Hundred-Dollar Grilled Cheese

I think offering seventy-five percent below asking price is generous. And when I only offer someone fifty percent below asking, I think I deserve a thankful handjob in return at the very least. People’s standards have never been lower and that gives people an arbitrage opportunity to turn something bought for two dollars into something sold for a hundred. Not many have the confidence to pull off the low-ball. But I do. And I do it left, right, center.

It’s because I was raised different from everybody else. Tougher, than everybody else. When I turned six, my old man handed me two dollars in small change and said I couldn’t come home until it was a hundred in medium-to-large bills. He was the kind of dad that parented on the outskirts. The kind that left an impression through hard knocks, like someone who punches the pinball machine instead of using the bumpers. And I knew my dad was serious about his two-dollar bullshit—because when I came home the next day having spent my two dollars on a corner store grilled cheese, he whooped my ass like a pinball machine that ate all the cash he had in his pocket. 

I learned quick that, to survive, you need to make that two dollars into a hundred. It’s not easy at first. But you can pull it off if you want to live. The first summer my dad threw me out, I mowed lawns. And in the winter, I’d shovel sidewalks. Pocket change from the neighbors and landlords, that’s all I got at first. But then, I’d make conversation. Widows would give me more when I’d show the welts on my forearms. The married men, or men like my father, or ones that wished they had the stones to be like my father, would also give more when I’d show the welts on my forearms—but only if I’d say they didn’t hurt much. To survive, you have to realize that human life is the product and all I did was learn how to sell it better than anyone else.

But shoveling shit won’t get you far in either summer or winter. You need an opportunity to take something cheap and sell it for a lot more. That’s how everyone else made money, at least. So I’d steal from the corner stores, things other than grilled cheeses. In the South End, I’d stuff candies and cigarettes into my pockets. You know, things that kids would kill for. Then I’d hang around the high schools in the North End and sell it all. I’d always hawk something cheap, something I could steal outright if not practically, to sell it at a markup. Arbitrage. And I made a killing.

Looking back, it wasn’t about the money. Not at first, because when I’d come home, it wouldn’t be my money anymore. I’d show my dad the wad of ones, fives, tens, and he’d transform it into objects only seen at the cusp of a South End kid’s imagination; new snow tires, tobacco-stained teeth, booze that’ll make you go blind, and women—girls, more like. All for the man of the house, he’d say. For the guy who’s smart enough to parent at the outskirts, who’s smart enough to punch the pinball machine and get his knuckles bloody every once in a while.

But before long, he hated that I’d learned how to make money hand-over-fist. When I got old enough, he’d send me out on a Friday afternoon and I’d be back home by midnight. His parenting had backfired. The outskirts of fatherhood kept encroaching on him at the worst times, when something important was happening for him. Namely when he’d have a girl over and he was getting some strange.

One of his girls, they saw me coming in with a wad of cash and it was like they hadn’t seen my dad altogether. Is that all it took to get some strange, just some small-to-medium-to-large bills? Money didn’t matter to me. It was cheap. But strange? That was important at the time, sure. Worth something. So, arbitrage. I offered her fifty-percent less than what she charged my dad and she agreed to a handjob because her standards must have been low since, after all, she was fucking my old man. I’d like to think he respected the move. But then he just whooped me, anyways.

It was then that I arbitraged myself all the way out the door. And in return for never coming home again, I had a hundred dollars all to myself. In large bills, this time.

See, a lot of people want to hire a guy who can turn two dollars into a hundred. And as always, the key is finding things that are only worth two dollars, things you can practically steal. Used cars, misplaced jewelry, deceased parents’ property. Things people want to get rid of since they don’t want to consciously think about them. And because they can’t think anymore, because their expectations for the future are rock-bottom, everything can be bought for only a couple of bucks. Fifty percent below asking. Seventy-five, preferred. And with a spread like that, you just need to perfect the low-ball. Or at least have the confidence to throw it.

When I found my niche, my business, the one I’ve been doing for three decades, all it took was confidence. All it took was remembering what I learned as a kid—that human life is a product and you’ve got to sell it better than anyone else. And if you want to get that arbitrage, that good spread, you’ve got to steal it.

Listen. You, the one sitting at the end of the stiff’s hospital bed, the person whose expectations for the future are rock-fucking-bottom. I just need sixty seconds to change your life:

One word. Organs. Heart, lungs, the humble liver and kidneys. People need them. Don’t you agree? And people like your ( spouse / child / lover ), in their present ( comatose / post-mortem ) condition, they have no use for them. It’s sad to say, but let’s face it, they won’t be able to do anything anymore. Except help. Your loved one, they can help someone like nobody else can, like a boy in need of a new ( heart / kidneys, set of / liver ). It’s a big question. But don’t you think your ( spouse / child / lover ) would want to spread some good in this world by selflessly giving away a piece of ( himself / herself / themselves)?

See, a dead loved one—that’s the perfect product to low-ball. An almost-corpse that somebody used to love, something they created, or something they probably fucked; it’s something you can steal, if you’ve got the confidence. That’s the key, that’s always been the key, having the confidence to arbitrage a two-dollar body into a hundred-dollar organ transplant. For me, it’s a killing because, like I’ve said, people’s expectations have never been lower.

When I got into this business, it was a lot tougher. They wouldn’t usually let me in the surgery wing. I’d sit outside on the hospital stoop, waiting for the ambulances to roll in. Then I’d be at the payphone, checking the white pages. Expecting a sobbing wife? Easy sell, just have to work the empathy. A sad-sack husband? Mixed bag. Some of them, you just know they couldn’t find another woman to put up with them, and they’d chase me away while hoping for a miraculous recovery. On the other hand, there’d be the others, the ones who dreamed of girls like their secretaries and the neighbor’s daughter returning from college. Strange, occupied their mind. Those were the easiest, since they’d get both the payout and the reassurance of watching me pull their wife’s plug to make sure the broad flatlined. It’d be arbitrage. Their two-dollar freedom, but my hundred-dollar grilled cheese.

After making my first million, I indulged in the most extreme limits of a South End kid’s imagination; prescription drugs from well-greased doctors, a wife who looks like a girl when viewed from a distance, and a ’79 Cadillac, cherry red, like the one my old man once found off the back of a truck. I couldn’t help but think of my dad. I wanted to give him a call. And I wanted to rub it in. Having a son of your own will make you want things like that, I guess. It’ll raise your expectations from the usual South End dreams and think you’re entitled to something you’d never get as a kid.

When I dialed my old man, I got a home caretaker. One from the state. I thought he’d be in cuffs but he was in a coma on account of his heart, and most importantly he was broke. And you know what that meant for a guy like me? For a South End kid who used to have those welts on his forearms and a handful of small bills for the girls he’d pick up from my school parking lot? For someone who can take two dollars and turn it into something other than shoveling shit? That’s right—it was an opportunity for me to change someone’s life in just sixty seconds. Even my old man’s. Which—for me, for only me, for the kind of guy my old man made me, me—is always a killing. Want to know what he was worth?

A brand new set of snow tires. Got them at a discount, too.

Then half a decade passed after that, as it usually does. By then, it was time to do the right thing. It was time to parent my kid from the outskirts—but more importantly, I wanted some strange, and the only way to do that is to get the kid out of the house. I gave my son two dollars and told him he couldn’t come home until he had a hundred in large bills.

But the little prick had the audacity to ask for more than two bucks. Said I was low-balling him. Wouldn’t leave the house until he got twenty. I threatened to whoop his ass like a pinball machine, like my old man would to recoup a little of the parenting investment. Said I wasn’t the kind of guy to use the bumpers. But my kid didn’t understand what the fuck I was talking about. So I went and told my wife about that bullshit. I said I wasn’t going to waste my life on a kid that doesn’t know when to beat it so I can get some strange. 

But when I asked for some strange, for a second kid to hedge the bets since the first one’s a problem, my wife said no to me. The most she’d offer was a handjob. Which—fuck me—is a real low-ball. And with that news, that shouting match, I just about dropped dead. Just about. 

See, like my old man, I had this heart condition, and it put me in the hospital with one of those caretakers. When I was good enough to talk to the doctor, that surgeon with the greased palms, he asked me if I’d ever thought about changing my mind on becoming an organ donor. Since one of my salespeople had gotten my wife’s signature, they just needed mine, too. Then my kid made a good point. Really sold it to me. They could always wait until I fell asleep again, so wouldn’t it be good to actually help someone for a change?

That’s when I noticed it. The real value of human life, or lack thereof. It’s like one day, as a society, we all woke up with two dollars and needed to turn it into a hundred. Everyone was low-balling each other. Left, right, center. Everyone, from the underage girls to the surgeons, to the widows and married men, everyone’s standards had finally hit rock bottom. Everyone but mine. Which, I’ll admit, presented a sort of arbitrage opportunity, didn’t it?

Higher and Higher

It started with stealing a pen from a bank. Banks helped destroy the country, hoarding honest people’s wealth, stealing their souls. Was anything wrong with stealing from them? No, ma’am. No, sir. The lady was on her computer, looking ditzy when I committed the theft. 

She didn’t notice because she was stupid. I wouldn’t have stolen the pen, but they had none on the customer’s side of the counter. 

Like I said, she didn’t notice. 

She glanced up. “Do you need a pen?” 

Smirking, I said, “I have one.” 

Then I signed the back of my check and handed it to the idiot. She cashed it, all 600 dollars. I lied “Thank you” and whistled on my way out the double doors. The street smelled of sour sewage and spilled liquor bottles. People milled everywhere. Nobody cared for the people they passed. I didn’t, either. That never worked. 

People didn’t matter. I walked through the human obstacle course. The sidewalk was cracked more than anyone’s back. The man in front of me dropped his wallet. I picked it up and walked up the hill to the Highland Sheriff’s Office. The blue boys and girls were busy ushering two guys into jail cells. One was a big boy, the other thin like wire. 

“What did they do?” I asked Sheriff Muller on the way to my desk.  

He was leaning back with a straw in his mouth, boots on his desk, like a wannabe cowboy.  “Stole someone’s wallet.” 

I watched one of the deputy’s push the boys into the dark corridor, where they disappeared. 

“The world’s gone to hell,” I said, taking my seat. 

The Sheriff nodded. “You can say that again, Deputy.” 

I went into the locker room, stole two wallets, then erased the cam footage when Sheriff Muller was on his doughnut-dipped-in-coffee break.

Stealing was empowering and financially beneficial. 

When the sun died, I went to the liquor store in uniform and bought a pint of rum and a bottle of cranberry juice. The employee was a moronic and morose man who had to recount my money three times. 

I sat in my living room, pondering reality. Yes, real reality. We came from nature red in tooth and claw. We built civilization to hide from that Reality. We were animals with canine teeth made for chewing and thrashing meat. We grew like fungus from primordial soup. Now we’re over-conditioned to our authentic selves. Our instincts got confused. Civilization wrapped us in a spiderweb of mental illness. 

After a few drinks, I finally accepted everyone was living inside a backward asylum. 

***

I woke up early and took my white civilian car to meet the street worker Lollypop, on Nile Avenue. She was my first hooker, which I admitted to her. She sucked me off in my car behind a gas station. 

It was liberating…until her tooth scraped me. I groaned and slapped her. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. I smirked, laughed, hit her between the eyes. She slopped over, unconscious. I reached over, opened the passenger’s car, and kicked her out. Her body fell weightlessly. 

What an incredible liberation. 

I arrived at the Sheriff’s Office. Nobody but Deputy Cyndi Mills was in our main office. Work was slow. 

I surfed the web for news articles on people beaten in parking lots. We’d probably never receive a report about Lollypop. She wouldn’t go to the police. 

She did have a pistol-whipping, crack-fueled pimp. But I didn’t give a fuck. 

***

A couple of weeks passed with me committing petty crimes, just playing. The air was heavy. I started to get morning headaches. I seemed to lose some altitude. But then grand larceny happened. 

Mr. Jenkins was an old grouch with a dingy, rickety Ford running on moonshine as white as his beard. I didn’t like him. And he wasn’t any saint, anyway. Mr. Jenkins was a shiner and a pill pusher. One night while he dreamed up jugs, I took his truck to the junkyard, where my cruiser waited. I removed the jerrycan from my car, splashed it onto and into his annoying truck, after finding a big bag of Oxycodone, a revolver, a jug of shine, and four thousand dollars. I lit a match. The flame was the sun, Apollo burning with the other gods. It smashed into the truck, bloomed an inferno. Grinning, I spread my arms to a night as dark as devil boots. And I’ll be goddamned if Mr. Jenkins didn’t jump up from the truck bed, all aflame, shrieking sins, arms windmilling. I waved at his charcoal-fire face, hurried into my car, and sped off watching the fireworks in my rearview mirror. 

***

The next day at the Office I browsed my files, finding a reputable drug dealer and selling Oxycodone to him. I’d always wondered how dealing felt. It was empowering like theft but even more thrilling. Drug dealing was entrepreneurial.

I kept a few pills. They were fun. Most nights comprised shots of whiskey and rum, sometimes chased by cranberries and weed. Twice a week I did snow from a gal in Philly. 

I learned to appreciate the art of getting fucked up. The world was mundane and muddy. The control freaks wanted us to live in a sandbox consciousness, no expansion. That way we wouldn’t know we were living a lie, a socially constructed matrix.  

***

I was off on Saturday and went to the local bar. There was a guy who called my favorite movie—Space without Safety—“a piece of trash.” I overhead him telling his friend. 

Looking over, laughing, I said, “You sure don’t know your movies.” 

He said, “Eat shit and die, dumbfuck.”

“Or else?”

He went to pull out his switchblade no longer in his back pocket. I’d stolen it when passing behind him. My gun wasn’t on me but there was a fifth of booze beside me. I smashed it into his head. 

He was hospitalized where doctors spent two days picking glass out of his face. 

Goddamn, I felt good. 

***

I worked late the next night, driving through one of the neighborhoods considered suspicious. A guy wearing a raincoat stood yapping in a payphone. I stopped my car, put on my mask, and approached. The man looked wide-eyed when my baton busted the glass. He dropped the phone, raced into an alley. I sped up to the opposite side, parked, and caught him at the edge of the alley. My baton broke his hand and nose and one rib.

It was the first time I’d seen someone piss themselves from a beating. 

Once in my cruiser, I licked blood from my baton. 

***

The corded phone rang. 

“Sheriff’s Office,” I answered. 

A weak male voice said, “I’d like to report an assault. Someone attacked me in an alleyway last night. I’m in the hospital with a broken hand, nose, and rib.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir. Let me get your name and info as well as a physical description of your attacker, and I’ll personally see that the person brought to justice.” 

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” He coughed and then provided info. I doodled weapons on my notepad while he described a shadowy figure hitting him “with a stick” last night. I held in my laugh. 

***

There was plenty of nice writings on rape. I liked rape fantasy. Sometimes I watched it, even hentai. Most people hid their true thoughts and motives. Most wanted to either rape someone or be raped themselves. Everyone had a dark kink whispered on some night. But a lot only whispered to themselves and still called the voice a liar. 

Coworkers and I had discussed prison rape and why it was done. Of course, there were gay and bi inmates and those “gay for the stay.” But there were others who did the act merely for sake of power and domination. 

For women, rape could destroy the soul. They called this “spirit-death.” 

I debated whether to rape a male or a female. 

And I realized there were too many crimes and not enough time. Land of the Free. Ha. I’d do what I could, what they never would. 

I disguised myself as a homeless man living under a bridge. Instead of a mask, I wore a tattered shirt, mildewy pants, a fake white mustache, and a stringy gray wig. 

Cotton gloves covered my hands. 

Only a ribbon of moonlight shined under the bridge. I waited in the trash on the opposite side. A few people passed, apparently not seeing me. A minute later, a love dove couple passed. The woman glanced at me, then swiftly shifted her head away. An hour ticked by. The moonlight still caressed a thin walking path. 

It was midnight when the guy approached me. “Get lost, bum.” He looked like a shadow, but I rose and made him follow me into the light. He was 20-something, baby faced, petite. 

He pulled out a knife in a fighting stance too stiff. His hands were small. 

I laughed. He looked surprised. Maybe because my laugh was younger than my masquerade. He stepped forward. I angled backward. He lunged. I clenched the blade in my hand, then twisted his wrist while kneeing his crotch. I dragged him behind a purple bush. 

“Help!”  

I slapped him hard and put the blade to his throat. “Shut up or I’ll kill you.” I don’t know if I meant that then, but it was possible. I pulled his pants down. He started to get up. I punched him a few times. “Do that again and I’ll murder you. You’re gonna be a proper bitch after tonight.” 

I taped his mouth, lifted his legs onto my shoulders, spat on his hole, and entered. He was a virgin, which was obvious from the tightness and muffled screams. After a minute he opened a little. I pounded him for an hour and came. Then I jacked his cock while still inside, until he came. 

“You never forget your first time,” I said. 

He was motionless, spiritually dead. I had taken his ego and combined it with mine.  

To dispose of the evidence, I dropped his semiconscious body outside an underground brothel.

I was a shadowy bird rising on high, propelled by euphoric empowerment. I looked down and saw cattle nearing the cliff edge. 

***

Rape was so satisfying I didn’t even want sex for another week. But when I did, I craved literal BDSM. 

Murder or Torture, which was the ultimate moral crime? I asked myself for hours but got no answer. The following day I walked the short path behind the Office, meditating for an answer. I decided murder was the ultimate crime. 

The blinking neon signs and cars made the street look like a broken strobe light. Turning off my bodycam, I cruised to the fridges of the city. My pistol, its safety off, lay in the passenger’s seat. Adrenaline hammered my heart. 

Murder was necessary to prevent overpopulation. Murder inspired countless artists. Murder had its own genres in entertainment. It showed us what could happen. It helped us appreciate the days we weren’t murdered. 

Murder was a leisure from antiquity, when more birds flew. 

I’d held guns to several people during arrests. All cops think about pulling the trigger too fast if they’re on the force too long. I almost shot a few suspects, almost. 

The jackass was on the side of the road, thumbing vehicles. After holstering the gun, I stopped my cruiser beside him. “Where you heading?”

He was middle-aged ruggedness. “Tarcon Terminal.”

“Hop in.”

The dumbass did. 

I took a hard left turn. 

His face broke out in puzzles. “Oh…it’s the other way.”

Flashing a genuine smile, I said, “I know a shortcut.” 

He nodded because he was naive. 

We stopped where the land dried into a desert. Quickly I pointed the barrel at his forehead. He raised his hands. I ushered him behind a rock, where I shot him dead after he begged for his life.

Performing murder was less arousing but more euphoric than rape. It was surreal, indescribable, holy. 

I was the crimson bird flying up to heaven while cattle fell to hell. 

***

The Office received a call about a gunshot near the desert. Sheriff Muller answered. He and Deputy Frasher drove to the scene. I followed a few cars behind, already expecting the beautiful sight. There it was…the feds’ black vans. Sheriff Muller was arrested on the spot, beside the body in the black bag. Obviously, I hadn’t used my own gun. The prints linked to him. And whose baton do you think had been used in the alley? The front of a stainless steel lighter found in Mr. Jenkins’s burned truck read, Muller. 

The prints, the lighter, the baton, and the gun belonged to Sheriff Muller. That was a fact. 

He would be going away for a long, long time. But I was his replacement. The Office threw a party for my first day as the boss. They were confident I’d boost morale and keep the streets safer than Muller had. I dealt with the increased workload while planning to soar even higher. 

I was starting to think certain forms of torture were superior to murder. 

I spent four months plotting my next move. I had become a well-respected Sheriff, receiving two Outstanding Citizen awards from the community. Before being deputized, I had been a city cop walking the same beat day after day. Usually, three times a month I’d make an arrest, mostly for domestic violence or theft or harassment. Eventually I accepted we weren’t stopping “crime” as much as we were stopping authentic human behavior, the real gems and grits before the over-conditioning…before the indoctrination, the pieces that fell through the filter. Cops were pillars for the filter, which hid the ultimate Truth: being good didn’t do you any good. I learned this the hard way, in my old days (call it past life) of sainthood. 

I kept hiding my own nature even after accepting that criminal activity was the reality of humanity, a beauty of the cosmos. I just didn’t care to stop crime anymore. 

***

This evening, I kidnapped a newlywed couple. I was doing them a favor, right? Marriage was an oppressive institution, an enslavement. Most ended in divorce, the lucky ones. But the scars never healed, only killed. At least they’d die before learning their love wasn’t real. 

Their dangling bodies shivered and hung nakedly from chains welded to the ceiling. The room had walls painted frosty blue with streaks of orange. They screamed, slobbering under gags. 

I pointed the liquid nitrogen freeze gun at the dear lady. The couple writhed like electrocuted worms. They squirted piss. I’d never seen so much terror. I pulled the trigger. The cryogun made a pressurized hiss, turning her leg into an ice block. Still, she was conscious, her red screaming face contrasting the frost nicely. I strolled to the rolling cart and fetched my chisel, then went to work on her leg. She shrieked, vomited, mumbled, wheezed at each hit. Frosty leggy glass piled onto the concrete. Then I froze her other leg—whoosh—and smashed it with a sledgehammer. It fell off as two ice blocks crusted yellow and red. I removed her gag. Her dolls eyes blinked at me, and she wheezed, “Kill…me…please.” 

Suddenly I had my answer: torture was the ultimate crime. 

I started the same act on her husband. He passed out before his first leg could be chiseled away. When I turned to her, she was lifeless. I left and locked the door to save him for later. 

***

But I know I can go even higher. There’s world destruction. I’m climbing fast. I’m looking around. Who’s going to stop me? I’ll burn the world to ash and bust through the ozone. 

Takin’ Care

“I wouldn’t treat you like that, sweetheart,” Paul began, as they arrived by the dumpster behind the bar. The disheveled and emaciated camouflage clad middle-aged woman who picks cigarette butts from the parking lot had just offered Paul what she was sure he wanted, what all the day-drunk baby boomers wanted from her mouth, which might have been pretty, before the hydros and dry rot took her teeth.

“Naw darlin’, I respect ya too much for that,” he went on, “besides, them other fellas are sick. They’re just takin’ advantage of ya.” After saying this he shook his head. “That’s not me. I’m here to take care of ya.”

Paul stood looking expectant and sly, with a plastic bag dangling from his hand, and the woman began to wonder what he was about to propose. Most of these old guys don’t even get hard, and she was sure he was no exception. Usually, they just stand there, hands on hips, playing their part, and after a minute or two, tap the top of her head, hand her a twenty, and return to the bar, where they laughingly tell their buddies about ejaculating into her eyes and hair. Surely, she thought, Paul wasn’t going to proposition her for sex.

“Like I said, I’m here to take care of ya, darlin’,” Paul explained, as he handed her the bag. “I’m givin’ ya a meal, a little somethin’ to eat, and I’m still gonna pay ya.”

The woman reached into the bag and withdrew two sleeves of Munchies BBQ peanuts and a bottle of castor oil. “See?” he asked, with rhetorical reassurance, “It’s nothin’ sexual. You get that there in ya, and in twenty minutes or so, I’ll come back here—right here—so’s I can watch ya do your business. That’s it.” She decided that this was the strangest proposition she had heard, but not the worst. 

Paul stared at her with intense fixation as she painfully tried to gnaw the spicy bar nuts with the remnants of her rotted molars. Each time that she coughed, trying to swallow whole and half-whole peanuts, Paul would interject, applying an exaggerated soothing tone to his gravelly voice, “Aw, that’s alright, darlin’. Don’t choke now, you just swallow some of that there oil back. That’ll help.” As she struggled gulping back the liquid, he gently placed his fingers against the base of the downward tipped bottle, continuing his baby-talk, “That’s right, that’s right. Drink it up, now. Good girl.”

After the peanuts and oil were gone, Paul issued a stark warning, “Now, darlin’. I’m goin’ in there to finish my drink; in about twenty minutes time, I’ll be back out here for ya. Don’t matter how much ya gotta go, if I come back and you’ve already done your business, you’re gonna owe me twenty-five dollars for that there oil an’ them peanuts.” She noticed that, as he said this, his hand was clenched in a fist, which was pulsating with jolts of tension that momentarily whitened his hairy knuckles. “Trust me darlin’, you don’t wanna cross me. Understand?” 

She was already experiencing stomach cramps and intense nausea but, sensing that Paul was the strangling type, she nodded in agreement. “That’s a good girl,” he replied, “Now, don’t you move, and I’ll meet ya right here.”

Paul returned to the bar, endured ribs from fellow alcoholics who had their own theories about what he was doing by the blue dumpster, and then anxiously exited for his appointment. The woman was on her fours in the parking lot, which was dotted with old chewing gum, and sharp with leftover traction sand from the winter. She was swaying back-and-forth and visibly shaking as she shuddered out cyclic breaths while sweat droplets dripped from her nose. Paul bent and looked at the rear of her grungy denims. “Good girl! Good girl!” he said, pulling a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket. “Now, show me!” 

The woman ripped down her pants, and before she could settle into a squat, a mixture of sludgy and pure liquid feces shot from behind her and continued spurting down in a high-velocity stream. Paul’s eyes were brimming with delight as he stared at the mess behind her. He paid no attention as she yanked the bill from his hand, and scampered off, while pulling up her jeans, which were wet and stained from the ordeal. 

Paul dropped to the ground and lowered his mustached face an inch above of a prominent glob of feces, featuring a single intact peanut, that was sitting like an island in a small sea of diarrhea. He closed his eyes and inhaled passionately, breathing in the deliciously sultry scent, and feeling its warmth radiating onto his face. He dipped his finger into the pile and began tasting the oily, bitter-salted paste, before scrubbing it around his mouth with the intimacy of someone privately freeing peanut butter from their teeth. As he savoured the flavour, and the coating on his gums, he closed and eyes and moaned with deep satisfaction.

When he returned to the bar, bellows of laughter met him from the table of drunk sixty-somethings who sat waiting. “We saw you goin’ back behind the dumpster, Paul! We know what you were doin’!” 

Paul looked annoyed and retorted, “I’m not like you fellas, I gave the poor little thing a few bucks spendin’ money and a bite to eat.”

After a renewed round of laughter, another man asked, “Just tell us this, did she blow it as good as we told ya?”

Paul scowled, shook his head in disgust, and responded, “Yous guys are fuckin’ sick.”

The New Craze

Redgrave saw the blood first. The floor was a smooth white tile, those little hexagon pieces like you saw in public restrooms. Spatters beaded on their surface or spread into thick Rorschach blotches that reflected the bald overhead lights.

 He noticed the naked woman second because she sat on a little plastic chair further up the hall, moving a bit with music that throbbed in another room. She was pretty with angular features though she wore her brown hair limp and untended now. 

Her breasts jiggled a bit as she shifted slightly, taking his attention from her face. She was probably mid-twenties, and her right shoulder was decorated with a pattern of colorful tattoos. He thought it odd she’d spent so much time sitting for that, but people’s priorities shifted too.

She looked his way, and he almost jerked his gaze away, but the focus in her dark brown eyes was elsewhere, not really on him, not suggesting she’d taken offense at his ogling. Dreamy, he decided, just before he felt the sting in his upper arm.

The big man, bald, shirtless but wearing a black plastic apron had jabbed him with a needle. The man had led him in here with a grip on his upper arm. He looked at his bicep as the plunger drove fluid into the muscle. 

“On up here,” the man said when he withdrew it and took Redgrave up the passage to a seat across from the woman.

“Get undressed then just sit down here,” the man ordered. “Don’t drag ass. The drug’s gonna make your limbs feel heavy for a while.”

Redgrave looked back at the young woman, but she didn’t seem to notice him. He hesitated anyway. The bald man was pulling on latex gloves, but he noticed the vacillation.

“Go on,” he said. “Don’t slow us down.”

Redgrave peeled his polo shirt off as the man gripped the woman’s arm and urged her to her feet. She looked at his gripping hand, confused a bit, but she complied as the man guided her forward. 

Redgrave watched as they moved on into an area at the end of the hall, an open workspace. He felt a little shock as he looked at the blood smears on the walls. The patterns on the floor tiles were even more plentiful and scattered in there. Several white buckets were positioned near large hooks at the space’s back wall. 

A young woman wearing a surgical mask and a white apron of her own stepped to the bald man’s aid, slipping leather cuffs around the woman’s wrists.

“It’s just easier,” the aproned woman said. “You won’t have to support yourself.”

The bald man took the girl’s arms and looped the connecting chain between the cuffs over one of the hooks that extended down from the ceiling. 

Redgrave’s brain fogged a bit, and the voices became distant as he watched the aproned woman select a sharp instrument, a scalpel, its tiny blade sending a flare of white-light reflection as she moved it.

He realized his leg muscles felt soft. If he tried to turn away, move back up the hall, they would give way.

He just watched. The first incision produced a thread-thin red line in the young woman’s flesh, the line thickening in an instant before droplets of blood moved down across her flesh.

Redgrave felt stirrings inside himself then and despite the drug’s effect, he drew in a quick breath as memory projected those old images.

Danielle, Danielle from fourth period English. Wavy-haired, usually wearing glasses, sweaters that weren’t too tight but didn’t hide her form. Her glasses had been off that night. Sweater too, and she had moved on top of him that warm evening, striving to make the most of the tight space in the car’s back seat. 

She’d looked pretty fabulous there as he gripped her hips. 

The window smashed in as she arched her back, those firm breasts thrust forward as the moans escaped her throat.

The jagged chunk of concrete missed, but the shards of glass cut into her, drawing rivulets of blood from her face and neck, running down her breasts. Her blood rained down upon him as he scrambled to grab his shorts and get out to defend her from her jealous ex.

He fought to control his breath now as the scalpel continued to work and the bald man helped the aproned woman with the flaying, patches of skin dropping one after the other into a bucket. The brightly tattooed skin giving way from the shoulder to reveal black-red muscle beneath, dark, gleaming red as the music pounded, a soundtrack for the scene unfolding. 

The woman made no sound. She must have been given the same injection he’d received, must be numbed, but the drug was supposed to provide an energy burst. He wanted to ask, but the people were too busy.

And he couldn’t form words anyway. He just sat, continuing to watch, thinking of what was in store. 

He lost track of how long it took, but when all of the outer layer was gone, when her head had become a ribbed-crimson dome and her form, still so feminine was free, the aproned woman stepped back. 

“We’re going to unhook the cuffs,” the bald man said. “You should be able to stand now. The sprint should kick in soon.”

Sprint…that was what they called the drug. The drug that made this all possible, extended strength and energy…through…the process.

Redgrave breathed in again, anticipating. 

“Come on,” the bald man said. And cuffs were placed around Redgrave’s wrists then arched over the hook just as before. He let his weight sag, relaxing. They said it helped if you relaxed and the drug’s initial numbing effects really meant you didn’t feel much. Then the euphoria was a cannon blast of energy through your system.

He saw that demonstrated by the girl. She had grown steady. It was true. She walked toward the doorway that opened off this work room. In the dark larger room beyond, where the music originated, lights, laser slashes of purples, reds, greens, blues streaked everywhere.

The girl waited only a moment in the door way and then stepped forward into the mass of writhing, fleshless revelers. They twisted with the music, bobbed, twirled in the mad ecstasy that had been promised in the forms everyone signed.

As the scalpel bit into the back of his neck, Redgrave willed the blade to work quickly. He wanted to catch up to the girl and dance with her, watching her form and looking into those brown eyes until they both dropped.