Alex S. Johnson

Pudding Spooks: The Clown Dies at the End

Special Agent Kandy Fontaine shook her head with vehemence. “I just can’t believe it. I grew up with Dr. Huxtable. He’s an icon of my childhood. Showed us all that a…”

“That a black man could display middle class family values, yes. I don’t mean that in a racist way, of course. Maybe I came off a bit crudely, but yes. The Jello Puddin,’ the cigars. William Cosby, Doctor of Education. The sweaters.”

“Reading Rainbow. Fat Albert. And yes, the sweaters.

“Right? As a father figure, there was none better. You could trust him. Hey, if you couldn’t trust Dr. Huxtable, the world would be a scary, scary place. But as it turned out, the world of Bill Cosby is a scary, scary place indeed.”

Director Steve Gustaffson passed the file over the desk. Fontaine picked it up and thumbed through. It was weighty and packed with incriminating evidence, surveillance photos, black and white glossies marked with red Sharpie ink: a figure in a patchwork gown standing over the limp figure of a young actress, on the card table a glass of wine drained to a dregs composed of chalky white residue.

“Cosby was onto Rohypnol long before the rest of us. He even joked about it on a comedy album he made in the 60s. The ‘Spanish Fly’ routine.”

“You know, I didn’t put that together until just now. But now that I think about it, it’s chilling, actually.”

“It’s a matter of cognitive dissonance, I think.” Gustaffson cut the end off of a cigar and, twirling it, took a few quick puffs. “Now that’s a good cigar. You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

“No, Sir.” Fontaine’s eyes began to water and she reached in her purse for a tissue. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I followed your point. About cognitive dissonance. Or Freudian embolism for that matter.” 

“It’s the inability to see danger in a familiar context. For example, an authority figure, such as Cosby, seems absolutely trustworthy. The brain has a hard time putting him together with serial rape and sexual abuse. A bit like clowns.”

“Ok, I see what you’re saying. Because we associate Cosby and people like him with values we hold dear, or hope we are perceived to hold dear.”

“Exactly.” Gustaffson snuffed out the cigar on his desk, cut it open with a six-inch, serrated blade and filled it with a composite of hash and cannabis, then sealed it up with another layer of tobacco leaf. “Care for a hit?”

“Oh, okay, I see what you’re doing.” Fontaine smirked. “Irony and all that. But seriously, Director, I want to nail this guy bad. If he’s really out there without any sort of constraint, drugging and banging girls under the mask of a lovable, wholesome Doctor of Education, he needs to be brought down. So what was all that about clowns?”

Fontaine opened the file and spread the documents on the Director’s desk. She looked up. “Clowns, Director?,” she repeated. 

“Let me explain. That file is just a drop in the bucket. We have an entire library of evidence on Cosby, going back to his early comedy career. We even found backward masking on his Jello Pudding spots.” 

The Director clicked on a sound file and Fontaine listened with astonishment as Cosby directed children to “worship the Prince of Light, the Lord of this World.”

“I thought that was just, you know, gibberish,” said Fontaine finally. “Clowning around.”

“Bingo,” said Gustaffson.

“Pardon?”

“Take a look at the documents in the manila envelope at the back of the file.”

“Oh?” Fontaine eased open the envelope and added the contents to the documents that now covered the Director’s desk. As soon as she registered what she was looking at, she dropped the envelope and scooted back her chair.

“There’s two of them,” said Fontaine in a hushed voice, as though speaking to herself.

“Bingo again. Clownsby and Cosby. They were separated at birth. Clownsby had a terrible time. He struggled to make a living while his identical twin brother soared into celebrity status. You see, Clownsby was hampered by two things. One, he is an angry obsessive with a borderline personality disorder, which led him into the world of clowning. Two, Tourette’s Syndrome. Shit cock motherfucker, that kind of thing.”

“I only caught a glimpse,” said Fontaine. “But some of those photographs are…really gruesome.”

“Taken at the scene of the crime, some of them by the man himself. The placement of the bodies in ritualistic fashion is a hallmark of the Clownsby style. Note the balloon animals stuffed down the victims’ throats—that was by design. He wants us to know who did this. He shows in every instance signs of both careful planning and, in the actual attack, blitzkrieg overkill. There must have been something that set him off—something the victim said or displayed. A trigger. We aren’t absolutely sure what that would be, but we have some ideas.”

Gustaffson clicked open another sound file. “This was obtained from surveillance. We dusted it off and filtered out the ambient noises.”

Fontaine scooted back to the desk and planted her elbows, listening intently.

First came the voice of a young woman: “Wow, Mr. Cosby, I want to thank you again for offering to help my career. I’ve only just begun. A few local commercials and that sort of thing, but I really, really want to break into the big time, you know?”

There was a muffled grunt.

“Mr. Cosby, where did you go?”

“I was just changing into something more comfortable, doncha know.”

“Wow, okay. A little informal, but…okay! That’s a nice dressing gown. Hey, you’ve got some really neat pictures here. Is that you and Bozo the Clown?”

“Why yes it is. I took that a few years before he died. Bozo and I were tight, ya know.”

“I didn’t realize you knew so many clowns.”

“M’kay, clowns and circuses make me feel happy, give me that good feeling in my tummy like a Jello puddin.’ Would you like some?”

“Jello pudding? Now? Well, I guess.”

“It’s wholesome and nutritious. Everybody loves the puddin.’”

“It’s so…creamy and…salty. Salty?”

“Yeah, that’s the extra special ingredients I add because flibberty woberty zappo!”

“Um, Mr. Cosby?”

“Yes, honey? Would you like some more, because it looks like you wolfed all that puddin’ down in a squiffy jiffy…hold on, I’m just goin’ to the kitchen to get some more of that special ingredient.”

“Mr. Cosby? I, uh, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel kind of woozy.”

“Why don’t you just relax and maybe take off all your clothes, I’ll be there in a flashety wamputty.”

“Something’s wrong…I don’t think I heard you correctly. Take off what?”

“While I put this big ole puddin’ pop in your mouth so you can taste all the chocolatey goodness m’kay. Let me just shrug off these pants and I’ll be inside you nice and tight. You won’t remember anything because of the Spanish Fly, I control the vertical and horizontal doncha wish your girlfriend was hawt lak me. Heh heh.”

“How do you…shrug off..pants…please no…stop…so sleepy…” The woman’s voice trailed off.

There was silence, followed by loud thumping sounds. Then grunting, panting, escalated breathing and a bloodcurdling scream.

“Mr. Cosby! What are you doing?”

“You are supposed to be asleep, young lady. I assure you that nothing improper is going on, nor could it possibly be going on. I’m a Doctor of Education.”

“Please let me go! You’re hurting me!”

“Oh it’s nothin,’ just a little bit of fun and play with the puddin’ pops doncha know.”

“No! It is not okay. I should have known when I saw those pictures…the clowns. It’s all coming back now. I…I can’t stand clowns! I hate them, and I hate you! You’re not at all what you seem to be. You’re a monster!”

Gustaffson paused the sound file. “This part is crucial. We think it’s the trigger—where he crosses the line. Loses the plot.”

Fontaine nodded.

“Ok, you know what, you’re right. I am a clown. A fucking clown. A fucking clown who is going to fucking rape you. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Who’s going to believe you? What are they going to say when you come to them with some crazy-ass story about Bill Cosby being a rapist clown?”

Whimpers. Sobs.

“Please stop…please stop! I won’t tell a soul, I promise. It will be our secret. I swear.”

“Young ladies like yourself shouldn’t swear, m’kay. Nobody should fucking swear. If there’s one thing I can’t fucking tolerate, it’s swearing. Comedians who work blue. And clown haters. Oh, I am going to fucking rape you like a fucking rapist…”

Gustaffson stopped the audio. “It escalates from there. The body was dismembered and the pieces were placed in plastic garbage sacks, scattered around the city.”

“That’s horrible!”

“That’s Clownsby for you.”

“So what happened to Cosby?”

“He keeps Cosby in a drugged condition, moves him around. When you see him appear on TV, have you ever noticed that he seems a little out of it?”

“Yeah, I thought that was just age.”

“That, and animal tranquilizers. He’s on a short leash, and by this point his brain has pretty much turned to mush. But if we find him, we’ll find Clownsby. And put a stop to these killings, once and for all.”

“Where do I come in?”

“We have intelligence that Cosby is doing a one-off benefit show at a club in Hollywood. Big security, hand-picked audience, of course. It’s going to be tough getting past the muscle, but we know he’s a sucker for a breathless ingénue. That, of course, would be you.”

“Naturally,” said Fontaine, batting her eyes at the Director and crossing her legs high enough to show her lacy panties. “And when is this all going down? So to speak.”

Gustaffson cleared his throat, gathered the documents from the desk and placed them in his lap. “Next week.” 

***

“Well doncha know doncha know flibbetty jibbety Ernie Hemingway gimlet eyes how d’ya do I see you met my…faithful…”

“Why how d’ya diddly freakin’ do,” said Special Agent Kandy Fontaine, extending an eager ivory paw. “I’m a young, innocent, extremely hot n’ busty ingenue who is eager to make a good impression on you, the esteemed Dr. Clow- I mean Crosby Stills and Gnash Muh Heart to Ribbons…see, you’ve got me all flustered-like, and that usually means within a few minutes of getting me alone, say at your hotel, you could, say, roughy me and then rough sex me up…pleez, oh woncha, doncha know what a girl is lookin’ fer?” she squealed in a high-pitched voice equal parts Betty Boop and Kate Hepburn. 

“Well howja diddly doo-doo young McLady I could just eat right the fuck up,” said Clownsby. He summoned an assistant to his side. “Dithers, I want you to escort this fine young thang to muh hotel toodles de sweet and await further instructions. Set her up with one o’ muh special ‘cocktails’ if you know what I mean, emphasis on the ‘cock’ and the ‘tail.”

“Yes sir I’ll snap right to it sir you won’t need to repeat yourself pleez sir ah need this job to support muh family down in Monroe, Michigan what r’ bein’ surveilled by multiple federal agencies due to bein’ long-time peace activists and setch.”

Kandy felt a twinge in her stomach. Only just the previous week she and Director Gustaffson had been exchanging oral McSex favors while furiously batin’ to orange-y surveilance videos of Dithers Dabbsburton’s family. One in particular they quite enjoyed was a scene from the house of “Pickles” McFarlane, a beautiful Hispanic artist and poet who was said to have involvements with a publisher of seditious litratchure out in California. 

“Sounds great!” said Kandy. She was actually quite looking forward to it on several levels.

***

“Well now honey you’re probably feelin’ the woozy oozy cootchie flow down there doncha know Pickles N’ Smol Bear Show, ever see that one?” said Clownsby, lowering his body over Kandy’s. Kandy was playing possum. 

Kandy twitched from within the soft cocoon of her semi-drowse. 

“And now fer some Diddy Diddlin’ for reals, dogg,” said Clownsby. He wore a polka dotted blouse, loose, baggy pants, a forlorn bowler hat and floppy shoes, He unzipped, bringing forth a turgid sausage which he then attempted to force down her throat.

After three pumps Clownsby was about to erupt with some hot creamy jissom action all over Kandy’s delectable cherry blossom lips when she bit down hard, severing his penis in half, then smacked his shit up with a quickness.

“On the other timeline, you got away with drugging and raping many, many women, Clownsby. But this is NOT your lucky day. This is the bad new bears timeline for you.” 

Clownsby screamed in pain and anguish as the blood pumped from his stub. “You fucking bitch! You whore! Doncha know who I am? Puddin’ Spooks Director Bill Cosby, Ed D. Do you even know what that fucking means? I…”

He began to sag as Kandy cinched the handcuffs tight behind his back and yanked. Hard.

“What it means is that if you’re lucky you’ll bleed right the fuck out on this hotel carpet, but if you don’t, you’re going to federal prison with a missing cock, where they have a special appetite for sex offenders like yourself.”

The clown shuddered, flopped around the room a touch, as the blood continued to gush from his cock, then gave one final departing scream and expired.

“Damn, that was fucked up,” said Kandy. After the dopamine and adrenaline rush had worn out, she made a mental note to quit the FBI. Despite her generally loose sexual morals, she couldn’t abide cruelty and racism, and the look in Cosby’s assistant’s eyes was heartrending.

Kandy broke the fourth wall to address the reader:

“You may have noticed that ambiguity remains over the exact identity of the clown. Was it Cosby all along? In which case, was Clownsby always already an alter ego of Cosby, or the reverse? Well I guess you’ll have to ponder that some, if that’s what does it for you, or not, or just have a dab or five and extremely rough consensual sex with a buddy…or five. Well, me for some o’ that three hole punch action as I turn over a new cannabis leaf and join Bone CIty PD. See ya in the funny papes!!!”

THEES EES THEE ENT, MUH HONLY FRENT, THEE ENT

Marty Shambles

Meat the Messiah: s01e04 – Remembering the Dead

down at the la brea tar pits, joe camel is with his 16 year old daughter, jenny camel. he lights up a smoke and offers her one. 

jenny: i have my own.

she pulls out a pack of american spirits.

joe: i won’t tell your mother you’re not smoking our brand.

jenny: your brand, dad! i’m my own person!

joe: i don’t want to fight. i have something to tell you.

jenny (annoyed): what.

joe: i have cancer. it’s all over. doctors are at a loss to explain it. i should be in peak health.

jenny: are you going to die?

joe: yes.

jenny: good! i hope you fucking rot.

joe: how can you say that?

jenny: you were never there for me and mom. you were always out smoking and being cool. but you never had time to smoke with me.

joe: i don’t have much time left, but i want to make it right. will you let me do that?

jenny: no. fuck you.

a procession of war dead march down wilshire blvd.

jenny: what is it, dad?

joe: our fallen heroes… great americans who died in the line of service.

jenny: imperialist swine? 

joe: no. fuck you.

***commercial break***

tonight, on a very special friends, monica becomes a nazi. if that wasn’t enough, joey and phoebe join the falun gong. will friendship be enough to save the gang from cults? tonight at 8/7 central.

***

the procession of war dead moves through los angeles like a sobering annoyance, greatly lengthening commute times. jordan peterson and kanye west are on a man date to see a film about the holocaust. they are waiting in line for tickets outside.

peterson: i can’t wait to see all of the atrocities.

kanye: death to the jews!

peterson: i wish i was black so i could be as racist as you.

kanye: you could always wear shoe polish on your face and eat watermelon and fried chicken. then people would think you’re black and you can be racist too!

peterson: that’s not a bad idea!

the procession goes past. jorpan peeperson and yeezy stare at the the caskets draped with flags. peterson begins bawling his eyes out.

kanye: be cool man.

peterson: i’m just so moved by their sacrifice.

kanye: what do you care? you’re canadian.

peterson: everyone knows that american lives are the most important lives. and soldier lives are the third most important kind of american lives, behind white children and white women. these are just facts.

kanye: yeah i know. but you don’t have to cry like a bitch about it.

chunk: fag!

***commercial break***

the last woman on earth goes to the old supermarket. there are vultures and flies in the meat market. the produce section is reduced to mulch. there is grass growing in the canned foods aisle. all that’s left is canned anchovies and deviled ham. the woman considers her options and grabs the anchovies.

deviled ham: the last thing you eat.

***

the eyes of the surveillance state look away from the war dead. the street cameras don’t want a reminder of what freedom costs–their video feed going straight into the eye of washington. that glazed cornia has only itself to blame.

down rodeo drive, the sound of rage against the machine can be heard blasting from car speakers. hulk hogan and ronald mcdonald roll up in the cadillac, blocking the procession. ronald mcdonald, riding shotgun, pulls out his shotgun, and points it at the soldier pallbearers.

the cops watch this scene unconcerned. ronald mcdonald blasts one of the soldiers in the face. the cops do nothing.

hulk: why aren’t the cops doing anything?

ronald mcdonald: i have a license to kill anyone who’s not a millionaire.

hulk: that’s killer brother!

ronald mcdonald (to the troops): we need four caskets! 2 for us, and two for our beer!

the first 4 caskets oblige and empty 4 corpses onto the street, to bake in the california sun, leaving 5 bodies as the cadillac is towed away. they have a new ride now.

credits roll.

***

Marty Shambles

Meat the Messiah: s01e03 – A Breath of Fresh Air

on the warner bros backlots, bukowski gives slurred and blurry directions. left here, right there, wait back up, never mind keep going. they linger to hoot and gawk at a group of chorus girls, then back to the task at hand. 

hulk hogan takes out his hog to examine his wounds. the necrosis is spreading rapidly. he has a half-dead dick, and it smells like old meat.

bukowski: there it is.

there’s a large machine that says ‘wind machine’ in an unassuming font. they stop the car and get out. there is a slight breeze. 

hulk hogan, elvis, ronald mcdonald, and bukowski get out their respective guns and shoot down the wind machine with all their power.

a man, who is really me, the devil, in disguise, runs up and yells at them to stop. 

man: what are you doing?!

hulk: we’re ending the wind, brother!

man: why?!

elvis (to the boys): why were we doing this again, man?

ronald mcdonald: so we can shoot stuff.

hulk: but we shot stuff anyway, brother.

bukowski: this seems kind of dumb.

they lower their guns. there isn’t a breeze anymore. it feels warmer.

man (who is really me, the devil, in disguise): it’s going to take me weeks to get more parts for this here wind machine! i hope you boys are happy with yourselves.

the 4 assailants look down in shame.

***commercial break***

a noid sits in a darkened warehouse that is empty, save for a twin mattress, a folding chair and a table. on the table are a glass, a bottle, an ashtray, a pack of marlboros, and some photos of a pizza. in the back of the warehouse is a large plastic curtain on a runner, beyond which, who knows. the noid looks at the photos and takes a long drag off his cigarette. he knows what he has to do. he gets in his car and drives off. he swerves as he drives. he’s still a little drunk, but he has to do the job. he parks his car directly in the path of the delivery driver. the driver stops, and that’s when the noid jumps out of the bushes with a gun and shoots the driver between the eyes. he drags the pizza crying to his car. the pizza is bound, gagged, and drugged, and thrown in the trunk. the pizza struggles against it all but there’s no point. it soon succumbs to the drug and passes out. the pizza wakes up strapped to a chair. the noid says, go ahead and scream. i like it when they scream.

***

hulk hogan, the perfect american, stands on hollywood boulevard, watching the parade of war dead; dozens of caskets, draped in american flags, carried by soldiers, making their way past the filth and flourish of tinseltown.

hulk is moved by the sight and a single tear forms. a 12 year old kid sees this. it’s chunk from the goonies.

chunk: fag.

hulk: fuck you kid.

a flurry of shutters clacking and flash bulbs bursting capture hulk extending his middle finger at a kid.

hulk, elvis, ronald mcdonald and bukowski go their separate ways.

there should be rain to atmospherically punctuate the scene, but there’s still no wind.

credits roll.

***

Alex S. Johnson

Twatzapooner’s Revenge: A Fucked-Up Fairy Tale

“Forgive me, Trollkins love, I feel ever so sleepy.”

Princess Cherrypop, 19, stretched, yawned and placed a dainty hand over her luscious, nubile lips. 

Her Troll attendant, whose name was Hermione Plunger, started. 

“No no no no, young miss, that will not do,” she said.

“And why ever not?”

“Because you must be vigilant. We must ever. Be. Vigilant. We must take the potions and the remedies, maintain our lookout at all times. She is awake now, and dark upon the land. She. Nair. Cuntingham.”

“To be honest,” said Cherrypop, depositing a kiss upon her beloved handmaiden that was ever-so-innocent even as she inserted a sly, experimental bit of tongue, “I am dead tired of the constant wakefulness, and I see nothing wrong with bedding down…I mean, we could, you know, separately…or…together. In an innocent, experimental way, of course.”

Hermione gently fingered the Princess, who sighed and oozed moisture from the Pussy of the Realm.

“Thank the goddess Twatzapooner for investing the hereditary pussy power in these mine nether lips,” sighed Cherrypop as Herrmione’s firm, nimble fingers played with her. “That feels so good, and better than good. Indeed, I feel a royal explosion coming on.”

“No, no, no, you mustn’t,” said Hermione. “For is it not foretold that the release of such power would cause great destruction and devastation throughout the Land of Euphoria, and your father, Herbert Longwood the XI, will lose of his wood, and the Queen Griselda will lapse and become a slushycorpse once more, and then…deadfucking will be the rule rather than the exception, as the peasantry always follow our example, be it good or bad.”

“I’ve never felt that was quite healthy,” sighed Cherrypop. “But then again, I am young in years and, aside from reams of experimentation, innocent of man.”

“It is what it is,” conceded Hermione. “At least it keeps him from plunging the royal fleshscepter willy-nilly amongst the entombed like Count Edward of Geine.”

The Princess shuddered.

“Could you help me out of mine royal costume?” asked Cherrpop? She was beginning to feel that odd itch and wished to engage in such activity as corresponded to it, which generally resulted in her suspension from the ceiling with a gag harness over her head. 

“Nay, Princess, I dare not and will not. You must attempt to dial back the sensations. Think of that awful toad, Crust Pellotone, who made his advances upon the royal pussy but recently. Think of what occurred to his body after Twatzapooner’s wrath.”

Cherrypop shuddered again with a mixture of delicious dread and outright horniness. “Oh my goodness yes. He was stripped of his clothes, stuffed into a leather sling, pinioned and punctured in every major artery. We watched that sling leak for days while he bled out, but due to the magic of the court sorcerer, Fuzzlewick, he never truly died. He’s still around somewhere,” she said. She frowned. “I’m glad he suffered. I know my father the king always admonished me to think kindly of all creatures, even the horrid, but Pellotone truly was the worst of the worst. His open and obvious slaverings! And him a peasant!”

“And him an ill-bred yob,” said Hermione. Without thinking, Cherrypop’s servant had gone knuckle-deep. Suddenly realizing what she had done, Hermione retrieved her fingers, then caressed the Princess’s cheek. Cherrypop sucked her slick fingers and licked her lips.

“I love to taste myself,” she said. “Could we play that lovely game now, the one with numbers?”

“We cannot,” said Hermione.

The Princess pouted. “You go from hot to ice cold. Which is it to be?”

***

High above Euphoria, nestled in a pink cloud, the goddess Twatzapooner was vexed. Her hereditary nexus with the royal pussy made her feel every sensation Princess Cherrypop did. And this ridiculous Hermione person was not only deliberately lying to the bearer of the Pussy of Power, she was blocking Cherrypop’s release, which caused her great frustration.

She heard the familiar whinnying of the Baroness Cuntingham, Queen of Nair, in the far distance. Nair craved the pussy power for herself, and took every opportunity to try and ambush the Princess in an attempt to carve the pussy from between her legs and extract its puissance.

“Can you believe Mistress Hermione’s boldness?” said Cuntingham partially to herself, but knowing Twatzapooner could read her thoughts.

“Yes, I can,” said Twatzapooner. “You know what, we both deserve relief. Let’s first edge the Princess, then allow her release, whereupon I will grant you what you have long desired.”

“Oh goddess, that would be…so very fucking great. Seriously though. I would do anything for you.”

“Are you mental?” asked Twatzapooner, infuriated. “I was just this close to granting your wish of obtaining the Quim Chalice, and then you pull this toadying shit.”

Twatzapooner grew angry, and angrier still, at the general impertinence. 

The heavens began to boil and teem. A horrible stench filled every nostril in the kingdom, the smell of rotten meat lying in the sun for days stirred together with the guts of a fishmire and the piss of a Nocturnicorn. 

Then the meat rain began.

Chunks of bloody flesh descended. They splattered rooftops and patios and yards and hedges and trees and the Dark and Light forests. Bits and pieces of blood slime smeared across cheeks and splashed down faces, making no distinction between royal and commoner.

“Oh no, the goddess is PIIIIISSED,” cried Hermione. “We need to give her discharge now.”

So saying, she tied the Princess to an x-cross, muffled the royal lips with a bit gag and proceeded to lash her until she bled. The Princess screamed through the gag, tears welling. She felt a convulsive sensation begin in her toes, then spreading up her body in violent waves. 

Till it reached the pussy of power.

And detonated.

On her pink cloud, the goddess Twatzapooner experienced the Law of Unintended Consequences. Linked as her pussy was with that of the Princess, her discharge was even greater.

The meat rain increased, gathering clouds and turbulence until it became a meat storm. 

The stinking flesh gobbets began to whirl in the sky, causing sucking columns to form. Houses were wrenched from their foundations, trailing bricks and sod. Horses were smashed against rocks as they screamed and screamed again. Many peasants were battered with clubs of meatcurrent until they expired. 

Looking at the scene through her Mirrorcast, Hermione’s eyes widened.

“Royal shitmix,” she said. “The goddess is displeased!” She rapidly undid the Princess from her bonds. “You need to use the royal pussy power now!”

“What?” said the princess, a tad dizzy from the bondage and blood coursing towards and away from the pussy of power. “Come again?”

“Yes, Mistress, cum again. You must cum again, and restore the balance.”

“Very well then, Hermione. Eat me in that special way, and I will partake as well of the sweet game of numbers curled inside themselves.”

After a furious bout of Ye SixtyNine, both the Princess and Hermione exploded with hot, frothing orgasms. A column of Pussy Power ™ ascended through the heavens, spearing Twatzapooner’s ethereal body. 

The heavens sucked up the meat rain the way one might use the heel from a loaf of bread to mop up extra shpegoootiin sauce. The storm collapsed in upon itself, rested, relaxed and smoked a cigarette.

In their respective places, the goddess Twatzapooner, the Princess Cherrypop and her servant Hermione dozed off to sleep, quite sated.

The only one who remained unsatisfied by this arrangement was the Baroness Cuntingham, Queen of Nair.

“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me, Twatazapooner. Seriously?”

And with that, she stalked off to her Eggsucking Hut.

Doug Hawley

Meditation Monsters

The ten people, five men and five women were meditating as usual at their Wednesday night session.  They were all nude because they followed the rules of their prophet Lee James.  According to James, a lack of clothing ensured their innocence as they spent an hour in a seventy degree Fahrenheit room with candle lighting.  The men and women were required to be in separate rows approximately five feet apart facing each other.  They believed their position and all of the other conditions of their meditation – silence, no devices, no food or drink – would improve their physical and mental condition.

Five minutes into the session two naked creatures interrupted them.  One was obviously male, and one female but they weren’t exactly human.  They were larger than typical humans and had hair in unusual places.  Their bodies resembled those seen on old space opera books.

After a stunned silence lasting more than three minutes Joy spoke up “What the hell.  Who are you and how did you get in?”

The male responded “Before I answer those questions, let us introduce ourselves.  I go by Night Monster, and she as Night Angel.  We are night demons, but good ones.  Our mission is to spread sexual pleasure or healing.  We came in earlier today, but you couldn’t see us because we are only visible at night.  We can better your lives by offering you extreme pleasure.”

Dan said “What a load of crap.  Are you escapees from a freak show?”

Night Angel answered “A freak show escapee who knows what you have fantasized doing with Janice?” 

Dan face flushed and he opened his mouth to speak, but slowly reconsidered.  Janice also blushed.

Monster said “Listen, all of you can go into denial about your desires, or what we are, or we can help all of you.  What do you say?”

Jake said “Whatever those two have on their minds, how about we let them talk.”

There was some mumbling, but no objections, so agreement was assumed.

Angel took the lead “As we said we have been here for a while, and examined your thinking.  This is a singles organization, and despite the asexual meditations, we know that most of you are here for romance as well as enlightenment.  You all studiously ignored Bill’s erection during the meditation and Carol’s admiration thereof.  Your meditations are valuable, but we have suggestions for augmenting the experience either before or after with earthly delights.  If there is one or more disinterested, you could wait in another room while we work with the rest of the group.”

Joy and Jay left.

“I don’t want to belittle anyone here, but none of you are in satisfactory relationships now, and everyone in the meditation group is a friend to everyone else here. You are all in good health and flexible.  Monster and I suggest the following couples:  Janice and Amir, Carol and Sam, Suzette and Bill, Helen and Dan.”

There was some surprise from the group because the combination mixed both size and race.  Pale Janice and dark Amir, big Suzette and little Bill, but no one objected and some were very pleased.

“We think that we have good matches based on your conscious and unconscious thoughts.  So if there are no objections, we suggest that couples get on your meditation mats and begin to explore.  If anyone needs help Monster and I are excellent fluffers.  No one here needs to go home without an orgasm or several.”

The couples went to their mats as instructed.  Most of them began erotic massages on their partners.  Janice used mouth while Amir let his fingers do the walking.  The couples, with one exception, were thoroughly aroused.  They did some bargaining, including do it my way first, then I’ll do it your way next.  Suzette blushed and pointed at her rear portal.  Bill smiled and started drilling.  After they all agreed on how to proceed they went into various versions of cowgirl, missionary, and things only available to Kama Sutra students.  An interesting mixture of groans, yelps, chirps, and purrs followed.

Carol and Sam were the exception.  Their mutual inspection didn’t lead to arousal.  Carol cried for help.  Monster positioned Carol for sixty-nine, and Angel used her foot long tongue on Sam’s penis.  Within a couple of minutes Carol and Sam were thoroughly fluffed and eagerly started on each other.

An hour later several thoroughly satisfied couples were ready to leave.  They bid farewell and gave thanks to Monster and Angel for giving them an addition to their meditation.  On their way out they stopped in to tell Joy and Jay goodbye.  To their surprise Joy and Jay were vigorously pursuing missionary sex.  Joy told the group “We weren’t against the sex; we just wanted to have a little privacy.  We didn’t tell the group that we have been a couple for weeks.  Nothing new here for us.”

Amir, Jay, and Janice told some of their friends and those friends told their friends.  Soon, Sexual Healing named after an appropriate Marvin Gaye song moved to a large room at the Portland State University campus, and hence to the more liberal colleges.  

Lee James contacted the original Portland Oregon group to propose a modification of his book on meditation to include Sexual Healing.  A year later James and the group had a best seller “Healing Though Sex And Meditation”.

As this is being written, peace groups are suggesting Sexual Healing between different racial, ethnic, national, and religious groups as a way out of conflict.  Various sexual orientations are copying the original straight groups.  The future is bright.

Marty Shambles

Meat the Messiah: s01e02 – Be Alert and of Sober Mind

in l.a. the sun is a flash bulb in the camera of the sky that never relents. roy mcroy eats his whole lunch in a laborious, trodding fashion. only two more days of this job. when he was young he met greta garbo at a screening of which film he couldn’t remember. since then he wanted to be near greatness. he got a job 35 years prior at the w.b. lot as a security guard, straight out of high school. it was a union job with a pension so he stuck around. he married his high school sweetheart and they had two children. when they got a tv at the security booth, the channel was always set to fox news. he left it on there because he wanted some noise while he had down time. the conservative programming made him more suspicious of immigrants, and black people who weren’t famous seemed to be hoodlums. for years he let his brain simmer on the conservative hotplate, until it was dry and hard. this was a point of contention at home, as his wife and kids were not cooking their brains on trash tv. instead, his kids became bay area anarchists, and his wife ran off with a woman; all of whom stopped talking to him. he started drinking and was mad at nights. he broke down crying at walmart and bought a gun. now with two more days on the job, he has two more days of purpose. two more days of slog and agony. then he could end it. roy mcroy watches as a cadillac convertible drives up to the security booth at w.b. studios. he sees elvis and hulk hogan, an old drunk and ronald mcdonald in the car. ronald mcdonald takes out a shotgun and blasts him in the face. 

***commercial break***

a very white upper middle class family rides in their cadillac escalade. ‘in this fast paced digital world, it’s important to take into account the quiet of a well made car.’ the escalade plows through a herd of deer without losing speed. blood splatters the windshield. the kids in the back say yay! the dad turns on the windshield wipers.

***

panama’s ‘destroyer’ plays in bullet-time as the hammer strikes the shell. there is a rapid expanse of gasses and flame, propelling the buckshot down the smoothbore barrel, each bb of shot trying to outrun the last, until they meet the true forms of light and death outside the barrel. this is plato’s shotgun, and in this moment, when the shot traverses from gun to face, everyone surrounding understands the true forms of the mortal moment. as the music swells, roy mcroy has a reverie from sometime ago, when men were men and the goddamn antifa wasn’t trying to take his job. it was a simpler time, some decades before this one. and he thought of an office building in the middle of a field that he saw as a kid. he didn’t know what was in the office building, nor why he was there, but he knew that there was something beautiful about that building and that field, that it had the american promise of taming the wilderness for business, that all frontiers would soon be mapped. there should’ve been a picture taken of that building, in all its dull imposition. this is what roy mcroy thinks of in his last milliseconds, as the buckshot pierces meat and crushes bone… as the metal snakes through the skull and out the back. the body of roy mcroy slumps back and air escapes his lungs like a sigh.

credits roll.

***

James Callan

Savage Longing

Maybe it’s me, but I find the mundanity of living, rife with its routines and needs –work, sleep, defecation, taxes– offset by the frequent, savage longing that seems to pounce upon me at every turn and corner.

How do I mean? Well, take the drive-thru at McDonald’s. It starts with golden arches, and the seduction only grows from there. There is the inviting glow of combo meals with their Homeric calories, temptations for cheap. Yet more alluring, by far, than any burgers or treats, is the effeminate voice, servile and oh-so-promising, through the intercom. Two minutes later, there she is, a greasy bag in her hand, a weak coffee extending out the narrow window to my car.

An exchange of meat and fluids for a few dollar bills makes it difficult to avoid drawing certain filthy comparisons. I reach through the window to accept my Number 4 while deeply entrenched in the salacious narratives playing in my mind. Eye contact is sparing between us, but we indulge in a modicum of discourse: Enjoy your meal. Thank you so much, have a wonderful day.

But before that: the plump hand with its faded heart tattoo and many silver rings. The tacky, dragon-like talons that curve, purple and bejewelled, impractical press-ons that I cannot look at without immediately daydreaming about a handjob. The oversized lips, endowed with plush extravagance. How they glisten, wet and dark, like cherry-cola. How they part to reveal an empty smile that I actively delude myself is flirtatious, an overt invitation to sex. The mangle of teeth she tries (and fails) to hide –such disarray, but so very white. The brush of her dimpled knuckles over mine.

I drive away from McDonald’s burdened with a cheap meal and a good chance of late afternoon diarrhea. But more than that, I leave McDonald’s with a half-strength erection, a dab of pre-cum on the inside fabric of my boxer-briefs, and two or three days of imaginative fuel for my five or six indulgences of self gratification. At the bottom of the bag, the underside of my paper cup, I am sure to find her number scrawled in pen. But all I find are far too many packets of ketchup. No napkins whatsoever.

***

I often find myself pulling into the Petco parking lot, drawn in by its friendly logo and what I know awaits inside. I enter the store with its familiar aroma of rodent piss and straw bedding, scan the brightly lit room with the bogus intention of locating more food for Fluffer, my tuxedo tomcat. I have a four-month supply at home, ever expanding, soon to eclipse five months of surplus, and undoubtedly, eventually, half a year of dried kibble will encumber the small capacity of my kitchen pantry. Am I preparing for the apocalypse? Certainly not.

Then why so much cat food? What gives?

This: I require the excuse to visit Petco, yet again, for the third time this week, the eighth time in the past fortnight, the umpteenth time this month, so I can determine if she is working. Who? The chubby blonde with the puffy blue eyes and the androgynous, pixie haircut. Her name tag has cordially introduced her to me. Haley. Sweet Haley.

My cravings demand that I drink her in, commit her dumpy physique and robust limbs to my memory, safeguard her pouty lips in the library of my longings and devotions. And so I haul the ten-pound bag of kibble onto the counter as I watch the perfect eroticism of her scanning the barcode with the laser gun. She asks for my number (for my frequent shopper discount). I give it to her, slow and deliberate.

“Should I write it down for you?” I ask.

“No need,” she lets me know. “It’s in the system.”

I chuck the cat food in the backseat and drive to the nearest semi-secluded spot before my arousal curbs from its towering peak. I unzip my denim shorts and wonder how much it would cost me to invest in tinted windows. I grip the old McDonald’s bag on the floor beneath the passenger’s seat to grease up my palms. I touch myself and whisper/whimper her name. Haley! I erupt, exhale, and search for napkins. There is nothing but an endless supply of ketchup packets, an enormity of cat food.

***

This is what I mean. These sudden, ambushing longings. These savage, torturous cravings that infuse an otherwise dull life with a certain –albeit painful– exuberant hue.

Am I alone? Can you relate? Am I a freak, or am I just being indecorous in my blatant honesty? Is this the typical male existence? A boner for each woman I encounter? A masturbation fantasy for anyone vaguely human-shaped and probably female?

It’s true, sometimes I chafe my dick raw thinking about the demure lady who works at the drugstore, my dentist with her platinum bouffant and monstrous tits –I won’t deny it. I can’t begin to guess how many times I’ve fantasized about my boss, her severe fringe and subtle underbite, her wet sex pervading the cramped office in my mind. She can be a real bitch, and on days when she treats me like scum I lube myself up the moment I get home from work. I recall her cruel remarks, the demeaning names she showered upon me. It takes two seconds to get hard, then I’m lost in a lovely fairy tale, pretty pictures in my head, our backs and assess up against a pile of paperwork, her threats or incentives that echo in forceful ultimatum. I make noises. Grunts and oaths. “I’ll behave. I promise to behave!” And then it’s cleanup time.

On my hands and knees, a little wash of shame accompanies my sudden sobriety. When I see my boss the next morning, I feel dirty, and that feels good. So I often do it all again.

It’s all a bit exhausting, being aroused all the time, left, right, and center. The prompts are everywhere, the desire is endless. But really, these episodes of need in the aftermath of my many quotidian encounters with so-and-so or whosiewhatsit are like little glimpses into Shangri-La. The soulless security guard who elects to frisk me in LAX? This episode is filed away, used later, and becomes an idyllic jaunt to Nirvana. The chirpy, septuagenarian who takes my picture at the DMV? I remember the tally of her crows feet, her lazy, open mouth as she assessed the washed photos of my mugshot, and voilà! I enter another realm. I dip into a volcanic thermal pool in Valhalla. In my cheerful, vile mind, the excess of golden bracelets that jangle on her bony wrists make music as they take me, knead me, mold me into an animal, and ultimately cause me to explode.

Excessively poetic? Perhaps. But what I frankly mean to say is this: while they come with a certain frustration, I wouldn’t discard my primal urges for a million dollars. Okay, maybe a million dollars. But for real, I openly accept my troubled and ravenous ways.

***

On rare and magnificent occasions, fantasy transcends to affair. The hands that wave to say hello, to take my money, to offer me change, to prod at my cavities with a sinister tool; these same hands, on merciful and remarkable instances, unbutton my shirt, pull at the elastic of my boxer-briefs, take up my sex in their clammy grip, guide me into their mouths, between their legs. It’s these mythical moments I discover my own personal religion. I look to the heavens (often the ceiling of a motel bedroom) and consider the real possibility that yes, there might be a god after all.

My most recent love affair was certainly divine, although it ended, as they all do, in emotional turmoil, with a deep sense of loss and a lingering bitterness that will never fully fade. But that came later. Much later. After all the savage, carnal lust. The foodstuffs and spreads that we licked off human plates, from navel soup bowls, and deep, briney crevices.

It spawned from peanut butter, believe it or not. Our love, our lust, our passion; it resulted from a chance encounter prompted by a defect label on an extra crunchy Jif jar. I didn’t notice when I plucked it from the shelf. And if I had, I would not have cared. After all, I’m not going to eat the label, you know? It’s the contents that will cover my toast, satiate that morning pang for a bite to accompany my coffee. But in retrospect, how glad I am that I took the jar with the faulty label. Random chance can be a bitch, but today, she is a saint, an angel of mercy.

I dropped the Jif into my basket. There is no way I could have foreseen it: how the spread would never see the golden side of rough toasted bread, but cover a canvas of flesh, both hers and mine.

***

There she was at the checkout. Hannah. She worked almost every day, it seemed. Every day that I shopped, anyhow, and as always, I was glad to see her, to watch her finger my groceries and tell me how much I owed her for the pleasure. Sometimes I’d opt to wait in a much longer queue, sacrifice three to five minutes so I could share that flicker of eye contact with Hannah, stare at her bored, sad face as she mindlessly shuffled my shopping to beep against the square of laser projections.

She was soft, and getting softer all the time, with a doughy neck and thick forearms, pale and round as a wood grub. She wasn’t fat, but transitioning that way, and her unspectacular features were elevated only by her youth. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but she was very particularly her, which, for whatever reason, made her particularly beautiful to me. When the spark ignites –often surprising who plucks at my heartstrings, tweaks my loins– the subject becomes a goddess, no matter how society may judge her physical faults. Haley, Hannah, whoever; when the cherub makes his mark, the peon becomes a princess. She outshines the model, the movie star, the pinup girl. She is the center of the world, and the gravity of her sexual appeal makes a circling moon out of me.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Hannah scans my can of peaches, my shrink-wrapped sausage, my frozen pizza. She handles each item with soulless automation. Her rhythm is slowed by the weighted items, the unpackaged fruits and vegetables that require a code. But her pace is regular, never truly halting, until she handles the peanut butter with its defunct label.

I watch as she struggles, tilts the jar, unable to induce the familiar, expectant beep that allows her to move on to the next item, and the next, and the next, until eight hours pass and she becomes the real Hannah, a myth and mystery that no doubt blooms beyond the muted professionalism required of her in the cold, halogen landscape of the supermarket. I zero in on her hands, her pale flesh taut with grocery store chill, and as they work on the peanut butter puzzle, I note their black talons, those ridiculous, monitor lizard daggers that make any task graceless. It’s amazing it took it this long, but there it is: the handjob daydream playing out in my one-track mind.

“Sorry,” Hannah says, and rewards my patience with a nanosecond of direct eye contact. “It’s the label,” she tells me. “It’s folded over. Can’t get to the barcode.” She stops trying to make the thing beep, uses her Godzilla claws to pinch and peel back the label which has stuck inward upon itself.

I watch in utter delight. I am in no rush, even if the sour lady behind me is rolling her eyes and shuffling her feet, sighing heavily every ten seconds, anything to communicate the words “Hurry up” without actually speaking them.

“Should I run and grab another one?” I offer.

“No, no. I’m almost there.” Then, finally smiling, she scans the amended peanut butter label and waggles one of her sorceress fingers at the jar. “Bad jar,” she jokes. “Bad, bad jar.”

We share a mild chuckle, and then I take my chance, employ a playground flirtation. “Well, I knew you were working today,” I tell her. “So I made sure to grab the one that was messed up.” My words didn’t come with a physical wink, but they carried one, unseen, in spirit.

Once again, I am rewarded with her brown eyes, and in them I see clear communication. Through the exasperated sighs and shuffling from the irritated woman behind me in the queue, I decipher an unspoken message in the doe-brown gaze that sparkles across the conveyor belt. Maybe I am deluded, but I swear it was an open invitation to love. In any case, when I laid bare my soul, ignored the throat-clearing of the demon grunting behind me, I was gifted with Hannah’s coy smile suppressed by a bitten lower lip, and finally, audible affirmation: Yes, here is my number.

***

I didn’t wait long. I texted her that evening, and she didn’t wait long, either, to text me back. She was as eager and forward as I, it seemed, and so I agreed to her suggestion: dinner at my place. I gave her my address and paced by the window until I saw her emerge from a lousy little car. I opened the front door before she got the chance to knock, and before I had the chance to see Hannah in her street clothes, they were on the floor, and so were mine. We stumbled, blinded by our smothering embraces, our limbs and mouths frantic and occupied, but eventually made it to the bedroom. In the other room, dinner got cold, and neither one of us cared.

We had sex many times, which is something I didn’t know I was capable of. Not in one night, one session. But really, it was easy. My body behaved, responded, performed. And though I owe my surprising ineptitude mostly to Hannah, to her radiant, soft body and doughy upper arms, her luminous small breasts and devout hunger for me, in truth, I may owe it all to the peanut butter, the freak catalyst to this glorious debauchery and fiery passion.

We applied the spread in the most creative and filthy of ways. Hannah smeared the condiment in dark corners and crevices I didn’t know I had, and in hidden valleys I was happy to discover on her own body. We explored our frisky palate, tasting, sampling, eating, indulging, feasting off of one another. After a time, we moved on from the Jif, wiping free our lips and chins and making love again, longer, harder, faster. And we didn’t stop when the peanut butter jar was down to a thin residue lining the glass. Next, it was pizza sauce, pesto, and coconut cream. It was cold on our flesh, but soon became warm, wedged between our slick, snaking bodies. In the end, my bed sheets were a write-off, totally unsalvageable. Hannah and I tossed them to the floor, let our bodies warm each other during the night, and awoke in the morning, shrouded in a disgusting, artful crust of congealed juices.

This went on for a while. Many months, I am happy to report. Sex with Hannah was always ferocious, never clean. Honestly, I could’ve done without all that food –Hannah was tasty enough on her own– but she was totally into it, and so I yielded to her desire, which became my own. My grocery bill skyrocketed, which added a measure of reluctance about the edible nature of our affair. But really, once you place pineapple rings to frame the nipples of your lover’s snow-white tits, there is no going back. Tropical fruit has never been so sweet.

“Shall we wine and dine?” Hannah would ask, bright and bawdy over the phone. It was our private joke, code for sitophilia, or as the layman might say, “fucking with food.”

“How about a movie?” I’d sometimes suggest. “Or I take you out to dinner, for real. You know, a nice restaurant?” After all the sex, I was desperate to become closer to her. Not physically –the only way to get closer would be to shrink and crawl up inside of her– but emotionally, romantically. I wanted to treat her like a princess, not a buffet.

“Or, I could get another jar of Jif?” If nothing else, Hannah was persistent. With her, it was always raunchy, edible sex.

“Really?” I’d ask, almost implore, using only my tone to communicate a desperate need to go beyond our sandwich spread fetish. “How about a walk on the beach?” Too cliché? Was I too old, too boring for Hannah, who maybe, just maybe, only appreciated me for my complimentary coupling with cream cheese or Greek yogurt, the fund to supply them to her. “Let’s try something different,” I’d say.

“We could go with Skippy,” Hannah offered. “There’s a sale on.”

“How about the zoo?”

There was a long pause on the other line. Eventually I heard something. A Sigh? “Hannah? You there?”

“Actually, I’m feeling a little tired,” she told me. “Maybe I’ll sit this one out.”

This felt like the beginning of the end. I didn’t want to lose her. “Skippy is on sale?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she brightened up. “Big time sale. Two for one!”

This time I sighed. “I’ll swing by the supermarket before I come pick you up.”

“I’m looking forward to wining and dining, baby.”

“Yeah. It’ll be great…”

***

And really, truly, it was great, even if I did feel that our relationship was stuck in the mud, unable to pass beyond the claggy mire of so much peanut butter. But here’s the thing: Hannah was beautiful, desirable, and smooth, even when we went with crunchy. It was fun for a while, but I wish we could skip the spreads. Don’t’ mistake me, I don’t mean to complain. I like peanut butter and cream cheese, I really do, but it’s the creamy flesh of the young supermarket attendant that really filled me up. Besides, all that rich spread, I was starting to get soft.

It was inevitable that we would fizzle out. Or, rather, it was inevitable that her passion for me would fizzle out, that I would beg for her to allow me, just allow me, please, to buy more peanut butter, anything, caviar if she desired some, if it would bring her back to my bed, to my arms, where I may embrace her cetacean-smooth body and feel her heartbeat against my own. I longed to fall asleep with her, encrusted and filthy, as we had so many times before, my face embedded in her mustard-hardened hair as she snored, her soft body rising, falling in perfect rhythm.

How was it that I ever had cause to complain?

***

And now, as things have developed, after Hannah met Pete, a boy her own age who skateboards past my house on the way to his work, the supermarket, where he and Hannah share sly winks across their respective serving counters, it becomes clear: I have been ousted, outdueled, beaten. My own relationship with Hannah has been reduced to shopper and cashier, the way it began. And although we cannot undo all the gorgeous, filthy things that we have done to each other, neither can we celebrate them, honor them with retellings of the past, or hope to reenact them. Not now, perhaps not ever. As her boyfriend, Pete does not allow Hannah to take my calls or text me back, or even talk to me outside of what he calls “modest professional discourse.”

When I shop for groceries, when Pete’s queue is virtually empty, I opt for Hannah’s, even as it winds, long and serpentine, deep into the aisles. From far away, I project a pretense of patience. I wait and study the products that hem me in, the many jars of peanut butter. In this state of hopeful expectation, I bide my time and will my erection to remain at bay. I listen to the scanner-gun beeps that tally the long seconds of my brimming anticipation, and as I approach, nearer to Hannah, I savor each one of her monotone greetings, sterile and polite.

I wait. I endure. I suffer throughout, until I get my chance, my own moment with Hannah, where maybe, just maybe, fortune will fall upon me once again.

Alex S. Johnson 

Reynaldo the World’s Smallest Circus Bear Vs. Dr. Grue Pansky

Dr. Grue Pansky cleared his throat and scratched at his earlobe, covertly extracting a glob of wax. He rolled the sebum between his fingers, thinking of the word “semen” and pun-rolling it with “not believing.” He was suddenly reminded of his patient, later revealed to run a child sex trafficking ring, Shtuffin Jensen Glurba, fond of sex magick practices involving whacking off in his victim’s face. 

The world really didn’t think much of him, and Dr. Pansky would never quite be comfortable with his lowered status ever since he left his staff position at Los De Abajo Hospital in San Bernardo, California under a cloud. Known as “Doctor Doom” to many of his patients for the record number of people, including major celebrities, who had died after appearing on his show RockStar Rehab on HBO, he no longer felt that he could afford to be associated with the sprawling, beautiful campus, a whited sepulcher plump to bursting with awful unclean bones and worse. 

“I am not Doctor Doom,” he’d told reporters at the time. “I am a human being.” You could have heard crickets, even the sound of tumbleweed families rolling down avenues of sin. 

“That is to say…those patients were going to die…anyway.”

“Ahem.” The small bear cleared his throat. Dr. Pansky looked up from his laptop. He’d nodded off. Too many late nights with Dr. Brownstone and Dr. J.

“I heard all about your patient, Eyelish Kiernan. She went all aggro on her boss, right?”

“Wasn’t me,” said Pansky irritably.

“Of course not,” said Reynaldo, the World’s Smallest Circus Bear.

An endless unquiet pause ensued.

Then: “Have you ever considered yoga and meditation?” asked Reynaldo, raising a thoughtful paw.

“Anyway,” said Pansky, slapping himself awake like Satan’s own bitch, “this is not and has never been about me. It’s about you. It’s about Reynaldo, literally the World’s Smallest Circus Bear. It’s about your childhood trauma, the death of your parents in a fire that you started when you fired up your first joint and casually tossed it to the forest floor. It’s about your journey through being a CIA asset to realizing your grandiose ambition to become the Bear Messiah, bringer of the Secret Wisdom and Sexy Shmexiness. It’s about your collaboration with the author of THE DEATH JAZZ, Alex S. Johnson, and the way Johnson has used me as a recurrent character in stories such as ‘Vitonic: For Your Life!,’ ‘Looker,’ and even referenced me and Los De Abajo Hospital under a different name between the pages of Morbid Curiosity Magazine, edited by Loren Rhoads.”

“That Johnson dude? Never trust him,” said the bear, shedding a single, tiny tear.

“Oh yeah? I thought as much. He sent me quite the nasty barbed memo when I…”

“When you…”

“When I…harrrumph…Satan’s Jeweled Cock…I must protest…”

“Look into my eyes, see who I am,” said Reynaldo, smiling. Twin flames danced in his cheeky chocolate brown eyes.

“The…the Devil!!!” cried Dr. Pansky.

“No. A thousand times no. I must protest,” said the bear with an air of injured innocence. “The Devil would be someone who trades his good name to become a shill for Big Pharma, pushing bullshit psych medications whilst condemning a substance that is legal in many states, including this one, California, where you practice…I’m talking about the sticky Black Sabbath wrote a song about…it will free your mind muh friend…”

“No…” shrieked Pansky. “That way lies chaos and schizophrenia!” He cleared his throat. “I and my colleague Dr. Thomas Hermuzti have declared that delta nine THC, otherwise known as murrrrrr…eeee….wa…”

“Go on, say it. I see you shiver in antici…”

“No.”

“You know why you’re such an awful person and went on mixed martial arts expert and lame-ass comedian Shmoe Rogaine’s show to spread anti-vax disinformation on behalf of your Big Pharma handlers is…”

“Nooooo…”

“You’re a fraud and you want to dress in a bra and panties and suck me off, doncha…that’s your shameful secret. But you’re too much of a fucking narcissist to admit it…let me tell you what, the rock stars you condemn because they check in under what you call a ‘phony name’ to this bish up in here are actually pretty fucking cool, whereas you yourself are a disappointment to your patients, everybody who trusted you, yourself, your long-suffering parents, your wife…”

“Have you no decency? Have you no ethics? Have you no morality? Fortunately nobody will ever have the unmitigated umbrage to publish a story with a scenario such as you’ve just lain out for me….”

“Are you 100% sure about that? What about HORROR SLEAZE TRASH?”

Pansky gulped, then smiled. “Not even HST.”

The bear smiled too. Very wide.

“Ok,so I do have quite the yen for forced feminization and crawling on muh hands n’ knees like a little bitch…”

“There you go muh goodman, my Young Goodman Brownstone,…”

“Why do you insist on making up awful nicknames for me? I do NOT have an addiction. I am not an addict. I TREAT addicts like…”

“Like?” Reynaldo made a signature gesture, the one he used when he was about to juggle chainsaws while negotiating a unicycle across a flaming tightrope?”

“Like…”

“Admitting you have a problem is literally the first step…”

Dr Pansky rose from his chair and kicked it over, sporting an enormous erection. He unzipped and began to furiously masturbate. The bear dove for cover just in time to avoid being caught in the eye with a geyser of hot jissom.

“You’ve gone and spoilt it! Damn you!!! I was going to save that one for muh spank bank for all time!!!”

“Seriously?” Reynaldo said in a tone of pained dignity. “But you know what? I think we’ve both been played.”

“How so?” said Dr. Pansky. The infamous host of RockStar Rehab attempted to seize a clutch of fur to wipe his still-spurting cock off on. The bear tucked and rolled, rolled and tucked, and kept rocking and rolling, rolling, rolling out into the long shock corridor of Los De Abajo Hospital. He could hear the LAPD choppers overhead. He knew he was in trouble once again. And he revelled in it.

He adored it.

It made his day.

Alex S. Johnson proof-read the story one more time, then typed:

THE END?

Marty Shambles

Meat the Messiah: s01e01 – Pilot

the road makes its own gravy. the sog of chew churns the juices through the masticated sludge. somehow the chief thrill is the swallow where the gut’s dark alchemy makes the gravy to smother the world. 

hulk hogan stands on the shoulder, farming out his processes. hulk hogan is the perfect american. he is taller than his shadow. half-chubbed, he has a bible in his right hand with his left thumb outstretched.

the thumb, immaculate, moisturized by the eyeblood of his enemies, beams godlight in a column from the thumbnail to the heavens.

i, the devil, tried to tempt the hulk in the desert, offering him gay sex and communism, but he held fast. he drank muscle milk and came on some big american tits he moulded out of sand.

(the road’s gravy pipe plugs into the rio grande. fish swim upside down as they try to cross the border.)

a cadillac convertible pulls up. elvis is driving.

elvis: i’m headin’ to vegas, man. need a ride?

hulk: you know it brother!

the sun is a derringer pistol firing solar storms into the middle distance. radiation bathes the car and it has a green glow as it cruises through los alamos. 

the desert feels like song and they sing viva las vegas. they stop at a bar. the sky is dark with black wings.

hulk: we can’t stop here. this is bat country.

elvis: don’t be a pussy, man.

a bat comes down and bites hulk hogan on his dick. hulk throws the bat on the ground and body slams it. elvis karate kicks it. the bat is no more but hulk bleeds from his dick.

elvis: i hear you can fuck better with a rabies dick, man.

hulk: i’ve had worse, brother!

the bar is a dive, all set up like christmas in august. it smells like smoke and beer and piss. they order two pints of kerosene and see lauren bacall behind the bar, or it looked like bacall, in her 40s.

elvis: say, mama, what’s your story?

bacall: growing up, everybody said i could be a star, but i got knocked up early and now this is what i do.

elvis: i didn’t mean it like…

bacall: it’s funny to think of now, the years i spent sucking off my dairy queen manager for raises. whatever little bit i had that wasn’t spoken for was spent on going to the movies. most girls at my age then had boys take them out to the movies. i had a husband and…

john wayne and lyndon johnson kick open the door of the bar. the door just falls the fuck over.

john wayne: i guess some big dicks swaggered into town.

johnson: ain’t gonna beat ol’ jumbo here.

john wayne: show us your dicks and we’ll show you ours.

i, the devil, watch this intently and start jacking off.

elvis (hard): you got it, man.

bacall: now, i don’t want any trouble.

hulk (also hard, but feeling the pain of the bite): show us your dicks, brother!

The four of them stand in a circle, the turgid dicks nearly touching heads.

john wayne (to bacall): Show us your tits so it’s not gay. $100 in it for you.

bacall: $500 

johnson: deal.

lauren bacall takes off her shirt and preps the bar, cursing under her breath.

the four men crank their hogs at eachother. in a dick duel, you’re trying to cum last. elvis is out in two strokes, then john wayne cums next. then the former president. then me.

the hulk cums last and the jizz spills out the bite holes. he looks at his dick. it’s going black with necrosis.

***commercial break***

in this fastpaced digital world, two men sit in two lawnchairs on 2 lawns, the way god intended. each man has his secrets. they are old men, white, southern. they have hoods in their closets. we ask these men who has the better lawn. they each say they have the better lawn. one says, that’s horse shit, you have a brown spot right there. the other says, that’s cuz your cunt wife let’s your dog piss on the lawn. what did you say about my wife? she’s a cunt and she gives sloppy top. i’m going to end you. scotts brand turf builder! get the best lawn in the neighborhood!

***

elvis (drunk): let me tell ya, man, when i was born, my mama was so poor, she couldn’t afford to give me a name. so i got a job as a little newborn, workin’ in the coal mines, man. i went into those baby coal mines for months. my first words were ‘blasting caps’ and finally, after getting little baby black lung, i went down to the general store and bought the cheapest name they had: elvis. nobody wanted that dogshit name, but i made it cool, man.

hulk (also drunk): hell yeah, brother!

this sunset puts confidence in the market. it’s a sunset that hit its mark and knows its lines; a sunset with the same great taste you love. 

at this moment jimmy olsen of the daily planet photographs this sunset to adorn postcards with the caption ‘you can have everything you want’ in big white letters.

elvis’s cadillac straddles two lanes in the dusk light, headlights off. they swerve all over like danger.

hulk: let’s grab some food, brother!

elvis: somethin’ fried.

they see a shining drive thru on a hill. a mcdonalds radiating light, like something holy, like heaven in the desert, polluting the view of stars. they ride up to the drive thru.

worker (nervous): good evening, would you like to try our deep fried divorce papers, or our honey dipped sadness log?

elvis: naw, man, i just want 2 #1’s… and what are you getting?

hulk: yeah i need 25 big macs to feed this muscle hammer! You got that brother? 25 big macs. 

worker (nervous): so 2 #1’s and 25 big macs. that’ll be $271.93 at the first window.

they follow the big white arrows painted on the ground, pointing the way to big macs. good think the arrows are there or they might just drive off into the desert and never be seen again.

elvis: how’s your night going?

worker: well i haven’t slept in 20 hours because i work three jobs to help my ailing parents who…

hulk: woah there, brother. i don’t need your memoirs.

worker: that’ll be $271…

hulk takes off his wrestling championship belt and throws it the dude’s face. It knocks him over. when he recovers, his lip is bleeding a bit.

worker (warily): what am i supposed to do with this?

hulk: that’s solid gold, brother. you could easily make two grand at a pawn shop.

worker: i need cash money. my till can’t be off count or i lose this job.

hulk: you need a better job, like c-list celebrity.

elvis: or rock god.

worker: i need cash.

a shot rings out and the worker’s brains are splattered all over the wall. ronald mcdonald is holding a shotgun. he opens the cash register and stuffs it all in his clown suit.

hulk: does this mean we don’t get our big macs?

ronald: i’ve got your big macs if you’ve got a ride for me.

***commercial break***

in today’s fast paced digital world…

***

dawn is cotton candy at the rest stop near purgatory canyon. there’s a brick shithouse and a series of picnic tables. grass grows from the cracks in the asphalt, gone brown with thirst. past the rest stop is rocky desert as far as sight could reach.

elvis finds a crate of records in the trunk of the cadillac. 

elvis (to ronald): lemme see that there pea shooter, man. 

ronald mcdonald: i’m not giving you my gun, dude.

elvis: then i guess i’ll have to skeet shoot these records with my .45 instead. 

ronald mcdonald: alright. that does sound fun. what records are we smashing?

elvis: now we’re talkin man.

hulk stands at the picnic table with 25 big macs. starting from the ground, he begins assembling all of those big macs into one ultra mac.

elvis: alright we’re gonna play keep or pull with these records. each of us gets three records per round. if we want to keep a record, say keep. if we want to shoot a record say pull.

ronald mcdonald: this is a good game.

elvis walks 25 yards into the desert, toward the snakes and lizards of pugatory. they have to yell over the distance.

elvis: insane clown posse!

ronald mcdonald: keep!

elvis: do you want to know which album?

ronald mcdonald: keep!

elvis: okay… the doors!

ronald mcdonald: pull!

elvis hurls the record into the air. the wind catches the record and it takes a hard right turn toward hulk hogan, whose big mac tower is still under construction. the ultra mac is 15 burgers high

hulk: hey watch it! i’m eating over here, brother!

elvis (to ronald): i don’t think this is going to work, with the wind and all, man!

ronald mcdonald: let’s go shoot wherever they make wind so we can put buckshot in jim morrison’s face.

bukowski: they make the wind in hollywood. i’ve seen it.

elvis: where did you come from, man?

bukowski: i was always here.

hulk hogan finishes building the ultra mac. it stands 3.5 feet tall. he gets on the picnic table and jumps off to body slam the ultra mac. it smashes down to a 4 inch tall burger, trembling with kinetic energy. hulk eats it in 2 bites. the burger explodes in his gut. it would’ve killed a lesser man.

bukowski holds a beer and is ready for anything.

credits roll.

***

Eli S. Evans

Corncob’s Great Adventure

Corncob Eisenhower of landlocked Waldick, Wisconsin always dreamed of living in a lighthouse, so you can imagine how excited he was when he opened the classified ads section of his local newspaper and found that one was for sale right there in town. Needless to say, he bought it immediately.

Unfortunately, Corncob was so busy celebrating this opportunity to fulfill his dream of owning a lighthouse that he failed to notice that in the classified ad in question, there was actually a space between “light” and “house,” meaning that – you guessed it – instead of a lighthouse, the poor fellow merely ended up with a light house.

And just how light was this house, you may ask? As it turned out, Corncob was wondering the same thing, and he soon received his answer: a storm came along that wasn’t even that strong, but his new house was so light that the winds lifted it up all the same, carrying it high above the clouds – high enough that had there been a rainbow around, he and his house almost definitely would have gone over it, just like in the case of his fellow Midwesterner Dorothy from that famous old movie The Wizard of Oz

But there wasn’t a rainbow around, being that this was only a windstorm and there were consequently no rain droplets to refract the light in the manner necessary to create a rainbow; in this regard, Corncob thought, his situation was perhaps less like Dorothy’s and more like that of the protagonist of another, more contemporary movie that he’d never seen but knew enough about to know that it centered around a grumpy old man who tied a vast quantity of balloons to his house so it would fly him away from a world in which he was no longer happy living, only to discover once he’d gone airborne that a child who was both full of optimistic energy and desperately in need of love had joined him as a stowaway. Initially, the grumpy old man was displeased by this turn of events, but over the course of their journey together he learned to let go of whatever pain or resentment or sense of guilt or regret was making him so grumpy in the first place in order to be able to give that child the love he needed.

“Maybe I, too, could be metaphorically reborn in such a tearjerking fashion,” Corncob said to himself. “It’s really just a matter of whether there’s a child both full of optimistic energy and desperately in need of love hidden away somewhere in this floating abode of mine.”

To find out, he undertook a thorough search of the premises. That was how he discovered that there was, indeed, another person with him. In this case, however, it was not a young child full of optimistic energy but, quite the opposite, a grumpy old man who was furthermore attempting to rob him.

“Halt! Police!” cried Corncob when he came upon the elderly hooligan rooting through the top drawer of his dresser, where he kept several important documents as well as a pair of women’s underwear he’d acquired via surreptitious means.

“Oh, please,” sneered the old man, barely bothering to toss a glance back over his shoulder. “If you’re the police, then show me your badge and your gun.” 

“I’m off duty,” lied Corncob.

“Off duty my itchy ass,” said the old man. “Now go on and get out of here while I look for something worth stealing or else I’ll be forced to wallop you right in that snaggle-toothed maw of yours.” 

It occurred to Corncob that grumpy and old though he may have been, if he was willing to risk a felony conviction in this fashion, the man must have been in need of, if not love, then surely something equally important.

“What I’m in need of is money, you dumbass,” he said when Corncob shared these ruminations with him. “There’s something I want to buy something for my wife Lucille and social security isn’t quite cutting the mustard at the moment as far as a purchase of that magnitude is concerned.”

“That’s actually really sweet,” said Corncob. “Do you mind if I ask what it is you want to buy her?”

“A big ass dildo,” replied the old man. “In other words, none of your fucking business.”

“Well, seeing as I’m the person you’re trying to rob so you can buy it,” observed Corncob, “I’d argue that it sort of is my business.”

The old man slammed the dresser drawer shut. “You know what? You’re very quickly becoming a lot more trouble than you’re worth, and now that I think about it, you’re probably broke, anyway. Therefore, if you’d kindly step to one side, I’ll take my leave of this shithole and go rob someone more worthy of my criminal exertions.” 

“You might want to have a look out the window before you do that,” Corncob advised.

The old man leaned to one side and peered through the nearest pane. “Ah,” he said. “We appear to be aloft.”

“Not only that,” said Corncob, “but I haven’t the slightest idea how to steer a flying house, so in all likelihood we’re just going to drift off into space together and die.”

The old man shook his head. “I swear to God the world wasn’t always full of half-witted nincompoops. Listen, you schmuck, it’s just a simple matter of weight distribution, which you sure as hell don’t need a master’s degree in rocket science to figure out. You move the furniture around to steer and chuck it overboard to descend.”

“And you’re saying you could do that?”

“Let’s make a deal,” said the old man. “You go down to the basement where you won’t be able to get in my way with your stupid bullshit questions, and I’ll take care of guiding us safely back to earth.”

“Wow,” said Corncob. “How will I ever be able to thank you for saving my life?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Five minutes ago, I was robbing you and now you’re asking how you can thank me? What a pathetic sniveling lickspittle you turned out to be. By the time I was your age, I knew how to kill a deer, slit it down the middle, and sleep in its steaming entrails as a way to survive being stranded outside on a cold winter night. Not that you’re smart enough to manage something like that, but on the off chance you did, I bet you’d cry about it like some three-hanky milksop.”

“I think I’ll head for the basement now,” said Corncob.

The days Corncob spent down there in the dark, disturbed only by the sound of furniture scraping across the floor overhead, were not altogether unpleasant, especially insofar as they gave him a chance to further pursue his burgeoning interest in the Tibetan Buddhist practice of “mun mtshams,” or dark meditation. Nonetheless, when he at last felt the clunk of the house meeting solid ground, he was truly happy to be back in Waldick. Truly happy, that is, until he came upstairs and discovered that he wasn’t in Waldick at all, but China!

“Ah-ah-ah,” said the old man when Corncob expressed his dismay. “I only said I’d get us safely back to earth – I never said where.”

“But why China, of all places?”

“If you really must know, the thing I was wanting to buy Lucille was a big shitload of Peking Duck, which after whole belly clams and oysters on the half-shell is her third favorite food, and between the favorable Yuan to dollars exchange rate and my detailed knowledge of the very best local back-alley establishments, here in China I can afford to buy her more Peking Duck than she could hog down in two lifetimes without having to resort to robbing asshats such as yourself. And on that note, I’m off to do my shopping, so goodbye for now and with any luck I won’t have to see that stupid looking face of yours again.” 

“Wait,” cried Corncob. “How am I going to get along without you? I’ve never even been to Cancún, no less China.”

“If it’s cold and you’re stuck outside overnight, just look for a deer.”

At that, the old man went on his way, and Corncob, without anyone to guide him, commenced wandering around Beijing like a fart in a barrel, as the old Yiddish saying goes. All in all, this was far from an ideal state of affairs, but on balance, things definitely could have been worse. In earlier times, for example, the fact that Corncob didn’t speak a lick of Mandarin Chinese would have completely prevented him from communicating with the local population, but thanks to being a part of the digital age, he had a special app on his mobile phone that could immediately translate anything a person said into the device’s microphone from a total of two hundred and forty-three different foreign languages and dialects into English, and, conversely, anything Corncob said into the microphone into, from among the same two hundred and forty-three, the specific language or dialect of his choosing. As a result, when various members of that local population, noticing how confused and out of place he appeared to be, approached him asking “Nǐ zài zhè’er zuò shénme?”, Corncob not only knew this was Chinese for “What are you doing here?” but was moreover able to reply “Zhè shì yīgè hěn zhǎng de gùshì, wǒ de péngyǒu, cǐkè wǒ tài èle, tài hàipàle, érqiě hěn gūdú, wúfǎ jiǎngshù tā,” which was Chinese for “It’s a long story, my friend, and at the moment I’m too hungry, scared, and alone to tell it.”