Telegram Sam

Aurelia De Quincey feels exposed, their eyes piercing through her clothes. Going further, faster, through flesh like a razor nosed bullet train. 

Down to her skeleton. Down to the marrow. 

Denuded has been Aurelia’s continued experience of life since childhood. Her jumbled toys still stir in the attic of her mind. They are soft and hard edged and plastic and plushy.

Her soul is shadow-scorched, and bad energy comes off of her in grave-waves.

She sits alone at a cafe, hunched over her tablet, doodling.

He sits at a nearby table.

Aurelia has identified him. His cop heart and soul. She feels his dagger optics lance her. Prurient fingers probing her like they were forensics experts seeking brain-embedded bullets.

She looks up, straight at him, daring him to respond. His eyes are hidden behind shades. Cop stache and attitude. 

***

They began to operate in her apartment complex at the beginning of the longest summer she can remember. 

They started by inserting their grubby fingers into her mailbox. She could see the scratches on the metal where they’d left their signs. The Aleph, the all-sigil, the Masonic signs, the Illuminati dog whistles.

She knew of their operational tactics having read Borges and Poe in childhood dreaming in her aunt’s house over dark magic tea and conversations that floated with spirits like red tea lights.

She was a legacy stalkee. Generations of the De Quinceys had passed through the gauntlet of the stalkers.

One time she was trying to walk across the street and a black Pontiac came out of nowhere and nearly crushed her.

They sent their agents into her dreaming world, clutching and clawing at her with long metal-taloned fingers.

It was impossible to free herself from them.

She heard scraping sounds from the apartment above hers as they moved the machine with the beams across the floor. Knowing how much it hurt her, they turned the weapon up to 11. It burnt her brain up so bad. She wept and gnashed her teeth and bit her lip and drooled and bellowed into her pillow.

***

She was a mark from the start.

She saw them park alongside her when she went to the grocery store. They brazenly made eye contact as their hands sauntered across the device, the Raven’s claw.

She saw their heads reflected in shop windows.

She heard their voices in her head when she paused by the apartment of the one friend she had, the cripple who was never home. Where did he spend his days?

She saw the Morgellan’s threads spill out of her palms like alien stigmata.

She drew a map from memory of the better timeline where she reigned like a mantis queen.

Aurelia knew that in the end nobody could hurt her, because she had much like Lurian Kabbalah resolved herself out of spacetime. Still the Nova Mob pursued her.

She wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

She sensed them hissing in the wee hours, like some kind of guerilla radio. Surface to air serpents filled her head with dread.

She ordered in but the pizza restaurant on the corner had her clocked. Their efforts would one day result in a body washing up on shore. Not hers, perhaps, but adjacent.

She was wrecked and ruined but still in good spirits when the officers showed up asking about her former roomie.

Of course she lied. The roommate still received mail. Aurelia told them that Eileen Glass had disappeared to Estonia to form a riot grrrl outfit. Which was partially true.

***

Eerily once in awhile her head split open and black bugs poured out.

Aurelia collected the bugs in a jar. They spoke a gossiping language that was entirely pictorial.

She wrote about the bugs in an online journal. Hers was a letter to the world that never wrote to her.

She was possessed by something or someone. She fell in love with a ghost. Perhaps the ghost issued from her future corpse.

She saw abjection rain down from the sky. She saw copper snakes curling on the ceiling. When her lovers took her, male and female, she evacuated her flesh body and joined the snakes.

She knew bi erasure was a thing and probably occurred to St. Bowie.

Her random architectures faded away in the light from a thousand suns.

She made soup out of bone broth. She imagined the skulls of the Buddhas bobbing in her soup like divinatory dreams.

She drew comic art of a woman whose twin sister lay in perpetuity in a hospital bed, big with hysterical pregnancy.

She made a comic book called Pen and Incubus.

She published panels from the book on Facebook, and slowly began to gain a readership.

She began to feel like her life wasn’t so damned after all, and she might be able to redeem herself in the fullness of time.

Aurelia De Quincey was no longer sad.

She took up yoga and pilates. She spent hours of languor wrapped up in her lovers’ bodies listening to the Cure’s Pornography album. 

Acid melted her and dripped her face and she delighted in that.

When they made love she merged with all the creatures.

It was a celebration. A mart of joy. 

One day she heard a noise from the kitchen. Nude, she shuddered awake. Her lovers were out cold, still dead from the party the night before.

She walked into the kitchen and saw the Man with the Hat.

And recognized him: Telegram Sam, an agent of the dream world. A shadow man.

He beckoned her.

Her stomach clenched. Her nerves shrieked. She wanted to scream and run away, but he had her in his power.

The solar flares began to lick the inside of her skull.

He fired off a series of telepathic instructions she could not refuse. 

Then he was inside her and she was inside him, like interlocking Russian dolls.

The suffocating heat closed in around her. Her feet froze to the floor.

He locked her in his fell embrace, whispering tender nothings about frost and genocide.

He knew her, evidently. 

Was the ghost, her ghost from the future. The one they spoke of in the black books.

Telegram Sam.

She would never escape his grin. It enveloped her. She felt his bloody temper rise as his miles of razor sharp teeth descended.

NURSE!

The lights went out with an industrial clatter and Amelia’s eyes snapped open. She heard faint crying beside her, the soundtrack of her stay. Ignoring it she chose to walk to the door, open it slightly and look out. There was a dim flickering light at the far end of the hallway near the ceiling, and another dim light coming from the nurses’ station at the other end of the hallway. She opened her bedroom door wider and stood in the doorway, her eyes and ears slowly coming into focus. The loudest sound was her roommate, her sobbing so animated even though muffled by the thin white cotton blanket she had shoved into her mouth. Poor Nancy, Amelia thought as she looked back toward the bed of sobs, when a flash of darkness whizzed by Amelia’s periphery, charging so fast she felt a rush of wind touch her face. Then, a sudden splat of skin and bones against concrete brick tiles and the immediate slump of body parts in a pile on the linoleum floor. Before she could wonder what happened, another dark form speeds past her smack into the wall and slumps down, then another and another. It might have happened four or five times while Amelia stood in the doorway, aghast and now quite creeped out. Squinting toward the far end of the hallway where the bodies heaped, she could hear a very soft moan and make out the word “nurse”. It was raspy and barely audible but she heard another “nurse” coming from the pile of bodies. Amelia’s skin started to prickle. In the part of the short hallway where the bedrooms are she could see a few other patients coming toward their doors, awakened by the bizarre ruckus. She heard louder moans and the word “nurse” coming from inside the bedrooms now too, some slow and constant demands “nnurrrrsssse nnurrrsssse nnnurrrrrsse”, an urgent high-pitched shriek “NURSE!!!” at a faster clip, “NURSE!!! NURSE!!! NURSE!!! NURSE!!!” like an actual banshee. The chorus of “nurses” was then coming from every bedroom, bouncing off the walls of the hallway, and drowning out the poor cries for help coming from the body pile. All around her at different notes and speeds Amelia was feeling NURSE NURSE NURSE NURSE overwhelm all her senses completely. Amelia slammed her door shut and ran into her bed, throwing the blanket over her head and thinking if she squeezes her eyes shut tight enough everything will go back to normal. In the open spaces of the nurse chant Amelia’s ears replay the awful sound of bodies smacking against the concrete bricks at full speed. She quickly acknowledged that her eye squinting was a dumb idea and tucked her blanket under chin, eyes open again. The electricity was out, some truly sick patients made a gross error in wall-judgement, and she was in a room alone with Nancy. She couldn’t figure out what’s worse, to stay shut in with Nancy’s blanket-chewing emo sobbing or to watch what’s going on in the hallway. Maybe she should make an exit plan. If the power was out then maybe the two doors to get out were unlocked, first to the vestibule next to the nurse’s station and then from the vestibule to the rest of the third floor of the hospital: freedom. There was no other way out. There were no windows or any other doors to the outside. She decided an exit plan is not a dumb thought, and got up to take another look into the hallway. By now the NURSE chant had slowed down, and she thought it would be better to know what’s going on in the ward since her bedroom door doesn’t lock. It doesn’t even have a doorknob, so she’s not safe cloistered in there with Nancy. Nancy’s not a threat but she is a distraction. Amelia started to wonder why she’s thinking in terms of threats and distractions as she returned to the doorway to a lively scene. To her right under the emergency light at the end of the hall she saw two patients arm in arm pivoting away from the only remaining good wall and strolling down the hallway. They were talking to each other intensely. Amelia could make out a hospital gown on one of them and knew that was Bob, who had no one to bring him clothes so he has to wear hospital gowns day and night. The other figure is a stout man with bulging eyes. That’s Carl. Carl and Bob both have delusions or hallucinations, Amelia’s not sure which ones, but only Carl had spent time in the quiet room, screaming and thrashing away at them. Now they looked more peaceful than ever, locked into each others’ eyes, promenading. They were so peaceful it spooked Amelia. To her left, still in the bedroom area she saw some patients sitting cross-legged outside their doors. Farther down, one large person was knocking on the locked door that contained the shower as if someone was occupying it. And farther on, a small group of patients made a sharp right turn across from the nurses’ station, just before the body pile, and into the multi-purpose room. Once in a while something in the body pile moved, an arm twitched or a hip flexed, but it was not looking good for them, and they were completely silent. 

Where were the nurses? They had to have heard the calls, Amelia thought, they had to see the patients’ bodies almost directly in front of the their station… Right then a slinky figure in white fell like from the ceiling right before her eyes then pounced back up, two wide white eyes and and a huge smiling mouth with bright razor sharp teeth smiling, dark fluids dripping around the face area. Amelia let out one quick yelp and slammed the door, put her shoulder to it to hold back whatever that white glowing monstrosity was, but for no reason at all. There was no pounding on the door or anything to indicate agitation, or even a presence. Not sure if the silence was the good or bad kind, Amelia readied herself, counted to ten, then swung the door open. All she could make out is Bob and Carl promenading, and the patients sitting by their doors, like this was a normal day, except it was night and all the lights except the two emergency ones were out. And oh yea, the body pile. 

Amelia remembered the group going into the multi-purpose room across from the nurses’ station and the exit doors, and made her move, trying not to look at the bodies. She flung herself down the hall on light feet and slipped into the MPR in near-silence. Christine was there opening every plastic cup of juice she could find, apple then orange then apple then orange, arranging them on the linoleum floor in columns. Jody was there rifling through the drawer next to the juice cabinet for tiny packets of salt and pepper. When she found a salt packet she’d gently tear it open then pour it onto her tongue like it’s candy. And long-haired Michael was there sitting at a table in a corner clutching the broken stereo. Amelia moved toward the safety of his friendly face but kept her back to the wall to maintain a vantage point. “Are you getting any channels?” she asked. “Just one. It’s talk radio, hyperlocal.” “Are they talking about the power outage?” “Yes.” “Oh wow! What are they saying?” Amelia excitedly leaned closer. She felt best with Michael and Jody. The two of them plus Jody, who was currently increasing her salt intake, had instantly formed a little clique. But Mike showed a side of himself that Amelia hadn’t seen before. “They’re speaking to ME ONLY,” he snarled, “I can’t tell you the details but they’re carrying out their plan, okay?! Jesus Christ!” Then he pulled a 180. “I want to protect you Amelia, you can’t get caught up in this,” and Amelia nodded seriously, and as she nodded she slyly moved her ear a bit closer to the radio. For some reason the darkness sharpened her sense of hearing so she didn’t need to get too close to hear the station that Mike was playing. It was static, nothing but static. Crestfallen, she looked into his eyes and said “Okay Mike, I won’t ask any questions as long as you protect me.” Michael smiled but turned serious as he held on to the stereo and kept one eye out for anyone else trying to approach them. In her seat next to Mike, Amelia scanned the MPR for nurses and noticed Marla for the first time. Her head was brighter than the emergency lights, almost as bright as that freaky creature that scared Amelia half to death. Marla’s hair was fluorescent white and stuck up in high pigtails directly at the sides of her head over her ears. Amelia never could place an age on Marla because of the child’s hairstyle on this woman with dark glass skin, deep crow’s feet around big green eyes, the only wrinkle in a smooth face. Christine started chugging her juices, switching from the apple column to the orange column and back and forth like she’s in a race against time, but Amelia’s watching Marla, sitting by herself at a table near Christine, grinning like she has a dark secret but sitting so still you’d think she was a doll. Amelia considered talking to Marla whom she’s been avoiding during her whole stay until she heard horrible coughing sounds. Christine was projectile puking orangey-red bile and she was retching like she’d wake the dead. A figure in a white nurse’s uniform jumped toward her. So there’s the nurse, Amelia thought. The nurse flew over to Christine to help her up while she was puking and shaking and gargling on the floor, but she wasn’t getting up. Something weird was going on, it looked like the nurse was… holding her down. The nurse put her face right up to Chistine’s like she was sniffing, then opened her mouth way too wide and chomped down on Christine’s cheek, blood seeping onto both their faces. Christine was trying to scream as the nurse chewed and sucked on her cheek flesh. Amelia froze as the second night nurse ran over to them both, pushing the other nurse away not to save Christine, but to eat Christine. She got a huge bite out of Christine’s neck, the blood started squirting, and Amelia unfroze in a snap, jumped up from the table. Her metal chair scraped against the floor and she froze again at the sound, but the nurses were fighting over Christine’s body, now completely limp. They’re biting and chewing and lapping up blood and puke and intestines and had no concern for squeaky chairs. Amelia looked to Michael and Jody, who’d let her salt packets fall to the floor and had backed away from the MPR’s kitchen area. They were in the far left corner, terrified. Amelia knew it was time to get them all the fuck out of there. She nodded her head toward the hall then put her finger to her lips, and the three of them moved briskly but silently out of the MPR into the hallway, an arm’s length from the body pile. She whispered to Mike and Jody, “they’re the only two nurses here, but there’s a security officer somewhere, and that guy who does our vitals might be here as well, do you know what time his shift starts? I think it’s Joe?” Jody replied, “5am”. Michael added “The radio show host said it was half past 4,” and they looked at each other’s faces thinking the same thing: Joe has the keys. If they timed it right, Joe could save them. If they could get to the door at the same time he does, they could all run out of the psych ward together and lock the nurse beasts in behind them. “The only clock is in the nurses’ station, but you can’t see it from outside,” Jody offered again. “It’s 4:30!” Mike shouted, indignant. Amelia ignored them and began directing. “Michael, keep an eye on the MPR. If the nurses or whatever the fuck they are get bored with Christine and Marla, make a noise. But stay very quiet. Maybe just wave your hands a lot. Actually, don’t make a noise.” Michael nodded and turned back toward the direction of where Christine used to be but was now a mess of pulp and bone. Marla was still there, but she’d stood up and was raising both her arms into the ceiling. Marla’s head titled up toward the ceiling as well, and Michael could see her lips moving and body swaying. The swaying became thrashing and whatever she was mumbling was not quite English, and getting louder until a sharp gargling sound cut her off. Her body thrashed to the ground and convulsed, spit bubbling at the sides of her mouth. Amelia was facing Jody and saw none of this. “Jody, you come with me to the nurse’s station, NOW,” she instructed. But before Jody and Amelia could move, Michael waved his hands at Amelia. “They’re done with Christine,” he whispered without taking his eyes off of the demonic creatures in white. “Marla started having a seizure…,” Mike trailed off. Amelia and Jody craned their necks to see into the room and Marla’s neon white hair was so dark as if it’d been dyed black. The nurse-type things moved on to Marla, defenseless on the floor having a medical episode. “I don’t think we have much time before they notice us. Jody, let’s go.” But Jody didn’t move. Amelia shout-whispered, “Jody, come on.” But she was staring at the pile of broken bodies of the patients who tried to make a run for it and forgot how short the hallway was, or how walls work. Amelia had an idea. “Jody do you want to stay here?” “Yes,” she said to Amelia but kept her eyes on the possibly dead patients. “Okay, Jody, Mike, listen. I’m going to get into the nurses station and find the clock and whatever else. You two, can you distract the nurses with these half-dead bodies? Can you feed them to the nurses? They’re maybe all fully dead, maybe not, but I think the nurses are attracted to patients who need, like, medical attention or something. No time to check, you gotta chuck those bodies in and hope I’m right!” “Aye-aye” said Michael who saluted Amelia and tapped Jody on the arm who saluted Amelia as well. She nodded at them then turned to face the nurses’ station.

Two of the patients sitting in the hallway had gathered in front of the nurse’s station. They were wiping their hands down the glass and jiggling the doorknob, tapping their palms on the wood and thick possibly bulletproof glass. Amelia could not remember their names. She saw Bob and Carl still promenading the hallway clasped together, and turned back to the two other men across from her. All she remembered were their medications, Latuda, Librium, Lithium, Lexapro… then she remembered! Jim who wanted to be called Jennie, and Jeff, who had all three come up on the same day. Amelia stood up and approached them. In a low and friendly voice she called their names and they turned to face her, “Is there something you guys want? I’m going in, can I get you anything?” Jeff, protective of Jennie, replied “Jennie wants to shower but the door is locked. I want to take my Librium. No one is in there and we can’t get in. We’ve been trying for hours.” “The lights went out only like half an hour ago but okay, maybe if we work together we can get in. Let me think….” replied Amelia. She glanced back at Mike and Jody shoving the first body from the pile into the MPR and hoped that patient was just alive enough to get the cursed nurses’ special attentions. “Let’s pick the lock open,” she suggested. “With what?” from Jennie. “I don’t know, I don’t know! Fuck!” Amelia felt desperate and couldn’t think straight. The nurses station was designed to prevent patients from getting in and Amelia had no clue how to beat it. She cried in a whisper, “Can we beat the door down?” and Jennie replied “We can try. But we were trying to get the guard’s attention first to open the door for us.” Amelia stood on tip-toe and saw the fat legs of the security guard. They weren’t moving. She tried hitting the thick glass but the legs didn’t even twitch. Amelia hated to do this but she had to. “Jennie, Jeff, the nurses are in the multipurpose room, did you see them?” “Oh, we didn’t!” Jeff shouted, followed by a loud “Can we get the shower key? Jennie is sweating and she doesn’t like how it feels” in the direction of the room. Both creatures turned their heads abruptly toward us. I ducked next to the body pile straight into Mike and Jody as the nurses leapt with animal prowess onto Jennie. “What are you doing to him?” Jeff cried and grabbed a nurse’s rippling shoulder. “I need my Librium!” Jeff shouted into the back of the creature’s head, and before Jeff had the chance to notice is creature-ness, he was attacked. With one nurse on Jennie and the other nurse on Jeff, it was up to either Amelia, Mike, or Jody to search their uniforms for the keys. It was an insane idea but this was the time and place to act insane. Blood and guts were flying everywhere while the nurses went nuts on Jennie and Jeff’s sacrificed bodies. Out of nowhere Jody leapt up into the air, slapped her hand on the ceiling tile, then the floor as she crouched in superhero stance. “What the fuck?!” Mike and Amelia said in unison but Jody didn’t notice. The salt was coursing through her veins, her heart pumping faster than ever before, so fast and loud Jody couldn’t hear anything outside of her body. Her blood was moving so fast she could sense it heating up, that any second it will overheat and her circulatory system will boil her alive. As the salt swam through her veins and her body started to react she understood she had to sacrifice herself before the salt fully kicked in and she got cooked alive. With the granulated courage practically bursting her veins already, Jody was no longer afraid. She sidled up to the feeding nurse demons and began patting them down. They don’t notice, their hunger too great and Jennie and Jeff’s bodies too tasty, especially Jennie with all that greasy sweat. Jody struck her arm out once, then twice and hit directly into a pocket. She covered her red pulsing hand over the angular lump of keys as her blood pressure spiked high again and her body sprang toward the ceiling. This time she landed less gracefully, more like a spill, her body exploding into hot nasty pieces. It was more than enough to get the nurses attentions. One of them froze in her feeding stance. She sensed it: Jody needed medical attention. The nurse’s claws loosened from Jeff’s gorged bloodied body and her head snapped toward the slush that was Jody. The nurse monster hissed and unrolled its tongue in the direction of Jody’s fluids and pieces. Mike and Amelia stared in horror as something from Jody’s direction hit Mike lightly in the face. He sputtered and spit and wiped his hands over his face frantically. Amelia saw a quick glint of metal: Jody had flung the keys to her friends in one final moment of glory. Amelia grabbed them from the blood mess then grabbed Mike’s shocked shoulders. “I need you to protect me. Can you keep those psychos busy while I go around them into the station?” “I promise. There’s three bodies left in the pile. I won’t let you down.” “Alright. This is it”, said Amelia, “and get ready to run toward me if I shout!” All Amelia could think about was that clock, and finding out what time Joe would enter this bloody freak show from hell and open the door to freedom. She gave a wide berth to the Jody/Jennie/Jeff feeding frenzy and started trying every key in the lock. There were five keys, and only 3 fresh bodies left, and the fuckers were not slowing down. The first key didn’t fit. The second key didn’t fit. The third key didn’t fit. The fourth key didn’t fit. Amelia paused to check on Mike. He had only one body left to throw at the nurses. Then it struck her. The vestibule! “The keys to the vestibule doors are on this keychain, what the fuck am I doing here!?” she thought to herself angrily. Moving faster now she went in the reverse direction, giving wide berth to the feeding again, and stopped at the vestibule door. “Mike”, she whispered loudly, “Mike, get over here.” Mike slid the last body to the nurses and ran to Amelia’s side hopping around like he had to pee real bad. “Open it!” he yelled. “I’m trying!” She yelled back as she put the third key in the lock and it jammed itself in all the way. With no time to spare, she pushed open the door and Mike and Amelia flung themselves into the vestibule and slammed the door behind them. They breathed heavy for a moment while the nurse creatures pounded their fists on the door, but Mike and Amelia were unscathed, and the creatures, sensing no medical attention needed, slipped from view. In the safety of the vestibule with no threats around them, their adrenaline started to downshift. The two psych patients looked at each other and burst into laughter. They slumped down to the floor, their laughter and breathing starting to slow until eventually they were silent. Mike looked to Amelia and asked her what he’s been dying to ask her since the first day she got locked up, when he first saw her walk through those same doors they were on the other side of now. He had been sitting outside the multipurpose room and held out the squishy excuse of a pen, saying to her, “Here, you’re going to want this.” In her dazed state she stared back, then took the gift. “Thanks”, she said, wondering what the fuck that weirdo was talking about. Mike looked at Amelia that very same way and finally, finally asked her, “Why are you in here?” Amelia sighed and parted her long bangs that had grown over her eyes while she was stuck in that hell hole. A scrape the shape of a large upside-down tear drop had begun to crust and scab over. “I was at a pool party with my friends. We were drinking and I got some pills and went into the pool shed. Before I could fade out I tied the vacuum hose around my ankles and dove into the pool. I hit my head along the bottom while they were pulling me out.” Mike was silent for a moment, reflecting on how he got brought up to this place after detoxing in the psych emergency room. “Damn,” he said to himself. Amelia shrugged. They both looked straight ahead at the final locked door, the slab of wood dividing the space between the nightmare behind them, and the outside world ahead of them. 

The Greatest Literary Prick of Our Times

An excerpt from Chapter 24 of the new biography

At 10:30, he got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and vomited. He was 47 years old and still had a couple months unemployment compensation coming. Although it was six years since he had last slept with a woman, he still masturbated frequently, using an old shoehorn, bacon grease, and a Squeegie doll. It was a trick he learned from Henry Miller, who was a great writer, too, but he felt his work picked up where Miller left off.

His kitchen table/work desk was littered with 17 tall cans of Schlitz Malt, a pint of I.W. Harper’s, and a half-pint of Popov. “I did some good work last night,” he thought, as he looked across the smog-filled Los Angeles morning air into the courtyard of the motel-style slum complex next door (a mirror image of his own building), where some Mexican rugrats where making an unholy racket running their Big Wheels over the neighborhood cats. He put a sheet in the typewriter and began.

“At 10:30, I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and vomited. I was 47 years old and still had a couple months unemployment compensation coming. Although it was six years since I last slept with a woman, I still masturbated frequently, using an old shoehorn, bacon grease, and a Squeegie doll. It was a trick I learned from Henry Miller, who was a great writer, too, but I felt my work picked up where Miller left off.”

“This is the FUCKING STUFF, Jack” he chortled in wonderment of his own talent, when the buzzer went off. It was his landlady, Jessica Sue Huorflees, who had dragged herself away from her usual post at the slime-ridden pool where she’d been sunning her stretch marks to harass him about the back rent. Her platinum blond wig, bad teeth, and sagging tits and ass (doing unalterable damage to her black string bikini) all made him glad he’d already had his morning retch. “It’s the 18^th, for God’s sake—” she started, but he was ready. 

“Shit, you know I’m good for it. I’m as dependable as the Federal Government, and you know how fucked up they are, but they always pay off. The checks will be in Friday. So we’ll be all even then.”

“Christ, I hope so. You know, I could boot you out and rent this dump to a family of 16 illegal aliens for twice the rent. Those little beaners know how to pull their weight.”

“Yeah, yeah—Friday for sure, Jessica,” and he closed the door. In the refrigerator was still almost a half bottle of Night Train, and, pouring himself a glass, he got back to work.

“Yeah, yeah—Friday for  sure, Jessica,” I said, while the hot Los Angeles sun burnt through the front of my robe. I still had the remnants of my morning erection, and with the hot sun and my perverse interest in mortified female flesh, the purple head of my engorged member came peeking through the folds.

“You know, you’re not built bad for an old, broken-down wino,” said Jessica, giving my blue-veined battering ram a caress as she slid into my apartment. “You’re a real fucking slob, did you know that?” she said, giving her property a glance before she got down on her knees to work me over. She was properly amazed at the dimensions the old divining rod reached, “Jesus, is that all yours?”

I laid her out on the sofa, home of a thousand cigarette butts, and fished out one of her tits from the swimsuit. It was like holding a huge piece of blood pudding. Her bottom was down. I put it in. I put it in again. It was like the Taj Mahal in there. “Oh god, oh gaawwdd,” she squalled, “I guess maybe Friday would be o.k.”

He had written so long and well that he figured he deserved a break. Plus, he was out of Night Train. He went to the corner liquor store, run by a middle-aged Chinese couple who sometimes gave him credit. As he walked into the store, he saw the couple’s 86-year-old mother down on her knees scrubbing the floor, as usual. “I guess it makes her feel useful,” he thought, as he accidentally stepped on one of her fingers, making the sound of a snapping breadstick. The old woman didn’t make a peep. “Inscrutable bastards, these Chinks,” he reflected, as he got a couple of six-packs, a fifth of Old Grandad, a bottle of M/D 20/20, a handful of 12-cent cigars, and a beefstick.

“This should hold me ‘til this evening,” he said at the counter. “Put it on my tab—Friday is collection day, for sure.”

He was tired of the four walls of his apartment, so, after dropping the groceries, he walked to the corner bar. They let him run a tab there. It was late afternoon. The bar wasn’t crowded—only a few regulars staring blindly at the tv or rolling dice for drinks. Looking at the blank, beaten faces, he felt a wave of revulsion swirl through his body and settle in his gut where it formed a tight knot. He hated people. And yet, sometimes he had an urge to be amongst them, if only to remind himself that he hated them. It was a paradox. He was as full of paradoxes as a $5 Tijuana whore was of crabs. That was why he was such a great writer. You know, the profundity thing.

Sitting at the end of the bar was a woman. She was far too classy for this shithole. Maybe she had needed a drink bad and stopped at the first dump she came to at the freeway off-ramp. Late 30’s, but the tits were still holding up. Good ass, trim figure. Dressed in expensive good taste, not too much jewelry but what was there was the real thing. Hair cut short in a trendy, new-wave style and expertly frosted. He sat down next to her. “Whiskey and soda and another of whatever the lady’s having. Add it to the tab—Friday I’ll settle for sure.”

“Friday, my ass!” roared the bartender. “You already owe me $219.67. And since when the fuck did you start buying other people drinks with imaginary money?”

The woman peeled a fifty from her purse. “Forget it, I’ve got it,” she said. She turned to him. “I know you from the picture on your book, Pustulant Scabs Cover My Soul and Anus & Other Love Sonnets. I cried when I finished it.” She took a sip of her Bacardi on the rocks. “You look worse in person. Your face looks like it’s been hit repeatedly with a waffle iron. A dirty waffle iron. With grease and pieces of burnt stuff on it. Yet, sensitive. With an undercurrent of vulnerability that could tear the heart out of a woman.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told that.” 

“Listen, I’m an agent for MCA. I think I can help you. Drink up and let’s get out of here.” They finished their drink in silence. Outside in the parking lot she went to the Mercedes and unlocked the door. They were driving west on Sunset Blvd., then getting in an elevator and getting off at a suite on the 35^th floor. It was like a dream. 

We walked in her office. Three of my apartments could have fit in it. Hundreds of feet below us the Strip could be seen through plate glass. She sat on the edge of a huge marble-top desk and crossed her legs. Her legs were good. I got down and started kissing her knees. She groaned and lay back on the desk. I nibbled my way up to her thighs.

“I usually handle rock stars,” she said. “Bowie, Jagger, Johnny Rivers. But I think you’re ripe for that audience. You don’t realize it, but you’re a God to the young people.” I ripped off her panties. There weren’t even any shit stains. Like I said, class. I ran the bridge of my nose along the lips of her cunt. It was oozing, like fresh-heated doughnut glaze. With my thumbs I gently opened the petals of her flower. “Squish, squish,” it said. The clit popped out like a small, flaming tongue. I met it, tongue to tongue, then sucked it between my teeth roughly.

“Sweet Jesus,” she screamed. “Listen, I have a beach house in Malibu. Come live with me. You’ll never want for a thing, I promise you, oh, ooh, there again, baby. Oh, CHRIST—”

I went down on her again and again while she writhed like a wounded earthworm, knocking telephones and 8×10 glossies off the desk with every orgasm. My front was covered with cum and spit from my eyebrows to my belt buckle. Hours went by, it seemed. Suddenly, my mind went far away. For the first time in years, I thought of my friend, Harry.

“Harry had been a prizefighter, a postal worker, a wino, a computer programmer, the head of public relations for AT&T, a pimp, a merchant marine, an agent for the FBI, a slave trader in Tangier, a phone-in astrologer, a newspaper delivery boy, and Professor of Humanities at Columbia. He wrote the second-best prose coming out of America. There is no need to mention who wrote the best. I’ll always remember the last time I saw him. I was taking out the garbage when I heard the sound of retching from the alley. It was Harry, lying in the gutter with a drunken hooker, alternately slugging from a bottle of brandy and spitting blood through the holes in his mouth where several recently missing teeth had been. Harry looked good—better than I’d seen him for 10 years.

Back at my place, I got her in the mouth while Harry fucked her in the ass. After that, we sat up drinking port wine and hatching our plan to bring the literary establishment to its knees.

“Who are you guys?” asked the woman, rinsing my jism off her teeth with some Gallo.

“I’m Norman Mailer,” said Harry. “And this is my friend, Truman Capote.” Then, Harry took the mouth while I reamed her out. It was a good night.

The next morning, Harry went to the hospital and died. “Poor bastard,” I thought when I heard the news. “It’s always the great ones that go. Oh well, less competition for me.” After all, it was a rough game we had gotten into.

Thinking of Harry’s last words, I stopped licking her cunt. Is this what I wanted? To be a sell-out? To live in a beautiful cage?  To have a life of comfort and ease with no responsibilities except eating pussy day and night?

“Honey, what’s the matter?” she said.

“Sorry, baby, but I just can’t make it. It’s just the way I am. Someday, I hope you’ll understand.”

“Nooo!” she screamed, and leapt off the desk toward me. Her legs were too weak to support her, and she fell on her face. Still, she crawled toward me, clawing wildly at my shoes as I headed toward the door. “Please, no, don’t leave. Everything I have—it’s yours. Don’t go—I love you…”

On the bus ride home, he stared out the window into the approaching dusk. In his lap was a torn-up job application—night watchman for the MCA building. “I can help you,” she had said. Women, he thought. They have a thousand ways to kill a man. Especially if he’s a real man. And the greatest living writer in the world.

Vigilante Dad

This was in the late eighties, right around the time the first Batman came out. I was six years old. Perfect time to see Batman in a little movie theater on Queens Boulevard with my dad. 

The movie affected me deeply but looking back, it was my dad who really started doing things that were Batman-like. 

First though, we made our own Batman movie. I played Batman, of course, and my friends from Sunnyside played Joker, Riddler, and Superman. My parents told me I was the director, but, of course, I was six. I mean I did dictate the script to my dad. But he filmed it and put it together. He was a professional filmmaker and he really went above and beyond with this Batman movie. For instance, he used the movie trick of spinning his camera in circles while holding my Batmobile Hot Wheel with a black sock in a room full of soft lights to make it look like Batman driving at night–and that was just for the credit sequence! Yes, there were credits. My dad taped episodes of the Adam West show and cut in the “KABLAM!” titles for the fight scenes, though he mostly relied on Danny Elfman’s music for Tim Burton’s movie. It was very, very well done. My mom directed the actors–she was an actress-turned-theater-director and had, albeit briefly, directed some soaps–and though I was technically the director, she’d often kick me out of the room if I was being a nuisance. 

My parents had split up for years. When I was one, my dad moved to Astoria with a new girlfriend–“I loved your father but I was never in love with him,” my mom told me later and she also told me this girlfriend was in love with him–but then he came back (though not for long) when I was three, then left again and moved into a different apartment in Astoria for another two years; I remember that one, an expansive (to me) basement apartment, a bat cave, that opened to a concrete wall; whether that girlfriend was still in the picture, I don’t know; my mom said what pissed her off the most about his leaving was how happy he seemed, returning to his artist life, unencumbered by a family. But then, for whatever reason, he came back. So this Batman movie was a reunion of sorts. 

But that was just the art stuff. Then my dad started acting like Batman. I don’t know if this was conscious or not, but looking back, it does seem like one thing led to the other. 

On our little block, 46^th Street–or Bliss Street–my downstairs neighbor and I were selling lemonade on a little table and two teenage boys came up and hurled it into the air. Joker stuff. They didn’t steal our earnings (if there were any) but I remember watching my dad chase them down the street, full throttle. 

From there, the story goes–if you believe my dad, and I choose to–that he chased the teenagers two more blocks and, when they reached Queens Boulevard, he followed them up the stairs to the 7 train and when the teenagers saw my dad was still coming for them, they hopped off the platform and onto the tracks and my dad did the same, kept chasing them halfway to the 40^th St. stop where he finally caught them. He brought them all the way back to our overturned lemonade stand on Bliss Street, holding the teenagers by the backs of their shirts, and made them apologize to my friend and me. 

Like Bruce Wayne, my dad was loaded. My lemonade-selling neighbor was a tenant. “We gentrified Sunnyside when we bought that house,” my mom said. 

My mom had been almost-mugged one night walking home from a performance; she was saved by her loud actress scream. I remember hearing it. I was awake in bed, waiting for her to come home. The whole block must’ve heard her. 

Still though, she insisted we get a garage; parking in Sunnyside was that much of a nightmare that she’d risk another mugging. 

The garage was on 39^th Ave. and 43^rd St. Part of a square of garages, maybe forty in all. 

Once, during the day, the three of us had just parked. As we were coming out, a trio of teenagers, standing atop the line of garages, pelted us with rocks. The glee of their sneak attack; I remember their laughing. And even as a six year old, I didn’t think what my dad did next was warranted. He chased them, same thing as last time. After locking up, my mom and I followed behind. When we caught up with my dad, he was in Skillman Park holding a blubbering teenage boy by his shirt sleeve. The teenager couldn’t stop crying, though he seemed relieved when my dad gave him something to do: to apologize to me and my mom. 

This is weird, no? That my dad, who left his family for four years, comes back and starts doing all this hero shit, getting teenage pranksters to say to his family what he couldn’t say himself: “I’m sorry.”

The Sweet Triumph of Doctor Gelato 

Through the pristine halls of Stockholm’s Nobel Institute, Doctor Marcus Gelato moved with careful, measured steps. His waffle cone cranium gleamed under the chandelier lights, rivulets of vanilla slowly trickling down his sugar-latticed skull. The condition that had once marked him as an outcast – Cranial Gelatus Syndrome – would today be recognized alongside humanity’s greatest achievements. 

As he approached the podium, ice cream dripping onto his collar, he reflected on the long journey that had brought him to this moment.

From his earliest days in academia, Marcus had faced discrimination that would have crushed a lesser spirit. His condition, a rare craniofacial anomaly that manifested as a fully functional ice cream cone head, complete with alternating flavors depending on his emotional state, had made him an object of ridicule The medical community had initially dismissed his condition as impossible, yet the Program in Craniofacial Biology at UCSF had documented his case as unique among developmental anomalies. Like many others with visible differences, he refused to let his disability define his limitations.

His story echoed those of other remarkable individuals who had overcome physical challenges to achieve greatness. Like Stephen Hawking, who revolutionized our understanding of the universe while battling ALS, Marcus transformed his perceived weakness into his greatest strength. The constant need to maintain his head’s temperature had led him to groundbreaking discoveries in thermodynamic biology, a field he essentially created from the ground up.

The breakthrough came during a particularly sweltering summer conference in Geneva. While other scientists struggled with the heat, Marcus’s unique condition led him to discover the fundamental relationship between cellular thermal regulation and consciousness. His paper, “The Thermodynamic Basis of Cognitive Function,” revolutionized neuroscience. Like Andrea Bocelli, who turned his blindness into a catalyst for developing extraordinary musical sensitivities Marcus had transformed his disability into a gateway for understanding human consciousness.

The Nobel Committee’s citation praised his “extraordinary contributions to our understanding of brain thermodynamics and consciousness.” The prestigious award, with its gold medal and substantial monetary prize was a victory for everyone who had ever been told their differences made them less capable.

Standing at the podium now, his head softening slightly under the warm lights, Marcus thought of the children born with various craniofacial conditions who might see in his success a reason to persist. Like Nick Vujicic, who transformed his life’s obstacles into opportunities for inspiring others, Marcus had become a symbol of possibility.

“The human brain,” he began, his voice steady despite the drop of vanilla rolling down his temple, “is not limited by its container.” He paused as a ripple of knowing laughter passed through the audience. “Whether that container is standard-issue bone or, in my case, a waffle cone, it’s the adaptability of our minds that defines us.”

The ceremony concluded with the traditional Nobel banquet where the chefs had thoughtfully provided a special cooling station for his comfort. 

As he accepted congratulations from his peers, Marcus reflected on how far society had come in accepting those who were different. His achievement stood as testimony to the fact that greatness could emerge from any form, that the human spirit could triumph over any physical limitation, and that sometimes the sweetest victories came from the most unexpected places.

20 more short stories presented by Outcast Press that don’t skirt around the many sides to sex work. Bad bitches and good guys. Creeps and kleptos. Nymphos and the needy. Eastern Bloc gangstresses to blackmailing e-girls. Yacht whores to yearning wives. Rent boys and triple-X stars. BDSM DVD kings and glory hole gawkers. Epstein wannabes and trafficking ring stingers. Dragsters and lot lizards. Every facet of prostitution, fetishism, and taboo/cathartic writing finds a haven here.

Includes the following pieces:

1. Razorblade Pussy by Manny Torres 
2. Boat Drinks by John Kojak 
3. Balloonatics by C.R. Abby 
4. The Doxxing Domme by Dan Baltic 
5. Toppings by Brandon Mead 
6. Girl Dinner by Paige Johnson 
7. Dead Fish by Annabel Costello 
8. Save Me, 6-Ft. Nazi Dominatrix by Charlie Babbit 
9. Eye Spy by Cody Sexton 
10. Honeysuckling by Ryan Warrick 
11. Cog Fuck by Neda Aria 
12. Ladyboy by Robb White 
13. Zombie Whorehouse by Sebastian Vice 
14. The Name of Your First Pet by Tom Leins 
15. Smalltown Boy by LG Thomson 
16. Perv Tax by Mark Burrow 
17. Deprivation of Character by Jeff Schneider 
18. Worms by James Jenkins 
19. Lot Lizard by JD Clapp 
20. Will-O’-The-Wisp by Aaron Paul Schaut 
21. Lewds by Slxt Vxmit

BUY A COPY HERE

The Splatter Meister Dies at the End

Krystoffer Beej Plutin knocked back another shot of rye and attempted to focus his swimming brain on the subject at hand: writing. 

Having just murdered his best friend, Roy Roy Buttecracke and his long-suffering cunty wife Murgatroyd, placing their duck taped bodies head to head in a walk in freezer, then watching them accumulate frosticles while he ‘bated, his writing felt turbocharged. 

And speaking of which, there was nothing like some classic fucking METAL to really rev his writing engine. He stabbed “play” on “Beyond the Realms of Death” covered by Andover, Mass. psychowhores Puke Graveyard, then changed his mind, got up from his taped-together chair, went out to the garage again, foraged deep beneath layers of old clothes and weathered copies of Mayfair edited by Graham Masterton, finally pulling out a raggedy-ass baggie with some poisonous silt of yellow rocks. 

He tucked the baggie in the front pocket of his black denim battle vest, covered with patches from Pussy Graveyard, Dick Delicious and the Tasty Testicles, Vomit Launch, Chunks Frenzy, Buttlicker Brummies and Horror Sleaze Trash Girls, brought it back to his study and began to chip relentlessly away at the stone, his balls crawling with desire, his three inches of hard mushroom cock leaking a trickle of clear liquid. 

“Me fer some of this low-grade meth shit,” he muttered to himself. Lifting his trusty tooter and doing a few bumps, he banged against the back of his chair, his entire body surging with the electric light orchestra. 

“I feel homicidal as shit,” he said. “Time for some more murder shenans.”

Without further ado, he used his new Onion router to delve beneath the surface of even the most taboo hardcore dark web shit to the truly nasty. Some of the images made him want to spew his Doritos, but he held it in, going in for the kill. Tightly cinched ligatures. Fixed and dilated pupils. Heads in bags with blood sludge smeared on the sides. Und so weiter, und so fort.

He logged into Facebook, then went live.

“Hey guys,” he said in his high-pitched nutless voice, “it’s the Four Twenty Double D D Goth Bitch Tittays Splatter Meister talkin’ right at ya live!!! How would you fuckers like me to show up at your door and cut your fucking head off? You’d like that, right? You’d even pay me for that privilege.”

Within a few minutes, he had 100 live viewers. By the time his obscenity-laced rant was over three hours later, he’d accumulated 3,000 viewers. Hot women were commenting with tittay flash. Even hotter women were dropping into his dm’s craving even a tiny taste of the Splattermaeister. They were blowing up his email with invitations to multiple beheadings, along with deposits to his Paypal.

***

“Welp, it’s been fun and games and shit, but now that I’ve sliced yer pretty face off and glued it to mines, played with your blood and slicked it over muh pud, ‘bated and busted out a nut rehearsing your murder in slow motion in muh head, saved some of the gooshier bits for muh spank bank, I’m exhausted if not somewhat demoralized.” He peeled the face away and dropped it on the floor, kicking the loathsome rubbery object away. A cat meowed, approached the face of its owner stealthily, then began to consume.

“How ya doin’ out there?” he roared into the microphone of his live podcast rig. 

Out in Internet land, the Splatter Meister’s jaded audience reciprocated his hard love for only himself. Hot men and women were peeling off their undies and stuffing then in their own mouths as they furiously ‘bated, looking straight at the camera so Krystoff could see their facial expressions as they worked length, girth and tight glistening snatch.

“Oh my goodness, this is better than sex,” he said to hisself, grunting and feeling his three inch mushroom rise once more.

“Should I write about this?” he asked.

The answer was a resounding yes.

He began furiously typing up his latest shenans as he continued to livestream. It wasn’t just the rock flowing through his veins, not even the certain knowledge that he had exerted the ultimate power, life and death, over other human beings, and done it repeatedly. It was the warm space cadet glow that accompanied understanding that the more outrageous the murder shenans, the more love, nay, adoration he received from his audience.

After a few months of house visits and livestreams in which he accumulated a body count to rival Gilles De Rais, after which he ‘bated and transcribed the results on his phone, he had enough for a collection, which he submitted to the top Splatterpunk publisher, an up-and-coming publisher called Skanky Bukkake Press.

The Splatter Meister began to win awards and the plaudits of his peers. He was interviewed in Cemetery Dance magazine and the revived Wicked Mystic and Bloodsongs. Tik Tok stans gave him rave reviews. He received so many thong panties in the mail that he started his own museum. People began to lop their own limbs off and use their last neural spasms and heroic surges of final life energy to mail them to him, leaking packages that revulsed him without causing him to quit his unboxing videos. He made more and more money, which in turn fuelled more murder junkets. He won five Splatterpunk Awards and received a special Bram Stoker Award that involved remaking the haunted house statuette in his own likeness. He was hosted by fans in South Africa and Brazil.

All of this murderous activity and his guilty feelings at long last caught up with him. Gulping blood thinners and chasing them down with vodka, he took his own advice and began to carve up his arms, making sure to cut across and not down, slicing his radial arteries till the red, red krovvy flowed. 

As his consciousness faded, Krystoff watched in abject horror as he saw one after another after another viewer leave his podcast and pop up on Books of Horror where his name was dragged through the mud. “Pollutin should have quit while he was ahead,” was the last nasty comment he saw on a new HWA forum thread. “Real murder is tired, and suicide livestreams are so 2015.”

His body had badly decomposed before it was scraped out of his easy chair by a crew in HazMat suits, who sealed it in a biohazard container and buried it in a landfill.

To this day, Krystoff Plutin’s sorry ghost weeps along the burning shores of Hell, telling his story to nobody. All his books were deleted by his publishers and within a few months after his death, he was completely forgotten.

THEES EES THEE ENT

Nips and Knives

Knife play, Anth thought, enjoying how the words clicked together like a bondage puzzle and bounded around inside her decadent mind. She’d never known or heard of its meaning or existence in the world of kink and fetish until she’d met D, when a chance meeting on Snapchat had brought them and their bodies together. “Mystery is the spice of life,” he’d told her one evening on the social media platform, his full name camouflaged from her.  

Dirty bastard, she thought, lying in bed. A pulse rippled through her g-spot, the nipples of her H-cup calcium cannons growing to bulbous proportions. Anth threw the bed covers off her, revealing her nude, racetrack-curved form, and looked down at the ginormous mounds of flesh attached to her chest which blocked out the view of her feet and toes. They make Devilish D squirt like an over-excited 13-year-old boy when he flops them out of my creaking bra. She smiled as the first few drops of love honey dribbled from her honey pot. Makes me so fucking horny. 

Anth’s hand went to her cunt, her index finger teasing the folds. 

“Mmm,” she said, biting her lower lip. Flesh crunched; a metallic taste flooded her mouth. Do I have time to click one out before her gets here with his bag of scream and orgasm-inducing tricks?  

Her digit slipped inside her slickness. Anth’s back arched, and her mind wandered to the top drawer of her bedside table. It was filled with various blades, stabbing and slicing weapons: butter, butcher, cheese, meat and fish-gutting knives. And, of course, the daddy of them all: the Bowie.

Let’s not forget the Kukri either, Anth thought, her breath exiting in trembling waves.

She gasped, her finger rubbing over the hard nub inside her twat’s hood as she thought about the night D had stormed into her house wielding the large Gurka weapon. 

* * *

Anth sat watching TV in nothing but a babydoll and a smile. Her front door stood ajar, as planned. 

What if he’s a lunatic? she wondered, wringing her sweaty hands together. The urge to close, bolt and barricade the main entrance to her house had her arse hovering mere inches off the sofa’s cushion. 

She sat back down, eyes darting towards the clock. Two minutes to midnight. 

“Be ready for me by the stroke of 12,” he’d told her. “I won’t be late.” 

Anth squirmed, her bladder pleading with her. 

I could just lock the door and turn the lights out. He’d think I’ve gone to bed, fed up with waiting. Was he seriously coming, or was he like all other men on social media: full of shit?

She glanced at the clock, her sexy nightie now glued to her back. Five past midnight.

Her heartrate slowed and a trembling laugh escaped her. Another one full of BS, giving it the big man, she thought, getting up and switching the TV off. Mind you, there must be something wrong with me, agreeing to something like that. Especially on a first—

Her front door kicked open with such force that it rebounded off the wall, causing a bang so loud it tore the stillness of the night in half. Anth thought her throat and lungs were going to tear asunder as a terror-scream emerged from her. 

A large, balaclava-wearing figure stood in her doorway, shoulders almost touching either side of the frame. 

“Now you’re going to get it, bitch,” he said. He parted one side of his army jacket and withdrew a Kukri from the waistband of his trousers. The living room light glinted off the steel as he slammed the door shut with the heel of his G.I. boot. 

“Jesus Christ!D . . . Is that you?!”

“Did I say you could talk, slut? I’ve seen you out on the streets, shaking those tits and wiggling that arse. You’ve been asking for it.”

Anth took a deep breath. It is him, she thought, recalling the scripted words he’d said he would utter as he ‘broke in.’

He strode forward, his heavy footwear thudding along her wooden flooring.

“Wait . . .” she began, but her breath hitched in her throat as he grabbed her hair and wound it around his gloved hand. 

He forced her up against the fireplace.

“Shit,” Anth said, her head yanked back. Liquid dribbled down her thighs, and she didn’t know if it was piss, jism or a mix of both. 

Anth screamed again, her lungs on fire, as he forced the blade beneath the hem of her flimsy garment and ripped upwards, tearing it open, her tits flopping out.

* * *

“Fuck. I’m coming, I’m coming!” Anth said now, her finger working overtime inside her pussy, the sheets under her soddening. “D,” she screamed. “D!”

Anth threw her head back, eyes closed, and then a rough, calloused hand wrapped around her throat. The tip of a thumb and index finger pushed up and into to the corners of her jaw. He’d informed her it was the safest way to do choke play.

Right on time, she thought, wondering when he’d sneaked in and how much he’d watched. “Don’t stop,” she said. “Please, D.”

The grip around her oesophagus closed and a squirt of come flooded out of her, followed by a second and third gush. “Fuuuck, D! Fuck. Let me feel it. Please, let me feel it. Now!”

“Not yet,” he whispered in her ear, and with that, his grip was gone and his weight was off her. 

“You fucking tease.” She laughed, opening her eyes. His six-foot-five naked frame towered over her. “Ooh, what do you have there?”

He smiled. “A new toy,” he said, holding up a knife with an eight-inch blade, its base wrapped in a gleaming black handle. 

“What’s that symbol on it?”

“That’s the best part.” He winked. “It’s a German knife, and that sign on the haft is a Swastika. Apparently it belonged to an SS officer, and it was stripped off his dead body at a prisoner camp. The officer was, by all accounts, a specialist in sexual torture, acts of depravity, devil-worshiping and human experimentation.”

Anth’s mouth formed a perfect O. “How do you know all this? It sounds made-up.”

“The guy I buy all my military stuff from down at my local ex-serviceman’s shop gets his hands on the odd specialty item now and then, which he keeps to one side for me. He knows his shit, trust me.” He shrugged. “He also said it’s possessed by the officer. Not that I believed him for a second.”

Fresh excitement arose in Anth. “Use it on me,” she begged. “Threaten to cut up my clit and cleave my tits off.”

“Oh, that was the plan,” he said, stepping forward. 

The sight of his erection caught Anth’s eyes and she giggled. “Are you going to poke me with that thing too?”

He nodded. “Goddamn ri—Fuck!” D said, flying forward as if yanked by an invisible force.

The tip of the blade plunged into Anth’s neck.

* * *

She gargled as, inch by inch, the steel sank deeper into her flesh. 

“Anth!” D said, tears streaming down his face.

He failed to stop his hand from turning. The knife twisted in her throat and violently ripped out against his will. And he found he couldn’t release his grasp on the hilt no matter how hard he tried.

D’s hand lashed out again and again, tearing an eyeball free, hacking at Anth’s face, slicing her nose off, mutilating her tits. Blood pissed up the walls behind the headboard and pooled around D’s feet, gluing him in place.

“Anth! Anth! Oh, my God!” 

As her body twitched, her numerous wounds now dribbling instead of gushing, his knife hand turned on him.

“No, Jesus, no!”

The steel swept downwards, emasculating him, and then the tip of the blade rammed through the underside of his mouth, pinning his tongue to his palate.

D stumbled backwards, smashing against bedroom furniture, crashing to the floor.

His body writhed a few times before lying still.

Overheard, Overlooked

Mother didn’t waste any time when Father took off and left us. Her taste in men deteriorated sharply. That was only my opinion, however. To judge from the sounds that emanated from her throat and other orifices, and her room, which was uncomfortably next to mine, she enjoyed her new mate with considerably greater volume and vigor than I’d experienced when life at home was still normal. 

The neighbors upstairs could hear. Maybe the ones around the block as well.

Though I knew it wasn’t possible, I was sure the other girls at school could hear her too. They’d say, my mother would never make sounds like that. And I was mortified for no reason.

He never made a sound, might as well not have been there. I can’t say what would’ve been more disturbing, his presence with, or his absence from her.

He claimed to be a writer, although I never saw him write anything, or even do so much as pick up a pencil. He wasn’t famous, and was most likely unemployed, otherwise he wouldn’t have had so much time to spend with Mother in her boudoir.

At other times, he sat in the living room and pretended to think. Stared into space so anyone present might suppose he was involved with plot and character. Mother said not to disturb him. Clearly, I alone saw through this charade. 

Some time after he’d installed himself, when it was obvious I wouldn’t dematerialize or go away on my own, he made various approaches, in the form of recommendations of books he thought I ought to read.

He stopped after I told him what I thought of his proposed sacred texts, Naked Lunch and Lolita. 

He never behaved inappropriately, however. He was trying to be friendly. Which was even creepier.

One evening he suggested we go out for dinner and a movie. He wanted to see The Shining. The reviews were panegyric.

“Stephen King,” I said. “Now there’s a real writer.”

He shot me a strange and knowing look. 

To my disappointment, the movie was nothing like the book. Some people’s innate ability to speak silently to those similarly gifted, and to hear the thoughts of others, living and dead, is incompletely explored. But I identified strongly with the weird little boy, who was nothing like me, and the hysterical freak who was nothing like my mother. The writer on the screen was the identical twin of the fellow who’d occupied my father’s spot on their loudly complaining mattress, and I told him I thought so. “You’re just like him. Except for the typewriter. You don’t even have a typewriter. I bet you don’t even know how to type.”

“Well you’re right about that. So…you think I’m crazy, huh?”

“Yes, I do. And no doubt even worse than that.”

He smirked, raised an eyebrow exactly like a frame from the movie we’d just endured. A shudder ran through me, which he caught.

“Not too smart, to tell someone whom you think might be insane that you think he’s nuts. Especially if he’s a writer.”

“You’re no writer. Stephen King’s a writer. He works hard, and sells millions of books. And I hope that scary bear from the final scene comes and devours you so I never have to hear…so I never have to see you again.”

He looked at Mother, who tried to seem appalled at my outburst. “Hear that?” he said. “She wants the bear to eat me.”

He growled like a bear, and licked his teeth with his repulsive tongue. Mother giggled. I covered my ears, closed my eyes and shook my head.

That night, the apartment echoed with bestial roars and moans from the depths of my worst nightmares.

From that horrible evening on, whenever he suggested restaurants or the cinema, I said I felt unwell. 

Since he’d failed to influence my taste in literature and film, he might’ve thought he could push his crude aesthetics my way. 

One of Mother’s friends had been awarded a show at a gallery located on an avenue known for really important art galleries. We were on our way to join her there for the opening. 

Some contemporary art charlatan had filled one of the gallery shop windows with a rotten mattress dredged up from the river, covered with greenish-brown stains and remnant sewer-weed. He or she’d tied it in half, so it looked like what the hippie girls at school see when they give themselves gynecological exams with their handmirrors. 

He noticed I was looking at this thing and must’ve read my thoughts. He stopped, pointed, leered. “Hey what’s that remind you of?”

Didn’t even think about it. “Your face,” I said. 

A moment passed, in which I thought he might pull a cleaver from his coat. Instead, he laughed maniacally. 

“That’s good,” he said. “You’re ready to face the world.”

The writer took off not long after that incident. Mother was inconsolable. Disgusted with men, she bought a dog, and called him Culo.

Culo was unusual. Unusually large, for starters, and he tended to stare at one. Without even opening that big slobbering mouth of his, which looked disturbingly like an engorged, diseased vagina, he told me, “You’re the writer. Don’t worry if you can’t think of what to write. I’ll tell you.”

Picklesmack

“ASS TO ASS, HARRIET!” Murray Silverman shouts to his wife over the crowd of screaming pickleballers packed into the Fontainebleau Las Vegas luxury suite.

Harriet Silverman is stark naked, kneeling with her palms placed down on a large folding metal table set up in the middle of the suite. Drugged up and stony-eyed, her pupils are dilated while her face is covered in a thin film of cold junk sweat. The inside of her right forearm is rife with track marks, and a large area of flesh around the inside of her elbow has turned a bluish-brownish-green color, swollen and infected with thick yellowish puss oozing out. Her amputated left arm ends in a sewn-off stump above the elbow. A trail of fresh semen runs down her chin from her bottom lip.

Beatrice Goldfarb kneels on all fours on the table beside Harriet, facing the opposite direction. She’s wearing no shirt, just a black lace bra with one shoulder strap ripped and hanging down over her bruised arm. Her pink Lululemon pickleball skirt is hiked up above her waist and she’s wearing no panties. Her ass cheeks are dotted with cigar burns while blood trickles down her right cheek from a set of human teeth marks that punctured her skin. A pickleball paddle lies next to her on the table, its broken-off handle smeared with blood, feces, vaseline and buffalo wing sauce. 

Sidney Goldfarb, Beatrice’s husband and pickleball mixed doubles partner, is standing behind the table between the two women, holding a thick black double-headed silicone dildo above his head and shaking it wildly for the crowd of pickleballers who are thrusting their fists into the air and chanting “ass to ass!” in perfect synchronized harmony.

Sidney looks down at Harriet and Beatrice, and says, “OK, ladies, time for the grand finale – now let’s bring it on home for these hungry ballers!”

“But Sidney, it’s huuurting me,” Beatrice slurs as a fresh stream of pinkish blood-infused piss runs down the inside of her thigh. She gulps, hiccups then vomits up a combination of vodka, semen, stale cheetos and moldy lasagna onto the table in front of her.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Beatrice!” Sidney bellows out and then looks back at Murray, waving his arm forward furiously.

Shaking his head and cursing loudly, Murray storms his way forward, pushing his way through the crowd of cheering pickleballers until he reaches the table where Harriet now lies on her stomach, face down in her own puke. He grabs the back of Harriet’s long filthy disheveled gray hair and wraps it tightly around his fist. With a quick strong snap of his wrist, he violently yanks and twists Harriet’s head up and around so that her sweat-drenched face is just inches from his own.  

“Listen to me, goddamnit!” Murray screams at Harriet. “The national senior pickleball tournament starts in two fucking days and we need – I repeat need – this money to pay the entry fees!” Murray clenches and twists his fist harder around Harriet’s hair while his face contorts into a psychotic scowl. “So you’re going ass to ass with Beatrice or you’re getting tossed off that fucking balcony onto the Las Vegas fucking Strip! Now pick it the fuck up and get back on your goddamn knees, Harriet!” 

With a quick hard downward shoulder pivot and forearm thrust, Murray slams Harriet’s face into the metal table, crushing her cheekbone and breaking three of her front teeth, then jerks her head back up just as quickly. With his free hand, he grabs an open plastic bottle of cold water from the table and raises it to Harriet’s dried cracked lips – allowing her to take a long pull – then splashes the rest of the water into her face. “Hopefully that’ll wake your ass up,” he mutters as he throws the bottle to the floor.

Refreshed by the cold water, Harriet rises back up to her knees and nods slowly at Murray while spitting a tooth out. “OK, peaches,” she mumbles through her broken teeth. “You know I want that pickleball title just as bad as you do, and I’ll do whatever it takes. But I need my fix first, Murray, I need it now! Please please please go get Roach!”

Murray nods his head to Harriet then looks over to a large muscle-bound black man standing at the end of the table five feet away and watching them closely. The man is wearing red leather pants, a pair of Air Jordan 4 “Cactus Jack” Retros, and an open red leather vest over a six-pack stomach and chiseled pecs, with bulging tattooed biceps crossed over his chest. He wears a wide-brim black fedora on his head with a black mink scarf wrapped around his neck.

“Yo, Roach!” Murray shouts to the man over the crowd noise and waves him over.

Roach walks over to Murray with raised eyebrows while Sidney joins them with the black dildo still in his hand. “What the fuck’s goin’ on here, Silverman?” Roach asks. “I got me some high-payin’ clients gettin’ impatient here, dog! So you better jump start that skanky-ass ho and get her ass back to work, mothafucka!”

“Don’t sweat it, homeboy,” Murray says to Roach. “My girl’s all good, she just needs some more of the he-ro. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“What the fuck, Murray!” Roach exclaims, shaking his head and then nodding toward Harriett, who’s staring at them from the table through vacant zoned-out eyes and hooded eyelids. “That nasty-ass bitch already shot up so much of my junk she nearly put my black ass outta business! An’ you pickleballin’ niggas already owe me big, man! So how the fuck am I gonna get paid for givin’ her flaccid white ass mo’ my junk. Murray?”

“We got you, brotha’,” Murray says. “We ballin’ hard this week at the senior natties, bringin’ home some fat stacks, yo. We payin’ you back plus interest, a’ight?”

Roach turns his head and looks at his cousin, Poptart, who now stands next to Roach after walking over from the back of the suite. “What you think, Pops? Should I trust these pickleballin’ fools with mo’ my skag?”

Poptart studies Murray closely and then glances over at Harriet. He looks back to Roach, shrugs his shoulders and says, “These niggas can ball, cuz. My brotha’ Curtis saw ’em play up in Pepper Pike back when he was hustlin’ up around that way. Said they f’real. I say give that pickleballin’ ho some mo’ smack, then her’n the other bitch can go ass to ass, then they make us some green at the senior natties.”

Roach nods his head in agreement, then looks over to Murray and Sidney. “A’ight boys. We’ll tune yo’ bitches up with the H, but then we better be gettin’ some ass to ass. No mo’ ’scuses, dig?”

Murray nods to Roach and extends his closed fist. “We good, dog. Just hit ’em between the toes, those stems can’t take any more of the beast.”

Roach bumps Murray’s fist and then leans over and whispers something into Poptart’s ear. Poptart nods and walks over to the bedroom door, opens it and walks through, then closes it behind him. About a minute later, Poptart emerges from the bedroom, walks over and hands a plastic zip-lock bag to Roach.

Roach turns to Harriet, then leans down to the table and whispers gently into her ear. “Shhh, just lay down and relax, baby girl, papa bear got just what you need.” 

“Thank you, daddy,” Harriet whimpers in a soft voice as she turns over onto her stomach. She bends her right knee and raises her foot to where Roach can hold it with one hand. Using his free hand, Roach places a hypodermic needle between two of Harriet’s toes. After looking closely for a usable vein, Roach drives the sharp needle through the web of her toes and presses his thumb down on the plunger, slowly injecting a clear fluid into her foot. Almost immediately, Harriet turns over and rolls her head back while closing her eyes. She opens her mouth halfway and smiles up at the ceiling in pure dope euphoria.

Roach gently pets Harriet’s damp matted hair back while planting a soft kiss on her forehead. “Now that’s my baby girl,” he whispers as he checks her pulse and gazes into her cold empty eyes.

After injecting Beatrice the same way as Harriet, Roach looks over to Murray and Sidney with Poptart at his side. “OK, fellas, we got your pickle-bitches nice and warmed up, now let’s get ‘em back to–”

“Oh fuck!” Poptart shouts, cutting off Roach while looking back at the table.

Roach, Murray and Sidney all look over and follow Poptart’s startled gaze.

Harriet and Beatrice are both convulsing violently on the table while scratching furiously at their faces with their mouths foaming. Behind them, the “ass to ass” crowd chant stops and the room goes completely silent.

Sidney looks at the two women curiously and asks, “Why are they doing that?”

“Bitches be codin’!” screams Poptart.

“Coding?” asks Sidney.

“OD’ing!” shouts Roach. “They’re overdosing, man!” 

Roach scowls at Poptart and asks, “Which fuckin’ needle you give me, nigga?”

Poptart grabs the needle out of Roach’s hand and looks closely at a marking on the barrel. He opens his mouth and raises his eyebrows. “Oh snap!” he says. “We gave those bitches the fetty by accident!”

“Fetty?” Murray and Sidney ask in unison.

“Fentanyl,” Roach answers while shaking his head at Poptart. “Pure grade A fuckin’ fentanyl.” 

“Well don’t you have one of those adrenaline needles, like in Pulp Fiction?” asks Sidney.

Roach and Poptart look at each other and laugh. “No, dumbass!” Roach exclaims between laughs. “They only got that shit in the movies.” 

After reading from his smartphone, Murray looks up and says, “It says here that you can use something called Narcan. You guys got any of that?”

Poptart nods his head and replies, “Yeah but we only got like two spray bottles left, an’ that shit expensive as fuck now with inflation an’ all.”

Murray nods back to Poptart and says, “No worries, we understand. Goddamn inflation is killing us all. Fuckin’ Bidenomics!”

Roach nods and says, “Tell me about it, yo. Fuckin’ loaf of bread at WinCo cost me like $5.99 now. I used to pay $2 tops for that shit!”

Poptart chimes in, “Costed me $65 to fill up my gas tank yes’day! I mean what the fuck!”

Sidney nods and says, “I hear you, man. What the hell did they think was gonna happen with the feds printing money as fast as they could cut down trees the past four years!”

Roach and Poptart both nod their heads. “Amen to that, brotha’,” Roach mutters.

Back on the table, Harriet has gone completely still while Beatrice is choking on her tongue with her eyes bulging out and hands desperately throttling her throat as her mouth continues to foam.

“Y’all think Trump’ll be any better, though?” Poptart asks.

“He ain’t Biden!” Roach pipes up with a quick chuckle.

“True ’dat,” Sidney says, fist-bumping Roach while Murray nods in agreement.

“I’m worried about those 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico he be talkin’ ’bout though,” Poptart says, shaking his head.

“He just tryna’ protect American industry, yo,” Murray replies.

“Yeah, I hear ya’,” Roach says thoughtfully, stroking his chin. “But the macro effects could be catastrophic in the long term, know what I’m sayin’?”

“I guess we’ll just have to see,” Sidney replies, shrugging his shoulders.

“Still can’t believe a convicted felon got elected president, yo,” Poptart quips.

“Wasn’t for nothin’ bad – just payin’ off a ho,” Roach replies.

They all look at each other, nodding in agreement.

Roach and Poptart glance back at the table, where Beatrice has just gasped her last breath after choking on her vomit. She and Harriet both lie on their backs, gape-mouthed with their dead eyes staring up at the ceiling.

Roach shakes his head and then looks out to the crowd of pickleballers, shouting, “Sorry folks, bitches croaked, party’s over. Y’all gotta bounce so we can clean up the mess over here.” He adds, “An’ y’all ain’t gettin’ yo’ money back, neitha’, so don’t even ask. Not our fault these pickleballin’ hos flaked on us.”

“What about ass to ass?” a voice shouts out from the crowd.

“Sorry, not tonight, boys,” Roach replies. 

“At least not with these stiff-ass bitches!” Poptart adds with a laugh.

Roach and Poptart both laugh while Murray and Sidney shake their heads with a chuckle. 

“You guys are baaad!” Murray says with a sly grin.

“All kidding aside, guys,” Sidney says, nodding his head back to the table. “This Harriet and Beatrice situation poses a real logistical problem for us.”

“How so?” Poptart asks with a puzzled expression.

“Yeah, Sid, do tell,” Murray chimes in.

Sidney looks at them sternly and says, “We have a mixed doubles pickleball tournament in two days, but now we have no mixed doubles. Harriet and Beatrice may’ve turned themselves into hopeless junkies over the past few months to raise money to feed their pickleball habits, but they were damn good doubles partners. Even playing with only one arm after Roach was forced to amputate the other one, Harriet could pickleball circles around every other woman on the court.” He shakes his head and sighs. “And now we have no one.”

“Sorry for your loss, man,” Poptart says, putting his hand on Sidney’s shoulder and giving it a sympathetic squeeze.

“Damnit!” screams Murray, turning to Poptart. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Poptart! How the hell could you confuse the two needles? They could not have been more clearly marked! I mean did they seriously not teach your dope smokin’ grape koolaid sippin’ ass how to read in whatever inner city metal detectin’ free lunch voucherin’ teen pregnancyin’ gangsta rappin’ straightouttacomptonin’ motherfuckin’ public school—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, Murray!” Roach interjects. “Don’t blame Poptart for what happened. And besides, I got an idea.”

Everyone looks at Roach and, after a pause, Sidney speaks up. “Well? Enlighten us, Einstein.”

Roach smiles, then walks back to the bedroom and returns about thirty seconds later holding a small bag in his hand. He pulls out two blond wigs and throws one to Poptart. Roach puts his wig on and motions for Poptart to do the same.

Roach looks over at Sidney and Murray with a wide grin. “Looks like you two mothafuckas just found your new mixed doubles partners!”

Sidney, Murray, Roach and Poptart all clench their fists, raise their arms and extend their hands in unison for a group fist-bump. Sidney looks to each of them with a smile while nodding his head and says, “Let’s go ballin’, boys.”