{EAV:94a5fd8b5095b030}
A Consequence of Copulation
By Stephen V. Ramey


Churly turned. "The maggots in Love's eye will not copulate."

Basco's lips curled down. "What of Hate?"

"The same," Churly said. "Maggots propagate in the meat, but not in the eye."

"This is problematic," Basco said. He pulled levers. Lightning raged between the poles of his Tesla coil. "Problematic. I do not wish to corrupt the meat of Love and Hate, merely their mechanism of sight. Their subsequent blind thrashings will destroy polite society, and I shall be blameless."

"Perhaps...?" Churly said. His face was bulbous and tinged green from certain other experiments.

"Yes, yes," Basco said. "Out with it."

"Perhaps, if they themselves copulate?"

"They themselves?" Frown dented Basco's high forehead.

"If they, you know, do it, perhaps the maggots will get the idea."

Basco pushed levers. The laboratory shook with thunder. "Ludicrous!" he screamed. "Lascivious!" He returned the levers to their set point. "Try it."

And thus were Love and Hate brought to the padded room and encouraged to relate.

"So," said Love, twirling her hair. "Do you come here often?"

And Hate rose up before her, his prodigious member pulsing. "Not really," he said in a voice that recalled Basco's thunder. "You?"

Now Love stood too, breasts heaving. "My first time," she said. A white worm pushed from her eye socket and crawled down her cheek. A black worm came out of Hate's heart.

Sometime later, Basco yelled, "Is it working? Is the experiment a success?"

Churly pulled his face from the peephole. "I cannot tell," he said. "The room is full of flies."


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Stephen V. Ramey lives in beautiful New Castle, Pennsylvania and edits the annual Triangulation anthology from Parsec Ink. His work has appeared various places, including A Capella Zoo, Daily Science Fiction, and Microliterature. This story began as a prompt at Show Me Your Lits, a web-based group dedicated to literary flash fiction.