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Go Where You’re Supposed To by Kelsi Graham

31 Aug

Mona drives with the windows down to dispel any left-over Arizona air. It makes her nose cringe.

Mona is twenty three. Her dry hair blows backwards, slapping the seat. She pulls out the first cigarette of her last pack, anticipating its comfort like expecting rain.

Kevin McTeirson, so many years ago, had taught her what it was like to lose breath forever. After fourteen years of heavy inhaling he managed to seize her wrist. In her resistant palm he dropped her first bad habit. She’d taken it, every day. Back then, her lips shook, and the cigarette felt bulky. But it’s steady now, and she’s grown. Kevin works with his father selling car parts to all the tourists in the small Arizona town, and she’s leaving for the city. But as the sun begins to fall into itself on the other edge of the universe, she remembers the going away present he had left her with a grimace. It shakes its tiny fists, beating on the side of the car seat.

Arizona smelled.

The air clears her senses. For miles, there are just trees and livestock and trees and trees, with the occasional livestock or passing pick-up that rattles away.

In her mind, she resists her new mantra that moving to the city will help her escape this hole. She knows not to think this because every time she does, McTeirson comes back and twists her wrist again. The road ahead stays curved and she thinks about new debts to make and the time to buy. She thinks about jumping from one friend’s house to the next, and then the thin lace underwear that tore a little when she packed it.

 

After a while, shade becomes dark, and then night.  Mona finds a gas station and fills up her grateful car, and lets the baby sleep. The fluorescent lights on the gas station sign isn’t on, but the lights inside eerily flicker in the refrigerated section and over the counter. The man who takes her money looks old and disinterested, but even his few mumbled responses feed her. She smiles at him, a -big, goofy grin, and even uncharacteristically buys a scratch-off ticket. She doesn’t win anything, and discards it in the waste basket next to the pump.  She also purchases a map.

“Ain’t nobody needs maps ‘round these parts. The road’s a straight line, you goin’ noth or south,” he scratches his chin, leaning towards her against the counter.

“It takes so long to find an exit that I’m sometimes afraid I’ve dosed off and missed one,” she confesses with a small smirk.

If he hears the joke, he doesn’t understand it. “We ain’t needin’ them maps, cause we know where we supposed ta be.” But he turns around and finds one anyway, handing it to her while looking at her eyes.

It takes strength to get back on that lonely road.

“Just miles and miles,” she says and nibbles on some gas station beef jerky, letting the incense-like smoke of the cigarette calm her from the ashtray. Eyes glow on the forest’s edge, and she locks the door. The baby screams and she jumps, and then it laughs.

“All the city lights. That’s where we’re headed– the city. Where the lights are always on.”

Her stomach suddenly leaps into her throat. For a moment she battles it, but loses.

Mona pulls her car to a thin ditch near a cow field. The baby tries to speak but shakes in frustration as its mother almost rolls out of the car. One bovine looks up jadedly and then, feeling no threat, continues to eat.

“Don’t look,” she says, and suddenly leans over and heaves. It lasts for at least a minute. Her trembling hand falters slightly off the car’s hood, and for a frightened moment she prepares to fall face-first into what she’s just retched out of her system. Shudder. Spit. Shudder.

Pine needles fall. Cows call out in the distance. The car begins to stall, and then blasts rebelliously into full life. Gnats buzz around her head.

She leans up, then back before she climbs back into the old fighter, making sure to chuck the gas station snack out of the car door.

In the back seat the baby continues to spit nonsensical noises. Her eyes are closed, and they become tighter and tighter shut. Then she yells.

“We’re almost there Kevin!”

After a pause she drives on as the baby watches Arizona get farther away and cries.

Mona once loved her family’s attic. She ran barefoot on the creaking wood floor, and her spring dress would dance around her thighs. Dust would fly up in the air and bother her nose. She spun with her arms outstretched, viewing the world in haze and shadows. But she knocked a mirror off the wall, twice her height, by simply trying to reach too far. It fell down a whole foot and stood vertically for a moment before crashing to the ground like a deer that’s been shot. The glass rippled and scattered, and for a minute, Mona was mute and stiff in terror. One of the shards dug a shallow cut into her ankle. The glass glistened in the light given off by the only window. Her only thought was “I’ll be here forever,” and she’d screamed then, loud, guttural screams.

Mona wants to stop thinking about Arizona.

There. There is something there. Her mind begins to panic. In the fuzzy, dark distance, she can see a large- thing. It’s huge, and it’s in the way. Even though it isn’t moving, she begins to slow down and curb to the right.

The nerves are shocked. She puts out the cigarette. Rolls up the window. Subconsciously ducks forward behind the wheel, still rolling at forty-five, but slowing down.

She holds her breath, feeling that young terror like broken glass cut her stomach.

Now she can tell that this thing is white, but a big black hole like a yawning mouth hangs open at her.

Thirty-five. Thirty.

She is close to tears,-

If I don’t move it can’t hurt-

only one hundred feet away.  And finally she inhales. The fuzz of fear has cleared from her eyes long enough for her to recognize the mighty slumbering beast as a mobile home. Dead stop.

She is surprised at the caution that strikes her before exiting her car. As a final precaution, she snatches a flashlight out of the glove compartment. Then she crawls out into the night, leaving her headlights aimed slightly left of the slumbering beast, and the baby groping for her mother.

Before she goes towards it, she aims her flashlight into the forest for the eyes- the glistening glass. For a minute, she stands there, and then takes a few steps forward, still hypnotized by the forest’s animosity.

She finally looks at the mobile home and her heart skips and then races. Then tin metal sides are dented all around, like it’s been rolled on its side until it resembled someone sucking in their stomach. It leans lazily on three slashed tires. The front door hangs open. It is too dark to see the interior, but in the daytime she would have found it completely naked.

And the writing. The writing.  Her feet are blocks. She cannot turn again. Her jaw falls as she thinks “I’ll be here forever,” over and over.

The writing reads, in dark red paint along the metal sidings: “YOU GO WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.” Under that, on a broken sign hanging limp, reads “Welcome to our happy home!” probably abandoned by the last owners.

A cloth closes over her gaping mouth. Her arms and legs suddenly dispel any energy. Muffled screams, and suddenly she is that little girl trapped in her basement, and that young woman about to inhale her first cigarette, cough it out, and try again. She does not cough it out, and the world goes black, and then blindingly white.

City lights.

—

Kelsi Graham is a writing student. She is inspired by the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski, and hopes to become successful in freelance short fiction.

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The Barrel by Holly Day

24 Aug

For as long as he could remember, the boy thought the old wooden barrel was some sort of pet. Three times a day, his father would take a jumbled plate of scraps out to the back yard and leave it right at the opening of the barrel. After the boy and his father were finished eating, his father would go back out into the yard and return with a plate to empty and clean it was as though it had been swabbed with a gigantic floppy tongue.

The boy often tried to imagine what it looked like when the barrel was eating. He could see it from the window of his bedroom, could just see what he thought must be its black gaping hole of a mouth. Did a long, pink, sticky tongue come out and delicately lap food off the plate? Did some sort of hose protrude at mealtimes to suck the food off the porcelain surface of the plate, like a vacuum cleaner extension, or the way mouths of the tiny tank snails worked in the fish tank at the doctor’s office? He could only imagine the answer, because whenever it was time to feed the barrel, he was already seated quietly at the table, waiting for his own food to be served. He didn’t dare ask his father if he could come out and feed the barrel with him. He didn’t dare ask his father anything.

Sometimes, when the boy was outside playing, he’d think about the barrel. The barrel was in the back yard, and the boy was only allowed in the front. A giant wooden fence surrounded the back yard. The only way into it or out of it was through the back door of the house. The boy’s father was the only one with a key. “Stay out of the back yard,” he’d say to the boy, any time he saw the boy looking at the big, locked door.

Once, the boy woke up in the middle of the night to noises in the back yard. He got out of bed and went to the window. His father was in the back yard, kneeling beside the barrel. He was saying something, but he was speaking so quietly that the boy couldn’t understand the words. He thought he could hear noises coming back to the man from the barrel, sounds that sounded like crying. After a while, his father stood up. He patted the barrel awkwardly before marching briskly back to the house.

The boy would often spend the long, empty hours of the day wondering about the barrel. He drew pictures and wrote stories of the backs of scratch paper about going to the back yard and making friends with the barrel. He was too little to go to school, and had no other children to play with, so his imaginary friendship with the barrel became his only friendship.

One day, his father caught him drawing pictures of himself and the barrel playing together. In the picture, the little boy was pushing the old wooden barrel on the rusty swing in the front yard. The boy’s father’s face grew red and angry as he looked at the picture. The little boy shrank into his chair, confused and frightened. His father was often angry, and the little boy had learned early on to stay out of his way. He did not understand why the picture made his father so angry.

“Stay away from that barrel!” his father finally shouted, crumpling up the picture and throwing it in the garbage. “Don’t even think about the barrel!”

After that, the barrel was all the little boy could think about. He would lie awake in bed long after his father put him in his room for the night, waiting for the house to go quiet. As soon as he was sure his father had gone to sleep, the little boy would creep across the room to look out his tiny window at the old wooden barrel in the back yard. If he put his ear to the window, he was sure he could hear the barrel singing, or crying, or making wet, blubbery, nonsense noises to itself. Every once in a while, the barrel would suddenly jerk, just a little, as though trying to roll away.

During the day, the little boy tried his best to not think about the barrel. He tried to make up new imaginary friends to play with in the front yard, mostly other children like himself, sometimes fanciful talking animals. He’d give them all conspicuously manly names like “Tom,” and “Peter,” and “Randall,” as his father seemed especially pleased with him when his imaginary friends had boy names. When he drew pictures of his imaginary friends, he made them all little boys like him, although, not having seen many other children, he often drew them with purple skin and green or pink hair. His father would frown slightly at these pictures, but since he didn’t actually say anything, the boy went on drawing his imaginary friends in rainbow hues.

The night alone was dedicated to imaginings about the barrel. In his dreams, the barrel sprouted legs and arms and could run about the yard like a person, or on all fours like a dog. When it was on all fours, it sprouted a long, wet tongue like a dog, and panted, and drooled, and barked. When it was on two legs, it laughed, and shouted, and said nice things to the boy, like, “You’re my best friend,” or “Do you want to run away with me?”

The dreams were so alluring to the boy the he began to think of ways to make them come true. The little window in his room had been nailed shut long before, but he began to see how easy it would be to take the nails out. He carefully dug at the soft pine windowsill in his room with the tines of a fork, and slowly, over the course of many nights, the nails began to come out. He was so careful not to make any noise. He was careful not to scratch the glass. He was careful not to scratch the wood too much with the fork so that if his father happened to look at the window, he wouldn’t see splinters and scratches on the frame. Unless he counted the nails left in the window sill, he would never know what the boy had been doing.

When all the nails were finally out, the little boy scarcely dared to push the window upwards. When he finally did, the wood screeched so dreadfully his heart stopped. He carefully, quietly, pulled the window shut again and jumped into bed, waiting for the sound of his father’s footsteps. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the door to his room opened and his father’s silhouette filled the doorway. “Was that you?” the man asked, quietly. The boy kept silent, eyes tightly closed, unmoving in his bed. After a few seconds, the man turned away and shut the door behind him.

As soon as he was gone, the little boy quietly crept out of bed and went back to the window. This time, the pane slid up easily, silently. The window gaped open to the back yard. The barrel loomed in its corner of the yard, its dark mouth open in a frozen  scream.

The little boy squeezed out the window and tiptoed across the yard. He could see his father sitting at the kitchen table through the small window in the back door, an open beer bottle in one hand, his attention focused on the newspaper spread out on the table before him. The boy held his breath and ran as fast as he could to the barrel. Any minute, his father would turn around and see him. He would reach the barrel before his father turned around.

“Hello?” he whispered, dropping to his knees and peering inside the dark of the barrel. It was much larger up close than it had appeared from inside the kitchen, almost as big around as he was tall. He could see something moving inside, something way in back. He crept closer, until his head was almost inside the barrel. “Hello?”

Long, thin arms reached out and grabbed the boy. He squeaked and squirmed and tried to get away as the arms pulled him completely into the barrel. Pendulous breasts and long, matted hair brushed his skin. Thin arms pulled him close to a body that smelled horrible yet familiar.

“Shhh,” whispered a voice near his ear. “Shhh, baby. Shhh.”

“Let me go!” he managed to get out before a hand clapped over his mouth.

“Mine, mine, all mine,” the voice began to softly sing. The body rocked back and forth, clutching the boy tightly, rocking him, too. “Mine, mine, all mine.”

The little boy began to cry. He wanted out. He wanted back in his bed, the safety of his room. He wanted his father to come and get him, to rescue him from the stinky darkness of the barrel.

“Don’t cry, little one,” cooed the voice, still rocking, one hand still over his mouth. Finger combed through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead. “Don’t cry. Someone will feed us soon.”

 —
Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poetry and fiction has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream. Her book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.
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Who Has Been Eating Franklin’s Candy? by Jimmy MF Pudge

17 Aug

Franklin tiptoed naked across the bloody floor, trying hard not to let his 500 pounds of pure love give his presence away. He’d been tracking the man who had been eating his Candy for about a week now, seeking out that elusive sonofabitch that smelled of Swiss cheese.

The butcher knife in Franklin’s hand was dripping the blood of the dude he’d just stabbed to death. The first attack, a puncture wound in the throat with the tip of the blade exiting out through the back of the neck, had been enough to kill that motherfucker. He’d stabbed him about twenty more times in blind rage, picking the body up and tossing it all around the room, laughing at the blood splattering the walls as the corpse hit with a thud, bouncing off and falling in a heap on the floor.

He’d come to his senses after about five minutes of that shit, realizing that the Candy Man, a nickname he’d attached to this motherfucker, might have been roused by the ruckus. He had to be quiet. He wondered who the motherfucker was he killed. It didn’t really matter.

Before entering the small brick house and killing the man sitting on the couch eating a Doritos Loco Taco (he could tell by the smell), Franklin had taken his clothes off and neatly folded them, placing them on the front porch. He didn’t need to get them dirty before work.

Tracking down the Candy Man had been difficult. Not too many people took the time to smell the slice of Swiss cheese he carried on him.

They thought him a nut–

A lunatic–

A freak.

Franklin sighed as he made it out of the living room to the hallway, gliding down the hall like a phantom to the first door on the right. Gently he opened the door.

“CREEEAK” went the hinge.

Nothing but an empty bathroom with a turd floating in the toilet bowl.

He’d found a waitress in a Waffle House down the road willing to tell him about the man that reeked of Swiss cheese. She didn’t even need to smell the cheese slice. Franklin had asked her if she’d smelled anyone like this before, pulling out the Swiss, and she’d nodded her head.

“How can I forget someone that smells like that?” she’d said. “The name on his debit card is Freddy Jones, and he’s a creep. He creeps me out.”

Franklin nodded his head, finished his waffle and thanked her with a two dollar tip. He walked outside, thumbed through a phone book hanging from a phone booth and spotted a Freddy Jones who lived less than half a mile down the road.

Franklin crept down the hallway to the next door and gently pushed it open with his swollen foot, glancing around the empty bedroom. He saw a Taco Bell bag on the bed and figured this was where the dead man slept. The room smelled of nacho cheese and Vaseline.

That left only one more place. He crept to the end of the hallway and gently turned the doorknob. His eye peered into the crack.

He could see the Candy Man on the bed, eating his Candy.

Franklin stepped inside.

“What THE FUCK YOU DOIN, MOTHERFUCKER!” Franklin screeched.

The Candy Man looked up from between Candy’s legs. “Who the fuck are you?” he said, his lips glistening.

“Franklin!” Candy screamed, sitting up, covering her beautiful breasts (BBs) with an arm.

“I been tracking down the man who been eating my Candy!” Franklin roared, raising the knife. “You bout to die!”

“Look, pal,” the Candy Man said, “it’s a free country. Maybe if you ate Candy more often, she wouldn’t come to me.”

Franklin reared back the knife and charged.

—

Jimmy M.F. Pudge was born and abandoned in the state of Georgia. He’s a lover and a business man of life. If any fine ass women looking for a big teddy bear, hit Jimmy James up at jimmypudge@gmail.com.

Jimmy published some crazy ass books on Amazon, including “Bad Billy,” “Ice Cream Man,” and “Yo A$$ is GRA$$: Tales From a Rednek Gangsta.” He got some good reviews and some bad reviews, but it all good.

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A Big Day For Patricia by Gwil James-Thomas

10 Aug

It seemed that not even the mighty Zeus could please them. Now that summer had finally arrived, the city could hardly cope. Through the smog, dogs died in parked cars, ice cream melted onto the pavements, discarded food and waste reheated itself in the bins, businessmen removed their jackets, the people pacing the streets as the sweat rolled down their backs and thighs. Some elderly passed away under the sun, some went to the parks, headed to the beach, others spent the afternoon in the cool dark of the cinema.

But she span through the air, her fly legs swaying, dancing through the atmosphere. Not all were having a bad time. She’d found her way into that kitchen through an open door and had been having a great time ever since. It had been a productive day, so far – she’d gotten there early enough to pace the chopping board a couple of times, before regurgitating on a block of cheese that had been left on the side.

She then flew and landed on a plant, with a certain magnetism to her landing. Maybe it had been the excitement of everything else, but there had seemed something so appealing about the plant. It was something short lived and like some femme fatale, it had seemed unthreatening, even inviting. The sides closed in, like jaws, everything tightening… Fading light… Ingestion…

Above, the hands on the clock on the wall continued to tick. It had been a while since Patricia had consumed a fly. As the latest pride to enter that house, Patricia stood tall on the windowsill – the city behind like some open cesspool. People sounded their horns at one another, sirens went off in the distance, as a plane drifted through the sky above. There would be more to come, Patricia would be waiting. It was only nature after all.

—

Gwil is a writer of short stories, essays and a novel titled Captains of Sinking Ships. His work has appeared in Mungbeing, Horror Sleaze Trash, Fiction 365, Blue Tattoo Magazine, and More Noize: The Worst Fanzine in The World. He currently lives in Brighton, England and is working on a second novel. Any questions, hate mail, etcetera can be emailed to measureofdesperation@gmail.com

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Chewing on a Legend by BF Moloney

6 Aug

The people of the little town of Grovel complain every day. They complain publicly and without inhibition. The town is famous for it. Our Grovel: the moaning capital of the world. Tourists come from afar to hear the townspeople complain. Usually the complaint is about the climate or something more trivial. Occasionally it might be about the stink from the town’s sewer, which runs through Parliament Square. For the tourist, especially those who come from extreme climatic conditions, it is a real novelty to hear someone complain about rain or sunshine. On any pleasant Grovel day Northern Hemisphere tourists feel less ashamed about their February snow complaints or when hurricanes come in late September. Other tourists however, can’t believe how lucky the Grovellers are, and wonder what is really going on. Maybe there is some sort of syndrome running deep in the town’s psyche. Of course not everyone in Grovel complain. These are the incomers who have found a better life here but don’t get involved in local issues. They have their complaints like everybody, but they prefer to keep them private.

One day during the height of the tourist season a strange thing happened. A young child was about to make its maiden complaint in the local city hall for the tourists. The complaints have been coming thick and fast and some quite emotional. Public complaining is an intense affair at times and even sombre tourists find it hard going. The mayor thought the audience needed some light relief. The debutant child was therefore coached to complain about the water being too wet to drink. It’s not an uncommon complaint in the town, but this was going to be the first public witnessing of it. However, it wasn’t the real issue. The real issue is the heavy fluoridation of the water, and a child was needed to highlight the problem in a simple way. The parents, at the prompting of the mayor, who rarely smiled because of his chalky teeth, felt they couldn’t directly complain about the fluoride; instead one could rightly ask how wet is too wet. This is the gentle path to reform. There was a risk, however, that the audience might find this complaint over the top and in a way mocking the whole seriousness of complaining.
The child got up and forthrightly walked to the lowered microphone, took a deep breath and said a funny thing. “I don’t like eating grass”. There was a stony silence. The smiling mayor left his chair and came over to the child, said a few words in the child’s ear and went back. “I don’t like eating grass” the child said again. This time the child’s parents got up from their chairs and ushered him from the stage and out a side entrance. Meanwhile the mayor was at the microphone and began to speak. However he couldn’t be heard amid the sudden uproar of shouting and laughter amongst the audience. It was a scandal. The tourists left Grovel amidst words of disgust and derision. What is it with this place that a child would be eating grass? This is outrageous. This is tantamount to child abuse. Who else ate grass? A murmuring fear took hold in the community. There would be serious economic and social consequences once the world knew what is happening here.

A public enquiry began, headed by a panel of independent commissioners from a neutral town called Ewes. The debutant child was the first witness and he stuck with his complaint of not liking eating grass. The parents were called in. Yes it’s true. They themselves eat grass. And gradually the local people came forward and said they eat grass too. As the enquiry continued it was found that those who complained were also grass eaters. In comers said they have never eaten grass and couldn’t understand it. As a result of this enquiry a new administration was appointed, with a mandate to rid the town of its image and to start afresh, and to find the reasons for all this grass eating and put a stop to the practice.

It appears a strange tradition had been exposed. At midnight when the full moon is its brightest in a clear sky, and when the frogs sing of this enchantment, the locals eat grass in a paddock on the outskirts of town, hidden by trees and protected by hawthorn bushes. They are all completely naked. Children under five are exempt, and are looked after by their grandparents who are also exempt. This has been a tradition since the founding of the town of Grovel. The first settlers discovered the local conditions were intolerable. The beauty of the place belied hostility and stark isolation. With the right and might of God on their side the settlers decided to stick it out, even if it meant eating grass to survive, which they eventually did. It was done stark naked to establish equality, and to create community bonding. They survived and a tradition was born, and it’s been kept ever since. Over time some local people began to complain. By this time the tradition became law. The complaints continued but the law remained firm. Like the law enabling free speech, eating grass was a fundamental ritual before God. In frustration the local people began to complain about other things like the climate and the tyranny of distance. And the sky was too blue and the rain too wet. When the complaints went from being a private town affair to a national one, the media got hold of it. And when Grovel began to appear in travel guides the international legend of Grovel, the little complaining town down under, had been born.

—
B F Moloney lives in Tasmania Australia where he manages a second hand bookshop. Born into the mad and imaginative world of Catholicism, he’s long escaped it with his imagination suitably perverted by the experience. Loony Tunes and David Lynch have helped him see an absurder light, and he hopes to write a little more.

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Krill Warriors by Jon Konrath

3 Aug

Every rusted double-wide in our trailer park had a story: meth lab explosion, first-cousin inbreeding, factory worker who lost his genitals in an auto-erotic punch press “accident.” Four lots down from our aging Skyline lived Dougie Berger, a kid born with an exoskeleton, a solid shell of cartilage like some kind of mollusk or insect. Massive birth defects weren’t unusual in Bighikistan; my kindergarten class of 32 had seven cases of Proteus syndrome, a couple of kids with neurofibromatosis, a set of conjoined triplets, and one of the first diagnosed cases of Kaufman oculocerebrofacial syndrome, which is characterized by extreme microcephaly and rampant mental retardation. When you dump millions of gallons of toxic PCBs into the water table, these things tend to happen. But Dougie’s congenital disorder was one of the most extreme anyone in our town had ever seen. This guy made Rocky Dennis look like someone with a bad haircut that would grow out in a week.

Dougie’s parents had a hell of a time finding the poor bastard any school clothes. Most of your typical Toughskins/Garanimals gear came in standard children’s sizes, which didn’t work out for him; a 6X with a chest size of 25 1/2 inches didn’t fit a large crustacean shell that measured two yards around. His mom, a tragic Hell’s Angels widow with a chronic gambling addiction, shoplifted Dickies work clothes at the Farm and Fleet and kit-bashed in pieces of army-surplus tents and wool blankets to construct something that resembled a costume from a low-budget Italian goblin monster movie. Our classmates in grade school would beat him accordingly, throwing sticks of butter at the alleged lobster boy while wearing plastic restaurant bibs from Captain Jack’s, the local seafood restaurant.

I had my own social problems as a child, stemming from my mom’s insistence that I was allergic to gluten, lactose, latex, and crayon wax. I spent the first three years of school quarantined in the library, cutting chunks out of old illustrated Leo Tolstoy comic books, pasting together a Spiderman versus Ivan Ilyich fanzine, where Peter Ivanovich was really the Green Goblin, and New York bore a strange similarity to a late 19th-century St. Petersburg. This was long before Marvel started their new business model of selling out en masse to Hollywood, when any idiot could make a couple of bucks writing a hack a script based on an obscure Marvel comic. (Seriously, who was really going to see that Peter Porker movie last summer?) Fortunately, grade schools hadn’t switched to the non-toxic variety of rubber cement, so my little scrapbooking project got me crazy high on the fumes.

In high school, I transferred all of my antagonism on to the Berger kid, spending fourth-hour social studies class in my freshman year trying to damage the shell around his neckline by smacking it with a nutcracker set I stole from home. Our Jesus freak vice-principal thought that all edible legumes and seeds were Satanic and/or Communistic and regularly swept everyone’s lockers with special kernel-sniffing dogs. He seized my shell-splitting tools and Butthole Surfers albums, and forced me to spend six Saturdays with a bunch of truants, stoners, and metalheads, digging slit latrines for his illegal backwater Jesus camp just outside of town.

(Legume originates from the Latin word legumen, which comes from the verb legere, which means “to gather,” and a gathering is synonymous with a salon, a collection of people meeting for intellectual enlightenment, which in the eyes of vice-principal Shitbag surely meant some kind of Socialist or anti-church fifth-column subversive activity.)

I forgot about crab boy completely, until twenty years later. My medical tech writing career fell apart (I got fired for accidentally sending pictures of my penis to a Cooking Lite email distribution list — who the hell sets their mailing list to “reply to everyone” in the 21st century anyway?) I couldn’t make it selling fiction about sex with vomit anymore, and wrote crap news articles for this pay-per-word SEO content mill. My article trawling led me to start researching the Navy’s trained arthropod/human hybrid squads used to defuse smart mines off the Iranian coast. (There are more mutants around than you’d think, mostly from that depleted uranium cock ring fad in the mid-90s.) Turns out Berger was in charge of some Krill Underwater Demolition Team, so I filled out the paperwork on the DoD web site to request an interview, expecting the usual form letter saying they wouldn’t help someone who graduated from an abortion technician vocational school.

After sending the request, I went for a two-hour lunch at the cattle mutilation-themed restaurant on the edge of town, a place where waiters dressed up as grey aliens and carved sides of beef with industrial lasers. The food’s not much better than Sizzler, but sometimes during the week, a chick with three tits like the one in Total Recall works there, and she tends to bend over a lot. It’s a good place to avoid work, enjoy a ten-drink lunch, and reflect on why your life has fallen apart. Given the state of the world, they do swift business these days during the lunch shift.

When I returned to the office, I got a call from Berger. “I’ll talk,” he said, “if you can tell me what really happened to my Six Million Dollar Man action figure back in the second grade.”

“Shit man, you still obsessed with that doll? I wasn’t there, but I heard Shawn Hill stole it out of your locker and smashed it with a sledgehammer.”

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “What happened to that glue-sniffing little fuck?”

“His dad was a DEA informant. Some paroled meth addicts found out, blew up his house in junior high,” I said. “Look Doug, I’m trying to write this article about the K-UDT teams. Can you tell me anything about Iran?”

“They eat yogurt with every meal,” he said. “I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t exactly tell reporters we’re sneaking nukes onto foreign soil with giant krill soldiers, and I’m pretty pissed about this bionic man thing. It had the karate chop arm and everything. Look, can I call you back?”

“Sure, whatever.” I hung up. “Douche.”

GIANT SHRIMP ARMS TRAFFICKING? I typed, the headline for my piece. I don’t give a fuck if I start a world war, I thought. I’m getting paid by the word here.

—
Jon Konrath writes absurdist/bizarro fiction and runs Paragraph Line. This is an excerpt from his latest book, Sleep Has No Master. He is obsessed with time travel, Star Wars pornography, and medical press releases. Go to rumored.com to find out more.

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Your Vitroworm and You By Daniel Davis

30 Jul

VITROWORM CONSUMER INSTRUCTIONS

WARNING! Women should not consume a Vitroworm before the Second Trimester. If a Vitroworm is ingested before this period, Link your Physician immediately.

  • Individuals consuming a Vitroworm without a Physician-approved prescription will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, as per the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract.
  • Your Vitroworm must be consumed within twenty-four (24) hours of purchase. Do not consume your Vitroworm if more than twenty-four (24) hours have passed. Link your Physician for further details.
  • Never consume a Vitroworm except for the reasons prescribed. Consumption of a Vitroworm in an uncontrolled recreational situation may result in a Vitroworm infestation, and is punishable to the fullest extent of the law, as per the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract.

STEP 1

  • Remove the softgel Vitroworm capsule from its insulated packaging.
  • Swallow with warm water.

STEP 2

  • Eat only your Physician-prescribed diet for the next seventy-two (72) hours. Any food or beverage not prescribed by your Physician may affect the performance of your Vitroworm.
  • Your Vitroworm Solution must be consumed with every meal, as scheduled by your Physician.
  • Avoid strenuous activity for seventy-two (72) hours.

STEP 3

  • After twelve (12) hours, the Vitroworm will have made its way into Subject’s bloodstream. Subject will begin to feel a warming sensation in the abdominal region.
  • If you do not feel a warming sensation after twelve (12) hours, Link your Physician.

STEP 4

  • After twenty-four (24) hours, the Vitroworm will have made its way into your womb. The warming sensation will dissipate, followed by a period of numbness.
  • If the burning sensation does not dissipate, Link your Physician.

STEP 5

  • After forty-eight (48) hours, Link your Physician and update him/her on your progress.
  • After forty-eight (48) hours, consumption of Vitroworm Solution is unnecessary, unless otherwise instructed by your Physician.

WARNING! Beyond this point, it is possible for Subject to feel suggestions of doubt, nausea, or depression. Use a Feed Unit to Link your Physician if ANY of these symptoms occur. If Subject is experiencing depression, it is permissible to Link your Psychiatrist.

STEP 6

  • After sixty (60) hours, the Vitroworm has entered the fetus’s bloodstream. Subject may feel minor physical discomfort. Do not consume any pain inhibitors, as they will interfere with the Vitroworm’s metabolism.
  • Link your Physician. Unless instructed otherwise, proceed to your Lavatory. No food or beverage is to be consumed for the duration of the Birthing procedure.
  • Subject is to straddle the Commode with legs splayed. Set up your Birthing Receiver Unit given to you by your Physician. Failure to properly set up your Birthing Receiver Unit may result in accidental spilling that neither your Physician nor UHealth MultiCorp is responsible for.
  • Severe pain may be experienced shortly before ejaculation of the Vitroworm and undigested fetal material. Do not consume any pain inhibitors.
  • Ejaculation may take as long as thirty (30) minutes. Wait at least forty-five (45) minutes after initial ejaculation before removing yourself from the Commode. Failure to wait at least forty-five (45) minutes may result in accidental spilling that neither your Physician nor UHealth MultiCorp is responsible for.

STEP 7

  • Flush Vitroworm and fetal material. Repeated flushings may be required.
  • Thoroughly cleanse your Commode and Birthing Receiver Unit with the Disinfectant provided to you by your Physician. If accidental spilling has occurred, thoroughly sanitize all surfaces of your Lavatory.

STEP 8

  • Once cleanup has been completed, Link your Physician. Follow the relaxation and dieting instructions given to you.
  • Do not consume any non-Physician prescribed food or drink before seventy-two (72) hours after original consumption of the Vitroworm.
  • Wait at least six (6) months before consuming another Vitroworm.

YOUR VITROWORM AND YOU!
A FRIENDLY GUIDE TO VITROWORM CONSUMPTION

For beginners, Vitroworm consumption can be a frightening process. What exactly does my Vitroworm do? What can I expect while my Vitroworm is inside of me? Are there any lasting side effects? We at UHealth MultiCorp have created this pamphlet to answer your important questions, and to help bring you the fullest enjoyment possible from your Vitroworm experience!

Q: Is my Vitroworm dangerous to my overall health?

A: As long as the guidelines and safety regulations established in the Vitroworm Consumer Instructions are followed fully and accurately, potential danger to the Subject is kept to a minimum. All guidelines and regulations have been approved by the Philadelphia Physician Institute. (UHealth MultiCorp is bound by the restrictions and regulations of the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract.)

Q: How much pain will I experience after consuming my Vitroworm?

A: Unfortunately, the Vitroworm consumption process may result in unintentional discomfort. UHealth Multicorp has closely consulted with the Philadelphia Physician Institute to ensure that the process is as painless as possible. Your Physician may provide additional UHealth-approved instructions to ease possible discomfort.

Q: What will happen if I do not rigidly follow the Vitroworm Consumer Instructions conveniently supplied to me?

A: Failure to comply explicitly with the Vitroworm Consumer Instructions is not only illegal, and punishable under the guidelines established in the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract, but can also result in unintentional side-effects, such as: incomplete digestion of the fetal material, or the total failure thereof; internal bleeding; environmental contamination; fatigue; accidental spilling; and personal harm. (This list is not intended to be full or complete. Consult your Physician or nearest UHealth Multicorp representative if you have further questions.)

Q: Are there any lingering side effects from Vitroworm consumption?

A: In certain cases, Subjects have experienced the following side effects days, weeks, or months after Vitroworm consumption: pain of the abdominal or inguinal regions; fatigue; depression; thoughts of suicide; restlessness; and insomnia. (This list is not intended to be full or complete. Should any side effects occur, consult your Physician or Psychiatrist immediately.)

Q: Where can I go if I have further questions concerning my Vitroworm experience?

A: If you have questions at any stage in the process, you can simply Link your Physician. All Physicians are UHealth-certified, and are expertly trained to handle every situation that may arise.

Thank you for choosing UHealth Multicorp! We hope that your Vitroworm consumption experience will be everything that you have expected—and more!

—
Daniel Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois. He is the Nonfiction Editor for The Prompt Literary Magazine. You can follow him at www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com, or on Facebook.

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The Devil’s Food by Gabino Iglesias

23 Jul

Once there was a couple of sisters who were wildly different. One of them had no children, lived in the best part of town in a beautiful palace made of cheese, and held the prestigious title of World’s Fattest Woman. The other sister had five kids, lived in the midst of filth, was a widow, and suffered from such poverty that she no longer had food enough to satisfy herself and her children. Although the same blood coursed through their veins, a little slower and thicker on the fat one and a tad more contaminated on the poor one, the two sisters had grown to despise each other and had not exchanged a single word in more than a decade.

The filial bonds had been shattered because each sister thought her own path righteous while looking down at the choices made by the other. To Henrietta, the morbidly obese sister, her emaciated, disease-ridden blood sister was nothing but a soiled wench with a floppy puss and very loose morals. Henrietta had watched with a censorious scrunching of the brow as Gertrude, the skeletal sister, had abandoned the virtuous ways of the Church of Conjoined Knees and had figuratively stuck her moral compass past the evil door of her dilated sphincter. While becoming a sex mercenary and engaging in despicable acts with men, robots, animals and aliens was something that didn’t sit well with Henrietta, it was her sister’s decision to marry an anencephalic dwarf that had made the plump one decide to never again utter a word to her rail-thin sibling.

In the case of Gertrude, who saw her carnal performances for monetary remuneration merely as a way to achieve the highest echelon of upward social mobility, Henrietta’s desire to expand her considerable girth to award-winning proportions in order to acquire fame and fortune was contemptible. Watching her sister drink down melted butter and wolfing down deep fried furry organs and chocolate covered teratomas always made Gertrude queasy. A professional didgeridoo player who’d come to town on tour and had requested Gertrude’s services had laid bloodshot eyes on her sister when he picked her up. After he’d given her a cherry cobbler and a clam chowder enema, the musically-inclined octopus had told Gertrude her sister probably suffered from sitophilia, which is sexual arousal from food. The explanation only achieved one thing: Gertrude began to think of her overweight sister as a sick individual.

The daughters of a couple with limited means, Henrietta and Gertrude were forced to put up with one another throughout their teenage years in the worst of ways: they had to share a bedroom. Lack of personal space only added to their growing dislike for one another. Continuous bickering and senseless screaming eventually lead to a cold silence between them. The bitter gap was only stretched further every time Gertrude came home reeking of intercourse with some feral beast or when Henrietta’s slobbering and moaning while eating shattered her sister’s last nerve.

Thankfully, all situations are bound to change and all things sooner or later meet their end. On the same week, both sisters found ways out of this state of affairs.

Henrietta found a young man with a budding career as a mobster who loved to roll around in her vast expanses of soft flesh and proposed marriage. As for Gertrude, she learned that the viscous liquid pouring out of her meant she was pregnant with a squid, which irked her father to no end. Fearing her father’s wrath, she went out and found an anencephalic dwarf on whom she blamed the pregnancy. In response, the dwarf drooled. Gertrude took the dribble as a marriage proposal and readily agreed.

Two days later the sisters muttered halfhearted goodbyes:

“I truly hope I don’t see you too often down the road, you anorexic harlot,” mumbled Henrietta.

“The day you choke on a whole pudding-stuffed ostrich I will celebrate your departure as if it was my birthday,” replied Gertrude through clenched teeth.

After those last words, the sisters went their separate ways in the arms of their new husbands. Their father, a deaf-mute piano tuner, said nothing. Their mother, a rather passé mermaid table lamp, only complained about the nautilus she was forced to hold over her head.

Henrietta’s husband, Giovanni Vincenzo Giuseppe Battaglia Spilotro Lombardo, who everyone called Tony, quickly became a big man in the underground world of hallucinogenic worm trafficking. Money begot power and his crimes lead to a successful career in politics. The day Tony became mayor, the couple moved into a posh four-story cheese palace on the outskirts of town. Away from the bustle and hustle of lesser beings and hidden from judging eyes, Henrietta confined herself to a gigantic bed in order to burn as few calories as possible. She spent her time eating, sleeping, farting, and allowing her husband to roll around naked over her large, soft body.

With Henrietta concentrating on becoming the first female to reach the 2,000 pound mark, her eating became a full-time endeavor. Since Tony had to attend to other businesses regularly and his wife never left the bed, two of his goons were given the task of shoveling fatty foods down his beloved’s throat. Although the gallons of gravy, dozens of bacon-stuffed fetuses, fried fatback sandwiches and lard-covered cheesecakes that disappeared down Henrietta’s gullet were expensive, Tony was a man who had sufficient funds to keep his adored mountain of adipose tissue happy. Miles away, unbeknownst to Henrietta, her sister was regularly woken by the rumbling complaints of her own empty stomach and the desperate cries of her starving children.

While Henrietta’s life was pampered and she lived surrounded by the comfort and mental peace that comes from opulence, Gertrude’s wretched existence was the complete opposite. Her first baby, a squid she named Franklin, ravenously ate fish and shrimp. With both food items reaching astronomical prices in a world where all oceans had turned into gigantic stretches of toxic green slush, Gertrude was forced to accept high-risk jobs that landed her in painful and uncomfortable situations. It also brought a second child her way.

Upon waking up from a five-month coma she was left in during a biomechanical gorilla gangbang, Gertrude learned a second being was growing inside her. This time around, a baby girl covered in luscious red fur was born. Gertrude named her Binadryl. Soon the twins, One and Two, joined the family. The twins had the dark, slick skin of a seal, cartoonish voices and purple tongues. Finally, Big Timmy joined the family. Timmy’s cyclopean size was matched by his cyclopean hunger.

Between Gertrude’s work and her husband’s panhandling, they scraped together enough money to get by. Sadly, that came to an end when George, Gertrude’s husband, died in a freak jump rope accident. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Gertrude contracted a strange disease from a traveling plantain salesman and painful, bulbous growth started appearing all over her body. The growths prevented her from finding clients. That was the proverbial last straw.

With five kids, no husband and no money, Gertrude was forced to move into the worst part of town. She acquired an apartment where they could all fit and where the landlord accepted oral sex and contributions that would help him keep his cropophiliac tendencies satisfied as payment for rent.

The abode smelled of rotting garbage and the walls could not be touched because they were covered by flesh-eating mold. Surprisingly, although Binadryl lost a leg to the flesh-eating mold, the carnivorous pest that plagued the walls was not the worst thing about the new dwelling. That title belonged to a gang of immense kleptomaniac cockroaches. The rowdy bunch of arthropods would invade the apartment once in a while and steal everything they came across.

One day, while Gertrude and her kids were busy trying not to pass out from hunger, the cockroaches showed up. There were six of them and they all carried butterfly knives. The biggest roach stood up on its hind legs, pointed at Gertrude with his blade and said:

“Listen, lady, we don’t mean no disrespect or nuthin’ but you gotta get those damn crazy kids the fuck outta here. Me and my boy Jeremy over here had to run away from the big one with only one eye the other day. We can’t live in fear of those little freaks eating our asses, you know what I mean? Maybe if you get the hell out, somebody who can actually afford some food might come to live in this damn dump. I’m being nice right now, but if we have to come back here again, every last one of yous is getting a Colombian necktie, ya hear?”

Scared and broke, Gertrude broke down and went to her sister. A tall man with no mouth let her in and took her to see her enormous sister. Swallowing her pride and steering clear of small talk, Gertrude addressed her sister:

“My children and I are suffering the greatest hunger and now we’ve been threatened with eviction by some very mean cockroaches. You are rich and have everything you can eat. Would you give me a mouthful of bread or at least some cheese from your walls?”

The very wealthy, portly sister, who was as soft as marshmallows on the outside but as hard as a stone on the inside, looked at her sister’s fleshy, suppurating growths with disgust and said:

“There is nothing to eat in the house. I can barely feed myself as it is. Now please remove your skanky, diseased ass from my property before I eat you.”

After those harsh, untrue words, the obese woman watched as the poor creature who shared her blood walked away. A smile spread across her face, but her cheeks were so heavy, smiling made her tired.

Later that day Tony came home. He was about to cut himself a piece of bread, but when he made the first cut into the loaf, red blood came flowing out. When Henrietta saw the bleeding bread, she became terrified and told her husband what had occurred. As she spoke, the walls all around them began to reek of a mixture of Roquefort, Camembert and Munster, which was strange considering they were made of American cheese. Just like the bread, the walls began to bleed. Tony reprimanded his beloved spouse and hurried away to help the sick widow and her children.

The mobster stopped at a pet store and bought a sausage-shitting puppy in the hopes that it would help Gertrude feed her kids. A gigantic goon carried Tony and the whimpering puppy into the worst part of town and dropped them in front of a dilapidated building.

Tony climbed up to Gertrude’s apartment and knocked on the door. Receiving no response, the mobster kicked the door in. When he entered, Tony found Gertrude mumbling to herself on the floor. The woman was bleeding from a few places in her arms, face and shoulders where growths had apparently been removed by considerable force.

The hungry, heartbroken woman had the twins in her arms. The three other kids were lying dead near her. On Big Timmy’s huge, toothless mouth as well as on Franklin’s twitching tentacles, Tony could see the chewed, bloody remnants of what could only be a few of Gertrude’s bulbous growths. Overcoming his nausea, Tony walked over to the mother and offered her the puppy and the few slim sausages it had crapped on the way there. With tears in her eyes, Gertrude shook her head and said:

“For earthly food have we no longer any desire. The Devil has already satisfied the hunger of three of us, and he will hearken to our supplications likewise. I have found that these growths are filled we a honey-like substance that’s very poisonous. I know it’s the Devil’s nectar.”

Scarcely had Gertrude uttered these words than the two little ones bit down on the round things in their mouths and immediately drew their last breath, whereupon Gertrude’s heart broke, and she sank down dead.

 

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Dead Violets in Ear Boxed Ears by Joshua Martin

16 Jul

ye old paint shop and marble desks of a widowed cloth wedding dresses like a coffin full of victor mature and monica moonpie with dead violets in her boxed ears spending a month’s pay on odetta records and reading bound for glory with the pages uncut / oh, the waves are in some kind of trouble, all those bastard raccoons with bananas between their claws and attaché cases on their minds / okay, so monica moonpie was at a dress shop fitting with a werewolf, peggy sue, and martin luther and as the lady with the clay hands measures monica moonpie’s waist, she’s got a grin on her face and her bloody crucifix around her neck smells like cherries and monica moonpie glances down at the lady with the clay hands and says “have you done this before?” “not since i was knee eye to a railroad track” “oh i see it all very clearly now and i want you to take those clay hands off of me before i spit all over you” and the lady with the clay hands stands up and wants to slap monica moonpie’s face, but she has her mind on tyrone power and the lone ranger so instead she looks monica moonpie right in the eye and says “you’re just a vampire and i think you’re better off without a smile!” and monica moonpie gets real mad and she gets these spikes growing out of her back and her lips turn bright red and the lady with the clay hands sees all this and laughs and says “if i didn’t know better, i’d say that you were nothing but a freak” and monica moonpie spits fire and says “you ain’t no anouk aimee and i bet you make a lousy cup of coffee and i bet you can’t carry a tune and i’d rather eat a jar of mayonnaise than smell you!”

next to the aquarium and somewhere near the smoky mountains an alligator football team practices macbeth behind the bleachers and there’s this square headed blonde sitting at the top of the bleachers and she’s humming softly to herself and wondering how much time has passed since she last apologized to her favorite ice cream attendant and had an evening prayer for the soul of brigid brophy / it’s been even more or many or whatever yrs since she walking down the train tracks with monica moonpie and in those days monica moonpie used to help elderly women cross the street and she used to speak cajun and recite woody guthrie lyrics at the top of her lungs…now, this blonde in the bleachers, she’s all thumbs when it comes to tying knots and it used to make monica moonpie die from laughter when they were sailors and the blonde had to tie some knot and she just couldn’t do it and monica moonpie would laugh at her very loudly in front of everyone and this really got to the blonde after a while and one night she drew a mustache on monica moonpie’s face and on her forehead wrote: I’D RATHER BE STUMBLING THRU THE ROCKIES WITH STOLYPIN!!!…they never saw each other again after that and after the blonde had a mutant daughter and had eaten the last apple pie there was, she thought, and it was the first real though she ever had, and the thought was of a book by ann quin she had read and suddenly she got to dreaming and got to flying all night and she learned hungarian and got sick of god and jesus and all that and then she found these bleachers and started sitting there every day /

then again, monica moonpie was living alone in philadelphia with a room full of newspaper ads and pictures of alain delon, gregory corso, and the shah of iran on the wall, ceiling, and floor…between the curtains lay a cat with a tumor as big as a basketball on its back and monica moonpie got beaten up real bad by an indie rocker in thrift store t-shirts because she had said that sonic youth wasn’t worth shit and, anyway, monica moonpie has been dressing like it was the 1950’s, in poddle skirts and stockings and all that and when the downtown hipsters – those hipsters that seem to be everywhere where there’s water and hamsters and drawings of james dean on the sidewalks – saw her, they just laughed and said she was outdated and when she mentioned that she was as outdated as nick ray films and rambling jack eliot songs and virginia woolf novels, they shrugged their hipster shoulders and so monica moonpie put an ad in the newspaper that read: IF I EVER CARE WHAT YOU THINK, I’LL GO BACK TO SCHOOL, GET A JOB, GET MARRIED AND GO TO CHURCH EVERY SUNDAY LIKE A GOOD LITTLE GIRL AND ANOTHER THING, I’M NOT THE ONE WHO RATTED ON DILLINGER, SO QUITE BLAMING IT ON ME; I WAS JUST IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME AND IF I’M A BAD PERSON, THEN SO IS SYLVIA SIDNEY AND RUBY KEELER AND JUDY GARLAND AND JANE POWELL AND I THINK YOU ALL AGREE THAT THEY ARE NO SO BAD; ANYWAY, I DON’T WANT YOU TO READ THIS UNLESS YOU’VE FIRST READ KAFKA’S THE CASTLE AND RIMBAUD’S A SEASON IN HELL AND JUST ONE LAST THING: I MAKE LOUSY SANDWICHES AND I DON’T DRINK AND SO FUCK OFF and she signed it THE HYSTERICAL BRIDE IN THE PENNY ARCADE.

—

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker dedicated to absurdity and radicalization.  His films can be found at www.vimeo.com/nanakproductions

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Ideas: Where to Get Them and What to Do When They Won’t Leave by David S. Atkinson

9 Jul

People are always asking me where I get my ideas.  I’ve never really understood that.  I mean, I run into them all over the place: supermarkets, taxis, parties, begging for spare change on street corners, orgies, drunk tanks, you know…all sorts of every day places.  Frankly, the biggest problem is getting rid of the worthless ones.

For example, take the one I ran into back in March.  I was at the biannual convention in Tucson for people who like to use the word ‘nipple’ inappropriately.  Advance reports suggested this one wasn’t going to amount to much new, but I figured I’d go anyway just to get some of the obligatory networking out of the way.  Put in a little face time in the industry and what not, just to keep my name fresh in everyone’s mind.

About the time I’d had as much pointless handshaking and business card exchanging as I could stomach, I headed to the refreshment table for a well-deserved break and some free stale pretzels.  There was already an idea hanging out when I got there, opening and chugging one can of Diet Coke after another.

“Hey,” he gasped between cartridges.  “How’s it going, guy?”

“Good,” I replied perfunctorily while trying to pretend to be deeply engaged in the debate between a bear claw and a cruller.  “Not doing too bad at least.”

I was not, needless to say though I will say it anyway, anxious to get into it with this idea.  He was dressed up in faded brown corduroy and the Battle of Hastings.  The soles of his shoes were peeling off and the Magna Carta hung out of one of his torn pockets.  Clearly, he was a bad idea if I’d ever seen one.  Maybe even Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle bad.

“Working with anybody right now?”  He wiped mustard from his fingers on the checkered paper tablecloth, though none of the snacks on the table included any mustard.  “You look like a classy sort.  Maybe we should hook up sometime.”

“Sure,” I replied, stuffing pretzels into my mouth to make it clear I wasn’t really seriously considering such.  “Maybe someday.”

“Really, we should,” the idea belched.  “I bet you’d be right up my alley.  Into weenie dogs?”

“Isn’t everyone?”

I pretended to catch sight of someone across the room right then.  “Ben!  Hey, Ben,” I shouted to no one.  “Where’ve you been hiding, you old dog?  Sorry, got to run,” I hastily told the idea before charging purposefully but aimlessly across the room.  Then I ducked into the can and cleared out of that snooze fest as soon as the coast was clear.

What was I supposed to do?  I’d never work with that idea.  He’d ruin me.  Still, I didn’t want to come out and actually say that.  No need to be rude, right?  We weren’t making a deal.  I was just being polite.

Or, that’s what I thought until the idea pounded on my door.

He charged right on into my condo, carrying a see-through whicker suitcase of old Scholastic magazines and my grandmother’s antique silverware, when I opened the door.  Half asleep from an afternoon nap as I was, he was already kicking back on my beige living room couch and watching reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies before I realized what was happening.

“Hey…what are you doing?”

“Settling in!”  The idea scratched his crotch (inside whatever underwear the idea might have been wearing) with my remote control.  “We got work to do and these things don’t happen overnight.  Got myself ready to just crash here so we could work round the clock.”

I stood there, staring at the revolting little guy.  I had to do something; I had to get rid of him quick.

“Well…I’m actually in the middle of a project right now,” I stammered, desperately trying to think of a way to get him out my door.  “It could be quite a while before I’m ready to sit down to something else.”

“No problem, boss,” he retorted, blowing his nose on my Herman Melville commemorative lace coffee coasters.  “I got nothing but time.  We’ll just be roomies until you get around to it.”

Then he switched the channel to a three day Toddlers & Tiaras marathon.  Clearly, he was settling in pretty deep.  I retreated upstairs just to get away from his smell of old fish and Emily Brontë.

I mean, how else should I have handled the situation?  The idea was obviously unstable.  His choices in television revealed that if nothing else.  There was a chance he’d get violent if I tried to throw him out myself.

The police certainly wouldn’t be any help.  They tended to stay out of idea-related conflicts.  ‘Purely a domestic matter’ they’d say.  Too many people inviting idea in and then thought better of it later for law enforcement to get involved.  No, ideas were outside police marching orders as far as they were concerned.

So…I was stuck.  I couldn’t just make him leave and I sure couldn’t actually work with him.  My only option was to wait him out and hope he got bored.

By the second week, though, it was clear that waiting wasn’t going to work too well.  I’m not sure the idea had even noticed.  He just watched TV atrocities, drank all of my Bisquick pancake mix, and made macramé sculptures out of my used mint dental floss.  He even alphabetized the words in my first edition copy of the complete works of James Joyce.  I guessed that this idea really did have nothing better to do.

My work was starting to seriously suffer.  After all, I couldn’t bring a decent idea home with that hobo parked on my couch.  What would it look like?  All the good ideas would be out of there faster than Mark Twain at a James Fenimore Cooper convention.  Whatever kinky plan they’d think I was roping them into, they would want no part of it.

Finally, when I’d had all I could stand, I went and got my tools.  Now, I don’t mean my normal ones.  I drug out that real bastard of a set from where it rusted on the shelf in my garage.  One way or another, this idea was getting taken out.

He sat up when I stomped in and pulled the plug on Dancing with the Stars.  I positioned a chair on the other side of the glass coffee table from him and grinned.  His head bobbed as he swallowed sharply.

“What you got there, boss?  Thinking of doing a little renovating before we get down to business?”

“Nah,” I laughed hollowly, slapping my knee with a jerky motion.  “I thought it was time that we embark upon our mutual little enterprise here.  No time like the present, right?”

I took out my foot-long gutter out of the dented iron box and dropped it on the table.  The nicks in the hard metal blade glistened as it fell.

“Only, I’m considering a different direction than daschunds.  Something along the epic line.  Maybe three thousand pages of consciousness stream unformed dream logic babble with a hint of poetic inversion.  Real high-level groundbreaking academic fiction kind of stuff.  We’ll need serious gear to take that on.”

The idea stared as I tossed the bone saw next to the gutter.  The rib retraction ripper came next, followed by the skin hooks.  He even gasped a little when I brought out the reciprocating centrifuge cartilage/fluid separator.

“Yeah,” I went on, pretending to check the high-pressure formaldehyde pump for coagulants, “no fun and games on this one.  Pain and sweat kind of writing for years on end by candlelight, right?  That’s the only thing for guys of our caliber.  None of that readable excrement.  No fluff.”

It was the testicle corer that really got him, though, what with all the gears and serrations.  I held that up in front of the idea and he was already halfway out the condo.

“To tell the truth, boss, he called over his shoulder as he ran, “I’ve got a few short pieces I need to ride sidecar on before I can commit to something long term like this.  I’m your man once I get all that wrapped up.  I’ll call you!”

Before I knew it, I was free.  The medieval assortment went back to its place in the garage and I finally got back to work.  All in all, it was just another day.

Extreme though it may seem, this is what you have to sometimes resort to in order to get an unwanted idea out of your house.  Just start putting it through the paces like it could really amount to something.  The bad ones will check out by noon instead of enduring that kind of thing.  Trust me, I know.

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David S. Atkinson received his MFA in writing from the University of Nebraska. His writing appears or is forthcoming in “Grey Sparrow Journal,” “Interrobang?! Magaine,” “Split Quarterly,” “Cannoli Pie,” “C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag,” “The Lincoln Underground,” “Brave Blue Mice,” “Atticus Review,” “The Zodiac Review,” and others. His book reviews appear in “Gently Read Literature,” “The Rumpus,” and “[PANK].” His writing website is http://davidsatkinsonwriting.com/ and he spends his non-literary time working as a patent attorney in Denver.
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