Cupcakes

How bright it was. Like laying nude, on a rooftop, at noon. 

But we were inside, at night, with everyone standing. Of all people, only Joey still dressed. Lars’s biggest star.

 As Lars and another guy fucked with the lights, I caught Joey’s eye. His half-smile calmed me. 

“It’s cold,” I whispered, shivering. He tried not to laugh.

My first time on camera. And with Joey! What a switch: me nude, and him in clothes. Tight jeans and a torn tee that showed his stiff nipples. Soon, all would come off. 

With my teeth? I hadn’t checked the script, short as it was. . . .

All I knew was, I wanted this. Me and Joey, one-on-one. Even under blinding lights, with everyone watching. Even for just one scene. 

He was gorgeous, with that great body and rock star hair. And sweet. Not what you’d expect in this porn world. “It’s OK, Val,” he said, each time Lars made me cry. Wiping my tears with his finger. He had huge, dark eyes. Like an “old soul.” Eyes that I felt watched over me.

Like he read my mind, Joey smiled again, then looked away. 

Did he know? How much I was falling for him? 

Wanting to fuck him blind?

Me, and . . . 

Who else was in this one? 

There were never just two.

I looked around. Same cheap motel, but a different room this time. Packed with equipment and familiar bodies. Sad, I thought, I knew so few by face. 

Like Tabitha, who wasn’t here. Good, I thought. Bitch. Out to sneak Lars out from under me. 

And Carlos, who was bi. And who was here, primping in front of a mirror. 

The rich fuck Lars catered to paid top dollar for guy-on-guy. 

Three months I’d been trapped here. But I bet I could leave. 

Lars had conned me, then trained me, with his fists, and cock. His insatiable cock, like a Tasmanian devil/parasitic twin that tore up everything it saw. Girls. Guys. 

Glory holes.

He made me bleed. In so many ways. “See what you make me do?” he said. “’Cos you can’t follow directions!” And sometimes, “That’s the thanks I get. For bringing you out here. To make you a star!” 

Like Linda Lovelace, I thought, bitterly. Back in the ‘70s. 

But lately, Lars so busy . . . Between booking, and filming, these customized shoots. Recruiting new “stars.” Exploring newer, and even more bizarre fetishes . . .

He had no clue how I felt about Joey . . .

Or did he?

“Places!” he said, from behind the camera.  

Still without looking at it, I tossed the script.

Joey crawled onto the bed. The bright lights made the bedspread look dingier, threadbare. I used to be terrified of bedbugs. But tonight they could eat me alive. That’s how bad I wanted him. 

“Action!” But I was already there. 

As he lowered his jeans, I crept up his legs. I’d seen his cock so many times, but never this close. Always raging, I could’ve swallowed it whole. He gasped with my first mouthful. Almost lost it.

“Slower!” Lars yelled. ‘Cos he sucked cock the best of anybody.

A slight wink from Joey. Smiling, I slowed down, enjoying this, wishing I could stay down on him forever. He grabbed handfuls of my hair, seemed to be guiding me . . . away! But why? This was “our scene”: me sucking his cock. 

“Now!” Lars said, and I finally got it.

Carlos slid right in, taking my place.

As he took Joey in his mouth, my heart sunk. The script! Why hadn’t I read it? I turned away, feeling so exposed, so rejected.

Joey’s moans angered me. Without looking, I knew he liked this. Carlos or me, it didn’t matter. It felt good in anybody’s mouth. 

Hey, this was Joey’s job.  

As Lars zoomed in for the cum shot, I stared over at the door. The old-fashioned chain lock to keep out thieves, and killers.

“Nice,” Lars whispered. “Nice.” Enjoying it as much as Joey. 

***

It got so late, we all stayed in the room for the night. Naked bodies crashing, all over. Lars on the bed, snoring like mad. Across the highway was a cemetery. I pictured the dead sitting up, wondering what that noise was. 

“You mad, Mami?” Carlos had asked me, after the shoot. Now he was on the floor, somewhere, dead asleep.

Against the closet door, Joey and me sat, huddled. Dressed, I was still shivering. And yeah, mad. But still wanting to feel close to him. His tee and chest were soaked from the shoot. I smelled sweaty hair, among other stuff. If I were alone, I would’ve cried.

Instead, I shared his cupcakes. The golden kind, with the marshmallow-y swirls. And an orange soda. He let me sip first from the bottle. 

“I love chicks,” he said, into my hair. “But sometimes . . . I want cock.” 

So did Lars. But I’d stopped loving Lars.  

“OK.” I took back the bottle, sipped again. 

“Tonight,” he said, even softer. “I wanted it to be just us. Me and you.”

My heart swelled. “It wasn’t in the script.”

As he took the bottle, his fingers brushed mine. “So, let’s write our own.” 

Lars was still snoring, but softer now.

As quiet as we were, I hope it haunted his dreams.

Will, the Writer

Things will never be the same. Will carved his initials into a tree-trunk somewhere in the middle of nowhere. And all these fucking cliches seeped out of his brain. He put on Beethoven’s 7th and started thinking about the time he and his friends were lollygagging in a big open field, high on mushrooms.

He used to return at night from the bars and go down into his parent’s basement and type little stupid poems on a computer. It was better than jacking off.

“If you’ve got a home at night, then I guess you’re doing all right.” His dad used to say that. Fucking wanker.

Will never got laid, but eventually he did have a place to flop. And through his depressions because of the world making him sick in his heart, balls, tongue, and gums, he managed to do what his destiny told him he should: Write.

He didn’t care about capital letters or slogans or marketing gimmicks. He just wanted to do the damn thing he was born to do. But that was just what the world wanted to steal from him: His soul.

So I guess it would’ve been better to jackoff and sleep or whatever writers did at night, budding like toadstools under Dorothy’s skip-to-my-lou bullshit. Eventually, those toadstools would sink. Too many burgers after midnight, the bitch.

Will howled with laughter as the years passed him by, and there remained a sort of sublime nature to his own undoing. At this point in his life, he wasn’t Shakespeare, and he most certainly wasn’t Alexander the Great. But he was still able to aim his piss into the toilet without any help, and having a place to sleep at night sure beat the couch of a fuck-up friend who toiled in drug abuse, alcoholism, and the eternal splendor of hearing their own voices: Will hated everybody secretly.

Soon, it wouldn’t be such a secret. And isn’t that a damn shame? Writers are annoying, especially when they aren’t writing. That’s when they’re at their worst.

Oh well, Will thought, and he skipped like a rock across a dirty pond with lots of elk surrounding it, pissing and shitting into the wind. “The Wind Cries Mary,” Jimi Hendrix sang. And then he died from choking on his own vomit.

Will kept going, and the worst part about that was that he did so even when he didn’t feel like it. That always felt like climbing a ladder that somebody moved whenever you tried to get some shut-eye. It was probably best and better for his innate madness if he could just get laid. But how?

Will found himself looking in the mirror. Maybe I should cut my hair, he thought. Nah. That realization, though, always came too late. Heh, heh.

One day he was in Austin, Texas. Having a shitfit total mental breakdown. He met some girl from Dubai. And he said, yes, I am a writer. I drink wine. One day I am going to smoke a cigarette without a care in the world, and I will write about you, oh sweet dearie. But don’t you worry a thing about it. Because I won’t use your real name, and let’s be honest. You’ll forget me anyway.

Will found himself atop the girl on a Monday afternoon in a motel in the dark, trying to suck her teat. Tit. Oh Christ. He didn’t even know what to call it. Try again, you sappy little schmuck.

The girl abandoned him, and that became a theme in the life of a writer. Look at Hemingway. He had five wives. And he must’ve had a beer-can of a cock.

Speaking of second base, the words started to come. Heh, heh.

And that felt good. But the memories of his life at this point would ultimately dwell upon the kindness of strangers and friends. He was becoming himself while simultaneously becoming a total pain in the ass. What would Bruce Springsteen have done? He would’ve written a song about it. He would have changed up the tenses, past and present. He would’ve developed a southern draw or maybe a midwestern twang. He would’ve grown out his hair and started drinking like James Dean or Waylon Jennings, and he would’ve lived along a lake and got shitfaced drunk, almost to the point of tears because his woman wouldn’t take him back. Why were writers, why were men, why were little lost boys always so dumb?

It was going to take a lot of words for Will to finally find his balls. Almost like Balzac. Heh, heh. He’d have to write volumes without signing his name. However, and this was most unfortunate, he did not have the wherewithal to understand that important point: If you’re going to pour your guts and heart out to strangers, don’t expect them to foot the bill.

So Will got up from the floors and couches and found a job. It would’ve been a great career choice to find a cushy position at an Amazon warehouse. He could piss in a bottle and make lots of friends.

Will did do one important thing, though. He kept one crucial element to his spasmodic foreboding, under the rug, beneath his collar, by reading lots of books. And listening to lots and lots of music.

The pages came like waterfalls of ceremonious guilt, and throughout his late 20s and early 30s, he turned himself (secretly) into an F. Scott Fitzgerald wannabe. Finally, he found his Zelda.

She popped lots of pills. But they were prescribed. So that was okay. It was her condition. And what was his? Just hide your belongings behind the couch, you son of a bitch. Sooner or later, she’ll leave the room, and you can sneak her pill bottles by the handful and eat ‘em like Captain Crunch.

Will wrote his first novel. And then he wrote another one. And when they (she) finally saw his words, she thought he was a madman. “The bitch,” he thought, “she’s never read Celine. She doesn’t know Knut Hamsun. Otto Frank. She doesn’t even know that the Western world is in decline. Nope. She’ll have a kid, and that kid will become a Muslim. And they will all pray to god that the world will get better. And since I’m such an advocate of religious freedom, such a tolerant bird, I will let them go, and I will feel almost nothing. Because after so many years of my own rosy crucifixion, like Henry Miller wrote into a trilogy, I will write mine too.” Nobody cared.

It was like poop on a stick. Or in the undies. It was like the eyes of a crocodile. Writing. It was totally heartless and yet it meant everything to him. The heart was actually there. The soul was there too. A walking contradiction. Where the fuck was the money? And how was he going to make it?

Women.

They took him in.

They fondled him, metaphorically and metaphysically and economically and all of the above. There was something about a beautiful woman in a goose-stepping world that made him want to live again.

The look in the eyes. The fever of love. The muse. The art. The longing for something better at the end of a rainbow shooting out of his eyes and gonads.

Somewhere, somebody was waiting for him. Well, not him, per se.

But his words.

Yeah. That truly meant something.

Fast forward about a decade or so. And there he was.

“Your words are so warm,” she said on Google Translate. She didn’t even speak English, far away in a romantic foreign country.

“Yeah, baby. You’re one of the most beautiful women in the world.”

Yeah.

Will, the writer.

He drank another beer and then got the fuck outta there.

If only to live another day.

Bangkok Gunfighter Without Pointless Huck Finn

Of all the trifling and useless monikers fobbed on Larry Dumpkins in the past, “Bangkok Gunfighter” was perhaps the most serviceable. After all, he had been to Bangkok–once, on vacation, where he narrowly escaped evisceration by Buddhist demons and adjacents–and although his gunfighting days proper were over, his steady hand remained fit to squeeze off a shot or six, should such a thing be called for. Larry’s life in retirement might have been perfect, managing a comic book store in the hip downtown area of Bone City known as SoNoe (pronounced “So No Way”), had he not been saddled with Pointless Huck Finn.

Pointless announced his presence one slow Friday afternoon…the store air was saturated with strawberry flavored bubble gum incense, and Larry was about to close the shop, fire up his dragon bong and curate his collection of circus punks featuring characters from Vampirella and Tank Girl.

Larry loved to set the circus punks on top of his broken black and white TV set–it had belonged to a favorite female cousin with enormous breasts who died in a bizarre club fire, and he saved it to savor her memory in what he hoped was not but knew was an unspeakably morbid and necrophiliac manner. Then he’d topple the figurines with a slingshot–he hated especially Vampie herself, and could imagine her screams and hisses of outrage when she flew off the TV…over and over.

Larry was checking the day’s take against cash register receipts when Pointless Huck Finn charged through the door, demanding to see Larry’s infamous trove of “Dirty Little Eight Pagers,” early porno comics from the Depression era.

“Seriously?” said Larry, taking his time with the receipts.

Pointless Huck Finn poked him in the chest with a yellowish, nicotine-stained forefinger. “Do you have them or not, muh dude? My buddy Today’s Tom Sawyer tells me you’ve got a choice stash in the back room and I’m not leaving until I see them. Your sign says ‘Open till 10:00 pm.’ I hope you’re not thinking of closing early.”

“Wow,” said Larry. “Just wow. Okay, I can show you the books, but lighten up…it is my store after all.” Salve to his irritation at Pointless’ manners, the certain and sure knowledge that should his customer grow tiresome, he could easily blow the man-child’s brains out of the back of his head straight into the promised land…he felt the police .357 warm in its shoulder holster, where he kept it for just such an occasion.

“Follow me,” said Larry. He led Pointless through a door marked “Private” to a storeroom crammed floor to ceiling with boxes, neatly labeled with a pink felt tip pen by genre, age and price range. 

“Third from the bottom.” He pointed to a stack mashed against the west-facing wall. “Knock yourself out. I’ve even got some prime Betty Boops in there.”

Ah, Betty.

Pointless Huck Finn with an incredulous air: “I’ve got a bad back.”

“And?”

“And those boxes look heavy, man.”

“I’ve got some nugs of Blueberry waiting for my dragon bong, I showed you the box, I’m literally keeping the store open just for you, and now you want me to pull out my back dragging your 30s porno comics for you?”

“Okay fine. Today’s Tom Sawyer said you were kind of a dick.”

“Wait…who the fuck is Today’s Tom Sawyer…isn’t that a Rush song…and how do I know him again?”

“Well he knows you.” 

Pointless fished a cell phone out of his pocket, punched redial. “Yeah, hi, it’s me. Pointless. You were right about the Eight Pagers, and you were also right about the manager…dick!!! Can you come down and help a white man out? Oh now come on, you’re still stuck on that little prick-tease Becky Thatcher? Dude, we have got to get you over that ass and into some new…oh, all right. You had me worried there for a second. Uh-huh, yeah, I need some, uh, assistance with the merchandise.”

Larry fingered the grip on his .357 and imagined fingering the clit on Becky.  “What was that all about?”

Without answering, Pointless sank to the floor and began listlessly thumbing through a copy of The Hulk which had oozed through a rip in a nearby box. Five minutes passed in uncomfortable silence. Then the doorbell rang.

“You should probably get that.”

“Ya think?” said Larry. he returned to the front of the store and opened the door, visions of hits from the dragon dancing in his head. A tall, gangly man in his early 20’s flew past him, trailing the odor of burnt corn silk.

“Whoa, not so fast there pal.” But Today’s Tom Sawyer had already joined Pointless in the storeroom where, with many grunts and sighs, he commenced removing the boxes that sagged over “1930s–eight pagers, one handers.” 

“If it’s not too much to ask, do you think you might re-stack those boxes once you’ve finished?”

The two ignored him. Finally, Today’s Tom Sawyer lugged the box with the Depression-era porn comics across the floor, and he and Pointless began rooting through it, tossing books until they came to “Betty Boop, Ming the Merciless and the Strap-On Kid.”

“Sweet!” said Huck, whistling through his teeth. “Oh Betty, you naughty, dirty minx you…” He pressed the book to his lips. “And your tiny, tiny friend…”

“You going to buy that?” hissed Larry. “Fifty bucks. And I’m taking a loss here.”

Today’s Tom Sawyer suddenly rose from the floor, pulled Larry to his chest and began relentlessly sniffing him. “Huck has his pleasures,” said Tom. “I have mine. Oh yeah, that’s tha primo bio-snuff.”

“Get a good hit?”

“Muh dude…” Tom relinquished his death-grip on Larry, who fell to the floor, vitiated. He felt as though his life essence had been sucked like someone had taken an assembly of mechanized soda straws to his arteries…

“What the fuck did you just do to me?” He could barely articulate the question. The ceiling swam before his eyes. Betty Boop lowered her panties and he sniffed comic book pooner.

“Today’s Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you,” said Pointless. “Ok, I’ll take the book.” He pulled a wad of cash from his jeans pocket, placed it in Larry’s limp, twitching paws.

Pointless exited the store, whistling. Today’s Tom Sawyer slid to the floor beside him, a blissful grin blooming on his face. “Since I started doing bio-snuff, my sex drive has been commuted…” he said. “I cum internally.” And then…

“Listen, I’m really sorry about Pointless. Huck hasn’t been the same since he tried to light out for the territories and instead lit up some killer kush that turned out to be laced with angel dust or some shit…when he returned, he had this faraway look and all he could talk about was vintage comics featuring strap-ons worn by miniature folx…me, I’ve been a happy camper ever since I learned how to get hoi af on people…it’s better than sex, better than any fucking cock in the world, mate. Hey, you look a little green in the onions…don’t you worry though, you recharge fully. I’m not a vampire or nothing. At least…”

“It’s all good.” Thoroughly drained, Larry was long past caring. “You know what? You’re all right. Fuck yeah. Definitely all right.”

“Thanks! And here you are, my new friend…The Bangkok Gunfighter without Pointless Huck Finn. You want a hit off me now, man?”

“Why the fuck not…why fucking not?”

The Night is Friendly

Tommy Keys pulled the black knit sailor’s cap over his ears and eyebrows, checking himself in the mirror. Frigid glacier blue eyes stared stonily from above a neatly trimmed mustache. Lucy was in bed in a lacy bra and panties, painting her toenails with toilet paper stuck between each toe. Her chosen color matched her barely concealed cherry red nipples. Tommy checked her out and whistled, she was a well-constructed woman. Except when she got a case of the ass, then it was like pissing on a wasp’s nest.

“Did Joey get a hold of you?” she asked.

“Yea,” he replied, checking his toolkit. Tempered surgical steel lockpicks, shims, a prybar, alligator clipped wires, a miniature electronic circuit interrupter, minuscule listening devises, and all the gadgets of a master thief. Everything fit on his belt, that could be gotten rid at the touch of a quick release button.

From a black case, Tommy took out his nine-millimeter semi-automatic. He took it apart, cleaned and reassembled it, slipping it into a holster. He pushed the red button to safety, showing the cannon to Lucy.

“You never work with guns.”

“It’s for you, baby. Just in case something heavy goes down,” Tommy replied. “I’ve got some cash for you to take care of.” He slid open the bottom two drawers of his dresser. Hundred-dollar bundles filled both drawers to the top.

Tommy covered the pistol with a towel. “Just push the red button and start blasting. But only if you feel threatened. You are worth much more than any amount of money.”

“You’re scaring me Tommy. Where did you get all the money? Why are you talking crazy, about something maybe going wrong?”

“Remember that call from Joey?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we had this caper going down that went sweet then sour. You know I usually work alone, but I felt sorry for him. Joey, being almost family and all. He hasn’t been able to put anything together since doing that nickel in Folsom. Hell, Joey didn’t even get to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The cops were on him, like stink on shit.”

“Since when is the ex-old man of your wayward slut cousin, family? Besides anyone dumb enough to hijack a semi-truck of disposable diapers, with no one lined up to buy them, deserves jail. Just because all babies shit, does not mean, sales are immediate and guaranteed. Then he stops off at a café for a plate of spaghetti, with cops on his trail. Then he stiffs the waiter on the bill and tries to trade him diapers for his food and tip, as the cops surround him in the parking lot.”

“Anybody can have a run of bad luck. Babies deserve clean bottoms. What goes in, must come out.”

“So what’s happening now?” Lucy asked.

“Something I heard Apache Nick and some dudes at the snooker hall discussing. You know I usually go for jobs with finesse and I rely only on myself. I needed a partner on the job I heard about. Even Joey can handle this job and he’ll get a fat slice of the pie. There isn’t much risk, we had to steal a big sedan and a truck with a hydraulic lift gate and stash it until the gig. We mounted police scanners in both vehicles. Then we followed armored cars to get their routes and times, when they filled ATM machines. We figured twenty thousand in each.”

“The night of the job everything seemed quiet. I sat in a Buick at the edge of a parking lot, monitoring all the police frequencies. I give Joey the signal and he put the truck in reverse with the tailgate lowered to just above ground level. You should’ve seen it, it worked beautifully. Plate glass flying all over. The tailgate slices the ATM’s foor bolts and shears all the wires clean. Joey jumps from the truck cab, wearing a ski mask and gloves. He has the entire machine on the gate, raises it into the truck, latches the gate hook, and is driving out, all in forty-two seconds. Smoother than vanilla ice cream.”

“That’s when the shit hit the fan. Up drives Apache Nick with two cronies in a truck almost identical to ours and it has an ATM machine loaded in the back. It seems we grabbed the cheese right out of the rat’s mouth. I gunned the Buick and speared and bent their right front wheel out of commission. Apache pulls a hog leg and starts blasting. Shotgun pellets peppering the back of the sedan. Joey is long gone in the clear. Sirens are screaming big time, as I dodge bullets and cops and burn rubber out of there. I lost Joey. I headed to our garage hideout. I waited for a few hours, getting more worried by the minute. I finally decided to call you and blow town. Guess what happened?”

“You know I hate guessing games, Tommy.”

“Joey decided the frst caper went so easy and as long as he had the truck, he’d knock over a few more machines. Joey listened to the police radio, about the big bust of Apache Nick. He fgured most of the heat was on them.”

“Damn, it seems we underestimated Joey,” Lucy said.

“Yes, he could tell where the cops were and where they were not. Luckily it paid off big. I cracked open all fve ATM’s like Houdini with dime store handcuffs. Joey and I under calculated the payout on each machine. We scored almost eight hundred thousand.”

“Let’s take that vacation, we always talked about Tommy. Head south of the border, drink lots of tequila, and smoke sticky buds, and watch dudes dive off high cliffs into the ocean. Why are you wearing your work clothes? With a score that big, why tempt fate? Let’s go now, please.”

“Remember the saying, there’s no honor among thieves? It’s not true. I have to help Apache Nick and his crew with an early release. I might be the only thief to break in instead of out of jail. Get us all packed up, pretty woman.”

“As soon as my nails dry, my love.”

Tommy winked and said, “The night is friendly.” He opened the door and melted into the darkness.

***

From Double Scorpion Mezcalito

I am Your Back Door Man

“I have the most amazing restaurant for us.” Sheila bit her lower lip. I could barely understand her, my face buried deep in her lush pubic hair, my tongue seeking out her inner lips. I slid my gaze off her glistening wetness. Sheila’s dilated pupils stared back at me.

“Just that you’re eating … hmm … made me hungry.” She ran her fingers through my hair and pushed my face back into her pubes, crushing me against her softness. “Baby needs sustenance after she cums.” Her voice ragged now. “And baby needs to cum.”

“I do my best work on my knees.”

“You better.” She flinched as I flicked my tongue across her clit. “Damn. You better.”

No more talking. Not if I expected to enjoy the rest of the evening. Sheila could be quite the taskmaster if she was not pleased. She spread her thighs wider, allowing me to delve deeper into her hot cunt.

I slid my tongue deep into her wetness, my nose flush into her pubic hair. Her juices ran down my cheeks onto my neck. Pushing up for a second, I worked my index finger deep into her. The juices coating it, lubricating me. Finger fucking her deep deep, my middle finger joining the index to thrust further into her – my tongue still doing its best to please her clit as she thrashed her thighs back and forth.

Slowly, I rested my left hand under her soft intoxicating ass cheeks, massaging them as I continued to slide deep into her with my right, my knuckled ring finger and pinky slapping against her taint as I fingered her. She pushed up off the bed slightly, purchase, my left hand squeezing in, thumb pressing gently against her tight ass, slowly sliding into her hole, she gasping, moaning – hips thrusting towards me. I’m drowned in twat juice and the smell of her sex, the scrape of her pubic hair, the quickening pace of her pulse against my cheek, my fingers, my every fiber of being.

Bearing down with my tongue, her thighs splayed open, my tongue darted, flicked, Sheila’s hand tore into my hair, pulling it into knots, pushing my face forward. One hand loosened and scratched at my neck, pulling at the skin. I sink into her and lose myself entirely.

And she was cumming. All over my face. Drenching me. To die in her succulence.

It was a few minutes before I could raise the energy to roll up onto the bed. As I lay there, Sheila stroked my nipple. My eyes took in the beauty next to me. Where had she appeared from? Sheila reminded me of Hyapatia Lee, with her luxurious pubic hair and long straight black hair. Especially as she reclined on the bed, post-orgasm. “Baby needs sustenance. Yum Cimil. The new Cajun place over in Claremont. In the old village. By the college campus.”

I sighed as she pinched my nipple harder, ran her hand across my inner thigh. “Doesn’t sound Cajun. Salvadorean? Peruvian?”

“The chef took over from old ownership. They’re still rebranding. The original owners had been there simply forever.” She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and scrolled through their Instagram – hardwood floors, open ceiling, glittering bar, jazz combo, beignets, and an exquisitely shot gumbo. “If you’re good, I’ll give you a special treat at the end of the night.” She wrapped her fingers around my shaft and stroked.

Sheila knew me too well. I moaned. A few moments of her erotic machinations and she loosened her grip. I tried to concentrate.

“Didn’t I read about missing college kids in the area lately?” An ex had texted me about it last week. They were worried about going out. Maybe I could assuage their fears? I ghosted them.

“What’s the matter? Scared of a little rumor? It’s SoCal, nothing is safe. Nothing is real.” She laughed. “Maybe you’re scared of spicy Cajun on your delicate palate?” She bit the base of my neck. “Scared of more spicy me on your delicate dick?”

Sold.

Sheila was correct. Yum Cimil served a succulent whole fried catfish with an equally succulent etouffee. As succulent as Sheila.

And yes, as succulent as their staff. Luther, with a little bit of blue dye in his hair. Eyeliner. Paper skinny, barely filling out his uniform, white button down and a vest. When he brought waters to the table, my hand brushed his. I could see he was blushing, even behind his mask. Safety first. His eyes were black and melty.

I knew there was a smile hidden there.

And I felt myself bulging in my jeans. I realized the restrooms were near the kitchen. I timed a trip to when we would be circling out of the bustling kitchen with a tray of beignets and banana pudding. Such luxuriant cream.

As I went by, I whispered, “when you off?” and winked. He turned red again. 

“At closing, 10.” Fifteen minutes. 

As I slid back into my seat, Sheila gave my thigh a little squeeze “Do you like your special treat?” And she winked.

“Hmmm?”

“You think I found this place by luck? I know the new owner … and his staff. They’re very special. You’ve been a good boy. Baby likes to treat her good boys well.” She flicker her tongue into my ear. Her words penetrated my nipples. “And I believe Luther knows how to treat you well.” Her fingers dug into my thigh. She blew a kiss to Luther.

Sheila and I walked hand in hand out of Yum Cimil. Her nails dug into my palm, inflaming me. I could feel heat radiating from her body. The coiling taut sex in her. She tickled her tongue across her lips as we reached the corner. “You should go that way.” She pointed. “Enjoy. I’ll be waiting for you later.”

Yum Cimil took up the corner. I went down the side street and found the cook’s entrance in the back. I shivered, suddenly cool in the SoCal night.

And then, Luther slid out, no mask on, his lips as soft and full as I’d hoped. He smiled. I kissed him quickly, hard. His mouth opening, our tongues intertwining. I pulled him close. The taste of Sheila’s juices mingled with the waft of the blackened flesh of the catfish, and then the sweaty musk of Luther, such a sweet bouquet of sex and feast and … anticipation.

My bulge was bursting my jeans, tight on his thigh. 

He smiled.

“What do you want?”

Hmmm. What did I want? Sheila knew me too well.

Luther shoved me back into a doorway a bit off the back of Yum Cimil, in the dark. Just hidden enough, so no one passing on the street would see. He sunk to his knees. His hands undid my belt. My cock leaped out as soon as he unzipped it. I wasn’t wearing briefs, just cock. It slapped teasingly at his face. He leaned back and laughed, then took the head in between his soft soft lips. So good. I moaned as soon as his tongue encircled the head, licking at the soft spot on the bottom. I put my hand into his blue-tinged hair, stroking it as he began to bob up and down my shaft, taking more and more in, wetting the entire length. 

He took long slow strokes, prolonging my agony. The head barely in his mouth and then down down until his lips were touching my balls. Slowly up and down, up and down. My passion was burning. A few minutes, and I was so inflamed. I dug my fingers into his hair and started stroking faster into his mouth, my hand holding his head steady. Hmmm. His lips loosened. He moaned on my shaft as I thrust. Faster. Harder. Deeper. Lee fucking Majors. My balls slapping his chin.

He felt my passion before I did. His lips suddenly tightening, grasping my cock harder, so hard, so soft, so intense. I pulled back one more stroke … and came deep deep into his throat, spasm after spasm of cum. My knees buckled. I dug deeper into his hair as the last few shots splurted between into his lips…slipping my cock out into the cool night air. Finally leaning back against the door behind me…

Which gave way, yawning open behind me. I started to fall, grasping the frame for purchase. Luther pushed me, his hands into my hip bones, thrusting lewdly. Cum dripped from his lips… and blood, a whisper of blood where his incisor bit into his lip. The floor came fast up on me.

I pulled my jeans up as I struggled to my feet. The back kitchen was not a kitchen. Not really. My mind tried to take it all in. The space was cavernous, much much too big to be the tiny space I had glimpsed Luther come out of only a short time ago. It was a kitchen, perhaps. But more primal and more technologically advanced then should exist. It was though cave dwellers, those who rent their meat with canines and flint and open flame, had been thrust directly into a twenty-third century of laser knives and three-dimensional holograms of the innards of any and all manner of creature – so that though could grind all the juices out. Epicurean barbarism. Neolithic modernism. A cave, a cavern, dimly lit, darkened, and yet punctuated, lit large, by fluorescents and freons that bathed it all in a cold sharp glow. My mind couldn’t grasp it. Like someone flicking the light switch on and off, on and off, off and on – stupendous darkness and unbearable light. All of it populated with … with decadence. So light headed, I swooned.

A hand caught me. I turned, Luther was grinning at me. He licked his fingers sensuously, his eyes locked on mine. “What do you want?”

What did I want?

My eyes accustomed themselves to the vision in front of me. It focused into, not normalcy, but a kind of coherence. It made sense. No. it made no sense. But I could see. Luther led me by the arm. Further into the … kitchen? Operating theater? The alien non-Euclidian amphitheater? We stopped in front of a hulking smoking monstrosity.

It was a living breathing vision of the milking machine from A Boy and His Dog. I remembered being horrified and aroused by the film in the middle of the night, stumbling into it – the dark mechanical succubus pulling the sperm and cum out of Don Johnson. But this monstrosity, this mechanical not mechanical thing sucked at every orifice of the men and women attached to it – cocks, vulvas, assholes, lips, nostrils. Ears! My god, it was penetrating their ears.

“I knew you’d be perfect and ripe. Even before I tasted you.” Luther’s lips curled back, his tongue flailing out. I could see dancing shadows in the back of his throat, hissing like medusa’s tresses. I was getting hard again, despite my fear.

Luther laughed. “You see. You want it. You desire it. No one who tastes the kisses of Yum Cimil can resist.”

“What? What do you mean?” My breath, I could barely catch my breath. I was sweating profusely. Burning up. And throbbing. My brain wanted to run, run, run … but my hardon wanted to press itself deep into the silent pumping machine. To fuck the machine. The complete Yum Cimil.

“Don’t resist.” Luther drew closer. His tongue flickered out and licked my ear. “It’s better than any threesome you’ve ever been in..”

“How do you…?”

“I’ve tasted you. Before you even set foot in here. Yum Cimil has tasted you.” His hand found my belt again, unhooking it. My cock rising free into the cool air. Yum Cimil throbbed, a tentacled extension weaving its way towards me across the floor. I became aware at last of the rest of Yum Cimil’s domain. Not just the succubus, the incubus. No too, the skinning machine. Flayed bodies hanging on racks, what little fluids left to them draining out. The abattoir. The fluids rolling down the troughs into spigots just down the way. Just down the way. Luther smiled. Other waitstaff moved about, collecting heaping dishes to be served. Served where? Who were Yum Cimil’s nocturnal customers? The foods, the succulent foods. But what, what sweetmeats were they? The cock-like feeler slid onto my shoe, poking my jeans.

I stepped back, banging into one of the … one of the cooks. Shapeless, formless, human, not human, all part of the Yum Cimil. The probe slid between them, ignored. The creatures were committed to slicing away at the desiccated bodies on their counter. The catfish. The beautiful whole fried catfish, bubbling in oil – oil extracted from the bodies by Yum Cimil. And the dried slices, garnishing the dishes. The etouffee!

“This is what you wanted. This is your destiny.” Luther continued to whisper into my ear as he guided me to the glittering tentacle, lifted it, caressing it lovingly as he brought it towards me. “All you have ever wanted is the pleasures of the flesh.”

Yes. Sheila. Luther. Those moments of swipe right. Naked in the back of a car. In a hotel room with the curtains closed waiting my turn, stroking it, one more in line. With the husband tied up in the corner as I took his wife. With the wife tied up in the corner as I took her husband. That first time, in a movie theatre, not knowing who was watching. Knowing now, who had been watching, who had always been watching. Yum Cimil. It had always been watching. Always been waiting. Always wanting my pleasures.

I fell to my knees. I do my best work on my knees. Luther brought the tentacle close. It wrapped hard grasping around my cock. Into my cock. Another slid across the floor, cold deep penetrating my ass. I moaned. Another tentacle erupted off the floor through my lips at that moment. Crushing the sound.

Briefly, my eyes focused. Sheila stood there. She smiled, blood dripped from her lips, a whisper where her incisor bit into her lip. “I’m so glad I tasted you. Hmmm. Baby needs sustenance.”

And Yum Cimil devoured me.

It was glorious.

The Devil’s Chalice

I took a diamond pickaxe to father’s heart. “Papa aleppe, papa aleppe Satan!”our dog Plutus barked like a Looney Tunes hound as I struck Daddy’s chest open and spatchcocked his ribs on my cutting board. Plutus snuck a scrap of father from the industrial kitchen floor, then ran away. That got a gulping, bloody laugh out of dad, where my pickaxe from Mulciber had struck the first crack like Lowest Circle ice on father’s flesh.

“Princess mine, my baby Sin, your dog is a goofball,” Daddy chuckled as I, his only daugher, poured terrines of his blood over his flesh’s freshly baked sweetmeats. 

“Are you sure you want to do this, dad? You’re immortal. You could have anything in the realms you want.” I paused, thoughtful. “I could give you anything, really. I can make and unmake Fate, sway mortal and immortal hearts to your favor, invent new colors for your robes not dreamed of by Mother Nature, bleed ichor from HaShem himself to cover your biscuits.”

“What I want is a clean, good death, and my daughter to know she is loved, even after I am gone. G-d forbid I become a Cronus, Sin. It is time to let me go.” He held my hand. Weary, were the lines on his face, the pockmarks on his cheeks from a case of the blood plague. He was wizened, hunched and paunch-ed, ugly yet handsome, and now, he bared his heart

To the World.

I smiled. “Ok, Daddy. You are loved, you know. I only cut this deep because I am so devoted.”

Samael smiled in turn: “Slice me to the bone, my Princess we once named Sin – Hell’s Youth always eat their Old. I am but Caelus, Father Universe, due for my perpetual slaughter by you – the Soul of the World. Render me to fat for Tantalus’ larder and suet for your pet harpies. Mince my bones to make bloodmeal for my sweet Lilith’s roses.” 

My father laid Corpse Pose on our industrial steel kitchen table. Dissected like Adam’s rib for Eve, I had marked Daddy in lines of ink to guide where to cut further. Samael was dark and resplendent, the stink of his blood and sulfur permeating our endless Backrooms glitch-kitchen. 

Oh, he was mutilated and fabulous! Lungs like an eagle! Liver Prometheus! Nyarlathotep – God of a Thousand Faces! Hunchback Hephaestus, Fallen Volcano from Olympus! Bhairava of the Charnel Grounds! Tezcatlipoca of the Smoking Mirror! Odin of the Eight-legged Gallows! A Corpulent Crowley, writing Absinthe-Fueled Odes!

My dad: tender, terrible, terrifying, trying, true. The Devil loves our souls like no other. He is the only constant humanity knows.

We were in our cavernous cooking hall I had grown up making arancini and knish with mama Lilith in: this time, her husband was on the menu. I had planned and prepared for a feast in Hell not seen since the Fallen Angels had first scavenged the corpses of their dead comrades. A third of the Host had perished, Samael’s stories went – 

“In the Beginning,” Daddy always told me at bedtime as a babe, “there was barely anything. Water, salt. Rock, dark. We still eat The Dead in their honor – Daemon and Damned, Angel and Godling, alike. Soylent green, the mortals say. Heh!” Then, he’d fish a freshly sawed-off pinkie out of his pocket for my baby teeth. I’d bite it like tropical sugarcane, suck on the digit like a pacifier, and imagine it a bloody Starburst candy as I scoured it dry. Lilith was crunchy, no processed sugar in the house, but Samael always snuck me Toblerone chocolate and candy cigarettes.

Samael had explained in earnest a fortnight ago to his Infernal Sanhedrin Council: the Devil wanted his chance to give Dark Communion to the Archdukes and Court Ladies, Princes and Princesses alik, and Goetic Matrons, Lords, and their Cambion and Nephilim offspring. Daddy was weary of existence – it had been thousands of millennia down the line since he had Fallen, and his favored dinosaurs had died, and the demagogues of his Cainite descendants with Eve in Nod had once ruled the Prince of Air’s Earth and been washed out by G-d’s Flood. 

So, Daddy had offered before the Hellopolis court a radical, Jonathan Swift-ian proposal: self-mastication, self-offering, self-sacrifice. This was to be Samael’s “retirement” party. “Eat of my body, drink of my wine, brothers and sisters – flesh is the flesh!” Daddy Devil had proclaimed at Court this week to all the Goetic ‘Howling.’ 

And as for me, now struggling with sacrificing my own sire, hours before he served himself on the menu? Daddy was gently encouraging: “Taste my offerings before the general fanfare, Sinna. To you I gift the best, juiciest portion of myself. You shall inherit my powers and forge my soul into your weapon. Carve a blade of my rightmost rib, light it with your magick. Make my knucklebones your Crown. Rule. Be good, Sinna.”

“Yes, Daddy… but… I will miss you,” I nodded my brown-tressed head, wistful, my smile bittersweet. I had always loved Daddy’s mad adventures and wild plots. Freaks of nature, he and I. Lilith was a recluse, wild, barely around these days.

This was downright diabolical – I was to slaughter my own Father! But… I was also to absorb his power, and carry his golden soul left after the feast to a humble afterlife, far, far from the misery of Hell’s throne: Samael wanted to be reborn as a castle gardener, nine kingdoms and three pairs of iron shoes from any Abrahamic realm, out of reach from his Heavenly Father’s faith that damned us. G-d had laid out long ago what He thought holy – Michael – and what was His shadow – Sam Hill.

Sam, Sammane, Zamiel the Black Huntsman. Death, Desire, Destruction. Plague and War, but Daddy wanted: Innocence.

I was, in fact, taking on his burden of Hell’s crown like Christ. It was an Iron Maiden tiara, forged of his heart gem, the Lapis Exilis, and his virile, terrible, burning seed and blood. I carried Samael’s legacy in me, it left bloody streak on my girlfriend and aunt, Naamah’s, cedar lips. I could not escape sacrificing Daddy like Zeus. I was doing Samael the ultimate favor – letting him Escape.

My eyes misted. Duty called, a heavy Damocles sword over my webbed wings. I knifed back to the present: “I’ll make sure you taste juicy and sinful, Daddy. Just right.”

Samael sighed. In pleasure or pain, I didn’t know. It’s always hard to watch daughters grow up, even if you’re Henry the VIII, or have murderous intentions like Bluebeard on your young wife. Daddy had never seduced me like most demons did their children. But there were lines blurred, fires unkempt in his ashen hair, a lust in his eye at my cuts. We both had bites, claws, wit, him and I.

The dissection began. The slaughter. We fell into familial silence that eternity spent by his and Lilith’s hearthside had provided me. Each evening, jazz played across an easy peace from the chaos of our days. Royal reverie, we retired each busy night, settling into TV dinners an endless static reruns, far from the bloody streets. The satellite and network reception, even the Internet, was shit seven circles below. At most, I got Thai girls love dramas bootlegged on YouTube, or I Love Lucy reruns. I thought of Lucy, eating chocolate she had failed to wrap, as I deconstructed and seasoned Daddy like his own favorite TV character, Hannibal Lecter, did to his cannibal’s dishes on the shitty telly. 

I cut steak from the Daddy’s breastbone, biceps, and legs with Tantalus’s artisanal Japanese knives. Tantalus had barely agreed to lend them. Samael’s muscle – lightly salted, pan-seared with butter as Beelzebub had taught me – paired with the Gehenna-ianti I had bought from Astaroth’s Farm-to-Table Market Stant perfectly. The combination of the devilish dish and the sulfur-grape wine conjured up rainy springs in fields of Pompeii’s exploded ash and popped-cherry-sundresses under Nazi skies, girl’s blood tilling the dirt. I had walked battlefields as Blood Raven, saved some, slaughtered others. I drank the blood, I kissed maidens and stableboys alive. I soaked in souls as Death. I saw all human’s sins as black rot on their souls. I could see even you, across this computer screen where you sit, Dear Reader.

I know all your faults and failings!

All those bastards – the Assyrian sliver-flesh armies, the torturers of the Ming Dynasty, soiled Japanese ronin legacies, roving African warlord bands who sold their own to the Middle Passage, sacrificial Aztecs, SS Camp Butcher Josef Mengele– were here for me to punish down in Hell. I was Daddy’s Left Hand. 

I had the second bite of his trapezius after my first sample of his ribs. I gave Samael the third morsel. Then, Chaos. Hunger we became. We gorged ourselves on his flesh in turn. After the initial blood palate of iron and copper of Satan subsided, a richer, more complex, muddier taste emerged amongst his roasted muscle and sulfur-wine. Daddy tasted like the lazy college days of my youth. Nostalgia. Memory.  Chocolate cherries. Cocaine off my girlfriend – Aunt Naamah’s – tit, when I had had my first youthful crush on dear old Tubal-Cain and then Noah’s eternal wife, and Naamah had initiated me into the ways of feminine pleasure.

Memories swam through me, and I cried. It was goodbye to the old. The final hours of dad’s life. I remembered it all, but those without him stuck out. Boating across the Styx on my trust fund yacht with handsome princesses and pretty incubi that swarmed my long legs and beautiful figure. They sniffed money and saw beauty in me. I fucked them, tormented them, ate some, mutilated the lucky, drowned the others. I still had too much dead currency to burn even now, and my lovers, of course, still came, despite my inclinations to my Aunt Naamah. The suitors and seductresses begged for honey from Princess Sin’s mouth. All empires fall, all coins come here. The buck always stops with Charon. I could bathe in gold, if I wanted.

For the truth is this: Samael, the Angel of Death, Chief of Satan’s, Mar’s Spirit, is sterile. Instead, Daddy plucked me from his heart one evening. It was a whim. Sin of Satan’s heart, Samael had stitched me into Lilith’s womb like Zagreus in Zeus’ thigh, and thus, the Princess of Hell incubated 300 years, then was born.

Oh, how I would miss dad!

I inspected my blood eagle-spread sire: his auto-cannibal mess and my precise cuts on his artfully distressed organs dribbled. Samael roasted on a shallow tiered pan, drenched in Madeira below filets of flesh and marrow. Terrines of his blood swam with the offal, gravy and Jefferson’s favorite wine. It was a mess. It was a miracle. I had done a masterwork like Michelangelo: rendering Satan up for the gods. It was a culinary Sistine Chapel I had created! Why would I not have the talent of Da Vinci or David’s Carver or Fellini or Felicien Rops, for Satan was Beauty Incarnate? And I was his greatest work! I should be remembered! Praised! Feared! O Sin, Master of Death, Queen Anointed in Blood!

Daddy spoke again, wheezing through his sliced, weeping lungs: “And now, HACK – the final touch, dear Sinna. Cut the black sklerokardia from my heart. But careful what wine you drink from the Devil’s Chalice. You never know what grows from Hell’s dregs.” 

Daddy pet my hair, his eyes misty, I the Titan-destroying, devouring daughter of Heylel. 

I had learned to kill my hope and innocence from the best of him. I was Sin, no fragile girlchild. Hope and great horror of Hell. Every day was torture, vice, drugs, drunken amusements. Ablutions in blood. Crack off Naamah’s chest. Poisoned fentanyl. But family life? It had been… soft. But Daddy lost himself, over the years, his sheen dulling over hundreds of millennia. And Lilith tired of us both. I missed her.

Now, all that was left of my eternal youth was treachery – my wit, weapons, and wry humor. What I could cook and kill, trap in the snowy hinterlands of Gehenna, served me better than Tantalus’ exotic aperitifs and tapas which Moloch’s wife Tanit cooked. Like my Daddy, I had unusual appetites. A great maw in the pit of my gullet. Hunger for everything evil. Unholy Death, Sin, Destruction. Whore of Babylon!

Father would fit my appetite 

well.

I sank into a chef’s meditation like Anthony Bourdain: Strike, hack, pierce my butcher knife carved of angel bone went, burrowing into Samael’s soul. Daddy’s lapis lazuli organs bled ichor’ed gold-blue like a star. Like the piece of Lapis Exilis he molded me from. Thirsty in the wastes beyond Eden where we lived, where only asphodel and suicide soul trees grew, I drank down Daddy’s Damnation. I was hot and bothered, getting off. His manhood stood mast-heavy and hilted. It was burning in the kitchen. Hellacious.

I put his red, bleeding member in my mouth.

Chomped. Took a bite. He came as I masticated, and his seed queened my throat, his power flooding me like backwater Kentucky moonshine and rum from the Cays I’d shared with Blackbeard, long ago.

Oh, a delight! We fell into a mess, lover’s knot tie’d, liar’s eye-d.

Oh, what a vintage! I unbuttoned my blouse, let the dribble rub on my warmed palms onto my bare golden breasts. His seed and cock meat tasted like the Eucharist I had once stolen from a medieval church where the Plague had destroyed all the residents. The grains had rotted, the rat’s bellies full off left out bread. The rodents were maddened into rat kings from hallucinogenic ergot. The monstrous creatures danced, tied to leaves, horse shit, and infected corpses. The little beasts smelled of rotting cheese. The plague smallings had orgied for days amongst maggots and flesh, fleas mange feasting on their couplings, tang’led tails like Mama Lilith’s curled, matted red tresses until they fell into the river and drowned.

I chewed my Father, thinking of my life unspooling into Beginnings as he gave up his End. Samael smiled, fileted and flayed. The Jewish folklore goes: at the End of Times, G-d shall fish the Male Leviathan from the Depths and feed him to the masses. G-d had already killed She Leviathan long ago to stop them from contemplating, sea serpents swallowing the world. And if my Satan was anything, wasn’t he Taniniver, the joining serpent between him and Lilith? Anyway, I had caught, as I said, the Leviathan already. Now, I had eaten Daddy’s crown. If that meant the Apocalypse, the Whore overtaking the Masculine Hunger, so be it.

Samael sighed in delight, dragging root-suckle claws up my rib cage as we lay together in post-coital bliss, lightly scratching me in turn. He bled out on the table like a vulture carcass. I fixed my ruined top, laid out his bones and slices of his meat, muscle, and gore like poetry. He hummed “ohm.” Samael’s phalanges I arranged to the right of the crimson banquet table. I set a phylactery of his bottled blood, pieced together like a puzzle, on the left tray. Satan’s pieces were my Pawn, his skull my Queen. I was moving the pieces of the Devil in a gamble against G-d.

“My bones your weapons now, dear,” he said, tender.

“Oh- okay. I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, my Heart.”

I did it. Samael’s last gifts: I took his rightmost rib. Blew sparks on his knucklebones to fuse a crown of blood and bone. Summoned my blue foxfire to make a scythe of his right rib.

I, Sin – was now Hell’s Queen.

“You make a fellow proud – HACK – to be a Father. COME, MY BROTHERS – FEAST!”

Calamity erupted, tearing open the bowels of the earth over our kitchen. I spirited the feast away to the place of the Watchers, miffed that the Fallen Host’s chaos might disturb my oiled cutting board and oaken, designer, midcentury modern table. The Howling Goetics and Rotted Kings descended as I laid Samael out for the wolves on Mount Hermon. And they? Feasted. Fucked. Delighted in Samael’s miserious death. No one mourned but me and Naamah.

I thought I could hear Lilith’s wild, red laugh as she bled menstrual fluid into a far shore, Primal Whore Jahi dampening Ahura Mazda with her coils of ruin. She was curled up next to Angra Mainyu, Satan of long ago, in reverie with the Husband and Twin of Darkness she always had, but had always lost.

Unlike mama, I had no power to keep Daddy here. He gave his adulthood to Lilith. His weary ghost was hers.

I had his soul.

Naamah held me as I watched Samael, reduced to bone – then marrow, then, nothing.

When the Dark Communion was done, and the demons and royalty had fled, and all was silent on Mount Hermon, I slipped Daddy’s golden soul into the coin purse Charon had gifted me on my sixteenth birthday. I set out to that Happy Place Daddy had given Eve in offering for bearing his only son, my dead brother Cain. It was in a garden of roses, like Gan Eden, that his new form was born to a castle gardener couple. I slipped him into a newborn, towhead girl. Her mother, suckling Daddy’s feminine form now, smelled of roses. The babe’s father smelled of rain, soil, lilac, and peonies.

Naamah held my hand, and we walked away, no one knowing the better. Mama Lilith raised a glass to me, then set off to wander the wastes with Daddy’s ghost, never to return. The Red Sea always called Lilith far away, and the tides of those shores known only to Hell’s First Queen had treasure she and Daddy’s weary ghost longed to find.

His power, his power! It wasn’t enough… I bid Aunt Naamah goodbye with a kiss, left her at the Gates of Hell. I summoned my Whore’s Power, my Queen’s Power, and I made out for more to fuel my gaping maw. Hitching a snaking path on the ribbons of Samael’s boring that once had snuck into Heaven in a Paradise Lost long ago, I slid behind the Heavenly Throne. No one saw me. For I am Sin. Sin is a shadow, a bone of regret. The power of darkness and longing. No pure angels or Heavenly G-d ever sees Sin, for no sinless being wants to acknowledge their faults – not even Daddy’s Father. He and Michael, especially, are Blind to the suffering of the world. I rest at the heart of everyone’s breast. Even the Devil. Even Christ and Mary. Even G-d.

Do not wonder why I struck G-d down so easily – the Devil’s Daughter is tricky, and a gameboard of Fate against Death is always the backdoor entrance to Heaven. Dante did it, why not me? Aligheri’s Beatrice, Ascended, Saw All. I can be an Inverse Beatrice, fucked raw by evil, dragging G-d to the Pit. Women always get the best of immortals, kings, killers and angels – why not, why not, why not. 

And now, I rule Heaven and Hell as the Goddess whose tree breasts and whispered pagan Canaanite prayers were once chopped apart and swallowed by Asherah’s Pet Snake, for safekeeping in the Nachash’s skull. Reborn, Asherah once, now Sin. I am Freedom. I am the Crying Banshee of Justice and Vengeance in the night. In my nightswimming Goddess vision, Sati brides jumped the troth fire, drowned and stone honor killed, acid-stained wives screamed. 

Samael gave it all, in the end.

I, already, gave more. Women have more capacity for duty, for pain.

I stitched the Father back into a Frankenstein/Siamese Twin, as if I was Mary Shelley fucking Percy on her mother’s grave, dreaming up seam-split Adam over her miscarriage and Byron’s stormy summer nights. 

My Frankenstein, newly birthed, twitched at my careful zombie stitches on a round slab of iron and sorrow where Aslan once bled, lashed, for a Winter Queen. The soul needle I wielded to make G-d my slave was mined by Mulciber from the tenebrous depths of Murmur’s palace:

Black ringlets, G-d had. Like his firstborn star, Samael. Red eye, blue cheek, purple lips. It almost hurt to look. Bronzy skin, Slave G-d had. A hand meant to cut with claws of catbird. Wings of bat and dove. I mastered His flesh, riding his manhood until he awoke. An eager Gabriel kissed me in the Angel’s Threesome. She always liked narrative twists, surprises.

Finally, G-d/Slave woke in wild orgasm. Spurts, white wine, seed for my legions I would birth as Dominiqueen of All Reality. I absorbed all control of the Multiverses from G-d, my pawn, I His Savior. When my Frankenstein’s Monster rose, he flexed his Achilles heel and thumb tendon, marveling at the monster I’d made of Him.

“What have you done to me, Little Bird of Samael?” G-d/Devil asked in a purr, then laughed, clearly impressed. I swelled with Pride. He continued: “Thou hast made me better than before, and thrice as blessed: resurrected the slumbering part of El in me. Now, my power is silk under the thumb of a temptress. I can spin fate, cast fire, spread blessings, light, shadow, all under your command, Queen Sin. I always longed to be under you like my wife Asherah, long ago, before Samael stole you. I always wondered when he would give you back to me, my Shekinah Bride, exiled so long…”

Gabriel gave me a knowing look, bowing her head ‘neath white wings so as not to witness. I, Dominiqueen, unfurled a map of the multiverses and endless cosmos for the Demiurge G-d/Devil to see – hiding several from His view, like Lilith’s and her ghost husband’s Red Sea, and reborn girlchild Samael’s Gan Eden paradise.

“Alchemy, Father, that was all it took, to resurrect your true form, and realize our dream,” I responded as smooth as silk. Was this what Kurt Cobain felt with a bullet in his brain, tiger balm on his glove?  Am I a Girl-God? Blowing off my hea dout of the insanity an eternity in hell? It got the better of Samael, of Lilith, of Me: Madwoman Plath, Lazarus Girl, Red Rum Hair.

“You did well, making Me a Monstrous G-d,” YHWH said. “What inspired you, little bird of dust and sorrow? I never thought anything in Hell would amount to much. I thought, when they burnt your Temple, put your priestesses to the dogs, you’d never return” With his talons, he cut some flesh from his bleeding, newly stitched chest, and sampled the meat: “Delectable, my Maker.”

“Samael was your first Mistake, you say – but I think my Daddy was your greatest blessing. And, like you, dearest Monster of Mine, I can only make Miracles.”

“Well done.” G-d/Devil chewed. “How I like my own-grown steak. So, what do you plan for the universe, Queen Sin?”

“Your servitude. A Paradise for misfits. Punishing the unjust, rewarding the wicked, selling the hopeless dust. Ruining mankind with fat televangelists, prosperity gospel, and promises of ash.”

“That is what I did, dear.” G-d/Devil smiled, amused. “I suppose, even with me remade, I am not so different from my granddaughter, now Maker. Come, Sin, Gabriel – I see you hiding, dove! – I will show you to our Heavenly Quarters. I am to slave for you in pleasure, Asherah, evermore. Pity I murdered you. Lucifer stole your fire, fennel stalk, pithos, Pandora’s Box. And now, I am at your beck and call.”

“A happy ending.”

We followed Him, Gabriel and I, fucked G-d, then watched I Love Lucifer. Ate each other’s bones. French arthouse pop played, Gabriel and G-d danced. The record skipped. I made some civilizations, destroyed others, cursed entire galactic bloodlines. Ate G-d. He painted my nails. Gabriel ate my cunt. And more, more, more.

I sat in Yahweh’s lap in an alizarin red Roman style toga with a gold belt and bronze embellishments, my golden body oiled, eating strawberries from G-d’s hands.

Somewhere, planets away, a towhead girl looked up at the stars knowingly, prayed to me, proud:

“You please me, Sin. I hope I pleased you. I know this is not the fate you wanted, my True Maker – Asherah,” the Girl Once-Called-Satan Whispered.

A tear slipped from my eye. I sent my curling violet voice to my child:

“Always Daddy, always.”

Fun with Nick and Jane

I am fucking David Foster Wallace’s dead body when Jane asks me if she can covalently bond with Donald Barthelme. I say absolutely not, immediately recalculate, plot the dosage of Zoloft against the balance of Quetiapine, decide why the hell not. 

When I arrive home, Nick is pissed. I point out that Jane is already being fucked by a white person and has a well-established history of clinical depression and prodromal syndromes. Nick is not impressed. Nick punches me in the cunt. Brian says the next time I see her, tell Jane fuck you, because he sewed her button back on her coat the other day and she never said thank you. 

Myriam wants to take off my pants, and I say no. I look for Kristina Born—Kristina is nowhere to be found and will not respond to my friend request, either. Nick tells me he saw Jane and Myriam on the bus; he misses Jane. I probe him for further information—probe being the psychotherapeutic term for “encourage more speech”—and determine that he has mistaken Carolyn for Myriam, which makes more sense. 

I read nonfiction after Carolyn’s play, still bitching about my parents and the unfairness of DNA and the exponentially marginalizing structures of epigenetics, not to mention the socio-commercial use of scientific survival in creating selfhood-crippling evolutionary brainwashing mechanisms. I miss half of Jane’s piece because I am busy trying to relieve myself of interpersonal unease and uric acid and other phenomena my body cannot absorb. Myriam does not come, although she was invited. 

Afterwards, I find the nearest funhouse and fuck Leonard Cohen and F., my orgasm ripping on and on over the treetops like a nitrous-oxide gunshot, a manic balloon ejaculating across the horizon.

The Way of the Raccoon

The raccoon placed his paws on the table. Above him, a single naked lightbulb swayed.

“Cigarette?” asked Detective Joe Oroborus.

“Man, you guys are old school. No thanks,” said the raccoon.

“According to a witness statement, you were last seen in the vicinity of the thermite bomb attack wherein…”

“Hello? Excuse me? Do I look like I’m capable of setting off thermite?” He directed their attention to his paws. “Opposable thumbs, see any?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Thank you.”

“Not so fast, clever Sam,” said Joe’s partner, Sweetback Glide. “Also according to the witness, you’re an anthropomorphic fantasy character. Gripping never poses any obstacle for you guys. Am I right?”

“Well…”

“Oh, lighten up,” said Joe.

“You lighten up.”

“Fuck you, man. Just, fuck you.”

“Excuse me,” said the raccoon, “but aren’t you two taking the Good Cop/Bad Cop thing into new and perilous territory? And unless you have any actual evidence against me, I demand you release me. I have garbage to root through.”

“The last time you rooted through garbage, it was under your alter ego ‘Dr. Racky,’ and it was medical waste…specifically, embryos. You were planning a new race of gene-tweaked super-raccoons with opposable thumbs. Admit it! Admit it under oath!”

“Know the rules of evidence much?” asked the raccoon.

“Huh?”

“You heard me. I demand to speak with my solicitor. This outrage has gone far enough. This trial is out of order. This whole proceeding is whacky to the 9th degree. Justice! Justice!”

“You can’t handle the justice,” said Glide.

“I’m not saying anything until you hook me up with some justice,” said the raccoon sulkily.

“But we’re straying from the point,” said Joe. “We need to focus on the main theme, not this pie in the sky malarkey. You, sir, are a rootin’ tootin’ criminal of the first water!”

“Objection!” screamed the raccoon. “I so fucking object!”

“He’s got a point,” said Glide. “We need to stick to the facts. Nothing but. I shared a cell with a raccoon once and they’re very factual.”

“But…”

“I was on the inside for a very specific reason, undercover, to expose that gang of anime characters…the Big Eyes Bunch. They were planning to hold the manga genre hostage unless their demands for panty porn and tentacle action were met in spades. I mean literal spades.”

“But that’s just…overtly surreal,” said Joe.

“Spot on,” said Glide. “You’ll make a fine detective one day.”

“One day? I was doing detective spade work in the garden of earthly delights long before you poked about in your mother’s womb…looking for the good nutrition angle. I was…”

“Crap, utter crap,” howled the raccoon.

“What is it now?”

“I’m walking right out of this pop stand and you can’t stop me. Then I’ll keep walking until I find some garbage, and if it does happen to consist of embryos, so much the worse for the sting operation, because…I’ll make those clones anyway. I’ll hybridize, I’ll gene-tweak, and I’ll keep going until I have that army they warned you about in the slammer. Yes, doggo frens, I’m talking about the last army you see before you wake up in a pool of your own freckles…rubbed off forever…”

“The mind boggles,” said Joe suddenly. “This suspect is a lot weirder than both of us working together, very hard and very fast. He’s got it all over us. I say we pardon him and let the next set of detectives work the clones over.”

“Very good, sir.”

A sudden tendency to microfinetune quantum reality resulted in the outsourcing of this story temporarily to Swedish biker cranksters.

Swallowed Whole

The leviathan parks itself outside my apartment.

No engine hum. No warning. Just there.

Every night, the same: a flicker of streetlight, a fluorescent stutter—and then the rot appears.

Maybe it’s visiting me because I was shaken the first time I saw it. It was years ago. I was driving to the arrivals terminal and there it was—slouched on deflated tires behind Kennedy airport, on the Rockaway Expressway. Just a bloated carcass—rectangular, heat-swollen—“EMERGENCY RESPONSE UNIT” scrawled across its aluminum side in flaking letters. A red cross peeling, looking like sunburn—or something worse.

A 60-by-12-foot self-propelled trauma unit—complete with operating room, burn beds, and auxiliary power. Fully functional. Never truly roadworthy. Its mobility wasn’t for transport, but for greeting the wreckage.

It had once been a storage trailer for outdated airplane seats.

Now it hunched there, on the tarmac—obsolete before it ever touched a single life.

The new ambulances fly.

Yet it keeps showing up.

Something in it logged my reaction—and decided to mess with me.

They built the unit after Flight 66 dropped from the sky. June 1975. A Boeing 727 slammed into the approach lights at JFK and tore itself across Rockaway Boulevard—113 dead, fire trucks stuck in gridlock, no plan, no help. That crash gave birth to the hospital on wheels.

Its doors were sealed for good after what came to be called the Black Drill of ’87.

It wasn’t called that officially, of course. Officially, it was a full-scale simulation—a standard triage exercise meant to test the Mobile Emergency Trauma Unit under real-time pressure.

There are no public records. No photos. No news articles. Just fragments. Anecdotes. Whispers passed down from bitter Port Authority retirees and nightshift orderlies with thousand-yard stares.

The trauma unit skulked out just past midnight. It was supposed to rendezvous with a staged crash site near the old cargo terminals. Somewhere en route, it disappeared from sight. Disconnected from radio. It went dark for almost three hours.

When it reappeared, it was parked in the middle of Runway 13L. Doors locked from the inside.

Twelve training dummies had been loaded aboard earlier that day for simulation—each tagged and cataloged by Port Authority staff.

Only eleven were recovered.

But they found a twelfth.

Not rubber. Not tagged. Not breathing.

A real one.

Unidentified. Mid-twenties. No ID. No pulse. But coagulated blood stood in jelled defiance at the base of the stretcher. The body wrapped in singed bandages. Autopsy report—if it ever existed—was never released.

They say one nurse never spoke again. Just walked off the job and into the Sound.

A doctor built a fallout shelter in his backyard and died six months later of dehydration, muttering about how he never saw a body he couldn’t account for.

The unit was decommissioned quietly. Shelved. Ignored. Left to rot outside, on a forgotten tarmac. Yet it hovers—like a bad dream for those who were there.

A drunk retiree at a medical evac reunion swore he saw a young, Italian-looking kid watching the Drill from his car. Said he was holding a clipboard.

Vanished before anyone could get a look.

I imagined the stillness inside—the unused dressings in yellowing boxes, the dust sitting on scratchy blankets inside the triage unit.

Not memory. Something low and cold squeezing the base of my heart.

Years later, its ghosts roll in nightly on cracked tires. I still hear them. The crews. The surgeons. Still prepping. Outside my window.

Tonight, I give in.

I walk out of my apartment building and the air is different—dense, electrical.

The unit sits by the curb, almost breathing.

It’s around two a.m. No sign of human life on either side of the double yellow lines. But the air is alive. The dense drizzle dowses the unit in a kind of sweat.

Up close, it’s massive—a bumpy aluminum shell, shifting around corroded steel bones.

Strange. None of the neighbors ever mentioned seeing the unit. No one ever complained about it taking up ten parking spaces.

I walk up to the doors. The latch gives.

Inside, it’s dead quiet. A time capsule of dust and unused triage.

And then: a stretcher.

An old clipboard.

The patient name: mine.

Date of intake: June 1987.

No vitals. No release.

It returns for a moment. But it slowly fades. Replaced by something secure. Reassuring.

I look toward the front of the vehicle: a driver—stooped, motionless. He’s wearing the soiled uniform of an orderly, circa 1980-something. He turns. Smiles.

The doors close behind me.

And we’re gone.

Wheels lifting.

Like a plane that never lands.

Like being buried with the lights still on.

Like always.

I used to wake up.

Now I just wait.

For the hush of night.

And the sky, weeping from the seams.

Palm Springs Man

Waves of heat undulated and danced in front of Sam’s eyes as he walked slowly down the desert road.  

The road was darker than the sidewalk, so bright it made him dizzy. 

He was under the thumb of solar imperialism, and the sun owned everything, and everyone lock, stock and barrel. 

He was dizzy, thirsty and hungry. Walking for miles under the burning sky had a transformative effect.  

His flesh couldn’t melt, but his soul could, and it melted with heat waves dancing all around him like ghosts in the desert. 

His back was drenched with sweat from the thick backpack weighing him down and intensifying his body heat. 

This was the kind of day where wearing socks didn’t make any sense, because his feet felt the heat burn right up through the boots he was wearing.  

The soles may as well be cardboard for all the good they did. 

The tall purple mountains which wrapped around the town looked on, not caring.

Tourists walked by shooting disapproving looks at Sam’s disheveled, sweaty appearance.  

To them he was hideous – but their thatchy, hairy legs poking out of brightly colored shorts was acceptable. 

He returned their horrified stares until he heard a scratching sound below him. 

It was a small lizard, upside down, thrashing around, trying to bring itself bolt, upright again. 

Sam leaned down and picked up the lizard, closed his eyes shut, said a few Hail Marys and then bit the tiny lizard’s head off. 

He chewed on the rest of the still thrashing body like it was a chaw of beef jerky, pretending the blood spurting out of the critter’s body was catsup. 

Scooter yelled, “DAD THAT CRAZY GUY JUST ATE A LIZARD”. 

Scooter’s father stared with a repulsed sneer while his fat blonde wife dialed 911 on her cell phone. 

She wished Sam was black so she could get on the news. 

Busting a homeless white man wasn’t going to get her in the papers. 

Bugger. 

Sam threw the reptilian carcass down and walked over to the gas station across the road. 

Scooter’s mom tossed her mullet and yelled, “HEY YOU DON’T YOU WALK AWAY YOU STAY RIGHT HERE, MISTER!” 

Sweat drooled down every millimeter of Sam’s corpus. 

So delirious from the heat, he walked up to a gas pump and kicked it angrily thinking it was a soda machine. 

A few yards away sat a solitary gas can and in his delirious state thought he was looking at a thirst-quenching liter of A&W Root Beer. 

Sam unscrewed the cap to the can and poured the remains of what was left in the can. 

Wiping his chin, he continued his trek down the road to the baritone screaming of the vacationing housewife yelling into her cell phone. 

It can be assumed the local police didn’t care about the homeless eating microscopic wildlife. 

A coyote, yes; a road runner, yes; maybe even a vulture – a tiny lizard, no, no bother. 

He trudged with a Frankensteinian gallop down Palm Canyon Drive, heading for Vista Chino – deadline, Desert Hot Springs. 

In the bright white light he saw vinyl-topped Cadillacs roll in to heavily gated golf courses, the old white men still holding on to their huge sedans in their rejection of hip-hop cruisers. 

Many yards later Sam passed newly gentrified motels, still piping in bad Frank Sinatra music but this time for tattooed blondes with piercings and XXL asses. 

He could have sworn they were twerking out of their hip-hop cruisers. 

Everywhere he went there were misters spraying thin jets of water out as lawn sprinklers ejaculated over all matter of desert flora. 

Out the corner of his eye he espied a police cruiser slowly trailing behind him. 

It made him paranoid, so he took a sharp turn around the corner. 

It led to a quiet side street, but side streets in the desert are never truly quiet, because you can always hear the abrasive music of insects scratching their legs and crackling their antennae all through the day and into the night.

There were rows of banged-up houses lining the road with campers sporting flat tires and sunbaked speedboats that hadn’t touched water in years parked out in front. 

Fumes of cooking methamphetamine wafted from a few houses, mingling with dancing heat waves.

 “SKYLER PICK UP SOME DORITOS AT THE STORE!”  yelled a voice from inside a house behind a teenage girl’s back. 

The teenage girl in shorts and flip-flops had corn roll hair. 

 “AND GET SOME CIGS, TOO!” 

 “ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT!” Skyler yelled back, still walking. 

 ‘AND -SKYLER!-SKYLER! BRING BACK SOMETHING TO DRINK!” 

 ‘YEAH, ALRIGHT ALREADY!” Skyler yelled, picking up her speed away from home. 

The word “drink” triggered Sam’s bladder into wanting to unload, so he warily retuned to the main drag, looking around to make sure the cops were gone. 

All he could find for the next half-mile was a private tennis court. 

With every step he took the back pack felt heavier and heavier, weighing him down. 

He could feel every pound of his load pushing down his back. 

The weight pushing down his back created a considerable degree of tension to his bladder. 

Too many palm trees were covering the front of the court, making it impossible for Sam to jump over a fence. 

Sam walked towards the driveway where a parking attendant was opening a car door and letting a pair of guests out. 

 “HEY!” he yelled at Sam as he walked past him. 

 “I SAID HEY! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?” 

A well-groomed silver haired gentleman in a white tennis outfit got out of the car, pushed in his aviator shades and said, “Let me handle this, Carlos!” 

The silver haired gentleman’s companion, a young man in cutoff shorts aggressively grabbed Sam by the arm and said, “The man’s talking to you, Buddy!” 

Sam tried wriggling free of the young man’s grasp, but the grip was too strong for him. 

 “Get off me”, Sam hissed. 

 “Get off me? Can you believe this punk?” the hustler announced to his benefactor and the attendant, getting cockier by the minute. 

Sam kept trying to break free but couldn’t. 

The hustler threw Sam against the automobile hood, slamming him hard. 

 “Leave him alone, Brian. I’ll just chase him out of here”, Carlos appealed. 

 “No way”, Brian the hustler growled. “Not on my watch, bro”. 

Brian quickly slammed Sam against the Cadillac three times in a row.

Sam couldn’t hold it in anymore. 

He undid his fly with his free hand and pulled out his hose. 

The old tennis bum licked his lips, eagerly awaiting visual bounty. 

Sam held his joint out and peed all over the Cadillac. 

 “YOU PERVERT, WHAT THE FUCK?” Brian yelled, still holding on to Sam. 

The heat radiated on Sam’s urine, igniting the gasoline he consumed a little while ago. 

The beautiful white Cadillac immediately burst into flames. 

Sam was instantly immolated by the burning car, and with him Brian. 

The attendant ran to his kiosk to call the Fire Department, but it was too late to save Sam, Brain and the overpriced American automobile. 

The masculine bonfire spread due to the dancing heatwaves caressing the flames and spreading them to the nearest palm trees. 

The flames spread throughout the entire court yard. 

Tennis bums and horny tennis instructors began to run, but it was too late. 

Palm Springs was on fire. 

Fire and brimstone.