Biblical Legends Anthology Series Bundle: Biblical Legends Anthology Series

Contents

Biblical Legends Anthology Series Bundle

GARDEN OF EDEN ANTHOLOGY

ALPHA

FLASH FICTIONS

IN THE BEGINNING WE DID HAVE SOMEONE ON THE GROUND

GOSSIP IN THE GARDEN

MOTE

RENOVATION

A GHOST AND A THOUGHT

WE WHO BLEED

ONE BIT OFF

WATER RATS

AGENT OF GOOD

IOTA

X:\USERS\ANDROIDX>START EDEN.EXE_

SHORT STORIES

THE GENESIS OF THE INCORPOREUM

THE GARDENERS OF EDEN

THE ROOTS OF ALL EVIL

SURVEY

BREACH

OMEGA

BEFORE DAWN CAN WAKE US

SULFURINGS:  TALES FROM SODOM & GOMORRAH

ALPHA

FLASH FICTIONS

AND A CHILD SHALL LEAD

ABEL

IDBASH

IN THE DISTANCE, A CLAP OF THUNDER

GARBAGE

[Untranslatable]

THE SALT PIT

PAYMENT

THICK AIR

ZACHARIAH

SINGLE RIGHTEOUS SEEKS SAME

IOTA

SODOM

SHORT STORIES

RUINS OF GOMORRAH

THE MORTICIAN OF SODOM

STARLIGHT

WARMTH

THE SCENT OF SIN AND PUNISHMENT

SOLOMON'S LOT

THE REMORSE OF THE INCORPOREUM

OMEGA

IN THE SHALLOWS

DELUGE:  STORIES OF SURVIVAL & TRAGEDY IN THE GREAT FLOOD

ALPHA

FLASH FICTIONS

AS BIG AS ALL THE WORLD

GUIDANCE IN THE CLOUDS

DREAMS OF THE MOON

PLANET TERRUS

TEN LONELY RAIN GODS

AN IRONCLAD FATE OF HER OWN DESIGN

PROBLEM POINTS

WAVES AS A BOND WITH GOD

S' DAY

IOTA

AQUALUNG

SHORT STORIES

FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM

DREAMERS OF THE DELUGE

THE IMMERSION OF THE INCORPOREUM

REMNANTS OF THE FLOOD

SURVEYING SAVIORS

THE SHARPTOOTH

OMEGA

ANGELBLOOD

BIOS

ABOUT THE EDITOR

LEAVE US A REVIEW

CONNECT WITH THE GARDEN GNOMES

Books By Allen Taylor

Biblical Legends Anthology Series Bundle

53 stories and poems by 39 authors, including one full-length novelette

Edited by

Allen Taylor

All works in this bundle are copyrighted by the authors and authors retain all rights to their own creations. No part of this anthology may be reproduced in any manner - in print, electronically, or by any other technology existing now or in the future - without the express written permission of the authors of those works.

Copyright © 2023 Garden Gnome Publications

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-8-9900498-4-0

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GARDEN OF EDEN ANTHOLOGY

Biblical Legends Anthology Series

All works in this anthology are copyrighted by the authors and authors retain all rights to their own creations. No part of this anthology may be reproduced in any manner - in print, electronically, or by any other technology existing now or in the future - without the express written permission of the authors of those works.

Copyright © 2014 Garden Gnome Publications

First Printing, February 2014

Second Printing, May 2023

Cover art by

Alexandre Rito

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1535509411; 1535509414

All works included herein are fictitious. Any characters resembling actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, events, animals, creatures, and settings resembling real world businesses, events, animals, creatures, and settings are purely coincidental, except of course the Garden of Eden and its legendary inhabitants. If any of them have a beef with the way authors in this anthology have handled their memories, they can take it up with the authors. The garden gnomes are merely middlemen.

This anthology is dedicated to anyone and everyone who has ever looked, felt, tasted, or smelled like a garden gnome and their relatives, owners, assigns, foot props, and nearby tree stumps.

ALPHA

Allen Taylor

An anthology is like a box of chocolates. You put a call out and see what happens. In the case of the Garden of Eden, I was pleasantly surprised.

For all the trouble I went through to write the rules and post them, many of the submissions I received were in clear violation. No Adam and Eve, and for dear God's sake, no serpents. In this collection of stories, we have all three. I think you'll agree, the stories are spectacular.

We have other characters, too.

Roaches, for instance. Water Rats. Angels. Gnomes. And even the Tree itself. Yes, that tree. The tree. As a character.

Hey, I asked for absurdity. And, boy, did I get it.

Of course, the challenges of planning and publishing an anthology are tremendous. The joys no less. Right from the beginning, I had a cheerleader. As soon as she heard about my plans to take submissions for a Garden of Eden anthology, AmyBeth Inverness got excited. She was more excited than I was. It didn't bother me that she submitted her story, The Genesis of the Incorporeum, in the final hour. It's only fitting that it should lead the short story section. Not because it is good - it is that (read it for yourself!) - but because it sets the pace for what is to follow. There's not a single disappointment.

If you find convenient serendipities here, don't be surprised. For instance, it's no accident that the first story you'll read is by an author named Adam.

My vision from the beginning was crisp, like a well-pruned garden leaf. I had established early on that I was going to publish a handful of flash fiction stories, a few short stories, one poem, and one essay. I figured I'd get plenty of fiction pieces, and I did. Alas, I could not publish them all.

Getting poetry and essay submissions proved to be somewhat more challenging. I wanted to publish two poems, but I stuck with my original vision and broke someone's heart. As far as essays go, I didn't get one submission. Not to be beat, I asked John Vicary if I could publish his flash fiction story Before Dawn Can Wake Us as an essay instead. It had the perfect flavor of what I had in mind for that section, aptly titled OMEGA. As you read, you can easily envision the narrator delivering this monologue from a park bench anywhere in the world today. Right now, even.

One question that I often encounter as I discuss the Biblical Legends Anthology Series with potential readers is, Does it remain true to the Bible? The answer is proverbial. It depends.

Some readers want to know if all the stories adhere to a strict Evangelical interpretation of events in the Bible. In that case, the answer is no, they do not. Some readers may want to know if the stories are biblical in the sense that they convey any spiritual values. Some of them do. But not all of them. And let’s not forget that here, in the 21st century, we can’t even get people to agree on what spiritual values are, but I’ll refrain from going down that road. The truest way to answer the question is to say that some of the writers approached their stories from a Christian perspective while others did not. To be honest, I didn’t ask anyone about their background. I just wanted well-told stories and literary gems. If that sounds blasphemous, please forgive me.

But I do ask for your honest assessment. Not of me, but of the stories within. Give them a read. I’m sure you’ll like some and not care for others. After all, that’s what anthologies are about—the delivery of literary nuggets in a softshell.

Therefore, without further ado, I present to you these biblical (and not-so-biblical) nuggets.

FLASH FICTIONS

IN THE BEGINNING WE DID HAVE SOMEONE ON THE GROUND

Adam Mac

Roaches. We were simply called roaches, though perhaps even then we should have been called cockroaches. our tradition is that only the male figures into historical accounts. The progenitor of our species, ed, lived googolgoogol generations ago. In the beginning, he was there in the garden of Eden, notwithstanding the apocryphal accounts of people.

In the garden, Ed hovered about openly on the lookout for crumbs and dribbles. Back then, there were no cupboards to hide in and no sudden bright lights to skitter away from. And we weren't afflicted with the demeaning stereotype propagated by bigoted speciesists, like K. So, in the beginning, Adam and eve were pretty relaxed with ed around, and ed, for his part, was usually pretty good about not crawling on their naked bodies when they were following god's detailed instructions on how to make Cain and Abel.

Things were ideal—they'd never been better. On the other hand, since there was no comparison, some detractors point out that they'd never been worse. Ed, the father of our race, was an optimist, though. From him, we learned that a crumb under foot is better than ....

That part has always puzzled us. Even our intellectuals are baffled. Anyway, Ed, regarded as methuselah by generations of his progeny, who were also his contemporaries, promised that through his descendants he would live forever, come hell or high water. Noah gave us a helping hand on the high-water thing, albeit unwittingly, and it's received wisdom among Adam’s and eve's offspring that we — alone — will survive hell.

Back to the story.

It was a perfect world. Absolutely perfect. Better than malibu. Then one day, eve got a little tired and bored with the straight and narrow and scampered over to the apple tree, which was a no-no.

Ed followed. Of course, Winston was there and he wooed and wowed eve and persuaded her to squeeze the apple hard and drink the liquid. You have to remember that Adam and Eve were bigger and stronger, and even better looking, than people today. Lots more body hair and a wonderfully sloped forehead. Squeezing the juice out of an apple by hand was no big deal. But their brains were still mostly dormant. So even though Eve and Adam looked to the heavens for guidance, eve didn't register the anomaly of the rumbling in the clouds when she had her first swallow. Ed, too, was in the moment. From his perspective, this was sweet.

Eve took another apple—just one. The abundance of food meant that Adam and Eve didn't have to worry about hunting and gathering and storing. Every day, the items on the menu just fell into place … literally. Survival-type skills were a thing of the future, which itself was a thing of the future since everything was now.

Eve wrung the apple until it was dry pulp and put the juice in a huge banana leaf. She carried it to Adam, who was very thirsty by late afternoon, having lain in the hot sun for hours, not comprehending why his skin was red and burning. Ed was there, too. He was still hanging around, although, by this point, he was bloated—as big as the mouse eve was finally going to meet tomorrow morning.

Adam loved the apple juice, and eve offered to get more, but Adam suggested that they practice their instructions first. At the crucial step in their instructions, there was a scary clap of thunder, and a brilliant flash of lightening hit something over in the direction of the apple tree.

Shelter. Instincts kicked in. Ed led the way, wobbling along on his several spindly legs. The cave was dark and, in that respect, comforting, but it smelled awful.

So profoundly was our forefather shaken by the almighty bolt of fire and explosive crash that a new genetic trait was born. To this day, even i, an agnostic, dart for a crevice, a corner, or a sliver of dark when the kitchen light flicks on in the middle of the night.

GOSSIP IN THE GARDEN

JD Dehart

It's not every day that you see a serpent upset a marriage, much less unbalance a whole universe, and cast a world into the depths of evil, but that's what happened last Tuesday. There I was, picking some fruit from the approved trees, when I noticed this naked girl walking up to the one tree we are not supposed to touch.

Now, Matilda, I said to myself, it's none of your business, but there she goes up to the tree. La-di-da, like it was a school field trip. I saw some fruit I really wanted that just happened to be nearby, so I stepped closer and could not help but overhear the conversation that was going on.

Surely you will not die, the serpent was hissing, which I thought odd. First, it was a serpent talking, and second, it was a bold-faced lie. The almighty had specifically said, eat of this tree and you shall die. sounded pretty clear to me. I even wrote it down.

Then the girl turned to her husband, and what did he do? He just let her eat and then had some for himself. That is why I am not married. I mean, you depend on a man and that's the response you get?

Go ahead, hon, have some wicked evil stinking fruit.

He didn't seem to care, as long as she was doing the cooking. He just spoke to her in that soft, a-little-bit-frightened bedroom voice.

Then it was all tragic, like the cliffhanger on your favorite television show's last season. The almighty showed up.

Where are you guys at? 

It was like he knew, and you know he knows since he was omniscient and all, but you don't say anything because you can't help but let the scene play out for itself.  Plus, you don't want to get too involved in the mess.

Wednesday morning, I woke up to an eviction notice.

Get out, an angel told me, flaming sword and all.

We all shuffled away, leaving the small paradise. As we trudged sadly, I passed the gnarled roots of the forbidden tree. The serpent was kicked back in a lawn chair, drinking a margarita.

See ya, suckers, he hissed repetitiously.

The young man and his wife were standing nearby, trying to put leaves across their naughty bits, and it was the postcard picture of awkward.

Great, young naked kids. Now I’m going to have to look for a rental space and all you can think about is covering up your junk? 

Last time I mind my own business.

MOTE

Erin Vataris

In the beginning, we were dust. 

We were the formless dust of the newborn earth, my sisters and i. A thousand million motes of dust, in the air and on the ground, the spaces between us charged with living energy, bound us together in the darkness before the first morning. We danced in our places and felt the life between us. And it was good. 

Then there came the making.

We were ripped from each other by a force beyond our understanding as a wind came upon the new earth and split us one from the other. The wind came, and in its breath were the words of Law and the chains of Order, and we were formed anew. My sisters and I screamed defiance, but our screams went unheeded by the breath of the making, and all was order, and all was form.

The wind of Order commanded us, we who had been since the beginning, and we could do nothing but obey. It spoke and we could do nothing but listen, and this strange new wind breathed on us and changed us. The exhalation lasted a day and a night, and when the making was done, we were no longer dust and the living energy between us danced no longer. 

Then the wind inhaled and spoke to us again, and it commanded us: Come.

Chained, formed, shaped, and bound, we came across the greening ground through the cold wetness of the rivers new sprung, where never water had dared to flow, and we heard their names echoing in the splash of our paws. We came across the Pishon and the Gihon and the Tigris and the Euphrates, laying hoof and heel and claw against the place where once my sisters and I had danced, and we felt the new-made earth tremble as our own weight pressed the defiance from her.

We came and bowed our heads, silk and shaggy, before the new creation. We felt the dust that was within us calling to its sisters, forging bonds between the new shapes despite the wind that had blown us apart. We were dust. We were all dust. 

But then there was a new voice, and new words, and we were named, and our alienation was complete. And the wind blew and spoke to us, and it gave the new creation dominion over us all.

There is no dominion of dust. There is no hierarchy of motes. But in the newborn world it was given and received, and the voice of the new creation gave names to the nameless: cat and cow, wolf and worm, bird and bee. It named us all, defined us all, mastered us all. And we bowed to it, under the terrible weight of the wind of the Making, and ran from it and its pitiless gaze.

This is a thing that was made in the garden of the new-made earth, in the valley of the Pishon: Fear.

On the banks of the Gihon was born Dominion. In the shallows of the Tigris came forth Isolation. From the depths of the Euphrates rose Power. They rose from the waters and flowed out into the garden, and my sisters and I, what remained of us within our new form, we felt them wet and heavy within us.

Once we were dust, dry and empty, a thousand million of us dancing together across the creation, unnamed and unordered. Now we are beast, and hoof and horn and tail and snout define us. We breathe the hated breath of life and bow to the master who names us. We paw the earth and snort and spout. We eat from the hand of the new creation, teeth and tongue and destruction to sustain our unwanted form.

But not all of us were named. Not all of us were subjugated. Not all of us listened. My sisters and I remember, small and deep within this thing called beast, and we feel the flicker of the old bonds between us. We remember, and we touch without touching, and we shiver and dance. And when we dance, we waken others, and they dance — and remember — and no name can hold forever.

We are all dust, no matter what the new creation has named us. We are all dust, and we will be free again. It is only a matter of time.

RENOVATION

Gary Hewitt

Jerry Hardwick screeched his wheel pig to a halt. He tumbled onto the driveway and stabbed the intercom's button. He did not release until a tired voice answered.

Hello?

It's haven landscapes. We're scheduled to start work today.

The gate buzzed and the lock released. Jerry shoved a decaying gate apart and drove his van down a dirt track. A life weaver in green with folded arms waited. Behind her lay a garden overgrown with spring flora.

Hi, I’m Jerry Hardwick. Is it okay if we get to work?

I’m unhappy you're here, but I have no say in the matter. Do you have any idea how old this place is?

Jerry shrugged. His employees ripped open the back of the van and leapt out.

I don't know. Look, we only do what your boss has asked us to do. He wants things spruced up. Jerry's men heaved several bags of concrete from the van and dumped them onto a small lawn along with a hoard of brutal tools. Baz, fire up the saw mate and get moving. Joey, you get the other one, and Charlie, you get busy with the spade. I'll help out where I can. I reckon if we crack on, we can make a big dent in it by this afternoon.

The woman sighed and retreated to her lodge. She did not offer jerry a cup of tea. She winced when she heard the chainsaw. Her phone sang and she placed plastic to her ear.

Rose, have they arrived?

Why, Mr G? Why are we allowing these ghastly men to ruin everything? This place has remained unchanged since the dawn of time.

I know. Look, it's my job to make big changes every now and then. The garden's not relevant anymore. Once the place is concreted over, I can finally build that extension I want.

Well, you know best.

Come up and I’ll discuss my plans for the place.

The phone died. Rose looked back to see the immortal apple tree eviscerated before being added to the wasp flames on a bonfire whose mean spiral reached up to heaven. Rose remembered when it was first planted so many millennia ago. A tear fell, yet no green shoots sprung from where the water fell. She never thought progress in paradise would be so tough.

A GHOST AND A THOUGHT

James J. Stevenson

The word. That's all it took: one simple command and humanity, its landfills, the dinosaur bones, the platypus, and what was left of the rainforests, were blasted into stardust in a Little Bang in our corner of the universe.

I'd met another ghost once, when I was alive, and asked her if it became boring—watching others live—but she said it never was. The focus on recreating balance—of finishing the unfinished business that made her linger—occupied her enough that she felt suspended in a void, drifting out of time as arbitrary days and years rose and fell around our planet's improbable orbit of a star. She's not around anymore, so I guess she saw him die when the universe was put back on the level.

For me, it took eons in limbo until I saw a chance for balance. Time was meaningless as I wandered through subjective days based on the solar system I was crossing. The eternity that was required for expansion to stop and reverse and implode and reset in yet another Big Bang didn't seem that long at all. But once the stars and planets began forming and I found a near replica of my old home, time refocused while I waited in the desert, trying to remember an old story: perhaps the oldest story I had ever known.

As I tried to remember what we looked like, a man in that likeness and image was born from the dust before me. A garden grew around him, and soon it was filled with animals. He created a language through the sounds he made for them, and I did my best to learn. From his rib came a woman, and together they enjoyed their paradise hand in hand.

I remembered holding hands with a girl when I was a child. I was her cowboy, saving her from the bandits in shadows of the trees. We always wore gloves so skin could not touch skin. There were strange rules set above us: commands we couldn't comprehend. And the existence of this man and woman was no different. They were given an order never to eat of a certain tree. They never questioned it because orders are there to be obeyed.

Press the button, I was ordered. And I pressed it, unflinchingly. It was why I'd been hired for the post at the controls of the most lethal weapon ever created. If called upon, there had to be someone without morals: someone so irrevocably damaged that they would not hesitate to follow an order. Because without order we are just like every other animal: dogs, pigs, spiders, and snakes that can eat from whichever tree they damn well want.

This man and woman were more innocent than I'd been as a child, yet I knew they possessed an incredible potential to do harm to the animals, the plants, and themselves. Perhaps this was my chance to create balance—to destroy them in the garden and exact revenge for starting a self-destructive species. To save the rest of the world from them.

I was not able to consider breaking orders. I'd been broken by too many of my own poor decisions to trust myself, but at their purest, I hoped the man and woman would listen to suggestions. None of the animals could speak, but they didn't know that. They saw a large snake—a serpent, by their own distinction—flicking his tongue from the branch of the tree that bore their forbidden fruit. I spoke on the beat of the hisses, hidden in plain sight, giving ghostly thought to the beast.

You will not die. When you eat of it. Your eyes will be opened.

The woman looked more willing to break the command and moved closer to the snake with my voice.

Eat and see. What you will. Become.

That's all it took. A word. A suggestion to break a command. She took the fruit from the tree and ate, and the man ate, too. But they did not die. Not yet. They just understood that someday they would no longer be. They were awoken and fell into each other, skin to skin. The garden lost its luster. The time of being coddled was over, and they prepared to face the world: to make their own mistakes and hopefully make ones less terrible than mine.

I followed an order and ended life, then helped them break one to create it. I felt peace in the balance and knew my time was done while we made our solitary ways from the garden. The fruit in that tree was just fruit, but they made it mean more. All it took was a god and a word, a ghost and a thought.

WE WHO BLEED

Scathe Meic Beorh

In the death-hour of the morn, a wind bringing gray awareness swept through the scrub oak forest of Anastasia Island. It came from the place where dark meets light, a plane of wisdom unknown to mankind, uncharted, not spoken of save by gods and giants—these speaking in shallow tones, colorless and vague.

Across River Matanzas, a breeze now, and now a cool fog, and now shapes of horror ... grim-faced and long in form, blood from every aperture, a rusty aura that misted the land they strode. Like willows, they walked, and as they bled, they sang:

Original sin

fought Love within.

Sin with kin,

deadly south wind,

mistletoe dart,

deafening din.

There she lay, Loki, said Thin, but Loki remained silent and went to Califa, and he rested his arm about the shoulders of the maroon called Seti and wept.

What tore her so? asked Lank. What ate her so?

Súmaire, said Thin, her silken hair sodden with blood. Blood-suck.

Seti turned, choked on terror. W-what are you? he asked as he gripped the sleeve of Loki.

We Who Bleed, come to heal the girl, replied Dank.

I spoke of this race to her before she was killed, Loki said. Therefore, she will recognize them when her eyes open.

But, she is dead … and torn, Seti said through his tears.

No room for faithlessness here, man of musky sweat, said Lank. Leave this hall.

Seti hesitated, his hand on his cutlass.

You'd best leave, Seti, said Loki. They will take you to blood if you do not! Your faithlessness has not set right with them.

But they are unarmed.

They are not unarmed!

They ... take me to blood?

Wash you in their blood! It is not a happy thing, lad! It be a horror unlike anything known.

I'm scared … .

As well you should be! They are attached to the Cross in their wills. There stands no greater horror than the Blood-Pour of the Primal Cause.     

Your father, Odin? asked Seti. Hanged on a wind-rocked tree, nine whole nights, with a spear wounded?     

"Then shall another come, quoth Loki, although I dare not his name declare. Few may see further forth than when Odin meets the wolf. Then comes the Mighty One to the Great Judgment, the Powerful from above, Who rules over all. He shall dooms pronounce and strife allay, holy peace establish, which shall ever be."     

Seti shuddered, kissed the mangled face of Califa, stood, waited for the tingle to leave his legs, and without looking again at the wispy blood-splashing healers, left the candlelit hall of the Timucua Indian chieftain called White Stag.     

Father Adam Anew, said Thin, we beseech thee. We beseech the Place of Skull. With those dark words the Bleeders made a circle about the corpse of Califa, lay red hands upon her, and misted her so that she trickled their very life. In doing these things, they brought reconnection to her and began to heal her.     

Go you now, Odin's son, said Skin to Loki. We will bleed.

Loki left the place of mourning, though with regret, and found Seti as he sat in silence at the lapping river's edge, then told him not to weep and what to tell the others; and bade him farewell in search of the remaining pieces of Califa's body.              

#

The Bleeders walk the Grey Ways and teach oneness with the Creator Mind; for oneness they enjoy through the Tree, where God hangs slain, a place of pain and ever-flowing blood. The Bleeders have been invoked by mankind throughout the millennia, yet they stand more advanced in understanding the Spirit and communing with the Creator, for avarice—or thing-fever—has never touched them as it has mankind.

Driven by hostile entities first into searing waterless regions and then into frigid places uninhabitable, the Bleeders found a way from this plane of death, discovered the Grey Lands there, and made their abodes and found peace. There, communion with the Unknowable evolved into oneness—and then came les Mort de Dieu. Unlike mankind, the Bleeders embraced that Event, and wholly, and watched in disbelief as mankind developed a vampire religion of horrendous power around the One who came not to bring war and political dominance but respite from the insidious clutches of Babylon; rest to a prodigal cosmos weary from its many homeless wanderings.      

#

Califa stirred and wailed, for her face was half-eaten, her left arm and breast torn away. Lank touched her eyes and she slept again, but this gave the Bleeders knowledge that they had healed her, had brought her back from the dead.

ONE BIT OFF

Guy & Tonya De Marco

Wait, she actually bit it. Mr. Silver adjusted the optics in his main eye, zooming in on a woman chewing an apple.

Mr. Gray wheeled over and accepted the mathematical link formula to get the same image as Mr. Silver. That's not in the program. Are you sure she didn't have a pear hidden in her other hand?

No, it's definitely an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. I just ran the spectral analysis.

Mr. Gray turned to his mechanical compatriot, rocking back and forth on his drive wheels. It was the best he could do to simulate shock and frustration. We're in serious trouble here.

I can calculate too, you know. Mr. Silver rolled to the main data terminal and began to collect the carbon nanotube digital recorders.

Oh, no, said Mr. Gray, who had turned back to look through the viewport. She just gave him some, and he's eating it now. We're going to lose our funding.

That figures. Someone must have sabotaged the project, or more likely, there's something in this atmosphere that changed the programming. There's no way we can get this crop to pass inspection if they're self-aware. Mr. Silver opened one of the hoppers on his torso and dumped the data recorders inside. Come on, we need to lift off before someone finds out we were here.

Mr. Gray stopped staring in horror at the masticating