It’s a dismal post-punk Birmingham City, England, 1986. A little over twenty-four hours after the Sigue Sigue Sputnik gig at the Powerhouse Ballroom, twenty-eight year old loner goth kid, Angel T. Cooley crisscrosses a lethal dose of heroin and speed down in a subway at three in the a.m…

In the streets above him, other broken souls who in some way came into contact with Angel continue to swim the murky, muddled waters of their own wrecked lives.

Breaking conventional literary structures, A Cigarette Burn in the Sun is a series of non-linear vignettes that depict a looking glass world where the derelict lives of an array of characters converge without any resolutions to the worthlessness of their own morbid existence, where the futures they dreamed of did not materialise.

What readers have said about u.v.ray:

“Nihilistic, hard-edged, no holds barred”

“Left field outsider philosophy, unapologetic, visceral”

“So hard-boiled you could crack a tooth on it, but also with glimpses of poetic beauty”

“u.v.ray has always written like a man hurtling towards his own death”

“Nobody writes about the gutters of working class life like u.v.ray”

“Hidden in the gritty writing there are moments of love, loneliness and tenderness.”

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Lean, Hungry, Prowling

Sunday, November Sixth

“Hear that Bengal growlin’, mean and angry!” came the slurred, unified chorus from the collected horde. Assorted German meats sizzled on grills innumerable; mac and cheese sat slowly simmering in crock pots. Sticky wet, plastic collapsible tables lined the cracked cobblestone parking lot just east of Gest Street, in the shadow of the titanic, lengthy Longworth Hall—that leaning, rectangular, chalky brick building long-since mostly abandoned other than the sketchy nightclub filling the echoey bones of its bottom floor.

“You want to play flip-cup?” said Fischer. My friend Fischer was a season tickets holder. He had hooked me up with a free ticket to today’s game—the Bengals were going up against the Panthers. Should be a bounce-back game against an inferior opponent after being whipped by the lowly Browns the previous week. 

“Yeah, I’ll play,” I responded. I poured a healthy portion of my can of Miller Lite into the red solo cup, watching the fizzy liquid bubble and pop in its plastic spherical home. I raised the cup, noticing that my hands were shaking visibly. I realized that I was uncomfortable—I was nervous. I didn’t socialize much in those days. I hadn’t been around such a huge crowd in I couldn’t remember how long. I hadn’t played flip-cup since I was in college, and that was ten years ago.

My teammates chugged their beers and flipped their cups. It came down to me; I was the anchor. I glugged, unable to finish the cup in one drink. I downed it in the second and flipped the cup on the second try. It slid across the plastic table, spinning counterclockwise, slippery in the remnant backwash-booze.

We lost.

“How much did you pour in there?” said my teammate, someone I didn’t know.

“About a third of the cup,” I said.

“That’s too much!” she responded “Just pour in a sip. I’m trying to win some games, you know?”

Friday, November Fourth 

Jin lounged atop the steep hill at the bank of the pool near the waterfall. He blinked in the brightly shining sun, feeling lazy. He liked his new enclosure, but he still yearned for freedom. It was an instinctive feeling; he couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter how much he loved his new home; its size was nowhere near adequate. Tigers need miles of land to prowl; crouching, creeping in tall grass, stalking prey—which, though also free to roam endless miles of wild land, never get too comfortable because of the looming presence of that invisible, striped, orange terror—like a killer filled with bloodlust. 

Jin rolled playfully in the grass, his gigantic paws dipping momentarily into the rippling water. Jin was a Malayan Tiger. He wasn’t that big, at least in comparison with other tigers—he only weighed about 200 pounds. His paws were huge, though. He was young; he still had some growing to do. 

Jin lifted himself from his place in the soft dirt and lumbered down the hill to the glass of the enclosure. When he appeared at the edge of that transparent wall perpetuating his enslavement, he looked out at the gawking onlookers, who were now collecting in number since Jin had come close to the glass. The depth of his eyes, which glowed light green, reflected and multiplied off the dirty glass, bouncing away like an army of ocular flying saucers. 

Jin didn’t like all these hairless apes watching him. He wanted to escape. 

Sunday, November Sixth

We were on a hot streak, having won the last four games. The table was drenched in booze and saliva. 

“Yeah!” I shouted after having successfully flipped another cup. I pointed at Fischer: “I’m whipping your ass!” 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “It’s about time to head over to the game, anyway. Let’s grab a road beer and start walking. 

“Either of you want a coney?” came an abrupt voice from the crowd.

“I’ll take one,” I said. The soft bun was filled with a hotdog and Cincinnati-chili, with an excessive amount of stringy cheddar cheese serving as its progressively melting, shaggy roof. I ate it in three voracious bites. 

The parking lot was still packed, though the crowd was shifting collectively toward the stadium like a school of jabbering sardines. Welcome to the Jungle, the chosen theme-song of the Cincinnati Bengals, blasted throughout the area. Axl Rose’s screeching, anguished voice sounded similar to someone being eaten alive. 

I wasn’t a big Guns ‘n Roses fan. 

Friday, November Fourth

Jin slept easily that night. Usually, he spent the nighttime hours pacing around like a paranoid psychopath, looking instinctively for something to hunt. He didn’t do that tonight, though—all of the onlookers from the day had exhausted him, both physically and psychologically. He listened to the calming splash of the waterfall as his horizontal chest contracted and retracted. His lips quivered, revealing his massive canines, as he dreamed of stalking a barking deer through the jungle. Saliva dripped from his mouth to the dirt below, encasing an unawares earthworm. 

Sunday, November Sixth 

It was a long walk across the length of the Longworth Hall parking lot. Most people were in elevated spirits, yelling and slapping hands in excitement for the upcoming game. Some, however, had either started drinking too early or gone too hard, too fast. A woman, using two of her unfortunate friends as a crutch, limped nearly unconsciously in the direction opposite the stadium. Vomit was dribbling from her mouth like a polluted stream. 

“Sucks to be her,” I said.

“Yeah, no shit,” responded Fischer, lifting his can and draining most of it in a single gulp. 

Suddenly, we heard screams from up ahead followed by a rapidly developing, frantic scramble. People ran past us, away from the stadium. Terror painted their faces. 

“The fuck?” said Fischer.

We continued ahead, toward the chaos. 

Saturday, November Fifth

During the zoo’s operating hours, while the collected hairless apes stared at him wide-eyed with amazement, Jin noticed a possible point of escape in his enclosure. The potential for freedom! This filled Jin with an almost uncontainable excitement. He paced the circumference of his enclosure obsessively. What sort of prey lay outside, beyond this cage? Obviously, there was no shortage of these hairless apes—Jin would have plenty of them to eat—but he had never tried them before. They didn’t appear very lean. It wasn’t his typical diet; he wasn’t sure he would enjoy it. Jin was an apex predator—he had the right to enjoy his meals. He had eaten an orangutan once—back in Borneo, but he wasn’t a fan. The hairless apes might be tastier, though. He decided he would give it a shot if he had to. 

The hole in his enclosure—a tear in the fencing near the waterfall—seemed to grow bigger as the day progressed. Jin could hardly wait to try and slip through it—he had seen so many squirrels and chipmunks dart through so carelessly—but he knew he would have to wait until the zoo closed. If he escaped now, they would overwhelm him, these innumerable hairless apes. He needed to wait until they all left.

Sunday, November Sixth 

“The hell?” I said, my voice quivering, stuck in the anxious, fearful shakiness of my throat. People stumbled by, running frantically away. One of them tripped and fell to the cobblestone ground before rising and darting off. Another, covered in blood, limped past. He was clutching at his belly, which was ripped to shreds, as if to cradle his intestines, which dangled outward like a freshly produced rope of sausage. 

“Go!” said Fischer, turning around, “Let’s get the fuck out of here, man!”

Saturday Night, November Fifth 

It was so easy! Even simpler than Jin had expected. He slid right through the rift in the fence, sneaking unseen into the night. This was such a strange place. It reminded Jin a little of Bintulu—the only other commune of hairless apes he had ever freely-traversed—and he hated that place. Those were the apes that had captured him—the apes that had sent him to this strange new place. Jin wished he had eaten one of them, back in Bintulu. At least then he would have gotten some payback; at least then he would know what they tasted like. 

The outside world was dark other than the hanging lights lining the stone paths. Jin, traveling so quickly and unseen as only a tiger is capable, made his way down a large hill, through a maze of stone, eventually glimpsing in the distance a large, softly flowing river. 

“That’s where I’ll find something good to eat,” thought Jin, “A nice fish. Maybe a deer. I may not have to eat those disgusting apes, after all.”

Approaching the river, Jin noticed the sun beginning to ascend. When the sun rose, all the apes came out—Jin knew that for a fact. He had to find a place to hide—to wait out the daylight hours. He was so hungry, but he would likely have to wait until the following evening to find a decent meal. Lumbering into a long, abandoned red building, Jin crouched in a dusty corner and waited. His eyes glowed, shining through the ever-decreasing darkness. 

Sunday Afternoon, November Sixth 

Fischer and I sprinted away from the source of the chaos. We had nearly made it out of the parking lot when I saw suddenly, crawling stealthily out from under a beige Toyota Land Cruiser, a fucking tiger! There was no mistaking it. It’s gigantic paws—its claws protracted and dripping red with fresh blood—gripped the old cobblestone, scraping against the chalky stone as if to sharpen its natural blades; time-tested, evolutionary killing machines.

Sunday Morning, November Sixth 

Jin awoke to a collective, irksome noise coming from outside in the parking lot. It was still relatively dark in his dusty corner, though a glimmer of sun shone through one of the dirty windows high up toward the ceiling of the huge, abandoned room. The adolescent tiger stretched and yawned. He did that every morning; it was a habit. He looked cute—he appeared happy—but he wasn’t. Jin was starving. Though he hated his enslavement at the zoo, they at least kept him well-fed there. They threw chunks of meat at him every day as if he weren’t capable of hunting for himself. He wasn’t used to going long without a bite to eat. Plus, the apes had congregated in number outside the building. He wasn’t sure why so many of them were there—this was more apes gathered in one place than he had ever seen—even including his time in Bintulu. 

“They must be here to get me,” thought Jin. “They must be here to take me back to the zoo. I can’t let them do that.”

Jin was hungry. He decided that he would sneak outside, stalking the apes to see what was going on. That wouldn’t be difficult at all; he knew that. The hairless apes, as innumerable as they were, could be bafflingly clueless creatures. They had no idea what was going on around them. They were more helpless even than typical prey. At least deer listened to their surroundings. They used their ears. These apes didn’t even do that; they behaved like predators though with the strength of prey. Jin hoped they tasted good, at least. 

He snuck quietly out of the building—sliding under one of the numerous cars and crawling on his belly as silently as the ghost of a soldier—through the parking lot. Staring out from his place under a truck he saw a large group of apes. They were yelling at one another; slapping and pushing each other like apes always do. Singing, dancing, and eating their strange, fire-blackened ape food. 

Jin didn’t waste any time. He leapt out from under the truck, jumping high into the air and descending onto a large male. Jin sank his teeth into his neck, sending him instantly, silently, to the stone ground as blood spurted geyser-like and pooled around him. 

Chaos erupted. That didn’t bother Jin, though—that’s what prey animals always did. If you took one of them, the rest would lose their minds. One of them didn’t, though. That one—some overly confident, adolescent stag—perhaps the son of the large male Jin had selected as prey—attacked Jin, swinging his fists down onto Jin’s head as if to bludgeon him. Apes always did that, too; it didn’t hurt Jin. After that, though, the adolescent began pressing his fingers into Jin’s eyeballs. That really angered Jin, who immediately leapt into the young ape, tearing into his stomach—ripping out his organs. The stag, mortally injured, fled. Jin then went back to his meal—the large ape. Jin was so hungry. 

Jin tore into the male’s chest, crunching and splitting the ape’s weak bones. Jin wondered how he had survived for so long, being so fatty and brittle. There must not be any predators in this place; that was good for Jin. He would move in—every place requires an apex predator, if it doesn’t have one, prey become overpopulated. The ape population required curbing—Jin could provide that.

Surprisingly, Jin enjoyed the taste of the hairless apes. They were overly fatty, true, but the meat was tender—the organs were chewy. Still digging into the large male, Jin heard abruptly a loud pop coming from the other direction. He had heard that sound before, back in Bintulu. It wasn’t a good sound. Jin ran from his half-finished meal across the cobblestone parking lot. Hairless apes innumerable dove out of Jin’s path, scrambling in a panic to get away from him. Jin needed to hide. Those pops were never a good thing for tigers. Jin saw another large vehicle. He crept underneath, seeking shelter from the pops. 

Sunday Afternoon, November Sixth 

With a roar, the tiger leapt at Fischer, digging into his calf, sending him collapsing to the ground. Only an instant later—while Fischer was still conscious, while he was still struggling to escape—the tiger drug him effortlessly beneath a Land Cruiser. The vehicle lurched and rumbled as if sputtering from engine malfunction, though it was actually from the jerking movement of Fischer fighting for his life while the tiger tore into him. The SUV’s movement soon stopped. The tiger didn’t reemerge. 

From behind, I heard another gunshot. It was the third one, I thought. I wasn’t sure whether it was someone coming for the tiger, or if looters had taken advantage of the chaos and disorder. I backed away from the SUV. I knew I should try and save Fischer, but what could I do against a fucking tiger? Nothing—that’s what I could do. I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have a knife, or anything I could really use as a weapon. What would I do, punch it? Hell no. I felt awful, but I backed away, eventually turning into an anxious sprint. I was no match for a predator of that size. That’s what prey did—escaped. That’s what I needed to do. That’s what I did. 

***

Joe Mixon scored five touchdowns in a Bengals route. The bloody, body-strewn parking lot somehow didn’t delay the game. The police, in a later statement, said that if they had postponed the game, it would likely have only added to the chaos. 

Jin was never found, but there’s no way he could have survived for very long. Tigers can’t handle a Midwestern winter, can they? 

That’s what I tell myself. I still avoid crowds, now—just in case.

Boss Burrito, Naked Like My Yearning

I wish I could put my arms around your neck, like those aprons you’re so fond of, snug around the back of you, close but not suffocating. I always stand too close, people tell me, but for you I’ll keep my distance, try to make sure you’re comfortable.

I really like spending time with you.

And I know it’s not like the other people, the being too close. We’re not even in the same town. That’s why I follow you online instead, why I know this week you’re celebrating. I sit staring at the photographs, complete with foil taco-shaped balloons declaring ‘Taco bout a party’. I try and peer around them to see what else I could know about you, see who you’re with, to no avail. 

Is there anything sadder than watching a party you weren’t invited to, hoping someone is going to tap you on the shoulder and say ‘Why aren’t you here yet?’ Then I could laugh and put some shoes on and go be part of the fun. The closest I can get to you now is zooming in, but that’s just letting me get closer to the things I can’t reach.

Like you, my precious Taco Bell.

I go to your website and browse out the menu. I don’t like doing it, it makes what we have feel so transactional. I’m greeted with the Naked Chicken Taco, the kind of abomination I want to get my hands dirty with. I wonder if it’s actually crunchy, or if it’s that soft crumbed chicken that melts in your mouth instead. I study the pictures carefully, wondering what I would order if I could go. Right now the Boss Burrito looks amazing, but I know I have days where the Crunchwrap Supreme would be the answer to my problems.

I find videos on YouTube. I see the worker who licked a stacked pile of taco shells and got caught on camera, and I get it. Imagine soft tongues on rough shells, the heady scent of Taco Bell taco shells right up against your nose, mixed with heat and the scent of saliva, like a passionate, stolen kiss in a supply closet. I briefly watch the video fallout to that incident, news presenters with staid tones, and I’m bored by the bureaucracy. Bored by the drama. Angry at people who went to Taco Bell and complained about things that didn’t happen, instead of savouring the things that did.

I lie in bed at night, thinking about what I would do if I could sneak into the kitchen when no one else was there. I think about burying my hands deep into the guac trays, cold, protein-rich sludge sinking between my fingers and under my nails. I think of leaning on flat palms in the metal bean containers, feeling their fragile little skins give way under my hands, spilling their pulpy innards into a muck that I squash against the bottom of the tray as my hand slides across the yielding metal surface. Floury fingers from tortillas. Stolen moments with crispy grilled cheese that stayed too long on the cooktop, browned crusty forbidden snacks. Even the drinks fridge is alluring, bright lights flickering like batting eyelashes.

Can a kitchen flirt?

I wonder if they’d understand why I did it, why it was better that I go to the kitchen when no one else was there, keep my sins to myself, rather than sneak in while it was open and full of people and let them see what you do to me, and the inverse. Instead, this lustful night-time orgy of touch and smell, even though everything would be tainted by the weird, muted dusty smell of refrigeration, is just one more step into the alienation. I wonder how long I would need to leave things out of the fridge to feel them at room temperature, closer to the heat of a living thing? Would it be the same if I microwaved them? I’m sure they have microwaves in their kitchens, even if they barely use them. I wonder how many Cheesy Swirls I can microwave at once, and what I’ll do with them when they’re all ready, warm enough to eat, but not hot enough to burn me. Or maybe they will be, and that can be the punishment for my transgressions.

Maybe I’ll eat them as I rest on piles of crushed taco shells, crumbled into tiny sharp points for me to kneel on as I eat my stolen bounty. The pain will remind me that what I’m doing is wrong, that in another world I could have been lining up at the front counter, mulling over my order, changing my mind as each person in front of me was served. Maybe the toughest choice would have been deciding when it was worth the extra $2 for guac (of course it is). Instead I’m sitting here, in my mind, bare legs on crushed tacos in the kitchen of an abandoned restaurant, hands full of bread wrapped in cheese, juices running down my hands. 

Until then, it’s just a screen between us as I move my finger across my phone, stroking you away and back to me, pinching you to bring you closer.

Already Human

I remember Audrey’s blue jeans hanging really low off her waist. So low, in fact, the streetlight casts a shadow on her naked pelvic bone. That was right before her body just shut off, and she passed out right on the sidewalk. It happened in a matter of seconds, but the first sign that showed me something was about to happen was when her head tilted back. The fur scarf hanging over her pullover falls and her with it, her head knocking against the pavement. Not being in a right state of mind myself, I don’t even try to catch her. I’m so out of it, her falling loops around in my head a couple of times before the logical side of my brain finally catches, and I realize I gotta do something. So I get on my knees, and for a brief few minutes I have the clarity to check her pulse which is faint but there beating steadily like the stars shining in the middle of the forest without any light pollution to drown out the sky. As I’m feeling around her skull for any cuts, my hands must’ve caught against her quartz, dreamcatcher necklace because clattering is heard, and I see beads rolling off the curb.

We had been waiting in line to see a special art exhibit featuring a live musical performance when the drug hit us like a semi-truck. In the car, parked about a mile away in an open lot, we had pulled out these funky-smelling, dried up roots of a plant and were studying them in the palm of my hand. I had gotten them from a strange-looking dude in the city square one night. It was a part of town where all the cool, grungy people hung out, selling their respective wares of tie-dye shirts, home-made jewelry and, of course, drugs. The particular guy I had gotten the roots from was a very thin, old, white guy who called himself, “The Shaman.” He wore a light blue hoodie and a Scottish-skirt-looking thing for pants. He was mumbling something about gold coming down like rain, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to give me directions on how to take the thing or if he was zoning out on his own supply. At the end of our meeting, “The Shaman,” waved his hand all around me like he was blessing me or cursing me. I couldn’t tell the difference. He was muttering seemingly made up gibberish with such a mix of aggression and sensitivity that I seriously had second thoughts about doing them as I walked away from the crowd.

I didn’t tell all this to Audrey as we sat in the car. The art exhibit was her idea. I was and am still not an art guy. Drugs were my art you could say. It just made everything more colorful and interesting. Anyway, she wasn’t wholly new to taking stuff, but she was looking at the thing and was seriously having doubts. But I was taking a long time, deciding whether to take them or not. In the end, with music bumping inside the car, I just popped them inside my mouth without warning, and that was how this whole crazy thing began.

We finally both began to “sober” up just as the line to get into the art exhibit started to move. The exhibit was inside of a multi-level parking structure and the now-moving line was wrapped around the building. I thought for a moment maybe we should ditch the thing since we were still in no condition to be looking at framed paintings on a wall. That was my thinking as I slapped Audrey on the cheeks to bring her back into waking consciousness. Her eyes rolled back into place, and her breathing became sudden as if the lungs were in full operation again. With her arm around my shoulder, I was helping her walk down the sidewalk, past the people in line when she mumbled where we were going.

“Home,” I said.

Audrey garbled some kind of response. She was conscious now but still high—as was I. But I could make out that she wanted to go in with the moving line.

“No,” I said.

We got into a little heated argument out in front of the multi-level parking structure with all the people in line staring at us. Thinking back on it now, we must’ve looked like possessed ghouls, muttering incoherent words like grunts somehow getting our words across to one another. A big-bellied guy with a white goatee came over to us then and asked if we were okay. He gave us some cold Gatorade in an unnaturally blue color which I had to pour into Audrey’s mouth like I was pouring coolant into the lips of a radiator.

He sat us down on the curb as the line continued to move. I swore I could’ve heard him say to someone behind in line to go inside without him and that he would meet them inside. Things started to get hazy after that. Time started to fast forward, or maybe, skip forward, at least in my memory. All of a sudden, we were walking down the ramp of the parking structure with parking attendants waving blinking, red batons, waving us to go down. I don’t even know what happened to the big-bellied guy with the goatee. The next thing I remember is reaching the bottom floor where it’s completely flat and a bunch of people are continuing to file in from the ramp. The lights are hot and bright at first. Then, it’s dark save for the blinking red batons which appear as if they’re floating in the black air. A single, distorted guitar string is strummed. Then, whole chords ring through a crowd as bluish-white spotlights shine down on the band playing on stage. I’m still holding Audrey by the waist while she has hers around my shoulder. She’s able to stand on her feet now, but she’s still a little wobbly. Then, wet things start falling on our heads. For some reason, I just accept this fact without even considering that we were in an enclosed space, so rain should’ve been impossible. But I just accepted it—as did Audrey.

The band continued playing, the lead singer’s voice raspy like it was an organic, human, distorted guitar. I don’t know what I mean by this, but that was what I was thinking at the time. We cover our heads with our hands to shade us from the rain, but it’s obvious it isn’t helping because we are getting drenched. Puddles are starting to form under our feet. Drums are being pounced on on stage. A guitar riff flies fitfully through the sky as the singer repeats the chorus. Clouds smolder in the sky.

The songs stops. Music stops. But the rain comes down in a torrential rainfall. The water which was slapping against our drenched shoes is now up to our necks, and on the surface of the water is a wooden ship. Someone’s thrown overboard. Time skips forward again, and I’m standing in front of a cashier at a coffee shop who’s staring with this dumbfounded look in her eyes.

“What size, sir?”

“Tall,” I say.

I don’t remember paying for the coffee, much less actually getting the coffee. I know my memory of that time is completely messed up because, after that, I recall looking up at a framed painting on a matcha-green wall. So, I must be mis-remembering or re-ordering the chronological chain of events. However, in my brain, it’s placed here for some reason. All the planets are spaced together around an invisible sphere. I don’t know about constellations and stuff, but I do know Saturn isn’t bigger than the sun which is how it’s depicted in the painting. The piece after that is of a woman reading a book at the beach, laying on a chair, under the shade of an umbrella. She is nude on top. After that, I remember looking at a black and white photograph of black people in suits and dresses entering into a church.

The last thing I remember, and I swear, I felt like this was really happening. I heard thunder. Lots of it, and I realized it was really bombs exploding. They felt really near. I didn’t look back to see what it was. It was that close. People were running past us. I was still holding up Audrey by the waist who still couldn’t walk properly and kept stumbling. The people running past us I began to make out because they were so different from each other: a small, dark, Asian girl; a beautiful blonde white woman; and a lanky soldier in a World War Two officer’s uniform. At the end of the dusty yellow road, some guy was waving people through a doorway. But the doorway was crooked as if my head was tilted to the side, and the man had a long white beard and a long flowing robe like a wizard.

H₂S Blues

One night, a horrible stench awoke Sam from a deep sleep. He glanced over at Claudette and assumed it was her and had a hard time falling back asleep the smell was so bad. He awoke the next day slightly put off, indeed hating Claudette a little. Though she was no more or less flatulent than anyone else, she had never passed wind that smelled so awful. Was it a precursor of things to come? 

On another night, Claudette was awoken by a stench so terrible she thought she might puke. She covered her nose and mouth and glanced at Sam. She felt like punching him in the face. She couldn’t fall back asleep, and was so disgusted she wouldn’t talk to Sam for the next two days. 

Neither came forward to discuss their concerns. Then one night both were awoken by a familiar stench—that one, that horrific stench they had both experienced. 

“Was that you?” Sam asked, his eyes watering. 

“Me?” Claudette exclaimed, pinching her nose. “You thought that was me? I would have left me if that was.” 

After a pause they both burst into laughter. 

“You mean to tell me that it wasn’t you?” Sam said, holding his belly.

“No,” Claudette said, snorting with laughter, “I thought it was you!” 

They both laughed until their abdominal muscles ached. Then they lay there in silence, both looking up at the popcorn ceiling.

The Spokes Critter Killings

Detective Dirk Wagmore dumped his coffee cup in the trash before donning nitrile gloves. The forensics team had been on site long enough to wiggle into their bunny suits, cover the body, and cordon off the area with police tape.

“Victim’s some kind of cartoon rodent,” his partner said. “Fisherman found him floating in the river and called it in.” Detective Liz Torres wore a jacket that covered the 1911 pistol, chambered in 10mm, she wore on her hip but nothing could cover her disdain for Mexican food. It didn’t take Dr. Freud to realize that the heiress to the Guillermo’s Taco empire had daddy issues. The police academy was her way out of a life of carne asada and refried beans. Once she got her badge, she never looked back. “Victim has no ID but from the animation style, I’d guess he was in his mid-forties.”

“What do we have, Joyce?” Wagmore asked the coroner kneeling by the body.

“Choked to death on a 42-ounce cannister of oatmeal.” Dr. O’Brian pulled back the sheet to expose the rodent’s face and neck. “Bruising indicates it was forced down his throat. Lack of swelling means he can’t have been in the water too long. Open sores and bleeding gums indicate the victim had diabetes. Finding his identity’s going to be tough. Cartoons don’t have fingerprints. I’m not sure about DNA and dental records. We might try to run the ink through a gas chromatograph.”

“You must not have watched Saturday morning cartoons in the 80s,” Wagmore said. “That’s Lenny the Cornflake Chipmunk. He was always running scams to get breakfasts that rodents weren’t supposed to have. Looks like we’ve got ourselves…”

“Don’t say it, Wagmore.” Torres put her fingers in her ears.

“…a cereal killer.”

***

The demon Mephistopheles appeared in the scholar’s study.

“What is your wish?” 

“That you will provide me with Bruckner’s Cornflakes as long as I live.” The disguised Lenny the Chipmunk closed a leather-bound book of spells.

“I am a servant of great Lucifer and may do nothing without his command.”

“And what would convince Lucifer to command thee?”

“Your immortal soul.”

“I would be damned a thousand times for just one bowl of Bruckner’s Cornflakes,” Lenny replied.

“Then sign this contract in blood.” Mephistopheles handed Lenny a parchment and a blade to nick his finger.

“Woo Hoo!” Lenny ran around the study and his robe fell off revealing a rodent body.

“Foolish Chipmunk. Cornflakes are for humans!” Mephistopheles disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“Bruckner’s Cornflakes – So tasty you’ll sell your soul for just one bite,” the announcer said.

 “That’s one of the tamer ones.” Captain Barkless turned off the VCR. “No doubt, Lenny made a lot of enemies with the Decency Council. Start by interviewing people who knew him.”

“Got it, Captain.” Wagmore and Torres left Barkless’s office.  

***

“Seen this chipmuck before?” Wagmore slapped a photo on the bar.

Of all the cereal cafes in all the world, Skim City had to be the worst. Even in mid-afternoon, teens with pimply skin, gaunt women with bitter frown lines, and overweight bikers whose denim vests revealed prison tattoos crowded the dimly lit room with their desperate craving for sugar, corn syrup, and carbohydrates. A TV over the dispensers showed an animated Wanda, the Woke Walrus, emphasizing the importance of inclusive language. The cereal tender picked up the photo.

“Naw, we don’t serve no rodents in here.” He was too skinny to be sampling the product.

“Look again.” Wagmore tapped the photo.

“Hey!” A biker sprang from his stool and grabbed Wagmore by the shoulder. “The man said he didn’t see him!”

Torres swung the biker around. After two quick slaps, she captured one of his hands in a wristlock and pointed her big pistol at his eye.

“Nice place you’ve got here.” Wagmore showed his badge. “Be a shame if the health department found some expired cereal containing red dye number two. We’re investigating a murder so look again.”

“All right. I seen him.” The cereal tender wiped spilled milk off the bar. “Understand we can’t keep rodents out of here if they wearing disguises like top hats, football jerseys, of they dressed like pirates. Always going on about how he used to be famous and hitting up my customers to buy him puffed rice. Felt sorry for the guy so I gave him a little oatmeal now and again.”

“When did you last see him?”

“About a week ago. Said he had some big score that would put him back on top.”

“Any idea what?”

“Said something about getting the old gang back together.”

The TV cut to a commercial with a man in a plaid shirt standing by a horse.

“Seems five-hundred-million dollars doesn’t buy as much as it used to. Like you, I’ve had to cut back by buying my daughter a Porsche instead of the Bugatti she wanted.” He placed a saddle on the horse and continued talking while tightening the straps. “Used to be, you could kill a hooker and pay the police chief to make the body disappear. Those days are gone thanks to the Washington elites and their big-government allies. I still believe America is the land of opportunity where anyone from a wealthy family can build a sweatshop or dig a strip-mine in a national park. That’s why I’m running for mayor. Even though I’m a billionaire, I need your checks for twenty-five, a hundred, or twenty-thousand dollars. I’m George Kintsugi and I approve this message.”

***

Disguised in a trench coat, Lenny entered the Soviet embassy. The scene cut to an interview room where a man with a large jaw sat behind a bust of Lenin.

“You wished to see the resident?”

“These are the specifications for an x-ray laser used in the Strategic Defense Initiative.” Lenny slid an envelope across the desk. “I can get more.”

“And what do you want in return?” The KGB agent opened the envelope and studied the papers.

“A lifetime supply of Bruckner’s Cornflakes.”

“We prefer an ongoing relationship. How about a month’s supply for every batch of documents you deliver?”

“Woo Hoo!” Lenny danced around the room and his trench coat fell off revealing his rodent body.”

“Foolish Chipmunk. Cornflakes are for humans!” The KGB agent pocketed the secrets.

“Bruckner’s Cornflakes – So tasty you’ll betray your country for just one bite.”

***

“Dean Shumway?” Wagmore showed his badge. “I’m Detective Wagmore and this is Detective Torres. Mind if we come in?”

“Sure.” Shumway ushered them into a living room, gestured to a leather sofa, and took a seat on a bearskin rug in the middle of the floor. He was wiry with blue eyes and a beard that was white with age.

“Do you own a gun, Mr. Shumway?” Torres pointed to the antelope and cape buffalo heads mounted on the walls.

“Bow hunting,” Shumway replied. “Just like our ancestors did for thousands of years.”

“When was the last time you saw Lenny, the Cornflake Chipmunk?” Wagmore asked.

“Saw it on the news. Real tragedy but it was bound to happen.”

“What do you mean?” Torres asked.

“If somebody didn’t kill him, the processed foods would have gotten him eventually. After I starred in all those cornflake commercials, I realized the human body wasn’t designed for that kind of diet. Tried to convince Lenny but he wouldn’t listen. Had a blow up three years ago. Haven’t spoken to him since.”

“Where were you on Tuesday night?” Wagmore asked.

“Giving a seminar at the Mukherjee Center.” Shumway pointed to a hardcover he’d authored, titled The Neanderthal Diet.

“Know anybody who would want to hurt Lenny?” Torres asked.

“You might check with our costar, Maggie,” Shumway said. “There were rumors of sexual harassment on set.”

As they were leaving, Wagmore noticed a Kintsugi for Mayor bumper sticker on Shumway’s Porsche.

***

The interview had to wait because Wagmore got a call about a dead body in the hills. The deceased was none other than Wanda, the Woke Walrus. Her maid found her unresponsive by the pool and called it in.

“Energy drinks, Adderall, and methamphetamine.” Dr. O’Brian pointed to the cans and bottles strewn by the body. 

“Could it be foul play?”

“My guess is an overdose or suicide. I’ll know more after the autopsy.”

“Seems like she couldn’t get woke enough,” Wagmore said.

***

Adolph Hitler shook his fist and ranted in front of a giant eagle and swastika while thousands of fanatical followers cheered. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Fuhrer,” Wanda, the Woke Walrus, raised her hand from the front row. “You forgot to tell us your pronouns.”

“He, him, his.” Hitler slapped his forehead. “Mein Gott! I’ve been wrong all this time.”

Black-and-white, newsreel footage played backwards. A building reassembled as a bomb rose and attached to a Stuka’s belly. German troops marched backwards retreating through the Arc de Triomphe. 

“Always remember.” Wanda wagged her finger. “Language has power.” 

***

“Two advertising mascots dead in two days! There has to be a connection, Captain!”

“Damn it, Wagmore! Homicide doesn’t have the budget for you to chase wild-goose chases. Dr. O’Brian said the walrus died of an overdose so drop it.”

“Yeah, just like the aardvark killer. The department never has the budget when it comes to saving toons’ lives.”

“That was thirty years ago.” Barkless fixed Wagmore with a stare he’d perfected over decades as a beat cop, a stare that could fill gangbangers’ intestines with icicles. “These deaths are isolated incidents. Now, get out of my office.”

“Come on, Dirk.” Torres put a hand on Wagmore’s shoulder. “We’ve got work to do.”

***

“My parents never liked him.” Maggie Haywood sipped her drink through a straw. Taking a break from shooting a toonbang, she’d covered her nudity with a blue, nylon robe while a herd of toon rhinos and their ox pecker fluffers waited for the next scene. “Lenny and I were both sixteen but dad said he was over a hundred in chipmunk years. Anyway, the studio offered a cash settlement for my parents to forget the whole thing.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Torres asked.

“Twenty years ago. After the settlement, my parents moved us to Ohio. Said it was a more family-friendly atmosphere.” Air bubbled in the straw as Maggie finished her drink. “I followed his career, though. He was more than a mouthpiece for cornflakes. He wanted to play King Lear.”

“Know anybody who would hurt him?” Wagmore asked.

“My parents but they cashed in that big poker chip in the sky after a fifth-wheel sideswiped their minivan in Vegas.” Maggie nodded toward the director. “I got to go back to work. If I can help, let me know.”

“Thanks for your time,” Torres said.

***

His hair cut in a mohawk, Dean approached Lenny, who was disguised in a fedora and muscle shirt.

“I’m looking for some action,” Dean said.

“Officer!” Lenny held his wrists together as if in handcuffs. “I’m clean.” He showed that his arms had no tracks. “I’m just waiting for a friend.”

“I ain’t a cop,” Dean said.

“Then why are you asking me for action?”

“She sent me.” Dean pointed to Maggie who wore sunglasses and shorts.

“One box of Bruckner’s Cornflakes for fifteen minutes. Two boxes for twenty-five.”

“I don’t know,” Dean said.

“I promise you ain’t never had pussy like that.”

“All right.” Dean produced two boxes from beneath his olive-drab jacket.

“Woo Hoo!” Lenny danced around and his fedora fell off, revealing his rodent head.

“Foolish Chipmunk. Cornflakes are for humans!” Dean retrieved the boxes.

“Bruckner’s Cornflakes – So tasty you’ll pimp your sister.”

***

“Looks like a flightless bird took a swan dive off the thirteenth floor.” Dr. O’Brian pulled back the sheet for the detectives to see the body bleeding purple ink.

“Can’t say I feel sorry. That’s Oscar, the Obedient Ostrich.” Torres leaned forward for a better look. “When I was growing up, my parents told me and my sister to be more like Oscar. Funny thing. They never said that to the boys.”

“Detectives, I think you should see this.” A uniformed officer motioned Wagmore and Torres to a stairwell marked with an arrow and a sign that said, “This way.”

The detectives trudged up the stairs, followed the signs to exit onto the roof, and stopped by one that pointed over the edge saying, “Step here.” 

“That dodo was too dumb to live,” Wagmore said.

***

Oscar and an eel sat in a secure room.

“These documents prove our government has known the Vietnam war is unwinnable for decades.” Eelsberg pointed to a stack of papers marked Top Secret. “We need to inform the public.”

“Don’t do it.” Oscar grabbed Eelsberg by the shoulders. “Even though we have security clearances, President Nixon knows more about the situation than we do.” 

“You’re right. We must trust our superiors.” Eelsberg sat down.

The following day, Oscar showed the headline on the New York Times that said, “Hanoi Surrenders!”

“You were right all along.” Eelsberg shook Oscar’s wing. “Always obey the authorities. They know more than you do.”

***

“So, you were right, Wagmore,” Captain Barkless said. “What do you want? A citrus, caramel sundae?”

“With toasted almonds.”

“Damn it, Wagmore!” Captain Barkless left and returned thirty minutes later with Wagmore’s sundae. “There! So, some serial killer is bumping off the most annoying cartoon characters in Jupiter City. What are we going to do about it?”

“Shame we have to do anything at all.” Torres picked an almond off of Wagmore’s sundae. “Jupiter City would be a better place without those lowlifes.”

“Agreed!” Captain Barkless looked at the dessert and touched his expanding waistline. “The citizens don’t care but mayoral candidate George Kintsugi’s making noises. If he gets elected, it could affect our budget.”

“We could. Excuse me.” Wagmore swallowed. “Stake out potential victims.”

“Who are the most annoying cartoon characters in Jupiter City?” Captain Barkless stroked his chin.

“For my money, they would be Barry, the Union-Busting Bear, and Gilbert, the Gospel-Quoting Gopher.” Torres answered.

“Sounds like a plan,” Barkless said. “Wagmore, take the gopher. Torres, you’ve got the bear.”

***

Wagmore parked his Ford Crown Victoria in front of an A-framed church on Inspiration Way. He entered and found the cartoon gopher kneeling in front of a large cross behind the pulpit. Even in animation, Gilbert’s suit looked drab and unflattering. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Gopher. I’m Detective Dirk Wagmore. We’re concerned about your safety. Have you received any threats?”

“Do you believe in Jesus, Detective?” Gilbert adjusted his plastic-rimmed glasses.

“I don’t think about it much.”

“Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

“Right.” Wagmore realized it was going to be a long day. “Let me check the locks on your windows.” 

***

Later that night, Wagmore’s cell phone rang.

“Dirk, I’m screwed,” Torres said. “I stepped out for fifteen minutes to get some chicken and waffles. When I came back, I saw Barry, the Union-Busting Bear, getting into a limo with George Kintsugi. I tailed them to the abandoned plutonium mine on Racine. I need backup but if I call it in, the captain will have my ass.”

“On my way.” Wagmore dashed to his car.

Even with lights flashing, it took Wagmore twenty minutes to drive across town. When he skidded to a halt in the parking lot, there was no trace of a limousine or Torres’ Dodge Charger. He rushed to the entrance and peered inside.

“Hello.”

The only response was the sound of his echo and smell of alpha particles. Wagmore called Torres but there was no signal. His police radio had no reception, either.  It must have been the radiation.

“Shit!” Wagmore slapped his head. “The gopher!”

He jumped in his car and raced back to the church.

***

“Drop your gun or the gopher gets it!” Torres held Gilbert from behind with her pistol to his head.

“We can talk about this, Liz.” Wagmore placed his pistol on the floor and raised his hands. 

“Sucker!” Torres fired two rounds into Wagmore’s chest. The hollow points expanded as they ripped through his lungs and he died choking on blood. 

Torres scooped up Wagmore’s pistol and executed Gilbert, the Gospel-Quoting Gopher, just like she’d killed Lenny, Wanda, and Oscar. She’d hated cute characters who propagandized little minds, too young for fact checking, ever since Marco, the Manteca Marmot, had crashed her quinceañera. Once the heat cooled down, she’d introduce Barry, the Union-Busting Bear, to an industrial shredder. After that, she’d knock off Frances, the Family Values Fox and those porcupines on the toilet paper ads. She wiped her fingerprints off Wagmore’s pistol, placed it in his dead hand, and prepared for the best acting of her life.

“This is Torres,” she sobbed into the police radio. “It was Wagmore. He killed all of them. I tried to save Gilbert but I was too late.”

The Golden Child

The name’s Waterloo Clyde. I’ve been working these hills for longer than anybody. I didn’t take up with too many women in all this time. Women found my countenance disagreeable. The hills have always been the warm bosom what grabs me and holds me through the long nights.

I had some lean times and some boom times, striking a nugget here or some flakes there. Whenever I had had the gold in my pocket, I drank and fucked it all away, until I had to go back into the hills for more.

I did call on the Widow Vern a few times to go for evening strolls. She and I would saunter past the gas lamps on the cobblestone plaza of The Town. She was fair in manner and presentation, and carried an ebullient air.

I asked her one evening, “Will you be my wife? There’s no use in both of us being alone.”

She replied, “Waterloo Clyde, I can look past the face, but you are too dirty and too poor to marry.”

I didn’t take too much offense to it. She was right. I was dirty from living in the dirt, and I was poor from not having enough money.

This happened out on her porch, where we could have iced tea within the quiet scrutiny of The Town, who needed to know we weren’t up to any funny stuff. Such were the morays of the time.

“You’ll see, ma’am. I’ll get a big payday and buy me a bathtub. I’ll wash up real good, so you’ll be proud to be around me.”

She said, “If you can get me a baby, I’ll marry you. My insides ain’t fit for childbirth, according to Doctor Tom. So that’s the deal. You have my word.”

I figured I could find a baby. Babies wasn’t as rare as gold and I found that plenty of times. So I went to the hills and started mining for babies. 

I spent years digging thousands of holes. I found some gold here or there, but mostly it was just mud.

One night I heard the holler in the dark. It was a baby’s cry. I followed it and found its source were under the ground, there in the clearing where the pines gave way to the stars. 

I began to dig. I dug like I dug into the grip of a bottle: with fury and trepidation. I hacked through roots and bramble, digging toward that plaintive wail. I used my hands when the cry got louder. What was born from that hole was a lump of gold 19″ long, roughly the size and shape of a child, there in the full moonlight. I knew what I had to do. 

I went back to The Town. I shaved part of the nugget off to pay a metal worker to sculpt me a golden baby. He had it finished within a fortnight and I presented the baby to the Widow Vern.

“Why Waterloo Jones, this not what I meant. I wanted a human baby, not a decadent facsimile of a baby.”

“Is it not as expensive as a baby? Love it like a baby. Everything is transactional.”

“Yes I suppose there is love to be had in a golden child. I think I’ll call her Goldie.”

And we paraded the baby through the streets, all hailed it as a triumph, and the Widow Vern became Mrs. Waterloo Clyde.

“We need a new house for Goldie,” she said as she nursed the metallic child.

And so I went, hat in hand, to the bank to ask for a home loan. 

Mr. Bankman, the owner of the bank said, “That’s no problem, Mr. Clyde. We’ll just need the golden baby as collateral.”

“Mr. Bankman, sir, that’s quite gracious of you, however, I don’t think I can square that with the wife. You see she’s become very attached to the baby. She’s not going to take too kindly to being separated for the duration of the mortgage.”

Mr. Banksy Bankman thought on this a second. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do because we do want your business. We will place the baby under glass and put it in our lobby. That way your wife can visit the baby during business hours.”

I thought this was a good compromise and presented it to Mrs. Clyde. She said, “So We need a bigger house to accommodate the baby, but if we get a bigger house, we have no baby to accommodate.”

“True.”

“How does that make sense?”

“I guess it really doesn’t. But we need to choose one or the other.”

“Why?”

“Because Mr. Bankman says it is so.”

“Oh. Well let’s get the house then. I can go visit the baby all day every day. Or whenever it suits me.”

This meant I had to work digging up them hills for enough gold to make the payments on the house. This was difficult because the hills was picked over like a Thanksgiving turkey, days after the feast. It wasn’t just ol’ Waterloo Clyde roaming the hills anymore. Word of the golden child spread far and wide. Now every pissant with a shovel was combing the hills, eating up all my glory.

I had to go so far to find gold, I never even visited the house I was paying for. I sleep still in a hole in the ground.

Meanwhile, throngs gather to see the golden baby. People swear they hear the baby crying still, like it did that night below the ground. Others claim to hear nothing but the echo of a marble bank lobby packed to capacity.

Party Pickle

Everyone calls me Pickles, from my biological family to my found one at Club Climaxxx. Don’t judge—or assume I got that nickname because I smell briny. Just ask my customers, I smell more like the raspberry jam of Linzer cookies. 

The nickname has more to do with my good luck. And okay, I drink the juice straight out of the jar, neon seeds and all. But ’tis the season for green stuff. You see, it’s German tradition to hide a pickle in the Christmas tree so whoever finds it gets an extra gift and blessing to carry into the new year. And I always win that Gherkin.

Some would say I’m too competitive over it, except now it’s strippers, not siblings, insisting it. But I need that good fortune more than ever since my family ices me out over my “exotic” job. I won’t have any celebration to come home to.

“So, let’s have X-mas at the club,” my boyfriend Geo says from the front seat of his shiny Escalade. He started as my escort to and from the club and remains that way for safety reasons. Sometimes I think I should still tip him for his advice. “Why not? Plenty of us are disowned by our families for running in underground crowds. Screw them. Let’s pop some bottles, exchange some bags, toss around a li’l mistletoe.”

I stop myself from chewing off my gloss. Though I can’t imagine candle-lighting the family tree after twelve teary “raised you better” voicemails from Mama, unstuffing stockings with near-naked girlies sucking on oranges and airplane bottles seems as off. 

He glances in the rearview as I stick rhinestones around my eyes to simulate a snow-speckled ice queen. The Santa toy from the Kinder Joy chocolate I gave him a year ago hangs off the mirror, its egghead winking at me as it metronomes to the soft techno. “C’mon, the holidays are bigger than the two of us. Let’s bring some folks together. We’ll have a blast. I’ll bring the Grand Brulot. Been eyeing a bottle since your girl turned me onto the VSOP.”

My smile resurfaces when I remember Chastity drinking him and DJ Jinx under the table over a game of Never Have I Ever. “I don’t know. . . That sounds like a big to-do. Chastity would be on board, but I don’t know if the girls wanna ‘waste’ their money so last-minute.”

“Ah, don’t sweat it. I’m not taking lip from selfish Sheena or too-cool-for-school Anissa. Trust me, I’m a master debater.” He rolls up to the big sign with the club’s bit lip logo. “I’ll bring the whole fam together. You can call me K-rizz Kringle,” he laughs. 

I lean over to noogie him. “Think you got too many sugar plums dancing in your head, handsome.” 

I kiss that big forehead, then we tell each other to be careful. But as I’m walking into the back of the club, I see Geo get out and beeline for the club owner’s mini monster truck. He knocks on the slime-green decaled door and down rolls the window. 

I scrunch my shoulders and push away thoughts of Mister Miser laughing at the idea—or polling all his pole minxes and them doing it to my face.

“Ooooh, Pickles,” Chastity cheers from her vanity, waving a sparkly blush brush at me. “What’s up, girl? Did you hear Miski finally got fired for thieving? Christmas come early, right? Now I can actually afford who’s on my Nice List.”

I plop into the pink roller chair next to her. “Good. That girl was feral. Worse attitude than the Cash Me Outside girl.”

“Total Grinch,” Anissa agrees, leaning into our conversation to borrow Chastity’s cotton candy perfume. “I’d put coal in her stocking and beat her with it like a prison rock sock.”

“Naughty, naughty,” Chastity clucks. “Have you really been to prison?”

“Just jail.” Anissa rolls her shoulders like it was a stint in summer school. “One night over a stupid lotion set I ’lifted for my moms… Bitch wouldn’t even pick me up at the station.” She shakes her head until her frown turns into a grin usually reserved for customers. “Who knew Kmart had security like that?”

“His helpers are always watching,” Chastity ominously intones, staring at a bedazzled Santa hat somebody draped over a mirror bulb.

“You play too much.” Anissa gives her a half-hearted shove. “What about you, Pickles? I know you ain’t never been to the pokey. But you ever done some stupid shit over people you thought was family?”

I flash on the holly-dotted embroidery hoop I have sitting on my coffee table, likely to become a dust-catcher after Aunt Zelda told me I’d “have better luck being an esthetician, not an embarrassment.” Scratching at the clasps on my bustier, I murmur, “Well, haven’t we all?”

***

On the stage, glacial in temperature and shade, I forget about all my sad-browed relatives and lack of holiday plans. I shake off the stress, keeping the beat even though I’m sick of Ariana Grande’s caterwauling and the customers who think I don’t see them reusing bills from the edge. Men keep their billfolds closer to the chest this time of year, squeezed tighter from their kids’ wish lists, hosting the in-laws, and their wives’ endless list of “necessary decorations.” 

I’ve heard about it for countless lap dances and tabletop bops, so I dip, slide, and shimmy through the night and early morning until Geo comes to get me. He greets me with Mister Miser, Chastity, and Anissa at his flank. 

“You gotta real fun braintrust here, Pickles.” The club owner winks and glances at his gold Rollie. 5AM. “Merry Christmas Eve. You gonna deck the halls with us next shift or what?”

“Huh?” I wipe sweat and glitter off my forehead, raising a brow to my man.

“Said I gotchu, Pickles!” He shakes up a bottle of Moet but doesn’t pop the top. “This Christmas will be five times funner than some dusty ol’ family function, a fusion of the new and classic! Let me surprise you.”

Well, this is surprise enough, I think, but seeing he’s even got the cheapskate club owner and snooty booty Anissa on board… “We’ll see.” My smile shows I’m already cautiously optimistic.

***

Though 7PM is more like breakfast to clubsters, twelve of us sashay through the doors of The Melting Pot. We soak in all the actual and metaphorical cheesiness of eating liquid cheddar while draped in fluffy white bras and hookah smoke. 

“Germans always have fondue for Christmas Even, right?” Geo asks, as eager as a puppy who actually studied the homework instead of ate it. “That’s what Google said. It’s corny fun anyway, right? Nice.”

“Yes. Kitschy in the best way.” I beam, hoping he’ll relax. “Can’t believe you actually coordinated something with eight strippers,” I whisper as he pulls my chair out.

“Can’t believe you doubted your boy!” He winks and asks the waiter for a round of cranberry mojitos. Once they arrive, he toasts, “Miami doesn’t have much of a winter, but it’s definitely the coolest place to come together. I hope this is the first of many years we support this tradition. Even if we move away from the club, we can all take a piece of this memory, knowing that family is what you make it. Thanks, Pickles, for inspiring this! Cheers, everybody!”

Everybody clinks glasses, then laughs about the droplets that fall and sizzle on the hotplates at our roundtable. The bouncer teases Mister Miser that these drinks are less watered-down than his, and the girls squeeze each other’s shoulders in playful shoves, kidding about who’ll get drunkest before dusk. We share cauldrons of Swiss to dunk duck and fillet mignon, charcuterie and shrimp, we cook ourselves on skewers. Anissa entertains us with how she used to slink into her mom’s closet as early as November to slit open her presents with a nail file. Chastity talks about how glad she is not to have to be glared and ogled at for free in church this year. By the time we move onto chocolate and wedges of bread, pineapples and pretzels, I forget why I ever feared rejection here.

“And the best is yet to come,” Chastity sings at me with as Geo signs the bill. 

***

The Champagne Room is strewn with candy-striped balloons. On the red-hot couches, we all sit for the gift exchange by a Charlie Brown tree. Our heels excitedly stomp on the carpet patterned with hair-swinging babes. Anissa tries her best not to fight over that Agent Provocateur lingerie set she had to trade in the shuffle. Chastity and I giggle like schoolgirls over the gag gifts of literal stress “balls” and pregnancy tests that got passed around. I’m more than pleased with the Body Works basket I won and the spa certificate I gave away, but Geo’s sweet deep voice says, “Wait. Pickles, it’s not Christmas without your signature.” 

He nods toward the artificial tree. 

It’s easy to see through its limbs but it takes some digging to pluck that ornament of a Vlasic classic. The other girls halfheartedly search, munching Haribo gummies. 

That pickle prize is mine! I hold it up like a torch.

The girls whistle and clap. 

Geo snatches it from my hand. 

Before I can ask why, he plants a jewelry box in my palm instead. He flicks open the small square and reveals an emerald ring. 

“Ol’ switcharoo. Whata ya say, Pickles?” He proposes, “Year one of many traditions?”

I say, pickles really are lucky. I am.

Fuck Christmas

Since it was Christmas Day Mom wanted to get drunk. This sounded like a good idea but it’s illegal to sell alcohol in Massachusetts on holidays. She would not be discouraged.

“We’ll drive up to New Hampshire. There’s liquor stores just across the State line.”

That sounded depressing. A storm had covered the Northeastern Corridor with several feet of snow that’d mostly turned black and crusty.  But anything was better than being at home, except maybe the Bay State Prison where I’d spent the last few Xmases. 

“And then we can drive a bit further north and visit your father.”

She put icing on the suicidal cake. My old man’s buried just outside the Navy Stockade at Portsmouth. He struck an officer while intoxicated. They could’ve strung him up, but he took care of that detail himself. 

Black ice blotted out the long stretch of industrial blight. Mom’s naturally chatty. I turned on the radio to drown her out. She doesn’t appreciate Satanic metal, and switched to a station heavy on the Xmas carols. She sang along tunelessly and it was better than her usual nonsense about happier times.

She’d dressed as though we were headed to Miami instead of closer to the North Pole. The car’s heater was broken. She mewled about eggnog, Yule logs and chestnuts burning on an open fire.

The New Hampshire liquor stores were all open. Even so, there were long lines. Xmas is hard to face sober. Mom waited till we were back in the car to open the first bottle. 

“Did you see how all those men were staring at me.”

The attention made her merry. The sky got lower and lower, grayer and grayer. Jesus Christ is born, hallelujah. A storm warning interrupted the carols and prayers. It was strongly recommended that citizens remain in their homes and avoid the highways. 

The prison loomed deathly pale against black clouds headed in from over the Atlantic. There were no other cars in the visitors parking lot. 

The inmates’ graveyard is just outside the chain-link perimeter. The names on the tiny headstones face in towards what amounted to home and family for those dead men.

Mom got weepy, even though her first ex-husband had spent all her money, knocked her up and then left her for some other alcoholic floozy. I never even met the guy, but he’d passed on the prison gene. 

The ice storm hit while we were on the bridge that leads onto I-95. The old car had bald tires and we skidded like a rattlesnake in a jar of vaseline. Police cars had staked out all the exits and the cops were waving people off the road. I prayed they wouldn’t make me pull over because I wasn’t too sober at that point and wasn’t supposed to go out of State. 

Mom saw the pink neon motel sign. “Oh look I stayed there with your father once. At least I think it was him.”

Seemed like a miracle when the old guy at the reception desk took a check for the room. He must’ve been new in the motel business, or maybe he was drunk too. 

“Oh look honey a double bed. We can snuggle up and watch TV like when you were a baby.”

A bottle hit the floor and I awoke to what looked like a snowdrift dancing up and down on my lap. The TV glowed an electric snowstorm and roared static. Mom looked up. 

“Oh I thought it’d be OK as long as you’re asleep.”

Actually it felt pretty good, and it wasn’t as though I had any other hot dates lined up. So it was time to follow through, head in where I came out of, turn life into a round-trip. The place where everything started was nice and cozy and Mom was singing jingle bells but then a thought crossed her mind and she stopped. 

“Ooh baby weren’t you awful lonely in prison?”

“They never stuck me in the hole.”

She moaned. “Oh that’s not what I mean, honey. Didn’t you have a nice cellmate to hug you and keep you warm on Christmas Eve?”

Those are the memories you forget as soon as they let you out. “I’d rather not talk about it, Ma.”

“You don’t have to talk about it, baby. Just let me feel it.” She assumed the position.

TV glare showed a wreath of dead flowers that pulsated with the cathode vibrations. The thing went in slow.

“Ooh now I remember why I fell in love with your papa.”

Guess I’d learned a thing or two at the Bay State Correctional Facility, the only place I was ever popular. 

Outside the motel the snow fell and fell. Mom sounded so happy. She sang about her dreams of a white Xmas. 

The white stuff came out, eventually. And I remembered through an alcoholic haze that there was something else I’d picked up in prison that maybe I should’ve told her about.

The Art of Love

I sit silently staring down at the blood dripping from the slashes in my arms. I embrace the pain as it reminds me that I’m alive, and still capable of feeling. I look at the canvas in front of me. It sits on an old wooden stretcher I borrowed in High School and conveniently forgot to give back. The painting on the canvas was an abstract tree meant to represent the tree of life. It had come alive with sweet melancholy when I started to smear the blood onto the tree, starting at the roots and making my way up the trunk. I eventually ran out and tore another gash into my arm to finish the branches. The way the blood mixed with the already dark construct made me smile. This was true art. There aren’t many left who will suffer for their art like this. This, after all, was a tree of life, and what better representation of life than blood?

​ The numbness in my body began and I knew that meant it was time to bandage myself up. I go to my cabinet in the corner of the studio where the medical supplies are kept, pull out a large amount of gauze and medical tape, and go to town on myself. I don’t worry about the stitching materials. I don’t think I went too deep this time. My last painting, a bastardized conception of the Virgin Mary was a whole other story. That one took a lot of blood, and a lot of stitches, which I had luckily watched a YouTube video on how to do.

​Now that I’m all bandaged, and feeling somewhat alive, still riding the high from the loss of blood I figure why stop there? I light a cigarette and open a beer, then send out the notorious, “You up?” text to a few girls on my phone. A few minutes pass, and it buzzes showing an icon of Sara’s face. Wouldn’t have been my top pick if I’m being honest, but it’s midnight and here we are. Her text reads, “Yeah, I can be there in ten.” with a smiley face. So I reply, sounds good, and crack another beer and wait.

​ Sara makes it to my house in what feels more like twenty, but I’m not going to complain. At least she showed up. Something about her is radiant tonight. She wore skin-tight black jeans and a low-cut v-neck showing off just enough. Her porcelain skin seemed to come alive when it was lit up by the pale moonlight. Her face was all angles and beautiful as she brushed her fair hair out of her eyes. “It’s good to see you,” she said. “Do you have another art project you want my opinion on or was this just a booty call?”

​“Can’t it be both?” I ask and we both laugh. I ask her to come in and offer her a drink. “We have beer or bourbon, take your pick.”

​“Do you have any Coke? I’d love a Jack and Coke.” So I mix her one before pulling her over to gaze into my newest masterpiece. She looked at it in awe and it filled me with gratitude, why was I ever hoping it would be one of the other girls? Sara truly sees my art and might be the only one who does. “Did you. . did you hurt yourself for this one too?” She asked in a soft voice. I just grin back at her and pull off my sweatshirt, revealing my heavily bandaged arms. At that moment, she looked so sad and I swear I saw tears forming in her eyes. 

​“Hey now, it’s okay. It’s all for the art Sara, don’t you see? Don’t you see how much better it makes it?” She doesn’t look convinced, but she forces a smile and says, “Of course. I think you’re brilliant, you know that.” I smile back at her. She was beautiful and full of flattery tonight. I grab her by the waist and pull her into the tightest hug I can muster with my arms in their lousy state. She leans in for a kiss and her lips have to be the softest I’ve ever felt. The kisses start coming faster in rapid succession as we both clumsily make our way back to the bed. 

She pushes me back onto the bed with little effort because of how woozy I am from the blood loss and alcohol. She starts taking off her shirt as I slide my jeans off and then I go for my shirt and by the time I get it over my head she’s standing at the edge of the bed completely naked. Her body curves in all the right places and I can’t remember a time when I was more aroused. She slides on top of me and it’s in within seconds, I swear I’ve never felt someone so wet. She rides me for what feels like hours, every second is pure bliss as skin slaps together. We fit together perfectly like slippery puzzle pieces that were meant for each other. 

We both come multiple times before she rolls off of me and we lay there in complete ecstasy. I light a cigarette and pass it to her and then light one for myself. She props herself up on one arm and leans into me, using her non-smoking hand to draw imaginary lines around my belly button. She starts to run her hands over the scars all over my belly and torso, and then she says. “I wish you wouldn’t do this to yourself. I know it’s for the art, and it makes it better, it does. I just still hate that you do it to yourself. I wish you would use someone else’s blood. Your body is scarred enough. Why not use the body of someone else you care about? Maybe even someone you love?” 

I think about this for a moment. Do I “love” anyone? That I’m not sure of but I guess if I did, Sara would be the one. I, at the very least, love her at this moment. “What exactly are you suggesting Sara?” I ask, already knowing the answer. 

“You could use me, I’d let you. I trust you to patch me up, and you’re still beautiful with your scars so maybe I will be too.” She says, almost excitedly. 

“Sara, there is nothing in this world that would ever make you less beautiful,” I say with a smile. I brush her hair back and tuck it behind her ear. “Are you sure? You want to be a part of my art?” She nods, and that’s that. “Then there’s no time to waste. I already have my next idea. Let’s get started.’

The concept for my next piece is simple. I will simply paint the Earth and then smear Sara’s blood from top to bottom on the canvas to symbolize the cruel reality we live in. This planet is dying, and we’re doing it. All of us, me, you, Sara, it doesn’t matter, we’re all guilty. Sara sits behind me and watches the gentle brush strokes shape the most authentic representation of the Earth that I can muster. It’s not my best work, for the hour is late and I’ve grown quite drunk, but I’m riding the high now and if I let go for even a second, I may crash. 

I start coloring in my world with blues and greens with a little dash of white here and there for a foggy effect. Look at that, I’ve painted the Earth and it’s only three-thirty in the morning. Now the fun begins. I walk over to Sara with my razor outstretched. She grimaces away at first but composes herself quickly. She’s still naked and I take a moment to see her whole for the last time, without any blemishes. She is so beautiful, but there’s work to be done. 

I make sure not to go too deep with the first cut. It’s on her upper forearm and I just want her to get a feel for it. She winces only slightly and then stares down, mesmerized at the site of her blood. I remember my first time and in that moment I envy her for how free she must be feeling. I grab her arm and squeeze as I run my brush under the flowing crimson. She cries out because my grip is too tight. “I’m sorry,” she says immediately. 

“It’s okay, are you sure you want this? I’m going to need a lot more than just that little bit of blood.” Most of what I had squeezed out of her was already drying and was useless to me now. She doesn’t speak, she just nods her head. So I tear a few fresh wounds open on her arms and go back to work. The blood sets up nicely on the not-yet-dry paint, giving it the exact effect I want. Sara whimpers behind me, admiringly as I, the virtuoso smears fresh blood on as much of the canvas as I can. “Other arm,” I say without even looking back at her as I hold out my hand for hers. She gives me her arm and I tear three new gashes into it, maybe going a little deep with one, but she’ll be fine. I’m a professional, after all. 

Sara’s arms look worse than I initially realized so I pause from my work and begin to bandage her up. The one I went a little too deep on won’t stop bleeding so I know I’m going to have to stitch it. I make my way over to the medical cabinet, pull out my supplies, and go to work on a not-so-great suture that looks even worse than the ones I did on myself. “There you are, good as new,” I said.

“Baby, I don’t feel so good, I think I need to lay down.” It is getting late and I also want to lay down so I get it. We can finish the blood-soaked Earth another time. 

“That’s okay, let’s get you to bed. We can finish it later. You did great for your first time.” I guide her over to the bed, lay her down, and tuck her in gently. She drifts off to sleep almost instantly. That really must’ve taken a lot out of her. I admire her one last time and throw my arm over, bury my face in the pillow, and begin to drift off myself. 

I dream that I’m standing on a stage in front of a large audience. There are hundreds of people seated in front of me in rows. Next to me stand my blood-soaked earth, still propped up on my hand-me-down stretcher. There’s what appears to be a panel of three judges looking over it. I hear their murmurs, saying words like exquisite. A normal man would blush under these circumstances, but I know what I am. I am modern expressionism embodied and the words from the judges are well-earned. They all hold up little cards with the number ten on them and the crowd begins to cheer. I deserve this.

I look down and see Sara sitting in the front row. I go to the edge of the stage and beckon her to join me. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I say to the crowd. “Could we have a round of applause for my partner, for it was she who truly inspired this work?” The crowd eats it up and then all of a sudden I hear an alarm going off in the distance. My alarm clock succeeds at waking me up even though I swear I shut it off the night before. I have a splitting headache. It’s only eight in the morning. What was that like four hours of sleep? Oh well. I look over at Sara and notice something is wrong with the way she is breathing, or rather the way she seems to almost not be breathing. 

“Hey, wake up,” I say, shaking her gently. Nothing. She doesn’t respond. I shake her harder and roll her onto her back. Her face stares up at me but there’s nothing left to it. All the vibrance is gone. Her eyes are open slightly and her mouth is ajar, but no air is going in or out. I feel a tear fall from my eye and it lands on her face as I begin to break down. I look at her arm and see that the stitching I had done the night prior had been ripped out and underneath her was a large pool of blood. My silent sobs grow heavier as I feel my chest heaving in and out. I turn with just enough time to avoid doing it on the bed and throw up all over my floor. 

I allow myself what feels like an hour to remain in this state before I get up and start pacing back and forth. “Okay, you gotta fucking think. Not only are you a murderer, but there are clear signs of mental health issues wrapped up in this too. So do you go to the cops? Confess? Spend the rest of your useless life in the psych ward of some prison? Fuck no, okay? We’re not doing that. It’s not what I want and it’s not what Sara would want either.” A thought crosses my mind to get rid of the body and ditch the cell phone. The cellphone would be the easiest to get rid of, my band plays a show tonight at The Rockit, I’ll just drop it there in the crowd somewhere, but the body was an issue.

I look around the room and my eyes fall on the pile of camping stuff in the corner from back when my folks and I still did things together. I know the sleeping bags are wrapped up in a couple of Hefty’s so I’ll use those first and foremost. I go dump the sleeping bags and I’m back to the bed in seconds. Her body was small so maybe I could just fold her into one? I start at the feet as if the trash bags themselves were sleeping bags and when I can’t go up any farther I push her head down and forward until it lets out a loud crunch. I recoil and it takes everything I have to not throw up again. It did work though. I was able to fold her up and get the first bag tied. The second bag fit over much easier and then part of it was done. 

Luckily my house is surrounded by a few miles of forest on each side. I just have to pick a place that’s not often explored and I know just the spot. After checking that both my parents had already left for the day. I picked up the garbage bag and went outside to my car. I popped the trunk and placed Sara gently inside. I run to the tool shed and find the biggest of the shovels we have to choose from and return to the car with it laying it on top of Sara. My head is going a million miles a minute in all different directions, most of which end with me in prison but I can’t think about that now. We’re not going far and I just have to take things one step at a time. 

It’s only about five minutes of driving before I park and go to the trunk to retrieve Sara and the shovel. It’s a bit of a walk to the secluded lake, and the overgrown wildlife doesn’t help matters. Still, after an additional five minutes, we come to a large open area with a big rock at the end of it that looks out over a lake. When it isn’t muddy and horrible like it is today, this is my favorite spot because of how beautiful it is. I’d spend hours here when I was young with my sketchbook and colored pencils trying to catch a trace of the magic on paper. In later years, I’d try to paint it. This was also the first place I ever self-harmed, the place I came to cry, and the first place I ever brought Sara to. 

I find the cleanest-looking bit of soil that I can and begin to dig. I dig for hours. She has to be deep. No one can ever know where Sara went and if she’s deep, no one will ever find her. I’m satisfied when I hit what feels like eight feet. It’s a struggle to get out of the hole and an even bigger struggle to say goodbye to Sara before tossing her into the hole. I fill the hole much quicker than it took to dig, and I smear a lot of the mud surrounding the area overtop so it doesn’t look much different from the rest of the ground. 

I toss the shovel in the back of the trunk and light a cigarette. I begin to cry again, as I had in this spot so many times before. This was my spot and now it would always be our spot. “I love you, Sara,” I say before flicking my cigarette into the lake. I’ve never said those words to anyone other than my parents, and never thought I’d love anything other than the art, but it was true. If I could go back I wouldn’t have cut her so deep, but there aren’t many left who will suffer for their art like this.