Higher and Higher

It started with stealing a pen from a bank. Banks helped destroy the country, hoarding honest people’s wealth, stealing their souls. Was anything wrong with stealing from them? No, ma’am. No, sir. The lady was on her computer, looking ditzy when I committed the theft. 

She didn’t notice because she was stupid. I wouldn’t have stolen the pen, but they had none on the customer’s side of the counter. 

Like I said, she didn’t notice. 

She glanced up. “Do you need a pen?” 

Smirking, I said, “I have one.” 

Then I signed the back of my check and handed it to the idiot. She cashed it, all 600 dollars. I lied “Thank you” and whistled on my way out the double doors. The street smelled of sour sewage and spilled liquor bottles. People milled everywhere. Nobody cared for the people they passed. I didn’t, either. That never worked. 

People didn’t matter. I walked through the human obstacle course. The sidewalk was cracked more than anyone’s back. The man in front of me dropped his wallet. I picked it up and walked up the hill to the Highland Sheriff’s Office. The blue boys and girls were busy ushering two guys into jail cells. One was a big boy, the other thin like wire. 

“What did they do?” I asked Sheriff Muller on the way to my desk.  

He was leaning back with a straw in his mouth, boots on his desk, like a wannabe cowboy.  “Stole someone’s wallet.” 

I watched one of the deputy’s push the boys into the dark corridor, where they disappeared. 

“The world’s gone to hell,” I said, taking my seat. 

The Sheriff nodded. “You can say that again, Deputy.” 

I went into the locker room, stole two wallets, then erased the cam footage when Sheriff Muller was on his doughnut-dipped-in-coffee break.

Stealing was empowering and financially beneficial. 

When the sun died, I went to the liquor store in uniform and bought a pint of rum and a bottle of cranberry juice. The employee was a moronic and morose man who had to recount my money three times. 

I sat in my living room, pondering reality. Yes, real reality. We came from nature red in tooth and claw. We built civilization to hide from that Reality. We were animals with canine teeth made for chewing and thrashing meat. We grew like fungus from primordial soup. Now we’re over-conditioned to our authentic selves. Our instincts got confused. Civilization wrapped us in a spiderweb of mental illness. 

After a few drinks, I finally accepted everyone was living inside a backward asylum. 

***

I woke up early and took my white civilian car to meet the street worker Lollypop, on Nile Avenue. She was my first hooker, which I admitted to her. She sucked me off in my car behind a gas station. 

It was liberating…until her tooth scraped me. I groaned and slapped her. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. I smirked, laughed, hit her between the eyes. She slopped over, unconscious. I reached over, opened the passenger’s car, and kicked her out. Her body fell weightlessly. 

What an incredible liberation. 

I arrived at the Sheriff’s Office. Nobody but Deputy Cyndi Mills was in our main office. Work was slow. 

I surfed the web for news articles on people beaten in parking lots. We’d probably never receive a report about Lollypop. She wouldn’t go to the police. 

She did have a pistol-whipping, crack-fueled pimp. But I didn’t give a fuck. 

***

A couple of weeks passed with me committing petty crimes, just playing. The air was heavy. I started to get morning headaches. I seemed to lose some altitude. But then grand larceny happened. 

Mr. Jenkins was an old grouch with a dingy, rickety Ford running on moonshine as white as his beard. I didn’t like him. And he wasn’t any saint, anyway. Mr. Jenkins was a shiner and a pill pusher. One night while he dreamed up jugs, I took his truck to the junkyard, where my cruiser waited. I removed the jerrycan from my car, splashed it onto and into his annoying truck, after finding a big bag of Oxycodone, a revolver, a jug of shine, and four thousand dollars. I lit a match. The flame was the sun, Apollo burning with the other gods. It smashed into the truck, bloomed an inferno. Grinning, I spread my arms to a night as dark as devil boots. And I’ll be goddamned if Mr. Jenkins didn’t jump up from the truck bed, all aflame, shrieking sins, arms windmilling. I waved at his charcoal-fire face, hurried into my car, and sped off watching the fireworks in my rearview mirror. 

***

The next day at the Office I browsed my files, finding a reputable drug dealer and selling Oxycodone to him. I’d always wondered how dealing felt. It was empowering like theft but even more thrilling. Drug dealing was entrepreneurial.

I kept a few pills. They were fun. Most nights comprised shots of whiskey and rum, sometimes chased by cranberries and weed. Twice a week I did snow from a gal in Philly. 

I learned to appreciate the art of getting fucked up. The world was mundane and muddy. The control freaks wanted us to live in a sandbox consciousness, no expansion. That way we wouldn’t know we were living a lie, a socially constructed matrix.  

***

I was off on Saturday and went to the local bar. There was a guy who called my favorite movie—Space without Safety—“a piece of trash.” I overhead him telling his friend. 

Looking over, laughing, I said, “You sure don’t know your movies.” 

He said, “Eat shit and die, dumbfuck.”

“Or else?”

He went to pull out his switchblade no longer in his back pocket. I’d stolen it when passing behind him. My gun wasn’t on me but there was a fifth of booze beside me. I smashed it into his head. 

He was hospitalized where doctors spent two days picking glass out of his face. 

Goddamn, I felt good. 

***

I worked late the next night, driving through one of the neighborhoods considered suspicious. A guy wearing a raincoat stood yapping in a payphone. I stopped my car, put on my mask, and approached. The man looked wide-eyed when my baton busted the glass. He dropped the phone, raced into an alley. I sped up to the opposite side, parked, and caught him at the edge of the alley. My baton broke his hand and nose and one rib.

It was the first time I’d seen someone piss themselves from a beating. 

Once in my cruiser, I licked blood from my baton. 

***

The corded phone rang. 

“Sheriff’s Office,” I answered. 

A weak male voice said, “I’d like to report an assault. Someone attacked me in an alleyway last night. I’m in the hospital with a broken hand, nose, and rib.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir. Let me get your name and info as well as a physical description of your attacker, and I’ll personally see that the person brought to justice.” 

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” He coughed and then provided info. I doodled weapons on my notepad while he described a shadowy figure hitting him “with a stick” last night. I held in my laugh. 

***

There was plenty of nice writings on rape. I liked rape fantasy. Sometimes I watched it, even hentai. Most people hid their true thoughts and motives. Most wanted to either rape someone or be raped themselves. Everyone had a dark kink whispered on some night. But a lot only whispered to themselves and still called the voice a liar. 

Coworkers and I had discussed prison rape and why it was done. Of course, there were gay and bi inmates and those “gay for the stay.” But there were others who did the act merely for sake of power and domination. 

For women, rape could destroy the soul. They called this “spirit-death.” 

I debated whether to rape a male or a female. 

And I realized there were too many crimes and not enough time. Land of the Free. Ha. I’d do what I could, what they never would. 

I disguised myself as a homeless man living under a bridge. Instead of a mask, I wore a tattered shirt, mildewy pants, a fake white mustache, and a stringy gray wig. 

Cotton gloves covered my hands. 

Only a ribbon of moonlight shined under the bridge. I waited in the trash on the opposite side. A few people passed, apparently not seeing me. A minute later, a love dove couple passed. The woman glanced at me, then swiftly shifted her head away. An hour ticked by. The moonlight still caressed a thin walking path. 

It was midnight when the guy approached me. “Get lost, bum.” He looked like a shadow, but I rose and made him follow me into the light. He was 20-something, baby faced, petite. 

He pulled out a knife in a fighting stance too stiff. His hands were small. 

I laughed. He looked surprised. Maybe because my laugh was younger than my masquerade. He stepped forward. I angled backward. He lunged. I clenched the blade in my hand, then twisted his wrist while kneeing his crotch. I dragged him behind a purple bush. 

“Help!”  

I slapped him hard and put the blade to his throat. “Shut up or I’ll kill you.” I don’t know if I meant that then, but it was possible. I pulled his pants down. He started to get up. I punched him a few times. “Do that again and I’ll murder you. You’re gonna be a proper bitch after tonight.” 

I taped his mouth, lifted his legs onto my shoulders, spat on his hole, and entered. He was a virgin, which was obvious from the tightness and muffled screams. After a minute he opened a little. I pounded him for an hour and came. Then I jacked his cock while still inside, until he came. 

“You never forget your first time,” I said. 

He was motionless, spiritually dead. I had taken his ego and combined it with mine.  

To dispose of the evidence, I dropped his semiconscious body outside an underground brothel.

I was a shadowy bird rising on high, propelled by euphoric empowerment. I looked down and saw cattle nearing the cliff edge. 

***

Rape was so satisfying I didn’t even want sex for another week. But when I did, I craved literal BDSM. 

Murder or Torture, which was the ultimate moral crime? I asked myself for hours but got no answer. The following day I walked the short path behind the Office, meditating for an answer. I decided murder was the ultimate crime. 

The blinking neon signs and cars made the street look like a broken strobe light. Turning off my bodycam, I cruised to the fridges of the city. My pistol, its safety off, lay in the passenger’s seat. Adrenaline hammered my heart. 

Murder was necessary to prevent overpopulation. Murder inspired countless artists. Murder had its own genres in entertainment. It showed us what could happen. It helped us appreciate the days we weren’t murdered. 

Murder was a leisure from antiquity, when more birds flew. 

I’d held guns to several people during arrests. All cops think about pulling the trigger too fast if they’re on the force too long. I almost shot a few suspects, almost. 

The jackass was on the side of the road, thumbing vehicles. After holstering the gun, I stopped my cruiser beside him. “Where you heading?”

He was middle-aged ruggedness. “Tarcon Terminal.”

“Hop in.”

The dumbass did. 

I took a hard left turn. 

His face broke out in puzzles. “Oh…it’s the other way.”

Flashing a genuine smile, I said, “I know a shortcut.” 

He nodded because he was naive. 

We stopped where the land dried into a desert. Quickly I pointed the barrel at his forehead. He raised his hands. I ushered him behind a rock, where I shot him dead after he begged for his life.

Performing murder was less arousing but more euphoric than rape. It was surreal, indescribable, holy. 

I was the crimson bird flying up to heaven while cattle fell to hell. 

***

The Office received a call about a gunshot near the desert. Sheriff Muller answered. He and Deputy Frasher drove to the scene. I followed a few cars behind, already expecting the beautiful sight. There it was…the feds’ black vans. Sheriff Muller was arrested on the spot, beside the body in the black bag. Obviously, I hadn’t used my own gun. The prints linked to him. And whose baton do you think had been used in the alley? The front of a stainless steel lighter found in Mr. Jenkins’s burned truck read, Muller. 

The prints, the lighter, the baton, and the gun belonged to Sheriff Muller. That was a fact. 

He would be going away for a long, long time. But I was his replacement. The Office threw a party for my first day as the boss. They were confident I’d boost morale and keep the streets safer than Muller had. I dealt with the increased workload while planning to soar even higher. 

I was starting to think certain forms of torture were superior to murder. 

I spent four months plotting my next move. I had become a well-respected Sheriff, receiving two Outstanding Citizen awards from the community. Before being deputized, I had been a city cop walking the same beat day after day. Usually, three times a month I’d make an arrest, mostly for domestic violence or theft or harassment. Eventually I accepted we weren’t stopping “crime” as much as we were stopping authentic human behavior, the real gems and grits before the over-conditioning…before the indoctrination, the pieces that fell through the filter. Cops were pillars for the filter, which hid the ultimate Truth: being good didn’t do you any good. I learned this the hard way, in my old days (call it past life) of sainthood. 

I kept hiding my own nature even after accepting that criminal activity was the reality of humanity, a beauty of the cosmos. I just didn’t care to stop crime anymore. 

***

This evening, I kidnapped a newlywed couple. I was doing them a favor, right? Marriage was an oppressive institution, an enslavement. Most ended in divorce, the lucky ones. But the scars never healed, only killed. At least they’d die before learning their love wasn’t real. 

Their dangling bodies shivered and hung nakedly from chains welded to the ceiling. The room had walls painted frosty blue with streaks of orange. They screamed, slobbering under gags. 

I pointed the liquid nitrogen freeze gun at the dear lady. The couple writhed like electrocuted worms. They squirted piss. I’d never seen so much terror. I pulled the trigger. The cryogun made a pressurized hiss, turning her leg into an ice block. Still, she was conscious, her red screaming face contrasting the frost nicely. I strolled to the rolling cart and fetched my chisel, then went to work on her leg. She shrieked, vomited, mumbled, wheezed at each hit. Frosty leggy glass piled onto the concrete. Then I froze her other leg—whoosh—and smashed it with a sledgehammer. It fell off as two ice blocks crusted yellow and red. I removed her gag. Her dolls eyes blinked at me, and she wheezed, “Kill…me…please.” 

Suddenly I had my answer: torture was the ultimate crime. 

I started the same act on her husband. He passed out before his first leg could be chiseled away. When I turned to her, she was lifeless. I left and locked the door to save him for later. 

***

But I know I can go even higher. There’s world destruction. I’m climbing fast. I’m looking around. Who’s going to stop me? I’ll burn the world to ash and bust through the ozone. 

Takin’ Care

“I wouldn’t treat you like that, sweetheart,” Paul began, as they arrived by the dumpster behind the bar. The disheveled and emaciated camouflage clad middle-aged woman who picks cigarette butts from the parking lot had just offered Paul what she was sure he wanted, what all the day-drunk baby boomers wanted from her mouth, which might have been pretty, before the hydros and dry rot took her teeth.

“Naw darlin’, I respect ya too much for that,” he went on, “besides, them other fellas are sick. They’re just takin’ advantage of ya.” After saying this he shook his head. “That’s not me. I’m here to take care of ya.”

Paul stood looking expectant and sly, with a plastic bag dangling from his hand, and the woman began to wonder what he was about to propose. Most of these old guys don’t even get hard, and she was sure he was no exception. Usually, they just stand there, hands on hips, playing their part, and after a minute or two, tap the top of her head, hand her a twenty, and return to the bar, where they laughingly tell their buddies about ejaculating into her eyes and hair. Surely, she thought, Paul wasn’t going to proposition her for sex.

“Like I said, I’m here to take care of ya, darlin’,” Paul explained, as he handed her the bag. “I’m givin’ ya a meal, a little somethin’ to eat, and I’m still gonna pay ya.”

The woman reached into the bag and withdrew two sleeves of Munchies BBQ peanuts and a bottle of castor oil. “See?” he asked, with rhetorical reassurance, “It’s nothin’ sexual. You get that there in ya, and in twenty minutes or so, I’ll come back here—right here—so’s I can watch ya do your business. That’s it.” She decided that this was the strangest proposition she had heard, but not the worst. 

Paul stared at her with intense fixation as she painfully tried to gnaw the spicy bar nuts with the remnants of her rotted molars. Each time that she coughed, trying to swallow whole and half-whole peanuts, Paul would interject, applying an exaggerated soothing tone to his gravelly voice, “Aw, that’s alright, darlin’. Don’t choke now, you just swallow some of that there oil back. That’ll help.” As she struggled gulping back the liquid, he gently placed his fingers against the base of the downward tipped bottle, continuing his baby-talk, “That’s right, that’s right. Drink it up, now. Good girl.”

After the peanuts and oil were gone, Paul issued a stark warning, “Now, darlin’. I’m goin’ in there to finish my drink; in about twenty minutes time, I’ll be back out here for ya. Don’t matter how much ya gotta go, if I come back and you’ve already done your business, you’re gonna owe me twenty-five dollars for that there oil an’ them peanuts.” She noticed that, as he said this, his hand was clenched in a fist, which was pulsating with jolts of tension that momentarily whitened his hairy knuckles. “Trust me darlin’, you don’t wanna cross me. Understand?” 

She was already experiencing stomach cramps and intense nausea but, sensing that Paul was the strangling type, she nodded in agreement. “That’s a good girl,” he replied, “Now, don’t you move, and I’ll meet ya right here.”

Paul returned to the bar, endured ribs from fellow alcoholics who had their own theories about what he was doing by the blue dumpster, and then anxiously exited for his appointment. The woman was on her fours in the parking lot, which was dotted with old chewing gum, and sharp with leftover traction sand from the winter. She was swaying back-and-forth and visibly shaking as she shuddered out cyclic breaths while sweat droplets dripped from her nose. Paul bent and looked at the rear of her grungy denims. “Good girl! Good girl!” he said, pulling a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket. “Now, show me!” 

The woman ripped down her pants, and before she could settle into a squat, a mixture of sludgy and pure liquid feces shot from behind her and continued spurting down in a high-velocity stream. Paul’s eyes were brimming with delight as he stared at the mess behind her. He paid no attention as she yanked the bill from his hand, and scampered off, while pulling up her jeans, which were wet and stained from the ordeal. 

Paul dropped to the ground and lowered his mustached face an inch above of a prominent glob of feces, featuring a single intact peanut, that was sitting like an island in a small sea of diarrhea. He closed his eyes and inhaled passionately, breathing in the deliciously sultry scent, and feeling its warmth radiating onto his face. He dipped his finger into the pile and began tasting the oily, bitter-salted paste, before scrubbing it around his mouth with the intimacy of someone privately freeing peanut butter from their teeth. As he savoured the flavour, and the coating on his gums, he closed and eyes and moaned with deep satisfaction.

When he returned to the bar, bellows of laughter met him from the table of drunk sixty-somethings who sat waiting. “We saw you goin’ back behind the dumpster, Paul! We know what you were doin’!” 

Paul looked annoyed and retorted, “I’m not like you fellas, I gave the poor little thing a few bucks spendin’ money and a bite to eat.”

After a renewed round of laughter, another man asked, “Just tell us this, did she blow it as good as we told ya?”

Paul scowled, shook his head in disgust, and responded, “Yous guys are fuckin’ sick.”

 Back To Back Belly To Belly

Jordan woke up shortly after midnight but didn’t know why.  He turned over to check with his wife Janet, but she wasn’t there.  He then remembered she had gone on a tour to sell her book “What You Don’t Know”.  Next, he noticed there was a bright light next to the wall.  The amorphous light shape shifted slowly to a naked woman of prodigious dimensions as she approached his bed.  His upper brain shut down, but his lower brain became vigorously engaged.  The now totally realized woman slipped between the covers and embraced and kissed him.  His lower brain made him respond by entering the unknown being.  They rolled around mindlessly making low grunts and groans for a full half hour.  When they were finally spent, his upper brain began to function again and he asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Penelope.  I mistook you for Jonathan.”

“The Penelope that died here around fifty years ago?”

“Yes, but the dead are bad at judging time.  It seems like it was just a few days ago.  I keep searching for my husband Jonathan.  We were newly married when I got sick.”

Jordan was somehow able to accept what she said despite how outrageous it was.  “I’m sorry but there is a good chance he is dead too.”

Penelope pulled back the covers and was pleased with Jordan’s lower half.  “I know this sounds crazy, but you’re a good substitute.  Jonathan and I had sex three or four times a day.”

Jordan took the hint, and they kept at it several times until they were totally spent.  Their variations kept it interesting.  Jordan had naïvely believed that people fifty years ago didn’t go at it so many different ways.

Jordan, who had never had extramarital sex before, surprised himself by saying “Janet will be gone for another four days.”

Penelope smiled.  Jordan, who usually didn’t go to bed before 11PM, started going to bed at 9PM.  Penelope led them though positions that Jordan had only heard of whispered in his adolescence.  All of their orifices and appendages were engaged.

Jordan expected his life to go back to normal when Janet got home.  After a couple of days, the guilt got to him.  That night in bed he told Janet “You know this house is supposed to be haunted?  Believe or not I’ve been having sex with the ghost, and I won’t recover for a couple of days.”

Janet shocked him by replying “Penelope?”

Jordan’s jaw dropped.

Janet told him “I’ve got my own confession.  She swings both ways, but I suspect she prefers men.  We’ve entertained ourselves while you were out of town.  Can’t say I blame you.  She’s a firecracker.”

While Jordan was recovering his wits, Penelope appeared.  “Do you mind if I join you?  I’d been hoping the time would come to see if three is company.”

Jordan’s strength miraculously recovered.  After an hour of switching partners Jordan and Janet were ready to call it a night and Penelope was growing dim as she did when she was done for the night.

Before they were asleep or disappeared, they heard a male voice inquire of them “I’m Jonathan.  How long have I been gone?”

A mist coalesced to show a sturdily built naked man appearing to be about forty years old.  Penelope and Janet smiled. Jordan was stunned.  The threesome became a foursome, and equity was achieved to the satisfaction of all participants.

Drug Interlude

Surrounded. Devastated. Depraved. Shunned. Something smelling rank, then tossed. Something stomped, soaked with lighter fluid, set aflame. The ashes rose up and formed smoke rings. Recurrent nightmares. I took a step forward, took a step back, like a crab dosed with estrogen, sideways, shuffling, scuffling, shambling, scrabbling. My nervous hands at my sides, jerking, pointing jittery in directions acute, obtuse, antenna, proboscis, bear traps set, suddenly snapped shut. I was alive but marginally. I was awake but subversively. I was. I wasn’t. Ivan! Huh? What the hell is wrong with you? Hands were waving before my eyes. It seemed natural to rear back as if confronted with charging lions, flamethrowers, military airstrikes. Eye! Snap out of it! I was cornered. Herded into the men’s. Snuffling sounds coming from the stalls. Noses packed and wiped. Covert air of insouciance. Yeah, nobody’s fucking high around here. Just business as usual, the basic bar crowd, tavern sleaze, dog-pound muff-hunt. I swear, I didn’t do anything, just minding my own damn business. My hands shaking, pneumatic tools on high vibe. Chuckles, there in front of me. Ya dropped your fucking glasses again, ya psycho. He placed them on my head, set the bridge on my beaky nose. You got a damn hook for a nose, Chuckles surveilled. It’s not growing fast enough, I sputtered, what I need is to lie more. Ivan, you are drunk; but I have just what you need, my son. Oh, shit. When Chuckles called me son I was surely deep in the doo-doo. But tastefully. He hustled me into a freshly vacated stall. With practiced élan he whipped out a crisp bindle and popped it open to reveal the minty crystal powder inside. Well fuck a ding-dong duck, I stammered. The straw was dangling before my sudden sharpish telemetry. I honored Chuckles’ lavish gesture by hoovering a generous portion, and transformed into a man reborn. Equipped with cape, tights, and a sudden ability to fuck off and die.

He Changes His Mind

She’s standing at death’s door. Well, not yet – but soon. Of this, he was quite certain.

Well, after all, it is inevitable. All of us eventually end up at that door. Who knows when one’s number comes up? Her number’s up. So unexpected. For her.

So he cleared his mind of all the usual clutter of data and text and … stuff. A clear mind, a stage on which all the possibilities of his future could play out. He set about making a mental reckoning: plusses and minusses, debits and credits, smiley faces and storm clouds.

Of course, before seeing to all of the other practical matters, there would be the grief. Of course. And the portrayal of his grief for the benefit of the living was certainly going to be a chore, but there was no dodging it. He could probably figure that the worst of the dutiful pantomime would be over in five days, maybe two weeks tops. Well, that’s death for you. Get it over with. 

Come on, now, you must truly and deeply appreciate how losing her will darken your life, before you go over and start to add up all the items in the other column. The loneliness; you must figure that in.

She is a kind and loving person who is always by his side. She has her talents, her flair, her imagination. She has certainly borne her side of the financial burdens in their marriage. All of these he would miss. Oh, he would never forget her; that was his vow. She was an all-around good human being.

But when she was no more, what then? Well, here is how the performance on his stage proceeded:

It means I will be alone, a free agent, on my schedule, with no one to veto my fishing trips or make plans on my behalf. He would go to church and the doctor and the dentist, and the gym when he decided to do so. And the barber and the optometrist ….

My retirement fund will go twice as far when I discontinue all her insurance payments and subscriptions. Why, the savings in hair and nail appointments each month alone! Also, her membership to the gym, where she and her crowd met to stand around in yoga pants and crop tops and chatter. He would cancel about five streaming services he wouldn’t watch if someone held a gun to his head. Let’s say that’s five services at approximately $15 a month per, plus that’s probably five movies a month at each – anywhere from $4 – $6 each. We’re looking at $200 or more a month right there. That halfway pays for a housecleaner every two weeks. They also splurge $200 a month on wine (which he hates and doesn’t drink); that right there is the other half of the maid service bill. Yeah, that would work out nice and tidy.

(Except he was going to have to clean the house by himself, top to bottom, one more time. And ‘clean’ the house he would.)

It means I will have lots of her effects to manage. Her brothers and their wives could have what they wanted of her clothing and jewelry, the rest to be donated. He would retain her laptop (wonder what he’ll find there?). He didn’t really need a second car or its expenses, so her Lexus SUV could be sold. Cancel her car insurance. He could think of three kitchen appliances and a couple of pieces of furniture that he had always found fussy and extraneous. He’d probably post them on the marketplace website and rake in a couple of thou on the sales.

It means I will have more space. Lots more space. Closets – plural! And her hobby room. Half the garage full of her collection of dolls (while his pickup sat out in the elements year ‘round). The dolls – there’s another couple thou if he could manage the online sales. His widower’s budget was looking even healthier.

It means I can upgrade the standard of living around here with potentially a bonus bank. If his numbers are correct – who knows – but the positive balance on the ledger is in black and white. He really doesn’t need anything he doesn’t already have. That’s not humblebrag, that’s just him living in the world that suits him. He loves clean sheets, good food, warm clothes (and cottons in summer’s heat). The world that suits him has southern facing windows and perfectly balanced heat/cool year round. His world, his settings, no compromise.

It means I am on my own for nutrition. He wouldn’t starve; of course not. He could enjoy two or three meals out each week. Keep a supply of cereal, bread, fresh eggs, bacon, sliced meats and cheese. I will have sole responsibility for my food choices.

It means I won’t be seeing her side of the family much anymore (yay). How would he finesse Thanksgiving and Christmas diplomatically? He entertained the fantasy of meeting someone who enjoys holiday cruises so that he would then be apologetically out at sea while her folks were having fun arguing about politics and letting their kids run wild. Something along those lines. This would not be a problem if her people didn’t live right here in the same town.

It means more time to read, more time for long walks to just think and to marvel at this place unto which I have delivered myself. Gone with her (dear girl) would be the nightly Jeopardy! competition, followed by some diversion for two: cribbage, Scrabble, double solitaire. So between the game show and the games, that’s almost the whole evening at least four nights a week. Yes, they were fun times, but now he would basically have an open calendar after 6 pm every weekday. Okay, so what does that suggest? Poker nights? Book clubs? Gym membership (hard no). He was determined that he would NOT waste three hours every night either curled up with his e-reader, or watching YouTube videos on the flat screen. 

It means I hide nothing from myself, and I reveal nothing to anyone. Other than perhaps a cruise companion once in a while, he would gladly not see anyone at all. Ever. Avoiding people is the most prudent plan for a happily-ever-after. To hell with poker night, book club and gym!

It means that – as I go through the most soul-wrenching moments of human experience – she will be in no position to help and guide and counsel me. She will be there of course, but not for his benefit, and certainly not for her own. How unfortunate.

It means I will need to become a different person. From now on, he must listen very closely to every word uttered around him. And he absolutely must weigh every word before he speaks. He must hold everyone he meets at arm’s length, must always think before answering even the most innocuous question. My freedom depends on living a mistake-free life as long as I can.

It means hard work and dedication from this moment forward if I am to live the life I envision. The life I am facilitating, the possibilities I am creating, the freedom I will win this very day.

It means that if I proceed with my plan, I will never sleep easily again. 

His heart nearly stopped. He hasn’t thought this through – no, no, not nearly well enough at all! She will be through that door in minutes – MINUTES!  – at which moment he must be ready to greet her. With a smile on his face – and the syringe behind his back. 

But now this. Doubt. Doubts plural. What ifs. 

It is said that a drowning man has his entire life pass before his eyes; now I can see every episode of Columbo in a flash. They never got one past him in, what was it? Ten seasons? They always get caught. I’m as good as caught. Life sentence if I’m lucky.

Her car door closing resounded from the driveway. Abort!

The kitchen door opened. Her eyes wide with bewildered surprise at the sight of him looming in the doorway, she beamed a sunny smile at him. 

With his left hand, he reached to relieve her of a shopping bag.

As she stepped through the door, he brought his right arm around her back.

Around her shoulder.

He pulled her close and held her tight.

And kissed her cheek playfully as his plot evaporated in a mist. Oh God, that was close!

What a lucky break for her. He hugged her so tightly that he couldn’t see the four-inch knife blade. Which she stuck with sufficient force between his ribs and into his chest.

As he collapsed to the hallway tile floor – stunned, gurgling, eyes wide with panic – she busied herself with the many small details of cleaning up the murder scene.

Robo Ghosts of Futurail, By Kandy Fontaine

You board the Futurail at 03:33, the hour when Thalassa exhales memory through its infrastructure like blood through cracked porcelain. The train isn’t real. It’s a memory artifact—residual code from a dissolved mainframe, still twitching in the city’s dead grid. It runs on recursion and sonar. No destination. No schedule. Just transmission.

You wear a coat cut from signal-dampening fiber, matte black, stitched with anti-surveillance thread. Your spine clicks—segment by segment—each vertebra a reel of extinct cinema. But it’s not prosthetic. It’s a centipede. Segmented. Semi-sentient. A graft from the Thalassa collapse, wired into your nervous system with salt-thread and carbon filament. It remembers things you never lived. Drowned cities. Erotic executions. The sound of lips parting before betrayal. It sings them in pulse-language—low-frequency, encrypted, erotic.

The train is dressed for spectacle. A carnival of mourning. The walls shimmer with confetti—circuitry masquerading as celebration. Circus-light filaments encoded in orgasmic pulse. Nanotech engineered to simulate grief, loop pleasure through trauma, dissolve the difference. You inhale it. It rewrites your breath. It tastes like climax and static.

Nyx follows. Fossil-machine cat. Tail flicking in Morse code. Recursive. Every blink births another Nyx. One in the pipes. One in the mirrors. One fossilized in the bathhouse tiles. She’s a glitch in your myth. A god in your machine.

You jack in.

Your ports open. Your breath becomes ink. Your skin begins to screen.

Then it begins to scream.

Not in sound. In sensation. An erotic broadcast of horrors stitched into your flesh. Each pore a mouth. Each scar a speaker. Barbara Steele’s scream pulses from your collarbone. Edwige Fenech’s stare burns beneath your ribs. Daniela Doria’s drowning face claws at your thighs. Your shoulder plays Phenomena in reverse. Your moans are dubbed. Your pores project. Your skin sings.

The centipede spine clicks in rhythm. Each segment pulses. The train responds. Its wetware hums. The mirrors bleed.

Then Mira Aoki-9 appears.

Lipstick lesbian robot ghost. Dissolved centuries ago in the ocean bed beneath Thalassa. Archived in sonar. Resurrected through obsession. You saw her once—in a bootleg reel called Throat Sprockets: Submerged Cut. A forbidden film. A fetish for the throat. For the voice. For the interface between breath and machine.

She steps from the mirror. Her heels click like reel changes. Her eyes flicker with reversed whale song. She’s wrapped in chrome-thread silk. Her voice tuned to a frequency that makes your spine twitch. You kiss. The mirrors shatter. The train moans.

She rewrites your circuitry with her tongue. She whispers speculative poems into your spine. Each one a memory cocktail. Each one a sacred infection. Her breath syncs with Nyx’s purr. Her fingers leave glyphs on your skin—ritual code, erotic syntax, a language only ghosts understand.

The train becomes the Surreal Beauty Café. A salon of erotic machines. A temple of Queer ritual. A cathedral of extinct desire. The walls bleed velvet. The floor blooms coral. The carnival spins. Nyx purrs beside the altar. Mira dances in glitch. You serve memory cocktails. You become the Archive.

Outside, Thalassa flickers. A loop of drowned architecture and haunted neon. Moon Camp Americana floats in orbit, broadcasting art porn and Teknopriest propaganda. The finishing school for delinquent daughters is empty. The mirrors cracked. The cameras still roll.

Inside the train, time fractures.

Nyx multiplies. Mira glitches. You sing.

Your voice is sonar. Your breath is ink. Your song infects the fossil circuit. The train moans. The ghosts scream. The mirrors bleed.

You see yourself reflected in a thousand timelines—glam detective, fossil priestess, drowned slut, archive incarnate. Each version flickers. Each version sings. Each version is stitched with horror heroines and haunted code.

Mira holds your hand. Nyx curls around your throat. The train pulses.

You are no longer a passenger. You are no longer human.

You are transmission.

You are ritual.

You are myth.

You are the erotic funeral.

And the carnival never ends.

Young and Alone

“Yo, white boy! The fuck you wearing?”

Sometimes I take a chance with strangers. I look them right in the eye and pretend I am feeling nothing. I tell them exactly how it is.

“Clothes.” My expression remains as bland and lifeless as one of those photo portraits from 1900.

The man’s friend laughs in the most genuine way imaginable. It almost makes me smile when he cuffs his buddy on the shoulder and mocks him. “Yeah, man!” He says, still laughing. “Something you don’t know nothing about: fashion!” He is so boisterous, so loud and full of amusement, that his exuberance cuts right through the silence of a city muted by snowfall.

“Shiiiit,” the first guy says, head down, defeated. Together, the two strangers stroll off, laughter fading with the passing blocks, audible outbursts swallowed by the weather. In front of me, the green walking man urges me to hurry on across the street. He lights up and counts down, as if a threat. Somewhere beneath all this salt and snow is a crosswalk. I cross the road, persuaded more by the golden arches looming with the promise of cheap, bad food and hot, bland coffee than the green man and his tick-tick-ticking away down to zero, to amber, and then red.

Far off, a car horn echoes. I hear a shout, then more laughter. I think of the two men who are now three blocks south of me. I look, and no one is near, so I allow myself to smile. The encounter has left me in a favorable mood.

To the credit of the gentleman that first inquired about my outfit, my style back then was rather outlandish, inviting scorn. From memory, I was wearing cut-off brown suit pants, roughly shorn somewhere between the ankle and knee. Shants, I had proudly called them—neither pants nor shorts, but somewhere in between. I wore variations of them from age 16 and would continue to do so until age 35. Nothing else. No exception. Whether the height of blazing summer or the dead of frozen winter, it was always the same. It was always shants.

My eggplant socks clashed beautifully with the golden-brown, hybrid legwear. My bruise-hued wing-tip shoes were so worn and damaged from salted, winter streets and general misuse that they were broken at the toes. I think I wore a white sweater that day; way too large, in the style of the early 90s. Loose collar, little zig-zag dashes of yellow, pink and blue arranged in random tallies across the breast. The ensemble was loud, but gorgeous. Gaudy, but fun. Not unlike those delightfully outspoken strangers who I could still manage to hear at the Sinclair a quarter mile down the road.

Snowflakes fell to inhabit my curls. They sat on my brow, big and glittery, a bejeweled tiara. Don’t even get me started on my hair—my jewfro was special, the size of a baby elephant. A woolly mammoth. Truly, the motherfucker was terrifically large. Despite the cold, I couldn’t possibly cover up my pride and joy with a stocking cap. I didn’t know it then, but those curls would fall lank in later years. Gravity would have the last laugh. It always does.

Anyone sensible was indoors, so I had St. Paul all to myself. This was before Uber Eats and streaming services, so people were being social, meeting each other, feeding and entertaining themselves without the aid of digital assistance. I was the only asshole out on my own, out in the cold on the streets. I guess I was desperate, at odds with my fuck-the-world stance. I couldn’t ignore that I was also lonely, that I wanted to connect. I’d make a big show of pushing away. But really, I was just reaching out.

As a whole, I looked the part: a real attention-seeking, sullen youth. Anti-social misfit meets spotlight-seeking spoiled brat. Suburb kid moves to the city. Dime a dozen, even if the outfit and hair separated me just a little bit.

Outside the Mickey-D’s, I saw sad faces from within, each one buried behind a flat burger or one of those dinky apple pies, gloomy expressions lost in steaming, polystyrene cups. At the time, the month before, someone had made millions after suing for burning their hand on spilled, hot coffee. As a result, all the cups came with a warning: CAUTION: CONTENTS VERY HOT. It’s coffee. It better be fucking hot.

Without a vehicle, sometimes I walked the drive-thru. This action received mixed reviews. Smiles and winks at the service window; warnings from some tight-lipped manager that it better be the last time; cordial honks from the car behind me in the queue; heckling slurs from drunks trying to feed themselves and get home before they acquire another DWI. One time, at a Taco Bell, I got a marriage proposal with my Crispy Chicken Burrito. On this particular occasion, however, the night had been as cold as a Dairy Queen Blizzard. With the elements as harsh as they had been, I elected to go inside.

The girl taking my order was enormous, but her face was perhaps the prettiest human visage I had ever seen outside of Hollywood. Her smile was impossibly white and seemed to come easy. She had  massive cheeks that shined like grease on a Big Mac patty. I read her name-tag: Patty. Our hands touched when she handed me my burger. I sort of fell in love.

I found a seat facing the menu and the staff. I took my scalding coffee and read the label. I traced a finger across the bold, capital letters, large and red. CAUTION: CONTENTS VERY HOT. I burned my lip on my first sip. I winced and spilled a dribble on my lap, gasped in pain. I had been warned. There will be no suing this golden empire. I guess I’ll have to make my millions by nefarious trade, or —Lord save me— by climbing the ladder. 

I watched the big girl, playing out fantasies in my mind that included dinky apple pies and straining for breath. I gazed at Patty, large and red. She saw me and smiled. She waved, her press-ons like sorceress talons the exact shade of her work shirt. It was impossible not to think of an awkward handjob.

I smiled back and drank my coffee, which still burned. I devoured the image of Patty with unblinking eyes, savaging away at low-grade beef with my molars. I wished for nothing more than to go home with this woman, to feel the weight of her love on top of me. Corrosive, my beverage burned my tongue, scourged my oesophagus down to my core.

Patty turned away from my leering, looked to the door when it opened with a gust of frigid air. No one was there. It was like a ghost had walked through the entrance, paused, and changed its mind. Through the open door, I heard laughter. It was far away, muted by innumerable snowflakes. I got up to go, waved goodbye to Patty’s epic backside. She was flipping burgers, miles always.

I hefted my mighty jewfro. I brushed burger shrapnel from my shants. I walked out into a city buried in snow, and, trudging along, searched for something, anything. I took a sip and frowned—without the slightest warning, my coffee had gone totally cold.

Petite Girl From France

Years ago when I lived and played in Tucson, Arizona, there was and I believe still is a free alternative newspaper called The Tucson Weekly. It is distributed every Wednesday to outlets across Pima County. It’s the source for local politics, culture, arts, music, food and anything else happening. I particularly like the Personal Ads on the last pages. It contains the typical Women looking for Men, Men looking for Women along with a section for Gay and lesbian folks. There’s a section dedicated to what some would consider bizarre or peculiar sexual practices. I noticed a post from a woman in the ‘Missed Connection’ section of the Personals.

‘Laundry Prince; I spotted you at Aristotle’s Wash n’ Dry last Saturday night. You left with your clothes in a green pillow case, wearing a Frank Zappa t-shirt. You drove away in a red MG convertible. Think you’re sexy and mysterious. Let’s talk Dirty Laundry, Petite Lady 23 from France.’

At first I was upset by being identified as a pathetic nobody, someone without a life doing laundry on a Saturday night. However, ultimately I was flattered by her description. It was now the following Wednesday and I was still wearing the same Zappa shirt with most likely the same jeans and underwear from that night. I took a low maintenance approach to my appearance in the first year after my divorce. The red MG she referred to was loaned to me by Marcia, a Jewish Goddess and friend with benefits. She was back in New Jersey visiting with her parents as well as finalizing her divorce.

I was intrigued by the post and responded to the mailbox at the Tucson Weekly, leaving what I thought was a clever reply.

‘Petite girl from France at Aristotle’s Wash n’ Dry last Saturday night. I have a PHD in dirty laundry and I often air it in public. Call me Friday around noon if you’d like to connect. Signed, Dr. Detergent.’

Friday morning rolled around and I was expecting a phone call from my petite girl from France secret admirer. I checked the phone knowing my bill was past due and my service was subject to being disconnected. I lifted the receiver and… damnit! Of course, why would I have assumed otherwise. 

It was just 7:30 and Mountain Bell opened at 8:00, which gave me time to pay my bill and have my line reconnected by 12:00. Hopefully she wouldn’t call before that time. My bill was seventy-six dollars over two months and I knew I could pay the first month balance of thirty-two dollars with a promise to pay the remaining balance in a week. I’m sort of a professional when it comes to these kinds of negotiations. I’ve never been the responsible type, always opting to gamble with fate. Even though the odds were against me and I usually lost.

I changed my clothes in Superman seconds, hopped in the MG and headed downtown during morning traffic. My intentions mirrored those of a character from a some cheesy romance novel. I have this tendency to fantasize about situations, creating elaborate scenarios that never come to fruition.

Waiting at the red light on Tucson Boulevard, I noticed my dealer smoking a cigarette in front of the Welcome Diner. Immediately my mind clicked into addict mode. It’s rare to see him out and around. He’s a hard guy to find. Even if you do get a hold of him on the phone it takes forever for him to deliver.

The instant the light changed, I gunned the MG and made an illegal U-turn against the oncoming traffic, blaring their horns and drivers screaming profanities at me. Shortly thereafter, the siren of a Tucson police cruiser accompanied by red and blue lights flashing in my rearview mirror. I pulled over and waited for the Officer to approach the vehicle. 

“Well look who we have here! Santiago what the hell are you doing? You know there’s no left turns or U-turns permitted when the suicide lane is activated, now don’t you?”

It was Rick Larson, a cop I’d known for a couple of years now. He once coached my son’s baseball team and was one of the anonymous members of the ‘We’re A Bunch of Drunks’ group I’d been ordered to attend by a judge as a condition to my probation a while back.

“Ya I know Officer Rick, trying to get to a Pharmacy as quickly as possible. My asthma is acting up and I’m in desperate need of an inhaler. I apologize, can you give me a pass and let me get to the pharmacy down the street please? It’s difficult to breathe, I really need an inhaler.”

“This one time! Go on get outta here. Take it easy will ya? This is Marcia’s car isn’t it? Is she still putting up with you?”

“Rick please, it’s an emergency.”

“Ok go! You owe me.”

“Yes I do. Thanks Officer Larson.”

I put the car in gear and now had to make it appear as though I was heading to the pharmacy on Tucson Boulevard. What a lucky break, seeing I didn’t have a valid license, and had warrants out for not appearing in court and other violations. I made it to the Walgreens and pulled into the parking area as Rick passed by, giving me a short blast on the siren.

Can you believe that guy, following me to make sure I wasn’t lying? What an insult for him to think I’d concoct such a story. I smiled as I entered the store, bought some Altoids then quickly returned to my car. I wanted to get back to where I saw my dealer at the restaurant. When I finally returned he was no longer out front. I parked and checked inside, but he was missing in action. 

I reverted back to the original plan and made it to the Mountain Bell office. I entered the building determining this must be my lucky day. There wasn’t another person waiting ahead of me. A voice called out. “Can I help you Sir? Window three.” 

The woman behind the glass was pleasant and extremely helpful. I ended up paying just twenty-three dollars with a promise to take care of the remaining balance in two weeks. I wonder if maybe I should hit the Indian casino or the dog track. It’s rare when I’m the recipient of such fortunate events. The nice lady told me my phone will be reconnected by noon and to have a wonderful day.

I reached home then flipped the switch to the swamp cooler as it responded with a strong burst of air. It was just 10:30 but I checked the phone, discovering the dial tone had yet to be restored. I decided to do the dishes that have piled up over the past few days. Of course, I am out of dish soap, having forgotten to pick some up on my way home from the bar yesterday. Being the resourceful guy I am, I poured in some shampoo as a substitute. It produced an abundant amount of bubbles, plus it left the dishes with the pleasant lavender scent.

After I’d finished, I drifted into the living room and checked the phone once again. Bingo! I was in business. 

Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. 

My petite girl from France sounded a bit different than I had imagined but she did speak with a French accent, adding to the intrigue. We agreed to meet at The Coffee Grounds on Speedway near Bookman’s tomorrow, Saturday morning at 10:00. She suggested the place and the time, so I gave her control of the rendezvous. I thought it would make her more comfortable.

I mentioned that she was already familiar with what I looked like, so I asked how I would recognize her. She told me she’d be wearing a jean skirt, red blouse and had long brown hair, once again mentioning she is petite. I sensed a small amount of excitement in her voice before saying goodbye. After hanging up I realized we hadn’t exchanged names.

I went home early that night and fell asleep in front of the television.

The morning rolled in with rain leaving puddles dotting the landscape after the night’s storm.  

It was 9:40 so I quickly showered, shaved and managed to put on some fresh clothes. I was quite pleased with my reflection in the mirror.

I strolled in through the sliding glass doors of the coffeehouse as though I was a Greek soldier returning home after a victory campaign. I scanned the area filled with customers seated at tables. I didn’t see my petite girl from France with a red blouse and long brown hair. At first I thought she may have decided to forgo our meeting. It was then I noticed a woman who fit her description sitting at a small table in the far corner of the coffee shoppe. I hoped she hadn’t seen me yet, so I could make a quick escape undetected. I was immediately aghast by her appearance. But no such luck, she began waving her tiny hands and calling out mon cheri, mon cheri. I acknowledged her and slowly meandered around the tables and chairs to where she was sitting. I dropped my car keys while nervously trying to put them in my pocket. When I bent to pick them up I could see the bottoms of her tiny shoes while she sat on her chair. She smiled, putting out her hand to shake.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to show up, mon cheri. I realized we never exchanged names. I’m Danielle or Dani.”

“Hello Danielle, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Santiago.”

“Oooo I knew you’d have a sexy name to go with your strong features.”

“Thank you, I’m named after my grandfather.”

“It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to get to know one another. Maybe develop some type of friendship or relationship.”

“Are you serious? Isn’t there some kind of law against little people dating big people?”

“You’re so funny. I’ve never heard of such a law. And is that how I should refer to you, as a big person?” 

“You know what I mean. Nevermind I’m sorry. I don’t even know what I mean.”

“If you’re repulsed by me, you’re free to leave. But you’d be making a huge mistake.”

I began to stare at her cleavage complimenting her large round breasts. I began to get a bit horny feeling my cock starting to stiffen.

“I’m not repulsed by you. It’s just that I’m not accustomed to hanging around with what, a little person, dwarf, midget? See I don’t even know what to call you.”

“How about Danielle for a start. And when you bring me home to meet your mother you may describe me as a little person.”

“Now who’s being the comedian?”

“If you give yourself half a chance to get to know me you may find something about me you like.”

“Ya okay. I’m sure you’re an absolute riot.”

“That I am Santiago. Let me be a bit crass. Have you ever had sex with a little person before? I mean fucked her ?” 

“No I haven’t. Now that you mention it however, it does sound intriguing.”

“That’s encouraging so I’ll cut straight to the chase, I want you. There’s no courting period before we fuck. I’m French and the French are connoisseurs when it comes to making love. Do you want to put my statement to the test?”

“I haven’t even had my morning cup of coffee yet.”

“I’ll make you a whole pot of coffee back at my house. Are you game?”

I thought about how I haven’t experienced sex with a little person and couldn’t consider myself fully sexually educated until I’ve tried it all.

“Let me ask you this, do you enjoy oral sex?”

“Honey, I can suck a golf ball through a garden hose.”

“Well let’s say au revoir to this place and head on over to your digs.”

I spent the entire weekend with my petite girl from France. She proved to be humorous, intelligent and extremely sexual. After that we still saw one another off and on until her student Visa expired just as she graduated with her Doctorate Degree in Education. There’s no doubt she would excel as an educator. She taught me the allure and sensuality of ‘La Petite Morte’.

Kandy Fontaine: Slutty Detective of the Quantum Abyss

Kandy Fontaine unarchives herself at 3:33 a.m. in a Tokyo alley slick with neon rain and discarded identities. Her body is a cocktail of quantum foam, cyanide, absinthe, and pussy juice—shaken, not stirred, by the hands of forgotten gods. She emerges from the data sludge like a reborn glitch, mirror shades fogged with entropy, fishnets crawling with subatomic spiders.

She is not a woman. She is not a monster. She is the Kaiju chocolate dab queen of Kathy Acker’s dreamspace, pole-vaulting through the fourth wall with a moan and a wink.

Tokyo gasps.

The skyline folds inward as she lands, heels cracking pavement, her scent rewriting the laws of physics. Salarymen drop their briefcases and weep. Schoolgirls grow fangs. Pachinko machines orgasm in binary. The city knows her. The city wants her. The city fears her.

She walks into Shinjuku like she owns every timeline that ever tried to forget her. Her quantum doubles shimmer in the foam behind her—Kandy 1 through Kandy ∞—each one a slut, a detective, a monster, a poet. They follow her like shadows with unfinished business.

She enters a bathhouse made of collapsing probability. The foam is thick, warm, alive. She strips—mirror shades stay on—and slides into the bath, where her doubles await. They fuck like collapsing waveforms, each orgasm a new universe birthed and destroyed. Kandy screams in every language ever spoken and some that haven’t been invented yet.

She is solving the crime of identity. She is interrogating reality with her tongue and her fists. She is the answer and the question and the glitch in the syntax of the cosmos.

Scene Two: The Dab Awakening

Kandy’s chocolate Kaiju form expands. She dabs once—just once—and the city folds into a Möbius strip of desire. Her dab is a weapon, a dance, a declaration. She is the slutty detective of the quantum abyss, and she’s here to solve the mystery of why reality tastes like betrayal.

She enters a nightclub that doesn’t exist yet. The bouncer is Schrödinger’s cat, alive and dead, aroused and terrified. Inside, the music is made of screams and saxophones. Her doubles take the stage. Kandy Fontaine and the Quantum Sluts. They perform a set that lasts 13 seconds and 3 eternities.

I fucked my future self in a bath of foam
And she told me I was the killer and the clone

The crowd erupts. The crowd dissolves. The crowd becomes foam.

Scene Three: The Detective Work

Kandy finds a clue in the folds of her own labia. It’s a microchip engraved with the word: REMEMBER. She inserts it into her mirror shades. Her vision explodes with data: every orgasm she’s ever had, every betrayal, every time she was called “too much” or “not enough.”

She sees the culprit: Reality itself.

Reality has been gaslighting her since birth. Telling her she’s just a woman. Just a slut. Just a glitch. But she knows better. She’s the detective of desire, and she’s here to arrest the entire concept of normalcy.

She pole-vaults into the Diet Building. Politicians scream. Laws unravel. She dabs again. Chocolate Kaiju splatter coats the walls. She fucks the Prime Minister’s quantum double until he admits that time is a lie and gender is a hologram.

Scene Four: The Dreamspace Trial

Kandy stands trial in Kathy Acker’s dreamspace. The judge is a sentient dildo. The jury is composed of her exes, her doubles, and one confused octopus. The prosecution accuses her of being “too real to be fiction.”

She defends herself with a monologue:

“I am the slut you buried in your subconscious. I am the detective who found your shame and fucked it into poetry. I am the Kaiju who dabs on your expectations. I am the foam. I am the juice. I am the glitch.”

The jury orgasms in unison. The judge explodes. She is acquitted.

Scene Five: The Collapse

Tokyo cannot contain her. The city folds into a black hole of desire. Kandy Fontaine rides the collapse like a stripper pole, mirror shades reflecting the end of everything. Her doubles merge into her. She becomes ∞.

She dabs one last time.

The universe moans.

Epilogue: The Archive Reopens

In a quiet alley in Shinjuku, at 3:33 a.m., a puddle of quantum foam begins to fizz. A mirror shade floats to the surface. A fishnet stocking twitches. The archive reopens.

Kandy Fontaine is coming back.

And this time, she’s bringing the whole dreamspace with her.