A Little Less Jarring, A Little Less Rude 

“Had I known that he used words like that, I would’ve never considered reading his book, let alone give him a review.” 

“What words did he use that made you so upset?” 

“Well, they’re just vulgar and not something that a lady like myself should ever, ever have to say.” 

“I’m having a bit of trouble understanding the source of your anger.  Now take a deep breath and tell me what specific words he used that’s got you so riled up.  I won’t hold it against you.” 

“Very well if you really must know.  The two words that this heathen, who considers himself to be well read and a seasoned writer, are none other than: fuck, and cunt.  I feel so disgusted with myself now, for having uttered those words.  I think I’m going to have to wash my mouth out with soap.  Maybe say a little prayer.” 

“Oh my. Did you tell him how upset you were?” 

“Oh yes.  I even suggested that he change the words to something a little less jarring, a little less rude.” 

“And how did he respond to that?” 

“He said that the words were fitting for the pieces that he put them in, and that he wouldn’t change a thing.” 

“How did you feel about his response?  Did you try reasoning with him any further?” 

“Of course, I did, it’d be foolish if I hadn’t.  I asked him if he cared what his readership thought. Then I pointed out to him that he should put the wants and needs of his readers first, otherwise, he wouldn’t have a readership to speak of.” 

“And did that get him to come around to your way of thinking?” 

“Heavens no, quite the opposite I’m afraid.  He went on to say that he writes for himself, and if no one likes what or how he writes, that suits him just fine.” 

“So, what happened after that, once he firmly stated his position for writing like he does?” 

“Nothing.  There’s just no reasoning with someone like that.  So, I got up from the table I was sitting at and left the room.  I could neither stomach nor stand to be seen in the same room with him.” 

“Just a few more questions and I’ll wrap up this interview.” 

“Thank heavens.  I don’t know how much more of this I can take.  I feel sick to my stomach.  I feel as though I’m going to throw up any minute now.” 

“Just hang in there.  It’s almost over.  So where is he now?  Did he lose the very readership that you warned him about?  Did he happen to change his vile, writerly ways?” 

“He didn’t change anything about the way he writes, or what he writes about.  If anything, he’s at the top of his game now.  His readership just adores him, no matter what he does or says.  Last I heard, his following has grown exponentially.  Can you believe that?  Isn’t it insane?  Even the readers are pathetic, just like he is.” 

“Well, that pretty much wraps up our interview session for today.  Any last words for my reading audience and for those who’ll be tuning into my podcast later today?” 

“I’ve got nothing more to say.  If it’s any consolation, I’ll pray for him and his readership.  It’s not like it’s going to make a bit of difference.  They’re all going to hell anyway.” 

“Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.  Anyhow, as hard as this interview was for you, I thank you for your time.  And for those of you just tuning in, hit the subscribe button, and like our page.  In closing, I hope everyone has enjoyed today’s session and that you and yours have a great day!”

The Rat King

Phil pulled himself up from the barroom floor after the drunken debacle. He’d caught a sucker punch from a mouth breather who’d claimed Lynyrd Skynyrd was the greatest band of all time. Phil called out from a few stools down, saying Lynyrd Skynyrd sucked dick because, well . . . because they did. The big bastard was on him in seconds. He expected it. Hell, he wanted it. He didn’t call out because of his distaste for the guy’s music, although it was dogshit. He called out to him because there was something about getting beaten close to death, and tasting your own blood, that no other kind of high could ever match.

The bartender slid him a pint of stale Pabst. “That’s the third time this month you’ve got your ass kicked in here,” he said, grinning. The bartender’s name was Rich, which Phil found hilarious. The man looking at him was hardly better off than he was; the only thing to his name was the rat’s nest of a dive they were sitting in, and he slept on a couch in the back. “Only the third?” Phil asked. “Huh. I could’ve sworn it was more than that. Thanks for the help by the way. You’d think the owner would break something like that up rather than record it on their cell phone,” he said. 

“Well if I did that, then I wouldn’t have this awesome video to upload to Bumfights, now would I?”  

Phil looked around at the hole he spent the better part of his life in. The stools and benches were held together with duct tape, and a family of rats nestled together in the corner. “Whatever, fuck off. I’m gonna take a piss and then I’m out of this shithole.”

“See you in the morning, Phil,” Rich called out as he stumbled to the bathroom. Once in the john, he fell onto the wall while dropping his drawers. He’d started going before it was fully out, wetting his pants a little before noticing he was pissing straight blood; side effects of the beating he’d taken, no doubt. The cracked brick walls started spinning, so he finished his business before making his way out of the backdoor. 

The alley behind Rich’s pub was secluded enough. It was just a small area behind the pub and the restaurant next door. The only way back there was a narrow walkway in between the two buildings. He was about to lie down in his usual spot, a twin mattress behind the dumpster, when he heard a scream from somewhere nearby.

Hurried footsteps came down the walkway, then he saw two figures emerge. A man appeared holding a struggling woman by the wrists with one hand, his other holding a knife. He shoved her to the ground as she stared back in shock, eyes wide and her mouth trembling, but she wouldn’t dare to make another sound. “Now as I said before, I just want the wallet, lady, don’t make me do anything worse.” 

Her voice quavered. “Please, that’s all I have. It’s for my daughter’s Christmas.” She was shaking, tears pouring from her eyes. Her blouse was torn and her hair was a wreck. Phil found himself thinking about how quickly this could go from bad to worse. 

“Lady, how would you like to be dead? Huh? Cause I could give a shit less about your little girl, or Christmas. So what’s it gonna be?” No sooner than he’d finished talking, Phil’s fist drilled into the man’s skull, knocking him off balance as the knife flew from his hand. Phil snatched it up before the mugger had a chance to understand the turn of events.

“Nice knife,” Phil said. “Now why don’t you get lost, or I’ll cut your throat.” 

The mugger flashed a sneer and turned tail down the alley. Phil reached his hand out to help the woman up. “Thank you so much, you saved my . . .” As he helped her up, he pulled her wallet from her purse with the other hand. “What are you doing?” she protested. He opened it and found two hundred bucks, took one hundred out, and tossed the wallet back at her.

“My hero’s fee,” he said. “Now get lost before I have a change of heart and take the rest.” The look in her eyes was that of sheer astonishment. 

“Wow, okay, you know what? You’re even worse than he was.” She stuffed the wallet back in her bag and stormed off down the walkway.

Phil turned back to his filthy mattress, a mattress fit for the Rat King he’d become. But before he could lie down, he was approached by a stranger in a fine tailored suit.

“That was rather cold, don’t you think?” The man stepped forward, straightening his jacket.

“Who the fuck are you?” Phil asked.

“Never mind who I am, Philip, but I know all about you,” he said. “You were discharged from the Army ten years ago, just a year short of the end of the Iraq war. The reason you were discharged was that you couldn’t keep your emotions in check after Serena and little Bobby were killed by a drunk driver. You blame yourself because you weren’t there, as if you could’ve changed anything. At that point, you thought the worst of yourself and came home to become the person you thought you were. How am I doing so far?”

Phil’s jaw clenched and tears welled in his eyes as he remembered the wife that had been so proud the last time she’d kissed him, seeing him off to war. He remembered just three days before that, teaching four-year-old Bobby how to ride the new bike they’d bought him with the first installment of his deployment bonus. At the memory of the happy boy riding down the sidewalk, he could hold the tears back no more.

“Get to your point, and get to it fast pal, ’cause I’m losing patience real quick.” He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Spare me your drunken tough-guy routine,” the stranger said. “I come to you with a proposition. I want to allow you to have anything you want in this world. You do a task for me, and I will give you whatever it is that your heart desires.” 

“I want you to get the fuck away from me. That’s what I want. You can’t grant wishes. Magic, warlocks, genies, whatever the fuck, it’s all horseshit.”

“I see,” the stranger said. “Well, Phillip, enjoy your night.” He turned to leave as Phil collapsed upon his mattress and promptly asleep. 

Soon after, Phil was falling down the rabbit hole, a nightmare he’d been having ever since he’d seen Alice in Wonderland as a child. The imagery had changed somewhat over the years, mainly the things he saw while falling. Tonight, for his viewing pleasure, he saw all the things the stranger had somehow known about. He saw himself breaking down when the letter was delivered. He was lying in a medical tent when he received the news, having taken two bullets in the shoulder only hours before. Next, he saw an old pickup slam into his wife’s SUV. And then, he saw himself sitting on a park bench, tying off his arm and shooting himself full of poison. 

After he’d finished spiraling, he found himself standing in the pitch black. This part of the nightmare was new. He walked along until he could make out the faint line of his family’s old home on Chestnut Street. The tire swing in the font yard blew in the wind as it picked up all around him. A full moon rose behind the house, shining brighter than anything he’d ever seen. That’s when he noticed the moon had a face, its wide eyes radiating a blinding blue light.

Next thing he knew, an alarm clock was buzzing in his ears. He awoke beneath a soft down comforter, his head resting upon the fluffiest pillow he’d ever felt. For the first time in ten years, he didn’t have a hangover and was feeling well-rested. He thought back to the night before, remembering everything perfectly. Confused didn’t begin to describe how he felt, and then he rolled over and saw a woman with pale blonde hair and vibrant green eyes staring back at him. Her mouth then curled into a beautiful smile. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said. 

“Serena,” he began and stopped. He didn’t know where to begin. She shushed him. “Let’s go, we gotta wake Bobby up so he can open his presents. It’s not every day our little man turns five.” This didn’t make any sense, but his heart swelled with joy for the first time in years. He wrapped her in a tight hug and kissed her repeatedly. “Yes, let’s wake up Bobby,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. 

They crept into his room with a big box wrapped in colorful stripes. The boy slept silently, tucked neatly beneath his racecar covers. Serena slammed the door and they both yelled, “Surprise!”

Bobby shot straight up in his bed. “Dad!” he yelled as he sprang to his feet and ran to him, wrapping his arms around him tight. He held the boy in his arms for a long while, silently weeping, and everything felt right. 

Bobby opened all of his presents before noon, and the family topped off the morning with ice cream and a trip to the park. Phil and Bobby tossed his new football around until Bobby was ready to hit the swingset. While Phil was off at war, the boy had learned how to swing all by himself. “It’s really impressive for a boy his age to be that good at this,” he said to Serena, but when he turned to face her, the sky went black. Where she had been just moments ago, stood the man from the night before. “Isn’t it?” he asked.

“Where’d they go?” Phil asked. “Bring them back! You asked what I wanted and this is it. Please, bring them back, I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Yes, I believe you will. That is good. Now that I’ve shown you what I’m capable of, you’re taking me quite seriously. It’s a huge improvement from last night. Desperation looks good on you, Rat King. That’s what you call yourself in your inner monologue, isn’t it? Most fitting.”

“Look, I know you’re enjoying this, but please just tell me what I have to do.” He was now on his hands and knees, begging at the man’s feet. “Certainly, Philip, it’s an easy enough task. I just want you to kill someone.” 

Phil looked at him, then back at the frozen image of his son on the swing set just a few yards away. “Are you crazy?” he asked. The man laughed uncontrollably, “I am the furthest thing from it,” he said. “You want their lives back, and I want you to take someone’s life for theirs.”

Phil stared down at his feet, and without looking at the man, he asked simply, “Who?” 

The mark was an old lady named Iris whom Phil had known from the local homeless shelter. She ran the place and would often bring him meals to his spot behind the bar when he didn’t show up. Since he got back from Iraq, she was single-handedly the nicest person he had met. She let him in whenever he wanted, even if it was 3 am and he was piss drunk banging on the door. She had a lovely daughter whom he had met on his first trip there. They both treated him so well, and now he had to murder her. And not just murder her, the stranger made that clear. She had to know it was him, and she had to suffer. 

After the stranger departed, Phil’s reunion with his family went on as it had before. Serena had agreed that Bobby’s swinging ability was incredible, and after a short while, the trio retired back to their home on Chestnut. They watched a string of kids’ movies until Bobby fell asleep and Phil had to carry him to bed; then Serena said she wanted to watch something scary. A new slasher flick, which made Phil uneasy because he knew that in just a few short hours, he would have to become the slasher or lose them both again. And losing them again was something he was not prepared to do. 

After the movie, the two went back to the bedroom. Although the day was tiring, they saved enough energy for a special night together. She wanted him to be rough, and had he not been planning out a murder in his head, this would’ve been much easier on him. Phil was nothing if not a trooper, however, and eventually he got the job done. Moments after they finished, he heard Serena’s soft snoring coming from her side of the bed. That was when he made his way out of the bedroom, and down to the garage. 

The two-car garage was clean and organized, just as he’d left it before deployment. He found himself trying to slip back into the mindset of the man he’d been in those days. When he received an order to kill back then, there was no question about it, and even though this was different, he had to treat it just the same. The tool bench that took up the entire back wall was the first place to start. He grabbed an old duffle bag from underneath and examined his options, tossing in a hammer, a box of large nails, a handsaw, a roll of duct tape, and a long length of chain. He looked at himself in the mirror that hung on the wall by the bench, hating everything he saw. There was no going back though. In less than an hour, Iris would be dead. In less than two, he’d be back home, getting cleaned up, and sliding back in bed with his wife.

The Savior’s Rest shelter was located in a neighborhood not far from Phil’s house. He killed the lights as he pulled onto Maple Street and drove slowly down the alley leading to the back entrance of the building. Quite conveniently, this door led right into the living chambers of the soon-to-be late Iris Colson. He killed the ignition, grabbed his duffle, and exited the car, creeping silently towards the shelter. Hoping to enter unnoticed, he found his plans foiled when the lights came on inside. A pair of old familiar eyes peered out from behind the window blinds. “Who’s out there? Answer me or I’ll call the police.”

Phil froze. He had to think of something, and he didn’t like the first thing that came to mind, which was rushing to the door to break it in. “Iris, it’s me, Phil Summers. Can you let me in? I need someone to talk to, and I didn’t know where else to turn.” He hated himself more with every word, and part of him wondered if she’d even know who he was. Sure, the mysterious stranger had chosen her because of their bond, but he wasn’t exactly sure how this weird time loop thing had worked. He was on the verge of bolting when he heard the click of the lock, and the door swung open to let him in.

“Oh, Philip, you scared me half to death darling,” Iris said. “Come on in, sweetie, I’ll make us some tea.” His heart fluttered, but he did as he was asked, feeling just like a vampire whose prey had invited him in. 

Now that he was in the small room that looked to be a studio apartment, he began to calm down. He sat at the coffee table in a fold-out chair as Iris brought a tray in and sat down across from him. Her body was old and pruning in on itself, and she looked at him with kind, thoughtful eyes like she was the grandmother he’d always wished he’d had. “Now, Philip, spill it to old Iris. What seems to be weighing on your heart so heavily tonight? You’ve got pain in your eyes young man, I can see it.”

“Do you remember the family that I told you about, Iris? My wife and little boy?” She nodded, so he continued. “All this time, I thought I could never be happy again, but then, by a true miracle, seriously like the type of shit in the Bible . . .” 

“Language,” she chided, though she didn’t look sincerely offended. After years of running this place, she’d heard it all. “Right, sorry, it’s just, they’ve come back to me, Iris. I met a man last night, and he somehow brought them back to me.” Her eyes widened, but she didn’t interrupt. “Then today, he told me that if I wanted to keep them, I . . .” He paused, not knowing how to phrase it. “I, uh, have to do something really bad.”

“Philip, shoot straight with me, young man. Are you back on the junk?” She got up and started walking towards the phone. “I know a really good help center.” 

“No, Iris, please.” He went to grab her wrist and she jerked it away. “Let go of me!” she yelled, moving as fast as her decrepit legs could go. He took the hammer from the bag and said, “I’m so sorry, Iris,” bringing it down hard on the back of her head as she slumped the floor.

Although she was bleeding from the blow, Phil could see she was still breathing. That was unfortunate, as he would’ve preferred to end it right there, but he knew that wasn’t good enough to meet the stranger’s request. He pulled out the duct tape, stretched it over her mouth, and then bound her legs. He cleared the coffee table and slumped her limp body down onto it like it were a slab in the morgue. He took two more pieces of duct tape and taped her wrists to the coffee table. He was specifically told to inflict as much pain as humanly possible, so next he pulled out the box of nails, grimacing at the sight of them. Holding one to her wrist as he pushed it down against the table, he closed his eyes and started pounding. 

Iris screamed with the first hammer blow, her shrieks muffled by the tape across her face. Blood sprayed out in all directions with each blow until he’d finished. Then he did the next wrist, although she passed out after the first blow on that one. He could only imagine the unbearable pain as he hammered away. With the final blow, blood shot up in his face, getting in his mouth and causing him to gag. He stared down at the body of the woman he’d come to love over the years, if he’d been capable of loving anyone during that time. Frankly, he wasn’t sure anymore. 

Phil took a glass of cold water and sat next to her. He eyed her, thoughtfully, and then splashed it in her face. She awoke instantly, crying out through her gag once more. He patted her on the shoulder as if attempting to calm her. “Iris, I just needed you to know once more. I’m sorry.” Next, he picked the hammer back up and started flailing it aimlessly, shattering her ribs, busting her knees, and then finally bashing her face completely in. Her head exploded like a water balloon filled with blood. Bits of brain and bone drooped down the edge of the table as he collapsed back onto his chair, breathing heavily. 

After a long moment, he got up to leave but froze in his tracks. Through the window, he saw flashing red and blue lights, hearing sirens approaching in the distance. Peeking through the blinds, he saw that it was not just the police, but Serena and Bobby standing there with them. He slunk down against the wall and began to hyperventilate. “No, this isn’t supposed to happen! This wasn’t part of the fucking deal! Fuck . . .” 

“Actually,” came a voice from the chair he’d occupied just moments ago, “It was never specified what was going to happen to you.” The man in the tailored suit stood up and straightened his jacket before stepping towards him. “I said I would give you anything you wanted. You wanted to bring your family back from the dead, which I’ve done. You wanted them back so badly that you beat a helpless old lady, who had been nothing but kind to you, to death with a hammer.” He looked down at Phil and sneered at him, kneeling in front of him so they were face to face. “Men are evil, fueled by self-desire, but you are worse my friend. I offered you a chance at redemption. An all-powerful being tells you to commit a heinous act. If you would’ve turned it down, you could’ve died honorably. Instead, you preyed on the weak, just like the rat you always knew you were.” 

The door swung open then, and the man disappeared before Phil’s eyes. The police were pulling him to his feet and slapping handcuffs on his wrists and hauling him out. Serena couldn’t even look at him and was trying to hold Bobby back as well, but the boy broke free and ran up to him. “Dad!” he cried, his eyes streaming with tears. “What did you do, daddy?” 

“I’m sorry, son. I know it won’t make sense, but I did it for you. I love you. Never forget that.” The boy wept in his mother’s arms as she tore him away from his father. They watched as he was carted away, covered in blood. The sound of Bobby’s sobbing would stay with Phil for the rest of his life, and this scene would later be incorporated into the rabbit hole he fell into each night. 

His first night in prison, he sat weighing the pros and cons of his actions. His wife and son would live full lives, and although they might hate him, he thought he could live with that. However, when he tried to close his eyes there was Iris, her kind face staring holes right through him.

He heard a skittering of echoes from somewhere nearby. Opening his eyes, he peered over the edge of his bunk.

At least a dozen rats sat upon the concrete floor, staring back up at him expectantly.

All the Melted Horses 

Jacob didn’t expect the fire to spread so quickly, but within seconds the flames had crawled across the floor and spiraled up the poles, illuminating the night sky. There was an audible “whoosh” when they reached the canvas of the tent-like top. He stood, transfixed by the ghost-like faces that formed in the fire, their malevolent grins flickering as they consumed everything except the metal pieces of machinery that powered the damned thing—spinning it around and around, moving the horses up and down, forcing them to gallop along an infinite track, devoid of destination. 

He had turned the power on after dousing the carousel in gasoline and now the plastic horses were melting as they spun, their faces dripping onto the platform below. Their expressions had always been grotesque—mouths open, lips pulled back by their bits, exposing large, rectangular teeth; they looked as if they were being driven hard, made to travel long distances at a painful pace—but the flames transformed them into demons. As they burned, their ornate manes were replaced by living flames, which Jacob found far more beautiful. Gradually, the carnival music slowed and distorted, its eerie melody punctuated by offbeat crashes as chunks of the carousel began raining down. The pole that bisected a jet black mare, connecting it to the structure, snapped free and the steed crashed to the ground. He stood watching the whole thing burn for much longer than was wise, entranced, exhausted, not caring what happened. With the flames still dancing, he walked over to the fallen black horse, fell to his knees and looked into its lifeless eye that was staring vacantly into space. He could see himself, framed by the flames, reflected in the dark paint of its pupil. 

The night closed in around him as he got to his feet and began walking home. He was vaguely aware he was dragging the horse, holding it by the length of pole that protruded from its withers. 

The next day he woke to the smell of gasoline mixed with smoke and whiskey. Both his right hand and his head were throbbing—the hand was badly burned, the headache was the result of the whiskey. Scattered snapshots of the night before flashed through his mind. With his eyes still closed, he patted the bed searching for his phone. He had kicked the blankets off during the night and the sheets were twisted around his body. Eventually, he located his phone and brought it to his face. Without lifting his head, he opened one eye. Six text messages, all from Julia, and three missed calls—two from Julia and one from a number he didn’t recognize. 

7:15 PM: Where are you?

8:23 PM: Hello? You were supposed to be here more than an hour ago.

8:45 PM: WTF, Jacob. This really isn’t cool.

9:03 PM: Whatever, I’m leaving.

7:32 AM: Where were you last night?

10:04 AM: “I’m done worrying about you, but we have some shit we need to figure out. Don’t make me show up at your door.” 

That was for the best. He was done worrying about him too. In an effort to stop from thinking, he shoved his face into the pillow and scrunched his eyes closed hard enough that he could see the orange capillaries of his eyelids snaking across his vision like streaks of lightning. “Do eyelids have capillaries?” his hungover brain wondered vaguely. Rolling over, a strange shape in the corner of the room caught his eye. When he brought it into focus, he saw it was the carousel horse from the night before. He must have dragged it all the way home. “I’ll deal with that later,” he thought, letting out a groan. Just then his phone, still in his hand, buzzed to let him know that he had a voicemail. It was from the number that he hadn’t recognized. 

“Hello, this message is for Jacob Digory. Mr. Digory, this is Detective Chung of the Boston Police Department. Please call me back as soon as possible. I have some questions I’d like to ask you.”

Jacob dropped his phone and sat up in bed, looking over at the carousel horse. “That can’t be good,” he muttered and flopped back down on the bed. His eyes were hot and the pounding in his head was unrelenting. He closed his eyes against a temporary dizzy spell and his mind thought back to his most recent session with Dr. Atawan, when he had told her about phantom limb syndrome. 

“The term was coined by a physician in the 1870s. Back then they thought it was caused by an irritation in the nervous system, at the place where the limb had been amputated, but in the late 1980’s some other doctor realized that couldn’t be true because people who had been born without limbs experienced it as well,” he had been loosely aware of the fact that he was talking very fast.

“You’d think they would have realized that a whole lot earlier, but they didn’t. Or maybe some people did, but they never told the right people, or it never got published or whatever, so the medical literature never got updated. Anyway, this guy in the 80s, Dr. Melzack, came up with this theory that the experience of the body is created by a wide network of interconnecting neural structures, which he called the ‘neuromatrix’. Then in the 90s a team of scientists conducted some experiments on monkeys that showed that the area of the brain responsible for processing sensory information undergoes a substantial reorganization after the loss of sensory input. I suppose that means they hooked the monkeys’ brains up to an imaging device and then cut off their limbs, which is really sick, but those experiments led to the theory that these changes in the brain may account for some but not all of the phantom limb pain that people report. They said that it might be the result of what they called ‘junk inputs’ from the neural system. But despite all of the years of research, to this day no one can really say for sure what causes phantom limb syndrome.”

“Why are you telling me about this, Jacob? How is it relevant to your life?” Dr. Atawan had asked.

“What I’m saying is that maybe what I’ve been experiencing is a sort of emotional version of phantom limb syndrome. That the hallucinations are the result of my brain reorganizing itself because of the loss. I’m saying it’s the same fucking thing and that if all these goddamn doctors couldn’t figure out how it works in the body, with all their monkeys and experiments and actual fucking physical evidence and quantifiable results then what hope do we have of figuring out the shit that I’ve been dealing with, nevermind treating it? I’m saying it’s a lost fucking cause.” 

By this point he had begun yelling and could hear the blood coursing through his veins. He had taken a minute to catch his breath and to look at the slight woman on the other side of his laptop screen. He could tell she was glad it was a teletherapy session—that she wasn’t in the same room as him. 

“Ok, Jacob. I understand,” Dr. Atawan had replied, her voice syrupy, slow and subdued. “I’d suggest that the parallels you’re attempting to draw between the two conditions are far from exact and that you’ve been expressing skepticism about this process since the very beginning, but before we get to that—I want to ask, how are you doing with your substance use? Are you still self-medicating? Are you under the influence of anything right now?”

That was the last time he saw Dr. Antawan. From that point on he had been alone and had been falling fast. He had spent the last month locked in the shitbox apartment that he had rented when Julia asked him to leave the house, after living with him had become “untenable”. He had stopped answering his phone and email and going to work. He ordered bottles of booze off the internet and instructed the delivery drivers to leave the packages at the door so he wouldn’t have to see them. When he moved, he had purchased a threadbare, second hand recliner and dragged it into the middle of the otherwise barren “family room”. He sat in it for hours, the shades pulled down and the lights off, feeling as though he were in a tiny boat that was lost at sea. 

“What are you doing, Dad?”

“No. You’re not here. You’re not real.”

“Maybe not, but what would I think of you if I were?”

“You’re not here, Eli. Please. Please stop it. I can’t take this.” 

“You have to. You have no choice now. Why did you do it, Dad? Why did you set it on fire? It was my favorite. I used to beg you to let me ride it every time we passed by on our walk home from the library.” 

“I did it because it was your favorite. I did it because it was still in the world and you’re not. Because I…because I couldn’t,” he trailed off, no longer capable of forming words. He was crying now—big ugly sobs that wracked his entire body. “Please,” he whimpered. “Please come back. I brought you home a horse.” 

Jacob no longer knew if it was day or night; what did it matter? He came to, shirtless and in sweatpants, slumped over on the arm of the recliner. He had been fading in and out of consciousness for what seemed like an eternity. He opened his eyes and saw a bottle of pills turned on its side, its contents spilled out across the floor, and an overturned half-empty bottle of vodka. Before he could make his hand reach for it, he registered, for the first time, the violent knocking at the front door. How long had that been going on? Was it what woke him? He grabbed the vodka bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took three large pulls, pausing for breath in between each. When the knocking came again, it did so incessantly, without pause for several minutes. Slowly, he got to his feet, dropping the bottle and listening to it roll across the room as he stumbled towards the door. 

“I’m coming,” he mumbled, too quietly for anyone to hear, his bare feet shuffling along the uneven floorboards.

“Don’t answer it,” Eli’s voice came from the far side of the room where he stood holding the black horse by the reins, its long muzzle looming over his shoulder. “You won’t like what’s on the other side, Dad.”

“I have to,” he replied, but he was no longer moving towards the door. 

“It’s over, Dad. If you open that door, it’s all over.” 

Jacob wrapped his arms around his head and squeezed, trying to block out the world. The knocking at the door was so loud it felt as if the person’s fist was rapping against the inside of his skull. The room began to spin, faster and faster, spots of light and shadow forming intricate patterns as they spiraled around him.

“Like a carousel,” he thought, collapsing to the floor. 

Good Demons

Undercover

Beverly woke up at 2am after doing some ill-advised self-medicating the night before.  She heard some scratching and bumping noises and mumbled “What the hell is that?”

A voice which resembled that of James Earl Jones came from under her bed “I’m the night monster”.

A groggy Beverly slurred “No you’re not; I’m either dreaming or you are a side effect of mixing vodka and my migraine prescription.  I don’t believe in you.”

“Oh, you will, but if as you say I’m not real, you wouldn’t mind if I get in bed with you.”

“Sure, why not.  I don’t have any need for the extra space.”  Beverly fell asleep again after what appeared to be a human male in the faintly lit room had crawled in next to her. 

When she next woke, she decided no more mixing alcohol and meds, then rolled over and bumped into something.  She felt scales on a mostly human body and a normal bald head.  The body spoke “Do you believe in me now?” 

After a few seconds to calm herself “Still not sure – it could be aftereffects.” 

“Do you mind if I convince you?” 

“Go ahead.” 

The night monster burrowed under the covers and used his long-forked tongue to full advantage while humming the Led Zeppelin song ‘Kashmir’.  Beverly had an orgasm which produced body waves accompanied by a mental montage of her favorite times – she cuddled her favorite kitten Batface, had sex with boyfriend Joe in the backseat of a Ford Mustang when she was a teenager, and won a $10,000 lottery.

“Ok, I’m starting to believe.  Do you mind if I explore you now?”

“Seems fair.  Your turn.”

Beverly didn’t know what to expect between his legs.  After his previous masterful performance, she was disappointed to find something soft and small.  She asked, “Is that it?”

“Oh, I didn’t know your taste, so I started off small.  Try again.”

This time she found an eighteen-inch tent pole.  “Umm, if you take requests, how about something in-between?”

“As you desire.  Climb on cowgirl.”

Thirty-seven minutes later Beverly asked, “Can you come again?”

“That could have two different meanings, but the answer to both is yes.”

“I mean if I want you to visit again, how do I get in touch?”

“Knock on the headboard three times.  Probably a bad idea if you have company.  If I’m available, I’ll get here.  I do have other appointments.”

“Why didn’t I think of this earlier?  Will I have monster babies like in ‘The Demon Seed’ or ‘Rosemary’s Baby’?”

“It won’t happen unless I revise my DNA.  We aren’t fertility compatible.”

“Another thing.  What do I tell my boyfriend Bob?” 

“I don’t think that Bob will mind if you break up with him.  My sister is visiting him tonight and has spoiled him for human women, much as you would be disappointed by any human man now.  Both of you may want to have fake relationships to give the appearance of normality, but nothing will compare to night monsters.”

Angel of the Night

When Bob woke up at 1:56Am, he was surprised that there was a very warm body next to him which smelled of jasmine and musk.  He was amazed that Beverly had come to bed with him after their date.  He had always thought of her as somewhat prudish.  Her perfume surprised him more because he had never known her to wear any, but it was all good.  It got better when he felt a hand manipulating his cock in a very non-Beverly way arousing him in a way he had never experienced before.

Wait a minute; he hadn’t had a date with her.  “Beverly when did you show up?  Not that I don’t like it, I love it.”

A deep but feminine voice with an alien vibrato responded “I’m not Beverly, I’m Night Angel, but you can call me Angie.”

“I brought home a hooker?  I don’t remember anything like that.”

“Not at all.  My brother and I just like to do favors for deserving people and don’t worry about Beverly; my brother is taking care of her like I will take care of you.”

Bob is stunned and his brain is spinning.  Is Beverly cheating on him?  What should he think about Angie?  Quickly his dick makes his decision for him.  “Um, I like what you are doing for me now, is there anything else that you do?”

“Why don’t I take you for a spin?”

Night Angel mounted Bob and pulled him into her.  In the pale light she appeared as one of the Playboy models that he had sneaked looks at as a teenager.  Tactile exploration showed that unlike the models all of her parts felt original and she had hair where normal women have hair.  Her arousal based on her wetness seemed to match his.

Even while the experience was exploding his brain with pleasure, Bob noticed some disturbing things about Angie.  She played her vagina like a symphony, vibrating, relaxing and contracting Cleopatra’s grip and changing tempo and theme.  When he grasped her buttocks he felt scales rather than skin.  Something brushed his inner thighs up to his butt.  Her assurance that “Oh, that’s just my tail” didn’t assure him.

When his brain returned to minimal function he whispered “What are you?”

“You don’t have adequate language or knowledge for me to answer you.  Let’s just say, that like my brother who likes to be called ‘Night Monster’, we are good demons.  We ask nothing from worthy humans but mutual pleasure.  As much as you have enjoyed me, I have enjoyed you.  Would you object to me calling on you again when we are both free?”

“Uh, no.  Could you stay longer tonight?  I don’t know if I can go again, but we could cuddle.”

“Oh, we can go again.”

Good to her word, Night Angel had Bob fully prepared in five minutes.

Teen Angel

Paul was having another one of those dreams at 3 AM.  Since he had turned twelve he had been having nocturnal emissions and since fourteen he had been experiencing embarrassing daytime erections, but no real sex.  He had grown used to encountering movie stars or attractive classmates at night, but this time it was somebody he didn’t recognize and didn’t seem entirely human.  Whatever it was had a tail and scales on parts of ‘her’ body, but otherwise looked like a girl of his age.  As her hand wandered across his abdomen, he immediately ejaculated.  She handed him one of the tissues he kept next to the bed for cleanup.

The bigger difference from his earlier dreams was that this partner spoke to him.  “The thing that I like about teenage boys is that they rebound so fast.  I love teaching sex education.”  To prove her point she quickly prepared him for sex.  Without any preliminaries, she easily pulled him on top of her as is he weighed ten pounds and inserted his penis in an appropriate location.  Her hands on his butt guided him into a slow rhythm for awhile, followed by rapid thrusts and a mutual orgasm.

“Now that we know each other better, I should introduce myself.  I’m a good demon that specializes in helping teen boys become proficient at sex.  You can call me Teen Angel.  I hope that you enjoyed your first lesson.  If you agree, we can cover hygiene, erogenous zones, various positions and practices and ways to find appropriate, agreeable partners.  What do you think?”

Paul found it difficult to talk, but managed to squeak ‘Sure’.

“One last thing.  When you wake up tomorrow, you will think this was a dream, a vivid one, but still a dream.  Check your sheets.”

When Paul woke up, he remembered the last thing that Teen Angel said.  He found some of her scales in his sheets.

The Black Lagoon

Sheryl woke up around midnight to find a roughly humanoid giant monster in her bedroom.  As she started to scream the monster tore the covers off her bed and her pajamas off her body.

As she continued to scream the demon roughly rubbed all over her body while lingering on her more sensitive parts.  His long forked tongue invaded all of her orifices not stopping until he had poked into both ears at once.  Her self-defense training was no match for his strength.

“Continue screaming, that just makes this more enjoyable for me.”

By the time his cruel treatment was completed, her screams had become whimpers.

He then picked her up by her waist as though she were nothing and lowered her slowly onto his organ.  The whimpers became moans as they established a rhythm.

After five mutual orgasms Sheryl spoke “God, that was great, but what would you think of a new scenario?  We’ve done monster assault a lot.  You don’t exist in the daytime, but I’ve got a pool and a white bathing suit for after dark.”

“You’re thinking ‘Creature From The Black Lagoon’?  Great.  I can become Gillman without scales so you don’t get scratches as in my natural form.  If we get tired of that there is always wife at home with pool cleaner when husband works late.  Been done too often?  If we want to stay dry, you can reinforce the chandelier for something really acrobatic.  How about I become a hopeless high school boy and you are the sexy math tutor?”

“I don’t mind the scratches.  They lend authenticity and I love the new ear trick”

“See you at your pool 10pm Friday?  I’ve got a date with newbie Beverly on Thursday.”

“Works for me.”

“See you then.  Love you babe.”

“Love you too, monster.”

***

Consists of four night demon stories in Terror House

Mausoleum 

Manifest a mausoleum of the miniature house father fabricated the fall you turn four.  Erected where the backyard abuts the meadow and the edge of the marsh, you are instructed of its cherry wallpapered purpose before you skip through the bee balm towards it in a periwinkle pinafore.  

Enter a door without any bolts, too scant for adults, a place only accessible to the most minuscule.  Play there, wile away long summer days in a tiara and your step-mother’s borrowed jewels, practicing the rituals of becoming a nobleman’s spouse.  Perfect patrician place settings, calligraphy and walk in plastic kitten heels until you are old enough to be of use.  Old enough a father can ignore how you feel.  Can no longer crouch beneath its childish ceilings, cower inside its cedar pretense.  

Father offers your hand in town and considers candidates while you, morose, in a marsh in a gingham babydoll dress, layer two sets of long leather gloves — only the gardener ever requests you dress for experimentation rather than love; the very same man who taught you the names of each plant, the noxious as well as the nice.  Though he does not have a clue the power you derive from his horticultural advice. 

Fill your covered fingers then coffers with what resembles dried Queen Anne’s Lace though you would tell the truth of their toxins if anyone ever bothered to asked — 

water hemlock you save for your final disgrace Wind some around your locks as a crown.  Drown sorrows in a skeleton bridal teacup, hand painted at 12 and stored four more years safely away.  You knew the next time you would see it, it would summon tears with the most toxic of teas one must sip on that most miserable day.  It’s kept in the back of the cupboard in the too-small house where you played.  Skin a hip on its jamb as you crawl.  Another season, you would be married away away or no longer fit inside of this place at all.  Happiness you are outgrowing.  Rest in peace where you were small.  

Bad Poetry is Bad Poetry 

“I just can’t figure it out,” she moaned. “No one seems to be reading my poems. I post them in my writing groups and even on the rest of those bullshit social media sites. I’m not getting any comments or likes.” She

“Wish I had an answer for you.”

“I’ve been thinking I should change the font of my poems. Maybe print them in a classical style format. I know, then post them over an image of a scene that captures the poems’ themes. What do you think?”

“My opinion isn’t important. I’m not at all familiar with how to present a piece of literature. Marketing is a mystery to me. I have no taste. People think I suffer from ageusia.

It was my poor excuse for not wanting to give her the actual reason.

“Why won’t you answer my question? I would really appreciate your professional critique. I’m trying to reach a larger audience and I believe the reason for my poor readership is the way my poems are presented. If I make them more attractive by adding a few features to capture their attention, I will become more popular and recognized. Don’t you believe it’s true? Tell me what you think.”

“My professional opinion? I’m not sure I can be categorized as a professional. Okay, if you want my take on your conundrum I’ll offer my honest assessment. And please don’t get all defensive and uptight and shit. Don’t take it as a personal attack.”

“Of course not. I know you’ll be honest. Why are you going to put me down?”

“I’m going to offer my opinion.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“I think you’re way off course. You’re not seeing where the actual problem lies. The early classic poets didn’t have social media and marketing tools available to dress up their work. Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and the Beat Poets as well, their poems became favored because of the content. The poem stood as a great piece of literature solely on the words alone. What is your reason for writing a poem?”

“I’m not really sure. I guess because it is something that is easy for me to do. Plus I think I can become famous and wealthy for my poems.”

“Your purpose for writing a poem is insincere. If your intention is to use it as a tool to attempt to win a popularity contest, receive sympathy, praise or become famous and shit like that, then you’ve missed what the purpose of poetry is about.”

“What, you don’t think I’m a real poet?”

“I think anyone that creates a poem is a poet. But not every poet is talented. Some just produce ‘bad poetry’ pablum, doggerel, drivel or pure shit.”

“So you think my poetry is shit?”

“Your poetry is always about you. About your thoughts, desires and dreams. You believe your experiences, your emotions and your opinions are as important to everyone else as they are to you. ‘Just because it happened to you doesn’t make it interesting’. You’re so depressed, so misunderstood. What I interpret from the poem is that it’s a pathetic cry for attention and sympathy. Then there’s the sappy, cheesy love poems filled with grammar school rhymes and overused phrases. Love and dove or above, home and roam. When’s the last time you roamed? Pure shit. How can anyone not see their poems as mediocre or ordinary? You’ve spent more time thinking about and planning the its presentation than the 10 minutes you spent creating the poem itself. And then you use cliches and idioms that were created by someone else and have been overused, worn out. Have you ever considered the fact you may just be a shitty poet? And as far as your ideas to gain attention, when I see a poem overlayed on a picture with fancy, hard-to-read fonts in some jumbled format, I don’t even take the time to read the title. I think if it takes all of that bullshit to giftwrap the poem, its content can’t possibly be worthwhile. Then people wonder why their poem has been rejected by every magazine they’ve sent it to.”

“You don’t have to be so mean. I just asked for help, not your degradation. Ya know what, fuck you. Your opinion doesn’t make you right.”

“That’s correct, I never claimed to be right. I said I would give you my honest opinion.”

“No sex for you until, when? Maybe forever.”

“If that’s the case I may as well add one other point. I see it so often that a poem with a creative theme turns into a mumbling, stuttering piece of rhymed words, completely losing the poem’s original theme. The emotions become secondary to a line or verse written to appease the rhyme. What’s left is that the feel becomes lost in a mixture of tangled words.”

“What makes you Mr. Know it All, huh? I don’t see your books on the bestseller list or your poems being quoted. Just who do you think you are?”

“Guess I shouldn’t have said anything like the hundreds of others that don’t read or comment on your poetry. Now here you are reacting exactly like everyone that doesn’t receive flattering comments. You said you wouldn’t become defensive. You believe everyone should shower you with praise. Do you know what else I see as a problem? There’s this undeserving praise or kudos given to someone who obviously has no talent for writing. They post their poetry and it receives a false positive response. What people are doing with their bullshit comments of approval is giving the person an unrealistic assessment of their writing. An untruthful evaluation of their poem or talent is a cruel act. False encouragement will backfire on them sometime. It’s considered being nice, but I’d rather have an honest critique of my writing, positive or not, instead of bullshit. I don’t need anyone to be nice, I prefer the truth. 

“You hurt my feelings. I thought you would give me advice, not belittle me. You don’t know what being nice is.”

“Please, whatever you do, don’t write a poem about it, trust me. I’m sorry if you’re upset but it’s just the way I see things. Ya know what, didn’t you take some painting classes a couple years back? Maybe you should take a shot at being an artist instead.”

Disasturbation

The flies circled in the sky above like great vultures. Their wings cast shadows on the rust colored sand below. I may be the last person left alive. I hope I am. No one deserves this suffering. I should have given up already but my body wants to live even if my mind does not. I grasped my manhood firmly and begin to masturbate. Pleasure can be an effective if brief distraction.

The flies were not an invading or alien force. It would have been simpler if that was the case. We could fight them and kill them and be done with it. No,they came from us. For years secularism and reason had grown powerful and secure in their hold on the human mind then this all went and fucked it up. Chaos was king again. We were cursed by our own desire. The human orgasm became a tool of human destruction. When it first happened to me I was in the dark of my bedroom playing with my meat. I came with the usual lively joy followed immediately by minor shame. Then I felt them squirming around my lap; flowing like mud through the small folds of my hairy scrotum. I turned on the light. I was covered in two dozen or so tiny white maggots. 

This in the coming days would prove to be a non unique experience. It wasn’t just those with cocks either. The whole human race was producing that vile shit upon each and every orgasm.  The world was overrun with those sticky little bastards in a week. That would have been bad enough. The metamorphoses turned the disgusting into the apocalyptic. The maggots grew large as bears. They walled themselves off in chrysalises for no longer than a few hours.If they were not destroyed by then the creatures emerged as fully formed flies identical in appearance to houseflies save their massive size which in some cases rivaled that of whales. The smallest of  them were larger than horses. They were hateful things. The flies would swoop down and devour animals and people like ripe fruit. 

As I manually pleasured myself I eyed the monstrous flies circling above. They saw me  but there was little urgency in taking my life. I closed my eyes and replayed an orgy I had once attended in vivid detail. I felt the most likely long dead mouth wrap its lips around the base of my cock. The imagination is a wondrous thing. I shuddered in ecstasy as I busted my vile nut. Upon opening my eyes it took a moment to adjust my vision to the blinding light of the sun. When I was able to see the fifty or so tiny worms I had produced squirming in the sand I quickly set to work gathered them into a small pile. “See this you bastards?!” I shouted up to the monsters. They seemed to be flying lower than before. I shoved several maggots into my dry and mostly toothless mouth. They sprayed bitter juice when I crushed them between my bleeding gums. 

Suddenly one of the flies was on  me. It probed at my eyes with its proboscis. Its six limbs engulfed my body. It was vibrating with joy and fluttering its massive semi translucent wings. That’s when I went for the blade I had taped to my side. It was more a broken beer bottle than a blade but for these purposes it might as well have been a magical sword. I stabbed the fucker once. It attempted to tighten its hold on me. I stabbed it three  or four more times, taking care to poke holes in one of its wings. It attempted to fly away and join its brethren which still flew above us. It could do little more than hop like a one legged chicken. I went wild. I no longer used the broken glass. I ripped into it with my bare hands and extracted its innards. They felt cool and soothing against my sunburnt skin. Eventually it stopped moving. I would be eating very good tonight. 

Santa’s Helper

No one enjoys working on Christmas, but some jobs are more bearable than others. 

If you’re stuck with a holiday double shift at the roadside massage parlor, you should be philosophical. Believe it or not, there are worse gigs. Tips are way better than fast food wages. And Bob, the owner, is a supportive guy, ready to beam jerks with a 2X4 when they step out of line.

The customers are almost always polite. Vast majority are truckers who just need some quick fun before returning to their rigs. They see the interstate exit sign that says “Climax” and get all hot and bothered. Most of them want to know if I’m a WMU student. I tell them yes, so they ask what I’m studying. Like it isn’t obvious.

It’s all theatre. I’m really from outer space, sent to western Michigan to observe the natives. My honchos at the home office picked the Midwest because of its homespun Americana vibe. In a few days, I’ll be back on my planet, ready to share research with esteemed colleagues. 

The door pushes open and a guy steps in wearing a Santa suit. He looks unhappy. Maybe his favorite reindeer died. I hand him the sex menu, and he peruses it like a guy who knows that someone will screw up his order. I’m not sure if he annoys me or if I just feel sorry for him.

“Can I answer any questions?” This seems like an absurd query for a massage parlor, but Bob gets pissed off if I don’t ask.

Santa’s face rises from the price list. “I just want to talk. I mean, have a real discussion. How much for that?”

I sigh. “20 thousand. You can’t afford it. It’s only one thousand for a two-girl back rub with extras.”

Santa bristles, and his face becomes even more red than usual. “How do you know I can’t afford it?”

Taken aback, I stammer, “Well, it’s a lot. Like a new car or a down payment on a house. Conversation is pricey these days.”

“Money is no object.” Santa sinks into a chair and begins to unlace his boots. The shoelaces flop everywhere like black spaghetti. When Santa finally looks up, his expression is coy. “Whaddaya think, sweetheart? You up for it?”

Like most customers, Santa wants to pretend I’m his girlfriend. I’m always surprised these poor saps can’t tell I’m an extraterrestrial. Men don’t look closely at anything, including women. If females knew how easy it was to impress guys, they’d save a fortune on makeup and Botox.

Santa gives me his credit card, and I swipe it through the machine. 10 grand for the house and 10 for me. Not bad for a slow night. I might as well be civil.

Santa has finally succeeded in his mission of boot removal. His plump toes are like two rows of overripe strawberries. I look away and smile politely. “What would you like to talk about?”

I hope he doesn’t want me to sit in his lap. It would be just like an ersatz Santa to have a lap fixation. But this guy doesn’t seem to be interested in sex at all. He’s into conversation, which strikes me as the ultimate kink.

Santa fixes me with an earnest expression. “I’d like to know what you think about Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. If you don’t mind.”

“Reason is slave to passion.” I watch as Santa unbuttons his shirt. “Ethics are based on sentiment, rather than rational behavior.”

Santa’s eyes meet mine, and I shiver involuntarily. “Who is your favorite existentialist philosopher?” he whispers.

“That’s hard to gauge. Those 20^th century European thinkers were a rather dull lot.” I help Santa disengage one of his chubby arms from a sleeve. “I do have a strong fondness for Camus, however. Reading “The Stranger” had a profound impact on my adolescence.”

“Oh God, me too!” Santa’s face is ecstatic, enraptured. “I never could understand why Meursault killed that man. It seemed so random.” 

“He just wanted to feel something.” I glance at the clock. Twenty more minutes until the end of my shift. I’ll head home, input the evening’s session data to the home computer, and catch a few hours of well-earned rest.

Santa is now completely shirtless. His corpulent body shudders for a moment, then goes still. “This is the best conversation I’ve had in a long time. Thank you.” He rises from his chair and throws his arms around me. 

Santa’s embrace feels warm, like I’m an old friend he’s not sure he’ll ever see again. I don’t understand why he’s so grateful, since our dialogue only lasted a few minutes. I am surprised by the authenticity of his gesture, and my own willingness to submit to it. For 20 grand, Santa has earned a hug. Perhaps I need one, as well.

Without another word, Santa pulls his arms back into his shirt and slides both feet inside his boots. He fumbles with the shoelaces until they come together. 

I can’t imagine why Santa wanted to converse while shirt-less and shoe-less. In my temporary line of work, it’s best not to ask too many personal questions. My role is to observe and take notes.

“I’ll be going now. Thanks again.” Santa strolls towards the door, then pauses to give me a final look. “You’re so SMART.” 

Santa wanders across the parking lot towards a 1998 Honda Accord. It’s a particularly hideous shade of slate-gray, half-covered in rust. Someone has painted a reindeer on it. He yanks the door open, gives me a cheery wave, and drives off in a cloud of exhaust.

The parking lot is now completely empty. A couple of stray snowflakes skitter across its surface. The absolute silence fills me with a strange sense of peace.

Well, I’ll have a hell of a story to share with the home office tomorrow morning. Hard to believe that a guy would be willing to pay so much money for conversation when sex would have been far cheaper. Especially someone with such a shitty car.

Perhaps sex is overrated. I have long suspected that might be the case. Rapport is much rarer, and therefore more valuable. Like the difference between a piece of costume jewelry and a black diamond. The costume piece might sparkle more, but that doesn’t really mean anything.

My mission on Earth is almost complete. I’ll be home in less than a week. And I’m ten grand richer. It hasn’t been such a bad Christmas after all.

Welcome to the New World 

Matt and I are not the best candidates for drug smuggling. In our loose circle of acquaintances Matt is generally regarded as a fuck up; terminally unemployed and frequently homeless (unless you count living in a wheelless van in a friend’s driveway a residence, which most people do not). When he’s not running his mouth or in an alcohol-induced rage he’s generally comatose from some ungodly over the counter cheap high gone wrong. 

I’m Jack, Matt’s best friend, which means I am more or less just like him but slightly better looking. When you get down to the lower rungs of the caste system, distinctions like this become more important

Matt and I make the drive to Tijuana in a little over two hours. It’s a few minutes before 5:00 and just getting dark as we pass through the giant turnstiles at the border (“abandon all hope ye who enter here” flashes through my mind) and cross the piss river into TJ proper. It’s New Year’s Eve, and the streets are already filled with drunks and gringo suckers looking to get fucked up and ripped off.

From the bridge we cab up to the old jai alai palace, fending off the driver’s offers to find us girls and drugs.

“What you guys want? I can get you pussy. You want sucky-sucky, yeah? You like mota?”

“I like mota,” I say, looking at Matt.

“That sounds cool and everything, bro, but can you take us to a donkey show?” Matt says, lighting a cigarette. “That’s what I really want. I wanna see Mr. Ed getting some head.”

The driver looks annoyed and waves his hand dismissively, his English suddenly improving. “No. No good. No such thing as a fucking donkey show.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Just take us up the strip. We can find our own action, man.”

We find Jorge and his partner Lee near the corner in front of the jai alai stadium, as arranged. Matt and I have known Jorge since we were kids, back when we were juvenile delinquents in grade school and years before he moved out to the I.E. and got into the dope trade. I’d been bugging him for a few months to give us a shot helping him bring some goods over the border, sort of a tryout to see if we could work together and make a few bucks. Jorge had agreed to it and talked his partner into it, but I had the feeling he was doing it against his better judgment. Maybe he felt sorry for us because he’d known us for so long and we weren’t doing as well as he was. It wasn’t easy being a fuck up. You never knew if anyone really trusted you or not.

Beneath one of the jacaranda trees surrounding the stadium Jorge gives us a map with directions in English and Spanish to the pickup site, which is at a bar a short taxi ride outside of downtown. The plan is pretty straightforward: Jorge and Lee will spend the afternoon buying prescription narcotics from various pharmacies around the city, then pack and seal them inside of a pair of hollowed-out Virgin Mary statues Jorge uses to get contraband across the border. All Matt and I have to do is pick up the statues and look like a couple of inebriated gringos with an armload of tourist junk and walk it all across the bridge for him. 

This is obviously not a French Connection-level operation, but Jorge wants us to take it seriously.

“Don’t get too fucked up. Get a buzz, get loose, but don’t get stupid. And if something happens, try to have it happen on this side of the border. Keep some money in your sock to bribe the federales if anything comes up.”

“What if something happens on the US side?”

“Lose my number,” he says, smiling grimly. “You’ll be on your own.”

Jorge hands us a couple of twenties and disappears with Lee into the crowd.

Matt and I have several hours to kill before we meet with Jorge and Lee to pick up the statues. Our cut from the night will probably cover the cost of gas from driving down from Orange County and maybe keep us fucked up for a few days, but the money was not really the point. Like most things we did, there was usually no point or reasonable logic behind it. 

We walk along Avenida Revolucion for a while before going into a bar called the Isis. As soon as we clear the door a man runs up to us. 

“Feliz año nuevo,” he shouts. 

I head toward a table at the back of the bar, but the man grabs my arm and ushers us to a pair of seats next to the stage. A sad faced woman in a zebra skin patterned bikini is dancing to a Billy Idol song that was a hit years ago. She smiles at us and pulls down her bikini top, revealing blurry india ink tattoos on the tops of her breasts: a heart on one and a lightning bolt on the other.

The man whistles and the dancer, who is now on her hands and knees, slowly crawls backwards toward our table.  When her ass reaches the edge of the table she roughly pulls her ass cheeks apart, exposing her pussy for us to see. The man is eagerly watching us for some reaction or sign of approval.

“She is my sister. Go on, eat! You can eat her if you want.”

“No thanks, man,” Matt says, casually blowing a stream of smoke toward the woman’s ass. “Jack, do you want to eat out this man’s sister?”

The man looks at me and exaggeratedly licks his lips and makes a horrible guttural noise with his throat. After staring at him in confusion for a long moment, I finally realize that the noise he is making is supposed to signify “good” or possibly “yummy.” 

“I’m okay, but thank you.”

After a few rounds of drinks the outdated new wave hits and repeated invitations to go down on the doorman’s sister drive us out of the Isis. Foot traffic on the Avenida has picked up considerably, and the street is now overflowing with new year’s revelers. I’d always hated New Year’s Eve. The forced conviviality, the countdown, the fucking singing. Jorge thought it would be good cover for our trial run, a couple of white boys in TJ on New Year’s looking for some action wouldn’t draw a lot of attention. I would have never picked New Year’s to come to this hellhole on my own.

A mile up the street we find ourselves in the Bambi Club. The “walking around” money Jorge gave us to amuse ourselves is running low, but Matt has a pocketful of counterfeit singles he’s intent on trying out.  Actually, counterfeit is probably not accurate, since that implies that the bills were made with an effort to reasonably resemble an actual dollar bill. Matt’s bills were one-sided Xerox copies of dollar bills with his head crudely pasted in place of George Washington’s. It didn’t just look phony, it looked offensively fake. I figured they would nail him for it straight off, but when he slipped a few “Matt Bucks” into a stack of singles to pay for a round, the dim colored bar lights made them virtually indistinguishable from the real bills.

At the Bambi there’s a mariachi band on stage, the girls are better looking, and between the “Matt Bucks” and some friendly Marines that buy a few rounds, we settle in to kill a few hours. A few drinks in I decide that I need to play drums with the mariachi band, so I bribe the drummer five bucks to take a break and let me fill in for a song or two. I was never a great drummer to begin with, and the alcohol isn’t helping. I bang along for a couple of numbers, trying to figure out the rhythm of the songs but not quite getting it. I try to show off with some fancy Keith Moon fills and fuck them up, so I reign it in and keep it to a simple 4/4 beat. I look up at one point and see Matt on the stage in front of me, dancing with one of the girls. He’s shuffling around, not dancing so much as miming corny Saturday Night Fever dance moves in slow motion, playing it up for the crowd. The girl reaches over and undoes Matt’s belt buckle. Matt is not wearing underwear, so when his jeans drop to the stage his erect cock springs free, bobbing in front of him like a dowsing rod as he grooves to the music. He steps out of his jeans and continues his palsied shuffle around the stage as everyone cheers. A fat Mexican man in a sailor cap jumps on stage and starts yelling at Matt to pull his pants back up, which causes everyone in the audience to start booing. The bass player and guitar player in the band are suddenly standing next to me and patting me on the back while shaking my hand, and I can’t hear what they’re saying over the noise of the crowd and one of them shouts what sounds like “Welcome to the new world!” in my ear and I look around and it seems like the whole bar has erupted into chaos and the sound is deafening and I realize that it’s midnight and we have entered a new year in a new decade.

***

When I wake up the next day I’m on the floor. I’m fully clothed and wearing my leather jacket, lying face down with my hands shoved deep in my jeans pockets, pinning my arms beneath me.  I have to roll onto my side and work my arms out, which are numb and sluggish from lack of circulation.

After a few minutes my eyes begin to focus and I realize we’re at Jorge’s father’s house in Riverside. The last thing I remember is being somewhere near the border at a firework kiosk and trying to talk Matt out of buying a stick of dynamite. I have no memory of crossing the border or the two hour drive to Riverside.

Matt is sitting at a small wooden table in the kitchen area, drinking from a fifth of tequila.  I check the fridge and help myself to a cold Milwaukee’s Best. Todd holds out the tequila bottle and I take a tentative swig, then puke it up immediately in the kitchen sink.  After that it goes down a little easier.

“Where’s Jorge?”

“Dunno. No one here when I got up.”

“Are the statues here?”

Matt looks at me blankly. A chill runs through me.

“We did pick up the statues, didn’t we?”

“Fuck man, I don’t remember.”

“Oh shit.”

I pace around the living room, wondering how badly we fucked up. Jorge is a friend, not some vicious drug lord, so it’s not like he’s going to take us out into the pasture and shoot us. At least I don’t think he would do that, not for a couple thousand dollars. But if we lost his shit we’re going to have to make it right, and that worries me. Making shit right is not my strong suit.

“What’s the last thing you remember? I remember being near the border at that fireworks stand, but I don’t remember if we had the statues or not. Fuck.”

“Last thing I remember is standing in front of the bar laughing at those college kids. They had all those guys in the back of the federale car and they were shitting it. The one kid tried to slip some cash to El Capitan and he gave him one of my fake dollars. I got the fuck out of there before they recognized my face on the bill.”

“But you don’t remember picking up the statues?”

“I think we fucked up,” is all he says.

I walk to the hall closet and start digging around, remembering from when we were kids that Jorge’s dad kept an old Winchester 30/30 in there. I find the rifle leaning against the wall in the back of the closet. I check to see if it’s loaded, then close the door. Matt turns and sees me with the rifle.

“You think it’s that serious?”

“I’m just going to go outside for a smoke,” I say, grabbing another beer from the refrigerator. “You never know what you’re going to run into out here in the boonies.”

Outside we’re greeted by Jorge’s dogs, two malnourished Dobermans. I can clearly see their ribs poking through their dirty, patchy coats.  Both dogs twitch spasmodically and bare their long yellowed teeth, their mouths contorting and then twisting back into a hideous rictus grin. The two dogs follow and circle us as we walk down a path leading from the house to a clearing overlooking their pasture, twitching and baring their teeth the entire way. The tequila isn’t cutting through the hangover and I feel disoriented out in the yard in the sunlight with these fucked up dogs following me. 

“What’s wrong with these goddamn dogs?”

“It has to be some kind of neurological shit…  Fucking look at that!”

“What kind of asshole would keep these mutants as pets…  It’s like animal abuse.”

“Totally,” Matt says.

“We should take them out to the field and put them out of their misery.”

We follow a trail to the edge of the property and climb over a small barbed wire fence. I hold the rusted strands open, whistling and making sure the dogs follow us through. From the top of the hill we can see the pasture below and a small creek running through it. 

“You’re not really gonna shoot Jorge’s dogs, are you?” Matt asks.

I have no idea what is going to happen. I feel disoriented and weightless, like I’m watching the morning unfold from outside my body. I take my jacket off and open the beer. 

“I haven’t decided yet,” I say.

We reach the edge of the creek and the dogs run ahead of us to the waterline.  We stand and watch the dogs timidly walk forward and regard the water, which is brown and stagnant.

Standing there on the hilltop I suddenly remember a dog I had when I was a kid, a black and tan mutt a friend from the neighborhood had given to me.  It had jumped the fence around our yard one day and gotten run over in front of the house. By the time I got home from school the only thing left of my dog was an oily brown stain with traces of fur ground into the asphalt. I had cried for days over it, believing it was somehow my fault. I whistle and clap my hands, and Jorge’s dogs turn from the creek and run back up the hill to where we’re standing.

I take the rifle and aim it at one of the dog’s heads but I know I don’t have the courage to pull the trigger. The dog looks stupidly at me, uncomprehending, shaking and grimacing, and I can tell that he wants to die as badly as I do, that he just wants all of this to stop, but I am not strong enough to do what needs to be done. I feel like a coward. That’s what I realize standing there on that hilltop on new year’s morning: I am a coward and things will always be this way.

“Hey,” Matt says, and I turn and look in the direction he is pointing. On the horizon I can see Jorge’s truck driving along the dirt road that leads to the house. 

I put the rifle over my shoulder, ready to face the new year, and the dogs and I slowly start down the hill in the direction of the truck.

The Christmas Party

Her pen out of ink, Heather tossed it in the trash can next to the kitchen counter and dug through the junk drawer for a pencil. Finding one with somewhat of a point left, she returned to her list, making check marks next to the items that had already been acquired. She hadn’t bought any yams, but Aunt Tilly would take care of that. She always brought the yams. 

“Is Susan bringing that commie again this year?” Heather’s husband, Doug asked, reaching over Heather’s shoulder to snatch a star shaped cookie from a red and green tin. 

“Marty isn’t a commie,” Heather said, sliding the lid on the tin before Doug could do more damage to his waistline. “He’s just young. He hasn’t figured things out yet.”

“He’s a god damned libtard. Ten to one, the jerk off shows up wearing a mask.”

“And if he does you’ll leave him alone,” Heather said, turning to poke Doug in the chest with the eraser end of her pencil. 

“Did you see how he carried on at Chad’s wedding?” Doug asked, snatching the pencil from his wife’s hand and tossing it onto the counter. “He might as well have accused us of being murderers. If he was so scared of the virus, why’d he bother to show up?”

“For the same reason he’ll be here for Christmas.  Susan and I told him he had to,” Heather said folding her arms across her chest to remind Doug it worked the same way for him. The wife was the boss. “He doesn’t want to end up in divorce court, which is where you’ll be ending up if you don’t behave yourself.” Doug grunted and wandered off to the refrigerator for a beer. 

Like Doug, Heather wasn’t too concerned about the pandemic, but there was no point in antagonizing the people who bought into the hype. If Marty wanted to go about looking like a fool in that mask, that was Susan’s problem. All that mattered was that he showed up. She opened the refrigerator and counted the beers. Only two were missing. Doug would be alright as long as Marty and Susan didn’t stay too long after dinner. If they did, hopefully Doug would be in full Santa mode, and concentrate his efforts on passing out the gifts. Dressed as Santa, Doug always distributed all the gifts, no matter who they were from.  

Heather was about to check on the ham when she heard her daughter’s voice hailing her from the foyer. They met in the hallway with hug.

“I thought you were going to show up early to help me with the decorations,” Heather said, scooping up the chubby cheeked girl tugging on her apron.

“Doug put up a fight. I had to throw a fit to get him out the door.”

Heather shook off the frown that had started to mar her face, gave her granddaughter a peck on the cheek and set the child down so she was facing the tree.

“Is there a present under there for me?” 

“Why don’t you go have a look,” Heather said with a grin. “No peeking under the wrapping.”

As the girl scurried off, Heather put her arm around Susan and led her to the kitchen.

“Where’s Marty now?”

“In the car. I assume he’ll be in soon,” Susan said with a sigh. “He said he had some calls to make.”

“Well, I’m sure he wants to wish his parents Merry Christmas. It’s a shame they couldn’t fly in like they usually do.”

“Marty wouldn’t have let them. He thinks we should all put our lives on hold until this pandemic ends.”

“That’s silly. Life is for living,” Heather said, suddenly remembering the ham. “I wish your father hadn’t insisted on ham this year,” she said, peering into the oven. “They always come out too dry when I cook them.”

“I’m worried Marty isn’t going to come around,” Susan said, handing her mother the meat thermometer that was sitting by the sink.

“Of course he will. Just give him time.”

“But what if he finds out about dad? He’d never accept it.”

“We just won’t tell him.”

“How are we supposed to keep something like that from him? The whole family knows.”

Heather started to reassure her daughter, but the doorbell cut her off. 

“That’s probably Tilly,” Heather said. “Go let her in. She probably has an armful of presents.”

A moment later, Susan was leading Tilly and Marty to the tree in the living room.

“Marty was nice enough to rescue me,” Tilly said. “I was about to spill yams all over the porch,”

“Glad to be of service,” Marty said, adding his burden of brightly wrapped boxes onto the stack of similar packages beneath the tree. Heather was disappointed to see he was wearing a N95 mask. 

“It’s good to see you, Marty,” Heather said, giving him a hug. “You don’t come around often enough.”

“I’ve just been trying to limit my contact with the unvaccinated for now. Of course I’ve missed you all.”

“Well, I’m glad you made an exception for today. There’s beer in the fridge in the garage. Go help yourself before Doug drinks it all.” 

“I came prepared,” Marty said, pulling a straw out of his pocket. Christ, Heather thought, realizing he planned to drink with his mask on. She wondered how he planned to handle the ham and green bean casserole. 

Aside from a few hostile glances, Doug left Marty alone throughout the day as presents were opened, dinner was served, and people left to make room for new arrivals, popping in to sample the peach cobbler and share a hug. It wasn’t until Susan asked Heather if she had seen Marty, and she realized Doug was also missing, that Heather felt a tinge of panic. Susan noted her mother’s expression and bolted from the room, making for her father’s work shed in the backyard. Heather raced after her.

“Don’t go in there,” Heather said, catching her daughter and pulling her away from the door as she reached for the knob. “It’s too late.”

“But that’s my husband he has in there!” Susan shouted, brushing her mother’s hand off her shoulder and turning back to the door. Before Heather, who was still trying to catch her breath, could stop her, Susan yanked the door open.

Doug, still in his Santa suit, stood over the body on the floor with his pants around his ankles. His back was to them, but they could tell he was frantically masturbating on Marty, whose head had been pulverized with the heavy crescent wrench resting in a pool of blood next to him.

***

Susan would be fine, Heather thought as she left her daughter tucked in bed, full of sleeping pills. As she passed the pictures, hung in neat rows in the hallway, she stopped and scowled. She’d have to rearrange them all to make room for a picture of Marty. Foolish Marty! Imagine going on about possibly losing someone to some stupid germs! Every year at Christmas Doug chose a victim. Sometimes it was a family member. Sometimes he got too drunk, waited too long, and had to go out hunting after the party. Heather always hated it when that happened. She always worried he’d get caught. Better to make the annual sacrifice here at home among people who wouldn’t betray them.  Christmas must always go on, she thought. Traditions must be upheld no matter what the cost. 

Sitting down at the kitchen table, she smiled at Tilly, who had stayed to help clean up, as Tilly set a mug of hot cocoa before her.

“Susan took it pretty hard,” Tilly said between coughs. Sitting down across from Heather, she blew her nose in a paper towel and looked disapprovingly at the greenish glob that had come out of her nose.

“She’ll be fine,” Heather said, her voice cracking. She took a gulp of cocoa, hoping to relive the sudden scratchy feeling in her throat.