Wet Schemes

As Frank pulled into the parking lot, which looked like something that would be converted into a future filming location of yet another Mad Max film, he had to admit he was far from impressed.

The bar Simon was over the moon about was attached to a damn-near empty strip mall. Unless you counted the large array of homeless residing in the nearby woods.

Frank approached the idiotically named superhero bar, which looked like some pedophile’s wet dream; he nearly avoided stepping in a pile of what he guessed to be human shit. Apparently nature called merely steps from a restroom in the lovely cartoon-esque-looking bar. Frank opened the door to be met by what appeared to be Cindy Lauper’s lard-ass lost twin.

“I can’t believe it! Frank Murphy is actually here!”

The woman dressed like some arts and craft project gone horribly wrong grabbed Frank without warning, squeezing him like a fucking orange. Frank silently prayed to himself it wasn’t her feeding time.

“Jesus Christ, big country!  A little over enthused, are we?”

The woman just looked at Frank, laughing. “Oh you’re just how I imagined you to be. We’re so happy you’re finally here!”

Frank stopped the woman as she reached out to grasp him in her death grip yet once again.

“Sweetheart, I’m flattered, but where is Simon?”

“Hey man, damn glad you finally made it. Let me buy you a drink.” The curly haired loon of an agent called out, waving him over to a dimly lit corner booth.

Frank looked around, noting that this place looked like a mix of Chuck E. Cheese and a very sad toy collector’s wet dream. As toys seemed to fill every corner as the weird mix of dork action figures and stuffed animals just freaked Frank out in this weird blacked out window bar clubhouse nobody in their right mind desired to be a member of.

Frank began to go sit with his loony ass former agent as suddenly the rotund woman grasped his arm. She said, “I’m sorry sweetie but you need to purchase a wrist band first.” 

She pointed to some very highly unimpressed kid behind a desk playing a video game. Frank figured this kid apparently was paid to play video games and tend the counter, though found it more important to finish his game of Halo before tending to this very hungover customer. At last, he turned from the TV screen to look at Frank.

“Yeah?”

“Umm, sorry to bother you, oh great wizard, but apparently I need a wristband. I mean, I hate not to be one of the not so cool kids and all.”

The kid just stared at him, clearly annoyed, as he handed him a neon pink colored wrist band.

“Thirty bucks, dude.”

“Wow, just the color to match my sparkling personality. So this includes….?”

The little ray of sunshine behind the counter looked extremely annoyed. “Yeah dude, like you can play all the games. Shit, man, what else you want, a fucking blowjob or some shit?”

“You sir, are clearly upper management material. I will pass on the blow job and the video games being I am over twelve, but you have a great day and enjoy commanding your troops in your quest to avoid pussy at all costs.”

Frank didn’t wait for the lovely millennial’s reply as he joined Simon in the dingy little booth.

“Wow, kid, love the fucking decor. What, you decorate this place from shit you grabbed from Michael Jackson’s estate sale?”

“Fuck you man! I knew you were going to give me shit over how the bar looks, but I didn’t design it. I am just buying it, man. I think it’s got real potential.”

Frank fought the urge not to burst out laughing as some homeless dude had whipped out his cock and was going to town on himself right in front of the widow where Frank and Simon were sitting.

“Dammit! Shirley, that guy’s at it again.” Simon called out as he slapped the glass. The clearly out of gourd dude trying to free Wilile just stared up as if God himself was trying to communicate with him.

A little Latina waitress made her way to the table, handing them both menus that looked as though they were made by a first grader.

The drinks all had bizarre names. Frank didn’t bother reading the visual bukake, he just ordered his usual Jim Beam and Coke to which he was surprised he didn’t have to tell this barely legal barmaid what went into the drink.

As he noticed his former agent’s eyes clearly fixated upon that said young lady’s non-existent ass.

“You know kid, you truly are a fucking idiot!”

“What the hell man, what did I do now?” Simon replied befuddled at his former client’s statement.

“You’re buying this pedo palace to get a piece of ass goddamn. Now I’ve truly heard it all!”

“It’s not that man. I mean, yeah, she is hot. I mean, she is really cool, man. You will dig her. Just don’t take a shit on this please, man. Okay?”

Frank bit his tongue as best he could knowing the kid was hell bent on this shit storm of a wet dream. He also noticed his new stalking victim making goo goo eyes at some weirdo with a rose neck tattoo behind the bar who occasionally cut his eyes back at Simon and Frank.

“Hey slapnuts, who’s the weirdo tending bar?”

“Oh, that’s just Tate, man.”

“Seems awfully friendly with your girl there, Romeo.”

Simon kept staring back at his soon to be employees and wistful love interest. “He is a bit of a dick man. Honestly, when the paperwork goes through I will probably give him the ax. Dude, he’s really odd and annoying as fuck.”

“Yeah, and boning your chick so…yeah, smart move, Count Dingleberry.”

The evening kept rolling as Frank and his former agent held court at the back booth and the place remained as empty as when he first arrived. But his friend was burnt out from his former job and simply burnt out from Frank himself and he fully understood that.

Although Frank was old enough to be his only true friend’s father he understood he had to have something more than the shit show it was being caught up in the publishing machine. So, while he thought it was a terrible idea to lend him the bank to buy this craptastic place, he knew he would do it simply for the fact he at least owed the kid that much.

As Frank excused himself to see a man about a horse, he made his way into the cramped little restroom. Some weird looking kid washing his hands at the sink glared at him. He oddly enough remained at the sink as Frank finished up taking a piss.

“You know, he’s not into you.”

Frank looked at the kid, questioning if Simon had employed this entire place from rejects from Houston state psych ward.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, you look alright, but he’s not into guys. At least that’s what he tells me after he led me on; he is so clearly repressed.”

“Look, I just want to use the sink, okay dude.”

The kid simply rolled his eyes heading out the restroom as Frank quickly washed his hands and got the fuck out of there. He paused at the bar to order yet another round from the neck tattooed prick who had been glaring at himself and Simon for a large part of the evening.

“You know dude, I have to admit I don’t get what folks see in your writing. It’s so, like, cliche and all. I mean, don’t take that wrong, I’m no critic or anything.”

“Yeah, I mean, kinda beats working a dead end job in a place that looks like a thrift store got butt fucked by deranged circus clown, but hey, nice neck tattoo. You know, you should get one on your forehead that reads This Space For Rent. I’m just saying you got some issues pal.” Frank replied. Simon’s favorite barmaid and the thousand tons-of-fun soon-to-be former owner cracked up while the weirdo with rose tattoo umm yeah not so much.

“Hey kid, great atmosphere in the men’s room. Really dig your fanclub. God, that dude weirded me out.”

“Oh, that’s just Ritchie; he busses tables occasionally and helps out in the kitchen. I don’t pay him all that much. Kinda has a weird crush on me, man. He brought his entire family to meet me. It was like The Hills Have Eyes or some shit really was awkward.”

Frank didn’t even bother entertaining the pointless conversation as the time slowly passed. The occasional customer staggered in looking around questioning just what the fuck they stepped into.

At last, against his better judgment, Simon introduced him properly to Sofia who Frank had already by this stage in drunkenness renamed Chi Chi Rodriguez. At least behind her back, that is. Like the refined gentleman pervert he truly was.

As they all joked, Frank made the usual expected ass of himself. Simon’s quasi girlfriend excused herself from the booth to grab more drinks while Simon continued his perpetual future sexual harassment lawsuit in the making stare.

“You know there, Casanova, it would be far cheaper to just pay to fuck her than buy an entire whatever the fuck you call this weirdo’s wet dream to get in her pants.”

“Quit busting my fucking balls, you prick, and please don’t fuck this up, man. I get it if you don’t want to loan me the money, but for once just be my damn friend, you asshole!” Simon, now on his tenth gin and tonic, snapped.

Frank knew not to press his favorite verbal punching bag too much, not because he feared him getting pissed; he just hated the thought of hearing him cry over how he had cost yet another failed attempt at hopeless romance.

The girl oddly looked like Simon in drag which threw Frank off a bit and really made him question if telling his former agent to go fuck himself all through the years had truly sunk in by default.

Sofia brought a tray of drinks and one for herself, which was some ungodly concoction called The Rainbow. Which, yeah, Frank had no reason to comment on, but as they continued their conversation Simon occasionally shot Frank a look that the demon’s that possessed his permanently charred soul could not resist in having a little fun on the nearest victim’s behalf.

“So Sofia, can I ask you a very simple question?”

“Of course, feel free to ask me anything, Frankie.” Sofia quickly replied as Simon just glared.

“Well, sweetheart, would you sleep with a guy for five million dollars?”

Simon did a spit take as his gal pal didn’t hesitate in her reply.

“Oh hells yeah!”

Frank flashed his legendary shit eating grin. “Well what about five hundred?”

Sofia glared at Frank, her demeanor instantly turning south.

“What, you think I’m some kind of whore!?’

“Well, honey, I think we already determined that; I was just trying to negotiate a price for my sex deprived friend here.”

“Fuck you, asshole!”

Sofia instantly shouted, throwing her ungodly concoction in Frank’s face then turned and smacked Simon in the face. She strutted off as Frank just sat there.

“You know, kid, I really think she’s a keeper and I got to admit after tasting the rainbow I have to say it’s a tad bit surgery for me. Yeah, not a fan.”

Simon yelled at Frank, and as he made his exit, his former agent was chasing behind his barmaid’s boney ass.

Frank was on the first flight he could grab back to the Carolinas.

He sat there a week later looking at the blank screen feeling that emptiness that had become his continual existence.

Frank had the money transferred. He knew it was a hopeless investment but, after all, wasn’t it always a shit bet when you banked on anything involving the heart.

The kid had his whacked-out bar, the girl had run off with the deuce with neck tattoo and apparently he had to ban Ritchie from the premises over a rather awkward incident in the walk-in box.

The business would go belly up a few months later. Yeah, Frank took a hit, but he always enjoyed penning and now financing his former associate’s unhappy ending.

He looked at the news, a storm was barreling in towards Kill Devil Hills, yet again. Frank could ride it out, but instead he booked a trip to the Big Easy because kicking back a hurricane seemed far more appealing than eating crow or sipping a rainbow over the Lone Star state any day of the week.

A cold beer will always beat a warm heart. Yeah, Frank hated to admit there was so much truth to that saying and bad memories attached to that title. Even he had to kick himself in the ass but life has a funny way of busting your balls if you live long enough.

We all have to pay that fiddler one day, but at least in Frank’s case it thankfully wasn’t today.

Greetings from Carolina. The beer’s cold and the weather is shitty. I hope all of you out there are as well. Frank typed the words upon the computer screen and left the laptop open as he headed out the door.

The storm could have the house and the computer to the bottle. Much like Frank’s nonexistent heart was strictly off limits, as were his deepest of thoughts. After all, a scoundrel must have his secrets.

The party was never relegated to a specific place. As Frank never cared for the window dressing as one floor, no matter how clean, was just like the next. As long as ice was available with plenty of mixers and some rented companionship, who gave a damn about the address? The party was always overrated, but, then again, aren’t they all?

Pick Your Poison

“Good morning, sir.” A portly fellow with a dark mustache and a bad combover stood behind the counter. “How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a nice plant for my wife,” I said. As much as I loved flowers, they often wilted and died within days, so I wanted something that would last. 

“Well, you’ve come to the right place. What’s the occasion?”

I hesitated, debating whether or not to lie. In the end, I figured the man would never see me again, so it wouldn’t hurt to tell the truth. 

“Well, to be honest, I upset my wife earlier, and now I need to make it up to her.”

A chuckle escaped the man’s lips. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I’d be a millionaire.”

“I can imagine. Any suggestions?”

The man pivoted and rubbed his chin, eyeing several plants along the wall behind the counter. “This Creeping Zinnia is nice.”

“Creeping Zinnia?”

The man turned to me and nodded. “Yeah. If you touch the leaves of the plant and then rub your eyes, it will cause you to go blind.” 

My brow furrowed. 

“Or maybe this Skunk Hair,” the man said, moving along to another. “When the temperature gets too hot or too cold, it will release a putrid toxin that will cause your body to convulse.”

Was this guy for real? 

“So, these are poisonous plants?” I said. 

“Yes.”

“But I’m looking for a harmless plant.”

“Unfortunately, all of the plants in my store are poisonous. Or, at least, dangerous in some way.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I think I made a mistake.” I spun around and walked toward the exit. When I put my hand to the door knob, it wouldn’t budge. “What the hell?” I muttered. 

“It’s locked,” the man said. 

I turned to him. “Why?”

“Because you haven’t bought anything yet. I have a button under the counter, and I locked the door after you entered the store. Without any other customers to bother us, you have my undivided attention. Now that’s service. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Are you serious? You can’t keep me here. I’m calling the cops.”

I slid a hand into my pants pocket, ready to pull my phone from it. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” the man said, a sly smile stretching across his face. 

“And why’s that?”

“See those vines overhead?”

I tilted my head back. Vines practically covered the ceiling, some of them hanging only a few feet from my head. 

“They can release flesh-eating spores,” he said. “At my command.”

This guy was crazier than I thought. 

“Really?” I said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “First of all, I don’t know of any plant that releases flesh-eating spores. And even if it is capable of doing that, how could you possibly control it?”

The man shrugged. “Many people call me the plant whisperer. I have a way with them. They’re like my children. Sometimes they don’t listen to me, but they’ll do as I say most of the time.”

A thought came to me. “So, you’d risk exposing yourself to the spores just to punish me for not buying a plant?”

He removed something from under the counter and held it up. “That’s why I have this umbrella. Just in case.”

I doubted an umbrella would completely protect him, but I wasn’t about to debate it.

“This is ludicrous!” I shouted. 

“Maybe, but do you really want to take the chance that I’m right?”

I mulled it over, then approached the counter. “I find it hard to believe that people haven’t complained about what you’re doing here. Whether it’s to the Better Business Bureau or The Department of Health. Even the police. How are you still in business?”

“You’d be surprised. I have connections all over town. And in high places, too.”

“And what’s to keep me from blabbing when I leave? I can urge everyone I know not to come here.”

“Plants are sensitive to human emotion. They can pick up on the slightest vibe. And if you’ve been badmouthing me, your plant will know it.”

I swallowed. “What are you implying?”

“It will take defensive measures. Which will be unpleasant for you and your wife. And anyone else in your household.”

“Then what’s to stop me from throwing it in the trash once I leave here?”

“The same. It will consider it a threat and take action. Plants can communicate with one another, and all of its buddies will make your life a living hell.”

I was about to call his bluff when something tickled my cheek. I flinched at the vine. It had lowered itself from the ceiling, then quickly recoiled like a snake. 

“Do you believe me now?” the man asked. 

I let out a frustrated breath. “Look. What if I pay for a plant but don’t actually take one?”

The man shook his head. “The whole point is to find loving homes for these plants. I don’t do it for the money. In fact, I’m barely breaking even running this business. It may be hard to believe, but these plants will grow on you. No pun intended. Anyway, if you love them, you have nothing to fear.”

I deliberated. “Fine. Do you have a plant that’s a little friendlier than the ones you already mentioned?”

“It depends on your definition of friendly.” He turned to another plant behind him. “For example, take this Spotted Redbrush. It has a better temperament. You really have to piss it off for it to retaliate. But if you anger it, you’ll have the most agonizing rash for weeks.”

That didn’t sound appealing to me in the least. 

I pointed to one on my left. “What about that one?”

The owner moved toward the plant. “This one?”

I nodded.

“That’s the Brown-Eyed Common Alder,” he said. 

“And what does it do?”

“It can put you to sleep.”

My lips stretched into a grin. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It wouldn’t be if that’s all it did. You’ll also experience vivid nightmares, and you’ll be vomiting for hours once you wake.”

I cringed at the thought, and my shoulders slumped in disappointment. 

“I can sense your indecision,” the man said. 

“Is it that obvious?” I took a breath. “Do you mind if I have a look around?”

“Be my guest.”

I perused the store, the owner hovering behind me the entire time. Then I spotted one. It resembled a small basil plant. It looked innocent enough. Then again, I’d come to realize that appearances could be deceiving. 

“You like that one?” the man inquired. 

“Maybe. I’m afraid to ask about it though.”

“It’s a Healing Ribwort. It’s called that because it can regenerate itself after being damaged. It’s one of the most resilient plants I know of.”

“But?”

“I’m not going to lie,” the owner said. “It’s partial to women. It tends to lash out more at men. But only if you give it a reason to. It can make one of your appendages go limp.”

My eyes bulged. “You mean—”

“Yeah. That appendage.”

I nearly choked on my saliva as I swallowed. I pondered for a moment, ultimately coming to a decision. 

“I’ll take it,” I said. 

The man raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. I figure there’s even more incentive for me to treat it well. And if I happen to anger it for some reason, at least it will take it out on me and not my wife.”

“Makes sense. So, how would you like to pay? Cash or charge?”

“Cash,” I said. “I’d rather my wife not know how much I’m spending on a flaccid penis plant.”

Deep Fried

Another shitty end to another shitty day. Noah was clopening, again, even though he was pretty sure it violated some OSHA bullshit that he had to be at work five hours after clocking out. Why did McBiggies even stay open this late? No one in this shit-for-brains town went out after ten, but the owner insisted they stay open until two in the morning just in case some big-rig trucker got the hankering for midnight diarrhea. Whatever. Noah put in his earbuds, turned them up full-blast, and mopped the floor to music most people he knew would classify as “Satanic.”

It was essential that Noah closed the front of house as quickly as possible, not because he was a particularly loyal minimum wage employee committed to avoiding time theft – fuck that – but because he was closing with Jeff. Jeff was the living embodiment of everything wrong with the world. Dropout, pot-smoker, rape-joker, ass-smacker, shrimp-dick motherfucker who, for some ungodly reason, thought he was the hottest shit to ever hit the pavement. Jeff could go choke on his light beer and chicken wings. Jeff could go take an Ambien and lie sideways on the train tracks. Jeff could go hang himself with his grandma’s shit-stained panties. Jeff could go—

“Becca, will you turn that shit down? I can hear it from the walk-in.”

Noah’s dream sequence of increasingly humiliating and painful ends to the boil that was Jeff shattered, and right when they were getting good. Noah ripped out an ear bud, whipping around and wishing to God he had a weapon of some kind. No one would miss this imbecile, this veritable worm, this Jeff.

“That’s not my name, Jeff,” Noah spit. He didn’t even bother making eye contact. He put his ear bud back in, punched the volume knob on his phone, even though it was already maxed out, and mopped like he was trying to scrape the tiles off the floor.

What a piece of shit, what a cretin. These idiots have no idea what’s coming. When the grid dropped and chaos reigned supreme, Noah would laugh as Jeff and the mealworms like him begged for water, for shelter, for their puny lives while he sat on a throne of—

“Don’t touch me!” Noah shouted, dropping his mop and pushing Jeff away with both hands. The fucker had snuck up behind Noah and ripped out his ear buds with the typical audacity of a cis, straight, white guy. 

“Jesus, calm down, groomer,” Jeff retorted with great intelligence. “Keep it down or I’ll bitch about you to Janice, again. One more complaint and you get fired, right?”

Empires were burned to the ground with less fury than that which Jeff’s shit-eating grin stirred up in Noah. What made it worse, Jeff was right. Noah had already been warned by the owner, Janice, in a one-on-one last week that his ice was getting thinner and thinner. Not a single one of his own complaints against coworkers who misgendered and dead-named him seemed to find their way into any of their folders, but for some nearly unfathomable reason, every single complaint against him had been typed out, Xeroxed, and filed alphabetically. Noah hated his job, almost more than he hated the government, but he needed the money. So, he turned off his music, ground his teeth, and wheeled the mop bucket to the kitchen to drain.

“Oh, Christ, he hasn’t even shut down the friers yet,” Noah thought, rolling his eyes. He’d probably be here for another hour, at least, since he couldn’t leave till Jeff finished closing the back of house. Whatever, he’d sit in a booth and harness his anger into a rant on Discord. He liked the people in the new server he joined. They weren’t snowflakes like so many other alphabet people. They wanted real change, like him, and they weren’t afraid to dirty their hands getting it done. 

“You know, if you tried a little harder, I bet you’d be fuckable as a chick.” 

This influx of charm announced Jeff’s arrival in the kitchen. You’d think that after a year of harassing Noah, Jeff would have come up with at least some new material. But no, it always circled back around to Noah’s fuckability as a chick, broad, or female. 

“You don’t even flatten your tits all that good. I can tell you’re like a C-cup.”

Speculative fixations on Noah’s binded chest, right on cue. 

“I just think it’s kind of pathetic how hard you try and how bad you fail. You don’t look like a dude or a chick, just some sort of—”

“Freak?” Noah couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t hold his tongue and listen to the same slew of shit from another low-life piece of shit. He knew he was fuming because he couldn’t think of any other words to call Jeff than “shit.”

“Exactly,” Jeff sneered, wiping down the grill with a sponge, “you saved my breath. A freak.”

Noah straightened the bottles of bleach and ammonia on the cleaning supply shelf with a precision that would make fascists proud. These idiots have no idea what’s coming. One more word out of him, and it’s over. 

“You know, I think I saw something like you crawling around on the Discovery channel. What was it called? He-She’s Gone Wild?”

Go ahead, shithead. I dare you. One more crack like that and—

“No, it wasn’t Discovery channel,” Jeff laughed, “it was Brazzers. Some bitch like you was in a train. Damn, maybe that’s what you need. A good fucking from six fat cocks, one after the other. Maybe then you’ll stop trying to—” 

Noah had never stabbed someone before. It was much easier than he anticipated. For all the corners McBiggies cut, they sure kept their knives sharp. Jeff was screaming, trying to pull the blade from his shoulder. Noah took care of that, sticking it back in twice more. He laughed, which was a mistake.

Jeff was almost twice as big as Noah. He’d been in a good mood ten seconds ago, making fun of the local freakshow. Now he was pissed, and bleeding profusely. 

“You bitch!” Jeff screamed, socking Noah in the stomach. 

Noah doubled over, another mistake, and got a knee to the face. 

“Not so tough now, are you?” Jeff spit. He twisted his neck to try and assess his injuries. “They’re gonna have a lot of fun with you in prison, faggot. You’re fucking dead, you know that?”

Noah didn’t answer. Instead, he straightened himself with calm collection, gathered his inner resources, and headbutted Jeff in the stomach. The two struggled, deer with antlers locked. Jeff wrapped his arms around Noah’s waist, attempting some janked-up form of a pile-driver. Noah kept stabbing Jeff below the ribs. When he hit Jeff’s hip, Jeff let out a high-pitched wail his buddies would roast him for, if they were here. But they weren’t, and this little shit was killing him. 

Jeff was losing blood and strength fast, which excited Noah. He hadn’t put much thought into this whole thing, but now that he was murdering someone, he figured he better do it right. He backed away from Jeff, who stumbled and leaned against the stove. A sweat broke out on his forehead. His eyes were getting hazy. There’s no way this faggot was gonna murder him. 

This was one of the last thoughts Jeff had. Noah dropped the knife, side-stepped a weak swipe from Jeff, and grabbed the dying man from behind. Normally, Noah needed help stocking ten-pound flour sacks or five gallon buckets of mayonnaise, but the thrill of getting even coursed through his veins. Noah drug a quickly-dying Jeff under the arms to the fryers. 

It wasn’t necessarily a pleasant smell when the flesh cooked, but it also wasn’t worse than a lunch rush. Noah only wished he had his music playing to accompany the screams. Some oil splashed up onto Noah’s forearms, bubbling his skin. He didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything. The sound of that fucker cooking, the slip of his shoe on his own stinking blood, the crack of his head against the hard tile, it was more than cathartic. It was holy. 

Noah laughed. He laughed as he washed his hands. He laughed as he gathered his things. He laughed as he stepped over Jeff’s body, pausing to snap a picture. 

“Hey guys,” Noah typed into Discord, “you’ll never guess what I just did.”

My Name is Penelope

He sucked on my AlloDerm lips and pounded my concentration-camp hips, trying in vain to fill my belly. I’d suspected, when he told me he’d given both his dogs – a German Shepherd and some kind of coyote – variations of his own first name, that the sex wouldn’t be selfless enough to be good enough; that he couldn’t pick pleasure out of a line-up. And I was right. Even in a part of the country as flat as this, an orgasm was never on the horizon.

It started with his fingers – the middle three, large, like a bunch of fucking mutant bananas and with knuckles like moldy walnuts – somewhere inside me, fumbling so deep they might be clawing at marrow. Fuck. It felt like a lion was chewing my spleen. Then – my body willing but my mind detached from the consensual unreality of what was being done to me – his tongue slurped at where he thought my still-hooded clit might be the way a trapped rat attacks a metal bucket. Then he was on top of me. I tightened my legs around him, ankles crossed and hands clasped behind his neck, as he rutted away at me.

But I could deal. Not a problem, and not unprecedented: pro-choice and promiscuous, I’ve had more scrapes than a three-year-old’s knees. So, with him panting over me like a whisky-breath Santa stoned on puberty, his clammy skin the color of boiled milk, I drifted away, as oblivious to his touch as he was to my indifference, compiling a grocery list and a who-to-try-next list. 

‘Lucille,’ he shuddered as that cloying sperm smell told me it was over.

My throat constricted. Desire, the most painful of all the abstracts, was no longer with us. It died with his utterance of that name; an undeniable presence that felt as heavy as an iron lung.

He was soon asleep and I lay there, motionless in that bed of ghosts, my cheeks the only wet part of me.

The Next Generation

It was Marc’s worst nightmare—at seventeen years of age a clump of hair came loose in his fist while showering. As his ginger strands slithered down the plug hole, dreams of being a normal teenager perished with them.

Marc’s father was bald as an egg and Marc knew his hair would recede too, but just not so soon, or by so much. Marc screamed over the noise of the flowing water, and then ripped apart the mouldy shower curtain.

What would people say at school? What would Carly think?

Marc lived in a sleepy seaside town where word got around quickly. Everyone knew Marc had a crush on Carly, and that despite his obsession, they’d hardly exchanged a word—he was as awkward and shy as they come.

It was rumoured Carly would take regular midnight swims, paddle out of the bay in freezing temperatures, and try to drown herself under the stars. It was well known she had taken a knife to her wrists. Everyone said she was a freak. But that only made Marc want her more—she was a lost soul, an outsider. Only Marc could save her.

One summer, Marc’s dad started taking cheap Japanese hair loss pills, bought from eBay. Marc’s mum had left him for a beefy fireman with a ponytail a few years ago. It still hurt. But there was a spark of hope as he quickly grew some imperceptible tufts of hair around his crown. That was enough for Marc to track down the pills for himself, and take double the recommended dose.

“Dad?” Marc said as they were eating toast and drinking wild redcurrant smoothies for breakfast. “When did you start losing your hair?”

“Truthfully?” Marc’s dad said, fingering his new shoots. “Your age. I see you’re suffering too. I don’t know what to say, it’s tough.”

After knocking back his smoothie, Marc found something floating in the remnants of his juice.
Marc said, “Looks like a chicken nugget.”

Marc’s dad instinctively reached for his earlobe and then excused himself from the table.
Pinching the flesh in between his fingers, Marc felt it squelch and ooze puss. He threw it out the window in disgust.

More strange things began to occur around that time. Marc discovered what looked like a mangled nostril in the recycling bin. It was surrounded by writhing maggots and tiny spiders. There was also the smell of brine and decomposing dog food wafting through the house.
Although Marc could hear his dad pad around upstairs, sometimes even groan like a stricken beast, his father mostly remained in his room and Marc decided not to disturb him.

Despite the weird goings on at home, Marc felt cheered by his hair growing back somewhat, and while sunbathing on the beach, he even caught Carly eying him up from across the dunes as she sucked on an ice lolly.

His hair must have been looking really good because something incredible happened. Carly sauntered over to Marc and as she blocked the sun, she cast a long shadow over him.

“Hi,” she said. “You’re scorched, should I rub some lotion on you?”

Marc looked up and smiled, but before he could flip his body over, he felt like ants were crawling around his chest, biting his raw skin.

Marc rolled back onto his stomach and shook his head without a word, blushing violently.

“Suit yourself,” she muttered.

Carly dropped her lolly stick in the sand and walked off as Marc inspected his body—surely he was suffering from some kind of sun stroke. But instead, he found strange lesions and mottled bloody bruises.

“Shit,” he said, looking around to see if anyone had noticed his lacerated skin. He quickly pulled on a shirt, but putrid sores soon soaked the cotton.

Thankfully, Carly had flopped onto a nearby deckchair and pulled a baseball cap down over her eyes, so Marc assumed she hadn’t noticed, but other sunbathers had begun to point and whisper.

Marc’s only option was to lay back down into the sand and suffer, and then wait for everyone on the beach to leave.

As the sun slowly set, sunbathers shook sand from their flip flops, packed up their well-thumbed books and disappeared into the night, while Marc’s skin continued to break out into vicious pustules.

As the stars peppered the clear night sky, the only person left on the beach was Carly, sitting up in her deckchair streaming music on her phone, lazily smoking a cigarette. She seemed to be staring right at Marc. He was convinced she was smiling.

Finally she packed up and left the beach, leaving a smouldering cigarette lying in the sand.
However, before he could scuttle up the steps to the carpark, a torch blinded him and he shielded his eyes, startled.

Carly said, “Stop right there.”

“Carly,” said Marc struggling to wrap a cardigan over his shoulders. “Please look away, something terrible has happened and I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Take your clothes off,” ordered Carly.

“Carly,” pleaded Marc, “I think I might love you, if we could just talk…”

“Strip, or I’ll say you raped me on the beach.”

So, Marc carried out Carly’s demand and peeled off his clothes, while she did all she could to stop herself falling into a fit of laughter.

Marc’s body clung to his clothes like sap and as he prised himself free, he let out an agonised cry.

Carly took a step closer to Marc until she could smell his odour of piss and turpentine. She reached out and touched him, felt his swollen body and exposed blood vessels.

That night the couple slipped and slid inside each other like wet seaweed. Carly licked Marc’s shredded skin and his beating veins. She gargled his fatty guts like she was feasting from a pregnant woman giving birth.

It was an orgy of sucking blisters, and chewing on succulent human flesh. Carly gently stroked Marc’s hair that was now lustrous and flowing, almost covering every portion of his scalp. For now, he had no skin but his baldness was history.

What could be better than that?

Bodies Exhibit

The Old West Gun Room in El Cerrito was ten minutes from my place in South Berkeley. The house that was ruining my life. I’d driven past a million times but this was my first time going in. The gun was only for the pictures, I promised myself that while handing my credit card to the cashier. Cashier feels too informal a title for the gravity of the transaction. Salesman? Gunman? Whatever. You get what I mean. 

When he spread the selection of bullets out on the counter, he adjusted them so they lined up perfectly. Full metal jacket, hollow point, soft point. They sounded like oysters. Like he was a server at some hipster seafood restaurant helping me decide between east coast and west coast. He kind of looked the part. As he explained the relative merits of each – something about target shooting, something about self-defense –  my mind glazed over. My eyes fixed on his too-groomed facial hair. The lines of his beard square and severe, carving a second, chiseled face out of his. 

“So? What do you think?” He asked like I’d left him hanging. 

“I think I’m okay for now.”

“Seriously? You’re gonna buy a gun and no bullets?” 

“I’ll come back for them,” I said and meant it, kind of. I’d read that for the majority of people, there was less than an hour between deciding to kill themselves and actually trying to. Putting an extra trip to El Cerrito between me and the option was a good insurance policy against myself.

I’d shot a gun once before when I was twelve and my uncle took me to the rifle range in Livermore. We lay on ratty old mattresses next to each other on our stomachs. He showed me how to breathe deep then hold it as I squeezed the trigger. “If you see stars, you’re doing it right,” he told me, although I doubted it. When we were done and I pulled the sling off, my wrist ached from propping the gun up and I had a headache from holding my breath. My ribs were sore from lying on my stomach, nothing but a couple inches of foam between me and the cold concrete. It seemed karmically right to me though that it would be uncomfortable to shoot a firearm. Even then, I knew it shouldn’t cost me nothing to send a bullet through space at 2,000 miles per hour. It should hurt a little bit. 

When I got my target back, bullet holes riddled the page with no discernible cluster around the bullseye. “Well, we’ve got room for improvement kiddo,” my uncle said. The next time he asked me to go with him, I said no.

This would be much different from a rifle though. A pistol at close range. There was no aim involved in turning it on myself, muzzle in mouth. Nothing skillful about that. And besides, it was just for the pictures. I repeated that part in my head on the drive home, like I myself still needed convincing that this was actually for art and not real life. 

It wasn’t my neighbor that I first noticed watching me. It was his iPhone, propped up against the windowsill outside his room, which looked directly into mine from across a couple feet of lawn. I was changing. Deciding what to wear to my classmate’s art opening. I didn’t want to go, but I knew I should, and I should try to look cute. She was one of the few girls in the art school I could actually see myself becoming friends with, and I was sick of being alone all the time. It had been months since I’d had anywhere I needed to pick a real outfit for and I could hardly remember what I used to wear to go out. A dress, a shirt, bra, no bra. I settled on a sundress and drew back the linen curtains, letting the afternoon light flood in. As I did, an arm reached out his bedroom window, pulling the phone inside. Pervert.

I came back home that night after the show, circling the block twice before I parked. Peered into his house with each lap to make sure he wasn’t still at the window. I ran up the steps and inside my front door, sticking to the interior rooms where I knew he couldn’t see me. I sunk down the wall, feeling sick.

It was impossible to fall asleep that night, knowing he was only steps away. I missed the safety of living with my ex. His warm body next to mine in bed, ready to be jostled awake at a moment’s notice. The easiness of sleep with him there. How small and insular he’d made my world, as I allowed the few friendships I’d actually made at Berkeley to wither and die. Lulled by the false sense that he alone was all I needed.

At three in the morning, still wide awake and scared shitless, I snuck out, locking the car doors faster than I ever had. All I took with me was a sleeping bag, a space heater, and a backpack full of clothes. I drove to campus and set myself up in my studio space. Lying on the concrete floor kept me up all night, but it was better than the feeling of being watched.

I wouldn’t go back to Julia Street for three days. Couldn’t stop thinking about the video he had of me changing. It bugged me, not knowing what his face looked like. I wondered if he thought I looked good in the video. I wanted to watch it. See how I held my face, my body, under the illusion of total privacy. How my posture changed when I stepped in front of the mirror. If I could somehow get ahold of it, I wondered whether I’d delete it right away or send it to myself first.

On day three of my on-campus sojourn, I woke up to a scream. It took me a second to remember where I was and why a tatted up dude might be hovering over me with a bucket and a mop. Right. The night shift janitor. “You can’t be here,” he said, and blushed like he’d walked in on me on the toilet. He seemed embarrassed that I’d heard his voice go up an octave. I felt bad. He probably worked nights so he never had to deal with students like me. I ran my tongue across my teeth and fingers through my hair, still half asleep and not ready for human interaction. “I know, I’m sorry,” I said, and stuffed my sleeping bag into its sack, avoiding his eyes as I squeezed past him through the narrow studio door. It was four am by the time I got back to Julia Street, my heart pounding as I pulled into the driveway.

My phone battery had been dead since I left my place, my charger still in the wall where I’d left it. I prayed for the dopamine rush of a bunch of missed messages. Evidence that I existed in the world and I wasn’t just a character in my own sleep deprived paranoid delusion. I flicked on my bedside lamp to plug in my phone for the night. 

As if he’d been waiting at the window since the moment I left, the light in his room turned on, right on cue. He hadn’t been sleeping. I imagined him restless, waiting to jump out of bed at the sound of my car. I turned off my light hoping the darkness might protect me. My phone glowed to life as its battery ticked from 0 to 1%. No texts, no missed calls. It didn’t matter that I’d dropped off the map, my radio silence was finally being returned. There was only so long you could go ignoring people until they got a clue and gave up on you. In the mirror, I brought my hands to my face. Skin on skin, to prove I wasn’t just a hallucination.

The next morning, I lingered in the living room before stepping out the door for class. Voices outside his front door. Sweet feminine voices. A woman and a young girl, maybe eight or nine years old. His wife and daughter. The girl with her pink backpack, matching pink scooter. Mom in her geometric glasses, her flowy linen pants. A professor type. She wasn’t especially good looking, but was pulled together in the way that said she had better things to care about. Immediate relief – he was normal enough for a family – followed by a swell of disgust. 

I wondered if she knew what he was up to. Maybe she had no idea and he called himself a feminist in front of her friends while they nodded and commented on what a good guy she’d found. Or maybe she was in on it. She was a partner to her husband, not a sex object. He had to get his kicks where he could, she might’ve conceded long ago. Maybe it was their fetish, watching the videos together. Videos of me. Of Molly, the red headed folk musician girl I’d taken the apartment over from. Molly hadn’t mentioned the neighbor when I’d toured the place but then again, she wouldn’t have. She must’ve been desperate to get out of there. 

I considered stepping outside then and telling his wife what was going on, but my stomach flipped at the thought. If she didn’t already know, it could end their marriage. It could traumatize the little girl. It could take her daddy away.

I googled his address, and all the details of his life popped up right away. White. Male. 49 years old. His previous address, and the one before that. Confirmed. That was his wife, that was his child. I searched his full name and his website came up. A photographer. About Eric, Shattuck Gallery, Work. I clicked on About Eric and his picture popped up in black and white. A full beard, wire glasses, faded 49ers cap. He looked like off-brand Michael Moore. The picture might’ve been a few years out of date, but it matched the shadow I’d seen lurking in his window. 

I clicked the button Work, and there I was. My naked body silhouetted against the linen curtains hanging in my room. I moved across the top four frames, evaluating myself in the mirror, then bending over, then hands outstretched overhead, pulling on my shirt. For once, I didn’t hate the way I looked, the way I usually did in pictures. My ex always wanted to take sexy pics of me, and he’d get mad when I’d tell him they were all ugly. He’d insist they were hot, which made it even worse. Like he was telling me no, babe, this is as good as it’s gonna get. He took photos of me the way he saw me. All unflattering angles and ungenerous light. 

These were hot. I wanted to download them and text them to my ex. I wanted Eric to hang them up in Shattuck Gallery. Watch the look on my ex’s face as he walked by and recognized my body, more beautiful than how he’d left it.

I scrolled through his work. Pages and pages of creep shots. A baby nursing at a woman’s breast from a bench across the park. A teenage punk couple making out on the corner of what looked to be 16th and Valencia, his hand on her ass, her tongue in his mouth. Molly from Craigslist, scrolling on her laptop in bed through what was now my window, her ass fully out in a pink lace thong, a matching bralette.  

I checked his website constantly, refreshing the page several times each day. I felt him watching me even then, through the internet. Him recognizing my IP address, pinging his site. When he did post something, it almost felt as if he were posting just for me. Me getting out of my car, me blurry through the living room window, wrapped in a towel, my hair slick dripping down my back. 

If he left the house at all, it was while I was out. He’d either become a total recluse since his days as a street photographer in San Francisco, or he was monitoring my comings and goings, making sure we never came face to face, hauling groceries from the car or otherwise forced to make neighborly small talk as if he hadn’t already seen all of me. We both preferred to keep the relationship – whatever it was – behind glass.

It went on like this for three weeks, each of us getting bolder. My heart no longer pounded from fear knowing he was there, but from excitement. Eric didn’t bother pulling his phone off the ledge anymore when he caught me looking. I crossed the street to avoid his wife and daughter, no longer entertaining the thought of telling on him. I’d become complicit, and wasn’t gonna tattle on myself. I texted Molly to see if she’d ever met the neighbors but the number she gave me was no longer in service. She’d said something about touring in Europe but hadn’t given me any way of getting in touch. I turned on Amy Winehouse and danced naked around my room and downloaded the pictures he posted of me an hour later. It didn’t matter what I did anymore. He was the only one watching. 

I tested him. I needed to know how far I could go. 

By the time I got home from the Old West Gun Room, it was already dark. I pulled back the blackout curtains I’d bought and kept the linen ones drawn, turning on the lights in my room so I’d glow, backlit, the outline of me clear. I held the gun to my temple and paced my bedroom, giving a show of contemplation. The muzzle was cold against my head. The tension between my usually knitted eyebrows lifted. A somatic relief, as if my body knew that some kind of end was near. I waited until I was sure Eric had gotten his shot.

When I felt he had, I lowered the gun, half anticipating the cops to rush my front door. Nothing though. Just the lazy whir of the space heater in the corner of my room. When I stuck the barrel in my mouth, I was surprised at how awkwardly large it felt, like a fumbling and unsexy blowjob. Nobody ever told you that, how wide you had to open your jaw to accommodate a pistol. Again, I let Eric take his shots and set it down. Satisfied that he’d gotten what he needed. Pleased that he knew that I had a gun. Surprised to learn how far I could go without him intervening. Zero boundary between life and death and art.

***

For the final project of our semester, we were each supposed to hang a show in the studio space we’d been granted by the university. It was kind of a thing, among artsier circles in Berkeley, to come see the student shows. To hop from one studio to the next, nibbling cheese cubes and sipping two buck chuck. I’d hardly been back to my studio space since I’d gotten kicked out for sleeping there. Half out of shame, and half because my project hinged on me being home on Julia Street. 

For my show, I downloaded all the pictures of me on Eric’s site and took them to Copy World on University Avenue, blowing each of them up several times their original size. They needed to look grainy, like low quality surveillance footage. I wanted not to recognize myself. The way I always looked unfamiliar and vaguely criminal on CCTV footage, even though I wasn’t.

I could hardly make eye contact with the cashier as he passed me my poster tubes over the counter. He didn’t look at me, either. He didn’t need to. He’d already seen everything. The inside of my room. The inside of my car. My naked body. The way my eyes bulged slightly with a gun between my front teeth. 

I hung my entire show the same afternoon it was due. The Bodies Exhibit, I titled it, after the show my mom had dragged me to for my thirteenth birthday in Vegas. “The Bodies Exhibit!” My professor exclaimed as she walked through the door. “I remember that. Fun!” Her breath smelled like cheese cubes. I watched as she eyed my nudes. She studied my pixelated body in various states of undress. Me, fully clothed, walking down the sidewalk, glancing paranoid at  Eric’s house. The gun pointed at my brain, my lips wrapped around the gun. 

As classmates and professors milled about the studio, I played the art critic John Berger’s voiceover on a loop off a Bluetooth speaker. His placid monologue on repeat. “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” 

When I got home that night, buzzed off red wine, I collapsed onto my bed. I reached under my bedside table where I’d left the gun. I wanted to feel the cold metal of the Beretta in my hand again. It wasn’t there. I ripped my room apart, in search of the pistol. It had to be there. I  hadn’t taken it out of the house. I tore through the entire place, throwing open kitchen cabinets, digging through piles of old makeup in bathroom drawers. I lifted all the pillows and the couch cushions, but nothing. It was nowhere. I ran back to the front door and double checked that I’d locked it. Back in my room, I pulled the curtains apart an inch to look across the way. There was Eric, in his room. His silhouette in the window, as it often was. I lifted my phone and hit record. Watched him through my little screen as he picked up the gun, and waited to see where he’d point it. 

Reap What You Sow

A beat-up truck bounced down the dirt road towards an old but sturdy farmhouse. Next to the house a legion of maize crops stood to attention. It wouldn’t be long until they would be ready for harvesting. That job belonged to Jessie. She had spent most of her living moments these last few months cultivating the corn field, each step of growth accompanied by care and dedication from the amateur farmer. When she was given the farm in her fathers will she expected to just sell off the farm and move away to live the cliché life of a country girl in the big city. 

But instead, she found herself incapable of leaving the farm. After selling most of the fields to nearby farms, she decided to keep the small field right next to the farm and try growing some corn. And so, using notes left by her father and online guides, she spent everyday contributing to the growth of the corn. Whenever she thought of the hard work she had put into the field of maize she welled up with pride and love for farming. On the rare occasion that she wasn’t in the field or the house, she was in the nearby town of Wolbach dipping into her savings to get some food and a book or two, to keep her entertained on the long nights. She had been on one such trip today.

The aging truck pulled up by the side of the house and outstepped Jessie. She couldn’t have worn a more stereotypical farmers outfit if she tried. Denim overalls and a faded t-shirt had become her standard uniform over the last few months. Jessie wasn’t complaining though, she enjoyed how she looked in the outfit with its pleasant combination of practicality and rugged beauty. Every time she looked in the mirror, a small rush of euphoria ran through her body. Her transition had been going well before she started on the farm, but the last few months had helped her find an inner peace she didn’t expect to discover. Despite this she still found herself unsure of her appearance at times, she had grown overly paranoid over her appearance, that somehow she wasn’t being the woman she was meant to be. Whenever these thoughts came to her she did her best to shove them down but they still lingered in mocking echoes in her head.

Back inside the house, she stored away her groceries and prepared herself a quick meal in the silence of the old house. A sense of loneliness crept into her. She may enjoy the toil of farming, but it left her little time for social interaction. She didn’t even have the time or energy to date. Part of her yearned for the intimate touch of another, but she managed to ignore the desire and went back outside to look over her hard work. As the sun entered its final descent in the horizon Jessie sat on the rocking chair on the porch. It used to be her dads spot, overlooking the fields he toiled in all day. Most of her thoughts of the old man centred around that chair. It was here that he told her about her family history, and it was here that she came out to him. Thankfully, both were pleasant memories. 

She felt much older than 26 while she rocked back and forth like an ancient woman about to dispense some prophetic wisdom on a passing traveller. But instead of vaguely understandable nuggets of wisdom, all she had was a book of escapist fantasy. The book told tales of creatures from the wildest fringes of the imagination brought to life, and the ways they lived with humans. Some brought destruction and decay, while others created beauty and love. 

Within minutes she was engrossed in this false world of fantastical creatures. She was so focused that she didn’t immediately hear the voices. Floating along the air, the sound of chatter emanated from the field of corn. Eventually Jessie managed to pull her gaze away from the book and towards it. Initially dismissing the voices as just being a few dogwalkers from Wolbach on a particularly long walk, she tried to focus back on her book. But the voices not only continued but actually grew in volume, demanding her attention. She looked up again, but rather than an empty landscape Jessie noticed movement in the fields. Right in the centre of the corn a silhouetted figure roamed as if daring the young farmer to remove it. The head of the figure appeared mishappen and hard to differentiate from the corn that surrounded it. An attempt at sternly shouting for the stranger to leave fell on deaf ears.

After grabbing a baseball bat from inside the house, Jessie ventured into the corn field. In the sky the sun had been replaced by the moon, its light being much more meagre than that provided by the sun. Every part of her screamed for her to turn back around and just call the police, but her pride pushed her onwards. She’d worked so hard to grow this crop, she couldn’t let some inconsiderate stranger stamp all over it. Inside the field she still couldn’t see the intruder, but as she delved deeper into the rows of corn she felt whispers emanating from all around her, a chorus of dissonant voices. Slowly she approached the centre of the field, shadowed movements glimpsed between the tall reeds. Each glimpse watered a seed in her mind of the nature of the intruder. 

First she saw the legs, gangly yet swift. Then came a glimpse of thin and wide hands that brushed against the stalks. Hands attached to arms that threatened to embrace her and reach out across the short distance between the two field dwellers. And then there was the head, barely distinguishable among the ears of corn. It was narrower than heads should be, with regimented ridges barely perceptible under the shadows painted on the head. An image of the stranger pieced itself together in her mind, but the image didn’t make any sense to her. She could feel sweat collecting on her hands, loosening her grip on the baseball bat. Eventually she reached the centre of the field and halted, unsure of where to go next.

Corn stalks swayed in the wind. Crickets croaked their tunes into the night sky. All was peaceful. Except for the corn. Jessie couldn’t understand how, but she could feel, deep within her soul, that the corn felt different tonight. For a few minutes the whispers abated, but they still lurked in the distance of her hearing.

“Who’s out there?” she shouted, trying to hide the wobble in her voice.

And then slowly, nearly outside Jessies periphery, the entity emerged. With slow and deliberate steps it revealed itself. Despite elongated legs and arms, its chest was squashed with no room for the organs necessary for a human. And in the light of the moon, the appendages she was only granted a glimpse of earlier made themselves clear. She could see their flatness, with the legs only strengthened by twisting green muscles that wrapped themselves around stilt-like appendages. The arms featured no such practicality. Instead, wide figures in the visage of fingers erupted from the end of its arms. But it was the head that grabbed the farmers attention. She had seen many heads like it before, albeit not on people. All around her were similar such heads though, for it was a larger-than-average ear of corn that sat atop the intruders head. And when she dragged her eyes down across its body she saw that the body was made entirely out of corn plants. Its appendages were forged from the stalks, muscles constructed from roots, skin replaced by leaves. The stranger was only human in shape, and even that required a stretch in the farmers imagination.

At first it simply stood there, presenting itself to the farmer. It showed no malice towards her. While she examined its appearance she could hear the whispers return. But rather than the chorus that had been present before, they now all spoke as one unified voice. 

“Hello Creator, we have been waiting for you,” the whispers said, “Thank you for joining us tonight.”

Jessie had a look of severe confusion on her face.

“We have been waiting. For the right time. For our Avatar to be ready. And for you to be ready. You have toiled and dedicated yourself to us, and it is time that you are rewarded for this show of love.”

The Avatar approached Jessie slowly with an air of passivity.

“We wish to bring you satisfaction. Satisfaction of an intimate kind.”

The meaning of this slowly dawned on Jessie. Surprisingly, to her at least, she didn’t immediately reject it outright.

 “You may say no if you desire. You can return to your home with our words of thanks and nothing more. But if you wish, we can grant you a certain pleasure.”

The Avatar stopped a couple of steps away from her and stood to the side. Her house was behind him, where it had existed for the last few generations of her family. She could very easily walk past the maize being and into the warm light of her house. And for a second she considered it, but the prospect of staying and receiving her reward was much more alluring. She had worked hard, why not receive it?

“I… I want my reward. I’ll stay here. Please, give it to me,” she replied after a few seconds thought. A shake in her voice was very present. She dropped her baseball bat.

With this confirmation of consent given to the corn, the Avatar of its spirit closed the gap between them. The whispers quietened again. The Avatar reached for one of the straps of her dungarees but halted millimetres away. Jessie noticed this and nodded at the corn creature, intent on receiving her reward. She pressed the leaf fingers down gently and let them undo the straps. When both straps were undone she shook slightly and let them fall with a heavy sigh. Her exposed legs felt cold in the breeze, but her face flushed with heat. 

The leaf appendages traced her curves, shooting sensations of pleasure through her body, before resting on her hips and pulling her closer to it. Slowly, one drifted away from Jessies hip and towards her crotch, where a bulge had steadily grown. Her breath quickened but she nodded once more. 

A single utterance of “please…” escaped from her lips.

With surprising gracefulness for a creature made of plants the Avatar of the corn pulled down her panties. Out flopped her cock, standing half erect in the moonlight. As the Avatars fingers softly gripped it, the whispers of the corn around her gradually returned. At first a couple simply thanked her for her hard work but overtime more spoke out, praising and complimenting her body. The Avatar matched the increasing amount of praise by stroking her cock. With each pump it grew stiffer until it was as hard as it could possibly ever be. Drops of pre-cum leaked out, extracted with as much ease as her moans. Her legs grew weaker with every stroke. It wasn’t just the physical stimulation that weakened her, however, it was the praising choir of whispers that was the most exciting for her. By now they were praising every intimate part of her and calling her things she would have been embarrassed to hear at any other time. Her mind was swimming in pleasure, nearly every part of her stimulated in ways that she hadn’t experienced in far too long. For a time it seemed like it couldn’t get any better. But then the Avatars hand drifted upwards.

The gentle grabbing of her breast took Jessie by surprise. She unintentionally let out a high pitch yelp. The Avatar recoiled away from her breast and for a second Jessie could have sworn that somehow a look of concern appeared on the corn creatures head. Hurriedly she apologised for the yelp and with a blushing face asked for the hand to return to her breast. At first the hand tentatively circled around them, as if worrying that a mere touch would break them. But overtime the Avatar became braver in its expeditions, until it was squeezing and grabbing her tits with no shame. Clinging to the squashed chest of the Avatar, Jessie could barely withstand the continuous pleasure anymore. The Avatars gentle but assured touching sent shockwaves of pleasure throughout her, but it was the encouragement and praise of the voices that made this an outstanding reward for her. Every compliment of her body and every acclaim of her dedication to nurturing the field of corn brought a low moan from her lips. 

Worship. That’s what it was. Pure, devout worship whipping masses into a frenzy. The breeze through the field carried the hymns of the worshippers and mixed them with her breathy moans into a toxic cocktail. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Rugged. Even handsome, something that made her cringe a few years ago, lit sparks in her. Its hands brushed her biceps and reached down to the faint outline of her abs. Soft seedling kisses peppered her midriff while the creature wrapped its gangly limbs hung softly around her broad shoulders. In every movement, every small act of earthly prayer, a thousand bursts of euphoria detonated in her. How glorious she was, caught in pleasurable rapture with this nightmarish being. Its tendrils navigated the lengths of her body taking advantage of every weakness to expose her more and more. And that was all she wanted.

Jessie wasn’t aware of how long it took until the end neared, but she certainly recognised the feeling. Just as a tidal wave slowly builds up until it becomes an unstoppable force, so too did her orgasm. She clung to the Avatar as the pressure built up inside her. She couldn’t tell if it recognised what was about to happen, but it didn’t seem to react to the sudden embrace. Within seconds she reached her breaking point and a few clear drops of cum leaked out of her cock. What she lacked in cum she more than made up for in noise. Her screams of pleasure rung out into the night until they weakened into murmuring whimpers. To the corn she barely seemed conscious. The Avatar, his duty nearly discharged, picked up the exhausted farmer and carried her back to the farmhouse. It lowered her into the porch rocking chair and covered her in a blanket before leaving her in peace, rewarded and loved by her field.

***

The next morning Jessie awoke slowly, the memories of the night in the field gradually returning to her. She didn’t believe it happened, at least not until she noticed a crumpled pile of corn plants just outside the field and found her baseball bat in the centre. She certainly did feel less lonely now though.

Southern Arizona Press
133 pages
$8.99

Judge Santiago Burdon delivers you his entrails and bile and treasure in these stories from the inside of his hell. Every story is rough and glorious, bloody and holy, harrowing and comforting. Burdon is as honest about his shortcomings as he is realistic with this world of temporary bliss and constant loss. In the end these characters are all broken and then healed: crushed by their own search for release, healed by their friendships and their unwavering truth. There is a code of those who end up in prison and swim together in this pool of sharks: keep your word above all else. This loyalty and the bravery to keep facing the lacerated face in the mirror day after day elevates the addict and the drug-runner to sainthood, even if the God is an injured fruit bat wrapped in a coat, a stray dog fetching a filthy ball, a van full of cocaine. There are lessons learned from Jingles the panhandler, from a sex-starved divorcee, from the Grim Reaper, from the grizzly bear slashing your throat. There are rings lost in the Vatican which end up on dead Pope’s fingers, there are keys which no longer open the childhood home and an endless doorway to approximations of what home feels like at the bottom of a bottle, a pile of white, a syringe of false peace. After each light crashes its brittle body all over the floor, the alarm blaring and the epinephrine surging, there is the apology and the embrace; there is the forgiveness and the kiss. This vindication, this escape from prison while in a prison of the ruined flesh, does not come from God, but from a friend with a breakfast burrito and a black coffee and a wish for safe passage past the “Border Patrol, DEA, State Police, Sheriff’s Deputies and Local Barneys.” The disguise is complete as you put on the priest’s collar, wrap your neck of costumed grace, and jump onto the “Ghost Pony” and ride into hell as it quakes our dirty cities to the ground.

— Scott Ferry, author of Each Imaginary Arrow

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Sum of the Parts

Riggs did a quick up and down on the young woman when she opened the door. Her untucked flannel shirt had that soft, washed-many-times look. A couple of the buttons were in the wrong places too. She’d thrown it on, and the skinny jeans were ripped in that fashionable style. Barefooted. 

Ash blond hair was pulled back into a hasty pony tail that let a lot of strands escape, and she wore glasses with heavy, dark rims. Maybe geek sheik but probably worn more after-hours when the contacts were taken out.

“You’re Hannah?”

He always asked for a name and double checked it. Avoided misunderstandings.

She studied him a moment then nodded. “You got here quick.”

“Taphonomic alterations start in a couple of hours. Rigor can be a headache.” 

Eyes widened behind those broad lenses. Maybe she hadn’t expected precise jargon. He wore a faded black tee with a metal band logo and jeans that looked more distressed than hers. 

“Couple of years of pre-med,” he explained.

“There have already been a few…taphonomic alterations,” she said. 

“Maybe you’d better let me have a look before we talk price,” he said.  

She reached forward to turn a small latch on the full-glass storm door that separated them.

“Come on in.”

The floors were hardwood, the veneer shiny. They’d been redone in at least the last couple of years. Nice house, well-kept, nice neighborhood. She was doing okay. They moved down a hallway with attractive artwork, one piece maybe an original. All right classy. No bloodstains. Nothing had been done up here.

A door off the living room opened to darkness. Riggs slipped a hand into his back pocket. He kept a small, flat knife there. The blade was sharp and could be nasty if he needed to defend himself. 

Hannah flipped a switch and brought light to a stairway made of treated but unpainted wood. A pile of rags and towels rested two steps down, stained with black-red, some spots glistening. 

“Down there,” she said.

“You lead,” he said. 

Shrugging, she descended first.

The concrete floor at the bottom was painted a dark green but hadn’t had a fresh coat in a while. It was spotted in a few places. Old stains. She’d done pretty good at cleanup. 

Riggs paused when he saw an X-cross covered in black vinyl against with nail-head trim on one wall. A restraint had been clicked tightly around a wrist, male from what it looked like. Riggs’ gaze trailed downward. The forearm was hairy. That was where the limb stopped. 

“Do you have a medical background?” he asked.

“I’m an orthopedic surgical device rep,” she said. “A thing for tendons. It’s kind of innovative. I’m in a lot of ORs on the job, but I’m not as elegant as the doctors. Of course ortho doctors are kind of like carpenters.”

The hack marks had been made just below—or maybe it was technically above the elbow in this position. A little fresh blood streaked down the X’s branch. Muscle and tendon were jagged, with strings of veins and arteries dangling down, though a hacksaw had probably been used on the bone. A patch of skin had been sliced in an almost perfect rectangle, leaving exposed red muscle. 

“Tattoo?” Riggs asked.

Hannah’s lips and cheek muscles contorted into a guilty grimace. Then she touched a corner of her mouth, seeking reassurance it was clean.  “I just got a little carried away,” she said. 

She had not been joking about taphonomic alterations. The head sat in a royal blue Dutch oven on a wire shelving unit. Longish hair was tangled in bloody masses, one central clump sticking up like the spiked handle it had been used as. The eyes were closed at least. 

Feet extended from beneath a multi-colored crocheted throw. They appeared to be still attached to legs and those extended under the blue-and-pale-blue pattern to what might be fairly intact.

“How long ago?” 

She pulled a phone from her hip pocket and checked the time.

“Hour and a half.”

“Everything else is under there?” he asked.  

She expelled a breath through pursed lips. “The, uh, genitals are in a Tupperware container in the fridge.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Carried away again?”

“A little.”

He looked everything over again. “One eighty, one eighty-five?”

“You’re good.”   

“Sum of the parts,” he said. 

He stroked the Van Dyke at his chin, looking from head to arm to the throw.

“Five thousand,” he said. “You’re still going to want to wipe everything down with bleach after I’m gone.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll be careful. I was thinking more seventy-five hundred.”

He hadn’t expected a haggle. He eyed her for a moment, impatient. She had some balls and not just in the fridge. Still, while they were vulnerable to each other here and now, he could account for his whereabouts at the time a medical examiner could place time of death. She was looking at worse charges. He was after the fact.

“How tall was he? Six-one?”

“About that.”

“Seven even,” he said. “Final offer.”

She didn’t want to keep the guy. 

Hopefully she’d made sure no one knew who the guy was meeting tonight. That wasn’t Riggs’ concern.

“Deal,” she said.

He slipped out his phone. “Venmo okay?”

“That will work?”

He tapped a few keys, looking over the remains again.

The internal organs would still be in fairly good shape, and she’d been smart to preserve the sex organs, if she hadn’t gotten out of hand with the removal. He could turn a nice profit even with the bargain she’d driven, and she’d reap the dual benefit of the payout and having the body gone with virtually no trace. He’d mark it a win/win.

It was around two a.m. so the neighbors would be dozing, and she had a garage that would accommodate his van and allow him to avoid Ring cameras and the like.

He could be out of here in a couple of hours and get early messages to all of clients. A few had grown impatient since his contact at the med school had moved on. 

He didn’t know what buyers needed bones or body parts for. He never asked. 

Jerry the Milkman

I never invited the milkman to my house, but he showed up anyway one cold November morning, when the windows were left crystal white from frost. His truck, a sleek baby blue in color and so polished it shined, was parked in front of my driveway, just minutes before I usually left for work. On the side was Mrs. Moo-Moo, a large smiling cow in an apron, looking like something out of a cartoon that you’d probably never show your kids. Sitting in the driver’s seat was a mischievous-looking man of about sixty-years old, dressed completely in white, from his long, baggy dress pants to his button-up shirt where a tiny black bowtie rested beneath his chin, wrapping around his neck like a tightened noose. The man was balding. A subtle comb-over of dark hair was the only thing that could indicate he ever had hair. Stepping outside, I read the name scribbled crudely on a crooked nametag: JERRY.

A line of bouncing children stretched from the truck to the end of the block, all of them eager to get a cold, refreshing glass of milk. Be it regular, chocolate, strawberry, it didn’t matter, the kids wanted their milk, and they wanted it now.

“You’ve made Mrs. Moo-Moo very proud today” said Jerry the milkman, as he handed one of the children a small glass bottle filled to the brim with pink-colored milk.

In addition to the milk, Jerry was also handing out what appeared to be plastic cow masks for each child to wear. As I tried to wade through the growing crowd to get to my car, I found myself surrounded by the eerie face of a grinning cow, just like the one on the side of Jerry’s truck, all with beady black eyes staring back at me. With every facial feature obscured under the masks, it was hard to tell they were even human. As I pushed through them, they pushed right back with surprising strength, loudly mooing at me as if to give a grave warning for me to leave and never come back. All I wanted to do was go to work in peace.

“Hey, you there, my boy!” Jerry the Milkman called in a jovial voice.

It took me a minute to realize he was talking to me. When I turned to look at him, Jerry flashed me a white toothy smile that made his thin black mustache curl under his nose.

“Would you like some milk, my boy?” Jerry asked. “I’ve got plenty here.”

“Who, me? Nah, that’s kid stuff.” I told him. I never was a fan of milk.

My reply brought a scowl to Jerry’s face. He looked angry. No, he looked straight-up enraged. But then that same wide smile crept back onto his face.

“Oh, you’re never too old for the magic of milk.” Jerry assured me.

“Look, I told you, I don’t want any milk, okay? I want you to get off my property. I need to get to work and frankly, you’re creeping me out.”

Once more, Jerry the Milkman frowned, but it looked almost solemn this time.

“Well, that won’t do. That won’t do at all. You’ve just made Mrs. Moo-Moo very upset.” Jerry said. “And you know what happens when Mrs. Moo-Moo gets upset?”

“I don’t care.” I replied. “Take your milk and leave.”

Jerry grinned again. “Did you just say milk?”

In response, the crowd of children in cow masks began to cheer loudly, so loud it made my eardrums burst with a sudden violence. They all began to chant milk, milk, milk, over and over again, repeating the words into the air like some kind of sacrificial cult. 

Before I knew it, I was savagely attacked by the army of masked toddlers. I didn’t stand a chance as they seized me from every side, no matter how much I struggled. I screamed for help as they dragged me to the back of the truck, but I knew it was too late. The kids continued to cheer as they shoved me inside into pitch black darkness.

It didn’t take long to start hearing the mooing, a low guttural sound that seemed to pour smoke from the open jaws of a hideous creature. I realized now I was in the presence of Mrs. Moo-Moo, a massive cow with twisted horns upon its head and four sets of red glowing eyes, the only light source available to me. The creature let out a demonic moo, jaws split open wide to expose rows of razor sharp teeth and a slimy green tongue. Her bottom half, composed only of dark oily tendrils, seemed to hungrily reach out for me.

So, this is what happens when Mrs. Moo-Moo is upset, I thought. I guess this is my punishment for being lactose intolerant.