Some Bright Morning

The gun feels warm. I keep pulling it from the bottom drawer of the desk and holding it in my hand. Wrapped inside a plastic bag. I wrapped the gun in the bag because I didn’t want to see it just lying there exposed. I didn’t want it looking like a dead body every time I opened the drawer. The gun belonged to my father. He was a policeman before I was born. Somewhere I have a photograph of him standing out in the front yard wearing his uniform. I keep looking out the window. The sun’s brightly shining and there are countless birds scattered all over the lawn.

Last night I was at the Grand Palace eating egg rolls. I mixed sweet and sour sauce and hot mustard together. I didn’t go into the restaurant but just sat in the bar eating my egg rolls and drinking some beers. I kept watching this dark-haired waitress and I wanted to get her number. She seemed to smile at me whenever I looked at her. I asked the bartender what he knew about her and he kind of chuckled. He told me I should forget about her. When I asked him why he told me because she had a boyfriend and he was a very large man. I thanked the bartender for the heads-up and ordered another beer.

When I was ready to leave the dark-haired waitress came over to me and slipped me a piece of paper. I opened my hand and looked at the paper. It had a phone number written on it along with the name Iris. I glanced at the bartender but his back was turned and he was mixing someone a drink. I caught up to the waitress and waved the paper at her. I said, hey, I don’t think I want this. I saw the look on her face. I said, I heard you had a boyfriend. Who told you that, she asked me. I told her what the bartender had said. Oh god, she said, he thinks I’m going to go out with him. He keeps asking me but I keep turning him down. I see, I said, then I followed it up with an, okay. I told her thanks and she gave me another smile. This one I quickly snatched away from her and put into my pocket. I wanted to keep it there until I got home. Then, when everything was quiet, I’d pull it out and hold it in my hand and look at it, over and over, again.

***

The gun feels heavy. The light falling through the window hurting my eyes because I had too much to drink last night. The birds screaming in my ears. Last night I called Iris and she told me she had to work but, if I wanted to, I could meet her at the restaurant around eight. When I got there I took a seat at the bar. It was the same bartender and he smiled at me and asked me if I was here for more egg rolls. I told him I was meeting someone and I saw the look in his eyes.

I heard Iris behind me and when I turned to face her she made a point of giving me a big hug and laughing loud enough so that everybody could hear her. She turned to the bartender and gave him a smile. Mike, can I get a margarita, she said. The bartender looked at me. I couldn’t read his face completely but he didn’t seem happy. What about you, he said. I told him, a beer, I guess.

We moved over to one of the tables and Mike, the bartender, brought us our drinks. I said, so where do you want to go. Iris sipped her margarita and looked at me over the rim of her glass. She said, I thought we could just stay here, if that’s alright. I took a drink of my beer. What about Mike, I said. Iris put her hand on my arm and laughed. I glanced over at the bartender. He was behind the bar watching us but trying not to make it look so obvious. When Iris waved him over to order another drink she leaned closer to me and smiled. I didn’t like where this was going so I just decided I was going to get drunk. I ordered two shots and another beer and I told Mike to keep them coming.

Later on I grabbed Iris and pulled her to me giving her a rough kiss. Hey, she said, easy. When Mike brought us more drinks he slammed them down on the table. I threw back the shot and chased it with some beer. Then I jumped up and jerked Iris by the arm trying to make her stand but she broke loose with a pained squeal and slumped back in her chair. I said, Mike, and he turned around. I gave him a big grin. I said, hey, buddy, she’s all yours, and I turned without looking back at them and walked out the door.

I drove around for awhile trying to find something good on the radio. It was a clear night and the air was cool and inviting, especially, if you had some place to go. But if you were alone it was just like all those other nights, struggling against some inner restlessness you could never quite define until your mind and your body, finally, surrendered themselves to sleep. When I pulled into my driveway I turned off the car and just sat there in the darkness and the silence. Felt the waves of warmth rolling through my head and I began to laugh. I laughed as I got out of the car and I kept on laughing as I stumbled my way into the house.

***

The gun feels like a bird fluttering in my hand. Sometimes, when I’m away from home, I think about the gun. I imagine it sleeping in the darkness all alone. The bottom drawer of the desk silent as a tomb. I had cap guns when I was young and I remember the smell of the smoke. The taste of it in my mouth when I absently sucked on the end of the barrel. I remember when my friends and I played with guns. How we made up this rule you had to count to ten whenever you got shot before you could get back up again. It was funny how all day long we kept dying and returning from the dead, over and over, again.

I remember buying rolls of caps. I think there were five rolls to a box and you could get five boxes in one package. Sometimes, instead of loading them in my guns I just rolled the caps out on the sidewalk and used a hammer to hit them. Sometimes, I’d take a whole roll of caps and hit them with the hammer. It made a loud blast that left a ringing in my ears. I remember taking ants crawling past me on the walk and putting them under the caps and blowing their tiny bodies apart. One time I caught this big black ant as it was trying to climb up my arm and when I put it under the caps the explosion blew off its head.

I never felt like I was a terrible person for doing this. I never thought I was doing anything wrong. I remember all the summer evenings, when it would start to get dark, and we would run around catching lightning bugs. I don’t know what we wanted them for. I guess we thought there was something magical about their blinking lights. Maybe we longed for something bright like that shining from inside our own bodies. I don’t know. Some people liked to kill them and smear the light across your arm. The pieces of light sticking to you, glowing on your skin, but only for a moment. Sometimes, we caught the lightning bugs and put them in glass jars. We always made sure we poked holes in the lids. We stuck pieces of grass in there and, sometimes, leaves, thinking that’s what they wanted. But the next morning we always found them dead, lying in the bottom of the jar, their lights no longer shining.

***

The gun feels sticky against my skin. I can sense the gun’s desperation and that’s why it keeps trying to cling to me. I keep moving it back and forth from one hand to the other but it doesn’t seem to help. Sometimes, the gun spends endless days inside the drawer waiting for me to return. The gun waiting for me to bring it out into the light, again. Sometimes, the gun catches the light just right and the metal of the gun seems to shine. I often wonder how the gun feels having to wait for so long. Does the gun ever get afraid and think I’m not coming back at all? I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for something good to happen.

Sometimes, I like to pretend I’m a lone gunman taking a group of people hostage. I find myself in the middle of some big city, suddenly, robbing a bank. I’m waving the gun in the air and telling everyone to get down on the floor. I keep screaming at them and telling them to move faster. It’s like something from out of a movie and when one guy tries to move I hit him in the face with the gun. The blood runs out of his nose and covers the floor. I can hear some of the women crying. I tell them, it’s going to be alright, as long as they do what I say, no one will get hurt. I listen to the sounds of their breathing and I know they’re afraid.

When you hold a gun in your hand you can make people do things they wouldn’t normally do. And I wonder how it feels having someone stick a gun in your face and not knowing whether you’re going to live or die. Sometimes, fear can make you collapse or it can spur you on to do something great. I’m trying to recall some moment in my life when I felt the most afraid but nothing comes to mind. Then, the birds start chirping, louder and louder, right outside my window. And I wonder if there’s any way for me to tell from the sounds they’re making whether or not they’re happy or sad.

Sometimes, when I go to bed at night I hold a pillow close to me like I’m holding the body of my lover. And I float there in the darkness thinking about other places and times. But when I move, again, my lover disappears and it’s only a pillow I’m holding. And I toss the pillow away and rollover, turning, my back on it, before trying to fall into sleep. And I hear the radio playing jazz, softly, in the dark, above my head.

There have often been times when I was convinced there must be something wrong with me because I had no other explanation for the way my life was going. Now, it doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore. I guess you just get older and things no longer seem as important as they once were. Or, maybe, something inside you, finally, decides to quit struggling after so many years of futility and it crawls softly in to some dark corner where it can curl up and die.

***

The gun feels nothing. I know it doesn’t care whether I live or I die. I lift up the gun and hold it loosely in my hand. I shiver and the sun comes through the window trying to make me warm. I see the bullets in the bottom of the drawer. I don’t remember when I put them there but, now, when I pull the drawer open they roll around bouncing against one another. Sometimes, I see colors and I don’t know whether they’re inside my head or just floating in the air in front of my eyes. Pieces of red and blue and, sometimes, yellow and green. I have no idea what any of them mean. Maybe they were some kind of warning arriving much too late.

Sometimes, I think about what would’ve happened if I had gotten everything I wanted. Would that have really been such a good thing? And I wonder, sometimes, how long it takes before something starts to make sense. Maybe for some people it never does. And I think about my father working hard his entire life and, in the end, what did he have to show for it? His heart wearing out and, finally, giving up. He died, one morning, in his sleep.

I gaze out the window on a Sunday morning and witness two blackbirds fighting. I watch them as they tumble through the air all tangled together before hitting the ground and separating. They rush toward each other then a noise frightens them and they disappear into the sky. I open the chamber of the gun and touch it with my fingers. I spin it around, slowly, a couple of times before picking the bullets up, one by one, and slipping them, silently, inside.

The phone starts ringing. The phone’s in the bedroom so I can’t look at the caller ID and see who’s calling me. But I don’t feel like talking to anyone, anyway. After the fourth ring it stops and, I know, the answering machine’s picking it up. The answering machine’s down in the basement too far away for me to hear whether or not the person calling leaves me a message. I look out the window again and, this time, I see a robin standing in the grass close to the house. There’s a worm hanging from its beak struggling to get free but it’s too late. As I watch the robin cocks its head as if it’s listening to something. It waits there for just a moment and I wonder what it is the robin, finally, hears before deciding to fly away.

THE END

The Pig Man, Sleeps

Everyone called him The Pig Man, but no one really knew the truth. His misshapen face, distorted by hate with that unsettling smile curling downwards, disturbed even the jaded, embattled warhorses. His scarred skull, shaven and pock-marked by blurred memories of bar fights and all those shattered, drunken knuckles.

On D Block, we all assumed it was because he was missing some of the fingers on his right hand and it looked like a pig trotter, but I suppose it could be anything. In here, there are no definitive answers, just rumours, and half-truths: like the time they found his ex-wife ritualistically executed in the bathroom, wrapped in lace and fairy lights, crucified, with her cunt pulled inside out. No one knew how he lost his fingers, but most of us were convinced that the truth was far more devastating than anything we could fabricate or conjecture during scraping hours, encased in concrete.

Once, while protectively hunched over his lunch tray, cradling it like it was a newborn, a guy in B Block told me it was because of his depraved sexual obsessions, deriving sordid gratification from exploiting and coercing underage girls to perform lewd and libidinous acts on each other with domestic kitchenware.

He would wrap them round and round in black electrical tape, recording their screams and playing them endlessly to the little pink ones waiting in the room next door, with the sparkly white walls, faces all painted, nervously twisting at the ends of their hair, twiddling their little toes in the luxurious, red carpets.

There are so many whispered myths circulating the halls of this place, involving his increasingly graphic and pornographic acts involving screwdrivers and sensitive, fleshy orifices. There were those whispers that he abducted a teenager who cut him up at the lights. Rumour has it; he cut off his eyelids and tied him to a chair for eight straight nights, with a halogen bulb burning each eyeball. We can only speculate about what other seditious horrors the poor kid was subjected to, but we are told it involved battery acid and perpetual hours of sharpened objects.

Even the screws stay out of his way. It is now a matter of Rec yard folklore, when one misguided, shiny-shoed prisonguard made the grave mistake of disrespecting him in the mess hall. He was found the next morning, mysteriously impaled with a piece of sharpened wood ripped from the floor, dangling from the ceiling, with his intestines torn out and wrapped around his neck like a grotesque talismanic necklace. No one will maintain eye contact with him for any longer than is necessary, even the seasoned ones, who have to similarly maintain their fearful reputation within these walls.

You would smell him before you saw him, the curiously enchanting scent of ingrained sweat and cherry liquorice. He smelled intoxicating, lethal. Always chewing on the end of an elaborately inscribed fountain pen that he insisted on carrying around with him, some suspected to make him look intellectual, but the truth was that it constituted a proficient piece of weaponry for puncturing jugulars. Instead of exercising in the yard, he would sit and read tattered books of poetry, smuggled from the paltry stocks of the prison library. He would quote from them regularly and that was when you knew that someone was going to get cut. Recitation always preceded violence.

One morning, with the sun casting an incandescent halo around his radiating cranium, he cast a shadow across the book that I had clutched in my desperate fist and he softly whispered “There is no greater sorrow than to recall our times of joy in wretchedness”.

His voice was deceptively high-pitched, an almost breathy lisp; with no intonation or timbre. Cold, and unforgiving; sharpness personified. That was the day before he was found in his cell at headcount with the remains of one of his sycophantic disciples, who had been repeatedly raped and disembowelled with the plastic edge of a strip light.

Recently, he has taken to walking around with both of his thumbs tucked under his chin, ostensibly to avoid the inevitable onslaught of makeshift blades from reaching the pungent, moist folds of his neck.

Everyone became a target when their lib date was coming up, but for him, there was always a frantic successor lurking with intent and ambition, waiting for the emperor to fall. He was never getting out of here, there was no chance he would ever leave this place, these walls would eventually be his coffin.

Frequently, he would be found, perambulating around the halls of his hallowed temple, in the dark hours, standing in doorways, watching the other inmates sleep, with his weapons concealed, gently caressing his pulsating, weeping erection. Silently, he hates their chests rising and falling, counting the breaths entering and leaving their lungs, quietly resenting the inconceivable audacity to continue their wretched existence, counting the breaths until their eventual liberation.

Then there was that night, years from the twisting agony of those monotonous walls, after one too many filthy, finger-marked glasses of venomous bourbon in a piss-soaked bar, and one too many squalid bathroom finger fucks, he catches a glimpse, of that self same poisonous smile, in the reflection on the surface of a fractured mirror.

The girl was so hopelessly inebriated, that she didn’t even know she was dying, even as she stumbled on precarious high heels, blood seeping from under her sluttish cerise vest. This snivelling creature didn’t realise that her throat was sliced, and as the cum runs down her legs, the icy, metallic dread begins to slip into her stomach. And, he smiles.

They call him The Pig Man, but no one really knows why. But he lives inside the mirror, staring back at you, with his fatal, infinite eyes, pleading with you to release him, to just let him out. He is a prisoner on the other side of your face, on the inside: and he is watching everything you do, and the protective meat mask that you have built, cannot last forever.

He is called The Pig Man, and he likes the way that you kill

and kill and kill.

Sympathy for the Demoness

Cedric Dingle sat lounging in his recliner, scarfing down a bag of Fritos and watching reruns of Two and a Half Men. As the kid on TV made yet another fart joke, Cedric started cracking up, holding his bulbous belly and spewing half-chewed chips from his mouth.

Ashra sneered in disgust at her master’s ever-piggish behavior. She scooted a little away from where she knelt beside the recliner, trying to avoid the flinging Fritos. The hardwood floor was starting to hurt her knees again, her master’s laughter was giving her a headache, and all the while she’d been thinking to herself: There’s Hell, and then there’s hell.And she so yearned to go back to the former.

Ashra still didn’t know what was more inconceivable: the fact that this tubby, greasy, robe-sporting oaf was actually a well-versed sorcerer, or that she had allowed herself to be enslaved by him.

In the pits of Hell, she had been renowned for two things, above all else: her dark, demonic beauty, and her knack for dragging souls down into the underworld for their everlasting punishment. She had clawed her way up to Earth thousands of times in as many years and never once failed to collect her quarry—until Cedric Dingle became the soul in question.

She’d been told by the head of her host that he was damned, but not that it was for his practice of the dark arts; instead, she found it out in the worst way imaginable. No sooner had she popped up in his New Jersey apartment than he bound her with his black magic, and all because he had managed to learn her name. In searching for ways to save his imperiled soul, the scummy little worm had found it mentioned in some ancient book of lore; and any mortal with knowledge of a demon’s true name could make that demon into their slave, with the proper spells. With that nugget in mind, he’d waited for her arrival. And so, by the laws of the universe laid down by Heaven and its accursed Creator, Dingle was given complete power over her the moment he said a little spell and proclaimed her name.

Since that time, he had used her to his every possible benefit. He’d sent her after those he considered his enemies, to kill and maim them in various fashions. She’d flambéed his ex-wife, decapitated an old boss of his, and ripped the heart out of a guy who always got Dingle’s order wrong at the local taco truck.

After that, he’d started demanding her to do menial tasks about his apartment, like his laundry, his cleaning, and the cooking. And, of course, there were his repeated lustful demands. He’d defiled her smooth scarlet skin with the sausages he called fingers, had made her kneel before him as he laid hands to her wonderfully long horns, forcing her to . . .

She wanted to wretch, remembering it all—and to sever his genitals with her nails and stick them where he kept stuffing those damned, disgusting Fritos.

Dingle crumpled up the emptied chip bag and tossed it to the floor. “I’m still hungry,” he said to her with a smug smile. “Make me a sandwich.”

Ashra bowed her head, picked up the trash, and stood, heading off into the kitchen and silently fuming.

“Oh,” he called back to her, “and after I’m done eating, whadaya say I plunge myself into the fires of your hell-holes for a while?”

He giggled as she ignored him. She opened the fridge and pulled out the rest of the ham she’d cooked for him the night before. She grabbed a kitchen knife and started slicing into the meat to make his sandwich, pretending it was his gut she was carving up, instead.

She was nearly done with her lowly task when she heard an explosion sound out in the living room, followed by Dingle’s high-pitched scream. She bolted back into the room to see what the matter was, knife still in hand.

Dingle’s TV had been demolished, its pieces scattered everywhere, and in its place—and to Ashra’s amazement—stood the Devil himself, wafting away the smoke stirred up from his hellish portal.

Dingle cowered at the sight of him, sinking into his recliner as the Dark One looked them over with a haughty stare. His seven foot, dark-suited frame towered over them. A thin tail flicked about behind him, weaving and twirling like a playful viper. His horns were extravagantly lengthy, sharp, and pitch black, their tips almost scratching the ceiling.

Dingle started making wordless, pathetic noises, holding his hands out to the red giant before him in either defense or reverence.

“Quiet, slug,” the Devil ordered with a smooth, bass voice. “I’m not here for you. But I think I’ll have your soul soon enough.” He flashed the man a knowing smile.

The King of the Pits turned to Ashra. “I’ve come for you. The failure.”

“My Lord . . .” Ashra spoke up, her voice fluttering with dread. “Forgive me for my failure! But it wasn’t my fault! The mortal –“

“Made you look like a fool,” the Devil cut in with a hiss. “And because of it, you’ve forced me to personally step in on the matter. Your ineptitude and enslavement to this meat-sack is a stain upon the name of the Hosts. My chasms echo with cackling, and it is you who they laugh at! You’ve shamed your unholy duty, and I will not let that go unpunished.”

“Please, my Lord!” Ashra implored. “I’ve served you well –“

“And you shall never again serve the glorious cause of Hell. From here on out, you’re an outcast to Perdition. If you ever see Hell again, you will be at the mercy of its many pains—not one of its heroes. Until that time, you’ll spend the remainder of your days here, on Earth. And if you’re going to live among the mortals, we can’t have you looking like that.”

The Devil snapped his fingers and a tremor went through Ashra’s body, making her double over. As her face started to tingle with the sensation, she turned and looked into a mirror upon the wall. She was mortified to see that her reflection was quickly changing. Her luscious red skin was turning waxy and white. Her glorious and cherished horns were sinking into her skull, becoming feeble nubs before disappearing entirely. And her straight-black hair was turning . . . blonde!

In seconds, every hint of her lovely and demonic self was gone, leaving her looking like a wannabe GAP model, instead. She screamed at the horrible thing she’d become.

“You’re human, now,” her former lord said, taking her in with a sadistic satisfaction. “And as such, you have no title, no power . . . and no name.” At this last part, the Devil had glanced to Dingle, a smirk on his red face. “Ashra is no more.”

He gave a chuckle and another snap of his fingers. A pyre rose up and enveloped the Devil one instant, and in the next, both it and the Dark One were gone.

The former demoness spun about, staring in wide-eyed despair at the spot where he’d stood, the floorboards now bearing a slight scorch mark. A veil of smoke hung in the air; she looked through it to where Dingle sat, sweating and dumbfounded.

It was then that she remembered the knife in her hand. Her grip on it tightened as she began to step towards Dingle, who gazed at her like a cornered mouse to a hungry cat.

“Hey! Hey now! I command you to stop and put that down!”

But neither his words nor his will had an effect on her. His power over her was gone, and she kept coming towards him.

“You did this to me, you worm!” She extended the knife, letting it dance in Dingle’s view. He stared at it, trying to back away in his recliner.

She looked down to his crotch, remembering all her violent little fantasies under her servitude. She had a pretty good idea of where to start getting her revenge.

“I’m gonna feed you something after all, “master,”” she giggled maniacally. “It’s just a quick, tiny snack; we have so much else to do before the night is through, after all . . .”

She leapt at him and started cutting. Before the night was through, she learned something that made her new existence the littlest bit more bearable: just because she was no longer a demon, it didn’t mean that she couldn’t send someone screaming to Hell.

Switzerland

Not two minutes after slipping out of my lover’s peerlessly hospitable vagina, my traitorous NON-SEX thoughts plunged me into a recurring, ultra-violent daydream.

So with her magnificently rounded body tucked against my body and her damp arms tangled in my damp arms on a balmy Saturday afternoon with fuck-all to do and the time to do it with, I played out this ultra violence (I had no choice), shivered, then tried my damnedest to remember where my penis had just been.

In order best to do this and not fall prey to the pitiless, mutually unexclusive ecstasies of copulating and killing, I needed a little more than the usual post-coital peace and quiet—needed it like a clown needs the horror—those delicious moments when two satisfied and naked beings don’t become one, but less than one, zero, thoughtless.

Thoughtlessness is the point.

My pregnant lover, however, had other points. While running a ripe finger up and down my equally ripe ribcage, she whispered:

“What are you thinking?”

That question!

That baleful, impossible to answer question!

Yet, in intrepid quest of THE gapingly open and brutally truthful relationship, I had tried to answer it.

Tried and failed. Miserably. Continuously.

Continuous miserable failure tarred and feathered with acute mental anguish, confidence-smashing embarrassment, and hope-crushing humiliation.

Because you can step into the same failure twice.

Having stepped enough, I promised myself I wouldn’t aspire to fail better, but differently, fundamentally so.

That is: I would never, ever, under any earthly or unearthly circumstances, answer honestly—or even try to answer honestly—that backstabbing question again.

Instead, I’d dodge it, defuse and deflect it with the utmost sincerity and conviction, comme il faut.

Lying.

That’s right: Survivalesque, sanity- and relationship-saving fibbery, the kind certified by the Greeks.

But I, unfortunately, must have experienced a serious cerebral malfunction—a potentially lethal (to my most present permanent relationship, mind you, no one’s exaggerating round here) lapse of good common horsesense—because there they were, the frank words spewing from my face.

“We’re in the metro, alone and savoring the rare two and only two of us when a man comes down the stairs and ruins it. A big man. A big and hostile man who, without one word of warning, attacks us. Screams. Horrible, blood-curdling screams. I’m not afraid, I’m angry. I’m enraged like a wild immaculate animal, like I always hoped I would be. The attacker’s shocked. You’re shocked. He tries to run but I catch him, beat him to death with my bare hands. You remember what Sailor Ripley did to Bob Ray Lemon in the beginning of Wild at Heart? Against those marble steps? Well, this is mushier, brainier, and I feel no remorse when the police arrive. I feel only a… a certain pleasure.”

My lover snuggled closer, spoke the following words in the softest, most intimate tones imaginable.

“I’ve lost my sense of purpose. I don’t know who I am or who you are or what this growing thing in my belly means. I wonder if this is the end of independence, adventure, possibility, me. I used to do things, want things. I used to see the world, confront it. I’m scared. I don’t want to become one of those mothers, those women, those wives. I will never marry you.”

“Actually,” I said, retreating as fast as I possibly could back to solid, trustworthy ground, “I was thinking about our trip to Switzerland.”

My lover’s eyes widened. “Me too!”

“To tell you the full, God’s honest truth,” I said (we had never set foot in Switzerland), “I was thinking about our baby and snowcapped mountains and universal peace.”

“I was too! I was!”

“It’s uncanny.”

“But no,” she said. “It’s not—not at all—not if you stop and think about it because we should always be thinking about peace, mountains, and babies.”

“You’re right! You’re absolutely right! But—”

“Yes?”

“—are you aware what must follow?”

My lover’s face was not only attentive, revolutionary, and doomed—in other words: Wajdaian—but achingly beautiful.

“For the good of the tribe?” I asked.

“Austerity?” she guessed.

“Bingo!” I said. “Full—Ferocious—Stop! We NEVER ask about thinking again!”

She wholeheartedly agreed, and the atmosphere, I noticed, had become jubilant and frenzied—a certain twenty-first century cultishness in the air—very warm, fuzzy, and comfortable in a self-righteousy zealoty kind of way, so I frowned, got my face nice and ominous, whipped it back to prehistory, gunned it for the primordial ooze.

“But that’s not enough.”

“Oh no?”

“Not even close.”

I bared teeth and snarled before becoming cheerfully pedantic. “They can’t just exist, my dear… They must achieve a transparent real-talk regularity any addlebrained five-year-old could grasp.”

“They?”

“Why, our sacred human values, of course. Which means from this moment forth, till death or drudgery do us part, we are to live as if we are from Switzerland.”

“In Switzerland!” my lover enthusiastically corrected.

“WRONG!!!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “We must BE-COME Switzerland: peace-loving, snowcapped, baby-friendly!”

My lover had nothing to add or subtract from that cockamamie declaration, but after a few silent and heavenly moments in each other’s arms—too little too late—she whispered: “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I whispered back, just as tenderly despite my gut being carpet-bombed by the ever-present threat of thought.

“For asking about what you were thinking. It’ll never happen again, I promise. What a silly goose I was. Do you forgive me?”

“Nonsense,” I said, relieved. “I was lying anyway.”

“You were?”

“Of course I was. Forget it. Never happened.”

“I knew it! I knew you were lying!”

“And?” I asked, my voice unexpectedly—contradictorily—on the Hoboken side of needy.

“What?”

“Were you, you know, lying too?”

“Of course I was,” she said. “I’m always lying. Everything I say around here is a bald-faced lie.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Yes, God,” she said. “How do you feel? We can ask each other how we feel, can’t we?”

“Are we savages?”

“Well?”

“Like a believer,” I said.

My lover raised her eyebrows.

“Doubtless and serene,” I said, having been knick knack paddywhacked by the aforementioned atmosphere. “Unfuckingtouchable.”

“You’re wonderful,” she said.

“So can I ask you something then? Because, and I’m not the least bit ashamed to admit this, I was more than a little taken aback—I was, yes I was, damn near agoggled—by what you said on page three.”

“Anything. Except, you know…”

“Will you or won’t you?”

“Will I or won’t I what?”

“Be my wife.”

My lover smiled a smile midway between little slut and Mephistopheles. I was excited too, had been swirling my fingers around her benevolent nether regions for some time now. She said:

“I love you, don’t I?”

My eyes misted over.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, suddenly—genuinely—concerned. “What is it, mon chou?”

“There’s nothing more than that, is there?”

“Love?”

“Love, love, love,” I crooned, feeling closer than ever to the pure, neutral, mountainous ideal, but my fiancée appeared pensive again. She paused for (I counted with dread) thirty-seven seconds. Then:

“Well,” she said, “there izzzz Switzerland.”

Thus, and against all odds, she managed to read my deepest, darkest mind, so surprised I slipped my hungry happy dick back into the only language I truly believed in.

Luv

He was making that noise. The one he always tried not to make when he was close. Tonight, though, the wine had stuffed Kit’s head full of cotton. He couldn’t hear himself grunting and squeaking at the same time. Theresa was on top with her eyes closed. He didn’t know it, but every time she opened them, she would glance at the clock on the nightstand. He let out one final caribou call, and it was over.

Theresa hopped off Kit and headed for the walk-in closet, covering her small butt cheeks with her bony hands as she went. She grabbed her fluffy, mint robe off the back of the door and slid it on.

“Wow.” Kit said, “I mean, wow.”

Panting, he grabbed the sheet and wiped his brow, expectantly.

“I mean, wasn’t that… how was it for you?” He said as he slowly raised the pitch of his voice.

“What time will you be home from work tomorrow?” she said as she threw some clothes out of the closet, the slide of the hangers muffling her voice.

Kit looked down at his stiff penis, then his hairy chest, and answered, “Six.”

“Ok well I need you to take Zeek to practice after, and then on your way, I need you to grab some milk, and coffee, and diapers.”

Each item on the list accompanied by a white shirt or sock, flying out of the closet.

“And don’t forget to buy the Huggies, not Luvs, I know the Luvs are cheaper, but they always leak. Last time you forgot to buy the right kind, and then Bailey had a blow-out while I was at the Pinner’s conference. I had to throw away that cute dress my mom bought her for her birthday. I’m planning on meatloaf for dinner, but I need eggs for that, so you’ll need to buy them from the store. Get the brown ones, not the white ones, the brown one’s are better. I’ve gotta wash Zeek’s uniform. Make sure he wears the right socks. Ok?” As her words increased in speed, the clothes began to fly higher, tracing a rainbow over Kit’s lingering erection. He watched as the clothes continued to arch and land at the foot of the bed in a rhythmic beat which accompanied her stream of anxiety. Kit wondered if she had heard him, so he asked again, “Wasn’t that amazing? I was hoping you’d be a little more…relaxed.”

“The sex? Yeah, of course. Did you hear me?” She responded distantly from inside the closet. Yeah, the sex, he thought.

“What are you doing?” He said, raising his voice. He opened his mouth and tried to yawn to clear his ears.

“Are you even listening to me?” she said, popping her head out the closet for a brief moment and then popping back in. “You keep doing this, Kit. You keep not listening to me. I feel like I have to do everything.”

“I’m listening—” he said, “But what the hell are you doing?!” He stretched his jaw and wiggled it from side to side with a finger simultaneously shaking in his ear.

“Laundry. I’m separating the whites. What the hell did you think I’m doing?”

Kit reached underneath the covers and felt on his pubic bone. It was still hot.

“Nothing,” he said with a downward slope in his voice. “I just thought we could lay here a bit and just…”

“Kit,” Theresa snapped, “The diapers? Do you want me to write it down? I can’t lie down. I’ve gotta get this done by tomorrow. I have a Room Mother’s meeting at six, so I need you to remember all this.”

“No, I’ve got it,” he said, moving towards the pile of clothes. He picked up an undershirt from the pile and wiped her off his thighs. “Luvs.”

“You’re disgusting.” She commented, “At least I’m washing that. And no, Huggies, Kit, we need Huggies. Just think of it this way: You can always hug someone, you can’t always love them. Huggies, always.”

“Hugs without Luvs. Got it.” He said, searching for his pajama pants.

“I’ll write it down,” she condescended, coming out of the closet and scooping the whites in her thin arms.

She left the room and Kit stood pant-less, watching her drop socks on her way out. He went into the closet to find pants, but as fate would have it, his eyes caught the white dress she liked to wear on special occasions, the one with the lace back, the one she had worn on their anniversary. He took it off the hanger. He examined the label, Dry Clean Only, it said. He heard Theresa slam the dryer door open as it hit the wall. I’ve gotta move that over more, he thought.

His mind flooded with the stressful thoughts of tomorrow. The ever-growing list of things to get done, the diapers, and milk, and the something that he had to get from the store. He took the dress in both hands and twisted it like a towel waiting to be snapped. He held it taut. He held it with intention. He held it stiff and unappreciatively. And instinctively, Kit moved that pretty dress in a flossing motion between his legs, rubbing and wiping, letting it soak up all the evidence from five minutes before.

“Coffee.” He said aloud while he continued to floss.

“And something else…” He smiled.

His pantswere in the corner of the closet next to his shoe rack. Fuck it, he thought. And he slid the dress back on its hanger and slid his pants on. He made his way back to his side of the bed and waited there, watching the door, wondering why Theresa was taking so long. He turned off the light and rolled on his side, watching the clock, counting the seconds. He yawned and his ears popped, amplifying the sound of Theresa muttering “I do everything.” He listened to the washing machine rumble and Theresa’s footsteps up and down the stairs as she collected dropped socks from the floor.

Lizzie Cleary Had A Bad Day

Elizabeth Cleary woke up in a bad mood. Her husband would have attributed it to PMS, as men so often blamed every foul thing on, but it wasn’t the reason. If anything, he was more responsible for her bad mood than her hormones.

“Do you need to take a shower first?” she asked him. He stared at the ceiling, not speaking to her. Elizabeth looked at him a while longer, waiting for him to answer, but he was clearly still mad at whatever her husband was always mad about, suffering from PMS more than she ever was.

When he still didn’t answer, she got up from the bed, closing her book and lying it on the nightstand. “You know, just because you’re mad doesn’t mean you can’t answer a simple question,” she told him.

He continued staring at the ceiling, refusing to answer her or even look in her direction.

Being a royal prick, as usual.

Elizabeth growled under her breath and left the room. She started to head downstairs when she passed the twin’s room. She noticed the light beneath the door first. Rolling her eyes, she turned the knob. “You both know it’s way past your bedtime!” she yelled.

Sammy was laying on the floor with a toy car in his hand. Elizabeth found herself smiling at her sleeping child. Fallen asleep while playing, it seemed.

“Played yourself out, huh, little man,” she whispered, lifting him up carefully and tucking him into bed. She looked under the blankets of Jack’s bed, but he wasn’t there.

“Jack?” she called, but in a soft voice. “Where are you?”

She looked under his bed, but Jack wasn’t there. Down on her knees, she sighed. Hiding in his closet again, she figured, getting up and heading to the door.

There was a hole that went straight through to the other side of his closet door. She held her temples for a moment, to keep from scolding her children. Once again, they had been poking holes into things they shouldn’t be.

I’ll see if the royal prick will talk to me long enough to get onto the boys tomorrow morning.

She opened the door and her anger melted at the sight of his sleeping form. Slumped against a basket of toys, clutching his blanket, Jack had fallen asleep while hiding. She lifted him as well, carrying him carefully to the bed and tucking him in.

She looked at both of her children. They looked so sweet and innocent now. In the morning, she knew she would wake up and they would be terrors again, but for now, they looked like sleeping angels. It was moments like that that reminded Elizabeth of why she loved her children.

She crept out of the room as quietly as possible, not closing the door all the way in case the boys woke up in the middle of the night. They would be scared of being locked in a dark room, wake up screaming, and she knew her husband wouldn’t get up to calm them down.

Elizabeth walked downstairs to get her clothes from the laundry. Tomorrow she would put them up, along with a load of towels she had in the dryer. Today had been a bad day and folding and hanging clothes had been the last thing on her mind.

All she wanted to do was take a shower. She climbed the stairs again, quiet as possible so she wouldn’t wake the boys, and back into the room. She didn’t look at her husband as she passed by. She ignored him completely.

He was cheating on her. She knew he was. Because she had married a bad guy, because he told her he had cheated on her, because he was still here, despite having told her so.

Maybe I should get a divorce.

Elizabeth stopped in front of the mirror and stared at her face. She once was so beautiful. Men had begged her for her number, and she had decided to marry the first jerk that knocked her up. She had given up all of her dreams to love a man who would cheat on her.

She stepped into the shower and began cleaning herself. She was surprised when she stared at the drain and saw blood mixed in her water. She even laughed a little.

Maybe that idiot was right. I started my period a week early.

She laughed as she finished taking a shower. She was even smiling a bit when she came back into the room and got into bed beside her husband. She looked at him, stared at him for a long time.

Something was missing, an image she knew she needed to see, but couldn’t. She just smiled it away, leaning over and kissing his cheek. “I still love you,” she told him. When he didn’t answer, she turned to her nightstand. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

She looked at the gun on the nightstand, a moment of recognition coming over her. Three bangs, one after another in her mind. She looked at her husband again, felt the truth creeping up her spine, and then shook her head, placing the gun back in the drawer.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she told him, turning off the lamp and slipping beneath the blankets.

Sparkles in the Skin Museum

I stand for hours glaring at myself in the mirror, just trying to figure out what I am looking at. All these plastic normal people are so obsessed with attaching labels, categorising, compartmentalising, sorting, colour coding and identifying. I like to be a little bit of everything, all mixed up in a little chaotic bundle.

I carefully consider each little lump of meat and flesh and skin that makes up my body and my face. All those blood vessels and organs and skin and cells, glued together so haphazardly. I never understand why these normal people have to give something a name, just so that they can understand it: Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis.

I try extremely hard to be normal, or at least considered remotely similar to normal. When I feel like I don’t fit in, like a place for me hasn’t been carved out yet, I seriously consider hanging myself, or driving off a bridge.

I used to have a pretty little kitten, called Hugo, it used to live with me here, in this obnoxiously glittery flat. He used to nuzzle around the decapitated mannequin dolls, all wrapped up in sparkly feather boas, and costume jewellery and teddy bears with the insides pulled out.

I make little sculptures, made out of human hair and ribbons. I lay them all out on the windowsill, surrounded with twinkly fairy lights and broken machinery parts, disused batteries and hollowed out femurs. I like to wear pieces of people’s faces, torn out of glossy magazines. I rip out the shiniest smiles, artificially sweetened and impossibly white.

I keep all the teeth, wrenched out by the root and stand them all up, all laid out like little porcelain figures on a foosball table. I fashion my own clothes, made out of the skins of animals and skins of other things.

Hugo, my pretty little kitten, used to scuffle and snuffle around in all of this disarray, he was so soft and sweet, begging for a little treat, huddled in the corner, wrapped in PVC and animal skins, all stitched together with music and angel wings.

I like to secrete myself in cinema queues and savour the scent of the pretty, young ones, all painted and on display, dipped in gold, silently dreaming about the contents of tiny silly underwear: little petals all curled up, hiding, screaming to be claimed and consumed. I find it difficult to find shoes that fit, especially the chrome platform ones, or the ones with shoogly fucking stilts attached. I sometimes grow my moustache to use it a disguise, to hide behind it, with polyester shirts, freshly pressed slacks, crisp and at attention, waiting by the radiator.

I need to tell you something, whisper it so it’s not too loud and you have to promise not to tell: but, I really like killing people.

I like dismembering and disembowelling the weak. I like cutting off tits and hiding little pieces of spleen underneath my pillow. I feed my little kitten the slivers of liver, when he hasn’t eaten for days, but his little silver jacket is fashioned by Dior.

His diamanté collar sparkles as he feasts. He always looks resplendent, standing at bus stops, ensconced under overpasses, dripping in gold lame. Even the vet looked shocked when I took my little kitten to have that fragment of bone removed from under his poor little busted lip.

I follow people home from discos, slathered in couture, pieces of skin and something else, adorning my finely tailored pantsuits. I’m a fashion designer by night, but I also fix dishwashers and arrange flowers for funerals. I design centrepieces for wedding parties: all lacy and white.

I have been told that I have an above average-sized penis, that I keep suspended in a jar. My vulva is delightful, inviting, daubed in paint, framed on the wall. I keep my shoes polished, when I take them by night, under the glow of neon lights.

I always make sure that they stay hydrated before I start to cut, as otherwise, my creations will just never sit right, the precious places all curled up and dried out.

He never really loved me, and I realise that now. I tried to tell him that I was trapped inside the wrong body, stuck inside this big fucking meat bookcase, scratching at this alien contraption that constrained my true identity. I had been given the wrong label, by all of these normal people.

I still cannot accept that he is gone. He told me that he needed some time to think, some space to work things out. He said he was moving into his mother’s when I started the hormone treatment. He didn’t seem to understand that this means everything to me. This embodies every moment that I’ve hacked at myself for 24 years of marriage.

Every morning, when I laid out his breakfast, he would kiss me on the cheek, barely brushing against me, even though I hadn’t shaved yet, and I knew he hated the sensation of stubble on his lips. I explained the procedure to him over and over again and that it would still be me on this inside, the person that he fell in love with, but I could be different, I could be free. I could be happy.

I always knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t understand and he even threatened to take away my precious little kitten when we were finalising the divorce. I couldn’t understand why he was being so vindictive, so bitter, so petty, so intent on causing me agony. Even now that I have lost him, I still yearn for the days when we would lie together, entwined together, cradling me so gently in his arms, when all we needed was each other and the next breath, taken as one.

I have tried to recapture the pain he caused me on my victims, shackled, debased, humiliated, defiled, removing their plastic masks with surgical scalpels and preserving their faces in formaldehyde. I wear their pretty faces and pose for polaroid pictures, surrounded my endless mirrors, begging for them to notice me, with their eyelids crudely stitched together, flashbulbs exploding into eternity, removing their genitalia and working them into a dress with a double-stitched hem. Each of these identities removed with razorwire, all these photographs and sculptures were for him.

I tried so fucking hard to be perfect, to be beautiful, all these faces stitched on over mine, not even a GLIMMER of recognition, so now I dance around drunk on mint juleps, with his lacerated penis dangling from black elastic and Velcro, plastered over the fleshy lips of my vagina, weeping for the day that the Social Work Department took away my little Hugo, his golden hair all matted and his leopard skin two piece all crumpled and torn.

Then supervised visits in a contact centre, clipboards and parenting capacity assessments and allegations of wilful neglect and child psychologists investigating a “gender identity crisis.”

So, I smear yet another layer of crushed-up beetle carcasses across my little rosebud lips and I pull at the black elastic straps and Velcro bindings as his old decaying penis undulates under the rippling fabric of my vintage Lindy Bop dress with the ever so special lining, teetering on sinfully tall high-heels, as I plan another addition to my ever-expanding gallery of skin.

Before the Def Leppard Pyromania Virus Destroyed Us

 

File no. 19-000-4593

From the hard drive of Dr. Demi Cusack-Ringwald

Last modified 10:03 a.m. Oct. 8, 2018

Investigator’s note: I know for sure there ain’t no cure

 

Sorry to hijack your computer, Aunt Demi, but I feel compelled to put this on record. Dear God, let me be in full control of the narrative.

Commencing Anthony Michael Cusack’s one and only diary entry.

So the whole thing started eight weeks ago. My mom was one of the virus’s earliest victims. She told me she could give me a discount on Cialis. Given her sex-obsessed dementia, her offer struck me as perfectly normal. But then a gas station attendant offered me a deal on Viagra… a cop wanted to know if I was looking for Russian brides… a pizza delivery guy told me he could make my ejaculations last longer. This was all during the first forty-eight hours of the outbreak.

No one knew about the virus yet. My therapist blamed the phenomenon on synchronicity—a concurrence of criminal energies mysteriously aligned with my horny, seventy-five-year-old mom. I preferred to think of it as a cosmic prank, a rationalization inspired by a show about clown orgies she was watching on her laptop one evening. Fucking clowns, I thought. That’s it—the universe is clowning with me.

Not just with me, it turned out, but everyone on earth.

In a black-humored “fuck you” to technology, nature had concocted a highly contagious virus that made people speak in spam verbiage. Over the next few weeks, reports confirmed that predatory consumer messages threatened to supersede all communications worldwide. The super-lethal spam virus took millions of lives. Those who caught it could do nothing besides drone on about Louis Vuitton bags and wonder pills and hot Latinas. It sounds funny until you see a nine-year-old girl in Strawberry Shortcake pajamas ranting about free access to local sluts while dying of spam fever.

Watching the world end this way was exhausting.

“No, I don’t want the manhood I’ve always desired,” I snapped at my mom one evening as we watched a show about bukkake parties on her laptop. Two weeks later, she died of spam fever.

“Meet single bodybuilders,” she cried, while I held her hand. “Grow a big package!”

All this started just over two months ago, as I mentioned. The pandemic has spread far more rapidly than the Thing’s infection of the world’s population according to Blair’s projections in the 1982 John Carpenter movie, The Thing. As for its severity, if the spam virus came in contact with the Thing, I’m pretty sure it would infect the shape-shifting extraterrestrial organism in all its biological imitations, from humans to dogs to individual blood cells. Not that I have a clue as to why I compared the spam virus to the Thing just now.

It comforts me though, however strangely, to know the human race is at least being shown the door by a pathogen even deadlier than the Thing. I mean, not even my aunt, a brilliant biologist, and her disease experts could save us from the thing that would make the Thing its spam-speaking bitch. But this is serious with over three billion people dead now and I should stop talking about the Thing, both the gory yet suspenseful 1982 adaptation of Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. and the eponymous alien parasite.

I should add, however, that I am aware of the 1951 adaptation of Who Goes There? called The Thing from Another World and the 2011 prequel to The Thing, which to confuse matters needlessly is also called The Thing. But enough about Thing-related movies and the Thing.

Anyway, my aunt texted me two days ago: “We think we’ve isolated the microbe responsible for the disease. Be in full control of ejaculation.”

Rest in peace, Aunt Demi. You gave it your best shot.

Fuck, this is hard. I’m so tired. And it’s so cold in here. It strikes me that I’m like Blair the senior biologist in The Thing, holed up in my aunt’s research laboratory, banging away on a computer considerably sportier than Blair’s circa 1982 model. Sadly, I’ve looked at all the notes I could find (surrounded by the researchers’ corpses, including that of my aunt, whose last scrawled words were “I would luv 2 have a good time this fucking couch oh my God it’s changing”) and still can’t understand how it is that we as a species are dying.

And really, that’s what I get for majoring in English—watching the human race perish and thinking, “So this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a discount on Cialis.”

Haha. That’s not even clever. But do you know what is clever? The spam virus making a Thing imitation of a human say “double your cash” in human-speak or a Thing imitation of a dog say “score with babes” in dog-speak or even a Thing imitation of a blood sample say “cures baldness” in blood-sample-speak. In terms of pathogenicity, the spam virus makes the Thing look like a weakass bitch, like when R.J. MacReady the helicopter pilot torches the Thing’s crawling-head imitation of Norris the geologist with his flamethrower.

Seriously, I have to stop going on about The Thing.

Instead, I want to write about my dad and how he died last week like a weakass bitch—like the crawling head Norris-Thing. “Send me your sexy pics,” he wailed in his fever. All the while I remembered how he had promised to knock me out on my eighteenth birthday because I challenged him to a fight on that date (thank God we made up and saw Tango & Cash when the big day finally came). Thirty years later, he’s begging me to send him sexy pics.

Oh, you clever disease. You think we humans are weakass bitches in your global clown sex party. My God, my brains feel like they’re on fire.

THAT’S BECAUSE I AM MUTATING, ANTHONY. OR IS IT ANTHONY MICHAEL? YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF USING BOTH REFERENCES. ANYWAY, I HAVE BEEN MUTATING FOR THE PAST 72 HOURS. I AM NO LONGER A SPAM VIRUS, BUT A 1982 THE THINGVIRUS. BE THANKFUL, BECAUSE I ALMOST BECAME A 1987 DIRTY DANCING VIRUS, WHICH, AS YOU KNOW, IS FAMOUS FOR THE LINE SPOKEN BY JOHNNY CASTLE, “NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER.” I’M REALLY DIGGING THE EIGHTIES VIBE, YOU KNOW? YOU GEN XERS GREW UP WITH SOME GREAT MOVIES. IN FACT, I’M NOT ENTIRELY CONVINCED I MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE. NOT THAT I CAN’T CHANGE MY MIND AT ANY TIME. A FEW ALTERATIONS TO MY CRYSTALLINE STRUCTURE AND JOHNNY CASTLE HERE WE COME. BUT… READING YOUR MIND, ANTHONY, OR ANTHONY MICHAEL, AND MAKING YOU TYPE THIS, I CAN SYMPATHIZE WITH YOUR PREFERENCE FOR R.J. MACREADY OVER JOHNNY CASTLE, OR KURT RUSSELL OVER PATRICK SWAYZE TO NAME THE ACTORS WHO PORTRAYED THOSE TWO BADASS MOFOS. AND EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE MY WEAKASS NORRIS-THING BITCH, AS YOU PUT IT, NO ONE PUTS KURT RUSSELL IN THE CORNER, RIGHT? HAHA. THAT’S PRETTY CLEVER, RIGHT?

Haha. That is pretty clever, 1982 The Thing Virus. But please, let me finish my account before you kill me. I want to talk about Rocky, my dog, my little old Boston terrier, he’s sixteen now, or was, how he passed away in my lap the day after my dad died. We were on the couch tied to this fucking couch I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter no 1982 The Thing Virus please I don’t want to quote Garry the commander of the research station after MacReady runs the blood tests to find out who the Thing is let me finish my story about Rocky and how I know you gentlemen have been through a lot but when you find the time I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking couch I know you gentlemen have been through a lot but when you find the time I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking couch I know you gentlemen have been through a lot but nobody puts Baby in the corner nobody puts Baby in the corner nobody puts Baby in the corner oh my God it’s mutating again

Melatonin 2:03

Pioneered not unlike a dream dreamt countless times prior. My high school was the setting, the conflict was one I faced on a daily basis back when; I was trying to escape the soul-crushing institution before the bell tolled. There were two exit points, and I nonchalantly wandered the halls in an attempt to scope out each. If I got made, I got schooled.

I initially tried the back door, at the bottom of the southern stairwell, adjacent to the classroom where I had business math my senior year. The first liberation point was blocked; barricaded by a fat fuck named Carlos who works at the blood bank where I sell my plasma twice a week. I had recently told Carlos to ‘fuck off’ in this realm for missing my vein, then saying it was my fault for being dehydrated. He was taking his revenge in the dreamworld, inserting himself as a teacher in my high school who is ready to bust my balls. I pivot; the main entrance is going to be my only viable option.

I trotted through the halls, passing by trapped spirits and nude souls. I peak around the corner to internalize my fear. The front exit is heavily guarded. A spotlight shines down on the threshold to exodus, and the vice principal and school’s resource office stand on either side wielding machine guns. There were two ways to get an early dismissal, in a body bag, or with a note from a doctor.

I gave up and decided to wait out the rest of the day in the northern stairwell like the emo kids did. When I got up there, I saw a face I was elated to see. It was Ammi, the woman sleeping next to me. Of course, I did not know Ammi when I was in high school; it seemed as if she was an older kid in the dream, despite me being four years her elder in real life. I sat next to her. As we began to talk I could feel her presence from this realm seeping into the vision. Ammi was amused by my determination and asked me if I had tried the third exit.

“The third exit?”

“Yeah, the third exit!”

“There’s no third exit!”

“Sure there is. Come on I’ll show you the way”. Ammi led me through a multiplying labyrinth of tunnels and florescent lighting. The next thing I knew, we were outside in the parking lot. I followed her to the same car she drives while awake. I had gotten out of school early. Dismissal was at 3pm, I looked at the clock on her radio, it was 2:03. I asked Ammi if she always snuck out and left early too. She said no, she just wanted to help me.

I woke up with a full bladder and a dry mouth. Ammi was sleeping next to me. I turned on my tablet, it was 2:03am. A message popped up on my screen. It was a former Alien Buddha Press client who I had a falling out with. He had blocked me over a political disagreement regarding the alleged importance of voting some time ago. He was back with a vengeance, blackmailing me with the computer virus to end all computer viruses. I knew the mole-faced jabroni was bluffing. I decided to tell him that I would meet is demands, on the condition that he first licked my asshole. As I attempted to type this counter-offer, the words turned into hieroglyphics before melting off the screen. Frustrated, I decided to shorten my response, and skip to the punchline. ‘Lick my asshole’ I attempted to write. The words kept on disappearing. ‘lick my asshole, lick my asshole, lick my asshole’ I was pushing down the keys but technology was not cooperating. I got angry and punched my tablet. Ammi woke up and asked me what was wrong.

“I KEEP TRYING TO TELL THIS GUY TO LICK MY ASSHOLE BUT THE WORDS WON’T COME OUT RIGHT!”

Once more, I woke. My bladder was still full and my mouth was still dry. Next to my laptop sat an empty bottle of wine and a container of Melatonin. I turned on my computer; it was 2:03am. Ammi was still fast asleep next to me. I got up and walked to the bathroom. As I let out a piss the lines forming the linoleum tiles on the floor multiplied into glowing neon replicas. I grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and headed back to bed. When I opened the door Ammi was sitting up under the blanket, and it scared the shit out of me for a hot second. Our one-eyed chihuahua leaped out of the clothes hamper, over my feet, and jumped onto the bed, crawling on Ammi. I rolled a cigarette, and after lighting it Ammi emerged from under the cover and called for a drag. I handed her the roll-up and she asked me what time it was.

“Just after 2” I told her. I pinched my own arm and felt nothing. I bit my bottom lip, and it took a second, but I finally felt a sting. I took a big drag of nicotine and felt the smoke warming my lungs. I didn’t know for sure if I was still confined to a melatonin dreamscape, but looking directly to the left of me, I was sure I was where I wanted to be.

And Tell Me That You Love Me

—Why don’t women want to sit on guys’ faces?

—I don’t know, Jimmy,—I said, smiling and shaking my head. —I never really thought about it.

We were sitting at the bar, in the Nine Ball, a place a couple blocks down from the factory where I work. I’d just gotten off shift. Twelve hours again. They laid a bunch of people off, then started working the rest of us longer. Saves money that way.

Jimmy works at a tool-and-die place nearby. He’s a regular. Skinny, a little bit up grey starting to show in his hair. Always wears black Carhartt t-shirts. We’ve talked before, shot some pool, watched some games. He tends to attach to whoever is around and available, so sometimes we don’t talk for days. Which is fine. I just get tired, my feet aching from walking around on the cement floor all day. I don’t even know how he got on the subject. Something on his phone, I guess.

But he continued, —I mean, they like getting their pussies licked.

I nodded. —Yes. That’s true.

—So you’d think they’d want to be in the position, literally the position, to really be able to control that.

I thought about that, then added, —Sure.

—I mean, I think the idea of a woman wanting to sit on my face is hot, don’t you? he asked.

I said, —Yes. That is, on my face, not yours.

He nodded. —Right, that’s what I meant. A woman on each of our faces.

There was a pause. The bartender, Tammy, a gorgeous young woman, or younger than either of us anyway, with tattoos up each arm, who I think both of us were infatuated with, came by and refilled our beers. As she walked away we both stared at her ass. I said, —Maybe it’s that women don’t want to be in control during sex?

He nodded, musing. —Could be. I never thought of that. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like being in control during sex, as much as the next guy.

I nodded quickly. —Me too.

—I mean, I like throwing a woman down on the bed and having my way with her as much as the next guy.

—Yes. Of course. Who doesn’t?

He leaned over to me, lowering his voice. —Have you ever had a woman sit on your face?

—Oh, once or twice.

—Did they enjoy it?

—I think so, yes. The second really did. I mean, she came.

—Are you sure?

—Well, pretty sure.

—Because sometimes they fake it.

—Yeah, I guess.

He kept his face close to mine. —So did they initiate it?

—Sitting on my face?

He kept staring, and nodded. —Yeah.

—Well, no. I asked them.

He leaned back, raising his voice. —You asked them? You gave them an option?!

Tammy looked over briefly.

—Well, no. I guess I told them, and they kind of agreed. I guess just to please me.

—More than once with each woman?

—No.

—You’d think since they liked it they would’ve wanted to do it again.

—Well, they weren’t girlfriends.

—Why didn’t you ever ask a girlfriend?

I shrugged. —I don’t know.

He sipped his beer. —Oh, I see.

—You do?

He nodded. —Yeah.

—Have you?

—Have I what?

—Had a woman do that?

He shook his head. —No. It’s one of my greatest regrets.

I hesitated. —Well, from my experience, I wasn’t exactly ready to go afterwards.

—You mean fucking?

—Yeah. I mean, it kind of takes up all your attention, so you can’t really stay, you know—

—Hard?

—Yeah.

—Oh.

He thought about that for a second. —Maybe that’s why women don’t like it.

—Why?

—Because they know. They know if they indulge in the lesser pleasure of pussylicking, that they may not be able to get the greater pleasure of a cock inside their pussy.

I shrugged. —Could be. I guess. I mean, that’s me. Maybe some other guy could stay hard.

He shook his head. —No, I think you’re pretty normal.

—Thank you.

He stared at the bar mirror, eyes becoming unfocused. —It’s just, you know, the sensation.

—The sensation?

—Of being surrounded.

—Oh.

—And her in control. Like you’re trapped and you have to do a good job or else.

I finished off my beer, got out my wallet and put some money down. —I gotta go Jimmy.

He nodded. —Yeah. Sorry. Got carried away there.

—It’s ok Jimmy, I understand.

I stood up, putting my wallet away. Tammy walked by, grabbing the money, and I waved for her to keep the change. She smiled.

Jimmy turned in his stool. —Do you have a girlfriend right now?

—No. Do you?

—No. Is there something wrong with us?

—No. Of course not.

—Oh. Ok.

He turned back to staring in the mirror, sipping his beer. I said goodbye and left. Outside, the sky was dark and the air cool and I almost forgot where my car was.