Alternative to Plowing

My wife Judith and I nestled in our bed at the end of a laboriously fruitful day of toiling in the field. Despite her modest age of 23 years old, she could still find the energy to arouse me in the most youthful of ways. We were always sure to keep quiet during our recreation as to not awaken our children or the neighbors of Plymouth Rock. I could sense she was feeling rather frisky when she whispered in my ear with the mousy voice I desired, “I want to make you squirm Jedediah.” Her words were provocative as if she were tempting the Lord above with flirtatious hymnals. Admittedly, I was exhausted from the day, however, my body presented itself for the occasion. My little Jedediah stood shrouded by the blanket that we shared in our straw bed as if to praise the heavens above. Judith’s calloused hand traced their way down my tanned and rigid abdominal muscles as she sought to introduce herself to my flesh.

We have recently initiated a cruel trick on the Lord by having relations without the intent of procreating. The scandalous act committed, the sin in the eyes of God, seemingly introduced passion beyond our mandatory commitments that came with the covenant of marriage. Once, on an occasion before this, I conducted the promiscuous act, and as I arrived toward completion, I exited Judith and jizzed in her Puritan blonde hair. Standing over her as a leader in the community and in the bedroom, we exalted glory for the deed. My seed eventually washed away from her curls due to the typical sweat and elements endured over the course of a few physically active days of work. We would giggle at each other over dinner with our little secret. It seemed as if tonight was destined to be a repeat of our extra-marital conduct.

Judith caressed my neck and whispered passionate praise as if I were the Messiah. “Oh Jedediah,” she said, “I want to taste your fruit and milk you as if you were one of the dairy cows outside.” I was electric. Her boldness always froze me, but I eventually found the strength to contribute. “Judith, do you take me to be your lawfully wedded boy toy?” To which she nodded approvingly. She paused with her strokes as she had a defined eureka moment. I opened my eyes slowly and met hers glowing wide with excitement. I had not seen her filled with this much enthusiasm since we boarded the Mayflower. Instead of moving her hands below the sheet, she descended entirely into the cottoned abyss that was our bed. Confused, I asked “What the heck do you think you are doing?” She hummed along in attraction to my cursing as she mischievously smiled and drifted into the dark realm. We descended into hedonism together.

At first, I was unsure what I felt. I pondered which lips she was using for my penetration. I stared at the wood beamed ceiling of our cottage as the ecstasy and confusion overtook my body. It felt wet but not as wet as typical intercourse. I concluded she must be using her mouth by the uninterrupted sounds of slurping and swallowing that were emitted from the sheet tent she was operating in. I was twice over a Pilgrim in a strange land. This must be a sin. There is no way this was normal, but then again, as animalistic as it felt, I had never seen a farm animal do what Judith was doing. I peeped down at the sheet to strengthen my imagination of what she might be attempting. My theory was confirmed as I could make out a fabric sphere bob vertically by candlelight. “Who is this devil in our bed? Do I tell our preacher about this? Should I beg for forgiveness?” All these thoughts stirred as she labored away in the late hours of the night. My back was arched and my legs tingled as if they were losing circulation. “Am I experiencing heavenly comfort or is this a measure of devotion I am not physically prepared for?”

The climax came after what felt like a fortnight. I was impressed that I was still riddled with a boner despite my neuroses. As I felt the familiar release build to the point of externalization, I reached down and tapped Judith on the top of her head. Her hair was damp with condensation and the entire under sheet was elevated with body heat. I shot my ropes into her mouth. I could not imagine the sensation she must have felt as she gulped and gasped at my relief. After enough time passed, she crawled back up my body, shamefully avoiding my eyes and asked, “Dear Jedediah, did you not enjoy my gift?”

I sat with the question momentarily before responding, “Why I do believe that might be the highest form of pleasure to be found on Earth!”

Judith finally made eye contact with me and confidently said, “I do not understand then, you laid dormant and became mute. Not even a smile upon my return to your side. I worry you have become ashamed of my heathen activities.”

Wanting to smooth over any insecurities she may have held, I told her, “Judith, I love you baby. I will eat the forbidden fruit with you any day.”

“Good. We are stuck together, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She teased.

I watched her roll over to extinguish the candle that illuminated our quarters. “Judith, I hope you forgive me for not kissing you goodnight. Your mouth just had my seed in it. I hope you understand.”

She giggled and told me, “All is forgiven.”

For the remainder of the night, I stared deeply toward the heavens while my deeply slumbering wife lay beside me. My torment was brought on by the affliction this possessed creature drug into our marital life. I could not get passed the guilt of sin we had committed. I had been led astray by lust. Even if she was my wife, this was Sodom and Gomorrah level treason against Thee. I am at odds with God or my Family. Earth was temporary, Heaven was forever I decided. In the morning I will report her to the Plymouth Rock authorities to be hanged on grounds that she is a witch conducting the devil’s work. Till death do we part, dear Judith. 

Duet

The violins were dueling. 

Soaring to great heights before plunging back to earth in a magnificent swirl of notes and patterns, each vying for his attention. Truly a glorious duet. 

Felix Chapuys felt the old familiar stirring in his chest, not unlike those early days of marital bliss when he was young and invincible and full of boundless optimism. As it was, music had been his only solace since his young bride and unborn child had been mercilessly snuffed out by a runaway conveyance in the thoroughfare, some twenty years before. 

It was a fate that still filled him with anger and disgust at his creator. A being so callous as to rip away Felix’s own heart while also filling his soul with sublime music. God was a horribly cruel master, indeed.

Chapuys twisted the simple gold band he still wore on his left hand around and around as the strings rose together into glorious climax, ripping him to pieces all over again. The violins seemed to know all the secrets of his heart, the confusion of his broken mind. They filled Chapuys with an intense and mournful longing, the past melding seamlessly into the present as the concerto played on and on.

A final, deep unison note pierced the air before slowly, exquisitely fading away. Silent tears fell in tracks down his face, as they always did at the concerto’s conclusion. Chapuys took a moment to savor that first, blissful moment of quiet as the last tone dissipated, returning the room to its usual, colorless state. 

Felix knew if he could, he would play the music in an endless loop, winding the battered old phonograph again and again until his arm gave out from sheer exhaustion. The concerto had to be earned. 

It demanded to be admired and cherished by someone who was deserving in every way; an eager student who would follow its divine instruction. Chapuys worked tirelessly to be worthy, pushing himself to the very edge in order to live within the music and pass on this knowledge. Inspired, he vowed to do it this very night.

With a determined sigh, Felix Chapuys caressed the skull a final time before gently returning it to its rightful place among the others. Turning away from his masterpiece, he smiled at a job well done.

Felix could feel a kindred spirit, a strange presence watching him from a great distance, already learning. Satisfied, he checked to make sure his blade was sufficiently sharp, before straightening his cravat and making himself ready for the long night ahead. 

***

Lucas backed away from the exhibit as the song ended. 

It was old people music, but Lucas didn’t mind. He may be two months away from his tenth birthday, but his mom always said he had an “old soul,” whatever that meant. The figure’s movements were so lifelike, he swore it smiled at him. It was eerie watching it methodically stroke the plastic skull as the music got louder and louder. The whole thing gave Lucas the creeps and a strange feeling of excitement at the same time. 

The man was one of those animatronic thingies. Lucas could hear the clicks and whirls as it sat dancing around in its chair but the face is what really got to him. It was lined and expressive, different emotions playing out across a wax-like surface. Curiosity getting the better of him, Lucas went over to the large plaque directly beneath the exhibit and began to read.

“Felix H. Chapuys, 1842-1902, was a notorious American serial killer in the late nineteenth century. He is credited for killing at least thirty women over a span of  two decades. It is said that he was driven by intense anger at the tragic loss of his young wife, Julia, who was run over by a Hansom Cab in the early 1880s. Julia was seven months pregnant. Chapuys was a great lover of the arts and music, carving up his victims while listening to his favorite musical selections on a hand-cranked phonograph. On the night he was caught, a “Concerto for 2 Violins in A minor, Op. 3, No. 8” by Vivaldi, had just finished playing as he was surprised by local authorities. The skulls of his many victims were carefully cleaned and stacked in the bedroom, the body of his latest mark still laid out upon a table, awaiting further dissection. He’d already boiled the skin from her head as they kicked the door in and shot him dead, thus ending his reign of terror.” 

Lucas turned his gaze to the headless mannequin lying on the table, goose flesh breaking out all over his body. They really were going for a realistic effect here. Bright red pieces glistened under the lights, fake gore and offal spilling over onto the floor. He could hear the display gearing up for another go as the crank on the old-fashioned music box began to spin. Unable to tear himself away, he hesitated. It was well past lunchtime and his mother would be looking for him.

He risked a final look back, feeling the whirs of the strange technology humming in anticipation, and saw a random tear fall down the killer’s face. A fresh jolt of fear sent him running away from the waxed figure and his crazy, hypnotic music. The opening notes of the concerto rang out once again through the “Hall of Killers” as Lucas desperately searched for the exit. 

A stray thought popped into his head as he hurried past the displays of Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, H.H. Holmes and John Wayne Gacy. It came out of nowhere, in a deep, fervent voice that wasn’t his own. This single, relentless thought would return to Lucas many times in the years to come, taunting him, driving him, igniting his imagination. A lonely, almost ten-year-old boy desperately searching for meaning who found a sudden, inexplicable appreciation for classical music. 

As Lucas burst through Wax Museum doors, he had no idea what any of this meant, but it would all make perfect sense to him in due time. The world would also come to know it, walking past Chapuys to where Lucas’ own likeness would one day stand, the maestro and student entwined forever in blood-drenched infamy. Truly a glorious duet.

The violins were dueling.

Psychoneuroses, Part 4

It was tough improvisational shit he’d sold to Aleister; it was shamanic: coming on strong. Even flea-ridden mongrels like Aleister weren’t guaranteed to handle deep funk action like this gear. Piggy peered into Aleister’s mince pies for reassurance. The bitch seemed cool. Joyfully, Pigsty drifted away; a trackless spore in a hot, humid dusk. Meanwhile, Cecil continued to push his luck, displaying a barbaric propinquity toward taking the piss. Using grotty rhetoric, the pawky manner in which he mockingly depicted community values threw a shitty spanner into the central mechanism of society’s psychical economy; devaluing core theories at the very heart of its exchange rate. Self-proclaimed Royalty; do me a favour! Cecil was simply out for what he could lay his grubby paws on. He couldn’t give a tuppeny-toss about all the fools deluded enough to idolise him. In bygone days, human behaviour mirrored unimpeachable elders, folk trusted digestible rules, and felt safe under the protection of pedagogical politicians hoving flinty principles like Thomas More, or James Ramsay MacDonald; gentlemen of integrity, sinew and fibre, who stood or fell on ancient fundamentals. Ab immemorabili, more martial, but equally legendary leaders flourished: Thor and Odin, brass-balled hairy guys who led from the front; demigods, content, nay eager, to share, even their dying energies, with a beloved natural environment. From those vanished golden-ages onwards, subsequent hero-less governments had been as corrupt as Narnia in winter. Aleister’s revelatory thinking swayed toward regicide, because organically (apart from that soggy-knickered Granny-shagging stuff) Fagan was spot on: any demagogue, quasi-prophet, or tin-pot opportunist seeking to subordinate our painstakingly patch-worked communities had to be dissuaded in the most brutal fashion- lest we poor people suffer. To be ill-governed under heavy manners is to be inspected, spied upon, directed, law driven, regulated, preached at, controlled, censored, and/or bummed by creatures that have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. 

For example, The Queen of England safeguards sovereignty for a cadet branch of the haunted house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; landed gentry poncing off successive populations of the British Isles like a bejewelled tapeworm since 1840. Her Majesty possesses arbitrary powers of pleasure over star-struck subjects, and takes the preposterous title of Supreme Governor on Earth of the Church of England. How mad’s that? Because structurally, amid the white-hot foundry of Christ’s notional Kingdom, there is no private property, no operationally leased airspace above buildings, or on rooftops, capped with newfangled mobile phone aerials; no pride and precedence, absolutely no commercialised motive, and no reward save love. Ah, love. Today schoolchildren are groomed from the age of four; force-fed fairytales daily, stuffed full of ornamental gibberish, and unwise additions, dreamed up by the unintelligently devout, concocting a miasma which paraphrases the lifecycle of a mysterious first-century Palestinian Jew: stuff and nonsense that kiddies must fit onto the same mental map as the lifecycle of a hungry caterpillar (to which, oddly, it bears a striking resemblance). A diabolical cult of the individual surrounds Queen Elizabeth (whose face as designed by Arnold Machin, appears on all legal currency and postage stamps); leeching it large in magnificent palaces with stunning gardens, she’s amassed a vast private fortune, becoming in fact, the richest witch in the world. What on God’s green earth does Fagan see in her? Her every public relations action, no matter how banal, is lauded by a crass, fawning, sycophantic media; dark forces choreograph accompanying, pro-royalist demon-strations. Lurking behind Blighty’s stylised figurehead, a voracious clique of parasitic castrators rule a decerebrated majority, who scribble the traditional mark of inutile illiteracy by one of three names twice a decade (although some unlucky blighters from outside the portcullis, beyond the motte-and-bailey, are procured by palace security chiefs for the dubious privilege of being humped by princes, whilst sky-high on drugs). 

“And now you children of my father’s flock, the stochastic moment arrives to realise the implicatures and insurmountable powers of conviction.” Cecil trumpeted forth mesmerising messages: “…there can be no life without injustice, no living creature can live and thrive without destroying another existing organism. Behavioural battles between one’s instinctual reflexes and conditioned roles, brings painful confusion upon one’s soul! Please yourself people, groove as you feel, follow your nature, let’s all remain real. Come! Gather now; conceive infinity as it actually is.”

Slyly Cecil produced his spellbinding lantern (a theatrical prop billed as a ‘sovereign cognitive apparatus’ over promotional posters dotted around the West End) and proceeded with a phantasmagorical exhibition of suggestive images; projections fraught with terrified mini-mammals, punctuated at intervals by uglier scenes where he performed bestial deeds on an array of plastic inflatables. This cynosure of spectator heed revealed hedgehogs and multicoloured shrews, pulling processional carriages under the yoke of fantastical homorphous creatures (bipedal figures that bore antlers or pointy things akin to mountain goats). All manner of inventive pictures were grotesquely distorted, conjuring up kaleidoscopic sequences of emotional and spiritual depravity, eating into and becoming ever more pressing upon the mindset of an audience agog. Tension grew, lewd ladies cried out in ecstasy, for stark was Cecil’s power. Gross manifestations emanating from CCG’s ingenious implement of lurid exposure formed a veneered pictorial mimicry of humanity, laced with vermin, smut, scatology; painting an eerie irreligious triptych, echoing mediæval exemplars of Judgment Day. Alternative cabaret disguised excavations into evils. Serving no teleological purpose, lionising deceit, and betrayal; highlighting people’s worst traits, Cecil triggered anxieties, disinterring a primordial adversarial fear of ‘others’. FOMO spread across vast ranging horizons. Thatcher’s atavism had won; employing rubrici branded: what’s in it for me? His contemporaries were no longer willing to curb sensory whims and fancies. En masse shunning personal responsibility, compromise and sobriety; wholeheartedly subscribing to brain-worms, sleight of hand, and cheap tricks that Cecil used to corner TGI Friday’s kippered meat market. Afternoon bled into evening; febrile scuffles broke out amongst rebarbative white niggers in the foyer. Aleister espied Piggy’s sudoriferous armpits milling amidst the best of them; late arrivals, as incompetent as they were brutal: an irruption of non-thinking easily divisible boot boys, disaccustomed to harmonious mingling at an after-office-hours soirée. A transitive section of stage-struck punters crowding the auditorium were, by contrast, smitten by Cecil’s spectacle to the point of sensualism. Aleister could feel a collective craving to edge closer to Cecil’s enthralling contraption. Cecil had turned them on big time. He’d spit roasted the lot of them by talking dirty. Now they were ready to bend over and retake it where the sun doesn’t shine. Aleister guessed that promises of requited lust were genuinely scarce fodder for most heavily taxed, hard-working citizens, and now, thanks to Cecil’s adept salesmanship, easy virtue had become a big issue of the upmost primary significance. The gloating horny figure of Curious Cecil Gruff (who jarringly reminded him of his absentee father) pandered to illicit desires, playing upon biblical guilt’s and weaknesses; beseeching volunteers to feast upon the pabulum of his wicked craft. Only a soupçon of sanity survived; it belonged to venerable Aleister, would-be guardian of an adamantine anus, thus not a man to die of ignorance. 

Proper leaders, heterodox ones who care about citizens, set the correct tone, they regulate an equitable agenda -called meritocracy- there’s no inheritance, and the right people are elevated as a direct result of their worth to society from a pool of stakeholders, not just to-the-manor-born usurpers. Direct democracies draw people together: promoting mutual respect, forbearance, and shared faith; not knobbing domesticated animals, or abusing feeble folk in the way Cecil encouraged. His ghastly vision was no better than some dreadful divorced, single, or separated shag-fest, where a winner-takes-all in a cold, friendless, windswept coliseum of malice, mistrust and paedophilia. Deciphering the nuclear consequences of undiluted iniquities free-flowing through this pantomime’s rudderless, ale-house intelligence, Aleister corroborated his heart for battle by swigging the dregs of his pint. Picking up Piggy’s abandoned shillelagh, Aleister tried to get at CCG ‘of the many gross improprieties’ but was hindered in his quest by profane powers. The fluctuating phalange of punters, seduced into chaotic tumult, prevented Aleister from marching unto war. An obsequious horde serried together in anticipation of Cecile’s grand slam finale: a human wave of pheromones, wafting sweat, semen, vaginal secretions, breast milk and urine; women bared their mammaries, whilst grown men chewed on leather belts and tapered cork butt-plugs. “Seekers of saliva hear me well, and duly obey my command! Bend your knees in supplication to erotic plasticity, shaped and finely tuned by the true might of passion” yelled Cecil during his rhapsodical rodomontade “…now hold hands and circle me, o relinquishers of the stoical void.”

Aleister wished to scream aloud in his eagerness to halt Cecil in his cloven tracks, yet was lost for words as an ominous shadow menacingly upstaged any notion of gaining attention. A teeny maelstrom of pastel hues appeared, pullulating into a racy nimbus over Cecil’s brightly painted, carnival style headdress, spraying out across the mosh pit like an expansive roman candle; showering mere mortals with star-spangled fairy cum. As the dust settled, an awesome three-dimensional monstrosity superimposed itself onto Cecil’s spot on the thrust stage, endowing momentary invisibility upon tonight’s barnstorming artiste: this gossamer Luciferian countenance, with an erect filamentous appendage sprouting from its brow, totally stole the show. “What does he do for an encore? Shag minors!” Fagan’s gravelly voice startled Aleister, conveying the impetus required to aim a well-deserved haymaker at Cecil, striking his target so hard that Piggy’s knotty walking stick snapped in twain. Before one could utter ‘hocus-pocus’, the garishly tinted bounder vanished in an acrid puff of smoke. Accusatively, a stranger demanded: “What the fuck are you doing, you nutter?” Bunches of bug-eyed Muppets stared daggers at him; they may have purchased council houses, but none had the Aristotle to confront Aleister mano a mano. In panic they pointed at him with large foam fingers. Poltroon bastards the lot of them, yet their consensus was remorseless. Aleister just couldn’t get a grip on what was occurring. He was so out of synch with the picture, it wasn’t funny. Was he the guilty party? Is that why spars blanked him? Fagan had seemed contrite, and other acquaintances had given him short-shrift. Someone could’ve warned him if he was edging off the rails & out-of-fashion. Now, who would visit him in clink- young Conservatives? Not a chance. Aleister could no longer handle this level of peer group rejection. At his feet lay CCG, at last bloody well mute; sprawled across the stage in fancy dress, shards of his technicolour Woolworth’s porch lantern scattered across the deck. A resident ship of fools was about to up anchor and mutiny, so he needed to scarper. He swivelled swiftly, nutted some character on the schnozzle, then was on his toes out into Leicester Square (the pungent stench of refuse contorted his expression); it was full of mad dogs with ticks, stretching muscles in his lower jaw as he roared back at them. He howled ripe obscenities, growling like a giant wolf from some Norse saga stuck in his head since the infants. His stature increased until all else appeared to shatter in his wake. As he raced through the green, hundreds of pigeons took flight in unison as if they were all tiny rockets; ICBMs, part of a first strike initiative aimed at destroying our planet. Blindly happy, in the depths of their ignorance, the population deserved mutually assured destruction: liars and cheats every last jack. Look! There’s the Devil. Where? There. How do you know? Listen my friend, the light from that bulb up there in the white asbestos Artex ceiling hit the Devil, and bounced off onto my retina; quantities of microscopic sensory things miraculously tingled in my mind. It was them telling my brain cells, no? What? You’re imagining things; you’re rather gonzo aren’t you? Am I bollox. 

Sprinting through Coventry Street and beyond into Haymarket, Aleister visualised that resistance was pure futility. A Route Master 12 fast approached, its number symbolising cosmic order; he braced himself to sacrifice the prospect of a virtuous life, to the mirage of a high-minded death. The omnibus hit him so hard it felt as if a fireball had exploded inside his hairless chest; he could hardly breathe. A massive bout of haemoptysis started to fill the airways of both lungs. Coughing, Aleister slowly drowned in his own blood. Energy dissipated from his being, his peripheral vision occluded; other senses seemed to operate autonomously, all of their own accord. As the world revolved around him, up above he noticed Fagan’s drunken face leering down. “Life ain’t fair Aleister, not for you or me leastways. Sadly, the likes of us see, across this big bad globe, we’re suffered: solely to be exploited. Even my mate Trestle-table the filth was fucked over. They dropped him like a hot potato when they discovered he was bent. Truth is- he was disposable see? His corruptible tendencies had gone undetected during routine security screenings, then, right on cue, the OB terminated his career: after twenty-nine frigging years! Oh well, every guttersnipe knows that manmade hierarchies are about princes and whipping boys, winners and losers, punishments or rewards. Still, you done good son. You realised we can’t let insolent twats like Cecil Gruff take liberties, and that he had it coming. I’d have done the same matey; only you beat me to it. Those yuppie wankers lapped it up like powdered pussies. As if Cecil was the greyhound’s undercarriage or some kind of fucking Sumerian deity. And the English working classes, this lost generation of uncivilised souls, socially engineered straight out of barbarism and direct into decadence, fought amongst them-selves as usual. Fuck ‘em. Still you got him; the means justify the ends OK. Now stay calm mate, I’ve brought a tasty reward; in recognition of your fortitude. Nothing styptic I’m afraid.” After chortling and wobbling a bit, Fagan gradually genuflected; holding tightly onto Aleister’s hand. With due care and attention, he produced a small wet pink object from his torn hip pocket. “Ere me now, I extracted Cecil’s sesquipedalian tongue. I’d have tampered with his greasy orifice had the opportunity knocked, but you know, been there done that.” 

This tribute, delivered in a final act of innocent albeit demented compassion, soothed Aleister; as death engulfed him, his last selfless wish was that his lifetime on magna mater’s terrestrial sphere, hadn’t been spent entirely in vain. And if a repository for his immaterial soul had indeed been preordained, he hoped that his crushed body would at least, as a rite of passage, be reincorporated into the cycle of life as sustenance for stray dogs, urban badgers, jackals, and foraging swine, if not fed to eagles, birds of the heavens or fishes in the deep blue sea. Regrettably, he feared his cadaver would be clinically dismembered. Selected organs would be legitimately employed by scientists involved in pathological research, others reaped purely for profit; sold abroad illegally, by un-Hippocratic medical practitioners trading corpus components. Boiled in water that’s been saturated with numerous herbs containing tannins, black-market shrunken scrotums thus preserved, are proudly worn as amulets by handmaidens of Hanbi, going about their murky duties. Deconsecrating screaming infants, innocent babes in arms, wrenched from impoverished families; torturing impuissant souls dredged from the substratum of an intercontinental social pyramid, to harvest adrenaline glands for adrenochrome, at the behest of an ancient and illuminated order of orgiastic priests. This is wisdom.

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 1

Psychoneuroses, Part 3

Manny’s extended family (a loud bunch of perfidious, po-faced, holier-than-thou, hypocritical wheeler-dealers) started as mozzle and brocha speculators who struck lucky. Establishing a London variety business during Soho’s vaudeville era, they grafted to nourish a lucrative customer base, and thereby curry favour with potential backers, to whom they pitched investment opportunities via a network of far-reaching, transterritorial transcultural channels of communication. Backed to the hilt, during World War Two they were able to boast, like the Windmill Theatre, ‘we never close’. Embroidered into the red-light districts’ bohemian tradition as a cool metonym for emancipation, as the swinging sixties dawned, the Klein’s (alongside competing cut-price facsimiles) were on hand to cash in. The K-mob became synonymous with navigating censorship and regulation, as parliament tacitly sanctioned Soho’s erotic cabaret boom: customers were obliged to pay fees, and join clubs as members an hour before admission. Thereafter, mischievous neo-Rabelaisian entertainment was permitted under law. By enthusiastically promoting liberation, lies and ersatz rebellion from the tight closets of inhibition, pimping-up revue bars and befriending the repressed, Manny’s family had won renown and favour. Alack, plebeian popularity doesn’t pay utility bills; hence, the bottom line means being admired ain’t worth bupkis. Not ones to rest on their laurels, the Klein’s remained sharp enough to excise flagging old comrades: dropping en route the functional mantle they’d worn as pansexual rights activists. Conversely, having cornered London’s hardcore porn cinema market, freedoms now required paying for; every customer was appreciated, no matter how rancorous. Or, as pontificated by Manny to Aleister (on his final relapse, just a few nights prior to his sacramental inauguration at West End Great Synagogue), over last-order beers in the French House: ‘’…you see collectively, we understand the technicalities of this world intimately. No one else has the beginnings of a clue. Without shame, we pretentiously relish explaining our expertly authorised view of what’s unfolding, as designed by our powerful clients; on whose behalf we issue whiny rejections whenever any dissenting voice speaks out. It’s all smoke and mirrors, obvs. History’s been knockabout fun up until now. If the truth be known, we’re deployed as an integral module, part of our masters’ ultimate authority toolkit, arranged to control public narratives, perpetuate obedience; keeping society suppressed by dint of cultural supervision.’’ Once again, Aleister had been well over the eight, so the lion’s share of Manny’s self-promotional spiel went in one ear, and out the other. Currently coming down around high noon (as per his custom on Freya’s day), in preparation for a critical night out ahead, Aleister was practically sat upright on the wagon. Thusly, temporarily, conflicted clouds cleared; turbid illusion cleaved, and momentarily, lucidity was suffered to intromit with his feelings.

“Manny! I ain’t seen you for ages you old bender, how’s it hanging?”

“Chambré to tepid, mon ami.”

“Tell me about it. I thought we were forecast to be basking under a hot sun regular now the ozone’s been depleted.”

“Don’t even go there, the climate’s one thing about this city which will never change.”

“True. What’s happening?”

“Man, I’m busy boyo. I’ve acquired all of Uncle Moses’ clip joints, peep shows, pop up massage parlours, along with his Swollen Gash™ topless kink kiosks; and I’m developing an avant-garde nightspot. We’re naming it ‘A Symphony of Expensive Contradictions.’ It’ll be the nuts.’’

“Whoa! That’s some itinerary.’’

“Well its business feller, not casual soul-laundering. However, there are perquisites; for one, it keeps me engaged in absorbing hobbies: know what I mean? How about you rude boy: still riding psychotherapy hobbyhorses, or solving trolley problems?”

‘’I weigh a person’s worth not by financial assets, but in their quotient of individuality, if that’s what you ridicule. But no, my intermittent disposable income doesn’t afford ongoing clinical indulgences, so I’m stuck with the difficulty of destiny over the ease of narrative. Left to independently question and challenge, the un-intellectual human condition homo-sapiens blindly follow, sans patronage.’’

‘’Splendide mendax on a shoestring; blimey, that’s more of a rivka, than a brifka. Stand on me Ally Bally; it takes a real trouper to admit that they’re badly cast in a revocable tragedy. I warned you already. There’s no future in poverty; crying over unremittingly bleak situations, without scope for cognitive entertainments.’’

‘’There’s a marathon of drudgery involved in signing-on for a pittance; however I keep faith in Raimundo Pato, theatrical agent extraordinaire.’’

‘’Charing Cross Ray’s looking after you, is he? Well, good luck with that schnip! What are you doing in between working days?’’

“Laxing dude: spending too much hard-earned money.”

“Splendid stuff, we must hook up- your shout of course.”

Immanuel K, with his costermongers’ God complex, was no more than a wide boy: too reliant on the dark arts of vice, hype and spin to foster credibility; Aleister had no intention of flyting with him, so he allowed Manny’s barbed comments to slide. They’d grown apart to loathe one another, but in the great scheme of things, this upshot was a bagatelle. Both chaps smiled courteously. Their enforced separation had plainly contributed to stifle a candid conversation. Bored, Manny’s morose minders shuffled; distrait, staring vaguely at some passing object. Halted, as if frozen; yet still, life’s frenzied momentum raced through muscular, bondage clobber-clad bodies: causing each tit weight to jangle nervously, like flies in a spider’s web. “Totally: it’ll be a mercy mission, won’t it? You’re working too hard.”

“Better to live as a blazing meteor, than die old gracefully.” Manny replied, and with a smirk added ‘’It’s a distraction, innit? The divine, as manifested within the universe, is my guiding light.’’

“But mate, apart from cavorting with toy-boys, to what purpose? Or don’t you care?’’

“I’m occupying my atoms so intensely; they’ll refuse to leave me. Life’s one big party dude, and that’s purpose enough for me.”

“Yeah, right cock, but like, what’s the end product?”

Through bored amber eyes; distrustful, assessing, imperious, Immanuel fixed a vulturine gaze on his dishevelled interlocutor. “Does God’s vengeance end? I think not brother. Historical consciousness keeps mutating: suck it up. Relinquish your neurotic orientation to sew loose hems; trust me. Anyway, let’s groove on, because it’s time to move on.”

‘’Wicked, I’ve got places to go, people to meet; sayonara Special K.’’

What’s that bustling atom malarkey all about? The impulse of an elementally active person to act is so strong, that it stultifies them from acquiring knowledge for the sake of apprehension. Just how did Manny Klein intend to blaze brightly in his dotage? And whatever happened to grace, friendship, honour, and serenity? Aleister was confused. Having acted intuitively all his life, he now found it nigh on impossible to think straight; psychological experiences steadily degenerated, visceral doubts multiplied. Much of this deterioration was a result of his disastrous addiction to adulterated angel dust. Assuming Aleister had once cherished continuity and cohesion, his life was now, in contrast, an ungovernable slide show of no fixed time span. Maddeningly, Aleister couldn’t fathom who was operating the projector, or where to find an emergency exit; some heartless tummler was evidently savouring a jape at his expense, and whomsoever it was, must pay. At the comedy club Aleister and Piggy (his anosmic dealer), snorted lines chopped up in the bog; sharing a splash of toilet humour and doing the Spanish fly deal, before Pigman was called out to strut his stuff. Wired, Aleister parked up at the bar where he met Fagan, langered on Nelson Eddy’s earned from his morning’s collar (running around Seven Dials for film production companies). The thin, delicate-looking figure with close-cropped hair that had stood in the dock a year before was a changed man: quietly confident, having bulked up in the prison gym. Mickey wore his unwashed hair in a ponytail, tied back with a blue ribbon; sporting stone-washed 501s, and a baggy white t-shirt bearing the slogan Frankie Says Relax in big black letters. On stage Piggy was first up (plying his Lorcán the Lovable Leprechaun shtick), but died horribly. Even Fagan heckled; stitching his mate up by intermittently screaming ‘Cobblers!’ By contrast, Aleister continued to feel awkward in the heaving venue; it burdened him with its fuggy claustrophobia, making him feel unusually aggressive. Worse still, the next act waiting in the wings was some gauche twerp named Curious Cecil Gruff; a wretchedly conceited squirt, artfully half concealing what appeared to be some type of magic lantern. The coy way in which Cecil postured bothered Aleister no end. Who did he think he was? Jack the fucking biscuit? These ultra-negative first impressions combined into a kind of supranatural sensorium, retained, or rather translated by a wounded hunter-gatherer within, multigenerational memories, and random imagination. Sensing his spars discomfort, Piggy ambled across, hoping to rub balsam over Aleister’s storm-tossed forehead. Piggy respected Aleister’s honest independence, but all the paranoid instability worried and depressed him. “Whatcha think: the big time, or late night Channel Five material?”

“Magic Pigsty, absurdly optimistic as always buddy; don’t give up your day job. How about this dodgy Cecil chap- you know him?”

“No; nor does anyone else. I bumped into him in the green room earlier. Curiously, he confessed to being a failed conceptual artist, but gruffly stressed he’d learned his lessons, and nowadays stands before us as the self-proclaimed king of multivalent comedy.”

“FFS Pigster, Equity shouldn’t hand out union cards to the likes of Cecil. His sorts tout angular collisions, rough ragged edges, raising voices of wrack and ruin. Amoral disorder oughtn’t to be assimilated into the federation of performing arts. Cecil’s idea of merrymaking is a monstrous anomaly, and best omitted. Look, I know this sounds Radio Rental, but I’ve witnessed Cecil’s repertory of treachery erenow, in my previous Mesopotamian existence; around the time a great famine gripped people in Babylonia, and settlers from Uruk conspired with Šamaš-šuma-ukin to plot evil.”

‘’Have a word.’’ Enough! Piggy’s clients were prone to puerile enunciations, so he remained silent, sipping maraschino via ruby red lips; just about every situation is sanable. As far as Pigsty was concerned, each chap’s concept of sub-consciousness was an extraordinary piece of storytelling, trying to present ways in which structural systems have explanatory force- simultaneously unknown, yet effectively present. The key question remained: what the dickens did Cecil represent to Aleister? Piggy gave him a gentle squeeze on his inside leg, and smiled. Piggy was a flirt, a proper card; a doughty lemon squeezer. Aleister was glad of Piggy’s playful company; it steadied him. Equanimity calmed Aleister, fending off eternal verities tampering with his mneme; carefully turning around to wholly admire Piggy’s glabrous countenance, possessed of soigné parity to Parian marble, he responded: “Your round innit geez?”

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 4

Psychoneuroses, Part 2

After old Mrs Fagan died, her singleton son grew increasingly obsessed by the notion of a wholly exposed, crudely infibulated woman as head of state; it agitated and aroused him in equal measure. What otiose limp-wristed protection was afforded Her Majesty, by the tightly-wrapped Prince Regent? Fagan ceremoniously placed QE2 on the same questionable pedestal as his own mother; a trophy for vile men, offering little or no emotional support to their booty. Mickey envisaged Elizabeth Regina mounted posteriorly, and forcefully fist-fingered, before being brutally sausaged Greek style; crass libidinous fantasies deranged remaining particles of sense, rendering him unsure whether to fuck or fight his Glücksburgian adversary. Forever a romantic, when push came to shove, inspired by Ken Russell’s audacious Women in Love, Fagan settled on stripping-off for a tipsy bout of Japanese-style wrestling amid the firelight of the Duke of Dunedin’s bedchamber. National press reports stated that Fagan was gallantly tackled by dapper footman Phil McCavity (since retired), a queer chap who was oddly reticent concerning his personal involvement in the drama. London Lighthouse carers insist that McCavity wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Fagan would though: hissing loudly, a noble savage; lightly polished by interchanging moody goods on behalf of antiquarian operations down Camden Passage market, whose traders were enamoured by the cut of his jib. It was a ragtag and bobtail cash-in-hand confederation, but he’d been earning a few quid at the time, so it was right mauve him rocking the sloop, what with three million unemployed. Directly preceding his iconic faux pas Fagan had inadvertently violated an Islington Council byelaw. Tipped-off, Housing Association policy and procedure staff complained about his grunting pet (it transgressed his tenancy agreement); Fagan swore blind he didn’t harbour one, although a particularly cynical girl-next-door insisted she investigate. Behold! No fish or fowl, while Mickey, without a trace of embarrassment, boasted that the theriomorphic-like din resulted from his beasting a string of high-maintenance erotopathic lovers. Not one to be duped, the nosey neighbour insisted she put his explanation to task; so doggy-style, Mickey howled like mad, banging her so hard he got a ruddy nosebleed (earning himself the sobriquet Rudolph). Still unsatisfied, the dopey tart opted to sue him for noise pollution via the Borough Council’s pro-feminist local authorities. 

“Bloody Hell, ma’am, what’s he doing ‘ere?” A shrill alarm was sent ringing around the City of Westminster by HRM’s flummoxed chambermaids, given the screaming abdabs, having stumbled over Mickey, supposedly supping from a carafe of half-inched Californian riesling. How exciting! Let’s face it; Fagan was in no fit state to endure the resulting ordeal. That very morning he’d been involved in a heart-rending family squabble over the ownership of a second-hand cut-and-shut motor, aspirated a leaded lungful of mouth-siphoned four-star petrol, and for reasons best known to his-self, was masquerading as Rudolf Hess. No sober assessment of his condition would have adjudged him capable of scaling spiky railings, climbing burglar-proof drainpipes, or least of all, leaping from roof-to-roof like an orang-utan. Tell me, just how conveniently did Fagan elude Buck House’s 24/7 security? And what precisely defined his shady, sadomasochistic relationship with wrinkly Prince Philip? Whose bruised sphincter, rumour had it, was treated by that venal, royally benighted arse specialist Dr. David Croft: famed as an entrepreneurial quack pioneering the high-specification production of platinum ring-holes, for celebrity coke addicts. In a futuristic John DeLorean world of powdered cocaine-cum-cosmetics, malleable monogrammed DDC rectal accessories were the last word in reassurance, for syringe users, aiming to keep bugles clean, and septa intact. Word-on-the-street was, that the grand old iron Duke had been corn-holed and felched, until his puce tuchus resembled the sort of swollen Jack and Danny seen hanging agape behind a West African baboon during Guinea-Bissau’s rainy season. Of course, it was a cover up; although Fagan confessed to several prison psychiatrists, that he’d toasted better genitals. So, whisper from that whatever tenuous conclusions you fancy. The Old Bailey certainly did. 

“You are not ‘ere to see ze peeping show I ‘ope?” Brigitte smiled ear to ear as her sultry French accent wafted back into his mind; triggering an amatory frisson that stirred his loins. Momentarily intimidated, he rose to leave without tipping; laughing off her dolorous suspicions that he was tuned into videos featuring adult content, and the rest (obscene publications, showcasing teenage call girls absconded from foster care- running away from Oldham social services). On the hoof, Aleister nonchalantly cased the joint -eye eye- wandering past replica nude statues (including Auguste Rodin’s Le Baiser), and a grandiose art nouveau mirror. He cast a bitchy moue at his faltering baroque reflection- begging the question: did he resemble an unbalanced pervert? If so, he’d best buy a pick-me-up. Aleister daren’t appear unhinged or worse (creepy) in Heaven- his preferred destination. There geezers dress to impress, by camping themselves up a class; competition is bristly stiff inside that grand celestial residence, where a kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt. Yuk! 

Opportunely Piggy, now his dealer, was due live on stage at the Divine Comedy Store’s Friday matinee; he was odds-on to hold a few banging party tricks up his ropey sleeve to loosen Brigitte’s resolve. K-I-D, mum’s the word. Aleister decided to procure something special to slip into mademoiselle’s café latte, in the course of a future assignation. Shame he needed to date rape her, as he didn’t consider himself a misogynist. Aleister liked ladies well enough; not the wicked ones who found him wanting, but he balked at his latent notions of punishing, hurting, or damaging them. However, he failed to see women as equals, soul sisters, or trustworthy friends. Through his grimy doors of perception, the second sex represented objects of desire; dolly birds, some of whom he’d been able to train up & domineer for while. Brigitte possessed several serviceable aspects sweet enough to buoy his horribly warped tri-sexual mind. If only she could button her quivering lip, and turn an amenably blind eye to his eccentric affairs of the flesh; he may even propose to her: anything to leave a lump in her throat. Strolling along Gerrard Street he chewed a chunk of Peking duck, formally deciding that he could never endure monogamy on account of his innate needs, to wit: bimbo’s, priapic saunas, peppercorn rent boys, Qabalistic weekends, ritualistic blood drinking sessions etcetera; hobbies of a type so essential for a relaxed middle age. But young Brigitte, despite her femme fatale façade, was, in Aleister’s estimation, well-nigh prim and proper. Add assertive female to practicing Roman Catholic, teetotal or, (God forbid) virginal, and who needs it? He wanted desperately to love and be worshipfully adored in return; the problem was, where to start? Aleister reckoned the glorious day was fast approaching when he would subscribe to a competitively priced Filipina marriage agency; a flourishing Oriental avenue of commercial intimacy: open to post-prime Occidental bachelors, widowers, and/or divorcées. Perhaps it was one instance of a missed opportunity, where those innumerable, inscrutable Chinese have erred? Granted, tiddlywinks constitute rising stars within our rough tough adaptable species: fitted to survive amongst strangers as segregated immigrants, or, thanks to Beijing’s mushrooming economic leverage, to lead a global mercantile system; but in eugenic terms, they’re junk people. Spawned from a passé imperial culture, informed by screeds of dynastic court archives; traditionally square looking, and businesslike. Not at all to Aleister’s flighty, eclectic taste; the source of which remained a mystery. 

Aleister supposed that his sartorial bent toward dépêche mode was rooted in the days of Pearly Spencer, and tragic second-order observations founded while orbiting creation on his very own lonely planet. During Aleister’s junior year three, Pearly earmarked his old lady on one of her excursions to Brent Cross shopping centre. A haunted, milky-white escapee from Northern Ireland’s sectarian troubles, Pearly was employed as a liveried bouncer in Mothercare; incendiary eye-candy with access to the retail facility’s inner sanctum. Giggling, they’d eagerly disappear together through a doorway signposted ‘staff only’, to fornicate behind a clutch of industrial wheelie bins (positioned in a designated waste storage area, along a poorly lit service corridor). Abandoned, snivelling wee Aleister was left traipsing around the well-stocked mall. Unsupervised, pressing against laminated glass exteriors fronting interchangeable shops; mixed-brand department stores, fashionable clothing boutiques, electrical retailers, on-trend accessory vendors, or luxury goods emporiums hosting award-winning Provençal face cream concessions: whichever. Aleister stared inside like a piqued Martian. Exhilarated by the non-stop abundant varieties of FMCG, but deflated by consumerisms inconsequentiality, Aleister grew up to conceptualise existence as a shaggy-dog story. Defiantly, he recollected window-shopping as a fond childhood memory, his mother’s carnality not so much; or her wuthering post-coital gawp from hooded eyes that neither knew, nor cared, about the developmental damage being done. In time, trips to Hendon’s materialistic funfair petered out; perpetually liquored up, Pearly lost his clip-on neck tie, his job, and his studio flat on Childs Hill. Ultimately, Aleister’s mother’s girlish infatuation withered as Pearly metamorphosed, into an impotent homeless mendicant, lumbered with untreatable cirrhosis; sleeping with rats in shop entrances down Kilburn High Road.

Looking up, Aleister was struck by dyspepsia, and another blast from the past. Across the pedestrianisation stood Immanuel Klein, a player who purported to abhor all things ci-devant. He hadn’t changed: a buzz fed through the grapevine asserted that he was still a cunt. Aleister and Manny first met as high school boys selling imported designer schmutter across two local trading Lanes (Leather and Petticoat), working for Lillian Skry & Ronnie ‘The Knocker’ Zucker, whose Uncle Joe Arzi’s influence reigned supreme over Camden’s, and Tower Hamlets’ licensing systems; controlling market inspectors, and subletting stalls. Manny fell in love with couture stock, and in due course became a right fashion victim; philosophising on the topic with all the brio of an art-house radical (a radical wanker naturally). During his late teens he’d formed Futurist Punx, a heavy rocking four-piece musical combo that extolled beauty in strife. They jumped into bed with louring Brigadier Robert d’Alby, a scary ex-forces cove turned small-time impresario for fledgling voices panegyrising insubordination. A genuine brute, the cigar-smoking brigadier was pretty mixed up. Possessed of archetypal officer baggage, viz., horse-haired duelling scars, pent-up aggression, institutionalised homophobia; mindless desires to assault anyone, or anything deemed officially dishonourable, on behalf of manly ideals. Manny insisted the end justified macho means, opining that d’Alby’s intriguing personality compelled exertion. A complex egg: BRd seemed to seek a noble form into which he could pour his volcanic energy. An accomplished cubist; he and his easels simply disappeared one day, never to return. Without the insensate brigadier at the tiller, Manny’s ensemble petered out. Aleister recollected a few trite lines from their one and only 7” single entitled Post-minimalist Self-Portrait: “We shall sing of the thrill of danger/Flying fist-fuck up the arse/Courage, movement, hard rebellion/Sniffing glue, in Regent’s Park.” It was pompous tosh really. Thank you! 

The Brig booked Futurist Punx on a tragic tour of shite gigs, at workman’s clubs spanning the London Boroughs of Camden, Westminster, and Brent; awkwardly on the bill alongside traditional Irish ballads: Dubliner’s tribute bands for the most part. Manny boasted that he and his conjoint collaborateurs were waking punters from feverish hypersomnia; he glorified cruelty, thuggery, seven drunken nights, and wild injustice, but shat himself and ran for his life after being glassed while exiting the ladies lavatories in Cricklewood’s Production Village. After that moment of self-discovery Manny gave up on being a front man, and segued back into the supporting cast of his family’s extensive business interests. As part of a tribal initiation ceremony, Manny solemnly swore not to fraternise with former associates hailing from families or enterprises unrelated and/or unaffiliated to the Klein’s expanding empire for a complete lunar year. Manny kept his promise for the most part, only lapsing in a couple of lunations; first up, tripping on brown blotters during a summer’s twilight, over a Hampstead Heath night-swimming weekend. Under the influence, Manny confessed to Aleister that perceiving himself as an expendable, landless, fungible itinerant, in a suicidal stratified society feverishly cannibalising greed, fear, and malignant narcissism, had brought him to his senses. He accepted he couldn’t survive alone in Cuntish Town: that listless dive, peopled by dawdling vagabonds. Aspirational London’s galaxy of burnt-out wannabees, where genuine pretending passes as an adequate mode of existence, and lowbrow participants are deceptively orchestrated on behalf of ruling élites (for the sorry sake of fading public-minded perceptions) by arch-facilitators, activating media-managed biases to foment prejudicial egodystonic sensitivities. Recounting that he’d pursued a safety-in-numbers logic, and joined a mercenary gang; strategically allying himself through his bloodline to Albion’s Premier Grand Masonic Lodge: an institution that aggregated supernumerary groups of abominable opinion formers. As a party to which, his tribe pretended under warrant, to present pragmatic balanced solutions to travails faced by ordinary folk tholing their humdrum lives. Adding in peroration, that he’d lost all his honest, salt-of-the-earth mates; but out of necessity, he’d changed. Manny petitioned for righteous understanding, and forgiveness; appeals that were rejected by Aleister, who couldn’t, and wouldn’t confer his imprimatur. Nowadays, made-man Manny weltered amidst an orgy of sensual gratification, surrounded by heavies togged up in black leather, rubber, and shiny PVC. They were his disciples; hook, line, and sinker. Body harnesses, panic snaps, and meat tenderisers eradicated any notion of revolt. Their overseer, whom Manny jocularly dubbed Jack the Rimmer, a hefty mouth-breathing automaton, was responsive to his masters needs alone. Kept firmly in check by a remote-controlled erection trainer, and subdued by double-bar nipple clips, Jack’s enjoinders were slurred due to a fetish for adjustable velvet tongue gags, but he dealt severely with backchat or obstinacy within the ranks: lashing out with his customised sauna whip, that, along with a latex executioner’s mask, constituted his vestments of office, and tools of domination.

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 3

Psychoneuroses, Part 1

Think of an occasion when you personally had to deal with either a challenging situation or a difficult person. What was the main concern, how did you tackle it and what were the consequences?

“While supervising twin rescue badger cubs playing outside our cosy Vale of Health home, I noticed a silly argument boiling over between nine or ten adolescent lads nearby. Two pretty refugees, Berber boys well known to us, were being bullied. My initial concern was that an unruly brawl might endanger my wards. Shuttling back and forth in cerebration between social totality and the irreducible complexity of individual needs, I prayed for a peaceful resolution, but a sudden escalation in aggression resulted in a nasty free for all. I gamely intervened, in an effort to assist the nicer foreign tykes- shouting aloud that they were our friends, and that acts of violence did no one any credit. At this point a craft blade was produced, and forcefully stabbed into my thyroid; I lost consciousness. It transpired that the big ugly cockney chaps had then carried me shoulder high at a canter, before gleefully throwing me through my own kitchen window. Consequently, I underwent five full emergency blood transfusions in order to live with disabilities, for the next three years in therapy; having suffered traumatic brain injury, I gradually relearned to think, speak, move, toilet unassisted- eventually conquering stressors that darkened my life with mental disorder: causing a deep sense of distress, and an abject deficit in functioning. I’ve since been blessed with a tidy legacy and almighty faith, learned to forgive, and am a happy burgher of Hampstead once more. Peace out.”

Slouched beneath yon immense, lonely Ash tree, grooving to Yiddish related acidic house, he greedily interfered with a lap-dancing Norn. Pungent little sort it was: halitosis, thick Irish accent, decked out in crotch-less knick-knocks, peephole bra, and dishing out plenty of extreme close-up. Bending over backwards it was, chomping his knob raw, yet falling asleep prior to eruption. She couldn’t even be arsed to spit out a prophecy. What a tease. In revenge, wearing a raincoat on his pecker, he shunted her up her dirty fibrous butt like a jackhammer. Oh, it was gripping all right; just a pity an amalgam of dour fate and high anxiety decreed Aleister never would get to blow his Old English. Up jumped a troll from under a humongous fungus, soliloquising ten-to-the-dozen; she clocked Aleister and threw a wobbler. “It’s all over son, you’ve blown it, and now it’s rustication time.” 

Instanter, he realised he was alit, retrograde; having been tossed onto the serrated horns of a dilemma, before plummeting from the upper levels of a multi-storeyed identity crisis. Gasping for air in front of London Underground’s bleak LIFT OUT OF SERVICE sign, Aleister feared losing his will to live within an admonitory pit of despair at Goodge Street tube-station. He was all in a quandary when some stroppy mulatto bitch, wearing a navy-blue TfL staff uniform, exhaling rank foetid breath and reeking of BO, goose-stepped towards him along this stop’s lacklustre southbound platform. “Can I see your ticket?” At this juncture her abrupt question made as much sense as psychedelic yodelling, non-alcoholic whiskey, decaffeinated coffee, woolly Liberals, or Britain’s unelected yet constitutional monarchy; as fathomable as chicks with dicks, love under will, fealty to a tyrannical demesne, Roberto Calvi’s venerdì nero, Molly Sugden’s grotesque shaven pussy- whatever. So Aleister, as fey as you like, answered in colloquial Akkadian, and with a self-measured dignity, produced the necessary if sullied travel credentials. Her hostility flamed undiminished as she callously warned him to ‘mind the gap’. Still, now wasn’t the time to go for the jugular; this piece of washed-out white trash could wait. Flashing harsh promiscuous stares, out of rheumy jaundiced eyes, the misshapen famulua crawled back silently to her dark station master. 

Stone me, another bloody trou-de-loup! Mortal peril was too close for comfort; somewhere along life’s impermanent way he’d taken a wrong turn. Festooned by beads of oily sweat, Aleister ascended a one hundred and thirty-nine step staircase to egress; stood outside the building’s oxblood red faïence blocks, palpitating, and timorously suffering all manner of oesophageal reflux, he rolled a fat fag -liquorice paper- trying to gauge the extent of this most up-to-the-minute mental lapse. Still tripping, he clocked a CCTV system overhead and so, in a public display of proleptic irony, pretended to be in complete control of internal impulses and external traumas. Meandering awhile, muttering scurrilously, before heading off down Berners Street; targeting those mawkishly bathetic Ancienne Forge tearooms on Berwick Street. Paul Raymond’s mock Vichy venue’s architectural splendour provided a makeshift video recording studio; its art deco interior offered scant pain relief from an excruciatingly naff fare of trademarked light entertainment spotlighting burlesque French missionaries clumsily shriving, whilst pursuing comic strip crusades against adult themed revues that the Grand Order of Water Rats officially pooh-poohed as misogynistic pornography. A clientèle chic of playboy property developers were treated to a caricaturish cast, bursting at their nylon seams with apotropaic mumbo jumbo, as they brokered a mesmerising repertoire of life insurance options (bon marché as far as Aleister could tell), plus slapstick servings of featherweight double entendres across disposable platters. A troupe of superficially wanton, but distinctly naïve mini-skirted waitresses, homogeneously sported black patent stilettos, tantalizing Hi-Vis stocking tops, and squeezed sun-ripened honeydew melons into sheer, plunge-cut white silk blouses; all in their early 20s, these heartbreakers passionately vied for Equity cards by advertising a synthetic, ‘take-me-from-behind’ coquetry. Bien sûr, for the sake of flickering proprieties, they also served luxurious leaf teas in fine bone china mugs. “Un tasse de bohea s’il vous plait Mam’zelle.”

Furtively checking his bins, Aleister felt relieved to grope a plenitude of coins of the realm, a travel-card for zones 1-2, three well-worn gummy ribbed condoms, a small cuneiform clay tablet, plus friable complimentary early-door midweek tickets into Madame JoJo’s; from whence hallucinogenic drugs and maladaptive daydreaming had instigated an impromptu mission to Yggdrasil (a right schlep on the Northern line). Occult Hindi messages garbled from the driver’s cab terminated his zero-hour tube journey in Mornington Crescent; bewitched, he’s popped out for an eyelash, but spent an unheralded Thursday night frottaging with a swarthy trog from County Kilburn. Sweet Jesus! He’d monster snogged mad Paddy’s emphysemic missus, two-bob Aoife, numerous times. Hot ruddied tongues inside rasping mouths, smooching and slavering; culminating in ultra-smelly staccato sex with both their zippers closed. He hadn’t climaxed mind, so he’d probably be okay. Psych! He lit a joint; even as a resting actor he figured it was outrageous, juxtaposing sensuously alluring gusset with Christianity. Bearing his order, a leggy, pussy-pelmetted factotum enquired after the state of his soul: inferno, purgatory, or paradise? You’re having a laugh! Ogling the ample cleavage on display caught his attention; her waitresses’ nametag read Brigitte. Oh là là. Was she a Bertie? Doubt it. Dear Brigitte, give us a wank. He blushed, picked up the linen draper and hid. It was all kicking-off that summer of 1983: in the wake of massive public spending cuts, British Airways helicopters plunged into the Celtic Sea, temperatures’ soared, and the Old Queen’s Guard wilted under bearskins. And still, it wasn’t nearly as perfervid as the previous one when The Battle of Goose Green, and racially aggravated consumer riots, set the scene for a hair-raising intrusion into monarchical mystique. Enter Mickey Fagan, Aleister’s old school mate; since transmogrified, a tad unexpectedly, from sardonic gamin into a star struck palace prowler. Aleister was loath to jump to conclusions, yet recursively suspect to his circumspect reasoning was that, national notoriety notwithstanding, Fagan’s alleged torch crimes and ostensible double trespass carried no legitimate conviction. Despite fractals of quasi-journalistic investigation no one appeared able, or willing, to corroborate any intelligible brass tacks. Each pejorative exposition differed in crucial details from its manufactured predecessor; resulting in fabulation, miscarriage of justice, and a palpable economy with the truth. Natheless, Fagan, the stock-in-trade madman, had exited stage left; to be housed sarcastically at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

Aleister himself acquired insights into shenanigans behind the story, months before its cognate scandal belched, having sampled the fellowship of Fagan and a gang of the saga’s key players on a night out celebrating absolving conclusions reached in Lord Cyprian’s report (formulated to close the book on a Security Commission inquiry). It was a jolly on expenses, courtesy of some big knob from Royal Protection codenamed Trestle-table; a group commander who could afford to support sordid and degraded company. Amusingly the copper’s favourite bed-hopper tagged along, a hustler called Roach, who tittered nervously and kept holding hands with his philanthropic squeeze; alluding to the senior officer as ‘my Vicky Order nut gone commando.’ This subversive posse, all lovely boys together, cruised (with some random wandervögel from the Canaries for good measure) from that well-appointed political nexus of Highbury Fields to rip it up, binge drinking around London N1. Aleister’s remembrance was frayed (same world, different planet). What was certain was he’d gotten shickered, and grown inexorably attracted to the witty Spaniard. By the time they alighted at The Famous Cock Tavern, Aleister had lost it completely; quizzing the young caballero in an ill-defined monologue that over-indexed Norwich City Football Club. Amid a dense cloud of King size cigarette smoke and acute embarrassment, with the help of pictures mapped onto scraps of paper, it was comprehensively pointed out that he’d sorely misunderstood the Guanche guy’s allegiances; Pedro wasn’t the least bit interested in association football. Neither was Aleister. He went for a leak, recovering his composure before returning to the fray, which was heady fare by anyone’s standards: commentaries on political stasis, corruption, and dire warnings that Britain’s population would soon be consigned unto a neo-dark age; an upcoming epoch heralded by societal crises (a series of vicious events, which Trestle-table delighted in referring to as Doctor Marten’s apocalypse). By this juncture Aleister had heard enough seditious gossip to develop an unhealthy appetite for complots, chiefly state-endorsed crimes against the proletariat. Despite that, on account of his unrequited love affair with loss and sorrow, he felt vulnerably ineffectual. Daring to fight the powers that be was unimaginable. Even in dreams he couldn’t escape an aching disappointment of coexisting with negative expectations; self-critically, he’d grown aware that he was the sort of frenetic, psychometrically-tested, unfit-for-purpose loser, who’d nause up a civil protest big style. 

By way of contrast, Fagan, throughout his wasted youth (best sympathetically understood in the context of psychological praxis), harboured a passion for zestful revolutionaries come urban guerrilla types; especially those prepared to go the full nine anarchic yards. He was fascinated by social inequity, royal prerogative, and class war, positing (after sedulous consideration): who the flipping hell wouldn’t rebel? Unmistakably, Aleister had experienced little enough welfare from trickle-down economics, his neighbourhood, or his estranged parents; two galling wage slaves, base, little-or-no hopers, scunnered by a lifetime’s penury. During reception year two, on the eve of his primary school sports day, his depraved bearded father (damnatio memoriae) buggered off, and whilst mother dearest kept social workers at bay, there was precious little time left in between her two cleaning jobs and recurrent affaires de coeur, for mother-son levity. Unsurprisingly, he’d never felt loved or wanted; more like some dusty ornament- a token curio from an ephemeral union. Aleister could only aspire to the warm devotion extant between Fagan, and his diminutive twinset mater. Their close-knit, cradle-to-grave relationship wasn’t flagrantly unconventional, yet Aleister sensed an intense, abnormal, selcouth aura: a kind of primitive joy. Aleister and Fagan’s mutual, ginger Piggy O’Brien (panel beater by profession, farceur by vocation), the grinning, stertorous, no-nonsense pragmatist of their thirty-something, Anglo-Hibernian Clan of Three, curtly trashed such unguarded speculation as ‘utter bollox’; counselling Aleister to keep shtum, or face extreme consequences. Quick with his fists, violent and territorial, Fagan smack-battered each of his pink step-dads purple. Eschewing happy family idealism, Piggy viewed Fagan’s domestic straighteners as expressions of a natural will to power. As far as Piggy was concerned, a humble council estate heritage wasn’t wealthy enough for disposable airy-fairy fancies; although O’Brien’s bog-hopper parents did stick with the sanctity of marriage, if only to celebrate a silver jubilee. Theirs was an elegantly understated party, gay beyond belief: Joe Loss and His Orchestra played over the gramophone, with cocktails and vol-au-vents served upon crepuscular rays of midsummer sunlight to underwhelmed public bar acquaintances, and a few pasty faces from their 1930s terrace. Pigsty’s nonchalance was typical of someone whom had always enjoyed the love and commitment of an adhesive family; he simply took it for granted. Aleister cried a river, Fagan danced a well rehearsed tango with his old lady, and gin slings washed the shores of dawn.

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 2

I, the Hammer

“What kind of sick bastard would run over a retired police dog?” I stared at the trail of blood the golden retriever had left on the pavement as he’d tried to crawl to sidewalk.

“I know you and Duke were close,” Captain Rex Barkless said.

“He saved my life in Nam. Lost his leg jumping out of the Huey I was flying to deflect a surface-to-air missile. I can understand killing a cat because cats suck. But a dog?”

“You know, most cat owners don’t even like guns.” Barkless touched the Glock on his hip.

“Not even, Betsy?” I removed the .45 from my shoulder holster. “I’m going to find who killed Duke and put a few dozen slugs in his testicles.”

“Not if I get him first, Mallet.”

“I don’t have to follow the rules that coppers do. Besides, I’ll save the taxpayer the cost of a jury trial.”

“How much you want to bet I’ll get him first?”

“Steak dinner?”

“You’re on.” Barkless walked to the squad car.

***

“Sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Barkless said to Duke’s bereaved dog mom.

“He was a good boy. Would you like a cup of herbal tea?” Hortense Hamentaschen struggled to rise from the floral-upholstered chair with doilies on the arm rests. She was in her late seventies with bones thin as number-two pencils. Hortense limped to the kitchen. After banging pots, she returned with a teapot and cups. “Would you like milk?”

“I take mine straight, just like my women.” I drained the cup of boiling chamomile in one gulp. 

“Did anyone want to hurt Duke?” Barkless tried to hide his frown as he sipped the herbal tea.   

“Oh.” Hortense held in index finger to her chin. “I can’t think of anyone.”

“Cut the crap, granny!” I backhanded her, sending Hortense’s dentures flying into the potted plant. I drew my .45 and held it under her chin. “Duke was a friend of mine. When I find his killer, I’m going to put a half-dozen slugs in his genitals, pour molten lead in his eyeballs, and make him listen to Miss Edna Chilblains, author of the epic poem Robinson Crusoe and that Damn Hangnail. The same goes for anybody who gets in my way. Now, spill it!”

“Sometimes he’d board the number forty-seven bus and ride it down to Hickenlooper’s Tavern on Delirium Street. Everybody loved him and the bus driver let him ride for free.” Without her dentures, Hortense slurred her words. “He also worked as a therapy dog at the pediatric cancer center.”

“Looks like I’m one step closer to that steak dinner.” I holstered my .45 and spoke to Barkless. “I’ll hit the hospital. You check out the bar.”

***

When a police officer makes detective, the taxpayers pick up the tab for his theme song. A private investigator with a movie deal might get the studio to buy him something like Harlem Nocturne. With my budget, I had to raid the public domain. I chose a kazoo playing the 1812 Overture and added a recording of a few rounds from my .45 for the cannon blasts. When driving in Texas, I’d even shoot a few holes through the roof of my rented pickup. Anyway, the theme played in the background as I drove to the hospital. I parked my Camaro in the emergency room zone and walked through the sliding doors. Juvenile malingerers, who’d shaved in a pathetic attempt to avoid working in the coal mines, roamed the pediatric cancer ward on the second floor.

“Names Mike Mallet.” I showed my PI license to the receptionist. “Give me the medical records of every patient you’ve treated in the past decade.”

“Sir, you’re not a policeman and have no authorization of subpoena medical records.”

“This is my authorization!” I drew my .45 and held it to her face.

“Security!”

Two sumo wrestlers wearing traditional mawashi ran up the hall. Even though both outweighed me two-to-one, I didn’t need my .45. I hit the first with a roundhouse punch that spun his head like an ultra-high-capacity, refrigerated centrifuge and dropped the second like a watermelon off a sixty-story building with a punch to the gut. A nurse who was watching fanned her neck with a prescription pad.

“Ooh, it’s getting moist down there.” She rolled her panties over her ankles and handed them to me. “Hold on to these until I finish my shift. The name’s Buttercup, Honey Buttercup.”

“Mike Mallet.” 

She was blonde as a bottle of Riesling, the dry kind because I don’t like mine too sweet, and her breasts were buoyant enough to keep a shipwrecked sailor afloat. 

“See you at eight, Mike Mallet.” Honey wrote her address on back of a Viagra prescription as if unaware that I never needed it.

Even though I missed out on bracing the kids, I judged my one-on-one with Honey would be more productive. When I left, I found a meter maid was placing a ticket under my Camaro’s wipers. I slugged her in the chin and left her unconscious body in a wheelchair by the emergency room’s entrance.

***

 “Do you know what a nymphomaniac is, Mike?” Honey let her nightgown slip off her shoulders.

“Yeah, a woman who can almost keep up with me.” I tossed my fedora on the bedside table.

“Oh Mike, I’ve made love to astronauts, Navy SEALs, Olympic athletes, and the entire Dallas Cowboys football team but I’ve never had a real man.”

“Then get ready, baby.” I slipped out of my shoulder holster and pleasured her thirty-seven times until she begged for more. I did her nineteen more times. Then I rocked her world with three hundred eight orgasms until she begged me to stop. I gave her a few dozen more for good measure.  

“Oh Mike, I brought you those medical records.” Honey got out of bed and returned with a pile of folders tall as Godzilla.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” I slapped her on the ass. “Now how about getting me a snack?”

***

Aside from sick kids using a lot of painkillers, the medical records were a bust. Sure, the pastor’s wife had chlamydia and the pictures of the DA’s genital warts might come in handy but there was no way to move my investigation forward so I took a drive to Delirium Street. 

“My name’s Mike Mallet.” I flashed my PI license at the bartender. “Show me your business records for the past twelve years.”

Hickenlooper’s Tavern seemed like a wholesome place with drunks passed out in their vomit and two bikers going after each other with pool cues. 

“Sir, you’re not a policeman,” the bartender said. “You have no authorization to subpoena financial records.”

“This is my authorization!” I drew my .45 and held it to his face.

I heard growling from a back room and kicked open the door to encounter the seedy underbelly of canine corruption. I’d always thought that painting of dogs playing poker was the artist’s fantasy but here I encountered it in real life.

“Show me your dog licenses and rabies certificates.” I fired my .45 into the ceiling to get their attention. Then I heard a familiar voice.

“Mikey, Mikey! You wouldn’t want to begrudge a few hardworking canines the chance to blow off a little steam.”

It was George Kolaczki, a retired English teacher who supplemented his pension from the Penobscot School District by loan sharking.

“You know this dog?” I showed Kolaczki Duke’s picture.

“Yeah, he played Texas Hold’em sometimes.”

“Was he into you for any money?”

“Hey, the game’s for entertainment. We only play for dog biscuits here.”

“Let me tell you something.” I shoved my pistol in Kolaczki’s nose. “Duke was a friend of mine. When I find out who killed him, I’m going to give him a sulfuric-acid enema, fit him into a poison ivy jockstrap, and make him listen to Edna Chilblains.”

“I taught Great Expectations in high school for twenty-seven years. You don’t scare me.” Kolaczki yelled, “Luka!”

A snarling Doberman in a luchador mask burst into the room. I kicked him in the nuts and he collapsed into a whimpering pile of emasculation.

“See you around, Kolaczki.” I adjusted my fedora to a proper thirty-degree angle and left.

***

  Honey took me to a strip club called the Habanero Narwhal. The name was slang for a kink that anyone with a capsaicin sensitivity shouldn’t attempt. I sat at a booth with my date and placed my fedora in my lap. A barmaid with breasts shaped like killer whales approached.

“Care for a drink?” 

“Vodka and baby seal blood, garnished with a Carolina Reaper. I want that baby seal clubbed fresh. None of that bottled stuff.” 

“Irish Cream.” Honey fingered my hatband.

The naked girls chewing mukluks backed by a chorus of howling malamutes wasn’t my thing so we left to ransack bodegas in a search for million-Scoville hot sauce. As we stepped out the front door, I heard squealing tires and turned to see a Lincoln Town Car speeding toward us.

“Get down!” 

I shielded Honey with my body as a man in the passenger seat leaned out the window and tossed a thesaurus at us. His throw went wide and the heavy volume embedded into the strip club’s brick facade. I drew my .45 and fired six rounds at the receding taillights. 

“Are you okay?” Honey asked.

“Yeah.” I holstered my pistol. “A certain loan shark with a name like a pastry is going to get it.”

***

“Do you have a reservation?”

“I’m Mike Mallet here to fix your rodent problem and that rat’s name is George Kolaczki.”

I muscled my way through the crowd and found Kolaszki at a table by a window with a view of Jupiter City’s skyline. A cornucopia of mayhem lay on the tablecloth. A Japanese hotpot simmered atop a blue flame, cheese fondue bubbled like the La Brea Tar Pits, Korean barbecue sizzled atop a portable grill, and a waiter ignited brandy atop a serving of Steak Diane. The cowboy, ninja, Viking, and pirate who served as Kolaczki’s bodyguards sat at a separate table, eating shish kebab on foot-long, metal skewers.

“I came to return this.” I dropped the thesaurus in the hotpot and splashed hot dashi on Kolaczki’s lap.

The loan shark recoiled from the table as the cowboy stood and reached for his six-gun. I threw a fondue fork overhand and it sunk three-inches deep into his eye socket. Before the Viking could draw his longsword, I flung the burning brandy into his eyes, used the pan to block three throwing stars, and brained the ninja into dreamland. Using one of the skewers as an epee, I scored first blood against the pirate before knocking him out with an uppercut.

“This is for Duke.” I held Kolaczki’s face in the boiling fondue until he drowned.

“Excuse me, sir.” A waiter approached with a lighter and chafing dish. “Does Mr. Kolaczki still want the Cherries Jubilee?”

***

 “What kind of sick bastard would run over a grieving dog mom?” I stared at the trail of blood Hortense had left on the pavement as she’d tried to crawl to sidewalk and began to wonder if I’d been wrong about Kolaczki.

“Two killings in one week.” Barkless fanned sweat off his face with his fedora. “You think they’re connected?”

“All I know is that when I find the killer, I’m going to use his intestines as dental floss.”

“Detective, you might want to see this.” A uniformed officer pointed to some broken glass.

I touched my finger to the liquid and gave it a sniff. 

“Rectum Rooter Hot Sauce. I’ve got to go.”

***

 “Mike, I wasn’t expecting you so early.” Honey peeled off her halter.

“It was you all along. Wasn’t it?” I stepped toward her. “I didn’t put it together until just now. You skimmed painkillers from all those kids. Duke was a drug-sniffing dog and he found you out so you killed him.”

“Mike, you’re scaring me.” Honey took off her bra and stepped backward.

“You paid the dog mom to keep quiet but she got greedy so you bumped her off, too.”

“I had to, Mike. I needed that money to pay for male escorts but I don’t need them anymore now that I have you. We can move away together to someplace in the country with a hot tub and waterbed.”

She stepped backward but I was relentless as a steamroller chasing Gumby and Pokey.

She reached behind her for a dildo on the coffee table and swung it so hot sauce from our last fetish flew into my eyes. I bent over in agony as she battered me about the head with the heavy latex but she couldn’t resist my manliness and our struggle turned into a BDSM session.

“Give it to me, Mike. Give it to me.”

I gave it to her all right, a .45 slug right in the guts.

“How could you do this to me, Mike?”

“Killings too good for you.” I strapped her to the easy chair with duct tape, put a tape of Edna Chilblains’s epic poem on repeat, and turned up the volume to cover Honey’s screams.

Fly the Friendly Skies 

I was heading back to Tucson after I had made a drug run of eighty kilos of cocaine to Sacramento. It was originally meant to be delivered to San Francisco but an earthquake of devastating proportion caused the destination to be changed. 

I finally boarded my flight to Phoenix after my stopover in Los Angeles.

Whenever traveling alone it seems I always get seated next to someone with some kind of  annoying trait or disgusting habit. The incessant talkers that go on even after you express  disinterest. There’s the drunks with unpleasant attitudes. Or those with body odor or with an excessive amount of cologne or perfume which is  just as displeasing. Close talkers with  bad breath. Others who pick their nose or clean out ear wax. Then they offer to shake hands with you after. You get the idea. I do wonder if the people that get seated next to me may find me annoying.  I’m occasionally drunk, seldom stinky, borderline attractive, depending on the border and my demeanor couldn’t be classified  as unpleasant. I am an absolute  pleasure, how could anyone not enjoy an encounter with me?

This time fate does me a solid and my traveling companion in seat 12B, the window seat on this flight to Phoenix, is not a beautiful woman but instead a scholarly looking fellow. His face is wrinkled, weathered and pocked, a testament to his many bouts with the challenges that life has thrown at him. As I sit down he uncaringly stuffs his jacket under the seat. He strokes his scraggly beard then pushes the call assistance button to summon the flight attendant. Then stares at me with a blank expression not showing any emotion. It seems as though he’s sizing me up.

I notice the flight attendant coming toward us. She’s  working her way up the aisle through the passengers still boarding, stashing their items in the overhead storage and searching for their seats.

“Good morning sir. How can I be of assistance?” she greets us in a melodic voice while reaching to turn off the call light.

“Well let me tell you that as soon as possible, I need three of those baby bottle sized whiskeys you sell. No need for a glass, water or ice. Just the whiskey and I don’t care what brand. And how about you there Pancho you want something? I’m buying.” The scholarly fellow asks.

“Sure , thanks. I’ll have a whiskey as well in the baby bottle. It doesn’t matter which brand.”

“I’m unable to serve you gentlemen before we depart but I will get your order as soon as we reach our cruising altitude and the pilot turns off the fasten seat belt sign.”

“You need to know I am an alcoholic and must have my medication otherwise I can’t be held responsible for my actions. And Pancho here appears as though he may possibly suffer from the same affliction. How is it that I noticed when I first entered there were people enjoying cocktails up front there. What gives?” The self proclaimed  dipsomaniac asks.

“Sir, that’s the First Class you’re in Coach. Those passengers pay extra for that privilege and service.” The waitress in the sky explained.

“So let me understand. I’m just second class and it all comes down to money?  Another example of the inequality of Capitalism and it smells of bullshit!  Do I appeal to the head of the airline to protest this bourgeoisie oppression or would this be something you could possibly remedy?”

I am unable to hide my reaction to the humorous exchange and I begin to laugh. The attendant leaves hastily shaking her head in disgust although still with her smile. She  returns moments later with six baby bottles of scotch. 

“A gift from the airline. My pleasure. And I know who you are, mister. So mind your manners.”

“Thank you ever so much. You shall be generously rewarded by the Gods my dear. Ya see Pancho  sometimes ya just have to kick the rules in the balls.”

I wasn’t offended or insulted by what some might consider a racist comment with the Pancho reference. There was no malicious intent in his expression describing my heritage. Although I’ve always been under the impression that my appearance was more Italian than Mexican.

The ball-kicker hands me two bottles of scotch and keeps four for himself. One extra for him as commission for his effort he explains.

“So what’s your story Pancho? Everybody’s got a story, some just not as interesting as others. So what do you do? You a drug dealer or a crop picker on vacation? Are you in this country legally or are you one of those border jumpers?” he inquires.

“I don’t want to disappoint you but I am a priest from Nogales ,Arizona. I just delivered donations of food and clothing to the earthquake victims in San Francisco. I’m headed back now, gotta work Bingo at the church tonight,” I told him.

“Son of a bitch! Are you fucking feeding me a line of bullshit? I would have never guessed that even if I was clairvoyant. You should be wearing your collar so you don’t catch people off guard. It’s not fair going undercover. So how’s that God fellow doin? Ya think he ever feels guilty about destroying people’s lives by his ruthless ungodly actions? I think of his assholiness as quite a prick. It doesn’t matter he doesn’t exist anyway. Don’t want to offend you or your beliefs so I won’t give you my take on him or religion. Gonna have to wait until I’m drunk. Then ya can give me a peso for my thoughts. Here’s to your Jesus and the rest of the fictitious characters in that Bible. And to all the religious fanatics as well. What a fairytale, a book of fables written by religious fanatics, numerous authors, interpreted by an unknown number of editors. Written hundreds of years ago without any factual data. And with events stolen directly from other religions. I’d rather worship the spirit in these tiny bottles. At least I know it exists and it tells the truth.”

He raises his bottle in a toast that excludes me. So that was an example of him sparing my feelings by not expressing his opinion? I found it curious that he was concerned with possibly insulting my religious ideals but had no problem referring to me as Pancho. I truly liked this character. There was realism in his demeanor and a fire of wisdom burning in his eyes. His views no matter how socially  or politically incorrect were sung and voiced without derogatory intent.

“So what do you have to say for yourself Mr. Dipsomaniac? You do anything else other than drink and give people a hard time? Are you a mean drunk? And what experience was so traumatic in your life that it resulted in you becoming an alcoholic as you refer to yourself?  Another question, the flight attendant said she knew who you were. What did she mean? And…”

“Hold on there Padre! I’m not one of your misguided flock that you can flog with your rosary and threaten omnipotent retribution for indiscretions. Just thought we would share philosophies on the complexity of women or maybe discuss a favorite or worst book you’ve read.  I’m not much for sports or political issues. But you want to pick at my psyche, get personal, have me bare my naked soul and we haven’t even gotten off the ground. Not gonna happen Padre.”

The airplane begins to make its way down the runway. We are thrusted into the cloudless sky as the ground below shrinks into minute images.

“It’s only the take offs and landings that rattle my nerves,” he says.

The fourth miniature bottle of Scotch meets with his lips and is emptied in one loud gulp. The aircraft levels off at the pilot’s designated altitude and the ding sounds indicating the fasten seat belt light has been turned off. Immediately after, he reaches once again for the assistance button and pushes at it with force.

“Gotta find our Angel of Mercy to stoke the fire. Ya ready for another there Padre?” my new best friend asks.

“No, I am just fine at the moment. I’ll wait it out till Phoenix, have a connecting flight to Tucson. They say if ya die in Tucson your soul will have to catch a connecting flight to heaven.”

“Cute, not funny, just cute. And you can spare me your Reader’s Digest witticisms. Save them for the Bingo crowd. Have you always been a servant to your imaginary deity or was there a time when you cut loose? Understand what I’m getting at?”

“Yes I understand and absolutely, I had an abundant supply of paint when I was younger with which I generously painted many a town red. However the time came around when I wrestled with the ‘better to serve in Hell than reign in Heaven’ quote. I concluded that I could become more useful as a priest than as a party animal.”

“Familiar with Milton I see.”

“Yes and with Voltaire, Candide, Moliere, Rousseau, and the entire pack of howling philosophers.”

“Quite impressed there Padre Pancho. But I am starting to develop a severe case of doubt concerning you being a man of the cloth. In fact I don’t believe you are a priest at all or for that matter a Catholic or even Christian. Where the hell is the attendant? I am drying out,” he says while looking down the aisle front and back. 

“Would you like me to fetch her for you?” I offer.

“I see her in back there readying the drink wagon now. Guess I’ll have to ride out the drought.”

“Here take my other bottle, you need it more than I do.”

He accepts my gift with a huge grin.

“I don’t care who the hell you are Padre, you’re okay in my book.”

I’m trying to figure out who this guy could be. He didn’t seem familiar to me at all. I was sure he wasn’t an actor or a famous musician. He couldn’t be a politician like a Senator or Representative. I was leaning toward the arts, maybe a famous painter or film director. Then it all became obvious to me who this character was and what he did. He was a writer, a famous author. I was an avid reader of his work since being a fan of transgressive fiction. This guy had written a great number of books and was an acclaimed poet as well. 

“Let me introduce myself. I’m Father Santiago. I’m enjoying our time together on this flight. You’re quite the character.”

“Still going with the Father act huh? Well I’m not buying what you’re selling. So is it alright if I just call you Santiago?”

“Sure, Santiago will be just fine.”

As we shook hands he introduced himself. 

“Pleased Santiago. Henry, Henry Chinaski.”

Anti-cemitas

Not the greatest vacation ever, Harlan Scropes thought. Pretty bad, in fact. A nightmare of  the kind that makes you wonder why you wanted to take a vacation in the first place. 

The flight from Newark had been seriously delayed, with no explanation or palliative cocktails. At the Mexican airport, border officials pulled a shakedown due to his near-expired passport. During the taxi ride to the resort, the driver pulled over at several grimy cantinas to offer pimp service. 

When he was finally in the sub-standard hotel room, he changed into his swimsuit and went out for a restorative swim. The resort’s swimming pool was closed for maintenance, although no workers or pool-cleaners were present. The nearby beach resembled postcard scenery, but the travel agency brochures hadn’t mentioned fierce mosquitoes, undertow and sharks. 

Black fins sliced the murky water not twenty yards from the shoreline. Harlan didn’t believe the receptionist who asserted they belonged to friendly dolphins, “Like Fleeeeper.”

The resort’s bar scene was dismal. There were no lonely female tourists around, and the only available prostitute was an unconvincing transexual, who proved unskilled with head or hand. Her switchblade prowess, however, made it clear that a big tip was nonetheless expected. 

Back in his room, badly shaken, Harlan finished himself off with a nudie-horror movie on the hazy TV, and wiped up with a gray, frayed bidet towel. The bidet itself, a potentially amusing novelty, was out of order.

Food at the resort’s restaurant made him long for Taco Bell.

So Harlan felt gourmet ecstasy when he bit into a cemita at a locals-only sandwich stand in Puebla. 

He’d ridden a bus to the historic city a few days ahead of schedule, to escape bogus tropical paradise resort purgatory. Puebla was surprisingly pleasant. Harlan took in a bullfight, and was further impressed by colorful baroque churches and a distant volcano’s eruption. He bought a spaghetti western poncho and pointy-toe, slope-heel vaquero boots, though he knew he’d feel ridiculous if he tried to wear them back home. In the old town, he bought a Tijuana Bible, rabbit-shit cigarettes and a bottle of mezcal with a worm inside. He felt he’d seen the real Mexico.

Then, at a local’s-only lunch stand, he bit into a cemita and was suddenly, truly in Mexico.

Harlan wandered from loncheria to loncheria. He couldn’t get enough cemitas. Best sandwich ever, he thought. A lifelong sandwich enthusiast, he wasn’t yet obese, but his waistline was on the healthy side. Or rather, beyond the healthy side. His enlarged liver was similar to the fly-blown cow offal slopped on mesquite-wood chopping blocks he’d seen at a picturesque food market. No chance for a hot date there, either. Bored Mexican housewives did their meat shopping early, before the flies took over.

Much as he liked Puebla, Harlan didn’t want to miss his flight home. 

Cops pulled over his taxi on the way to the airport. The driver must’ve phoned in an easy target. The cops made Harlan get out of the car and lean against the hood. They slapped his potbelly, brandished pistols, brass knuckles, beavertail blackjacks. “Jew peeess blood for the rest of jew life, mang.” Harlan forked over all the shredded Mexican currency he had left. 

Mexican beer was expensive at the airport, especially if you had to pay with a credit card. “Sewer-charge,” the barmaid said. She’d squeezed her tan pear-shaped tits into a gauzy peasant blouse, but she scoffed at his pick-up gambit.

On board, the Captain announced that the flight to Newark would be delayed, due to a handicapped passenger who needed to be specially boarded.

Harlan looked out the hazy porthole. A severely overweight white woman was being rolled across the tarmac in a wheelchair. 

Thought they stowed fat feebs like her first, he thought. Isn’t that the whole point of pre-boarding?

He watched the king-size paraplegic swat at the ground crew coolies with her leather satchel. A big black rubber dildo spilled from the bag and rolled briefly down the runway. The crippled woman soundlessly screeched, Get it! Get it! 

Her screaming face turned as red as the local beet-and-orange cocktail Harlan had drunk with all those cemitas. 

She snatched back her penis substitute from the jumpsuited man who’d gone to fetch the dildo. the man bowed humbly, cap in hand. She tried to smack his head with it. He politely evaded her vicious swipes.

The ground crew couldn’t get the disabled behemoth up the mobile boarding ladder. They signaled the men in the cockpit to open up the cargo bay, and went to fetch a forklift. 

When he’d boarded, Harlan thought he’d lucked out when a pockmarked skinny señorita stewardess ushered him to a bulkhead seat with leg- and elbow-room galore. Oh shit, he thought, as the cargo bay door thunked closed and the stewardesses shoved the enraged crippled fat lady towards the only vacant seat left on the plane, the one next to his.

His intestines grumbled, and delivered a flashback taste of the scrumptious, slightly soapy herb that lent cemitas their mouthwatering flavor and consistency. Pápalo, the friendly sandwich-griddler had said. Pápalo!

Make the next one heavy on the pápalo, please. And more, please, many more of them delicious, delightfully smoky poblano peppers. Harlan couldn’t get enough, seriously. But it was suddenly obvious that he’d overdone it. 

“What the fuck are you staring at, fatso?”

Harlan mouthed air like a caught bottom-lurker fish, the kind that lazes around tropical coral reefs hoping for easy meals and quick mating action. Since he was momentarily struck dumb because a fat woman in a wheelchair had just called him fatso, his colon spoke for him. A wretched moan escaped, at a frequency pitched for elephants to hear, and fat wheelchair-bound women to smell. 

“Oh Jesus don’t stick me next to this creep. He stinks.”

The ground crew man said, “Would jew pleeeease stand up for a moment, sor? We need to secure the special chair to the bolts under jewer seat. Thank jew, sor.”

Harlan didn’t get a chance to say, no way get this fat crippled dildo-freak the hell away from me. A pápalo fug of gas escaped him as he rose.

The Mexican ground-crew men either didn’t notice, or else they’d been trained in sensitivity towards turistas pasajeros. 

“This old fart hasn’t washed in decades” the wheelchair lady said. “There’s god damn bums on my block who smell better’n him. I refuse to sit next to this stink-ass motherfucker.”

Harlan thought, who’s she calling an old fart? 

A steward-stevedore who resembled Ramón Novarro said, “Señora, pleeeease. Eees only differently abled handicapped seat avail-erble. But…if jew would prefer to wait for tomorrow’s flight, we can accompany jew back to the terminal.” He nervously fumbled a switchblade or rosary in his jumpsuit pocket. 

Harlan thought he was saved. “Can I sit back down?” 

Get her off, he prayed to God. Get her off this fucking plane and let’s get the fuck out of here so I can use the fucking restroom.

Unfortunately for him, the crippled lady was none too thrilled about having to spend an extra 24 hours in Mexico either. “Oh all right,” she said. “But could you, like, tell El Capitán to hurry it up? I mean, like, fly extra fast? ‘Cause I really need to be with my cats again.”

Harlan pictured a cluttered apartment clouded with cat-hair and ammonia-laden cat-piss fumes. His guts meowed.

They got her wheelchair strapped in, and tested its rock-steadiness with their pointy-toe boots. “Pleeeease, Señor, to resume jew sit and fasten jew sit-belt in preparation for takeoff.”

Harlan was worried the paraplegic cat-nut would bite his ass as he shinnied past her. Instead, sizzling chile poblano gas-vapors escaped through the pressure-valve of his anus. She caught his fart right in the teeth. 

“Oh my God, no,” she said. “I hate Mexican food. I hate it.”

The other passengers shook their heads. They’d have to listen to that grating, screeching voice throughout the flight. Their vibrations of hate seemed to drape Harlan in a cloak of unsmellability. His feelings for the overweight cripple shifted, slightly. Oh thank you, God. Thank you.

The cushion touted as an emergency flotation device inflated slightly when Harlan sat down and further relieved the pressure from his large intestine. 

The airplane taxied, took off and blew jet-fuel fumes into the Earth’s non-renewable atmosphere. Poblano peppers and pápalo pulp poisoned the cabin’s pressurized atmosphere.

The stewardesses put on truncated serapes and prepared to serve the in-flight meal. They slid chile rellenos and cheese enchilada dinner trays into on-board microwave ovens as a flavorful farewell to Old Mexico for the gringos. 

Harlan caught a whiff of beans, minus exotic peppers and mystical pápalo. He tried to imagine what a pápalo plant might look like, and passed another toxic cloud.

One of the stewardess’ heads popped up, like the first wildebeest in the herd to catch lion tang in the air. She quickly quadrant-scanned the cabin for flames, smoke. 

She knew that humans strapped into their seats in a metal ship much heavier than the surrounding air are highly sensitive to signs of alarm in trained professionals who’ve gained airborne-emergency instinct through flight-miles logged. 

Panic was to be avoided.

The stewardess edged aft, sniffed around nervously. 

Harlan was sure she’d stop by his seat and say, “Are jew feeling all right, señor? Do jew require ass-eeee-stance in going to the toyyyy-let?” 

No matter what the mirror said, Harlan didn’t consider himself an old fart who’d shit his pants. Not like the lady next to him, who needed help with all of life’s humiliating details and wasn’t even polite when she got the help she needed. The wheelchair lady was inspecting her fingernails, for some reason. 

Harlan saw his chance, caught the stewardess’ eye and hooked his thumb at the she-cripple. Hand-jive for, it was her.

The stewardess gave him a conspiratorial O sign with her pretty little mouth.  Glossy lipstick flashed erotic between the olive skin of her chin and slight, sexy fe-moustache. Oh man, he thought, what a kisser. Maybe that’s why he’d wanted to go to Mexico in the first place. Only he’d failed to realize the dreams he’d never realized having dreamt. 

The stewardess spun on her heels and sashayed back towards the cramped galley. Harlan scoped her swaying hips. Maybe there was hope he could score with a swinging stewardess. The Mexico trip wouldn’t have been a total washout. Aside from cemitas.

What did an overweight handicapped woman in a wheelchair want in Mexico, especially if she hated Mexican food? Oiled low-rent gigolos? It would’ve been easy enough to find out, but Harlan didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t want her to know that he spoke English and was not, in fact, mute. He was sure she’d talk his ear off on some inane, annoying subject, given half a chance. 

Didn’t seem likely she spoke Spanish. The only words Harlan had learned on his vacation had to do with sandwiches and beer. Oh yeah, and chinga. But he could do a passable Speedy Gonzales impersonation. 

The captain still hadn’t turned off the ‘Keep Seatbelts Fastened’ sign. Industrial-strength nylon webbing cut painfully into Harlan’s distended beergut, though he’d loosened the strap to the last possible degree. Intestinal gas has an anti-Newtonian tendency to expand under pressure. 

Her goddamn wheelchair’s going to make it awful hard to get up and go to the toilet when the pilot finally deigns to let us rise and wander about the cabin, he thought.

He’d seen crippled beggars aplenty in Puebla, including a blind guy with a sandwich-board sign—not a hand-lettered lunch-counter ad, but a highly effective slogan for handouts. A steady stream of heavy silver Mexican coins went into his cup. Grácias, grácias, the blind man said, in a plaintive voice that might’ve been put on for effect. 

The other thing the beggar said was, por favor. 

Harlan hadn’t given the blind man anything, but he’d imitated his voice, repeated his words, every time he went into a cantina to ask for more beer and sandwiches.  

The pain in his abdomen felt like punishment for his lack of charity. 

The crucified Jesuses in the baroque churches had human hair, looked and smelled as though the Savior had been smeared with real blood, maybe from the bullfights. 

“Por favor,” Harlan said. The captain had finally extinguished the Fasten Seatbelts sign, and he wanted to be in pole position for the airplane toilet. Man oh man, whoever comes in after me’s gonna die, he thought, as he unbuckled and half-rose from his seat.

“What do you want me to do, you moron? I can’t get up.”

“Por favor,” he pleaded meekly. “Por favor.” His gas-bladder was about to explode, in a repetition of the Hindenburg disaster. He swung his leg up and over the fat lady’s lap and lurched towards the aisle. 

“Oh my God! Get your stinking greaser ass out of my face.”

Get your ugly face out of my ass, he thought, and let a really juicy one. 

She’d just opened up to emit another anti-Mexican epithet. She choked, screamed, “Oh my God! Oh my freakin’ God!”

Another stewardess shuffled down the aisle to quell the ruckus. She was short, on the chubby side, and exuded homey friendliness. “Qué pasó?”

Harlan waved air in front of his face. The crippled obese woman, who was desperately trying to suck oxygen into her lungs, missed the gesture. 

The stewardess understood, reached into her serape, quick-drew a can of air-freshener and sweetened the cabin’s airspace. Harlan made a break for the toilets at the back.

Luckily for him, no line had formed. 

The skinny pockmarked stewardess was in the galley next door to the toilet, arming the coffee-brewing apparatus. Harlan’s mind drifted back to high school, when he invited Jolene Odom, the crosseyed polio girl, to the Senior Prom. She turned him down. The stewardess was Jolene Odom’s Mexican twin sister, only walleyed instead of crosseyed, and no stainless steel braces on her spindly legs. 

She noticed him staring at her.

“Ay-yi-yieee,” she whispered. “Es terrible, la vieja. Siempre nos molesta mucho.”

  That was too much Spanish, for Harlan. “Por favor,” he said. “English, por favor,”

“She eees ‘orrible.” The stewardess pulled a face. “Always bother us. Always make troble.”

“What, you mean she’s a frequent flyer with you guys? She said she hates Mexico. And she…she’s in a wheelchair, for cryin’ out loud.” Harlan’s gut was primed to explode. He strained to contain his bowels. 

“Ay sí, señor,” the stewardess said. “She hate México. She hate us Méxicanos. But she love…how you say? burros.”

“Donkeys?”

“Sí. She looooove donkeys.”

Though intrigued, Harlan had more pressing concerns. The buzzer on the coffee unit frazzed. The machine spritzed high-octane brew into the stainless steel receptacle. Coffee aroma triggered his colon. “Por favor,” he said. “Grácias.”

The friendly stewardess helped him get the toilet’s accordion-door fully closed, then discreetly vamoosed to pour coffee. 

“Thank you,” Harlan whispered to the ‘No Smoking’ sign. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you.” Then he filled the toilet with tangible proof that there is no God. 

Harlan felt sure the smoke alarm would blow. The stewardess would be waiting for him outside, her wacky eyeballs hidden by a green rubber gas-mask. She’d foam him down with air-freshener while the other passengers laughed, pointed fingers and held their noses. 

Jet-engine turbo-flush took care of the evidence. Harlan kept the built-in air-freshener button pressed for a count of 20 before he dared emerge. 

The coast was clear. The cute stewardess was serving coffee in First Class. Toilet miracles happened, if you prayed hard enough. 

The white-haired whale in a wheelchair gulped coffee like it was the cure for polio, or whatever blight had taken her legs. Maybe she was simply too heavy to walk on her own.

Harlan hadn’t gotten any coffee, but maybe it wouldn’t have been such a good idea, just then. 

“Por favor,” he said. The fat crippled lady had positioned herself to take up as much aisle-space and leg-room as possible while she noisily slurped. Harlan sign-languaged that he wanted to resume his seat. 

“Oh Jesus,” she said, and slumped back minimally. 

Harlan tried to fart in her face again, but was unable. All systems clear? Didn’t seem possible. 

The disabled behemoth sucked coffee dregs as forcefully as the airplane toilet sucked human waste. “Hey!” she yelled. “More coffee, here. I want more coffee!”

The stewardess signaled that she’d be back as soon as the other passengers had been served.

“Oh Jesus,” the fat woman muttered. “Slow as motherfucking snails, the whole greasy bunch of ‘em.”

The fat lady hated Mexicans but loved donkeys, the other stewardess had said. Some guys Harlan knew in college took a trip South of the Border and had sworn they’d seen a donkey show. Maybe such spectacles were the only sexual thrill available to a fat rude racist creep who lived in a handicapped-access apartment packed with cats. Or else she was some sort of holier-than-thou animal rights activist. 

“Por favor, señora,” he said. “Ees true jew loooooove burros?”

She looked at him as if he’d just puked. “I don’t speak to Mexicans,” she said. Her thick eyeglasses were smeared with human grease, speckled with eyebrow-dandruff. Maybe she couldn’t see that the cartoon Mexican accent issued from a caricature of an average American gringo turista. 

Harlan hadn’t spoken much to Mexicans either, but when he’d asked them for cerveza and cemitas, they’d been polite and forthcoming. He was about to let the fat crippled lady know he thought she’d just said something incredibly ignorant when a painful abdominal spasm lifted him slightly from his padded seat. 

The wheelchair woman had witnessed the blast. The smell hit a second later. “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s horrible. You awful, awful man.” She punched the stewardess alarm button.  A bell bonged. A tiny orange lightbulb lit up.

The stewardesses approached cautiously. The wheelchair woman was struggling for breath, with drowning pachyderm sound-effects. Harlan fanned the air in front of his face. In calm, unaccented USA English, he said, “I think she needs the toilet.”

The woman in the wheelchair slapped at the stewardesses’ hands as she struggled to undo the safety straps that held her near the toxic cloud’s source. “Get your bean-grubbing, taco-bending hands offa me!” A man in a dingy short-sleeve shirt appeared; the co-pilot, or maybe the navigator, but certainly an expert at undoing wheelchair safety straps. Together, the crew-members trundled the disabled passenger to the restroom under heavy protest. 

Didn’t seem equipped for handicapped persons, Harlan thought. But that was their problem. He let fly freely, to relieve the pressure. Didn’t smell too bad, or not to him.

“Oh sweet Jesus.” The man in 29A covered his nose and gagged. 

The airplane hit a shock-wave of turbulence. Dinner trays and stowage compartmets clanked and rattled ominously. The plane rolled violently to a near 40-degree angle. They’d entered the Southern USA’s infamous hurricane zone. Anvil-shaped clouds farted lightning. The captain saw monster jellyfish gliding in a dark, roiling toxic sea. Their electric tentacles sparkled with the promise of pain. 

The passengers couldn’t see what lay ahead, could only smell the enemy within. They heard their captain’s not terribly reassuring voice. “Señoras y…Lay-deeees an’ gen’lemen, we will be experience a leetle tor-bulence. Kindly resume jew sits and fasten sit-belts tightly.”

Invisible demons buffeted the aircraft. Passengers shrieked and moaned. A dinner cart slammed into a bulkhead. The stewardesses and the co-pilot, or whoever he was, hustled the distressed handicapped passenger back to her spot. “We will assist jew weeth the toilet as soon as it is again safe,” the man said. “Now, we must ask that jew kindly remain calm, please.”

They high-tailed it fore, to strap themselves in. The plane flew sideways, then was brutally smacked back to horizontal. Yellow plastic oxygen masks dropped like the fruit of the damned. The captain yelled the emergency checklist while he struggled to regain control of the helm. “Kindly do not panic. Place jew own oxygen mask over your face before as-see-sting those next to jew, especially small cheeeldren.”

Harlan put on his mask and felt instantly calm. He watched, amused, as the crippled woman tried to snatch her mask. The plane’s lurches and jolts made the banana-colored piñata dance before her eyes and playfully evade her grasp. 

“Help me, you greaser!” she shrieked. “You’re supposed to help me, God damn you!”

Harlan pulled his oxygen mask slightly away from his snout. “First, señora, jew must sing Viva México!”

“What? Fuck you, you fucking wetback!”

Harlan grabbed the dangling cup of life-support and farted as hard as he could. “Sing with feeling and sincerity, por favor. Or no air.” 

“Viva Mexico,” she gasped. “Viva fucking Mexico.”

Harlan handed her the mask, but left it to her to strap it on her own face. She sucked oxygen greedily.

The Mexican pilot kept his nerve and came in for a textbook emergency landing in Tulsa, OK.

Pentagram

His eyes lock onto hers. She glares back up at him, defiant, unblinking. Holds his gaze as she strains against her bondage. She flexes her shoulders. The loops of rope that bind her wrists behind her back hold firm. Too tight. She exhales a long breath.

One of his arms snakes out behind him to snatch up a cushion from the couch. He drops it in front of her on the worn hardwood floor.

“Kneel on that.”

His voice rumbles deeper than any human voice. Like river rocks shifting under a spring flood, a summer thunderstorm just over a ridge. That voice – not human at all. Neither are his long ebony horns, his multi-jointed claws, nor that shifting cloud of black heat-shimmer that trails along as he walks by on obsidian hooves. Not human. Inhuman. If she could just distract him long enough to…

SLAP!

The sting makes her wince, clench her jaw. She falls to her knees on the cushion.

“I don’t like to ask twice,” he whispers low as he tosses aside the horsewhip. The red welt across her breast burns like fire. He runs his thumb over her cheek to brush away a tear. Dips his finger into her mouth.

“Such defiance requires…consequences,” he growls as he circles his finger over her lips, “first, I’m going to fuck that pretty little mouth.” He stands to his full height, shifts his hips so that his cock bobs over her upturned face. The shaft is glistening, smoothly veined, with a slight upward curve.

“Then I’m going to make you wish…”

DING!

He grumbles, whirls at the sound from the kitchen. Wisps of black mist trace pentagrams in the air behind him as he strides out of the room. She can see him hunched over the counter, one finger outstretched towards a device of metal and glass. He’s distracted. This is her chance. She strains against the ropes that bind her ankles and wrists. If she can just slip her thumb under the knot.

He whirls to face her, one obsidian talon clutching…a French press.

“Babe, do you want oat milk in yours?” he rumbles through the archway.

“Oh,” she sighs, “we’re all out. I can take it black.”

His jagged jack-o-lantern mouth curves into a smile as his forked tail snakes up over his shoulder. He wiggles a carton of organic oat milk back and forth with his prehensile tail. Tiny beads of condensation fly from the carton to the kitchen tiles.

“Guess who picked up a fresh quart on the way home?”

She smiles, settles comfortably into her cushion. 

“Now that’s a good boy.”