by Alex Johnson
“Honey, I’m going to get you a cooling drink. Just get comfortable on the sofa and I’ll fetch that for you right now.” Yvonne moved slowly, inching her way past her husband, who was still on his knees.
“When Jesus took the Death Ball championship and was crushed by heathen cleats, we wept, and were sore afraid, but did not understand. When Jesus returned from heaven with a message of glad tidings, we wept, and were sore afraid, but did not understand. When Jesus proclaimed, here is the Death Ball, take it and play it in my name, we understood a little better but were even more sore afraid because Jesus was a scary ghost. Now we have heard, and not wept, and indeed understand to the limits of our comprehension. But our wives and daughters have been swotted with an evil club and their understanding is diminished.”
***
“How long has he been like this?” asked Dr. Owens, pen poised over his notebook.
“I tell you Doc, I’m not crazy,” said Von Gooch. “The times they are awry.”
“I have to agree with you on that score,” said Dr. Owens. “The times are a bit awry. Wasn’t it Zekaboah in the Book of Stone Gibberish who said…”
Yvonne looked from the doctor to her husband, then back again. “I can’t believe it. You sound exactly like him.”
The men entreated her. “Mrs. Gooch,” said Dr. Owens, “it may be difficult to fully comprehend now, but we live in a dangerous climate for our faith. You have seen your own daughter wrestled from the flock of the believing and inseminated with the very jissom of wrath.”
“I’m sorry, did you just say ‘jissom of wrath,’ Dr. Owens?”
“It’s a figurative expression, no more. My point is that I absolutely agree with your husband. Something must be done, and done soon, or the very fabric of our exceedingly blond community will be torn apart and diluted with the fabric softener of the damned. Our children will turn to basketball, solvents and even worse—hair dye. They will turn their naturally straight hair into the Aunt Jemima’d horrors that even now bump and grind around us. This trend must be stopped, and stop it we will, as long as we stay strong and use state-of-the-art science.”
Yvonne was starting to turn green. Her world had spun 360 degrees. She wanted to believe, but she was frightened. The doctor was sprouting the same nonsense she’d heard from her husband; what was worse, even she was starting to see the world through their eyes. It reminded her of the one time in college she’d drunk the special punch. Ah, the fun she’d had, the license, the frolic, the liberties, an entire week of polymorphous promiscuity, all sanctioned by the calm, benign hand of Coach Jesus and his special medicine. That was when she’d first met Von.
“We must bring back the pure blond strain,” said Dr. Owens. “Unfortunately, my knowledge of genetic science is very limited. However, I have a colleague, Dr. Shreck, who is more than capable of handling the exigencies of this project. He will infuse future generations of our youth with docile, placid hearts, smooth minds and a guiding vision of Coach Jesus crossing that final goal line with the Death Ball, his streaming locks clotted with the gore of victory, his sandals on fire, his eyes—oh his eyes, ablaze with such gentleness, and such cruelty, that we will all bow before the tent of his robe and worship him in an unspeakable fashion.”
“Would anyone like some iced tea?” asked Yvonne. Her brain had begun the process of shutting off. She would leave it to the men to handle things, as she always did, eventually.
***
For Shreck, it was always and forever about Andy.
Bowie had been right: Andy Warhol did look a scream. Most important, you could stick him anywhere and he fit right in. Better—he made the anywhere comfortable with fame, notoriety, random car crashes, race riots, police brutality, death by electricity, glamour, the big screen, loops of film piled on the cutting room floor like so many intestines.
If with his dexterous butchery Jack the Ripper had inaugurated the 20th Century, it was Andy who had birthed the 21st. Before Andy, it was still possible to feel—awe and terror at things like genocide, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, the proliferation of uncanny Japanese toys—to reach out from wherever you were to the suffering others crowding an increasingly small planet.
But after Andy, it was all about the look. Soldiers fresh from the desert wars found themselves cut off, abandoned by the very government that had sent them to fight biological and chemical terror for the sake of democracy, freedom and justice for a few. But they looked good on film. Brat girls grew up sunburned by the media spotlight and transformed from cartoons of innocence to grotesques of vampiric whoredom. And by extension, or proxy, the vast viewing public acquired their stories, internalized the pain and projected the difference into a yen for even more technology, the tiny boxes growing beneath their tapping fingers to encompass one universe after another, always more gory, more exciting, crammed with more adventures, apps within apps like wheels within wheels, forever and alpha omega soup amen.
But the dread was gone. Well, not gone exactly, but isolated, compartmentalized, placed in a box and dragged to the limbo of trash where it might or might not be awoken to add extra spice and zip to the plot. Conflict in its geometrical purity had replaced the agony of facing your opponent. Long-range drones solved the problem of confronting your opponent’s humanity. The walking dead had infiltrated every level of society: now,you too could be a zombie. And tap out the eyes, and tap out the heart, and press out the fears, and start again.
All because of Andy.
If Andy could be stuck anywhere, then you could be stuck anywhere. You could cut yourself out of the picture and plant yourself in Van Gogh’s back yard. You could cut the Hindenberg disaster in half and transplant your head into the flames. You could edit out the flames and transmute yourself into them, a walking glow, never to die, never to be born except on the screen, or on paper, on television, in the movies, a there that was never here, a here that would never fade, until the next press of the thumbs, the next push of the button, the next taxi ride to the dark side.
Existential doubt had been swapped for blasé certainty. Tools for communication had destroyed thy neighbor’s face, his features mediated by an ever more complex series of codes that for all intents and purposes doubled, tripled, preserved in amber the essence, all you ever needed, really—fame, sex, excitement, languor, the itchy caress but not the stinking carcass, the walking bones but not the long wait for the resurrection. Unless you wanted it, and then the resurrection itself teemed with chambers, mazes, exits and entrances, where jackal-headed beasts roved with machine guns and God was just a mouse-click away.
VII.
“And that,” said Ms. Crampton, “concludes the story of Macbeth, in which an army of trees take down a tyrant. I think we can all learn something from that. Don’t you think?”
To amuse herself, if nothing else, Samantha Crampton liked to employ a bit of humor to engage her second period seniors.
She looked around, registering the class’s reaction.
In the back of the class, three of her students were huddled together over a fashion magazine and giggling. Further in, the school’s Death Ball hero, Buff Dudeson, appeared to be locked into a bout of serious self-love, his eyeballs far gone in the white, his ragged breathing punctuated by the occasional “suck it hard for Daddy.”
Ms. Crampton couldn’t help but take a peek under the desk, where Dudeson’s otherwise pristine Anthology of English Literature barely hid a cock of astonishing length and girth. She bit her lip, cursing the ethics that governed teacher-student relationships, as Dudeson’s massive hand moved like a piston. And shut her eyes, telling herself how much she needed her job. And forced herself to focus on the front row.
There sat her best and brightest, sitting with attitudes that perfectly mimicked the alert scholar. Pencils were busily scribbling notes, eyes were scanning the board to see if they’d missed any crucial information Crampton might have placed there. Even though she knew they were just acting, Crampton solaced herself with the illusio
n that these, at least the front row set, had the good manners to pretend to pay attention.
She couldn’t wait for fourth period prep, where a large, tasty cookie, loaded with hash oil, waited patiently in her purse. She could practically taste it. They were only 15 minutes into the class, and already most of the students had gone missing—mentally, if not in actual fact.
“Trees, Ms. C?”
Now it came, the dreaded snarking. Crampton braced herself, reminding herself of the paid vacations and other perks of her profession. If she were lucky, she would end the day not with bitterness and self-recrimination but in a glorious haze of Chunky Monkey and the Green Crack, laughing herself to bits over the stupidest movie she could find.
“Yes?”
“Was that, like, supposed to be funny?”
“Could you expand on your question, please?” said Crampton, buying time before the inevitable.
“Your joke,” said Tabitha Tuffington, trying vainly to separate a wad of pink bubble gum from her luminous blonde hair.
“I’m glad you caught that, Tabitha. Yes, I suppose I indulged myself in a little humor. The Bard can be funny, you know. Remember the drunken porter scene?”
“Huh?” said Tabitha.
“The hilarious bit about ‘standing to’?”
“Huh?”
“Okay, maybe I’m not following your point.”
“Whatever, I just mean that you make these jokes and nobody gets them. They’re not funny or anything. They’re just lame.”
Ms. Crampton flushed. At least they were engaging the subject, even the wild periphery. It was better than the usual complete non sequiturs.
Then she noticed something strange.
Either Tabitha was crying, which would account for the runny, wet look her flesh had acquired, or—the other option was bizarre, but what else could explain the way her face was oozing down her chin--other than that…she was melting.
Crampton had seen many weird sights in her first year of teaching, but this was a new one. She racked her brain but failed to recall anything in her training that dealt with this specific problem.
“Tabitha…” she asked, her voice trembling, “are you feeling okay?”
“Never better,” said Tabitha emphatically.
“Maybe you’d like to see a nurse?”
“Are you fucking retarded? No, I don’t need to see a nurse. I feel great.”
“I’m going to ignore that blatant show of disrespect,” said Ms Crampton. “Just this once.”
“You always do,” said Tabitha complacently. The girls behind her giggled.
“Do you realize that…” but she couldn’t complete the sentence.
“Realize what? Just spit it out.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs and her face flushed bright red. Nothing had prepared her for the mixture of arrogance, rudeness and sheer—the only applicable word was twatdom—displayed by her students. It was as though they truly believed they were invulnerable. Because Daddy worked in the industry, and so did mommy. Their hard little eyes sent the clear and distinct message that they could buy her, or, if necessary, have her meet with a little accident on a lonely road.
“Would you just…” Crampton stammered, “take a look at yourself. In your makeup mirror.”
“Rude!” said Tabitha. “I’m sure I’m flawless.” Nevertheless, she fished out the mirror from her purse, sighing heavily like she was humoring a small child.
“Okay,” she said, poised in front of the hand mirror. “Oh, I’ve got some gum in my hair. So gross!”
There’s something wrong with you, thought Crampton. Something deeply wrong. And not just the usual blatant disregard for the feelings of others, the vanity, the narcissism, the thick money shell.
“Okay,” said Tabitha, slamming down the mirror. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I look fabulous.”
She turned around to soak in the rays of encouragement and agreement that usually met such a self-evident statement. Her nose was floating somewhere around her upper lip, and her eyes were drooling a yellow custard-like substance. Her best friend, Samantha Dubois, dropped her cell phone in horror when she saw Tabitha’s face. The cell clattered to the floor.
“Oh!”
“What’s ‘oh’?” asked Tabitha.
“Nothing?”
“You’re acting really strange. Why can’t you look me in the eyes?”
Roused from sleep by a shift in the classroom dynamic, Tabitha’s unofficial fan club stirred. Brenda, Buffy and Bernadine reacted as a group—crying, vomiting and spilling their small salads. Tabitha shook her head, splattering her fans with gobbets of congealed skin, muscle and tendon. Her immaculate blonde hair was falling out in clumps.
“Could somebody please explain what’s going on?” asked Tabitha, exasperated.
“Brenda, Buffy and Bernadine?”
“Yes, Ms. C?”
“Please escort Tabitha to the nurse’s office.”
“You’re all crazy!” shouted Tabitha, rising from her desk and clutching her purse to her chest. “I am not going to just sit here and take this madness!” Shoving and pushing her way to the back door, Tabitha slammed into Principal Bender.
“Are you all right, young lady?” asked Bender, looking past her through the open door. A commotion had broken out in the back rows, students milling about covered with what looked like pizza cheese. Tabitha began to sob, throwing her arms around Bender.
“There, there,” he said, doing his best to sound comforting. The girl looked terrible—her makeup was running, and it was thick, and there was a lot of it, to the point that it seemed as though her face was coming off. He looked down and gasped—Tabitha’s makeup was smeared to his sweater vest, and when he took her by the shoulders and gently pushed her away, thick strands of makeup formed a ropy bridge from her head to his vest.
The makeup looked like the pizza clumps. He smeared some between his fingers and noted the consistency—more like gooey flesh than any makeup he was aware of. Tabitha’s eyes were slopping out of their sockets, her chin was running down her cleavage, and her forehead was dripping like candle wax.
Tabitha’s fan club followed in a cluster. “Principal Bender, what’s wrong with her?” Brenda wailed.
***
Entering Room 110B for her prep hour, Linda Bumgarten felt nervous. The Tuffington girl had been in her first period Home Economics class, right before the melting incident that had made the rounds of the school’s rumor mill, gathering horrific detail every time it passed from the ears to the mouth of another student. Although she hadn’t observed it at the time, Ms. Bumgarten began to wonder if she hadn’t seen the start of the girl’s facial slippage when the class was working on the gingerbread cookies. There they lay in rows on waxed paper, fresh from the oven and smelling good and tasty, only they seemed sinister to her at present, recalling tales told around the hearth by pervy uncles, dark legends of lust and baked goods.
Despite the cold flush of the air conditioning, the room felt hot. Third period had been almost unbearable for her, and she felt her forehead to see if she might have a fever. She was also oddly horny. When she turned her back to the cookies, she could almost swear that they were moving in a sexual way, peeling from the waxed paper and popping out enormous sexual organs. Her forehead was cool to the touch, therefore it couldn’t be a fever that was affecting her thus, but something else. As she walked among the students, commenting on their efforts and rendering praise and critique, there had been an almost palpable heat coming towards her, a wave of ambient desire. She thought maybe it was due to the meltdown and the students’ excitement at seeing one of their classmates lose face in such a literal way, but even in their absence, she felt it still. Concentrated there among the cookies.
She was aware even more than usual how closely her persona matched the stereotypical repressed schoolmarm, with her blouse’s top button always primly closed and her skirts descending below her knees, her hair up in a bun and even the horned-rim
glasses perched on her slightly aquiline nose. How badly she itched to be taken, pushed down on to her knees, hard cock rammed between her lips, hot tears splashing down her cheeks as a trio of men commenced with the three hole punch.
“Fuck it,” she said finally, locking the door and first taking down her hair, then shedding her top and unhooking her bra to release the girls. As she bent over, unzipping her skirt and letting it simply fall to the floor as she stepped out clad only in naughty knickers, garter belt and stockings, she saw a shadow move from the back of the room and heard a rustling noise.
Then the cookies were upon her. She never imagined that gingerbread men could be so strong, pushing her over a table and pressing their doughy organs deep inside her, as another clambered onto the table and thrust its cock in her mouth, choking her as it reached the back of her throat. She felt sticky jets of frosting fill her ass, pussy and mouth simultaneously, pouring into her with a hot, sweet love, and her own climax built in her toes, crawled up her thighs and exploded like a star gone nova. At some point she must have fainted, because when she came to, she found herself lying on the floor, the cookies in sated heaps around her.
Eighteen Years Earlier
Ashley Fairchild was astonished, elated and maybe just a little bit nauseous.
She couldn’t believe her good luck. Within 15 minutes, she had not only made her way into the Temple of Rock and Roll—The Paradise Bar & Grille on Sundown, known to habitués as “the Pair” or, less often, “The Dice”—but he had noticed her. The King Dementia himself. Bam Crawley.
She checked her head for a tiara, amazed that she wasn’t wearing one, considering that he had called her a princess and suggested a private audition.
Looking up from her place in the booth, she wondered where the other girls had gone. Maybe they’d just evaporated out of sheer jealousy. She could only hope. Sure, they were hot, and blonde, and underaged, but maybe not as hot and blonde and underaged as she.