Last Weekend

Lana is sucking my cock as if she were paid by the stroke of her tongue, and in fact she is. Four hundred euros for every client she makes come within three minutes. She looks me in the eyes while she works. She is a professional. She killed her husband with a wood axe in 2022, seven blows to the back of the skull while he slept. She told me ten minutes ago, smoking a cigarette on my lap. Now she is sucking my cock. On her right wrist she wears a white bracelet identical to mine.

There are seven of us in this room they call the premium suite. Four men, three women. All wearing the bracelet. All sentenced to death. Cigarette in mouth, cock out, cunt in the air, cocaine on the marble coffee table like powdered sugar on my grandmother’s fritters. The State – don’t ask which one; at that level they all start to look alike – has thought of everything. Four-hundred-dollar Japanese whisky. MDMA in little heart-shaped candies. Poppers in the bathroom dispensers as if they were hotel soap. Marcus, to my right, has just snorted two lines and now Aaliyah is jerking him off while he cries. He cries. She laughs. She is beautiful. Black, nearly two meters tall, with a knife scar under her right breast. She slit her boyfriend’s throat and his lover’s in a Memphis motel in 2023, five cuts each.

“How much do you think they’re paying us?” Marcus asks me, his teeth stained with coke.

“They’re not paying us. The people watching us? They’re paying like maniacs.”

“How much?”

“Manhattan-apartment money. Per head.”

Marcus nods. He was an auditor before he slit his wife’s throat over the toilet because she had discovered he had not been going to the gym for five years and had kept it from him so she would not humiliate him. Courtesy kills more than discourtesy, Marcus explained earlier. He did not take it well.

Lana pulls away, spits into the champagne glass beside her, drinks from another. Her eyes are red. Not from crying. From eight straight hours of coke.

“Not long now,” she whispers. “Room two at eleven.”

“What is room two?”

“The one where they kill you.”

She smiles. Starts sucking again.

“How do you know?”

She pulls away again. “I’ve been here a week. They tell you everything the first night. They want you to know. It helps the performance.” She turns toward one of the cameras in the cornice and makes a little heart with her hands. “You’re on, too, Mister Italian. Say hello.”

I say hello. The camera waves back, I imagine.

“When do you die?”

“Tonight, after you. I’m in the Premium Plus package. The clients bought the encore.”

“Fuck.”

“Whatever. Outside there was only a cell and an injection eight months from now. Here there’s cock, coke, and rich men paying fifty thousand euros to watch me come. I feel like Madonna.”

The bell rings at exactly eleven. It does not growl. It does not scream. Ding ding. Five-star hotel concierge.

A door opens in the wall that had looked blind until then. A man in a gray suit comes out. Fifty or so. He smiles like a dentist. Hands folded.

“Ladies. Gentlemen. The second part of your experience awaits.”

Marcus grabs my wrist. Hard. Says nothing. Aaliyah is still laughing, but it is a different laugh now, the laugh of someone who has started seeing the walls breathe. Lana walks in front of everyone, naked, like a hostess closing a flight.

Room two.

White.

Seven luxury dental recliners. Seven IV bags already waiting. Seven nurses smiling like Lana. The chairs are angled toward a wall of smoked glass. Behind the glass, in the half-dark, silhouettes of seated people. Drinks in hand. A soft round of applause. Not enthusiasm. Purchase confirmation.

I sit down. The nurse strokes my arm. The needle goes in. Lana was right. It does not hurt.

The last thing I see before I go is the reflection of my cock, still half-hard, superimposed on the smoked glass over the face of an old man on the other side, calmly touching himself under the jacket of his five-thousand-euro suit.

***

I wake up.

The package did not include death.

They drug you to the marrow, carry you to room three, open you up – kidneys to Riyadh, liver to Istanbul, heart to an industrialist in Milan who does not want to know the donor’s name – and then they put you back together. Yes. It costs three times as much. The Resurrection package, clients call it, laughing among themselves. Seventy-two hours of presumed death, partial harvesting, organs replaced with gene-edited pig tissue grown in the Netherlands, and then they return you to prison with your white bracelet. All legal. All consensual. You signed, remember?

And now, for the eight months you have left before the real injection, you have to live with a liver that is not yours, two pig kidneys, and a heart that stopped beating the day before it began beating for you.

The first beat of a new heart is not something you forget.

The second is when you understand that even the first one was never really yours.

In my cell, they left me the souvenir. On the nightstand. A little blue velvet box with a white card printed inside: Thank you from the client. Enjoy the rest of your stay. Inside, preserved in formaldehyde, was the little finger of my left hand. I checked it under the neon bulb in the cell. It is mine. The cat scar from 1997 is still there.

The client had paid for it as a trophy. Then he changed his mind.

They returned it to me because he did not want it anymore.

On the back of the card, a QR code. Rate your Concierge experience. Your opinion matters.

I scanned it with the disposable phone they had left me for the eight months I still have.

Three stars out of five.

The pinkie had arrived cold.

Salvation Lies in Baraboo

Chester Chuckles’ size 37 shoes, once shiny and red, were covered in fallout dust as he waddled across the post-apocalyptic wasteland. He finally emerged from his car weeks ago and had been walking ever since. A clown car is a pleasant place to pass an apocalypse if you are well-provisioned. Also, if your car seats 21 clowns, as Chester’s did, it offers ample room to stretch out if you are alone, as Chester was. When finally, he emerged from the lowest depths of the car’s labyrinthine interior to the outside world, all had changed. He found himself alone in a post-apocalyptic hellscape that had once been the beautiful palm tree-lined campus of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Sarasota, Florida.

Also, the paint on his car was scratched.

At first Chester did not know what to do or where to go, but after he sat and thought for a moment, he knew that if there was hope anywhere for a lone clown like him, it lay in Wisconsin. For, tucked away in the quartzite hills of the ancient Baraboo Range from which the great Ringling Brothers sprung to spread the gospel of Circus to the all people, were the Circus World Museum and International Clown Hall of Fame. Surely salvation lay in Baraboo!

Now hundreds of miles into his journey, Chester shuffled through the red-gray dirt and thought about how it had all come to this. In the years before the end (though at the time no one anticipated a real end) there was a something in the air that could not be measured by any barometer or Sunday morning news shows. It was not something simple and nameable like political unrest or climate change, nor anything in the usual catalog of historical forebodings long compiled by historians reviled by those making the history. It was something subtler: a pervasive trembling beneath the irritated skin of ordinary life. Shelves were stocked, the airplanes arrived on time, screens glowed with appetite-inducing advertisements. And the good people of earth moved through their routines as if performing them for an audience they could not see. But though they could not see it for themselves, humanity at large was seized by a quiet dread: they required some proclamation of worth, some signal that their lives were anchored in something sturdier than awards shows and bull markets. Being no longer felt self-evident. It felt provisional, contingent, as though the veneer of the inevitability of experience was peeled back and, to everyone’s horror, there was nothing underneath. The horizon seemed suddenly closer, far too close. A few people gradually sensed that history had begun to slope, that time was leaning forward, that everything was about to tip under its own terrible inertia. But most people simply turned the other way, or at least looked down at their phones. 

The world had become a dark and impenetrable obstacle to the transparent and ephemeral souls that inhabited it. Those afflicted with ontological clarity suffered most acutely. They were not superior in intellect, nor purer in motive, but they were constitutionally unable to perform in the play in which everyone else had memorized their lines. To pause, to ask foundational questions, was to risk exile. They were accused, subtly or overtly, of ingratitude. Depth was recast as morbidity, introspection as self-indulgence. The ultimate accusation was wickedness: that by declining to participate in the communal theater, they endangered the fragile coherence of the whole wide world. 

The machinery of distraction hummed with increasing efficiency, insulating the populace from silence, but the signs of an approaching threshold intensified. The markets fluctuated, the climate destabilized, alliances shifted, but these were symptoms, not causes. Beneath them lay a metaphysical unease: a suspicion that the current being was unsustainable. Still, children were born, couples married, people commuted to work. Continuity was the order of the day. Yet in private journals and late-night conversations, people confessed to a peculiar anticipation. It was not despair, it was the intuition that the present form of things could not endure indefinitely. Toward what end were they marching, moving, slouching, creeping? No one could say what would come. But many felt deep in their marrow, that something fundamental was drawing near—not a spectacle, but a revelation. But it was not revelation. It was rupture more than anything. 

Chester was suddenly torn from his philosophizing by a chortle that ran down his funny bone like ice water. He had been so absorbed in his own thoughts and narrative exposition that he didn’t realize he had nearly run right into another clown. Ordinarily Chester would have been overjoyed to have stumbled upon a fellow clown, but at the appearance of this strange clown he could offer only a hesitant ‘how-do-you-do’ wave. 

The new clown’s greasepaint smile was carved too wide—much too wide—splitting his face into a permanent rictus that showed far too many small, needle-like teeth. His white makeup was cracked over sallow skin, and his eyes, ringed in smeared black, glinted with predatory amusement. A faded patchwork suit, once obviously bright but now stained and frayed, the ruffles stiff with grime, hung from his large but emaciated frame. Blood dripped from his red nose and lips. 

Chester held out his hanky. “You seem to have a nosebleed.”

“What’s your name, pal?” asked the stranger.

“Chester. Chester Chuckles. And to whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“They call me Gristle Splitgrin.”

“I see. What kind of clown are you?”

“The evil kind.”

Chester Chuckles’ face took on a dour look. “I thought that kind of clown only existed in the movies.”

Gristle shrugged and held out his hands as if to say, ‘And yet here I am.’ “And yet here I am,” he said. “What kind of clown are you?”

“Mostly a happy clown. A grotesque whiteface carpet clown, I suppose, if you were to be being taxonomical about it. What’s your bit?”

“Destruction,” growled Gristle most malevolently.

“You wanna see one of my gags?” asked Chester Chuckles. “It’s a pretty good one.” Gristle didn’t say no, so Chester stretched his arms as high as they would go, then plunged them deep into his suspendered wide hoop pants. There was a loud clanging noise as if a whole workbench of tools came crashing down. Then, his eyes lighting up, Chester exclaimed “I got it!” Gristle leaned in closer and Chester triumphantly yanked a machete from his hoop pants and thrust it into the air where the sunlight glinted on the razor-sharp edge. “Snicker-snack!” he halooed as he swung it wildly before him, slicing one of Gristle’s suspenders on a forehand and the other on the accompanying backhand. Gristle’s pants fell to his ankles. “Shall I tickle your entrails with Johnny Corkscrew?” Chester turned the blade in a deadly imitation of twisting it in a wound that he had planned for the middle of Gristle’s belly. Gristle pulled up his pants and ran for the hills. 

“See ya, friend!” shouted Chester after him. Chuckling merrily, he continued down the path.

***

On a forest path, Chester stumbled upon a mime. 

“Hello, there,” Chester chuckled.

 “Hi!” the mime mimed.

“What’s your name?” asked Chester.

The mime mimed a look of barely hidden judgement of Chester’s powers of intellect.

“How silly of me,” replied Chester, barely registering the insult. “Let me guess.”

The mime mimed a greatly exaggerated rolling of the eyes.

“Let’s see… Is your name Arlec?” 

The mime mimed shaking his head, meaning that his name was not Arlec.

“Is it Aurelio?”

It was not.

“Bellrose? Corvin? Lucern? Lune? Malvo? Marceau? Orrick? Pierre? Theophile? Valentin? Vespertine? Virelai?”

In addition to not being Arlec or Aurelio, the mime’s name was not Bellrose, Corvin, Lucern, Lune, Malvo, Marceau, Orrick, Pierre, Theophile, Valentin, Vespertine, nor was it Virelai.

Chester lifted his cap, then another smaller cap underneath the first cap, and scratched his head. “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…” he pondered. “I supposed I will just have to call you ‘Mr. Quiet’.”

Mr. Quiet mimed sticking his tongue out with disgust. 

“Tell me, Mr. Quiet, how did you get here?”

Mr. Quiet mimed a thermonuclear explosion, hiding in a basement for three weeks, digging himself out from the rubble, being set upon by a pair of radiation-mutated looters, killing one with his bare hands and ripping out the throat of another with his own teeth, then stumbling, terrified, cold, and hungry through the woods in which they now stood.

“I see,” said Chester Chuckes, nodding, smiling, laughing, and crying all at the same time. “Will you come with me Mr. Quiet?”

Mr. Quiet mimed shaking his head again. He mimed the glorious Land of the Mimes, where it was always sunny and everymime had their own invisible box to lie down in.

“That sounds nice,” said Chester Chuckles. “Well, it was nice meeting you.” He put out his hand.

Mr. Quiet clasped Chester’s hand to shake it and jumped as the hand buzzer Chester had concealed in his palm buzzed him.

“Hyuck! Hyuck!” chuckled Chester Chuckles.

Mr. Quiet mimed giving Chester the finger and stomped away toward the Land of Mimes.

***

Chester Chuckles stood on the bank of a great river, wondering how to get across. With great joy, he spotted a rowboat with two oars tied to a tree and made his way down to untie it.

“Hold it clown,” said a familiar voice. “That’s our boat.”

Chester looked up toward the source of the voice and was unsurprised to see Gristle Splitgrin emerging from behind a tree. “Oh – hi, Gristle,” said Chester.

Standing at Gristle’s shoulder was the most physically ravishing female clown Chester Chuckles had ever seen. Her hair was cardinal red, at least three feet across, and bouncy—nearly as bouncy as her breasts, which were stuffed quite precariously into a harlequin-patterned latex bralette. She wore a multicolored rainbow tutu, thigh-high black-and-white striped socks, and ruby stilettos. A very beautiful Gerber Daisy was pinned to her top. Chester leaned in close for a sniff and a surreptitious peek at the soft flesh upon which it was perched it when it squirted right in his eye.

“BWAH-HA-HA-HA!” laughed Gristle.

“Who’s the girl?” asked Chester, wiping his face.

“This is my gun moll, Slaughterbell.”

“What kind of clown is she?”

“The sexy kind.”

“I can see that,” said Chester. He reached into his pants and rummaged around for some time (actually, quite some time—perhaps too long—and even Slaughterbell’s confidently sexy, smug, heavily-painted face began to waiver at how deep and actively Chester’s two clown hands were working inside his oversized pants; she felt suddenly cheapened by the vigorous, drawn out motions of his hands in his pants) and finally pulled out an old-fashioned klaxon horn. “Hold on a second,” he mumble-chuckled as he shook the bouncy balls out of it. “There,” he said, satisfied, and began cranking the klaxon as fast as he could.

“Aaaaahhhooooooooooooooooogggaaaaaaaahhh!” said the horn.

“Enough!” shouted Gristle

Chester sadly let the klaxon wind down. “…oooooogaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh…” it moaned.

“What should I do to him, sweetie?” purred Slaughterbell. 

“Kill him,” growled Gristle. “But in a fun way,” he added.

Slaughterbell slipped two fingers exquisitely manicured in a domino pattern into her cleavage and pulled out an unreasonably large and (presumably) heavy 69-cc chainsaw. With one practiced pull, it roared to life.

“I wonder where she found the gas for that,” wondered Chester to himself. “It’s probably a two-stroke,” he reasoned, “and can run on degraded gas.” Then, aloud: “Wait!”

Slaughterbell paused just long enough for Chester to dive back into his pants and bring out a sawed-off shotgun. “Boom!” he shouted each time he pulled the trigger and sprayed buckshot everywhere. “Boom! Boom! Boom!” 

Gristle and Slaughterbell ran screaming along the riverbank while Chester stepped lightly into the rowboat and began pulling swiftly for the opposite shore.

***

Deep in a wood, Chester Chuckles heard a beautiful sound, like angels singing. He stopped to listen, then followed the sound. It grew louder. He was getting closer, and he ran faster. Turning a corner around a large boulder, he came to a natural amphitheater worn by mother nature into a rock hillside and, arranged within, a boys’ choir. 

“Beat it, clown,” sang the boys. 

“I’m just trying to get to get to Circus World,” explained Chester.

“Sing, damn it!” sang the boys beautifully. “Or this will be your end.” They started into the “Kyrie” from Hayden’s St. Cecilia Mass and drew switchblades from under their brilliant white choir robes.

Chester chuckled nervously and loosened his collar. He pulled a white hanky from his sleeve, then another hanky (red), and another (blue) and another (yellow) and another (green) until he finally wiped his brow with the last one, which was purple. The castratos’ angelic voices soared as they sang a terrifyingly gorgeous descant over the melody and fitted brass knuckles to their small, white, feminine hands.

Chester mumbled “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite,” but the boys hit back hard with “Carol of the Birds.” Chester tried “Entry of the Gladiators” and the choir countered, seemingly without effort, with “A Birch Tree in the Field Did Stand.” Chester changed tactics and hit them with “Baby Elephant Walk,” but the choir boys were too quick. They executed an adroit key change to G major and launched into the “Benedictus” from Mozart’s Pastoral Mass. Chester could feel the press of their beautiful harmony and sought through his own admittedly small musical catalogue for his big guns. He landed on “Merry Go Round Broken Down” and quickly launched into a rollicking rendition, but the clever boys brought him down with “The Prayer of Francois Villon.” Desperate, Chester tied “Hungarian Rhapsody,” his last best hope, but the boys were ready and the choir struck out at him viciously with Monteverdi’s “Tancredi and Clorinda” madrigal. 

Chester knew he was beaten, but there was one hope. He began humming “The Major General’s Song” as he danced a little two-step and tossed two Mk 2 pineapple grenades into the choir, one for the trebles and one for the altos. Before they could react, he opened his umbrella and huddled under it as the blood and gore rained down upon him. When the bloody shower stopped, Chester peaked out from under the umbrella at the 24 left feet and 24 right feet standing alone where the choir had once threatened him. He chuckled and shook his umbrella and went on his way.

***

About seven miles south of Baraboo, Chester Chuckles picked his way carefully through the Badger Army Ammunition Plant. “How ironic that the last stretch of my journey through this post-apocalyptic world is through an ordinance works where the instruments of our own destruction were created by our own hands,” he said to himself. “I wonder if there’s a thematic reason for that?”

“There isn’t,” sneered a voice with a sneer.

Chester stopped and rolled his eyes. He knew already to whom that sneer belonged.

“Happy to see me?” asked Gristle Splitgrin.

“No,” said Chester, who was always honest, sometimes to a fault. “Not particularly.”

“Well then why are you smiling?”

“I’m always smiling, you assclown. It’s painted on. I’m a happy clown!”

“I don’t particularly care for your tone,” said Gristle. “Boys!” he called. “Let’s teach Chester Chuckles some manners.”

From behind Gristle’s tall but not particularly wide frame fanned a half dozen clown lackeys: two whitefaces, two Augustes, a rodeo clown, and a Pierrot.

“You there,” said Chester, pointing at the Pierrot. “What are you doing here? You’re better than this.”

The Pierrot just shrugged his shoulders. “Le travail est difficile à trouver.”

“Hmm,” replied Chester. “I don’t know what you just said.”

“Lucky for you, you won’t need to speak French in Hell,” laughed Gristle.

“Wouldn’t it be more fitting if they only spoke French in Hell?”

“Shut up!” roared Gristle. “Get him, boys!”

Once again, the clown hands at the end of Chester’s clown arms plunged deeply into Chester’s oversized clown pants. He grunted as he bent down to get a better grip, reaching so deeply that he disappeared into the wide waist of his pants and it appeared now to the savage clownish horde that there was but the lower half of clown left standing before them. 

“Hey!” shouted Gristle. “Come back up here! Stop clowning around down there!”

Chester’s head popped up above his waistband and he smiled. “Just one second, buddy.” He looked at the advancing sextet of murderous clown lackeys: “Can you all hold on for just one more second?”

Chester dove down again, completely disappearing once more into his pants. Then, with triumphant music swelling in the background, a high-explosive anti-tank rocket emerged, followed by the muzzle of an M20 Super Bazooka, then the rest of the bazooka, then Chester’s huge, ecstatic smile, and finally, the rest of Chester. 

“Sorry, boys,” said Chester, taking aim. “At first I thought we clowns were an endangered species—you know, with the apocalypse and everything—but now I see there are just too many bad clowns. Well, goodbye!”

Gristle Splitgrin and his six accomplices blew up in a spectacular display of high-explosive anti-tank technology. Chester Chuckles tossed the bazooka on a pile of unexploded ordinance and walked off to the north on the homestretch.

***

Huffing and puffing, Chester Chuckles pulled himself to the summit of the Devil’s Lake West Bluff and stood, letting his vision sweep the Baraboo Valley that stretched out before him. 

“Shit,” he said.

Directly north, right where Baraboo should have been, right where it had been the last two hundred years, was a huge Baraboo-sized crater. Around its edge, a few buildings and trees that survived the initial blast smoldered. Nowhere to be seen was even the slightest hint of a circus: not a single big-top tent, no circus trains, no elephants, and certainly no clowns.

“Shit,” he said again. Chester sat down to think. “Maybe I could try miming.” That sounded nice.

The Kaiju Queen of the Mean Streets: A Kandy Fontaine Mystery

The streets in West Hollywood had that particular late‑night sheen they get when the neon has been burning longer than a whore’s nightstand cigarette and the air has grown clotted with the residue of too many unfinished, blood-adjacent conversations, and as I padded along the curb — because yes, I am a cat, though not the kind anyone would mistake for ordinary — I could feel the story tightening around me like a coat someone else had worn first, carrying the faint scent of their intentions. I should say this plainly: I am not merely in the story; I am the story, dressed in the sleek, amused body of Burroughs’ shotgun’s cat, which is to say I move with the casual authority of something that knows it could rewrite the entire night with a flick of its tail if it felt the need.

Kandy Fontaine pushed open the door of the convenience store with the kind of weary grace that belongs to people who have outgrown their own silhouettes, leaving them behind like vapor trails in sinister Dutch bars, her trench coat trailing behind her at a 45 degree angle in non-Euclidean memories, and Joe Oroborus, Soft Detective, followed her in with the splotched expression of a man who had misplaced his last good idea somewhere between Sunset and La Brea but was too tired to retrace his steps.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with the nervous energy of a philosophy student who had read too much Sartre and not enough La Fontaine, and the aisles seemed to shift slightly, weave themselves through bad wormholes, as if preparing themselves for a narrative turn they could sense but not yet name.

Kandy paused, sensing something in the air — a subtle rearrangement of the moment, a quiet intake of breath from the universe — and Joe felt it too, though he would never admit it, because soft detectives in this city survive by pretending they don’t notice the metaphysical drafts that blow through the cracks in reality.

I felt it most of all, of course, because stories always know when they are about to change shape. We’re born like that.

The rustle came first, a soft metallic whisper from the alleyway, followed by a flicker of chrome and a shadow that looked like Pirandello’s farts, and then — with the kind of theatrical inevitability that only the truly mythic can pull off — Kathy Acker sprang up from the alley, dressed as the Eiffel Tower’s motorcycle cat, her chrome‑slick fur catching the neon in a way that made her look like a monument that had decided it was tired of being stationary and wanted to try being alive for a while.

The miniature Eiffel Tower perched on her head tilted slightly, as if it too were curious about what would happen next, and her eyes beta-glitched with the mischievous intelligence of someone who knows the rules and ignores them out of principle.

“Kandy,” she said, her voice carrying the faint clatter of a typewriter dreaming of Paris’s asshole’s distant cousin Sam: “you’re late.”

“For what?” Kandy asked, though she already knew the answer in the way people know things they haven’t yet admitted to themselves.

“For your own myth,” Kathy‑Cat replied, stretching with the languid confidence of a creature who has never once apologized for existing.

Before Kandy could respond, the door chimed again, and this time it was Time — badly disguised as Kathy Acker’s motorcycle wearing the Eiffel Tower in drag, a look that might have worked on a different night but here only made Time seem like it was trying too hard to blend in with a city that had long ago stopped believing in subtlety. The chrome still gleamed beneath the cheap metallic paint, the Eiffel Tower wig kept slipping sideways like a landmark with stage fright, and Time — well, Time has never been good at pretending it isn’t Time.

Heisenberg, the clerk with the nametag H. Berg, didn’t bother looking up from stocking gum. “That’s Time,” he said, as if announcing the arrival of a regular customer. “Don’t let the wig fool you.”

Kandy stepped forward, unafraid, because she has always met the universe head‑on, even when it shows up wearing impossible drag not so subtly Susan Sontag.

“Why are you even here?” she asked, her voice steady in the way only someone who has already survived several versions of herself can manage.

Time shifted, the motorcycle frame creaking like a confession, or fart, it had been holding onto for too long.

“To be seen,” it said quietly. “To be something other than inevitable.”

And that — that was the moment the story finally exhaled itself the way a self smoking and self unarchiving French dab wax adjacent Kaiju Queen always do, and revealed its spine, like a greased and nameless asshole because Kandy’s Kaiju Queen transformation was never about spectacle or destruction; it was about recognition, about stepping into the version of herself that had been waiting just outside the frame.

The moon tilted, the air thickened, and Kandy grew — not violently, not monstrously, but with the slow, deliberate inevitability of a truth expanding to fill the space it had been denied, her shadow stretching across the aisles, her scales shimmering like unresolved feelings, her eyes glowing with the soft light of someone who has finally stopped apologizing for her own magnitude.

Time stared up at her, wig slipping, chrome trembling like several monster bugs in a cyclatron smoking acid winged acid. “You see me,” it whispered.

Kandy nodded, her voice low and certain. “I see you because I’ve been you.”

Kathy‑Cat curled around Kandy’s Kaiju ankle, purring like a small motor of rebellion, and Joe let out a long Bataille-infested, Genet infused, ghastly-grommet vapor he hadn’t realized he was holding, while the neon outside flickered with something that might have been respect or might have been relief.

And I — the narrative dressed as Burroughs’ shotgun’s cat — stepped forward, because this was the moment where the story folded back into itself, where the teller became the told, where the myth recognized its own architecture, and I rubbed against Kandy’s enormous neon foot, claiming her the way stories claim their heroes, and the mean streets softened just enough to let the night breathe again.

Roadkill

“No one will ever love me!” Isabel intoned, giving voice to the image of a bright-eyed fat girl smiling at us from a bus-stop advertisement. She puffed out her cheeks and let rip a raspberry. I was drinking a milkshake, and pink goo ejected from my nose. I decided to give my heart to her then. When later we kissed, I learned that hers was the most aggressive tongue I had known.

The last thing we spoke of pertained to baby sex, as in people having sex with babies. She heard an infant had been hospitalized. It gave me the icky shakes—and right before I had to step into the great wide world, full of all those strangers with their secret minds. How many people on that morning bus had been asleep just an hour before, dreaming up some truly unsettling imagery, only to ponder in horror the extent to which they might take responsibility for all that? Then out the door, wearing faces of common decency, into dangerous proximity with other silent nasties.

Would I have said something romantic had I known she would be dead before lunchtime? Certainly, I would not have gone to work. Certainly, I would have stayed home and tickled her, fingers trespassing the boundaries of her granny panties. I would have reminisced and caressed. But if, for whatever reason, I absolutely had to leave… I just don’t know what I would have said. 

Men often die first, worn by years of secretly expending the energy required to repress sadness and rage. I would joke that if and when I died first, I would have her lean in close over my death bed and I would whisper, so tenderly, the word “shart” into her cute little ear.  She would poke me hard in my belly when I said this. She would often poke me in the belly or punch me in the arm. Consequently,  I would cower and yell “domestic violence!” which would prompt further assault. 

“I love you” was said at the beginning and end of every day. It was sprinkled generously throughout. An abyss of love-yous. Sometimes, self-awareness would lead to the most inane of conversations. “I love you. No, I mean I really, love you. I mean it. More than you comprehend. I really, really love you. You are so loved. God it’s frustrating that I can’t explain it to you.” Blandness via repetition. 

“Goodnight. I love you.” 

“Goodbye. I love you.”

Our earliest impressions of one another were constructed via the joyless toil of cleaning up nice. Such theater is tricky. One wants the camouflage to fulfill its function of deceiving the potential mate, yet the intended object of affection must recognize that this image of perfection is maintained at too high a cost of energy and is, ultimately, false. Metabolically, ugliness is more efficient. One hopes to be found out.

The big breakthrough in our getting to know the ugly truths came when she showed me the picture of thirteen-year-old Isabel. What a dweeb. What a complete vacuum of sex appeal. This is no insult. I, too, was a goober at that unfortunate stage in my life. I think we wore the same fuck-me-not glasses. That a thirteen-year-old should lack sex appeal is appropriate. However, retroactive vanity produces bizarre desires. Isabel would love to know that gown-man-I would have let thirteen-year-old her bounce on his leg (yee-haw). What am I to do? Hurt grown-up Isabel’s feelings by refusing her imagined advances?

When she was fourteen, a chatroom stranger requested photographs of her feet. She obliged. She told me this story with a subtly hint of pride. If only she could be longed for as she was by that internet pervert. That was all she wanted. 

Did I adore her feet as did that stranger? Did I know her as well as I could-have-should-have? Did I give her my true self? I hate to think I hid a secret hubby the whole time. A stranger in her bed…. 

Never. I was an honest grotesque, like those who hang about the churches.

Yet neither truth nor love did save her. 

Never more shall Isabell and I bear our uglies. She was crossing to get a pint of ice cream from a 7-11 and was hit by a car. As she died, sprawled upon the pavement as the inconvenienced driver tried to force her to accept his apology. 

The call came when I was at work.

”My wife is dead.” I told my boss. “I need to leave.” 

“Aw no,” said he. “Sorry to hear that. You can go. Just make sure to clock out.” 

Besides having killed my wife, the driver was quite upstanding. He donated to feed hungry children in war-torn countries—he made sure I knew. 

Because Isabel was too busy bleeding out in the street to reassure him that it was obviously just an accident and that he remained new-born innocent, the responsibility fell to me. I pardoned him. Why not? I did not like the man, but it occurred to me that he really was too new-born stupid to be evil. Isabell and I used to make fun of men like him. McDingleberry: a character I would perform for her benefit. I would never have imagined that McDingleberry would be responsible for her death. 

Before McDingleberry was taken away by a cop, I asked if Isabel had shared any final words. He told me that she did but, he couldn’t make them out, as her mouth was full of blood. What he thought he heard made no sense.

The next day, I saw a rat lying in the street with its intestines spilled over the blacktop, gushed open. There was nothing to be said about it, nor anyone to say it to. No way to transform the obscene into its opposite. The eviscerated rat was simply what it was, like a fact. It was ugly. It was honest. It was what it was.

Constrictor

I am dangling a small rat above Sidney, my Ball Python. I have moved him into a separate enclosure to feed. This helps in the taming process. They associate the second enclosure with meal time so they are less likely to bite your hand when you reach in their terrarium to pick them up. The rat is squeaking desperately, flailing for its life while Sidney slithers forward and waits. 

I drop the rat into the box. It scampers around the edges of the enclosure, hugging against the walls for a way out. Sidney is motionless. He patiently watches. When the rat draws near, Sidney lashes out with one strike and has the rat’s head in the clutches of his jaws. Within a split-second Sidney’s body is wrapped around the torso of the rat, squeezing the life out of the creature. For a while the rat doesn’t move. It is struck with fear and lost for breath. One might think it is already dead. And it might as well be. Eventually the rat kicks it’s back legs in desperation. Sidney constricts tighter. 

The rat chokes to death and Sidney begins the process of swallowing the body whole. It can take up to ten minutes for this to happen. Sidney slinks forward and opens his jaws wide. He takes a minute to fit the rats face into his mouth and begins to choke the body down. His neck expands, stretched by the body of the rat. You can see it slide back beneath Sidney’s skin as it goes further and further towards his stomach. Soon all that is left is the pink of the rat’s tail jutting out of Sidney’s mouth like a surrogate tongue. 

I am standing in front of the terrarium watching the heat lamp glow in the dim of my bedroom. It illuminates my face red and casts jagged shadows up the wall behind the enclosure. Sidney curls around my limbs. Slithers across my arms and silently flicks his tongue. I can tell he is very happy. I like to keep people happy. Generally, I consider myself an introvert. But I am outgoing in this way. I think of how Sidney kept the peace within the box until the rat fucked up and drew too close. I relate to it. I respect it. Sydney slides down my shoulder, forearm, and wrist, and slinks under his log where he watches me from the shade. I am imagining him smiling behind his beady eyes. But Sydney has no way to smile.

I am walking down Leavitt Street. Late September in Chicago. I pass the liquor store on 21^st and a voice calls behind me. “Ey brother!” Three old drunks are across the street on a stoop of a condemned building drinking malt liquor out of brown bags. They are ex-gangbangers. Old heads of the neighborhood now wasted away on booze, drugs, and lingering traumas. “Come here brother!” the man in the middle of the group yells to me. “It’s been a long time! I’m glad you’re alive!” 

I approach and bump their fists with mine. The man in the center has two faded blue tear drops tattooed in the wrinkles of his leathery cheeks. His beard is grey and white and scraggly. His eyes are glazed over and look past me. The man to his left is curled up with his knees to his face backed up against the brick wall. He doesn’t look at me but occasionally lifts his head up to drink. He has symbols tattooed and equally faded on the crease between his thumb and pointer finger on his right hand. He grunts along with what we are saying. It is unclear if he is agreeing with or protesting the conversation.

The man to his right is in an oversized hoody soiled with dirt, the hood pulled over his head. His brown eyes are mourning. He looks like he is going to cry. I remember that the last time I saw these men their friend had just been murdered. Shot in the street in the night. The SD’s had shut out all the street lamps on the block and when he came stumbling through the darkness, they gunned him down and escaped into the black. I remember the prayer candles glowing on the corner. The empty bottles and smashed glass. The destitute men drinking and crying sad songs on a half-busted guitar long into the night. I had heard the sound of sirens. The shades of my apartment window were flashing red and blue. Yeah, there used to be four of them. These old drunks. Now three. 

“Be safe out there, papá,” he says to me. “It’s no life to live…” I nod and walk away. The man with his knees to his face appears to have fallen asleep.

I am at Martin’s Bar now. Home away from home. My second enclosure. This is where I eat and drink with my friends. Ernesto is there. My girlfriend, Nadia. And Chuy, too. Modelo is on tap. Hot wings and their bare bones sucked dry of meat fill our plates. The Bears’ game is on television. In the far corner a group of young Mexicans sing Vicente Fernandez songs acapella over the narration of the football game from the speakers. They are drunk, proud, and deeply saddened. 

“Por tu maldiiiiiiiiito amor! No puedo terminar con tantas penas!” They sing.

“He was El Rey,” nods Ernesto. He pulls his glass of Modelo up to his sagging cheeks and pouting lips. On television a Bears linemen sacks Aaron Rogers. The announcer’s excitement is drowned out by off key singing.

“He lived a hard life.” I say.

“So does everyone,” Scoffs Chuy. He looks to Nadia and she laughs.

“All we can do is appreciate the beauty while it lasts.” I look from one to the other.

“To Chente!” says Ernesto. We raise our glasses to toast. The group in the corner cheers with us. The bartender turns off the volume on the television giving way to customers playing classics on the jukebox. They have had their say.

“Por tu maldito amor!” I nudge Nadia. She rolls her eyes and I smile. I think about the sadness of this song. The music is religious to us. I buy my companions another round of beers and shots. They spout fair-weather rhetoric and drunkenly sing while I ponder the religious cult of sour love. The temptation of snakes. The fleetingness of paradise. The forbidden apple’s desire burning behind all of our eyes. I hear the hiss of a serpent but it is just the sputtering of the soda gun pouring a vodka tonic. I look at Nadia, mi novia, and Chuy, my friend. I see the way their eyes meet when they sip from their glasses. I see the way their hands graze when they reach for the plates I have put in front of them. I see their comfort in each other’s smiles and comradery in their laughter. I say nothing to them. I am calm like Sydney presented with a rat. And I know they have been unfaithful.

When their glasses empty I have them refilled. I let them drink on my dime. I keep their pints as full as mine. The beer in my cup has not dipped an inch in two hours. They are too self-involved to notice, indulging in their feast. 

A scrawny white art student type with green hair and black painted fingernails sits a few stools down drinking a Topo Chico Hard Seltzer. Chuy is eyeing them up. He scoffs once more. His eyes are sunken. His skull is heavy. 

“I remember,” he begins to say. “I remember being on the block as a kid. Riding my bike. A gangbanger motherfucker walked into the street and punched me right in the face as I rode by. Knocked me off my bicycle. He got on it and rode away. This neighborhood was something else back then. You couldn’t walk here. White motherfuckers didn’t come through here unless they wanted to lose their life! They move in here now and live in our buildings, drink in our bars, and eat at our spots, but they don’t know what this place was!”

“Back then I seen a dude get shot for a pack a smokes just right across the street!” adds Ernesto.

“These kids don’t know. They don’t know,” Nadia says shaking her head. Chuy rubs his hand on her knee and thinks that I don’t notice.

“Who fucking cares anyway?” I ask.

“Strike a nerve, milkweed?” laughs Chuy.

“Pinche güero!” jokes Ernesto. Nadia rubs her hand on my shoulder and clenches her nails in twice.

“Ey! Bartender! Another round for my friends!” I shout, snapping my fingers at him from down the counter. He shoots me a glare and slaps the bar in front of the woman in which he is having a conversation with and comes over to replenish our pints.

“You’ve hardly touched yours,” he nods to me.

“Please,” I tell him. “My friends are thirsty.”

“You’re too kind to us!” smiles Chuy. I hold my glass up and stare into his eyes.

“I’m getting tired,” Ernesto admits, “I’m too drunk to drive my car home.”

“I’m hardly even buzzing,” I tell him, “I’ll drive you all home then park at my place. I’ll bring your car back in the morning.”

“This is why I love you, Milkweed,” says Ernesto.

“Looks like we have a designated driver,” laughs Chuy.

“Baby, are you sure you’re not too drunk?” asks Nadia, rubbing my shoulder with her free hand.

“I’m sure baby,” I say, “It’s really no problem.”

I drive Ernesto home. He sits in the front. Chuy and Nadia sit in the back. On the way we listen to Molotov rap over rock anthems. I watch Nadia’s facial expressions from the rearview mirror at every stop sign and red light. She laughs as Chuy enthusiastically mouths the words along to the songs and bangs his head. By the time we reach Ernesto’s apartment in Back of the Yards, Ernesto falls out the side door, and self-consciously fumbles to pick himself off the ground, his body overwhelmed with alcohol. 

“Thank you, brother,” he tells me, digging his pockets for his house key. “Goodnight.”

“We’ll wait until you are inside,” I say to him, “You can never be too safe.”

“Not like anyone’s comin’ to rape him or nothin’,” Chuy jokes. Neither me or Nadia laugh. Ernesto is in his apartment. A yellow light turns on behind his blinds. 

I put the car into gear and start driving towards the highway. I flip through my phone and play slower, sadder music. The kind where the singers croon to smoke filled lounges lit by flickering neon lights, holding rocks glasses of Jack Daniels in their hand free of the microphone while a stoic bartender rubs a glass with a pale gray rag, and women with diamond earrings, pearl strings, and men with bow ties sit at circular tables covered with white cloth, enchanted by the haze of jazz age romance. By the time I hit the on ramp, Nadia and Chuy are passed out snoring. The heavy food and alcohol have equally done their jobs.

On the side of the expressway a car is flipped and burning. A miniature inferno. The flames dance like cobras. Black smoke coughs into the cool of the breeze. I can almost feel the heat on my face as I turn my head to keep my eyes on the crash. In the rearview, blue and red apparitions wail, growing brighter with the passing seconds.

Sometimes everything plays out like a dream. High keys of a piano cascade on the stereo and what’s left of the constellations, not brutalized by urban light pollution, shine dirty like blood diamonds in the bastard black of God’s vapid galaxy streaked with gas.

Not much longer and I pull off at 87^th Street and Lake Michigan. Steelworkers Park. I drive down the access road towards the parking lot by the lakeside. The silhouette ruins of the old steel mills stand like rotting tombstones and mausoleums under the orange glow of the autumn moon. I park in front of the bronze statue of a faceless Union steel worker with his arms around his family, fronted with a plaque reading “A Tribute to the Past”. Nadia and Chuy are still in a daze, hardly recognizing where we have driven to.

One thing I know about my friend Ernesto is that he keeps a Smith & Wesson 9mm Luger in his glove compartment at most times. Living in Back of the Yards hasn’t been easy for him. He gets fucked with a lot. Thugs, bangers, dope fiends, petty theft. He likes to have protection. I pull a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of my jacket and slide them on my hands, snapping the ends at the wrist as each fist fits in. I reach for the glove compartment and pull out the 9mm. Then I call back to my two companions, snoring on each other’s shoulders to the smoky reverberations of a saxophone blazing a solo over delicately swinging cymbals and popping snare.

“Wake up guys. We’re here.”

“Wuh…argh…Whuh? We at the lake?” Chuy mutters, stretches, yawns.

“There’s a full moon out,” I tell him. “We’re going for a swim.”

“What the fuck?” grumbles Nadia, opening her side door. “Which beach are we at? You’re fucking funny man. I thought we was going home.”

We are all standing outside Ernesto’s car when I flash the gun. Chuy grunts and charges me and I whip him in the face. He falls back into the dirt holding his bloody cheek. Nadia screams and curses desperately but there is no one around to hear. 

The two snivel in protest as I lead them towards the concrete walk on the lakeside which drops off into the icy waters with no ladder to get back up. “Take off your clothes.” I order them.

“Fuck you!” shouts Nadia, cracking her voice in anger. I put the 9mm up closer to her head. Chuy jukes like he is going to charge me again and I whip the gun towards his face causing him to flinch. He staggers back, and with a feminine bay, trips off the concrete and plunges into the lake. 

“Help! C’mon! Help me!” Chuy treads water in the tide of the lopping waves. His clothes are visibly weighing him down. There is nothing to hold onto. 

“Pinche cobarde!” Nadia weeps. I see through her crocodile tears. She sounds straight out of a telenovela. Like Soraya Montenegro or something.

“Take your clothes off!” I command, shaking the gun at her in my right hand. She does not budge. She is scanning like a rat for a way out of her trap. Chuy sloshes in the water, crying for his mother while the current bobs him down beneath the surface. Mami! Mami! Mam- Oof!

Nadia reacts to this by turning towards him. Without a word I lift my leg and boot her in the back. Her body crumples like a cheap toy. She briefly shrieks and splashes into the lake. 

My heart is racing. I am surging with adrenaline. But I know to be patient. I know this adrenaline is a bodily reaction. I feel like I might explode. I might cry. But I have to meditate in the moment. In real time. Keep a sharp mind. I have to know that things are going to be okay. And as my two old companions asphyxiate in the water, I have to constrict them further. And I have to do it in a focused calm. 

Nadia is a better swimmer than Chuy. She makes it to the edge of the concrete walkway and scratches at the wall, trying to hold herself above the water. I think fast and grab a loose cement chunk scattered on the ground with the trash and empty liquor bottles. She cries out as I drop it down on her. It hits her head and she sinks below the surface and does not come up. I pick up a glass bottle and look for Chuy, but he is long gone. All that is left are the rolling waves and the glow of the moon on what’s left of the decaying steel mills lurking off in the dismal expanse of the industrial park. I sit by the lakeside for another half hour watching the water. I listen to it lap against the concrete and I breathe in and out slowly, to bring my heart beat down. I do my best not to shed any tears.

Life to me is all about control. If you don’t have control then you aren’t truly living. And really, most people don’t have control. They are raised to be the controlled. I was like that once. But I had a burning desire to be alive.

“Ey’ papá! How are you?” the hooded old drunk asks as I pass 21^st and Leavitt. He is drinking Cuervo from the bottle. I have parked Ernesto’s car on a side street. I walk home like I never left the neighborhood.

“It’s cold.” I tell him, “September never gets this cold. My friends, they wanted to swim in the lake. But I said, ‘Nah, you guys can though! You can go together. Me? I’m going home.’”

“They swam in this weather?”

“Nude as a full moon. They’re still swimming there right now.”

“A la verga. Is crazy!”

“Stay warm, brother.”

“Stay warm and stay safe, mijo. Be careful out there. I tell you, always. This life…This life… It’s no life to live, my friend. There is no way…”

I bump his fist and make my way down the block to my apartment building. In the distance I can hear him singing his own wisdom to himself, off key, and mellow, his voice gritty with tequila. Despite the events of the evening, I feel good. I contemplate this good feeling. I step towards home with swagger and confidence. The conversation with the old man has brought my nerves back down with a sense of normalcy, a display of routine. 

I enjoy my relationship with this old man. I see him on the street and we catch up. It is nothing more than that. It doesn’t need to be. In this sense I often appreciate my vague acquaintances more than I appreciate my closest friends. But in this moment, I mostly enjoy the thought that Nadia and Chuy are floating together. They are out in the open. Where they need to be. They bit the hand that fed. Got too close and paid the price. Constricted. Asphyxiated. Shed. There can be nothing more behind my back. I can finally get some sleep.

Some men charm snakes. Some snakes charm men. I think to myself, turning the key to the front door of my building, imagining an old Indian market, a Sapera man in robes, playing the pungi for a dancing cobra rising from the lid of a bamboo basket. Like most of life, it is all a show.

The snakes can’t hear the music, but they’re intimidated by their perception of the instrument. It’s a predator to them. Their dance is a balance of fear and aggression. 

Most men can hear but don’t listen. They see something beautiful, are intimidated, and are unable to understand it. They can’t admit this to themselves, and likewise respond in fear cloaked in an expression of hardness. In this way many men are just like snakes. Many men that I know. They slither around me thinking I can’t hear the music either. It’s best to keep them close. Tame them. Feed them by the hand. Toss them rats to keep them happy.

Sidney is soaking in the pool of water I have placed in his terrarium, next to the wooden log which gives him a dark place to hide. This soaking will help in the process of shedding his skin. He has outgrown his old body. It is time to move onto something new. My bedroom is shadowed with the light of his heat lamp. I too like to lay in the darkness. It gives me a place to reflect. To meditate. To reject the skin of past sins and move onto a better life.

Welcome to Reptilia

An Excerpt from “Double Dicks or Double Down,” a choose-your-own-sex-adventure novel

First glance: Black sand, white surf. Komodo dragons in designer suits—Armani, red lapels.

“Welcome to Reptilia.” The space pod computer spoke in a sexless, spiritless monotone.

I recoiled from the porthole window. Took a breath. Let curiosity out-wrangle my disgust. Allowed myself another peek.

Two-inch talons sheathed in diamond. Maybe glass? They sparkled. Pretty, gaudy, costume jewels. Knock-offs. They curled at the end of scaled fingers, pinning cigars or raking prey or tweaking the strings of strange instruments (some sort of oversized lute, pearl inlaid, maybe bone)

Lizards. Lots of them. Doing what? Gyrating, for a start. Moaning. Singing? And was that dancing? Was it epilepsy? They twerked or did the hula on the beach. They had no grace, but the stars as my witness, they made up for it with effort. The males swung their two-headed genitalia, their double penises famed among the Varanus, the monitor lizards that ruled the third moon.

I felt sick watching them. But that simmered into wonder, eventually boiling into arousal. It was all so gross and stimulating and wrong, which made it right—for me.

The porthole window fogged up with my heavy breathing as I watched the grotesque lizards spasm on the black, volcanic sand. They stood like men, bipedal, bowlegged freaks. Although, leaning back, supported by their strong tails, the dragons were almost tripodal. Others, with  their bellies on the sand, acted like quadrupeds, crawling, writhing, dirtying their fancy blazers while snapping their maws at scurrying crabs, or nothing at all, ghosts or inner demons.

“It’s a mating ritual.” Eliza joined me at the window. She clutched a gun—what else is new? For each unlucky bastard I was forced to kill along the way—believe me, plenty—Eliza had killed seven or eight, maybe ten. Sure, she was quick to kill, a real trigger happy bitch, but I wasn’t complaining. Her killing sprees had saved me more than once.

“Do you plan on shooting them?”

“There’s no charge,” she told me.

“That’s good, cause I’m broke.”

“I mean the power cell,” she corrected me. “Gun’s dead. It’s just a prop.”

“Fan-bloody-tastic.”

She pushed me aside, pressing against the glass. “Look at those lizards go.”

“Gives me the willies,” I told her. “In all the right ways,” I did not add.

Eliza was quick to kill. Me? I was quick to drop my pants, to fuck the next alien in the wide, weird cosmos. By some miracle, I had yet to contract an STD, a stellar transmitted disease.

“The heebie-fucking-jeebies,” Eliza agreed.

Our cheeks touched as we crammed our faces together, crowding the porthole window. We looked down to the black sand below, the incoming tide lapping at the cracked, lizard skin of gold-banded ankles. Gold leaf flaked from scaled arms, expensive snow drifting on a warm, sea breeze. Ceremonial paint chipped to fall into the foaming suds of incoming ocean surf. The gas giant, Leviathan, pulled the freshwater oceans of Reptilia without reservation. The tide came quick and hard. Crabs skittered into the pockmarked burrows in the sand. The dragons tucked away their double penises and ran to the edge of gloomy, jungle terrain.

As the sea advanced, rising to engulf our space pod, the porthole splashed with agitated water, churning white, then calmed to a sedate, tranquil blue. Fish swam past. Cichlids, or something similar. Lizards too. They hunted and they played. They pressed their yellow eyes against the glass and watched two humans watch them.

“Full opacity,” Eliza commanded the computer, and the view faded to black.

In private, in a capsule at the bottom of a freshwater ocean, Eliza and I whittled away the hours until the low tide would return. We ate and slept and fucked. We talked a little. But when we did, it was filler. Mundane stuff. Idle chit-chat. Neither of us asked the real question, what was really on our minds. Neither of us mentioned the word, the nature of our predicament: exile. Neither of us were willing to put to question what we feared to know the answer to: just how badly, exactly, were we fucked?

Story At Midnight

Night had a way of pressing itself into the bones of the cabin, as if the woods themselves were leaning in to listen.

Max Sciller sat in the dim wash of a single lamp, the light trembling against the walls like something afraid to stay. Once, his face had been familiar—measured, calm, the trusted voice of Richmond, Virginia flickering through living rooms at six and eleven. Now, that same face stared back at him in the black mirror of the window—thinner, hollowed, eyes sunk deep as if something inside had been eating him slowly.

He hadn’t left the mountain in months.

Didn’t need to.

Didn’t want to.

The world beyond the trees felt like a fever dream he’d barely survived.

A sound cut through the stillness.

A scream.

Sharp. Human.

Max froze, head tilting, breath caught halfway between doubt and recognition. Then he exhaled slowly, shaking his head.

“No,” he muttered. “Not tonight.”

The doctor had warned him about auditory hallucinations. Stress. Isolation. The mind filling its own void.

Another scream—longer this time, ragged, dragged across the forest like torn cloth.

Max pressed his palms against his temples.

“Not real.”

He said it again, quieter, as if speaking too loudly might make it true.

The woods went still.

Then came the scratching.

At first it was faint, like branches brushing the cabin. Then it grew deliberate. Fingernails on wood. Slow. Curious.

Max stood, heart beginning to stutter.

He moved toward the door, each step hesitant, like walking toward a memory he wasn’t sure he owned.

“Hello?” he called out.

Silence.

Then—breathing.

Not his.

Close.

Right outside.

Max’s throat tightened. His mind raced through explanations—animals, wind, echoes of his own pulse—but none of them held.

The doorknob turned.

Not fully.

Just enough to test.

Max stumbled back.

The door opened.

They slipped in like shadows peeling themselves from the night.

Thin. Filthy. Pale shapes wrapped in rags and animal skins, their faces smeared with something dark that caught the light wrong—too thick to be dirt. Their eyes gleamed with a wet, knowing hunger.

There were too many of them.

They moved without sound, circling him, breathing him in.

Max shook his head violently.

“This isn’t real,” he whispered. “You’re not real.”

One of them laughed—a dry, cracking sound like breaking bone.

“Oh, we’re real,” a voice said.

The leader stepped forward.

He was taller than the rest, his face almost human beneath the grime, though his smile stretched too far, as if it had forgotten its natural limits.

“We’ve been watching you, Max.”

Max’s stomach dropped.

“You know my name.”

“We know everything about you.”

The leader tilted his head, studying him like something fragile and fascinating.

“The man who talks to himself. The man who hears things. The man no one would believe.”

Max’s breath came fast now.

“This is a delusion,” he insisted. “You’re not here.”

The leader smiled wider.

“Then why is she?”

They dragged her forward.

Max’s world shattered.

“Emily?”

His sister’s face was bruised, eyes wide with terror, mouth gagged. Tears carved clean lines down her dirt-streaked cheeks.

“She came looking for you,” the leader said softly. “Such a sweet thing. So worried.”

Max staggered toward her, but the circle tightened.

“No—no, this isn’t—this isn’t happening—”

“Isn’t it?”

The leader stepped closer, lowering his voice.

“We live out here, Max. We survive. We take care of our own.”

He gestured to the others, who watched with quiet anticipation.

“You’ve been alone for so long. No one to understand you. No one to hear what you hear.”

Max’s eyes flicked between them, between Emily, between the door.

“You belong with us.”

Emily shook her head violently, muffled cries spilling from behind the gag.

Max’s hands trembled.

“I’m not like you.”

The leader leaned in, his breath sour and warm.

“You already are.”

Silence stretched.

The woods seemed to hold it in place.

Then the leader placed something in Max’s hand.

A knife.

Cold. Heavy. Real.

Max stared at it.

At Emily.

At the circle closing tighter.

“This isn’t real,” he whispered again, but the words sounded weak now. Fragile.

The leader’s voice slipped into something almost gentle.

“Prove it.”

Max’s breathing slowed.

Something inside him shifted—not snapping, but settling, like a puzzle piece finding its place.

All the doubt. All the noise. The endless questioning.

Gone.

He looked at Emily.

Really looked.

Saw the fear.

The pleading.

The recognition.

Then something colder rose to meet it.

Clarity.

“If this is in my head,” Max said softly, “then none of this matters.”

The leader smiled.

Emily screamed behind the gag as Max stepped forward.

The knife moved quicker than thought.

A single, clean motion.

The sound it made was small.

Too small.

Her body crumpled at his feet.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then the woods erupted in laughter.

Wild. Exultant. Hungry.

Max stood there, staring down at what he’d done, waiting for it to dissolve—for the illusion to break, for the cabin to return to quiet madness.

But it didn’t.

The blood stayed.

The smell stayed.

The bodies around him stayed.

The leader placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Welcome home, Max.”

Max didn’t answer.

After a long moment, he smiled.

And this time, it stretched just a little too far.

Jack With a Beer Back

“Alright. Maybe a bar was the worst place in the world for me to be at that point. It was late, real late, and there were only shambling bar wrecks there. And me. Me, with a Modern Lit paper hanging over my head—remember, I was actively striving toward a degree back then—and no idea, no idea at all, how to do it.  Except that I figured on doing Kerouac or Fitzgerald because I liked drinking. 

“So I got to talking to Kevin, the bar-keeper, about it. Mostly about Kerouac and how it was impossible to know the real man from the lines of all the books and biographies. I railed against the biographies in particular.  Telling Kevin about how they were written in such adulatory states that all the grit of the man seemed to be cleaned away and replaced with some sani-clean aura that no linger smelled of old kitchen tables and Benzedrine sweat. 

“I was really adamant about it. As adamant as a half drunk sophomore can get. Drunks shuffled by. More beers came and this guy sat down across from me.”

I waited a moment. For effect.

“He didn’t look like much to me. Big homespun face, boilermaker slack, hanging pale and vaguely ham-like above an old faded red-flannel shirt. His hands were swollen, his eyes were sort of half shut. He looked like every hero of every Bukowski poem ever written. He leaned over the table that divided us—an old, beery, dinged-up wooden table with the shellac coming off—and he whispered:

“‘I am the grit that lies in all the gutters of all the streets that sprawl crazy over the earth. I am the old beer and creepy graveyard dim cold blast of smelly sweaty workingman’s bar that hits you BAM! in the face when you walk by and some crazy old bum opens the door.’

“He breathed his drunk’s breath on me during this.  Beer, spit, germs of uncoughed coughs, old sour teeth. That breath came over the table. His face leering closer and closer, mine leaning further and further back against my chair. I didn’t want to MAKE him go away, I wanted him to just FORGET ME and drift away. To leave me alone. To zero in on some other sucker.

“He inhaled. He put both hands—big fleshy hands, the hands of a gone soft drunk—on the table and sat back. Quiet. Looking at me. Then, with that exaggerated dignity drunks assume when they feel patronized, he said:

“‘Ask me some questions.’

“And he put his hands down on his knees.

““Ask you what?” I was tired. Too tired for what looked like an alcoholic sermon on life’s lessons and grand schemes gone bad.

“’You wanted to know me. Smell me.’

““No, I can’t”, I said “I’ve got a really—“

“’Smell me!’ He pushed forward in his chair. ‘Kitchen tables. Benzedrine. Old typewriter ribbons. Smell me.’

“That tooth-beer-spit breath combo hit me again. I picked up my lighter. He grabbed my hand. I jerked. He lurched forward into my face.

“’It’s me.’

“’Okay.’

“’You want to know me? Ask me.’

“He sat back suddenly, his eyes steadier than his hands.  He turned to Kevin.

“’Two Jacks with beer backs.’

“’You buying?’

“’I know what you’re thinking. You’re looking at me.…and you think I’m just another bum. Just a bum with broken down shoes and stinking breath.  A stinking breath drunk that sits in bars and breathes his stinking breath…’

“He was getting loud.  I didn’t want him to know that I had been thinking about his breath. So I quickly disagreed.

““No. No. I didn’t think that.”

“And I smiled warmly so I’d look honest.

“He waved his huge hand in front of his chest.

“’S’okay. S’okay. S’long as you find out. …you find out who I am.’  He coughed, and stopped talking—politely—as Kevin put the drinks on the table and dumped the ashtray. Kevin moved on.  The guy picked up the shot glass and raised it. Not a tremor. He said:

“’This is to me. This is to all that is left of me. Jack with a beer back.’

“He laughed a sort of snort/chuckle/cough laugh and he threw back the shot.

“’Benzedrine and wine bottles and little dead cats in Mexican streets and now…now here….here it is.’

“He slapped the shot glass down.

“Then he started talking slow and started to sway. He pushed at the little glass in front of me.

“’C’mon. Drink. Drink it in. Jack with a beer back…’

“He burped. Rubbed his lips with the big knuckles of his hand. And then he threw up. Threw up stuff that looked like rotted baby food. Clots of phlegm. Beer yeast. I don’t know what it was. And the smell. The smell of it coming up past the rotten mouth, over the rotted teeth… It was like every bad smell molecule in the world coming together to tug at your stomach’s pit and test your gag reflexes. It smelled so bad it hurt trying not to throw up, not to look, not to breathe…

“Instinct carried me up and away. I was at the far end of the bar—by the jukebox and the popcorn machine where the other bums were—before the first drops hit the floor. Most of the bums didn’t notice, but a couple of them looked at me. I pretended I had no idea why.

“Kevin was throwing bar towels and disinfectant over the bum and the table. The barkeeper looked over my way, held up my beer. Not the shot, the beer, I don’t even want to know what happened to the shot. And he said:

“’Do you want this?’

“He was being serious. My throat pulled with a gag jerk.

““No.” I said.

“A little after that I went home.”

Jo lit a Marlboro, dragged at it and exhaled.

“Jack with a beer back, huh?”

“As God is my witness,” I said, “Do you want another beer?”

Meet Me in Hvammsvik

It was a midnight flight to Reykjavík and right before take-off the man from Seattle announced he was bit. It was enough to kill Zach’s buzz.

The reveal of the wound came almost comically. Through a tangle of airplane policies and bureaucratic loopholes, both Zach and the Seattle man had to change seats and come forward to the emergency row. As it shook out, they were the only two on the flight that spoke English and, apparently, that was a requirement to pull the big red handle on the exit door. It seemed like a bizarre oversight for an international flight but in a world where most people spoke a little English, it was probably a safe bet. Most of the time. This time, however, the flight was 90% Chinese tourists, 9% firm Icelanders (proudly not speaking English), and then Zach and Seattle.  When the stewardess begged if anyone spoke English, Zach, eager to redeem his day drinking, raised his hand and shambled from the back. After she ran through the instructions he nodded and said “Yes” aloud and took his seat in the empty row. The same rigamarole happened for Seattle which was when the stewardess pointed at his bandaged hand. It was reddening, still, and the man kept it in his lap.

“I think just another Band-Aid will help,” he said, shrugging.

“Did you cut it on something?”

“No, somebody bit me. In the bathroom.”

It was Zach’s big travel day, and the drinking had started that morning when he woke up in Flåm. After two trains to Bergen, another to the airport, and then a flight to Denmark, the journey had two more legs: flying to Iceland and then driving through the dead-of-night to the Hvammsvik Hot Springs & Resort. That’s where Jessie was waiting for him. Zach had never travelled alone before and while it was superficially freeing, every activity grayed with the absence of his wife. Two tickets for the funicular? Just one. Two spots in the cold plunge? Sorry, she couldn’t make it. Reservation for two at the fjord sauna? You can give up a spot. They had planned the vacation for years. A week in Norway and then three days in Iceland. They had been married for five years, had no kids, made reasonable money, and a week before the trip she admitted to cheating.

At first, Zach was proud of himself for taking it in stride. He did his box-breathing and didn’t lash out (although he really wanted to). Instead, he made her promise to answer all his questions truthfully, which, to be fair, was itself a cruel and demeaning bargain. But crying and puffy faced, Jessie promised, and then Zach asked a variety of questions that, for any man, was the equivalent of putting a loaded gun to your own head. The interrogation started Normal: Who was he? How many times? Where did it happen? And then went into the Guilt Trip: Does he have a wife? Was it worth it? Are you proud of yourself? And still unsatisfied, he plunged into Lunatic Mode: Was he bigger than me? Did you cum? How many times did you cum? And did you cum harder? She answered the best way she could simultaneously sparing details but sounding truthful enough to fulfill her bargain. It didn’t matter though. Despite the setting she tried to paint (not without her own cliched lines of course, “It didn’t mean anything” and “I was just lonely”), Zach still scripted, directed, and shot his own pornographic series of events. Jessie and this guy, rutting in a Hyatt hotel, her losing her mind in ecstasy and him, cumming so much his warm, strong seed spills out of the condom and so, fuck it, they take off the condom and go again. After a day or so when the porno ended, Zach indulged one more severity: kicking her off the trip. “I’m doing Norway alone. You can meet me in Hvammsvik.”

Of course, traveling alone was just depressing. In his Uber to Newark Jessie texted him. “Have fun. I love you.” And Zach scoffed. The lack of emojis, the militant punctuation. It was clear that the mending of this marriage, and the subsequent solo trip, was perfunctory. Less ‘find yourself’ and more ‘waste your time.’ But to be honest, it couldn’t be any other way. Zach was a straight, white guy. The romance of “Eat Pray Love” didn’t extend to him. Frankly, he was too ugly to get laid and too depressed to try. Double frankly, he still loved Jessie, which only added a poignant misery to all the sightseeing, not so much elevating the experience, but flattening it. The majestic fjords, the towering waterfalls, and the high-end cuisine all held the same attraction as the lesser events – the McDonald’s, the busses, the pints of Hansa, and even watching Fight Club in a hilarious Norwegian dub. So, he drank, and he got maudlin. But he also kept all the reservations and tours. “Have fun.” She had said. Yes. Will do. “I love you.” Ok. Period.

“Fuck, I don’t feel good.”

Zach looked at Seattle. He was seated across the aisle, next to the door. It was just them two with four empty seats between them. And Seattle was looking green. 

“Are you okay?” Zach asked.

“I’m so hot, I’m sweating through my underwear.” Seattle shifted in his seat and extended his legs along the empty row. Then, still uncomfortable, he re-arranged himself and buried his face in the blue pillow the stewardess gave out.

Zach tried not to stare. There had been grumblings of these bites happening all over Europe. By most accounts, the end result was that the fever either killed the virus or killed you. And the biters didn’t seem to act with the rage induced, red-eyed sprint for brains you’d come to expect from movies and TV but, rather, a more simmering anger that built into a lash out. A small disagreement somersaulted into a loud argument, then a screaming match, then a fuck me? fuck you! and take this too: Chomp! In other words, the bite was deliberate, but it was easy enough to avoid. Especially if someone was vocally pissed off and noticeably sweaty. Still, the proximity made him nervous.

Zach snuck a glance. Seattle fidgeted like someone under too many blankets. In short time, he’d be angry. A part of Zach envied him. When was the last time he was angry? Actually angry? It seemed like never. He was an educated, liberal salaryman who was dutifully trained in the useless art of self-reflection. Any ‘anger’ – foreign as it was – was immediately analyzed to death and dispelled. The emotions of his life were always under a self-imposed magnifying glass. How ‘angry’ was he allowed to get with Jessie? Was it more noble to see her perspective? To put himself in her shoes? Was he expected to pivot on a dime and immediately understand that his wife had needs and her cheating wasn’t really cheating at all but a larger symptom of some bigger, more boring marriage drama, and that, itself, part of an even larger tableau of capitalism in the west and the corporate creep of spiritual ennui? What did bell hooks have to say? Who gives a shit? He thought of his father, a republican. Voted for Trump twice. Now there was a man who got angry. Allowed himself his anger, indulged it in like a whisky or a good cigar. What a treat for Seattle, honestly. Some guys got all the luck.

He thought back to the setting where Jessie told him. It was a Sunday and there was nothing to do. They were overcaffeinated and restless, pinballing around the apartment from the couch to the tv to the office to the kitchen, reading, watching, scrolling, making another cup of coffee, both of them silent. She was avoiding him, but he didn’t notice. Not until he offered her a refill and she cracked. Why didn’t he get angry? He wanted to. He wanted to so badly. When he was a kid, he’d watch porn and fight the erection. Let his dick twitch with excitement as he’d try to re-interpret the sex on screen. He doesn’t know why he did that. Maybe he thought he was better than his base instincts. If he could control what turned him on, he could control what made him angry. And, moreover, he could be a role model of society. A good man who didn’t partake in the misogynistic industry of pounding tight teens. And when Jessie confessed, it felt the same. The rage fluttered but he denied it. Maybe he was already in the future, imagining Jessie (fat now, a huge slob) telling her friends that, “No, he didn’t raise his voice once.” He was trying to show that he’s so progressive and cosmopolitan and has such a grasp on his emotions he would never be someone to get cheated on. Yes. The twitching. But now on the flight, the blue balls were there. And Seattle groaned.

“Goddammit, I’m so fucked up.”

Zach looked around to see if anybody could help. Also, he wanted another drink. In a moment, the stewardess came down and looked at him, perturbed. She was the one who had rearranged the seating. Her Dutch Blonde hair fell straight. She didn’t look at Zach like he was a hero anymore. Rather, it was clear she didn’t want to turn her back to Seattle. He wasn’t yet restrained. 

“Can I get a rum and coke?” Zach asked.

“We haven’t started our drink service yet, but we will soon.”

She shimmied off back to where she came and spoke in Dutch to another attendant. Somewhere behind him he heard Chinese. The news of the bite was traveling languages; such was the polyglot of gossip. 

At 30,000 feet the captain finally made the announcement. In his own euphemisms, he touched on the sick passenger and stated that despite there being empty seats in the cabin, it was paramount to stay in your assigned seat. That was where the trouble started.

Before, when the Dutch Blonde made the big fuss that the exit row needed to have English speakers only, people got displaced. Namely, a Chinese lady in an orange hoodie. She kept showing her ticket to the stewardess and the stewardess kept nodding while ushering her to another seat. This caused some laughter among the Chinese tourists who teased the Orange Hoodie with some inside joke. Now, with the flight in motion, the Orange Hoodie got up, snuck down the aisle, and reclaimed her assigned seat. Right next to Seattle. Now the seating chart went: Zach at the emergency door, empty seat, empty seat, aisle, Orange Hoodie, empty seat, Seattle, now groaning. 

It was clear she wanted the extra leg room, and he tried to alert her.

“I wouldn’t sit there,” he whispered.

But the Orange Hoodie had no interest. Nor could she understand him. Instead, she spoke the universal and pulled her hoodie down to get some sleep. Zach’s eyes shot over to Seattle, pressed against the window, already getting sweaty. If the stewardess didn’t return fast to redirect the Orange Hoodie, to send her to the safety of the back of the plane, then something was going to happen. The entropy of it all started to form. Zach could hear it, even, thumping overhead in the luggage bins.

Looking back, he regretted the Hvammsvik rendezvous. What was the point? Now neither of them would enjoy the stay. They’d turn the matte black cabin into a domestic dispute, but worse, a dull one, full of therapy speak and validation, the signature of these new wave relationships. In college, he dated a girl that slapped him.

He regretted the rendezvous some more. He wanted Jessie to stay home. He didn’t want her flying alone. He didn’t want her driving to Newark. She always got nervous at the turnpike, and the parking lot came so abruptly, too, a sharp turn that careened into a bright yellow overhang. If you braked too fast you were rear ended, and if you didn’t then you blew right past it. She’d be nervous making that drive. He didn’t want her to feel that. 

“Ma’am, you can’t sit here. Ma’am.”

The Dutch Blonde was back, and the jig was up for Orange Hoodie. Laughably, she kept her head down, feigning sleep, but the stewardess wasn’t buying it. Next to the window, Seattle muttered. Zach was worried the fever was already blossoming. He was gonna be mad soon. He could see the slurs forming on his lips.

“Ma’am, now.”

Some Chinese folks joked in the back. Someone else teased. The Orange Hoodie got up and shuffled back to her new seat and the others laughed. Zach couldn’t tell if the bite was being taken seriously on the plane. Zach couldn’t tell if he himself was taking it seriously.

“Can’t she tell I’m fucking sick?” Seattle growled.

“I’m sorry, sir. Just let us know if you need anything else.”

“Water. Ice water. Please. I’m on fire here.”

He took off his Mariners cap and wiped his brow and Zach saw his face. Woof. He had already gone pale. His small beard was sweaty, and his lips were this sickly pink, like an open scab.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

“Sorry,” Zach said.

“No – I’m sorry. That was – just – ugh.”

Zach turned back to his window. He needed that rum and coke. He didn’t want to be sober at the Hertz. He didn’t want to be sober for the night drive to Hvammsvik. He didn’t want to be sober when he opened the door and saw Jessie’s luggage on the ground, neat and tidy like she didn’t plan to stay.

He liked being married is the truth. He liked being married to Jessie too. But he could never talk about her the way everyone else talked about their wives. They said words like smart, brilliant, my best friend. Really? Your best friend? He supposed she was, but the competition was light. No, Jessie was a hard ass. But he liked that. She was loyal too, at least she was. At least he thought. And what was loyalty anyway? She could be faithful for five years and then cheat once, did that make her unfaithful the entire time? He loved her still. Oh God. He needed a drink. He didn’t want to fold. He didn’t want to lighten up. If he lightened up, if he just forgave her, he’d have nothing, no hand, no integrity, no agency at all. When did he get so castrated? He loved her. He loved her. She was kind to her parents. She was politically active. He loved her. She never missed a protest, a march, a petition. She was a bad driver, but a great traveler. He loved her. But he had to get angry. It was all he had.

He played back the porno tape he imagined. Her on all fours like a dog. He felt his dick twitch with excitement. What a funny reaction. He looked around to get a drink.

Orange Hoodie had returned.

“You can’t sit there,” Zach said. But even as he said it, he knew it was pointless. She didn’t speak English. She didn’t care. She waved him away like he was a gnat. And people snickered in the back like perhaps this was a bet. Zach grew nervous. Something bigger was happening. The entropy thumped again. No, now it was turbulence. They were over the Atlantic, shaking about, and the stewardess was gone.

“He’s sick. Lady. Hey.”

She waved him away again. Someone else laughed. This was actually great. He could get angry. A test run for Hvammsvik. He closed his eyes and tried to be racist. Tried to conjure up some good ol’ xenophobic vitriol. After all, here he was trying to help. And she waved him away. She thinks she’s the queen of the plane with her bag of boiled peanuts and her Alipay. He imagined the lot of them touching down in Iceland with their GoPros and selfie sticks, moving like locusts, knocking over everyone and shouting. No, no, this anger was not his style. Still though. 

The plane shook again. 

And then she screamed.

Zach’s eyes shot open. 

Seattle was biting her.

The following events happened quickly. The Dutch Blonde and another stewardess (a Frumpy one) came hustling down the aisle. People in the front stood up and turned. Others shouted. The plane bumped again and a container up ahead popped open. Bright colored luggage tumbled out onto an old man’s head. He screamed too. Sadder.

Zach pushed himself against the wall. The emergency exit beckoned. Was now the time? Of course not. But what if? What if? He could pull it open and have everyone sucked out into the black sky. All of this chaos squashed like a bug. That’ll teach Jessie. Should he reach?

Orange Hoodie yanked her arm away. She stood up, stumbled, fell back. Her arm was bleeding through her sleeve. Seattle looked thrilled and then suddenly ashamed. He clapped his hands to his mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she wouldn’t go back to her seat!” He cried. Blood poured off his beard and colored the collar of his shirt. Some of it sprinkled the little TV screen. On it, their digital plane limped to Keflavik.    

When the moment was over, Seattle was restrained in his seat and his face bounced between embarrassment and shame and pure, unfettered rage. Once again, Zach was jealous.

As for Orange Hoodie, she was rushed to the back of the plane where she was restrained as well. There was no more laughing, and the plane shook itself out of turbulence and the rest of the flight was promised to be smooth.

“We need everyone to stay calm and collected,” the pilot said. “We cannot turn around and we cannot land anywhere else. We’ll be arriving at Reykjavík in one hour. Thank you for your patience and your resilience.”

Resilience. What an odd word for the pilot to use. Who was being resilient? Everyone was tearful and horrified. Two people were bleeding and others were screaming. The old man up ahead was still spinning from when the hard-shell suitcase clapped him on the skull. Resilient?

Seattle was now taped to his chair, and his mouth was taped too, a silver strip against his bloody beard. His Mariners cap was on the ground and the image was depressing. Zach studied him and then looked away.

In the past, the few times he did get mad, he reminded himself of his father. His racist, republican father. Hell, going on the Chinese rant was almost a tribute to his old man, come to think of it. Oh brother. The only difference was the end. Whether Zach was ranting, picking a fight with his cousin, or flirting with a little road rage, he always ended up apologizing. Apologizing with his tail between his legs. His dad never did though. He couldn’t tell which was better. God, to be a republican. What a dream. To have that liberating, self righteous anger. To be completely detached from civil society. Rather than what he was now, a capital L loser who wanted the best for people. A hangdog humanitarian cuck.

But why didn’t he follow his father’s path? Maybe because he saw his mother grow hollow. Maybe he loved Jessie because she was the antithesis of his father. Because she called him ‘self-congratulating’ when he called her ‘performative.’ Because both of their opposed furies let Zach live in the gray neutral where he could repair his mom in silence. And all of it, to still be cheated on. Oh, man, if his father knew. He’d have a field day.

And there it was. 

The math on the chalkboard finally made sense, and the revelation was bright. Zach wanted permission to be angry. Needed it. If Zach could be angry at Jessie and be, not necessarily justified, but excused, then he could extinguish this fire in him, this anguish. Maybe Zach always knew this was where the flight was headed. From the moment Seattle confessed to being bitten, Zach was jealous. Why? Because he was allowed to be angry. And Zach wanted that.

When their descent was announced, Zach kept low and shimmied across the aisle into the seat next to Seattle. He reached down and grabbed the Mariners cap and put it on Seattle’s head and Seattle’s eyes darted around in confusion. 

Zach couldn’t get too big of a bite. Otherwise, there’d be blood, shouting, and he probably wouldn’t make the drive. It had to be small enough, delayed enough, that it really kicked in right when he met Jessie. He rolled up his sleeve and pulled back Seattle’s tape. He breathed heavily.

“Leave me alone,” he growled. “Can’t you see I’m fucked up? You fucking faggot.”

“It’s okay,” Zach said. “Just do me a small one.”

He offered his wrist. Seattle took his pinky.

The snap startled him. It was like separating a wing flat. A tiny pump of blood shot out before Zach even registered what happened. Only when he saw Seattle chewing on his digit did it all make sense. Why his hand felt so weird. Why his hand felt so wet. And then there was the pain. He gasped, and fought a scream, and scurried back to his seat. Quickly, he kicked off his shoe. With his other hand, he pulled off a sock and wrapped it around his wound. He tucked the whole mess into his mitten and sat on it. Then he grabbed the sanitary bag and vomited.

Things got worse before they got better. In his painful scramble, Zach forgot to put the tape back over Seattle’s mouth. And when the Dutch Blonde came to prepare for landing, Seattle lunged and got her too. That one hit a vein, and the blood was bad and by the time they touched down and skidded to a halt, it was bedlam. A riot was forming, and Orange Hoodie had started cussing.

The Frumpy Stewardess came over in a tizzy and told Zach that they weren’t going to make it to a gate and that on her say so, he should open the exit door. Zach felt thrilled. But his hand throbbed.

“Everyone please remain calm,” the captain announced. “We are forgoing the taxi process and finding a place to stop. There will be medics on the ground ready for you.”

After a long moment of anticipation, the plane stopped rolling. Frumpy came and looked at him and nodded, “Please, sir, open the door now.”

And he did. The sky over Keflavik Airport was dark black and freezing, and for a moment, he couldn’t be sure if he had opened it over the Atlantic like he first wanted to. Then the big yellow tongue flopped out and hit the tarmac with a slap and before he knew it, he was helping women and kids down the vinyl slide, all while his mitten filled with blood.

At the car rental he was nauseous and leaving the airport he was sweaty. The fever settled in around the second or third round about and he peeled off the mitten to better grip the wheel. Blood poured out onto his lap and his vision swam. He wasn’t drunk anymore, but he certainly wasn’t sober. And the black night of Iceland was impenetrable. An esoteric billboard displayed a church of elves, all of them leering. Another round about came and he went in circles. The final stretch was an hour up and down one mountain, and to his left the water of Hvalfjörður was a listless black, like a paste or a Velcro. Something sticky and inescapable. By the time he saw the glowing huts of Hvammsvik he was smiling. The anger was there. Ready for him. It was pure and bright and without any shame. Just look at his hand. There was the proof. He was bitten! He wasn’t in his right mind.

He parked the car and approached their hut. Their couple’s hut. Warm light came from the small windows. Elves chittered and laughed at his back. He spun around but the terrain was black, black and loud with a howling wind. His hand dripped blood onto the snow. He marched towards the cabin, fuming.

When he opened the door, he was greeted with a smell. Something delicious. Was Jessie cooking? A midnight meal? For her pussy husband? He stepped inside. Her luggage was open on their bed. Her clothes all around. She was planning to stay. And that pushed him over. He went into the kitchen to show her how angry he was. Finally. 

Attack of the 50ft Stalker

“Don’t call. 
Don’t text. 
Don’t write!”

Greg told her, which he’d demanded countless of times over the past few months, but it wasn’t sinking in, no matter how much he screamed it in her face or bellowed it down his mobile phone. Bailey, his ex-bae and current, fuck-nut stalker, had given him weeks of hell: He’d blocked multiple phone numbers, Facebook accounts, Snapchat usernames and Instagram identities. Yet, she kept coming, like a lovesick Terminator. 

To make matters worse—a living-fucking-nightmare of a situation—was the fact they worked together, too. There was no escape. She was there. Always. However, the situation had now hit its crescendo, its summit, as she went full, stage-five-clinger and erupted ‘at the office’. She stood before him now, ranting and cursing, having previously kept all arguments, threats and belittling comments and abuse to the shadows, away from work and hawk-eyed, eagle-eared colleagues, friends and managers.

“You bastard. You never loved me. You used me. Fuck it, I really am going to do it this time. If I can’t have you, then I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Huh?” he said, her screechy voice reverberating around inside his head, sending icy, clawing talons down his back. His eye began to twitch. How the fuck did that noise not turn me off to begin with? he thought, drinking her in, fixing his eyes on her. Between that, her bullfrog-like neck, caked on make-up—half of which was always on her collar—itsy-bitsy tits with inverted nips, bland personality and the mindset of a child, I must have been thinking with my prick. Oh, yeah, I was. Fucking idiot. Well, I didn’t think she’d go all Play Misty for Me. Yep, got a regular Glenn Close on my arse.          

“Are you fucking listening to me, Greg?” Bailey clicked her fingers, stamped a foot, causing him to take a step back, away from the psycho, wannabe Barbie.  

Customers in the shop—standing on the outside of the in-store bakery—stopped to look and listen. To whisper among their numbers as the domestic unfolded. Along with the shoppers, colleagues and managers had also affixed themselves to their spot, mouths agape.

Fuck. This is bad, Greg thought, looking out at his chiefs, hoping his face looked pleading enough. “Well?” he said, thrusting a finger at Bailey. “Aren’t you—”

“Sod this,” Bailey said, cutting Greg off. 

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw her hand dart for something. 

A knife? he thought. With neck-cricking speed, Greg turned his head to look at her, seeing her reaching blindly for the rat poison the Rentokil guy had brought in earlier that day, ready to lace the traps with.  

“No!” Greg said. “Do—,” he trailed off, words giving way to laughter, as Bailey picked up a handful of raw yeast and shoved it into her mouth, going back for more. Before realising her mistake, she’d consumed over half a block.  

His giggles caused her to look, in horror, with particles of munched bread-riser falling from her drooping gob, and squeal. “What have I done?” she gagged, holding her gut. 

“You’re in for some painful diarrhoea, babe,” he said, chuckling some more.

 Customers to join in.  

However, their supervisors did not see the funny side of things, causing Greg to wipe the smirk from off his face, as they moved through the throng of goggling shoppers, inching towards the bakery’s entrance. 

“I feel awful,” Bailey said, clutching her stomach, moving towards Greg, stumbling and collapsing against the door to one of the walk-in ovens. 

“Right, that’s it. Enough of this bloody nonsense, Bailey,” Florence said, the shop floor manager, entering the bakery. “I’ve just about had it with the both of you, to be honest,” she snapped. “The tension in here the last few months has been palpable.”

“What’s a palpable?” Bailey said, her arse squeaking. “I thought it was a plant.”

Greg slapped his face and groaned. It’s that intellect that kept me around, he thought, turning to Florence. “Had you taken my complaints about her stalking and harassing me seriously, then it wouldn’t have got to this stage, now would it?” Greg said, puffing his chest out, towering over Florence. 

A loud grumble, followed by a second fart, rocked the bakery. 

“Oh, fuck,” Bailey said, putting a hand to her arse. 

“Do not use profanity whilst on duty,” Tomasina—acting store manager—said, filing in behind Florence. “You’re in enough trouble, both of you, as it is, young lady.”

Outside the bakery, Greg heard a couple of other managers trying to disperse the shoppers. 

“It’s under control now, people,” someone said. “We’re sorry you had to witness that.” 

Another loud rumble sounded out. “I think I’m dying,” Bailey said, doubling over, as liquid shit began sliding out of her trouser leg, pooling around her feet.  

“Oh, God!” Greg said, holding his nose. “That stench.”

“Right,” Florence said, gagging, grabbing hold of Bailey’s arm. “It’s the training room for you.”

“Greg, I love yooou!” she said, latching onto the oven’s door handle. “I can’t live without you. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. Please!” Tears flooded down her face. “I promise I won’t be needy. I’ll give you space. You can fuck other women… Whatever it takes.” 

“Shhh!” Tomasina said. 

“Let go of the oven,” Florence grunted. 

“In any other situation, this would be comedy gold,” Greg said, about to give his superiors a helping hand.  

“You’re coming upstairs too, Greg,” Tomasina said, snarling, trying to pry Bailey’s fingers free of the handle.

“Hell did I do?” Greg said. 

More shit splashed out of Bailey. “I’m bleeding,” she wept. “The pain!”

“Will you help us get her out of here, for God’s sake!” Florence said. “This place will need fum—”

Florence’s rant was derailed, her hands flying off Bailey’s suddenly bulging forearm, smacking her in the face, sending her backwards, reeling, and smashing into the wall. Her skull connected with a sickening thud. 

“Uh!” Florence said, sliding down the brickwork. 

“What the?” Tomasina said. “Did—did you strike her?”

“Nooo!” Bailey wailed, Tomasina sent flying, her other forearm ballooning in size, followed by her hands, arms, shoulders, neck and every other inch of her. 

Greg, in fits of uncontrollable laughter, stopped, the gasps and screams around him jolting him back to reality. “Jesus Christ,” he said, watching as Bailey grew a dozen feet or more within the space of sixty-seconds, going from a petit five-four to gigantic seven-four, and beyond. 

Her clothes tore asunder, akin to the Incredible Hulk’s.  

You won’t like me when I’m angry, Greg thought, lifting his head up and up and up, seeing her grow at an incredible rate. This is how Jack must have felt after selling his cows.

Bailey’s body filled out. Her arse became curved and plump, thighs thick, tits stout and pendulous. 

“Why don’t you love me?” she continued to bawl, her expanding body crushing everything around it. When her head and shoulders crashed through the ceiling, raining chunks of plaster and board down on those below her, Bailey realised what was happening.  

“Greg?!” she said, her voice breaking, tears dropping like individual waterfalls, whistling like Doodlebugs as they cut down through the air, washing Greg, Tomasina and Florence away, out the bakery and onto the shopfloor. 

It was biblical. It was Noah and his fucking arc. 

“We have to get out of here,” someone said. 

Shoppers jammed together as they tried stampeding towards the exit. 

Within the bakery, more ceiling collapsed, as spider-web-like cracks raced in all directions, causing the staff canteen on the second floor to fall through. Tables, chairs, Jill from checkouts and Dan the trolley boy, tumbled out of the spreading hole, along with fridges, ovens, chest freezers and other apparatuses and workers.  

Customers were crushed and splattered. 

Puddles of blood, piss and excrement spread along the floor in lakes. 

Clean up on aisle six, Greg thought, climbing out of the tear pond, pulling Tomasina to his feet as he did so. “We have to move, before the place buries us alive,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the crumbling building and hysteria. 

“Greg?” Bailey called, her voice making the ground and shelving tremble.

When he looked, he saw Bailey raise her one exposed hand up through the hole in the roof her head and shoulders had create, and use it to smash away at the structure that trapped her. The back half of the bakery closed in on itself. Stone, plaster and board buried the large mixing bowls, bread and roll plants, tables and friers. 

Screams rang out from above, as more bodies rained down, necks, arms and legs snapping on impact. 

Greg saw blood streak and seep across what was left of the ceiling.

“Fuck,” he said, moving backwards, pulling Tomasina with him, as desks, chairs, cabinets, PCs, laptops, and other office equipment crashed from the heavens. 

Sprinklers burst to live.

Alarms blared.

Pipes exploded. 

“Where are you, handsome?” Bailey continued, her both hands now pulverizing the shop’s construct, freeing her body, like Kong breaking his chains.  

“Holy fucking shit,” Greg said, looking at her. “She must be 50ft tall.”

“At least,” Tomasina said. 

“Run,” Florence said, “before we’re—Oooph!” she cried, as Bailey’s enormous hand enclosed around her and squeezed. “Ugh… B-Bailey, you’re killing me…” she wheezed. “My ribs.”

From where Greg stood, he heard Florence’s ribcage, hips and other bones snap and disintegrate, before Bailey opened her gigantic maw and scoffed her down, grinding the manager to a bloody pulp.

“Mmm,” Bailey said, moving forwards, raising one foot and bringing it down on a group of gawking shoppers, some of which took selfies and photos of the sci-fi freak. 

“Arrgh!” they said, before Bailey turned them into a puddle of sticky crimson. 

“Come here, baby,” Bailey growled. 

“Bollocks,” Greg said, turning to run, slipping on the wet, teary floor, causing him to collide with a display table filled with packets of hot cross buns. When he saw Bailey’s hand swipe for him, he commando rolled over the Jesus buns, avoiding her grasp. “Sorry, bitch, but you’re not my type. Too tall!”

Greg glanced over his shoulder as he ran down an aisle, gaining on the shop’s exit, seeing her come after him. 

“You can’t get away from me.” Bailey swatted shoppers, staff members and managers out of her way, some of which were thrown through windows or into shelving.

“I don’t mind a tall girl, but a 44 foot difference is a bit much,” Greg said, exiting the shop, finding his car in the car park. When he reached the driver’s side door, Bailey come crashing through the front of the shop, demolishing the sliding doors and foyer, as the building’s centre fell through. Bailey stopped looked at Greg, roaring as she did. 

In the distance, Greg fumbling with his keys, he heard sirens, followed by a monstrous groan and the shredding of metal. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, watching Bailey tear up a trolley bay and hurl it in his direction.

Greg ducked, as the missile flew overhead, and crashed into the first fire truck on the scene. 

“Move,” he told himself, slotting his key into the door, unlocking his car. Behind the wheel, he started the engine and threw the car into gear, stomping the go pedal. “Screw you, Bailey,” he said, giving her the finger in the rearview mirror.

“Go, car. Go, go, go,” he said, moving his battered Pinto out onto the main road.

All the while, Bailey’s image filled his side mirror, as she gave chase, gaining, her impossibly long arms stretching out, her fingers grabbing for his car…