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

BUY A COPY HERE

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.

Visible Woman

“You were that kid with the boner. Back in high school, right? Freshman biology?”

Lying on the lounge chair by the pool at the Ardent Gardens Mobile Home Court rec center, you’re looking up at whoever it is speaking to you. The sun, directly behind her, blinds you. You can make out that it’s a woman because the crotch of her bikini is right at eye level. The camel toe makes it official.

“You’re that guy, right?”

You shade your eyes. Now you can make out the face. Which is—your science teacher, Mrs. Nicks. From high school. Like from fifteen years ago. Holy shit. You didn’t realize you were fixating on your former science teacher’s vagina.

You remember Mrs. Nicks as a slender, serious woman, maybe in her early thirties back then, with tortoise shell glasses and a smoker’s voice. She kept her wild, curly brown hair cut in a loose, jaw-length bob, went bare-legged in belted shirt-dresses, and wore penny loafers without socks. Seeing her in a skimpy two-piece swimsuit is somehow unnatural.

She’s standing over you, running a towel over her hair, the water droplets dancing off your chest.

There’s a little bit more to her now than you remember, but not much.

“The boner kid? Every class. That whole semester. Right?”

Of course it’s you. How could you forget? You’ve still got the scars on your psyche. But you had no idea Mrs. Nicks ever noticed.

You give her a cocked grin. “Freshman year is still a blur,” you say. Which is not in the least bit true. It’s crystal clear and still fresh enough to make you cringe every time you think of it.

That whole year, you could not get your mind off sex. Freshman Biology was the absolute worst. Mrs. Nicks kept a model on her desk at the front of the classroom, a transparent figure of a naked woman with the skeleton and all the organs visible through the clear plastic skin. Your seat assignment put you right in front of it.

At one time or another, you imagined every girl in your class displayed naked, full-sized as a transparent plastic figure.

By the time class ended, you had a huge hard-on. Every time. It felt enormous. And not in a good way.

When the bell rang, you hunched over in your seat until everyone else left the room so they wouldn’t see, wouldn’t laugh at you. If a couple of the girls hung around by the door, you wouldn’t move. Better to be late for the next class than have everyone talking about the useless boner you always got in biology.

“Kevin, right? Kevin Winchell?”  She’s holding out a beer to you.

“Mrs. Nicks?”

“Ms. now. Mister Nicks gone bye-bye.”  She waggled fingers of farewell with the hand holding the beer. “I’m back to Waxworth. I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

You don’t remember, but you say you do, making noises about old wounds or something. You’re not fully here. You’re back slogging around in the sludge of despicable memories.

“You might have missed it. But it felt like everyone was making jokes about us.”

She waggles the beer, drops of condensation hitting the crotch of your swim trunks. Like she’s aiming. It’s cold on your folded-up pecker. So you take it.

“That boner of yours kept me sane. Least I can do is buy you a beer.”

She stretches out on the lounge chair next to yours, crossing her legs at the ankles, then takes a pull from her own beer.

There’s a faint whiff of something familiar and you realize it’s the same fragrance she always wore in the classroom. Something ferocious is stirring in that dark cave of memory.

You realize she’s been talking, and all you’ve done is stare at the texture of her thigh.

“—like, do I come right out and thank you for having a hard-on in my class?”

You’re not listening closely. Your science teacher, in a wet swimsuit, is talking about your penis.

“Feels odd bringing it up, but we’re both adults, right? Some of us a lot longer than others.” She leans over the arm of the lounge chair and dips her sunglasses to look at you. “You don’t mind me talking about your penis, do you?”

“Not at all,” you say, because you don’t want to come off as a dipshit prude, even as you stare in on the freckled bosom in her swimsuit top spilling toward you.

She re-sets her sunglasses and settles back on the lounger. “I didn’t think so, but you know how it is. Old habits, I guess.”

Old habits sound okay right now.

“At first, I assumed it was one of the girls in class.”

You’re about to say you can’t recall any of the girls in that class but she keeps on talking before you can lie to her.

“I tried playing Sherlock and catch who you were watching,” she said, “then I realized. Every time I looked? You were watching me.”

Which you were. You were terrified she’d stop the class and make you go see the nurse or something. You’d have to walk out of the classroom with that boner of yours leading the way.

“If my marriage wasn’t breaking up, I’d have reported it to the assistant principal and let the office handle it. But. That asshole Frank was fucking the girls’ P.E. teacher. You may not remember her.”

“Miss Gantz?”

“Miss Gantz. She always smelled great. Like she was sweating Giorgio or whatever it was she was wearing. Made me feel like shit.”

She takes a pull at her beer, quenching a fire not quite dead.

“But—there you were, with your little pecker all hard in my class, watching me. For that, I am grateful.”  She salutes again with her beer. “Good thing you weren’t eighteen.”

You chuff a laugh, non-committal, leaving it there.

“What was going on in that overheated adolescent brain of yours? Like, was I naked? Right there in class?”

It makes you feel bad how she’s built up this idea about you and your boner. As far as you recall, she never got a turn on your fervid mental merry-go-round. She wasn’t the one keeping your adolescent brain sautéed for the entire hour.

“Some days, I’d be so depressed. Then I’d come into class, and there you’d be with that super erection aimed right at me.”

Again, you laugh, like something shared. But really. Who imagines their science teacher naked?

“I couldn’t think what to do about it. Can you imagine? Frank is fucking Miss Gantz and I’m going to the office to report an unauthorized boner in my class.”

She laughs. You laugh. It does sound ridiculous.

“So I let it go. Besides. It was an emotional pick-me-up.”

She swirls the last of her beer and knocks it back.

“Seriously. Between us. The age difference didn’t bother you?”

You give her an embarrassed smile and a shrug, but she waits for you to speak.

You don’t want to spoil her own fantasy, something that’s sustained her through a really tough time, the way she tells it. So you decide you can do her a small favor. You can recall one of your fantasies and fit her into it. For old times’ sake.

“Okay,” you say, “there was this one. Kind of regular. We’d be naked, and totally see-through. Skin and muscle would be transparent and the organs totally visible.”

“Kind of creepy.”

Creepy is good. Discourage her curiosity.

“Well,” you say to her, “I was looking at the plastic model on the desk all class period. So. No, it didn’t seem creepy at the time.”

“Where were we? What did you have us doing?”

“Up on the desk. As I pushed in—slowly—I could see everything inside. How all the innards shifted around to make room for my—penis—”

“Innards? Is that a technical term?”

You laugh but keep going. “I could see through the skin and muscles enough to make out the reproductive parts, the nerves, the blood vessels. I could watch how my prick slid in and out, in and out, going faster and faster. All the parts started getting warm, so warm they’d glow. Then we’d lock together to let me come. I could see the way it spread through the abdomen, the legs. I didn’t have a good grasp of where semen went exactly, so I imagined it spreading like ink in water, going everywhere. I’d keep going until I was done. Then, we’d relax. I’d pull out and all the organs and muscles would close around the tunnel I’d created.”

She seemed to go slack, staring straight ahead.

“Wow,” she said.

You wonder if you overdid it.

She swings herself upright and says, “Come on, I want you to have something.”

You overdid it.

She slips into her wrap, throws the towel over her shoulder, then grabs you by the hand.

You’re worried you’ve turned yourself into the magic dick of her fairy tale fantasy. You have serious doubts about conjuring the boner she remembers so well.

But you follow her. You imagine the neighbors watching as you leave the pool, her leading you past the other mobile homes to her own double-wide, hidden behind dwarf orange trees and a leafy trellis.

Inside, her place is cluttered but well-kept. There’s no sign she shares it with anyone.

She offers you another beer, which you take. A good excuse if you can’t get hard for her.

She disappears into the back, the bedroom probably. Were you supposed to follow?

You shouldn’t have told her that story. But you did. So—that makes it your fault she’s thinking the way she is. You should at least show her you’re not grossed out by the idea.

You will your dick to rise, and give yourself a few quick rubs to help it along. It does, and you’re grateful.

She comes out from the back, carrying a large box of what look like toys.

She notices immediately. “Is that what I think it is?”

Is she being funny? She’s a fucking science teacher. Or are you about to make a total fool of yourself?

She puts the box on the table, watching you, watching your hard-on.

You’re confused. She seems to be waiting on you. Whose turn is it?

She steps closer to you. “Did you mean to do that?”

Must be your turn. You’re not sure what should happen next. Maybe you’re supposed to offer a kiss. You lean in but she flinches aside.

You straighten up. You can feel your cheeks brighten, to a glowing stoplight red. You retreat, but she hooks her finger in the waistband of your swim trunks.

“This,” she says, “could turn out to be weirder than either of us imagine.”

You’d flee, which she seems to sense, and tugs you closer. She squats down, settling on her heels and slides your swim trunks down to your ankles, helping you step out of them. She takes you into her mouth, wetting you thoroughly. With a kiss of the tip to signal she’s done, she stands up, steps out of her bikini bottoms, kicking them away from under her feet. She turns her back to you and bends herself over the dining table, guiding you in from behind.

Your ambivalence hasn’t melted your hard-on, but does give you a fine balance of insensitivity and hardness that forces you to work toward the climax, which right now seems a long, long way off. Like your elevator is stuck on the second floor. It feels good, but not good enough to speed things along. You realize she’s working right along with you, vocalizing, arms stretched out, gripping the edge of the table. You’ve got her by the hips, concentrating on how it feels, trying to raise the elevator.

Not wanting her to get bored, you wet your finger and reach around to find her button. That seems to unlock something.

Pretty soon the table’s shaking, you’re shaking, she’s shaking, the entire mobile home is shaking on its blocks, and then she lets loose with a howl and she reaches back, grabbing hold of you, clamping you to her. Then you’re rising, like a mortar on the 4th of July. You’re up on your toes. You explode. She’s got you by the buttocks and you can’t draw out, even as you spasm with the contractions, a shot gun racked and fired, racked and fired, until the spasms lessen, leaving you drained.

When you can’t seem to give any more, she lets go of you and rests her head on her arms. She is sighing, regaining control of her breathing.

You pop out, making a mess on the carpet.

You offer an “oops.”  You’re not sure why.

Boning your high school science teacher wasn’t high on your life’s achievements list. Now it is.

After a moment she pushes herself up from the table, first one arm, then the other, to rest on her elbows.

She ducks her head to look back at you. “Damn,” she says.

She straightens up and moves past you to get her cigarettes. She lights up, takes a long drag. Then looks down at the glistening trail you left running along her thigh.

She leans against the little breakfast bar and says, “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”

You aren’t sure if that means hygienically or spiritually.

“You know,” she says as she draws on her cigarette, rolls the smoke around in her mouth and blows a stream to the ceiling. “I only meant for you to have that model of the visible woman as a thank you for getting me through very bad time,” she says, taking another drag, “but shit that was worth the wait.”

Your cock still spasms, unwilling to surrender the field just yet.

She reaches out with her foot and flexes her toe on the underside of your crank.

“Would it be greedy to ask if you have another one of those in you? Since you’re here?”

There’s only one way to find out.

If Cormac McCarthy Wrote the Grasshopper and the Ants

In the warm days of summer, Grasshopper woke from a bad drunk after crashing in an empty Lone Star beer can. He munched a clover leaf in an attempt to clear his head but it was no good so he picked up his fiddle. He was halfway through his warmup exercises when he saw a line of ants, each straining under fallen seeds and dried fruit six-times their weight.

Oy, what are you doing? Grasshopper asked.

Storing food for the winter, the first of two ants, struggling with an acorn, said. He wiped his brow with his five legs, the sixth being lost in a bar fight in Abilene. Summer isn’t going last forever, you know, the second ant said and the two resumed their journey.

Grasshopper picked up his fiddle. The conversation caused him a great deal of cognitive dissonance. He worried that he should prepare for winter but the ants were drones, who wouldn’t understand passion if it bit them on the thorax. Besides, he’d just about mastered the chords for The Devil Went Down to Georgia. He began to play and a centipede stopped to listen.

You hear about that lady bug? the centipede asked after Grasshopper completed Venus in Furs.

No, what happened?

She choked to death on some moldy rye, the centipede said.

That’s horrible! Grasshopper suppressed a grin. 

The tragedy reinforced his world view. Finally, he had an argument to shut those stodgy ants up. There was no point in preparing for winter because the food would spoil anyway. He played a few chords of the Ode to Joy and left to enlist Bullfrog’s help.

***

Bloody diarrhea! Projectile vomiting! Fever! Dehydration! Electrolyte loss! These are the dangers of old food, Bullfrog croaked at sunrise. The insects paid so much attention that he croaked his message three times a day.

The ants argued that May flies and June bugs died from natural causes but no one listened.  As a fresh-food advocate, Grasshopper’s career skyrocketed and he kicked back some of his profits to Bullfrog. At each sold-out concert, he played the theme from Schindler’s List in memory of the dead. And the groupies! Dozens of lady bugs lined up outside his dressing room eager for a few minutes of inspiration. Then he received his highest honor, an invitation to play at the High Council of Cockroaches.

***

We must act to prevent food poisoning. The head cockroach wobbled his greasy antennae. Play us a tune while we confer.

Grasshopper played Schindler while the cockroaches traded political favors.

A decision has been made, the head cockroach concluded. In the interest of saving lives, all stored food shall be banned under penalty of death. He turned to Grasshopper. As a reward for your civic virtue, I present you with this medal. Another cockroach whispered in his ear. What? We gave the medal to an assassin bug? A hum. As a reward from your civic virtue, I present you with this stale cracker.

***

Wasps fanned out across the land to confiscate stored food and stung anyone withholding. Being wasps, they stung many who turned in their food as well. Innocent and guilty alike died, gut stung, bloated, begging for water, and their carapaces withering under the brutal sun. In celebration, Grasshopper held a victory concert. Accompanied by a chorus of crickets, he played REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It to an audience of beetles, millipedes, earwigs, butterflies, and water striders.

***

When the hard frost came, the ants were first to go, a small mercy, really. At least, they didn’t live to witness the depravity their neighbors sunk into.  After weeks of hunger a mob of stink bugs gathered to raise a stink outside Grasshopper’s home.

You betrayed us!

What will our larvae eat now?

Grasshopper muscled through the crowd and ran to Bullfrog.

We have to tell everybody that it’s the ants’ fault, Grasshopper said.

What do you mean we? Bullfrog shot out his tongue and ate Grasshopper. It was a tasty appetizer but a growing frog needs protein so he turned to cannibalism. The tadpoles, tree frogs, and leopard frogs lasted through mid-December. Then Bullfrog died wracked with guilt and suffered eternal damnation as an entrée in a French restaurant. Each night a chef amputated Bullfrog’s legs and fried them in butter. They grew back the next morning to return on that night’s menu.

The other insects starved. Their bellies swelled, they grew weak, and had trouble concentrating until they hallucinated and died. Only cockroaches survived, fat and happy living off the food they’d confiscated from the others.

A toast to that fiddler who brought us this bounty! The head cockroach raised a glass of honey seized from bees who were by now dead. I couldn’t have thought of a better scam, myself. What was his name, again? No one remembered. Well, screw him, then. Let’s have another round of drinks.

Civil Sex

Commentator: If ladies were only ladies, and gentlemen, still gentlemen, this is how it would play out…

She is luxuriating in her bed as he approaches, coming from his bedroom.

He: May I join you?

She: You have only to ask, love.

He: I would further request–

She: I thought you’d never ask. Of course.

He: I’m having trouble. It’s a little tight down there.

She: Don’t worry. I’ll provide some liquidity.

He: It’s working. With a bit of a push, I’ll be in.

She: There. I think you’ve got it.

He: There, I’m in. Oh, the gates of heaven have sprung for me.

She: I knew you’d succeed.

He: It’s warm.

She: I’m sure that’s the way you like it.

He: Ah! The squash of unwashed don’t know what they’re missing.

She: Now, that I’ve got you by your nether parts, it’s a thrill.

He: No. I don’t mind it a bit. This is bliss.

Commentator: And that’s how it’s done among the upper classes.

Alibi

An urgent knock came to the front door of my apartment just as I finished giving Private Ernesto Salazar the best blowjob of his life.

Holy shit, Salazar exclaimed sitting up from his prone position at the center of my bed. He helped me up from a position on my knees. That was the best blowjob of my life!

As a second knock sounded, I ran to the bathroom, my new breasts bouncing. I caught my reflection and smiled. Bouncing breasts were new to me. Of course, I also frowned when I noticed my worthless penis. Whatever, I muttered.

Wiping Pvt Salazar’s cum from my lips, I pulled on a floor-length silk kimono and turned for the door.

Police! Open up. Urgent but not demanding.

I noticed a nervous look on Salazar’s face, as to why I could not guess, and I motioned him to stay in the bedroom.

I’m AWOL, he whispered.

Of course, you are. I shook my head and left him cowering.

At the door I took a breath, synched my kimono tighter, and turned the knob. Two police officers in cheap suits turned to face me. One – tall, young, slender, very attractive – smiled, almost apologetically and with a hint of curiosity. The other – short, overweight, older, balding – held no expression. Both look up, noted my height, my breasts, and my lack of make-up.

Good morning, the short, round cop said, Ma’am. He said it more as a statement than pleasantry. When sitting I could nominally pass, especially with the new boobs, but standing? Forget it. Too fucking tall.

Ma’am? Really? I pulled the door wide. Honey, fucking please.

The tall, handsome cop, stifled a chuckle.

How can I help you two at this unwieldy hour?

Can we come inside? Old Detective asked.

Certainly. Pardon the mess and my freaked-out friend in the bedroom.

Friend? Young Detective asked.

Casual acquaintance, you know how it is, don’t you? I looked directly at Officer Handsome Big Bulge and he smiled, nodded at me, then crossed the threshold into my living room. Old Detective followed. Pvt Ernesto Salazar shuffled around in the bedroom, finally going into the bathroom and shutting the door.

I’m Detective Murphy and this is Detective Callahan, Old Detective gestured to Young Detective, to whom I looked at directly with great curiosity.

Please tell me your first name is Harry. I asked.

It is.

No fucking way. I put a hand to my mouth and laughed in utter delight. Sorry to curse, but that’s lovely.

My parents were fans.

So, it seems.

Can I see your gun? I surprised both of them with the question.

Detective Callahan coughed once. An odd reaction, I thought, but immediately understood his confusion. Double entendre intentional.

Your registered firearm, Detective Callahan. I am hoping for a 44 magnum. Eight-inch barrel, of course.

Of course, but no. I carry a Glock 19.

Bummer. Does your weapon have an eight-inch barrel.

Naw. It’s kind of average.

Average is good.

Is it?

Can be.

Um…what the fuck are you talking about, Callahan? Detective Murphy flush with confusion and a degree of impatience snapped. Callahan sheepishly shrugged. I pondered, a moment, Callahan’s barrel length.

So, Miss…?

Oh…yes. Sorry. I’m Jacklyn, Jacklyn Henry.

Jacklyn, Detective Murphy said. I immediately recognized the tone and that he didn’t quite accept me as a Jacklyn, even with expensive, near perfect manmade breasts, facial feminization, and ten years of HRT. Fuck my height.

Well despite your confusion, I am Jacklyn. I may have started as Jack a lifetime ago, but here I am, honey. My temper flared. Three inches short of 100% woman. I moved my hand to the opening of my robe and gestured as if to flash them my little 3” penis. Detective Murphy put a hand up and looked away, Detective Callahan stared at me expectantly. I took note.

No…no ma’am. Completely do not care. Your business. Murphy had blanched red in the face and I let a bemused smile drift across my face. I pulled my hand away from the robe opening and crossed my arms.

So, what’s the deal, gentlemen?

Do you recognize the name Anthony Paul? Detective Callahan asked.

Of course, he lives downstairs by the laundry room. Nice guy, very private but we chat from time to time.

Would you say you knew him well? Callahan said.

Well? No. I mean, if we saw each other we talked. Nothing more, really.

About? Murphy chimed in.

I don’t know. Anything, you know? Things going on. Current events. Weather. You know? Whatever came to mind. I took a few steps forward, suddenly curious and increasingly concerned. Tony and I knew each other well enough to help each other out. When I had a surgery, he would be my ride to and from, and then would care for me post-op. I took care of his cat, Lulu, when he traveled somewhere overnight. We never shared a romantic interest in one another, although we fucked on occasion. I needed a friend more than a relationship. I could count my friends on one hand.

Where were you earlier this morning, around 2 am?

I was here, Detective Callahan. In my bedroom.

Where you alone?

No, the man making all the noise in the bathroom was here. We just got back from a bar and were…you know.

Ma’am? Detective Murphy said.

Please don’t call me ma’am. Really. I finally sat in an overstuffed chair and carefully crossed my legs. I sighed. I think you can guess what we were doing.

Yes…um…yes, Murphy coughed out.

Do you want to ask him? Of course, you do. Ernesto, come out here please. Neither detective objected.

It took a second but Ernesto popped out of the bedroom. The police asked him his name and address, which he stuttered out.

Honey, these officers…

Detectives.

Detectives want to know where I was last night around two am? And they don’t care if you are AWOL or not.

Pvt Ernesto Salazar nodded in acknowledgement, then pondered his response, blushed at the recollection and shyly looked at his feet.

Honey, you actually have to say it out loud.

He looked up, his eyes wide and fearful, but like a true marine, he spoke the truth when asked by authorities. Well, most marines. We were fucking. 

There you go, gentlemen. I crossed and recrossed my legs, ala Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Callahan caught a glimpse and grinned like a schoolboy seeing pussy the first time. We were fucking.

Callahan and Murphy traded glances. Callahan then looked at me with a bit of a twinkle in his eye. I returned the look. And Murphy just sat there trying to unswallow his tongue. Pvt Ernesto Salazar stayed silent.

And I have receipts. The tab at the bar, the Uber receipt. You can go there if you want and ask the bartender, Danny. We know each other. No way you can forget a 6’5” tranny, now can you? Flicks on University.

Callahan scribbled a note and said: I know it.

I was hoping, I purred.

Another look. Another twinkle.

So really, fellas. What the fuck? I’m guessing Tony’s dead or something?

Why would you say that?

Enough cop shows. I feigned a hyper masculine voice. We’re canvassing the area, asking all the neighbors, looking for clues. Shit like that.

Detective Callahan closed his notebook and leaned back on the couch. He crossed and uncrossed his legs and I shivered. I felt certain he had an eight-inch barrel on his weapon.

Wow, very perceptive, Jacklyn. Callahan said, and I liked the way he said my name, in his rich baritone voice. Goosebumps littered across my arms. I shivered. The room felt warm and cold at the same time.

Thanks, honey. I tried to contain my attraction but seemed to be failing.

Seriously, that is what we are doing. They found Anthony…Tony out behind the apartment building about an hour ago, deceased.

Deceased? As in murdered?

Seemingly. Murphy wanted to remain evasive so as to not give anything away that they might already know but then Callahan blurted out, gunshot to back of the head.

I sat down quickly, tears welled in my eyes. We were fuckbuddies, and I loved him, and I denied to myself that we were in a relationship. 

Callahan stood and moved in front of me, crouching down and taking my hand.

Are you going to be okay?

Yes, I’ll be fine. Just a bit of a shock.

Pvt Ernesto Salazar broke the silence by asking to be dismissed. Murphy waved him off and he quickly rushed from my apartment.

Call me, I murmured after the door shut, then laughed quietly. Story of my life.

Bar scene’s like that, Callahan said somberly.

Murphy cleared his throat.

I think we’re done here.

Detective Murphy lit out of the front door nearly as fast as Pvt Ernesto Salazar. Callahan stood up and offered me his hand, which I took. The difference in our height made me laugh.

You are a tall woman.

I am. It’s unfortunate sometimes.

Only sometimes.

Yes.

Can I get your number?

You have it? Didn’t you ask earlier.

No, that was your friend. 

I provided Detective Callahan my number and slowly closed the door as I watch Detective Handsome Big Bulge walk away.

After I locked the door, I swooned, thinking of Callahan, then fell somber when I thought about dead Tony.

I kept most of my details to myself. The cops didn’t need any help from me. Tony sold drugs, pure, uncut cocaine. He kept a very low profile, no one in the complex knew, except for me. And Tony provided what he called, samples, to me at no charge. When I had the urge. The previous night he provided three glassine button bags stuffed full of samples, something to start the engine before hitting the clubs in Hillcrest. I gave Tony the best blowjob of his life and that would be the last time I saw him. By the time Pvt Ernesto Salazar rolled up on me I had burned through most of the coke and fell into a mood of depravity, much to Salazar’s enjoyment. 

Tony had enemies for sure, but I never thought they’d kill him. The cartel that supported his trade protected him. If someone took him out, there would be a price to pay. Unsanctioned hits were frowned upon by Tony’s keepers. Whoever pulled the trigger on Tony, probably had been given his own bullet. Detective Murphy and sweet, sweet 8-inch Barrel Callahan would make no arrest.

***

When I heard the toilet flush, I opened my eyes and smiled. Detective “Confirmed 8-inch Barrel” Callahan padded naked back to my bed and crawled in. He leaned across my body and kissed me. His hand swept under the blanket and cupped my right breast.

They are perfect.

Thank you. Money well spent.

He kissed me again, mouth open, tongue darting, but my mood had not met up with his. I pulled away.

How’s the investigation going?

About your neighbor?

Yeah, Tony.

Closed.

Oh. It’s only been a week. I mean cops on TV solve a murder in an hour, so a week feels like forever.

We don’t close as many as you might think.

For real.

I spun off the bed and padded naked across the wood floor to the bathroom and sat on the toilet. I purposely left the door wide open to be nasty, and peed. Unlike Detective Callahan I washed my hands then pulled on my floor-length silk kimono.

So, we found another body a day after Tony. We think he’s the perp.

Really?

Yeah. The gun he had matched to the gun used on Tony.

Crazy.

I got back into bed and snuggled into sexy detective.

Should we go to breakfast, Callahan asked.

Oh my God yes. A breakfast date? I need to call my mother.

What?

Nothing, honey. Get your ass dressed before you change your mind.

Gooner’s Brood

Lucas shuffled to the end of his rusty parallel bars, his legs sore, and settled into his wheelchair. He rolled himself along the carpet, forming deep ruts that made forward motion harder as the wheels sank deeper. Eventually, he reached the computer.

A stab of disgusted passed through his body, but it wasn’t enough to stop him.

He pulled his sweatpants down, groped around the floor for his recently washed tube sock. Then he set it over his erect penis, where it rested like an obscene tea cozy.Quickly he put his right hand on the mouse and pulled up the bookmarked page for “Pregnant White Trash Sluts.” There were thumbnails for all the girls, each with a still image gallery and a link to a video library available only after signing up for a membership.  

There was Pam, wearing a red nightie frilled with black lacework, sitting on the edge of a waterbed covered in a leopard print comforter. Her freckles stood out against her pale, sallow skin, and the droop of her dark eyes gave her a drug-dazed look. It shamed him to admit it even to himself, but her appearance turned him on, some form of fentanyl (or meth) chic.

Then there was Tammie, wearing a red, white, and blue bikini, emerging from an aboveground pool limned with seaweed-green scum, her plump belly swollen and water-slicked. Her bright blond hair was up in tight pigtails that only added to the barely-legal effect given by her shiny braces.   

His erection grew stronger so that the sock danced, the shame and self-loathing moving over him now in tidal waves. 

From somewhere upstairs came a sound, the metallic slap of the mailman dropping letters through the front door’s brass slot.

Lucas jolted upright in the wheelchair, so that his spine burnt and nettles pinpricked his otherwise numb legs. He took deep breaths—one after another—just like the shrink in rehab had taught him. Eventually the rhythm of his breathing calmed him and he returned his attention to the screen.

There was Deb, his favorite. 

She stood naked, with her belly swollen and ripe, as perfectly globular as a Rand McNally globe, sneering at the men watching from the darkness of the internet.  

Die, she seemed to broadcast to Lucas with her hard, dark stare. Die, she said, to all the men in the world, including the one who’d taken the photo and the one who’d knocked her up. 

Lucas’s penis seized in the sock, spasming, the pleasure intensified by the coarse cotton rubbing against the organ’s sensitive skin. 

Suddenly he felt a tug from his groin, different from the muscular contraction of orgasm. He looked down, at an image impossible to process. 

It was the size of a doll, red with blackish markings on its skin, like tandoori chicken left too long in a clay oven. Phallic coils of leathery hair snaked from the top of its shrunken head, the mane sprouting wildly and shining like tiny tangled whip thongs. 

It braced itself between his legs, its little claws digging into the tender, pale flesh of his thighs. Its movements were subtle, more of breathing than anything else, but there could be no mistake. This was not a statue; it was either alive or some strange remote-controlled toy. 

The thought hit him—mortifying—that the thing might house a webcam, that someone was seeing him here: in his wheelchair, with a sock on his penis.

The creature snarled, baring sharp white teeth that shined like polished ivory. Embarrassment gave way to fear and Lucas was only too aware of how close its rodentlike teeth were to his unprotected genitals. 

In one swift motion the thing yanked the sock from the top of his penis, and tied its end into a knot. Then it draped the sock over its shoulder, looking like a hobo with a bindle, long-accustomed to its weight and treasuring the contents.

Lucas found his voice, used it to scream, reaching a near glass-shattering pitch.  

The creature hopped down from his pallid thighs, then skittered quickly away, taking the stairs, ignoring the wheelchair lift. 

There was the sound of its sharp-nailed feet mincing over hardwood, followed by a metallic shink as it slid through the mail slot, out onto the street.

Lucas looked around the room, down at his penis, now cold and exposed, weeping a last couple drops of semen from the bluish lips of the head.

 It hadn’t been real. It had been a hallucination, brought on by the car crash, compounded by the months he’d spent holed up here in the dark.

Time to take a break from the computer.

He moved to touch the mouse with his sweating hand, x-ed out the window displaying Pregnant White Trash Sluts. Then he depressed the power button, holding it down until Deb disappeared, replaced by an unlighted screen, its glass reflecting the pathetic tableau of him, alone in the basement. 

***

At last, the initial shock of seeing that evil idol wore off enough for him to move again. His first act was to take a long-overdue shower, then change into clean clothes. He next planned to break down the stack of greasy cardboard pizza boxes and take them to the dumpster.

He was halfway through the task when the doorbell rang. The wiring was somewhat faulty, and what started as a traditional dingdong tapered off into a wheeze, like strains from a dying music box.   

“Coming,” Lucas said, and wiped the oily cheese residue onto his pantlegs. He cursed under his breath once, remembering only after his fingers touched his legs that he’d just changed clothes.

He walked to the door, gripped the cold brass knob with a greasy hand, and put his eye to the keyhole. The fisheye glass revealed the impossible: an attractive woman on his threshold. She had deep brown eyes and dark brown hair, done in tight cornrows that vividly showed the whiteness of her scalp. Usually cornrows didn’t work on white girls. This time, however, they did, highlighting her hard-edged beauty. 

Lucas snapped the bolt and pulled the chain down. The woman drew back, holding her arms crossed over her front so that the pale mounds of her prodigious breasts bulged from her pink velour top.

She caught him looking, zipped her top up, and scowled. “Still horny, huh?” She shook her head. 

“Huh?” he asked, dumbly. Then it hit him. “Deb from Pregnant White Trash S—”

She slapped him in the face, hard.

 A white flash went off behind his eyes, and then she was in the apartment with him. She closed the door behind her and shifted the strap of her brown leather purse from one arm to the other.

Lucas watched her, rubbing his stinging jaw.

Still scowling, the young woman looked from the couch to his chair. “Which one of these two pieces of furniture has less of your nut on it?”

“Neither,” he said, the word out of his mouth before he could form a thought, or make a protest. “I mean, I use a sock.”

Her sneer curved into a smile, and she flashed him a gap-toothed grin. The gap, like the cornrows, was something that didn’t always work on a female face, but did on hers. “I know you use a sock,” she said, taking her place on the edge of the couch. “I’ve got it.”

She set her purse on top of the glass coffee table covered in a film of soda pop stains. Cleaning the table was going to be his next move after he finished folding the pizza boxes. 

“I mean,” she said, digging in her purse, “he’s got it.”

“Who?” Lucas asked. 

She pulled something out of her purse. It was a little doll, a tchotchke that looked to be carved from ebon wood and stained with some natural dark red dye. He had hair like pronged penises, though they were made of raffia fiber rather than living leather. And the teeth which had so terrified Lucas now looked to be made from sharpened bamboo slivers rather than polished ivory.

“You recognize him?” She tapped the little fetish, grinning.

“I thought it was a dream.” Lucas, without thinking, took his place on the soft recliner, settling into the deep impression he’d left there sitting and staring at nothing.

“My name isn’t Deb,” she said. “It’s Shoshana. I just took that name for the website.”

“Okay…Shoshana.” 

“And you should be ashamed of yourself. You think me and other girls want to be put in that position when we do those videos? Our backs are against the wall when we finally say ‘yes.’ We’re not your fantasy. We’re flesh and blood women with responsibilities, kids with deadbeat dads who aren’t in the picture anymore. We have addictions, issues. And you prey on us. Now I’m going to prey on you.” She stroked the tapering phallic coils bursting from the totem’s little wooden head, then her eyes drifted toward Lucas’s lap.  

Lucas looked down where she stared. The erection formerly contained by his underwear had slipped free of his boxers, presenting a more obvious puptent near the fly.

“Ugh,” she said, swallowing as if to keep the coursing bile from becoming upchuck.  “I’m glad I’m not a man. It must be hell to think with your dicks. The guys at Cheetah’s are pathetic. Doing relay races to the ATM for one more table dance.”

Lucas pointed at the little man on the table. “Sounds like you don’t need him to prey on men.” 

She tilted her head, looking at Lucas rather than through him for the first time. “Cheetah’s is a dump. Bunch of dollar generals in there waving around singles and barking orders.” She teased the little toy’s hair, working each strand individually like a stylist. “And sure this is about the money, but more than that, it’s about revenge on all you perverts, making you claim some responsibility, watching you squirm.”  

She looked back down at the little carved totem. “I got it from this crazy goth girl at work.” She petted the gorgon-headed toy it as if it were a lapdog needful of constant doting.  “This cool ass wiccan chick. She said it could bring me good fortune. I didn’t believe her.” She shook her head, as if regretting her previous lack of faith. “I even forgot all about it, til she slit her wrists a couple months back and we had to clean out her locker. And then I found it, and remembered what she told me. I tried it, and whaddya know, it worked.” 

She picked the doll up, set it back in her purse. Then she stood, breathing a sigh of relief now that she was almost free of this apartment’s musky confines. “Come on.” She slung her leather purse strap over her shoulder again. 

“Where are you going?” he asked, watching her but not moving.

“We’re going,” she said, opening the front door. “To see your son.” 

***

Lucas stabbed the ground with his crutches, limping down the apartment corridor, trailing Shoshana by several paces. 

“Slow down,” he said.

 “I’ve already petitioned Hamilton County Jobs and Family Services, Child Support Division to get some of your bloodwork from the hospital just to confirm the kid is yours. That’s if you want to deny paternity when they come knocking on your door.”

He didn’t say anything, just continued working the crutches to catch up, panting and sweating now. This was the most exercise he’d had in weeks.

“I’m guessing you’re double-dipping with social security disability, too, aren’t you?” She reached the door and pulled it open. Cold, crisp morning air entered the hallway, freezing the sweat on his body, making him shiver. 

“How much of that half-million do you still have?” she asked.

“Shh!” he hissed, moving so fast now that his armpits screamed with pain from the recoil of his crutches. “Keep it down! I don’t want anyone knowing I have money.”

“Too late.” She was smirking, but at least held the door open for him.

He walked out into the daylight with her, squinting against the sun, blinded by its disinfecting glow. 

Her heels clacked against the sidewalk as she moved. She was wearing tight designer jeans with the label name stitched in gemstones on the seat of the pants. As she walked, her apple-shaped bottom switched left and right with a throbbing, musical rhythm.

Lucas cinched the crutches beneath his right armpit, and hopped after Shoshana on one leg until he came up alongside her.

“Where’s the kid?”

“I left him in the park.” She pointed across the street, at the small green island enclosed by concrete curbing and shrouded with oak trees. A sandbox and rusty jungle gym were its only kid-friendly accoutrements. 

“You just left him there?!”

“He’s not like other kids,” she said, as if that explained, or excused it.

“What about…” Lucas trailed off, tried again. “What about the kid you were pregnant with on the Pregnant White—”

“Say the website’s whole name out loud again and I’ll slap seven shades of shit out of you.” 

There was a beep then, as the little red man on the crosswalk sign turned white. 

“Hop, gooner,” she said, walking ahead of him, her high, bluejeaned booty still making music through its motion.

“What’s a gooner?”  

Morning traffic was light, only a dandelion-yellow VW Bug and a rusted blue Ford pickup truck stopped at the intersection.

 “A gooner,” she said, voice slightly muffled by the wind, “is loser who’s hopelessly addicted to porn and doesn’t even feel bad about it.” 

“I feel bad about it. I haven’t even looked at porn for weeks.” 

“I guess what happened with me taught you a lesson.”

“That’s part of it,” Lucas said. 

They had made it across the street. Near the base of a tree’s mossy trunk, in the middle of the park, stood a small boy. 

***

Lucas stopped, unable to move forward. Even at this distance the boy looked hideously white, pale as if exsanguinated of blood and filled with embalming fluid. There was a liquidous bulge to his skin, like a water balloon filled to bursting, which only furthered the impression of him being brimful of formaldehyde.

“I put foundation on its face,” Shoshana said. “It looked too weird without it.”

“It?” Lucas crutched his way a little closer, stabbing the grass still slick with morning dew. “That’s our son.”

“I miscarried my son, and my worthless wannabe rockstar boyfriend dipped while I was going through contractions at the hospital.” She pointed at the child, still unmoving and impossibly pale beneath the tree. “That over there is something the homunculus conjured after I said the words asking for great fortune, and added my blood to your sperm.”

Lucas gagged. 

“My menstrual blood,” she added, in the hopes that his misogynist’s disgust caused him to throw up. 

When he had recovered, he looked back over at the boy standing by the tree. 

“Go say hello to your son. Hop to it, gooner.”

He crutched the final stretch of the way toward the boy without protesting the slur. He didn’t care about her anymore. There was only the strange child before him.

“Hey,” Lucas said, softly, approaching as if he were nearing an oft-abused feral cat.

The wind picked up, tousling the strands of the boy’s blonde hair, fine as cornsilk. 

The foundation Shoshana had applied made the child at least halfway presentable when viewed from a distance. Up this close, a blue webwork of pulsing veins visibly striated beneath the skin, squirming like worms, giving the boy the impression of not being sickly, but alien. 

The eyes were spaced too far apart and had no focus. Even worse, they didn’t blink, and the sclera were bloodshot, limned with a red compliment to go with the blue webwork of veins undulating beneath the skin. 

Lucas cleared his throat, spoke. “My name is Lucas Milton.”

The boy’s unblinking eyes roved toward Lucas, staring blanky. 

Lucas held a smile on his face, feeling awkward, but not quite awkward enough to cease smiling.

The boy opened his mouth, the lips full and dark purple, swollen as if bruised after a fight. His teeth were sharp and small like those of a baby shark, serrated like a saw’s, as if he had teethed himself on a whetstone.

The voice came then, not quite forming words, but bearing sounds on wet bubbles. Then there was a low animal moan, a keening of something young and sensitive with its foot caught in a sharp-jawed trap. 

“Daddy?” It widened its pale, noodlelike arms, also wormed with blue veins, waiting for Lucas to accept its limpid embrace.

Lucas tried to go forward to hug it. Couldn’t. He turned around. Shoshana was still several feet away, leaning on a wooden bench’s back. 

“I can’t,” Lucas said, eyes tearing, beseeching and broken. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Shoshanna. I just can’t.”

She switched her purse from one arm to the other. “It took me a month to learn to say those words Bry wrote down. I had to go online and look up Sanskrit pronunciations. I blew a linguist in the champagne room so he wouldn’t charge me for the phonetic translation. You can make a little effort here.”

“DADDY!” 

The thing started quickly toward him, its arms fully extended, unblinking eyes wide, hungering for its father’s attention.

“No.” Lucas hefted his right crutch, swung and caught the thing on the side of its head. The veins erupted beneath the skin, filling the subcutaneous space between soft endoskeleton and softer flesh with warm blood, finally lending it a touch of color.

It fell down, landing in a soft pile of brown mulch. 

“You hit your son!”

“He’s not my son!” Lucas’s shout resounded through the park like a rifle shot, silencing the bolder birds in the trees and sending the more timid ones flying skyward. 

“DADDY!” The boy rolled over onto his belly, got up to his knees. He regained his feet and resumed walking toward Lucas, as if he had no memory of his previous rejection at his father’s hands. 

Blood flowed fast and freely from his ears as if from a faucet on full bore, a strange cranial stigmata.

Lucas backed up, hopping awkwardly, dancing on one foot while flailing with the right crutch. “Get away! Get back!”

“DADDY!!!!”

There was a questioning, wounded lilt in its single word, as if it felt abandoned, much as Lucas and his mother had been abandoned by his father. But Lucas had to be imagining it. There was no variation in its vocal cadence, any more than there was variance in the unblinking fixity of its dead stare.

Regardless of how it said the word, if it said itone more time, he would be forced—

“DADDY!!!”

Lucas swung the crutch again, and again connected with the thing’s head. 

Only this time the head exploded in a shower of dark blood that flew upward in a bursting fountain before descending in a warm, red rain. The blood splashed Shoshana, hitting her full in the face, staining her eyes and putting the taste of menses fluid and sperm on her lips. 

“You motherfucker!” she shouted, dabbing at her stained face with her fingertips. “I’ll get you for this!”

Lucas hopped away on one leg, his remaining crutch squeaking pitifully as he worked it hard on the dewy sod, back in the direction of his apartment building.   

Home, where everything made more sense. 

“I’ve got your other crutch, gooner!”

The sounds of his gusty hyperventilation echoed, louder in his ears than her screams. Louder still, though, was the memory of the single word the boy had learned, said probably without understanding its meaning, or what memories it recalled for Lucas.

DADDY!

***

After getting home, he slammed the front door, bolted it, and fixed the chain. He pulled the curtains down and closed the slatted Venetian blinds, and used a screwdriver to disable the doorbell. Then he turned out all the lights and sat in the living room, in darkness and silence, amid the detritus of stacked pizza boxes thick with coagulated cheese.

He had no plans except to make his sleep dreamless, which he accomplished by downing cherry-flavored Nyquil until the room began to spin, then finally somersault.

When he awoke, still dizzy—now sick—he had long, scrofulous stubble on his chin and a neckbeard rough as Brillo pad. 

He didn’t have time to wonder how long he had been out. 

There was the thunk of pebbles hitting the balcony’s glass door, one after another, in methodical succession, as if whoever was throwing them did it to keep time.

He stood, donned his mildewy bathrobe, and walked to the balcony door. He slid the glass door aside and walked outside, looked down.

Shoshanna stood on the grass, wearing a powder blue Adidas sweatsuit with white vertical piping up the arms and legs. The crown of the sweatsuit’s hood was up but dented so she looked like some beguine in a weird holy order. Someone or something stood directly behind her, but because it was hidden by her form he couldn’t see it. 

Still, he could guess what it was, who it was.

“You could have tried the door,” he said. “You might break a window this way.”

“Broken window’s the least of your problems. Besides, I tried the doorbell.”

Through the haze of sleep he had some foggy half-memory of having disabled the doorbell. “You could have knocked.”

“I did that, too. I thought you might have been dead. I decided to come back one last time, and it paid off.” She pointed up at him, the evidence of her persistence. “Nice to see you again, baby killer.”

“Baby killer!?” He moved to the edge of the balcony, gripped the cold iron railing. “You’re the one who called it an ‘it’!” He was suddenly conscious of how ridiculous he sounded, how ridiculous he looked in his bathrobe.

“That’s what you call us when we have abortions, right? Of your babies. What do you call a guy who beats his own son to death with a crutch?”

There was no way of answering a question that insanely rhetorical, but he was preparing to try anyway, when she turned from him.

As she turned, her blue beguine’s cowl fell, exposing her headful of tautly pulled cornrows. “Someone’s here to see you.”

Lucas looked down toward it, him, whatever, the conflicting knot of emotions tied too tightly within him to separate one from the other. He was relieved to discover he wasn’t a murderer—“baby killer”—equally disheartened to discover he hadn’t killed it. 

Him. 

Whatever. 

Lucas placed his hands over his face. He cupped his eyes as if he were a baby lacking object permanence, who only needed to hide from a sight to make it disappear. But when he lowered his palms and looked again, mother and son were still standing there, looking up at him. 

“Here,” Shoshana said, softly. She took the child’s hand in hers, showing a maternal warmth she lacked the other day in the park, a warmth of which he hadn’t thought her capable.

The pale-faced boy wore a fitted Cincinnati Reds hat, new and with an unbent bill, the white on the “C” still as impossibly bright as the first toothpaste from a fresh tube. The hat gave the face enough shadow to soften the unblinking gaze and blue veins crawling beneath the translucent skin.  

He almost looked human, real. 

Shoshana held his hand loosely, playing with each of the fingers one at a time. “He reconstituted about an hour after you busted him like a water balloon.” She patted the boy on his narrow shoulder, as if to test the sturdiness of this, his second incarnation. “I can remake him as fast as you can break him.”

“I couldn’t bring myself to ‘break him’ again if I wanted to…” And he did want to. Or at least a part of him did. 

“If I come to your door, you going to open up for us?” 

“No,” Lucas said, and sighed. “I’ll come down to you.”

“Good,” she said, “because he wants to go the park. Don’t you, Lucas Junior?”

Lucas watched as the boy touched the front of his jacket. Its green parachute silk made him look more like a tiny militiaman than a little leaguer. The boy moved his fragile fingers—white as bone China—over the jacket’s silver zipper, separating the teeth with one quick zip. He reached inside, and when the hand emerged, it was sheathed in a Wilson’s genuine leather baseball mitt. The glove glowed with a fresh coat of liniment, as badly in need of breaking in as the hat. 

Shoshanna (who’d apparently thought of everything) pulled a white baseball from the right pocket of her sweatsuit jacket. She held it by the poppy-red seams, as if ready to pitch a forkball.

“Play catch with us, Daddy!” 

Lucas averted his eyes so Junior wouldn’t see the tears. When he trusted himself to speak again, he shouted, using the practiced tone of a father barking encouraging words to his son standing on the baseball diamond. It was a voice and they were words he had always wanted to hear his own father shouting. 

“Coming, son!”