MUTANT RAIN FOREST ISSUE

  WELCOME TO THE 20TH ISSUE OF THE FREEZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

For this extra special edition of our nonprofit cyber-rag, we're featuring four short stories: INEVITABLE, by Sanford Meschkow, MEERGA by John Shirley, THE RECIDIVIST by Brian "Flesheater" Stoneking, and LATE NIGHT EXTERMINATOR by Vincent Daemon; in addition, we close out this special commemorative issue with five poems by Bruce Boston reprinted from the 1992 Horror's Head Press collection he co-authored with Robert Frazier CHRONICLES OF THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST.

Click the images below to read the stories and poems in this issue:

INEVITABLE    by Sanford Meschkow art by Les Bossinas for NASA

                       
In this vision of a crew aboard the space craft Ultima Thule, the author explores the questions of whether it's a commanding officer's duty to motivate junior officers toward a promotion along with more startling inquiries into the nature of their mission to space.



MEERGA     by John Shirley                                                   art (detail) by Will Ferret

In this moving short story about a near future where synthetic women are mass produced as sexual pets, the author looks beneath the genetically modified skin to peer deeply into our real human condition. Here's a tale about the triumph of the human spirit battling sexual objectification at its most perversely extreme. 



THE RECIDIVIST  by Brian "Flesheater" Stoneking    art by Jason Heckenliable

Personnel in hazmat suits at a military quarantine lab are holding a very special prisoner in lockdown. He is the perfect killing machine and carries with him a terrible secret. It's up to General Manning and his crew at the research station to insure this rogue agent does not escape to kill again. 



LATE NIGHT EXTERMINATOR     by Vincent Daemon              art by Kara Koma

We return to Vincent Daemon's twisted world of Dolton, Pennsylvania with the mis- adventure of Lee, who is not a doctor nor a paramedic, he's an exterminator.  He fucking kills bugs.  Lee's seen a lot of sick things in and around this tweaker town.  Lee's ready for the job when he gets a desperate call after midnight. The question for our readers remains: are you prepared?



5 poems by Bruce Boston from CHRONICLES OF THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST

        featuring 4 watercolors by Marge Simon plus an illustration by Shasta Lawton




And that's a wrap for the 20th issue (count 'em)of the FREEZINE of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  I want to give an emphatic shout out and props to the following authors and artists for having dared to contribute their outstanding stories and artwork to keep this free experimental weblog/zine going well into it's seventh year. Thank you to Sanford Meschkow, John Shirley, Brian Stoneking, Vincent Daemon, and Bruce Boston for contributing your original material to our cause. Thank you to Marge Simon for the four beautiful watercolors that went along with the first four Mutant Rain Forest poems; and thank you to Shasta Lawton for contributing the banner art in addition to the illustration for the fifth Mutant Rain Forest poem.  A heap of thanks goes out to Jason Heckenliable for allowing the use of my cellphone snapshot of his reptoid painting for Flesheater's The Recidivist; thanks to Brother Chief Cat Will Ferret for his gracious contribution providing a visual counterpoint to John Shirley's story; and a million thanks goes out to Kara Koma for her bugged out illustration used in Vinnie's Late Night Exterminator.  

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MUTANT RAIN FOREST: V

THE MUSIC OF THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST

by Bruce Boston

                                                                             art by Shasta Lawton

is a completely natural music

born of transformation,

a thoroughly mutated music

born from corruption.

The Mutant Rain Forest

comes alive at night,

and that is when

its orchestra tunes up

in a wild cacophony

of unnatural selection:

the hissing baritone

of a millipede python

the hypnotic drone

of the blood orchid,

drawing predators

that become prey,

the rising falling hum

of insect swarms

as they live and die

and evolve into

twilight dawn,

the raucous squeak

of the parrot hawk,

a ravenous bird,

a shadow bird

except when it feeds

and a feathered ruff

rises in garish

rainbow array

around its neck,

the hard bone click

of horned tapirs

clashing by night

for control of the herd,

the roars that

rake their throats,

and always

the sudden intermittent

sounds of death and feeding,

the cries of the conquest

and of those eaten.

And intertwined and echoing

within and beyond it all,

the sibilant and husky

language of the cat people,

a constant refrain,

whispering yet insistent

in its seductive complexity.

For no rational reason

you wait for them to finish,

but they go on and on,

this endlessly tuning up.

You wait for the

conductor to appear

in his tie and tails

with baton in hand,

tapping the stand

for attention

and silence.

You wait for him

to raise his arms

and strike that

hard blow

against the air

with his stick

that starts the concert.

But he never does.

There is

non-conducting.

The concert

never begins.

And that arrhythmic

beat keeps changing

with every measure.

You are frightened

yet drawn by

its random oscillations

and savage insinuations.

Then you realize

that you are already

listening to the concert,

this endless tuning up

for a performance

that never occurs

and occurs forever.

Click Image Below

for all 4 stories + 5 poems

to be bundled together into the

 MUTANT RAIN FOREST ISSUE

featuring writing by

SANFORD MESCHKOW

JOHN SHIRLEY

BRIAN STONEKING

VINCENT DAEMON

BRUCE BOSTON

and artwork by

WILL FERRET

JASON HECKENLIABLE

KARA KOMA

MARGE SIMON

SHASTA LAWTON

only on

the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science

Fiction 

MUTANT RAIN FOREST: IV

THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST MEETS THE SEA

by Bruce Boston

                             watercolor by Marge Simon

All-night cantinas are still.

Shabby film-noir hotels

are steeped in shadow

deeper than their stains.

The vines are everywhere,

like scouts of an army

hard upon their heels,

like mad organic lace,

a grand ophidian opulence

leafing the listing

masts that dot the harbor,

caging the empty plazas

and abandoned streets

in tendrils that stray

along pastel walls,

across rust tile roofs,

twining through windows

with sinuous grace,

toppling lamps aside,

indifferent to remains,

mute green strength,

blind and vegetative,

about to pull the city

down into its waves.

Return Tomorrow to read

THE MUSIC OF THE
MUTANT RAINFOREST
by Bruce Boston

appearing online only on 

of Fantasy and Science

FICTION 

MUTANT RAIN FOREST: III

ILLUMINATION IN THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST

by Bruce Boston

                             watercolor by Marge Simon

Rebel saints and stray pariahs,

   clever con artists and stalwart desperadoes,

     mad adventurers and rogue fanatics,

devotees of all that is outré and fantastic...

embrace the transfigurations of this spacious borderland,

   this unexpected frontier where individual imaginations

            can chance freedom and death beyond

                        the hermetic wisdom of dome-dweller cant,

beyond the futureless ghetto entrapment

of the unshielded urban sprawl...

where it is rumored that in a valley yet to be mapped,

somewhere in the vast interior of this organic labyrinth,

   light, the very spiritus lux incarnate,

     roams the treetop canopy silently

        from branch to intertwining branch...

spilling a liquid radiance from the cups of flowers,

   rifling the hidden plumage of exotic birds,

     peeling an ebon sheen

        from the chitinous backs of arboreal beetles...

gathering diverse shades and blending unseen colors

   to cast an illumination so archly pure

          in its dusk light clarity

   that it fills the leaves with a rarefied translucence

for miles in every direction...

so potent in its distillation

   you must smell and taste and savor

     its foxfire nectar with every intake of breath,

        so vital in the implications

     of its visionary promise

        that tears will rule your cheeks...

and you will know with a certainty akin to madness

   that all the unnamed appetites of your questing soul

          could soon be sated...

Return Tomorrow to read

THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST  
MEETS THE SEA
by Bruce Boston

appearing online only on 
The FREEZINE

of Fantasy and Science

FICTION 

MUTANT RAIN FOREST: II

A GOURMAND OF THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST

by Bruce Boston

                         watercolor by Marge Simon 

His jaded palate

is startled and refreshed

by a wealth of flavors

so subtle and provocative

that frissons of delight

shudder up and down

his meaty back,

by pungent aromatics

so utterly unique

he once again discovers

the first unbounded passion

of his sensual decay.

From a penthouse suite

safe within the Seattle dome,

he expends his fortune

on delicacies more

bizarre and illicit

than a cannibal's feast.

He bribes customs officials

and employs unsavory sorts

so that he might savor

the fruits and meats

of a furious ecology,

so that his taste buds

might embark upon

vicarious exploration

of far rivers and climes

he would never dare

to visit in the flesh.

Even the pains which

rack his portly belly

do not lessen his desire

for spiny bone-white guavas

seasoned with banana moss.

The rash of radiation welts

which erupts upon his chest,

his throat and forearms,

does not delay his hunt

for the perfect table red

to complement the spicy

roasted sweetbreads

of the anaconda sloth.

He is discovered

one morning slumped

before his laden table,

nearly unrecognizable

in the stench of his decay.

The slender stalks

of saffron fungi

which sprout

from all his orifices

have reduced him

to an ectomorph

and scoured

the plates before him

till they shine,

yet have left

a ghastly rictus

of gluttony revered

upon his face.

Click Below to read

ILLUMINATION IN THE
MUTANT RAINFOREST
by Bruce Boston

appearing online only on 

of Fantasy and Science

FICTION 

MUTANT RAIN FOREST: I

THREE EVOCATIONS OF THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST

by Bruce Boston

                                     watercolor by Marge Simon 

Evolution

When young Charles rode the Beagle round the Cape

bound for the revelations of the Galapagos,

little did he know that war and rampant

radiation would turn this continent

he circumnavigated into a land

which would first prove his

theories of survival

and selection,

not in millennia but months,

and with like rapidity prove them

as useless as Newton’s linear equations

to the curving temporal attenuations of space.

And now even his special island is rife

with protean life and the unique

and isolated species he once

cataloged with such care

have vanished

in an onslaught far more

unique and constantly changing,

more fertile than flights of pure imagination.

Expansion

From space, with each revolution of the planet,

the dark arboreal palimpsest seems to lengthen.

In the time lapsed motion of satellite tapes,

it swells like a gargantuan amoeba in mitosis.

Rio. Caracas. Sao Paulo. The coastal cities

which survive do so by a daily confrontation.

The lines of armor clad troops advance warily,

spraying gouts of liquid fire into the wilds.

Napalm. Cyanogen. Agent Orange. A poison rain

of defoliants and excoriation falls in waves

from the decks of combat planes and choppers,

yet the flames are strangely dampened and die.

In a makeshift refugee camp, a native Indio

from the abandoned interior, drafted to fight,

sleeps in battle fatigues by his pregnant wife.

All his dreams have been transformed to frights

in which the serpentine vines he burns by day

have rooted deep within their displaced lives,

to twine and strangulate the bloody umbilical

and suffocate the breath of his unborn child.

Elan Vital

Beyond the claws of bestial battle,

beyond the green on green attrition,

some say a force is dwelling here

which links its manifold creations,

a rank and raging barbaric spirit,

a dim but still awakening sentience,

which touches and taints our souls

and gives rise to stray obsessions.

The banks of thunderous cumuli

stacked against the Andes range,

fall east to meet miasmic mists

which rise in streaming drifts

from the swamps of lowland basins,

and in this airborne compilation

dense and brackish figures evolve

in an endless surreal cinemontage

of unconscious organic visions.

Some say that far and farther south

beyond the Rivers Negro and Parana,

beyond the encroaching vegetation,

a retreating tribe has suffered

an enchantment and possession

in the shadow of the forest wall,

for now they divinate its growth

and foretell our changeling future

as they read the clouds’ collisions

Click Below to read

A GOURMAND OF THE
MUTANT RAINFOREST
by Bruce Boston

appearing here online only on 

of Fantasy and Science

FICTION