Noel Negele

Sertraline

It’s bad and it will get worse—
this is the certainty.

Then
it will get better—
this the assumption,
the hope, the gamble.

On salary day
I spend the night 
drinking at a sports pub
in Newcastle.

I’m here for work.
It’s freezing up here
and working as a cladder
has never sucked harder.

I bet almost all my salary
2.350£ on Leicester to win
after they are already winning 
1-0 and with 1.95 odds
I’m looking at doubling
my money.

It ends with them losing
3-4 and getting back to my travel
lodge a homeless man asks me for money
and nodding him away from me
I think if I’d only won that bet
I’d probably take him by the hand 
to an ATM and really make his night.

Looking at people walk around life 
with seamless easiness 
has always been a source 
of great envy in me.

Always have felt that I’ve walked
in a quicksand the whole time
and the more I tried to keep up
the more I sunk.

The more they kept getting ahead.

Autopilot doesn’t work.
Stirring through every second 
of life manually is laborious work.

An unforgiving loneliness
monolithic in size and grandiose.

It’s like you’re that astronaut 
standing on the moon 
looking back at the earth 
getting hit by a meteor 
like an AK bullet going 
through someone’s chest

Nobody else but you left

And only for a short while longer.

Brian J. Smith

Instant Connection

THEIR love is a different kind. 

She eases him onto the edge of the bed and takes two steps back. She bites down playfully on her left thumb, greets him with a sensual expression and slides her hands down her left thigh. The front of her strapless red dress accentuates her breasts and displays the network of bright blue veins streaking across the tops. 

He shrugs out of his camel-colored work shirt and tosses it onto the back of a nearby chair. He grins as the bedside lamp traces the contours of his white pear-shaped body with soft brass fingers. Sweat breaks out across his forehead in a sheen of bright lucid acne and glistens off of his big hairy chest. 

From the second they saw each other from across the bar, they know it was meant to be. The magnetism, heat and attraction that’d pulled them together had been too strong for them to resist. They’d left the bar together, oblivious to the mystified expressions on the faces of the other customers they’d passed on their way out. 

She slides her dress down her slender frame, exposing milky white skin stretching taut over her ribs. She grins at the silky smooth fabric of her dress sliding down her hips and caressing her ankles on its way toward the floor. He fumbles with his belt and jeans, drops them into a heap around his ankles and kick them across the room. 

“Oh, babe.” She says. “You’re so fucking hot.” 

He draws his tongue across his upper lip and sighs. Her chest rises and falls. Her skin bristles as the wave of widespread passion washes over her. 

“I want you.” He says. 

Without hesitating, she leaps off of her feet and clamps onto him like a koala. Their lips pressing together in a passionate kiss, their tongues writhe inside the caverns of their mouths. She pushes him onto the bed, slides down the length of his naked plump body and glides her tongue across his huge sack. 

He sighs, his body writhing under the aura of the euphoric pleasure wafting off of her skin. He raises his head from the mattress and peers down to watch her work his stiff pale cock in her left hand. Her saliva glistens off of the hairless patch of skin above his cock as she runs the light pink nails on her right hand across his stomach. 

He grasps her arms, lifts her up and over him and onto the bed. She bounces face first onto the mattress, chuckles from behind a wide pleasing grin and rolls onto her back. She slides the fingers of her right hand across his cock, winds a strand of long black hair around her left forefinger and spreads her legs. 

He crawls across the bed, slithers his corpulent body between her legs and guides his cock inside of her soft wet pussy. She draws a quick breath, peers down at the narrow gap between their stomachs, arches her back and groans with pleasure. 

“Oh yeah.” She sighs. “Right there babe oh yeah right there don’t lose it.” 

Her legs quivering, she sighs and stares up at him with wide starstruck eyes. 

Gripping her hips in both hands, he leans back on his feet and slides his cock in and out. A small sensation rises from somewhere deep inside of her, sending seismic vibrations throughout her body. The cheap metal bedsprings squeal under their combined weight; the even cheaper wooden headboard thuds against the motel room’s sick green walls and sends the three second-hand landscape portraits into a swaying and scraping frenzy. 

She grasps the bedspreads until her knuckles turn pale as their orgasms collide against one another in a supernova of sexual ecstasy. His body shudders with carnality. They sigh, their bodies heaving from exhaustion, and grin at each other. 

He plops down beside of her and plants his right hand on his chest. She grins at him and hikes her right leg over his left. 

“Oh God, babe.” She says. “You were great.” 

“You were wonderful.” 

She leans toward him, her mouth curling into a satisfied smile. He winces, his face creasing with pain and raises his left hand in a protesting manner. She leans back and greets him with an apologetic expression. 

“I’m sorry, honey.” She says. “I didn’t mean to do that.” 

“It’s okay, baby.” He says. 

They look down the length of their bodies toward their genitals and smile. The bright pink tube growing from the tip of his shaft connects to the small soft pink pocket growing from the center of her vagina. It pulsates and pumps a continuous amount of sperm inside of her. 

He brushes a strand of hair away from her face and grins. He stares into her vivid deep-set blue eyes and feels his heart twitch with joy. 

“How many do you think we’ll have?” 

“Two,” He says. “Maybe three.” 

“Are you sure?” 

He nods. 

They rests their heads together. Their eyes flickering with affection, they hold hands and listen to the sounds of raucous night traffic blare outside of the motel. 

No matter what, whether human or inhuman, love is what it is. 

John Alejandro King

Catwalk of Spies

The Agency neither confirms nor denies
While booking its models
On the catwalk of spies

That the catwalk of intel is a runway of lies
And everyone poses
On the catwalk of spies

Catwalk of whispers, catwalk of sighs
Catwalk of secrets
Catwalk of spies

Cover is a microskirt flaunting your thighs
With sheer blouse unbuttoned
On the catwalk of spies

And truth’s a pair of pumps, too small by one size
Make sure you don’t stumble
On the catwalk of spies

Covert action is shadow that brings out your eyes
And black ops make you slimmer
On the catwalk of spies

Spy dust is blush the makeup artist applies
And everyone’s airbrushed
On the catwalk of spies

Agents are items you accessorize
You wear each one proudly
On the catwalk of spies

But when the big designer your portfolio buys
And you make that cold read
On the catwalk of spies

In that moment your dress falls, and you realize
Strutting forth naked
On the catwalk of spies

That the passage through which unto light we all rise
That runway of spirit
Is a catwalk of spies

Catwalk of whispers, catwalk of sighs
Catwalk of eternity
Catwalk of spies

J.J. Campbell

if i was a wiser man

i remember the shower
and you coming in right
as i was washing my balls

you looked me right in 
the eyes and asked may i

if i was a wiser man
i would have married 
you right there

but that kind of shit
didn’t exist in me at 
the age of 21

but the images stuck 
in my brain from that 
shower still persist a 
quarter century later

i’m pretty sure you 
and your family are 
comfortable living 
out west

i still laugh when 
you said i’d be the
perfect one to have 
an affair with since 
i was living on the 
other side of the 
country

well, here i am on 
the other side of the 
country

patiently waiting

HSTQ: Winter 2024

horror, adj. inspiring or creating loathing, aversion, etc.

sleaze, adj. contemptibly low, mean, or disreputable

trash, n. literary or artistic material of poor or inferior quality

Welcome to HSTQ: Winter 2024, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!

Featuring poetry by Alan Catlin, Chris Butler, Johnny Scarlotti, Arthur Graham, A. Lynn Blumer, Judge Santiago Burdon, William Taylor Jr., Damian Rucci, Adam Hazell, Brenton Booth, Karl Koweski, Damon Hubbs, Casey Renee Kiser, Mike Zone, Harry Whitewolf, Daniel S. Irwin, J.J. Campbell, Jonathan S Baker, Andrew Vuono, and Donna Dallas.

FREE EBOOK HERE

Brandon Yount

Stroke

The man’s face was frozen in a permanent sun squint. With his lower lip just a fat pocket of chewing tobacco, he was just another backwoods hick. Except for his police uniform. Standing all hunched over and with one thumb tucked into his belt, his other hand was holding Dad’s backpack. He said there was a crash. Dad’s car got totaled. Crushed up like an empty beer can. The cop spat out a brown glob of chew and said the words “drunk driving.” He called it a damn shame.

The girl who smashed full-speed, head-on into him was drunk off her tits and high as a rocket. She swerved through the double yellows, reeking just like a skunk with rabies. With my dad dead, she didn’t even break a nail.

That afternoon on the front porch the grownups talked. Little-kid me was digging through the backpack. Whatever things Dad needed with him were inside. Spare socks. A flashlight. There was a pack of translucent plastic lighters and a pair of mirrored red sunglasses with circle lenses. Emergency screwdriver case. A half-empty bottle of coke. These were the last things Dad ever touched. The things he loved, I figured.

Then that old magazine flopped out onto the floor, pop, right on the spine of it. It flipped open by itself, almost like it had its own memory. Crinkled and worn and bent, it knew exactly which page to turn to. Must’ve been Dad’s favorite page. The picture in the middle of the magazine takes up two pages. It’s called a centerfold.

I didn’t know why yet, but I knew it then. I was going to hell. Blueberry eyes with those fat pink lips, she shimmered wet like a jolly rancher. That babe was a smoke-show. With her perfect skin lit up between my sketchers; I knew I wasn’t a little kid anymore. Seeing all that naked skin for the first time, I threw the rest of Dad’s stuff to the side.

One minute, Dad was gripping the steering wheel, cruising the back roads. It was on one of those winding-curvy mountain roads where you can’t see past the bend, and all you need to watch for is deer crossing and the odd pick-up truck. A Sunday driving kind of road, all week long.

Then, at full speed, he shot through the windshield like a jack in the box full of meat and hair. His legs got snagged under the steering column and the shattered glass cinched around his waist like jaws of a bloodthirsty shark chewing him in half. His organs pan-seared on the hood of his car. All that pain triggered the adrenaline to flood his brain. He spent his last moments alive not knowing he was dying.

According to the cop, Dad went full spaz. He was wiggling to get free, pulling and squirming as his lungs strained, tighter by the breath. His diaphragm, Google says that’s the muscle that pumps up from under your lungs, was torn apart in the crash. To make up for it, his shoulder muscles worked overtime to pull in more air. The veins in his neck popped out, fat and purple. 

His fingertips painted desperate hand prints all over the hood of his car. Lubricated in his own sludge, he couldn’t get past slipping. The thing you need in a situation like that is friction. Too much lube will get you nowhere, trust me. Dad couldn’t have known it, but grinding side to side to get free, that broken windshield became a hacksaw through his waistline. It shredded his intestines and tore holes through his bowels. He was leaking half-formed shit and blood all over everything.

The stupid bimbo who smashed into him was a gazillion-out-of-ten. Her mug shot is in my search history and she’s just my type. Ticks every box. If you sent that picture to a modeling agency, they’d post her bail. She’s staring intense, like the porn star from the centerfold. From where the photo cuts off near her bikini lines, you can tell she’s got huge knockers. Those great big tits must’ve been smooshed into her windshield, car-wash style. The last thing Dad ever saw was probably those heaving honkers. Crawling toward them.

If your dad gets killed in a head-on collision with a sorority slut, you cold-sweat every time you sit in the driver’s seat. You never get anything passed down, father to son. That porno from his backpack is all you have. Whenever pretty girls wink at you, your dry mouth can’t even say “nice ass.”

Then, you’re twice that age and all your friends are learning to drive. All their dads have been teaching them how. Their dads have been stashing money to cash-flow used station wagons. Birthday presents. Your dad in an ashcan, your family, with no income, you ride the bus. Behind the steering wheel, you’re sitting where your dad was when he got rammed. You suffocate with the seatbelt tight against your neck. Don’t google auto-erotic asphyxiation. It sounds like this, but it means something totally different. If you read my search history, you’d see:

BLONDE BIMBO WITH DOUBLE “E”S

BLONDE SLUT NAKED CAR WASH

HOW TO GET OVER YOUR FEAR OF DRIVING

PARTY GIRLS, BIG TITS

When you don’t get your license in high school, your friends leave you behind. When they ask you to sneak out and party, you freeze up. You say you can’t. You tell them you’re grounded. While they were out getting laid and growing up, you just stayed home and jerked off.

The most disgusting and disturbing things never seem that bad until later. That’s called post nut clarity. I was just a dumb kid and I stuttered and shook every time some spit-roaster talked to me plus my friends stopped calling and I couldn’t drive, all my teenage cum got pumped out between my knuckles, splat. White raindrops hardened all over my computer desk like the bird shit on the hood of Dad’s car. 

It’s like breathing while bleeding to death. Each breath out is one breath closer to dying. But then you strain to pull more air. To make it one more breath. Then another. One more pump. By the time you’re done, you’re alone and panting and ashamed. Post nut clarity.

What my mom kept from me as a kid was that while he sliced his guts open on the shattered windshield, Dad also cut clean through his boner. Sandwiched between his beer gut and the jagged razor blade of broken glass, it was his first line of defense. Defeated, it rolled off the hood of his car like a runaway hot dog, grilling on the blazing hot hood. 

By the end of high school, if you looked at my dick, all red and covered in blisters, you’d think it had some horrible std. Only I hadn’t even lost my V-card yet. If you looked at my search history, you’d see that I was searching up:

AUTO-EROTIC ASPHYXIATION

CAN A PERSON DIE OF LONELINESS

FUCKING COLLEGE GIRL IN PASSENGER SEAT

SLUT FUCKED ON HOOD OF CAR VIDS

In college, the professor’s rant sounded like TV static fading in the background. I knew I was going to hell when I missed out on an education staring at some blonde skankinator in the third row. Just my type. Ticked every box. The professor was talking about Keynesian economics, but the only inflation on my mind was those giant milk mounds. My hands rolled back to flex the tendons in my wrists. Imagine those things smooshed into the windshield like deployed airbags. While the guy up front talked about the push and pull of the market, my boner slowly woodpeckered the bottom of my desk.

When you pop a stiffy in public, there aren’t a lot of options. Pretty much, just wait for it to go away or hide it. You can’t really wait though because a watched pot never boils. A watched boner never flops. So, when class ends, if you want to stand up and leave with everyone else, you’d better have a plan.

I always wear a belt for this exact reason. You wear it loose, so it leaves a gap. With your hands in your pockets, you contort the unwanted wood up behind your belt, and voila. Totally flat. 

Class was over and I was tying it back when that hose-me-down-hottie I’ve been ogling stood and turned my way. She must have spotted me drooling at her. Speeding toward me in her pink sweater, she swerved into my lane. I braced for impact. Then… nothing. No crash. No guts. No hot dog on the road. Just a pretty pink smile.

Parked right in front of me, she said how she needed a study buddy. Looking just like all those other girls I beat off to, she giggles. Just like the chick who killed my dad. Biting the bottom corner of her lip and glancing down past her headlights, she twirled from side to side, waiting. I froze, sweaty and red, just like my dick behind my belt. I gulped down a mouthful of spit as she slipped a scrap of paper into my chest pocket. Her dorm room number in green gel ink. She made a U-turn, shimmying her ass with each step. Looking back at me over her shoulder, locking eyes with me, her pink lip gloss mouthed “ay-toe-clok”.

My heart pounding in my fist, wrapped around my crank, I’m searching:

COLLEGE GIRL FUCKS NERD FOR HOMEWORK HELP

CHEERLEADER SLUT NEEDS GOOD GRADES

WHAT IS AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS

SHOULD YOU MASTURBATE BEFORE YOUR FIRST TIME WITH A GIRL

In her dorm, on her bed, I was out of time. Trust me, she was hot, even when she yawned and checked her watch. My sweaty hands rubbed and pulled and jerked. No luck. I went fast and light. I squeezed hard and pulled slow. Nothing worked. Where was the stiffy from class when I needed it? Her, glazed over. Inspecting her manicured fingernails, she was fleshy heaven. But in that moment, all I could picture was my dad’s severed cock, steaming like a BBQ sausage in between the double yellow lines. Flaccid from blood loss and stinky.

“It’s fine,” she said, pulling me by the wrist and forcing me out the door.

My spongy wiener still clenched in my hand, I told her this literally never happens, I promise.

“Yeah, suuuurrreee,” she rolled her giant Bambi eyes and slammed the door.

Alone in the hall. I was still too horny to stop rubbing. I squished my ear against her door and heard a click. Then, the beehive buzzing of a vibrator. Then soft, airy moaning. Drunk-driver-waiting-to-happen moaning.

I could have battered that door down, full force. Reaching out for those big tits, just like Dad. Gasping for air and full of adrenaline. I could have rammed my stick shift, smashing like a head-on collision, slam, right up her guts at 90 miles an hour. With her big fat airbags cushioning my face, her hands would clutch my shoulders at 10 and 2. Her preppy pink nails would curl into me like a leopard plush steering wheel cover. With this iron solid piston thrusting at a million horsepower, it would be impossible for her to walk a straight line, even sober. With all the Listerine she would need to rinse my taste out of her mouth, she’d never pass a breathalyzer. 

By then I was hard, but I just stood there pumping. Stroking in secret to her porn star moans, I pumped and pumped until I blew my angry wad all over her door. Powerful ropes of pent-up virginity erupted into the air. The first squirt, with all that rage and disappointment behind it, got eye level and landed splat, bullseye, right on the lens of her peephole. I didn’t even wipe it clear. My cum would dry up on that lens. Looking through it, everything would seem fuzzy and haloed. The way it looked in heaven. Everyone would look like angels. 

They say if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you master it. In empty aisles at Walmart, it didn’t even make me smile anymore. In public library bathrooms, I got off to people being shushed. I jerked it in the elevator on the way up and pounded it again on the way down. My cock sputtered little white globs on every surface I had a moment alone with. Like bird shit on my dad’s rusted-out car frame, a lifetime later in some junkyard somewhere.

Even now, I’m king of virginity with the most used penis in the animal kingdom. It’s deformed and all chewed up and striped like a tiger with stretch marks from when I’d torn the skin. Don’t look at my search history unless you want to see:

ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

SILDENAFIL FOR SALE ONLINE

DEATH GRIP SYNDROME

When I finally get my driver’s license, I remember about my inheritance: Dad’s porno magazine, the one from his backpack. Brittle and stuck together and smelling like mildew from all the years crammed under my mattress. Trapped with all the moisture and dead sperm. Hidden like the decomposing family prostitute. Used up and rotting. 

I figure, what’s the harm? In high school, all my friends had dads who bought them rusty old used cars. Secondhand vehicles with crinkled-up doors, the interiors full of stains. Covered in dried white globs. Coming of age gifts from father to son. I think let’s dig out that old beater and take her for a spin.

While I drive, she’s spread eagle in the passenger seat. I keep glancing over, taking her in. The slut on the centerfold is just my type. Ticks every box. I’m tasting her shiny candy skin with my eyes. In my mind, thousands of copies of this same girl are getting slammed wide open on repeat.

At the drive-thru, a breathy voice asks me what I want. I almost let “blow job” slip out. Our hands brush past one another when I grab my soda and she smirks. Pulling out onto the road, I’m already stiff and throbbing up from behind my belt. On this quiet road, the only signs I pass are speed limits and deer crossings. No traffic in any direction. Just me and my boner for miles.

I’m one-handing the wheel while my other hand goes back and forth between feeding me handfuls of fries and rubbing the tip of my dick, strangled purple. The grease from the fries is perfect lube. I’m barely paying attention while the empty road zooms past me. The “no seatbelt” alarm blares while I think of that disappointing night after class. I’m staring down the barrel of my pee hole when pop. Bullseye. The opposite of post nut clarity.

One stroke, you are on a relaxing drive. The next, you’re flopped on the hood of your car, sticky. Warm from the sunlight. The heat mirage of the engine. The iron taste of blood. The craft glue smell of cum. Shards of broken glass are crusted into your face and up the length of both forearms. The dull pressure on your guts of something stabbing up is a million miles away. Everything is a white, soft version of itself.

With all the adrenaline frying my brain, I am completely numb. But I know I’m going to hell, even before I see him. The red fur and spiky horns. His black eyes stare into mine without blinking. I hear the sideways clopping of his cloven hoofs against my fender. That’s when I know for sure. I’m going to hell. The palm of my jerking hand is covered in blood and for once in my life, I can’t feel my dick.

I remember how Dad died—the sausage on the road, cooking in the sun. Suddenly, I don’t care about being in hell anymore. I try to rip and pull myself out, just like he did. I finally get it. He wasn’t trying to squeeze the girl’s tits, he was reaching for his dick. He saw this same demon and didn’t want to be caught dead in hell without his penis. Think of all the loose gash burning in Hell! 

Jerking and yanking, hard as I try, I’m getting nowhere. I always figured it would hurt more all those years ago, when my dad ripped a hole in his stomach and his stinking bowels fell out of him. Just like me, he couldn’t get free. Being in his place, it feels like nothing. No pain at all. The demon keeps screaming and bucking its horns. I’m about out of strength when, through my snowy white vision, I see people haloed in white. Wearing red crosses, they must be angels. 

“I’m here to help,” a voice tells me. The breath of god warms my skin, saying everything is going to be okay. If I still had my cock I’d be pumping out some knuckle babies to it.

“God,” I whimper, “please…save…my…dick.”

When I wake up, I’m not in heaven, but at least I’m not in hell. Machines that keep people alive beep all around me. Everything is white and soft blue under fluorescent light. A blue nitrile hand prods at me, playing with a tiny plastic tube in my arm. Then I see two airbags. For one breath, I’m back in the car, dying. Practically grazing my face, this is way closer than my old man ever got.

It was the belt trick that saved me. When I plowed into that ten point buck, my dick was the only thing buckled in. The windshield glass got caught up in the leather of it, so I got away with some tearing and bruising. Other than the broken bones, it’s nothing new.

“Oh,” the tits exclaim from inside their blue scrubs, “you’re awake!”.

Looking up to see the rest of her, she’s just my type. Ticks every box. Her pink lip gloss tells me I’ve been sleeping for a week. It could be my imagination, but I swear she was shimmying her ass on the way out the door. In that hospital room, I don’t know how long I got alone.

A whole week without a Google search bar. Not one tug or jerk or pump that whole time. The nurse’s eyelashes fluttered when she looked at me. I swear she wanted it. Thinking that, I can feel my dick again. My bruised and beaten willy, it almost killed me. Probably in self-defense. Now in this bed, alive, I’m giving it a rest.

I’m broken and half-dead and full of glass. Hooked up to tubes and fed air by oxygen machines, everything hurts. But for the first time since the day my dad died, I’m not picturing jugs or asses or blond hair or big eyelashes.

I promise, I’m not thinking about rock-hard nips or fake sex moans or fat pink lips or blow jobs. And I’m definitely not wondering about that nurse and her knockers in my face or how her cunt smells. I swear, I can hardly even think of her grinding that ass up my IV pole, practically begging for it.

Looking toward my feet, that little tent pitches up under the hospital blanket. Like a finger pointing right at me. Blaming me. Fully erect, with the rounded lump of a catheter tube bent out of the top, I just close my eyes and grit my teeth and try not to touch it. 

That nurse though. She was just my type. Ticked every box. Please don’t look up:

POSTERIOR URETHRAL STRICTURE

SUPERFICIAL THROMBOPHLEBITIS OF THE DORSAL VEIN OF THE PENIS

MAN HAS FATAL STROKE WHILE MASTURBATING

Casey Renee Kiser

Slow Pussy Finger

All the lifetimes
I will live from this point on
slaying single and weightless-
yeah, not so pointless
anymore
Get that slow pussy finger outta my face;
Take me off your speed dial for head
case-trickery and favorite warm space
Put that dick away, not even a trace
I said, this bitch back on homebase!
Can’t touch this    and bet
I’ll remain single 
all the lifetimes
if no man steps up and says keen
what the fuck he means
’cause only winners on this team
and so far,

it’s just me