Monster Vice

by George P. Saunders

  “Do we have to?” I ask tentatively.

  “You want to heal, do you not, Inspector?”

  “Uh, well.”

  “Good. Now. Talk to me about your practice of self-abuse. What do you think about when you’re doing it?”

  My mind becomes a massive screen of white – how am I supposed to answer a question like this? Oh, what the fuck, I suddenly think. Go ahead, answer the woman. Maybe she knows something I don’t. I take a deep breath.

  “I – well, I fantasize about my last girlfriend, I suppose.”

  “The one you broke up with six months ago, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “What was the cause of the breakup?”

  “She said that I wasn’t ‘there’ for her enough, that my work kept me from getting ‘closer’ or ‘more intimate’.”

  “I see,” my counselor nods, with a kind of perspicacious air about her which is truly daunting. “But there were no problems sexually?”

  “None whatsoever,” I offer a dim smile. “Except that we didn’t seem to have enough of it, due to my work schedule.”

  “Or your possible latent homosexuality, yes?”

  Ah, so, we were back to that.

  “Uh –“

  “Let’s move on from that and return to my original question,” Dr. Simonhoffer waves a dismissive hand, and begins to write on a yellow pad, no doubt something concerning my newfound anxiety and dirty joy in wanting to suck (and certainly more than suck) the ever protean Cock.

  I am silent, until she looks up at me, and raises her eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

  “For what?”

  “For an answer to my question. The mechanics of your masturbatory practices.”

  “I guess I do it in the usual way,” I say, cop-wimp in full mode.

  “Show me.”

  “I really don’t want to,” I say defensively.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s very personal and it’s embarrassing. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  “I’m trying to embarrass you, Inspector,” my counselor says. “I want you to drop that wall around yourself. I want you to find that little boy who is hurting inside.”

  “You know … look, maybe as I get to know you better … I’ll feel more comfortable showing you the mechanics of, er … uh…”

  “Jerking off,” Dr. Simonhoffer smiles.

  “Yes.”

  She studies me for a moment, considering (or as she would put it, perpending), and even musing … then begins writing once more. I am relieved. She’s not going to push the Flogging The Perennial Pants-Pigeon issue. For this relief much thanks.

  “Now, I would like to talk about your mother, Inspector,” my counselor presses on. “Is she still alive?”

  I respond that my mother has been dead now close to three years. Dr. Simonhoffer nods sagaciously as if this explained so much … I am also trying to understand the clear-so-understandable nature of her nod, but fail in all secondary attempts. Perhaps this slowness on my part is due to my understandable surprise at discovering I really do enjoy the taste of penis versus that of the female genitalia [so theorizes my counselor]. My counselor presses for details vis a vis my mother’s death.

  I inform Dr. Simonhoffer that my mother died tragically, that she was in fact, killed by a falling palm tree in Miami Beach, Florida.

  “How awful,” Dr. Simonhoffer says, clearly aghast. “How did it happen, Dick?”

  “Allow me to retort,” I say, taking a breath.

  I proceed to tell her that my mother’s death was due to a confluence of sad, inexorable series of events which discerning experts at the time defined as ‘one of those things that could only happen to one person out of three billion.’

  My mother had worked with my father in the shop for over thirty years, and she was not disposed to vacations. This did not preclude my father from taking breaks whenever he pleased, but my mother lived by a very strict code – that while one had one’s health, one should always work. She never missed a day of work at Dad’s shop. It was only at the behest of the family doctor conveying to my mother that she needed to ‘slow down’ due to indeterminate blood-pressure issues, that she in fact one day did (slow down, that is…). She agreed to accompany me to Miami Beach for three days of doing nothing more than resting by the pool, after which, she promised she would be back in the dress shop, lickity-split, because, you see, she was ‘no shirker.’

  And so, that first day by the pool, surrounded by beautiful people, fauna, and palm trees, my mother pulled up a lounge chair, donned her Vogue sunglasses at two hundred dollars a pair, and began officially her vacation.

  Perhaps no more than two minutes later, as I was soaking in a nearby Jacuzzi with a possibly under-aged teen bikini model, I heard a thunderous crack. I turned to the source of the noise, and saw that a huge palm tree had split at its center. Within half a second, the entire trunk and attending leaves, was in a freefall. Within the span of another second, my mother was crushed by the tree, which stood easily at over forty feet tall, weighing in at just under one thousand pounds.

  The gardener who had been attending to the tree – an elderly gentlemen who was simply hacking at what he believed to be some dying bark-fronds with a small machete – was par chance also intoxicated [and a recently-converted atheist] minister of the black persuasion, i.e., Negro, or as he ‘put it’ to the report-driven policeman after the incident, of ‘Ethiopian descent’. Because of his tipsiness (his word), he had forgotten about the warning by a reputed expert on palm-tree root disintegration who had visited this particular resort just three days earlier, stating unequivocally that the trees in this particular resort were rife with a kind of decay component known as Ganoderma butt rot, and susceptible to damage in the extreme by anything other than sensitive and professional care and treatment.

  Ganoderma butt rot is caused by the fungus Ganoderma zonatum.[3] This organism causes a gradual decline in palms. Unfortunately, there is no cure for Ganoderma. It is most commonly a result of an injury to the trunk of the palm. After a palm is injured, the Ganoderma fungus gets inside the roots and slowly kills the tree. Such an affected victim of Ganoderma will slowly decline over a period of time. The fronds will be droopy and will eventually hang limp. Ganoderma butt rot can occur in any palm, but it is most commonly seen on areca and queen palms … the likes of which this resort was, as they say, ‘lousy with.’

  On this tragic day, the Ganoderma butt rot had eroded the integrity of the palm tree that murdered my mother, right down to the core. Thus, when the recently converted atheist minister (drunk, mind you) of Ethiopian descent, presently employed as a part-time gardener by this resort, hacked at the poor tree riddled with disease, it simply collapsed upon its own cancerous decay and keeled over dead.

  This was, by way of lengthy explanation, how my mother had passed away some three years ago.

  It was, as I refer to it, a death by palm.

  My counselor is again creating pyramidal shapes with her hands, nodding, and punctuating every other nod with an ‘uh-huh’ or ‘I see.’

  The vagaries of my mother’s passing seem of little interest to my counselor, as is evidenced by her next question:

  “Did you ever harbor a secret desire to sleep with your mother, Inspector?”

  I am [again] momentarily speechless and do not give immediate retort.

  “It’s perfectly alright to admit that you felt sexually attracted to her,” Dr. Simonhoffer assures me with a knowing smile, as if, indeed, all of her patients, or perhaps, every man she knew, held secret lust in their loins for the women who gave them birth, and that to deny such a basic, fundamental need within oneself was, in the extreme, a full-blown anathema, and even inconsequential when one is to consider the basically animalistic inclinations among the Male of the Species, in general.

  “I – really, I don’t think I felt this way at all,” I shrug helplessly, and something in Dr. Simonhoffer’s demeanor changes just a little bit �
�� a conveyance of disappointment, I think. “And I’m just wondering how all this talk of sex is enabling me to better deal with my grief for both brother and partner.”

  “If you’re going to get adversarial with me, Inspector, the healing process will simply be thwarted, or damaged, arrested before it can even begin.”

  “I’m not trying to be adversarial –“

  “I think I hear an underlying tone of combativeness, Inspector.”

  “No, really, I’m –“

  “I don’t have to sit here and be repudiated by you, or questioned, like I was some kind of murder suspect, Dick.”

  “Maybe you misunderstand –“

  “I’m the trained fucking professional in this room, Inspector. Don’t tell me how I’ve misunderstood any thing you’ve said to me thus far.”

  “I would never presume to do that –“

  “We start out from a mutual position of trust and now you’ve made a one-hundred and eighty degree shift out of healthy communication to one fueled by resentment and subliminal fury, at me, your counselor, no less. It’s mortifying.”

  I am chagrined into silence, recognizing the futility in further discussion with my out-of-her-mind counselor. I shrug helplessly – wondering how much longer this unendurable session with last.

  “Will you at least consider the obvious -- that you have a deep-rooted need to share physically with a same-gender significant other?” my counselor suddenly asks, shifts ‘gears’, as these things go, [with what can only be described as complete objective caring] and [even love] – of the greater, big-picture sense.

  I say that I will indeed consider this possibility (anything, for the love of Jaysus, just to get the hell out of here) -- that I am indeed glad that I have come here today to share in a completely objective (yet deeply subjective, from a personal point of view) analysis of my multi-faceted issues afflicting my quotidian, or day to day functions as a valuable, giving, useful, albeit highly homicidal (or monster-cidal) individual who has suffered, of late, great personal loss (and that further), I asked my counselor to forgive my just-moments-ago ‘rudeness’ and ‘ill-targeted’ rage, and that any seeming offense I may have given was no doubt predicated on, or predicated by, those same above-mentioned losses.

  “This is a very good beginning, Inspector,” my counselor tells me, now apparently fully recovered from my ostensible abuses against her.

  “Can I expect a favorable report to my captain?” I ask in abject humility, tinctured, I believe, with a certain amount of revelatory astonishment which causes me to whisper, versus speak fully aloud. As if sensing my newfound orientation to be something akin to realizing that there is indeed life after death, space aliens live among us, or that I truly am a being of spiritual light whose complexities are so unified as a whole that they cannot be described merely as sums of their respective parts, my counselor nods and speaks softly.

  “I will pass on to Captain Zelig that you and I have embarked on a great journey together, to be continued on a weekly basis.”

  I sniff, wipe a non-existent tear from my eye, nod gratefully, then stand. I turn, and exit the office, doing my very best not to break out in hysterical laughter.

  I am successful, until I reach my car.

  At which point, I break down, and do not recover for at least five minutes.

  I think to myself: I love therapy.

  Until next week.

  I see that the sun has dipped over the horizon. Nightfall has arrived.

  And the Grand Master awaits.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I arrived home half an hour later, my headache having returned and my disposition generally about as friendly as the Joy Trail of a week-dead hooker. The sun was doing a gentle melt-down over the horizon, turning the sky an orange blue, reminding me of days long gone when I used to vacation in Mexico, down Cabo San Lucas way. I wished I was in Mexico today, and especially tonight, versus where I would inevitably end up with my two new partners, facing an unholy obscenity hell-bent on our collective destruction.

  Curadal and Sam were leaning against my door, in the shadows, looking terribly rested and relaxed.

  “Are you alright, Dick?” Curadal asks, seeing me shake despite my feeble attempts at trying to hide my alcoholic infirmity.

  “Actually, no, thank you for asking.”

  Sam watches me like a cat about to pounce a mouse, but says nothing.

  Curadal glances at his watch. “It’s early yet.” He looks up at me. “Why don’t we go inside and get you freshened up, Dick.”

  I sigh the sigh of the eternally hung, then nod. “Probably a good idea,” I reply. I take out my key and open the door to my apartment building.

  In front of my apartment, Mirabelle hovers just a few feet away. She smiles at me, her vaporous form murky and intermittently transparent. I am momentarily concerned that Mirabelle’s ghostly presence might startle Curadal and Sam, but I have no need to worry. I glance at them, and they regard my phantom mistress without expression. I suppose it is silly to assume they might be freaked by a ghost – these people had successfully put down a Lycker in record time, and barely batted an eye. Benign little hobgoblins like Mirabelle probably didn’t even merit an extra breath.

  “Friend of yours?” Sam asked neutrally.

  “Yes,” I said. “Her name is Mirabelle.”

  Mirabelle floats near me as I try to control the shakes long enough to put my key into the lock.

  “How are you today, Dick?” she asks me in a low, sexy voice.

  “Been better, Mirabelle,” I say, opening the door. “Got a busy night ahead of me, though.”

  Mirabelle takes the hint, a small, disappointed expression crossing her face.

  “But don’t worry,” I say quickly. “I’m going to the orphanage tomorrow. I promise.”

  This instantly causes Mirabelle to smile and she then evaporates without another word. I indicate to Curadal and Sam to enter.

  Little Prick hisses from beneath the sofa, and does not even come out to bitch-mewl about his once-again late dinner. I find that odd, but am immediately distracted by my partner. Curadal suddenly produces a bottle from his long jacket, of what appears to be a 12 year old scotch.

  “I thought this might help,” he says to me, grinning.

  I want to hug and kiss Curadal on the spot, but I restrain myself. The inebriated look of gratitude on my face must be something truly comical to behold because Sam starts to chuckle. I take the bottle, nod a non-verbal thanks, then unscrew the cap and take a swig. The burning sensation in my throat and belly is almost instantaneously revitalizing.

  “Oh, boy,” I hiss, and drink again. I then gesture to my guests to sit down, which they do. I sink into my favorite lounge-chair, opposite my laptop sitting on a small fold-out table. I lift the bottle toward Curadal.

  “Want a hit?”

  “Thank you, I don’t drink spirits,” Curadal says smiling. “Or, I should say, not my drink of choice.”

  I look to Sam. She merely nods no.

  For a moment, we regard one another in silence.

  “This could be a very hairy night,” I said to them at last. “I mean, I’ve only run into a Master twice before, and barely came out alive on both occasions.”

  “Yes, you’re a historical icon within the vaulted walls of Monster Vice on every coast.” I think Curadal is jesting with me, but the look on his face is dead serious. In fact, he’s right. I am the only Monster Vice agent, anywhere, to have survived multiple Master encounters.

  “It is going to be dangerous,” Curadal continues matter-of-factly. “And he knows we’re gunning for him, which stacks the odds further against us. But we must start somewhere.”

  The sun continues to creep over the edge of the world, and the light outside my apartment window gradually dissipates. We sit there for awhile, none of us saying a word. Sam never seems to stop staring at me … and I don’t mind one little bit. Like some bench-worn pathetic drunk, I sit there nursing my scotch, as Curadal and Sam
remain fairly motionless – watching me. I know that I should feel something akin to embarrassment – my fellow warriors watching one of their own get smashed. Yet I don’t feel remotely self-conscious or guilty. Nor do I believe that my two guests for a moment want me to feel as such.

  “Mirabelle seems nice,” Sam finally says something.

  “Yes,” I mumble. “Very nice. For a ghost.”

  “I can tell she’s in love with you.”

  I stare at Sam point blank. I sum up that Sam is remarkably perceptive.

  “You can tell that?” I say tonelessly.

  Sam nods.

  “How is sex with a ghost, Dick?”

  Now how would she know that, I wonder through a miasma of boozy curiosity. But I am emboldened by the scotch, and shrug, almost arrogantly.

  “It’s not bad, Sam,” I say. “Very comforting really. And surreal. Because, mind you, she’s dead, and the illusion of warmth and flesh is just that – illusion.”

  “Doesn’t take away from the come-factor, though, right?” Sam asks matter-of-factly.

  I suddenly imagine that Sam in bed must be an incredible experience. She recognizes no boundaries, and asks intimate questions on a coolly casual and clinical level. I am intrigued, and feel an erection coming hard upon, as ‘twere.

  “No, that factor is not affected, Sam.”

  Sam smiles warmly at me, as if sensing I’m boasting half a stalk even as we speak. I cross my legs and take another jolt of 12 year old comfort in a bottle.

  I am also more than a little convinced that Curadal and Sam are truly only professional associates. I cannot put my finger on it, but what they have is completely nonsexual. As I become gradually drunker I again entertain notions of a romp with Sam at some point down the line. Something in her eyes tells me she might be receptive to this, though where and when, I cannot say. I begin to drift from the effects of the alcohol. Perhaps to say I’m merely drifting is a misrepresentation because it seems as if I’ve closed my eyes for only a few minutes and in fact several hours have passed. Curadal is now standing over me with Sam at his side.