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like to be immortal?”
    She sits up and reaches behind her, rubs the model’s
mound until the model cries, “Yes, mother!”
    And so it is done.
    ***
    Over the succession of many nights and mornings and
afternoons, the artist impregnates her model, fills her with pomegranate seeds
from which the model’s immortality will grow.
    Finally, the model’s belly quickens. Weeks later she
births a butternut tree.
    The artist is never sure what type of tree her models
will birth. No matter—she knows how to carve them all, knows how to carve all
woods to immortalize her models, each one in turn.
    After the quaking aspen is birthed, the artist sends the
model on her way. The model’s body is still ripe from her pregnancy. Her cheeks
are plump and rosy. Her eyes luminous. Still, she
doesn’t want to leave the artist; she doesn’t want to leave this home.
    “You are woman now,” the artist says. “It’s time to go
into the world and make your way. It is time for me to carve another into your
wood.” With that she pushes the model out the door with a basket of food and a
bag holding the model’s worldly goods.
    ***
    The room, wide and white as the tundra in winter, is
empty. The artist walks in, followed by a man in an expensive gray suit. He
pulls a large wheeled suitcase behind him. He stares at her body’s curves
beneath her long red dress.
    The artist surveys the room, walking along the walls,
studying the matte black floor, the matte black ceiling that rises into
forever.
    “Open the suitcase,” the artist says.
    The man lowers the suitcase to the ground and opens it.
Inside are dozens of carved pieces of wood with girls’ images staring at him.
    The artist picks up four of the carvings. In one, a girl
is bound to a tree with moss, gagged with flowers, blindfolded with giant
leaves. In another, a girl hangs from a tree’s branches, strapped to the
branches by thick strips of bark, cherries spilling from her ripped open belly.
In another, a girl is trapped beneath a tree’s roots. In the last, a girl has a
tree growing from the center of her chest.
    One by one, the artist nails these carvings to a display
wall. She studies the wall from different directions, from different distances.
    Finally she says, “This will work. This will be a fine
place to house my daughters.”
    The man nods his head.
    “I will send the rest tomorrow. And leave one space
empty—I have one more piece to add.”
    ***
    The artist stands naked in the forest. Her breasts and
belly and hips full, yet supple. She props a large, full-length mirror framed
in ebony against an oak. She takes several steps back, and closes her eyes.
When she opens them again they are black. She stares at her image in the
mirror, and she begins to blink.
    ***
    Spike Marlowe has held a number of odd jobs, including
working as a detective, a Bigfoot researcher, a writer for an internet content
farm, a busker and as a performer in a wild west show.
These days she's a writer, blogger and bizarro editor for Eraserhead Press,
with a focus on the New Bizarro Author Series. Her first book, Placenta of
Love, is available at all the usual locations. You can stalk her online at
her website spikemarlowe.wordpress.com or on Twitter at @spikemarlowe .
    ***
    THE EMPEROR
    Dmitri and the Mad Monk
    By Kris Austen Radcliffe
    “You have brains on you, Grand Duke.” The spy sniffed
the air and lifted an eyebrow, proud of his vocal inflection.
    The Englishman’s need to state the obvious and then pass
it off as wry humor annoyed Dmitri more than the gore on his greatcoat. He
watched the body on the floor of the prince’s flamboyant estate, ignoring both
the spy and the metallic stench of blood mixing with the pathetic notes of fear
wafting off the other men. The pistol in his hand, he still aimed. Now was not
the time for distractions.
    Ten minutes inside the palace and Rasputin had bled out
onto the extravagant rug. They’d tempted the vile fornicator with breasts and
the promise