F*ckload of Shorts

  Upon waking he saw that the body lay beside him in the grass and that it was, even then, being fed upon by bold scavengers who took no notice of him. With a start, he rolled to his feet and decided to let the animals claim her. It would be peace enough as her type was likely ever to know and if it brought him a restful night of sleep and a firming up of his bowels, so much the better.

  Through the night he slipped under sleep a dozen times and came up again clutching his breast a few minutes later. His attempts to shirk the visions were futile and his efforts with the witch’s body in vain. Even if he had succeeded in burying her, he knew it would have been fruitless. He cried in frustration and seethed in anger at his heavenly father who had abandoned him. The day found him limp and spent, gaunt and so pale that he had been turned away by the gaggle of terrified collaborators he led. They agreed he looked like death and they would go the day without a lynching.

  He had retired back to his cot where he’d fallen into a more substantial sleep, which produced a dream that he was not able to escape this time.

  He stood in the pulpit before his congregation waiting for the Apostle to speak. But his mentor stood mute in the aisle, glaring at him with the perspicacious sight of The Spirit. Chalfont thought to appease him with words, but felt his insides shudder and a weak belch escape his mouth accompanied by a smell like spoiled eggs. The Apostle imperceptibly flared his nostrils and tilted his head. The intensity of his gaze Chalfont could feel on his face like breath. A tickle on his upper lip caused him to touch his fingers to his visage. Upon taking his hand away he studied it, and found that there had begun a nosebleed. He tried to sniff back the trickle of blood and then clutched at his nostrils. He then began to blow trying to dislodge the obstruction inside. After three brief attempts to clear the passage he felt the object work its way out of his airway and pinched it between his forefinger and thumb as soon as it had cleared the orifice. He saw the Apostle drop his gaze and heard the congregation gasp as he pulled the worm from his proboscis. He held it up to inspect and it began to twist and wriggle in increasing agitation.

  Chalfont dropped the creature and gagged. He coughed and spit three pale maggots onto the floor beside the worm. The front three rows of the church stood and the Apostle turned and began to slowly walk out of the room. Chalfont cried out after him, but no words came, only a great slug which he extricated with his hand and cast away with such force that it rocked the wood podium he stood behind. A woman from the flock screamed and the Apostle disappeared through the chapel doors which shut with such certainty behind him that everyone in the congregation had been startled and turned around to regard them.

  A steady and increasingly heavy procession of crawling things erupted from Chalfont’s mouth and clogged his nose and trickled from his ears, though he remained standing and never stopped trying to speak. By the time a great serpent had slid from his anus and was poking its head out the leg of his trousers the church was in an uproar. Women were crying, men were cursing and some were trying to force open the doors that would not budge.

  Though unable to breath for the flow of herpetological beasts from every aperture of his body, Chalfont began to laugh.

  It turned to sobbing as soon as he woke.

  The witch’s house had a Persimmon tree growing right through the middle, a hole in the floor and roof, and Avery wondered at its significance. Set into the woods in no cleared area either by laziness or design, there was a small vegetable garden preceding the door and separated from the forest only by a creaking gate, which Chalfont entered through, announcing his presence to the seer, though he wondered if that were necessary.

  He’d left his shiny star at home and worn unfamiliar clothes in an effort to hide his identity. A man of God by reputation still, and a semi-deputized vigilante, he was more concerned with concealing himself from the hoodoo darky for fear she’d clam up and refuse his patronage than that some Christian citizen would be scandalized by his consorting with evil spirits. His desperate need to touch a spiritual dimension again had brought him this low; demons and niggers, but the ethereal plain it would be.

  The front door opened while he was yet five strides away, and he beheld the Negress, impossible to say how old, but a handsome woman with a healthy build. She was dressed in rags, but they were clean and her hair was occupied in twisted together ropes and given to adventurous trajectories, around her face and over her shoulders, once sprouted. She tucked her chin and cocked her hip slightly, resting her left hand upon its sturdy form and gave him a look that was part enticement and part challenge. Chalfont stopped his advance and held up his right hand in greeting. She gave him a good once over and glanced about the woods quickly before jutting her chin out and addressing him. “What you want?”

  Chalfont reached slowly into his breast pocket and withdrew his wallet, stuffed with Confederate currency and showed it to her.

  The African scoffed. “Ain worth shit nohow.” Chalfont smiled and pulled out a bag of gold and silver coins from about his waist and tossed it to her. The woman caught his pouch and inspected it disinterestedly. “What you want?”

  Chalfont paused. What exactly did he want?

  He settled on, “I want to talk to God.”

  The witch laughed a low and pitying chuckle, and Chalfont felt anger rising in him. “Go home and pray, Christian. Jesus be listen to you.” She tossed the coin purse back to him and began to close the door, but Chalfont stepped forward and put his foot in the gap. The door stopped on his boot and she increased the pressure, but he held his place. When he saw her eyes again, the change was marked. Gone was any pretense at demureness, her teeth were bared and her voice was a hiss. “Go away, Christian.”

  But Chalfont pushed back, “I want to talk to the dead.”

  The woman continued to push, “Is an abomination, dey kill me for it.”

  Finally, Chalfont withdrew his foot and the door slammed in his face, but he did not leave. “I want to pay you for it.” He listened to the still night. “Please.” Suddenly, the anger was gone and it was replaced with desperate fear again. His eyes watered and his breath caught in his chest. “Please, I have to.”

  The door creaked and opened a few inches. Chalfont stood still, holding his breath. From inside the tiny house her voice came to him as if from the depths of a cavernous space. “Come in, then. Close the door behind.”

  The cabin did seem much larger inside than out, even crowded as it was with exotic and profane paraphernalia. Pairs of chicken’s feet tied together hung from nails in the wall, folded paper parchments of ground spices that he could not name and at least four different types of mossy vegetation hung in cascading formations from pots suspended from the low ceiling.

  A modest fire barely burned in the corner, but filled the space with a pungent smoke that made Chalfont’s eyes water and his breathing deliberate. “Sit down,” came the voice, but he still couldn’t place her in the room. He did find a seat fashioned from a tree stump and sat upon it before a small, but heavy wooden table. Chalfont turned his head to find her and saw nothing behind him, but when he faced forward again, she was seated opposite him on the other side of the table. “Now den,” she took his hand in hers and the touch was like ice that traveled up his arm and through his torso putting out a fever that he had not even noticed was there. “Tell me who it is you wan to speak wit.”

  “Naaman Mosley.”

  If she recognized the Apostle’s name, she did not show it, only concentrated on his touch for a full minute. Then she selected some dried leaves and ground them into a powder. She removed a water pot from its place over the fire and strained it through them, making a tea, which she offered to him and told him to drink. He did. Chalfont had never tasted anything so bitter, but the warmth of it seemed good in his stomach. He felt a ball of calm, ringed-round with a coat of prickly sensitivity begin to grow inside him. He sprouted goose flesh and an erection after a few minutes.

  She sang softly or chanted a mumbly, indistinct parade of sound
s that made no sense to him, but held an atonal cadence that he fixed on and learned and went with instinctually, anticipating its rise and fall. She continued repeating her song and watched him closely for some time, and he tried to do the same and hold her steady in his gaze, but she kept shifting suddenly to the far edges of his periphery, slipping the grasp of his gaze, though he was quite certain she was sitting still. Finally, he bent over and vomited a thin, black stream of tea and bile onto the earthen floor and when he sat up again, she closed her eyes and hummed a single low note.

  She held that note for an impossible term, increasing the volume and intensity until her eyes popped open to reveal only white beneath her ocular hoods. The humming stopped and she began to hyperventilate with quick, shallow, noisy breaths. And then the voice of the Apostle came forth from her lips.

  “Who is calling me?”

  Chalfont didn’t know what to say. Finally he stuttered, “It’s me, Naaman. It is Chalfont.”

  The witch’s face contorted in a mask of terror and she produced a strangled cry, which she held quite independent from the Apostle’s voice. “Why have you disturbed me?”

  Chalfont quaked and fell to his knees. He pressed his forehead into the floor and cried. “I am so greatly distressed. The enemy advances unabated, sacking and burning and destroying everything and God’s spirit has left me and does not answer.”

  Now the witch formed words of her own with great effort. She hissed at Chalfont, “You have tricked me and come to kill me.”

  “No,” said Chalfont.

  “Yes,” she said. You are the one murdering mediums.”

  The Apostle spoke to the woman through her very own faculties. “No harm will come to you on account of this man. He has been brought here to degrade himself by the hand of God.”

  Chalfont sobbed. “Why? Please help me. Tell me what I should do.”

  The witch’s voice was now merely a faint whine underneath the sound of the Apostle. “You should prepare yourself to die, Chalfont. You have made yourself the adversary of God and He has considered you chaff and delivered you into the hands of your enemy. Tomorrow you will surely die.”

  Then the Apostle left. The witch’s eyes rolled back into her face and she looked at Chalfont with terror and rage. The terror receded some and the rage evaporated at the sight of Chalfont lying on his side on the floor, his head resting in a pool of snot and tears. She got up from where she sat and began to prepare food.

  He emptied all his strength to cry in ten minutes and lay quietly awake on the floor until the woman brought him the meal she’d prepared. “Sit up,” she said with the gentle firmness of a mother. Chalfont obeyed and she fed him spoonfuls of a brothy soup that sharpened his senses to the point that he finished feeding himself.

  When he had eaten enough, she helped him to his horse and once astride, she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” asked Chalfont.

  “I’m sorry that it wasn’t better news.”

  When he returned home, he did not stable his horse, but set her loose to do as she pleased. He spent that night, his last on earth, listening to the trickle of scout riders passing and prophesying the great current of the devil’s flood.

  With the dawn came smoke from the fields of his neighbor and the great creeping swarm of Shermanites, their image slippery through the heat. Avery set his own barn alight and strode toward their army with his a pistol in his hands, his bible left to the flames. As they began to separate into distinction and he discerned the countenance of their fore, he called out, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” before shooting himself through the brain.

  Viscosity

  "You country boys are fucked up. All I'm sayin."

  "Like you popped your cherry in the prom queen."

  "Far as you know."

  "Get the fuck outta here."

  "Nah, he's got sisters."

  "What are you implying?"

  "Jus saying. Why would you need to get creative? All that natural snatch at hand."

  "Creative? That what you're calling it?"

  "What else?"

  "Like I said, you country boys are fucked up."

  "Hear that, Mike? Says we're fucked up."

  "I hear that, Tom. Sounds like a jealous man, lashing out."

  "Whatever."

  "You're right, Mike. Sounds like a man thinking, 'Damn, I didn't even eat the shit'."

  "Didn't."

  "See? Never had fried chicken either, huh?"

  "Just cause you some seriously disturbed hillbilly don't give you cause to attack my momma's cooking."

  "The night is young, my friends, the night is young."

  "Keep it up, you'll see how young this night is. Keep heading that direction you'll see real quick this night is fucking geriatric."

  "Sounds like a man tantalized."

  "Sounds like a man uncomfortable with an awakening."

  "Check please."

  "Oh take it easy. There's no judgment here."

  "I tell you what, I will not be that drunk tonight or ever. White people all like you? 'Cause that might explain a thing or two."

  "People all like us, period. Not as smart, all of em, but made of the same stuff. Including you, my man."

  "First I ever heard of it and I'm no innocent."

  "Okay, okay. Then what?"

  "You askin?"

  "You heard me."

  "Just so y'all know you're some sick motherfuckers, I'll answer. Tennis ball cans."

  "Wha-?"

  "No!"

  "How exactly?"

  "No way. Got like a three inch diameter."

  "Yeah."

  "Do you wanna hear, or not?"

  "So explain."

  "For a master race, y'all some slow sons of bitches. Got yourself a can-"

  "Like a tin can with the pressure and shit?"

  "Yeah, they got pressure, but all the ones I ever seen were plastic."

  "Amazed you saw any in your neighborhood."

  "Racist motherfucker. I could take you any day."

  "Well I never played that pansy bullshit."

  "Yeah. You must've got yourself beat the hell up every day."

  "Not for tennis."

  "No?"

  "No. We played at night. In the summer, at the public courts, after the lights would go out around ten. My boy Maleek and me? We'd go up with a couple of beat up old rackets we got at the pawn shop and collect all the balls the white folks left. Then we'd soak 'em with lighter fluid and -whoosh- ... was like tracers or some shit."

  "Bull-"

  "No, really. You could hold it in your hand and everything. Didn't burn, 'casue the flame always goes up. Sometimes we'd just play catch with our bare hands."

  "Huh."

  "Burned a long ass time too."

  "Should have that on ESPN. Smokeball."

  "Yeah, then the loser has to fuck the can."

  "Explain that, now."

  "Y'all making me lose my train of thought."

  "How far away was this court?"

  "I don't know, ten blocks?"

  "What does it matter?"

  "Just wondering how important smokeball was to you guys."

  "Who cares?"

  "Yeah, man why you care?"

  "I wouldn't walk three blocks for tennis."

  "Nah, man, but you'd scoot your narrow white ass all over the pumpkin patch for a date."

  "So were you like always gettin a boner watchin Jimmy Connors?"

  "Didn't watch that shit. Shit. Just 'cause I play don't mean I'm obsessed. Got better things to do with my time than watch people in white shorts-"

  "So, after an exhausting night of smokeball and a fucking epic journey home-"

  "-you crawl into bed and reach underneath for your tennis ball can Cindy-"

  "Pam."

  "Coffey. Hell yeah."

  "Okay it was stuffed right?"

  "Stuffed?"

  "With like bread crumbs and savory seasoning?"

&nb
sp; "Tissue. Kleenex. And generously lubed with uh-"

  "Vaseline."

  "Sometimes. Or any sort of moisturizer."

  "I used vegetable oil sometimes."

  "On fruit?"

  "No. With my hand. Smell made me hungry though. Was a little disconcerting."

  "Dude, one time I used some serious poison."

  "What?"

  "No shit. My mom was out of the house and I was making a night of it. Jacking off with all the different stuff in the house."

  "Once with a bar of soap-"

  "Yeah-"

  "Ever use the hand pump stuff?"

  "Yeah, plus like Dawn dish soap and shit."

  "What else?"

  "Uh peanut butter and jelly."

  "Together?"

  "Yeah, plus my dog helped out."

  "No!"

  "Didn't really help, though. Tongue was all rough. But he was hard to discourage. He really liked peanut butter."

  "You sick fuck."

  "Oh like you're not a cantaloupe cuddler."

  "What poison?"

  "Was some sort of furniture polish."

  "No shit."

  "Burned like shit, but good viscosity."

  "Vis- what?"

  "Too bad."

  "You get sick?"

  "Yeah. Felt pretty shitty for a couple days."

  "Tell your moms?"

  "No. Like I gotta add to her worries. Just curled up and told her my stomach hurt. Burned when I pissed and I'll tell you what else... My dickhead swelled up like an arrowhead or some shit."

  "Yo, me too."

  "What?"

  "For real. Sometimes when the cans weren't tight enough and I was using a shit load of moisturizer I'd squeeze my dick like it was a venomous snake. I mean both hands all slippery and smooth by now turning white trying to choke that thing and then afterward shit would swell up just like he said."

  "Freaked me out."

  "Me too the first time."

  "What'd you do?"

  "Nothin. Freaked out. Just looked at it all the time."