Bring Me the Meta-Head of F.W. Murnau’s Meta-Head

Anton Shreck was tired, so tired, tired of listening to gossip.

And complaints.

He peered through the sliding glass door that led to the patio and the outdoor heated pool, checking on the girls to see if they were well-cooked yet. 

They were for sure well-secured, and muffled protest pleased him. He supposed on reflection that their frogties, pimp goggles and baroque bit-gags that winked with telepathic mutations were a bit over the top, but the visual gave him a hard-on and focused his powers of chaos magick. 

Soon their juices would  be streaming, blue soup, Goth girls tumbling into the mix, a fleshy fireworks display of sizzle, crackle and pop. And then…

He smiled, and the universe looked like a big titty Goth girl from where he sat batin’ it to the pages of Horror Sleaze Trash.

Then it frowned.

Fuck.

“Why you frown, dawgz? Shit ain’t right!” He did some quick calculations and smiled again. Meanwhile the black acid had begun to kick, with the moons of Tartarus dripping gore candy over their full, round titties, sliding down the stripper pole matrix surrounding crimson fingers of iodine and sulphuric acid. 

Lines of transgression cross-checked their agonies into the motherfucker of all sigils. Juice from the girls powered the ceremony about to begin.

“Let’s get this bish on the road before the whole shithouse goes up, cities on flame with rock and roll!”

He now had to face what was left of the head of German Expressionist filmmaker F.W. Murnau after first the Zeena Shreck treatment and then Alex S. Johnson arriving a few years later with “Bring Me the Shrunken Head of Some Motherfucker,” not published in Horror Sleaze Trash due to prior copyright claim. 

After removal from the family plot in Stahnsdorf, the hot headlight’s bump n’ grindcore ride to a mansion in the Hollywood Hills drove splatter-driven screwball comedy like the liquid expanding phallus of the Mistress of Graves into Kandy Fontaine’s eager, receptive greased and yet simultaneously nameless asshole. 

Sometime actress, full-time vampussy Missy Crampton had smuggled the head inches from her Wicked Candy, passing off the odd crotch-gremlin to TSA agents as a tumid growth. “I don’t really like to talk about Catfish McDaris or his contribution to the Junk Merchants 2” she said later in a press conference. “I actually prefer real catfish. So tasty, and good with salt, lime and butter, y’know?”

Crampton’s flatter-than-fuck bellygutz suffered no metastatic foolish Kierkegaardian of the Gates of Urizen fools gladly, the withering glare she gave the TSA agents focused media attention on the treatment they’d accorded the waif-like starlet, famed for her roles in such films as Ivanna Focker Grrrrlz that systematically interrogated the bioethics of sleaze.

The actress had “soaked up death jizz,” according to Shreck’s narcissistic cabal. 

Butt first fist fuck, PKD grafting.

There was a long story there as well, but Shreck had no time for such nightmare shrapnel, a wench squealing on the roof, in a Brundeflied homage to Rabid and Suspiria. A black leather bondage harness held the moldering head in place as it descended, raining its confetti of glowicky flakes to the floor, a ramp down which slid esoteric skater-bois who had wandered in at the last possible second.

“Attention, ahem.” Shreck spat a fat wad of jisssom onto his henchbeast Wendy McBurgler. “On my instructions, the pool girls will be rendered, their good juices squeezed like Bowie’s hot wad into Mick Jagger’s poutilips ™, and the Murnau-Dickbot graft shall commence.”

“But what if there are complications?” mewled McTurdler, in a voice that closely resembled a butt-hurt Isaac “Dreamboat” Assimov. “Remember the last time we tried suchlike shenans. It really hurt muh belliguts.”

“Silence, slut!”

“I love your dominance,” simpered Wanderlustburger, crawling off to its corner to watch and Norman McBate itself into a puddle of ambiguous fluids.

Shreck blew Dicks. Multiple. He wiped the slime off his lips and continued to take the whole shafts. Quickly running out of orificial ports he…

The body of the Philip K. Dick robot was lashed to my antique electric chair. It just might be the lunatic and drinks YOU were looking for in your pile of old Bauhaus 12 inchers. 

“And a one and a two…”

Murnau’s head continued its journey from the skylight until it sat squarely on the shoulders of Robo-Dicktator Tots.

Outside, Missy “Supersztar” Crumptown was the first to hit the water.

Her flesh bubbled, blackened and popped harder than her tender pushay.

“I’ll get you, Mister Shreck,” she screamed, “And your cybernegative jolenes too!”

A surge of electricity spiked, and the mansion was plunged into hot vats of your hawt big tittay Goth girlfriend.

But something had gone horribly, terribly wrong/right.

No sooner had the knit taken, cubic inches of synthetic cunt fury nerve got jiggy wit dead organic matter and the F.W. Murnau skull, vitally reanimated and flowing wit da nuflesh, tore from Robo-Dick’s body and flew through the air. 

Sigil curse Crampton secreted within Murnau’s head—her terrible revenge against Shreck’s duplicity.

A bolt of blue flame, fire of unknown orgies, blasted forth from Murnau’s mouth and played a dab-fire along Shreck’s body- thrashed features. A junk heap of bone and metal, Cyclatron shit, Shreck crumpled to the ground and lay there, 

Shreck’s cabal, composed mainly of bored necrophiles, dabblers in the occult arts, dropouts from UCLA film school and Ole Zombie Zoetrope regarded the scene with a level of detachment that buggered belief.

“Shit is weak ginger bear” said one of the dropouts. “I liked it better when it was Andy Warhol’s head and Burroughs’ body. Andy Warhole, rather. As in holes. Andy Warhole.”

“That was pretty kewl,” said a skater-bot.

“Hey, look, what’s that sound, everybody look at what the cat drugged him with…”

“What happened?”

A fractal battery of pixel-fucked actresses charred out of the pool. Their eyes blank raylike discs, their intention Al Khemical.

“Time for some hipsters to die like bitches!” roared Krouton. “Let’s get ‘em, girlz!”

THEES EEZ THEE ENT???

The Claws That Catch

I’d been dating Beatrice a few months when she randomly developed an allergy to my cat. Which was strange, as she’d never had a cat allergy of any kind.

That wasn’t officially why we broke up, but it wasn’t irrelevant, either. 

Stacy had two cats, herself. We’d been dating a year when the three of them moved in. Immediately after Stacy’s breakdown, her sister came to collect the cats, as well as the rest of Stacy’s things. Apparently Stacy’s doing better these days, which is a huge relief. I respect that she doesn’t want to hear from me, though god knows I myself did nothing wrong. 

Still. I plan to learn from my mistakes. This time it’s going to be different. 

I sit down with my cat, and speak to him directly. 

“Alastair. I do NOT want to be a bachelor forever. You have to accept that. You have to adapt.” 

Alastair pretends not to hear me, and licks his claw with practiced indifference.

I stay most nights at Julia’s place. She’s never slept at mine. But my excuses are getting tired, as I’m tired of making them. There’s nothing wrong with the apartment. It’s clean and it’s safe. It’s perfect, other than the demonic feline who struts around like he owns the place. 

Julia’s sleeping in my bed for the first time. I’m listening to her breathing, worrying that the sound will stop. But that’s crazy, right? The legend that cats steal the breath of babies is: 

A. A legend 

B. Only about babies

Anyway, Alastair isn’t even the room. It’s not as if he can stop her breath from his place on the living room rug, right? I mean he’s not THAT powerful. Sure he can cause an allergy in a 24-year-old healthy woman, and can drive an even healthier woman to the point of madness, but he can’t literally kill my new girlfriend. Right?   

I get a text, from a number I don’t recognize.

“You are factually correct. Alas, I cannot. Thus the trashy mouse you shagged lies not in mortal danger. I will have my revenge, upon you and she both, but I assure you she’ll survive the night. The question is whether you want her to.”

So he can read my mind. So he can type. With what? His tail? His teeth? His penis? He doesn’t have opposable thumbs, I don’t know!

And the weirdest part is he types exactly as I imagine him sounding in my head. Threatening, yet…pretentious.

I should have listened to the old man who warned me not to adopt Alastair. His broken English makes more sense in retrospect. 

I get another text. 

“PS. Get me more milk.” 

I get out of bed, to do as I’m told. How did Alastair even get my number? And where is he texting me from? Ugh. This fucking cat!

Picklebrawl

“MOUTH ON THE CURB, MILDRED!” Beatrice Goldfarb commands while brandishing her pickleball paddle and staring down at Mildred Mendelbaum, who’s kneeling on the street with her back to Beatrice.

“What?” asks Mildred.

“I said put your fucking mouth on the fucking curb and do not make me have to ask you again!” shouts Beatrice.

“But why?” asks Mildred.

Beatrice glares down at Mildred while raising the pickleball paddle above her shoulder. “Don’t you remember that scene from American History X after the pickup basketball game? You don’t ask why, Mildred, you just do it!”

“Is that the new Woody Allen picture? Murray and Harriet just went to see it last week and they said—”

Beatrice’s paddle slices through the air like a laser beam and strikes Mildred’s eye socket, crushing her orbital bone. Mildred yelps in pain and collapses face first onto the street curb, breaking her nose and knocking out two of her front teeth upon impact.

“Now this can be quick and easy or it can be slow and painful, Mildred – you decide,” Beatrice says while she pulls Mildred’s head up by a fistful of hair and pushes her face against the curb. “Now open your goddamn yap and eat curb, you insolent fucking yenta!”

This time Mildred does as instructed and places her open mouth onto the concrete curb at the edge of the sidewalk facing the pickleball courts. About a dozen pickleballers have congregated behind the fence to watch the action unfold on the street in front of them.

Wasting no time, Beatrice steps forward and plants her left foot on the pavement next to Mildred, raises her right knee as high as she can, then stomps the sole of her Adidas Gamecourt sneaker down between Mildred’s shoulder blades with as much force as she can muster.

Mildred screams out in agony and turns over on the street, holding her chest and gasping for air through her bloodied nose and mouth.

“What the hell was that, Beatrice?” bellows out Sidney Goldfarb, Beatrice’s husband, while he kneels on the back of Sheldon Mendelbaum, Mildred’s husband, who’s lying face down on the street.

Beatrice looks over at Sidney and explains, “I curb-stomped the bitch, just like in the movie when Edward Norton—” 

“Yes, I can see that, Beatrice, but you were supposed to stomp her at the base of her skull so that her head splits open, not on her back! I mean that’s the whole goddamn point of making her put her mouth on the curb! Good lord, Beatrice, can you do anything right today? First you lose a pickleball game for us and now you can’t even execute a simple fucking curb stomp!”

“OK, I’m sorry, I guess I should have watched the movie closer, but—”

“Forget it, Beatrice, just come over here and sit on Sheldon while I finish off Mildred.”

Sidney and Beatrice switch places on the street, Beatrice sitting on Sheldon while Sidney stands over Mildred. The crowd of onlookers has now doubled in size.

Mildred looks up at Sidney and pleads for her life. “Sid, please, I have five grandchildren. They need me to—”

The heel of Sidney’s Nike Zoom Challenge sneaker crashes squarely into Mildred’s face, rocking her head back violently and shattering her jaw. “Just shut the fuck up and put your mouth back on the curb, Mildred. You know the drill.”

Before Mildred can turn over on the street to face the curb, Sheldon cries out, “Sid, please stop! Can’t you just make this quick and painless so Milly doesn’t suffer? There must be some other way!”

Sidney thinks for a moment, then nods and says, “I have a loaded Glock 9 millimeter in my car that I keep for protection. We can use that.” Sidney tosses his car key fob to Beatrice and says, “Go get the gun, Bea, it’s under the driver’s seat. And please please please remember to hit the lock button twice from at least ten feet away when you leave the car to make sure it’s locked.”

Beatrice stands up off of Sheldon and says, “Don’t try anything funny, Shel, we’ve got eyes on you.” She jogs over to Sidney’s sky-blue Mercedes SUV parked in the lot next to the pickleball courts, then hits the unlock button on the key fob. After opening the driver-side door and reaching beneath the seat, Beatrice jogs back onto the street holding Sidney’s gun, which she hands to him with the key fob and then sits back down on Sheldon.

As Sidney walks slowly up to Mildred with the gun pointed at her head, she looks over to Sheldon through swollen eyes with tears streaming down her bloodied face. “Shelly, please – isn’t there anything you can do to stop him?”

Sheldon shakes his head. ”Sorry, Mils, but he’s made up his mind and there’s nothing I can do about it. Don’t worry, hon, it’ll be quick and painless – you won’t feel a thing.”

Sidney stands on the street in front of Mildred with his gun still pointed at her head. She sits up against the curb facing him with blood and snot flowing down from her nose and mouth onto her chin. Sidney slides his forefinger onto the trigger while releasing the safety with his thumb. “Any last words, Mildred?”

Mildred wipes the tears from her eyes and sniffles quietly. Struggling to speak through her broken jaw and teeth, in excruciating pain, she garbles, “I just wanted to talk smack like a badass baller. I’m so sorry it didn’t work. Just do what you have to do and—”

Sidney squeezes the trigger and the deafening sound of the gunshot rings out and reverberates through the street and pickleball courts. Mildred’s lifeless body slumps back on the sidewalk while a stream of blood spurts out from the fresh bullet hole in her forehead. Behind her on the pickleball courts, the bystanders shake their heads to each other and then return to their games. A pool of blood spreads across the sidewalk behind the back of Mildred’s blown-out skull, absorbing the brain matter and bone fragments strewn in its path.

Sidney looks over at Sheldon, who’s busy tapping out a text message on his cell phone while Beatrice continues to sit on his back. “I’m sorry, Shel, but at least she’s in a better place now.”

Sheldon raises a finger and says, “Just gimme a sec, Sid, I gotta reply to this text.” Sheldon finishes his text message and then thumbs the send button on his cell phone. After quickly re-reading his text, he raises his head to Sidney with a smile. “Sorry about that, Sid, I’m all yours now. What was that you said?”

“I was just saying that Mildred is probably in a better place now,” Sidney replies.

Sheldon shakes his head apologetically while placing a forefinger behind his earlobe. “Sorry, Sid, I left my hearing aid back on the pickleball court. What was that?”

“I SAID THAT MILDRED IS IN A BETTER PLACE NOW,” Sidney nearly shouts so that Sheldon can hear him.

Sheldon nods his head vigorously. “I totally agree, Sid, 100 percent. Better place for sure. I know it was difficult but you guys did the right thing. You had no choice.”

Beatrice stands up from Sheldon’s back and stretches her legs out, then looks down at her Apple watch. “We have a 7:00 p.m. dinner reservation at the Marble Room downtown, Sid, and I need time to shower and get ready so let’s get going. It’s almost impossible to get a reservation there this time of year so we can’t be late.” She looks down at Sheldon and says, “You’re welcome to join us, Shelly, but don’t feel obligated if you have other plans.”

Just as Sheldon opens his mouth to reply to Beatrice, an Avon Lake police cruiser barrels around the street corner and speeds toward them with its siren blasting and lights flashing.

Sidney discreetly places his Glock 9 into the elastic waistband of his pickleball shorts and covers the protruding gun butt with the untucked bottom of his Lacoste tennis polo. “Five-oh in the house!” he warns the others. “Bea, you may need to call the Marble Room and move our reservation back a bit,” he says coolly while nodding toward the police cruiser.

The cruiser pulls to an abrupt stop about ten feet in front of Sidney. Two uniformed officers step out and survey the scene.

“Goddamn gangbangers,” Sergeant Felix Dixon mutters to his partner, Noah Garrison, shaking his head and glancing over at Mildred’s dead body, her blood now congealed on the sidewalk while her vacant eyes stare up at the sky. “This used to be such a safe neighborhood before the city installed these fuckin’ pickleball courts. It was the kinda place where you could raise a family without having to worry about crime and all. Now look at it.”

Garrison nods in agreement as he looks over at the fenced-in courts.

“I know how to deal with these punk-ass ballers so let me handle this, Noah,” Dixon says.

“Well, well, well, now what do we have here?” Dixon says as he approaches the Goldfarbs and Sheldon, shifting his gaze between the three of them. “Where y’all comin’ from today?” he demands.

“Beachwood,” Beatrice replies nervously.

“Pepper Pike,” adds Sheldon.

Dixon looks back at his partner with a sarcastic smirk and raised eyebrows. “Eastsiders,” he says, “Now ain’t that a shock.”

Garrison chuckles back at him. “I think I’d like to solve the puzzle, Pat.”

Dixon laughs as he turns back to the three tense pickleballers. “And what about sleeping beauty over there soiling my lovely sidewalk with her nasty-ass head cheese?” Dixon asks, nodding towards Mildred’s corpse.

“That’s my ex-wife. She’s from Pepper Pike also,” replies Sheldon.

“Ex? So you two are divorced?” asks Dixon as he writes on his notepad.

“Well no, she’s dead,” explains Sheldon. “We were married up until she died a few minutes ago so I guess she’s technically my ex-wife since I can’t legally be married to a dead person. Sorry for the confusion, officer, I’ve just never been in this situation before – it’s a bit unnerving.”

“OK, roger that,” Dixon nods to Sheldon. Shifting gears, Dixon asks, “So what the hell brought you bangers over here to the west side? Ain’t there enough pickleball courts over in your ’hood where y’all can play without bringin’ your gangsta shit to Avon Lake?”

Sidney steps forward to answer Sergeant Dixon while Beatrice pulls her cell phone from the pocket of her Lululemon pickleball skirt to video-record their exchange. “We have friends in Avon who just got back from the Amalfi Coast and were showing us their photos over brunch, so we thought we’d try out a new court while we’re over this way.”

Dixon rolls his eyes while placing his notepad back into his pocket, then looks sternly at the Goldfarbs and Sheldon. “OK, so which one of you pickleballin’ punks wants to tell me what the fuck happened here today?”

“Well, we were playing mixed doubles …,” Beatrice begins, then tells the story.

Flashback to thirty minutes earlier:

“Wipe his ass all over the court, Sheldon!” Mildred shouts to her husband as she shifts her weight from foot to foot on the pickleball court, firmly gripping the handle of her paddle as she glares across the net at Sidney and Beatrice.

Sheldon looks back at Mildred in disgust. “Wipe his ass? Really, Mildred? That’s not trash talk, it’s just gross. And it would actually entail me getting toilet paper and wiping his butt, which is not exactly intimidating and he may even enjoy it.”

“OK, my bad – I’m still learning the smack talk part of this pickleball thing but you know what I meant. Just serve the goddamn ball, Sheldon,” says Mildred.

After a few rounds of volleying, the Goldfarbs take the lead after Sidney’s “dink” into the Mendelbaums’ “kitchen” hits the court just a foot behind the net and goes unreturned. 

“Mildred hasn’t been in the kitchen in years so that’s always a safe place to hit the ball!” Sidney jokes.

Sheldon laughs and adds, “Take that back, Sid – Milly microwaves the meanest quiche lorraine in all of Cuyahoga County!”

Sidney and Beatrice both chuckle while glancing apologetically at Mildred, who glares back at Sidney with fierce slitted eyes.

“Fuck you, Goldfarb! This is our house and we’re gonna burn your asses down like an LA wildfire, you fucking cocksucker!” Mildred screams at Sidney.

All goes silent on the pickleball court while Sheldon and the Goldfarbs look gape-mouthed at Mildred in utter shock and disbelief.

A trim middle-aged woman in a dark green Vuori pickleball dress and matching visor cap walks over from the neighboring court and turns to Mildred. “I’m sorry to interrupt, ma’am, but could you please watch what you say here. My sister and her husband live in Malibu and their house was just destroyed by the wildfires. It’s terrifying what’s happening over there now and I really don’t think it’s appropriate fodder for pickleball trash talk.”

Sheldon steps forward with an embarrassed look and says to the woman, “We’re so sorry, ma’am, my wife is new to pickleball and her trash talk could obviously use some fine tuning. We’re sorry to upset you and I promise we’ll keep it down over here.”

After the woman thanks Sheldon and walks back to her own court, he turns to Mildred with an angry scowl. “Damnit, Milly! Will you please just be quiet and leave the smack talk to me! We didn’t come here all the way from Pepper Pike to get kicked off the court because you can’t keep your damn mouth shut!”

Mildred apologizes and the pickleball game resumes. The Mendelbaums score a point after Beatrice returns Mildred’s serve into the net. Beatrice shakes her head and curses herself.

Exhilarated by the Goldfarbs’ fault, Mildred pumps her fist and taunts Beatrice. “Nice one, JonBenet, but isn’t the point of the game to hit the ball over the net and not into the net?”

Beatrice looks at Mildred with a puzzled expression and furrowed brow. “JonBenet?” she asks.

“Yep!” Mildred replies with a laugh, “Because you choke every time you have to perform, you stupid fucking cunt!” Mildred shouts at Beatrice while looking over at Sheldon for affirmation.

Sheldon just looks back at Mildred stone-faced while the Goldfarbs and neighboring pickleballers stare at her in pure unbridled disgust.

Mildred stammers uneasily while the others continue to stare at her. “I was just referring to JonBenet Ramsey. Remember how she got strangled by that garotte made from Patsy’s paint brush handle?” She adds, “It’s just pickleball trash talk – part of the game, right?”

Nobody says a word.

After another minute of awkward silence, a tall bearded man with a yellow Avon Lake Parks & Recreation shirt walks up to the group with a stern look. “I’m sorry, folks, but she’s gonna have to leave,” he says, nodding to Mildred. “You’re really starting to disturb a lot of the other players with your trash talk, ma’am. So please just leave quietly and don’t make this difficult for me.”

“Goddamnit!” shouts Beatrice while looking over at Sidney. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! We never should have brought this bitch to play with us, and I told you that, Sid! We have the best court here and now we have to give it up because of Mildred!”

Mildred interjects before Sidney can reply. “Fine! You guys keep playing and I’ll leave. But I’m not staying here. Let’s go, Sheldon.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Sheldon protests, “Sid and Bea drove us here so we need a ride home.” Sheldon looks to Sidney expectantly.

Beatrice steps forward while shaking her head at Sheldon, “No fucking way are we losing this court because of Mildred. You two can take an Uber home. Sidney and I aren’t leaving.”

Sheldon glares at Beatrice with bulging eyes and exclaims, “An Uber back to Pepper Pike will cost us over $100 now! No way we’re paying that!”

“Well, I’m not staying here!” Mildred shouts defiantly with her arms crossed in front of her.

Beatrice looks up to the sky with pursed lips, pinches her eyes closed and pauses for a moment, then lowers her head, grabs Mildred by the hair and walks her off the pickleball court towards the street.

“What are you doing, Bea?” Sidney asks with concern.

Still holding Mildred by the hair, Beatrice turns back to Sidney and screams, “I’m doing what none of you pickle-pussies have the fucking balls to do! I’m taking care of this little bitch MY WAY!” 

Beatrice walks Mildred through the fence opening to the street while Sidney and Sheldon hurry after her.

Now on the street outside the pickleball courts, Beatrice takes a deep breath and calmly instructs Sidney, while pointing to Sheldon, “Get his ass on the ground and keep him there so he doesn’t try anything.” Looking to Sheldon, she adds, “Now’s not the time to be a hero, Shel.”

Sidney and Sheldon both nod to Beatrice, then Sheldon lies face down on the pavement and Sidney kneels on his back.

Still gripping Mildred by the hair, Beatrice throws her to the ground and looks at her with a snarl. “Now get the fuck down and put your mouth on the curb! Don’t fight this, Mildred.”

Flashforward to present:

After listening patiently to Beatrice’s recount of events, Sergeant Dixon nods and says, “OK, we get it. We know that you guys just got caught up in the game and Mildred over there got what she deserved. Nobody should have to play pickleball with that annoying bullshit. The game is stressful enough without someone like her fuckin’ it up for y’all. That said, we still have to maintain some law and order around here. We can’t just let every swingin’ paddle come waltzin’ on in here from the east side and disrespectin’ our shit.” Dixon glances over at Officer Garrison, then looks back to the group. “Y’all just sit tight and stay put while my partner and I decide how we’re gonna handle this mess.”

The Goldfarbs and Sheldon wait anxiously on the street while the two officers walk back to their cruiser to discuss what to do.

After a few minutes of heated exchange with his partner, Sergeant Dixon walks back to the group. “OK,” he says sternly. “Today’s your lucky day so y’all better count your blessings. We’re gonna let you bangers off with a warning … this time. But if it ever happens again and we gotta come back out here to deal with your pickleballin’ bullshit, we’re gonna haul your lily white asses downtown for disturbing the peace. Now take your paddles and get the fuck outta here before we change our minds!”

Officer Garrison steps forward and chimes in, “And maybe it’s time for you thugs to get your lives together and go back to school.” He looks over at Dixon, who nods in agreement, then adds, “Pickleballin’ on the streets is no way to survive. You bangers are headin’ down a dangerous path that’ll leave you dead or in jail. Is that what you want?”

Sidney looks at Officer Garrison incredulously with his eyebrows raised. “Back to school? Officer, I graduated summa from Oberlin and have a PhD in applied physics from Northwestern. I’m a senior fellow at Case—”

Beatrice interrupts Sidney with a smirk. “And you got passed over for tenure more times than Pete Rose did for Cooperstown — why don’t you mention that part, professor?”

“Beatrice, please!” shouts Sidney. “You know goddamn well that I wasn’t able to publish without my research assistant during COVID, and then they made me teach that godawful undergraduate semin—”

“Hey, hey, hey now! You gangbangers just settle your asses down, y’aint back home in the ’hood!” belts out Sergeant Dixon. “And we just handed you a gift so don’t fuck it up!” he reminds them.

Without another word, the Goldfarbs and Sheldon hurry back to the parking lot with their heads down and pickleball gear in tow while the two officers walk back to their cruiser.

The shrill shouts and laughter of the pickleballers resonate through the courts behind them while, just twenty feet away, flies swarm around Mildred’s open mouth.

The Cuckold

The fuck I’m gonna do? Woman says she wants to do it with another man, the fuck I’m gonna do? Shit. I’m forty-three. I done it so many times I couldn’t even count if I tried. I been doing it since I was thirteen. Girl from Des Plaines. Real nice. Real easy going. Put on a performance for me in spite of my ineptitude. Screamed like she’d never been penetrated before. Gave me all the confidence I needed to play the field.

Now Wilma, my girl for sixteen years, well, she come out of a convent when I met her. Claimed she’d never done it before. I heard rules don’t get broke like they do in a convent, but I took her word for it. She probably told the truth. First time with her, she was real sloppy. All over the place. Enthusiastic, you bet. What twenty-two-year-old ain’t got enthusiasm? Not one I’d ever waste a moment with, I tell you. But sloppy. Well, that told me if it weren’t her first time, it was damn near close.

So, we been doing it, Wilma and me, for sixteen years. I’ve slowed down, if we’re being honest. Shit, like I said, I’ve done it so much, I don’t really need to do it more than once a month. Maybe a man my age is supposed to have more energy. Maybe I spent all mine. Shit. I don’t know.

So, Wilma says to me, she says, “You don’t seem to got it like you used to.” Real perceptive, she is. She says, “I’m still on fire, I need to do it at least once a week.” Well, I been with women in their late thirties before and they all got that in common. Like they want to make up for all that time they spent in their teens and twenties being shy and humble and not doing it because society told them to ignore their own instincts.

Well, I’m a considerate man. A sensitive guy. If I ain’t got the gump like I used to have and the woman I love needs to do it more than once a month, what choice I got? I says to her, “What you have in mind?”

She says what I expected, that she was thinking of a younger man. More energy. More gump. She says, “Got my eye on this lonely-looking boy stacks oatmeal on the shelf over there at the Walmart in McHenry.” Still got pimples on his skinny little face, she says. Reminds her of Opie, from that old show about a wholesome little town in a black and white world. She says she imagines his voice still squeaks, like his balls ain’t even dropped. Like he’s never done it. That’s what really turns her on, she says. I ask her how old she thinks he is, is he legal and all, and she says, “He works during the weekdays, afternoons.” She says, that means he don’t go to school. That means, she says, he’s old enough to do it.

So, I tell her, “Go on then, see if he’s game.”

Now, understand, Wilma’s thirty-eight years old, but she ain’t no normal thirty-eight. Sometimes I think it’s like she made a deal with God. Or maybe the devil. I don’t want to be one of them men that curses women for being able to weave a spell over any man that ain’t done it in a while. Or ever. She’s good-looking, is what I’m getting at. Big, saucer eyes, the kind you see on movie star women. Auburn hair, shoulder length. Not too short, not too long. Never gets in the way when we’re doing it. The sweetest, milkiest skin. Even at thirty-eight. Wilma ain’t the kind of woman sits in the sun, inviting cancer and skin as rough as leather. She takes good care of herself. Still tastes like a peach and purrs like a kitten after a good round of doing it. So, what I’m getting at is, how she convinced this young fellow to go along with her ain’t a part of my immediate knowledge beyond the fact I still catch men looking at me like they wanna kill me and take her away from me any time we venture out to a restaurant after we’ve done it. Because doing it makes you hungry. I mean, you ever done it, you know what I’m talking about.

So, Wilma sets it up with Tad. That’s the boy’s name, Tad. The fuck kind of name that is for a grown man, I don’t know. Makes me think of a baby frog. But, whatever. It’s Wilma’s thing, not mine. She sets it up so that she and the boy are gonna do it with a girl they meet at Mink’s, a club on Seventh Street. One of those multi-level places with dance floors on each story. Grating electronic beats thumping the walls, threatening to knock the bricks outside from their mortar and collapse the entire building. Used to love finding girls to do it with at places like that years ago. Now I get a headache just thinking about pushing through a crowd.

But I don’t want to stray from the story at hand. Wilma tells the boy her plan to pick up a girl at the club. The boy’s young enough, he ain’t gonna say no. And he doesn’t. Wilma calls me on my cell, tells me the boy can barely contain himself. She says, “He’s so curious. I just hope he doesn’t get too excited, you know, finish before I tell him to.” I tell her the boy ain’t got a better instructor.

I say, “You tell him what to do, Wilma. He’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

So, now I’m outside the Jack Four, a motel off highway 90. One of them ranch-style establishments. Single-story. Rooms lined up and down a row. Mostly semis in the lot. Some hookers in the cramped lobby. Kind of place I used to love finding girls to do it. Loved it. But goddamn, getting old is a bitch. I’m listening to Journey on the radio. That shit about not stopping your beliefs, or whatever. Last I heard, they tour with other FM dinosaurs. Foreigner. Styx. REO Speedwagon. That kind of shit. They got some karaoke singer filling in for Steve Perry. Really fucked up, what time does to the things we thought we’re supposed to do. I’m smoking a cigarette, remembering the past like things were somehow better even though people still couldn’t pay their bills twenty, thirty years ago. Thinking the world was a fucking rose garden just because I didn’t have to crawl out of bed like a demented slug in the morning. Thinking June Cleaver’s pussy tasted like a peach just because I didn’t have to wake up every hour to take a piss at night. Thinking I’d never tire of doing it on a weekly basis just because I didn’t have an ulcer just eating away my insides.

The cell rings. It’s Wilma. I says, “Yeah?”

She says, “Jesus all holy hell Christ and fuck not.” Something wrong? I ask. “This little shit’s chickened out,” she says.

This makes me sit straight. The boy gets cold feet, well, that’s a problem. “Where you at in the process?”

“Trying to get the girl in the mood.”

“The boy didn’t even want to give her no foreplay?”

“He’s acting like that’s somehow worse than doing it.”

I want to tell her, What’d you expect from a man named Tad? Tad wears short-sleeve shirts with collars. Tad punches numbers on a calculator at H&R Block. Tad uses them fancy Italian words to order his coffee at Starbucks. Tad ain’t the kind of guy a woman should try to do it with. Tad ain’t the kind of guy, far as I can tell, who either knows how to do it or enjoys doing it. I says, “Maybe you got to completely take the lead?”

Then she tells me, “He’s pacing, close to the door. Threatening to leave.”

My cigarette don’t meet the pavement before my feet do and I’m out of the car. Slamming the door. Marching to room 32, clear on the tail end of the motel. Nobody seems to notice me. Angry old man stomping to a hotel room. They figure my old lady’s in there with another man. Had I the time, I’d sure tell them it ain’t a man she’s in there with. Wouldn’t much matter. They’d still think of me as a cuck. And that wouldn’t bother me if Tad hadn’t turned out to be a fucking pussy.

I bust the door open, smack Tad square in his face. Blood shoots from his nose. Unpretties the stubble he’s clearly been growing for six years. “Fuck’s the matter with you?” I slap the cleaner side of his face with the back of my hand. Boy’s fragile as Tinker Bell, I tell you. Falls right over on the bed. Falls right on top of the girl. She’s had her clothes cut off her, like Wilma likes to do, and her hands cuffed to the rail running along the shitty, crumbling wooden headboard. The boy ain’t even pulled off her panties yet. “I let you do it with my wife and you disrespect the both of us like this?”

He mumbles through the blood streaming from his nostrils, filling up his mouth. He didn’t know it was going to be like this. He didn’t know this is what we had in mind. Stupid little fuck.

So, I throw the little shit to the floor. Undo my pants and pull out old John Thomas. The girl, oh, she’s a good one. She’s got them sleepy eyes Hollywood girls these days are selling to the masses. Big, natural tits. I rip her panties off. Snort when I see what I always see these days—Bald pussy. She must have money. No stubble on her clam. No ma’am. This girl sports a top-notch wax job. I’m thinking she must have one of them self-service porno sites where women from all walks flash it for the perverts out there that ain’t got the gump to get the real thing.

She struggles a little when I force her legs apart. She can’t stop John Thomas, though. He bulls straight into her and next thing I know, I got energy I ain’t felt in a long time. Maybe getting pissed off at the younger generation was just what I needed. I fuck that girl until the tears march down the sides of her pretty little face. Next thing I know, Wilma’s licking my balls. Licking my asshole. I told her before rim jobs don’t do nothing for me. But she’s always reading women’s magazines telling her all sorts of stories about what men do and don’t like in the bedroom. All sorts of speculations written by women who should stick to putting down their fantasies in them romance books you see on the rack at the local drug store.

I’m climbing that mountain, getting nice and close to filling the girl up with my baby batter. Wilma reminds me the girl can’t be alive when I come. She hands me the fishing knife we use when we do it and as I release inside the girl, I slice through her throat from one ear to the next. Oh friends, you ain’t ever had an orgasm until you’ve arrived just when your partner’s departed. Try it sometime, if you don’t believe me.

Well, you can imagine, the boy is crawling toward the door again. Stupid little fuck. I pull up my pants. Pass the fishing knife, like my hands, like the boy’s face, just a smeared in blood, I pass it on over to Wilma. I know she’s furious. I must not have wiped so well last time I took a shit. She’s got herself a little brown mustache. She licks her lips, gets all that crusty fudge on her tongue, and spits on the boy. She drops her foot, firmly encased in her favorite red high heels, onto the boy’s back.

“You ain’t leaving here,” she says to him, “without doing it someway, somehow.”

Tad, the boy, the man who will never be a man, blubbers like someone already cut his nutsack in two. Which is something Wilma will get to, sooner or later. For now, she uses that bloody knife to cut off the boy’s belt and lower his pants. “Would have been so much better,” I tell him, “if you’d just done it the way you were told to.”

Wilma don’t give a shit about my pep talk. She yanks down the boy’s skinny jeans and tickles his balls before ramming the knife straight up his asshole. I can see the smile on her face. She ain’t quite got what she wanted from the night, but a little sudden variety, I can see, well, she seems to think that’s the next best thing.

Princess Cherrypop and the Baroness’s Bad Habit: A Fucked-Up Fairy Tale

Princess Cherrypop skipped through the neon-drenched woods, her pink frilly dress clashing violently with the gnarled, pulsating trees. She clutched a basket overflowing with artisanal cupcakes, each frosted with enough saccharine sweetness to induce diabetic shock in a lesser mortal. They were a peace offering for her ailing Granny Goodguts, currently residing in a gingerbread cottage that reeked of stale farts and regret. 

Little did Cherrypop know, Baroness Cuntingham, Queen of Nair, was lurking nearby, her heart blacker than a burnt offering and her intentions fouler than a public toilet in Tijuana. 

The Baroness, bored with tormenting the denizens of her own wretched kingdom, had set her sights on Cherrypop’s sugary innocence. Transforming herself into a disturbingly convincing replica of Granny Goodguts – think melted wax figure after a meth binge – she awaited the princess’s arrival, her dentures chattering with anticipation. 

The Baroness wanted the utter annihilation of Cherrypop’s relentlessly cheerful disposition. She wanted to crush that sparkle, that naive belief in sparkling goodness, into a fine, shimmering powder of despair. 

Cherrypop, bless her cotton-candy heart, was easily deceived. She entered the cottage, the aroma of decay barely registering amidst the cloying sweetness of her baked goods. “Granny, darling,” she chirped, “I’ve brought you cupcakes! They’re gluten-free, dairy-free, and completely devoid of anything resembling actual flavor.”

The Baroness, her voice a gravelly rasp, beckoned her closer. “Come closer, my dearie,” she wheezed, “so I can admire your…dress.”

Cherrypop, ever the trusting soul, approached the bed. She peered at the Baroness-Granny, noting the unsettling details: the pustules erupting on her forehead, the single, twitching eyebrow, the way her eyes seemed to glow with an unholy light.

The Baroness lunged, her claw-like hands reaching for Cherrypop’s throat. But instead of fear, a slow, unsettling smile spread across the princess’s face. Her pink frilly dress dissolved into wisps of smoke, revealing a body adorned with skulls and serpents. Her skin darkened, her eyes burned with crimson fire, and a garland of severed heads materialized around her neck. The cupcakes transformed into miniature skulls, each grinning with malevolent glee.

“You thought you could devour my innocence, Cuntingham?” Cherrypop, no, Kālī, cackled, her voice echoing with the force of a thousand collapsing universes. “Innocence is merely a mask I wear to lull the wicked into a false sense of security!” 

This wasn’t a damsel in distress; this was the destroyer of worlds, the embodiment of feminine power and righteous fury. The Baroness, now genuinely terrified, scrambled backward, her transformation spell crumbling under the weight of Kālī’s terrifying presence.

With a flick of her wrist, Kālī summoned a khadga, a crescent-shaped sword that shimmered with cosmic energy. She didn’t just kill the Baroness; she disassembled her, atom by atom, scattering her essence across the dimensions. 

The gingerbread cottage, no longer able to contain the goddess’s power, imploded in a shower of sprinkles and gingerbread shrapnel. The forest, once a saccharine nightmare, withered and turned to ash, the neon lights extinguished by the sheer force of Kālī’s wrath.

As the dust settled, Kālī surveyed the wreckage, a chillingly serene expression on her face. The heads on her garland whispered tales of past transgressions, of cosmic imbalances rectified. 

She adjusted her skirt of severed arms, a reminder of the karma she had absorbed. The world, for now, was safe from the Baroness’s particular brand of evil. But Kālī knew, with a certainty that chilled her very bones, that the forces of darkness were eternal, ever-evolving, always seeking new avenues for corruption. And she, the destroyer, the preserver, the skull-faced goddess of mayhem, would be waiting. As the sun rose, painting the ashen landscape in hues of blood orange and bruised purple, she whispered, “SECRET HERBS AND SPICES!” before dissolving into the ether, ready to play another role in the grand cosmic game.