Crimson and Clover

Do you have any idea how many times I use sugar and nothing happens? Nothing! What the hell! You are the witch in this duo! I’m just your little princess toad.”

Sarah gives me one of her sideways smirks and reaches over to grab and then gently squeeze my left tit which immediately gets me wet. I want her to take me right now, beside the cauldron she has so resourcefully and cleverly assembled over the fire pit. I mean right here, in the soot.  There’s something about how she forcefully pulls me under her and her face is shrouded behind her powerful bushel of curls, a berry bramble thicket without the thorns and all I can see is her lips drawn into a stabbing slit before they descend on my mouth and I am pried open like an oyster as she dives for her pearl.

Sarah has her knees planted firmly on the earth and is bent over the apple crate searching for an ingredient. Her crimson robe with the belt tie is coming undone in her state of fervency as she really puts her heart into her craft. I hope it falls off completely. 

“Go in the house and fetch me the wooden spoon, bad girl.” She is all business when we are working a spell.

I myself have been working spells like this since I was 13, but never have I seen them performed with such aplomb as when Sarah lords over the ladle. My spells work for a while but they invariably peter out long before I want them to end. Not Sarah. Once she puts a spell on you and has you ingesting one of her signature brews, well Good Night Nurse Ratchet…you are hers for as long as she wants you. Sometimes I think I too am an unknowing victim of her potions – but honestly, I don’t care.

Still, the brew is simmering, these spells are time-sensitive and I am hotter than Elton John’s horny black toad. I hustle back to the cabin, but it’s way more than a measly cabin.  It’s a fucking Music Chalet hidden deep in the White Pine Woods west of Chicago and she and I are musicians on top of probably being the finest witches to ever grease a broom.  Ok, mostly Sarah, but sometimes I can rustle up a few perky tunes and vampy incantations and Sarah seems to be impressed, but I think she just likes the way I lick her. At any rate, at least I’m a great Sous Chef. I enter the kitchen and quietly open the utensil drawer, rummaging around for that wooden spoon. So many uses, I think – and I’m wetter than ever.  

Giddy now, with spoon in hand, I half skip out the door being careful not to let it slam shut as Thaddeus, our future human sacrificial phallic wand, is still drugged and sound asleep. The lore of witches stealing penises to intensify and amass great power is actually quite real although most witches of today are not so bold. Once Thaddeus came into Sarah’s life, it was destined to happen. And poor Thaddeus didn’t help himself either with his braggadocious boasting. “Well, when I was born,” he brazenly told Sarah one wild night, “the doctors told my mother, Mrs. Menteur? Your son will have NO PROBLEMS with the ladies, ahem, if you know what I mean…”

Sarah agreed with the doctor. I did too. Thaddeus was my lover at one time as well. Actually, Thaddeus had several women and was arrogant enough to think he’d never get caught. That doesn’t work that well with witches, though. Even though he was careful to keep our respective belongings out of his apartment, I felt those freaky witch vibrations throughout his place. And then there was his cat. Thaddeus was not aware of how cats can commune with us. It’s too long to explain, but even without the vibes, I knew he was involved with someone else when I read the eyes of his cat.

​I can see Sarah back by the pit now, pouring an entire box of Dominoes sugar into the cauldron. 

“He likes sugar,” as if she is telling me something I don’t already know. She likes to think she has all these facts about him that I don’t have. Most times I just let her talk. I don’t mind at this point.

“Now, the trick to the sugar, is that it has to heat up slowly.” She says the word slowly real slowly and with a snaky emphasis on the S in that little high-pitched voice she has sometimes.   She’s so damn cute.

“Great!” I chime. “I’m gonna get my guitar! Let’s do a duet. How about some Carol King?”

She doesn’t answer. She’s busy organizing things in the crate and putting lids back on jars. She’s very tidy. It always makes me feel inferior but Sarah says we all have our strengths.  

I take her silence as an implicit nod and I daintily traipse back to the cabin. Thaddeus is snoring – loudly.

My heart warms as I recall how many nights, sleeping next to him, he would rattle the walls like a prime candidate for CPAP, but he’s way too vain for that gizmo. Me and Sarah, we both dug the snoring – at least she agreed with me when I told her it was mad hot and it turned me on, so she naturally had to say, yes, it made her hot too. Aside from his magnificent manly dick, which pleased us both, we had other commonalities in our mutual adoration for him. For instance, both of us really dug those balls. Once, while shopping with Sarah at Whole Foods, we moseyed past the modified plum tomatoes. “Aw, look Sarah. Thaddeus’s love apples,” I sighed. Sarah got a kick out of that.  

The day Sarah and I became a team began with a phone call I boldly decided to make soon after I cut Thaddeus out of my life.

“And just who are you?” she said when I phoned her.

“I’m the woman he’s been fucking for over a year, that’s who.”  

Silence on the other side.

“Look, Sarah,” I informed her. “He’s all yours, my dear. I broke up with him last night.”

There was something, however, in that initial silence and I could tell she sensed I was a witch.  That’s when we both decided it might not be a bad idea to meet in person.

When I first noticed her sitting at the bar, drinking what looked like an Old Fashioned, a traditional witch’s cocktail, and looking like an enchanted goddess while laughing with some hot babe to her left, it all became as clear as the moon at midnight. The thing is, a witch will always recognize another witch. And a fellow witch who has been fucking your man will irradiate the homing device needle bright nuclear neon green. When I approached her, she turned to face me.  She smelled vaguely familiar and when her hair got in my face, I couldn’t catch my breath. It was too similar to the homemade Patchouli oil I used. We were locked into each other. After a few drinks, we walked out of the bar, arm in arm, into the warm Chicago night to smoke some weed.

“You know, he was my four-leaf clover,” I said wistfully while taking in the sultry dark night and the bright stars that were popping out like seltzer bubbles on dark glass. That’s when Sarah floated the phallic wand idea to me. “Oh honey, he’s way more than a clover,” her voice conveying something only witches can discern. I was starting to get the not so pretty picture of just what Sarah was planning to do to poor well-endowed Thaddeus, when all of a sudden, I was pushed up against the brick wall, her hand was under my skirt and I was looking up at the sky where a satellite was moving rapidly across the night tableau. I always loved looking into outer space, from any vantage point.

“Hey Sarah,” I said after I came like I didn’t think possible and my brain was still flickering like a pulsar, “Would you ever want to take a one-way trip to Mars?”

“Of course, silly.”

Soon after that, our “game nights,” as we called them, began. I wasn’t too keen on Sarah’s phallic wand idea, but I wanted to keep Sarah in my life. That experience under the stars deeply affected me. And yet, I kind of missed my escapades with Thaddeus too, in spite of his pathetic poverty-stricken patriarchal ego. And while I had certainly offed my share of woodland creatures in minor sacrificial rites, I never dreamed of taking a human life.

“Couldn’t we just make a puppet out of his likeness? I mean he is so cute. We could paint on the freckles and even add those adorable glasses. And his ass alone, if we plumped it up just so, I mean, it would be a delight to craft.” But Sarah was a witch before all else.

“No, Cynthia! We will NEVER find a prick like this. Lightning never strikes twice. I must have it. And once you see what we can do with it, once it’s properly dried and petrified…”

Her eyes emitted the deepest black. She was dreaming of record labels and Grammy awards. Her despotic matrifocal lust often scared me.

“Ok, Ok,” I interrupted. I knew Sarah was serious about this. “But come on now. At least let’s have some more fun with him. You and me, together.” I knew Thaddeus would not go for a threesome with me anymore, since I pretty much shredded his ass when I broke up with him.  And now, well, after meeting Sarah and finding out she was a sister witch, I kind of regretted emasculating him the way I did. I thought sharing him with her could bring us even closer. But hey, I still had a few spells up my sleeve and with Sarah’s expertise, the idea really made sense to me.

Hence “game night” became a regular event. We figured we’d keep him around until at least the early fall, the autumnal equinox, to be exact. The perfect time to do some ancient ritualistic slicing. No need to waste these steamy sexy summer nights anyway.

Every weekend I would drive up to the cabin after I knew Sarah and Thaddeus had arrived and were settled in. Sarah would usually have a nice picnic lunch with him up at the orchard but she’d be sure to have him drugged and snugly tucked in by the time I pulled up the long gravel road.

The funny thing was that lately, our “game nights” were gnawing at something deep inside me. I definitely liked it but it seemed my guitar time with Sarah alone was what I really wanted. I didn’t think Sarah would understand, so I kept it to myself. 

The brew was starting to waft plumes of sugar steam into the night air. A few more hours to simmer. Just in time for Thaddeus to begin rousing and Sarah would be going in to lay down with him, lick his huge cock, and pour him a glass of potion. Once he was in “the zone” as we so unimaginatively called it, I would join them and we’d have our dandy daddy, taking turns and laughing and Thaddeus would be the jolliest, most compliant hunk of a duplicitous lover, sucking and joking and never knowing who was who. I think something about the spell made him fuse us together in his mind. It was delicious and enchanting and other-worldly. It was Sarah’s imagination though that kept us all rolling and rollicking like a quantum triangle – three sides with hypotenuses folding within hypotenuses. Thaddeus was our real-life monopoly board and Sarah and I vied for houses, hotels, and free parking on this handsome hunk of a man – our unsuspecting expendable sex shaman with a meter on his head.

When I got back with my guitar, Sarah had set up the Adirondack chairs with cushions, a bottle of wine was opened and a glass was resting on the arm waiting for me. Sarah was exquisite in the furious moonlight, her crimson robe pulled wide open, her voluptuous breasts beckoning me. 

“How about So Far Away, baby girl?” she suggested. But I couldn’t resist. I propped my guitar on the chair, took my wine over to her, and knelt at her feet. We toasted the moon and the wolves in the woods and Thaddeus too. I drank my wine which had a vague familiar taste. I reached my head in between Sarah’s thighs. The sky rushed in behind my eyes, I saw the rocket’s trajectory like bright white halo rings emanating from my retinas and I assumed someone had arranged for my one-way ticket to Mars. 

Speaking in Tongue

My knees on the sticky floor, my hands on her thighs, my tongue at work, I keep pinching her so she’ll shut up. She likes it. I get that. But the other customers? They’re trying to watch the movie. I don’t want them to know that I’m eating her out while the car chase is going on, or that she’s starting to slosh when the hero is being held with a knife at his throat, or that she’s about to let loose when the monster erupts from the container where the hero keeps his coffee grounds. I just want her to quietly enjoy her purchase.

Mrs. Albert is my second. She learned about this service from my first, Mrs. Eldridge. I use their last names because I don’t want to be on a first-name basis. This is a job, a job I love, but little more than dispensing extra happiness on boring afternoons in a Kansas farm town. 

“Wheat,” Mrs. Eldridge said, when I asked what her husband did. “Miles and miles of wheat.”

She surveyed the snacks. “Jujubes,” she said, pointing. “And some Good & Plentys.”

“Would you like … butter on that?” I asked.

She seemed perplexed. She had permed dark hair, which rose from her neck at the sides, like little waves. I waited. “Butter?” she said. “On Good & …?”

“It’s really … pleasurable,” I said. “Most of our female customers like it. Mmmm, butterrrrr.”

“Well,” she said, “if you say so. Is the movie any good?”

“I think you’ll like it.”

I rang her up. She seemed startled by the total. “It’s the butter,” I said. “We have to charge extra. It’s imported.”

“From where? The moon?”

“Actually, I don’t know. It’s what they tell me.”

At first, most of the patrons paused a bit at the charge. Ten bucks for butter was cheap. But they relaxed when I told them it cost half what they charged in the big cities. Out here, on the prairie, it was a bargain.

Two weeks before, I had hopped off the bus, cleaned myself up with my water bottle, and started walking Main Street. It had been a month since Alice left. Who would leave a perfectly standard one-bedroom upstairs apartment with a view of the garden and a parking stall underneath? We didn’t have a car, yet, but felt the awesome potential. Who buys a car without a place to park it? It’s about being prepared. 

Alice left a note. Said she wanted more, that I was pretty good at what I was pretty good at, but she needed more than a tongue tickler. She is unique, in that she may be the only woman on earth who doesn’t carry a smartphone, which makes her smarter, in some respects, but also makes her unreachable, in the final estimation. I wanted to call and remind her that, during our intimacies before she agreed to marry me, she had described my oral ministrations as “rare” and “special” and “the key to this woman’s heart.”

To me, that was enough. It was satisfying to be satisfying. Frankly, it was a nuisance to have a penis. When I was ministering, my dick would always start demanding attention. I wished it would just shut the fuck up, you know? It took my mind from what my mind wanted.

If I were to extrapolate from Alice’s appreciation of my talent, it seemed likely that she wasn’t the only woman whose lock that key might fit. I filed that thought for future reference. I’m not stupid. I’ve been a guy my whole life. You hang around guys, you get a sense of what they like and don’t like. Usually, it’s the reverse of what women like. Guys form likes and dislikes after they’re old enough to have tried a few things, or gotten the impression from listening to other guys that they might like certain things a lot, if only they could find someone interested in sharing. A lot of guys like the old in-and-out. Others speak highly of blow jobs. Been there, tried that, found it lacking. 

One thing I rarely heard was guys who said they like eating it. Clam diving. Rug munching. You know. It’s just not something that keeps ninety-nine percent of guys awake at night, dreaming of the next time.

Me, I’m in the one percent. Makes me a specialist. Fits, when you think about it, seeing as how most of my jobs have fallen into the category of customer service. Something else I’ve learned, there’s a lot more customer service jobs than jobs being president. So I thought I’d take my toolkit on the road until Alice sorted things out. She’s got my number. Until she finds a phone booth, I’ll work my way around the country. 

“Help Wanted” signs were everywhere after I got to Brewster, Kansas. I went straight to the theater. No surprise, they were hiring.

Right next door, above the hardware store, I found a furnished room. Bathroom down the hall. Hotplate and a small fridge. Pretty basic, but met my needs. I was moving around. Looking for something, just not sure what. Figured I would know it when I found it.

Mr. Gifford — “Mac, call me Mac” — ran The Sunset Cinema.  He showed me around, proud that he thought to take out every other row. Give customers more leg room. Made sense. When the lights went down, it was perfect for my side gig.

Most people knew to be there on time. When traffic slowed at the snack bar, I went upstairs and dialed down the lights. Then I turned on the projector. The welcome screen appeared. I let it run for a bit before I felt I could trust it not to jump the sprockets, then stepped outside. Inside the darkened theater, I waited for my eyes to adjust. It was a slow afternoon. A large man sat in the front with his tub of popcorn. Two kids, brother and sister, sat off to the right, giggling.

And Mrs. Eldridge sat in the second to last row. Right in the center. I walked to her aisle and found a seat two seats from hers. Then I waited.

Once the movie got going and her hands got active in the candy boxes, I knew it was time. I got up, walked towards her, said “Excuse me.” 

She tilted her legs to the side to let me pass. I knelt down, in front of her, and lifted her skirt. I could hear her whisper above my head, “WHAT are you doing? I’m going to call the manager.”

“Butter,” I said. “You ordered butter. This is the best we have.”

I buried my face in her bush. I never knew what to expect, so I was glad to find that she had washed. It always helps my delivery. In short order, I could tell she was enjoying herself. When she eventually slipped down in the seat and clamped my head with her thighs, I knew it was time to leave.

In my line of work, word got around fast. Mrs. Eldridge told a couple of her friends, and after they ordered butter, they each told two or three more ladies in their circle, and within a week, there was a line outside waiting for doors to open — for the matinee. The evening shows drew couples. No room for my side hustle. 

Doesn’t matter. Bottom line, “butter” sales had boosted ticket revenues four hundred percent. I had my regulars. Some were on speed dial. I knew them not by name, more by look and, if I’m honest, taste.

Things were going pretty good until a guy named Weldon knocked on the glass doors before opening one Friday afternoon. He seemed agitated, so I went and let him in. If I’d been smart, I would’ve run out the back.

“My wife says I need to train my tongue to do what it ‘posed to do,” he said. “She says Earl, you need to eat me, or I’ll ask that boy down at the theater to eat me. Something tells me he can eat it reeeeal good. Is that true? How would she know that, from just looking at you? Buying Jujubes and such? Watchin’ a cowboy movie? Any ideas?”

This was cutting close to the bone.  

“Well, can’t say for sure, but your spouse sounds like a fine woman. Has a real active imagination. Can’t say as I’ve ever been a fantasy object. Look at me.”

I held my hands up near my chest and angled my fingers back, as if they had the ability to say “Can you believe she would think such a thing of this puny schlump, when she is married to an Adonis such as yourself?”  

Weldon read my fingers. 

“Well, just make sure she doesn’t give me reason to crush the livin’ shit outta your face.”

Livin’ shit? Still, I got his point. A couple of weeks into the gig, here came the big redhead with the substantial hips and her hair in a bun up top. Red lipstick like she dipped her lips in a bucket of paint. She had become a regular. She needed to bathe more often, too, but maybe she didn’t fit in her tub.  

Thing was, she walked in on the arm of Mac. My boss. 

“Phil,” he said, “have you ever had the pleasure of meeting my wife? Leonora?”

I stared at her.

“Why, not formally,” I said, “but I believe she is a big fan of the movies.”

I smiled at her, and her face went all red and she turned briefly away and patted at her upper lip with a cotton hankie. 

“Well, thank you for doing such a great job since you started,” he said. “Can you come in a little early tomorrow, go over some of the numbers with me?”

“Numbers?”

Playing it cute, but I felt the elevator in my gut go into freefall and hit my ass on the way to the basement. 

“P&L, revenues, expenses,” he said. “You know. The numbers.”

I met him at noon the next day. We had an hour before the first showing. Time to talk, then scoot downstairs and sell tickets, candy, popcorn … and butter. He was upstairs, in his office next to the projection booth. 

“Take a seat,” he said. 

Then he told me he had been curious, why the amount of butter we typically buy each week hadn’t changed, even though sales of butter were through the roof.

“Which is great,” he said, “except that we don’t sell butter. Never have. It’s included. With the popcorn. Why are we selling butter, but apparently not using very much of the stuff?”

“Good question,” I said. “Hadn’t thought about it. I boosted the price on what we used to give away. People think movies are about popcorn. I believe, from years of observation, that customers just want to eat butter. And salt. Popcorn is the delivery vehicle. So, I figured that if they really want butter more than anything, we should recognize demand and price it accordingly.”

“You should own this business,” he said. “Really. You’ve got a head for product pricing.”

I smiled and waited. 

“I’ve gotten calls. People I know in town. I know everyone, and everyone knows me, and we all know everyone. It’s a small town.”

“Nice,” I said.

“The gentlemen in town seem to share a concern. Their wives are going to the movies a lot. More than ever in the past. It’s scaring them.”

“Scaring? The wives?”

“The husbands. They think their wives may be fooling around, meeting boyfriends in the dark. You’re here. Seen anything like that?”

I shook my head. 

“Once it’s dark, I walk the aisles every ten minutes to check on hanky-panky. It’s all  good.”

“One other thing. All the increase in revenue links directly to ticket sales. Where did the butter revenue go? And why the bump in ticket sales? Since you arrived, I mean.”

“Coincidence?”

“Odd. This is a dying business in a small town. The building is falling down. People don’t go to movies, not in the middle of the day, but suddenly, since you show up, that’s changed. Just trying to figure it out. Leonora, my wife, she can’t say enough about how much she has been enjoying herself down here. But the thing is, she doesn’t like movies. Never has. She likes potting plants, needlepoint, sipping tea and playing cribbage. She and people like her are the reason we’re dying. So what’s the attraction? You ain’t selling pot, are you?”

It seemed like a perfect time for loud and incredulous laughter.

“Good,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

He looked at his wristwatch, then me. “Guess you better get downstairs,” he said. 

“Can I ask you something first?”

“Sure, but make it quick.”

“Do you believe in pleasure?”

“Of course.”

“Do you believe marriage can provide the pleasure that people need?”

“It’s why we get married, isn’t it?”

“All of the pleasure? What if one or the other people in a marriage wants something that the other can’t provide? Do they have a right to pursue that? Does the spouse have an obligation to encourage that and celebrate what their partner takes pleasure in?”

“You’re brash, aren’t you? How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I’m forty-eight. I have a good life. I love my wife. We’re happy. I don’t see what more either of us could want.”

“Do you talk? Do you ask her what she might want? Would you help her get it, if she told you?”

“Where is this going? And why are you asking?”

“My wife said I didn’t meet her needs. Trying to figure out what I could’ve done better, I guess.”

“Well, I’ve got a meeting. And you’ve got work to do.”

“Just want to be on the same page. People have appetites. You should know that. You’re in the business of satisfying the appetite to be entertained. And I am your agent. Happy customers are repeat customers are customers willing to leave their money with you in exchange for what they know they can get here that they can’t get anywhere else. Is that correct?”

“Sure. We’re the only moviehouse in a hundred miles.”

He was on a different page. This turd didn’t know shit about his wife or her wants. If she was happy, why had she developed a severe addiction to butter? 

I thought this moviehouse side-hustle of mine was destined to fail if I kept offering my services on the down low. A little extra coin for awhile, but then the sight of the ground rushing rapidly toward our little biplane, Mac at the controls, me screaming for a parachute that hadn’t been invented yet. An angry mob with pitchforks waiting for us. I knew I needed to leap sooner than later. 

I had a better idea, to become my own boss, run my own numbers. People did it all the time. Barber shop. Cut ‘n’ Curl salon. Pedicure. Manicure. Pussy cure. I could position myself as a licensed practitioner of labial arts. Beneath a clever brand name, smaller type would note that we offered “Cunning linguistics — by appointment only.” 

People would ask, “What’s that? Is it like Rolfing or Etc?”

Etc? Someone actually said that to me once, and I almost reverse-snorted. 

I thought how fun it would be, once I found a storefront and did the remodel, to tell people “I speak in tongues.” 

All this thought transpired across the desk from Mac, who had placed a call and turned his gaze from me and was talking as if I had already left. I closed the door behind me.

In the carpeted balcony space outside, I pulled out my phone. I looked at the blank screen. I wanted to call Alice and tell her about my business idea. A path to wealth and renown. I wanted her to call me. “Come home. Just fuck me. Once in awhile.” But that wasn’t me. God gave me tongue for a reason. And, of course, Alice didn’t have a phone. I went downstairs and sold tickets and candy and butter. 

After dimming the lights and starting the film, I waited five before slipping into the dark. Leonora was waiting in aisle three. It was evident, from the start, that she had prepared. Sweet girl that she was, she had realized that our intimacies constituted more than a business transaction. They were relational, yes, but more. She paid, but what she got was more than a haircut or an oil change. She inferred a need for reciprocity. Give and get. Get and give. 

Weeks earlier, when she had first ordered candy and butter from me, I had mentioned that I liked Baby Ruth candy bars. Again beneath her skirt, I found one waiting for me, tucked delicately where I was sure to find it. I love my customers.

In my apartment, after work, I lay on my bed and thought about the future. It is a rare person who can identify an unmet need and meet it. I knew what people wanted. OK, half the people. I would have to start small, but the numbers would seduce investors. Rapid growth was not at all out of the question. 

Greatness lay ahead. Renown, of the sort people ascribed to the Colonel. Built on a shared appetite. A secret for women only. Embraced by women, loved by women, craved by women — and a complete and befuddling mystery to men. In every town in America, weary travelers would arrive and spy a strip mall with one of my franchisees. The father would take the kids into a donut shop for something sweet and sugary. Something they couldn’t get at home. 

“I need something different,” the mother would say.

Then she would step through the doors of Butter ‘Licious. For something she couldn’t get at home. Something a lot like fried chicken. The fingers. The lickin’. Only quite a bit different.

D.O.A – Dawn of Agriculture

Before the Dawn Of Agriculture men like ME where slapped into the shadow of sexual shame but now who needs muscles or chiseled chins, great size or strength, a lover’s passion or a thick throbbing cock, ‘cause for ten thousand years now I can persecute any female for infidelity towards ME and hold paternity privilege over MY biological children because we exceptional farmers invented marriage to destroy human sexuality  by enslaving women with MY property for sex so I no longer need to share or compete or settle for an alpha males’ sloppy seconds within foraging groups that are forced to share what they carry with them instead of our enforced legal couplings that takes the innocent, primal pleasure and mystery out of sex by connecting fucking to birth thanks to dirt MY dirt MY very own thousand acres of seeded soil littered with pens full of MY trapped sheep, cattle, goats and pigs which means I can pork any female I fancy and destroy any man who thwarts MY desire as simply as the bulls I castrate into submission to easily herd into MY slaughterhouses that feed all the inferior people no longer dependent on their hunting and gathering skills but on ME to stay alive so not only am I not considered a sociopath by hoarding food but am praised at harvest time like a goddamned hero because I have legally claimed and legally raped those precious few life-giving inches of topsoil with rotating crops and extended grasslands that exhausts and shrinks the earth, MY earth MY reign of forcing agricultural workers to bend over in the fields, stupidly exposing hairless backs to sun poisoning instead of their protective hunters’ heads of hair harvesting MY food that shrinks the testicles of everyone who is forced to feed on the cheap calories of MY industrialized plants and animals that lowers fertility, but who needs big balls anymore when you don’t have to kill larger animals  in order to survive or attract females with your superior physical attributes proving I am the social parasite Sultan of Swat who grows fat on the food  I’ve  seized by stealing public land in the name of government protected ownership as the leader of a vicious pack of hyenas circling a luscious, lovely lamb like you because I am your superior and you know it despite your jealousy of my factory farm fresh endowments and of my lavish, decadent  lifestyle that turns the lips on your face and the lips between your legs moist with desire as you ache to suckle my vegetable love that grows bigger, thicker, stronger than any inferior substitute you can pluck from wild dark forests you pretend contain freedom from want but what I want I get and what I get I need and I want I need is for you to fall to your knees in phallic worship of my industrial container that turns my package into the most sought after edible on God’s green earth so hail to thee oh Dawn of Agriculture the holy D.O.A!

While He’s A Woman

While he’s a woman he wants to be sexy, admiring himself in the mirror, wearing clothes that highlight his assets—pantyhose + a bra which makes his tits look bigger, which makes him feel sexy, maybe look sexy—or ridiculous, because while he’s a woman he cares about what he looks like to other people—even especially to other women, because while he’s a woman he looks at other women and compare himself, and mostly thinks he’s not as attractive, but sometimes while he’s a woman he thinks, Well, at least I’m more attractive than her.

But mostly while he’s a woman he doesn’t feel confident at all, craving attention from women, or men, or certain men anyways, but those men he would do anything for, like get on his knees, or all fours, or send pics of himself, which he knows they might share with their friends, because while he’s a woman he understands that men would want more attractive women, so he’s grateful to get anything, because while he’s a woman he wants to lose control and feel a man’s weight on top of him so he cant breathe or say no though he would tell them anything—even tho in reality he’s scared of men and their danger.

And anyway while he’s a woman he doesn’t do things that really fulfill him, losing time talking to crazies, spending too much on clothes and make up and time and even if he does feel like he looks decent he’s scared to go out in public, so while he’s a woman, alone in his apartment, with no one to look good for, is when he feels most lonely.

WHEN THEY BLED

The light turned red, halting the Volkswagen beside a laundromat. Nighttime clouds were ripping open. Rain parachuted to the tar sandwiched between rows of brick buildings. Lightning flashed, illuminating a wooden statue of a bear standing outside the entryway. The sculpture wore a yellow painted-on raincoat and held an umbrella made of the same oak. 

“The beautification commission is working hard,” Mickey Dou joked. “Cubs at the ballpark, bears holding diplomas at high school, bears lifting coffins at the funeral home. They’re all over town.” 

The light turned green; the Beetle rumbled along Main Street. “We’re almost there.” Mickey turned left, the sharpness of the turn almost causing him to swallow his gum—something he swallowed easier than his pride. 

His vehicle ascended, circled, dipped. Pavement yielded to gravel. Houses became sparse, roads narrow. 

Blair Chambers brushed her blonde shoulder-length hair, shaping it for the mask. “I thought you said we were close.” 

Mickey looked at the time on the clock. “We’ll be there in thirty seconds” 

“You’re sure they aren’t home?” 

Twenty-four-year-old Lance Faust lowered his face to hide the disgust written in its crinkles. Mickey, however, caught a glimpse before the expression retracted into darkness. 

“Hey, kid,” he started, “you signed up to join. We’ve fed you, given you shelter.” He sighed and shook his head. “If you bail on us now, we’ll kill you.” 

“He already knows,” Blair said matter-of-factly. She winked in the passenger’s side mirror. Mickey also peered into the boy’s reflection on his side, for a second, then returned his focus to the road. A second was long enough to see the wickedness flicker in his eye like the warming of a demonic crucible. 

Lance’s expression became nonexistent. He had learned to hide emotions. 

“We only accepted you because of your medical knowledge.”

Lance had completed a bachelor’s degree in premed Biology and had been attending a nursing school when he was arrested and barred from medical practice after stealing pain medicine. Now he was sober but living as a criminal. 

The vehicle pulled into the vacant driveway leading to the two-story cabin belted by woodland. 

Finally, Mickey answered Lance’s question. “We know nobody’s home because the spy nerd has done his spying.” When the overweight forty-year-old Dave Kunt wasn’t gobbling hamburgers in his mother’s basement, he was flying drones, setting up spyware, and reporting his findings to Mickey.  

“His balls are too little to come with us,” Mickey continued. “Lucky for us, the extra mass went to his brain.” 

Everybody laughed. Even Lance. (Levity, he had learned, made the tragic more bearable because it slowed the growth of insanity that bloomed from tragedy’s seed.) He slipped on his mask and backpack as they exited the Volkswagen. 

They approached the front door. 

“Don’t be worried about the lights,” Mickey said. “The owners left them on when they went on their month-long vacation.” 

“Dave learns a lot,” Blair said. 

Mickey started picking the lock. “That’s his job. And he disabled the security system.” 

The door opened to a spacious living room. To the left, the staircase ran to the second story. The living room opened to the kitchen, where a fifth of whiskey set on a cherrywood countertop. A table against the wall harbored a jar of honey. Mickey put both items into Lance’s backpack.

All three searched the downstairs. 

“Not much here,” Mickey said. “Bedrooms must be upstairs.” 

“Usually they are,” Blair said sarcastically under her breath. 

She and Lance followed their ringleader upstairs. Three unpainted doors stood in the corridor. 

“Watch,” Mickey said. “They’ll all be bedrooms.”

Blair asked, “This is more boring than that one time, huh, babe?” 

“Maybe a little.” 

“Maybe a lot. The way you sliced open that guy’s chest looking for his heart while he was alive. And how you sliced off his wife’s nose.” Lance’s stomach churned. That day would never be forgotten. It had been the day he realized, yes, hell was real, and its location was Earth. Yes, demons were real, and they lived inside Blair and Mickey. 

She said, “My favorite part was when we fucked beside their corpses.” 

He removed her mask, then stroked her hair. “I can fuck you here, too.” 

“Not as exciting.” She smirked. 

“It’s always exciting when I’m a three-hole golfer.” He slapped her ass, bit her lip. 

Her tone was sensual. “We’ve got all night to finish the hunt. Where you wanna do me?” 

Leaning into her ear, he answered, “Let’s find the biggest bedroom,” then nibbled the lope. She moaned as he twisted the knob. The bedroom was missing the bed. The second door opened, revealing the same situation. 

Taking Blair’s hand, he kicked open the door at the end of the corridor. The knob slammed into the wall, chipping wood. Two twins, a queen-sized bed, and a king-sized bed lined the front of the fireplace. 

Mickey, pointing at each bed, wisecracked, “Little Bear’s bed, Little Bear II’s bed, Mama Bear’s bed, and Papa—” The sentence broke when the downstairs side door opened. Blair and Mickey heard the creak. But only Lance glimpsed the mindboggling sight. 

Boots thudded, and then Lance Faust saw elephantine legs blanketed in thick black fur. In fact, all seven-foot of the body was furry. A ripped black leather hat set askew on the head. A shotgun rested in the arms.

Lance completed the broken sentence in his mind: Papa Bear’s bed. Although he didn’t see the face. He refused to look. Flight or fight instinct drum rolled. Lance darted down the steps, and out the front door. 

Mickey stared at the black bear walking on two legs, a shotgun in its paws, a smirk on its mouth. 

His heart jumped to his throat. He reached for his pistol. Papa Bear fired first. Buckshot dispersed, a pebble penetrating woodwork inches from Mickey’s face. He crashed through the second room, knocking over a dead beehive, shaky hands unlocking the window. 

He skedaddled down the lattice. 

A sudden shatter resounded from the backroom as Mama Bear crashed through the panoramic window. She stepped over triangles of broken glass. Her face was painted in makeup and a wooden purse dangled by her side. 

Lance raced for the road. But heavy footfall drove him under the porch. An adolescent bear garmented in a yellow raincoat appeared, carrying an umbrella identical to the one on the statue at the laundromat. But now the rain-shield was held level and pointed forward. Dizziness tickled Lance’s consciousness. Panicky breathing dried his quivering throat. The young bear lackadaisically skipped behind a wall of shrubbery on the left. Crawling out, Lance ran in the opposite direction. 

The backyard sloped toward a rocky edge which dropped 300 feet onto a lower floor of mountain. Stealthy but jittery, he traversed to where large tires leaned against a shed. He hid behind them. Blair started screaming. The cacophony electrified his nerves. Behind him, venomous snakes flicked their fork tongues. Their eyes were dim. They shared his fear. 

Whimpers and cries originating under the back porch warped the air. He searched for their origin point. 

Terror reigned upstairs. The bears had spoken no English but had seemingly heard Mickey’s libido-driven comment about golfing. Mama Bear and Papa Bear subdued Blair: her back was propped against the wall with her bottom half laying on the floor. Streams of tears coursed the red barren fields of her face. 

The bear in the yellow raincoat opened the bedroom closet. She removed a golf ball and a driver (much longer than the “club” in Mickey’s pants). Standing in front of Blair, she dropped the ball to the floor. Papa Bear gave her a thumbs up. 

Smiling, she swung the driver. It connected with the ball, which hit Blair’s chest. She coughed and cried. 

Papa Bear rolled the ball back to his daughter. The teen hesitated, taking time to study the target. Sweet innocence blessed the girl’s face, and Blair found this fact as disturbing as everything else. She decided to trade the club for her umbrella.

The paws tightened around the handle. The umbrella swung back and forward. Then its curved but thick handle connected as the airborne ball whistled like steam released from a pressure cooker. 

Blair was shrieking when the golf ball hit the “O” her mouth was making. The impact shattered her teeth. A fountain of blood poured forth. 

Again and again, the ball hit Blair, whose face began resembling a busted tomato bandaged in human skin. She was alive, but her voice had entered death’s silent gates. 

Lance crept to the back porch. A cub lay sprawled in a pile of last fall’s leaves, trembling. It wore a blue ballcap and blue and white striped shorts. He recognized the cub as a statue at the local baseball field. Blood caked the fur on its leg, which was caught in a bear trap. The cub’s cries amplified. 

“You’ll be okay,” Lance consoled. 

Cautiously but decidedly, he patted the cub’s trapped leg. The little bear jerked.

“Stay still,” Lance advised.

He used a mini flashlight (the moon serving as a secondary auxiliary) to assess the trap. The steel jaws hadn’t bitten too deeply. Lance managed to push downward on the springs, subsequently opening the clamps. The leg slipped to freedom. (Little Bear’s ankle was thick for a cub. Or else the injury would have been worse.)

After fetching a medical kit from his backpack, Lance made a torniquet amid periodic peeks around the corner. Where is the bear in the raincoat? Where is Papa Bear? Where is Mickey? Blair? She probably died with her screams. 

“I have to go, little guy, but you’ll feel better soon.”

The cub sat up and patted Lance’s leg. 

Lance asked, “Do you know why they want to kill us?” 

Little Bear removed a photo from his pocket. A pile of slaughtered bears was next to hewed oak trees. Woodcutters sat drinking beers on a container stenciled with the company name Carters Forestry. A revelation cleared the mental fog clouding Lance’s mind: woodcutters had massacred a colony of real bears while stealing oak to sculpt fakes. And now the fakes were real.

Real and angry. 

Mickey zigzagged to the backyard. He brandished his pistol and pounded his now-shirtless chest. Lance, still hidden with the cub, watched the madman go madder. He leaped, ran circles, and fired his widow maker at the moon. 

“Come get me you stupid bears! I’m HERE!” 

Papa Bear stomped to the backyard. Roaring and embracing the shotgun, he gained speed. Mickey fired but missed. 

He fired again; he missed again.

Papa was not slowing.

The third bullet grazed flesh. The beast released an earsplitting roar, charged, and finally pulled the trigger. 

Shell fragments pierced the air, two stopping in Mickey’s femur. He fell backward and his screams grew louder as Papa Bear drew near, boots shaking the earth. Little Bear watched indifferently. 

Mickey tried spider-crawling away. But the bleeding leg refused to cooperate. The best he managed was a snail-like drag. 

Mama Bear and her yellow-coated daughter came from the left side of the house. Mama Bear shook a claw at Mickey. 

Her paws were dripping Blair’s blood.

Papa Bear loomed over him. Mickey shut his eyes—this is only a dream, only a dream—but once they peeled back Papa Bear’s face was an inch from his own. The grin on the beast seemed to say: No. This is reality. 

Terror froze the burglar’s vocal cords until Papa Bear yanked the ring out of his ear. Pain unleashed screams that became a cacophonical train cutting through terror-capped ice in the tunnel of his throat. A large boot smashed his hand. Bones cracked; fingernails oozed blood.

Lance was the opposite to his kidnappers, who had sheltered him to use him. He hated violence; they bathed in it. But now a sadistic smile lit his face. They slowly had hoodwinked Lance into tagging along to a strange house and helping with their theft, never telling him that the crazed lovers would torture and kill the owners. Later, Lance begged them to let him start a life away from them. Mickey held a pistol to the boy’s temple and told him that he would kill him more brutally than all the rest if he ever left. 

Now the tyrant had fallen. 

Papa Bear whistled. Little Bear attempted to stand. 

“It’s best to stay put,” Lance said. 

The cub didn’t listen. 

He was halfway upright when he lost balance. His paws caught Lance’s shoulder, accidentally scraping skin. “Ouch,” he said, his jerking feet stirring leaves. 

Papa Bear squinted, sniffed. His head rocked side to side. A second later, he spotted Little Bear and the human. His roar shook birds out of 100 tree canopies as he charged, shotgun in paws. Lance contemplated running, but there was no escape. The other bears were here, and the one charging him was death incarnated as 1,000 pounds of furry fury. 

The cub extended an arm in a gesture to halt. With his other hand, he pointed at his treated wound. 

Papa Bear stopped. He understood. Lance’s and Papa Bear’s eyes collided. The big bear no longer grinned. His lips straightened and his head nodded in acknowledgement. 

He stumped to one knee and clapped his paws. The cub, helped by a hesitant Lance, limped into the dying moonlight. After he and his father embraced, they worked on the ringleader. Mickey screamed continually until Mama Bear ripped out his tongue. 

Lance’s fear dwindled enough to join the scene. Papa Bear patted his back. The colossal paw shivered his spin. But it resonated more warmth than he had ever known from the psychopathic burglars. 

Papa Bear used Mickey’s good leg to demonstrate how to break a femur. As the bone cracked, a piece of skeletal matter poked out of his leg, the agony rendering Mickey unconscious. The cub worked at the other leg, merely breaking the ankle. 

Papa broke the femur, then dragged the burglar to the front of the house. Lance followed. 

They walked onto a platform harboring a firepit, a six-foot-long grill, and rocking chairs. Papa Bear threw Mickey onto the grill. Mama Bear placed a metal cap over the waking body. The red-gold cover had diamond shaped perforations useful for watching skin melt. 

Lance turned to Papa Bear. “I have something that might belong to you. The others took it.” He retrieved the jar of honey from his backpack. The bear gladly grabbed it. 

The whiskey bottle had been under the honey. Lance noticed that the label read, Honey Whiskey. He placed it in the paw. “And this.” 

Papa Bear took the bottle. Then he poured the jar of honey onto Mickey and cranked the heat. 

Mama Bear and Papa Bear sipped honey-flavored whiskey as they watched flames lick skin off a face that screamed blood. Finally, Lance watched the devilish flicker in his master’s eye melt to goo. 

The meat was still cooking when Papa Bear and his children walked Lance deep into the forest. 

Ahead, lights tore holes in darkness. Lance was ushered forward. 

Candles burned inside treehouses belting every tree. Bears—wearing various colors painted on after their sculpting—stepped onto balconies, which were decorated in beehives, to see the newest arrivals. Lance gazed up in wonder. 

Bears waved welcoming paws. 

The four arrivals entered the largest treehouse in the land.  

Papa Bear opened the door to a room where a 30-foot-long wall held boards tattooed in names and birthdates. 

The names etched into the boards represented a variety of regions. In addition, birthdates included the young, the middle aged, and the old. Statues of bears had been sculpted throughout the nation, leading to the destruction of ecosystems and to the deaths of real furry critters. All hope seemed lost until they gathered and built this paradise.

Papa Bear pecked the northern window, out of which Lance had not looked. Happy-faced humans were mingling and playing games in a clearing. They had been outcasts in the normal world. All had been beaten, oppressed, or enslaved. But in this land of bears they were appreciated. Wooden and biological bears had experienced similar mistreatment at the hands of industrial society. They understood the misunderstood.

Lance etched his name and birthdate into a partially blank board. After that, he joined the fun in the clearing. 

People disturbed various things, including animals. Some things remained undisturbed, never given attention, enveloped in oblivion. Sometimes people suffered such a fate. There were times when wooden statues were the sufferers. And nobody cared. Nothing changed…except for when they bled.                     

Fuck City Girls

I remember that summer like it was yesterday or even today. It was smoldering hot, hotter than it had been in years, hot enough to get into the record books and have the weathermen toss the terms “hottest day” and “record highs” around loosely and frequently. That was the summer I graduated high school and made up my mind that attending college at-least-a-city away from here was best. I broke it off with my high-school sweetheart—she cried, I didn’t—packed up, said my goodbyes, and I was on my way. I was leaving it all behind, everything, every one, the only world I had ever known to venture into the exciting unknown. 

I got settled into my dorm, unpacking what little I brought with me. I met my new roommate who seemed weird and just left his boxes on his bed unopened. Later that night, the boxes were still there. The next morning they remained, untouched. I wonder if I’d ever see him again. 

This new world known as college-in-the-city was definitely different from what I was used to. Back home was a small town of only several thousand where the Dairy Queen was the coolest spot to hang out after school and the local grocery store was the primary place of employment. The people in the city… It was somewhat refreshing to meet people that weren’t cheerleaders or football players and who weren’t white. The party scene was unbelievable with more booze, drugs, techno, and young women throwing their inner selves at you (that’s putting it lightly) than I could’ve ever imagined—bass thumping, girls dancing, everyone high on something. These were real parties, not like the little high-school get-togethers involving a keg and a few bottles of Boones Farms.

I remember meeting her. She was cute and so were her friends. Their clothes were straight out of the punk scene from the 80’s—torn fishnet stockings, lots of lime green and fluorescents, combat boots—ugly, but hip. Sexy. She was so free-spirited. They all were, laughing and smoking and dancing around in public, not giving a fuck about what anyone thought of them. And her eyes… She didn’t look at you. She looked in you. I had never met anyone like her. All the girls back home came from the same republican-conservative-cheerleader factory. They were all beautiful, but in that small town look-like-all-their-friends sort of way, like they were molded from perfection—blonde, tone, perfect teeth, clean clothes. Not her. Not by a long shot. She was different and as far from the perfect I knew as you could get. And this difference drew me in like a fucking magnet. 

Before I knew it, I was smitten over her, and she appeared to be smitten over me. And the sex… it was wetter and wilder than any world I had been to. Sex with her felt like freedom. Or maybe that was just the drugs that made it seem that way.

She and I had been hanging out for a couple weeks, and that day, we went to the mall. I remember how hot it was, and how I couldn’t remember a day ever feeling this hot back home. We goofed around. She was so playful. She’d hit me and slapped my ass, and I’d slapped hers. She grabbed my crotch in front of everyone which was kind of embarrassing but also exciting. We laughed and laughed about anything and anyone unfortunate enough to cross our field of vision: fat people, Asians, want-to-be punkers, the old guy with basketball calves and tall socks. I remember her flicking her lit cigarette on the ground after being told that there was no smoking allowed. That was right after she took a long, slow puff, staring dead-on at the security guard, and blew the smoke in his face. I was stunned. That was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen. The look on the guard’s face was priceless: angry, but too shocked to react, a look of total disbelief, or maybe disgust.

Later on, we walked past one of those sunglass places, and there were these big fluorescent green Wayfarers. She grabbed them and put them on and posed in the mirror and posed some more—turned this way and then that way—and at that point, she had drawn a couple other admiring fans. 

“Those are awesome,” I said to her. 

“I want them,” she said. 

I bought them for her, despite never spending that much money on anyone or myself ever before. 

After that, we had some ice-cream in the food court and then went and met some of her friends at an outdoor downtown café. It was in the heat of the day, and it must have been one-hundred degrees out there, but no one except me seemed to care that our own sweat was dripping into our drinks and our food. We sat around in this God-awful heat, sweating profusely, while they discussed bands I’d never heard of, and she showed off her new expensive shades. Her friends loved them. I felt good about buying them, but wondered if I was going to overdraft my account, and then figured, fuck it. She’s worth it. She’s that girl you only dream about but never meet in real life. 

That night, we got drunk and went to some party, and despite it being almost midnight, she never took the shades off. She started making out with one of her friends whom she kept saying was hot, and I kept agreeing. She pulled me and this other girl back to a dark room in the back of this house we were in, and before I knew it, someone’s mouth was on my dick and someone else’s on my mouth. Then I was fucking one of them and both were moaning. It was too dark to see anything. I could only imagine what was going on. But whatever was going on, it felt amazing and like there were a hundred hands and wet mouths on my body. 

After I don’t know how long, I heard the door open. Light crept in from the hallway. The door shut, and I lie there in the dark, my body drenched and becoming one with the bed. I wondered where she and the other chick had gone. I got myself up, stumbled around, found my clothes on the floor, and decided to go find them. I never did. 

A couple weeks or so went by, and I hadn’t seen her again until I ran into her at a party on east campus. She was with someone else. She didn’t have on those expensive green Wayfarers I bought her but some light blue ones. This guy she was with looked like a total loser, but I didn’t care. I was with someone else, also, and this new girl I was with seemed an exact replica of the old one, but only better, like she had been manufactured in the same democratic-liberal-hates-jocks-loves-punk bands factory—equally free spirited if not more and loved life just the same if not more. And our sex… it was also out of this world. Or maybe it just seemed that way because of the drugs. Or maybe, that’s just how it was with girls from the city—wild, wet, uninhibited, dirtier, different, better. 

Despite me loving the girls here in the city, and how they so eagerly threw their inner selves at me, I got tired of that whole party scene I had become a part of. And the buildings and streets and cars made it seem hotter and more miserable than how I remember it ever being back home. I remember standing outside several hours after the sun had gone down, the salt from my sweat burning my eyes, and thinking to myself that this is no way to live. 

I dropped out of the school I wasn’t attending anyway and moved back home within the following week. It was hot, but not as dreadfully hot as it was in the city. I was horny, so I asked my ex to give me another chance. She did almost too easily. I remember walking into her parent’s big house—they were out of town—and up the stairs where she was waiting. I opened the door to her bedroom. She was propped up on her bed on full display like a gift wrapped in red lingerie I hadn’t seen before, and she seemed cleaner and shinier than what I remembered. I made my way into her perfect room, surrounded by the stuffed animals she had since she was a little girl, and her perfect self was on that perfect bed, enticing me. I walked over to her. My dick was hard. I started kissing her. She said that she missed me. I continued kissing her. She asked if I had been with anyone else. I told her “No,” and then thought about the girls from the city and their free-spiritedness and their wild bedroom antics and the threesome I had and said again, “No.” I continued kissing her neck and slid her red bra down and kissed on her breasts. She smelled and tasted freshly-bathed—like edible soap mixed with Happy perfume—which was refreshing. I gently pushed her back onto her fluffy white bed and climbed up over the top of her. After a minute or so, our roles reversed, she was on top of me, kissing my chest. I looked at her kissing my body with those innocent, crystal eyes peeking up from time to time, really trying to be naughty, and wondered how or why I ever left. But then I noticed this picture of her and her cheerleader friends on her nightstand. As good as her warm mouth felt getting lower and lower, I was fixated on this picture. As clear as the picture was, I couldn’t tell her from her friends. They were all blonde, tone, had perfect teeth, looked like the picture was stolen from an Abercrombie and Fitch. They all looked perfect. And when everyone is perfect, then everyone is the same. And being the same is only . . . ordinary. I remember the way she smelled and the way her hot breath felt on my chest and then on my stomach which sent pulses of electricity throughout my body. She unzipped my pants and worked them below my knees and kept kissing my stomach, slowly working her way down, one soft nibble at a time. She grabbed my dick and then looked back up at me and asked me again if I had been with anyone else. Then she said she had too much respect for herself to allow herself to have sex with me if I had been. I assured her that no, I hadn’t. I then thought about the way those city girls smelled and tasted, and it was different. 

She started kissing me again and slowly—even slower than before—inched her way closer to my dick one kiss at a time. It tickled. I remember when she stopped. I lie there for a second thinking, What the fuck? before looking up. Those crystal eyes were staring back at me, and I smiled and said, “What baby?” 

She didn’t smile back but more scowled, her eyebrows pulling to the center of her face. Her eyes went from mine back to my dick. She moved it to the side and leaned in closer to examine something. 

“What?” I asked. 

That’s when she leapt off me. She paced frantically back and forth, back and forth, shaking her head and looking into some distant land before calling me a liar and cursing which was not of her typical character. She told me to get the fuck out. I remember asking what, again and again and again, and her just repeating the words “Liar,” and “Get out,” and “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

I left her that day in all her perfection, in her perfect room in her big white perfect house, and I remember thinking that she will someday make some preppy politician type very happy.

On the way home, my dick started to itch. I scratched it, but that only seemed to make it worse. It soon turned from an itching to a slight burning. I remember that night, seeing the small, red bumps and trying to pop them, but Goddamn, it hurt. 

The next day, my parents asked me where I was going, and I lied and said, “To a friends.” I remember thinking about the girls from the city and the threesome and thinking that not any of us, in all of it, even as much as mentioned protection, and shaking my head in disappointment of myself. Fuck.

I pulled into the doctor’s parking lot, and embarrassingly sat in that lobby for what seemed like an eternity. I remember the doctor coming out, and of course she had to be female, which made my situation even worse. She asked me how many partners I’d had in the past three months and if we wore protection. I wanted to say only one, and yes, but I said, “Three or maybe four” and “No.” She put on latex gloves and examined whatever those fucking little bumps-turned-blisters were that had gone from itching to burning like angry wasps. With a tone that was too straight and calming, she said I was now one out of four young adults, and that there were treatment options to keep the outbreaks from flaring up. She also said I would need to let any of my partners know to get checked. She nonchalantly suggested she take some blood for testing, saying that one STD could lead to another and threw out some statistics I can’t quite recall. My stomach dropped out of me. 

I remember that girl from the city in all of her free spiritedness trying on those green Wayfarers and the other guys checking her out while she tried them on and her loving the attention. There was the threesome and then the other girl I started fucking from the city whom I almost couldn’t tell apart from the first. All the girls in the city were so imperfect, they were the same. And when everyone is the same, then everyone becomes . . . ordinary. I remember thinking that I wanted the fucking money back for those shades.

The doctor put on a new set of gloves and told me that what she was about to do was going to hurt a little, but it needed to be done. She squeezed on the blisters. They popped. My eyes went black. I had never felt anything so fucking venomously painful in my existence. Fortunately the paralyzing stinging of the popping blisters only lasted a few moments which was long enough.  

Leaving the doctor’s office that day, it was hot out, but not nearly as miserably hot as it was in the city. I was glad to be home. 

You Identify As Haunted 

He is a professional, an urban planner, nestled among amateurs (college students) in a Spanish Revival chopped up into apartments.  Lives on top.  

The depressed blonde bisexual artist you fuck (tutors you in college algebra) lives directly below— painter who came north to Pensacola  “for these trees” leaves to fall into a Miami grave. Calls you once before he does just to say “I’m driving there to fuck you.  Be ready.”  

Shave your pussy.  Touch to thoughts of being hurt then held again by someone so blond, herringbone tweed perfect who sees art in all your freckled southern gothic baby fat flaws.  

No idea when he’ll arrive except it’s too long a drive to be today — ten-hours.  Tomorrow? This week, certainly.  There’s desperation behind his bravado of clipped commands. 

Months pass.  The silver Karmaan Gia convertible never appears.  That tingle of power you savored, his palpable long distance need,  on the phone recedes —  perhaps he didn’t regret your abandonment at all.  The hole he left inside you is dug deeper by his second ghost.  

The time in which he’s twice disappeared, you fill with computer sadists, online doms, big city professionals.  Some come much farther than Miami to Pensacola to see you cry.  Pay to convey you to painful parties.  Decorate flesh with their anger and desire.  It is a comfort wearing crudely crafted marks in Pensacola bars returned from hotel suite sex shows and brownstone liaisons — returned to your small southern stars with metropolitan tear drop scars.  

Whiskey sours, jukebox drum licks, guitars and a voice that demands you rock the boys wafts over welts beneath a floorlength sundress — spaghetti straps and shooting stars.  Lock eyes with the planner neighbor, paying out at the bar.  All you see is the boy who used to live beneath this man, the one studying you, grinding his teeth.  Beckons you with a subtle nod.  Though you should retreat, legs carry you closer. 

Troy, his name you remember, and that unusual occupation, though you’ve met maybe three times, at most, in the artist’s apartment.  Just a few small overlaps of pleasantries before you climbed onto the lap of your host, and this one puts down an empty Corona to climbed a flight of stairs home.

Booze on his breath, his fingers trace the first cleft of you, exposed and quivering, a dimpled chin.  Tells you tonight it is time to go home with him.  

Takes you by the hand as your heart starts to race.  You cannot say no to going back to almost exactly the perfect place.  Climb stairs that trace memories so many nights to such blissful states.  Pass a door you won’t go in anymore on your way to his neighbor’s bed where he lays you on your back, lifts a dress to inspect the rest achingly slow — every stray mark in any furrow, crawling over your timorous form.   Turns you over on your skittish stomach and traces your goosebumped back towards the red raised evidence of your assignation with the most recent handsome maniac.  

Hear him gasp and finger each welt then trace some with his tongue.  He’ll ask for a detailed recitation of how it was done before he pulls you by your long hair up onto your knees.  Slams into you while you whimper please. 

After he’s silent as ever but holds you close, a new body you’ll cling to after it has hurt you almost as much as the one who made those stripes on your ass.  In the darkness and quiet, you finally work up the nerve to ask, “Do you ever hear from him — Matthew? He was supposed to come see me months ago, never showed.”  

Turns you over  with a different expression, human and hurt.  His hand covering half of his face as he manages.  “You don’t know?”

Shake your head, tears dripping as he strokes your sweaty, disheveled hair. 

“He killed himself.”

Words weigh down the sex soaked air.  Press you low into his crumpled sheets, a shadow that sobs while he continues to speak about how special he was, how talented, sweet.  Feel rabid heartbeats over you.  Turn to look him in the eye — two lovers, you realize, abandoned  by the very same guy, who died instead of returning to either of you.  

Because you ask him, “Did he tell you he was coming back too?

This nod makes you hold him tighter, this pain you suddenly share.  Both bisexuals, haunted.  You will feel the other one there, the ghost — almost see him in the haze when Troy chokes you with his belt pulled against your throat tight.  Sometimes you each tell your respective ghost stories when he turns out the lights.  

Sometimes they are goofy, other times grave. 

“I should have known by the jokes he made on the way to class —- dumb riffs he repeated  about driving right over the tree-covered cliffs.  He laughed when I’d call him dramatic, blamed  his artistic temperament, big city sardonic wit.” A ghost is composed of such details you can never forget.  

He didn’t drive off a cliff in Pensacola, hung from a rope in Miami alone.  Waited for him, ready, and might never have known until you were summoned by a lecherous older neighbor to a wrought iron bed above the place you once frolicked with one who is dead.  

The professional will hurt you in physical ways no amateur could.  He will make you strip for his friends.  Push you harder than he should. Yet you’ll feel a tenderness even tied to his bed that is less about this living man than a boy that is dead.  Artistic young fingers you feel on your pulsing flesh while the professional uses a body the other one left.  

You both identify as haunted.  Feel him with you inside of this bed.  It is why you submit to this living sadist to hold on to something tender and dead. 

Wake Me Up When I’m Famous

“Who the hell are all these people and what are they doing in our house?”

“All these people? It’s only five friends in my house. They wanted to meet you. They’ve read all your books and wanted to meet the famous Santiago. I met them at the bookstore when I was going over the information for your reading Saturday with the manager. You were suppose to have been there.”

“Wait! What reading? When? Where? First, why is this mob of strangers here?”

“They saw me with one of your posters and asked if I knew you. I said not only do I know you but we live together,” he continued. “They asked if I could introduce them to you. I told them yes to follow me here.”

“You invite a bunch of strangers here? You don’t know who these people are. They could be escapees from some psychopath support group. Maybe they’re Republicans or Christians out to kill me for my writing for all you know. Like the Sandman Muskey incident with the Iranian Muslims.”

“You mean Salman Rushdie?”

“Ya, him too.”

“That imagination of yours, running wild. You’re so dramatic. Why do you hide from the world? Fame isn’t like a tattoo, it doesn’t stick around for long.” 

“So now you want me to get a famous tattoo?”

“What? No! You know what I mean. Don’t start with that shit. Come in the living room and meet them. Three of them work at the bookstore. It could be good for book sales. Now put on some clothes. They brought a bottle of Johnny Black and they have some Cocaine. Hurry up!”

Damn it! My life has taken a turn down the wrong street. There was a time when people did all they could to ignore me. Now I’m some writer slob doing public readings to sell a few books. 

I don’t enjoy reading my own work, especially in public out loud. It scares the shit out of me. There’s times when I read something I don’t remember writing. It isn’t familiar to me at all. It’s a creepy feeling as though someone is channeling their thoughts through me.

And then I have to autograph the books as well.

“Can you sign it to my good friend Cecil? Always a pleasure to see you.”

“Sign it Desdemona you’ve ruined me for any other womman.” 

“Desdemona. Othello’s wife was named Desdemona,” I tell her.

“Who? Wait, you spelled my name wrong.” 

“Fuck!”

So I write what they ask me to  write for a couple of bucks and an afternoon at the bar with Chloe when we are done. She loves the attention and answers most of the questions people ask. I just sit there, smile and shake my head yes. People buy me drinks and tell me how much they enjoy my writing. Chloe doesn’t say a word about me getting drunk, she’s too busy being my agent. I think I pay her but I’m not sure how much.

I walk in the living room to meet my admirers. 

A horn from a semi shakes me awake from my dream. Good, it was just a nightmare. Back to sleep. Wake me up when I’m famous.

“You have very little to do with fame. You’re not the one who makes you famous, it’s the people who like what you do.”

Grub

Ben stirred from a deep sleep to a centipede scurrying up the slope of his cheek. The bug turned toward the entrance of Ben’s nose before retreating and tickling along his lips. Ben tried to move only to realize he was chained at the wrists and ankles. The vile thing crawled from his face to his ear, vanishing off the ledge of the rock altar which Ben lay on.

He glanced around. Dirt walls surrounded him, illuminated by a string of dim bulbs woven throughout the ceiling. It looked as if he was in an old mining shaft. A subway train approaching and then passing somewhere beyond the dirt shook debris from the enclosing.

A rickety wooden door opened. Several darkly-cloaked figures stood at the entry. Their faces were consumed by the shadows of their hoods. It took two of them to move a large stone funnel. A few others followed in tow, holding a cauldron of foaming vomit-like-slop. Though their shape appeared manlike beneath their robes, the group’s movements were non-human and rhythmically in unison.

“Where the hell am I!” he croaked with a desiccated throat. “Who are you people?” He strained to fight the chains but was too weak, discovering that fear was masking starvation.

“Answer me, damn it!” There were no words, only the sound of crawling from the darkness of their cloaks.

They circled him as did the crawling. Ben’s mind blanked with terror and his heart screamed from his chest. The captors held his head still while the funnel was aligned with his mouth. The tip was crammed down his throat. Ben tried crying out but it was corked by a rush of blood, teeth, and stone. The cauldron’s contents were emptied next. The clumpy liquid tasted like a warm meat and shit milkshake. The slush filled his gullet and then gushed from his nose before he passed out from over-consumption.

***

Ben awoke with his stomach turning and to the realization that he was not in a nightmare.

The crawling throbbed from behind the walls, followed by the subway train screeching in a tunnel nearby. Through the fear, he remembered taking the seven-thirty, five mornings a week to work for the last decade. Ben felt a bit of hope for escape surface in the sea of sickness tossing in his gut.

If I could only break these, he thought, tugging the bonds at his wrists. The action made Ben aware his limbs were discolored and swollen. The pain was fading, quelled by a hunger erupting in his stomach and surging throughout his body, consuming everything like a dead-star. Thoughts of his children, Laura and Rose, fought back the darkness from fully taking his mind.

The door flew open. The cloaked figures carried in the feeding apparatus and cauldron of muck.

“Why are you doing this?” He wanted to rattle on about how his family needed him, but they plugged his mouth with the funnel and began the dispensing.

***

The train moving behind the dirt woke him. He realized the chains were gone. His body had ballooned. Merging with his torso, neck, and head, Ben’s hands and arms were gone, rendered useless flattening stumps. His legs were fleshing together, left fat pegs that felt close to nonfunctional. The hunger raging in his stomach was suppressed by an overwhelming feeling that Ben no longer felt like himself. He searched his mind for something to hold on to.

Memories of Rose and Laura smiling and laughing, pierced like light into the void. If I could find the train tracks, he thought in that moment of clarity, I can follow them home. Ben rolled from the altar, throwing his lower half around to position what was left of his legs to the ground. He landed stumbling before wobbling his plump form toward the door.  He fell short and his blubbery body planted face first in the dirt. The hunger grew, devouring the thoughts of his girls, keeping Ben from acknowledging he was thirsting for the taste of the shit they were pouring into him.

The door opened. The cloaked ones entered as did the crawling that pulsed from their bodies. They turned him on his back. Ben shamefully opened his mouth ready for his daily dose.

***

Ben woke to the hunger tearing at his insides. He still lay in the dirt. His head and torso were now one round mass connecting to a long curled posterior. Though he had lost most control of his physical and mental self to the hunger, he had gained a new sight in his transformation. In his mind, hearing and feeling became panoramic images of his surroundings. The ability revealed the crawling to be trillions upon trillions of legs to arthropods moving within the dirt.

The hooded ones returned one after the other in their rhythmic synchronized steps. They were empty handed. Ben shouted for more muck from a tongueless and toothless hole where his voice once belonged. The sound came out like the whine of an insect in the dark. Their cloaks dropped, showing their true forms to be mass groupings of centipedes. They fell to the ground in clumps where a rising-tide of their brethren met them.

Ben found himself swept away by waves of centipedes through the door and down the hall. He was pulled into a massive chamber with a mountain of dirt erected at the center. Keeping Ben afloat, the ocean of centipedes filed into the chamber as if it were their synagogue.

Beyond the reach of his newly found sense, the train roared from deeper in the earth. The ground exploded with a colossal creature emerging. The beast flopped its corpulent frame onto the mountain of dirt and nestled into its throne.

The congregation of arthropods swelled beneath Ben, lifting and presenting him to their emperor. Claws the size of bulldozer scoops clamped him from the sides, relieving the centipedes of their offering. A pair of blank, black, eyes, disproportionately tinier than the beast’s head, stared atop a mass of fur. The creature snarled and probed Ben with a nose equipped with nineteen digits in the shape of tendrils, groping and enveloping Ben’s enlarged state. Ben’s last thought before being shoveled into the creature’s salivating maw was a craving for the slop.

The Feud

Kurt stared in the mirror at the milky white orb in wedged in the socket where a glass eye should be.  He dabbed the wet dead useless thing pretending it was some great star illuminating the immediate galaxy. It was dark in his world. He needed something and it had been missing for a while now but soon it’d return and there’d be a reckoning and it would be lost forever either way and then what would he do either here or the other side of eternity?

The feud had was a boyhood passion which had morphed into adult middle-aged obsession. 

A schoolyard brawl over stealing a couple of marbles from little Nancy, the cutest golden-haired girl in first grade. Dylan had to be a hero, as Kurt held them hostage for a kiss. A bit of shoving here and there with cruel giggles and sly snickers until tiny brittle Dylan reached through a hole in the fence and took a piece of glass to Kurt’s eye.

At 17 Dylan’s family won the lottery. His dad invested in several local businesses because that’s what you do when you get out the trailer park…start a business or buy someone else’s as the big local hero. Dylan was skateboarding and getting girls, playing bad music believing he was going to be the next big thing alongside his brother Jason, a square jawed football player type with a full ride scholarship on his way to Duke for basketball and football, didn’t matter how smart he was really was just how smart he could play and he knew how to play with plenty of practice until one day leaving the bar after a bit of drinking ‘cause you can do whatever you want from a family of money and being the hometown hero, something hard cracked him along the base of his skull.

Jason was left mentally disabled, barely able to process the simplest concepts. No scholarship. No sports. No glory. 

But don’t worry, the culprit got caught and was held accountable. Kurt would be spending some time in county and state for it. Before he went to prison, Kurt took a picture of the tire-iron he used and used it as his social profile pic as a wicked reminder. Being disfigured and poor didn’t leave Kurt with a lot of options for friends or job opportunities, he learned from his crowd that the best way to avenge a wrong was to hurt your enemy through their loved ones.

When he got out, he saw Dylan at the same tavern and put an arm around that cleaned up grunge puppy and grinned maniacally.

“Yo’…Jason still a fuckin’ retard?”

Dylan clutched the unloaded gun he kept in his waistband. It was his gimmick. Being the tortured artist he was, liable to shoot himself and deprive every one of his words and sounds as life was just unceasing pain. He learned well from Kurt and let a sadistic smile spread across his face.

“I got places to be.” He responded to the dark complected buzzed cut, toned figure wearing the same shabby clothes the night he did the deed.

Kurt got loaded and walked to the nearly empty parking lot to find his sister, pants down being taken from behind by Jason as Dylan held her down, smacking her with the butt of his pistol. She was screaming like a stuck pig, unfortunately before Kurt could do anything the cops arrived.

Turns out even with being a big deal with a substantial amount of money, you can’t always get away with everything, then again…Dylan’s dad couldn’t manage a business worth shit and the financial status quo was fading, and Jason wasn’t in his glory days while Dylan was just…whatever.

When Dylan got to state, he met a friend of Kurt’s, who wrote him a letter and Dylan became the stuck pig.

Like any good midwestern state, there weren’t any mandatory minimums for violent crimes, so seven years later on the day Dylan was about to get out, Kurt’s sister Carrie feeling guilty wanting to end the bloodshed. 

Her brother’s son drank weed killer and Dylan’s puppy now a full-grown dog waited for him with a nail through his head on the front door. Carrie wrote a note after sticking her head in the oven, but her mother burned it to avoid further shame on their “trailer trash terror family” as they had been labelled.

Both men were too remorseful to continue their feud until Dylan’s first day of work. See, Dylan’s father did the worst thing a poor person could when striking it rich…buy businesses people don’t really need during a pandemic like half a dozen donut shops and nail salons…so much for a small business empire.  Losing all that money, quite the fall from grace, Dylan found himself side by side almost with his old enemy at the Cluck Bucket Chicken Factory. 

Kurt was the Fryer Lead.

Dylan battered meat and mashed spuds. 

Nancy the one who allegedly started it all was the manager, inheriting the franchise from her dead husband, a veteran with honors. 

Dylan never really grew up and plucked her wedding ring from her finger, giving chase around the kitchen. 

Kurt went into the bathroom looking in the mirror at his milky white eye, mulling over this full circle situation. He took the boxcutter from out of his apron and thought about where it all went wrong.

Eye for an eye. 

There was never a reason for it to escalate the way it did.

It was time to set things right, to finally see…

Eye to eye.