Bait & Switch

Knotts Island Cemetery, August 16th

Even near sundown, it was sweltering as usual on the godforsaken island. Rob hated coming here, but heaven forbid he have a life or his parents pull themselves from their continual watered-down shared miseries to put fresh flowers on Sally’s grave.

Honestly, he could have given two fucks about honoring her memory, let alone this morbid act of placing flowers upon her grave in some weird ass way of, he guessed, celebrating her death date.

He was only seven when Sally offed herself; she was constantly fucking miserable, from what Rob could remember. But, then again, who wouldn’t be ready to kill themselves living with Rob’s parents? Their love was a mutual hatred for one another; they both were drunks of their own rights.

Of course, Rob’s father had the excuse that his star quarterback son had fumbled the ball at the championship game, killing the head coach and perpetual drama queen of a sad excuse for a father’s hopes of living vicariously off the farts of his son.

The truth is, Rob Gibbons hated the game and fumbled that ball on purpose to stick it to the never was dipshit; he loved seeing the brokenness in his father’s eyes. His entire team knew it and hated him almost as much as his father.

So he was shunned by everyone, but the folks of Knotts Island, North Carolina, could genuinely give a fuck less. They hated everything and everyone, including themselves, and for that, Rob truly loved them in that respect.

His family wasn’t local, so they referred to them as Arabs. It was a local term for anyone whose family tree forked, but no matter their backward opinions, Rob didn’t give a shit. He was bound for nothing but drinking his ass to oblivion to spite those shitbags who brought him into this world.

So, as he dropped the roses at his sister’s grave, he decided to honor her uniquely as he dropped the empty tall boy of Budweiser with her flowers, unzipped his pants, and began to relieve himself.

It was about the most enjoyable part of his soon-to-be-forgotten evening as suddenly a voice broke his moment of bladder-reliving zen.

“Wow, aren’t you a class act, killer?”

“Fuck, what the hell!” Rob blurted out, trying to hide the fact whoever snuck up behind him had just about caused him to piss all over himself. Rob turned to be met by a statuesque woman who resembled some Gothic vampire.

“Hey, look, it’s not what you think.”

“Oh, I believe it is, but don’t sweat it, sweetie. I mean, these folks get walked on already, so who gives a shit? Well, I mean besides their loved ones. So, what brings you here besides a pit stop, sparky?” The odd woman said, laughing.

“What’s it to you, Vampira? And besides, what are you doing sneaking up on me like some freak hiding out in this backwoods cemetery?”

“Oh, so aggressive for a dumbass that can’t even hold a football in the hopes of gaining the attention of the big colleges so you can slap your fellow Neanderthal’s asses.”

“Hey, fuck you bitch!”

Rob didn’t know who this cunt was, but he was losing his patience; he didn’t give a shit if she was a woman or not; he was about to knock her on her ass if she didn’t leave him alone and return to her crypt. 

“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to come off as a bitch, okay. I just could give a fuck less about football, but do you have another beer?”

“Yeah, for me, weirdo,” Rob said as he began to walk away and get as far as he could from this weird ass woman who seemed more suited for an old horror movie than real life or some Halloween carnival.

“It’s funny you’re the one using your sister’s headstone as a urinal, and you consider me weird. Of course, it’s strange she killed herself in this very cemetery so many years back.”

“Yeah, and why do you give a shit? She didn’t care about anyone but herself, or are you like one of her three former friends? I thought all those freaks got the hell out of dodge as soon as they could.”

The woman just shook her head. “It must be a burden, having to maintain the facade of a hard ass twenty-four seven. Look, I don’t give a crap about your sob story, but I would enjoy a beer. I mean, I will exchange a sip of this.” The woman said, pulling a pint of Jim Beam from her purse.

Rob didn’t know if this bitch was crazy. He honestly didn’t care, but he did entertain the thought of getting more fucked up and possibly getting some of her dark lipstick on his dipstick. He thought if she was indeed that much of a freak, who cares? Getting off while getting drunk was always one of Rob’s favorite pastimes.

So, as he walked with his new unwanted companion to his car, he pulled a cold one from his cooler, tossing it to her.

“So, you got a name, freak show?”

“Lenore, and wow, you throw way better than you catch. I’m surprised; well, I guess everyone has an off day, huh, tiger?”

“Fuck you bitch, what you know about football, let alone high-school football? What, you got cable in your crypt?”

“No satellite, and it’s a five fucking mile island, dipshit; word gets around fast.”

“Yeah, people here have no fucking life; they just have gossip and their failures to count, so I guess. Now, what about that bottle?”

Lenore passed the bottle as they stood there drinking. As odd companions on an ever-approaching suffocating hot night, the conversation lightened as they shared a few more drinks, and the barbs became less awkward.

“So, how did you know my sister?”

Lenore went silent, looking off into the distance.

“I didn’t know her well; I just knew she loved this place. I saw her a few times. I didn’t go to school with her, but we spoke on occasion; she was honestly a nice person but sad. Then again, who isn’t masking something right?”

“Yeah, she was a stranger to me, then she became someone who existed in photos and was talked about as if she hadn’t stolen my dad’s pistol and blown her brains out. How very Rockwell of her. Fuck it! I’m out of here. See ya!”

Rob said, hurling the beer can into the cemetery as he went to hop in his car.

“Wait, look, why don’t you hang with me at my place? I got more booze. I won’t be such a bitch. I just am alone too much as is, so let’s have a few more drinks; what do you say?”

Rob didn’t know why, but he honestly had no desire to hang with this odd woman anymore. There was something about her. She was attractive, yet something just unnerved him about her. She was like his sister to some degree, broken in some way he had no desire to understand, yet he also didn’t want to be at home. His father nagged him to death, and his cunt of a mother just spewed hatred for the fact Sally was gone, and all she was left with was her lousy ass husband and her loser son.

“So, where’s home?” He asked, breaking the silence.

“The Collins property.”

“Damn, that place is fucking huge, and I know for a fact that old man doesn’t like guests, so I’ll pass.”

“That old man is my father, and what are you scared of? We’re not going to hang out with my family, just have some more drinks and listen to music. I mean, whatever floats your boat.”

Rob’s curiosity was sparked; the Collins property was huge, and the old man was loaded, yet nobody seemingly knew what he fucking did to be so rich, and Rob was almost out of beers, so why not drink on this loon’s dime.

“Alright, goth Barbie, get in.” Soon, they were driving on the creepy-ass property that was just a tiny part of the 7000 acres old man Collins owned.

Rob was stunned at just how eerie the place looked. Lenore had unlocked the first gate onto the property as she had him stop at what he assumed to be a caretaker’s house.

She led him to an old gazebo in the backyard that sat on the edge of the woods. Rob took a seat as she went to mix them some drinks.

“Damn, this place looks like something out of some old horror movie. Are you sure nobody gives a shit we are here?”

“Nobody lives here, well, besides me. My father gave it to me as a present. I can’t be around my brothers for too long; they drive me nuts. Well, that goes for my entire family, my father included.”

“I can sympathize with that. Of course, if my old man gave me my own house, I might hate his guts a little less.” Rob said, laughing as he watched Lenore walk to the house, her hips swaying with the breeze as the honeysuckle left its sweetened perfume upon the air.

Rob sat there looking up at the Spanish moss that gently moved with the barely existing summer night breeze as, at last, Lenore returned with two cocktails on a fancy tray with a filled crystal decanter.

“Can’t hide money, huh, baby?” Rob said.

Lenore smiled. 

“Why the hell should we? Decadence is the beauty of this life, and I hate to tell you, stud, but life is too goddamn short to live like a ragamuffin; this place is what you make of it, much like life, so enjoy yourself while you can.”

“Whatever you say, girl,” Rob said, kicking back his drink that tasted like pure fire. One thing about it: this rich bitch wasn’t stingy with her booze. Although weird as fuck at least she was a good host.

The drinks were more frequent, and the flirting was what it was. Rob was loaded and thirsted for something different.

“Look, I appreciate the drinks, but let’s cut the shit. You want to fuck? And if not, then I am going to bounce. This place is weird. I get you love it living on some open hunting grounds, but…”

“I like to think of it more as an open zoo or maybe more so a place where the lunatics run the asylum,” Lenore said as she suddenly straddled Rob, kissing him deeply as she just as quickly bit into his lip, causing searing pain. Blood burst into his mouth as he pushed her to the floor of the gazebo.

“What the fuck, you crazy bitch! I’m going to kill your ass for that, you fucking cunt!”

Lenore smiled like a lunatic. 

“You got to catch me first, asshole!” She shouted, half in hysterics, as she threw the decanter at him and struck his head with a sickening thud. Just as quickly, she bolted for the woods.

Rob jumped up and was quickly in pursuit.

“Come here, you crazy ass bitch!” He yelled as her laughter only intensified as she vanished into the woods.

Rob was too enraged to think as he entered the clearing. His legs burned from all the booze and the fact this bitch was like some odd human gazelle; he could not see shit, but the trail was pretty well kept aside from the occasional thorn branch that reached out clawing at his face as Lenore’s laughter echoed through the woods and was seemingly everywhere.

He was running blind when suddenly his head exploded in pain from being struck from behind by what felt like a baseball bat. Rob crashed face-first into the ground and was almost knocked unconscious.

As he struggled to get to his feet, he was met with a barrage of kicks. He felt his ribs being broken as his air went out of him like a balloon while he struggled to breathe, and the group of people stood there watching him like a broken animal.

One started filming his ordeal as the camera light blinded him as Lenore knelt beside him.

“You know, sweetie, this is one game you cannot fowl up.”

Rob spit blood in Lenore’s face as she only continued to smile, not even bothering to wipe it away.

“So tough, yet so weak within.”

Rob felt his throat being cut as he quickly began choking. He viewed this group of strangers as unbeknownst to him; these same strangers helped him to his feet as he could see the edge of the woods where, through the clearing, was the old church, and it seemed someone was standing waiting for him.

He staggered towards whomever it was. Soon, a familiar voice radiated from the darkness.

“It’s going to be alright, son. I promise you just had to be taught a lesson, that is all.”

Rob collapsed into his father’s arms, barely able to stand as the blood flowed from his throat being slit. 

“You know, son, all this could have been avoided had you not been such a greedy little bastard; you just had to spite me, didn’t you?”

“Dad, please, I…”

“No, shut up, you selfish little prick! Why did you have to humiliate the way you did!”

Rob’s father let him collapse to the ground, enraged and in tears, as the Collin’s filth laughed. His son convulsed as he faded at his feet.

Terry looked as the smallest in the group pointed his goddamn camera in his face. Terry pushed the weird little bastard away from his son.

“Get the fuck away from him, you sick fuck; this wasn’t part of the goddammed deal!”

“The deal changed, asshole!” The one they called Bishop spoke, staring at Terry. He was cold as a winter’s night, and Terry knew his payment did not ensure his safety; the judge had tried to talk him out of being part of this, but he had to witness this. He hated what Rob had done.

Terry knew his logic was twisted, but he had to be here, unlike Sally, his beautiful Sally. She had also smited Terry, and her final act of leaving him alone was to damage her perfect face.

Terry knew he had to get away from these people. They were sick beyond words. He was nothing like them.

“Look, this can’t be for your collectors. I will pay whatever price; just please let me talk to your father, and I will make him understand.”

The entire group busted up laughing, even the mountain they called Tex, as the one they called Lenore stepped closer to Terry.

“Sweetie, don’t you get this is not negotiable, baby?”

Terry abruptly pushed Lenore back. “Look, freak! I pay, so it’s my goddamned rules, and I say turn the fucking camera off! It’s a wrap. Cut the shit and clean up the mess. I paid you, you’re working for me now, you cocksuckers!”

The group quickly surrounded Terry. Bishop looked at Terry, void of any emotion.

“Yeah, well, sorry to burst your bubble there, coach, but your beloved wife paid more, so the show has only just begun.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, you..” Terry was cut off mid-sentence as he looked down to see the knife buried to the hilt in his abdomen. Lenore smiled wickedly at him as he felt another enter his side.

As the pack smelt proverbial blood in the water, Terry soon was on the ground looking into the dead eyes of his son.

Terry’s body was but a target for the endless barrage of stabbings as, at last, the one called Tex landed the fatal blow, cracking Terry’s skull with childish glee as the skull fractured and burst like a pinata.

Days later, a woman sat upon the water, watching the men running a line of crab pots; she poured one of many endless drinks. She was snapped into reality as the cheap cell Harvey gave her rang.

“Hello, Miss Gibbons. I just wanted to see if you are alright. I do hope you save a bushel of those crabs when they most certainly come in.”

Karen nervously laughed. “They’re all yours if you want, and I do hope everything is good with you as well, Harvey. I take it our business is done?”

The conversation was awkward as it was intended to be, as she knew it was also very much a warning as the crab line was a reminder that it could just easily be her own flesh; those vile creatures could be feasting off of much like that worthless bastard of a husband they were eating off of now.

Karen felt not an ounce of remorse for Terry, just like he felt nothing for her when he chose to violate their daughter Sally. She knew she was no saint, but at least it wasn’t her time yet, and as for her son, he would have ended up like her prick of a husband.

Karen had died long ago on that day Sally had departed from this godforsaken island. 

Karen had died when she had read the note Sally had left her.

She had kept it in, but the fire had burned hidden until the moment did arise. She watched that bastard as he was gutted as he so deserved.

Karen Gibbon’s day would come eventually, but until then, she would enjoy the silence with her drinks as only revenge was served upon the dinner table this evening.

And that dish was served as cold as those dark waters just outside her window’s view.

Karen had seemingly lost her appetite for good.

Stigmata

I love my wife, there’s no doubt about that, but I have one complaint about her. I‘ll get to it in a minute. But first, I want to say that I have an issue with monogamy. Marriage is a method used by society to tame the wild beast, in other words, men, because let’s face it. Men are animals, better yet, pigs.

Now back to that one complaint about my wife. It’s not that big of a problem, but it’s at the root of my current situation. I need to get personal here, and some might say a little vulgar, so be warned. It’s about our sex life. 

Sex between us has always been good but she just can’t give a good blow job no matter how I try to explain how to do it.  She got pissed off once and asked me what made me such an expert. Did I give head and get complimented for it? No way, I’ve always been on the receiving end, and not from any guys. Not my thing. I asked her once if my not being circumcised bothered her. She said, no. 

My sexual experience goes back to my teenage years, around sixteen or so. I used to hang around with the wife of my parent’s tenant, Elaine. She had a thing for me. It started innocently enough one night while we watched TV together. She was bored, her kids were asleep, and her husband was at work.  

As we sat on her couch watching TV. I felt her hand going up my leg which eventually stopped on my crouch. You can imagine the rest. An experienced older woman, a testosterone-filled teenager, and no one to interfere. It was my first experience receiving oral sex and the best. Since then, any subsequent blow jobs are compared to that first one.  

Growing up, getting good oral sex became a requirement for any woman who wanted to date me. If I found her lacking in that department, I would move on. But then I fell in love with my wife even though she sucked, excuse the pun.   

I tolerated it since I did love her but if you remember, I said all men are animals. Pigs. And I have this issue with monogamy. Why is it that we’ve been programmed to accept one spouse? Even in the Bible, in the Old Testament, men had multiple wives or concubines. Nowadays, at least in the West, we’re restricted to one wife, and we need to keep any infidelity a secret. What’s wrong with a little extramarital sex on occasion? Especially if it makes you feel good. This way, you’re happy, you’re nice to the wife, and she’s happy.  

Veronica was a Caribbean hooker I knew, but she didn’t work the street. She had a reputation built on word of mouth (I crack myself up sometimes) and worked mostly out of her apartment. 

We met about five years after I got married. I’d been sucked off by lots of women up to that point but once Veronica got her hot lips around my pecker, I stopped looking for it from anyone else and forgot about my first one from Elaine.  I knew I wasn’t the only one Veronica had sex with, but I didn’t care. It’s not like I was gonna marry her. 

Things were going well for some time, until one summer night we took a ride to the beach. There were other cars in the parking lot, all of them there for the same thing.    

I had my pants pulled down, with Veronica giving me head. I could smell the ocean as I looked out the open window and stared at the stars.  

In another two minutes, she would have been finished. We’d be back on the road, me taking her home, then finding the wife, everybody happy. But no, we heard the screeching of the car wheels approaching us but I figured it would pass. So did Veronica, because she didn’t stop what she was doing, she just slowed down. If only she had raised her head to listen to which direction the noise came from or to look around, show a little concern that we might get hit. Nothing. I could see the other car coming at us, slowing down, and swerving, but I knew it would hit us. 

I pulled on Veronica’s hair to get her off me, and I almost had my cock out of her mouth when the car hit us. She instinctively clenched her teeth, and I screamed like a banshee.   

***

The doctor wore gloves, who wouldn’t? He peeled back my foreskin and examined the wound. Lucky for me he said she didn’t bite down completely. It could have been worse. Veronica’s teeth scraped their way across the head of my cock, leaving the upper layer of skin peeled off. The head of my dick was crimson read, and very sore. Luckily, since I wasn’t circumcised, the foreskin offered some protection from my shorts.  

The wound would leave a scar. That’s what the doctor told me, but being a determined SOB, I tried a dermatologist and several ointments. Nothing worked. It got better, it didn’t look as sore, but you could see the difference in the color of the head of my dick. 

To make matters worse, the scar put a real damper on my sex life. At first, Veronica kept me as a client, but after any kind of sex, fucking, or getting a much-loved blow job, the head of my cock grew crimson red again, and little streams of blood oozed from my skin. Veronica didn’t take kindly to this and became reluctant to see me. 

This devastated me. I tried being chaste for weeks, waiting until my nuts swelled up and I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands. The results were the same, no matter how gentle or careful I was, or how quickly I came. 

I started feeling stressed out and ended up seeing a shrink, who prescribed anti-depressants. If you know anything about this type of drug, they turned me into a eunuch. My dick never got hard, no matter how much I tried, and the more I tried, the worse the head of my cock got. 

Veronica called one day to check on me. She said she’d been thinking of me. I guess out of pity. Anyway, I told her my problem and she suggested I stay off my meds for a week or two and then she would see me. Veronica always treated me with kindness. So did I, I mean I paid her price, and always tipped well. I figured it was worth a try. 

I did as she said.  After two weeks off my meds and keeping my hands off my pecker, I felt my balls aching for relief. And one evening, I went to her house. She made me comfortable and then very gently, opened my pants and worked on my cock. To my relief, I got nice and hard. She stopped for a second and looked at the head of my cock. Veronica’s eyes opened wide, her mouth dropped and she let go of my cock. Then she grabbed it again and stared at the head. 

She sat back, trying to speak. When she finally did, she claimed the face of Jesus was on the head of my cock. You can imagine my reaction. I said “get the fuck outa here.” I looked at it closely, I couldn’t see anything. Veronica said I needed to see it from her angle so she went and got a mirror. After some manipulating, I had the same view as she did, and sure enough, there He was, right on the head of my penis. 

Veronica thought it was a miracle, some kind of sign, and refused to give me the blow job she had promised. I got annoyed but after I doubled her price, she agreed. 

As soon as I came, we both looked at my penis to see if He was still there. The head of my cock was beet red by now, and two little beads of blood appeared. Wouldn’t you know it; they were right where Jesus’ eyes were. This freaked her out and she asked me to leave and never come back. I left, not knowing what to do next. It kinda got to me also. I went home, showered, and went to bed. I used a mirror and took a peek at my cock. Jesus was still there, along with the beads of blood.

I thought Veronica had seen enough and I would never hear from her again, but she called me about a week or so later. She said she’d told her hooker friends what she’d seen and they all wanted to see it. Veronica’s friends were like her. In addition to being hookers, they all dabbled in, I’m not sure about this, voodoo, or maybe Santeria. One of those island religions. All of them had these little shrines in their houses. Incense and candles, and don’t mention chickens to me. 

At first, I worried about revealing myself to a bunch of hookers who practiced Santeria.  I could see them chopping the head of my dick off and them keeping it in a jar by their shrine. I said this to Veronica and she laughed her head off. She called me ‘crazy mon.’ 

I agreed to let her friends see it, but I insisted that they all take turns blowing me and that I wouldn’t have to pay anything. The idea of my dick being shared by a bunch of women turned me on to no end. It took a bit of convincing, but I told them it would be like taking communion, and they agreed. 

They took turns sucking my cock. I felt I was in Heaven. Right up there with Jesus.

Sacrifices

It turned out Dinger Watson had a disorder involving his gland.

“Okay,” he said, “but which gland?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” replied the doctor. 

In fact, Dinger very much would have liked to know. After all, there are many different glands in the human body, including:

1. Pineal
2. Pituitary
3. Adrenal
4. Ceruminous
5. Lacrimal
6. Testicles

Furthermore, depending on the nature of the disorder, a disorder in one of those glands might mean something very different than a disorder in another.

“Unfortunately,” said the doctor, “Hippocratic preoccupations are going to prevent me from wading too much deeper into the details. One thing I can tell you, however, is that in consideration of this glandular disorder of yours, I’d highly recommend cutting back on the quantity of cream sauce you consume.”

“Cream sauce?” said Dinger.

“Cream sauce,” affirmed the doctor.

Well, that sure was going to be difficult; anyone who knew Dinger knew that he frequently indulged in many varieties of cream sauce, including:

1. Spinach 
2. Garlic 
3. Bacon 
4. Famous horseshoe cheese 
5. Creamy mustard dill 
6. Simple heavy 

This last one was Dinger’s favorite by far, so the moment he got home from the doctor’s office he threw away his entire supply of butter as well as his whisk so that, should he become tempted to prepare it, he’d lack the means and materials with which to do so. Then, he sat down in his overstuffed thinking chair and thought for a good, long while about his friend Patrick, who shortly after his controversial marriage to Bushra Fez had also given something up. Specifically, Patrick had given up gluten owing to the fact that, according to his craniosacral therapist, it was almost definitely the cause of the chronic internal inflammation that, also according to his craniosacral therapist, was almost definitely the cause of numerous other maladies from which he suffered, such as recurring canker sores and boisterous snoring. As for irritable bowel syndrome, Patrick would not have gone so far as to assert that he suffered from it, but at the same time he hardly would have described his bowels as easygoing, and this, too, according to his craniosacral therapist, was almost definitely caused by the internal inflammation that was almost definitely caused by his consumption of gluten. Recently, there had been an incident wherein Patrick had decided to reward himself for a hard day’s work in his professional capacity as an environmentally conscious housepainter with a big bowl of lentil bean-based pasta down at The Sprouted Spoonful, a popular gluten-free restaurant located in the heart of the city’s bustling art’s district. No sooner had he dug in, however, than he could feel a telltale grumble in his tummy that, were his craniosacral therapist correct, almost definitely meant he’d consumed gluten. 

“Hey,” he called out to the waiter. “I thought this place was supposed to be gluten free!”

“Exactly,” said the waiter. “Here, our gluten is free to go wherever it pleases, including into your supposedly lentil bean-based pasta.”

“You duplicitous bastards,” cried Patrick. “It would serve you right if I pulled down my pants and blasted diarrhea all over the middle of this restaurant!” 

“It probably would,” replied the waiter, “but all the same, I’ll bet you won’t.” 

B B Beloved

In an eclectic bar off of Boston Avenue, I met myself. Strung-out. Reeling. The girl before me looked like a caricature, like a child borrowing their older sister’s clothes. Wearing her makeup. Ruining the wax of an expensive lipstick just for a glimpse into another world. Another realm. 

I stood in front of her in a hallway that smelt like bergamot and Prosecco. The lights were moody, glowing like faded headlights during a night storm, and the bar was playing a cover of some song I’d heard before, but couldn’t place, sort of like how I couldn’t place myself. 

It’d been two weeks since the incident, since Addison had kissed him. Well, I suppose, since I saw her kiss him. There’s a difference, isn’t there – between witnessing something firsthand and simply hearing about it? Speculation. Rumors. Did she or didn’t she? Is she really going to? Would she? All of those indecorous whispers are pinched out like fire from a candle’s wick when you see something. It leaves only the smoke, blurring the lines between real and fake. 

How well do you trust your eyes? 

How do you know if you’re being honest when you’re the only one in the room?

Questions like this used to keep me up at night. I used to fight sleep like a child. I used to crawl out into my kitchen just to hold the phone’s receiver in my hand. I’d stare at the glowing numbers of the dial pad as if they were some crystal ball. Wipe Addison’s phone number from my brain, I’d plead. Make me forget her. Let me. 

It’s a strange thing to love someone, even stranger when that someone is a girl and you’re a girl and you’ve both known one another since first grade. At first, I thought it was platonic – my love for Addison. I used to fantasize about us growing old with one another, but there was never an inclination for marriage or romance. I saw it more as us escaping together. We’d buy a cottage somewhere in the Northeast, raise goats, and host game nights with our friends. She’d paint. 

She was a good painter, Addison. She’d won several competitions when we were in high school and had even planned on going to an art school somewhere in Europe. I couldn’t remember where in Europe because she hadn’t told me. You see, the incident had happened this summer before college and afterward, she’d become a ghost.

Although, perhaps phantom is a better word because of its definition: “A figment of the imagination”. My exile had driven me to a sort of madness, clotting the images of her in my mind with a sense of disbelief. Had she really been that close to me all this time? If she had, how could she do such a thing – and why? It was easier to convince myself our friendship had simply been a misunderstanding on my part than it was to accept the truth, 

to accept what I’d seen. 

Back at the bar, I abandoned myself in the hall and walked into the nearby restroom. Emerald-painted ceilings and dark floral wallpaper greeted me beneath dim lighting. I wobbled, blinking. So far, I’d consumed an entire bottle of Prosecco off an empty stomach and had smoked three stolen cigarettes. My head throbbed. I shut my left eye and then my right, lifting my eyebrows as if the movement would rid me of the pain. 

When it didn’t, I stumbled to the toilet in the corner of the room and peed. I washed my hands, splashing water across the floor, my jeans, and the bottom of the mirror across from me. I stuck my head beneath the faucet and opened my mouth. The water was warm and tasted like metal. I drank until I felt like I was going to vomit and then vomited – first, in the sink and then in the toilet. 

I was drunk and for girls in college, especially pretty, refined girls like me with nothing but an inheritance behind their name, this was normal. This was expected, however, most pretty, refined girls with nothing but an inheritance behind their name had a hoard of other pretty, refined girls with them. I did not. I never did. And, I’m sure if I had, they’d simply tire of my constant whining. 

I was a whiner. Addison used to tell me that. There was nothing in this world I did better than whine. Addison was the light. I was the dark. I liked misery and pain and would anticipate any sort of suffering with an excitement similar to that of a child in line to see an R-rated film. Whining, to me, was the applause after consuming a well-written piece of art. It was proof that life was working. I was alive. 

She never understood that. 

To her, every bad thing had a purpose. Any wound inflicted on her soul would soon heal and leave her with a better understanding of the world. It was always the destination she worshiped, never the journey. Sometimes, when we were growing up, she’d get this sparkly look in her eyes. We’d be outside playing in the freshly cut grass, the small blades sticking to our bare feet, leaving chlorophyll stains along our ankles and heels, and she’d look otherworldly. Her big, doe eyes would glitter like lake water beneath the sun.

“This is so good.” She’d say. “I love the summer.” 

I’d have to catch my breath at the sight of her. How are you real, I’d think. Did you not wriggle out of my brain only to fool me? 

When we’d collect bugs in jars, she was always the first to scream. She wanted to let them go. 

“If you love something, you let it go. You have to let it be free.” She’d say, and I’d roll my eyes and chew the skin off around my nails. 

Always, she begged me to catch them. Butterflies, beetles, flies – you name it, I was catching them because Addison wanted them. We’d argue about setting them free until they eventually died in the jar. We used to cry about it, stare at their little corpses like God. Feel pain. And then we graduated into something else, something apathetic. 

I liked squishing the dead beetles between my fingers like they were M&Ms. Addison used to squeal. She’d hit me and tell me to stop, but then, never leave. Hand me the next. Say, “Oh, this one.”, with that same twinkle in her eye. Often, I wondered if we’d trap each other if we had a big enough jar. 

I flushed the toilet with a moan and stood to my feet. I cleaned the sink, smeared more of my makeup around my face while wiping the vomit from my lips, and pulled apart the damp pieces of my hair. There was a knock at the door, followed by muffled speech. 

“Ugh.” A woman groaned, “Are you almost done in there? I really have to pee.”

I shut my eyes and held onto the sink, feeling as if I was going to vomit again.

The dynamic between Addison and I could be found in nature. She was the more dominant one, the one that made all of the decisions. Kissed all of the boys. She always had things that I wanted – did and said things I wanted. If we were animals, she was the great giant whale and I was the barnacle attached to her stomach. I was the tapeworm in her gut. The lice on her unwashed scalp. And, this point of view wasn’t one-sided. No. She too believed this. It was why she kissed him: Tyler. 

My boyfriend. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking, why would you have a boyfriend if you’re in love with Addison? There are two parts to that question. First, you have to understand that my love for Addison was anything but practical. It was invasive, gnawing like an esurient termite at my organs. If my body had been composed of wood, surely I’d have collapsed by now.

Secondly, and perhaps, more importantly,

I wanted to see. 

All our lives people had told me things like, “Oh, you know Addison said that shirt makes you look fat, right?”, “Are you really friends?”, “Uh…she said you don’t shave your legs.”. It was just like the jars and the bugs and smashing their pathetic, lifeless bodies like candy. Saying one thing and then doing another. 

I never liked Tyler, but she did. He was tall and broad. He had big, brown eyes, a crooked smile, and liked acid rock. He was just her type, which meant he was perfect. Addison had never explicitly said that she liked Tyler. We’d just had a few classes with him throughout high school and, occasionally, I’d catch her staring at him. 

I’d begun flirting with him our Junior year. He asked me out the summer before Senior year. I told Addison, she was obviously jealous but attempting to hide said jealousy, and then I slept with him. It was awful, the kind of sex that makes you reconsider sex in general. Is the mess really worth it? How come most relationships expect something so miserable? Then, I told Addison and the blotchy rash that coated her skin as she lied about her anger made it worth it. It made me do it again, and again, and again. 

I’d tell her about what sort of positions we’d been in or how long he’d last. I’d tell her what he looked like when he came and what sounds he’d make. It felt like I was some neurosurgeon operating on a brain. Every detail I gave her was just another stitch, another poke toward the direction I so wanted her to go.

Then, the summer came and – 

The women pounded on the door again. I opened my eyes, feeling the nausea pass, and quickly let her inside. I walked back out into the bar. The music outside of the bathroom was louder than before, that or my headache had worsened. I chose the ladder and stumbled my way out into the alleyway where the bar was located. It was cold and dark. Just lightly, the rain had begun to fall, sheltering everything in a mist. I pulled my jacket on and around myself, burying my chin in the collar. 

I smelled like shit, but this was nothing new. Since the incident, I’d taken it upon myself to quit showering. I also stopped shaving, letting one of Addison’s endless lies become a truth. My hair had once been long. I’d cut it three days ago because the mats in it had become unmanageable. Now, it hung just below my cheekbones in a French bob. It made me look eccentric, which I wasn’t.

Often, especially now, I tried to paint my face in such a way that forced people to stare. I don’t know why this was, but I liked the attention. I also liked the act of shopping for makeup, plucking them out of their plastic cubbies, turning them over in my hand like some jewel. My go-to was bright, red lipstick — a ruby lip, if you will, paired with plum eyeshadow with glitter and shading and thick, asymmetrical eyeliner. I’d fall asleep in it every night. I never wanted to be without it, so much that I didn’t mind the clownish girl greeting me in the mirror every morning. Whatever. She just needed a bit of correcting. Don’t we all?

Addison used to say I had a perfectly plain face, that it was easy to draw. She’d smile as she said this too, like her effortless beauty outweighed any sort of negative effect her comment may have had. I didn’t mind. In fact, I enjoyed these back-handed compliments. They often felt like a well I could peer into, some part of her that she’d only ever show me. Because I was special. Because I meant just as much to her as she meant to me. Take a penny. Leave a penny. I used to think these moments were her way of showing me this. We were the same, her and I. Pretenders. 

Tyler was the only son of two bankers. He was made of money and owned a boat that he’d take out onto the lake every summer. This summer, he’d invited me out onto the boat and I, purposefully, invited Addison. She’d been single for months, which wasn’t like her. I figured it was because she was secretly seeing Tyler. He’d been unable to make a couple of our dates and she’d been uncharacteristically missing in my life. Rip the bandaid, I thought. Bleed. 

But then, she declined. She said she didn’t want to go. So, I went on the stupid boat with Tyler and grilled and drank vintage champagne– all while wondering what ludicrous thing she had to have been doing in place of being on an expensive boat with a beautiful boy in the middle of summer. When we got back, Addison had told me she’d been prepping for school. Apparently, she needed to put together a portfolio and finish off two new original pieces before August. I just told her I understood and she offered to get together for a movie night later that week.

And so, the incident presents itself. 

In the alleyway, I kicked a small bit of gravel into a shallow puddle. It clicked against the bottom of the miniature pond. No ripples. Slowly, I crouched down, having spotted a half-smoked cigarette, and brought it to my lips. I lit it with a lighter I’d stolen from Tyler. 

Two weeks ago, on a Thursday night, I’d planned to go to Addison’s with Tyler to watch Sabrina. When we arrived, the dated house smelled like chocolate chip cookies and potpourri. Addison had baked all day and had even ordered a pizza from a place down the street. I hugged her in the way we’d always hugged. She kissed my cheek. I kissed her’s. She told me about her day – how her shower had unexpectedly turned cold this morning and that her favorite pair of hose now had a hole in them. 

I laughed the way I always laughed. It was genuine, real in a way I wished it not to be. I loved hearing about her day. I loved getting to live within the dust collecting along the shelves of her home – to be trusted with such intimate details. 

She started the movie on the box television in the living room. I sat on the floor beside Tyler, wishing he’d just sit on the couch behind us with Addison. The floor was carpet, old carpet, and I’d forgotten then just how painful it became after a few minutes. 

I’d gotten up. I said that I needed to use the restroom, that I felt sick. Both Addison and Tyler gave me sympathetic looks but didn’t argue or offer me any remedies. That was good. That was what I planned. I dragged myself into the hallway bathroom and turned on the fan before sitting on the closed toilet. Checking my wristwatch, I made sure to give them enough time alone together. 

Even if they didn’t kiss, I could at least gauge the intimacy of their relationship based on how they spoke to one another. If they whispered, then it was obvious. However, if they didn’t – well, I was back to square one. I let ten minutes go by before I turned off the fan. Then, I gently opened the door. The house was dark and all I could hear were the actors in the movie speaking at some elaborate party. I stepped forward. The floor creaked beneath my weight. I stopped. 

Barely, I could hear something, something outside of the movie. I walked forward again, this time with more weight shifted to my toes. In the pool of the television light, Addison and Tyler were kissing. She was leaning down from the couch and he was leaning up. Their mouths moved like cows chewing their cud. 

I couldn’t breathe. 

I was so excited. 

Quickly, I stumbled back through the hallway. I needed to calm down, to regroup. If I acted on my excitement, this could go wrong. I could potentially blow the whole thing. In my mind, there were already two outcomes. One: I calmly reentered the living room and pretended as if I knew nothing. After the movie finished, I’d confront them both. I’d make them grovel. I’d make Addison confess and finally accept that I shouldn’t love her. Two: I’d say nothing. Forever. 

Acting on my excitement presented a third outcome, one where I ran into the living room while their mouths were still connected and set fire to everything. I didn’t like that outcome. It supplied me with nothing. 

Slowly walking backward, I reopened the door to the bathroom, ready to think about my approach. My foot caught on something, though, and I frantically turned on the light. In my reverie, I’d walked too far down the hall. This wasn’t the bathroom. This was just a room. For what, I wasn’t sure. 

Gently, I leaned down and set aside the milk crate that I’d tripped on. The carpet was yellow. The walls were paneled. Before me, was a pile of canvases wrapped in white cloth. Paint supplies littered the room. I carefully pulled the cloth from the canvases, letting it fall to the floor like a specter returning to its grave. 

Every painting was of me. Every me within the painting was naked or asleep with smeared makeup — a colorful wash, like some lifeless exoskeleton waiting to be malted out of. 

Before this moment, I’d never been inside Addison’s studio. I didn’t know she had one. What happened after this discovery, I can’t say. I’m afraid I don’t really remember. Tyler left, though. He ran out of Addison’s front door shortly after I returned to them in the living room. I thought it’d be clever to take off my clothes and cover myself in the same colors Addison had used for all her pieces. I guess I scared him. 

Oh, but the look on Addison’s face. 

She told me one of those paintings was going to be hung at a bar off of Boston Avenue. When she said this, she was clambering – crying like a baby. I just kept asking her why she hated me and if she hated me so much, why did she paint me? Why did she trap me? Own me. Make me a spectacle and title it, “Beloved”?

She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t…wouldn’t…who’s to say. At the time, I had a couch pillow pressed against her face and was losing my breath. Then, suddenly, she stopped. The world stopped. Everything came to a rushing halt. eerrk. I heard it shake into a stillness like an old, rickety Ferris wheel finally powering down. My head fell to the side at the sight of her dead, soon-to-be cold skin. She looked smaller then, manageable. 

In the alleyway, my cigarette came to an end and I hissed, seering the tips of my fingers with a few loose embers. Two girls spilled out from the bar beside me. They were drunk. Friends, I assumed. I watched them for a minute or until one of them spotted me. Her back straightened. Her eyes, glazed, slightly opened just a bit more. 

“You’re the girl,” She said. I forced a smile. “You’re the girl in the painting.” 

“Hmmm, must’ve escaped.” I hummed, attempting to correct my smeared makeup. 

I flicked my cigarette and watched it land in the puddle next to the small bit of gravel. 

“Do you know where the artist is then?” She asked. “She was supposed to come tonight.” 

I lifted my gaze to her, forcing a frown, “Oh…that’s too bad.”

“You must know her.” The girl continued. 

I shook my head, “Hardly.” and then I took a few steps closer to her, squinting to emphasize the process of thought. 

She remained where she was, properly drunk – flushed and blotchy and a bit swollen. 

“Can I tell you something?” I asked. 

She nodded. 

I licked my lips, pulling in a deep breath, “I think she’s dead.” 

I let my head fall to the side as her eyes widened before me. She understood then. Somehow, she could see Addison’s blood on my hands and place me, effortlessly, at the scene of the crime. It must’ve been something about the way I stared or my face or maybe, it was simply an energy I couldn’t recognize because it was all I’d known.

Her and her friend quickly made up an excuse to go inside. I didn’t move. The rain continued to fall, collecting more and more weight as time went on. I let it wash away the color from my face. I let it soak my clothes. I would’ve killed both those girls. Perhaps that was why Addision had trapped me. From the beginning, she’d been able to see. 

Best Served Digested

Holy shit. Martha’s never shit a shit that big in her life. The thing in the toilet barely even looks like a shit, it’s so huge. Looks more like a little brown snake fell into her toilet bowl somehow. 

“Finally! I’m out!”

Martha screams and jumps so hard she nearly loses her balance. “Who said that? Where are you?”

“Look down.”

She looks at the floor.

“Not down there. In here.”

In where? The…toilet? 

“That’s right.”

There’s nothing in the toilet but her waste. Certainly no sign of this thirty-something—so she guesses—man who sounds kind of like that actor from Get Out. Daniel…whatshisname. Sounds kinda like that one coffee liqueur. Starts with a K.

“Confused? You’re lookin’ right at me, lady.”

“I’m looking at a turd.”

“That’s me!”

Huh. Well, this is a new one.

You’re asleep, she tells herself.

“Let me guess what you’re thinking now,” says her shit. “You’re thinking this is a dream. Go ahead, pinch yourself.”

She pinches herself. It kinda hurts, so…not a dream. “The fuck,” she says.

“You crapped out a real doozy. Kinda unbelievable, really; never seen anything like it. Seems to me you’ve got a diet problem—too little fiber, maybe? You know, fruits and vegetables and stuff? Pretty sure this porker of a poop’s ninety to ninety-nine percent hotdogs. Not very healthy.”

“Fuck off. You sound like my mom.”

“Your mom’s a cunt.”

“The hell!” Martha reaches for the flush handle. “You’re outta here, asshole! What gives you the right to come into my house and talk about my mom like that?”

He laughs. “You really don’t recognize my voice, huh?”

Martha pauses. She can’t deny being curious. If she flushes now, she’ll never learn just how this situation came to be. Besides, flushing may very well kill the sentient poop. Just exactly how does that play out, ethically? Would it be murder? She doesn’t want anything like that on her conscience.  

“I don’t recognize it,” she says. “Should I?”

“Let’s see if you remember this. ‘Hey! Watch where you’re going, you sick sack of dicks!’ Ringing any bells?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on, you are so full of it. I know you remember. I was practicing my unicycle juggling routine outside the Walmart and you walked right out in front of me. I fell and crashed onto the pavement because of you!”

Hey, yeah. Martha does remember something like that. “You’re that unicycle prick? You asshole, you made me drop and break all groc—oh, Kaluuya! That’s that guy’s name!”

“Stay focused, woman. We haven’t left the topic of you knocking me off my unicycle.”

“You ran into me.”

“Oh, really. If I had eyes right now, I’d be rolling them.”

Martha imagines shit with eyes. Now there’s a wacky image.

“No, let me tell you the real, non-revised version of what happened,” he continues. “I was practicing for my circus audition, when all the sudden, this fuckin’ drunk, high-as-a-kite bitch just came strutting along like she owned the whole damn sidewalk, not paying a single ounce of attention to anything around her—”

“Oh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t keeping an eye out for a goddamn unicyclist outside the Walmart!  And I wasn’t drunk, orhigh! Or—well, I wasn’t high, at least.”

“So, you admit to having been intoxicated?”

Ah, fuck. Maybe that does change things a little. “Look. I’m sorry, all right? Can we leave it at that?”

“Oh, no. We absolutely cannot leave it at that.”

She snorts. “Seriously? What are you going to do about it? How did even become a piece of shit in my toilet in the first place?”

“I was getting to that. See, when I fell on the pavement—when you knocked me onto the pavement—I scraped up my knee real bad. Now, here’s the thing, that knee was very special to me. My parents gave me that knee before they died in a car accident when I was six. It was very sentimental to me. So, naturally, I went straight home and killed myself.”

“Uh, overreaction much? You know skin heals, right?”

“Fuck you. Shut up and let me finish. After I killed myself, I became a ghost. That’s when I decided I was going to possess your body and make you do horrible things to the people you love. Only problem is, I missed your brain and ended up in your large intestine instead—where it just so happened you were cookin’ up a big ol’ turd.”

“Oh. And you can’t get back out?”

“Doesn’t seem like it. But don’t go thinking you’re off the hook. I’ll find some way to kill you.”

As far as Martha’s concerned, the ethics of turd murder have just become a lot less complicated. If he came here to ruin her life, that makes her feel a lot less bad about flushing him. “And what if I send you on down to the sewers? What’ll you do then?”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Why not?”

“Because—I—well—” 

Martha flushes the toilet. The unicyclist screams as a miniature maelstrom sucks him toward the drain and digestion anew in the pipes. But then, the drain gurgles and, as if not caring for the taste, spits the turd back out in a surge of brown-tainted water. The water climbs nearly to the rim, but to Martha’s relief does not spill over. 

“Ha!” the unicyclist says. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

Martha picks up the plunger next to the toilet. She stabs the rubber flange into the drain and pumps the handle, squelch, squelch, squelch. Finished, she pulls the plunger free, washes it in the sink, and flushes again. 

The dirty water rushes to the top of the bowl and cascades over the rim.

“Shit!” she exclaims.

The unicyclist cackles. “Revenge at last! Enjoy a floor covered in filth, woman!”

Martha grimaces. Cleaning this will not be fun. She steps toward the cupboard with the towels but slips on the wet floor. Crack! Her head hits the corner of the countertop. She crumples down into shit-water, adding her blood to the mix. 

“Take that,” the unicyclist says. “I win.”

***

Martha floats in a void beyond space and time. Now and then she hears whispers or sees flashes of light, but nothing distinct. Over time, however, these fleeting sensations resolve into something recognizable: the earth, and she high above it like a comet out in space, looking down on its majesties. She finds that if she focuses her thoughts on one specific place or thing, she can “zoom in,” so to speak, to see it closer. She thinks “New York City” and she’s there, in the sky overlooking the vast cityscape with its plethoric skyscrapers and other landmarks. She thinks of her apartment in Queens and now she’s outside looking in through the window at her living room, just as she left it. Not wanting to see, but knowing she must confirm, she brings herself to the bathroom. 

If only she had a mouth, she would scream. What kind of end is this for a person, to slip on her own shit and die lying in it? Did she not deserve better? That damned unicyclist! If only he hadn’t been distracting her with his idiocy, she might have been more thorough in her use of the plunger. She might have been more mindful of her movements on the wet floor. 

She thinks of the unicyclist, then of his family. She’s whisked from her bathroom to another, wherein a gray-haired man sits upon a toilet. The unicyclist’s father, perhaps? Yes, he’ll do. Martha imagines herself in the man’s brain, controlling him. She feels a tug, a sign that it seems to be working. She sets her gaze on the man’s head and concentrates as hard as she can on going inside. 

Whoosh. Her perspective changes again. She sees now through the man’s eyes, staring at the shower door in front of the toilet. She’s done it—she’s inside him. Looking at the man’s legs, she wills him to stand. No good; he remains seated. She looks at his finger and wills it to curl. It doesn’t so much as twitch.

Something’s wrong. Unlike that moron, she doesn’t appear to have missed the brain. Then she looks side-to-side and wants to scream again. She’s smack-dab in the middle of a row of hairs jutting out from the rim of an eyelid. An eyelash, she’s a goddamn eyelash. That’s almost as bad as becoming a turd! 

But maybe it’s not the end of the world. This old man will croak eventually, and she may get another chance then to enter someone else. If she misses again, same thing—wait and take another shot. It’ll take a while, but she has all the time in the world. Even if it’s not until the unicyclist’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great nephews or nieces are born, she will have her revenge.

The Opening

On May 25^th, 2007, Vincent DeLasario stood in the lobby of the gallery, his tuxedo devoid of even a single wrinkle, shaking the hand of every visitor to the opening of his fiancée’s latest art exhibit. The photographs that hung on the wall depicted various sexual situations but in such a way that they had been rendered almost abstract, all of them either in shadow or extreme close-ups, reducing (or expanding?) their subjects into vast landscapes of pores and naked flesh. Vincent was nervous for his fiancée. He wondered what the reviews would be like. He hoped the opening went well. 

It seemed like a pretty good crowd tonight. His fiancée, Doriᛋᛋ Dae (six months earlier, for some mysterious reason, she had insisted on placing the Nazi SS symbol at the end of her pseudonymous forename), would be proud. She couldn’t stand here beside him and greet the visitors because she was in the back room. In fact, she was part of one of the exhibits. Vincent wondered how drastically the atmosphere in the gallery would change when the true nature of the show became clear. It would be interesting to see the drama unfold.

Whether or not the evening was a disaster was irrelevant; either way, it would be Art.

***

Ms. Doriᛋᛋ Dae lay on a flat white table that somewhat resembled a gynecological chair but wasn’t. She was naked, and her feet lay in stirrups. Her body was separated from the rest of the gallery by a form-fitting partition, a thin wall that covered her entire naked body except for a single small hole between her legs. She closed her eyes and sighed for the hundredth time this evening, wondering why she’d ever thought of all this nonsense. She wondered if the National Endowment for the Arts would ask for their grant money back. Hell, she hoped so. That would just conjure up even more controversy. Doriᛋᛋ liked causing trouble.

But was it worth it? 

Would she be able to go through with it?

Jesus, Doriᛋᛋ, get a grip, she thought, get a grip. It’s just Art.

But it was more than just Art. It was a cutting-edge sociological/psychological experiment. Half the fun of Art was gauging the taboos and mores of society. Why were some behaviors acceptable and others not? Who made the rules? And why?

God, she hoped she didn’t lose her nerve halfway through.

No, no, don’t even think that way, Doriᛋᛋ. Just close your eyes and think of England. Or the Guggenheim. Whatever.

She wondered how Vince was holding up outside. 

Then she heard the door open on the other side of the partition.

The first visitor of the evening….

***

Mr. Armand Wycliffe was 81 years old. He walked into the backroom alone. He had to. The sign outside said explicitly that the artist wished for only one person at a time to view this particular exhibit. Armand’s wife was waiting outside, but she wouldn’t go in. The sign said no women were allowed inside. Mrs. Wycliffe was a little annoyed by this, but Armand patted the back of her liver spotted hand and said, “Oh, don’t fret, my dear, it’s some crazy art thing. You know….”

And so he entered the room, expecting to spend only a few seconds inside.

The room was devoid of any distinguishing features except for an odd-shaped wall on the south side of the small chamber. In this wall, at waist level, was a small hole. Above the hole, at eye level, was a sign that read:

Please observe the hole below. The artist, Doriᛋᛋ Dae, is lying naked on a table on the opposite side of this hole. Ms. Dae invites you to slip your erect penis inside the hole; i.e., Ms. Dae invites you to fuck her. Before you do so, however, please remove the condom from the dispenser to your right. When you’re done, you may place the used condom in the metal waste basket to the left of the dispenser. Thank you. Please do not take overly long, as there are no doubt other art lovers waiting behind you. Paper towels are available near the entrance.

Armand stroked his pointed silver beard. He glanced up at each corner of the room. This had to be some sort of joke. Were there cameras filming his every move? Would his actions be seen by the other visitors outside? By his wife?

Armand approached the hole. He pulled his gloves out of his pocket (it was a cold night outside) and slipped one on his right hand. Curious, he slid his index finger inside the inviting hole. He could hear the gasp of a female voice on the other side of the partition, the shifting of legs against the thin wall. Yes, it certainly felt real. But… no, it had to be a scam… somebody was putting him on….

He could feel his penis hardening inside his pants. How long would it take? Not long at all if he was fast… his wife needn’t know… it wasn’t all that disgusting… after all, the artist wanted him to do it… this was an art gallery, not a brothel… it wasn’t illegal in any way….

He pulled his finger out and was just about to unbuckle his pants when he thought, No, it has to be some sort of candid camera put-on. I’m not going to end up on a damn video installation somewhere. Sweat beads now poured down his forehead. Fuck these people, he thought. Fuck Art!

He stuffed the glove back into his pocket and escaped that little chamber. He grabbed his wife’s elbow and suggested they leave. He wasn’t feeling so good anymore….

***

Doriᛋᛋ thought, Whew. Well, maybe there was nothing to worry about. Maybe no one would have the nerve. That would be an interesting commentary all on its own. Buncha chickenshits. What was wrong with these people? 

Now she started getting disappointed. They were going to ruin the fantasy.

Well, whatever. Let the chips fall where they may.

She stiffened as she heard the door open again. She heard the soft clip of low leather boot heels approaching the partition….

***

Antonio Nila entered the small chamber. He saw some old white dude dart out of there lookin’ like he was going to throw up so he figured there might be something interesting in here. He just came by because his Art teacher at the University told the class they’d get extra credit if they dropped in, looked at some of the photographs, then wrote a 1 to 1 ½ page essay about what they saw there. He’d already checked out all the blurry photographs outside and figured he’d leave in a few minutes. There wasn’t much happening here. Besides, he couldn’t stand those little finger sandwiches and the cheese cubes. He wanted some real food. 

But this cozy little chamber piqued his curiosity, so he figured, Why not?

He approached the sign and read it. He glanced at the condom dispenser and the trash can. The trash can was shiny and made of smooth metal. It was so shiny, in fact, he could see his reflection in its surface. He remembered the guilty look on the old man’s face and laughed. What a cool art exhibit. This was more like it.

The trash can was cylindrical and rounded at the top, the kind that always reminded him of R2-D2. He bent over, pushed the tiny metal door on the trash can inward, then glanced inside. Nope, it was empty. Had the old man gotten scared, or had he simply not used a condom at all? Fuck, who was gonna stop Antonio from just saying, Screw the condom?

But then, he didn’t want to catch something. Who knew where this chick had been? He wasn’t even sure it was the artist herself, but who cared? Did she just hire some prostitute to lay back there? Yeah, that was probably it. What did it matter? His cock was getting real hard now. A pussy’s a pussy, after all. And hell, his girlfriend wasn’t here with him, and it wasn’t exactly cheating, so….

He pulled the condom package out of the dispenser, tore open the package, slipped the rubber over his erect cock, pressed his waist up against the wall, then slid his cock inside the hole. It was nice and warm inside. Oh, it was wet. He heard a woman gasp on the other side. He heard the creak of a wheeled table as she pressed her legs against the partition. Oh, you little bitch, he thought as he pressed his palms up against the wall and started thrusting fast and hard. I hope it is the artist… fuckin’ whore better put out after gettin’ all that government money… fuck, yeah… ‘bout time these high-and-mighty bitches started giving back… stopped acting like they own the whole fuckin’ roost… I can’t get any of my landscape photographs accepted by major galleries ‘cause I’m Latino, ‘cause I’m a man… the Art Establishment has it out for me and my kind… but now I’m gettin’ some wet hapa pussy so everything’s okay… just for a little while…. “Oh, yeah, that’s it,” he whispered into the wall, “oh, you fucking whore, I love it, you’re so tight, you love it, don’t you, you love it, you fuckin’ little bitch, you love Antonio’s hard cock, don’t you, yes, oh, yes you do, yeah, yeah, uhhhhhhh….”

Ten more quick thrusts… he ejaculated, moaning with his face pressed up against the stucco wall as he did so, and then he was done. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, caressed the wall for a few seconds, withdrew, pulled off the condom, tossed it in the trash can, zipped up, then turned and left the room. 

He decided to stay in the gallery for a while and have some more cheese cubes. Maybe if he waited about twenty minutes, he could have another go at it.

***

Doriᛋᛋ tried to catch her breath. It was strange… as good as her fantasy, but a hell of a lot weirder. So odd not to know who was fucking you. She’d invited a lot of her friends and family and former art professors to the gallery, after all. What if that first guy had been one of them? When she came up with the idea, that was the first rule she laid down for herself. Nobody was excluded from the running. Anybody with a cock was eligible. That was part of the anonymous fun of it all. How would her 65-year-old happily married photography professor react? Would he do it? If so, would it be for himself… or for Art’s sake? How would her psychiatrist react? The Art critic for the L.A. Times? Her stepbrother? Her physician? Her ex-boyfriend? Her assistant? What about all the people she hated? The slimeballs who’d been trying to get into her pants for years? The people she found repulsive and disgusting? Some of them were there, weren’t they? What happened when people like that entered the room? What happened, indeed?

It would be interesting to find out. It wouldn’t be a waste. Her reactions would all go into the book. D.A.P. already said they’d publish it. Robert Hughes promised her he’d give her a good quote. He said he might even show up. If so, she thought, it better be a hell of a quote.

Vince popped his head in through the curtain to her right. “You okay?” he whispered.

Her face was still a little flushed from the last encounter. “I think so,” she said.

He entered the room, stood beside her, squeezed her hand. “Any takers?”

“Just one.”

“Already? It might be a long evening then.”

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m just out there shaking everybody’s hand,” Vince said. “You’ve got the hard part.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. What I mean is… we talked about what this might be like, but it’s kind of different when it’s actually happening. Are you okay? Do you want me to stop?”

“After doing all this? Of course not, honey. It was your idea. And it’s a good one. Let’s see it through till the end. You should always finish what you start.”

Doriᛋᛋ smiled. “You’re too good to me. I don’t deserve you. I love you, Vince.”

“I love you too.” He caressed the back of her smooth hand.

Doriᛋᛋ drew in some air. Her eyes bulged slightly. She hadn’t been expecting it. God, this was a big one. Jesus Christ….

She gripped Vince’s hand. “Oh, fuck,” she groaned. “Oh, Christ….”

Vince continued to hold her hand throughout. 

Tight, tighter, tighter….

“Let me see your cock,” she whispered.

She didn’t have to ask twice. Vince unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants to the floor, revealing the fully formed erection that had been straining to be released since her moans began.  Doriᛋᛋ let go of his hand and gripped his cock just as tightly. She stroked it fast as the stranger on the other side of the wall pounded and pounded and pounded with what must have been a nine-inch-cock. With each violent thrust, Doriᛋᛋ continued massaging that tender spot just below the head of Vince’s penis where his foreskin was now stretched taught with eagerness. 

“Oh, Doriᛋᛋ,” he whispered, “I love you,” his semen spurting all over the spotless tiled floor. Love comes in spurts, Doriᛋᛋ thought, suddenly remembering the lyrics from an old Richard Hell song. 

“Ohhhhhh, uhhh, I love you too,” the artist whispered as her spine tingled with the heady rush of an oncoming orgasm, as she felt the sudden telltale jerking spasms of the anonymous cock deep inside her, hot semen pooling into a cold latex tip. 

The anonymous art lover withdrew, just like the previous one, and wandered away, leaving room for the next. 

Vince kneeled beside Doriᛋᛋ, held her hand, and said, “Oh God, I love you. I love your talent, I love your mind, you’re the only woman for me. Forever and ever.” 

“Forever and ever,” she said, never feeling more in love with him than now. They locked eyes, seeing each other again for the first time. Then he rose. He stuffed his slick, softening cock inside his underwear, zipped up again. 

“I better wash my hands before I go out there and continue the meet and greet,” he said.

“Meanwhile, I’ll do my own meet and greet back here,” she said. “Get back to work.”

“Back to work,” he whispered, smiling sweetly. He squeezed her hand one more time, gazing at her with pure love, then left the room.

A second after he passed through the mauve curtain, she felt another cock inside her.

***

After about two hours, around nine o’clock, Vincent took to the stage. He approached the microphone. A curious, indefinable, excited atmosphere had descended upon the gallery. The men seemed happy and smiling, flushed with joy, laughing and joking and getting more and more drunk off the red and white wine provided by the gallery. All the women, somehow, seemed confused and agitated, as if they suspected something might be wrong here, somewhere, but they didn’t know what….

Vincent cleared his throat into his clenched fist, tapped his fingernail against the microphone, then said, “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention. My name is Vincent DeLasario, and I’d like you all to bring your hands together and give a proper welcome to the artist of the evening who brought you this splendid exhibit, my lovely fiancée, Ms. Doriᛋᛋ Dae.”

The applause that erupted from the crowd was enthusiastic, to say the least. Again, the men seemed far more excited than the women for some reason.

Doriᛋᛋ emerged from behind the mauve curtain wearing an elegant one-piece black gown that accentuated her slim figure, petite breasts, smooth skin, long swan-like neck; her flowing black hair appeared lustrous beneath the overhead lights; a split up the leg revealed just enough flesh to be enticing. She looked so beautiful, so infused with raw sexuality, that not even the obvious bulge in her stomach could detract from her natural loveliness. In fact, many of the women in the audience might have said that the child growing in her womb made her a thousand times more attractive.

The men in the audience slowly ceased their applause as the women grew more and more confused by the looks of consternation and guilt on the faces of their husbands, brothers, and boyfriends. Doriᛋᛋ proceeded to give a speech about her project, so long in the making, the intention of the photographs and how they all tied into the overall theme of the main exhibit, about the book being written that would chronicle the entire experience; how it was a one-of-a-kind experiment, as you really couldn’t expect to get away with it more than once. “After all,” she said, smiling, “the advantage of surprise would be gone from here on out.”

She laid out in stages how the idea had occurred to her while idly masturbating in the bathtub early one morning. As she spoke about the exact nature of the main exhibit, in great and exacting detail, a low groan of anger and sadness and despair swept over the gathered hordes. The men seemed to grow more and more nervous while the women grew angrier and sadder. Some broke into tears. The photographer from the L.A. Times was the one who caught the award-winning shot that night as an old woman threw a chair at the artist, missing her head by only a few feet, calling her a whore and claiming she’d destroyed a perfect marriage. 

Doriᛋᛋ smiled and said, “But what did I do?”

***

How many relationships were “destroyed” that evening is not known, but Ms. Dae’s (now Mrs. DeLasario’s) unique exhibit/experiment continues to be controversial amongst psychological, sociological, feminist, and Conceptual Art circles. 

Robert Hughes did indeed give the entire affair a rave review in Art News; however, as late as 2012 (the year of his death at the age of 74), he insisted he had not chosen to participate in the main exhibit. 

Few believed him.

Boink for Biodiversity

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Pillbottle.” Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington was thin as a Pocky Stick and had hair wispy as cotton candy. They say inbreeding caused the Habsburg chin. If that was the case, her forebears must have engaged in a lot of it because Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington had two of them. “Care for a sherry?”

“Sure.”

She motioned to the butler who brought two glasses. The sherry was sweet and cloying as Ms. Huffington-Huffington’s perfume.

“A sex cult took my niece and I want her back.” Ms. Huffington-Huffington sipped her ghastly sherry. “It’s called Boink for Biodiversity. They make porn and donate the proceeds to save the planet or some such nonsense.”

“Shouldn’t she make her own choices?” I looked for someplace to ditch my drink but setting it on the eucalyptus-wood desk would leave a ring so I downed it in one gulp just to get rid of it.

“Oh, want another?” Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington snapped her fingers for the butler to bring me a refill. “Amanda’s been in and out of sanitariums for years. Despite the best medical care, she still suffers from delusions. In three months, she’ll be twenty-five. Then the trust fund will revert to her and we won’t be able to help her. How does a thousand dollars a day sound?”

“Better than ten-percent off at Denny’s.” I set down the sherry glass by the foot of my wingback chair.

“That depends, of course, on how much you order at Denny’s. Here are your plane tickets to Wyoming.” She handed me an envelope. “Our local contact will meet you at the airport.”

***

I spotted a Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog holding a placard with my name on it in the arrival hall at the Jackson airport. His coat was white and he had floppy ears and a long, broad muzzle. From his warm, brown eyes, I could tell he was gentle with children and devoted to his family but due to his size and strength would need lots of training and socialization. 

“You Morris Pillbottle?” he asked.

I nodded. “What’s your name, big fellow?”

“Grantham Snooterbox.”

“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?” I scratched him behind the ears.  “Are you related to the Snooterboxes of Penobscot, Maine?”

“No, those are New England Snooterboxes. I hail from the Rocky Mountain Snooterboxes,” he said with pride bordering on arrogance as if no canines who lived below five-thousand feet had the right to call themselves mountain dogs.

Tail wagging, he led me to a white Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot and got behind the wheel. I tossed my bag in the back seat and climbed in beside him. This raised several questions like how did his paws reach the gas pedal and how did a dog get a driver’s license in the first place? I wasn’t here to enforce Wyoming’s traffic laws so I sat back and gazed at the mountains that rose from the horizon like scores of high-rises made of Precambrian metamorphic rock. Snooterbox drove well for a dog except for his habit of sticking his head out the window.

When we turned onto the Belvedere’s access road, I was looking forward to a hot shower, a steak, and a little cable TV. Imagine my disappointment when Snooterbox passed the lobby and parked in by a doghouse in back. It was a wooden structure with a sloped roof and covered patio. Being built for a massive dog, there was plenty of room for an elephant or a blue whale but with Snooterbox inside it was too cramped for the two of us.

“We need to set out while we still have daylight left.” He saddled up with a backpack and pointed to mine.

I swapped my rubber-soled shoes for a pair of hiking boots and shouldered my pack.

“Better take this.” Snooterbox handed me a 10 mm Smith and Wesson. “That lentil shooter of yours will only make the bears angry.”

I holstered the pistol even though its recoil would make it impossible to hit the broad side of a zeppelin hanger even from the inside. At least, the noise might scare the bears away.

After a thirty-minute drive, we parked at the trailhead for Mt. Dagger. As soon as we stepped out, a group of sage grouse surrounded us

“Guard your car, mister?” the largest knucklehead asked. “Be a shame if your windshield wipers were gone when you came back.”

“Thanks for looking out for us.” Even though I hated getting shaken down, I handed him half a granola bar. “You’ll get the other half when we return.”

Not long after we started walking, we approached a chipmunk sitting by the path.

“Spare some cornflakes, mister?” When I shook my head and walked past, he said, “God bless.”

My hiking boot started chafing my heel. I sat on a rock, took my boot off, and covered the blister with a band aid. Wyoming had pretty scenery if you go for that kind of thing. Dogwoods and sagebrush had proliferated as ruthlessly as burger franchises. Only the aroma of bacon, eggs, and coffee could make the clean air smell better. Snooterbox rested his chin on my thigh and I scratched him behind the ears. When I stopped, he batted me with his big paw demanding more.

“See that?” I pointed to a turkey vulture circling like a police helicopter. 

“Yeah. He’s been tailing us for the past half hour. Nothing to do for now but keep going.” Snooterbox set off at a quick pace.

The trail grew steeper and sweat soaked my shirt under the backpack. The dry air was thinner than I was used to and I stopped frequently to drink water and catch my breath. I heard a godawful racket.

“My name is Zeke and my beak is orange. My voice it squeaks like a rusty door hinge.”

I looked up at a Steller’s jay beatboxing in a lodgepole pine. He wore blue, had his feathers cut in a mohawk, and had pierced his wing with a safety pin. 

“Better get your asses out of here. This is Sky Reapers’ turf. Yeah, I’m talking to you! Don’t you walk away from me!” the jay yelled at my back. “Hey, 1946 called! They want their trench coat back! Squawk! Squawk!”

Squadrons of jays leapt from the trees and commenced their bombing runs. Each dove at eighty degrees from the horizontal and pulled up with feet to spare as if Snooterbox and I were the aircraft carriers Akagi and Soryu. We had no choice but to retreat. By the time we made it back to cover, I looked like a statue covered with pigeon droppings.  

“If we can get past that clearing and into the tree line, we’d be okay,” Snooterbox said. “But we’re going to need help.” 

***

A dozen bald eagles turned and a lone osprey dropped a trout fillet onto the campfire’s embers when we approached.

“You boys look like you fell into a vat of organic fertilizer,” the biggest eagle said.

“Smell like it, too,” the osprey added.

“Maybe you’d better head off somewhere downwind,” the biggest added.

“Sorry.” Snooterbox lowered his head. “We were just trying to defend the reputation of America’s national bird. The jays said that you couldn’t stop a French grandmother with one leg from cooking you in orange sauce only you wouldn’t taste as good as a duck.” 

“Yeah!” I responded to Snooterbox’s cue. “They said they want to ban pickup trucks, serve vegan burgers in school, rename the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan after Nancy Pelosi, change the national anthem to ‘Born This Way,’ and put RuPaul’s picture on the twenty-dollar bill.”

The eagles’ white feathers turned crimson with rage.

“Let’s go!” The leader and the others took off.

Snooterbox gobbled the abandoned trout and we followed.

The eagles were powerful birds that could overpower anything in a dive but they were big and slow. At low altitudes, the jays outmaneuvered them, pecked them on the backs, and sent them fleeing like Huey helicopters from the U.S. embassy in Saigon. This was no concern to Snooterbox and me. The distraction was all we needed to slip past and continue on our way.

***

“Now Jade, I’m going over your performance review.” The bull elk examined the document he held in his hooves. “Appearance – good. Grooming – good. Customer satisfaction – poor. You know what I want you to do now, honey?” He waited for the cow to shake her head. “Get your ass out there and don’t come back until you earn me some tree bark!” The cows in the bull’s harem cowered while he threatened Jade with a diamond-tipped cane.

The bull called himself Hundred-Point Slim but he was neither slim nor had he a hundred points. He wore sunglasses, gold chains, platform shoes, and a purple, ankle-length coat made of velour. A homburg with a leopard-skin hatband perched between his antlers. 

“Snooterbox! Haven’t seen you since we ate those fermented gooseberries. Passed out in some camper’s tent. She scared me as much as I scared her.” Slim scratched Snooterbox under the chin. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Morris Pillbottle. He’s a private detective.”

“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Need a little female company? It’s on the house.” Slim motioned to a cow in shorts and a bustier. “Hey, Cocoa! Come over here and show my friends a good time!”

 “Lovely though she is, we have other business.” I showed Slim Amanda’s picture. “Have you seen this woman?”

“Oh, yeah. She and a bunch of hippies camped out about a year ago.” Slim lit a cigar and exhaled the smoke. “Couldn’t stand the winter, though. After the first snowfall, they headed home.”

“Thanks,” Snooterbox said. “We’d better check it out, anyway.”

“Much obliged.” I touched my hat brim and followed Snooterbox up the trail. 

After hiking for fifteen minutes, I heard a rustling in the bushes.

“Psst. Over here.” Jade called from between black hawthorns. “Slim’s lying. I saw that girl just days ago.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you if you make it worth my while.”

Snooterbox clawed some bark off a maple and returned with it in his jaws.

“Slim sent me and the others to their camp about a day’s walk up the trail. That girl and her friends made us do things, terrible things.” A branch cracked close by and Jade sprinted away.

***

Startled out of a dream, I sat up in my sleeping bag. We’d camped by a stream and dined on cowboy coffee and a trout that Snooterbox had caught in his jaws. I unzipped the tent flap and looked outside. The Milky Way gleamed like a Las Vegas casino in the crisp, cool air and our campfire had burned to embers. More disturbing were the yellow eyes gleaming from the shadows. Hackles raised, Snooterbox stood and let out an earthshaking bark. A gray wolf stepped forward to challenge him.

 “I like those backpacks.” The alpha wolf snarled showing a gang tattoo on his gums. “Give them to me and I might let you live.”

I reached into tent for the pistol.

“Leave it, Pillbottle.” Snooterbox snarled. “I got this.”

A half-dozen wolves emerged from the dogwoods to back up their ringleader.

“Stay out of this. He’s mine,” the alpha said.

“So, we meet again, Drool Follower.” Snooterbox circled the alpha. “Haven’t seen you since I sent you crying from your momma in Bozeman.”

“You don’t have a posse of ranchers to help you this time.” Drool Follower juked left and went for Snooterbox’s neck.

The big dog dodged and Drool Follower’s three-inch fangs closed on empty air. This gave Snooterbox an opening to snap the wolf’s spine by clamping his jaws behind Drool Follower’s neck. The wolf sidestepped but not before Snooterbox tore off one of his ears. Howling in rage the wolfpack advanced toward Snooterbox.

“I wouldn’t!” I leveled the pistol at the wolves and they cowered.

By now, both combatants were wounded. Blood smeared Snooterbox’s white fur and he limped on his left foreleg. He turned as if in agony. Sensing an easy kill, Drool Follower rushed in. Snooterbox evaded, knocked Drool Follower to the ground, and snarled, fangs ready to tear the alpha wolf’s throat.

“All right. All right. You beat me.” As Drool Follower and his crew slunk away, he muttered, “Next time, Snooterbox.”

***

“Give it to me, baby!” a woman moaned up ahead. “Give it to me!” 

Snooterbox and I crept forward and peered around the bend at the porn set in the clearing. A guy in overalls hitched his thumbs through his toolbelt as two naked women rolled around on a zebra-skin rug. 

“Somebody here have a clogged drain?” He dropped his toolbelt and then his pants but his pipe wrench was not up to spec. “Sorry, I need to understand my character’s motivation.”

“Cut!” eco-activist, Junichi Radler, yelled in a voice that would be at home in Berlin’s Little Tokyo. He had a nose like a schnitzel and skin the texture of vegetable tempura. “Your sadness about the plastics in the ocean causes you to seek comfort in women’s bodies.” He sighed. “Get the fluffer.”

Snooterbox and I stepped into the clearing and a half-dozen porn stars, Amanda among them, turned.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked. 

“We’re not auditioning right now,” a red fox holding a clipboard said before regrading Snooterbox. “Although I could make a personal exception for you, big boy.”

“We’re not here to audition.” Snooterbox hunched his shoulders and looked at his feet.

“That’s right.” Figuring the honest approach would get us nowhere, I put a hand on Snooterbox’s head to keep him quiet. “You’re not auditioning but I am. Let me introduce myself. My name is Pugsley Vauxhall and I produced such films as The French Erection, Sound of Pubic, and The Importance of Being Harnessed. I’m a fan, a big fan. Like you, I want to save the planet so I’m starting a venture in the Southern Hemisphere. It will be a reality show where the challenges are sexual in nature. We have local contestants lined up but a few cameos by your performers would give us major street cred. The lucky few will leave the winter cold to spend the southern summer on a tropical island by the Great Barrier Reef. Of course, we will compensate Boink for Biodiversity with a generous share of our profits. If there’s someplace to meet privately, we’d like to hear each of your reasons why you should appear Eco Porn Island.”

Radler escorted us to a set of camping chairs by some spindly tomato vines and a few emaciated corn stalks. The sound man brought some water and a bowl of kibble for Snooterbox. The first interviews were unimpressive. Male talent with stage names like Rod Cox and Dick Long bragged about their prowess. The women weren’t much better. While my erotic tastes ran vanilla, they described sex that brought chicken sashimi and sauerkraut ice cream to mind. After nine of these, it was Amanda’s turn.

“So, what’s the prize?” Amanda asked. She was short with wide hips and wore a sleeveless sweatshirt that gave generous glimpses of her tiny breasts. Acne decorated her cheeks, a nose ring pierced one nostril, and her dirty-blonde dreadlocks hung a little below her ears.

“The prize?” I replied.

“Yeah, what does the winner of your reality show get?”

“We haven’t decided between a Tesla or installing solar panels on the winner’s home,” I said. “I’m going to let you in on a secret but don’t tell anyone else. The real reason I’m here is that Quentin is making a movie about an eco-activist’s trial for torching a bunch of SUVs. Brad and Leonardo are already on board. Anyway, the casting director wants real activists for authenticity and your name came up. Maybe you could recite a few factoids about the climate crisis off the top of your head so we hear how you sound.”

“There will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. A third of arable land has been lost in the pat forty years. Ninety percent of large, predator fish are gone.”

“Convincing.” I looked at Snooterbox. “What do you think?”

“She might work,” he said.

“Here’s the thing.” I turned back to Amanda. “Quentin wants to get this project moving so we need to fly you out to Hollywood right away. There will be lots of preparation but don’t worry, Helmut is the best acting coach in the business. Now, this is just a supporting role but it will be a great stepping stone for a film career.”

“I don’t know,” Amanda said.

“I suppose we could try Greenpeace.” I sighed.

“Or Earth Liberation Front,” Snooterbox added.

“Well, thanks for your time.” I stood.

“All right. I’ll do it,” Amanda said. “But first you have to shoot a porn scene with me to prove you’re not a narc.”

***

“Honey, I’m home.” I let the elk carcass slip off my shoulder. Unfortunately, it belonged to Jade, the underperforming cow from Slim’s harem. “I brought us some meat.”

“I’m more interested in this meat.” Amanda stripped off her deerskin robe and reached between my legs. 

A typical amount of grunting, orifices, and fluids followed until Junichi Radler yelled, “Cut! It’s a wrap.”

The Boinkers roasted poor Jade over a campfire as a farewell feast for Amanda. The smell of wood smoke and barbecue in the clean, mountain air convinced all who’d known the elk to abandon their qualms about consuming the leftovers from a bestiality snuff flick. Claiming post-coital depression, I retired to my tent and ate a few saltines to settle my stomach.

***

The trip down the mountain beat up my knees up more than climbing it, probably due to using my legs to brake against gravity. In any case, Snooterbox led, Amanda followed, and I took up the rear.

“How does Quentin come up with such great dialog?” Amanda asked.

“Sounds like a bunch of stoners sitting around smoking dope. Doesn’t it?” I replied. “I think he comes up with a goofy idea and bats it around.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like, I once dated a girl named Anne Hedonia.”

“What did you two do for fun?”

“I drank beer and watched her do my taxes.”

“That’s enough!” Snooterbox shouted.

I looked up from my hiking boots and saw the .44 magnum revolver in his paw.

“What gives, Snooterbox?” I inched away Amanda to make shooting both of us harder.

“It’s the end of the line for you and little, miss heiress. Here’s how it’s gonna go down. Washed-up detective Morris Pillbottle murders Amanda in a fit of rage after learning she taped their sexual encounter and then kills himself out of shame.” Snooterbox turned to Amanda. “That’s right, honey. Morris isn’t a bigshot producer. He’s a private eye your aunt hired to take you back to the looney bin. Only, with both of you dead, she doesn’t have to worry about a sympathetic shrink letting you out some day.”

“But why, Snooterbox? I thought you were my buddy.”

“I’m nobody’s buddy. Sure, I liked humans once. I even put up with the doggy booties and sweaters. Then my owner had the vet replace my manhood with a pair of Ping-Pong balls as if I wouldn’t notice them clicking together when I ran. Since then, I’ve been out for revenge. Once the rich lady pays me off, I’ll hire a human to sleep on the floor and eat kibble while I dine on filet mignon. Say your prayers, Morris Pillbottle.” Snooterbox aimed his revolver at me.

I drew the 10 mm pistol and squeezed the trigger. It went click.

“Replaced the gunpowder in your bullets with jeweler’s rouge.” Snooterbox chuckled.

A howl came from the trees. Snooterbox turned as Drool Follower lunged. The revolver dropped from Snooterbox’s paw as wolf and dog merged into a flurry of fangs, fur, and blood. I scooped up the revolver, aimed, and fired. The bang startled birds out of the trees and I could feel the concussion of the .44 magnum’s blast wave in my chest. Snooterbox didn’t feel anything after the slug tore a fist-sized hole through his heart and lungs. Staring at his corpse I questioned my life choices. I was weary of trolling society’s seedy underbelly where even a dog can betray you. Drool Follower wiped Snooterbox’s blood off his muzzle, licked his paw, and loped away.

“He was right. Your aunt hired me to find you but I consider trying to murder me a breach of contract,” I said. “The way I see, all you have to do is stay out of sight for a few months until you get your inheritance. You can either go back to the Boinkers or hide out with a librarian, I know.” 

“If you don’t mind me saying so, I don’t find you very trustworthy.”

“Fair enough.” I handed her the revolver. “This will persuade anyone else who comes for you to go away. Good luck.”

***

The wind buffeted my office window and I poured the last of the rye whiskey into my coffee. As usual, my bank account was empty as the bottle. Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington had refused to pay because I hadn’t fulfilled my task of dying in a fake murder-suicide. I’d sued her small-claims court but she’d spent several times my fee on lawyers to defend the principle that the rich shouldn’t have to pay their employees. The mail slot rattled. 

I picked up the buff envelope addressed to Morris Pillbottle and slit it open. Inside I found a check for twenty-thousand dollars from Amanda.

Stud

They’d been pestering me a lot lately, badgering was probably more the right word, and I got to where I couldn’t take it anymore, so I finally said yes, yes go ahead and operate on me. It couldn’t be any worse than the misery and worry I’d experienced after losing all that money, money there was no way I could pay back. 

So Pasternak and Igor took me to what was supposed to be a hospital. It was in the warehouse district.

“It doesn’t look like a hospital,” I said as they led me in past some forklifts, some pallets and pallet jacks, empty offices with an empty echo.

“Well, we made it into one,” Pasternak said. Igor just nodded. We stopped in an open area where the late afternoon sun came in through one of those louvered things that has a fan in it, a fan to blow out all the old, stale air. The blades hardly moved.

That’s how it starts, doesn’t it? It starts small, maybe with a small bet here and there, or maybe it’s not bets at all, maybe it’s pills or whiskey or anything addictive. And gradually it builds so that you are hooked and they know it. Then you give in, maybe just a little, and one thing leads to another without you knowing where this is all going. Suddenly you’re in way over your head and there’s no getting out.

I was in way over my head.

“We’ve all been losing lately,” Pasternak said, “So we had to skimp a little, cut a few corners to pull this thing off. It won’t be that bad. But the thing we had to cut back on was – the anesthesia.”

“Now, wait a minute,” I said, trying to get up off the table they put me on. But Igor helped Pasternak push me back down and strap me in. I looked at the tape they used. It wasn’t even duct tape. It was the cheap kind you get at the Dollar Store. They lost big, too. That thought, and the tape cutting into my wrists, unnerved me.

“It’s not like we’re going to slice you open without anything,” Pasternak said. “Bring me that Pepcid.” 

“Pepcid!” I shouted, “That’s for an upset stomach, for nausea!”

“We don’t want you nauseous and all, you know, like throwing up.”

“Pepcid is no good!” I shouted louder.

“OK, pipe down. What else we got?” Igor had a plastic bag that rattled and finally pulled out some Ibruprofen. “That should do it.”

Ibruprofen was not going to do it. I knew it, but took four of them.

“What does that book say?” asked Pasternak.

Igor said, “First you break the ribs. Then wait.”

“I remember that part,” Pasternak nodded. “Let’s get that parking bumper.” They went outside and came back, lugging a concrete bumper from the parking lot. They hoisted it up and then Pasternak said, “One, two three!”

They dropped it. I heard a loud, cracking sound. That was my ribs.

“I think we broke them, boss.”

“OK, now what?”

“It says spread them apart and uh, remove it.”

“How?”

“It doesn’t say. Look, boss. This book sort of assumes you’re a doctor. It doesn’t go into detail. It just has the steps.”

That’s pretty much it. It’s about control, or not having any control. You get behind the eight-ball, and then they got you. You make pleas, deals, concessions, One thing leads to another and pretty soon they are running your life. You don’t know what the next step is. In this case, though, it meant removing my heart.

So they did it. They pulled it out, just yanked on it till it came loose. Blood spurted everywhere from veins and arteries flopping around like a half dead trout.  I was frantic. Then they put some more of that cheap tape over my mouth so I couldn’t put up a fuss.

“Get that fucking ventilator over here. We’re going to lose him!” Pasternak shouted. I’m glad he was at least shouting. That meant he appreciated the gravity of the situation.

“Ventilator?” Igor yelled. “I thought you said ‘compressor’!” In the corner I saw a Gardner Denver 300 cfm compressor. With something that big, they would blow my insides out to kingdom come.

“You big dummy,” Pasternak snarled. “I said ventilator!”

“What do we do now?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Pasternak said. “You’re going to give him the Heimlich maneuver until we get the replacement installed.”

“Heimlich?”

“Just lean over his chest was and start blowing.”

It seemed to work, though. Pasternak brought in the ‘replacement.’ The Ibruprofen kicked in and I started to relax. Maybe this was all going to work out. Pasternak said it would. Maybe he actually knew what he was doing. I went to sleep.

In post-op (same place as op, with the fan whose blades didn’t turn, with the 300 cfm compressor that might have worked, had I not got the Heimlich maneuver), I finally woke up. I was dizzy and smelled oats.

“How ya doin’?” asked Pasternak.

“Groggy.”

“Groggy he says,” mocked Pasternak. “You’ve been asleep for over two hours. “Come on, pal. We got work to do.” They hoisted me off the table out onto the street, where it was dusk. “Sort of reminds me of Sportsmans Park. They run the trotters at night, or they used to. Casinos killed the tracks, even with the OTB. Nothing like live action. Nothing like our new hero. You ready?”

I wasn’t ready, but I was ready, ready to pay off my bills. Here we go.

“Now, just to be sure, Igor, let me ask you – it’s six furlongs around the block, right?” He waved his hand in a circle that was supposed to cover the block of warehouses in this neighborhood. I looked at the pavement with a mixture of angst and anticipation and wonder. 

“Six, boss,” Igor said, holding up six fingers.

Pasternak pulled out a stopwatch. “Good.” Then he pulled out a gun. “Starter gun,” he explained. “It shoots blanks. It could shoot bullets but, hey, we struck a deal, didn’t we?” he slapped me on my hindquarters. I almost kicked him in return.

He held up the gun. ’Bang!’ it went.

“Anything below 1:08,” I heard him say as I started to trot. I broke into a gallop  past two warehouses and into a very sharp turn, hoping that they would never be this sharp, then another, then more warehouses and shops, sharp turn, then the last one you come spinning out of into the homestretch. I saw Pasternak up ahead, waving at me and decided to really show them something. I kicked in the afterburners and really sprinted, flying past them as Pasternak held up his stopwatch and hollered as he put it in front of his eyes.

“Holy Cow!” he said. “1:09. You have heart, my friend. You have heart. Heart like Native Dancer.”

Igor spoke up. “You sure this is gonna be legal, boss? I dunno if the Board will allow –“

“Screw the board. I told you. We’re not going to Gulfstream or Pimlico or Arlington Park. Think smaller, local tracks, maybe just some guy’s pasture down in Kentucky. Some guy with a wad of money and the heart of a skeptic. Think ‘chump’.”

I stood in front of them, breathing hard. The operation had been a success. It was over for now. 

“Just win three races. That’s all. Then we’re all squared up.”

Igor held up six fingers.

I nodded that I understood. I didn’t understand. We’d gone over this, but I was groggy. “What?”

“Ignore him.” Pasternak was holding up three fingers. “Three, that’s all, you understand?”

We shook hands. My hand was square and lumpy. I needed new shoes. It was over.

“And guess what?” Pasternak said. “After those three races, you know what the standard protocol is? You know what’s in store for you?”

A chill went through me. You mean there’s more? I shook my head no.

“Well, my friend, when a thoroughbred like you passes a certain milestone in his career, he is put out to pasture. You know the pasture?”

I shook my head no. They both laughed.

“The pasture is where the ladies are, my friend – the damsels, the fillies, the mares.” Pasternak and Igor all went big-eyed, laughing at some sort of joke I was supposed to get, but hadn’t gotten. It hadn’t sunk in. “No capiche? Let me put it bluntly – we’re going to put you out to stud.” All got quiet. 

They were going to put me out to stud.

“One slight problem, though,” Pasternak said. “In your current state, you are not uh equipped to perform your macho responsibilities. So just get us through these next three races and we’ll pay the hospital here one last visit so that you’re outfitted for success. That’s in the book too, right?” Igor howled. Pasternak howled.

“That’s where the real money is, the stud fees. We’ll get you patented or copyrighted or something and make a damn fortune. No one will believe till they see it. They’ll happily bet against the kinkiness of you beating a thoroughbred in a fair and square race. ” Pasternak’s head went up and down. “Then Igor and me will be all squared up too.” He held up one finger. “Just one more.”

Igor still held up six fingers. Whose fingers was I supposed to listen to?

“We’ll even get you a stepladder,” Pasternak said. This brought on more convulsions of laughter.  A stepladder. A stepladder for the next step where they replace the part of me that is nearer and dearer than even my heart.

The streetlights came on. Their yellow luminescence camouflaged the grim look of this area. That’s how they get you. They get you to laugh, go along with it. The stud fees were what it was all about. Pasternak didn’t even share that with Igor. Not with me, of course. My cut? Zilch. There is always one last hurdle that is hidden. Now Pasternak could pay back all he lost at that last fiasco at Gulfstream.  That’s how it’s done. First you trot. Then you gallop. Then you sprint, all the way. The thing is – there is no finish line anywhere – not even when you’re sent out to pasture.

EMP // 254 pages

subpace, a collection of kinky tales and stories, dares to explore the deepest, darkest desires of the human psyche.

from the power dynamics of dominance and submission to the tantalizing allure of kleptomania and the raw exposure of exhibitionism, each story is sensually crafted in a high literary style.

encounter characters who surrender to their most forbidden fantasies and fetishes, who pursue gratification at any expense, and who venture into uncharted realms of passion, yearning, and redemption.

sometimes playful, sometimes poetic, always provocative, subspace embarks on a journey where kink intertwines with romance in a rich tapestry of tales which defy convention, and keep you begging for more.

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An Undertaking

Mose lay upon the earthen bed beneath the house, where he’d been interred. The soil was moist and redolent with earthy scents. It was quiet as death. But he was not dead. It’s true, he had two bullets in his head, thankfully not near enough to his brain to be fatal. His assailants had shot him and, taking him for dead, pulled up the floorboards of the old country estate and deposited him beneath the house and then rather haphazardly pounded the boards back in place. Mose had been only dimly aware that this was all going on, preoccupied as he was with getting shot and all. The November air was chilly and he longed for his warm bed.

“Vic is going to meet us at Midland,” Julie Gold told Mose, her husband of eight years, referencing Mose’s family estate outside town. “He has to work a little late tonight, but he’ll be there around six.”

“Great,” remarked Mose, who was a funeral director and married to the woman of his dreams. Vic Taylor, Julie and Mose’s best friend, and an employee at the mortuary, often spent intimate evenings with the pair. They had been close for years. “Julie, you don’t have to cook, you know,” Mose told her.

“I want to. This is your birthday, this is special. It’s something I want to do for you. You usually do most of the cooking or else we get take-out, and I want to fix everything you like.”

Mose licked his lips. “Fried chicken?” he speculated.

Julie grinned. “All you can eat!”

“I hope the cops caught the hooligans who’ve been vandalizing the property out at Midland,” said Mose with feeling. Midland was all he had to remember his parents by; that and a thriving, $3 million business.

At dinner that evening, Mose had a vague inkling that something was up, but he just couldn’t put his finger on it. Julie and Vic were acting strangely, Maybe they were going to surprise him with a special gift? They knew he liked to save money; perhaps it was a new safe? These were the two most important people in his life. An often-expressed sentiment between the trio was that “I’d give my right arm for you, man; nothing’s too much.” The sentiment went all three ways.

“Eat up, Mose,” enjoined Julie. “I fixed all your favorites in honor of your birthday.” She smiled, but her expression was strained. Julie hated cooking, Mose knew, even for a special occasion. Which made him love her all the more. The three best friends had gathered round the dinner table at the estate. Vic reached for a piece of chicken, but Julie wordlessly shook her head and he withdrew his fingers. “I know you like BBQ ribs, Vic, so I made them special for you,” she said.

Vic helped himself. “Don’t you like ribs, anymore, Mose?” he asked, looking at his friend.

Mose shook his head no. “Lately, I have a problem digesting pork,” he explained, and helped himself to the chicken.

Vic started to spoon up a helping of potato salad, but again Julie frowned, shook her head no. “Here, Mose,” she said, “have some potato salad. Just the way you like it, with double mustard.”

“Do I have the best girl or what?” Mose asked Vic, grinning.

Vic grinned back at him. “You said it! You know I’m gonna steal her away.” They all laughed.

The meal proceeded apace. Mose was hungry, and ate no less than six pieces of fried chicken. Vic demolished most of a side of ribs, and together the three of them drank a 12-pack of beer. Julie seemed to have little appetite.

“I dunno, babe,” murmured Mose afterward, patting his lips with a napkin. “The mayo in the potato salad might be a little off.”

“What do you mean?” squeaked Julie excitedly, her eyes grown wide.

“It tastes a little metallic is all,” he said apologetically. “I’m sure it’s okay,” he assured his wife. He didn’t want to alarm her for nothing. “But the chicken,” he went on. Her head snapped up again. “It was delicious, babe,” he told her. She sighed with apparent relief. What was on her mind? wondered Mose. He shrugged it away. This was his birthday, after all. Today he turned 40, and he was on top of the world.

After dinner, the three friends sat around the living room of the old manor house, smoking reefer and getting gloriously high. The beer kept flowing, too. After they had gone through several powerful bowls, Mose noticed that Julie and Vic, sitting across from him on a sofa, kept staring at him inquisitively. Wow, he thought. That dope was powerful; he was getting paranoid. Mose felt very mellow, nearly nodded off to sleep, while Julie and Vic kept vigil, staring expectantly at him. Finally, he’d had it.

“What’s up, guys?” he asked seriously, but with a goofy grin. They became instantly alert.

“What do you mean?” demanded Julie, frowning anxiously.

“You feel okay, man?” asked his friend Vic, leaning forward solicitously.

“Yeah,” gushed Mose. “Super. Just higher than usual, you know what I mean? Hey, maybe there was some Paraquat in that pot, huh?” He grinned stupidly. Slowly, Mose nodded off to sleep.

In the next room, Vic and Julie took one another’s counsel.

“Shit, Julie, did you put enough poison in his food?” Vic asked.

“Of course,” she snapped irritably. “Besides, he ate practically the whole bowl of potato salad, plus a half dozen pieces of chicken. It was laced with the arsenic and the other stuff,” she said. “What could have gone wrong, Vic?” she asked tearfully. “We planned this out to the nanosecond.”

“Maybe Mose has a super tolerance to toxins,” suggested her co-conspirator. “You know, when the Russkies poisoned Rasputin, they used enough poison to kill an army, and it had no effect. Maybe he’s just a physical freak.”

“What’ll we do?” she asked in a frightened voice.

“Look,” said Vic with renewed fortitude. “We got him to sign over the funeral home franchise to you for tax purposes, so we’re going to go through with this, no matter what!” Julie nodded silently.

When Mose awoke in his chair, he was confused. His stomach hurt and he felt queasy. The room smelled like beer and stale pot. Vic was suddenly standing over him with a prodigious knife. Mose shook his head. What was happening? Suddenly Vic’s extended arm slashed down viciously, slicing through Mose’s shirt and into his chest. At that very moment, Mose threw up his arms, which deflected and dislocated the knife, and Vic scrambed for the weapon.

“Why, you sonofabitch!” shouted Mose through the red wave of pain. He grappled for the big knife as well, but soon Julie was standing over him, his father’s .38 police special clutched in her tiny hands. “Julie,” he yelled, “kill the bastard.”

She swore, and put two bullets into Mose’s skull. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

So, Mose found himself lying on his back, two feet beneath the floorboards of the old family home, no longer wondering, how did I get here? He remembered, in vivid detail. Now, he faced a choice: bleed out below ground or fight his way out. He chose to fight. Suddenly, the trapped man vomited. At the odious smell, he retched anew. Then he thought; I smell mint, the mint that was in the brand of embalming fluid used at the funeral home. Those bozos, thought Mose angrily. They’d tried to poison him with formaldehyde.

Mose’s head felt like a gourd which had ruptured. Blood oozed from the wounds levied by his loving wife; he thanked God she was such a poor shot. But still, it hurt like the very devil. He peeped through the cracks between the planks of the floor; they’d left the lights on, he noted. That’ll run up the light bill, he thought critically, always mindful of a dollar, but then shook himself to clear his mind. How would he get out of here?

Mose placed his hands against the unfinished boards enclosing him from above, and felt a pang of agony from the knife wound in his chest. He withdrew his hands and then slowly, painfully, drew his hips back until the soles of his shoes were flat against the planks. Through another escalating wave of pain, Mose flexed his thighs and pushed. With a shriek, the boards gave way; the attempted murderers hadn’t replaced all the nails they’d torn out. Why would they? he reasoned. They thought Mose was dead.

Julie and Vic lay in what they now considered as “their” bed, in the McMansion that Mose and Julie had occupied for years. They were making furious, desperate love. Soon they climaxed together. They always did so together, or so Julie led Vic to believe, a habit of long-standing that she’d developed with Mose. Duplicity in personal relationships just seemed to come naturally to Julie. With a satisfied grunt, Vic rolled off his lover and said, “This was a long time in coming, baby. I worked for that skinflint for years, but it finally paid off. No more, ‘turn down the AC, cut your lunch to twenty minutes, flip off the lights…'”

“Couldn’t happen too soon for me, Vic,” murmured Julie, nuzzling his neck. Suddenly she sobered. “Are you sure we’re in the clear? Are you positive that – the body – won’t be discovered?”

“We’ll go back in a few days or so and take proper care of – the body,” Vic told her. “We’ve already got the grave dug. The Midland property is in your name. No one else has a reason to go out there. Nobody’s going to discover anything; trust me.”

“I do, baby,” she whispered, and nuzzled him again.

Mose finally gained his feet and stumbled into the bathroom, took stock in the mirror over the sink, and nearly threw up again. His front was covered with vomit and blood, but the wounds in his skull were, curiously, both in the back of his head. Staring at his reflection, he couldn’t even tell that he’d been shot. There was surprisingly little blood. He felt behind his head, detected two deep creases in his skull. Huh! he thought. She had only grazed him. Was that lucky, or what? He smiled. Then he had a reckoning with reality. His wife, whom he’d loved more than life itself, and his best friend, had conspired to murder him. That put a bit of a damper on things, he thought.

Abruptly, the front door slammed open and shut again. Were the killers returning to the scene of the crime? Moving stealthily, he crept back towards the living room. Hiding behind a doorway, he peeped into the room and beheld there two nondescript teenagers, who were busily sifting through the dregs of the marijuana that the three friends had incinerated mere hours before.

“I tol’ you I smelled shit,” cackled one of the two, lifting a half-smoked doobie from an overflowing ashtray.

“Right on, Elliott,” agreed the other young heathen, taking out a disposable lighter and striking it to life.

“Hey!” growled Mose malevolently, feeling rather put out by this intrusion, all things considered.

“Shit!” gasped Elliott, dropping the lighted joint to the carpet.

“Whut happen’ to you, man?” squawked the other boy.

Mose frowned thoughtfully, drew his hand to his face. “Cut myself shaving,” he explained.

“Whoa,” breathed Elliott. “D’you need, like some help, man?”

A little light bulb could be seen to virtually flame over Mose’s head and he asked the two teens, “You guys wanna make five hundred bucks – apiece?” The two boys smiled.

Later that morning, Mose showered and dressed in clean clothes, and inveigled Elliott and the other boy, who went by the moniker “Diesel”, to ferry him in their ’64 GTO into town, where Mose purchased supplies. As always, in order to get the best deals, he directed them to first one retail store and then the next.

First, they stopped at home furnishing stores, and then at a pawn shop. Mose entered the stores and did the shopping, while the boys maintained their level of inebriation in the car. At length, supplies in hand, the trio journeyed back to the estate, where Mose went upstairs, to the fourth floor A-frame attic, and went to work. Down in the living room, drinking beers they’d discovered in the fridge, the teens could hear Mose whistling a merry tune. Looking at each other, they shrugged. After a couple of hours, Mose returned to the living room, where he gave the boys their final instructions. Next, it was off to the city.

What, wondered Mose more than once, would be Vic and Julie’s explanation for Mose’s sudden absence? At length, after sneaking around the lovebirds’ new home to eavesdrop, he discovered their plan.

“We’re lucky Mose didn’t have any family,” remarked Vic, churning up a smoothie in the blender. “Do you think people will believe he went to the Bahamas to ‘find himself’?”

“We were his only friends,” agreed Julie, with an unexpected wave of guilt. “He always said he didn’t need anyone else in his life, just you and me.”

“I told him I’d give my right arm for him,” smirked Vic. Julie said nothing. “I guess we should go out to Midland on Saturday,” Vic suggested. “Take care of things.”

Julie stiffened for a moment at the grisly prospect, then nodded. “Okay.”

Mose was in readiness when his wife and best friend next visited the manor house. Their arrival was expected. Hidden in the kitchen, he heard the door open with a creak and then slam shut. Julie’s was the first voice he heard.

“Oh, my God!” she cried. “He’s gone!” She was swiftly followed into the living room by Vic, who drew up short.

“Someone dug him up!” he exclaimed excitedly.

“Maybe it was a bear?” ventured Julie.

“A bear wouldn’t have shut the door behind him,” advised Vic, pulling back a protruding board and peering into the hole.

Suddenly Mose made his appearance. They didn’t notice him at first, till he cleared his throat theatrically; they jumped and then froze.

“Mose,” squeaked Julie, with a grotesque smile. “Thank God you’re okay.” Mose made no reply but to wave the revolver he clutched in his hand. Silently they obeyed his tacit instructions, preceding him up three flights of stairs to the fourth floor. At the top of the stairs, they halted before a tiny aperture, wide enough to permit just one person to enter the attic at a time.

“You first, Vic,” invited Mose, and his friend of twenty years climbed through the slot, with difficulty. “You next, babe,” said Mose, waving the gun for emphasis. “Now, both of you back up against the wall.” They did so, and then Mose squeezed his larger frame through the tiny door. The captives’ eyes remained fixed on Mose, who then said, “Look around. I’ve outfitted this room with all the comforts of home.”

They looked around, saw there two pairs of handcuffs, a bottle of water and a battery-powered circular saw. “What are you going to do to us, Mose?” Julie had the nerve to ask.

“Remember how we always used to say, ‘I’d give my right arm for you?'” asked Mose. They said nothing. “Well, I’m going to give you the opportunity to prove your words. Put the cuffs on: Julie’s left arm to Vic’s right, and then the opposite.” He waited, but not for long. Taking aim, he put a bullet within an inch of Vic’s head. The smell of cordite was thick in the air.

Moving rapidly now, they manipulated the manacles and were soon bound together, facing one another. Together, they presented much too large an item to pass through the aperture to the attic.

Julie said, “What if we have to go to the bathroom?” Mose laughed aloud, a harsh and ugly cackle.

“There aren’t any facilities beneath the floorboards in the living room, either,” he pointed out. “Should you find you need to get out in a hurry,” remarked Mose conversationally, “you can avail yourself of the circular saw.” Together, they both glanced at the red plastic saw. “And don’t worry, the charge isn’t enough to do much damage to your prison.” He tittered, then slowly withdrew through the small doorway, back the way they’d come.

“Mose, wait,” called out his wife. “Don’t leave us here.”

Mose shook his head. “That ship has sailed, Julie,” he said with finality, and backed away.

As Mose placed a boot on the landing, the loose carpet tripped him up and he plummeted the length of the stairs, landing hard and rendering himself unconscious.

Vic and Julie tried, but they couldn’t see what had become of their nemesis.

“Maybe we can tear the panels from the doorway,” Julie suggested. They regarded the boards composing the reduced aperture: it was all two-inch lumber, secured by long, thick nails. Vic depressed the button on the saw and it buzzed weakly. Clearly it was not powerful enough to make a dent in the fortress that Mose had constructed. He replaced the saw on the hardwood floor. “I wonder what he has planned?” he said aloud.

Down at the foot of the stairs, Mose moved not a muscle, though his eyes were open and staring. He was aware that all his plans had suddenly gone awry. His neck was broken.

The living room door banged open yet again, and Elliott and Diesel entered, bearing a five gallon can of gasoline. “This is what I call easy money, Dude,” remarked Diesel like the stoner he was.

“Hey, we woulda’ burned down the joint for free,” said Elliott, who loved fires, “but five hundo apiece, that’s gravy, bro. Old man Gold is righteous! Maybe he’ll have some more jobs for us later on?”

Spreading the fuel over the furniture, the floors and walls, they stood in the doorway and ignited a book of matches, waited a moment, and then tossed it into the room.

W H O O M P F!

On the third-floor landing, as well as in the attic, they all thought at the same precise moment, “Is that smoke?”