5^th Street, that’s what we called her, you can guess why, she’s restocking the boudoir section seeing that boxes of speculums and cream were cluttering the entryway and cleanliness is mandatory. The cream, tubes and tubes of it, was the kind to whiten your butthole, because different strokes, right? But 5^th Street didn’t much seem to mind the work, what with her earbuds in and probably listening to more of them biography pods.

Me and Bareback, we’d be gassing over what happened to her troll hole, and 5^th Street would slide in, gum snapping, saying you ever know about Jack Redwood? Or Bareback and me, maybe the toilet outside the Dirty Eddie took to almost overflowing again, and 5^th Street, she’d pop out an earbud and tell us hey, what about Wendy West, you ever met her?

These pods 5^th Street listens to, she wasn’t learning about the civil war or Richard Nixon. Ask her about a commandment, any of them, and 5^th Street would guess at you something like thou shall not do A-T-M and beats me if she’s joking.

But the speculums are soldiered up on the shelf, and the cream is on the next rack over, and 5^th Street is aiming to work through the herbal enema supplies next when the front door tings. And in slow season we’re just three nickels waiting on a dime, so that ting, it gets all of us keyed up to perform.

Could be a she or a he, but they strut up to the counter like Samantha Pink in Citizen Caned and ask if we got any Japanese clover clamps. 5^th Street, sycophant that she is, and by that I mean brown-noser, pops up like a turkey button and gushes yes, aisle 3, let me show you.

This not-Samantha-Pink, they say Mmm, yes – that throbs and follows 5^th Street back towards the BDSM section, tossing a wink at Bareback and me on the way through. And we hear them chittering and hooting for the better part of a quarter hour, like not one of them ever met someone so funny, til they come back holding hands and 5^th Street drops a pile of merch on the counter. Bareback rings it up, the clover clamps but also a tube of the butthole cream and a gimp mask, and not-Samantha-Pink slips two crisp Franklins across the glass. The extra is for my lovely here, she goes, and slides a painted fingernail along 5^th Street’s jawline.

The door tings again as not-Samantha-Pink peacocks their way out, and 5^th Street, she’s got a white bud tucked into each ear already as she slices open the box of herbals. Me and Bareback, real quiet we hear her whisper I can’t believe it, I can’t fucking believe they were here.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Cap, he said we got timber beams, which of course means there’s a few extra ticks before the floor lets loose. Being geared up heavy, you’re wishing for oak but would settle for pine, all things considered. Those hewn logs, big bastards that got drug out of the holler by a Belgian Draft a century back, they don’t burn quick as the new stuff. Laminated veneer, it’s killed a probie or two, but it’s not the wood at fault. Those gusset plates, the kind you see in most builds since the MTV days, they cause all the grief. Gets hot enough and those metal connectors, sometimes just a mesh rectangle but maybe your numbers hit and it’s galvanized, give up the ship in less than 10 minutes and next thing you know, bang, you got an LODD on your hands and Lieu is rounding up the honor guard. Line of Duty Death, that is. But it’s timber beam, so while Cap is on the tip, I’m probing corners and feeling for the floor to get soft.

30% oxygen left, IC crackles over the radio. Checking the meter, I tell him back it’s 33%.

Out the window, Burny yells Sir, it’s not safe, you can’t go back in there. He’s plugged into crowd control considering he ain’t much more than a Jake when you put a hose in his hands, but nobody better at stopping a civvy from needing skin grafts.

Cap, right now he’s losing the fight. Red and orange lick the rafters and we’re going on fully involved. The plywood is all Bell’s Palsy drooping under my heels like that, and the bedroom ceiling we’re standing on has a date with the bedroom floor, timber beams or not.

Ma’am, ma’am, no, you need to stay outside, Burny warns from two stories down.

The charlie side flares up and Cap radios to get the stick in the air because the stairs are a no-go. The ladder, he means. Me, I’m on the alpha side still poking through cardboard boxes. First three were jack squat.

25% remaining, IC buzzes, but he’s always undercutting it.

People ask about the smell and suspect I’m fooling when I say campfire. But it’s nothing special, unless of course a bunch of those totes are melting down to a puddle, in which case your nose says you might better get some fresh air, respirator or not.

Next box is just plates. Ceramic, maybe. Dinner and hors d’oeuvres size. So I shove it towards the opposite corner and it disappears in the smoke.

You ever stood in the middle of a trampoline, not as a kid but full-grown? The way it sags down towards the grass and you wait for the springs to pop? Then you can get your head around what the floor feels like right about this moment. As in, maybe you don’t want to be in my shoes.

20%, the IC who cried wolf announces on comms.

Burny, the uproar signals he’s wrestling Mr. Homeowner to the driveway so the guy doesn’t turn chargrilled trying to save the cat.

CHING…CHING CHING…CHING.

Sayonara to the dinner plates, burst into thousands of shards.

Back Cap’s way there’s a thump, low and dense, and the wall mushroom’s up. Time to go, the overreactor shouts over the radio. Stick’s ready at the bravo window, now! But there’s one box left, so I spin the volume down to zero and peel back the flaps.

Jackpot.

Stacks on stacks of big hair and expertly placed fishnet. Page after page of silicon and leopard print. Neon D-cups and “Girls of Hawaii,” raw and uncensored.

From behind me, CHING CHING. CHING.

The corner of the box lights up with a whoomp and I’m still foraging. “America’s Best ASSets!” Velvet and Gallery and High Society. “Raunchy Ladies of Reno” and Miss Melissa’s 56-inch jugs.

Buried beneath it all, under the moose knuckles and “Nympho Nurses,” I spot two smoldering issues of Bang Box and my belly flips. After eleven houses and dozens of boxes stuffed away in bedroom closets and mildewed basements and broiling attics, I’ve got it. Them, really. Sticky and dog-eared, the covers blare about the “Girl Next Door” contest winner. December 1988, erect nipples jut out from a denim vest while both legs are splayed open, revealing a thatch of pubic hair crawling down both thighs. Also, pink Chuck Taylor’s. December 1989, topless beneath a color block nylon ski jacket, with furry boots and crotchless panties.

On both covers, the same feathered dirty-blonde hair.

The same front teeth gap.

The same mismatched eyes, one hazel and one brown.

The same black cross inked in the slot between left thumb and index finger, situated so it’s rightways up when she looks at it and upside down for anyone else.

The only two-time winner of the contest.

Angela Aubrey.

Not her real name.

THUD THUD THUD from the respirator says oxygen is at zero, so I jam both copies under my jacket and turn for the window.

Before I get there, the floor lets loose and everything goes dark.

#

7:49am, March 15^th, 2026. Newsome VFD responded to reports of heavy smoke at 109 Jurgen Street. Upon arriving on scene, firefighters encountered flames engulfing the rear of the home. All members of the family were evacuated safely, though a cat remains unaccounted for. The fire spread to the second floor and attic where firefighters were battling the blaze, until rapid intensification forced the call to evacuate. Partial collapse of the attic temporarily trapped 35-year-old firefighter Amber Raisor. A two-man crew extricated her from a window via ladder truck, and she was transported to Block Memorial Hospital for treatment of severe burns and smoke inhalation. An investigation into the cause of the fire is continuing.

#

Did you know there are darn near 350,000 residential fires per year in the United States? It’s cooking that’s to blame for more than half. Propane tank is fresh out but those ribeyes are still dinner so you fry them in a pan on the gas stove. Then the grease lights up and in a tizzy you throw water on it, and we know how that goes. Or maybe Pops says let’s deep-fry the turkey this year, but the garage was the wrong place for that, so it’s a three alarm before the green bean casserole is even out of the oven. Not always a bonehead thing though. Could be you used a hand towel to move a hot pan and dangled it over the flame on accident. But knowing this, that cooking fires are the main culprit, someone who’s liable to start a fire on purpose will basically always aim for the kitchen.

The nurse, she just nods through all of this and layers more cinchocaine on my hands. Jacey, in her scrubs the color of Hi-C, she mmhmms and hangs another bag of oxandrolone.

“Get some rest, Amber,” she goes, snapping her gloves off into the trash, and leaves the room.

#

Jurgen Street, the one with the missing cat, like I said it was the eleventh house. Didn’t bank on it taking that many. Each one though, I could tell it back like a golfer replaying every shot from their last round.

19 Muirfield Road, October 9^th. We had a full squad, so Cap and the boys worked the kitchen and laundry room while I ducked into the basement to creep. Some boxes, sure – there are always boxes – but only hand towels and seasonal knickknacks. Hand-painted rabbits holding a banner that said “Hoppy Easter.” Two pawprint ornament kits, unopened. Wooden sign announcing everyone should gobble till they wobble. But no smut, so I rucked back upstairs after pocketing a Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia from the Lego display because the kid will never miss them.

95 Chris Street, October 30^th. Kitchen wasn’t the source this time around, but a coal furnace in the garage that sat under the living room. Pulling up I knew right off it wasn’t the place, not with them hanging ferns and oversized rockers on the porch, but we’ve all been surprised before. Me, I worked the tip seeing that Cap was out of town and Burny was shoved off to traffic control, but having the lead wasn’t all bad. The pipeman was outside, which left me free to mine for filth in every toolbox and tote down there, all while keeping the nozzle focused on that furnace. Didn’t have what I was looking for, this place. Impact wrenches and socket sets, sure. Brad nails and spiral saws, you bet. Two woks and an electric griddle, because why not, but no Swank. No Hustler. No Club. No Angela Aubrey.

81 Highland Lane, November 16^th. Kitchen fires, they pretty much don’t run themselves into attic or basement fires, unless when nobody is around to call it in. And Highland, we got there in under five, so it didn’t land in the “saved the foundation” category. Lieu dug for hot spots on the delta side while Cap had the nozzle to knock down flare-ups, so I made like the storage closet around the corner was a worry. Sliding open the doors, there was cereal to feed a penal colony. Rows of canned peas and corn and fruit in heavy syrup. Stacks of frying pans, more than one blender, and cleaning supplies like if you needed to swab down the hospital. As in, all of it. But just a single box loaded with shoes, kid size. I slid the flaps back together, migrated to the kitchen, and signaled the all clear.

You don’t need to hear about the other seven. All that matters was the eleventh.

#

2:49pm, March 17^th, 2026. Newsome police conducted a welfare check at 42 Riverside Parkway, issued by a concerned landlord. After the inhabitant of the home failed to answer the door following numerous attempts, police forcibly entered the residence and found Angela Raisor, 56, unresponsive in the kitchen. She was turned over to the Newsome VFD and transported to Block Memorial Hospital.

#

It’s that bad pee color this time, Jacey’s scrubs that is, maybe like you took too much vitamin B. Or Mountain Dew, the original color. She rolls me to face the window, which just sees out to the brick wall of the neighboring wing, and spreads more silver sulfadiazine over my right shoulder blade. We do this twice per day, me and Jacey, with her slathering a creamy whatever on my skin or tapping another clear bag of something or other as I talk.

Monologuing the bricks out the window, I point out that a fire-related death happens roughly every 140 minutes in the US, and an mmhmm rumbles from behind my back. The silver sulfadiazine, it stings like sunburn going on, which the doctor told me is better than dying from a bacterial infection and who am I to argue. Do you know which state has the most fatal house fires, I ask the bricks, and then say it’s Texas before Jacey can answer. Hmm, she says, which feels like a breakthrough, and wraps a layer of gauze around the fresh slick of antibiotic.

“Back for more around 6 o’clock,” Jacey goes, as she tugs another pair of gloves into the garbage and hangs a left down the hall.

#

Knuckles rap on the door, not soft and low the way most hospital knocks are but the same THUD THUD THUD as the respirator that ran out of oxygen, and it’s Lieutenant Knee Pads.

Not his real name.

Dangling from his left arm like a ball sack is a plastic grocery bag and he stands there waiting for an invite, so I say to come in. He plops into the chair in the corner, hissing air out of the seams, and sets the bag between his booted feet.

“When you getting out?” he asks, skipping the niceties.

My head bobbles side to side, the way your grandparents bobbled when they heard a good song on the car radio (always side to side, not front to back like the youngins’).

“Depends,” I tell him, looking down at the mummified wrap of my shoulder and chest.

“Be good to have you back,” he nods, the whole time staring at my bricks out the window, never looking at me. “Burny ain’t shit on the tip.”

A pair of heels click past the door, trailed by the splat of max-cushioned running shoes, nursing clogs being dinosaurs these days. Beyond that, it’s silent for a ten count until he breaks the deadlock.

“Brought you this,” he says, and Frankenstein’s his way to me, leaving the cuck chair inhaling behind him. The bag, reeking of campfire, lands heavy on the bedside table. Through the milkiness of the thin plastic, I see the screaming pink of canvas high tops. Pressed against the side of the bag are two legs topped with panties, sans crotch. Bang Box, it says through a hole in the corner of the bag.

Lieutenant Knee Pads, he’s standing by the bed, looking at me now. Not saying, just looking. Watching as I pull the side of the bag down to get a cleaner peek at the green and yellow and black squares of a nylon ski jacket. An unobstructed view of the hedgehog of hair parked at the intersection of two spread legs.

“You could of got to the stick with Cap,” Knee Pads stage whispers to me. “And then ain’t none of this,” he says, gesturing to my body, “none of this ever happens.”

More running shoes muffle down the hallway as I pick at the edge of the bag. Everywhere is the smell of woodsmoke. Knee Pads, he’s spitting distance away as I slide my left hand inside and pull out the December 1989 issue.

The feathered dirty-blonde hair.

The gap in the front teeth.

The hazel and brown eyes, one of each.

Gazing at her, at Angela Aubrey, everything goes fuzzy even though I know Knee Pads isn’t one to deal with crying.

“Why’d you hang back? For those?” he says, flicking a hand towards the bag and making like tears aren’t leaking down my cheeks.

The black cross, the one between Angela’s left thumb and index finger, I look at it, then look to the notch on my left hand. There, on that flap of skin between thumb and pointer, is the dusky, blown out image of a cross.

The same tattoo, me and Angela Aubrey.

“Why?” Knee Pads repeats.

#

Me telling you it was just bricks outside the window, that wasn’t right. It’s bricks, but with my face splatted against the glass it’s also how to see into the window for the first room in the adjacent wing. Shoving my ear hard into the corner, so hard the metal frame leaves railroad tracks from temple to jaw, I can tell you the room is occupied now. Standing here with the window frame pressed into my face, Jacey and her Mountain Dew scrubs not due back yet, there’s a person in that room with an oxygen mask over her mouth. At least I think it’s a her. The fluorescent light over the bed flicked on and I saw long hair. Blonde, but maybe darker.

#

“Diluted chlorhexidine,” Jacey tells me through her mask as she irrigates the skin on my shoulder, then scrubs softly with a square of gauze. It’s debridement that she’s doing, taking off some dead layers that I don’t need.

Not wanting to watch, I stare at our reflection in the blank TV mounted on the wall and tell Jacey that, even though the number of house fires has declined since the 80s, the rate of deaths is up. Almost nine deaths per thousand fires, I say to her, and it used to be closer to seven.

“You’re kind of a pyro,” Jacey goes, and in the TV screen I watch her drag a peel of skin off with her fingers and wipe it on a pantleg.

“57% of deaths are men,” I say, “mainly because they’re most likely to run back inside trying to play hero.”

“Or because they do dumb shit,” Jacey adds, squirting another round of chlorhexidine.

“Like trying to play hero,” I add, then look to the bricks.

#

“I’m seven years old and home alone,” I tell Jacey, who’s right now smearing my shoulder and chest with fresh silver sulfadiazine. “And Mom, she said not to touch the stove and she’d be back in a wink, but that was hours before and all I had was fruit snacks.”

She’s stopped mid-smear, Jacey has, and is just looking at me now.

“There was mac n’ cheese, so I tried to remember what Mom did, the way she pushed the dial on the stove and it click click clicked before the blue flame lit up. And it did, after some click clicking, the flame lit up, but my blanket was there on the stove, so it lit up too. Just the edge at first, but then all of it, and I ran upstairs, chased by the beep…beep…beep of the smoke alarm.

This whole time, Jacey is staring at me while I sermon the bricks. In the hall, a horde of thick-soled running shoes plops past the nurse’s station.

“They found me in a closet, the firefighters did, hugging my mom’s shirt and crying. After taking me down the ladder, they gave me to a lady with a quiet voice who wore brown pants and a sweater soft like kitten fur. She asked where my parents were and I told her mom would be back in a wink, that’s what she told me, in a wink.”

“Jesus,” Jacey murmurs, as she strips off both gloves and lays a hand on mine, her thumb worrying over the cross tattoo.

“That fire took everything,” I say to this nurse who, after days of mmhmms, feels like the only one who listens. “The ratty chair we used to snuggle in to watch movies. The table where we did puzzles. My stuffed animals and books. Mom’s fancy clothes that she would put on when we played dress-up. The boxes of pictures, every single one.”

Her scrubs are orange today, Jacey’s are. Carrot, maybe. Or pumpkin.

“It even took my Mom,” I tell her, like we’re in some kind of confessional, “because the quiet lady said it wasn’t safe with her.”

#

Back at the window, the cool of the metal frame pressed against my cheek, I know it’s a woman in that room. She’s sitting up in bed now, talking to someone. A nurse, maybe. But the woman, she has so much hair the color of wet sand, and she’s gesturing with her hands as she speaks. On the left hand there’s a dark smudge, two black lines intersecting, and my mouth falls open.

It’s her. In the adjoining wing of Block Memorial Hospital, it’s her.

I pull back from the window, leaving a greasy face print like a cave painting, and shuffle to the hallway. My gown is flapping open behind me, bare ass there for anyone who cares to look, but it doesn’t matter. One turn, then one more, and I’m frozen outside room 213. Standing there, listening, it’s quiet inside. A pair of heels clacks down the hallway behind me. I nudge the door and it swings open.

Her head spins in my direction and even now, years after Bang Box, she’s still gorgeous.

She starts to speak, but the words are cut short when it clicks. Angela Aubrey, she’s speechless when she sees this woman, me, standing in the doorway with feathered dirty-blonde hair, just like hers when she was young. This total stranger, the one who crept unannounced into room 213 wearing an untied hospital gown and layers of gauze around her shoulder and chest, has mismatched hazel and brown eyes, one of each. She has a gap in her front teeth, wide and proud, and Angela Aubrey, looking at me, could be looking back in time.

It’s a staring contest, until finally she breaks.

“Baby?” she breathes, “Is that you?”

“Oh my god,” I sigh. “You look so beautiful,” I tell her, and surge to the bed.

“Oh, sugar,” Angela says, holding me against her chest as I weep. “Baby, I look like a busted can of biscuits under this sheet.”

It’s really her. The only two-time winner of the Bang Box “Girl Next Door” contest.

Angela Aubrey Raisor.

My mom.

#

You can strut into pretty near anywhere, provided you do it confident. Not looking for permission, everyone supposes you got business to attend to and lets it ride. Looks the other direction. The thing about being in a hospital is, people have their own mess to handle. The nurse on hour nine of another double in a row, she’s dwelling on the guy in 1102 with the burst hemorrhoid who keeps calling her toots, so another rando sliding by in the hallway doesn’t register. Visitors, they don’t give a hoot about someone in a gown rallying past unless it’s Grandpa Don because he shouldn’t be up, not with the fall risk and all.

So me, I’m prancing like Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven, each step signaling I’ve got somewhere to be and no patience for chit-chat. And the hand clasped around mine, imagine it’s attached to Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, except that in this movie Meryl has a cross tattooed between her thumb and index finger and a gap in her teeth.

“Is this really gonna work?” Angela asks, to which I say just keep walking.

We bail on the elevator and skip down two flights of stairs, popping out into the lobby with our hands still latched tight. Angela, her gown is falling open in the back and even at 56 she’s still got that donk. Hanging a left at the registration desk, Clooney and Streep with business on their mind, we swagger through the sliding doors and into the pull-up zone outside the ER.

Being on the other end of this enough, you know that stealing an ambulance is duck soup. Open and shut, I mean. The thing is, when those popo-medics come in hot to the ER entrance, all’s that’s on their mind is getting the patient out of the box and into a room, so the two-stroke is left running. Sometimes, if maybe it was a big wreck or a shootout, you’ll have three or four meat wagons loitering there, belching exhaust with no crew in earshot.

That’s what we happen across, Angela and me. A trio of ambulances lined up neat like the front row of the Indy 500. All of them running, unlocked, waiting for green.

“We’re really doing this, baby?” Angela says, but I’m already buckled into the driver’s seat signaling her to take shotgun. Climbing up, her gown snags on the door and a thigh beard announces that, almost four decades after Bang Box, Angela hasn’t changed her grooming habits.

Both doors thunk shut and I hammer the gas, chirping the rears as we burst from under the breezeway and into the sun, angling for open space. The E-Series doesn’t handle like the ProMaster and we swing wide at the first stop sign, kissing the front end of a Honda and sending a shower of plastic into the intersection.

“Let me get this, darlin,” Angela tells me, paying no mind to the Honda driver disappearing in our sideview mirror as she strips a ribbon of dead skin from my shoulder and flicks it on the floor.

The speedometer touches fifty as we splinter the arm barrier and launch into the empty overflow lot. In the back of the box, the ambulance I mean, it’s a chorus of glass and metal as we land, everything slamming into everything else. Needles and catheters, jump bags and oxygen tanks, a portable defibrillator and EKG unit. Next to me, Angela has both hands pressed on the dashboard, a mane of hair sucked across her face and out the open window, and she’s laughing. That wheezing kind of laugh, the one where you almost can’t hear it but your eyes know what’s happening, that’s Angela’s laugh.

Letting the rig coast down to about twenty, I tell Angela to hang on and jack the wheel to the left, tromping on the gas at the same time. And the E-Series, it doesn’t handle like some of the others, but the V-8 has enough horses to pull killer donuts. The rear end whips around, tires screaming, and I keep on the throttle as the centripetal force kicks in. Faster and faster we spin, each rotation flooding the cabin with tangy rubber smoke as the tires overheat.

“When’s the last time you whipped shitties?” I yell to Angela over the squealing, but all she can do is hang on and it’s just those gapped front teeth braying at the windshield, tears streaming down both cheeks, she’s so happy. And me, that’s all I ever wanted, to make her happy, so I give it more gas and twist the wheel all the way to 90, the whole time watching her hoot.

Ambulances, though, they sit high, and sometimes that center of gravity has plans that don’t line up with yours.

We’re spinning through so much smoke you can’t tell sky from blacktop and I feel it go, the driver’s side wheels lifting off the ground and hovering for a breath before the entire wagon, all 14,000 pounds of it, keels over dead like roadkill. Me, I’m spit out of the seatbelt at impact and thud onto Angela while around us the windows, all of them, explode and we’re peppered with glass. In a milky fog of burned tires, I feel Angela shuddering beneath me. I clear the dirty blonde hair from her face, frantic that she’s hurt or worse, but that’s not it. Panting and alive, she’s laughing, laughing so hard she can’t breathe, her giant open mouth topped by gapped teeth.

A black tattoo of a cross comes into view and Angela’s left hand tugs a translucent filet from my collarbone, revealing the fresh pink skin underneath. It sticks to her fingers and she tries to snap it off the way you do after a wet sneeze, but my skin dangles there, not wanting to leave. So Angela, she wraps both arms around me and pulls me close to her chest, and we both of us start to cry. Not because we’re sad, but because we’re not.

Out the window, past the lingering cloud of fumes and stink, I hear sirens.

#

4:02pm, March 20^th, 2026. Newsome Police were called to Block Memorial Hospital to investigate complaints of a stolen ambulance. Arriving on scene, officers reported the ambulance had rolled over after the driver, 35-year-old Amber Raisor, had initiated a series of donuts in an empty parking lot. The passenger, 56-year-old Angela Raisor, sustained minor injuries. The driver was arrested and charged with multiple felony counts, including possession of a stolen motor vehicle, aggravated reckless driving causing bodily harm, and vehicular hijacking. While in Newsome County Jail awaiting arraignment, Am. Raisor provided information pertaining to a nearly three-month investigation into a series of recent house fires. Chief Investigator Hank Drummond announced that Raisor, a longstanding member of the Newsome Volunteer Fire Department, was charged with eleven counts of arson in the first degree for deliberately starting fires at eleven different homes between September 2024 and March 2026. Prosecutors anticipate a plea deal, as Raisor reportedly confessed to all counts.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Coming September 4th, 2026...Group Isolation, featuring artwork by Steven Fain and stories by six authors...including me! This is the only place you'll be able to read "Something Special," a psychological horror story I haven't posted or published anywhere previously. Be on the lookout for preorder information in the coming weeks as only 100 copies will be available. And yep, you read that right - this is a physical book, one you can hold in your grimy hands and dog-ear and highlight your favorite sentences. Hell, it can even be displayed on your bookshelf next to the dusty wedding photo and unread copy of Fifty Shades Freed.

Share

Leave a comment

The bus dropped me here, being as how it’s the furthest place from there. That and Dubai was off the table with the price of flights and all. Room enough for two on that grate, I say, a statement rather than a question, but the mound of consignment shop jackets and pants lays there mute. No acknowledgment, just continues steaming himself (herself? I don’t know) like broccoli in the fog of sewer stink huffing up from beneath the street. Oh, and the thing swaddled in layers of AMVETS originals? It’s wearing a fedora, if you can imagine.

There’s a twinge of feeling in my right foot still, but just the pinky toe mostly. The rest are moving towards black like charcoal. This could have been Key West maybe, which at least would have afforded the luxury of not trying to befriend the homeless pile basking in the condensed air remains of every shower and dishwasher and toilet flush in the city. But no, I went north, the result being my fingertips have a date lined up with necrosis.

Listen, cawing for sympathy is a bad look, I get that. Just know her name is Sienna, and the size 6 loop pressing an imprint in my front pocket wasn’t supposed to be there. The extra $89 per paycheck for overtime shifts was earmarked for a deposit at The Rosewood. But the heiress, she decided I might better turn it into a Greyhound ticket instead.

Sorry, the whole “heiress” thing was uncalled for. She’s not like that. It’s just, what does a person feel when someone says, “I love you too”?

I wouldn’t know.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

She clenched the restraining bar in both hands, ski tips bouncing, and twisted to look over her shoulder at the chairs sliding up Berthoud Pass behind us. Looking for someone. Her parents, perhaps. “Shit,” she whispered under her breath, then swung her head around as we neared the top of the lift. “Shit,” she muttered again, a tiny voice slithering towards panic. Hunger clawed my throat.

“You can have the rest of my sandwich?” she said, the way kids sometimes make everything a question. “But only if you tell me the fastest way to the lodge?”

She knew I was hungry without being told. Out loud, anyways. That was a start. I asked how old she was.

“Ten?” she told me.

“Ten is a little young to be left alone on a big mountain like this,” I replied, then asked her name.

“Frances? But take my sandwich, cuz you’re starving.” She tucked a mitten into the pocket of her coat and revealed the remains of a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Every surface was smeared with the greasy slick of raspberry preserves and gobs of bread that had been pounded into a mash.

Frances, who knew my next meal was long overdue without being told as much. My jaw twinged. It had been forty days since the Turning – recruitment, if you prefer – and my insides said that couldn’t continue much longer. Dinner was waiting for me at home, I told her, but she could follow me to the lodge.

“What do you like to eat?” Frances asked as she slid the oily package back into her pocket and took another hurried glance downhill.

I lifted the bar, slid off the chair, and angled left towards the glades. Frances skidded to a stop and peered in the opposite direction.

“Is that the way to the lodge?” she shouted, her voice catching. Every tastebud fired, as if a sour candy was dropped on the back of my tongue.

“It’s a shortcut,” I answered, and pointed my skis towards the tree line.

Behind me, Frances slid both hands into the loops of her ski poles and shoved off in my direction.

“You really need to eat something,” she said.

And I did. Soon enough, I did.

#

23^rd June 1948

It’s silly, you know – the entire concept. But I don’t have to tell you that, my sweet. No, someone like you doesn’t need to be told much of anything. We intuit things most people do not. Your sister shared the same talents, to a lesser degree. On occasion it’s that sense of déjà vu. Of knowing the Plymouth sedan is going to launch into oncoming traffic where it will be met head-on by a Freightliner bound for Topeka. We look away, the both of us, because we don’t need to watch to have seen it. Other times, it’s brushing arms with a stranger and their thoughts sizzle like a thunderbolt. Last fall we crossed paths with a dour woman while browsing in the produce aisle. Such a precious child, she mumbled, her eyes focused on the tops of her shoes. As we passed, a silent plea detonated in my mind. PLEASE HELP, MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME. You felt her appeal as well, no doubt, judging by how your body jolted stiff. I avoided the papers for a few days, expecting that she was dead but choosing ostrichism over validation. Is this a word you know, ostrichism? Perhaps I shouldn’t assume. It means burying your head in the sand. Ignoring truths.

But that’s the crux, isn’t it? The willful ignorance of the truth?

We play the same game, you and I, but even as your mother, I’ve come to accept we’re not on the same team.

#

25^th June 1948

You wanted to spend the summer at the beach. Begged to take the train west through the Rockies and not stop until your toes lost feeling in the bracing waters of China Cove or Mendocino. Pleaded for Bandon or Manzanita. As the day of our departure approached, you filed a late petition for somewhere, anywhere but Colorado. Summers would be rife with thunderstorms, you cautioned. Your classmate had been to Colorado and moaned it was the horror of their young life, you warned. At the library, you showed me books about the dangers of altitude. Books far beyond the level of a normal seven-year-old, which you are anything but.

My body craved the company of the Overlook, and it coveted ours as well. I was compelled to return by soaring peaks and endless forest. Lured by the chime of a brass gate pulled shut at the elevator. Enticed by impressive gentlemen whispering promises of lavish parties and sweet wines, their words invading my dreams and begging for my presence once more. Of course, we had the personal invitation from Mr. Derwent himself, in his typical unhurried longhand, that tilted the scales in favor of the Overlook.

To the lovely Missus Dorothy Miles,

It would be my honor to host you again this summer at the glorious Overlook Hotel. And please, I insist you bring that extraordinary young boy of yours. My associates and I have heard much about him, and we are eager to make his acquaintance.

Forever a friend of Dorothy,

H. Derwent

It’s nice to be desired, is it not?

And so we are here. As I write this, you suffer through a restless and fitful afternoon slumber. The bed in room 107 was not to your liking and the noise from the lobby was untenable, so at my request Mr. Derwent moved us to the second floor. Your sleep has not improved.

Today, just like the last, I’m drawn to your bedside while you rest – the force of a great magnet finding its opposite. Inches away, I’m awash in smells. The delicate citrus of your shampoo, the honey and lavender of skin lotion applied after a morning bath. The tang of sheets soaked in sweat. Your fingers are woven between the loops and twists of the black and white checked afghan my mother knitted to celebrate your birth seven years ago, a mirror of the pink and white version she made for your sister two years prior. And yet, the familiar whispers of the impressive gentlemen tickle my ear and in unison say eat, you must eat! My mouth is awash with saliva, and I think, can I? My stomach yearns for it.

You shine like a beacon, a meal that would sustain for months.

But you are my son.

I beg the whispers away. I shall be outside, enjoying the wonders of the topiary.

#

August 1944. Paris is on the verge of liberation and German forces are shattered by a Soviet offensive on the eastern front. Camp Carson is in full bloom outside Colorado Springs. In the shadow of Pike’s Peak, a woman and two small children sit in the grass near the playground behind Pearlman Elementary. Their arms are extended in front of them, as if each was carrying an invisible dinner tray. The midday sun sits high and fierce.

The girl is five years old. She wears a light grey plaid dress with a Peter Pan collar. The stain across the chest suggests cream of wheat for breakfast, with a dash of homemade jam. Her hair is auburn with flecks of delicate blond, and she possesses the same thin frame and pale complexion as the woman. She is her mother in miniature.

“Will we catch a flutterby, momma?” the girl asks.

Her mother smiles.

“Butterfly, darling.” She leans forward and places a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. “And perhaps we will, but we must remain still, and quiet.” She extends an index finger and taps the tip of the girl’s nose. The girl beams, then closes both eyes and resumes her vigil.

The boy does not have the patience to catch a flutterby. One suspender hangs loose from his waist, dislodged by an arm that preferred digging in the dirt to mimicking a tree branch. His button-down shirt has come untucked from the wool short pants, and one – no, both – shoes have been removed. He is three years old.

“Dada?” the boy asks, both hands gripping piles of unearthed rocks.

His sister opens an eye and risks a sideways glance at her brother, but remains silent. The woman turns to her son, places a hand on his cheek, and says, “Shh, my love. The butterflies will never visit us unless we are quiet.”

He stares at her, then tosses the rocks aside. “Where Dada?,” he says, louder this time.

“Dada is away, sweetheart,” she reminds him. “He went on the boat with the soldiers, remember?”

“WANT DADA!” the boy shouts, dragging his sister from her trance. She sighs. This is no way to catch a flutterby.

The boy continues to demand his father, his calls echoing off the oak surrounding the school. Tears well up in his mother’s eyes. She reaches for him.

“Come, sit with momma,” she says, her voice thick and failing. “Let’s have a snack,” she offers. “Yes, let’s have a snack,” she repeats, and pulls a package of crackers from her shoulder bag.

The boy climbs into his mother’s lap, thudding heart visible through the thinness of his shirt. The woman extends a hand towards her daughter, who tucks in alongside her brother. Swallowing a sob, the mother pulls her children tight to her chest and dots their heads with kisses.

“Dada will be home soon,” she assures them, her voice just a rustle. “He’s just away.”

The children grow heavy with the weight of sleep. Perhaps a nap would do them all some good, the woman thinks, and gingerly reclines in the grass, her son tucked under one arm and daughter nestled under the other.

“He’s just away,” she breathes. Her eyelids drop shut and exhaustion takes hold.

Deep asleep, the boy’s mouth trembles and a hushed phrase escapes his lips. “Flutterby coming,” he burbles, and buries his face deeper into the soft folds of his mother’s dress.

From the row of trees emerges an armada of brilliant iridescent blue and black wings. Pipevine Swallowtail, dozens of them, bounce and flicker through the warm air, seeking a resting place. They land weightlessly on the shoulders and legs and chests of a mother and her children dozing in the afternoon sun.

#

26^th June 1948

The girl Frances was my first. Deep in the glades, our skis leaning against a tree a few feet away, I dragged her to the snow and jammed the fingers of my glove down her throat. Fumbling like a newborn seeking its mother’s breast, I tore the balaclava away from her neck and sought out the tenderness of the skin below as she thrashed beneath my weight. The terror, the tension of every muscle in her tremoring body, was the ringing bell.

“You should have turned right and never looked back,” I hissed, and withdrew a small blade from my jacket, waving it inches from her nose. Tears poured down her face. It was time. Ravenous, I pressed the tip under her right ear and drew it across to the left, but haste and inexperience left me unprepared for the sudden release. I gulped at the vapor rising from her gaping throat, pawing the air towards my mouth like a street dog gorging on found meat. But so much steam was wasted, lost in the thin air of Berthoud Pass.

This must be hard for you to read. To learn who, or more precisely what, your mother is.

My body throbbed with energy after taking steam for the first time. Aches and ailments disappeared overnight. Skin grew taut and fresh, hair thickened and threads of grey vanished. But I was wracked with guilt. To think of her family, losing a child so young and in such a horrific fashion? Never again, I told myself in the days that followed.

It was a promise I could not keep. The hunger refused to go silent.

After the fiasco with young Frances, each feeding was more refined than the last. My skills soon allowed me to release the steam in a dribble, just enough to savor an inhale or perhaps a mouthful, like enjoying tapas in Spain or filling your lungs with the saccharine air of a candy shop. Or, keep them alive for days on end, rationing the steam when food was likely to be in short supply. Most of these skills were self-taught, of the trial-and-error variety, because I rarely spent time with the others. There were, and still are, others, but their nomadic lifestyle does not mix well with motherhood or family. But they were handy in the early days for a pinch of insider knowledge. The canisters, for example? Unknown to me, until a chance encounter outside Glenwood Springs gifted me the expertise to harness the steam I couldn’t, or chose not to, consume in the moment, preserving it for later use.

The cedar chest at the foot of my bed contains a collection of canisters. Most are empty, though two hold what remains of the twins, Shirley and Joyce O’Dell. You remember the O’Dell’s, yes? Each no bigger than a pound of soap after a hard day’s washing. Classmates of yours who set out for the grocer but were lured into the trees by the want to find a missing dog. Their shine wasn’t strong enough to feel that there was no dog, though I’d like to think my acting job could lay claim to a share of the credit.

Mouthfuls of dirt and rock muffled their cries as my blade traced from ear to ear, leaving a gushing slit in its wake. Such brittle bones.

I’m not proud of what I am.

#

27^th June 1948

Afternoon sun pours through the paned glass of the Overlook, washing over your milky skin. Your arms twitch in a disturbed sleep. Watching the fragile cage of your chest rise and fall, rise and fall, my thoughts drift to when you stood at my bedside and said, “Daddy’s guts are on the outside.”

I asked what you meant. “Daddy’s guts are on the outside,” you repeated, burying your face in my shoulder.

Days later the telegram arrived. It is with regret that I am writing to confirm the death of your husband, Corporal William Miles, who was killed in action on 6 June 1945 in Okinawa…

Some may have dismissed it as coincidence or the ramblings of a child who longed for his father to be home. But not I. You had seen it, my sweet. Daddy’s guts were laid out in the sand like a rummage sale, put there by the burst of a Japanese mortar, and you saw it happen.

My suspicions had been there since you toddled. When asked to draw a picture of our family, you scrawled four stick figures flanked by a brown pup with huge, floppy ears. We didn’t have a dog, until we did; Daddy arrived home hours later with a stray Basset Hound that had wandered through the base. Brown, with the biggest floppy ears we’d ever seen. Thumper, your sister named him. Or the night screams of Nana! Nana! echoed from your room. I bolted down the hall and found you standing in front of the wooden rocker where my mother had so often cradled you to her chest before bed. Your skin was mottled with gooseflesh. Nana! Saw Nana! you shrieked, pointing at the chair. We woke early the next morning to a knock on the door and received the news my mother had passed during the night. As you grew older, the visions grew more distinct. Often it was simple and pure – Snoopy Sniffer!, you shouted, holding the present aloft before it had been unwrapped. Other times, it was troubling.

Robert won’t be at school anymore because his brain will die.

Miss Tucker has a baby in her belly, but it won’t be born.

Sissy has a clown smile on her neck.

And you were right, always.

You shined, brighter than the O’Dell’s, brighter than Frances, brighter than your sister, brighter than dozens of others, and when you saw Daddy die, I knew there was no greater threat to you than me.

And yet still, I brought you to this place. Our home was a shattered husk without Daddy, full of shadow when before there had been light. The need for an escape hatch, for a place that was vehement in demanding our presence, was overwhelming. The Overlook filled that need. I insist you bring that extraordinary young boy, Mr. Derwent had written. We are eager to make his acquaintance.

Yes, it’s nice to be desired.

Your eyelids flutter and both legs spasm, twisting the bed sheets into a clump. I lay my head to your chest and feel the frantic metronome of your heart, then grow nauseous as an image blooms before me. Seated at the head of a grand table in the ballroom, the impressive gentlemen hang over my shoulders. In front of me lies a large aluminum dome with a wooden handle. Eat, you must eat!, the gentlemen urge. Their lips caress my neck as a bony hand presents me with an opaque pearl handle topped by a two-inch steel blade, then motions to the smoldering platter in front of us. The chorus grows louder as my fingers wrap around the handle and the dome is lifted, revealing the platter beneath. On it lies a body, a boy, with pale skin and frail shoulders, clutching a black and white checked afghan. EAT, YOU MUST EAT, the impressive gentlemen thunder. I touch the blade beneath the boy’s right ear, preparing to draw it across, and feel the press of the gentlemen on my back, their voices now just a seduction. Yes, eat, they soothe, as they explore my breasts and work to separate my thighs. My breath grows ragged and harsh, my hips rise to meet their touch, and a bead of crimson appears where the tip of the blade has broken the skin.

MOMMA! you cry out, and the image explodes like dropped china. Gone are the lustful touches and urgent appeals of the impressive gentlemen. It is quiet in our room. Your brow glistens with sweat, yet you shiver. I tuck the blanket around your body. Out the window a group of ladies promenade towards the roque court.

I haven’t eaten in days. Your nearness torments me.

Medoc, are you here? It’s me that I fear.

#

28^th June 1948

My thoughts grow darker than a stack of black cats.

Here I sit watching you sleep. The eaves of the Overlook shudder and stained-glass windows rattle from the vigor of afternoon thunder booming across the mountaintops. Today there is no roque. There is no admiration of topiary beasts or stunning vistas. Instead, I am besieged by perpetual mutterings. Faceless voices so close their breath puffs across the nape of my neck. Eat, you must eat, they say. “Show yourself,” I shout, a demand that is met with laughter not with but at.

From the bathroom echoes the sound of something falling from height and smacking to the floor.

Tink tink.

I rise from your bedside to investigate.

She creeps she creeps, you rasp from behind me. Your voice, there can be no mistake, but I wheel around to see you still at rest, arms clasped around the checked afghan. A shiny trail of spittle escapes your lips.

Laughter erupts. It is everywhere but nowhere.

I wish we had gone to Mendocino.

Tink tink.

My mind curls as I stride to the bathroom and throw the door open. There, on the tile, lays a small steel blade, revolving slowly as if in a game of spin the bottle. The blade that opened the throat of young Frances, who was separated from her parents on a ski trip. The blade that peeled back the gullets of Shirley and Joyce O’Dell, who were looking for a dog but found the everlasting instead. The blade that carved a ghastly, dripping clown’s mouth beneath your sister’s precious smile as she experienced first-hand what her mother had become. The blade that released the steam of innumerable children, delicious and shining and horrified. The same blade I dared not bring when we departed for the Overlook, instead locking it in the cedar chest.

Yet there it sits, gleaming.

Eat, you must eat, the impressive gentlemen crow, their voices radiating from the tub, from the closet, from within the walls.

The rotation of the blade stops, the pearl handle aimed at my quivering hand.

Hunger wells up from deep within and I am overcome. Kneeling, my fingers grasp the handle, cool and heavy in my palm. Countless hands probe my body and tangle in my hair, eat you must eat, she creeps she creeps, extraordinary young boy and a force pushes me to your bedside.

Now I stand above you, dining on the soft exhales of your sleep. My hand squeezes the handle of the blade, knuckles blanched white. My nipples grow firm under the desperate circling of so many unseen thumbs and wetness blossoms between my legs. She creeps she creeps, eat you must eat and the steel tip of the blade meets the smoothness of the skin beneath your right ear as my hand presses down.

A bead of crimson reveals itself.

Laughter overwhelms. EAT, YOU MUST EAT, SHE CREEPS SHE CREEPS, WE ARE EAGER TO MAKE HIS ACQUAINTANCE the impressive gentlemen roar. Blood pulses through every limb, my body yearning for the meal that is to come.

Transfixed, I watch a sputtering, oozing grin appear across your neck. EAT, YOU MUST EAT the impressive gentlemen growl through lips that slide between my breasts. Your eyes flicker open and meet mine. Panicked air fills your lungs, but your cry of MOMM- is cut short as the blade completes its arc and your throat splits open as if a sausage left to roast too long above the coals. From the cherry-red line bursts a flood of steam and the street dog inside me devours your energy. Pausing not to gather myself, I feast on the unrelenting surge. Belly full and mind swimming in delirium, I begin to withdraw, but a skeletal hand shoves my head back to the pulsing wet of your throat and the Overlook heaves with joy.

Medoc, are you here? I’ve been feeding on children, my dear.

#

29^th June 1948

What a scene you have happened upon, Mr. Derwent. My sincerest apologies to your room attendants for what will undoubtedly be a prolonged and unfortunate undertaking. Might I suggest hydrogen peroxide for the bedsheets? Though perhaps everyone would be best served if the linens found themselves ablaze in the boiler.

Please accept my eternal gratitude for your hospitality, generosity, and willingness to ensure my son and I had all the comforts we desired. Our stay at the Overlook was quite spectacular, and I depart most satiated, much like the prior visit with my dear daughter.

The ever-present itch in both nipples foretell that I am expecting again, and with God’s grace I shall bring another healthy, glowing child into the world!

Adieu, Mr. Derwent. It is with much anticipation that I look forward to our next encounter.

#

29^th June 1954

Yes, my sweet child, here we are at the Overlook, at last! Regretfully, Mr. Derwent is no longer present; how I do wish you could have met him. He so adored your sister and brother, may they rest in peace.

The afternoon storms of summer rage outside our second-floor window, but you remain lost in a broken and agitated sleep. Your legs pinwheel, tossing sweat-soaked bedsheets onto the carpet. I lay my hand across your chest to feel the drumbeat of your vigorous heart and lean close to draw your gentle aroma deep into my lungs.

Eat, you must eat, a familiar voice whispers. From the bathroom echoes the sound of something falling from height and smacking to the floor.

Tink tink.

I rise from your bedside to investigate.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Yeah, I mean it. Don’t tell me guys can’t lactate if you haven’t never met Randy Clam.

Look, check this out. I got a pic of Randy’s nipple that he texted me.

Ok, it’s not a great pic or anything, but trust me this is it, that’s Randy Clam’s teat. Don’t look like much of nothing, but it’s a garden hose when that milk gets to flowing.

What do you mean, why am I showing you this? We got at least 40 minutes to the next stop and neither one of us got books or nothing to read. And we’re beyond the black stump out here, so what are we gonna do until we get to Reno, chew our fingernails? Seems like talking about a guy named Randy Clam that feeds crack babies is a better use of time than slack-jawing out the window.

No, thank you, gummies give me the pee shivers. Wait, look, let me show you this one. For 6^th grade we had to do a project about cells, not prison cells but cells in your body, and Randy helped me make a cake that had the nucleus and everything. He said we should use a snowball for that, the marshmallow snowball kind, and we got M&M’s for it and made frosting.

Crud, where is that.

OH, here it is. Found it. Look.

Isn’t it pretty great? And it tasted SO good. Randy Clam, he’s good at basically everything. Like when he teached me how to golf? I could not never even hit the ball in the air except when it went straight sideways, and Randy is all Jack Nicholson. Check this photo out, it’s my favorite of him even though he never wants his face in photos, Randy doesn’t, but it’s like professional stuff. Here, look.

I KNOW, right? Totally so good.

My parents? Mmm, not really? One time Randy sent me a pic and said it was my mom, but I don’t remember her or nothing. Got it around here somewhere, but when you save all these pictures in your phone it can be hard to find something when you need it, you know? Might better tag her so it’s easier next time.

Hold on. Must be farther back than this.

Scroll, scroll, scroll. Ha, sheesh.

Darn it, I’ll be back. I’m gonna wet myself before we get to Reno. Hate these tiny bus bathrooms, but nature calls, you know? Don’t let anyone mooch my seat.

#

Oops, scuse me. Sorry. What’s this driver, like, Tokyo drifting up there? Just about ended up in your lap, which, no thanks. No offense or nothing. Know if anyone’s in the bathroom? The light’s not working. No? Ok, thanks.

#

Phew, I’m back. Longest pee ever, plus the driver pretty much tossed me into some crusty dude’s lap, which he seemed keen on. But there’s nothing worse than sitting on a warm toilet seat. Gives me the ick so I tried to hover, but with the bus darn near tumping over it didn’t work so good. Plus whoever got there before me left a big brown shark in the bowl. Smelled like, hmm, brussel sprouts maybe? Here, check out the picture I took of it.

Ha! Just friggin around. I wouldn’t take a picture of poop. But if you’re gonna crunch a grumpy like that, maybe hold it to the bus station, for cripes’ sake.

Oh wait, I found the pic while I was peeing. Here it is. That’s my mom, Randy Clam says.

He didn’t really say. Maybe she had a long day at work or something. She was a really hard worker, Randy says. But we got the same eyes, don’t we? People always are like, you’re looking tired today, and I tell em nah, it’s just the sleepy eyelids like my mom got. Like that song, you know? “I Got It From My Mama,” you remember that one?

Oh. Well, it was a while ago. But that’s what I sing, the Fergie part, when people say something about my eyes. Randy Clam, that cracks him up every time.

No, Randy never said nothing about him. Only ever mentioned mom. Bonnie, he said she went by.

Who, Randy Clam? No, he’s like, way older than my mom was. He’s pretty much grandpa age, so, umm, no, him and mom weren’t doing it. Gross.

A test for what? I’m not asking Randy to take a test. You’re being weird.

We’re pretty much to the station, so. I’m grabbing my bag up front. Randy Clam is supposed to pick me up.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

So I says, listen, this is eggshell, not white, and she’s just laying there like a roped goat, not saying nothing. Takes a drag off her cig and puffs it out these Patrick Ewing nostrils, the whole time still wearing one of them wireless headset things and eyeballing the TV. At this point I’m over it, so I scroll down on facebook and tap the screen and I says, look, it’s right here – it says white, not eggshell. There should be like 20% off or something, I says, being that I drove all the way out here and it’s like, false advertising. She leans away seeing as my phone is blocking her view of a “Castle” rerun. The sound is turned all the way down.

Baby Nora is coming home today from the NICU and we don’t got a crib, so I went to marketplace on account that you can catch a deal, but it’s going on noon and this dung beetle ain’t wanting to budge on the price. Even though we both know it’s eggshell, not white. So I go, listen, I’ll give you thirty for it, best and final, and stripe a few tens onto the table.

She ain’t said a word yet, not since I called her out on the color, but she moles a fist down between the couch cushions and dredges up a calculator, which is like, ok, whatever. She flips the screen around after a few pecks and it’s got two fours standing shoulder to shoulder and I says, $44 for eggshell? But dickering wasn’t part of the timetable, so I toss another ten-spot and a fiver her way and make for the porch.

Sliding the last of it into the backseat, I see she’s upright now at the door watching me, nostrils smoke-stacking like Plant 3, so I says, get your fill of that before you come over, because there ain’t no smoking at the house once Nora gets home, Ma.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share

Ratty skimped on insulation because he wanted our nips to show, which I guess whatever. We’re here on his nickel, so however you want to justify it.

Kort’s got on her black two-piece today, high-cut because she wants more leg, with the embroidery I hand-stitched around the seams. Black and white low dunks, no socks. Says guys have a thing for sneakers with a bikini. Me, I went with the red triangle top and boy shorts, white Keds. There’s a molehill pressing through each triangle of fabric and chill bumps on both arms.

Each time the order window skids open, Kort leans so far out to hand off a coffee that I can see where babies come from, and Brent or Brick or whoever is driving the truck gets a face full of tits. Which I guess is more of Ratty’s handiwork. Always looking for ways to “inspire the customer,” he says, which is why in this neck of the woods the speaker is pushing out Patty Loveless or George Jones rather than, I don’t know, Sabrina Carpenter maybe.

He’s got one of them pencil dicks, Ratty does. Kort says so.

Order up is an iced cortado with four pumps of vanilla syrup, which signals Ratty is at the window. I start brewing the double shot and hear the glass pane slide open, then Kort, she whispers “hey baby” and I can see the outline of her jewelry box with how far out she’s leaning. Three pumps of vanilla syrup go in, and for the fourth I squeeze off a rocket from my nose let it drop into the glass because it’s colder than Bowie’s piss fridge in here.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Paint falls away in meaty coral straps from the underside of the sagging roof, each peel reminiscent of pink salmon – “humpies” – that roam the deeper tributaries that feed Lake Ontario. Oncorhynchus Gorbuscha, for the science-inclined, were stocked in Lake Superior in the 1950s and spread east. They aren’t supposed to be in the lake, but they feed on other gatecrashers – the alewife, rainbow smelt – so the DEC accepts their presence.

Rusted, leaking AC units slouch out of the upper windows, hibernating until summer when it’s time to spit air into the broiling interior of the old hotel. And that’s what they call it, the locals do. “The hotel,” and only the hotel, either as a badge of honor or out of fear that assigning it a proper noun of a name would grant lifetime residency on Main Street. Inviting the vampire inside, as it were.

Tacked to the façade, above steps crumbling like teeth with no dental plan, a banner blares “Tuesday, 75-cent wings! Friday, Karaoke!” The banner, because small towns have no time for irony and little inclination to repair themselves, hangs low on one side, slumped like the drunks who exit the dark of the hotel – or worse, head to their room on the second floor – after Donna flicks off the bar light.

The west wall of the hotel is held upright by a Chinese food joint.

The east wall, propped up by a rehab facility. (See: my prior note about no time for irony.)

Part folklore, part urban legend, the collapsing bulk of the hotel has a history. But I’m no academic. Yours truly drove 17 minutes south to find out what kind of person would choose to rent a room in the hotel when it’s just as easy to die in your own stink on a friend’s couch.

#

Stepping past the fragmented, rotten mouth of the stairs and through the been-here-since-the-beginning wooden door, the inside of the hotel is suffocating in shadow. A bouquet of cigarette smoke, dish rag, and wing sauce hangs low, and I wonder if sudden-onset black lung is a thing. With each step, my shoes stick-peel-smack against weathered green linoleum doubling as fly paper. To the left, the L-shape of the bar lurks. Above it hangs actual fly paper. To the right, a decomposing bank of Off-Track Betting terminals, layered with an unemployment line’s thickness of dirt.

Four heads lift from behind humped backs at the bar. Regulars with nowhere better to be at 2:36pm on a Saturday in March. Their eyes startle, like I ambushed a family of raccoons digging in the trash, before drooping back to pints of whatever panther piss was cheapest.

“Dave around?” I ask, shifting my weight back and forth. Stick-peel-smack.

Donna (I know that because a raccoon chittered “Anotha’ one, Donna?” seconds prior) tells me he’s in the can, then around the corner walks 265 pounds of meat stuffed into Wranglers and a Jimmie Johnson 2010 NASCAR Champion t-shirt.

“Dave?” I say, and he extends a chuck roast of a right hand. “You must be the reporter,” he says, then motions to a booth in the corner.

As we sit, Donna slides a fresh pint of Genesee – Genny, as it’s known locally – in front of him and raises her chin at me. I wave a no thank you.

Having worked through the introductory bits over the phone, we jump right in. I ask why Dave chooses to stay here rather than bunking up with someone until his job situation is steady.

He pulls a third of the beer into his gullet, gluck gluck gluck, and shakes his head. “Nobody cept my ex and my daughter, and that ain’t happening,” he admits. “Family down in Tampa, but much as people bitch about the snow around here, I never much liked the heat.” He empties the rest of the beer and slides the pint to the edge of the table. Donna glances over, then goes back to rotating a glass jar of pickled sausage.

I press him on the ex and the daughter.

“Nothing much to know,” he grunts, and gazes at the bar. A topic he’s not willing to broach just yet. I pivot and ask about prospective work for the summer, knowing Dave formerly ran a fishing charter out of Wilson, a lakeside town an hour north. Some Coho and Chinook, but pinks – the less common, smaller breed of salmon in the Great Lakes – were his specialty.

“Ain’t got no boat,” he rumbles, “and nobody is paying to catch fish walking the banks. Even if I know all the spots.” Another Genny appears at Dave’s fingertips and Donna stick-peel-smacks away. Dave drains half, then continues. “Those humpies, people mostly think they’re an Alaska thing, but we yanked some brutes outta Eighteen Mile and the Lower Niagara. I got a skin mount of one upstairs that’s the biggest ever caught in New York.”

Seizing the opening, I ask Dave if he would show it to me. I’d heard plenty about the rooms at the hotel, but needed to see one for myself. Dave gives a curt bob of his head, finishes the beer, and rises. There’s a wobble in the first few steps before Dave steadies himself and arcs up a cramped, murky staircase, the wooden boards grousing about another set of feet.

There are four functional rooms left at the hotel, the others converted to storage (of what I dare not ask) or permanently shuttered for reasons unknown. Dave’s room is the last door on the right down a windowless hallway that is heavy with the reek of piss. He pushes open the unlocked door, and we step into a cramped sarcophagus. The kitchen contains a sputtering fridge, an electric stove syrupy with grease, and doorless cabinets that pitch forward at an impossible angle, ready to vomit their contents onto the pitted and streaked vinyl floor. Opposite that is the living room with a single recliner, brown and concave, facing a 24-inch TV seated atop a plastic milk crate. The exterior wall contains a lone window overlooking Main Street. The glass is clouded with road dust. Everything smells like a box left in a damp basement.

“Fish is in here,” Dave murmurs, then lurches through a frameless doorway into the bedroom.

You’ve seen prison movies, so you’ve seen where Dave sleeps. No windows, no closet, infirmary green walls, a bunk the size of a picnic table pressed into the corner. The aroma is less damp box and more sweaty nuts with a hint of old yogurt.

Dave points to a plaque that bears the (unofficial) largest pink salmon caught in New York State. Unofficial, Dave tells me, because the DEC “retired” the category in 2024 after nobody reported a pink since the prior record was set in 1985. But it’s not the fish that holds my attention; it’s the stuffed rabbit lying on the bed. Scrubby fur, missing one button eye, an opening in the bottom for a hand. I ask what the story is with the puppet, and Dave exhales. After a few beats I stop expecting a reply.

“Belonged to my daughter,” he breathes. “Lost my job six years ago and was pretty tore up about it. And her seeing that, she said, uh, here Daddy, take Mr. Hopples, cuz he makes me happy when I’m sad.” He slides a chuck roast hand inside the rabbit, wiggles the nose and ears, then looks over at me in the doorway, eyes welled up. “Haven’t seen or talked to her since. That bitch, my ex, left that night. Took Emma with her. Changed her number. Poof.”

I start to speak, but Dave mumbles that he’s done talking.

#

Phone calls the next week go straight to Dave’s voicemail, so I lay low for a few days and text him the following Saturday. Hey Dave, thanks for the chat. Can I pop over this weekend?

Days go by with no response. Two full weeks since we met at the hotel, I call an audible and drive into town. There are more questions to ask.

I tramp up the grungy staircase and approach his door. One knock. Two knocks. Dave, you here?

Nothing.

Pushing the door open, I’m smacked by the fetid stink of rotting meat. Of sour milk and mothballs. I weave my way into the bedroom, shirt collar pulled over my nose, and find a melting, pink pile of flesh on the floor, the color of a humpie decaying in the summer sun. The top half of the body is wrapped in a t-shirt celebrating Jimmie Johnson’s exploits on the track in 2010, but fluids have soaked through the cotton, leaving it weeping and repugnant. The bottom half of the body is naked, each massive thigh falling away like silly putty left on the counter. Skin is sloughing off in oozing mounds, and rodents nibbled away most of Dave’s member. Size 38 Wranglers lay in a heap at the foot of the bed alongside a bottle of Jergens hand lotion. Stuffed between the thin mattress and box spring, ass-end out, is a crusty, deflowered hand puppet.

Dave fucked Mr. Hopples. And then laid down to die.

#

The raccoons give me a nod of recognition as I slide onto a stool. I order a Genny and a pickled sausage, and inform Donna she might want to call the cops.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

“You got the kid who’s a fruit, right?” he garbles through a mouthful of home fries. Crispy, extra onion, an embarrassment of ketchup.

Dana claws into the placemat, digging ditches that reveal the laminate table underneath. Uses the tip of a steak knife to peel bits of soggy paper from under her nails. Sips her black coffee. But she leaves me to speak.

“Jacob,” I correct. “His name is Jacob.” An announcement that is met with a yeah, whatever wave of a fork, and a slurp of orange juice. That sound Lecter makes when he tells Clarice about the fava beans and a nice chianti. Spell it however you want.

The surrounding tables are buzzing and wild, kids with half-chewed pancake yelling stories to each other about did you see the rhinoceros and the monkey house was cheugy and I got this pigeon feather in the parking lot, and also a flower petal. A muzak version of “Umbrella” is straining to be heard above the plague of eight-year-olds. You know the one. You can stand under my um-brella ella ella.

“What’s it like then, knowing he’s into boys?”

You don’t need me to tell you what he looks like. Sketch it out in your brain. Did you include the festering boil under his chin? No? Well add that. That’s the guy.

I feel Dana wobble, which means she’s almost Mount St. Helens. Beavering away at the placemat only buys so much time.

“Well, listen,” I start, “Do you love your children unconditionally, Ken? Because I do. Jacob is smart, he’s funny, he’s kind, and I don’t care who he chooses to love or marry.”

“MARRY?” he blurts. “None of them will be able to marry each other once Tru-“

A flash of skin and steel to my left. I see Dana’s fist piston down on the back of Ken’s hand, then pull away. Left behind is the quivering handle of a steak knife, the blade shoved clean through his palm and into the table below. His mouth drops open. Globs of sausage gravy and biscuit cling to his tongue and lips. He makes no sound.

“Ohh shit,” a small voice bursts from the booth behind us. “Jacob’s mom is salty.”

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

She was like, “My what?” which I took to mean she didn’t hear me.

Up til then we’d been having a lark. We laid in bed snacking on room service French toast and Ashley explained why motherhood wasn’t right for her, which of course I already knew long before we got hitched. Shiatsu massages after that. Snagged a tour of the distillery on cheap from the concierge being that it was our first night. Even got a selfie with Rye Guy in the tasting room, then popped a squat at a picnic table outside and went halves on a tray of meat and cheese with some other couple who was visiting from Provo. Don’t recall the guy’s name, but the woman was Hannah.

Flowy white skirt that tickled mid-thigh.

Pineapple-print tank top that was tight in all the right places.

Hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, which always gets the mind to thinking.

The guy though, her husband, floats out that we should take a kayak tour with them on the river the next day, says he knows the outfitter from when they went to the same temple and could get a break on the fee. Me and Ashley look at each other and she winks, and I go from 6pm to midnight because I know what she’s got in mind.

Having done it enough, we know Ashley needs to be the one to propose it. Never sounds anything but softheaded coming out of my mouth.

She makes the pitch and, after some side-barring, Hannah and hubby signal they’re down.

Jump ahead some hours and there’s a pineapple tank on the floor, laying on top of a flowy white skirt and my jeans. Looking back, I could’ve done with a thought bubble going don’t say it again, you dumb shit. But that wasn’t in the cards, so me thinking I needed to use my outside voice, I go “I said do you want it in your cockpit?” As in, her hot pocket, right? And listen, not to say she overreacted, but one minute I’m about to take the skin-boat to tuna town and a blink later the door slams shut and I’m left to wander the hallway in my skivvies, hoping Ashley’s about wrapped things up in room 212.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

I wike hog dogs and macawoni and ceweal. Aaaaand fwench fwies. And chogwate ikes qweem. Momma said no ikes qweem for bwekfast. She said you can have oatmealllll orrrr fwuit but no ikes qweem. and I yowed at her BUT I WANT IKES QUEEM and fwew my bubby on the gwound and said momma I don’t wike you and then momma qwied and got in her ca and vwoomed away. and daddy tucked me in for bedtime sted of momma and read me a stowy and said it’s ok, wiam, you can have chogwate ikes qweem wiff spwinkles for bwekfast tomowow. and then for bwekfast daddy gave me ikes qweem and he dwank his daddy juice and then someone nocked on the dowr. aaand it was the powice and they tell daddy somefin and then daddy dwopped his phone and was cwying. and I said daddy you fogot the spwinkles.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

“You remember this one?” I say, and my palm glows lava-lamp red. “It’s the blood inside.” But maybe that’s not true.

“No, that’s not it,” she corrects, “do this one,” and drags my hand under her chin. Faces are lit from above mostly, so a shadowy forehead and gleaming nose give us the ick. But she got the angle all wrong. Think bad selfie, not creepshow. I slide the flashlight down, toward her chest a bit. Eye sockets disappear. Chin morphs into an anthill. Hairline concealed in shadow. The horror.

“Eww, bats in the cave,” I say.

“Emotional abuse!” she cries out, laughing as she dabs each nostril with a corner of bedsheet. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

The power blinked out just after the last round of vitals, so the beeps and thrum of machinery are missing for the first time since she was admitted. Small miracles and such. But they’re scrambling because the generator didn’t kick in. Don’t need to be an aerospace engineer to pour diesel, but maybe that’s just me.

On the far wall, it’s the shadow of a rabbit, then a goose. Now a dog.

“What the hell is that supposed to be?” she giggles.

“What do you MEAN, what is it supposed to be?” I respond. “It’s clearly a bloodhound. You need to brush up on your biology.” Two ears and a snout dance across a dry erase board that announces Today Is: June 13^th. Your Nurse Is: Tina.

She reaches over, clicks the button on the handle. The room goes black.

“You remember the first time we exchanged vows?” she breathes. Our hands crawl together.

A smile erupts in the dark. “The monopoly top hat guy was my best man,” I say. “We hid in your parent’s closet for the ceremony.”

A finger and a thumb, brittle like matchsticks, dance across the back of my hand and locate the silver loop on my ring finger. Spin it a few times.

“My brother was out for revenge,” I add. “He wanted to marry you.”

“He was four,” she burbles, voice thick with tears.

“We were only seven,” I whisper, and dispatch my lips to find hers.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

So I was like, take your cummerbund and shove it up your fat ass. And he’s just like, comatose. No idea how to respond, which tracks cause he’s a dipshit, and I jam all my stuff in the wheelie bag so I can get to the airport and the whole time he’s just standing there catching flies. Which is, like, infuriating, so I go, have another cheeseburger, you fat pig, and walked out.

Yeah, I know, Mom, but you haven’t worked for him before. It’s not like there’s some binding agreement that I have to put up with his crap until I retire or something. He was a middle school science teacher before this. MIDDLE SCHOOL, not even high school.

I mean, I guess, but that doesn’t make him qualified. For, like, anything. And for his sake I hope someone there knows CPR, because all that garbage he eats is going to congeal in his blood one of these days. Wait, is that your blow-dryer? Could you, like, at least wait until we’re done talking? I’m having a moment here and you’re working on your bangs or whatever.

Hold on, he just texted me.

Oh my god, for real? It says can you grab more bluebell for the lobby display. Like, I’M NOT COMING BACK, fuckhead. You’re such a moron.

No, I didn’t say that to him, but, like, I should. Figure it out, bro. Add all the flowers and pastels you want. Condé Nast magazine ain’t coming for a visit.

Yeah, Mom, I get it. Like, sure, he’s my dad, but he’s definitely firing me.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

If you’re me, you know the difference between a square knot and a double coin. Which of course isn’t the same as an inline double coin. Sure, if you know the things that I do, there’s no mistaking a Prusik head knot for a cross hitch. Eyes closed, you could pick out a Lark’s head from a Fisherman’s knot.

And if you’re me, you know 6mm rope is the chef’s kiss because it’s thin enough to bang out complex knots and strong enough to whip up a suspension, if that’s your thing. And you don’t think twice about buying the hemp rope because sure, jute is cheaper and looks the same, but the fibers will grind off a few layers of skin faster than you can say chrysanthemum. Which is the safe word, but you already know that, if you’re me.

What is RACK short for? Risk Aware Consensual Kink. Boom. Easy peasy, if you’re me, but some mother truckers jump past the “consensual” part.

And you know that acute repeated compression of the radial nerve during full-body suspension is unlikely, but not impossible, if the sperm donor tying the knots doesn’t know what the frick they’re doing.

If you’re me, you know that leaving someone hog-tied for more than a few ticks is no bueno because positional asphyxiation arrives on the scene in a blink, especially if the person is carrying some extra weight in the gut because, for example, she happens to be 32 weeks pregnant.

These are all things you would know, if you were me.

**

“In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf. One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and – pop! – out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.”

That will be you soon, my sweet little babe. My tiny little caterpillar, popping out and ready to eat.

“She started to look for food.”

The book says “he,” but I changed it because you’re my little girl.

“On Monday she ate through one apple. But she was still hungry.”

Do you have to read that out loud, Emily? Jesus. Storage Wars is on.

It helps the baby, Tyler. They said she’ll be smarter if I read to her when she’s in my belly.

Ok, but, like, can you go into the other room or something? And what are you even reading anyways?

It’s called…nevermind. She’s your daughter too, Tyler. Maybe you should try reading to her sometime.

**

Did you know exposure to human speech while in the womb plays a role in language development for children? For real. If momma bear read to you, she was stacking the odds that you’d ace the verbal presentation segment of the Ethical Values of Business final exam at Georgetown or wherever. Mothers who read to their baby in the womb are on point, whether they know it or not.

It’s not like listening to a conversation through a wall. You know how that goes – hearing the sound of words, but not sorting out the words themselves. Picking up the inflections and variations of voices. Maybe she’s a soprano, he’s a baritone. You register the pacing, the interruptions, the noises that could be confused for a word you maybe know, but it’s shoved through an inch of drywall, a layer of primer, and two coats of Academic Grey satin paint, so it’s just the sound of a word.

No, it’s not like that.

Citing sources was never in my wheelhouse, so just trust me on this, kay?

**

“You were a wanted child, God knows, she would say at other moments, lingering over the photo albums in which she had me framed; these albums were thick with babies, but my replicas thinned out as I grew older, as if the population of my duplicates had been hit by some plague. She would say this a little regretfully, as though I hadn’t turned out entirely as she’d expected.”

Did you hear that part, my little caterpillar? She was a wanted child, just like you. Oh, how your momma bear is so excited to see those sweet littles eyes for the first time.

“No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well.”

Oh dear, I just know you’ll be everything a daughter could possibly be. And I’ll do everything I can to be the best momma bear to you.

“But despite everything, we didn’t do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this. So I could tell her I forgive her.”

Oop! That was quite a kick. Gracious me. Someone is feeling peppy tonight.

**

By the time little-fetus-you cracked the 28-week mark, you’re hearing everything that goes on outside that bubble of fluid. Not just momma bear’s heartbeat and blood flow, but voices. Music. Dogs barking. That scene in Severance when the MDR team dances to defiant jazz. Yep, you’re hearing all of it, and it’s nothing like that garbled and muted conversation overheard through the walls of a crummy apartment. The one where the soprano maybe, possibly, said “my SISTER??” but, you know, drywall and primer and such, so maybe it was blister or mister or transistor.

Ever dunk your head underwater and listen? Just really listen? Sound travels in fluids more than you might think. I mean, whale songs can rip for thousands of miles. So when momma bear is reading to you, or sorting out a disagreement with pops, all those noises are landing. Clear, crisp, like someone leaned over on the bus and whispered into your ear.

**

Loosen the knot around my ankles, Tyler. No, the ANKLES.

Wait, just give me a sec, Emily. Let me adjust it.

Ouch, c’mon, take it off. It’s too tight. My whole foot is going tingly.

Ok, ok. Sorry. It’s off.

Jeepers. You told me you studied.

I DID study, Em. But they don’t look the same on you as they did in the book.

It’s just a simple square knot, Ty.

A what?

A SQUARE knot. And, wait…what kind of rope did you get?

It was, like, jute or something? Jude maybe?

You were supposed to get hemp. The book said to use hemp.

But this one was way cheaper.

Oh my gosh. Just, untie my hands too please. And take my blindfold off. I can feel the baby kicking and it’s weirding me out anyways.

Ok. Can I at least get a blowie? My balls are aching something fierce.

**

It’s midnight, or close enough to say so. The crowd at Butters has thinned. It’s a Wednesday, after all. There’s a couple making out in the corner booth. They wear wedding rings, meaning reliving old times or hoping to get caught because otherwise they would never pull the ripcord on their own. Three bros in joggers and backward caps slap a few singles on the bar and shove the door open, laughing as they trip into the drizzle. Molly pockets the tip, sloshes a rag across the pockmarked wood, and lugs a rack of glasses to the washer.

He’s sitting alone at the bar, working through the final sip of a High Life. Hair is crawling down over both ears and licking at the collar of his shirt. Longer than the last time he was in here, but it’s a good kind of change. Enough belly to be noticeable, but not so much that it worries the buttons of his flannel. Jeans, sneakers of a brand I don’t recognize. A brown jacket, rugged and thick like his hands, hangs from a hook under the bar. He downs what’s left in the pint and moves to stand, so I slide in next to him.

Where you off to in such a hurry? I ask, laying my hand across his.

He jolts at the touch but doesn’t pull back. Meets my eyes, holds the look, then dips his glance to the cut of my blouse.

Got somewhere better to be? I say, lady-bugging my fingernails along the inside of his forearm.

He sits, makes no effort to hide how his eyes are gobbling up the view from my ankles to calves, calves to thighs. My legs separate just an inch or two, not so much to give him a clean look up the skirt, but enough to speak without saying anything.

Suppose I could stay for another, he tells me. Flashes two fingers at Molly. There’s a touch of grey coming in over both temples. The start of crow’s feet.

Leaning in close, close enough to smell the pine and musk of his cologne, the barely-there hint of sweat, I whisper to him I’ve been thinking about you since the first time I saw you in here.

Is that so? he says, matching my volume. Two pints of High Life slide in from the right.

And the things I want to do to you, I add, placing my hand on his knee. The bulge beneath his jeans twitches.

So tell me, I purr, my lips tickling the lobe of his ear. How do you feel about being tied up?

**

I swear, Emily, I’ve been studying more. Relax your shoulders.

This just maybe doesn’t feel safe, Tyler. I want you – I mean, REALLY want you. These preggers hormones are going crazy, especially when I’m tied up like this. But you’re sure this one is ok? Like, hog-tied won’t hurt the baby?

Promise, sweetheart. Relax. I told you, I’ve been studying. I just need to make an overhand knot to connect your ankles and wrists. Yeah, ok, there you go.

Oh gosh, Tyler. This feels amazing. Please tell me you’re taking pictures.

So many pictures, Em. God, you are so fucking hot. Open your mouth for me.

Ok, but use another finger. Please. One more.

Oh yeah, baby? Another finger? You are so dirty. Fuck, I love that.

GOODNESS, Tyler, oh my gosh. This isn’t great on my belly, but I’m going to come. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

That’s a good girl. Open that mouth for me again.

Wait. Tyler, wait. It’s getting hard to breath on my stomach like this. Ooh. Maybe I need to roll over on my side.

Just give me another minute, baby. Fuck, look at you. Yeah, that mouth feels incredible. I just need another minute.

**

The no-name sneakers lay in the corner, tongues lapping at each other. Jeans, jacket, and flannel are folded and stacked on the nightstand. He wasn’t wearing boxers, or socks.

My clothes are on because off felt wrong.

He’s on his knees in the middle of the bed wearing nothing but skin. Both wrists are bound behind his back by a short length of jute, 6mm thickness, using a bight with a double column knot. Ditto the ankles.

There’s more gut on him than the flannel prophesied at Butters. Which is a nice surprise.

Squatting down to look at him dead-on, I say bet this isn’t how you thought the night would end up, huh?

He tries to smile but the gag chokes it off.

**

Ohh, yes, Emily. Fuck, I’m coming. I’m coming. Ohh, shit. Goddamn. I fucking love that mouth. Jesus.

That was the hottest shit. Those Japanese know what’s up. You need a water?

Emily?

Hey, Emily, stop fucking around.

Em, seriously, what the fuck? Wake up!

Oh my god. Oh my god, Em, can you hear me?

Oh shit, Em, are you breathing? Em? EMILY?

…

She’s in here! She’s in the bedroom and she’s not breathing. Please, the baby, you have to help the baby!

Sir, ok, Tyler? Is it Tyler? Please, just stay back so we can help her, ok?

EMILY!

[No pulse. Go on CPR.]

Sir, Tyler, how far along is she?

How far? What do you mean how far?

The pregnancy. How far along?

Oh, fuck. Oh fuck, like, eight months or something? Is she ok? Is the baby ok?

We’re doing everything we can to help them both, Tyler. Did you give her CPR before we arrived?

CPR? Uh, no, I, I, don’t know how.

Ok. And how long has she been unconscious?

Oh, Jesus. Fuck, EMILY! Um, I guess probably for like 5 minutes when I called?

[Still nothing on the pulse. We need to get this baby out now.]

What does that mean? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Tyler, please, stay back. We need to give them room to work. Since your…wife?

Girlfriend. She’s my girlfriend. Oh god.

[Someone get the RH kit.]

Ok. Since your girlfriend has been unconscious for so long, we need to do an operation to get the baby out.

Here? You’re doing that HERE?

Yes, here. It’s called resuscitative hysterotomy. RH. We’re doing it now and we’ll do everything we can to save them both, but please, you can’t be in the room for this.

I’M STAYING. I’M STAYING.

[We need to clear the room.]

Dave, please, can you get him out of here? Tyler, please go with Dave. Let us do our job.

EMILY! EMILYYYY!!

**

My breath runs hot across his face. I’ve been dreaming of this for so long, I buzz. Bet you’d like to come, wouldn’t you?

He can’t respond. The gag, again. But the rager between his legs does the talking for him.

Soon enough, baby, I murmur, lifting his chin so our eyes lock. Inches away. I Just need to make an overhand knot to connect your ankles and wrists.

The smile drops from his cheeks at that. Sometimes, 14 words is all it takes to wreck someone.

I pull the overhand knot tight, dragging his ankles and hands together behind his back, and shove him face-down.

Stepping back from the bed, I tell him Did you know that leaving someone hog-tied for more than a couple minutes can be very dangerous? Especially if they are carrying extra weight in the belly and find it hard to keep their chest up.

The sound of words come from his mouth.

It’s called positional asphyxiation, I add. And it’s no bueno.

More sounds, like words shoved through an inch of drywall. Not crisp or clear, like the voices of your parents that found their way into that bubble of fluid where you lived for 40 weeks.

Or 32 weeks, in my case.

All that struggling is just going to use up your air faster, I warn. So you might want to relax, Tyler. Can I call you Tyler?

That hog-tie is not going anywhere. Silly him.

Did you know there is a direct correlation between a baby’s emotional connection to their mother and the amount of time they heard the mother’s voice while in the womb? Or that hearing the mother’s voice in utero stimulates neural development in the baby?

These are all things you would know, if you were me.

But you aren’t.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

This one might require some explanation. Chuck Palahniuk invited his Substack subscribers to submit a one-paragraph story written in baby talk. It’s a perfect set-up to portray horrific events in an innocent, childish voice. The winning submissions will earn a jackalope head off Chuck’s wall (no, really), a signed leather-bound copy of Fight Club, and bragging rights. No word yet on the winners, but it felt like time to share my version with everyone. Try reading the story aloud to get the full effect.

Happy birfday Douie! Happy birfday to me! Douie is firty-fwee today and dat means NEW MITTENS FOR DOUIE. Haha! Gamma and Gump Gump buy Douie new Mittens evwy birfday cuz Douie loves aminals but ekspecially kittens. Douie loves to SQUEEZE dem until dey burp. Haha! Mittens and Mittens Two and Mittens Fwee and Mittens Four and Mittens Five. Douie squeezed dem so much dey burped. Gump Gump makes holes with his digger and we put the Mittens in the dirt, but evwy birfday NEW MITTENS. Gamma says amember, Douie, aminals are fwens, don’t make dem burp, but Douie love aminals so I squeeze dem so much. Douie is squeezing Mittens Six and she is burping. Haha!

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

It isn’t a caste system.

That was premature.

It’s a caste system, but it’s all good.

You have the photon engineers with their gleaming Lumina® uniforms, unlimited commissary credits, and matching tattoos. “6.24×10¹⁸ eV” it says just below the hairline of 10 different foreheads. Not that it hurts their ability to attract puss. Every snatch of engineers is edged by a fleet of strumpets in neo-lace wraps and halo corsets trolling for a soulmate. Or if not, at least a pecker with access to the Nova Lounge.

Then you have the bots with their NDIR sensors because accepting fault is human, but passing the buck is divine. No job for a real boy, detecting C02, but it’s a bad day if everyone in the V-berths falls asleep and stays that way. Being culpable isn’t in our wheelhouse.

Of course you’ve got the navigators and medical staff. The stewards and comms officers. Oh, and the security forces that possess a peculiar attraction to the business end of the Starburst MultiCannon® that dangle from their waists. The barrel happens to be 5.5 inches long and of a moderate-but-not-too-intimidating circumference and it requires daily greasing to maximize functionality? And it happens to slide quite nicely into the fecal evacuation port of your Embershroud®? Well, isn’t that auspicious.

And then there’s me. Doing what? Hauling shit from the holding tank to the greenhouse. Not shit as in “stuff,” but shit as in literal shit. The Ag techs confirmed before we even left NGC 4676 that you need the real deal to effectively feed 2,419 people. No, you couldn’t grow plantain or purple sweet potatoes or even scallions using synthetic fertilizer.

But I don’t do it alone. Excreta® v4.6, manufactured by Honeywell Industries, is a self-regulating, sentient android that can haul enough human shit to choke an Iapetus chonster.

And she’s a great conversationalist.

And maybe I can’t get us into the Nova Lounge, but I know a place with no surveillance, an external sound carpet, and a hefty supply of titanium shaft lubricant.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Daddy never paid no mind to a shovel. He’d pitch em into the burn barrel, tugging on his earlobe the way he always did and shifting off his bad foot, and wait for the kerosene to catch. Then he’d say, “You stir that up” and pin-leg back inside to watch another episode before Ma got home.

No, Daddy wasn’t no icon, you can right guess. But Ma, she never had the backbone to upgrade.

But you had to stir it up. To make sure all the gristle burnt off, that is. I’d maybe say a few words, depending, then dig around in the barrel with the blackened handle of the manure fork we used as a poker. Always making sure I was upwind. The rain bucket was on standby cause it’d burn down to coals right quick if you wasn’t watching, and then Daddy would be all horns and rattles. You’d splash some water in the barrel to tamp it down near the end, cause letting everything go to waste was paramount to sinning in his eyes.

Getting at the marrow wasn’t no epic event or nothing. Daddy would use the fire glove to pull the bones out of the barrel, then crack em open with the bench vise. Once you got past the idea of it? You ain’t never tasted anything like it. All butter and cream up front with a hint of maybe roasted cashew, and then the beef fat flavor would come on hard. Even though it wasn’t no cow, or even an offshoot.

About the chihuahua, which course didn’t amount to much, Daddy said, “I ain’t never liked that yappy bitch anyways,” and tossed the pinky-sized bone back into the ash. Jazzy was her name. But Mongo, the Bernese? Even Ma came out for a scrape, cause that old boy had way more than me and Daddy coulda ate.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

So that’s what we’re doing for my birthday, huh? Well then…this is unexpected, but I. Am. In.

If we’re being real, I could start a damn cottage industry in tossing off with how much I think about you. That’s probably weird to hear, I guess. But ever since that night last spring when we met up at The Alchemist – I think Bryce and Mckayla were there too? – I’ve been, like obsessed. And we didn’t even do anything that night. I mean, you wouldn’t even give me your number. I had to sift through a bunch of group chats to figure out which one was yours.

But tonight? Damn, I will make you roar. I’ve played out the scene in my mind an immeasurable number of times, and every single one ends with both of us dripping in sweat and gasping for breath. Blankets and clothes tossed on the floor. Furniture shoved around. The pink outline of my handprint on your ass. Stickiness like syrup on your chest, and maybe a little in your hair. I heard it’s like a waterfall when you finally let loose, and I’m pumped to find out for myself.

Wait, what?

OHH, sheesh. My bad. Sorry, I…I thought you said, “Can you find somewhere for us to pork tonight?” Ha! Pork as in, like, you know.

Anyways.

Yeah, parking. There’s a public lot over by the bank that always has plenty of spots open. I can drive.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now