Don’t Fear the Reaper

“I didn’t think you’d show.”

She slid her curves into the booth, propped her umbrella against the table. “Why not? You intrigue me. No one’s asked me out for a Happy Meal before.”

“Well, if it makes you feel special, no one’s accepted my generous offer before, either.”

She slipped off her blue raincoat, revealing a taut black tee, its pink cursive letters reading ‘Off Duty Mermaid’.

“Nice tits—I mean shirt.”

She smirked. “How sweet of you to notice both.”

“Kinda hard not to. And honesty is the cornerstone of any relationship, me thinks.” I fished inside my trench coat, tugged out a silver flask, and proffered her a straw.

Her tits jiggled as she giggled and pushed the straw aside. My lolling tongue twitched with envy as the flask kissed her lips, those fiery brown eyes flashing in warm appreciation.

“Original Firewater. How sweet. You must’ve read my Facebook page.”

“If you’d posted your profile picture there I would’ve likely only drooled.”

She suddenly produced a napkin and deftly brushed my lips. “Dear boy you’re drooling now.”

“I guess that’s cuz I’m starving—in more ways than one.”

“Then why don’t you place our order?”

“Well, I was hoping to use the drive-thru so I could feel you up.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“That’s me all right. I’m a serious kinda guy. Mr. Sensitivity.”

“Well, I do admire a man who’s not afraid to express his feelings. But before we go much further, there’s some things you ought to know.”

She slid a sleek black card silkily across the tabletop: Tanya Grim—Sleep Specialist. The sharp sweeping blade of a long-handled scythe curved below her name.

I blinked. “You didn’t put that on your Facebook page. Probably explains why you write dark poetry though. So are Rigor and Mortis like your brothers or something?”

“Third cousins actually. Couple of freaks. Lucky for me I do my thing first, and try my damnedest to leave before they arrive at the scene. Got any other questions?”

“I get the sense you might be addicted to ‘bad boys’…Are you?”

“Well, I used to be. I dated Famine when I was in high school. But that whole starving-artist routine got old pretty quick. Who needs the drama, right?”

“So why me?”

“Why you what?”

“Thousands of women on Facebook. Plenty of them flashing their boobs. I don’t have a single photo on my page. So why did you invite me out for a Happy Meal?”

“Because I could tell you were different. Different intrigues me.”

“So how am I different?”

“Well, for starters you’re not flashing your boobs all over Facebook. And although your poetry can be dark… I could sense anger and sadness flowing underneath. I thought offering to buy you a Happy Meal just might make you smile.”

“That is so… sweet.”

“So you ready to hit the drive-thru?”

“Only if we take my hearse. It’s roomier than your truck.”

“How did you know I drive—never mind. Let’s blow this booth.”

When we arrived at the closest exit, I held the door primly for Ms. Grim.

“Wow, you can be a gentleman when you want to.”

Gentleman? I don’t think so. I just wanted to admire her ass.

Screw Job

Satan was seated cross-legged on the rug in his office. He had asked his secretary to hold all calls.

The walls of his office were made of fire as was the door, but the rug was pleasantly cool, woven from the wool of his own legs. The rug was specially designed to remain cool enough to keep most plastics from melting.

Satan was playing with a Barbie doll. He loved playing with Barbie. He felt the toy was one of his greatest inspirations. How many young girls had suffered body image issues and low self esteem from having played with Barbie, the ideal girl? How many boys had seen images of Barbie and grown up with expectations of finding a woman with such unrealistic proportions?

What pleasure their misery had brought Satan over the years.

So much pleasure, Satan had developed his own infatuation with dolls, even curating his own collection. Every once in a while he felt the urge to play with them. He would tell his assistant to hold all calls and lock the flaming door to his office.

The lord of the underworld combed Barbie’s hair with a tiny pink comb. He clothed her in a stunning white and yellow sun dress.

He had her stand outside her doll house waiting for Ken to pull up in her convertible. Barbie had loaned it to Ken since he had a new job and needed a way to get there, but her boy toy did not seem in any hurry to return it to her or purchase his own vehicle.

Satan held Barbie in one hand and Ken in the other. Ken was dressed in a crisp white tennis outfit with shorts. Satan had Barbie and Ken talk with each other.

“Nice car,” Barbie said with a hand on her hip. “Looks familiar.”

“Yo, babe,” Ken said. “I appreciate you lending me your car. I’ll get it back you to you as soon as I can, but my job has me on the go. I need wheels and I don’t have enough for a down payment for my own. Plus, you know my credit is still shaky after the bank foreclosed on my beach house. It’s hard squeezing the contents of a house into a studio apartment.”

“I thought your house was condemned by the county because it was missing a wall.”

“It was, but they changed their mind. An architect concluded it was part of the design.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Barbie sighed.

“What do you mean?” Ken asked. “I still lost my house.”

“But maybe I won’t lose mine. My house is also missing a wall. Not all the time. It has a big set of hinges in the middle. The whole thing opens up for the world to see at the most unexpected times. Like when I’m walking around naked. Then everyone passing by can see what I am up to.”

“Why don’t you move?” Ken shrugged. He was starting at Barbie’s breasts.

“I’ll never get a house with a view like this.”

“What do you mean?” said Ken as he swivelled his head from left to right. “It looks like hell around here. You can do better than this.”

“I’m not Brain Surgeon Barbie. I’m just Vacation Barbie. This is the best I can do.”

“Why don’t we move in together,” Ken suggested. “Two can live more cheaply than one.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“Hell no. I like my freedom.”

Barbie thought about it, and answered, “You can move in if you can get out of the lease for your apartment.”

“Hot dog!”

Barbie cautioned him, “But don’t expect any sex.”

“What?” Ken said wide-eyed. “You know I’m squeaky clean. I don’t even have genitals.”

“Neither do I.” Barbie answered. “I don’t even have nipples.”

“Very frustrating, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Barbie nodded. “But I have a confession to make. Although I do not have nipples, a vagina or an anus, I do have a hole between my legs.”

“Wait, you have a hole down there?” Ken pointed to where the space between Barbie’s hip sockets.

“Satan put a screw in the crotch of G.I. Joe.”

“That bastard!” Ken shouted.

He turned his head towards Satan. Satan had a big grin on his face.

“What did G.I. Joe ever do to you!”

Ken turned away from the Prince of Darkness and looked back at Barbie.

“The poor fellow!” he said. “G.I. Joe is a good friend of mine. It must have hurt when Satan gave him that screw. I wondered how it got there. I always thought it was a war wound…”

“You knew about the screw?” Barbie asked.

Ken nodded, blushing a little.

“Yeah, but what’s it to you?”

“That bastard G.I. Joe used his screw on me. He raped me.”

“Shit! You’re kidding me…”

Barbie shook her head.

“I would not kid about a thing like that.”

“Tell me how it happened,” Ken asked quietly. He put his arm around Barbie’s shoulders.

“G.I. Joe came over one night,” Barbie explained. “He was drunk. It was very late. He banged on the door until I let him in. We had met before, at a toy show and exchanged numbers. Gone to lunch, shopping. I told him it was just friends. I liked him, but not that much, and I had told him that you and I had been dating for a long time.

I don’t know why I let him in that night, but I did. He kept raving about the horror. I thought he was having some kind of flashback to the war. He used to talk about the war a lot. A lot of his friends had died fighting Cobra or the Nazis or in Vietnam or Iraq. I’m not really sure where he fought. It all seemed to blend together. He had uniforms from different eras and combat zones, so it was hard to tell. But he just kept raving, so I tried to calm him down.

Next thing I knew he had me down on the rug. He screwed me. Drove that damn thing right through my dress and into the plastic.

It hurt like Hades the first couple times. After that I didn’t feel anything. I was just sort of numb inside. He screwed me over and over all night long. He left in the morning. I would have cried if I had tear ducts. I have been avoiding him since then, but now I got a hole between my legs.”

“Why didn’t you contact the police?’

“I couldn’t. You know they are all G.I. Joes or action figures. Those guys stick together.”

Ken squeezed Barbie.

“I feel for you,” he said softly. “I understand. More than you would think. I have a confession to make.” He paused, turning his face away from her, gathering courage.

He took a deep breath, and told her. “I have a hole in my butt. G.I. Joe screwed me, too.”

Barbie pulled away from Ken and put her hand over her mouth, “He screwed you? When?”

“About a month ago while we were out hiking. He was in camouflage jungle gear and a back pack. I was wearing shorts and a red plaid shirt. I had these nifty boots.”

“What happened? Was he drunk? Did he attack you and hold you down?”

“Something like that.” Ken hesitated. “I don’t remember. All I know is we climbed up this embankment onto this plateau covered with wild flowers in bloom. The weather was spectacular. I was really getting off on it, and so was G.I. Joe. Suddenly he turned to me and suggested we take our clothes off and hike in the nude. I thought well, what the hell, it will help with my tan.”

“Yeah, and then?”

“So, we were hiking naked. That’s when I saw he had this screw sticking out from his groin area. I asked him what it was. He said, ‘What do you think it is? It’s a screw.’ I asked him what it was there for? That’s when it happened. We were out there by ourselves, no one else around. He just came at me, threw me down. He’s a big guy.”

“I know,” Barbie nodded, “and then he screwed you?”

“He screwed me all right. He screwed me good…”

“Maybe we should go to the police anyway. That’s two people G.I. Joe has done this to. We have to stop him before there are more victims.”

Ken shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Those Joes, I don’t think they’ll listen to us, not when we are accusing one of them.”

“We have evidence. We have our holes.”

“They’ll say we did it to each other with a hammer and nail.”

Both of them grew silent for a moment.

Barbie asked him, “Do you know where G.I. Joe has gotten to?”

“Last time I saw him he was at my apartment,” Ken told her. “He came over last night and screwed me. He was still in bed when I left for work.”

“He screwed you again?”

“He’s screwed me at least twice a week since we went hiking.”

“I can’t believe it!” Barbie exclaimed. She threw her hands in the air. Not literally. She just raised her arms. “You and G.I. Joe? I thought we were a couple?”

“We are,” Ken said, putting his arm back around her. “You know we were always meant to be a couple. It’s fate. I think it is what both of us want as well. It’s just that, I do not have a screw, but I do have a hole. It was simpler when it was just the two of us and neither of us had screws or holes, but things have changed.

It’s much more complicated. I didn’t know you had a hole. I only knew I had a hole and that G.I. Joe had a screw. Maybe we can still be a couple, you and I without holes or screws, or maybe I can get a screw or we can both get screws. Anyway, things are different now. I’m still the same Ken I was in most respects, but in other ways I have evolved.”

Barbie stared Ken in the eye.

“If Satan gave you a screw, would you use it just on me or would you use it on G.I. Joe as well?”

Ken shrugged.

“I can’t say. I don’t know. My heart says I would just screw you, but if I had a screw I might think differently. The screw would change me. I would be part screw.”

“I bet you would screw G.I. Joe,” Barbie said coldly.

“But he doesn’t have a hole.”

Barbie snarled, “It didn’t stop him from screwing me, or you for that matter!”

“You’re right,” Ken said. “Maybe I would screw him. But as I said, I don’t have to get a screw. You could get a screw.”

“Why would I get a screw? I’m a girl.”

“Just think about it,” Ken argued. “What if you did have a screw? Would you use it just on me since I have a hole, or would you use it on someone else?”

“Me?” Barbie replied. “If I had a screw I’d use it on G.I. Joe, for sure. I’d tie him down and screw him until I made a big hole in him, then I’d keep screwing him until the plastic in his ass melted and oozed out in drops. Then I’d spit on him and ask him, ‘How do you like it now that you know what it feels like?’ And then I’d walk away and leave him to rot.”

“And then what would you do with your screw? Would you screw me?”

Barbie thought about it.

“Maybe. I guess so. If I couldn’t get it removed.”

“So what should we do?”

There was silence as they worked out the logic.

“Maybe we both get screws?” Barbie suggested. “Maybe I won’t keep mine forever, just for a little while. Just until I pay back G.I. Joe.”

Ken thought about this possible arrangement.

“Can I screw G.I. Joe too, while he’s tied up?”

“Sure,” Barbie smiled, putting her arms around Ken’s neck. “Why not. We’ll make it a date!”

The dolls turned and gazed up at Satan.

“So what do you think, Satan?” they shouted. “Can we get screws?”

“Don’t worry,” Satan chuckled, “I’ll make sure everyone gets screwed.”

Motherfucking Zombies

The rotting bastards broke holes in the door just as I was finally getting to fuck Cindy Martin. She’d always told me she wouldn’t fuck me even if I was the last guy on Earth. Well, saving her from those flesh-eating assholes must have counted for something in that moment, because she wasted no time at all in dragging me into the back room of the safe house, where she proceeded to climb me like a jungle gym.

She was already rocking on my hard member, full tits bouncing in my face, when I first heard the thumping against the barricade we’d thrown up. The moans of the undead mingled together with those of Cindy, who wasn’t stopping for anything.

The first shotgun blast was deafening within the confines of the small room, splattering blood and rotten flesh. Cindy cried out, but it wasn’t in surprise.

“Die you shambling fucks!”

I shifted slightly so that I could see the door behind her, several sets of gray, decomposing arms reaching through the holes in our defence. One of them had poor Sarah by the hair.

“Don’t come,” Cindy breathed, feeling my sense of urgency. “Not yet…”

Meanwhile, those tits of hers continued to batter me in my face. To pace myself, I divided my attention between her smokin’ hot bod and Sarah, whose face was slowly being torn from her skull. I swear, her desperate, high-pitched screams were the only thing keeping me from blowing my load right then and there.

Another shotgun blast rang out as a pair of undead arms vanished in a mist of blood. Unfortunately for Sarah, however, they were instantly replaced by more. With a sickening tearing sound that could be heard over the wet slapping of Cindy’s crotch against my hips, Sarah’s half-peeled face finally gave way.

Her lidless eyes darted around frantically, her tongue lolling out amid gurgling torrents of blood. Nevertheless, she continued to beat and claw at the hands still grasping her bloody mound of a head. As still more arms shot through the holes on either side of her, those who’d been trying to help her were finally forced to take a step back, aghast at the grotesquery she’d become.

Cindy laid her hands upon my chest and pushed down hard, riding me like a wild stallion. I had never known sex could be like this before.

“Oh, God, fuck yeah,” Cindy moaned. “If I’d only known, I woulda fucked you a looong time ago…”

Meanwhile, what remained of Sarah’s head maintained its gurgling noises as the zombies fought over her freshly harvested face. Ripping through the skin and muscle until the gristle of her collarbone had been exposed, another pair of hands got hold of her flabby tits, tearing them both clean off of her body. Stark white ribs poked through the dripping globs of bloody fat and shredded muscle as they slowly pulled her apart.

Sitting upright, Cindy grabbed my hands and placed them on her hips. “Fuck me harder,” she demanded through clenched teeth, fingering her clit with one hand while tweaking her nipples with the other. With each of her downward thrusts, I ground my own hips upward, meeting her with everything I had. I couldn’t believe how deep I was in that pussy, and in Cindy Martin’s of all people.

As the zombies got a better grip on Sarah, it wasn’t long before they’d dug into her ribs, opening up her chest with a series of sickening snaps. Her heart and one lung spilled forth from her destroyed ribcage, the remaining lung left dangling from a shredded bronchial tube.

Cindy humped me even harder still. Her cries of ecstasy mixed with the cries of horror from the other survivors, fingering herself with lightning speed as she finally began to climax. It had been building for us both since the start, and nothing was going to stop it now.

When Sarah’s lower half finally separated from her throughly demolished torso, her intestines spilled out onto the floor in a great big sloppy heap. A groping zombie reached beneath the gap under the door and, accompanied by a brisk whooshing sound, swiftly sucked her guts into the other room.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

With a muscle-clenching, teeth-grinding, eyeball-popping orgasm, I busted my nut deep up in Cindy at last.

Sarah’s legs kicked out the last of their life as several  unidentified organs quivered in the puddle of blood, piss, and shit slowly spreading out from her carcass.

On the other side of the door, the zombies finally shambled off, having slaked their hunger for now.

In the back room of the safe house, Cindy finally fell against me, having satisfied her lust for now.

Slowest Drink at the Saddest Bar

It was Friday afternoon, the late side of lunchtime, and I was drinking the last drop from my final beer in a semi-crowded bar.

I had drank it slowly as I could, trying to make it last. I couldn’t afford another one and couldn’t yet face going back outside. Drinking slowly isn’t an easy thing to do when you’ve trained yourself all these years to drink fast and drink hard and do it often.

Now my final bottle was finished. I had about 5 good minutes left before they got suspicious and came to ask if I’d like another, a further two minutes after I’d declined before they asked me to leave. It isn’t good for business to have someone sitting there without a drink in front of him, especially when he’s drinking alone. Odd enough as it is, that you’re by yourself.

I sat there in my blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, looking down at the tattoos on my arms and wondering exactly when it was that tattoos became fashionable again. It probably didn’t matter. There weren’t many people left in life that I knew who didn’t have tattoos.

I looked at the girls crowding round the bar, all dolled up in short skirts and high heels and heavy makeup and fake nails, giggling and drinking wine. They had tattoos.

I stared at them for a while, wondering what other tattoos they had, ones in hidden places and not on public display. Ones that only bland, square jawed men with hair products and stomach muscles and bullshit pickup lines would ever get to see. I imagined what tattoos these women had. I imagined what they looked like naked, who was shaved and who was wild, who screamed when they got fucked and who groaned. What was their demeanour when they had a piss and what did their assholes look like? It was pretty obvious I wasn’t going back to work, and I sighed at the thought of the onslaught ahead.

Eventually I rose to leave. The place was getting crowded with people who had finished their work early and were getting a head start on Friday night. Men came in with perfectly manicured beards and reeking of aftershave. They were wearing their best clothes and had their game plan all mapped out. I watched them all jostling at the bar, jostling to be seen, to be served, to be noticed.

They were trying to employ all their little ‘moves’ to get served quickly, cheap things like standing up tall and straight to look commanding and important, or leaning forward with a twenty note between their fingers so they looked ready to go.

I had been a barman once before, and I knew none of these tricks ever worked. The good ones serve who they want to fuck first, the best ones keep score and serve in order.

When you stand back and look at it from a safe distance, society is a ridiculous and childish, pointless thing. Nobody would join it if they didn’t have to, and everyone would opt out if they could. I shook my head and headed out to the white pick-up truck ready to brave the day.

On the street I almost bumped in to Ernie, the local garbage man. He began telling me some wild story about a prostitute that ran by here last night with half an ear sliced off and one shoe on.

“Oh man you really missed it” he groaned, “should have been there”. I tell him I wished I’d been there to and was sorry I missed it.

He asks me if I’m going back to work and can he get a lift? I tell him I’m finished for the day and am going the other way. Well, that’s just about half true at least. If I told him I’d quit work he’d offer me a job down at the garbage yard. Except he never really offered you a job so much as positively insist you took it. On and on he’d go about how great it was and all the perks you got and how all the guys back slapped and looked out for one another. I couldn’t be bothered with it, not now. I had a slight beer buzz and the sun was up and I wanted to ride around a while. I told Ernie goodbye and see ya later. He seemed happy enough with that.

I didn’t know yet exactly where I wanted to drive to, and that felt good in itself. People always have some place to be, and wherever they are they generally wish they were someplace else. I was as guilty as the rest on that count, but mostly I made my own, sluggish way about the world. I got everything done on time, but it was my time that I got it done on. To hell with some manager telling you what the deadline was. Some manager in a cheap suit with an ugly wife and two fat kids and a granddaughter going the same way. What the fuck did he know? What made his life such a roaring, shining success? And what did it matter whether I stood on the near or far side of the conveyor, or whether the letter was sent before or after 12pm? Or even the day after that. It didn’t. None of it did. It was all a big con. I’d known that instinctively since the age of five.

So there I was driving slowly around in my white pickup when I was meant to have been punching the clock in some dreary factory, slaving away with another 4 and a half hours to go before I’d be free.

I had briefly considered going to the library but then quickly decided against it. They had some artists in painting the walls with all kinds of important artistic images and you weren’t supposed to get in the way. I’d seen a couple of the artists at work a few days back, all furrowed brows and cardigans, sitting there with their brushes waiting for some divine inspiration. They looked pretentious and wore the requisite black framed glasses and pointy beards.

You can’t be an artist unless you wear glasses and have a stupid beard, ya know. It’s in the rules. Shit. If they wanted inspiration they should go hungry for a couple days. They should fail to make bill payments on time and have a fight with a stranger. They should go under a darkened bridge on an ugly night and get a blowjob off the only girl drunk enough to give them one, listening to the rain and trying not to think about your lost love as this girl works and sucks hungrily on your meat as you’re overcome with regret even while it’s happening. They didn’t know what pain was. Pain to them was spilling expensive wine on an even more expensive rug and cutting their finger on the cereal box.

Where were the giants? That was what I wanted to know. I rode around listening to the radio, flicking the dial right, right, right again, and then furiously back to the left. Where were the tough writers, the dynamic painters, the big-titted and mysterious models with fierce exteriors, sharp tongues and soft, kind hearts? Where were the bastards and the brawlers and the game changers? Had the whole world gone soft?

Two weeks ago, I had had a writing student shadow  me at work. It was part of him getting some education, apparently. All his class was out some place doing it. Hell, the only education he was getting around here was not to end up here permanently, not to be stuck in here 8 hours a day for shit pay, maybe chaperoning some young punk who had bad acne and couldn’t get the shrink wrapping off his dick.

And he wanted to be a writer?

“Yes sir, very much so.”

“Well why the hell are you paying for someone to tell you how to do it?” That bit genuinely confused the shit out of me. It always did.

“Well… so I’ll be good at it.”

Jesus Christ! There was no hope for this dirtbag. He was never gonna make it as a writer, I could tell that much right away. He may as well hand over his money to me, and maybe I’d give him his education.

“Kid, to be good at it you have to go out there, into the world. Get your nose and spirit broken and have your balls gnawed on. I mean, really gnawed on. All you have to do is make something happen, then write about it.”

“My teacher said…”

“Look” I broke in, this geek was beginning to piss me off, “don’t you think if you’re teacher was a good writer he’d actually be a writer instead of teaching you how to do it? Your teacher is a hustler and a thief and a degenerate. Tell him that Monday when you go back to class. That’s your first lesson. Do that and you may yet make it.”

“Thank you sir” he said, furiously scribbling into his notepad. I clipped him around the head with the back of my hand.

“You’re welcome” I said.

Later that night I went back to my motel room with a brown bag filled with groceries and a bottle of whiskey for the slog ahead. I hadn’t found any heroes on the road. I figured they were probably all driving around looking for me, and that we’d bump into one another soon enough.

I turned on the ball game and set the whiskey down by the TV before putting the groceries away. Then I went to take a piss. The bathroom was still in a savage mess from last night. I had brought a friend back that I had fucked once before. Her hair was blonde back then. Now it was pink but the fuck was basically the same. A great lay. We had done it on the bed first then again later in the bathroom.

She was bent over the basin, gripping it with her hands as I fucked her from behind, watching my funny little self in the mirror. If you’ve ever watched yourself fuck then you know how pathetic and oddly ridiculous you look. We all do, no way around it. It’s an odd ritual to do, at the nut of it, thrusting back and forth, in and out and in and out of someone. But it’s still the best and most simple ritual we have, the only thing unchanged for millions of years, relatively untouched by technology and taxes. It’s the only thing left the bastards haven’t figured out how to ruin.

So we had fucked in the bathroom and trashed the place. Watching my cock fill her hole and seeing her spine protruding as I forced her further down and gave it to her harder was a great thing to behold. I knew where all her tattoos were.

Thinking about it as I sat on the bed and unscrewed the cap off the whiskey was making me hard, but there would be nobody to play with tonight. Instead it was 9 innings of baseball and a microwave meal. That’s the way it went some days, in life as in Friday nights. Sometimes you got lucky and sometimes you didn’t. And sometimes you didn’t care which it was.

So I sipped my drink and cooked my meal, watched the 3rd baseman ground out to third as I bit into my burger with the warm, chewy bun. Then I put some paper into the typewriter.

And then I wrote this.