Glendale Cantina, Marijuana Merchant Roast Beef Enthusiast

Glendale Cantina was visited at his emporium by a traveling salesman sporting a Jelly Roll hairdo and a rather flamboyant pair of winklepickers. He had come hawking papier-mâché sculptures of horses with mermaid’s tails.

“See here,” said Cantina after the man, who identified himself only by the name of “Sneed,” had made his pitch. “I appreciate the opportunity, but I’m afraid that, in something of the manner of a dog chasing a car under the mistaken impression that it’s a potentially savory piece of prey, you’re barking up the wrong metaphorical tree. This isn’t an art gallery – it’s a cannabis dispensary!”

“But that’s exactly my point,” said Sneed. “Only someone buzzed up on the devil’s lettuce could take a shine to a monstrosity such as this. Yet, once they do, they’re liable to find it utterly mesmerizing, and the next thing you know, you’ll have a lucrative sale on your hands. Believe me, I travel the country four seasons out of the year selling these abominations, and to a person, my most loyal clients all work in the cannabis sector.” 

“I see your point,” conceded Cantina. “The only problem is that for the price you’ve named, I only have enough money to afford a single sculpture.”

“That’s no problem at all! At the 500% suggested retail markup, once you sell that single sculpture, you’ll have enough to buy five more, and that’s when the cash will really start rolling in. Soon, you’ll be as rich as a truffle-stuffed bonbon.”

“That does sound pretty sweet,” conceded Cantina. “I suppose I’ll have to give it a try.” 

Forthwith, the wholesale transaction was completed, and the satisfied salesman departed in his maroon DeSoto Firesweep with the ragtop down. Cantina, meanwhile, hung the papier-mâché horse-mermaid from a hook in the ceiling intended for potted plants and then, while he waited for his first customers of the day to arrive, sampled some of the new products that had just come in on the overnight express from his top Central Asian supplier, the Old Kandahar Toker Brokers. Before long, he was as high as a kite at the beach on the Fourth of July, and that was when the sculpture really caught his eye. 

“Woah,” he said to himself, regarding it. “It’s a horse, but at the same time it’s a mermaid. It’s almost as if I had a mermaid’s tail, but at the same time, I was a horse instead of a man, which would be amazing because I could gallop down the beach with my mane flowing in the breeze and then, when I’d worked up a nice horse sweat (assuming I didn’t suffer from anhidrosis), plunge into the sea and paddle all the way down to the bottom. Just think of the creatures I might meet there. A giant siphonophore, for example, or maybe even one of those adorable flapjack octopi.”

Momentarily, the bell hanging from the top of the door jangled and in ambled Veranda Smithereens, the retired Kiwanis Club boxer.

“Top of the morning to you,” Cantina greeted him.

Smithereens tipped his cap. “I’m here so early because my puncher’s elbow is all flared up, and as you know, nothing eases the pain like a few huffs and puffs from the old hot stick.”

“I’ve got great news, in that case,” came Cantina’s reply. “A hot-off-the-presses strain of Himalayan Super Boof just arrived as part of my latest shipment from the Toker Brokers, and I have a feeling it’s going to do wonders for that tender hinge of yours.”

“I thought Super Boof was mainly used for inducing sexual arousal.” 

“Normally that would be true, but this Himalayan strain hits different. Moreover, the first dose is on me. After all, once you see what sweet relief it supplies, I have no doubt you’ll be hooked.” 

“That’s why I like to do business with you, Glendale,” said Smithereens. “You’re not just some sleazy drug dealer who tries to create dependencies in your customers and then exploit them. To the contrary, you’re an honest merchant, and a mensch.” 

At that, they blazed up a big fat spliff packed tight with the aforementioned Super Boof and passed it back and forth a few times.

“Hey,” said Smithereens, coughing out a cloud of blue-green smoke. “What’s that crazy thing hanging over there by the window?”

“Oh, that,” said Cantina. “Some sculpture I bought this morning from a traveling salesman with a Jelly Roll hairdo and a pair of winklepickers pointy enough to poke a hole in a car tire.”

“Interesting,” said Smithereens. “I can’t help but notice that it’s a horse, but at the same time, it’s also a mermaid.”

“You’ve got that right, bub.”

“Nevertheless,” continued Smithereens, “the more I gaze at it, the more I feel like it’s not just a horse that’s also a mermaid. It’s also an approach to living. In other words, why does a horse just have to be a horse when there’s so much out there in the universe, such as the ocean. What I’m trying to say is, we’re all like that horse deep inside. We go about our days and nights trotting over dry land and munching on hay, yet if only we turned around to look at our own behinds, we’d realize we were mermaids, too, to whom all the wonders of the sea are as ripe for the picking as a purple plum.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Cantina. “I acquired the thing on a whim, but once I got to really looking at it, I could see that there was more to it than the mere combination of a horse’s head with a mermaid’s rear end. One way to put is that there’s life, and then there’s life, and that sculpture – that’s life.” 

“How much do you want for it?” said Smithereens.

“Come again?”

“I want to buy it,” said Smithereens. “What’s the price?”

“Oh – I certainly appreciate the interest, old boy, but for all the reasons you yourself have just alluded to, I’m afraid I’ve gotten a bit attached to having it here with me in the shop.”

“I’ll give you ten thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot of green, brother, but you can’t put a price on the things we’ve just been talking about. Life being the big one. Also, flapjack octopi, although I’m not sure we talked specifically about those.”

“Twenty thousand,” said Smithereens. 

Cantina shook his head. “I’ll sell you a cartload of kush any day of the week, champ, but the mermaid-horse is off limits.” 

“How about this?” said Smithereens. “I’ve got a very large truck full of roast beef parked right outside, and if you give me that sculpture, I’ll let you have every last slice.”
“Every last slice?”

“Right down to the crumbs from their crusty little edges.”

 Cantina thought it over for a moment.

“All right,” he said, then. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

As you can probably tell, Glendale Cantina absolutely adored roast beef. Unfortunately, he was also a bit like a fish when it came to the meaty delicacy, and afforded access to what was for all intents and purposes an unlimited quantity of it, promptly ate himself to death.

Zero the Hero, Featuring Special Agent Kandy Fontaine

Special Agent Kandy Fontaine, last seen spooging ghost jizz all over Bareback Mansion, slowed her Jaguati to a stop outside the club. The neon sign flickered, promising delights both perverse and profound. A dive bar promising less than zero. She’d met weirder conditions. 

Inside, the air hung thick with cigarette smoke and unspoken desires, a miasma Detective Joe Oroborus, late of Bone City PD and looking like a raccoon who just lost a fight, navigated with practiced ease. 

Oroborus signaled her over, his face illuminated by the sickly purple glow of the sign. He nursed a drink that looked suspiciously like cough syrup. 

“Kandy, doll, you won’t believe the parade of freaks I’ve seen tonight,” he rasped, his voice gravelly from cheap whiskey and existential dread. “This place is a goddamn circus.” He wasn’t far off; Reynaldo, the World’s Smolest Circus Bear, knew all about that. Tonight, though, the circus lacked the glamour Reynaldo injected through the LucasFilm people and Gaga’s psychic mindlink skills. It was just…sad. Turns out this job was far from the Bizarro bicycle accident that spelled poor Nico’s end.

“Spill it, Joe,” Kandy said, adjusting the sequins on her dress.

Oroborus sighed, taking a long swig of his drink. Said nothing.

Kandy raised an eyebrow, her shocking locks which looked like serpents of blue neon gas somehow reflecting the flop sweat ooze of this bar. “And this concerns a missing persons case…how?”

“Because our ‘hero’ is connected,” Oroborus explained, gesturing vaguely towards the back of the club. “Name’s Victor Sterling. Silver spoon stuck so far up his ass he shits caviar. Daddy’s a senator, Mommy’s a socialite, and he’s…well, he’s nothing. A zero.”

“But someone’s pulling his strings,” Kandy mused, already piecing together the puzzle. “Using him as a patsy.”

“Exactly,” Oroborus confirmed. “And the strings lead straight to our missing girl, a reporter named Lila Monroe. She was digging into Sterling’s finances, and wouldn’t you know it, she’s disappeared off the face of the Earth. Gone to ground, as Amelia Mangan might say.” 

They worked their way through the crowded club, a gaudy tapestry of desperation and cheap thrills. The air thrummed with darkness, that occult mythology Sedgwick explored so well/ Oroborus pointed out Sterling, holding court in a dimly lit corner booth, surrounded by sycophants and the glittering promise of wealth. As they approached, the noise began to drown out the thought, but Kandy was a professional.

“Sterling,” Oroborus said, his voice cutting through the din. “We need to ask you a few questions about Lila Monroe.”

Sterling barely glanced up, his eyes glazed over with self-importance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he mumbled, waving a dismissive hand.

Kandy stepped forward, her cybernetic eye implants gleaming in the low light. “Don’t bullshit us, Sterling. We know she was investigating you. And we know you’re hiding something.” Maybe something so close, they’d recognize what it was all along.

Sterling’s facade finally cracked, revealing a flicker of fear in his eyes. “I…I didn’t do anything,” he stammered, his voice barely a whisper. “She was just…asking questions. I told her to stop, and that was it.”

“That’s not what our sources say,” Kandy countered, her voice cold and unwavering. “We know you paid someone to ‘persuade’ her to drop the story.” 

Oroborus leaned in, his raccoon eyes glinting menacingly. “Tell us where she is, Sterling. Or things are going to get very unpleasant for you.”

Sterling hesitated, his gaze darting nervously around the booth. He was trapped, a puppet with nowhere to run. “She’s…she’s at the old mill outside of town,” he finally confessed, his voice choked with desperation. “They’re…they’re planning to make her disappear.”

Kandy and Oroborus exchanged a grim look, knowing they were running out of time. Justice would be served if they could help it; no matter what “brand of love!” Wayne Dobbins was pushing. As they sped away from the club, sirens wailing in the distance, Kandy couldn’t shake the feeling that they were only scratching the surface of something far more sinister. 

Victor Sterling, the zero, was just a pawn in a much larger game. As Black Sabbath wrote, “Impossibility, it’s a fallacy mother.”

The old mill loomed in the darkness, a skeletal silhouette against the night sky. Inside, they found Lila Monroe tied to a chair, her face bruised and bloody. Two thugs stood guard, their eyes cold and empty. 

Kandy and Oroborus moved with deadly efficiency, dispatching the thugs with swift precision.

As they untied Lila, she looked up at them, her eyes filled with gratitude and fear. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “You saved me.”

“Not yet,” Kandy said, her gaze hardening. “We still have to expose the people who did this to you.”

And as they drove away from the mill, leaving the darkness behind, Kandy knew that their fight was far from over. They had only uncovered the first layer of a conspiracy that reached into the highest echelons of power. But with Oroborus by her side, and the ghosts of Bone City PD whispering in her ear, she was ready to face whatever darkness lay ahead. After all, in the twisted world of Horror Sleaze Trash, even a zero could become a hero, albeit an accidental one.

Hello Flesh

Welcome to Hello Flesh! Whatever your appetite, we feed the hungry. Delivery right to your doorstep or threshold. Through our new partnership with the penal system, we are now pleased to offer Ethical Eatz™ delivered live to your location, free range or bound. Ask a representative for details. 

New customers, press 1. 

Returning customers, press 2. 

{2}

Welcome back. To help us direct your call, please choose one of the following options. Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. 

For Crimson Cuisine, our line of hematological products, press 1

For Necrophage Nibbles, press 2

For Offal Offerings, press 3

To learn more about Ethical Eatz™, press 4

For all other inquiries, press 5

{3}

Please hold while we connect you with a customer service representative. Rest assured your call will not be recorded to protect the privacy of our clients. Thank you for putting your trust in Hello Flesh! 

(muzak)

Hello Flesh! This is Amy, how can I help you?

Hi Amy. There’s been a mistake in my order.

I’m sorry to hear that ma’am. One moment, please, while I look up your account. (clicking sounds) I see you selected the Thai option this week. 

That’s correct, but clearly I’ve been sent Korean. 

I don’t understand, ma’am. I’m sorry you’re not satisfied. Our records show that you were sent the Thai option? 

I’m telling you that even though the label says “Thai” that this is Korean. There’s quite a difference in flavor you know. 

(garbled background sounds) Can you hold please? (muzak plays)

(long slow breaths becoming faster, groaning evident in the background) (calling back to someone else in the room) Calm down. I’m on hold with them now. No! We can’t just go out for Thai. That’s why we had to move to this neighborhood. 

(click) Hello Flesh! This is Kevin. I understand there’s a problem with your order?

Yes, Kevin. I ordered Thai and was sent Korean. I want a refund and a corrected delivery.

(clicking sounds) Our records show that you were sent the Thai option. 

Drop the script, Kevin. Amy already read it to me. (growling in the background intensifies)

I’m sorry that you’re dissatisfied. 

I don’t need your sympathy. Just a refund and the Thai brain I ordered. My husband is sensitive to the preservatives used in pickling. He can’t eat Korean.

What?

Listen, Kevin. (deep sigh) We were vegans before we were bitten. 

It’s bad enough that we are forced to consume flesh to survive now. We care about the quality of food going into our bodies. 

Do you send tainted blood to your vampire customers? 

If you can’t provide fresh brains from healthy donors, we’ll have to take this up with the Better Business Bureau. 

There’s no need for that, ma’am. I can send out a new order this afternoon at no additional charge. 

(muffled sounds, receiver microphone partially blocked) Actual Thai this time?

That’s not my department, ma’am. All I can do is place the order. Fulfillment will take it from there.

And my refund?

Thank you for choosing Hello Flesh! (click)

Bring Me the Meta-Head of F.W. Murnau’s Meta-Head

Anton Shreck was tired, so tired, tired of listening to gossip.

And complaints.

He peered through the sliding glass door that led to the patio and the outdoor heated pool, checking on the girls to see if they were well-cooked yet. 

They were for sure well-secured, and muffled protest pleased him. He supposed on reflection that their frogties, pimp goggles and baroque bit-gags that winked with telepathic mutations were a bit over the top, but the visual gave him a hard-on and focused his powers of chaos magick. 

Soon their juices would  be streaming, blue soup, Goth girls tumbling into the mix, a fleshy fireworks display of sizzle, crackle and pop. And then…

He smiled, and the universe looked like a big titty Goth girl from where he sat batin’ it to the pages of Horror Sleaze Trash.

Then it frowned.

Fuck.

“Why you frown, dawgz? Shit ain’t right!” He did some quick calculations and smiled again. Meanwhile the black acid had begun to kick, with the moons of Tartarus dripping gore candy over their full, round titties, sliding down the stripper pole matrix surrounding crimson fingers of iodine and sulphuric acid. 

Lines of transgression cross-checked their agonies into the motherfucker of all sigils. Juice from the girls powered the ceremony about to begin.

“Let’s get this bish on the road before the whole shithouse goes up, cities on flame with rock and roll!”

He now had to face what was left of the head of German Expressionist filmmaker F.W. Murnau after first the Zeena Shreck treatment and then Alex S. Johnson arriving a few years later with “Bring Me the Shrunken Head of Some Motherfucker,” not published in Horror Sleaze Trash due to prior copyright claim. 

After removal from the family plot in Stahnsdorf, the hot headlight’s bump n’ grindcore ride to a mansion in the Hollywood Hills drove splatter-driven screwball comedy like the liquid expanding phallus of the Mistress of Graves into Kandy Fontaine’s eager, receptive greased and yet simultaneously nameless asshole. 

Sometime actress, full-time vampussy Missy Crampton had smuggled the head inches from her Wicked Candy, passing off the odd crotch-gremlin to TSA agents as a tumid growth. “I don’t really like to talk about Catfish McDaris or his contribution to the Junk Merchants 2” she said later in a press conference. “I actually prefer real catfish. So tasty, and good with salt, lime and butter, y’know?”

Crampton’s flatter-than-fuck bellygutz suffered no metastatic foolish Kierkegaardian of the Gates of Urizen fools gladly, the withering glare she gave the TSA agents focused media attention on the treatment they’d accorded the waif-like starlet, famed for her roles in such films as Ivanna Focker Grrrrlz that systematically interrogated the bioethics of sleaze.

The actress had “soaked up death jizz,” according to Shreck’s narcissistic cabal. 

Butt first fist fuck, PKD grafting.

There was a long story there as well, but Shreck had no time for such nightmare shrapnel, a wench squealing on the roof, in a Brundeflied homage to Rabid and Suspiria. A black leather bondage harness held the moldering head in place as it descended, raining its confetti of glowicky flakes to the floor, a ramp down which slid esoteric skater-bois who had wandered in at the last possible second.

“Attention, ahem.” Shreck spat a fat wad of jisssom onto his henchbeast Wendy McBurgler. “On my instructions, the pool girls will be rendered, their good juices squeezed like Bowie’s hot wad into Mick Jagger’s poutilips ™, and the Murnau-Dickbot graft shall commence.”

“But what if there are complications?” mewled McTurdler, in a voice that closely resembled a butt-hurt Isaac “Dreamboat” Assimov. “Remember the last time we tried suchlike shenans. It really hurt muh belliguts.”

“Silence, slut!”

“I love your dominance,” simpered Wanderlustburger, crawling off to its corner to watch and Norman McBate itself into a puddle of ambiguous fluids.

Shreck blew Dicks. Multiple. He wiped the slime off his lips and continued to take the whole shafts. Quickly running out of orificial ports he…

The body of the Philip K. Dick robot was lashed to my antique electric chair. It just might be the lunatic and drinks YOU were looking for in your pile of old Bauhaus 12 inchers. 

“And a one and a two…”

Murnau’s head continued its journey from the skylight until it sat squarely on the shoulders of Robo-Dicktator Tots.

Outside, Missy “Supersztar” Crumptown was the first to hit the water.

Her flesh bubbled, blackened and popped harder than her tender pushay.

“I’ll get you, Mister Shreck,” she screamed, “And your cybernegative jolenes too!”

A surge of electricity spiked, and the mansion was plunged into hot vats of your hawt big tittay Goth girlfriend.

But something had gone horribly, terribly wrong/right.

No sooner had the knit taken, cubic inches of synthetic cunt fury nerve got jiggy wit dead organic matter and the F.W. Murnau skull, vitally reanimated and flowing wit da nuflesh, tore from Robo-Dick’s body and flew through the air. 

Sigil curse Crampton secreted within Murnau’s head—her terrible revenge against Shreck’s duplicity.

A bolt of blue flame, fire of unknown orgies, blasted forth from Murnau’s mouth and played a dab-fire along Shreck’s body- thrashed features. A junk heap of bone and metal, Cyclatron shit, Shreck crumpled to the ground and lay there, 

Shreck’s cabal, composed mainly of bored necrophiles, dabblers in the occult arts, dropouts from UCLA film school and Ole Zombie Zoetrope regarded the scene with a level of detachment that buggered belief.

“Shit is weak ginger bear” said one of the dropouts. “I liked it better when it was Andy Warhol’s head and Burroughs’ body. Andy Warhole, rather. As in holes. Andy Warhole.”

“That was pretty kewl,” said a skater-bot.

“Hey, look, what’s that sound, everybody look at what the cat drugged him with…”

“What happened?”

A fractal battery of pixel-fucked actresses charred out of the pool. Their eyes blank raylike discs, their intention Al Khemical.

“Time for some hipsters to die like bitches!” roared Krouton. “Let’s get ‘em, girlz!”

THEES EEZ THEE ENT???

The Claws That Catch

I’d been dating Beatrice a few months when she randomly developed an allergy to my cat. Which was strange, as she’d never had a cat allergy of any kind.

That wasn’t officially why we broke up, but it wasn’t irrelevant, either. 

Stacy had two cats, herself. We’d been dating a year when the three of them moved in. Immediately after Stacy’s breakdown, her sister came to collect the cats, as well as the rest of Stacy’s things. Apparently Stacy’s doing better these days, which is a huge relief. I respect that she doesn’t want to hear from me, though god knows I myself did nothing wrong. 

Still. I plan to learn from my mistakes. This time it’s going to be different. 

I sit down with my cat, and speak to him directly. 

“Alastair. I do NOT want to be a bachelor forever. You have to accept that. You have to adapt.” 

Alastair pretends not to hear me, and licks his claw with practiced indifference.

I stay most nights at Julia’s place. She’s never slept at mine. But my excuses are getting tired, as I’m tired of making them. There’s nothing wrong with the apartment. It’s clean and it’s safe. It’s perfect, other than the demonic feline who struts around like he owns the place. 

Julia’s sleeping in my bed for the first time. I’m listening to her breathing, worrying that the sound will stop. But that’s crazy, right? The legend that cats steal the breath of babies is: 

A. A legend 

B. Only about babies

Anyway, Alastair isn’t even the room. It’s not as if he can stop her breath from his place on the living room rug, right? I mean he’s not THAT powerful. Sure he can cause an allergy in a 24-year-old healthy woman, and can drive an even healthier woman to the point of madness, but he can’t literally kill my new girlfriend. Right?   

I get a text, from a number I don’t recognize.

“You are factually correct. Alas, I cannot. Thus the trashy mouse you shagged lies not in mortal danger. I will have my revenge, upon you and she both, but I assure you she’ll survive the night. The question is whether you want her to.”

So he can read my mind. So he can type. With what? His tail? His teeth? His penis? He doesn’t have opposable thumbs, I don’t know!

And the weirdest part is he types exactly as I imagine him sounding in my head. Threatening, yet…pretentious.

I should have listened to the old man who warned me not to adopt Alastair. His broken English makes more sense in retrospect. 

I get another text. 

“PS. Get me more milk.” 

I get out of bed, to do as I’m told. How did Alastair even get my number? And where is he texting me from? Ugh. This fucking cat!