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Elsewhere in the April-May, 2008, issue of Armageddon Buffet, our editorial comments on Scott McClellan's kiss-off-and-tell-off book in "What the %$#@ Happened?"

On the (now-blogged!) Road to Armageddon, read about Armageddon Buffet's tragic adventures in MySpace Land in Signs and Portents of Armageddon!

Wars, Famines and Pestilences looks at Ralph Nader's war with his inner Alpha female!

In Preparing for Armageddon, find out when you are scheduled to die.

Finally, in The Cassandra Report, see how reality imitates fiction!

Next issue: June 2008!!

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Obligatory Mission Statement: "Our purpose is to wield the Word -- to oppose oppression disguised as religion, power disguised as patriotism, injustice disguised as law, and commerce disguised as art."

At Armageddon Buffet, we publish fiction with an edge, the type of edge you get when you spend waaaay too much time sharpening your shiv for the Last Battle.

  Tyrone Nagai / Lola and Jean It is a little-known fact that the 1998 film Lola rennt (Run Lola Run) is actually based on an event that occurred on July 22nd (2005) in London, England. In the movie version, a narrator iterates the musings of the late soccer coach Josef (Sepp) Herberger -- the Yogi Berra of Germany: "After the game is before the game. The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes."

Jefferson P. Swycaffer / In Search of The Fuehrer The Nazi hierarchy had gone on retreat, taking the waters and airs at the spa at Kandersfeld, Austria. Accessible by a winding truck-trail up the Zillertal Alps, although within easy radio communication of Innsbruck, the inner circle of the Third Reich had the mingled advantages of isolation and total hierarchical dominance of wartime affairs.
     Winter's furies had abated, and Adolf Hitler had decided to take a bit of a walk. Therefore, the rest of his entourage had decided likewise. Heinrich Himmler was managing to keep up the pace, while Josef Goebbels, showing the sort of canny wisdom that had kept him alive during periodic party re-organizations, managed to go slowly, so as not to show up the less athletic of the junta. Hermann Goering, of course, plodded along in the rear, red-faced and huffing.
     A platoon of mountain troops had fanned out over the ridges and cuts, and a special section of SS officers maintained a minute-by-minute census of the population of Kandersfeld, taking no chances against any lack of patriotism or loyalty on the part of the good citizenry.

Don Traverso / Dysecdysis As the latest images of war show on the TV screen, Kuhn hears someone exclaim, "What kind of world is this? It's like God has abandoned us."
      Kuhn smiles sadly at the woman who'd said these words. He wishes he could do something to take away her despair. He sees so much of it around these days. He wipes the moisture from the chapped skin around his eyes.

Thomas Logan / Ghost Dance SoliloquiesTrash, is it necessary to our modern life? That sounds like a documentary you'd see in grade school, huh? Like the answer will have to be 'yes', unless I asked it with a more serious tone, maybe an angrier voice, 'Trash, is it necessary to our modern life?' and then somehow you'd know to shout out, No! and maybe pound or raise your fist. Trash, yeah, there's too much of it. It seems to be our gross national product. Everything's expendable, meant to be on its way to becoming trash.

B. F. Price / Animals Were Harmed The Head Scientist made her way through the empty corridors and entered the laboratory unit at her usual early hour. She was the first to arrive in the labs but not the first to arrive in the building, as evidenced by the list of last night's dead animals posted on the job board by Paul, the animal caretaker, who liked to arrive early to haul off the dead carcasses and feed and hose down the still-living animals before the researchers arrived. She was relieved to note that none of her animals had died that night, and chose to interpret this as a sign that the research she was doing would achieve the results she wanted.
     She wasn't superstitious: instead, she believed in a chaotic and unpredictable universe and thus good and bad omens signaling how the universe was operating. For now, the universe was treating her research well, which was fortunate. It was vital to stopping the wasting epidemic spreading through the colony.

Jefferson P. Swycaffer / The Gift that Keeps On Giving In the deeps, in the lowest fastnesses, in the caverns of red, buttery rock and black pools, the Devil languishes. Here there are crags and precipices, rising up and over-arching, closing in again above this moral encystment.
     But, were one to scale the rugged cliffs, edging up the gore-slick crevices and inching up coarse chimneys, one may find a niche, a nook, an encircling standpipe.
     An exit.

Harold Jaffe / Cho Taking no chances, Texarkana, Texas, police Thursday spent hours combing through every crack and crevice of Bowie County High School after a cafeteria worker said she saw two young "Oriental males" wearing camouflage -- one in a ski mask -- "trotting" through the hallways before the school was scheduled to open, officials confirmed.
     The alert prompted school authorities to cancel classes for the day.
     The cafeteria worker said she did not "think" she saw any weapons on the young Orientals, and no one has seen them since, Texarkana Chief Duane Louie said.
     "We don't know if this is a prank, we don't know if this is a copycat deal, we don't know if this is a figment of someone's imagination, but we're going to take every precaution we can."

Jefferson Swycaffer / Leviathan of the Blades I've been there, and I never grow tired of it. There's a beauty to it, a calmness, a glorious isolation. I filled in the blanks in my mind, envying him the chance to go out and down, even with students. In clear water, it was more like flying than flying itself is. The giant kelp stalks grow up from the depths, an ugly greenish-yellow in color, and the sunlight shines down from the surface, growing weaker and weaker the farther down you go. The kelp fronds had a way of casting shadows and sunbeams, so distinct they sometimes seemed solid. So far, everything checked: Eric, Dave, nine students. Their names were on cards in my file cabinet, their money in the bank, probably already spent and gone owing.

Devin Walsh / Felix Culpa When the invaders came they mostly blacked out the sky, and they pilfered everyone's watches and clocks and hoarded batteries and surgically canceled electricity throughout the City and took people's generators, so basically nobody ever knew what time it was. The invaders probably thought this would put a real curb on the ability of the occupied to coordinate a resistance movement, and for the most part they were right. But it would happen sometimes, in the chill of early evening, when the air smelled unmistakably of twilight, when people's stomachs growled for dinner, that cells would gather in someone's candlelit living room.

Tony Zurlo / What Did You Do During the War, Daddy-O? Earlier in the day, my class had grilled me about the sixties. Did I fight in Vietnam? Had I smoked pot? Tripped on LSD? Tried group sex? Hitched across country? Worn my hair down to my knees? Seen Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock?

Stephen W. Potts / One Thousand and One Nights "Tariq and Sikander finally joined the battle when the enemy came into the skies on flying things -- looking like the great simurghs out of ancient stories, except that instead of being wise these things were evil. They were feathered with shiny metal like blue steel and red gold, and studded with great jewels that shone like the flames of Hell, which was in fact where they came from. Soaring on these birds of burning metal, the enemy dropped exploding fires, blasting entire towns to ashes -- houses, marketplaces, and mosques alike. People were consumed in flames, and every family lost someone to death."

Juventino Manzano / Epiphany in Hell and in the halls o' hell Jesus said unto me 'fear not fear except when filled, for then the fear is truly fruitful and ye shall be free as the bloody sheep I sacrificed as a boy.'
     (wow, what fuckin' great wise guru shit is that?)

Don Traverso / Tuesday 10:30 AM The sky's gone out. We stumble through the field, six of us, our knees and shins hitting and scraping the jagged chunks of air lying on the ground. Days pass quickly, though we cannot tell by clocks, sun or stars anymore. Of the six of us, only I remember the moon, but only vaguely. I can no longer describe it to the other five.

Frank Norris / Comida "Comida!" shouted the crowd in answer. "Comida! Comida!" deaf to everything but the clamor of empty stomachs. But somehow at last they understood; somehow at last wood was found, three huge fires were built, and camp kettles (borrowed from Mr. Ramsden, the British consul) filled with corn-meal mush set a-cooking. It was six o'clock when we began. The terrace was just high enough to shut out the view of the plaza, but at every fresh suggestion that the distribution was to begin, a waving forest of hands topped the terrace wall, and the lamentable wail broke out afresh, "Comida! Comida!"

Don Traverso / Mist I walk to the open window of my small apartment. The ceiling, walls, floors, cabinets and fixtures are all immaculately white and sterile, as is the windowsill. I look through it, down at the backyard next door. There are six children there, three boys, three girls, dressed in bathing suits of various colors. Their laughter dazzles the air, rippling with the sunlight in the swaying trees. One of them sprays the others with a garden hose. A band of colors shimmers around the cone of mist emitted from the spray gun. My hands grip the peeling white paint of the windowsill. I lean out, studying the dancing multicolored band, the darting mist, the leaping laughing children....

Juventino Manzano / Suburban Passion In Three Acts He picks up the Nixon biography; turns to a page. Eyes look at the words, but only see the scene in his head wishing he was there cause he'd pick her up by her little waist and give it to her good -- the way he'd given it to her mother when he was a young-on-top-of-the-world-entrepreneur-living-out-the-Dream. She was an Audrey Hepburn look-alike, and who could know she'd go to hell and fat after her 20s. Still got the Vanagon and unfulfilled desires -- twisted like him -- but can still get within two rooms of them...

Stephen MacKinnon / Triptych "That your magic potion?" It was an older, raspy male voice. I looked up. "This it?" he asked the skinny guy, who nodded. The older man said, "Give Mrs. White her money back." He put a big hand on my right shoulder like he was going to bounce me. I shrugged it off. He pulled out a gun, a .22 pistol -- a squirrel gun, which in hindsight shouldn't have intimidated me the way it did, but it made everything around me, including my voice, freeze instantly.

Juventino Manzano / Requited Ecstasy Had to check my AK in at the door. Besides checking in our long arms, we had to pay the steep admittance fee of a box of shotgun shells and a hunting knife we had found scavenging. She wanted to drop something she'd scored for us. I was ready as well; forget the gunshots, the violence -- just drop and veg in the chill room, watch the wall melt. Not her, she was anxious to forget herself by diving into the dance floor manumit -- a savage band dancin' hard to post-mil electro music -- a beating rasping or rhyme -- music of a sort, got a groove somewhere.

Stephen W. Potts / Loose Ends He stood before the medicine cabinet mirror in the upstairs bathroom, surveying his pasty, parched complexion. Might as well head for the office, he thought, and get away from the unpleasantness at home. Leaning over the sink, he stroked his cheeks under the white light; it was obvious he hadn't shaved for days. He remembered having heard that hair continued to grow long after a person died. He would have to be careful not to let his appearance slide.

Kirsten Noelle Hubbard / An Elegy for the Uninvited My own palms begin to burn, and discreetly I clasp my hands together under the table. I look down. I need to fix my nails; they're acrylic, and two of them are already coming off. I raise my eyes and allow them to drift from painted woman to painted woman. I analyze their nails and wonder if anyone else has seen the little boy.

Conor Murphy / Think Nothing of It Leaning over the body of the condemned to find a usable vein, she notices that whatever he had for lunch reeks all the way from his throat, and he didn't brush his teeth. A slight break of skin, some Versed with its date-rape effects, and she passes her lethargy down to him. When she leaves the room the stink of his next-to-last meal sticks in her nose.

Jefferson P. Swycaffer / The Lifeboat Game It was only a game. The students would discuss it, going through their usual inanities. Didi would insist on saving the four-year-old and the cancer-stricken art student. Hal and some of the other guys would defend the policeman, not because of his profession, but because of his gun. The priest was sacrosanct from the start. The politician and the salesman were in some danger, and a minority would argue against the retarded child. In the end, over the edge would go the old woman, and everyone would feel that justice had been done.

Chris Tannhauser / Backflash The mall was a still, almost meditative place for him; other than the small sounds of people walking in large spaces and the occasional shout, it was quiet. Quieter than outside. Quieter than his apartment. It was a cathedral space, with broad, open angles of glass and metal bigger than a human mind. It was awe-inspiring that such a huge space held nothing. Of course, he knew this was just his lack of perception -- for everyone else the towering spaces and balcony-encircled shafts were filled with holographic video and dancing signage, animated vegetables, animals, babies; no doubt in those great spaces bright hauntings taunted and begged.

H. G. Wells / A Dream of Armageddon No one living, you know, knew what war was; no one could imagine, with all these new inventions, what horror war might bring. I believe most people still believed it would be a matter of bright uniforms and shouting charges and triumphs and flags and bands -- in a time when half the world drew its food supply from regions ten thousand miles away --

Chris Tannhauser / See-Through It was unlike any interrogation he'd endured; no clusters of tools from the hardware store bargain bin, no trays of needles and flame, no neural depolarizers. There were flickering lights -- at least he thought of them as flickering lights -- and there was pain, the kind that came from within. He lifted his head and pawed feebly at his spittle-soaked chin. The sensation of pins and needles in his right hand -- one of his shoulder straps was too tight. Whenever the thing buckled him back into his transit couch, it got it wrong. At least it stopped putting him in upside down. That was -- how long ago?

Stephen W. Potts / Apocalypso He was a block away when a female shriek froze him midstep. The woman a few paces ahead of him had left the sidewalk and was slowly floating upward. Still screaming, she swung arms and legs in a blind, wild search for purchase. She revolved almost gracefully, as though dangling on a plumbline, until her horrified eyes fell on Warren. She was in her forties, he guessed, and slightly plump, with a nimbus of dark hair around her head. She vainly tugged her loose skirt down over her pantyhose as her mouth stretched open again.

Mark Twain / Letter to the Earth Your increasing donation, every two or three years, has kept your name on all lips, and warm in all hearts. All heaven watches you Sundays, as you drive to church in your handsome carriage; and when your hand retires from the contribution plate, the glad shout is heard even to the ruddy walls of remote Sheol, "Another nickel from Abner!"

Morgan Lockhart / Coyote and the Faceless Cowboy I'd long since given up on catching Coyote. His meddling had been gradually accepted and then, finally, appreciated in a bitter sort of way. The day-to-day monotony of life on a chicken farm can wear a man down. Especially the one chicken farm in all of His existence where the eggs disappeared from the collection pails when the sun set, and the rooster, however cock-sure he might carry himself around the yard, hadn't successfully fertilized an egg in a hundred years--new generations becoming unnecessary when I ran out of new ways to cook chicken and came to terms with the fact that I didn't need to eat, and I hadn't needed to in nigh fifty years.

Brad Lyke / Murder Takes Your Wings I sat in the roach-infested hotel that looked as though a colony of rats from the New World thought this was their manifest destiny. I fingered the hammer on the gun, cocking it back and releasing it slowly, my tension ebbing and flowing. I had been in Cairo for three days now--three damp, sweltering, interminable days.... The principal assignment didn't bother me; it was a simple matter. If murder is ever really that simple.

Stephen W. Potts / The Lord's Work Elmer experienced a passing thrill of joy at the sight of all those true Christian men just like himself, with all their wives and children and aging parents at the other tables around him. At this precious moment they were all full of food and the spirit of the Lord, all content and comfortable in each other's presence.

Conor Murphy / Two Poems: After the Smoke Sermon and Inundation of a Rat.

Stephen W. Potts / A Sad Story Josie had the ike on the other side of the bar tuned to one of the midday news shows. I watched a story about last night's fight in Madison Square Garden and wished I had been there.

Jessica Hayes / Above the Ed Sullivan I scratch at the lock in a fury to yank it open to get to her. Still hearing the screams, I race into my front yard; the wet grass on the bottoms of my feet ground me into consciousness. A frenzy drives me forward; I have to get to her.

Chris Tannhauser / Zoroaster's Conundrum I fell to my knees, sending up little showers of dust in the hard vacuum, and gazed stupidly into the wreckage of Anabel's face. Her ghost had taken flight, leaving nothing but this, just shit on bones.

Jessica Wineteer / Fashion Statement She corrected me. "Toned down does not mean not having flair or style. Stylish is one thing darling." Her sibilant voice tickled my ear over the phone. "Tacky is another."

Stephen W. Potts / The Commuter His face scrunched automatically; the coffee was cool. He thought of spitting it out the window, but did not want to compromise the air conditioning and swallowed instead. He stabbed a finger at the Kopaid^® dispenser in the dash.

B. F. Price / Levels of Comfort Entering Nordstrom, I paused at the cosmetics counter to test a new perfume sample, then tried a new shade of lipstick. Afterward I rode the escalator upstairs to ask the counter girl which chocolates were best for after dinner and which best for tea.

Stephen W. Potts / United We Stand He spot-checks his flag decals--the one on the rear driver's side window, the larger one on the back window, the red-white-and-blue license plate holder, and the stars-and-stripes motif of his own bumper sticker, which reads "Proud to Be American" under a scowling bald eagle with its claws outspread.

Jefferson P. Swycaffer / The God Monologues Ghost stuff doesn't have mass; we never captured any in any of our bottle-traps. You could go tearing at a ghost with your fists and never feel a thing. It didn't take us long to work out that it was, ultimately, immaterial. Not in the sense that it was not made of matter--atoms--but in the sense that we didn't give a damn.

Alan Wade / Wonder Woman, Hungry She would feel better if she could just hide out inside her invisible plane, but since she herself is not invisible, everyone could see her rummaging around inside it anyway. Steve Trevor hasn't called her back for years, and from two doors down, the sticky sounds of sex are overwhelming her senses.

Chris Tannhauser / Sadhus in Trouble The tank treads broke the cobblestones like the barking of Hell; the stones gave up their liberated spirits with sounds of gunfire or snapping bones. As dust and the shrieking moans of hot metal filled his small beehive of mud, Dharmendra remained as he was, as he had always been, folded closed against the illusion of the universe.

Stephen W. Potts / In Your Dreams He finds himself amid a loose crowd gathered on an outdoor green. He gazes across the tops of heads at a huge contraption like a Ferris wheel, constructed of bamboo and wood, spinning at a brisk speed for something so ponderous.

Armageddon Buffet is looking for speculative fiction, social satire, and cyberpunk; future fantasies, alternate histories, and apocalyptic visions; surrealism, naturalism, and literotica; well-researched and considered political, philosophical, and cultural commentary; true tales of successful activism, rebellion, and opposition; positive alternatives and survival strategies. More