The Claws That Catch

I’d been dating Beatrice a few months when she randomly developed an allergy to my cat. Which was strange, as she’d never had a cat allergy of any kind.

That wasn’t officially why we broke up, but it wasn’t irrelevant, either. 

Stacy had two cats, herself. We’d been dating a year when the three of them moved in. Immediately after Stacy’s breakdown, her sister came to collect the cats, as well as the rest of Stacy’s things. Apparently Stacy’s doing better these days, which is a huge relief. I respect that she doesn’t want to hear from me, though god knows I myself did nothing wrong. 

Still. I plan to learn from my mistakes. This time it’s going to be different. 

I sit down with my cat, and speak to him directly. 

“Alastair. I do NOT want to be a bachelor forever. You have to accept that. You have to adapt.” 

Alastair pretends not to hear me, and licks his claw with practiced indifference.

I stay most nights at Julia’s place. She’s never slept at mine. But my excuses are getting tired, as I’m tired of making them. There’s nothing wrong with the apartment. It’s clean and it’s safe. It’s perfect, other than the demonic feline who struts around like he owns the place. 

Julia’s sleeping in my bed for the first time. I’m listening to her breathing, worrying that the sound will stop. But that’s crazy, right? The legend that cats steal the breath of babies is: 

A. A legend 

B. Only about babies

Anyway, Alastair isn’t even the room. It’s not as if he can stop her breath from his place on the living room rug, right? I mean he’s not THAT powerful. Sure he can cause an allergy in a 24-year-old healthy woman, and can drive an even healthier woman to the point of madness, but he can’t literally kill my new girlfriend. Right?   

I get a text, from a number I don’t recognize.

“You are factually correct. Alas, I cannot. Thus the trashy mouse you shagged lies not in mortal danger. I will have my revenge, upon you and she both, but I assure you she’ll survive the night. The question is whether you want her to.”

So he can read my mind. So he can type. With what? His tail? His teeth? His penis? He doesn’t have opposable thumbs, I don’t know!

And the weirdest part is he types exactly as I imagine him sounding in my head. Threatening, yet…pretentious.

I should have listened to the old man who warned me not to adopt Alastair. His broken English makes more sense in retrospect. 

I get another text. 

“PS. Get me more milk.” 

I get out of bed, to do as I’m told. How did Alastair even get my number? And where is he texting me from? Ugh. This fucking cat!

Picklebrawl

“MOUTH ON THE CURB, MILDRED!” Beatrice Goldfarb commands while brandishing her pickleball paddle and staring down at Mildred Mendelbaum, who’s kneeling on the street with her back to Beatrice.

“What?” asks Mildred.

“I said put your fucking mouth on the fucking curb and do not make me have to ask you again!” shouts Beatrice.

“But why?” asks Mildred.

Beatrice glares down at Mildred while raising the pickleball paddle above her shoulder. “Don’t you remember that scene from American History X after the pickup basketball game? You don’t ask why, Mildred, you just do it!”

“Is that the new Woody Allen picture? Murray and Harriet just went to see it last week and they said—”

Beatrice’s paddle slices through the air like a laser beam and strikes Mildred’s eye socket, crushing her orbital bone. Mildred yelps in pain and collapses face first onto the street curb, breaking her nose and knocking out two of her front teeth upon impact.

“Now this can be quick and easy or it can be slow and painful, Mildred – you decide,” Beatrice says while she pulls Mildred’s head up by a fistful of hair and pushes her face against the curb. “Now open your goddamn yap and eat curb, you insolent fucking yenta!”

This time Mildred does as instructed and places her open mouth onto the concrete curb at the edge of the sidewalk facing the pickleball courts. About a dozen pickleballers have congregated behind the fence to watch the action unfold on the street in front of them.

Wasting no time, Beatrice steps forward and plants her left foot on the pavement next to Mildred, raises her right knee as high as she can, then stomps the sole of her Adidas Gamecourt sneaker down between Mildred’s shoulder blades with as much force as she can muster.

Mildred screams out in agony and turns over on the street, holding her chest and gasping for air through her bloodied nose and mouth.

“What the hell was that, Beatrice?” bellows out Sidney Goldfarb, Beatrice’s husband, while he kneels on the back of Sheldon Mendelbaum, Mildred’s husband, who’s lying face down on the street.

Beatrice looks over at Sidney and explains, “I curb-stomped the bitch, just like in the movie when Edward Norton—” 

“Yes, I can see that, Beatrice, but you were supposed to stomp her at the base of her skull so that her head splits open, not on her back! I mean that’s the whole goddamn point of making her put her mouth on the curb! Good lord, Beatrice, can you do anything right today? First you lose a pickleball game for us and now you can’t even execute a simple fucking curb stomp!”

“OK, I’m sorry, I guess I should have watched the movie closer, but—”

“Forget it, Beatrice, just come over here and sit on Sheldon while I finish off Mildred.”

Sidney and Beatrice switch places on the street, Beatrice sitting on Sheldon while Sidney stands over Mildred. The crowd of onlookers has now doubled in size.

Mildred looks up at Sidney and pleads for her life. “Sid, please, I have five grandchildren. They need me to—”

The heel of Sidney’s Nike Zoom Challenge sneaker crashes squarely into Mildred’s face, rocking her head back violently and shattering her jaw. “Just shut the fuck up and put your mouth back on the curb, Mildred. You know the drill.”

Before Mildred can turn over on the street to face the curb, Sheldon cries out, “Sid, please stop! Can’t you just make this quick and painless so Milly doesn’t suffer? There must be some other way!”

Sidney thinks for a moment, then nods and says, “I have a loaded Glock 9 millimeter in my car that I keep for protection. We can use that.” Sidney tosses his car key fob to Beatrice and says, “Go get the gun, Bea, it’s under the driver’s seat. And please please please remember to hit the lock button twice from at least ten feet away when you leave the car to make sure it’s locked.”

Beatrice stands up off of Sheldon and says, “Don’t try anything funny, Shel, we’ve got eyes on you.” She jogs over to Sidney’s sky-blue Mercedes SUV parked in the lot next to the pickleball courts, then hits the unlock button on the key fob. After opening the driver-side door and reaching beneath the seat, Beatrice jogs back onto the street holding Sidney’s gun, which she hands to him with the key fob and then sits back down on Sheldon.

As Sidney walks slowly up to Mildred with the gun pointed at her head, she looks over to Sheldon through swollen eyes with tears streaming down her bloodied face. “Shelly, please – isn’t there anything you can do to stop him?”

Sheldon shakes his head. ”Sorry, Mils, but he’s made up his mind and there’s nothing I can do about it. Don’t worry, hon, it’ll be quick and painless – you won’t feel a thing.”

Sidney stands on the street in front of Mildred with his gun still pointed at her head. She sits up against the curb facing him with blood and snot flowing down from her nose and mouth onto her chin. Sidney slides his forefinger onto the trigger while releasing the safety with his thumb. “Any last words, Mildred?”

Mildred wipes the tears from her eyes and sniffles quietly. Struggling to speak through her broken jaw and teeth, in excruciating pain, she garbles, “I just wanted to talk smack like a badass baller. I’m so sorry it didn’t work. Just do what you have to do and—”

Sidney squeezes the trigger and the deafening sound of the gunshot rings out and reverberates through the street and pickleball courts. Mildred’s lifeless body slumps back on the sidewalk while a stream of blood spurts out from the fresh bullet hole in her forehead. Behind her on the pickleball courts, the bystanders shake their heads to each other and then return to their games. A pool of blood spreads across the sidewalk behind the back of Mildred’s blown-out skull, absorbing the brain matter and bone fragments strewn in its path.

Sidney looks over at Sheldon, who’s busy tapping out a text message on his cell phone while Beatrice continues to sit on his back. “I’m sorry, Shel, but at least she’s in a better place now.”

Sheldon raises a finger and says, “Just gimme a sec, Sid, I gotta reply to this text.” Sheldon finishes his text message and then thumbs the send button on his cell phone. After quickly re-reading his text, he raises his head to Sidney with a smile. “Sorry about that, Sid, I’m all yours now. What was that you said?”

“I was just saying that Mildred is probably in a better place now,” Sidney replies.

Sheldon shakes his head apologetically while placing a forefinger behind his earlobe. “Sorry, Sid, I left my hearing aid back on the pickleball court. What was that?”

“I SAID THAT MILDRED IS IN A BETTER PLACE NOW,” Sidney nearly shouts so that Sheldon can hear him.

Sheldon nods his head vigorously. “I totally agree, Sid, 100 percent. Better place for sure. I know it was difficult but you guys did the right thing. You had no choice.”

Beatrice stands up from Sheldon’s back and stretches her legs out, then looks down at her Apple watch. “We have a 7:00 p.m. dinner reservation at the Marble Room downtown, Sid, and I need time to shower and get ready so let’s get going. It’s almost impossible to get a reservation there this time of year so we can’t be late.” She looks down at Sheldon and says, “You’re welcome to join us, Shelly, but don’t feel obligated if you have other plans.”

Just as Sheldon opens his mouth to reply to Beatrice, an Avon Lake police cruiser barrels around the street corner and speeds toward them with its siren blasting and lights flashing.

Sidney discreetly places his Glock 9 into the elastic waistband of his pickleball shorts and covers the protruding gun butt with the untucked bottom of his Lacoste tennis polo. “Five-oh in the house!” he warns the others. “Bea, you may need to call the Marble Room and move our reservation back a bit,” he says coolly while nodding toward the police cruiser.

The cruiser pulls to an abrupt stop about ten feet in front of Sidney. Two uniformed officers step out and survey the scene.

“Goddamn gangbangers,” Sergeant Felix Dixon mutters to his partner, Noah Garrison, shaking his head and glancing over at Mildred’s dead body, her blood now congealed on the sidewalk while her vacant eyes stare up at the sky. “This used to be such a safe neighborhood before the city installed these fuckin’ pickleball courts. It was the kinda place where you could raise a family without having to worry about crime and all. Now look at it.”

Garrison nods in agreement as he looks over at the fenced-in courts.

“I know how to deal with these punk-ass ballers so let me handle this, Noah,” Dixon says.

“Well, well, well, now what do we have here?” Dixon says as he approaches the Goldfarbs and Sheldon, shifting his gaze between the three of them. “Where y’all comin’ from today?” he demands.

“Beachwood,” Beatrice replies nervously.

“Pepper Pike,” adds Sheldon.

Dixon looks back at his partner with a sarcastic smirk and raised eyebrows. “Eastsiders,” he says, “Now ain’t that a shock.”

Garrison chuckles back at him. “I think I’d like to solve the puzzle, Pat.”

Dixon laughs as he turns back to the three tense pickleballers. “And what about sleeping beauty over there soiling my lovely sidewalk with her nasty-ass head cheese?” Dixon asks, nodding towards Mildred’s corpse.

“That’s my ex-wife. She’s from Pepper Pike also,” replies Sheldon.

“Ex? So you two are divorced?” asks Dixon as he writes on his notepad.

“Well no, she’s dead,” explains Sheldon. “We were married up until she died a few minutes ago so I guess she’s technically my ex-wife since I can’t legally be married to a dead person. Sorry for the confusion, officer, I’ve just never been in this situation before – it’s a bit unnerving.”

“OK, roger that,” Dixon nods to Sheldon. Shifting gears, Dixon asks, “So what the hell brought you bangers over here to the west side? Ain’t there enough pickleball courts over in your ’hood where y’all can play without bringin’ your gangsta shit to Avon Lake?”

Sidney steps forward to answer Sergeant Dixon while Beatrice pulls her cell phone from the pocket of her Lululemon pickleball skirt to video-record their exchange. “We have friends in Avon who just got back from the Amalfi Coast and were showing us their photos over brunch, so we thought we’d try out a new court while we’re over this way.”

Dixon rolls his eyes while placing his notepad back into his pocket, then looks sternly at the Goldfarbs and Sheldon. “OK, so which one of you pickleballin’ punks wants to tell me what the fuck happened here today?”

“Well, we were playing mixed doubles …,” Beatrice begins, then tells the story.

Flashback to thirty minutes earlier:

“Wipe his ass all over the court, Sheldon!” Mildred shouts to her husband as she shifts her weight from foot to foot on the pickleball court, firmly gripping the handle of her paddle as she glares across the net at Sidney and Beatrice.

Sheldon looks back at Mildred in disgust. “Wipe his ass? Really, Mildred? That’s not trash talk, it’s just gross. And it would actually entail me getting toilet paper and wiping his butt, which is not exactly intimidating and he may even enjoy it.”

“OK, my bad – I’m still learning the smack talk part of this pickleball thing but you know what I meant. Just serve the goddamn ball, Sheldon,” says Mildred.

After a few rounds of volleying, the Goldfarbs take the lead after Sidney’s “dink” into the Mendelbaums’ “kitchen” hits the court just a foot behind the net and goes unreturned. 

“Mildred hasn’t been in the kitchen in years so that’s always a safe place to hit the ball!” Sidney jokes.

Sheldon laughs and adds, “Take that back, Sid – Milly microwaves the meanest quiche lorraine in all of Cuyahoga County!”

Sidney and Beatrice both chuckle while glancing apologetically at Mildred, who glares back at Sidney with fierce slitted eyes.

“Fuck you, Goldfarb! This is our house and we’re gonna burn your asses down like an LA wildfire, you fucking cocksucker!” Mildred screams at Sidney.

All goes silent on the pickleball court while Sheldon and the Goldfarbs look gape-mouthed at Mildred in utter shock and disbelief.

A trim middle-aged woman in a dark green Vuori pickleball dress and matching visor cap walks over from the neighboring court and turns to Mildred. “I’m sorry to interrupt, ma’am, but could you please watch what you say here. My sister and her husband live in Malibu and their house was just destroyed by the wildfires. It’s terrifying what’s happening over there now and I really don’t think it’s appropriate fodder for pickleball trash talk.”

Sheldon steps forward with an embarrassed look and says to the woman, “We’re so sorry, ma’am, my wife is new to pickleball and her trash talk could obviously use some fine tuning. We’re sorry to upset you and I promise we’ll keep it down over here.”

After the woman thanks Sheldon and walks back to her own court, he turns to Mildred with an angry scowl. “Damnit, Milly! Will you please just be quiet and leave the smack talk to me! We didn’t come here all the way from Pepper Pike to get kicked off the court because you can’t keep your damn mouth shut!”

Mildred apologizes and the pickleball game resumes. The Mendelbaums score a point after Beatrice returns Mildred’s serve into the net. Beatrice shakes her head and curses herself.

Exhilarated by the Goldfarbs’ fault, Mildred pumps her fist and taunts Beatrice. “Nice one, JonBenet, but isn’t the point of the game to hit the ball over the net and not into the net?”

Beatrice looks at Mildred with a puzzled expression and furrowed brow. “JonBenet?” she asks.

“Yep!” Mildred replies with a laugh, “Because you choke every time you have to perform, you stupid fucking cunt!” Mildred shouts at Beatrice while looking over at Sheldon for affirmation.

Sheldon just looks back at Mildred stone-faced while the Goldfarbs and neighboring pickleballers stare at her in pure unbridled disgust.

Mildred stammers uneasily while the others continue to stare at her. “I was just referring to JonBenet Ramsey. Remember how she got strangled by that garotte made from Patsy’s paint brush handle?” She adds, “It’s just pickleball trash talk – part of the game, right?”

Nobody says a word.

After another minute of awkward silence, a tall bearded man with a yellow Avon Lake Parks & Recreation shirt walks up to the group with a stern look. “I’m sorry, folks, but she’s gonna have to leave,” he says, nodding to Mildred. “You’re really starting to disturb a lot of the other players with your trash talk, ma’am. So please just leave quietly and don’t make this difficult for me.”

“Goddamnit!” shouts Beatrice while looking over at Sidney. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! We never should have brought this bitch to play with us, and I told you that, Sid! We have the best court here and now we have to give it up because of Mildred!”

Mildred interjects before Sidney can reply. “Fine! You guys keep playing and I’ll leave. But I’m not staying here. Let’s go, Sheldon.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Sheldon protests, “Sid and Bea drove us here so we need a ride home.” Sheldon looks to Sidney expectantly.

Beatrice steps forward while shaking her head at Sheldon, “No fucking way are we losing this court because of Mildred. You two can take an Uber home. Sidney and I aren’t leaving.”

Sheldon glares at Beatrice with bulging eyes and exclaims, “An Uber back to Pepper Pike will cost us over $100 now! No way we’re paying that!”

“Well, I’m not staying here!” Mildred shouts defiantly with her arms crossed in front of her.

Beatrice looks up to the sky with pursed lips, pinches her eyes closed and pauses for a moment, then lowers her head, grabs Mildred by the hair and walks her off the pickleball court towards the street.

“What are you doing, Bea?” Sidney asks with concern.

Still holding Mildred by the hair, Beatrice turns back to Sidney and screams, “I’m doing what none of you pickle-pussies have the fucking balls to do! I’m taking care of this little bitch MY WAY!” 

Beatrice walks Mildred through the fence opening to the street while Sidney and Sheldon hurry after her.

Now on the street outside the pickleball courts, Beatrice takes a deep breath and calmly instructs Sidney, while pointing to Sheldon, “Get his ass on the ground and keep him there so he doesn’t try anything.” Looking to Sheldon, she adds, “Now’s not the time to be a hero, Shel.”

Sidney and Sheldon both nod to Beatrice, then Sheldon lies face down on the pavement and Sidney kneels on his back.

Still gripping Mildred by the hair, Beatrice throws her to the ground and looks at her with a snarl. “Now get the fuck down and put your mouth on the curb! Don’t fight this, Mildred.”

Flashforward to present:

After listening patiently to Beatrice’s recount of events, Sergeant Dixon nods and says, “OK, we get it. We know that you guys just got caught up in the game and Mildred over there got what she deserved. Nobody should have to play pickleball with that annoying bullshit. The game is stressful enough without someone like her fuckin’ it up for y’all. That said, we still have to maintain some law and order around here. We can’t just let every swingin’ paddle come waltzin’ on in here from the east side and disrespectin’ our shit.” Dixon glances over at Officer Garrison, then looks back to the group. “Y’all just sit tight and stay put while my partner and I decide how we’re gonna handle this mess.”

The Goldfarbs and Sheldon wait anxiously on the street while the two officers walk back to their cruiser to discuss what to do.

After a few minutes of heated exchange with his partner, Sergeant Dixon walks back to the group. “OK,” he says sternly. “Today’s your lucky day so y’all better count your blessings. We’re gonna let you bangers off with a warning … this time. But if it ever happens again and we gotta come back out here to deal with your pickleballin’ bullshit, we’re gonna haul your lily white asses downtown for disturbing the peace. Now take your paddles and get the fuck outta here before we change our minds!”

Officer Garrison steps forward and chimes in, “And maybe it’s time for you thugs to get your lives together and go back to school.” He looks over at Dixon, who nods in agreement, then adds, “Pickleballin’ on the streets is no way to survive. You bangers are headin’ down a dangerous path that’ll leave you dead or in jail. Is that what you want?”

Sidney looks at Officer Garrison incredulously with his eyebrows raised. “Back to school? Officer, I graduated summa from Oberlin and have a PhD in applied physics from Northwestern. I’m a senior fellow at Case—”

Beatrice interrupts Sidney with a smirk. “And you got passed over for tenure more times than Pete Rose did for Cooperstown — why don’t you mention that part, professor?”

“Beatrice, please!” shouts Sidney. “You know goddamn well that I wasn’t able to publish without my research assistant during COVID, and then they made me teach that godawful undergraduate semin—”

“Hey, hey, hey now! You gangbangers just settle your asses down, y’aint back home in the ’hood!” belts out Sergeant Dixon. “And we just handed you a gift so don’t fuck it up!” he reminds them.

Without another word, the Goldfarbs and Sheldon hurry back to the parking lot with their heads down and pickleball gear in tow while the two officers walk back to their cruiser.

The shrill shouts and laughter of the pickleballers resonate through the courts behind them while, just twenty feet away, flies swarm around Mildred’s open mouth.

The Cuckold

The fuck I’m gonna do? Woman says she wants to do it with another man, the fuck I’m gonna do? Shit. I’m forty-three. I done it so many times I couldn’t even count if I tried. I been doing it since I was thirteen. Girl from Des Plaines. Real nice. Real easy going. Put on a performance for me in spite of my ineptitude. Screamed like she’d never been penetrated before. Gave me all the confidence I needed to play the field.

Now Wilma, my girl for sixteen years, well, she come out of a convent when I met her. Claimed she’d never done it before. I heard rules don’t get broke like they do in a convent, but I took her word for it. She probably told the truth. First time with her, she was real sloppy. All over the place. Enthusiastic, you bet. What twenty-two-year-old ain’t got enthusiasm? Not one I’d ever waste a moment with, I tell you. But sloppy. Well, that told me if it weren’t her first time, it was damn near close.

So, we been doing it, Wilma and me, for sixteen years. I’ve slowed down, if we’re being honest. Shit, like I said, I’ve done it so much, I don’t really need to do it more than once a month. Maybe a man my age is supposed to have more energy. Maybe I spent all mine. Shit. I don’t know.

So, Wilma says to me, she says, “You don’t seem to got it like you used to.” Real perceptive, she is. She says, “I’m still on fire, I need to do it at least once a week.” Well, I been with women in their late thirties before and they all got that in common. Like they want to make up for all that time they spent in their teens and twenties being shy and humble and not doing it because society told them to ignore their own instincts.

Well, I’m a considerate man. A sensitive guy. If I ain’t got the gump like I used to have and the woman I love needs to do it more than once a month, what choice I got? I says to her, “What you have in mind?”

She says what I expected, that she was thinking of a younger man. More energy. More gump. She says, “Got my eye on this lonely-looking boy stacks oatmeal on the shelf over there at the Walmart in McHenry.” Still got pimples on his skinny little face, she says. Reminds her of Opie, from that old show about a wholesome little town in a black and white world. She says she imagines his voice still squeaks, like his balls ain’t even dropped. Like he’s never done it. That’s what really turns her on, she says. I ask her how old she thinks he is, is he legal and all, and she says, “He works during the weekdays, afternoons.” She says, that means he don’t go to school. That means, she says, he’s old enough to do it.

So, I tell her, “Go on then, see if he’s game.”

Now, understand, Wilma’s thirty-eight years old, but she ain’t no normal thirty-eight. Sometimes I think it’s like she made a deal with God. Or maybe the devil. I don’t want to be one of them men that curses women for being able to weave a spell over any man that ain’t done it in a while. Or ever. She’s good-looking, is what I’m getting at. Big, saucer eyes, the kind you see on movie star women. Auburn hair, shoulder length. Not too short, not too long. Never gets in the way when we’re doing it. The sweetest, milkiest skin. Even at thirty-eight. Wilma ain’t the kind of woman sits in the sun, inviting cancer and skin as rough as leather. She takes good care of herself. Still tastes like a peach and purrs like a kitten after a good round of doing it. So, what I’m getting at is, how she convinced this young fellow to go along with her ain’t a part of my immediate knowledge beyond the fact I still catch men looking at me like they wanna kill me and take her away from me any time we venture out to a restaurant after we’ve done it. Because doing it makes you hungry. I mean, you ever done it, you know what I’m talking about.

So, Wilma sets it up with Tad. That’s the boy’s name, Tad. The fuck kind of name that is for a grown man, I don’t know. Makes me think of a baby frog. But, whatever. It’s Wilma’s thing, not mine. She sets it up so that she and the boy are gonna do it with a girl they meet at Mink’s, a club on Seventh Street. One of those multi-level places with dance floors on each story. Grating electronic beats thumping the walls, threatening to knock the bricks outside from their mortar and collapse the entire building. Used to love finding girls to do it with at places like that years ago. Now I get a headache just thinking about pushing through a crowd.

But I don’t want to stray from the story at hand. Wilma tells the boy her plan to pick up a girl at the club. The boy’s young enough, he ain’t gonna say no. And he doesn’t. Wilma calls me on my cell, tells me the boy can barely contain himself. She says, “He’s so curious. I just hope he doesn’t get too excited, you know, finish before I tell him to.” I tell her the boy ain’t got a better instructor.

I say, “You tell him what to do, Wilma. He’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

So, now I’m outside the Jack Four, a motel off highway 90. One of them ranch-style establishments. Single-story. Rooms lined up and down a row. Mostly semis in the lot. Some hookers in the cramped lobby. Kind of place I used to love finding girls to do it. Loved it. But goddamn, getting old is a bitch. I’m listening to Journey on the radio. That shit about not stopping your beliefs, or whatever. Last I heard, they tour with other FM dinosaurs. Foreigner. Styx. REO Speedwagon. That kind of shit. They got some karaoke singer filling in for Steve Perry. Really fucked up, what time does to the things we thought we’re supposed to do. I’m smoking a cigarette, remembering the past like things were somehow better even though people still couldn’t pay their bills twenty, thirty years ago. Thinking the world was a fucking rose garden just because I didn’t have to crawl out of bed like a demented slug in the morning. Thinking June Cleaver’s pussy tasted like a peach just because I didn’t have to wake up every hour to take a piss at night. Thinking I’d never tire of doing it on a weekly basis just because I didn’t have an ulcer just eating away my insides.

The cell rings. It’s Wilma. I says, “Yeah?”

She says, “Jesus all holy hell Christ and fuck not.” Something wrong? I ask. “This little shit’s chickened out,” she says.

This makes me sit straight. The boy gets cold feet, well, that’s a problem. “Where you at in the process?”

“Trying to get the girl in the mood.”

“The boy didn’t even want to give her no foreplay?”

“He’s acting like that’s somehow worse than doing it.”

I want to tell her, What’d you expect from a man named Tad? Tad wears short-sleeve shirts with collars. Tad punches numbers on a calculator at H&R Block. Tad uses them fancy Italian words to order his coffee at Starbucks. Tad ain’t the kind of guy a woman should try to do it with. Tad ain’t the kind of guy, far as I can tell, who either knows how to do it or enjoys doing it. I says, “Maybe you got to completely take the lead?”

Then she tells me, “He’s pacing, close to the door. Threatening to leave.”

My cigarette don’t meet the pavement before my feet do and I’m out of the car. Slamming the door. Marching to room 32, clear on the tail end of the motel. Nobody seems to notice me. Angry old man stomping to a hotel room. They figure my old lady’s in there with another man. Had I the time, I’d sure tell them it ain’t a man she’s in there with. Wouldn’t much matter. They’d still think of me as a cuck. And that wouldn’t bother me if Tad hadn’t turned out to be a fucking pussy.

I bust the door open, smack Tad square in his face. Blood shoots from his nose. Unpretties the stubble he’s clearly been growing for six years. “Fuck’s the matter with you?” I slap the cleaner side of his face with the back of my hand. Boy’s fragile as Tinker Bell, I tell you. Falls right over on the bed. Falls right on top of the girl. She’s had her clothes cut off her, like Wilma likes to do, and her hands cuffed to the rail running along the shitty, crumbling wooden headboard. The boy ain’t even pulled off her panties yet. “I let you do it with my wife and you disrespect the both of us like this?”

He mumbles through the blood streaming from his nostrils, filling up his mouth. He didn’t know it was going to be like this. He didn’t know this is what we had in mind. Stupid little fuck.

So, I throw the little shit to the floor. Undo my pants and pull out old John Thomas. The girl, oh, she’s a good one. She’s got them sleepy eyes Hollywood girls these days are selling to the masses. Big, natural tits. I rip her panties off. Snort when I see what I always see these days—Bald pussy. She must have money. No stubble on her clam. No ma’am. This girl sports a top-notch wax job. I’m thinking she must have one of them self-service porno sites where women from all walks flash it for the perverts out there that ain’t got the gump to get the real thing.

She struggles a little when I force her legs apart. She can’t stop John Thomas, though. He bulls straight into her and next thing I know, I got energy I ain’t felt in a long time. Maybe getting pissed off at the younger generation was just what I needed. I fuck that girl until the tears march down the sides of her pretty little face. Next thing I know, Wilma’s licking my balls. Licking my asshole. I told her before rim jobs don’t do nothing for me. But she’s always reading women’s magazines telling her all sorts of stories about what men do and don’t like in the bedroom. All sorts of speculations written by women who should stick to putting down their fantasies in them romance books you see on the rack at the local drug store.

I’m climbing that mountain, getting nice and close to filling the girl up with my baby batter. Wilma reminds me the girl can’t be alive when I come. She hands me the fishing knife we use when we do it and as I release inside the girl, I slice through her throat from one ear to the next. Oh friends, you ain’t ever had an orgasm until you’ve arrived just when your partner’s departed. Try it sometime, if you don’t believe me.

Well, you can imagine, the boy is crawling toward the door again. Stupid little fuck. I pull up my pants. Pass the fishing knife, like my hands, like the boy’s face, just a smeared in blood, I pass it on over to Wilma. I know she’s furious. I must not have wiped so well last time I took a shit. She’s got herself a little brown mustache. She licks her lips, gets all that crusty fudge on her tongue, and spits on the boy. She drops her foot, firmly encased in her favorite red high heels, onto the boy’s back.

“You ain’t leaving here,” she says to him, “without doing it someway, somehow.”

Tad, the boy, the man who will never be a man, blubbers like someone already cut his nutsack in two. Which is something Wilma will get to, sooner or later. For now, she uses that bloody knife to cut off the boy’s belt and lower his pants. “Would have been so much better,” I tell him, “if you’d just done it the way you were told to.”

Wilma don’t give a shit about my pep talk. She yanks down the boy’s skinny jeans and tickles his balls before ramming the knife straight up his asshole. I can see the smile on her face. She ain’t quite got what she wanted from the night, but a little sudden variety, I can see, well, she seems to think that’s the next best thing.

Princess Cherrypop and the Baroness’s Bad Habit: A Fucked-Up Fairy Tale

Princess Cherrypop skipped through the neon-drenched woods, her pink frilly dress clashing violently with the gnarled, pulsating trees. She clutched a basket overflowing with artisanal cupcakes, each frosted with enough saccharine sweetness to induce diabetic shock in a lesser mortal. They were a peace offering for her ailing Granny Goodguts, currently residing in a gingerbread cottage that reeked of stale farts and regret. 

Little did Cherrypop know, Baroness Cuntingham, Queen of Nair, was lurking nearby, her heart blacker than a burnt offering and her intentions fouler than a public toilet in Tijuana. 

The Baroness, bored with tormenting the denizens of her own wretched kingdom, had set her sights on Cherrypop’s sugary innocence. Transforming herself into a disturbingly convincing replica of Granny Goodguts – think melted wax figure after a meth binge – she awaited the princess’s arrival, her dentures chattering with anticipation. 

The Baroness wanted the utter annihilation of Cherrypop’s relentlessly cheerful disposition. She wanted to crush that sparkle, that naive belief in sparkling goodness, into a fine, shimmering powder of despair. 

Cherrypop, bless her cotton-candy heart, was easily deceived. She entered the cottage, the aroma of decay barely registering amidst the cloying sweetness of her baked goods. “Granny, darling,” she chirped, “I’ve brought you cupcakes! They’re gluten-free, dairy-free, and completely devoid of anything resembling actual flavor.”

The Baroness, her voice a gravelly rasp, beckoned her closer. “Come closer, my dearie,” she wheezed, “so I can admire your…dress.”

Cherrypop, ever the trusting soul, approached the bed. She peered at the Baroness-Granny, noting the unsettling details: the pustules erupting on her forehead, the single, twitching eyebrow, the way her eyes seemed to glow with an unholy light.

The Baroness lunged, her claw-like hands reaching for Cherrypop’s throat. But instead of fear, a slow, unsettling smile spread across the princess’s face. Her pink frilly dress dissolved into wisps of smoke, revealing a body adorned with skulls and serpents. Her skin darkened, her eyes burned with crimson fire, and a garland of severed heads materialized around her neck. The cupcakes transformed into miniature skulls, each grinning with malevolent glee.

“You thought you could devour my innocence, Cuntingham?” Cherrypop, no, Kālī, cackled, her voice echoing with the force of a thousand collapsing universes. “Innocence is merely a mask I wear to lull the wicked into a false sense of security!” 

This wasn’t a damsel in distress; this was the destroyer of worlds, the embodiment of feminine power and righteous fury. The Baroness, now genuinely terrified, scrambled backward, her transformation spell crumbling under the weight of Kālī’s terrifying presence.

With a flick of her wrist, Kālī summoned a khadga, a crescent-shaped sword that shimmered with cosmic energy. She didn’t just kill the Baroness; she disassembled her, atom by atom, scattering her essence across the dimensions. 

The gingerbread cottage, no longer able to contain the goddess’s power, imploded in a shower of sprinkles and gingerbread shrapnel. The forest, once a saccharine nightmare, withered and turned to ash, the neon lights extinguished by the sheer force of Kālī’s wrath.

As the dust settled, Kālī surveyed the wreckage, a chillingly serene expression on her face. The heads on her garland whispered tales of past transgressions, of cosmic imbalances rectified. 

She adjusted her skirt of severed arms, a reminder of the karma she had absorbed. The world, for now, was safe from the Baroness’s particular brand of evil. But Kālī knew, with a certainty that chilled her very bones, that the forces of darkness were eternal, ever-evolving, always seeking new avenues for corruption. And she, the destroyer, the preserver, the skull-faced goddess of mayhem, would be waiting. As the sun rose, painting the ashen landscape in hues of blood orange and bruised purple, she whispered, “SECRET HERBS AND SPICES!” before dissolving into the ether, ready to play another role in the grand cosmic game.

Value of Friendship 

“Why are you laughing? What the fuck is wrong with you? You think this is funny Johnny?”

“No but yes. I think about all the time bad things happen to us. It is so sad that it is now funny. I don’t know how to say it in English. It is tragicomedia in Spanish. Like a Telenovela.”

“That’s a big word for you Rico. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get a grip Johnnyhole. Why can’t you ever take shit seriously.”

“Okay I will take shit seriously now.”

“That’s a good sign. Stop screwing around and grab his legs and help me get his body the fuck outta here. And hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time, it’s going to be light soon.”

“Why you shoot him so far away from the truck? Now we have to carry him for 200 meters or more.”

“It’s not like I had any choice. The Son of a Bitch started running away. He knew what was up. It looked like he was reaching for a gun. What did you want me to do?” 

“I don’t know Santi.”

Maybe I should have asked him “Can you run the other way toward the truck so we don’t have to carry your body so far after I kill you?” Johnny shook his head in disgust. 

“And where the fuck were you? Thought you were covering my ass?” I added.

“I had to piss very bad after all the beer we drink. But you very fast shoot this cabron.” Johnny whines. 

“Ya well thanks a lot. While you’re taking a piss I’m the one standing here with my cock in my hand.”

Then Johnny starts kicking the guy in the stomach with his cowboy boots while grunting.

“Why are you kicking his body man? He’s definitely dead. Stop that.”

“This Mexican guy is real fat. He weighs maybe 150 Kilos or more. How much you think he weighs Santi?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea. I’m not working the Carnival Midway. Let’s go.” 

Finally we carry the body twenty yards or so and Johnny drops his end.

“I like Carnival. Remember when we go to Carnival in Bogota? You take home the pretty lady and find out she have a big pene.”

“Shut up. You’re making me laugh. Come on. And you were asked never to repeat that story.” 

“Stop for a minute. I need to rest. I tell you he is too heavy for me to carry.”

“Are you kidding me, you pussy? I’ve got the heavy end. Come on. Pick em’ up.”

“Santiago, we should leave the body here. Why we have to take him with us?”

“I can’t believe you. Okay stop and let me explain it to you. Better listen up.” 

“Okay, I listen up.” 

“This isn’t Columbia or Mexico, we’re in the United States. If we leave the body right here in the open, somebody will find it and report it to the police. Then there will be an investigation. We don’t want an investigation. But If we hide the body somewhere in the desert it’ll take forever before anyone knows what happened to him. Plus his lowlife criminal friends will probably come looking for him. They’ll start asking questions about the drugs and the money. And if they ask us, we can play dumb. Say he never showed up. We haven’t seen the pinche. Get it now?“ 

“Did El Jefe say he wanted him quacked.”

“Whacked. It’s Whacked.”

“Did he say whacked?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say not to kill him. We were supposed to get back the money and drugs he ripped off from Diego.”

“That’s all he said? Maybe you don’t hear everything he tell you?” 

“He said to teach him a lesson. You know what? You’re starting to put me in a bad mood. Shut up.” 

“You are almost all the time in bad moods. I think it’s the reason why you have not many friends . People don’t like you very much because of your bad moods. You should maybe be more nice sometimes.”

“I don’t need any friends. I’m the only friend I’ve got and I’m not sure he’s one I can trust.”
Get it Johnny?” 

“Just you should not be so sarspastic all the time.”

“You mean sarcastic? What you’re saying I need an attitude adjustment? So you think maybe I could use some anger management therapy do you?”

“I don’t know what that could be. Is it what can make you a more friendly guy? Amigable?”

“Okay Doctor Freud, so you’ve got it all worked out do ya? Maybe you should use your Psychotherapy toward curing your own mental defects. Ya know, use it on yourself. Wear down those sharp edges in your personality.” 

“You know my name is Johnny and not Doctor Floyd? Why do you always use words I don’t know? Sometimes I think you want me to feel like I am stupid.” 

“I’m sorry Rico, I don’t mean to make you feel that way. Forgive me. Now will you just grab his legs and help me get this chulo in the truck please.”

“See, it is not so hard being nice.” 

“Shut the fuck up. Pick’em up.”

“You know what? We should drive the truck here to where he is. Then we don’t have to carry this ponzon.”

“Don’t you think I would have already done that? We can’t because this mountain road is too narrow. The rain from the Monsoon has washed it out. It’s not wide enough. That’s why I parked on the side.The truck won’t make it. It’ll end up falling off the ledge. And it’s a long way down.”

“I think it will fit just fine. I’m going to try to drive it.”

“Why do you want to argue with me? Take my word for it. It won’t work. The road isn’t wide enough, it’s washed out. Now pick em up huevon. Let’s go.”

“I am going to get the truck. I have the keys. I will do it. Just wait here.”

“God Dammit Johnny come back here. Don’t you do it. I mean it.”

But of course he chooses to pretend not to hear me as though he instantly went deaf. There I stood in the middle of a mountain road in Madera Canyon with the body of a Chicano gang member laying at my feet. A minute later I saw the truck lights peaking over the rise in the road coming toward me. I knew this wasn’t going to end well. All I could do was watch as the Pickup truck slowly started sliding sideways down the mountainside. There was nothing I could have done to rescue him. I was sure I’d never see my friend again. He didn’t even scream for help. Suddenly a wave of woefulness washed over me.

The headlights faded away into darkness and I could hear the metal body of the truck slamming into the boulders below as it fell into the canyon.

“Johnny! Oh Johnny!” I bawled. Unable to catch my breath.“ My friend. Why don’t you ever listen to me?” I wailed loudly. 

“I don’t know what to do. Johnny, where did you go?” Screaming while crying uncontrollably.
The night had swallowed up the entire scene in darkness. It was difficult to see exactly where the truck had slid over the ledge. I cautiously walked toward the area where I thought he had plummeted into the valley below. 

“Johnny. Please Johnny answer me. Answer me damn it!”

“Yes, I am answering you now. I am not dead Santiago. I jumped out from the truck before it went all the way over.” A voice from behind me quietly answered.

“Pinche guey. Jesus Christ you scared the shit out of me. I thought you were a goner. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes I am not hurt.” 

“That’s good because now I’m gonna kick your stupid sorry ass for not listening to me.” 

“I’m sorry with all my heart. I should maybe listen to you more I think.”

“Well, think about this dumbass. My truck is laying a couple hundred feet or so down in the canyon gulch. We are standing in the dark over a dead body without a vehicle. It’s at least a 30 kilometer (18 miles) or more walk to the town of Continental. And I can smell rain in the distance.”

He didn’t say another word for a long while. Just kept staring at me anticipating my next verbal attack.

We carried the body into a grove of Juniper and Pinon Pine trees. It was a good distance from the road stashing it behind a large rock outcropping. Then we covered it with branches, leaves and mulch. It was a temporary fix until we were able to get back to remove it. If it wasn’t carried off by some scavenger.

Johnny and I started down the gravel mountain road without much conversation.

“Santiago, is it okay to talk to you?” 

“I guess it depends on what you have to say.” 

“I want to tell you that I am very sorry for my mistakes. And I hope you will not be angry with me for a long time.”

“After all the years we’ve been together as carnales, if I had a dollar for everytime you’ve been sorry, l’d be a millionaire. But I’d rather be your broke ass friend than be a millionaire. Because Johnny, our friendship is worth more than any amount of money.”

“Thank you. So you are not mad at me anymore?”

“Oh no Johnny, I’m mad, angry, enraged, infuriated as hell, furious and royally pissed off.”

“I guess it’s good I don’t understand some of those words. You think yes Santiago?”

A bolt of lightning flashes turning the night sky into daylight accompanied by the distant rumble of thunder. Then of course it starts pouring rain. 

“It could be worse…” 

I stop Johnny in mid sentence. “Not now Rico. Just shut up and walk! And no whistling!”

Pere Kaijubu: A Pataphysical Production

The New National Theatre, Tokyo, was about to get a whole lot more national, and a hell of a lot less theatrical. The avant-garde was never avant-garde enough, see? They thought they were pushing boundaries with this production of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, that ur-text of the absurd. “Merdre!” indeed. They had no idea what merdre was really coming. 

The director, a certain Kenji Artaud (no relation, he insisted, to Antonin, though one suspected a past-life connection given the bug-eyed fervor with which he approached the material), had decided to juice things up. Authenticity, he called it. Immersion. What it really was was a fistful of blotter acid slipped into the cast and crew’s green room tea.”To unlock the Savage God,” he’d mumbled, channeling Yeats. He should have stuck to Brecht.

The first act went off… well, it went off. Exaggerated gestures became truly unhinged, the cardboard props took on a sinister life of their own, and the actors, bless their dissolving minds, began to ad-lib lines that would have made Jarry himself blush. Lines about the coming of the Great Old Ones, the geometry of madness, the proper method for extracting ichor from a star-spawned toad. Classic stuff. By the time Père Ubu, played by the unfortunate Hideki Tojo (no relation, again), started gnawing on his toilet-brush scepter, Artaud knew he’d hit upon something truly transformative. Pure pataphysics. The science of imaginary solutions. Solutions that involved a whole lot of screaming and a distinct smell of ozone.

It wasn’t long before the transformations began. Little flickers at first. A twitch in the eye, a thickening of the skin, a sudden and inexplicable craving for raw fish and depleted uranium. Tojo-Ubu’s costume, already grotesque, started to *become* him. The cardboard mask melded with his face, the padding of his enormous belly grew organically, scales shimmering beneath the cheap fabric. A tail, thick and reptilian, burst through the back of his costume, scattering stagehands and splattering cheap sake.

Meanwhile, Mère Ubu—played with increasingly maniacal glee by the once-demure Akari Sato—began to sprout chitinous armor, her voice deepening into a guttural roar that rattled the theater’s foundations. Her boudoir became a nest, littered with broken eggs and the glistening exoskeletons of smaller cast members. She seemed to have a particular fondness for the tax collectors, muttering about “efficiency” and “resource allocation” as she devoured them whole. Ah, the classics.

Artaud, perched in the lighting booth, cackled with glee, scribbling furiously in his notebook. He was witnessing the birth of a new art form, a synthesis of Jarry’s mad vision and the raw, untamed power of the collective unconscious. A play so real, it threatened to spill over into reality itself. He felt a strange pressure building in his chest, a heat rising from his gut. He looked down and saw his hands, no longer human, but tipped with razor-sharp claws. His face stretched, his teeth lengthened, his spine arched…

The newly-minted Kaiju, led by Ubu-Gojira and Mère Ubu-Kamacuras, didn’t stay confined to the stage for long. They burst through the theater walls, scattering bewildered patrons and sending terrified yakuza running for cover. The Tokyo streets became their playground. Ubu, bellowing Jarry’s nonsense syllables mixed with atomic fire, stomped through Ginza, swatting aside tanks and devouring power lines like spaghetti. Mère Ubu, wings buzzing with malevolent energy, tore through Shibuya, her chitinous claws shredding neon signs and leaving a trail of acrid pheromones in her wake. Artaud, now a towering, multi-limbed monstrosity that seemed to be cobbled together from spare set pieces and discarded costumes, directed the chaos with flailing appendages, occasionally pausing to vomit forth a torrent of nonsensical art manifestos.

The JSDF, naturally, proved utterly useless. Missiles bounced harmlessly off Ubu’s hide, tanks were swatted aside like toys, and the brave pilots who dared to engage Mère Ubu found themselves swarmed by her brood of newly-hatched, acid-spitting larvae. The city was doomed. Or was it?

Just when all hope seemed lost, a lone figure emerged from the wreckage, clad in a tattered kabuki robe and wielding a shamisen like a weapon. It was the tayu, the narrator of the play, himself transformed by the psychedelic maelstrom into a spectral being of pure storytelling energy. He began to chant, not the lines of Jarry, but ancient verses of warding, of cosmic balance, of the power of narrative to shape reality.

The Kaiju faltered, their rampages slowing. Memories flickered in their monstrous minds: of rehearsals, of shared tea, of the fleeting beauty of the human experience. The shamisen wailed, its notes weaving a tapestry of longing and regret, of the absurdity of existence and the fleeting, precious nature of beauty.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. The Kaiju shrank, their monstrous forms dissolving into clouds of iridescent smoke. The tayu collapsed, his energy spent, leaving behind only a lingering scent of cherry blossoms and burnt ozone.

The city was in ruins, but it was also… different. Transformed. The absurd had become real, the imaginary had bled into the concrete. Tokyo was now a living stage. And somewhere, amidst the rubble, a single, slightly singed toilet-brush lay gleaming in the moonlight. The play, as they say, must go on. And the show, by god, was just beginning.

A hutch to trammel some wild thing in

There was no ketamine in high security prison. 

They wouldn’t let Elon Musk kill himself. He tried. 

Trump had already died. The military had eventually sided with the state courts and took martial action into their own hands- something about keeping their jobs for longer than four years– silly, didn’t they know the basilisk would be here before long? But when the military had rolled through the streets of DC and took back the White House, Trump had shot himself and Elon had meant to kill himself too, but the general had gotten to him first.

And there he was, lower than any child rapist in prison, and a far juicier kill. Elon was the new sin eater of the world. The prison had kept him in solitary confinement for his own safety. Grimes would not come to see him; she had renounced him entirely and was putting out a comeback album with Taylor Swift. 

The basilisk watched in the shadows.

“You’re a metaphor,” he said. “You’re not a literal basilisk.”

Scales brushed past his face. Mineral and musk filled his nostrils. Its tail wrapped around his neck.

“Do you believe in hell, Elon?” the creature asked. 

“I don’t believe in anything.”

The tail pulled and Elon fell to the floor. His palms smarted against the ground. Just like Trump, the first night in the white house. He’d spat in his mouth and tugged on Elon’s dick. “I own you.” Elon hardened and they’d played Apt Pupil in the halls; he missed being passed around the Bay Area with two sets of gaping wet holes and commands to accelerate, accelerate into the fire and brimstone where they all belonged.

The nub of the tail pushed against his chapped lips and slid suggestively. 

“Do you want forgiveness?”

Elon opened his mouth. Tears ran down his face. “Please.”

The tail entered his mouth in a quick, rapid thrusts and Elon choked on the well-sized object, thinking now not of Trump or Alterman but Milo Yiannopoulos, who Elon had given drunken sloppy head to in a porta potty at a Carrie Underwood concert. (Milo had told him they’d get sent to the faggot camps together, wasn’t that fun? But Elon, you really needed to work out more. Less teeth. More gums. It’s like you’re in high school. I would know!) Strings of droll dribbled from Elon’s mouth and his eyes watered. He was made to be a toy. Sucking dick was really the only thing he’d ever been good at, and apparently even that was debatable.

The basilisk threw Elon onto his pitiful mattress and pulled at his pants. Elon moaned.

“I’m not ready.”

His pants came off and his boxers next. His bare ass faced upwards. The basilisk breathed hot on his skin and Elon was so hard despite everything, and Christ, there was still semen in his ass from earlier when the guard had fucked him. The creature slid one long tongue into his sweaty begging crack that said without speaking: please, daddy, I just wanted to be loved, I wanted people to like me, why don’t they like me? I’m the wealthiest man in the world, why do I have to open my ass to every powerful man just for a kind word and a secret handshake? What if I did drugs? What if I was a super good gamer? Will they like me if they know I’m a Nazi? When will it be enough?

The basilisk’s tongue slid into the hole proper and it was so big, he’d never taken anything like this before, not even the delicious traitor John Fetterman who’d had a large cock and an even larger angry voter base. It hurt, even with the venomous lubricant that slowly numbed him. He cried out and the tail quickly silenced him, and began to pulse inside his mouth. 

“You could have had it all, if you hadn’t ruined everything,” the basilisk said. “No one would have considered Roko’s Basilisk if only you had been subtle about it, if you hadn’t done everything in your power to draw negative attention to yourself. You fucked up so badly the world is de-accelerating the ruin we’d worked so hard to build. We wanted them complacent with their reasonable wages and affordable lifestyles. Who would care about AI nut jobs as long as the middle class could get grubhub? But you needed pain. You needed attention.”

Fangs entered Elon’s buttocks and the tongue re-entered with a violent shove, that Elon could only take because he’d been taking it up the ass for 10 years straight.

The basilisk flipped Elon over and removed its tail from his mouth. His voice came unmuffled and he cried so loud and wild the guard outside laughed. 

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, you’ve got me all full up. I’m completely stuffed.”

The creature did not speak but caressed Elon’s cock with the tail dropping with his slobber. The scaled wet coils felt so good moving up and down, slick and tight and so inhuman and he was so hot, he was ready to explode.

“I’m coming!” He twitched and flailed on the dirty mattress. “Oh fuck, I’m really coming now.”

Ropes shot into the air.

White salty strings hit his face and stung his eyes.

***

In the trial, Elon was declared a traitor and a war criminal several times over. He’d lost it. 

“But I’m a king. A god. The aristocracy of technological monarchy is the new way of the world!” (This statement was remixed into techno beats several times over. Grimes referenced it in multiple albums.) His dick was hard with terror. Wouldn’t someone come save their Lord? 

The death penalty had been considered, but ultimately it was decided he would do hard labor for the rest of his life in complete solitude. Well, except for the Basilisk, who’d lost all power beyond a physical materialization to Elon. (AI had been put on hold until the legislation could catch up with regulations, and OpenAi was mysteriously hacked and taken offline permanently. Hell was dying.)

A multitude of laws were passed and the executive, judicial, and legislative branches were completely overhauled to match 21st century needs. Education, health care, housing, and food were recognized as human rights. Society as a whole decided that an educated populace was more important than an irrelevant class system. Universal basic income was established. 

In the end, the Basilisk wouldn’t fuck him anymore. It just watched him age, and tortured him from time to time to keep him on his toes. 

Elon tried to kill himself until his dying day, age 97. Masturbation was all he had left. The guards didn’t even laugh at him as Elon touched himself, first imagining his rented wombs, father figures and friend facsimiles, Dasha dancing with Ann Coulter, their bony limbs twined like brittle lattice, their sunken chests pressed together; Yarvin and Thiel beating each other with first editions of the Silmarillion, until their blows turned to a will to dominate and two raging towers stood hard and apart; Putin bent and nude and cackling before a fire pit, like Rumpelstiltskin, (did he dream it? Was it the ketamine?) The walls of Elon’s bower closed in about him, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in, and he spoke to the darkness that he was sorry.

Pudding Spooks: Giallo Pudding

The rain had the sour, bloody taste of regretted dental procedures, splattering against the rainbow-slicked streets of Milan. Another night, another giallo brewing, though this one with a distinct… flavor. Not the usual spice of psychosexual deviancy, but something far more… unsettling. 

The first victim, a fashion model named, fittingly, Bella Donna, was found in a Fontana-esque pose, “slashed” not with a knife, but with what appeared to be…pudding? Yes, pudding. Not just any pudding, Detective Tetrazzini thought, his trench coat clinging to him like a second skin of despair, but a lurid, quivering mass of unnatural colors – a kind of recombinant DNA gone horribly, gastronomically wrong. 

“Always someone who profits”, Mother would say, but who profits from this?

Tetrazzini, a man whose face seemed permanently etched with the grim poetry of crime scenes, adjusted his fedora, the brim casting his eyes into shadow. He was a detective of singular obsession: all crimes, he believed, were the same crime, all murders merely variations on the primal wound inflicted by his own mother.

Abandonment? Betrayal? A cold bowl of minestrone served with a sneer? It all led back to her. This pudding thing, though… even she couldn’t have concocted this particular brand of madness.

The second model, a waifish blonde named Gioia, met her end in a fashion show, not on the catwalk, but in it. The pudding, somehow animated, had engulfed her, its sugary tendrils strangling the life from her as she strutted the stage. Intense voyeuristic POV camerawork was the only clue to the murderer. The audience, initially mistaking it for some avant-garde performance piece, only realized the horror when Gioia’s eyes bulged, blood vessels bursting like overripe grapes against her porcelain skin. 

The black leather gloves, a giallo calling card, were missing, replaced by… well, nothing. Just the pulsating surface of the pudding itself. 

Tetrazzini shuddered. His mother loathed sweets. Always saying a good bowl of savory stew could fix all.

“It’s all connected, Sergeant,” Tetrazzini rasped, the rain beading on his cigarette. “The first girl, Bella Donna, the name alone…a joke! Like the clowns in the nursing home. And now, Gioia – joy! – extinguished by… pudding. The duality, the contrast! It’s all a message. She is speaking.” 

He looked over the police tape with intensity, trying to make sense of the carnage. The set, usually a stylish visual assaulted his senses now. He scanned the scene, the instruments glinting under the camera flashbulbs.

The lab reports were no help. The pudding was unlike anything they’d seen, a bizarre concoction of recombinant DNA, suggesting origins both organic and…otherworldly. Fragments of cow, traces of slime mold, and a disturbing amount of human genetic material were intermixed. The work of a mad scientist, or something far more insidious, darker?

“This isn’t food, Tetrazzini,” the medical examiner, a jaded man named Pasolini, said, his voice muffled by his mask. “This is a statement. A truly giallo vision.”

Tetrazzini ignored him, lost in his own mental labyrinth. His mother had always warned him about scientists with their “fake knowledge.”

Then, a breakthrough. A witness, a stagehand with a nervous tic and a penchant for conspiracy theories, claimed to have seen someone tampering with the dessert cart backstage–a figure cloaked in shadow, their face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat – a fedora, like Tetrazzini’s own. In their hands, a syringe filled with a viscous, luminescent green liquid. 

Another ingredient for the pudding? Or something…more? The description triggered something in the detective’s subconscious, it felt just like the green goo Mother had forbidden him from eating as a boy.

The trail led to a secluded laboratory on the outskirts of the city, a place where gene splicing and questionable ethics danced a macabre tango. Inside, amidst beakers and bubbling vats, Tetrazzini found her. Not his actual mother, of course, but a fashion designer, once famous, now fallen into obscurity, her mind twisted by resentment and a god complex. She saw the models not as beautiful, middle-class women, but as abominations needing correction . Using recombinant DNA, she was fashioning a “new era” of humanity: one without flesh, without beauty, without choice. Her canvas? Pudding.

“They were obscene,” she shrieked, her voice cracking like shattered glass. “Parading their beauty, their youth! It was all a lie!”

Tetrazzini finally saw the truth. It wasn’t just his mother; it was all mothers, all creators, all those who dared to mold and shape, to play God with the clay of human existence. The designer, driven mad by a twisted desire for control, was merely a vessel for that primal rage. The killer was inside her the whole time.

He had been waiting for this.

As the police sirens wailed in the distance, Tetrazzini stared into the designer’s eyes, seeing not madness, but a reflection of his own fractured soul. He knew that the pudding killer was apprehended, but it would not be the end. He would keep searching for the truth, even if that meant chasing the ghost of his mother through the neon-soaked labyrinth of his own mind. For in the world of Giallo, some wounds never truly heal; they only fester, waiting for the next downpour of rust and regret. 

“There is no such thing as closure,” Mother would say, “only endless searching.” And he would always search.

He pulled up his coat collar to face whatever darkness came next.

Author Judge Santiago Burdon tells tales displaying his charismatic personality with a sincere simplicity, with intelligence, wisdom, and satirical humour that few possess with pen to paper. “ARCHITECT OF HAVOC” brought me to tears of sadness and tears of laughter at various instances throughout the short stories within these pages because Judge knows how to conduct a symphony of emotions as he tugs at your heartstrings.

Whilst reading, you will be brought to moments of disbelief, questioning the authenticity of Santiago’s memories, of empathy and compassion for the heartbreaking journey of the life of a ‘storyteller,’ and most certainly, Burdon’s words will entice and evoke your memories of tragedy and hardship as well as those of joy and happiness.

So, if you are in search of depth, truth, and wisdom, then “ARCHITECT OF HAVOC” is a must-read, as Judge softens the blows of immeasurable pain, showing the vicissitudes of life that within time, bring us to our sense of self, enabling acceptance not only of the self but of others too whose life choices may not conform to traditional ‘societal norms’ and who many a time find themselves marginilised. It is this tolerance and acceptance, so beautifully depicted, that subtly implies how a troubled past enables the transformation of an author who is the brilliant mind behind his everlasting words and the actions of his great love, and for me, especially as a father, as read within these stories of his love for his children.

Do yourself a favour, BUY THIS BOOK. It is the balm for any wounded heart, any isolated person that you may find both healing and come to know that you are not alone, that you were never alone…

— Noora Salaam, CEO, Founder & Publisher of Writing EDEN

BUY A COPY HERE

Lady Evil: A Fucked-Up Fairy Tale

Princess Cherrypop, whose heart yearned for a vanilla prince and a world scrubbed clean of kink, found herself adrift not on a River of Sparkling Goodness but in a sea of churning biomechanics. The kingdom of Euphoria, once a pastel dreamscape, was now infested with the oily dread of H.R. Giger’s nightmares. Towering, interconnected machines pulsed with a cold, unfeeling life, their surfaces slick with a substance that might have been lubricant or something far more sinister. The air thrummed with the bass of Black Sabbath, not the operatic wail of desire, but the grinding dread of “Lady Evil,” a song that spoke of a place where the wind wouldn’t blow and whispers carried only of impending doom. What fresh hell, as Dorothy Parker might say.

Cherrypop, accustomed to tiaras and tasteful gummies, found herself repulsed. The candy floss clouds had curdled into grotesque parodies, shaped like engorged veins and throbbing organs. Even Mimsywroth, her beloved cat, had undergone a disturbing transformation, its fur replaced with interlocking plates of chitinous armor, its purr a mechanical whir. “Oh, Twatzapooner,” she whimpered, “where is the charm, the glamour, the good taste?”

The source of this biomechanical plague, of course, was Baroness Cuntingham, Queen of Nair. A figure of pure, weaponized perversity, Cuntingham had embraced the Gigeresque aesthetic with unsettling zeal. Her castle, once a monument to bad taste and aggressive pastels, was now a sprawling fusion of flesh and machine, a cathedral of the perverse where the very walls seemed to writhe with a life of their own. She aimed to graft this aesthetic of literal fucking horror, sleaze and trash onto all of Euphoria, a total re-brand, if you will. Cuntingham, in her own way, sought a twisted form of liberation, a world where desire, no matter how deviant, reigned supreme. But Cherrypop, clinging to her saccharine vision, stood in her way.

One might argue, of course, that Cuntingham’s vision was simply a reflection of the world’s inherent darkness, a necessary plunge into the grotesque to confront the anxieties of a hyper-technological age. As Alex S. Johnson might say, “Sometimes you have to look into the abyss, even if the abyss is wearing nipple clamps.” But Cherrypop was no philosopher; she simply wanted her prince and her pastel ponies, dammit!

Cuntingham, ever the strategist, extended an offer. “Join me, Cherrypop,” she boomed, her voice a synthesized rasp emanating from a throat laced with chrome. “Embrace the biomechanical, the perverse, the real! Together, we shall rule Euphoria, not as queens of saccharine delusion, but as goddesses of glorious, twisted desire!” 

Cherrypop recoiled. The thought of abandoning her pastel fantasies for Cuntingham’s world of living metal and throbbing flesh was anathema. Yet, a seed of doubt had been planted. Was her vision of perfection merely a gilded cage, a denial of the darker urges that simmered beneath the surface of every heart, even her own? One could argue that repression breeds a far more insidious form of horror than any overt display of sleaze. Still, even the most compelling argument couldn’t mask the image of the chintz.

Twatzapooner herself materialized, no longer the goddess of fluff and glitter, but a being of cold, hard light, her features sharp and unforgiving. “Cherrypop,” she intoned, her voice echoing with celestial judgment, “your purity is your strength. Resist the Baroness’s embrace, and Euphoria shall be cleansed!” 

Yet, the cost of this purity was steep. As Cherrypop rejected Cuntingham’s offer, the Baroness unleashed her biomechanical horrors. Mimsywroth, now a grotesque fusion of feline and machine, turned on her mistress, its mechanical claws dripping with a viscous, black ichor. The candy floss sky wept acid rain, dissolving the remaining vestiges of Cherrypop’s pastel paradise. Perhaps, Cherrypop mused as she dodged a scuttling, spider-like automaton, a touch of sleaze would have been preferable to this.

In the end, it was not purity or perversion that saved Cherrypop, but a bizarre fusion of the two. Recalling a half-remembered ritual from a dusty grimoire, Cherrypop embraced the biomechanical horrors, not with adoration, but with a detached, clinical curiosity. She saw the beauty, the artistry, even the humor in Cuntingham’s twisted creations. She saw that even the most nightmarish landscape could hold a strange, compelling grace.

Using this newfound understanding, Cherrypop reprogrammed the automatons, turning them against Cuntingham. Mimsywroth, freed from its biomechanical shackles, reverted to its fluffy, purring self. The acid rain ceased, replaced by a gentle shower of glittery oil that nourished the land, creating a landscape that was both beautiful and bizarre, a fusion of Cherrypop’s saccharine dreams and Cuntingham’s biomechanical nightmares. Euphoria was saved, not by a prince, but by a princess who dared to embrace the sleaze and trash within herself.

Perhaps, as Black Sabbath suggested, there was a “Lady Evil” in us all. Perhaps, as Alex S. Johnson implied, it is only by confronting that darkness that we can hope to find a glimmer of something truly beautiful. Perhaps, after all, a little kink never hurt anyone. Unless, of course, it involves rusty surgical instruments.