SQUID PULP BLUES

a novella collection

By Jordan Krall

SQUID PULP BLUES

a novella collection

By Jordan Krall

Eraserhead Press

205 NE Bryant

Portland, OR 97211

www.eraserheadpress.com

Copyright © 2008 by Jordan Krall

Cover art copyright © 2008 by Jeff Powers

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

BOOKS BY JORDAN KRALL

OUT NOW:

Piecemeal June

Fistful of Feet

Squid Pulp Blues

Blow Up the Outside World (with Ash Lomen)

King Scratch

COMING SOON:

Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys

Tentacle Death Trip

Penetralia

Your Cities, Your Tombs

Donkey Djinn

CONTENTS:

The Haberdasher

The Longheads

The Apocalypse Donkey

Billy Roanoke(bonus short story only available in the Kindle version)

THE HABERDASHER

Chapter One

When she walked into Room 11 of the Solar Lodge Motel, the first thing Marie did was take the bible out of the dresser drawer.

She opened to a random verse in the Book of Revelation and rummaged through her purse. She finally found the small plastic baggie she had treasured throughout the whole car ride to the motel. Her eyes read the bible while her right index finger scooped up a substantial pile of cocaine and brought it to her left nostril.

An unfamiliar rush started from the skin in her face and cascaded down to her toes. She wiggled them and then kicked her shoes off. The stench of her foot odor made her nose crinkle; she picked up the shoes and threw them across the room. They landed in front of the bathroom door like two stinky rocks. Her finger dove back down into the bag and came up covered in shimmering snow that was immediately sucked up through Marie’s nose. God, I love this shit.

Then she heard a noise coming from the bathroom.

It didn’t scare her at first. The sound itself seemed to belong, as if Marie was the intruder instead of the noise. It resembled the sound a housemate would make while they went through kitchen cabinets looking for food. Marie thought it was a lazy sound, a slow-moving din. Then it began to frighten her. This was her motel room. For someone to feel that comfortable in it made goose bumps pepper her skin like freckles.

Instead of rushing out the front door and running for help, Marie decided to confront the noise. She knew it was stupid, something you should never do in that sort of situation. The drugs made her brazen, made her ready to battle to the death with whatever raccoon or hobo had intruded on her room. She waited on the edge of the bed, heart thumping and arms trembling from fear and chemicals. From where she sat she could barely see the bathroom doorway let alone the actual bathroom. This made her both petrified and excited, though the latter had to do more with the shit running through her system.

A slender, tanned arm darted out from the bathroom doorway and clutched at the rug. The fingers were rough, dirt trapped in every wrinkle and crevice. It grabbed at the floor until it reached Marie’s shoes. It grabbed them by the laces and pulled them back into the bathroom.

Marie couldn’t see whom the arm belonged to. Her eyes widened as she tried to mentally digest the scene of a stranger stealing her shoes. A small sliver of courage pushed her up off of the bed and two steps closer to the bathroom.

Standing there waiting to either make a move or have a move made on her, Marie remembered playing hide-and-seek with her brothers. From what she could recall, they were always hiding from her and she’d be left to creep around the house, listening for a giggle or a creak of a floorboard. Now in the motel room, she wished it were one of her brothers in the bathroom playing a joke on her. Maybe they’d jump out and yell, “Happy Birthday!” despite having missed it the last three years.

Another noise from the bathroom sent a jolt into Marie’s brain. It was a sniffing sound. Someone’s smelling my shoes. She was at once both disgusted and intrigued. Who would sneak into a motel room just to get a pair of shoes when she was sitting on the bed, a defenseless woman who would make a perfectly fine sex-crime victim? What was wrong with her? Wasn’t she good enough to be attacked, raped, or murdered? Were her shoes that much more desirable?

Story of my life.

Marie crept toward the bathroom slowly but her drug-fueled mind felt as if she wasn’t moving at all. She wondered if perhaps she had snorted something other than coke. She felt different. Marie took a few more steps and noticed the rug underneath her feet felt filthy. Though it wasn’t a surprise considering where she was, it made her wonder just how filthy her feet would be after walking to the bathroom. Marie could imagine the wrinkles of her soles turning black, the balls of her feet darkening.

She reached the bathroom door and peeked in.

Chapter Two

Through the filthy windshield, Red Henry Hooper watched the two men bring their duffle bags into the motel room and close the door behind them. He waited sixty seconds and when the door didn’t open back up, Henry got out of the car.

The Solar Lodge Motel was located just off the Garden State Parkway outside of Thompson, New Jersey. Despite having grown up in the area, Red Henry had never actually taken notice of the place and was now struck by the feeling he had traveled back in time to the late 1960s, which was the last time the motel’s architecture was in style. It was a shit-hole yet it obviously had enough customers to stay afloat in the world of Holiday Inns. Henry suspected the management supplemented their income by allowing illicit business to be conducted in the rooms.

He stood next to his car, staring at the yellow and brown L-shaped motel and wondered how many crimes had been committed in those rooms, how many infidelities, how many drug deals, how many scumbag porn shoots. He started walking toward Room 12 where the two men had gone in just a few minutes ago.

He stood in front of the door and listened. The television was on. They were watching The Golden Girls. I’ve seen that one. The one with the flashbacks and shit. Yeah, that’s a good one. Henry looked around and saw a man looking at him from the other side of the parking lot. Fuck’s his problem? If the guy stared any longer, Henry decided he’d go over there and put a knife to his throat. He’d say, “You staring at something, pal?” and watch as the guy would most surely start pleading for his life, saying he had a family and that he wasn’t meaning to stare. That’d be funny as hell, Henry decided but wished it didn’t come to that because he didn’t feel like wasting his time. Besides, the last few years taught him to think about the consequences before he acted, something the he had usually never done before.

He tensed up when he saw the guy reach for something in his jacket. Henry relaxed when he saw him pull out a cigarette lighter and walk away. Red Henry turned back toward the room door.

Ready or not, motherfuckers.

Red Henry slammed his fist on the door. “Open up, assholes! It’s the police!”

He heard frantic whispering and then a laugh. The door opened. Dix Hayden stood there smiling in only his boxer shorts. “You dumb shit,” he said. “You think I’m gonna fall for that a third time?” Dix grabbed Henry in a hug.

Standing behind Dix was Grant Minissi holding a beer in one hand and the remote control in the other. “Hey, what’s up, man?” He slapped Henry on the back once and then went back to sit on the bed. Dix sat down next to him and Henry took a seat on the other bed.  He grabbed a can of beer from the nightstand.

Dix said, “So, what’s the story? You out for good or what?”

“Parole,” Henry said, opening the beer. He took a sip and made a face. “God, this shit’s terrible. This all you can afford?”

Dix smiled and shrugged.

Lazily, Grant said, “Money’s tight right now, know what I’m sayin?”

Red Henry said, “Yeah, well I guess I shouldn’t bitch about that. I’m in the same boat. My fucking P.O. is hounding me. Gotta hurry up and find a job. Like I want a job at a motherfucking fast food restaurant or something. Not gonna do construction either, break my back everyday so I can go home and be too tired to do anything. Fucking bullshit, guy thinks I’m gonna go back to living a straight life.”

“Who’s your P.O.?” Dix asked.

“Eddie Ford. Know him?”

“Heard of him,” Dix said. “I don’t think he’s a real fucking asshole, just your usual hardass, doesn’t want trouble, wants to show his supervisor he’s a tough guy. I think he’s buddies with that Detective what’s his name. McMadigan. Fucking guy’s crazy. But Ford, I don’t know. I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve had worse.”

“Still, it’s a pain in the ass.” Henry took another sip of his beer and made a face. Dix laughed.

“It grows on you, trust me. Hey, uh, how’s Susie? You two back together?”

Red Henry said, “Yeah, I called her this morning, talked about shit, not gonna get separated just yet. Good thing, too, since she’s been making good money lately which will help if I can get some before she spends it all.”

“Only thing better than a good piece of ass is a good piece of ass with money,” Dix said. “Oh, hey, I heard she lost a little weight, looking real good, bet you’re happy about that.”

Henry said, “Ah, you know I don’t give a shit about her weight.”

Grant took his eyes off of The Golden Girls and said, “I heard Susie was up to her ears in cock while you were gone.”

“Fuck you just say?” Red Henry said, squinting and leaning his head to one side.

“I said I heard Susie was up to her ears in cock while you were locked up.” Grant’s mouth opened in a toothy but silent laugh, his head shaking and showing Red Henry that he was quite amused with himself.

Dix said, “Jesus, Grant, what the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Grant smiled and turned his attention back to the television. “God, I love Blanche Devereaux. She’s pretty fucking hot for an old broad.”

Red Henry threw his beer at Grant, hitting him in the cheek and splattering beer all over the bed. Dix jumped up and stood between the two of them, hoping to squash any physical altercation. On one side of him Henry was now standing and staring at Grant who was looking down at his beer-soaked shirt with that same stupid grin on his face.

“What’d you do that for?” Grant said. “You know I was just fucking with you, right?”

Dix put his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Man, the guy’s just fucked up right now, took some pills, don’t know what he’s saying.”

Henry said, “He should know enough not to talk shit when he knows I’ll fuck him up.”

“Easy, man, easy. Let’s go outside,” Dix said, leading Henry towards the door.

The two of them walked out of the motel room and stood out in front of the room. Dix was relieved. He hated having to get in the middle of any conflict especially when it involves good friends of his. On top of that, he knew he was partly responsible for what had just happened. I shoulda never hooked Grant up with those fucking pills.

Now Red Henry was in front of him smoking a cigarette and looking like he was about to go berserk. I gotta calm him down. Take him to a strip joint or something.

Henry said, “Since when is Grant a fucking pill-popper?”

“It’s a recent thing. It’ll blow over,” Dix said.

“Hope so. If not, I’m gonna fuck him up, mark my words, friend or not.”

“There’s no need to get so angry, okay. We get together, we always talk shit like that. You know, ‘Hey, your wife was good last night’ and all that shit. Maybe he crossed the line, I don’t know but he’s high as a fucking kite so cut him a little slack.”

Henry said, “I don’t know, it’s just…” He started walking towards his car and Dix followed.  “I’m out on parole, I come here wanting to meet up with you two, bullshit, play cards, and maybe make some plans and I gotta deal with that dickhead? No way, I don’t have to take that fucking shit. You make sure you get him off the fucking pills or we don’t pull a job together.”

Red Henry knew he was probably being unreasonable. His wife Susie was a hooker and so he knew what Grant said was true. Even so, Henry still loved his wife, despite her profession and he didn’t feel like hearing that asshole talk about it.

Dix sighed and said, “Wanna go to Scooter’s?”

Red Henry sighed. Then he smiled as he always did when someone mentioned Scooter’s Go-Go-Rama.

Chapter Three

The go-go bar was one of many such places in the area where a man could go to get cheap beer while being able to eyeball Russian immigrant strippers and local college drop-outs. Henry and Dix walked into the place and were happy there were only three other customers inside.

The bar itself was a rectangle with a stage in the middle where the less-than-enthusiastic dancers would do their thing. The two of them sat down at the far end in front of the pool tables.

There was only one dancer on stage. She was a tall, lanky brunette with several generic tattoos. Henry hated that. If you’re going to get a tattoo, get something original. He saw that a lot nowadays. Young guys with faux tribal art as if they were ever even in a fucking tribe anyway. Girls with butterflies as if those creatures held any sort of deep meaning for them. The girl on stage had both: a barbed-wire-looking thing on her right arm and a real ugly butterfly above her ass crack.

Dix got the bartender’s attention and she hobbled over. He said, “Hey Peggy, how’s it going?”

“Eh, alright I guess. Who’s your friend?”

“This is Henry. Henry, this is Peggy.”

Peggy said, “Hiya.”

Henry wasn’t quite sure if he was supposed to shake the woman’s hand so he just smiled and nodded. Despite her being a cripple, Henry thought she was pretty cute: five-ten and almost two-hundred pounds. Blond hair, huge tits, her shirt low enough to show off her ample cleavage. He figured she was in her late thirties.

“What can I get for you guys?”

“Bottle of Bud,” Dix said.

“Same here,” said Henry.

Peggy leaned over for the beer, her breasts even more exposed. Red Henry saw himself burying his face in there, licking the sweat from underneath those mounds. He snapped out of it when she put the beer in front of him.

“Wanna see a trick?” Peggy still held Henry’s bottle.

“Uh, okay.”

Peggy held the bottle at an angle so that it was pointing towards her. She held it out as far as she could and leaned her head back. Henry looked at Dix who just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. Peggy cleared her throat and spat up into the air. The ball of phlegm rose in the air and dropped into Henry’s beer bottle with a fizzy splash.

“Jesus Christ,” Henry said.

Peggy laughed and said, “Well, sweetie, that’s sort of a Scooter tradition. You gotta drink it all up. You do that and you’ll have good luck the rest of the night.”

Good luck, yeah right. Henry looked over at Dix.

“You heard the woman, Henry. Drink that shit up,” Dix said.

Henry picked up the bottle. Hell, I’ve done worse. He took a big gulp and felt Peggy’s goo slide down his throat. He saw that she was watching him to see what his reaction would be so he just put the bottle down and wiped his mouth.

“Pretty good,” he said. Peggy gave a faux bow and walked away.

Dix said, “So, what do you think of her?”

“Who, Peggy?”

“No, the stripper.”

Henry looked over and cringed when he saw the dancer bending over, the butterfly perched on top of her ass like a stinky and crudely drawn pest.

“The tattoos are ugly and she’s too boney.”

“Yeah but she’s Russian. I love Russian chicks.”

Henry said, “I don’t know. There’re too many Russian strippers in Jersey. Just give me some good old American white trash or a nice Puerto Rican chick.”

Dix laughed. The dancer was making her way over to him, moving her hands up and down her body and shaking her small bikini-covered tits.

With a heavy accent she said, “Hi, honey, what’s your name?”

Dix leaned his head close to her and said, “What was that?”

“I said what’s your name.”

“Oh. Dix.”

The stripper covered her mouth and laughed. “Dicks?”

“No, D-i-x. Dix.”

She said, “Strange American name, huh?”

“No, not that strange,” he said, getting tired of her talking and just wanting her to do something that warranted his sticking a dollar bill between her tits.

Henry was daydreaming, wondering when the next dancer would come on stage. He had some singles in his pocket but didn’t want to waste them on that skinny bitch. While Dix was busy talking to her, another girl was making her way to the stage. She was carrying a purse in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. Fucking shit, Henry thought, what a dose of reality. He didn’t want to see a stripper drinking a coffee or carrying her shit to the stage. Might as well show him pictures of her kids or take out her past-due electric bill.

Next to him, he heard the Russian say something to Dix that sounded like “Dunce” but then realized that she was saying “dance” as in “lap dance”. Dix elbowed Henry.

“Man, I’ll be back in a few minutes, watch my beer for me.”

Dix followed the Russian to a back room and the new dancer got on stage after taking one last hit of caffeine and making sure her purse and car keys were set right in front of Henry on the edge of the stage. It was a cheap purse made of fake red leather. The car keys were connected to far too many key chains, Henry thought. He was beginning to get depressed.

Then he actually took a look at the girl.

*                      *                      *

The back room was exactly that: a drab room in the back of the bar that could’ve very well been used for storing surplus cases of beer. There were a couple of chairs against each wall and a few vintage movie posters (walking in, Dix noticed The Asphalt Jungle and to his right, the face of Barbara Stanwyck in Lady of Burlesque).

Dix sat down in the chair facing the Barbara Stanwyck poster and the Russian straddled him. She started moving, not exactly dancing, to the music that was playing at the bar. Her tits brushed against Dix’s nose and he smelt her sweat. She turned over and stuck her ass out against his chest, the butterfly staring at him.

The stripper looked over her shoulder. “You, what you do?”

Dix said, “What do you mean?” He wanted so much to put his face to her ass.

“For job, what do you do for job?” She bounced her ass up and down though it didn’t do much considering it was mostly all bone.

What the hell was he supposed to say to her? Yeah, sweetie, I rob places for a living. Banks, jewelry stores, you name it. Want me to take you to work sometime? Yeah, I think “Take your stripper to work day” is coming up soon.

Dix said, “Uh, different things, here and there.”

She seemed to take that as an answer and slid her ass of him and lounged on the floor in front of him. She was on her back, her legs up in the air, and her crotch mostly exposed but for the thin strip of her bikini bottom. “You like? You like lick?” She rubbed herself.

Dix nodded.

The Russian turned over and sat on all fours. “You like lick like this?” she said and started furiously licking the cement floor. “Like this you lick juicy cunt, juicy pussy.” Her tongue was widened and was dragged across the floor until Dix could actually see where it picked up all of the dirt from the cement.

Dix whispered, “Jesus Christ,” but continued to watch in stunned fascination at the puddle of spit that was growing on the floor. While he stared, a man came into the room. He was short and fat with a beer belly like a beach ball beneath his Journey t-shirt.

The man said, “Hey, Alina, you get the money upfront for this?”

Alina took her tongue off of the floor and said, “No, did not.”

Dix dug in his pocket for the money and the man walked up to him quickly.

“Next time you accept a dance from one of the girls, the money comes first, got that? Or your ass is out.” He took the twenty-dollar bill from Dix and then said, “You looking for anything special?” His voice got lower. “Weed? Pills? I got some coke that’ll knock your fucking socks off. Not really coke, to tell you the truth, but better. Guy told me it’s made from squid, fucking squid. It’ll fucking make time stop.”

Dix felt uncomfortable. He was in the middle of a freaky lap dance and here was this guy, probably the owner, trying to sell him weed, pills, and fucking squid powder.

“Nah, I’ll pass.”

The man made a sour face. “Shit, man, your fucking loss.” He looked at Alina. “Got two minutes left,” he said and started walking out of the room.

She said, “Yes, Rick.”

The girl stood up and lifted her top, airing out her tiny breasts. This is more like it. Some good old titties.

Alina started slapping her breasts. First with her right hand and then her left. Right. Left. Right. Left.

Then harder and faster until her hands were a blur and her breasts were covered in red, fleshy blotches. Dix got up from the chair and grabbed her arms. “Knock it off, what the fuck you doing?” He held her wrists but she didn’t fight him off.

Alina said, “You don’t like?”

“Shit no,” Dix said. He let go of her and started towards the door. She called out behind him and he turned around.

She was up against the wall, licking Barbara Stanwyck’s face.

“Christ,” Dix said and went back to the bar.

*                      *                      *

The stripper that replaced the Russian was beautiful, Henry decided. She wasn’t beautiful for a stripper but just plain beautiful no matter what profession she was in. Cute Betty Page haircut, no tattoos (which was always better than ugly tattoos), and the prettiest, most hypnotic eyes that Red Henry had ever seen.

He watched her do her routine with more enthusiasm than you usually see at any go-go bar or strip club in New Jersey. Henry looked at her shoes and was happy to see she wasn’t wearing the clunky high heels strippers usually wore but rather a black pair of heels that would’ve been more appropriate on a female executive. Henry liked that.

The girl came over to him and he got a couple singles ready. She smiled and said, “Hi.”

Henry said, “Hi there.”

“What’s your name?”

“Henry. You?”

“Sweetie Martini.” She laughed like she was embarrassed by it.

“Sweetie Martini, huh? Guess your parents hated you, huh?”

Her smile lessened. “It’s a stage name.”

Henry said, “I know. I was joking.”

“They made me pick one when I started dancing at the club.”

Club? Henry didn’t consider this place a strip club per se. It was a bar. A go-go bar. Strip clubs allowed the girls to actually show some nipple on stage.

Henry said, “I figured. Sorry I said anything.”

Sweetie nodded and then pushed her plump breasts together. Henry slipped his hand in between them and left two dollars there. She held them in place with her tits. “Thanks,” she said.

She took a step backwards and put her leg up on the bar in front of him. The bottom of her shoe was in his face and he thought he caught a whiff of her foot, sweaty like the inside of a sneaker. She must have changed from her sneakers into those heels. There was no way she drove to work in those. He wanted to get closer but didn’t.

Sweetie grabbed the shoe and slipped it off, her bare foot now revealed, the stench not a mystery anymore as it mingled with the smell of beer. She scrunched up her toes and then wiggled them. They begged for more singles so Henry slowly put one dollar between each toe while savoring the aroma of her foot.

“Thanks, hon,” she said after he had put a total of four dollars in there. Then Sweetie took her foot down, grabbed the dollars from her feet, and walked over to the side and took a sip of her coffee. Then she scratched her ass.

Red Henry shook his head. Another dose of reality. Fucking shit.

Chapter Four

Grant sat on the bed while the episode of The Golden Girls ended only to be replaced with the pilot episode of Golden Palace, a spin-off of the previous show.

He popped open another beer and thought about Red Henry. Though he could admit to himself he had been a prick, Grant didn’t think he deserved having beer thrown at him. It wasn’t like I was saying anything that wasn’t true. Susie was a whore, plain and simple. Henry always thinking he’s better than me, he’s the one married to a whore.

Grant dug in his pants pocket and brought two large green pills that he swallowed with a mouthful of beer. He leaned his head back and the ceiling became a movie screen whereupon Grant saw himself forcing Susie to have sex with him. That was three months ago.

Grant had said, “Loosen up, Susie. Henry’s my friend and he’s locked up so I’m here to take care of you.” His hand grabbed her breast hard and squeezed until her eyes filled with tears.

“Let me go,” she said.

“Not until you show me some of your special moves, that thing you do with the squid.”

Susie said, “Okay, just let go.”  The next hour was spent with her doing whatever she could to satisfy Grant and get him the hell out of her apartment. She had decided she wasn’t going to tell Henry.

So Grant stared up at the motel room ceiling and saw the events of the past transpire while the walls transformed into giant pink crab shells with swirls of blue.

Christ, this is crazy shit. Grant always hated seafood and the sight of the crab shell walls made him a little queasy. Growing up in Thompson, his parents always took him to The Chowder Shack every Saturday afternoon where they made him order either squid or crab. It was a tough choice considering he liked neither but his parents would never hear it. The only redeeming part of the meals was the hush puppies. It was the only thing that quelled the nausea.

Still, he was intrigued by the wall. He sat up and stumbled over to it, feeling that it was indeed rough like the shell of a crab. Grant’s eyes caught glimmers of red and blue images so he looked up. Memories of his grandfather played on the ceiling.

Wait a minute. I never even met grandpa.

New memories oozed into his head: his parents showing him the footage from a projector, his father saying, “There’s grandpa fighting for our country. Son, look at that and be proud.”

The uniformed man resembled a thinner version of Grant standing on some large rocks next to the beach. He was alone but shouting out to the water, waving his gun in the air. To the right of him, a Japanese spider crab scurried to him. Grant was frightened. The crab was monstrous; its legs six feet long and razor sharp. It then used those legs to eviscerate Grant’s grandfather. Sprays of blood sprinkled the rocks. The crab seemed to tremble with excitement and Grant had to look away.

Inside of Grant’s stomach, the two green pills dissolved completely, sending a new rush through his system. His senses became more sensitive and he smelt the entire history of the room: cigarette smoke, semen, beer, piss, taco meat, mayonnaise, shit, and old paint. All of the stenches coalesced into a thick olfactory paste that bombarded Grant’s nerves.

The crab shell wall dissolved into streaks of white light and Grant stumbled back to the bed and put his head on the pillow. Here it comes, here it comes. But nothing really came, just noises: canned laughter from the television, the buzz of the electric currents, and a sniffing sound. There was something else under those noises, a sound that pierced Grant’s brain and tickled the hairs inside his ears. It was a combination of whimpering and the splash of a liquid.

Grant looked at the television which was now showing footage of an army of spider crabs overrunning a battalion of troops. He turned away from it and faced the wall behind him. The wall shuddered and Grant’s eyes widened. He put his ear against it and listened. Something was going on in the next room; he could feel it. There were sounds, yes, but he could also smell something.

Fuck it, I gotta see what’s happening.

Grant turned off the television. He grabbed the Gideon’s Bible, stuck it in the door way so he wouldn’t need to bring his key, and walked out of the room. Looking into the window of Room 11, Grant felt his head turn into a balloon, floating up, up, up and away while he watched a woman drag herself across the motel room floor. For a few seconds he wondered why she was dragging herself. Did she break her legs? Is her wheelchair broken? No, he told himself. She had no feet.

Chapter Five

Dix and Henry left the bar after having a few more beers and playing a game of pool. Henry sunk the eight-ball and lost, cursing his luck though he was used to it when playing any sort of game. He told Dix, “I just got a lot on my mind.” His friend responded with a friendly nod.

While driving back to the motel, Dix said, “I ever tell you about my brothers?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Henry said.

“My brother Louis was in the army, Sam was in the Marines. Both younger than me, serious guys, you know the type who won’t loosen up unless they’re really, really drunk. Guess it’s from growing up in my house with my father never opening his mouth unless it was to criticize something, but anyway. Not many people outside of my family know this but Louis…..”

Dix gripped the wheel tightly, knuckles turning white. Henry saw this and said, “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t feel comfortable with, you know.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Maybe it’s the beer, I don’t know. Makes me just want to talk about this shit, get it off my chest. My mother would kill me for sure if she knew I was talking about it but anyway whatever, when Louis came back he was, you know, different. I think he saw some shit there, something to do with those fucking freaks.” Dix pointed out the window toward a group of men with elongated heads who were stumbling about in front of a bicycle shop.

Henry said, “I wouldn’t fucking blame him, seeing that shit, guys coming back from the war all fucked up and disfigured like that and no one knows what happened to them. That’s got to fuck up anyone who sees that shit.”

“Yeah but he’s more than just stressed out or anything like that. I mean, he’s a fucking wreck, lives in our mother’s basement reading comics. Refuses to let anyone come in except Sam. Every week Sam brings him food, comics, and the newspaper.”

Henry said, “You should get him some help.”

“Yeah, I know but I don’t want to push the issue, have him go nuts and shot our mother and himself like those guys you hear about on the news.”

Henry was looking out the window, thinking about the situation from the perspective of someone who’s never had any desire to enlist in the army or become involved in any politics whatsoever. If suckers wanted to wave the flag and get killed, let them; Henry was concerned only with his day-to-day life which consisted mostly of surviving and looking out for the ever elusive “big score”. But now that he thought about it, he felt bad for those bastards who came back looking like that. No one should have to live out their days looking like those longheads out there.

Henry wasn’t really sure what the appropriate response would be, what words would soothe his friend’s anxiety.

He said, “Yeah, that’s fucked up, Dix, but what isn’t?”

*                      *                      *

Grant knew that what he was seeing wasn’t a product of the pills. Though he felt like his brain was frying, he was convinced the woman in the room was real. She had no feet which wasn’t so strange. Grant heard about amputees and had even seen some amputee porn; though, after viewing it he decided that it wasn’t his thing. The woman crawling on the floor didn’t have stumps. Her feet were cut cleanly at the ankles. And there was no blood.

Whenever Grant was put into this sort of position he usually went back to his own business and said, “Fuck it.” Whether it was the drugs or a blossoming conscience (he didn’t know which and didn’t feel like thinking about it), Grant decided to go over to the manager’s office of the motel and report what he saw. Then he got worried. What if the cops came? He was high as a kite. Still, he didn’t feel comfortable just ignoring it.

He ran to the other side of the parking lot to the office. Grant thought it was a depressing room. Pale yellow walls with decades old magazine clippings thumb tacked to them. A calendar that was months behind. Crumpled cans littered the floor. Grant looked at the guy reading a book behind the desk. He figured him to be no more than twenty-two or twenty-three.  No, he’s twenty-three, yeah, I think he looks about twenty-three. That sounds right.

Grant said, “Excuse me?”

The guy didn’t look up from his book. “Yeah?”

“Um, I think there’s a problem.”

“Who’re you?”

“Grant Minissi, room twelve,” he said and then added, “You the manager?”

The guy looked up from his book. Grant saw it was a thick comic book. He looked at the cover: a shadowy figure in a fedora hat; behind him stood a guy who looked like a punch drunk boxer.

Grant was never one for comics. He always said it was a waste of time but secretly knew the reason why he had an aversion to it. His parents never let him buy any comics or read the funny pages when he was growing up. When he became an adult, instead of reclaiming his youth and indulging in those childish pleasures, he went in the other direction and looked down on anything to do with them.

The guy behind the desk said, “Yeah, I’m Clark, the night manager. What’s the problem?” He still held the book open and though he was looking at it upside down, Grant could make out drawings of something that looked like a donkey. There was a girl, too, and some snow, blood, and black gloves. What kind of comic was this? Where were the guys in tights flying around and shit?

Clark said, “Hey. I said, what’s the problem?”

“Oh, uh, I think there’s something wrong with the woman in the room next to mine.”

Clark’s eyes were back on his comic. With his fingers he traced the donkey. “Ah, Little Bing Bong.”

“What?”

Clark looked up from the book. “Listen, I don’t ask a lot of questions when people check in here and I don’t really give a shit about what you saw because I can tell you’re fucked up right now. So unless you want trouble I suggest you just go back to your room and turn up the volume on the television and pretend the woman next door is just peachy. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He went back to reading his comic.

Grant said, “What the fuck is this? I’m telling you someone’s hurt.”

“You know how many junkies run to me telling me someone’s hurt or dying or screwing an alien or some shit? I’ll tell you. Too fucking many. Get the hell out of here, okay? I don’t know what kind of shit you’re on, but go sleep it off.”

Giving up, Grant walked out of the office. He heard Clark say, “Oh, Little Bing Bong, you sweet son of a bitch,” and laugh maniacally, slapping the pages of the book. He shook his head. Fucking comic books.

Then he saw a guy standing in front of the door to his room.

“Shit,” Grant said, wishing he had made friends with Clark.

Chapter Six

Three miles away from the Solar Lodge Motel, Robert Hapertas was drinking a Red Bull and smoking a cigarillo. It wasn’t anything fancy, he knew that, but he enjoyed it. To him there was nothing better than a case of Red Bull and a box of Laura Chavin La Vision hell cigarillos.

Robert sat on his white leather couch, the 52-inch television in front of him showing Barbara Stanwyck opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Two Mrs. Carrolls. This particular film always made Robert laugh. He thought Bogie playing a deranged son of a bitch was a real trip. Damn, I wish that guy was still alive.  And that Stanwyck, shit, she’s a real actress. Hot as hell, too. What’s that one she did with Errol Flynn? That was pretty good.

From the kitchen, Robert’s cat lazily walked over to the couch and jumped up on his owner’s lap.
Robert said, “Hey Burt, whatcha up to, huh?” He rubbed the cat’s back and let it come up to his lap to lie down.

The phone rang. “Shit, Burt, hold on,” he said, holding the cat gently while he reached over to the coffee table to answer the phone. Burt stayed where he was, oblivious to Robert’s movement.

“Hello?”

“Rob, hey, it’s Billy.”

“Yeah, Billy, what’s the matter now? You run out of pills?”

Billy said, “No, nothing like that. Just wanted to ask if I could maybe take the night off. Got some shit to take care of.”

“I can only imagine it’s got something to do with that waitress, what’s her name, Stella something. Am I right? You want to get laid tonight, that it?”

Billy laughed. “Well, yeah, sort of. Her husband’s gonna be out all night and she has to stay home in case he calls so I wanted to go to her house.”

“And you want to take a night off selling so you could get some pussy?”

Billy was silent and Robert had a difficult time holding in his laughter. Honestly he didn’t mind if the guy took a night off. This week’s take was above average; he could afford to let Billy get some ass. But it was fun to let Billy squirm a bit.

Robert said, “You want me to lose money so you can get your dick wet?”

“Rob, come on, it’s not like that. Forget it, I’ll do my rounds, just forget I called.”

It was impossible to hold it in any longer. Robert laughed. “You dumb ass, I’m fucking with you. Go ahead and see your girlfriend.”

Billy said, “Thanks, I’ll do some extra shit this weekend.”

“No, don’t worry about it. Just call Ben or Dallas, have one of them make your stops for tonight.” Robert stopped in mid-thought. “Oh, but Billy, I’m going to have to make the Sun Lodge stop myself. Don’t want them going over there.”

“Oh, why’s that?”

Robert said, “They fucked up the place last time they went there. Don’t need that shit right now. Just don’t tell them I said anything.”

“Okay, sure, thanks.”

Robert said, “And Billy?”

“Yeah?”

“You keep fucking that waitress, you’re gonna to get yourself shot in the head by her husband. Can’t keep doing shit like that and not expect to get caught.”

Billy said, “Thanks for the advice but I’m cool. Guy’s got no idea about it. Too busy running the diner and all that shit.”

Robert told Billy to watch out nonetheless and then got off the phone. Burt was still curled up on his lap, purring. The television showed “The End” and so Robert gently moved the cat to the couch and stood up.

Getting dressed was always a huge production for him but it was something else he enjoyed. His family had been in the clothing business and so he was used to dressing well. He especially loved hats. Robert felt like he was born out of his time. He longed for the days where most men wore hats, when the city sidewalks were oceans of fedoras of all colors and materials. His collection of hats was one of his prized possessions and he often pretended he was giving a tour.

This here is a genuine dark grey pork pie fedora hat by Adams circa 1952, skinny brim, no blemishes whatsoever. And here, oh, I have another one, a high crowned fedora, light grey felt, satin lining, flexible three inch brim. Wonderful workmanship you just can’t find nowadays, ladies and gentlemen.

Robert stood in the mirror, modeling one of his hats. His walk-in closet was filled with vintage suits and hats as well as a collection of rare cufflinks. At the far corner of the closet was his collection of women’s shoes. Robert walked over to them and bent down to pick up a pair of alligator heels. Dark green. Buckles on front. Made by the Lewis Company in the early 1950s. Robert had made one of his girlfriends wear the shoes for two weeks straight. He had told her, “No showers, don’t wash your feet at all, understand?”

The girl, Deborah, had nodded her head and said, “Yeah, yeah, I got it but what’s that mean? I gotta smell like shit for two weeks?”

“Wash up in the sink or something, your armpits, your pussy, whatever but just not your feet. Keep the shoes on.”

Much to Robert’s pleasure, she had complied and at the end of the two weeks, he spent a whole day worshiping the shoes as well as her feet while he played a record on his vintage 1966 suitcase turntable. He spent hours sniffing to the sounds of Robert Mitchum’s LP Calypso is Like So.

Deborah sat there reading a magazine while the whole thing was going on. Occasionally she’d say, “Yeah, smell those stinky shoes,” but mostly she read the latest Hollywood gossip. When he was done, Robert kissed her on the knee and left the room saying he had to see to some business. Deborah knew what that meant.

Now as he stood in his closet reminiscing about Deborah and the shoes, Robert felt good, felt alive. Though he didn’t live extravagantly, he was close to being a millionaire. People who drove past his home would never know it because Robert lived in a two-story house on a side-street of Thompson which was not a town known for its wealth. The house itself was close to eighty years old and was in dire need of new aluminum siding. Robert didn’t care much about how his house looked from the outside. He wanted only to live comfortably, taking care of his business and indulging himself in his quiet, innocent obsessions.

The phone rang again. Robert left the closet and answered it saying, “Yeah, Billy, what is it?”

“Billy? No, Robert, it’s Rick, Rick Scanlon, down at Scooter’s.”

“Oh, what can I do for you?”

Rick said, “Need more of that new shit, man.”

“What? Squid? I thought my boys hooked you up with that like three days ago. What the hell happened, you snorting it yourself?”

Rick laughed nervously. “Nah, Robert, you know how it is. I got five different girls a night dancing for me and I want them all on the shit when they’re up there. Then I try to sell as much of it as I can to the jerk-offs who come in here to get a lap dance. The shit runs out fast, man.”

“You better make sure your girls chill out on that stuff or you’ll be having corpses dancing up there and I don’t imagine many guys want a lap dance from a fucking zombie.”

“I got it under control but thanks for the concern,” Rick said, sweating profusely and appreciating the fact Robert couldn’t see that.

“Well, I’ll send one of my boys around but the earliest is tomorrow morning.”

Rick wanted the stuff tonight but knew enough not to push the issue with Robert or he’d find himself making a home at the bottom of the Raritan River along with the squid. Robert came off as a nice guy but Rick had heard stories about what happens when you piss him off.

Rick said, “Fine, that’s fine, I’ll be here by eight.”

“Okay then,” Robert said. “Bye.”

He hung up the phone and sighed. Son of a bitch handing out the shit to his strippers like it was candy. Motherfucker’s probably snorting it himself. Keeps doing that, he’s gonna be more fucked up than that barmaid of his, the one that fucking spits all the time.

Not wanting to hear the phone ring again, Robert quickly finished getting ready. He put on one of his best evening suits and left the house. Parked in his driveway was one of his guilty pleasures, a green 1969 Dodge Super Bee in near impeccable shape. Nowadays people didn’t appreciate style when it came to cars; they wanted bulky gas guzzlers that did nothing but supplement the driver’s lack of self-confidence or dick-size. This fact made Robert appreciate his automobile even more.

Once he started the car, he dug around for a cassette he had made. Robert found it underneath the passenger seat. He popped it in the tape player (that he had installed himself) and drove away listening to Frank Gorshin sing “Never Let Her Go”.

Chapter Seven

Marie crawled on the floor, refusing to accept what had just happened.

She could barely remember walking up to the bathroom door. Time had seemed to slow; her body a glacier inching its way toward the noises. She remembered snorting the coke but now she was sure it wasn’t plain coke. As she used her arms to drag herself across the filthy rug, Marie looked to the window and saw a man looking in.

Her recent memory of what happened in the bathroom seeped like oil into the present moment, soaking the motel room in a sepia-toned aura. The man at the window now resembled the thing in the bathroom. What was it? She could barely remember. Everything was going slowly. Her thoughts wouldn’t come quickly.

What’s happening to me?

Marie made another move across the rug and saw the man leave the window. She wanted to remember his face, wanted to memorize it in case she needed it later though Marie couldn’t really come up with a reason why. Her mind just couldn’t process anything.

Shutting her eyes, she tried to focus. It was a white guy with black hair. No wait, brown hair, looked black though. But it could’ve been red, dark red if there wasn’t enough light. Whatever, he’s a white guy, tall. No. I’m on the ground so of course he looked tall. Fuck.

Marie remembered the man’s eyes being bright, shining into the room like two tiny flashlights. That couldn’t have been right. Were they headlights? Was a car pulling in behind him? Was someone after her? She could feel her heart beating faster and faster as she pushed her mind through to the next thought.

What was he wearing? Couldn’t see the pants but he was wearing a white undershirt. People call them wife-beaters, real charming name. There were stains on it, yeah, stains all across the front in patterns of some kind, like that stupid Kabbalah shit that Terry had tattooed on his back.

The thoughts were coming quicker now but with them came the remembrance of what transpired in the bathroom. She turned her head and saw that she had no feet.

“Oh god,” Marie said. It surprised her mostly because she felt no pain, no phantom limb tingling or itching. All the time she was dragging herself across the floor, it hadn’t occurred to her as to the reason why she was not walking. Now it was clear.

She looked at the window, wanting the man to come back and help her. Why did he look in the room if not to see if something was wrong? Now she went through the shards of memory of what had happened in the bathroom.

There had been a naked woman there; she remembered that. Naked and covered in dirt. She was sniffing Marie’s shoe, holding it to her face like an oxygen mask. On the floor was some sort of machine, something that looked to Marie like a combination of a manual meat grinder and a cappuccino maker. Then what? She couldn’t remember.

The woman looked at me and then she put my shoe down, yeah. She put it down and held out her hand. Her fingers were filthy, gross and then…

Something to do with the machine, Marie thought. Her feet were gone with no trace of blood, pain, or scars. It was as if she never had any feet at all. Marie’s mind refused to delve into the past any further. There had been a filthy woman in her bathroom who was nude and smelling her shoes. Then something happened to her feet and she was left to crawl out of the bathroom and across the room.

So now what?

She listened for the man at the window. He had gone but maybe he’d come back with some help. At this point she wasn’t worried about the police, wasn’t worried about being caught with the drugs in her purse. The rug below her was stained like the man’s shirt: 11 circles and a myriad of criss-crossing lines. The stains kept Marie’s attention focused for a few seconds and then she dropped her head on the design below her. She sniffed each circle.

Mustard. Pickles. Beer. Ketchup. Semen. Menstrual Blood.

Her nose hairs tickled.

Bleach. Wine. Mayonnaise. Urine. Jelly.

Marie’s head shot up when she heard the voices outside the door. This was it, she thought; they were coming in for her. The man with black/brown/red hair had gotten help. She had never been so happy in her life.

Her head went down to the rug in relief and her nose pressed up against the stains again. She looked at it closely and saw the design was disappearing, morphing into tiny dots that swirled like drunken insects.

There was the sound of a door opening and Marie breathed a sigh of relief. She looked up but the door was closed and the room was empty. There were voices, loud ones but they were coming from the room next to hers.

“Goddamnit,” Marie said right before sinking into sleep.

Chapter Eight

Eddie Ford stood in front of the motel room door and watched as that scumbag Grant Minissi slowly made his way over. The guy looked exactly like the type of element that Henry Hooper should not be bumming around with being that he’s out on parole and all.

He waited for Grant to get to the door and then smiled. “So, you must be Mr. Grant Minissi, did three years in Rahway for armed robbery, paroled a year and a half ago. Guess you haven’t been keeping on the straight and narrow, now have you?”

Grant stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the man standing there, knowing who he was, but not wanting to believe it was real. Of all the times that Ford could’ve shown up, this was one of the worst possible. Grant was high, there was something fucked up going on in the other room which he probably would get blamed for and there was a gun in his motel room.

“I’m talking to you, son. Can’t you hear me? Or are you so high you can’t even hear yourself think?” Eddie scratched his beard and shook his head. “I can’t believe Hooper’d be so stupid as to hang out at this shit-hole with a known jerk-off like you. Can’t wait till he gets back so I can have a little chat with him. When’s he due back, huh?”

Grant looked at Eddie dressed in his shirt and tie, both probably bought on sale at J.C. Penney’s or Sears. The shirt was stained with ketchup, the tie too thin for Eddie’s chest. He felt sorry for the man, busting his ass for less money in one month than Grant, Dix, and Henry would make after one job. The guy was a sucker.

“I don’t know,” Grant said, “He didn’t tell me.”

Eddie put his hand on Grant’s shoulder. “No worries. I’ll just hang around till he gets back. You got something to drink in there, doncha? Soda maybe? I imagine you guys aren’t drinking any beer, am I right? Wouldn’t want to get drunk and do something stupid, now wouldya?”

Grant pushed the door open, kicking the bible into the room. Eddie was right behind him but then pushed his way in front and picked the book up. Then he walked into the bathroom.

“Gotta drop the kids off at the pool if you know what I mean,” Eddie said, leaving the door open. Grant heard a whispery fart and then a few heavy plops. He stared uncomfortably at the wall where he saw only shadows of his grandfather’s evisceration. Those shadows pushed him forward to bed where he searched underneath the mattress for his gun. It wasn’t there.

Fucking guy went in the room when I was in the office. He’s got the gun.

Eddie called from the bathroom, “Hey, you’re kinda quiet out there. Whatcha doing? Don’t start jacking off till your friends get back.”

Another fart came out of the bathroom. Grant dug into his pocket and got another pill. He crushed it with the bottom of a beer can and scooped up the dust with his index finger. The green pill dust looked like candy and reminded him of spending Easter with his cousins.

Grant stuck the finger under his nose and inhaled. Tiny rockets of drug matter burned through his nose up to his brain. It hit him faster than he had expected, a brutal cold shiver that sent his eyelids fluttering and his teeth shining with iridescent light. He giggled and said, “Grandpa.”

Meanwhile Eddie sat on the toilet, reading one of his favorite passages from the Good Book. He leaned forward and held the book with one hand.

Hosea chapter 13, verse 16. “Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword. Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.” Ah, some good old fashioned vengeance. That’s what the world’s missing now with all those feminists and homos running around, all those kids disrespecting adults. God’s gonna come in and take care of that, mark my words.

He listened and again didn’t hear a thing from the room. That idiot Grant couldn’t be so stupid as to run off. “Hey, what’s going on in there? I’ll be done in a second.” He farted one last time and put the bible down on the sink. There was a creak like a weak floorboard and then he looked up in the doorway.

Grant was standing, smiling widely. His hands were behind his back.

“Let me see your hands, asshole,” Eddie said, standing to pull his pants up despite not having a chance to wipe.

With a high-pitched squeal, Grant lunged forward and brought his hands out. Each held one half of a torn beer can. Eddie reached his hand back to the side of the toilet where he had put down the gun he found but was stopped by the sharp edges that started to rip at his torso, chest, and throat.

The parole officer tried to defend against the addict; his arms coming up to block but were cut to shreds by the beer metal. His pants fell to his ankles and Grant made a slash at Eddie’s crotch splitting open the penis at the root. Eddie screamed and fell backwards but Grant kept coming, slashing and stabbing his way into the man’s body.

All Grant could see was a Japanese spider crab flailing its arms while it screeched and struggled in between the toilet and the bathtub. Poor little thing looks helpless. He wanted to put it out of its misery so he slashed even harder in order to break its shell completely and dig into the soft meat and whatever organs crabs have. He wasn’t too familiar with crab anatomy.

Then he saw the gun on the other side of the toilet. What’s a crab doing with a gun? He stopped attacking for a second and picked it up. It was his gun; he vaguely recognized it as drug-sparks bombarded his brain cells. Wanting to end the suffering of the creature, he thought about using the gun but decided he didn’t want to take the chance of anyone hearing the shots. So he found what he thought was the crab’s throat and slit it open, lifting the head up so it bled into the bathtub.

Grant left it there twitching while he went back to the bed and sat down. He grabbed a beer and put his head back. On the ceiling there were snowy scenes of violence; someone was getting murdered in an alley. There was a donkey. Like in that comic book the guy had back there in the office. Shit, at least give the donkey a cape or something.

The warm beer put him at ease and reminded him of those nights he spent alone in his trailer with nothing to do but drink, smoke, and watch porno movies he ripped off from the guy down the street. He didn’t have a fridge so he drank warm beer like they do down in Mexico and England. At first he hated it but soon got used to the taste and was content to watch Chubby Cheerleaders 3 while sipping a Budweiser at room temperature.

Grant grabbed the remote control and turned the television on. Another episode of The Golden Girls was starting. What was it, a marathon? He realized that he was actually glad it was on again. He felt like jerking off and Blanche Devereaux was sounding good to him right about now.

Chapter Nine

Robert Hapertas drove down the streets of Thompson, savoring the position he was in. He didn’t mind doing a little bit of his own dirty work every so often. Most of the time he was behind the scenes, planning this shit, making sure it was done. It was refreshing to get out there again.

Most guys with his money would move to the city but Robert enjoyed the working class town of Thompson, enjoyed the gritty dreariness and slow-moving progress of it all. He especially loved the hookers. The bald ones. The dwarves. The amputees. The squid-freaks. Beautiful all in their own way.

When he reached the Solar Lodge Motel, Robert realized he hadn’t been there in close to ten years yet it didn’t look any different than he remembered. It still had the look and feel of a motel that should only exist on Route 66 circa 1965. Still, it had its charm and Robert felt good to be there.

But he couldn’t remember what room he was supposed to go to.

Shit.

Robert was usually very prepared, very meticulous when it came to work but sometimes simple things just slipped his mind. Ah fuck it, I’ll just ask the asshole at the front desk. Simple problem, simple solution.

He parked the car and walked over to the office. The motel was a sad looking place, Robert thought. Needs a paint job, too. He walked through the door and saw a guy sitting at a desk reading a book. Robert didn’t expect a guy so young to be working here. Maybe he was old-fashioned, stuck in one of the old movies he watched but he expected an older guy: late fifties, balding, chain-smoking, and grouchy as hell.

But this kid looked harmless and not the type of guy Robert would want running the office if he owned the motel especially considering the type of element that frequented the place. Robert would admit his business dealings were responsible for much of that element but he still couldn’t understand putting a skinny college boy on the night shift.

Robert said, “Hey buddy.”

The guy didn’t look up from his book. Robert could see from where he was standing that it as a comic book. Fucking kids.

“Hey buddy, I’m up here,” Robert said but still no response. He took a step closer and then the guy looked up.

“Oh hey, sorry. Didn’t see you there. Too busy reading. Man, this book is amazing, ever read it?” He held the cover up.

It read: THE ADVENTURES OF FAUNTLEROY LEROUX

Robert said, “Can’t say that I have. But listen, I have a question.”

The guy pointed to the window behind Robert. There was a sign that read

“NO, we don’t give directions. SORRY.”

“No, I don’t need directions. I’m looking for someone, a woman, probably checked in this afternoon.”

The guy said, “Can’t really give you that information.”

“Can you get me the manager?”

“I am the manager.”

Robert smirked. “You? You’re what, nineteen? Twenty?”

“Twenty-three and yeah, I’m the night manager. Name’s Clark and if you have any problems take it up with Smitty in the morning. Otherwise, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, okay man?”

Robert stepped around the counter towards the desk. “Clark, Clark, Clark. That’s not going to be good enough.”

Clark stood up and put his hands out. “Hey, what the hell is this?”

“You got the wrong idea, buddy. Here let me explain,” Robert said, digging his hand into his coat pocket. Clark’s eyes widened and then closed tightly. Robert’s hand came out of his coat holding a billfold.

Robert slipped out a twenty and said, “Is this going to help soothe your conscience?”

Clark opened his eyes and smiled. “That’s it? I get more than that just by keeping my mouth shut.”

Robert sighed. He’d much rather solve this sort of problem with cash than violence but this guy Clark was getting on his nerves. He slipped out two more twenties. “What I want to know isn’t worth any more than this so make your decision, kid.”

Clark shrugged. “Okay, fine. What is it you wanna know?”

“A woman checked in today. Probably this afternoon, maybe this morning.”

“She alone?”

“Should be,” Robert said and then waited. “Well?”

Clark said, “Yeah, a woman checked in alone this afternoon. Let me see.” He looked over the rack of keys. “Room 11 but I can’t give you a key or anything.”

“That’s fine, I don’t need a key. She’s expecting me.”

Clark gave a smart ass smile. “So how come you don’t know her room number?”

Robert felt like shoving Clark’s head into the desk a few times but restrained himself and left the office. He walked across the parking lot, kicking up sand, and wondered if the owner ever heard of asphalt.

When he got to the door of Room 11, he stood and listened to see if he could hear if anyone else was in the room. There was only silence. She better be there.

Robert knocked and said, “Marie, it’s Robert Hapertas. Billy Roanoke couldn’t make it.”

No answer.

The hell if he was going to go back and give that asshole Clark more money in exchange for a key. Fuck it. Robert channeled the old days where he’d bust into apartments and motel rooms for the thrill of it. He’d rummage through rooms for spare cash, women’s shoes, and electronics. Those were the days.

Robert took a step back and then sent his foot flying into the doorknob, breaking it. The thing probably hadn’t been changed for ten years. He kicked again, this time sending the whole doorknob apparatus to the ground. The door opened.

He walked in and shut the door behind him. Then he noticed Marie on the ground and saw she had no feet.

*                      *                      *

Henry and Dix debated whether or not they should go to a diner and get some food. They decided against it when Henry brought up the fact that the last time they went to a diner together, Dix got food poisoning and was shitting out liquid squid shit for three days. Dix suggested they go back to the motel and see if Grant wanted anything and then maybe hit a fast-food restaurant. Henry reluctantly agreed.

They drove back to the motel and parked the car in front of their room. Once they were out of the car, Dix laughed.

“Hey Henry, that shit I was telling you about my brothers, don’t mention it to Grant, okay?”

Henry said, “You think I’d tell that asshole anything?”

“No guess not. Oh shit, I just remembered.”

“What?”

Dix said, “I was talking to John the other day and he said he was looking for someone to take care of his place for a while.”

“John who?”

“Kreese. You know the guy, we used to hang out at his bar all the time, drink squid shots and whiskey chasers while those stupid college kids drank that imported shit. We get drunk and pick a fight, smash their fratboy heads against the wall.”

“Yeah, I remember. But what kind of job he got in mind?”

“I think just sort of like a manager position. Take care of things behind the scenes.”

Henry said, “That might be good but you think he’d mind if I did my business out of there, too?”

“Nah, he’s cool long as you float some his way,” Dix said.

“I’ll give him a call.”

Dix opened the door with his key and was the first to see Grant lying in bed, covered in blood while he drank a beer.

“Jesus Christ,” Dix said.

Henry walked in behind him and looked at Grant. “What the fuck.”

On the bed, Grant slowly looked over at the two of them and nodded his head. “You guys have fun? God knows I did.” He sighed. “Ah, Little Bing Bong.”

Henry felt the world closing in on him. After getting paroled, he was sure he didn’t want to live a straight life. The hell with a sucker’s job. He was too good at selling guns not to mention setting up and executing robberies. Still, he didn’t want to get tagged his first week out. He should’ve gone with his first instinct and not agreed to get together with Grant. Dix was okay but Grant was an unpredictable asshole.

“Dix, I don’t know what the fuck your friend’s been doing but you better find out before I fucking lose control.” Henry started to shake; the adrenalin pumping through his body preparing him for his next move.

Stepping closer to Grant, Dix said, “Hey, what happened? Are you hurt? Fuck’s been going on? How many pills you take?”

Grant laughed. “Man, I’m fine but you better go check the bathroom. Oh, and next door. Next door there’s something going on that’s real fucked up.”

Henry said, “Dix, go next door and see what he’s talking about.”

Dix nodded and left the room. Henry walked over to the bathroom. Then he screamed.

At first he couldn’t make out what the hell he was looking at. It sort of looked human. On the other hand, it also resembled a giant crab with pinkish white skin. He stepped closer to it, his adrenalin levels peaking, and looked at the head that was drooped over the bathtub.

It was Eddie Ford, his parole officer.

Or at least it had his face.

The whole body was a mangled pile of bloody crab shell, skin, and viscera. Henry felt faint. He held the bathroom wall and slowly walked out of the room, not sure what to expect when he looked back at Grant. Was he hallucinating? Would Grant, too, look like a giant crab? Henry was ready for anything at this point.

When Henry looked over, Grant’s eyes were closed and next to his right hand was a handgun. Slowly and as quiet as he could manage considering he was still shaking, Henry made his way to the bed and grabbed the gun. Then he left the room in a daze and wondering if Dix was witnessing something equally grotesque.

*                      *                      *

When Dix went next door to Room 11, he almost knocked before he saw the doorknob was missing. Goddamnit, Grant. What the fuck did you do now? He slowly pushed the door open and peeked inside. There was a well-dressed guy standing with his back to Dix. He moved towards the bathroom while Dix just stood there and watched.

The man turned around and Dix recognized him.

Robert Hapertas. The Haberdasher. Motherfucker used to work for Terry Silver. Even for an ex-con, he was a real fucking scumbag coming off like he’s all proper and shit when he’s just a fucking shoe-sniffing pervert. Dix’s ex-girlfriend Deborah had told him about the guy, about all the weird shit he asked her to do. She had told Dix he made her were pantyhose for weeks on end as well as high heels and old sneakers. What the fuck was wrong with the guy, Dix had always wondered. The guy was rich but lived in a shitty house off of Main Street. Crazy guys like that are unpredictable.

The Haberdasher squinted to get a good look at Dix and then held up a gun. “So you did this, huh?” He pointed to the woman on the floor. The woman had no feet.

Dix said, “What the fuck are you talking about?” He prepared his body for a quick retreat. Then someone jumped out of the bathroom and jumped onto Robert. From what Dix could see it was a dirty, naked woman using her fingernails and teeth to tear at the Haberdasher’s custom made suit.

Robert shouted and put his gun to the woman but his fingers were pried open by the woman and the gun dropped to the ground.

“Help me!” Robert screamed but Dix was petrified with morbid amusement. He felt an arm on his shoulder and jumped with shock. Henry was standing behind him.

“What the fuck is going on? I just saw…” Henry couldn’t finish. Explaining it just wouldn’t make any sense.

Dix said, “We’re getting the fuck out of here now.” He pulled Henry away and went towards the car. Henry resisted and took a look inside the room, watching the struggle between the dirty, naked woman and the Haberdasher. At that moment, the woman was pushed into the bathroom and the man picked up the gun.

“Christ,” Henry said and then got in the car beside Dix.

Dix drove away before Henry even got both his feet in the car. They sped off and Henry said, “You know who that was, right?”

“Yeah. It was the fucking Haberdasher,” he said, “and he’s right behind us.”

Chapter Ten

Robert was more pissed at the damage being done to his suit than at the physical damage he was receiving at the hands of the crazy woman who jumped out of the bathroom. Once his gun dropped to the floor, he knew he’d either have to make a grab for it himself or get out of there before the woman grabbed it.

She now had a hold of his neck and was digging her nails in it. Over her shoulder, Robert could see something in the bathroom, some sort of weird contraption. Next to it was a pair of feet. Marie’s feet. He still didn’t know what the fuck happened and surrendered to the fact that he may never find that out.

The woman was so close to him now that kneeing her wouldn’t do any real damage. She had him in a clinch, her filthy, droopy tits against the front of his suit and her mouth open wide in a spittle-filled frenzy.

Finally Robert felt her muscles relax for a second and he pushed her back, sending her into the bathroom where she landed on her ass. He grabbed the gun and ran out of the room but not before almost tripping over Marie who was still unconscious on the floor. The naked woman ran out of the bathroom and ran after him.

Robert said, “Fucking bitch.” He turned quickly and fired twice at the woman. The first bullet missed and the second hit her in the gut. She screamed and fell to the ground, writhing in agony.

Getting into his car, Robert thought about going back in to get Marie but decided that the bitch must have gotten herself in trouble with the wrong people and it wasn’t his responsibility to help her out with that. Their business together was over as far as he was concerned and if she survived, he’d send her some flowers but that’s all.

What he needed to do, Robert decided, was go after that guy Dix. He recognized the guy from the pictures his girl Deborah had in her purse. He sees me in there with Marie on the ground, gonna get the wrong idea about things, tell the wrong people. Robert thought he saw another guy, a taller one who also looked familiar. He’d find out soon enough.

Robert also wondered whether Dix and the other guy had something to do with Marie’s predicament. What if that crazy woman in the bathroom was Dix’s new sweetheart? The fucker just stood there and watched Robert get mauled. That alone required retribution.

He was grateful at that moment that he had a fast car. Robert couldn’t imagine trying to chase someone in one of those new pieces of shit that pass for automobiles nowadays. Down the road, Robert could see their headlights or at least he thought it was them. They left the parking lot in a shitty foreign car. He’d drive up close and make sure it was them.

Then: Bang, Bang.

*                      *                      *

Clark was still reading his comic book when he heard the gunshots.

“What now?” he said. Since getting the job three years ago, he was used to all the shit that went on here. The fights. The drug deals. The occasional longhead coming around and banging on doors at three in the morning. Still, Clark was never told by his Uncle Smitty, what to do in the event of a gunfight. Calling the cops could bring some unnecessary heat down on the motel. Both Clark and his uncle had a stake in some of the illegal dealings that went on and they both had no desire to get locked up.

This put Clark in a little bind.

He looked out the office window but couldn’t see a damn thing because it was caked in dirt and dirty handprints. Clark had to get closer to the door in order to see what was going on but by doing so he knew he’d be putting himself in harm’s way. He put his face to the glass door and looked out.

Lying in the parking lot was a naked woman, trembling and screaming. She was holding her stomach and Clark can see that it was a gut-shot, painful as hell. He couldn’t see a shooter but saw a car leaving the parking lot so he was safe. But what now? Call the cops? No, there had to be another solution.

A thought occurred to Clark. The thought wasn’t an original one. It was something that he had read in the comic book. The motel wasn’t a tourist destination and so the other guests wouldn’t be doing shit about the gunshots. They knew enough to keep to themselves. So Clark decided to take the comic as inspiration.

I just gotta find a car, break into the trunk, drop the body, and let the poor fucker drive away with the body. Simple as shit.

First he’d drag the body in the back, wait until the middle of the night to break into the trunk. But the woman was still alive. I don’t give a shit, the bitch is crazy, probably a meth-head who attacked her junky boyfriend or something and got what was coming to her. She’s sure as shit not a girl scout. I’ll be doing the world a favor by getting rid of her.

Clark opened the door and stepped outside. He looked around but saw no one looking out their windows. They were probably all drunk or high. Clark jogged over to the woman who was only sobbing now, her stomach bleeding profusely.

“It’s okay. I’m gonna help you,” he said, grabbing her under the armpits. The woman squealed in pain but Clark held her tight and dragged her towards the office. At first she resisted him but then surrendered to the movement. A trail of blood led from the middle of the parking lot to the office. Clark made a mental note to cover that up later.

Once he got her in, he brought her into the back room. There was only a table, two chairs, and a cardboard box full of comic books. Clark put the woman in a chair and said, “I’ll be right back.”

The woman said nothing in response but instead started to sob.

Clark left the room and shut the door behind him. He looked around the office, looking for something that he could use to finish off the woman. Using his hands would be too personal for him. Not only that but he’s heard of guys who’ve strangled their girlfriends to death in a fit of anger only to find out that they weren’t really dead. That’s all I need, the bitch coming back from the dead to tell the cops that I did her. Fuck that shit.

Clark wished his uncle let him keep a gun at the motel. You’d think with all the dirtbags that stayed at the motel, the guy would’ve let him keep some sort of weapon but no. He was cursing his uncle until he saw it.

The ashtray.

The five-pound squid ashtray.

Perfect.

Clark tossed it up in the air a few inches, appreciating its weight and imagining the sort of damage it was going to do to the woman’s head. He can imagine telling his buddies about it later on. You ever see what a squid ashtray can do to a woman’s head? That you should see. You should see what a squid ashtray can do to a woman’s head. He held it in his right hand and walked over to the backroom door.

As he turned the doorknob he said, “Don’t worry, I called for help.”

When the door opened, all Clark saw was a blur of teeth, throat, and tongue. He felt hot breath and spit as his jaw and throat were ripped open. The woman still used one hand to hold her bleeding gut but managed to kill Clark in less than fifteen seconds.

Clark’s last thoughts were weak visions of being a captain of a ferry that was sinking while simultaneously being a pilot of an airplane that was crashing. He cursed his uncle for not keeping a gun onboard and then surrendered to death.

Seconds later, the woman collapsed and grabbed the ashtray, holding it close to her like a teddy bear. She wished she was drowning in the Raritan River where the last thing she gazed upon would be the squid. Looking at the ash tray lovingly, she died.

Chapter Eleven

Henry said, “I wish we’d taken my car, I got guns in there.”

“Yeah well, we didn’t,” Dix said, trying to keep the car under the speed limit. What they didn’t need now was one of the jerk-off Thompson cops pulling them over. I probably shouldn’t tell Henry what I got in the trunk.

There were not a lot of cars on the road but they managed to get stuck behind a slow-moving Ford Taurus. Dix stayed close behind, fighting the urge to pass. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw headlights coming up fast.

“Shit.”

Henry turned around and saw the car, too. “That him you think?”
Dix said, “Either him or a cop.” He sped up and passed the Taurus while Henry held up a hand to the other driver as if to say “Don’t take it personally, we’re in a hurry.” He got a middle-finger in response.

The car behind them got so close that they could hear the roar of its engine. It pulled up behind them, inches between the bumpers. Henry told Dix to speed up but they were coming to a red light in a busy intersection. Dix eased the car to the right and then slammed on the brakes. The car behind them slowed but was too late and hit the corner of their bumper. It slid across the road and into the intersection. A pick-up truck slammed into it and Dix could see now that they had indeed been followed by the Haberdasher.

While Dix was looking, he didn’t see the car in front of them brake also and they slammed into it.

*                      *                      *

Robert enjoyed the chase, enjoyed keeping his eyes on their taillights and getting up close to their shitty car. He was about to speed up some more and bump them into oncoming traffic when they moved to the right and stepped on the brake. Robert’s Dodge Super Bee hit the corner of their back bumper and spun around into the intersection.

If it wasn’t for the damage to his car and the potential danger, Robert would have enjoyed spinning around like that. In the few seconds in between spinning and getting hit by the pick-up truck, he said, “Whew, that was fucking awesome.”

The pick-up couldn’t have been going more than twenty or thirty miles an hour but it hit the Super Bee on the driver’s side, sending Robert into the passenger side window. He wished he had worn his seatbelt.

From the force of the crash, the glove compartment opened and a pair of high heels fell on the floor next to Robert’s 1966 Colt Anaconda Revolver that he had shot that crazy bitch with. His right arm felt broken so he tried using his left to make a grab for the weapon. He couldn’t reach it. Instinctively he made a move for one of the shoes. A week ago he had picked them up from Peggy and he knew they were well worn. He wanted to put his face to them, inhale the smell that he knew would make him feel at ease.

The driver of the pick-up was coming out now. Robert could see him, a young guy dressed in flannel and jeans. No style at all. Doesn’t the guy own a mirror?

The guy said, “Hey, you okay?”

The fuck he’s talking about? Am I okay? Do I fucking look okay?

“No, goddamnit, open the fucking door.”

Flannel and jeans guy came around to the passenger side. “I don’t think you’re supposed to move until the ambulance comes.”

Robert said, “Get me the fuck out now.”

The guy walked away and started talking with another driver who was drinking a coffee while staring at the crashed cars. Robert wanted to get out of the car and beat the shit out of them both. Or better yet use the Anaconda to blow some big holes in their heads. He screamed and tried to reach the gun again. This time, he touched it but still wasn’t able to grab it. He tried again and got his hand around it but not without excruciating pain.

He stretched his left hand towards the door handle and opened it. The door didn’t move at first. Robert pushed against it with his shoulder and pulled the handle again. It opened with a loud creak.

Robert fell to the asphalt, landing on his right arm which he now knew must be broken. He heard the driver of the pick-up who was telling the other guy that it wasn’t his fault and that Robert had come out of nowhere.

He looked around, trying to see if Dix’s car was still there. It was painful but he turned his body around and saw their car about a hundred feet to the right, the front bumper smashed into another car. Dix was standing outside of his car now with another guy. That guy looks familiar. Where do I know him from? Yeah, I know him. Henry something. Susie’s husband.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Robert said, “Son of a bitch,” and then raised his gun.

*                      *                      *

Both Henry and Dix cursed as they got out of the car. Henry was about to tell Dix about what he saw in the motel bathroom when they crashed. He wouldn’t believe me anyway. I just imagined it, that’s it. I’m just going fucking crazy.

They looked over at the Haberdasher’s car which was smashed up pretty good. Then the passenger door opened and Robert Hapertas fell out with a gun in his hand.

Dix said, “You believe that shit?”

Then they heard the sirens. They were fucked.

“We gotta get the fuck out,” Henry said.

“I leave my car here, they’ll get me eventually. What’s the fucking point?”

A cop car pulled up followed by an ambulance. Two officers got out and walked over to the Haberdasher’s car.

Someone said, “He’s got a gun!”
The police officer closest to the Haberdasher went for his weapon but was struck by a bullet to the kneecap which sent him down immediately. A bullet ripped through the second officer’s shoulder while another went through his eye.

On the ground next to his car, Robert aimed again and shot an EMT in the stomach. The driver of the ambulance came out and a bullet hit her in the neck, sending a fountain of blood backwards towards a petrified bystander.

Henry and Dix were both on the ground and quickly crawling away from the scene, hoping to make it down the side street and over the hill towards the woods. Henry felt like he was in one of those old war movies, crawling in the jungles of the Pacific islands, dodging the bullets of the Japanese. He listened for another gunshot and then turned around when he heard Dix.

“Henry, let’s get up and run.”

“You crazy? You see the aim that guy had?”

“No way could he hit us from that far away. Let’s go.”

The Haberdasher was aiming again. He had already hit two cops, two EMTs, and the driver of the pick-up. Now he was aiming at Dix’s foot. He could see him crawling along with his friend and thought he’d be able to hit his ankle at least making it hard for him to run away.

He aimed and then smiled because Dix stood up and started running.

Perfect timing.

The Haberdasher fired and Dix went down with a bullet in his back. Henry turned around and then dropped to the ground.

Then the sound of more sirens tore at Robert’s ears.

*                      *                      *

Officer Freddy Fernandez jumped out of his squad car.

“Drop your weapon!”  He had his gun aimed on Robert Hapertas. Freddy watched as the guy did as he was told and then walked over and kicked the thing away. What a beauty of a weapon the guy had. Had to be, what, at least thirty years old. Shit, they don’t make guns like that anymore.

Freddy cuffed him making sure to pull on the guy’s arms hard because he knew one of them was broken.

The guy said, “Son of a bitch.”

Once seated in the back of Freddy’s patrol car, the guy started babbling. Something about a woman with no feet and a naked woman. Freddy heard this kind of shit before. Sick of these crazy fucking assholes with guns.

Another ambulance arrived a minute later and an EMT took her time getting to Robert who was trembling in the backseat. He looked over at the EMT: a woman, probably in her mid-thirties, cute and wearing well-worn sneakers.

Wonder what those smell like.

Chapter Twelve

Henry looked over at Dix who was lying on his stomach convulsing.

“Dix, can you hear me? There’s help coming.”

He could see an EMT coming over quickly and wanted to tell his friend what he had seen before it was too late. Though he wasn’t sure if any of his words were being heard, he told Dix what he saw in the bathroom.

Dix didn’t seem to hear. Slowly he stopped shaking and just as the EMT got over to him, he died.

Henry put his forehead down on the asphalt. He felt like crying but knew that the tears wouldn’t come, not after all the shit he’d been through in his life. After this, he’d try to go back to a normal life or as normal as he was accustomed to having. He knew he’d be arrested and probably would go back to Rahway for a few years but hopefully the evidence would show that he wasn’t the one who killed Eddie Ford.

Eddie Ford, his parole officer.

Eddie Ford, the crab-thing in the bathroom with its throat slit.

From behind him an authoritative voice said, “You Henry Hooper?” and then he felt the cuffs tighten around his wrists. He thought of Peggy the bartender spitting in his beer, telling him it was good luck.

Henry looked over at Dix. Good luck. Yeah right.

*                      *                      *

Marie woke up to an empty room. She felt a draft and saw that the door to the motel room was open, the doorknob broken off. What the fuck happened?

It wasn’t a dream; she really didn’t have any feet. It wasn’t a drug-induced a hallucination though she couldn’t be sure about the naked woman and her machine.

Marie picked herself up, wondering if she could perhaps walk on the bottoms of her calves. As she put pressure on them, she fell face first into the corner of television stand, the wood piercing her eyeball and sending it straight into her brain.

Her last living thoughts were of Japanese spider crabs, of a man being eviscerated by them. She instinctively knew that the man had a grandson somewhere who was witnessing the same thing she was and for that, she felt sad.

In the next room, Grant finished another beer and continued to watch television. I wonder when the guys are coming back. I’m gettin’ hungry. Horny, too.

He got up from the bed and with slow, deliberate steps walked to the bathroom. Shit, what a mess. Grant looked at the butchered mass of flesh and shell in the bathroom. He saw the image of Blanche Devereaux on the back of the body and walked over to it.

He loosened his belt.

What the hell. I’m not picky.

THE END

THE LONGHEADS

CHAPTER 1

The donkey on the hill laughed loudly through its Halloween mask.

It stomped its feet, shaking the snow off its fur, and let out a small, deep-throated giggle as well as a squeaky fart. The donkey turned toward the sunset, its eyes filling with pure light, and then dropped dead in the same way it had lived: joyful and filled with gas.

At the bottom of the hill, the city of Thompson, New Jersey bustled, despite the heavy snow and bitter cold. It acted out its routine like an oversized ant colony. Each man, woman, and child went through the motions of good citizens, despite the underlying hum of several factories that pumped noxious smoke into the air, adding cancerous spice to the falling snow.

Tommy Pingpong sat in his car with the engine running. Jake should’ve been out ten minutes ago. What the hell’s taking him so long? Tommy knew he was taking a risk idling in front of the building like that. Sure, the cops didn’t patrol often but when they did, they were a bitch to get rid of. Despite that worry, he stayed, looking at his watch every thirty seconds and glancing up to see if Jake was on his way.

Fifteen minutes. Shit, where the hell is he?

Finally, through the snow flurries, he saw Jake run out of the building, almost tripping over his own feet. Opening the passenger door with a frantic pull, Jake plopped down in the seat, out of breath. “Just drive,” he coughed.

Tommy put the car into gear and stepped on the gas. The car’s tires lost traction for two seconds but then regained control and moved quickly down the block. Jake turned his head and kept his eyes on the back windshield. A thin blanket of snow covered most of the window. “I can’t see a thing.”

“What happened? Who’s following us?” Tommy’s voice was calm though inside he was as frantic as his friend. He knew that he had to balance out Jake’s emotional outbursts with a good amount of composure.

Jake kept looking though he could barely see through the snow. “I don’t know. Everything got fucked up. It wasn’t my fault, no fucking way.”

“Yeah, okay, calm down. What happened?”

Turning to the front, Jake moved the rearview so he could keep an eye out. “Everything was going great. I was telling Aaron the whole plan and he seemed into it or at least that’s what I thought just by the way he was acting. But then Peachy walked in and everything got fucked up.”

“Christ almighty,” Tommy whispered. Okay, I’m not going to freak out. I know damn well Jake’s a paranoid motherfucker. Stay calm…stay calm.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know Peachy would be out already? He was supposed to do at least half of his time.”

Tommy nodded his head. “Yeah, well, apparently he got out early. So go on, what else?”

“I was nervous to begin with, then he walks in and just stares at me, fucking smiling at me. I lost it. I don’t even remember what the fuck I said. I just ran out.” He ran his hands through his hair.

“What’d Aaron do?”

“He looked at Peachy and then he said something like ‘I’ll have to think about it’. That was it. They smiled at each other and I just fucking ran out.”

Tommy threw his hands up. The car jerked to the right. He put his hands back on the wheel. “And you RAN out? Jesus Christ…”

“I’ve been in those situations before, I know what that fucking means. I’m not a complete idiot, you know. Trust me on this, will ya?” Jake looked at  Tommy, waiting for an acknowledgement. Tommy kept his eyes on the road, careful not to get into an accident on the snowy, congested streets.

“Jake, I trust you.” As it came out of his mouth, he realized that his tone betrayed the message even though he believed that statement whole-heartedly. “All I’m saying is that you might have, MIGHT HAVE, over-reacted. Look, is Peachy a back-stabbing prick? Yes, but that still doesn’t mean that he’ll cause problems at every step of the way. You could’ve stayed cool, kept talking to Aaron. Now they both know you’re fucking freaked out. There’s no doubt now that someone’s coming after us. Even if it’s just to ask why the fuck you ran out.”

Jake sighed. “I don’t know, man. You know that creepy sonovabitch better than I do. Doesn’t he still blame one of us for that shit?”

A year and a half ago Tommy and Jake worked a job for Peachy. The job went south and the two of them got pinched. By sheer luck, they were let go because the witness couldn’t, with one-hundred percent confidence, identify Tommy and Jake as the culprits. They were released soon after.

However, someone had left a dirty diaper behind at one of the job sites and a dirty diaper at a crime scene meant only one thing to the Thompson Police Department: Peachy was behind the whole thing. With as much diligence as they could muster on a weekend, the cops cornered Peachy at the local pool hall where he was showing his fellow patrons how far he could stick the pool cue in his ear without damaging a single brain cell. He was arrested without incident but had squealed on Tommy and Jake as soon as he was taken into the station. Since they had already released those two and didn’t want to make it appear that they had made a mistake, the cops ignored Peachy’s accusations and charged him for the whole thing.

In Tommy’s opinion, the two of them had every right to be pissed at Peachy and not the other way around. They could have ratted him out but choose not to do so simply because snitching could ruin your reputation fast. Peachy, on the other hand, betrayed whatever trust they had between the three of them. To Tommy, however, all was forgiven. He never liked holding a grudge; it got in the way of executing a successful job.

Jake got more frantic. “When I was running out, I totally got the feeling that they’d be coming after me. I really think Peachy’s gonna come after us.”

“Yeah, probably, after you ran out of the room like a goddamn rat off a sinking ship.”

“Whatever. You always blame this shit on me. I’m sick of it.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ. I just don’t want any fucking trouble, that’s all. Sometimes you overreact, okay? That’s it. Doesn’t make you a bad person or anything and it doesn’t mean I don’t take you seriously. Now, is there anything else I need to know? Before Peachy came into the room, did Aaron say anything else?”

“No, he just nodded. He looked like he was into it. Until Peachy walked in. Then there was some weird vibe, I’m telling you.”

Though Tommy was doing his best to restrain himself and act like the calm half of the partnership, he felt himself falling deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of aggravation. “Fuck!” He slammed his fists on the steering wheel. If Peachy was again in Aaron’s good graces, even more so than Tommy and Jake were, then the two of them were fucked pretty good.

Jake got defensive. “Why’d you make me go in there by myself, anyway? If you were so afraid I’d fuck things up, why didn’t you do it your goddamn self, huh?”

“I did the last meeting. If Aaron was normal and let us both in, we wouldn’t have this problem but when we deal with him we have to alternate.” Tommy wasn’t too crazy about Aaron’s eccentricities. He never allowed a meeting with more than one person who didn’t belong to his organization. The fact that Peachy was there in the room with Aaron and Jake also gave Tommy some worry.

Their relationship with Aaron Jeffords was strictly business related. Because of that, there was always the chance that there would be a falling out. No personal attachments meant no assurance that Aaron would think twice before putting a bullet into both of their skulls. Now with Peachy involved, Tommy was worried that everything might turn to shit.

“What’re we gonna do, man? What?” Jake trembled, partly from the cold (the car’s heater hadn’t worked since Tommy got the car ten years ago) and partly from the stress.

“Okay, listen. We’ll stop at a payphone and I’ll call Aaron, try to test the waters, see what his reaction is. I’ll explain that you overreacted and hopefully I’ll be able to smooth things over.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “What good will that do? I told you, it wasn’t an outright threat. It was sneaky the way they looked at each other. He’ll just lie to you, tell you everything’s okay and that he was shocked when I ran out, whatever, but really he’ll just be bullshitting you. Next thing we know, both of us are in the river swimming with the Thompson squid.”

“I’m going to have to take that chance. I’ll make it clear how we feel about Peachy, don’t worry. There’ll be no confusion about that. This way, if he is bullshitting me, he’ll know that we’re fully aware of things and that we’ll be on our toes since we know Peachy’s somewhat involved.”

Tommy slowed the car down easy, not wanting to skid into a telephone pole or one of the many pedestrians on the sidewalk. As he parked the car in front of an alley, he looked to his right to see if he was close enough to the curb. His eyes caught something in the alley.

“Christ almighty, what the hell is that?”

Jake looked over. “What? Where?” He followed Tommy’s finger.

“Looks like a longhead but what the hell is he doing?” Tommy asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. Ever since the war ended, he was made uneasy by the fact that a small fraction of the troops came back looking like that. Their skulls were vertically elongated, the skin stretched close to its breaking point to where it was translucent and one can see straight to their skull. One of the odd things about the whole situation was that all the longheads ended up moving to Thompson, forming a small ghetto at the south side of town. They took up with desperate prostitutes and had children who came out looking like even more sinister versions of their fathers.

The longhead in the alley was dressed in a cowboy costume and standing on a soapbox. In his arms was a strange contraption that looked like a combination of a manual meat grinder and cappuccino maker. His right hand furiously twisted a lever while his left held it tightly to his chest. Out of the top of the machine came spurting long, curly strips of what looked to Tommy like pasta.

“Tommy?”

“Yeah, Jake?”

“Is that longhead making…pasta?”

“Yeah, Jake, I think so.”

They stared at him for five minutes totally forgetting about Aaron and Peachy. Watching the pasta drop to the snowy ground made Tommy think of footage he once saw from the war of a troop getting disemboweled by a guerrilla fighter who used only a set of sewing needles. The troop’s entrails fell to the ground with the same wet clunk as the pasta.

“Tommy?”

“Yeah, Jake?”

“Can we go to another payphone?”

“Yeah, Jake, I think we can.”

They drove off, Tommy keeping his eyes on the road and Jake keeping his eyes on the alleyway, hoping to God that he would not see that longhead again.

CHAPTER 2

Aaron grinned at Peachy. “What the fuck was that about?”

“What’re looking at me for? I didn’t do anything. The bastard got scared, what’s that gotta do with me? You’re the one who said I could sit in on this one.”

“Yeah, I wanted you to sit in so you can patch things up with those two assholes.”

“So why didn’t you invite both assholes?”

“I didn’t want things to get crowded in here. You know how I feel about that. Things get too crowded, I start to get jumpy.” Aaron took a cigar out of his front pocket and lit it. “Why do you look so bulky?” He pointed at Peachy’s pants.

“Diaper.”

Aaron stifled a laugh. “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

Peachy blushed and had a seat in the chair across from the desk. Motherfucker didn’t forget. He knows I shit my pants. At least I don’t have a squid fetish.. He leaned forward, cupping his hands as if to tell his boss that he was ready to get down to brass tacks. “So, what are we going to do about this?”

He could tell Aaron wasn’t listening. His boss was too busy looking at the cigar smoke, his eyes a heavily sedated green haze of preoccupation. He ignored Peachy’s question and instead asked his own.

“Peachy, do you know why I really invited you to the meeting?”

“No….”

“I had a dream last night.” Aaron got up from his chair and came around to the front of the desk. He leaned on it like he felt a real boss was supposed to do while he looked down at Peachy, his long-time employee. “I had a dream that changed my life. For better or for worse, I don’t know. It was about my stint in the war. I told you about that, right?”

“Yes, you’ve talked about it a little.”

“Well, I probably didn’t tell you the bulk of it for fear of having you think of me as a coward or an asshole or something. Anyway, I had a dream about it again last night. I actually have these dreams quite often, but most of the time half of my body is a squid while the other half is completely covered in sunburn. So yeah, I have these war dreams a lot, you know, in between the ones where I’m screwing Chesty Morgan and that one about taking a nap in a fruit stand but anyway, let me go on.” He puffed at his cigar. “I was in battle, the rest of my fellow troops having gone deep into the shit, fighting their little patriotic asses off while I stood there, watching the sun in the sky as it turned into the face of Barbara Stanwyck. You know Barbara Stanwyck, right? I’m not that old, am I?”

“I don’t think I know her, no.”

“She was an actress from when I was a kid. Beautiful, beautiful woman. I was looking straight at the sun, being blinded by her face but also by the rays of sunlight. I swear I even felt the heat in this dream, like my skin was going to burn off. Then my troops came back, half of them were blown to bits, being brought in on wheelbarrows, donkeys, and I think even an elephant. Their eyes were falling out of their faces and their cheekbones were all busted up. But the ones that weren’t wounded were even more disfigured. They were the longheads. That’s one thing I never told you about my tour of duty. I was there when that shit happened. I’ve felt guilty about that every day since. I should’ve been one of those longheads. I choose not to go in there and all those boys came out looking like….that.” He made a face of disgust.

Peachy’s eyes bugged out of his head in shock. He never gave much attention to what he considered just mutated freaks of war. In fact, he never gave much thought to politics in general and for all he cared, the country could blow itself up along with the rest of the world. But to think his boss was intimately involved; that was incredible. I guess there’s more to Aaron than just money and squid-smelling. Peachy nodded his head and listened as his boss went on.

“And so I realized this morning as I shook myself out of the dream that not a single thing I do can make a difference. Whether I was a longhead or just a short head, nothing really matters, not a goddamn thing. I might as well be a longhead. Get it? Do you get what I’m saying? I was looking at the sun, at Barbara and the men came back. So even in the sunlight, where everything is lit up, illuminated or whatever, I still was blind to the fact that I was pretty much the same thing as them. What I was doing and what they were doing were the same. But still, I still feel that gnawing guilt, you know? The feeling that my life deviated from its predestined path. But now, I don’t know.”

Aaron sucked on his cigar and exhaled. A few puffs of cigar smoke enveloped Peachy’s face and he coughed.

Peachy felt uncomfortable. He knew he had to act sensitively but it was something he wasn’t used to. “I’m…sorry…about everything. But what’s this got to do with anything? I mean, business-wise.”

“What I’m trying to tell you is that whatever you choose to do, it’ll be done. What’s done is finished. That path I’ve always thought was there in front of me, it doesn’t exist. Everything is done, over with. So with those two assholes,” he rubbed his cigar in the squid-shaped ashtray, “you can do what you like.”

Peachy contemplated this. Not many people can say that they have received philosophical lectures from their boss. Still, though, he didn’t feel like it was something he would like to hear on a daily basis. After all, the more time one spends with Aaron Jeffords, the more one becomes used to all of his habits and routines. He couldn’t count the number of times he had to sniff Aaron’s squid collection or ride the albino pony that was kept locked up in a large closet in the office. If it wasn’t for the large sums of cash, Peachy would have left years ago.

He still wasn’t sure though. “Are you serious? I can take those fuckers out?”

“Yes.” Aaron opened his drawer and took out his pony harness. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

With a smile, Peachy got up, adjusted his diaper, and left the room.

CHAPTER 3

A few blocks from where Tommy and Jake were scouting for a new payphone, a man clad in a trench coat, black leather gloves, and a fedora hat stood outside of a go-go bar. He had been standing in the snow for an hour, waiting for Ms. Isabella Martino who was known mostly by her stage name, Sweetie Martini.

Despite the warnings from her coworkers, Isabella left the bar without an escort and started to trot her way to the bus stop. Her car was in the shop and it was only a ten minute bus ride home even with one stop before hers. She couldn’t wait to get home and curl up next to the window with a good book, with complete view of the snow-covered streets. Having worked a five hour shift most of which was spent on her feet, dancing and gyrating, she was more than simply exhausted. Isabella wanted to spend as much time lying down as possible.

Isabella never planned on becoming a stripper but she knew perfectly well that no one does. Little girls don’t dance around in their rooms to bad rock music, pretending to be on stage in front of sweaty old men or obnoxious frat boys. When she was a child, Isabella was like many girls her age; she dreamt of getting married, having a huge wedding, and perhaps pursuing a career in a myriad of fields.

She learned quickly, however, that life doesn’t always work out as planned and sometimes people have to do things that they aren’t proud of simply so they can eat and pay the rent. Her father’s brutal murder at the hands of Terry Silver (war veteran, millionaire, and organized crime boss) left her with little faith and even smaller hopes for herself.

As she was walking past the alleyway next to the club, the man who had patiently waited for her all of that time grabbed her hand. He whispered something into her ear and led her to the alley.

“So you knew my father, then?” She smiled, recognizing the handsome face of the man who wore black gloves.

He answered in a frantic whisper as if it pained him to get the sound out. From inside his jacket he pulled out a straight razor, opening it like he had practiced so many times before, although in those instances he had been nude and standing in front of a full-length mirror.

There was a quick horizontal whoosh of his arm and Isabella’s throat exploded in a fountain of deep red squirting that stained the snow both on the ground and in the air. Crimson snowflakes sparkled like tiny rubies in front of the man who was now breathing heavily and whispering bittersweet verbal abuse.

Isabelle’s body fell to the ground, landing in the soft snow like a stuffed animal on a shag carpet. The man looked down the alleyway and saw that everyone who walked by was distracted with their own lives, be it business or pleasure, and didn’t as much as glance down the alley. Grunting with joy, he turned Isabella on her stomach and ripped her jacket and dress off, revealing her pale, bare back.

He dropped the razor and took out a black permanent magic marker. With delight similar to that of a child in art class, he meticulously sketched a comic strip across the back and upper buttocks of Sweetie Martini. The comic wasn’t an original idea; the man had memorized it from a book he had found, a book he had stolen after he killed its original owner, Terry Silver.

Two strips of five panels in black marker, colored in only by the hues of stripper skin. In this grim adventure, Fauntleroy Le Roux was on the bloody trail of Little Bing Bong, the Apocalypse donkey. Even with assistance from his stalwart side-kick (ex-boxer Mushy Nebuchadnezzer), Le Roux ultimately fails and in the tenth panel, the world is brought to its knees by Little Bing Bong.

The man looked down at his work and was satisfied that it was an exact copy of the original. He capped the marker and put it back in his jacket pocket. Through the whole ordeal, the man’s fedora hat had stayed on and he could now feel a puddle of sweat forming on the top of his head. He felt like an infant with a warm, soft spot in its skull.

He dragged Isabella against the wall and positioned her so that anyone walking down the alley would have full view of the comic strip. They would therefore be able to admire his artwork not only for its esthetic value but also for its soon-to-be historical significance. He looked at his work once more, memorizing the image, and then ran off with his mouth open, catching snowflakes on his tongue.

CHAPTER 4

“I think we’ll stop here, see if Red Henry is around,” Tommy said, pulling the car over to the right, nabbing a spot right in front of Kreese’s Bar and Packaged Goods. It was a place well-frequented by people just like Tommy and Jake, citizens of Thompson who wanted to keep a low profile but still be able to get what they needed when they needed it.

Red Henry Hooper was their firearm supplier. If there was a clean gun somewhere, Red Henry could get it, though often it was attached to a ridiculous price. Still, Tommy knew he could rely on him to keep quiet even under the most pressing of circumstances. Not to mention the fact that Red Henry had helped save Tommy from an unfortunate fate at the hands of some very angry haberdashers.

“Do you even know if he’s there?” Jake asked, “Why don’t we just stop at the barn, pick up a couple of shotguns.”

Tommy shook his head. “That’s in the complete opposite direction and Peachy knows about that place anyway. If you’re so worried about him, the barn should be the last place you wanna go. I want to get a drink and use the phone. I’d rather sort this shit out with Aaron before running ourselves out of town for no good goddamn reason.”

“Okay, let’s go then.” Jake opened the car door even before the car stopped moving. He jumped out onto the sidewalk, put his hands in his coat pockets, and waited at the doorway of Kreese’s, trying to stay out of the way of the barrage of snow flurries that twirled over the sidewalk. Once Tommy was out, Jake walked into bar.

As soon as he entered, they smelt the squid.

There weren’t many places in Thompson where you could get a one-dollar shot of whiskey with a squid chaser. Bits of the marine animal were blended together with egg yolk and extra virgin olive oil and then stuck in the freezer to make it ice cold. Among the regular patrons of the bar, it made a delicious first drink and an even more delicious last drink of the evening.

Those who have had the drink had often likened the experience to being beaten about the abdomen with a sac of warm jello. One patron even went so far as to call it “the most sexually arousing liquid seafood in the world” immediately before choking on an unblended piece of squid. That quote was now carved into a piece of wood and hung over the bar.

Tommy made eye contact with Kevin, the bartender, and mouthed the words “Is Henry around?” Kevin pointed to the back room. As Tommy and Jake made their way, they saw an amorous couple in one of the booths, sharing a huge pile of bacon cheese-fries. The man looked up at Jake and coughed. “You lookin’ at somethin’, son?” He took his hand off of his date’s ample breast, picked up a handful of bacon cheese-fries, and slowly covered the woman’s face with it, as if the grease was soap and the fries were a washcloth. The woman had no reaction.

Jake looked at his partner but Tommy just shook his head and pushed him into the backroom. “Just ignore that shit,” Tommy said as they made their way into Red Henry’s back office.

“Well, goddamn, if it isn’t Tom Pingpong and Jake Waite. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Red Henry talked stern and fast. His mouth seemed to move two steps ahead of his words.

“What’s happening, Red? How’s things?” Tommy extended his hand and Henry took it, providing a short but vigorous handshake. He gave the same to Jake.

“Can’t complain. Just came back from visiting my P.O. who is, I might add, a complete asshole. Tells me I gotta stop hanging out Kreese’s. Part of my parole, he says. Well, fuck him, that’s why I say. A man’s gotta eat, you know? A man’s gotta pay rent. What’s he think I should do? Flip burgers? Man’s a fucking idiot, thinks I’m gonna live a straight life so I could rot in some halfway house.”

Tommy nodded his head in agreement. “I hear you, man. There’s no disagreement there. Speaking of which, I was looking to buy a piece, nothing big, just something to get the job done.”

“Close range?”

“Nah, I’m not expecting it to get that intense. I don’t have much cash on me right now.”

“Well, how much do you have?”

“Only two hundred and change.”

Red Henry scratched his face. “Sorry to break this to you, buddy, but I’m almost completely sold out. Slim pickings, know what I mean? I only got a 9mm, about fifteen years old. Nothing fancy or anything but it’ll do the job at close range.”

“Last time we talked you had a pretty big inventory. You were practically begging me to help you unload it. What happened?”

“Ah, you know I keep my mouth shut about that sort of thing. That’s why I can stay in business, people know I’m not gonna name names.”

Tommy gave an open mouth smile. “You seriously going to pull that shit on us?”

The three of them laughed and Red Henry sat down at his well-worn, second-hand mahogany desk. “Okay, to tell you the truth, I don’t even know any names. I was honest to god cleaned out by a bunch of longheads. In a little over two weeks I must have sold thirty or forty pieces, all to those longhead bastards. The one I’m sellin’ you is just an old spare I keep around for myself.”

“That’s fucked up. You think anything’s going down?”

“Not that I heard. And usually I’m first or second on the grapevine so I wouldn’t worry about it. You know those guys are just paranoid war vets, anyway. Probably scared as all hell and hiding in their bunkers, waiting for the end of the world.”

Jake tapped in fingers impatiently. “So, let’s talk price.”

“Well, you said you have two-hundred. That’s a fair price.”

Jake shook his head. “Oh, no, that’s before we knew we’d be getting a piece of shit.” He turned to Tommy. “What do you think?”

“Jake’s right, Henry. I’ll give you one-twenty-five.”

The three sat in silence for a minute while Hooper chewed on his fingernail. Behind him was a window frosted with snowflakes. Still, Tommy could see clear enough to notice someone looking in from the building next door. It was a longhead, naked and standing on a velvet couch. He was holding a candle which he moved slowly from right to left, tipping it over just enough to let a few globs of wax falls to the floor with each movement.

“Jesus Christ.” Tommy got closer to the window and Jake then followed. Red Henry turned around in his chair.

“Well, would you look at that? Now he’s got a candle.” Red Henry chuckled.

Jake looked wide-eyed at him. “What do you mean? What did he have before?”

“A snapping turtle. Thing must have been a foot long. That guy was just holding it by its feet, dangling it over the floor. Felt bad for the turtle but I wasn’t just about to go knock on the door of some longhead. Especially not right after I sold him a gun.”

Tommy squinted. “What the hell is he looking at? Us? What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Who the fuck knows?” Red Henry leaned forward in his chair and opened up the desk drawer and pulled out a gun that looked as if it was dragged under a truck for at least three blocks.

“That’s an ugly piece of shit, you got there, Henry,” Tommy said.

“Take it or leave, Pingpong.” He put the gun on the desk and waited as Tommy took out the cash from his pocket.

After the quick transaction, Red Henry got up from the chair and ushered the two out of the room. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I gotta go pick Susie up. She’s been out there all night and Christ knows she probably spent most of the money already. Boys, if you follow one piece of advice, let it be this: never marry a whore.”

Tommy gave a wry smile but Jake didn’t have a reaction. His mind was on Peachy.

As the door was shut behind them, they walked toward the bar to get a drink. Before they could reach it, however, a fat man in a raincoat blocked their path.

Tommy let loose the fakest smile he could muster. “Detective McMadigan, how nice to see you.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch. You drink here, too? I had no idea.” The cop laughed and the sound that escaped his throat was filled with cigar-phlegm. He was a round man with a face full of dull, gray stubble. His shirt was stained with red wine and yellow spittle, combining to form tentacled shapes over his overwhelming gut.

“What can I do for you, Detective? You see, my friend and I here are in a rush to catch a movie.” Tommy, without realizing it until it was too late, felt his jacket pocket where he had put the gun. He was relieved to see that the detective didn’t notice. He was too busy eyeing up Jake.

“Who’s this goofy looking bastard?”

Jake started to sweat. He had heard about Detective McMadigan but never had the displeasure of running into him. From the stories that Tommy and others have told him, the cop was partial to a whole slew of odd behaviors. On any given day he may show up an ex-con’s apartment and force him to dig out his stash of girly magazines or ask the guy’s wife to strip while he played his harmonica. She’d then be subject to a wide range of mental abuse mostly involving being nude and forced to recite old Honeymooners routines. It’s well known even in the police department that Detective Shawn McMadigan is behind the prostitution ring that moved in downtown. It catered to those who liked to live on the wild side of Thompson. McMadigan made sure to provide customers with anything they desired be it born-again housewives addicted to prescription pain medication or bald hookers with dwarfism.

“This is Jake Waite.” Tommy turned to his partner. “Jake, this is Detective McMadigan. I’m sure I’ve mentioned him a time or two.”

McMadigan put his hand out and smiled, yellowish saliva sliding off his dull teeth. Jake reluctantly shook the cop’s hand and was pulled forward. The detective put his mouth close to Jake’s ear. “If you stick with this guy, then I know you’re looking for trouble, my kind of trouble. If I gotta teach you, that’s fine by me. Ever get gang-raped by a group of angry cops?”

The twinkle in the cop’s eye was disturbingly pornographic in nature. Jake looked into the speckled orbs and saw himself being torn apart by sheer force of McMadigan’s cannibalistic penis. He saw its teeth, its gaping mouth, and its mucus-filled nose. It was joined by three others, all belonging to members of the Thompson Police Department, their nightsticks being no match for their throbbing rods of power-drunk retribution.

Jake pulled away and headed for the door. The detective’s face turned angry and shouted. “Hey, I’m not done with you.”

Digging into his pocket, Tommy took out a twenty-dollar bill and discretely handed it to McMadigan. “We really have to catch that movie, detective.” He rushed out the door before the cop could do anything, though he knew that with a greased palm, Detective McMadigan would probably save his abuse for another day.

Once outside, Tommy ran to catch up to Jake who was walking down the sidewalk, away from their car.

“Christ, Tommy, that guy is a psycho.”

“Yes, I know. I told you about him. What the hell did he say to you?”

“What did he say to me? He fucking threatened me with a gang-rape! Thanks a lot for giving him my name, too, by the way. Real fucking smooth.”

“Shit, he’s a cop, man. Getting your name would be easy as fucking pie for him, anyway,” Tommy stopped walking. “Shit!”

Jake stopped two footsteps ahead and turned. “What?”

“Forgot to use the phone.”

As they both stood there cursing, Tommy felt a tug at his coat. He looked down to see a bald dwarf in a blue velvet coat. “Hey, baby, wanna date?” Even without a hair on her head, the woman was quite attractive with Russian facial features and a pierced nose that added a touch of feminine brutality to her allure.

“Uh, no thanks,” Tommy said, not finding the sight of the woman even the least bit surprising. Where there was Detective McMadigan, there was a dwarf hooker. From Tommy’s experience, that’s just the way it was.

“How about you, honey, thirty bucks, half and half.” She moved over to Jake and sucked on her finger. Her crude gesturing made Tommy so queasy that he knew that he’d vomit if she touched him.

“Maybe some other time,” Jake said. He made eye contact with his partner and shook his head slightly to the left. The woman saw this and stuck up her middle finger.

“Fuck you both, then.” She walked away and moved on down the sidewalk where she was accosted by a longhead dressed in an old moth-bitten business suit. The longhead looked at the dwarf, looked up at the sky, and then slapped the woman in the face before running off past Tommy and Jake, almost knocking them down.

“Jesus Christ, man. Tonight’s just getting worse and worse.” Jake took out a pack of cigarettes. “Hey, you know who McMadigan reminds me of?”

“Who?”

“Orson Welles in that movie Touch of Evil. Ever see it?”

“No, I don’t think I have. Any good?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty fucking good.” He took a drag and blew the smoke upwards, looking at the stars in the process. “Okay, well I’m still worried about Peachy. Do we go to a phone and call Aaron like you wanted? I think we should just get the hell out of town for a few days. Let things simmer down.”

“Despite the fact that I think you’re overreacting just a little bit, I guess I agree with you. Let’s go back to the car and get going.”

They walked back the other way, toward their car, passing another alleyway. If they had looked down that alley, they would have seen the longhead who had slapped the dwarf. They would have witnessed him sitting on a large snapping turtle and using one hand to shave his head with an electric razor, his hair falling off of his elongated skull like burnt wheat. If Tommy and Jake had looked down that alley, they also would have noticed that the longhead’s body was slowly shrinking to about the size of a dwarf.

Chapter 5

Peachy drove down Main Street blasting the radio. His head bopped to “She’s Lost Control” as he nearly skidded into a group of teens who ran across the street throwing snowballs at each other. He muttered a curse and then looked past the kids and saw Tommy and Jake getting into their car.

“Oh yes, you cocksuckers, I got you now.” He gripped the steering wheel and then felt his stomach bubble. His bowels exploded, letting loose a storm of diarrhea into his diaper. The deluge was far more than the diaper could hold, so much of it leaked out down his legs. “Oh, Christ, not now!”

He looked down at his lap to make sure he wasn’t leaking shit onto his car seats and didn’t see the ice patch that was clearly evident on the road. The car slid horizontally into a parked car that had been parked behind Tommy and Jake’s.

A fat man came running out of the bar. “Son of a bitch! Get the fuck out of the car!”

Peachy opened his glove compartment and pulled out his handgun that had been carved from an elephant’s tusk. It had been a gift from his great uncle who was a world traveler and was known within the underworld as Bootlicker Benny in reference to his tendency to steal the shoes of his rivals’ wives. His uncle had never endorsed the nickname but he had never rejected it either.

Peachy gripped the gun in his hand but hid it in his sleeve as he stepped out of the car.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Peachy said, smiling and trying to sound like a remorseful driver. Then he saw who the fat man was and the smile quickly dropped into a frown.

Detective McMadigan smiled sinisterly. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Keen. You’re in a world of shit, now, aren’t you?” He put his hands on his hips and nodded his head. Oh, I’m gonna have a whole lot of fun with this motherfucker, he thought, and after I’m done with him, he’s gonna need more than a diaper.

With one slick motion, Peachy swung his arm up and unloaded three shots, hitting McMadigan twice in the torso and once in the neck. The detective fell backward, barely able to register what was happening. His last living thoughts were of an elephant with diarrhea spearing him repeatedly with its tusks.

Screams echoed through the streets as the terrified pedestrians ran to take cover. Peachy ignored them and went back into his car. His mood quickly darkened as he realized that more shit had leaked out of his diaper and had formed a trail along the street.

After getting back into the car and pulling  away, he ejected the Joy Division cassette from the car stereo and continued the ride in silence. In honor of his great uncle, he kissed his warm, ivory gun and pretended it was a boot.

Chapter 6

“Hey, Tommy, how about we stop home?” After being threatened with a law enforcement gang-bang, he was less worried about Peachy.

“First you want to get out of town, then you want to go home? If Aaron’s got someone after us, first place they’ll look is our place. Then the barn. We’ll stick with the original plan.”

Jake leaned back. “Okay.”

The car swerved to the right and Jake grabbed the dashboard. Tommy groaned and slammed on the brakes. “Would you look at that shit?”
Walking across the street, through the slush and ice was a longhead.

“It’s another longhead. Yeah, he’s walking his dog. So what?”

Tommy pointed. “That’s not a dog.”

The longhead was walking a snapping turtle on a leash. The animal was wearing snow boots that were obviously made for an infant. While Tommy and Jake watched, the longhead stopped at the sidewalk, unzipped his pants, and proceeded to urinate on a parking meter. The passersby ignored him as they do whenever they see a longhead. To acknowledge them was to bring thoughts of war, guilt, and consequences.

“Just drive, man, just drive,” Jake said, making himself look away from the scene. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the snapping turtle take a step into the stream of piss. It splashed off of its shell in large droplets that mixed with the downpour of snowflakes.

Tommy pulled away and went one more block. He slowed down in front of the movie theatre. “I have an idea.” He pulled into a side street and parked the car. “Let’s see a movie.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nah, listen, we’ll hold up here, keep our eyes on the door, and see if anyone’s following us. What’s a better hide-out than a big, dark room?”

“I don’t know. A big, dark room out of town, maybe?”

“I’m just saying, if we go out of town and Aaron gets wind of it, it’ll look like we got something to hide which isn’t the case, am I right? So, this way we’re not doing anything but watching a movie.”

Jake nodded his head reluctantly. “Okay, fine.”

They walked around the corner and up to the ticket booth. Tommy looked up at the marquee. “Hey, which movie do you want to see?”

“What’s the difference? We’re not actually here to see a movie.”

“Oh, whatever, just pick one.”

Glancing up at the titles, Jake was surprised to see that they were all old movies. “Let’s see…Ball of Fire, um,  Remember the Night… Flesh and Fantasy….Never heard of these.” He directed his statement toward the ticket seller.

“We’re running a marathon. All Barbara Stanwyck pictures. We’re also showing Clash by Night.” The ticket seller was a lanky bearded teenager who, Jake thought, looked happier than he should’ve been to be working on such a cold night in an unheated ticket booth.

Tommy took out the remaining money from his pocket. “Two tickets, then.”

“For an extra five dollars, would you each like a Barbara Stanwyck Halloween mask?”

Jake made a face. “Are you serious?”

The teenager smiled, revealing a bright overbite. “Yes, very.”

“No thanks, no masks.” Tommy handed over the cash and took the tickets.

As they walked away, he heard the ticket seller mocking them, speaking in a faux-Spanish accent, “Masks? We don’t need no stinkin’ masks!”

Tommy and Jake stepped into the theatre but not without taking one last look out onto the street to see if anything looked amiss. From what they saw, the Thompson night was close to a normal one.

The theatre lobby was large; it reminded Tommy of a church foyer, albeit one with movie posters and a floor sprinkled with popcorn. He stepped up to the snack bar and turned to Jake. “Want something? I got a few dollars left.”

“Just popcorn, I guess.”

The girl behind the counter had both her hands in the popcorn machine. She was making hand-washing motions, sticking her arms deep into the popcorn. Tommy caught her eyes. “Can I have large popcorn, please?”

She looked at him, eyes grey and blank. “We have no popcorn.”

Jake and Tommy looked at each other. “What’re talking about? There’s popcorn right there!” Jake pointed.

“We have no popcorn, sir.” She continued washing her hands with the warm kernels.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jake’s voice echoed through the lobby. Tommy grabbed his arm.

“Let’s just go into the movie. Forget about it.”

Jake slammed his knuckles into the popcorn machine and pointed to it with his middle finger. “Crazy bitch.”

He followed Tommy towards the theatre. As they walked, something caught Tommy’s eye. A small group of men walked past them and made their way to a small hallway off to the side where only the employees were allowed.

“Oh, shit, I forgot about this place.” Tommy gestured toward the men. “Totally forgot. This place is fucking loaded.”

He led Jake toward the hallway and heard the popcorn girl shout.

“You can’t go in there, sir.”

Tommy held his hand up. “Really?” He kept walking. Once they got to the door, they could hear the low thump of music, like a rapid heartbeat through the walls.

“What the fuck’s in here?” Jake asked.

“Gambling. Been here once, years ago with Joe Gurney. It’s pretty wild.”

He opened the door and walked slowly in, cigarette smoke confronting them like a cloud. Through the smoke, they saw five tables set up in a circle each with a different casino game being played. In the middle of the circle was a small stage where tall, skinny women gyrated. All of the dancers were dressed in cowgirl outfits and wore Barbara Stanwyck masks, obviously the same ones that Jake and Tommy passed up at the ticket booth.

The music was a noisy cacophony of metallic clanging and bowel-churning bass. A syrupy voice oozed out of the speakers. “It’s the smiles that keep us going, don’t you think?”

“Neat place,” Jake said sarcastically.

“It’s actually not that bad. Let’s have a seat.” As soon as he started walking, a short man dressed in a tuxedo approached them.

“You don’t belong here, assholes.”

Tommy smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve been here before.”

“I’ve never seen you, so get the hell outta here. Hit the bricks.” He stuck a thumb out and made a backwards motion with it.

Jake took a step back. “Okay, okay, we’re leaving.” He walked out the door and realized that Tommy wasn’t following him but instead was looking past the short man over to the stage where a new dance was starting. The women took off their masks and began rolling around on the ground like worms. As they writhed, they violently caressed their exposed breasts.

“Tommy, come on!” Jake was relieved when he finally saw his partner turn around and walk in his direction.

They walked past the popcorn girl who was now smearing a melted chocolate bar on her hands. “I told you. You can’t go in there,” she said, not looking up from her hands.

Tommy and Jake ignored her and went into their theatre. As soon as they walked in, they were shocked by how cold it was. Though it was freezing outside, there was no heat in the theatre. Goosebumps appeared immediately on their skin even under their coats.

“Fucking cold as hell, man.” Jake stated the obvious and Tommy just nodded, looking at the screen as Barbara Stanwyck smiled. The film flickered for a moment and between Stanwyck’s lips, Tommy saw the shape of a longhead as if it was climbing out of her throat. It morphed into something that looked like a furry inkblot with four legs.

Barbara’s forehead was a huge, blank slate on which Tommy envisioned a plethora of grotesque geometric shapes that moved with every utterance of dialogue.

Jake tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get a seat with a good view of the door.” He started walking to the corner of the room, where they could see the entrance easily and have a clear path to the emergency exit.

Tommy was still looking at the screen, entranced, as if Barbara Stanwyck herself was performing a bizarre point-of-view seduction for him and him only. She licked her lips. She touched her forehead, forcing the kaleidoscopic forms into a whirlpool of silent violence.

Jake slapped him on the back of the head. “Tommy! What’re you doing?”

“I don’t think I wanna stay here,” Tommy put his hands up to his face. “Let’s just go.” He turned around and headed out of the theatre.

Jake followed him out and they walked past the snack bar attendant who was picking her nose with her wet, brown index finger.

“Tommy, what’s the matter?”

“I’m just really fucking confused right now.”

“About what?”

They reached the door to go outside. Jake looked out and noticed that there were more people than he expected there to be considering the weather and the near certainty of frostbite and car accidents. Thompson wasn’t exactly a substantial metropolitan city. It was caught in a limbo that was not uncommon in New Jersey. Too small to really be called a city, but too impersonal and urbanized to be called a town. Suburban streets were cut in half by strip malls, factories, and the occasional run-down park.

As soon as Tommy opened the door, a gust of wind combined with a wall of frosty daggers attacked their faces. Jake closed his eyes and for a split second imagined that he was in a sandstorm, lugging his body through a desert as if his brain was simply a corpse-mover, delivering flesh and bone to a destination that was clear across the treacherous landscape.

Tommy walked out and then leaned against a parking meter. He coughed and looked at the sky. White streaks were now flashing across the pinkish hue beyond the hill. Through the noise of voices and car engines, he heard the almost-subliminal sound of the factory down the street. The rumbling ambience made him mindful of the fact that he indeed could be in much danger and that he was only a fragile sentient form standing in the cold, waiting for something that was beyond his present knowledge.

Jake put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, shaking him out of his quasi-meditative state. “Come on, let’s go.”

They walked back to the car. Nearby, a longhead wearing a Barbara Stanwyck mask was sitting on the roof of a 1966 Plymouth Barracuda. He held a match in his right hand and staring straight ahead, he made it disappear and appear over and over, performing wintry sleight-of-hand for an audience of snow flakes and car-exhaust-stained slush.

Chapter 7

Several blocks from where Tommy and Jake were getting into their car, a woman was answering a quiet knock at her door. Dressed in a robe under which she wore a brand new negligee, the woman looked through the peephole and saw that it was her lover, Willie Packard.

She opened the door and ushered him in. “My husband will be out all night. He’s working a double,” said Mrs. Sara McMadigan.

Willie planted a short but wet kiss on her lips. “I still feel weird, though, doing it in your house. Why couldn’t we stay at my place?”

“Because it’s too cold and I didn’t feel like going out. You wouldn’t want your little sweetie to get sick, would you?” Mrs. McMadigan wrapped her arms around Willie and returned his kiss.

Sara had met Willie when she was a secretary for Dynatox Industries. He had been a fisherman for most of his life but when his wife went missing (she was believed to be abducted by either squid or octopi), he gave it up to work with computers. As soon as they met, there was an obvious mental-sexual connection and the affair began when he bought her a lunch of tuna salad and oysters. They’ve been screwing ever since.

Sara and Willie walked together into the living room and sat on the couch. Sara had set down two glasses of scotch. Willie grabbed one glass, handed it to her, and went to pick his up. When he did so, he glanced up out the window and saw something in the window of the neighbor’s house. He dropped his glass and the scotch spurted out of it all at once, silently splattering the carpet.

“Shit! Sorry!” Willie looked around for a napkin.

Sara giggled. “Don’t you worry about it. I don’t mind stains on the carpet. They remind me of blood, makes me remember when I was a teenager.”

Willie made a face. “What do you mean? Why?”

“You know I used to work on a boat, helping bring the squid in. Almost every day someone would cut themselves open because they weren’t paying attention, just slicing open the suckers and their own hand in the process. The floor of the boat had splotch after splotch of blood and squid guts or whatever it is that squids have inside of ‘em. I remember this one sleazy guy who used to always try to get me to bend over in front of him. Ray! That’s what his name was. Anyway, one time he cut his hand open and there was this HUGE blood stain on the floor of the boat.” Sara took out a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it. She took three drags before she began talking again.

“Well, he went right ahead and took out this turtle shell and started draining his blood in there. Then he went around asking us if we wanted our fortunes told. I couldn’t help noticing, too, that all the while he’s doing this, he has the biggest erection I’d ever seen.”

“He was naked?” Willie laughed.

“No, no, he was wearing pants but you couldn’t miss it, I’m telling you. After that, I just didn’t mind stains all that much. If I spill some juice or some wine on the carpet, I just stare at it and try to see my future or someone else’s.”

Willie pointed to the stain. “Well, what do you see here?” He kissed her neck. Sara tilted her head and looked at the carpet.

“That’s fucking weird.”

“What?”

“I just thought of my old neighbor from when I was growing up in Brooklyn. I haven’t thought of her in years. Barbara something. God, she was like a big sister to me.” She got down on her knees and put her face closer to the stain which was now fading, sinking deeper into the carpet fibers. “Yeah, I can almost see her face, her nose especially, she had a big nose.”

Willie looked down at Sara and then out the window again. The person he saw in the house next door was still there, standing on some sort of stool, waving a flag. While his married lover inspected her stain, Willie got up closer to the window. At that distance he could see that it was a longhead dressed in a Viking costume. Willie couldn’t see what sort of flag was being waved but he could see that it was being moved with fervor and passion as if the man on the stool was actually marching in a parade and not standing in his room alone.

“Honey, come look at this,” he said. Sara was still on her knees.

Wait, I see something else, I think. There’re some dog hairs in the carpet and they’re adding shapes to Barbara’s face. Come here, Willie, I want to know if you can see it, too.” She put her cigarette out in a squid-shaped ashtray.

Willie stared at the longhead for another few seconds and then walked back to Sara. “That guy Ray really did a number on you, huh? Having you stare at carpet stains. Shit.”

“Oh, who cares? Just come down here and look at this.”

Willie grabbed the bottom of Sara’s negligee and pulled it up. “I’d rather look at THIS.” He caressed the backs of her thighs. Sara stiffened and turned over. Willie fell into her and they made love on top of the Barbara-stain.

Afterwards, they leaned against the couch, smoking. Sara nuzzled into Willie’s neck. She pointed to the piano. “Can you play something for me?”

“Sure can, honeybunch. What would you like to hear?”

“I don’t know. Anything. I love anything you play.”

Willie got up and sat on the piano bench. “You make a wonderful audience, you know that?” He smiled, cracked his knuckles, and took a fake bow. “Ladies and gentlemen! Mr. William Henry Packard!”

Sara giggled and lay on her stomach facing Willie who was sitting naked in front of the piano.

Willie started pounding on the keys, his face contorted into humorous expressions. Then his face faded into seriousness.

The piano made no sound.

“What the hell is this?” He turned to her. “Sara, what happened to the piano?”

“Nothing, no one uses it but you. It hasn’t been played since the last time you tried teaching me how to play.”

Willie got up from the bench and opened the piano. He nearly fell backward when he saw that the inside of the piano was filled with long, wet strips of pasta. “Jesus Christ!”

“What?” Sara took a look inside. “Oh my God!” She fainted and fell sideways, hitting her head on the coffee table, dying instantly. Blood oozed out of her skull, covering the scotch stain with a fresh one.

Willie’s eyes bugged out of his head in shock and horror. “Sara? Sara?” After checking for a pulse and finding no signs of life, he quickly got dressed. As he scurried out of the apartment he took one more look out the window. Willie thought he saw the longhead pointing and laughing at Willie though he wasn’t so sure he was willing to trust his own eyes.

Before closing the apartment door, he saw Sara’s new stain on the rug and thought that it looked a lot like a turtle shell.

Chapter 8

“Stupid cop.” Peachy shook his head, still thinking about McMadigan but not necessarily regretting what he had done. The detective had made a pastime of screwing around with ex-cons and Peachy was fed up with having to supply the cop with impromptu urine and stool samples at the drop of a hat. That’s the last fucking time I take a shit for that asshole.

The car moved slowly down the street, windshield wipers barely moving fast enough to keep up with the snowflake assault. Peachy looked out the passenger window as he drove and his eyes caught the movie theatre marquee.

“Hey, watch out!” a voice called out just in time for Peachy to see five teenagers in the road with snowballs in their hands. He swerved to the left, sending the car straight into an empty fruit cart that sat in front of the Thompson Produce Shop.

Shards of wood and snow piles flew off of the cart as he hit the brakes. The car skidded and then stopped, hitting a brick wall. “Christ almighty,” Peachy said, stepping out of his car, praising every god that he could think of that he was wearing his seatbelt. He took a step out and yelled a few half-hearted curses to the kids who returned the sentiment. If there was one thing he had a soft spot for, it was kids. Ah, to be young and carefree. Lucky little bastards.

Then Peachy saw the body.

A middle-aged man dressed in a tattered suit and a long beard lay against the wall. He had been sleeping in the fruit cart and was killed on impact when the car hit. “Oh, you must be fuckin’ kiddin’ me!” Peachy looked around and saw people walking over to him to see if he was okay. He quickly grabbed hold of the body and dragged it a few feet away and covered it with the pieces of the cart.

“Are you alright?” one voice shouted. Peachy ignored him and went back to his car. He dug out his gun and then jogged down the street.

“I’m calling the cops!” another voice yelled.

Peachy kept going until he saw Scooter’s Go-Go-Rama. He hadn’t been in there since before being locked up and he was getting erotic stirrings despite the stress of the evening.

His stomach rumbled so clinched his ass cheeks, knowing what to expect. A wet squeak escaped followed by a spurt of liquid shit. Should of brought an extra fucking diaper, he thought. He walked down the alley next to the go-go bar and started to take down his pants when he saw the body.

At first his mind didn’t register it as a body because he saw the comic first. The drawings were so vivid, so bold, that Peachy couldn’t help but respect it as a piece of art and not just magic marker scribbling on the back of a corpse.

Pants down to his knees, his dirty diaper drooping with the weight of diarrhea, Peachy read the comic strip three times. He was no fan of comic strips, comic books, or art in general but this adventure of Fauntleroy LeRoux entranced him with a bittersweet vertigo. His head swam in an increasingly psychotic state, his brain cells screaming the apocalyptic hymns of Little Bing Bong.

Down the alley, a group of longheads watched intently. One of them grunted and Peachy looked at them. They laughed and continued pissing into empty wine bottles. Deep yellow urine filled each and every one. When the last longhead was done, they muttered words that Peachy could not hear and then as quick as it takes for one’s eye to register a snowflake falling to the ground, the urine in the bottles became deep red wine.

The longheads proceeded to get drunk while Peachy pulled up his pants, half mad with visions of jack-ass eschatology. He ran onto the sidewalk and then across the street, stumbling to the ticket booth of the movie theatre. The words Barbara Stanwyck Film Festival swirled off of the marquee and into his brain. He didn’t know what Stanwyck looked like but he sensed her as if she was a long-lost lover who was present in spirit only.

“How many tickets?” the teenage ticket seller asked. He gave a face, seeing the diaper sticking out of the top of Peachy’s pants.

“I don’t know…what are you….unveiling tonight?” Peachy slurred his speech and felt the sudden urge to wag his tail that is, if he possessed one.

The guy pointed to the sign in back of him. “A bunch of classic Barbara Stanwyck movies. Are you interested?”

“Give me a minute,” Peachy replied, wanting so much to take his elephant tusk gun and beat the ticket seller to a bloody pulp and then use those pieces of pulp in a display of snowy, blood-soaked divination.

He settled on buying a ticket.

“For an extra five dollars more, would you like a Barbara Stanwyck Halloween mask?” He held up the mask.

Peachy looked at the seductive features of the mask and felt his heart flutter a warning.

“Shove it up your ass!’ Peachy said. With a grunt and a curse, he fell backwards into the snow and crawled away from the theatre.

“You shove it up your ass!” the ticket seller laughed while he started rolling a joint.

Chapter 9

“Hey, pull over for a second,” Jake said. He tapped the window with his knuckles.

“What for?” Tommy slowed the car down.

“Just pull over.”

A parking spot opened up in front of the liquor store so Tommy pulled right in. “Okay. Now what?”

Jake gave a half smile. “I’m starting to think you might’ve been right.”

“About what?”

“About this whole situation. I mean, why are we running? It’s like we turned into a bunch of paranoid assholes all of a sudden.”

Tommy stared Jake. “What the hell is this? I told you that you were overreacting from the get-go. Christ Almight. I can’t believe this shit.”

“I know. It’s my fault, I’m sorry. I’ve just been on edge for a few days.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I have no fucking clue.” Jake ran his hands through his hair. “It’s this town, it’s messing with my head or something.”

“I know what you mean.” Tommy didn’t elaborate but instead looked out his window.

Jake shouted. “Oh my god, isn’t that…?” He pointed to the sidewalk where a man was pulling his hair out of his head, ranting and raving. His skin was blotched partly from the cold and partly from years of hygiene neglect.

“Holy shit, it’s Pastor Timothy. I haven’t seen him since he threw that rock through the window of the soup kitchen.” Tommy laughed. “That fucker is crazy.”

“Yeah, was he that nuts when he was preaching? I can’t imagine any church would put up with that shit.”

“My parents used to just say he had a nervous condition or something. Anytime he’d do something fucked-up, they’d tell me that we have to forgive him because God forgave him. I just think he’s a hateful son of a bitch.”

“Are pastors even allowed to hate anything?”

“Apparently.”

“I thought religion was supposed to make you nice.” A flash of memory illuminated Jake’s mind. He remembered a kind uncle from his childhood who used to point to the grass and say “That’s God” and then point to the sky and say “That’s God”. Before Jake could ask any questions, the man would point to a stray cat and say “That’s God, too.” Jake would then be treated to an ice cream cone which was, much to Jake’s surprise and delight, God as well.

“I don’t know. I guess for some people it’s something to make them nice and compassionate. I think Pastor Timothy just hates a lot of things, figures God wants him to. Figures if they don’t believe the same things as he does, they aren’t worth giving two shits about. He’s just miserable and thinks that he might as well be since he’s going to heaven to live in paradise.”

“That’s one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever heard.” Jake thought again of that compassionate uncle who spent most of his free time helping feed the homeless, mentoring orphans, and helping nurse sick animals back to health. All of this without having gone to church. His good deeds had outshined his lack of religious showboating.

That all ended, however, when the uncle was eaten alive by squid after being thrown into the Raritan River by an angry mob of religious conservatives. They thought that his time would best be spent raising funds for the church rather than helping the needy. After all, Jake’s uncle was the mayor and what else should a politician do but support the church?

Tommy and Jake watched as the disheveled man screamed while lighting a book of matches on fire. “The Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God!”

Jake scoffed. He remembered his uncle reciting a scripture from the bible….Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude…

Pastor Timothy spit onto a woman’s face, a woman he suspected of being a homosexual and, even worse, a democrat. Witnessing this, Jake thought again of his uncle… For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son.

“Ah, I guess having a son coming home a longhead doesn’t help either.” Tommy reasoned. “That’s gotta do some psychological damage to a man.”

Jake felt a tang of compassion. “Shit, I guess that explains some of it. But still, what’s the point of religion if it ain’t gonna help you deal with shit?”

Pastor Timothy was scratching the skin off of his face, throwing the flakes of flesh into the air like confetti. “Hear what the Lord thy God has spoken! If anyone comes to me and does not hate,” the pastor said, gritting his teeth, “his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple, says the Lor-“  Pastor Timothy was cut short by a snow shovel to the face wielded by an elderly drag queen.

“Ah, shut your pathetic little pie-hole. The hell I’m hatin’ my parents for any god!” the drag queen shouted as Pastor Timothy fell backward, his yellow teeth coming straight through his lower lip.

Tears started to stream from the pastor’s eyes. “My son, my son, the pagans killed my son,” he repeated over and over.

Jake looked at Tommy. “This town’s fucking weird, man.”

“No kidding. But it’s not as weird as Fisherville, let me tell you. That place is a fucking zoo.” He laughed and looked at his watch. “Shit, I feel calmer now that we’re not going fucking crazy running from nonexistent assassins.”

Jake laughed, reclined his seat, and continued to look at the scene out on the sidewalk. “Man, let’s just sit here and enjoy the show. But I do think we should give Aaron a call later, like you said.”

“Sounds good.” Tommy and Jake sat for a few minutes, watching Pastor Timothy and the drag queen arguing over who got to keep the shovel.

“You hit me with it, look at my lip, I’m a wreck, I should be able to keep the shovel!” The pastor was insistent about it in between mumbling about his son and how the pagans were destroying the country with all of their talk of peace.

The drag queen wasn’t having any of it. “Oh no, you don’t. It belongs to my girlfriend and the hell if I’m gonna let some impotent fire and brimstone cocksucker take it home so he could shovel heavy metal albums onto his little bonfire!”

Jake laughed at the drag queen’s argument and then dug in his pocket. “I’m going outside for a few minutes, have a smoke. Want one?”

“No thanks.”

Outside the car, Jake smoked and watched the crowd that was growing around the shovel debate. Inside, Tommy leaned his head to the side and stared at Jake. Man, he put on some weight. Should I tell him? Nah, he’ll get pissed. Maybe I’ll tell him we should join a gym together.

His eardrums crackled as a gunshot rang out. Instinctively his head went down and as he did so he saw that Jake did the same thing. Then he realized that Jake didn’t go down to protect himself. He had been shot.

Chapter 10

Tommy crawled over the seats and out the passenger side door. “Jake! Jake!” He could see that the shot wasn’t fatal. It had grazed the side of his stomach. Despite being scared and face-first in a slushy pile of what looked like snow, motor oil, and dog shit, Jake was okay.

“Can you move?” Tommy asked him, pulling him up.

“Yeah, I could. What the fuck was that? I knew someone was after us. Christ!”

Tommy held Jake and started him walking. “Let’s fucking go, NOW.” They started running, not bothering to look back at where exactly the bullet came from. They had an idea about who it was but weren’t in any sort of rush to confirm their suspicions.

Even with the snow and the screaming crowd on the sidewalk, they managed to make a good run for it. They made it to the corner and slipped up the side street.

Up the street Peachy stood clad only in his dirty diaper, brandishing his ivory gun. His thoughts alternated between thinking about those two assholes and creating new adventures of Fauntleroy LeRoux. Peachy created an alternate ending of the comic strip, one in which Little Bing Bong does not usher in the apocalypse and mankind does not have to learn the ultimate truth about their existence. Peachy loved ignorance and he didn’t want to know any more than he had to.

Through his quickening madness he heard Pastor Timothy and started to agree with the man. Maybe this life was a shithole. Maybe he should just put his faith in God so that he can spend an eternity in paradise. Who would want to be happy here and now on earth when you could be happy forever in the ambiguous heaven of God? “Damn straight, pastor, you have a point.” Peachy sniffed the muzzle of his gun. “I’m livin’ this life for my soul and my soul only. God damn everyone else.” He giggled.

Pastor Timothy looked over at Peachy. “Oh yeah, son, you smell that? Smells like the burning flesh of sinners, don’t it? Sweet smell, it is.” He looked at Peachy’s diaper. “Does your momma know you’re out here in the cold?”

Though his mother had been dead for over twenty years, Peachy said “Yes, she does,” and then walked down the street toward Tommy and Jake. He thought he heard police sirens but realized it was only the humming of the Dynatox factory down the street.

The snow got heavier and blinded him for a minute. Every snowflake became a weak hand of resistance that pushed him away from his goal. Tiny white hands, cold with rebellion, slapped Peachy across the face, across the stomach, across the legs. It melted against his skin and soothed his diaper rash.

Meanwhile, Tommy and Jake stood against a brick wall. Tommy took out his gun, opened it up and thanked God that it was loaded as he had never checked after buying it from Red Henry. With a deep breath, he cocked his gun and turned the corner.

Through the blinding snow, Peachy was stumbling toward him in the middle of the snow-covered street. Tommy quickly aimed and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped into Peachy’s kneecap and it exploded like a piece of oversized ravioli. Despite the wound, he didn’t go down but instead used his good leg to stay standing like a scarecrow.

Tommy turned to Jake. “Get up! Get the fuck up! We gotta go!”

Jake was pale and mumbling.

“The bullet barely hit you, Jake. Come on, you’re alright. You’ll be fine. We gotta go NOW!”

With a cough, Jake motioned for him to get closer. Once Tommy was in earshot, he started talking in a gargled voice. “You know, my dad was in the war. He wasn’t supposed to have another tour of duty but he wanted to go. He was patriotic, you know?”

“I didn’t know that, Jake.” Tommy didn’t like where this was headed. Besides, they didn’t have the time to go into all of this.

“He came back alive. Mom and I were happy he didn’t come back a longhead, you know, but the thing is, he just wasn’t the same. He didn’t have that spark that we loved, didn’t care so much about life, about living things. It was like he became an inanimate object during his tour or something.” He coughed up blood and wiped his mouth.

“Oh shit, Jake, shit, man..” Tommy whispered, using his own jacket to wipe away the blood. Tears gathered in his eyes. “Fuck, man, let’s go.” He couldn’t hold it in any longer; he started crying.

Jake smiled. “After three months, dad died. Doctors told me and mom they didn’t really know why. Said he just gave up. Never heard of that before, you know, someone just giving up and their body listens. My dad didn’t believe in heaven even though he went to church every week. I was there when he died and know what he told me? Know what his last words were?”

Tommy thought it was a rhetorical question but Jake stared straight at him as if expecting an answer.

“I don’t know, Jake, what were they?”

“He said to me ‘Son, none of this is real. Not a goddamn thing. We’re all the fucking same. All just ants waiting to be burnt by the sun.’ That was it and then he closed his eyes like he was going to sleep but there was no snoring, no fidgeting. He was just gone.”

Tommy turned his head and sobbed into his hands. He’d heard many stories about Jake’s father but never this one. He knew Jake’s father was a dependable, loving father who always provided for his family. Even though he was disappointed in Jake’s criminal path in life, he had never turned his back on his son.

Jake’s head fell back. Tommy could see that the life was slowly leaking out of his body. He bent down and gave Jake a long, soft kiss on the lips that tasted like copper and salt. “I love you,” Tommy said, “Don’t go.”

A barely audible bubble of speech escaped from Jake. “I love you, too.” He coughed. “Thanks for the laughs.” And then, like a snowflake on a stove, he was gone

.

Chapter 11

Aaron Jeffords stood in his office looking out the window at the pink, snow filled sky. He shook his head when he saw the image of Barbara Stanwyck appear and noticed that her breasts were much larger than they were in her films. Her cleavage was a long, deep black lightning bolt across the sky. Aaron longed to smother himself in it, lapping up the breast-sweat. He imagined her drooling down her chest causing him to drown in her abundant saliva.

He leaned back, picked up his phone, and dialed his attorney.

“Hey, Bill, Aaron Jeffords here. Yes, remember what we were talking about earlier today?”

“Yes, of course I do. What about it?”

“Is everything in order?”

“Uh, yeah, Aaron, why? What’s the matter? Aaron!” Bill shouted.

Aaron hung up the phone. He opened up a desk drawer and took out a gun. He turned to face Barbara, mentally sinking in between her massive, fiery breasts. The sky behind her became a mixture of pink and black swirls. She lifted a foot and Aaron could see her wrinkled soles that were as large as a mountain. In an instant he could smell her foot stench through the windowpane.  Aaron sniffed up as much of the smell as possible and then put the gun to his head.

Lord, I’m on my way.

He pulled the trigger with no hesitation. Blood spurted and pieces of brain fell like dice onto his desk. His skull, however, stayed connected to his body in one piece albeit a bit disfigured. He now resembled a longhead. The gun dropped to the floor, smashing a spider that had come out to witness the sight of Barbara Stanwyck outside. Aaron’s body fell forward and was held up against the window by his misshapen forehead.

Chapter 12

Pete and Randy dragged their sleds up the hill, laughing the whole way up. They were quite grateful that this early snowfall had come. School would surely be cancelled the following day and that would mean more sledding and more snowball fights.

When they reached the top, Pete saw something that nearly made him faint. A dead donkey, stiff yet bubbling from corpse-gas, was lying in the snow.

“Holy shit! A pony!” Pete yelled.

“It’s not a pony, jack-ass, it’s a donkey!” Randy was quick to correct his friend.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Duh, it’s dead.” Randy walked closer to it, still holding onto his sled. His eyes flickered with adolescent creativity. “Let’s put it on your sled and send him down the hill.”

“Why my sled? Let’s use yours!”

“Mine’s brand new. Your sister gave you that piece of shit so who cares what happens to it?”

“Fine,” Pete gave in, knowing that arguing was futile when talking to Randy. He brought his sled over to the donkey and the two of them held their breaths and heaved the donkey onto it. “We’re gonna get in so much trouble. Man, I don’t want to be grounded on a snow day.”

“Oh, don’t be such a pussy. No one will find out. Trust me.”

They positioned the sled so that the donkey would be sent down flying down a path that ended just to the left of Main Street.

Randy took a deep breath. “On three, okay? One..two…”

Chapter 13

Even with his kneecap blow off, Peachy was able to stagger down the street toward Tommy. I hit one of them, I know I did. He saw the two of them run away and felt his self-esteem lower just a bit. I used to have better aim.

From around the corner, Tommy stuck his gun out and sent three shots in Peachy’s direction. Two of the bullets missed but one hit him in the other kneecap, sending him to his shredded knees. With the diaper on, it made Peachy resemble an ugly infant playing in the snow. He dropped his gun.

Tommy looked at Jake one last time and then came out onto Main Street. He aimed his gun and was ready to finish Peachy off when he heard a ruckus down the street. Through the thick snowflakes he saw a small army of longheads stomping up the street, shooting the guns that Red Henry had sold them. One by one, they slaughtered the citizens of Thompson in a macabre parade.

After seeing this, he knew that Peachy was the least of his worries. Then he saw the bastard pick up his gun. Before Tommy could react with his own firearm, a brown and red blur sped past him and into smashed into Peachy, slicing him in two.

“What the fuck…” Tommy questioned as he now realized that the blur that had turned Peachy into a quivering mess of flesh and diaper was a dead donkey on a sled. You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.

Tommy took another look toward the oncoming assault of the longheads and decided his best bet was to go over the hill into Fisherville. He would have liked to take Jake’s body with him but knew that he didn’t have the time. Besides, he knew that whatever consciousness or soul that had been Jake was now far away from his corpse.

As he raced upwards, slipping and sliding in six inches of snow, he looked up and saw the shimmering image of Barbara Stanwyck in the sky above. Tommy froze. His testicles retracted and his heart skipped a beat. Barbara winked and jiggled her breasts which appeared to be three sizes to large for her body. Her nipples were dots of pink fire and her teeth were glistening bubbles of starlight.

He continued running and when he reached the top of the hill, Tommy fell down to his knees. He chuckled, realizing that this was exactly the position Peachy was in when a speeding donkey on a sled killed him. This thought made him cut short his rest and sent him down the other side of the hill. I hope Joe Gurney still has that shack in the clay pits, he thought. His friend Joe used the shack for bootlegging and it would be, in Tommy’s opinion, a great place to hide out for a while.

Thinking back to his childhood, Tommy decided on a better way to go down the hill.  He ran a few feet and then jumped onto his belly, sliding down the rest of the way. The freezing cold seeped through his jacket and shirt. He smiled and thought that Jake would have found all of this extremely hilarious.

Chapter 14

Inside Laruso’s Italian Eatery, the killer in black gloves sat at a table, his magic marker sitting beside a bowl of pasta. His mind was divided between the pleasurable taste of the food and the fracas outside on the street. Also in his mind, in a small corner that had always been reserved for obsession, was the remembrance of the musky stench of Sweetie Martini’s armpit sweat as he tore off her clothes.

The man eating pasta stared out the window, watching as a group of longheads came to the door of the restaurant. He shouted to Dan, the owner and cook. “You better leave now,” he said. Dan nodded and went to hide.

A group of four longheads came through the door. The one standing in front was dressed in a wrinkled military uniform. He walked up to the table where the man was eating pasta.

Instead of the frenzied manner in which they attacked outside, the longheads calmly took the man to the floor and proceeded to beat his arms and legs to a pulp with the butts of their guns. The man did not fight, did not say a word.

A living torso with crushed bones and flesh for appendages, he flapped around a little bit and then stared at the ceiling remembering his years spent in the military.

“General Entwistle, you awake?” one of the longheads asked. He looked around and saw his attackers gathered around him. His mind flashed jagged slivers of light and memory.

Now, General Entwistle remembered everything. He had brought the troops to the city and ordered them to attack. Meanwhile, he stayed back, out of harm’s way, with his good friends Sgt. Aaron Jeffords and Sgt. Dario Martino. They played cards and ate pasta while their men fought a fierce battle.

Many hours later, the troops came back. The walked their own trail of tears, gnashing their teeth and dragging snapping turtles that had attached themselves to the soldiers’ hands and feet.

The turtles were the least of their problems, however, for the men came back with freakish elongated skulls which made them resemble pale clones of Frankenstein’s monster. It was as if the soldiers were crystal clear reflections of a funhouse mirror.

General Entwistle scolded the men for not winning the battle and forced them into the worst hospital tents he could find. There they sat for weeks, being fed stale rations and being shown the same three Barbara Stanwyck films over and over. The men requested new movies, ones that were current but General Entwistle reserved those for himself. After viewing the same films for weeks, all of the longheads had memorized the dialogue. They chanted it like scripture, reworking it into their own stories of existential revelations and horrific revenge.

So now, he found himself on the floor, unable to move, finally facing the cruel, elongated arm of fate. One of the longheads took out a bizarre contraption and strapped his head into it.

General Entwistle felt a strap and a buckle being closed around his skull and felt metal rods being forced against his temples. He stared at a painting on the wall of the restaurant: a vibrant mural of modern Venice. He wanted so much to visit there. Even without arms and legs, he thought, it would be rather pleasant. I could hire someone to carry me around. Maybe a nice big, Amazonian woman with huge tits. I can sit on top of them and she can walk me around the city.

The longheads cranked the contraption that they had attached to the general’s head. It took five whole minutes of vigorous cranking until finally they had made him into something even more grotesque than themselves.

Entwistle spent the last fifteen minutes of his life thinking about snapping turtles and how nice it would have been to be able to visit Venice with his good friends Aaron and Dario. A minute before he died, the face of Barbara Stanwyck appeared over the wall and he watched her swim in the canals of Venice while her breasts bobbed in the water like oversized cantaloupes.

The longheads watched as General Entwistle expired and when it was all over, they started to convulse. The veins on their heads bulged like raging underground rivers which then exploded in a spurting display of biological apokalypsis. Floating rivers of blood shot through the air like ketchup angrily squeezed from bottles. The longheads dropped dead on the floor.

Dan Laruso came out of the kitchen closet where he had been hiding and took a look at the scene in his restaurant.

“This is gonna be a real pain in the ass to clean up,” he said, grabbing the mop and bucket.

Chapter 15

The donkey corpse still lay on the sled, Peachy’s entrails dragging close behind. The falling snow had covered it with a thick layer of glistening whiteness that reflected the streetlights.

A wet bubbling sound erupted from the donkey’s stomach along with a rip that echoed down the street, tickling the ears of each and every longhead. Out of the corpse of the hairy sled-rider came a baby donkey, half-dead with fright but with a resolve that was above and beyond that of any trauma victim.

It took only a few seconds for Little Bing Bong to get his bearings and when he did, he stood on all four legs and let out a hee-haw that shattered windows and brought goose bumps to everyone within a half mile radius. The sound even made the remnants of Peachy’s kneecaps slide into the gutter where they were eaten by a three-legged stray cat.

Little Bing Bong made his way down the street, ignoring the longheads and the slaughter of the citizens of Thompson. He started up the hill and when he reached the top, he looked into the eyes of Barbara Stanwyck. His donkey consciousness debated the idea of jumping off of the hill and into her cleavage but his reasoning skills told him that he’d never make it. Instead, he settled on bowing his head, mentally supplicating for a boon of some kind.

After ten minutes, Barbara responded favorably to the donkey’s petition and lifted her feet up and let loose a fierce brevibacterial wind of snow and sole dirt. Little Bing Bong closed his eyes and inhaled through his large donkey nose, filling his lungs with the revelation and blessing of Barbara Stanwyck.

At the bottom of the hill, a large crowd of longheads gathered, staring up at the animal on the hill. They were silent, focusing their minds on every snippet of dialogue from the Barbara Stanwyck movies they had watched. Every line was not only recited mentally but was studied and meditated upon.

Barbara’s foot brought another gust of wind and the longheads watched as each and every snowflake now reflected a different scene from the very films they were thinking about. The sky before them became a holographic universe of black and white memories, a seemingly infinite array of twinkling Barbara-clones encased in frost.

Little Bing Bong shook the snow from his fur and snorted in donkey-laughter. He looked down and saw a cardboard Halloween mask. Lacking the appropriate appendages to pick it up, he kicked it instead and watched it flip up into the air and get carried by the stink-wind that was still emanating from Barbara’s feet.

And so Little Bing Bong, the Apocalypse donkey, stood on top of the hill that rose above Thompson, New Jersey, and for the first time in his young life, felt a tinge of bittersweet sorrow. He knew that something was going to happen to the world, something so massively absurd that it would erase any semblance of normality that had previously existed in any form whatsoever.

And so he watched and waited.

And waited.

Little Bing Bong was finally sucked up through the air and into Barbara Stanwyck’s mouth where he swam in her yellowish, gelatinous drool.

Chapter 16

Willie Packard ran out of Sara McMadigan’s apartment building and stumbled down the steps. While dressing, he neglected to pull up his zipper and now cold rush of air enveloped his penis, tickling it with icy fingertips. Though the feeling wasn’t unpleasant, he zipped his pants.

The street was quiet except for the always existent hum of the Dynatox Factory that reverberated through the town like an inexhaustible gong. Willie took a look down on end of the street and then the other.

No people.

He started walking until he got to Main Street and stopped when he saw all of the corpses.

“Whoa. What the fuck happened here?”

He walked slowly, careful not to step on anyone as he took a look at each person. Some people he recognized. Mike Barnes from the hardware store. Jessica Andrews from the pottery shop. John Lawrence, Willie’s mailman. Even Officer Freddy Fernandez was lying in the snowy gutter, his torso riddled with bullets. Willie shook his head. “Goddamn.”

His stomach growled so he walked farther down the street and saw that the lights were on in Laruso’s. Willie walked in and saw that Dan was mopping the floor which had streaks of gore across it. “Jesus, Dan. What the hell happened?”

“The hell if I know, Willie.”

“I hope it’s no trouble but you mind if I sit down? Maybe have something to eat?”

Dan gestured to the empty tables. “Sure thing, have a seat. What can I get ya?”

“Hmm,” Willie wondered. He knew the fettuccine alfredo was delicious but he’d also heard good things about the insalatadi polpo. Not being able to make up his mind, he asked for both. “Can I have a glass of your house red wine, too?”

Dan nodded and went into the kitchen to prepare the food. He grabbed a wine glass, picked up a bottle of wine and poured a full glass. Good thing some winos left these bottles outside, Dan thought, remembering the weird looking drunks who were hanging out in the alley next to the restaurant.

After Dan had cooked up the food, he walked into the dining room. He saw Willie sitting at the table and almost dropped the plates.

Willie Packard was sitting, hands folded, at the table wearing something on his face. Dan slowly walked closer and quietly placed the plates on the table.

“Are you okay?” Dan asked.

Willie Packard laughed loudly through his Halloween mask.

THE END

THE APOCALYPSE DONKEY

Chapter One

Simon Palmer swerved the car but ended up hitting the squid anyway.

What the hell was a squid doing in the middle of the road? He didn’t know the answer but didn’t care so he kept driving. He figured the thing was dead before he hit it. But how could that be? It was out of water. Squid can’t survive for long out of water, can they? Another question he didn’t have the answer to. He was getting used to that.

The car hit a pothole and Simon heard one of the boxes in the backseat fall over, spilling copies of his books all over the floor.

“Shit,” he said and reached back with one arm to scoop some of them up. He almost hit the car in front of him so he eased over to the side of the road. Looking at the copies of book, the trade paperback collection of his comic book The Adventures of Fauntleroy LeRoux, Simon was reminded of the year he spent living in his car, drawing Fauntleroy LeRoux over and over in his notebook. Who would’ve thought that he’d get a chance to work on a new series featuring the classic character he had grown up reading? Though he was far from rich and famous, Simon considered himself lucky.

This book signing was something that Simon looked forward to despite knowing that most of the readership came from an obscure demographic. It wasn’t the usual comic book fan (male, 18-35, living with his parents) who read his work. He got fan mail from eighty-year old doctors, meth-addicted housewives, ten-year old orphans, and even an imprisoned priest. His publisher told him that the biggest readership came from central New Jersey and more specifically, the city of Thompson.  Simon recalled hearing that Byron McPhee, the creator of the Fauntleroy LeRoux comic strip, moved to the area in 1932 although whether or not there was a connection, Simon didn’t know.

Once he drove into Thompson, he stopped at a strip mall and looked for a payphone. There was one by a liquor store and when Simon picked up the receiver, his hand touched something slimy. Smeared on the phone was something yellow and gooey. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and held the phone with it. Then he dialed.

It rang twice and then a voice answered, “Hellooooo there!”

Simon said, “Hey, Chaps. What’s up? I’m in Thompson.” Chaps lived three towns away. Ever since Simon moved to Pennsylvania four years ago, they only saw each other occasionally.

“Already? I figured you wouldn’t get there until another hour or so. I still have to eat breakfast.”

“We’ll get something to eat, just meet me at Zip Comics and we’ll go to a diner or something.”

Chaps said, “I don’t know. I think I’d rather eat at home and meet you afterwards.”

Simon sighed. “Okay, when?”

“Maybe two hours or so.”

“Two hours? You kidding me?” Simon wanted to curse but held himself back, not wanting to upset an already unstable friendship. He wanted to tell Chaps to stop being a hermit, stop being a procrastinator, stop alienating his friends. But instead, Simon just said, “Okay, meet met at the comic shop at 9:30.”

Chaps said, “Okay. I’ll be there.” He giggled nervously. “Take care.”

“Yeah, you too. Bye.” Simon hung up. I really should’ve told him to go fuck himself.. Sick of this shit. If he doesn’t want to hang out, just fucking tell me. Simon felt like ending the friendship but felt like there was something there to nurture, something that was worthwhile. Chaps was unreliable to say the least but for some reason Simon liked his company.

What the fuck am I going to do for two hours? The comic shop isn’t even open.

Simon sat outside the strip mall and smoked a cigarette. He watched the cars drive by and wished he was in one of them, wanting to know what it was like to be someone else. He wasn’t discontent with his life but it would be fun to explore other lifestyle options. There might be a good story in there somewhere.

A car pulled into the parking lot, taking a space that was near Simon. The car idled for two minutes and then shut off. A man got out and walked towards him. He tried not looking at the guy but it was difficult. He was tall, freakishly so. Long brown hair and muscular, though not really that big. Okay, I think I better go back to the car. Simon hated being afraid but that was his instinct especially in unfamiliar surroundings where there were guys he knew could kick his ass in a minute.

Though mentally he was prepared to stand up, his body wouldn’t listen. The man got closer and walked up to Simon. He could see now that he wasn’t as scary close up. In fact, he was attractive and if Simon were gay, he’d find the guy irresistible.

The man said, “You him?”

Simon didn’t know what to reply. Was this a Fauntleroy LeRoux fan that recognized him? Did the guy come into town for the book signing? No, he didn’t seem enthusiastic. He’s too casual, nonchalant.

“Uh, I don’t know. Who are you looking for?” He stubbed out the cigarette and realized right away that it might come off looking like an aggressive gesture, like a character in a spaghetti western who was getting his hands ready to go for his six-shooters.

“Don’t fuck around. You’re the only guy standing here and so I’m asking, are you the guy?”

Oh, what the hell.

“Yeah, I’m the guy,” Simon said, instantly regretting it.

The man didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look excited or disappointed. His facial expression didn’t change while he went for his back pocket and brought out a black envelope.

The man said, “Here,” and dropped it on Simon’s lap. Then he walked back to his car.

“Hey wait!” Simon grabbed the envelope and stood up, taking a few steps towards the man. He got no response and so then jogged over to the guy, wanting to say, “Hey I was just kidding. I’m not the guy so here, sorry about that. Take back your weird, black envelope.”

He knew he couldn’t do it. So when the guy turned to look at him, Simon just said, “Thanks.”

The guy didn’t respond. He got into his car and drove away.

Simon stood in the middle of the parking lot, watching the car drive away and wondering what was in the black envelope. He hoped it wasn’t what he thought it was.

Chapter Two

Harry Bosch drove out of the parking lot, relieved to be done with the whole mess. He was told by Terry that there’d be a meth-head hanging out in front of the convenience store on Washington Road and to give him the envelope. Harry did just that and hoped that it would indeed be the end of the whole fucking mess.

That meth-head was acting strange but who knows what the fuck those guys are gonna do?

He’d been in debt to Terry Silver for far too long. Harry had been sucked in the by the allure of Terry’s unorthodox organized crime family, one that was not based on ethnicity or old country tradition. It was based on money, violence, and squid, all of which Harry loved. Still, Terry turned out to be the kind of guy who’d promise the same thing to three people, never intending to give it to any of them. Fucking asshole. I shoulda listened to Mike Barnes and stayed the fuck away from him.

And to top it off, Terry tried to get Harry into the Kabbalah, talking for hours about one mystical thing or another. Jesus Christ the goddamn guy thinks I’m a fucking Jew or something.  Harry decided that after this whole situation was settled, he’d find a way out. He was a strong guy, big in all the right places and there were plenty of jobs around town he could get. I think Kreese’s is looking for a bouncer or something, I gotta check on that. It’d mean a cut in pay but I got savings.

Harry drove down to see if Zip Comics was open but then saw the CLOSED sign and passed it by. He normally didn’t read comics but Mike had told him that there was such a thing as adult comics. “Full of sex, and not just normal sex, I mean sex with aliens and squid and shit, guys jacking off on car engines, two-headed hookers and donkeys. Crazy motherfuckin’ stuff,” Mike had said, so Harry decided he just had to check it out.

I’ll go by there later. Got nothin’ better to do.

Hoping that his day’s work was done, Harry stopped by the Thompson Diner for pancakes, sausage, and fried eggs: sunny side up. He knew the waitress, a woman who always flirted with him, making it quite clear that if he was so inclined, Harry could take her to his car and screw her brains out. He would’ve taken that horny broad up on her offer if not for his impotence. So Harry would just have to settle for glimpses of her ample cleavage and plump ass.

When he was done eating his breakfast, he asked her for the check.

She said, “Going so soon, hon?”

“Got stuff to do, Stella. I’m a busy man, you know.” He couldn’t tell her the truth, that he really had nothing to do the rest of the day and he’d be happy to sit there at the diner, staring at her goodies. But if there was one thing he had learned in life, it’s that women don’t like a man who doesn’t do shit all day.

Stella said, “Oh, I bet you are. I just wish you’d get busy with me.”

“You’re a hellava waitress, Stella, you know that? That’s why I tip you so good.” He took out his wallet.

Stella leaned over the table, her freckled cleavage on display. “Yeah but that’s not the kinda tip I want.”

Harry stared unabashedly at her breasts. He had no shame in the matter. Being coy was for teenagers or romantics but it wasted time, Harry thought. So he licked his lips and imagined those milk-mounds slapping his face. In his fantasy his dick was hard and he was able to follow through with the act of love-making, something he wasn’t able to do in five years.

“You’re terrible, Stella.” Harry laughed and took the check from her hand and looked at it. She didn’t charge him for the side of sausage as usual. I think that’s her way of saying I’m gonna owe her some of MY sausage.

He took money out of his wallet and handed it to her with the check. Tipping her above and beyond the usual amount was something he was happy doing. She made his day pleasant and she deserved it.

Stella said, “Thanks, cutie pie. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Well, maybe,” Harry said. “Remember, I’m a busy man.”

She giggled. “Oh, don’t remind me.”

Harry left the diner and sat in his car for a few minutes, smoking and wondering what the hell he was going to do for the rest of the day. The comic shop would kill a half hour tops but as for after that, he was clueless.

He started the car and turned on the radio, scanning the radio stations until he found a song he liked.

Yeah, Judas Priest. Now we’re talkin’.

Harry drove away, tapping his fingers to “Ram It Down” and wishing he had stayed at the diner for a few minutes longer.

*                      *                      *

Chris woke up next to a dumpster.

The first thing he saw was a chain-link fence, behind it a field made of dirt and the occasional patch of grass. He wondered why someone put a fence around that field, why someone would want to keep people out of it.

He also wondered who he was. He couldn’t remember.

Who am I?

Chris hated that question; it sounded so existential, so cliché. But he asked it in all seriousness because he had no idea what his name was and how he ended up propped up against a dumpster. He checked the pockets of his dirty khaki pants but there was no wallet, only some loose money and a plastic baggie full of little crystals.

Okay, okay. I took some of these drugs, and it just fried my brain a little bit. Everything’ll come back to me soon. I just need to wait it out.

So Chris waited.

After a half hour, he started to get worried. Though he lacked the memories of his identity, he remembered other things. An old movie he had seen with John Hodiak playing a guy who loses his memory. Shit. Why can I remember that but I can’t remember my own fucking name. And I remember walking up to Krauszer’s to get a lottery ticket and a coffee but the door was locked. I thought they opened at like six or something.

But then the memories stopped. What happened to him between trying the door to when he woke up? He had no clue. But he did know that he had a baggie full of what he took to be crystal meth. He looked at it again, crushing some of it between his fingers. Another memory came back to him: arriving at a house that had a green van parked in the driveway. Chris knocking on the door, asking for some holiday meth, envisioning the green crystals as vividly as if they were right in front of him. He remembered the guy at the door saying he didn’t have any more but that he had something brand new and it was called Squid Ink, looked just like crystal meth but was twice as powerful. Chris remembered asking, “What’s in it?” and then guy responding with “You really want to know?” but then the memory stopped there.

What the fuck is in this shit?

If that’s what messed him up, Chris wanted to know the details. He could picture the guy’s face but no name. He could picture the house but no address. So he knew he was a drug addict, fine. But where did he live? Or did he even have a home? What if this was it?

Is this where I sleep every night? Fuck, this is crazy. This can’t be happening. I gotta remember something.

Chris hoped that slowly the details of his life would trickle back to him until the whole jigsaw puzzle was complete. Then he could go on.

But what if my life isn’t worth remembering? What if I wanted to forget?

He stood up and walked around to the front of the building. A trace of memory flashed through his mind because he recognized the strip mall and could see the sign for Krauszer’s. Another piece of the puzzle. He walked over and went inside.

There were a few customers in the store and one guy behind the counter. Chris walked down the aisles for a few minutes, hoping to jog his memory again but nothing came. He walked up to the counter and looked at the middle-aged guy with a beer gut who was sitting on a stool looking grouchy.

Chris said, “Excuse me?”

“Yeah?” The guy didn’t look in the mood for questions.

“Do you know me?”

“What?”

“Have I been here before?”

“The fuck should I know?” the guy said, squinting and getting impatient.

Chris was embarrassed. He said, “Sorry,” and walked out of the store, feeling like a complete jack-ass. That was stupid. If he knew me he would’ve said something when I walked in. So what the hell do I do now?

He sat on the curb in front of the store. Another sliver of the past came back but this time in the form of a feeling and not an image. Chris had the distinct impression that he was supposed to be waiting for someone here, someone who was supposed to give him something.

Guess I’ll just wait here and hopefully whoever it is will come by and give me whatever it is they’re supposed to give me. Shit, I hope it’s something good.

Chapter Three

Simon had seen enough movies to know that when a guy you don’t know hands you an envelope, it can’t be good. Most likely the guy mistook him for a hitman and inside the envelope was a picture of the target as well as half of the fee, the other half which would be delivered after the hit. He didn’t want to believe this but the situation was so similar to a set up of a movie or a book that he couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it all.

Still, if it turned out that he was correct, he knew he was in deep shit. It ever ended well in the movies. The guy who was mistaken for a hitman would be hunted down by both the man paying for the hit as well as the real assassin. In the movies, the heroes were resourceful and destined to come out on top but this was real life. Simon knew he possessed no attributes that would help him in that situation. No strength. No special skills. No martial arts training. No military background. No real determination. He would be doomed.

Here goes nothing.

Simon tore open the envelope.

The first thing he noticed was that there was no money inside. Part of him was disappointed. Even if the whole mistaken-for-a-hitman thing had happened, at least he’d have some extra cash in the meantime. It would be a short-lived fantasy, he knew that, but he was disappointed nonetheless.

The second thing he noticed was that there were photographs, just like he had expected.

Son of a bitch.

Then he looked at them. There was a cold fist of dread in the pit of his stomach. His eyes bugged out of his head and he was aware of the sensation. He would have never thought it was possible for eyes to do such a thing but the shock of what he was looking at was too strong. His hands shook and the pictures fell to the ground.

Simon quickly bent down to scoop them up but before he did, he looked at the position of the photographs and imagined them as tarot cards.  If they were, he wondered, what the hell would they be telling me?

They’d probably be telling me to get the fuck outta here.

He didn’t want to think about it anymore and so he picked them up. Once they were back in the black envelope, he put them away in his pocket. Fear was slowly coming forward like a blood red tide.

What the fuck am I gonna do now?

Simon was sure that the guy who handed him the pictures would come back once he found out that he gave them to the wrong person. It was only a matter of time. But Simon didn’t live in town and if he left right after the book signing, what are the chances that the guy would find him?

Okay, after I finish up at the comic shop, I get the fuck out. I throw the photos out or I drop them off at the police station or something and that’s it. I’m gone.

While he planned his escape, Simon saw a child staring at him from across the parking lot. The child walked closer and Simon soon realized that it wasn’t a child but a dwarf.

She was dressed in a tight, green dress and black cowboy boots. Simon watched as she made her way over to him, fixing her long blond hair in the process as if wanting to make sure she looked pretty for him.

The dwarf said, “Hey sweetie, wanna date?”

What the fuck is this?

“Um, no thanks,” Simon said.

“A blow is twenty, half-and-half is forty-five. I know it’s early but I’m real good,” she said as she tweaked her hardened nipple through her dress. “Really fuckin’ good.”

Simon said, “Yeah, um, no thanks.”

The dwarf’s face squinted in anger. “What the fuck is your problem? You a fuckin’ homo or somethin’?”

“No, I just don’t want a date, okay.” Simon started walking away. The last thing he wanted was for her to make a scene or bite him in the thigh or something.

The dwarf followed close behind but was now bald, her blond wig in her hand. She said, “How’s this? You like ‘em bald? I’m bald everywhere, you know.”

“Jesus Christ, leave me alone,” Simon said, picking up the pace. He wanted to get into his car but imagined her jumping in with him, forcing him to fuck her. The thought made him sick not because she was a dwarf but because she was so goddamn aggressive.

“You look like you’re into squid. I can get squid if that’s what you like. Only cost you seventy-five, best price on the street. How about it?”

Simon said, “What the hell is wrong with you?” He walked faster and decided that getting into his car would be the best thing. Once he reached it, the dwarf stopped following him and walked away muttering under her breath.

The relief was short lived once Simon remembered the envelope in his pocket. I just need to make sure that I can get out of town after the book signing without the guy seeing me. He thought about the photographs again and instinctively shook his head in disgust and denial. How can anyone take pictures like that? Where would anyone even get the idea to do those things let alone grab a camera and document it? He asked those questions but didn’t really want to know the answers.

Simon started the car and went on his way to the comic shop, hoping that maybe Chaps would get there early but he knew that was unlikely. Maybe one of the guys at Zip Comics was there early and would let Simon in. He hoped so or he’d have to sit in his car, hoping another dwarf hooker didn’t accost him in the parking lot.

When he got to the comic shop, he saw that the lights were off but walked up and knocked on the door anyway. There was no answer. Simon went back to his car and put the seat back, hoping he wouldn’t fall asleep and dream of the photographs. As if to protect himself from their influence, he put the photographs in the glove compartment.

Chaps better be here by 9:30 or I’m gonna beat his ass.

Chapter Four

Having enough to worry about, Chris tried to ignore the stomach pains.

He didn’t know his name or anything else specific about himself so having diarrhea would just have to wait. The pains came in waves, sharp knives one minute and then dormant the next. He walked away from the strip mall, hoping to find something that would help him regain his past or at least lead him on the right path.

His stomach started gurgling. It was like someone was boiling water but in this case the water was in danger of erupting out of his ass. Chris stopped walking and bent over, holding his stomach. He thought if he could withstand the pains and hold it in, it’d go away. Once he felt the spasm in his colon, he knew he was wrong.

Chris was now on a main road and there was cars passing him, making it impossible for him to just take down his pants and get it over with. He ran across the street to a gas station. The man working there was a tall Sikh with a nametag that said his name was JIMBO.

Chris said, “Can I use your bathroom please?”

“Customers only.”

“Oh come on, please. Here,” Chris said, pulling out money from his pockets. “I’ll pay you, please, just let me use it.”

Jimbo said, “It’s out of order.”

“Fuck!” Chris walked over to the side of the gas station with Jimbo slowly following him asking him what he thought he was doing. Without any other option available, Chris pulled his pants down. He crouched down and leaned against the wall and relaxed his sphincter muscles.

Jimbo was a few feet away but stopped when he saw what was happening. He watched in disgust and gross fascination as Chris’s ass emptied itself on the ground, quickly forming a greenish black pile of shit. For ten years, Jimbo had worked at the gas station and had dealt with junkies and longheads but never did he ever see anything like this.

Chris was feeling faint and tried to keep himself from falling into his own shit. His stomach kept churning and Chris felt like his ass had become an assembly line that would never stop producing. With a grunt, he pushed out what he hoped would be the last of what was festering in his bowels.

For Jimbo, there was no way to stop staring; the sight of it was hypnotic. The thick curls of feces started to tremble and lift off the ground like tentacles. He was surprised to see the man stand up and run off after shitting. Jimbo wanted to go after him, make him clean it up. However, the sight of the living-shit tentacles kept him cemented in place.

The wet sounds of shit-hitting-cement got louder. The tentacles got closer and before they wrapped around his leg, Jimbo thought he saw the hypnotic and crystalline eyes of a squid. He blinked, thinking it was his imagination but when he looked again, they were still there.

Jimbo’s body was wrapped in tentacles. A car pulled up to the gas station for gas and after thirty seconds, the driver got out and said, “Anybody here?”  Jimbo tried to answer but could only manage a faint cough as his mouth was filled with the warm tip of a tentacle.

The car drove away and Jimbo lied down. He wanted to feel the soothing cold of the cement and not the burning stink that was now gripping him like a family of pythons. Jimbo felt himself loosing consciousness which he didn’t think was possible. He always thought it was a sudden blink into la-la land rather than a gradual descent into sleep. It was not as unpleasant as he had imagined. He finally succumbed to it, falling into dreams of squid and debauchery.

Several streets over, Chris was running away. Of all the things that he had forgotten and couldn’t remember, he wished he could get rid of the memory of shitting against a gas station wall. That guy watching him do it made it even worse.

Why the hell was he just standing there watching? Must be a pervert or something, getting off on me taking a shit.

Chris stopped running and realized how uncomfortable he now was. He had run off without wiping his ass and his ass now felt sloppy and wet. There had to be somewhere that he could clean himself off. He walked two more blocks and saw something promising: a carnival. It was closed and there didn’t seem to be anyone around so Chris hopped the fence and looked around for a portable toilet.

He found at Johnny-On-The-Spot in the corner next to a hotdog stand and a place that sold fried Oreos. Chris went into the portable toilet and locked the door. The carnival wasn’t open yet so the toilet was clean and smelt like disinfectant. Chris pulled down his pants and realized that these sort of portable toilets don’t have sinks.

“Son of a bitch.”

He sat down and leaned against the wall, exhausted from the experience at the gas station and from racking his brain for his identity. Now he just wanted to sleep again in hopes of waking up with his memories intact and his ass clean.

Maybe this whole thing is a dream. Some drugs I took or bad squid I ate or something.

Then he fell asleep.

*                      *                      *

The tape player squeaked and the music stopped playing. Harry slammed a fist into it to no avail. “Motherfucker.” After hearing the Judas Priest song on the radio, he dug around his car for one of their tapes and was happy to find it under some magazines.

He hated having to replace the tape player again. It was the third one he had bought in the six years he had the car. Fucking car must hate tape decks. The squeaking stopped only to be replaced by a clicking sound. Harry slammed his fist into it again but only succeeded in cutting his knuckle.

As he drove past the video store, Harry thought he saw someone he recognized so he pulled the car into the parking lot. Shit, yeah, it’s Liam. He could see the guy leaning against his car.

Harry parked two spaces away and got out.

He said, “Hey, you son of a bitch, what’s up?”

“Look who it is. What’s goin’ on, Harry?” Liam Holt was an extremely friendly, unassuming guy; Harry always thought he was too nice to be in the sort of business he was in. He also observed that the niceness often covered up the dormant force of a volcano. More than a few times Harry had witnessed Liam explode, like the time he carved Ronnie Winkler’s eyes out with a Godzilla toy. It was an unexpected act of violence that made Harry fear and respect the guy even more.

Harry and Liam shook hands.

“So where’s Henry?” Harry asked.

“Hank’s in the store looking for porn.”

Harry laughed. “And you’re not in there with him? What’s the matter? You sick?”

“I can’t stand looking at porn with him. He takes too goddamn long trying to decide whether he wants fucking ‘Golden Oldies Part 12’ or ‘Spit Swappers Part 23’. It’s a pain in the ass, know what I mean?”

Harry said, “Yeah, I hear ya. Hey listen, you know anything about Kreese’s needing a bouncer or anything?”

“Why? Terry not giving you enough to do?”

“I just want to explore my options. I’m not really digging the way shit’s happening.”

Liam frowned. “Well, you know I don’t want to fuck with your shit or anything but you shouldn’t fuck around with Terry. I mean, he’s a hard motherfucker. Look at the shit he put Robert through when he wanted to leave.”

“Yeah, but Robert still left and he’s doing pretty good I think. Doing his own business without having to deal with Terry’s shit.”

“But he’s locked up now.”

“For what? What happened?”

Liam said, “You didn’t hear? He got into a car accident and started killing a bunch of people.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah but this whole town’s pretty fucked up so I’m not completely surprised, know what I mean?”

“I do but listen,” Harry said, wishing he’d have kept his mouth shut, “forget I mentioned anything about Terry or bouncing at Kreese’s, okay?”

Liam said, “Sure but remember I’m just looking out for you, man.”

“I appreciate it. Say hi to Henry for me when he gets done picking out his porn.”

“That could be days, man, days.”

Chapter Five

At five minutes to ten, Simon saw two guys go up to the door of Zip Comics. One of them, the fatter guy, had a set of keys that he used to unlock the door. Simon looked at his watch and saw that Chaps was twenty-five minutes late but thought he might be in the parking lot somewhere.

He got out of the car and walked to the comic shop. Before he went in, he took a look around the lot to see if his friend was parked somewhere. There was no sign of him. What the fuck is wrong with that guy?

Simon walked into the comic shop and a skinny guy wearing a Kate Bush t-shirt said, “Hey, Simon Palmer, how are ya?” He held out his hand and Simon took it. As they shook hands, Simon wondered if the guy knew his hands were sweaty.

“I’m Scott. We talked over the phone.”

Simon said, “Yeah, thanks for having me.”

“No problem. Once I heard you were doing a book tour, I called your publisher right away to get them to let you come up here. Thompson is a small town and all but there’re a lot of LeRoux fans in the area.”

The fat guy came out of the back room wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Adam West’s face on it. A scraggly beard covered the lower half of his face and a tattoo of a whiskey bottle decorated his right arm. “Simon, hi, I’m Peter.”

They shook hands and Simon was relieved to find that Peter’s palms were dry. “Hi, Peter. I was just telling Scott that I appreciate you guys hosting this.”

“Don’t mention it. We’re excited to have you. We’re big fans, big fans.”

Peter took Simon to the back of the store where they had set up a table complete with Fauntleroy LeRoux merchandise surrounding it. Behind the table were several LeRoux posters which Simon remembered having done under duress. He didn’t like the merchandising as much as he liked simply writing and drawing the thing.

Peter said, “You have anything in the car you want me to help you with?”

“Yeah, I got some extra copies of the new issue plus the trade paperback and an exclusive one-shot that’s only available on the book tour.”

“Awesome. You mind if we bought a couple of those before the signing?”

“No, not at all. Oh, but before we do that, can I use your phone.”

Simon was handed the phone and he waited until he was away from Peter and Scott to make the call. It rang several times until finally Chaps picked up and said, “Hello?”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Oh shit, Simon, sorry, man. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? You said you were eating breakfast and then coming to the comic shop.”

Chaps said, “I know, I just got distracted. I started playing my French horn and got into the zone, you know? Doing some recording, getting some things down on tape.”

“You’re blowing me off because you want to play your goddamn horn? Are you kidding me?”

“Don’t get so upset. Try to be more understanding,” Chaps said. He sighed and went on. “I’m really sorry about this, though.”

Simon wanted to say, “Fuck you.” He wanted to tell the guy what a complete and utter jack-ass he was. Instead, he just said, “Okay, I’ll talk to you later,” and hung up the phone.

Peter walked over to him and said, “Hey, you wanna see something?” He held open a tattered phonebook-sized comic. Simon looked at it.

It was a rough, ultra-violent montage of sex and death. There was so much happening on the pages but Simon could make out a few things: a woman being sawed in half with a polka-dotted femur bone, a smiling man carrying a bag of teeth, a twisted body that was a cross between a toilet and a woman,  a  half-man half-crab lying in a bathtub bleeding to death.

Peter said, “It’s Turkish. They’re really giving the Japanese a run for their money, let me tell you. I can’t even sell some of the shit the Turks publish.”

“Wow, pretty cool,” Simon said despite thinking the art looked too rough and assumed that the writing was probably less than stellar.

“You can have this one if you want,” Peter said.

“Nah, that’s okay.”

“No, seriously, man. This might be worth money someday. Just take it.” He handed it to Simon who felt he had no choice but to take it. In social situations like this, he would have rather just kept refusing but knew that if he had to spend the next six hours in the shop with the two of them, he’d better stay on good terms.

He said, “Thanks,” and took the book, looking closer at the battered condition of it. Shit, I hope the guy didn’t jerk off to this.

Scott said, “We got some cool as hell bootlegs, too. Ever hear of Death Laid an Egg?”

“Nah, never heard of it. Any good?”

Scott became animated. He said, “Oh my god, man, you have to see this. It’s a crazy as hell giallo. You know what a giallo is, right? Italian thriller? Like Dario Argento? Well this is a weird, psychedelic one with headless mutant chickens and shit like that. The beginning alone is worth the price. You wanna see it?”

Simon said, “Now?”

“No, maybe after we close we can hang out and watch. We got a T.V. in the back.”

“Oh, after the signing I gotta get going but thanks anyway.”

“Well just let me know if you change your mind.”

Simon nodded and slowly moved away from the guy. He didn’t want to chit-chat about the shit they stocked in the store. They were nice enough guys but were the type that would talk your ear off if you let them. He flipped through the Turkish comic book again, landing on a page where a crudely drawn man in a diaper was eating a bowl full of human toes. This is gonna be one hell of a day.

*                      *                      *

While asleep in the portable toilet, Chris dreamt of his father.

He didn’t recognize the man but something told him that it was his father. It was one of those moments of intuition that often occurred in dreams and Chris was fascinated and scared at the same time.

The man was wearing a green suit two sizes too small for his body. He stood on a wheelbarrow, screaming and complaining about corn husks and sinister skin blemishes. Chris was floating around the wheelbarrow, though there was no water in sight. He wanted to talk to the man but the words stopped at his throat.

He felt something at his feet. There was something moving in between his toes. Chris looked down (though it really wasn’t like looking down; it was as if he had eyes on several parts of his body) and saw a polka-dotted squid. Again he wanted to scream, to verbalize his discomfort and fear but his dream-physiology wouldn’t allow it.

The squid moved up Chris’s body, rubbing up against his torso and his chest. It moved up to his neck and nibbled on it with tiny teeth that looked like pencil erasers. It let out a squeak and said, “Do you know your name?”

Chris wanted to tell the thing that no, he didn’t know his name but again, the words wouldn’t come.

Again, it said, “Do you know your name?”

He tried dream-swimming away from it but as much as it felt like he was moving, the squid stayed with him, asking again, “Do you know your name, Chris?”

It took him a second but Chris realized what the squid had managed to accomplish. Its cryptic questions turned into an ironic revelation. It provided him one of the pieces of the puzzle.

I know my name now. Chris. My name is Chris. Can the squid hear me? Am I talking? What’s wrong with me? Am I talking?

If the squid heard him, it made no indication but instead asked again, “Do you know your name?”

Yes, yes I do. My name is Chris.

The squid trembled and moved away from him, floating through the air and attached itself to the man on the wheelbarrow. Chris wanted to make contact with his father, wanted to ask him so many questions that he couldn’t even concentrate.

I gotta pee, where’s the bathroom?

He left his father and walked through a restaurant where he stared at the Mexican waitresses in tight skirts and low-cut blouses. When he passed one of them, he saw a door that he knew was the bathroom but when he went through it, he was in a library. He turned to go back to the restaurant but the door was gone and he then forgot about the restaurant and instead started looking for a book on bathrooms.

I gotta pee, where’s the bathroom?

A woman was standing by a stack of books. Chris somehow knew that she was waiting for something and so he went up to her in the hopes that she was waiting for him. The woman looked at him impatiently. She reached down and took off her blue and white sneaker.

Placing the opening of it to Chris’s nose, she said, “Breathe in.”

Chris sniffed the sneaker and got a whiff of warm sweat. He felt his nose grow and actually touch the moist sole of her sneaker. The laces felt rough against his forehead.

“Keep breathing,” she said. “You have to pee.”

Chris remembered his quest for a restroom. He wanted to pull away from the sneaker but felt himself growing lightheaded from the smell. He slowly awoke and found himself staring at the label that declared that the portable toilet he was in was a Johnny-On-The-Spot V.I.P. exclusive model #2332.

Shit, that was all a dream.

Chris remembered the sexy Mexican waitresses and the woman making him sniff her shoe. He knew there was something else he was forgetting, something that happened before the waitresses.

I remember a squid, yeah, and the squid talked to me and it said something to me that made me happy. What was it?

He got frustrated at not being able to recall anything else and soon realized that he had pissed his pants during the dream. He looked at the Johnny-On-The-Spot label again and smiled sourly at the irony.

Chapter Six

Harry drove around trying to kill some time and find something worthwhile to do. He passed the strip mall again and saw something he liked. Pulling over the car, he rolled down his window and waved the dwarf over.

She walked over and said, “Yeah, honey. What ya want? Lemme guess. You look like a guy likes his dick sucked. Am I right?”

“Nah, not that. How about you hop in and we’ll talk about it.” Harry unlocked the passenger side door and watched her climb in.

The dwarf said, “So what do you want?”

“How much for,” Harry said, “having you, maybe like, spit in my hand a little bit.”

She laughed. “Jesus Christ, why you so nervous? You think that’s the weirdest thing anyone’s ever asked me to do? You’re in Thompson, you know. How about we say for twenty I’ll put a shit-load of spit into your little hand there?”

Immediately Harry regretted having picked up the hooker. The fantasies in his head were one thing but when someone else actually said it aloud, he felt embarrassed. He knew he shouldn’t have been uncomfortable, though, since he knew that the level of depravity in the town was high above even his own interests. He also felt justified in his fetishes since he wasn’t able to fuck the normal way and had to rely on more creative measures to satisfy his sexual urges.

Harry held out his hand and watched the dwarf spit a ball of drool into his palm. It was yellowish and bubbly and reminded Harry of whiskey vomit. She hocked up another one and forcefully sent it into his hand. Some of it sprinkled Harry’s lips and he thought about licking it off but was worried about what the dwarf might say though he knew that was ridiculous.

Who the fuck cares what she thinks? I should just go ahead and lick it off. Goddamn, why can’t I do it? Don’t be a pussy, man, come on, just do it, do it.

Harry sent his tongue out like a snake’s, lapping up the tiny beads of her spit. Luckily, she had her head back, gargling some more phlegm in her throat. With a hocking sound, she spat out another load but missed his hand. The bulk of it landed on his chin.

She said, “Shit, sorry about that.”

Lick it off, lick it off. Just do it. Who cares what she thinks?

The dwarf made a move to wipe it off. Harry knocked her hand away.

He said, “No, don’t worry about it.” Harry moved his tongue out again and tried to reach her drool. He couldn’t reach so he moved it into his mouth with his fingers.

The dwarf said, “Shit, why didn’t you say so?” She started spitting into Harry’s face, practically covering his jaw. “You happy now?” She wiped the sides of her mouth. “That’ll be twenty.”

Harry took the cash from his wallet and handed it to her. When she left the car, he wondered if she’d be telling her fellow hookers about him. A part of him felt embarrassed about that but another part felt special. Then he decided that in comparison to all of the other shit she would probably do today, his request probably wasn’t worth talking about.

He looked at his watch and decided he might as well go over to the comic shop and see if he can get his hands on some of those adult comics. With the stale smell of the dwarf’s spit lingering in his nostrils, Harry drove away.

*                      *                      *

Once the time arrived for the book signing, Simon was fairly impressed with the turnout. He didn’t think people would travel to a small, somewhat shitty town like Thompson to get an autograph from him. Sure The Adventures of Fauntleroy LeRoux was nearly a century old and he was the newest artist and writer to take over the storyline. But Simon couldn’t help but be surprised that it brought such a diverse fan base.

The shop was crowded with fans of Fauntleroy as well as people wanting to see what the hubbub was about. Simon imagined that a good quarter of the people getting autographs have probably never even read an issue. They see some guy signing autographs and they figure, “Hey, it’s gotta be worth money someday, right?”

He didn’t mind. He liked his job and this was a part of it. The hardest part was still to come, though. The question-and-answer period.

Shit.

Peter hushed the crowd and asked if anyone had any questions for Simon. A woman in her fifties raised her hand and said, “Have you ever used any of the original Fauntleroy comic strips from the 30s and 40s as inspiration?”

Simon said, “Um, not really. I mean, of course I’ve read them before and I’ve always been a big fan but I try not to use them as inspiration because I want to present something new, um, something fresh that I think the, uh, readers will enjoy.”

I sound like a real douchebag. .

Peter said, “Next question.”

A young guy in a Cary Grant Dropped Acid t-shirt said, “I heard that a lot of celebrities used to read the comic strip back in the day. Do you know if that’s true? And if it is, do you know which celebrities?”

“Well, yeah, it’s true. Um, Sterling Hayden was a big fan. John Hodiak, Edgar Ulmer, uh, Richard Widmark, too, I think. Barbara Stanwyck of course, that’s pretty well-known. But she actually was a bigger fan of the Fauntleroy spin-off comic strip called Little Bing Bong. But that comic strip only lasted like a year and a half or something like that. There was rumor that she actually suggested to Howard Hughes of RKO Pictures that they do an adaptation of it but being the finicky guy he was, Hughes passed on it.”

There was a murmur in the crowd as if that last bit of information was a particularly juicy bit of gossip. A man in a suit raised his hand said, “Are there any plans to put any of the Thompson longheads in the story?”

“Uh, I really wasn’t planning on it but if it comes to that, maybe. If I did, I’d make sure that I wasn’t doing it in an exploitative way or like any way that’d be insensitive to the veterans, I mean, you know, the longheads.”

The man said, “What about Byron McPhee? You know he came from Thompson, right?”

Simon said, “Yeah, I heard that. That’s part of the reason why I agreed to come here and I can see that it’s the reason why there’re so many fans here in town. I think that’s pretty cool.”

A different man shouted, “I know where McPhee used to live. It’s where the movie theatre is now. They tore down his house to build it back in 1955.”

“Wow, I didn’t know that. Thanks,” Simon said, wondering if his house would ever be torn down to build a multiplex. If so, would anyone ever wonder where Simon Palmer’s house stood?

He took a few more questions and then Peter said that they would be continuing the signing for another half hour.

Simon started to sign a copy of issue number 34. It was one of his favorites; Fauntleroy and his sidekick Mushy Nebuchadnezzer find out that they’re infected with a rare strain of syphilis and have to travel back in time in order to make a deal with Aleister Crowley for the cure. He finished signing it and looked up to see someone come through the door to the comic shop. Someone he recognized. Someone handsome and freakishly tall.

It was the guy who had given him the black envelope.

Simon said, “Oh, shit.”

*                      *                      *

Liam got tired of waiting so he went back into the video store to get Henry. He walked into the XXX section and said, “Hank, what the hell’s taking so long?”

Henry Price looked up from the box he was looking at. “I can’t help it, can’t decide on which one to get.”

“So get them both and let’s get the hell out of here.”

“If I get two, then I might as well get three and that’ll mean trying to make even more decisions. Plus, I only have cash for one anyway unless you wanna lend me some.”

Liam said, “How come you don’t have any money? Didn’t we just get paid like two days ago? What the fuck you spending your money on?”

“You know what I’m spending it on; I’m working on a project. Anything extra gets used for paying bills and for porn,” Henry said, putting the box down and picking up Water Power.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe they have this.” He held up the cover so his friend could take a look at it.

Liam said, “So? What is it?”

“It’s this really fucked up movie about a guy who goes around forcing women to have enemas and shit like that. It’s not even really a porno.”

“So what the fuck is it doing here?”

“No, I mean, there’s hardcore shit in there, cumshots and all that but there’s an actual plot, it feels like you’re watching a real movie, I mean, sort of like a perverted version of Taxi Driver but instead of a gun and a Mohawk, there’re enemas.”

Liam shook his head. “And you watched this movie?”

“Yeah I saw it a couple of years ago. But this must be a bootleg. They didn’t release this in America yet.”

“So rent it and let’s go.”

Henry put it down. “Why? I already saw it.” He perused the movies again and picked one up. “Okay, fine, I’m getting this one.”

Liam looked at the cover. “MILF and Cookies Number 23. I heard that one’s like Taxi Driver, too.”

“Shut the fuck up, Liam.”

“You shut the fuck up,” Liam said, grinning and walking out of the XXX section. Henry didn’t know it but his friend was going to go back later on and rent Water Power.

Just for curiosity’s sake. Yeah.

Chapter Seven

Harry wondered why the hell the comic shop was so crowded. He could barely walk in the door.

The geeks really come out and play, don’t they?

There was no one behind the counter when he looked but then saw a fat guy come around and ask him, “Can I help you with something, buddy?” The guy was smiling widely, all yellow teeth out in the open and it made Harry look away.

Harry said, “Always this crowded?”

“No, we’re having a comic book signing. The artist and writer of The Adventures of Fauntleroy LeRoux is here.”

“Never heard of it. What is that, some kind of super hero?”

The fat guy laughed as if the question was absurd. “Um, no, it’s much more than that. It’s a mature-readers comic which means it’s for adults. It has great stories, really great writing.”

Ah, so I guess this is what Mike was talking about when he said adult comics. I guess I showed up at the right time.

Harry said, “Can I get a copy?”

“Yeah, just wait in line and there’re a bunch of different issues up on the tables along with the trade paperback that just came out that reprints issues number one through fifteen of the new series.”

Harry nodded and got in line behind a short girl with pink hair and a t-shirt that said she loved “Little Bing Bong”.

Who the fuck is Little Bing Bong?

He tried looking ahead at the table to see what the guy signing autographs looked like but couldn’t see anything because there were a bunch of those damn comic geeks in the way, babbling and asking questions.

Let the poor guy sign the autographs. Let the guy breathe, why don’t you? I hate geeks like that. Fucking weak ass motherfuckers who probably still live at home with their moms. Never been in a fight, never did anything worthwhile but jerk off to comic books. Losers.

As Harry thought about it, he realized the irony and smirked. Though he was quick to judge the people around him, he knew that they were harmless enough and he probably was being too hard on them. After all, he was waiting in the same line.

*                      *                      *

After seeing the tall guy walk into the comic shop, Simon signed the autographs in a nervous daze. How did the guy find him? Worse yet, what would the guy do to him now that he knows Simon was the wrong guy.

He smiled and nodded to the people in line, answering only the easiest questions, the ones that required a one or two word answer. When it was over, he knew he’d feel bad about it. He’d feel like he’d cheated the people who’d come and bought his comics but he couldn’t help it. He was probably in deep shit. In fact, he was sure of it.

Minutes passed and he lost sight of the tall guy in the crowd.

Shit, maybe he didn’t even see me. Maybe it was a coincidence and he already left. God, please let that be it.

He signed another copy of the trade paperback and handed it back to the ten-year-old boy. Then he motioned to Scott to come over and then said to him, “Hey, is it alright if I go into the back and take a break?”

Scott said, “Yeah, sure.”

Simon practically ran to the room behind him and sat down. He looked around at the posters on the wall. Among the huge pictures of Spiderman, Batman, and Ms. Tree, there were vintage one-sheet movie posters that practically filled in every other empty space on the wall. Barbara Stanwyck in Lady of Burlesque, Jean Harlow in Hell’s Angels, Jane Russell in The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown. He looked closely at them and decided that they were originals. Simon was envious.

Scott poked his head in the doorway. “Hey Simon, don’t wanna be a pest but we gotta lot of people out here. You mind coming back out now?”

“Sure.”

When Simon went back out, the tall guy was standing there, first in line. He wasn’t there before but now he was there, smiling and holding a copy of the trade paperback.

The tall guy said, “Hey asshole.”

Simon fought the urge to run back in the room but instead grabbed the magic marker and sat down at the table. The guy dropped the book in front of Simon and bent over.

He said, “You took something of mine, you know. You had every chance to tell me you ain’t the guy but you didn’t do that. So how about you give it back to me.”

Taking the book and signing it absent-mindedly, Simon said, “I don’t have it on me, okay? I’m sorry I took it, I didn’t know what the hell else to do, know what I’m saying? I was just confused. I’ll get it back to you. I promise.”

“Fuck your promises, asshole. We’re getting up right now and getting it wherever it is.”

A voice from behind said, “Hey buddy, hurry up, will ya?”

The tall guy turned around and shot a dirty look at the people behind him. Peter came up to see what the problem was. Simon saw him put a hand on the tall guy’s shoulder and thought that was a bad idea.

Peter said, “Hey there, we gotta lot of people behind you so now that you got your book signed, you mind moving aside?”

Simon watched in amazement as the tall guy actually listened to Peter and moved aside, leaving his signed book. He walked out of the comic shop and Simon felt relieved.

“What the hell was his problem, dude?” Peter said.

“I don’t know.”

*                      *                      *

When Harry got close enough he saw the guy who was signing the comics. Sonovabitch. That’s the motherfucker I gave the envelope to. Now why the hell is a fucking meth addict signing comic books. Unless…

Harry had given the envelope to the wrong asshole.

“Shit.”

And the fucking guy took it, too. I asked him straight out “Are you him?” and he lied right to my face. That asshole is dead.

He saw the guy get up from his seat and go into the room behind him. Harry got out of line and went to the front of it. Harry thought the guy at the front of the line was dressed like a psychiatrist: wrinkled khakis, eyeglasses, and a boring sweater.

Harry said, “Excuse me, buddy. My wife’s in the car and I really want to get a book signed. You mind if I hop in front of you?” He handed the guy a twenty-dollar bill. At first the psychiatrist-guy seemed like he was going to refuse but when he looked up into the intensity of Harry’s eyes, the choice was made.

The psychiatrist said, “No problem, man, go ahead.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. Then he waited for the guy to come back.

When he finally did, Harry relished the look on his face. It was priceless.

I love that look. The “Oh fuck, I’m in deep shit” look.

Harry said, “Hey asshole,” and proceeded to ask for his property back. He had to admit, though, that he was only half serious in his tough-guy attitude. He especially enjoyed the “Fuck your promises” bit. That was great. Straight out of a movie.

The guy wouldn’t budge and that pissed him off even more than him having taken it in the first place. Harry always believed that if confronted with a mistake, one should at least have the balls to admit to it and try to correct the problem.

Goddamn, the guy was spineless. I hate guys like this. Always a coward no matter what.

Finally, the fat guy who worked at the shop came up to Harry so he decided to avoid any trouble in front of the crowd and just leave. He’d figure something out later. As he walked out, he read the flyer that announced the comic book signing.

Simon Palmer, huh? Well, Palmer, you are in deep shit indeed.

He could just imagine the fear that was going through that asshole’s mind. He probably had expected Harry to go ballistic right there in the store. Then the cops would’ve come and taken him away. That coward could sit back and be satisfied that he did the right thing even though it was the pussy thing to do, the weakling’s way out.

As he walked out the door, Harry started to think of various ways to go about screwing with Palmer. Then someone came up from the side and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Heyo, buddy boy, thought that was you.”

Harry said, “Oh, hi Dave, what’s up?” It already turned out to be a pretty shitty day as it was but running into Dave Carteret made it even worse. The dickhead never shut up.

“So hey, listen. I hear you’re not really digging Terry’s vibe, the Kabbalah situation and all that jazz. What’s going on with that, man? You can talk to me.”

Yeah, I’m sure I can talk to you. And then you’ll talk to every goddamn person you know.

Harry started walking to his car, hoping that Dave would take the hint. He didn’t. He followed Harry and kept talking.

“Seriously, Harry, give it a chance. I mean, when we’re talking about God, it’s not the typical shit, you know, that bullshit they teach you in church. You don’t have to be a Jew to get the benefits of Kabbalah. I mean, it’s something universal. Really helps out with the business, too, puts things into perspective.”

He just wouldn’t shut up.

Harry grunted in response and opened his car door. As Dave went on about the Tree of Life and the ten divine powers, Harry rummaged through the backseat.

He came up in one motion, sending a six-inch blade into Dave’s neck. He got in close, bringing his body close to Dave’s.

Harry said, “Take it easy, Dave. Don’t fight it and you’ll do fine, easy, easy. Don’t breathe too fast. Relax.”

Dave’s neck bled profusely and his body trembled, his teeth shivering. He grabbed onto Harry’s jacket but let go after a few seconds, realizing he didn’t have enough strength to do anything anyway.

Harry hadn’t planned it. He knew what he did was partly as a result of the bad day he was having and partly because he wanted Dave to shut the fuck up. The fact that the dickhead wouldn’t stop pressuring him about the Kabbalah probably factored into it, too.

Goddamn guy’s worse than the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“Sorry, Dave,” he said, easing the body into the backseat of his car. Now there was the problem of what to do with the body. If it was just any old fucker, Harry had a whole myriad of people he could ask for help from but since this was Dave Carteret, a guy closely associated with Terry Silver, it wouldn’t be so easy. Harry would have a lot of explaining to do.

Harry sat in his car with Dave’s body next to him. He thought about his limited options. Then he thought about that Palmer guy and how he could perhaps solve two problems at once.

He got out of the car and looked around the parking lot. It was a small enough lot and he thought he could probably figure out which car was Simon’s. He thought that the guy was probably not from New Jersey so if there was an out-of-state license plate, it might just be him. He searched around and looked at both the plates and the bumper stickers to see if there was any indication which was Palmer’s car.

After five minutes of looking, he got lucky. There was a Pennsylvania license plate and in the backseat, Harry saw a cardboard box full of comics.

That’s probably him. If it ain’t, who gives a fuck? Another poor sucker will have to deal with Dave, then.

Harry went back to his car, started it, and parked it close to the one from Pennsylvania. He got his tools out from under the front seat. Though he hadn’t had to do it for a while, he was adept at picking any lock. He brought his gear to the other car and within thirty seconds, got the driver’s side door opened and then popped the trunk.

He quickly and successfully brought Dave’s body out of his car and into the trunk of the other one. It was a good fit. The driver of the other vehicle didn’t seem to have a need for keeping any extra supplies in his trunk.

Guy should bring something along, shit. Extra oil, antifreeze, jumper cables, something. Christ, typical pussy who can’t do shit for himself.

After closing the trunk, he went back to his car and drove to his original parking spot. He just had to wait and see the guy come out and get into his car, unknowingly driving away with a stiff in the trunk. Whether or not it was that Palmer asshole, Harry didn’t care. Just to see some innocent fuck cart away the evidence was pure entertainment.

While he waited, Harry saw someone walk behind his car. He looked in the mirrors but when he couldn’t see anything, he turned around. Standing in the rearview blind spot was a longhead.

Harry said, “What the fuck is that guy doing?” If it was anyone else, he would’ve been out of the car and in the guy’s face, asking why the hell he was standing there staring. But the longheads had always grossed him out. He wasn’t totally insensitive to their predicament. Harry had a friend who had come back from the war with no legs and no right arm. Those things happen and it always tragic. But in Harry’s opinion, the longheads were creepy as hell and ever since the massacre at Laruso’s restaurant, he had been more than a little fearful at what those freaks could do.

Shit, the guy looks like he just lifted weights or something.

The longhead’s face was deep red, his neck muscles pulsating and his arms flexing. His elongated head was bald except for a tiny sprout of blond hair at the top. He tapped Harry’s car with his knuckles.

Harry said, “Seriously, of all the goddamn things I had to deal with today, really, I gotta deal with this, too?” He opened the door and but didn’t stand up; the longhead was short and Harry didn’t want to intimidate him by his height. Instead he just leaned out and said, “Hey buddy, can I help you with something?”

The longhead smiled and stepped closer. His hand reached into his camouflaged jacket and brought out a straight razor. Harry’s eyes widened and he shut the door and started the car. There was no way he was getting into a fight with a longhead. Even if you win, you lose. You’ll have fifty of them coming to your house to avenge their fallen comrade.

Harry drove away, circling the strip mall until he saw the longhead get distracted by a small, one-legged seagull. The animal was hopping around, tearing off pieces of a Twinkie while the longhead watched in obvious delight. Then he put the razor away and got down on his knees. He grabbed the Twinkie away from the bird and started eating it. Stale cream soon streaked his face and Harry looked away in disgust.

Fucking freak.

Chapter Eight

Simon wasn’t about to explain the whole situation to Peter and Scott even though he knew they were curious as to what the tall guy was talking to him about. He didn’t want to discuss it, though, at least not with them.

Toward the end of the signing, the crowd dwindled and Simon managed to leave a few minutes early.

“I hope you don’t mind, guys,” he said, hoping that they wouldn’t ask him to stay to watch a movie or read some more Turkish comics.

Scott said, “No, it’s okay, man but you sure you don’t want to stay, hang out a bit or something?”

“I really gotta go, I’m supposed to meet somebody.”

Peter came up from behind him and said, “Before you go, you gotta see this.” He shoved a statuette in Simon’s face.

“What is it?” Simon said. The statuette was a half a foot tall and looked like a cross between a squid and a donkey.

“It’s my version of Little Bing Bong from issue number sixty-three. I had it custom made. You like it? I saved this for last. Scott said I should show it to you right away but I wanted to make it a surprise.”

“Wow,” Simon said. “It’s pretty cool.” He actually sort of liked it but was feeling uncomfortable with the two of them grinning like horny freshmen.

“You can have it if you want. I was thinking about asking you to sign it so I can sell it in the store but I thought you might not be cool with that. So you can have it if you want.”

What the hell am I supposed to say? If I say no I look like a dick and they tell all their comic friends and then it’s “Simon Palmer is a big, stuck-up asshole who doesn’t appreciate the fans.” Yeah, that’s all I need.

Simon said, “Sure, that’s awesome. I’d love to have this. Thanks a lot.” He took the statuette, looking at it again to appease Scott and Peter. It was extremely heavy and that surprised Simon who thought it looked hollow.

The two of them kept smiling and looked pleased that Simon had accepted their gift. Then he took them up on their offer to help load the extra comics into his car.

“Just put them in the backseat, guys,” Simon said when they outside. They loaded the boxes and said their goodbyes.

Simon started his car and leaned his head back. He was more than simply relieved that the day was over but now he had to deal with the whole envelope business.

What’re the chances that the guy’s gonna spot me in my car? No way. He doesn’t know what car I drive.

He pulled out of the parking lot, intent on driving around town. Though he had only been the Thompson once before, Simon felt a connection with it. The town was a relic and he felt at home in its sleazy arms. As he drove he kept seeing signs for St. Stanley’s Carnival.

There’s a church named after a saint named Stanley? Are they kidding?

Considering that the plans with Chaps had gone down the drain, Simon decided to follow the signs to the carnival.

Ah, what the hell.

Then maybe, just maybe, he’d go to the police and tell them the envelope story though he wasn’t too sure they’d believe him.

*                      *                      *

Liam had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the radio when Henry pointed to the sign and said, “Hey, the carnival. Let’s go.”

Liam turned down the music. “What?”

“Let’s go to the carnival, I heard there’s some fucked up shit goes on there.” Henry bobbed his head and thought of the stories he had heard about St. Stanley’s annual carnival. The clandestine booths that weren’t visible to the casual attendee.

Liam said, “I thought you didn’t have any money.”

“I don’t but I still wanna take a look.”

“Let me guess; you’re going to ask me for cash. Am I right?”

“Oh, come on, don’t be a dick.” Henry saw another sign for the carnival and noticed a longhead standing at a bus stop holding a turtle.

Liam said, “We’ll stop by but I don’t want to stay long, okay?”

“Dude, listen,” Henry said. “I heard there’s a woman behind the hot dog stand who’ll blow you for five bucks and get this, she doesn’t have any teeth. You believe that? But she’s hot, I mean, not like she’s old or a junkie or anything. She’s fucking hot but has no teeth.”

“And apparently no idea what a blowjob is worth nowadays.”

Henry laughed. “Someone also told me, wait, yeah I think it was Billy Roanoke, he told me that there’s this black girl with the biggest ass you’ve ever seen who sits on you face and if you can stand it for more than three minutes, you win a prize. Thing is, get this, she’ll only sit on a white guy’s face. I think she wants to show all the white boys what a strong black woman can do.”

“What the fuck kind of carnival is this, anyway?”

“Nah, the shit I’m telling you only happens in the back, behind the regular booths and tents and shit. You gotta know the right people, grease some palms and then you get access.”

“So I gotta pay a bunch of people to have a black girl sit on my face? I can get that for free, you know.”

Henry said, “Okay, you’re missing the point. It’s the atmosphere, the excitement, the whole carnival environment. I think they also have a booth where you can throw pies at longheads.”

“That’s fucked up, Hank, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m just telling you the shit that’s there.”

Liam said, “Wait. You are going to ask me for money, aren’t you? You’re gonna see that big black girl and you’re gonna tell me how she’s waving you over and taunting you and shit and you’re gonna beg me for money, just admit it.”

“What?” Henry said, trying to sound insulted. Then he said, “Okay, fine, yeah, I’ll admit it, okay, I’m getting down on my knees, dear old pal, and asking will you please lend me some money when we get the carnival?”

Liam said, “I lend you money you better stay under that ass for three whole minutes.”

“Deal.”

*                      *                      *

Harry smiled as he watched that Palmer guy get into his car. It was perfect; he had been right about the Pennsylvania plates. Though he didn’t consider himself a genius, Harry always knew he was pretty good at figuring things out.

He followed Simon out of the parking lot and kept at a distance, not wanting to alert the guy too soon that he was being followed. That would come in time, he thought.

Gotta wait for the perfect time and then BOOM, “Hey asshole, look in your trunk.” Maybe I’ll threaten to call the cops or tell him I already did. That’d really make the guy freak out, a pussy like that would probably start crying, shit. That’s gonna be hilarious.

Harry followed him for a few miles and then saw Simon turn onto Main Street. They kept going until they passed the banner that announced, “St. Stanley’s Carnival Parking - Use Lot Across the Street”. Simon pulled into the lot and parked on the grass. Harry pulled in right next to him.

He watched as the guy got out of the car and as soon as he was walking away, Harry got out and said, “Hey.”

Simon turned around but said nothing.

Harry said, “Hey asshole. Look in your trunk.” He was relishing the look on the guy’s face. It was what he was waiting for.

Still, Simon didn’t say anything nor did he move. Harry walked around his car and went over to Simon’s. He sent a fist through the driver’s side window. Though it hurt like hell, he made no outside indication of pain. Harry always liked to keep up appearances.

He reached inside and pulled the level that popped the trunk but it didn’t open.

Motherfucker.

Harry said, “Something’s wrong with your trunk.” He motioned for Simon to come over. “Don’t worry, I’ll back up. Just go ahead and open your trunk.”

True to his word, he backed up a few feet until Simon started walking toward the trunk. Harry was happy; the guy still looked scared shitless as he grabbed a hold of the trunk and lifted it. His face became pale and he screamed.

Harry laughed and walked closer to the trunk. He looked into it and then stopped, the smile on his face disappearing.

Then a strange voice behind him said, “Hey, do you know who I am?”

Chapter Nine

When Chris heard voices outside, he unlocked the door and left the portable toilet.

He knew he looked like shit, figuratively and literally but he wasn’t too concerned. His first priority was finding someone he recognized. As he made his way into the middle of the carnival, he saw only strangers. He took a look at the attractions, at the Kiss the Squid booth, the mirrored funhouse, and the Take Your Picture with a Barbara Stanwyck Look-a-Like booth. They all looked like they’d be fun if he was in the right state of mind to enjoy them.

God, I just feel like giving up already. Fuck it.

Chris forced his body to zombie-walk through the crowd that was getting thicker by the moment. The smell of hotdogs, pizza, deep-fried Twinkies, and roasted cashews made him nauseous. He had to get out there but as he walked towards the exit, a middle-aged woman in a business suit tapped him on the shoulder.

She said, “Hi sir, would you mind taking a five-minute survey?”

“Who? Me? What’re you talking about?”

“A survey, sir, a five-minute survey about your satisfaction with your current choice of car insurance.” Her mammoth breasts were barely held back by her blouse and Chris noticed this immediately. His eyes were entranced as he shook his head.

“No thank you, I gotta go.”

She wouldn’t give up. “Sir, it’ll only take five-minutes but if you can’t do that now, I understand. Here, let me give you my business card and if at a later date….”

Chris tripped over his own feet as he stumbled away from the woman. He liked her breasts, sure, but her bullshit was unbearable. Besides, he had to figure things out.

He walked out of the carnival and across the street to grass field that doubled as a parking lot. As he walked through the grass he noticed something. There were huge teeth scattered on the ground and when he went to pick one up, he saw that they all looked freshly torn as if some crazed dentist went ballistic in the parking lot.

God, am I losing it?

Then he heard a child’s voice in the distance. “Look, mommy, teeth!”

Chris dropped the wet tooth he was holding and continued walking through the parking lot. Up ahead he saw two guys standing near a car. One of them he recognized.

Yeah, I know that guy or at least I know his face.

He quickly walked up but stopped when the other guy screamed. Then Chris said to the man he might know, “Hey, do you know who I am?”

The guy turned around and gave a startled look that soon turned into one of horror as something jumped out of the trunk.

It was a donkey covered in what looked like phlegm.

Then Chris remembered.

Harry. That’s my name? Is my name Harry? Is that his name?

Chris said, “Harry?” as the donkey jumped around the car, bumping it with its wet head, leaving a sloppy trail on the paint. Harry was petrified and the other guy fell to the ground. Chris was oblivious to the donkey and when it hit him in the abdomen, he barely felt it.

The donkey’s head went clear through Chris and stuck out of his back. Entrails and squid-parts splattered out of Chris and onto the donkey. Blood pumped out of Chris’s busted body as he was carried along with the animal.

Harry watched as the donkey danced around, its head sticking out of Chris’s back, galloping around the parking lot in a bloody celebration. The stringy intestines and squid-guts that hung out of Chris looked alive and when Harry looked closely, he could’ve sworn he saw some of those parts move on their own. It was as if the whole thing was some sort of donkey-squid-human monstrosity.

The donkey made a loud hee-haw and ran off into the carnival where it was met by screams of confusion, horror, and stunned curiosity. Harry got up from the ground and looked to see if anything was visible from where he stood.

Simon got up from the ground, unknowingly holding a handful of teeth he had picked up while he clutched the ground in terror. He dropped the teeth and ran to the front seat of his car.

Harry grabbed his arm. “No, you don’t.”

Despite what he had just witnessed, he wasn’t about to let this guy Palmer get away with taking the envelope. Donkey or no donkey, he wasn’t done with this asshole.

Simon made a fist.

Harry laughed and said, “You fucking pussy, just give me the fucking envelope.”

He stopped laughing when Simon punched him in the nose.

Harry said, “Don’t do that,” and then got punched again. He was about to pull out his six-inch blade when he saw the longhead standing next to the car by the passenger side window.  Harry said, “What the fuck?”

Then there was a warm flash of white light and the sound of something cracking. He realized that it was the sound of his skull splitting like an egg.

Harry saw that donkey-squid thing again but this time it was smaller, almost cartoonish. It looked liked a miniature version of what had hopped out of the trunk.

Simon raised the statuette and hit him in the head again. Then again. And again. Harry’s brains were slowly leaking out of his head and onto the front seat as well as onto Simon’s pants.

As Harry died he thought about who would take care of Smitty, his squid. Maybe Keith will take him, I hope so. He always seemed to like Smitty.

Then he looked at Simon.

I guess the guy wasn’t such a fucking pussy after all.

Simon dropped the statuette onto the floor and put his head back. He stared upside down through the window at the longhead and watched as a straight razor tapped against the window.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Simon said, exhausted.

The longhead walked away.

Chapter Ten

Henry couldn’t breathe.

Both the denim and heat were almost unbearable and he couldn’t believe he had paid money to do to do this. At first it was arousing, Bonnie in her tight jeans, putting her entire weight on his face. But then it got too much for him.

Liam stood a few feet away along with the rest of the small crowd of men waiting to have their chance with Bonnie. He said, “You had enough, buddy? You want me to go get the lady a magazine or something?”

Henry was on his back with the voluptuous Bonnie sitting on his face, smothering him with her ass. He didn’t answer Liam but instead reached his arms up to tap Bonnie on the shoulders, the agreed-upon gesture that would signal that he had had enough.

“Nah, honey, you’re so cocky, tellin’ me how you gonna stay under there for an hour, well that’s what you’re gonna do,” Bonnie said, laughing and bouncing her rump up and down.

Liam was just about to walk over and taunt Henry some more when something ran into the tent. It was a blur at first and then he saw what it was. Though it looked like a wet donkey, there were tentacles hanging off of it along with the flapping remains of a human body. The human head bobbed up and down and Liam thought he recognized the face but didn’t stare at it long enough to make sure.

Bonnie jumped off of Henry, kneeing him in the crotch in the process. She ran out of the tent screaming along with the rest of the crowd.

Only Liam and Henry remained in the tent with the donkey-thing.

Intestines and tentacles were entwined like gory vines and Liam thought he saw the head of a squid below the donkey’s jaw. Whatever it was, it was moving on its own, bouncing to its own rhythm as the animal galloped around the two of them, leaving a trail of sticky goo. Henry was still on his back, holding his sore crotch and looking at Liam.

“Are you seeing this? Is this real?” Henry said, getting up to his knees.

“I don’t know. I guess so,” Liam said, “But I don’t know.”

The thing stopped and looked at Liam. From the way it had barged in and ran around madly, he had expected the eyes to be sinister but they were almost human and even looked friendly. Then the squid-head flopped around and dropped to the ground, sliding on the trail of goo that the donkey had left behind.

Liam’s and Henry’s eyes met and they both shook their heads simultaneously. They darted out of the tent like terrified bullets, almost slipping but successfully making it outside where they saw a crowd of longheads standing around eating deep fried Twinkies.

“Let’s get the fuck out,” Henry said. As he ran through the carnival, he thought he could still smell Bonnie’s ass though he knew it was probably just the aroma of hotdogs and gyros in the air. Still, his face felt like it was still being punished by denim as he dodged the frantic crowd that was just getting over seeing the donkey-thing run past them.

In Bonnie’s tent, Little Bing Bong shook off Chris’s body and watched it fall to the ground in pieces. He felt sorry for whoever it was though he lacked the appropriate human understanding to follow through on that sorrow. Little Bing Bong, in his own little donkey way, said goodbye to the squid-head and watched it grow more tentacles and slide off out of the tent. Then he did the same.

Outside the tent, the longheads looked at the donkey, covered in sloppy entrails, blood, and sticky wetness, and felt pity. One by one, they came by to pet the beast, wiping it clean of its filth. Behind them, the “normal” citizens of Thompson came up and, ignoring their general fear of the longheads, did the same. They rubbed Little Bing Bong until he burst into donkey laughter, his feet stomping gently in a slow spasm of joy.

He finally felt free.

*                      *                      *

Liam figured that he’d never run that fast in his life. He considered himself to be in pretty good shape but he was about to fall down from exhaustion. As he left the carnival, he knocked down a woman in a business suit who was holding a clipboard. Liam thought he heard her say something about car insurance or something. He didn’t feel bad, though as he actually caught a glimpse of her panties as her feet went up.

He looked back and saw Henry close behind, his face red and generally looking like he’d seen better days. Finally they reached the car and got inside. They both sat silent not wanting to be the first to start the discussion about what they had just witnessed. Liam wasn’t sure if he should just start the car and pretend like it didn’t happen or start the conversation and get it over with. Liam decided to speak first.

He said, “You know you owe me twenty-bucks, right?”

Henry laughed.

Then Liam started the car and drove away, swerving so he wouldn’t hit the bald dwarf that was stumbling her way through the parking lot.

*                      *                      *

If asked, Chaps Goldman would admit to feeling just a little bit bad about ditching Simon.

When he thought about it, though, he couldn’t bring himself to leave the house. He was having too much fun jamming with his new free-jazz band. For Chaps, blowing his French horn was a lot more enjoyable and now that he had his band together to record their demo, he was determined to stay home until it was completed.

Chaps sat on the bed next to his recording equipment and instructed his saxophone player to go through the bit he had liked. Chaps snapped his fingers and smiled, loving every second.

He had never heard a longhead play the saxophone before.

Thank god I went to Thompson last month.

In the corner, the longhead behind the drum kit started using the sticks to poke at the window until Chaps told him to chill out and get a beat going. Soon the whole room buzzed loudly; saxophone and horn sounds squeaked against each other while the drum made rapid fire beats that shook the knick-knacks from off of the shelves.

Chaps played his horn like a man on a mission. It was almost orgasmic for him, the feeling of connecting with other musicians, feeling the music move him in ways that friends or girlfriends never could. He was glad he had cancelled with Simon. This session was much more important.

Fuck friends. Fuck going out of the house. Avant-garde jazz is where it’s at.

The longhead on the trumpet took two steps forward and wiggled his ass. Chaps loved it so much he got up and did the little dance himself. This was it, he decided. This is what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Then he thought about the longheads.

For the past few months he had gone into Thompson alone, wanting to spend some time finding himself. He thought perhaps trekking into downtown Thompson would help him but he ended up making friends with some of the longheads. Upon their request he even brought them some things: porn magazines, old vinyl records, a couple of straight razors, and a turtle.

It was all worth it, Chaps thought. Not only did he get a new band but they were also just about to record their demo. He just hoped his mom wouldn’t come up and disturb him. She always had the habit of doing that. Sooner or later he’d get a job and move out, he decided.

But once this demo gets out there, I won’t need to get a job.

He continued blowing his French horn and dancing along with the trumpet player. The music roared through the room like a high-pitched avalanche.

With his ass still wiggling, Chaps took his mouth off the horn and shouted over the music.

“This song’s gonna be called LONGHEAD BLUES!”

The saxophone player nodded his head and took one hand off the instrument. Slipping his hand into his pants pocket, he stepped closer to Chaps.

Then he pulled out a straight razor.

One of the last things Chaps thought about while he was getting his throat slit was how sad it would be that he’d never get to listen to John Coltrane’s Ascension LP again. Then he remembered that he had lent that album to Simon.

He appreciated the irony and let a great big smile grow on his face while the last of his blood bubbled out of his neck.

THE END

BONUS SHORT STORY:

BILLY ROANOKE

The last thing he remembered was having his toes eaten by a transparent squid.

Then: darkness. And then: a gradual awakening followed by the smell of cinnamon. Christ, is that mom’s apple pie?

When his eyelids finally unshielded his eyes completely, Billy Roanoke was faced with an unfamiliar ceiling. He turned his head to the right and saw an even more unfamiliar dresser covered with perfumes, face-creams, and all sorts of cosmetology goop. Billy turned his head to the left and saw a door.

Where am I? What the hell is this?

He was agitated. Regardless of any pain he had experienced during his life, he always was reassured if he knew exactly where he was and where he could go to get away from the situation.

He was also confused. The room was alien to him. It didn’t resemble anything he’d ever encountered. Billy thought there was something off about the room, something under the surface that made the reality of the room all the more terrifying.

Billy swung his legs to the left and stood up.

He fell to the ground face first, chipping his front teeth on the mahogany wood floor. “Fucking shit!” he yelled but then felt silly. Billy always believed that getting angry was only satisfying when someone was there to witness it. Otherwise, it was just like putting on a play without an audience.

His eyes went down to his feet but then Billy realized that they were gone.

It wasn’t a dream. The fucking squid ate my feet.

He almost cursed again but held it in. Swallowing his pride, he lifted himself up with his arms and dragged himself toward the door.

The cinnamon smell abruptly turned to smoke. Mom, you’re burning the pie!

Billy’s nostrils twitched as he put his hand on the doorknob. He screeched in pain. The doorknob was like molten lava in the shape of a breast.

A velvety layer of smoke slid from under the door and entered the room. Billy almost thought he even heard the flapping sound of flames.

The house is on fire!

With all the energy that fear and adrenalin could provide, Billy dragged himself toward the other side of the room and sat up against the dresser. His shoulder bumped into it and a small vial of perfume fell over, rolled down, and fell on top of Billy’s head, shattering in the process.

One nostril sucked in the sweet fumes while the other choked on smoke.

Billy looked out the window and saw only a few feet of dirt and then a cliff.

Beyond that: grey water that stood still like glass. Billy also thought he saw something tiny out on the horizon.

“Here goes nothing, you stupid son of a bitch,” Billy said. He slammed an elbow into the window, smashing it. Shards fell on him like rain. His eyes were blinded yet again. He dragged himself out the window and tried to look over the cliff. All he saw was water but he thought he glimpsed his own reflection as well as someone else’s.

Is that…her?

Her.

Though his eyes were now wounded by glass and stung by perfume, he could make out her features. He cursed her and leaned over, sending himself into the water. This is what I get for fucking the fisherman’s wife.

Out on the horizon, a boat sat serenely on the water which now shuddered with waves. On board, a man sat at a small table eating. He smiled and nodded to himself, shoving bite after bite of apple pie into his near toothless mouth.

Across from him a squid sat holding a beer bottle in one tentacle and playing cards with another. “So, we playing or what?”

The man put the last spoonful of apple pie in his mouth, looked at the squid, and smiled. “Yeah, Smitty, we’re playing.”

And then they played.

During the first few games the two of them reminisced about their stint in the war. After losing several times, the squid put his cards down. “Hey, lemme ask you something.”

“Yeah, Smitty?” the fisherman said.

“Did that guy really fuck your wife?”

The fisherman smiled and threw up his arms.

“Who hasn’t?

And then they laughed.

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Krall is the author of several bizarro books, three of which have been published by Eraserhead Press. He has been praised by such authors as Edward Lee, Matthew Revert, Tom Piccirilli, Gary Coleman, and Carlton Mellick III. Readers are encouraged to contact him at www.filmynoir.com. Jordan loves Italian cult films, squid, and pancakes.

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