Fun with Nick and Jane

I am fucking David Foster Wallace’s dead body when Jane asks me if she can covalently bond with Donald Barthelme. I say absolutely not, immediately recalculate, plot the dosage of Zoloft against the balance of Quetiapine, decide why the hell not. 

When I arrive home, Nick is pissed. I point out that Jane is already being fucked by a white person and has a well-established history of clinical depression and prodromal syndromes. Nick is not impressed. Nick punches me in the cunt. Brian says the next time I see her, tell Jane fuck you, because he sewed her button back on her coat the other day and she never said thank you. 

Myriam wants to take off my pants, and I say no. I look for Kristina Born—Kristina is nowhere to be found and will not respond to my friend request, either. Nick tells me he saw Jane and Myriam on the bus; he misses Jane. I probe him for further information—probe being the psychotherapeutic term for “encourage more speech”—and determine that he has mistaken Carolyn for Myriam, which makes more sense. 

I read nonfiction after Carolyn’s play, still bitching about my parents and the unfairness of DNA and the exponentially marginalizing structures of epigenetics, not to mention the socio-commercial use of scientific survival in creating selfhood-crippling evolutionarybrainwashing mechanisms. I miss half of Jane’s piece because I am busy trying to relieve myself of interpersonal unease and uric acid and other phenomena my body cannot absorb. Myriam does not come, although she was invited. 

Afterwards, I find the nearest funhouse and fuck Leonard Cohen and F., my orgasm ripping on and on over the treetops like a nitrous-oxide gunshot, a manic balloon ejaculating across the horizon.

The Way of the Raccoon

The raccoon placed his paws on the table. Above him, a single naked lightbulb swayed.

“Cigarette?” asked Detective Joe Oroborus.

“Man, you guys are old school. No thanks,” said the raccoon.

“According to a witness statement, you were last seen in the vicinity of the thermite bomb attack wherein…”

“Hello? Excuse me? Do I look like I’m capable of setting off thermite?” He directed their attention to his paws. “Opposable thumbs, see any?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Thank you.”

“Not so fast, clever Sam,” said Joe’s partner, Sweetback Glide. “Also according to the witness, you’re an anthropomorphic fantasy character. Gripping never poses any obstacle for you guys. Am I right?”

“Well…”

“Oh, lighten up,” said Joe.

“You lighten up.”

“Fuck you, man. Just, fuck you.”

“Excuse me,” said the raccoon, “but aren’t you two taking the Good Cop/Bad Cop thing into new and perilous territory? And unless you have any actual evidence against me, I demand you release me. I have garbage to root through.”

“The last time you rooted through garbage, it was under your alter ego ‘Dr. Racky,’ and it was medical waste…specifically, embryos. You were planning a new race of gene-tweaked super-raccoons with opposable thumbs. Admit it! Admit it under oath!”

“Know the rules of evidence much?” asked the raccoon.

“Huh?”

“You heard me. I demand to speak with my solicitor. This outrage has gone far enough. This trial is out of order. This whole proceeding is whacky to the 9th degree. Justice! Justice!”

“You can’t handle the justice,” said Glide.

“I’m not saying anything until you hook me up with some justice,” said the raccoon sulkily.

“But we’re straying from the point,” said Joe. “We need to focus on the main theme, not this pie in the sky malarkey. You, sir, are a rootin’ tootin’ criminal of the first water!”

“Objection!” screamed the raccoon. “I so fucking object!”

“He’s got a point,” said Glide. “We need to stick to the facts. Nothing but. I shared a cell with a raccoon once and they’re very factual.”

“But…”

“I was on the inside for a very specific reason, undercover, to expose that gang of anime characters…the Big Eyes Bunch. They were planning to hold the manga genre hostage unless their demands for panty porn and tentacle action were met in spades. I mean literal spades.”

“But that’s just…overtly surreal,” said Joe.

“Spot on,” said Glide. “You’ll make a fine detective one day.”

“One day? I was doing detective spade work in the garden of earthly delights long before you poked about in your mother’s womb…looking for the good nutrition angle. I was…”

“Crap, utter crap,” howled the raccoon.

“What is it now?”

“I’m walking right out of this pop stand and you can’t stop me. Then I’ll keep walking until I find some garbage, and if it does happen to consist of embryos, so much the worse for the sting operation, because…I’ll make those clones anyway. I’ll hybridize, I’ll gene-tweak, and I’ll keep going until I have that army they warned you about in the slammer. Yes, doggo frens, I’m talking about the last army you see before you wake up in a pool of your own freckles…rubbed off forever…”

“The mind boggles,” said Joe suddenly. “This suspect is a lot weirder than both of us working together, very hard and very fast. He’s got it all over us. I say we pardon him and let the next set of detectives work the clones over.”

“Very good, sir.”

A sudden tendency to microfinetune quantum reality resulted in the outsourcing of this story temporarily to Swedish biker cranksters.

Swallowed Whole

The leviathan parks itself outside my apartment.

No engine hum. No warning. Just there.

Every night, the same: a flicker of streetlight, a fluorescent stutter—and then the rot appears.

Maybe it’s visiting me because I was shaken the first time I saw it. It was years ago. I was driving to the arrivals terminal and there it was—slouched on deflated tires behind Kennedy airport, on the Rockaway Expressway. Just a bloated carcass—rectangular, heat-swollen—“EMERGENCY RESPONSE UNIT” scrawled across its aluminum side in flaking letters. A red cross peeling, looking like sunburn—or something worse.

A 60-by-12-foot self-propelled trauma unit—complete with operating room, burn beds, and auxiliary power. Fully functional. Never truly roadworthy. Its mobility wasn’t for transport, but for greeting the wreckage.

It had once been a storage trailer for outdated airplane seats.

Now it hunched there, on the tarmac—obsolete before it ever touched a single life.

The new ambulances fly.

Yet it keeps showing up.

Something in it logged my reaction—and decided to mess with me.

They built the unit after Flight 66 dropped from the sky. June 1975. A Boeing 727 slammed into the approach lights at JFK and tore itself across Rockaway Boulevard—113 dead, fire trucks stuck in gridlock, no plan, no help. That crash gave birth to the hospital on wheels.

Its doors were sealed for good after what came to be called the Black Drill of ’87.

It wasn’t called that officially, of course. Officially, it was a full-scale simulation—a standard triage exercise meant to test the Mobile Emergency Trauma Unit under real-time pressure.

There are no public records. No photos. No news articles. Just fragments. Anecdotes. Whispers passed down from bitter Port Authority retirees and nightshift orderlies with thousand-yard stares.

The trauma unit skulked out just past midnight. It was supposed to rendezvous with a staged crash site near the old cargo terminals. Somewhere en route, it disappeared from sight. Disconnected from radio. It went dark for almost three hours.

When it reappeared, it was parked in the middle of Runway 13L. Doors locked from the inside.

Twelve training dummies had been loaded aboard earlier that day for simulation—each tagged and cataloged by Port Authority staff.

Only eleven were recovered.

But they found a twelfth.

Not rubber. Not tagged. Not breathing.

A real one.

Unidentified. Mid-twenties. No ID. No pulse. But coagulated blood stood in jelled defiance at the base of the stretcher. The body wrapped in singed bandages. Autopsy report—if it ever existed—was never released.

They say one nurse never spoke again. Just walked off the job and into the Sound.

A doctor built a fallout shelter in his backyard and died six months later of dehydration, muttering about how he never saw a body he couldn’t account for.

The unit was decommissioned quietly. Shelved. Ignored. Left to rot outside, on a forgotten tarmac. Yet it hovers—like a bad dream for those who were there.

A drunk retiree at a medical evac reunion swore he saw a young, Italian-looking kid watching the Drill from his car. Said he was holding a clipboard.

Vanished before anyone could get a look.

I imagined the stillness inside—the unused dressings in yellowing boxes, the dust sitting on scratchy blankets inside the triage unit.

Not memory. Something low and cold squeezing the base of my heart.

Years later, its ghosts roll in nightly on cracked tires. I still hear them. The crews. The surgeons. Still prepping. Outside my window.

Tonight, I give in.

I walk out of my apartment building and the air is different—dense, electrical.

The unit sits by the curb, almost breathing.

It’s around two a.m. No sign of human life on either side of the double yellow lines. But the air is alive. The dense drizzle dowses the unit in a kind of sweat.

Up close, it’s massive—a bumpy aluminum shell, shifting around corroded steel bones.

Strange. None of the neighbors ever mentioned seeing the unit. No one ever complained about it taking up ten parking spaces.

I walk up to the doors. The latch gives.

Inside, it’s dead quiet. A time capsule of dust and unused triage.

And then: a stretcher.

An old clipboard.

The patient name: mine.

Date of intake: June 1987.

No vitals. No release.

It returns for a moment. But it slowly fades. Replaced by something secure. Reassuring.

I look toward the front of the vehicle: a driver—stooped, motionless. He’s wearing the soiled uniform of an orderly, circa 1980-something. He turns. Smiles.

The doors close behind me.

And we’re gone.

Wheels lifting.

Like a plane that never lands.

Like being buried with the lights still on.

Like always.

I used to wake up.

Now I just wait.

For the hush of night.

And the sky, weeping from the seams.

Palm Springs Man

Waves of heat undulated and danced in front of Sam’s eyes as he walked slowly down the desert road.  

The road was darker than the sidewalk, so bright it made him dizzy. 

He was under the thumb of solar imperialism, and the sun owned everything, and everyone lock, stock and barrel. 

He was dizzy, thirsty and hungry. Walking for miles under the burning sky had a transformative effect.  

His flesh couldn’t melt, but his soul could, and it melted with heat waves dancing all around him like ghosts in the desert. 

His back was drenched with sweat from the thick backpack weighing him down and intensifying his body heat. 

This was the kind of day where wearing socks didn’t make any sense, because his feet felt the heat burn right up through the boots he was wearing.  

The soles may as well be cardboard for all the good they did. 

The tall purple mountains which wrapped around the town looked on, not caring.

Tourists walked by shooting disapproving looks at Sam’s disheveled, sweaty appearance.  

To them he was hideous – but their thatchy, hairy legs poking out of brightly colored shorts was acceptable. 

He returned their horrified stares until he heard a scratching sound below him. 

It was a small lizard, upside down, thrashing around, trying to bring itself bolt, upright again. 

Sam leaned down and picked up the lizard, closed his eyes shut, said a few Hail Marys and then bit the tiny lizard’s head off. 

He chewed on the rest of the still thrashing body like it was a chaw of beef jerky, pretending the blood spurting out of the critter’s body was catsup. 

Scooter yelled, “DAD THAT CRAZY GUY JUST ATE A LIZARD”. 

Scooter’s father stared with a repulsed sneer while his fat blonde wife dialed 911 on her cell phone. 

She wished Sam was black so she could get on the news. 

Busting a homeless white man wasn’t going to get her in the papers. 

Bugger. 

Sam threw the reptilian carcass down and walked over to the gas station across the road. 

Scooter’s mom tossed her mullet and yelled, “HEY YOU DON’T YOU WALK AWAY YOU STAY RIGHT HERE, MISTER!” 

Sweat drooled down every millimeter of Sam’s corpus. 

So delirious from the heat, he walked up to a gas pump and kicked it angrily thinking it was a soda machine. 

A few yards away sat a solitary gas can and in his delirious state thought he was looking at a thirst-quenching liter of A&W Root Beer. 

Sam unscrewed the cap to the can and poured the remains of what was left in the can. 

Wiping his chin, he continued his trek down the road to the baritone screaming of the vacationing housewife yelling into her cell phone. 

It can be assumed the local police didn’t care about the homeless eating microscopic wildlife. 

A coyote, yes; a road runner, yes; maybe even a vulture – a tiny lizard, no, no bother. 

He trudged with a Frankensteinian gallop down Palm Canyon Drive, heading for Vista Chino – deadline, Desert Hot Springs. 

In the bright white light he saw vinyl-topped Cadillacs roll in to heavily gated golf courses, the old white men still holding on to their huge sedans in their rejection of hip-hop cruisers. 

Many yards later Sam passed newly gentrified motels, still piping in bad Frank Sinatra music but this time for tattooed blondes with piercings and XXL asses. 

He could have sworn they were twerking out of their hip-hop cruisers. 

Everywhere he went there were misters spraying thin jets of water out as lawn sprinklers ejaculated over all matter of desert flora. 

Out the corner of his eye he espied a police cruiser slowly trailing behind him. 

It made him paranoid, so he took a sharp turn around the corner. 

It led to a quiet side street, but side streets in the desert are never truly quiet, because you can always hear the abrasive music of insects scratching their legs and crackling their antennae all through the day and into the night.

There were rows of banged-up houses lining the road with campers sporting flat tires and sunbaked speedboats that hadn’t touched water in years parked out in front. 

Fumes of cooking methamphetamine wafted from a few houses, mingling with dancing heat waves.

 “SKYLER PICK UP SOME DORITOS AT THE STORE!”  yelled a voice from inside a house behind a teenage girl’s back. 

The teenage girl in shorts and flip-flops had corn roll hair. 

 “AND GET SOME CIGS, TOO!” 

 “ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT!” Skyler yelled back, still walking. 

 ‘AND -SKYLER!-SKYLER! BRING BACK SOMETHING TO DRINK!” 

 ‘YEAH, ALRIGHT ALREADY!” Skyler yelled, picking up her speed away from home. 

The word “drink” triggered Sam’s bladder into wanting to unload, so he warily retuned to the main drag, looking around to make sure the cops were gone. 

All he could find for the next half-mile was a private tennis court. 

With every step he took the back pack felt heavier and heavier, weighing him down. 

He could feel every pound of his load pushing down his back. 

The weight pushing down his back created a considerable degree of tension to his bladder. 

Too many palm trees were covering the front of the court, making it impossible for Sam to jump over a fence. 

Sam walked towards the driveway where a parking attendant was opening a car door and letting a pair of guests out. 

 “HEY!” he yelled at Sam as he walked past him. 

 “I SAID HEY! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?” 

A well-groomed silver haired gentleman in a white tennis outfit got out of the car, pushed in his aviator shades and said, “Let me handle this, Carlos!” 

The silver haired gentleman’s companion, a young man in cutoff shorts aggressively grabbed Sam by the arm and said, “The man’s talking to you, Buddy!” 

Sam tried wriggling free of the young man’s grasp, but the grip was too strong for him. 

 “Get off me”, Sam hissed. 

 “Get off me? Can you believe this punk?” the hustler announced to his benefactor and the attendant, getting cockier by the minute. 

Sam kept trying to break free but couldn’t. 

The hustler threw Sam against the automobile hood, slamming him hard. 

 “Leave him alone, Brian. I’ll just chase him out of here”, Carlos appealed. 

 “No way”, Brian the hustler growled. “Not on my watch, bro”. 

Brian quickly slammed Sam against the Cadillac three times in a row.

Sam couldn’t hold it in anymore. 

He undid his fly with his free hand and pulled out his hose. 

The old tennis bum licked his lips, eagerly awaiting visual bounty. 

Sam held his joint out and peed all over the Cadillac. 

 “YOU PERVERT, WHAT THE FUCK?” Brian yelled, still holding on to Sam. 

The heat radiated on Sam’s urine, igniting the gasoline he consumed a little while ago. 

The beautiful white Cadillac immediately burst into flames. 

Sam was instantly immolated by the burning car, and with him Brian. 

The attendant ran to his kiosk to call the Fire Department, but it was too late to save Sam, Brain and the overpriced American automobile. 

The masculine bonfire spread due to the dancing heatwaves caressing the flames and spreading them to the nearest palm trees. 

The flames spread throughout the entire court yard. 

Tennis bums and horny tennis instructors began to run, but it was too late. 

Palm Springs was on fire. 

Fire and brimstone. 

A Perfect Fit: Part Two

READ FIRST: https://horrorsleazetrash.com/2025/12/03/pieter-kohler-9/

Alaric’s girlfriend Lena worked at a clothing boutique, and when her hours and Master Kurt’s free time coincided, we went there. She was petite in stature, short blond hair, green eyes, slim and small breasted. She was dealing with a customer when we walked in, Kurt wearing army fatigues and t-shirt to reveal his muscularity. I wore a short skirt and tight blouse, following Master’s commands.  Kurt was only interested in Lena because she was Alaric’s girl. I occasionally saw her in the on campus chatting with Alaric who towered over her small frame. She could well be submissive to his will, perhaps a willing slave in training, I speculated, except I didn’t know to what degree my student dominated his girl or understood the liberating dynamics of BDSM. 

Ever since the incident at the pet store, Alaric took every chance he could get to stop by my office. He spread his legs on the chair opposite to me to talk about life and love and my soldier friend Kurt. I could see the outline of his hardening cock as he did so. Because I didn’t object, in fact I encouraged it, he became quite at ease, and said he had even talked to Kurt a few times over the phone and told him all about his girl and how she couldn’t get enough. Of course, Kurt told me all about Alaric’s excitement. And my fantasies included Alaric fucking me, which of course I revealed to Kurt, who found that amusing.

And I was intrigued by Kurt’s desire to seduce Lena, fresh prey, he called her, and I wanted to see if he had any chance in that direction. In the boutique, he told me to sit on the chair by a mirror and hold that larger butt plug securely in my ass, which he had inserted after a rough fuck that morning. Frankly, I wanted him to bone her good and hard because she was Alaric’s girl, and the boy was getting me hot and bothered in my office. He made innuendos about how far he wanted to go, how much he enjoyed putting the dog collar around my neck in the pet store, all nudges towards his own desire to fuck me, I think, with my master’ permission. Frankly, I wanted it. Students can be so irresistible, so horny and insatiable. 

Also, after the pet store incident, Alaric had come to the office and said he wanted to be excused from writing the compulsory term paper. He wore a t-shirt with the logo “I eat Sushi” written on it.

“Why should I agree to that? How could you pass the course if you don’t write it?”

“Well, because I’m telling you to,” and he stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles, clenching his hands behind his head. He wore thick-soled black shoes, Doc Martens probably. “And Kurt said you would because you’re obedient and you like me. And you’ll pass me anyway.”

“Kurt said that?”

“Is he wrong? Remember, I collared you in the pet store.” 

He laughed, leaning forward and crossing his arms on my desk, staring me hard and provocatively in the eyes. He obviously knew that he could get away with such boldness, for the barriers between us had crumbled. I stared at his biceps. He flexed them. You know you want to, Miranda.” His use of my first name sent a sweet and sharp pain through my cunt. Of course, I exempted him from writing the term paper and would grant him an A for the course. His cold blue eyes gave me a knowing look. He smiled, winked, and left after standing up first so I could see the bulge in his pants. 

“See you again, soon, pet.”

His use of the word pet brought back the incident at the pet store. I wanted to see Alaric there again. And I wanted to see Kurt mount Alaric’s girlfriend in his bed and fuck that petite bitch senseless with his big dick, holding her arms above her head and maybe even teasing her with Alaric’s name as he opened her up and made her writhe under his power. Even better if Alaric knew about it, or saw it, but I wasn’t going to say anything. This was Kurt’s game; she was Kurt’s prey. I was the obedient observer, even if I joined in the hunt. Just as I had become a kind of game or fresh prey for Alaric, although it didn’t know if he even fully understood how far they could go, aside from the opportunity of fucking his teaching. 

I clenched the butt plug, feeling sensations go up and down my spine. Needing to get fucked. Needing the sharp slap of Master’s hand on my ass. Kurt was physically training me, getting me used to gags and shackles, butt plugs and floggers, collars, hoods, bondage, even tit and clit torture. I was practicing deep throating on a ten-inch dildo, pliable and thick, sucking it in past the gag reflex every day. Keeping my body and spirit in shape for sweet degradation and ferocious fucking. 

An enslaved cunt, which Master sometimes called me, although he generally referred to me as “it.” 

It had ceased to be a professor when in the master’s presence, its other world, the world of obligations, friends, profession, family, etc., disappeared when it was with its Master, and it became just the Master’s possession, collared animal, or mere object, to do with as he pleased. And every day it lived in a kind of ecstasy of expectation. 

Kurt fingered some blouses on a rack and whispered to me. “She’s one little fuckable doll, I’ll give her that. Getting a boner just thinking about her lips on my dick. She’ll be tight at first, but a perfect fit in the end,” he chuckled. Looking up, Lena was startled to see a muscular soldier fondling silk blouses. She didn’t know Alaric’s teacher, at least she didn’t recognize me, as she wasn’t in my class nor did she ever come to my office with Alaric, so I simply remained quiet, watching Kurt flirt with her. 

He said he wanted to buy a blouse for his daughter and, as if it blurted out of her sweet little mouth unexpectedly, she said, “you have a daughter?” Admittedly, Kurt didn’t look like a fatherly type, but he was old enough to have a teen-aged daughter. Lena, Alaric had told me, had recently celebrated her 18th birthday, although she could pass for younger. Alaric was nineteen. I must say that I fancied swallowing his cum. Even daydreamed of two hunky students spit-roasting me in front of my master. Kurt bantered with Lena and asked why she was so surprised that he should have a daughter. How old did he look to her? Maybe he should have a paunch and skinny arms, he chuckled and stepped close to her as he fondled the blouses, almost touching her shoulder, close enough for her to smell his aftershave. She didn’t step back.

“Trouble is I don’t know her size. But I want to surprise her. She likes clothes a lot.” Then he said: “as a matter of fact she looks as if she’d be your size. Petite and trim, pretty like you, too.”

“Well, I take a small in these blouses.”

“You know, it would help if I could see you wearing one. Then I’d get a better sense of fit, you know what I mean. And color too. She sort of has your lovely complexion and her hair is shiny like yours too. What color goes best?”

Without hesitation and blushing with pleasure, she grabbed three blouses of different colors and went to the change room. Kurt playfully punched my shoulder.

“That little bitch will be sucking my dick within two weeks. I’ve got a fucking hard-on for her already. You think she noticed? I’m buying the blouse and will find out when she’s on duty again this week and I’ll come back for something else. First, I’ll chat her up, see if she has a coffee break soon. I can tell she likes me already, and she’s probably creaming her panties in the change room. My little fuck doll, my baby girl. I’ll give the little bitch to my friend Jamal, see how she likes a black buck. Stuff her fucking panties in your mouth; you’d like that, wouldn’t you, cunt? Soon, I’ll give Alaric permission to smack and fuck you, too. By the way, have you licked his boots yet, cunt? We’re going back to the pet store soon.”

The question struck me as rhetorical at the time. I didn’t know when such an event would ever happen or how, despite Alaric’s innuendos and pushing the envelope and my own fantasies. Kurt had not yet specifically commanded that it lick its student’s boots, although it had implicit permission to do so, and it wanted to, just to tell Master when it did. 

And so, he engaged Lena’s attention and got her to smile and giggle. Throughout the patter and flirtation scenario, it could see the fresh prey weakening and growing interested, and obviously flattered that a rugged muscular soldier had taken a shine to her. So much for love and loyalty to her boyfriend. Admittedly, it was somewhat annoyed being ignored while it sat on the chair, and also jealous. 

But it allowed itself to imagine Alaric unzipping in its office to reveal a demanding cock, and laughing. It allowed itself to imagine Alaric’s cock down its throat. Maybe he’d do that in the pet store on our next visit. As Master Kurt chatted with his prey, I clenched the perfectly fitting butt plug and soaked my panties. Pronoun correction: it clenched and soaked itself.

Jacob’s Drift

They go by travelers, traveler punks, traveling kids, hobos, hobo-punks, crusties, crust punks, anarcho-punks, transient punks, punk nomads, road kids, gutter pirates, street punks, dirty kids, train hoppers, rail riders, and many other names that they’ve been called.  Jacob preferred gutter punk. It suited him well, he would say. He would get up, eat cold beans, drink warm beer, and fly the sign, asking for spange.  Spange is short for spare change.  Jacob wasn’t a fan of stealing, but had in the past, when he was really hungry, or needed more beer.  The same couldn’t be said for the people he was with now.  They stole frequently, and as much as they could.  Dogface was a big, burly, son of a bitch, who basically was protection for the rest of them.  He was older, probably in his early thirties. Scumboy was the youngest. He ate and drank anything in front of his face, sometimes for survival, and other times just for attention. Then, there was Firefly.  She was a spitfire of a girl, hence the name. Jacob was infatuated with her to say the least.  Firefly was a petite, but stacked, little red head with dreads, and a shape that would bring most men to their knees.  They met outside of Asheville, North Carolina, while waiting for a train car.  Jacob thought that she didn’t stink like the rest.  They both talked of their travels, horrible upbringings, and painful memories.  It was the attention he needed at that time.

Jacob enjoyed the conversation with a girl, which he hadn’t had in quite some time.  He didn’t want the train to stop.  It did, and occasionally they would have to hide from the railroad police.  They were headed to New Orleans, just in time for Mardi Gras.  Some of Dogface’s friends were already down there as he knew from the ‘sign in’ outside of Asheville.  ‘Sign ins’ are tagging of certain walls as communication between travelers.  Jacob had never been to the Big Easy, as he was only a year into his travels.  The other three had made the rounds a few times in years past. 

“What’s New Orleans like?” asked Jacob.  Dogface almost leaped out of his skin to respond, “It’s fucking amazing.  There are so many of us there, especially this time of year. Beer runs like waterfalls, and leftovers for days, I tell you, days!”  Scumboy had to speak up, “He’s right. Cold beer too.”  Jacob longed to feel the sensation of a cold beer to his lips.  Firefly barked, “Tell him how we get most of the beer.  This waterfall of beer utopia, you speak of.”  Scumboy with no hesitation said, “She shows her tits, and we get beer!”  Jacob thought of this as a win-win.  Not only would he get free beer, but also get a look at Firefly’s beautiful, bulging bumps, which were currently covered by a stained, white wife beater.

It was daybreak when the train arrived outside of New Orleans.  There were no beans left, and all four shared the last beer.  This was Jacob’s first train ride, so Dogface played big daddy, “When it starts to slow down, get ready.  When we jump, you jump. Ok?  And roll like we do.”  Jacob thought, if Firefly was jumping, then he was jumping.  He would follow that girl to hell, and ask for seconds. 

The train slowed to a manageable speed and Dogface yelled, “JUMP!”  They all jumped and rolled onto the dusty gravel.  They made it unscathed for the most part.  A few cuts and scratches are nothing to a traveler. Brushing himself off, Jacob thought, let’s get that free beer.  They had a small walk to endure before the festivities would be enjoyed.  Plus, they had to locate Dogface’s friends.  They had been there for a few months to escape the brutal northern winters.  The best places for shelter and food were already pinpointed by them.  Firefly would provide the beer.

After a modest walk, they arrived at the French Quarter.  They strolled Royal, turned on St. Peter, and saw a fellow kid half way in a garbage can with his feet straight up in the air.  Dogface approached the can and asked about his friends through the opening at the top.  The kid quickly emerged from the bottom of the can, half eaten Po’Boy in hand, and said, “Look, It’s still warm.”  Dogface asked again, “Do you know where the Killhead Drunks are?”  Different sects of travelers took names to separate themselves from other ‘sign ins’.  The kid, with an almost reverent demeanor and tone said, “Oh yeah, I know where they hang. Follow me.” 

They followed, weaving through thugs, drunks, and whores.  Jacob, seeing all the glistening glasses of cold beer in the tourist’s hands, thought, Firefly needs to break those titties out.  They got stares and heard whispers as they passed.  Sometimes it wouldn’t be whispers. “Take a fucking bath!” an old, leather-skinned, drunk whore yelled.  Dogface marched forward through the mass of flesh, said over his shoulder, “Ignore them. Keep moving.”

The kid ducked off between two shotgun houses and they followed close behind.  He took a quick left and arrived at an abandoned house with boards on all of the windows and doors.  The kid knocked twice then ran off into the night to find another trashcan.  As they waited, Jacob gazed upon Firefly’s face in the streetlights and wanted nothing more than to taste those succulent lips.  The board blocking the doorway started to slide to the right.  “Dogface? Is that you motherfucker?”  Dogface smiled, “Yep, it’s me motherfucker.”  They embraced as if they were lovers.  Dogface introduced Jacob, as the others were already familiar with one another.  “Jacob, this is Bull.  He is my bro from way back.  We’ve been in the shit from Oregon to New York City.”  Jacob could feel the unspoken alliance between the two, and after seeing them greet one another, wondered if they had fucked in the past.

Bull was a big one too, about the same age as Dogface.  He had a shaved head, as Dogface’s was short, and unkempt.  “Get in here.  We have jambalaya, some bread, hell, even some fucking fried shrimp.”

“Any beer?” Jacob asked.  “Don’t fucking spit on his offerings!” Dogface said foaming.  Bull laughed, trying to reel in Dogface, said, “It’s cool man, it’s cool.  All out of beer at the moment.”  Scumboy with a mouth full of jambalaya, spat out half intelligible, “Let’s go get some fucking beer!”  Firefly knew she would have to take advantage of tourists by showing her tits.  It really wasn’t a big deal for her.  She thought that it was funny that men would turn into puppy dogs with cash when in front of big, fat, whale-shaped tits.  The tourist would try to give beads, but Firefly would insist on money or beer for her and the boys.  Beer and cash would soon follow after her pale mounds of flesh with dime-sized nipples were exposed.  Jacob, beer in hand, and tits in sight, thought about tasting more than her lips.

They all had their fill of beer and debauchery for the night and decided to pack it in.  On the walk back, Scumboy busted out a car window and took some visible change from the console.  When they reached the abandoned house that would be home for the time being, Dogface and Scumboy staggered inside.  Firefly asked Jacob, “Will you stay out here with me for a bit?” Without hesitation, Jacob responded, “Of course I will.” The two of them sat on a broken set of concrete steps.  “I hope you don’t look at me any different now,” said Firefly.  Jacob almost blushing said, “Well, yeah, I see you a little different, but in a good way for sure.”  Then Jacob moved a little closer, put his arm around her, and went in to kiss her. She quickly stood up, straight as a soldier, and walked over to a dilapidated wrought iron gate.  “I’m sorry.  It’s not that I don’t want to kiss you, but I’m fucked up Jacob.  I’m damaged goods.” Jacob, now with an arm around her once more, said, “You are beautiful.  We’ve all been through shit.  I don’t judge or blame.” Jacob knew it must have been horrific by her closed off body language, but didn’t want to exacerbate the situation.  He didn’t judge nor blame.

Firefly whispered, “I was raped.”  Jacob squeezed her tighter.  “By my uncles and stepfather years ago,” Jacob, unsure what to say, said, “I’m so sorry.  At least you are out of there now.  They can’t hurt you anymore.” Firefly turned, gave Jacob a small, quick kiss on his lips and said, “Come on, let’s get some sleep.”  The look on Firefly’s face told Jacob that there was more to this horror story, but he knew it wasn’t the time nor the place.  They moved the board back in front of the door, found a blanket, laid on the floor, and went to sleep in each other’s arms.

Jacob woke up numerous times throughout the night while the others slept soundly.  The yells, gunshots, sirens, and thoughts of Firefly getting raped plagued him repeatedly.  A few hours later, sunlight through small cracks in the wood woke him again. The rest were still asleep.  Jacob sat up, grabbed a white styrofoam container beside him, and scooped in some cold jambalaya with his fingers.  Everyone else eventually started to wake and move about.

It was a hot morning for early March as they headed out with cardboard in hand.  Dogface, Bull, and Scumboy took one corner, while Jacob and Firefly took another.  It was a rough life for sure, but sometimes freedom costs.  They have avoided the typical trappings of society.  No bills, no overbearing bosses or parents, and no social media.  However, also at times, there was no food, no drink, no warm beds or showers, and no love.  It was a sacrifice that many were willing to make, but Jacob, only a year in, battled with this dilemma constantly.  As they sat collecting a few coins here and there, Jacob reflected on the hardships of his travels, and wondered if this life was truly for him.  He turned, looked at Firefly, and thought that it was all worth it to have met this dirty angel.  She turned, gave him a smile and said, “My ass hurts. Can you look at it for me?  I’m sorry, but it hurts.”  Jacob without hesitation pointed to an alley and said, “Sure, no problem. Right over there.”

In the alley, Firefly pulled her dirty cargo pants down mid-thigh and exposed a supple, pale, very round ass to Jacob. He said, “Yep you have a big ol’ bump. I’m gonna get it.”  Jacob thought that this was the nicest ass he’d ever seen in spite of the huge, glowing red and yellow pustule.  He squeezed the oozing matter out until only blood and clear fluid could be seen, wiped it off with his shirt, and said, “There, all done.  Good as new.”  He gave a little smack to Firefly’s rear just before the cargo pants concealed it once again.  She gave him a light, but sensual kiss as a thank you.  They went back to the corner, but Firefly decided to stand for a while.

It was late evening now.  Bull, Dogface, and Scumboy met up with Jacob and Firefly to discuss and compare the day’s haul.  Of course, Firefly was responsible for their total being much higher.  They even had some one dollar bills, and a five spot swimming around in with the coins.  Tourists, local cons, and whores started to mill about in droves.  Scumboy said, “Get us some beer Firefly.”  Jacob interjected, “We have enough here for beer. Let’s just buy some.”  Firefly appreciated Jacob’s thoughtfulness, but said, “We can save that for food or something.  I don’t mind. Honestly.”  They headed for Bourbon Street, where beer would flow like Niagara.

Jacob stood on the corner drinking a beer and watching old drunks lust after Firefly as she continually exposed flesh.  This had been fine with him before, but now he had a sense of shame associated with the act.  One drunk got a little too close to Firefly and attempted to cop a feel.  He ran his hand up her stomach and grazed the bottom of her tit.  Before he could get a full squeeze in, Jacob was between them, and pushed the drunk back with fury.  “Get the fuck out of here!  Get on down the road, motherfucker,” Jacob said, with a hateful tone, through gritted teeth.  The drunk just smiled, took a few more steps back, and wandered down the street to possibly molest another.  Jacob spit at his departure in disgust.

It was now dark and the five returned to the uninhabited shack to rest.  Once again, everyone staggered in laughing and cursing except for Jacob and Firefly.  They took the same seat on the broken concrete steps and looked off into the night.  Firefly pulled out a joint given to her by a tourist and said, “This is just for us.”  She lit it and they smoked it down until it burned and stained their fingers.  Jacob, sobered a little, but stoned by the weed asked, “Do you ever want a change?”  Firefly took a long pause, breathed in the stale air with the stench of vomit, beer, and piss, and said, “This is pretty much all I know now, but sometimes I think change could be good.  What are you thinking?” Jacob hadn’t thought about it, he just knew that he was now in love, and wanted to spend every waking moment with this girl.  He wasn’t sure if he wanted to return to normal life, or continue on the drift. He did know, however, that whatever he did, he wanted Firefly beside him.  Jacob looked at Firefly and began to speak, “I’m not quite sure.”

Then, through the smoky haze of the night, a medium-sized dog appeared.  Its hair was matted and it was thin. Firefly called the dog over and began picking ticks from its skin. “He’s dirty like us,” said Firefly.  “He just needs a little love, too.”  Jacob went inside and retrieved some stale bread for the dog to eat. As the dog devoured the bread, Jacob looked at Firefly and said with a laugh, “Well, we ARE gutter punks.  We need a dog.  What should we call him?”  Firefly looked up into the sky, then down at the dog again, and said with clarity, “Drifter.”  Jacob loved the choice of name.  They both continued plucking ticks from Drifter’s scarred skin until no more could be found. 

The next morning, Bull, Dogface, and Scumboy woke to the sight of an empty floor where Jacob and Firefly had been sleeping the previous night.  “They’re gone. Where do you think they went?” Scumboy asked without true concern.  Bull kind of shrugged and said, “They may be out getting some food or something.”  A grin appeared on Dogface as he said, “Nope. They’re gone. Continuing their drift.”

As Jacob, Firefly, and Drifter sat in the back of a pick-up truck headed west, the two of them could only smile at one another. They weren’t sure what was ahead of them in this life, but one thing was for sure, they were together. The three of them found the love they had been desperately searching for this whole time. Firefly put a leg across Jacob’s lap, with wind blowing dust from her dreads, said, “Julie. My name is Julie.”

Serial Date

Consuela Reyes hoped she looked slutty enough. At least, for the purpose.

She’d picked the gentlemen’s club strategically. The killer had last struck at another strip joint in Valasia, which was just off the 415 Freeway South. Consuela figured he wouldn’t hit that neighborhood again for a while. If her calculations were correct, Big Joe’s was his next pick-up spot. So she was there too, shaking her ass, kill-bait with curves.

Ogling herself in the bathroom mirror three hours’ previously, Consuela felt certain she had the tawdry goods to snare a murderer of working girls. Pink vinyl boots with platform heels, a black microskirt that left nothing to the imagination, white lace stockings, a blue thong bikini, lacy white halter top. From what she’d grasped from the headlines, he liked them dark, a little primitive maybe. Well, that was her. Masses of dark, curly hair flowed down her back; her face was narrow, Indian, her eyes black as obsidian chips. Her makeup was subtle, accenting her natural colors, her leonine cheekbones. Except for the “Fuck Me Red” lipstick—she couldn’t resist.

She noted the twisted tube of toothpaste “for sensitive gums” on her sink next to her amber-handled hairbrush. That relationship had been brief. The man was vainer than any woman she knew. But not in a hot, self-assured way. Consuela gingerly removed the toothpaste and popped it in the trash. Then, with one final glance around her living room—piles of Anatomy and Physiology textbooks on the glass-topped coffee table, a well-thumbed paperback entitled Extreme Self-Defense—she shouldered her Joosy handbag. From the wall, Ramirez, Dahmer and Bundy—real guys—seemed to give her a collective wink.

Go to it, Sister. We can’t wait for your report.

Now, standing on the sidewalk just outside Big Joe’s parking lot, she wondered. Maybe he’d be able to sense it. Something not right about her, or too right. A set-up. An undercover cop.

WWTD…What would Ted do?

There had been rain, and the neon letters that sat atop the club’s awning smeared their reflection across pools in the asphalt. Consuela lit a cigarette, even though she didn’t smoke. She waited, watching the cars cruising down the boulevard, standing well back from the curb so she wouldn’t get splashed.

Nothing. She flicked the smoking butt onto the ground, where it expired with a hiss. She shivered, wished she’d worn something warmer. That she wasn’t subject to dangerous whims. In a way, she and the killer weren’t that different. Except for the killing part. So far.

Consuela’s hybrid was parked on the other side of the street, down the road a ways. She was just about to pack it in—terrible idea, she could actually be murdered—when a silver Corvette coupe slowed to a stop.

Casually, like she did this all the time, Consuela sauntered over to the car. It matched the description from the police reports and the flyers plastered all over the three-city area the killer was crawling. A zagged scratch extending over the right wheel well exposed the primer like a scar. The windows were smoked.

The driver’s side window rolled down. She leaned in. For a moment, she felt a surge of terror—

it was so dark inside the Corvette. Then a piece of the darkness lifted on a white, white face. He was wearing a hoody.

Her man. He even dressed the part, like one of those signs asking you to watch for suspicious characters.

“Looking for a date?” she asked, batting her eyes. Wasn’t that what pros said in movies and on TV?

The man nodded. “Get in,” he said in a voice surprisingly soft. Consuela slid into the car next to him.

The coupe’s interior smelled acrid, smoky. Adrenaline jazz. She smiled, licked her lips and crossed her legs. He was checking out the package.

They drove for a while in silence. He seemed moody, and she couldn’t get a fix on what he might be thinking. He flicked on the radio: “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” by AC/DC. The flicker of a grin teased his lips. He began to keep time on the steering wheel to the classic song.

“Now this is rock and roll,” he said.

“Right fucking on,” she responded. So far, so good.

“I’ve got a flask in the glove compartment, if you want a drink,” he said. She thought she’d seen this neighborhood before. But it was hard to tell. The same liquor marts, gas stations, bail bondsmen. Were they going around in circles? She flipped through the glove compartment, found the silver flask and took a pop. Cheap bourbon. Well, it hit the spot.

“You want to talk some business?” he asked.

“What kind of business?” Doing her best to sound hard. The alcohol was going straight to her brain. She wished she’d eaten something before, but she’d been so keyed up. “You’re not 5-0, are you?”

He frowned. Had she hit a sour note? At least she hadn’t said “po-po.”

“No, I’m not the police,” he said. “How much?”

What was the industry standard, and for what? “Two hundred,” she said, making her voice husky, blasé. “You can do anything you want, but no rough stuff. And no pee.”

Consuela had really impressed herself with that last note. She hoped he bought it. Two hundred bucks sounded like a reasonable fee for fucking her, or whatever. She was young and pretty, after all, not some gap-toothed slag. She imagined a drop-down menu of hardcore services provided, a naughty fridge magnet poem maker. “Rough teabagging.” “Light anal.” “Bondage shit.” The man grunted. “No worries. I’m not a weirdo like the President.”

Which left a lot of room for the bizarre.

The possibilities excited her. All the things she hadn’t tried. Multiple penetration—cocks fore and aft, wriggling inside her. Suspension. Toys. She was starting to get wet. She lifted the edge of her microskirt and slid a finger down her panties.

The man’s face went cold, rigid. His lips curled over his teeth as her scent filled the car. Chewing down the panic—she hadn’t meant to do that, she was probably pissing him the fuck off—she pushed things a step further. With her other hand she reached over and curled her fingers around his thigh. He was big, but soft, like some kind of Loofah. His eyes went dark. “Cut that out,” he said. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling away her hand. She was really, really turned on. The prospect of imminent death aroused her like a drug.

They’d left the city proper and were driving through an unincorporated industrial area. He indicated a field next to an abandoned factory. She shrugged. “Do you have a tarp or something? Looks a little muddy.”

He was silent.

“Well, they say the customer is always right.” She waited for him to get out and open her door. The sky was a profound gray and the rays of the dying sun streaked it like fragments of shattered, bloody glass. They stood at the base of a set of concrete stairs that ended on a ten foot square platform, part of some building project sacrificed to the economy. Weeds jutted through cracks in the platform like wire sculpture. About ten feet away to the left stood a corrugated aluminum shack, and behind a thicket of bushes, a hand-pump.

She timed it perfectly. Turning her back to him, she pretended to fish in her handbag for a pack of cigarettes. Consuela felt his hot breath on her neck, and her hands curled around the can of Mace. Suddenly she crouched, crippling his forward attack. Going to one knee, she kicked out sideways. He struck the platform hard, and the ball-peen hammer he was holding flew from his hand and landed harmlessly on the concrete.

The killer was out cold. While he was unconscious, she tugged off the hoody, pulled his jeans around his ankles, inched down his boxers and bound his wrists and ankles with zip-ties. When his eyes fluttered open, she gave him the spray full in the face. “You fucking cunt!” he shrieked.

“Wow,” she said. “That was so not cool. Apologize.”

His eyes streamed tears from the pepper spray.

“You like to kill prostitutes,” she said. A flat statement. He sputtered and swore at her. “Yes, I know,” she said, pretending this was a reasonable, ordinary conversation. “Mommy was a pro, she abused you, something something. You, sir, are a cliché.”

Consuela suppressed a peal of giggles. She hadn’t intended the last part. But her blood was on fire, the cold was tonic, the moon was out, and she was pretty sure she was going to do and say some other things that were just as much out of character, or flat-out weird coming from anybody.

“You can’t get it up, and when they see your little handicap, they laugh. Right? Not that it’s little…” She kneeled down and took his cock in her hand. At last she was at leisure to examine it, caress it. She kissed the tip. Still soft. “A shame, all that meat and no spine.”

She noted a small trickle of blood oozing from his scalp, like an ooze of black pudding. She swiped a finger across the head wound and brought it to her lips. “Mmm…that’s good. Maybe that’s why you’re so flaccid…your blood is flowing through the wrong head.”

“I’ll kill you, bitch!” he shrieked.

“Maybe,” said Consuela. She rolled off him and grabbed the ball peen hammer. Then she straddled his chest and turned the hammer over in her hands so it caught splinters of moonlight. “This the one you use on your victims?” She placed the haft of the hammer against his throat, and pressed experimentally. He gurgled. “I know you’re into overkill,” she said. “I prefer a more subtle approach.” She pressed harder.

His face grew red, and his eyes bulged. She caressed his neck with the hammer-head. “You like the way that feels against your skin, the cold steel?” He was struggling to speak, but no words came out. Bubbles of saliva burst from his lips.

Consuela slid down her body till she found his cock again. Now it was fuller. Not full enough, but on its way. She began to stroke the shaft with one hand, keeping the hammer pressed against his throat with the other. As her hand moved faster, he grew, filling her palm.

“Houston, we have hard-on!” she squealed. She rolled down her panties and squatted down on him, sighing with relief as his full erection filled her up.

“I seem to be a little dry,” she said.

Her hips grinding against him, up and down, up and down, she picked up the hammer again.

“Nonononononoyoucrazybitch…”

With precise, unerring strokes, she turned his skull to jelly. Riding the spasms as an electrical storm tore through his nervous system, she held on like an experienced jockey, daubing herself with the sweet, sticky blood that bubbled from the wreckage of his face.

She couldn’t wait to tell the boys the story, down to the last toothsome detail.

Blood Dahlia

I can’t understand myself anymore
But I’m still feeling lonely
Feeling so unholy

– Numb, Portishead

Elliott stood outside Carrie’s apartment building for the third time this week.

The apartment’s exterior was faded with age, overgrown with vines that crawled up its sides like thick, dark snakes. Street lamps cast pale yellow light amid apartment buildings and businesses cramped together for blocks around.

He inhaled the November night air, pushed his thinning, stringy hair from his face, and plunged his hands into the pockets of his coat.

Did he have the courage to knock on Carrie’s door and tell her all the things that had been on his mind since their first—and last—date at Applebee’s three weeks ago? He had shown up to the restaurant that night loaded on Maker’s Mark, his nerves like hot wires, his hands almost trembling.

His love for and encyclopedic knowledge of cinema left her underwhelmed; she was not into films. He bragged about his impressive fantasy miniature collection, also to no effect. She talked about her love of animals. He did not like them. At all. They were smelly and needy, although he did not tell her he felt this way.

Toward the end of the date, she asked him whether he had “fabricated” his online dating profile. He admitted he may have done so to some extent. But only because the dating scene was cold and inhospitable. What was a guy to do these days?

After she noticed him staring at her cleavage while she ate her Caesar salad, she promptly looked at her cellphone and remarked about how late it was and that she needed to be up early for work tomorrow. She concluded the date by telling him that she didn’t think it would be good to go out with him again. That she just wasn’t ready to date right now. 

Elliott knew she was lying. They always did.

After she broke the news and left him humiliated and standing outside the restaurant, the words of his cloying mother, who never seemed to receive enough affection from him, no matter how much she wanted, seeped into his mind. The words were an acid that burned through the pitiful layers of his life for as long as he could remember:

No woman will ever love you as much as I love you, Elliott. Never forget that.

His mother drilled this into his brain throughout his fatherless childhood, as if she were performing a verbal lobotomy and sabotaging any chance of happiness he might have with a member of the opposite sex. And it worked.

Until now. 

Carrie was different. Elliott got the sense that she didn’t really know what she wanted out of life, let alone what she wanted in a man. She seemed so delicate, so fragile. As if her whims could change with a gust of wind.

He could be that gust of wind that changed both of their lives.

After their date, he had followed Carrie from a safe distance until she reached her building.

In the days that followed, Elliott found her employer’s website—a veterinarian’s office— and located her headshot. He quietly masturbated to it a few times over the next week in his bedroom, interspersed with occasional online videos of German torture porn, of which he was a devoted curator. 

He was careful, as always, not to let his mother hear him. 

With each sad, messy orgasm, he became more confident that he deserved her and that having her—mind, body, and soul—made him a complete man.

Following work shifts at the movie theater–and sometimes before–he stood across the street from Carrie’s apartment. Hoping to catch her leaving for work. Hoping to spy her coming home with another guy. Hoping their eyes would meet, music would swell from somewhere, and she would realize that no other man could fulfill her the way he could.

But each time he stood across the street from her building, that sense of entitlement grew like a rancid seed blooming within. He had to have her. She belonged to him, whether she knew it yet or not. 

Now, standing outside her place tonight, he recalled a line Billy Crystal said in the film When Harry Met Sally: 

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right now.” 

He never appreciated the film and didn’t understand why Sally liked Harry. He was weak and wore tight-ass jeans like one of those twinks. But that line stuck with him after years of rewatching the movie. It was a perfect line of dialogue.

This line was now his North Star. He would convince her that their lives together were just beginning. 

One way or the other. 

He snapped out of this trance, not realizing he was mumbling under his breath, when he noticed someone exiting her building.

It was now or never.

Elliott darted across the street, narrowly avoiding getting creamed by a blaring bus, and reached the door before it closed, bypassing the call box. As the door slammed shut, muffled sounds of crying babies, arguments, yapping dogs, and droning televisions seeped through the walls. The air carried the odors of animals, fried cooking, and dirty carpeting. 

He found her mailbox and apartment number.

A rusted sign hanging on the doors to the elevator declared DANGER: OUT OF ORDER, so he climbed the four flights of stairs to Carrie’s apartment. 

He stood there, one hand inches from knocking on the door. His nerves were conducting his tension like a mad orchestral maestro. Only this time, there was an undercurrent of delicious anticipation.

***

Carrie finished putting the wax-paper-wrapped, freshly cut meat into the freezer and was washing the large, serrated, hand-me-down butcher knife from her late mother. 

Looking down at the wet, gleaming knife, her thoughts drifted to one night decades ago that changed everything for her. 

Carrie’s mother was standing in the kitchen with her only child. She was stroking Carrie’s long chestnut brown hair with a hand that was becoming stiff with coagulating blood, while her 10-year-old daughter’s sobbing subsided.

There was a dark, glistening trail of blood leading from the kitchen to the bathroom. The crimson-coated knife was on the kitchen counter.

“He’s gone now,” Carrie’s mother assured her only child, in a voice that seemed a million miles away. “He can’t hurt us anymore. He won’t touch you anymore either. Do you understand?”

Carrie nodded.

Her mother kneeled down and handed Carrie the knife, handle first. “I want you to keep this.”

She then kissed Carrie’s forehead and held her for a long time.

Now, Carrie was staring at the knife and initials, deep in a dark reverie, when a knock at her apartment door snapped her back to the present. She opened the door slowly.

“Hey, how have you been?” Elliott asked.

A look of shock stretched across Carrie’s soft, pale face, which was framed by her now short brown hair. This expression turned into a slight smile.

She couldn’t believe her good fortune.

“What a surprise,” Carrie said. “What are you doing here?”

“I, um, thought I would swing by to see how you’re doing. I didn’t like how the last time ended, and I wanted to see if you’re doing okay.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have. But thanks.”

She leaned against the door frame, crossing her arms.

Elliott stood there, biting his lower lip and staring at the floor.

After an excruciating moment of silence, she stood aside and beckoned him into her apartment, then smoothed her waifish hands over her dark blue veterinarian scrubs. They were flecked with spots of blood. She must have just gotten home from work. 

Her purple-polished nails gleamed like a wolf’s eyes in the hallway’s harsh overhead fluorescent lighting as she slowly closed the door.

“Mind if I use your restroom?”

She winced, thinking of what her bathroom looked like presently. “Unfortunately, it’s out of order. You know how old buildings can be.” She shrugged. “Have a seat.”

He plopped down on the tired leather couch, folding his hands in his lap, and scanned her cramped studio apartment. The space was absolutely crammed with books, some with titles indicating her interest in human and other creature anatomies. There were also photos of cute dogs, cats, and other mammals, some framed, some merely pinned to dulled white walls. Portishead played softly from a set of speakers connected to a vinyl record player in a corner next to an unmade mattress on the floor.

His gaze lingered on the mattress for a moment. 

Elliott yelped as a cat jumped seemingly out of nowhere onto a couch cushion and hissed long and loud at him. The creature’s luxurious grey-and-white fur stood on end. One of the eyeballs was missing. The eyehole was horizontally stitched up.

“That’s Lucky. He’s a rescue. Very interesting story about him.”

“I see,” Elliott said nervously, not caring about the cat’s story. He kept one eye on the cat and the other on Carrie. She looked so cute in her veterinarian outfit.

“He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” she smiled. She lifted Lucky and placed him gently on the floor. He hissed at Elliott again and disappeared behind the couch.

She sat down on the other end of the couch. “Take your coat off. Get comfortable.”

He removed the coat and placed it on the arm of the couch. It fell to the floor, but he didn’t notice as he continued to gaze at Carrie.

“So, Elliott. What really brings you here?”

“Like I said, I just wanted to check in and make sure you’re okay. The other night kind of sucked.”

“It sure did,” she replied, cracking her knuckles loudly. “Was there anything you wanted to say to me about that night?”

“I know that you were offended that I lied on my profile. I’m sorry. It’s just tough out there, you know?”

She laughed, cracking her knuckles again. This nervous knuckle-cracking thing was adorable.

“I see,” she sighed, draping her right arm over the couch and moving a little closer to him. “Anything else you want to say? You were staring down my blouse, Elliott.”

“Well, yes, actually.” Eagerly, sensing that he was starting to break through. “That was just a compliment. I think that women are too sensitive these days and don’t appreciate when a man finds them attractive.”

Her teeth gleamed in the lamplight over the couch as she smiled. “And?”

“I think we got off on the wrong foot. I think we could make this work. I think we need to make this work. Look how desperately lonely and miserable people are. How we are. I don’t know about you, but the isolation and vapidness of society feels like it’s eating away at my bones sometimes.”

She reflected for a minute. “That’s almost poetry, Elliott. It is brutal out there, isn’t it?”

“Yes!”

She pondered his words, then placed her right hand on his knee and squeezed. “You know what? Maybe I was overreacting a bit. How about a drink? I have bourbon in the cupboard. How do you take it?”

“Neat,” he said, his body shimmering with a flood of endorphins. He couldn’t believe how well this was going.

“While I get our drinks, would you mind playing with my cat? He’s been here alone all day while I was working and needs to get some angst out,” she laughed.

She tossed him a string attached to a chewed-up mouse plush and then moved to the kitchenette for some glasses.

This was a busy week, Carrie thought to herself as she poured two Bulleits. Elliott was even dumber and more pathetic than the last guy.

While Elliott picked up the toy with mild disgust and gingerly draped the string behind the couch.

Claws from Lucky’s paws immediately tore into the mouse, violently yanking the string and knocking his hand hard against the wall.

“Owww!” he exclaimed, more out of surprise over Lucky’s strength than pain.

“See what I mean? Lots of steam to blow off. I know the feeling. Don’t you?”

Elliott started to reply and turned around to find Carrie standing there holding two glasses of bourbon. 

She handed him the drink. He accepted but tried to stop shaking.

A sudden anxiety swept over him. All through high school and into adulthood, he had imagined a scenario like this happening, but no dice. Spurned by girl after girl, all because they were too emotional, couldn’t take a compliment, or just weren’t as interesting as him. Now, for some reason beyond his understanding, it was happening. He was terrified.

He had never been with a girl before. Thirty-seven years. And now, after all the years of his mother smothering him and telling him he was no good for any girl, here he was. Just went to show that persistence and confidence paid off.

He drank the bourbon in one loud, deep gulp. His face turned warm.

Here we go.

“Your shoulders look so tense,” Carrie cooed, sipping on her drink and setting it down. “Turn around, let me work on them. I can do amazing things with my hands.”

Elliott chuckled and complied. His breath caught as she lifted his Slayer t-shirt up and over his head. 

Her cold hands sent a shiver through him. They soon warmed, and he closed his eyes, leaning back against her. He could feel her breasts pressed against his back through the fabric. He sighed, losing himself in the moment.

“Carrie, I think I love you,” he whispered.

Losing himself to the degree that he didn’t notice one of her hands slip down into one of the pockets of her scrubs. 

He felt the prick of a needle. 

“Hey, what the fuck?!”

Elliott tore himself from this fantasy and spun around. Lucky mewed, watching with intense interest from Carrie’s mattress, as she stood before him, putting the cap back onto the needle and launching it into the kitchenette’s sink.

“Have you ever heard of a Komodo dragon?” she asked. “They’re truly magnificent creatures.”

There was an expression on her face—her eyes narrow slits, her lips pouting—that filled Elliott with deep fear.

She sauntered over to the record player and cranked up the Portishead album, then returned.

“Did you know that female dragons can reproduce without males? It’s a process called parthenogenesis. This enables them to reproduce in isolation.”

Elliott, stunned, started to respond as if he knew what she was even talking about. What stopped him was a tingling in his extremities. He stared at his hands, mouth agape, then looked back at her.

“Another fascinating thing about Komodos is that their venom can do absolutely fucked up things to the human body.”

Elliott’s legs wobbled as strength continued to drain from them. He fell to the floor, sitting awkwardly but upright against the couch.

Carrie went to the kitchenette. She produced the serrated hand-me-down from a drawer and a crisp new plastic tarp from beneath the sink.

She swayed and hummed to the music as she playfully spread the tarp out. 

“I have my mother, who was also a vet, to thank for encouraging my interest in animals,” she said. “I’m also grateful for what we learned together about how to handle animals like you.”

Carrie pushed him onto the plastic and straddled him, grinding hard. She groaned then laughed.

“Damn, your tiny cock is still hard! That will change in a minute.”

She placed the blade against his neck, her face scrunched in concentration like a butcher deciding the correct cut to take. She blew a tuft of hair from her face and shifted the blade to his bare chest. Carrie sliced vertically from the collar bone to the navel as the skin peeled open, making a sound like wet paper.

Shock and poison clotted any pain he should have felt. His life essence blossomed like blood dahlias and cascaded down his chest. Elliott could feel the warmth pouring out of his body as it began to pool around him. He tried to scream but only emitted a loud groan, drowned out by the music.

She punched him hard squarely between the eyes.

“How we doing, baby?” she said in an enthusiastic purr.

Stars swam in Elliott’s vision. He tried to struggle from underneath her, but his body now felt very weak. He lifted his left arm to attempt a punch, but he couldn’t complete the swing. His arm fell limp against the floor. 

Carrie tittered.

“Komodo venom takes away muscle control, which is why you couldn’t hit me. It’s also an anti-coagulate. Do you know what that means?”

She dipped a finger into the thick rivulets of blood pouring from his chest and painted a crude smile on his lips. 

“It means you can bleed to death because your blood won’t clot, dipshit.”

“P-p-please, I’ll do anything you want, I’ll apologize. I apologize! J-just don’t let me d-die,” he muttered as the venom increased its hold. He felt his lungs laboring to breathe now as warmth spread from his groin. Piss.

She punched him in the jaw this time and knocked his head to the side, sending a thick line of spittle into the air. He strained to focus his vision on what was under the couch.

Several pairs of men’s shoes sat beneath the couch. Elliott started crying as his wheezing increased.

Her eyes followed his fearful gaze. 

Lucky pranced over and started lapping at the blood pooling on the floor.

“Don’t act like you’re surprised. I’ve noticed you standing outside my building. You’re a sick little twat, buster. Just be happy you’ll be able to feed my cat for months. Now, I need to get to work on you before you lose consciousness.” 

She tugged his jeans down, tore his boxers off, and guided the blade to his now flaccid penis. She yanked it and started sawing to the sound of the cat’s purring.

Meant to Last

The night ends the way it always ends. A pickup truck’s headlights backlighting three men. They wield a baseball bat, fists, boots, a tire iron. It gets harder and harder for me to see through a haze of blood, splinters, and tears. 

I know I am dying, even as I know soon, I will live again. 

***

You’d think that if you had to repeat the same day over and over, at least it would be a day you didn’t sleep in. Nope. I don’t even get ten hours of consciousness in the loop. My alarm goes off on my shitty Cricket phone, and it’s half past two in a grimy room that reeks of ditch weed and cum. 

This day used to be decades ago. I don’t know why this started. I woke up on a day I’d mostly forgotten. This time of my life was lost in a void.

An argument in the next room. The same one I’ve heard thousands of times. My boyfriend’s voice louder, petulant. “They loved me at the interview, I just failed the piss test.”

His father’s voice fills in every gap, lightly accented, and raspy from hand-rolled cigarettes. “I give you almost every dollar I have, I sleep on the couch so you can have a place to stay…for what? You said you could pass the test.”

Of course, he blames me. “He didn’t pick me up on time. I was sweating buckets. I drank a fucking drink, okay, that was going to get my piss clean. But this dipshit had to take a late lunch and the drink went nowhere except my fucking pit stains, okay?”

His dad doesn’t blame me, but doesn’t defend me either. He puts up with me. He hopes that I am going to realize I am a woman and make my boyfriend into a normal man, with a wife and kids and a real job on the horizon.

Sometimes I engage them, join the argument or try to break it up. Most times I don’t. Nothing I say seems to make a dent.

I shrug and put on clean clothes, although they’re contaminated by my unwashed skin. I slept in my binder—I knew I shouldn’t, but some days back then, it was the only thing that made me feel safe. Sometimes I even wore my steel-toed boots to bed. My wardrobe, stuffed in a backpack, is loose-fitting and drab. The kind of clothes that fade well into a corner while my boyfriend’s dealer (and sometimes roommate) works up to hitting his boyfriend. My hair is dramatic, though: layers of bruise colors, from fresh to faded. Enough piercings in my face to delay an MRI. The days I brave the bathroom, I love to stare at my fresh young face.

Grabbing my keys and wallet hidden in the closet makes me grimace as I raise my arm, thinking longingly of my deodorant trapped in the bathroom; might as well be in Siberia, I don’t want to walk past them to get there. And in Tucson, deodorant never lasts long anyway.

Hand on the doorknob, listening for the right lull. I manage to hustle out with a mumble, and without a glance behind me. I need to break through.

***

In this dilapidated landmark tower, now low-income senior housing, I might be the youngest person. In my future, the building becomes something different, luxury condos, office space, something with a lot of steel and windows. In the future, I won’t make it back to Tucson much, but I’ll look for it every time.

My boyfriend lives with his surprisingly-old father—or maybe not that surprising, now that I have processed how much older my boyfriend is than I was. Back in the 90s, “legal” was all that mattered, and he waited until my 18th birthday had passed so I was no longer “jailbait.” Remember, this was the time of websites that counted down until underage actresses would be legal to fuck. The ball dropping in the Times Square of Natalie Portman’s presumptive virginity being up for grabs by schlubs on Geocities.

A rotating crew of one or two other queer men stay with him on the twin mattresses lined up on the floor; no sheets, no pillowcases, just layers of stiff blankets we hide under when we want to fuck. 

Yes, I am one of those squalidly-surviving men who don’t officially live anywhere. My boyfriend is not allowed to live in the building; by extension, I am so unwelcome in the building that I was never sure if it was the last time I’d be able to sign myself in. 

I sign out, this time, every time, to an eye-roll.

I jiggle my car door and ease it up a breaking hinge to get in. It doesn’t lock anymore, but it’s never been stolen. It never will be stolen, if the future unrolls in the expected way. The tape deck will be stolen out of it in a few years, but, well…it is just a tape deck. Not even a CD player. This is a little while before iPods, but a long while after CDs. I work at a used record store; the CDs aren’t even shiny anymore, usually. When someone sells us a pristine CD, I feel like I can see into their future, and it involves escaping Tucson and at last, ironically, being able to afford air conditioning.

I stop and get a sandwich on the way to work. That’s about a third of my $14 for the day. Take it to eat in the midtown park’s recently-repaved parking lot. I could sit at a picnic table, but that’s even hotter than my car. I have a half-full water bottle from yesterday in my cup holder. Drinking plasticky water the temperature of tea really takes me back.

I chuck my sandwich wrapper on the floor of the passenger side, because why not, and go check my email at the library tucked in the corner of the park, a hidden oasis. Somewhere to cool off for approximately 45 minutes, although sometimes I let myself be late to work. (Why not?)

The first time I lived this day, I was still a reader, despite the haze of pot and abuse. Since the loop began, I usually borrow something ambitious that I’d never quite been ready to face over the years. I’m almost at the end of Empire of the Senseless, dipping in throughout my work shift and meal break. I feel a little guilty, borrowing books that I will never return. Will those books go missing in some kind of library of the multiverse? Or does my death transport them back onto this exact shelf, crisp and ready to get me through the next ever-darkening evening?

The ironic part of this errand is that I could check my email at “home,” but my boyfriend is always logged in to a slightly-less-expensive knockoff of World of Warcraft. I’m not allowed to touch his computer. He sits there as the hours redden his eyes, hunched over the keyboard, smoking, scowling, drinking two-liters of Dr. Pepper right out of the bottle. How he hasn’t died by the time I get to my future is amazing. I starved myself for years and will end up diabetic. He pumped his veins full of sludge and has a vibrant fucking life. He ended up, of course, with the lucrative job, lovely wife, and adorable baby. My deepest fears confirmed, that he did not think of me as a man at all, that he wanted to be what his father wanted him to be, that he really wanted a woman and everything easy and conventional, with hashtag “blessed” slathered all over.

Anyway, I check my email at the library most days, because I’ve noticed that sometimes, I get different messages. I always hope that this Nigerian prince or that limited-time offer will have a secret message from Bill Murray, or Natasha Lyonne at least. Never happens. And nothing from my friends or family. My boyfriend has driven everyone away, although I didn’t see it like that, the first time I lived this day. The first time, it was unremarkable that no one was writing me back, that my inbox was barren, full of automated messages and notifications. Every time I relive this day, though, it gets a little bleaker. 

I get to work, and I could tell you about how the afternoon and evening goes. The 41 different customers and which CDs they buy (among other items, including hair dye, lascivious stickers, and DVDs, a format just coming into its prime, and never quite replaced by Blu-Ray as expected). What my coworkers chat about. The store manager stinking up the bathroom in the back of the store by the time clock where I punch in. The incense the assistant manager lights to drown out the smell. The endcap I create out of posters for an album (I’ve created everything from a crooked poster stapled bare onto the wood framing a tray of CDs, leaning into the punk, anti-capitalist aesthetic, to an assemblage of caution tape and layers of jagged, feathered posters threatening to take over the whole aisle. It’s oddly soothing work). The music my coworkers put on; eventually, I get a turn to put something on. This is another detail that shifts with each loop: it seems to vary based on subtle interactions throughout the day; if I play a bright, poppy CD, that might change the decision my goth coworker makes an hour later, to spite me. If I chat about a movie, someone might put on its soundtrack. The assistant manager puts on “Closing Time” at the end of the night, every night—not just this endlessly repeating night; it was his schtick. 

I don’t think any of those things matter as far as why the day is repeating, or how to break the cycle. I’ve really tried every kind of interaction I could think of. 

I’ve tried calling in sick, but my boyfriend has always kicked me out to end up somewhere on the streets of Tucson with a broken-down car, and of course, the truck finds me.

I’ve tried leaving work early, but my shitty car doesn’t start. I can call my boyfriend, on his landline, because during this entire four to midnight shift, he never seems to leave his dad’s apartment. He always says he’ll pick me up. But never shows, or at least, not before the day’s over and I die and live again. I’ve tried calling my dad, AAA, whatever. Only one tow company ever picks up, and they don’t have any availability until it’s too late, and my dad does usually answer, but always says he can’t talk right now, try back later after work; when I do that, it goes straight to voicemail. 

There is no version of this that ends up with me able to get out of the parking lot before ten after midnight. Except on foot, and I know how that goes.

I’ve tried walking every direction, away from everywhere I went during that day. Just walking and sweating in the Arizona sun, cooling off a little after dark, but not much. Finding places to hide. Overheated and hunted. Most storefronts mysteriously closed. Nowhere that stays open late enough. Even the 24-hour Albertsons and Circle K are closed for floor cleaning that night. According to the hand-scrawled note on the door, at least; the disturbing fact that both appear to be written in the same handwriting has not escaped me. 

Every day, I make it until a little after midnight, and then they find me.

I always have $14 when I wake up, cash; no credit card, and my debit card is overdrawn. Just like the financially abusive situation with my boyfriend’s dad, most of my income goes to him too. Not just today; throughout our whole relationship. When we will end up getting kicked out of his dad’s place, I will pay most of the rent. When I will luck into a free two-week vacation, I have to go with about $40 to my name because he needed money to buy a wolf pup, I shit you not. 

$14 goes further in the past. It’s enough to buy me a couple meals, or take the city bus anywhere, or theoretically a short jaunt on the Greyhound or the Amtrak. But if I can make it downtown to the station, they have mysteriously closed up, even though the buses are supposed to run all hours and the first train would be at 4 a.m. 

I’ve tried driving, just cruising past my work instead of pulling into the doomed parking lot, but my engine always gives out at some point before sunset, and I’ve never gotten far. At least, not far enough. 

And then there’s hitchhiking. No one picks me up. I feel like a ghost. I think anyone I hadn’t really interacted with that day can’t even see me, and that I can’t go anywhere I didn’t go that day, either. I still don’t understand the rules, though. Maybe it’s nightmare rules.

I have called every number in my shitty Cricket phone, and it’s always a dead end, if they even pick up. Most of my “contacts” seem to barely remember me, or to pity me. I have even called a few numbers that I somehow remember from my future. No luck there, either; I’ve yet to find a thread that convinces them to save me, although certainly, my future friends and exes are a little intrigued by my promises of stock market fortunes and juicy gossip. Maybe eventually I’ll break through.

***

Today, I’ve decided to take a different tack. My remaining $9 after the sandwich is more than enough to buy a gas can and enough gasoline to do the trick. It would be enough to buy a lighter too, but there are plenty in the display case by the register that I can pocket. I choose a novelty one that says “fuck you, you fucking fuck.”

 In my past life, I never stole shit. Now, what does it matter? (To answer the obvious question about my limited funds, I have, on previous days, tried stealing from the register, and even, lowest of the low, from the charity box by the register where people drop in loose change on the honors system. I am always caught, detained by the assistant manager, made to perform a disgusting sexual favor, and then let go, no richer than I began. I wish I hadn’t tried this as many times as I have; I think I must be losing days off my future every time.)

I know the route their truck takes into the parking lot. They always stop in the same place, although of course, if I take off running in the other direction, they just catch me. But there’s a spot they will go, all things being equal. I take my meal break at around nine thirty. It’s dark and there’s only tweakers around. No one cares what I’m doing. 

I pour methodically, then stash the gas can back in the trunk. 

I head back into the record store, wiping my fingers on my ripped jeans. The metalhead couple leaning on the trade counter, antsy from withdrawal as they try to eke out a little cash, talk shit about me. “Look at his hair. Or is it a he/she?” Sometimes, I get an “It’s Pat!”

Tonight, if instead of buying gas, I’d gone to grab fast food at the only place that’s open, or open to me (and it’s always tempting; this young body can turn anything into fuel and beauty), I would have met the men in the pickup for the first time. For the first time this day. 

I did always keep a vague memory of this encounter; it had stuck with me, although whether the day had originally unfolded with a second encounter is lost to the mists of time. Obviously, I couldn’t have died from it, and I’m sure I’d remember even being threatened or injured. Queerbashing deaths were in the news all the time, back then. I was always very conscious of the risk of being seen.

The first time I met them, they were a looming threat. These guys have baseball bats, and have already started getting liquored up. There’s shouting, and swerving to follow me, but no beating happens, not then, not before midnight. 

It’s not that the future is less homophobic and transphobic, exactly, but it’s been startling to relive how overt it used to be. Even a fellow clerk who I literally will know in the future to be bisexual rolls her eyes and deems all kinds of annoyances “so gay.” 

The closing routine is odd. In the future, even in the near future, I’ll work at jobs that feel more like a family, and at night, we’ll make sure we get to each others’ cars safely, that everyone has a ride, that no one’s being followed. 

As I leave the record store, though, we have to examine each other’s bags after locking the door, standing on the sidewalk in front of the facade. Peering into tampons, chewing gum, dental floss, whatever detritus. This pageantry of people who are poor as fuck policing each other’s possible theft of an item that, at best, might help them afford lunch or an ounce. I rub my fingers over the stolen lighter in my pocket nervously, but of course, it’s just a bag check, not a pat-down. It’s no wonder that after that affront to our common humanity, we go our separate ways in silence. 

I’m parked towards the back of the lot. I liked it that way; if I wanted to eat or read on my break, I didn’t want the clerks who smoke outside to scrutinize my off-the-clock life. But that means everyone else is long gone before I try to start my car. 

I’ve tried changing this outcome. I’ve tried parking right up front. Asking for a ride. I’ve tried delaying someone for almost half an hour with dumb chitchat, everything. It never works out. I will never be so alone as I was during this time.

Anyway, I pull my shitty Cricket phone out of my bag, and pretend to make a call, leaning into its glow like a depressed anglerfish. I head towards my car, by way of that spot in the parking lot. With my other hand, I grip the lighter. 

A little sweat. I don’t know why. If I fumble this, I can always try again. I hope that’s true. Or maybe I don’t.

And here comes the truck, on cue. 

Their voices, even their words, are identical to the moments before all the other deaths etched into my memory. The amount of accumulated trauma must be incalculably high. I don’t know how I will come back from this, even if I can get it to end.

But now, a flick, and the lighter doesn’t catch. 

And then it does, a wavering flame, and I throw it, assuming that it’ll go out or I’ll miss the gas slick trap I’d laid. 

A miraculous fireball envelops the truck. It’s their turn to scream. 

I don’t take long to relish it. I need to book it, before the nightmare can continue with, fuck knows. Them somehow surviving unscathed? A different truckload of assholes?

On a whim, I dive into my car instead of fleeing on foot as planned.

The door swings smooth, like my car is young and vibrant and full of life. And this time, it starts. I make it past the intersection of Oracle Road and Miracle Mile. Yes, those are the real names, because in Tucson, a good omen is always waiting on the same corner as sex workers and drug dealers. 

I get to the freeway, still occasionally glancing in my rearview, not quite believing it worked, and finally relax enough to focus on the gas gauge. Half a tank plus my last couple of dollars might get me out of this state. I regret getting lunch. If I have to turn a trick, at least it won’t be in Tucson, and it won’t be to placate the greasy assistant manager for a fistful of twenties I have to give back anyway.

I listen to Nine Inch Nails; Broken is in my tape deck, and I don’t change the cassette all the way down I-10. It’s only an EP, so it must end and begin a lot of times. Sometimes I go back and listen to a song over and over. I guess I got in the habit.

 I pull over in Yuma for a quick nap.

I don’t know if I will wake up back in my comfortable bed, with my girlfriend’s good morning sunshine emoji dancing on my iPhone, or if I will be back in this time again for good, in my shitty car in Yuma scrounging for spare change melded to the cupholder with congealed soda droplets. 

I don’t know how hard it will be to survive. But I know I’ll get through it. I know that I will return. I have broken through.

Two Stops ‘til Daylight

Jeremy stands at the edge of the yellow ‘Do Not Cross’ line listening to the rattling metallic screech echo in the tunnel. He shuffles backward and looks beyond the platform watching the lights come closer until the train roars past. It shrieks to a halt. Two tones reverberate off the subterranean walls followed by an electronic voice.

“Doors opening.”

Like an ocean tide, the passengers flow in and out of the train car. Jeremy steps through the sliding doors and the voice chimes once more.

“Doors closing.”

The train lurches forward immediately. Jeremy sighs after catching himself on a rubber handhold that hangs from the ceiling. He looks around the car thinking about the strangers he recognizes on his morning commute. He nods to the familiar faces he makes eye contact with, occasionally getting a greeting in return. More often than not, Jeremy is ignored. They are too caught up in their morning routines and sleepy stupor. Like the middle-aged gentleman juggling a thermos, a newspaper, and his cellphone, or the large woman with thinning brown hair and fading dye who chews her breakfast louder than the train runs.

Jeremy glances out of the window at the bleak tunnel walls. He thinks of the other sleepy faces around him. The occasional light bulb whirring past and distracting him from both the familiar and unfamiliar.

He reminds himself beneath his breath. “Two stops ‘til daylight.”

The train’s professional voice sounds off once more, cutting though the uncomfortable morning silence. “Approaching Clarke and Division. Next stop: North and Clybourne.”

A Sikh man bounces onto the train offering all who meet his gaze with a bright smile. After another exchange of passengers, the train surges forward once more. Jeremy closes his eyes after returning a smile and reminds himself.

“One stop ‘til daylight.”

Jeremy forces a low, airy laugh. He finds humor in a wandering thought regarding his morning ritual. It reminds him of turning on the light in a dark room. He closes his eyes to prepare for the onslaught of sudden illumination. The light shines through his closed eyelids. His pupils adjust. Jeremy feels silly. He had already walked through the morning light to get to the train station. The train itself has several fluorescents lighting up the cars. What makes the sun’s light different? Is it the reflective magnification off the city windows? Jeremy plays with different reasons, but none feel like a proper answer.

He shrugs his thoughts away and continues to observe his fellow commuters. He wonders how the pink haired woman with the side cut and dark lipstick reads her novel while squeezed between the loud chewer and a smartly dressed but dazed looking businessman.

The train stops and its voice informs, “This is North and Clybourne. Exit through the doors on the right. Fullerton is next.”

The doors thud open, and the car becomes emptier. The businessman rushes out pushing past a homeless man as he enters. The vagrant looks at Jeremy and smiles. Some of his teeth are missing but his eyes are bright.

“G’ morning, Jeremy, my boy!” 

Jeremy returns a smile. “Good morning, Hughie.”

“Doors closing.” The train launches and repeats itself. “Fullerton is next. Transfer to the purple and brown lines at Fullertron.”

Hughie points to his eyes. “Daylight’s a-comin’! Better close dem eyes before the sun burns ‘em out!” He chuckles and turns away to find his way to the back of the train car.

Jeremy smiles at Hughie. He closes his eyes still wondering what he shields them from. The sudden shift in light? Is it a simple game he plays with himself? Is he thinking too much about a completely normal thing?

The train rattles and screeches. Jeremy sways with the train car, lightly correcting himself with the plastic handhold hanging from the ceiling. The sun’s warmth is sudden and even through his closed eyes, he winces. There is both pleasure in the sun’s warmth and discomfort in his eyes as his pupils adjust. The sound of the train no longer echoes; it makes him feel as though the train is floating away like an object released into space.

The train slows, and the momentum makes him swing forward. The train’s automated voice calls out. “This is Fullerton. Switch to the brown and purple lines at Fullerton.”

Jeremy sighs and the doors crank open. He can feel the bodies shift in and out like the air in his lungs. The sunlight shines through the skin and blood making a find crimson beneath his eyelids. The train calls out to the passengers. “Doors closing. Next stop: Belmont. Switch to brown and purple lines at Belmont.” The doors close rapidly, and the train lurches forward.

Jeremy’s eyes flutter open. He blinks at the rising glass buildings reflecting the sunlight. He looks over the familiar commuter faces and notes that Hughie is gone. There is one new face with olive skin and curly black hair. She is looking at her phone wearing a smile that shines with more light than the sun itself. Her eyes are hazel trimmed with golden flakes. She is radiant. She is a flashbang grenade stealing Jeremy’s sight and sucking the oxygen from his chest. Everything feels like that picture perfect movie moment. Two people see each other. Time slows down. Love at first sight.

Jeremy watches her for a moment. Wondering if it is appropriate to move over and talk to her. He decides against it. Who would want someone hitting on them at six-thirty in the morning? He averts his gaze outside and is taken aback by the sight.

Three birds, a robin and two finches, are frozen in mid-flight next to the window. The train is no longer moving. Nothing is moving. The trees outside are frozen in their dance with the wind. The vehicles and pedestrians on the streets and sidewalks all paused in their movements.

Jeremy looks at all the passengers in the train car. The middle-aged man’s thermos is falling from his hands. The liquid spills over the side, while his phone seems like it’s levitating away. There is a woman holding her phone to her face. Her mouth contorted in the middle of the conversation that she was having. 

“No. This can’t be happening. What is even happening?” Jeremy regurgitates the skepticism. He slides to the spilling thermos. He takes it from the man frozen in time and flips the thermos upside down. 

Nothing falls out.

He releases the container.

It does not fall.

Jeremy screams at the man’s face. No reaction. He pinches the man’s arm. No reaction. Jeremy pinches his own arm thinking of the classic trope that you can wake yourself from a nightmare with a little pain. His fingernails slice his skin. Nothing happens.

“I’m not asleep.” The words drip from his lips. Shocked tears fall from his wide-open eyes.

He lets fear take him like the high tide waiting to breathe calmly. When the fear subsides like the low tide, he looks at her. How the sunlight is fixed on her motionless frame. Her brilliant beaming is comforting and intoxicating. It makes him feel safe.

Jeremy blinks hard as if it will reset his malfunctioning brain. His thoughts race. He must be asleep. Perhaps, he is stuck in a bout of sleep paralysis on the train. Yes! He thinks to himself. That must be it! He sits and leans back in the seat growing lightheaded. The edge of his vision becomes static, tunneling into the center. Jeremy tries to control his breathing. He opens his eyes, and he immediately looks at her. 

“Is it you?” He whispers to himself, looking at her hair like black fire in the morning light. He shakes his head. “No. That doesn’t make sense.” Jeremy tries to tear his eyes away, but his gaze is pulled back. He shuts his eyes hard, stands, and turns away from her.

He looks at the floating coffee, like a liquid in space. He dabs his finger in it and licks it. A thought crosses his mind, and he grabs his phone from his pocket. Jeremy clicks the lock button, and the screen remains dark. He sighs and looks at his reflection. The man stuck in time gently tosses the phone upward, expecting it to stay suspended like the coffee. It falls to the floor shattering the screen. He sighs again. 

“How long?” He wonders out loud. “How long will it be this way?”

***

Jeremy’s stomach growls painfully. He scratches his long, grey beard then sniffs the grime that burrows beneath his fingernails. His nose scrunches. Jeremy lifts his fingers to his eyes. 

“Time doesn’t exist.” His voice wavers. He cannot tell if he is thinking the words or saying them. “This is proof. I am proof. Dinosaurs. Did time exist then? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. The asteroid. Did it end time? Or did it begin time? Begin. Yes. Because I knew time. Before this. Before the train. The train. It is my asteroid. This train is the asteroid that broke time.” Jeremy’s sunken bloodshot eyes flick toward the radiant woman. She looks like a religious statue carved from the most precious material. “Or is it you? Maybe. Perhaps. Mayhaps.” He hums thoughtfully laying his head down on a pile of clothes he gathered from the other commuters. 

“No. No. No! Wrong! Maybe time is not broken! This is limbo! Purgatory! My damning punishment! If punishment, then this must be hell!”

Jeremy laughs. Hysterical hot tears clean the dirt from his wrinkled face.

He stops and leaps up onto all fours. The birds. He crawls over to the window and presses his face against it. “Maybe this train went off the rails. This is the moment before I died. I am stuck here. Yes. YES! I did not believe in God or any religion! The universe doesn’t know what to do with me! So, I am here! Suspended in time! Yes!” He bares his yellow rotting teeth.

Jeremy’s attention snaps to the coffee man. He grabs the rubber handholds and pulls himself to the man. He crouches lowering himself to be eye-level with the man.

“What do you think, Stefan?” He cocks his head waiting for an answer.

Jeremy nods in agreement. “Yes. I understand. We don’t speak enough for you to want to answer. I apologized for that incident. I just wanted to know your name! The others didn’t mind that I looked at their IDs! It felt improper to call you Thermos Guy! Still, I think I know what you would say. You would agree with me.” Jeremy stands tall and turns to all the other commuters. “You all would agree with me!”

Jeremy sees the man’s phone in his breast pocket. He had not noticed it before. He falls onto his knees and inches forward. His fingers grab it carefully. Jeremy’s stomach drops at the sight of his reflection. His skin is wrinkled and covered in liver spots. His eyes are desperate beads in sunken sockets. His hair is long, thin, and greasy. His beard is unruly and reaches down to his belly button.

“I am my own demon.” He snarls at himself, horrified further by his decaying teeth and infected gums. He throws the phone to the side and looks at her radiance. His voice croaks with lucidity. “I am slipping! I’ve felt it for so long now. How long have I been this way? Have I always been this way? You are my only constant, yet I do not know your name.” He gestures to Stefan and the other commuters. “They have all told me their names. I-I learned what I could about my neighbors. I’ve grown to love them. They are my friends. They’ve brought me solace in this time!” 

He almost loses this sudden clarity when he says time. A smile cracks onto his face then slips away.

Jeremy grabs two metal poles and reels himself closer to the radiant. “I’ve refrained from learning about you. I stopped myself. I don’t want to disrespect you. I don’t want to invade your privacy.” His lips curl into a frustrated sneer. “We could be friends! Like Stefan and I! He shares his coffee with me! Imagine what we could share! Imagine the conversation! I need to know your name! I need to know who you are!” Spittle sprays from his mouth. He breathes rapidly and steps forward hesitating as his hand reaches for the purse hanging from her arm. He reaches in and feels until he grabs a wallet. Relief floods his veins as he pulls it out. 

The train rattles and screeches as it brakes. The sudden shift in momentum throws Jeremy down. He lands on his back. Shocked faces and voices stare at him. They plug their noses, while he grasps the radiant woman’s wallet. His chest is tight with confusion.

“What the hell is wrong with you!” The radiant woman comes into view and snatches her wallet back. 

Everything, everyone is loud now. All his friends are yelling at him. They are forcing him off the train. He stumbles off. He falls and the pavement cuts his palms and knees. Jeremy feels so weak, like the life has been drained from him. He hears the train chime and announce its next stop.

Jeremy looks at the train car. All his timeless friends stare at him. They look confused, but he did not care about them. His eyes are on her. She is smiling at him!

Jeremy smiles back. Despite that he cannot breathe. Despite the pulsating pain in his chest. That smile is enough to give him energy to fight back the pain and difficulty breathing. He stands. He descends the stairs and exits the train station. Turning into an alley, he sits against a brick wall. He looks at himself in a puddle. Old. Withered. Laughing. The energy fades. The pain returns. His breathing is difficult once again.

Jeremy’s eyes close, and he thinks of her radiance. He smiles weakly ignoring the discomfort.

His voice is hoarse. “She is warmer than the sun.” A final breath croaks outward, as if squeezed from a rusted tin can.