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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Joan Vollmer Burroughs Died for Somebody’s Sins not Mine by Fiona Helmsley

20 Jul

Here’s the thing. I am very distrustful. I’ve been burned many times. One time in particular that was quite painful was by Patti Smith. She was with her then boyfriend, the young man who would go on to become the photographer, who would be wearing monogrammed slippers in fifteen years’ time, shooting flowers and whips up his asshole. A good looking fellow with unkempt curls. Bill would not have cruised him as he liked Spaniards.

They were at the Chelsea Hotel, what we used to call the Literary Leper Colony as a kick. Not out of disrespect for the address but because so many of the greats had gone there to die. Patti was very aware of the anniversary, she’d even found out approximate times from somewhere, though she and the boy did travel in the same loose circles as Bill when he was in town. They had dressed for their parts, the boy in a handsome Salvation Army suit coat and matching pants and Patti in a diaphanous slip dress and pearlescent shawl. There’s not much written as to my sartorial flair. Despite having such a prolific circle of writers for friends, it’s amazing how invisible I have remained. It was because of this that when dressing as me Patti defaulted her look to that of Ophelia before hitting the brook.

At 7:15 PM, Patti and the boy exchanged words like they imagined Bill and I might have before I was shot. So much pageantry was involved in their reenactment it’s a wonder they didn’t sell tickets. It was like a warped wedding ceremony, the groom being artistic sensibility. We now pronounce ourselves outlaw artistes!

“I think it’s time for our William Tell Act,” the young man said without emotion.

“I don’t think I can look, you know how I can’t stand the site of blood,” Patti replied.

The only aspect of the recreation they’d neglected was the weaponry. Instead of a .38 the boy had a small plastic water gun, painted brown and filled with red food coloring. He put a tumbler glass onto her head and backed up not too far. I saw something in his face, it read like hesitancy. A squirt of food coloring hit her squarely between the eyes. She twitched and the glass fell without breaking. As the pinkish- red trail ran down her forehead she collapsed to the floor.

Finé.

The whole thing was really a rather crass affair, but who’s to say, I might be biased. My husband and I have become one of the most popular his and hers Halloween costumes in certain circles of New York. More popular then Zelda and Scott, atleast as popular as June and Henry. I’d seen my share of these farbs but Patti’s was the first by a person in circumstances similar to my own and with a connection. I suppose it was the reason I was drawn out. That and it was obvious she was outré enough not to be completely spooked by the idea of talking to a ghost.

She dropped to the floor, feigning the last wheezy breaths of my death’s rattle. The boy waited a few seconds before leaning down and helping her to her feet. She moved her hand to his face as he lifted her, to caress his smooth skin and invite him to kiss her. Instead he moved her hand away.

“I have to go,” he said. This going of his had become a reoccurring motif. Though he was rejecting her advances it was not with cruelty.

“Where?” she asked. The food coloring had streaked down her forehead and pooled at the bridge of her nose. Her costuming was in such stark contrast to the boy’s. He looked debonair, brashly handsome; with the blood, she looked like a Bellevue escapee.

“To Terry’s loft…”

“You spend more time with Terry than you do with me, Robert. Not a small feat considering we live together.”

“I said I’d do this with you…” He moved his hands in the air, though the fleeting traces of their reenactment. “I don’t want to argue. He’s waiting for me. I’ll be back late tonight, I promise.”

Once the boy had gone, she went over to the bookcase and took out a small, elegantly constructed handmade diary. She poured herself a glass of wine from the bottle she had planned to use as an aid in the seduction of the boy, if only she had made it that far.

She picked up a pen, sat down at a small table and began to write: Rimbaud, Whitman, Blake, Burroughs: Robert and I are similar in the way we express our idolatry. We commune with our influences; covet their experiences like cicerones to luminosity. But it appears for Robert having one such experience Rimbaudesque hasn’t been enough. Jim Carroll said he knew he wasn’t gay because he only did it with men for money. I’m fairly certain that Robert is now doing it with them for free. 

Without confirmation from the boy she was in purgatory. Without confirmation as to the circumstances of my death, I was too. You could say I thought we could help each other out of a jam.

Not wanting to scare her but conceding that some fright was inevitable, I waited till she had finished her first glass of wine and had the beginnings of a glow on. When she got up to use the bathroom in the hallway, engaging all three door locks behind her, I even refilled her glass to encourage more consumption.

There was so much riff-raff in the halls of the Chelsea that when I did manifest, in the second chair at the table, the boy’s chair, she did not even seem that startled. I wore a knitted cloche low on my forehead to cover the bullet hole and moved my chair in a way advantageous to the dim lighting of the room.

“How did you get in here?” she demanded, catching sight of me when she looked up from her journal. She clenched the pen in her hand like a javelin.

“Joan Vollmer, Patti. I was watching your reinterpretation of my death.”

As could be expected, the revelation came as quite a jolt. She jumped up from her seat and bolted towards the door. “You old freak! You were spying on us! Get out now or I’ll get the police!”

“Touch me Patti,” I said following her as quickly as I could with my gimpy leg. She was frantically trying to undo all the locks on the door. “I can prove it to you if you touch me…”

She wouldn’t acknowledge my request, so to offer up irrefutable evidence of my nature, I walked through her, through the door, out into the hallway, then back into the room and beside her.

“I’m a ghost, Patti. An eidolon.”

She frantically continued with the locks. As she was both tipsy and unnerved, all she could do was fumble them. “I’m asleep,” she whispered, closing her eyes and shaking her head side to side as if she could wake herself up. “I passed out in the chair, this is a dream…”

“You’re awake,” I interjected.  “Robert left a little while ago. You’ve been drinking wine, writing in your journal.”

An uncomfortable silence rested between us. A sort of stalemate. She could either resist believing what I was or she could accept it.

When she finally spoke it was with such a release of emotion I thought she might cry.

“Did I… conjure you?”

“I don’t know exactly what you did, but everything lined up. I don’t have long though. I’m like Cinderella at the ball and can’t dance all night. Can we sit down?”

She didn’t respond but followed me back to the table, keeping as much of the small room between us as she could.

She stared at me for a good moment, then leaned across the table to touch me skittishly, like someone might if trying to gauge the heat of a hot stove. When her hand cut clear through the air, clear through me, she threw back her head and began reciting verses from Whitman: “And thee my soul, thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet thy mates the eidolons!” She assailed her hands upon the tabletop and cried out, “Old Bull Lee’s wife!” referring to my husband by his character’s name in Jack’s book. Talking a mile a minute and with much animation, she began speaking of her and the boy’s reenactment of my death.

“It…it… was meant as a tribute, a paean to you and your relationship with Old Bull Lee… You are such an inspiration to me, Joan. You were the hippest, the smartest girl on that scene, a real firecracker. Robert has said I’m so obsessed by my icons their like my imaginary friends. I’ll be writing in my journal and he’ll say, “What are you doing over there Patti Lee, communing with your dead pals?” I’ve always been thought of as this sort of ‘little girl who cried wolf’… “Oh Patti and her imagination!” they always say. That’s probably why you came to me Joan, you knew from my mouth no one would ever believe it! A visit from you is just the sort of thing they would expect me to claim!”

She was so excitable and schizophrenic it dawned on me we might go on like this forever unless I got stern.

“Robert is homosexual Patti,” I said. “His sexual encounters with men are not just some artistic experiment. I know all about the denials and justifications. I went through the same thing with Bill. I had as hard a time accepting it as you are.”

“Joan Vollmer Burroughs in my room at the Chelsea! Commiserating with me about man troubles!” She pulled her feet up into the seat of her chair and wrapped her arms around her legs, adjusting the skirt of her dress for modesty. “I’ve felt so jaded lately. My belief in the magic of the world has really been on the wane.” She inhaled deeply and fidgeted with a loose gold band on her ring finger, twisting it in circles it as she spoke.

“At one time, Robert and I were like one person, Joan. Psychic twins I used to say. Telepathic, like you and Old Bull Lee. I’d always dreamed of meeting another artist to love and create with. Robert’s my muse and my maker. I’m resistant to give that up no matter who he shares his bed with.”

She must have forgotten I was untouchable because she started to reach across the table, then pulled back.

“I feel so blessed to have this time with you, Joan.”

“You’re blessed to have someone to have this conversation with,” I replied. “I had no one. At least no one who wasn’t in some way caught up in our madness. You can’t just talk to anyone about your lover, your husband, being fey. They don’t understand why you just don’t leave, that you can’t just turn your feelings on and off like that. Then there’s the denial. I used to say to Bill, “How can you be a faggot when you fuck like a pimp?”

A sly smile spread across her face that led me to think she could relate.

“I need to ask you a favor, Patti. I want to know if my husband shot me on purpose. I want to know once and for all if my death really was just an accident.”

“Oh Joan, I can assure you right now that it was! Lee was devastated by your death. It ruined him. It took him to depths so low, he had to write to find his way out. Your death is what inspired him to become a writer. It’s the reason he writes now!”

“Bill had been writing for years before my death, Patti. He was starting to become more ambitious about it with encouragement from Allen and Jack. He was writing two books at the time of my shooting. I had read parts of them. One was about boys, the other was about junk.”

“I’m staggered that you would even question this, Joan. Lee had no reason to do you in. You were the mother of his child. You had a partnership, a numinous understanding…”

“He’d been home for three days from a trip to South America with his boyfriend when I was shot. They were in South America for over two months, Patti. Two months! I don’t know what happened over the course of that trip. Maybe the thought that once he came home- the looming threat of returning to that existence… I suspect he was done with us. Billy could go and live with his parents- and me, I don’t think he really cared where I went, as long as it was a way from him.”

“Oh Joan, I don’t believe that for a second. You had tolerated all of his lovers in the past. Whatever would have been his complaint?”

“I think he wanted to be free of the trappings and responsibility of a family, Patti. Free to be an artist, to bugger boys where and when he wanted to, with impunity. Free of my loud mouth, my ugly face. I moved my chair over here because the lighting is better and you won’t get a good look at me. At my teeth. They’re like rotting tombstones from all my years on Benzedrine. What you would see isn’t damage done by any bullet. I was off the speed by then, but I was foul- mouthed lush with a gimpy leg from polio. Twenty-eight years old, but looking closer to fifty. I was only a few years older than you and you made me for an old freak when you first caught sight of me! And I can’t be positive because I’d been drinking, but I think I saw something in his eyes when he pointed the gun…”

“You were both drunk, Joan. That’s probably why your recollection’s so hazy. You were blitzed. You and Bill were at a party, at friend’s house when you were shot. You were performing your William Tell Act, something you’d done many times before…”

“No Patti. I remember what happened. I remember clearly. Bill and I hadn’t even come to the apartment I was shot at together. I hardly saw him over those three days after he returned from his trip. We met up at the apartment where I was shot by coincidence. His lover, the boy he went to South America with, was one of five or so people that lived there. And I think it bothered Bill. He wanted me out of his life and there I was, a guest at his lover’s apartment, and it made him feel like he’d never be free of me, he’d always have to tolerate my presence in some unbearable way or another. He’d come to the apartment to sell a gun. And I was at my wit’s end with him, Patti. I had to call his parents for money to feed the children while he was off in South America gallivanting with his catamite! We bantered there. I knew him so well, I knew just what to say to get him good and make it sting. He hated to be embarrassed. He was such a show off, with a machismo streak a mile long. I made a comment, not even a clever one… I said, in front of his catamite, in front of his claque, I said, “The big man with the gun who can’t shoot straight.”  You see, Bill was a great shot, it was one of the things he prided himself on, his marksmanship. I was being cheeky; I meant it as double entendre. I just wanted a response. Some pathetic acknowledgement of my existence. And he said, “Oh yeah?” And then to prove it, to prove me wrong, I let him put the glass on my head. It was the most interaction we’d had in months, Patti… Yes, it was something we’d done once before, but it wasn’t any party trick. I wasn’t suicidal Patti; I would have never let him put that glass on my head if I thought for a second he might miss…”

“I don’t believe it, Joan.”

“I saw something in his eyes, Patti. I’m not saying it was a total set-up, but I think in that moment, he saw a way to get what he wanted…he saw a way out. What I’d like for you to do is, I’d like for you to put it out there for me. I’d like for you to say that you suspect I was murdered…”

“Oh, Joan! I’m a fairly new face on the scene here. I don’t want to alienate anyone… I’m a poet, Joan. I’m not any kind of investigative reporter…”

“You could write a poem. Nothing will happen to Bill, Patti. It was eighteen years ago. I don’t want him rearrested. He already got his sentence, which he ran from, by the way. I just want some acknowledgement of what really happened to me that night…Why doesn’t anyone have the guts to say it aloud? To even question it? Is it because all of you who venerate him so would have to confront an ugliness about yourselves?”

“Look at my bookcase Joan! I’m a scholar of your lives!”

“What are you saying? Because you’ve read all my husband’s books you are somehow better qualified than I am to judge what happened to me that night?”

“William Burroughs is like another bible to me, Joan. He’s one of the reasons I became an artist. He’s one of the reasons I moved to New York…”

“Another bible…Do you like science fiction, Patti?”

“Science fiction? I mean, I suppose. I’ve read some Ray Bradbury…”

“What about gay pornography? Do you enjoy gay pornography, Patti?”

“I’m not against any kind of sexual expression, Joan. It’s not what gets me off, if that’s what you mean…”

“What about pederasty? Child fucking. How do you feel about child fucking, Patti? Because that’s what my husband writes about. That’s your bible. Or is the real reason my husband’s your favorite writer what you think he represents? Gentleman- degeneracy with a Harvard degree and a handsome hat? Is it the kitsch value of his lawlessness that you venerate? Is my husband your favorite writer because you’re so frantic to viewed as outsider you’ll pardon his transgressions’ so you can be associated with them?”

“I’m sorry I came here tonight Patti, but I have no choice who I come to. Because of that, if you keep with your crass reenactments, I may be back.” I was so angry now that I stood up and removed my cloche.

“Yours will wash away, Patti.”

I picked up her pen from the table, the one she’d been using to write in her journal, and jammed it into the hole in my forehead. “Mine won’t.”

Then I left her there, at her table, in her room at that hollowed hotel.

Left her with the lepers.

***

Bill is dead now, so what does any of this matter?

I have not seen him since his passing, but I came across something the other day, something interesting. It was a transcript of an interview a man named George Laughhead did with my husband right before he died. I can’t get into the logistics of how or where I saw it, but in it Mr. Laughhead concedes to something I waited over sixty years to hear someone admit.

He says, “I don’t really care if William Burroughs murdered his wife.”

My husband was allowed my death. His status as an icon allowed for him to transcend my shooting to such a degree it was no longer considered a criminal act, but a celebrated one.

In his old age, it appears Bill himself felt a little more emboldened to speak closer to the truth. In the same interview, he yells out, “SHOOT THE BITCH AND WRITE A BOOK….THAT’S WHAT I DID.”

     It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword.

     And sometimes it is the sword.

     Don’t let me down.

     Joan Vollmer Burroughs

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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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Suckle by Gary Anderson

13 Jul

So this thing happened a few months back. Nobody knows about it but my brother-in-law Phil—not counting Norma. I only told Phil because he had a thing with his testicles a few years back—cancer I guess—before his divorce. I don’t really know why that made a difference to me. I guess I just thought he had some weird stuff going on with his body too so maybe he would think mine wasn’t so weird. He looked up at me from his plate of soggy eggs kind of shocked and said You oughta take that fuckin’ shit on the road Bennie. But that was just Phil—always making jokes but mostly meaning nothing by them. It was like part of his makeup or something. Like the grain of his wood I guess.

Phil’s works for KNOB—a local radio station with stupidly bad call letters. That’s what Phil says and I guess I’d have to pretty much agree. Phil’s not a disc jockey anymore. Now he says he’s an on-air personality because he doesn’t just spin tunes—he’s a shock jock. That’s one of those radio guys that are always calling celebrities at home and telling them they’re fat or saying some artist or hockey player is a fag or calling some politician a douchebag. But Phil has never said anything like that—not on the air anyway. He can’t really call anyone a fag or a douchebag on air but he might be able to call some local celebrity fat if it’s not a sponsor or something and as long as they really are fat. Like I said—KNOB is a local station so it can’t be too shocking. I guess the truth is Phil just tells kind of mean jokes for a living and that’s about it. Not like me—I watch people for a living. I’m a security guard. It’s not exactly my dream job but I guess it could be worse. I spend my day mostly watching people come and go from the offices of Tower Plaza on a grease-smeared security monitor. It’s not real exciting work. Not like Phil’s. But a few months back I did blow the whistle on a janitor who was putting his man-thing all over this chubby girl’s office stuff. Phil said I did the right thing because the guy was a real sicko and that it was primo shock jock material. I remember because it was around then this weird thing happened to me.

It’s kind of hard to explain about the thing so I’ll just come out and say it—I started to lactate. I know that’s what it’s called because I looked it up—lactate: to secrete milk. I mean it was a shocker because I thought it was just mothers who lactate. And I guess I don’t need to say I’m not a mother. I’m not even a woman. When I said this to Phil he said No shit Bennie. And when he wanted to see me lactate right there I said Right here? In Big Boy’s? And he said Yeah why not? Give me a shot of half and half in my coffee. Ha ha I said—but it wasn’t a real laugh but just the words ha ha. I told him it’s not like that. I said I have to be kind of excited. Phil picked up his coffee mug. What do you mean? Like Super-Bowl excited? Like Stanley-Cup excited? He stuck his fat lips on the rim and slurped real loud. At first I thought he was joking but then I saw he wasn’t so I said No I mean excited—like you know sexually. Phil’s Adam’s apple did this kind of tap dance thing under his chin. I could tell he almost sprayed coffee all over the booth. Jesus Bennie. Is this some sick way of tricking me into some homo thing with you? Has it really been that long? I pulled my knock-off Lacoste shirt tight against my man-boobs. Watch I said. Then I thought about Norma until it was like I could see the top of her head moving around down there or something. Pretty soon a wet spot soaked the little green alligator with man-milk. That’s when Phil said his thing about taking my act on the road.

 

Phil and I mostly got along better after Sam died—better than when we were still brothers-in-law for real. I guess we’re still brothers-in-law for real—even if the person who made us brothers-in-law is gone. But now I think about it I’m not really sure about that just like I’m not really sure why we got along better after Sam was gone either. Maybe we both needed something from each other. I guess I should say Sam was my wife—and Phil’s sister. She died having our little girl Becky. We already picked out the name and I guess Becky was Becky for about three minutes before she died too. That was three years ago. And all that stuff they say about not a day goes by—well it’s pretty much true. Not a day goes by. My little Becky would’ve been three years and three minutes old if she’d lived. And I’d be bouncing her on my knee right now. And I’d be happy I’m sure. And Sam would be happy too.

After Sam died Phil started coming around more. He’d just walk in and sit down without really saying anything. Maybe he’d watch some TV with me for awhile. Then maybe he’d go out to the kitchen and do the dishes or go outside and water the dying rose bushes. Always something like that. Like I said—we needed something from each other and I guess Phil got something out of it too. He was going through a divorce around then so he didn’t like to stay home much. His wife Steph moved out after the cancer turned Phil into a one-nut lunatic. That’s what Phil called himself mostly—not Steph. And not me—but I thought it sometimes. The truth was I think Steph didn’t care about the cancer mostly and she probably would’ve stuck around but Phil got all weird and morbid and stuff. He kept asking people if they wanted to see his withered scrote or his one-melon gunnysack. When they didn’t know what to say he’d stick a hand into his fly and pull out a shriveled flap of skin. I wish I could say I never saw it myself but I did and it wasn’t much to look at—that’s for sure. It was kind of like the pink and bumpy skin Sam used to pull off chicken breasts and throw into the sink but it wasn’t really pink—it was more like black I guess. Anyway Phil almost got himself fired but somehow he didn’t. He hung onto his job.

Then the shock jock thing opened up and it worked out pretty good for him. I guess it was a real good release for all the stuff he was holding inside.

Me—I took some time off after Sam died. I went through all the stuff that people go through mostly but I didn’t get weird and morbid like Phil did. Anyway six months later I was back at work—bored and drinking coffee in front of the security monitor. I guess I was living like the people on the screens I watched all day long—gray and silent. For the next two years I lived gray and silent. A kind of pointless life is what I’d say now. I mean it’s a different kind of loneliness. Like you know that it’s never going to go away. Even if you do meet someone else it’s still going to be there. Like a kind of constant hum in the background that you finally just get used to. At least that how it seemed then. And not that I was really thinking about meeting someone else. It never really crossed my mind but it seems like that’s when that kind of thing happens mostly —when you’re not really thinking about it. And that’s when I met Norma but I didn’t know she was Norma then. She was still Rosie to me.

 

I sometimes went for beers after work with a couple of guys from the Plaza. We’d cross the street to this afterhours place—Orion’s Belt My Ass. I mostly just wanted some beer to relax some—like my boring night shift was stressful or something. After a few I’d drive home and watch reruns of Barney Miller and Soap and fall asleep in front of the TV. I guess it was around Christmas Eve when I first saw Rosie in Orion’s Belt, My Ass. The guys from the Plaza were mostly just looking for something easy—looking to stuff some Christmas turkey. That’s what Rudy said high on industrial cleaning products like he always was. Like I said—I was just there for a couple of beers. But when I went to the john there was this girl in there losing her lunch in the sink. I mean the stuff coming out of her was fluorescent or something like she’d been drinking radioactive martini’s or kryptonite & tonics. So I pulled a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and stood there waiting for her to finish. Finally she straightened up and pulled her hair back into a ball of frizz. There was a kind of shine on her dark skin—sweat I guess—so I handed her the paper towels and she took them in her long nails that looked kind of like bloody bird’s claws or something and then she wiped her lips and face and she looked at me. I’m Rosie she said like she hadn’t just lost her lunch in the men’s john. Bennie I said. That was very sweet of you Bennie she said and she bent in and put her lips on my cheek. I could smell some spicy kind of perfume mixed with some tequila and vomit. Are you here alone Bennie she asked and I said I was with some guys from work. No I mean are you here with a woman. Do you have a date? I didn’t even know till right then she was a professional but I heard that line so many times on TV that I figured she must be. No—no date I said. She sat on the sink and kind of opened her legs some. So do you want a date Bennie she said. But before I could answer Rudy walked in and blabbed something about shots on fire and flaming Christians and I better get my ass back out there. Rosie put a hand on my chest and she dug her claws in some. Maybe later then Bennie she said and then she kind of swayed out the john. I didn’t know you were into the whores said Rudy. Black whores too. I thought I might knock him down—but I didn’t. I’m not I said and not because she was black. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant I’m not into the whores like the way Rudy said I was.

 

I want to say here that I never cheated on Sam when we were married—when she was alive. I never went to the city looking for hookers or got hand jobs in Koreatown. Not like Phil. I never screwed around with anyone. I mean I had a thing for Stephanie my sister-in-law but nothing ever happened—mostly nothing I guess. We got drunk one Thanksgiving and when everyone else was passed out we kissed and I think I felt her up too but I’m kind of foggy on that part. But anyway we stopped and I guess the truth was she stopped—not me—and we never said anything about it and no one ever found out. It was like it never happened mostly but sometimes I saw something in Steph’s eyes. It wasn’t really guilt but more like she was ashamed or something and I couldn’t tell if she was ashamed of what we did or if she was ashamed that she did it with me. I guess maybe I would’ve let it happen if she would’ve. That’s the real truth and the sad truth all rolled into one worse truth. I should probably say that I’m not the handsomest guy in town. I mean unless you’re into fat and bald—then I might be handsome. But I’m not real fat—a bit fat though and bald is just bald because it doesn’t matter how much. Like you can’t have three quarters or half a head of hair the way you can be ten or fifteen pounds overweight. Anyway Steph was a good-looking woman—still is a good-looking woman I guess. So for someone like me it was something pretty tempting. So like I said—maybe I would’ve done it. Or probably I would’ve done it I guess.

But I don’t want to make it seem like Sam was unattractive or anything like that because she wasn’t ugly at all. I mean you could say she was plain and that would be true mostly I guess. But her kind of plain looked okay to me and parts of her were pretty good—like her calves. They were something to look at for sure—I mean long and thin and muscley. I guess every woman has something about them that’s real good like that. I mean I could’ve watched Sam walk around all day long. The way her calves pulled tight and then let go. I only have one picture of them. It was at her mom and dad’s in Montana in front of their above-ground swimming pool and Sam’s in a swimming suit walking away from the camera. I guess I said something—I don’t remember what—because she’s looking over her shoulder kind of smiling like she’s angry but not really. And her calves are perfect.

 

I left Orion’s Belt My Ass a little drunker than usual that night because I guess those flaming Christian shots just about did me in. My mouth tasted like candy cane mostly and a bit of beer but my legs were all rubber and I didn’t need a breathalyzer to tell me it was a good night for a taxi. I waved one down and was just getting in when two hands reached around from behind me and I recognized the bloody claws right away even though I was pretty drunk. Share a cab Bennie? said Rosie. I guess I didn’t say anything because next thing I knew we were in the backseat and Rosie was doing these little kiss things on my neck kind of like a pigeon pecking at bread crumbs but I was sitting straight and stiff like I was a statue or something so she stopped pecking. Let me guess—you don’t normally do this kind of thing right? she asked. No I answered. Married? she asked. Was I answered. Divorced? she asked. Died. How long? Three years I answered. Oh Bennie said Rosie and sighed like she was sorry about Sam or like maybe she’d died and left people behind in another life too. Then she dropped a leg over mine like if we were one person we would’ve been sitting with crossed legs and she rested her head on my chest and it felt good. I mean I knew I was going to have pay but it still felt good because in three years nobody touched me mostly if you don’t count the bridesmaid at my cousin’s wedding last summer. I guess she passed out on the sofa and I kind of put her hand in my crotch but nothing really happened and it wasn’t much more than a small scuffle between me and her boyfriend. So I guess what I mean is I didn’t really care how much it was going to cost me.

Rosie started doing the kissing thing on my neck again and then she slipped one of her claws inside my shirt and started flipping my nipple up and down like it was the light switch for a burned out bulb or something and the whole time she was rubbing me with her leg. At first I was thinking about the taxi driver—watching us in the rearview mirror but Rosie didn’t seem to care so I tried to ignore him too. Then she unbuttoned my shirt and starting doing the pecking thing and licking my chest with a real pink tongue and I was getting worked up some by now and my man-thing was pretty much through the roof. Next thing I knew Rosie was latched onto one of my man-boobs and sucking like one of those baby deers you see on TV that they feed with a bottle but I guess what was weird was I really liked it. I mean it was like a real turn on or something but then Rosie stopped all of a sudden like something was wrong and I didn’t want to say anything because I was breathing so heavy I knew I would sound all shaky and out of breath so I just waited mostly although my hips were still kind of rabbitting up and done some. Rosie sat up and put a pinky to her lips. She looked at the red claw and tasted it like the way someone tries to figure out what kind of dressing is on their salad or something. What’s wrong? I asked and she pinched my man-boob and it squirted man-milk on the Plexiglas shield. You’re leaking she answered.

 

When I was ten I had a purple banana-seat bike and for about six months I guess I was the most popular kid in the neighborhood until Bobby Schwartz got a trampoline. Anyway I knew the other kids only liked me because they wanted to ride my bike but I didn’t care because I was just happy they liked me some even if it was for just awhile. I guess that’s how I felt about lactating too—and about Rosie. She really took to the teat just like the old saying says and I don’t really know why for sure. Maybe because she’d done everything else already—all the different positions and all the weird stuff and all that but she’d never been with a lactater. I mean I’m guessing about the lactate part but I’m pretty sure she hadn’t. And for me—I was just happy she seemed to like me some. I was happy to be with her and near someone I guess. Three gray and silent years was enough I thought. So I guess you could say I became a regular of Rosie’s.

At first we had a lot of sex. I mean good sex—normal kind of sex. But it always ended with Rosie suckling at my man-boobs and staring up me with big round eyes and it was disturbing some I guess because it was like they were looking at me like they were looking for something but I didn’t know what exactly and even if I did know what they were looking for I probably didn’t have it anyway. After awhile we kind of stopped having sex and went straight to the suckling part. It’s hard for me to explain how this was better than the best sex. I don’t know—it was kind of churchy or something. Like something somewhere deep inside but from I don’t know where.

I guess the first time it happened was maybe three weeks after the time in the taxi and I was meeting Rosie every night mostly then. We’d have drinks at Orion’s Belt My Ass and cross the street to the King’s Head Inn and we’d get one of those full suite rooms—the same one every time with the same sawed-off broom leaning in the kitchen and the same scratches on the inside of the door like maybe someone had used a gooseneck jimmy to get out or something. Anyway we’d mostly go straight to the sex and end up suckling—always end up suckling like I said. But this night was something different. We took a taxi to the somewhere in the east end and Rosie took me up the fire escape of this four-story brick building. It didn’t really look like a hotel or anything and I guess it was some factory or something once. Anyway she took me in and it’s her place—her own place so it was kind of a shocker. I mean not the place itself because the place was real normal—real kind of womany I guess like I could tell a woman lived there. Candles and pictures and long mirrors and dishtowels folded in half and orange juice in a pitcher. Anyway I didn’t know what else to do so I tried to pay her because the pay was always upfront and she told me to keep it. She said Buy me breakfast in the morning and that was a shocker too. I mean we never stayed all night at the King’s Head. Who would want to really? But we stayed all night there and the next morning I bought her breakfast like she said and later when I tried to get going she stopped me and said there was something more she wanted to do. So she took me to this theater and I don’t even know what the name of the movie was but it was some kind of old war movie—black and white and bad sound. Anyway we found a seat near the front and there were lots of people around and we sat down in the middle of them and the gray pictures were flashing on the screen and next thing I knew Rosie started suckling. She opened my shirt wide and my belly kind of pushed up and stretched all around and she was pulling and sucking at my man-boobs. I mean I could tell people were looking at us and watching us more than the movie mostly but Rosie didn’t care and I didn’t care and my man-thing sure didn’t care and pretty soon my man-milk was running down her chin.

The theater kind of changed me I think and it changed Rosie too because we never had sex again. Like I said—we stopped having sex and just suckled. And Rosie stopped calling herself Rosie too. She told me her real name was Norma and I have to say it was a bit of a shocker. I mean both things were a shocker—the part about her telling me her real name and her real name being Norma too. Phil made a joke about it when I told him. The only Normas I know need mustache wax and liposuction he said. It was kind of funny at the time although not really anymore but I guess he was kind of right—she didn’t look like any Norma I ever saw either except maybe Norma Jean—like she was kind of black Marilyn Monroe or something. That would be about right I guess. Anyway I don’t really know how it happened but I remember looking down at her suckling and the sound of gun blasts and bombs were all around us and I was thinking I loved her. I mean that was the real shocker I guess because like I said I wasn’t really looking for anything like that but then there it was—the plain truth and the simple truth rolled into one bigger truth. I loved Norma and that was that.

 

When things with Norma and me started getting regular some I told Phil about it and he thought it was okay mostly but he wasn’t sure about Norma being a professional. He said Whores are only a Band-aid solution and I guess he would know. Later when things started getting a little weird with Norma and me I told Phil about it too. I mean I say weird but not weird like some kind of stupid crazy weird or something but just different weird. So I was trying to explain this to Phil and we were in Big Boy’s again—something me and Phil did a lot I guess—and when I told him me and Norma started suckling outside he said What do you mean outside? Like outside the bedroom? Like in the kitchen outside? Phil was poking the pointy end of his toast into a yolk that rippled some but mostly didn’t break. No like outside the house in public I said. Phil did that thing with his Adam’s apple again and I thought he was going to spray coffee all over the booth. So breastfeeding you’re whore girlfriend isn’t enough—now you gotta breastfeed her in public? he asked. I knew it wasn’t a real question but I nodded anyway. So where in public? he asked. I told him pretty much everywhere. So where’s everywhere? Be specific. By now he’d punched a hole in the the yolk and was lapping it up with his toast. I told him about the theater. Okay—weird but not super weird. Where else? he asked. In the park I said. Which park? he asked. Livingston I replied. Kind of busy he said. And I said Yeah it was. Where else? he asked. In the public library I said. I’ve seen worse there he replied. One time I swear I saw a guy going down on the Easter bunny in the public library said Phil. I heard Phil tell that story before but I didn’t say anything. So where else? In the cathedral I said. Wait! No! That’s just wrong. So wrong! he said. I said I knew that. You’re going to hell he said. I said I probably was yeah. Then he got all serious like I’ve never seen Phil before. You gotta stop Bennie. You know I love you like a brother and I’m glad to see you’re moving on but I’m telling you as a brother and a friend you gotta stop. He picked some egg from his mostly blond goatee and I asked him why. Why? Are you fuckin’ kidding? Where do think this is going to end? he asked. I said I didn’t know. He said I better think about it. I said I love her Phil and I guess this time there was no stopping it—he sprayed coffee like he was the broken handle of a two-bit carwash or something.

That was the end of our talk that morning but every chance he got Phil told me I had to stop and it wasn’t right and it was sick he would say but I didn’t see it like that. What Norma and I had wasn’t sick. I didn’t know exactly what it was we had but I knew it wasn’t sick. It couldn’t be sick and I told Phil that and I asked him why he wasn’t happy I found someone to love after Sam. I mean it kind of made sense to me that the woman I found wasn’t like Sam at all because I can’t just plug the hole that Sam left with another Sam because there is no other Sam. I mean Phil was trying to plug the hole that Steph left with another Steph and it wasn’t working good for him and that’s just more of the truth but he couldn’t see that and he didn’t like it when I said so. Anyway pretty soon he stopped coming around mostly. The last time I talked to Phil he told me I should see a doctor and when I asked him why he said Exactly! Why! Don’t you wanna know why? Don’t you wanna know what’s up with your man-boobs? Why you’re squirting milk like Bessie the fuckin’ cow? I never answered him I guess because I didn’t want to know why. I didn’t care because deep down I guess I was scared the doctor might do something to stop it and I didn’t want to stop it so I just sat there mostly not saying anything and Phil got up and left. I guess I didn’t care much then because of how he was being about things and all the things he said and I guess that’s how people drift apart. Like a sea of words just kind of washes up between them or something and the next thing they know they’re so far apart they can barely see each other anymore.

 

Me and Norma kept things real regular—suckling a lot in public mostly. She told me about growing up in the Midwest and about moving to the coast thinking she’d be a dancer and she laughed like it was some kind of inside joke and I guess it was because I didn’t really get it. Anyway after that we drove into the city and found one of those five-dollar-coffee coffee shops to suckle in. Norma wasn’t ripping my shirt open anymore because she cut holes around my nipples and they looked kind of like two pink antennas sticking out or something when I opened my jacket so it was pretty easy to suckle pretty much anywhere we wanted. The coffee shop was full and loud and we bought fancy coffee with foam and cinnamon and found a place by the window. Some jazz song was playing in the speakers—Someone to watch over me it said slow and breathy and pretty soon Norma started suckling and I guess it was kind of loud because people got up and left but some stayed and watched. Pretty soon the manager came over and asked us to leave and said he was going to call the cops if we didn’t but that just made Norma mad mostly and she said something about not doing anything wrong—nothing against the law. I wasn’t real sure if what we were doing was or wasn’t against the law so I didn’t say anything. Anyway we left and drove out the city back to Norma’s place and we watched TV and suckled some more. I was on the sofa sitting low and kind of slouching with my shirt off and Norma was doing this thing to my man-boobs with her teeth and tongue at the same time and my man-thing was like a frozen rock or something and when she was done we lied down on the sofa and I just held her. Norma always looked happy or content or something after she was done suckling. Anyway I don’t really know why but I thought about what Phil said to me about where this was all going to end and I thought about asking her the same question like the way Phil had asked me but I don’t know what happened—I lost my nerve I guess and I couldn’t do it so I said I love you and she said I love you too Bennie. Then we fell asleep.

 

The next morning I went in for dayshift. I never said anything about Norma to the other guys at Tower Plaza so work was pretty much the same as always—watching the screen and drinking coffee. But the gray and silent screen didn’t seem like my life anymore because now the screen was just work. Like my life had color and sound now or something and like my senses were dead before and now they came back to life again—like that guy from the Bible that Jesus brings back. When I thought about it I wondered what he did first after that. Maybe he found a bar and got drunk or maybe he just went home to his wife or maybe he never went home but just started a whole new life somewhere else with someone else. Anyway that was kind of like what Norma did for me Iguess—brought me back. She changed everything and gave me a whole different life. Sometimes at work I thought about Sam and I wondered what she’d think of me and Norma. Maybe she’d say the same thing as Phil and maybe she’d think I was being stupid or sick or something. I mean I don’t know for sure but part of me thinks she wouldn’t say that or think that at all. Part of me thinks maybe she might say it was okay.

I went home that night and it was the first time staying home in maybe a week or so because I wasn’t staying at home much now I guess now that Norma liked me to stay with her and suckle her to sleep. I parked my bel-air on the street like I always did. Phil parked in the driveway mostly when he used to come by but I didn’t parked in the driveway after Sam died. I don’t know why for sure but it just didn’t seem right or something. Anyway the bel-air was a classic but Phil said it was junk—Shit on wheels is what he said about it. It’s only a classic when it’s fixed up. Just ’cause something’s old doesn’t make it a classic he said. I thought Phil was wrong about that. It was a classic even if the fender wells were dented and the rusty front bumper hung crooked and I liked the bumper because it was kind of like a smirk or something. Anyway I got out and walked to the house and I noticed a couple of rose bushes out front had some pink and yellow flowers on them. I took in the mail and opened some windows and then I went in the kitchen and found a beer in the fridge and I cracked the can and sat at the table. Sitting there I saw the dishes were done. I guess I mean it looked like they were done so I thought maybe Phil came by when I was gone but it could’ve been from before so I didn’t know for sure—I couldn’t remember. But I still thought maybe he came by. I mean I couldn’t say for sure he didn’t come by so I took a drink of beer and thought it would be okay if Phil came by again. And I thought maybe if he did we’d be okay again—me and Phil.

—

Gary Anderson lives and writes near Princeton, New Jersey. His works have appeared in numerous magazines. Most recently, he has published stories in Gadfly, Menacing Hedge, Umbrella Factory, and Literary Orphans. His first novel, Animal Magnet, was published in 2011 by Emmerson Street Press. His second novel, Best of all Possible Worlds, was published by WordsworthGreenwich Press in May of 2012.

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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.

—
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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Seven Distinct Iconic Representations by Keith Buckley

6 Jul

1: The Swing Bridge

Laura Danly imagines the right angles between the open swing bridge and the landing on which she stands are the rungs on a melting ladder out of time, in direct contrast to the very solid metal rail she followed to this terminus, the long track of her own private entropy.  She watches Frederick Townsend Ward walking back and forth through the watch house, contrasting the irregular shadows across the mercenary’s scarred jaw with the pleasing symmetry of the rusting diagonal trusses.  Painfully clearing his throat, Ward brings up one last gout of blood from the abdominal wound that had killed him over a century ago.  He waves at the silent woman below, recognizing her as an absolute value in the only remaining vector space where he had any chance of retaining a semblance of meaning.

 

 

2: The Demolished Pool

Stretching across the broken rubble of the demolished pool, Alex Fillipenko assumed the various postures of Elizabeth Ann Short’s bisected corpse, memorializing dreams of the serial mutilations he intended to commit and the vaguely lurid expectation of retribution her descendants might one day visit on his dissolving corpse.  The jagged piece of #6 rebar poking his exposed right thigh reminds Fillipenko that a recent survey showed housewives age 31-40 slightly prefer images of smaller plus-sized males to those of compound transverse fractures with impact.

 

 

3:  The Unassembled Sink

Michelle Thaller bitterly resents the billions of dollars wasted on the search for intelligent life in the universe.  She knows for a fact the only hint of organized thought beyond Earth exists on an uninhabited planetoid orbiting an outer star in NGC6705, the Wild Duck Cluster.  On warm summer evenings when Nambu-Goto activity is particularly unstable, NS-branes match the resonant frequency of the calcarine fissure in the unfortunate woman’s left occipital lobe, and she sees this badly decorated bedroom with an unassembled sink, the solitary feature on that very distant planet.  Her study of Messier objects has revealed this star can be no older than 210 million years, and therefore the room’s existence is the result of a completely random collision of molecules rather than any bio-evolutionary process, so she feels deeply cheated.  She could really use a chunk of all those billions of dollars.  And why was the only extraterrestrial room decorated with such hideous wallpaper?  To make the vision of the sink and the bedroom disappear, Dr. Thaller will have to eat at least a pound of red velvet cake in the next 24 hours.

 

 

4: The Twilight Platform

The sienna substructure of the platform ceiling reminds Neil DeGrasse Tyson of the infinite manifold of Mina Loy’s thorax– the perfectly aligned and powerful ribs, cross-bracings of intercostal meat waiting to be wrenched apart, bolt-heads of vertebral anchorage.  The objectification of the dead poet’s body in the topography of the station gradually destroys her identity.  How far down the twilight platform must Tyson walk before he can locate the vorticized pelvic girdle?  Undisturbed by the wrestler’s crude explorations, Mina cries out to him in her only remaining voice. After a few minutes, however, her plea becomes a garish intrusion into the indigo silence, and Tyson turns away, his thoughts now curling around a recent Carneros Pinot Noir.

 

 

5: The Violated Bidet

Amy Mainzer winces at the bombed-out restroom with its shattered porcelain. Quantum entanglements are no longer valid here.  Even the violated bidet, the symbol of hidden renewal and possibility, is reduced to a non-linear sigma model.  These fixtures are the corpses of a remembered moment in the victim’s excretory history.  Mainzer decides the most disquieting attributes are the dichotomous displays of Roman tile and the sea beyond.  The disjunction of these two features through the years, and their infiltration of her own continuity, has twisted them into inflexible constructs upon which she will mount the severed head and limbs of her doorman.

 

 

6: The Green Machine

 

For the last three months, the local cable feed had been jammed with videos of the New Mexico Penitentiary Riot reenactments, many of which featured the use of incendiary devices and specially trained camelids.  Michio Kaku professed a complete lack of surprise when the source of these appalling films turned out to be a green machine hidden in the basement of Saint Michael’s Church, a few miles outside of Cornettsville, Indiana.  What Kaku could not predict, however, was that follow-up studies clearly demonstrated that phony atrocity media had a profoundly positive effect on the verbal and social skills of stroke victims previously identified as persistently vegetative.  One of his next door neighbors has gone so far as to buy a blowtorch and a herd of alpacas.

 

 

7: The Unappetizing Bear

The oven door drops open, and Owl looks in. “Hallo, Pooh,” he coughs. “How’s tricks?”

“Terrible and sad,” Pooh bubbles, “because I’m not much good at my work, I’ve never had a girlfriend, or a friend of any kind, I’ve got very little imagination, nothing makes me laugh.  I’m fat, poor, and balding.  I’ve got a terribly spotty face, violent flatulence, B.O., Piglet breath, an amputated package, and I’m actually only eighteen inches tall. Hardly a meal for one, bearly an appetizer.  I’ve gone quite mad in this oven, what with my brain cooked down to a blackened lump of honey.  Fair enough?”  “Mmm.” says Owl, licking his beak. “Brains.”

 —
Keith Buckley lives in a dimly-lit, mildewed money pit in south central Indiana. He has written numerous unpublishable novels, pornoviolence, and noir, as well as more bad music than anyone in human history. He is currently awaiting extradition to Kerguelen Island to face charges of slandering their land cabbages.
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Hello Iceman by Timothy Gager

2 Jul

After the meeting John walked up to Michelle, the rain turning to ice again. The twigs on nearby trees looked like toy animals completely encased; trapped in clear plastic cubes. As a child he’d imagined the entire world melting, the ice and all the animals coming to life.

“My name is John. I’m an alcoholic,” he said.

“You don’t need to say that outside.” She looked at the ground from the top of the stairs.

“I didn’t mean to say that but I wanted you to know I liked what you said in there about vitamins. How one made you feel good and soon you were taking ten a day. I thought it was funny.”

“It’s what we do.”

“I’d like to know what brand of vitamins.”

She side-stepped down the brick stairs of the church.

“Be careful out there,” he said.

“Yes, I know.”

“If you fall, don’t worry, I’ll pick you up. I’ll probably laugh, though.”

“I would too. I always laugh at someone who falls on their face. My name is Michelle.”

“I know. I heard it inside.”

“Well, see you next week.”

They walked to their cars, navigating places where they could see down to the blacktop. John looked for animals in a tree, instead saw a twig ricochet to the ground.

—

Timothy Gager is the author of eight books of poetry and fiction. Over 250 pieces of his work have been published on-line or in print. He lives on www.timothygager.com

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The Atrocities on St. Patricks Day by Matt Serey

29 Jun

“Excuse me, sir, but your child appears to be seizuring. You should call 911.”

The father was not amused. In fact, I could see the fury light up in his eyes when I dared to tell him how to parent his son. I would be pissed, too, but on the other hand I wouldn’t let my child have a goddamn seizure in the middle of a frantic crowd. As if watching drunken fools stumble around aimlessly vomiting all over each other weren’t bad enough, now I had to watch this kid flap around like an eagle stuck in a bear trap.

I don’t really see why you would even bring your kid to the Chicago St. Patricks Day Parade, anyways. I’m sure your child would be wearing the same color as everyone one else. One wrong step, and they’ll be lost in the sea of convulsing green drunkards. Also, your kid could seizure.

I’m no seizure expert. The kid could have been suffering from heat stroke, Meningitis, or even a brain tumor for all I know. Maybe he was epileptic? Maybe he was suffering from a PCP overdose? Regardless of what the cause of this awful condition was, I was not in any position to help out. The only medical knowledge I have is from a Heimlich maneuver class I took in elementary school once, but I slowly forgot everything I was taught. God forbid one of my guests chokes on a bite while they’re over for dinner, because I would probably just throw my glass of water at them and run away.

It was early in the morning on St. Patricks Day, and with a good amount of good company, we set off for the show. Luckily my apartment was only a block away from the parade, which minimalized the amount of stumbling fools we had to bounce off of to get there. Close to a ninety percent of the people there weren’t even facing the upcoming parade. I can’t blame them; why watch girls that are pretending to be Irish dance around on green floats when you can watch fights, people puking on their significant others, and taserings?

It wasn’t long until we all had to find an unoccupied alley to urinate in. After finding one, we split up and stood behind our chosen trashcans. One second, all of my companions were within sight, the next, they were gone. Bizarre thoughts ran threw my head. Did they get picked off by angry frat boys, who were black out drunk and wielding two by fours? I saw them attack some poor homeless man in a parking lot earlier. Or maybe we were peeing on sacred gang territory, and they were mowed down in a surprise ambush? I could have sworn I heard about a serial killer around these parts who slaughters people mercilessly, and keeps their toenails as souvenirs. Oh no.

After calling them, and hearing their voices that told me they had already left, I collected myself and decided to wander around and try to find them. How the hell did they just forget me? Then more disturbing thoughts: Was I lame? Did they leave me to die there? What was wrong with me? Maybe I’m a nerd.

Luckily no one was sober enough to realize I was shoving them out of my way, as I sifted through the crowd. On any other day, I would have probably gotten stopped, and had my eyelids torn off and thrown into the river. There were far too many people crammed into Millennium Park, and getting pushed around was a way of life, which made me feel sorry for the short guy screaming about his Claustrophobia in the middle of the shaking crowd. Poor dude, life will get better.

Some members of the crowd would stop me and ask incoherent questions. I tried to ignore them the best I could and keep moving. It was only a matter of time until I offended one of them with my gestures, and got pummeled. I had a mission to accomplish, a damn good one at that, too. I had to find a friend, or friends, so I could surround myself in that good company before one of those wild drunks breaks my cheekbones with a pool ball while I’m alone and defenseless.

After one good speed walk down Columbus Street that ended with a very anticlimactic ending, I decided to turn back around. I made it all the way down Millennium Park without seeing a single person I knew. How is that even possible? The stars must have been aligned against me, or someone placed me under some voodoo spell. But, I don’t know anyone in the Deep South, so I doubt it was voodoo.

The second time I walked through the parade wasn’t any better. I just got déjà vu seeing the same floats twice, and seeing the same fights again. Where were the cops? They were all hanging around in the only places that weren’t erupting with violence or bodily fluid. I couldn’t tell if the people were purposely avoiding the cops to fight, or if the cops were avoiding the fights. I wanted to tell them about the two pregnant ladies punching each other at the corner of Congress and Michigan, but group of cops looked like they were having a good time. I didn’t want to disrupt their fun and risk getting a nightstick thrown into my face.

Fuck it, time to go home. I knew it was time to split when they closed the Bean… which I didn’t even know could happen. What’s next, cloning children and using their skin for coats? I hope not, that’s sick.  I reunited with my friends people when I reached the homestead, and all was well.

I saw the river being green. That too.

 —
Matt Serey is currently studying Film and Video with a Fiction Writing minor at Columbia. When he’s not doing school work, or working at his lame office job, he’s usually taking long walks on the beach, or contemplating black holes. His other interests consist of, but are not limited to, eating pasta, watching foreign horror movies, listening to metal, playing with his obese dog, Whiskey, and drawing pictures of octopuses.
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Yorky’s Ridge by Martin Shaw

22 Jun

‘Six o’clock Zulu time, Yorky. It’s just you now, Yorky. Get some spit and swallow.’

One Three Delta, this is Golden Goose, radio check, over.

‘That’s me; shit … Got to turn it down. ‘One Three Delta, okay, over.’

One Three Delta, this is Golden Goose; Foxtrot Yankee is coming in at six o’clock, Zulu time. Keep your heads down and wait. Golden Goose, out.

‘Right I’ve got half an hour. Keep your heads down? Fuckin’ keep my head down! There’s just me left here, dip shit. Here, speak to Bob with half his head missing, it’ll make more sense.’

TIME LAPSE AND I START SINGING

‘When I was young I’d listen to the radio, waiting for my favourite song. Friggin’ Carpenters record, is that all I can remember? My bloody ears are ringin’ and I’m singin’ a friggin’ Carpenters’ record. I suppose I just need something to add a beat to my tinitus, eh? Got to keep myself focused and listen out; concentrate. I bet Baz is still alive back there. He always did run in the wrong direction, the fuckin’ coward. Shit, I wish I was a coward.’

WHISTLING

‘What the hell’s that; a budgie? It’s a bloody budgerigar singin’ or whatever stupid multi-coloured birds they have out here. The enemy must have disappeared else it wouldn’t be so bloody happy. A machine gun lets rip and you’re singin’, you little twat. That’s some humour you have up there. God, some crazy warped humour. Or maybe it’s just half deaf like me and answering to its own whistling ears from the heavy gun fire. Shit, that was one hell of a fight. Well at least you’re at home, you multi-coloured sparrow. If I ever get home I swear I’m gonna kill my mum’s fuckin’ budgie then find a good old British pigeon and paint it green and yellow, telling everyone I fed Percy on steroids.

Fuckin’ home, huh! No chance. Not after seeing all this shit. I belong nowhere. In fact I belong here, yes, right here. This is my spot, my new home and these bastards have killed all my family. Look at them all strewn and littered, they’re only half the men they used to be, ha ha!

Home. Yes, it’s been in my dreams for too long, but this is reality now. I’ve seen the humanity in friends and enemy alike as they’ve died in each other’s arms, and now I know exactly where I belong. Home is just a plastic doll’s house … a big fake, a plastic friggin’ doll’s house with toy people inside.’

SINGING

‘What! These bastards are still here calling to me now: calling to me in their dug out machine gun nest. They sound like Manuel from Fawlty Towers, ha ha. Hold on, I think it’s singin.

Come on then, you Rag ‘eds. Yeah! I’m here; still fuckin’ here. You’ll soon need those hats for bandages. Ahhhh, woooo ah woooooooo woooooooo.’

Stinky, sandle-wearin’ bastards. I’ll slap a fuckin’ flash bang to your ears. Here, have some Western music. Have some Carpenters. No, wait! Have some Guns and fuckin’ Roses; yeah, that’s it.

‘ Oi, cunts! Have some Guns and fuckin’ Roses. Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty; oh won’t you please take me home, YEEEEAAAAH! Come on then. It‘s better than your friggin’ la la shite.’

I just got to take a peek over. It doesn’t sound like they’ve moved. Not like us; we shoot and scoot, but you lot, you shoot and stay put and give the game away. You stupid pyjama-wearing twats.

‘You stupid fuckin’ pyjama wearing twats, ahhh-wooo wooooooo!’

Come on, Yorky, take a peek, just an itsy peek. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeees! Ah, I see you: you motherfuckers. I bloody well see you. Still there, eh? Still friggin’ there. You’ve been too lucky sunshines, too bloody lucky. Big Yorky’s coming to get ya. Yes, big Yorky’s gonna stick ya.

Right, Bob, next move, what’s the next move? Just charge at em; got to catch ‘em unaware, catch ‘em with their pants down. They weren’t looking in my direction. That stupid deaf budgie has helped me by singing next to me, and making them think I’m over there, right where they think it’s scared to go.

That’s it! They think I’m in the dunes as it echoes. I’ve got the edge. Yes I have the edge. Yes, Yorky, you have it. Let’s get them: got to get them. Take a deep breath, only ten minutes to go. You can do this, Yorky; you can do this.

Practise, right? One two three go. One two three go; got to practise. Come on, come on, come onnn, right! After one two three … go!

Right now, One two-three, yes,yes,yes.… Yeeees! I’m running fast as a camel; no, I’m running fast as a leopard. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Fucking sand! Here we go…

‘Aaaaaaargh! Aaaaaaaargh! Fuckin’ yes, yes. Aaaaaaargh, have some, have some: Aaargh …’

‘ No shoot, no shoot.

‘Yes, no shoot, no shoot, dick ‘ed. You should no shoot. Bet you wish you went home now, ‘don’t ya? Av some, av some. You’re not singing now, are ya? There’s no belly dancers for you anymore, you dead arse wipe.’

MOMENTS OF QUIET AND BUZZING FLIES

‘Jesus! Will you look at how old your dead mates are? Will you look?

What? They look about twelve or even younger. They look younger than my son.

Are these your sons? You stupid bastards; you stupid, stupid bastards.’

JET ENGINES

‘What’s that? It’s six o’clock Zulu time; yes, it’s time. This is it for me now; it’s time.

I’m the actor from the film Platoon. Yes, the one that stuck his hands in the air: on his knees and getting shot in the back by the gooks. Drop your bombs, motherfuckers; I wanna die now. I gotta die now.

Yes yes yes, YEEEES!’

EXPLOSION AND HUGE BALL OF FLAME. THEN SILENCE.

BUDGERIGAR SINGS

—

Bio

I was born in 1964 in Luton, Bedfordshire: second son to a journalist.

Like a wildebeest looking for easy water, I sauntered through school without a care in the world. It was the same throughout teenage society in those days. We were the ‘wasted youth’: a rebellious lot that rode on the back of the anarchic punk music scene: dragged from the pretend delinquent New Yorker’s like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. We fashioned ourselves on all things bright and sweaty, quelling the desire for anyone to mould and squeeze us in to round tent-peg holes.

At the age of seventeen I joined the army. It seemed the right thing to do at the time: a form of escapism. I scraped through training helped by my newly found mates, and an early morning yodelling training sergeant with a repetitive strain injury in his jaw. Once I honed my marching skills, they posted me to an air defence regiment, then quick as a flash grenade I was bundled off to war with the rest of the boys. We landed in the Falklands just as the Argentine land forces surrendered. Their pilots thought otherwise, but with the whole of their army doing a ‘come on down’ Lesley Crowther impression they had no choice but to fly home.

There were booby traps everywhere, but not of the female variety, hence the deafness in one ear. Two of us were caught in a blast; the other guy was nearly blown to pieces before I carried him back across a minefield.

I did the rest of my stint as a superhero and came back smiling from the southern hemisphere. However, it was in a crazy sort of way and I was later diagnosed with PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

After leaving the army I had various jobs, always resulting in shifting heavy objects from one place to another. Eventually I met my wife to be, Margaret. We now have four kids, two with autism and two with the normal malfunctions of spotty teenagehood.

We are presently living happily ever after in a house by the sea in sunny Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire.

I write early in the mornings and evenings as my heavy lifting work still dictates. I have yet to be published.

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A Man of Fingernails by B F Moloney

18 Jun

Fingernails grow, fingernails split, fingernails scratch, fingernails blacken; its all about fingernails to a man, curious in his Presley suit, imbibing in a Macdonald’s lunchtime special. They stare, they stare, the people really do, but he’s used to it. Not that there’s anything wrong with elongated fingernails.

“Hello Pres, how are we to be your provedore today?”
Ah yes, could I have the Big Mac, double fries and a strawberry shake, thanks”

He pays, and the instant order is in his hands. His left hand’s fingernails extend around the Mac, and then the fries, and then the strawberry shake. He’s checking for the salt and sugar content. He’s knows there’s a fair bit, he doesn’t eat this too often; but there must be consistency.

The hungry ones around him are all agape. ‘Thank you” he says, “All good”, and finds an empty plastic table and its chairs.

Its not that he’s obsessive, he’s just anxious. His parents regularly warned him about proper eating, and showed him how to calculate the calories. His fingernails are his monitor, his gauge, his canary in the coalmine.

His fingernails do things others can only dream. He can bring up his Facebook page on the nail of his right hand’s index finger. Another nail acts like a compass, and another an envelope opener.

He slowly eats his meal, savouring its flavours and texture. Of course he’s being stared at, so he peels off his Presley suit to reveal a t-shirt and jeans over white runners. Then the staring stops and he continues his meal. He’s really quite normal.

The sun shines and the day is brilliant. It’s a great time to be alive. This morning his thumb nail on his left hand extended too far and it split; the top part went black and then dropped off. He took this to be a sign of renewal. He’s due for a change.

Tonight he’s meeting a girl. He’s already seen her on a nail. She’s pretty and her name is Naomi. She works in finance as he once did. They first met on an online dating site and she says she spends a lot of time and money on her nails.

He’s got the afternoon to enjoy before the big date. He decides to give his nails a manicure at his favourite place of beauty. He’s got a few but this one treats him the best. The girls always clean each nail thoroughly, right down to the last centimetre of the twenty they can extend to.

‘Hi Pres, how you been? Here for the works? Mary, can you come here and do the work on Pres for me?”

“Sure Sharon, just give me a sec”. Mary’s a good choice. She’s his favourite. The other girls have worked on him too, but Mary has that X factor his nails need. He sits on his favourite chair and places his hands on a small bench in front and he extends his fingers and his nails.
Each nail gets a thorough oil, buff and polish and the minutest dirt is cleaned away. They are as pink as can be and Mary give him a wink to his good health. His pink smooth nails are wonderful to work with. They are firm and neither side shows any sign of defects, except the thumb nail.

“You’ve got a girl on your mind haven’t you” she says. “I can tell by your nails. They look electric. Can I see her?”

He brings her up on his pinkie nail and they both stretch their necks forward to look at her. “Nice girl. She’s pretty”.

He pays with a tip and says cheerio. His nails are absolutely pixel primed. The day couldn’t get any better, but it will when it enters night. Must remember my lines and be polite and don’t be too pushy, he thinks to himself. He’ll need to control his nails of course. They have been unpredictable in the past. He’s never got over the last girl he went to dinner with.

It began as a great night. They had known each other for awhile and tonight’s the night. Much laughter and talk and a lot of verbal intimacy. She went back to his place for the coffee and feeling comfortable with each other they were soon in each others arms kissing. The clothes came off and they began to make passionate love.

What happened next changed his life. It began while their lovemaking was taking them far away from everything in their lives and in the world. Everything was being forgotten, and each passionate throe elevated the other’s into spiritual ecstasy. He was gently caressing her, conscious of his withholding so that she might be pleasured by him even greater. It was getting close and his left hand stroked her face.

He began to shift his body so they could have maximum comfort. In that second he cramped, his upper body rose slightly and to steady he reached for her shoulder. But he slipped and in that second a nail punctured her throat.

That was seven years ago. The jury found him guilty of accidental manslaughter and he got ten years with parole after five. He came out identifying with Elvis. It was the only way he could have coped. Elvis was his hero. It was the only way he could hold on to renewal, and today is his unveiling.

—
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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