Absinthe Oranges and Alligators

It’s the Saturday before Fat Tuesday “Mardi Gras” and New Orleans is in full swing like the tits on a woman jogger. The French Quarter is so packed you can tell what flavor of gum the person next to you in the crowd is chewing. The smell of vomit, piss, and day-old beer fills the afternoon air. It’s the aroma of a decaying city that shall rise from the pestilence, the filth and garbage on Ash Wednesday.

I’d had more than I could stomach of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Women flashing sagging, stretched-out, wrinkled fake tits for plastic beads made in China. Drunks staggering aimlessly, unable to navigate through the throngs of fraternity boys and tourists screaming “show us your tits!”

Locals are convinced the reason New Orleans is sinking is due to the weight of all the imported beads.

I decide to get the hell outta the French Quarter and heel toe express it to St. Charles Street and catch some parades, with a more passive and less inebriated group.

The Crew of Bacchus always presents an exciting, colorful and festive parade. This year it more than lived up to their past performances. As Bacchus rolls by on his Chariot of grapes shrouded in purple, I hear the voice of an angel whispering in my ear from behind.

“Hey Sailor, looking for a good time?”

I  turn around, abruptly spilling my cup of Johnny Walker on the mysterious voice and myself.

“Of all the parades, in all the towns, in all the world, you’ve gotta show up at mine,” I say with the worst Bogey imitation ever spoken.

“Sailor, you’re suppose to drink that there whiskey, not shower in it,” she says with a smile. She wipes the spilled liquor from her chest and puts her booze-soaked fingers in my mouth.

“Yummy like sugar, huh sugar?” she whispers in a Cajun drawl that causes my heart to race.

“Tell me Santiago, you still hooked up with that coon-ass queen slut from Irish Bayou? Or do I finally get my chance to fuck you ’til tomorrow becomes a memory?”

Now, I  want to just jump on that bus of suggestion like a commuter late for work,  but I decide to play it poker style, just checking her raise. What a cosmic event, running into Gitane after five years. I knew this exotic, erotic, and somewhat toxic mulata princess from my days of living in Fat City, when she bartended at Pat’s Pub. The woman she’s referring to is Pamela, pronounced pa-mel-la, an old flame of mine that was extinguished after I finally pissed on it.

“I am no longer engaged in sharing that tangled web of lies and lunacy with that spider of a woman. She ran off with the bass player of some Aerosmut cover band. The word around Irish Bayou was that she got pregnant and he abandoned her somewhere in Nevada. Now that’s some bad fucking luck… Nevada, God’s toilet. Dream woman dream until your dreams come true!” I sing, raising my glass in a toast. I’ve since grown fond of Tyler and his band; seems I  have discovered the reason why.

Gitane grabs me and lays a kiss on my lips that would make cooked spaghetti hard again.

“Well sugar, whatya say? It’s Mardi Gras baby, time to throw out the old an bring in the new.”

“Did you say bring you in nude?” I joke.

She just smiles and grabs my hand.

“Santiago, you always make me laugh. I’ve got some LSD, a bottle of green fairy direct from France, my body achin’ for some tender loving and no one to share with. Come on sugar, we were meant to be together, this meeting wasn’t by chance! My aunt Gerty read my tea leaves yesterday and it was in the stars. You don’t wanna disappoint aunt Gerty, she jus’ might put a Gypsy curse on ya. Laissez los Bons Temps Roulez,” she sings.

Here we go, Cajun Gypsy curse, how does anyone accept this type of bullshit as gospel? I pretend to be afraid with a display of my body shaking and a terrified facial expression. It evidently doesn’t appear to be all that convincing, because she starts laughing.

“I certainly can’t chance hurtin’ aunt Gerty’s feelings,” I say, “what a callous fellow I would be.”

We start walking to her apartment on Napoleon, her arm around my waist, mine around her shoulders. Strange, but I suddenly develop a taste for a cup of hot tea with honey.

I’m not one to express my softer side, but this is turning into quite a  romantic moment. I didn’t just write that did I? I did? Damn, I must be becoming a romance novelist.

“So tell me baby, what brings you back to the Crescent City?” she pries. “You aren’t still doing that work for Marcellus, are you?”

“What work, for whom, and where did you hear such exaggerated bullshit like that? Don’t start believing rumors, Gitane. I’m just an unemployeed musician on a quest to capture those mythical golden notes belonging to the melody of magic.”

“Uh huh, and I’m really a princess kidnapped by Gypsies when I was just a baby.  Now I’m leading a life of palm and tarot card reading to make my living. I’m learning what a humble life is like before I’m discovered and restored to my throne to reign as queen, now that my mother has died.”

“I always suspected just that! You  possess a regal air about you, the demeanor of royalty.
Your Majesty, I do admire your talent for story telling.”

“Oh stop flattering me. Still your charming old self, Santi. That story is so Sam Clemens it rings of Twain. So are you?” she asks again. “You know, working?”

“Where? What work you say?”

She slaps me in a loving manner and doesn’t inquire again. However, she hit the proverbial nail on the head, driving it deep into my thoughts. I was there waiting for a load of cocaine to deliver to Chicago within the next few days.

The crowd grows as the sun begins to set, permitting the night to spill its darkness into a jealous sky pouting over the absence of its stars, their sparkle obscured by the clouds bullying their way into the space left by the sun’s retreat. The moon grows larger and brighter as the Earth turns, spinning  night’s beacon of  light into a brilliant white.

New Orleans becomes a completely different city at night. The scent of magnolia blossoms travels on every breeze. The sweet gum and oak trees appear taller and seem to scratch the sky with their fingered branches. Sounds burst through the lazy silence, celebrating with notes of noise that fill the air with the music of darkness. I watch the light from street lamps dance on her brown skin, highlighting the minute, almost invisible hairs on her arms. Her hair smells of lavender and her skin is soft like the fur of a sable.

“Santi, would you like to spend the night with me? It’s Sunday tomorrow and I don’t have to work. Thought maybe we could go to Mandeville and visit my mother and sister. We could bring a king cake, drink some home-brewed moonshine and get silly. You remember my mom and ‘dem from the Christmas party at the bar a couple of years back. She took a shine to you, ya know.”

“Can I spend the night? Baby, there was a time when I wanted to spend my life with you.  You loved me but you just didn’t know it. Sounds like a perfectly pleasant day. Yeah baby, it’s a date.”

We reach her apartment, which is actually a house that has been split down the middle, making two shotgun homes. They’re refered to as shotgun houses because you can open the front and back doors,  stand on the porch with a shotgun then shoot straight through the house. The buckshot exits out the back door without hitting a single thing.

It’s a quaint and welcoming home with lace curtains, doilies on antique tables next to an oversized davenport, covered in a crushed velvet material.

“Come on sugar, let’s take a shower. It’s in the bathroom in my bedroom. The other is outta commission right now. Come on, get outta those whiskey-soaked clothes and let me give you a dirty shower…”

I’m not really all that soiled or soaked from the whiskey incident, but I’m certainly not going to object to a dirty shower. I’m naked in a matter of seconds, sitting on the bed as I watch her undress. She turns on the radio and dances, performing a strip tease for my pleasure.

“Mardi Gras mambo, Mardi Gras mambo down in New Orleans…”

I’m totally captivated by her body and the way she gives purpose to rhythm of the melody. She reaches into her dresser and pulls out a small bottle containing the acid. She floats over to me and places a tab on my tongue, which dissolves in my mouth. Pulling at my arm after consuming her own dose, she leads me into the shower. The water pulsates from one of those adjustible spray shower heads with a thousand different settings.

“I see you left the setting on masturbate. How can any man compete with an instrument  that possesses the ability to provide non-stop, pulsating pleasure?”

“Don’t embarrass me sugar. Yes I use the shower to pleasure myself from time to time, but it’s  a poor substitute for a man. There’s no intimacy, no loving touch, no body next to you, skin to skin. The excitement of his breath becoming more and more rapid, the sound of his heartbeat…”

While lathering up a bar of soap between her hands, she gets on her knees and takes my cock into her mouth, gliding back and forth in slow motion. After a few minutes, her hands begin to move smoothly in short strokes up and down the shaft.

I cum long and hard, groaning in pleasure, my legs weak and shaking as she stands, tenderly kissing my body all the way back up. Her lips are soft and velvety, her tongue moving slowly, passionately in my mouth.

She stops and whispers, “Did you enjoy your dirty shower sugar?”

I’m at a loss for words, literally unable to utter a syllable. Gitane start to laugh but I can’t find any humor in my dilemma. I am beginning to feel the LSD coming on. My mind is lucid and my body is experiencing rushes that originate from my head, trickling down to my lower extremities. I exit the shower and Gitane is lying naked on the bed waving a multicolored scarf above her head, totally mesmerized.

“Baby, are you getting off on the acid?” she asks.

“Yes, I’m fucking tripping heavy baby. Like someone climbing the stairs with their shoe laces tied together, this shit is awesome. Hey Majesty, I’m going to put on some music, open the bottle of absinthe and release the green fairy. Do you want a cocktail baby? Of course you do, what am I thinking? I’m going to “louche” the absinthe, do you have sugar cubes?”

Suddenly I realize that I am speaking out loud.  I’m curious why light bulbs are  shaped like they are and start thinking of how profound and crucial the question has become. I find a gap in the traffic of thought rushing through my mind, remembering that I was going to do something that required sugar cubes.

“Santi, do think that clouds are good things or a bad things? I mean they bring storms, rain, snow and they unleash violent tornados and hurricanes that destroy things, but they are so alluring and pretty… They look so puffy and soft, creating different pictures shaped like almost everything. They’re like art in the sky, they’re the angel’s Play Doh…”

I’d feel a bit silly and quite embarrassed if I were to bring up my light bulb epiphany just then. It seems so trite compared to Gitane’s deep observation.

“Gitane, that was beautiful and profound,” I tell her. “The manner in which you expressed your thought was classic Joyce Kilmer. She was the poet that wrote the poem about the beauty of a tree. The angel’s Play Doh! Classic, baby…”

I decide to put on her robe. It’s one of those satiny materials with a feathered boa attached to the neck line. I take a look at myself in her full-length mirror hanging on the closet door, and I’m surprised at how attractive I appear.

“Santi, are you a crossdresser?” she screams. “You like wearing women’s clothes! Let me dress you up, please, it will be so much fun! I think there’s film left in my camera.”

“I’ll indulge your obsession to dress me up, but no fucking pictures. I need to put on some music, then pour us some absinthe that I’m going to louche. Now, do you have any sugar cubes, for the second time?”

She awakes from her LSD trance and momentarily grasps a small portion of reality, just enough to answer my inquiry.

“If you louche, you’re gonna need sugar cubes, Santi. You’ll find them in the left upper cabinet by the sink, and the absinthe spoons are in the drawer under the same cabinet.”

If you’re not familiar with absinthe, a quick lesson: It’s a spirit that originated in Switzerland. The wormwood tree provides the major ingredient, producing cognitive brain functions leading to hallucinations when consumed in excess. It gained its popularity in France, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many artists and writers such as Hemingway, Poe, Rimbaud, Lautrec, Picaso, and Van Gogh all chased the green fairy, believing it enhanced their creative abilities. I drink it because I become sexually aroused and it creates intimacy, much like ectasy or mescaline.

Gitane enters the kitchen as I’m pouring the absinthe over a sugar cube. It slowly drips into the glass from a spoon with holes acting as a sieve.

“Santi, I want an absinthe cocktail now…” she whines.

“Almost ready baby, damn you look incredible, absolutely gorgeous. You are a vision of lovliness.” My comment  was the gospel truth; she is more than I ever imagined, a classic work of art.

The absinthe was ready, and our glasses clink in a silent toast accompanied by her sensual smile.  Some  spills on her chest as she shoots the entire glass down. The drops  roll down her breasts from her chest to her stomach, tiny green tears of pleasure begging for my lips to sip the green droplets from her body. After licking the drizzled liquor from her breasts I drop to my knees and begin to suck it from her stomach. She pulls my head against her and I do not resist. Purposefully, she spills a bit more, giggling as the absinthe cascades down her body and into my eager mouth.

“Santi, I want sex but it’s different than what you may be use to…” she says.

Different than what I may be use to? I hardly think so! I’m no Don Juan or Cyrano, but I’ve been around the block a few times and have experienced some strange sexual practices.

“Sure baby, anything you want,” I  say, “just tell Santi.”

She walks to the refrigerator and retrieves a large bag of oranges. Alright, orange body shots, I  happily assume is our recreational sex game. She sets the bag of oranges on the table and walks back to the fridge, placing her back against it. She looks at me and smiles.

“Now Santi, throw an orange at me please…”

Without hesitation, I rip open the bag, grab an orange, and casually lob the fruit at Gitane. She makes no attempt to catch the orange, and it bounces off her left breast.

“Yes baby, but harder!” she instructs. “Throw it at me harder, I  want to cum…”

I grab another and throw it with more force. It makes its mark just above her pussy, leaving a large red spot no her groin.

She’s moaning like a cat in heat, screaming, “Yes baby, yes, harder, again harder!”

I grab another orange, wind up like a big league pitcher and let it go. The fruit strikes her belly and I  respond quickly with another then another. I continue with a barrage of oranges, hitting her tits and legs. She spreads her legs and with her fingers she opens her vagina.

“Here baby, here, come on Santi! I’m so close to cumming….”

I’ve tried to win those ridiculous stuffed animals at county fairs and carnivals, throwing balls at targets with no success. Now I needed to hone my skills and make an accurate throw.

I wind up and bingo, I hit the spot!

She writhes and moans in pleasure, fingers rapidly stroking her clitoris. I must admit, in all my years of sexual activity, I  have never encountered this type of sexual gratification before. I’m totally aroused and ready to respond in kind. I walk over to her, turn her around, and immediately enter her from behind.

She screams, “Harder Santi, harder!” I comply with her request and slam myself into her, finally cumming in triumph.

It is then hear something knocking, a loud pounding from what I  think is out back.

“What the hell is that noise? Do you hear that, Gitane?”

“It’s nothing,” she assures me, “just the wind blowing a tree against the house.”

Then, again, the sound like someone slapping the wall or the door.

“Let’s have another absinthe, Santi,” she suggests. “You can lick the juice off of my body…”

I whip up two more large portions of the green fairy, and we both down them with one gulp. Gitane hugs me tight, the sticky remnants of oranges sticking to our bodies.

“Is everything okay, Santi?” she asks. “You don’t think I’m strange for enjoying that type of sexual stimulus, do you?”

“Yes baby, I do find it strange and unusual,  but does it bother me or cause me to not want to participate? No. Did you think it would make me uncomfortable? I’m a pleaser angel, at times to a flawed degree. No, it doesn’t bother me, and I’m grateful you have such trust  to share your predilection with me. Although,” I think to add, “I  wouldn’t use apples or pears or anything harder than grapefruit.”

Truth is it didn’t disturb me at all. I found it strangely erotic and sexy.

By this point, the LSD has leveled off to a mellow high, and I fix us another round of cocktails. Gitane embraces me and places her head against my chest, rocking  side to side to the music playing in the other room. Again I  hear that fucking slammimg and slapping sound coming from somewhere on the other side of the wall.

“What the fuck is that noise?” I ask her again.

“It’s the wind, like I  said before. Just the wind!”

I look out the kitchen window and observe the stillness of the trees and other plants. There’s not the rustling of a single leaf.

She walks into her bedroom, signaling for me to follow.

“Come on sugar, take a shower with me. I’ll let you wash me any place you want, come on sugar…”

Just as I take a step in her direction, I hear the disturbance again. This time I’m determinded to investigate it. I turn and march toward the back door and the bathroom she said is out of order.

“Santi, no!” she screams. “Do not open that door!”

It’s too late, my hand has already turned the knob and I push the door open. I fumble for the light on the wall, flicking the switch as my ears begin to register a loud, throaty hissing. Suddenly a four-foot alligator comes lurching at me from the darkness. I nearly fall on my ass, screaming like a schoolgirl as I stumbled back out of the bathroom.

The gator lunges at me again with its mouth wide open, displaying enormous teeth lining its huge pink mouth. I figure that this is the end. I’m dinner for some fucking alligator. I accept my fate, but before I can become gator bait, I feel Gitane’s hands gripping my arms.  She tugs at my body, freeing me from the impending doom. The gator’s mouth snaps shut within inches of my leg. With Gitane’s assistance, I finally scramble to my feet and make a mad dash to the safety of the living room.

“Gitane, what the fuck are you doing with an alligator in your bathroom? That son of bitch nearly killed me!” I scream. “Are you missing some god damn brain cells? What the fuck are you thinking, you lunatic!”

She coaxes the monster back into the bathroom and shuts the door. She’s laughing hysterically, pointing at me now, trying to comment but she’s unable to speak through her laughter.

Finally, she’s out of breath, still reeling from the excitement.

“Oh Santi,” she says, “you should have seen yourself, you were so scared!”

“Scared, scared you say! I  was fucking terrified, totally panic strickened. You pulled me out just in time, and not a second too late. Seriously, why the hell do you have that monster son of a bitch living in your bathroom, tell me?”

“He was just a baby when I found him washed up on the street from the last hurricane. I felt badly for him, so i brought him home and put him in the bathtub and gave him a home.  He grew so quickly, I just kept him as company. His name is Gawain, after Sir….”

“Yeah,” I interrupt, “I know who the hell Gawain is!”

“It’s time for a drink!” she yells enthusiastically.

“Is that door secured, is it locked?” I ask. “I don’t want that bastard getting a second chance! You realize you can’t keep him, don’t you? Call the zoo or that alligator hunter guy on TV. He’s only gonna grow larger. He should be in the swamp, not your bathroom, baby.”

“I know that I can’t keep him… Will you help me find a home for him, Santi?”

“Gladly, it will be my pleasure.”

We partied into the wee hours of the morning, finishing off the bottle of absinthe and occasionally laughing at the alligator incident.

I wake up to discover I’m dressed in a plaid skirt, a crew-neck blouse, and fucking panty hose. I’m wearing one glittery sandle with my hair tied up on top. I make my way to the bathroom and my reflection scares the shit out of me. Unlike last night, the mirror hanging on the closet door betrays me this time. My lips are painted with a bright shade of shocking red lipstick, my eyes with blue eye shadow and mascara. More than anything else, I resemble an old, washed-up hooker. I’m wearing dangly silver earrings and a too-tight bra that is presently strangling my chest.

“Oh, Santiago,” I whisper to myself, “you incredibly submissive fool…”

Like a Chainsaw With Malice

What nerves you must have, absorbing paradise in your flip flops and that cheap Hawaiian shirt. Don’t you know what goes on behind these walls? The dogs are fighting for scraps and I’ve misplaced my bag of angry rats; things are only going to get weirder from here, I’ve been off my meds for days now and that’s a bad thing to happen under any circumstance.

The cantina was my future sanctuary and I desperately needed it, I was screaming at all the tourists and I slept in horse shit the night before, I would have looked like an abstract shell of a man, speaking in tongues, stinking up whole blocks on my way to the cantina.

After the long surreal struggle to “THE CORPSES CANTINA” where I was received as royalty, or at least the kind of royalty particular to the island. I arrived with the stench of hell, vomiting, screaming and really thirsty, fortunately this was a common occurrence so the staff new how to handle things, they even pinched in some of their tips to buy a defibrillator. I stopped screaming after about a half hour, two beers and two shots of rum.

Lately I’ve been misplacing my bag of angry rats; I use it for protection, I mean, who’s going to fuck with someone carrying a bag of angry rats. I treat them well, at the bungalow where I’m staying they get free reign, abstract thought was the only way to survive the island, turns out I left them at the cantina, that’s one thing they really don’t jive with.

As I continued to consume I tried putting the grueling remnants of the debaucherous night together, seemingly extracted from what was once my brain. I knew I stole a boat, that was a vivid recollection but I hadn’t a clue where it was nor who it belonged too. It wasn’t a big deal; people steal boats all the time on the island, there was no law or cops here, it was like a pirates paradise, but mostly inhabited by those who would prefer not to be found.

Anyway, as I stared down at my cheap Hawaiian shirt and warned out flip flops, some of the dizziness began to leave, I seemed to be feeling better, as the psychotropic cocktails kicked in.

Bikini Beach Bloodbath

Jack Ashley and Joe “Show No” Mersey were speeding down the coast in a black top down Jeep, three days into a two week lam from work and any shred of responsibility. They were best friends, approaching their mid-forties and clinging to what looks they still possessed.

Joe turned the radio up full volume and sang with the oldies station: “Motorin’/ What’s your price for flight?” They were celebrating his most recent divorce, his third. Jack only had one under his belt. Between them they had three kids to accompany the four ex-wives. This trip was to relive former glory, to briefly recapture a moment of their youth they missed. They planned to party like they did in their twenties, if age allowed it, following less traveled paths and touring whatever dive bar along the highway drew their interest.

The trip, so far, had found tequila shots and a topless billiards contest in a little town called Casla. Jack got a hangover, Joe got a t-shirt proclaiming him a FREELANCE GYNECOLOGIST. In San Guerre del Bendita they met a “biker chick” named Lola Monroe whose claim to fame was blowing JFK before he shipped out to WWII. Seeing Joe’s t-shirt, she hit him up for a pro bono exam. Bets were made whether he would or would not. Whiskey fortified him as Lola removed her dentures and led him to a back room with a drippy smile. Afterward, when questioned, Joe would only say, “I don’t want to talk about it,” as Jack counted his money.

By the fifth day, Jack and Joe arrived at their ultimate destination: Baniki Bay, a small beach town that learned early to get tourist dollars by advertising themselves as Bikini Beach.

Baniki thrived on out-of-towners and their expendable cash. It was brimming with mom-and-pop shops, restaurants and the odd chain business. There were boat and jet ski rentals for fun in the summer sun, deep sea fishing, and any number of artisans crowding the streets and beaches to sell their crafts. The laws were lax on Bikini Beach, clothing optional, if at all, with ragers and keggers going all night during the height of the tourist season. Local law enforcement didn’t have a drunk tank, they had the beach. Everything was good as long as nobody was severely injured.

The bendable laws are what brought Tri-State Chemical to Bikini Beach, or Baniki Island more accurately. The island sat just offshore, far enough away from prying eyes but close enough for an easy commute. Tri-State donated generously to the town, which got it through the off season, and town officials ignored improperly disposed industrial waste. Tri-State took residence of the island from Longview Prison for the Criminally Insane. Lethal treatments of questionable legality, and body dumping, closed Longview once federal and state authorities learned of its practices. But none of those things were listed in the Chamber of Commerce’s brochures and they were expunged Bikini Beach’s history.

***

When Jack and Joe made it to Bikini Beach, Baniki Island was a dot of silhouette on the horizon thanks to the setting sun. Music blared from various venues while a band was strumming at one end of the beach near the cliffs. People were dancing and jamming, raising drinks to the tunes.

Jack parked the Jeep in the lot of Bikini Motor Inn, which set right on the beach. “Doesn’t look like anything has changed,” he said. Cars inched along the boulevard, throngs of people going from one good time to another. There was laughter, chatter, and a pervasive vibe of happiness and freedom— a groovy kind of spirit.

Joe scanned up and down the lane. “I wonder if that tattoo place is still here?”

“I count four just looking,” Jack said.

“No, don’t you remember? Agony and Ecstasy Tattoo and Body Piercing.”

“Oh, yeah. You were too afraid to go inside.”

“So were you,” Joe said.

Jack grimaced. “I’m not big on the agony part.”

They checked in, they got their room keys, 9 and 10, adjoining. They unpacked and refreshed to discard road grime. For dinner they sought the Gator Tail Seafood Shack, a place they had enjoyed years prior. They were happy to see it still a staple of the local cuisine, and that the waitresses still wore short-shorts and cut-off t-shirts.

After a feast of gator tails and coconut shrimp, the guys hit up Skeeter’s Bar for a couple of Coronas and an unflattering turn on the dance floor for Joe. It was there they met Janet and Ronnie, cousins and divorcées fresh from their thirties, on their way back to Baja from a family funeral with a couple of days to kill.

“So what do you do?” Janet asked Jack.

“Does it really matter?”

“No,” she said. “We’re not using our real names,” which sent her and Ronnie into rolls of laughter.

Joe said, “I wish we’d thought of that.”

Most personal talk ended there for the foursome, other than Joe’s last IRS audit. They talked in generalities, adult topics that would bore the predominantly younger crowd: paying bills, fine wine, expensive meals, cell phone overage charges, great works of literature, guilty pleasure movies, dream vacations in exotic locales, Joe’s next IRS audit. They cracked wise about the “poor, dumb kids” and pointed out which ones would be burned by their vacation hook-ups.

Once a couple of rounds had come and gone, the newly formed group made their way to the gathering on the beach. The band was playing fifties and sixties pop songs and the accents of the waves yawning on shore added a dose of heart to the performance. Jack and Janet slow danced to a slithery instrumental of “Sleep Walk” while Joe and Ronnie were half buried in the sand in each other’s arms. That’s when the earthquake hit.

***

As far as earthquakes go, this one was a sneeze. It didn’t register on the locals’ Richter scale. Shelves rattled, pictures fell, some nerves frayed. People clung to each other as police, paramedics, and firefighters arrived. Aftershocks were nonexistent. No buildings crumbled and neither did the earth open wide to swallow the town. No one was seriously injured and mass hysteria was avoided. Not even the rocks of the cliffs were disturbed. Within an hour and a half it was business as usual.

Under the water it was different.

The mass graves of barrels that Tri-State Chemical had discreetly dropped under the placid waters of Bikini Beach were disturbed. A large number of those barrels were cheaply made and improperly, even incompetently, sealed. They shifted beneath the waves and foam. Caps popped, sides split. Chemicals leaked and mingled, and while a slick surfaced, some compounds settled on the seafloor where other things rested long buried.

Those things woke. Those things stretched limbs, flexed fingers and jaws.

Those things gave up their dark burial sites and inched their way through the water to the morning rays that were breaking over Bikini Beach.

***

Jack woke up and checked his phone. A little after eight, no messages, no calls, battery at half life. Janet was asleep beside him, her long brunette hair fanning over the white slip of the pillow. The sheet covered her naked body and he admired the roundness of her hips. Next door, he heard an irritated Ronnie cussing at Joe’s snoring.

He got up and slipped on his underwear to fetch a Pepsi from the mini fridge. He peeked out the curtain of the patio doors as he drank. People were already sunning on the beach and swimming. Gulls darted a cloudless sky as the sun was gearing up for a scorcher.

Janet woke. Sitting up to stretch, the sheet fell below the full volume of her breasts. Her large dark nipples were hard in the air conditioned coolness. Jack’s dick twitched in matted pubes at the sight of her.

“Please tell me you have coffee,” she said.

“No,” he said, adjusting his beginning stiffness. “Joe’s the coffee drinker.”

A loud snore like a landslide came from the closed adjoining door. It was followed by Ronnie, “For shit’s sake…”

“I’ll pass,” Janet said.

Jack put his drink on the nightstand. He laid beside her, on top of the covers. Hands behind his head, ankles crossed, the head of his cock poked through the fly of his tented boxers.

Janet snuggled partially atop him. Her breasts were cool when they touched him. She spread her leg over him, nudging her knee against his erection. She teased her nipple with a long pink fingernail. “I can pass on the coffee, for now,” she said, biting Jack’s nipple hard enough to make him wince.

He kissed her, feeling kind of silly for smiling so big. Janet threw her head back as Jack kissed her neck and traced his teeth down her throat. When she guided his hand between her legs, he found her fevered and wet. Before he could probe too deeply, she pulled his hand to her face and smeared his moist fingers across her mouth.

Jack crawled out of his shorts and forced her flat. He partedd her legs with his own. She gnawed at his chest as he traced his cock along the folds of her pussy. A small yelp escaped her lips when he slapped it against her clit.

Janet pulled his head down to hers. Her breath in his ear wrung his spine.

Her heat intensified as he patiently entered her inch by inch. The ache in his balls threatened to explode inside her as his thrusting became feral. Her nails raked his back as she tried to suppress her moans and screams. But she did scream as she clenched his pounding cock, her cries filling Jack’s ears and shaking his bones while her body trembled and shook beneath him.

Jack yelled as he came inside her with a stabbing fury. He kept going, slick and slippery between her legs, plunging as deep as he could, urged on by every tense twitch of Janet’s writhing body, by each moan and prayerful breath.

His hips slowed even though her body still gripped him tight. Utterly spent, he licked the sweat from between her breasts before rolling off her.

Janet dipped her fingers from where their juices mingled and closed her legs around her hand. “I’m throbbing…”

“I’m dying…” he replied.

She eyed his erection still at full salute. She grabbed it and yanked it like a gearshift, and he jerked from the sensitivity and laughed. She licked him from his asshole to the head of his dick. She rolled his balls in her mouth, lapping up anything that tasted like sweat and cum.

With a fistful of hair he guided her down his dick. Her throat was as scorching as her gash. The clouds of desire thinned in his head and he wondered how she could still be screaming and choking on him at the same time. He let go her hair and she came up for air, teary eyes and a big grin dangling a thick cord of spit.

“What’s wrong?” Janet asked, following him as he abruptly left the bed.

“You hear that?” he asked, pushing the curtains apart.

She did. Screams. Bloodcurdling screams. Pleas for help.

Jack stared out at the unfolding commotion on the beach.

“What in the actual fuck?”

***

When Roger Banks, the mayor of Baniki Bay, answered his cell phone, he listened intently to the harried explanation being blurted into his ear. His response was an irritated, “Not again…”

When Chief of Police Lacretia Sullivan received her reports from the beach, she simply asked, “How many this time?”

When Mayor Banks spoke with Chief Sullivan, she didn’t mince words.

“We’re fucked. I’m en route, but there’s no containing this one, Roger. We’re being butt fucked with a live chainsaw on this one. It’s all up in our asses. Pictures, videos. I’m sure this shit’s gonna be plastered on the web. Some little fuckhead is probably live streaming on some bullshit something right now.”

“Sweet Italian Jesus,” Banks said.

Sullivan disconnected the call. She never could stomach a grown man crying.

***

Jack pulled on his jeans and a pair of shoes. From a duffel bag in the closet, he removed the gun case in which rested his Glock 22.

“What is all this?” Janet asked, standing at the window naked and glistening.

Jack chambered a round and released the safety. “I don’t know.” He had an urge to kiss her neck, to bite her ass or smack it, but there’d be time for all that later. At least he hoped.

He pounded on the connecting door. “We got a situation,” he said through it.

“You got a fucking gun?” Janet asked.

“Cop.”

“You looked like one…”

The door opened. Ronnie was mostly dressed, but her hair was disheveled with bags under her eyes. Joe, in tighty-whities and a FREELANCE GYNECOLOGIST shirt, already had his Glock locked and loaded. “What’s up?” he said.

“Not sure,” Jack replied. “Lock the doors,” he told Janet and Ronnie, before charging outside.

***

Five things had crawled from the waters. The early beach-goers had assumed junk and seaweed had washed ashore. Then the things stood on two legs, like men, and walked, like drunks, toward the sun addicts. The things reached with arms. Grabbing a burly jock who wore a too form-fitting speedo, one of the things bit into his neck with a chomping mouth. The other four things lunged for stunned sunbathers, and those that couldn’t grab a meal dined with the creatures who were more successful.

When Jack and Joe came running onto the beach, the things had taken down three victims. Joe tried stopping a busty girl that was running by with a tit flopped out of her bikini. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

“Terrorists!” she shrieked, not tarrying as she ran straight by.

“Did you see that titty?” Joe asked Jack.

“Couldn’t miss it,” Jack replied, continuing toward the chaos.

Friends of the burly jock beat at the creature eating him. Another of the soggy monsters fell on them. They thought they had that thing beat down until it rose and plunged a hand through one of their tight, tanned stomachs.

Joe fired two rounds into a creature presently munching on a woman, face deep in her guts. The bullets hit the back of its head and it lay motionless, buried in a mound of intestines.

Jack aimed for the heads of the other two eating the jocks. One bullet hit a jock in the chest as he tried to dodge grabbing hands. He fell screaming, staring up at the rotted maw as it closed over his face. Jack’s next shots finished both the creature and the doomed jock.

“Fucking zombies…” Joe said, scratching his balls.

Jack swiveled his neck until it popped. Meanwhile, the water had spit two more creatures out onto the beach in search of a flesh buffet.

“Who’d have thought, after almost thirty years,” he said, “this shit would happen to us, here, again?”

“Wasn’t in my crystal ball,” Joe replied, raising his gun to pop the head of one the waterlogged bastards. “I ain’t giving this place a third chance though, that’s for sure!”

“To old times then,” Jack said with a smirk.

Guns raised in unison, together they closed in on their targets.

Superhero With a Bad Back

I take another hit because I can’t throw no more punches. I mean, I haven’t officially retired or anything, but I will never again be called back into action. Of this much I am certain.

Once a week, some ungrateful civic servant comes and checks on me. She asks some questions and ticks some boxes. When she leaves I pick off the gum she sticks under the coffee table, put it in a plastic baggie and place it in the fridge. I don’t know what I plan to do with the evidence, confront her maybe?

Someday…

Anyway, I can’t fly like I used to anymore, but sometimes hookers will sleep with me for free if I promise I will take them up for a cruise. I tell them to get on my back and then I jump off the bed, then we float about a foot or so off the floor. In all honesty, the jumping (and I guess the sex) has taken its toll on me.

When they discover that I am impotent all round, they leave all pissed off, unfulfilled by a man once again.

Most of the week is spent on the couch or in bed on some relaxants or, when I’m in the mood, some prescription weed. No one hassles me about it, enough of my neighbours are old enough to remember what I did for the city, but the kids are becoming a concern.

They’ll be starting to outnumber this generation soon.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and die (if I can) before I’m completely out of my stash.

I look out from my sixth floor window. Should I just go ahead and jump?

It seems I don’t have that much of a choice, as none of mankind’s weapons have ever worked against me. In the old days, falling would be nothing, but I’m old now, so who knows..?

I’m relaxed about it, y’know? I’ll let gravity do its thing and maybe we’ll meet in mutual agreement.

The window opens, I exit and hover.