In the Language of Scorpions

THIRTY TALES OF MODERN HORROR--In his newest collection, Charles Allen Gramlich, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, explores the dark territory of modern horror, from monsters, to serial killers, to the surreal landscapes of the insane mind. He climbed toward wakefulness through scarlet-tinted dreams, rising up to a morning that burned pink outside his window, like watermelon flesh. A hundred images cracked and ran as the dream period ended and heavy lids shuttered back over eyes that were yellow-brown scars in an otherwise pale face. The empty pupils dilated suddenly with pleasure as he slid from beneath sticky wet sheets and stood looking down, his body finger-painted red. ******* There were eyes in the canvas that I had never drawn--eyes full of dark wings and teeth. There were round mouths open to the night air, and bloody tongues whose dance burned with holy words. And in the wastelands of the unfilled canvas were ruins whose outlines I could not yet trace. I knew only that they held a bitter rapture and smelled of ashes.