Gender: Female
Status: Single
Age: 102
Sign: Scorpio
Country: US
Signup Date: 12/5/2006
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Thursday, June 28, 2007
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 Bury Me with the Watch By April Richmond
Mortimer stared at his distinguished graying whiskers, crisply reflected in the glass of his heavy gold pocketwatch. The well crafted chain lovingly encircled his aging paw down to the cuff of the noble burgandy velvet blazer he was rarely seen without. Two or three minutes had passed, he knew, from the reliable but gentle ticking resonating from his little friend's complicated inner mechanical workings. He tucked the faithful victorian watch back into the pocket directly above his withering hare heart. Mortimer felt his blood pumping in a strange synchronized rhythm with the clock's fragile second hand as the cyanide laced carrot began to take effect.
He wasn't sure what death would feel like. A rabbit of humble but disciplined ideals, he'd spent his entire lifetime making sure he was never late for an important date. "Keeping one's head is of the utmost importance," his forty seven children would fondly recall as a typical quote in the White residence, though ironically he was often running frantically around as if he'd already lost his. All this meant that Mortimer hadn't allowed much time in life to consider the inevitable question of an afterlife, and so far, it wasn't anything like he'd expected. The feeling of dying, that is.
His long aristocratic features peered back once again in the reflection of his beloved pocketwatch, cradeled now in a paw that seemed to change colors like the face of an easily exasperated queen of hearts. Five minutes had passed, at least, though it was growing increasingly difficult for Mortimer to concentrate. Could it be that reality was beginning to slow? Or was the clock winding down in a gesture of comfort and solidarity to its truest and dearest friend? "Oh dear, no time for questions," a voice not unlike his own whispered. His fur lined eyelids were closing now. Upon his final, lingering breath, Mortimer knew not where he would end up, only that he would be exactly on time.
Double 0 Hef By Matt Frederick
I've been the man for a long time now. It's not exactly a secret anymore. I started over fifty years ago with nothing—I didn't have two nickels to scrape together. Just a couple of nudies, a connection with a publisher, and a dream. And today… Well, like I said, I'm the man.
I live in a mansion in Beverly Hills, my parties are legendary, and I have as many girlfriends as I want. Hell, most of them actually live with me! And who says something about it? The media? I am the media. The morality police? They gave up on me a long time ago. The other girlfriends? Ha! They wouldn't dare. They know they'd be on a bus back to Missoula in about three seconds. No way. No one says anything. You know why. Don't make me say it again.
I have a whole wing of the mansion that no one is allowed in. It's just for me. Sometimes I allow Chef to bring me my sandwich back there, or Secretary to come locate me if I'm due for an important meeting (I stopped remembering names about fifteen years ago—it just didn't seem important.) But those are rare occasions. This is my inner sanctum, this East Wing, and no one may enter.
No one has ever even raised an eyebrow when I tell them they are forbidden. But I'm not an idiot. I know they think I'm losing my mind, that I'm old and eccentric, that I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. I know all this. But they don't know that I know, because I play the game well.
No one can enter the East Wing without my knowledge. How can I be sure of this? Well, aside from the ten mini-cameras scanning the entry hallway, there are tiny little infrared lasers that no one can see. Even if you could get past the cameras and the lasers, there's a security keypad that requires a combination that I've never told anyone.
What's back there that's so damn important? Am I really just a crazy old man with too much money? Has a career of airbrushed Bunnies and legendary bikini parties (I should get a couple of cents anytime anyone even uses the word "grotto") made my head soft, like people sometimes suggest behind my back? (Microphones. All over the house. People have no idea how wily this "crazy old man" can be.) No, I'm not crazy. Behind that titanium door with the keypad, is the Bat Room.
Don't tell anyone, ok? This is going to be just between you and me. See, unbeknownst to them all, I am so much more than just a walking advertisement for Viagra—I'm a secret agent. I save the world. All the time.
The room is designed to my specs exactly—I saw the design on T.V. once. Past that door there's this huge open space. The floor is a really shiny metallic color, and emblazoned in the middle is this cool insignia with a bat carrying a gun in its claws. It actually used to be in the basement of the Kremlin. (Seriously. I bought it in an auction.) The ceilings are vast, and the lighting is sparse; you can't really see where the room ends, except for the one wall with the giant screen. It's fifteen feet high and almost twice as wide. Bolted to the floor about ten feet from the screen is my metal chair. That's where I sit when I receive my assignments from the Commissioner, or when I'm researching how to foil the latest conspiracy plot. There's a little keyboard in front of the chair, and I can make things pop out of the walls with a touch of a button—anything I need. You name it, it's in some hidden compartment.
You know that hostage scare a few weeks back? Worked out ok, right? But no one really saw any footage of the rescue. That was me.
That coup that went so smoothly in that up-and-coming third world country? Yep.
That dictator that's always threatening our beautiful country? Well, I'm working on that one. It's going to require a little more…tact.
It's the perfect cover, when you think about it, right? Eccentric billionaire playboy? No one would ever suspect. Sure, when the CIA approached me all those years ago, I was dubious. But in the end, the patriot in me won out. (That, and the fact that there's just really very little else for me to do these days.)
But something's amiss. I believe we have a spy in our midst. Checking the records, I saw that someone has gotten past the lasers and the mini-cameras. Someone punched in the right code on the keypad. (It's my birthday! How could they have known?) Someone has seen the Bat Room! And no one must know it exists!
I suspect it was the one with the little dog. She's acting strange; she avoided my eyes and told me she was sick when it was her turn to sleep in my bed last night. No one ever turns down a night in my bed.
This is a grave matter. No one can know about me. About what I do. It's a matter of national security! Freedom may be at stake!
Something must be done.
The arsenic capsule in my right robe pocket—I keep it there always. Perhaps I'll ask Chef to make an almond-flavored dessert of some kind. Say I have a craving.
But what if it's not her? That other girl was acting weird too—the blond one. "The other blond" is what I call her. (It's a joke.) Or the tall one?
Fuck it. They're a dime a dozen. Maybe I'll just spike the Kool-Aid.
Five to One
By Chris Murrin
Whitey burst into Warren's, late as usual. I whistled to catch his attention and waved him over to the secluded table in the back where the four of us waited. Whitey walked over, nodding a hello to Ozzie, the bartender. A true classic American shithole, Warren's served two types of customers: sots looking to drink away their last dime, and scumbags plotting to make their next one. Ozzie didn't make a lot of money selling drinks, but he made bank selling privacy.
"Sorry I'm late," Whitey said as he pulled up a chair to my right.
"T-t-typical," Roger spewed, covering my left arm in spittle. In the shadows across from me sat Harv, just looking bored, not even touching his beer. Next to him, Pete munched on a salad, oblivious. He was the only one of us brave enough to actually eat Ozzie's food.
Whitey defended himself, "Hey, man, I got held up at work!"
"You're always making excu--"
"Enough," I had to cut Roger off before he blew his stack. "Let's get to it."
Roger looked daggers at Whitey, but managed to keep his anger under control. Pete popped a radish into his mouth. Watching him eat, you'd think he didn't know where his next meal was coming from. If Harv didn't blink from time to time, I wouldn't have been sure he was still alive.
Wiping my arm off with a napkin, I began laying out the plan. "It's a lead pipe cinch. He's already expecting us, so he won't think anything's fishy. Whitey, you go in first and loosen him up."
Roger again piped up, "The t-t-temporally challenged one goes in first? He'll--"
It took all I had not to smash Roger right in the teeth. "SHUT. UP." I turned back to Whitey, "Get a beer or two in him or something. Make him relax."
"You got it."
I took a sip of beer and turned my attention to the gentle giant sitting across from me. "Harv, once Whitey is in there for a while, you're next. Same deal. Just act natural until I get there."
"'Kay." Harv was a man of few words.
"Roger, you've got the car all set, right?"
"Yep. He p-p-purrs like a kitten, roars like a lion. And he seats five." Roger looked over at Harv, "And a half."
"Good. Then the three of us will roll up. Roger, you stay in the car, and have him ready. Pete, you hang out outside the door while I go in. You see anything or anyone suspicious, you come inside and call it off. Got it?"
"Mmm hmm," Pete mumbled around a mouthful of French beans.
"Once I'm in, Harv, you just have to grab him and hold him. He's a slippery fucker, and he'll do anything to get away. He'll kick, he'll scream. Hell, he might even try to kiss you, but you can not let him go, understand?"
"Yes." That Harv, a picture of consistency.
"Whitey, once we've got him pinned, you get out. Go sit in the front of the car. You don't need to see the rest," I said, grinning as I cocked my thumb and pointed my finger at my temple. "Once you hear the shot, Pete, pile in the back of the car. Leave the door open. Harv and I will be right behind you."
"Sure thing," Pete said, shoving even more lettuce in his gullet. My cell started to ring. I ignored it.
"Once we're in the car, we're gone. That's all there is to it. No witnesses, and no more Mister Big Shot." I raised my glass in a mock toast to our soon-to-be-departed friend. My cell rang a second time. I took it out and looked at the name on the display.
"It's him. Get ready to go."
I hit the talk button. "Hello?"
"Heya, Trixie," came his annoying, nasal voice. I hated when he called me that.
I decided to give the motherfucker a taste of his own medicine, "Heya, Bugsy."
"So what's up, Doc? Where the hell is everybody? I thought this was poker night, not solitaire night."
"I'm on my way."
"Good, 'cause I'm feeling lucky tonight. I think I'm gonna make a killing."
"Well, Bugsy, someone surely will."
It Was Magic
By Brock Faucette
I am sitting opposite my vanity mirror, bulbs ablaze, backstage at a variety playhouse called Jynx. From my seat, I can hear the rain outside, but I know it is not rain at all. Rather, it is shit. Falling from the deep black cellulite of nimbus clouds. But out there, the passersby don't see it as shit. They see rain. And they walk about unimpressed as the shit falls on them, most of them protected by a blanket of umbrellas anyway. Still, those without any form of shield run through the falling shit, smiling and laughing because they think it's rain, but it's shit as sure as I am sitting here clutching my overpriced oversized Manhattan in one hand and a powder puff of pink in another. As sure as I'm sitting here, God's shit slides down their faces. Mixes in their hair. Stains their clothes. They don't care because, unlike me, they can't see the truth. Or smell it.
Almost a year ago, my tits were removed.
Everything is shit.
"Grayson, I want you to meet my friend Bunny." It is Olivier, whose real name is not Olivier but Oliver because he is not French at all but just another boy-humping fag from the sticks who managed one day, in his sole moment of brilliance, to steer a beat-up Camaro toward Atlanta where every-so-tiny hints of progress and civilization poke through the southern terrain. Of course, it doesn't matter about Olivier because Bunny is not my real name nor is Grayson his if I were a betting girl—but I'm not because betting is for poor people or drunks or for those who just plain don't know any better.
Olivier gives me a this-guy-can-help-you nod as Grayson extends his hand. "Bunny," he says, "this is Grayson. Grayson, this is Bunny." I'm hesitant to take Grayson's hand as I am wearing new silk gloves, and he looks rather dirty. Were he not bipedal and attempting, in some vague sense, the English language, I may have even mistaken him for a ferret, and it is my contention that anything in the weasel family is not deserving of trust if not altogether unforgivable as a species. But I concede nonetheless, remembering Olivier's this-guy-can-help-you nod. Ferret-boy gives me the handshake equivalent of a hickey.
"So this here's the magician's girl?" confirms Grayson from behind gigantic teeth and an oil-glazed epidermis.
"Ex-girl," says I. "After this show, I'm being traded in for a new girl. A new Bunny who still has her tits."
"Tits?" He looks at my sequined gown, south of the spaghetti straps where my breasts had been. Where my breasts had one day in the not-too distant past hovered like dual stars, radiant satellites stuck in my own gravitational pull. But those stars,
somewhere in the constellation of Cancer, imploded. "Whoa, lady! Tough break. Christ!"
I cover my chest with an ermine stole and shrink back into my seat. "Some would blame Christ, yes, but I blame him." My eyes guide his in the direction of a poster on the far wall. Oswald, The Fantastic and His Magic Bunny. "And you've left a shit-print on one of my gloves, you filthy mongrel."
"HEY!"
"She doesn't mean that—"
"Oh, yes I do." I interrupt Olivier while removing my new gloves. My fingers make a tweezer-grip. I dare not contract whatever diseases Grayson is carrying. Left glove first. Right, second. All the while, my nose is curled up like a terrier's. I drop the gloves into the nearby wastebasket. "They're worthless now. Covered in shit!"
"Shit?" Grayson's nose is curled now.
"Want to make it up to me? Have the stuff?" You have to be curt with these types. These shit-furred ferrets.
"Yeah. I got it. Not sure if I wanna give it to you, though. I mean, sounds like you's too damn good to take anything I got to give."
"Your call," says I, putting a wad of hundreds on the counter. They glow green in the vanity mirror's lightning flare of bulbs.
Presto change-o!
Despite what any number of people say is the oldest trick in the book, in actuality, the oldest trick involves pulling a rabbit from a hat. Before there were even hats per se, magicians of note were pulling rabbits from whatever headpiece they had in grasp. Turbans. Crowns. The abnormally large cowlicks of unwitting vagrants.
It is well known, for example, if you read your Bible that long before Jesus turned water to wine, he was divining hares from halos. It was also the favorite parlor trick of one Merlin the Magician, I'll have you know. Centuries later, though, the trick had long lost its luster. It was Oswald, The Fantastic who rejuvenated this old doozy, which was an act of magic in and of itself.
But what twist returned flesh to this fossil? ME! I was the climax! The girl named Bunny. The magician's voluptuous assistant (the real star if anyone were to ask)!
Here's how it worked:
After Oswald the Fantastic successfully completed a series of slide-of-hand deceptions, the audience, in his palm, saw the stunt of a lifetime. I disappeared in a puff of smoke—and on the other side of the stage, he reaches into this overturned hat and pulls me out. A full-grown woman!
"Ladies and gentlemen, I've just pulled a Bunny from my hat."
Ta-da!
Laughter and applause!
But impossible! How was this done?
Shhhhh.
It was magic.
The stuff is good. The horde of shit disappears, and in its place sprout up breasts. Breasts everywhere. In the blazing bulbs. In the bowl full of exotic fruit on the far table. In the sensuously arabesque slopes of the doorways and moulding. In these things, I don't see bulbs or Japanese honeydew or good architecture. I see breasts.
"You're on in five," someone whispers.
The strap loosens. The needle clinks to the floor.
Let him get another Bunny. I don't need him to disappear.
Poof.
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Monday, May 28, 2007
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 Ghosts By Rubber John
Not ghosts in the literal sense of course, but metaphorical.
I'm talking about gross encounters of the awkward kind that haunt you throughout your life. Unwanted memories that visit you when you're at your most vulnerable. To torment and aggravate like juveniles in the schoolyard, bullying you into a state of total embarrassment and regret - refusing to go away.
Remember the time your mother caught you masturbating?
Or the time you asked that slightly plumping but infertile female friend when she was expecting the baby that she wasn't pregnant with?
What about the time you offered to pull the stray, inch-long hair from your date's upper lip, only to find that it was actually attached?
It was to be a party to celebrate the grand reopening of Marco's Café, unveiling three months of refurbishment following a random visit from a threatening health inspector. We regulars were certainly going to miss the old greasy food, broken crockery and rotten furniture that we'd become accustomed to.
Quite often the three of us delude each other into thinking that we are 'hip', and as Marco suggested fancy dress for the big night, we prepared hip costumes to suggest as such.
Rob went as a mental patient complete with straight jacket and everything, but once at the party he got really drunk, really quickly on vodka and orange and decided to strip off his clothes— for one very unimpressed female patron— exposing the large yellow stain on the front of his white underpants for all to see.
And yes…. photos were taken.
The clothes Martin wore were his usual apparel of blue jeans, black t-shirt and brown shoes. He just looked like his regular self— except his face had been coloured completely black with two crooked red stripes on both of his cheeks, angled from the corners of his mouth to his ears.
Martin had gone as the A-Team van.
He would have come out of the situation relatively unscathed too had it not been for the fact that he was supposed to attend a job interview the following morning and realised that he had used a permanent black marker to colour his face.
And me….
Having dressed as a Droog from A Clockwork Orange, I innocently put my bowler hat down on the edge of the griddle that was still hot from cooking burgers for the party guests. The hat ignited, spread fire across the entire kitchen and through to the dining area, scattering the reopening party, damaging the newly refurbished café and everything in it, and ultimately putting Marco out of business.
This ghost has now joined the gang at the front of the giant conga line that now boogies its way through my thoughts, tonight and for the rest of my tortured life.
Maugham's Diner By Kim Jong-il
I'm jumping out of my skin, jumping straight through the goddamn roof. Stop at Maugham's. I'll stop at Maugham's.
"Morris! We've been expecting you."
"Hey, Les," I say. Maugham's: the only diner within fifty miles. Gustavo asks me why I stop here every week and I tell him because it's the only goddamn restaurant with eggs that taste like a hen's ass, sausage the color of wet cement, and coffee thick enough to grout your bathroom. Then he laughs his Chicano-snicker and leaves me be. Until the next time he asks me why I stop at Maugham's every week.
"Is that Morris?" Peter Maugham sticks his head out the door to the kitchen. "You're an hour late, boss. We almost closed up!" He points at his wristwatch. From the radio dial in the cab I know it's close to three a.m. The Maughams were expecting me around two.
"Yeah," I say. "Traffic, you know." Leslie pours me a cup of her trademark coffee. It's three in the morning on a Wednesday and she's still got the Tammy-Faye makeup mask of a harlot, her graying hair done up in what I can only describe as a mock-beehive. I take a sip and it coats my tongue like plastic wrap. Peter has already put the eggs and sausage on the griddle.
"So tell me, Morris, what you hauling this week?" Peter nods towards the back of my truck.
"Toys. From a port on the West Coast to the General Mills factory in Missouri. You know, the shit they put in cereal boxes for kids." I can smell the eggs, and Leslie goes to check on them.
"Like from the Chinese?" Peter says, and I look at him, scraping the coffee off my tongue with my teeth.
"Yeah. Probably from the Chinese. Maybe the Thais or the Koreans. But it doesn't much matter."
"They're all the same anyway," Peter laughs, "I can't tell those Chinamen apart. I guess their little hands are good with plastics and electronics and such." Peter refreshs my coffee and I watch it slide slowly out the coffee pot and into my mug.
"Actually they're all very distinct cultures, Pete. That's like saying the French and the Germans are all the same."
"Ah hell, then they're all the same too." He waits a beat. "Hey I read an interesting article. Apparently the Chinamen are responsible for global warming. Must be all two billion of them breathing in all the oxygen."
Leslie comes out of the kitchen, the hen's ass eggs and the wet cement sausage steaming on the plate in her hands. I pour half the cup of coffee down my throat to coat my stomach and grab a fork.
"The best damn part of my week, right here," and they smile when I say this. The egg crunches under my fork, sounding like a boot on gravel. I spike it and stick it in my mouth with a bite of toast.
"Honey, I was just telling Morris here about how the Chinamen are using up all the oxygen and causing global warming." A bite of sausage with a swig of the tar coffee. I always thought the problem with Peter Maugham was that he read too much.
"Oh yeah, it's terrible," Leslie chimes in. She rests a hand on Peter's. They'll be up in three hours to serve breakfast. Wonder if they'll even sleep. "So, Morris, how are you?"
"I'm great, Les. Just great." She goes to refresh my coffee and I shake her off. Been drinking coffee since I left California and too much will give me the shakes. I always know my limits. "Can't complain about nothing."
"Well that's good Morris. That's real good." Leslie watches me take my last bites.
"Ok, folks," I say, lifting myself off the stool and wiping my lips with a greasy napkin. "I gotta get back on the road. Deadlines to meet." I clear my throat a little.
"Okay," Peter says. "Okay, Morris." He pats me on the cheek twice. "You take care of yourself."
"For Christ's sake, Pete, I'll be back in a week." Peter shakes my hand, Leslie winks at me, and I exit the diner. Run the load, sleep for a day, then turn it around and do it all again. Yup, the best damn part of my week.
Neon Smiles
By Mo Ali
The angular cars outside are long dead, beneath their bodies things are squirming still. No-one's been here for a time.
The door falls back surprised as you place your palm against it gently, held there only by cobwebs. The sound is deafening, and an army of dust motes rises up as glass blossoms and fragments.
Inside the smell of old water greets you like an absent friend. Perhaps it's the acoustics, an echo, the sound of the door dying, but you can make out voices now.
Conversations. Music and laughter. Lovemaking and arguing.
A scream that is sudden and bloody and then nothing.
All quiet.
You step forward toward the counter with its empty seats. Light winks at you from the shadows, chrome and glass and plastic.
You reflection is warped and distorted in this place, leering back at you from all corners as shapes form around you, fluttering sounds that tickle the back of your neck or brush your arms without warning.
The smell gets stronger the deeper you go, like turpentine and warm blood, clogging your throat as you spin, disoriented, looking for the fallen door. A creaking sound, padded feet, breathing slow and rasping.
You cough, you try to stop yourself but the sound escapes anyway.
Finally you spot the door and begin to walk towards it, carefully.
Don't run.
Don't run. Slowly.
You reach the broken glass and then, a sound.
You shouldn't turn but you do; it's instinct.
You turn and stare into the dark.
And something smiles.
The Elite Diner By DeWayne Todd
My arm pumps food into my mouth in a rhythmic motion. I'm hungry but there is no joy in eating. People only eat to sustain themselves nowadays. It's been so many years since I took pleasure in food or anything else for that matter that I can't even remember what it was like.
When everyone I loved plummeted down into the rotting pits of hell, then came back to life, then I died. They're called the walking dead. They feast on the living with an insatiable hunger, but there appears to be no pleasure for them either. They simply exist to feed. I've watch them gorge themselves until their guts are distended atrocities ready to rupture. Seen them rip a child from limb to limb and suck the marrow from her bones. And for no discernible reason but the mindless drive to consume life.
You watch that a few times and all pleasure in life is stripped away. Your soul turns numb and apathy takes on a new meaning. All that remains is a choice. Are you going to continue to exist or not. The reality is that I'm not sure we are any better than they are. In fact it's probably worse because there still remains some small spark of humanity inside of us. The memory of joy. Love. Passion. But our humanity is continuously cauterized by what we have to do to live. Now the only thing that sparks passion is unloading a magazine of 9 mm rounds into their brains. And even that is tiresome. It seems like we should be making a dent in their numbers, but then you remember there are billions of them.
Trust me. We've all tried to arouse the old desires of the flesh. Booze. Drugs. Sex. And for the record, my desire still works whenever I wank it up, but it's only a physical reaction. Stand up, puke and pass out. We've even taken turns embracing each other. Soft touches. Wild rides. But it's not the same. The scars are far too deep and we've lost the ability to find joy. Everyone has lost everything.
We live at the Elite Diner. Don't know why, but for some reason the vintage stainless steel shell keeps them away. It's like the place doesn't exist to their senses and they simply walk on by in search of other prey.
But there is more to this place than a simple roost.
I look around and memories rise in this diner like dark specters of the past. People ate here. They did more than sustain themselves; they came to this place to enjoy the most basic visceral pleasures. I can imagine those ghosts savoring greasy eggs and peppered bacon. Smiling as they feed their children syrup-drenched pancakes in the mornings. Meatloaf and mashed potato flakes for dinner. I can barely remember the bitter taste of coffee and lingering smell of burning cigarettes, but sometimes I catch the faintest odor.
Nat looks up from her bowl of stew. Three bites and she's done. She walks away with a sigh. We pretend that someone still grows vegetables and slaughters cows for meat. We imagine that all these canned goods are preserved against radiation and rot. But the imagination is not endless.
The Elite Diner remains the last haunted diner in the world. We are the ghosts who linger, seeking to taste what once was. Simple joy and satisfaction of a sated hunger. We gave our souls, but it wasn't enough.
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Thursday, April 26, 2007
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Fame By Tom Leins
I sick up another bit of Anton, and crawl back onto the veranda. Dr. Rat is where I left him, nursing a Lipton Tea- sugar, no milk. He gestures towards another drink on a tray nearby.
"Lemon?" I ask hopefully.
"Sorry, no lemon."
I shrug, wipe my mouth on my filthy sleeve and haul myself into the deckchair next to Dr. Rat. A fierce crack of thunder and a sudden deluge puncture the slow Nashville afternoon.
Dr Rat closes his eyes and listens to the drone of the rain. He is razor-thin, wears an eye-patch and smokes his cigarettes through a long, slender holder. He has made a career out of quasi-medical depravity, and looks the part. A siren wails in the distance. Dr Rat opens his good eye warily. Earlier this year he spent thirteen days in jail for his involvement in a botched sex-change operation. I paid his $2,312 bail out of my most recent royalty cheque, as a gesture of good faith. I have been attending these unpredictable fortnightly consultations with Dr. Rat for the last eighteen months. He tells marvelous stories of the rich and famous that unsettle and entertain me in equal measure, but he won't tell me what I want to know.
"Doctor, can you cure me?"
A sharp grin flashes out, lingers and fades. Finally he says, "Yes, Coley. I think I can."
Without wanting to sing my own praises too much, I'm moderately famous – a honky-tonk hero to a large and voluble cross-section of America's music-buying public. 46 million Americans smoke. 47 million Americans buy Christian Pop records. That makes me more popular than smoking, and a heck of a lot less likely to ruin your lungs. Nevertheless, it's tough concealing your bulimia when you're in the public eye as much as me. Nearly as tough as trying to conceal your cannibalism.
My car crawls through the stagnant suburbs, the rain doing nothing to blot out my desperate butcher-shop visions. As I hit Main Street traffic starts to move sluggishly. Juicy-looking cops in ill-fitting uniforms do their best to keep the traffic moving, but the overturned eighteen-wheeler proves to be too fascinating an obstacle. I wind down the window to get a better look. To me, a traffic accident is an all-you-can-eat buffet of flesh and innards, and I feel myself getting hot under the collar. To distract myself I turn on the radio, and crank it up to 11. One of my own songs 'Never Slouch In The Presence Of the Lord' is playing, and I feel like a real Southern-fried asshole. A cop turns around to glare at me, and then he catches a glimpse of my wet-look perm and rhinestone-flecked shirt and realises who I am.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Clarke. Take care on these wet roads now, sir. "
I wind my window up hastily, but hear him turn back to his cop buddies and call me something unpleasant. They look over their shoulders and grin. I wave sarcastically and drive on. When you're North America's twelfth most successful Christian Pop chartbuster of all time you've got to take the rough with the smooth.
As I enter the Civic Center, I nod to the hollowed out old codger slouched in the ticket booth– his head covered by a black synthetic 'mop-top' wig. My Uncle Clive. His rheumy eyes stare right through me. Dr Rat fixed him. People say he used to have the same affliction as me. I don't know. I was too young to remember what he was like before he turned into the cadaver he resembles now.
In the lobby Janine is sobbing wholeheartedly. She's just been sent a fax. Apparently Anton has been reported dead by a mutual friend. I feel my gut-fluid bubble ominously, and fight to keep it down. I offer Janine the briefest of hugs and a few mumbled words of consolation. Anton is her brother-in-law. Her moose-jaw gurgles mournfully on my shoulder until I extricate myself from her grip and swagger backstage in search of a clean change of clothes.
Show time. The elderly folks in the front row do the resurrection shuffle. I flash them my cheesiest grins whilst emoting to high Heaven and dreaming about cheerleader's thighs and the fat chewy arms of obese welfare cheats. I'm filled with nervous excitement regarding what Dr. Rat has planned for me. During the intermission I calm myself down by snacking on the withered limbs of a milky-white cripple in the disabled toilets – eventually sicking him up in a carrier bag outside before it was time to go back on.
After asking a subdued Janine to cancel the rest of my booking for this month, I drive over to Dr. Rat's house. He has promised me a "last supper" before the course of treatment begins. I begin to tuck in heartily to the torso of the feral child that Dr. Rat kept in his basement for "social experiments." That's when I notice a flashbulb go off outside Dr. Rat's house.
Mouth still full of stringy child, I upend the dinner table and grab Dr. Rat by the throat, grunting threats. After a couple of good punches he manages to wriggle free and stumble into the backyard. He edges towards the chain-link fence wearing nothing but his shabby robe and the bewildered frown of an amateur illusionist whose attempt to saw the body in half has worked all too well. I regurgitate what little of the child I had already chomped on, screaming obscenities at Dr Rat. The assembled crowd gasps. The camera crew scramble backwards. The Sheriff's nervous young deputies inch towards me, weakly brandishing their nightstick. Minutes later they finally manage to pry me off Dr Rat – bits of eye and cheek stuck between my teeth - and cram me cackling and bloodied into the back of the Sheriff's cruiser. Finally, fame has swallowed me whole.
Roommates By Molly Lederer
"Look," Rodolfo said calmly, tweezing his left eyebrow with methodic precision. "I said I was sorry about it."
Frank eyed his room-mate warily. "It's not abut the Cocoa Krispies."
"I know I ate your bananas too, and I swear to God I'll replace everything next time I go to the store."
Frank was surprised. "My bananas too?"
"There were only three. And two of them had gone all brown and spotty. But the other one – it was weird – it was, like, still green and firm."
Frank regained his composure. "That's not the point. That's not what I'm teed off about, and you know it."
Rodolfo sighed dramatically and slapped the tweezers down on the porcelain sink. "I'm sorry, I guess I'm not telepathetic, Frank. What exactly are you teed off about?"
"Telepathic." Frank shifted uncomfortably in the cramped doorway.
Rodolfo tapped the toe of his red alligator cowboy boot and clicked one long red fingernail on his rhinestone watchface. "Time is a' tickin,' Chatty Kathy!"
"It's – it's what you're doing."
Rodolfo raised his now-perfect left eyebrow. "I'm afraid I'm not following your drift, Frank. Your fragrant Rite-Guard-Irish-Spring-Bud-Light-and-corn-chip-residue drift."
Rodolfo had a point about the corn chips, but Frank wasn't about to admit it now. "What happened to your songwriting, man?"
"It was crap! We both know it. You're the one with the regular gigs as a musician." Rodolfo pronounced the word musi-chi-one, Frank noted.
"Regular? I host open mic night once a week. My paychecks come from the Coffee Cabana. But I'm still trying to…"
"Well, I'm through trying! My talents lie elsewhere. I have found something I am actually honest-to-goodness good at and by God I'm gonna do it!" Rodolfo finished this statement with a triumphant blast of hairspray on the bangs of his big blond wig.
Frank was suddenly reminded of waiting in the doorway of his childhood bathroom in Jersey, dumb-founded and transfixed by his older sisters' elaborate beauty rituals. Armed with bobby pins and hot pink cans of Aerosol spray, they blowdried, teased, and shellacked their bangs into strange scalloped formations that were as impressive as they were unflattering. As they wrestled each hair into submission, they'd argue – "The left side, Ann-Marie! There's a gaping fucking hole!" – "It's not a hole, it's a dip, ya doofus!" -- while all Frank wanted to do was pee. Somehow, all these years later in the bathroom of this two-bedroom in Tennessee, absolutely nothing had changed.
"…And when you're really good, you've just gotta ride it, like really harness that gift and ride it all the way," Rodolfo was explaining breezily as he adjusted the stuffing in his bra.
"But Rodolfo…" Frank wanted to tell him the truth: he wasn't good, that there was no gift, that he actually really sucked, if you wanted to get right down to it, and furthermore it was kind of insulting to the guys who were really good, not to mention the artist herself, and creatively it was a total cop-out, almost like plagiarism or something – but what he said was, "Forget it…" and shuffled down the hall to play with his Xbox.
"You think you're a liberal, Frank, but you are a S-Q-U-A-R-E!" Rodolfo sang from the bathroom.
Ten minutes later, Rodolfo bopped his fully made-up face in front of the TV screen. "I'm off!" he chirped, smelling like a Wild West whorehouse, or at least what Frank imagined one would smell like. "Why don't you come, Frank. Just stop by!"
Rodolfo could only stay irritated with Frank for as long as it took his hairspray to harden. With similar magnanimous spirit, Frank allowed, "Maybe."
"'Kay, byeee!" The apartment door slammed shut.
Frank turned off the Xbox and stared at the blank screen for awhile. It was Friday night, and it was hot as hell in their apartment, what with the air conditioner on the fritz. Maybe he was biased about it because it was her, because he loved her so much and couldn't stand to see her mocked. Maybe it wasn't mocking, but "homage," as Rodolfo always justified it. Maybe Rodolfo was better than Frank gave him credit for.
Frank eased tentatively off the couch and stretched. He didn't need extended time in the bathroom to get ready, just his keys and his wallet, conveniently centered on the coffee table. Maybe it would be good.
Half an hour later, he found himself staring slack-jawed at the main stage of Club Pussywillow, where Rodolfo was pantomime-pouring himself a cup of coffee. Or rather, as the song lyric goes, "a cup of ambition." Then Rodolfo was high-stepping his way through the rest of Dolly Parton's "9 to 5," lip-synching a half-measure behind the words, dancing with confidence in spite of no discernible sense of rhythm, a lipstick smudge visible across his front tooth and upper lip. The crowd was polite but unenthused.
At the line "It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it," Rodolfo let loose with a tremendous neck roll, presumably to illustrate crazy. There followed a loud popping sound, and Rodolfo grabbed his neck and gasped. The song played on, but Rodolfo did not move. Neck cocked, hand clapped to it, one cowboy boot still poised to prance, he just stood there. Finally somebody cut the music and a burly stage technician helped Rodolfo into the wings. The crowd dispensed six claps, two whistles, and a muted "Woo hoo" (from Frank.)
Later, at home, Frank let Rodolfo eat all of his Lucky Charms. Then he made him a cold compress for his neck and helped him to bed. As Frank stood in his bedroom doorway to say good night, Rodolfo looked up at him plaintively, burped softly, and asked, "But wasn't I good up until then?"
Frank swallowed hard, considered the six months left on their lease, and lied.
Fingers
By Bradley Paul Valentine
Rumor had it that to sleep with this woman all you had to do was cut off one of your fingers and give it to her. I heard several different stories from the different guys on the crew I'd been paired with on the various nights I worked on the riot squad after the gas shortages. Being new, "the rookie," I figured they were putting me on. But over the period of a month the stories continued. I didn't believe them. Aside from being outrageous, all of the men had all of their fingers or else they would have been cut from the squad as being disabled. Regardless, every man on the crew stood by his claim, citing without hesitation or elaboration their "reliable sources."
The girl in question worked at this little cafe that stayed open every night until 2 AM. We never saw her anywhere else but standing against this very ugly wall smoking cigarettes as we patrolled the area. She was there on my first night on the job all the way to the end of my four-month stint. The tales went on about those men who because of this girl supposedly were walking the city short of a finger or two or several more. I could not imagine it.
The men who slept with her, as the stories went, told of how she would take their severed finger and hold it in her hand as she lead them through the cafe to the back room where there was a bare mattress. They told of how when she took off her shirt underneath would be a loose necklace of the finger bones of all the men she had slept with. But it didn't matter to these men who'd been pushed past the point of desperation by their desire for her. Normally indifferent to the men, never tempted without her fee, she would supposedly commit to the sex acts with an intensity that would make them forget about their severed finger sitting on a crate by the mattress.
Finally I made up my mind to meet her. I found her out by the wall of the cafe, cigarette in hand as usual. Seeing her up close, I understood why the men would talk about her. She was very pretty standing against that ugly wall. I felt immediately embarrassed, brought back from the mist of unreality that sets in after many sleepless nights with the men and their tales. Of course they were just wild stories, I thought.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I want their fingers?" she asked me.
I did not say anything. I could see my partner across the street in the cab of the truck laughing hysterically, trying to hide his face.
"I'll tell you," she went on casually.
I turned back to her.
"But that comes with a price, too."
I thought that she must have been joking even though she looked at me, not smiling, deadly serious.
Feng Shui By Rubber John
Ideally you should get someone in that knows what they're talking about - someone with experience. Perhaps even pay them to sort it all out for you. Ideally.
What you do is clear everything out before you start so that you can assess the space, the shape and size and then decorate - make it clean and fresh. Make it new.
I've done OK on my own, I think. It feels good.
The Qi (Chi) now flows freely from the windows of my third storey flat, carried by the restless wind from the south. This is said to bring luck.
It circulates around the living room, through to the kitchen area, my bedroom and the bathroom- all of which I have painted in a smooth, white paint.
White gives the impression of space and has a calming energy, along with cool colours such as blue. I have included tiny proportions of these colours in the décor for the bathroom.
Some of the furniture was already appropriate, like the sofa and chairs. These are now set in places that allow the energy to travel more freely. The table, however, along with some other items had to be replaced. The colours were all wrong and totally upset the harmony of the room.
I bought two new tables- a circular glass coffee table for the centre of the living room and a smaller bedside table for my bedroom.
I also threw out lots of junk, including a set of drawers and a couple of stools that I never used, but I decided to add a few more plants as I don't get out much besides work and my complexion could do with the oxygen.
Mugs and cups were replaced. So was my entire cutlery set.
My posters have been relegated to two walls only. Miss Saigon is hung on the wall to the left of the kitchen - Cats and Les Miz on the opposing wall.
I have placed my meditation mat where the Qi is at its pinnacle, and where I purposefully left a sizeable space free of furniture. This spot also allows a generous view out of the window and across the town's sky, but at the same time completely eclipses the Ruben scum down below that drink and scorn their way through their moral free existences.
My coats and hats will be stored along with all of my other clothes and shoes in various compartments in the new wardrobe that I bought for my bedroom.
Books, films and music will be kept packed and out of the way with the stereo system near the sofa and the skulls will be put in order on one of the shelves in the kitchen.
I will have to remove Rachel's body from the bath tub. I could skin her, then put all of her organs in polythene bags and put them in the freezer. Unfortunately though, there isn't enough room for her head in the fridge, what with Penny's head and those hands from that woman I can't remember the name of, but I could keep her complete skeleton in my bed for a while until I figure out if it works well enough with the current scheme of the flat.
Those Yin-Yang coasters I bought can go anywhere really. I'll leave a couple in the living room, a couple in the kitchen and one in the bedroom.
I'm not sure about the curtains though. They might have to go.
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Saturday, March 31, 2007
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The Implications of Cleanliness By Molly Lederer
The Cozy Corner Cafe over on South Peabody was never known as the cleanest establishment in town. The cracked Formica counters and faux marble floors were ringed with grime; the blue vinyl booths were of questionable taste at best, and a cesspool of bacteria and latent body odor at worst. But the food was good, in the way that anything slapped on a grease-coated grill can be good, and Carl Jean liked working there.
He liked the hustle bustle pace and the busybody spirit of the place, everyone with something to say to or about the person in the next booth. He liked the temperamental jukebox, which only worked if you kicked it in the right spot and played songs like "If You Like Pina Coladas" (which he was amazed to learn was actually titled "Placid Escape"!) Carl Jean mostly washed the dishes, sometimes took out the trash, occasionally swept, and once in awhile mopped. He was of the firm belief that the steam from the industrial sink had cleared up his complexion.
Not so for Leeann Pernicki, who could've used a little more time in the back kitchen and away from the grill. Poor girl's face was like a ripe raspberry, bumpy and pinky-red all over. Still, Carl Jean was not adverse to the sight of her upturned – some might say disproportionately large, but not Carl Jean – backside, sashaying around the Cozy Corner like she owned the place, with her blue gingham uniform stretched tight. Carl Jean wouldn't have minded taking her out sometime, maybe to the drive-in or the bumper cars on North Peabody. But before he got around to asking her, something terrible happened.
What happened was, it was closing time one night, and Carl Jean was sweeping up. Which is to say that he was leaning on a broomstick and gazing moon-faced out the back window, re-working a complicated scenario involving Leeann Pernicki, a pogo stick, and the song "Eye of the Tiger," when he heard a strange sound. It was coming from behind the industrial fridge, a kind of squeaking noise. A high-pitched sort of keening. Carl Jean flicked off the ceiling fan to hear it better. Silence. He crept over to the fridge and peered behind it. Then he opened his mouth and dropped the broom with a clatter.
The café door swung open and Leeann poked her pink head in. "What's goin' on, Carl Jean?"
Carl Jean straightened up and murmured coolly, "Nuthin'."
"You just made a weird noise. Like a fog horn."
"That wasn't me."
They stared at each other while, Leeann's dark squinty eyes assessing him closely, pinpricks in a sea of pink pulp. He crumbled under her scrutiny.
"Behind the fridge," he sighed, slumping over the dish rack.
Leeann bounced over to take a look. "Oh shit, guess we got mice again. Look at that, he tried to get off the glue trap by chewing his own little leg off…"
"Oh God," Carl Jean gasped. "That's horrible."
"Well, better get it out of there!" Leeann cheerfully squatted down -- a position Carl Jean would ordinarily have been able to appreciate, but under the circumstances only noticed with a theoretic, fleeting interest.
"Poor little…" Carl Jean trailed off, remembering the bedtime stories his Grandpa Tanner used to tell him. Little mouse in his little mouse house, drinking tea and waltzing with the flea. They eat toast with jam, and when the cat calls, they scram, woo eee!
"Here, hold it while I get the fire extinguisher," Leeann was saying, and Carl Jean realized she was thrusting the glue trap with the half dead mouse at him.
He reared back. "What do you need the fire extinguisher for?"
Leeann rolled her eyes. "To crush it, lamebrain."
"To what?!" Carl Jean grabbed the trap protectively. It was a small field mouse, soft and brown, lying curled on his side with one hind leg a half inch away from his body. He gazed up at Carl Jean with his little mouse eyes and squeaked. "We'll just put him outside, Leeann. Just out in the field…"
"Ha! You try getting that stinker off the glue."
Carl Jean furrowed his brow, put on his yellow dishwashing glove, and made an earnest attempt. The squeaking grew frenzied and his glove got stuck to the trap. "I can't – it won't -- oh…" Carl Jean had to wriggle his arm out of the glove, which remained firmly attached to the trap, hanging over the side limply like a banana peel.
Leeann lugged the fire extinguisher over. "Look, it's in pain, and we gotta just get it over with. If you put it out in the field on the trap, it'll just die slowly, freeze, or get eaten."
Carl Jean suddenly felt very ill.
"Now," Leeann said, all business, "Put it on the floor, I'll throw another glue trap on top, and then we'll crush it."
"I really – I don't think…"
"Carl Jean, you're white as a sheet! You look like you might faint!"
"I've got to – goodbye," Carl Jean placed the mouse trap on the half-swept floor. The little mouse looked at him and squeaked, Stay, Carl Jean, please stay. Save me, Carl Jean. Crater Face is gonna kill me.
"I can't!"
"What?" Leeann looked at him curiously.
"Nuthin'!" he grunted, and slunk out the back. As the door swung shut behind him, he thought he heard a squeak and a thump, but he couldn't be sure.
The next night at work, Leeann called him Minnie and he watched her forlornly, her round rump a constant reminder of the nights they would never spend together on the bumper cars. But he cleaned, oh did he clean. That back kitchen was swept, mopped, sprayed, scrubbed, disinfected, and dusted. And from then on, the Cozy Corner Café enjoyed a slightly improved reputation.
Margarita's Roses By Curtis Meyer
Margarita explains to Ms. Trenchard
That the best way to fertilize a garden
Is with organic material
She's never had to buy fertilizer a day in her life
But her roses are the envy of the neighborhood
When Ms. Trenchard asks for her secret
Margarita advises her to bury the scraps from her meals in the dirt
When setting the foundation for new plants
She prefers chicken bones and shells left over
From crab cakes and shrimp cocktails
But lately she's been substituting the crusts cuts off
From the sandwiches she makes her husband for lunch at the office
They work just fine, she says
Ms. Trenchard tells Margarita
That her roses are a shoo-in for Grand Prize at this weekend's
garden festival
Standing up, Margarita takes off her gardener's gloves
And freeing her hair from its bun, she thanks Ms. Trenchard for the compliment
Adding that she could use the money to help pay the bills
Looking up from Margarita's cleavage
Ms. Trenchard thinks again how striking she is
That she could easily have any man she wanted
Margarita adds that in lieu of bones or shellfish
One can use the shells of peanuts or mixed nuts
Even fingernail or toenail clippings or hair that any barber
Will gladly sweep up and bag per request
It's like putting yourself in your creation, she says
Her mother used to bury her baby teeth after the Tooth Fairy
came to visit
She says with a laugh that she knew the whole time but never let on
Margarita's comment about baby teeth reminds Ms. Trenchard
About the string of disappearances that have befallen their town
Three teenage boys, ages 15 to 18
The latest news is that
Authorities are looking for
One of the boy's fathers
Margarita mentions that she heard about Darryl Simmons
He's a Scoutmaster for her son's troop
This used to be such a peaceful town, she says
The whole neighborhood has gone to Hell, Ms. Trenchard remarks
Even her outdoor cat has been missing for what seems like days
Margarita excuses herself
Ms. Trenchard's talk reminds her
She has to make lemon squares
For her 8 year-old's Cub Scout troop
The other den mothers are holding a bake sale
To raise awareness about Darryl and his 17 year-old son
Whose younger brother is in the troop too
Ms. Trenchard tells Margarita
She wishes she could be like her
Fit, beautiful, and some 20 years younger
With a loving son and husband
Margarita smiles, wondering
If anyone will miss the old widow when she's gone
Holding a rosebud only a few shades lighter
Than her own lips and cheeks
With her free hand she removes a strand of black hair
From in front of her almond-shaped eyes
Coffee grounds work too, she says, re-emphasizing that any organic matter will do
Ms. Trenchard leaves, telling Margarita to call her Linda
Margarita cuts the stem of a rose with a pair of shears
Before opening the gate to the backyard
A hummingbird crosses her path as she walks to the tool shed
Inside, she delicately puts the rose inside a longneck vase
Before placing her shears, gloves, and spade
Atop a shelf adjacent to a workman's bench adorned by a hacksaw
A bottle of rat poison, and a small blue pet collar
Walking out, her sandals kick a garbage bag on the floor filled with children's clothes
A bloodstained dishrag, and a Scoutmaster's uniform dabbed with one smear of lipstick
All waiting to be washed with bleach and sent off to the Salvation Army
Holly Went Lightly
By Kim Jong-il
This is more a memoir than fiction, but I am of the belief that at the root of all fiction is truth. Or other fiction. But in this case: truth.
For a brief period in 1998, I would frequently visit a Starbucks just outside of Pyongyang, taking it upon myself to flirt mercilessly with the cute barista named Holly, a 23-year-old blonde from Oregon. Holly had come to the city to pursue her dreams of acting and from the time I first met her I dreamt of walking her through my apple orchard, discussing Fellini, and then making love to her atop a pile of rotting crabapples, their sour juices stinging our skin.
The third or fourth time I saw her I resolved to ask her out. The scene was rehearsed many times. She would take my order, I would get my change, and I would ask her if she liked apple orchards or the opera or unfathomably large prison camps. A half-year courtship would follow. I would marry and impregnate her, and then hang her upside down and bleed her like a sacrificial goat once she had born me a healthy male child.
But things did not work out in such a way, my dear readers.
"Hello, Holly," I said. "Nice weather we're having." Just as rehearsed.
"Yo, KJ!" she took to calling me KJ by my second visit. "What can I get you?"
"Ahem," I cleared my throat. My coffee order was a fairly spartan grande americano, black with five sugars- easy enough to make so I could capture her full attention. "I'll have a grande americano," I said and then immediately realized my mistake. In my rehearsed haste I pronounced the 'and' in 'grande' as the 'and' in 'candy' and not as the 'ond' in 'pond.'
"Um, sure. One grande americano coming up," Holly said, correcting me. I knew right then that I had lost her. Kim Jong-il had proven a philistine. At once I lamented the year in college I decided to spend at Sciences Po instead of the University of Bologna. Holly handed me my coffee and I shuffled out of the store, my confidence in tatters. Most might think I would have killed Holly, and the old Kim would have. But I let Holly be. I loved her too much to kill her on impulse.
When I returned to the office I found, waiting for me, a female insurgent from the state prison by the name of Park Sung-nam. Park Sung-nam proved, with her hair dyed blonde, a suitable Holly-effigy. First I singed her fingertips and had each of her teeth removed. Corpse identification was, of course, not really an issue, but I liked to role-play as if it were; the added element of danger sustained my erection. I sewed the left side of her mouth shut with surgical thread to marginally stifle her pleas for help (More accurately, I had my mistress do it. I can't be bothered by such domestic tasks).
"You pretentious coffee slinging whore," I said as I crosshatched Park Sung-nam's features with a razor blade, rubbing a specially constructed steel wool glove up and down her face and through the newly colored dirty blond hair. Her screams were half-muffled, like a screeching cat in the pillowcase you held up to the exhaust of your Daewoo. "I dare you to call me a philistine again." In the end I severed her left foot at the ankle, made a creative pattern of cigarette burns across her torso and left her bound in a dark closet with only the rats and her thoughts to accompany her until her death. The whole thing was too emotionally draining for me to finish the job properly.
As for the Starbucks, I had it razed the day after. About a week and a half later Holly found work at a Coffee Bean which had opened only a few blocks away. Every morning from then on I ordered my americano from Holly, the cute former Starbucks barista at Coffee Bean, but our relationship was never the same. And then I had her killed for wearing a hat on a Wednesday. I believe it was Faulkner who said, "Caprice is the not only the right of the ruler, but his duty." It was either Faulkner or nobody.
Hurt By Jenny Lederer
They're standing in the shower, holding each other. Her head is curled into the hollow under his chin, listening intently to the Morse code of his pulse. He flinches a little as water runs into his cut eyebrow and into his split lip. The bathroom fills up with steam. Her dress, already heavy with sequins, grows heavier with the weight of the water. His leather shoes are softening beyond redemption.
After a long time like this he lifts her up and out of the bathtub. Seats her on the edge, gently towels her dry and begins bandaging her incisions. They will certainly miss the party now, so there's no need to rush. When he finishes with her, she will bandage him.
Is there anything better, she wonders, gingerly skating her fingers over her knees where the swelling has already begun, more simple and sweet, than lovers undressing and dressing each other? They are so lucky to have this. They should tell each other more often.
Before she found him it was always masturbatory, alone in her bathtub with a hammer or a broken water glass. He had gotten in the sad habit of picking fights in sports bars by whispering a lewd suggestion to the brawniest guy there. That was too dangerous, and left him feeling sick, like a rapist; they could never realized how much pleasure he stole from watching, say, his teeth spraying out and skittering across the asphalt. He had figured he was gay, more or less. He never imagined a woman with appetites like his.
For a long time it's happiness, so intense and protracted it feels undeserved. And then things change. The constant mounting costs of home repairs and the hunt for new apartments every couple of months begin to take their toll. He starts working later and later. He comes home too tired to fight. She starts taking long walks through the city alone; she smiles at madmen on the subway with such glittering feverish intensity that they look away, unnerved.
One night he comes home late and pads softly into the bedroom where she's sleeping. He flicks on the bedside lamp and pulls back the covers. He stops. Stares. Her naked arm is outstretched toward him, and on top of old yellowing bruises, fresh ones are blooming. A plum sized welt stares unblinking and accusatory from her shoulder. He pulls the rest of the blankets off her body and looks closer. She stirs and mutters, and then he is grabbing her, shaking her, shouting "Who?" and crying, and she is terrified because there is no love in his hands.
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Thursday, March 01, 2007
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Marjorie Aplomb By Eric Schwartz
I can't say I ever liked Marjorie Aplomb.
There was something odd about her, something twitchy, freakish, combustible.
I also can't say in good conscience that I didn't want to bed her, but the fantasy usually involved Akido classes and two fire extinguishers. But it was that edgy, loner, assassin combustibility that made me want her and made blood rush to my unmentionables at the sight of a fire safety station.
All in all, I thought the evening was going well. She seemed more sedate, over her plate of Cajun blackened salmon, than I had ever seen her. I have always felt that people let their guard down when they eat. All fashion and facade dissipates over a nice stuffed cabbage or Belgian waffle. So I hardly touched my crab.
Instead I watched the real Marjorie shovel seafood into her skull. She had the unnerving habit of eating everything on her plate counter-clockwise. As she finished each item, she would stare unblinking at the next dish that she was going to devour as if it were going to make a break for freedom. Then, satisfied that her rice pilaf had no hidden agenda and no intention of racing for amnesty, she would plunge her fork into its depths. Her gaze would then lock onto her steamed vegetables.
The whole evening was filled with this type of behavior. Several times during the night we passed a billboard of McGruff, the Crime Fighting Dog, and every time she felt compelled to roll down my car window and bellow "You piss-swilling, fascist mongrel!!!" at the sign. Every time I would try to kick start a conversation it would come around again to the fact that she'd been raped by a freelance journalist at a Reggae Sunsplash concert, and then pivot abruptly into the social significance of heavy eyeliner. Marjorie was fathoms below any normalcy I had encountered in my relatively short life.
But the sex was exquisite.
As we hungrily shucked our clothes, I saw Marjorie in a whole new light. Nude in the half-light I could have mistaken her for a Young Republican hard-body. Her pale skin was surprisingly free of any blemishes. And, oh God- the way she moved. It was as if I were basting myself in warm butter and attempting a medium-tension Stairmaster at full speed. I felt like I was fucking a Jackson Pollack-animalistic and guttural, yet brilliantly abstract. My head swam. When she climaxed the first time, she threw back her head and seductively moaned, "I am Death, destroyer of worlds." The second time she whimpered breathlessly, " "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" My degree in literature kept me going. Kipling! Dickens! Capote! Umberto Eco! Yes! Yes!
But my degree was worthless in the end. I collapsed, exhausted onto the bed next her, my abdominal muscles still quaking. She leaned over and kissed me gently on the forehead. She ran her hand along the line of sweat on my face that had just begun to cool.
"It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest I go to, than I have ever known," she said.
I just chuckled and asked for a defibrillator.
To: cutebunnyxxx By Amy Carpenter
To: cutebunnyxxx
From:georgiew
I know homeland security is so gay. It was totally not my idea but it's only for terrorists and people not like us you know? tell me more about your dog I have a dog too! ttyl!
-prez
To: cutebunnyxxx
From: georgiew
hey it's me again! I so don't want to do this speech tonight ugh whtever.. so guess what, cheney is being such a prick. I'd call him a dick, but that's his name. I'm glad my mom didn't name me dick! what do you smell like? I can't believe we haven't even met yet. I really liked your last message about guns. I like hunting but I only wear swade, not leather. did you know that my brother is sleeping with donatella versace? don't tell anyone. please write more!
xoxo
prez
To: cutebunnyxxx
From: georgiew
omg, wars sucks but sombuddies got to do it, right? what's that saying, just do it? that's me I guess. ughhh… I seriously don't get paid enough for this. dick is mad again and I haven't even done anything wrong. this is like being in school ALL THE TIME. I hate it. I should never have agreed to this job. My dad likes war and business stuff, but come on I am not into all those games. monopoly, RISK, battleship…I'm more of a hungry hungry hippos guy…how bout you? did you ever play that? maybe I can get somebody to get me that and we could play together. you will have to tell me where you live and then I will have secret service come get you. that will be fun.
ok talk soon
xoxoxoxooxooxooxxoox
your prez (haha!)
To: cutebunnyxxx
From: georgiew
so yeah, I totally can't believe how cool this myspace thing is. I'm still kind of amazed at how close I feel to a complete stranger. I usually hate strangers! I mean it's like we're connected in the brain or something! I can never talk to laura like this, only rummy but he's gone now along with brownie, oh well. time to look on the bright side. so I wasn't kidding about that hungry hippos thing - I had condi look into it and she says they have it on ebay. what's that? if you could help me with this, thatd be so great. I think it would be cool to play on the bed in Lincun's bedroom we can't eat in there though and we'd have to watch out for tours, maybe you could come at night? I will look into this. we could swim in the pool too and maybe watch a movie. I like ghost and spaceballs. okay, well I gotta go to some war meeting or something. did you see grays anatomy last night? me too.
xxxxxxoooooxoxoxoxoxo
george
To: cutebunnyxxx
From: georgiew
why haven't you written? is that ebay thing hard? don't feel bad, we can probably get the hippos game somewhere else. I heard somebody say google the other day – what the hell is that? doesn't this internet end somewhere? sometimes I get so confused by all of this stuff. but you know what? I am going to try and find out. because imagine if I had never tried any of this. then I would never have met you. wish me luck!
xoxo
george
To: cutebunnyxxx
From: georgiew
I am totally not so good right now so I hope you are okay, because I'm not. No more operation hungry hippo at least not for a while. yeah everything totally sucks dick is being a total jerk. I feel really weird and kind of sick too. I found that google thing and when I realized that I could just type anything in I looked for fishing stuff, and that hippo game and to see if laura was on there and then I was like maybe Im on there and I never knew that I look like a chimp or that there are Hitler posters of me but the worst part is that I was looking around and after I found my poor buddy ted haggard I thought of saddam and I typed him in and all these things came up but they were videos and it took me a long time to get my speakers to work but then when they did I was able to watch A VIDEO of saddam getting hung and that just totally freaked me out because we might be on opposite teams but we are still in the same game you know and if he can get hung well so I was watching it over and over and over again and I wasn't paying any attention to anything and then all of a sudden there was condi saying george…george…and I realized I was shaking but there was a tour in there in my office and it had all these school kids and people with cameras and it was so bad. I pretended like I'd choked on a pretzel again and excused myself but then dick found me and it's been really really bad around here worse than when I forgot to be spooked when the whole 911 thing happened and I just sat there with that stupid goat book…omg this is so bad, they told me they were just going to take him to a fancy prison the kind with indoor swimming pools and models everywhere. I don't know what to do. is there something on the internet to help me? please let me know. thanks so much.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
your true friend
georgie
To: cutebunnyxxx
From: georgiew
I have to write this super fast I hope you get it they are coming into my office and taking my computer away I am not allowed to have the internet anymore they are saying it is a liability and that it cannot be risked call me or something bunny or write or when I get out of here I will write y
Jungle Boy
By Gavin Castleton
Red Teller was seven when his brother Colin left for the Congo. Tales of his voyage became a favorite subject of Red's lunchroom council of third graders, though Red's version of events, magnified and distorted by his carnival mirror imagination, bore only a passing resemblance to the actual stories in Colin's letters. But only the bulky Nick Canache challenged these performances, declaring Red a "white trash gaylord" and maybe slapping an oily slice of pizza across his cheek.
Each of Colin's letters would trigger a new tirade from Mr. Teller. Fueled by the shots of whiskey lined up on the coffee table like penguins, Mr. Teller's nightly rants regarding his son's safety would escalate to apoplectic proportions. Mrs. Teller would try to deflate him with something like, "Richie, they all have cell phones over there now!" (For Mrs. Teller, cell phones were the distinction between good Republicans and anarchists).
"Deb, you don't understand how far one of them will go to get his hands on the White Man's Magic," Mr. Teller would reply, referencing a favorite episode of Ramar of the Jungle. Each concern for Colin that he was able to articulate was riddled with caricature: wildlife became "beasts," Africans werewolfed into "savages."
A couple days after the White Man's Magic speech, Colin was killed by savages. A week later the family received three photos in a manila envelope: a fraction of him, from the second knuckle of his remaining fingers down to his wrist, identified by a his bulky compass watch.
Two weeks after the funeral, a package addressed to Red arrived at the house from Colin. In the box Red found a letter. Mrs. Teller shakily read it aloud, "My name Fidele. You brother Colin stay with my family for weeks before he leaves for west coast. He find this gifts for you and ask me to send. Be Gola."
Wrapped in a purple cloth inside the box was a pair of jaws. Red brought the box into his room and propped up the teeth on his nightstand. He half expected them to say something. When they finally did, it was an hour past his bedtime. He watched the jaws open and shut three times before saying, "Red. Red. You awake?"
It was Colin's voice coming from the empty jaws on his nightstand.
"Colin?"
"Don't be afraid. I'm coming back to see you."
"Aren't you dead?"
This question hung in the air unanswered.
The next day, Red opted not to tell his parents about the talking teeth and instead consult the lunchroom council. Tory, Steven, and Perry were speechless. Nick Canache, who Red thought was out of earshot, leaned over from a neighboring table and punched Red in the arm with a sneered "Douchebag."
When the chicken legs arrived a week later, Red's mother threw up in the kitchen sink. Red ran the claws up to his room and put them in his dresser drawer. His mother never even came up the stairs that night – she'd vomited out the last of any feeling that was in her.
"Red. Red. You awake?"
"Colin!"
"I'm coming back to see you." Again, the conversation halted on those words; inside Red's dresser the claws clicked and scratched the lining. Red rose twice to observe them moving, but couldn't catch them animated. He spent the night watching the windows while they tapped out their strange Morse code.
Three days later there was a third package, and then a fourth: a box of leopard ears and the eyes of a cow. Red took these gifts up to his room and sat on his bed, nudging them with his pinky. He couldn't wait until evening. "Colin! COLIN!" he demanded. The eyes rolled towards him in their watery sockets. The teeth yawned.
"Hey, stop yelling."
"Colin, can you see me?"
"Of course I can, doofus. I told you I was coming back to see you."
Red had thought of hundreds of questions for Colin, about Africa, about life after death. But all he could blurt out was, "Nick Canache doesn't believe you're coming back."
The eyes lolled left and right.
"Red, you need to do something for me."
Red was unsure if Colin had heard him. "What?"
"Go get Mom's sewing kit. Make sure no one sees you."
For the next two hours Red received a crash course in taxidermy from his fragmented brother. Using his Winnie The Pooh bear as a base, he had patched together a fanged, dough-eyed Frankenbear, which now sat on his dresser flexing his claws and twitching his spotted ears. Once he had finished stretching his new body, Colin turned to Red and was shocked to see the fear on his face. The bear's motley features pulled together into one big wound.
"I don't want you to see me like this. Put me in the closet, please," Colin said curtly.
Later, Red lay in his bed imagining life with his new stuffed brother. Would he be able to go outside? Would he eat and go to the bathroom? What would happen when Mom and Dad found out? To his own surprise, these and many other fitting questions were eclipsed by "Colin, Nick Canache doesn't believe you're coming back."
And from deep in the closet Colin answered: "Bring him to see me."
Officer Kinnard couldn't help but notice that it was as if someone had attempted to give the dresser organs of its own: a brain in the top drawer, heart and lungs below, intestines where the once clean pants lived, in the bottom drawer. Red's parents sat eerily calm in the living room. The ghastly murder of their one remaining son couldn't shock them - it fit too neatly into the string of surreal events they'd found themselves in. When Officer Kinnard extracted the head from the top drawer, both parents were finally roused out of their stupor. It wasn't the head of their son Red, it was someone older. Someone rounder. And, unlike any expression Red had ever worn, the look on that head said, "Bite me."
Later, as the police catalogued every inch of Red's room, Mrs. Teller found the envelope from Colin in the pile of mail by the door. It was postmarked the day Colin was killed. Inside was a photo of Colin and Red, making monkey smiles out of orange peels and waving from the jungles of Africa. Scribbled on the back were the words "Wish you were here."
You Have a Thick Skinned Face By Christine del Castillo
"Oh, really? Well, I guess I'll see you at home, then."
Ila ended her mother's phone call and gazed dolefully down the empty, acacia-lined avenue. Teresa was about to close a deal and could not come get her.
"Don't pick me up. I'll walk," said Deo, talking on his cellphone behind her. That was unusually reticent of him. So annoying. She couldn't even hate him for being stupid. They had been adversaries since the fourth grade, when he told her that some hair accessories she had on looked like condoms. She had been furious when someone explained to her what a condom actually was. What a highly unoriginal cosmic joke, to be cast opposite each other in the school play.
He caught her watching him. "Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate!" he exclaimed.
"Let him that moved you hither remove you hence: I knew you at the first. You were a moveable," she responded witheringly.
"Why, what's a moveable?"
"A join'd-stool."
"Thou hast hit it: come, sit on me."
"Asses are made to bear and so are you."
"Women are made to bear and so are you."
Their voices were amplified by the absence of other students. The only people who were around now were the athletes, far away in their gymnasiums, and the chorale, practicing for the next mass.
"Performing The Taming of the Shrew at a Filipino Catholic school is just as weird as doing Fiddler on the Roof last year," Ila said.
"Ang kapal ng mukha mo." (Literally, "you have a thick-skinned face," figuratively, "you are conceited.")
Ila gave him a look: Oh, I am?
He thought she meant that no one would get it. She was thinking more along the lines of how weird people sounded in Elizabethan English, and how ridiculously overheated they would be in their costumes.
"So you're walking?"
He nodded.
"Who was supposed to be picking you up?"
"My mother's new husband."
"Oh."
The week before they were both tapped to be on debate teams, for which the topic had been "The Legalization of Divorce in the Philippines." In a rare moment of backstage camaraderie, he'd asked her how he looked in his suit and tie.
"Fine," she said. Not only did she lose that day (even though her own parents were separated and she'd read books to prepare) but she put on her mother's houndstooth sheath dress, which was apparently transparent under stage lights. Why hadn't he said anything? Putang ina. That was the last straw. She attacked him via a private message in a chatroom that night, sneering at his choice of aliases.
Ilarawan: i know who you are. i hate you.
excelsis de0: what?
That was kind of extreme, she thought in retrospect, but she'd been upset.
She felt awkward about pointing out that they were walking together, so she didn't. She hoped no one saw them. He was surprised she was tolerating him for this long, but couldn't tell if was just out of an objective curiosity, like to mold in a petri dish. He realized that no one noticed Ila turning beautiful until she had. She did not wear it well; she was too defensive. The other kids thought she was stuck-up and an oddnik. But her face had opened a little when she was lost in thought.
A golf cart bumpily rounded the corner just in front of them, startling Ila. "'An ostentatious display of wealth,'" she said, quoting her mother.
"It's stupid," he agreed. "You would think there would be rules about keeping those things off the road."
There was a long silence.
"So, Ila," he started, and she noticed a Cheshire cat gleam in his eyes. "Is that short for...?"
"It means island."
"Ila isla," he mused.
"If you tell me that no woman is an island, I will push you into open traffic, 'God's gift'," she said, raising an eyebrow. Deo was short for Deodato.
He laughed delightedly. "Hey, I didn't choose it." He flipped open a box of cigarettes. "Want one?"
"Ugh, no."
The flame from his lighter danced on his cheek. He took a long drag. "I steal them from my stepfather."
"I log on the internet at five in the morning," she said. This was Ila's version of rebellion.
"Huh," he said, recalling the chatroom encounter.
"This is my house," she said finally, stopping. The ilang-ilang trees were blooming, and the air smelled like sultry jasmine and heavily buttered bread. He sat on her curb, unfolding his long legs, and pointed at a house a few blocks down.
"I live over there now."
"No kidding."
He didn't seem like he was about to leave, so she sat down next to him. He finished the last of his cigarette, stubbed it out, and pulled out another. She stared at him.
"Give me one of those," she commanded. He looked amused, but lit one for her anyway. She took a puff, and choked, trying to restrain a coughing fit. A thin curl of smoke hovered just above the sweet indent in her upper lip, and dissipated.
"This is a very bad habit to start, you know," he said.
She leaned back, putting all her weight on one arm. The backs of their hands touched, but she let that lie, too.
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Thursday, February 01, 2007
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 1812x4 By Jesse Perez
They had met in art class, and after many days of basting Arthur finally convinced Ilona to let him into Tech-City before the store opened for the day. Tech-City had the cheapest and best selection of electronics in town. Arthur had been waiting for over two years to get the newest 1812x4.
Ilona was an energetic sprite of a girl. She greeted him at the back of the store with, "Arthur, you're never on time! Are you excited? So it's pretty warm out today huh?"
She grinned up expectantly at Arthur. Though he appreciated the favor, he wasn't particularly interested in whatever she wanted to chitter about this morning. He waved her away.
"Thanks Ilona, I know exactly where it's at." He quickly walked in the opposite direction, leaving Ilona sheepishly standing by the robotic vacuums. Examining each box within the bulletproof glass display case Arthur wondered if all the units were really programmed uniformly or if each one had some slight but crucial difference. He nervously chewed the cuff of his shirt.
Finally Arthur settled on the box in the center of the row three units back. In the distance he could hear Ilona's footsteps echo along the corridors of the lonely consumer warehouse. He entered the code of his chosen unit; a robotic arm located his box, lifted, and brought it to the register. The house lights in the large warehouse sleepily fluttered on.
He met Ilona at the register. She smiled at Arthur, "Don't you think these things are kind of weird? I mean... they're so lifelike."
"I know," said Arthur grinning as he handed his credit card to Ilona. Her gaze lingered on his fingers, which had started drumming impatiently on the counter. Turning away she quickly entered the card into the computer and handed him his card and Tech-City receipt with a look of defeat. An obnoxious electric voice sputtered directions for exit and pickup of his parcel. Arthur tipped an imaginary hat to Ilona and without another word strode out of Tech-City.
Back in his apartment, Arthur tore through the cellophane of his1812x4 version 2.0: a five foot three inch bare naked brunette beauty, and all his. He stroked her face, touched her lips, and began unpacking the rest of her. Her skin was cold, but so soft and lifelike.
He began fumbling around for the power button which he finally located behind a flesh colored panel on the bottom of her left foot. Arthur copped a quick feel and proceeded to flip the tiny switch behind the flesh colored panel from off to on. A small whirring sound came from within, and her fingers wriggled momentarily. Suddenly her eyes clicked open revealing dazzling green irises. She scanned the room then fixed her gaze on Arthur.
"Hello, what is your name?" Her voice was sultry and smooth.
Arthur stammered, "M-m-m-my name is Arthur!"
"Hello Arthur. I'm 1812x4 version 2.0. Pleased to meet you. What would you like to call me?"
"Kate."
"All-right. What shall we do today, Arthur?"
Arthur shifted uncomfortably. "Uhhh, I'd like to have sex, Kate."
"Very well Arthur, but before we start I must recommend that you read my manual."
Arthur glanced over at the thick manual, and then back at Kate's sexy robotic clavicle. He dropped his head in defeat. He couldn't wait.
"Kate, I will read the manual later, promise. Let's make love."
She opened her mouth to speak, but with his pointer finger Arthur covered her mouth ssssshh and went about exploring Kate with a technique far more robotic than she. After a few moments he slipped in and began grinding against her, telling her how much he loved her. Intermittently Kate would grunt or sigh; occasionally she eeked out a singular note of pleasure. After a couple minutes of sex Arthur reached orgasm. As he collapsed beside Kate he could hear the familiar whirring within her chest cavity. She turned over and looked at Arthur lovingly.
"You should have read the manual .." she purred. Then one of her eyes closed and she slumped over.
Jarred from his post-coital bliss, Arthur leaped up in search of the user manual.
"Chapter Three: Sexual Relations with Your 1812x4 version 2.0
She is NOT waterproof.
Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should liquid be dispensed into the inner cavity of your 1812x4 version 2.0.
Doing so VOIDS YOUR WARRANTY.
Wrap it up."
"Shit." Arthur had saved up for his precious Kate for over two full years. 720 days. Arthur stroked Kate's face and then shoved her off his bed. He fumbled around for his phone. Finally locating it within the soiled sheets, he flipped it open and dialed Ilona's phone number.
I Love Lorraine By Molly Lederer
"Quick like a bunny you go in that room, Benji Birnbaum, and tell that child to stop it right this minute!"
"For Chrissake Lorraine, he's your kid too," Benji muttered, petulantly scuffing the toe of his penny loafer on the carpet.
"Not now he isn't! I disown him! That child is a disgrace to the Birnbaum family name and his behavior is not to be tolerated! And I don't give a hoot about Christ's sake; just because we are secular Jews does not make us Jews for Jesus, Benji Birnbaum!" Lorraine crossed her arms over her chest and stamped her stockinged foot indignantly.
"Lorraine, be reasonable. You insisted we hyphenate his name. He's half Birnbaum, half Bernstein. He's only half a disgrace to the Birnbaum name," Benji argued weakly, with a furtive, wistful glance in the direction of the I Love Lucy marathon on television. Lorraine caught him in the act and, quick like a bunny herself, snatched the remote control from the coffee table and zapped the TV off.
"Aw, Lorraine, it was the episode when Lucy.."
"Benji," Lorraine snarled through gritted teeth.
"But Lucy and Ethel, they.."
Lorraine fixed him with such a withering gaze that he found himself fairly levitating off the oh-so-comfortable Pier 1 couch and plodding like a zombie down the hall, towards the closed door of their eleven-year-old son's bedroom.
Lorraine was right behind him. He could feel her rapid little puffs of righteous breath on his neck. Halfway down the hall he stopped abruptly and turned, causing her to collide into his chest.
"Wha- what.." she sputtered.
"Look," Benji gripped her bony arms. "For the record .. I think we should let him figure this stuff out on his own. I think it's natural that he, you know, work things out and experiment and, well, he's got to be his own man and.."
"You look, Benji Birnbaum. I told you two years ago to give him The Talk, to tell him how things work, and you said later, you said in a little while, you said lay off, Lorraine. And you look where that's gotten us!"
So Benji looked, down into his wife's blazing brown eyes, over her ski jump nose now squished up in anger, at those clenched, crooked teeth he'd once found so fetching across a crowded prep school cafeteria.
"God damn it." He turned back and continued down the hall.
"God has nothing to do with it," piped in Lorraine, hot at his heels.
A black pirate's flag hung from his son's door with a bubble caption that read "Argh! Who goes there? Ye who better knock, that be who."
"Just-open-it," Lorraine hissed in his ear.
Heeding his wife and ignoring the pirate, Benji took a deep breath and flung open the door.
His son lay in the same position Lorraine had found him twenty minutes prior, flat on his back on his old Thomas the Tank Engine twin bed, gazing up at the star constellations on his ceiling, a sweet half-smile on his face and an antennae sticking out of his fly. The sound of a battery-operated motor buzzed ominously.
With a mighty bellow drawn from the depths of his Birnbaum heritage, and one arm raised high, index finger extended, Benji decreed, "Take the robot out of your pants, son."
He felt Lorraine's thin fingers curl around his elbow. "Well done, Benji," she whispered. "Well done."
I Desperately Ache for Giant Flesh Melons to Grow from My Chest
By Amy Carpenter
"What do you mean I can't have breasts? I want breasts. I need boobs."
"I'm sorry Annabella, but we just can't do that. The nature of their construction is just too risky with your skin type."
I knew what I'd seen on TV and the web - hell, Google had been the sexiest professor ever. Obviously I'd be much more powerful with boobs, big wobbly juicy ones that would hold a bra up with their own anti-gravitational pull. Not Anna-Nicole Smith style, I just wanted some stylized, glowing C-cups. Since the technology boom of '07 we've made carbon fiber space elevators and nanobots that clean your blood- you'd think that someone would be able to construct some simple, glorious titties for me.
I flashed the doctor my saddest smile and sniffled a bit.
He didn't buy it.
"I'm sorry, we just can't do it. There are, of course, prosthetics that you can wear under your clothes, here's a catalog..you can take it with you if you want."
I am just not into fake things.
"No, thank you. I'll go to someone else."
"You can try, but we both know that that isn't really an option."
"Thank you doctor, but there are always options."
I stood up and smiled a different smile, one of determination, cleverness, and a touch of 'fuck-you-asshole-for-not-helping-me' and then quickly left the room.
At Veronica's Caf.., Drew sat across from me in the red vinyl booth stirring his cup of foam.
"You can't just have boobs - everyone knows that. They have to like, fit you, or else you'll come out looking like Tara Reid or Janet Jackson's sister..LaToya..you don't want to be LaToya, right?"
"Shut up."
"Anna.. you're better than LaToya. I like you just the way you are."
"That's real nice Drew, but you're my brother."
"Well, I want you to be hot- it makes our generation look good. I just don't think girls like you should get boob jobs, you know?"
"Mmmhmm.."
"So, you want boobs..well, watch out- next thing you know you're gonna want a vagina. And then a uterus, and then.."
"Don't be ridiculous, Drew. Me wanting boobs is NOT the precursor to wild
vagina-lust. People will see my boobs and be affected by them .. it's the basic obvious sexuality equals power equation. But no one can see if I have a vagina or not. It's totally irrelevant. I don't want a vagina. Or babies for that matter."
"Yeah, that's what you say now, but think about it.. first they give you boobs.. which are totally useless because you can't have kids. You get your sex-boobs.. then what? The older you get the more the power basis is going to turn into whether or not you are actually having hole-sex and if it's good or not. There is also the Lindsay/Britney/Paris factor of pussy-valor. I bet it won't be long before you'll want to be able to show your lady-bits like they do, so you can prove you've got what others might want."
"Whatever.. those girls are drunken starlet whores. I'd never do that."
"Never say never- the beef-flap flash parade isn't slowing down. First boobs, then a vagina, and then when you've been around long enough - your thirties or forties, say, you'll want a uterus to hold a baby to prove to the world that you are still sexy and that your boobs and vagina combined can make a whole other valuable package that will live long after yours have rotted into the ground. It's like the ultimate power combo."
"But I don't rot."
"Exactly. Nor do you make babies. They will be made for you probably when you're twenty-eight, unless you opt out of that role in your Lifetime Agreement Contract."
"Right, ugh.. why does this have to be so complicated? I just want some boobs. I want to feel like a real woman. And be 27 billion times smarter, faster, and more efficient than the best of them. Ha." I smelled my almond biscotti before breaking it into tiny square pieces.
"Well Miss Competitive, if you really wanted to be a 'real woman' you'd be begging for tears and cramps and bloody menstruation as well. I don't see you pining for the gnarly parts. You just want the best woman fa..ade."
"You are such a prick."
"Aside from the impossibility of that statement, there's no need to be mean. I love you sis.. you know that. I just don't think you need boobs."
"Whatever. I want them. There's gotta be some back alley scientist who will work on me."
"Anna.. Come on..Jesus..Alright, if you're going to be like that.."
"You can't stop me."
'No.. Neil has the number of some guy that his wife went to for some enhancement. Maybe he's still around."
"Really? You know someone? Oh call Drew, call! Right now!"
"Yeah yeah.. Maybe..Man, I hate this shit."
"Pleeeeease?"
"Sure, love. And I'll have a fresh virginal vagina wrapped under the Christmas tree for you. And a uterus for your birthday. I'll buy you some tampons and a box of Midol. It'll all be great. Just great."
"Just the boobs, Drew."
"Mmhm.. yeah..okay, sure, whatever you want. But when you want that baby, you're on your own .. I am not going to steal a human for you or pay some shady "couple" to make one. No way. When you get that far into this, you are totally going to have to pull a Madonna. And adopt."
How It Happens By Brian Jannarelli
In the alley, bits of trash blew around in the breeze that trickled through the spaces between buildings. It was good to get a breath of fresh air away from the dissembling flirting inside. It was singles night at Sha-Booms and all I wanted was to be back home in bed with her. It wasn't going to happen, not in this lifetime. I lit a cigarette and decided what my next move would be.
I'd been at this dating game for three weeks now. All my worries and lack of confidence going in had faded and all sorts of new ones developed in their place. At first, I thought no woman would take an interest in me. I thought I was too fucked up inside and they would see it. The truth is that the singles in my age bracket are all a little fucked up inside. The real problem is finding someone with issues that are compatible with my own. I didn't think I'd be attractive to any of these women but the reality is that I wasn't entering a crowd with many physically attractive people. Matching personalities isn't quite as easy as thinking, "yes, I want to fuck that."
There was a group of younger nubile ladies sitting at a four-top back inside the club. This was a rare occasion but I ignored it for a while. I met up with Cassandra, a middle-aged schoolteacher, over by the jukebox. I was halfway through a conversation about how awful the youth of today are when I noticed one of the spring chickens at the four-top smiling in my direction. One was whispering in another's ear before she turned around and waved me over. Cassandra's opinion on discipline in the school system would have to wait, indefinitely. Even though my body didn't move as it used to I gave my best attempt at a youthful strut over and plopped myself casually down into an empty seat. It hurt, but I think I played it off nicely.
It was a great time. They were young and full of energy and they were paying attention to me. They laughed at my jokes and smiled when I looked at them. One of them even sang all the words to "The House of the Rising Sun" when it played on the jukebox. It was such a good time that when I ran out of money and all the smiles turned to frowns, I nearly ran to the automatic teller at the bank on the main drag. It wasn't until I was waiting for my cash that I realized what I was doing. I left my apartment with a hundred bucks and had nearly that much coming my way. In the midst of my inebriation, I had a moment, an epiphany. It only lasted seconds but everything was clear at that point. Those girls weren't interested in me as a person. They only wanted a fun time at my expense. I was an aging man with hopes high enough to believe that at least one of these girls would sleep with me. I was kidding myself. They knew I'd be a sucker for their insinuations and innuendos. They thought I was a dirty old man who would play ball and they were right.
I couldn't blame them for wanting a good time. I could only blame myself. I fell for the fantasy when all the realities were right there in front of me. I realized it was too much for me; It was too much to admit to myself that the type of lifestyle I wanted had passed me by years ago. I felt the anticipation of great things happening in my life fading away. That's when I did it. That's when I tried to fuck the ATM. I did it right in the complimentary envelope slot.
I don't know if it was the booze making me feel the way I did or if it was the fact that I was getting nowhere in the dating scene but something had to give. It was a bad idea but at the time, it seemed befitting to the situation. I've thought about it a lot since then. I know I did it out of anger and frustration of sorts but something about the experience occupies me to this day. That's why I don't go to things like singles nights anymore. I've decided to stop looking to women to fulfill my sexual needs altogether. I did some research and came up with a design. I call it RoboClam. It will do everything I ask of it and unlike some sexual partners even brings in money. You can get your own in 4-6 weeks on a special order basis.
It's funny how things work out sometimes. In this case, I decided to make my misfortunes work for me. It goes to show how seemingly bad situations and low points in life can be blessings in disguise. Just in case you're wondering, it wasn't that moment of epiphany alone. I had plenty of time to rethink things while I spent six months incarcerated on charges of property destruction and committing a lewd act in public. After all, those things have cameras.
Green Obsession By Christian W. Thiede
My psychiatrist says I may have a problem with fixation. Everything in my apartment is green. The walls, the carpet, the bathroom tile, the curtains. If you open my closet door you will see green coats, vests, shirts, pants. I have over one thousand potted plants. I trim the brown leaves everyday. I drink green tea and eat lots of peas, broccoli, asparagus, and spinach.
Green robots turn me on. Especially the ones colored like fresh spring leaves. I go to the mall to watch them. The robots sweep the floors and take out the garbage. The oily shine from their piston arms and legs pumping away makes me sweat. I capture video of them from cameras hidden in my sunglasses and the tips of my shoes. The money shots are when a robot bends over to pick something up and I stick my foot underneath for a view of their machinery.
Sometimes I think I am going crazy. I record myself watching my own robot film. I fixate on it for days at a time. I feel like I am plugged into an electrical socket and might explode or fry. Sleep is impossible. Light hurts my eyes like pins being stuck into a cushion.
My psychiatrist also says I shouldn't be alone so much. That I should have roommates. But I dislike living with other people and dealing with their neuroses. Truth be told, roommates usually have more objections to living with me than I do with them. So my psychiatrist and I struck a compromise. I will buy a robot to keep me company. Robots are not cheap and I am poor. It took over three years of me saving, but I finally have enough money for a down payment.
The newest model is the VDX24. It is close to a human in physical appearance and has advanced Artificial Intelligence built-in. But I like the older models better because they have an exaggerated kind of super human look. Besides, you get too much lip from the newer models. It's like being with a real person.
My robot is green, light green, a thirteen year old VRS17. Its name is Lolita. Lolita came with the standard neutral nurse-like white pants suit. The first thing we did was to go down to the local thrift shop and get Lolita several outfits: one French maid, one cheerleader, one with leather, and several sundresses. Of course, all these outfits have a green motif, but they are a darker forest type of green to contrast with Lolita's lighter skin. We leave walking arm-in-arm, with Lolita wearing one of the sundresses. I cannot recall a day where I am as happy or proud. I believe this is a new beginning, a turning point where my life will start working well and I will fit in with society. I decide I will delete my videos when we get home.
We stop at a caf.. to relax and celebrate. Even early-model robots can eat nowadays. We sit outside and order espressos and sandwiches. The sun comes out yellow from behind the clouds and a light breeze blows. The heat feels luxuriant as on a tropical island. I smile and Lolita smiles back a bit stiffly as VRS17 models tend to do. I notice the wind has blown the sundress up and exposed part of Lolita's machinery. I reach over and tug the dress down. I explain to Lolita the necessity of keeping the machinery covered when in public.
I hear a man laugh behind me. I look around and see him sliding his foot back under his chair. His shoe has a camera attached to it. Without thinking I jump up and throw a left-right-left combination of punches. The man's head rocks back and his lips burst into red. He falls out of the chair. I hear people scream. I grab Lolita's arm and we run. For an older model Lolita runs very well.
We arrive at my apartment unnoticed. I unlock the door and feel relief in the sea of green. The release of tension makes me laugh out loud and Lolita laughs with me. I take Lolita in my arms and we start kissing. Soon we are having sex. I feel an ecstasy like I never have. Lolita's machinery has suction, spinning, and vibration features. Lolita makes sounds that can only be described as grossly primitive. Oh God, I love my Lolita robot!
In the throes of our passion I hear a loud knocking on my door. I try to ignore it, but the police break down the apartment door and come crashing in, pointing guns. They are wearing those ugly dark blue uniforms. I almost throw up. I hate dark blue.
The lead officer holds up Lolita's bag of clothes that we left at the caf.. and asks if they are ours. He knows they are. He tells me I am under arrest for assault and battery. They handcuff me. I tell them I want to speak to my lawyer and they laugh. I tell them I know my rights and should be read them. They laugh again and tell me robots don't have rights. This shocks me. I scream I am not a robot! They tell me to shut up, that I am a VDX24, and that it is also against the law for robots to have sex with each other.
I am convicted and receive a sentence for complete reprogramming. I wait in a cell painted army olive green. Not my favorite, but green nonetheless. I miss my Lolita's spring green hue.
Robot at 8
By David Keaton
"I've always wanted to have sex with a stranger," my girlfriend said as we sat in bed together. I had been busy reading an old diary I had bought at a secondhand shop when she mentioned it to me.
I was shocked. Not about the fantasy, but because we had never had sex; it was something she had repeatedly told me she was not ready for. That was why we were just sitting in bed together, fully clothed, at three o'clock in the afternoon.
"What do you mean, meet someone and have sex with them?"
"No, like, one night I'm at home and some handsome, dark figure comes through the window and we have sex."
"Rape?"
"No, no, just like a Robin Hood figure. I'm lying there and through the window he comes and then that's it."
"Are you saying that you want to have sex?"
She shrugged her shoulders and pointed at a magazine she was reading.
"It says here that men fantasize about sex all the time and women only occasionally. Do you fantasize about sex all the time?"
"Not all the time."
"Do you think you're normal?"
"Yes I think so."
"But you don't really like sex?"
"What are you talking about? Why would you say that?"
"You know how I feel, but you never really say anything about it."
She was right. I was uncertain what to say.
"Are you afraid of sex?"
I was not so much afraid of sex as I was of women.
"No, I'm not afraid of sex; I was respecting your right to wait for marriage."
Sarah threw the magazine down on the bedside table.
"I think we have waited long enough. I would like to make love to you."
"O.K."
We sat there silently for a moment and I went back to reading the diary I had bought.
"Jeez this diary is good," I said finally. "This woman gives real insights into her life. She's recorded everything. On the 15th of February she found a twenty dollar note in a public toilet, in the toilet itself, recovered it and spent it on ice-cream for her friends. Now that is something I would never record."
"James, I said I think I'm ready for sex."
"O.K."
I looked back down at the book.
"I want you to come to my house tonight. James, listen, please put the book down."
I put the book down and turned to her. She was beautiful, but thinking about sex scared the hell out of me. I turned red and hot and my eyes got a bit teary. I hoped she couldn't tell.
"Tonight, I want you to dress up in a costume, like Zorro, maybe wear a mask. Come around to my window and just climb through. I'll be in my bedroom."
I nodded, she left and I went back to my book. After she had gone I put the book down and wondered what time I should go around. 8 pm was a little too early for bed and any later than that I would look strange getting around in a hat. I decided 8 pm exactly was the right time.
I went to the cupboard to see what sort of disguise I had. There were my last five Halloween costumes, but I had been with Sarah for four years, so she knew four of them. But the first costume was still there and only worn once. Now I'd get some more use from it.
It took half an hour to get into costume and then pull a coat over it. Then it took me another three quarters of an hour to go four blocks on foot.
The costume was heavy and the big box- shaped feet were hard to walk in. I began to sweat like a sprinkler. People were stopping to stare at me in the street. I stood for a while outside my favorite bookshop and saw myself in the window. The coat was ridiculously small over my metal frame. The setting sun glinted off my square skull. I wished I had either not put the head on, a silver top that came down like a Roman helmet, or had alternatively worn a bigger hat.
I waddled the rest of the way to Sarah's house and wandered around to the backyard. I fell down twice in the journey. Once on the roses and once over a child's skateboard. The child and a group of his friends had gathered to watch me stumble, sweating and shining around the back of Sarah's house.
As I maneuvered behind the house I heard the child screaming back to his house next door, telling mummy to come and see what was happening.
Around the back I found the open window and could not believe how high from the ground it was. I was already well over my normal weight and to pull myself up would have been a hard task. So I tried the back door, and finding it unlocked, I went in.
Sarah was not in her room. I found her in the kitchen putting some bottles in the fridge. She was half dressed in the slippery black thing that she usually wore under dresses. She looked cool and calm. I stood in the doorway unnoticed. So I made some robot noises.
Sarah screamed and broke a bottle.
I lumbered towards her with my silver arms outstretched, ready for love.
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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
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 Zombie Girlfriend By Molly Lederer
In the ranks of Pinkerton High School society, Hugo Sidwell was a nobody. If he had been good at something, he might have slipped into the margins of some crowd or other. If he had math or science skills, he could've competed in tournaments and worn a standard issue, maroon polyester sports jacket with the Pinkerton coat-of-arms emblazoned on the breast pocket- oh, how he had dreamed of that sports jacket. If he played Dungeons & Dragons or video games or even chess, for God's sake, those groups would have welcomed him too. Or at least let him sit with them at lunch or during school assemblies, where everyone scrambled up the bleachers to be beside a familiar face and Hugo always ended up on the edge of the row, one chubby leg dangling dejectedly off.
Hugo had peculiar tastes that simply didn't mesh with the rest of the student body, even the fringes. His heart belonged to his pet rat Jerome, Earl Grey tea and Nancy Drew mysteries. Except this fall, he had developed an interest which he shared with MANY of his Pinkerton peers: Stacey Sinclair. Stacey Sinclair sat behind him in homeroom- Sidwell, Sinclair- and she was nothing short of perfection. Long red hair, eight million freckles, shiny green eyes the size of quarters, and glimmery white, tiny teeth that marched through his (only occasionally lustful) dreams every night.
Stacey Sinclair, in Pinkerton High School society, was a Big Deal. In the locker room, boys talked about her T and A in terms more worshipful than lascivious, while in the cafeteria girls crowded her table to watch her sip Diet Coke through a straw and re-apply Strawberry Sparkle Lip Gloss. Stacey Sinclair was on Prom Committee and Prom Court, Stacey Sinclair was Class Treasurer and Homeroom Representative, Stacey Sinclair played Varsity Field Hockey in the fall and Varsity Softball in the spring, Stacey Sinclair was everything Hugo Sidwell wanted to be and wanted to be with. And so, having no extracurricular demands on his time, Hugo made her his new hobby. Armed with a notebook and a slightly rat-chewed pencil, Hugo took to recording and analyzing Stacey Sinclair's every move. The entries from this past week read as follows:
Monday 10:03 am. Sighted in corridor, wearing pink polo shirt and ponytail. Laughing v. loudly. Can see almost every tooth.
Tuesday 8:21 pm. Licking strawberry ice cream cone on Main St. With girls who don't matter.
Wednesday 3:47 pm. Scores goal in home field hockey game against Beresford, wearing white headband and matching mouthguard. Gloating.
Thursday 8:11 am. Told by Mrs. Pepperidge to swallow that gum please or spit it out. Swallows.
Friday 12:39 pm. Cafeteria. Wears yellow tee-shirt which is v. tight. Nipples!!!
Saturday 9:27 pm. Jumps in green Jeep Wrangler driven by nasty, horrible, soccer-playing Zach Dorfman.
Saturday 11:58 pm. Jumps out of Zach Dorfman's Jeep, rapidly adjusting pink skirt and rumpled pink top, and blows kisses as he drives away with his nasty, horrible self.
Sunday 3:02 am. [yes, Hugo has fallen asleep in a bush behind the Sinclair house- not an unusual turn-of-events] Wearing white cotton nightie WHICH IS SEE-THROUGH climbs out window, shimmies down rose trestle UNDERPANTS VISIBLE, walks slowly in straight line through three backyards, across street, over stone wall, into Pinkerton County Cemetery-
Here Hugo's meticulous entries trailed off. As he stared, bewitched by her red hair and transparent nightgown in the light of the full moon,it hardly seemed strange when Stacey Sinclair fell to her knees by the grave of a certain Ermina Keller. Nor did Hugo find it odd when she began stroking the grass below the headstone, making a mournful keening noise deep in the back of her perfect throat. When she began digging frantically into the grave, well, then Hugo couldn't deny that something a little fishy was going on. But a little fishy was a small price to pay for the sight of Stacey Sinclair in her see-through nightie and white panties dotted with little red hearts, right? Right?
As a chill rose up his stocky arms and legs and curved around the back of his neck, Hugo kept repeating that thought. Right? as Stacey Sinclair suddenly appeared to be slipping into the dirt she was digging, sinking into the ground. Right? as two hands, honest-to-goodness hands of bleached bone and ragged flesh reached up from the ground and encircled Stacey Sinclair. Right? Right? Right? as Stacey Sinclair completely disappeared from view, pulled down underground until only one lonely lock of red hair lay shining on the grass.
Hugo crumpled to the ground, shaking uncontrollably as a warm stream of urine flowed down one leg of his unfashionable tweed trousers. He might never have left that spot again had not a miracle occurred right before his eyes. Ermina's grave began rumbling. Bits of grass and clumps of dirt shot up into the air until, suddenly, Stacey Sinclair herself started to rise out of the ground. Red hair tangled and matted, nightgown torn and streaked with dirt, skin paler than the moon and blue veins pulsing dramatically, but it was Stacey Sinclair. Hugo stood up and cheered like the girls did at the football games, "Goooooooooo Stacey!"
At the sound of his voice, she turned her head and looked at him. As far as Hugo knew, it was the first time she had ever looked right at him. Her quarter-sized eyes were bloodshot, the green irises swallowed up by big inky pupils. Her lips, lacking their Strawberry Sparkle Lip Gloss, were grey and parched, but she was still beautiful, still a Big Deal, still Hugo's beloved Stacey Sinclair. As she walked towards him slowly with her arms outstretched, tears of joy began to drip down Hugo's pudgy cheeks. At last, he thought, picturing a different Pinkerton High, imagining kiss-covered lunches and huggable homerooms, making out under the bleachers at school assemblies .. whatever making out entailed, gosh, to find out!, getting high fives in the locker room and begged, to reveal every secret of Stacey Sinclair but never, ever telling because she was his girlfriend.
The word "girlfriend" was the last Hugo ever thought before Stacey Sinclair's glimmery white, tiny teeth tore into his jugular. When the police found his ravaged body the next day, draped over a wrought iron bench in Pinkerton County Cemetary, one chubby leg dangling dejectedly over the side, they couldn't help noticing it wore the blissful smile of a boy in love.
Turning By Gavin Castleton
They finally pick Cotter to watch because he's known me the shortest time, and probably because he's wound so tight they don't want him around the others. He lost his sister on the way here and has since turned into a stone-faced automaton. I feel like we've been staring each other in the eye for over an hour and he isn't blinking, as if he thinks in that millisecond someone might swoop in and do the job for him. And he wants the kill. He's the only one out of us keeping track, cutting them into his forearm with his Swiss army knife. Or maybe he's imagining exactly where on my forehead the entry point should be. Who knows. Like I said, stone-faced.
I'm trying not to hate him for it. I know he's just doing what has to be done and that he's young and lost. It's just irritating. Every time I twitch he raises the rifle a tiny bit. Just a centimeter maybe, but I notice. Despite the obvious distraction of THE FLARING FUCKING PAIN IN MY FUCKING NECK that really didn't seem that bad at first but two days later it's smelling like a dog's mouth full of gym socks and I still have to apply pressure to it and tilt my head to keep it from drooling on my shirt. I'm tired in a weird way - still aware of everything happening in this small back room (and just outside the door where Heather's bawling for them to let her patch me up better) but unable to get the word out to my limbs like I used to. Can still make them do what I want, but the signal is dulled, delayed, like a bad echoey cell connection.
To be honesttt I can't really tell how much of the blurry is the turning and how much is the whiskey that they funneled into me when I was thrashing around. Heather couldn't get the skin around the bite to hold on to the dental floss she used to sew me up, and after she'd shredded the whole area she just frantically tried to stop the bleeding and she was afraid I would see the Jim Beam spurts on the bandage and realize how fucked up and deep it really was but I was somehow relieved that she was more scared than me and I tried to gurgle out calm things at her.
Word just came back from my left hand that it wants a divorce and how strange is it to watch your new purplegray skin tone creep up quietly to your knuckles. It's so interesting I almost point it out to Cotter but when he sees me looking down, he thinks my eyes are closing and the gun is up two more inches so NO NO NO he's not invited to the rigor mortis party. Worst part about this shit is that I can't even try for some compassion because everything I say is red bubbly and he might mistake "I loved her too man, you have to believe me" for "mmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeegggghhhhh" the way these fuckers say it all bovine and lethargic when they come for your FUCKING NECK. Her teeth broke on my throat - how weak is that? Where is Darwin in all of this? How is a little girl with only one arm and splintery teeth higher in the food chain than a heavily-armed 28 year old (terrified) man?
Shitfuck at least Cotter could help me hold this shit on so my right arm can rest up for a few... He didn't act so fucking Spock when it was his sister leaking all over herself - No, I recall him being quite considerate of her situation and it's pretty clear that he's holding a grudge here. If he was really so fucking objective, he'd realize that I was just the closest one and she was moving for Heather and I'm not really so aggressive usually but she was a fucking Thing then not a 14 year-old drama queen with an obvious weight problem.
I think he saw my lowering hand because he just oh-so-quietly (you fuck) clicked off the safety and I wasn't really paying attention trying to calm my stomach, God, so gray it's almost not even realistic maybe this is part of it - you go color blind at first and then you just stare to the top left of whatever you're looking at and then, "mmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeegggghhhhh."
I haffff to use my fucking wrist to hold this thing on now because my hands are completely insubordinate and goodbye legs... sure we may want to bolt from this shitty store and at least out there they'll show a flicker of love for something (even if it's my dying FUCKING FLESH), show something not like stony McRockhard bitchassbitch vengeful fuckwitface here but my legs have officially peeeeaced out for good so
the rest of us will try
come up with some lasst wordsbubbles. I wish he'd say something so could see if ears are still
involvd intrested in this weird metamorfashit. I don't even know if
I'm breething I just know
that he
got rifle it
all thewayu p now in
bothh han
The Morning After
By Jenny Lederer
Walt died at approximately 4:30 a.m. but came down to breakfast at the usual time that day. His wife shot him a quick, rabbity look from where she stood at the counter, and over-poured her cereal into a small golden mound above the rim of the bowl. His son Todd was sitting as usual at the kitchen table with his back to the door, crunching tunelessly from his own bowl. The baby was eating something beige and mealy in his highchair. The children kept eating, as unaware of their father's death as they had been from the moment they awakened.
As he stood looking over this familiar scene, a crooked finger of hunger unfurled in Walt's stomach. He reached over his son's shoulder and picked up a slice of toast from the table. His wife made a small sound like she'd been pricked by something, turned away quickly and began scooping the spilled cereal up into the box. Walt allowed himself to feel a small measure of relief at the practiced motions of pulling out a chair, sitting, bringing toast to mouth and chewing in the relentless sunny morning-ness of his own kitchen.
"Gross, man," said Todd. The toast, once chewed, was leaving his mouth at the same rate it was introduced, and collecting in a slimy mass on the tabletop. Walt looked down at the mess and began to cry. The baby goggled at him; his wife pressed the sharp knuckles of her hands up into her brow and began weeping into the palms of her hands.
"I'm so hungry," he said, but the words coagulated uselessly on a tongue that lay thick and foreign in his mouth. He tried again and again, and bits of that tongue flew out of his mouth with the force of his effort. His son rose from the table and tried to back away but got tangled in the legs of his chair and fell heavily to the floor. Walt stretched his hands out to his family, wanting them to understand so badly, and also wanting more somehow than he'd ever asked of them. He gathered them into the corner of the kitchen.
The baby was crying, and so was he.
He was crying and eating, and then just eating and eating.
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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
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 The Janowitz Gene By Molly Lederer
For Desdemona Janowitz, the problem was two-fold. First off, the little hooligans her son called children were completely ungovernable, really hopeless wretches, with drippy pug noses and shrill voices that frightened her cat, Mr. Potts. The beloved green-eyed tabby of generally mild temperament was at present keeping a glowering watch on the riotous bunch from a safe haven atop a bookcase. He'd learned the hard way that Chad, Chet, and Britney Janowitz were not to be trusted with worn copies of Reader's Digest, plastic cups of Welch's grape juice, and reaching distance of his rump.
Desdemona tried to be patient- after all, they were her grandchildren, her blood line, her progeny- but why did her progeny have to be three feet tall with mousy brown hair and negligible morals? Desdemona tried to be christian about it, to forgive them the youth and vigor which caused them to upset her coffee table, douse her lime green carpet with grape juice, perform unspeakable acts on poor dear Mr. Potts, and fling her porcelain dishes of lavender potpourri at one another, shrieking. But the fact was, Desdemona was in actuality an agnostic and in general rather impatient.
Which led to problem number two. Her Secret Ability (or S.A. as she referred to it in all internal monologues), so carefully guarded and honed in her seventy-eight years upon the earth, became difficult to control in times of stress. And sure enough, as she stared with repulsion at the situation currently developing in her double parlor- Britney, clad in a hot pink tee-shirt which spelled "2 Cute 2 Care" across the chest, gleefully pummeling her jug-eared brother Chad; Chet, with furrowed brow and tongue partly out, systematically chucking volumes I - XI of the Encyclopedia Britannica in the direction of Mr. Potts- Desdemona could feel her S.A. tingling in her outer extremities. It was beginning.
If she could just focus her energies on it, as she'd always done, just concentrate on the sensation creeping up her arms and legs, she could stop it. But focus was impossible with Chet now shaking the bookcase with both chubby arms in his attempt to scale it; with Chad wetting his pants, wiggling out of them, and proceeding to whip Britney with the whole rolled up, sodden mess. Desdemona desperately tried to recall other times she'd harnessed her S.A. under duress- when Old Man Sotheby had railed at her for leaving bicycle tracks in his peonies (age seven), when dreamy Michael "Mac" Pherson had confessed he was canoodling with her best friend Sheila (age seventeen), when she accidentally walked in on her son and daughter-in-law conceiving one of the beasts before her today (age seventy-two). She'd manage to keep it in check then, but now- now --
"Gamma, why won't Mr. Potts come down?" Chet whined.
"I'll kill you and eat your brains, Chad, I will I will!" Britney howled.
"You- just- try- it," Chad dared in between whacks of his wet pants.
She reminded herself of her responsibility as a baby-sitter, grand-parent, and adult, but it was all for naught. Both of her orthopedic shoes were already gone. There went her pink lacquered fingernails, then the fingers, then the wrinkled wrists and ankles simultaneously. Quickly, quickly followed her perfumed coiffure, her lined face, her thick legs encased in their mauve trackpants, her sturdy arms in the matching windbreaker, her prow-of-ship bosom and child-birthing hips and then the rest of her flesh in a flash.
The violent drama playing out in her double parlor continued, oblivious to her departure, and for a moment she rested blissfully in the nether-realm. She was light as a will o' the wisp and twice as quiet, moving gracefully over the children, reaching up to knock a heavy volume of Chaucer onto Chet's head just as he neared the top of the bookcase, soothing Mr. Potts with a touch only he, rich in feline senses, could feel. With a sweep of her invisible hand she deposited the rest of the grape juice onto Chad and Britney. In the midst of their awkward sputtering and angry finger- pointing, they finally realized she was gone.
"Grandma!" Britney yelled. "Where'd ya go?"
"Are you hiding, Grandma?" Chad hollered.
"My head, Gamma, my head," Chet moaned, flat on his back, sprawled out like a giant starfish.
It didn't take them long to tear apart the double parlor, then embark on a path of destruction through the rest of the apartment looking for her. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, study- every closet door opened and slammed, every drawer pulled out and left ajar- and then suddenly Desdemona couldn't hear them anymore. She knew she should return to the physical realm and attend to them, but she needed a few more minutes. Just a few more blessed minutes to drift through walls and windows, aimlessly, leisurely. To pause and be still. And then-
"Helloooo Gamma!"
"Ha ha, we found you!"
"Grandma can do it too!"
There they were. In her sacred space. Dancing noiselessly about like chimpanzees. Her progeny. Her blood line. The goddam injustice of genetics, proving in as spiteful a manner as possible that superpowers were in fact a result of nature, not nurture.
The Amazing Victor By Derek Kroessler
Victor Carlyle sighed and started picking up the larger bits of goo off the sofa. Where the hell did that cat come from? He certainly hadn't let it in. He'd walked into the apartment, put his comic bag down on the coffee table, stretched out on the couch and then: MEOWPT! Really inconvenient, he thought to himself as he picked up an eyeball. He'd never admit it aloud (not that anyone ever stuck around long enough to listen to what he had to say), but he cried a little on the inside every time he made a pet explode.
Victor emits what is called a cellular agitation aura. Fairly rare among mutant powers, it affects most living creatures that come within ten feet. Any person who breached that perimeter developed a throbbing headache within a couple of minutes; bodily contact often resulted in a seizure. And, as that poor puss so recently demonstrated, any animal smaller than a human that Victor encountered would pop like a meat balloon. Often he wished his power didn't compliment his poor hygiene and lousy personality so well.
He took some small comfort in being able to make an honest living from his power, something that most mutants couldn't pull off. He worked at PlorpCorp, an independent testing facility for cosmetics companies, as a "disposal specialist." Anytime the scientists needed to get rid of a worn-out bunny rabbit, they sent it over to him. It paid fairly well, but he was lonely. The only people who ever visited his dark little closet of an office were the delivery boys, but they were in and out after 10 seconds, and it's not like they would even want to stick around if they could.
Victor continued on that train of thought while he cleaned. Once he had placed most of the ex-kitty into a garbage bag, he threw it out the window into the neighbors' yard (which was already open- that's how it must have gotten in), then lay back down on the couch and opened up his bag of comics. His inner niggler told him that comics were puerile and unrealistic. Most mutants weren't powerful, selfless, or even good-looking. Why did he waste his time with this mindless shit? He continued to read them week after week, though, because they let him forget about his pathetic self and imagine himself a suave, useful mutant for the 15 minutes it took to read one. Besides, it's not like he had anything better to do with his time. There was no one he could hang out with, no bars he could go to, no women he could take home. Comics were Victor's friend, narcotic, and lover all rolled into one cheap, glorious medium.
He took the first comic out- The Scarlet Lieutenant, Issue 33- and heaved a contented sigh. The Lieutenant ("Guardian of Music, Poetry, and Doomed Young Lovers Everywhere") was one of his favorite heroes. His specialties were swordplay, rooftop infiltration, seduction, and ego-crippling bon mots. Like Victor, his power was a cellular agitation aura. Unlike Victor, he could telekinetically control its intensity and area of application (usually directed at the heads of unsuspecting guards and towards the genitals of frigid countesses). This particular issue was the climax of the Père Foncé story arc, in which the pilot of the RosbifBot, after a laborious battle, would finally be revealed. With uninhibited glee, Victor opened to the first page and began reading.
Panel 1: Title, credits. The Lieutenant, standing imperiously over the gargantuan body of the RosbifBot, not a hair out of place to indicate that any struggle had transpired.
Panel 2: Close-up of the Lieutenant. "Friend, you have fought valiantly and honorably, but now it is time to see once and for all who has destroyed Versailles and goosed all of the chamber maids."
Panel 3: The Lieutenant kicks the chin of the RosbifBot, causing a puff of steam to issue from underneath its face.
Panel 4: The face slowly starts to rise as the Lieutenant steps back to observe its pilot.
Panel 5: The Lieutenant, normally unflappable, gasps in shock. "NO! It cannot be..."
With trembling fingers and tenuously held bladder, Victor turned the page.
Panel 1: "...PIERROT DELLAGAMBA?!"
Victor threw down the magazine in disgust. After all of that anticipation, carefully paced over 10 issues, after all of those saucy innuendoes that the villain might have been the Lieutenant's long-lost father, it turned out to be the pimply court page, a minor character whom nobody cared about and was in, like, one issue. The fuckers had robbed him of the satisfaction gained from traditional narrative form. Victor got up seething, went to the window, and threw it open.
It was getting dark, and all of the houses were aglow with yellow light. Leaning on the sill, brooding, Victor noticed a woman in a pink dressing gown passed out in the neighboring yard next to the open garbage bag. Looks like she had found his present. He looked to his left: Mrs. Barnaby's bird feeder. A titmouse flew up and began nibbling the seeds. Moments after, it closed its eyes, wobbled a bit, and fell down into the garden with a soft thud. Victor sighed. We are born, we live, we die, to no effect. Real life sucks, he concluded. He stuck his head back inside, shut the window, and went back to his couch and his comics.
This Superpower Sucks By Robert Albanese
Back when I first conceived of a career writing for the comics, I came up with a nameless hero whose power would be to depress his enemies. His mere presence would induce feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, inadequacy, anomie, suicidal ideation, ad infinitum, and sap the particular villains belonging to whatever fictional milieu of their desire to commit crimes, acts of terrorism, violations of the space-time continuum, etcetera, etcetera, blah blah blah. The villains- and I always imagined Dr. Doom in particular because no one would see the sadness under the mask except for in those boxy slits that served as eyeholes- would be plunged so far into this deathlike emotional paralysis that they would skip the initial apathetic-engagement-in-everyday-tasks stage of depression, and move immediately into the secondary crawl-into-bed-and-listen-to-effete-boys-whine-little-emo-songs-about-girls stage. I wrangled with the particulars of how this hero would mire his enemies in despair. Would it be a form of mysticism? A science-based way of manipulating neurotransmitter levels in the human brain? Telepathy? A power invested in the hero by a religious figure, or by God himself? All seemed reasonable, but not particularly good. I was at a loss. I wanted something remarkable, some means of action complex and revolutionary in the medium, and the above were only remarkable insofar as they are remarkably cliché.
Then, one afternoon as I was masturbating into my sink, I looked up at the mirror and realized from where my hero's power would stem: himself. I mean, of course they would be his powers, but this was something more, this would be a hero who was his own power. His presence would be that of the ideal human, God or evolution's final achievement of perfection, and just to be near him would cripple those he confronted with feelings of inadequacy coupled with the knowledge that overcoming these feelings and the shortcomings that created them was simply impossible. Looking back now I realize that this concept bears some similarity to Dr. Manhattan's effect on the world in Alan Moore's "Watchmen," but I still swear by that genesis point: that half-hard, overlit moment in Des Moines, with notes strewn about in the other room, empty mailers waiting to be filled with information about my perfect superhero.
So I ran to the computer without bringing myself to orgasm (though the eureka moment oddly intensified my erection, so much so that I had to take my jeans off and put on a pair of loose-fitting pajama pants) to type up my very first plot for my hero.
And that's when the problem occurred.
The problem was that, as I wrote, I realized my hero could not control his power, since his power was himself; depression did not simply befall his enemies, but everyone, all human beings and any domesticated pets that strongly identified with the human characteristics of their owners. I tried to write through this dilemma, but could not bring myself to suspend disbelief. The words that crossed the digital tablet described a world plunged into inertia, moving from the small town of this monster's youth, to the nearest city, to the nation, until it reached the status of global epidemic. No one wanted to move, and no one wanted to work, and the economy collapsed, and no one did anything to help himself or anybody else out, and slowly but surely the world crumbled. (Perhaps the only heartening side-effect of this was that Adam Smith's dictum that the market is steered by invisible hands was disproved, since it moved in no direction once all the visible hands of the market thrust themselves under the asses of their owners as they tucked themselves into their cold beds for the last time ever.)
My typing fingers were now consumed by rage (and my penis had gone completely limp and practically shriveled its way back into my abdomen), my enthusiasm and testicles horribly deflated. I wanted to kill my Frankenstein (this name wouldn't work, though I liked the idea of making him German), my Narcissus, (a good one but I remember what a disappointment it was when I used to watch the WWF and they were getting ready to introduce a character with the same name and I thought the name sounded cool, like an armor-clad warrior, but the wrestler turned out to be nothing but a prissy little fop who wore a lot of makeup and carried around a little hand mirror, and actually this memory would serve as the panacea to my hatred and anger, which leads me to...) and it didn't take long for me to realize what I had to do.
"In an attempt to have some perfect fun with his perfect fucking self, not exactly knowing why and not exactly caring that he had ruined civilization, our hero goes to the Prada store to indulge his fondness for streamlined suits and appreciation for Rem Koolhaus's audacious architectural critique of/testament to the postmodern consumer space. And there, with no one to torment with his perfection, this nameless devil looks in a mirror for the first time in his life, because maybe he was sent here by some awful thing to do this, to end this fucking nightmare of a life, of a world, and a mirror would have meant the plan failed but now it was time for the abyss to look into him and it did and he saw the image of his own perfection, and he stands there, transfixed and brutalized by the lie he had told the world, and this is where he will die."
After he died- the demise of my gift to the world of comics- I gouged my eyes out.
Major Ultro By C. Raymond
I used to hate Superheroes. I couldn't help it; it's something I had to come to terms with emotionally, being a psychiatrist. But I did, I hated them.
This morning I got up, shaved, spit out an ounce of blood from an ulcer, got dressed and went to work. On the way I got a call from my ex-wife to tell me my seventeen year old son has decided to skip college and play professional ping-pong. Also the neighbors are filing suit because the dog desecrated their prize winning strawberry patch. The dog belonged to me- she won it in the divorce settlement, but she's still holding me responsible.
Then, I'm sitting in traffic, scratching the rash on my inner thigh and listening to static because some punk kid bent up my antennae, when the superhero know to the public as the Speedominator comes blowing by at mach 5 completely destroying my paint job. Three and a half minutes later I hear a static filled account on the radio about how he stopped a bank robbery downtown.
"Now, if he'd tell me the name of a cheap auto detailer and a lawyer who handles canine cases, he'd be saving my day too." I thought to myself
You see, that's why I hated them. They're always above us- sometimes literally. They're flying around and shooting lightning out of their fingers and getting in cataclysmic battles for the sake of mankind and saving the world. But at the end of the day, they never really had to live in it.
No, they can retire to their secret headquarters and be catered to by robot servants and never have to worry about bills or braces for the kids or ping-pong.
But something happened today. I walked into my office this morning, my office on the 44th floor of the Bacto Tower, downtown. I walked in to see my receptionist Ms. Tess with a look of amazement on her tiny face.
"What is it, Ms. Tess?" I asked her.
"Um, sir," she said quietly. "There's a... Mr. Ultro to see you."
"Ultro...I don't have a nine o'clock."
"Major...Ultro!" she whispered excitedly.
Major Ultro was the first, the first Superhero, been on the cover of every magazine under the sun. He's saved the world from evil despots and alien invasions half a dozen times in the last year alone- and he was standing on the ledge outside my office window.
I stuck my head out my office window and there he was, standing with his bright cape flowing in the wind. He stared blankly at the street below.
"Um...Major Ultro is it?" I asked.
He peered over at me with puffy eyes. When he spoke his voice was like distant thunder.
"I could jump..." he said quietly.
I stared at him for a moment, contemplating the situation.
"Yes, yes you could." I told him.
He grinned ruefully.
"Wouldn't do me any good, I can fly."
I nodded my head and lifted an eyebrow.
"That you can. And even if you couldn't, you're nigh invulnerable. You'd just leave a big crater in the street- maybe hurt a few innocent bystanders."
He stared up at the sky. "I tried to slit my wrist- went through six or seven boxes of razor cartridges before I gave up." He rubbed his hands across his forehead. "Know what I did this morning?" he continued. "I stopped three rampaging monsters on the streets of Berlin. Then I rescued forty-seven people from a man-made earthquake in South America."
I scratched my forehead.
"Sounds like you've had a busy morning," I told him.
He laughed. "Morning? I did this in the last two hours," he told me.
I stood watching the tears forming in his eyes.
"When I shot across the ocean faster than light, the heat coming off of me... caught offshore tankers on fire... and I discovered it too late."
Part of me contemplated what could be going on in his head, the other part wondered how long it would take the people in the next building to notice this strange scenario.
Then he began to speak again, and something wondrous happened- the thunder left his voice. "When I was a kid, I use to dream about flying," he told me. "Every time my stepfather would chase me out of the house with his belt I would dream of flying off, or running at top speed- or wishing I had a superpower I could use against him."
Slowly he leaned back against the wall. "Hanging around a nuclear waste site- that's how I got my powers- know that? I would just walk around the site until I had powers- or until it killed me." He slowly slid down the wall into a squat. I stared at him and all the hatred I harbored for superheroes just melted away.
"I can't even make love to a girl, without hurting her. So you know what I have to do?" he asked with a sob.
I shook my head slowly.
"Do you know what I..m vulnerable to?"
"I read about it somewhere, a yellow chemical of some sort."
"Yorulium. Prolonged contact can kill me. But this ring of Yorulium I have, if I slip it on my finger, it makes me vulnerable long enough to do the deed," he said as he sniffles. He cracked a grin. "Of course I spend an hour after sex hurling my guts out in her bathroom and trying to claw it off my finger."
He laughed a bit. A laughter edged with pain. I stared long and hard at him.
"Why don't you come inside and we'll talk," I told him.
He glanced over at me with watering eyes. He curled his mouth ever so slightly. "Do you... charge by the hour?"
I figured I'd let him have the first session gratis. It would be the human thing to do.
The Marquis de Sade and Superman Play Chess By Allison Kilkenny
Marquis teased Superman for a good twenty minutes before they even set the board up, before they took the black and white pieces from the velveteen innards of the case. See, Superman showed up in his costume, giant "S," and red cape, and everything. Which is to be expected, but...still.
"Oh, but I LOVE it. Are you angry? Let me feel. Is that silk?"
"Get OFF me," Superman snarled and slapped the Marquis's hand away. Marquis doubled over with laughter, and his powdered wig slipped low on his pockmarked brow. Superman rolled his eyes and focused his attention back to the board. Suddenly, a leg appeared on the table. A leg, covered in flocked brocade knickers and white tights. When Superman looked up, Marquis's lips were pulled back to reveal his leering yellow teeth.
"See? I adore tights too." Superman shoved Marquis's leg off the table, nearly upsetting the board in the process.
"Whoo-hoo-hoooooo!!!" Marquis howled and slapped his hands together. Superman bowed his chin to his blue chest and leveled his gaze on the checkered board. A single spit curl hung from his brow, an upside-down question mark that obstructed his view. Even when his mind began to wander to other things, like saving humanity from impending doom, he pretended that the entirety of his attention was still devoted to their game of chess. This was to discourage Marquis's lewd behavior. Any hint of distraction opened a virtual Pandora's box of depravity.
The last time he'd let his mind wander from the game, the loony had ripped off his clothes and smeared feces along the game room wall. Four armed nurses then charged into the room, only to see the Marquis, pantless, locked in a full nelson by Superman.
Which isn't even the funny part. Every Tuesday at eight in the evening, Superman came to Saint Christopher's Mental Health Center with his chess set. For two hours, he and the Marquis played some of the most intense, intricate games of chess the world has ever been totally unaware of. No one except the orderlies knew these games occurred.
Superman pretended to focus on the pieces as he sensed atrocities blooming across the face of the Earth. A train-train collision. A dam rupturing. When the Marquis clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, an armed robber shot a pregnant bank teller in her belly. Superman reached forth and moved a pawn. When he looked up, Marquis smiled.
"What," he asked flatly, annoyed. Marquis pouted and shrugged as he fiddled with the lace of his cuffs. Theatrically, he swept his arms to the side, stretched them into the air, and then folded them across his chest. Superman frowned. "Tell me."
Marquis spoke to their black and white pieces. "I think you are swimming in the shit of your own self-righteousness again."
Superman barked, "I am NOT!"
"Really. You don't think you're better than me. Right now. Consider it. Are you better than me, Superman?"
"I...no..."
"Really. You. Savior of humanity. Reliable Jesus. Faster than a speeding bullet, etc."
"No!"
"You're not thinking of how to play martyr RIGHT now? How many different ways you can die for lesser beings?"
."ALL RIGHT! ENOUGH!"
Marquis smiled and moved his Queen. Dangerous. Aggressive. Superman frowned. He'd missed a hole in his defense, but it wasn't too late. He could stop the attack. He shouldn't have raised his voice. He should never let the Marquis know he was annoyed. The only window in the room was at the top of the door. There, he saw the eyes of an orderly appear. They'd heard him yelling. To show everything was fine and dandy, he waved at the face and it disappeared.
Superman considered the board.
"You don't think I provide humanity with a service," asked Marquis.
He folded his fingers at his mouth and glared at the board. He should not have spoken to Marquis. That had been a mistake, but he would terminate the conversation now. He would not nibble the bait.
"You don't think sex is as important as NOT dying."
The corner of his eye twitched. Marquis knew sex conversation made him wildly uncomfortable. They'd barely finished their first few chess matches due to Marquis's inappropriate comments about the crotch region of his costume.
"I AM A HERO."
The dangerous edge in the Marquis's voice made him wary. The transition from harmless eccentric to crazed psychopath happened in an instant. One minute, the man made delightful quips, and the next he foamed at the mouth, whipped out his penis, and used it to bat chess pieces across the room.
"I am a HERO. Pornographer! Champion of the senses! Liberator of cum!" Marquis cackled and tossed his head back. He tipped too severely backward and the chair, and the Marquis, crashed to the floor loudly. Superman sighed. It appeared that their game was experiencing an indefinite hiatus. Sometimes, the Marquis's fits lasted five minutes Sometimes, they lasted an hour. In both cases, Superman sat on his metal foldout chair, cross-legged, hands folded on his lap patiently.
The pornographer laid on the floor, curled into himself, his body convulsing in violent fits of laughter. Superman looked on, his face completely neutral. That ageless face, lineless, emotionless, without want, desire, or interest. Which is the funny part. The Marquis was filled with more life than Superman had ever saved in all his immortal years. Which is why he didn't stop the trains from crashing, or the bank robbery. Which is why he waited until they could finish their game.
Dealing With It By Gavin Castleton
I'm embarrassed to admit it's my mom who wants me to go into crime-fighting. I don't think what I have is even technically a "gift," but she just keeps pounding away at me, ever since I got laid off.
What began as subtle news clippings left on my bed ("Crime Rates Soar!" and "Police Chief Baffled!") evolved into a high-pitched campaign when the Caped Vapor's invisible crime spree began.
"The city needs you! Fighting him is your destiny!" she'd volley over the permanent panic of Channel 4 News.
"Argh, Ma, give it a rest" I'd lob back from my dent in the couch.
But the idea itched me a little. Or scratched my itch maybe. It is odd how perfectly adverse our abilities are. Before the Caped Vapor appeared on the scene I considered my "skill" to be sort of a curse. Picture this - you're in a crowded elevator, someone lets one rip, and you alone can clearly see the green fog swimming out of the heart-shaped butt of the leggy blonde in the corner. Is that cool? Or would you prefer to not have the God-given ability to see any kind of gas as a tangible colored word bubble?
I've kept my power a secret for 26 years. I've never even told my girlfriend Vera. My mom discovered it when I was four years old and I inadvertently alerted her to the monoxide leak in our basement. She's hoarded that knowledge like a winning lottery ticket ever since.
Eventually I started thinking Mom had the right idea. When she sewed me the bodysuit that was somehow both purple and flattering (though the weird logo on the chest that I think is supposed to be a nose but more closely resembles a penis is not going to work), I kind of went for it.
Little things at first- making the workplace safe from fumes for the common folk, sniffing out some toxic waste dumping hoodlums, and the inevitable monoxide poison prevention, making a little name for myself in the process (Mom and I argued for three days over what was to be my superhero name- she didn't think "Gaseous Clay" was very funny, and whinnied, "Finally we can make a name for this family! Why don't you have any respect for your fatherrrrr" until I accepted the bland and confusing moniker "The 7th Sense").
Meanwhile the Caped Vapor's been busy exterminating large crowds of people with untraceable chemical cocktails, and, as he's been doing this primarily in large outdoor settings, the police are completely unable to get the jump on him.
"That's where you come in," says Mom. She's convinced that he'll strike again this evening at the big game at Central High. The entire town will be there, and the Caped Vapor's made public several not very cryptic messages regarding his disdain for high school sports. But the whole scenario she's laid out for me (complete with "floor plans" that look like they were drawn with boxing gloves on) is, truthfully, at the back of my mind. I'm just a frazzled mess, lying here in my room with this purple suit half on. I can.'t get motivated about this whole mass annihilation thing right now because stuff with Vera has reached a standoff.
So, ok, here it is. To be frank, Vera is what you'd call a "gassy lass." Normally, with a relationship as developed as ours, this wouldn't be an issue. We've showered together. She's held my head while I vomited out many a Friday night. During climax I've heard her foghorn every possible obscenity she can conjure up. Hell, I passed gas myself on her naked thigh two nights ago (not on purpose). And yet, she would rather be drawn and quartered than admit to a single vaporous emission. You laugh, but this morning she left my house in tears after a very heated exchange that all began with her insisting (for the millionth time) that the foul stench in her vicinity was the work of Ted Koppel. Thing is, I feed Ted Koppel the $50 superhealthy dog food, and he's nowhere near the flatulent age yet. Oh, and plus there's the fact that I CAN SEE THE GREEN VAPOR SNAKES COMING FROM HER ASS WHEN IT HAPPENS BECAUSE I'M A FRICKIN SUPERHERO. I just don't understand why she denies it so childishly! It's not like I'd love her any less. Truthfully, I think it's kind of cute (though I always avert my eyes from the green snakes, which I find hideous).
So what do I do? I'm certainly not going to go to the game tonight with this weighing unresolved on my mind. That kind of cloudy thinking could cost a lot of people their lives. Do I reveal my secret identity to her? It's very plausible that she'll be so embarrassed that she'd go public with the info, ruining my blossoming career. I feel like we're at a giant, noxious crossroad. If she lies to me so easily about this, what else is she hiding? Hell, she could be the Caped Vapor herself, as far as I know (though she has no background in chemistry). This is one of those trial-by-fire moments that we superheroes all have to go through- wouldn't we be happier as normal people without these amazing powers? Wouldn't our lives and relationships be more carefree? Simpler? No suit, no saving, no snakes?
When I woke up the next morning in the eerie silence of a suddenly vacant town I was still half dressed in the purple suit. Outside the sun was shining blearily through a few curls of the acid orange mist rising from the Central High gymnasium. I shook my head to clear it of the fuzziness and the green snakes I'd wrestled all night in my dreams, and went to the front door to retrieve the want-ads.
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