Archive for the urban fairy tales Category

OUT NOW: “Full Metal Octopus”

Posted in Bizarro Fiction, Carlton Mellick III, mermaids, urban fairy tales, Urban Fantasy with tags , , on July 20, 2021 by carltonmellick

My newest book, FULL METAL OCTOPUS, is now available.

FULL METAL OCTOPUS

Welcome to Grub Town, the most corrupt city in America. A place where gutter punk mermaids swim in sewage-filled canals, fairy prostitutes hang in birdcages on every street corner, and yakuza elves run everything behind the scenes.

Eliot is the most beautiful fairy in all of the city with his dazzling emerald green butterfly wings that make everyone who sees them fall instantly in lust with him. But it’s more of a curse than a blessing. Forced to hide his wings in public in order to avoid the constant sexual harassment, Eliot only finds solace when visiting his friends at the Snake Pit lamia strip club or getting tattooed by the dark and mysterious half-octopus woman named Oona.

Oona is the best tattooist in the city, but she is a frightening woman three times Eliot’s size with nine-foot tentacles that could choke a man to death in seconds. But despite this fact, Eliot is desperately in love with her. He’s so infatuated with the octomaid that he gets new tattoos from her each and every week just to be closer to her, addicted to having her artwork permanently embedded into his skin. But when Eliot accidentally murders the only heir to the elf yakuza crime family in Oona’s tattoo shop, they are forced to go on the run together, hoping to avoid the wrath of the most dangerous man in town. With everyone in the city out to get them, they can only rely on each other if they have any hope for survival.

Available at amazon.com

OUT NOW: “Stacking Doll”

Posted in Bizarro Fiction, body horror, eraserhead press, Fiction, surrealism, urban fairy tales on March 12, 2018 by carltonmellick

STACKING DOLL

Stacking Doll is the story of Benjamin Hammond, a young man who is in love with a Russian nesting doll. But in this world, nesting dolls are not just antique wooden toys. They are a race of people known as Matryoshkans, a subspecies of human who are born with a very peculiar abnormality—they have a collection of smaller people living inside of them.

Benjamin never thought he’d ever fall in love with anyone, let alone a Matryoshkan, but from the moment he met Ynaria he knew she was the only one for him. Although relationships between humans and Matryoshkans are practically unheard of, the two are determined to get married despite objections from their friends and family. After meeting Ynaria’s strict conservative parents, it becomes clear to Benjamin that the only way they will approve of their union is if they undergo The Trial—a matryoshkan wedding tradition where couples lock themselves in a house for several days in order to introduce each other to all of the people living inside of them.

No human has ever gone through The Trial before, so Benjamin has no idea what’s in store for him. He assumes that he’ll love each of Ynaria’s inner selves just as much as he loves her, but as she peels off her layers he realizes that each one is more neurotic and difficult to deal with than the last. And if they’re ever going to be together, Benjamin must fall in love with each and every one of his fiancé’s inner personalities, no matter how strange or disturbing they turn out to be.

Available at amazon.com

OUT NOW: “Spider Bunny”

Posted in absurdism, Bizarro Fiction, Carlton Mellick III, surrealism, Uncategorized, urban fairy tales on April 3, 2017 by carltonmellick

My new book, SPIDER BUNNY, is now available. This one is a tribute to the unintentionally terrifying children’s commercials of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I hope you check it out.

Spider Bunny

SPIDER BUNNY

Only Petey remembers the Fruit Fun cereal commercials of the 1980s. He remembers how warped and disturbing they were. He remembers the lumpy-shaped cartoon children sitting around a breakfast table, eating puffy pink cereal brought to them by the distortedly animated mascot, Berry Bunny. The characters were creepier than the Sesame Street Humpty Dumpty, freakier than Mr. Noseybonk from the old BBC show Jigsaw. They used to give him nightmares as a child. Nightmares where Berry Bunny would reach out of the television and grab him, pulling him into her cereal bowl to be eaten by the demented cartoon children.

When Petey brings up Fruit Fun to his friends, none of them have any idea what he’s talking about. They’ve never heard of the cereal or seen the commercials before. And they’re not the only ones. Nobody has ever heard of it. There’s not even any information about Fruit Fun on google or wikipedia. At first, Petey thinks he’s going crazy. He wonders if all of those commercials were real or just false memories. But then he starts seeing them again. Berry Bunny appears on his television, promoting Fruit Fun cereal in her squeaky unsettling voice. And the next thing Petey knows, he and his friends are sucked into the cereal commercial and forced to survive in a surreal world populated by cartoon characters made flesh.

Get it at amazon.com