Tarzan’s Torments

She had Gordo playing Tarzan every time his mother called her over to “babysit.” Gordo was too old for a babysitter, but just old enough for an ankle monitor. Part of his parole, and it kept him out of juvey. Gordo was impressionable, what his mother called “young for his age.” She wanted someone older in the house to keep him out of trouble.

Tarzan’s Torments is what the babysitter called it, with Gordo as Tarzan, and her playing a lion or an alligator or a python or a cannibal warrior or antelope priestess or whatever. She always mixed it up.

But it meant Tarzan would be naked, tied to a chair or chained to the ottoman, dangling from mom’s chin-up bar wedged in the closet doorframe, or stretched out on the ironing board. Sometimes Tarzan had to be the sacrifice to a ravenous animal, or the main course for an after-battle feast. Tarzan had to fetch his own ropes and chains from the garage while she stripped off her clothes and left them piled in the bathroom.

The cannibal warrior would use one of dad’s best paint brushes to baste Tarzan with canola oil, pinching and squeezing Tarzan’s delectables, telling the gathering of imaginary diners how she planned to prepare his tastiest parts for the hungry crowd. She made him hold an apple in his teeth and greased up all kinds of cucumbers or carrots for sticking into Tarzan to see if the rump roast was ready to serve. Despite all the butter, Tarzan hated that part, and was glad when she got around to nibbling his jungle delicacies.

On nights she was the wild animal, she went straight for the nuts and sausage, which could get scary the way the lion and the alligator took his balls in her mouth, whipping her head back and forth, pretending to tear them off. Of course it was pretend. She didn’t want to be explaining how Tarzan’s bloody balls ended up detached from Tarzan and rolling on the floor.

The python was different. She would lock her legs around Tarzan’s head, her crotch mashed into Tarzan’s face. She would swivel and twist trying to crush the life out of Tarzan, which she nearly managed to do every time. Tarzan yodeled and huffed great hot breaths, inhaling her smell that reminded Gordo of tuna fish left too long on the picnic table. Tarzan’s struggles to breathe seemed to drive the python into a lashing frenzy. Once the pretend life had been totally squeezed out of Tarzan, she would slither down the length of him, stopping to taste-test him with flicks of her serpentish tongue. She’d rear up, arched to strike, then lunge, gulping him like a snake working its prey down her gullet pretending to devour him entirely, boner first.

Sometimes she’d let Tarzan buy his freedom from the cannibal warrior if he would submit to the antelope priestess who demanded Tarzan pay a tribute. Tarzan, being naked except for the ankle monitor, didn’t have anything to give the antelope priestess, so she settled for milking him for any gold or jewels he might be carrying in his scrotal sack. Sticking her finger into his rectum as far as she could reach, worming around for any hidden gold coins, made it easy for Tarzan to come up with lots of tribute.

When the babysitter finished playing Tarzan, she’d retreat to the bathroom to do her homework—she said—running the shower the whole time.

Playing Tarzan never got old. She was full of ideas. The last time they played Tarzan, the cannibal warrior drizzled Tarzan’s ass with honey, making his butt cheeks stick together. After licking up all the honey, she went to snag a shot of dad’s whiskey kept in the broom closet, leaving Tarzan spread-eagled on the dining room table. Mom came home early and that was the end of Tarzan’s Torments.

Gordo missed playing Tarzan. It took his mind off the ankle monitor.

Nostalgia Box

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! That’s the sound of love.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!?!?! That’s the sound of sex.

There’s a difference. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Need to hear it again?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! is the sound of love and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!?!?! is the sound of sex.

I’m glad to have been able to clear that up for you. It’s important that you understand the difference moving forward. I don’t want you hearing AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- WWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!?!?! and thinking that you’re hearing the love of a lifetime when really all you’re hearing is plain old dirty sex.

There’s nothing wrong with plain old dirty sex, but don’t go getting it confused for the love of a lifetime. I know I have and it just leaves you feeling empty inside, like an avocado with all the yummy green gook scraped out and spread over buttered toast and leaving you nothing but the crinkly skin that contained everything you once were.

I was laying in someone else’s bed while the bed’s owner was in the shower, washing off the evidence of what we had created. You were also there. Not that we were in bed together. It’s that you were me because we’ve all been there. Just at different times and at different places and with different girls and boys and people who care not for such labels in different showers, washing different fluids down different drains with water culled from different reservoirs. But we’ve all been where I was, so everyone was me just as I was everyone else.

Sex makes us all the same like that, and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- WWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!?!?! is the sound that makes equals of us all. The girl in the shower and I had been going “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW-HHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!?!?!” all afternoon, but I was young and dumb and had mistaken it for “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” on at least two occassions that very day. I was looking for AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! just about everywhere back then, and every now and then convincing myself that I had found it.

Rolling over into the warmth of where she just lay, I ran my eyes over the spines on the bookshelf by her bed. I shouted warm hellos to my old friends Dylan Thomas and Joyce Carol Oates and John Steinbeck. I gave friendly nods to my hazy acquaintances Virginia Wolfe and James Baldwin, but I didn’t bother introducing myself to strangers like Camus. They’d be time enough to meet them later. And for your information, Camus and I are fast friends nowadays.

Seeing all those friends and strangers packed so tightly that they’re overflowing on her narrow shelves makes me want to know everything about her. At the time, I thought that we might be drifting towards falling in AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH- HHHHHHHHH!!!!! together. You know the feeling.

I slid off the bed, scooped my boxers off her carpet and slid them on. I don’t know why, because even if she returned just then she had already seen all there is to see down there. I guess that there’s a whole level of intimacy and vulnerability to let someone see that part of you in its typical mode that simply doesn’t come with showing it to someone when it’s in high-performance mode, and that wasn’t a bridge we had really crossed yet.

With my cotton-blend chainmail covering the only part of me I still felt the need to cover, I began to investigate. The first thing that caught my private eye was a milk crate full of vinyl records nestled beneath her bed, and I bent over to flip through them.

Leading the pack was London Calling, Paul still smashing his Fender bass over forty years later. Once again I was thirteen and alone in my first bedroom, with “Clampdown” and “Brand New Cadillac” blaring through my speakers and upsetting the downstairs neighbors. I flipped through to In Utero and then I was I’m sixteen and with friends and the four of us are in smoking our first joint in someone’s mom’s basement, airing the smoke out through a dwarfish window and masking our giggles in “Pennyroyal Tea”.

The next record was The Money Store and I was eighteen and unpacking boxes in my first dorm room, introducing myself to the freshman hall with “Hustle Bones” and making eyes with a slender girl who walked by my intentionally ajar door. I browsed through her collection a moment longer, passing some other favorites before pushing the milk crate back under her bed.

It was haunting how many of my cherished memories she owned, etched into those grooves. While I was never someone who believed much in signs, it sure felt like one. I know that you’ve got those songs or albums that are inextricably linked to a cherished or despised memory, so don’t even pretend not to understand what I’m talking about.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!,” I whispered to myself. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

I fumbled around under her bed until my fingers grasped a worn shoebox, and I yanked it out into the light of day cast by a dull yellow lamp. Something about the Converse shoebox told me that it no longer contained Converse, as it had the energy of a special shoebox that contained special things. Things that were even more special than a beloved pair of Chuck Taylors.

My guess was that it was a nostalgia box, filled with trinkets and knickknacks and doodads and thingamajigs that were of no value other than whatever memory-based connection they bore to her. I had a nostalgia box myself, filled with birthday cards and ticket stubs and paper programs and gaudy two-dollar purchases. I lifted the shoebox up to my face and opened it. Then I dropped it onto the floor.

The box was filled with hearts.

Some of the hearts were withered and decaying, dry and blackened. Those hearts looked as if they hadn’t pumped a drop of blood in years. Others were fresher and still had traces of color and moisture left in their tissue, and some were so fresh that they were a ruddy, glossy red and still leaked wet blood onto the shoebox.

One of the hearts was even still beating a little, the atriums gently breathing in and out. I reached into the box pulled out the beating heart, the oozing blood slicking my palm. As I lifted it up, I thought I heard a faint sound escape from the organ. I lifted the heart to my ear.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” the heart whispered to me. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

The heart beat twice more, then died in my hand and become as still as all the others. I felt a prickly sensation in my chest as I imagined my pectoral being sliced open and my own heart harvested and added to the ghoulish collection.

“What the hell are you doing?” I heard from behind me.

Still clutching the bloody heart, I turned to see the girl in the shower. Only now she had returned from the shower. So let me rephrase that: still clutching the bloody heart, I turned to see the girl recently returned from the shower. She had a white towel wrapped her from her thighs to the upper half of her breast, and she was dripping like a baptized infant.

“What the hell am I doing?” I retorted. “You’re the one with a shoebox full of old bloody hearts. What are you, some kind of serial killer?”

“No,” she said softly.

“Well, you’re not cutting my heart out in my sleep and adding it to your trophy box,” I said rising to my feet and ignoring her answer. “‘Cause guess what, I’m not as dumb as the other people you’ve fucked and I’m not letting you do that to me.”

“Those are my hearts, you dumb asshole,” she said.

“Wait, what?” I mumbled, the heart slipping out of my slackening fingers and plopping onto the floor with a wet squish.

“Those hearts are mine,” she reiterated. “They came from my chest.”

“What?” I repeated, looking at the shoebox full in varying stages of decay. “That’s impossible.”

“Wanna bet?” she said.

She dropped the towel to the carpet. Unsheathed, she stepped towards me and gestured to a spot a little above her bare left boob. Scars and stitches and slender band-aids wove an intricate pattern on her flesh in the space she revealed, over where her heart should be. I couldn’t help but wonder how I didn’t notice all of that during all the AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!?!?! Maybe it wasn’t AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! after all.

“They keep dying,” she explained. “Right in my chest, my hearts keep dying. They get one whiff of what they think is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! and swell up bigger and stronger and bloodier than they ever were before. But the moment my hearts start to realize that they were wrong again, they begin to beat more and more faintly and shrivel away into nothing more than a useless, empty husk.”

“I still have some questions,” I admitted.

“I can feel it when they begin to fade and die. And when I feel that, I have to get rid of them,” she continued, seeming to guess my general line of questioning. “They’re gross and awful and toxic when they get like that, and I can’t have them inside of me anymore. I tear them out of me as soon as I can. It hurts each time, but you get used to it after a while.”

“But do you have like a million hearts?” I asked surveying the box. “Do you also have seven lungs and an extra clitoris?”

“No, but that last one would be nice,” she answered. “I only have one heart, or at least only heart at a time. But every time I tear a dead or dying heart out of me, another fresh one grows back in its place soon after, only for it to eventually die too and for the process to start all over again.”

“But why do you keep them all in that shoebox?”

“They’re a part of me, and they always will be,” she said, shrugging her naked shoulders. “I may have ripped them out of my body, I don’t think I could get rid of them entirely even if I wanted to. If I tried to throw them out they would just return, probably in a somehow worse condition than they already are.”

“Have you actually tried to throw them out?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “But I don’t need to have tried to know that that’s what would happen.”

We fell into a stiff, heavy silence that pressed down on my chest like an incubus. I broke it just to feel light again.

“That thing you talked about before, when you said that before your hearts start to die they get bigger and bigger and stronger and full of more blood than they were before,” I said. “It seemed like that part was a good thing. Is your heart like that now?”

“No, you can relax,” she said conversationally. “You didn’t make my current heart swell up and you don’t have to worry about making it eventually wither and die either. This is just AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!?!?! You know that.”

“Oh, ok,” I mumbled.

I felt a tightness in my chest as my heart began to contract, and to beat just a little bit fainter.

John D. Robinson returns with ‘Smoking Herb & Other Stories’, his first collection of short fiction from Analog Submission Press.

A5 saddle stitched chapbook. Lovingly handmade, hand stamped, and hand numbered. 3 stories over 20 pages. Limited to 25 copies. Printed on an old Canon laser printer we found abandoned at a dump site.

Out April 10th. Pre-orders welcomed. £4.00 + shipping.

BUY A COPY HERE

The ongoing Horror Collection series from KJK Publishing is a series of short anthologies of horror fiction. The sixth edition—The Horror Collection: Pink Edition—was released today!

Includes stories by Tim Curran, Kyle M. Scott, Mike Duke, Zoey Xolton, Natasha Sinclair, Kevin J. Kennedy, and HST alumnus Douglas Hackle.

Only $1.49 on Kindle!

BUY A COPY HERE

 

Dog’s Day

Sunday. God’s day. Misty, gorgeous, redheaded, freckle speckled Misty, naked and on her knees, spread out a large stained blanket on the living room floor. Jesus, her German Shepard, watched, tongue out, thick bushy tail thumping the green carpet. Misty hadn’t bathed since Friday and her crotch put off a killer reek. Jesus whined. A shudder ran up his spine and down his front paws. He gave a muffled, frustrated woof.

Misty giggled, and wagged her jiggly ass.

Peeking over her shoulder, she saw Jesus’s pink cock rocket poking from its sheath. She crawled over, and gave the tip a lick. Precum spurted in her mouth. She tongued his wet nose, tasting dog snot, then crab crawled back, bitch giving a teaser. Jesus leaned into the smell. She laid out on the blanket, propping pillows under her ass. She spread her legs.

“Come, Jesus,” she said.

Eager Jesus shot over. Breath caught in Misty’s throat as Jesus painted her slit with his slobber, his long, wide tongue rolling along with master artistry.

“Good boy, Jesus, oh fuck, good boy Jesus, lick mommy, oh good, good boy,” she said squeezing her droopy titties and thinking of suckling pups, thinking of love and Holiest Sweet God in a woman’s best buddy. Jesus’s tongue tickled her butthole. She squeaked.

Her toes started in to curl. Her stomach reddened, prickling along her folds. She put her hands under Jesus’s snout and lifted his head.

“Mount,” she said.

Jesus stepped over her legs, his penis unsheathed and quivering like plucked guitar string. Drops of stanky, goopy pre-seminal drippage wetted her bushy crotch. She wrapped her legs around his rump and guided his pulsing cock with her hands. His heat entered her, fever-like heat spreading up through her guts. Jesus collapsed on top of her. His dog dick knotted, swelling. Spooge flowed, filling her cunt.

“I’m your bitch, Jesus. Breed,” she said. Jesus’s wiener stretched her pussy, like a white-hot sun expanding inside her, until, moaning, they tied off, woman and canine locked in a cock-poon clutch. Tingles ran over Misty. She wiggled, and farted. Warmth of gushing seminal fluid, dog nestled between her sagging tits. Jesus licked her face. She played with her clit, swollen hot dog dong inside, her finger motions, and stroking her lover’s fur, digging her nails back along her lover’s skin. Her chin dripped with Jesus’s spit. Her ass tensed, rhythmic pelvis motion, rubbing her belly against his. She held his head and licked his mouth, licked his teeth, his gums, dancing tongues, sucking spit and dog breath, her body beaded in sweat. Heaven is a place on earth.

Misty’s fuck hole filled, Jesus’s dick shrank. Jesus backed up, and began lapping the overflow. Misty smiled, rubbing Jesus’s head, her bladder releasing on a residual twitch, urine dribbling onto the pillows. Jesus loved her piss.

“Perfect angels,” she said propped on her elbow and playing with her nipple. Jesus knitted his eyebrows and looked up at her.

“Our puppies would be angels.”

The Proposition

If your uncle yammers for hours about alcoholism, and how it fucked up the entire family, you don’t expect him to take you to a dive bar afterward.

Crazy Scorpio guy. Henry was obsessive and had the goods on everybody. The previous evening, he’d driven me around my grandmother Mildred’s neighborhood, pointing out the hidden skeletons behind every door. Mildred lived in the wealthy North Bay section of Racine, Wisconsin. She played bridge with Johnson Wax executives and voted a straight Republican ticket.

Henry pulled up in front of the most expensive house on the block and idled for a full minute. “Real can of worms in this place,” he said, without elaborating.

Mildred seemed happy to go to the bar with us, though she usually drank at home. She’d nursed her second husband through senility until the bitter end and was having a great time without him. I didn’t blame her. Henry Sr., a racist, sleazy dentist, had a bad temper and a poor sense of humor. All of us were better off with him gone.

At 29, I was always glad to visit a bar, even one in Racine. Henry had talked non-stop since I arrived at Mildred’s house two nights beforehand. I’d paid her an impromptu visit, just so I could flee Chicago for the weekend. As soon as I saw Henry, I regretted my decision, but now it was too late.

Aunt Donna had left Henry for another man, so he’d gone home to live with his mother. My uncle’s old bedroom featured zebra skin rugs and African spears. Mildred’s twisted idea of  boy’s room décor. She’d picked up these items during transcontinental excursions, when her son was still young and impressionable.

Henry married Donna, his high school sweetheart, a couple of days after graduation. The two of them looked like two mid-1960s caricatures of young adults. Henry sported a stylish crew cut and Donna wore tight capris. They adored each other.

This arrangement sufficed for many years, until the couple’s inevitable midlife crisis. Donna went nuts, drinking and crying and screaming and fucking other men. She had a breakdown and spent a few weeks in a mental hospital.

Henry had already devoted several hours to the task of warning me about the destruction alcohol wreaked upon families. A bar would be a nice change of pace. I climbed in the back of Mildred’s Lincoln Continental and stared out the window.

My uncle fidgeted in the passenger seat. “You sure you want to go?” A weaselly attempt to walk back the invitation and avoid responsibility. Typical Henry behavior.

Mildred smirked. “Of course, or we wouldn’t be here.” She turned the key, and her engine roared to life.

We headed straight downtown and pulled up in front of a dive. Multicolored neon lights shone on the hood of my grandmother’s Lincoln. Mildred killed the engine and climbed from her vehicle, slamming the door. “I’m ready for a drink.”

“Don’t worry, I’m buying.” Henry sidled up to the bar and waved his hands until the bartender came over. The poor man looked ancient. Most likely the owner, but jobs were scarce in Racine.

“Um, O’Doul’s for me,” Henry said. “Mother?”

“I will have a Manhattan,” Mildred said, in the imperious tone she reserved for drink orders.

The bartender glanced at me, and I deliberated. “You got Point on tap? I’ll take one, please.”

The delicious local brew sold in Madison’s college bars for two bucks a pitcher during happy hour. I didn’t share Mildred’s love of hard liquor, preferring to drink for quantity.

On the other hand, my grandmother could really put it away. She tossed back her Manhattan and signaled for another. The aged bartender picked up a bottle and a glass and began his arduous task of pouring and mixing.

Mildred’s eyes traveled down the bar and came to rest upon a middle-aged man. He sat at the far end, nursing a can of Old Style. Handsome but tired-looking, the fellow appeared to be in his late 50’s. At least 20 years younger than Mildred, who planned to celebrate her 80th birthday in April.

My grandmother already had a new boyfriend named Clay—a millionaire who took her dancing every Friday. Mildred had made no promises of fidelity. She leaned over the bar and squeezed my arm. “He’s cute,” she said in a stage whisper. “Don’t you think so?”

“I guess.” I gazed down at my glass. Henry had revealed that Mildred was almost broke. She’d burned through two million dollars and was down to her last $100,000. It still seemed like a lot of money to me. My college fund had gone into my grandparents’ expensive liquor glasses, a few dollars at a time.

College was bullshit anyway. I took a gulp of beer and stared straight ahead. Harry sat on my left and nursed his can of O’Doul’s. He appeared to be deep in thought. It was a welcome switch from his usual mindless chatter.

Suddenly, Mildred draped her body across the bar’s Formica surface and gestured towards the man. “Hey, handsome,” she slurred.

Looking startled, the man raised his head and slowly rotated in her direction. Mildred flashed him a lascivious grin. “What are your feelings about oral sex?”

My grandmother’s voice was so loud that the bartender almost dropped her Manhattan. Undeterred, Mildred continued to lounge on the counter like an octopus, her long limbs scattered willy-nilly amongst the ashtrays and empty glasses.

The man’s eyes grew huge, and his mouth fell open. After a moment, he composed himself. “It depends.”

Henry burst into laughter. He set down his beer can and covered his mouth with his hands, but the guffaws escaped through his fingers anyway. Rivulets of beer streamed from his nose.

I gaped at Mildred, horrified. The concept of her as a sexual being had never occurred to me. Like a couple in a 1960s sitcom, she and Henry Sr. had shared separate beds for years. I’d often helped my grandmother clean the conjugal bedroom. She’d tried, in vain, to teach me how to construct hospital corners with her crisp, imported sheets.

Mildred shrugged. “I need to visit the ladies’ room. Be right back.” She rose to her feet and staggered towards the rear of the bar.

I leaned towards Henry. “I’m afraid she came on a bit too strong.”

Henry emitted a final snort, then shook his head. “She prefers the direct approach.”

I swiveled on my barstool and turned my back on Mildred’s would-be paramour. Most likely, he didn’t relish the sight of our dysfunctional family—three generations of social misfits, all lined up and staring at him like vultures. The poor guy was entitled to some privacy.

After a moment, Mildred wandered back into the room. She sank into her seat, then rotated in a clockwise direction, hoping to attract the man’s attention again. Feeling apprehensive, I allowed my eyes to travel slowly towards his end of the bar. I didn’t want him to think Mildred’s seduction was a family affair—some sort of unholy foursome, too ghastly to imagine.

His seat was empty. An abandoned can of Old Style remained on the counter, beside a half-drained glass. The man had tucked a couple of dollars underneath an ashtray and wandered off into the winter’s night.

My grandmother sighed. “I guess he got cold feet.” She raised a hand and signaled the bartender. “Another Manhattan, please.”

The bartender scuttled towards the sink for another glass. His face assumed an implacable expression. The man had undoubtedly seen some weird shit during his years behind the bar. “A bit stronger this time,” Mildred snapped. “The last one was weak.”

“I think you scared that poor fellow,” I said.

“Who? The guy at the end of the bar? He wouldn’t know what to do with a real woman.” Mildred accepted her drink from the bartender and took a hearty gulp. “That’s all right. I’ll find someone who will.”

I didn’t doubt it. Mildred always got what she wanted, one way or another. In an hour or so, we’d return to her palatial home. The Lincoln would idle on my grandmother’s pink driveway for a few seconds. Then Mildred would guide her vehicle into the garage and retire to her pink bedroom.

The woman loved pink, and she finally had it all to herself—as soon as Henry Jr. moved into his new apartment. Friday was only a few days away. Clay would come over with a dozen roses and his usual invitation for a steak dinner and ballroom dancing. Meanwhile, in the dark of her bedroom, Mildred might conjure up an image of her fantasy lover. If she even cared or managed to remember.

Take It Off and Say Goodbye

Derek’s girlfriend Yvonne was a stripper. She danced two nights a week at Joe Rae’s, on 6th Avenue and 24th Street. Joe Rae took one look and gave her Fridays and Saturdays. She also danced out in Queens, and at another place in Jersey City. She kept her tits and ass busy.

Derek and I worked together, but we weren’t bankers or lawyers or doctors. We were editors at a weekly sex newspaper.

Derek was of medium height, skinny, dressed in black. He wore near-opaque sunglasses, even at night. There used to be a million guys like him in New York. I always thought Yvonne should’ve been involved with someone more interesting. Like me, for instance.

Yvonne’s hair was like neatly stacked marine rope. She was from Illinois, and had a bit of a heroin problem. She’d nod off at odd times and there was a slight, constant trickle from her upturned nose, but it didn’t seem like anything to go into rehab about.

As the sex newspaper’s Art Director, my job was to look at pussy all day. That wasn’t enough, so I went to Joe Rae’s topless bar nearly every night. There’s a big difference between pictures and the real thing, even if all you get to do is look. Though it wasn’t strictly legal, Joe Rae’s girls would pull aside their G-strings for a dollar. If they’d seen you around, or if they liked your face, they’d work finger-magic. Some nights, a low-tide tang clung to my beard like fog.

Pussy’s nice to look at. I guess I like looking at it more than dealing with it. But it wasn’t just pussy that kept me coming back to Joe Rae’s. I really loved his place.

Joe Rae was an old hippie, even older than me. He stuffed the jukebox with Cream, Hendrix and the Stones. Some of the dancers complained there was no disco or Latin. Joe gave them quarters and bills to feed the glowing slot, and strippers became adolescent girls in a department store who’ve been told they can have all the makeup they want for free.

Drinks at Joe Rae’s cost the same as at normal dives. The girls never asked, but you could buy them a drink and they’d sit with you to while they drank.

The decor at Joe Rae’s hadn’t changed since it’d been an Italian social club. The red flocked wallpaper was sticky to the touch, and hung with amateurish oils of Palermo and Naples. There was also a picture of a young man who was killed in Korea.

That hand-tinted photograph bothered me sometimes: a guy in uniform, with a toothy smile and sad eyes, all geared up to kill commies overseas. They killed him instead. Born in New York, 1930, died at Inchon, 1952, Corporal Joseph DeRamo might’ve been tickled from beyond the grave that his shrine was in a topless bar. It always seemed kind of strange that Ma and Pa DeRamo hadn’t taken their boy’s picture with them when they closed up shop. Maybe they left abruptly, for the place where you can’t bring anything along. I asked Joe Rae, but he didn’t know his place’s history. The rolling metal shutters had been down a long time when he bought it.

Bikers sold crank at the Teddy Bare. Boob-job skells hustled ginger ale champagne at the Pla-Z-Boy. It cost ten bucks just to get past the threadbare velvet rope at Limoncello’s. Joe Rae’s had no such drawbacks. I never got diarrhea from the free-buffet meatballs. The men’s room wasn’t a gay pick-up scene, not that there’s anything wrong with it. Even the bouncers acted friendly.

Not all Joe Rae’s women were as beautiful as Yvonne, but some of them were real dancers, and it was nice to be there just to watch them move. A Canadian amazon who could touch the back of her head with the soles of her feet stayed in town long enough to get me obsessed. I handed over ten-dollar bills until one night she was gone.

There were junkie girls, and ladies who looked like they’d carve you up with a  razor for whatever was in your pocket.

Joe Rae gave big women a chance. Baby Blue looked like she was carved from a block of cellulite, but she was a crowd-pleaser. She shimmied hard for her finale. Cottage cheese crammed into flesh-colored pantyhose vibrated and shook while the sweat sprayed. She was powdered with stardust, but I never asked how she got home, or where that home might be.

Yvonne told Joe Rae she didn’t want to strip any more. She’d decided she wanted to get into the music business.

The founder and publisher of the sex newspaper heard of Yvonne’s career dreams through her boyfriend, Derek. Our boss had a soft spot for his employees’ girlfriends, especially the ones who may or may not have blown him for a hundred bucks in the stairwell at one of the XXX-mas parties he threw every year, attendance mandatory. The big man said Yvonne must have a farewell party at Joe Rae’s, and that he would sponsor the event.

The editorial offices of the sex newspaper were on 14th Street. They occupied a high floor with sweeping views of midtown Manhattan. The walls were covered with obscene graffiti left by contributing cartoonists and illustrators.

My office was next to Derek’s. We spoke to each other through open doors, but not that often. Since he had a year or two of college English under his belt, he turned our illiterate employer’s ramblings into sentences and paragraphs. He drew from readers’ deliria and edited stories from outside writers on an Army Surplus electric typewriter. Derek had created the publication’s voice.

The paper’s scumbag look was my baby. I dropped out of Art School. The black-and-white pictures came from inexhaustible battleship-gray file cabinets.

Our boss ran the operation with his own money. He was the one who went to prison when The Man said he must, which was often.

A few women worked at the sex weekly. Miss Gloria was the boss’ long-suffering personal assistant. A slightly addled Jewish lady handled accounting and advertising. Long tall Cindy did the cut-and-paste layouts. She was from Florida.

The entire staff was practically ordered to attend Miss Yvonne’s Farewell to the Stripper Life party.

The affair started at nine. Everyone went home to change into festive attire. In my case, a basement dump in Brooklyn and the last shirt left with a collar, which had grown tight.

The underground scene was represented by a grizzled poet and a director of nudie art films. Vinnie the Bouncer stood at the door and told the businessmen and college guys, “Sorry, we got a private party tonight. Joe Rae’ll buy you a beer next time.”

What went on at Yvonne’s goodbye party was the same as what went on any other night, except the drinks were free. Felt like in a dream I had, a nightmare, I guess, in which New York City was Hell. The only things different were that the subway was free and there was no Statue of Liberty in the burning harbor.

At midnight, Yvonne would do her last show. Then, like a princess in a fairy tale, she’d disappear and keep her clothes on forever after.

We ripped into the greasy spread, catered by the boss’ favorite deli. Free liquor made things jollier. Cindy the Paste-up Girl, who’d held onto her Florida accent, talked about how she used to hit Plato’s Cave every weekend, before Town Hall shut the place down.

She seemed wistful, as though the swinger scene had been some glorious chapter in human history.

There were so many women like her in town, loose and slightly nuts. They can’t all own art galleries or run ad agencies. New York was a Hell for dashed female aspirations.

Yvonne emerged from the toilet. The other girls onstage applauded and lingered briefly to fondle her. Hendrix played “Little Wing” from the jukebox.

Hendrix was dead. So many evenings I’d sat there thinking that this was what it was all about, in the end. Joy and rage and thinking things could be different boiled down to thighs spread for a dollar.

Yvonne went all the way. Her G-string flew. Decency laws exploded. She backed up against the mirror wall streaked with femme-grease, spread her legs and sank down slow.

Goodbye to being young. Goodbye to whatever it was that everyone thought was supposed to happen. Goodbye to the idea that dropping out could lead somewhere good. Goodbye to topless bars.

The music biz, in Yvonne’s case, turned out to be selling used records at Bleecker Billy’s.

There was a positive side to her career change, though. She met a skaggy guitar player and dumped Derek. At least I thought it was positive.

Yvonne’s last move on that final night was a backwards bend-over. I didn’t want to see her go. I couldn’t have her. She wouldn’t be mine. I asked, once.

Turned out I couldn’t have Joe Rae’s, either. The laws changed, and the place went through a brief bikini-dance phase, but not many guys will tip girls in bathing suits on the off-chance that a nipple will pop out. There’s hornier stuff on television.

Joe Rae, unlike Yvonne, had no last hurrah. He didn’t sell his business, he closed it. Or maybe he tried to sell the place. I heard he moved to Mexico.

The green awning out front said Joe Rae’s Topless. Then for a while it said Joe Rae’s STopless, with the S hand-painted on, not even stenciled. The wind tore the awning, and it flapped like a flag. It still said STopless, but it wasn’t true.

A Pipe Dream

The sound of waves and roller coaster screams came in through the bathroom window in Niv’s motel room: my favorite place in the world. I’d hose down my wetsuit and shake the Pacific chill in the shower, hang out in the steam to watch the sun go down and the fog roll in.

Niv lived at the Tramonto Motel with his Iranian girlfriend. Her family ran a Persian restaurant up in San Francisco. They disapproved of their daughter’s lifestyle choices, but they sent money. Her brother rolled back and forth between the States and Tehran. He always had opium. The restaurant connection was a perfect cover. He shipped the dope in bottles of pomegranate syrup. He came down to Santa Cruz often, to visit his sister and get stoned with her and her friends.

His name rhymed with Ay-rab, so that’s what I called him. He’d get hot, and sputter that Iranians weren’t arabs, like anyone cared. I can’t remember his sister’s name, or if it rhymed with anything.

Ay-rab was nice to look at. He and his sister worked on their tans in minimal Euro-style beachwear while Niv and I caught waves. Back at the motel, she’d cook Iranian dinners and we’d blow opium. The motel was built to look like an ocean liner, with portholes for windows and fake smokestacks on the roof. The room smelled of poppy resin, and pomegranate syrup cooking down.

Big Dan dropped by with his sister Kath. She was new in town, fresh from a divorce or a less formal break-up with some black guy over in Stockton.

Kath was wearing one of her brother’s sweatshirts, about four sizes too big. Her shorts made her thighs bulge when they didn’t have to. Flowery flipflops showed off her blackened soles and toenails. When she pulled down the hood it looked like someone had gone over her hair with bacon rinds. Smelled that way, too.

Motel room rhymes with womb and tomb. Kath squatted down to hit the pipe, and didn’t even ask what was in it. An intimate whiff of herself blended in with opium smoke and Iran grub. I stared, and got lost in a stoned dream of her soaping up in the shower not far away.

Big Dan shot an ugly look. He was close to seven feet tall, weighed over two hundred pounds. He was the human hydraulic lift at a garage on the outskirts of town. He reamed out corroded pistons with his bare hands, or his hard cock. Lay off my sister, the look said. She’s in a bad place right now. 

Opium bugs crawled around like a family of cockroaches under my skin, which felt like a wetsuit. Dreams rolled in like waves and mist from the ocean.

Niv changed records. His olive-skinned lady brought in dinner and we ate it on the floor.

Ay-rab seemed really interested in what Big Dan had to say about slant-six engine blocks. He opened his caramel-colored eyes wide, and wagged his head slightly off the beat from the speakers.

Kath rose shakily to go to the bathroom. She came back with a flush fanfare and dropped down again, slightly closer than she’d been before. I handed her the pipe. She showed a chipped front tooth when she smiled.

Niv’s woman took her shirt off. Those two were real make-out artists.

Big Dan was explaining what ring job meant. Ay-rab scratched, nodded, blinked and mouthed oh wow. He packed more opium into the pipe with a little knife.

“You’ve got good hair,” I told Kath. “But you don’t treat it right. Look at you: no body, bounce or sheen.”

She shrugged, scratched her crotch. She had sorrows to forget, pain to medicate. She put Zippo to pipe-hole and sucked in deep.

Looked like a movie flickering on a distant screen when I reached out to flick a limp strand.  Kath said quit it, like we were back in fourth grade. So I flicked her again.

Then I must’ve nodded out. I was in a sideshow: The Man in the Chicken-Wire Cage Full of Snakes. My job was to sit there barely even breathing while cottonmouths, copperheads, fat rattlers and cobras crept and crawled. Suckers in Sunday clothes paid a quarter for a look and a shiver. A Gaboon viper flicked his forked tongue, sensed a carotid artery neaby and lunged. But if I panicked, all the other snakes would sink their fangs in.

Kath’s breath pulled me out of the snake-pit. “What is this stuff, anyway? Got me all sleepy.”

The only light was a beam from under the utility kitchen door and the stereo’s green glow. Niv and his motel wife humped away to the drone music under a mound of sleeping bags, blankets and clothes on the motel bed. The heap rose and fell in the gloom. The springs creaked in tune with their breaths and moans.

Ay-rab and Big Dan were off in Dreamland, fascinated by the live love show.

“Kath, let’s face it: your hair’s a mess. You’re a mess. Let’s hit the shower and see what we can do. Come on.”

She tripped over her brother’s legs. We bumped the bed. I locked the bathroom door. The dim bathroom light seemed surgical after the motel room’s gloom. I unscrewed one of the lightbulbs over the mirror at the sink. Kath held her arms up like a kid so I could pull the dirty sweatshirt over her head. Her tits flopped and bounced. Cool air from the open window stiffened her nipples.

A black mamba went for my jugular vein.

Kath’s shorts hit the floor. No panties. Female funk filled the air. I stripped like getting naked was no big deal, turned the knob, checked the temperature, pulled her into the stall.

Niv’s woman had barrels of hair-care products stockpiled in there. I moved Kath around like a doll, kept her nose and mouth out of the spray so she wouldn’t drown. I became the hairdresser who’d make her look like the girl in the shampoo ad of her dreams.

Green gunk oozed from one of the bottles. I massaged it into her scalp. Gray foam formed, like roadside slush-monsters seen from bus windows back East. Rinse and repeat, apply conditioner and let it steam. Steam was fine, but smoke was better. I pulled Kath from the shower, sat her on the sink. “Don’t move,” I said.

A needle skated uselessly on black vinyl. Niv and his woman were still screwing like dogs. Ay-rab was sucking Big Dan’s big dick. He was good at it. I almost stayed to watch, but grabbed the pipe and a lighter instead.

Kath had slumped forward on the sink.

She sucked the smoke hungrily.

“It’s working,” she whispered. “It’s like I can feel my hair coming alive.”

Like snakes. Medusa. Men turn to rock.

There was a chrome blowdryer on the shelf, and a pair of scissors.

A yellow butterfly tattoo on Kath’s left shoulder showed in the clouded mirror. I hit the pipe and began to snip.

Kath took another big hit and pulled me into her face to shotgun the smoke. She had teeth missing. She squirmed, bucked her hips, moaned she needed love, bad.

But I had a haircut to finish. My ears filled with invisible music. My hands flew.

The mirror cleared, and showed the unholy mess I’d made of Kath’s head.

Her cement-boned brother Big Dan was in the next room. Outside, mist rolled in off the Pacific. Waves roared in darkness. Sharks glided just below their surface.

Better re-fog the mirror. Steam billowed from the shower like a dream of incense-breathing dragons.

Kath, limp with romance, glamour and opium, let herself be dragged back into the stall.

“Let’s get the stray hairs off you, or you’ll be itchy all over.”

New boys in the Marine Corps had better haircuts. Nothing left but the Final Solution, which in this case wasn’t placenta-based conditioner.

Niv’s woman kept a quiver of razors in the shower. Shampoo can be used as shave cream. Kath was too stoned to maintain erect posture. She sunk to a showerstall squat and did what came naturally.

A surf bum no longer, I became some kind of monk whose saffron robes flapped in sunlight and a stiff breeze that blew from snow-mountains in the background.

Kath was a monastic novice who still lived in the sensory world that was maya, illusion, vanity. She had to learn, pray, meditate. But first she had to get her monk look down. I shaved Kath’s head to serve God’s will.

Then I shaved my own, and took my left eyebrow off too.

Kath kept on doing what she did best. The drain was clogged with hair. Dirty water and human fluids rose, overflowed. Then the motel’s hot water ran out.

Nude bald stoners shivered in a shower stall in Santa Cruz. We couldn’t stay in there forever. We had to face what passes for reality, in this world.

When I unlocked the door, Niv’s lady rushed in as though she was about to explode. She squealed when she saw the horror.

Niv was sprawled on the bed.  Big Dan was nailing Ay-rab to the floor. He got a load of Kath.

“Whu’d you do to my sister, motherfucker? I’m gonna take you apart.”

“Shut up, you big homo.”

He stared, open-mouthed. He shut up.

Big Dan later beat up Ay-rab for turning him gay.

Kath liked her new hairdo, for a little while. We went to a wig shop just off the boardwalk and got a magenta Louise Brooks model from the bargain bin. She liked the wig.

Niv still lives in the ship-shaped motel, but he never invited us back.

You Can’t Go Anywhere

I really thought I was ready.

The premier for my movie was set to play my hometown—after Cannes, Sundance and Toronto—and I insisted that everyone close to me come: my girlfriend, my parents and my homies. Which was going to be difficult, because most of us, outside of my parents, live in Hollywood these days. And right before I broke it to them, the news had reported on yet another movie-theater shooting.

I skulked around my parent’s living room, pausing to gaze at my reflection in a china cabinet. I frowned at my long face, my thin lips and delicate features. I considered my short black hair in a fauxhawk, my cobalt eyes and tanned skin, not to mention my crusty douche-bag mustache. I came off as looking about as greedy and as cheesy as possible. All that was needed to complete the profile were some huge gold chains around my neck. When did I become this guy? The entertainment biz, I tell ya, the ruination of persons.

So here I was, all the way home from Hollywood, and I still had to convince my folks to attend my premiere. Bracing myself for the inevitable backlash, I sighed and went back into the kitchen.

“It’s just not safe, Mickey,” my mother said, pursing her lips in that persnickety way old women have. “There’ve been many movie-theater shootings lately…”

“But you can’t live in fear,” I argued. “Besides, we live in Mowquakwa, Illinois, where nothing ever happens. C’mon, I’m into mixed martial arts. If we run into that, I’ll disarm the puke and call the cops.”

Bad things did happen here, though. Many were convinced Mowquakwa was cursed, built on an old Indian burial ground. I wasn’t about to remind them of that, however.

Dad nodded his gray head in my direction, coming back from the fridge with a beer. “She’s right, Mick,” he said. “It’s just not practical.”

I slapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, I’m into karate, boxing and wrestling. I’ll protect you, Dad.” I threw some pretend punches at his face and gut, bobbing and weaving as he returned the gesture.

Willa came into the kitchen from the other room, where she’d been watching a fright flick with my homeboys. My girl—thirty, thin and vivacious—looked jailbait but blessedly wasn’t. She wore a collared shirt with popcorn, candy, and film reels on it, along with tight black jeans, and she filled out both like a champ. “C’mon, old people,” she said. “You can’t be fraidy cats. You need a little adventure in your lives!”

Going to a movie’s an adventure? I guess it is nowadays…

How the mighty have fallen.

But I know karate and shit!

Manny G. swaggered in, his Flexfit Cardinals hat on sideways, the stickers still on it. His hair underneath was dyed blond. He wore a silk shirt and trendy, baggy-ass jeans. “Hey gringos,” he said, “you tellin me ya don’t have the cojones to go see a stinkin movie?”

“Thanks, home skillet,” I laughed.

Z-Boz swaggered in after him, an African American in an Oakland Raiders jersey and snakeskin pants that made me look like an amateur baller in comparison. He also wore a black Cardinals hat like Manny G’s. “Yo, fam,” he said, “ya’ll need to get some mayonnaise!

I raised my hand in his direction. “Up-top!” I said.

He hissed like a snake. “Man, ain’t nobody do no ‘up-top’ no more, kid.”

Suddenly, a brilliant scheme found its way into my head. “Tell you what,” I said, turning back to my folks. “You two come with us, and I’ll quit smokin.”

My sainted mother placed her hand over her heart. “Oh, I do hate that habit. Does no good, just kills ya.”

Dad nudged her. “C’mon, Mother. It’s for a good cause.”

Mom touched her gray curls of as if keeping them in place, then wrung her hands in frustration. “I don’t know…”

“I’ll pony up some money for a charitable contribution,” I added. “What’s that club you’re in?”

“The Historical Society.”

“Yes! I’ll pump it up.” I gave Mom the puppy-dog eyes. “Please? Hey, I know Krav Maga, Kajukenbo, taekwondo, Okinawan karate, Shotokan karate, parkour and Kung Fu. I’ll be on that psycho before he can dye his hair Joker-orange!”

Standing behind them, Willa put her arms around my folks and pulled them both in for an embrace. “You seasoned veterans need to show us young people how to let our hair down and have a good time!”

“I feel ya, Willa.” Manny G. said, turning his hat the other way.

“Yeeeaaah, son!” Z-Boz added.

“Aw, poo,” Mom said. “I guess we’ll give it a try.”

“If it helps, I’ll be packin, Mother,” Dad macked.

She turned to him with that tight-lipped frown and narrow eyes. “You leave that thing at home. You’ll probably shoot yourself in the foot.”

Fucking derringer.

“It’s just a pea shooter anyway,” I blurted without thinking. I can be a bit of a dick sometimes.

Mom smoothed her apron over her skirt, for she’d been baking like a Stepford. The rich scent of hot cookie dough was driving me mad. “All right, gang,” she said, “let’s get ready to go to the Bijou, then. Ooh! My cookies!” She took them out of the oven and set them atop the stove.

I found myself jumping up and down and whooping with Willa and my boys.

Little did I know it would be a premature celebration.

***

If I could’ve seen myself entering the movie theater with my arm around Willa and my boys flanking us, my parents—the stragglers—bringing up the rear, I probably would’ve grinned ear to ear. It was to be a celebration of my labor of love, our hands full of popcorn, soda—spiked with peach Schnapps, my girl’s demand—Jujubes, Sour Patch Kids, Raisinets, M&Ms, Goobers, Lemon Heads, Milk Duds, Dots, Junior Mints, Trolli Sour Bites, and Cherry Twizzlers.

“You kids are going to go into anaphylactic shock with all that sugar,” Mom said.

“No, that’s an allergic reaction,” came Willa’s response.

Holding her close, my shorty’s scent was enchanting. She’d put on Kim Kardashian perfume just for the occasion—Gold.

The Pied Piper of the rats, I led my posse up to front-row and center. The screen, huge and inviting, hadn’t been lit up just yet, but the wan bulbs around the stage gleamed like Christmas lights. This evening was like Christmas to me, but little did I know, it was soon to be more like Christmasland in NOS4A2.

I took a load off, and for a few vivacious moments, Willa perched on my lap with her soft, firm behind. Va va voom. She giggled and sat down next to me. My boys took their seats to my left. My folks took the row behind us, showing their age as they groaned into their seats.

“Got the life! Victor gets the spoils,” I  said, tossing candy out to my homies.

My girl and I went at the treats like starving dogs, the candy and popcorn delectable, ambrosia—the sugar made me dizzy, joy fireworking all up in my brain.

Man, I’m such a lightweight…

No anaphylactic shock, but the sudden sugar overdose damn-near numbed my tongue.

Mom leaned forward and placed an arthritic claw on my shoulder. “Fancy place, Mickey. You must be doing pretty well for yourself.”

“Bangin like a baller,” I laughed.

My dad’s hand fell firm upon my other shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Son.”

I craned my head and said, “You haven’t even seen the movie yet!”

That’s when I got a creepy feeling I was being watched. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of some shadowy figure, but by the time I’d turned my head, it had already vanished into the darkness. The fire door was left swinging, however. Someone had placed a brick to keep it open.

Clearly, some hater must’ve thought they were getting a free movie.

Which meant they were ripping me off.

Needless to say, I wasn’t havin none of that. I rose and headed straight for the door.

Cavalierly, Willa rose and ran off ahead of me.

“Whachoo doin, girl?” I snapped.

“I got you!” she said, smiling back over her shoulder.

“Nah, I got this…”

But she’d already closed the door before I could catch up to her.

Heading back to our seats, my homies were laughing and pointing at me.

Manny G. said, “Man, I’m gaggin. She had to handle yo shit!”

“Damn, son, you be doggin,” Z-Boz added.

I shot them both my best look of death through tightly narrowed eyes. “At least I got a girl, poindexters…”

My parents, easily amused, smiled as they looked back at forth between me and my homeboys. They could’ve been at a tennis match.

“You tell ‘em, Son.” My dad bade me into a fist-bump.

Who was I to deny him? “Thanks, Daddo.”

“We just playin,” Manny G. chuckled.

“I feel ya,” Z-Boz said. “Strong shorties be hot.”

“Watch it,” I said, “That’s my girl you talkin bout.”

Meanwhile, the rest of the audience was finally showing up, a compliment to me of course. On top of the world, I snickered as the lights went down and the huge screen came to life, rolling out the coming attractions.

Nothin can touch me.

***

And then, all at once, I really had to question that thought.

Blasting through the fire door came a fiend like the devil himself, all done up in white makeup with black smeared around his eyes and mouth. He was dressed just like the Penguin from Batman Returns, complete with top hat and black coat.

He held a shotgun in his hands, a pistol strapped prominently to his side.

Wise folk say your life flashes before your eyes when confronted by death, but this fool’s sure didn’t. Pure rage consumed me, not only because he was about to ruin my hometown premiere, but also because he aimed to shoot us up as well. So, like any good Dean Koontz fan, I took his advice and ran into what scared me. This clearly caught him off guard, but before I could grab him, he jumped back and leveled the shotgun at my head.

Aw shit…

Acting on reflex, I pulled an Okinawan karate move, swiftly stepping to my left and slapping the gun to the other side. But before I could follow up by kicking it out of his hands, he pivoted away and dodged my foot with ease.

“Satan told me you’d try that…” he wheezed.

Blam! He shot me in the leg.

A sharp ringing erupted in my ears, everything else fading into background noise by comparison.

I cried out—my voice embarrassingly high-pitched—and collapsed onto the floor. The pain exquisite, the whole rotten event instantly transforming into an open house in Hell.

He snickered in a tinny little voice, the Penguin’s laugh exactly. Rushing back over to me, he roughly hauled me up to my feet.

“Prepare to die…” he rasped in my ear, drawing his pistol and holding it to my forehead.

“How the Hell you supposed to prepare for that?” I whined, trying to sound all tough (I didn’t).

He frowned and furrowed his brow, the eyes of the Devil staring deep into mine. “Say your prayers, stupid!”

Seeing my opportunity, that’s when I attempted a Krav Maga move. Lifting my hands in a gesture of surrender, begging him not to shoot, I went to kick him in the nuts while simultaneously crouching down away from the gun. Pretty smart, right?

And yet, once again, he dodged with the grace of a dancer and re-holstered his pistol. With a mocking sneer, he leveled the shotgun back at me.

“You gotta be kiddin me!” I cried.

I’d seen YouTube videos that said gun-disarming didn’t work, and I hadn’t believed it. If it was good enough for Black Scout Survival, it was good enough for me. But, balefully, they’d been right all along.

“Where my homies at?” I screamed in panic. “Cap this fool already!”

“Shut your cocksucker!”

Blam! He shot me in the other leg. I gritted my teeth in agony, writhing in a pool of my own blood.

Finally, the previews came to an abrupt stop and the house lights came up. All I could hear was the screaming of my fam and crew. I rolled onto my side so I could see the catastrophe unfolding before me, live-wiring my brain with a sense of terror and doom.

He’s gonna murder everyone I love!

Meanwhile, my homeboys had drawn their own weapons, but why were they just standing there shaking and not firing? That’s when I knew they were all talk, the fuckin cowards.

“Bust a cap in his ass or you’re dead to me!” I yowled in pain.

But the Penguin was a sharpshooter, shooting both pistols out of their hands just as my boys had finally found their nuts.

That’s when Willa came charging at him from the side. To do what? Some wrestling takedown move? Hurling herself feet first, she was poised to connect a perfect dropkick, and then…

Blam! He spun around and shot her right in the crotch. Blood sprayed out of the back of her skin-tight jeans as she flopped onto the floor. Then he shot her in the tits. Blam! Blam! Instantly deflated.

“No!” I cried out in anguish.

The love of my life! Dead?

Curling up in a ball on the floor, all I could do was pinch myself.

This has gotta be a fucking nightmare!

Meanwhile, everyone else with half a brain had already fled the theater, but my folks had only just begun to rise shakily from their seats, as if suddenly stricken with Parkinson’s.

Blam! He blew the top of Mom’s head clean off, leaving her bottom lip quavering, her tongue lolling around in search of the roof of her mouth. Instinctively, Dad turned to dive into the row behind them to scoop up the top half of her head, just like a male Jackie Kennedy.

“Mom! No!” I cupped my hands tightly over my ears, but still this wasn’t enough to drown out the deafening gun blasts echoing within my skull.

Blam! Hitting him in mid-air, the Penguin shot Dad square in the ass, sending him sprawling into the aisle.

“Dad! No! Oh God, oh Jesus Christ…” I trembled all over and pissed and shit my pants, this black comedy of errors finally taking its toll on my sanity.

In a last ditch effort to take him down, my homies screamed at the top of their lungs and bum-rushed the Penguin. Before their could tackle him though, he blasted Manny G.’s left leg off at the knee. My homeboy went down like a sack of onions.

“Tweedledee and Tweedledumb…” the Penguin mused, laughing in that tinny voice.

Swiftly tucking the shotgun under his arm, he whipped out a machete from under his coat. Then, just as Z-Boz lunged, he cold stabbed his ass in all the Van Damme pressure points: his forehead, high on his left shoulder, lower on his right shoulder, lower on the left and into his heart, and into both of his sides of his abdomen. Z-Boz closed his eyes and sank to his knees just in time to get his head sliced off for good measure.

All my loved ones, dead.

I’d lost the plot.

And I’m next, I knew. And I’m not saved. I’m going straight to Hell.

Lord knew my parents had taken me to church as a child and had been on me to go back ever since, but I wanted horror, the handiwork of the devil, the job of the damned! Shoot, I had a franchise, son!

At least I was bleeding to death, a precious small mercy. My vision was going dark around the edges. Yet I knew I wouldn’t die just yet.

Pulling out my own hair and keening like a banshee, I screamed my guts out as a conflagration set my brain aflame. The breakdown was like spiders crawling out through my ears. All of my loved ones were dead, and demons were going to fuck my straight ass with no Vaseline in damnation, for all eternity. I just knew it.

That’s when the police entered the theater, guns drawn, screaming at the Penguin, “Down on the ground! Right now!”

Instead, he turned on his heel and stared deep into my eyes, grinning with yellowed snaggleteeth as he stuck the pistol under his chin. Took the coward’s way out. Blam! Bloody gray matter blasted out through the top of his head.

Fuck the Joker. By the time the EMTs reached me, I was cackling like the goddamned Mad Hatter.

And I couldn’t stop.

Saw bugs as big as cars on the walls. Shrieked with more laughter. Whipped out my cock and smeared shit all over my own face.

Some fates were worse than death. Worse than even Hell. Where would I go from here?

YOU CAN’T GO ANYWHERE

Repossession

He carried the woman out of the boot of his car using a fireman’s lift. Her wrinkled hand with knotted arthritic joints grazed his cheek, making his skin crawl. He could almost feel the dirt under her nails infect him. Of course, he wanted to help her but, regardless, he was repelled by her feral state.

The pair were at his cottage in the country just outside town in a sparsely populated neighbourhood where it rained so much the rivers swelled to twice their size in winter and the trees dominated the horizon.

He heaved her onto the sofa bed – the springs groaning, moths fluttering out of the crumpled sheets. The woman sighed and showed signs of surfacing. He bolted all the doors and pulled up a chair opposite her – ready with mace and a rope in case things turned nasty. He rolled himself a cigarette with the artistry of a calligrapher.

As the woman came to, she propped her head on her hand and absorbed the scene – red velvet curtains drawn, stale smell of potatoes, spiders’ webs assembled in every corner. This wasn’t a home, definitely not a bachelor’s pad, but a place where untold pain had been suffered. The man licked another cigarette into a perfectly smooth cylinder and offered it to her. She shook her head with a grimace.

It was then she noticed the rope and mace he’d placed on the floor that was lined with plastic sheeting. Trying to shrug off her nausea she said, “I have nothing and I have no family for you to blackmail. Kill me if you want.”

“I’m not going to kill you, and I don’t want anything from you. I’m here to help.”

“So, you’re one of those twisted freaks who gets off on power. Well do your worst.”

“You haven’t aged well,” he said, flicking through some notes. “Says here you’re thirty-two. You look sixty. I’m guessing the drug you’re on is Fathomalide, right? I’ve seen these aging effects before, but not so pronounced. What are you doing on a posh drug like that anyway?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m your repo man and now the best friend you’ve got.”

“Whatever, mate, I’m past caring. You’ve already taken everything from me.”

She stretched her arms then scratched her cheek, loosening a scab of dry skin that floated down from her face, nestling amongst the folds of the duvet. The man noticed her sagging skin hanging from her throat.

“So, you’re going to get me clean? I’m no normal fiend, I warn you.”

“I’ve seen it all before,” he said, prodding his phone, scrolling through pictures of her belongings. “Give it twenty-four hours, you’ll be a new woman. See, my method is I show the addict pictures that connect with their past. It’s cathartic. Taking drugs blocks the emotions, getting in touch with the past sets the mind free – free from the ties of addiction. Being a repo man gives me the perfect opportunity to access their possessions.”

“You don’t have family a family do you; otherwise why would you care about a random stranger like me? And you ain’t no Mother Teresa either, so what gives?”

The man began to tap his foot – disgruntled. He stood and decided not to defend himself. He went to his room, grumbling under his breath, flopped onto his bed and continued analysing pictures. He uploaded the pictures to his laptop and let them scroll across the screen, one after another.

She began to sweat – a cold fever taking control of her body. She could only wait. She pulled on a single strand of hair, curled it around her finger and then plucked it out. By the time the man returned she’d cleared a tiny bald patch above her forehead. He sat and stared at her, curling his upper lip with disgust.

He pointed at her; “your face is – is disgusting. It’s all peeling, look.”

There were flakes of skin in a small heap beside her, mingled with loose strings of hair.

“Let’s get you into a bath and clean you up.”

As they moved into the bathroom, through the open door of his bedroom the woman could see the pictures displayed on his computer. She spied one photo in particular – a shot of an elderly couple – and as the man helped her fragile frame along, her legs buckled from beneath her. She gasped. The man struggled to maintain their balance, feeling her hip bone dig into his side. He rested her on a stool by the sink, drew the woman a bath, laying out some worn towels and a shrivelled-up piece of soap.

“What just happened? You nearly fell,” he said

“My parents, a picture of my parents. They died recently.”

She wiped tears from her eyes as steam clouded the bathroom mirror. The man turned off the taps and the last few droplets splashed into the body of water.

“Take a long soak. We’ll get through this.”

“Why are you doing this to me?

“Take as long as you need and when you’re clean maybe we can look at some more photos. It’ll quicken the process.”

The woman took off her hoodie, leggings and beaten-up trainers as the man closed the door on her. Her naked body was hunched and blighted with scars from bedbugs that had ravaged her skin. She lowered herself into the water and began to shake, falling into a silent fit, losing control of her senses as time ground by slowly.

An hour later the man opened the bathroom door and chucked inside a clean tracksuit for her to wear. As she returned to the living room the man noticed her appearance was significantly altered – her posture was erect, her skin was taut, her scars healed, the leaden glare in her eyes, gone. She was transformed. Then the man’s attention was drawn to a stench emanating from the bathroom.

“Smells like something died in there,” he said, and he went to investigate. As he peered through the door, scouring the room, everything was normal, until he realised laying by the bundle of the woman’s dirty clothes was another pile, consisting of a mysterious material. An odd fly dipped and dodged about the mass, that on closer inspection looked like flesh. He poked it with his foot. It gave way and rippled. The form reminded him of flaccid, discarded intestines.

“The old me,” the woman said, grinning from ear to ear, peering over his shoulder. “I tell you; I’ve never felt better.”

“What just happened?”

“I thought you’ve seen it all. Come on, let’s look at some more pictures, I want to finish this.”

In a daze the man got a bin bag and scooped up the rotting flesh with rubber gloves and it oozed through his fingers. He recoiled in disgust. He dumped the bag outside as maggots squirmed in the creases of the mushy bundle.

After dinner the man collected his laptop from his bedroom and set it up on the kitchen table allowing the woman to comfortably focus her attention on the photos of the possessions that had once represented her entire world.

“Stop,” she said after a dozen or so photos had drifted by, “let me look at that one in more detail.”

A brown teddy bear was pictured – a toy without any real distinguishing features – and yet the woman reacted to it violently, clutching her stomach as if she’d been stabbed. Within seconds, her belly had swollen, stretching her top out as if she was six months pregnant. She pulled up her hoodie and pressed her hands against the naked bulge, stroking bruised veins that poked out of her skin. She whispered gentle words to the unborn soul. “It’s ok,” she said, “this time will be different.”

The man dragged his fingers through his hair and wore a look of disbelief.

“I’m going to need pears, lots of pears,” she said, eyes glued to her tummy.

“Uh, ok. Listen, do you know what’s going on? Because I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“Yes, it looks that way.”

“Pears.”

“Ok, you really want pears. Give me an hour and I’ll stock up. I have to lock you in because we’re not finished. I hope you understand. But you’ll have your pears soon and we’ll figure this out.”

As he returned, heaving groceries under each arm while juggling his keys, he looked around for the woman but she was nowhere to be seen. Only then did he notice a streak of blood marking the floor. He heard a sharp cry. He dropped his bags and raced into the bathroom. The woman was on the floor, resting her back against the bath, writhing in pain. Her lower body was stripped bare and blood gurgled out of her crotch. Then something slimy, something large forced its way out of her, moving imperceptibly, maybe even breathing.

“You did this,” said the woman, “you.”

“Did what? How?” he said.

“Never mind. It’s dead. I don’t know why I thought it would be any different this time.”

“Please explain, what’s happening.”

“My drug, it eats my insides up. I’ve had one miscarriage after another throughout my life.  Seeing that teddy brought all the memories flooding back – memories of a time when I was preparing to become a mum.”

“We need to keep you off the drug and clean your system out. Maybe looking at some more pictures would help. Trust me I know what drugs can do. I never had a proper family because of them. That’s why I always wanted to be a dad. But it hasn’t happened for me yet.”

“That’s a touching story. Look, I believe you mean well but I don’t want this anymore. I can’t do it.”

She got to her feet, blood and mucus pouring down her thighs and walked into the living room as the man laid a towel over the dead foetus, ready to be binned beside the skin festering in the trash cans outside. Despite her anguish, she looked fresh and full of life. Her hair glossy, teeth white. She had oily skin too and was breaking out in spots around her forehead and temples. She could pass for a teenager.

She picked up the laptop, with the man’s phone still hooked up to it, raised them above her head and sent them crashing to the ground, spreading broken electronics to each corner of the room like scuttling cockroaches. The man dashed out of the bathroom, head in hands, and screamed at her with every sinew in his body, causing the girl to cower. “Why!” he cried, “don’t you see that was our only hope!”

“Hope for who? Maybe there’s hope for you, but not me. At least if I can block any memories that trigger me, I can avoid going through more pain.”

The man took several deep breaths. There was always a solution.

“Listen, let’s gets some sleep, we’re both on edge and I’m sure we’ll see things clearer in the morning.”

That night, while the girl tossed and turned in bed – troubled by sinister dreams of rabid dogs attacking her stillborn baby, the man injected her with a sedative and bound and gagged her. By the time she woke up she found herself seated in a large room illuminated by halogen lights and filled with boxes – some nailed shut, others crowbarred open, with possessions spread across the floor.

“This is your lockup, and these are all your repossessed belongings,” said the man. “Now I’m going to take off your gag. Scream if you want to, the place is deserted.”

Once she was freed the girl said, “What now?”

“Well, we find the next trigger.”

“Where does this end? Please let me go before something worse happens.”

“Don’t look at it that way, we’re on the cusp of something important.”

The man began to sift through boxes, ripping open lids and burrowing deep inside. He fished out clothing, kitchenware, paperwork, and held them up to the girl in the hope that an object would spark a reaction. When he found a child’s watch, with the design of a unicorn floating on a rainbow, the girl sat bolt upright, straining against her ropes.

“This is something, isn’t it?” He said. “Who does it belong to? Did you have a child after all? What is it, tell me?”

Her neck began to shift from one side to the other making a loud cracking sound. The man hid the watch from the girl’s view and her body immediately slumped in relaxation.

“Ok,” he said, “I want you to be entirely honest with me. And if you do, I will let you go. This whole thing will be over for you, I promise. But you have to explain yourself.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, I have other things to do too you know.”

“That watch belonged to my older sister. She died of a brain tumour when I was young. I didn’t really know what was happening, I was too little, but anyway I wouldn’t stop crying after she passed. I cried and cried and my parents couldn’t cope. Their solution was to put me on a new drug at the time, Fathomalide. Well, the crying stopped, but it had side effects – uncontrollable vomiting, joint pain, weird growths on my body – things like that. But my parents kept me on it and I seemed to adjust.”

“But now,” he said, “you’re suffering consequences in ways you could never imagine, right?”

“Right. Now do as you promised, let me go.”

“I did promise, didn’t I. But to be honest it’s just too tempting to find out what will happen next.”

He held out the watch, dangling it by her nose as she began to gag and her body rocked from side to side. Her lips trembled and snot dribbled into her mouth. He moved the watch closer to the girl’s nose, dangling it with a steady hand as the girl fell into contortions.

“What are you? What can I do with you?” he said.

The girl spat at the man’s cheek and he wiped off the saliva with the cuff of his shirt. Suddenly there were ripping sounds. Her tracksuit tore as bones jutted out of cloth – spine, shoulders and knees, poking through like jagged knives. He could see blood dripping from her flesh. She tried to close her eyes, but somehow, she was compelled to maintain her gaze.

“Help me!” she cried.

Then everything changed. A cascade of vomit spewed out of her mouth, knocking him back on his heels sending the watch flying across the room. Then a gel-like substance was excreted from her pores all over her body, casting her in a thick layer of gunge from head to toe. As the gel solidified around her body, he could hear the sound of bones shifting and crunching again.

The man listened as her voice murmured from inside her casing. He could hear the girl sobbing, becoming desperate – a clawing cry that set the man’s nerves on end. He couldn’t hold back any longer. He thrust his arms into the gel and searched around, finally grabbing hold of her as she shuddered with fear. He pulled out the body and a green discharge spurted across the room. He unveiled a child of about two years old, draped in sopping wet rags.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” the man said, wiping the pus from her face. The child took some deep breaths, ceased crying for a few seconds as she took in her environment, her new body and the man staring intently into her eyes. But it didn’t take long before she started up like a car engine and began to wail again.

“Ok,” he said, “what do you want? What shall I do?”

The child was inconsolable. There was the sound of activity outside. It was dawn and the lockup was opening for business.

“We’ve got to get out of here. Hold on to me. I won’t let you go.”

He gathered up the child in his arms and raced to his car before his bleary-eyed co-workers could discover any wrongdoing. The man placed the child in the passenger seat and strapped her in. Still crying, he held her by the shoulders and said, “This doesn’t fit but it’ll have to do for now. Listen, you belong to me now. I can look after you in the ways your parents never could. You will need me like I need you. I know I treated you badly but one day you’ll understand why it had to be done. So, let’s both start over. Just please, please stop crying.”

They drove off into the morning streets, sun nestling behind a block of trees, casting a long shadow in the man’s rear-view mirror.  They had no place where they had to be, nothing tying them down. They would find their own way, in their own time – into the burning heart of the future.