My Love talks too much, I decided as I left the living room of that damn Stripper woman and explored the house. He got caught up with those damn maps, too. I hated “Fun Time Atlas Dress Up Hour” with Love and Her every week. The noble beasts such as myself were not designed to resemble human migratory routes. The Canines were the keepers of the World, trusted by the Spider God KARLTOR to maintain this universe for the return of PABLOS, the Ovener, who will come again in glory to save existence from the Nothing Pandas.
It’s basic theology, and you would figure the Humans would know their stuff. But, of course, they don’t, ignorant fools. Even Love retains his ignorance, preferring to marry that hag in the outdated Cathol wedding ceremony. While it was appropriate to perform this ceremony about three millennia ago, it had gone the way of income taxes and child sacrifice in most of the civilized galaxy. But on this KARLTOR forsaken hunk of rock, they still listened to the Rolling Stones. Ignorance abounds.
I made my way through the Stripper’s modest domicile, sniffing around her rooms and linen drawers. This lass was not trustworthy, not one bit. She had to have some sort of skeletons in her closet, probably Eskimo children she’s lured into her realm with the prospect of sealskin shoes or mukluk washings. Those Inuits were suckers for a good mukluk Scrub and Shine.
This human’s home was stranger than most that I’ve encountered. Each room had a different theme, usually centered on the prevailing autonomy of these United States. The master bedroom contained flag enameled locks and chains, whips and harnesses with the stars and stripes festooned in elaborate fashion. The bed, a waterbed of sorts, was a giant flag and waved once trounced upon. The ceiling was a picture of Thomas Jefferson, the lamps Abraham Lincoln, and the telephone the Statue of Liberty, her torch the earpiece, spreading the fire of liberty through telecommunications.
The bathroom was a devotion to America’s landfills, littered with anti-recycling treatises and miniature models of the Great American Landfills, like Mt. Rumpke in Cincinnati, Wheelabrator in Pennsylvania, and all of New Jersey. The bathtub, titled “Newark Finishing School” in big, bold letters hewn into the marble, has a faintly green hue. The toilet, which the Stripper has named “Baton Rouge,” has an oddly floral scent. I could not spend much time in this room.
I ended up in the basement. Racist memorabilia adorned the walls. She was especially into caricatured depictions of Senegalese-Americans. I would have been abhorred by such tepid displays of segregationist pride had it not been for an oddly off-putting statue leaning against a far corner of the room. It was a headless John Adams, his hands stroking a goat, the animal’s face strangled in fear and anger. I sniffed along this marble creation, confused as to its meaning and purpose in this dungeon. Inquisitively, I licked the goat, hoping to extract something through my bionic tongue. The biological mechanics of my taste buds bristled over the smooth surface. Nothing special to report. Suddenly, the wall behind the statue started to shake, the hand of John Adams brushed down the goat before returning to its original position. A doorway appeared in the stone wall. A secret passage! I ventured forward into the darkness, sniffing a trail through the gloom.
The room inside was small, modestly furnished, and warm. The rocks glowed with a strange luminescence, giving off heat from unknown sources. They were not hot to the touch, but rather spewed heat from their essence. The room resembled a sauna, the humidity in the air thick. Brown, plastic bottles were strewn across the floor, with towers of two-ounce plastic cups stacked neatly up to the high ceilings.
In the corner, a faint wheezing was heard, then a cough, a brackish hack that shook the walls. No figure was around, no visible entity from which the wheeze emerged. Then a voice, low and salty, rose from the darkened corner.
“Bring me Delsym!”
I scoffed at this demand, barking to the hidden stranger, “I shall do no such thing. Show yourself or I shall be forced to eradicate you.”
“Delsssssssym,” the voice echoed again, straining to conceal its desperation.
On the floor near my feet lay a bottle half filled with liquid. The orange label read “Delsym.” I kicked it over to the corner, mere inches away from the darkness. A scaly hand emerged, snatching the bottle, retreating into the gloom in a hurry. A vast sucking noise followed, like a hog in a trough, before a giant belch bellowed in the room, the bottle thrown down in the dark.
“Oh I’m so high right now.”
“Present yourself, stranger. Or I shall be angry.”
A kangaroo foot stumbled into the light, another one emerging soon after. Big red eyes blinked at me. An odd amalgam of genetic modification, the creature now standing before me burped again. Kangaroo feet, scaly body, red eyes, cat’s paws. I barked in displeasure.
“What sort of foul beast are you?”
The creature blinked at me again, his oblong jaw gaping, the sharp teeth protruding in an ignorant grin.
“They call me Sir Bill. I am a chupacabra.”
I had never heard of such a beast, and told him so.
“Do you have any goats on you? No? Damn. I could go for a good goat right about now.”
Sir Bill stared blankly at me for several minutes and I used my bionic sensors to get a good read on this strange being. My internal zoological dictionary could find no traces of him, which was odd since I could locate every distinct species of the Moonworm genus.
“Hey bro, do you have any more syrup? I’m jonesing for a good buzz.” Sir Bill licked his lips with a forked tongue. His red eyes dimmed a bit as the psychedelic effects of the Delsym seemed to wane.
“No. How did you get here?” I implored, waving my paw at the stone walls of his cell.
“The Stripper caught me in the desert. I was high on peyote. She bribed me with sugar wafers. Those things are great munchies. I’ve been stuck in this cell for nearly a month now, surviving on cough syrup. Those give you such great, mellow highs. Oh man,” Sir Bill’s voice trailed off as he wobbled, smiling stupidly and slapping his forehead, barely missing the gigantic ears adorning his face. “Man, I think I have a problem.”
I scoffed at his suggestion, barking in impatience. “I don’t have time to meddle in your puny affairs. Why is she keeping you down here? What purposes do you hold?”
Sir Bill frowned, exasperation filling his face. “She knows my secret. And the power I hold. She’s trying to mate me with others. If that were to happen…”
“The world will be mine.” A shrill female voice filled the room. The Stripper loomed in the doorway, hands on her hips, smiling menacingly. “Enough of your blather. It’s time for us to go, all of us.”
I leapt at her, ready to strike.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 22: Lola Goes Home
I wandered through the door of my sister's laboratory and glanced around. Text books were piled high, impossibly balanced all the way to the ceiling. The walls were completely covered by a thick layer of framed diplomas from countless schools of higher learning. And in the back corner, I could see my sister, conversing with a mentally challenged-looking guy on a nest of old term papers."Lola!" she screeched. She dismounted from the stack and tossed a black cloak over herself before running across the room. "Camille!" we hugged and it warmed me. After everything that had happened, I felt safe in my sister's arms here in New Orleans. I looked in her eyes and I could see she felt the same way.Breaking off the hug, I asked her about the guy in the corner."That's Pierre. I read in a medical school book that retards have interesting conversations, so I got one. We're just about on the same intellectual level, despite his handicap," she walked back to corner. "I'll let him have a couple minutes out then I'll throw him back in the cage." "Je m'appelle Pierre!" he yelled."Shut up or I'll get the hose!" Camille shrieked. "Do you want a go with him before I lock him up? It's OK, I fixed him so he doesn't talk about anything offensive or remotely interesting. Basically, I took the fun out of him."I told her no thanks and then broke down. I told her the whole story: Abito, Will's injury and my quest to find Karl."Can you help me, sister? I need to find a spell to locate Karl and banish Abito to another dimension?""I have a test to study for, I don't have time!" she howled, throwing her hands on her hips."Please, Camille, you've had more education than everyone I've ever met...combined. If anyone knows the answer, it's you."She sighed and walked over to her desk. She flipped through some papers and picked up a stack."The Karl spell will take a couple days to round up the ingredients and let it simmmer. Do you have a hair from his pubis?" I reached into my pocket and pulled out the glass jar I use to protect it. I didn't want to lose this little piece of him."Is there another way?" I asked."If you want to save him, this is the only way."I handed it over. Camille snapped her fingers. "There's another thing we can do with this. I can make a love potion to help you make him yours."I paused. I could decide later if I wanted to use it, but if I had it..."Go for it," I told her.Camille shifted through more papers and continued to absentmindedly talk. "I can get this together and put it on the burner..."She stopped and looked at something on her desk. Transfixed, she picked it up.It was one of those mailings colleges send out by the gross ton to students across the country. Shit, I thought to myself, who let that in here?"Huh, did you know SUNY Binghamton is ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the best liberal arts college in Binghamton, N.Y.?"Uh oh, I could see it in her eye. This was bad."Dad! Dad!" she bawled.After several seconds of her yelling, father came through the door to the lab."What is it, Camille? I heard zee yelling from the kitchen. Is it Bastille Day?""Dad, I want to go to SUNY Binghamton!""Oh Camille, you have been to other SUNY schools.""I want to go to SUNY Binghamton," she screamed, stamping her foot."OK, OK," he said holding his hands out. "I did not want to retire anyway."At that point Camille glanced over and saw Pierre was gone."Dad! My retard ran away!" she turned back around to yell at father."Do you want me to birth one from the womb?" father asked innocently."No, dad! I want you to find Pierre. He couldn't have gotten far."Father shruggged. "I will find zee stun gun." He left the lab and closed the door.Camille collected herself."Now, back to your problems."Home sweet home.
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 21 : Hoagie's History
Hoagie here and damn them lesbian bitches. It’s just like two women to leave a man for dead, while horny men fudge-pack each other on TV repeatedly. I’m gonna get those bitches and get them good, for Scotty.
After I came to, I got up off the floor, zipped up my pants, and looked around. In any other situation, I’d probably just raid the fridge for beers, but I needed Scott’s killer come hell or high water. I walked over to a desk and found an address book in the drawer. On the cover was scratched “My loved ones” in flowery print. I flipped to the number called “Megan’s cell phone” and dialed it on my Richard Petty themed cellular phone. I acted like I was Karl to fool the young minx, but it didn’t work. The bitch hung up on me. So I got in my truck and drove. I needed to think and feeling three hundred horses under my marbles sure helped.
Just as I kicked my rig into third gear I started to get a unusual feeling in my pants; all tingly like. The motion of my truck made the fuzzy feeling stronger and more intense. The faster I drove the more intense the feeling got; it raced up and down my homosexual genitals. It had to be Scott’s doin’. He’s the only person who could do that to me, alive or dead! I drove on, using the sensation like a homing device.
When the invisible stroking finally ceased I had ejaculated all over myself and my truck. I dug some old napkins from a McDonald’s bag and began to cleanup the mess. While wiping off the passengers seat, I looked up and found I was parked in front of a small home with a mail box reading “Karl, Abita, and Kate”. Oh Scott, your final resting place. You were leading me!
I jumped out of my truck and raced around to the backyard as if being pulled by my still-moist penis. The fountain in the middle of a flower garden grabbed my attention immediately. The water flowed red as blood and the grass surrounding the stone structure was wilted yellow. As I approached, Scott began to call to me, “Hoagie, bro, help me. Hoagie, please”. It continued to get louder as I came upon the earth beneath the flowing red water.
“Hoagie, baby. I need your help, bro. Release me from my earthen tomb so I may rise again!” Scott’s voice rattled through Hoagie’s mind.
“Tell me what to do? How do I release you?” I shouted at my lover’s voice.
“Hoagie, there is only one way you can release me from death and bring me from the grave” he began.
“Tell me! I’ll do anything!” I pleaded. There was a long pause and I began to sweat. The voice arose again.
“You must mix the living blood of this fountain and the seamen from the front of your pants, spread it over your bear nipples and sing the song Alfie. Then I can rise anew. the Zombie King!” he groaned in invisible pain.
I didn’t think twice and got right to mixing. The blood and semen mixed together making a smooth pink texture. I stripped naked, smearing the fluid over my nipples and now erect prick. There was only one sausage for my meat locker and he needed and blood/semen melody yesterday.
Moments after I started singing, the earth below me began to shake and shutter. The sky above me churned and I lost my balance, falling over into the blood fountain. A figure rose from the dirt, crawling to his feet and moaning. He was covered in a dark film of dirt and sticks. Bugs and tiny insects fell from his limbs and they straightened. As he turned to me, I checked out his crotch area to make sure that bitch dog didn’t damage my lover’s package. It seemed to be the same size but the blood ran into my eyes, blinding me momentarily. I kept singing and as he stood upright fully, an unseen choir joined in with harmonies over the chorus of my song
“Hoagie, my love. I knew you had the power to raise me. I have returned as a zombie king. I must search for a zombie queen to lift the curse bestowed on me by Satan” Scott said in a hallow tone. His voice was much different than I remembered it being. Darker, and filled with power.
“I had come to avenge your death my love, but the lesbian whores got away. Oh and btw, if you need a zombie queen, I could totally be one for you” I spoke. I was still sitting in two feet of blood looking up at him, when he moved closer.
“Fear not. I have changed and risen from the dead with superpowers!” he said, puffing up his chest and slapping his buttocks with one hand. “I now have the power of many undertakers” he said turning towards a small statue of the Virgin Mary in the corner of the garden. With a twitch of his rectum, a beam of fluid flew from Scott’s barbed boner and melted away the porcelain statue in a puff of green fog.
“Fuck me in the ass! Did that come from your boner?” I asked.
“I will, but later. And yes, it was my super power; I ejaculate acidic formaldehyde.”
“Cool beans” I said.
We vowed then and there to avenge Scott’s death then move to the Mexican coast. Scotty told me all about his spirit journey with Satan in the garden. We held hands, bathed in the fountain and took turns shaving each other’s grundles. After a few hours we retired inside the house and put on a DVD.
After I came to, I got up off the floor, zipped up my pants, and looked around. In any other situation, I’d probably just raid the fridge for beers, but I needed Scott’s killer come hell or high water. I walked over to a desk and found an address book in the drawer. On the cover was scratched “My loved ones” in flowery print. I flipped to the number called “Megan’s cell phone” and dialed it on my Richard Petty themed cellular phone. I acted like I was Karl to fool the young minx, but it didn’t work. The bitch hung up on me. So I got in my truck and drove. I needed to think and feeling three hundred horses under my marbles sure helped.
Just as I kicked my rig into third gear I started to get a unusual feeling in my pants; all tingly like. The motion of my truck made the fuzzy feeling stronger and more intense. The faster I drove the more intense the feeling got; it raced up and down my homosexual genitals. It had to be Scott’s doin’. He’s the only person who could do that to me, alive or dead! I drove on, using the sensation like a homing device.
When the invisible stroking finally ceased I had ejaculated all over myself and my truck. I dug some old napkins from a McDonald’s bag and began to cleanup the mess. While wiping off the passengers seat, I looked up and found I was parked in front of a small home with a mail box reading “Karl, Abita, and Kate”. Oh Scott, your final resting place. You were leading me!
I jumped out of my truck and raced around to the backyard as if being pulled by my still-moist penis. The fountain in the middle of a flower garden grabbed my attention immediately. The water flowed red as blood and the grass surrounding the stone structure was wilted yellow. As I approached, Scott began to call to me, “Hoagie, bro, help me. Hoagie, please”. It continued to get louder as I came upon the earth beneath the flowing red water.
“Hoagie, baby. I need your help, bro. Release me from my earthen tomb so I may rise again!” Scott’s voice rattled through Hoagie’s mind.
“Tell me what to do? How do I release you?” I shouted at my lover’s voice.
“Hoagie, there is only one way you can release me from death and bring me from the grave” he began.
“Tell me! I’ll do anything!” I pleaded. There was a long pause and I began to sweat. The voice arose again.
“You must mix the living blood of this fountain and the seamen from the front of your pants, spread it over your bear nipples and sing the song Alfie. Then I can rise anew. the Zombie King!” he groaned in invisible pain.
I didn’t think twice and got right to mixing. The blood and semen mixed together making a smooth pink texture. I stripped naked, smearing the fluid over my nipples and now erect prick. There was only one sausage for my meat locker and he needed and blood/semen melody yesterday.
Moments after I started singing, the earth below me began to shake and shutter. The sky above me churned and I lost my balance, falling over into the blood fountain. A figure rose from the dirt, crawling to his feet and moaning. He was covered in a dark film of dirt and sticks. Bugs and tiny insects fell from his limbs and they straightened. As he turned to me, I checked out his crotch area to make sure that bitch dog didn’t damage my lover’s package. It seemed to be the same size but the blood ran into my eyes, blinding me momentarily. I kept singing and as he stood upright fully, an unseen choir joined in with harmonies over the chorus of my song
“Hoagie, my love. I knew you had the power to raise me. I have returned as a zombie king. I must search for a zombie queen to lift the curse bestowed on me by Satan” Scott said in a hallow tone. His voice was much different than I remembered it being. Darker, and filled with power.
“I had come to avenge your death my love, but the lesbian whores got away. Oh and btw, if you need a zombie queen, I could totally be one for you” I spoke. I was still sitting in two feet of blood looking up at him, when he moved closer.
“Fear not. I have changed and risen from the dead with superpowers!” he said, puffing up his chest and slapping his buttocks with one hand. “I now have the power of many undertakers” he said turning towards a small statue of the Virgin Mary in the corner of the garden. With a twitch of his rectum, a beam of fluid flew from Scott’s barbed boner and melted away the porcelain statue in a puff of green fog.
“Fuck me in the ass! Did that come from your boner?” I asked.
“I will, but later. And yes, it was my super power; I ejaculate acidic formaldehyde.”
“Cool beans” I said.
We vowed then and there to avenge Scott’s death then move to the Mexican coast. Scotty told me all about his spirit journey with Satan in the garden. We held hands, bathed in the fountain and took turns shaving each other’s grundles. After a few hours we retired inside the house and put on a DVD.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
The Dinner Guest- Chapter 20: Where to Go America!
Colorado
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
Colorado
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
I watched as Shriss Babler sprawled over her living room carpet. In a unique bit of interior decorating, the former Christ-like Viking cum star-dazzled showgirl allowed for her innate love of the American way to seep into every aspect of her home, from the Fourth of July tree, plastic with red and blue balls dangling from its wood, to the American flag wallpaper depicting every incarnation of the Stars and Stripes, even a special section in the basement devoted to the Stars and Bars and other streamers of alternate American pride, the subterranean dwelling being the most appropriate arena for displays of risqué historical artifacts. I share her enthusiasm for the minutiae of history, my own basement being filled with my personal anthology of Falun Gong insignia tote bags and Children of November wristwatches.
But the most interesting feature of Shriss’ home was the carpet of her living room, a vast cavern of apple pie lamps and baseball glove recliners and George Washington ash trays and Thomas Jefferson themed TV trays. This carpet, in precise detail woven into the fibers, depicted an enlarged map of the United States, circa 2150 AD. The normal fifty states were there in their contemporary incarnations, with a few moderations, namely the entirely of California broken off into the Pacific Ocean and Delaware finally portrayed for its true nature: a dark emptiness in the soul of America. A few additional states littered the rest of the carpet, from the Guami goodness in Asia, to the liberation of Georgia 2 in Eastern Europe (after the Second Balkan Revolution of 2035), to the single, sub par state known as Canadaxico, two parts straddling the Contiguous 48 and connected only by their year of admittance (2099). Shriss was sprawled out over the American MidWest, her long, luscious legs spreadeagle towards New England and the South, a deep mouth ready to swallow the Mid Atlantic into the recesses of her womb, swallowing and engulfing Ohio and Kentucky into her snatch.
Colorado
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
“Where to go, where to go?” She sighed as she wiggled her strong thighs to and fro, swooshing along the Mississippi and no doubt halting the commerce on her flat, tiny rug country. I gazed at her ripping physique, the smooth tan of her back and the tiny tramp stamp peeking out from her skirt, a lotus petal being infiltrated by a hummingbird. How quaint.
“I have so many places that we can go. So many friends and safe houses.” She sighed again, her head falling to the carpet. “Oh how I love maps.”
This last statement piqued my inerest, my own fascination with geography and the lost art of cartography deeply ingrained in my own psyche. Countless times I would make love to Kate while she wore a costume shaped like Idaho, while Abita festooned her painted fur in a rough sketch of Route 66. “Fuck me in my potato maker,” Kate would scream, “Ravish me like the huckleberry loving state that I am.” Things got really interesting when she dressed as Florida. That’s when we brought out the two sided dildo and Abita resembled Interstate 75.
“In Albuquerque we can stay in my cousin’s Alpaca farm. You’re not allergic to camelids, are you?
I shook my head as I stared at her glistening, straight white hair, the testament of her scarred existence.
“Hmm, maybe not. Those animals are kinda boring. Oh, we can go to Dallas! I have tons of family there.”
Dallas….Dallas…..Dallsa….Dassal…..Dassad…..Lassad….Sallad….no
“Houston?”
“Fuck no. Too many bad memories.”
“Austin?”
“If there’s one place for me to hide, it’s definitely at my in-laws. No way.”
“Salt Lake City? I am a high ranking member of the Mormon church, ya know.”
I shuddered, remembering my last encounter with the Mormons. So many dead rabbits. An entire solar system strung out on caffeine…
“No thanks. I’d rather die.”
Abita barked, three long ruffs followed by a yowl and a yip. I raised my eyebrow quizzically, pondering her suggestion. Before I could say anything ,Shriss interjected.
“What’s that girl? Pueblo? You don’t say…”
I sat there, dumbstruck at the powers of this being before me. I thought I was the only one who could understand my dog.
“That’s a perfect place to go!! I have friends there we can stay with. Plus they have a laboratory that might be able to help us out in getting you off this planet. This sounds perfect. You’ll love them, they’re a cute gay couple. Robert Strange and Captain Rage. It’s settled, we’re going to Pueblo!”
Colorado
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
On to Colorado.
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
Colorado
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
I watched as Shriss Babler sprawled over her living room carpet. In a unique bit of interior decorating, the former Christ-like Viking cum star-dazzled showgirl allowed for her innate love of the American way to seep into every aspect of her home, from the Fourth of July tree, plastic with red and blue balls dangling from its wood, to the American flag wallpaper depicting every incarnation of the Stars and Stripes, even a special section in the basement devoted to the Stars and Bars and other streamers of alternate American pride, the subterranean dwelling being the most appropriate arena for displays of risqué historical artifacts. I share her enthusiasm for the minutiae of history, my own basement being filled with my personal anthology of Falun Gong insignia tote bags and Children of November wristwatches.
But the most interesting feature of Shriss’ home was the carpet of her living room, a vast cavern of apple pie lamps and baseball glove recliners and George Washington ash trays and Thomas Jefferson themed TV trays. This carpet, in precise detail woven into the fibers, depicted an enlarged map of the United States, circa 2150 AD. The normal fifty states were there in their contemporary incarnations, with a few moderations, namely the entirely of California broken off into the Pacific Ocean and Delaware finally portrayed for its true nature: a dark emptiness in the soul of America. A few additional states littered the rest of the carpet, from the Guami goodness in Asia, to the liberation of Georgia 2 in Eastern Europe (after the Second Balkan Revolution of 2035), to the single, sub par state known as Canadaxico, two parts straddling the Contiguous 48 and connected only by their year of admittance (2099). Shriss was sprawled out over the American MidWest, her long, luscious legs spreadeagle towards New England and the South, a deep mouth ready to swallow the Mid Atlantic into the recesses of her womb, swallowing and engulfing Ohio and Kentucky into her snatch.
Colorado
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
“Where to go, where to go?” She sighed as she wiggled her strong thighs to and fro, swooshing along the Mississippi and no doubt halting the commerce on her flat, tiny rug country. I gazed at her ripping physique, the smooth tan of her back and the tiny tramp stamp peeking out from her skirt, a lotus petal being infiltrated by a hummingbird. How quaint.
“I have so many places that we can go. So many friends and safe houses.” She sighed again, her head falling to the carpet. “Oh how I love maps.”
This last statement piqued my inerest, my own fascination with geography and the lost art of cartography deeply ingrained in my own psyche. Countless times I would make love to Kate while she wore a costume shaped like Idaho, while Abita festooned her painted fur in a rough sketch of Route 66. “Fuck me in my potato maker,” Kate would scream, “Ravish me like the huckleberry loving state that I am.” Things got really interesting when she dressed as Florida. That’s when we brought out the two sided dildo and Abita resembled Interstate 75.
“In Albuquerque we can stay in my cousin’s Alpaca farm. You’re not allergic to camelids, are you?
I shook my head as I stared at her glistening, straight white hair, the testament of her scarred existence.
“Hmm, maybe not. Those animals are kinda boring. Oh, we can go to Dallas! I have tons of family there.”
Dallas….Dallas…..Dallsa….Dassal…..Dassad…..Lassad….Sallad….no
“Houston?”
“Fuck no. Too many bad memories.”
“Austin?”
“If there’s one place for me to hide, it’s definitely at my in-laws. No way.”
“Salt Lake City? I am a high ranking member of the Mormon church, ya know.”
I shuddered, remembering my last encounter with the Mormons. So many dead rabbits. An entire solar system strung out on caffeine…
“No thanks. I’d rather die.”
Abita barked, three long ruffs followed by a yowl and a yip. I raised my eyebrow quizzically, pondering her suggestion. Before I could say anything ,Shriss interjected.
“What’s that girl? Pueblo? You don’t say…”
I sat there, dumbstruck at the powers of this being before me. I thought I was the only one who could understand my dog.
“That’s a perfect place to go!! I have friends there we can stay with. Plus they have a laboratory that might be able to help us out in getting you off this planet. This sounds perfect. You’ll love them, they’re a cute gay couple. Robert Strange and Captain Rage. It’s settled, we’re going to Pueblo!”
Colorado
Utah
New Mexico
Texas
On to Colorado.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 19: Abito in 'Hot on the Trail'
So far this trip to Earth had turned out to be quite the craptacular time: I'd been blasted with a laser, locked up, thrown in a pit, forced to maul a warlock to escape captivity...
If I had a robot vagina, I'd be menstruating all over the shitty carpet in this drug prevention van.
Yeah, I forget to mention that. I had to infilrate what was left of this pig cop convention. I'm still a goddamn fucking robot dog cop and I stand out.
Barks McLarson - the dog fighting arson.
And I was stuck in the middle of a Miami street festival. From the back of the van, I looked across at McGruff the crime dog. He was slipping a rubber over his doggie bone.
"Shit, I don't want to see that, cocksucker," I growled, spitting out my drink.
"I'm getting lucky tonight, dog cop, and you can't stop me," he giggled.
It was true. He had immunity.
Yeah, it's a fucked up universe.
But I had to put up with it. This was the only spot that gave me an eye on that witch and warlock's shithole apartment. When she left to find sweet Karl, I'd be on her trail.
I took another long drag-nasty of grain diesel and kicked the doors open.
"El perro arsono!" they screeched.
The children poured in to see their crime prevention mascot messiahs.
"Hold them back," I screamed, but they kept coming. I looked over at McGruff and saw him folding under the numbers.
Be careful what you wish for, perv ball, I thought to myself.
One tiny boy leapt up and planted himself on my shoulders, riding me like a great dame.
"El perro arsono, should I play with mes amigos fireworks?"
I grabbed him from my shoulders and drew him to my face.
"Only if you promise to blow off your little goddamn crab claws," I cursed in his ear. I threw him back into the crowd and saw a sea of trouble.
I pulled out my gun and started blasting away.
"These are Kracken creatures, McGruff! Fight the crab invaders!" I leveled off my gun and blew the crab head off an approaching enemy.
I don't know how they tracked me down. I killed the last of them the day I traded my soul for a pack of Dorals.
The heat of the battle hit me like the warmth from my blaster gun, the sounds rolled over me. I heard McGruff yelling and the crab people screaming in their native tongue.
I gunned them down until no more stood and their crab guts oozed on the ground. I looked over at McGrufff.
"Comrade, I have defeated those Kraken invaders once again. Thank you for assisting me, brother. You'll get a good write up in my report."
McGruff looked over at me.
"Dude, you really messed up."
I looked down at the fallen crab and I only saw dead children. Rough math said 27 dead childen.
I hadn't seen that many since the time I killed 28.
"You saw the Kracken again, didn't you?" McGruff asked. "You're done now."
I turned around and blew his head off.
"I didn't dodge the Lanthanide mines those bastards left in the jungle to hear your guff about war," spitting at his dying body.
My sensors started to go off. The meter I set to track dischordant violin emissions was going off the charts. Shit, Lola was about to move.
I ran up the stairs of her apartment and burst out the roof doors as Lola flew off into the sky.
I could see her about to glance back so I dove behind a heating vent. Good, she didn't see me.
I was on her trail and Karl was the next stop.
I grabbed my ultrasonic hang glider and leapt off the roof, leaving the sound of screaming voices behind.
If I had a robot vagina, I'd be menstruating all over the shitty carpet in this drug prevention van.
Yeah, I forget to mention that. I had to infilrate what was left of this pig cop convention. I'm still a goddamn fucking robot dog cop and I stand out.
Barks McLarson - the dog fighting arson.
And I was stuck in the middle of a Miami street festival. From the back of the van, I looked across at McGruff the crime dog. He was slipping a rubber over his doggie bone.
"Shit, I don't want to see that, cocksucker," I growled, spitting out my drink.
"I'm getting lucky tonight, dog cop, and you can't stop me," he giggled.
It was true. He had immunity.
Yeah, it's a fucked up universe.
But I had to put up with it. This was the only spot that gave me an eye on that witch and warlock's shithole apartment. When she left to find sweet Karl, I'd be on her trail.
I took another long drag-nasty of grain diesel and kicked the doors open.
"El perro arsono!" they screeched.
The children poured in to see their crime prevention mascot messiahs.
"Hold them back," I screamed, but they kept coming. I looked over at McGruff and saw him folding under the numbers.
Be careful what you wish for, perv ball, I thought to myself.
One tiny boy leapt up and planted himself on my shoulders, riding me like a great dame.
"El perro arsono, should I play with mes amigos fireworks?"
I grabbed him from my shoulders and drew him to my face.
"Only if you promise to blow off your little goddamn crab claws," I cursed in his ear. I threw him back into the crowd and saw a sea of trouble.
I pulled out my gun and started blasting away.
"These are Kracken creatures, McGruff! Fight the crab invaders!" I leveled off my gun and blew the crab head off an approaching enemy.
I don't know how they tracked me down. I killed the last of them the day I traded my soul for a pack of Dorals.
The heat of the battle hit me like the warmth from my blaster gun, the sounds rolled over me. I heard McGruff yelling and the crab people screaming in their native tongue.
I gunned them down until no more stood and their crab guts oozed on the ground. I looked over at McGrufff.
"Comrade, I have defeated those Kraken invaders once again. Thank you for assisting me, brother. You'll get a good write up in my report."
McGruff looked over at me.
"Dude, you really messed up."
I looked down at the fallen crab and I only saw dead children. Rough math said 27 dead childen.
I hadn't seen that many since the time I killed 28.
"You saw the Kracken again, didn't you?" McGruff asked. "You're done now."
I turned around and blew his head off.
"I didn't dodge the Lanthanide mines those bastards left in the jungle to hear your guff about war," spitting at his dying body.
My sensors started to go off. The meter I set to track dischordant violin emissions was going off the charts. Shit, Lola was about to move.
I ran up the stairs of her apartment and burst out the roof doors as Lola flew off into the sky.
I could see her about to glance back so I dove behind a heating vent. Good, she didn't see me.
I was on her trail and Karl was the next stop.
I grabbed my ultrasonic hang glider and leapt off the roof, leaving the sound of screaming voices behind.
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 18 : Road Trip
Flying my jet powered rocket car always gets me excited, especially on a trip like this. I was on my way home to save my loving brother’s young bride and flying there made it easy. It’s one thing to take a nice road trip with a dear loved one. It’s something entirely different when you’ve been rocketing across the desert below radar altitude in a jet-powered muscle car. My addiction to Jack-in-the-Box’s Jalapeño Poppers was going to have to wait.
Tucson in the summer heat reminds me of my childhood. Karl and I had such wonderful times in the Arizona desert. Mom and Dad didn’t mind that my brother and I would wander unsupervised for hours in desert. We explored caves, plants and animals as well as each other. We let our imaginations run free and our feelings grow. It was at this time that Karl and I realized our gift. We knew we were special. What better place to get to know your only brother than in the southwestern desert heat? The world was our sandbox and that slut Abita had just buried a huge shit in it for us to discover.
Karl always seemed to be drawn to the cacti. He would always seek the biggest one he could find and sit under it like a pre-pubescent Buddha. He said he admired how the cacti fought against oppressive sunshine and endured the extremes of Mother Nature, just to grow in America. He said I was too young and naïve. He said I wouldn’t understand what it means to fight for something you believe in, something you love.
Even though we aren’t telepathically connected right now, Karl, I understand. I’m woman now. I know what I like, and it doesn’t have a robot vagina.
“How’d you know where to find me.” Kate said.
“Listen big sis, there’ll be plenty of time to talk later. We need to get out of here before he wakes up.” She pointed at a balled up figure on the floor. Kate said his name was Hoagie and he went mental.
“He was making me pay for what that whore dog of your brother’s did!” Kate snapped. She was really shaken up by what had just happened. I needed to get her out of there.
“Grab whatever you can in two minutes. I’ll wait in the car,” I said as I headed towards the door.
The house Kate and Karl found was quite nice. Karl really had his whole life rolled up in this suburban two-bedroom love nest.
I plopped down in the driver’s seat of my Ford Duster. My old boyfriend back in college sold it to me for 39 bucks and a date. With the money I saved working for NASA, I installed the jet upgrade myself, along with the long-range navigation system. Plus I couldn’t turn down a free meal.
Kate came bounding towards the car with a duffle bag full of god knows what. “Where are we headed?” she said with a big smile. Her red hair bounced behind her like rainbows dancing in clouds of joy. Had she already forgotten the homosexual psycho that just attacked her? Damn, this girl is resilient!
“Umm, well I came to find you because we need to talk about stuff. Karl sent me a message saying something happened. I told him to lay low and that I’d come make sure his supple, young bride is safe” I said.
“Awww Megan, that’s so sweet!” squealed Kate as she threw her arms around me. Through the thin cotton blouse she was wearing I could feel the metal wirework of her bra.
“That’s what sisters are for, right? To help each other out in times of stress and to always be honest, right?” I said, looking into her shimmering blue eyes.
“That’s what sisters are for” she said, clinging to me tighter.
After a long, soothing hug I navigated the Duster onto a narrow Arizona highway where there wouldn’t be much traffic. This was going to be a long trip and we needed some time alone. I watched Kate with my peripheral vision while pretending to keep my eyes on the road. She yawned and gave out a sigh of relief.
“Everything alright?” I asked.
“Oh yes. I’m just glad to be out of that house.” She said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It was…confusing,” she said quietly. “I was in my garden when Scott’s friend Hoagie came over. He seemed nice enough. I guess I’m used to seeing gun racks and beer cans, so he didn’t seem like a threat.” She trailed off as tears started to form in her eyes.
“Kate, what did he do to you? You can tell me everything, anything.” I said. My hand moved from the steering wheel towards hers. I felt the soft, warm skin ease from the touch of my fingers. I gave her hand a squeeze as if to say ‘It’s alright now darling’, Daddy’s here’.
“Ever since the wedding and the move, I’ve had this pain in my gut. Maybe I just miss Texas,” she said with a sad tone turning towards me.
“You’ve had a long day, lay back and take a nap,” I said. Her eyes had looked heavy for some time.
“Thanks Megan, I really owe you one.” she said. She leaned back in the passenger seat, stretching and folding her arms under her well-supported breasts.
I thought about the Tucson summers and my brother Karl. Getting a handle on the situation between him and his bone-able wife was my first priority. I gazed at her for what seemed like hours. Suddenly an awful sound began churning from the tires. My eyes whipped forward and I pulled the car back between the lines on the pavement. I looked over to Kate to see if she was still asleep. Her head was unmoved; she’s had a long day.
My cell phone rings.
“Hey Megan, where are you?” a distant voice asked.
“Who is this?”
“Are you okay? Where are you?” the voice asked again.
“Karl?”
“Yeah, this is Karl. Where are you headed?” the voice inquired a third time.
Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t Karl’s number. This person seemed to make sense over the phone, unlike Karl. Hoagie?
“No Karl, I’ll dial you on the ‘other’ phone, alright?” I said and hung up before whomever could answer. I had to be sure about this and risk hanging up on my brother, for Kate’s sake. I reached back in my brain for the telepathy switch.
Oh no, Karl, you didn’t.
Whenever entering into Karl’s mind I feel what he feels, at that moment. My eyes were locked on the road but I felt a warm tongue licking my face, chest and corn hole. I broke out of the mind-lock just before the tongue entered a hole in my body.
This was going to be one crazy game of cat and mouse.
Tucson in the summer heat reminds me of my childhood. Karl and I had such wonderful times in the Arizona desert. Mom and Dad didn’t mind that my brother and I would wander unsupervised for hours in desert. We explored caves, plants and animals as well as each other. We let our imaginations run free and our feelings grow. It was at this time that Karl and I realized our gift. We knew we were special. What better place to get to know your only brother than in the southwestern desert heat? The world was our sandbox and that slut Abita had just buried a huge shit in it for us to discover.
Karl always seemed to be drawn to the cacti. He would always seek the biggest one he could find and sit under it like a pre-pubescent Buddha. He said he admired how the cacti fought against oppressive sunshine and endured the extremes of Mother Nature, just to grow in America. He said I was too young and naïve. He said I wouldn’t understand what it means to fight for something you believe in, something you love.
Even though we aren’t telepathically connected right now, Karl, I understand. I’m woman now. I know what I like, and it doesn’t have a robot vagina.
“How’d you know where to find me.” Kate said.
“Listen big sis, there’ll be plenty of time to talk later. We need to get out of here before he wakes up.” She pointed at a balled up figure on the floor. Kate said his name was Hoagie and he went mental.
“He was making me pay for what that whore dog of your brother’s did!” Kate snapped. She was really shaken up by what had just happened. I needed to get her out of there.
“Grab whatever you can in two minutes. I’ll wait in the car,” I said as I headed towards the door.
The house Kate and Karl found was quite nice. Karl really had his whole life rolled up in this suburban two-bedroom love nest.
I plopped down in the driver’s seat of my Ford Duster. My old boyfriend back in college sold it to me for 39 bucks and a date. With the money I saved working for NASA, I installed the jet upgrade myself, along with the long-range navigation system. Plus I couldn’t turn down a free meal.
Kate came bounding towards the car with a duffle bag full of god knows what. “Where are we headed?” she said with a big smile. Her red hair bounced behind her like rainbows dancing in clouds of joy. Had she already forgotten the homosexual psycho that just attacked her? Damn, this girl is resilient!
“Umm, well I came to find you because we need to talk about stuff. Karl sent me a message saying something happened. I told him to lay low and that I’d come make sure his supple, young bride is safe” I said.
“Awww Megan, that’s so sweet!” squealed Kate as she threw her arms around me. Through the thin cotton blouse she was wearing I could feel the metal wirework of her bra.
“That’s what sisters are for, right? To help each other out in times of stress and to always be honest, right?” I said, looking into her shimmering blue eyes.
“That’s what sisters are for” she said, clinging to me tighter.
After a long, soothing hug I navigated the Duster onto a narrow Arizona highway where there wouldn’t be much traffic. This was going to be a long trip and we needed some time alone. I watched Kate with my peripheral vision while pretending to keep my eyes on the road. She yawned and gave out a sigh of relief.
“Everything alright?” I asked.
“Oh yes. I’m just glad to be out of that house.” She said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It was…confusing,” she said quietly. “I was in my garden when Scott’s friend Hoagie came over. He seemed nice enough. I guess I’m used to seeing gun racks and beer cans, so he didn’t seem like a threat.” She trailed off as tears started to form in her eyes.
“Kate, what did he do to you? You can tell me everything, anything.” I said. My hand moved from the steering wheel towards hers. I felt the soft, warm skin ease from the touch of my fingers. I gave her hand a squeeze as if to say ‘It’s alright now darling’, Daddy’s here’.
“Ever since the wedding and the move, I’ve had this pain in my gut. Maybe I just miss Texas,” she said with a sad tone turning towards me.
“You’ve had a long day, lay back and take a nap,” I said. Her eyes had looked heavy for some time.
“Thanks Megan, I really owe you one.” she said. She leaned back in the passenger seat, stretching and folding her arms under her well-supported breasts.
I thought about the Tucson summers and my brother Karl. Getting a handle on the situation between him and his bone-able wife was my first priority. I gazed at her for what seemed like hours. Suddenly an awful sound began churning from the tires. My eyes whipped forward and I pulled the car back between the lines on the pavement. I looked over to Kate to see if she was still asleep. Her head was unmoved; she’s had a long day.
My cell phone rings.
“Hey Megan, where are you?” a distant voice asked.
“Who is this?”
“Are you okay? Where are you?” the voice asked again.
“Karl?”
“Yeah, this is Karl. Where are you headed?” the voice inquired a third time.
Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t Karl’s number. This person seemed to make sense over the phone, unlike Karl. Hoagie?
“No Karl, I’ll dial you on the ‘other’ phone, alright?” I said and hung up before whomever could answer. I had to be sure about this and risk hanging up on my brother, for Kate’s sake. I reached back in my brain for the telepathy switch.
Oh no, Karl, you didn’t.
Whenever entering into Karl’s mind I feel what he feels, at that moment. My eyes were locked on the road but I felt a warm tongue licking my face, chest and corn hole. I broke out of the mind-lock just before the tongue entered a hole in my body.
This was going to be one crazy game of cat and mouse.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
The Dinner Guest- Chapter 17: The Saga of Shriss Babler, Part the Second
Havockon began with a whimper, a steady screeching thump as the igneatic mechanism descended deep into the glacial depths. A brilliant blue hue of frozen mass flickered around me, dazzling me into a stupor, infecting my senses with beauty before the harrowing ritual ahead of me. No luster, no shimmering splendor, no infestation of natural glory and icy wonder could dissipate the precipitous and imminent sojourn condensing before me.
From my superior knowledge of everything and the stupefying breadth of my studies, I had encountered tales of Havockon from past warriors, many of them (obviously) far beneath my vast limits of saturated glory and awesometude. While it appeared to be a common trope of the literary kind, a mere wander through the underworld to achieve enlightenment in a metaphorical trek from stunted adolescence to cynical maturity, this excursion was most definitely harder than it appeared.
Karl broke my thoughts with an insidious question. “Yeah, it is pretty trite to have to go through Hell to achieve immortality or enlightenment or whatever. This is a pretty lame trope.”
I stared at him intently. “Seriously, dude, can I finish my fucking story? If you think Hell is so hard to go through, you do it yourself. Jesus Christ Karl, shut the fuck up and let me tell me story. You’re being a bitch, ok?”
Anyway, my magmatic elevator completed its plunge with a muffled thump. I was in a bare room hewn out of stone. A lonely door stood forlorn at the far wall, a simple portal fabricated from cheap wood and a brass handle. I entered the door without pity, the boards creaking softly as I ventured through it, bellowing from a lost opportunity of a new friend. I had no time to reflect upon its wary condition, my task at hand too important to entertain a gate who was down on its luck. This was Havockon, not a pity party.
Through the wooden loser-door I entered a lavish banquet hall, splendid in the trimmings of sumptuous frivolity. Half naked jaguar women danced a liquid rumba on plush velvet carpeting, dozens of them bumping chests and slapping backs to the rhythms of a thirteen piece jug band and hollowed turtle shells, a furious beat and syncopated palpitations from the physical realm of Nature. On the outskirts of the dance floor, robot maidens performed a noxious jig in place, feet welded to the ground while their torsos and upper appendages vibrated wildly like spasmatic octopi and anemic willows flapping in a fall afternoon gale. There were tables near the walls of the hall with a few straggling dancers sitting in broken chairs and fanning themselves with clamshells.
This is Hell? I thought to myself, intrigued at the party unfolding before my eyes. This isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. Maybe this is hell to the more wussified warriors that come through here, like Odysseus or Pee Wee Herman, but definitely not enough for me.
And then I heard the voice.
“Oh my god, I’m sooooo drunk.” An alto shriek pierced the music, thrashing the rhythms of the band with a sledgehammer of vocal fortitude. I turned my attention to an elevated stage at the far end of the hall. Seated on two elaborate thrones were the two lords of the Underworld, the king and queen of Hell: Persephone and Hades. Laying on the ground next to them was that three headed dog-beast, Cerberus, its heads laying in a tower of skulls in blissful slumber, rising and falling in unison as they slept gracefully through the ruckus.
“So I was all like, ‘Who does that?’” came the shriek again. The voices’ source was none other than Persephone, beautiful Queen to the darkly sinister Hades. She guzzled a clear liquor out of a large bronzed head, the face resembling Richard Nixon. The liquid poured into her mouth and down her face, the streams soaking into her curls and the wedding dress she wore. When finished with the drink, she dropped her cup, Nixon’s face grimacing as it hit the ground, and Persephone expelled a mighty burp from her mouth. She smirked and turned to Hades, exclaiming, “I missed you Hades.” Hades smiled, obviously drunk, his hands retracted near his neck, head bobbing to the music, a goofy grin plastered on his face. He turned to his half-bride, freshly returned to him for the fallow winter months, and said, “I missed Per-sephone,” in a sing song bass, drawing her name out into a lyrical iamb.
They continued their lubby-dubby exchanges, each remarking the importance of their respective love to their own life, with many pronouncements of missed partners and “Oh my Gods.” It was a sweet tete a tete of romantic niceties and drunken avowals of love. It was achingly genuine and certainly unexpected of the classical lord of darkness and his beseeded lady friend. I smiled and laughed at the thought of such shadowy figures professing the truths of the greatest emotion given to mankind. Of course, I was full of the greatest quantities of love imaginable, but they gave each other an admirable amount.
Slowly I inched forward to the stage, avoiding the dancers and robots who thrusted and jiggied in haphazard fashion. I was tempted to show off my own unique dance stylings to these creatures, seeing as I had a dance named after me (the Babler) which would have been the hit of the twenty first century had it not been for 9/11. But these poor beings of Hell were not worthy of such a new craze, just like those jackasses at TRL who decided to stop playing my music video because the country was “in mourning.” Stupid jackasses.
I brushed along the dance floor, sidling up to the stage. Before I could reach it, a hand tugged at my shirt. I turned. It was Orpheus. Tears streamed down his face, and he gazed up at me with sad eyes. He was obviously thinking about his lost love Eurydice, stuck in the other parts of Hades while he became known as the greatest minstrel the world has ever known. He peered at me with the desperation only unfulfilled love could allow. The music still burned in his eyes.
I shrugged him off, pulling my arm away. I spat in his face. “Stop crying, pussy.” How could that little bitch get his music played and I couldn’t?
“Wait, you spit on a mythical person whose name is synonymous with heartbreak? What type of asshole person are you?? Implored Karl, his face aghast in contempt.
“Karl, this is the second time you interrupted me. And now you’re judging me. You wanted to hear my fucking tale, so let me tell it, ok? One more time, and I’m going to stop. You understand?”
He remained silent, and I continued.
Persephone noticed my actions toward Orpheus, spitting out her drink in a spray of vodka, exclaiming, “Oh my God, who does that? I mean really.” Hades turned his attention from his beautiful mate towards me, pointing at me with a bony finger. “Come up here young Viking. We’ve been expecting you.” He laughed heartily at this statement, his body shaking, forcing his whiskey to spill over his black robes. I climbed onto the stage, crossing the platform. Cerberus’ triple heads snarled at me as I walked by, their jowls nipping at my ankles. This sent Persephone into hysterics, the queen falling out of her chair as I jumped away from the dog’s attacks. “Oh Hades, I want a dog for our away home in San Antonio. We need a vacation dog at the ranch. They crack me up sooo much.” Hades remained silent, his body shaking in similar hilarity.
I quickened my step, sidling up to the thrones until I was just out of the range of the damned dog’s leash. With a sigh of relief, I turned to Hell’s royalty, saluting with an elaborate gesture, utilizing each limb (and other appendages), impressing the crowd with my skill and body control. After a half hour, Hades motioned for me to stop, and I halted my salutation, climbing down from my height, my body stopped as I balanced my weight on my enormous, tree trunk erection, twirling in circles, only halfway through the official PSHAW salute.
Hades was visibly peeved and peered down at me from his perched throne. “So you’re the son of Odin, here to journey through Havockon.” I nodded, beginning my salute again. He motioned for me to stop, continuing. “I spoke with you father earlier. You may pass through my domain on your gay little ‘spirit journey’ or ‘warrior quest’ or whatever brand of homoeroticism Odin wanted you to go on. Boy, it’s pretty typical of your father. You know he’s bisexual, don’t you?” My mouth formed an instant objection, the words stammering in my throat before Hades cut me off. “Thor used to give him the ol’ Hammer of the Gods, if you know what I mean.” I told him I didn’t. “Oh come on, he made his warriors cross a rainbow bridge into Valhalla. Doesn’t that tell you something? Are you that dimwitted.” I begin shaking with rage, my fists balled up, ready to strike.
“I don’t know how you came about, Shriss. He either got too drunk and started fucking whatever hole was presented to him, or your mother was a part of his college ‘experimentation and finding himself.’ Either way, you’re the bastard son of a buttfucker who owes me two hundred bucks. I’ll let you go through Havockon if you pay the dividend right now. Otherwise, you’ll never grow up to be the oiled up man-wrestler your father wants you to be. Like father like son, I guess. Anyway, do you have the money?”
I was visibly shaking at this point, infuriated at the insults to my familial heritage. I picked up the nearest object to me, the drinking head of Richard Nixon, and threw it with all my force at this bastard’s queen. It pegged her on the shoulder, causing her to drop her glass, spilling pink mojito on her fresh wedding dress. The banquet hall stopped, the music halted and the dancers stood silently in place, the throng gazing open-mouthed at the affront to their illustrious queen leader.
“Oh crap,” I uttered, turning around and beginning to run.
Hades stood, his presence filling the vast hall. Persephone sobbed next to him, tears of vodka and lager streaming down her face. I froze, unable to escape from the debacle they forced me into. Hades glared at me, pointing his finger at me.
“Shriss, halt. You have insulted my woman and my kingdom because I spoke the truth about your whore of a father. I cannot let this action go unpunished. And I will let the woman you insulted do the punishing.”
Persephone sniffed loudly, wiping her nose with the hem of her dress. The tears had stopped at this point. She looked at me with sullen, red eyes. “Oh my god, who does that? I mean, really. You threw a cup at me. And it hurt! I demand an apology.”
“I will not apologize to you. You insulted my family and I retaliated. I am not sorry and will do it again.” I planted my feet, crossed my arms, glowering with my fiercest grimace.
The unholy queen smiled, sniffling again, and belched, aiming the foul gas expulsion towards my face. “I have the perfect punishment for you. If you want a life-changing journey through the underworld, I’ll give you one. I’ll curse you with the ability to travel through space and time. Haha! Take that.”
Hades turned to her, shaking his head in frustration. “Honey, dear, I think you’re drunk. Give him a worse punishment.”
She blushed and nodded in agreement. “Oh, sorry. Well, I’ll raise the odds then. Not only will you be cursed with the power to travel through time and space, but I’ll also change you into the culmination of your family heritage. You will be…a woman! Havockon!”
She tapped my head with her delicate finger. A surge raced through my body. I blacked out.
When I awoke, I was back at the glacier, naked and female. The bears were dead and my father was gone. I was naked (and smoking hot), but cold.
“Whoa, so that’s how you got your smoking hot body,” Karl said with a grin.
“You’re lucky that was the end of my story. Now you know how I came to this point. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go to sleep. We’re doing a production of Cinderella tomorrow, and the stripping is extremely intricate. I play the magic pumpkin, and I roll around in pumpkin seeds. Those things are hell to get out of my vagina. Good night Karl. Your journey begins tomorrow.”
From my superior knowledge of everything and the stupefying breadth of my studies, I had encountered tales of Havockon from past warriors, many of them (obviously) far beneath my vast limits of saturated glory and awesometude. While it appeared to be a common trope of the literary kind, a mere wander through the underworld to achieve enlightenment in a metaphorical trek from stunted adolescence to cynical maturity, this excursion was most definitely harder than it appeared.
Karl broke my thoughts with an insidious question. “Yeah, it is pretty trite to have to go through Hell to achieve immortality or enlightenment or whatever. This is a pretty lame trope.”
I stared at him intently. “Seriously, dude, can I finish my fucking story? If you think Hell is so hard to go through, you do it yourself. Jesus Christ Karl, shut the fuck up and let me tell me story. You’re being a bitch, ok?”
Anyway, my magmatic elevator completed its plunge with a muffled thump. I was in a bare room hewn out of stone. A lonely door stood forlorn at the far wall, a simple portal fabricated from cheap wood and a brass handle. I entered the door without pity, the boards creaking softly as I ventured through it, bellowing from a lost opportunity of a new friend. I had no time to reflect upon its wary condition, my task at hand too important to entertain a gate who was down on its luck. This was Havockon, not a pity party.
Through the wooden loser-door I entered a lavish banquet hall, splendid in the trimmings of sumptuous frivolity. Half naked jaguar women danced a liquid rumba on plush velvet carpeting, dozens of them bumping chests and slapping backs to the rhythms of a thirteen piece jug band and hollowed turtle shells, a furious beat and syncopated palpitations from the physical realm of Nature. On the outskirts of the dance floor, robot maidens performed a noxious jig in place, feet welded to the ground while their torsos and upper appendages vibrated wildly like spasmatic octopi and anemic willows flapping in a fall afternoon gale. There were tables near the walls of the hall with a few straggling dancers sitting in broken chairs and fanning themselves with clamshells.
This is Hell? I thought to myself, intrigued at the party unfolding before my eyes. This isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. Maybe this is hell to the more wussified warriors that come through here, like Odysseus or Pee Wee Herman, but definitely not enough for me.
And then I heard the voice.
“Oh my god, I’m sooooo drunk.” An alto shriek pierced the music, thrashing the rhythms of the band with a sledgehammer of vocal fortitude. I turned my attention to an elevated stage at the far end of the hall. Seated on two elaborate thrones were the two lords of the Underworld, the king and queen of Hell: Persephone and Hades. Laying on the ground next to them was that three headed dog-beast, Cerberus, its heads laying in a tower of skulls in blissful slumber, rising and falling in unison as they slept gracefully through the ruckus.
“So I was all like, ‘Who does that?’” came the shriek again. The voices’ source was none other than Persephone, beautiful Queen to the darkly sinister Hades. She guzzled a clear liquor out of a large bronzed head, the face resembling Richard Nixon. The liquid poured into her mouth and down her face, the streams soaking into her curls and the wedding dress she wore. When finished with the drink, she dropped her cup, Nixon’s face grimacing as it hit the ground, and Persephone expelled a mighty burp from her mouth. She smirked and turned to Hades, exclaiming, “I missed you Hades.” Hades smiled, obviously drunk, his hands retracted near his neck, head bobbing to the music, a goofy grin plastered on his face. He turned to his half-bride, freshly returned to him for the fallow winter months, and said, “I missed Per-sephone,” in a sing song bass, drawing her name out into a lyrical iamb.
They continued their lubby-dubby exchanges, each remarking the importance of their respective love to their own life, with many pronouncements of missed partners and “Oh my Gods.” It was a sweet tete a tete of romantic niceties and drunken avowals of love. It was achingly genuine and certainly unexpected of the classical lord of darkness and his beseeded lady friend. I smiled and laughed at the thought of such shadowy figures professing the truths of the greatest emotion given to mankind. Of course, I was full of the greatest quantities of love imaginable, but they gave each other an admirable amount.
Slowly I inched forward to the stage, avoiding the dancers and robots who thrusted and jiggied in haphazard fashion. I was tempted to show off my own unique dance stylings to these creatures, seeing as I had a dance named after me (the Babler) which would have been the hit of the twenty first century had it not been for 9/11. But these poor beings of Hell were not worthy of such a new craze, just like those jackasses at TRL who decided to stop playing my music video because the country was “in mourning.” Stupid jackasses.
I brushed along the dance floor, sidling up to the stage. Before I could reach it, a hand tugged at my shirt. I turned. It was Orpheus. Tears streamed down his face, and he gazed up at me with sad eyes. He was obviously thinking about his lost love Eurydice, stuck in the other parts of Hades while he became known as the greatest minstrel the world has ever known. He peered at me with the desperation only unfulfilled love could allow. The music still burned in his eyes.
I shrugged him off, pulling my arm away. I spat in his face. “Stop crying, pussy.” How could that little bitch get his music played and I couldn’t?
“Wait, you spit on a mythical person whose name is synonymous with heartbreak? What type of asshole person are you?? Implored Karl, his face aghast in contempt.
“Karl, this is the second time you interrupted me. And now you’re judging me. You wanted to hear my fucking tale, so let me tell it, ok? One more time, and I’m going to stop. You understand?”
He remained silent, and I continued.
Persephone noticed my actions toward Orpheus, spitting out her drink in a spray of vodka, exclaiming, “Oh my God, who does that? I mean really.” Hades turned his attention from his beautiful mate towards me, pointing at me with a bony finger. “Come up here young Viking. We’ve been expecting you.” He laughed heartily at this statement, his body shaking, forcing his whiskey to spill over his black robes. I climbed onto the stage, crossing the platform. Cerberus’ triple heads snarled at me as I walked by, their jowls nipping at my ankles. This sent Persephone into hysterics, the queen falling out of her chair as I jumped away from the dog’s attacks. “Oh Hades, I want a dog for our away home in San Antonio. We need a vacation dog at the ranch. They crack me up sooo much.” Hades remained silent, his body shaking in similar hilarity.
I quickened my step, sidling up to the thrones until I was just out of the range of the damned dog’s leash. With a sigh of relief, I turned to Hell’s royalty, saluting with an elaborate gesture, utilizing each limb (and other appendages), impressing the crowd with my skill and body control. After a half hour, Hades motioned for me to stop, and I halted my salutation, climbing down from my height, my body stopped as I balanced my weight on my enormous, tree trunk erection, twirling in circles, only halfway through the official PSHAW salute.
Hades was visibly peeved and peered down at me from his perched throne. “So you’re the son of Odin, here to journey through Havockon.” I nodded, beginning my salute again. He motioned for me to stop, continuing. “I spoke with you father earlier. You may pass through my domain on your gay little ‘spirit journey’ or ‘warrior quest’ or whatever brand of homoeroticism Odin wanted you to go on. Boy, it’s pretty typical of your father. You know he’s bisexual, don’t you?” My mouth formed an instant objection, the words stammering in my throat before Hades cut me off. “Thor used to give him the ol’ Hammer of the Gods, if you know what I mean.” I told him I didn’t. “Oh come on, he made his warriors cross a rainbow bridge into Valhalla. Doesn’t that tell you something? Are you that dimwitted.” I begin shaking with rage, my fists balled up, ready to strike.
“I don’t know how you came about, Shriss. He either got too drunk and started fucking whatever hole was presented to him, or your mother was a part of his college ‘experimentation and finding himself.’ Either way, you’re the bastard son of a buttfucker who owes me two hundred bucks. I’ll let you go through Havockon if you pay the dividend right now. Otherwise, you’ll never grow up to be the oiled up man-wrestler your father wants you to be. Like father like son, I guess. Anyway, do you have the money?”
I was visibly shaking at this point, infuriated at the insults to my familial heritage. I picked up the nearest object to me, the drinking head of Richard Nixon, and threw it with all my force at this bastard’s queen. It pegged her on the shoulder, causing her to drop her glass, spilling pink mojito on her fresh wedding dress. The banquet hall stopped, the music halted and the dancers stood silently in place, the throng gazing open-mouthed at the affront to their illustrious queen leader.
“Oh crap,” I uttered, turning around and beginning to run.
Hades stood, his presence filling the vast hall. Persephone sobbed next to him, tears of vodka and lager streaming down her face. I froze, unable to escape from the debacle they forced me into. Hades glared at me, pointing his finger at me.
“Shriss, halt. You have insulted my woman and my kingdom because I spoke the truth about your whore of a father. I cannot let this action go unpunished. And I will let the woman you insulted do the punishing.”
Persephone sniffed loudly, wiping her nose with the hem of her dress. The tears had stopped at this point. She looked at me with sullen, red eyes. “Oh my god, who does that? I mean, really. You threw a cup at me. And it hurt! I demand an apology.”
“I will not apologize to you. You insulted my family and I retaliated. I am not sorry and will do it again.” I planted my feet, crossed my arms, glowering with my fiercest grimace.
The unholy queen smiled, sniffling again, and belched, aiming the foul gas expulsion towards my face. “I have the perfect punishment for you. If you want a life-changing journey through the underworld, I’ll give you one. I’ll curse you with the ability to travel through space and time. Haha! Take that.”
Hades turned to her, shaking his head in frustration. “Honey, dear, I think you’re drunk. Give him a worse punishment.”
She blushed and nodded in agreement. “Oh, sorry. Well, I’ll raise the odds then. Not only will you be cursed with the power to travel through time and space, but I’ll also change you into the culmination of your family heritage. You will be…a woman! Havockon!”
She tapped my head with her delicate finger. A surge raced through my body. I blacked out.
When I awoke, I was back at the glacier, naked and female. The bears were dead and my father was gone. I was naked (and smoking hot), but cold.
“Whoa, so that’s how you got your smoking hot body,” Karl said with a grin.
“You’re lucky that was the end of my story. Now you know how I came to this point. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go to sleep. We’re doing a production of Cinderella tomorrow, and the stripping is extremely intricate. I play the magic pumpkin, and I roll around in pumpkin seeds. Those things are hell to get out of my vagina. Good night Karl. Your journey begins tomorrow.”
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 16: The Magical Journey of Lola the Space Witch
The Merlot chaser left a sweet flavor in my mouth, masking the sterile, pharmaceutical taste a handful of Vicodin leaves.
I needed the pills just as much as I needed the wine.
The sunset outside my window left tendrils of light in the humid air, a backdrop to the human play of boisterous Latino courting rituals on the street. On any other day, I'd lean over the balcony and listen to their exotic Spanish conversations, held at the top of their voices, but this was no day to admire the sights and sounds of Miami.
A few days ago, I would have been on stage, earning tips, bitching about my sleazy boss and running home for some animal-like love making with my warlock lover.
But now Will was mangled and my neck hurt from looking over my shoulder for signs of that bastard robot dog cop Abito.
I can't believe it's already been days since I heard Will's cries coming from the basement, a pitiful moaning emanating from the bottom of a filthy dirt hole. I remember cautiously taking each step down the stairs into the basement, scared of what I mind find.
My fears were realized.
He lay there at the bottom of the whole, his body broken and insides turned out. The strength it took to stay conscious and call out for help was mind-boggling. The pain...
I dropped down into the pit using a levitation spell and cradled what was left of him in my smooth arms.
"Oh my sweet, sweet Fig Love," I whispered. "What happened?"
"Yo check it, the dog is loose," he muttered before passing out.
Abito was free and my warlock left for dead.
Damn you, cruel world.
Even though I had never loved him, it still hurt me to see him like this. There wasn't a cure spell out there to save him or a box of tampons big enough to stop the bleeding.
The only way was to save his head.
So now, with the Spanish epithets floating up from the street, I was looking across the room at Will's face staring at me from a glass jar.
"Yo, can I still blaze blunts up in this bitch?"
"The fluid might make it difficult, Will."
He looked sad.
"What about a bubbler? My weed's in the other room."
I sighed. It hurt me to look at him like this. But it hurt me even more to think sweet Karl could end up in the same way.
I decided it was time to make sure that never happened. I grabbed my phone and called Karl and Kate to tell them Abito was on the planet and looking for his pound of flesh.
The phone rang several times before someone picked up.
"Holla, this is the Hoagster."
I didn't recognize the voice.
"Is Karl or Kate there?"
There was a pause.
"Kate? I guess you mean that chickadee who left me knocked out on the couch. I woke up to the DVD menu for gay porn."
Something was wrong. I should hang up right now. He sounded drunk.
"Are you hot or something, lady? Could you pretend to sound like a guy and tell me it's time for my prostate exam?"
I slammed the phone down. Did Abito find them already? No, that would have been too fast. I needed to find Karl before it was too late.
"Will, I need to leave for a little while, can I get anything for your head?"
"Yo, you said head, ha!"
"I'll be back in a couple days. I need to take a trip."
There were spells out there to find Karl, but I didn't know them. I needed to visit New Orleans to consult with my sister Camille. I could also ask her about ways to banish dog cops to another dimension.
I ran to my room and grabbed my violin. I stepped out to the balcony again and started to fly away on the instrument, leaving the voices behind.
Out of the corner of my eye, I swore I saw Abito on the roof, watching. I turned around and nothing was there.
I'm getting paranoid. The sooner I get to Camille, the better.
I needed the pills just as much as I needed the wine.
The sunset outside my window left tendrils of light in the humid air, a backdrop to the human play of boisterous Latino courting rituals on the street. On any other day, I'd lean over the balcony and listen to their exotic Spanish conversations, held at the top of their voices, but this was no day to admire the sights and sounds of Miami.
A few days ago, I would have been on stage, earning tips, bitching about my sleazy boss and running home for some animal-like love making with my warlock lover.
But now Will was mangled and my neck hurt from looking over my shoulder for signs of that bastard robot dog cop Abito.
I can't believe it's already been days since I heard Will's cries coming from the basement, a pitiful moaning emanating from the bottom of a filthy dirt hole. I remember cautiously taking each step down the stairs into the basement, scared of what I mind find.
My fears were realized.
He lay there at the bottom of the whole, his body broken and insides turned out. The strength it took to stay conscious and call out for help was mind-boggling. The pain...
I dropped down into the pit using a levitation spell and cradled what was left of him in my smooth arms.
"Oh my sweet, sweet Fig Love," I whispered. "What happened?"
"Yo check it, the dog is loose," he muttered before passing out.
Abito was free and my warlock left for dead.
Damn you, cruel world.
Even though I had never loved him, it still hurt me to see him like this. There wasn't a cure spell out there to save him or a box of tampons big enough to stop the bleeding.
The only way was to save his head.
So now, with the Spanish epithets floating up from the street, I was looking across the room at Will's face staring at me from a glass jar.
"Yo, can I still blaze blunts up in this bitch?"
"The fluid might make it difficult, Will."
He looked sad.
"What about a bubbler? My weed's in the other room."
I sighed. It hurt me to look at him like this. But it hurt me even more to think sweet Karl could end up in the same way.
I decided it was time to make sure that never happened. I grabbed my phone and called Karl and Kate to tell them Abito was on the planet and looking for his pound of flesh.
The phone rang several times before someone picked up.
"Holla, this is the Hoagster."
I didn't recognize the voice.
"Is Karl or Kate there?"
There was a pause.
"Kate? I guess you mean that chickadee who left me knocked out on the couch. I woke up to the DVD menu for gay porn."
Something was wrong. I should hang up right now. He sounded drunk.
"Are you hot or something, lady? Could you pretend to sound like a guy and tell me it's time for my prostate exam?"
I slammed the phone down. Did Abito find them already? No, that would have been too fast. I needed to find Karl before it was too late.
"Will, I need to leave for a little while, can I get anything for your head?"
"Yo, you said head, ha!"
"I'll be back in a couple days. I need to take a trip."
There were spells out there to find Karl, but I didn't know them. I needed to visit New Orleans to consult with my sister Camille. I could also ask her about ways to banish dog cops to another dimension.
I ran to my room and grabbed my violin. I stepped out to the balcony again and started to fly away on the instrument, leaving the voices behind.
Out of the corner of my eye, I swore I saw Abito on the roof, watching. I turned around and nothing was there.
I'm getting paranoid. The sooner I get to Camille, the better.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 15 : Kate's Story
“Yes. Why don’t you see for yourself?” I said sternly. I could tell by the way he held himself he was a Marlboro man. He reached down towards one of the cacti and extended his thumb and index finger. As he did I asked him if he liked flowers. He turned his head to respond and didn’t see the sharp cacti spine pierce the soft skin under his fingernail.
I noticed the pain in his eyes first. Blood sprayed everywhere. Blood on the flowers. My flowers. He gripped his fingers, wailed in pain spraying blood about the scene. His blood was dark red as it dried in the hot Arizona heat. His wail of agony reminded me of something I’d heard on a nature show Karl and I saw once. He reminded me of some beast from the Discovery Channel I couldn’t place. His name was Hoagie and meeting him changed my life.
I offered to wash the blood from his stained skin inside my marital domicile. He accepted like I hoped he would. We shared our life travels up to the present while washing blood from our persons. Hoagie was a great listener. Where Karl would always respond with the same “uh huh” every two minutes, Hoagie listened, cared and knew the struggles of a young woman.
After drying ourselves, I put on a kettle of water for tea. While trying to decide between Tootie Frutti Jinger Rutti or Earl Grey, Hoagie pulled out a knife and said, “Kate, I cannot let a crime of this magnitude go unpunished”. His face turned dark and mysterious, but I still wanted to know his feelings. He walked towards me as I began to back up against the cabinets. The knife came down on the wood near my head with a bloody hand clinging to the handle. Hoagie leaned in close and said, “Let’s watch some TV”.
Sex with Karl has always been amazing. I’ve never wanted anything more than my Karl, my one true love. Sure, we all think about having relations with someone other than our soul mate, but it’s sinful. It’s sinful to watch two human beings make love for pleasure. Hoagie, this Hoagie, made me watch, and watch, and watch. We watched two men make love for hours and hours.
“You’ll never understand what’s happened to me Kate,” he said in a desperate tone.
“Hoagie, please, I don’t understand,” I cried.
“Scott, oh Scott, my one true love is gone. You took the sweet liberty of life from him. I’ll never again see his shining eyes or never again hear his mysterious Orange County accent,” he said. Hoagie was in a trance recalling his long lost love.
“Please don’t hurt me Hoagie, Scott was my friend too. We had a wonderful dinner together that ended in a accident, that’s all” I said.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that will pierce your pure soul is the sight of impure adult acts. Feast your eyes upon homosexual flesh,” he promoted with eyes fueled by fire.
“Please, no!” I pleaded. The sight of torrid, gay sex washed over me. Wave after wave of sweat and teary-eyed men vibrated through my bones. Slowly, I became calm. Slowly I became weak.
Hoagie was in frenzy next to me. Drool from his mouth pooled on the floor as he muddled words of lasting love. I knew these words so well; I had just spoken them on the happiest day of my …life? Hoagie moaned and moaned. His cries drowned out the sound of the door being kicked in by an angry foot. Standing there, in the dusty drone of gay porn stood a female figure. The freckled face of her Texan sunburn screamed youthful curiosity.
“Hey Kate, wanna get outta here?” she said.
I couldn’t believe my eyes and I said “What’s under your shirt?”.
I noticed the pain in his eyes first. Blood sprayed everywhere. Blood on the flowers. My flowers. He gripped his fingers, wailed in pain spraying blood about the scene. His blood was dark red as it dried in the hot Arizona heat. His wail of agony reminded me of something I’d heard on a nature show Karl and I saw once. He reminded me of some beast from the Discovery Channel I couldn’t place. His name was Hoagie and meeting him changed my life.
I offered to wash the blood from his stained skin inside my marital domicile. He accepted like I hoped he would. We shared our life travels up to the present while washing blood from our persons. Hoagie was a great listener. Where Karl would always respond with the same “uh huh” every two minutes, Hoagie listened, cared and knew the struggles of a young woman.
After drying ourselves, I put on a kettle of water for tea. While trying to decide between Tootie Frutti Jinger Rutti or Earl Grey, Hoagie pulled out a knife and said, “Kate, I cannot let a crime of this magnitude go unpunished”. His face turned dark and mysterious, but I still wanted to know his feelings. He walked towards me as I began to back up against the cabinets. The knife came down on the wood near my head with a bloody hand clinging to the handle. Hoagie leaned in close and said, “Let’s watch some TV”.
Sex with Karl has always been amazing. I’ve never wanted anything more than my Karl, my one true love. Sure, we all think about having relations with someone other than our soul mate, but it’s sinful. It’s sinful to watch two human beings make love for pleasure. Hoagie, this Hoagie, made me watch, and watch, and watch. We watched two men make love for hours and hours.
“You’ll never understand what’s happened to me Kate,” he said in a desperate tone.
“Hoagie, please, I don’t understand,” I cried.
“Scott, oh Scott, my one true love is gone. You took the sweet liberty of life from him. I’ll never again see his shining eyes or never again hear his mysterious Orange County accent,” he said. Hoagie was in a trance recalling his long lost love.
“Please don’t hurt me Hoagie, Scott was my friend too. We had a wonderful dinner together that ended in a accident, that’s all” I said.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that will pierce your pure soul is the sight of impure adult acts. Feast your eyes upon homosexual flesh,” he promoted with eyes fueled by fire.
“Please, no!” I pleaded. The sight of torrid, gay sex washed over me. Wave after wave of sweat and teary-eyed men vibrated through my bones. Slowly, I became calm. Slowly I became weak.
Hoagie was in frenzy next to me. Drool from his mouth pooled on the floor as he muddled words of lasting love. I knew these words so well; I had just spoken them on the happiest day of my …life? Hoagie moaned and moaned. His cries drowned out the sound of the door being kicked in by an angry foot. Standing there, in the dusty drone of gay porn stood a female figure. The freckled face of her Texan sunburn screamed youthful curiosity.
“Hey Kate, wanna get outta here?” she said.
I couldn’t believe my eyes and I said “What’s under your shirt?”.
Friday, June 22, 2007
The Dinner Guest- Chapter 14: The Saga of Shriss Babler, Part the First
The IDF was filled with nothing but whiners and pussies. I joined the Israeli Defense Force because I wanted to change the world, not because I wanted to watch over some Goddamned neighborhood brawl over something as tedious as fence color. But that’s what this whole Middle Eastern mess was about: Israel painted their fence red when everyone else in this God forsaken Home Owner’s Association needed it green. Green like the money the Corporations make, the McDonalded World throwing plastic cups and Styrofoam lunch boxes into the rainforests to drown out the cries of Mother Earth as angry white men formed a line behind the alley to take turns fucking her in the ass. God I hate Republicans.
I left the IDF because they were not committed enough to the cause of Good. They had to protect their “identity” from “heathens” who wanted them “dead.” Hell, I’ve never known a jihadist hurt anyone. Instead, the whole army became another fucking Crusade.
This new Crusade was not the one I envisioned when I joined the Paramilitary Seminary of Hope and Wholesomeness (PSHAW). My three year tenure in this Brotherhood had me on the fast track to priesthood. I was fighting for Good because that was the right thing to do. But these bastards turned a good, old Holy War into the Fourteenth Crusade. Lazy twats.
As soon as I threw my rifle to ground and spat on a picture of Ariel Sharon, my life as a soldier of Middle East Good was done. My commanding officer, a feisty little man named Sergeant Ben Davidmanson, his mouth hung awkwardly in a stunned silence, could only point the way to the exit in response to my inquiries out of this hellhole. “See you in Hell, with all your Muslim friends, Sergeant Douchebag. Jesus Christ, the world is going to shit and all you want to do is kill the people who are different from you. Who are you to judge them?”
An army full of cowards. They don’t deserve the oil they shit out of the ground from those sandy cunts they call the oil wells. Let them kill each other, for all I care. The whole world was getting warmer by the minute because of the military industrial complex, and they were still fighting over a sea full of salt and a pack of camels.
This whole world is going to Hell.
I returned to PSHAW with head held high and a new determination to prevent any further catastrophe around the world. Didn’t they know that I was the only one who could save the world from itself?
The Brotherhood gave me a small room with a straw cot in the corner. Looks like they’re getting fancier now in their accommodations. This new class must be full of softies. I’ll teach them a lesson.
I lasted about a week in PSHAW. Turns out the abbot didn’t appreciated my bid for commander of the headquarters, especially objecting to my classification of the entire enterprise as “an anthology of steam pressed pansies in a steel vagina welded to the cunt of the aborted love child of C3PO and Rosie the Robot Maid’s latest fecal saturated bodily excretion.” I went through fifty of my fellow monks on the way out, fighting each of them with my hands tied because I enjoyed the challenge. They didn’t stand a chance, especially the ones I sought out in sick bay to ensure that nobody followed me. Poor saps pleaded with me to spare them because they had “terminal illnesses.” Little did they realize the malignant cancer they were upon our good Mother Earth, each and every one of us wasteful humans. Except for me. I am the goddamned child of Creation, here to free the world of the Evil that men do.
The week after I left PSHAW is hazy, not entirely because I decided to break my vow of sobriety and chastity by visiting an opium den in downtown Detroit. Mostly it was because I was finally able to live my life. Chicks dig the fact that I was training to be a priest. Hella nookie from those dim broads.
The smoky glow of opiate induced frenzy fizzled away in the bright sun and freezing winds on top of a glacier. In the span of seven days, I had traveled from the civilized mecca of downtown Detroit to Iceland, resting on top of a frozen tundra and ice sheath by the ocean’s edge. Goddamn am I good, I thought, as I grabbed a nearby polar bear baring his teeth at my direction, breaking its neck with a simple flick of my wrists, skinning it with my teeth, and tossing the meat to her three adorable bear cubs. Eat well, my new children. Let Mother Earth nourish you.
This glacier represented the last remnants of a pure world, the glistening brilliance of the sunshine glittering off the ice sheets flickering with intense brilliance, denoting the glory and splendor that our Earth is inteded to represent. Here I built my farm, a peaceful ranch devoted to the Earth’s purity and chaste luminosity. I lived here with my three bear cubs for nearly a year, surviving entirely from the icicle sustenance of pure, glacial spring water. Normal humans would have died within a week. But I was no mere mortal: I was the most evolved being on this Earth, as Mother Nature gave me the power to live entirely on the honor of her waters. My bear cubs feasted on the fish that swam around our little glacial island. They grew big and strong, much like I did as I leached energy from my Mother.
One day, I woke up at dawn, earlier than normal. I was exhausted and had slept soundly, due to a long day of basking in my own strength. The puppy laid on the ground, shivering in the cold. Basasha, the eldest bear cub, nuzzled it with its snout. “Master Shriss, should I eat it? It looks nourishing.” “No, stupid bear! This is a gift from Mother Earth. We do not destroy her. By eating this being, you will give off harmful byproducts that will cause greenhouse gases to melt the polar ice caps. What are you, a stupid American? Come on, you have to be Enlightened like a European.” “But Master, we eat the fish of the sea and the ice flowers of Tarbithini. Are not those from this Earth?” I replied, with a hearty laugh, “Oh silly bears! Fish are not animals. And Tarbithini is a visiting archipalago from the moon of Hydros, the Ice Planet in the Odessa system. You knew that, silly bear!”
The bears laughed with me. We laughed for an entire day, I amused them that much. The next morning, our laughter subsided as we heard more whimpering from the puppy. I nudged it gently with my foot. “Puppy,” I asked it, “why cry you so much?” The only answer in response was a high pitched whine, a shrill groan from the pup’s throat. “He must be cold. Bashoga, please sit on the dog. That should heat his bones.” The young bear hesitated, his rear end hovering over the dog’s head. “But Master, I’m afraid I will crush the poor thing.” I roared and lunged at the stupid bear, picking it up and throwing it a mile away. “Stupid bears!” I bellowed, pumping my chest, “how dare you call this dog poor? You want poor? How about the fifty million Americans without health insurance? Or the thirteen million homeless in America? Those are the poor, not a shivering dog! You make me sick with you faltering sympathies!”
There was only one way to heat this poor puppy: fire. I grabbed Manshakalon, the youngest of the bear cubs, and probed my fingers into his ear. From there I extracted a long line of earwax, shaping it into a thin candle. I bent over the candle, expelling a cinnamon scented ball of gaseous flatulence, the gas igniting the candle’s wick. I held the candle next to the puppy’s face, its nose twitching towards the warmth. His eyes opened slowly, his breathing returning to normal. He peered up at me, the whimpering subsiding slowly. I reached out a hand to pet the poor animal. His tongue, coarse like the back of a Hyena, licked my fingers. I smiled, laughing to myself. I bent over to kiss the dog on his forehead, the ultimate form of healing on this world. My kisses have cured cancer; I was sure it could cure a frozen body. And of course, it worked, the dog jumped to its feet and wagged its tail. But in its haste to recover, its back paw grazed against the lit candle. As the dog intended to bark in thankful tribute, instead he yelped and jumped back, crying loudly in the still air.
I burned the puppy! Oh damned me! I, Shriss Babler, have burned a poor, cute puppy! When the winds would catch onto this, the horrid rumors will never cease! Woe be to me!
I threw the candle to the ground as my bears ran in horror. Doubled over, my head in my hands, my body shook in wracked anger at my horrible fate! Why must all bad things happen to me, I screamed into the air! I am the most fated man in Creation!
My face remained in my hands, the tears of sorrow pouring down my face, blurring my vision and distracting me from the spectacle unfolding around me. As I lay and wallow in my own pitiful circumstance, I failed to notice the change occurring in close proximity to my pathetic, weeping mass. That young pup, the cursed beast who had the malicious happenstance to get accidentally burned by me, stood erect on his hind legs and grew a good thirty feet into the air. With a wag of his tail, he leaned over and tapped me on the sobbing shoulder. “Shriss, get up! It is I, Odin, your master. Rise my Son.”
I brushed the slick trails off my cheeks and stood before him, staring into this giant puppy’s face. “Odin? Father? Where have you been?” “I have been watching you. You have done the most wicked thing imaginable: you have burned a puppy! I am embarrassed by your presence.”
My head bowed in frustration and anger. I muttered into my mighty beard, “It was an accident.”
“Silence!” roared Odin. “You are master of the World. There are no accidents from you!”
“Sorry Father.”
“There is no time for apologies. You must repent in the only way possible.”
“No, Father, not that,” I pleaded. I knew what he meant. Havockon, the descent into Hell.
Odin smiled, a deep grin from dog ear to dog ear. He reached behind him, his paws obscured by his body. When he brought them forth, he had in his hand a shiny red button. Still grinning, he pushed the button with one, giant paw. The ground around me shook, and a bright rectangle of red shone through the cracks starting to form. “Havockon! Fight your way back from Hell, my Viking Messiah! This is the wrath of Odin.”
Karl looked at me in disbelief. Abita licked my slight, feminine hands. “But Sunshine, you are such a beautiful woman now. I cannot believe that you were ever a macho, macho man.”
I turned around, hiding the tears that were streaming down my face. I closed my eyes, waiting for the sobs to cease before I answered his question. I ran my fingers through the brilliant shock of white hair on my head, remembering the horrible tragedy that led to my current state, yet also granted me the power to travel through space and time. “I will tell you about Havockon soon enough. But first you need some rest. Good night, warrior. And good night to you, Dog Princess.”
As Karl led Abita to their shared bed, I sat down in my Rainbow Brite bean bag chair, relaxing in its springy comfort. I leaned my head back, feeling my feminine body, and reflecting. I was alone. Time to transport…
I opened my eyes again. I was standing on that glacier again, the bones of three polar bear cubs tanning in the sun. Before me was a rectangular shape hewn into the glacier. I stared at the slab for a long time before raising my hands in the air. “Curse you, Father,” I bellowed into the quiet night sky.
I left the IDF because they were not committed enough to the cause of Good. They had to protect their “identity” from “heathens” who wanted them “dead.” Hell, I’ve never known a jihadist hurt anyone. Instead, the whole army became another fucking Crusade.
This new Crusade was not the one I envisioned when I joined the Paramilitary Seminary of Hope and Wholesomeness (PSHAW). My three year tenure in this Brotherhood had me on the fast track to priesthood. I was fighting for Good because that was the right thing to do. But these bastards turned a good, old Holy War into the Fourteenth Crusade. Lazy twats.
As soon as I threw my rifle to ground and spat on a picture of Ariel Sharon, my life as a soldier of Middle East Good was done. My commanding officer, a feisty little man named Sergeant Ben Davidmanson, his mouth hung awkwardly in a stunned silence, could only point the way to the exit in response to my inquiries out of this hellhole. “See you in Hell, with all your Muslim friends, Sergeant Douchebag. Jesus Christ, the world is going to shit and all you want to do is kill the people who are different from you. Who are you to judge them?”
An army full of cowards. They don’t deserve the oil they shit out of the ground from those sandy cunts they call the oil wells. Let them kill each other, for all I care. The whole world was getting warmer by the minute because of the military industrial complex, and they were still fighting over a sea full of salt and a pack of camels.
This whole world is going to Hell.
I returned to PSHAW with head held high and a new determination to prevent any further catastrophe around the world. Didn’t they know that I was the only one who could save the world from itself?
The Brotherhood gave me a small room with a straw cot in the corner. Looks like they’re getting fancier now in their accommodations. This new class must be full of softies. I’ll teach them a lesson.
I lasted about a week in PSHAW. Turns out the abbot didn’t appreciated my bid for commander of the headquarters, especially objecting to my classification of the entire enterprise as “an anthology of steam pressed pansies in a steel vagina welded to the cunt of the aborted love child of C3PO and Rosie the Robot Maid’s latest fecal saturated bodily excretion.” I went through fifty of my fellow monks on the way out, fighting each of them with my hands tied because I enjoyed the challenge. They didn’t stand a chance, especially the ones I sought out in sick bay to ensure that nobody followed me. Poor saps pleaded with me to spare them because they had “terminal illnesses.” Little did they realize the malignant cancer they were upon our good Mother Earth, each and every one of us wasteful humans. Except for me. I am the goddamned child of Creation, here to free the world of the Evil that men do.
The week after I left PSHAW is hazy, not entirely because I decided to break my vow of sobriety and chastity by visiting an opium den in downtown Detroit. Mostly it was because I was finally able to live my life. Chicks dig the fact that I was training to be a priest. Hella nookie from those dim broads.
The smoky glow of opiate induced frenzy fizzled away in the bright sun and freezing winds on top of a glacier. In the span of seven days, I had traveled from the civilized mecca of downtown Detroit to Iceland, resting on top of a frozen tundra and ice sheath by the ocean’s edge. Goddamn am I good, I thought, as I grabbed a nearby polar bear baring his teeth at my direction, breaking its neck with a simple flick of my wrists, skinning it with my teeth, and tossing the meat to her three adorable bear cubs. Eat well, my new children. Let Mother Earth nourish you.
This glacier represented the last remnants of a pure world, the glistening brilliance of the sunshine glittering off the ice sheets flickering with intense brilliance, denoting the glory and splendor that our Earth is inteded to represent. Here I built my farm, a peaceful ranch devoted to the Earth’s purity and chaste luminosity. I lived here with my three bear cubs for nearly a year, surviving entirely from the icicle sustenance of pure, glacial spring water. Normal humans would have died within a week. But I was no mere mortal: I was the most evolved being on this Earth, as Mother Nature gave me the power to live entirely on the honor of her waters. My bear cubs feasted on the fish that swam around our little glacial island. They grew big and strong, much like I did as I leached energy from my Mother.
One day, I woke up at dawn, earlier than normal. I was exhausted and had slept soundly, due to a long day of basking in my own strength. The puppy laid on the ground, shivering in the cold. Basasha, the eldest bear cub, nuzzled it with its snout. “Master Shriss, should I eat it? It looks nourishing.” “No, stupid bear! This is a gift from Mother Earth. We do not destroy her. By eating this being, you will give off harmful byproducts that will cause greenhouse gases to melt the polar ice caps. What are you, a stupid American? Come on, you have to be Enlightened like a European.” “But Master, we eat the fish of the sea and the ice flowers of Tarbithini. Are not those from this Earth?” I replied, with a hearty laugh, “Oh silly bears! Fish are not animals. And Tarbithini is a visiting archipalago from the moon of Hydros, the Ice Planet in the Odessa system. You knew that, silly bear!”
The bears laughed with me. We laughed for an entire day, I amused them that much. The next morning, our laughter subsided as we heard more whimpering from the puppy. I nudged it gently with my foot. “Puppy,” I asked it, “why cry you so much?” The only answer in response was a high pitched whine, a shrill groan from the pup’s throat. “He must be cold. Bashoga, please sit on the dog. That should heat his bones.” The young bear hesitated, his rear end hovering over the dog’s head. “But Master, I’m afraid I will crush the poor thing.” I roared and lunged at the stupid bear, picking it up and throwing it a mile away. “Stupid bears!” I bellowed, pumping my chest, “how dare you call this dog poor? You want poor? How about the fifty million Americans without health insurance? Or the thirteen million homeless in America? Those are the poor, not a shivering dog! You make me sick with you faltering sympathies!”
There was only one way to heat this poor puppy: fire. I grabbed Manshakalon, the youngest of the bear cubs, and probed my fingers into his ear. From there I extracted a long line of earwax, shaping it into a thin candle. I bent over the candle, expelling a cinnamon scented ball of gaseous flatulence, the gas igniting the candle’s wick. I held the candle next to the puppy’s face, its nose twitching towards the warmth. His eyes opened slowly, his breathing returning to normal. He peered up at me, the whimpering subsiding slowly. I reached out a hand to pet the poor animal. His tongue, coarse like the back of a Hyena, licked my fingers. I smiled, laughing to myself. I bent over to kiss the dog on his forehead, the ultimate form of healing on this world. My kisses have cured cancer; I was sure it could cure a frozen body. And of course, it worked, the dog jumped to its feet and wagged its tail. But in its haste to recover, its back paw grazed against the lit candle. As the dog intended to bark in thankful tribute, instead he yelped and jumped back, crying loudly in the still air.
I burned the puppy! Oh damned me! I, Shriss Babler, have burned a poor, cute puppy! When the winds would catch onto this, the horrid rumors will never cease! Woe be to me!
I threw the candle to the ground as my bears ran in horror. Doubled over, my head in my hands, my body shook in wracked anger at my horrible fate! Why must all bad things happen to me, I screamed into the air! I am the most fated man in Creation!
My face remained in my hands, the tears of sorrow pouring down my face, blurring my vision and distracting me from the spectacle unfolding around me. As I lay and wallow in my own pitiful circumstance, I failed to notice the change occurring in close proximity to my pathetic, weeping mass. That young pup, the cursed beast who had the malicious happenstance to get accidentally burned by me, stood erect on his hind legs and grew a good thirty feet into the air. With a wag of his tail, he leaned over and tapped me on the sobbing shoulder. “Shriss, get up! It is I, Odin, your master. Rise my Son.”
I brushed the slick trails off my cheeks and stood before him, staring into this giant puppy’s face. “Odin? Father? Where have you been?” “I have been watching you. You have done the most wicked thing imaginable: you have burned a puppy! I am embarrassed by your presence.”
My head bowed in frustration and anger. I muttered into my mighty beard, “It was an accident.”
“Silence!” roared Odin. “You are master of the World. There are no accidents from you!”
“Sorry Father.”
“There is no time for apologies. You must repent in the only way possible.”
“No, Father, not that,” I pleaded. I knew what he meant. Havockon, the descent into Hell.
Odin smiled, a deep grin from dog ear to dog ear. He reached behind him, his paws obscured by his body. When he brought them forth, he had in his hand a shiny red button. Still grinning, he pushed the button with one, giant paw. The ground around me shook, and a bright rectangle of red shone through the cracks starting to form. “Havockon! Fight your way back from Hell, my Viking Messiah! This is the wrath of Odin.”
Karl looked at me in disbelief. Abita licked my slight, feminine hands. “But Sunshine, you are such a beautiful woman now. I cannot believe that you were ever a macho, macho man.”
I turned around, hiding the tears that were streaming down my face. I closed my eyes, waiting for the sobs to cease before I answered his question. I ran my fingers through the brilliant shock of white hair on my head, remembering the horrible tragedy that led to my current state, yet also granted me the power to travel through space and time. “I will tell you about Havockon soon enough. But first you need some rest. Good night, warrior. And good night to you, Dog Princess.”
As Karl led Abita to their shared bed, I sat down in my Rainbow Brite bean bag chair, relaxing in its springy comfort. I leaned my head back, feeling my feminine body, and reflecting. I was alone. Time to transport…
I opened my eyes again. I was standing on that glacier again, the bones of three polar bear cubs tanning in the sun. Before me was a rectangular shape hewn into the glacier. I stared at the slab for a long time before raising my hands in the air. “Curse you, Father,” I bellowed into the quiet night sky.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Metapost: The Story So Far
Karl and Kate are a young couple making their way in Tucson with their lovable dog Abita at their side. One day, Kate announces she's going to invite her co-worker, Scott, over for Sunday dinner. Karl doesn't like the idea and wonders what's going on between his wife and this stranger.
Scott shows up, gets intoxicated off Coors Light, and tries to have relations with Abita while letting her out in the backyard. Abita lunges at his throat, killing him, leaving Karl to clean up the mess. Karl buries the unwanted dinner guest underneath the fountain in the yard.
But the telltale fountain starts to bother Karl and drive him crazy. He keeps seeing the blood of Scott bubbling up and no matter how much cleaning he does, the evidence doesn't go away.
Realizing her husband is losing it, she sends Karl and Abita off to lay low. Karl consults with his sister telepathically who suggests heading to Vegas and staying with a friend of hers. As a result of the telepathic conversation, Megan becomes impregnanted with the child of Napolean, a byproduct of her intense hallucatinations of the Frano-Prussian War.
Karl and Abita make it to Vegas after a stop at a seedy hotel in Lake Havasu. They're looking for Megan's friend and they discover it's none other than Karl's old nemesis, Shriss Babler, this time posing as a transexual stripper.
Kate, back at the house in Tucson, is enjoying the quiet of the garden when Scott's old college buddy, Hoagie, shows up with unknown intentions.
Meanwhile in Miami, Abito, the intergalatic robot dog cop, comes looking for leads on Karl for a series of other crimes committed off-world. He shows up to pry the information out of Lola, a space witch showgirl, but Lola's warlock lover, Will, saves her.
Lola won't give up Karl's location, and Will suspects she harbors feelings for him. Will wants her to spill the blood of an orphan to begin their bonding ritual, but she refuses.
Bored of keeping Abito captive, Will decides to fight the robot dog cop in a pit dug in the ground. Abito gets the bettter of the fight, escaping from the witch and warlock and leaving Will injured...
Scott shows up, gets intoxicated off Coors Light, and tries to have relations with Abita while letting her out in the backyard. Abita lunges at his throat, killing him, leaving Karl to clean up the mess. Karl buries the unwanted dinner guest underneath the fountain in the yard.
But the telltale fountain starts to bother Karl and drive him crazy. He keeps seeing the blood of Scott bubbling up and no matter how much cleaning he does, the evidence doesn't go away.
Realizing her husband is losing it, she sends Karl and Abita off to lay low. Karl consults with his sister telepathically who suggests heading to Vegas and staying with a friend of hers. As a result of the telepathic conversation, Megan becomes impregnanted with the child of Napolean, a byproduct of her intense hallucatinations of the Frano-Prussian War.
Karl and Abita make it to Vegas after a stop at a seedy hotel in Lake Havasu. They're looking for Megan's friend and they discover it's none other than Karl's old nemesis, Shriss Babler, this time posing as a transexual stripper.
Kate, back at the house in Tucson, is enjoying the quiet of the garden when Scott's old college buddy, Hoagie, shows up with unknown intentions.
Meanwhile in Miami, Abito, the intergalatic robot dog cop, comes looking for leads on Karl for a series of other crimes committed off-world. He shows up to pry the information out of Lola, a space witch showgirl, but Lola's warlock lover, Will, saves her.
Lola won't give up Karl's location, and Will suspects she harbors feelings for him. Will wants her to spill the blood of an orphan to begin their bonding ritual, but she refuses.
Bored of keeping Abito captive, Will decides to fight the robot dog cop in a pit dug in the ground. Abito gets the bettter of the fight, escaping from the witch and warlock and leaving Will injured...
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 13 Abito v. Fig Love
"Yo! Space dawg! You hungry or what?"
Fuck, that hurt. Of course he's throwing food at me, no one loves Abito.
I came to lying face down in dirt. As my eyes opened I realized the dirt I'd been sleeping on surrounded me. There were dark dirt walls all around, my back hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and someone was throwing dog food at me. I looked up to see what some might call "fun with stem cells" staring back down at me with what I can only describe as a smile. I didn't know this human's name, but he looked like a bad genetic copy of Al Roker. Ever since humans discovered basic genetics, there have been numerous stories of amateur geneticists trying impossible experiments. I was even assigned to take down a one mad scientist calling himself "Axon 'Mendel' the Grindballer". I hope this wasn't one of his kids.
Even though the plastic trey that he threw at me didn't scratch my thick metal skin, it still hurt...inside.
"Listen up dawgy, Ma space queen is myspace'n right now. So you's and me are gonna throw down, ya heard?" He spatted.
My secondary optical circuits kicked in just as his muttered his last colloquialism. The hole I was in appeared to be 3 by 3 meters in width and 8 meters in depth, my neuro-net was still rounding off to the nearest thousandth...
"You're a cha-cha brained metal puta, and I'm a motha-fuckin warlock! I took your stank-ass outta stasis cuz we gotta rub uglies, ya heard?"
I had no idea what he was saying. My linguistic networks scanned front wards and backwards unable to make sense out of the sounds. I really needed to download that update from Krontos Inc. I've been telling myself I'd do it for months.
"Was that a threat?" I said in a slow, clear tone. I could tell I'd have to speak slowly to this one.
"Yo damn right it was a threat, dawg! My special lady upstairs said to 'take care of our guest'. And you da guest. Aye!"
He trailed off saying something about orphan’s blood. As he spoke, he pointed and swung in his hand a small stick. My optics closed in on it. It was a small carved stick roughly a quarter of a meter long. On the side in sloppy capital letters were carved the words "Wonder Boy". Again, I had no idea what that meant. If only my father had been around to teach me the ways of the universe. I once called the help desk of my current repair center to pose this query.
The curry-laced voice of the operator laughed and asked, "Your name is Abito? Noice."
“Who is my father? My creator?” I pleaded.
“Sir, are you sitting down?”
…The story I heard from then on nuked my world in a thousand napalm nightmares. Hair. Sex. Computer keyboard. Heaney.
It wasn’t fair.
As I arose to my feet I said, "Look, . . . sorry, what's your name?"
His face went from drunken anger to a sobering calm in moments.
He spoke, "I gots many names, dawg. My homies from the 'hood back on Betrian Deuce called me "Lil Hug", but they ain't called me that for years. My boys on the salvage vessel Latvian 43 called me "Big Bug", but they ain't called me that in years. Now, my space queen, she calls me. . . " He stopped for a moment.
Then, as quickly as he went calm, his anger arose again.
"You can't call me that dawg! You can call me what I call myself!
'William 'Fig Love' the Warlock', or 'Fig-dub' for short... for years"
Christ, this guy likes to talk.
"Ok, 'Fig-Dub', you shot me in the back, threw me in a hole, then threw my, what I can only assume was my last meal, in the dirt. Are you gonna stand up there like some magical skank, or are you going to confront me with honor?"
I figured the only way to reason with this mouth-breather was to rise to his level, which from where I was standing was just above the toilet bowl rim. He starting spewing again, but I needed to think fast. The microphone in my nose would record the train of sounds for me to come back to; I needed every nano-second to think.
First, I was ambushed. The witch/dancer Lola contacted this guy who showed up outside the club and shot me in the back. Second, they threw me into stasis, which explains the slow reboot of my main systems. A sub-freeze like that slows every part of my body, even in earth climates. Third, this prick threw me in this hole to thaw out and now wants to "have some fun". Options. Calculating...
"Oh, dat's it! Dat's it! It's ON!!!!"
The human quickly disappeared. With a few seconds to spare I ran through my options. The hole was round, no corners. With the internal hyper-hydraulic drive system coupled with a 42 THz reflex matrix in my engineering, this hole would take no time to resolve, assuming this hole is square, but it isn't....
Clunk! Thud! "Ouch!" the human exclaimed from out of sight. After a quick patter of feet he appeared again and tossed a rope down.
Christ! This guy is an idiot!
He then stammered down the rope slowly, descent slowed by an enormous beer gut. As he neared, I stepped back preparing for anything. My nose was picking up scents of petroleum in the air. No sooner had his feet hit the dirt, he tapped his stick to the rope. It went ablaze in an instant. Shit...
"It's so on now!" he shouted, "Check it! I learned me that fire spell, like puff, puff, pass, yo..."
Seeing the opportunity, I lunged towards the portly human. His stick appeared to breathe fire, so I went for it first. I suppose the darkness might have helped me because I was able to get the stick and disable it with great ease. I then turned to the human. He stood roughly one and two thirds of a meter high and half that wide.
"Shit, dawg! Shit! You broke my wand! Where's my laser gu...."
My teeth sank into his lower back. While he was screaming about his stick, I flanked his huge flanks and found a vital point, the nervous system. According to police regs I should avoid killing the innocent if possible. As far as I could tell, the only crime this guy committed was not committing suicide. So, I chose a non-fatal wound to inflict. I knew a large section of lower back would not kill the human, but ensure he would never walk again, I chose it for that reason. Additionally, it left me with all I needed to escape from that hole. The rope was well burnt away at that point.
And again, I was alone, in a hole with a bleeding human and left to find a way out.
"Awwwww shit, dawg! You broke my back! Fuck you dawg! What? What you doin with my foot?! Oh no you didn't! You did not just fashion a grappling hook from the bones in ma foot! It's about to go down, right now! Oh yeah? You think you can make a harness out of my intestines and Cliffhanger your ass outta this hole?!?! You crazy, mental fucked! Oh sure, you badass, run away. Punk bitches always leave the fight. Ain't you even gonna fight? You there?"
In the fainting throws of that human’s consciousness I realized we are quite similar, him and I. Both being bastard sons of poverty and perversion, I believe it was fate that kept me from swallowing his face. I like to think I’m a better person because he’ll live another day. Either way, I sleep better now.
Fuck, that hurt. Of course he's throwing food at me, no one loves Abito.
I came to lying face down in dirt. As my eyes opened I realized the dirt I'd been sleeping on surrounded me. There were dark dirt walls all around, my back hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and someone was throwing dog food at me. I looked up to see what some might call "fun with stem cells" staring back down at me with what I can only describe as a smile. I didn't know this human's name, but he looked like a bad genetic copy of Al Roker. Ever since humans discovered basic genetics, there have been numerous stories of amateur geneticists trying impossible experiments. I was even assigned to take down a one mad scientist calling himself "Axon 'Mendel' the Grindballer". I hope this wasn't one of his kids.
Even though the plastic trey that he threw at me didn't scratch my thick metal skin, it still hurt...inside.
"Listen up dawgy, Ma space queen is myspace'n right now. So you's and me are gonna throw down, ya heard?" He spatted.
My secondary optical circuits kicked in just as his muttered his last colloquialism. The hole I was in appeared to be 3 by 3 meters in width and 8 meters in depth, my neuro-net was still rounding off to the nearest thousandth...
"You're a cha-cha brained metal puta, and I'm a motha-fuckin warlock! I took your stank-ass outta stasis cuz we gotta rub uglies, ya heard?"
I had no idea what he was saying. My linguistic networks scanned front wards and backwards unable to make sense out of the sounds. I really needed to download that update from Krontos Inc. I've been telling myself I'd do it for months.
"Was that a threat?" I said in a slow, clear tone. I could tell I'd have to speak slowly to this one.
"Yo damn right it was a threat, dawg! My special lady upstairs said to 'take care of our guest'. And you da guest. Aye!"
He trailed off saying something about orphan’s blood. As he spoke, he pointed and swung in his hand a small stick. My optics closed in on it. It was a small carved stick roughly a quarter of a meter long. On the side in sloppy capital letters were carved the words "Wonder Boy". Again, I had no idea what that meant. If only my father had been around to teach me the ways of the universe. I once called the help desk of my current repair center to pose this query.
The curry-laced voice of the operator laughed and asked, "Your name is Abito? Noice."
“Who is my father? My creator?” I pleaded.
“Sir, are you sitting down?”
…The story I heard from then on nuked my world in a thousand napalm nightmares. Hair. Sex. Computer keyboard. Heaney.
It wasn’t fair.
As I arose to my feet I said, "Look, . . . sorry, what's your name?"
His face went from drunken anger to a sobering calm in moments.
He spoke, "I gots many names, dawg. My homies from the 'hood back on Betrian Deuce called me "Lil Hug", but they ain't called me that for years. My boys on the salvage vessel Latvian 43 called me "Big Bug", but they ain't called me that in years. Now, my space queen, she calls me. . . " He stopped for a moment.
Then, as quickly as he went calm, his anger arose again.
"You can't call me that dawg! You can call me what I call myself!
'William 'Fig Love' the Warlock', or 'Fig-dub' for short... for years"
Christ, this guy likes to talk.
"Ok, 'Fig-Dub', you shot me in the back, threw me in a hole, then threw my, what I can only assume was my last meal, in the dirt. Are you gonna stand up there like some magical skank, or are you going to confront me with honor?"
I figured the only way to reason with this mouth-breather was to rise to his level, which from where I was standing was just above the toilet bowl rim. He starting spewing again, but I needed to think fast. The microphone in my nose would record the train of sounds for me to come back to; I needed every nano-second to think.
First, I was ambushed. The witch/dancer Lola contacted this guy who showed up outside the club and shot me in the back. Second, they threw me into stasis, which explains the slow reboot of my main systems. A sub-freeze like that slows every part of my body, even in earth climates. Third, this prick threw me in this hole to thaw out and now wants to "have some fun". Options. Calculating...
"Oh, dat's it! Dat's it! It's ON!!!!"
The human quickly disappeared. With a few seconds to spare I ran through my options. The hole was round, no corners. With the internal hyper-hydraulic drive system coupled with a 42 THz reflex matrix in my engineering, this hole would take no time to resolve, assuming this hole is square, but it isn't....
Clunk! Thud! "Ouch!" the human exclaimed from out of sight. After a quick patter of feet he appeared again and tossed a rope down.
Christ! This guy is an idiot!
He then stammered down the rope slowly, descent slowed by an enormous beer gut. As he neared, I stepped back preparing for anything. My nose was picking up scents of petroleum in the air. No sooner had his feet hit the dirt, he tapped his stick to the rope. It went ablaze in an instant. Shit...
"It's so on now!" he shouted, "Check it! I learned me that fire spell, like puff, puff, pass, yo..."
Seeing the opportunity, I lunged towards the portly human. His stick appeared to breathe fire, so I went for it first. I suppose the darkness might have helped me because I was able to get the stick and disable it with great ease. I then turned to the human. He stood roughly one and two thirds of a meter high and half that wide.
"Shit, dawg! Shit! You broke my wand! Where's my laser gu...."
My teeth sank into his lower back. While he was screaming about his stick, I flanked his huge flanks and found a vital point, the nervous system. According to police regs I should avoid killing the innocent if possible. As far as I could tell, the only crime this guy committed was not committing suicide. So, I chose a non-fatal wound to inflict. I knew a large section of lower back would not kill the human, but ensure he would never walk again, I chose it for that reason. Additionally, it left me with all I needed to escape from that hole. The rope was well burnt away at that point.
And again, I was alone, in a hole with a bleeding human and left to find a way out.
"Awwwww shit, dawg! You broke my back! Fuck you dawg! What? What you doin with my foot?! Oh no you didn't! You did not just fashion a grappling hook from the bones in ma foot! It's about to go down, right now! Oh yeah? You think you can make a harness out of my intestines and Cliffhanger your ass outta this hole?!?! You crazy, mental fucked! Oh sure, you badass, run away. Punk bitches always leave the fight. Ain't you even gonna fight? You there?"
In the fainting throws of that human’s consciousness I realized we are quite similar, him and I. Both being bastard sons of poverty and perversion, I believe it was fate that kept me from swallowing his face. I like to think I’m a better person because he’ll live another day. Either way, I sleep better now.
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Dinner Guest- Chapter 12: Karl finds the Sunshine
The bright lights hurt my eyes. The Strip is not what I imagined, the hazy neon glow of gambling boogaloo that inundates the mind in uncomfortable, shimmering stimuli. My temples throbbed like ballroom dancers and my stomach grizzled with hunger. Abita whimpered by my side, looking up at me, a tear rolling down her cheek. I know girl, I know, I told her through osmosis as I petted her matted fur. You don’t like the strangers. Don’t worry, though, they’re not judging you. They’re judging me.
I never thought that in a town like Las Vegas, with all the hustlers, strippers, lowlifes, and alcoholics, the anonymous faces of nondescript strangers would look down on a man with his dog, riding her sidesaddle around town like a princess. Having they seen saddle sores before? This is the last time we ride in the cities. Abita will be disappointed, but even I have my pride. That dog will just have to get used to a bare back for a while. Just like last night.
We were in Vegas looking for a friend of Megan’s. I got her email only a day ago, a couple of days late, as usual. She must have been hitting the weed again, smoking marijuana cigarettes and stunting her memory. Three weeks is way too long to wander in a desert with a dog. There are only so many motels that allow dogs to shower with their owners. Dog hair is not that bad for shower drains. Who are these people to tell me I can’t have my dog watch me as I wash myself?
Megan’s message was short and sweet, just like she was. It contained the kind of cryptic nonsense that delusional acid freaks and enviro-journalists instill in their writing, the doomsday plot devices and scatterbrained messages of a world gone wrong:
Karl,
Look for Sunshine in the Palms. Beware of broomsticks. Napoleon knocked me up. When the last leaf falls, make like Garvey. Back to Asia! Heat of the mom, init!
Meg-an
Poor child should lay off the hash. It’ll fry her brain and turn her into a whore.
Abita and I wandered the Strip for about two hours, our heads held low as we averted our eyes from the passersby. The billboards and signs all resembled warning signs and ominous portents of bad things to come. In our sleep deprived, oversexed, and hunger addled minds, those blinking lights, drunk cowboys, block lettering, wild fountains, and giant guitars mutated and shifted to form messages from our Beyong, beckoning us in invisible directions to heed our next move. The Cowboy winked, drank his whiskey, pointed to Abita, and said “This dog will win!” while the Hard Rock Guitar bent its neck over, nudging the dog, its strings snaking out of their tight, twangy grip and slithering through her fur, six long cables caressing the dogs mane, pulling her chin up and pulling her tail, like a dog show judge prying the particulars of the sporting dogs to determine the blue ribbon winner. Without warning, the guitar became erect again, plucking its strings in a dischordant melody, the notes materializing in the air, floating high into the air, expanding, and shaping themselves into a simple sentence, “We’ve been waiting for you.”
It was at this time I knew we needed to find some food.
Las Vegas is the land of the buffet, the most American of appetizing styles, devoted not to the increased efficiency of space and effort, but the quick and cheap mass production of gullet crushing glop. We were surrounded by troughs devoted to abiding the delirious pangs wracking our minds. But my allergy to gambling prohibited any entrance to the buffet tables, stuck as they were in the casino and gambling halls. Whenever I ventured near the halls of avarice, the games of chance nearing my soul, I started coughing up money. I learned of this allergy during our last trip to Vegas, Kate in tow, as after a night of unbridled greed and triple cherry flavored daydreams, by the next morning broke, my head was stuck inside an ATM machine, trying in agonizing desperation to inhale the sweet stench of greenbacked gold.
Thus we continued our walk amidst the lights and noise, our dementia satiated only by the only Crab Rangoon cart in all of Vegas, its lovely patron serving us deep fried bundles of aquatic joy. After consuming fifty of these apiece, we wandered off again, in search of Sunshine in the Palms.
Unbeknownst to my companion and me, we had consumed way over the normal limit allowed to man and beast alike of those delicious crab and cheese filled fried wontons, and a blackout ensued as we stumbled throughout the Strip, both of us drunk on cheese and crustacean.
I came to with my head in the lap of a stripper.
“Hello Karl. Do you remember me?”
I peered into the young woman’s eyes. That intensity, the ferocity and desire for do-goodery. I knew them very well. But those eyes belonged to a man! Not a tight bodied dancer like the one I was staring at.
“I think I do. But it can’t be. Where am I?”
“Why, silly, you’re at Harry Palms Whack Shack. I’m Sunshine. But you can call me…”
I know the name. Please don’t say it.
“Shriss. Shriss Babler. I’m glad we meet again.”
My eternal nemesis. And here I am ogling his tits. Or her tits. At this point I couldn’t remember, as I fainted directly into Shriss’ lap.
“Oh baby, there you go. Careful, though. A face full of Sunshine is just going to get you burned.”
So we meet again, Shriss, I think as I lose consciousness for the third time today. Hell must have sent you back…
I never thought that in a town like Las Vegas, with all the hustlers, strippers, lowlifes, and alcoholics, the anonymous faces of nondescript strangers would look down on a man with his dog, riding her sidesaddle around town like a princess. Having they seen saddle sores before? This is the last time we ride in the cities. Abita will be disappointed, but even I have my pride. That dog will just have to get used to a bare back for a while. Just like last night.
We were in Vegas looking for a friend of Megan’s. I got her email only a day ago, a couple of days late, as usual. She must have been hitting the weed again, smoking marijuana cigarettes and stunting her memory. Three weeks is way too long to wander in a desert with a dog. There are only so many motels that allow dogs to shower with their owners. Dog hair is not that bad for shower drains. Who are these people to tell me I can’t have my dog watch me as I wash myself?
Megan’s message was short and sweet, just like she was. It contained the kind of cryptic nonsense that delusional acid freaks and enviro-journalists instill in their writing, the doomsday plot devices and scatterbrained messages of a world gone wrong:
Karl,
Look for Sunshine in the Palms. Beware of broomsticks. Napoleon knocked me up. When the last leaf falls, make like Garvey. Back to Asia! Heat of the mom, init!
Meg-an
Poor child should lay off the hash. It’ll fry her brain and turn her into a whore.
Abita and I wandered the Strip for about two hours, our heads held low as we averted our eyes from the passersby. The billboards and signs all resembled warning signs and ominous portents of bad things to come. In our sleep deprived, oversexed, and hunger addled minds, those blinking lights, drunk cowboys, block lettering, wild fountains, and giant guitars mutated and shifted to form messages from our Beyong, beckoning us in invisible directions to heed our next move. The Cowboy winked, drank his whiskey, pointed to Abita, and said “This dog will win!” while the Hard Rock Guitar bent its neck over, nudging the dog, its strings snaking out of their tight, twangy grip and slithering through her fur, six long cables caressing the dogs mane, pulling her chin up and pulling her tail, like a dog show judge prying the particulars of the sporting dogs to determine the blue ribbon winner. Without warning, the guitar became erect again, plucking its strings in a dischordant melody, the notes materializing in the air, floating high into the air, expanding, and shaping themselves into a simple sentence, “We’ve been waiting for you.”
It was at this time I knew we needed to find some food.
Las Vegas is the land of the buffet, the most American of appetizing styles, devoted not to the increased efficiency of space and effort, but the quick and cheap mass production of gullet crushing glop. We were surrounded by troughs devoted to abiding the delirious pangs wracking our minds. But my allergy to gambling prohibited any entrance to the buffet tables, stuck as they were in the casino and gambling halls. Whenever I ventured near the halls of avarice, the games of chance nearing my soul, I started coughing up money. I learned of this allergy during our last trip to Vegas, Kate in tow, as after a night of unbridled greed and triple cherry flavored daydreams, by the next morning broke, my head was stuck inside an ATM machine, trying in agonizing desperation to inhale the sweet stench of greenbacked gold.
Thus we continued our walk amidst the lights and noise, our dementia satiated only by the only Crab Rangoon cart in all of Vegas, its lovely patron serving us deep fried bundles of aquatic joy. After consuming fifty of these apiece, we wandered off again, in search of Sunshine in the Palms.
Unbeknownst to my companion and me, we had consumed way over the normal limit allowed to man and beast alike of those delicious crab and cheese filled fried wontons, and a blackout ensued as we stumbled throughout the Strip, both of us drunk on cheese and crustacean.
I came to with my head in the lap of a stripper.
“Hello Karl. Do you remember me?”
I peered into the young woman’s eyes. That intensity, the ferocity and desire for do-goodery. I knew them very well. But those eyes belonged to a man! Not a tight bodied dancer like the one I was staring at.
“I think I do. But it can’t be. Where am I?”
“Why, silly, you’re at Harry Palms Whack Shack. I’m Sunshine. But you can call me…”
I know the name. Please don’t say it.
“Shriss. Shriss Babler. I’m glad we meet again.”
My eternal nemesis. And here I am ogling his tits. Or her tits. At this point I couldn’t remember, as I fainted directly into Shriss’ lap.
“Oh baby, there you go. Careful, though. A face full of Sunshine is just going to get you burned.”
So we meet again, Shriss, I think as I lose consciousness for the third time today. Hell must have sent you back…
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 11: The Tale of Will
Yo check it - I'm Will and I'm a warlock.
And right now, I'm the warden of my own private prison. Population: one intergalatic robot dog cop.
It's been three days since my witch called and said some homeboy was out to start something down at the club. I was up to my elbows in orphan blood, but dropped it all and hopped on my tricked out rocket broom.
I was packing my piece so I got the drop on that player while he was getting up in my woman's grill.
Since then, we've had the dog locked up in a statis field in our closet. I want to drop another cap in him and this time knock him out for good, but Lola's trippin'.
"Will, we can't kill a cop. They take that kind of think seriously. I don't want to end up like my brother."
Lola's brother was serving a stint in Senegal for selling stims to an undercover narcotics agent.
"Lola, we should let this guy go. Just tell him where Karl is."
She got that dreamy look in her eye. That far away look like she was somewhere else, the look that I've seen so often while making love.
"I can't give up Karl, I...."
She trailed off.
"I treasure his friendship."
I've heard that before. It's not convining and other signs are there.
For months, I've tried to begin the transcendent astral bonding ritual that would tie us as warlock and witch. However, Lola won't take the first step and spill the blood of a requisite orphan.
I've killed close to 20 myself, but she's unwilling to take the plunge. Morality has no meaning for our kind, so I know it's not that. I bet she would spill the blood for Karl.
"So what are we going to do about this clown, baby?"
She furrowed her brow.
"I know there's a spell out there to banish him to another dimension, but I'll have to check," she said.
I thought to myself.
"Isn't your sister in school for that? She could help"
Lola smiled.
"Yes, I think she got a degree in intergalactic dog banishing decades ago from Vassar. I'll give her a call. Meanwhile, you take care of our 'guest.'"
Whateva. This was getting old. Oh well, maybe I could sneak in another orphan sacrifice tonight.
And right now, I'm the warden of my own private prison. Population: one intergalatic robot dog cop.
It's been three days since my witch called and said some homeboy was out to start something down at the club. I was up to my elbows in orphan blood, but dropped it all and hopped on my tricked out rocket broom.
I was packing my piece so I got the drop on that player while he was getting up in my woman's grill.
Since then, we've had the dog locked up in a statis field in our closet. I want to drop another cap in him and this time knock him out for good, but Lola's trippin'.
"Will, we can't kill a cop. They take that kind of think seriously. I don't want to end up like my brother."
Lola's brother was serving a stint in Senegal for selling stims to an undercover narcotics agent.
"Lola, we should let this guy go. Just tell him where Karl is."
She got that dreamy look in her eye. That far away look like she was somewhere else, the look that I've seen so often while making love.
"I can't give up Karl, I...."
She trailed off.
"I treasure his friendship."
I've heard that before. It's not convining and other signs are there.
For months, I've tried to begin the transcendent astral bonding ritual that would tie us as warlock and witch. However, Lola won't take the first step and spill the blood of a requisite orphan.
I've killed close to 20 myself, but she's unwilling to take the plunge. Morality has no meaning for our kind, so I know it's not that. I bet she would spill the blood for Karl.
"So what are we going to do about this clown, baby?"
She furrowed her brow.
"I know there's a spell out there to banish him to another dimension, but I'll have to check," she said.
I thought to myself.
"Isn't your sister in school for that? She could help"
Lola smiled.
"Yes, I think she got a degree in intergalactic dog banishing decades ago from Vassar. I'll give her a call. Meanwhile, you take care of our 'guest.'"
Whateva. This was getting old. Oh well, maybe I could sneak in another orphan sacrifice tonight.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Chapter 10: Kate in the Garden of Life
The garden is my favorite place to sit because in here nothing dies. This is life and life eternal, the endless cycle of blooming, wilting, tilling, plowing, and back to blooming. When the flowers fade away, they just pop right back again.
Flowers are not people, nor are they animals. They are hardly vegetables, meant for eating and suckling and nourishing the rest of creation. No. The flowers in my garden are there to live forever.
Karl hates our garden. He likes the cacti. His favorite spot in all the world is on the biggest one in our yard. Old thumby, we call it. The succulent resembles a hand giving a thumbs up to the sky. “Great job,” it says, “thanks for the flood of water from the torrential rains. I really appreciate it.” I don’t like that cactus. I think he’s mean. But Karl can sit for hours, his sweet ass nestled on the tip of the thumb, clapping his hands and calling out “oh sweet liberty!”
The cacti are not like the flowers. They are more like turtles, stuck in their own shell, secluded from everyone else, and growing slowly, moving slowly, always there. They never die because they never live. All they do is survive, slurping the detritus and remnants of life all around it. Scavengers! That’s what they are. Purposefully biding their time and waiting for the mement to strike again. We have sixteen of those bastard weeds scattered throughout our lawn, most of them on the inside. Every day I look around and wonder. Did they just inch forward? Are they approaching my geraniums?
My flowers do not die. Some might think that they do. But they don’t. They just hide. The ground is their bed and when they get frightened, they hide under there. They hate the winter. I think cold winds horrify them.
The bees like the flowers. Together they form friendships and clans. I like when the bees come. My flowers sing when the bees come. Some say that buzzing sound is made by those bugs. I know better. That buzzing sound comes from the flowers. It’s the sound I make every Thursday night when Karl’s around. It’s the sound of pleasure.
Bzzzzzzzzz. The bee goes inside the flower. Then the magic happens. The bees leave and the noise is heard. Bzzzzzzzz. The flowers sway, the wind fans away their rising temperatures. They sigh, swoon, and wait for the next bee to enter them.
Soft sounds and sweet vapors to lure the pricks. That’s what life is about! The flowers are life!
The cacti do not get the bees. All they have is Karl. They are flesh covered in sterile erections, staving off others, anti-social to eternity. They are opportunity cost and inflation without the benefit of community. They have liberated themselves into the ground, but refuse to join the group. They are all dicks.
Flowers live. When they hide, they come back. They look alike and act alike. For all I know they are different each time. I can’t tell. But they get to fuck and live again. The are not at the liberty to leave. But by gum do they have fun. I like the flowers.
And then there’s the fountain. I never knew what to make of the fountain. When I sit in my garden, I can admire its beauty and its design. It sticks out of the ground, erect and flowing. It gives water to the flowers and lets them live on. I think the flowers like it, but I don’t think they trust it. The cacti like the fountain. That’s why they inch forward. It’s free water and new life to them. But they can’t handle either of those commodities.
The fountain has been spewing for months on end now. Always crystal clear water. The invisible hand that feeds its children. It’s this invisible hand that guides the garden and allows the flowers to live. Nothing dies here. They’re not allowed to.
Until the fountain starting spewing the Red. The flowers do not like the Red. The shy away from it, looking towards their neighbor, fearful of its secrets. The Red scares them. The cacti ignore the Red, but it is there to stay. The bees don’t come near the Red. And then they avoid the flowers. The enter garden has become blacklisted. My flowers are sad. I think they need a wall around the Red to keep it away from them.
This is all Scott’s fault. He ruined my garden.
I got up and retrieved my hoe from our garden shack. It was time to do something about my garden. I bent down to begin my tilling.
A noise blared from the driveway. A car pulled up, a black pickup with golden rims and purple stripes. The license plate read “Hoagie.” The bed was filled with cans. Out walked a man, belching in the sunlight. He wore a Ron Paul ’08 t-shirt. He looked up at me and said “Nice cactuses. Do their stingers hurt?”
What a prick.
Flowers are not people, nor are they animals. They are hardly vegetables, meant for eating and suckling and nourishing the rest of creation. No. The flowers in my garden are there to live forever.
Karl hates our garden. He likes the cacti. His favorite spot in all the world is on the biggest one in our yard. Old thumby, we call it. The succulent resembles a hand giving a thumbs up to the sky. “Great job,” it says, “thanks for the flood of water from the torrential rains. I really appreciate it.” I don’t like that cactus. I think he’s mean. But Karl can sit for hours, his sweet ass nestled on the tip of the thumb, clapping his hands and calling out “oh sweet liberty!”
The cacti are not like the flowers. They are more like turtles, stuck in their own shell, secluded from everyone else, and growing slowly, moving slowly, always there. They never die because they never live. All they do is survive, slurping the detritus and remnants of life all around it. Scavengers! That’s what they are. Purposefully biding their time and waiting for the mement to strike again. We have sixteen of those bastard weeds scattered throughout our lawn, most of them on the inside. Every day I look around and wonder. Did they just inch forward? Are they approaching my geraniums?
My flowers do not die. Some might think that they do. But they don’t. They just hide. The ground is their bed and when they get frightened, they hide under there. They hate the winter. I think cold winds horrify them.
The bees like the flowers. Together they form friendships and clans. I like when the bees come. My flowers sing when the bees come. Some say that buzzing sound is made by those bugs. I know better. That buzzing sound comes from the flowers. It’s the sound I make every Thursday night when Karl’s around. It’s the sound of pleasure.
Bzzzzzzzzz. The bee goes inside the flower. Then the magic happens. The bees leave and the noise is heard. Bzzzzzzzz. The flowers sway, the wind fans away their rising temperatures. They sigh, swoon, and wait for the next bee to enter them.
Soft sounds and sweet vapors to lure the pricks. That’s what life is about! The flowers are life!
The cacti do not get the bees. All they have is Karl. They are flesh covered in sterile erections, staving off others, anti-social to eternity. They are opportunity cost and inflation without the benefit of community. They have liberated themselves into the ground, but refuse to join the group. They are all dicks.
Flowers live. When they hide, they come back. They look alike and act alike. For all I know they are different each time. I can’t tell. But they get to fuck and live again. The are not at the liberty to leave. But by gum do they have fun. I like the flowers.
And then there’s the fountain. I never knew what to make of the fountain. When I sit in my garden, I can admire its beauty and its design. It sticks out of the ground, erect and flowing. It gives water to the flowers and lets them live on. I think the flowers like it, but I don’t think they trust it. The cacti like the fountain. That’s why they inch forward. It’s free water and new life to them. But they can’t handle either of those commodities.
The fountain has been spewing for months on end now. Always crystal clear water. The invisible hand that feeds its children. It’s this invisible hand that guides the garden and allows the flowers to live. Nothing dies here. They’re not allowed to.
Until the fountain starting spewing the Red. The flowers do not like the Red. The shy away from it, looking towards their neighbor, fearful of its secrets. The Red scares them. The cacti ignore the Red, but it is there to stay. The bees don’t come near the Red. And then they avoid the flowers. The enter garden has become blacklisted. My flowers are sad. I think they need a wall around the Red to keep it away from them.
This is all Scott’s fault. He ruined my garden.
I got up and retrieved my hoe from our garden shack. It was time to do something about my garden. I bent down to begin my tilling.
A noise blared from the driveway. A car pulled up, a black pickup with golden rims and purple stripes. The license plate read “Hoagie.” The bed was filled with cans. Out walked a man, belching in the sunlight. He wore a Ron Paul ’08 t-shirt. He looked up at me and said “Nice cactuses. Do their stingers hurt?”
What a prick.
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 9: Karl on the Run
I dropped an alka seltzer tablet into a glass of water and downed it in one gulp. I still had a headache from yesterday's telepathic sarcasm and, man, did it hurt.
The scenery wasn't helping my mood. Me and Abita were holed up in a fleabag motel near Lake Havasu. It was a place that didn't ask questions. And if you could get past the roaches and the Asian ladyboy hookers hanging out in the lobby, it could be a nice place.
But I had other things on my mind.
We hit the road this morning, Abita riding shotgun. I wasn't going to be at work for a while and I think they bought the cancer excuse. I figure that should buy me a couple weeks and maybe a couple more if I play the remission card.
It was clear we had to get out of Tucson. There were no cops asking questions, just my own demons coming out for house calls.
That first day I liked looking at the fountain. It gave me a sense of comfort.
By day two, I started noticing the water was muddy. Kate had me clean it out.
But it came back.
I cleaned it again. And it started getting darker, more red.
Blood red.
After cleaning it for the hundredth time, Kate suggested I get away for a couple days. She would stay in town and play off Scott's disapearance. Not like anyone was asking other than Hoagie, his old college frat buddy.
Tomorrow we'll be in Vegas and try to find Megan's friend and lay low for a little while. By then, I bet the fountain will be better...I hope.
Well, it's my vacation, hell, I'll make the best of it. Huh, the bed has one of those coin slots, I guess to get it vibrating.
"Abita, turn down the covers for us. I think I'll take a trip to the lobby."
Abita barked in pleasure.
The scenery wasn't helping my mood. Me and Abita were holed up in a fleabag motel near Lake Havasu. It was a place that didn't ask questions. And if you could get past the roaches and the Asian ladyboy hookers hanging out in the lobby, it could be a nice place.
But I had other things on my mind.
We hit the road this morning, Abita riding shotgun. I wasn't going to be at work for a while and I think they bought the cancer excuse. I figure that should buy me a couple weeks and maybe a couple more if I play the remission card.
It was clear we had to get out of Tucson. There were no cops asking questions, just my own demons coming out for house calls.
That first day I liked looking at the fountain. It gave me a sense of comfort.
By day two, I started noticing the water was muddy. Kate had me clean it out.
But it came back.
I cleaned it again. And it started getting darker, more red.
Blood red.
After cleaning it for the hundredth time, Kate suggested I get away for a couple days. She would stay in town and play off Scott's disapearance. Not like anyone was asking other than Hoagie, his old college frat buddy.
Tomorrow we'll be in Vegas and try to find Megan's friend and lay low for a little while. By then, I bet the fountain will be better...I hope.
Well, it's my vacation, hell, I'll make the best of it. Huh, the bed has one of those coin slots, I guess to get it vibrating.
"Abita, turn down the covers for us. I think I'll take a trip to the lobby."
Abita barked in pleasure.
Friday, June 15, 2007
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 8: Enter Megan
As I climbed out of my mid-afternoon shower, the psychic telephone nestled inside my mind rang its obnoxious, pulsating melody. Of course I knew who it was. There was only one person who had a deep telepathic connection with me. My brother.
“Hello Karl. What do you want?”
“Megan, I need a favor.”
“You always do. And no, I’m not giving you any more money. You’re just going to blow it all on Milkbones. I thought you told me you were off of those.”
“Well, I’m not. But no, it’s not for my dog biscuit addiction. I promise. It’s for something much more important.”
Geez, I thought, the poor guy must be jonesing for a butterscotch flavored dog treat. That witch of a wife must have put them above the fridge where he can’t reach them.
“If this is for Kate’s Slovakian pornography collection, I’m still calling no deal. She has plenty of copies of ‘My Vagina is a Liberated Communist Bloc’”
I could feel him sigh and shake with frustration. Poor guy, I’m riding him too hard. I need to back off.
“Sorry brother. What’s your trouble?”
“I need to hide out for a while. Me and Abita.”
I knew it. He’s finally leaving Kate for that dog. How long did that take? Two months? Damn, I just missed the spread. Looks like I owe somebody a free night on the town. I’ll call Greg later. He’ll be elated to know he won a date with me.
“Poor Kate. How’d she take the break up?
There was a brief pause. If I was paying more attention to my brother, I would have suspected that I said something wrong. But at this point I was still thinking about my future date with Greg. I wonder if he’s a good kisser…
Disirregardless, Karl’s tone became drenched in sarcasm, which was a problem.
“I’m soooo glad you’ve approved of my marriage. You’re the best sister ever.”
Mental telepathy might seem like quite the preposterous situation in this modern world of Science, the Age of Reason in which we live, but it is a verifiable connection between the closest siblings in the universe. There are only three sets of telepathic siblings in the United States, the other two being Michael and Latoya Jackson and the Menendez brothers. I’d say we were in esteemed company.
The problem we were experiencing during our particular psychic bond was that the mental parallels can only take certain emotional states. Sarcasm was the most destructive of the visceral forces. A little will only give both parties a headache. But too much sarcasm will cause hallucinations. I was already getting off my weeklong acid trip and was not in the mood for seeing more visions of the Franco-Prussian War. God, it’s bad enough seeing the War’s effects everyday in college. One more day of watching the Light Brigade, and I just might shoot myself. With heroin.
“Karl, please, I was joking,” I wasn’t, “tell me what’s up before I start hearing artillery fire.”
“Abita’s done it again. I need a place to hide. Any suggestions?”
That damn dog. She’ll be the death of him one day. I can sense it.
“How ‘bout Vegas? I have a good friend up there you can hang with. He’s kinda odd, but perfectly legit and low key. He knows his way around the law. I’ll email you the info.”
“Thanks sis. Kate will really appreciate your help. She’s always been a big fan of yours.”
Oh no, he’s starting again without realizing it.
“Karl, please stop with the sarcasm. I don’t want to go back to Prussia.”
“Don’t worry sis, I love Vegas. Whatever happens there, stays there, right? Not under the fountain at my home, like a tell-tale douchebag mocking me every time Kate makes me clean it out.”
Here I go again. The connection failed. I could hear the hoofbeats.
Once more into the breach, my friend!
You take my life but I take yours too! I’m like a freight train running over you!
Charge! Kill the Prussians!
All the bodies. The French! The smell! It was horrible. I couldn’t take it. I’d rather be in Vietnam! Karl, damn you and your wit! I hope they sent you to Thermopylae.
I thrashed around, dodging bullets and ducking under cannon fire. The Prussians didn’t notice me They never do.
I closed my eyes, intent on willing away the hallucination. I could see my bathroom mirror across the battlefield. I had to run to make it.
Just before I reached the mildewed tile, as my sarcastic hallucination began to subside, I saw him. The short physique, the tri corner hat, the lascivious glare. Napoleon. He pointed at me and laughed, touching my stomach with a grubby finger.
I woke up naked on my bathroom floor. I was pregnant with Napoleon’s child. Thanks Karl.
“Hello Karl. What do you want?”
“Megan, I need a favor.”
“You always do. And no, I’m not giving you any more money. You’re just going to blow it all on Milkbones. I thought you told me you were off of those.”
“Well, I’m not. But no, it’s not for my dog biscuit addiction. I promise. It’s for something much more important.”
Geez, I thought, the poor guy must be jonesing for a butterscotch flavored dog treat. That witch of a wife must have put them above the fridge where he can’t reach them.
“If this is for Kate’s Slovakian pornography collection, I’m still calling no deal. She has plenty of copies of ‘My Vagina is a Liberated Communist Bloc’”
I could feel him sigh and shake with frustration. Poor guy, I’m riding him too hard. I need to back off.
“Sorry brother. What’s your trouble?”
“I need to hide out for a while. Me and Abita.”
I knew it. He’s finally leaving Kate for that dog. How long did that take? Two months? Damn, I just missed the spread. Looks like I owe somebody a free night on the town. I’ll call Greg later. He’ll be elated to know he won a date with me.
“Poor Kate. How’d she take the break up?
There was a brief pause. If I was paying more attention to my brother, I would have suspected that I said something wrong. But at this point I was still thinking about my future date with Greg. I wonder if he’s a good kisser…
Disirregardless, Karl’s tone became drenched in sarcasm, which was a problem.
“I’m soooo glad you’ve approved of my marriage. You’re the best sister ever.”
Mental telepathy might seem like quite the preposterous situation in this modern world of Science, the Age of Reason in which we live, but it is a verifiable connection between the closest siblings in the universe. There are only three sets of telepathic siblings in the United States, the other two being Michael and Latoya Jackson and the Menendez brothers. I’d say we were in esteemed company.
The problem we were experiencing during our particular psychic bond was that the mental parallels can only take certain emotional states. Sarcasm was the most destructive of the visceral forces. A little will only give both parties a headache. But too much sarcasm will cause hallucinations. I was already getting off my weeklong acid trip and was not in the mood for seeing more visions of the Franco-Prussian War. God, it’s bad enough seeing the War’s effects everyday in college. One more day of watching the Light Brigade, and I just might shoot myself. With heroin.
“Karl, please, I was joking,” I wasn’t, “tell me what’s up before I start hearing artillery fire.”
“Abita’s done it again. I need a place to hide. Any suggestions?”
That damn dog. She’ll be the death of him one day. I can sense it.
“How ‘bout Vegas? I have a good friend up there you can hang with. He’s kinda odd, but perfectly legit and low key. He knows his way around the law. I’ll email you the info.”
“Thanks sis. Kate will really appreciate your help. She’s always been a big fan of yours.”
Oh no, he’s starting again without realizing it.
“Karl, please stop with the sarcasm. I don’t want to go back to Prussia.”
“Don’t worry sis, I love Vegas. Whatever happens there, stays there, right? Not under the fountain at my home, like a tell-tale douchebag mocking me every time Kate makes me clean it out.”
Here I go again. The connection failed. I could hear the hoofbeats.
Once more into the breach, my friend!
You take my life but I take yours too! I’m like a freight train running over you!
Charge! Kill the Prussians!
All the bodies. The French! The smell! It was horrible. I couldn’t take it. I’d rather be in Vietnam! Karl, damn you and your wit! I hope they sent you to Thermopylae.
I thrashed around, dodging bullets and ducking under cannon fire. The Prussians didn’t notice me They never do.
I closed my eyes, intent on willing away the hallucination. I could see my bathroom mirror across the battlefield. I had to run to make it.
Just before I reached the mildewed tile, as my sarcastic hallucination began to subside, I saw him. The short physique, the tri corner hat, the lascivious glare. Napoleon. He pointed at me and laughed, touching my stomach with a grubby finger.
I woke up naked on my bathroom floor. I was pregnant with Napoleon’s child. Thanks Karl.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Dinner Guest - Chapter 7: Lola's Story
As soon as he walked through the door, I could tell he wasn't one of the regular schmucks that shows up to watch me shake my ta tas. Sure, a giant robot dog cop might look normal to most people in Miami, but I knew better.
My name is Lola. Je suis a space witch.
I've met their kind before: Overzealous, hardened and sarcastic bastards carrying an axe to grind bigger than the Champs-Élysées. Yes, dealing with a robot dog cop was a completely different flavor crepe.
I was on stage, doing my routine, when I saw him through the smoky haze ask the bouncer a question. I don't make enough off the tips from these jerkoffs to be a betting woman, but I would have let everything in my g-string ride that this guy was looking for me.
Sure enough, I saw that meathead Victor point right at me. He was a good bouncer when a patron started getting touchy feely with the talent, but other than that he earned every credit he deserved at Florida Atlantic.
The dog cop made a beeline toward the stage, plopping down right in front of me. He waved down a drink from Misty the waitress and settled in, placing his mechanical gaze right on me.
Zut alors, if this creep was going to check me out, I was going to give him a show. I signaled over to Renny at the DJ booth and gave him the signal. Renny pushed down the shades from the bridge of his nose, giving me a questioning look.
Yes, I shot back with a flourish of my pasties. I want the Baha Men.
Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who?
That eternal question rang out over the club; the song that would make this dog cop melt for me.
I swirled, I swayed, and he ate it up like the milkbone truck just flipped on I-95.
A doggy is nuttin' if he don't have a bone.
Misty brought him his scotch on the rocks and he lapped it up. He reached into his pocket and fumbled around, pulling out some bills.
Get back gruffy, back scruffy.
He stretched out and clumsily slipped a tip into my g-string. Either that wasn't his first drink or it's been a while since he's been to earth, I thought to myself.
The song ended, I bowed, and gave him a wink. I slipped off stage and thought of my options.
I could run out the side exit and catch a cab back home. These bastards might point me out on stage but they would never tell this creep where I lived.
I scurried back to the dressing room, had a quick change and threw my stuff in a gym bag. I pulled out my cell phone and made a quick call, waved goodbye to the girls and hit the side door to the alley at a full sprint.
I crashed thought and he was standing there.
"Hellola," he growled in a sing-songy tone, while shooting a robot hand out to block my way down the alley.
"You must think I was manufactured yesterday, sweet thing," he said. "All you hussies always make a run for the exit."
Not good, I thought to myself. This guy was savvier than his attempts to tip me.
As if he read my thoughts, he said, "You didn't look at what I left you."
I was staring at him, afraid to break eye contact.
"Go ahead," he urged. "Look."
I fished my hand into the bag and found where my tips had settled. I could tell right off the bat my friend George Washington wasn't alone.
This dog had slipped me a 12-credit Xathonian Minor note. I flipped it over and scrawled on the back were the words 'Don't try the side door.'
He let out a laugh, echoing and unsettling.
"I made you as a space witch the moment I walked though that door, sweetheart."
Maybe there's still a chance to play dumb, I thought. If he had all the answers, he wouldn't be playing mind games at a crappy Miami dive.
"OK, you got me, copper. What's the scuttlebutt?"
He leaned in closer.
"I'm looking for your friend Karl. He's a bad man who's done some bad things."
Exactly. He still doesn't know where Karl is and that's the way things are going to stay.
"If you think I'm going to give him up, you're going to have to learn some new tricks," I purred.
He was now only inches away from my face. His eyes were pulsating like far away brake lights.
"Oh, you haven't seen what this old dog knows, pretty."
Suddenly, he cried out in pain and dropped to the ground. The beam had knocked him out flat.
I was glad I made that call. Standing a few feet away was Will, my space warlock, holding a smoldering pulsar gun in his hand.
"I got your call, my space witch bride."
My name is Lola. Je suis a space witch.
I've met their kind before: Overzealous, hardened and sarcastic bastards carrying an axe to grind bigger than the Champs-Élysées. Yes, dealing with a robot dog cop was a completely different flavor crepe.
I was on stage, doing my routine, when I saw him through the smoky haze ask the bouncer a question. I don't make enough off the tips from these jerkoffs to be a betting woman, but I would have let everything in my g-string ride that this guy was looking for me.
Sure enough, I saw that meathead Victor point right at me. He was a good bouncer when a patron started getting touchy feely with the talent, but other than that he earned every credit he deserved at Florida Atlantic.
The dog cop made a beeline toward the stage, plopping down right in front of me. He waved down a drink from Misty the waitress and settled in, placing his mechanical gaze right on me.
Zut alors, if this creep was going to check me out, I was going to give him a show. I signaled over to Renny at the DJ booth and gave him the signal. Renny pushed down the shades from the bridge of his nose, giving me a questioning look.
Yes, I shot back with a flourish of my pasties. I want the Baha Men.
Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who?
That eternal question rang out over the club; the song that would make this dog cop melt for me.
I swirled, I swayed, and he ate it up like the milkbone truck just flipped on I-95.
A doggy is nuttin' if he don't have a bone.
Misty brought him his scotch on the rocks and he lapped it up. He reached into his pocket and fumbled around, pulling out some bills.
Get back gruffy, back scruffy.
He stretched out and clumsily slipped a tip into my g-string. Either that wasn't his first drink or it's been a while since he's been to earth, I thought to myself.
The song ended, I bowed, and gave him a wink. I slipped off stage and thought of my options.
I could run out the side exit and catch a cab back home. These bastards might point me out on stage but they would never tell this creep where I lived.
I scurried back to the dressing room, had a quick change and threw my stuff in a gym bag. I pulled out my cell phone and made a quick call, waved goodbye to the girls and hit the side door to the alley at a full sprint.
I crashed thought and he was standing there.
"Hellola," he growled in a sing-songy tone, while shooting a robot hand out to block my way down the alley.
"You must think I was manufactured yesterday, sweet thing," he said. "All you hussies always make a run for the exit."
Not good, I thought to myself. This guy was savvier than his attempts to tip me.
As if he read my thoughts, he said, "You didn't look at what I left you."
I was staring at him, afraid to break eye contact.
"Go ahead," he urged. "Look."
I fished my hand into the bag and found where my tips had settled. I could tell right off the bat my friend George Washington wasn't alone.
This dog had slipped me a 12-credit Xathonian Minor note. I flipped it over and scrawled on the back were the words 'Don't try the side door.'
He let out a laugh, echoing and unsettling.
"I made you as a space witch the moment I walked though that door, sweetheart."
Maybe there's still a chance to play dumb, I thought. If he had all the answers, he wouldn't be playing mind games at a crappy Miami dive.
"OK, you got me, copper. What's the scuttlebutt?"
He leaned in closer.
"I'm looking for your friend Karl. He's a bad man who's done some bad things."
Exactly. He still doesn't know where Karl is and that's the way things are going to stay.
"If you think I'm going to give him up, you're going to have to learn some new tricks," I purred.
He was now only inches away from my face. His eyes were pulsating like far away brake lights.
"Oh, you haven't seen what this old dog knows, pretty."
Suddenly, he cried out in pain and dropped to the ground. The beam had knocked him out flat.
I was glad I made that call. Standing a few feet away was Will, my space warlock, holding a smoldering pulsar gun in his hand.
"I got your call, my space witch bride."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
