23 years ago, a crack genetics research unit was sent to prison for a clone they didn’t create. They promptly escaped to the Los Angeles gene pool, where they continue to perform microsurgery—for a price. So, if you’ve got a problem, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire
Author Archives: Gary L. Gehman
Ramona and Rimple
Once upon a time, while Ramona Otoe was walking through the forest, she ran into the Prefect’s little boy, Rimple. The weather was sunny and warm and Ramona had had quite a lot of fun already that day, so she stopped to ask the boy to play tag with her. “I sha’n’t play wif you,” …
Amazing ! What if… Stories
Mountain Story
On a hill where the water springs that eventually winds its way down out of the Sierra Madre, that thunders finally into the mighty Los Angeles River; on that hill there, clings the spine of a human town. It’s just a store, really; and a post office and a couple of houses for no particular …
Esmerelda & the Font Slave
“First things first, I always say,” said Fred, as he took the utensil firmly, but tenderly in hand. “I know I know what I’m doing. It’s just that I haven’t bothered to recently review my reasons for doing it.” Nevertheless, he gave the fingerpick a flip and launched into a torpid rendition of Melancholy Baby. …
Circus Saga
He sat there like a junkie, pulling slivers of wood from the picnic table with the teeth of his car keys. Every minute that ticked off some invisible clock seemed to him like another crack from the lion tamer’s whip. He rubbed his eyes and tried to block the calliope music from sending him off …
UPscale-downBEAT
Dog’s bane windowpane Sent the little one out on errands in the rain. A loaf of bread a jug of Schlitz, Poppies for puppies, Yuppies still got zitz. Amniotic fluid still wet behind the ears, Latent petulant druid with a charge plate for Sears. Time sealed in a capsule, The crepuscular dawn; Eos in tap …
noir
Nothing feels like a fresh pack of cigarettes. Nothing like a woman’s kiss. And nothing like a baseball bat across the occipital lobe. Two hours later, I regained consciousness and staggered my way to the stinking third story apartment in the Bengali quarter where Madame Stolchnya held her Druidic ceremonies. When I got there, four …
Field Trip
They used to tell stories. First you had to get undressed. They made you lie down on the carpet. Then, while the others you were with tried to calm you, the leader would pry open your eyes with his fingers. There would be an eyedropper that contained a very dilute acid and they’d let a …
Untitled #2
The fiddler and the joker spent too much time in the balcony. Tess up and took the carriage and left them to wander in the wretched mist outside the abbey. A leper crawled from the shadows and pleaded for absolution. The joker rendered it with a vanilla wafer and then knighted him with his battery …