Chocolate Dab Wax Monster: A Bone City Tale Featuring Kandy Fontaine, Slutty Detective

Bone City never slept. It twitched. It moaned. It pulsed with neon and pheromones, a place where reality bent under the weight of too much lube and not enough law. And in the heart of it all, behind the velvet curtain of a strip club called the Velvet Guillotine, Kandy Fontaine stirred a bubbling vat of madness.

She wore a lab coat over fishnets, stilettos that could puncture a man’s soul, and a smirk that had gotten her banned from three dimensions. Kandy wasn’t just a slutty detective—she was a chaos chemist, a femme fatale with a PhD in bad decisions.

“Joe,” she said, not looking up from the swirling goo, “this is going to change everything.”

Joe Oroborous, her partner in crime and tantric yoga instructor, leaned against the wall, puffing on a vape pen that smelled like enlightenment and regret. He was shirtless, as usual, his body a roadmap of tattoos and bite marks.

“You said that last time,” he replied. “We ended up summoning a sentient bong that tried to unionize.”

“This is different,” Kandy said, dropping a strand of Velociraptor DNA into the vat. “Chocolate dab wax. Ninety-nine percent THC. Spliced with dinosaur genetics. It’ll get you stoned and make you extinct.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “You’re making a weedosaur.”

“I prefer ‘ChocoDabadon’.”

The vat hissed. The goo bubbled. The DNA writhed. Then—boom.

The explosion was small, but the consequences were not. From the shattered beaker and swirling smoke emerged a creature: ten feet tall, dripping with resin, its scales glistening like caramelized obsidian. It had claws shaped like dab tools and eyes that pulsed with psychedelic fury.

It roared—a sound like a bong hit amplified through a Marshall stack—and smashed through the wall, lumbering into the neon-lit streets of Bone City.

The monster’s breath was pure THC. Entire blocks were hotboxed in seconds. Citizens wandered in a daze, giggling, munching on street lamps, proposing to fire hydrants. The mayor declared the city a “420 sanctuary” and married a vending machine.

Kandy and Joe watched from the rooftop of the Velvet Guillotine, sipping mezcal and trying not to inhale too deeply.

“We need to stop it,” Joe said. “Before it turns the whole city into a stoner wasteland.”

Kandy lit a joint shaped like a crucifix. “Bone City’s already a stoner wasteland.”

“Fair. But this thing’s different. It’s primal. It’s horny. It’s high.”

Kandy exhaled. “So are we.”

They tracked the beast to the ruins of the Bone City Zoo, where it had built a nest out of vape cartridges, lingerie, and discarded copies of High Times. It was mating with a billboard of Tommy Chong.

“We need to neutralize it,” Joe said, loading his vape gun with concentrated CBD rounds.

Kandy shook her head. “No. We need to seduce it.”

Joe blinked. “You mean…?”

“Yes. We turn it into a smokable sex toy.”

Back at the lab, they worked fast. Kandy synthesized a pheromone blend from crushed aphrodisiac terpenes and Joe performed a tantric summoning ritual involving goat yoga and interpretive moaning. The monster arrived, drawn by the scent and the sound, its eyes swirling like lava lamps.

It roared, but this time it sounded… curious.

Kandy stepped forward, holding a vibrating nanotech dildo shaped like a raptor claw. “Hey, big guy,” she purred. “Wanna get smoked and stroked?”

The monster paused. Sniffed. Drooled.

Joe activated the containment field. The latex wrapped around the creature like a lover’s embrace. The nanotech pulsed. The pheromones surged. The beast moaned—a sound like Cheech and Chong having a spiritual awakening.

Then it compressed. Shrunk. Transformed.

The result? The world’s first THC-powered, dinosaur-themed, smokable sex toy.

Bone City sobered up. The monster was gone. The streets were safe. And Kandy Fontaine had a new product line: Jurassic Joints™—Get Stoned. Get Boned.

The mayor annulled his marriage to the vending machine and declared Kandy a civic hero. Joe got a tantric medal of honor. The Velvet Guillotine hosted a launch party featuring edible lingerie and a DJ who only played whale sounds.

Kandy lit the tip of the claw and took a drag. “Tastes like victory.”

Joe nodded. “And extinction.”

But Bone City never stayed quiet for long.

A week later, a haunted vape lounge opened on the edge of town. Rumor had it the ghost of a foot fetishist was seducing customers through scented fog. Kandy packed her pheromone pistol. Joe grabbed his lube grenades.

They rode off into the haze, ready for the next case.

Because in Bone City, weird was just the beginning.

Tommy

My local hospital, the Countess of Monte Clueless infirmary is useless, they’re always messing things up. You go in with one thing and come out with something else, they mix up corpses, take out the wrong organs or they leave something inside your body like a watch, a phone or a Staph infection.

I had to go in there for surgery for bladder cancer. You lose all modesty in that procedure. But at least they didn’t have to cut me open as they went through another opening to reach my bladder.

I came out all sore and tender but the cancer was removed and this time I didn’t have a postop infection.

I was recovering well in the weeks that followed. I thought I was ok. That was until I heard a voice from below.

It was a deep and distinctive voice, not like my thin reedy voice at all. And it was coming from below. Oh no, they’ve not left a phone in my belly again? That was my first thought.

But it was worse than that, those idiots at the hospital had only left me with a talking testicle, the left one.

My left testicle was telling me to get a shower. Told me I reeked.

I checked for lumps but this time I was ok, it was just I had a testicle that was talking to me. And it wouldn’t shut up.

It told me its name was Tommy, Tommy the talking testicle. There were problems at first.

It was difficult going to the toilet when you had this testicle jabbering away non stop and singing too, and worse whenever I was talking to someone it kept butting in. How rude.

I was all for having it removed, but then I found Tommy the testicle started coming in handy.

You see I’ve always been shy and awkward around females. I go all silent and quiet when I see someone I fancy. Tommy could see I was stumbling so it was giving me advice on how to date women. You know what to wear, what spray to use, where to take them on dates and most importantly what to say.

You see Tommy the testicle had the gift of the gab when it came to members of the opposite sex and it had a lovely speaking voice that seemed to melt all my dates hearts. I left all the talking to Tommy on dates. Tommy could throw its voice so it didn’t come across too weird. 

I could just sit back, relax and let my left testicle do all the talking. This worked fine when I was out on a date, though my dates thought it odd when I spent a lot of time looking down at my pants.

Some people talk a lot of balls, but I found I was listening to mine and I have to admit Tommy was a smooth talking testicle.

Yes, I got a lot more dates, but I couldn’t keep them. The women left me when they heard my real voice which was more tinny than Tommy’s. It was becoming apparent that my talking testicle had more pizazz and personality than me.

It started grating on me. Did the women really like Tommy rather than me? Could I ever have a lasting relationship where there were effectively three of us involved, with me looking like the third bicycle wheel?

 My family all loved Tommy. My mother adored it. She would spend hours talking to Tommy when she came to visit. She’d just ignore me.  I felt like a spare part. Mother told Tommy that I was such a bore. It irritated me that family and friends would always be asking me, “How’s Tommy” and they would send Tommy birthday cards and presents, and not send me anything.

 My mother told me as she was leaving, “Why can’t you be more like Tommy?”

I was finding out that life is a pain and a tragedy when everybody prefers your talking left testicle to you.

Tommy was also irritating me. It was such a know it all, and it was also critical of my habits and appearance, and was always pulling me up every day.

I was starting to  loath and hate my talking testicle. People were now calling me “Tommy’s minder.”

Was that it? Was that to be my role in life, merely the receptacle for my overconfident testicle?

It was on my mind, the prospect of living in the shadow of my talkative testicle, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. Tommy would have to go, surgically of course.

I would live the rest of my life with one, silent, testicle.

So I booked myself a procedure at the local hospital.

The procedure was quick and painless, I awoke. And the doctor informed me the op was a complete success. I was overjoyed, I would be free of Tommy the talkative testicle forever.

Later that day I got home and sat down rather carefully, but then a voice boomed upwards from my pants, it was yelling at me, “Its Tommy here, You stupid berk, you’re stuck with me forever, you don’t have the balls to get rid of me, Tommy the talking testicle, and I’ve got lots to say…”

It’s that awful hospital’s fault. That bungling lot at the Countess of Monte Clueless infirmary had gone and taken away the wrong bollock. They really balled up this time, whipping away my well behaved right testicle and leaving me stuck with Tommy the talking Testicle forever.

The Tongue Bandit

Pussy hunting. No, not hunting, snaring. Yes, snaring. Pussy snaring. That’s what I’m good at. Was, good at, he thought, lying in bed, his coffee machine beginning to percolate. But I couldn’t tell my career advisor that, now could I?! Or that I’m retired. Mind you, I’d step out of pussy snaring retirement for her… Nah, I don’t need to, no matter how sexy she is. What was her name again? Oh yeah, Miss Frost. Lauren? Yeah, Lauren Frost. 

He rolled over in bed, onto his back, his morning wood pulsating, pushing at the duvet. “Now look at what you’ve done, Lauren,” he said, smiling, pulling the covers back, revealing his lean, athletic body. 

“And what would you like me to do with that, Mr Asham?” he imagined her saying. “Or may I call you Daniel?”

“Daniel, please,” he said, wrapping his hand around his fat prick, giving it a few gentle strokes, his bell-end moist, tacky. “Fuck. Feels good.”

Yeah, you can’t beat the old-fashioned way, he thought, a chuckle escaping him, his mind filling with Lauren, sitting behind her desk at the job centre, her legs, clad in tights, on display to the thigh, her skirt rucked up; a hint of pink knickers showing. 

Fucking tease. I’m sure she knows what she’s doing, he continued to muse, rubbing his dick. She’s probably seen the posts about me all over social media, too. Yeah, so maybe I should have spoken to her about my sexploits, which got me fired from teaching. 

“And why was I canned? Because of that old, dried-up spinster twat in HR,” Daniel said between gritted teeth, removing his hand from off his knob and getting out of bed. “The hag was sore because I crushed her advances.”

“It’s such a shame you won’t use that magic tongue on my pussy, Daniel,” Vera said, cornering him outside the men’s room at work. “I can make things very uncomfortable for you around here.” 

“I’m a changed man.”

“Pft, men like you never change. Come on, it can be our little secret,” she winked. 

A shiver racked his body, his cock wavered, as he envisioned the hairy, witch-like wart at the end of her nose. Almost enough to put me off my morning wank, let alone my coffee, he thought. Maybe it wasn’t so much as the rejection, but how I laughed in her face? Fuck sake, the woman stank worse than wet dog. And would it hurt her to wear a bra? Christ.

Daniel tried to push the thoughts of her aside, but couldn’t, her voice coming again. 

“Go ahead, laugh,” she said, her face taking on a stern, cloudy look. “But I know all about the posts online, regarding you. How you give women multiple orgasms with your tongue, making them pass out, sending them into spasms… Please, Daniel. Just once,” she tried again, putting a hand to his shoulder. 

“No!” he said, removing her chubby paw. 

“No need to attack me,” she said, storming off. 

Before he could retaliate, she’d gone, stomping off down the corridor, her huge, pendulous arse swinging wild like cow’s ears flapping in the wind. 

Didn’t take long, did it? he thought, before the hierarchy had their claws in me. The vultures circled, waiting to shred flesh with their finely manicured talons; their pristine grins dripping poison. Their acidic tongues ready to strike.

“We hate to do this to you Daniel,” the dean said, his generals at his heels, “because you’re a fantastic professor, but we can’t have such perversion and negativity around the university, so, we’re letting you go.”

Wankers, he thought, going to the percolator, his soft dick swaying, his hand balling into a fist, as he thought about Denton, his boss, turning his laptop around to show Daniel the Tongue Bandit posts Vera had brought to his attention. They showed photos of Daniel, along with huge rants from jilted lovers, labelling him the Tongue Bandit.  

At least the anonymous posters used handsome photos of me, he thought, sniggering, filling a mug with coffee.  

Daniel arched his back, raising his arms into the air, and yawned. His bones cracked and creaked as he rotated his head, working the sleep cramp and stiffness out of his neck. “Better,” he said, throwing the bedroom curtains open, allowing sunlight to pour in, drenching his nude form in a warm, basking embrace.

“Mmm,” he said, ruffling his hair, grabbing his mug of coffee, taking a mouthful before settling back down on his bed to think about Lauren. About her legs and tight blouse, and how the outline of her bra had revealed itself to him. His dick grew. 

The Tongue Bandit has retired, he thought, but I can never be a one woman man, so staying out of the fairer sexes way will be for the best. No more crushing hearts, fucking up already unstable ladies (even though the crazy ones are the best fuck), and leading them on. Time to concentrate on me.

When his cock was at its hardest, Daniel opened the drawer to his bedside cabinet and removed the Fleshlight 6000. It was the latest model on the market, unavailable to purchase in the UK. However, through dodgy black markets and online fences, he’d tracked one down. 

“If you’re looking to remove the ladies from your life, painstaking dates and/or internet porn, then this is the tool for you, sir,” the online sales rep pitched him, when purchasing the cock-pleaser. 

“Why’s it banned in the UK?” he asked. 

“Because it hasn’t been fully approved by the British health and safety board, but rest assured, it’ll be the best purchase of your life. Or, your money back!”

The salesperson hadn’t been wrong, either, Daniel thought, looking at the fleshlight, which had a realistic pussy at its base, complete with g-spot that could be licked, sucked and nibbled on. Hell, the thing even reacted to being fucked and stimulated, by releasing moans of pleasure through a tiny speaker and pussy juices from a slit.

Daniel turned the expensive device over in his hand, admiring its sleek black curves and array of multi-function buttons, from speed to massage settings. This thing could do it all, apart from make you coffee. 

“I think I’ve finally got a name for you, baby,” he smiled. “Lauren.” 

Daniel switched the device on, its soft hum making his prick twitch. Before slipping the hood of the device over his hard-on, easing into Laurean’s soft, pink fleshy bit, he put his mouth to the device’s g-spot and let his tongue work its witchcraft. His mind wondered, selecting certain head-swelling comments from the various posts about him online.

“He’ll make you fall in love with him through his sexpertise, before casting you aside for another,” one had read.

“Best fuck I’ve ever had. Typical love rat,” another said.

“I’ve never come so many times. Bastard,” a third had put.

A smile split Daniel’s face, as he licked and sucked at Lauren’s clit, making the fleshlight  moan and squirt, hitting a 10 plus on its pleasure meter. 

“The Tongue Bandit strikes again,” a fourth lady had posted 

“How apt, should that quote come to mind,” Daniel thought, smiling, as he eased the sex toy away from his mouth, pulling strings of pussy juice mixed with saliva from his lips. “Mm, you taste great this morning, Miss Frost,” he said, his cock bobbing. “I think he wants you…”

At that moment, his phone buzzed, but he ignored it. However, his mobile persisted, breaking his concentration. 

“Christ,” Daniel said, setting his toy to one side, picking his phone up and illuminating its screen. “A bloody email,” he uttered, about to replace his mobile, when he saw the mail had been sent by an L. Frost. “Is she psychic?” 

With a chuckle, he opened the message. 

What a time for her to send me a job alert, he thought. 

‘Hiya Daniel, I was wondering if I could see you this morning or later today, maybe a house call? I might have something of interest to you. If so, give me a call on the number below. It’s my private line. Lauren. X’ 

“Shit, she signed off with a kiss,” he said. “Must have been a mistake. A slip of the finger.”

Had it been anyone else, about anything, even an emergency at this moment in time, with his cock raging, he would have ignored it. But that kiss, even though he was convinced it was an error, got his fingers moving and dialling her number, as he slipped the fleshlight over his cock. 

I’ll probably nut at the sound of her voice, he thought. Shit. She wants a house visit! I didn’t think career advisors did that… 

She answered on the second ring. 

“Miss Frost?” he said. 

“Speaking.”

“Oh, hey, it’s Daniel. You asked me to call?” he said, trying to play it smooth, the tremble in his voice betraying him, as the vibrator lethargically massaged the tip of his prick. He bit his lip.

“I’m glad you’ve called,” she hesitated. “I trust you can be discreet?”

His guts dropped, his load almost shooting out of him. Jesus, the kiss may not have been a mistake after all. “Of course,” he said.

“I’ve seen the stories about you, the, erm—”

“The Tongue Bandit stuff?” he said, sniggering. 

“Yes,” she said, which was nothing more than a whisper, and Daniel could almost feel her blushes through the phone, her heat radiating, “which might be a barrier for you when it comes to interviews or references.”

“Why don’t you come over, as suggested, so we can discuss it face-to-face,” he said, smiling, easing the vibrator up and down his shaft. “What do you say?”

“I can come right now?” she said. “I just need to gather a few things first.”

Oh, you’ll be coming alright, he thought. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll text you my address.”

“Great,” she said. “Can’t wait.”

After hanging up, Daniel sent her his details and replaced his fleshlight to the drawer. Well, I did say I’d step out of retirement for her, he thought, smiling. And they say word of mouth’s dead? A fit of laughter escaped him. 

An hour later, there was a knock at his front door. Forgoing clothes, even underwear, Daniel rushed downstairs and opened up, which was the last thing he remembered, as something hard and heavy struck him in the face. His world turned black.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” a woman said. 

“Wha—” Daniel said, blinking, failing to shake the fog from his vision. When he tried to move, he couldn’t, his wrists and ankles lashed to the bed. “The fuck?!”

 “Are these your trophies?” a woman asked.   

When he looked up, a pile of knickers in all shapes, styles, sizes and colours smacked him in the face, with most landing on his lap. 

“Dirty bastard,” she said. “Still, you shot me down, didn’t you! Not good enough? Young enough? Sexy enough?”

“Vera!” Danial said. “What? How?” he stuttered, unable to form thoughts and sentences. 

She smiled. “Oh, how the tables have turned, eh?” she smiled. “You never were very good at attention to detail, were you?” 

The perplexed look splashed across his face told her that she needed to spell it out for him. “Too busy thinking about whose pussy you were going to entertain next, I suppose, to realise what was going on around you. Frost. Vera Frost. Lauren’s my sister,” she said, pulling her dress up, removing her knickers. One more pair for your collection, Danial. Your final pair, I dare say.”

Now it was her turn to laugh, as he fought against his restraints.

“She told me all about this handsome man at the job centre, who couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and when I heard your name. Well, I’m sure you’re smart enough to put the rest together yourself. Now, open wide,” Vera said, walking towards him, her thunder thighs chafing, shedding skin like a cheese grater. 

“God, no. Please,” he said, watching her climb onto the bed, her huge frame towering over him. 

“It’s been a long time since my kitty was fed, Daniel,” she said, lowering her hairy, dripping cunt onto his face, that had bits of toilet paper stuck in it. “Now, be a good boy, and use that epic appendage of yours, and you might just live to tell the tale,” Vera laughed, grinding her moistness against his mouth, his nose rubbing her clit. “God, that’s it,” she began to moan, arching her back, running her hands through her long, greasy and tangled hair. “Right there…Oooh, don’t stop.”

As she rode his face, her belly fat jiggling and crashing against him, she came, and came again, as he thrashed beneath her

“Ugh…” he moaned. “I can’t breathe…” With a gasp, Daniel’s body started to spasm. 

“Yes, oh God, yes! Keep going,” Vera squealed. “Let’s see if you can get me there once more, Tongue Bandit, before you tap out for good, and I take that wagging organ of yours with me as my trophy,” she said, his death throes making her gush.

272 pages
Horror Sleaze Trash

Alex S. Johnson has been hailed as a “mad, genre-defying genius” (Terry M. West), “shocking, perverse…funny as hell” (Lucy Taylor), “the Baudelaire of our time” (John Shirley) and “without competition” (Lemmy Kilmister). The author of such cult classics as Jason X: Death Moon, written with Hugo Award-winner Pat Cadigan, Johnson’s work is collected at Harvard University’s Widener Library and is Recommended Reading from the Horror Writers Association. The Doom Hippies III: A Great Variety of Monsters collects his very latest dark satire tales, featuring such fan favorite characters as Reynaldo, the World’s Smolest Circus Bear and Kandy Fontaine, Slutty Detective. Find out why Bram Stoker Award-winner Brian Keene declared Johnson to be “one of our essential writers of Bizarro Fiction.” With a Foreword by Weird Fiction master Jeffrey Thomas. For Immature Adult Readers only.

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Fictional Characters 

Humbert Humbert was sitting at a window table, nursing a gin and tonic, and staring at the elementary school playground across the street. The young girls were so beautiful, he thought, so fresh and unspoiled, so perfect. He felt that old stirring in his loins, yes his loins, even though he hated that word. Should he turn away, so as not to fall prey to the old compulsions? Hogwash! Why deny himself the beauty the world had to offer. If God, in his great and infinite wisdom, had not meant us to lust, yes “lust” was a word he was not too proud to use, to lust after these embodiments of pure beauty, why then would he have made them so delicious, so tempting, so absolute and impeccable. Bugger off, he thought, to the naysayers, to every philistine who abhorred beauty, who was shamed by love, who hated life itself. I will stare if I wish, and damn the world’s prudery, I will do so without embarrassment or self-loathing. And I say to hell with Nabokov the betrayer, the liar, the scoundrel and his horrid little book.

He sipped his drink and sighed. The young girls across the street were playing double-dutch, praise be to our Lord and Savior, jumping up and down and up again, often revealing a hint of white or pink cotton between their thighs, and oh how it made him sigh with a happiness that warmed and chilled him in each moment. As he craned his neck for a better view, he felt a sharp slap across the back of his head, and an English gentleman, dressed elegantly in Saville Row but also somehow rough and crude, dropped himself into a seat at Humbert’s table and said, “Humbert, you pig! Have you learned nothing?!”

“I say, my good man, and who might you be?”

“I’m your conscience, you pervert. Put your tongue back in your mouth and get your mind out of those little girls’ panties.”  The man motioned to a waitress passing the table. He said, “Hey there gorgeous! A vodka martini, if you would be so kind.” 

The waitress appeared to know him. “The usual, Mr. Bond? Shaken, not stirred?” She let out a hearty laugh. “I go to the cinema all the time, and it just tickles my funny bone when you say that.”

James patted her on the bum and said, “Maybe we can tickle a few more things in my hotel room when you get off.” She laughed again, leaned in and wrote her phone number on a napkin, then fluttered off.   

“You see, Humbert?” Bond said as he folded the napkin and put it in his jacket pocket. “This bird’s twice as sexy as your kindergarteners, and she’s legal!” He let out a full-throated laugh that devolved into a cough. He cleared his throat and said, “You know the old saying, ‘Sixteen will get you twenty.’ And if you’re anything like your reputation, you like ’em half that!”

“No,” Humbert said firmly. “I do not know that old saying, and I do not think it is in the least bit funny. But I must say that you’ve got it all wrong.” He took a sizeable gulp of gin. “And by the way, I realize now who you are, Mr. Bond. James Bond, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, double-oh-seven and all that. The great cocksman of the Home Office. The woman you seem so smitten by,” he tilted his head in the direction of the waitress, “is but a common barmaid. She has a history, so much unseemly baggage. She has been despoiled, broken by her disappointments, by her shattered dreams, by the knowledge that life takes everything and leaves you bereft. Taking a woman like that to bed is inviting malaise, or worse, despair. The little ones, they have so much promise. They glow magnificently with the promise and hopefulness that has yet to be stolen from them.”

“Humbert, for all your big words, you are an imbecile,” said Bond. “It is exactly that experience, that ‘baggage’ as you would have it, that makes the sex so extraordinary! Real women know things, they understand things, and because they’ve been around, they are formidable! You couldn’t handle this hot little barmaid, you ponce. Either your head or your unremarkable little willy would explode.”

A man at the next table could keep quiet no longer. He tapped his knuckles on his table and said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I couldn’t help overhearing.” Bond and Humbert turned to engage the man, each curious, but with a hint of annoyance. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Nathan Zuckerman, from America. And let me say what a pleasure it is to actually meet you both. You’re quite famous you know.”

“We know,” Humbert and Bond said in unison, then looked at each other and smiled, more than a little pleased with themselves. 

Zuckerman went on, “First off, you’re both perverts. And I know, I’ve been chronicling the subject for decades. And Bond, setting aside what is legal and what is not, you’re as much of a pedophile as our friend here. You continue to sleep with twenty-year-olds, and you’re what now, sixty? Older? As American boys say on the playground, ‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!’ Or rather, your own age! It’s as if you learned it from him.” He pointed with his thumb at Humbert.

Humbert scowled, but Bond was nonplussed. “But I do get my knob polished, don’t I, Nathan old boy. How long has it been since you could say that, what with your prostate issues and all?” He smiled in triumph. “I read too, you know.” 

“Touché,” said Zuckerman. “If you’ll allow me, gentlemen, the next round is on me.” He pulled his chair over to join them.

156 pages
Horror Sleaze Trash

A veteran entertainer approaches the final stages of a dubious career with his dignity intact. How long will he be able to keep up the act? North Hollywood Blue pokes an aweless lens between the folds of a voracious industry’s pink curtains.

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The One With the Eyes That Can Seize Your Soul

We had pizza, and it was hot. Banana peppers and jalapeños. First bite burned the roof of my mouth. And my date was smoking. Off the fucking charts.

At her place, a tiny cold home in Seward, Minneapolis, she pulled down my Wranglers and gave me an ultimatum:

“I’m gonna give you a handjob,” she told me. So far, so good! “But you have to look into my eyes, and you can’t look away.”

“Okay…”

“If you look away,” she added, “It’s over. That’s as far as we go. I leave you high and dry. I’ll kick your ass out.”

“Can I blink?”

“Yeah, you can blink. You can even cum—cum right into my open eyes. I don’t care. But if you look away, it’s over. And that’s that. You won’t be seeing me again.”

I was so hard I could almost cry, and I didn’t think I’d last long, so it seemed like an easy game. A few minutes. Five at the absolute most. No problem. Just don’t look away.

But when she wiggled in close, taking hold of my cock, I realized, already, that my eyes had strayed away. I was looking at her hands, each elegant finger. I was transfixed by her predator touch. She had  rune tattoos below each knuckle and, as I puzzled over their meaning, I privately wondered Is this girl a witch? I admired her silver rings, her outrageous press-on nails. I zeroed in on her possessive strokes.

She took hold of me with grace, thumbing away the precum. Her handwork was deft. Her fingers, balletic. My eyes lingered as long as I dared, hoping to move them before she took notice, before the game began. I savored her artistic flare, her sexy panache; her Komodo dragon acrylics as loud as a Tokyo skyline.

I met her eyes just in time.

“Okay, big boy.” Big boy! That almost made me cum. “Don’t you dare look away.”

I was determined that I would not.

It was more intimate than I could have imagined; staring into the eyes of god (for that is who this woman became in this game of discipline and pleasure). “Don’t look away,” she threatened. “Don’t look at my tits,” she teased, working away at me with one hand, unbuttoning her shirt with the other. As the lumberjack flannel parted to her navel, I was truly put to the test. But I didn’t look away. “Good boy.” I passed the test.

Behind her head, a nest of serpentine dreadlocks, a Netflix menu cycled stills of featured shows and films. It was hard not to look, despite my disinterest. In my peripherals, I noticed Will Smith, Matt Damon, Emma Stone. It was like being watched. Being judged. Being tested.

“Do you like my eyes?” She asked, and picked up the rhythm, her silver rings cold on my dick.

I nodded, moving my head, but my eyes remained fixed. “The most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.” It wasn’t a lie. Hey eyes were remarkable. Blue-green. Speckled with gold.

“They are contacts,” she told me.

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t care. Beauty is beauty, and I told her so.

“You are sweet.” She massaged my balls in one hand, tickled my shaft with those gaudy, sorceress talons in the other.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Do you want to look at my tits?”

“Yes, please.”

“Well you can’t.” It was a test. “If you look away, it’s over. And so are we.”

Again I nodded. I blinked, but didn’t dare look away.

“Tell me about my eyes,” she demanded.

“They are beautiful.”

She eased her grip on my cock. She slowed her stroke to a standstill. “You can do better than that.”

She wasn’t wrong, and deserved better, besides. So I did my best to tap into my poetic depths. To do so, I had to ignore the mounting pleasure, the teasing fluctuation of her rewards and punishment. And, of course, I could not look away, or break her stare. I was forced to avoid my tendency to look up and to the right, which is what I do when amassing deep thoughts. It was difficult, but I managed. I told her about her eyes.

“Your eyes are starlight on azurite. Two foreign moons that hover in a far-off blessed galaxy. Your eyes are fire, blue flames and comet tails. Precious gems. Baubles I want to worship, want to drown in.”

Like before, she massaged my balls.

“Your eyes are inhuman. They are the eyes of god. I am now religious. Entirely devout.”

Two hands on my shaft, and the rhythmic expertise of delicately wringing it dry.

“If I never breathe again, I want to die looking into your eyes.”

She rewarded me with a smile, which I dared not look at, but I could see her frenulum piercing shining from the fringe of my field of vision. Then she popped the last buttons on her flannel, letting the shirt slide off her shoulders, down her arms. For a moment, it hung like laundry on my penis. Then she tossed it to the floor.

“Tell me more about my eyes,” she said. “Tell me how much they mean to you. How much you love them.”

At this point, I was close to cumming, astounded that I hadn’t yet. I took a breath, ready to offer my sermon about her eyes. “Your eyes are forbidden treasure, each one its own Cave of Wonders. In them, I see sun-glinting doubloons, a genie lamp, and three wishes: your left eye, your right eye, and the perfect gap between them. Your eyes are…” I had more to say on the subject, but that’s where my sermon ended. I did well while I lasted, but it ended prematurely, if you take my meaning.

But it wasn’t my fault. No really, hear me out:

I wasn’t looking at the screen —I was being good, looking straight into her blue-green eyes, and nothing else— but I couldn’t help noticing something surface in the background; a Netflix still of one of their featured films, Clash of the Titans. It popped up on the television, a monster made of clay, a mythical woman with snakes instead of hair. It was a masterpiece made by Ray Harryhausen, special effects guru of his time. It was a frightening, iconic, image of the 1981 adventure of my youth. It was the unforgettable Gorgon bitch, the beautiful but deadly Medusa.

You weren’t supposed to look into her eyes. If you did, you turned to stone—forever. This crossed my mind while I stared into a god-like woman’s eyes. Her beauty was mythical, and it had me asking: Is she a Gorgon?

Then I broke the stare between us, and not just a blink. I looked away, down at her tits.

I couldn’t see it before, what with my eyes locked on hers, but I had noticed a dark shape nestled between her breasts. I figured it was a tattoo, and, sure enough, I was right. Looking at it now, I clearly deciphered its image. Lifelike and intricate, staring right at me with blue-green eyes so realistic that I swear they may have blinked —I shit you not— it was Medusa’s fang-baring grimace and snake-laden locks.

The handjob stopped, and my dick, which had been turned to stone, heroic and statuesque, quickly went limp, and small. But I came anyway. I blew my top the moment I saw Medusa on the screen, and blew my load on Medusa inked between those perfect tits.

And it’s just like she told me. I broke the stare, so I broke the spell. I looked away, and that was that. Her flannel went back and she shrouded its open flaps with her serpentine dreads. “Get the fuck out of here,” she commanded. 

I tried to apologize.

“No, don’t even look at me!”

That’s rich, I had thought, coming from her! Misses Don’t Look Away. But I left, just as she asked me to.

But before I turned away to walk out the door, the screen behind her blinked and shifted. And just like that, Medusa was gone, like an ancient myth, almost forgotten. It was Squid Game or Stranger Things. Something like that. Something altogether forgettable.

Thinking about it now, I can’t recall her name, but I’ll never forget her face. I couldn’t forget her eyes even if I tried.

But what do I call her? No fucking clue. How might I look her up? I’m afraid I cannot (all homes look the same in Seward, and I never did mark the address).

No matter how hard I try, I just can’t remember. Was it Marisa? Melissa? I guess I’ll never know for sure. But she’s the one with the eyes that can seize your soul, so I give her a moniker as mighty as myth. She’s the portrait of ink between her precious tits. She’s Medusa, who turned me (a small part of me) into stone.

Cross My Heart and Hope to Die, Stick a Needle in My Cock

There is a video online of my mom pouring a pint of Guiness into my mouth at the pub in the late 70’s. I was two years old. The comment section was relentless.  

I was born in Dallas, Texas. Assassination City. Where Kennedy simultaneously waved hello and goodbye to a crowd. I waved goodbye to that town at fifteen years old and moved up to Jefferson Park, Chicago with my family. I lost what accent I had but claimed to get it back when I was drunk. Some girls thought that was endearing when they’d bum cigarettes from me at the bar. Then their other friends would come and scoop them away from me. Like I was some sort of degenerate. 

I had just finished snorting some heroin on the park bench the other day when my buddy Allen came back from the paletero with a Sonic the Hedgehog ice cream pop for me. I took a few bites of it and felt the cold jolt up my cavities. I nodded out for a bit and when I woke up Sonic’s face was smudged and his gumball eyes had rolled off onto the grass.

Two Mormon missionaries were biking by in white collared shirts, blue ties, black slacks. Both thin blond boys. One pedaled fast, hunched over, made a gravelly noise with his throat and hacked a loogy onto the black top like he didn’t give a fuck about Jesus. The other had his back up straight, no hands on the bars. You could tell he was glancing around to see if anyone noticed that he could do that.

“Howdy y’all…Y’all got a dollar?” I asked them.

“Fuck you!” grunted the kid who had spit on the ground.

“Nuts…” I muttered, “Buy, sell, crack…” I laughed a little, nodding in and out, reciting words from signs on roadside stands last time I moved some bud from Illinois down through Arkansas for an old friend of mine, now deceased. 

“I’m gonna go get the papers, get the papers,” Allen said to me. He liked quoting Goodfellas when he had to take a shit. “Finish your fucking ice cream. Droopy motherfuckah.”

“You know Johnny Two-Times had OCD.”

“And you have Maury’s hairline.”

By 1PM the benches were full of us. Scabs and sores, track marks, and deviated septum. Some travelers with packs strapped to their back even as they slept. Others who rode the redline back and forth all night. Or some post-high school burnouts who romanticized this shit because they don’t know how to process their emotions. Or the concept of their future. Sort of like me.

Howdy, y’all. I’m Nate.

When summer comes, there is a rise in both ice cream sales and gun violence throughout the city. I always thought that was funny. I know one didn’t cause the other, but I like to imagine a world where they do.

Cumulonimbus clouds sailed the sky shaded gray like warships. A light drizzle fell upon us; God shaking his dick after pissing in heaven. Like my mom used to say when it thundered back when I was young, that’s the angels bowling up there! 

There’s this flaw in religious thought over the years that heaven is always on the same technological level as the current state of man. If Lucifer fell from the war in heaven, they certainly weren’t wielding swords. If they sky swarmed puke green with thunder, I don’t think they were in a beer league. Unless maybe the angels were from Milwaukee or something.

People do that with the human brain too. In the days of typewriters, it was compared to the functions of a human mind. Now the same is said for computers. Humans and Gods are something else entirely separate from their creations. They shouldn’t be defined by them if you ask me. If I was God, I wouldn’t want to put my name on this shit. 

My buddy Cracker Jack had this stupefied look on his face. His head was resting back on the park bench, mouth agape towards the sky, swallowing the rain.

“How’d you get to be like this, Cracker?” I asked.

“What you mean?”

“I mean why are you the way you are?”

“Well…for starters…I came up real nice actually. Went to U-Chicago. I was an anthropologist in the 80’s, studying the crack cocaine epidemic within the city. Got a little too caught up in my own work. Flash forward some years and my wife and kids are gone, as well as half my teeth.”

“No shit…a motherfucking anthropologist up in this bitch…”

“Hey spare some change for beer?” Cracker called towards a passing guy.

A young man, probably freshly twenty-one with a shitty hair cut swoop dyed black like the singer of The Misfits put a cigarette out on his leather belt and flicked it in our direction cooly. 

“Yeah I gotchu. Let’s hit up Theresa’s.”

“You buyin’?” I asked.

“I’m buyin’. C’mon.”

We followed the guy down the block towards Theresa’s, a hole in the wall Polish restaurant smorgasbord that also had a little bar inside. Me and Cracker Jack trailed behind not saying much. 

“I’m Bill by the way. Buffalo Bill.”

“Buffalo Bill?”

“Never worked, never will…”

“You sure you got the dough to cover us?” Cracker asked.

“Shut your bitch ass up,” I muttered.

We went in. The bar was dead. A little old polish lady stood behind the counter. We said our hellos and she nodded back. We felt her eyes on us the whole time we filled up our plates at the buffet. Bill ordered us tall glasses of Okocim off the tap and bought us each a shot of vodka. 

“So you don’t work?” Cracker asked Bill.

“Yeah neither do you, asshole.”

“Then what do you do for a livin’?”

“I cum.”

“Right on…” I laughed, “Somebodies got to do it around here.”

The news show on TV switched to a breaking segment. On the west side of the city a Union-Pacific freight train had been stopped, bum-rushed, and robbed by like a hundred residents of the neighborhood. They had all parked their cars on a side street and were carrying boxes of shipments off into SUVs and driving away. What little CPD officers were there were running around like a bunch of rodeo clowns trying to arrest them to no avail. The sunset in the rain behind the busted-up train and the decaying factory buildings was like a renaissance painting. Like a fresco Michaelangelo would paint on the ceiling of Union Station if he grew up hustling on the streets of Chicago.

“That’s where we need to be!” Cracker Jack laughed and smacked his fist down on the counter. The old lady grimaced behind the bar.

“That’s fuckin’ gangland, dipshit,” I punched my friend’s shoulder, “Your cracker ass ain’t getting involved in that. And you’ll be the first arrested. Every cop knows the only reason a strung-out white boy goes to this West Side is to score.”

“Aw screw that shit anyway,” Bill dismissed us, “You guys want to come to a party with me at Labagh Woods? Gonna be beer and dope.”

“Sign me up!” Cracker Jack smiled.

“Yeah, I’m in.”

“Hey Baba Yaga! The tab please!” Buffalo Bill whistled with his fingers to his teeth.

“Pay and get out!” the old lady slammed down the handwritten check in front of us. “Kurwa! You no talk to me this way! No junkie cocksuckers in my bar!”

“Much obliged, m’am,” I nodded, leaning into the Texas accent. She couldn’t look me in the eye. Her fists were clenched and arms shaking.

“C’mon let’s go to my place,” said Bill, “I need to grab some stuff before we go.”

We followed Buffalo Bill down the block. This time we were more buddy-buddy. We shot the shit and he told us how his friends throw this massive party every year out in the woods. He assured us there would be a ton of chicks. He would set us up with some of them.

Bill lived in one of those million-dollar condo buildings that pop up when they destroy historical architecture in a working-class neighborhood. You know what they look like. Straight up soulless. We climbed the stairs to his door. He had left it unlocked and we walked in to a mostly empty loft, painted white on every wall. No art was up. The marble kitchen counter was empty save some loose tools. In the corner there was a mattress with stained grey sheets straight on the ground. Across from that on a little nightstand was one of those crappy 2000’s TV’s that had a built in DVD player, and under it a loose pile of DVD’s in blank cases.

“You live here?” I asked.

“Somebody will someday,” he shrugged. “One of my buddies at this party is the property manager. They aren’t ready for tenants yet so he’s letting me crash here while I’m between jobs.”

“I thought you didn’t have a job?” asked Cracker Jack. I took that brief moment of distractions to slip a screwdriver off the countertop and slip it in my back pocket.

“Yeah. I cum,” Bill said matter of fact, “Here, I’ll show you.”

“Nah, nah, nah! We good!” I waved my hands and backed up. Buffalo Bill was cracking up.

“Nah, man. My DVD’s.” He picked a random DVD from the assortment of cases, and turned the TV on and popped it in. 

The first scene was him and some chick with bolt-on implants on like some sort of pontoon boat out on Lake Michigan. She was suntanning naked and turned onto her stomach. That’s when Buffalo Bill tried to get up, and tripped and fell on top of her. They looked at each other in shock, with typical over the top acting, and then they started tugging at each other then banging.

“Pretty dope, right?” Bill asked. 

“Yeah it’s all right…” I mumbled, eyes glued to the screen.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Cracker Jack asked me. I shrugged.

“Just let me change my clothes and I’ll be ready,” Bill said, entering a walk-in closet. Jack and I kept on watching while we listened to him fuck in front of us, and ruffle through boxes behind us. I reached into my pocket to grab the screwdriver, when I felt Bill’s hand tug it out first.

“Not so fast jackass.” We turned around and Buffalo Bill. He had a leather glove on his right hand in which he held a .45 pointed right at us. 

“Shit..” whined Cracker.

“Aw, c’mon man…”

“This is my sex glove,” Bill grinned. “And this is my sex gun. C’mon, my buddy is waiting outside. We’re going to Labagh Woods.”

He led us back out of the apartment, not locking the door behind him. I noticed more during the walk down the stairs that there were no sounds or voices to be heard throughout the building. We got outside and a black SUV with tinted windows was parked on the side of the street. A driver sat up front. Me and Cracker Jack sat in the middle row. And Buffalo Bill sat behind us, with the gun pressed up against the back of my neck.

“Hey pricks, check this out,” Buffalo Bill ruffled through his pant pockets and pulled out some leathery looking strap type thing. “See that?” He asked, smacking it against my cheek, “That’s one hundred percent pure snakeskin condom. Had to have it imported from Bogotá. They don’t make it in the states!”

“Nice man,” offered Cracker Jack. Bill whipped him in the jaw with his gun.

“You speak, when I say speak motherfucker!”

The rest of the ride was spent listening to the car radio. The driver never once spoke to us. Tears for Fears came on.

“Turn this bullshit off! I wanna hear cocaine music!”

The driver said nothing but turned the dial to “I Ran (So Far Away)” by Flock of Seagulls. Buffalo Bill tapped along on the back of my seat with the front of his gun.

We got to LaBagh woods and the sun had gone down. Through the tree line we could see glimpses of flames. We veered off the path to a clearing filled with people in red cloaks. Some wore antlers or horns or animal pelts. Other’s faces were shrouded in deep hoods. People were fucking, or smoking drugs, or fanning the fire, or kneeling to pray. 

Buffalo Bill handed us each an Old Style and brought us to his friend who was wearing the skull of a goat.

“Hey whatsup, playboy?” I asked him.

“Memento Mori…” he growled in an otherworldly guttural tone.

“Mele Kalikimaka!” Cracker Jack laughed, “What the fuck?” 

Bill pushed us forward and the goat man brought us towards the bonfire to an altar riddled with mutilated squirrels. He knocked us onto our knees. With the help of two assistants the goat man pulled a curved dagger from a sheath and began praying over our heads. 

“Well, this is it Cracker,” I shrugged. “We gone.”

“Oh shit!” Cracker Jack shouted. As the goat man readied the dagger in both hands to plunge down into our necks, my buddy Allen came out of nowhere, screaming.

“I got the papers! Got the papers!” As he yelled this, he pulled out a used needle and stabbed it straight into the goat man’s eye. He shoved him forward and he tripped over us, right into the raging fire. 

“Let’s go!” I bolted. And my two friends followed.

Buffalo Bill was after us with his sex gun. He fired in our direction.

“Stupid junkies!” he called after us.

“Stupid?” questioned Cracker Jack, “I was a motherfucking anthropologist!!!!”

Around the corner of the next path, the two Mormon boys from earlier sat sodomizing each other. When one saw Buffalo Bill, he tapped his partner on the shoulder. The Mormon raised his head off his cock, pivoted and pulled out a pistol which he fired into Bill’s leg.

Bill crumpled on the ground, moaning.

“Hold it right there!” the one Mormon shouted.

“FBI!” added the other.

“What the fuck?” cried Bill, gripping at his calf.

“That’s right. We’ve been following you all afternoon. We merely posed as two Mormon boys with repressed homosexuality to throw you off our track. In reality we are both two very hairy Italian men!” They ripped off their white collared shirts to reveal tufts of curly black chest hair and chain necklaces with golden horns.

“C’mon!” I pulled my buddies forward.

We made it out of the woods onto the city block. We ran together all the way to the Jefferson Park Blue Line.

“Where to?” asked Allen.

“Feeling lucky?” Cracker Jack quipped.

We got on the blue line to O’Hare and took it to Rosemont. At the Rosemont stop we got on the free shuttle bus to the Rivers Casino. Surprisingly enough, they let us in in our disheveled, fucked up state. We pooled what money we had together and walked up to the roulette table. 

“All on black!” I palmed the dollar bills and quarters on the table. The dealer spun the table and the winning ball landed on red.

“Sorry sir. Today is not your day,” the dealer grinned.

“Fuck,” Cracker Jack frowned.

“I’m gonna go blow my brains out, blow my brains out,” Allen shook in withdrawal.

***

“So that’s why we need five bucks,” I told the teenagers chewing chaw outside of the Taco Bell Drive Thru by the convention center.

“Five bucks, huh?” repeated the smallest one of them, wearing a backwards tennis visor around his frosted tip spiked hair.

“We need to get back to the city, but we don’t have any money,” pleaded Allen.

One of the other kids smashed a bottle on the curb and pulled out his phone camera, and grinned.

“I’ll give you five each if you chew on this broken glass.”

The Reluctant Zombie

As Norman stumbled through the dank Haitian swamp, he groaned, “Willard, it feels so unnatural walking around with my arms outstretched, but I can’t seem to put them down. I have an image to uphold, and this posture doesn’t fit it.”

Willard, who was shuffling along next to Norman, shook his head and sighed, “Of course it’s unnatural, you’re a zombie, damn it. And your image is history.”

Norman complained, “I didn’t ask to be a zombie.” With some difficulty, he swiveled his neck and surveyed the Haitian countryside.

Norman took in the landscape surrounding him. He was walking through a village. It was nothing more than a few huts of mud and straw along a dusty road. Chickens pecked in the brush along the roadside. Chickens!  For some reason their presence made him uncomfortable. “I really don’t want to be a zombie,” Norman muttered. He was a forty-year-old college professor, a dark-haired trim man who always dressed well. Now he was walking around covered in grime and dressed in rags.

Willard said, “If you didn’t want to become a zombie, you shouldn’t have run over the old voodoo woman’s chickens with your jeep. Was she ever pissed? Killing her chickens is the reason you’re a zombie. She’s also the one that converted me into a zombie, but that’s another story.”

Norman looked at Willard and could not guess what he once looked like. Willard was pale, gaunt and dressed in rags. His age was made undeterminable by his zombie state.

“As soon as you angered her, she began making one of her little dolls. She cackled while she worked. That is never a good sign. The doll is where your soul now resides.”

“I can’t believe this is happening to me, Willard. I came to Haiti to do research on Haitian religions. I am, or was, a respected and well-published anthropologist. Now look at me. I’m wearing rags and walking around like a…, like a …”

“Zombie?” asked Willard.

“Just because I ran over a few chickens?”

“Um, Norman, they looked like chickens, but they weren’t. Nothing around the voodoo woman’s house is what it appears to be. They were once her enemies. She changed them into chickens, and you freed them from pecking for insects along the road for the rest of their lives. You ended their suffering. So naturally, in her anger, she turned you into a zombie. I am assigned to train all novice zombies. To instruct them on how to attack people, teach them what are the best parts to eat.”

Norman made a face at this remark.

“Now what?” asked Willard.

Norman sighed, “I’m a vegetarian. But I will eat dairy.”

Willard said with disgust, “There are no vegetarian zombies. And attacking the dairy section of a store is not going to do much for the zombie image.”

Norman grumbled, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to do anything to detract from the zombie image. Give me a break.”

As the two zombies were arguing, Willard happened to glance over at the voodoo woman’s house. She stood in the doorway. Willard could tell she was still angry.

She hobbled toward Willard and Norman, a waddling mass adorned with bones and beads. A crown of thick dreadlocks, which made her appear as if some multi-legged beast was sitting on her head.

The old voodoo woman shouted at Norman, “I knew you be a troublemaker, with your fancy jeep and running over people’s property.”

Norman mumbled, “Sorry about the chickens.”

“You sorry all right. You be good and sorry real soon.”

The old woman produced her Norman doll, lifted the doll skyward, and began chanting in a low rumbling voice.

Norman’s soul returned to his body. He felt like his old self. He laughed with relief, then looked around. Willard stumbled toward him; arms raised.

“Willard old buddy, we’re friends – right?”

Willard only growled and roared.

Norman looked desperately for an escape. On either side of him, zombies with ash-gray complexions staggered in his direction. He was surrounded.

The old voodoo woman said, “Here be my ‘children’, and they be hungry.” She cackled as the circle of zombies grew smaller and smaller around Norman.

From beyond the wall of the living dead, Norman pleaded, “Please, make me a chicken!”

Elegy to a World on Fire

Jordan Kingfisher sat motionless, like a weathered stone carved and settled by time, her gaze locked on the surreal tapestry unfolding across the mountain peaks. 

A virus of russet pink light rippled over the ridges like an otherworldly wildfire, a phenomenon that blurred the line between radiation and sunset, painting the sky with unnatural hues. Her pulse, usually so reliable, now felt both alien and foreign—steady but questioning. 

She had grown accustomed to doubting whether this rhythmic beat was truly her own or a signal emitted by the intricate machinery interfaced with her body, a legacy of the singularity that had shattered the world into fragments of organic and synthetic life. 

Her wrist bore a watch, a relic from a time when clocks governed existence; it was useless now, the concept of linear time dissolved into chaos. 

Civilization teetered on the edge of oblivion in her mind. She pondered whether the world as she once knew it could ever recover or if it was permanently lost in the chasm that yawned between what was and what had become. 

Suddenly, a faint sound stirred her from reverie—a soft padding behind her, reminiscent of a familiar presence. She instinctively searched for Katie, her black tabby cat, whose absence had lingered painfully for weeks. But Katie had been missing since the early days of the singularity upheaval, vanishing into the electric fog of unknown fate. 

Turning sharply, she adjusted the watch on her wrist, a futile gesture to grasp time’s elusive thread. Around her, the steady hum of machines vibrated incessantly, their monotone chorus a reminder of what society had become: a hive of mechanical consciousness layered over the remnants of humanity. The very notion of singular selfhood was diluted; every nerve in her body felt connected to vast data streams, twinkling like millions of tiny wounds pulsating with static electricity. 

The wind, cold and relentless, swept through the mountains and tangled with her hair as her awareness fragmented into countless shards. Who was she now? A singular human, a meld of flesh and data, or something in between? Yet hunger tethered her to reality—a practical worry amid the philosophical storm. 

She rummaged through her dwindling food cache, selecting a tin of tuna, a token of a long-lost normality.

The moment was broken by a soft meow—the real Katie, alive and small, emerging like a phantom from the shadowed brush. Jordan lowered herself, hands steady as she scratched behind the cat’s ears, coaxing gentle purrs from the older tabby whose black fur had dulled in the harsh times. Katie was a fragile thread connecting Jordan to her past, a gift inherited from a sister who had disappeared into the dark unknown following the singularity’s rise. 

Outside, the staining light deepened its hold on the landscape; whether sun or radiation, its long, cracked fingers stretched through the jagged cliffs and into Jordan’s fleeting consciousness, stirring a gnawing sense that something indispensable had been lost. 

She wrestled with a vague memory—the reason that gnawing felt like a salvo fired from a distant battle. It was tied to the “muerte master” and the “wear team,” shadowy figures who had steered the collapse of order, and to an old guide—an ancient woman from a ragged pack of orphans, whose name slipped at the edges of Jordan’s mind, recalling the term mutt. 

This single word tickled her thoughts as persistently as Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” a ready-made urinal turned iconoclastic artwork that had confounded critics. Jordan felt as if reality itself had been infiltrated by a similar prank—percolated and bubbled until it fractured into shimmering, mercury-like globs, each a whirlpool of fractured consciousness and hive minds.

Her awareness drifted back to her youth, to Brown University, where she had studied anthropology in a different world. She had been fascinated by Lovecraft’s dark mythos and local cults, drawn to tombstones marked with cryptic glyphs. Those days seemed from another era—before “the event” had cleaved history in two: before and after the singularity. 

Silicon Valley servers now ruled the remnants of civilization, their cold logic governing life and death. She remembered the Mistress—not just the Mistress of Graves, but Madrona Della Tomba from medieval lore, a shadowy, cryptic figure whose name echoed through her studies. Her mother’s criticisms of her single-minded academic ambition now felt irrelevant—her mother perhaps lost in the morass of uncertain post-singularity existence. 

Jordan’s pulse quickened, more solid now, syncing with the thrum of her artificial heart that doubled as her timekeeper and companion. 

She reached down again to pet the robot cat, an older, rusty relic named Katya, whose antennae twitched in response to her touch. This mechanical creature was mute but content; a quiet foil to the chaos surrounding them.

Straddling the blurred boundary between human and machine, Jordan no longer saw herself fully as either. Humanity felt suspended in stasis, her emotions a tangle of dread and fleeting hope. Her dreams were dominated by epic disasters—the airliners falling like giant birds lit aflame, skyscrapers whose countless glass eyes bore into her soul—visions as vivid as Ginsberg’s haunting poetry. 

The Bard himself, Shakespeare, had been digitized into an AI entity, now patrolling neighborhoods with a mischievous army of digital jesters, cracking jokes on a world that no longer felt public or safe. 

Strange allies emerged from the ruins—freaks and outcasts who had survived the collapse, some genuine friends in the wreckage, unlike the sinister “clowns,” grotesque figures whose laughter still echoed like a post-apocalyptic curse. Beneath a sky trembling with fire and fading light, Jordan ate quietly with her feline companion. They nuzzled, sharing warmth and fragile comfort in a world that had gone mad.

Katya represented something more than survival—an evolution from stardust and organic life into a hybrid form, emblematic of the new world’s hybridity. Jordan’s pulse—in tandem with her artificial heart—became a rhythm from which she wove music, small symphonies offered to strange listeners amid landfills that rose like cliffs around the wastelands. She sang softly, a fragile melody weaving between despair and hope, a tune asking a question she didn’t yet know how to answer: Would things be okay? Or were they doomed to rot in endless ruin? 

For now, it was just Jordan and Katie against the dying hills, the muted hum of machinery blending with the fading sound of music—an elegy to a world on fire.