The Morning After

The amnesia was all too familiar. 

I remembered drinking with Todd at a downtown dive bar. Then nothing. Nada. Blank. Zip. Still, I could fit the pieces together. The narrative wasn’t hard to construct. After all, I hadn’t gotten home all by myself. Somebody had returned me to my apartment and tucked me in all nice and tidy. 

Todd. 

A real gentleman. 

It was enough to make me sick. Which I already was, although not so severe that I couldn’t climb out of bed and pad to the bathroom in my stockinged feet. The thoughtful bastard had even removed my shoes before covering me with a blanket. 

Shedding my blouse and miniskirt, I took a long shower and mentally reviewed last night’s failure. No doubt Todd had searched my billfold to ascertain my address. He had driven me home, using my key to unlock the door, and carried me to bed. 

Chivalric prick. 

Of course, he wasn’t the first. I had been treated like a princess before. Granted, Todd was the first to actually enter my apartment. Most guys called me a cab at the bar, others an ambulance. A few had actually driven me to the emergency room. 

Unfortunately, this was the norm. Believe it or not, most folks are decent people. 

I got out of the shower, toweled dry, and put on some comfy sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and a bowl of instant oatmeal. Half the day was shot. I had slept through it all, slumbering like the dead. Not that it mattered. It was Sunday. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Curled up on the sofa, I finished the oatmeal and nursed my second cup of coffee. Familiar street sounds came through the open window of my second-floor studio. Most people would have found them comforting. I found them loathsome. Last night’s dud date had put me in a foul mood. 

I was losing faith in men. 

The city was full of hipster pussies and woke faggots. Momma’s boys, every last one. Effete do-gooders. Scumbags were getting harder and harder to find. It had been months since my last successful hookup. 

Gene. 

A real degenerate. 

I had regained consciousness the following morning behind a dumpster in a trash-strewn alley, my skirt hiked above my hips, my back bruised and bloody from him pounding me against a cement wall. Used. Abused. I was long overdue for another Gene. 

A man who wouldn’t freak out when I started to fade, a man who knew how to take full advantage of the situation, a man more than capable of sealing the deal . . . 

I was contemplating a third cup of coffee when my phone vibrated. Todd. Fucking great. I had hoped it would be my dealer. My supply was getting low. Todd was checking on me. How touching. I visualized him crossing the threshold of my bedroom, carrying me like a young groom with his chaste bride. 

“Give it up.” I frowned at my device. “You’re not my type.” 

The whole thing was terribly confusing. 

I wondered why he—and the others who had failed to measure up—had even messaged me in the first place. My profile on the dating app should have made my sexual aberration abundantly clear. I was nothing if not transparent. Starting with my screen name . . . 

Mickey Finn.

Black Chrome

Lydia Christian emerged dripping from the starfield. She attempted to wipe away the black and star-spackled droplets which felt like rubber against her body, but discovered they had worked their way into her flesh and were worming through her cellular structure.

“This is fine,” she said, a halo of flames suddenly bursting from her head. She sat down before the controls deck of the spaceship and examined the feed.

“Now navigating the Lucipheria galaxy,” said Major Tom.

“Nice name,” said Lydia. “Does she play?”

“All the games.”

“Does she play Black Chrome?”

“Oh yes.”

“And to win?”

“She kills at Black Chrome.”

“Get her online,” said Lydia. “Let’s see how bad the bitch is.”

“So it goes,” said Major Tom. 

The board came online. Lydia picked up the MirrorShades and put them on. Slight burning sensation as the contact points fused with her neural weave.

“Uploading to pain.net and Akasha.net with Reality Hack embedded” said Major Tom.

“Looks like Lucipheria is a Kopy Kat.”

“That is correct,” came a disembodied voice, soon followed by the enormous face of a black panther.

“Good to meet you.”

“Enchanted, I must say,” purred the panther. “In how many moves do you expect to be defeated?”

“I’ve never been defeated at Black Chrome,” said Lydia.

“First time for everything,” said the cat.

“True,”

“Shall I make the first move?”

“Yes.”

In an instant, Lydia was transported to a Reality Studio stage with a live audience. On the stage was a table at which sat her mother at age 36, her at 10 years old, and a math book. Tears glistened on Lydia’s cheeks like diamonds.

“I win,” growled the cat.

“Why in the hell would you expect me to agree with you?” said Lydia, giggling to herself, then bursting out into loud laughter. 

“Because that is the nature of Black Chrome. The nanocircuitry is already rewiring your DNA to express different enzymes based on the recognition of your specific learning disability, dyscalculia.”

“Is that what you think?” said Lydia. But she was bluffing. She could feel the nano ants working inside her. Everything about her current attitude was bravado, including how she had faked her way through StarRider Academy and fabricated her test scores. Her field tests were slightly more difficult to forge, but with the help of a friend on the inside who had a link to an Akasha.net admin, she’d managed that too.

The truth of the matter was that Lydia had done whatever it took to land a coveted commander office, and nothing and nobody, she felt, was capable of defeating her.

Until now.

She looked deeply into the implacable eyes of the panther. She could feel the beast’s hot breath infused through her skin. She began to sweat the rubber droplets which writhed and churned inside her flesh like razors. Her brain was boiling alive with recalled shame as the nanobots, manifested and exuded as avatars outside of herself, began to unmake the pixel content of her form as a represented 10-year-old girl.

But she loved that girl. Admired her for her fortitude in never giving an inch, always learning from other people–and animals, and cyberconscious beings. That girl with the black pigtails and Lycia girlie t was going to triumph even over this local optimum.

“How badly does it burn?” purred the cat. “The shame of it. Your family’s shame. How your mother would beat you up afterwards and then send you to your room, exhausted from crying. You lost sleep, and in the morning when you had school your brain was so sleep-deprived and exhausted your head slammed against your desk. All the other children made fun of you. Mocked your disability, your poverty, the fact that you alone weren’t able to access Akasha.net, which had just come online.”

“It’s true,” said Lydia. She felt sick now. Her stomach was doing flip-flops and her face was burning. “I’m so fucking sorry I let you all down,” she cried, and before her stood her family, her aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and grandparents, some of them deceased, back in a line of savants that stretched back forever. She was uniquely stupid in her entire line. But sometimes she wondered if they wanted it as badly as she did.

Neither of her parents had done anything with the gifts. They’d squandered their time on Earth 2. They were ready for the landfill or worse, the underworld where the Dark Ones roamed. 

“Are you ready to give up yet?” asked the cat, not cruelly but in matter-of-fact tones.

“What is the nature of Black Chrome?” asked Lydia.

“Are you fucking serious? Its nature is ambiguous. Their nature is God. It is us.”

“Correct answer,” said Lydia. In one move she had swapped out the cat for herself. The cat now sat opposite Lydia’s mother, transformed into an enormous female black panther. 

The catmother growled. Her kitten wailed. Glistening tears streaked her fur.

She mewled. 

The catmother lifted her with her teeth by the nape of her neck, dropping her off in the corner of a virtual cage.

Lydia watched with enormous satisfaction as the cage was closed on the kitten’s terrified face.

Despite the fact that she was unable to count the number of years her galactic adversary would be incarcerated, due to her learning disability, she knew it would be many indeed. Lydia now had full range of the Lucipheria galaxy, a fact she intended to take complete advantage of.

Two Smoking Hot Girls

JUNE 8, 1980

Fairfax Boulevard marinated in a vermillion afterglow, touching the date palms, simmering against the show and flow of slick glossy chassis rushing past in an electric stream of posh and style. Designer duds on sun-kissed hard bodies strolled past. Stellas and studs. It was all feeding into the kinetic pulse that rippled through the back lot of Canter’s Deli, and was now vibrating between Stephanie McGrath’s thighs. Stephanie was the early-out. They always had one last cigarette—Penelope and Stephanie, whenever one of them was the early-out. One for the road.

Penelope Wise’s cheeks hollowed as she sucked hard on the tubular white forerunner to emphysema. The fiery tip glowed against encroaching dusk. She blew smoke.

“So…it’s like a throbbing, euphoric ache with a hint of…Technicolor TV static?”

“Yeah”. Stephanie took a drag, and a long exhale. “Throbbing and like a stretching sensation inside…”

“Like your body getting ready for something to go inside?”

“Yeah.”

“Blue walls.”

“Blue walls?”

“Yeah”, Penelope said. “Like what happens to guys. “I’m hip, man. Been there, had that.”

Penelope was hot shit, and she knew it. 26 and laughing at the reaper. As though he showed up to assign her that first set of wrinkles, and instead she gave him the best blowjob this side of hell, and sent him merrily on his way. Brunette and curvy, half Jewish and half guido grease monkey on her mom’s side. But all scrappy broad.

“I don’t know. I think it’s something else.”

“Like what? Coke?”

“No,” Stephanie said. “Nothing like that. Last night I went to that party over at…”

“UCLA. With ah, Patrick?”

“Patrick.” Stephanie choked on smoke mid-exhale when she giggled. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Spill it.”

“It was our third date…”

“Third. First. C’mon, kiddo. Who cares.”

“I…” Stephanie cleared her throat, and lowered her voice, then looked around, and said, “Gave him a blowjob. I tried to give him a blowjob…”

Penelope burst into laughter. “Oh, honey. You have to maintain eye contact…”

“He…You know. Lost his hard-on…”

“Oh sweetie. It wasn’t your fault. But full range of motion…Play with his balls…”

“I just…I panicked and ran off…But I met this other guy. He was older. He kind of looked like my uncle Rod.”

“His name was Rod?” Penelope giggled. “Gross.”

“No. His name was like Steve, I think…But my Uncle Rod was kind of hot. He died in a car wreck.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, kiddo.”

“He took me for a ride on his Harley Davidson on my sixteenth birthday. We rode around my small town back in Iowa. All the girls in school were like He’s so groovy. I’d make out with him.”

“So this Steve guy looked like your uncle?”

“Yeah. And he was like I guess a professor at UCLA, of farm-a…”

“Pharmacology.”

“Yeah. And he gave me these pills…I guess he wasn’t supposed to…”

“What do you mean, wasn’t supposed to?”

“They were like, experimental. Called Adam.”

“Like Adam Ant?”

“Yeah. It was called Adam. It was called Adam, because they felt it returned patients to a more innocent state.”

“Like Adam and Eve?”

“Yeah. It was supposed to get people in touch with their sexuality. I got like so high.”

“Looks like it worked.” Penelope took a drag. “So did you guys fuck?”

“Fuck who?”

“You and Uncle Rod?” Penelope filled in the silence. “The guy who looked like your Uncle Rod.”

“Oh. I don’t know,” Stephanie said. “I don’t remember anything. I woke up naked in my bed. With heart palpitations. And feeling like this.” 

“Trippy, man. Did your drunk asshole old man cash in on your ah…Altered state?”

“Fuck no. He was passed out in his clothes on the couch.”

“Stephaine. Oooh. When are you going to get rid of that asshole? The one time you’re actually horny…” 

“I get horny…”

“He can’t even get it up. C’mon, look at you. You’re rock candy baby…You’re hard sweet and sticky…C’mon look at you. Strawberry blonde…Contours for days. A chassis like a friggin’ Corvette Stingray. Look at those tits!” 

“Stop.” Stephanie looked around the nearly vacant back lot to see if she should be embarrassed.

“Better use it up before it gets old.”

“Oh, look who’s projecting.”

“Oh screw you, man.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Like three weeks. On top of that it’s going to be that time of the month. Like any minute now.” 

This wasn’t news to Stephanie. They spent so much time together on and off shift and on so many smoke breaks, they had the same cycle.

“No wonder you’re so goddamn horny!”

They both laughed.

Penelope grounded out the remnants of her cigarette into the curb. “How’d that audition on Friday go?”

The New Backstage came out every Thursday morning with a list of open calls. Come Thursday at 10AM, Penelope and Stephanie would be hovering over the counter at Sam French on Sunset and Stanley. They’d find the general auditions—ones that weren’t union, and didn’t require an agent. On audition day, they’d get up before dawn to get into a line (they were never first) that stretched sometimes three blocks long. But this past weekend Penelope had to work.

“Oh hoho. Oh…You won’t believe it…” This required another cigarette. Stephanie slid a Virginia Slim between her cherry red lips and fired up the tip. “Okay, so I read the sides. And okay, it’s a guy. The casting director’s a guy. Like how often do you see that?”

“He was cute?”

“Oh fuck no. Total poindexter. Okay, so I read the sides…And then he goes turn around. Let me see your behind…Let me see you from behind, that’s it.”

“Your ass.”

“Yeah, he wanted to see my ass.”

“And?”

“And. I said, I don’t fuckin’ think so. And walked out.”

“So he saw your ass anyway.”

“Oh, okay…”

“So you might as well have shown him your ass, you know…”

“Politely?”

“Yeah, politely. And maybe you would have gotten a call back.”

“Oh fuck that.”

“Who was it for?”

“Oh. The director? Wes Craven.”

“Wes Craven. Oh, you fucked up, man. The Hills Have Eyes. The Last House on the Left.”

“Yeah, okay. Alright,” Stephanie said, sucking in a nice long drag. “I prefer a little more chivalry.”

“Chivalry? You want chivalry go to a Ren faire, man.”

“What? You think you don’t deserve chivalry?” The pulsating shudder Stephanie felt between her thighs gave way to the throaty rumble of high-performance engine. 

“Of course I do,” Penelope said. “Here comes my knight in shining armor now.”

The Cavallino Rampante, a prancing black stallion, was center stage as the front grill of the inferno-red Ferrari plunged into view, searing the edges of their POVs, flexing its muscle in a deep-throated growl. “Four point four V12 engine with 352 horsepower,” Penelope said. “Ferrari Daytona, 1972. Holy shit. That’s Jon Peters.”

“Barbara Streisand’s old man. Total womanizer.”

“Bet you’d show him your ass.”

Jon Peters had style. Watching him get out of his Ferrari was a performance. 

So now Penelope had the newly lit cigarette hanging out at the very corner of her mouth, gripping it by the tail end of the filter. Probably thought she looked sexy. She did. 

“Nobody’s rocked a beard that hot since Jim Morrison,” Penelope said.

A chocolate velvet blazer with a navy blue wide collared shirt belted into Guess blue jeans.

“Check out the blazer. Looks like Yves Saint Laurent.”

“Nah,” Stephanie said. “Halston.”

Both girls were quiet, as he pushed the door shut and stepped up onto the curb. There was only one true test to know if a guy had style, or he was a sleaze: Footwear. Jon Peters had on Gucci loafers.

“Thanks for saving me a space, girls,” Jon Peters said. 

He was staring at Stephanie when he said it. All she could do is stare up at her reflection in the midnight blue lenses of his Carrera aviators. Her work tee had shrunk on the first wash and now she was pitching tent poles.

“Anytime”, Penelope said, as he walked past them. “Come again.” They watched him discreetly slip in through the back entrance. 

Penelope cocked an eyebrow. “Way to show him your ass, Steph. Jon fucking Peters just spoke to you, and you couldn’t even say hello. Total deer-in-the-headlights, man”. She dropped the latter half of an unfinished cigarette onto the asphalt and stamped it out. “I’m totally grabbing his section.”

Reinhardt’s Eager Clients 

The lawyer wouldn’t scream. Reinhardt inserted the silver ring gag to fit snugly inside the lips and force the mouth open like the statue’s. There would be pressure on the jaw and the facial muscles would feel the strain, but the lawyer would get used to it. In the boutique, following his orders, Manfred had examined a wide selection of mouth gag and speculum designs in either black or silver, and had spent time talking with the clerk, scanning pictures of models on the store computer showing how each gag looked when worn. Finally, he chose the one that Reinhardt now locked behind its head. It could make animal noises, if it wanted, but neither pronounce words nor shut its mouth, nor would anyone call it by its usual name. It could swallow but not chew. A mouth funnel could be inserted and attached to the ring for beer, cum and piss. It was ready to receive whatever form of food and liquid refreshment Reinhardt cared to give his pig.

Speaking after a fashion, the wife Wanda writhed and moaned and emitted bird-like sounds on the couch where Jamal had placed her to perform his “cunt specialty.” Before engaging, he secured her nipples between thumbs and forefinger, pinched, rolled, and stretched; pinched, rolled, and stretched. His wide hands covered most of her breasts, as the hard brown nipples ached and stiffened between his thumbs and forefingers. She began kicking her legs. Jamal needed one hand to constrain them. His dog tags popped out from behind his khaki green T-shirt. He wore a soldier’s outfit like she wanted.

The lawyer could not move, its entire body, arms and legs, roped and shackled. Reinhardt had pulled his arms behind the chair and connected the leather wrist restraints; the ankles cuffed the same way to the chair’s front legs. To restrain the torso, he used a yellow nylon rope criss-crossing his chest and knotted from behind. The rope had a smooth texture. The lawyer wasn’t going anywhere. After properly restraining his cuckold pig, Reinhardt inserted the ring gag in its mouth.

Confined to a steel cock cage, its dick bulged but had no room to rise. Who the fuck cared about the lawyer’s dick, anyway? A pathetic and useless appendage exposed through its unzipped slacks. Wear one of your best suits with a white shirt; Reinhardt had left a message on the lawyer’s iPhone. So, it had chosen a grey wool and mohair stretch suit, according to the label Reinhardt read before applying the ropes, dry-clean only, under the jacket a crisp Egyptian cotton white shirt, and a sapphire blue silk tie. Like Jamal, he wore fatigues and boots like a soldier, according to the agreement.

“This is what you wear in court, fuckhole?”

The cloth bunched and creased under the ropes. The lawyer nodded, its brown eyes glistening. Reinhardt knew that the lawyer was slipping into subspace, where he ceased to be an independent, smart-ass lawyer, and became whatever Reinhardt decided. And Reinhardt knew the lawyer wanted to shed the burden of being human and become an animal, a pig or dog. A dog leashed by its master.

Reinhardt and Jamal smoked in the condo, traipsing over the white carpet in their dirty boots. A sudden rainstorm blew up from the east in mid-morning, soaking the streets, splashing the soldiers’ fatigues, so they left footprints on the rug. The dog enjoyed the opportunity to lick the soles of both their boots just after they entered the condo. Jamal bellowed surprise. What the fuck? Reinhardt had pointed to the floor and in his suit, the lawyer, obeying the force of Reinhardt’s silent command, fell on all fours, and then crept to the boots.

“What’d I tell you, Jamal?” He’s a fucking animal. A soldier’s bootlicker. See that, bitch? Your hubby’s a fucking dirt pig, nothing but fuckmeat for a soldier.”

“He sure is, Reinhardt.”

Wanda giggled, watching Manfred proceed with the licking. Wanda said that he deserved a spanking. She showed the soldiers a paddle like the kind used in ping pong, flat black leather with a handle embedded with purple and green rhinestones. Ribbons of the same colour fluttered from the handle’s tip.

Reinhardt looked, but said nothing.

“Hey, there, Reinhardt’s pig or dog, nice to meet you. Don’t forget my other boot.”

Jamal stretched out on the sofa to give the lawyer easy access to the treads of his boots. The animal went at them as if famished.

Jamal examined Wanda’s body in detail as Manfred tongued his dirty black boots. She gained about six inches of height on her stilettos, but still had to look up to giant Jamal, who could lift and sling her easily over his muscular shoulder. Reinhardt had given him permission; he could do anything he wanted with the couple. The hem of her short red leather skirt stretched across her pudendum barely covered by a black thong. A breast man, Jamal admired her bosom ballooning out of a constrictive black lacy corset. Tit clamps with a fine silver chain would look great on those nipples. Did she have any? The lady had dressed for games. He wondered if she also owned a whip to use on her wimpy husband.

“So, you spank your hubby with your sweet paddle?”

“Oh, yes, he’s such a bad boy sometimes, he needs discipline, and mommy gives it to him. Let’s spank him, shall we?”

Jamal winked at Reinhardt, who lit a fag. Wanda spoke sharply.

“Don’t smoke. I told you last time I don’t like it in the condo. Put it out.”

“Hear that, Jamal? The bitch told me to put it out.”

“She telling you what to do, Reinhardt? Be careful, she might spank you.”

“Never gonna happen, buddy.”

Reinhardt grabbed her by the air, pulling it back, forcing her mouth open, and he blew smoke down her throat. She choked and spat. His fingers folding into a fist, and tension hardening his biceps, he refrained from slapping her face, but jabbed the fingers of his free hand into her cunt. He withdrew his hand and rubbed it over her face, her juices smearing her perfectly applied makeup. How much time did she spend creating that face of hers for the public when he could get her on all fours and fuck her ass, if he had a mind, like the bitch she was. Fucking slut thought she was queen of the world. He’d show her what she was. Be the rough bull she craved and paid good money for. Fuck, he did degrade the cunt for nothing. 

The contract specified bondage, discipline, verbal abuse and humiliation within agreed-upon limits, no breaking of bones or blood: that was the rule. Nor did he beat up on women, outside of permitted discipline games like spanking, love taps, and necessary flogging for those into it. Aside from a well-deserved smack now and then, he had never beaten the shit out of a woman, but he knew she wanted to be terrified and threatened. And it was tempting. He knew he could force the cunt anytime he wanted.

That superior look on Wanda’s face, the plucked eyebrows raised, trying to put him down like a toy poodle sniping at a German shepherd, dressed up like a Barbie dominatrix with cranberry red lipstick. Giving him an order. Wanda was going to get it, and get it good and hard. He’d break the rules, he didn’t give a damn, she wasn’t going to the police anytime soon to complain that the man she wanted to fuck and degrade her in kinky play, well, had actually fucked and degraded her in kinky play. He’d show her, though, that he wasn’t playing Barbie dolls in a playhouse condo. Stupid little paddle and her silly corset from a sex shop, and spiky heels. Did she go there to buy the crap herself, or perhaps her husband did, or maybe she found them on eBay. Costumes: Reinhardt almost spat the word on the rug. Was he supposed to shake in his boots? Fuck that shit.

His cock pushed up hard under his fatigues, so did Jamal’s. Together their cocks would fuck the bitch senseless, plough her ass, choke her throat, teach her how to behave and show respect, just like she wanted it, like the terms of the contract specified. They would wipe that supercilious disapproval off her expensively cosmeticized face. She was nothing but his slave cunt in need of a lesson. No smoking, as if he had to follow her commands. Maybe a flogging wouldn’t be a bad idea to begin. Twisting her hair in his hand, she winced and whimpered, he blew more smoke into her face, and shouted to the lawyer.

“Where do you get off telling me what to do, bitch?”

“The smoke…we don’t…” she coughed again. Reinhardt tugged her hair harder.

“We don’t…who gives a fuck what you do or don’t? I do what I want and you do what I want. Got that, bitch?”

About to scream, he stopped the sound by kissing her full on the mouth, exhaling more smoke down her throat, followed by his marauding tongue, and she struggled, choked, and pushed against his chest, and tried to slap his face. That was the ticket. Play the role. He’d train them both like dogs. Why else was he there?

“You’ll get something to gag on, cumslut.”

“Hey, Reinhardt, that cunt needs a good fuck.”

“You go ahead and start. The pig can watch.”

He stood behind the bound lawyer as Jamal led Wanda to a position in front of her husband.

“Ever worry they’ll call the cops?” Jamal had asked.

Last week they had been checking out pussy in the bar, finding nothing to their taste; skanks all tonight, they agreed. Reinhardt had already serviced three customers that week. Jamal, his friend who was new to the kinky escort business, had ordered four beers, and had already gobbled down half the pretzels as Reinhardt told the story of how he first met Wanda and Manfred, and what they did. And how much they paid.

“Nah, we signed a contract.”

“What?”

“An agreement, the rules and regulations laid out, saying what they’re into, their free choice and desire, what I can do, what they expect their bull master to do. If legal shit happens, I can show the contract. See, consensual play, they went into this with eyes wide open. No one’s ever called the law on me.” He invited Jamal to go with him to the next session. To experience kinky play. They both craved black cock in their fantasies. And would pay handsomely for the privilege.

“Listen to this. From the wife, my slave.”

Reinhardt played the voice mail on his cell.

No one fucks me like you, my bull. Please, fuck me. I’ll do what you want.

“And this one from the hubby.”

Please fuck Wanda, master. I’m your cuckold pig. Your dog. Please put it on a leash, mein kommandant, SIR. Please, master.

“Shit, Reinhardt, you got it made.”

“They don’t want anyone to know about their little fuck games. Besides, the more I degrade the pig, the more he wants it. I’ll collar him like a dog and make him lap my boots and bark. He wants to submit to soldiers, so I dress the part. Wanda protests sometimes, but that’s all part of the fucking game. She likes to be taught a lesson and shown who’s the master. The rougher it gets, the better she likes it. All written down in the agreement. They’re my cunts now. I can do what I want with them. My personal, hot and eager cunts. I’ve been fucking kinky cunts like them for years. They pay well. So, Jamal, you want to dress like a soldier and fuck the bitches? You’ll come away many Euros richer.”

“My cock’s hard, so the answer is damn right I do.”

A Great Variety of Monsters

The Big Top loomed against the bruised, pre-storm sky like a cancerous growth, its garish colors somehow muted by the encroaching darkness. Inside, the air thrummed with a discordant symphony: the wheezing calliope struggling to maintain a semblance of cheer, the hushed whispers of the gathered throng, and the barely perceptible thrum emanating from beneath the center ring. 

Reynaldo, the World’s Smolest Circus Bear, adjusted his tiny fez, its jaunty angle a defiant gesture against the encroaching cosmic horror. He was, after all, a professional. A veteran of countless shows, seen it all. Or so he thought. He’d debuted as a cub, wrested (gently) from his mother’s arms, and thrust into the spotlight. Now, decades later, he was a seasoned performer, capable of death-defying feats of dexterity—balancing precariously on a stack of increasingly unstable spools, juggling miniature cleavers with unsettling accuracy.

Tonight, however, was different. There was a wrongness in the air, a psychic weight that pressed down on him with the force of a collapsing star. 

He prepped for his act in the cramped squalor of his dressing “room”, a space measuring only a few feet. 

Reynaldo ran the show in his area. He just had to make sure to keep out of the way of the elephants. Reynaldo checked his equipment, made sure that his small arms were properly lubricated. He needed to be at his peak for tonight.

A tremor ran through the tent, causing the calliope to skip a beat, morphing its cheerful tune into something akin to a funeral dirge. The crowd gasped, then fell silent, a silence so complete it felt unnatural, as though all sound had been sucked into a cosmic vacuum. Reynaldo knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that the show was about to begin.

Outside, Silas Blackwood, the circus barker, wrung his gnarled hands, his eyes gleaming with a feverish intensity. He’d made a bargain, you see, with entities best left unnamed. A bargain for success, for fame, for immortality. And the price? Well, the price was merely a matter of rearranging certain elements of the show, of tweaking the…ingredients…ever so slightly.

He glanced at the crowd, a motley assortment of the gullible, the desperate, and the deeply, profoundly curious. They’d come seeking entertainment, but what they were about to receive was something far more…transformative. 

He flashed a grin, a rictus of teeth that seemed far too numerous, and launched into his spiel, his voice taking on a hypnotic cadence that seemed to bypass the conscious mind altogether. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up! Prepare to witness a spectacle unlike any you have ever seen! A great variety of monsters, both human and…otherwise!”

Blackwood gestured towards the entrance to the Big Top, its canvas flaps now rippling with an unseen energy. “Tonight, we offer you a glimpse beyond the veil, a peek into the abyss! But be warned, dear patrons: once you have seen, you can never unsee! Enter at your own peril!” With a flourish, he swept his arm, ushering them towards their doom, or perhaps their enlightenment. Hard to tell these days.

The acts began as they always did: the contortionist, her limbs bending at impossible angles, the strongman, hoisting weights that defied gravity, the clowns, their painted smiles masking a disturbing emptiness. But as the night wore on, the performances grew increasingly…aberrant. 

The tightrope walker, for instance, began to levitate, her eyes rolling back in her head as she spoke in tongues unknown. The lion tamer, normally a figure of fierce authority, cowered before his charges, their roars taking on a distinctly unnatural timbre.

And then came Reynaldo’s act. But the carefully balanced spools had been replaced with pulsating, tumorous growths, and the cleavers had been swapped for obsidian knives that seemed to hum with malevolent energy. The calliope, now possessed by some unseen force, shrieked out a cacophony of discordant notes, driving the audience to the brink of madness. But Reynaldo, bless his tiny bear heart, persevered, juggling the knives with a grim determination, his movements growing increasingly frantic as the tent around him descended into chaos.

“The show must go on…” he muttered to himself.

He glanced at Blackwood, who was now standing in the center ring, chanting in a language that tasted of salt and decay. The thrumming from beneath the ring intensified, and the canvas above began to bulge, as though something vast and terrible were attempting to breach the barrier between worlds. 

Reynaldo may have been the World’s Smolest Circus Bear, but he was also possessed of a keen intellect and a surprising knowledge of the occult. Years spent traveling the world, performing in forgotten towns and far away corners, had exposed him to things that no bear, or human, should ever have to witness. But he’d learned, he’d adapted, and he’d survived. 

He knew, with a dreadful certainty, that Blackwood was attempting to summon something from beyond, something ancient and malevolent, something that would consume them all. And Reynaldo knew that it was up to him, the tiny bear in a fez, to stop it.

With a roar that belied his diminutive size, Reynaldo launched himself at Blackwood, bowling him over like a cheap lawn ornament. He snatched the obsidian knife from the barker’s hand and, with a desperate prayer to whatever gods might still be listening, plunged it into the center of the summoning circle.

The tent went silent. The thrumming stopped. The bulging canvas relaxed. The calliope sputtered and died, leaving only the sound of ragged breathing and the distant rumble of thunder. 

Reynaldo stood over the fallen Blackwood, his tiny chest heaving, the obsidian knife dripping with ichor.

The crisis was averted, for now. But Reynaldo knew, with a cold certainty, that this was just the beginning. The show, as they say, must go on, but Reynaldo was going to be the one to do it right this time.