The River of Lost Limbs

I was the only one working through the afternoon break on this Friday afternoon. I found a rhythm, throwing one 2×4 after another onto the saw bed then dragging the blade precisely through it. Vreet! Vreet! Vreet! The blade resounded every few seconds as it chewed through the wood voraciously. Sawdust spit out behind the saw onto a mounting pile that looked like a snowdrift.

When I stopped to double check my measurements, I let the saw run. The blade hummed hypnotically, musically. I pulled my tape measure across the board to check my accuracy, and I felt the slight breeze from the whirring blade glide over my hand like a ghostly caress. This gentle breeze didn’t fool me. Even a kiss from this sawblade could leave a painful and lasting impression.

I continued to cut with the same rhythm, the same way, but then the saw hiccupped temperamentally. The blade bit into the 2×4 and sucked it in with so much power and aggression, there was no way I could hold it back, even if there was a warning, even if I saw it coming, but I didn’t. I did hear the resounding KACHING! It was an angry sound the saw made when a small chunk of wood got launched against the metal guard and ricocheted off like a bullet. This time the blade not only bit into the 2×4, but it also bit my hand. I felt the force of the saw grab me, and I pulled back and jumped away, but it was too late. It took a moment to focus and realize what I was looking at, given the damage. My hand was brutally disfigured. For what I had grown accustomed to seeing all my life had changed dramatically, grotesquely. It was a mutilated mess of red and white, bone and blood. Despite the indecipherable sight, the blur trauma, I knew for sure that I had lost my index finger, possibly more. The flayed flesh and exposed bone had never felt the outside world. I was surprised that the pain was minimal. It stung, but it felt more numb and cold than painful. Eventually, it would have to hurt. 

I placed my left hand over my mutilated right hand to stop the bleeding. I wondered if I could bleed to death from my injury. Still, as I walked away to get help, I was conflicted about whether I should look for my finger or any other part of my hand that was somewhere in the sawdust. 

“What are you doing, Mick?” 

“Just looking for a finger, maybe two.”

Dizzy and nauseous, I walked through the empty shop to look for the foreman. He would know what to do. He would know how to help me. I thought I might pass out, so I took a deep breath to try to control my anxiety. Can’t lose it. Can’t lose it.

I stopped outside the breakroom, and I listened to the indiscernible chatter and laughter of my coworkers. I cracked open the door and peaked inside to see if the foreman was in there. He wasn’t. A couple of the guys looked at me, but even in my desperation to find help, I couldn’t go in there. I thought if I was going to die, I wasn’t going to die in there in front of them. To me, there was something extremely sad about dying in front of coworkers. No one wanted to work here, not really. No one, as a young boy or girl, wanted to grow up to work in a manufacturing plant for wood components. It was a back breaking, bust your ass job. The plant was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It dusty, dirty, and obviously dangerous. The pay wasn’t great either.

Maybe the foreman was in his office, so that was my next destination. On my way up the wood stairs leading to his office, blood began to seep through my fingers. Drops fell with a soft pop and spread into crimson spiders that I thought I saw scurry away. 

The foreman’s office was empty.

Now the drip of blood was constant like a leaky faucet. The stress put me on the verge of panic. I walked gingerly back down the stairs and went into the shop bathroom. I wheeled off a two-foot sheet of the brown towel and wrapped it around my hand.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, the shop was still empty. I couldn’t believe that break wasn’t over yet. It felt like an hour had passed since the saw attacked me. Do trauma and tragedy slow time?

I pressed my good hand to my bad and felt blood seep into the paper towel.

I’ve got to get to the hospital.

I looked around the empty shop. I left the saw running, and the whirring blade screamed an excruciating dirge. I shivered and felt cold. The walls closed in, and the saw moved towards me.

Got to get out of here!

Bay door #2 was open. Sunlight gushed through, and I could see the crisp clear blue sky of the beautiful autumn day. The turning leaves blazed with shades of red and orange. That was where I had to go, out there. I walked through the door and left behind the cold concrete and harsh machinery and went to my car. Opening the door on the old red Valiant wasn’t a problem but getting the key into the ignition with my left hand, now my good hand, was slightly awkward. Is this what I would have to do for the rest of my life?

In less than a minute I was on Highway 35 and headed for the hospital, but as I drove, I felt myself physically and psychologically breaking down. Pins of white crept in from the corners of my eyes blurred my vision and pushed me towards unconsciousness. Shit, I’ve got to stay awake! I used my right foreman to steer and rolled down the window with my left hand. The cool autumn air whipped through the window and slapped me in the face. 

Up ahead there was a large orange and black DETOUR sign with an arrow pointing to County Road K. “Goddamnit! How far is this going to take me out of my way?” I considered going back the other way and take I-90 but it might take so much more time to get to the hospital, so I took the detour. County K wasn’t a familiar road to me, and I tried to remember if I had ever taken it.

How far will this take me out of my way?

The road wound through hills. Rich colors of fall cascaded around me, as the late afternoon sun flickered through the trees. This would have been a beautiful drive on any other day, but the reds of the turning leaves ran cold and matched the color of the blood-soaked wrap on my hand.

I kept waiting for another road sign to appear and lead me back to Highway 35 and into the city. Instead, the road led me down through a deep cut with sheer bluffs on either side. The sun was obscured. The trees became dark and bare, as an ominous charcoal gray sky shrouded the valley.

The road leveled out and suddenly ended “What the hell is going on?” I drove into an opening where there was a weathered gray wooden booth. A battered rusty “Information” sign painted in red hung crookedly on the booth.

I stumbled down a dirt path to the booth, and I was greeted by a scrawny old man with albino wrinkled skin and disheveled white hair. His was missing his right hand and flipping through the pages of an S&M porno mag on the counter. He looked over his black rimmed glasses at me and asked, “What can I do for you, son?”

“How do I get out of here. I have to get to the hospital. I hurt my hand bad,” I said urgently. 

“Let’s have a look. Unwrap it,” he chirped.

“Why? Are you a doctor or something?”

“Come on, boy, time’s wastin’,” he snapped.

I reacted like a scolded child and gave up my damaged hand. “You do it, please.”

He peeled back the paper towel and took a long look. “Lost your pointer and middle finger-fucker. Ripped ‘em clean off,” he said heartily.

Nausea gurgled in my stomach, and dizziness shook my head. “I’ve got to get to town. I need to get to the hospital.” My words came out in a heave, and I was on the verge of tears.

“Do you want your fingers back?”

“I just want to get to the hospital! Please help me get out of here!”

“Get a grip, boy. Everything will be okay.” He patted me on the shoulder. The stump of his other arm flapped slightly. “You’re not going to die.”

I had no idea who this man was, but I chose believe him, and relief washed over me.

“So, do you want your fingers back? Time’s a wastin’.”

“I don’t know,” I said. When I left them back at the shop, I figured I had already made the decision. And in the smallest way, I began to accept my loss and live life without them in the most immediate sense.

“You don’t know?” My indecision annoyed him. “You want to go through life with people gawking at you like you’re some kind of freak? They will, you know. They will think you’re a dumb ass for cutting your fingers off. They will wonder why you let that happen.” The cranky old man paused for a second. “When you shake someone’s, your stump will make them quiver with revulsion.”

“I’ll shake with my left hand.” I’ll keep my right hand in my pocket forever.

“Women? You like them?” he asked.

“Yes.” 

“Do you think they’ll like you rubbing your stump over their tits?”

“I don’t need this shit!” Wishing the was all a nightmare I could wake from, I closed my eyes tight to make the old man disappear.

His voice broke through. “Do you want your fingers back or not?”

“They’re gone. What are talking about?” I felt lightheaded. Pins of white were creeping into my vision again, so I leaned against the booth to steady myself.

“They’re not gone. They’re out there.” The old man pointed with his stump. “They’re in the River of Lost Limbs.”

I turned around and looked to where he pointed. In the distance a wide soupy red river flowed slowly with drifting debris.  “What’s in that river?” I asked.

“Your fingers. And the amputated body parts from a thousand battles and a million accidents like yours.”

The sight of the River of Lost Limbs made my mouth salivate, the lubricant and precursor to vomiting. I turned away and bent over to throw up.

“You’re not the first to puke on your shoes at the banks of the ROLL.”

“ROLL?”

“River of Lost Limbs, boy. Like YOLO. You wanna ROLLO?” He laughed.

“Yeah, real funny,” I said. 

“Jump in that canoe down. Your fingers out there waiting for you. You can’t get out of here, until you go down there.” 

Where is here? Hell? 

“How am I supposed to find them?”

“Body parts are like children. You can pick them out of a crowd.”

“You obviously didn’t find your arm.” I knew how absurd the conversation I was having with him, but within the parameters of what happened to me and where I presently was, the absurd was the only thing that made sense right now.

“I gave my arm for love,” the old man said soberly.

“For love?”

“You’ll see.” The old man gazed out at the bobbing slurry of the River of Lost Limbs. 

I looked at my blood stump, and I wondered how I was supposed to do this.

“Take that canoe down there. Better hurry before someone else fishes your fingers out.”

“Why would anyone else want my fingers?”

“Someone will find a purpose for them. Get them before someone else does. Godspeed, boy!”

I walked down to the river and climbed into a dented and battered old aluminum canoe. The river carried every combination of amputated arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers, and toes downstream. I wondered what sea of death awaited at the end of this river. 

Body parts clanked and banged against the canoe with varying emphasis depending on their size. I scanned the melee of carnage, the pogrom of human potential snatched ruthlessly away from so many people, from so many different places. Long highways, dirt roads, and narrow paths led here, to the River of Lost Limbs.

I wondered when this nightmare would end. When could I go to the hospital and lie in a bed with clean white sheets and breathe sterile air, as morphine dripped into my veins and killed the pain. That was all I wanted? Why couldn’t I have that?

Then my eyes fixed upon two fingers barely attached to each other by a flay of skin and meat. I saw how nasty and violent the amputation was. My fingers stood out, like the old man said.  As I rowed frantically, awkwardly with my left hand and right foreman, towards them I wondered how reattachment could occur. I was clueless, but hope gave me strength to pursue my fingers bobbing in the murky bloody water.

I closed the distance, and when I was within arm’s length of my fingers, a net pulled them away from me in a wash towards the riverbank. A woman with long sooty hair in a yellow sundress-stained pink from the river hauled the net onto the shore.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I yelled.

The woman squatted over her catch and examined the contents like any good fisherman, then gathered her catch into a wicker basket and ran off.

“No! Come back!”

She looked back but kept going and scampered up a path that disappeared into a forest of charred trees. 

“Come back!” I rowed as hard as I could to the shore. The weight of my damaged hand was taking its toll. Where did you go, bitch? I stumbled out of the canoe. My legs were stiff and shaky. Using my good hand for leverage, I pulled myself up the steep riverbank and followed the path. I stumbled through the old dead forest. There wasn’t the chirp of birds or the chirring insects, only the sounds of my shuffling-tired feet and labored breathing. The silence and the vacuum of death was thick in the air. 

The path led to a rickety old wood shack with a rusty roof. I crept up to a window and smeared away a layer of dirt to peek inside. The woman in the yellow dress was standing next to a table where she had dumped her catch of limbs. I noticed my fingers immediately. Then she walked to the sink and in one sweeping motion she pulled off her dress and dropped it into the sink. Her sleek, naked, athletic body glistened with a sheen of perspiration and diluted blood. At that moment I realized how hot and humid it was here. 

We were less than two feet apart, only the pane of glass the window separated us. I stared at her without notice. She was beautiful, but her gaunt face, blue lips, and pallid skin made her look of the grave. I wondered where the blood was coming from to get me hard. It felt like I had been bleeding for hours. Blood rushes to vital organs when one’s body sustains a traumatic injury. I guess my cock is a vital organ.

She looked up and saw me. Our eyes met and the ineffable love at first sight moment flooded over me. I didn’t believe this could be real, but I couldn’t deny how my body was reacting. Despite my debilitated condition, I was still lusting her. 

She smiled and said, “Come inside.”

I walked around to the door. 

“My name is Mary. What’s your name?”

Her nakedness was distracting, but she appeared completely comfortable with it like girls in a strip club. “I’m Mick.” I had many questions, but the most pressing was, “Why did you take my fingers?”

“For him.” She pointed to a male cadaver on a bed in the corner. He was missing his left arm at the elbow, two fingers on his right hand, and his head. His left and right leg were complete because two different legs that didn’t belong to this body were attached just above the knee. As a matter of fact, the attached legs came from two different bodies. Mary had done a good job finding matching legs in size, but it was easy to see that they didn’t come from the same body. The foreign limbs were sewn on and looked like the sutures of Frankenstein’s monster. 

“I want my fingers back, so they can be reattached on me.”

“I’m creating my soulmate. Don’t you want to be my soulmate?” We were standing about ten feet apart, and she took my amputated fingers, slid them between her legs, and inserted.  She released my fingers but left them inside her, and from across the room I was now controlling my amputated fingers. I felt her warmth and slippery wetness. I slid my fingers deeper inside her, and she responded with moans and rolling eyes. Mary crossed the room and kissed me, her tongue softly exploring my mouth. With my good hand I roamed her body and pressed mine against hers, as my amputated fingers continued to pleasure her. She rubbed my erection, and I could feel myself getting close. Noticing my building excitement, she went to her knees, pulled my pants down and took me in her mouth.  

When we finished, Mary said, “You have to go. You have to take care of your hand.” Then she took my bloody stump and held it to her breast. I thought I could now accept the impending gawks, the looks of revulsion, and the whispers of the ignorant at my aberration.

With newfound energy and less desperation, I paddled back to the old man. 

“Did you find your fingers?”

“Yeah, I left them with her.”

“You fell for her, didn’t ya? So what body part are you gonna lose next to come back?”

“I’m not going to lose my head.” I tapped my forehead to indicate what head I was talking about.

A confused look came over the old man’s face.

“Her soulmate needs a head.”

The old man shrugged. “Well, get outta my way, boy. I got a date.” He hobbled out from behind the counter with a craggy crutch under each arm. His right foot had been recently amputated and was wrapped with soiled rags. “Well, I’m looking for a man who needs a foot, and a girl who’ll give me love for it.”

“How do I get out of here?” I asked.

“That way.” He pointed towards woods.

“There’s no road there, just the woods.”

“Drive that way, the road will appear. See ya.” And he made his way down to a canoe on the banks of the River of Lost Limbs and paddled away.

I slowly drove towards the direction he indicated, and the trees opened up to reveal a road.

I woke up in a hospital bed. My hand was neatly bandaged, and my girlfriend was standing by my side. “How did I get here?”

“You’re okay.” She softly cried. “Does it hurt?”

“Not as much as I thought it would.” I slid my hand towards her, and she recoiled subtly and winced. 

“Here take this.” She forced a smiled. “It’s a morphine pump. For the pain.”

I hit the button, and a bell dinged acknowledging the dose before I drifted off to sleep to search for my soulmate in the River of Lost Limbs.

Suffering Pleasure 

Darkness had punched the time clock showing up to work the night shift, so I lit a couple of candles in my Studio apartment. The purpose wasn’t to create a romantic or Gothic ambience, but instead to be able to navigate around my four hundred square foot living space with some type of light. It seems my memory has been on a drunk once again and forgot to pay the electric bill.

The Electric and Power guy pointed out I’ve used that somewhat creative as well as almost humorous excuse far too often. The novelty has worn off with the consequence being orders to confiscate the Electric Meter and return it to the office. It meant he couldn’t just pull it out, turn it upside down, and push it back in. The company mid-level suits had become aware of me pulling it out then placing it back into the service restoring my power after the electric guy left

I guess I’ll be playing pioneer for a while. Maybe I should stock up on candles or get one of those oil lamps. You know what? My neighbors are leaving on vacation for a month tomorrow. So I’ll be able to jump their electric power and their Cable, which I think is still hooked up from the last time I tapped in. I’ll try to find some way to get my TV out of hock. Quite possibly I’ll just borrow one of my neighbor’s. This guy will be living like a suburban scumbag in no time at all. I’ve got it all worked out.

“This has to stop Santiago. There’s no future in what you refer to as a recreational activity.” I said out loud.

“Ya I know. I’ve gotta straighten up.” Answering back with a four a.m. honesty.

I emptied the entire contents of the paper into the small pool of water in the spoon. 

“When do you think that might happen?”

“I’m not sure. It may manifest as a revelation or an epiphany? Maybe there’ll be an intervention, or the never-fail cure, incarceration.”

Bubbles appeared on the surface caused by the heat as I held the spoon over the candle flame.

“It doesn’t matter. You’ve gotta get clean. This is just no fun anymore.”  

“I can’t remember when it didn’t become fun any longer.”

I drew up the warm liquid mixture through the cigarette butt I used as a filter, inspecting the contents for air bubbles.

“You look at life as though it’s a nonstop parade and you just watch it pass by. Let me tell you, the last float will be showing up soon signaling your demise. It’s got to stop!”

My voice echoed in the near empty apartment.

 “Ya, it’ll happen. I just can’t say when.” I answered sincerely. But even I didn’t believe myself.

I stabbed the syringe deep into my vein. I didn’t even have to pull back on the plunger to register. My dark, thick, rich red blood billowed into it, offering a crimson preview of the explosion about to erupt inside my body.

Boom!

***

Originally published in Raven Cage Zine #73

Leashed

During the first weekend that we met Lucia offered herself as my sex slave. We stayed in a hotel room in downstate New York and explored. That Sunday afternoon, before parting for the week, we went to a large department store with an extensive pet section. Lucia had been wearing a use collar that I had provided; this next one would be permanent. After spending several minutes viewing various collars, I approved a demure and glittery and frankly quite trashy collar – which she loved. She began wearing it that day.

Many people stared but no one commented directly. I think a few people understood the significance; at least, they seemed to have knowing looks on their faces. For the little bit of time left that day I began casually and quietly training Lucia to hand signals. I would point, raise a hand flat, or make a shushing gesture. She seemed very responsive to such direction.

The next weekend it was time for the leash. Behind closed doors, in the privacy of the hotel room, I told her to undress, which was to be standard. There were basic rules that I had enumerated. I reviewed: the bathroom door must be left open, she was to ask before acting, she was required to be extremely polite. 

Then it was time for her to kneel. Chin up, on her knees on the floor, and I snapped the leash to the collar. Now onto all fours, and I began using the riding crop to adjust positioning. Her knees needed to be further apart; I swept the crop between them. This served to spread her ass crack, opening it, keeping her displayed.

Starting at the small of her back, she needed to begin curving downward. A smooth touch and light pressure of the crop brought this about. Her torso would then begin curving upward again, but the level of shoulders and top of head had to be below the level of the still-spread ass cheeks. Face down, parallel to the floor, not looking up or side to side and follow the leash lead. I walked her around for several minutes until I was satisfied her performance was adequate. At first I led her, having her crawl behind me; later, I rotated the collar to the back of her neck and had her crawl in front. I gave directional commands while watching to ensure she maintained proper position.

Then I had her kneel back, and re-assume the crawling position on command. She practiced this until I was confident she could assume it on command. Then more crawling, to habituate her to the leash. And as she crawled, I told her, “Kiss my foot.”

“Please…”

“You are an animal. Animals don’t talk. Do as told.”

She still hesitated.

“Now!”

“Up on the bed.”

She hesitates, on the floor on all fours.

“Jump up, like an animal would.”

And she does, awkwardly, and is now on all fours in the middle of the bed. I use the crop to again adjust her posture, but she is getting it mostly correctly already. 

“Bark. Bark like a dog.”

Silence. She does not respond.

“Do as told. Bark like a dog.”

Still silence. I strike her twice on the left ass cheek. But she is still silent. I repeat my actions, the command and the crops. She is still silent and unresponsive.

“I have told you several times to bark. You disobey. So now I am going to beat you with the crop until you obey.”

One word, a single response, but I am already striking her.

“Wait.”

But I am striking her. Do as told. She starts to bark, and maintains it, and I keep hitting her. She keeps barking and I keep cropping; she defied me; she needs to learn discipline. Finally I stop and she keeps barking until I tell her she may stop. She seems to be learning.

“Good dog.”

“Lift a leg up, as if you are going to piss.”

“Roll over.”

“Sit.”

“Good dog.”

She quite respectfully informed me that she needed to urinate. Not a problem. I led her to the bathroom and sat her on the toilet. I told her she was to sit there and NOT urinate. Then I turned the tap on and went back into the main room and watched TV.

The Left Hand Of God

To the Parents of Penelope Peterson,

Hi. I don’t usually contact my victims nor their family members. I think about it. Taunting them must be a risky extra delicacy. And I hope you feel my tongue unwelcome on your tear ducts, for I have risked. I am contacting you because this time was not like most of the little ones I have mangled and snuffed out. Yourbundle of joy has transcended me. Usually in my path I leave violated fragments of children, discarded in places where they will never be bothered. But I have made your daughter into art! I want eyes dragged across what I have made out of her. I didn’t plan for this. I mean, I did for her kidnapping. Mama Peterson, you made it way too easy. Every day she waits for you to pick her up from school and every day this month from the moment she gets out at 2 O’clock every day she waited for you an average of 35 minutes-every day which she would spend at the playground by the cafeteria. Did you know her favorite toy was the jungle gym? I’m sure you did, she called for you a lot, you must have been real close like, I bet you’d know which teeth she lost to the tooth faerie and which I beat out of her.  After 30 days of Mama Petersons consistent tardiness, I made my move and it was an easy nab. Penny was playing all alonesome and the after-school teachers weren’t looking. I hit her on the head with my Nana’s femur. Did you know the human femur has the same hardness as concrete? I have never swung as hard at anything in my life. I needed to make sure she would be knocked out. I felt a crack and she fell right off the jungle gym. She slept quietly on her concussion until I woke her up with a bucket of water where she could scream freely. I tied her to a chair. I told her I would untie one of her arms so she could wipe her tears away and blow her nostrils if she needed but it was so I could get to her fingers. Driving to where little Penny’s journey would end I noticed her bedazzling fingernails. Little ladybugs manicured on the keratin tips of little digits. I wanted those cute little fingeys.  I pulled and clipped off each little piggy of her right hand with a pair of pliers.  When I reached her ring finger, I lingered. I daydreamed of a disfigured bride who couldn’t say “I do” because nubby little stubs had no perch for love’s metallic ring. The daydream’s anguish tasted delicious. I ran my fingers through Penny’s hair, complimenting her on the pseudovisuals I was getting from our playdate. Dawn broke on me in that tender moment that I was the only one having fun. Here my caress of Penny’s bushy golden hair tiptoed curiously to her face. I applied rouge on both of us, but she was the cat’s pajamas of the two. It was only skin deep I quickly discovered. Your whore rat spawn tried to bite me when I tried to smudge her lipstick with my muddied man fingers. Your little blond piranha almost bit off one of my ringed claspers. Your girl needed discipline. And trojaned within punishment, her role as muse would emerge. I hit her in the mouth with Nana. Many, many, many times aplenty. She couldn’t properly cry because every time she opened her mouth to caterwaul I socked her again. When I was done I looked at the snaggletooth train wreck enclosed in her swollen, redder than rouge, lips. The shards and jagged bits of teeth left Penny’s chompers looking vicious. It’s a good thing she had already lost most of her baby teeth, I would have hated for her to have hoped that her smile could be saved. I looked at the beartrap looking babe I made and thought to myself, “damn, she looks like she could chew up an arm now”. Right then and there I got a quick glimpse of what a masterpiece she would become. I knew then what I had to do. Your daughter went through a lot of pain, but I believe the most physical pain she endured on our play date was when I sawed her left forearm off. The bone, and nerve endings. It was like gnawing through guitar strings with a bread knife. Once all the fleshy sinewy bits were cut and the bone snapped off, I burned the wound. I’m not sure if that stops the blood loss or if it just closed up the outer damage, but the puddle stopped getting bigger. All her yummy screams paled in comparison to the shock in her little green eyes from what I did next.  Better than Picasso and Goya before me, I encompassed atrocity! I forced little Penny’s battered mouth open and began pushing her little arm down her throat. She was gagging, eyes wild and wetting themselves. A few times it seemed like it would not go further but we persevered, and I pushed through. I lodged it at a height where what protruded looked like a little palm tree, with ladybugs on the branch tips. She neither gasped or grasped anymore, she just gurgled. Stupefied I fell to my knees and watched as the darting of her eyes slowly stopped. I swear to you Peterson Family if I had molten bronze I would have coated her and sold her to the Louvre. I did attempt to paint it, represent visually how amazing my experience with her made me feel while showing the triumphant product of our encounter. The little left hand of innocence, reaching out of the maw of the pleasures of the flesh and their vile savagery? ABSOLUTE ZHEITGEIST! And she did die innocent. I was entranced by her suffocation that I only thought of fucking her after she was dead, but by then I didn’t want to reposition the art. I have decided to call the piece, “The Left Hand Of god”.  The illustration I will keep for myself, but the source material you may retrieve. You will find her in the basement of the last house of Honeyoak road. Go to her, before she rots, though even spotted in purple blotches, she would look very debonair as a center piece in any family room or den.

One of her fingers is enclosed as proof.

Delightedly,

Buck Jim

The Voyeur

She kissed him like she wanted to suck the enamel off his teeth. Kyle smirked  and slid his hand down her back, tracing the zipper with his fingertip, but not undoing it. Yet. He knew enough to take his time. After all, eager older women were his specialty.

Connie gave a soft growl and pressed herself against him, her head nestling against his throat. This one knew what he was doing, which was a tad disappointing. Corrupting the truly innocent was much more fun. On the other hand, a young man already familiar with both the mechanics and geography of a woman’s body made for less work and better results.

He pulled away from her eager lips, wiping the small, waxy, crimson remnants from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. Her lipstick was mostly unsmeared, but then women like her only used the best. Like her perfume. He ran his nose against her collarbone, audibly inhaling her, knowing it would turn her on. “You smell amazing.”

She chuckled and ran her French tips through his hair. “You do too.” It was true. Young men never used decent cologne, and the healthy smell of his drugstore deodorant, sweat, and hormones beat that toxic, cheap body spray. 

They fumbled and groped and banged off walls all the way to her bedroom door. She pulled him in by the hand, kissed him again, then pulled away. With a knowing smile, she gestured around the room. “So. Here we are.”

There they were. Kyle looked around at a real woman’s room. No dorm room fumbling or roommate hushing tonight. Spotless. Classy. Expensive. Maybe the priciest room he’d seen outside a hotel room. And probably high maintenance. Like her. But that wasn’t his problem, was it? 

Surprisingly, all the lights were on. Most older women went for mood lighting that not only set a tone, but concealed imperfections and masked insecurity. Not that Connie-Bonnie? No, definitely Connie, had anything to be insecure about. A gym-toned, firm body wiggled under that satiny fabric. Between a personal trainer, expensive lingerie and good genes, she was probably ten years older than she looked. And she clearly wanted him to see everything she had. The way she danced and squeezed his junk right at the bar in front of everyone—the woman was definitely an exhibitionist. Kyle had no complaints.

He spun her around so he stood behind her, pressing himself against the muscled product of all that gym time. Big hands circled her waist and slid upward as he ran his lips along her flawless nape. Just as about to let his hands cup her breasts, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. 

Up in the corner. He wasn’t seeing things. A tiny, single, red dot.

“Is that… is that a camera?”

Connie spun around, took his chin in her fingers and nodded. “A girl can’t have too much security. You never know who might find his way into her house.” She gave a naughty chuckle and playfully nipped at his lips.

“Yeah, but it’s on now? Like it can see us?” He gave the camera a mocking salute, and then stopped as the possible consequences occurred to him. His hands dropped to his side and every other part of him was perfectly still.

“Afraid you’re going to wind up on the internet or something? Don’t be, honey. It’s just for me. Kind of my thing.” The thought hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, but yeah. Getting splashed across the interwebs wouldn’t be great. Not a big deal. He was the guy, after all. But not something he wanted.

She pressed against him. “Don’t you think it’s kind of hot? You ever done it on camera before?” Connie reached up and toyed with the buttons of his polo shirt. “What? I’ll bet you’ve got what it takes to be my big, bad, porno stud, dontcha?” She punctuated the question by running the pink tip of her tongue along the V of his collarbone. 

Kyle groaned. He’d seen himself on video before—grainy cell phone shots meant only for himself and his partner. It was the twenty-twenties after all. And if she enjoyed performing for the camera, this could be a lot of fun. “Just for us, right?”

Connie nodded. “Just for us. ‘Kay?”

The evening was getting wilder and weirder, which was just fine with him. Life is about the stories you can tell, and he’d swapped more than a few war stories with his cronies at the car lot. Kyle let out a playful growl and dropped his head to her chest, eliciting a squeal from the woman. 

There was another sound as well and froze. It was almost inaudible, just slightly lower in tone. Barely detectable above the AC.

“What?” Connie squinted, studying him. The unexpected appearance of microscopic crow’s feet showing her exasperation.

“Did you hear that?” Kyle stood and looked around for the source of the noise. If might be just his overactive imagination. There were certainly enough wicked ideas bouncing around in his skull at that moment to confound his senses.

She took his chin and turned it to her, those eyes burning into him. “No. Come on, let’s…”

That time, he was sure he heard it. A low, deep moan, muffled and unrecognizable. Kyle couldn’t place it, maybe a sick animal, maybe not, but the sound oozed through the walls. Whatever it was made the hair on his arms tingle and stand up. He pushed off her, holding her at arm’s length, and looked around, trying to home in on the source. “Shush.”

“Don’t shush me.” Connie hissed. She halted a moment, then clearly reached a conclusion. “Okay fine. You want to know the truth? I think you’ll like it. You seem like the type.” 

She bunched his shirtfront in her small fists and dragged him to the bed. He landed on his back, legs dangling over the edge of the mattress. Then she straddled his legs and looked down at him, a cat smugly studying her mouse. She raised her blond head up to look directly at the camera, gave a smug smile and a finger-waggling wave, then turned those eyes back on him.

“Since you like to ruin surprises, you naughty boy. My husband likes to watch. Me. With other men.”

Kyle scrambled out from under her, rising to his feet, tucking his shirt into his pants. “Your husband?”

Disappointment crossed Connie’s pretty face and she blew a raspberry at him. “Don’t BS me. You knew I was married.” The married woman displayed her fingers to him, bright light catching the huge sparkling stones in her ring. “You sure didn’t mind a minute ago Or when I was buying your drinks and letting you shoot tequila off my tits.”

Kyle ran a hand through his perfect black hair. “Yeah, I know but… I thought you were divorced. Or at least he was out of town—” His eyes whipped one way, then the other. “Is he here? Like, he won’t come and axe murder me or anything, will he?”

Chuckling, Connie took Kyle’s shirt and ripped it out of his pants, then ran a chilly hand under it and across his firm, young abs. “No, Tiger. He’s somewhere he can’t do anything about this but watch. Just like we like it. Now stop wasting my time.” The icy fingers dropped from his stomach inside his pants, gripping the part of him in charge of his decision making..

He groaned, and any opposition vanished. “You are a freak, aren’t you?”

“No argument. Think you can keep up, Junior?” Connie pulled her hand out enough to unsnap his tight jeans, then reclaimed him in her grip. She shuffled to her left a tad, knowing that when the kid did what she knew he’d do, the camera would capture it perfectly.

Young men seldom disappointed. He unzipped her dress and yanked it down, then undid her bra and dropped it to the floor, exposing her breasts; real and close to perfect. As his mouth dropped to her chest, her left hand stroked his head. The other offered a playful hello to the camera, and she blew her audience a kiss.

Kyle moaned at the sheer decadence of the moment. He’d never felt like such a stud, and his determination to prove his worth swelled. Aggressively, his lips captured a hard nipple, and he heard another moan. Louder but no less muffled and indistinct.

But this sound wasn’t from either of the room’s occupants. It was unlike their panting or gasping. This wasn’t pleasure. It was soul-deep pain. Kyle stepped back, shaken.

“That didn’t sound like he’s enjoying this at all. Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, goddammit.” 

She reached for him, eager to distract her playmate, but Kyle pulled away and took tentative steps towards the closet. “Is he in there? I mean, I know this is all a game with you guys. He’s really okay with it?”

Connie’s lips curled in a sneer. “What do you want, a fucking permission slip?” Her voice was becoming more harpy than siren..

The young man, thinking about how this might ruin the evening, was about to concede when another plaintive sound wafted into the room. 

“Noooooooo. Stop it.” No level of denial could pretend someone wasn’t begging for help.

“That doesn’t sound like he’s digging this at all. Is he in there? Whaddya have him tied up in the closet?” Moving faster than her, Kyle threw the sliding closet door open and ducked inside. He pushed aside a rack of designer dresses and almost tripped over the dozens of shoes scattered across the floor.

 In the back corner, a razor-thin line of light extended from floor to ceiling. He pressed his hand to the sheetrock, and it gave a bit. He froze with his hand on the wall, undecided whether to continue.

A shriek assaulted his ears. Connie’s voice echoed in the small space, “Don’t you fucking dare.”

The other voice persuaded him. It was guttural, obviously male, and knotted his guts to hear it. He ignored Connie’s pleas and leaned forward. The hair on his arms stood at attention, his mouth dry as sand. 

“Help. Me. God, help me.”

Kyle pushed and nearly fell into another room tucked behind the enormous closet. His forward momentum drew him forward, just out of Connie’s reach. A single fingernail scratched down Kyle’s back, and somehow it registered in his mind he was bleeding.

Scrambling to avoid the woman’s talons, he scooted on his knees into a small, dark room. Raising his head, he blinked to help take in what he thought, but couldn’t believe he saw.

The only light in the space came from four thirty-inch screens, one per wall. No matter which way one looked, there was no missing the high-resolution, garishly lit, color view of Connie’s now-empty bedroom. 

Kyle didn’t have time to think about the walls. On the floor in the center of the room, taking up most of the space, was a ring of white crystals, several inches deep. In the center of the circle  was a faint figure, not lit by lamplight but by an inner phosphorescent glow. Kyle was sure it was a man.

 Only it wasn’t. At least not a live one.

The figure hovered motionless in the air. Its lower body fading to nothingness the closer it got to the floor. It didn’t even appear to have feet. The body simply faded to nothing the closer it got to the floor. The upper body was more solid, but still opaque. It wore colorless khakis and a golf shirt. Then Kyle saw the figure’s face. The left half appeared to be a handsome man, about fifty years old, although the face was droopy and lined, as if deprived of sleep for years. Where the right side of the face should be was a dark, mangled, scabbed over mess, unrecognizable as anything human. No one could mistake the agony behind the clouded, damaged eye.

“HI honey, I’m home.” Connie put her hand on Kyle’s shoulder and moved alongside him, her attention on the spectral vision. Was it a fucking ghost? He couldn’t believe it but that had to be what it was, right? “Kyle, this is Bert. Bert likes to watch, don’t you, babe?”

 The spirit’s head tilted to the ceiling and a pitiful roar vomited up from somewhere inside it.

She continued, her voice artificially calm, like oil over shards of glass. “Bert, honey. This is Kyle. Isn’t he pretty? We’re going to have so much fun. And you get to watch. Again.” She pursed her lips in a mock kiss to what was left of the man she married. Icy fingertips stroked the younger man’s cheek for a microsecond before he jerked away, almost slamming into the wall  to avoid her touch. 

The question croaked out of Kyle’s throat. “What the fuck is this?”

“He’s what’s left of my dear husband. Maybe you’re not as smart as you look.”

He had to know. “What happened to him?”

The smile never left the woman’s painted lips. “A little gardening accident. He keeps all kinds of equipment in the garage. Some of it is really dangerous, apparently. Like that hoe. Sharper than it looked, huh Babe?”

The figure pointed to its mangled face and screamed its fury at her. Kyle cowered against the wall, his tan complexion turned ashy grey. Connie stood with her hands on her hips, talking to her guest but keeping one satisfied eye on the specter. 

“Since he likes to watch so much, I figured I’d let him. He can watch me. Just like he made me watch him with that little slut.” She turned to Kyle, trying to regain her composure. It didn’t really work. The madness in her eyes belied the perfect makeup and clothes.

“I found a video on his phone. The bastard wasn’t even sorry. He laughed and told me he was leaving me for a hotter piece of ass. Then held me down and made me watch it. Didn’t you, you limp-dick bastard?” 

She continued explaining to Kyle in a freakishly calm voice, “She was even younger than you, sugar. I didn’t want to see it, but he sat on top of me and made me watch. Every minute of it. Then again. Holding the phone up to my face. Told me he was going to divorce me and marry her. Thought it was hysterical. Said his lawyers would make sure I got nothing. Can you believe that shit?”

Kyle wasn’t sure if it was a question, or if she directed it at him, but he was incapable of responding. His eyes were wide with terror, and his throat dry and constricted— equally appalled by the woman at his side and the horrible figure floating in the circle.

He raised a finger and pointed at the apparition. “How did you…?”

“It’s called a Devil’s Trap. It’s just rock salt, but spirits can’t cross an unbroken line. There’s enough there he’s not going anywhere. Ever. Are you sweetheart? Even his shit-hot attorneys can’t get him out of this. We won’t be disturbed.”

The figure’s mouth formed a circle, and the voice struggled to form clearer words. “Let me go.”

Connie chuckled. “Don’t think so. It’s your turn to watch.” She reached out to take Kyle’s trembling hand. “Come on, kid. Let’s go.”

He ripped his hand away from her; the nails leaving bloody tracks down the back of his hand. “You’re frickin’ nuts. I’m not going with you.”

The thing that had once been Bert inched closer to the salt line but couldn’t get any closer. It spoke to Kyle.

“Break the Circle. Let me go.” 

“Don’t you dare, you little shit. He has this coming.” She turned to the spectre. It’s my turn to put on a show isn’t it darling.. My. Turn.”

The voice on the other side of the line pleaded. “Do it. For the love of God.” The sound echoed in Kyle’s chest, painfully churning his guts.

Connie shrieked. “Don’t!”

Desperate to take some kind of action, Kyle shouted incoherently and stepped forward, taking a kick at the salt line. The first kicked merely left a smeared but intact barrier. Connie leapt at him, tugging at him, trying to pull him back. The second time, his shoe left a bare spot on the floor. As the woman screamed her outrage, the spirit collapsed into a dense fog and drifted through the opening. It reformed on the other side, its mangled face inches from Connie’s . Her face was a mask of fury and horror. The gaping hole that was once Bert’s mouth opened. The odor of rotted meat filled the room, and the walls shook with the figure’s horrible scream. 

Then it was gone.

Kyle stood immobile for a second, panting and looking around, uncomprehending. There was no misunderstanding the hatred in the woman’s eyes though. She lunged at him, talons first. He’d never hit a woman before, but he shoved as hard as he could. Her head hit the wall with a sickening thud, and he ducked through the entry to the closet.

Connie yelled after him, “You don’t know what you’ve done! Get back here!”

Kyle banged his head on the door frame in his rush to escape and he stumbled into her bedroom. Connie’s voice trailed after him. He thought he heard her footsteps behind him, but all he could think of was escape. He tripped over a pair of Manolo Blahniks, yet scrambled away, making a break for the door with Connie screaming like a harpy behind him.

He almost made the stairs when cold fingers grabbed his ankle and he felt gravity betray him.

Two weeks later, the door opened and a drunken couple stumbled into the foyer. The young man — twenty-first birthday shots scenting his breath, pushed the woman against the door and kissed her hard.

“You sure we’re alone?”

In response, Connie wrapped her arms around his neck and stuck her tongue down his throat. When she needed air, she pulled back to smile into his baby blue eyes.

“My boyfriend’s home.”

The kid’s eyes widened. She put a finger to his lips.

“Shh. It’s cool. He likes to watch.”

See No Longer

His name is Curtis. His eyes are green. He’s almost gone; I see it. Sometimes Curtis and I work graveyard shifts together in the airport restaurants, or else trade off solitary shifts in the dishpit. The dishpit is underground and smells like hot mold.

The dishpit has a pair of commercial dishwashing machines shaking and churning on the far side of the room. For each machine there is an industrial sink. Conveyor belts jut through the wall in several places and feed filthy dishes onto their warm awaiting surfaces.

Today, as I am trying to sweep the lunch rush sludge off the sink tops, a pristine white coffee cup tumbles out of the chute. Inside, there is a bright-blue sticky note. I’m curious and bored, so I carefully unfold the soaking wet paper.

The ink is runny but I know Curtis’ handwriting, all loops and no space. The note reads: “Where were you last night?” 

Usually I don’t think about anything as I work. Today, I cannot think of anything else. Until recently, this was not like him. Passive-aggressive notes delivered strangely. We were friends. But he has not been thinking clearly lately. Neither have I. 

I once met his daughter, Jenny, and his wife, whose name I forget. Another time Jenny looked at me and didn’t know. She was looking at somebody else. 

And then later I remember looking down at his wife, her jet-black hair gathered on the white sheets beneath her, dark eyes half-closed as our naked bodies pressed together. This was a strange thing – Iwould never have fucked her. Yet I had seen skin, felt hipbones and heard somebody’s laughter. I liked it. No one knew, not even her.

Each time the faces of Curtis’ family look at me, I feel whole. Often, I go back again to see these things, at night and in the day. I go back at work. I reach inside myself and go to him all the time.

Until about a month ago, after our night shifts, Curtis and I met for a drink at the bar on Terminal C. I would drink several lite beers and he would sip a single shot of whiskey with remarkable temperance, staring over at me with those exhausted eyes that never lost their understated confidence. The kind that see down into everything. I wanted to see like that, and often did.

The last time Curtis met me there, a couple weeks before today, he arrived late. He always came early to get back to his family as soon as possible without slighting me. On this particular Friday, instead of taking his customary stool, he remained standing and shifted from foot to hip to foot. When I asked him what was wrong, he glanced up and down the bar, behind us. Leered suspiciously at the bartender, a tolerant college kid we both knew well. Then Curtis leaned in and whispered:

There was another member of the staff, a new guy I’d never met or even seen. He was specific about that fact. I could never have met him. This guy, he said, was moving things around inside his locker. He believed that the new guy was stalking him. Claimed to have seen a figure out front of his house. Curtis said that he often heard the new guy behind him when they worked together, whispering strange comments, and he was always gone before Curtis turned around. And the new guy whispered things in Curtis’ ear that no stranger could have known. Things about Jenny, about his favorite drinks. What it meant when Curtis narrowed one eye and smiled at a person. I loved that.

Then he leaned in closer, and I could smell vodka on his breath — not his drink. 

He said, “I know it’s you.”

When I asked him how it could be possible, a shadow passed across his face. He froze. The TV from behind the bar lit up the whites of his eyes, spread so wide that you could see strips of white along the bottom. He dashed out of the bar. So you see why I prefer to look out from his eyes, and not from mine.

Since that day he won’t meet or speak with me. I peered around the corner of the break room last week and spotted him at my locker, jiggling the combination lock. When I replay our conversation in the bar and think about the note, I wonder what might be happening to my friend. 

All I do is dream my dreams – it’s pure fantasy. Nobody could know where my mind goes when it’s dark. I am safe and innocent.

I work six more hours in the pit, and next to my station a millipede lurks above the trash. I am not authorized to take it to the dumpster, or even leave through any door except the elevator I entered from. Security purposes, of course, you understand. The room is windowless and the vents, although powerful, are clogged with grease. After a first hour of blistering hot water, and the steam generated by droplets against half-eaten shrimp cocktail and empty cups of ice water, all the walls begin to sweat. 

My palms get slippery. I drop a cup. The shattering sound is what a person does after an injury, before they realize there will be pain. A sharp-edge inhale. I think of Curtis’ face. I hear the glass this way and am blaming him for my mind and hating him for his fucking note.

Where was I last night? I was here. He sawme here. I am always down here and I do not admit to leaving.

Usually somebody comes through the elevator to cover me for lunch. The person always used to be Curtis. His face was the first thing I understood on any day. Since the bar, he changed shifts. We don’t see each other anymore. Now I don’t see anyone I can understand. I crave the feeling of a shared glance between friends.

And today, of all days, the coffee cup note day, nobody comes at all. Why won’t somebody come? My break comes and goes, and my eyes begin to float over my hands, their work. I must eat. 

I claw back to the surface of the airport and take my 30 minute lunch alone. I sit over a wet ham sandwich: rye bread with a swirl and a tepid lettuce leaf dangling from the side.

And beyond the plate glass windows of terminal C, I watch the planes glow neon beneath the false dawn cast by downtown Denver. Although I want to give up, I look around for a new employee that could be the one Curtis mentioned. Of course, there is nobody like that. Curtis is working the greasiest breakfast rush in the airport, at Fiesta Taqueria, so I cannot ask him about the note until later. I buy and slam a half pint of vodka, return to the dishpit, and finish my shift submerged in a throbbing liquid silence.

***

When the work is done, I find Curtis in the locker room. My hands are shaking. He’s at the far end, changing out of his black uniform polo.

He turns around and greets me. “Hey, my dishpit friend!” I am shocked by his friendliness, and I am relieved we have seen each other’s faces and not looked away.

I ask him how life is, how his wife is doing, where does that shitty neighbor live again? And we talk. I mention it: “I got a note earlier,” I say.

“Oh, from Jenny? A note from Jenny, eh?” he asks gleefully, with a strange high-pitched cackle that I’ve never heard from him. An uncharacteristic joke, too, both because Jenny is his daughter’s name and we both know Curtis wrote the note. Or is Jenny his wife’s name? This happens when I panic; I forget the details I want to know the most.

“No,” I got a note from us. I got a note from you. You got a note from me. You got a note from me. I got a note. “I got a note,” I manage.

He asks, “What do you mean? What kind of note?” even though he knows the answer already. Narrows one eye. Smiles crookedly. The expression does not mean what it used to.

My head thrums, it is speechless, jaw locked in place until he walks. Away. 

When he is gone I, myself, walk toward the escalator, pursued by the buzzing and the shouting of the world. Each footfall is an accusation, and every mumbled comment a shout directed at me. I run through the crowded terminal, bouncing off families with their baggage, pinballing out into the parking garage. I slam my car door and with a last furious thump, my door muffles all the rage and anxiety of the world, and it pounds down ceaselessly.

As I drive home, the sicknesses of the world begin to fizzle back in through the gaps. The wind gusts, an assault. There is only one way to escape. I go away from my mind, reaching out with thin blue tendrils from the bottom of nothing, the jellyfish tentacles which flail in the void like I am drowning in air. Then relief: the gauzy sound of Curtis singing in the car, “Bad company, and I won’t deny.” I found him. He is driving 90 miles per hour, going the wrong way on Highway 36 South. I pull in closer.

“Bad Company, until the day I die.” I feel the dial as he turns the music up. I smell the coke in his cigarette – I taste the smoke bitter, like a corroded penny. 

Behind us, blue-red-white-blue-red-white light leaps onto the highway and Curtis panics, I feel his panic like a rapidly expanding balloon in the throat, popping, shredding, and he kicks in the gas. The back end of our car slips left to right, he overcorrects, we are losing control and the wheel tears out of the other hand. Inertia is spinning them into the concrete barrier, slamming into it. A tearing sensation. We are separate. I float into dark, all abuzz with colorless white noise. The nothingness behind eyelids.

***

I wake up in my own bed. Dull morning light filters weakly through the blinds. The apartment stinks. Take-out containers, trash, two cardboard boxes that have stayed taped for five years. 

First thing I feel is alone and I try to find the other presence. Curtis is not there, not beside me, perhaps not anywhere at all.

Why should he be? What a fucked up dream. That was not me; I was not there.

The sheets press on my arms. I must rise. Get down the hall. Twist on the shower. The water stings my forearms, speckled purple and red with bruises under the skin, like a grotesque new tattoo. Stumble out of the shower and look in the mirror. My chest is purple. A flat, diagonal, impossible bruise runs from my left shoulder to my right hip. Seatbelt. I was not there. It happened to him, not me. It didn’t even happen!

I want to wake up, wake up again, so I get back under my sheets. They stick to my raw forearms. Stand up. White sheets have streaks of blood. I look down at my arms and they are seeping, bleeding without cuts. Dizzying darkness presses me down onto the bed again. I sleep the static.

***

When I wake up, sweating face-down in the hot afternoon, light is filtering through my fifth-floor window. My sheets are crisp with blood, and my right collarbone sticks at the pillow. I have to know what we did the night before: the man with green eyes, Curtis, and myself.

I drive up Route 36 North from my house for fifteen minutes and back down Route 36 South, but I don’t see any signs of a crash. I turn around to drive North again. I am late for work. Five minutes away from my exit, I am pulled to a stop.

A plastic shard glitters on the pavement just a few yards ahead of the car. Looking closer, I see a shard of reflector from inside a headlight. To the right, down the steep embankment, a youngish tree stands ahead of the rest with a massive gash in its side. The fresh sap bleeds.

And further beyond, hidden in the shadows that gather in forest dusk, there is a low moaning. My first thought: roadkill. A dying deer or dog, maybe, hit so hard that its haunches tore apart the impacting headlight and sent shattered pieces flying along with the carcass down into the trees below.

But then there is the gash in the tree. Too deep a cut for bone-flesh impact. I walk down the hill, drag my fingers through the sap of the tree’s cut as I pass by. A smell cloying, like honey. Not at all pine sap. Something else is wrong, too, first felt. Then the moaning I heard grows quieter. Stops.

I begin to run, my feet crackling along the pine needles. The sound of the highway disappears in the irreconcilable stench of honeyed sap that now permeates the forest. I see another shattered piece of reflector, a splinter of plastic buried in the ground, and a dark tear through the pine needles that cover the rest of the forest floor. Tucked beneath a cluster of trees, I see the still-smoking remnants of the car that Curtis wrecked last night. With me.

Curtis is draped over the warped front bumper, hanging aloft the wreck like so much dripping wet laundry. His eyes are green and pure and dead. I know he was in the driver’s seat because the steering column bent back over itself and extends from the crumpled windshield beneath his body, like another broken limb.

Curtis’s forearms hang down over the bumper, bloodied like mine, scabbing over in almost the exact same places. I take his hand and I look into his face. I saw it all happening. I had been with Curtis as he drove. And I had been there before, behind him as he worked, slept with his wife, loved his child. I was his new guy, standing not behind but beside his mind, a passenger. And now I am whispering to his body about Jenny and his wife and the drinks at the bar and all the beautiful ways that only his face could move.

I only wanted to know every angle of you.

Carefully, leading with my fingertips, I lift Curtis down from the bumper and lay him in the pine needles. His head rolls left.

Down here, among this wreckage, there is nothing for me. I have it all inside. Back to the highway. Listen to the traffic scream past. Wash the dishes, scrub the floors. I will hide myself in the sub-basement, surrounded by the rhythm of airport byproducts. I won’t promise not to do this again.

The End of Most Things

God spoke to me in a dream last night, and I was informed that the end of the world would be much more absurd and a bit less dramatic than most of us assume. It will begin with squids rising from the earth. The squids will be equipped with flamethrowers on each tentacle for some reason. Like teenagers, the squids will be angry, horny, and confused. After they shoot flames and try to mate for a while they will turn into land dwelling dolphins. The dolphins will have caustic urine and full bladders. Said dolphins will urinate on a wide variety of human beings. Half of said humans will dissolve at the touch of the urine, but half will turn into clowns. The clowns will masturbate in public for reasons unrelated to Diogenes. This cycle will repeat for a few days, and then teddy bears will sprout from the ground. The teddy bears will split open, and those murder hornets that you’ve heard so much about will emerge. The murder hornets will carry with them miniature bass guitars, playing ominous basslines while they destroy humanity. 

But wait, there’s more. Even after mankind is vanquished, the apocalypse will continue. Specifically, giant bagpipes will fall upon the earth, cracking it open. Lava will flow over the land. The lava will turn into sentient creatures who will, unfortunately, begin holding committee meetings. While talking, the lava beings will melt the earth’s surface. Eventually, the earth will devolve into an amalgamation of tiny Geraldo Riveras. Then, it will wither away into ash, disappearing from the universe. This is how our world will end. Please plan accordingly. 

Dive Deep

My husband messaged his girlfriend about me. His careless text said she gave better head than me. I told my therapist I didn’t give a shit. But deep down, I gave a big massive shit. And to be honest, I am slightly less upset about my spouse’s repeatedly cheating on me than I am pissed about his criticism of my fellatio skills. He knew I could work my mouth around his cock like a boss, and so, well, fuck him! “Does this make me sound shallow?” I asked my therapist.

My therapist said my marriage is like an inground swimming pool with a deep and shallow end. And I mostly waded in the shallow end of my marriage, where I kept my head above water, breathing freely. I avoided the deep end whenever possible, refraining from diving down too deep to the bottom of things because I knew if I investigated the bottom closely, I would suffocate and drown. “Am I a coward?” I asked.

  A few weeks after finding my husband’s traitorous text, I told my therapist I got drunk, met a cute musician, and blew his fucking brains out in the parking lot of a local Chinese restaurant. The musician said I had “mad skills” as he pulled up his pants and it made me smile. “It didn’t feel wrong,” I admitted.

My therapist asked why I didn’t leave my marriage, a loveless and unfulfilling union. And I said I thought a therapist is supposed to be like a lifeguard, teaching me how to swim and dive deep, keeping me from drowning. But the therapist said it was his job to ask me the questions so I can figure out for myself where and when I needed to dive. “Fuck that shit!” I exclaimed, “I can barely swim!”

My marriage pool continued to fill with stagnate water and disloyal semen, eventually, jamming its filter. Soon I stopped thinking of my therapist as my lifeguard and considered him nothing more than a pool guy who skims and vacuums the pool, stabilizing it with chemicals until the water becomes crystal clear. But my pool remained cloudy and unswimmable, so I fired the pool guy. And then a year after my husband’s betrayal, I threw myself a life preserver and filed for divorce, draining my own damn pool.

Showtime!

The decor in my psychiatrist’s waiting room isn’t retro. It’s just old. And the green shag carpet always makes me sneeze. The worst part is I can’t see his office door from my seat on the stained floral-print couch. Every couple of minutes I wander over to the hallway to make sure Dr. Kildare isn’t waiting for me. 

I clutch the bright blue pill in my hand, Geodon 40 mg. I used to take the lower dose pill, half blue and half white. I must’ve said something wrong at my last appointment—’cause this was what came out of the new bottle. I usually take it with breakfast, but I don’t like when my meds get changed without anyone telling me. So, here I am walking around with it, like it’s a precious gem or something.

 Dr. Kildare greets me from the hallway, “John, good to see you. Thanks for being patient while I finished my calls. Come on back to one of my rooms and tell me what brings you in early.” 

I follow him back into his office. His shoes are terrible: white, clunky and sticking out below his pleated dockers. The soles are worn out at funny angles and just looking at ‘em makes my knees hurt.

 I like the brown leather couch in his office better than the floral print one in the waiting room. At least someone made a pretense of cleaning this one.

“How have you been?” Dr. Kildare asks.

“Okay. Surviving.”

“What’s in your hand?”

“The blue one.”

“Are you going to take it?”

“Yeah—but can I tell you a story first?”

Dr. Kildare repositions in his chair. He sets his pen down on his yellow notepad, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a compliment. He nods for me to continue. I feel patronized and want to clamp shut, to curl back down inside myself. But I don’t get a lot of chances to talk to other people.

“It starts on Friday, when I went to the movies with my wife. After the show, I was using the urinal when this massive guy stands next to me, which was strange ’cause there were a lot of other options. I was doing my best to keep my eyes forward and ignore that this guy is looking over at me, but then he sneezes. It was loud and wet. The germy droplets tinkled down onto my pecker. Which is a weird sensation, if you’ve never had it happen before.”

I look up at Dr. Kildare. He’s not smiling, but he’s no longer staring at the blue pill hidden in my hand. I knew this was a good story.

“Doc, I know we’ve been working on me standing up for myself more in the moment, but I ain’t ashamed to admit that I didn’t say a thing. The guy was twice my size and I didn’t have any one-liners prepared for that particular situation. I just waited for him to zip up and leave. When I went to wash my hands, I wondered if I should wash off down there too, but there were kids in the bathroom. So, it didn’t seem like a good idea.

“I should’ve done something different though, ’cause by the time I got home, my dick was sick. It kept sneezing and coughing away, which when you’re wearing pants, feels as muffled as it sounds.”

Dr. Kildare looks like he wants to stop me. I know he doesn’t like it when I talk so much about dicks—I mean who does? But I gotta get this story out.

“I had to do something. So, I opened a can of chicken noodle soup and warmed it in the microwave. My wife caught me in the kitchen, which was real awkward. Me with my pants around my ankles, pressed against the counter, standing on my tippy toes with my man-parts dunked in the soup. 

“My wife’s a gem, though. She got over the shock quick, bundled me off to bed, and took care of me. Course that meant she got sick too, which wasn’t pretty. You’d think a vagina sneezing would be cute—but it’s not.”

I look up at Dr. Kildare with hopeful anticipation.

He frowns and adjusts his glasses before answering. “I’ve asked you to limit vulgarity in my office. Don’t make me do it again.” He looks at his watch and then back at me. “I have to see my next patient. Take your medication and I’ll check on you when I’m done.”

Dr. Kildare leaves the room with his notepad. 

I stand up to follow him, but the doorway ain’t there anymore. The walls are gone too. I’m on an empty stage with a single microphone. The amphitheater in front of me is filled with the rustle of people waiting to be entertained. The spotlight’s so bright, I can’t quite make any of them out.

I walk up to the microphone, still clutching my blue pill. When I cough, the hall fills with the amplified echoes of my discomfort. I’m nervous, but I’ve always dreamed of making it big.

“You all get charged a copay to get in tonight too?” I ask the quiet crowd. “If so, I hope your insurance is better than mine. Mine seems to think it stands for con-pay. ’cause I’m the only one getting conned into paying anything around here…”

Nothing. Not even a chuckle. I grab the microphone and pace around the stage, trying to think. I’m not gonna get many more chances.

“Did you hear the local university is offering a course where the students watch the Tour de France backwards…”

I pause and count to three. Giving ‘em time to mull it over.

“…It’s gonna be called Reverse Cycle-ology.”

A single laugh. Short and awkward, but still a laugh. It gives me hope and spurs me on.

“I gotta tell you all that while I’m thrilled to be here, I just can’t wait to get home and rip off my wife’s panties…”

I hook my thumb into the waist of my cotton boxers and pull at ‘em. Grimacing real big, so even the people in the nosebleeds can see.

“…’Cause the elastic in these things is killing me.”

That gets me a scattering of chuckles. 

“You all like the wife jokes and potty humor, huh? Well, who am I to argue?

“So, the other night the old lady and I went out for dinner. It was a real fancy place. Didn’t even have prices on the menu. Now I know what you’re all thinking. That’s not such a great idea for an agoraphobic with schizoaffective disorder. But that’s where you’re wrong. How else are we gonna get all these great stories? Can’t argue with that logic, can you? 

“Besides, I had my wife with me. She was wearing a real pretty blue dress with a low-cut white sweater over the top. She’s a real gem. Did I say that already?”

“John,” a deep voice rumbles, filling the room and interrupting my bit. “It’s time to take your medication.”

The spotlight moves to my hand. I uncurl my sweaty fingers. The blue pill glows in the bright light. 

I sigh.

“It’s been a pleasure entertaining ya’ll tonight…but it seems my time has come.”

I try to swallow the pill dry. It catches, a lump in the back of my throat. I gag and it comes spitting back out. I cough up a storm and before I know what’s happening, there’s a sharp jab in my right shoulder. 

I sink back down into the brown leather couch and sit there for I don’t know how long. The amphitheater walls constrict back into the tan-striped wallpaper of Dr. Kildare’s office. A foggy version of him pockets a syringe and small vial. He picks the blue pill off the rug with a tissue and drops it in the trash. His stern face pops into focus, a little too clear, and he offers me an off-white dixie cup. The water’s lukewarm and waxy.

“Feeling better?” Dr. Kildare asks.

“No.”

“Would you like me to call the hospital? A few days inpatient would allow you to safely stabilize on the new dose.”

“No.” 

I’ve been admitted to the psych unit before. It never helps, and I still haven’t paid off the three grand from last time.

“Will you at least promise to take your medication?”

I want to tell him that he’s the one causing all the problems by messing with my dosage. But I know better than to say that.

“Doc, I may be crazy—but I’m not stupid.” 

“Good. The intramuscular Geodon I gave you works quickly, but won’t last as long. Take a 40 mg pill as soon as you get home and I’ll add you on for a check-in Thursday morning.” 

The bus ride home is rough. The medication makes my blood heavy and my gut sick. There’s a kid with big green eyes standing on the seat in front of me. I ain’t got nothing for him. Not even a silly face to make him smile. 

Back in my studio apartment, I go straight to the bathroom and flush the blue pills down the toilet. Crawling into my single bed, I look up the half-life of Geodon. Then fall back onto my pillow. 

Only twenty-five hours ‘til I get back to Showtime!

The City of Angels (as told by Bukowski at the bar)

She was one of the good ones, but she was a whore. They all were. They all are. 

I was young and at the bar. I had worked a long shift at the factory and would often come in this place to wind down, drink a couple drafts, whatever I could afford after a day’s work. This gal comes in. She has this bright beautiful red hair. She’s in a dress, really showing her legs, you know. She walks in. The bar stops. The few other scumbags who are drinking while the sun is still out stop what they’re doing and look at her. The mugs on these guys, all of them: lonely, worn, some more so than mine, some less.

So she comes in and walks past me, and I smell her perfume, and I look at her. And she looks away, scared. I’m not a looker by any means, so I’m used to that look. There are empty seats all around me, but she takes a stool several spots down, I guess not wanting to be too close to this monster. She orders a drink, something red, something classy, you know those drinks sophisticated broads drink. I had four, maybe five dollars on me, so I offer to buy. 

I tell the barkeep, ‘Hey Jimmy, I got it.’ 

The leggy vixen looks at me, and man, she’s a looker, with that fiery red hair and the brightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen, a total gem. Then she looks away and insists to Jimmy that she can pay her own way. 

I say, “Look. I offered to buy your drink. Let me buy your drink.” 

And she says, “Oh, thank you, but you really don’t have to.” 

And she plays with her hair some and looks off uncomfortably, so I insist. I’ve always been persistent when I want something. Why start if you’re not going to finish? 

She tells me “Thank you” and gives me a shy half-smile. 

I had only had a couple, so I was still pretty good with my words. I said to her, “Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to allow someone to be kind.” 

She takes a drink and looks straight at me with those eyes. I have that sense. I know that I just broke through to her, and now it’s only a matter of time for ugly-old-me to wrap those gorgeous legs around me. I ask her, “Where you from?” 

She asks me, “Why do you ask that? I can’t be from here?” 

And I say, “No. You can’t.” Again, I had only had a couple, so I was careful and aware and chose every word I said to her with pure precision. 

She tells me, “I’m from Atlanta.” 

“Ol’ Hot-lanta,” I say which makes her laugh a little. “I’ve done my fair share in Hot-lanta.” Really, I had never been to Hot-lanta. 

The conversation seemed to be there, but there was no movement. She was still way out of reach, several seats away. My beer was running low, and I was out of money, so time was ticking. I said, “Why don’t you come down here, and I’ll allow you to kindly buy me a beer like the kind gentleman I am?” That was it, my final attempt to try and close the deal. 

She sits there for a moment before standing up, picking her purse up off the bar, and walking in my direction. Imagine this bright red fireball with gams out of this world walking toward you. She sets her purse right down from me, orders two drafts from Jimmy, and slides onto the stool next to me. Jimmy brings over the drinks, and I cheers to her and we clink our glasses, and now I know she is mine. My face will be knee deep in that fiery crotch before too much longer. 

We carry on and laugh for a while about something, I don’t remember, and then she calls Jimmy to bring over two shots of whiskey. But she calls it bourbon like the lady she is. I can tell she’s buzzed because her cheeks are starting to match her hair. We take the shots. I look down at those fantastic legs, her dress riding higher than before, showing her magnificent thighs. 

We finish our beers, and I ask her, “So Hot-lanta, where you going?” My words are still there but beginning to lose ground. 

“The hotel I guess,” she tells me and then asks, “You want to walk me?” 

And with that, there’s no turning back for her, now. 

I say, “Yeah, I guess I can walk you. Wouldn’t want you to get lost in this City of Angels.”

We get back to the hotel she’s staying in which is three or four blocks up from the bar. It’s one of those really nice hotels, clean, smelling good. I’m dirty from a long day at the factory and half-drunk so I feel a little out of place in such a classy joint, but that’s okay. We get onto the elevator. The button is pressed. The doors slide together. The elevator begins to ascend, dinging with every floor we pass. I look over at her, and she smiles at me and then looks down, and I’m hoping she hasn’t sobered up enough to realize her situation. We don’t say anything, and I can’t wait to see where those racehorse legs lead to.

The elevator dings one last time, and we get off. She walks in front of me down the hall, swaying, her behind a beautiful piece of art. I’m no looker, you know, so I don’t often get a behind like that. So I’m excited, and I’m beginning to bulge, and I can’t wait to fuck her. I follow that behind into her room. The door closes behind us and she immediately attacks, kissing all over my mouth, aggressively. I rip the dress from her, and she unbuttons my belt, and we get at it. I mean, we really get at it. I worked that gal. I was proud of the job I was doing on her. I’ve got her bent over, over the bed, pushing the mattress halfway off the frame and onto the floor, and I’m slamming her as hard as I can, and she’s loving it and moaning. And then she gets quiet, and I say, “What’s the matter?” 

The next thing I know, she tenses up and constricts around my purple monster, and I keep going, and I’m about to blow. Then, she convulses, her insides tightening even more, and she hurls onto the bed, and I lose my load inside of her as I watch this chunky orange liquid spew from her mouth, covering the bed sheets. I’ve always hated the smell of vomit. Still inside of her, I gag and hurl all over her back. And then more comes. My vomit isn’t nearly as chunky as hers as it’s possible I hadn’t eaten in days. I’m just standing there, now, my cowardly cock between my legs, and she throws up again, that poor gal. 

I guess I fall asleep there, because I wake up the next morning with the sun coming beaming through the blinds of this vomit-flooded hotel room that now stinks like absolute death. She’s awake and dressed and looking like she did when I first saw her. 

“I’ve got to go to a meeting,” she says, “and then I have a flight to catch.” 

She’s looking into the mirror putting in one earring at a time behind that hellish red hair of hers. I’ve never been one to overstay my welcome, so I get up and find my pants and slide them on and then look for my shoes only finding one. I put it on. I pick up my shirt from the floor—there’re some orange vomit stains splattered on it—and place it over my head. I think I put it on backwards, I don’t know. Looking at her, I can’t believe such a beautiful creature graced me with her womanhood. I’m thinking as she looks at me that she is probably thinking that she can’t believe she allowed such a repulsive being to enter her, but oh well. People make mistakes. We all make mistakes. 

She walks me to the door, I’m hobbling in one shoe, off-balance. We walk down the hall, her beautiful behind swaying in front of me. We don’t say anything. We get onto the elevator. She presses the button, and the doors close. The elevator dings with every floor we pass, breaking up the silence. Then it dings one last time, symbolizing the finality of our fragile encounter, and the doors open. We step out and walk toward the entrance. The sun is bright and getting brighter as we approach. We walk outside and she hooks a right, but I need to go left, so I do. I turn back to see her beautiful behind swaying and those thoroughbred calves of hers. I want to call out to her, and it’s then I realize I never got the ol’ gal’s name. 

I stand there watching her, the sun really coming down, her swaying behind getting smaller and smaller before finally disappearing, lost forever in this City of Angels. 

***

Originally published in “Notes for a Dirty Old Birthday – Buk100” from Newington Blue Press