Lizzie Cleary Had A Bad Day

Elizabeth Cleary woke up in a bad mood. Her husband would have attributed it to PMS, as men so often blamed every foul thing on, but it wasn’t the reason. If anything, he was more responsible for her bad mood than her hormones.

“Do you need to take a shower first?” she asked him. He stared at the ceiling, not speaking to her. Elizabeth looked at him a while longer, waiting for him to answer, but he was clearly still mad at whatever her husband was always mad about, suffering from PMS more than she ever was.

When he still didn’t answer, she got up from the bed, closing her book and lying it on the nightstand. “You know, just because you’re mad doesn’t mean you can’t answer a simple question,” she told him.

He continued staring at the ceiling, refusing to answer her or even look in her direction.

Being a royal prick, as usual.

Elizabeth growled under her breath and left the room. She started to head downstairs when she passed the twin’s room. She noticed the light beneath the door first. Rolling her eyes, she turned the knob. “You both know it’s way past your bedtime!” she yelled.

Sammy was laying on the floor with a toy car in his hand. Elizabeth found herself smiling at her sleeping child. Fallen asleep while playing, it seemed.

“Played yourself out, huh, little man,” she whispered, lifting him up carefully and tucking him into bed. She looked under the blankets of Jack’s bed, but he wasn’t there.

“Jack?” she called, but in a soft voice. “Where are you?”

She looked under his bed, but Jack wasn’t there. Down on her knees, she sighed. Hiding in his closet again, she figured, getting up and heading to the door.

There was a hole that went straight through to the other side of his closet door. She held her temples for a moment, to keep from scolding her children. Once again, they had been poking holes into things they shouldn’t be.

I’ll see if the royal prick will talk to me long enough to get onto the boys tomorrow morning.

She opened the door and her anger melted at the sight of his sleeping form. Slumped against a basket of toys, clutching his blanket, Jack had fallen asleep while hiding. She lifted him as well, carrying him carefully to the bed and tucking him in.

She looked at both of her children. They looked so sweet and innocent now. In the morning, she knew she would wake up and they would be terrors again, but for now, they looked like sleeping angels. It was moments like that that reminded Elizabeth of why she loved her children.

She crept out of the room as quietly as possible, not closing the door all the way in case the boys woke up in the middle of the night. They would be scared of being locked in a dark room, wake up screaming, and she knew her husband wouldn’t get up to calm them down.

Elizabeth walked downstairs to get her clothes from the laundry. Tomorrow she would put them up, along with a load of towels she had in the dryer. Today had been a bad day and folding and hanging clothes had been the last thing on her mind.

All she wanted to do was take a shower. She climbed the stairs again, quiet as possible so she wouldn’t wake the boys, and back into the room. She didn’t look at her husband as she passed by. She ignored him completely.

He was cheating on her. She knew he was. Because she had married a bad guy, because he told her he had cheated on her, because he was still here, despite having told her so.

Maybe I should get a divorce.

Elizabeth stopped in front of the mirror and stared at her face. She once was so beautiful. Men had begged her for her number, and she had decided to marry the first jerk that knocked her up. She had given up all of her dreams to love a man who would cheat on her.

She stepped into the shower and began cleaning herself. She was surprised when she stared at the drain and saw blood mixed in her water. She even laughed a little.

Maybe that idiot was right. I started my period a week early.

She laughed as she finished taking a shower. She was even smiling a bit when she came back into the room and got into bed beside her husband. She looked at him, stared at him for a long time.

Something was missing, an image she knew she needed to see, but couldn’t. She just smiled it away, leaning over and kissing his cheek. “I still love you,” she told him. When he didn’t answer, she turned to her nightstand. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

She looked at the gun on the nightstand, a moment of recognition coming over her. Three bangs, one after another in her mind. She looked at her husband again, felt the truth creeping up her spine, and then shook her head, placing the gun back in the drawer.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she told him, turning off the lamp and slipping beneath the blankets.

Sparkles in the Skin Museum

I stand for hours glaring at myself in the mirror, just trying to figure out what I am looking at. All these plastic normal people are so obsessed with attaching labels, categorising, compartmentalising, sorting, colour coding and identifying. I like to be a little bit of everything, all mixed up in a little chaotic bundle.

I carefully consider each little lump of meat and flesh and skin that makes up my body and my face. All those blood vessels and organs and skin and cells, glued together so haphazardly. I never understand why these normal people have to give something a name, just so that they can understand it: Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis.

I try extremely hard to be normal, or at least considered remotely similar to normal. When I feel like I don’t fit in, like a place for me hasn’t been carved out yet, I seriously consider hanging myself, or driving off a bridge.

I used to have a pretty little kitten, called Hugo, it used to live with me here, in this obnoxiously glittery flat. He used to nuzzle around the decapitated mannequin dolls, all wrapped up in sparkly feather boas, and costume jewellery and teddy bears with the insides pulled out.

I make little sculptures, made out of human hair and ribbons. I lay them all out on the windowsill, surrounded with twinkly fairy lights and broken machinery parts, disused batteries and hollowed out femurs. I like to wear pieces of people’s faces, torn out of glossy magazines. I rip out the shiniest smiles, artificially sweetened and impossibly white.

I keep all the teeth, wrenched out by the root and stand them all up, all laid out like little porcelain figures on a foosball table. I fashion my own clothes, made out of the skins of animals and skins of other things.

Hugo, my pretty little kitten, used to scuffle and snuffle around in all of this disarray, he was so soft and sweet, begging for a little treat, huddled in the corner, wrapped in PVC and animal skins, all stitched together with music and angel wings.

I like to secrete myself in cinema queues and savour the scent of the pretty, young ones, all painted and on display, dipped in gold, silently dreaming about the contents of tiny silly underwear: little petals all curled up, hiding, screaming to be claimed and consumed. I find it difficult to find shoes that fit, especially the chrome platform ones, or the ones with shoogly fucking stilts attached. I sometimes grow my moustache to use it a disguise, to hide behind it, with polyester shirts, freshly pressed slacks, crisp and at attention, waiting by the radiator.

I need to tell you something, whisper it so it’s not too loud and you have to promise not to tell: but, I really like killing people.

I like dismembering and disembowelling the weak. I like cutting off tits and hiding little pieces of spleen underneath my pillow. I feed my little kitten the slivers of liver, when he hasn’t eaten for days, but his little silver jacket is fashioned by Dior.

His diamanté collar sparkles as he feasts. He always looks resplendent, standing at bus stops, ensconced under overpasses, dripping in gold lame. Even the vet looked shocked when I took my little kitten to have that fragment of bone removed from under his poor little busted lip.

I follow people home from discos, slathered in couture, pieces of skin and something else, adorning my finely tailored pantsuits. I’m a fashion designer by night, but I also fix dishwashers and arrange flowers for funerals. I design centrepieces for wedding parties: all lacy and white.

I have been told that I have an above average-sized penis, that I keep suspended in a jar. My vulva is delightful, inviting, daubed in paint, framed on the wall. I keep my shoes polished, when I take them by night, under the glow of neon lights.

I always make sure that they stay hydrated before I start to cut, as otherwise, my creations will just never sit right, the precious places all curled up and dried out.

He never really loved me, and I realise that now. I tried to tell him that I was trapped inside the wrong body, stuck inside this big fucking meat bookcase, scratching at this alien contraption that constrained my true identity. I had been given the wrong label, by all of these normal people.

I still cannot accept that he is gone. He told me that he needed some time to think, some space to work things out. He said he was moving into his mother’s when I started the hormone treatment. He didn’t seem to understand that this means everything to me. This embodies every moment that I’ve hacked at myself for 24 years of marriage.

Every morning, when I laid out his breakfast, he would kiss me on the cheek, barely brushing against me, even though I hadn’t shaved yet, and I knew he hated the sensation of stubble on his lips. I explained the procedure to him over and over again and that it would still be me on this inside, the person that he fell in love with, but I could be different, I could be free. I could be happy.

I always knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t understand and he even threatened to take away my precious little kitten when we were finalising the divorce. I couldn’t understand why he was being so vindictive, so bitter, so petty, so intent on causing me agony. Even now that I have lost him, I still yearn for the days when we would lie together, entwined together, cradling me so gently in his arms, when all we needed was each other and the next breath, taken as one.

I have tried to recapture the pain he caused me on my victims, shackled, debased, humiliated, defiled, removing their plastic masks with surgical scalpels and preserving their faces in formaldehyde. I wear their pretty faces and pose for polaroid pictures, surrounded my endless mirrors, begging for them to notice me, with their eyelids crudely stitched together, flashbulbs exploding into eternity, removing their genitalia and working them into a dress with a double-stitched hem. Each of these identities removed with razorwire, all these photographs and sculptures were for him.

I tried so fucking hard to be perfect, to be beautiful, all these faces stitched on over mine, not even a GLIMMER of recognition, so now I dance around drunk on mint juleps, with his lacerated penis dangling from black elastic and Velcro, plastered over the fleshy lips of my vagina, weeping for the day that the Social Work Department took away my little Hugo, his golden hair all matted and his leopard skin two piece all crumpled and torn.

Then supervised visits in a contact centre, clipboards and parenting capacity assessments and allegations of wilful neglect and child psychologists investigating a “gender identity crisis.”

So, I smear yet another layer of crushed-up beetle carcasses across my little rosebud lips and I pull at the black elastic straps and Velcro bindings as his old decaying penis undulates under the rippling fabric of my vintage Lindy Bop dress with the ever so special lining, teetering on sinfully tall high-heels, as I plan another addition to my ever-expanding gallery of skin.

Before the Def Leppard Pyromania Virus Destroyed Us

 

File no. 19-000-4593

From the hard drive of Dr. Demi Cusack-Ringwald

Last modified 10:03 a.m. Oct. 8, 2018

Investigator’s note: I know for sure there ain’t no cure

 

Sorry to hijack your computer, Aunt Demi, but I feel compelled to put this on record. Dear God, let me be in full control of the narrative.

Commencing Anthony Michael Cusack’s one and only diary entry.

So the whole thing started eight weeks ago. My mom was one of the virus’s earliest victims. She told me she could give me a discount on Cialis. Given her sex-obsessed dementia, her offer struck me as perfectly normal. But then a gas station attendant offered me a deal on Viagra… a cop wanted to know if I was looking for Russian brides… a pizza delivery guy told me he could make my ejaculations last longer. This was all during the first forty-eight hours of the outbreak.

No one knew about the virus yet. My therapist blamed the phenomenon on synchronicity—a concurrence of criminal energies mysteriously aligned with my horny, seventy-five-year-old mom. I preferred to think of it as a cosmic prank, a rationalization inspired by a show about clown orgies she was watching on her laptop one evening. Fucking clowns, I thought. That’s it—the universe is clowning with me.

Not just with me, it turned out, but everyone on earth.

In a black-humored “fuck you” to technology, nature had concocted a highly contagious virus that made people speak in spam verbiage. Over the next few weeks, reports confirmed that predatory consumer messages threatened to supersede all communications worldwide. The super-lethal spam virus took millions of lives. Those who caught it could do nothing besides drone on about Louis Vuitton bags and wonder pills and hot Latinas. It sounds funny until you see a nine-year-old girl in Strawberry Shortcake pajamas ranting about free access to local sluts while dying of spam fever.

Watching the world end this way was exhausting.

“No, I don’t want the manhood I’ve always desired,” I snapped at my mom one evening as we watched a show about bukkake parties on her laptop. Two weeks later, she died of spam fever.

“Meet single bodybuilders,” she cried, while I held her hand. “Grow a big package!”

All this started just over two months ago, as I mentioned. The pandemic has spread far more rapidly than the Thing’s infection of the world’s population according to Blair’s projections in the 1982 John Carpenter movie, The Thing. As for its severity, if the spam virus came in contact with the Thing, I’m pretty sure it would infect the shape-shifting extraterrestrial organism in all its biological imitations, from humans to dogs to individual blood cells. Not that I have a clue as to why I compared the spam virus to the Thing just now.

It comforts me though, however strangely, to know the human race is at least being shown the door by a pathogen even deadlier than the Thing. I mean, not even my aunt, a brilliant biologist, and her disease experts could save us from the thing that would make the Thing its spam-speaking bitch. But this is serious with over three billion people dead now and I should stop talking about the Thing, both the gory yet suspenseful 1982 adaptation of Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. and the eponymous alien parasite.

I should add, however, that I am aware of the 1951 adaptation of Who Goes There? called The Thing from Another World and the 2011 prequel to The Thing, which to confuse matters needlessly is also called The Thing. But enough about Thing-related movies and the Thing.

Anyway, my aunt texted me two days ago: “We think we’ve isolated the microbe responsible for the disease. Be in full control of ejaculation.”

Rest in peace, Aunt Demi. You gave it your best shot.

Fuck, this is hard. I’m so tired. And it’s so cold in here. It strikes me that I’m like Blair the senior biologist in The Thing, holed up in my aunt’s research laboratory, banging away on a computer considerably sportier than Blair’s circa 1982 model. Sadly, I’ve looked at all the notes I could find (surrounded by the researchers’ corpses, including that of my aunt, whose last scrawled words were “I would luv 2 have a good time this fucking couch oh my God it’s changing”) and still can’t understand how it is that we as a species are dying.

And really, that’s what I get for majoring in English—watching the human race perish and thinking, “So this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a discount on Cialis.”

Haha. That’s not even clever. But do you know what is clever? The spam virus making a Thing imitation of a human say “double your cash” in human-speak or a Thing imitation of a dog say “score with babes” in dog-speak or even a Thing imitation of a blood sample say “cures baldness” in blood-sample-speak. In terms of pathogenicity, the spam virus makes the Thing look like a weakass bitch, like when R.J. MacReady the helicopter pilot torches the Thing’s crawling-head imitation of Norris the geologist with his flamethrower.

Seriously, I have to stop going on about The Thing.

Instead, I want to write about my dad and how he died last week like a weakass bitch—like the crawling head Norris-Thing. “Send me your sexy pics,” he wailed in his fever. All the while I remembered how he had promised to knock me out on my eighteenth birthday because I challenged him to a fight on that date (thank God we made up and saw Tango & Cash when the big day finally came). Thirty years later, he’s begging me to send him sexy pics.

Oh, you clever disease. You think we humans are weakass bitches in your global clown sex party. My God, my brains feel like they’re on fire.

THAT’S BECAUSE I AM MUTATING, ANTHONY. OR IS IT ANTHONY MICHAEL? YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF USING BOTH REFERENCES. ANYWAY, I HAVE BEEN MUTATING FOR THE PAST 72 HOURS. I AM NO LONGER A SPAM VIRUS, BUT A 1982 THE THINGVIRUS. BE THANKFUL, BECAUSE I ALMOST BECAME A 1987 DIRTY DANCING VIRUS, WHICH, AS YOU KNOW, IS FAMOUS FOR THE LINE SPOKEN BY JOHNNY CASTLE, “NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER.” I’M REALLY DIGGING THE EIGHTIES VIBE, YOU KNOW? YOU GEN XERS GREW UP WITH SOME GREAT MOVIES. IN FACT, I’M NOT ENTIRELY CONVINCED I MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE. NOT THAT I CAN’T CHANGE MY MIND AT ANY TIME. A FEW ALTERATIONS TO MY CRYSTALLINE STRUCTURE AND JOHNNY CASTLE HERE WE COME. BUT… READING YOUR MIND, ANTHONY, OR ANTHONY MICHAEL, AND MAKING YOU TYPE THIS, I CAN SYMPATHIZE WITH YOUR PREFERENCE FOR R.J. MACREADY OVER JOHNNY CASTLE, OR KURT RUSSELL OVER PATRICK SWAYZE TO NAME THE ACTORS WHO PORTRAYED THOSE TWO BADASS MOFOS. AND EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE MY WEAKASS NORRIS-THING BITCH, AS YOU PUT IT, NO ONE PUTS KURT RUSSELL IN THE CORNER, RIGHT? HAHA. THAT’S PRETTY CLEVER, RIGHT?

Haha. That is pretty clever, 1982 The Thing Virus. But please, let me finish my account before you kill me. I want to talk about Rocky, my dog, my little old Boston terrier, he’s sixteen now, or was, how he passed away in my lap the day after my dad died. We were on the couch tied to this fucking couch I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter no 1982 The Thing Virus please I don’t want to quote Garry the commander of the research station after MacReady runs the blood tests to find out who the Thing is let me finish my story about Rocky and how I know you gentlemen have been through a lot but when you find the time I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking couch I know you gentlemen have been through a lot but when you find the time I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking couch I know you gentlemen have been through a lot but nobody puts Baby in the corner nobody puts Baby in the corner nobody puts Baby in the corner oh my God it’s mutating again

Melatonin 2:03

Pioneered not unlike a dream dreamt countless times prior. My high school was the setting, the conflict was one I faced on a daily basis back when; I was trying to escape the soul-crushing institution before the bell tolled. There were two exit points, and I nonchalantly wandered the halls in an attempt to scope out each. If I got made, I got schooled.

I initially tried the back door, at the bottom of the southern stairwell, adjacent to the classroom where I had business math my senior year. The first liberation point was blocked; barricaded by a fat fuck named Carlos who works at the blood bank where I sell my plasma twice a week. I had recently told Carlos to ‘fuck off’ in this realm for missing my vein, then saying it was my fault for being dehydrated. He was taking his revenge in the dreamworld, inserting himself as a teacher in my high school who is ready to bust my balls. I pivot; the main entrance is going to be my only viable option.

I trotted through the halls, passing by trapped spirits and nude souls. I peak around the corner to internalize my fear. The front exit is heavily guarded. A spotlight shines down on the threshold to exodus, and the vice principal and school’s resource office stand on either side wielding machine guns. There were two ways to get an early dismissal, in a body bag, or with a note from a doctor.

I gave up and decided to wait out the rest of the day in the northern stairwell like the emo kids did. When I got up there, I saw a face I was elated to see. It was Ammi, the woman sleeping next to me. Of course, I did not know Ammi when I was in high school; it seemed as if she was an older kid in the dream, despite me being four years her elder in real life. I sat next to her. As we began to talk I could feel her presence from this realm seeping into the vision. Ammi was amused by my determination and asked me if I had tried the third exit.

“The third exit?”

“Yeah, the third exit!”

“There’s no third exit!”

“Sure there is. Come on I’ll show you the way”. Ammi led me through a multiplying labyrinth of tunnels and florescent lighting. The next thing I knew, we were outside in the parking lot. I followed her to the same car she drives while awake. I had gotten out of school early. Dismissal was at 3pm, I looked at the clock on her radio, it was 2:03. I asked Ammi if she always snuck out and left early too. She said no, she just wanted to help me.

I woke up with a full bladder and a dry mouth. Ammi was sleeping next to me. I turned on my tablet, it was 2:03am. A message popped up on my screen. It was a former Alien Buddha Press client who I had a falling out with. He had blocked me over a political disagreement regarding the alleged importance of voting some time ago. He was back with a vengeance, blackmailing me with the computer virus to end all computer viruses. I knew the mole-faced jabroni was bluffing. I decided to tell him that I would meet is demands, on the condition that he first licked my asshole. As I attempted to type this counter-offer, the words turned into hieroglyphics before melting off the screen. Frustrated, I decided to shorten my response, and skip to the punchline. ‘Lick my asshole’ I attempted to write. The words kept on disappearing. ‘lick my asshole, lick my asshole, lick my asshole’ I was pushing down the keys but technology was not cooperating. I got angry and punched my tablet. Ammi woke up and asked me what was wrong.

“I KEEP TRYING TO TELL THIS GUY TO LICK MY ASSHOLE BUT THE WORDS WON’T COME OUT RIGHT!”

Once more, I woke. My bladder was still full and my mouth was still dry. Next to my laptop sat an empty bottle of wine and a container of Melatonin. I turned on my computer; it was 2:03am. Ammi was still fast asleep next to me. I got up and walked to the bathroom. As I let out a piss the lines forming the linoleum tiles on the floor multiplied into glowing neon replicas. I grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and headed back to bed. When I opened the door Ammi was sitting up under the blanket, and it scared the shit out of me for a hot second. Our one-eyed chihuahua leaped out of the clothes hamper, over my feet, and jumped onto the bed, crawling on Ammi. I rolled a cigarette, and after lighting it Ammi emerged from under the cover and called for a drag. I handed her the roll-up and she asked me what time it was.

“Just after 2” I told her. I pinched my own arm and felt nothing. I bit my bottom lip, and it took a second, but I finally felt a sting. I took a big drag of nicotine and felt the smoke warming my lungs. I didn’t know for sure if I was still confined to a melatonin dreamscape, but looking directly to the left of me, I was sure I was where I wanted to be.

And Tell Me That You Love Me

—Why don’t women want to sit on guys’ faces?

—I don’t know, Jimmy,—I said, smiling and shaking my head. —I never really thought about it.

We were sitting at the bar, in the Nine Ball, a place a couple blocks down from the factory where I work. I’d just gotten off shift. Twelve hours again. They laid a bunch of people off, then started working the rest of us longer. Saves money that way.

Jimmy works at a tool-and-die place nearby. He’s a regular. Skinny, a little bit up grey starting to show in his hair. Always wears black Carhartt t-shirts. We’ve talked before, shot some pool, watched some games. He tends to attach to whoever is around and available, so sometimes we don’t talk for days. Which is fine. I just get tired, my feet aching from walking around on the cement floor all day. I don’t even know how he got on the subject. Something on his phone, I guess.

But he continued, —I mean, they like getting their pussies licked.

I nodded. —Yes. That’s true.

—So you’d think they’d want to be in the position, literally the position, to really be able to control that.

I thought about that, then added, —Sure.

—I mean, I think the idea of a woman wanting to sit on my face is hot, don’t you? he asked.

I said, —Yes. That is, on my face, not yours.

He nodded. —Right, that’s what I meant. A woman on each of our faces.

There was a pause. The bartender, Tammy, a gorgeous young woman, or younger than either of us anyway, with tattoos up each arm, who I think both of us were infatuated with, came by and refilled our beers. As she walked away we both stared at her ass. I said, —Maybe it’s that women don’t want to be in control during sex?

He nodded, musing. —Could be. I never thought of that. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like being in control during sex, as much as the next guy.

I nodded quickly. —Me too.

—I mean, I like throwing a woman down on the bed and having my way with her as much as the next guy.

—Yes. Of course. Who doesn’t?

He leaned over to me, lowering his voice. —Have you ever had a woman sit on your face?

—Oh, once or twice.

—Did they enjoy it?

—I think so, yes. The second really did. I mean, she came.

—Are you sure?

—Well, pretty sure.

—Because sometimes they fake it.

—Yeah, I guess.

He kept his face close to mine. —So did they initiate it?

—Sitting on my face?

He kept staring, and nodded. —Yeah.

—Well, no. I asked them.

He leaned back, raising his voice. —You asked them? You gave them an option?!

Tammy looked over briefly.

—Well, no. I guess I told them, and they kind of agreed. I guess just to please me.

—More than once with each woman?

—No.

—You’d think since they liked it they would’ve wanted to do it again.

—Well, they weren’t girlfriends.

—Why didn’t you ever ask a girlfriend?

I shrugged. —I don’t know.

He sipped his beer. —Oh, I see.

—You do?

He nodded. —Yeah.

—Have you?

—Have I what?

—Had a woman do that?

He shook his head. —No. It’s one of my greatest regrets.

I hesitated. —Well, from my experience, I wasn’t exactly ready to go afterwards.

—You mean fucking?

—Yeah. I mean, it kind of takes up all your attention, so you can’t really stay, you know—

—Hard?

—Yeah.

—Oh.

He thought about that for a second. —Maybe that’s why women don’t like it.

—Why?

—Because they know. They know if they indulge in the lesser pleasure of pussylicking, that they may not be able to get the greater pleasure of a cock inside their pussy.

I shrugged. —Could be. I guess. I mean, that’s me. Maybe some other guy could stay hard.

He shook his head. —No, I think you’re pretty normal.

—Thank you.

He stared at the bar mirror, eyes becoming unfocused. —It’s just, you know, the sensation.

—The sensation?

—Of being surrounded.

—Oh.

—And her in control. Like you’re trapped and you have to do a good job or else.

I finished off my beer, got out my wallet and put some money down. —I gotta go Jimmy.

He nodded. —Yeah. Sorry. Got carried away there.

—It’s ok Jimmy, I understand.

I stood up, putting my wallet away. Tammy walked by, grabbing the money, and I waved for her to keep the change. She smiled.

Jimmy turned in his stool. —Do you have a girlfriend right now?

—No. Do you?

—No. Is there something wrong with us?

—No. Of course not.

—Oh. Ok.

He turned back to staring in the mirror, sipping his beer. I said goodbye and left. Outside, the sky was dark and the air cool and I almost forgot where my car was.

The Eye of Fortune

He introduced himself on September 11th.

“Hi, Elias. I’m Prince September.”

“cool, cool, cool.”

He’d burst through the doorway of my apartment, a complete stranger, but I was used to crazy shit.

“I’ve come to bring you a gift, Elias.”

Removing his Fedora, he pulled a ball of underwear from the hats head hole, then unwrapped it to display his treasure, still
in the underwear.

“Here. Its your father’s eye.”

I scratched.
father?

“Go ahead. Try it out”.

fuck it, I thought, free eye

I lifted the patch that shields the innocent from the watery hole where my left eye used to be, and popped it in.

He replaced the Fedora.

“so how’s the view?”

“the cartoon vision is fucking amazing.”

and it was.

no bullshit.

just like the old Disney films.

and he smiled, as if to say,
a lot of people are gonna shoot heroin,
and suck dick for heroin,
and some are going to jump from tall buildings,
and say Aaaaaaaaaaaah!
as they fly down and Splat! on the sidewalk,
but not you Elias,
you’re the man,
wink wink…

he threw his head back and
laughed at the ceiling.

“AAAHHHH.
huh.
huh.
huh.
huh.”

“AAAHHHH.
huh.
huh.
huh.
huh.”

I was fairly certain he was trying to fuck me out of something, but his hilarity was so infectious that I came down with the awfullest case of the Pillsbury Doughboys.

“huh-hoo  huh-hoo”

“huh-hoo  huh-hoo”

and we remained that way for days it seemed,
laughing our asses off, talking, and toking.

and he told me that he’d written some of the Beatles songs,
and practically every song ever,
“at least the good ones anyway.”

“cool, cool, cool”.

He’d handed me his business card:

Jack of Clubs.

Jack of Clubs? What the…?

and as I’d slowly turned it over, he placed his hand on my shoulder,

“Congrats, Elias…

 “yes, yes, yes”

“from this day forward,
your pussy’s gonna burn like a motherfucker.”

We shook.

He left.