“Awwww, what’s wrong rookie?” Chief Donaldson walked into the crime scene, pipe lit. “Can’t handle a little…” The pipe fell into an isolated puddle of blood. “Holy…Hell. What the Hell happened here?”

“I dunno, sir. I was hoping you could…” Officer Jones gagged, holding back another wave. “I was hoping you could figure that out.”

“I don’t think…I’m the right person to do that, Officer Jones. I keep the lights on, keep the public off your backs when one of you mess up. I think it’s time to call for some outside assistance on this one.”

“Couldn’t…our detectives handle this?”

“One’s on vacation, the other’s out on maternity leave. We’re short staffed and I believe this was your career path, wasn’t it Officer Jones?”

“Yeah, it is, but not…not like this.”

“Then make the call, Jones.”

***

“What do we have here?” Timmy Hightower stood in the door of the police station, his New York Mets cap backwards to better look around. Officer Jones stood up from behind his desk.

“Hi, you must be Timothy Hightower.”

“Please, call me Timmy.” Timmy walked over to Officer Jones’ desk and shook his hand. “I understand you’ve got a case for me.”

“Yes.” Officer Jones handed a manila folder to Timmy. “Do you know Sergio Connor?”

“He was the star third baseman of the Taco Dog Devils, the national Little League champions. Saw him around in school here and there but never talked. We didn’t run in the same circles. Why?”

“We found him yesterday…juiced.”

Timmy opened the file and looked at the photos and the police report. “Juiced?”

“Juiced.”

“And you’re asking me…to figure this out? Don’t you have detectives better equipped to deal with this kind of case?”

“One’s on vacation, the other is out on maternity leave. The Chief recommended we bring you in on this.”

“Have you tried figuring it out, Officer Jones?”

“I’m…I’m not ready for this kind of case.”

“And you think I am?”

“Not me. The Chief.”

“I guess I have no choice if Sergio has a shot at seeing any kind of justice.”

***

“Have you…thought of asking him for help, of talking…to the boy?” Leopold Franz, knife thrower extraordinaire, asked Timmy.

“I can’t. I’m still locked out up there. I’m lucky that I figured out how to access Timmy’s skills again after that stroke. I don’t think my father realizes that yet.”

“Your father…”

“Don’t say it, Leopold. He might be listening.”

“What’s…his plan?”

“To see if I stop believing in the good of humanity, that they weren’t really worth dying for after all. He’ll keep throwing these kinds of cases at me until I stop believing or until I find a way back home.” Timmy opened the file. “This boy was…juiced…for some reason. I have to find out why, Leopold. I haven’t regained access to Timmy’s memories though so I need your help. Who would have the biggest motivation to kill Sergio?”

“Hmmmm…” Leopold twiddled his handlebar mustache. “I have an idea, Timmy, that might give us a list of suspects.”

***

Timmy looked through the binoculars at the people sitting around closed casket burial of Sergio Connor. Leopold held a listening device. Both had a set of ear buds to listen.

“The person…who looks the least sad Sergio is dead…is our prime suspect.” Leopold said over Timmy’s shoulder.

Timmy watched Cara Connor, Sergio’s mom. Her over sized black sunglasses muffled any signs of grief she had, her dress equally black, not muffling her figure. Theo Connor, Sergio’s older brother, clutched at his mother, soaking her forearm with his tears. Timmy looked around the crowd, all of them grieving at various volumes until he noticed a boy Sergio’s age trying to grieve but slightly giggling beneath his hand.

“Leo, is that boy…laughing?” Timmy handed Leopold his binoculars.

“Yes…yes he is.”

“Who is he?”

“That’s…Travis…Travis Evans. He was the star third baseman for the Taco Dog Devils…before Sergio came along.”

“He might be our guy then. I’ll have to have a talk with him.”

***

“Hello, Travis.”

Travis turned around from his open locker and saw Timmy Hightower standing in front of him.

“I heard what happened, Timmy, and I understand why you would suspect I did it. Yeah, I hated Sergio, a lot. I spent years, years working my way up the food chain. Sergio just walked in and…just had everything I spent so long trying to have a tenth of. He was too good.”

“Do you have an alibi, Travis?”

“Yeah. I was home playing Dungeon Crawlers with my younger brother when that happened.”

“Got a problem if I check that?”

“Nope, no problem. I wanted to beat Sergio fair and square.”

“Why were you laughing then at the funeral?”

“Come on, he got juiced. Don’t you see the irony in that?”

***

“Travis’ alibi checked out, Uncle Leo. What now?” Timmy chomped down on a Five Alarm Taco Dog, the chili cheese sauce escaping the hard corn tortilla shell.

“You’ve got…the mother…and the younger brother to talk to.”

“I think I need to look at the crime scene up close. I have a feeling Officer Jones missed something.”

“Are you…sure?”

“I’m not twelve, Leopold, remember?”

***

Timmy looked around the kitchen, the ghost of the blood and chunks in the blender. He looked in the manila folder. “Really…no fingerprints? How are these people allowed to be police officers?” Timmy closed the manila folder and walked upstairs to look around the bedrooms. Before walking into Sergio’s room, he noticed a bloodied aluminum baseball bat sitting outside of the master bedroom. “How did Officer Jones miss this?”

***

“Hello, Ms. Connor.” Timmy sat on the hood of Ms. Connor’s white Volkswagen Golf.

“Timmy…what brings you here?”

“Chief Donaldson asked me to work on finding out who killed your son and I was wondering if you could answer a question for me.” Timmy held up the bloodied baseball bat encased in a plastic bag.

“Would you like to tell me how this was sitting outside of your room?”

“What…what are you talking about?” A police siren blared closer and closer.

“Don’t bother trying to run, Ms. Connor.” The police car pulled up and Officer Jones stepped out, gun drawn and aimed at Timmy. “Why did you do it, Officer Jones?”

“That kid was stopping us from being happy, Timmy. His obsession with baseball, the constant training, the money she had keep spending. He had to be stopped. We were going to ship Theo off to his father due to him being so traumatized over Sergio’s death and then live happily ever after.”

“So you would blend him to death instead of being supportive of Sergio’s dreams? What is wrong with you two?”

“You’ll never find out.” A knife flew out of the bushes and into Officer Jones’ hand. Leopold leaped out of the bushes, holding one of his throwing knives to Officer Jones’ throat.

“You…you dare not…”

“No, Uncle Leo, don’t do it. You will become him if you do it.”

“I’ve…killed before.”

“But you haven’t since. Don’t do this. We got them.”

Leopold put the throwing knife back with the other knives on his leather vest as additional police sirens wailed. He walked over to Timmy.

“How do you…how can you keep turning the other cheek despite this madness?”

“I have to believe, Leo, I have to keep believing in them or all hope is lost.”

You go into the bathroom to shit, you sit down and as you wait you run your middle finger across the scars on your leg. You realize you have to work tonight, you work evenings at a retirement home. You leave your house, its freezing out. Its -10 degrees Fahrenheit. With the windchill they say its close to -40 F. The cold burns your skin, your lips crack and bleed. You drive through a foot of snow, skidding through stops signs along the way. You are the only one on the road.

Your knuckles are bleeding.

At work you sit at a desk as senior citizens sleep, You read emails and watch television. You watch documentaries on dead rock stars and presidents. You chew NoDoz to help pass the time. You work seven twelve hour shifts then get seven days off. After work you sometimes go to the local strip club. Five dollar cover. The city council won’t allow it within city limits so you have to drive a few minutes out of town. There’s one pole, seven girls, and no door on the bathroom. You know, to keep hicks from jerking off in there.

You order a vodka 7 and sit alone. Its late, they’ll close in little over an hour. Next to you three hillbilly’s cat call the dancer. They all have cowboy hats and plaid shirts on. You grip your drink and take a heavy pull. You stare. Its hunting season, they’ve probably been drinking all day. The stripper is young, early 20′s. She has brown hair and seven inch scar across her stomach. You move to sniffers row, you tip her one of your dirtier ones. She moves in, she breathes heavy in your ear, purrs and asks:

“How are you doing tonight honey?”

You say:

“Better than I deserve.”

She doesn’t respond, she dances over to the hillbilly’s. You decide to leave. You get in your car and drive home. You pass the sign that says Waterville Pop. 20,000. You think you see something in the headlights of passing cars. You start to feel sick.

You think you might be friends with a serial killer. He tells you he knows of 100 different places to hide a body. This state is all corn fields, he’s probably right. You feel like throwing up. You keep your knife sharp.

Once home you decide to go for a walk, you need to get out. It takes almost ten minutes to put on all your winter gear, you begin to sweat almost immediately. The walk doesn’t help, you can’t stop thinking about your own funeral. You walk a mile or more and see a deer in someone’s back yard. Your hands and feet are numb, you love the sensation. People are up getting ready for work. The garbage truck rolls slowly down the street like a tank, the flashing light on top cuts through the still falling snow. You decide to go home.

You decide to kill yourself.

Your roommate has a loaded gun, a cheap 9mm. He never puts the safety on. He’s at his girlfriends house. You decide to shoot yourself. You enter the bathroom, turn the water on as hot as you can tolerate. You step in, you stand naked in the dark. The only light comes from a small water resistant radio. It plays country music, you hate country music.

Your skin is red. You are going to miss your cats. You are going to miss her.

You hope the shower will contain most of the mess.

You put the barrel between your eyes. Water beads run down the barrel and through your hands. You press the barrel hard into your head, your hands shake. You wonder why you’re pressing the barrel so hard so you try to ease up a bit. Seconds crawl by and you wonder what death will taste like. You didn’t leave a note, you have nothing to say. You stare at the barrel, expecting it to end everything at any moment but in the end, like always, you chicken out. Although, this time was the closest you’ve ever gotten. You dry the gun off with a towel. For the first time in months you’re not afraid of yourself.

You wash your hands 27 times a day. You imagine germs and bacteria reproducing on your skin. You think everyone hates you. You used to be sad. You’ve gotten worse since then. You thought you’d be gone by now. You have spider bites on your neck and stomach. You need to wash your blankets.

She keeps telling you that hope lies somewhere inside it. You pretend to believe her. You feel like you’re living on borrowed time. You tell her that it feels like you have glass in your lungs. She says she cries when you speak like that. You wonder if you are alone. She tells you she loves you, that it’s the kind of love that shatters the sky. You pretend to believe her. When you tell her she deserves better, you mean it.

She sleeps in the same bed as you almost every night. While she falls asleep calmly in your arms you tear yourself apart from the inside. You stare at the wall as you painstakingly relive every mistake you made throughout the day. She rolls over, nestles her head on your chest and breathes a heavy sigh. You feel like you are going to die.

Two days later, you regain consciousness behind the wheel of a moving car. The sky is the loneliest shade of gray. You vomit in the cup holder as you idle down the road, past the bowling alley. Hot stomach acid drips out of your nostrils and you begin to feel reality shifting away from you once again. Trying to hold on, you grasp at nothing but air. You feel your heart collapsing and something somewhere begins again.

Contrary to what people say, a person that takes t———– does not routinely suffer fulminant liver failure, wild mood swings, or testicular atrophy.  The key to avoiding these real but unlikely side effects is the monitored administration of t———–.  As Dr. G—- said, even acetaminophen in excessive doses can cause irreversible liver failure.  A person who takes t———– in controlled, therapeutic doses usually feels slightly more confident and euphoric.  He thinks more clearly.  He has an increased libido.  He more easily adds fat free mass and loses subcutaneous fat.  Accordingly, t———– is anabolic, and I required an anabolic state to increase my mass.  T———– was the proper supplement to round out my anabolic state.  Even though she is a whore, my wife is conservative by nature and does not believe that a person should use science to augment his or her body’s natural physiological processes.  For this reason, I did not relate to her all of my anabolic techniques.  I allowed her to know about the mass gainer shakes and protein powders because we lived in the same house and revelation between spouses is important in maintaining a transparent marriage, but I never told her about the t———– injections and creams.  Maybe this need for transparency in a marriage was part of the reason why she made no attempt to hide her so called ‘modeling’ gig.  But modeling requires perfectly symmetrical features, stage presence, a height of at least 5’10″, and a uniquely lean frame.  Her ‘modeling,’ though, required nothing more than a tan, G-strings, a handful of black, pink, and red checkered bikinis, and high heel shoes.  Three of the six secretaries in my office could do this kind of ‘modeling,’ even though none of them, like my wife, can model.  Even though she complained that the gym and my anabolic lifestyle made me egotistical, she should have taken a look at herself.  Just because she narrowed her hips and flattened her belly and toned her legs and buttocks, does not mean that she was entitled to become a whore.  And just because a loser from Chino has a makeshift photography studio in his home and messages you on the internet and tells you that you would make a great model, does not mean that you should follow through on being a ‘model.’  If you cannot be a model, you should not be a ‘model.’  When I was up to a body mass index of 21.4 with a body fat of 12% and drawing all kinds of stares in the office and at the gym, I told her this seemingly obvious truth, but she didn’t take my no-nonsense statement of fact well.  Instead she took it as a personal attack, a remark on her supposed belief that because of my new physique I was elevating myself above her.  She was wrong.  I am not a model, and I know that I am not a model.  I am just a CPA with sixteen inch biceps and a forty-two inch chest.  I am just someone who can crunch a financial statement and sit on even ground with some of my more physically immense, ethically decrepit clients.  My meetings nowadays go smoothly.  My biceps peek out from under the sleeves of my polo, and my neck is wide, and I sometimes flex my pectoralis muscles during meetings.  My clients do not push nearly as hard as they used to for me to validate their financial statements.  Bullying around a sculpted man is a difficult thing to do, even if you weigh 260 pounds and try to squash my hand with your handshake and are the one paying the audit fee.  Intimidating a man who does not want to be intimidated is not a pleasant enterprise.  And having a wife who ‘models’ is not a pleasant enterprise.  Dr. G—- has a wife who ‘models’ but who could very well model.  But she is too smart to model, and instead ‘models’ for the advertisements Dr. G—- places in the I—- E—– W—–.  When I saw Dr. G—-’s wife in person during a routine visit to his office for a t———– injection, I immediately knew that not only was she was too attractive and physically perfect to ‘model,’ but that she was too intelligent to model, and so I deduced that she was doing neither.  Rather, she was working, helping Dr. G—- with his half page weekly advertisements.  Her beauty is best appreciated in person, and not via some pictures in an advertisement.  T———– increases libido.  In fact, testosterone is largely responsible for the sex drive in both males and females.  But sex is not a purely biochemical process.  My wife is testament to that statement.  After she had decided she was good at ‘modeling,’ she decided to pursue it further.  She enlisted the guidance of that loser in Chino to expand beyond the internet, and he lined her up with a ‘modeling’ agency from Orange County.  These ‘models’ could have been the baristas who work at the S——– across from my office.  They were ‘models’ because they were not ‘dancers.’  My wife told me that she did not like the new me, the one with the bulky frame and cocky sneer and disparaging remarks.  But she is a whore, so she lacks credibility.  When I achieved a body mass index of 23, Dr. G—- said that not only is my physique proof that science can build a better body but that my perfectly normal laboratory values and minimally changed mental profile were evidence that controlled anabolic enhancement was safe.  He said that I was his walking atypical result.  The addition of fat free mass in the amount of 33% of a person’s initial weight is a remarkable achievement by any measure.  Now that I have physical presence, my clients like to slap me on the back and ask me in a jovial manner as to how they can expense their lapdances.  But the difference between their tones now versus then is that now they do not really expect me to conjure up ‘creative’ methods to minimize their taxes.  They do not attempt to bully me around.  They know better.  Taco Tuesdays is not a place where models go but it is a place where ‘models’ go.  Every girl around here who works behind a counter or answers phones thinks that she is a model but I do not see her in any advertisements for D—- & G—— or even B— or A———- & F—-.  Furthermore, neither the ‘agents’ nor ‘photographers’ of these ‘models’ are gay.  Accordingly, these girls cannot possibly be models.  They are ‘models.’  Excellence requires talent.  My ability to completely delineate the health of a company through a dissection of its financial statements is a combination of innate ability and experience.  Modeling requires elements of height, beauty, and symmetry, all of which are God-given.  These elements cannot be coaxed out of a girl by a loser who is trying to make a DVD about ‘models’ and V8 engines.  Even after I achieved 23 on the body mass index, I did not allow my body to become a vehicle of distress.  I tried to make gentle, soothing love to my wife.  But mostly she resisted my romantic overtures.  I told her that if she was allowing random men to ogle her, she should at least allow me the opportunity to do the same.  ‘Modeling’ cannot be valid ‘work’ when our joint tax return places us in the highest federal tax bracket and we have a 4,200 square foot house in Rancho Cucamonga with a three car garage and no Mella-Roos and an almost paid up mortgage and a A— sedan for me and a rimmed up C—- T—- with a trailer hitch for her.  Ten years is not a major age difference between us.  Her youth is not the reason for her destructive actions.  Before she started whoring around, she was mature.  She understood that a husband and wife needed to form a bond of trust in order to stay together, avoid strife, and be happy.  Although I have become impressed with my physique as of late, I have never seen myself as anything other than a CPA, small business owner, and providing husband.  Although t———– increased my libido, her toned body did more to heighten my interest in her than the t———– did.  But again, I must say that our sex life in the pre-gym, pre-anabolic days was never lacking.  Neither of us had reached a point in the relationship where we felt we had to liven up our marriage.  We were intellectually and emotionally in sync with each other and so were sexually connected as well.  When I had a body mass index of 19, back in the days before my wife became a whore, I showed Dr. G—- a picture of my wife, and he said, “You did well.”  His comment, unlike those of my clients, did not irk me.  Dr. G—-’s observation was professional in nature while the comments of my clients during my low body mass index days were part of their psychological warfare on me.  My wife did not understand that she could not simultaneously ‘model’ and withhold love from me.  These actions are incompatible with each other.  “Whores must be whores,” I told her, after we had not made love for almost three months.  She did not appreciate my comment.  While I was finishing up my Masters in Business Administration at the University of S——- C———, she was dropping out from the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.  Our respective classmates understood that we were emotionally and intellectually connected and so never remarked on our age difference.  Our intellectual and emotional bonds broke after our physical relationship disappeared.  I was, I must admit, still physically attracted to her, but my ability to muster up interest in her life disappeared when the sex vanished.  Dr. G—-, although not a behavioral specialist but a Board Certified internist who not only maintains a private practice in Claremont but also serves as an Associate Professor of Medicine at L— L—- University Medical Center, confirmed that sex is an important part of a relationship.  When the sex is gone, the relationship is over.

When I had a body mass index of 21, my wife’s ‘modeling’ agency added three ‘models,’ and the owner of the agency pimped this new collection of girls out to the Speedway, where the girls walked around on Sunday afternoons, handing out bottle cap openers that were emblazoned with the logos of sponsoring alcoholic beverage and energy drink companies.  For $20 a picture, my wife and the other ‘models’ posed with heavyset, greasy, socially maladjusted losers who for some reason felt the need to stand beside a glorified whore.  When I reached 172 pounds, Dr. G—- told me that the addition of any more mass to my frame would increase the stress on my joints, thereby creating additional benefit at too great an additional cost.  Upon his recommendation, we cut back on my t———– dose, and I modified my weight training regimen so that I would develop the mass I already had in lieu of adding any more bulk.  The secretaries in my office compliment me weekly on my ever improving physique but I am careful not to cross the line of professionalism.  I am not a vulture.  I do not ask them out to dinner or after work drinks.  Plus, I am still married, and do not want to be a whore, even if my wife is one.  After my wife takes pictures with these losers at the Speedway, she refers them to the agency’s website by handing out a glossy black business card, which lists the name of the ‘modeling’ agency, its internet address, and information on how to book the ‘models’ for private events.  The photos are uploaded to the website every Monday morning under a section titled ‘Events.’  The men get the satisfaction of being on the internet with a ‘model’, and the ‘models’ get to think that they are models just because they maintain a body mass index of under 30 and know how to coat their faces with makeup and shop at stores that are geared towards ‘dancers’ but are really intended for strippers.  Dr. G—- says that happiness begins within.  He also says that unhappiness begins in the home.  Unlike many of my physician clients, Dr. G—- has never been divorced, and so has no need to bitch at me about how his spousal and child support payments are killing him.  He has no need to tell me about the additional emergency room calls he needs to pick up at the hospital just so that he can keep his ex-wife and kids mired in the luxury that his own life now lacks.  If Dr. G—- did not have a successful marriage, I would be less inclined to ponder his outlook on life, but he is happy and peaceful.  In the two years that I have known him, he has been universally correct in his assessments, and not just about the maintenance of an anabolic state, and so I subscribe to his viewpoint on happiness, which he says stems from peace in the arenas of health, home, work, and spirituality.  I am at peace with two of these elements in my life.  Back before my wife became a whore, I used to be at ease with three of them.  I am working on the fourth element now.  I have purchased several books about non-theistic and monotheistic religions from the B—— at Victoria Gardens, and read them nightly.  I must admit that I feel that I will find spiritual peace before I find domestic tranquility.  Even though my wife is gone, the bulk of her clothes and personal effects, including her jewelry, cooking instruments, and romantic comedy DVDs, such as S——– in S—— and C— of A—–, remain in the Rancho Cucamonga house.  But her ‘modeling’ clothes are gone.  I knew about the asshole at the racetrack before I saw the pictures of her and him on the Speedway’s website, but I could not confront her just yet.  The key to my confrontation revolved around the fact that the pictures of her and that asshole on the website were publicly available.  My wife drove a three ton T—- only because it was my engagement present to her, a symbolic manifestation of the vastness of my love for her.  She swallowed her social guilt, and dealt with the truck’s 14 miles per gallon.  She pushed that behemoth around the Inland Empire with pride and affection.  Whenever I saw her small, 5’3″, 115 pound frame inside the truck, which rode on custom 22″ wheels and low profile tires that I got from one of my clients who owns tuner shops in Pomona, Fontana, and San Bernardino, I wanted to hug and make love to her.  When I hit a body mass index of 21, she began using her ‘modeling’ money to trick out her truck, and not just in the purely cosmetic fashion of changing the decal and trim, but in a more performance oriented one.  She added headers, a cold intake air system, dual exhaust tips, and a full ground lowering kit.  But women like my wife do not throw away their Oceanside values on a whim.  Neither do they suddenly gain proficiency in modding out a truck.  They need motivation and guidance for their maneuvers.  I have a client who owns a security firm that provides low and medium level security services for several of the clubs and minor celebrities in Orange County, and I hired him to trail my wife.  Over the course of two weeks, he discovered that she was trekking weekly to Murrieta, where she would meet with this waiflike asshole from the track, this guy who is at least five points lower than me on the body mass index, this guy who thinks that stock car racing is a way of life.  When my client provided me pictures of this loser, I had difficulty appreciating the motivation for her infidelity.  I still cannot fathom her desire to be with this wimp.  Not only is he not a good looking man but he is bony to the extreme.  When I asked Dr. G—- if I was morally in the wrong by spying on my wife, he shrugged, and said, “I cannot tell you that answer.”  I took his response as ‘Yes’, and so stopped the surveillance.  Even though I continue to maintain a body mass index of 23, my physique continues to improve.  My body fat percentage, which had reached a high of 14% in the days when I underwent rapid anabolic growth, is now 9%.  I am absolutely ripped.  Furthermore, my strength is remarkable for my size.  Several of the powerlifters in the gym ask me to spot them on the bench press and squat rack.  They trust me not only to keep the weight moving but also to protect them from injury.  I finally confronted my wife a month ago.  On a Friday night when she was actually home, I placed the laptop on our granite counter while she made dinner.  I pulled up the pictures of her ‘modeling’ with that loser from the Speedway website.  “Look at these,” I said.  She stopped salting the pot of water she was boiling.  “I’m trying to have you and me reconnect,” she said, “and that’s why I’m here tonight.  That’s what tonight is about.  I’m not cheating.  He’s a client.  It’s just work.”  I laughed.  “I’m trying to stop you from being a whore,” I said.  She stared at her fingers for several seconds, before turning off the stove, wiping her hand on the dishtowel, and saying, “I want somebody who understands me, somebody who treats me the way you used to treat me.”  I flexed my biceps muscles beneath my polo shirt, and said, “Why the hell would you want to get with that wimp when you have me?”  I did not have to look in the mirror to know that the veins of my neck were protruding against my skin as I spoke.  I followed her to our bedroom, which she had decorated over the years with puffy pillows, bright colored sheets, and scented candles.  “We can have the whole world in our hands if you can just return to Earth,” I said.  She didn’t respond.  Instead she pulled our wheeled garment bag, the same one we used on vacations, from the top shelf of our walk-in closet.  As I watched her pack, I felt a tang of remorse, but even so, I could not be sure if this brief moment of sorrow was genuine or simply a result of Dr. G—-’s lowering of my t———– dose.  In either case, she and I had not made love in more than six months.  Not only had she resisted on a nightly basis every one of my advances, but she’d also glued herself to her corner of our California king mattress, turning her body away from me and drawing her own separate comforter over her shoulders.  When my clients learned about my wife’s departure, several of them attempted to comfort me, even suggesting ways to begin my love life anew.  They recommended that I begin using internet dating services, hook up with a speed dating agency, or even close the gap in my celibate life with the temporary use of escorts.  I am sure that these men would not have been eager to help me had I still been physically sleight.  If I were still skinny, they would have expected my wife’s infidelity.  But I am not puny anymore.  I have presence, and so they are as perplexed as I am about my wife’s whorish activities.  Even so, I have not attempted to enter the world of dating.  I also have not disturbed the contents of my wife’s closet or of her half of the bathroom counter, just in case she decides that she is done being a whore, and wants to come back to our house in Rancho Cucamonga.  I have not touched the rows of clothes that she bought on our trips to Victoria Gardens, nor have I moved any of the half dozen tweezers that she had used to shape my eyebrows and pluck my blackheads.  A body mass index of 23 enables me to maintain flexibility, which is a key determinant of strength and overall physical health.  Even though I added weight quickly, my mass is not cumbersome.  I am not massive to the point that my general health suffers.  I always liked my wife’s body, and did not require that she go to the gym with me.  Rather we went to the gym together because we enjoyed spending time with each other.  Although she looked better when she worked out, she looked good even when she did not.  Her weight was perfect for her height.  Even during our bad times, when she was isolating herself from me and whoring around, I always complimented her on her physical appearance.  I have no plan to disturb her things in the Rancho Cucamonga house, but even so I am not completely sure that I would welcome her back into my home, because she has changed for the worse, and I am not confident that she can change back into the wife I used to have.

—

Hassan Riaz is a writer, physician, and Paragraph Line veteran. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he earned degrees in creative writing, medicine, and finance. When he is not writing or seeing patients, he can be found scouring Los Angeles for wide receiver talent for his hapless flag football team. He can be found on the web at hassaninla.com.

That’s all fine and good if you come from a real family with parents, but I don’t see who they are to complain. So there are ghosts. So I murdered a saint to keep them on hallowed ground. I gave them a damn orphanage and if they don’t like it, I’ll put them on the list. Scotty whines a lot. Let’s see how he likes being boiled. The other children have to eat, and it is his turn. I can’t keep putting it off forever.

Sometimes it is really hard to convince the parents that their children are truly orphans. They holler angrily. I hate to look at their twisted faces when they are in denial. It takes the sort of convincing that I am good at, the sort that requires a hammer and a hacksaw. Destinies are crafted, and I am their cabinetmaker.

There is a ghost who keeps giving out telephone numbers on the girls’ ward, telling them that if they call the numbers, then they’ll be taken to a better orphanage. All the numbers have been disconnected for years. I’m not sure if the ghost is insane or just cruel, but the girls don’t even listen to her anymore. That is Olivia’s first ghost.

Her second ghost looks like a sewer rat. The exterminators have never been successful in getting rid of her. That’s how I know it is also Olivia. She’s got a lot more ghosts than a normal person. That’s how I know she’s a saint. That and she was a virgin. I’m a doctor. That’s how I know.

So, when Olivia’s zombie came and found me, I was surprised. Her ghosts were there already, posturing with bravado in my sleep quarters three miles below the city. This became the only place safe for me once they salted the earth and took my own children of flesh and bone away. They destroyed my children and said it was wrong to make children out of flesh and bone. They said they were not real children. They said that disinterring corpses to make ‘puppets’ (for this is what they called them) was wicked and insane. They said that the preservatives I used on them were carcinogens. They came at me from every angle. What else could I do but design the Bunker?

But now, her zombie has found me. I did not craft this one carefully enough. And she is pieced together from small bone fragments that slowly wormed their way free from the orphanage foundation. Maybe I will not call her a saint, because in the East they fear those whom the earth will not accept, those whose bodies do not corrupt. I thought she was half angel, half witch. Now she’s several ghosts and a zombie.

Before I forget to mention it, her third ghost is a dog next door that never stops barking in Morse code. And I moved out here, three miles down, thinking I would find solitude! All my neighbors have had the same thought, but one brings a damn dog. And her fourth ghost has six heads, with only one head able to wear a hat at a time. They fight over the hat. This scares the children the most, I think, for the voices of each head are different but equally terrifying, like the sound of the day dying and being looped through a PA system. Her fifth ghost, I have never seen nor heard. But her sixth is the worst. She comes in the form of a Bible scholar with terrible acne. She knows every scripture and loves to drink tea. I spent a whole week making tea for her as she expounded on the meaning of 2nd Samuel 12:21. She uses a translation that I am unfamiliar with but which she declares to be the only accurate one in the English language. It goes like this in her version: “His servants asked him, ‘Why act this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and you eat the child! Save room for later, David! Many more will die soon. Olivia in the pond. Scotty in the stew pot.’”

Olivia was the best orphan you could ask for. Pretty, no parents, no uncles or older brothers to defile her, no visible marks or tattoos or distinguishing characteristics. If you would have asked me before that morning if I would drown Olivia, then I would have told you, “Of course. I know when the time is right I will do what I must. Olivia is counting on me to make her a saint. And the water will be holy. And the Lincoln will be holy. And the foundation of the building in which she was born an orphan will be holy. And her zombie will be holy. And the dog barks will spell out a holy code, more holy than anything devised by mortal man.” I would have told you this, but I would never have believed my own words. Not until I heard the splash.

Her zombie wants to kill me, to give me the martyrdom befitting a selfless servant of fate like myself. I have given up everything now. I have finished off everything on the list. All I really want is an excuse to light one last cigarette and stare off into the night sky very seriously. When she asks me what I’m thinking, I will turn to her and meet her dead gaze. And it is then I will say, unashamed, “Nothing. I’m fine.”

—

G. Arthur Brown is a short male aged 35 years who dwells on the East Coast and travels by Skylark.  When he is not busy writing his own bios in the third person he is driving himself around the East Coast in a Skylark, paying far too much for gasoline.  He supports using less gas whenever possible (his Skylark is the color green).  His work has previously appeared in the Dream People, Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival and Words and Images Journal.

Juan was saying, “Man, I ain’t gettin’ stuck with six.”

“How is that fair?” I said. “You only kicked in like seventy-five cents.”

“Fuck fair.” Juan held out his palm, motioned with his fingers for me to put something in it. “I gotta habit.”

The final bell had already rung and the three of us were supposed to be in the gym with the rest of the basketball team getting ready for practice. But we were in no hurry. School was out for the weekend. The weather had girls wearing skirts. There really wasn’t anything else on our minds.

“Ok, ok, fine. Be like that. I’ll just bum ‘em off you guys once I’ve smoked mine.”

“You do that anyway,” Lima Bean said. “Maybe you should just quit.”

Juan stepped on Lima Bean’s shoe, then gave him a shove. “Maybe you should just shut up.”

At the rear of school property, we peeled back a broken flap of the sagging, rusted chain link fence and crashed through some bushes to end up on the breezeway that split right through the middle of campus. Coming the other way were Paige and Ashley, two identical twins from our grade.

“Hey,” Paige sang, bouncing towards us on her tip-toes. She opened her arms, reached up and gave me the kind of big hug that made her boobs smush like water balloons in between us. “You’ll give a girl one of those ciggies, won’t ya’?”

Paige was the first girl I’d ever kissed and she’d been my girlfriend — in fifth grade — for three and a half days over the Columbus holiday weekend. Back at school on Tuesday, she had Ashley slip me a breakup note during lunch. Now, we were supposed to be just friends, but that didn’t stop Paige from laying the mack on me any time she’d get the feeling to.

I said, “Of course, yeah, sure, have two.”

Paige slipped out of my hands, passed one to Ashley and said, “What’d I tell ya’? Such a sweetheart, isn’t he?”

The five of us went around to the back side of the gym, where we couldn’t be seen from the teacher’s parking lot, to light up. We huddled along the long, brick wall with the weeds and wind blown trash next to a door that led directly into the boy’s locker room. The door was supposed to be exit only; its outside handle had been sawed off. There was no way to get in except to pry the latch open with a knife and then hope that Coach didn’t catch you on the sneak. We did it all the time.

Ashley took a mouth puff off her smoke, blew it out. “So what are you guys doing this weekend?”

“I dunno,” we said. “Nothin’.”

“We’re going to Great America,” Paige said, meaning the theme park in Santa Clara, south of the city. She hooked her pinkie into my belt loop. “It’s gonna be so fun. You should come with.”

“I’m there. But you don’t wanna see Lima Bean on a roller coaster,” I said.

He shrugged, grinned at his shoes. “They make me barf.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re a freakin’ wuss,” Juan said. “I could ride ‘em all day. The crazier the better.”

“I’m that way too,” Ashley nodded. “I can’t help myself. Once I rode the Demon six times in twenty minutes and I got so dizzy that I fell over.”

“You enjoy them a little too much.” Paige rolled her eyes, giggled, cupped her hand to her mouth like she was letting us in on a secret. “Ya’ know, guys, Ash’s an epic screamer.”

“Duh.” Ashley backhanded her sister. “Am not.”

“Hey. Ow,” Paige said, then returned the slap. “Are to.”

“What-ever. It’s just like, I get so excited and I gotta let it out or else I’ll explode or something.”

“I’ll bring ear plugs,” Juan said, putting his arm around Ashley and reeling her in close. “That’s all the protection I’ll need.”

Just then, the heavy, metal gym door kicked wide open and slammed against the brick wall with a bang. The door bounced outward from the concussion, but then fell back against the brick twitching on its hinges like it’d been knocked out cold. We all froze. It was Coach.

“Real cute, boys,” he growled. “But who’s gonna protect your lousy butts from me?”

I snapped to attention, whipping my hands behind me. Paige spun on her heels, plucked the cigarette from my fingers. I could feel her breath in my ear. “Meet up at the playground, after dark, ‘k?”

Coach watched the two sisters leave, then, never blinking, narrowed his eyes to us. “You’re late. Again. I’m done playin’ with ya’, fellas. There’s rules on this team. You break ‘em, you suffer the consequences. Emphasis on suffering.” He jammed his clipboard under his arm pit and hiked up his sweats. “Responsibility. Teamwork. Effort. Those aren’t just words I say when I feel like wastin’ oxygen — they’re what I expect from every ball player. And ‘til I start gettin’ that from you, your butts are runnin’ thirty suicides apiece after practice — every practice.”

“But, Coach,” we stammered. One suicide —  a continual sprint from the baseline to the free throw line and back, then to half court and back, then to the opposite free throw line and back and then, finally, baseline to baseline — was enough to make you want to puke. “Thirty?”

“Ten for bein’ late. Ten for smokin’ and ten,” Coach took Juan’s cigarette out of his mouth, snapped it over his thumb and ground it into the pavement. “Because the only way to get through your thick skulls is with pain. Now, don’t just stand there. Double time your butts inside, A-SAP!”

“Wow. What bullshit, man,” Juan complained. This was after practice. We’d survived, but just barely. Now, the three of us were in the showers, exhausted and doubled over with the kind of spastic, paralytic cramps you’d normally get from eating the cafeteria’s meatloaf. “Run. That’s Coach’s solution to everything.”

My whole body felt dead. Even the weight of the hot water spraying down on my head was too much to bear. I gave up, slouched my back against the tile wall, let my legs go limp and slid slowly to the floor.

Lima Bean moaned, “I’m not moving ‘til there’s no more hot water.”

“I’m not movin’, period,” I said.

But Juan was still going at it. “You’re late for practice? Run. Miss your free throws? Run. You fart and don’t say, ‘‘scuse me?’ Run.” Juan tipped his head back, let his mouth fill with water, gargled, then spit. “Builds character my ass. What the hell are sprints ‘sposed to be teachin’ us, huh? Only thing I’ve learned is that Coach is one sadistic motherfucker —”

“Ya’ can’t be that tired, numb nuts,” Coach shouted from his office on the other side of the locker room. “I can hear your mouths still runnin’.”

We choked back our laughter while Juan mimed an exaggerated replay of what Coach had just said, then, as he finished, whispered,  “I don’t fucking care if you can.”

“Consequences to your actions, boys. Get used to it. You think bein’ on time is small potatoes? I say it’s bigger than you know.” Coach’s voice sounded like he’d swallowed the bead in his whistle. Either that or he was just worn out from yelling at us. “Nobody goes good or bad overnight. Get me? They’re just walkin’ a road they’ve been buildin’ they’re whole lives. That’s why I’m bein’ so hard on ya’ now; ya’ gotta learn your lessons young. Some day it’ll click and maybe — you’ll wanna thank me for it.”

Maybe. But it wouldn’t be today. Because, we’d already toweled off and dressed and were heading out the back door into the night. We had more important things to do.

We were going to Juan’s apartment to swipe the last dusty jug of his father’s sweet wine from the cabinet above the sink. And then later, after we’d had a couple of sips to ourselves, take it up to the playground to share with the girls and hopefully, have a good time.

“You sure your dad won’t be home?” I asked Juan as we got on our bus. I was worried because that was the only alcohol we’d be able to get. Lima Bean lived with his mom and grandma and grandpa, who didn’t drink, and my mom had got wise to us and started marking her bottles with a pen. “Paige really likes that Boone’s Farm.”

“You’re hopeless.” Juan flashed his MUNI pass at the driver and elbowed his way past me. “One look from that girl could tease the knots right outta your shoelaces.”

Lima Bean agreed. “She could do pretty much anything she wanted to him.”

“And with a little liquor in her, sometimes she does,” I grinned, holding out my fist while the two of them gave me daps. “So, is he gonna be there or what?”

“Yeah, right, sucker. Keep it in your pants, man, jeeze. I told you.” Juan took the gum he’d been chewing on and stuck it underneath the seat in front of him. “He won’t be there. He won’t be there ‘cause he’s hardly ever home any more.”

“Whattaya mean?” I asked him. “Since when?”

“I dunno. I didn’t mark it on the calendar, stupid.” Juan bent the brim of his ball cap and pulled it down to his eyes. “Since awhile, ok? Like after Mom went back to Mexico. I guess he got his truck license and took a job drivin’ long haul. Every four or five days he pops in for a nap and clean laundry, then he’s gone again.”

Juan slouched in his seat, looked out the window, not saying anything as the scenes of the city jerked on past. He was the youngest kid in his family. His closest brother was more than ten years older. I think he lived in New York or something.

“It don’t bother me, though, all right? I don’t need anybody to take care of me. I’m not a freakin’ baby.” Juan stood up and yanked the pull cord rapidly six or seven times. This was our stop.

“I’m serious,” he repeated, as we pushed our way out the rear door. “It don’t bother me one bit”

As we crossed behind the bus to McAllister towards Juan’s apartment, which was in the middle of a large complex of public housing that sprawled all the way through the Western Addition, we could see that something serious had gone down. Flashing red and blue lights were swirling off the buildings and we could hear the canned burble of an incoming voice over walkie-talkies. Cops were everywhere and the entire row of Section 8’s where Juan lived had been yellow-taped off.

Half a dozen squad cars were jacked up along the curb, doors flung open like they’d been piloted by a bunch of drunks who just abandoned them anywhere. A fire engine idled in the middle of the street shining a spotlight on the unit a few doors down from Juan’s apartment. Uniform cops with Maglites swept the bushes and the grass and the security gate that had been erected by the city to keep the residents safe.

One of the officers was talking to the rent-a-cop responsible for patrolling the public housing. He was just an old man in a wrinkled uniform who didn’t know anything, didn’t see anything and whose only answer to the cop’s questions was to shrug his shoulders.

“They’re not going to let anybody through,” Lima Bean said.

“You have to talk to that cop,” I said to Juan. “Tell him you need to be let into your place real quick. You gotta get your homework or somethin’. They could be here all night. I don’t wanna keep those girls waitin’.”

“You mean you don’t wanna keep Paige waitin’, ‘cause if you do she’s liable get bored and find somebody else to hook up with.”

I gave Juan a dirty look because in my heart, I knew it was true. “Just go talk to him, ok?”

The three of us approached the yellow tape and listened in as the officer finished up with the old man.

“So this car,” the cop was saying. He sounded bored. “What color was it?”

“It was dark,” the old man replied.

“Black? Blue? Grey?”

“No, I mean, it was dark. I got these cataracts and can’t see well at night.” the rent-a-cop took a handkerchief from his back pocket and ran it across his nose. “I’ll tell you, all I could make out was them wheels. You know, the kind of big, shiny hubcaps these kids put on the beaters they drive?”

“You mean rims? The things the tires are on?” It was then that the cop caught sight of us from the corner of his eye. He tucked away his pen, took two long steps to the perimeter. “You kids need to move it back to the other side of the street,” he said and blasted the three of us in the face with his high powered LED.

The light’s brightness was sudden and shocking. For a second, my mind felt like it had been completely erased and I had an overwhelming urge to piss.

“Um,” Juan stammered, blinking blindly into the glare. “I, uh, just had a question. About my homework.”

“Now that you mentioned it,” the old man said, looking over the cop’s shoulder. “One of ‘em looked kinda like that middle kid there.”

The cop’s flashlight moved to our hands, to our knees, to our shoes and back to our faces. “So where are you coming from?”

“Basketball practice,” I said.

“Have you been drinking? Any drugs?”

“He lives here,” I heard Lima Bean say. “What’s wrong with you, man, tell him.”

“Uh —” The words just kind of fluttered out Juan’s mouth and died in mid-air. “Uh, um, I mean, yeah, yeah, that’s right,” he pointed.

I chimed in. “Number Four. That’s probably how that old dude knows him. We just wanna get in real quick. Grab school books and other school stuff to like, study. That’s ok, right?”

“Study, huh?” The cop gave me a suspicious look.

Just then, Juan dropped his backpack and made a sudden move for his front pocket. The officer took half a step back and grabbed for his hip.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he commanded, flipping the safety flap on his holster.

But all Juan was doing was going for his keys. They were in his right hand, held by the ring, jangling together softly. “Number Four?” he said, meekly.

“Jesus.” The cop exhaled, clicked off his flashlight. “Listen, I know you’re probably just worried about your family, but I can’t let anybody in. We did a door to door evacuation. No one was reported missing or injured in any unit other than the one in which the incident took place. Now, please, kids, back it up to the other side of the street. Let us do our jobs.”

We shuffled across the street and stood on the sidewalk with the rest of the neighbors dressed in their pajamas and slippers and work clothes from the late shift. We all stared across the road like we were waiting for a parade to go on by.

“That cop almost shot you,” Lima Bean said. “That was cool.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “At least he would’ve been doing something.”

I was getting impatient. Most of the policemen had already stopped looking for clues. Some of them had gotten into their patrol cars and left, others were making small talk with the firemen. Not a lot seemed to be happening, but there weren’t any signs of anything actually being wrapped up.

“Man, can’t they move any faster?”

“Somebody probably died or got all messed up or something,” Lima Bean said. “Have some respect, man, jeeze.”

But all I could think of was that soft sound that Paige made as my hand made its way underneath her shirt. It wasn’t even a sound, really, more like a purr that vibrated up from inside her lungs.

“Well,” I said to Juan. “I guess one good thing is that your dad wasn’t around. Who knows what couldda happened to him if he was.”

Juan didn’t say anything. In fact, he hadn’t spoken one word since the cop almost shot him, which for him, was probably a world record for silence. It had me a little worried.

I tried to cheer him up. “I wouldn’t sweat it, man. Probably he’s just workin’ a lot of weird shifts or whatever. A man’s gotta earn a living.”

None of the neighbors had gone back into their houses yet. Some were gossiping, but most were keeping a close eye on the police. One dude even had his camcorder rolling.

“They gonna act right when they know they on film,” he said.

“But soon as they get back to the po-lice station,” another said. “All them evi-dences is goin’ straight inta the trash can. They done proved time and again that they got no in-trest solving a crime perpetrated on poor folk.”

“Either that or his work is taking him out of town or something like that.” I nudged Lima Bean. “Right?”

“No,” Lima Bean said. “I know what it is. Your dad is like our boy here. Probably some honey’s got him all wrapped around her dainty, nail polished pinkie. He’s taking her out, spending his cash —”

“Dumbass.” I kicked Lima Bean in the knee. “His parents are still married.”

“Right, I knew that. I didn’t mean it in that way.”

A little ways away from the rest us a man was muttering and laughing to himself. All he had on was an old pair of boxers and a white t-shirt with a faded photo of somebody’s face printed across the front. The shirt read: Willie Green 1982-2000 RIP.

“Poor Po-Po don’t know his ass from his elbow,” he said to no one in particular.

I asked him, “Do you know what happened?”

“Saw the whole damn thing go down from right outta my winda’. Couple of muthafuckas came strapped with guns an’ duct tape an’ kicked the Lewis’s door in. Had the whole family from gran-ma to baby facedown in the livin’ room.”

“A home invasion?” Lima Bean said. “What were they looking for?”

“Who knows, kid. Ain’t nothin’ in these dumps but roaches an’ frustration.”

We all stopped talking for a minute to watch a young woman be escorted out of the Lewis’s apartment into a waiting ambulance. She had a bandage across her eye and was wearing a fireman’s blanket because her clothes had been mostly torn off.

An old lady followed close behind her. “Oh, Lord — why — just a innocent baby. A baby. Sweet Je-sus what’d we do to deserve this?”

The man continued, “Saw them fools climb outta the back winda empty handed an’ duck inta a se-dan that was waitin’. Took off thataways.”

Lima Bean said, “Whoa. Really? Man, you should let the cops know so they can catch those assholes.”

The man screwed up his face disgustedly. “Shit. Ain’ no bis-ness of mine. Talk to the po-lice?” He was now speaking loudly enough for everybody to hear. “You kiddin’? Boy, I ain’t no snitch.”

Then he turned, cursing us and anyone else, went in his front door, snapped the dead bolt, closed the curtains and turned out all the lights.

“What a dick,” Lima Bean said.

“Whatta perfect waste to a Friday night,” I complained.

“I’m bored too,” Lima Bean agreed. “Let’s do something else.”

“My place?” I said. “Madden marathon?”

Just then, a purple box Chevy on triple golds crept through the intersection. The passenger side window rolled down, a whiff of smoke floated out. The brake lights blinked twice and then the driver hit the gas. The car reared on its haunches and sped off.

“All right?” I asked Juan. He didn’t move, he was looking at the car’s taillights as they disappeared around the corner. “Ok?”

“Uh — hey, man,” Juan said. His voice cracked feebly, like he was using it for the first time after coming out of a long, deep sleep. “You think, like, it’d be cool with your ma if I maybe just stayed the whole night at your place, too?”

This month, we’re publishing more flash, but also mixing in some longer short stories.  Look forward to some stuff from some great writers, including Joshua Citrak, G. Arthur Brown, Hassan Riaz, Tyler Gates, J. Bradley, Joshua Martin, and Chett Tiller.  We’re going to publish something each Monday and Friday this month.

We’re starting to get more stuff submitted, but we’re always looking for more.  Please check out our submissions page, especially if you write absurdist or bizarro fiction.

And please spread the word! We’re on facebook over at https://www.facebook.com/paragraphline and Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/ParagraphLine. The best way to find out about new stuff is to add one of those two and get all the updates.

Thanks!

Your editor,

Jon

Hiding away in this dirty, disgusting, shithole bunker . . .

This is after escaping multiple assassination attempts, right? He was sooo pissed. He slaughters 4000 people for revenge. After all this shit, he couldn’t handle the pressure and decides to off himself. Fucking jerk. But he doesn’t go alone, right? He has his girl Braun come hang with him in the bunker, beforehand. And this is right after he marries the girl, after, I don’t know, fifteen years of fucking her? And don’t forget the dogs. They were under a lot of pressure, too, according to Hitler, and he wasn’t about to let them keep suffering. He was a regular Kavorkian-Samaritan, a real peta-advocate kinda guy, an activist almost . . . for the dogs.

So anyway, poor Hitler woos this Braun chick, right? And gets on one knee, proposes. But by this point, I think this was more semantics than anything, because they hardly did it anymore. Braun was still a hot chick, but Hitler was just not that into it. I don’t know. It might’ve been work or the pressure for him to perform. Anyway, what’s funny about this Braun chick, right? Is that she tried committing suicide twice before. I mean, who tries to commit suicide? You either do it or you don’t. You don’t try. There’s no trying and failing. No one’s bad at killing themselves. If you really want to end your life, then you will. Failed attempts equal either A: You’re too scared to go through with it or B: You don’t really want to go through with it, right? You just want someone to notice you. And cuts and scrapes are great for getting noticed. Fucking bitch.

So anyway, here’s how all this all went down, right? Braun starts threatening to take her own life and all that shit and starts pleading hysterically, all over-dramatic-drama-queen style, ‘I can’t handle it, anymore’ and ‘I don’t want to live in this shithole!” Yadda, yadda, yadda.

And then Hitler’s like, ‘I can’t believe I left my bros for this shit. This place is a wreck. What do you do all day? You sure as hell don’t fucking clean.’

This Braun chick’s like, ‘Fuck you, Hitler. Fuck . . . you.’

Hitler says, ‘Oh, fuck me? Fuck me? No . . . Fuck you! You drunken bitch.’

Braun’s all confused, looking around, and then Hitler’s like, ‘I know about your secret booze stash, you drunk. I know.’

And Braun’s all, ‘I can’t do this with you, anymore.’

Hitler says, ‘What does that even mean?’

And she’s like, ‘I’m gonna fucking . . . kill myself.’

Oh, Hitler gets pissed, right? And laughs because he’s seen this song and dance before and says, ‘Ohhh . . . cause you’re so good at that, aren’t you? You fucking liar.’

She’s crying, but trying to cry harder, like pushing the tears out. ‘I’m serious this time. I’m gonna fucking do it!’

Hitler’s had it, now, right? Fumes are coming off of him. He laughs at her and says, ‘If you’re going to fucking do it, then do it already!’ And then, ‘I’ll help you, since you suck at it, just like you suck at cleaning this fucking house!’

Braun is really bawling at this point, but she’s still trying to bawl harder.

Hitler’s all sarcastic, ‘Boo hoo.’ He says it all shitty, rubs his eyes like a baby.

He grabs the cyanide pills she’s pretended to swallow before, right? And shoves two into her mouth. Her pride doesn’t let her try to stop him. She swallows them down. Then he’s all, ‘I love you.’ He looks into her eyes slowly, deeply, and they embrace in the most passionate kiss you could imagine, right? Her tear smeared mascara gets all over him.

He says, crying now, ‘If we’re going, we’re going as a family. I don’t want these dogs to grow up in this world alone.’ He gives them some pills.

After like ten minutes, right? He starts to think her cyanide pills are aspirin or something. He asks all insinuatingly, ‘Hey, are you sure those were cyanide? Because I had a slight tension headache earlier, and now it’s gone.’

She just looks at him with the meanest, piercing look you’ve ever seen, like, are you fucking kidding me, Hitler?Really?

And he’s like, ‘I was just wondering. Jeez.’

And then Hitler, right? He tells her, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t given you much sexual attention, lately. It’s just that work has really stressed me out.’

And she’s like, ‘It’s not me?’

He’s all, ‘No way, Braun. You’re the hottest chick I’ve ever seen. You’re smoking.’

She smiles and says, ‘I needed to hear that.’

He looks at her for a second and says, ‘I really do love you, Braun.’

And then he shoots all of them, starting with her, then the dogs, and then himself.

Ha. Ha. Funny, right?

—

Matt Micheli is a transgressive fiction writer out of Austin, TX, author of MEMOIRS OF A VIOLENT SLEEPER: A BEDTIME STORY. His analytical, sometimes satirical, and often times blunt views of love, loss, life, and beyond are expressed through his writing. For him, writing is an escape from the everyday confines of what the rest of us call normal. He can be found at www.violentsleeper.com.

The drinks are not particularly cheap at this bar. The food is not particularly good. The atmosphere is not particularly American in that way that makes you say to yourself “self, this is America”. It is beautiful and special only in its inevitability. Unless you’re looking to meet a sasquatch, because the occasional sasquatch comes in.

I drifted there because I wanted to be near an ocean and I could not choose an ocean or someone to be. I liked the idea of Windbreakers and dufflebags and bearing the beard of a quintessential enigma. I felt ready for anyone and anything, a Lester Dent hero leading a Willie Nelson life.This was back when I was young and hopelessly wrong. Though there was some indication there may have been fear in me somewhere, it was no longer in sight.

Thing is,if you end up at this bar, when you end up at this bar, there will be someone there to meet you. It might not be a problem for you. It could be your favorite lost childhood dog, wagging his tail and eager to split a basket of potato skins. But I had no such luck. I could never have been prepared for what I saw.

When I was a kid, my mother had these three boarders that lived in the attic, drinking all night. A vampire, a mummy and a werewolf, as creepy, as hairy and as smelly as you would think they would be. They’d wake me up in the middle of the night, their breaths stinking of Old Granddad and meat and they’d pull up my covers and-

No. It wasn’t like that. They weren’t those kinds of monsters. What they did to me was bad enough to forget, but it wasn’t that. They would take me out to the backyard. And they would make me dig holes. Big holes. It was exhausting, especially for a kid who hadn’t gotten much sleep. But that wasn’t the problem. As usual it wasn’t the backbreaking labor, but the heartbreaking labor that got to me. When I was done digging the holes, they would open up the sacks. If I was a more clever boy than I was, I would have made sure to dig slowly. But I wasn’t that clever and I was young and they were monsters and I was scared. One look at the fangs of the vampire or the claws of the werewolf or the hideous rotting, dusty face of the mummy and I’d be digging faster than a child should ever dig, especially someone digging holes for what I was digging holes for.

The kids in the sack weren’t from my school. It doesn’t make it better or worse that they didn’t come from my school. It’s just the facts. I never betrayed a friend. Just kids I’d seen on milk cartons and posters. Most of them were already dead. Most of them. The monsters would sometimes throw in a live one because they thought it was funny. It wasn’t funny. None of it was ever funny.

Not when I was chopping up all those bodies with a hatchet. Hard work for a little kid. Disgusting work for anyone. For years, I had blocked it out. My mind wouldn’t let me grow up in a world where shit like that happened. But then I saw him again, and the moment I caught sight of him I remembered every tiny arm I chopped off. Every twitching, begging child that the monsters had challenged me with. The time I was brave enough to attack the mummy with that hatchet and the vampire took me over his knee and spanked me for it. I would have lived without things if he wasn’t sitting there waiting for me.

The vampire? The mummy? Some child’s ghost? No. It was worse. My true accomplice, the one who had enabled me to do the things they’d made me do, the one whose conscience had been bloodied by this most of all. My childhood hatchet. I fell to my knees and screamed at the sight of him. I should have been allowed to live without those memories. I should have been allowed to be young and adventurous and eager to reach the sea.

The hatchet had since grown an eye on the side of his blade. The eye was chocolate brown and caring but full of sadness and disapproval. The eye pitied me and hated me for what I’d done. I longed to flee the bar, but when you have drifted to the center and you know there’s a reason for being there, it’s difficult to leave. So I sat across from him and ordered us a couple of beers.

He didn’t touch his.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “that we had to do that.”

He made no indication that he accepted my apology. I had nothing to say, and neither did he so we stared at each other, each begging for permission to forget. We did this until the bar closed. We drifted together him and me only as far as Williston, where we got an apartment. He was doing nothing with his life and I was doing nothing with mine, so it was common sense.

For years, he would cry through the night. I slept with headphones on. Recently, he’s started waking me up around midnight and pressing himself to my neck. I can’t help but think “this is the end. He’ll do it tonight for sure.” But he keeps on surprising me. The brown eye tears up and he retreats back to his room to reflect on what he’s done. I keep hoping that he’ll change his mind and finish what he started. I’m not suicidal, but I long for one last chance to drift away.

—

Garrett Cook is the winner of the first annual Ultimate Bizarro Showdown and the author of such Bizarro works as Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective and Archelon Ranch. If he told you anything else, he would have to erase your memory. He can be found at http://chainsawnoir.wordpress.com/

Gerty looked out across her award-winning yard—the well-manicured lawn, the lush garden, the wispy young apple tree dotted with pink buds—and she knew that she would win the Silver Stream County Cottage Competition. She would be crowned the Homestead Queen of Silver Stream County for the tenth time. Her fingers brushed lazily against the duffel bag and watched the sun warm her domain. Lettuce unfurled and tomatoes glistened as the automatic sprinkler system came to life. Zucchini the size of a man’s arm rested on barely visible watermelon. Long trails of creeping vine snaked around fences and latticework and dripped from birdfeeders, blowing in the pleasant breeze. It was perfect, and nobody could take it from her. Not the pests, not the critters, and certainly not Mrs. Maryanne Wilson-Smitts. Gerty glanced over her fence, past three houses with mediocre lawns, and there she was, that rich old crone, trimming hedges. She hired professional landscapers to install them; avant-garde designs strewn all about. Gerty thought they were hideous, but she knew the judges would eat it up. She patted the duffel bag and smiled.

A quick movement in the garden caught Gerty’s eye. She stared for a few moments at the rabbit, its bob tail quivering in the air as it nibbled a bright orange carrot, freshly dug from the dark soil. It was young, plump, and sported a lustrous grey-brown coat, surely well-fed on Gerty’s precious vegetables. She narrowed her eyes and pulled a small square of paper from the duffel bag. It unfolded again and again until she held out the huge diagram, assembly instructions for the .50 caliber sniper rifle she purchased on the internet.

Gerty spun the barrel into a threaded hole and locked it in place. She adjusted the scope and oiled the moving parts, loaded the magazine, felt the weight of it in her hands and assumed a prone position further up on the roof where the grade was less steep. She pressed her face to the scope and whispered an apology to her grandson for dipping into his college fund. He would understand when he was older.

Through the lenses and down the sight rails, glowing guides on the curved glass, the range display and the thermal filter, she watched the rabbit’s nose twitch. She heard wind chimes tinkle and squeezed one eye shut.
“I’m the Homestead Queen, you cute little son of a biscuit.”

She regained consciousness almost instantly. Her ears were ringing from the report of the rifle and her face throbbed. With some difficulty she returned to the prone position and looked through the scope at the long trench in her garden where the rabbit used to be, as wide as Gerty’s fist and still smoking. There were bits of white fluff drifting on the breeze.

Her chest swelled and Gerty felt the same tight pain as she had a week before, during her third heart attack. She took a deep breath through her nostrils and felt proud, strong, like a queen, like the Queen. Nothing could keep her from winning. Nothing.

Her eyes followed the barrel across the lawn, up and over the fence, past three houses. Maryanne Wilson-Smitts was looking at the sky and shielding her eyes. She kept looking for the source of the deafening sound while Gerty found the exact middle of her forehead.

—

Justin Bostian is a writer and editor killing time in the city of Chicago. His editorial eye has worked with first-time novelists and industry-tested professionals alike, and he currently edits subversive stories for Criminal Class Press and book reviews for Columbia College Chicago. He is a tutor for students of creative writing and the producer and editor of Friction, a zine focused on the insane creations of emerging writers. His work has appeared in Story Week Reader 2011, Zine Columbia, Perfect Distance from the Sun, Half Nelson, and is forthcoming in Hair Trigger 34.

Though I had a boyfriend at the time who was also a virgin, my first time was not with him. It was with his best friend, a sixteen year old mimbo extraordinaire who spelled the “I” sound in his name with a “Y,” making “Chris” Chrys. I choose Chrys specifically because he was promiscuous and aggressive. My boyfriend, whom I liked very much, was just too chivalrous and respectful towards me, which left the physical aspects of our relationship stalled because of my own sexual hang-ups. I needed a first time partner who would not just storyboard the event for me, but feed me his penis like a director might feed a bad actor their lines.

Chrys and I had had a previous sexual encounter when it hadn’t been cheating on my part and bro foul on his, the summer before I hit the hallways as a freshman.

One night I snuck out of the house with my friend Louise and Chrys was one of the boys we happened to meet out on the street after midnight. While Louise got it on with his friend, I laid down in the grass and let Chrys have most of his way with my basically comatose form. I wasn’t drunk or on drugs, it was the shame I felt that completely mired my ability for both response and reach around. Chrys had to release his own member and put it into my hands, because to take the initiative and open up his pants on my own would be to show that I wanted it, which I wouldn’t, even though I very much did.

From a very early age I had been sexually paralyzed by the notion that it was bad form for a female to show she wanted anything sexually, and even worse for her to go out and seek it. I had grown up in an Irish-Catholic family, and even though for a short period of time my parents had hidden a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves under the mattress in their bedroom, there was zero dialogue in our house about the subject matters in its pages. Everything I learned about my body and sex I had to scavenge for myself. Though we never spoke about the “S” word, there was a strong, fragrant undercurrent to the silence. We weren’t talking about sex because it was a dirty, shameful thing.

My teenage years found me incredibly curious about sex, but the shame I had internalized shaped all of my sexual interactions. I was not prude per se but more frozen into frigidity. All of my sexual fantasies involved aggression on the part of my partners (envision Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees as a rapist) to resolve my own desirous culpability. It was my partners who were the ones in control, shaping events; I was just a passive entity. Even in my inner-most thoughts I wouldn’t allow myself be shown as an willing participant.

So freshman year- I liked my boyfriend, but he was just too respectful. He didn’t push me. He didn’t put my hands into his pants like Chrys did; he didn’t offer instructions or storyboards. He was holding me back by not taking the reins, by not making me do what he didn’t even know I wanted to. The night I’d fooled around with Chrys in the grass he’d asked me to have sex with him and though I’d said no, I always remembered the offer and we became closer as I dated his best friend. And one warm fall evening, 24 hours after my sweet, gentle boyfriend serenaded me outside my bedroom window with songs he learned starring in our high school’s production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, I agreed to meet Chrys in my backyard and had sex with him in the dirt pit behind my house.

It was very quick and it didn’t hurt. I was expecting it to as my only other close friend who had had sex had ended up in hospital with cysts on her ovaries, locker folklore at the time connecting the cysts to her too early middle school forays into fornication. Though I didn’t think sex would give me tumors, I assumed there would be some kind of strong physical discomfort. It was anticlimactic in all regards.

My first words to Chrys afterward were “Did I bleed?” He looked down at the prophylactic on his now flaccid penis and said “No.” I recall answering, “Must be all those horseback riding lessons I took.”

I hate to use words like give and take but I choose to give Chrys my virginity purposely, because I knew he would take it.

*Alas, LSD would let me down, too. I’d read Timothy Leary’s autobiography Flashbacks and had been heartened to learn about his experiments with psilocybin in the prisoner population. Leary had claimed success with using the drug to help recidivists come to terms with the personality defects that led them back to crime. Since adolescence is essentially one long ten year bid, I reached for LSD in the hope it might serve as a sort of psychedelic fix me in a time before Prozac. Maybe, my thought went, LSD would help me come to terms with what it was about myself that I loathed. Alas, it just made me even more tongue tied and awkward, and my taste in music and clothing suffered. I took it over 200 times, anyway, just to be sure.

—
Fiona Helmsley is a writer of creative non-fiction and poetry. Her first book There Are A Million Stories In The Naked City When You’re A Girl Who Gets Naked In The Naked City was released in 2010. Her writing can be found in various anthologies like How Dirty Girls Get Clean and Air In The Paragraph Line and online at websites like Jezebel and The Rumpus. She can be reached through her blog Flee Flee This Sad Hotel at http://ilikemymeattender.blogspot.com.