The Narc in the Cupboard

Zack woke in a haze. It was hard to focus. The prior night had been wild from what he could remember. All he knew now was that he had to get up. It was necessary.

He went to the bathroom, emptied his bladder and took a dump. That was enough work to put him in a mood to go back to bed on most mornings, but not today. He had other needs to fill.

He touched soap and ran water over his hands. He called this washing. 

There was a dirty cup on the sink. He filled it and drank it down. His mouth was still dry and pasty. He filled and drained another glass. His mouth still didn’t feel right. He considered brushing. He didn’t see any toothpaste laying about. He looked around and couldn’t find a tube anywhere. Then he remembered he was out of toothpaste. He had meant to get some at the store yesterday. And the day before that.

Zack dipped a toothbrush in the soap dish. The soap was still damp from washing his hands. It would do.

His mouth felt a little better, but his belly was saying other things. A rumbling in his stomach told him to eat, but a rumbling lower down in his guts told him he would need to shit again, real soon. The signal from down below took precedence.

A half hour later his hands were clean again. The bathroom stank, but he could live with it. It smelled worse on most days.

He needed something to eat. His stomach was bossing him about. It would have to be something easy, something even he could not mess up. His head was in worse shape than his asshole was. It had been a late night.

He went to the small kitchen in his apartment, opened a cabinet and took out a box of cereal, all oats and sugary sweetness. He took a half empty bottle of milk from the refrigerator. He placed both items on the kitchen table. He took a spoon from a drawer, and reached up to another cabinet at eye level, next to the stove, to get a bowl. He opened the cabinet and stopped. All the shelves had been removed from the cabinet and all the plates, cups and bowls that had been inside were missing. Instead, a short man with mirrored sun glasses, a waist length leather jacket, jeans and army boots was curled up inside. The man’s chin was tucked to his chest. His shoulders rested against one side of the cabinet. His knees were bent and cramped against his body, almost touching his mustache. 

“I’m just a dream,” the man said. “Close the cabinet and go about your business.”

“Ah, I can’t. I need a bowl for my cereal. What did you do with my bowls?”

“Everything that was in the cabinet, including the shelves, is in a box under the kitchen table.”

“Why did you put them there?”

“I didn’t put them there. You must have done it and forgotten about it.”

“I didn’t do it. The plates were there yesterday. You must have moved everything.”

“I couldn’t have moved anything. I’m not really here. I’m a dream. An illusion.”

“I don’t know about that. You look pretty real.” Zack noticed the man had a lanyard around his neck with a photo I.D.. Zack’s vision was blurry but he thought he could make out the word ‘Police.’

“You and your friends got real high last night. You haven’t come down yet.”

“Do you have a warrant or a court order saying you can be here?”

“Of course not. I’m not really here. You’re imagining it because you have a guilty conscience.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. You know you met with that dude in the parking lot. The guy had something in the trunk of his car, a big package wrapped in a black plastic trash bag. He let you open the bag. You stuck your finger inside, then put your finger on your tongue. You exchanged a few words and you gave him a big roll of bills. He checked the roll and put it in his pocket. You took the bag, put in your car and headed home.”

“Man, it’s like you were there. Have you been following me?”

“I couldn’t have been following you. I don’t exist. I’m all in your head.”

“What did I do when I came home? I’m having a hard time remembering.”

“You carefully unwrapped the package, divided the contents, and used a scale to weigh out and fill small zip lock bags. When you were done, you put all the small bags in a shoe box and hid them under some sweaters in your bedroom closet. Then you called some of your friends to come over and party with the leftovers.”

“Are you sure you weren’t really there? You remember more about last night than I do.”

“I am you, in a sense. I’m in your head.”

“Okay, so if you’re me, tell me what happened after my friends came over?”

“You all drank a lot, snorted, shot up, and took some pills. One of the girls who came kept you busy while your friend Phil searched your apartment. Then you drank more with your friends and did some more stuff. Finally, you passed out.”

“Really? I can’t remember most of that, especially Phil searching my apartment.”

“You were busy getting laid. After you passed out Phil went through your bedroom. He found your stash, took most of it and all the cash you had. He also found the gun you bought last week at the playground.”

“Shit! Phil did all that? Why didn’t any of my other friends stop him?”

“They were all in on it. Phil gave them a cut.”

“Damn those mother fuckers. I’m going to kill them all.” 

“How? You don’t have a gun anymore and you have no cash to buy one.”

“Damn it. Damn it. They were supposed to be my friends.”

“How can someone in your business have true friends, especially as a freelancer. You have many more enemies than friends. At least they decided not to kill you.”

“They were going to kill me?”

“Phil wanted to put a pillow over your face while you were unconscious, but your other friends wouldn’t go along with it.”

“I guess they’re not that bad, except for Phil.”

“Nah, the others figured you’d be killed by the loan shark you borrowed money from to start up your business, since you won’t be able to make any payments now. No need for them to get involved.”

“Mother fuckers. Those fucking mother fuckers. What should I do?”

The man in the cabinet pulled out a typed statement and handed it to Zack along with a pen.

“Just sign this statement. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“How can you help? You told me you don’t exist?”

“I don’t exist, but, you can think of me in some ways as your fairy godfather. You sign this, date it and go back to bed. I will magically take care of the rest. Best of all, I’ll keep you safe.”

“Safe?”

“Safe from Phil, your friends, and that loan shark. I believe their names are all in the statement. But it would help if you could write in the name of the guy you bought the stuff from.”

“That’ll help?”

“You will sleep easier.”

“And what about my kitchen? Who will put all this stuff back in the cabinet?”

“Don’t worry about it. After you sign the statement, and go back to bed, everything will be fine. Sleep for an hour or two. Take a pill if it helps. “

“Okay, if you say so. But you’re really me, right?”

“That’s right. I’m part of you. Your conscience and your higher self.”

“Higher than I am now?”

“You’ll never know.”

Narcotics and the organized crime unit made the arrests, fourteen in total. Zack denied signing any statement, but a figment of his imagination had suggested he put his thumbprint on the paper in addition to his autograph.

There were some questions about the arrests. Captain Davis from Narcotics defended his diminutive operator to Chief Inspector Morton and the DA.

“Detective Smalls is a good officer. Honest as they come, and dedicated. His methods may be a bit unorthodox but he gets results.”

“Well,” said the DA, who had his doubts, “Lets just hope the evidence he obtained doesn’t get thrown out by a judge this time.

Crimson and Clover

Do you have any idea how many times I use sugar and nothing happens? Nothing! What the hell! You are the witch in this duo! I’m just your little princess toad.”

Sarah gives me one of her sideways smirks and reaches over to grab and then gently squeeze my left tit which immediately gets me wet. I want her to take me right now, beside the cauldron she has so resourcefully and cleverly assembled over the fire pit. I mean right here, in the soot.  There’s something about how she forcefully pulls me under her and her face is shrouded behind her powerful bushel of curls, a berry bramble thicket without the thorns and all I can see is her lips drawn into a stabbing slit before they descend on my mouth and I am pried open like an oyster as she dives for her pearl.

Sarah has her knees planted firmly on the earth and is bent over the apple crate searching for an ingredient. Her crimson robe with the belt tie is coming undone in her state of fervency as she really puts her heart into her craft. I hope it falls off completely. 

“Go in the house and fetch me the wooden spoon, bad girl.” She is all business when we are working a spell.

I myself have been working spells like this since I was 13, but never have I seen them performed with such aplomb as when Sarah lords over the ladle. My spells work for a while but they invariably peter out long before I want them to end. Not Sarah. Once she puts a spell on you and has you ingesting one of her signature brews, well Good Night Nurse Ratchet…you are hers for as long as she wants you. Sometimes I think I too am an unknowing victim of her potions – but honestly, I don’t care.

Still, the brew is simmering, these spells are time-sensitive and I am hotter than Elton John’s horny black toad. I hustle back to the cabin, but it’s way more than a measly cabin.  It’s a fucking Music Chalet hidden deep in the White Pine Woods west of Chicago and she and I are musicians on top of probably being the finest witches to ever grease a broom.  Ok, mostly Sarah, but sometimes I can rustle up a few perky tunes and vampy incantations and Sarah seems to be impressed, but I think she just likes the way I lick her. At any rate, at least I’m a great Sous Chef. I enter the kitchen and quietly open the utensil drawer, rummaging around for that wooden spoon. So many uses, I think – and I’m wetter than ever.  

Giddy now, with spoon in hand, I half skip out the door being careful not to let it slam shut as Thaddeus, our future human sacrificial phallic wand, is still drugged and sound asleep. The lore of witches stealing penises to intensify and amass great power is actually quite real although most witches of today are not so bold. Once Thaddeus came into Sarah’s life, it was destined to happen. And poor Thaddeus didn’t help himself either with his braggadocious boasting. “Well, when I was born,” he brazenly told Sarah one wild night, “the doctors told my mother, Mrs. Menteur? Your son will have NO PROBLEMS with the ladies, ahem, if you know what I mean…”

Sarah agreed with the doctor. I did too. Thaddeus was my lover at one time as well. Actually, Thaddeus had several women and was arrogant enough to think he’d never get caught. That doesn’t work that well with witches, though. Even though he was careful to keep our respective belongings out of his apartment, I felt those freaky witch vibrations throughout his place. And then there was his cat. Thaddeus was not aware of how cats can commune with us. It’s too long to explain, but even without the vibes, I knew he was involved with someone else when I read the eyes of his cat.

​I can see Sarah back by the pit now, pouring an entire box of Dominoes sugar into the cauldron. 

“He likes sugar,” as if she is telling me something I don’t already know. She likes to think she has all these facts about him that I don’t have. Most times I just let her talk. I don’t mind at this point.

“Now, the trick to the sugar, is that it has to heat up slowly.” She says the word slowly real slowly and with a snaky emphasis on the S in that little high-pitched voice she has sometimes.   She’s so damn cute.

“Great!” I chime. “I’m gonna get my guitar! Let’s do a duet. How about some Carol King?”

She doesn’t answer. She’s busy organizing things in the crate and putting lids back on jars. She’s very tidy. It always makes me feel inferior but Sarah says we all have our strengths.  

I take her silence as an implicit nod and I daintily traipse back to the cabin. Thaddeus is snoring – loudly.

My heart warms as I recall how many nights, sleeping next to him, he would rattle the walls like a prime candidate for CPAP, but he’s way too vain for that gizmo. Me and Sarah, we both dug the snoring – at least she agreed with me when I told her it was mad hot and it turned me on, so she naturally had to say, yes, it made her hot too. Aside from his magnificent manly dick, which pleased us both, we had other commonalities in our mutual adoration for him. For instance, both of us really dug those balls. Once, while shopping with Sarah at Whole Foods, we moseyed past the modified plum tomatoes. “Aw, look Sarah. Thaddeus’s love apples,” I sighed. Sarah got a kick out of that.  

The day Sarah and I became a team began with a phone call I boldly decided to make soon after I cut Thaddeus out of my life.

“And just who are you?” she said when I phoned her.

“I’m the woman he’s been fucking for over a year, that’s who.”  

Silence on the other side.

“Look, Sarah,” I informed her. “He’s all yours, my dear. I broke up with him last night.”

There was something, however, in that initial silence and I could tell she sensed I was a witch.  That’s when we both decided it might not be a bad idea to meet in person.

When I first noticed her sitting at the bar, drinking what looked like an Old Fashioned, a traditional witch’s cocktail, and looking like an enchanted goddess while laughing with some hot babe to her left, it all became as clear as the moon at midnight. The thing is, a witch will always recognize another witch. And a fellow witch who has been fucking your man will irradiate the homing device needle bright nuclear neon green. When I approached her, she turned to face me.  She smelled vaguely familiar and when her hair got in my face, I couldn’t catch my breath. It was too similar to the homemade Patchouli oil I used. We were locked into each other. After a few drinks, we walked out of the bar, arm in arm, into the warm Chicago night to smoke some weed.

“You know, he was my four-leaf clover,” I said wistfully while taking in the sultry dark night and the bright stars that were popping out like seltzer bubbles on dark glass. That’s when Sarah floated the phallic wand idea to me. “Oh honey, he’s way more than a clover,” her voice conveying something only witches can discern. I was starting to get the not so pretty picture of just what Sarah was planning to do to poor well-endowed Thaddeus, when all of a sudden, I was pushed up against the brick wall, her hand was under my skirt and I was looking up at the sky where a satellite was moving rapidly across the night tableau. I always loved looking into outer space, from any vantage point.

“Hey Sarah,” I said after I came like I didn’t think possible and my brain was still flickering like a pulsar, “Would you ever want to take a one-way trip to Mars?”

“Of course, silly.”

Soon after that, our “game nights,” as we called them, began. I wasn’t too keen on Sarah’s phallic wand idea, but I wanted to keep Sarah in my life. That experience under the stars deeply affected me. And yet, I kind of missed my escapades with Thaddeus too, in spite of his pathetic poverty-stricken patriarchal ego. And while I had certainly offed my share of woodland creatures in minor sacrificial rites, I never dreamed of taking a human life.

“Couldn’t we just make a puppet out of his likeness? I mean he is so cute. We could paint on the freckles and even add those adorable glasses. And his ass alone, if we plumped it up just so, I mean, it would be a delight to craft.” But Sarah was a witch before all else.

“No, Cynthia! We will NEVER find a prick like this. Lightning never strikes twice. I must have it. And once you see what we can do with it, once it’s properly dried and petrified…”

Her eyes emitted the deepest black. She was dreaming of record labels and Grammy awards. Her despotic matrifocal lust often scared me.

“Ok, Ok,” I interrupted. I knew Sarah was serious about this. “But come on now. At least let’s have some more fun with him. You and me, together.” I knew Thaddeus would not go for a threesome with me anymore, since I pretty much shredded his ass when I broke up with him.  And now, well, after meeting Sarah and finding out she was a sister witch, I kind of regretted emasculating him the way I did. I thought sharing him with her could bring us even closer. But hey, I still had a few spells up my sleeve and with Sarah’s expertise, the idea really made sense to me.

Hence “game night” became a regular event. We figured we’d keep him around until at least the early fall, the autumnal equinox, to be exact. The perfect time to do some ancient ritualistic slicing. No need to waste these steamy sexy summer nights anyway.

Every weekend I would drive up to the cabin after I knew Sarah and Thaddeus had arrived and were settled in. Sarah would usually have a nice picnic lunch with him up at the orchard but she’d be sure to have him drugged and snugly tucked in by the time I pulled up the long gravel road.

The funny thing was that lately, our “game nights” were gnawing at something deep inside me. I definitely liked it but it seemed my guitar time with Sarah alone was what I really wanted. I didn’t think Sarah would understand, so I kept it to myself. 

The brew was starting to waft plumes of sugar steam into the night air. A few more hours to simmer. Just in time for Thaddeus to begin rousing and Sarah would be going in to lay down with him, lick his huge cock, and pour him a glass of potion. Once he was in “the zone” as we so unimaginatively called it, I would join them and we’d have our dandy daddy, taking turns and laughing and Thaddeus would be the jolliest, most compliant hunk of a duplicitous lover, sucking and joking and never knowing who was who. I think something about the spell made him fuse us together in his mind. It was delicious and enchanting and other-worldly. It was Sarah’s imagination though that kept us all rolling and rollicking like a quantum triangle – three sides with hypotenuses folding within hypotenuses. Thaddeus was our real-life monopoly board and Sarah and I vied for houses, hotels, and free parking on this handsome hunk of a man – our unsuspecting expendable sex shaman with a meter on his head.

When I got back with my guitar, Sarah had set up the Adirondack chairs with cushions, a bottle of wine was opened and a glass was resting on the arm waiting for me. Sarah was exquisite in the furious moonlight, her crimson robe pulled wide open, her voluptuous breasts beckoning me. 

“How about So Far Away, baby girl?” she suggested. But I couldn’t resist. I propped my guitar on the chair, took my wine over to her, and knelt at her feet. We toasted the moon and the wolves in the woods and Thaddeus too. I drank my wine which had a vague familiar taste. I reached my head in between Sarah’s thighs. The sky rushed in behind my eyes, I saw the rocket’s trajectory like bright white halo rings emanating from my retinas and I assumed someone had arranged for my one-way ticket to Mars.