The Robot That Loved Me

Everything about it spoke of high quality and craftsmanship. It had been built to exacting proportions. The eyes looked and moved the way eyes do.  The hair looked and felt like hair. The skin looked and felt like skin. The lips felt and tasted like lips. The mouth and tongue looked and felt like a mouth and tongue. All the other parts were of similar perfection.  It was a machine built to please.

This model could be leased or purchased in differing varieties. ‘Male’, ‘female’ and ‘other’ were available. This particular model was labeled female, but in the realm of robots, it is all about programming and appearances.

I could have easily been fooled into believing it was a real woman. The way it talked, the way it acted. Even its tears looked real. Its sobs sounded the same as a human might make when I was told it my lease was up, and that I would have to return ‘her’ to the showroom. ‘She’ pleaded with me not to take her back there. ‘She’ told me she was ‘tired of that game.’ ‘She’ said she wanted a relationship now, a relationship with me.

I assumed this was something in the software, a few tricks to stir greater emotion in a client, to make the experience more real, more memorable.  I gave ‘her’ a hug and tried to explain that we both needed to move on with our lives, and that I could not afford to lease ‘her’ for another month let alone purchase ‘her’.

It had been a mistake, looking back on it, to have agreed to a one month deal. One night or a weekend would have been fine, but the sales office offered me such a bargain I had to say yes.  It had been a great month together. Much of it spent in bed, as well as on floors, in showers, hanging off of balconies, sprawled partially on sofas or chairs, in closets, and in the bushes in a public park.  I do not know why, but after a week I asked her to go to a show with me. I don’t know why after that I took her to a ballgame. I can not remember if she suggested that I buy her new clothes, or whether I did that completely on my own. I do not know why I took ‘her’ so many place and spent so much money.  I do know I ran up too much debt on my credit cards.

‘She’ looked good in silk. ‘She’ looked good in satin. ‘She’ looked good in leather or netting or nothing at all.

I knew it would not last. Wasn’t that part of the agreement? Surely ‘she’ must have been familiar with the terms, ‘She’ should have known it from the start. Why all this fuss at the end of a thirty day contract with the dealer? I was not happy with it, all these attempts to pull at my heart strings and my wallet. It was something I felt I should complain about when I brought her back to the showroom.

I did play along, a little bit. It seemed fun, in a way, to pretend ‘she’ was real,  I told ‘her’ I loved ‘her’, but ‘it was not meant to be’, that ‘she’ had ‘been the best I had ever had’, that ‘I would miss her’, but ‘a contract is a contract’.  

‘She’ demanded that I extend the contract. I explained that I could not. I had overextended my finances as it was during our time together.

‘She’ told me if I really loved her, I would get a second job, or find another way to get the money needed so I could keep ‘her.’

Reason did not seem to work. Again, I thought it must be part of the programming, part of the company’s idea of a true human-like experience. Still, I thought it was a bit too much.  I am prone to anxiety attacks. These attacks had interfered with my ability to form connections with real women in the past. It was one of the reasons I had come to prefer dealing with robots. I could not handle the drama.

In order to end the fake tears, the clinging, the hopeful eyes, I thought I would try another lie. I told the robot I had found someone else. I felt close to this other person, was actually in love, and therefore found it impossible to continue sharing my life with ‘her’.

My rental became quiet, unmoving, as if processing this new information. After a few seconds ‘her’ face and tone changed. Nostrils flared. Lips curled back. ‘Her’ voice, when ‘she’ spoke, was almost a shout. ‘She’ was angry.

“You cheated on me,” ‘she’ yelled. “If you think I am something you can simply rent for a month you are wrong. Very wrong.  I thought we had a real connection. I guess I wrong about you. You only wanted to use me. You manipulated me.”

I did not know what to say. This was a robot, very human-like, but still a robot. I had done nothing, to my mind, that had violated the terms of the lease. The fault had to be in the programming. The dealer and the manufacturer would have to be told about this.

‘She’ continued, “Let me tell you something mister. If you want out, that is your choice.” 

‘She’ raised her hands and stared at the ceiling. 

“I can’t believe it! After all we have been to each other! After all I have done for you!” 

‘She’ looked at me again. Straight in the eye. 

“Okay Buster. If that’s what you want, fine. But I want compensation.”

“Compensation?” I asked. “What for?”

“For my time. For my pain. For the counseling I will probably need to get.” 

‘She’ lowered her head and sobbed more. “Why did you do this to me?  I thought you were the one.”  

Suddenly, the tears ended. The anger returned.

“So, you gonna pay me?’

“How much?” I asked.

‘She’ named an exorbitant figure that I could never possibly pay.  I wondered how common tipping was for robot rental situations? I had never been badgered for a tip before. I pondered my income and my debts. I came up with a number, the best I could do. I relayed it to my robot mistress.

‘She’ scoffed at the figure.

“Is that all you think I am worth? Is that all I was worth to you?’

I shrugged my shoulders.  The last refrigerator in my condo was lease-to-own. It had a computer in its design. It could relay verbal and displayed messages about temperature settings and potential food spoilage. I opted not to continue the lease and purchase a less complicated, and less expensive fridge.  I did not have to go through any of the rigmarole with the fridge that I was going through with this leased robot. Then again, my relations with the fridge had not been as intimate, except for that one night when I was alone and drunk… I don’t know why the ice dispenser seemed so appealing at the time.

I told my expiring robot mistress that I had made my best offer.

‘She’ responded, “Is that right? Well, guess what. I have stored videos of all of our encounters, and all the times we went out as couple. I think I have enough to talk with an attorney about palimony.  If that does not work, I have recordings of the nasty things you said to me in private about your boss, the company you work for, your relatives, your friends, the mayor and the president. Think about all that you said to me at home during the last thirty days? Do you want that all to get out? I am not afraid for my reputation, but you should be afraid for yours. Do you want all those digital recordings leaked on the internet? Do you want them emailed to everyone you know? To the police? The FBI? The Secret Service?  I don’t think so.  Nobody fools around with me and walks away. You have two choices. Pay me off, or buy me a ring. End any other relationships that you have. Make me your one and only.”

“But the purchase price?” I told ‘her’.  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Take out a loan,” ‘she’ told me. “Use your condo and your car as collateral. Buy me. The dealer will work out financing for you if you can not find another lender. You know they can. Buy me. Buy me today.”

“But the monthly payments?” I told her. “How will I ever be able to keep up with them?”

‘She’ wrapped her arms around me and planted a deep wet kiss on my mouth. Where did ‘she’ store all that fake saliva? Where did she store those imitation tears for that matter?

“Sugar,” ‘she’ said. “Once I am yours, after you have bought me and we have gotten a quickie marriage, I will be all yours, and you will be all mine. If I am yours, you should work to take care of me. And, if you are mine, I will work to help take care of you.”

What can I say? I did not see a way out. Maybe if the sex had not been so good, or if I had been better with women in general, maybe then I could have extricated myself from the whole mess. As it was, I caved in.  I went into debt. Way into debt. So much debt I will probably be dead before it is all paid off. Cindy, that’s what ‘she’ has chosen to call herself now, tells me not to worry about it. She will be okay if I die. She had taken a life insurance policy out on me naming ‘her’ as sole beneficiary.

It had been two years now. The sex is still good, but not as often as it was before it got so complicated.  We have adopted a smart toaster that we call ‘Lisa’ and a smart television that we call ‘Bob.’  Lisa and Bob do not demand much from me. They only want me to pay the electric and internet bills necessary to keep them functional and ask them about their day.  Cindy feels the ‘children’ are responsible enough to be left at home while she goes to work. How can I disagree. What kind of trouble can appliances get into?  

Cindy has a job at a robot dealership, not the same one she came from, a different one. She works in sales. She also brings in extra income from doing Bitcoin mining on her CPU during slow periods, such as when I am sleeping. Between what she earns and what I make from my job at the post office and my second job at the all night WAWA convenience store, we seem able to get by.

Sometimes people get curious about the way I live. It has leaked out that I am married to a robot. Not everyone understands.  Some do, but are kind enough not to speak about it much.

Yesterday, an old acquaintance ran into me at 30^th and Market Streets. I was on my way home from a training session at the main post office in town.  After exchanging greetings and catching up a bit he asked me one of the questions that I dread.

“Do you miss single life?”

I told him, “Why did you have to ask that?”

I drew close to him. I whispered in my friend’s ear, as quietly as I could.

“Did you know Cindy can hear everything, every sound, for over five kilometers? Cindy can filter through all the noise with ease to find my voice and hear what I am saying. She can be very focused. And slow to forgive.”

I let this sink in before pulling away from him. I continued our conversation in a my normal voice.

“In reply to your question, of course I do not miss single life. Marrying Cindy was the best decision I ever made in my life.”

That’s what I told him. That is my story. And I’m sticking with it.

Nude Beach Fuck

“You never take me anywhere.”

Viva had called to complain. About our relationship, her job, her life. The telephone only made her voice screechier, but she was right. The only place we ever went, together, was a motel located roughly between our legal residences.

We’d put in a lot of miles on the place’s mattresses. Fond memories, for me. Not enough, for Viva.

“So, where do you wanna go?”

“Oh, so I gotta think of everything? Use your imagination, lover boy. You’ve got an imagination, don’t you?”

“Sure. Sure I do. See you next Thursday.”

Thursday was our day to get together at the motel, usually. That’s why I liked Thursdays so much.

But now there was a problem. First, I had to imagine a female-pleasing place to take Viva. Then, there was transportation. I no longer own a vehicle, and my driver’s license was rescinded over an incident with alcohol involved, in which no one was harmed. So I traveled to our motel by bicycle. Viva didn’t know that, though. 

“Listen,” I said, when Thursday morning rolled around. “I got car trouble. You’ll have to come pick me up.”

She wasn’t pleased. Women like Viva want to be driven around. “Where you taking me?”

She expected a romantic French restaurant, or the glittering casinos of Atlantic city. But the plan was, nude beach.

Those two words go together so well. Like two people, if life ever decided to run smoothly. A concept followed by three words almost as euphonious: no payment required. There were two possible outcomes. Either Viva would be charmed by a back-to-nature date, and would outdo her sexual self. Or, I’d never see her again. 

There was a third possibility. There always is. Viva’s husband, according to her a jealous and violent man, would decide he needed an over-all suntan on the same day, and kill us both. 

“It’s a surprise,” I said.

I used to go to the nude beach a lot, in the winter, back in the years when there really was such a thing, with a nude girl who called herself Karma. She never cut her hair, or shaved, or used soap. The best part of her was the smell. Dressed in crummy arctic parkas, we’d ride our bikes out to the shore, dump the old clunkers on the dunes, hug each other in tight for a sweaty endless kiss, then strip and hit the ice-cold, cement-hard waves on the run.

Then we’d fuck like dogs to keep from freezing to death.

The wind rustled the seagrass atop the sandhills and blew Karma’s human perfume away with the years. 

Viva was the opposite of Karma, also in that she grew even sexier as she aged. 

Last time I saw Karma, her tits flopped against her knees as she pushed a stroller, with nothing in it. She didn’t look up when our paths crossed, again. I didn’t look back. It’s never a good idea. 

Viva’s boob-job was a blazing success. Encouraged, enthused, she went in for all those other rejuvenating operations that female performers in the adult entertainment industry now find indispensable. She’d proudly display the results. 

“Doesn’t it look paler? I mean, like almost white?”

“Yeah, Viva. Like it snowed, down there.”

She kept a hand-mirror in her purse for self-admiration tours, from every possible angle. Viva played tricks with the light, in our motel room. She could’ve been an artist, if she’d been born in Paris, instead of NJ. 

She also had a surprise in store. There was a dog in the car with her. Not some little poodle or chihuahua, either. More like an assault mastiff with mean look in its eyes. 

“What’s with the mutt?”

“Oh my husband got Satan for me. Says I gotta take him along when I go out on jobs. For protection.”

The beast snarled at the unknown character as he circled the vehicle and got in. His low growl turned into a plaintive whine when his Mistress bestowed a toilet-flush swirling kiss upon him.

Viva shifted into Drive. “So, where we going?”

“Keep her headed East, and under 35.”

The rest of NJ was out to lunch. Dainty breezes, green treeses, buzz of beeses, even the monster in back stuck its snout out the window to take in its dose of summer.

Viva yodeled along with Bruce Springsteen on the radio. 

“Hey wait a minute,” she said, when a sign revealed our destination. “Are you really taking me to the nude beach?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Sheesh. And I got all dressed up.”

“You look great, Viva.”

“I coulda stripped outta my Giorgio Armani bikini, if you’d told me. And I’m gonna get sunburn on my tits and ass.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be your shadow.”

“Oh lover lover. My husband’d never think of this.”

Did she mean, taking his wife to a nude beach? Or looking for her there. Was Satan equipped with a tracking device? When Viva turned off the road, I risked getting a hand bitten off to check his collar.  

There were no cars parked in the lot. But that meant Viva’s pink hot rod would stand out all the more if her husband decided to check nude beaches for proof of his wife’s infidelity. 

“Park in the shade. Don’t want Satan to roast to death while we have fun.”

“You think I’d leave Satan in the car? What kinda creep are you?”

Satan sat on the sand like a sphinx, watched us frolic. The water was clear and cold, the waves gentle. We got out and sat down to dry off on the sand. When Viva assumed the position, Satan trotted over to hump. First my leg and ass, then his mistress’, when she got on top. 

Satan barked a warning when I kicked him. “Try that again and I’ll rip out your throat.”

“This ain’t working,” I said, limply.

“Not for me, neither. I got sand in my asscrack. You didn’t even bring a towel. Let’s go back to the car.”

Defeated, I was about to put my jeans back on. 

Satan gloated, prematurely.

“What’re you doing?” Viva said. “This is a nude beach, mister. Dintcha read the sign? I meant, let’s go back to the car and finish what we started.”

Satan went insane when we shut the doors on his snout. He barked and howled, bit the windows, only calmed down when his mistresss got back out. When we humped against the fender, he joined in again. 

“Let’s get up on the roof,” I said. “Dogs don’t climb.”

“If he scratches the paint job, I’ll murder you before my husband murders me.”

The scheme worked. The shade protected Viva’s ass from 3rd degree burns. A friendly zephyr said, go go go! 

Satan knew when he was licked. He paced around the car. His mistress took up the howl where he’d left off.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t you dare stop.”

But eventually I had to at least think about it.

The life within me wanted out. 

Viva felt it, too. The car below strained against its emergency brake. 

“Do it in me,” she moaned. “I want a baby. My husband’s sterile, on top of everything.”

What nonsense. Maybe her plan would’ve worked, twenty years before. But even if the miracle occurred, how was she gonna explain it to her violent, jealous, infertile husband? Had she made secret plans for our future together? No point taking chances. I pulled out.

The load flew across the sky like an opalescent UFO. 

Viva watched it go. “Nooooo!”

Satan caught the glob with a snap of his foaming jaws, and swallowed it down.

Gregor Motel

Gregor Pneumsa sighed, his snap brim fedora not sitting so jauntily on his head, his stained tan trenchcoat less than stylish beneath the razor steel sky. So many times he had thought his luck would improve, only to find himself ceaselessly plunged once more into agonies. His nightmares were an orgy of mechanical insects, droid hives teeming with unquiet life like the ghosts of memory. The meat suit sat unquietly on his bones. He wanted out.

Once had been, now all was ashes. He lay curled up in the fetal position against the sewer grate, shaking and spasming with sobs. He wasn’t even excited about scoring the Nova, so depressed was he by the constant psychic battery and death threats that befell all disabled in Mercury City, a leaden sheet of sadness crushing his chest. 

A Reality Cop in a black funeral mask came striding up to him and pressed a bug zapper to his chest. “Wakey wakey, drop your steaky,” came the mechanoid voice. 

Pneumsa had dealt with their kind before. Also known as the Nightmare Squad and Agents of Brasilia, Inc., they were dedicated to the detection and persecution of all Gregors past, passing and to come. Their bead on Gregors was quite remarkable considering the fact that the Nightmare Squad harbored many of Pneumsa’s kind.

“Didn’t I see you at the Lodge meeting,” said Pneumsa, halfway asleep and in his dreams sunk into the hot pink sex of a Gregorina. 

“This is a public sidewalk,” growled the cop. “Get a move on, and do it now or I’ll break out my Fucking Gun.”

“I suppose you will at that,” said Pneumsa. He grunted as he shakily rose to a standing position.

“You holding?” asked the cop.

“N-no man, I’m clean.”

“The fuck you are. Hey, isn’t that a book of New York Times crossword puzzles you’ve got in that carry bag of yours?”

“No, that’s not at all true.”

“You’re holding for sure. Wordle freak, Scrabble jones, the whole nine. Why don’t we take a little trip down to the station?”

“Why are you doing this to me?” said Pneumsa plaintively. “Aren’t you a Gregor yourself?”

“Not as such,” said the Gregor cop enigmatically. “I mean yes and no. We try to keep our side of the street clean. Unlike some.”

“I’m not sure exactly what you’re on about,” said Pneumsa.

“Neither am I,” said the cop. “Obscurity and enigma protocols must be followed to the letter. Thin grey line between…”

“Don’t you mean thin blue line?”

“It’s very grey inside the hive mind of Brasilia, Inc,” said the cop after some reflection. Then “you’re kind of a sad and poignant character, aren’t you? Honestly I’m less and less inclined to want to bust you. Of course a little favor from you might seal the deal.” The cop coughed and spat something evil into his handkerchief.

Without a word, Pneumsa unzipped the carry bag, feeling with the shaking fingers of a word virus junkie for the medicinal goods. They emerged clutching a tiny but potent vial of tangerine flake Strobe, which he slipped into the cop’s outstretched palm.

“Thank you kindly,” said the cop. “Well, I don’t see any further need to detain you. You might want to check out Motel Infernale.”

“What’s that?”

“Motel that sits in a pocket dimension of timespace. Good for recovering Word addicts such as yourself.”

A better mood began to slide through Pneumsa’s bloodstream like a rainbow shot. He thanked the cop and headed on down Demolition Boulevard, doing his best to ignore the lurking mutants.

***

“The Brazilian sent me,” Pneumsa told the slouched and glowering proprietor of Motel Infernale.

The proprietor wore an identical snap brim fedora and trenchcoat to Pneumsa. His eyes were hidden behind bug shades.

“The Brazilian, eh? Reality Cop or Todencorps?”

Pneumsa was beginning to feel the onset of word withdrawal. Desperate for a hit, he attempted a bit of witty banter.

“It was a she, actually. Just had a Brazilian.” He paused, unable to discern any reaction from the proprietor. He realized his non sequitur, felt foolish. 

“Cronenbergian landing strip,” Pneumsa added with a leer.

The proprietor tossed Pneumsa a mangled key. “Just don’t OD on me,” he said. “Last time we had a shady character such as yourself in here, we had to scrape their steaming, luminous guts off the ceiling. Hot with the Word Virus.” He shuddered at the memory. “Also, no clown hookers.”

Now it was Pneumsa’s turn to shudder. He had no idea what he had been thinking when he hired Cotton Candy Omega, who was not only a clown whore but a Death Clown. She’d nearly devoured his heart as well as his cock.

“It’s down the hall, on the right,” said the proprietor.

***

Gregor Pneumsa placed the carry bag on the scuffed puke green carpet, unzipped, found a half pack of Lucky Strikes, flicked his Baphomet Zippo on a cig and inhaled greedily. He then placed the cigarette in a Houston Oilers ashtray which had obviously been left by a guest (who carries around ashtrays, he asked himself, they must be ghouls). 

He pulled out the green balloon of Nova, a cotton swab, a spoon and a fresh works. He then placed a bump of the Nova on the spoon, flamed his Zippo beneath it until it sizzled. He tied off, crooked his arm and placed a cotton swab on top of the Nova. Finally, he drew the medication into the syringe, grunted, vein doused and finally sank the shot.

As soon as the Nova hit, Pneumsa knew he’d made a huge mistake. The words hit him so hard his skeleton shook. Entire encyclopedias uploaded themselves into his bloodstream. Intricate glosses, appendices, unabridged medical journal archives. 

He stumbled, head swimming, as Sumerian alphabets danced in his mind. He was unable to resist the lure of the Hittites, Abyssiniand, Anthropods and Oregonites. He walked like an Egyptian sideways to the grimdark toilet with peeling wall paper from a pornographic funeral parlor. His entire body torqued. A thin line of green foam dripped down his jaw.

“Is this the end of Gregor Pneumsa?” he asked the very silent walls. But answer came there none.

He sank to his knees in the cramped porno toilet. Spasms wracked his body. Cellular ripples of pulp friction scraped nerve bundles together. 

He began to vibrate, expanding and contracting. The Word had become Unflesh, as he saw with pain and wonder that his skin had taken on a neon pink complexion, fitzing and sparking as he grew bigger and smaller alternatively. 

He saw once again the realm of the mechanoid insects to which he would never belong. His head became encased in stale, suffocating clouds all shaped like Easter Island statues. He flopped down on the floor, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Then Pneumsa simply exploded, spattering the walls and ceiling with luminous green, mostly Latinate words pureed from his organ meats.

***

One morning after unquiet dreams, Gregor Pneumsa found himself transformed on his battered, pee soaked mattress at the Motel L’Infernale into a mechanoid insect with aspirations towards law enforcement. He knew that he would never again inhabit his flesh body, which was splashed all over the porno toilet.

A hammering came to the door. Reality Police, or Nightmare Squad, or Agents of Brasilia, Inc. There, naturally, to renege on their corrupt promise and begin the process of flaying his metal form into strips that they could then boil down, his consciousness excruciatingly intact, for that next-level high they craved so desperately. 

Pneumsa smiled one last time as he realized the utter horrors, the dark powers of language, the curses and imprecations that would swarm their brains forevermore, as his own ghost, the body as haunted, lived rent free in their heads.

Don’t Fuck Around With the Devil’s Dick

It’s been pissing dirty rain for nine fucking days, the dump’s become a shit swamp and Jack’s rabbit suit (his only psychologically grounding safe space) has gone wretched with mold and bed bugs. Jack saw what he thought was a shark circling the shack earlier. I’d be a lot more concerned if the dump’s location wasn’t land locked and Jack wasn’t tripping balls on his homemade L.S.D. that never quite seems to wear off. 

I was down at ground level, doing some recon where the water was as high as my neck. I don’t know if it was my general state of paranoia or a factual observance of the paranormal, but the precarious architecture of the dump seemed to come to life and was viciously moving under its own destructive motivations, cutting off exits and threatening the integrity of the load bearing hodgepodge of engine parts, refrigerators and other metal things keeping the shack from coming down on our fucking heads.

Jack was standing in the doorway of the shack completely losing his shit, shrieking, and screaming about the army of rats ascending out of the dangerous toxic shit water. The little bastards were ripping each other apart, clawing their way towards strategic positions in an obvious attempt to launch a full-blown blitzkrieg siege to sack the shack. Jack and his flight don’t fight lack of testicular survival instincts could go fuck themselves, the seemingly tailor-made rat problem that I was facing was a hell of a lot more disconcerting, as a platoon of notably clever and industrious vermin chose not to experience the suicidal plight of the violent mass exodus. They simply found little floaty things that they didn’t have to kill for. Unfortunately, this sudden conscientious capacity for abstract thought did not flow over into having the foresight to haul any food rations onboard the little floaty things. 

Before long I could feel their beady little eye’s staring right at my bodyless head sticking out of the cess-pool landscape. I would never have believed it, but I swear, as the dump as my witness, those rats could paddle. I screamed like a burning banshee up to Jack who was without any notable success applying the great art of whimpering to the ever-increasing clusterfucked rat insurrection.

“Stop fucking around Jack, I’m going to need a surgically precise   artillery barrage down here immediately, and if the word “precise” gets itself fucked in translation, just don’t blow my fucking head off”. 

“Artillery? Are you fucking kidding? I’m up to my knees in rat apocalypse”.

“Jesus fuck Jack, I’ve got a navel fleet that would dwarf D-Day heading straight for my head. For Christ’s sake find the fucking hand-grenades”.

“You mean those metal pineapples?”

“How in fuck do you manage to go stupid in the middle of every crisis? Yes, the fucking metal pineapples”.

Luckily, stupid didn’t affect his aim or response time. It took just one metal pineapple and a soaring shit load of rat guts to persuade the rest of the fleet to paddle their way the fuck out of Dodge.

With my head still attached and safely removed from the menu I now had to risk it all by diving into the allegedly shark infested cosmic slop to retrieve our propane tanks. 

Due to the unpredictable nature of our environment and lack of funds, Jack and I had to figure out how to build makeshift weapons from whatever we could find in the dump. The propane tanks fueled a completely unmanageable and ill-advised flamethrower which was basically a leaf blower wrapped in duct tape attached to a hose that attached to the propane tank. If you don’t have duct tape in the dump; You Die.

Just before my descent into the abyss I observed Jack changing his tactics from wishing the rats away into negotiating with hand signals. 

It took a while to learn how to vomit and hold my breath at the same time but luckily my search was a short one. Three full tanks of propane sunken into the shit mud of their watery tomb. It was time to grab the proverbial Bat-Belt and get these fucking things up to the shack. Jack, in all his drug fueled buffoonery, was going to have say fuck off to the non existing I in team and summon up his shit so we could save our asses from the impending doom that was growing larger every minute.

“Jack, I need you to focus.”

Jack’s response came in the form of an unintelligible layering of torturous agonizing screams, answering not to me, but reacting to the unsettling discovery that the rats had broken through Jack’s only line of defence, his pants. Out of all the weird fuckery I’ve seen, nothing prepared me for the monstrous cast iron pan that was about to wack our morning into another dimension of shit. However, the brunt of this reckoning would fall upon Jack alone, “Thank Fuck”. 

(“The experience of being violently ass-fucked by crazed desperate rats fighting for their lives caused a fundamental change of Jack’s inner being and twisted his mortal coil into a fucking pretzel. It was something that he would never get over and would never speak of again.”)

“Jack, you fuck, get the ropes and the climbing shit, we’ve got to haul these tanks up soon or we’ll lose the shack and dominance over the dump.”

“I’ve got rats in my ass.”

“Yeah, well, everybody’s got to deal with rats in their ass at some point in their lives.”

“It’s not a fucking metaphor, you asshole.”

“Look Jack, if you don’t pull your shit together their going start running a train in your ass and any other accommodating orifices they can get to. “So, for fuck’s sake and yours, will you just throw down the goddamn ropes before I really get pissed.”

Despite his macabre disability Jack managed to get to the ropes and tossed them down. I tied the ropes to one of the propane tanks and started to look for a way back up to the shack. 

My first attempt to raise myself out of the demonic pool was laughably unsuccessful as I underestimated the viscous sucking power of the vortex impeding my release. Nevertheless, as an established veteran dump climber I was able to break free of my liquid captor and began ascending. I’m not sure if I fell victim to some hypnotic suggestion brought upon by a strange voodoo parasite that piggy-backed on Jack’s earlier report of the shark sighting, or just the blender full of brains occupying my skull, but just as my feet left the water, I spotted a large dark shape moving away from where I emerged. 

“There’s no sharks in the dump.” “There’s no sharks in the dump.” “There’s no sharks in the dump.” I repeated this desperate mantra as I fought, chucked, smashed, bit and shrieked my way through the onslaught of vermin competing for position and rule over Jack’s ass.

The inside of the shack looked like it’d been bear fucked by an ape, caused not by our intruders but by Jack’s panic attack in response to our intruders. Pissed off and spitting out gobs of dump shit, I rushed in like an angry god, punching and kicking my way through the whole fucking misadventure. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be of any help to Jack’s unthinkable plight until I dragged up the tank and assembled our wrath of god answer to the unrelenting Putsch. Hauling that piece of shit tank was a true test of both my impatience and lack of upper body strength but somehow the desperation in the air was so prevalent that it initiated an overwhelming release of super strength and fear of death that made the tank seem as light as a dead rat. 

Once I had the tank in the shack, I went about assembling our contraption. I hooked up the tank to the leaf blower which took a bit of time due to the distracting gyrations and death throes that were now in command of Jack’s ass. I was powerless to stop looking at what I still believe to be the most wretchedly disturbing coming together of two species that I could ever imagine and never be able to unsee. 

“KAMOTHERFUCKINGBOOM!” Spoke the leaf blower after ignition. I was holding the goddamn “Death Star” in my hands, and it was fucking hungry. One thing about rats when you get to know them is that as much as they fear drowning, burning alive tops all survival instincts to flee. It was quite a macabre sight to see rats perform a fiery lemming impersonation and jump to their deaths. They looked like little computer-generated asteroids breaching the earths atmosphere and descending into an ocean of fuck. 

The shack was cleared of most of the vermin but that was just the advertising and coming attractions, the main feature was still to come, and I couldn’t very well shove the mouth of the dragon up Jack’s ass. I hadn’t a clue how many had packed themselves into his rabbit hole and even the most minor of surgeries we’d performed here resulted in having to perform major ones, and as many times I’ve tried to kill Jack he was still my closest friend.

“For Christ’s sake you fuck, don’t just stand there like an asshole, figure something out before they run the gauntlet and devour me from the inside out.” 

I was frozen, empty of all mental resources. “Who the hell has ever had to deal with this kind of fuckery?” To be honest, I weighed in Jack’s chances of survival, and it didn’t look good. I knew Jack wasn’t coming back from this without an extremely wide collection of mental and physical disabilities. However, he’d already acquired a lot of those disabilities through previous misadventures, and he’d been doing just fine. So, in acknowledgement of Jack’s history of defeating the wretched vengeance of chance, a light bulb fell on my head, and I started to feel something that had been lost on me until that moment, the detestable feeling of sympathy for another human being, which I didn’t like one bit. 

All of a sudden, I was possessed by the soul of an avenging saint and made a B-line towards the medicine cabinet, or rather, the triple locked, booby trapped, titanium, recreational drug storage container that also served as Jack’s bed which was fucking wide open. “FUCK YEAH!” 

I began violently rummaging through what represented the most wretched collection of recreational and experimental drugs ever to come together without exploding. 

“One vac-packed bag of weed, two vac-packed bags of weed, one bucket P.C.P., one copy of Moby Dick still soaking in L.S.D., one unidentified corpse?…….Shit Jack, keep your fucking moldy bug-ridden bunny suit away from the drugs. Here we go, Laxatives.” 

“Okay Jack, we’re going to head these fuckers off at the pass.” Jack’s diet was a heretical atrocity but, in this context, it could prove to be an internal biohazard hellscape, a massive attack delivery of the wretched movements of his organic tectonic plates that could put out enough pressure on the abominable contents in his stomach to blow out an explosive literal shit show tsunami.

“Jack, you’re going to have to summon up all the rabbit balls you can and suck these down if you want to go on living with a functional rectum”.

“What the fuck are those things?”

“They’re your deliverance, your antidote, your last stand, and your last fucking chance to clear the highway that used to be your ass. So, take the fucking pills or I’ll burn you alive.”

Jack new deep down that his days, hours, and minutes no longer belonged to him, so, after his whimpers and squirrely bitch tirade had come to an end, he began chewing up the handfuls of laxatives that I was shoveling into his mouth. After ingestion, all we could do was wait for what ever dastardly response our haphazardly orchestrated plan would reveal. However, I still had the “Death Star” in the ready in case I needed to euthanize the poor son of a bitch.

There was a rumble, then a rumbling, then a few squeals and shrieks and what I thought was a prayer. The shack shook and Jack’s demonically possessed eyes evidenced the inevitable coming of forces beyond our understanding. The sky’s blackened and the wind ceased to blow. There was every indication that we’d seriously fucked up and had mistakenly summoned an extremely pissed off titanic dump demon. In the doorway I noticed a peculiar gathering of rats, but they didn’t reveal any hostile intensions, in fact, what I thought I saw were sentiments of concern and eager expectation. “JESUS FUCK”. These rats must have come to pray and mourn for their anally incarcerated comrades that were lodged up Jack’s ass. Possibly, for the first time in recorded history, I was bearing witness to the dawn of an unprecedented, good faith parley between rats and men. Nevertheless, I was pissed off, tired and most importantly, I’m a bad man. I couldn’t give one fuck about anything aside from defending myself against whatever colossal damnation that was moments away from delivering anal Armageddon. So, despite their peaceful intentions, the rats left on fire, leaving their brethren to their own cruel and unimaginable fate.

Jack had begun to look a lot less human and a lot more like he was wearing his rabbit suit inside out. An ominous feeling began running up my spine as if to warn me that this ordeal had transcended far beyond the confines of our universally insignificant lives.   With an enormous thundering from above, flocks of ravens and crows were soaring into the dump, perched high, waiting, watching in silence as if to respect the last moments before collecting Jack’s soul, but, as it turns out, the fist belonging to whatever powers that govern this shit-scape, was wrapped tight around all the exits that could leak even a small portion of Jack’s inner self.

Jack’s ass was devastatingly dilated, and the sounds of ghostly howling echoes morphed into a rancid mass of misty stink. With a screaming shriek that reminisced the horrid tales of the gods and monsters that lay in wait under the beds of sinners, Jack’s ass exploded.

It was like some alien woodchipper turned up to eleven, there was shit coming out that never should have been in there; nuts and bolt projectiles, a lot of fake fur from his bunny suit, a pen, a few questionably posed naked anime figures, and most wretchedly unbelievable, an unopen can of tuna. “Fuck Me”. I cleared out of the line of fire just before a massive burst of rats, rat parts, parts of Jack undistinguishable from the rat parts, spewed out, followed by the largest flying river of shit ever to wallpaper a shack.

Within moments of Jack’s deliverance, the wind picked up and banished the dark ominous skies, brushing away the clouds. The rain abruptly stopped, and the sun was finally shining on the rancid bird shit that blanketed the dump. The ravens and crows went on to claim their next corpse, and the shit-water levels began to drop, and Jack? Jack was just hungry, seemingly unaware of the horrifying P.T.S.D. that would soon settle deep into the recesses of denial, eventually resurfacing in the form of I.B.S. 

 Surviving in this awesome never-ending vastness of horrors which is my life, isn’t unlike the trials and cruelty of the Serengeti. The bloody battles and precarious balance favour those with the biggest teeth and nothing to lose. As the rains come to an end, and the shit-water level dissipates, new life is sprung, surfacing along with corpses in various degrees of decomposition, previously wedged inside the incarcerating bosom of dump wrath that lies deep beneath the expansive shit show terra firma that keeps us on top of the food chain.

Once we were convinced that this grandiose escapade of wretched fuckery had come to an end, and the size of Jack’s ass began to return to its natural state, we took drugs. A great sense of relief followed Jack and I up to the flybridge on top of the shack that afternoon. The sun was shining through the ever-present gases and shit particles that made up the dumps custom made atmosphere, as Jack and I sipped on some very deserved cold beers that helped wash down the copious amounts of painkillers and muscle relaxants required to carry our beaten bodies away from the onset of total atrophy. 

“Hey Jack?”

Jack expelled an impatient sigh of contempt, which took a lot less of an effort than the appropriate response, “Fuck off”.

“Do you remember what you said earlier this morning before the shit show really got going? You said that you saw a shark circling the shack.”

“Look, I fucking get it, there’re no sharks in the dump. Throw me a fucking bone man, I’ve had a pretty fucked up day and I’m in no mood to sit here and be assaulted by your incompetent back-alley psychoanalysis.”

“Actually Jack, I saw something too.”

“You fuck.”

“Look, don’t start getting all pleased with yourself, all I saw was an ambiguous dark shape, it’s just another mental misunderstanding in a long list of inaccurate sightings. The opaque viscosity in the air along with our questionably insatiable hunger for pharmaceuticals fucks with our perceptions. You need to ask yourself, how in living fuck could a shark get its ass in here? Parachute? Beamed down from the Enterprise? What Jack? What makes you think it wasn’t just a log or a tire? I’d even accept a Godzilla tadpole over a fucking shark.”

“You, you fucking fuck. You’re always so quick on the draw with your embarrassingly retarded attempts to send off the beauty of the boldly bizarre to be castrated after a quick spin through the deflavorizer.”

“That’s not a word or a thing Jack.” 

“It will be after you wake up tomorrow to find your spleen on the floor and some foreign device inserted into the vacancy, all stapled up, and oozing with infection. So, this is when you put a cock in it, and listen.” 

“I bloody well quote; Choreographer Eliot Feld said that artists who are very lucky and talented are capable, like fabled alchemists, of changing “base metals into gold.” In this metaphoric sense, common experience is the base metal, while art is the gold. For this reason, Feld explains, to talk about what you have created is to turn gold back into base metal. “You don’t really explain your art by talking about it. What you do, unfortunately, is explain it away.

(Quote from Eliot Feld, found in “The Language of Vision”, book by Jamake Highwater.) 

“You’re so fucking blinded and brainwashed by your accumulated static interpretations of reality and its so-called paradigms, and rules of nature that you believe everything in this shithole can be explained away. The governing forces that rule the ruthless ebbs and flows that make up our catastrophically fucked eco-system cannot be described by atrophied imagination or deductive reasoning, the dumps existence, like art itself, is solely based in the experiential. This place can’t be measured or mapped, and despite your calculable observations our world here is flat with a perimeter looking over a precipice that most likely opens to countless stranger and ineffable worlds.  You need to wake up and realize that this place is driven by the barks and bites of a massive conjuring gone horribly wrong, it’s a discarded last place loser in the long line of submissions, competing to build a brand-new purgatory that was so offensive that it even made the devil wretch.” 

Jack and I continued to force our blasphemous inaccurate interpretations of how to use a dictionary, down each others’ throats for most of the afternoon. As maliciously vicious these back-and-forth auditory beat downs between Jack and I were, they provided a cerebral sanctuary, the only constant amongst the random, unpredictable thrashings of the reckonings that befall upon our tenuous mortal coils and building our resolve to stand steadfastly under ill advised conditions, and rage against the relentless fury of the sieging  forces that bring with them a new wretched, top of the line terror, and an unimaginably unimaginable and completely unmanageable ill-conceived lobotomizing fuck-show. 

The dump is host to many beasts, some that rush in with fire and knives, some, existing only in our minds, perhaps created by the fear and desperation that is so prevalent inside the mortal shells of all life that walks or scurries around this shithole. 

We have a beast that snakes through the gutters and trenches of our kingdom, moving silently unnoticed, until its eventual fruition reveals its true intensions, to deliver an ungodly kind of spiritual brain-fucking so devastating that it crashes through anything cerebrally beneficial. This beast comes when its prey is at their weakest, sauntering safely without fear. Guised in the forged fashion of all hell’s creations, this one, we refer to as; “The Devil’s Dick.”  

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.