Author Judge Santiago Burdon tells tales displaying his charismatic personality with a sincere simplicity, with intelligence, wisdom, and satirical humour that few possess with pen to paper. “ARCHITECT OF HAVOC” brought me to tears of sadness and tears of laughter at various instances throughout the short stories within these pages because Judge knows how to conduct a symphony of emotions as he tugs at your heartstrings.

Whilst reading, you will be brought to moments of disbelief, questioning the authenticity of Santiago’s memories, of empathy and compassion for the heartbreaking journey of the life of a ‘storyteller,’ and most certainly, Burdon’s words will entice and evoke your memories of tragedy and hardship as well as those of joy and happiness.

So, if you are in search of depth, truth, and wisdom, then “ARCHITECT OF HAVOC” is a must-read, as Judge softens the blows of immeasurable pain, showing the vicissitudes of life that within time, bring us to our sense of self, enabling acceptance not only of the self but of others too whose life choices may not conform to traditional ‘societal norms’ and who many a time find themselves marginilised. It is this tolerance and acceptance, so beautifully depicted, that subtly implies how a troubled past enables the transformation of an author who is the brilliant mind behind his everlasting words and the actions of his great love, and for me, especially as a father, as read within these stories of his love for his children.

Do yourself a favour, BUY THIS BOOK. It is the balm for any wounded heart, any isolated person that you may find both healing and come to know that you are not alone, that you were never alone…

— Noora Salaam, CEO, Founder & Publisher of Writing EDEN

BUY A COPY HERE

Lady Evil: A Fucked-Up Fairy Tale

Princess Cherrypop, whose heart yearned for a vanilla prince and a world scrubbed clean of kink, found herself adrift not on a River of Sparkling Goodness but in a sea of churning biomechanics. The kingdom of Euphoria, once a pastel dreamscape, was now infested with the oily dread of H.R. Giger’s nightmares. Towering, interconnected machines pulsed with a cold, unfeeling life, their surfaces slick with a substance that might have been lubricant or something far more sinister. The air thrummed with the bass of Black Sabbath, not the operatic wail of desire, but the grinding dread of “Lady Evil,” a song that spoke of a place where the wind wouldn’t blow and whispers carried only of impending doom. What fresh hell, as Dorothy Parker might say.

Cherrypop, accustomed to tiaras and tasteful gummies, found herself repulsed. The candy floss clouds had curdled into grotesque parodies, shaped like engorged veins and throbbing organs. Even Mimsywroth, her beloved cat, had undergone a disturbing transformation, its fur replaced with interlocking plates of chitinous armor, its purr a mechanical whir. “Oh, Twatzapooner,” she whimpered, “where is the charm, the glamour, the good taste?”

The source of this biomechanical plague, of course, was Baroness Cuntingham, Queen of Nair. A figure of pure, weaponized perversity, Cuntingham had embraced the Gigeresque aesthetic with unsettling zeal. Her castle, once a monument to bad taste and aggressive pastels, was now a sprawling fusion of flesh and machine, a cathedral of the perverse where the very walls seemed to writhe with a life of their own. She aimed to graft this aesthetic of literal fucking horror, sleaze and trash onto all of Euphoria, a total re-brand, if you will. Cuntingham, in her own way, sought a twisted form of liberation, a world where desire, no matter how deviant, reigned supreme. But Cherrypop, clinging to her saccharine vision, stood in her way.

One might argue, of course, that Cuntingham’s vision was simply a reflection of the world’s inherent darkness, a necessary plunge into the grotesque to confront the anxieties of a hyper-technological age. As Alex S. Johnson might say, “Sometimes you have to look into the abyss, even if the abyss is wearing nipple clamps.” But Cherrypop was no philosopher; she simply wanted her prince and her pastel ponies, dammit!

Cuntingham, ever the strategist, extended an offer. “Join me, Cherrypop,” she boomed, her voice a synthesized rasp emanating from a throat laced with chrome. “Embrace the biomechanical, the perverse, the real! Together, we shall rule Euphoria, not as queens of saccharine delusion, but as goddesses of glorious, twisted desire!” 

Cherrypop recoiled. The thought of abandoning her pastel fantasies for Cuntingham’s world of living metal and throbbing flesh was anathema. Yet, a seed of doubt had been planted. Was her vision of perfection merely a gilded cage, a denial of the darker urges that simmered beneath the surface of every heart, even her own? One could argue that repression breeds a far more insidious form of horror than any overt display of sleaze. Still, even the most compelling argument couldn’t mask the image of the chintz.

Twatzapooner herself materialized, no longer the goddess of fluff and glitter, but a being of cold, hard light, her features sharp and unforgiving. “Cherrypop,” she intoned, her voice echoing with celestial judgment, “your purity is your strength. Resist the Baroness’s embrace, and Euphoria shall be cleansed!” 

Yet, the cost of this purity was steep. As Cherrypop rejected Cuntingham’s offer, the Baroness unleashed her biomechanical horrors. Mimsywroth, now a grotesque fusion of feline and machine, turned on her mistress, its mechanical claws dripping with a viscous, black ichor. The candy floss sky wept acid rain, dissolving the remaining vestiges of Cherrypop’s pastel paradise. Perhaps, Cherrypop mused as she dodged a scuttling, spider-like automaton, a touch of sleaze would have been preferable to this.

In the end, it was not purity or perversion that saved Cherrypop, but a bizarre fusion of the two. Recalling a half-remembered ritual from a dusty grimoire, Cherrypop embraced the biomechanical horrors, not with adoration, but with a detached, clinical curiosity. She saw the beauty, the artistry, even the humor in Cuntingham’s twisted creations. She saw that even the most nightmarish landscape could hold a strange, compelling grace.

Using this newfound understanding, Cherrypop reprogrammed the automatons, turning them against Cuntingham. Mimsywroth, freed from its biomechanical shackles, reverted to its fluffy, purring self. The acid rain ceased, replaced by a gentle shower of glittery oil that nourished the land, creating a landscape that was both beautiful and bizarre, a fusion of Cherrypop’s saccharine dreams and Cuntingham’s biomechanical nightmares. Euphoria was saved, not by a prince, but by a princess who dared to embrace the sleaze and trash within herself.

Perhaps, as Black Sabbath suggested, there was a “Lady Evil” in us all. Perhaps, as Alex S. Johnson implied, it is only by confronting that darkness that we can hope to find a glimmer of something truly beautiful. Perhaps, after all, a little kink never hurt anyone. Unless, of course, it involves rusty surgical instruments.

Plague Bitch

Detective Joe Oroborus winced.

“Please tell me you’re not actually going undercover as a stripper…you’re bad enough as it is with the polymorphous perversity, God only knows what you’ll be like slicking a pole with your twat juice…”

“Check you out, honey. You’re starting to sound exactly like me.”

Detective Oroborus looked like he was going to burst into tears.

“D-did I actually say that?”

“D-did you st-utter bitch?”

“How can you be so cruel?” Detective Oroborus fished inside his grimy black denim jeans pocket for an even grimier handkerchief–monogrammed with the initials “S.G.” in the corner–and blew out a copious amount of snot.

“Oh Jeesh, I hope those Chinese nanoparticles or whatever the Wuhan Tang Klan shenans is responsible for this latest batch of the ‘rona stays far, far the fuck away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Detective Oroborus. “At any rate, you’ve always done exactly what you wished, and this gig is no exception. Just remember, don’t fuck the customers and you should be fine.”

Kandy Fontaine tossed her fire-engine red curls and laughed, long and so slowly that Detective Oroborus found himself watching the hands of the clock ooze to a pre-Cambrian monoculture. 

“But fucking the customers is why I took this assignment. Don’t you get it? I’m a slutty detective.”

She pointed to the pink, ripe, bursting balloon letters emblazed across her chest: “Kandy Fontaine, Slutty Detective.” 

Detective Oroborus sighed. “I mean yes I’m aware or whatever. Guess I’m just in denial about the full extent of it…areas of your life that I just don’t want to know.”

“That’s no fun,” she purred, leaning over to whisper in his ear. “Did I ever tell you about the threesome I had with the hermaphrodite midgets?”

“I believe they prefer the terms ‘intersex’ and ‘little people,’ respectively” he sniffed.

“Shit got messy,” she said, snort-laughing. I mean literally, shit got messy.”

“Oh hell no, Kandy…I mean Detective Slutty…”

“It’s ok, Officer Porker,” she said. “Breathe. Relax. Have a bump.”

“Not here!” Detective Oroborus screeched. “You cannot just openly snort coke in the operations room. What if somebody…walks in?”

“Hell, half the force is on meth anyway,” said Detective Fontaine with a cackle. 

“I guess you’re right.”

“You KNOW I’m right about that shit,” she said. “Anyway, I gotta joan jett muh ass over to Bumpy’s Clown Room and get undressed in the manager’s office, maybe take his rock hard four inches in muh mouth…”

Detective Oroborus shook his head again and did the sign of the cross.

Manager’s Office, Bumpy’s Clown Room

“That was fucking amazing,” said Bumpy the Clown.

Kandy was still bobbing up and down on his knob, mesmerized, making satisfied animal gurgles and grunting sounds.

“I, um…I finished, Sweepea.”

“Sweepea?”

“That is your name, right?”

“Mrrrggglbbb…lurme gert berk toya…” 

“Ok, but I’m really good, Sweepea. You got the job, honey. You start this Monday. I’m giving you Crystal Kaleta’s job.”

“Mrrrrrrgllllbbbbbrr..”

“Right, so… I kinda need to get back to work? If you could just fill out these I9 forms and sign here, and here, and here…” Bumpy slid the papers into Kandy’s hands.

“Oh maaaaan,” said Kandy, protesting as Bumpy carefully pulled his pud from between her jaws. She stood up, wiped slime from her cheeks, sat down opposite to Bumpy’s desk, chewed her lip, frowned and said…”Man, I hate doing forms. If I give you another beejer, d’ya think you might?”

“Yes, yes,” said Bumpy. “But not now. I need to interview the next girl.”

“Fair enough,” said Kandy. “You satisfied muh appetite for cream atm, but I’ll be back.”

“I kind of figured you would say that,” said Bumpy.

*** 

Kandy’s first night as an undercover stripper went by without any unusual incidents, aside from her usual penchant for wild erotic horseplay. But the club was so sleazy that this went unnoticed for the most part. One customer, a man in a tall black hat, seemed particularly attentive. When Kandy got off her shift, he approached her.”

“Say, I like your style, lady,” he said with a Texas drawl. “Buy you a drink?”

“Well darlin,’ said Kandy, “You know the house rules are that we ain’t supposed to date customers.”

“I’m sorry, Sweepea. I respect the hell outta ya, ya know. I’ll just walk away, no worries, you didn’t hear this from me.”

“Fucktard,” said a voice from behind them.

Kandy and the tall black hat whirled around to be confronted by a rangy young man with corded muscles and black and white tattoos for days. A fire burned in his eyes and he let out a terrible raw energy. 

“Leave Sweepea alone if you know what’s good for ya,” said the man.

“Wow, I like your energy,” Kandy said.

The man smiled, a great big overbroad smile with more than a glimmer of psycho.

“I like your energy,” he said. “Do you know that song ‘Tom Sawyer’ by Rush?'”

“Hells yeah, of course I know that song. Everybody knows that song. That’s a stripper song for sure.” Kandy began to swivel her hips and press against the man as she did so. He pulled away.

“No, no, no, no,” he said. “You’ve gone and spoiled it.'”

“No, I have done nothing of the sort. I’m Today’s Tom Sawyer, and I get high on you.”

The man turned around and stalked away. Kandy pursued him.

***

That night saw Kandy brutally fucked in al the ways she liked it…tied down, whipped, gagged, slapped, dominated to her heart’s content till the cream oozed. She could tell this one had to maintain control at all times. 

Halfway through the session, while she was tied to an x-cross, she began to feel a weird energy pass between them. 

A vortex was opening up. A portal in time and space.

She recognized this portal as something she had studied in Astrophysics at Brown before she began upon the course of action that led inexorably towards her becoming a slutty detective. 

The man swatted his own cheek as though a gnat had bit him.

“What the fuck,” he growled. “Felt like an insect bite, but there’s no insect….”

Within seconds he was swatting across his neck and arms. 

Kandy groaned and drooled through the gag.

“Oh yeah, shit, I gotta let you go,” he said. He unbuckled the straps and unfastened the ball gag, releasing her. 

Kandy wiped the drool away with the back of her hand. “You must be a sadist, or you wouldn’t have done that. Shit, I was just getting going.”

He motioned with one hand, then yelled: “Go, bitch, you’re bad fucking news.”

“Suit yourself,” said Kandy. 

***

Kandy’s stripping performances grew in intensity and even menace. An arts critic came to the club and wrote an essay comparing her act to Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty. She began employing sound effects and large puppets that she manipulated from a complex board she set up above the stage. She invited men to come up on the stage with her; she would shout at them and make crazed, freaky animal faces. One customer shat himself with fear. While some art punks began attending her shows and taking notes, most of the usual customers began to frequent the club across town. 

Bumpy called Kandy into his office.

“Listen, Sweepea, we’re going to have to have a little talk,” he began, but Kandy raised a hand.

“I know what you’re going to say, and believe me, I have considered, you know, more and gaudier, even sleazier puppets in the act, and suchlike shenans,” said Kandy. “The thing of it is, and I believe this is literally a law of physics, the more puppets you have…”

“Listen, lady,” Bumpy cut her off. “I like you a lot, and believe me, it pains me more than you would think to say this, but this particular business relationship is not working out. It’s just not. I’m afraid I’ll just have to let you go.”

“Really,” said Kandy. She was wearing nothing but strategically placed black tape and mirror shades.

“Really,” said Bumpy. “I’ve run this club for the past 30 years, and before that, my dad ran it, and…”

“You look like you’re about to cry or some crazy shit,” Kandy said in exasperated tones.

“M-maybe I am.”

“Ok, well, what you have to realize is that…I love this job. I really fucking love it. In fact, I think I will continue on as your best, hottest, sexiest stripper, and you will give me a raise…” she looked hard at him.

“There’s no raise, lady, you’re out of your mind. Now get your things and split.”

“No.”

With that, she pulled out her service revolver from her purse and shot him in the head. His skull exploded, splashing his brains against the wall. He slumped over, vomiting blood, and finally landed at her feet.

She gave his head an experimental kick. She was feeling…she couldn’t quite put her finger on the sensation, but she had the sudden image of boiling yeast, and insects under her skin, and growing wings. A strange energy began to course through her veins. She found herself kneeling down and lapping at the spilled blood the way a cat laps a saucer of milk.

I like the way this feels, she thought. I’m going to be a stripper and a killer and a detective. Maybe I’ll commit more crimes and…investigate myself in a kind of mis-en-abyme deal. 

Is the world ready for the first stripper/killer/self-investigator/hall of mirrors infinitely recursive slutty detective?

Perhaps. 

Perhaps not.

THEE ENT…or is it?