The Family Curse

Kennedy sits at the bar, mildly distracted by the rolling news on the TV screen and the young, good-looking barmaid, whilst outside the rest of the world loses their minds in the usual carnage of their regular bouts of consumerist madness.

“I’ll have another round of these” he finally tells the girl as he sits with nothing to do but drink and wait.  Sometimes it feels like this is all he ever does, sits waiting on his god-damn brother.  His no-good god-damn brother who, as usual, couldn’t bring himself to name a specific time just a vague reference to ‘afternoon’ which could literally mean anything up until about 9 and as Kennedy looks up at the clock he spies it slowly ticking around to half-past-2 and he knows he could be in for a long wait, a very long wait maybe.

“God-damn him!” he spits as the barmaid brings his latest round of a double Jack and ice and a cold half-pint beer ignoring his obvious annoyance about something but as a ravishing beauty walks through the door Kennedy no longer cares.  He no longer cares about the time, he no longer cares about his brother all that matters is walking right towards him as his eyes devour her enticing body.  Standing tall and slim her attitude is of someone who’s been there and done more stuff than some squeeze into a lifetime but somehow her beauty has remained intact.  

“Hi there beautiful,” Kennedy says as she sweeps his boredom away as she struts right past him before leaning into the bar.

“So how about you let me buy you that drink if you like?” he offers.

“What?  Do I look like I can’t afford a drink of my own?” she responds, her voice an angry buzz of words whilst a grinning smirk spreads across her face.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean it like that…I just saw you walk in alone and, well… I’m alone and I thought, maybe, we could keep each other company if you like?”

“Well, as long as you don’t expect anything beyond the talk… I’m not that kind of girl I’ll let you know and trust me you wouldn’t want to make me angry” she retorts before turning to the barmaid and asking for a large glass of the best red wine they have.  As she slides onto the stool next to Kennedy her long green dress parts at her leg and Kennedy can’t help but soak in the view of her beautiful slim legs.

“Well, how’s it going today?  I’m Kennedy Monroe by the way,” he says by way of introduction as the barmaid brings over the huge glass of wine and Kennedy, desperate to not have any interruptions, passes her a note of some description.  

“You can just call me Becca, alright?” she responds.

“Sure,” Kennedy says allowing a quiet moment to fall between them and, for the next hour, the quiet is all consuming.  Any question he might ask she knocks away with a one or two word response until, finally, and Kennedy isn’t sure he’s ever been happier to see his god-damn brother, Kaufman walks into the bar.  A brief nod of the head is all he gets as his brother disappears off to the toilet and Kennedy knows that means just one thing; the old Bolivian marching powder is back and Kaufman is going to be nothing but a god-damn pain in the arse to his younger brother.  

“Hey there little bro,” Kaufman shouts across the bar as soon as he leaves the toilet, “how’s it going?” he asks as he slides in between Kennedy and Becca.

“Well it was going just fine,” Kennedy responds already knowing just where this afternoon is going to go and, sure enough, over the next couple of hours Kaufman will dazzle Becca with his American Express Gold Card, his knowledge of fine wines and his burgeoning cocaine-fuelled confidence.  For Kennedy though time just struggled on as Kaufman moves in for the kill as his inevitable crash slowly comes to consume him.  

“So, how about we take this little party back to mine?” Kaufman asks but Kennedy has other ideas.

“Why does it always have to be your place?” he retorts.

“Well little brother, I think we should ask sweet little Becca here where she wants to go from here don’t you?” as both sets of eyes turn to her.  As she finally turns her head towards them a smile beaming across her face she teases them both.

“Enie, Meanie, Minni, Moo, tonight we’re going to go to this one’s home!” she says with her finger pointing right back at herself.

“Well I’m sorry guys it looks like you’re both losers!” she says unsteadily climbing down from her stool in her wine-addled state laughing all the way.

“Say what now?” Kaufman responds.

“You heard me loser,” she taunts doing a L shape on his forehead to confirm her feelings.

“But, but…” is all he can say.

“But nothing loser,” she says suddenly seeming to sober up in the blink of an eye before moving off towards the door of the bar but today something seems to have caught Kaufman in a rare mood.

“Hey beautiful, you can’t just walk out on us like this,” he says climbing off his stool and walking towards her by the door.

“Why can’t I?” she retorts, “I told your brother exactly what the deal was, no funny business I said didn’t I?” she asks turning to Kennedy who simply nods his head in agreement.

“But, but… But that was him, this is different…” Kaufman responds.

“Why is it any different?” she asks before he desperately lunges for her arm.  “What the fuck are you doing?” she demands.

“I want you…” Kaufman slobbers feeling the rare sensation of rejection hitting hard.

“Well you can’t have me!” Becca responds but as Kaufman makes one last feeble grab for her dress something miraculous happens, something beyond belief, something that no one would believe unless they saw it with their own eyes and even then they would struggle to comprehend.

Becca starts growing inexplicably, bigger, higher and taller than anyone has ever seen before and as her head busts through the roof of the bar the brothers can barely believe their eyes.  Like a gigantic feminine Hulk she majestically sweeps her green dress causing a gale to sweep through the bar and send all the customers running for the door.  As they run screaming from the bar she lifts her foot up and Kennedy knows just what is coming and he’s sure it ain’t going to be good for him, for his brother, hell for anyone within stomping distance and sure enough as he turns on the street corner she wails like a banshee before stomping her god-knows what size boots down flattening the bar in one swoop. 

“What the fuck now big brother?” Kennedy asks as Kaufman joins him on the corner.

“Don’t ask me!” Kaufman responds before running as if his life depends on it which he soon discovers it very well might.

“Where’s that bastard!?” the giants voice demands and as Kaufman ducks into an alleyway he struggles to comprehend what the hell is going on; less than a few minutes before he’d been quite happily doing his usual routine on the latest woman to have stumbled into his path and now, well now, he’s hiding from a giant beast whose just flattened the bar they’d been sat in.

“I see you fucker!” she hisses as one of her giant hands disappears up Kaufman’s alleyway desperate to grab his puny little body to be her plaything but they both know it’s inevitable and as Becca picks him up Kaufman can do nothing but scream.

“Help!!” he pleads but no one can do anything to stop the attack of the two-hundred foot tall woman and as she pulls him up to her eye-level he’s convinced that not even cocaine has got him as high before.

“I told you didn’t I?” she booms covering little Kaufman in spittle, “I ain’t that kind of girl, I told your brother that and we got along fine but you… well… What you got to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry, I’m really, really sorry!” he responds whilst balling his eyes out.

“I don’t believe you!” she hisses in response as suddenly the area is flooded with emergency vehicles; the cops, a number of ambulances, a fire engine and finally an army battalion appear on the scene with their sirens wailing but even the fire engine’s longest ladder barely makes it to the giants’ knee and the army’s bullets merely bounce off her.  

“She’s got my brother!” Kennedy tells the lead cop who is still looking up stunned at the giant beast of a woman now working her way down the narrow tree-lined street and towards the towns’ ancient old pier.

“We’re trying everything we can sir,” the cop responds but as the bullets keep bouncing off her he knows they’re running out of ideas and quickly and if the army battalion can’t come up with something, well to put it bluntly, everyone is going to get fucked and not in the good sexy kind of way.

An army helicopter flies into the scene and suddenly a huge net descends onto Becca and covers her back and head and suddenly she slips and falls crashing down onto the towns’ Aquarium.  Even more chaos ensues as sharks ride the waves right up onto Marine Parade and as day-trippers and street-dwellers are devoured the chaos grows ever more wild.  Water is flooding the streets all around the pier and is returning a large part of the beach to the sea with a whole load of very exotic and in some cases very dangerous additions.  

Kennedy turns onto Marine Parade as the army helicopter drops its net and as he spies its manouvres he knows as soon as he sees Becca falling that somehow he’s got to get in there and save his god-damn brother.  Running full-tilt like he hasn’t in years, hell decades even, he is on the scene in a matter of seconds and as he witnesses the carnage the sharks are bringing to the party he spies his brother flapping around in a deluge of water.  Arriving on the scene a fleet of ambulances pull up to the disaster zone and a horde of paramedics come piling out desperate to get on with their job of saving some lives.

“Can one of you help my brother?” he asks as he walks on through and straight up to Kaufman.  “How’s it going big brother?” he asks as a paramedic appears at his side.

“It, it ain’t good…” Kaufman responds struggling for breath as the medic diagnosis at least two broken ribs.

“We’ll need to get him to the hospital to help with his breathing,” the medic tells Kennedy as they pile Kaufman into the back of the ambulance.

“Can I get a ride?” Kennedy asks before the medic nods his head holding the door open for him.  As the ambulance hurtles the short distance from pier to hospital the quiet is a blessed relief after the carnage especially as Kennedy knows his brother is going to be fine.

Wheeling him into the hospital in a wheelchair and down a passage straight pass the dreaded A&E Kennedy follows until finally he is told to wait as his brother is wheeled into a private room.  As Kennedy sits back he notices a tiny TV in the corner and as soon as his eyes focus he can see they’re talking about the incident he’s just escaped and the scene ain’t pretty, it ain’t pretty at all. The pier pounded to pulp, hundreds of homes and at least a dozen bars destroyed, flattened, including the one they’d originally all met in. The beast, and Kennedy still can’t believe it is Becca, is currently doing more damage to the ravaged beating heart of West Street than any Saturday night crowd, going off like a bomb and bringing nothing but destruction in her wake.

“Kaufman!” her voice booms through the tiny TV set in the corner of the room, “I know you’re out there somewhere watching this and I want you to know I’ll find you and I’ll crush you yet!” she booms before suddenly lowering her voice to a whisper, “And if I don’t I’ll put a curse on you and your whole bastard evil family, in fact anyone named Monroe!”

“Sir,” a nurse says arriving at Kennedy’s side, “sir, I’m afraid…”

“Oh no,” Kennedy says recognising the tone, “he’s gone hasn’t he?”

“Yes sir, we just couldn’t save him!” she confirms as a call comes in from the front office.

“A telephone call for me?” Kennedy asks as he walks on in, to which the admin clerk confirms holding the reciever out for him.

“Yes, yes this is Kennedy Monroe, yes… my parents…” he says as news is delivered before the inevitable comes again and he drops the phone and falls to his knees.

“Oh no!” he sobs suddenly more alone than he’s ever been in his life and as the clerk leans in all Kennedy can hear, in the distance, is the ominous thud of the biggest feet in the world.

“I know you’re in there!” she booms a few seconds later and Kennedy knows, he just knows, the only way out of this mess is to confront the situation.

“Here I am!” he declares walking out the exit a few minutes later, “Now you don’t have to kill or injure anyone inside, you’ve got me!  Your damn curse has killed my entire family you bitch and let me tell you, right now I ain’t got much to live for so if you want to finish the job go right ahead!”

“Oh no Kennedy, it’s always been you that I liked!” she whispers for only half the town to hear and suddenly, just like that, she shrinks right back down to her normal size. A lone policeman suddenly appears from nowhere and arrests her, placing her in hand-cuffs and walking her the short distance to the police station and all Kennedy can do is try and forget it all. As he walks off in the direction of his home he spies a bar and walks on in as he realises the madness of the day finally needs drowning in an ocean of booze.

Yes Sir, a Man Can Have a Baby

I sat beside Esther on our sofa and said, “I should have been on birth control. I just peed on a stick and came up pregnant.”

“Oh, George,” she said, “you always see the dark side of things. It’s probably something you ate.” 

“I don’t know, babe. I think these stick results are pretty specific.”

“Well,” said Esther, “it’s possible, because I’ve been shooting you full of lady-fluid for a while now. You know, squirting from my womb and stuff the way a lot of women do.”

“I think I shot a wad into myself, maybe last week when we drank all those beers and tried that new position,” I said. “I don’t know what I was pointing at, and I think somehow my own bugs knocked me up. It’s complicated.” 

“It sure is. I’ve been avoiding pregnancy like the plague. I’m sorry it’s happened to you. I guess you should have taken birth control and worn a condom, too.”

“I kind of suspected I was preggers. I feel bloated and sick, my feet are swollen, and my ta-tas are tender.” 

“Tender ta-tas is one of the worst parts, I hear,” said Esther. 

“Also I’m beginning to show. My sack is swollen along with my feet. I think the fetus is in my sack, or somewhere down below my belt. Probably not in my feet, though.”

“No, not your feet,” said Esther. “A foot-baby would be really strange. Tell you what, I’ll give you the number of my gynecologist and you can have her examine you. Then you’ll know for sure what’s going on.”

The gyno doctor put me in stirrups and told me I was about three months gone. I asked her if my situation, a man being pregnant, was unusual. “Not so much these days,” she said. “It’s amazing what the human body is capable of.”  

“A man like me can handle it, huh?” I said.

“Yes, a man like you,” she agreed. “One thing to keep in mind, though, is that you’ll need a Cesarean delivery. Although you managed to get pregnant, there’s no natural way for the baby to leave your body when you give birth. So we’ll plan accordingly. Meanwhile the nurse will give you some pamphlets on diet and exercising and what to expect from the surgery.”

“I guess this will ruin my figure, won’t it? Still, I’m so excited!”

Esther didn’t go with me to the first sonogram. In fact she took a funny attitude. “Tell me it’s mine and not some other woman’s or man’s,” she said, “or I’m not going through with this.”

“Of course it’s yours,” I said. “I haven’t been with anyone else.” 

She knew that was a lie, and so the tech oiled up my nads or whatever without Esther being present. “Do you want to know the sex?” the tech asked me, rubbing the wand over my expectant parts.

“Let me tell you something,” I said, chuckling. “When I go to the store to buy corn, I never buy the exposed kind where I can see what the kernels look like, but I always buy unshucked ears still wrapped up in their green husks. That’s because I like surprises. So no, don’t tell me the sex.” 

“I won’t,” she said, “but you’ll need to decide about a circumcision.”

Esther didn’t show for the C-section either, when the time rolled around. By then I hadn’t seen or heard from her in six months, and it had occurred to me that parenting wasn’t her style. But I knew I could do this myself. After all, I was the mother and father both, as I saw things.   

I was still in the recovery room when the lactation tech came by to show me how to use the electric breast pump. My nips got a workout but it wasn’t too painful, and I was glad to see how much I gushed. Even though my leakage looked purplish like Grape Nehi, the tech assured me it was loaded with nutrients. That made me proud. 

Before long I filled several bottles, so no formula for Little Buster. We were going natural, yay! That Esther didn’t know what she was missing.

Who You Gonna Believe?

Catfished!

Us Bobby Glam fans. Lovesick, rabid chicks. A whole mob from all over the world. Some older, some younger than me. Holly, who wasn’t even born yet at the height of Glam’s fame, got his signature tattooed on her chest. At the “catfish’s” request.

Now here we both were, in his lair.

“He” was laughing. Deepfakes did that. Not just Glam’s irresistible giggle. They made him look exactly like he did back in the 80s, in MTV videos. Lustrous black curls, bedroom eyes, pouty mouth. As lean and muscular as when Reagan was prez. But holding a cell phone! “I got your numbers,” Glam’s younger voice told us. “All of you’z.” Same Jersey accent. Trashy, but we loved him. Would die for him. We’d . . . 

Kill for him. 

“It’s not me!” The real Bobby Glam swore. “I would never . . . trick my fans! If it wasn’t for my fans . . .” He sounded all choked-up. “I wouldn’t be who I am today.”

That latest video, with the actual rock god begging for validation . . . was dark, with an older guy who looked vaguely like Glam would now. But you couldn’t see him clearly. And was that really his voice? Had it gone raspy?

“Ya’ ask me,” Holly said, “That’s the catfish.” Reverently, she touched her new tatt. “Not our guy.”

Catfish, or not, we had to share our guy. What choice did we have? We all wanted to fuck him. If one of us fucked him, it was like we all got to. 

Sort of. 

Young, beautiful Holly. Like one of those video bimbos. Long, shapely legs strolled toward him, as he lay in a heart-shaped bed, singing his band’s most heart-wrenching ballad. 

I eyed Holly with hate. 

Like she really was that chick, crawling across the bed. 

In the middle of the song, he said, “Who’s next?” Looking right at me! Again, with the cell phone. “Maybe . . .” Scrolling down what must’ve been a call log. “You!”

When my cell rang, Holly and I squealed. 

Suddenly, the video shimmered and changed. “I would never . . .” That older guy again! 

“What the fuck?” Holly said.

Slightly clearer, the picture was, but it couldn’t be Bobby Glam! He looked like a politician, in a tasteful suit, with a tasteful chick with him. “Never,” he repeated, “Reach out to any of you personally. Deceive you!”

“Who you gonna believe?” Our guy was back. “Him . . .” Alone now, sprawled on that bed, he patted the empty space next to him. “Or me?”

Leaving Holly behind, I walked toward the screen. 

Just inches away, and he looked so real! Was this a dream? As he sat up and reached for me, his hand actually came through the screen! A hologram? I didn’t care.

When I took his hand, it transformed, got gnarly, squeezed mine like he wanted to break it. “Trust me . . .” the guy said, through clenched teeth, maybe dentures. “I am Robert Gallucci. There is no Bobby Glam!” 

As I struggled to get free, Holly screamed. 

“It’s all AI!” the guy said. “Don’t let him . . . don’t let . . . it . . . win!”

Then, a flash of something like lightning, and the screen tore itself in half.

Holly and I clung to each other, trembling. Waiting. Unsure what was real, and what wasn’t.

“Who are you,” a dreamy voice asked, “gonna believe?”

Stroke Of Genius

I wanted to perch at the bar so I could more clearly drag my eyes over gorgeous Annie, the newish bartender, but it was infested with a lot of the usual late-afternoon drinkers rattling on about internal medical conditions, mythical/epic children and grandchildren, and deflated golf scores, so I hovered past them, took a sharp right to the front empty area of the bar, and ensconced myself into the dingy corner overlooking the street.

Annie brought me a beer, spilling (accidentally, or maybe not) some in my lap. She said, “Did you think about me today?”

Odd question, I thought, and while I struggled to discern the meaning, Annie said, “Well, did you?

I was confused although I inkled.

She stood there, strangely too long in my opinion, but I’m not the most reliable narrator of my own life. She said, “So, what I said… Did you think about me today?”

“Well, uh…”

“About 10:30.”

Damn. She’d nailed it. I’d jerked off thinking about Annie, but… what the fuck? The best I could come up with was another “Uh…”

“Coz,” she continued, “I had an orgasm behind the bar at 10:30, nothing I was doing, and your face popped into my brain. You were wanking, thinking about me, right?”

I was more than slightly confused. The universe seemed to be opening up to me.

Annie said, “How do you do that?”

“Uh, uh, uh, I don’t know… I had no idea I could do that.”

“It’s OK,” she said. “Just don’t do it all the time. Especially not when I’m working.”

Annie left, and I started to get hard just thinking about my morning…

OK. This wouldn’t do. I had to distract myself, and soon. Decay. Death. Mutilation. Suffering animals. Abattoir. Slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse-Five. Movie. Valerie Perrine, half-naked, smiling, gorgeous, sexy. Damn. I was back in the same place, my jeans tightening.

I took a slug of beer, looked out the window, and concentrated on the traffic fumes, the street garbage, the ugly humanity. All was back to normal.

And then… And then… A young woman passed by and stopped in front of my window, her back turned toward me. She took her phone out of her purse and stared at it. She had long brown slightly curly hair that waved in the breeze, hair that flowed over her swimmer’s shoulders, ending at her hourglass waist, just above the most beautiful shorts-covering ass I’d ever seen. Black t-shirt. White shorts. A stark contrast in color, a perfect complement in beauty. And I…

And then… And then… She turned around. She stared at her phone as intently as I was staring at her. Jesus. Her front put her beautiful back to shame. Her eyes were a brown-black that looked like eternity. The smile that emerged from crimson lips that seemed to pulsate sparkled and exploded into a supernova of the whitest light not seen ever. Her cheekbones ascended to the sky. Her chin quivered slightly, her neck throbbed, the skin above the t-shirt line flushed. Jesus.

And then… There were her breasts. Jesus again. Not huge, not small, but absolutely perfect. She wasn’t wearing a bra but that made no difference to their solidity. I thought I saw one of her nipples rising. I looked up at her face. Her eyes were rolling, and her mouth hung open, and she seemed to be panting.

I realized I was completely hard and had been stroking myself for a while.

I looked over at the bar, and saw Annie nowhere, and the day drinkers had moved on to discussing bowel movements. I unzipped.

I slowed my motion, and looked back at my sidewalk woman. She put out a hand to steady herself against the window and I heard her moans. She rocked back and forth, and I delayed as long as I could.

There were no napkins at my table, only coasters and a discarded receipt from the night before, so I made do with those.

I was startled by the woman outside banging her hand on the window a few times, turned to the increasingly loud sounds, and caught her eye.

She smiled at me, and then a look of confusion crossed her face. And then I read her lips. She said, “That was you! I saw your face!”

All I could do was attempt the universal indication of bafflement: I shrugged my shoulders, extended my arms palms up, and turned my face into bemused befuddlement. I mouthed the words, “I don’t know how I do that.”

I had no idea if she knew what I said or meant because she went away forever.

I leaned back on the decaying pseudo-leather sticky bench as Annie brought me another beer. She said, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing at all,” I said.

“Oh, man,” said Annie, you didn’t…”, looking at the wadded-up paper in my hand. She was being ironic; of course I did. She shook her head and backed away carefully.

As I sipped my beer languidly, my mind wandered back and forth until it settled on an incident from five years previously. I was living in Vancouver at the time, waiting for a bus. There was a woman waiting there as well. The bus never came. We looked at each other, said nothing, then moved together as one into the park next to the bus stop. We carefully removed each other’s clothes and fucked at least three times. By the time we dressed, and I got back to the street, she was gone.

I wonder how she feels having multiple orgasms every day for the past five years.