A fairy visits in the night, at around 3:00am in the morning. She carries with her, a plain manila envelope, and puts it under your pillow. Then she gives you a few wake-up taps about the eyes and nose, and takes off.
You wake up a few seconds later, find the mysterious envelope, and begin to read:
"In return for having lead such a great life, the great lord up above, has decided that you will be given an amazing opportunity. His grace has decided that he will decree a thousand years of peace and prosperity on your behalf! The whole world will know the grace and peace of GOD, and everybody will get 20 blowjobs a day from strangers just because! No one will ever go hungry again and nobody will ever experience any misfortune whatsoever. There will be free concerts by great bands every weekend, and the LORD will let even musicians long-dead rise, unsullied, from their earthly confines to rock once again. Hard. Drugs will be legal and powerful, plentiful and non-harmful. The concepts of time and money will be eighty-sixed, along with everybody you ever hate, and everybody who ever hated you. All wives, and girlfriend’s vaginas will grow tight and wet like the Sahel in the rainy season, and all females, even animal females, will all become multi-orgasmic, exhibitionist, sexually permissive (but not in a crack-whore way, more like a Halle Berry in “Monster’s Ball” way) and very very grateful. The whole of the universe will be corrected, and stay corrected for what basically adds up to forever. And all of it will be in your name, which will ring out from countryside to cityside and back, also forever.”
You continue:
“In return, the Lord only asks one thing. God has commissioned the construction of a great amphitheater in Manhattan. He’s got the thing bought and paid for one night. Eight hours. There is to be an awesome and powerful performance, and you are to be the star. The night of the show will come after six months of non-stop interest generation, and so by the time we stand on “go” , the LORD’S tv people tell him he can reasonably expect almost three quarters of the world’s televisions to be tuned in. At the given hour, you will step out onto the stage, and take a bow. Your subjects, the whole world over, will rise in the biggest standing ovation in the history of applause. It will go and go until it’s plainly been going on WAY to long, and is still going on, and you raise your hands in sort of an “I want you to stop - yes - but I also really dig this” kind of motion. Finally, after minutes more of this good natured but uncomfortable ovation, you will speak. You will say these words: (Read them now , but that night you’ll have to have them memorized).”
“My fellow earth people, Thank you for coming out, and the LORD says Wassssup! (avoid the urge to say it in an angry Asian voice and extend into “Wahhsabi…”). (After THAT round of applause dies down, you will get to the important part. This part must be said WORD FOR WORD. Seriously, play the first part loose, make it your own, whatever, but this shit here has to be on the fucking book. Ok. Here it is) I love the taste of poop. I love the smell of all poop, but really, it’s the smell of my own poop that I like the best! In fact, not only do I like my dookie-stink more than all other shits, I like it better than all other SMELLS as well. In the world. All. That’s right. I will now do what the lord - the one true GOD - has asked of me.”
“Then you will step back from the microphone, and move over into a single spot light on the stage. You will then unbuckle your belt, drop your pants and underwear, (there’s a specific kind GOD is into, I‘ll give you a brand name later), turn around, ass-facing audience, and defecate onto the floor in the middle of the spotlight.”
“Now, obviously, there’s some wiggle room here. Shitting involves different stuff from different folks. God has done his research here (obviously, he’s God. HeLL-OH!), and he’s not known you to be an indulgent shitter (and that was actually a huge factor in your being selected but you never hoid that from me right? Right? Allright…). So - bottom line - keep it simple and get the shit out, it’s all good.”
“After the shit, you must quiet the crowd again, which is probably going to be a bit harder this time. If they need to emote for a bit, then so be it. You’ve just taken a shit on the floor while God watches you and jerks off, so let’s just give it time to marinate shall we? There’s bound to be a few freakouts ok? Give them a few good minutes, and then do the arm-motioning thing again until they shuthefuggup. That’s when you speak again (and again, SUPER on-book with this part. This shit cannot be embellished. Can‘t stress that enough): “Thanks you everybody, I hope that was as much fun for you as it was for me. Now if you will join me right back here…” (at this point we’re going to have you sort of over-the-shoulder take, and a little set-kitchen will appear under more spots. There will be a butcher table, an oven range with two tops, and a shallow pan with a non-stick coating. I did it in pre-pro and it looked AMAZING. Seriously. SO PSYCHED. OK. Focus) On the butcher table will seven very carefully measured, fully prepped ramekins full of different ingredients. They’ll be well labeled, and you will read off the labels as you put each item in the pan and bring the heat up like so: Olive Oil (dump the oil), Sea Salt (dump ss), CARROTS (dump carrots), LEAKS (leeks), CHEESE (dump it), and (there’s going to be a long drum role hear so make sure you let that shit sustainnnnnnnnnnnnn…..”And of course….MY POOPIE! FROM BEFORE! REMEMBER? WHOOO-HOOOO!” and you go dancing up to the poop from before, grab it with a ting or whatever, dance back to the pan and add it. Now, I know I just sort of sprung the God-Jagging and watching you shit thing on you, but there’s too much back-story there. Just…Better if you get on over it ‘cause it really doesn’t affect what you do, well it does but not till later, ok now I’m getting ahead of myself. Get it back OK. Here we go.”
“So you add the poop, mix the thing, a few turns. If the crowd is freaking go ahead and just let ‘em freak. If they’re silent, resist the urge to small-talk or say funny things. You stay quiet too Mr. Mouth! Set the timer (forgot:there’s a timer there on the counter as well) for two minutes, cover the pan, and wait. Again, GOD will be watching you and pleasuring himself vigorously, but he won’t be spot-lit so...It's just the two minutes. Tough it out. Timer rings, you take the cover off, and start doing the thing where you wave food-air into your face to smell it. After a long time of this, Like I want you five minutes longer than way too fucking far, ten times over. Wait with this. Waving and smelling the shit steam. Then, after so long doing that, so fucking long, doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it doing it…The equivalent of that last sentence of “doing its”, only like sixty more times and then ninety more times, then you speak again. I know I don’t have to say it cause you know it but I’ll say it cause I mean it: Don’t fucking fuck with the fuckin’’’ fuckin script. Recite. OK. Last part, so lean in. But have fun with it!: ”
“OK, so what I’ve done here, I’ve sautéed some onions, carrots, salt, leeks, my poop, and cheese. It should be right about ready. Ooops!” (I actually want you to say that exactly like that: Ooops! Not “Whoops” or “Whup”, just stay on the fucking book and we’ll be ok. Ok. Now. You say: Ooops! And “see” God over there, and he’s about to finish up, and shouting and moaning, really, cause he really likes to go all the way so he’s gonna’ be lathered by this point. He might not be seated still. More likely lying. On the floor. The actual floor of the pit. The orchestra pit. I’ve seen it, just tumbles and then…Ploop. Done. Out. Has to inhabit another body. I know. It’s…I know) “Ooops! It looks like our friend God is ready as well so, let’s get to it. Thanks everybody!” And now GOD is going to be cumming - like actually CUMMING. And it’s GOD dude. Dude can JIZZ. He’s a pimp. Like a firehouse shooting clam chowder all over the first seven or eight rows. Mayhem.”
“Now you walk over up behind god, weather he’s laying or sitting or whatever, you have a sharp Samurai sword upraised. You walk up behind the guy, and just as he’s really just getting his rocks right off, you slice his head from off of his body. NOW. Wait. Stay with me cause we’re just getting started. Now, the head is off, the blood, blasting right? Right? NO! HA! I FOOLED YOU. GOD FOOLED YOU FUCKER! Instead of blood rivulets and twitching, God’s body is going to just KEEP JAGGING OFF! More cum, and instead of blood, flees and mosquitoes! That’s right! Sick right? We’re going to have a cloud of hungry, dirty, disease-probably-carrying fuckin’ fuckin’ flees and mosquito fly out of his headless, masturbating corpse of GOD and start biting the thing all up! You’d think it would take a while but God does some special voodoo thing and it’s actually kind of interesting. The bugs bite and bite and drink all that blood from the corpse, which is loosing it’s erection by this time (hell-Ooh!), and then, when every flee and tick is full and all the God-body’s blood is drank, the savage insects will rise, a black, malevolent vapor of hatred and disease and bad personal hygiene choices, and fly into the sir, and over to - you guessed it GI! - YOU. Then, well how else could it go? - The bugs eat you from the inside, and God mass-reproduces them inside you while they eat and eventually your body just explodes and the bloody bugs and little maggots just go all over. I know what you’re thinking: high concept. And You’re right. It’s a weird ending, but there’s no talking to supreme beings.”
“Now, there’s going to be some pain here, and I want to be upfront with that. You can’t really, you know, pull a body apart like this without a few ouchies right? So, there’s that. But God is willing to give you his word - he’ll swear on his own name - that after all this he can provide you with a new body, free of pain or disfigurement. Beyond that, there’s all the stuff about piece and blowjobs and what-not from before. That’s nice. But really, this is a labor of love. If you’re telling me you’re in it for the peace and good will towards men, I’m saying: “I picked the wrong fucking guy”. Fuckin’ idiot right? No. This is a soul-job. A real you kind of job. An American job for American winners who worship God. So you go home and you sleep in your bed and fuck your wife tonight and you think about it. When you’re rammin’ it in there, and she’s saying thank youthankyouthankyou like a sixteen year old getting a car on her sixteenth birthday, and you’re howling and barking up there, you can turn to yourself and look at you in the mirror, still fucking, and say “You fuckin’ big-dick motherfucker! You fuckin’ answered the fucking bell Jack! Yeah! Yes! Awright! Ok.”
“So think it over and get back to me, I’ve got vendors camped out in my ass with hot and cold running, and clothes lines. Oh yeah - I forgot to mention - After you explode with bugs we’re going to serve the shit-dish to the first few rows while the credits role. Small point, yes, but I thought you’d like to know. Thanks, and good luck whatever you choose (don’t choose wrong or else GOD will kill you! Kidding! But really not kidding…Ha!)”
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
WOODS
And then he woke up in the woods. He knew it was the woods because there were leaves and mud and shit piling up under as he went scraping through the brush. He went through water, and thorns. He saw kudzu and stinkweed. They were in the bayou. Beyond the fairgrounds, out towards Metarie, twenty minutes drive from where the Lady’s boy Lerion had jacked them up. They'd dragged Kretz from the car, but now he'd been slung over a shoulder. Bound up like a calf, with his head pinging off the mysterious valet's back as they trudged on through the brush, Bobbi heard people talking from all around. Three guys, he'd thought when they'd first arrived, but now he thought he heard female voices up ahead, laughing maybe.
And he saw T.
She was behind him a ways and it was almost full dark, but he recognized the 1980’s jean jacket with bandana patches. Definitely T. She wasn’t moving either, carried over somone else's shoulder. The question of why the old Lady Pam would kill the girl, and then drag them both into the swamps, ate at him until they threw them next to each other in the unlined bed of a white Dodge. Bobbi’s dad had a Dodge just like it. The boy recognized the corrugation.
She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t all there either. Like Lerion had touched her up some, she looked dirty about the face. She was staring at him, whispering something but the talking seemed louder, more people maybe, and Bobbi couldn’t hear the words. Looked like she was saying “can” or “car”, but he couldn’t get it.
Just say it…They can’t hear us…
He tried to say it, but nothing much happened. He felt his tongue moving like a dead eel in his mouth, but his breath couldn’t bend to the words. His eyes must have went wide, T’s did too, but not for long enough. They lay there, the two of them, for a while then, with the murmurs around them ebbing and fluxing in the gloaming, and the white unlined Dodge-bed going grey underneath their heads.
***
When it started up, it was all the way dark. He felt like maybe he’d been dreaming. Whatever they’d pressed him with, it was pretty solid. The hell-strung feeling he’d carried into forced imprisonment was gone, as was the gut-ache, the head ache, the freezing and burning and the awful taste in the back of Bobbi’s mouth. Everything - come to think of it - was gone. Coming to that final, inarguable realization, would be the last wholly conscious thing Bobbi Kretzle did for a long while.
The drums started suddenly, and loudly. Boom. Boom. Boom. Slow. Like a county gang cleaning up a median in 100 degrees. Sweat. Boom. Boom.
And it was hot as well. It seemed hotter, even, since sundown out here in the swamp. His daddy, another daddy, not the one with the truck, used to say “only wanted men go to the swamps, because you caint be there unless you jess caint be nowhere else.”
He was right. That wetland out beyond the fairgrounds lay there his entire childhood and adolescence, just sprawling and begging conquest, but Bobbi’d never been but to the very edge of it, and there only a very few times. Once was when he was thirteen, on a dare. He hadn’t lasted long. The smell. Something about the smell out there was too old, too permanent. It reminded Bob of a musty basement, with triple canopy cyprus marking the ceiling instead of mold-blackened joists. He was sure it was that smell, flooding Bobbi's olfactory system almost from the minute he woke up. Whatever they pressed in him, though, had killed that off too, mostly.
Now there was torch light, and as they came to a small fire Bobbi could see faces. Big guys. Three white dudes, all wearing jeans, one wearing a shirt. Nobody he knew. He could tell they was amped up though, they were breathing loudly and they were all talking over one another even though they were trying to keep it quiet. They plopped him down hands tied behind him, leaning up against a fallen tree. He heard one say:
“Uh uh. Uh uh. Not him ol boy no. No Sir.”
And then, the same voice, all twitchy and stressed and trying to be quiet:
“Yep. You got it ol son. Yes. Yes you do…”
And one of the dudes, probably - Bob thought - the one who’d shouldered him here, walked over to T. She was against the same tree, but asleep. Bobbi saw her eyes winking a bit maybe when the dude grabbed her by the her belt and her hair, from behind. He winced - or tried to wince - as the dude pushed her down onto planks of wood on the ground. Bobbi thought that looked harder than necessary. Another dude said:
“Wait Wait.”
And the guy who’d body slammed T said:
“What’s that sir? Whasat sir? Huh?
And the tweaker, still crouching over by Bob, spoke again:
“This guy’s like the last one’s, but he gotta see this one here”
He was pointing a shakey finger, Bobbi could see in the dancing torch-glow, at the girl, now on her back on those planks. She was definitely awake now, Bobbi could see.
“ohhhhh”
Both the other guys said that at once, and the one guy not handling T came over and crouched down level with Bobbi and said:
“Oh no son that’s too bad. Not a good evening for either one of y‘s”
“no-siree”
They were fast then, checking time on cell phones, smoking faster, getting to it. They took T’s arms and cut them loose from the bunji’s she’d been trussed with. Bobby watched them flop down on to the planks. They were two by sixes like the ones he’s used to build hundreds of sheds with. They cost three bucks a piece at Morris place in town. Bobbi watched, leaning and drooling-helpless, as they cut her shirt off, and her bra, and lined her hands up on those planks. Dipping - he saw - into separate sacks on the ground, for nine-inch steel railway nails. He watched them loose her feet, cut away pants and panties, and spread her on the planks. They tapped the nails first, like you do, before they got the stroke and started swinging away. T’s eyes were madness and then rolled-gone, as if they’d done all they could do, and escaped while they could. When they were done they left them there for a few minutes on the ground. Bobbi was something like amazed, and didn’t notice when they’d lifted him into a wooden chair. The drums were louder, but not faster, when they came to take them.
They left the light of the torches, carried again. There were two guys holding the big X, and another two humping him along. The stink, Bobbi knew, was worse out here. He could feel it more than anything else, invading, occupying him. Waiting for it’s piece. The drums were so very loud, but still so slow.
Boom.
They placed the chair in the same white truck bed, just outside a ring of bodies. He saw there were more than he’d ever dreamed. 50. 100 folks,
Naked. Black and white.
Fucking and screaming and moaning in a gigantic, red circle. Bobbi saw mud and tears. He saw people fucking and eating of one-another. He saws a guy pissing on a woman from behind. There was torchlight, and another greenish glow…and everything was happening around a giant pile of brambly sticks and planks. A pyre.
An evil pile, rotting wood and live earth, infested and moving. Writhing. Worms and things with teeth. Slime and evil. Bobbi could feel the pile, could feel it’s smell invading. He pissed himself. He felt himself being sick, and there were rats and dogs licking at his shoes, eating his sick dripping down the legs of the chair. He was sorry then, about all of it. Sorry to his mom and T’s mom for ever taking up the pills and the needle, and sorry to God and Jesus for every miserable turn his awful life had ever taken.
Now it was a party. A roast. Nobody trying to be quiet anymore. All that turning an tossing seemed like it should be, had to be, louder. Louder than anything in woods, or the world. He saw a fat white dude choking a waif-thin black-girl with his bare hands. He saw a woman eat nose and face off a squirming dog. He saw two men stabbing a white woman over and over hundreds of times. There was a gigantic hound fucking a lady with her head and arms on the pile, and bobbi saw the far side of the pile, where they’d cut something open, and were shouting and dancing while they flung the offal around and rubbed it over each other. There was blood and smoke from torches. Bobbi saw a child smash a crucifix through an old lady’s eye and grind it around by the cross-part. And he saw them put that big X up over the top of the pile. The drums were slower and louder.
BOOM.
The moaning got louder. And the crowd around the wood drew back, a dark, wet thing hovering in expectancy. Bobbi saw arms waving around the base of the wood, and then fire blooming from underneath. There was a “whoosh” sound and a suck of air at his legs as the thing caught.
BOOM.
From his seat in the truck, Bobbi was almost level with T’s eyes, and now, he could see by the light of the new fire, she was staring at him from the terrible cross. He felt himself falling in there, her black eyes interrogating him. Then, he noticed the moans had quieted to almost nothing, and the he saw the crowd back up from the flames as a new sound filled the area, beyond and deeper than the pops and hissing from the flames. Bobbi heard scratching like the scratching of a million nails and then saw it: A black flood loosed from the flames and fleeing in, over the un-burnt wood toward the X. Bugs.
BOOM.
When he was seven years old, Bobbi remembered his mother taking him out back and showing him a preying mantis and a Walking-Stick bug that her father had found in the swamps.
If they’re big enough to see from ten feet away, them Tulane boys’ll give you money for ‘em. Stu from across-a-river got gave almost a hunnert bucks for a june beetle the size of a silver dollar. These outta fetch a healthy price.
Bob didn’t remember anybody getting paid, but he remembered those bugs. The mantis was the size of a full grown cat, and bright green almost to a florescent yellow. The Stick looked more like a branch, and he remembered grampy needed to pry it away from a real stick to get it in the storage crate he’d selected for transport.
The drums…
The bugs flooding from the burning pile were bigger than those bugs, and Bobbi saw no flashes of yellow. Only black and slithering and pumping skeletal legs, like a wave of slime with teeth, snapping and pincing to escape the flames newly sprung behind. Within minutes they’d converged on the X from the bottom, and as the flames closed in behind, the bugs overtook T from below. Bob watched, mystified, as his girl’s feet, her legs, torso, arms and face were overrun with the filthy, snapping vermin-wave, and then - almost immediately after - consumed in an evil black and red inferno.
He watched her, and her eyes never broke their death-grip on his, even with her hair and mouth crawling with bugs and burning. Even at the end, with her torn body burnt away into the pile, her head hung from one arm and still seemed to glance Bob’s way, accusing. The light was brightest then, and Bob felt it must be burning his skin.
Still, he felt nothing at all.
And he saw T.
She was behind him a ways and it was almost full dark, but he recognized the 1980’s jean jacket with bandana patches. Definitely T. She wasn’t moving either, carried over somone else's shoulder. The question of why the old Lady Pam would kill the girl, and then drag them both into the swamps, ate at him until they threw them next to each other in the unlined bed of a white Dodge. Bobbi’s dad had a Dodge just like it. The boy recognized the corrugation.
She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t all there either. Like Lerion had touched her up some, she looked dirty about the face. She was staring at him, whispering something but the talking seemed louder, more people maybe, and Bobbi couldn’t hear the words. Looked like she was saying “can” or “car”, but he couldn’t get it.
Just say it…They can’t hear us…
He tried to say it, but nothing much happened. He felt his tongue moving like a dead eel in his mouth, but his breath couldn’t bend to the words. His eyes must have went wide, T’s did too, but not for long enough. They lay there, the two of them, for a while then, with the murmurs around them ebbing and fluxing in the gloaming, and the white unlined Dodge-bed going grey underneath their heads.
***
When it started up, it was all the way dark. He felt like maybe he’d been dreaming. Whatever they’d pressed him with, it was pretty solid. The hell-strung feeling he’d carried into forced imprisonment was gone, as was the gut-ache, the head ache, the freezing and burning and the awful taste in the back of Bobbi’s mouth. Everything - come to think of it - was gone. Coming to that final, inarguable realization, would be the last wholly conscious thing Bobbi Kretzle did for a long while.
The drums started suddenly, and loudly. Boom. Boom. Boom. Slow. Like a county gang cleaning up a median in 100 degrees. Sweat. Boom. Boom.
And it was hot as well. It seemed hotter, even, since sundown out here in the swamp. His daddy, another daddy, not the one with the truck, used to say “only wanted men go to the swamps, because you caint be there unless you jess caint be nowhere else.”
He was right. That wetland out beyond the fairgrounds lay there his entire childhood and adolescence, just sprawling and begging conquest, but Bobbi’d never been but to the very edge of it, and there only a very few times. Once was when he was thirteen, on a dare. He hadn’t lasted long. The smell. Something about the smell out there was too old, too permanent. It reminded Bob of a musty basement, with triple canopy cyprus marking the ceiling instead of mold-blackened joists. He was sure it was that smell, flooding Bobbi's olfactory system almost from the minute he woke up. Whatever they pressed in him, though, had killed that off too, mostly.
Now there was torch light, and as they came to a small fire Bobbi could see faces. Big guys. Three white dudes, all wearing jeans, one wearing a shirt. Nobody he knew. He could tell they was amped up though, they were breathing loudly and they were all talking over one another even though they were trying to keep it quiet. They plopped him down hands tied behind him, leaning up against a fallen tree. He heard one say:
“Uh uh. Uh uh. Not him ol boy no. No Sir.”
And then, the same voice, all twitchy and stressed and trying to be quiet:
“Yep. You got it ol son. Yes. Yes you do…”
And one of the dudes, probably - Bob thought - the one who’d shouldered him here, walked over to T. She was against the same tree, but asleep. Bobbi saw her eyes winking a bit maybe when the dude grabbed her by the her belt and her hair, from behind. He winced - or tried to wince - as the dude pushed her down onto planks of wood on the ground. Bobbi thought that looked harder than necessary. Another dude said:
“Wait Wait.”
And the guy who’d body slammed T said:
“What’s that sir? Whasat sir? Huh?
And the tweaker, still crouching over by Bob, spoke again:
“This guy’s like the last one’s, but he gotta see this one here”
He was pointing a shakey finger, Bobbi could see in the dancing torch-glow, at the girl, now on her back on those planks. She was definitely awake now, Bobbi could see.
“ohhhhh”
Both the other guys said that at once, and the one guy not handling T came over and crouched down level with Bobbi and said:
“Oh no son that’s too bad. Not a good evening for either one of y‘s”
“no-siree”
They were fast then, checking time on cell phones, smoking faster, getting to it. They took T’s arms and cut them loose from the bunji’s she’d been trussed with. Bobby watched them flop down on to the planks. They were two by sixes like the ones he’s used to build hundreds of sheds with. They cost three bucks a piece at Morris place in town. Bobbi watched, leaning and drooling-helpless, as they cut her shirt off, and her bra, and lined her hands up on those planks. Dipping - he saw - into separate sacks on the ground, for nine-inch steel railway nails. He watched them loose her feet, cut away pants and panties, and spread her on the planks. They tapped the nails first, like you do, before they got the stroke and started swinging away. T’s eyes were madness and then rolled-gone, as if they’d done all they could do, and escaped while they could. When they were done they left them there for a few minutes on the ground. Bobbi was something like amazed, and didn’t notice when they’d lifted him into a wooden chair. The drums were louder, but not faster, when they came to take them.
They left the light of the torches, carried again. There were two guys holding the big X, and another two humping him along. The stink, Bobbi knew, was worse out here. He could feel it more than anything else, invading, occupying him. Waiting for it’s piece. The drums were so very loud, but still so slow.
Boom.
They placed the chair in the same white truck bed, just outside a ring of bodies. He saw there were more than he’d ever dreamed. 50. 100 folks,
Naked. Black and white.
Fucking and screaming and moaning in a gigantic, red circle. Bobbi saw mud and tears. He saw people fucking and eating of one-another. He saws a guy pissing on a woman from behind. There was torchlight, and another greenish glow…and everything was happening around a giant pile of brambly sticks and planks. A pyre.
An evil pile, rotting wood and live earth, infested and moving. Writhing. Worms and things with teeth. Slime and evil. Bobbi could feel the pile, could feel it’s smell invading. He pissed himself. He felt himself being sick, and there were rats and dogs licking at his shoes, eating his sick dripping down the legs of the chair. He was sorry then, about all of it. Sorry to his mom and T’s mom for ever taking up the pills and the needle, and sorry to God and Jesus for every miserable turn his awful life had ever taken.
Now it was a party. A roast. Nobody trying to be quiet anymore. All that turning an tossing seemed like it should be, had to be, louder. Louder than anything in woods, or the world. He saw a fat white dude choking a waif-thin black-girl with his bare hands. He saw a woman eat nose and face off a squirming dog. He saw two men stabbing a white woman over and over hundreds of times. There was a gigantic hound fucking a lady with her head and arms on the pile, and bobbi saw the far side of the pile, where they’d cut something open, and were shouting and dancing while they flung the offal around and rubbed it over each other. There was blood and smoke from torches. Bobbi saw a child smash a crucifix through an old lady’s eye and grind it around by the cross-part. And he saw them put that big X up over the top of the pile. The drums were slower and louder.
BOOM.
The moaning got louder. And the crowd around the wood drew back, a dark, wet thing hovering in expectancy. Bobbi saw arms waving around the base of the wood, and then fire blooming from underneath. There was a “whoosh” sound and a suck of air at his legs as the thing caught.
BOOM.
From his seat in the truck, Bobbi was almost level with T’s eyes, and now, he could see by the light of the new fire, she was staring at him from the terrible cross. He felt himself falling in there, her black eyes interrogating him. Then, he noticed the moans had quieted to almost nothing, and the he saw the crowd back up from the flames as a new sound filled the area, beyond and deeper than the pops and hissing from the flames. Bobbi heard scratching like the scratching of a million nails and then saw it: A black flood loosed from the flames and fleeing in, over the un-burnt wood toward the X. Bugs.
BOOM.
When he was seven years old, Bobbi remembered his mother taking him out back and showing him a preying mantis and a Walking-Stick bug that her father had found in the swamps.
If they’re big enough to see from ten feet away, them Tulane boys’ll give you money for ‘em. Stu from across-a-river got gave almost a hunnert bucks for a june beetle the size of a silver dollar. These outta fetch a healthy price.
Bob didn’t remember anybody getting paid, but he remembered those bugs. The mantis was the size of a full grown cat, and bright green almost to a florescent yellow. The Stick looked more like a branch, and he remembered grampy needed to pry it away from a real stick to get it in the storage crate he’d selected for transport.
The drums…
The bugs flooding from the burning pile were bigger than those bugs, and Bobbi saw no flashes of yellow. Only black and slithering and pumping skeletal legs, like a wave of slime with teeth, snapping and pincing to escape the flames newly sprung behind. Within minutes they’d converged on the X from the bottom, and as the flames closed in behind, the bugs overtook T from below. Bob watched, mystified, as his girl’s feet, her legs, torso, arms and face were overrun with the filthy, snapping vermin-wave, and then - almost immediately after - consumed in an evil black and red inferno.
He watched her, and her eyes never broke their death-grip on his, even with her hair and mouth crawling with bugs and burning. Even at the end, with her torn body burnt away into the pile, her head hung from one arm and still seemed to glance Bob’s way, accusing. The light was brightest then, and Bob felt it must be burning his skin.
Still, he felt nothing at all.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
dogshitart
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Monday Story II : Lawson Danes
A murder cop working in an area where there's not a lot of murders has to have a skill set beyond the ability to track and arrest killers. In places like East Greenwich, RI where there was hardly any crime at all, the officer who heads a murder investigation is oftentimes also the officer who finds stolen bicycles, and busts weed dealers. That’s just what Lawson Danes was doing when he got the call about the afternoon’s excitement at 193 Dollar. This was a fortunate coincidence for both the weed dealer and Danes, as the former avoided the wrath of the law (mostly - Lawson called him a “shithead” ), and the latter scored two ounces of monumentally stoney weed. Danes smoked some on the way to Dollar St.
Uniformed police are trained in certain procedures where murder is concerned. They are often the first of all the first-responders to show up on scene. As such, these police are responsible for the preservation of the crime scene until the Investigating officer arrives to take charge. Murder is an act that people go to great lengths to conceal, and so the place where a body falls gets taken apart detail by poison detail, everything dusted for prints and bagged for later consideration by forensics teams, police personnel, and legal counsel. It’s an exacting dance, and best performed under low-stress conditions. Critical pieces can be overlooked because of pollution in and around the crime scene, so the cop in charge has a great many things to account for. The better ones start learning names and enlisting support right away upon arrival, delegating tasks, taking information from some, and transiting it to others the minute they arrive on scene. The best call ahead, starting their choreography while ducking speeding towards to the call. Lawson Danes wasn’t one of the best, but he had the speeding part nailed.
Arriving at 193 Dollar, Danes wished he’d gone slower.
***
Martin Burke woke up in a different place. He wasn’t exactly sure where he’d come from, but he knew for a certainty that it was not here. His theory was confirmed by the flying car that almost ran him down. The place in which he’d woken appeared to be a vast, empty plane of grass, not a road in sight, and so he thought himself safe enough. At least from cars. The one that almost hit Burke had to be going over a hundred miles per hour. It missed his head by what seemed like inches, and in the instant Martin hit the dirt, he thought he heard laughter in the blast of hot air swirling and pushing in flying thing's wake. By the time he looked up, the car was gone out of sight, melted into a horizon where green grass met with blue sky.
Las Vegas looked the same, even if the desert that Martin knew surrounded it had changed into a grassland. He’d walked for what seemed like weeks before seeing it. Now he was walking around it about a mile out, nervous to enter, and nervous to keep his orbit around the city. When at last he did enter, he was relieved to find the Vegas he’d known all his life. The Luxor still looked the same, and the bellmen and desk staff still remembered his name. Within two hours of hitting the city that day, Burke had been given three thousand dollars in courtesy chips from the Luxor concierge. He augmented that with another thousand- worth from his account, and set to work at the tables. Within two weeks of playing and winning and whoring, Burke started to forget about his weird circumstance. After a month he’d no recollection at all of his previous life, and no yearning for the people and things that had meant so much to him. He was in Vegas now, winning. Martin Burke was alright with that.
That was the other thing: winning here in this Vegas was a lot easier than back in the world. Burke didn’t know why, but he suspected it had something to do with the odds in this place being different. Burke spent five years raking in Las Vegas. Whatever weird statistic was at work in this world, it made Martin Burke a very rich man. He stashed his new fortune in four different numbered accounts and began a high speed, improvised jaunt all around his new reality. He planned on hitting up every place he’d never gone on earth, and he planned to do so in a flying car. He secured a used one, and spent a few weeks on the grassy plains outside Vegas. Eventually he felt ready to test his skills in the great big world, and took off at 150 mph in a rush of noise and hot air.
Alaska, he found, was too hot for an extended visit, and too noisy. Aside from that, though, it prooved culturally superior than any place Martin had ever been. Chicago was just plain boring. They rolled up the sidewalks there at unreasonably early hours. London was barbaric and dangerous, but home to some of the most dramatic landscapes and countryside of anyplace in any world. The journey lasted more than a year, and cost him only a tiny fraction of the money he’d won. On his return, Martin planned to buy himself a house. Nothing fancy, just a nice little place to call his own. He’d been out seeing open houses when he got sick.
He was bed bound for three weeks, and by the time he’d gone to the doctor, the cancer had spread from his colon and laid waste to his anatomy from his balls to his throat. The doctor wasn’t worried though. Instead of telling Martin to get his affairs in order and prepare for the worst, he prescribed a drug called “Vidas”, and told his patient to take three a day with a full glass of water. He’d told Martin:
You should be ok after that, but if not we’ll give you another week’s supply and mop up the last of it.
After a few moments of uncomfortable staring, Martin and the doctor had the most amazing conversation. Cancer, the doctor told him, had been solved in this world. Even the worst, most malignant types could be beaten, usually with nothing more invasive than a pill-regimen. It wasn’t just cancer either. Most diseases and ailments - from the common cold all the way to Muscular Dystrophy - had been eradicated.
Martin went back to his new house in Vegas, and lived out the rest of his days as a successful gambler. He died at the age of 110, which - he'd learned - was about right for this world. One night he’d climbed into bed to watch Letterman (still funny here), but he dozed off instead, dreaming of a gigantic school of fish moving fast over a huge coral reef. They swam as a group but constantly feinted and slid as one unit like high-speed underwater swallows. After a long time following them, Martin saw them break for the surface. He followed, sounding moments after the fish, who were now doing their weird drill in the air. Martin sat there watching them for a few minutes, still hypnotized by their lunatic route. After a while he got tired of treading water and stopped. He felt himself sinking, and didn’t care.
Uniformed police are trained in certain procedures where murder is concerned. They are often the first of all the first-responders to show up on scene. As such, these police are responsible for the preservation of the crime scene until the Investigating officer arrives to take charge. Murder is an act that people go to great lengths to conceal, and so the place where a body falls gets taken apart detail by poison detail, everything dusted for prints and bagged for later consideration by forensics teams, police personnel, and legal counsel. It’s an exacting dance, and best performed under low-stress conditions. Critical pieces can be overlooked because of pollution in and around the crime scene, so the cop in charge has a great many things to account for. The better ones start learning names and enlisting support right away upon arrival, delegating tasks, taking information from some, and transiting it to others the minute they arrive on scene. The best call ahead, starting their choreography while ducking speeding towards to the call. Lawson Danes wasn’t one of the best, but he had the speeding part nailed.
Arriving at 193 Dollar, Danes wished he’d gone slower.
***
Martin Burke woke up in a different place. He wasn’t exactly sure where he’d come from, but he knew for a certainty that it was not here. His theory was confirmed by the flying car that almost ran him down. The place in which he’d woken appeared to be a vast, empty plane of grass, not a road in sight, and so he thought himself safe enough. At least from cars. The one that almost hit Burke had to be going over a hundred miles per hour. It missed his head by what seemed like inches, and in the instant Martin hit the dirt, he thought he heard laughter in the blast of hot air swirling and pushing in flying thing's wake. By the time he looked up, the car was gone out of sight, melted into a horizon where green grass met with blue sky.
Las Vegas looked the same, even if the desert that Martin knew surrounded it had changed into a grassland. He’d walked for what seemed like weeks before seeing it. Now he was walking around it about a mile out, nervous to enter, and nervous to keep his orbit around the city. When at last he did enter, he was relieved to find the Vegas he’d known all his life. The Luxor still looked the same, and the bellmen and desk staff still remembered his name. Within two hours of hitting the city that day, Burke had been given three thousand dollars in courtesy chips from the Luxor concierge. He augmented that with another thousand- worth from his account, and set to work at the tables. Within two weeks of playing and winning and whoring, Burke started to forget about his weird circumstance. After a month he’d no recollection at all of his previous life, and no yearning for the people and things that had meant so much to him. He was in Vegas now, winning. Martin Burke was alright with that.
That was the other thing: winning here in this Vegas was a lot easier than back in the world. Burke didn’t know why, but he suspected it had something to do with the odds in this place being different. Burke spent five years raking in Las Vegas. Whatever weird statistic was at work in this world, it made Martin Burke a very rich man. He stashed his new fortune in four different numbered accounts and began a high speed, improvised jaunt all around his new reality. He planned on hitting up every place he’d never gone on earth, and he planned to do so in a flying car. He secured a used one, and spent a few weeks on the grassy plains outside Vegas. Eventually he felt ready to test his skills in the great big world, and took off at 150 mph in a rush of noise and hot air.
Alaska, he found, was too hot for an extended visit, and too noisy. Aside from that, though, it prooved culturally superior than any place Martin had ever been. Chicago was just plain boring. They rolled up the sidewalks there at unreasonably early hours. London was barbaric and dangerous, but home to some of the most dramatic landscapes and countryside of anyplace in any world. The journey lasted more than a year, and cost him only a tiny fraction of the money he’d won. On his return, Martin planned to buy himself a house. Nothing fancy, just a nice little place to call his own. He’d been out seeing open houses when he got sick.
He was bed bound for three weeks, and by the time he’d gone to the doctor, the cancer had spread from his colon and laid waste to his anatomy from his balls to his throat. The doctor wasn’t worried though. Instead of telling Martin to get his affairs in order and prepare for the worst, he prescribed a drug called “Vidas”, and told his patient to take three a day with a full glass of water. He’d told Martin:
You should be ok after that, but if not we’ll give you another week’s supply and mop up the last of it.
After a few moments of uncomfortable staring, Martin and the doctor had the most amazing conversation. Cancer, the doctor told him, had been solved in this world. Even the worst, most malignant types could be beaten, usually with nothing more invasive than a pill-regimen. It wasn’t just cancer either. Most diseases and ailments - from the common cold all the way to Muscular Dystrophy - had been eradicated.
Martin went back to his new house in Vegas, and lived out the rest of his days as a successful gambler. He died at the age of 110, which - he'd learned - was about right for this world. One night he’d climbed into bed to watch Letterman (still funny here), but he dozed off instead, dreaming of a gigantic school of fish moving fast over a huge coral reef. They swam as a group but constantly feinted and slid as one unit like high-speed underwater swallows. After a long time following them, Martin saw them break for the surface. He followed, sounding moments after the fish, who were now doing their weird drill in the air. Martin sat there watching them for a few minutes, still hypnotized by their lunatic route. After a while he got tired of treading water and stopped. He felt himself sinking, and didn’t care.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Pee Story
You'd do it for Randolph Scott
I go into the bathroom to urinate. It's me and the boy. Middle of the day, fuckin' Tuesday. The boy is four years old. Old enough to roam freely while I take a piss. Me peeing takes about a minute. Now, that's a stressful minute, because the boy is not trustworthy. He's a backstabber, and he lies. Well. It's the Sicillian in him that makes him this way.
As is my custom, I made the boy aware that I'd be going to the bathroom as I walked there, and I encouraged him to join me. He said he would, but didn't show up. There was extra time. I went slow, because the boy said he would come but hadn't, and the possibilities that open up in that situation are...Considerable.
But it was too late to go after him. At some point, the body commits fully to micturation and it's full-go. To stop suddenly after commiting, you take your life in your hands. I was at that point, pissing smoothly...A Strong, proud stream. Honorable. But then the boy still hadn't come, and he'd been silent for a bit. As a parent who spends a great deal of time with a mistrustful, deceptive child, you learn, as a mother Lion probably learns, the sounds of the jungle. Certain combinations of sounds mean certain things. This particular combination: the sound of only urine hitting toilet water, and nothing else - in my jungle that's the drums stopping for a few seconds before the savages spring from the treeline. I cursed my still draining bladder, and cursed the gods for this silly untimely pee, and continued to curse them until the boy spoke up. He was directly behind me, and he said:
Daddy I have to go to the bathroom and pee too!
and as he said the words "pee too", he started peeing on my shoes, into my socks. A strong stream. Honorable. And we stood there voiding together like two links in a daisy chain of pee, I into the toilet, and he onto my fucking feet. He finished just when I did, zipped up and left. As I took off my shoes, my socks, laundry, shower, whatever, I heard another noise from his room across the hall. I was soaked in urine, though, so I had to clean up to avoid diaper-rash. After that whole thing I heard the weird noise again and went to investigate. The boy was standing there, still holding the red sharpie he'd just used to graffiti a giant stick figure onto his wall. He told me that his sister did it, but - like I said: kid's a liar.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Monday Story
He looked back, and saw where his bare feet had been tracking blood behind him through the house. No surprise there, there had been a lot of blood. It was on the windows in spatters so dense they were half-blocking the afternoon sun, blasting red and yellow diffusions of late day light in a blending, 3-D matrix on the walls. For a while, with everything was winding to a close, he sat there in the stink and the fluids, and watched the blood-polarized rays dancing and reflecting around him. He let himself go then, and sat still until the gloaming brought an end to the weird light. He said out loud:
Well…Time to go.
And began to gather his things. Two minutes later he was on his way, and almost gone, when a sudden memory stopped him. He went back to the room. Oddly, the computer - an ancient desktop from a company long-extinct - wasn’t so deluged in red. He walked over and regarded the monitor. There was a face book account open, and he read the status header:
My FUCKING kids!
There was a great smear of blood above the words, and two or three drips below. For a few seconds he actually considered taking a picture. He laughed a bit at the idea, and then pressed the “send” key. Now just one last element to make his awesome tableau complete. He let his eyes wander back over to the scene of his “outburst” and comb the floor for it. Finding the thing, he grabbed it, and used it, and dropped it again.
***
Amy Burke was having an orgasm. She was trying to be discreet about it, sure. She didn’t let the extacy betray itself in her expression, and she damn well wasn’t cooing and gasping like a porn star, but despite all evidence to the contrary, Ms. Burke's rocks were, indeed, getting off. She stood, knees turning to pudding, face shiny-flush, in the paper goods aisle. It went on and on for what seemed like hours. When it was over, she felt for the thing that had caused it sitting safe in her purse. It was a Zippo lighter, the silver kind that smelled of butane. Amy had been in the act of admiring it when interrupted by her enthusiastic cumming.
It hadn’t been easy. She’d evaded capture by deploying her not-inconsiderable acting talents, thumbing through magazines shelved adjacently to her quarry.Every minute or so, she would reach downward, then pop up discretely to look around for room-reaction. A visual scan of the pharmacy revealed only a clear coast. The moment - Amy knew - was now. She dipped down again, and at the same time reache into a deep coat pocket and coming up with a carbon-black mini-switchblade. One stroke, well placed and well-delivered, was the extent of it. Amy removed the lighter and, stashing it atop a package of extra large Huggies", ambled over to the magazine rack to see if she'd been made. Nothing. five minutes, ten...Another little walk around the shop, picking up asprin, ginger ale, and greeting cards for three different occasions. Only after she was positively not made by store security did Amy return to the smoking accessories aisle and her Zippo. Taking a discreet last look around, she grabbed it and pursed it in one deft motion. That’s when she came. The orgasm was followed quickly by two shorter ones and then it was time to go. Instead of the forward check-out counter she opted to pay at the rearward perscription center. She was just pulling into the short line when her cell phone rang. She ignored the first ring, but the rest of the line began staring pointedly at the second and third attempts. She was feeling around her purse to mute the ringer when she noticed the words “East Greenwich Police” flashing across the front of her I Phone and decided to answer. Could it have been about the lighter? She clicked the talk button and said “Hello”.
***
Essex Hightower was an old man. His hearing, along with his legs, his eyes, his breath…Each felt every second of his 82 years, and each was far into the inevitable act of late-life failure. Nevertheless, Mr. Hightower called the cops when he’d heard the noises. Essex had done his bit for uncle Sam twice, enlisting under an assumed name in 1942, at the tender age of 17, so that he might go kill Germans in Europe. Ten years later he lead a battalion as an XO, eschewing command so that he could remain in the field as a forward observer. He sounds he’d heard emanate from his neighbor’s house between the hours of 2:30 and 3:15 on that Thursday were sounds Essex had heard only twice in entire bloody slog across France and - later - across frozen green hell surrounding the Chosen Resevoir. They were the sounds of children suffering and dying. Hightower called the cops and told them:
hurry up. Something’s happening.
Then Essex Hightower stepped outside to wait on his front steps. He no longer heard the terrible noises.
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