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.

Plague Bitch

Detective Joe Oroborus winced.

“Please tell me you’re not actually going undercover as a stripper…you’re bad enough as it is with the polymorphous perversity, God only knows what you’ll be like slicking a pole with your twat juice…”

“Check you out, honey. You’re starting to sound exactly like me.”

Detective Oroborus looked like he was going to burst into tears.

“D-did I actually say that?”

“D-did you st-utter bitch?”

“How can you be so cruel?” Detective Oroborus fished inside his grimy black denim jeans pocket for an even grimier handkerchief–monogrammed with the initials “S.G.” in the corner–and blew out a copious amount of snot.

“Oh Jeesh, I hope those Chinese nanoparticles or whatever the Wuhan Tang Klan shenans is responsible for this latest batch of the ‘rona stays far, far the fuck away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Detective Oroborus. “At any rate, you’ve always done exactly what you wished, and this gig is no exception. Just remember, don’t fuck the customers and you should be fine.”

Kandy Fontaine tossed her fire-engine red curls and laughed, long and so slowly that Detective Oroborus found himself watching the hands of the clock ooze to a pre-Cambrian monoculture. 

“But fucking the customers is why I took this assignment. Don’t you get it? I’m a slutty detective.”

She pointed to the pink, ripe, bursting balloon letters emblazed across her chest: “Kandy Fontaine, Slutty Detective.” 

Detective Oroborus sighed. “I mean yes I’m aware or whatever. Guess I’m just in denial about the full extent of it…areas of your life that I just don’t want to know.”

“That’s no fun,” she purred, leaning over to whisper in his ear. “Did I ever tell you about the threesome I had with the hermaphrodite midgets?”

“I believe they prefer the terms ‘intersex’ and ‘little people,’ respectively” he sniffed.

“Shit got messy,” she said, snort-laughing. I mean literally, shit got messy.”

“Oh hell no, Kandy…I mean Detective Slutty…”

“It’s ok, Officer Porker,” she said. “Breathe. Relax. Have a bump.”

“Not here!” Detective Oroborus screeched. “You cannot just openly snort coke in the operations room. What if somebody…walks in?”

“Hell, half the force is on meth anyway,” said Detective Fontaine with a cackle. 

“I guess you’re right.”

“You KNOW I’m right about that shit,” she said. “Anyway, I gotta joan jett muh ass over to Bumpy’s Clown Room and get undressed in the manager’s office, maybe take his rock hard four inches in muh mouth…”

Detective Oroborus shook his head again and did the sign of the cross.

Manager’s Office, Bumpy’s Clown Room

“That was fucking amazing,” said Bumpy the Clown.

Kandy was still bobbing up and down on his knob, mesmerized, making satisfied animal gurgles and grunting sounds.

“I, um…I finished, Sweepea.”

“Sweepea?”

“That is your name, right?”

“Mrrrggglbbb…lurme gert berk toya…” 

“Ok, but I’m really good, Sweepea. You got the job, honey. You start this Monday. I’m giving you Crystal Kaleta’s job.”

“Mrrrrrrgllllbbbbbrr..”

“Right, so… I kinda need to get back to work? If you could just fill out these I9 forms and sign here, and here, and here…” Bumpy slid the papers into Kandy’s hands.

“Oh maaaaan,” said Kandy, protesting as Bumpy carefully pulled his pud from between her jaws. She stood up, wiped slime from her cheeks, sat down opposite to Bumpy’s desk, chewed her lip, frowned and said…”Man, I hate doing forms. If I give you another beejer, d’ya think you might?”

“Yes, yes,” said Bumpy. “But not now. I need to interview the next girl.”

“Fair enough,” said Kandy. “You satisfied muh appetite for cream atm, but I’ll be back.”

“I kind of figured you would say that,” said Bumpy.

*** 

Kandy’s first night as an undercover stripper went by without any unusual incidents, aside from her usual penchant for wild erotic horseplay. But the club was so sleazy that this went unnoticed for the most part. One customer, a man in a tall black hat, seemed particularly attentive. When Kandy got off her shift, he approached her.”

“Say, I like your style, lady,” he said with a Texas drawl. “Buy you a drink?”

“Well darlin,’ said Kandy, “You know the house rules are that we ain’t supposed to date customers.”

“I’m sorry, Sweepea. I respect the hell outta ya, ya know. I’ll just walk away, no worries, you didn’t hear this from me.”

“Fucktard,” said a voice from behind them.

Kandy and the tall black hat whirled around to be confronted by a rangy young man with corded muscles and black and white tattoos for days. A fire burned in his eyes and he let out a terrible raw energy. 

“Leave Sweepea alone if you know what’s good for ya,” said the man.

“Wow, I like your energy,” Kandy said.

The man smiled, a great big overbroad smile with more than a glimmer of psycho.

“I like your energy,” he said. “Do you know that song ‘Tom Sawyer’ by Rush?'”

“Hells yeah, of course I know that song. Everybody knows that song. That’s a stripper song for sure.” Kandy began to swivel her hips and press against the man as she did so. He pulled away.

“No, no, no, no,” he said. “You’ve gone and spoiled it.'”

“No, I have done nothing of the sort. I’m Today’s Tom Sawyer, and I get high on you.”

The man turned around and stalked away. Kandy pursued him.

***

That night saw Kandy brutally fucked in al the ways she liked it…tied down, whipped, gagged, slapped, dominated to her heart’s content till the cream oozed. She could tell this one had to maintain control at all times. 

Halfway through the session, while she was tied to an x-cross, she began to feel a weird energy pass between them. 

A vortex was opening up. A portal in time and space.

She recognized this portal as something she had studied in Astrophysics at Brown before she began upon the course of action that led inexorably towards her becoming a slutty detective. 

The man swatted his own cheek as though a gnat had bit him.

“What the fuck,” he growled. “Felt like an insect bite, but there’s no insect….”

Within seconds he was swatting across his neck and arms. 

Kandy groaned and drooled through the gag.

“Oh yeah, shit, I gotta let you go,” he said. He unbuckled the straps and unfastened the ball gag, releasing her. 

Kandy wiped the drool away with the back of her hand. “You must be a sadist, or you wouldn’t have done that. Shit, I was just getting going.”

He motioned with one hand, then yelled: “Go, bitch, you’re bad fucking news.”

“Suit yourself,” said Kandy. 

***

Kandy’s stripping performances grew in intensity and even menace. An arts critic came to the club and wrote an essay comparing her act to Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty. She began employing sound effects and large puppets that she manipulated from a complex board she set up above the stage. She invited men to come up on the stage with her; she would shout at them and make crazed, freaky animal faces. One customer shat himself with fear. While some art punks began attending her shows and taking notes, most of the usual customers began to frequent the club across town. 

Bumpy called Kandy into his office.

“Listen, Sweepea, we’re going to have to have a little talk,” he began, but Kandy raised a hand.

“I know what you’re going to say, and believe me, I have considered, you know, more and gaudier, even sleazier puppets in the act, and suchlike shenans,” said Kandy. “The thing of it is, and I believe this is literally a law of physics, the more puppets you have…”

“Listen, lady,” Bumpy cut her off. “I like you a lot, and believe me, it pains me more than you would think to say this, but this particular business relationship is not working out. It’s just not. I’m afraid I’ll just have to let you go.”

“Really,” said Kandy. She was wearing nothing but strategically placed black tape and mirror shades.

“Really,” said Bumpy. “I’ve run this club for the past 30 years, and before that, my dad ran it, and…”

“You look like you’re about to cry or some crazy shit,” Kandy said in exasperated tones.

“M-maybe I am.”

“Ok, well, what you have to realize is that…I love this job. I really fucking love it. In fact, I think I will continue on as your best, hottest, sexiest stripper, and you will give me a raise…” she looked hard at him.

“There’s no raise, lady, you’re out of your mind. Now get your things and split.”

“No.”

With that, she pulled out her service revolver from her purse and shot him in the head. His skull exploded, splashing his brains against the wall. He slumped over, vomiting blood, and finally landed at her feet.

She gave his head an experimental kick. She was feeling…she couldn’t quite put her finger on the sensation, but she had the sudden image of boiling yeast, and insects under her skin, and growing wings. A strange energy began to course through her veins. She found herself kneeling down and lapping at the spilled blood the way a cat laps a saucer of milk.

I like the way this feels, she thought. I’m going to be a stripper and a killer and a detective. Maybe I’ll commit more crimes and…investigate myself in a kind of mis-en-abyme deal. 

Is the world ready for the first stripper/killer/self-investigator/hall of mirrors infinitely recursive slutty detective?

Perhaps. 

Perhaps not.

THEE ENT…or is it?

My Dinner with Adriana

The life of a serial killer is tough. It’s not as easy as some people think. The work requires months of meticulous study, crafting each act with precision, only to find that no one gets to appreciate your artistry.

To maintain appearances, you must suppress primal impulses and undertake mind-numbing jobs. I became a night porter, which affords me plenty of free time to attend to the duties of my trade.

Today, I rose early to make a critical, anonymous phone call before disposing of pieces of Uberto. Afterwards, I swung by the hardware shop for supplies. So little time, and so much to do.

I’ve lived in cities all my life, always watching from the shadows. When I was ten, I realised how people lie, how they wear masks, how their eyes never line up with their words. That’s when I discovered the streets are empty, even when they’re overflowing with bodies. People are hollow, consumed by their self-importance, and indifferent to the suffering of others. There’s something revolting about how they scurry through life, trampling over one another, locked in their delusions. Even amid crowds, they remain alone.

Now, at thirty-six, all I dream about is killing.

It was two in the afternoon, and all I wanted to do was go home and watch a homemade movie with a cup of hot chocolate. But instead, I had a date. I met Adriana online last week. She’s younger than me, which works in my favour. Less experience. Less… suspicion. We’d arranged to meet for lunch at Perro Rojo. It’s quiet.

It’s perfect.

I took an extra-long look at myself in the mirror this morning. I dress like a typical tourist: khaki shorts, a loose shirt, sandals, and a rucksack slung over one shoulder. Nothing out of the ordinary. Average height, average weight. Clean-shaven. I could be anyone. That’s the trick, though.

I arrive first. The restaurant is empty. Dark tables bathed in low light. A waiter, lean and pale, greets me with a stiff smile and gestures to a booth at the back.

I sit facing the door, positioning my rucksack beside me on the bench. The weight of it is comforting.

Adriana arrives. Late. She’s not as pretty as her pictures. Her photos promised sharp cheekbones like a model’s, but in person, her face is rounder. I can’t decide whether I’m disappointed or relieved. There’s an air of dishonesty, as if she’s crafted an image to be like everyone else. She’s wearing a bohemian-style white dress, and a large crystal pendant dangles between her breasts. She walks with effortless confidence. Too many dates to count.

I stand as she approaches, smiling with the right mix of warmth and detachment.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Energy work ran over. Client had a major blockage.’

She slides into the seat opposite me.

‘I understand,’ I say. ‘I know how it is when the universe refuses to align.’

She smiles.

The waiter appears and pours water.

Adriana raises a hand. ‘What are the vegan options?’

The waiter smiles. ‘Uh, the roasted vegetables and the quinoa salad are vegan.’

‘That’s it?’ Adriana stares at him, as if he confessed to a crime.

The waiter nods.

‘Quinoa salad,’ she says, as though it’s some moral victory.

‘I’ll have the steak,’ I say.

Adriana narrows her eyes. ‘You eat meat?’

‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘I know it’s not great, but—’

‘It’s unethical, don’t you think? Animals are sentient beings, and we’re all connected. It’s inhumane.’

‘You’re right. I’m not proud of it. But—’

‘That’s… human of you. The universe doesn’t want us to live in such a violent way.’

I smile, but I don’t believe her. I don’t need to. She thinks peace comes from a crystal. Mine comes from watching the life drain from someone’s eyes.

‘That’s why I connect with veganism. It transcends the material world.’

I nod, knowing the real reason I eat meat. There’s dominion in consuming another living being. And I’m not blind to the fact that I, too, am a living being. One day, I’ll be a box of flesh and bone, devoured in turn. There’s a beauty in that symmetry. A balance.

But I don’t say that out loud.

Adriana prattles on about her holistic lifestyle and how she’s healing the world one plant-based meal at a time. Her words are smooth and confident, but something flutters behind her calm façade. It’s an effort to convince herself as much as me.

I nod along. She talks about crystals and their power to channel energy. Her fingers grip the pendant. I can’t help but notice the tension in her shoulders, as though her words are a performance she’s been perfecting for years.

The waiter arrives with our food.

Adriana digs into her quinoa salad with a self-satisfied smile, while I cut into my steak.

I savour the first bite.

‘So,’ she says, ‘what made you try online dating?’

‘The usual,’ I say. ‘Busy schedule.’

A moment of silence passes.

‘Oh, no one’s aligned anymore.’

I sip my wine. ‘Frustrating,’ I say.

She nods. ‘God, yes. My ex? He was so toxic. He didn’t understand my work at all. I tried to cleanse his aura, but he suffered from emotional constipation. Complete narcissist.’

I fight the urge to smile.

The irony’s suffocating.

Adriana twirls the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, studying me.

‘You have an interesting energy.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah.’ She squints. ‘There’s something dark and mysterious about you. Have you ever done shadow work?’

‘Every day,’ I say.

‘That’s so important. Many men struggle with emotional maturity. They don’t even try to evolve.’ She sighs, shaking her head. ‘I’ve been on so many bad dates, I should get a medal. Like, this guy Uberto? Ugh.’

I almost choke on my drink.

Adriana doesn’t notice. She rolls her eyes. ‘He was so low-vibration. Obsessed with cryptocurrency. Plus, the pig never called me back.’

I grip the rucksack’s strap. Uberto. A breath escapes me, and I fight the urge to look inside. He’s still in there, waiting.

Then it hits me. How absurd it all is. How random. The universe, in its cruel humour, ties us together in ways we can’t anticipate.

I turn my focus to her hands as she speaks. Soft. Unscarred.

She’s never cleaned up anything messy.

She grimaces at the memory of Uberto. I swallow my laugh.

If only she knew.

‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘some men are terrible.’

‘Right?’ She smiles, leaning in. ‘It’s exhausting. You want to meet someone evolved, you know?’

I sip my wine and think about the animal I’m eating. The guilt slips away. It isn’t about the animal, is it? It’s about control, about power. And power is so delicious.

Adriana excuses herself to the bathroom. I watch her go, then exhale.

She speaks to me with a warmth I cannot comprehend. Part of me wants to understand her. Part of me wants to break her. To force her to see the emptiness I do.

I unzip my rucksack a few inches. The scent slithers out, coppery, sweet, decay.

Inside, Uberto stares back at me, mouth agape, as if insulted.

I scratch the line of dried semen from his eyelid and zip the bag shut.

When Adriana returns, she stops short of the table. ‘Do you smell that?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The waiter brought cheese. I sent it away.’

She studies me for a moment, then sits back down.

We continue talking.

She laughs. We finish our meals.

‘You know,’ Adriana says, ‘this is nice. A normal date for once.’

I match her smile. ‘Yes. Normal.’

The word sticks in my throat. Normal. Is it this banal dance of words and fake smiles or the darker currents beneath the surface? The things we don’t speak of, the things that pull at us even as we pretend they don’t?

The city hums outside, indifferent to the dramas unfolding within it.

I picture her head in the bag. How her skin will tear when my mask of patience slips.

The thought excites me, but only for a moment.

A part of me doesn’t want to see her again. A part of me wants to see that flicker of recognition. The moment she realises what I am.

She looks at me, fingers clutching her crystal pendant.

‘You have an unusual energy,’ she says.

My grip tightens on the rucksack. ‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. Like you’re standing on the edge of something. Like you’re about to make a decision.’

The candle flickers.

Does she see me? What’s beneath the mask?

I could end this now. Let her walk away, never knowing how close she came.

She leans in. ‘You should go for it,’ she says. ‘Don’t hold back. The universe rewards those who chase their dreams.’

She reaches for her empty glass. Our eyes meet.

I blow out the candle.

The world holds its breath.

And in the near darkness, I decide.

Digital Dreams in Euphoria: A Fucked-Up Fairy Tale 

In the techno-mystic realm of Euphoria, Queen Cherrypop lounged on her crystalline throne, her neural interface crackling with static as data streams flowed through the kingdom’s quantum networks. The palace walls shimmered with holographic representations of her past battles with the notorious Baroness Cuntingham each pixel encoding the power struggles that had shaped their realm.

Co-Queen Silver materialized beside her, their shared consciousness intertwining through Euphoria’s bioelectric grid. The kingdom had evolved since the days of simple fairy tale magic, now existing in a space where ancient spells merged with cutting-edge technology. Together, they monitored the realm’s vital signs through their enhanced neural networks, watching as the streets below pulsed with neon dreams and digital desires.

“The old powers are stirring again,” Cherrypop whispered, her voice carrying the weight of both organic and synthetic wisdom. She remembered her earlier days as a naive princess before the great technological awakening had transformed their realm into a hybrid of magic and machine. The goddess Twatzapooner’s essence had been uploaded to the kingdom’s mainframe, becoming an AI guardian that watched over their digital domain with algorithmic precision.

A warning flashed across their shared consciousness – unauthorized access in the Dark Forest’s data core. The forest had become a maze of fiber optic cables and quantum entangled trees, where digital predators lurked in the shadows of corrupted code.

“Something’s different this time,” Silver observed, her chrome-enhanced fingers dancing through streams of data. “It feels like… Cuntingham, but evolved.”

In the end, it wasn’t just about power anymore, it was about evolution. As Queens of a kingdom where fairy tale magic had merged with high technology, Cherrypop and Silver understood that their real strength lay not in dominance, but in adaptation. The juxtaposition of technology and humanity had become their greatest weapon against the darkness that threatened their digital domain.

They rose together, their forms flickering between flesh and light, ready to face whatever new horror had emerged from the synthesis of old magic and new tech. In Euphoria, even fairy tales had to upgrade their operating systems.

Life Happens

Six hours after I delivered the valedictorian speech at my high school graduation ceremony in the Trinity School gymnasium, I fucked a transvestite prostitute in an alley off the corner of 44th & 10th. I didn’t know “Stevie” was a dude. For one, he had the same name as the unquestionably female lead singer of Fleetwood Mac (who had an ubermasculine boyfriend named Lindsey). I was also kinda buzzed after knocking back a bottle of Old Grand-Dad washed down by a sixer of PBR tallboys. But the warning signs were there. Stevie had an unusually deep voice … a disproportionately large adam’s apple … knew the name and alma mater of each of the Jets draft picks … and my best friend Simon’s mom told me that my dick tasted like ass after she blew me the next day at his graduation brunch in East Hampton. 

But gender and sexuality issues aside, I knew that Stevie wasn’t my type, and it would be a short-lived romance, when he wouldn’t shut the fuck up about urban renewal and gentrification driving up rents and pushing the working class out of Hell’s Kitchen while I was shredding him behind the dumpster. People shouldn’t have to listen to that annoying first-world petit bourgeois bullshit on a first date, especially on the night of their high school graduation. New Yorkers are so selfish, especially the poor ones.

I learned the truth about Stevie a few years later during my junior year at Georgetown when he showed up at my feminist theology class – disguised in a priest’s cassock and using the pseudonym “Father O’Finnegan” – claiming to be the professor. At least now I know where he mastered his M. Butterfly dick-tuck/butt-lube technique … and why he wouldn’t blow me.

During my gap year between undergrad and NYU Stern, I had a serious live-in girlfriend named Margaret who preferred to be called by her nickname, Peggy – which coincidentally was the same name as my eighth grade art teacher, who looked much better in thigh-high pleather boots and red lace panties (and sucked a better dick) than my Peggy.

Peggy ate with her mouth open and had atrocious table manners. It wasn’t until I took her to the free clinic for a pregnancy test that I found out she was a Peruvian Llama. I guess that’s why the test came back negative. 

But it wasn’t meant to be with us. Maybe because I could never figure out why “Peggy” was a nickname for “Margaret” – I guess it’s just one of those things in life that you’re supposed to accept and pretend to understand, like cryptocurrency or the electoral college or abstract art or the weekly New Yorker  fiction piece. It ended for good when Peggy got bounced from first class on our flight home to New York. Buh-bye, Peggy.

With my first Goldman Sachs paycheck, I bought a silicone sex doll customized into a combination of Posh Spice and Joan of Arc. Some nights I spoke French to her, some nights I spoke Cockney-accented English. Some nights I called her Joan Spice and we ate roasted lamb shanks and drank red wine and snuck into the basement laundry room and made love on the floor, watching ourselves reverently in the washing machine window reflection. Some nights I called her Posh D’Arc and beat the living bejesus fuck out of her. She didn’t complain as much as Stevie and Peggy, even when I snored and pissed the bed. She left me when I got passed over for a promotion.

My first night in prison after my securities fraud conviction, I shit myself to discourage the other cons from raping me. I had heard or read somewhere that’s what Ivan Boesky did, and he was a much better securities fraudster than I was. One of the guards laughed and told me that prisoners don’t rape each other in minimum security federal prison. When I asked him for a pair of clean pants and underwear, he winked and brought me a used, threadbare Smurfette costume. I had to give it back when I got paroled.

A few weeks ago, I met a nice girl named Carol at the coffee urn in the church basement at my Tuesday night meeting (I can’t remember for which group). She’s old as fuck like me – at least 43.  On our first date, she asked why someone with my education and experience was working as a dock hand. I said it was always my dream but life got in the way.

“Life happens,” she agreed.

I think Carol’s a keeper so long as she stops asking stupid questions.