Stroke

The man’s face was frozen in a permanent sun squint. With his lower lip just a fat pocket of chewing tobacco, he was just another backwoods hick. Except for his police uniform. Standing all hunched over and with one thumb tucked into his belt, his other hand was holding Dad’s backpack. He said there was a crash. Dad’s car got totaled. Crushed up like an empty beer can. The cop spat out a brown glob of chew and said the words “drunk driving.” He called it a damn shame.

The girl who smashed full-speed, head-on into him was drunk off her tits and high as a rocket. She swerved through the double yellows, reeking just like a skunk with rabies. With my dad dead, she didn’t even break a nail.

That afternoon on the front porch the grownups talked. Little-kid me was digging through the backpack. Whatever things Dad needed with him were inside. Spare socks. A flashlight. There was a pack of translucent plastic lighters and a pair of mirrored red sunglasses with circle lenses. Emergency screwdriver case. A half-empty bottle of coke. These were the last things Dad ever touched. The things he loved, I figured.

Then that old magazine flopped out onto the floor, pop, right on the spine of it. It flipped open by itself, almost like it had its own memory. Crinkled and worn and bent, it knew exactly which page to turn to. Must’ve been Dad’s favorite page. The picture in the middle of the magazine takes up two pages. It’s called a centerfold.

I didn’t know why yet, but I knew it then. I was going to hell. Blueberry eyes with those fat pink lips, she shimmered wet like a jolly rancher. That babe was a smoke-show. With her perfect skin lit up between my sketchers; I knew I wasn’t a little kid anymore. Seeing all that naked skin for the first time, I threw the rest of Dad’s stuff to the side.

One minute, Dad was gripping the steering wheel, cruising the back roads. It was on one of those winding-curvy mountain roads where you can’t see past the bend, and all you need to watch for is deer crossing and the odd pick-up truck. A Sunday driving kind of road, all week long.

Then, at full speed, he shot through the windshield like a jack in the box full of meat and hair. His legs got snagged under the steering column and the shattered glass cinched around his waist like jaws of a bloodthirsty shark chewing him in half. His organs pan-seared on the hood of his car. All that pain triggered the adrenaline to flood his brain. He spent his last moments alive not knowing he was dying.

According to the cop, Dad went full spaz. He was wiggling to get free, pulling and squirming as his lungs strained, tighter by the breath. His diaphragm, Google says that’s the muscle that pumps up from under your lungs, was torn apart in the crash. To make up for it, his shoulder muscles worked overtime to pull in more air. The veins in his neck popped out, fat and purple. 

His fingertips painted desperate hand prints all over the hood of his car. Lubricated in his own sludge, he couldn’t get past slipping. The thing you need in a situation like that is friction. Too much lube will get you nowhere, trust me. Dad couldn’t have known it, but grinding side to side to get free, that broken windshield became a hacksaw through his waistline. It shredded his intestines and tore holes through his bowels. He was leaking half-formed shit and blood all over everything.

The stupid bimbo who smashed into him was a gazillion-out-of-ten. Her mug shot is in my search history and she’s just my type. Ticks every box. If you sent that picture to a modeling agency, they’d post her bail. She’s staring intense, like the porn star from the centerfold. From where the photo cuts off near her bikini lines, you can tell she’s got huge knockers. Those great big tits must’ve been smooshed into her windshield, car-wash style. The last thing Dad ever saw was probably those heaving honkers. Crawling toward them.

If your dad gets killed in a head-on collision with a sorority slut, you cold-sweat every time you sit in the driver’s seat. You never get anything passed down, father to son. That porno from his backpack is all you have. Whenever pretty girls wink at you, your dry mouth can’t even say “nice ass.”

Then, you’re twice that age and all your friends are learning to drive. All their dads have been teaching them how. Their dads have been stashing money to cash-flow used station wagons. Birthday presents. Your dad in an ashcan, your family, with no income, you ride the bus. Behind the steering wheel, you’re sitting where your dad was when he got rammed. You suffocate with the seatbelt tight against your neck. Don’t google auto-erotic asphyxiation. It sounds like this, but it means something totally different. If you read my search history, you’d see:

BLONDE BIMBO WITH DOUBLE “E”S

BLONDE SLUT NAKED CAR WASH

HOW TO GET OVER YOUR FEAR OF DRIVING

PARTY GIRLS, BIG TITS

When you don’t get your license in high school, your friends leave you behind. When they ask you to sneak out and party, you freeze up. You say you can’t. You tell them you’re grounded. While they were out getting laid and growing up, you just stayed home and jerked off.

The most disgusting and disturbing things never seem that bad until later. That’s called post nut clarity. I was just a dumb kid and I stuttered and shook every time some spit-roaster talked to me plus my friends stopped calling and I couldn’t drive, all my teenage cum got pumped out between my knuckles, splat. White raindrops hardened all over my computer desk like the bird shit on the hood of Dad’s car. 

It’s like breathing while bleeding to death. Each breath out is one breath closer to dying. But then you strain to pull more air. To make it one more breath. Then another. One more pump. By the time you’re done, you’re alone and panting and ashamed. Post nut clarity.

What my mom kept from me as a kid was that while he sliced his guts open on the shattered windshield, Dad also cut clean through his boner. Sandwiched between his beer gut and the jagged razor blade of broken glass, it was his first line of defense. Defeated, it rolled off the hood of his car like a runaway hot dog, grilling on the blazing hot hood. 

By the end of high school, if you looked at my dick, all red and covered in blisters, you’d think it had some horrible std. Only I hadn’t even lost my V-card yet. If you looked at my search history, you’d see that I was searching up:

AUTO-EROTIC ASPHYXIATION

CAN A PERSON DIE OF LONELINESS

FUCKING COLLEGE GIRL IN PASSENGER SEAT

SLUT FUCKED ON HOOD OF CAR VIDS

In college, the professor’s rant sounded like TV static fading in the background. I knew I was going to hell when I missed out on an education staring at some blonde skankinator in the third row. Just my type. Ticked every box. The professor was talking about Keynesian economics, but the only inflation on my mind was those giant milk mounds. My hands rolled back to flex the tendons in my wrists. Imagine those things smooshed into the windshield like deployed airbags. While the guy up front talked about the push and pull of the market, my boner slowly woodpeckered the bottom of my desk.

When you pop a stiffy in public, there aren’t a lot of options. Pretty much, just wait for it to go away or hide it. You can’t really wait though because a watched pot never boils. A watched boner never flops. So, when class ends, if you want to stand up and leave with everyone else, you’d better have a plan.

I always wear a belt for this exact reason. You wear it loose, so it leaves a gap. With your hands in your pockets, you contort the unwanted wood up behind your belt, and voila. Totally flat. 

Class was over and I was tying it back when that hose-me-down-hottie I’ve been ogling stood and turned my way. She must have spotted me drooling at her. Speeding toward me in her pink sweater, she swerved into my lane. I braced for impact. Then… nothing. No crash. No guts. No hot dog on the road. Just a pretty pink smile.

Parked right in front of me, she said how she needed a study buddy. Looking just like all those other girls I beat off to, she giggles. Just like the chick who killed my dad. Biting the bottom corner of her lip and glancing down past her headlights, she twirled from side to side, waiting. I froze, sweaty and red, just like my dick behind my belt. I gulped down a mouthful of spit as she slipped a scrap of paper into my chest pocket. Her dorm room number in green gel ink. She made a U-turn, shimmying her ass with each step. Looking back at me over her shoulder, locking eyes with me, her pink lip gloss mouthed “ay-toe-clok”.

My heart pounding in my fist, wrapped around my crank, I’m searching:

COLLEGE GIRL FUCKS NERD FOR HOMEWORK HELP

CHEERLEADER SLUT NEEDS GOOD GRADES

WHAT IS AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS

SHOULD YOU MASTURBATE BEFORE YOUR FIRST TIME WITH A GIRL

In her dorm, on her bed, I was out of time. Trust me, she was hot, even when she yawned and checked her watch. My sweaty hands rubbed and pulled and jerked. No luck. I went fast and light. I squeezed hard and pulled slow. Nothing worked. Where was the stiffy from class when I needed it? Her, glazed over. Inspecting her manicured fingernails, she was fleshy heaven. But in that moment, all I could picture was my dad’s severed cock, steaming like a BBQ sausage in between the double yellow lines. Flaccid from blood loss and stinky.

“It’s fine,” she said, pulling me by the wrist and forcing me out the door.

My spongy wiener still clenched in my hand, I told her this literally never happens, I promise.

“Yeah, suuuurrreee,” she rolled her giant Bambi eyes and slammed the door.

Alone in the hall. I was still too horny to stop rubbing. I squished my ear against her door and heard a click. Then, the beehive buzzing of a vibrator. Then soft, airy moaning. Drunk-driver-waiting-to-happen moaning.

I could have battered that door down, full force. Reaching out for those big tits, just like Dad. Gasping for air and full of adrenaline. I could have rammed my stick shift, smashing like a head-on collision, slam, right up her guts at 90 miles an hour. With her big fat airbags cushioning my face, her hands would clutch my shoulders at 10 and 2. Her preppy pink nails would curl into me like a leopard plush steering wheel cover. With this iron solid piston thrusting at a million horsepower, it would be impossible for her to walk a straight line, even sober. With all the Listerine she would need to rinse my taste out of her mouth, she’d never pass a breathalyzer. 

By then I was hard, but I just stood there pumping. Stroking in secret to her porn star moans, I pumped and pumped until I blew my angry wad all over her door. Powerful ropes of pent-up virginity erupted into the air. The first squirt, with all that rage and disappointment behind it, got eye level and landed splat, bullseye, right on the lens of her peephole. I didn’t even wipe it clear. My cum would dry up on that lens. Looking through it, everything would seem fuzzy and haloed. The way it looked in heaven. Everyone would look like angels. 

They say if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you master it. In empty aisles at Walmart, it didn’t even make me smile anymore. In public library bathrooms, I got off to people being shushed. I jerked it in the elevator on the way up and pounded it again on the way down. My cock sputtered little white globs on every surface I had a moment alone with. Like bird shit on my dad’s rusted-out car frame, a lifetime later in some junkyard somewhere.

Even now, I’m king of virginity with the most used penis in the animal kingdom. It’s deformed and all chewed up and striped like a tiger with stretch marks from when I’d torn the skin. Don’t look at my search history unless you want to see:

ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

SILDENAFIL FOR SALE ONLINE

DEATH GRIP SYNDROME

When I finally get my driver’s license, I remember about my inheritance: Dad’s porno magazine, the one from his backpack. Brittle and stuck together and smelling like mildew from all the years crammed under my mattress. Trapped with all the moisture and dead sperm. Hidden like the decomposing family prostitute. Used up and rotting. 

I figure, what’s the harm? In high school, all my friends had dads who bought them rusty old used cars. Secondhand vehicles with crinkled-up doors, the interiors full of stains. Covered in dried white globs. Coming of age gifts from father to son. I think let’s dig out that old beater and take her for a spin.

While I drive, she’s spread eagle in the passenger seat. I keep glancing over, taking her in. The slut on the centerfold is just my type. Ticks every box. I’m tasting her shiny candy skin with my eyes. In my mind, thousands of copies of this same girl are getting slammed wide open on repeat.

At the drive-thru, a breathy voice asks me what I want. I almost let “blow job” slip out. Our hands brush past one another when I grab my soda and she smirks. Pulling out onto the road, I’m already stiff and throbbing up from behind my belt. On this quiet road, the only signs I pass are speed limits and deer crossings. No traffic in any direction. Just me and my boner for miles.

I’m one-handing the wheel while my other hand goes back and forth between feeding me handfuls of fries and rubbing the tip of my dick, strangled purple. The grease from the fries is perfect lube. I’m barely paying attention while the empty road zooms past me. The “no seatbelt” alarm blares while I think of that disappointing night after class. I’m staring down the barrel of my pee hole when pop. Bullseye. The opposite of post nut clarity.

One stroke, you are on a relaxing drive. The next, you’re flopped on the hood of your car, sticky. Warm from the sunlight. The heat mirage of the engine. The iron taste of blood. The craft glue smell of cum. Shards of broken glass are crusted into your face and up the length of both forearms. The dull pressure on your guts of something stabbing up is a million miles away. Everything is a white, soft version of itself.

With all the adrenaline frying my brain, I am completely numb. But I know I’m going to hell, even before I see him. The red fur and spiky horns. His black eyes stare into mine without blinking. I hear the sideways clopping of his cloven hoofs against my fender. That’s when I know for sure. I’m going to hell. The palm of my jerking hand is covered in blood and for once in my life, I can’t feel my dick.

I remember how Dad died—the sausage on the road, cooking in the sun. Suddenly, I don’t care about being in hell anymore. I try to rip and pull myself out, just like he did. I finally get it. He wasn’t trying to squeeze the girl’s tits, he was reaching for his dick. He saw this same demon and didn’t want to be caught dead in hell without his penis. Think of all the loose gash burning in Hell! 

Jerking and yanking, hard as I try, I’m getting nowhere. I always figured it would hurt more all those years ago, when my dad ripped a hole in his stomach and his stinking bowels fell out of him. Just like me, he couldn’t get free. Being in his place, it feels like nothing. No pain at all. The demon keeps screaming and bucking its horns. I’m about out of strength when, through my snowy white vision, I see people haloed in white. Wearing red crosses, they must be angels. 

“I’m here to help,” a voice tells me. The breath of god warms my skin, saying everything is going to be okay. If I still had my cock I’d be pumping out some knuckle babies to it.

“God,” I whimper, “please…save…my…dick.”

When I wake up, I’m not in heaven, but at least I’m not in hell. Machines that keep people alive beep all around me. Everything is white and soft blue under fluorescent light. A blue nitrile hand prods at me, playing with a tiny plastic tube in my arm. Then I see two airbags. For one breath, I’m back in the car, dying. Practically grazing my face, this is way closer than my old man ever got.

It was the belt trick that saved me. When I plowed into that ten point buck, my dick was the only thing buckled in. The windshield glass got caught up in the leather of it, so I got away with some tearing and bruising. Other than the broken bones, it’s nothing new.

“Oh,” the tits exclaim from inside their blue scrubs, “you’re awake!”.

Looking up to see the rest of her, she’s just my type. Ticks every box. Her pink lip gloss tells me I’ve been sleeping for a week. It could be my imagination, but I swear she was shimmying her ass on the way out the door. In that hospital room, I don’t know how long I got alone.

A whole week without a Google search bar. Not one tug or jerk or pump that whole time. The nurse’s eyelashes fluttered when she looked at me. I swear she wanted it. Thinking that, I can feel my dick again. My bruised and beaten willy, it almost killed me. Probably in self-defense. Now in this bed, alive, I’m giving it a rest.

I’m broken and half-dead and full of glass. Hooked up to tubes and fed air by oxygen machines, everything hurts. But for the first time since the day my dad died, I’m not picturing jugs or asses or blond hair or big eyelashes.

I promise, I’m not thinking about rock-hard nips or fake sex moans or fat pink lips or blow jobs. And I’m definitely not wondering about that nurse and her knockers in my face or how her cunt smells. I swear, I can hardly even think of her grinding that ass up my IV pole, practically begging for it.

Looking toward my feet, that little tent pitches up under the hospital blanket. Like a finger pointing right at me. Blaming me. Fully erect, with the rounded lump of a catheter tube bent out of the top, I just close my eyes and grit my teeth and try not to touch it. 

That nurse though. She was just my type. Ticked every box. Please don’t look up:

POSTERIOR URETHRAL STRICTURE

SUPERFICIAL THROMBOPHLEBITIS OF THE DORSAL VEIN OF THE PENIS

MAN HAS FATAL STROKE WHILE MASTURBATING

Wizard of Oz

The house burns. 

I almost trip over her corpse as one hand stuffs a deflated blow-up doll into my shirt, and the other wipes blood off my chest with a brochure for St. Albany’s School of Excellence. Seven in nine of their graduates end up in ivy league schools. Impressive.

The campus is state of the art. First rate, grade A heroin for helicopter moms. The gym features a full size weight room, two olympic swimming pools, and suspension ropes for aspiring gymnasts. 

“I want Jonny to have the best education,” I tell her, between not staring at her breasts and looking at the pools. “If only Veronica could see this…”

“We can schedule a second tour if you like—” the guide leans in and raises an eyebrow, “for your wife?”

It’s generally not considered polite to talk about car accidents, cancer, or dead spouses with strangers. I drop them all into her DD cups in a single line.

Then her blue plaid blouse is on the floor of janitor closet #4, the math wing. Superior to #7, the science wing. No one left an open container of Clorox bleach on the shelf.

Next is St. Mary the Immaculate’s School for Girls. Cushioned indoor track. Virtual reality computer lab. Red headed tour guide. Tears. Dead wife. Supply closet.

Wilconsin’s School for Excellent Children. Equestrian program. Dead wife. Tack room.

Academy of Arts. Dark Room.

School of Science and Space.

You get the idea.

“Tell me about your son,” she glares through thick glasses. Forehead stretched as taught as her bun. Thirty couples walk the halls waiting their turn. Her day hasn’t even started.

Tears are good, with manly control. Shudders and shoulder trembles draw them closer. A solid, “I promised I wasn’t going to do this today,” is gold. Avoid snot bubbles. Passion turns to disgust with the first pop.

I get through my dead wife routine, composure mostly maintained. A good show.

Her pencil stops tapping.

“That’s very touching,” she says.

Her name is Margret. 

She strives for her students to finish first. I love her for it. It saves my life.

“But, it doesn’t answer my question.” Margret looks at the stack of student files left to interview, “What makes Jimmy special?”

If a dead mom doesn’t make a kid special, what does?

Margret sets her pencil down.

“Look. There are countless couples who want their kid short listed. So, I’m going be blunt. Is that OK?” She waits for me to nod. “Good. Tell me what you or Jimmie can offer to get him on the list?”

***

Sexual anhedonia is caused by medications, physical conditions, and psychosis. It’s the joke without a punchline of a sexual disorder. Unlike erectile disfunction, everything works. The zucchini gets hard. You can mash that potato whenever you want. 

Sex therapy is supposed to help. So is exercise. I spend thirty minutes a day doing Kegel’s to strengthen my pelvic floor. It doesn’t.

Imagine cooking pulled pork. Eight hours of slow cooking bliss. The kitchen fills with the succulent smell of rendered fat and BBQ sauce. The warm tug as you pulled the loin apart with your hands. Five minutes under the broiler crisps the edges to perfection. You plate the meal. Set the table. Sit down. But don’t eat. 

Yes, you’ve satisfied your senses on the process. You’ve gained fulfillment by making perfection. But no matter what you do. No matter how many meals you prepare. You can never take a bite. You live in constant hunger.

That is sexual anhedonia. You get all the sweat and cum, but none of the fun.

Can you imagine the lengths a person would go to achieve an orgasm?

***

I pick up Thai and a tail on my way home. Two lights and three turns after Thai Nana Plaza, I see the blue Malibu. Four cars back and keeping pace.

After a closet rendezvous some people feel guilt. They tell their therapists. They tell their spouses. They tell their friends. Who do you think needs to watch their back? When I was younger, before I knew better, I found myself with slashed tires and broken bones. I’ve learned. Now I watch the rearview. 

It doesn’t take much to loose an amateur. Pros are harder. A few quick turns, run a red light, and the Malibu’s gone. Coincidence, maybe. Stranger on a night drive, probably. Better safe than broken.

***

I get home to Veronica waiting, hair done up, make up on, and mad as hell. Like always, she sits at the dinner table. The thai is as cold as she is, so we eat in silence. It fits us like a glove.

When it’s time for bed, she shows me her back. This is the signal. Three days ago I told her I was horny as all hell, so she’s right on time. Three days, every time, like resurrection clockwork.

Twenty minutes of back rubbing. Fifteen minutes of manual stimulation. Five minutes of cunilingus. She manages to touch me right before penetration. Its clinical. Just enough to make sure I’m hard. After that, she doesn’t touch me again. Doesn’t kiss me. Can’t even look at me. This ends the same for me every time. Nothing.

Alden’s Organic Vanilla Bean Ice Cream is considered the best in the world. An investment banker told me during a school tour. How they process the beans draws out a depth in the flavor that causes people to go mad. They’ll stand in line for hours just for a taste. For vanilla. Vanilla fucking ice cream. Sure as a pallet cleanser. A free cone at someone else’s birthday party. Maybe throw in a sprinkle of road head, a squeeze of bondage, with some butt play on top. I’m mixing metaphors. 

The point is, no one can survive on a diet of vanilla alone.

My first therapist said anhedonia can be cured. It was just a matter of finding the right stimulus. It was possible to walk the yellow brick road of sexual experimentation to the Orgasm of Oz. You just need the willpower to keep trying.

***

The call comes at 4:30 am. Blocked number. I answer anyway.

“You still want Jimmie on the short list?” asks Margret.

I get to her place as the blue of the sky starts taking over from the night. Big house. Stone. Fruit trees on the lawn. And Margret hitting my thighs with a whip, clad in skin tight leather, screaming, “When you finish the dishes you’re going to wash the floor. I want to see my reflection in it!”

***

Working on the belt isn’t as bad as people think. It’s about seeing what’s different. Like that Sesame Street Song, “One of these things is not like the other.” Except instead of fruit it’s prophylactics. 

As each foil wrapped string slides by they are visually inspected for punctures and tears. Any damage to the container and they’re pulled. Marked for destruction. One in every four-hundred receives manual inspection. One condom randomly chosen from the strip is rolled on and off a baseball bat. If the condom fails before the seventh application the whole batch is pulled. Marked for destruction. It’s an insurance thing. Failure testing is not my department. I just inspect and remove.

The belt vibrates as the condoms go by. If you lean into it just right it provides constant stimulation. I’ve been employee of the month for over a year now. I’m dedicated to this job.

One guy in the New York Plant was employee of the month, too. He came at work early every morning. Better than reading the newspaper with his Mrs. He told me about the vibrations. Two years ago he went bare nut to wheel and they found him dead two hours later as clean cut as a bloody Ken doll. Supposedly, a couple in Illinois won the prophylactic lottery, they found a nut and half his shaft.

Insurance says there’s supposed to be a plexiglass barrier on all observation posts. No one listens.

At the end of the day I load all the marked for destruction rejects into my trunk. The foreman helps. He saves overhead not running an incinerator 24/7, and I’m the largest blackmarket distributor of wholesale condoms in 200 miles. Most of the rejects are actual rejects. Some are perfectly fine and pulled to fill customer orders.

My biggest clients are clubs, travel agents, and college vending machines. The vending machines are the real money makers. I sell 1,000 count a week to the resupply technician at 3/4 standard wholesale rates. We both make a bundle.

If you’ve bought a condom from a club for a private dance or “drinks” in the champaign room, you’ve bought from a guy like me. Was it a reject or taken from the line to fulfill an order? Toss a coin. If you get anything but heads there’s a good chance you just won child support.

***

After I finish weeding Margret’s garden and deepening the edging, she pushes me onto her couch. Like her students, she wants her lovers to finish first. She says it’s to deplete sperm count, reducing the chance of pregnancy. I think it’s about the control of keeping me hard after ejaculation.

She disappears under a weighted blanket before taking me into her mouth. It’s four or five inches thick. The blanket. If anyone walked in, they wouldn’t even know she was there.

I enjoy eye contact and the curves of a woman’s back, but the blanket makes it easier. Faking an orgasm while staring into someone’s eyes as they drool smile like they’re doing you a favor is tedious. Facial contortions. Eye rolls. The whole kabob – waisted effort. I finish, but there are no fireworks or tingling limbs. No elation, euphoria, come to Jesus moment of release. Just me. Empty. 

There are times when it is right there. When the building pressure leads to a momentary spasm of promise. Like the sun coming over the horizon, about to warm your face with early morning rays — only to plunge back into darkness again. Unfulfilled.

***

The travel agents don’t like me bringing my wares through the front door. They worry people will ask why they buy hundreds of single serve condoms at a time. They couldn’t just be honest. Lay it all out. How do people think they stay in business with GroupOns, Trip Advisors, and other large tech taking over the travel game? What kinds of “trips” do people think they arrange these days?

I unload the boxes onto stacks of dusty timeshare brochures, and go up front to collect payment. 

Syed has been a customer from the beginning. He arranged my first dungeon experience. I give him a discount.

He gives me a check and tells me to go to Malibu — hot girls, great party scene, real crazy stuff — when the door bell jingles. 

“Hey there, stranger,” a voice says. “Planing a trip for you and little Jonny?”

St Albany’s School of Excellence. Blue plaid blazer. Janitor closet #4, math wing. 

“Bora Bora,” I tell her, not staring at her tits. “I was thinking sunny beaches for Christmas.”

She squeezes my arm to her chest.

“You are such a good dad,” her lips quiver enticingly. “I don’t know if I could be so strong if—”

And she bursts. Pulls me into her cushy embrace. Warm tears running down my neck from her cheeks. I feel it. Actual passion. Desire. Today is the day. I am going to finally reach Oz. Pressure builds. She pulls me tight. I’m about to pull her into the back room. Throw her down on the dusty time share brochures… and her snot bubble pops in my ear.

***

The drive home is tedious. One more day. Two minutes from home and I’m so distracted by failure I almost miss it. A hint of blue five cars back. The tail. 

I drive straight on Sinclair instead of right on Jackson. An immediate left to Kimble, left again to Johnson. Another hint of blue. I speed through a red light at Four Corners Intersection and slam into a driveway between two pickup trucks. Thirty seconds later the blue Malibu slowly prowls by. And there’s DD cups, Mrs. Snot Bubble herself, scanning the road. 

Our meeting at Syed’s wasn’t a coincidence. She got on my trail. But for how long, what has she seen, and why?

A neckless bruiser in a wife beater that matches his truck pounds on my window. “What the hell do you want?” he asks.

I smile. “Do you have time to talk about our Lord and savior?”

***

Veronica is silhouetted in the dinning room window when I get home long after dark. She doesn’t speak when I get in. No dinner on the table. She didn’t touch the breakfast I left her, and there’s no chance she’s going to touch me. Just stares. Cold.

I shower and make us sandwiches for dinner. Peanut butter and jelly. Barely a meal. We eat in silence.

***

The phone call comes at 1:30 pm. Blocked number. Margret.

“Get here now,” she demands through the phone. “And if you want the short list, bring your wife.”

I try to convince her otherwise. I don’t have a wife, or girlfriend, dead or otherwise. Try to tell her the truth when the lies don’t work. She doesn’t listen.

“I followed you home tonight, asshole,” Margret says. “I saw her silhouette in the window. You have an hour.”

She hangs up.

Fucking silhouettes.

I get Veronica in the car and talk the whole way. I explain everything. Every sordid detail. Every casual liaison. I try to explain what makes one closet better than another. Snot bubbles. Sexual anhedonia. I did it all for little Johnny. She doesn’t say a word.

When we arrive she won’t get out of the car, so I carry her up the steps. The light of the opening door falls across our struggle, Margret is all laughs and memories of leather.

“Oh! This will be fun,” Margret giggles, and leads the way inside.

***

The living room is entombed with candles. Soft music plays. An open bottle. Glasses.

“Tonight will be different,” Margret says, sipping her wine. I pour a glass for Veronica, anything to make this easier. 

“No chores. No work. Just sex,” Margret smiles.

“Let her leave,” I plead. “She has nothing to do with this.”

“No,” says Margret, and pushes me onto the couch. “She watches.”

And she disappears under the weighted blanket.

If it weren’t for the sounds of suction and casual gags, it would be easy to pretend we were alone, Veronica and I. Music and candle light. A romantic evening. The things normal couples do. Normal couples who are not us.

As my tension builds, I can’t look at her. I can’t meet her eyes. She won’t look away. This is what she’s always wanted. This is her ticket out. After tonight, she can wait as many days as she wants before showing her back. She can not touch, not kiss, not look at me as much or little as she pleases. She sits triumphant, and I stare out the window just waiting for it to be over.

And the window stares back.

In the darkness of the night, the candle light reflects off the contours of a face. Blue eyes. Angry scowl.

“Ohh. Fuck!” I scream.

“Let me have it,” Margret moans. “Don’t hold any back.”

“Don’t move,” I tell her. Stiffening, holding her head in place. The window breaks.

“This is what you want!” a voice yells, as I don’t stare at her tits. “This is what you chose over me?”

Margret bites down in shock.

“No!” I cry, picturing bloody Ken dolls.

“This could have been me. I loved you.” DD says, wiping tears with her right hand, showing me the gun. “I loved you, and you treat me like this?”

Fuck. This is my moment.

“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to keep Margret still under the blanket. “I don’t even know your name.”

“You,” DD’s head shakes uncontrollably. Tears. Snot bubbles. “How can you say that? We love each other.”

I look at Veronica, “I don’t know her. She was a closet fling. I don’t know why she’s doing this.”

DD barely looks at Veronica. The gun comes up. BANG. Right in the head. The bullet passes cleanly through shattering a bottle of wine and launching candle-wax and flame across the floor. Margret jumps at the sound, I can barely keep her head still.

The motion combined with the smell of burning plastic as Veronica slowly deflates onto a bed of candles pushes me into high gear.

“Welcome to Munchkin Land” blasts through my head.

DD sees the blanket move at my lap.

“That’s what gets you going?” she screams. “A fucking doll? Well it’s too fucking late. There’s only one way to deal with trash like you.”

She points the gun at my head.

A tornado. Falling houses. Fields of poppies. Lions. Scarecrows.

“I’m going to take the only thing you care about,” tears stream down her face as she lowers the gun towards my crotch.

“NO!” I yell. 

She fires.

I explode.

All hail the Wizard of Fucking Oz.

By Royal Decree

I hesitated at the doorway, looked left and right down the corridor, then knocked. Knock-knock, pause, knock-knock-knock, pause, knock. The code I’d paid for.  God, I hated these places. Couldn’t believe I’d sunk this low. 

I turned the knob, sticky from god-knew-what—I didn’t want to know. 

“Welcome.” 

A youthful voice. My lips pulled back into my cheek. The right side only. I felt it. The pull. Felt it because I tried not to show my delight.

I stepped from dark corridor into darker room, let the heel of my snakeskin boot tap the door closed.

“Make yourself at home.” The youth’s words, syruped with drink, stumbled from across the room. 

A light flashed. Moved through the air. Landed on a stubble of candle wax. Phosphor smell burst through the air, then poof, disappeared, replaced by the scent of vanilla, and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. A rotten lemon? A decaying tuna sandwich? Vomit? My stomach tightened. Why couldn’t I turn around? Leave?

“Don’t be shy. The bed’s right there.” 

Now I could see who owned the voice. Nice looking. Had me by an inch or two. The hair reminded me of Black Minx, the horse I’d lost a bundle on at Doomben. On a photo finish no less. Should’ve listened to Charlie Hersch. He warned me that filly would stay undefeated. The Minx’s mane was longer than the kid’s, which fell just past the collar of his shirt. Looked like a silk shirt. Black silk. Or maybe midnight blue. Or deep plum. 

I slid my fingertips across my bottom lips, thinking—color, not a difference to make a difference. I rubbed my bottom lip against my teeth, an old habit I had no intention on breaking, except in front of news cameras. Now skin color? That would make a difference. A big difference. 

But Billy Ray knew where I stood on that matter. Christ, every voter in Dawson County knew where I stood on that matter. 

Candle light flicked shadows across the kid’s pale face. 

I loosened the tie around my neck. “Where’s the goddamn air in this place?”

“A.C.’s down. Billy Ray says heat’ll add to the atmosphere.” 

“If I wanted to screw in a sauna, I’d go to my club.” No. Not my club. Somebody else’s club. “Shit.” No A.C.? In fucking west Texas? “I paid Billy Ray good money. I should have comfort.” 

“Billy Ray isn’t into comfort.” 

“Flexing his sadistic muscle, is he?” 

“Paying me to provide the comfort.” 

I unbuttoned the top button on my shirt, forced my breathing to slow, forced my blood pressure down. No sense getting worked up over something you couldn’t change. Wasn’t that what I told city counsel just this morning? 

“I’ve had my fill of arguing,” I told the kid. “Got enough of that with people at work. Every fucking day. Makes the goddamn office a pressure cooker.” 

I removed the linen handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my forehead. “From one pressure cooker into another, huh?” A chuckle strangled my windpipe. 

“You’re smiling.”

“Pretty funny.” Wasn’t funny at all. I ought to get a medal for how well I hold it together. “I’ve got a right to let off steam. Any way I see fit.” I removed my jacket and tossed it on the bed.  

A sandstone-colored sheet I assumed was once white covered the mattress. Spotted, dark stains reminded me of Old Joe, the mongrel who shared my home for fourteen years. 

Where the hell did that thought come from? Old Joe was dead. Dead for three fucking years. What’s that mutt doing raising his ugly head now? 

Maybe that’s what I need, a new mongrel. One who runs to me when I come home at night, wagging his tail, lapping my hand, slobbering his delight.

“Sheet’s clean.”

I jumped when the kid whispered, close, sudden, into my right ear. Nearly peed my pants. God I hated being startled. 

The kid placed a gentle hand on my forearm. “Sorry.” The word almost dripped, like thick, raw molasses. “I didn’t mean to scare you. . . . unless you want to be scared.”

“I . . . ah—” 

“All you need to do is describe your wishes.” 

Wishes? My wishes? I’d made a living out of bartering other people’s dreams. My own had died long ago.

“Your first time?” he asked.

What a laugh. “Yours?” 

The kid glanced away, hesitated. “I’ve got experience.” 

Hmm. A dodge. I’d obviously struck a nerve. I tried to keep my eyebrows level, my lips from smiling. I’d heard first timers worked harder to please. I waited for the squirm. 

“Why don’t you give me a name I can call you?” he said. “Bob, Leonardo, Mr. Smith . . .?”

“It’s . . . King.” A slight rise in my voice tipped off my deceit.

The kid hesitated again, either spotting the lie or about to make one up. “Then King it will be.” 

Now I did smile. Wise kid. Knew a big tip depended on making nice.  

“And you can call me . . . Prince.” He took my arm and guided me to the bed. “Come over here.” 

He had a knack, this kid. He almost made his voice sweet as a woman’s. A new admiration spread inside me. So did Hope. The hope that I’d find what I was searching for, what I’d had to deny needing. Deny needing for way too long. I could help the kid get somewhere in this business. 

I sat on a mattress that must’ve been stuffed with the county’s best caliche soil. Hard, lumpy, and moist.  “Christ, it’s hot in here.” 

Prince stood before me and unbuttoned my shirt. 

My shoulders dropped and I rolled my head from side to side, heard the crackling as I stretched out the kinks. Prince must’ve heard it too. He slipped warm hands under the opening of my shirt, kneading the tension from my neck. 

A burst of needles radiated from my elbows, ran cold prickles through my arms and chest as my torso shivered. A sound I didn’t even recognize as my own moaned from deep inside me. 

“How about a drink, King? Be right back.” 

A drink? Now? Did the kid think I wasn’t ready? He trying to enhance my pleasure or get me loaded, make his work easier? Or maybe it was the kid who wasn’t ready. Maybe Prince was as confused as I. 

I used the time while Prince was out of the room to scan the nightstand, not really a piece of furniture, rather a pile of cinderblocks with a wood slab on top. A candy dish with a half dozen assorted condoms and finger rubbers sat in the center. An opened package of Juicy-fruit gum, a matchbook with “The Hot Spot” embossed on the cover, and a ballpoint pen lay to one side.  A Gideon Bible sat toward the back, looking as crisp and untouched as the day it was printed. 

Was the Bible a reminder? A portent to go home? Prince returned with a glass of pale amber liquid. I held it for a long while before drinking it. What if it was spiked? Or poisoned straight out? I twirled it under my nose. It smelled like weak beer. It tasted flat, stale. 

“It’s my own concoction,” Prince said. “How do you like it?”

“Different. It’s different.” 

“That’s me. Nothing common about me.” Prince pulled his tee shirt over his head and tossed it onto a chair. Cream-colored skin flickered in the candlelight. Obvious the kid didn’t work outside, but he did do some sort of physical work. Tight abs. Defined muscles. He nodded to my glass. “Feel better?”

“Sure, thanks.” Actually, I did feel better. Relaxed. I reached out and touched the kid’s hard chest. The softness of his black hair reminded me of the negligee my wife wore on our honeymoon. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Damn thoughts keep popping into my head.” What the hell was happening to me? I gulped down the rest of the unnamed elixir. “How about we talk first. Okay?” My words surprised me as much as the thoughts about Old Joe and my wife. 

“Sure.” The muscles in Prince’s face softened, his eyes relaxed, his shoulders lowered.

Or perhaps it was a reflection of my own relief. 

“‘Your nickel’ as my grandfather used to say. As long as you realize the meter’s still ticking, talk away, King.” Prince lay on the bed, his arms bent, hands under his head. 

The pose oozed an invitation I fought against receiving. 

I paced the short length of floor by the side of the bed. “How much is Billy Ray paying you, Prince?”

“Why?” More curiosity than distrust. Good. Definitely an amateur.

“Maybe I can pay you more. If you can be discreet.”

He got up on his elbows. “I’m listening.” 

Ah ha. He needs money.

“You clean?”

“I don’t have any drugs, if that’s what you’re looking for. But if you’re worried about sex, I’m cleaner than a bar of soap.”

“Why you doing this?”

He sat up. “None of your damn business.”

I sat next to him, laid a palm against his cheek. Clean shaven. Smooth. “I want to make it mine. Bet your family doesn’t know you’re queer. Bet that’s why you sell it—to get it.”

His jaw muscle pulsed. He pulled my hand from his face. “Sorry, King, I’m not paid to give you my family history. You want to talk, tell me about yourself.”

“I can’t do that.” I stood and took a fifty out of my wallet. Placed it on the nightstand. 

He looked from the money to me to the money again. Then crossed his arms over his chest and gazed straight ahead. I took another fifty from my wallet and waved it in front of him. He followed my movements. I laid the bill atop the other. 

Prince stared at the money and exhaled between pursed lips. “It’s complicated.”

“Always is. Do they love you?” 

He looked off to his left, ran his gaze along the side wall, up and down, sucked in the corner of his lip. He shook his head, just tiny back-and-forth movements, while staring at the wall. His gaze lower to his hands and they closed into fists. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and released his clenched hands. He took another deep breath, then sprung to his feet. “So how do you like it, King?”  

I yanked off my boots, dropped my pants. “I’ll show you. Get undressed.” 

Prince stripped and I regretted the command. Without saying a word, his body, lean and full of youth, shamed my soft chest, my flabby gut, my marshmallow derrière. Christ, I’d become my old man. “No!”  

“No what, King?” 

Sweat hid under my hairline, ran like sideburns past my ears, dribbled down my forehead. I glanced at the door. He’d be coming home from work soon. Don’t you love me, Daddy? My hands flew to my head. “No!” My son’s voice? My own?

I recoiled from the bed. Two steps and my back was to the wall. 

“Hey, man. It’s all right.” He took a small step forward, tested the ground for explosives. “It’s all right, King. No one’s going to hurt you.”

My vision blurred. My son came toward me, whispering, Don’t you love me, Daddy? My son morphed into me, I was approaching my father, whispering, begging, Don’t you love me, Daddy?

Love you? How could I love a queer like you? Was it Daddy talking or was it me? “You disgust me.”

“Okay,” Prince said. “If this is how you like it.” 

“Like it?” How could a man like having a homo for a son? 

“I can get you to like it.” 

In one step Prince was in front of me, pressing his bare chest against mine. Pressing an erection next to mine, crushing me against the wall, whispering in my ear. “You’ll like this.” His fingers grabbed my hard, oozing cock. Christ, I couldn’t help myself. I moaned and threw my head against the wall, arching my chin to the ceiling. Prince tightened his grasp and my knees went weak. I pressed against the wall to stay on my feet. 

“Yeeeeessssss,” I called to the ceiling. 

Prince licked my chest, sucked on a nipple, dragged his tongue down the center of my body. He took me into his mouth, working his tongue and suction in harmony, his hands crawling around my ass, kneading and pressing and probing. I spread my knees like a cowboy posting a horse. Oh, god. Why’d I stay away for so long? The kid was so fucking good. I grabbed Prince’s head and thrust it harder against me, pushing myself deeper into the kid’s throat. I came quickly, shuddered and shrunk in the kid’s mouth. My back traced the wall to the floor. 

Prince lowered himself with me until we were both lying on the small floor, not even caring about the last time it was vacuumed. Prince propped himself on an elbow, pulled a hair off his tongue, wiped the sweat off my temple with his fingertips. “That wasn’t so hard to like, now, was it?” 

I closed my eyes and pulled in a big draft of air. I could have said no, but the word caught in my throat. 

“Good,” Prince said. “You want to give it in the ass now? Or you want me to give it to you?” 

I jerked myself to a sit. “You think I can’t come more than once, kid? You think I’m not the man you are?” 

Prince rolled to his feet. “I didn’t say that.” 

“Hand me your belt.” 

Prince cocked his head, arched an eyebrow.

I stood and pulled on my pants, zipped and buttoned them. I stuck out my hand. “Now.”

Prince pulled the belt from the loops of his pants. “This’ll cost extra.”

“I know what it’ll cost. Now hand it to me. Bend over that dresser. I’ll show you what I want to do with your ass.” I folded the belt in half. With the double ends in both hands, I snapped the leather twice. 

I could tell Prince tried not to jump, but he couldn’t help himself. I tucked the belt under my armpit and freed my hands. With both palms I rubbed Prince’s bare ass, separating his crack, pushing it together, feeling the softness, losing myself in the kneading, my eyes closing, my head tilting up, extending my neck, feeling the heat of his skin, hearing Daddy ask, So is this what you do with those boys?

“You want sounds?” Prince asked.

I bent and kissed the center of each ass cheek, a hard, deep kiss. When I stood, I told him, “Not a sound. Not a whimper. Be a big boy and I’ll go easier on you. Show Daddy you’re not really a faggot.” 

Zzzwhack. I slapped the belt across the kid’s butt. The soft skin vibrated with the assault.

The kid grabbed the handle of a drawer. Said nothing. 

Zzzwhack. 

A welt erupted along the trail of the first strike. The mark of the second strap was instantaneous. 

“Turn over.” 

“This’ll cost you an extra three bills. You got it with you, man?”

“Man. Strange word coming from you, queer.” 

The kid stood, his eyes moist with unspoken pain. “I think you should go.”

“I’m going nowhere.” I snapped the belt. “I need you to show Daddy you’re a man. A goddamn fucking man. My genes didn’t create any fucking fags.” I pointed to the bed. “Screw her!”

The kid shot a look at the bed. “Scenes’ll cost you another two. And I don’t run a tab.”

I raised the belt and he flinched. I slapped the leather on the bed. “I told you to shut up, girl.” I stepped to the bed, made sure her hands and feet were still tied. “You ought to be proud of yourself, girl, proving your brother’s no sissy.” I pointed to the bed again. “If you want to belong to this family, prove you’re really a man. Fuck her.”

The kid’s eyes roamed over his sister’s naked body. His beautiful twin’s body. He stood there staring at her. Just staring at her. I lifted the belt and he inched his way onto the bed. 

“I’m watching you, boy. You fuck her good, then spread her legs and pleasure her till she cries out for more. You hear that girl? If he pleasures you, you better cry out for more. And if you beg for more, by God, he’d better deliver. You don’t cry out for more, I’ll know him for the fag he is. He’ll no longer be your brother. He’ll no longer be my son.” 

I glared at the kid’s crotch. “Get it up, boy, and show your sister what a man can do.”

I instructed the kid how to fuck the girl, at times demanding he pull his torso back so I could see his penis enter her. At times, I’d stick my finger inside her to demonstrate where the kid’s tongue should go. 

The girl cried out and I shouted, “Again.” She cried out for more and I ordered, “Again.” She cried out and—it wasn’t a cry of delight. Her face glistened with tears. Blood colored the sheets, from her wrists, from her ankles, from her—

The kid lay limp and exhausted beside her. 

“What have you done?” I grabbed the kid’s shoulder and pushed him off the bed. “What the hell have you done to your sister? You think fucking a virgin will make you a man? You’re sick, boy. I can’t bear to look at you.” I rushed to my jacket and hauled out my .38. 

The kid backed behind a chair and glanced at the door. “Easy, man. I didn’t do anything to anybody’s sister. I fucked the damn mattress is all, doing what you told me. Now put that thing down.”

Look what you made me do. Why’d you do that, Daddy? I was floating. I couldn’t let Daddy get away with—Daddy says God’s got to punish queers. I was Daddy. I pulled the trigger. The kid, me, Daddy slumped to the floor. Red or crimson or scarlet spouted from his pale chest. Color, not a difference to make a difference. 

The gun burned with fever, its sweat made it slide in my hand. Had it made a sound? I hadn’t heard anything. I listened now. No footsteps running in the corridor. No siren. 

Holy shit.

What had I done? 

I shoved the gun into my jacket pocket, poked my arms into my shirt sleeves. 

God’s gonna punish you. I smacked my temple with an open palm. “Shut up, old man. You crazy, fucking old man.” Christ. I needed to get out of here. 

I pressed my heels down hard inside my boots. Pocketed the money on the nightstand. My money.

Blood spun in my ears like in a centrifuge. My mind whirled, my thoughts gyrated. But I had to think straight. Ha. Daddy’d have a laugh at that one: me, thinking straight. 

Billy Ray would know what to do, how to clean up the mess. He wouldn’t want a spotlight on his business. Besides, helping me would be like earning a get-out-of-jail-free pass. 

I made a quick sweep of the mess. Prince’s crumpled, nude body had stopped gushing blood. I took his shirt and covered his privates. My hands were vibrating like a goddam dildo, but I gently closed his eyes. “Cradle this young prince in loving arms, Lord. It’s about fucking time he had a good father.”

Art

“The problem with art is that not everyone seems capable of appreciating it.”

Vogel listened to what the curator said. He nodded in agreement.

“It can’t all be pretty pictures,” he said.

“Or mere representations. A camera will always do better at that game,” said the curator.

“Or a 3D printer,” Vogel added.

“Yes, of course, for statuary,” said the curator. “And yet we still yearn for the simple, the organic. That is one of the reasons I appreciate what Udermeyer does. He and his imitators combine the natural, the simple, the organic and the theoretical. Their work can be both representational and complex and elusive.”

“I have seen many of Udermeyer’s pieces. He has done realistic portraits and busts, but also works that are more of a study of geometry.”

“He teaches us about life,” the curator said. “Both its beginning and end. He does it with shapes, smells and textures. We learn to overcome any initial feelings of disgust, any urge to regurgitate, and become aware of the intrinsic beauty to be found in the worst possible materials.”

“He certainly is remarkable,” Vogel said. “How many years did he spend training his bowels?”

“I read an interview in which Udermeyer stated it took him fifteen years to develop his technique.”

“Really? I heard it took him much longer.”

“Well, who is to really know?” the curator said. “He worked on his art for years without notice. He was nearly sixty before he had his first showing at a major gallery. “

Vogel thought about this before replying.

“There can be benefits to obscurity. It provides an artist with an opportunity to explore, develop and blossom without being poisoned by outside forces. They can stay on their own course, become something truly unique and new. Too many artists find the spotlight too soon. It happens much too early. I blame social media in part, and the curiosity people tend to have for anything new.”

“They do seem to have a brief moment before getting crushed by the critics or getting corrupted and turning into a machine that stamps out more or less the same thing over and over again.”

“Money and fame, ” Vogel said. “These are the gifts of the marketplace.”

“The marketplace giveth and the marketplace taketh away,” said the curator.

“Do they even get fifteen minutes anymore?”

“Come on. You know they all get more than fifteen minutes. It is after they have worn out their welcome that we wish they had wasted much less of our time.”

The two walked in silence viewing more of the exhibit. Vogel felt fortunate to have been allowed an early glimpse before the formal opening of the museum’s retrospective on Udermeyer’s work. It was on of the benefits of being a major benefactor of the museum and a well known collector of Udermeyer’s art. At the curator’s request, Vogel had loaned several statuettes and a few small canvases to the museum for the special exhibit. Vogel smiled whenever he came upon one of his loaned pieces during his private tour. He liked how the placards displayed his name prominently along with the name of the artist. Vogel had always loved art, but had never had much talent for it. This was his way to be part of the art world.

“I heard he experimented a lot with diet over the years,” Vogel said.

“From what I understand that is true. What he consumed depended on the piece he envisioned. For some he needed the color and texture supplied by carrots and corn. For others he needed to eat something else such as oatmeal or sardines.”

“It still amazes me what he was able to do with his ass. It had to have been very difficult. I tried to imitate him without success. All my attempts ended in a mess.”

“I must confess I was once tempted to try Udermeyer’s methods myself. It  did not end well. Udermeyer is several levels beyond the artists in the sixties who used to squirt paint into their anuses then squat over a canvas. I doubt anyone will ever be able match his success, let alone surpass him, using similar methods.”

“Udermeyer is one of a kind,” Vogel agreed. “A true master.”

“I am sure his version of the Mona Lisa would have impressed Da Vinci,” said the curator.

“Michelangelo would have appreciated his take on David,” said Vogel.

“Udermeyer proved in his middle period that he could compete with the old masters with canvas, murals, and large statues.”

“Yes,” said Vogel. “I still enjoy viewing Udermeyer’s works from that period. Still, I have always been more impressed by his more impressionistic, almost surrealistic work from his most recent period.”

“If we are talking about personal preferences,” the curator said. “I have always had a soft spot for some of his early works. Many are small, often no larger than the size of a palm, but what he does is revolutionary.”

“How could I disagree,” said Vogel. “Some of Udermeyer’s early works are rather spectacular when you think about it. I used to wonder how could he possibly form a perfect sphere like that, or a cylinder, or a cube? I know I could never contort my sphincter like he could.”

The curator nodded.

“Back then he was developing the building blocks that would help him later create much larger works.”

“You can see the future in his Statue of Liberty that is on loan from my collection,” said Vogel. “It is no more than seven inches tall, yet has so much detail.”

The curator smiled and shook his head. 

The curator said, “It is so hard to believe. Udermeyer insists it came out that way all in one shot.”

“It is remarkable what he was able to do.”

“It is unbelievable what he is still able to do now. Age ninety, a colon cancer survivor. He had a colostomy but somehow still manages to produce art from his stoma.”

Vogel laughed, “Yet some people still refer to his art as nothing but shit. I have heard people say that this entire Udermeyer exhibit is just a  pile of shit.” 

“What fools.”

“Philistines.”

“Yet they are right in a way,” said the curator. “It is all shit, at least in base substance.”

“Yes it is,” Vogel said. “But it is so much more than that. You could call it ethereal.”

“I could not agree with you more.”

Crazy Fucking Rats and Ass-Ended Cadillacs 

I’d been in seclusion for a few months or more in my haphazardly constructed shack in the dump; the stench and vermin were unbearable, keeping most ass-fucks from ever coming around, save for a few asshole scavengers who visited when the time came to cannibalize the dump for anything that would fetch a few dimes. I didn’t feel comfortable with those creepy fucks roaming around at night; so I started shooting off my gun and hanging gruesome voodoo dolls covered in butchered rats; there’d be no quarter in my land of the wretched. The corpses that caught some of my bullets were easy to dispose of, being at the dump already they just sank beneath the bird shit and the top layer of garbage like quicksand.   

I often wondered what was more fucked; a recluse lowered to the status of having to live in a dump, or a recluse choosing to live in a dump and committing homicide to defend it, anyway most people steered clear of my shit kingdom and that was really the point. I needed to write, to bring words together in any discernable context; but I had writers block, or as I referred to it; an ass backwards divine intervention with extreme malice delivered by sodomy, I was convinced that some god or demon had sucked out my creative machinery, most likely through my ass, but I never discounted the possibilities of extraction through other orifices.

Everything I wrote read like it had been shit out of somethings ass or on all accounts an indecipherable abomination to the entire history of writing; I drank the local moonshine which probably wasn’t helping.

The locals called the dump the “Ivory Mountain” and told stories to their children about elephants going there to die. “Jesus Fuck” it was completely white from the years of seagull shit fossilized and covering it like a blanket, and no self-respecting elephant I’ve ever met would come within a mile of this shithole.

The dump was old and never used due to the troublesome fossilized bird shit that had through some process become explosive and in the wretched heat little bursts of fire blew up skyward without warning, which made navigating the terrain close to impossible. This and the fact that the dump was covering an antiquated mine field, left me preferably quite alone and undisturbed. The shack itself was constructed of many strange things but the main super-structure keeping the whole thing standing were four Cadillac’s standing on end; asses dug in the ground, they were like skyscrapers, solid and triumphant like those sculptures on Easter Island, evoking a guardian like nuance. The roof was a big square piece of corrugated green plastic and roared like fuck through the rainy season which lasted eleven months out of the year; my chair and desk were gracefully cannibalized from another abandoned “caddy” using chainsaws and pickaxes, I had the typewriter bolted on the dashboard with a pea green long front seat behind it. The shack was lit with dollar store flamingo lights powered by a haphazardly ill-advised dangerous connection to a few car batteries; the rest of the interior design was made up of coolers I found around the dump stacked up against my Cadillac walls, everything I had was stored inside them, down here monsoon season shared the same seasons as the rainy seasons so the coolers had to be completely fucking water-proof and they had to fucking float in any flood, demonic insurrection of water monsters, or large tectonic movements.   

I smoked the local cheap brand of cigarettes that I believe actually contained some species of animal shit, which gave them a pungent but bold and pleasant aromatic flavor and smell; the local “shine” cost pennies and really fuck-assed your mind due to its hallucinatory effects and one of its more gruesome ingredients being gasoline. The smack habit started not long after I arrived when I realized that I was a recluse living in a dump and the fact that I had orchestrated every bad decision that put me there; there really was no “down” from that point and certainly nothing to propel me upwards, onwards, or out of that fucking dump.

My prescription meds were long gone and the only pharmaceuticals available were the recreational kind; needless to say I was on a hayride to hell with my mental illnesses creeping back in and completely laying rot to any good decision making skills I may have had, I was desperate and my brain was literally eating itself.

The voices in my head had started to wake; luckily, they mostly argued with each other, leaving me out of their existential bullshit, but they were pissing me off all the same, and the smack was doing shit fuck all in that regard. What I needed was P.C.P.; now that would fix me up all right ways. There was a mini little shanty town about a mile from the dump; which I was previously trying avoid, but when that monkey on your back throws you into a choke hold, well, you’ve got to feed the fucker.

I put on my most dapper attire; shit stained Bermuda shorts, my FUCK THE WORLD t-shirt, and my camouflage bucket hat, I had no shoes as they floated away during the last storm, however I didn’t discount the possibility that they were taken by the rats, they’d been gathering in organized groups since I arrived and I suspected that they were conspiring against me, now that would be an earth moving clusterfucking massacre that nobody would walk away from. As it goes for now, I’d added shoes to my shopping list, some bullets would be useful as well, and a few sticks of dynamite, the sensible thing would be to hoard munitions, as I had little experience in vermin warfare. I made out for my grocery run and the voices in my head were beginning to address me; even though I explained that any dialogue would not be advantageous for them or me at this particular time, they never fucking listened, they were self-involved fuck-asses, and it was my goddamn brain that they were ass-fucking, they were squatters at best. Man; did we get into it, by the time I reached the town I was screaming bloody murder and they weren’t making any fucking sense, they were all talking at once, one was suicidal and wept through the whole ordeal, one was screaming at that one, calling him wimp little pussy, and it went on and on and on. 

If I couldn’t get my hands on some P.C.P.; I was going back for a do-it-yourself lobotomy in the dump. I crept up to the main strip that had only one bar and that was it; I noticed that it was also a grocery store, hardware store, lots of fishing and tackle shit, and a whole lot of bad ass, noticeably armed motherfuckers, just hanging around drunk, or on some fucking crazy shit, with their eyes just bugged the fuck out of their sockets; obviously I’d come to the right place.

I found flip flops; cheap rusty bullets and sat down for a beer. I was casing the joint for any salesmen baring the fruits I was in desperate need of; if they were anywhere, they were here, but I wasn’t attracting any business at all, until a waitress took my ear and said, “If you’re lookin, see what’s cookin, dump man”. Jesus fuck man! Was I the talk of the fucking town now? I’ve never seen any of these creeps before, but I guess they’ve been watching me, I wondered what they knew, none of them looked like they could string two words together, fuck, they’d have trouble with one from what I was seeing.

Let’s go check out what’s “cookin”. I discerned from the cryptic words I’d received, that the kitchen was where I could find some bumpable product. Aside from being the most wretched, disease infested, blood-soaked demonic cookery I’ve ever set eyes on; their chef was a giant bunny rabbit, not some guy in a fucking bunny outfit, a goddamn human sized bunny/rabbit/hare thing. In all living fuck; what in goddamn hell was going on? I thought I’d seen some really fucked up shit man, but this was the motherfucking topper on the proverbial cake of shit sideways clusterfucking madness. 

I decided to be really casual about the whole thing; the truth was that if I didn’t get some P.C.P. soon those motherfuckers in my head were going to take over and I’d be completely ass-fucked. I addressed him as “chef”, and he came back with “Hey! Aren’t you the dump guy”, was I wearing a fucking sign on me or something? I came here to be anonymous, not the best fucking show in town, “yeah; I’m the dump guy” I confessed with obvious frustration, “what can I do you for?”, fuck! He was a pretty fucking chipper bunny guy, “I’m in desperate need of some fucking angel dust, and for the love of god, please tell me you’ve got some”.

He motioned for me to follow him out back; and I enthusiastically skipped along after him, stepping through a door marked no exit into a back yard of sorts. It was jam packed fucking full of what some may call a “how to begin a guerrilla war starters kit”; there were two tanks, an Apache helicopter, crates on top of crates of guns, bazookas, ammunition, grenades and land mines. “Jesus fuck dude! You planning for a rainy day?” apparently he was known infamously for being the guy who could get anything for anybody, fucking fast and fucking cheap. “So, what about that P.C.P.?”, “you’ll have to give me a minute” the bunny man strolled over to a hole, dug in the yard behind some crates and dove in, about three minutes later he crawled out with a bag the size of a potato sack and asked how much I wanted. “I’ll take the lot, and by the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any dynamite, would you?”Hee motioned to a crate the size of a couch and said I could take the whole thing as it was apparently hard to unload because of all the new advancements in the mass destruction industries.

He went inside and grabbed a couple beers for us and sparked up a zeppelin sized dube; the shit was some super high grade weed, and after the first haul I was spinning all Disneyland style. He enquired about my curious arrival a few months ago and choice of living arrangements; I explained that I was a writer of sorts and required privacy; not only for creative exploration but also because I was bat-shit fucking crazy and a danger to all those around me, passing over the joint he gave an me a subtle understanding glance.

I asked him about my surprising infamy; as I thought I’d been very careful in my attempts to be generally unnoticed, having no contact with anyone, save for those douche-bag scavengers I’d murdered in the dump a few weeks ago. He explained that this was a very small place; and most of the people here were hiding from the authorities, disgruntled countries, mobsters, aliens, their wives, or husbands or both, most had prices on their heads from ripping off ass-fucks they shouldn’t have. So, everybody knows immediately about any newcomers; in fact, you’d have been fucking butchered within days of your arrival if it wasn’t for your constant screaming and choice of habitat, everyone knew you must be crazy as fuck, and therefor presented no danger. 

We sat and got abominably stoned off the bunny man’s grass; sucking down a few more beers, and bumping P.C.P. It was a good old time; and I really appreciated the pleasure of his conversation, but there was still that proverbial elephant strolling around the yard amongst the tanks and assorted munitions. I was fucking dying to ask him what in all living fuck he was, I had a lot of extremely surreal ideas rolling around my head, but I’d learned not to trust my presumptions because I was cosmically fucking deranged, and most of my ideas led directly into cryptic misadventures that couldn’t be undone.  

Finally, at last the elephant was poked, or acknowledged, or evidenced, or tipped over, however the fucking phrase goes it went. The bunny man brought it out in thanking me for treating him like any other douchebag should be treated; he started out saying I guess you’ve been wondering, and fuck yes, I’d been wondering.

As the story goes; before the munitions business he’d been a scientist of sorts working in the field of dimensional shifting, which was a debunked science at the time and only a few wacko fucks were actually involved in those type of studies. He’d become ostracized from the scientific community; he was defunded and became the punchline of many unoriginal jokes. Faced with bankruptcy and having to move his lab into his basement; depression set in, as well as a very expensive cocaine habit which followed in divorce and the loss of his kids, he continued his work with what little he had, haphazardly defying all health bylaws in storing radioactive materials that were integral to his work. In acquiring some of the more dangerous materials; he was forced to go through some back channels, which forced him to associate with some very shadowy people, and it was one of those shadowy people that offered to help him in his endeavors, but it came with a very concerning ethical dilemma. This guy offered up tons of fucking cash; and a shitload of land to build up a new state of the art laboratory, all he had to do was come up with a genocidal size explosive device that could be detonated with absolutely no sound and no residual evidence. Apparently, he jumped all over it; the funding came in, the lab was built on a giant piece of farmland, far away from any peering eyes, they even brought in some farm animals to complete the disguise.

By this point in the conversation I was pretty ass-fucked on the P.C.P. so the science behind building this device was fucking lost on me; but basically the bunny man found a way to separate the physics of this explosion, in that he could someway move the sound into another dimension when the fucker went off, as far as the evidence goes, he said that the aftermath would be so goddamn radioactive that it would take about a hundred years for anyone to get close enough to take any readings without melting into toxic fucking goo.

He knew he’d hit the nail on the head; but there’d have to be a test, admittedly at this point he’d been doing so much cocaine that his nose cavities were in fast decay, so he did overlook a few details in his calculations, and being the first person to ever open a dimensional rift, details were sort of important. During his research he was being visited by a curious wild rabbit that he’d feed from time to time and eventually adopted as a pet, he said it was good company as cocaine makes one talk a lot of shit a lot of the time, and the rabbit seemed to listen, and from his perspective completely understand everything he was saying.

Finally, the day came for the test and a few of his benefactors rolled on up with gleeful anticipation; the bunny man had cordoned off a circle of about a half mile radius and placed a small container of this gruesome cocktail of inter-dimensional whatever the fuck in the center. They all got behind a makeshift shelter with a big plastic 5inch thick window; the bunny man was holding his little friend at the time so he handed off the detonator to one of the others. 

Apparently, this was the time that the small details manifested into not so small details, the little bit of what the fuck blasted a hole in the ground about five miles deep and incinerated everything within ten miles of the explosion. However; the test was actually successful, given that there was absolutely no sound at all, the shelter was completely gone and so were his benefactors, as well as all life, structures and every fucking thing around him, it seemed to have just vanished, except for him, he spent about an hour looking for his rabbit without success before retreating into a bunker he’d dug out in case of emergencies, this is where he finally realized after looking into a mirror about forty or fifty times, that his not so little cocktail of catastrophes had somehow fused him and his little rabbit together, creating what was sitting beside me: the bunny man. He never figured out what actually happened; like why he and the rabbit fused and survived, “survived” however, in this particular case was a somewhat abstract usage of the word, he’d really fucking shit the bed on the dose of the experimental explosive and now with some of his benefactors “disappeared” he’d have to get the fuck out of dodge before the rest of his benefactors got wind of the clusterfuck that had just occurred, he was unable to collect anything formally on the surface as there really was no surface to speak of, so he grabbed whatever he could from the bunker, which included an ass-fucking amount of uncut cocaine, a few notes and a small amount of the cocktail he’d created. He hitched a ride to the nearest circus; and eventually ended up here. 

I had to compliment the fellow on his reintegration into society; if you could call this fucking snake pit a society, I never asked his name, mostly because I didn’t give a fuck and really wanted to get back to the dump before the rats gained too much ground. I asked what I owed him for the drugs and dynamite; he said I could just take it, probably because I sat there for a fucking hour listening to his bullshit, which he could have summarized down to about a few minutes, in fact I believe I may have slept through some of the more crucial details. Fuck him anyways; I’ve got enough douche- bags inside my head squawking shit about shit-fuck all, and I’ve had enough of bizarre bunny man origin stories for one day. I paid the fucker a decent sum despite his gracious offer; I didn’t want any fuck-asses coming down to the dump asking for favors, so I smiled and went on my merry fucking way.

By the time I got back to the dump I was right fuck assed on P.C.P. The dump was downhill from the town/store thing; and because of the rain I was actually able to ride my supplies all the way, unfortunately, I couldn’t steer or stop, so the crash following the ride turned out to be rather gruesome and painful, and would probably have lasting medical effects. After unloading my booty; I had a good look around at the dump, it looked different in some way, it was hard to see as it was raining shit buckets and blowing like some furious titan fart, but if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, as they usually did, I could make out a fuck-load of very small tower looking things that had sprung up in my absence. Those fucking rats: they’d built watch towers all around my fucking shack, this was obviously a prelude to a full on insurrection, they had eyes on me now and I didn’t fucking like it. As the rain began to calm I could see the motherfuckers on top of these goddamn things, looking at me through tiny little binoculars, where they got hold of the miniature technology I’ve no clue and didn’t give one fuck, all I knew was that my previous paranoia was in fact a realistic first strike troop movement, these seemingly small brained nonconsequential little fuck heads had developed into a comprehensive fully sentient war mongering culture. Even the voices in my head were silenced in a full on conscientious grouped focus on what lay before us; any further movement of those little fucks would put me into an irrevocable situation with no way out.

It was going to be bloody; and massive destruction would ensue, but now was the time, I knew full well that I could do very little to save my life, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to be taken down by a full on rat attack, I was on enough P.C.P. to hospitalize about five elephants, and had enough dynamite to level the whole dump, with that, the fire bursts, and whatever mines were still active under this shit heap, we were all going down in frightful bloody fucking carnage, and no one, rat or human, was going to escape the wrath of the guy living in the dump.                          

Lancelot of the Mart

From the register John watched the girl circling the aisles of the Sunshine Food Mart, biting her thumb as she glanced at him. He figured she was waiting for the line to go down before she approached, but she didn’t have a basket, and in fact she wasn’t carrying anything at all. Did she want to talk? The morning rush began to taper off, as the construction workers, bros, and commuters bought their sandwiches, Red Bulls, and coffees.

He smiled at her a couple of times, to apologize for the short-staffing, and to show her he was harmless. Just a middle-aged guy, medium height, thinning hair, who found himself running a register. Maybe she was looking for condoms or lube, and didn’t want to talk to Jake in the deli. For one thing, Jake was always busy back there, and for another he looked (and, truthfully, was) kind of pervy.

But 9:30 on a Tuesday morning wasn’t usually when girls came in for that stuff. Usually Friday or Saturday afternoon, before their dates showed up to take them to bar hop on Boyle Street. This girl didn’t look like she was going on a date. Quite the opposite. She looked anti-feminine, like she was doing her best to hide any girlish part of her. Baggy sweatpants, too-long hoodie, hair under a cap, no makeup. Maybe she should have worn makeup, because her face was red and puffy, and every few minutes she wiped her eyes with a sleeve.

John decided, a girl in trouble. He wondered, as he almost always did when a young girl came in, about Cassie. He told himself, as he almost always did when he thought about Cassie, that this time he really would get out the email address Melissa had written out for him on that sticky note, and ask her about their daughter.

He finished ringing up Nora Rae, who came in every couple of days to spend her social security on scratch-offs and smokes, and then the front of the store was empty. The girl looked around, took a breath, and bounced to get herself moving. John gave her his warmest you-can-trust-me smile when she walked up.

“Morning, miss, I’m sorry we’ve been busy, what can I do for you?”

She smiled in the way of young girls, who smile automatically to make things ok, but her eyes held nothing but fear. She scrunched her hands in the long sleeves and leaned forward. “Do you guys carry, uh, the, uh, morning after pill?” Her voice was shallow, and husky from the crying, and she flamed crimson in embarrassment.

John’s heart sank. After the last election the state had essentially outlawed abortion, and he’d heard the Planned Parenthood clinic had shut down a few months ago. Sure he knew that girls sometimes needed help and couldn’t get it. He just never thought they would show up at his register and have to ask a wretched old fool like him for something so intimate. He felt helpless and useless, as he always did when Cassie came home in tears. He remembered her look, just like this girl: do something, just please help me!

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he whispered back. “We don’t carry anything like that. Just the condoms and stuff.”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said. He hoped she wouldn’t start crying in front of him. “Um, what about–” She pulled her phone out of the sleeve and looked at some page she had found. “What about, like, pennyroyal or licorice root? I mean, you’ve got some stuff…” She trailed off, and we both looked at the little display of aspirin and bullshit hangover cures.

John wanted to reach out and touch her hand, but if she was looking for a morning-after pill at least he wasn’t so stupid to think that a man’s touch would help.

“No, no, we’re just a food mart. Half of this stuff is probably blackmarket and expired anyway.” He tried a laugh, and she gave a quick half-smile. “What about the organic market? They’ve got a bunch of stuff in their wellness aisle, or whatever they call it. Maybe you could find something there?”

She seemed to shrink even further into the hoodie. “That’s where my mom works,” she said. “I can’t, I just can’t.” She looked around the little mart, looking for an answer that wasn’t there. A tear slid down her face and she absently wiped it away with the sleeve.

“Maybe your boyfriend can help, maybe he could find what you need in the wellness aisle. Does your mom know him?”

“Oh, she knows him,” the girl said with a sudden fury. “She’s married to him.”

She fled to the front door and parked herself on the yellow metal bench out front. She wrapped her arms around her shins and stared at the cemetery across the road.

John stood there, paralyzed with all the old feelings that came up like an unflushable turd. Useless, stupid, wishy-washy, a failure. He wanted to do something, so he brought out a can of green tea and set it beside her on the bench. She didn’t acknowledge him and he went back inside to keep the register ringing.

He noticed that she had taken off the hoodie, with nothing but a purple sports bra underneath. John didn’t like that. A food mart with two pumps of off-brand gasoline was no place for a slim young girl to be showing herself. Sure enough, around lunchtime a pickup rolled in and two dudes piled out. Each one eyeballed the girl as they walked in and shared a wolfish grin as the doors closed behind them.

They bought chips, jalapeno jerky, dip, and a twelver of Natty Light. As John rang them up the tall one asked, “Yo, you know that tasty bit of sweetmeat out front?” The other snorted.

John flushed, in the spotlight, and he stammered out, “Oh, she’s-” my daughter, just say she’s my daughter “-a friend, she likes to hang out here.”

“A friend, huh, that’s nice.”

John nodded, feeling better, now that he was doing something, helping.

“So, what’s your friend’s name?”

In the face of John’s humiliated silence the tall one smiled scorn, taking a bully’s pleasure in catching out John in his sad little lie. He dropped exactly one penny in the change plate and sauntered outside. 

It was the smaller one, with his blonde hair in a ponytail, who started to chat up the girl. John thought, C’mon guys, she’s only fourteen or fifteen. But they kept smiling and laughing, and pretty soon so was she. When she offered the blonde guy a drink of her tea, Cassie’s face finally pushed John out the door.

“Hey, miss, uh, I can call and get you a ride, anywhere you need, no problem.”

She didn’t meet his gaze, but the tall dude didn’t give her a chance to take the offer.

“Thanks cashier-man, ah, ‘John’, John-boy,” he smirked. “Yeah, no, Maddie says she wants to take a ride with us. We’ll take her to where she needs to go.”

When John didn’t move he stepped forward hard. Youth and arrogance pushed, the familiar bloom of fear pulled, and John was back in the mart.

“Is that true, Maddie, you want to go with them?” he managed, but the door shut in his face.

They all climbed into the truck, with Maddie in the middle. Someone said something and the guys laughed, but Maddie did not. They drove off.

At home, after his shift, John thought she might have looked back at him as they drove away, then decided she hadn’t. Why would she?

Steamboat Willie Vomits Rainbows at the Dick Sucking Factory

What is the measure of a mouse? Is it in a long lost heyday revisited in mind and diction daily? Is it a willingness to suck a bag of dicks to keep a roof over his head, however tenuously? Is it in a belly full of jism after a long day at the factory? Only God can judge.

Steamboat Willie awoke in black and white, on the couch, to the sound of Felix T. Cat coming in through the front door.

“Wake up, Mickey. I’ve got a present for you.”

The air was thin with stale smoke. Willie sat up and grabbed a Pall Mall. “I told you my name is Steamboat Willie.”

“You’ve gotta quit living in the past, man. You had one role 40 years ago. Let it go. Besides, everyone calls you Mickey.”

Steamboat Willie lit the cigarette, dangling by the grip of his lips. “It’s hard to be nobody again after being somebody.” He took a long, regretting drag from his cigarette. “Just a point of mockery in my near-feral state. I want to be Willie. But perhaps I’m just Mickey.”

Felix sat on the chair near Mickey. “Those residual checks can barely pay for your smokes anymore. It’s time to give up the ghost and think about your next move.”

Mickey said, “I don’t know…”

“Here. Stick out your tongue. This will make you feel better.”

Felix was always bringing in various health tinctures, so Mickey didn’t think anything of it. Felix dropped 10 fat drops onto Mickey’s tongue.

“What was that?”

“It’s some really high quality LSD. You’re going to trip for days.”

Mickey’s eyes widened, “What! I can’t trip now! I have work in 30 minutes!”

Felix lit a joint and laughed, “Yeah well, I wouldn’t recommend going in. Your job sucks. Literally. Go be a fry cook or something. Then you’ll only have to suck metaphorical dicks.”

Mickey got up and started pacing. He resembled a locomotive, pacing and smoking. “This pays better than a fry cook. And I’m just two months away from getting healthcare. Then I can get surgery for my fucked up jaw.”

“Your jaw is only fucked up because you suck dicks all day for your job. And you hate it. You hate sucking dicks.”

“I can’t believe you dosed me, dude. That’s pretty fucked up.”

Felix toked and choked as he said, “Just don’t go in, homie. We can have an arts and crafts day.”

Minnie’s voice bellowed from the other end of the house, “Are you getting high before work again?” She came out of her bedroom, fully bathed and professionally dressed. “I’m tired of covering for you, Mickey. I got you this job and you’re making me look bad.”

Mickey looked ashamed, “Yeah, I don’t think I can go in today. Felix dosed me with 10 hits of liquid acid.”

Minnie said, “That’s your choice, but if you don’t go into work, you can find somewhere else to sleep tonight. I’m tired of this shit, Mickey.” She didn’t yell. It was more of an exasperated tone.

Greener Pastures: Cooking Excerpts From the Apocalypse

When I was young, I dreamed of living in a dystopian society. An eye in the sky or androids created to serve man until they revolted and enslaved us. Or even a moon car, for Christ’s sake.

How about being a survivor of an apocalypse?

Back then, I was a teenager. We had things called film and television. It may have altered my perception of reality somewhat. It looked and sounded awesome when I was young. Driving around in rusted cars and on bad-ass chopper motorcycles in the desert looked cool. All the while sword-fighting with cannibal vampire mutants. Who ended up simply being nothing more than misunderstood beings. In the end, all they wanted was to be loved. That fantasy would have been amazing. Just thinking about all that sweet mutant-cannibal-vampire love still gets me going.

Nobody is entirely sure what caused the apocalypse, but at least we know what didn’t. We know it wasn’t a virus or bacterium. Scientists had concluded this months before the world gave up its goods and turned to shit. We are also almost positive it wasn’t some mad scientist’s lab experiment gone awry. It wasn’t angry monkey rage, but acts of God are still on the table. Most survivors think The Earth just decided it was time for a culling. All we do know is that it happened in a short period of time. In just over one week, most of civilization’s food became tainted. The meat had become inedible by humans, and animals were no longer on the table.

After the Earth, God and a gaggle of angry monkey scientists rendered all the livestock inedible. We collectively had to make a change. For the ones that refused to adapt, things didn’t work out so well for them. It started with cattle, then rapidly jumped species. Not only were we unable to consume the meat, but the people who did quickly turned into something freakish and scary. Technically, they weren’t dead. We think science is up in the air, but “zombie” is still the name of choice.

It wasn’t contagious, but once you ate the meat, you got sick and died, then you came back. It took a while for people to believe that our livestock had become tainted. Entire groups of people thought it was a government conspiracy. One conceived to raise the price of food and gas. To strip us of our civil rights and take power away from the everyday human, but, alas, they were wrong, dead wrong. With death came zombies. With zombies came death. It had become the vicious cycle of un-dying life.

I have since endured being bitten, scratched, soaked and submerged in bogs of blood, brains, guts, and waste from zombies. Apart from dysentery, I was fine. Lots of water, a few stitches here and there, and lots of antibiotics did the trick. Nature has been making antibiotics forever. A bit of honey on a wound works wonders. It pulls moisture away from bacteria, causing the bacteria to get dehydrated and die off. It also works internally, so yes, we still keep bees. Soak some garlic in oil, and you have an extract. Which also works when applied externally. Thyme oil is for external use only. Do not ingest. I found that one out the hard way. Lavender oil kills bacteria. Oregano is also quite handy to have around. And finally, vinegar. It comes in handy for cleaning and disinfecting surfaces, and if you mix that with a bit of apple cider, voila, you have something to wash your hair. The same ingredients also work well in a soup, but I will address that momentarily.

As a person who loves to cook and, more often than not, cooks for the entire community, I have plenty of these ingredients and so much more, always on hand at a moment’s notice.

Now the world is ending, and it sucks. This much I now know to be true. How the world is ending is a waking nightmare. We messed with the planet’s ecosystem to the point of no return. Summer temperatures rose to deadly highs, and the winters dropped to subarctic conditions. But, it was Spring and Autumn that became the worst. Seasons’ rapidly changing weather system caused extreme polar vortexes to occur regularly. Not only did we get good old zombies, but the weather was havoc on our lives. The two seasons, Spring and Autumn, had turned. They are what we now refer to as “Touchdown Seasons.” Tornados were touching down all around the planet, and they were massive. At first, they had been hitting the usual belt areas, and now, with such drastic changes in temperature, they had become way more aggressive. They started hitting major metropolitan areas, wiping out entire cities in a few short days. It became commonplace to find body parts hundreds of miles away. And with body parts came the zombies. Touchdown Season was upon us on two fronts. The world was a cacophony of calamities. And now we, as its caretakers, were getting fired for our lacklustre performance.

Not that any of these situations isn’t a complete hell on earth, but on the right day, when the moon is in its proper house, and Mother Nature has thrown a banana peel on the ground, we get the perfect storm. Zombie, let me introduce you to Tornado. Tornado, meet Zombie. Gad zukes! There is no good way to put this, but it freaking sucks in “the bad way.” Granted, mostly the flying zombies get torn to shreds, but that turns into a different kind of a specific nightmare. We were constantly on the lookout for touchdown zombies. They would show up just about any place the wind blew. And boy, that wind knew how to blow like a drunken sorority girl with daddy issues. You have to look out for dust devils that pop up and sweep across the land. We call them decay devils. They consist of approximately ten or fifteen rot bags that will come through with minimal damage. Maybe a few limbs are missing after spinning around, but those bastards can still bite. Crazy Mary from Two Caves Away claims she once saw a Zombie Tsunami, but we all know that lady is off her rocker. I mean more so than the rest of us so-called “normals.” She is a hoot at parties.

We also get Zombie Falls. Stay away from the Niagara region. Dead Ramps are anything involving a river and a pile of flesh-eaters. I think they learnt that one from the ants. We also have Stink Towers. That’s when zombies pile on top of one another to scale a wall. They do this to get to all your tasty bits, no matter how small Crazy Mary tells us our bits are. Watching them fall over the other side can be fun if you are far enough away.

It’s almost needless to say, but humanity is in a pickle. (food pun intended.) With the population mostly annihilated, our food source consisted predominantly of stuff we could grow or forage. We still had quite a few books. There are a few survivors that could grow food on a large scale. But those first few winters had been brutal, and we struggled to hang on. Most of the remaining population hadn’t any clue about agriculture. Food was scarce, and humanity had crumbled. With only a few remaining survivors scattered around the globe. With limited forms of communication at hand, we were lucky to survive. At least we still had Ham radios, and it didn’t take long to figure out how to work them. One day at a time, I always say.

The apocalypse was indiscriminate in who it took from us. It didn’t matter if you were a farmer, doctor, lawyer or criminal. All were gone in a short amount of time. For most of us simpletons – even the most basic act of putting a seed in the ground was confounding. I mean, how hard could it be, right? You dig a hole and then do a crazy thing like dropping the seed in the freaking hole. Cover it up, add some water and voila, you have dinner. Not quite. Our numbers continued to dwindle. The culling was quickly transforming itself into an extinction-level event.

The planet started reverting to much greener pastures. For one, the air was clean and fresh when the deadheads were not around, toxins from burning fossil fuels, only the comforting scents of campfires. The skies held a deeper cast of azure blue as clouds whipped by at breakneck speeds. When the weather was calm, you could see green as far as one’s aging eye would take them. Planet Earth was a magnificent beauty and seemed a strange new land.

A dwindling population was on the brink of starving its way toward expiration. One morning, we were out foraging for insects and berries when we discovered a small child. Somehow, a zombie had gotten tangled up in barbed wire. It was still alive, attempting to feed on the young girl, who was just out of arm’s reach. We watched in astonishment as she fearlessly pulled chunks of flesh from the creature’s leg and happily filled her mouth. We watched her for days with no signs of any ill effects. And that’s when we realized. We could consume those that consumed us. It was a fundamental change. We scooped her up and brought her home with us. She lives in the cave with Crazy Mary and is the closest thing we have to a rockstar around these parts.

Even though the winters had become life-threateningly cold, we always looked forward to them. The tornadoes stopped, and almost all the zombies froze where they stood. Sudden tropospheric polar vortexes would drop temperatures almost instantaneously. The meat was ripe for the picking. Parties would go out for days and bring enough food back, lasting us for weeks. We had to be careful not to overfarm the livestock. After all, tomorrow is only a day away.

Summers sucked the worst if you had a sensitive nose, especially if all the zombies started hoarding together. Even though we, as a civilization, now had to live underground to protect ourselves from the elements. The stench of summer still made its way to us. Thick and rancid for months on end. The smell was so foul that it stuck to the papillae of your tongue. While also taking root in the back of your throat. It didn’t matter how much water or urine you drank. That stench was there all season because of the damned zombies. Thanks, tilted earth’s axis for the seasons.

The end of the Fall season drew near. While foraging for meat one bitter day, we noticed a band of white arcing across the sky. Earth now had a ring system. It didn’t take long to discover what it was. We had long incorrectly assumed the tornadoes had torn all the poor souls apart due to the carnage. But what we didn’t consider was this fact. Because of the massive size of these tornadoes, the humans that got sucked far enough into its eye had jettisoned out into the icy, unforgiving arms of outer space. Unfortunately, the billions of souls ejected into the stratosphere are frozen and locked in a low earth orbit. Forever to circle the earth as a reminder of how we, as a civilization, had messed things up. “Rings and Things” have become a term nowadays for someone who makes monumental mistakes.

So here I am, stuck in this tree-hugging hellhole of a world where everything is as beautiful as a postcard. (Sarcasm is still the highest form of comedy.) Now I’ve always got dirt under my fingernails and nothing to watch on the old boob tube. Thank God for court jesters. They are like royalty around these parts.

I would openly welcome a plague of locusts. Better still, succulent amphibians that fell from the sky. I love to work on my culinary skills to pass the time. One of my more desirable dishes is tongues, lips and eyeball soup. The foggier the eye, the better. Now throw in some cockroaches, wild garlic and a few dried berries.

Pure heaven.

At least we’re back on top of the food chain again. Well, kind of.

Navigating an eat-or-be-eaten world whose weather wants to kill us has its challenges, but now we can do it on a full stomach. Sometimes I worry we might run out of those tasty undead bastards, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. For now, we all only have one wish when we see a shooting star – that we don’t become someone or something’s next meal. As we watch the skies of August light up with meteor showers, I wonder if that’s Bill from accounting? He was always such a dick!

Soup’s up, everyone. Come and get it.

Bon Appétite, and let the trumpets blow.

Do You Want to Build a Screamo Band?

Were you there the night the Pilot Light closed down? Like, 2006? No–we just booked it. Matt broke his dumbass arm on a halfpipe, two weeks before the show.   

It’s all these kids in black, denim jackets and jeans with patches. Cheap face tattoos before they were cool. And dreadlocks, lots of white kids with dreadlocks. This scummy pond of black-clad kids with tattoos and filthy dreadlocks. Before the show even started, everyone’s shoving inward, thronging the band. There was maybe an inch of space for them to set up, the guitar players (they had at least ten), the bassist, and singer. Vocalist. And they’re just bathed in B.O. and beer breath. No stage. The band just set up on the floor. I bet they slept there. 

My back’s jacked from sleeping on the couch in my man cave. Anne hates it when I snore. With some coaxing, Anne drove me to the chiropractor. I read this thing about a guy getting paralyzed by a chiropractor snapping a nerve in his neck. I went, though; that shit works. Not the next day, but two days later, after he cracked me around, it stopped hurting. Like magic. If we went on the road, I could probably sleep in a car for a few nights, maybe sitting in the passenger seat.  

The vocalist–I always thought that sounded goofy– was wearing a black knit hat with his hair shoved in his eyes, mumbles all shy into the mic,  “We’re Remedia Amoris,” and then, “from Chicago.”  This big, drunken howl bursts out of the kids, who can’t wait to bash each other. One of the guitar players lit the fuse with this sick little lead lick: “deedly dee, deedly dee.” 

I figured out how to play that, here–check it out.

All hell erupted. The drummer bashed away in that jazzy, off-time crashing, thing Matt could do–like “Bap, bap, buh, bap.”

We should call Matt. Have you talked to him? I Face-timed him when they were tearing the statues down two years ago. He was smoking a blunt, blacked out, wandering around downtown Charleston.  

 All those guitarists had their volumes perfectly set to drown each other out, though the drums cut right through. Always. Those drums clanged directly into your eardrums. I always heard the drums until I passed out. Like 3 a.m. and my skull’s going “eeeeeeeee.” 

You know, bands have these headphones now where they can hear every instrument specifically. With computers or something. They’re not that expensive. I don’t think I could play with rolled-up toilet paper anymore. 

The screamer hunched over his microphone, red-faced, inaudible, but giving his best. He looked like he was shitting a baby. The front line of sweaty, black-clad dudes bounced him off the drums. Some big, meaty tall guy bent down and lifted him to his feet, then the poor guy pretended that that hadn’t hurt like a motherfucker. The last twenty seconds passed, and the screamer, already horse, coughed “Thank you” into the mic, announcing which song–some Kant or Nietzsche quote–came next. Wild cheers erupted from the crowd.

Don’t you miss that shit? Come here. It’s on YouTube. That show is. I watch it all the time. There we are in the back. Look how smoking; they still let you smoke inside then. And you never moshed. You were too cool for that. I guess someone recorded this with their phone? It sounds like the inside of a beehive. 

I played the EP on  Bandcamp for Anne. She said, well, she was nice about it. I got embarrassed, and we had a fight–I need to stop doing that. But, when I’m alone, and the house is empty, I crank it. She hates it when I turn the music up loud, but she’s still got her hearing–right? 

Do you think the cavemen longed to be twelve again? 

“Hey, Oog, remember when we ripped the wings off that eight-foot butterfly?” 

Oog smiles all wistfully and acts like he doesn’t really remember, and the first caveman, Dook, tells the story. They have this same conversation every time they hang out. They’re, like, twenty, which is middle-aged for cavemen, I read. 

 The halcyon days. 

Anyway, you want to start a band, man? I have this sick riff in my head. Listen, it’s like, “Rugga rugga dow-ow-ow, chon-chon-chon…”