Meat the Messiah: s01e02 – Be Alert and of Sober Mind

in l.a. the sun is a flash bulb in the camera of the sky that never relents. roy mcroy eats his whole lunch in a laborious, trodding fashion. only two more days of this job. when he was young he met greta garbo at a screening of which film he couldn’t remember. since then he wanted to be near greatness. he got a job 35 years prior at the w.b. lot as a security guard, straight out of high school. it was a union job with a pension so he stuck around. he married his high school sweetheart and they had two children. when they got a tv at the security booth, the channel was always set to fox news. he left it on there because he wanted some noise while he had down time. the conservative programming made him more suspicious of immigrants, and black people who weren’t famous seemed to be hoodlums. for years he let his brain simmer on the conservative hotplate, until it was dry and hard. this was a point of contention at home, as his wife and kids were not cooking their brains on trash tv. instead, his kids became bay area anarchists, and his wife ran off with a woman; all of whom stopped talking to him. he started drinking and was mad at nights. he broke down crying at walmart and bought a gun. now with two more days on the job, he has two more days of purpose. two more days of slog and agony. then he could end it. roy mcroy watches as a cadillac convertible drives up to the security booth at w.b. studios. he sees elvis and hulk hogan, an old drunk and ronald mcdonald in the car. ronald mcdonald takes out a shotgun and blasts him in the face. 

***commercial break***

a very white upper middle class family rides in their cadillac escalade. ‘in this fast paced digital world, it’s important to take into account the quiet of a well made car.’ the escalade plows through a herd of deer without losing speed. blood splatters the windshield. the kids in the back say yay! the dad turns on the windshield wipers.

***

panama’s ‘destroyer’ plays in bullet-time as the hammer strikes the shell. there is a rapid expanse of gasses and flame, propelling the buckshot down the smoothbore barrel, each bb of shot trying to outrun the last, until they meet the true forms of light and death outside the barrel. this is plato’s shotgun, and in this moment, when the shot traverses from gun to face, everyone surrounding understands the true forms of the mortal moment. as the music swells, roy mcroy has a reverie from sometime ago, when men were men and the goddamn antifa wasn’t trying to take his job. it was a simpler time, some decades before this one. and he thought of an office building in the middle of a field that he saw as a kid. he didn’t know what was in the office building, nor why he was there, but he knew that there was something beautiful about that building and that field, that it had the american promise of taming the wilderness for business, that all frontiers would soon be mapped. there should’ve been a picture taken of that building, in all its dull imposition. this is what roy mcroy thinks of in his last milliseconds, as the buckshot pierces meat and crushes bone… as the metal snakes through the skull and out the back. the body of roy mcroy slumps back and air escapes his lungs like a sigh.

credits roll.

***

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Savage Longing

Maybe it’s me, but I find the mundanity of living, rife with its routines and needs –work, sleep, defecation, taxes– offset by the frequent, savage longing that seems to pounce upon me at every turn and corner.

How do I mean? Well, take the drive-thru at McDonald’s. It starts with golden arches, and the seduction only grows from there. There is the inviting glow of combo meals with their Homeric calories, temptations for cheap. Yet more alluring, by far, than any burgers or treats, is the effeminate voice, servile and oh-so-promising, through the intercom. Two minutes later, there she is, a greasy bag in her hand, a weak coffee extending out the narrow window to my car.

An exchange of meat and fluids for a few dollar bills makes it difficult to avoid drawing certain filthy comparisons. I reach through the window to accept my Number 4 while deeply entrenched in the salacious narratives playing in my mind. Eye contact is sparing between us, but we indulge in a modicum of discourse: Enjoy your meal. Thank you so much, have a wonderful day.

But before that: the plump hand with its faded heart tattoo and many silver rings. The tacky, dragon-like talons that curve, purple and bejewelled, impractical press-ons that I cannot look at without immediately daydreaming about a handjob. The oversized lips, endowed with plush extravagance. How they glisten, wet and dark, like cherry-cola. How they part to reveal an empty smile that I actively delude myself is flirtatious, an overt invitation to sex. The mangle of teeth she tries (and fails) to hide –such disarray, but so very white. The brush of her dimpled knuckles over mine.

I drive away from McDonald’s burdened with a cheap meal and a good chance of late afternoon diarrhea. But more than that, I leave McDonald’s with a half-strength erection, a dab of pre-cum on the inside fabric of my boxer-briefs, and two or three days of imaginative fuel for my five or six indulgences of self gratification. At the bottom of the bag, the underside of my paper cup, I am sure to find her number scrawled in pen. But all I find are far too many packets of ketchup. No napkins whatsoever.

***

I often find myself pulling into the Petco parking lot, drawn in by its friendly logo and what I know awaits inside. I enter the store with its familiar aroma of rodent piss and straw bedding, scan the brightly lit room with the bogus intention of locating more food for Fluffer, my tuxedo tomcat. I have a four-month supply at home, ever expanding, soon to eclipse five months of surplus, and undoubtedly, eventually, half a year of dried kibble will encumber the small capacity of my kitchen pantry. Am I preparing for the apocalypse? Certainly not.

Then why so much cat food? What gives?

This: I require the excuse to visit Petco, yet again, for the third time this week, the eighth time in the past fortnight, the umpteenth time this month, so I can determine if she is working. Who? The chubby blonde with the puffy blue eyes and the androgynous, pixie haircut. Her name tag has cordially introduced her to me. Haley. Sweet Haley.

My cravings demand that I drink her in, commit her dumpy physique and robust limbs to my memory, safeguard her pouty lips in the library of my longings and devotions. And so I haul the ten-pound bag of kibble onto the counter as I watch the perfect eroticism of her scanning the barcode with the laser gun. She asks for my number (for my frequent shopper discount). I give it to her, slow and deliberate.

“Should I write it down for you?” I ask.

“No need,” she lets me know. “It’s in the system.”

I chuck the cat food in the backseat and drive to the nearest semi-secluded spot before my arousal curbs from its towering peak. I unzip my denim shorts and wonder how much it would cost me to invest in tinted windows. I grip the old McDonald’s bag on the floor beneath the passenger’s seat to grease up my palms. I touch myself and whisper/whimper her name. Haley! I erupt, exhale, and search for napkins. There is nothing but an endless supply of ketchup packets, an enormity of cat food.

***

This is what I mean. These sudden, ambushing longings. These savage, torturous cravings that infuse an otherwise dull life with a certain –albeit painful– exuberant hue.

Am I alone? Can you relate? Am I a freak, or am I just being indecorous in my blatant honesty? Is this the typical male existence? A boner for each woman I encounter? A masturbation fantasy for anyone vaguely human-shaped and probably female?

It’s true, sometimes I chafe my dick raw thinking about the demure lady who works at the drugstore, my dentist with her platinum bouffant and monstrous tits –I won’t deny it. I can’t begin to guess how many times I’ve fantasized about my boss, her severe fringe and subtle underbite, her wet sex pervading the cramped office in my mind. She can be a real bitch, and on days when she treats me like scum I lube myself up the moment I get home from work. I recall her cruel remarks, the demeaning names she showered upon me. It takes two seconds to get hard, then I’m lost in a lovely fairy tale, pretty pictures in my head, our backs and assess up against a pile of paperwork, her threats or incentives that echo in forceful ultimatum. I make noises. Grunts and oaths. “I’ll behave. I promise to behave!” And then it’s cleanup time.

On my hands and knees, a little wash of shame accompanies my sudden sobriety. When I see my boss the next morning, I feel dirty, and that feels good. So I often do it all again.

It’s all a bit exhausting, being aroused all the time, left, right, and center. The prompts are everywhere, the desire is endless. But really, these episodes of need in the aftermath of my many quotidian encounters with so-and-so or whosiewhatsit are like little glimpses into Shangri-La. The soulless security guard who elects to frisk me in LAX? This episode is filed away, used later, and becomes an idyllic jaunt to Nirvana. The chirpy, septuagenarian who takes my picture at the DMV? I remember the tally of her crows feet, her lazy, open mouth as she assessed the washed photos of my mugshot, and voilà! I enter another realm. I dip into a volcanic thermal pool in Valhalla. In my cheerful, vile mind, the excess of golden bracelets that jangle on her bony wrists make music as they take me, knead me, mold me into an animal, and ultimately cause me to explode.

Excessively poetic? Perhaps. But what I frankly mean to say is this: while they come with a certain frustration, I wouldn’t discard my primal urges for a million dollars. Okay, maybe a million dollars. But for real, I openly accept my troubled and ravenous ways.

***

On rare and magnificent occasions, fantasy transcends to affair. The hands that wave to say hello, to take my money, to offer me change, to prod at my cavities with a sinister tool; these same hands, on merciful and remarkable instances, unbutton my shirt, pull at the elastic of my boxer-briefs, take up my sex in their clammy grip, guide me into their mouths, between their legs. It’s these mythical moments I discover my own personal religion. I look to the heavens (often the ceiling of a motel bedroom) and consider the real possibility that yes, there might be a god after all.

My most recent love affair was certainly divine, although it ended, as they all do, in emotional turmoil, with a deep sense of loss and a lingering bitterness that will never fully fade. But that came later. Much later. After all the savage, carnal lust. The foodstuffs and spreads that we licked off human plates, from navel soup bowls, and deep, briney crevices.

It spawned from peanut butter, believe it or not. Our love, our lust, our passion; it resulted from a chance encounter prompted by a defect label on an extra crunchy Jif jar. I didn’t notice when I plucked it from the shelf. And if I had, I would not have cared. After all, I’m not going to eat the label, you know? It’s the contents that will cover my toast, satiate that morning pang for a bite to accompany my coffee. But in retrospect, how glad I am that I took the jar with the faulty label. Random chance can be a bitch, but today, she is a saint, an angel of mercy.

I dropped the Jif into my basket. There is no way I could have foreseen it: how the spread would never see the golden side of rough toasted bread, but cover a canvas of flesh, both hers and mine.

***

There she was at the checkout. Hannah. She worked almost every day, it seemed. Every day that I shopped, anyhow, and as always, I was glad to see her, to watch her finger my groceries and tell me how much I owed her for the pleasure. Sometimes I’d opt to wait in a much longer queue, sacrifice three to five minutes so I could share that flicker of eye contact with Hannah, stare at her bored, sad face as she mindlessly shuffled my shopping to beep against the square of laser projections.

She was soft, and getting softer all the time, with a doughy neck and thick forearms, pale and round as a wood grub. She wasn’t fat, but transitioning that way, and her unspectacular features were elevated only by her youth. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but she was very particularly her, which, for whatever reason, made her particularly beautiful to me. When the spark ignites –often surprising who plucks at my heartstrings, tweaks my loins– the subject becomes a goddess, no matter how society may judge her physical faults. Haley, Hannah, whoever; when the cherub makes his mark, the peon becomes a princess. She outshines the model, the movie star, the pinup girl. She is the center of the world, and the gravity of her sexual appeal makes a circling moon out of me.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Hannah scans my can of peaches, my shrink-wrapped sausage, my frozen pizza. She handles each item with soulless automation. Her rhythm is slowed by the weighted items, the unpackaged fruits and vegetables that require a code. But her pace is regular, never truly halting, until she handles the peanut butter with its defunct label.

I watch as she struggles, tilts the jar, unable to induce the familiar, expectant beep that allows her to move on to the next item, and the next, and the next, until eight hours pass and she becomes the real Hannah, a myth and mystery that no doubt blooms beyond the muted professionalism required of her in the cold, halogen landscape of the supermarket. I zero in on her hands, her pale flesh taut with grocery store chill, and as they work on the peanut butter puzzle, I note their black talons, those ridiculous, monitor lizard daggers that make any task graceless. It’s amazing it took it this long, but there it is: the handjob daydream playing out in my one-track mind.

“Sorry,” Hannah says, and rewards my patience with a nanosecond of direct eye contact. “It’s the label,” she tells me. “It’s folded over. Can’t get to the barcode.” She stops trying to make the thing beep, uses her Godzilla claws to pinch and peel back the label which has stuck inward upon itself.

I watch in utter delight. I am in no rush, even if the sour lady behind me is rolling her eyes and shuffling her feet, sighing heavily every ten seconds, anything to communicate the words “Hurry up” without actually speaking them.

“Should I run and grab another one?” I offer.

“No, no. I’m almost there.” Then, finally smiling, she scans the amended peanut butter label and waggles one of her sorceress fingers at the jar. “Bad jar,” she jokes. “Bad, bad jar.”

We share a mild chuckle, and then I take my chance, employ a playground flirtation. “Well, I knew you were working today,” I tell her. “So I made sure to grab the one that was messed up.” My words didn’t come with a physical wink, but they carried one, unseen, in spirit.

Once again, I am rewarded with her brown eyes, and in them I see clear communication. Through the exasperated sighs and shuffling from the irritated woman behind me in the queue, I decipher an unspoken message in the doe-brown gaze that sparkles across the conveyor belt. Maybe I am deluded, but I swear it was an open invitation to love. In any case, when I laid bare my soul, ignored the throat-clearing of the demon grunting behind me, I was gifted with Hannah’s coy smile suppressed by a bitten lower lip, and finally, audible affirmation: Yes, here is my number.

***

I didn’t wait long. I texted her that evening, and she didn’t wait long, either, to text me back. She was as eager and forward as I, it seemed, and so I agreed to her suggestion: dinner at my place. I gave her my address and paced by the window until I saw her emerge from a lousy little car. I opened the front door before she got the chance to knock, and before I had the chance to see Hannah in her street clothes, they were on the floor, and so were mine. We stumbled, blinded by our smothering embraces, our limbs and mouths frantic and occupied, but eventually made it to the bedroom. In the other room, dinner got cold, and neither one of us cared.

We had sex many times, which is something I didn’t know I was capable of. Not in one night, one session. But really, it was easy. My body behaved, responded, performed. And though I owe my surprising ineptitude mostly to Hannah, to her radiant, soft body and doughy upper arms, her luminous small breasts and devout hunger for me, in truth, I may owe it all to the peanut butter, the freak catalyst to this glorious debauchery and fiery passion.

We applied the spread in the most creative and filthy of ways. Hannah smeared the condiment in dark corners and crevices I didn’t know I had, and in hidden valleys I was happy to discover on her own body. We explored our frisky palate, tasting, sampling, eating, indulging, feasting off of one another. After a time, we moved on from the Jif, wiping free our lips and chins and making love again, longer, harder, faster. And we didn’t stop when the peanut butter jar was down to a thin residue lining the glass. Next, it was pizza sauce, pesto, and coconut cream. It was cold on our flesh, but soon became warm, wedged between our slick, snaking bodies. In the end, my bed sheets were a write-off, totally unsalvageable. Hannah and I tossed them to the floor, let our bodies warm each other during the night, and awoke in the morning, shrouded in a disgusting, artful crust of congealed juices.

This went on for a while. Many months, I am happy to report. Sex with Hannah was always ferocious, never clean. Honestly, I could’ve done without all that food –Hannah was tasty enough on her own– but she was totally into it, and so I yielded to her desire, which became my own. My grocery bill skyrocketed, which added a measure of reluctance about the edible nature of our affair. But really, once you place pineapple rings to frame the nipples of your lover’s snow-white tits, there is no going back. Tropical fruit has never been so sweet.

“Shall we wine and dine?” Hannah would ask, bright and bawdy over the phone. It was our private joke, code for sitophilia, or as the layman might say, “fucking with food.”

“How about a movie?” I’d sometimes suggest. “Or I take you out to dinner, for real. You know, a nice restaurant?” After all the sex, I was desperate to become closer to her. Not physically –the only way to get closer would be to shrink and crawl up inside of her– but emotionally, romantically. I wanted to treat her like a princess, not a buffet.

“Or, I could get another jar of Jif?” If nothing else, Hannah was persistent. With her, it was always raunchy, edible sex.

“Really?” I’d ask, almost implore, using only my tone to communicate a desperate need to go beyond our sandwich spread fetish. “How about a walk on the beach?” Too cliché? Was I too old, too boring for Hannah, who maybe, just maybe, only appreciated me for my complimentary coupling with cream cheese or Greek yogurt, the fund to supply them to her. “Let’s try something different,” I’d say.

“We could go with Skippy,” Hannah offered. “There’s a sale on.”

“How about the zoo?”

There was a long pause on the other line. Eventually I heard something. A Sigh? “Hannah? You there?”

“Actually, I’m feeling a little tired,” she told me. “Maybe I’ll sit this one out.”

This felt like the beginning of the end. I didn’t want to lose her. “Skippy is on sale?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she brightened up. “Big time sale. Two for one!”

This time I sighed. “I’ll swing by the supermarket before I come pick you up.”

“I’m looking forward to wining and dining, baby.”

“Yeah. It’ll be great…”

***

And really, truly, it was great, even if I did feel that our relationship was stuck in the mud, unable to pass beyond the claggy mire of so much peanut butter. But here’s the thing: Hannah was beautiful, desirable, and smooth, even when we went with crunchy. It was fun for a while, but I wish we could skip the spreads. Don’t’ mistake me, I don’t mean to complain. I like peanut butter and cream cheese, I really do, but it’s the creamy flesh of the young supermarket attendant that really filled me up. Besides, all that rich spread, I was starting to get soft.

It was inevitable that we would fizzle out. Or, rather, it was inevitable that her passion for me would fizzle out, that I would beg for her to allow me, just allow me, please, to buy more peanut butter, anything, caviar if she desired some, if it would bring her back to my bed, to my arms, where I may embrace her cetacean-smooth body and feel her heartbeat against my own. I longed to fall asleep with her, encrusted and filthy, as we had so many times before, my face embedded in her mustard-hardened hair as she snored, her soft body rising, falling in perfect rhythm.

How was it that I ever had cause to complain?

***

And now, as things have developed, after Hannah met Pete, a boy her own age who skateboards past my house on the way to his work, the supermarket, where he and Hannah share sly winks across their respective serving counters, it becomes clear: I have been ousted, outdueled, beaten. My own relationship with Hannah has been reduced to shopper and cashier, the way it began. And although we cannot undo all the gorgeous, filthy things that we have done to each other, neither can we celebrate them, honor them with retellings of the past, or hope to reenact them. Not now, perhaps not ever. As her boyfriend, Pete does not allow Hannah to take my calls or text me back, or even talk to me outside of what he calls “modest professional discourse.”

When I shop for groceries, when Pete’s queue is virtually empty, I opt for Hannah’s, even as it winds, long and serpentine, deep into the aisles. From far away, I project a pretense of patience. I wait and study the products that hem me in, the many jars of peanut butter. In this state of hopeful expectation, I bide my time and will my erection to remain at bay. I listen to the scanner-gun beeps that tally the long seconds of my brimming anticipation, and as I approach, nearer to Hannah, I savor each one of her monotone greetings, sterile and polite.

I wait. I endure. I suffer throughout, until I get my chance, my own moment with Hannah, where maybe, just maybe, fortune will fall upon me once again.

Reynaldo the World’s Smallest Circus Bear Vs. Dr. Grue Pansky

Dr. Grue Pansky cleared his throat and scratched at his earlobe, covertly extracting a glob of wax. He rolled the sebum between his fingers, thinking of the word “semen” and pun-rolling it with “not believing.” He was suddenly reminded of his patient, later revealed to run a child sex trafficking ring, Shtuffin Jensen Glurba, fond of sex magick practices involving whacking off in his victim’s face. 

The world really didn’t think much of him, and Dr. Pansky would never quite be comfortable with his lowered status ever since he left his staff position at Los De Abajo Hospital in San Bernardo, California under a cloud. Known as “Doctor Doom” to many of his patients for the record number of people, including major celebrities, who had died after appearing on his show RockStar Rehab on HBO, he no longer felt that he could afford to be associated with the sprawling, beautiful campus, a whited sepulcher plump to bursting with awful unclean bones and worse. 

“I am not Doctor Doom,” he’d told reporters at the time. “I am a human being.” You could have heard crickets, even the sound of tumbleweed families rolling down avenues of sin. 

“That is to say…those patients were going to die…anyway.”

“Ahem.” The small bear cleared his throat. Dr. Pansky looked up from his laptop. He’d nodded off. Too many late nights with Dr. Brownstone and Dr. J.

“I heard all about your patient, Eyelish Kiernan. She went all aggro on her boss, right?”

“Wasn’t me,” said Pansky irritably.

“Of course not,” said Reynaldo, the World’s Smallest Circus Bear.

An endless unquiet pause ensued.

Then: “Have you ever considered yoga and meditation?” asked Reynaldo, raising a thoughtful paw.

“Anyway,” said Pansky, slapping himself awake like Satan’s own bitch, “this is not and has never been about me. It’s about you. It’s about Reynaldo, literally the World’s Smallest Circus Bear. It’s about your childhood trauma, the death of your parents in a fire that you started when you fired up your first joint and casually tossed it to the forest floor. It’s about your journey through being a CIA asset to realizing your grandiose ambition to become the Bear Messiah, bringer of the Secret Wisdom and Sexy Shmexiness. It’s about your collaboration with the author of THE DEATH JAZZ, Alex S. Johnson, and the way Johnson has used me as a recurrent character in stories such as ‘Vitonic: For Your Life!,’ ‘Looker,’ and even referenced me and Los De Abajo Hospital under a different name between the pages of Morbid Curiosity Magazine, edited by Loren Rhoads.”

“That Johnson dude? Never trust him,” said the bear, shedding a single, tiny tear.

“Oh yeah? I thought as much. He sent me quite the nasty barbed memo when I…”

“When you…”

“When I…harrrumph…Satan’s Jeweled Cock…I must protest…”

“Look into my eyes, see who I am,” said Reynaldo, smiling. Twin flames danced in his cheeky chocolate brown eyes.

“The…the Devil!!!” cried Dr. Pansky.

“No. A thousand times no. I must protest,” said the bear with an air of injured innocence. “The Devil would be someone who trades his good name to become a shill for Big Pharma, pushing bullshit psych medications whilst condemning a substance that is legal in many states, including this one, California, where you practice…I’m talking about the sticky Black Sabbath wrote a song about…it will free your mind muh friend…”

“No…” shrieked Pansky. “That way lies chaos and schizophrenia!” He cleared his throat. “I and my colleague Dr. Thomas Hermuzti have declared that delta nine THC, otherwise known as murrrrrr…eeee….wa…”

“Go on, say it. I see you shiver in antici…”

“No.”

“You know why you’re such an awful person and went on mixed martial arts expert and lame-ass comedian Shmoe Rogaine’s show to spread anti-vax disinformation on behalf of your Big Pharma handlers is…”

“Nooooo…”

“You’re a fraud and you want to dress in a bra and panties and suck me off, doncha…that’s your shameful secret. But you’re too much of a fucking narcissist to admit it…let me tell you what, the rock stars you condemn because they check in under what you call a ‘phony name’ to this bish up in here are actually pretty fucking cool, whereas you yourself are a disappointment to your patients, everybody who trusted you, yourself, your long-suffering parents, your wife…”

“Have you no decency? Have you no ethics? Have you no morality? Fortunately nobody will ever have the unmitigated umbrage to publish a story with a scenario such as you’ve just lain out for me….”

“Are you 100% sure about that? What about HORROR SLEAZE TRASH?”

Pansky gulped, then smiled. “Not even HST.”

The bear smiled too. Very wide.

“Ok,so I do have quite the yen for forced feminization and crawling on muh hands n’ knees like a little bitch…”

“There you go muh goodman, my Young Goodman Brownstone,…”

“Why do you insist on making up awful nicknames for me? I do NOT have an addiction. I am not an addict. I TREAT addicts like…”

“Like?” Reynaldo made a signature gesture, the one he used when he was about to juggle chainsaws while negotiating a unicycle across a flaming tightrope?”

“Like…”

“Admitting you have a problem is literally the first step…”

Dr Pansky rose from his chair and kicked it over, sporting an enormous erection. He unzipped and began to furiously masturbate. The bear dove for cover just in time to avoid being caught in the eye with a geyser of hot jissom.

“You’ve gone and spoilt it! Damn you!!! I was going to save that one for muh spank bank for all time!!!”

“Seriously?” Reynaldo said in a tone of pained dignity. “But you know what? I think we’ve both been played.”

“How so?” said Dr. Pansky. The infamous host of RockStar Rehab attempted to seize a clutch of fur to wipe his still-spurting cock off on. The bear tucked and rolled, rolled and tucked, and kept rocking and rolling, rolling, rolling out into the long shock corridor of Los De Abajo Hospital. He could hear the LAPD choppers overhead. He knew he was in trouble once again. And he revelled in it.

He adored it.

It made his day.

Alex S. Johnson proof-read the story one more time, then typed:

THE END?

Meat the Messiah: s01e01 – Pilot

the road makes its own gravy. the sog of chew churns the juices through the masticated sludge. somehow the chief thrill is the swallow where the gut’s dark alchemy makes the gravy to smother the world. 

hulk hogan stands on the shoulder, farming out his processes. hulk hogan is the perfect american. he is taller than his shadow. half-chubbed, he has a bible in his right hand with his left thumb outstretched.

the thumb, immaculate, moisturized by the eyeblood of his enemies, beams godlight in a column from the thumbnail to the heavens.

i, the devil, tried to tempt the hulk in the desert, offering him gay sex and communism, but he held fast. he drank muscle milk and came on some big american tits he moulded out of sand.

(the road’s gravy pipe plugs into the rio grande. fish swim upside down as they try to cross the border.)

a cadillac convertible pulls up. elvis is driving.

elvis: i’m headin’ to vegas, man. need a ride?

hulk: you know it brother!

the sun is a derringer pistol firing solar storms into the middle distance. radiation bathes the car and it has a green glow as it cruises through los alamos. 

the desert feels like song and they sing viva las vegas. they stop at a bar. the sky is dark with black wings.

hulk: we can’t stop here. this is bat country.

elvis: don’t be a pussy, man.

a bat comes down and bites hulk hogan on his dick. hulk throws the bat on the ground and body slams it. elvis karate kicks it. the bat is no more but hulk bleeds from his dick.

elvis: i hear you can fuck better with a rabies dick, man.

hulk: i’ve had worse, brother!

the bar is a dive, all set up like christmas in august. it smells like smoke and beer and piss. they order two pints of kerosene and see lauren bacall behind the bar, or it looked like bacall, in her 40s.

elvis: say, mama, what’s your story?

bacall: growing up, everybody said i could be a star, but i got knocked up early and now this is what i do.

elvis: i didn’t mean it like…

bacall: it’s funny to think of now, the years i spent sucking off my dairy queen manager for raises. whatever little bit i had that wasn’t spoken for was spent on going to the movies. most girls at my age then had boys take them out to the movies. i had a husband and…

john wayne and lyndon johnson kick open the door of the bar. the door just falls the fuck over.

john wayne: i guess some big dicks swaggered into town.

johnson: ain’t gonna beat ol’ jumbo here.

john wayne: show us your dicks and we’ll show you ours.

i, the devil, watch this intently and start jacking off.

elvis (hard): you got it, man.

bacall: now, i don’t want any trouble.

hulk (also hard, but feeling the pain of the bite): show us your dicks, brother!

The four of them stand in a circle, the turgid dicks nearly touching heads.

john wayne (to bacall): Show us your tits so it’s not gay. $100 in it for you.

bacall: $500 

johnson: deal.

lauren bacall takes off her shirt and preps the bar, cursing under her breath.

the four men crank their hogs at eachother. in a dick duel, you’re trying to cum last. elvis is out in two strokes, then john wayne cums next. then the former president. then me.

the hulk cums last and the jizz spills out the bite holes. he looks at his dick. it’s going black with necrosis.

***commercial break***

in this fastpaced digital world, two men sit in two lawnchairs on 2 lawns, the way god intended. each man has his secrets. they are old men, white, southern. they have hoods in their closets. we ask these men who has the better lawn. they each say they have the better lawn. one says, that’s horse shit, you have a brown spot right there. the other says, that’s cuz your cunt wife let’s your dog piss on the lawn. what did you say about my wife? she’s a cunt and she gives sloppy top. i’m going to end you. scotts brand turf builder! get the best lawn in the neighborhood!

***

elvis (drunk): let me tell ya, man, when i was born, my mama was so poor, she couldn’t afford to give me a name. so i got a job as a little newborn, workin’ in the coal mines, man. i went into those baby coal mines for months. my first words were ‘blasting caps’ and finally, after getting little baby black lung, i went down to the general store and bought the cheapest name they had: elvis. nobody wanted that dogshit name, but i made it cool, man.

hulk (also drunk): hell yeah, brother!

this sunset puts confidence in the market. it’s a sunset that hit its mark and knows its lines; a sunset with the same great taste you love. 

at this moment jimmy olsen of the daily planet photographs this sunset to adorn postcards with the caption ‘you can have everything you want’ in big white letters.

elvis’s cadillac straddles two lanes in the dusk light, headlights off. they swerve all over like danger.

hulk: let’s grab some food, brother!

elvis: somethin’ fried.

they see a shining drive thru on a hill. a mcdonalds radiating light, like something holy, like heaven in the desert, polluting the view of stars. they ride up to the drive thru.

worker (nervous): good evening, would you like to try our deep fried divorce papers, or our honey dipped sadness log?

elvis: naw, man, i just want 2 #1’s… and what are you getting?

hulk: yeah i need 25 big macs to feed this muscle hammer! You got that brother? 25 big macs. 

worker (nervous): so 2 #1’s and 25 big macs. that’ll be $271.93 at the first window.

they follow the big white arrows painted on the ground, pointing the way to big macs. good think the arrows are there or they might just drive off into the desert and never be seen again.

elvis: how’s your night going?

worker: well i haven’t slept in 20 hours because i work three jobs to help my ailing parents who…

hulk: woah there, brother. i don’t need your memoirs.

worker: that’ll be $271…

hulk takes off his wrestling championship belt and throws it the dude’s face. It knocks him over. when he recovers, his lip is bleeding a bit.

worker (warily): what am i supposed to do with this?

hulk: that’s solid gold, brother. you could easily make two grand at a pawn shop.

worker: i need cash money. my till can’t be off count or i lose this job.

hulk: you need a better job, like c-list celebrity.

elvis: or rock god.

worker: i need cash.

a shot rings out and the worker’s brains are splattered all over the wall. ronald mcdonald is holding a shotgun. he opens the cash register and stuffs it all in his clown suit.

hulk: does this mean we don’t get our big macs?

ronald: i’ve got your big macs if you’ve got a ride for me.

***commercial break***

in today’s fast paced digital world…

***

dawn is cotton candy at the rest stop near purgatory canyon. there’s a brick shithouse and a series of picnic tables. grass grows from the cracks in the asphalt, gone brown with thirst. past the rest stop is rocky desert as far as sight could reach.

elvis finds a crate of records in the trunk of the cadillac. 

elvis (to ronald): lemme see that there pea shooter, man. 

ronald mcdonald: i’m not giving you my gun, dude.

elvis: then i guess i’ll have to skeet shoot these records with my .45 instead. 

ronald mcdonald: alright. that does sound fun. what records are we smashing?

elvis: now we’re talkin man.

hulk stands at the picnic table with 25 big macs. starting from the ground, he begins assembling all of those big macs into one ultra mac.

elvis: alright we’re gonna play keep or pull with these records. each of us gets three records per round. if we want to keep a record, say keep. if we want to shoot a record say pull.

ronald mcdonald: this is a good game.

elvis walks 25 yards into the desert, toward the snakes and lizards of pugatory. they have to yell over the distance.

elvis: insane clown posse!

ronald mcdonald: keep!

elvis: do you want to know which album?

ronald mcdonald: keep!

elvis: okay… the doors!

ronald mcdonald: pull!

elvis hurls the record into the air. the wind catches the record and it takes a hard right turn toward hulk hogan, whose big mac tower is still under construction. the ultra mac is 15 burgers high

hulk: hey watch it! i’m eating over here, brother!

elvis (to ronald): i don’t think this is going to work, with the wind and all, man!

ronald mcdonald: let’s go shoot wherever they make wind so we can put buckshot in jim morrison’s face.

bukowski: they make the wind in hollywood. i’ve seen it.

elvis: where did you come from, man?

bukowski: i was always here.

hulk hogan finishes building the ultra mac. it stands 3.5 feet tall. he gets on the picnic table and jumps off to body slam the ultra mac. it smashes down to a 4 inch tall burger, trembling with kinetic energy. hulk eats it in 2 bites. the burger explodes in his gut. it would’ve killed a lesser man.

bukowski holds a beer and is ready for anything.

credits roll.

***

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Marty Shambles

Corncob’s Great Adventure

Corncob Eisenhower of landlocked Waldick, Wisconsin always dreamed of living in a lighthouse, so you can imagine how excited he was when he opened the classified ads section of his local newspaper and found that one was for sale right there in town. Needless to say, he bought it immediately.

Unfortunately, Corncob was so busy celebrating this opportunity to fulfill his dream of owning a lighthouse that he failed to notice that in the classified ad in question, there was actually a space between “light” and “house,” meaning that – you guessed it – instead of a lighthouse, the poor fellow merely ended up with a light house.

And just how light was this house, you may ask? As it turned out, Corncob was wondering the same thing, and he soon received his answer: a storm came along that wasn’t even that strong, but his new house was so light that the winds lifted it up all the same, carrying it high above the clouds – high enough that had there been a rainbow around, he and his house almost definitely would have gone over it, just like in the case of his fellow Midwesterner Dorothy from that famous old movie The Wizard of Oz. 

But there wasn’t a rainbow around, being that this was only a windstorm and there were consequently no rain droplets to refract the light in the manner necessary to create a rainbow; in this regard, Corncob thought, his situation was perhaps less like Dorothy’s and more like that of the protagonist of another, more contemporary movie that he’d never seen but knew enough about to know that it centered around a grumpy old man who tied a vast quantity of balloons to his house so it would fly him away from a world in which he was no longer happy living, only to discover once he’d gone airborne that a child who was both full of optimistic energy and desperately in need of love had joined him as a stowaway. Initially, the grumpy old man was displeased by this turn of events, but over the course of their journey together he learned to let go of whatever pain or resentment or sense of guilt or regret was making him so grumpy in the first place in order to be able to give that child the love he needed.

“Maybe I, too, could be metaphorically reborn in such a tearjerking fashion,” Corncob said to himself. “It’s really just a matter of whether there’s a child both full of optimistic energy and desperately in need of love hidden away somewhere in this floating abode of mine.”

To find out, he undertook a thorough search of the premises. That was how he discovered that there was, indeed, another person with him. In this case, however, it was not a young child full of optimistic energy but, quite the opposite, a grumpy old man who was furthermore attempting to rob him.

“Halt! Police!” cried Corncob when he came upon the elderly hooligan rooting through the top drawer of his dresser, where he kept several important documents as well as a pair of women’s underwear he’d acquired via surreptitious means.

“Oh, please,” sneered the old man, barely bothering to toss a glance back over his shoulder. “If you’re the police, then show me your badge and your gun.” 

“I’m off duty,” lied Corncob.

“Off duty my itchy ass,” said the old man. “Now go on and get out of here while I look for something worth stealing or else I’ll be forced to wallop you right in that snaggle-toothed maw of yours.” 

It occurred to Corncob that grumpy and old though he may have been, if he was willing to risk a felony conviction in this fashion, the man must have been in need of, if not love, then surely something equally important.

“What I’m in need of is money, you dumbass,” he said when Corncob shared these ruminations with him. “There’s something I want to buy something for my wife Lucille and social security isn’t quite cutting the mustard at the moment as far as a purchase of that magnitude is concerned.”

“That’s actually really sweet,” said Corncob. “Do you mind if I ask what it is you want to buy her?”

“A big ass dildo,” replied the old man. “In other words, none of your fucking business.”

“Well, seeing as I’m the person you’re trying to rob so you can buy it,” observed Corncob, “I’d argue that it sort of is my business.”

The old man slammed the dresser drawer shut. “You know what? You’re very quickly becoming a lot more trouble than you’re worth, and now that I think about it, you’re probably broke, anyway. Therefore, if you’d kindly step to one side, I’ll take my leave of this shithole and go rob someone more worthy of my criminal exertions.” 

“You might want to have a look out the window before you do that,” Corncob advised.

The old man leaned to one side and peered through the nearest pane. “Ah,” he said. “We appear to be aloft.”

“Not only that,” said Corncob, “but I haven’t the slightest idea how to steer a flying house, so in all likelihood we’re just going to drift off into space together and die.”

The old man shook his head. “I swear to God the world wasn’t always full of half-witted nincompoops. Listen, you schmuck, it’s just a simple matter of weight distribution, which you sure as hell don’t need a master’s degree in rocket science to figure out. You move the furniture around to steer and chuck it overboard to descend.”

“And you’re saying you could do that?”

“Let’s make a deal,” said the old man. “You go down to the basement where you won’t be able to get in my way with your stupid bullshit questions, and I’ll take care of guiding us safely back to earth.”

“Wow,” said Corncob. “How will I ever be able to thank you for saving my life?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Five minutes ago, I was robbing you and now you’re asking how you can thank me? What a pathetic sniveling lickspittle you turned out to be. By the time I was your age, I knew how to kill a deer, slit it down the middle, and sleep in its steaming entrails as a way to survive being stranded outside on a cold winter night. Not that you’re smart enough to manage something like that, but on the off chance you did, I bet you’d cry about it like some three-hanky milksop.”

“I think I’ll head for the basement now,” said Corncob.

The days Corncob spent down there in the dark, disturbed only by the sound of furniture scraping across the floor overhead, were not altogether unpleasant, especially insofar as they gave him a chance to further pursue his burgeoning interest in the Tibetan Buddhist practice of “mun mtshams,” or dark meditation. Nonetheless, when he at last felt the clunk of the house meeting solid ground, he was truly happy to be back in Waldick. Truly happy, that is, until he came upstairs and discovered that he wasn’t in Waldick at all, but China!

“Ah-ah-ah,” said the old man when Corncob expressed his dismay. “I only said I’d get us safely back to earth – I never said where.”

“But why China, of all places?”

“If you really must know, the thing I was wanting to buy Lucille was a big shitload of Peking Duck, which after whole belly clams and oysters on the half-shell is her third favorite food, and between the favorable Yuan to dollars exchange rate and my detailed knowledge of the very best local back-alley establishments, here in China I can afford to buy her more Peking Duck than she could hog down in two lifetimes without having to resort to robbing asshats such as yourself. And on that note, I’m off to do my shopping, so goodbye for now and with any luck I won’t have to see that stupid looking face of yours again.” 

“Wait,” cried Corncob. “How am I going to get along without you? I’ve never even been to Cancún, no less China.”

“If it’s cold and you’re stuck outside overnight, just look for a deer.”

At that, the old man went on his way, and Corncob, without anyone to guide him, commenced wandering around Beijing like a fart in a barrel, as the old Yiddish saying goes. All in all, this was far from an ideal state of affairs, but on balance, things definitely could have been worse. In earlier times, for example, the fact that Corncob didn’t speak a lick of Mandarin Chinese would have completely prevented him from communicating with the local population, but thanks to being a part of the digital age, he had a special app on his mobile phone that could immediately translate anything a person said into the device’s microphone from a total of two hundred and forty-three different foreign languages and dialects into English, and, conversely, anything Corncob said into the microphone into, from among the same two hundred and forty-three, the specific language or dialect of his choosing. As a result, when various members of that local population, noticing how confused and out of place he appeared to be, approached him asking “Nǐ zài zhè’er zuò shénme?”, Corncob not only knew this was Chinese for “What are you doing here?” but was moreover able to reply “Zhè shì yīgè hěn zhǎng de gùshì, wǒ de péngyǒu, cǐkè wǒ tài èle, tài hàipàle, érqiě hěn gūdú, wúfǎ jiǎngshù tā,” which was Chinese for “It’s a long story, my friend, and at the moment I’m too hungry, scared, and alone to tell it.”

Strength In Denial

Ronnie Coleman’s Hollywood Fitness and Keto Grill Yonkers—no affiliation with American professional bodybuilder and IFBB multi-title champion Ronnie Coleman; and yes, there have been lawsuits—is, in my considered opinion, the single finest bro gym north of the city, hands down, no contenders.

At Ronnie’s, you know what you’re getting, and bros like to know what they’re getting. I’m always thinking up new marketing slogan for Ronnie’s. I spend a lot of time alone.

The space was converted from a four-story, 1950s cinder-block storage warehouse, a standalone structure built into a hillside sloping down toward the Hudson. The building is as long as it is tall, as tall as it is wide, and painted gold with gold trim for no good reason whatsoever, except, perhaps, because bros love the color gold, or maybe it’s just a big, gold-colored middle-finger to everyone driving by on the Interstate.

There are no surprises at Ronnie’s, because bros don’t like surprises.

The ground floor is mostly cardio equipment—treadmills, ellipticals, steppers—with an area near the back for group fitness classes and other such CrossFit-related nonsense; who the hell has time for strengthening their core? It’s also the level with the men’s locker-room, so that whole area, appropriately, smells like muscle-milk diarrhea, a familiar odor at any gym that has achieved that critical mass of gym bros.

At Ronnie’s, no bullshit, just bros.

The rest of the place is for serious lifters only, a glorious, multilevel clusterfuck of free weights and resistance machines, perfect for any bro that has absolutely no workout plan, other than to train, and then overtrain, until something breaks. And, of course, every wall is a mirror, so no matter what direction you look, you’re admiring your pump.

But the best thing about Ronnie Coleman’s Hollywood Fitness and Keto Grill Yonkers is the bros. Not for nothing, but Ronnie’s is likely the finest assortment of bros you will ever encounter. It’s wall-to-wall bros. To move between sets is to navigate a labyrinth of fist pounds, and if you’re paying attention, every confrontation yields gems of bro-wisdom.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Josh, the roofer who works out in his dirty work boots. “If it’s an isolation exercises, drop the weight and do higher reps.” He pressed his finger into my chest. “It’s easier on your fucking joints.”

Sure Josh is aggressive, but it’s only because he cares so much. He’s a true bro. He’s also six-foot-six and build like a brick shit-house, so bros listen when he speaks.

“You want to buy some Tren?” said Scott, the strength and conditioning coach. “Not that you look like you need it, but I can get you a great deal. Shit’s for real, and it never hurts to be a little more anabolic.”

Scott’s sketchy AF, and his darkweb steroids have killed people, allegedly, but as bros go, he’s alright.

“Protein is bullshit,” said Steven, the sound engineer. “It’s a myth. It’s not real. Have you ever seen a protein molecule? Yeah, me neither. No one has.”

Steven smokes too much weed, but he’s still a solid bro, usually, but not today. Today I asked Steven to for a spot, and in the middle of my last frickin’ set of bench presses, he just ran away.

At Ronnie’s, not everything is as it seems.

I racked my weights. Steve and others were headed downstairs. Then I heard it too. Somewhere up front, past the commercial refrigerator filled with pre-workout drinks, past the check-in desk with the weird lobby boy who also cleans the toilets, someone was shouting, screaming almost. Looking down into the gallery, I saw a crowd forming near the entrance.

“It’s Paul,” said Mark the cop. “Paul’s dead. The vampire got Paul.”

I ran to join them, then pushed my way through the crowd. Beyond the glass doors, I saw gore. It was Paul, the snowboard instructor, dead in the parking lot, his head smashed in by a dumbbell, seemingly dropped from above.

What a waste of a bro!

Others push past me, each jockeying for a better view, but no one stepped outside. The gore was overwhelming. Then Mark the cop removed a gun from his gym bag and un-holstered it. We knew what he had in mind.

“Bro! Don’t!” said Anthony, the delivery driver.

“You’ll be killed,” said Clementine, the exotic dancer—not her real name.

“I have to do something,” said Mark. “I can’t just hide in here.” But as soon as he stepped outside, an industrial air-conditioning unit landed on him.

The chorus of cries that followed was painful to witness.

“Bro! No!”

“Why, bro?”

“No! Bro!”

And there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Apparently, this had happened before, many times, as it was explained to me, but never until now when I was present. It was the reason I hadn’t seen Kenny in a while, and Joey, and Greg. They were all dead. I struggled to get my head around it. The rest of my workout sucked. When I was done, I ran as fast as I could from the entrance to my truck.

***

On my next visit to Ronnie’s—Thursday, back and biceps—I confronted Renfield, the boy from the check-in desk. He was cleaning the toilets in the men’s locker-room.

“I can’t get up there,” said Renfield. “There’s nothing I can do.”

The door to the roof was locked, and no one had a key. It was difficult for me to understand.

“I told you already,” said Renfield, pushing past me, toilet brush in hand. “There’s no way to get up there. There’s nothing can be done about it.”

During hammer curls, I bumped into Roy, the firefighter. “The door’s locked and there’s no roof access,” said Roy, and he walked away. Just like that, our conversation was over.

During my last set of bent-over rows, I spotted Kevin, the fitness app developer. “It’s Dracula up there,” said Kevin in a whisper. “He can hear through walls.” He was unwilling to discuss it further.

After my workout I returned to the locker-room. I ran into José, the MMA fighter. “If there was somethin’ could be done about it, they’d do it,” said José. “The door to the roof is locked.”

Bros aren’t known for their problem-solving skills.

As José and I walked from the locker-room together, I decide against further conversation on the topic of Dracula, and instead José gave me an account of the tremendous health benefits he’s experienced since eliminating water from his diet. “Water’s poison, bro,” José assured me. When we reached the entrance, I paused, to prepare myself for the sprint from the entrance to my truck, but José did not pause, instead, forgetfully, mindlessly, strolling right through the doors to the parking lot, pausing only to hold the door for me. When he realized I wasn’t behind him, he looked back. Our eyes met as a forty-five pound iron plate from above compressed him into a gruesome pulp.

Despite my shock, I acted quickly, running to the door, to what was left of José, to lean out, just barely, to look up from the spot where the plate had landed. I glimpse a head looking back at me. Quickly the head pulled back from the ledge.

“I saw him,” I said softly, but already a crowd was forming around me.

“He saw him,” shouted Mike, the electrician. “He saw Dracula.”

“Tell us what he looks like,” said Karen, the fitness influencer—Karen has over 40,000 followers now on Instagram.

I had to think for moment; so many eyes were on me. “He looks like a sex offender mugshot of Mark Twain,” I said.

No one was happy with my description, so I tried again.

“He looks like my grandfather, right before he died from anal cancer.”

I could see it in their eyes, it was not the description they expected, or wanted, so I tried one last time.

“He looks like a broken old man,” I said, “defeated, gray, and unhappy.”

“Bro, that is not what Dracula is supposed to look like,” said Patrick, the manual laborer.

“I know what I saw.”

“Then your eyeballs must be broken, bro,” said Jason, the bouncer.

Are bros just stupid, or is something else going on here?

“Just tell us what you fucking saw!” screamed Tangerine, the exotic dancer, not to be confused with Clementine the exotic dancer. Tangerine then threatened me, pointing her fake nails at me as if they were knifes.

“I saw an old man that hates the world,” I said.

“Bro, be serious!”

“Seriously, bro, come on!”

“I saw a miserable old prick,” I said, “filled with sorrow and regret, pain and despair, extreme anguish, frustration, and anger. He looked like he had been weeping, and perhaps, gnashing his teeth. His wife is dead. His children don’t talk to him, or allow him to see his grand kids. He’s been thrown outside, into the darkness. It’s the fate of the wicked. The consequence of a life lived unrighteously.”

Then Michael, by far the largest, most muscular, most performance-drug-enhanced bro to ever grace Ronnie’s, picked me up by my throat and said, “Did you or did you not see Dracula… bro?”

I struggled to speak with his hands around my neck. “I saw our future,” I said. “I saw Josh and Scott, and Steven and Roy, and Clementine and Tangerine. I saw Kevin, Karen, Patrick, and Jason. I even saw Ronnie Coleman. I saw them all, in the fires of hell.”

Michael squeezed my neck harder, but still I could speak.

“I saw you and me, Michael, in the fires of hell.”

Michael squeezed my neck even harder. “Last chance,” he said. I could barely speak now.

“I saw weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Michael tossed me from the entrance. I landed on my knees on the pavement. Then Michael and others held the entrance shut so I couldn’t return. They watched through the glass, waiting for an object from above to crush me, but it never came. I ran to my truck and drove away. Fuck you Ronnie Coleman’s Hollywood Fitness and Keto Grill Yonkers.

Looking back on it now, I can find no reason that I should have been the only one to escape, no prophecy or unique circumstance to set me apart from the others. Yet no one was saved, no evil defeated, and balance was restored to nothing. I can only assume the universe needed a witness to attest to the folly of those bros that came before me, seduced by the promise of glamour muscles.

El Camino del Diablo

Fading pink daylight glowed in the rearview mirror and the nearly full moon rose beyond the mountains at the horizon. The car winding its way up the dusty road was the only movement across the vast landscape. GPS was useless so far from any cellular tower, but the email had provided simple enough directions. El Camino del Diablo was the only road off the state highway. Matt just had to follow it for another thirty miles west after Bates Well Ranch. They told me this guy Dan was eccentric when I accepted the job, but living out here in the middle of nowhere? This is crazy.

The congratulatory email he’d received a week earlier included an invitation to join several other new hires at the home of the founder and owner of Tobar Battery. Dan Tobar started the company in the sprawling emptiness of the Sonoran desert. The offices were hours away in Tucson, the manufacturing in Mexico, and his home crouched at the crest of a small mesa overlooking endless square miles of saguaro and dry brush. Matt accepted the strange invite, despite his reluctance. No ties to keep him back home in Tucson–he’d never been to a billionaire’s home before, so why not?

The rough miles jostled past until he saw the right hand turn-off onto an even narrower, bumpier dirt road. The darkness seemed to overwhelm the moonlight, as he could see only a short distance down the rutted trail. No signs or indication that this was the way, but it had to be, according to the directions; ‘Take El Camino for 32 miles past Bates Well, it is the only turnoff for miles – can’t miss.’

Can’t miss, thought Matt. 

***

Danior Tobar looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his living room, waiting patiently for telltale headlights flickering in the distance. He’d instructed the guests to arrive at 10:00pm, not too long after sunset.

Who’d be the first to arrive? 

The engineer? Most likely, due to a propensity for precision. The HR rep? Possibly, due to an innate need to please. Or perhaps the salesperson? The dark horse, in his view, as he’d never known a salesperson who could resist a nearly endless conversation with some poor stranger at a restaurant or gas station.

A flicker of light bounced off rock formations, as a vehicle climbed into the hills. 

Good, now we begin. A glance at the clock over the stone mantel confirmed the promptness of his guest, who would arrive a minute or two before the instructed time. Where were the others?

***

Matt stared at the massive front doors which towered imposingly over the entry. They were intricately carved with hundreds of small figures. Many were tangled in tortuous positions. He pressed the doorbell, and three chiming tones echoed from inside the home. Moments later, his examination of the carvings was interrupted as the doors opened by a tall dark-haired man wearing a crimson Victorian wing tip shirt, black blazer and pants, and black ankle boots. His ebon hair was pulled back in a shoulder length ponytail. He was powerfully built, despite appearing to be in his early sixties. Matt took note of the unusual fashion choices, but decided not to comment on it. What is he wearing? Is he going to a fancy event or something?

“Mr. Peterson? Greetings and welcome to my home.” 

His host invited Matt inside with a sweep of his hand, leading to a spacious, dimly lit foyer beyond.

“Hi Mr. Tobar, pleased to meet you.” He extended his hand in greeting. Tobar glanced at it, remaining motionless, and returned his gaze to the younger man’s face.

“Call me Dan, please, and may I call you Matthew? I’m sorry but I don’t shake hands. I find it…unpleasant.” He led his guest inside.

“Matt’s fine, Mr. Tobar. Quite a place you have here. Bit far from anywhere, isn’t it?” He examined the minimalist interior, although that would have been luxurious compared to this large stone-floored home, with its jumble of angular concrete, glass, and imposing double front doors. No furniture, no art on the walls, no television, or books. It was a blank slate. “Did you just move in or something? Looks like your stuff hasn’t been delivered yet.”

“I prefer to live ascetically. I don’t usually tolerate company and a spartan lifestyle suits me.” His smooth voice carried a trace of a rough accent, buried beneath a cultured veneer.

Tobar led the way from the living room to what could have been a kitchen. The room had a long stainless-steel sink, expansive barren black stone counters, and unadorned gray metal cabinets on the wall. It looked more like an operating room than where a meal or even a cup of coffee would be prepared. A severe wooden table and four stark gray metal chairs, the only furniture Matt saw, were in front of modern French-style doors overlooking the moonlit landscape.

“Please, sit down,” he said. 

Matt took a seat, watching as his host surveyed the silver-bathed desert. Clouds drifted across the sky and somewhere coyotes howled. “Do you hear them? Creatures of the night.” Tobar shifted his eyes to meet Matt’s. “What songs they sing.”

Songs? Matt wondered. The predatory howls sent shivers down his spine. This guy is a little weird.

“Why did you ask me to come all the way out here, Dan? To be honest, this is all a little strange for me.”

“I asked you, and two others, to be my guests. I want to meet my new employees. I’ve heard you are a very skilled engineer. As you may have guessed, I do not much enjoy the company of people, so I asked you to come where I am most comfortable. I thank you for honoring my request.” Tobar tilted his head slightly, as something appeared to catch his attention. “Ah—another guest is arriving. Please, wait here.”

***

A solitary gas pump stood beside the parched dirt road that disappeared into the shimmering distance in either direction. Nearby, a sun-bleached wood building slumped in the heat. The sign over the door simply read ‘Store and Gas’ in faded, peeling red paint. 

The weathered wood door opened, revealing a tall silhouette contrasting against the glare of the sweltering desert beyond. A little bell above the entry tinkled as a tall man stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He was surprised that it wasn’t much cooler in the dim interior of the roadside store.

“Evening, son. You lost?” The old man behind the counter looked intently into the traveler’s eyes, waiting for a reply.

“Hi! I don’t think so. This is El Camino La Diablo, right?” The tall man brushed his hands across his expensive Oxford shirt, wiping at any road dust that may have settled on the short walk from the car to the store. The tie, left behind on the passenger seat.

“Del. But yep, that it is. Only damned road out here, so kinda narrows your options. Don’t get too many people out here, figured you was a lost tourist from the city.” 

The tall man looked at the old proprietor. He seemed to be about eighty, with a scraggly gray beard and wore a dusty old sweater, despite the heat inside the cramped store.

“What makes you think I’m from ‘the city’?” he asked, with a big smile.

“Son, there ain’t but two kinds a’ people out in this desert—those of us with sand in our veins, and the rest a’ ya that got blood in yours. You got a nice city vee-hicle,” he nodded at the unblemished late-model luxury car outside the window, “you got nice city clothes that don’t got a single worn thread on ‘em, and you ain’t got any weather in your face or work in your hands.” He leaned back, his wrinkled and veiny hands propping him against the wooden counter.

“Wow. You’re a good judge of people, buddy. I’m Bill, by the way,” he took two steps towards the old man, his hand extended for a shake. The proprietor didn’t move.

“‘Bill By The Way’, I don’t shake hands, never know what you’ll catch. You need gas or food or water?”

Bill kept his bright smile on, assessing the store. A beverage case displayed cold bottles of water and soft drinks. The counter had various sundries and goods. Bill saw that everything had a fine layer of road dust, and nothing looked like it had been stocked in the recent past, if not longer. I’m not going to get a cappuccino in this place, that’s for sure, he chuckled to himself.

“No, sir, I’m good. Just wanted to make sure I’m on the right route. No GPS out here, you know?” Looking around, he wondered if the old guy even knew what GPS was.

“I can’t tell you if yer on the right path, that’s ‘tween you and Him.”

This old guy might be a little touched by the heat, thought Bill. “Ha,” he said instead, “you’re funny. I like that!”

“Bill By The Way’, lemme tell ya something…this desert here, it’s an honest place. It don’t like falseness. In fact, falseness is the most dangerous thing in this desert. It ain’t snakes or coyotes or pumas, it’s what ain’t real. This place knows the difference ‘tween a porch-cat and a puma, and it don’t take kindly to one that don’t know which one it is.”

Bill was taken aback by this…threat? Brushing it off as the musings of a weird and probably not-all-there octogenarian, he turned to leave.

“Hey, son. I think I offended you. Take a bottle a’ water, on me. And whatever you do out here, don’t be false.”

“I’m good, thanks. You take it easy, mister.” Bill went out the door, the little bell ringing softly behind him. The evening heat and light still hit like a blast furnace, as he quickly got back into his car and cranked the A/C. Driving away, he looked back in the rearview mirror at the little shack of a store.

***

Lily Kasirye fiddled with the cell phone that was in the holder on the dashboard. No bars. Great, no music and I still must have a couple hours to go. Why does he have to be out here? Her mood had steadily soured as she traveled further and further from the comforts of civilization. The temp display showed 99℉ outside, as it had for the last hour or so. Lily clicked the A/C fan up one more notch and checked her face again in the mirror. The dusty road rolled past, shadows from the cacti lengthening in the late afternoon and pooling in depressions in the desert. A structure of some kind appeared far down the road, off to the side a short way. Oh thank God, I really need to pee, she thought. All this bouncing from this terrible road is really getting to me. Next time, get the small iced coffee!

She parked her little hybrid next to the ramshackle building with the sign over the door, praying there was a bathroom inside. A bell rang softly as she entered, her eyes trying to adjust to the gloomy interior. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her long black hair, the plastic frames clinking against the beads in her cornrows. Lily noticed the old man behind the counter, staring at her. Here we go. Her neck hairs rose, from anticipation of what she expected this codger to be like, and from too many experiences with men like him.

“Hi, excuse me–is there a restroom?” Lily smiled at him, nicely. Be nice, be nice.

“Rest room? Naw, we don’t have one a’ them. But there’s plenty of desert so knock yerself out, young lady. You another city type lost out here? At least the second one I seen today.”

“Lost? I think I’m on the only road out here. Camino del Diablo.” She looked around at the store, hoping he was just teasing her, but she didn’t see any door for a bathroom or for any other room at all. The place was tiny, and cramped with shelves full of what looked like long-forgotten relics from years gone by.

“That it is, missy. El Camino del Diablo. You know what that means in English?” he didn’t wait for a reply, “means ‘The Devil’s Highway.’” He let that hang in the air.

“Oh, yeah. OK. So really, no bathroom?” She was not looking forward to relieving herself behind some rock or brush.

“Really, no. Look, go out behind the store, there ain’t nothin’ or no one around for miles. I’ll be right here, mindin’ the store.”

Lily nodded, not sure if she had any choice. It was that or try to make it to this Tobar’s place but that was at least another hour down the rugged road. She couldn’t drive much more than thirty miles per hour due to the ruts, rocks, and bumps. Resigned to the pleasures of outdoor bodily functions, she pulled the door open and went back into the sweltering desert.

***

Matt heard the chimes ring out three times, thankful that someone else was now there. This house, with its sprawling emptiness and the vaguely unsettling mannerisms of his host, made him uneasy.

What kind of person doesn’t even have a couch?

Voices echoed across the distant house, and in a moment Dan Tobar entered the kitchen with another guest. A tall, well-dressed man, with a big, almost goofy smile followed him, and strode towards Matt.

“Bill MacNeil, allow me to introduce Matt Peterson, our new engineer. Matt, this is Bill, our newest salesman.” 

Nice-to-meet-you’s and handshakes were exchanged. Bill eyed the room, evaluating the surroundings. This Tobar fella is one odd son of a bitch.

“Dan, you got one hell of a place out here. Looks like you could use an interior decorator, though, am I right?” he laughed and slapped Matt on the shoulder, giving him a wink. Matt returned a polite smile. Tobar watched, silently, no expression on his face. “So, is this it or are we expecting more company, cuz’ right now it doesn’t look like much of a party.” Bill flashed his practiced thousand-watt smile at Dan, hoping that he could find some way to break the ice.

“My interior is as I prefer. And yes, one more guest will be joining us, shortly I expect.” Tobar’s mirthless dark eyes focused on Bill’s. “She is nearing, even as we speak.”

Matt noticed their host’s head tilt as it had earlier, and without a word to his guests, he left them in the bleak kitchen. Matt and Bill exchanged glances, and Bill shrugged his shoulders.

“What do you think?” asked Bill.

“This is certainly different. I have never seen a house so…dead,” Matt whispered the last word.

“You got that right, buddy!” Bill took a closer look at the kitchen, and walked over to what had to be the refrigerator. Large stainless-steel double doors fronted the industrial style unit. He reached for a handle and at that moment, Tobar interrupted him.

“Gentlemen,” announced Tobar, as he shot Bill a look. Bill moved away from the fridge, feeling like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “This is Miss Lily Kasirye, our newest HR representative. Lily, welcome to my dwelling, and allow me to introduce you.” He did, and then stood aside, watching.

Lily looked at the two other guests. Bill, the salesperson, appeared to be in his early forties, friendly looking and composed. The engineer looked a few years older, very ordinary without any sense of style or personality. Nice, but bland. She wasn’t sure why she’d decided to accept the invitation now that she was there. Everyone else was at least ten years her senior, and she was the only woman, and the only one who didn’t look like they ate only unseasoned, bland food.

“Forgive me, I have forgotten my manners,” Tobar said, “ but you all must be hungry and thirsty from your journeys. I have taken the liberty of having a light repast prepared for your arrival. Please, allow me to serve.” He directed them to the uncomfortable chairs around the table, which had three place-settings laid, and pulled out a seat for Lily. She smiled politely as she sat down.

“Won’t you be joining us, Dan?” Bill inquired, as he pulled out his own chair.

“I have already enjoyed my sustenance. I apologize, but I follow a very different schedule than people.” From a warming oven, he pulled out three food-laden plates with his bare hands and carried them over to the table, setting one before each guest. Matt had been silently observing, and cautiously reached out for his plate. “Careful,” Tobar interjected, “the plates are very hot. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

Lily looked at her plate, which had the identical meal as her companions. A large and very rare looking steak of some kind had center-stage on the plate, covered with a thick reddish sauce. Beside it, something resembling polenta was carefully heaped next to stewed cabbage.

“Um, Mr. Tobar…Dan, I’m sorry but I can’t eat this. I’m a vegetarian,” she pushed the plate away from her, pulling her fingertips away quickly from the hot plate.

“Vegetarian?” he scoffed. “There is no such thing. That is a construct of this modern world, of people who deny what they are. When one is hungry enough, one will consume…anything. Eat or don’t eat, it matters not. This is what I offer. Do you choose to offend your host?”

“No, I don’t mean to offend you, but…”

“Hey, Lily, if you’d like, I’ll trade you my…grits, for your steak. OK?” Bill flashed his big smile at her, hoping she’d accept and they could move past this uncomfortable moment. She nodded and the big man stabbed her piece of meat with his fork and piled it on his plate. He pushed his polenta onto her plate, and let out a hearty laugh. “There, everyone’s good now, right Dan?”

Throughout this exchange, Matt had been gently prodding the steak on his own plate, and taking small tastes of each item. He was hungry, and despite the very undercooked state of the meat, it tasted quite delicious. “Thanks, Dan. This is all really tasty. Is there anything to drink?”

Tobar produced three glasses from a cabinet, and then a bottle of wine. He opened the bottle and poured a generous amount for each, setting the glasses before his guests.

“This is a Sereksiya, from the country of my ancestors. Enjoy.” The wine had a pale red color, and smelled like sour cherries. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will leave you to dine in peace. I will return later.” Tobar bowed very slightly from his waist, and slowly backed away from the table a few steps before turning and leaving them alone.

They all looked at each other, trying to sort the wide range of feelings, from awkwardness, to anger, to…fear?

“What the fuck was that all about?” Lily stood up from the table, pointing at the food. “There is no such thing,” she mimicked. Her anger was getting the better of her, and she made a snap decision. “I’m leaving. Fuck this. Nice meeting you both, but I do not need this bullshit, not even for this job.”

Bill stood up.

“Now hold on, hold on. Yeah, that was insensitive and, well, downright rude, but can you really just walk away from this job? Matt, you know what I mean, right buddy?”

Matt shrugged and looked at Lily. “I can’t say I blame you, and I don’t know how much they’re paying you, but I’d think twice about just ‘up and leaving’,” he replied. He took another forkful of food, and washed it down with some of the wine.

“Well neither of you know what it’s like to be a Black woman. I know when I’m being fucked with. If you were smart, you’d both get out of here too.” She grabbed her clutch off of the table, and walked away. Bill and Matt looked at each, both wondering the same thing; What the hell was going on?

***

Danior Tobar was fuming, mostly at himself. These unpredictable fools! He’d planned everything, and somehow overlooked the possibility of one of his guests being a vegetarian. The very idea of that offended him to his core. When Lily stormed out, he of course had heard the entire conversation and was awaiting her in the large gravel driveway fronting the four-car garage. Lily bristled when she saw Tobar standing before her on the walkway to the driveway, and it took her a moment to see the cars behind him. All three of their vehicles were upside down, tires up like overturned turtles. She looked at the cars, and backed away from Tobar slowly before turning and running back into the dark, cold structure of his home. Matt and Bill heard her yelling for them and they rushed towards the sound of her voice, the three of them nearly colliding in the entryway. Past them, beyond the wide open front door, Tobar stood silently glaring at them, his dark eyes like black holes in his face.

“What’s the matter, Lily?” Bill looked from her tear streaked face out towards the unsettling man outside.

“The cars…he did something to them, they’re all on their roofs!”

“That’s impossible,” Matt said, mainly to himself. “How could that be?” He approached Tobar. “What’s she talking about? Did something happen to our cars?”

Tobar fixed his black eyes on Matt, turned his head towards the driveway and simply extended one hand in that direction, gesturing for Matt to proceed. Matt rounded the slight bend that curved to the garage and driveway, the cars coming into view. Just as Lily described. Each on its roof somehow, improbable but real. 

Tobar laughed bitterly.

“You fools! I invite you to my home, to offer you a rare and exquisite opportunity, and you behave like frightened sheep.”

Matt, Bill, and Lily were speaking all at once, confusion and fear on their faces.

Tobar’s voice deepened suddenly, “SILENCE!” he commanded, his voice seemingly inside their heads.

Matt’s body went rigid, arms at his side, as he obeyed the overwhelming force of Tobar’s order. Bill and Lily stilled, eyes wide with a mix of confusion and fear, unable to move or speak. Tobar approached, his countenance radiating focused rage. He traced one long fingernail across Lily’s face, flicking it against her cheek. A thin crimson line opened, a trickle of blood joining the wet traces of tears.

“You, yes, I think you. I wasn’t sure at first, but your insolence has persuaded me, and there is something intriguing, I must admit, about tasting you. I have never had the pleasure of someone’s sustenance who abstains from flesh.” He circled Lily, looking at her from head to toe, appraisingly, a spark of hunger flaring in his deep black eyes. 

Tobar turned to look directly in Matt’s eyes, a slow predatory grin spreading and revealing sharp yellowed teeth. Despite his panic, Matt was surprised that he hadn’t noticed those long dagger-sharp teeth before.

“My engineer,” Tobar said softly, grasping Matt’s head in both of his powerful, long nailed hands. “I had hoped we could come to a logical arrangement, with your scientific mind and understanding of the nature of things. I am a creature of God, yes? Just like all of you. Some of us are made as wolves, some as sheep. Now you know what you are. There is a truth in this that you can’t deny.” Tobar pulled Matt’s head forward with startling speed, and sank his wicked fangs deeply in Matt’s neck. Bones crunched, blood sprayed from the wound, covering Bill and Lily. Tobar drank for a moment, then casually tossed the body across the room. It thudded wetly against the concrete, limbs splayed brokenly.

He turned to Bill. A strong odor became apparent. Bill had shit himself. Tobar chuckled.

“My salesman, it seems you have ruined your tacky but expensive trousers. I don’t mind, though. Your fear accentuates my desire, my hunger. For such a big man, you may be the weakest of my guests.” Tobar padded behind Bill, and in an instant dug his claw-like fingers into Bill’s neck, twisting and pulling Bill’s head from it. The body fell to the floor, the severed neck fountaining red. Tobar held the decapitated head over himself, drizzling the spilling blood into his mouth. Rivulets of blood painted Tobar’s face like warpaint. He held the head by the hair, and forcefully threw it against a wall. It crunched with a fleshy smacking sound, falling to the floor.

“They were nothing but useless fools. That is what happens to people like them. But you, Lily, I have higher expectations for you. Do you want to join your new found friends, here on my floors and walls, or do you want to work for me? Speak!” 

Lily felt the hold on her release. She wanted to scream, to run, to explode like a nuclear bomb from the terror and gore around her. She couldn’t do anything but shiver in fear, looking from corpse to corpse and back at the thing who killed them. Thoughts flashed across her brain. What is he? How is this happening? He’s going to kill me!

“I…I…what do you want from me?” she stammered. Her panicked eyes continued to dart from gruesome vision to vision, the entire world seemed bathed in blood, and the smell of death and excrement made her vomit.

“What I want is for you to be my emissary. I need a new one, and the three of you were invited here to audition for it. From time to time, it becomes necessary for me to…retire…my emissaries. They have a, shall we say, limited period of use.”

“I don’t understand,” she sobbed.

Tobar sighed, as though disappointed with having to explain a simple thing to a child yet again.

“Emissary! An agent. I need one to handle certain business matters that, due to my nature, I am unable to attend to personally. In return, my emissary is afforded certain privileges. A life of luxury, for one. A very long life. And yes—as I can see you are asking the question to yourself—I will feed on you, making you mine in a very special manner.” Tobar circled Lily, running his long fingers through her long cornrows. She couldn’t stop shaking and sobbing. “I need your decision. Please don’t disappoint me.”

Her life was over. If she agreed, she’d become in thrall to him, and would never have the life she’d worked so hard for. Never have the family she’d always pictured, with the ‘American-dream’ home and lifestyle she’d been sold. Never see her mother, her friends, or anyone or anything that she’d choose for herself. A life of servitude to evil. She thought of her heritage, and the generations of ancestors who’d lived as slaves to other monsters. She felt her fear subsiding as her anger and pride rose up in defiance. She knew what her answer was, and she laughed at him.