Southern Arizona Press
133 pages
$8.99

Judge Santiago Burdon delivers you his entrails and bile and treasure in these stories from the inside of his hell. Every story is rough and glorious, bloody and holy, harrowing and comforting. Burdon is as honest about his shortcomings as he is realistic with this world of temporary bliss and constant loss. In the end these characters are all broken and then healed: crushed by their own search for release, healed by their friendships and their unwavering truth. There is a code of those who end up in prison and swim together in this pool of sharks: keep your word above all else. This loyalty and the bravery to keep facing the lacerated face in the mirror day after day elevates the addict and the drug-runner to sainthood, even if the God is an injured fruit bat wrapped in a coat, a stray dog fetching a filthy ball, a van full of cocaine. There are lessons learned from Jingles the panhandler, from a sex-starved divorcee, from the Grim Reaper, from the grizzly bear slashing your throat. There are rings lost in the Vatican which end up on dead Pope’s fingers, there are keys which no longer open the childhood home and an endless doorway to approximations of what home feels like at the bottom of a bottle, a pile of white, a syringe of false peace. After each light crashes its brittle body all over the floor, the alarm blaring and the epinephrine surging, there is the apology and the embrace; there is the forgiveness and the kiss. This vindication, this escape from prison while in a prison of the ruined flesh, does not come from God, but from a friend with a breakfast burrito and a black coffee and a wish for safe passage past the “Border Patrol, DEA, State Police, Sheriff’s Deputies and Local Barneys.” The disguise is complete as you put on the priest’s collar, wrap your neck of costumed grace, and jump onto the “Ghost Pony” and ride into hell as it quakes our dirty cities to the ground.

— Scott Ferry, author of Each Imaginary Arrow

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Sum of the Parts

Riggs did a quick up and down on the young woman when she opened the door. Her untucked flannel shirt had that soft, washed-many-times look. A couple of the buttons were in the wrong places too. She’d thrown it on, and the skinny jeans were ripped in that fashionable style. Barefooted. 

Ash blond hair was pulled back into a hasty pony tail that let a lot of strands escape, and she wore glasses with heavy, dark rims. Maybe geek sheik but probably worn more after-hours when the contacts were taken out.

“You’re Hannah?”

He always asked for a name and double checked it. Avoided misunderstandings.

She studied him a moment then nodded. “You got here quick.”

“Taphonomic alterations start in a couple of hours. Rigor can be a headache.” 

Eyes widened behind those broad lenses. Maybe she hadn’t expected precise jargon. He wore a faded black tee with a metal band logo and jeans that looked more distressed than hers. 

“Couple of years of pre-med,” he explained.

“There have already been a few…taphonomic alterations,” she said. 

“Maybe you’d better let me have a look before we talk price,” he said.  

She reached forward to turn a small latch on the full-glass storm door that separated them.

“Come on in.”

The floors were hardwood, the veneer shiny. They’d been redone in at least the last couple of years. Nice house, well-kept, nice neighborhood. She was doing okay. They moved down a hallway with attractive artwork, one piece maybe an original. All right classy. No bloodstains. Nothing had been done up here.

A door off the living room opened to darkness. Riggs slipped a hand into his back pocket. He kept a small, flat knife there. The blade was sharp and could be nasty if he needed to defend himself. 

Hannah flipped a switch and brought light to a stairway made of treated but unpainted wood. A pile of rags and towels rested two steps down, stained with black-red, some spots glistening. 

“Down there,” she said.

“You lead,” he said. 

Shrugging, she descended first.

The concrete floor at the bottom was painted a dark green but hadn’t had a fresh coat in a while. It was spotted in a few places. Old stains. She’d done pretty good at cleanup. 

Riggs paused when he saw an X-cross covered in black vinyl against with nail-head trim on one wall. A restraint had been clicked tightly around a wrist, male from what it looked like. Riggs’ gaze trailed downward. The forearm was hairy. That was where the limb stopped. 

“Do you have a medical background?” he asked.

“I’m an orthopedic surgical device rep,” she said. “A thing for tendons. It’s kind of innovative. I’m in a lot of ORs on the job, but I’m not as elegant as the doctors. Of course ortho doctors are kind of like carpenters.”

The hack marks had been made just below—or maybe it was technically above the elbow in this position. A little fresh blood streaked down the X’s branch. Muscle and tendon were jagged, with strings of veins and arteries dangling down, though a hacksaw had probably been used on the bone. A patch of skin had been sliced in an almost perfect rectangle, leaving exposed red muscle. 

“Tattoo?” Riggs asked.

Hannah’s lips and cheek muscles contorted into a guilty grimace. Then she touched a corner of her mouth, seeking reassurance it was clean.  “I just got a little carried away,” she said. 

She had not been joking about taphonomic alterations. The head sat in a royal blue Dutch oven on a wire shelving unit. Longish hair was tangled in bloody masses, one central clump sticking up like the spiked handle it had been used as. The eyes were closed at least. 

Feet extended from beneath a multi-colored crocheted throw. They appeared to be still attached to legs and those extended under the blue-and-pale-blue pattern to what might be fairly intact.

“How long ago?” 

She pulled a phone from her hip pocket and checked the time.

“Hour and a half.”

“Everything else is under there?” he asked.  

She expelled a breath through pursed lips. “The, uh, genitals are in a Tupperware container in the fridge.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Carried away again?”

“A little.”

He looked everything over again. “One eighty, one eighty-five?”

“You’re good.”   

“Sum of the parts,” he said. 

He stroked the Van Dyke at his chin, looking from head to arm to the throw.

“Five thousand,” he said. “You’re still going to want to wipe everything down with bleach after I’m gone.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll be careful. I was thinking more seventy-five hundred.”

He hadn’t expected a haggle. He eyed her for a moment, impatient. She had some balls and not just in the fridge. Still, while they were vulnerable to each other here and now, he could account for his whereabouts at the time a medical examiner could place time of death. She was looking at worse charges. He was after the fact.

“How tall was he? Six-one?”

“About that.”

“Seven even,” he said. “Final offer.”

She didn’t want to keep the guy. 

Hopefully she’d made sure no one knew who the guy was meeting tonight. That wasn’t Riggs’ concern.

“Deal,” she said.

He slipped out his phone. “Venmo okay?”

“That will work?”

He tapped a few keys, looking over the remains again.

The internal organs would still be in fairly good shape, and she’d been smart to preserve the sex organs, if she hadn’t gotten out of hand with the removal. He could turn a nice profit even with the bargain she’d driven, and she’d reap the dual benefit of the payout and having the body gone with virtually no trace. He’d mark it a win/win.

It was around two a.m. so the neighbors would be dozing, and she had a garage that would accommodate his van and allow him to avoid Ring cameras and the like.

He could be out of here in a couple of hours and get early messages to all of clients. A few had grown impatient since his contact at the med school had moved on. 

He didn’t know what buyers needed bones or body parts for. He never asked. 

Jerry the Milkman

I never invited the milkman to my house, but he showed up anyway one cold November morning, when the windows were left crystal white from frost. His truck, a sleek baby blue in color and so polished it shined, was parked in front of my driveway, just minutes before I usually left for work. On the side was Mrs. Moo-Moo, a large smiling cow in an apron, looking like something out of a cartoon that you’d probably never show your kids. Sitting in the driver’s seat was a mischievous-looking man of about sixty-years old, dressed completely in white, from his long, baggy dress pants to his button-up shirt where a tiny black bowtie rested beneath his chin, wrapping around his neck like a tightened noose. The man was balding. A subtle comb-over of dark hair was the only thing that could indicate he ever had hair. Stepping outside, I read the name scribbled crudely on a crooked nametag: JERRY.

A line of bouncing children stretched from the truck to the end of the block, all of them eager to get a cold, refreshing glass of milk. Be it regular, chocolate, strawberry, it didn’t matter, the kids wanted their milk, and they wanted it now.

“You’ve made Mrs. Moo-Moo very proud today” said Jerry the milkman, as he handed one of the children a small glass bottle filled to the brim with pink-colored milk.

In addition to the milk, Jerry was also handing out what appeared to be plastic cow masks for each child to wear. As I tried to wade through the growing crowd to get to my car, I found myself surrounded by the eerie face of a grinning cow, just like the one on the side of Jerry’s truck, all with beady black eyes staring back at me. With every facial feature obscured under the masks, it was hard to tell they were even human. As I pushed through them, they pushed right back with surprising strength, loudly mooing at me as if to give a grave warning for me to leave and never come back. All I wanted to do was go to work in peace.

“Hey, you there, my boy!” Jerry the Milkman called in a jovial voice.

It took me a minute to realize he was talking to me. When I turned to look at him, Jerry flashed me a white toothy smile that made his thin black mustache curl under his nose.

“Would you like some milk, my boy?” Jerry asked. “I’ve got plenty here.”

“Who, me? Nah, that’s kid stuff.” I told him. I never was a fan of milk.

My reply brought a scowl to Jerry’s face. He looked angry. No, he looked straight-up enraged. But then that same wide smile crept back onto his face.

“Oh, you’re never too old for the magic of milk.” Jerry assured me.

“Look, I told you, I don’t want any milk, okay? I want you to get off my property. I need to get to work and frankly, you’re creeping me out.”

Once more, Jerry the Milkman frowned, but it looked almost solemn this time.

“Well, that won’t do. That won’t do at all. You’ve just made Mrs. Moo-Moo very upset.” Jerry said. “And you know what happens when Mrs. Moo-Moo gets upset?”

“I don’t care.” I replied. “Take your milk and leave.”

Jerry grinned again. “Did you just say milk?”

In response, the crowd of children in cow masks began to cheer loudly, so loud it made my eardrums burst with a sudden violence. They all began to chant milk, milk, milk, over and over again, repeating the words into the air like some kind of sacrificial cult. 

Before I knew it, I was savagely attacked by the army of masked toddlers. I didn’t stand a chance as they seized me from every side, no matter how much I struggled. I screamed for help as they dragged me to the back of the truck, but I knew it was too late. The kids continued to cheer as they shoved me inside into pitch black darkness.

It didn’t take long to start hearing the mooing, a low guttural sound that seemed to pour smoke from the open jaws of a hideous creature. I realized now I was in the presence of Mrs. Moo-Moo, a massive cow with twisted horns upon its head and four sets of red glowing eyes, the only light source available to me. The creature let out a demonic moo, jaws split open wide to expose rows of razor sharp teeth and a slimy green tongue. Her bottom half, composed only of dark oily tendrils, seemed to hungrily reach out for me.

So, this is what happens when Mrs. Moo-Moo is upset, I thought. I guess this is my punishment for being lactose intolerant.

Visible Woman

“You were that kid with the boner. Back in high school, right? Freshman biology?”

Lying on the lounge chair by the pool at the Ardent Gardens Mobile Home Court rec center, you’re looking up at whoever it is speaking to you. The sun, directly behind her, blinds you. You can make out that it’s a woman because the crotch of her bikini is right at eye level. The camel toe makes it official.

“You’re that guy, right?”

You shade your eyes. Now you can make out the face. Which is—your science teacher, Mrs. Nicks. From high school. Like from fifteen years ago. Holy shit. You didn’t realize you were fixating on your former science teacher’s vagina.

You remember Mrs. Nicks as a slender, serious woman, maybe in her early thirties back then, with tortoise shell glasses and a smoker’s voice. She kept her wild, curly brown hair cut in a loose, jaw-length bob, went bare-legged in belted shirt-dresses, and wore penny loafers without socks. Seeing her in a skimpy two-piece swimsuit is somehow unnatural.

She’s standing over you, running a towel over her hair, the water droplets dancing off your chest.

There’s a little bit more to her now than you remember, but not much.

“The boner kid? Every class. That whole semester. Right?”

Of course it’s you. How could you forget? You’ve still got the scars on your psyche. But you had no idea Mrs. Nicks ever noticed.

You give her a cocked grin. “Freshman year is still a blur,” you say. Which is not in the least bit true. It’s crystal clear and still fresh enough to make you cringe every time you think of it.

That whole year, you could not get your mind off sex. Freshman Biology was the absolute worst. Mrs. Nicks kept a model on her desk at the front of the classroom, a transparent figure of a naked woman with the skeleton and all the organs visible through the clear plastic skin. Your seat assignment put you right in front of it.

At one time or another, you imagined every girl in your class displayed naked, full-sized as a transparent plastic figure.

By the time class ended, you had a huge hard-on. Every time. It felt enormous. And not in a good way.

When the bell rang, you hunched over in your seat until everyone else left the room so they wouldn’t see, wouldn’t laugh at you. If a couple of the girls hung around by the door, you wouldn’t move. Better to be late for the next class than have everyone talking about the useless boner you always got in biology.

“Kevin, right? Kevin Winchell?”  She’s holding out a beer to you.

“Mrs. Nicks?”

“Ms. now. Mister Nicks gone bye-bye.”  She waggled fingers of farewell with the hand holding the beer. “I’m back to Waxworth. I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

You don’t remember, but you say you do, making noises about old wounds or something. You’re not fully here. You’re back slogging around in the sludge of despicable memories.

“You might have missed it. But it felt like everyone was making jokes about us.”

She waggles the beer, drops of condensation hitting the crotch of your swim trunks. Like she’s aiming. It’s cold on your folded-up pecker. So you take it.

“That boner of yours kept me sane. Least I can do is buy you a beer.”

She stretches out on the lounge chair next to yours, crossing her legs at the ankles, then takes a pull from her own beer.

There’s a faint whiff of something familiar and you realize it’s the same fragrance she always wore in the classroom. Something ferocious is stirring in that dark cave of memory.

You realize she’s been talking, and all you’ve done is stare at the texture of her thigh.

“—like, do I come right out and thank you for having a hard-on in my class?”

You’re not listening closely. Your science teacher, in a wet swimsuit, is talking about your penis.

“Feels odd bringing it up, but we’re both adults, right? Some of us a lot longer than others.” She leans over the arm of the lounge chair and dips her sunglasses to look at you. “You don’t mind me talking about your penis, do you?”

“Not at all,” you say, because you don’t want to come off as a dipshit prude, even as you stare in on the freckled bosom in her swimsuit top spilling toward you.

She re-sets her sunglasses and settles back on the lounger. “I didn’t think so, but you know how it is. Old habits, I guess.”

Old habits sound okay right now.

“At first, I assumed it was one of the girls in class.”

You’re about to say you can’t recall any of the girls in that class but she keeps on talking before you can lie to her.

“I tried playing Sherlock and catch who you were watching,” she said, “then I realized. Every time I looked? You were watching me.”

Which you were. You were terrified she’d stop the class and make you go see the nurse or something. You’d have to walk out of the classroom with that boner of yours leading the way.

“If my marriage wasn’t breaking up, I’d have reported it to the assistant principal and let the office handle it. But. That asshole Frank was fucking the girls’ P.E. teacher. You may not remember her.”

“Miss Gantz?”

“Miss Gantz. She always smelled great. Like she was sweating Giorgio or whatever it was she was wearing. Made me feel like shit.”

She takes a pull at her beer, quenching a fire not quite dead.

“But—there you were, with your little pecker all hard in my class, watching me. For that, I am grateful.”  She salutes again with her beer. “Good thing you weren’t eighteen.”

You chuff a laugh, non-committal, leaving it there.

“What was going on in that overheated adolescent brain of yours? Like, was I naked? Right there in class?”

It makes you feel bad how she’s built up this idea about you and your boner. As far as you recall, she never got a turn on your fervid mental merry-go-round. She wasn’t the one keeping your adolescent brain sautéed for the entire hour.

“Some days, I’d be so depressed. Then I’d come into class, and there you’d be with that super erection aimed right at me.”

Again, you laugh, like something shared. But really. Who imagines their science teacher naked?

“I couldn’t think what to do about it. Can you imagine? Frank is fucking Miss Gantz and I’m going to the office to report an unauthorized boner in my class.”

She laughs. You laugh. It does sound ridiculous.

“So I let it go. Besides. It was an emotional pick-me-up.”

She swirls the last of her beer and knocks it back.

“Seriously. Between us. The age difference didn’t bother you?”

You give her an embarrassed smile and a shrug, but she waits for you to speak.

You don’t want to spoil her own fantasy, something that’s sustained her through a really tough time, the way she tells it. So you decide you can do her a small favor. You can recall one of your fantasies and fit her into it. For old times’ sake.

“Okay,” you say, “there was this one. Kind of regular. We’d be naked, and totally see-through. Skin and muscle would be transparent and the organs totally visible.”

“Kind of creepy.”

Creepy is good. Discourage her curiosity.

“Well,” you say to her, “I was looking at the plastic model on the desk all class period. So. No, it didn’t seem creepy at the time.”

“Where were we? What did you have us doing?”

“Up on the desk. As I pushed in—slowly—I could see everything inside. How all the innards shifted around to make room for my—penis—”

“Innards? Is that a technical term?”

You laugh but keep going. “I could see through the skin and muscles enough to make out the reproductive parts, the nerves, the blood vessels. I could watch how my prick slid in and out, in and out, going faster and faster. All the parts started getting warm, so warm they’d glow. Then we’d lock together to let me come. I could see the way it spread through the abdomen, the legs. I didn’t have a good grasp of where semen went exactly, so I imagined it spreading like ink in water, going everywhere. I’d keep going until I was done. Then, we’d relax. I’d pull out and all the organs and muscles would close around the tunnel I’d created.”

She seemed to go slack, staring straight ahead.

“Wow,” she said.

You wonder if you overdid it.

She swings herself upright and says, “Come on, I want you to have something.”

You overdid it.

She slips into her wrap, throws the towel over her shoulder, then grabs you by the hand.

You’re worried you’ve turned yourself into the magic dick of her fairy tale fantasy. You have serious doubts about conjuring the boner she remembers so well.

But you follow her. You imagine the neighbors watching as you leave the pool, her leading you past the other mobile homes to her own double-wide, hidden behind dwarf orange trees and a leafy trellis.

Inside, her place is cluttered but well-kept. There’s no sign she shares it with anyone.

She offers you another beer, which you take. A good excuse if you can’t get hard for her.

She disappears into the back, the bedroom probably. Were you supposed to follow?

You shouldn’t have told her that story. But you did. So—that makes it your fault she’s thinking the way she is. You should at least show her you’re not grossed out by the idea.

You will your dick to rise, and give yourself a few quick rubs to help it along. It does, and you’re grateful.

She comes out from the back, carrying a large box of what look like toys.

She notices immediately. “Is that what I think it is?”

Is she being funny? She’s a fucking science teacher. Or are you about to make a total fool of yourself?

She puts the box on the table, watching you, watching your hard-on.

You’re confused. She seems to be waiting on you. Whose turn is it?

She steps closer to you. “Did you mean to do that?”

Must be your turn. You’re not sure what should happen next. Maybe you’re supposed to offer a kiss. You lean in but she flinches aside.

You straighten up. You can feel your cheeks brighten, to a glowing stoplight red. You retreat, but she hooks her finger in the waistband of your swim trunks.

“This,” she says, “could turn out to be weirder than either of us imagine.”

You’d flee, which she seems to sense, and tugs you closer. She squats down, settling on her heels and slides your swim trunks down to your ankles, helping you step out of them. She takes you into her mouth, wetting you thoroughly. With a kiss of the tip to signal she’s done, she stands up, steps out of her bikini bottoms, kicking them away from under her feet. She turns her back to you and bends herself over the dining table, guiding you in from behind.

Your ambivalence hasn’t melted your hard-on, but does give you a fine balance of insensitivity and hardness that forces you to work toward the climax, which right now seems a long, long way off. Like your elevator is stuck on the second floor. It feels good, but not good enough to speed things along. You realize she’s working right along with you, vocalizing, arms stretched out, gripping the edge of the table. You’ve got her by the hips, concentrating on how it feels, trying to raise the elevator.

Not wanting her to get bored, you wet your finger and reach around to find her button. That seems to unlock something.

Pretty soon the table’s shaking, you’re shaking, she’s shaking, the entire mobile home is shaking on its blocks, and then she lets loose with a howl and she reaches back, grabbing hold of you, clamping you to her. Then you’re rising, like a mortar on the 4th of July. You’re up on your toes. You explode. She’s got you by the buttocks and you can’t draw out, even as you spasm with the contractions, a shot gun racked and fired, racked and fired, until the spasms lessen, leaving you drained.

When you can’t seem to give any more, she lets go of you and rests her head on her arms. She is sighing, regaining control of her breathing.

You pop out, making a mess on the carpet.

You offer an “oops.”  You’re not sure why.

Boning your high school science teacher wasn’t high on your life’s achievements list. Now it is.

After a moment she pushes herself up from the table, first one arm, then the other, to rest on her elbows.

She ducks her head to look back at you. “Damn,” she says.

She straightens up and moves past you to get her cigarettes. She lights up, takes a long drag. Then looks down at the glistening trail you left running along her thigh.

She leans against the little breakfast bar and says, “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”

You aren’t sure if that means hygienically or spiritually.

“You know,” she says as she draws on her cigarette, rolls the smoke around in her mouth and blows a stream to the ceiling. “I only meant for you to have that model of the visible woman as a thank you for getting me through very bad time,” she says, taking another drag, “but shit that was worth the wait.”

Your cock still spasms, unwilling to surrender the field just yet.

She reaches out with her foot and flexes her toe on the underside of your crank.

“Would it be greedy to ask if you have another one of those in you? Since you’re here?”

There’s only one way to find out.