Forebodings

Kenny opened his eyes slowly, but the minuscule amount of sunlight coming in from the inch of open curtains was enough to make him squeeze them back shut again. His head ached and his stomach was twisted with pain. The thirst that he felt was immeasurable. Kenny pulled himself from the comfort of the plush hotel bed and staggered to the sink for handfuls of tap water. As he sucked down copious amounts of liquid, he attempted to put the pieces of the previous night together. 

Kenny was the singer of an up-and-coming band known as Winter’s Dread. He remembered opening the show for the well known regional act Gloomy Forebodings, then drinking, doing blow with the headliners, and meeting some girls after the show. Kenny’s band played music on the extremely heavy side, so the majority of attendees were usually young and sweaty guys looking to fight. It shocked him that a fair amount of attractive girls were at the show. 

He found a towel on the tile floor and picked it up to wipe his mouth and face. The room was mostly dark, but obvious that it was littered with empty beer and liquor bottles. Kenny made his way back toward the bed. He just needed a few more hours of sleep before the band or their road manager would be knocking on his door. As he went to lay back down, he was able to make out a figure on the opposite side of the bed.

Kenny then had a memory of a sexy blonde in a cut off black t-shirt and short jean shorts that came on to him pretty hard. She was with the group of girls backstage, and this one had taken a liking to him. A faint recollection of the two of them snorting heroin off a guitar case entered his brain. Then he recalled getting head from her while others were in the room. He wished he could put more of the night together, but it all melded into a fuzzy blur. 

Kenny crawled into the bed to snuggle up to the mystery girl. He wanted to make some memories that couldn’t be forgotten. But as soon as his naked skin touched hers, he felt the cold, clamminess of death. Kenny instantly released the tit of the corpse, recoiled away, and sat up on the bed. He switched on the side lamp and slowly turned to verify: The once living, breathing, sexy blonde, was now wide-eyed, stiff, and lifeless, with dried vomit down the side of her face. 

Kenny frantically began to switch on every light in the room. He knocked over bottles in his haste, which heightened his anxiety further. The room had to be cleared of any illegal activity before he could do anything else. He flushed every baggie that he found, empty or otherwise, and continued his search. 

Kenny found the purse of the dead girl and looked inside. He removed her wallet to search for an I.D. A driver’s license was visible through a clear portion of the wallet. Jessica Stevens was her name, and she was only…16 years old! Kenny’s heart dropped, his breath quickened, and a feeling of despair overtook him.

Kenny thought, not only is this girl dead, but she’s underage, and she died from drugs that I gave her. He fell to his knees and broke down. Kenny knew that there was no way out of this. Thoughts of gloom, sadness, and regret overwhelmed his being. 

The eyes of the cadaver seemed to follow Kenny everywhere in the room. He covered her head with the sheet, sat on the bed, and put his face in his hands. Kenny knew that he had to call the police and give this girl the respect that she deserved. He was terrified, but knew of no other option than to face the dismal consequences. 

Kenny picked up the phone with trembling hands, but before he could dial, there was a loud pounding on the door. 

“Police. Open the door,” a gruff voice shouted from the other side. 

Before Kenny could do anything, the door exploded open, and large monkey-like beasts charged in at him. The largest creature opened its mouth to reveal a pair of large, jutting fangs. Just before they entered Kenny’s skull, he awoke in a panic. 

Kenny shot up in the bed, switched on the side lamp, and looked around frantically. He was in the same hotel room, but there weren’t bottles everywhere, and best of all, there wasn’t a dead girl beside him. In fact, there was no one there but him.

Kenny sighed deeply and let out a slight chuckle.  It was just a dream, he thought, as he laid back on the comfy, down pillows. 

However, the relief he felt didn’t last long. The entire hotel began shaking violently. He had been in a few earthquakes in the past, but never over twenty stories in the air. He was about to flee his room and find the stairwell when the shaking intensified. Rumblings, deafening crashes, and sounds of devastation flooded his ears. Screams of terrified and dying people could be heard all around. The hotel started to crumble and break apart. Massive chunks of falling debri rained down on him, and the floor began to give way from under his feet. 

Kenny was awakened by the shaking of his bunk. It was lights out, and his cellmate, Big Chocolate, was ready for another piece of ass.

Sanctuary Golf Course

The sky was red.

“Honestly it’s fucking crazy,” she said.

“It’s because California’s on fire,” he said.

“Nah that’s fucking, way too far for us to see it.”

“It’s like bright fucking red.”

“I think it’s Utah or something.”

“What even is Utah.”

“Haha yeah. Nevada.”

“That’s way too far. It’s literally red, like right fucking there,” he said.

“Yeah.”

They stood, looking at it.

“I guess like our own shit must be on fire—”

“Yeah like our own shit must be on fire then,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“Who gives a fuck honestly.”

“Honestly who fucking cares. Honestly.”

They were in the middle of the fairway. The sky at one horizon was indeed a searing red. The summer green of the fairway contrasted. 

They were essentially on top of a mountain, and the grass of the eighteen fairways was stamped there for their recreation. The groomed grass fell about the crest of the mountain and down its sides. It was like at any moment there was a vantage by which they could spy the rest of the world, or its apparent annihilation, or whatever was occurring with that red of the horizon.

She now had to hit the ball in the direction of the green. Tim’s dad and Tim’s dad’s friend were waiting there, at the green. She hit the ball. When she was done following her shot she turned to him and said, “Tim,” and he said, “What?”

She said, “I look like such a rich-ass hoe right now.” She spun around and lifted her skirt so Tim could see her ass. “I love it we should golf more often,” she said.

“Babe. Notwithstanding how ungodly fucking sexy you look in that outfit—”

“Look at my fucking legs like holy shit babe. With the color of the sky.”

“Yeah notwithstanding any of that, golf is pretty wack—”

“Can you just like briefly comment on how fucking amazing my legs look right now—”

“I mean babe I’ve literally had, like at least half a boner for the past half hour.”

“You can fuck me you know. Right now I mean.” 

She stood there, leaning on the golf club.

Tim looked downtrodden.

She said, “It’s just your dad. Your dad is super wack.”

“So wack.”

“Let’s go join them?”

“Let’s,” he said as she got in the cart and he drove through the fairway to where his father and his dad’s friend were standing. He parked adjacent to the green and he and Sara grabbed their putters.

His dad said, smoking a cigar, “This is just absolutely wild with the sky isn’t it.” His dad exhaled the cigar as it was part of his persona.

“Wild, yeah.”

“Crazy yeah.”

His dad’s friend was standing there, aesthetically equivalent to a filing cabinet.

Tim’s father said: “Well we’ll definitely have to get a photo before the day is done. Several photos. I mean just look at the sky. Have you ever seen anything like that? Roger have you ever seen anything like that.”

“Yes once.”

“But I mean, like that?”

“It’s impressive. I admit that is impressive,” Roger said.

The four of them stood there on the green, staring at the sky. 

Sara said, “It honestly looks like the world is ending.”

“Who gives a fuck,” said Tim.

“What was that? Hey don’t say that. Don’t say that Tim,” his dad said.

In one minute Sara said, “So whose turn is it?”

“You can putt. You’re inspecting your line. I see you. You got it,” said Tim’s dad. And then he said, “Great putt,” after her stroke.

Tim navigated the scenario and finished his putt rather quick.

They reconvened at the tee box of the following hole. Roger manipulated the velcro of his gloves and looked down the line of his club. He pressed his cleats into the grass at the tee box and then lifted one foot and then the other, testing the ground. Then he did so again. With the ball teed up, Roger drew back his club a few inches and then reset it, and then did it again. He hit the ball. Then Tim’s dad got up to the tee box and did the same routine.

Tim got in position to swing and said, “You guys can go on ahead. I’m probably going to mulligan a few times here. You know.”

“That’s cool Tim. We can wait,” his dad said. “That’s fine whatever you have to do.” He exhaled his cigar.

“No honestly just go ahead. Gonna try something new here.”

“It’s okay if you have to take a few practice balls,” his dad said.

“Just go ahead hahaha.”

“Well that’s fine that’s not usually—”

“Really if you don’t mind I have to say something private to Sara.”

“Tim,” his dad said, “yeah we can play, sure. Roger you don’t mind? We can go out there on the fairway.”

They drove down the cart path, dissolving into the grand view of the valley.

He and Sara were alone at the tee box. He teed up a shot and took some practice swings.

She said, “So what did you have to tell me?”

“Literally nothing haha.”

“Hahahaha.”

“He’s just so fucking lame,” Tim said.

“So fucking lame.”

“Honestly.” He looked at her. “My dad wants to fuck you.”

“Duh. Hahahahaha. What a fucking gremlin.”

“And the fucking Roger guy.”

“Who the fuck is he.”

“One of my dad’s friends from AA. Literally my dad only has sober AA chode friends.”

“What does Roger do?”

“Sells airplane parts.” Tim took a few practice swings.

“That’s so fucking lame hahahahaha. What a fucking loser,” Sara said.

Tim hit the ball. It curved into the trees, where it might have just rolled down the mountain. He fished from his pocket another tee and another ball. He regarded his surroundings, seeming to finally take it all in. He said, “Holy fuck.” She stared at him. He looked at her and said, “Dude this is a fucking insane view,” and she laughed. He hit a ball which went into the trees. He said something absurd and grabbed another ball and hit it into the trees.

She said, “Why don’t you actually try?”

He said, “Baby I am I’m just fucking hammered hahahahahaha.”

He hit another ball.

“Baby,” she said.

“What.”

“Babe?”

“What.”

“Why don’t you just fuck me in the trees. Just hit one into the trees and play it and we can go over there and you can fuck me,” she said.

He looked at her. “Yes. The trees. Let’s go fuck in the trees.” He hit the ball and it landed in the middle of the fairway. Then he took another ball and hit it into the trees.

She had to hit a ball now.

“Just hit the fucking ball,” he said to her, “hahahahaha. Just fucking hit it.”

They got in the cart and he drove down the cart path. He drove them into the trees where lay his seventh ball. He said, “We’re doing this come over here.” From where they were standing they could actually see the outlines of his father and Roger down along the fairway. They were playing their balls.

“I’m shivering oh my god,” she said, “in the shade I mean.”

From behind—he grabbed her at the waist and put her up against a tree so that there was a tree between them and the rest of the course.

He grabbed an ass cheek and pushed her panties to the side and said, “Just take them off,” and she said, “Yeah I’m just gonna take them off,” and she slid them down her legs and threw them in the cart. He slipped his fingers into her pussy and he untucked his shirt and stuck his cock inside her. He put his elbow around her throat, from the back. “It would be dope if you screamed right now,” he said. He fucked her and she lifted up her shirt and felt her own tits. “Tim,” she said, with her hand in his hair.

They were celestial with the red.

“Should I put them back on?” she said.

“No fuck that.”

From the trees he hit the ball into the fairway. They drove to it and she sat in the passenger seat of the cart.

“Your dad. What a fucking loser,” she said. Tim was crying and laughing, trying to hit the ball. He said, “This is really serious, we need to be serious for a second. Just for a second while I hit this fucking ball.”

He hit the ball.

Back in the cart he said, “Alright Sara. Where’s your ball? Where’d you lie?”

“I don’t know. Over there.”

He drove in the indicated direction.

The distant sky was blackened intermittently by blurring smoke. It was clear that the environment was on fire.

Roger and Tim’s father were chatting at the green. When Tim and Sara arrived, Tim’s dad said that they should take a photo. “What do you think Sara? You guys look really good.”

“Great idea. Definitely need some photos.”

Tim put his arm around her and their background was the apocalyptic sky. It was like the universe was cut into two plains. There was the edenic, lush, green world, and there was the ethereal celeste of dissipating red. This is what Tim’s dad saw as he took photos. Even Roger made a comment.

Tim’s dad said, “You guys look really good,” and Tim said, “You know I fuck her right? I literally just fucked her in the trees,” and Sara literally laughed. Tim’s dad said, “Hey Tim, that’s not what you want to say right.”

“Honestly fuck you.”

“You better watch what the fuck you say to me,” his father said. “You better watch what you fucking say to me.”

“Why? So you can maintain your stupid fucking identity of being this fucking cool corporate fucking douche bag that walks all fucking indolently on the golf course—”

“Tim I don’t know what the fuck is your problem right now but I want you to know that I do not approve of the choices that you are making in your life right now. I do not approve. You tattoo your fucking hands. And you’re clearly drunk—”

“Like it fucking—”

“Fucking listen to me right now Tim. You come out here and embarrass me in front of Roger. I entertain you and Sara all day. I come up with a plan so that maybe I can relate to you and we can have an enjoyable afternoon and understand each other and maybe you can have something purposeful in your life. And I do not—I repeat—do not approve of the choices that you’re making with your life. I’m your father, and I’m disappointed in you—”

“Do you realize—”

“Tim you better pick your words very carefully right now—”

“Yo literally fuck you. I come out here and ‘embarrass you in front of Roger,’ who gives a fuck. Fuck Roger. Roger fuck you. Either of you is just a complete fucking joke just a complete hollow fucking identity—”

“Tim—”

“Literally fuck you. You’re a fucking joke all you do is spew your fucking toxicity upon anyone who even approximates a fucking mile within your radius. Why don’t you fucking drink you’re a fucking pussy you literally pretend to have this identity like you’re this wise old fucking man that lived a life and had all these experiences and then decided to do the right thing or whatever the fuck and you’re sober but don’t you get that you’ve just fucking put all that shit inside yourself you’re a miserable old fucking piece of shit you’re a fucking pussy you drink black coffee and smoke cigars because you still need to hide everything inside that you’re running from you’re a fucking monster, you know I still have fucking dreams about you I’m a grown fucking man I still have dreams about you where I’m crying and you’re fucking laughing at me. Your life’s a fucking joke and you too Roger you’re a fucking pussy you both sold out your fucking lives and bought into some bullshit fucking value system asserting that you can’t make your own fucking choices and you’re just the victim of a fucking disease, why don’t you fucking drink you fucking pussies. You fucking losers. And dude you tell me you’re disappointed in me? Do you realize how fucking little I give a shit about what the fuck you think about me. I literally don’t even give a fuck. I literally fucking hate you. You’re a fucking pussy you embrace this fucking bullshit corporate identity and do the whole golf thing and buy into a fucking image and you smoke your fucking cigar and you fucking actually literally fucking believe in all the AA fucking bullshit like it’s the core of your fucking identity your utter futility before fate or whatever the fuck your victimhood before the fucking disease the fucking world like you don’t have any choice and you just embrace the fucking lies so you don’t actually have to take any fucking responsibility, that’s what it is you take no fucking responsibility you fucking outsource your own fucking identity to some external cause that isn’t in your control so you think you’re destined to just be this fucking worthless loser that’s just uptight all the fucking time and only achieves like ten percent of what they fantasize about. And dude you just make everyone fucking miserable, except Roger who’s a fucking loser anyway, worshipping you, your group of orbiting fucking AA buddies. Like it’s become your fucking identity, weakness your identity, victim your identity, impotence your fucking identity, misery, no-fun your identity…”

This was happening and she acknowledged it. Roger was walking distantly, lighting a cigar. She asked him if he wanted a photo of just him in front of the sky. He scowled at her and she peered expectantly until he said explicitly, “No I don’t want a photo.”

She didn’t actually know what she was supposed to do in this situation. She was standing on the edge of the green and looking at the grass which was effulgent with the red of the sky. But the color of the grass reflecting its inverse in the sky formulated something inexplicable. And the anger which arose fulminant, apparently, yet not unpredictably; typifying for her effectively the whole world. She didn’t know what to think about it. She hated his dad. She thought maybe that they should stop getting drunk with weirdos like this. If Tim was just here yelling and being a psychopath—how could she disapprove. She literally hated the world. Literally fucking hate it, she thought. I fucking hate it, she affirmed. So what the fuck am I supposed to say. She felt anyway that maybe there was a better way for things to go. If Tim wasn’t so recalcitrant then maybe there’d be less anger and hatred. It was almost like it was unethical or something, everything that was occurring. It’s not like I have a strict set of ethical values, to compare it to, she thought. Tim’s dad was screaming terrible terrible things, presently. She could see within the man despair and failure and figured that Tim was in a way just psychologically enslaving the dude and was probably a source of constant torment. And she thought, I don’t fucking care. She thought: this is what I’m supposed to do in this godforsaken society of violence, I’m supposed to yield to moments like these and recreate them and sponsor them. It makes no sense to me. Why is Roger such a loser. Who are these people. Where did these people even come from. How can someone like Roger even exist. How is that even a possibility in the universe. How can you actually be a conscious aware thing experiencing what it is to be, Roger. What must that man think about himself, how must he see the world. How can you not react with disgust and hatred. How can you not fucking vomit on sight when you see Roger. I literally don’t get it. So that makes sense. Hopefully we can leave soon because I think the vibe has been killed. Also what the absolute fuck is going on with the sky right now.

***

From Good Antifreeze

Shit Hole

I’m living in a shit hole; not a meta-fucking-phorical shit hole, an actual, literal shit hole at the bottom of an antiquated outhouse. I had to get the fuck out of Dodge immediately man; I had people after me, I had organizations after me, a few small third world countries, aliens, the church, and even the goddamn Chupacabra. The dogs were at the door man. I’d been spotted, filmed, my bank account was hacked, along with my email and rest of my goddamn computer, in fact I believe my computer was fucking hacking itself.

It’s quite amazing how much you have to think about when you’re off your meds. I’ve been digging tunnels; tunnels through tunnels, going up and down and sideways, it’s a goddamn labyrinth down here. I dug out small rooms furnished by the dump up the road; I had a small generator for light, and a flame-thrower for the rats, both to stop their insurrection and also for cooking.

The water is collected using a makeshift aqueduct running through the tunnels gathering all the drips streaming off the walls. I was pretty self-sufficient; but I still had to take little trips to the town down the road, for things I couldn’t produce myself, like fuel for the flame-thrower, this was essential for life in a shitter, the rat population represented a small army, and we didn’t get along at all. The generator needed gas as well; and I’d always stock up on cigarettes, as they were my only luxury.

I’d been hoping to tunnel myself into a gas line leading to the small gated community to the south, I could tap in and limit my trips out of the shitter, but I had a serious problem with my blueprints, I didn’t have any blueprints. That thought escaped me in the beginning; I never imagined I’d turn this shitter into what could very well be called, a subterranean condominium. I was getting lost all the time, but I kept tunneling, I figured I’d dug about one kilometer in the time I spent there.

That was another small crisis; I had no clue how long I’d been there, sure I could buy a calendar in town and some new batteries for my watches, but I don’t know when I arrived. I was stark raving fucking mad when I left the city, and could barely remember to dress myself, and yes, I actually walked out the door naked once. I guessed my stay in the shit hole to be about two and a half to three months, but really I hadn’t the slightest fucking idea.

There was something bothering me concerning the rats and their movements around a certain time of day; of course I had no idea what time that was but it was regular. Every so often I’d see no rats at all; then, after a while, they’d come around again, doing their rat business, whatever one could describe as rat business.

I’d begun to have a horrible sinking feeling about their absences; like maybe they were congregating somewhere in the tunnels. Maybe even conspiring against me; they could have been acting on the orders of one of my pursuers, or maybe just acting alone like a rogue guerilla force with its own agenda, I swear I could hear them talking, I had to investigate, but with extreme caution, they outnumbered me and it would be more advantageous to form a truce of sorts, than to battle when the odds were so clearly on their side. I wondered what Sun Tzu would say about this particularly peculiar type of warfare; then I realized that he would never let himself be caught in a shit hole facing an adversary such as a small army of rats. Clearly; I was on my own with this one.

I eventually found where the rats were gathering, and my suspicions were right on the money, there was an organized conspiracy at hand. However; I didn’t speak rat so I hadn’t a fucking clue as to what they were planning, but all evidence pointed to my demise.

After going through a copious diversity of problem solving methods; I decided that a full on frontal attack during one of their meetings was the way to go, the tank for the flame-thrower was full up, and could push out an enormous flame for about fifteen minutes, the most conservative account of the rats numbers was in and around one hundred and fifty (give or take), leaving just a few stragglers in the aftermath. 

I chose my moment; all the rats scurried off as per usual, I quietly crept towards their forum, and waited until the speaker had the rest of the rats engaged in whatever it was he was saying, I could hear them clapping in agreement after the long winded speeches from the many speakers in their clan.

Now was the time; I fucking pounced into the tunnel like a fire-breathing puma, and cooked as many rats as I could see, they obviously weren’t expecting this, I had the upper-hand, and it didn’t take long before I silenced their twisted conspiracy, the flame-thrower acted like a fucking bomb going off in that small space, what the fire didn’t take, the heat did.

As I gazed over the charred and still burning corpses of my adversaries; I made an extremely eye opening troublesome discovery, the evidence of the gas line I’d been searching for, I quickly realized that fire, heat, and a condensed space around a functioning gas line was in no fucking way in my best interest.

I dropped my weapon and crawled through the labyrinth of tunnels as fast as I could manage, I was trying to get to the original exit which was the outhouse on top of the shit hole, I got lost a few times but eventually made it, and I climbed out to the surface. I ran so fucking fast I lost my shoes in the process, I had no idea of how far the tunnels ran, so I just kept going.

Then it happened; still running with my tail between my legs, an explosion erupted behind me, sending me about six feet forward through the air and onto my fucking face. I managed to roll myself over to check the carnage, I was deaf at that point and could hardly see straight, but simply put; it was a giant fucking hole with rock, dirt, and burnt rats surrounding it. I have to admit that I took a certain pride in my destructive capabilities; that is, until I looked down and noticed the absence of one of my feet. I had to wonder what Sun Tzu would say about this extravaganza, I concluded that he’d probably have me locked up and executed. 

Matthew Licht has a dirty mind, a dirty keyboard, and the very best intentions. His literary world is a place of sleaze and trash, religious sex cults, talking anuses, melancholy strippers and monkish opium smokers, sex in toilets, and voyeurism in the back of limos. And yet there’s also a genuine warmth and decency in his writing and in his view of the world. It’s an interesting contradiction. Or maybe it’s no contradiction at all.

—Geoff Nicholson, author of “Still-Life with Volkswagens” and “The Lost Art of Walking”

There’s a dark and edgy wit to Licht’s stories in this crazy, often comic collection, a wit that veers from erotic to emetic and back, and that has heart in it as well. A vividly imagined world where, as the man says, ‘joy and rage and thinking things could be different boiled down to thighs spread for a dollar’. But there is hope there too, among the strippers and the dealers and the no-hopers, and sometimes even a chance for escape, as the usually luckless hero of the final tale finds out.

—Charles Lambert author of “The Children’s Home” and “With a Zero at its Heart “

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Undead Fairyland

The Bad Fairies snatched Darrow’s boy. Murdock gave the order. It was a rainy Thursday. Charlie stopped at the Pump & Munch for a cruller and caffeine. He placed the travel mug on the roof of his Prius. The Bad Fairies grabbed him as he fumbled for his fob. The AMC Gremlin came out of nowhere. It was one of those enchanted Gremlins with the mana transmission and Eye of Sauron mural spray-painted on the hood—blasting Casey Kasem’s countdown from February 23, 1978.

The Bad Fairies were packing AK-Le Guins. They blew a wormhole in the cage of the propane tank exchange, releasing a level-12 Gaseous Form. Charlie disappeared in the blink of an eye. Eyewitnesses say they saw a ripple in the mist. Some felt pressure in their ears. Others lost the fillings in their teeth. Time and space were distorted. Toads fell on a woman pumping gas. A FedEx driver lost his vowels. The Prius folded in upon itself until it was the size of a brownie turd. Charlie’s travel mug raptured. His pumpkin spice latte turned to cinders, and his body was teleported to the Clearcut Forest. His spirit was too pure to pass through the anti-matter sphincter, though, and got left behind. (For three weeks, Charlie’s life force haunted the Pump & Munch parking lot, searching for a new host. His soul finally landed in a bottle of premium wiper fluid and spent the next 2 years cleaning bug splatter off the window of a 1985 Honda Civic.)

The Bad Fairies were spawned from the corpses of condemned prisoners, reanimated after execution. Murdock raised them out of pauper’s graves. He was the only one who could control the evil hoard. Murdock had the charisma and the enchanted Hammond organ. When Murdock played “Muskrat Love,” it sent the damned into a frenzy. It was Darrow who kept the clown car contained. Darrow was a button man, MI666’s number one fixer. He’s the one they called to seal up unauthorized breaches into Undead Fairyland.

Darrow built a career out of making enemies—and Murdock was his archenemy. Theirs was a tale of sorrow and betrayal that can only be sung in a lost language. The two had history and old scores to settle—although, when they were first recruited, Darrow and Murdock were just one circle jerk short of a legendary bromance. In high school, they were co-captains of the math team, and both correctly answered all 17 secret, coded questions on the SAT. They trained together in “The Dungeon,” MI666’s wet work division. (This was before Murdock found Oberon’s anklet in the lost Nazi bunker and envisioned a more diabolical manifest destiny for himself.)

Charlie’s kidnapping was the predictable next step in an escalating grudge match. Murdock had snipped off Darrow’s vestigial tail when they’d dueled inside the Recalcitrant Hedge Maze, and, in return, Darrow had killed Tabitha, Murdock’s wicked stepsister wife. Not that Tabitha didn’t deserve to die an epically painful death. She’d been experimenting on innocent gnome fetuses in the rubble that had once been MIT. There she mixed her stinky protoplasmic potions in ogre skull cauldrons, trying to regenerate her shredded wings, ravaged in the Epcot Eugenics Wars. Tabitha spent her days bathing gnomic stem cells in unfiltered moon juice and dreaming of creating a master race. Darrow felt no remorse liquidating Tabitha. She’d tortured millions of fey folk in her frantic quest for power. She’d built Death Camp Narnia and was single-handedly responsible for the pixie genocide. 

Darrow wasn’t a psychopath. He was a lab rat who’d been MacGyvered into a sophisticated death machine, programmed to shape Middle Earth as MI666 saw fit. Darrow’s amygdala was reconditioned by Dungeon headshrinkers. “Empathy,” “shame,” and “regret” were only words found in a dictionary of travel phrases for a fantasy kingdom Darrow never longed to visit. Darrow felt nothing for his victims, those magical creatures whose photographs were delivered to him in manilla envelopes that smelled of bog and sulfur.

It’s hard to believe that a monster like Darrow had a part in creating a gem like Charlie. The kid worked for Habitat for Humanity for fuck’s sake. He was a social justice lawyer and a loving husband. And he was with child—early in his first trimester—carrying the fetus of the three couples he promised to honor and obey. The critter growing inside Charlie’s womb housed the best strands of six genetic blueprints, mingled together on top of an Amazon Basics HarmonyBed. The entire cul-de-sac had thrown a block party and gathered around the maypole to watch the brewing via Nest. They held hands and sang show tunes from Hamilton VII as a Tesla angel-bot prepared the impregnation broth. No, Charlie didn’t deserve to pay for his father’s sins, but Darrow cast a long shadow, and Charlie had the misfortune to be born his father’s son. 

Murdock had no intention of ransoming Charlie. After a mock trial for crimes against the altered state, Murdock executed Charlie in the Clearcut Forest and streamed a live feed on demonic TMZ. When, months later, Charlie’s severed head arrived via messenger tortoise, duct-taped to the shell, Darrow immediately called his HR rep on his “Hello, Kitty” burner phone. He was sorry to bother her in the middle of the night with personal business, but he needed to take bereavement leave and didn’t know how to code it on his timesheet. MI666’s payroll portal was hidden on the dark and stormy web, and Darrow kept fat fingering the IP address and getting redirected to panda snuff sites.

Darrow understood that this emotional disconnect from his son’s murder was freakish, even for him. Truth be told, he tried to grieve for Charlie, but the sadness never came. Darrow missed his son, of course, but the feeling was understated. His sensation of loss was situated somewhere between watching the last episode of Cheers and having to throw out a favorite pair of slippers because they smelled like cheese. Darrow suspected that his compassion’s missing chunks were submerged deep beneath the boggy swamp that was once his soul, but he could never coax them to the surface. In the days before Charlie’s virtual celebration of life inside the Fortnite meditation chapel, Darrow practiced crying. He watched Love Story over and over and afterward stood at the mirror in his bathroom, trying to mimic the sad face of Ryan O’Neal.

And what of Jukes, Charlie’s mother? Darrow hadn’t seen her since the night they’d conceived their son—and she’d witnessed Darrow smothering a paparazzi troll with a Little Mermaid-themed shower curtain. Jukes spent much of her time off-grid, trying to avoid Darrow and his violent multiverse—but the slipstream assassin continued to monitor the activities of his old flame like an upskirt security cockroach on the floor of a Target dressing room. Still, over the years, Darrow had only gathered the courage to call Jukes once, on the anniversary of their one and only venereal conjugation. Darrow was doing gin shots and cleaning his favorite Luger when the bittersweet burn of Jenever in his throat and musky scent of gun oil on the printless tips of his fingers triggered an unanticipated wave of nostalgia. Darrow dialed his satellite phone, intending to pour his heart out to his old flame. However, when he heard the terror in Jukes’ voice, Darrow lost his nerve and hung up without reciting the erotic haiku cycle he’d composed for her.

Jukes was married to that Wood Elf, the architect with the eyepatch. Darrow called him “the Pirate.” Jukes and the Pirate lived in Switzerland now. Charlie visited them during the holidays, and Darrow had a photograph of Charlie and the Pirate skiing. He’d pulled it off the Pirate’s blog with the endlessly ponderous posts about growing his own heirloom hops and designing passive solar houses in the Alps. Darrow kept the picture in a shoebox in his storage unit—the one in Nebraska that MI666 didn’t know about—along with some childhood toys, trophies of his kills, and his dead mother’s nightgown. Darrow visited the storage unit once a year to reconnect with his past. His mother had smelled of Vicks Vapor Rub and cigarettes, and Darrow sealed her nightgown in plastic to preserve the scent. Darrow had a virologist friend working in the Dungeon’s cryogenics division. She hooked him up with an argon preservation system that didn’t cost Darrow a literal arm and a leg.

Jukes and Darrow met in Copenhagen in the summer of 1982. Jukes, a rising starlet, was there to film a cop show. Darrow was moonlighting for the Alchemical IRA. They bumped into each other at a gallery on Jægersborggade. Darrow had just planted a metaphysical car bomb in an Orange Wizard’s Hummer and needed to hide in plain sight. Jukes, who was being stalked by paparazzi trolls, hoped to get lost in a crowd.

The exhibit was an interactive installation of famous literary suicides. According to the interpretive signage hanging on the wall, the artist wanted to “implicate the viewer in melancholy.” There was a Hemingway-blowing-off-his-face-with-a-shotgun display and a diorama of Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven. Darrow and Juke’s meet-cute was in front of a hyperrealistic sculpture of Virginia Woolf, her overcoat pockets ladened with stones, and about to walk into a plexiglass river glued to the floor. Gallery patrons were encouraged to empty Woolf’s pockets to save her life, and as a result, there was a makeshift cairn of rocks piled around the feet of the sculpture with notes from visitors sticking out like, “We miss you, Virginia!” and “The Waves rules!”

The two mismatched strangers soon discovered they shared both an intense hatred of pretentious conceptual art and a gallows sense of humor. Together, Darrow and Jukes loaded stones back into Virginia Woolf’s pockets and ate sushi off the Yukio Mishima seppuku sculpture. Darrow recited pi to 200 places, and Jukes told her best abusive stepfather jokes, laughing in an unpracticed way that convinced Darrow she hadn’t been this happy in a very long time. Neither of them had an inkling that, in two decades, they’d be grieving the death of a son they were yet to make.

At first, Darrow didn’t realize who Jukes was—even though her face was plastered on most of the busses in Copenhagen, looking fierce as Detective Inspector Proust of Interpol’s Memory Crime Division. When Darrow finally made the connection, he understood that he’d seriously overachieved. For her part, Jukes knew she knew Darrow was a well-chewed wad of sugarless gum in a gutter, hardly worth bending over to rescue, but she longed for one last anonymous fling before her career spiraled out of control. 

Darrow gave Jukes a backdoor tour of the city and kept aggressive autograph hounds at bay. They broke into Tivoli Gardens after hours and played hide and seek on the carousel. Juke shared essential details about her life. Why was she called “Jukes”? Because she was conceived against the jukebox in the Shire’s third-best titty bar. Darrow couldn’t be honest about what he did for a living, so he related the experiences of “Bob,” one of his cover identities, a quirky but lovable forensic accountant from Idaho, Alaska, who was in Denmark to track down some financial discrepancies at a food additive company. Darrow was hardboiled; his alias was undercooked. 

They found a midnight showing of Sophie’s Choice. They held hands in the dark and stayed through the credits, and Jukes wept, and Darrow just sat there, not really understanding what all the fuss was about. When Jukes recovered, they walked the streets for hours. She contemplated big ideas and the future and the possibility of hope, and Darrow feigned interest as best he could. Jukes spoke about her film career and how she wanted to direct eventually. Darrow, presenting as “Bob,” his threadbare but comfy cover-identity, could almost imagine an alternate, practically human future for himself. Early in the morning, they bought coffee and pastry, sat by the canal, and watched the sunrise. Then Darrow walked Jukes back to her hotel. She invited him up to her room to make sure everything was safe and secure, and Darrow ended up spending the night.

Jukes was staying in the Hans Christian Anderson Suite. She and Darrow made tenacious, greedy love atop the Princess and the Pea canopy bed. Together they caught the midnight train to Georgia. Darrow shot the sheriff (but did not shoot the deputy), and Jukes came in through the bathroom window. Afterward, they wrapped themselves in Emperor’s New Clothes bathrobes, raided the Thumbelina minibar, and fell asleep in each other’s arms—one like a coiled serpent fruitlessly spooning the spiraling smoke of a smoldering funeral pyre—and the other like an economy body bag cuddling the decomposing remains of a vulnerable adult.

Darrow got up in the middle of the night to take a leak and discovered a paparazzi troll crouching behind the Ugly Duckling bidet. It was there to snap pictures of Jukes in flagrante that it could peddle to the anti-matter tabloids. The troll tried to make a run for it, but Darrow grabbed the fiend by its lichen-encrusted, forked phallus, and cursed it in High Ogre. Darrow’s fluency in the sacred tongue of its people caught the troll off guard—and the frequency of that living dead language, larded with infanticidal imagery and unholy diphthongs, made coroners across the city giggle and caused atomic clocks to skip a beat. When the troll saw Darrow’s chainsaw-wielding-Mother-Goose tramp stamp—the emblem of the Storybook Assassin’s Guild—it began to cry out for the festering gestational proboscis that had shat it into existence.

Jukes heard the commotion and wandered in on Darrow. He stood there naked except for his Snow Queen slippers, smothering the troll with the Little Mermaid-themed shower curtain. Darrow smiled at Jukes, embarrassed but oddly proud, like a little boy whose mother just caught him torturing a family pet. Jukes ran and never looked back. 

As for Darrow, he was surprised to discover that as the years passed, he couldn’t seem to get Jukes out of his mind. The recollection of their time together in Copenhagen continued to haunt him almost as much as his memory of that morning he walked in on his mother soaking in the bathtub and chatted with her about the previous night’s Partridge Family episode for hours before he realized she’d overdosed on pills and grain alcohol. Darrow tried to quench the unfamiliar pang of loneliness in his gut by catching all of Jukes’ films—at the art house down the street, in foreign cities in the rain. After a kill, Darrow surfed for clips of her on YouTube. It was a ritual cleansing for him, along with eating chicken pot pie and having sexual congress with furries in abandoned zoological gardens. Darrow liked to nap with one of Jukes’ films playing in the background. That made him feel safe and cared for, like when he watched those slow TV episodes from Norway, the train journeys into the Arctic Circle that went on and on.

A decade passed before Darrow discovered that he and Jukes had conceived a child. Darrow was enjoying a post-coital blooming onion at a sports bar in Melbourne, with a web developer in a vixen raccoon fursuit, when he looked up at the flat-screen TV and saw Jukes in the middle of a press conference. She was in Australia to direct a sequel to Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World. Sitting next to Jukes was ten-year-old Charlie, who was the spitting image of his old man. Darrow went through back channels to acquire a strand of the boy’s hair and then asked one of the Dungeon dweebs to run a full heredity panel. Darrow’s paternity was indisputable.

Charlie quickly became an unanticipated complication to Darrow’s already precarious life-work balance. MI666 considered children an unacceptable liability for field agents since offspring exposed its already at-risk operatives to the additional likelihood of coercion and manipulation by their numerous mythological adversaries. If Darrow’s employers discovered that he had a son, they would immediately dispatch a crew of cleaner locusts to sanitize the situation by devouring every last trace of Charlie’s existence. To keep Charlie safe, Darrow decided long ago that he would never attempt to make contact with him—although he did once tempt fate by sending the boy an unsigned Devils Tower postcard from Wyoming while on a freelance mission to steal a stuffed Jackalope from a diorama at the Yellowstone National Park interpretive center for the Smithsonian Underground.

Child support was never an issue, as Jukes, by that time, was signing multi-million dollar movie deals. Darrow learned to be satisfied with staying informed of Charlie’s life—but uninvolved. Through his AV buddies at MI666, Darrow had access to technology that could track a single louse hiding in the pubic hair of a dead orc decomposing in a dumpster in the back of a Blockbuster in Mordor. So Darrow was content to watch his son grow from a safe distance, via hidden cameras, social media, and hacked cell phone and computer accounts. Of course, Murdock’s kidnapping and subsequent execution of Charlie changed that best-laid plan.

There was one emotion that MI666 allowed Darrow, and continued to stoke in him through hypnotic nocturnal suggestion and pharmaceutical cocktails, which was a craving for vengeance. Revenge was a prime motivator for secret agents, experienced specifically by Darrow as an intense sexual hunger with notes of heartache and an aftertaste of cold eel aspic (a flavor and texture so revolting that, under normal circumstance, you’d discreetly spit the glutenous fishy wad into your napkin after gagging on it—although I know from personal experience that when the congealed jelly of retribution is warmed with the freshly splattered rheum of a nemesis you’ve just tortured, as payback for a transgression you’ve waited thirty years to redress, the cold nauseating glue wondrously transforms into the sweetest dish you’ve ever tasted. You finish every last bite with a smile on your face.)

To honor Charlie’s memory, Darrow decided he would kill Murdock, slice off his wings, and, using a particular set of skills he’d acquired over a very long career, make a commemorative mobile out of them. Like a tomcat bringing his mistress a dead mouse, Darrow would present Jukes with his trophy, hoping that the sacred offering might mend their estrangement and trigger in his one true love fond memories of that lost Danish weekend so many blue moons ago. 

And so Darrow put his affairs in order and went hunting. Off the books. Without a handler. Without MI666 logistical support or cool gizmos provided by the Dungeon’s research and development team. For his vendetta, Darrow relied on his own wits and a few trusted assets in the field: a manic pixie dream girl hacker in Budapest who supplies blueprints of Murdock’s remote island lair; a down-on-his-luck whiskey priest in Paris selling hand-crafted ammunition dipped in the tears of baby unicorns—lethal for Bad Fairies; a retired thief with early-onset Alzheimers, indebted to the Ukrainian mob over gambling debts, and looking for one last big score but can’t remember why he broke into the vault; a lovable rogue bard who, as a day job, plays the tambourine in a Monkees cover band, and basically serves as eye candy for the team until he falls on a live grenade and dies knowing his sacrifice is for a greater cause; conjoined twins, one a white druid serial killer and the other an African-American FBI ranger profiler, whose cat-and-mouse, Iago/Othello story arc gives the otherwise hackneyed plot a quasi-Shakespearean feel; a quirky centaur call girl with a heart of gold—and a photographic memory—who forges Darrow’s travel papers; and an Italian punk chick halfling with daddy issues who grew up in a Formula 1 racing family, and who, or order to see over the steering wheel, drives the getaway car sitting on a stack of ratty D&D manuals.

Darrow spent seven years tracking down the Bad Fairy King. His quest took him to the four corners of the globe. After defeating numerous minor bosses (including Stephen Hawking Ninja, Bigfoot Mime, and Mr. Rogers’ Evil Twin), Darrow faced his son’s killer in the secret catacombs beneath the Library of Congress where Ben Franklin’s grimoires are shelved. Darrow slew Murdock thrice, just as the prophecy directed, each time using a weapon forged from a different base elemental—fire, earth, wind—waiting precisely seven Babylonian lunary cycles between the kills. Murdock knew that Darrow would be employing water for the fourth and final attempt, so he stayed away from oceans, lakes, and streams. But Darrow snuck into Murdock’s man cave and poisoned his Slush Puppy machine with a blue raspberry liquid hydrogen chaser. Murdock suffered instant brain freeze, and his head shattered into a zillion bosons. The Bad Fairy King was no more.

Darrow used an 18-inch stainless steel, Anthony Bourdain-branded, cheese wire from his mother’s hermetically-sealed cookware set to cut off Murdock’s wings. He returned to the safe house and hung his trophies in the shower stall to dry, squishing the spiders, earwigs, and ticks living symbiotically in the seemingly infinite folds of the appendages with his boot as they dropped onto the ceramic floor tile, trying to escape. After curing the wings with a blow dryer and his proprietary small-batch embalming rub, Darrow began to sketch plans for a holy diptych on the membranous canvas. He was inspired to paint scenes of Charlie’s life in the lobes of the organs. The left hemisphere would depict episodes from Charlie’s past, and the right would illuminate the future milestones that Murdock had erased, celebrations and joy that were never to be. 

As he contemplated his grand project, Darrow felt, he suspected, as Michelangelo had when staring at the bare ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For decades, the hit-man had been promising himself that he would return to the artistic practice that he’d abandoned long ago. When he was just starting out in the profession, Darrow routinely crafted with body parts harvested from his prey. He recalled the day he wandered into a Marcel Duchamp retrospective in Berlin and was later inspired to glue a mark’s ear to a telephone, his two eyeballs to a pair of binoculars, and his tongue to a giant peppermint lollipop. Over the years, Darrow had made a human hair Mona Lisa, a footstool out of actual feet, and a wide assortment of tooth jewelry. He was pleasantly surprised to find himself, at his age, called once more to the sacred creative space.

Darrow went to Michaels. He bought paints and brushes. He bought a glue gun, ink pads, and glitter jumbo shakers—and wispy pine sprays, stamp kits, and stencils, pipe cleaners, designer fur, and origami paper, assorted googly eyes with lashes, and a leather-punch, and sequins. Then he holed up in his room and binged on Bob Ross for three days straight. He huffed some Mod Podge to get his imaginative juices flowing. And then Darrow got to work.

No Goddam Androids

Stenciled in black letters on the frosted glass of my office door was “Adam Murky/Investigations.” 

Scrawled on a sheet of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven taped below was a footnote, “No Goddam Androids.”

Not that it made a difference.

The door opened and wowie zowie. It’s a dame, all curves and shoulder-length blond hair, who sauntered into my seedy office. I swept the nearly completed jigsaw puzzle to the floor and settled back.

She nestled her haunches in the chair across from my desk and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “It’s my husband. I think he’s—”

“Are you human?”

“What does this look like, glycol?” she shot back, offering the damp wad.

“So you think he’s seeing another woman?”

She looked puzzled. “Not at all. He went out for a pack of cigarettes week before last and never came back.”

“Was there anything unusual in his manner?” I asked. “His mood or disposition—anything different?”

Forefinger to chin, she closed her eyes. ‘Yes, there was,” she said. “It just occurred to me. He doesn’t smoke.”

Now I had her. 

“Duh, cigarettes were banned by the Global Warming Reform Act enacted by President Thunberg more than a decade ago,” I snarled.

I stepped around the desk. “Okay, lady, you’re going to stand for an inspection. There’s no second way.”

I yanked her to her feet, ripped her bodice and grabbed her left boob. A twist to the right and it swung open like a bank safe.

Her blubbering stopped. “Press star nine to reset,” she recited in a monotone. “Press star nine to reset….”

I entered a different code, swung her boob closed and pushed her back in the chair.

Her eyes took a moment to refocus. Then she looked at me, bewildered. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Fix your bra, honey, you’re hanging out.”

She scanned my squalid office as she made the adjustments. “Is this where I pay my gas and electric?”

“If only, baby,” I said, sliding the credit card reader across the desk. “Twelve hundred smackeroos and we’ll get those triple pane windows on order. Only a down payment, of course.”

She inserted her card and tapped in a code. “When can I expect delivery?”

“It’s on the way,” I said, and stood up. “Just like you. Don’t let the door hit that shapely ass on the way out.”

She stood in the doorway, started to say something, thought better of it, and sauntered down the hall.

Fucking androids. It’s a helluva way to make a living, but someone has to do it.

John D Robinson is a UK based writer and painter. He has published several chapbooks of poetry and three full collections. ‘The Dirty Sacrifice & Other Stories’ is his first full collection of short stories.

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If It’s Not Saint Laurent Leather

When I saw him in his Lululemon Athletics, drinking a bud light, and standing in a Juul cloud at the end of the bar, I decided it meant that living and lazy could live happily ever after: we ended up with a Peloton, two Peterbald cats, and a greenhouse full of Hart’s-tongue ferns.

When I left, I took the Peloton. 

After that, I decided it would be much easier to live my life in dreams: as long as my mind stayed firm I could say things like, “We’ll always have Paris” and “My tastes are very singular.” My lovers would always know what that meant and every morning we could fly to the Grancaffè Quadri in Venice for brunch.

That plan burned out quickly: I knew I could only dream for so long until my Hulu and Amazon Prime were canceled and Siri taken away because my love-dreams couldn’t pay the bills.

I fought that truth for a bit, but I got it together.

I even met my new neighbor in the Whole Foods parking lot. He was in Gucci and his cart was full of Bud Light seltzer. I decided that meant flash and sweet could be the mix that lived happily ever after.

The next day he introduced me to his new, no-one-knows-what-breed-it-is, rescue dog. I went on walks with them. He and I would indulge in the centuries-old custom of ice cream in the park on a bench near a fountain. 

And, once again, that thing started to slink its way back into my life. Don’t call it by its name I kept telling myself, not yet. 

So, I gave it some time, but finally said its name, and he cried, “I was waiting for this, but I wanted you to say it first.”

Our decision was Eastside or Westside. He decided Eastside because it was closer to the park. 

To celebrate our first year his friends and family gathered around his enviable RH dining room table ready to enjoy his version of Chef Alexis Gauthier’s Vegan Foie Gras and Beetroot Terrine, even though none of us were vegan. 

Before we ate he decided there should be candlelight, and there was Owen Drew. 

During the meal he decided there should be music: there was a cello, a violin, and Beethoven’s Duet in C Major.

And then, the next morning, over Presco Mamassos, I decided to say goodbye and thought: from now on it will be sunlit brunches at Grancaffè and moonlit strolls through the Bois de Vincennes in Paris, and all my lovers will be in Saint Laurent Leather and drinking Mitchter’s Bourbon.

Pictures of Lela

They finally found Lela at the cemetery. Her body at least. They’d been searching for her ever since she disappeared three days before. It took the police three whole days to find her and they didn’t even find her. A couple of doom-laden teenage girls discovered her. They were hanging around the graveyard taking pictures of antique tombstones, dressed in black, smoking thin cigarettes and they came upon Lela. They weren’t expecting to find dead people on top of the ground.

They looked at the body for several stunned, silent minutes and then began to greedily take pictures. They both posed with the corpse.

“Okay, look up at me. Big smile.”

“She’s starting to smell.”

“Hey, if she’s gone all rigor mortis maybe we can pose her. Like a Barbie.”

“I don’t really want to touch her.”

“Yeah, me either.”

And then they came to their senses and called the cops. They had seen stories on the news about Lela, the latest missing blond chick, and figured they’d gain local fame for finding her.

Poor Lela had a clear plastic bag over her head but when they completed the autopsy they learned that she’d died as a result of too much fentanyl. The plastic bag suggested foul play but wasn’t the cause of death. A precaution maybe? Overkill? They also found traces of semen in her deceased vagina.

The two teens, Cassie and Maggie, were questioned but they had airtight alibis. They were both working at Max’s Candle Stand when Lela met her fate and had the timecards to prove it. Besides, they couldn’t have been responsible because semen. They were dismissed as suspects. Cassie and Maggie were relieved of course, but thrilled to have been briefly suspected of murder. They both felt the experience gave them some kind of morbid credibility. Of course they were pissed that the cops had confiscated their beautiful pictures of Lela. They got a stern lecture and were told they were lucky that the police decided not to charge them with tampering with evidence.

“Homicide is not a laughing matter,” they were told.

They both had to restrain themselves from rolling their eyes.

Lela had died at the tender age of twenty-four. She had lived with her grandparents and worked as a physical therapist. Her grandfather, Roscoe (62) was also questioned as a person of interest because he had a history of violence and access to fentanyl (he had cancer in his knees and used fentanyl patches for pain) but since he was bound to a wheelchair, he was quickly omitted as a suspect.

“You got me all wrong, fellas, I ain’t violent. I just used to get drunk and beat my wife. Because of my bad legs I can’t even do that no more.”

“Domestic abuse is not a laughing matter,” he was told.

Eventually, they determined that Lela had committed suicide, choosing the cemetery as some kind of black ironic statement. Those who knew Lela were shocked and puzzled:

“She was an upbeat, people-person.”

“She was so cheerful and could light up a room. A real people-person.”

“She was a people-person. Nobody ever saw an anguished side of her.”

“It’s tragic whenever you lose a people-person.”

There was a tiny local radio station (WZIP) in town and the morning DJ, who went by the moniker of Lizard P. (nee William Zecker) was notorious around town as a womanizer and heavy drug user. He bragged about his sordid exploits on the air. He was the little town’s own shock-jock/morning-zoo type celebrity. He was fifty-two years old and wore a brown, curly wig and gold medallions.

Acting on a hunch, police sampled his DNA. When the results returned from the lab, they found it matched the semen from the crime scene. They brought him in for questioning:

“Yeah, we had sex together. But it was totally sensual.”

“I’ve never even seen fentanyl let alone kill somebody with it.”

“You guys want me to confess to something I didn’t even do! At least accuse me of something I did do! That I could understand!”

Eventually they had to release him due to lack of evidence. He went on the air, called the cops “pigs” and threatened a lawsuit. Most of the folks who listened to his show thought he was guilty and his ratings plummeted.

Eventually, Lela’s death was officially ruled a suicide and the case was closed.

Zeke Vorte (38) lived one town over, in Headly. He lived alone, enjoyed sports and opioids, and got away with murder. Again.

***

From Everything Dissolves

The Swinging Bikers

Geezer wanted my wife, I wanted his. So there was no problem, except our wives weren’t interested.

Wait, that came out wrong. Our wives were interested in sex, but not swapping.

They didn’t give any reasons when we asked why not.

We routinely got nude and had sex in front of each other. We even got married together. But whenever we suggested mixing things up a bit, the ladies acted like we’d hurt their feelings.

Geezer and I discussed the situation at Mother’s, a roadhouse.

“We either find some new old ladies,” I said. “Or sneak out with some looser ones.”

“Forget that. Lurleen once saw me glance at another woman, and I didn’t care for the look in her eye. Foolin’ around leads to lawyers, and lawyers lead to the loss of our hogs in the divorce battle. We have to convince the girls that swapping’s cool.”

“How?”

“Maybe I have the answer.”

“Far out. What is it?”

“DMT.”

“C’mon. That’s like vitamin D, for those two.”

“The Satan’s Scamps bro who sold it to me said it’s special stuff. He did mention there might possibly be side-effects.”

“We’ll worry about side-effects afterwards.”

***

Next evening, we rode up Crested Skull Hill. We entered the cave that made the left eye-socket and threw down our stuff.

A full moon shone on spent condoms, empty bottles and roaches from parties past.

“Big treat tonight,” Geezer said, as he smoothed out an old blanket on the cave floor.

“Whatcha talkin’ about, Geezer?” My wife Babette sounded suspicious.

“It’s uh, hard to explain.” he said.

Lurleen, Geezer’s wife, said, firmly, “No needles.”

“Calm down,” Geezer said. “This is a special occasion.”

“Oh yeah?” Babette sounded even more suspicious. “What special occasion is that?”

“The anniversary of when I realized Lurleen was the only one for me.”

“Is that true, honey?” Moonlight glinted off a tear in Lurleen’s eye.

“Naturally, my love.”

“Aw, ain’t that sweet,” Babette said, unconvincingly.

The pop of beer bottles seemd to reassure her. Clink, clank, clunk, we drunk to true love, and then the ladies took their pills.

Geezer and I must’ve stared.

“Hey! What’s going on?” Babette said. “How come you guys aren’t…”

The stuff kicked in fast. Babette licked her chops and lunged for Geezer. He giggled as my wife tore down his pants.

Lurleen fell to her knees. I felt like crying.

Life was different. The world had changed. Heaven was real.

Spent, I hugged Lurleen tight. “That was great,” I said.

“You aren’t done yet, clown.”

“Huh?”

“I need more.” Her voice was deep, hoarse. Purple searchlights shot from her eyes.

“Gimme a minute to recover. Let’s smoke a joint or something.”

Lurleen punched me in the face, hard, twice.

She shone her lavender eye-beams across the cave floor. “Hey Babs, has my hubby got anything left?”

Geezer had his mouth full. He was playing for time.

“Are you joking?” My wife pushed him away.

“In that case, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Let’s go.”

“But girls,” Geezer sounded meek. “Just a…”

Babette smacked him. His head spun. He fell down and lay still.

“Get the keys to their bikes,” Babette said.

“You can’t handle that heavy old hog. Please…”

The world went black. Life was painful. The ladies riffled through our leathers, then a pair of motorcycles rode off into the night.

***

Geezer helped me up after what seemed like a long, long time. He was shaking, bad.  “Can you believe it?”

“I was there, wasn’t I?”

“Well, we got what we wanted, didn’t we?”

“Right. Now how’re we gonna get home?”

”Walk, I guess.”

***

Two Death Jesters gave us a lift on the main road. Riding behind some greasy slob gave me a new perspective on Babette’s existence. I resolved to be a better man, and buy her her own bike.

The guy shouted over the wind. “You guys headed to the gang bang?”

“What gang bang?”

“At Mother’s. Couple chicks gone completely crazy.”

“Oh. Far out.”

There were many bikes parked out in front of Mother’s, and more headed in from all directions. Whoops and hollers split the air. My ‘48 Knucklehead was crashed into a garbage dumpster. Geezer’s Indian was ploughed into a car parked out front.

We pushed our way inside. Bikers swarmed like a cloud of leather flies around our wives, who were having the time of their lives. There was nothing to do but wait in line and watch.

“Uh, look man, that’s my old lady there,” I said to the dude ahead. “Mind if I cut in front of you?”

“No way, bro.”

Geezer tapped my shoulder. “That stuff has to wear off sometime.”

As soon as it was our turn, it did.

“Help! Rape! Somebody call the cops!”

The guy behind us said, “Oh yeah, I’m a cop.”

The guy standing next to him said, “Me too.”

Everyone else scattered. The cops clobbered us with their billy clubs, and snapped on the cuffs. A paddy wagon came. Tires squealed, sirens wailed.

Did our wives press charges? You bet your ass they did, bro.