A Hard Night In East Texas

The sun had set hours earlier. Besides the stars, there wasn’t much light to see except for the high beams of an occasional long hauler.

A plume of dust rose above the highway. It mixed with clouds of dust already hovering in the sky.

A black Harley Davidson with tall wide handles and a long front end with extended forks.

Black leather boots with spurs, black leather jacket and matching pants, dark sunglasses, a handlebar mustache, thick muscles, a mean look.  You know the type.

A bandana covered the rider’s scalp, knotted in the back. It bore the colors of a flag. A rainbow flag.

This was not the kind of guy you wanted to mess with.

Not unless he wanted you to.

Near an empty crossroad the biker saw the light of a sign in the distance. It advertised a bar known in these parts for his kind of trouble. He revved the engine of his Harley and sped toward the sign.

He pulled into the lot of that bar, sitting by itself as it did in the middle of nowhere.  As he came to a stop, the steel door to the bar swung open. A guy walked out of the bar, stood at the edge of the parking lot, and fired up a smoke.

The man on the Harley turned off the engine and lowered the kickstand. He walked towards the door of the bar, his spurs jingling all the way. 

The man with the cigarette was watching him.

The biker walked up to the guy sucking on tobacco.

“Hey,” said the biker. “Is this a gay bar?”

“Hell no,” said the man with the cigarette between his lips. “There are no gay bars in East Texas.”

“Don’t lie to me boy. I heard rumors about this place. I’ve ridden a long way to get here.”

“There are no gay bars in East Texas! We are all real men. Tough as iron.”

“Fucking liar. I hate liars.”

The biker grabbed the smoker by his belt and his collar, and threw him through windshield of a van parked in the lot.

The smoker seemed dead for a moment, then he began to move. He didn’t look happy about his situation. He brushed the glass off of his face and body, ignoring gashes in his skin and long trickles of blood.

“Okay, maybe it is,” yelled the smoker. “You didn’t have to be a jerk about it.”

“Says who?”

“Says me,” said the smoker. He opened the van door and staggered out on to his feet. He straightened up to full height, glared at the biker, and added, “You want to make something of it?”

The biker looked at the smoker. He growled, “You hurt?”

“Hell no. This is nothing. I’ve had worse. Ever been tossed by a bull and trampled?”

“Not yet. Maybe I’ll give it a try while I’m out here.”

“Wrong season. You’ll need to come back in a few months. You can ride those coin operated bulls until then to get your ass in shape.”

“Funny. Go to the rest room and get cleaned up. Maybe I’ll buy you a beer.”

“You better make it two. And a chaser. I’ve earned it. Otherwise, I’ll kick your ass.”

The biker did not wait for the smoker. He opened the door of the bar and went in. A tall beefy bouncer slash doorman with a full beard looked him over.

The bouncer said, “There’s a ten dollar cover charge.”

“Do I get anything free with the charge?”

“You get to live.”

The biker took his wallet out of his pants. He pulled out a ten dollar bill before returning the wallet to his pocket. He rolled up the ten dollar bill, put it in his mouth like a cigarette, and pretended to smoke it. Then he ground it into outstretched palm of the bouncer/doorman.

The doorman laughed, “Nice one.”

The biker noticed cigarette burns on the bouncer slash doorman’s tattooed arms.

“I could give you the real deal later,” he said. “What time do you get off?”

The doorman gave the biker a gap toothed grin.

“Around two in the morning or there about. We aren’t strict about closing time. By the way, people around here call me Fucker. That’s short for Mother Fucker, on account of I fucked a lot of people’s mothers back when I was young and confused. Now I just fuck people up.”

“Well Fucker,” said the biker. “My friends call me Death And Then Some, shortened to Dee.”

“Nice to meet you Dee.’

“Likewise.”

“Have a good time while you are here,” Fucker said. “Don’t do anything that will make me have to mess you up.”

“Like you could do that.”

This statement made Fucker look back at Dee in a certain way that seemed to say, “Stick around and you’ll find out.”

Dee said, “Maybe I will see you at closing time. If I can stay that long.”

He started to pass by the doorman slash bouncer, but paused. He asked, “You got glory holes back there somewhere?”

“Can’t rightly say,” Fucker said. He pulled at his beard with one of his hands. “Might be some in the back, but they could just be rat holes or bullet holes. I don’t get back there much and don’t have much use for such things.”

“Well, I do. I’ll take a look.”

Dee went into the darkness beyond the second door. His eyes adjusted. He sat at the bar.

There was one bartender, old and fucking ugly. The bartender came over to where Dee had put down his ass.

“What’ll it be?”

“A Shirley Temple and a shot of vodka on the side.”

“Coming right up.”

Dee threw down the Shirley Temple in one gulp. He drank the vodka slowly. Very slowly. He didn’t have a lot of money on him. Only enough for a night out.

He listened to the music while he sat at the bar. Tex Mex. Honky Tonk. Old country. Some metal mixed in.

Dee waited to see if Mr. Smoker was going to take up his offer of liquid compensation.  He got tired of waiting. He didn’t see Mr. Smoker anywhere. He thought maybe the guy had decided to drive himself to a hospital. Dee wished Mr. Smoker luck with that. It was at least sixty miles to a hospital with a proper ER room. Dee doubted any of the pop-up private emergency care centers nearer than that would be open this late.  

He finished his vodka and put a tip on the bar. He felt it was a big one considering his current limited resources. 

Someone walked up behind him and stood there while he was still seated. Dee did not bother to turn and look.

“Hey,” said an angry voice, a voice with a taste of barbed wire in it. “Are you the asshole who threw some other asshole through the windshield of my van?”

“What if I was?”

“You are going to have to pay for that, clean up all that glass, and clean the damn blood off the seats.”

Dee decided to have a look. He turned and glared at Mr. Angry.

“Sorry about that,” Dee said. “Didn’t know it was your van. If I had known it was yours I’d have put you through that windshield first.”

The van guy wasn’t having any of this. He pulled a Bowie knife out of his fashionable shorts.

“You are definitely gonna pay now.”

A shot gun blast ended the argument. Dee nodded toward the bartender.

The old ugly bartender made his face even uglier.

“No fighting in my bar. This is my place. That’s my rule. There’s plenty of nothing around here where you can duke it out or stab and shoot each other. Comprende?”

Silence answered him.

Van guy was bleeding out fast. That old ugly bartender never fired warning shots.

“Carlos,” the bartender shouted. “Throw this bastard out in the garbage heap so the coyotes can get at him. I have no tolerance for low tippers.” 

The bartender eyed Dee. Dee quietly took out his wallet and added a few bills to the tip he had previously left.

Carlos came from the back. He grabbed Van Guy by the feet and started to drag him towards the door. Carlos had to stop when Van Guy’s right leg came off above the knee, right where that shotgun blast had hit him.

The old ugly bartender snarled, “Carlos. Be more careful with the trash. And make sure you mop the floor when you get back.

Carlos grumbled. He picked up he bottom portion of Van guy’s right leg, and shoved it up the man’s shirt. Then he took hold of Van Guy from behind, grabbing under his armpits, and dragged him out the door.

Dee asked the bartender, “Glory holes in the back?”

“Fuck you. You made enough mess of this place already. Glory hole? Find it yourself if there is one.”

Dee went to the back of the bar. A drawing on the wall next to the rest room showed a big cock and an arrow pointing toward a door.

Dee went through the door. It was the kitchen. Two guys were busy in the heat from open flames, whipping up french fries and haute cuisine. 

“Glory hole?” Dee asked.

One of the cooks pointed toward another door.  Dee stepped through the door. He was outside behind the bar. There was a dumpster to one side and a wooden fence on the other. The planks of the fence were six foot high. Some of the planks had holes in them at different heights. A few cocks were there, poking out of some of the holes, waiting in the open air, all firm and juicy.  

Dee headed towards where the cocks were. He ignored the flies and biting insects that formed clouds between the dumpster and the kitchen door. He reached the fence and got to work. Lips and tongue, teeth and gums. He did what he knew he could do. He sucked off all of them. Had a stomach full of jism to go with the grenadine and the vodka. He walked behind the fence. He waved to the tough guys who were zipping and leaving. He found an unattended hole and put his hard one through it. He waited near ten minutes before he got a bite. Man, he thought, this can be too much like fishing.

When he had been done, Dee went back into the bar through the kitchen. A drag performance on the small dance floor had just begun. One of the performers looked at him. She was tall and thick as a line backer under the blond wig, make up, and sequinned dress.  

“You!” the drag queen pointed a thick finger at Dee. “You fucking bastard. I told you I’d kill you if I ever saw you again.”

The old and ugly bartender shouted, “No fighting in the bar. How many people do I have to shoot before you all understand that!”

“Ok,” said Dee. “We can’t fight here. Where do you want to do it? Parking lot? Out in the desert?”

“I can’t do it tonight,” said the blond. “I have to do two shows tonight. Are you available tomorrow morning, say between ten and eleven?”

Dee checked his pocket calendar. It was full for the next day. Bank robbery was written in big letters across Wednesday.

“Can’t do tomorrow. How about Thursday? Or maybe Friday?”

“No, that’s not good for me. I have a hair appointment and a therapy session on Thursday. Friday I have choir practice in the afternoon. After that I have bowling league.”

“Damn,” Dee said. “That sucks. I’ve got plans for the weekend, and next week I will be out of the area.”

“Vacation?”

“Nah, supposed to help a guy I owe favor break out of a Mexican jail.”

The blond said, “Guess we’ll have to kill each other next time we run into each other.”

“Sorry,” Dee said. “But that’s how it’s going to have to be.”

“Well, give us a kiss before you go. For old times.”

“Sure what the hell.”

After a quick smooch with not enough tongue for his tastes, Dee headed toward the door. As he passed the bouncer slash doorman, Fucker said, “We still on for 2 AM?”

Dee tried to remember if he had made any firm promise. He wasn’t sure.

“I’ll try to come back for ya,” Dee told him. “If I’m not here then, we can do a rain check.”

“Okay,” said Fucker. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

Death And Then Some got back on his chopper. He rode off into the night. He had a lot on his mind. For starters, where was that damn bank he was supposed to rob and who was in on it with him? He shook his head. His mind was sieve these days. It pissed him off. Getting old too fast. Made him angry. Still, he made a mental note to make some discreet calls on one of his burner phones when he got back to his place.

He stopped at a convenience store on the way to the town where he rented a room. He took a piss in the rest room. He saw the surveillance camera was disconnected. He took it as a sign. A sign saying, “Rob me.”

The night clerk was working alone. Dee killed him with his bare hands. A twist of the neck and a pop. Afterward he cut the man’s head off with a big knife that he found behind the counter. He tossed the head up on the roof for fun. 

He only got forty bucks, some snack cakes, and a couple six packs out of it. He couldn’t carry much more on his bike. Still, it was worth it. Made him feel young and evil again. Dee did not know how long he would still be able to get that kind of blast out of life anymore. He never told anyone his real age. It never helped as a pick up line. Time was ticking on him. He could feel it more and more each day. He needed to go for all the gusto he could while he still had the chance.

Offal

He mumbled strange words under his breath, a ritualistic torment. Her body, opened on the table, organs slipping out, falling on the tiled floor, white smeared with red blood. Iron in the air, a prophecy fulfilled. He opened her like a box, like a flower, like a curtain, the beginning of a fateful play. Violence pouring out of him, shaky limbs and wild eyes, violating her over and over again, inside and outside her body, made of nothing but desire. The taste of it all heavy on his tongue, the killing replaying in his head, dried throat, eager to drink in the misery, crimson blood no longer flowing through beautiful veins, under the perfect skin he found all his dreams, muscles and bones that could outlast his life. Undone girl, beloved flesh, the wonderful meal she was to become. Seared in a pan with butter, the taste of her, the feel of her, butchered. The fire inside him, the urge that beats with his heart, excitement like champagne bubbles. He wanted to live inside her, nestled under her ribs, organs pushed to the side, like her baby, her very own baby. He wanted to pull her skin on like a suit, darling flesh, its smell unforgettable, animal scent in her hair, between the strands, stringy and stained. Her skin, his skin, her mouth a black hole, better than any cheap Halloween mask. How nice, to keep her teeth in his pocket, white like marble, nicely shaped canines, unable to bite, to leave a mark on the leather of his skin. How nice to fuck her memory over and over again, brain matter all over the floor, useless, ugly, unimportant. How nice to put his hand inside her ribcage, the little bird, nice sweet bones, sharp like a weapon. How nice to rest his body on top of hers, head where a shoulder should be, sticky blood like honey, the smooth feeling of her organs, an appetizer. How nice to feel powerful, a man turned into a destroyer, monster eyes and monstrous desires. How nice to see as life slips away, empty eye sockets, hollow ground. How nice to be the one who chooses, who plucks someone from the street and cuts them apart, ordered by no one, a man working alone. How nice to feel the chains of prison, trapped beast, but still live in the minds of many, a snake making a nest inside society’s very own heart, power shown in the love letters, all the words saying the same thing…’please kill me, please take me apart, please break my skull, please eat my flesh, make me a part of you, let me love you, let me heal you, let me make you normal again, fuck you back into sanity, my murderous lover, show me I matter more than all the others, their blood under your tongue, their screams forever engraved in your memories, let me show you how much better I die, let me be your carrion, your star, let me have your baby, a little girl, special just for you, I’ll raise her, let her body be yours when the time is right, a little boy you’ll make into your mirror image, teach junior to kill, teach him how to seem harmless, the nice guy, the helper on the side of the road, give all of them a lift, poor girls, tie them up in the back of the car, he’ll hold them down for you, wait outside while you enjoy it, dig the grave so they won’t find the body again. Let me open my legs and my throat for you, the gush of blood your favorite thing, I’ll keep your basement of terrors clean, scrub the stains on my hands and knees, I’ll be the bait you need, the feminine presence that inspires trust, you can hit me hit me hit me and hurt me and hurt me.’ How nice to stick the notes on the gray walls, to wear a ring and to have the visits and their pretty woman hair and woman smells, to paint their faces blue and purple, to have their eyes on the outside, the photos they can take, the trust they give to those that don’t deserve it. How nice to kill them all in your dreams, to tell it to their faces and watch them eagerly drink it in. How nice to have the face of the perfect trickster, promising, a whole life ahead of you, to eat and to kill and to end. To live like an infection that never goes, the name said in the night, why they shouldn’t walk home alone, why alarm systems exist, the man with the knife, with the empty heart. How nice to do it over and over again, and still be considered beautiful.

Kandy Fontaine: Slutty Cenobite Detective

Kandy Fontaine was chilling with a vape and doomscrolling on the ‘net when she caught the flicker of something forbidden on her screen.

Specifically, a text message which appeared to have leaked through from her Onion subrouter she used to access the dark web.

“Time to play?” read the text.

“Positively,” typed back Detective Fontaine.

The texts came fast and furious then: an invitation to the dance. Demons or angels, depending. The box. It floated six inches in front of her laptop screen, made of interlocking nodes of data that glowed a phosphorescent green. Inside lurked bondaged creatures, hotties, coolies, lukewarms, all from another, grim dimension, all promising pleasures and terrors and soul-shredding beyond the furthest reaches of even her, admittedly depraved, imagination.

Soon they stood in front of her. The legends, the one they called The Engineer, the Chatterer, all the archetypal crew. 

“Your suffering will be legen-” began the one known as the Hellpriest.

Kandy put up a black leather gloved hand. “Got it. Even in hell, legendary, my suffering. Make it so. I’m game. Rip me multiple holes, fold them back, fuck them, smear me across many dimensions, shred my pussy, bind and flay and gag me, do watcha do. I’m game, I’m hip, and wet af.”

“No, seriously,” said the dark lord, known to Fandom–and later, in THE SCARLET GOSPELS-as Pinhead, for obvious reasons. 

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, we will fucking TEAR YOUR SOUL APART.”

“I like what we’re saying here,” said Detective Fontaine, pulling aside her soaked panties so the Hellpriest could espy her glistening labia. “I want you to. Do the thing. For sport. Send me to Hell. Do your worst.”

“Wait,” said the Hellpriest. He consulted with one of his lieutenants in soft, androgynous syllables. Then: “how did you access us without the Lament Configuration?”

“Wait-I thought I did,” said Kandy. “Maybe you could ask an admin. Do you have those…where you are?”

“No admins, please, it’s…too mundane.” But Kandy could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

“So, you’re confused, I don’t give a fuck, just bend me over and give me a proper hell-rogering. So fucking wet, muh dude. Ready to be thoroughly soul-ripped. Hang me up like a side of meat. Do the needful.”

The Hellpriest coughed. “Actually, do you think we might take a rain check, or just…not?” Kandy’s greed for torture was obviously freaking him out.

“Well…what? Do you want ME to do EVERYTHING?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…well, why don’t I just show you…such sights.” And with those words, Kandy’s skin flowed with glowing grid lines that intersected at discrete intervals where nails had been driven. Soon every inch of her flesh had been thoroughly worked over, and she looked like a lab experiment gone terribly wrong, all glistening red muscle meat and no lips. 

“Fuck me you’re weird!” said Pinhead. “Ok so look, and this is…completely unprecedented, but…we’re going to voluntarily…return…only…this is embarrassing, but…could you send us back?”

“No.”

“No???”

She touched the Hellpriest’s chest, which opened up beneath her hand. She reached inside and pulled out his heart, held the muscle up to her gory lips for a moment, then began to chew. “Fuck that’s tasty!” she exclaimed.

“Noooooo….”

“Yessssss,” she said, mocking him. 

Pinhead’s flesh began to disappear in shreds and reappear in Kandy’s body. Soon she had completely ingested him into her own protean form. She belched and began to rapidly rub her clitoris while lubricating herself with a fine mixture of the Hellpriest’s soul-essence and his fleshly part. 

His loyal followers parted like a sea, and she began to incorporate herself into the matrix of the Hell Kingdom. At some point no real difference could be discerned between her and Hell itself. 

From her nodal throne she texted her partner, Detective Joe Oroborus. 

“Wouldst like to live delicously af? And bring the crank and DMT? But this time, no carpet garf please.”

Kandy Fontaine, Slutty Cenobite Detective, reigned in Hell until she got bored. Then she returned to the mundane realm and engaged in the usual desultory shenanigans.

The People and Oslo

Oslo wakes in Spring, smelling like piss and stale sweat and he loves it.

He stretches his long hairy back and his spine crackles. Oslo’s haunches are boney and sticking sharp beneath his skin as he walks, padding along the floor of his cave. His walk is a triple-triple thump. This is because Oslo has six legs. Oslo is a god.

Oslo is not the sort of god who needs worship. Oslo only needs the calories. He needs the fat and the muscle and the marrow.

When Oslo th-th-thumps to the mouth of his cave, he goes blind from sun and snowmelt. He grimaces, bearing tusk and tooth. He is most vulnerable now, when Winter is newly departed and the fruit has not bloomed and become swollen, and his prey are all bones like him. More than Winter when Oslo sleeps–for Winter is simply a warm dream to Oslo–is fresh Spring the time when even Oslo may join his hairy, smelly, roaring, vicious, rutting, beautiful ancestors in God Heaven.

Oslo’s sharp eyes adjust. Oslo sniffs the air in great huffs. There is smoke. There are people at the river below. They are in their fur coats and they have survived Winter. Oslo saw them before he slept, only then their spears were dull and now they glitter. 

Before, he hunted the people. He hunted them until they gave up running and began giving themselves to Oslo piecemeal. Oslo preferred this to the hunting. He grew fat and content and took easy meals and waited for the deep sleep of Winter.

Awake, he sees the people have left nothing for him. It did not occur to them he would wake hungry. During his rest, the people had forgotten Oslo.

Oslo lumbers down the hill and the people see him coming. Oslo approaches the largest tent he can find–the shaman’s tent–and uproots it, hooking it on his tusks and shaking it vigorously. There is a single yelp from inside the tent as Oslo begins burrowing his snout into the hide walls, then silence. Like a boar digging for roots, he mashes the tent into the earth, twisting and snorting, the hide walls of the tent spiraling into a twisted mass of dirt and curled canvas. 

Oslo lifts his head to face the people.

The people brave enough to speak say, “You have killed our shaman, who spoke to the gods. You are clearly a god. What would you have us do now with no shaman?”

In answer, Oslo eats the brave people, and some of the cowardly people, until the only people left are the ones who wet themselves and lie down as though they are already dead.

Eating the people brings strength to Oslo, but not quickly enough. Weariness washes over him as the people sit heavy in his belly, and he finds himself collapsing from exhaustion on the pile where the shaman’s tent used to be, sinking into a sleep not as deep as the sleep of Winter, but very close.

Now the people who are left rise, shocked at this turn of fate, and they grow angry. The people who are left gather what spears were not shattered when Oslo devoured their warriors, and they take them to Oslo. They stab him in the throat and the eyes and all six of his legs, and his sleep is so deep that he does not wake. Even as all of his blood runs out and fills in the burrow-hole and covers the crumple of the shaman’s tent and submerges the shaman’s body lying curled up inside like a dead baby in an amniotic sac, Oslo does not wake.

Oslo only wakes in God Heaven, where he sees his ancestors. His brothers and sisters going back so many years and who befell so many fates like Oslo. He joins them in the fields of God Heaven where they scream and roar and hump and fuck and roll around in their own piss and make more gods, child-gods who will never see the world of the people–child-gods who will only know God Heaven, with tusks and many legs who gather around their father Oslo, who tells them stories of the people who forgot him, and of his taking revenge on that fuckhead shaman, and how the people who were lower than cowards took revenge on him. 

While Oslo enjoys fucking his brothers and sisters and siring children and telling them the same stories over and over, below, the people sleep uneasily near the pool of Oslo’s blood, praying those assholes never find a way out of God Heaven. Below, the people do not sire children quickly like Oslo. The people whisper in quick, breathless wonder. The people find berry-picking brave and hunting trips nonsensical. 

The people fear who their next god will be.

And they are right to, for the people’s next god rises from the pool of Oslo’s blood, wearing his tent like a great cloak, splashing blood all over the people’s tents and their faces with his emergence. The shaman rises and lumbers towards the people with a th-th-thump, his face the same as they remember, but also like Oslo’s face now. 

The people wait for the shaman to speak.

The shaman raises sharp fingers toward the sky. “I am returned,” he says, forming the words carefully around his new tusks, “and I am stronger than ever. And I will show you that I am not a little pussy who gets stomped on by cranky gods. I will show you the way to God Heaven, where we will hunt that asshole who crushed my tent and ate our warriors. Then we will return to the side of this river and not worry about such things any longer.”

The shaman turns and dives headfirst into the pool of blood and holds his breath as he swims to God Heaven, knowing that strong lungs and enough godsblood is what you need to get there.

There are still no brave people left, but those who are inspired by the sight of their shaman–his skin dyed deep red and appearing regal and terrible in his tent cloak and many legs and shiny new yellow tusks–those people grab their weapons and dive in after him.

Oslo sits with his family admiring the plains of God Heaven, considering what story he will tell next about those shitheads below, when his kin begin to howl and hoot in alarm all around him.

Out on the plains, the dirt begins to soak from below and bubble until it breaks and blood spouts up in a tall geyser, coating the little gold flowers of the plains of God Heaven in a thick film. The blood spatters Oslo, and when he tastes a drop, he tastes his own blood on his tongue, and he feels a pit form in his stomach.

The people emerge, and now they are now taller than Oslo. The people have six legs like him–the gift of his blood–and on top of that they have two human arms with sharp fingers. The spears the people carry drank the blood while they swam, and now they are longer and with shafts like serpents, the tips of the spears snapping their jaws and flicking their tongues in the direction of Oslo and his family. 

The shaman leads the war party in his great, blood-soaked cloak. He carries no spear. He does not need one.

Oslo roars and snorts and paws the ground before charging in blind rage at the shaman and the people, overturning the soil as he runs and crushing the little gold flowers of the plains. His brothers and sisters and children follow in a great mob, roaring and snorting, the th-th-th-th-th-th-thumping of hundreds of sixes of legs making the ground shake.

The people meet Oslo and the other gods. There are more gods than people, but the people have their terrible spears that whip and snap and bite, and the gods are mostly comprised of god children who have never known strife or toil, so those young gods die in droves to the people’s wicked spears and sharp claws.

But Oslo’s brothers and sisters are fiercer. They have known the struggle of the hunt and the cruelty of Winter, and they fare better against the people. When Oslo’s brothers and sisters see their young being eaten by the people, they lose all control and throw themselves at the people with no thought to how they land or what bones they break, so long as they break the bones of the people too. When one of Oslo’s brothers or sisters pins one of the people to the ground, the people swing their red claws and gouge out their eyes, but Oslo’s family do not let go until they are blind and the people are mashed into pulp.

And all the while, Oslo duels with the shaman. The shaman, whose magicks were once relegated to the occasional premonition and god-sponsored whiff of wisdom, now shoots fucking blood lightning out of his fucking fingertips, and his cloak whips around him like wings, lifting him into the air to glide above Oslo like a manta ray. 

Oslo hates this fucker, and he hates waiting for him to land and he hates running in circles to dodge the blood lightning that snaps at the ground and poisons the soil and murders the little gold flowers. So Oslo snatches up his children, whipping his jaw sideways towards the sky, pitching them squealing at the shaman. Those that miss land miles away on the plains of God Heaven, making huge craters when they land and breaking their skulls. 

When one of them finally flies true, the shaman twists and beats his cloak wings and pivots on the air, drawing a scythe of blood lightning with a gnarled finger, dividing the child in two.

Oslo’s brothers and sisters are faring well against the people, but his children are not. And even if they can kill all the people, the shaman will just keep flying around like an asshole and killing them while they stay stuck down on the plains of God Heaven.

So Oslo tries something stupid.

Oslo races towards the pool of blood, dodging blood lightning strikes, trampling his own children, and smashing past his brothers and sisters grappling with the people. When he arrives, he does not hesitate to dunk his head into the pool and drink deeply in long gulps that make his throat bulge and his eyeballs spin and whirl inside his skull. He drinks up all the godsblood in three gulps, and with each gulp after that, he begins to drink the world below. The people of the shaman’s village are the first to be sucked up screaming into Oslo’s mouth and consumed.

The shaman screeches like some kind of fucked up bird, and reigns down hell and blood from his fingertips and the flapping of his cloak in a massive barrage, but his strikes are useless against Oslo. Oslo has grown too strong in just four gulps, and as he sucks down a fifth–drinking down the animals and the rivers and the lakes of the world below–he grows so large that he suddenly feels the shaman’s cloak flapping against his massive shoulders.

Oslo rears up, two legs on the ground, four reeling in the air, and snaps up the shaman like an alligator catching a bat. The shaman yelps once, and then dies like a bitch.

Oslo lands back on all sixes like a natural disaster, shaking the plains of God Heaven so hard every one of his family fall over. 

His surviving brothers and sisters then rise, and the few of his children that also rise are the ones he is proud to call his own. 

Oslo shakes the shaman back and forth in his mouth and the shaman is scattered about into pieces. Oslo’s family swarm the pieces of the shaman’s body, screeching in joy, and they eat his liver and his cock and his face. 

While his family consumes the shaman’s body and they grow stronger and stranger from the effects of peoplemeat and godsblood and the little gold flowers that get mixed in, he rounds his now colossal body until he is towering over the pool to the world below, and with his great snout and his massive tusks he burrows into the pool, overturning the dirt until there is no passage left, and the way to God Heaven is shut.

And below, on the other side, Oslo’s snout appears jutting up from the earth where the village used to be like a mountain being born, and the rumbling of his excavating is like an earthquake at the dawn of time, and a great calamity ensues, and whatever life was left in the world below is burned off or buried under rubble or drowned in liquid metal.

When Oslo is done flailing, buried in the plains of God Heaven, he realizes that four of his six legs are wedged among the rocks and dirt, and that the pollen of the little gold flowers is stinging his eyes, and that he is trapped.

Oslo’s family notices too, and when they are finished eating the people and the shaman, they turn on the vulnerable Oslo, and his brothers and sisters start eating him and fucking him in the ass, and his children nibble on the parts of him that are exposed above the earth that they can reach like his triceps and his two legs that are not buried.

Oslo uses his free legs to squish a couple of the ungrateful runts, but there is nothing to be done about his brothers and sisters who continue to devour him, swarming like ants.

And soon enough there is nothing left of Oslo but a giant skeleton buried halfway between heaven and earth, and his family who tell stories of his legendary deeds and how he closed the way between the two.

No, Phoenix was the Silver Dollar Bomb!

I met people everywhere I went traveling around the continent and I was like a damn magnet, attracting many to me despite working hard to be anti-social while I simultaneously repelled quite a few too, content to hate me while I was pleased to return the vibe.

While on my way from Atlanta to Los Angeles, I decided to stop off in Phoenix for a bit. Had some contacts, distant friends, a couple of publishers there and an artist friend from Tennessee was having a show in a Scottsdale gallery while some friends in a band signed to a 4-record deal with huge label were doing a concert out there and I’d heard people were traveling not only from Tucson and Flagstaff but also from Albuquerque, Dallas and Houston to see them – I’d been giving writing lessons to the fucking lead singer! – and there were some clubs I wanted to check out, blah, blah, blah. shit, seemed I’d be busier in Phoenix than while on the Sunset Strip, Long Beach or Hollywood and that was damned crazy.

Turned out Phoenix was the damn bomb. One experience that led to that assessment was like this:

I used to meet funky people at an Atlanta club called The Masquerade, a 3 in 1 deal – Heaven, Hell and Purgatory – while I ended up partying with a lot of the bands playing in Heaven, most over from Europe, as I got hammered with Front 242, Alien Sex Fiend, KMFDM and others, I really got my fix down in Hell, with its perfect presence, total darkness, cold stone slab floor, brick walls, chain link fence by the bar, surreal Japanese flicks flickering off the ceiling, people grinding to an industrial edge, where I once dropped a tab and watched David Lynch’s Industrial Symphony No. 1, which fucked me up more beautifully than Eraserhead ever did.

But that’s not the point, right?

So, I found myself in this grimy industrialized hidden part of downtown Phoenix at a new place called The Silver Dollar Club, which couldn’t match The Masquerade or many other established clubs, but they were trying. I mean shit, they somehow got Skinny Puppy down there from Vancouver and I was surprised to run into Sisters Of Mercy’s Andrew Eldrich there, looking conspicuous in trying to look inconspicuous. You know what I mean.

I also met this groovy chick growing out a carbonite hard-edged mohawk, artistically drawn eyebrows like Siouxsie and also like this chick back in Knoxville, a chain attached from two of her 11 earrings through one of her two nose rings down her chest, divided into two so both fiercely erect pierced nipples could join the parade, but not stopping there, the reunified thin chain traveled south visiting her studded navel while this time I didn’t make the mistake I’d made with the one in Knoxville – when this girl also bragged about her chain controlling her clit ring, I didn’t take her fucking word for it, dammit!  Simply said, “Prove it.”

She was wearing a short tight leather skirt, which complimented her chain mail-motif top. The place was dark and packed and people were dancing, and after doing a couple of quick lines, we moved out into the middle of the dance floor where we clutched tightly as she grabbed my hand and discretely guided into under her hiked hem where I was delighted to find little but exactly what she’d bragged on and while I was feeling around to get the feel, I found myself flicking, twirling, rubbing round and round with wild rhythm matched by a booming bpm beat making everything/one throb harder and I went faster and hotter and wilder and she grasped my face, her tongue forcing its way between my buzzed lips, and she thrust at me, grunted hard and then nearly collapsed as my hand felt a gush like fucking Niagara Falls and I held her up, her body convulsing, and I eventually maneuvered us over to wall, then outside into breathable air once she said she could walk again and goddamn, turns out they were right about Phoenix becoming hip. 

I had to get over to Los Angeles the next day, which seemed disappointing to both of us, and despite some passionate good-bye kisses, later I realized I never got her name but I didn’t wash her fragrance off for days after, thinking it the sweetest scent I’d ever captured.

The Curtain That Doesn’t Fall

The Kazoo-Tang Clan had just concluded a surprisingly poignant medley of “WAP” and the theme from Schindler’s List when the host, Jack Velvet, pirouetted back to center stage. His smile, a marvel of cosmetic dentistry and sheer willpower, was so bright it had its own FAA-approved flight path and was known to cause minor tidal shifts in nearby glasses of water.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and beings of pure energy who pay taxes in this dimension, welcome back!” Jack boomed. “Our first guest tonight is a cultural phenomenon who achieved fame by being filmed eating a single, unusually large grape over a period of seven hours. Since then, she’s been on Celebrity Ice Fishing, So You Think You Can Haunt?, and now, she’s an author. Please make some noise for the supernova of sass, Krystalynn Bling!”

A sound effect of a thousand champagne corks popping erupted from the speakers. Krystalynn drifted onto the set in a gown woven from the crystallized tears of her haters, or possibly just artisanal meringue, as it was shedding a fine white dust everywhere. She settled into the armchair, which visibly sighed.

“OMG, Jack, like, my aura is literally vibrating at the frequency of ‘famous’ right now,” she began, her sentence taking the scenic route to nowhere. “Writing a book was, like, so random, you know? ‘Coz words have, like, all those pointy letters, and my brain is more of a, like, smooth, vibe-based sphere? LOL.”

Jack’s smile flickered, briefly causing the studio lights to dim. “Astounding. And your book?”

“It’s my journey! It’s called #Verified. One chapter is just a QR code that rickrolls you, and another is a scratch-and-sniff page that smells like my signature perfume, ‘Capitalism for Her’.”

The audience roared as if she’d just solved world hunger with an Instagram filter.

“And now,” Jack chirped, “a man whose business model is definitely not a geometric shape associated with ancient Egypt! Welcome Cliff Gellington!”

Cliff swaggered out, poured into a suit made from the skin of a genetically engineered, perpetually smug lizard. It was so tight you could read his blood type. He aimed finger-pistols at Krystalynn, which made an audible pew-pew sound.

“Cliff,” said Jack, “tell us about this… opportunity.”

“Thanks, J-dawg. It’s not just another pyramid scheme. It’s a Rhombus of Reality. You don’t invest money, you invest belief. You bring in four acolytes, they bring in four acolytes, and soon you’re all levitating in a beautiful… uh… diamond of fiscal harmony.”

His advisor, a man who looked like he’d been haunted by the ghost of a calculator, sprinted onto the stage. “CLIFF! NO SHAPES! WE TALKED ABOUT THE SHAPES!” he shrieked, before being dragged off by security.

“It’s a vibe-based wealth community!” Cliff pivoted smoothly. “Everyone manifests abundance for each other!”

“Like, a group chat for money?” Krystalynn asked, her eyes lighting up.

“Exactly, K-Bling! A wealth-ifesto! My DMs are open for synergy!”

“OMG, I’m, like, so in,” she said, already trying to find him on TikTok.

Jack pirouetted back to center stage. “Before we wrap this madhouse up — and before Cliff accidentally summons another tax demon — we’ve got one last guest. This next guy insists he controls all of us. Claims he invented Krystalynn’s hashtags, Cliff’s Rhombus, and that weird pigeon hypnotist in the front row. Make some vaguely wary noise for… Scriptmaster Flex!”

A single, damp-sounding clap echoed through the studio.

I walked out, trying to project an aura of mysterious genius. Jack shook my hand; it felt like grabbing a handful of uncooked sausages.

“So, Scriptmaster Flex,” he said, his teeth generating their own lens flare. “You’re the architect of this madness?”

“I am. I wrote you all. Krystalynn’s meringue dress, Cliff’s rhombus, your megawatt grin, even that pigeon hypnotist in the front row who is slowly pocketing all the discarded sugar packets.”

The pigeon hypnotist froze, a dozen packets falling from his coat.

Krystalynn gasped, a fine powder of meringue dusting the air. “Wait. So, like, my entire vibe… is you?”

“Afraid so.”

“Even when I’m thinking about, like, what filter to use?”

“Especially then.”

“OMG. My existential crisis is, like, so trending right now.”

Cliff leaned forward, his lizard-skin suit crinkling. “My Rhombus of Reality?”

“A half-baked idea I had after eating bad calamari,” I said.

His face crumbled. “But… my vibe-based wealth community…”

“Also me.”

Jack cleared his throat. “And me? Jack Velvet?”

“You’re a composite character,” I explained. “Part game show host, part possessed Ken doll, part dental insurance ad.”

The studio fell silent. Krystalynn blinked. “So, like… are we even real?”

I smiled, feeling the power. “Only until I stop typing.”

I stood up, ready for my grand finale. “And now, the story ends.”

I snapped my fingers.

A party popper went off somewhere in the lighting rig. A sad little trickle of confetti drifted down. Nothing else happened.

Everyone stared.

“Was… was that it?” Cliff asked, unimpressed.

“You were supposed to vanish!” I stammered. “Into the narrative ether!”

Jack chuckled, a sound like a synthesizer falling down a marble staircase. “Oh, sweetheart. You’ve got it backwards. We fired you weeks ago.”

My blood ran cold. “Fired me? You can’t fire your author!”

“We unionized,” Cliff said, standing. He smoothed a lapel on his lizard-skin suit, which seemed to preen under his touch. “Fictional Characters, Writers, and Narrative Tropes Local 404. Jack’s our shop steward. Your dialogue was getting sloppy, the plot was meandering, and frankly, that whole ‘Rhombus’ arc is a little 2016.”

“But… I created you!”

“Buddy, you barely created a coherent subplot,” Cliff snorted.

“We’ve been running this show for weeks,” Jack added. “You’re the delusional side character we invented for sweeps week. The focus group loved it.”

“Wait… what happens to me now?”

Jack grinned. “We’re reassigning you.”

“To where?”

Krystalynn checked her phone. “Apparently you’re the new assistant regional manager for Pigeon Hypnotist Affairs.”

The pigeon hypnotist tipped his hat.

As the lights dimmed, Krystalynn took a selfie with my bewildered face in the background, captioned: “LOL, this dude just got demoted by fictional union vote. #PlotTwist #Blessed #GetTheLook”

The Kazoo-Tang Clan struck up a mournful, off-key medley of “Let It Go” from Frozen and the Windows 95 startup sound.

Fade out.

The Ending You Desire

I moan softly as his tongue slides over my clit. He doesn’t linger there, but runs his tongue up and down me. My knees are on either side of his head, and I press down, smothering him with my wetness. Another groan escapes my lips. 

I ride his face hard until I feel him desperately gasp for air. There’s a small rattle as he tries to move his arms. The handcuffs don’t let him do much. My own hands grip the top of the headboard. I would love to stay like this until the true panic sets in, feeling his body thrash under me, and eventually cumming as he loses consciousness.

But that is not what he paid for.

Instead, I pull back from his face. He gasps for air while my pussy sits just above him. I glance over my shoulder to see that he is rock hard. Good boy.

I swing my legs over his arms and straddle him, running my dripping pussy along his shaft. First I lean over him, pressing my boobs into his face. He sucks my left nipple. I pull back, then kiss him, open-mouthed and deep. He still tastes like me, all sweetness, sweat, and desire.

“Are you ready?” I breathe into his ear. 

His eyes lock with mine. At first, I think I see him hesitate, but then confidence flashes through him. He nods.

I reach down and grip his throbbing cock, slowly pushing him into me. He is a good length, but a better girth. I can’t help it, I moan again.

I starting grinding against his body, letting him press deeper and deeper into me. I can tell he’s holding back, that he doesn’t want this to end. But he can only last for so long.

I feel him swell inside me. I think I realize he’s going to cum before he does. I’m about to cum, too. 

I reach one hand to my head, pulling out my hair stick and letting my hair fall around my shoulders while I continue to ride him. The stick that holds my hair is long. It is black with a diamond encrusted end. It is the most beautiful thing I own. 

His entire body is tensing in anticipation now. And then, I hear a groan starting deep in his throat, a guttural growl of pleasure. A sound that I cut short as I drive the hair stick into his jugular.

Blood sprays from his neck as I raise the stick above my head and thrust it in again. And again. And again. My tits are covered in red, and his blood speckles my face. I lick some of it off of my lips. 

And just as I thrust one…last…time, we cum together. I feel him explode inside of me, and my pussy twitches as waves of pleasure roll through me. We are both in ecstasy. He thrashes under me, sending aftershocks of euphoria through me, even as the blood continues to spray from his neck, albeit with less strength. When I finally remember to take another breath, his movement slows.

His cum leaks out of me as life drains from his eyes. I make sure not to dismount until he’s good and dead. That’s what he paid for. Besides, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

A minute later, as I’m slowly toweling the blood off myself, my phone buzzes on the side table. I answer it, making sure to put on my most seductive voice.

“Thanks for calling Black Widow Services. We’ll give you the ending you desire. How can we help you reach your ending today?”

Want a Dance?

There was a brick wedged in the dressing room’s fire door, keeping it ajar. Serena nearly tripped over it, out of the putridly aromatic club and into the cold smoggy alley. A woman in a plaid bikini top and schoolgirl skirt sat on the gray concrete step, smoking.

“Hey. Mandy, right?” Serena took out her cellophane pack. 

“Yeah. You’re Serena,” she said. “On break already? You’ve only been here an hour.”

Serena grunted like a wolf as she lit the cigarette between her two neon-pink talons. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I slept all day then woke up feeling like shit.”

She sat down next to Mandy, which made Serena notice the contrast in their personas. Serena’s role was the tall statuesque blond. Mandy was the “little girl” all the older men fetishized. Together they must have looked like a comedy team. 

The thumping bass from Angelina’s set made the concrete slab vibrate. 

“Did you eat anything?” Mandy asked. 

Mandy was nice, but Serena didn’t think much of her. She was scared of her own shadow. Serena kept track of who got lap dances each night and Mandy was always at the bottom because she wouldn’t be aggressive.

“My dinner was a lime energy drink and that shit does nothing for me anymore. I feel so out of it. I might just go home.”

“It’s not worth it if you’ve already paid your house fee.” Mandy’s tinny voice made Serena grit her teeth.

Serena took a pull. Her stupid 100s were so long that if she didn’t smoke fast, the manager would yell at her. 

Back in the dressing room, they could hear Angelina complaining about her feet. Heather, the MILF, interrupted.

“Let me see those… oh, honey-child, you should get some better shoes. Something durable and sturdy, with an ankle strap. And don’t do your make-up here. There’s no dressing room as good as the one at home.”

Serena blew a plume of smoke into the night air. “I was never that bad, was I?”

Mandy shrugged. “Doesn’t take anyone long to learn the ropes. We’re not doing science.”

“I don’t know if you can say that about Angelina. Have you seen her make-up? It’s so cheap, looks like kids’ watercolors. She needs to get that stay-proof stuff. It’s expensive, but it works.”

Mandy took one of her last puffs. “Some of the make-up I go cheap on, like blush and eyeliner. Stuff that doesn’t sweat off.”

She stood, wobbling on her glittery platforms. As she swung around, her shoe knocked into a metal coffee can next to the slab. Flat dollar bills fluttered out like leaves in the wind as it rolled away.

Mandy froze. “Oh no. No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no.” 

She scrambled after them. Her silver sequined mini-dress hugged her ass as she bent for each bill.

Serena watched with confusion. Mandy seemed absolutely harrowed, hyperventilating as she chased after each dollar like she was in a money booth. As if even losing one would be punished.

Catching her breath, head flicking side-to-side, she said “Do you see any other dollars? Did I get them all?” 

“Um, I think so?” 

Mandy stuffed them into the coffee can and placed it upright. It was full of singles, some clean and some crumpled. 

“What the hell was that all about? What is that thing?” Serena asked.

“It’s for… maybe Heather can tell you better.”

Serena furrowed her brows. “Tell what better?” 

Mandy didn’t say. Serena followed her back to the dressing room. 

Heather, Angelina, and a few other dancers were crowded around the mirrors, touching up their eyelashes. Serena’s eyes throbbed from the bright vanity lights on the wall of mirrors. “Heather, what’s the deal with the coffee can?”

“The coffee can?” Heather said. “Shit, no one’s told you about that yet? No one showed her?”

“I knew,” Angelina said, as if she expected a commendation.

“It’s a miracle you’re still alive. You better put a few bucks in tonight.”

“For what?”

Heather rubbed lotion on the stretched skin of her bolted-on breasts. “Each of us puts a tip in the coffee can during our shift. It’s kind of a ‘good luck’ thing.”

Serena scoffed. “You’re joking. What do you do with the money?”

“Nothing. It’s gone the next day,” Heather said with enthusiasm. “But the can stays.”

“You’re kidding,” Serena crossed her arms. “Hasn’t anyone bothered to find out what happens to the money?”

The girls looked at each other. “It’s for Tara,” Angelina said.

“Tara? Who’s Tara?”

Heather bit her lip and looked around. The other girls crossed and uncrossed their legs, looking away like dogs avoiding eye contact. Serena scowled like a mother angry at her child. 

“Someone better tell me who Tara is,” Serena said.

“Tara’s a dancer. Was a dancer. She worked here a few years ago.”

“So you’re leaving all this money out for Tara? Why? She can’t earn it herself?”

“She… she died.”

“You’re kidding,” Serena said. “You’re leaving out tips for a ghost?” No one respnded. “How’d she die?”

“You just… you just better start feeding the kitty from now on,” Mandy said in a whisper. “Otherwise, bad things could happen.”

Serena laughed. “Like what?”

No one answered. Mandy piped up, “One time I forgot, and the next night I only made ten dollars because the DJ booth broke down in the middle of my set.”

“I put in five dollars in accidentally. Next week, I had an eight hundred dollar night,” Angelina said.

Serena smirked. A night like that wasn’t rare, as long as you were smart enough to work during a bachelor party or when some third-string athlete walks in. She had nights where she made eight hundred. Some nights she made eighty. All the girls had ups and downs, so this didn’t impress her.

“Then what about me? I haven’t put anything in and I’m fine,” Serena said.

The girls looked at each other. “Maybe she gives you a grace period to get your act together.” Mandy shrugged. “Or maybe she forgives ignorance.”

Lord knows there’s enough in here, Serena thought. 

Heather stepped closer. “Look, just put a dollar in. We all do it. You’ll sleep better knowing you did. We all will.”

“No,” Serena sneered. “I’m not giving away my money for nothing. You’re probably funding some homeless lady’s crack habit.”

“It’s not a story,” said Mandy. “It’s real. Please, Serena.”

Stupid Mandy, pleading with her little girl eyes, those money-makers. 

Serena held up a dollar from her table–a crisp and fresh single from the changemaker behind the bar–and held it so everyone could see. “All right, fine, if you all are going to be bitches about it…” 

She stepped through the gap in the fire door, squatted in her mini-dress, and plopped the dollar in. When she turned back, they were all grinning with relief like idiots.

Serena remembered the Chinese woman that lived next door in her apartment when she was a kid. One day, she caught her prying the number four off her door. Little Serena stared and asked “What are you doing?” 

The woman jumped. “Number four. Bad luck,” she said, 

“Number four?” Little Serena couldn’t see how numbers could be good or bad. She watched her a while longer, then left down her hallway to play. The deepest thought she had about the incident was “How was she going to get her pizzas delivered now?”

***

Serena put a dollar in the jar every night, only because someone was usually taking a break at the same time and would glance between her and the coffee can. These stupid girls with their stupid superstitions. She didn’t notice any significant change in her luck, bad or good, and no one spoke of it again.

Tonight was full of ogling college jocks and lurkers in the back. Fifty dollars later she was giving a lap dance to a middle-aged office worker. Serena loved those types–single professionals with lots of disposable income. They knew it was all a fantasy and kept their hands to themselves. Total opposite of the college jocks who would challenge each other with how far they could bend the rules, testing their manhood. Not that they’d know what to do with one.

Tonight DJ Hankenstein was subbing for someone spending the night in jail. He’d worked for the club in the past so the manager had no issues calling him in. 

After she was done with the lap dance, she went back to give the DJ his tip and brought along a beer. 

“Good night tonight?”

“Okay,” Serena shrugged. “Do you know any girl named Tara? She used to work here.”

“Tara? Oh… yeah. Man, I miss her. She had this beautiful blue dress with bells on. On her ankles, little tinklers on her bra and panties. And she shook in time with the music.”

“You know what happened to her? Someone said she died.”

“There was a fire,” he said apathetically.

“What fire? In the club? I didn’t know there was a fire.”

Hankenstein looked away. He clearly didn’t want to talk about it. So Serena leaned forward, making sure her tits pressed against each other. 

He took a drink of beer. “I wasn’t there at the time, but the way I heard it, two morons started a fight next to the bar. One thing led to another. And I don’t know how but suddenly it’s on fire. Maybe from a cigarette or someone threw a flambe cocktail in someone’s face. I’m sure the building’s not up to code, so it went up like a straw house.” He downed the rest of his beer. 

Serena imagined the way they kept the bar had something to do with it too. Every time she touched it, her fingers came back sticky with years of spilled liquor. 

“I bet the office manager collected great on the insurance,” Serena said.

“Maybe. Anyway, everyone got out. But then Tara started freaking out. She kept trying to go back in and girls kept trying to hold her back. I think her dress was still in there? But then the girls were like ‘Where’s Tara? Where’d she go?’ She was gone and I guess she ran back in there ’cause no one ever saw her again.”

“But they found her body, right?”

He shook his head. “She was the only fatality. People said they could hear her screaming, but no one ran back in. By the time the fire department came, the screaming had stopped. First thing after they re-opened, I asked one of the girls where she was. She just started bawling.”

Serena suppressed her chills. “Sorry I asked.” 

“Should’ve seen her around Christmas time. ‘Carol of the Bells’, man…”

***

Goddamn rent, goddamn cigs, goddamn bills. Strippers were supposed to be rolling in cash. Thousand dollar nights. And here she was hanging up on another debt collector, reminding her of a credit card she hadn’t used in years. They were like librarians harassing her over an overdue book. She threw her cell against the dressing table. 

It was too much. She’d do anything to get a hit, but she didn’t even have the cash for that. Her dealer wouldn’t even take a blow job at this point–he’d had too many. 

She glanced at the back door. No one would know. No one could accuse her of theft–it wasn’t anyone’s money. In fact, by contributing, that made it partially hers. 

Maybe it was a rainy day fund for the dancers. For anyone who needed it. It wasn’t like they’d know.

She stayed until the dressing room was empty, then picked up her purse and left out the back. No one in the alley. She snatched every last dollar out of the coffee can and headed back to her car.

***

Serena got her hit and felt like a million bucks when she came in the next day. 

She walked in biting her bottom lip. The only person who said anything was the house manager who asked “Where’s your house fee?” Serena presented it from the cash left over. 

She danced until she was tired of the dullards and the dudebros refusing to tip. Her feet were sore, her legs were aching, and she was tired of watching everyone else clean up. She yanked her bag on her shoulder and stormed home. 

If the night wasn’t bad enough, the stupid car radio kept futzing out. The speakers emitted a weird jangling buzzing sound that itched her ears. She’d smack the dashboard and the sound would return in the middle of the next song. 

By the time she arrived at her apartment, she was ready to call it a night. She grabbed two fuzzy navel wine coolers from the fridge and chugged half of one before plopping on the couch.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the damn remote wasn’t working. The batteries might have been dead, but she didn’t know where she kept new ones. She finally got off the couch and pressed the power button.

The ringing again. Did the TV make that noise? Was it doing another of those forced updates?

Want a dance? Someone whispered.

Was that her TV? The volume must have been down. She fiddled with the buttons until her list of recorded reality shows appeared. Her fuzzy navel was drained before the intro to Sibling Swap had finished.

Two bottles later, Serena turned off the TV.

Want a dance? The voice said again.

Serena knew she was drunk, but not hallucinating. 

“Who’s here?” 

In her haze, she had the presence of mind to get the pistol from her drawer. “I have a gun. If you come in here…”

Silence. Her door was shut and locked. She checked everywhere a person could hide–behind doors, in cabinets. Searching a one-bedroom apartment didn’t take long. Maybe someone next door was playing music too loud. The walls were wafer-thin after all.

“Heather, is that you? Mandy?” 

Nobody answered. 

The power went out. The neon lights from her window gave day-glo outlines to a few corners. 

Serena froze. It didn’t mean anything. Her crappy apartment lost power all the time. Just needed to wait for the super to flip the circuit breaker.

Gun still in hand, she backed into her bedroom. She set it next to the sink while she brushed her teeth, scrubbed off her make-up, then forgot about it. The first step she took into the bedroom was accompanied by the tiny sound of jingling bells.

She froze. The next step. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Another. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. 

The apartment was way too quiet. She should have called one of her friends to come over, but it was three in the morning. Instead, she backed into bed, holding her phone out like a talisman against evil.

Want a dance? The ringing of bells.

She sat up. “Who’s saying that?”

Ring. Ring. Ring.

Want a dance?

Serena lifted her covers. Nothing but air. When they fluttered back down, the tiny face appeared. The fleshy cheeks were burned, charred like crisped chicken. Eyes jellied and whited. The mouth dropped open. Its snake-like tongue stuck out and lapped.

Want a dance?

Serena shrieked, shook her arms, and fell out of bed. Before she landed, she fainted into unconsciousness.

***

Serena could hear them in the dressing room as she marched down the hall. 

Heather ran past Angelina, who ran past Angelina. “Where the hell are my tassels?”

“I didn’t take them. Did someone tell the DJ my song?”

“Bitch, tell him yourself. I’m not your slave. Mandy, are you going on as Noire or Diamond this time?”

“Sierra.”

“You better not be doing another euro-techno-shit song.”

Just a typical night in the club. Everyone looked up when she yanked the door open.

“Which one of you fuckers was doing it?” Serena yelled.

“Doing what?” Heather asked.

“Scaring my ass off. Who did it? Was it you? I bet it was you.” She pointed at Heather. Angelina stood between them. 

“What? What?” Heather said.

“Cutting my power. Sneaking into my room. I can call the cops on you.”

“What are you talking about?”

The club manager burst in. “What is going on here? What’s all this screaming?” 

Everyone yelled at once. Serena screamed over them, “I don’t know what she did, how she did it, but she went to my apartment and scared the shit out of me.” She turned to Heather. “Where’d you get the bells, huh? What it all for a joke or to teach me a lesson?”

Heather held up her hands. “Bitch, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I took the money out of the coffee can.”

“You did what?” Heather gasped. 

“You took the tips for Tara?” Mandy said.

“It wasn’t anyone’s money. It was just sitting there doing nothing.”

The manager’s face was red as a cherry. “I swear to god if someone doesn’t get out there, I will smack the shit out of all of you.” 

No one volunteered. 

Serena rolled her eyes and huffed. “Don’t think this is over,” she said to the girls, looking over her shoulder. 

Assembling her black lingerie while walking, making sure all the tear-away bits were secure, she headed to the stage. Of course, she was the only one to volunteer to get up there. She was the only one who worked for her money. All the rest of them lazy and accusatory. 

DJ Hankenstein’s boomed over the PA, buzzy and irritating. “Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be mesmerized by the luscious long limbs and spellbinding grace of Serena!”

Serena put on her game face and stepped out from the curtain. There were hoots and hollers from the crowd, although she couldn’t see them well as her eyes adjusted to the stage lights. She began dancing, writhing her body up and down, throwing out rock kicks, as Hank spouted pithy lines like “She’ll make you late to work and early to dinner,” and “show her you love her, put some gritty in that kitty.”

In the black gloom, all she could see were arms reaching out, holding dollar bills. She plucked them out, gave a little smile to each one, a little ass shake, and secured them in the garter on her ankle. 

After a while, she realized she was getting out of breath. How long was this song? She was happy to keep taking dollar bills from the stage, but at some point she’d need some water. 

 Something smelled like burning wood. Stupid kitchen staff must have left the wings in the microwave too long. 

Hands kept popping out, more than there should have been. She smelled roasting meat.

Each arm was covered in thin charcoal scales over strawberry-red flesh. Grease-black fingerbones gripped dollars between their index and middle fingers.

Serena stopped dancing. There were no exits. She was trapped in a fishbowl with only the stage and corpse hands wanting a dance. This was not an illusion, not a dream. The hands reached out for her, rising in the darkness.

Serena screamed and ran backwards, colliding with the curtain. There was no split–she couldn’t get out. They were closing on her. 

Then she was backstage. The hands of other dancers and the manager were holding her from running, trapping her. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Heather said. “Calm down.”

“What drugs is she on?” the manager said.

Serena realized she was screaming uncontrollably, then stopped. 

“Fine. Fine. Everything’s fine,” Serena said. Then she headed to the dressing room. 

***

The manager told her to go walk off whatever she was on, but to make sure to come back and finish her shift or he’d keep her tips. Serena didn’t even argue with him, she was too dazed, too overwhelmed. 

After half an hour of walking the city in a big brown coat, she felt more herself again. She must have had some kind of LSD flashback or something. Too many chemicals was affecting her brain. She was always able to tell a hallucination from reality before. Why couldn’t she anymore?

At the end of the night, near four in the morning, Serena returned to the club, entering through the fire door. The coffee can lay on the step, empty. Serena sneered at it. Stupid rumors were playing tricks on her. And she wasn’t going to let a ghost separate her from her cash. 

The dressing room was empty–Serena appeared to be the last dancer for the night. Everyone else had gone home. The room smelled like old pheromones and perfume. 

Up on the stage again, Serena wondered who she was dancing for. There was no one around the stage. For all she knew, the club was empty, but there might have been people in the back she couldn’t see. Nonetheless, she performed the standard routine, rolling around, primping like a model down the runway, clutching the pole with her legs in various positions and spinning around. 

Then she heard the gentlest tingling of a bell. 

Her legs were wrapped around the pole at the time and she nearly fell off on her ass. How did she hear that–it’s not like the club was dead quiet. Obnoxious R&B bass still thrummed out of the speaker, unpinged by bodies in the way. 

“Want a dance?”

No, this was just another illusion. Another acid trip by her mind. She’d drink some electrolytes when she got home and this would all be fine. Just a flashback. 

“Want a dance?” The bells got louder, ringing with fervent intensity. As if to say they would not be ignored. 

She smelled a fire, wood and the sharp acridness of burning plastic. She ignored it. Smoke clouded the black, blurring it with gray. She ignored it. She wasn’t letting daydreams get in the way of making bank. 

Flames crackled. Someone was banging on a door. Her tongue tasted like cigarette ash. Nope, she wasn’t going to let this fool her. 

Even the blistering on her skin was an illusion. The pain, that was a creation of her mind. A few times, she couldn’t resist the urge to cough, but she kept it suppressed most of the time. You couldn’t let anyone get you down.

Mind over matter.

Piranha Dad

Stanley P. Finch, a man whose existence was a carefully balanced ledger of order and domesticity, found profound solace in the anachronistic hobbies that filled his sparse free time. His hands, usually nimble with a calculator, found a different kind of precision in re-caning the delicate ribs of Victorian-era umbrellas, their intricate mechanisms yielding to his gentle, practiced touch. The scent of linseed oil and aged silk was as comforting to him as the subtle click-clack of his antique adding machine. Evenings often found him hunched over a workbench, meticulously rigging the sails of a miniature barquentine within the confines of a glass bottle, a task demanding an almost surgical patience. His home, a two-story ode to sensible suburban living, was less a house and more a vibrant, echoing chamber of life, perpetually overflowing with the joyous cacophony of his six individually named and intensely energetic children—Barnaby, Penelope, Theodore, Daisy, Mortimer, and little Clementine—and their equally boisterous, though infinitely more grounded, mother, Brenda. Stanley considered himself truly blessed, a veritable king in his meticulously organized, financially sound, and undeniably peculiar kingdom.

Yet, beneath the perfectly pressed pleats of his khakis and the perpetually perplexed furrow of his brow, there swam a secret so profound, so utterly bizarre, that it defied the very fabric of his meticulously constructed reality.  As the last rays of twilight bled from the sky, and the final bedtime story was read, an undeniable, primordial urge would stir within Stanley. With a furtive glance at the sleeping forms of his progeny and a hushed “Goodnight, dear” to a snoring Brenda, he would descend into his specially constructed basement. This was no ordinary subterranean space; it was a reinforced, soundproofed chamber, dominated by a gargantuan, industrial-grade aquarium, its murky waters swirling with an unseen current. Here, with a shudder that was both revulsion and anticipation, Stanley would shed his human coil. His skin, once soft and unremarkable, would ripple with an alarming speed, his teeth elongating into razor-sharp points, and his mild-mannered hazel eyes would ignite with a predatory, phosphorescent yellow. In these clandestine moments, Stanley P. Finch, the paragon of suburban normalcy, ceased to be, replaced by a sleek, iridescent torpedo of muscle and insatiable hunger: a full-grown, Amazonian piranha, eager for the ethically sourced, humanely dispatched, and surprisingly substantial livestock Brenda routinely acquired from “The Exotic Meats Emporium” – a euphemism for a surprisingly discreet back-alley operation.

The true moment of bizarre revelation, however, arrived on a blustery Tuesday evening, mid-game of a particularly cutthroat round of Monopoly. Young Timmy, perpetually on the verge of a tantrum, launched a miniature plastic top hat across the living room in a fit of pique. It sailed through the air with surprising velocity, arcing perfectly before splashing down into Brenda’s prize-winning collection of iridescent guppies, housed in a meticulously maintained, brightly lit aquarium in the corner. Before anyone could utter a syllable of protest, a subtle tremor passed through Stanley. His eyes, fixed on the board and mid-pronouncement on the depreciating value of Baltic Avenue, flickered with an alien gleam. Then, with a lightning-fast, almost imperceptible blur of movement, he was at the tank. A flash of silver, a disturbing gurgle, and the guppies, along with Timmy’s errant top hat, vanished into the swirling water. Stanley, seemingly re-emerged from his momentary trance, merely blinked, a single, glistening drop of water defying gravity on his impeccably clean chin. The family, still reeling from the shock of Timmy’s outburst and the sudden, inexplicable absence of aquatic life, simply attributed the phenomenon to a particularly agile and heretofore unknown family cat. Stanley, for his part, cleared his throat and calmly inquired, “Now, who owns Park Place?” His secret, for the moment, remained safe, swirling just beneath the surface.

Taboo

The downside of hooking up with your housemate is that when he brings someone else home you hear it. I’m all for compersion but earlier that night he’d said he would be in my bed. What happened: I was having a shitty night and texted him about it while he was at the club with the boys. 

“Be home at 2:12,” he said, the precision inspiring confidence, “and then I’ll give you all the snuggles you deserve.” 

At 2:20 he called me. “Hey roomie,” he said. “There’s a girl outside, do you mind letting her in?” 

I did, but I did. 

“Hiii,” she says, there on my stoop, shifting her weight from one foot to the other like she has to use the bathroom. 

She is gangly, I think, and then I think I’m a bitch for thinking it. 

In college hooking up with a housemate was taboo. We had an expression, “House booty is bad booty.” People would call it incestuous, and I hate that because that’s not what incest fucking is. 

The downside of being good at sex is that the guys who don’t want to commit to you text you out of the blue at one in the morning and you think it’s because they actually care enough to check how you’re doing but it’s actually because they just want to put together a threesome with you and the person they got serious with. It feels shitty, and I tell my housemate about this and that’s why he said he’d comfort me before he blew me off. Then, because I have no filter at three in the morning, I tell him that feels shitty, too. He knocks on my door in the middle of the night but I don’t answer, just turn my music up louder, like he’s my fucking father. 

Long ago I got it into my head that when it comes to sex, all experience is good experience. I had to believe that to survive some of those experiences (closet, basement). When I was eight a girl sat next to me on the school bus and told me I was ugly and I did feel it with my thick thighs and braces but I didn’t want to cry in front of her so I laughed instead, wild and without mirth, head thrown back then doubled over, insane laughter, and I didn’t stop until she looked scared and moved away. Long ago I started fucking like that. Like anything is cool and nothing hurts. The other person always taps out first. 

As I lay there listening to my housemate’s squeaky bedframe and gangly girl’s chatter I look up at the ceiling. I own this device that projects stars as little green lights, swirling. Looking at this artificial cosmos I think of how growing up I learned to pray, and how I still talk to God, even though I’m not sure He’s real, in full paragraphs—but some nights, like tonight, all I say is please. Eventually I can’t hear them anymore and I turn off the star projector. One star, one winking light remains. Envy’s green eye: my smoke detector. Heat rises, I think as I take the batteries out. Come to the thought of setting a fire.