Chocolate Soup for the Soul

I was shopping at a boutique called Chocolate Soup, where the clerks were so tight-assed that when they farted it sounded like a piccolo and smelled like lavender lattes. Their faces were pinched and smug. It was obvious they hadn’t taken a dump in weeks and felt entitled to a monument carved in their constipated honor.

Ashka, Nina, and Carlyle, smelling of old money, frat jizz, and useless Elizabethan Poetry BAs, were moored behind the desk, their microbladed eyebrows peaked high, judging everyone against the silk wall of their Hampton summers and Daddy’s trust fund.

I dropped two thousand duckets here last month, but to Ashka and the Piccolo-Farters, I was just a blur in a Faded Glory tee. Maybe it was Brad Pitt’s facial blindness, or maybe my Botox had finally surrendered. I didn’t care. I had a pea-green Trans Am idling in the lot and a case of Mad Dog 20/20 chilling in the trunk. White trash wins the Lotto: I’m so rich that people want to suck my butthole, and so trashy that I don’t give a fuck.

My sister, Sam, was an Army Ranger navigating the strollers with military precision. Lieutenant Mom barked orders: “40% off to the left, BOGO to the right, final clearance in the back.”

My little nugget slept like an angel, her rabbit-fur kitty clutched in her chubby little hands. But my demon-slayer nephew Devon, a 26-month-old serial killer in the making, launched Cheerio rockets and screeched like an M80. He was in a pissy mood because there weren’t any knives or explosives lying around for him to play with.

 Carlyle wandered over, her judgy Whole Foods eyes scrutinizing me like I was a can of expired Vienna sausages. Her voice was a fried electric wire and a jostled orange juice can filled with gravel.  “Can I help you?”

“Unless your tits are leaking milk and you can feed my kid, then no.”

Vocal-fry Girl froze like a dirty diaper in a snowbank. I looked at her pants to make sure she didn’t piss herself. She mumbled something about needing to do some inventory and scurried off. Yeah, you do that, Sweetheart. Take inventory of your crappy attitude and, while you’re at it, have your rich daddy buy you some voice lessons so you don’t sound like such a creaking, croaking, whiny little bitch. Maybe put that Elizabethan poetry degree to good use by scrawling some rhymes in the city park restroom.

I popped a piece of Nicorette gum into my mouth and chomped down. It tasted like a forest fire, a gallon of Lysol, and used tampons—my tastebuds screaming for mercy. God, I missed my smokes, but I knew my kid would miss her mom a lot more if she keeled over dead from lung cancer. I needed to stay around for as long as I could.

Mom waved her hands, her nose wrinkled in a way that suggested she’d just discovered that this snooty store housed weapons of mass destruction. She hollered, “There’s a pile of crap on the floor! And my God, it smells just like roast beef!”

I looked down. Eden was asleep. I pulled her back as Mom continued ranting about the consistency, color, and shape of the poop. She was a car alarm with teeth—incessant, piercing, and making you want to smash a window or shoot out some taillights the second she opened her mouth.

“Keep the wheels out of the sludge!” she barked in her Emergency Broadcast voice. “That’s a steaming pile of hepatitis! Someone call hazmat or OSHA!”

The clerks, who looked like they’d just downed rubbing alcohol shooters and rusty nail chasers, shot daggers at my sister and me. They saw two nasty women with toddlers who had clearly desecrated their gleaming hardwood floors. The pizza swirled in my gut like a stubborn turd that wouldn’t flush. It was the smell—that god-awful aroma of a bovine-and-gravy lunch’s butthole evacuation. I found myself wishing it had been a vegetarian who dropped the deuce; those little rabbit turds of theirs would be a piece of cake to pick up.

The bougie batik dressing room curtain, which likely cost more than my monthly salary, was partially open. Sam was hunkered down in the foxhole with her two-year-old, Ted Bundy Jr. My heart sank. Devon was a mystery pooper, a little shit who once took a mega-dump in the dog’s bowl while my sister praised him for his effort.

I stepped toward the curtain, expecting the stench to knock me flat, prepared for the “my kid did it” confession. But instead, my sister leaned in and whispered, “It wasn’t him. Look at the old man.”

I looked toward the cash register. There stood an elderly couple, perfectly calm, as if they were buying a cashmere sweater and not standing in the middle of a biohazard. He was wearing tan shorts, and there it was: a dark, wet trail of diarrhea mapped down his leg, smeared across the fabric like a signature of his own collapsing dignity.

I looked again and I saw it. His face was a white sheet of paper filled with scribbles, chicken scratch, and random numbers going every which way. My Gramma carried that same confused expression when she was locked up in that hellhole of a nursing home. Poor guy, he looked like a man who had survived two wars only to be defeated by a roast beef sandwich in a place that sold lavender lattes and hated the sight of his filthy shorts and shaking hands.

The Piccolo-Farters were circling him like vultures in stilettos, ready to peck out whatever pride he had left. “Sir, you could have asked to use the bathroom, you know! What were you thinking? You’re disgusting.”

The man shivered, haunted eyes like a rescue dog cringing in a cage. His wife’s face sprung a leak and her shoulders shook. “I’m so sorry. He has Alzheimer’s, but he was having a good day. I thought if I brought him along… he’d be happy. I’ll, I’ll pay for the mess. Please try to understand.”

The trio crossed their arms and scowled. They flashed a row of white marble teeth,  palace columns guarding throats full of lies. They were sharks that had just bitten their own tongue—dead eyes, cold blood, and a mouth full of expensive, serrated bone.

Nina hissed, “Sounds like it’s a ‘you’ problem to me. Keep him locked up and in diapers and never come back here again. And by the way, there’s a mop in the bathroom—clean it up or I’ll report you for elder abuse.”

The other Yas Queens nodded, lips puckered tight, feasting on a meal of arrogance and the flesh of a beating heart ripped from a weaker person’s chest. Ashka squeezed back a giggle.

Oh, hold my beer, darlin’! You ain’t getting away with dissing this poor man. I cleared the rust out of my throat, coughed up some wet cement, and hocked a green, bubbling loogie right on Ashka’s three-thousand-dollar suede boots.

She looked down, her face twisting like she’d just seen a ghost made of bile. The ‘Yas Queens’ were frozen, their pastry puff smiles finally cracking. I didn’t give them time to scream. I leaned in, the taste of Nicorette and victory sharp on my tongue.

“Clean that up? No, Ashka, she’s not gonna do that because I’m buying the floor! See this gold card? That’s ten million dollars of ‘fuck you’ money from a Scratch-Off I bought at a gas station while you were  getting your landing strip waxed smoother than a bowling ball for your sixty-year-old sugar daddy who can’t get it up until your Hooha lawn has been scalped and the clippings are stashed away in a garbage bag so the wifey of forty years doesn’t find out.

All you Yas Queens know how to do is suck dick, bleed your dad’s checking account dry, and treat people like dogshit clinging to the bottom of your shoes. On the outside, I get it, you’re a million bucks. But on the inside, you ain’t nothing but a clearance Dollar General chocolate Easter Bunny, half-melted before you leave the store.

So, here’s the news: You’re fired. All three of you. Consider this your final notice. And don’t you dare look at that man like he’s a ‘problem.’ You think you’re better than him because you smell like overpriced French cologne? Life is nothing but a series of blowouts. It’s a messy, stinking conveyor belt where people clean up your shit and, if you’re lucky, you get to return the favor. Sometimes you’re the one scrubbing the carpet, and sometimes you’re the one needing the towel.

But none of you—with your sparkly teeth and your ‘Yas Queen’ bullshit—have ever lived a real day in your lives. You’ve never stood in a shower and watched the poop flakes swirl down the drain while you washed the dignity back into someone you love. You’ve never hosed a friend’s driveway after an explosive cow-patty episode or scrubbed a friend’s dignity back into a pair of filthy trousers.

You’re terrified of a little roast beef sludge? You aren’t even human yet. Until you’ve crapped yourself and realized the world didn’t end because someone loved you enough to wipe you, you don’t know a damn thing about ‘style.’

So get out in the real world. Get down and dirty. Go lose control of your bowels and roll in it until you find your soul. And once someone cleans you up and you realize you aren’t the center of the universe—then you give me a call. Maybe then I’ll give you your jobs back. But until then? Stay out of the splash zone.”

I looked at them, their faces were red like beets boiled alive. They clutched their designer handbags and their 200-gallon-sized Stanley Cups infused with cucumbers and lime, like I was going to steal them. They performed a collective haughty hair flip and simultaneously shouted, “Fuck you, trailer trash, and the cheap broomstick you rode in on!”

I flipped them the bird and smiled wide. “For a fancy degree, you don’t know shit about grammar—never end a sentence on a preposition. Take that and shove it up your iambic pentameter!”

Meanwhile, my military reinforcements—Mom and Sam—grabbed the bleach, paper towels, trash bags, and wipes from the trunk of my Trans Am, a Costco on wheels. I tossed a bottle of MD 20/20 to the sweet older lady. “You stay right here. We’re going to get your husband cleaned up. Take some big gulps of this stuff; it goes down hard, but comes up easy. It’ll dull the pain of your day.”

We got him cleaned up in a jiffy and wrapped him in Devon’s Winnie the Pooh comforter and sent them on their way, with five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills as a thank you for his service to our country and a show of support that not everybody in the world sucks.

We turned out the lights in Chocolate Soup and piled into the Trans Am. Mom was having a bitch fit. “Why the hell am I always in the back seat? I’m the oldest. I deserve to ride shotgun.”

Instead of saying, “Because you’re safer back there, Mom, and I’m not ready to see you go,” I shouted, “Woman, it’s because you’re a huge pain in my ass!”

Then I spun cookies in the parking lot, kicking up a cloud of dust and mud, Mom and the kids screaming and laughing like maniacs in the back. I shifted the gear and tore out of there like a bat out of Hell.

When we reached cruising altitude, Sam turned off my Mötley Crüe CD and said, “So you bought the store. Good for you.”

I laughed, “Actually, I didn’t. I just wanted to see the look on all their faces when they realized a ‘trailer trash’ loogie costs more than their commission. Besides… I never liked the smell of the place.”

I rolled down the windows, shut off the CD, hands gripping the wheel, and floored it all the way to Walmart. There was no way some skanky hotbox would beat me to a Faded Glory yoga pants sale.

Johnny Boogles and the Gap-Toothed Bitch

Cath lay there frustrated, exasperated, her diddling fingers doing jack shit as her deformed clit played hardball more than ever. Next to her, rolled onto his side with his tiny, flaccid dick resting on his inner thigh, was her husband—or Noodle Dick, as she’d caught some of her co-workers referring to him—fast asleep, farting, snoring and drooling.  

“Okay for some,” she muttered, slamming her fists into the duvet on either side of her. “Noodle Dick.” Cath giggled, but then recalled the cock someone had drawn into her mouth on the photo at the front of her store. Bastards. If I do ever find out who did that . . .

She unclenched her fists and balled them again, scrunching up handfuls of bedclothes. 

“Kinda looks like a rocket ship with sparks, not a squirting prick,” one of her customers had commented, passing her by in the shop foyer, where the offending article stood on a plinth.

The large, crudely sketched appendage had the words HUBBY’S COCK etched up its veiny centre, along with the words—which someone else had clearly added, as the handwriting was different—NOODLE DICK. 

“Take it down!” Cath scolded the morning cleaner. “Now!” she added, stamping her heeled foot. Fucking twit, she thought, giving the staff member a death glare. Her face burned scarlet as she gazed at the added words again. Fuck’s sake. “Get rid. Immediately,” she snapped, clicking her fingers. 

Breathe, Cath thought, relaxing her hands, looking again at her husband of over ten years. Pathetic. A three-pump wonder. 

However, she knew she was being harsh on him, as no man could make her come thanks to her warped clit, which had looked much like a miniature cauliflower ear since birth. Hell, she could only get herself off every now and then, and that was only because she had found that being a total bitch and cunt to her staff, friends and family got her hot. 

Some days, when Cath was a mega-twat, she could orgasm without touching herself; memory alone was enough. On the days and nights she had the urge to stroke her clitty cat, or was struggling to orgasm with hubby, she would think of times she’d embarrassed people. Stepped on them. Talked to them like they were utter shit, knowing they couldn’t do anything. She held the power. She was their God. She could fire them at any time, for anything, and nobody could stop her.

So what’s wrong tonight? she wondered, unable to climax even after slating her husband’s naff performance, thinking his humiliation would serve her purpose. But nope, nothing. Not even a twinge. 

Cath had even conjured some of her favourite berating recollections while hubby had plugged away, such as the dozy baker who worked for her. “The weirdo with a beardo,” she whispered, smiling. One day the big bastard had thought he could cow her down with his size and aggression, but she had soon put that puppy in its place, breaking him in two by wielding her power axe and threatening his job. Since that tussle, the baker bowed to her. Kept his nose clean. 

It’s beautiful, having such a beastly specimen under my power, she thought, thinking that would spark a bolt of pleasure through her pussy. But no, nothing. 

Cath lifted her head off her pillow to stare past her flabby pouch of a belly. “You little bald bastard. Why won’t you work for Mammy?”

Her FUPA flopped back into view and her face twisted into something ugly. She could feel it’s grotesqueness, knowing then that most of her colleagues had seen how obnoxious and horrid she was.

“Watch out, the gap-toothed bitch is coming,” she’d heard someone say once. 

“Seen her teeth? Could park a bike between them!” another had said. 

“A regular werebeaver,” a third mocked. 

“Tits like limes,” a fourth teased. “Itty-bitty, with a zingy-zangy taste.”

The past laughter of her staff echoed in her ears. 

Fuckwits. They’ll all pay soon enough, one at a time. They’re just fucking numbers. 

Well, not all of them. There was Motormouth Miguel, who shit-stirred, caused trouble, spread lies and triggered fear and panic among the ranks. A rat. A danger. MM would spy and go running to Cath with any scrap of news or gossip he could find. My pet, she thought.

Then there was her other general, that faggotty, long streak of piss and rent boy, Tomasino. He was a special case, and once she’d gone through his phone and found photos of him wearing women’s underwear and sticking various objects, like knitting needles, down his urethra, he quicklyforgot about his ambition to replace her as store manager. Watching him quiver and hearing him stutter in her presence set her little cauli-clit to tingling on many an occasion.   

All these thoughts and images had rekindled her sex life over the past few years. But for the past fortnight or so, nothing, no matter how much she tried.

I’ll have to start being extra cunty on Monday, she thought, grinning. But it didn’t look like she was getting any satisfaction tonight.

She turned off the bedside lamp and settled down in the darkness, thinking about the odd, annoying occurrences from the past week. It had started with her coffee tasting slightly bitter and off from Monday, then the weird phone calls at all hours began, and she had got the shits after eating gone-off doughnuts from work, and finally her car had refused to start. Maybe that was why she was having problems coming? Stress?

Karma, a voice at the back of her mind suggested. 

Nah, that bitch knows better than to fuck with me! 

Cath’s mobile vibrated on the nightstand beside the bed and she jumped. A groan stuck in her throat. Not again, she thought, snatching up her phone and answering the call. “Yes?!”

“How about another dad joke?” the caller asked, laughing idiotically. “Or, why don’t I tell you why you were really sick after eating those doughnuts?”

Cath froze. The hair on her arms and at the back of her neck stood on end. Is this freak watching me? Cameras? Phone tap? “Who the fuck are you?”

“I squirted extra special cream into those doughnuts for you. Pew-pew-pew!,” he said, giggling. “You got my ickle, pearly white swimmers slithering around inside your guts, child. Hee-hee-hee!” 

Cath’s stomach flipped. “Is this Greg?” she blurted, thinking maybe it was a role-playing thing, and maybe this would be the catalyst to her finally achieving an orgasm.

“No, it’s not your hairy baker, who thinks he’s the dog’s bollocks.”

Cath sat bolt upright. “Then who are you, you little twat?!”

“Been struggling to come this week? Ha-ha-ha! That’ll teach you, being such a venomous cunt,” he said. “And to think, it was working out so well for you. Had you not pushed your cuntish ways so much the last couple of weeks, I, Johnny Boogles, would not be . . . haunting you.”

“Haunting?”

“Yes. You see, I’m the Cunt Demon, and, when someone has been too much of a cunt to innocent people, then I’m brought in.”

“For what? I’ll call the police!”

Johnny scoffed. “Best of luck with that one. And in answer to your question, well, that’s a simple one. I was brought in to annoy the living shit out of you, for all eternity. To out-cunt the cunt.”

He’s a fucking nutter!“I’ll have you arrested, and I also know people who will—” 

“Who will what, Catherine? Do me over? Scare me off? Again, good luck with that, as I’m a demon. I’m not of flesh and blood, you dumb cu—” 

Cath ended the call. She worked to control her breathing, then muttered, “Fucking fre—”

“You can cancel my calls,” the caller’s voice boomed, “or hang up on me, or not answer at all, but I will always be with you. Forever. Until the sun burns out.”

Cath screamed, her knickers dampening, a dribble of piss trickling down her leg. 

From the darkness came the thing of nightmares, stepping into a shaft of moonbeam that speared through the window and slightly parted curtains. 

A breath hitched in her throat. She pulled back, sinking into her pillows, pulling the duvet up to her chin. “W-what are you?”

“I’m Johnny Boogles, the thing that pissed in your morning coffee every day last week, who squirted hot jizz into your doughnuts, and who’s been constantly ringing you with prank calls and crap dad jokes.”

“You did something to my car too?”

Johnny smiled. “Yes. Sugar does awful things to an engine.” 

Cath looked at the black, floating thing hovering above the foot of her bed. Its body, cloaked in raggedy black clothes that flapped wild as though a tremendous wind howled through the room, looked squashed. Crushed. Ribs jutted out here and there, along with squished organs and flat hands and feet. Johnny’s face and head resembled a mangled pumpkin, his brains oozing out of a smashed skull. 

“Pretty, aren’t I? My beauty is the result of being an absolute tool. It got me killed, in the end, and the gods thought this image befitting of me in the afterlife as I come to do Karma’s work. She’s the real bitch, you know. You’ve got nothin’ on her.”

Cath’s stomach cramped, her eyes lowering to Johnny’s horse-sized cock, which hung from out of a hole in his shredded trousers. It was warty and oozing pus. 

“Oh my fucking God,” she said, turning her head and throwing up on her husband. He didn’t stir. When she was done heaving, she wiped warm bile and chunks from her lips, scowling at him. “How can you sleep though this, you dickhead?”

“Because he’s dead,” Johnny said. 

“Dead?” She turned to look at Johnny, his pendulous dick setting her off again.

“Yep. Karma sent me for him too.” Johnny licked his lips and grinned. “I know you like to dish it out, but I hope you can take it too. Because you’re in for a world of hurt, you gap-toothed bitch,” he said, cackling.

To Reference That Joy Division Song Again

I keep my curtains drawn, lights low, paranoia level high. Those fucking nosy neighbors called the cops on me while I was washing the dishes with the kitchen window open, not yet owning drapes or blinds. They told the cops they saw me break out a “butcher knife” and actually carve my arms into bloody ribbons while giving them “death grins” and other weirdo shit that the cops agreed, after arriving to check things out, seemed ludicrous. I mean, I was wearing a perfectly clean white button-down, home from work. If I’d been using “a butcher knife to carve my arms into bloody ribbons,” like my drugged-out neighbors asserted, my perfect white shirt would look kind of different, you know? Maybe with some reddish stains, maybe actively dripping (or worse) blood staining it or literally soaking through the cloth, confirming their indictment of me rather than showing the cops they were weirdo troublemakers. Obviously.

Except.

Except the cops never asked to look at my actual arms, torso or anywhere else, nor to roll up my sleeves or disrobe so they could ascertain for themselves the truth of what seemed obvious – clean white shirt, no blood, no harm, no foul, right?

Except things were momentarily interesting when the younger cop saw a raised white scar on my left hand and asked about it. We all laughed when I admitted that I’d done some stupid things in college and this had been one of them, that when going through Hell Week near the end of pledging my fraternity, I’d drunkenly lost a stupid dare/bet and was forced to endure two seniors carving the fraternity’s Greek letter symbols into my hand with a knife. Hurt like hell and no one had thought I’d basically be branded for life, but there you are – crazy, officers, right? 

Right.

Though if you actually looked hard at that scar, it’d be tough to make out which Greek letters, which fraternity. Some might look and conclude it was more likely the work of Freddy Kreuger, not drunk frat boys eager to score points. Honestly, I sure couldn’t guess what could be seen in that scar. It was an angry mish mash of cuts, slices and etchings amounting to chaos theory, not really what the power of suggestion would lead others to believe they saw. What and which realities are ever right anyway? I doubt anyone really knows.

I wanted to be left alone and finally was. First, one clueless cop admitted he’d always wondered what kind of weird shit those frat kids did. Laughed when I replied, “Obviously not just those drunken orgies you always see in the movies.

I was glad to see them go when they did because I was kind of surprised and relieved they hadn’t asked me to remove my shirt. If I had, I’d have a whole lot of explaining to do about all of the scars decorating my body – my arms, chest, inner thighs. The tic tac toe game carved into my chest over time with many beautiful tools, most especially my Cold Steel 15” serrated tanto I loved so much, nor the bloody serrated loving courtesy my Benchmade, SOG, Gerber, K-BAR, Kershaw and other beloved blades in my collection.

Yes, hard to explain but harder still, I imagine, the arms wrapped into rapidly dampening rust-colored Ace bandages, and I noticed, with some leakage that would be hard to explain. I mean, WTH, right?

As I ripped the bandages from my arms, you could see scars, scabs, open red and soaking wet cuts oozing blood, leaking blood, in a new development, even gushing blood, but it was the scars, those precious scars that were key to my identity, my very existence, that weren’t tats, weren’t Greek letters, weren’t pentagrams, but just like me, WEREN’T SHIT AND NEVER WERE SUPPOSED TO BE, because chaos theory can rule the mind and body just as legitimately as it seeks to explain other concepts more theoretical than the very real and tangible, if in a micro way, my personal needs, fears, beliefs, coping skills.

I mean no one would believe this shit, right? Who ever heard of a middle-aged man who cuts because foreplay sucks in comparison and he’s addicted to creating and maintaining scars of beauty and significance on his most loved and hated canvas?

Would never happen, right? I mean they’d lock anyone like that up, call him Hannibal or something like that because we’re not dealing with geniuses here, or creatives or artists. Pencil pushing, braindead cogs in the machine who pack heat, who will kill in a heartbeat but would call ME the sick one. My scars bear out my philosophy and my loves and fears. The other peoples’ lack of visible scars doesn’t hide their internal cancerous decay nor their fear of anyone not like them.

I call bullshit on them!

I like it better alone.

I always preferred Dessau’s cover of Joy Division’s “Isolation” to the original. Its industrial aggression that comes screaming out at you more accurately reflects my sense of personal isolation and my feelings than Ian Curtis’s distinctive voice sharing those same lyrics, but for me, the band’s near-synth pop sound that tries to drearily bounce along with the listener in an existential despair really undercuts the rage and bitterness I feel that few are more qualified to express on my behalf than Ministry’s Al Jourgensen, who apparently and fittingly produced the Dessau version. 

Maybe it’s really this simple. Joy Division’s version stood for a very real suicidal ideation as we would all find out. But Dessau’s “Isolation” could be just scar tissue layered on more scar tissue yet though the flesh decays and body weakens, the only suicide to be found is more likely invented by some pervy author seeking a harmony between control and chaos they’ll never attain – but it won’t kill them, their characters or the readers either. Just more scarring in a world of art for art’s sake. And maybe that’s good enough.

Something Wet This Way Cums

The peddler always sold lightning rods on Mondays. He waited till Tuesdays to sell books. Yet, here he was with a big trunk full of them. The curator didn’t appreciate the break in the routine. 

“You know the rules of The New Ways. No hats indoors,” the curator reminded him as she sat behind her desk.

“My apologies.” He grinned and doffed his porkpie hat. He was sweating. Ill-at-ease. A little too eager to get to business. 

“So, what do you have for the Museum of The Old Ways today?” the curator asked.

“Books,” the peddler said. 

“But today is Monday,” the curator said. “Why the deviation from our standard schedule?”

“Well… They’re… um… They’re different than my usual inventory, and I knew you’d want to see them right away,” the peddler said.

“Well. No need to stand on formality then. Show me,” the curator said.

Still unnerved, the peddler opened his large case and set a paperback book on the desk before her. 

All Horny on the Western Front, the cover read. 

Now, the curator didn’t read the books of The Old Ways, but she was familiar with their titles, and there was something off about this one. 

“I have more. Lots more,” the peddler said and spread three additional books across the desk.

The curator read the titles carefully, critically. From left to right, they were Frankenshaft, The Catcher and The Pitcher in the Rye, and Dr. Jackoff and Missus Thighs. 

“What… um… What exactly are you trying to peddle here, book peddler?” the curator asked.

“Well, you see, the publisher had a vandal in their employ. And, this vandal, he was able to… um… alter some of the covers before they went to print,” the peddler said. “But, as the curator of the Museum of The Old Ways, you are obligated to accept many things that no longer reflect the values of our New Ways. After all, book banning is poor form and altogether a social faux pas.” 

“We ban nothing from the Museum of The Old Ways,” the curator said. “But we do curate what is in our collection. And these…”

“I have others,” the peddler said. 

On top of the growing pile, he added Brave New Whore, One Spunked Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Naked Lunch. 

“This one,” he tapped on the cover of the last book, “is actually unaltered. I guess the vandal couldn’t figure out how to make this one any more lurid than it already is.” 

“Or, rest assured, peddler. We are quite aware of that book,” the curator said. “And inside the covers?”

“Unaltered. The words are just as they were originally published. This one here?” He pointed at a copy of Moby Thicc. “It’s Moby Dick. Word for word, just as Melville wrote it.” 

“And, dare I ask, Little Philipino Ladyboys?”

“Little Women,” the peddler answered. “Some of these are pretty obvious. Wurthing Dikes is actually Wurthing Heights. The Lion The Bitch and The Dominatrix is, of course, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe…”

 “And you want me to purchase these for the museum?” the curator said.

“Well, see, the publisher is struggling financially, reading not really en vogue at the moment, and well, if I can’t move these books…”

“The financial well-being of a publisher incapable of controlling their employees is no business of mine, peddler,” the curator said.

“Don’t say no. Not yet. I haven’t even shown you Missionary on the Orient Express. The cover art, I have to say, is done very tastefully,” the peddler said. “And here’s A Tale of Two Titties. You can hardly notice the difference.”

“And I suppose you’d have me pass Weiner-in-the-Pooh as the classic children’s storybook?”

“Never mind that one. It’s a picture book, and well, this vandal was a bit of an artist,” the peddler said. “And Charlie in the Scat Factory. And Incest Family Robinson.”

“Sir. The Museum of The Old Ways will not be purchasing any of these books,” the curator said firmly.

“My good lady. I didn’t want to bring you these titles,” the peddler said. “I know the high standards by which we hold ourselves in The New Ways. I know this is unbecoming of both me as a book dealer–”

“Peddler,” the curator corrected.

“–and you as a curator. But some of these books, the unaltered content is just as vile as these titles. You already have The Left Hand of Darkness on display. Is it such a breach of decorum to shelve The Left Handjob of Darkness next to it?”

“Peddler. Just because we have books on our shelves does not mean individuals should pick them up and read them,” the curator said. 

“Atlas Subbed then? The original work is–”

“Sir. This entire conversation is wholly absurd. Do you have any excuse for this behavior? Has someone put you up to this?”

“Actually, if I may be truthful…” The peddler leaned over the array of vulgar titles spread across the desk and whispered, “There are entities watching this very interaction. They’ve always been watching. Since the dawn of human existence, they’ve been watching. And yes, they sent me here, with these books, in hopes of getting them into circulation.”

“So the vandal–”

“I lied. There is no vandal. These books didn’t come from my usual publisher,” the peddler said.

“And these Watchers…?”

“They’ve grown bored with us as of late,” the peddler said. “The New Ways don’t satisfy their rather decadent tastes, and this is their way of injecting some of The Old Ways back into our modern, more civil society.”

“Well, you can understand my objections. I will have no part in soiling our New Ways with this… with this smut,” the curator said.

“Just one? If I walk out of this museum having not moved a single copy–”

“Your dealings with these Watchers is not my business,” the curator said. “How you got involved with such people–”

“They are not people. And believe me when I tell you that I leave here with all of these books, they will liquify me into a puddle the moment I step back into the daylight,” the peddler said.

The curator searched his eyes for signs of deceit, of tomfoolery, of a misplaced sense of humor. She found none. Nevertheless, “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. There is simply no place for Lord of the Cock Rings or To Cuck a Mockingbird or The Money Shot of Dorian Gray in our collection. And now, sir, I will have to ask you to leave.”

“Please. Just one. I’m telling you, if I leave here with all these books, a laser beam will come down from the sky and melt me into goo before I can cross the parking lot. Just… Just…” 

He shuffled through the mound of books, searching for perhaps the least objectionable of them all. His hands came up clasping a copy of Fahrenheit 469.

“Please,” he begged.

“If I take that book from you, will you leave? And take the rest of this filth with you?” 

“I doubt one book will be enough to appease them,” the peddler said.

“One book is already far too many by my count,” the curator said. “But if it will make you go away.”

***

For the rest of the day, the curator did her best to forget all about the exchange. And she was fairly successful. It wasn’t until the end of the workday that she returned to her office and saw the copy of Fahrenheit 469 resting on her desk. As she gathered her things, she picked up the book, determined to bring it home and throw it in the incinerator. 

On her way out, she cracked the cover. The first line intrigued her, so she read the next. By the time she pushed through the front doors of The Museum of The Old Ways and stepped into the sunlight, she was so engrossed, she almost slipped and fell on a wet spot. Luckily, she caught her balance. 

Unbecoming, being so distracted, she decided. The curator tucked the book away for further examination and study after she got home. 

Me and my Imp

My imp shakes on the floor like a go-go dancer—enthused by the knowledge that my eyes are on her. She’s quite shameless in dress and manner, though so it doesn’t really matter how little that little thing conceals. She’s all fuzzy. She’s also a gangly girl, clumsy and abundant in possession of that charm unique to one thriving in the failing. Like a babe, she shuffles out of rhythm—smiling, unselfconscious, in tune only with the truth of chemicals telling her synapses “yes, yes, yes”. 

She doesn’t know her body’s symbolic while she proudly plays the fool. Since I found her hiding under my bed, she’s treated me as her divine. I’ve never been treated with such intoxicated adoration. High on hubris as I fear I have been, my recklessness may be blamed for the danger in which she finds herself. 

Repressing my joy, I open the bag and say, “in”. 

She makes the pouty lips. The mousy creature sees no difference between the public and the private. To her, play doesn’t signify. When play attracts the jealous gaze, however, it does so by expressing an abundance that could only exist as the product of some transgression. What more dangerous significance could be assigned? I’m left to wonder: how oh how am I to educate this imp? If I fail to do so, I fear she shall receive the unamused instruction of a Hillary. 

At least my imp is obedient. Begrudgingly, she hops into my bag just before my Hillary returns from the restroom. The creature’s eyes glitter up at me from the dark recess, soft like my heart, and I give her a brief flash of that which she desires if only to show her that keeping secret is a strategy that pays. 

“At what are you smiling?” my Hillary asks. 

“N-nothing,” I, the criminal caught in the act, stammer before she snatches the bag from off my shoulder. 

I yell and plead, but my Hillary throws open the bag and out tumble’s the imp, landing butt-side up. She giggles until she sees the look of horror that distorts my face, then she notices a nightmare in grouchy gray. 

“AHH!” my imp yips, then scrambles to hide behind my calf.  

“Give her here!” my Hillary demands. 

I shake me head in refusal. 

“Now!” 

I know Hillary’s intentions and I fear what I know. Turning swiftly, I scoop the harmless mass of evil into my arms. It coos and rubs its head against me in an expression of boundless trust. I resolve to never betray her, no matter the cost. 

Leaving Hillary to scream her threats, I run. 

***

I bear the unbearable upon my shoulders. It is impossibly light for something so burdened by the resentments of a generation. Yes, she is small, but I’ve checked her from head to toe and found that she is quite puffy. Twiggy though she may be, she eats indulgently and only ever junk. She’s got a soft little belly into which my poking finger has disappeared. Her thighs touch like chonky cuts of ham whenever she sits. I sometimes call her my little chicken fat. She just smiles at me mischievously and keeps licking her sugar-sticky fingers. 

A Hillary can’t see this fallibility that characterizes the charm of the imp. They’ve got it all twisted. The Hillarys don’t really look at the world. They read it. 

One Hillary saw us eating fast food on a park bench. “Skinny bitch”, I heard her say as she walked by. Concerned that perhaps all the Hillarys of the world were in cahoots—for who knows what they get up to when they’re not pecking at us like hens—I wrapped up the uneaten portions and threw the imp over my shoulder. She bounced up and down as I made a run for it, her softness going plop plop plop. 

Perhaps my Hilary was just extra vigilant. Perhaps I had at some point erred before she ripped the bag out of my hands and initiated the hunt. I suspect art is to be blamed. I should have kept the paintings I made of my imp turned against the wall. The creature, smiling so broadly in that compromising pose, was rendered too realistic. It was risky, but I had to depict her as she presents herself to me. I thought others would find her alien form equally compelling. She was eager to share. I was a fool to believe I could share my joy while keeping it secret. 

But I did depict her, flirting with the idea of living unafraid. I should have known better, been more cautious, but the sights my imp made possible dazzled me and I forgot my wits. I didn’t see the difference between painting her and painting myself. Since meeting, my imp and I have been extensions of the same system: a brand new species the likes of which the world had never before seen. 

That’s the trouble. I can’t become a new thing. I’ve got responsibilities to Hillary.

Then again, Hillary doesn’t put her novels down long enough to look at my paintings. Every now and then she pops her head in just to remind me that I am not to feel at ease. She doesn’t engage. If I were to make a landscapes out of words, fields of white dotted with black characters reading “tree” “sky” “grass” “scissors” “lovers”, she’d sing of my genius. What I do with my fleshy blobs of color is too childish to merit attention. 

Maybe Hillary heard my imp howling when I pinned her down and subjected her to a relentless tickling. A noise is enough for an expert identifier. My imp was too unembarrassed. Hillary, the sharp hunter, heard her blissful call and knew her kind. Instantly she suspected I might be imbibing a surplus of enjoyment. 

I was playing with fire. I had heard of imps prior to finding mine. Hilary would rave about them over dinner, claiming imps to be the embodiment of vanity. How vulgar. How arrogant to think that they possessed all that the Hillarys lacked. 

How wrong my Hillary was. Imps possess nothing. Thriving in the failing: that’s what my imp gives like no one else. Wonky body nowhere near perfection and thus perfected. Willing to try despite. My girl. My boy. My boyish girl—what a horrible girl she is. She failed as a real girl, really, though I call her a her for her efforts. I applauded as she invented herself, pulling herself out the realm of phantoms, putting on her ill-fitting skirt and skipping about. 

The challenge from the start was that words clung to my imp’s flesh like brands. Words like “bitch”. I scrubbed and scrubbed but the semiotics didn’t wash off. 

I don’t think she understood the stakes. She giggled while I scrubbed, harder harder, and she arched her back. 

“This isn’t for fun!” said I.

“I just can’t help myself!” said she. Ohhhh she broke my heart with her little noises. 

We tried a different approach. She stretched out wide and I painted her tromp l’oleil, concealing her fruit behind a curtain. I tried in many colors until it stopped looking like mine or yours but hers and hers alone. A glowing oddity. It does so many tricks, I couldn’t even imagine. It accepts and emits, surrenders and grips. 

I called the results of my work a bag, and I made my imp hide therein. So confident was I that I began taking her outside, letting the sun shine upon her puffy pink cheeks. I thought the disguise I invented would protect my imp, but Hillary always has a keen eye out for any new accessory. Hillary is always vigilant. She seethes and puffs out smoke. 

Now I wonder if perhaps some of my imp’s hair did not fall outside the back and betray her presence. It was my imp’s wild hair that howled loudest. No one could control it. I tried, but the strands flew about madly as the tongues of ornery fire. As had the ancient fields in which her primordial line once ran free and giddy, it overgrew. How doggy she was, shedding all over. That hair was her way of laughing at me, of making us laugh together at the absurdity of our wants. My furry freak. 

My lip trembled as I told her we needed to cut it, but she wouldn’t. It was her pride and joy. I could happily drown in those knots and kinks, but I wanted so to save her—turn down her volume. “Uh-uh” went her moon-being eyes—the sweet loon—and I set my mind to finding another way. But there wasn’t another way. 

Oh how it all seems so perilous in retrospect! There were too many clues. Even my smile proved a clue. What matters is that Hilary found us out. Hilary will find our hideout. Hilary will make her will known.

***

My imp and I hid in an abandoned carnival. We slept in a boat parked within the love tunnel. The cold made the feeling of her warmth upon my feet all the more pleasant. We were comfy in our little den.

One night, I was jostled unpleasantly. At first I thought my imp was playing a game, but there she was, curled up at my feet as ever. By the time I gathered my wits, we sailed into a papier-mâché cavern all aglow with red. Red: the color of love. The color of violence. 

Violently, we stopped, and I was thrust forward. I landed on top of my imp, who was as agiggle as always. Looking up, my eyes traced the stilettos, the garters, the corset, the bowtie, the pointy glasses behind which were the pointy eyes that glowed red with a lust for vengeance. 

She took us. 

In a dark place, I cry. Oh Hilary, am I, too, enlisted? Social contract gobbledygook? Hell is other people and what not? You have your cross to bear, and I have mine? The yin to your yang, I must? Must we be at odds? Must you hunt the imps?

Let’s leave her in the dark room, then, so she can curl up in a ball, whimper and die. What will you do as the light goes out? Smile as thus perishes the pathetic creature. Laugh at its neediness as it calls out my name? Sweep under the rug any evidence of that potentiality it represents? The gall of the gal, to let herself be pet. A wimp of an imp. Didn’t she get the memo? 

“Don’t entertain! Don’t charm! We are enlisted!”

But no. The great un-enjoyer does not smile. This is what enrages me most. Not happily does the sharp face settle as it gazes at its prey. Hillary’s tongue pops balloons and ends parties at the slightest flick. Still Hilary calls my imp a bitch. A “bitch” alienated. Not the type you pet, but the type you beat. 

One way or another, my Hilary had to beat her. Hilary has to beat all the imps—the bitches. She has to beat me. We are, all of us, enlisted. 

After days of watching my imp turn limp from malnourishment, chicken fat all spent, I hear a noise. Snip snip go a shiny set of scissors. Hilary forces me to watch as they are unleashed upon the illicit thing’s fur. 

Death to the species, and a just revenge, no? 

My imp’s eyes well up with gooey tears the likes of which Hilary had never allowed drip down her face. Those scissors cut at my heart and my Hillary knows it. 

“Well then cut mine off, too!” I yell. I can’t stand the idea of my imp being made bare against her will, but that cannot be helped. I’m a weak man. I can, however, help her feel less alone. 

Taking an aluminum chair from out under a joyless table, I begin beating the thick glass I had allowed separate me from my dear friendliest of friends. I beat it till it breaks. 

My Hillary rolls her eyes and throws the scissors away. Other Hillarys come to drag me to my cell, wherein I will be given less colors with which to paint. Perhaps it is a defeat, but not one without value. The warmth had been conveyed. My imp gives me a little smile as I gaze on. I give one back, and through it I try to say that she has been made all the more lovely. This is just another way of failing, and she fails so lovely. 

DESTROYER

She poured her third glass of straight vodka. When younger it was Budweiser or wine, until it turned into white Russians, then vodka over the rocks, by her sixtieth birthday she’d been drinking vodka straight from the glass for several years. 

Her husband, Michael, died three years earlier from a drunk driving accident. They’d been married for twenty years, but she had had enough of the married life several years before he wrapped himself around a tree after a night of gambling on NFL games. 

She grew increasingly distant from her sisters and brother. She retired from her job as a computer analyst early, took her dead husband’s money and locked herself up inside her house. One time it had rose bushes, garden statues of fairies and leprechauns, and every blade of grass meticulously kept in uniform by Hollins Landscaping. Now, dead leaves collected on the driveway, walkway, and lawn. A pane of glass knocked out by a storm hadn’t been replaced in a year. Her only recourse to the life she lived was to drink every day until the pain she caused turned into justifications. 

The house was cold, matching her skin, lips, and pursed face. She put on, “Let Your Love Flow,” by the Bellamy Brothers and sat down in front of a mirror. Long red hair from youth turned into a short greying mess. The song traveled through the cold halls, and stacks of newspapers, bills, and dust collected on the once obsessively polished furniture. A once warm house turned into a tomb, a waiting room, a fortified compound. 

Arthritic fingers reached out to the Styrofoam head set to the left of the mirror and picked up the red wig with side swept bangs and fastened it to her skull. She looked into the mirror and with slow moving hands she painted on blue eye shadow, then glued on fake eye lashes. She didn’t need to convince herself to pour another vodka it had become ritual. Next, she applied foundation to hide her aging spots, followed by a powered red lipstick. The look wasn’t for anyone but her, a way to convince herself that if she were beautiful then all would be forgiven.

The grandfather clock in the living room worked, but time was no longer a concern to her. She only ate a meal a day to keep herself alive and thin. If she didn’t value her own neck she’d stop eating altogether, food had become an annoyance she had to deal with daily. A pest asking questions about the future when she was trying to travel backwards. 

“Always Dusty Springfield,” she said, “I Only Want to Be with You.” She played the song again, allowing her body to contort in joy and happiness across the scuffed marked wood floors. Along with walls, the man hater thrust her body like a 1960s pop star in a psychedelic dream. Skin like lily white boneyard markers placed the glass on the fireplace mantle. 

Her photographs in silver frames stood in the same spots for the last twenty years. One of her honeymoon in the Florida Keys, back when cocaine and speedboats were a part of her collective consciousness. One of her father standing next to a swimming pool not long after he returned home from fighting the Nazis. The last photo was of Jack in nursery school. His fine blonde hair parted to the side, eyes young and blue, full of hope. She’d dressed him in a black V neck sweater pulled over a white mock turtleneck. When he was little, she called him, “Jackie.” 

By the fourth play of Dusty Springfield, she poured another vodka, and spit on the photo of Jackie. She didn’t like that he decided to grow up. When he was a little boy, she dressed him up in girl’s clothing. One time, in the aisle at Zayre he cried when she bought him an Easter dress. Customers looked at her, wondering if she was going to do anything about it, she did. She made him stay home from school for three days and wear nothing but the dress. If he cried about it, she beat him with a belt. His tiny body black and blue, red heat marks across his butt and thighs. 

“Only babies cry,” she said, clenching her teeth at the photo. “Only babies cry!” 

Years later, when Jackie reached puberty and stopped wearing dresses, she started sneaking into his room at night. He could fight her off most nights, until he couldn’t. Of course, to her, none of those things happened, a figment of Jackie’s imagination. If no one saw it, then it wasn’t true. She told herself that every day until she believed it. She cut her son off. Took him out of her will and never picked up the phone. By the next drink, she convinced herself that there never was a child. In the throes of denial, the music sounded good enough to dance to. 

The fall wind outside slammed the phone booth on the corner. She looked through her window and saw a man with a long black coat inside. A running black Caddy parked next to it. She narrowed her blue eyes like a serpent, studying the man. She couldn’t make out his face but could see his thick head of silver hair slicked back. He moved around inside the booth, mouth moving, hands up and down. Then he hung up the phone and stood there.

“What’s he waiting for?” She thought. 

She walked to her makeup desk, snatched the bottle, and poured another glass. By the time she returned he was back on the phone, hands moving and he was pacing back and forth inside the booth like someone had told him shocking news. She wondered what bad news the man had received, it excited her. 

“Good for you honey,” she said, thinking a woman had left him.

When the grandfather clock chimed four, she nodded off. When she woke thirty-two minutes had passed. The man was no longer in the phone booth. She stumbled across the floor, and put on “Out of Time,” by the Stones and quickly poured another drink before the shakes had a chance to set in, then sat in front of the mirror to freshen up her make up and straighten out her wig. 

She staggered to the kitchen and opened the freezer, pulling out a package of frozen breakfast sausage links, and tossed them into the microwave above the marble countertop where she once had a bar, now littered with empty vodka bottles, and prescription Xanax bottles. The Xanax was to counteract the hangovers and shakes she had every morning. Once it settled in, she began drinking and repeating the same ritual every day. Day in and day out, blaming everyone but herself. It was her father’s fault he had PTSD. Not the year he spent leading a tank brigade across Europe fighting Nazis. It was Jackie’s fault that he didn’t want to wear dresses as a child. It was completely his own doing for crying into the night and hugging himself after she left his room naked. 

She’d lost count of how many drinks she’d had and fell to the couch. The record player scratched. The ceiling lowered down on her and the walls closed in. She’d become a photograph of flesh. Her silver sequence party dress glowed underneath the chandelier glass bulbs in the shape of candles. Her wig and makeup both immaculate. She spread open her pale dagger like legs and set the glass in front of cotton blue panties hanging out from the short party dress. She tried to kick off her shoes, but she wasn’t wearing any, the ankles fought for supremacy with heels and toes across the museum floors.

The grandfather clock chimed seven when she woke up. The tremors set into her soul and rattled her bones like a locomotive hell bent on early arrival. She picked up her glass and downed the last of it, then picked herself up and touched up her makeup in the mirror. Her eyes fixated on the expensive bottle of unopened vodka. She couldn’t recall if she had delivered it but was too drunk to remember. She tried to recount her steps, wondered if she fucked the delivery man. It wouldn’t be an insane thing to have happened. She fucked the landscaper the year before and jerked off the mail carrier when he dropped off a box with new socks inside. 

“That’s the kind you used to drink,” a calm and even voice said. “If I remember correct.” 

She slowly turned around and, in the chair, next to the door the man in the long black wool coat sat with his legs crossed. She studied him for a moment, his silver hair slicked back, cut barbershop fresh. He had a matching silver goatee neatly trimmed under his nose and chin. The rest of his face, shaven razor smooth. Bright blue eyes leered at her like he wanted to tell a punchline to a joke. He held up his hand, inviting her to a drink. 

Her reaction was to say something, anything, but sickness aligned with her veins, gut, brain, and skin. She took a swill from the expensive blue bottle of vodka, then poured some in her glass. She took notice of his black shoes, shined up like mirrors. Pressed black pants, and white shirt tucked into them. She figured his waist must’ve been a thirty-four. 

“Couldn’t wear a tie?” she said, shoving more of the liquid down her throat. 

“Feel better?” He asked. 

“How did you get into my house?”

He pointed back at the busted windowpane and smiled. 

“Need to get those fixed on occasion,” he replied. 

She huffed and downed another mouthful, her brain let up on the nerves and skin.

“I’m…I’m…going to,” she slurred, “call the cops if you don’t get out…”

“Destroyer,” he interrupted. 

“Excuse me?” she replied. 

“You’ve been a destroyer of lives for as long as I can remember.”

“Who the fuck are you!” she screamed.

He got up out of the chair with a gentleman’s ease and walked over to her. Their eyes met as he placed his wide hand across her mouth. 

“Don’t scream.” 

She studied his eyes. They appeared lost, but also eyes covered in years of humor and well-built armor. When her throat settled down, he removed his hand and stood in front of her.

“Still playing the same records I, see?” He said, walking over to the stack of albums. “I like this one.” He put on “River Deep Mountain High,” by Ike and Tina Turner. 

She poured herself another drink and poured it down her throat fast, then poured another. She had no idea where she was anymore, the faint smell of burnt breakfast sausage rotting in the microwave hit her nose. She recognized the eyes standing in front of her. 

“I’ve always loved this song,” she said.

“It’s a good fucking song,” he told her, his hair unable to move from the hair tonic the barber had put it in earlier. 

“Where have you been all these years?”

“Around. Man, I tell ya, Los Angeles, Paris, New York City. You know, just last month I was in Frankfurt Germany. “

“You leave Boston?”

“I come here all the time. Work for people over in Southie on occasion. You wearing a wig now I see.”

“People don’t like a woman without looks.” 

“No, people don’t like you.” He told her with a warm smile. “You got exactly what you wanted after all, didn’t you?”

She shifted her body on the couch and snapped into attention. He walked back and forth across the deadweights of the floorboards. 

“And what’s that?”

“You are finally alone. After ruining everyone you met you got to build yourself a little temple of the damned to rot away in. No more husband. No family, just you and the denial you love to suck off whenever you get the chance.” 

“How dare you speak to me like that. I’m your…”

The blast from the sawed-off shotgun inside his long coat lifted her up off the couch and threw her back onto the floor. The music from the song played in the background as he walked around the couch and looked at her. The silver sequence of the dress soaked up the blood red carnage, staining the stomach with the hand of death. Her eyes, wide open, fixated the glossy whites awaiting the nothingness inside the return of his gaze. 

  “You don’t ever get to say that word to me,” he said.

On the way out he grabbed the picture of young Jackie from the mantle and made his way down the long driveway. He started up the Cadillac and took a handful of quarters from the console. The phone booth provided relief from the dark streetlight wind, he dropped in several quarters and dialed a number. 

“Who’s this?” A voice said.

“It’s me,” he replied. 

“Did you find her?” 

“I did. Send over Archie and Lenny. There’s a mess to clean up.”

“What do you want em to do with her?”

“On Colony there’s that abandon strip mall. At the end where the Zayre used to be?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“Bury her there in the ugliest Easter dress you can find.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, did you find the location of the priest?”

“Costigan?”

“Yeah, that cocksucker.”

“I did.”

“Give me the address.” 

The Spy Who Loved Bees

Moneypenny found Bond standing in front of the MI6 break‑room mirror, adjusting his tie with the solemnity of a man preparing for a duel—or perhaps, as he would later insist, aligning his throat chakra for optimal self‑expression.

“The name’sh Bond… Jam—” he began, only to be interrupted by her pointed throat‑clearing.

She crossed her arms. “James, darling, we’ve talked about this. You don’t need to introduce yourself to the coffee machine. It already knows your energy signature.”

Bond sighed, the sound rolling out of him like a disgruntled Highland bull who had just been told to ground himself barefoot in the grass. “Moneypenny, the world’sh changed. The ladsh don’t even wear tuxedos to work anymore. They’ve got… hoodiesh. And feelingsh. And meditation appsh.”

She stepped closer, patting his arm with the kind of affection that had been simmering in the background of their franchise for decades. “That’s called emotional intelligence. And speaking of which, we need to talk about us. Our dynamic needs to evolve. Spiritually.”

Bond straightened, suddenly alert, as if someone had whispered the word “martini” behind him or waved a sage bundle in his direction. “Ah. The old ‘will‑they‑won’t‑they’ shtory arc. Very meta, Moneypenny. Very self‑aware. Very… conscious.”

She smiled. “Exactly. It’s been sixty years of flirtation. The audience is exhausted. The universe is exhausted. We need to modernize. Harmonize. Co‑create a healthier relational paradigm.”

Bond frowned thoughtfully. “Sho… no more shlapping my way into your officeh with innuendoesh?”

“No more,” she said firmly. “We’re going to have a relationship based on mutual respect, healthy boundaries, and professional equality. A relationship that honors our highest selves.”

Bond blinked, as though she’d just suggested he switch to decaf and give up Aston Martins for bicycles. “That’sh… very progressiveh.”

“It’s 2026, James. People are doing shadow work now.”

He nodded solemnly. “Then I accept. From thish day forward, I shall be a new man. A man in alignment with his purpose.”

Two weeks later, Bond stood in a Scottish glen wearing a tweed jacket and holding a pair of binoculars, looking like a man who had been forcibly retired by the plot and gently nudged toward a mindfulness retreat.

“Ornithology,” he declared to no one in particular. “A nobleh pursuit. Birds don’t try to kill you. Usually. They simply mirror your inner vibration.”

He had taken up habitat preservation, lectured schoolchildren about wetlands, and even started a blog titled “Shparrowsh and Shpecie Preservation: A Journey Into Avian Consciousness.”

He practiced mindful breathing with the herons. He thanked the universe before every bird call. He saged the bird blind.

Moneypenny checked in via video call. “You look happy, James. Your aura seems less… weaponized.”

“Aye,” he said, adjusting his binoculars. “I’ve turned over a new leaf. A wholeh tree, even. I feel my root chakra connecting to the moss.”

That was when she appeared: Fiona MacHoney, beekeeper extraordinaire, cresting the hill with a smoker in one hand and a veil fluttering dramatically in the wind like a goddess of pollination summoned by the cosmos itself.

Bond froze mid‑sentence. “Good lord… she’sh magnificent. Her aura’sh golden. Like a sunrise over Glashgow.”

Moneypenny’s voice crackled through his earpiece. “James? Are you still there? Your energy just spiked.”

But Bond was already striding toward Fiona, chest out, accent thickening like a Highland fog rolling in before a storm—or perhaps like a man whose sacral chakra had suddenly awakened.

“Hello there, lassh,” he purred. “I’m Bond. Jam—”

She cut him off with a glare sharp enough to slice through his entire character arc. “I know who you are. You scared my bees. Their collective consciousness is very sensitive.”

Bond’s grin widened. “Ah, but I’d love to learn more about your… hive dynamics. Their group soul. Their shacred geometry.”

Moneypenny groaned through the earpiece. “James, no. We talked about this. Stay grounded. Stay present. Stay in your body but not… like that.”

But it was too late. The eyebrow arched. The charm activated. The theme music swelled faintly in the background, as if the universe itself had given up trying to stop him and decided to let karma handle it.

Fiona smirked. “You want to help me with the honey frames?”

Bond’s eyes gleamed. “With pleashure. My spirit animal may be the wolf, but I feel a deep shoul connection to the bee.”

As Bond followed Fiona into the apiary, Moneypenny sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Well,” she said to herself, “at least he’s flirting with someone who actively contributes to the ecosystem. And who can sting him if he gets out of line. A natural consequence. Very karmic.”

She closed the call, lit a lavender candle, and whispered, “The universe will sort him out.”

And somewhere in the distance, a bee buzzed in agreement.

Sacred

I’m here. At the Damian River. Today is the day. I’ve been praying for this day for years. Father Johannes is so kind and generous. He has taught me to be a lady in trying times. I, Marta, know now how to please a man and keep a husband thanks to Father. I am grateful that Father Johannes will do my baptism today. 

“Do not fear, Marta. The Father will take care of you.” My veil trails behind me, not touching the ground, thanks to the hands of my sisters in faith. 

“Whatever could I fear, when Father Johaness is there?” I smile.

“You’re right of course, Marta. It is only what is sacred.” My other sister pipes up with a serene smile. 

The Father speaks up then. “Leave us, sisters. You know how this must go. This moment is between me, Marta, and God.” The sisters bow out, laying my veil on the ground. I walk to the Father and kneel before him. He smiles genially down at me, taking out his Bible. “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” As he continued his prayer, I laid my head on the ground in reverence. 

“Come, it is time.” I look up and take his hand to gather myself to my feet. He leads me into the water and covers my face with my veil. “Lord, I take this virgin and dip her into the River Damian. I bathe her in the sacred seed of Fathers and rebirth her anew.” My eyes widen beneath the veil. What part of the Bible was he reading from?! I begin to struggle but his grip remains firm and he doesn’t give reprieve. The Father tightens my veil firmly around my eyes to blind me completely and then I am being dipped into the river. The river which is now thick and warm. Salty and sweet. It tastes of nothing I have ever tasted in my twenty years.

The Father holds me in the warm river while I struggle and I think to myself, wow. I am going to die here. I have learned so much from the Father. How to cook. How to clean. How to worship at the altar. How to be a proper wife for a man one day. And it was all for naught. For the Father is now drowning me. In a demonic river. I pray to the Lord, my proper Father that I am welcomed into his kingdom, even without a baptism. I stop my struggles and let myself sink to the bottom of the warm river.

I drown.

My death is long. So long. I drown for what seems to be endless hours. The pain in my lungs is painful and pleasurable. I taste the river, warm, salty and sweet. I see the Father’s face in my visage. And as I imagine him, Johannes becomes clearer and clearer. He appears to me. Like he never has before. Nude. And he is beautiful.

I’ve always known. I’ve always known that to make a man happy, I’d have to see him nude. I’ve seen church boys and imagined. Imagined how they’d look. What they might taste like, their lips against mine. But none of these imaginary ideals of mine compare. Johannes is a visionary. A man of the Lord. Sculpted by God he is. Tan skin, long hair braided down his back, lips so kissable, and hands rough from working with the boys he educates. I want him. I feel sin.

I feel like… a sinner. I’m having feelings in a region that never gets feelings. My nips are hard and tingly. My vagina is wet and sticky. I-… I might as well. The devil may be watching but I am already dead. What’s one more sin going to do? I’m sorry Father above. That I had a failed baptism. That I let temptation get to me even in death. I confess my sins to you. 

But I need this. I need my Father. I need Father Johannes. Right now. In the River Damian. Where virgins go to be reborn. I need him inside me. Father, please? 

As if the Father can hear me, he swims towards me. His naked body next to mine. He grabs me. He’s so gentle. Kisses along my neck, the inside of my wrists. The sides of my breasts. He says to me, “You are baptized in the sacred seed of your Father, in the River Damian. Praise the Lord and let this seed enter you. Be reborn as a sinner.”

And as he enters me, I know. I know I can never go back. I will never be reformed. I am a whore for the Father. Like my sisters in faith. I pray now to Father Johannes at the River Damian only. Father. Feed me your sacred seed! Let me be reborn! I feel alive again! 

My eyes snap open and I gasp. I sit up, grabbing my chest. I swim to the top of the river, shedding clothing along the way. The river is semen. Gallons upon gallons fill this beautiful river to the top. And as I edge the top, I swallow. I step out of the river, completely nude, save for my veil. I throw the veil to the Father and grin over at him. 

“I pray to you Father, that we baptize me again. Sacred acts such as these must be repeated after all.”

What Gets Remembered When Everything Else Burns

I’ve been thinking about the dead dog.

In the first cut of “Alphabet Burning,” the imaginary documentary my imaginary filmmaker Alex Chen made in my imaginary game about the real Lower East Side in 1978, there’s footage of a dead dog on Avenue B. The camera lingers on it for maybe eight seconds. No music, no narration. Just the dog and the garbage and the sound of the city. In the second cut, the one that got Alex a distribution deal and lost their reputation in the underground film scene, the dead dog is gone. Cut for being too rough, too real, too much.

I made a game where you have to decide whether to cut the dead dog.

This probably sounds strange if you’ve never played a solo journaling role-playing game, and maybe it still sounds strange if you have. Blank Generation asks you to play an artist trying to survive in New York City’s underground scene from 1977 to 1983. You roll dice to navigate crises. You track four numbers that measure your exhaustion, your visibility to threats, your money, and your reputation. Every session you create something and then choose whether to stay pure or compromise or sell out completely. The game asks a question it knows you can’t answer: was it worth it?

I didn’t set out to make a game about failure. I set out to make a game about documentation.

The mythology around CBGB and Max’s Kansas City and the Mudd Club always made it look so cool. The photographs are all dramatic angles and artful grunge. The documentaries cut together the best nights, the moments that mattered, the bands that made it. Even the oral histories tend toward the highlights, the war stories, the times someone famous showed up or something wild happened. What you don’t see in the mythology is the rent you couldn’t pay, the friend who overdosed, the choice between eating and buying film stock, the exhaustion that accumulated until you couldn’t tell if you were making art or just going through motions.

I grew up on those photographs. The Ramones at CBGB. Patti Smith at Max’s. Blondie before anyone knew who Blondie was. I thought it looked like freedom. Then I started reading the actual accounts, the zines and personal journals and less polished interviews, and I realized it wasn’t freedom at all. It was desperation documented well.

So I made a game where you track your desperation on a six-point scale and when you hit six you’re done.

The interesting thing about games, the thing I didn’t fully understand until I started designing them, is that they preserve procedural knowledge in a way other media can’t quite match. A documentary can show you what the scene looked like. A book can tell you what it felt like. But a game makes you navigate the same decision trees under the same constraints. When you’re playing Blank Generation and you’re at five out of six Burnout and you have zero Cash and someone offers you money to soften your work, you’re not reading about compromise. You’re making the compromise. You’re feeling the pressure of the numbers and the awareness that one more mark on Burnout ends your character and the knowledge that you need money to survive. The game forces you to understand not just that people made compromises, but why they made them and what it felt like in the moment of making them.

This is what I mean by games as documentation. Not documentation of what happened, exactly, but documentation of what it felt like to navigate what happened.

I’m planning eight books in the series. Four track New York from 1977 to 1999, watching the scene get commercialized and policed and gentrified until by the end there’s a Disney Store in Times Square and the whole thing is a museum. Then four city variants: London punk from the Sex Pistols to Thatcher, Berlin techno from the Wall falling to reunification killing the party, Seattle grunge from Sub Pop to Kurt’s death, Detroit from punk through techno through bankruptcy across thirty-six years. Each book asks the same question in a different accent. Each book documents a different way the city kills the scene. Each book tracks the same erosion, the same exhaustion, the same choice between integrity and survival that almost everyone eventually loses.

The more I work on this series, the more I realize I’m not making entertainment. I’m making an archive.

There’s a moment in the third session of my playthrough where Alex has to choose between going to Danny’s memorial or going to a career-making interview with a magazine. Danny was the friend who overdosed, the one Alex was supposed to check on but didn’t because Alex was too tired and too busy and too burned out. The memorial and the interview are scheduled for the same time. You can’t do both. Any choice that adds another point of Burnout ends the character completely.

I chose the memorial. I went drunk. I couldn’t handle the weight of it, so I walked out. I lost my last remaining reputation with the scene. Then I stopped making films because any choice that kept me making films would have pushed me past six Burnout and ended everything.

This isn’t a story about success or even about meaningful failure. It’s a story about stopping. About choosing survival over art because the alternative is not existing at all. Most stories about underground scenes don’t end this way because most stories about underground scenes are told by the people who made it, or about the people who made it, or are constructed to build toward some kind of meaning. But most people in most scenes didn’t make it. They burned out or sold out or left or died. They did a few things, lost a few things, and then stopped.

The documentation they left behind is all we have to prove they were there at all.

I keep coming back to the dead dog. Such a small edit. Ninety seconds out of twenty minutes. Alex could tell themselves it wasn’t really compromising, just making the work accessible, letting more people see the documentation. And Alex would be right. More film students watched “Alphabet Burning” because of that edit than would have watched the uncut version. The work reached further because it was softer.

But the underground film scene still knew about the cut. Still knew Alex had compromised. Still marked Alex as someone who bent when pushed. And Alex still had to live with knowing that the most brutal truth got edited out to make the rest palatable.

That’s the thing about documentation. You can document the eviction, the poverty, the violence, the desperation. You can document everything except the cuts you made to the documentation itself.

I designed Blank Generation to force those cuts. To make you feel them. To track what they cost. Every playthrough generates a story about someone who tried to document something true and then had to decide how much truth they could afford. Sometimes they stay pure and burn out. Sometimes they compromise and survive. Sometimes they stop before the choice kills them. There’s no winning condition. There’s just the question asked over and over in different ways: was it worth it?

The game can’t answer that question. Neither can I. But the game can make you sit with it, session after session, watching your numbers climb and your options narrow and your character erode. It can make you understand that almost everyone who was there had to answer that question for themselves and most of them answered it by leaving.

And maybe that’s documentation enough.

Twenty years from now, someone will stumble across Blank Generation in some corner of the internet. They’ll read the rules about Burnout and Exposure and Cash and Reputation. They’ll roll dice to generate a crisis. They’ll track their character’s deterioration across three sessions or five sessions or however long they can stand it. They’ll write in their journal about what they created and what it cost and why they’re still there. And when their character hits six Burnout or loses all their Reputation or just can’t take another session, they’ll understand something about underground art scenes that no documentary or book quite captures.

They’ll understand what it felt like to choose between the work and yourself. They’ll understand why most people eventually choose themselves. They’ll understand that the work existing is sometimes the only victory anyone gets.

I built a game where you track your desperation until you can’t track it anymore. Where you document loss until you become the loss you’re documenting. Where the question isn’t whether you’ll burn out but when, and what you’ll leave behind, and whether anyone will remember that you tried.

The dead dog stayed out of the final cut. The film students watched anyway. Some of them wrote letters. One of them said the work mattered.

Alex left New York with two completed films, zero reputation, and just enough money to leave. The work existed. The person who made it was gone. That’s the real story.

I’m making eight games to document eight versions of that story. Eight cities, eight timelines, eight ways the scene ends. Not because it’s fun, exactly. Because someone needs to write down what it actually cost. Someone needs to preserve not just that it happened, but what it felt like to be there when it happened. Someone needs to make a game where you cut the dead dog or keep the dead dog and either way you lose something.

The mythology says it was cool and free and pure. The mythology is a lie. The truth is it was desperate and exhausting, and most people didn’t make it and the ones who did make it usually made it by becoming something else.

But people were there. They made things. They documented what the city was like before the city changed. They chose art over safety until they couldn’t choose it anymore.

That matters.

Even when the dead dog gets cut. Even when the filmmaker leaves. Even when the scene dies and gets turned into mythology and nobody remembers what it actually felt like.

The documentation exists. The game preserves the procedure. The archive grows.

Someone has to remember. Even if remembering means tracking the exhaustion, the compromise, the moment you couldn’t do it anymore.

I made a game where you have to decide whether to cut the dead dog.

I hope you keep it in. I hope you can’t. I hope either way you understand why the choice matters.

That’s what games can do that other media can’t. They make you live the choice. They make you feel the weight. They make you document your own documentation, track your own tracking, remember what it costs to remember.

The scene is dying. The scene is being born. You’re broke. You’re brilliant. You’re burning out. You’re making something real. The city doesn’t care. The work demands everything.

Make something that matters. Even if you have to stop before you’re done. Even if the dead dog gets cut. Even if nobody remembers your name.

Make something that matters. Someone will find it later. Someone will understand.

That’s the only win condition there is.

Bedbugs

When he opened his eyes, the bedside clock glowed 2:33 a.m. He watched as a digit snapped, to 2:34, and he flinched—in mind, if not in body. 

Morton hadn’t been sleeping; he’d been pretending, killing time. He was completely, utterly awake, as he usually was as night crept into its deepest, blackest corners. Morton’s insomnia distressed him. He still clung to the belief that he was a decent, upstanding guy; he felt that during these hours, people ought to be asleep. Good people like him, anyway.  

Tonight he also suffered from another chronic condition, a headache, which pounded each temple like a throbbing bass and released cascades of sweat along his brows, underarms, and back. Meanwhile, a nasty itch burrowed like something alive into his right foot. What the hell was that, he wondered.  But he lacked the will to bend his no-longer agile body to examine the irritation. He kept brushing it with his other foot, which didn’t help.  

Morton used to be a creature of habit. Repetition had kept him on task, ensured that at any given moment, he was doing the right thing. Like every week day the alarm buzzed at 6 a.m. to wake him; a shower, then a breakfast of Raisin Bran and coffee. At 7:10, he commenced his drive to work. And so on. (Back in the day he’d always been asleep by midnight—unless something amorous and or exotic was happening in his life.) A strict timetable provided his best chance to succeed, he thought—or at least, to get through the day whole.     

But there were drawbacks. When life’s unexpected twists disrupted his schedule, he grew frustrated and his nerves tautened like screws. His heart raced and his breathing got difficult. He couldn’t think clearly, fixating on what he thought he should be doing instead of attending to the issue at hand. Morton was ashamed of this weakness, and he tried to hide it. He pretended he was someone he wasn’t: a man with calm nerves, unflappable and always in control.  

But the charade was strenuous, and it wore Morton down. He was able to fool people for only so long. For example, his wife. He’d been 30 when they married; 39 when they split. More and more during their life together, his anxiety had erupted into anger, much of it childish and vulgar. He’d stomp around, cursing and spitting vitriol. Sometimes he couldn’t believe his own behavior. But he was unable to stop, especially as his outbursts seemed to ease his tension. 

He came to loathe his job, once a wellspring of status and accomplishment. By mid-career his professional advancement had stopped abruptly, like a cartoon figure running into a wall. Younger colleagues leapfrogged him for promotions, then sadistically ordered him around.  

At 50, Morton was fired, or “downsized,” as they called it. They claimed it was due to budget cuts, that he shouldn’t take it personally. But the simple truth was, nobody wanted his cynical, burnt-out ass around anymore. 

A year later, Morton remained unemployed. Without a profession or family to ground him, he felt fogged-in and unbalanced. Time was a sea of muck; it barely stirred—much like Morton himself. He spent days lurching from bed to couch to chair; drinking scotch and watching pornographic dreck on his laptop. 

***

Finally, as he lay, exhaustion found him. He went numb and dark. He dreamed: the next thing he knew, he was standing by his bed. A guy stood with him—one he recognized from work but whom he hadn’t seen in years, Tommy or Teddy, something like that. The man hadn’t changed, was still stubby with glasses and a cheerful gleam in his eyes. 

How far back did they go? Some 10 or 20 years?  The jolly eyes reminded Morton of the man’s demeanor, eager and energetic, and Morton at the time they’d known each other felt the same, certain he too had a promising future. The window near Morton’s bed filled with a dazzling sunshine that streamed through the room, and Morton felt an uplifting warmth as his former colleague said to him, “You know, all us guys were jealous when you and Debbie married. Damn, she was stunning.”

It was true. Debbie had always drawn a lot of male attention, from veiled glances to outrageous flirting. 

Morton grinned. “We’re still going strong,” he bragged. “In fact, we’re doing so well, she doesn’t need to work anymore.”

The guy said, “No surprise there, Morton. Anyone with eyes could see you were going places.”

Morton said something modest, but inside he was gloating, yeah, I kicked ass. 

“Why’d you cheat on her?” Tommy or Teddy said. “That was cold, man.” 

“What?” Morton was genuinely confused.

“C’mon, you and Jill. Everyone knew.” The guy playfully elbowed Morton. “You sly dog, you.”

Well, Morton thought. Maybe he had. Lots of guys did it, just part of the formula for go-getters. 

“And how you pulled off that media campaign,” the guy said, “while juggling two gals.” The guy kissed his fingertips. “Bellissimo! A masterpiece.”  

“Heh heh. Thank you. Thank you.” They shook hands, Morton preening with self- satisfaction. 

Quickly the sun dimmed, like a blanket thrown over a light, and Morton was alone. Shadows invaded the bedroom. The air chilled. Morton’s bed was stripped of sheets and blankets but wasn’t bare. Instead, the mattress was covered—infested—with small, writhing creatures. 

Morton saw glossy roaches and water bugs scurrying in circles. Their shells looked diamond-hard, yet suggestive of filth underneath. Carpenter ants, long as twigs, zig-zagged around. Furry caterpillars curled their bodies. Ink-black spiders revealed ominous patches on their bellies. Dozens of each type, rummaging wildly as if Morton’s bed was their natural habitat. He watched, mesmerized, as antennas scraped together and microscopic legs hurried. Some creatures dug into the mattress, gouging slits and disappearing as others followed. 

Morton oversaw the invasion without emotion, reserving judgment. Till he saw a new battalion of water bugs climbing up from the floor. They were of a different breed, as large as toads, with finger-length antennas that probed and prodded. Their eyes were black, round and dead as space. They began to eat the others, slurping them up like worms. Struggling legs protruded from the primordial slits of their mouths. 

Morton recoiled and his mouth hinged open.     

Then he was awake, horizontal in bed. Without bugs, but with his foot still inflamed. He no longer could ignore it; he sat up, reached under his covers and grabbed his foot. He pulled it toward his face. 

Morton was shocked to see the foot drenched in sticky, gleaming blood. Some patches looked scarlet, and there were purplish scabs. Blood bubbled from a slit in the middle of the arch, streaming over his ankle and onto his sheet. Pain sharpened, like someone was cruelly rotating an embedded spike.  

Morton released the scream he’d begun in his dream, a howl from beneath his belly that tore through his guts like bile.  

His voice faded. The bedside clock switched to 2:35.