Month: September 2026

Jeff Weddle

A Taste of It

Here is the secret history of the world.
Here is the memory shared by no one living.
Here is Curtis hiring me
at The Prestonsburg Post
because he was needed the help
and I was desperate for a job.
Here is meeting George and Elizabeth
and drinking the night away.
Here is me writing about Abe Smiley dying
and a woman buying the paper
just for that story
and Curtis giving me the fifty cents.
Here is Curtis telling me I was a writer
and me believing him.
Here is the San Francisco night in Vesuvio
when I yelled at George
to go fuck himself
and big Special Forces George
started crying, right there in the bar
as Curtis drank his beer
waiting for the storm to pass.
Here is the first time we shunpiked
through the night
and all the times that came after.
Here is George sleeping on my floor
because he had nowhere else to go.
Here is the time we three drove to Key West
on my three hundred dollars
and George’s food stamps
and we grilled filet mignon
beside the road like kings.
Here is the fifty dollars we earned
listening to a time-share pitch
that went on for hours
until I finally told the guy
there was no way any of us
were ever going to sign anything
and besides we were unemployed and broke.
Here is the other Key West trip
I won’t tell you about.
Here is the time Curtis hid in a bathroom
while a stinky old man tried to fire him from a paper
his sleazy lawyer son owned
and the old man had a massive heart attack
and died.
Here is George doing CPR
and cleaning out a wad of spit and tobacco
so he could do mouth-to-mouth.
Here is the year Curtis kept that job
because no one ever knew what happened.
Here is the time we all lived in Alabama
and only Curtis was working
so he was the only one who ate well.
Here is the time George’s car died
and we had no money
and George found an old tuna can lid
on the ground and fixed it.
Here is the time George and I
were the ExitGuys,
driving up and down Interstate 65
between Athens and Birmingham
selling ads for a tourist guide we made up.
Here is George and Curtis finally publishing it
two years later and keeping the cash.
Here is the time George got cancer
and found a doctor in Italy to save him.
Here is Curtis dating Audrey
and leaving her for Donna,
whom he loved until she died.
Here is George marrying Donna’s sister, Cathy.
Here is George maybe throwing a cat
out of a moving car, and maybe not,
but the cat went out the window either way
and was not seen again.
Here is George sleeping with two women
I loved.
Here is George disappearing
into Costa Rica.
Here is Curtis calling to say
George was dead.
Here is Curtis dying in his sleep.
Here is the secret history no one ever knew.
Here is the bare minimum.
Here is the world as it was and will not be again.

Liz Craig

deeper because

For Caleb

I feel deeper because of you,
each splash of your tongue on my system
soaking through the car seat pores.

The top shelf behind my belly button dizzy
somersaults when my inner voice is yours
speaking about thrust, licking, all day.

My pants warmer and my phone loud for
two hands of freedom, for letting
gushing flow when I bubble over,
fingers pruney, toe muscles and cockpit cramps.

There is scantily a word for when
you’ve rubbed until it’s see-through,
carving such a valley, peering over the edge –
one can almost make out my base.

Bruce Pinner

Beyond Freedom and Dignity

By Christmas Eve I had been awake for over 48 hours and things were starting to get a little blurred around the edges. We were at Little Anthony’s room at the Princess Motel. Me, Carl, Billy T., and Ricky were working our way through a batch of Anthony’s bathtub crank while he showed off his latest acquisition, a young runaway from Fontana named Justina. Justina was wandering around the room aimlessly wearing only filthy, loose-fitting bikini bottoms, her long hair tangled in greasy fuck-knots from being repeatedly violated by Ricky and Billy T. while Little Anthony taped the festivities with a stolen camcorder. Little Anthony claimed to have found her hustling outside the Friendly Tavern, and over the course of a week broken down her personality and brainwashed her using a particularly potent strain of LSD (“approaching CIA quality,” he had gloated) and mind control tactics he learned at the School of the Americas. The room was littered with various types of restraints and sex manuals, several books by B.F. Skinner, an assortment of dildos, rubber masks, and a large tank of nitrous oxide from a dentist office we had burglarized.  I never stopped to consider why Anthony had all this shit in his room to begin with. I stopped trying to figure people out a long time ago. 

“Watch this,” he had said earlier that evening, stepping naked from the jacuzzi tub and leaving us there with Justina, passing her roughly back and forth among us. When he returned he was wearing a rubber Hillary Clinton Halloween mask and holding a small tape recorder. He switched the tape player on and “Turkey in the Straw” began to play, and Justina immediately started to shriek and thrash around the tub uncontrollably. Little Anthony did a little jig around the edge of the jacuzzi, his limp cock bouncing and slapping against his thigh in rhythm with his palsied movements. Justina began to scream louder, clawing at her eyes with her dirty fingernails and hyperventilating in terror. 

“Okay, we get the idea,” Ricky said, obviously impressed. “Now make her shut the fuck up!”

  Little Anthony shouted “Justina! Platz!” and she sprinted out of the tub and crawled under a table in the other room, shaking and breathing heavily. I was less than impressed with Little Anthony’s display of mind control over Justina. I explained to Ricky that Little Anthony hadn’t actually brainwashed her at all, only traumatized her into a dissociative state of shock. Conditioning and shaping an individual’s behavior is a slow and meticulous process that requires and ongoing regiment of reinforcement and punishment to have any significant and lasting effect.  It’s not something you can pull off in a week with a few hits of acid and a bag of dildos. Naturally she will suffer for years from her painful ordeal at his hands, something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, but she would definitely recover and she was definitely not brainwashed. 

Ricky rose slowly from the tub and leveled an accusing finger at Little Anthony. “Is that what you did? Are you practicing pseudo-science here?” 

Before he could answer Ricky picked up a cattle prod from the bathroom sink and chased Little Anthony across the room. He cornered him near the door and repeatedly shocked him, bellowing “What did you do? Tell me! What did you do?” Little Anthony collapsed on the floor, covering his genitals with his hands and screaming incoherently through the Hillary mask. Billy T. grabbed him by the legs and dragged him to the other side of the room and handcuffed him to the bedpost, and we took turns beating and torturing him for a while, violating him with the same sex toys he had used on Justina. 

By early Christmas morning the novelty of having a new slave to play with had worn off and we had become bored of tormenting Little Anthony. Ricky dressed Justina and gently led her to where he lay on the bed, trembling and pissing himself in terror. “I want you to finish him off, “he said, handing her his belt. She dropped the belt at her feet and stared blankly ahead, tears welling in her eyes. Ricky picked up the belt and placed it back in her hand, then produced his switchblade and held it to the side of her throat. 

“I said… Beat… Him… Now!” 

Justina hit Little Anthony slowly at first, sobbing loudly as the belt bit into his flesh, but as we yelled encouragement to her she soon quickened her pace, the large brass Harley Davidson belt buckle striking his back and tearing off large strips of skin. We had to step in and stop her when she began beating him in the head with it, afraid she might actually kill him. 

We left Little Anthony tied up in the room and walked across the street to have breakfast at Dennys. No one was very hungry because of the massive amounts of speed we’d been ingesting over the past few days, and we sat there pushing our food around on our plates with our forks, no one saying anything. Justina began to scream again when Ricky threw a ketchup bottle at a waitress, and we were quickly asked to leave the restaurant. 

Out in the parking lot Ricky hot-wired a car, some nondescript Japanese model that wouldn’t draw any attention. He placed Justina in the driver’s seat, buckling her seatbelt and selecting a radio station he thought she might like. He set a pile of bills on the dashboard in front of her, then cupped her face softly in his hands and tilted it up to meet his eyes. 

“Today is your lucky day. Drive away from here and don’t come back, ever. You’re going to forget everything that happened here and tell no one about it. Not the cops, not your family, not your priest, no one. Do you understand?” 

Justina nodded her head to show that she understood, but whether or not she really got it was anyone’s guess.  

“Oh yeah. Have a Merry Christmas,” Ricky said, thrusting his hands in his jeans and turning away from the car window. We watched Justina weave the car slowly out of the parking lot and head toward the highway. When she had disappeared from sight we turned and slowly walked back to the motel.  Back to our friend Little Anthony.