Unwrap Your Candy

by Jesse Miller

  Section I

  Sub Rosa

  12:00AM- Yes.

  Was it time? Was it? Perhaps not. Eyes—meet the eyes as they are the mouths of the meek and the mighty. Slowly, eyes, mouth, slowly. Don’t ask, make her. Let her, she knows, eye contact is key as they are the mouths of the mute. George’s movie. No, this. This. Now close your eyes. Lose sight. Lose grip. Pass the glowing stalagmites pushing up from the room. Pass the starlight stalactites fanging down from the sky. Fade into the next. Don’t worry. Fade. Loss. Fear not. Hover. Fall up and a a a assume a a aa a a a a ba ba ba babe babe baby babydoll slow, slow, cord, chords, catalog, catamaran slowly, slowly slow deep so deep sow deep, deeply dark dirge slowly, detergent, dust, dust of the dust, dusting dusty slowly slow, slow, slow slowly, ding dong dong dong, dis, dat, de other silently, slowly slow slow slow, slowdredge, slowerdredge, do, do, do drunk Dracula good idea good egg o~ o~ ego o o o o slow, slow, down, excise, exist o o o oelooo[f]oongate ooooo good god go, go, go, go, good, great grain, gain, slow h i j k j f m a m j j a s O n d lock and load lips, little slits, lickety splits, lay, lay, lee, lil’, low, luge, lure, lore, more, murky, mercury, merchant, merchandise, mercantile, mummery, nunnery, nunnery, mummery, mammary, memory, no, no, no ba, ba, ba, baby, baby, o o o noslow, noslow, o o o ornery, orny, orny, orny, orny oink oink oink oink, okokokokokokooooo oo o o oo omphalos o 0 O primalprickreunite,o proudfuck, o quickfuck, o ratfuck, o stoutfuck, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Thom, Thom, Thom, Thom, Samantha, Thom, Samantha, Thom, Samanthom. Thomantha. Samanthomantha o o o o unfuck, very well x-ecuted, x, x-axis, x-chromosome, Xe, xebec, xeno, zymogenic, zygote.

  COITAL CODA

  Jangaly, bangally, jangally, bangally, bangally, bangally, urruu-ga, urruu-ga, ar, ara, ara, ara, arre, arre, are, are, are, are, are, arre, arre, arre, aress, aress, arress areyes, aress, yes, yes, yes arrest, arrest, est, est, est, my be, eat, eat, eat eating, eating, heart.

  L.S.M.F.T.

  (Vampires are some silly shit, really, to drink the blood of others, feed off a life force, really, the collectors of blood, tampons, band-aids o

  Flying corkscrew of owls, puking pinecones, spin over a sarcophagus, no, no, no a black wooden coffin, wake from the crypt like stepping on rake, poof: perpendicular with the floor, arisen o

  That is the badass, though, lips at her neck the tip of the tongue to her nape, a flutter from her toes to her pigtails, a gasp, a pink tongue up her chin to measure, perfect, and then back down tracing the line, needle in a groove, erect teeth and a pause, last gasp, and then to feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedo

  Mama had a baby and his head popped off.

  A cool costume, night creature, necknotcher, spooky if done right, no fake blood or plastic medallions, float across the floor, a long, long cape to wrap the night in, dull the moon, or a disembodied head, just guts for a body wriggling and flailing for blood o

  To suck blood, do they take it from their teeth like a straw, no that’s made up, too malt-shop, no, down the gully, pint after pint like a good alcoholic, ahh ahhh all iron and nerve endings twitching down the throat, [don’t let it get caught in the teeth] no disgust, nausea, the satisfaction of smoking o

  And don’t they love that freaky-freaky eros shit, all tongues to the bung and swinging wings, ribcage like window blinds, a blistering white double-helix, crotch in cranium, peekaboo, body over body, a twitching two necked beastly thing, a rill of blood trickling from the corner of the mouth, trying to pull each other through each other, unbutton the bones from the brackets and sever the sinew, pass like smoke through air, flutter bony-bat wings like a shiver o

  Porn name: Ram Strokero

  So cold though, so cold, poor little daysleeper, upandat’em at dusk night after night, stuck in that bitch forever, pining after the sun, drenched by the cold blue shadows from the moon, alcohol wipes, what’d what’shis name, Tetanus? Is tit, hon? Oh no! Onus. Tithon. Stepping on the rake, stepping on the nail. That cold prisoner, shit on at dawn, that cold prisoner, heaven’s hostage, so sad to be suspended, sin some more, break the ice, the night sloughs off the earth, another day burns into rust

  release me, restore me to the ground

  drako-for-goodness-sak-o) o

  O

  0

  o

  Recumbent on the bed, held between the ceiling and the floor.

  * * *

  MIDOR AND SONS PRINTING

  SECURITY GUARD REPORT

  Franklin Midor

  10∕13∕04

  1st Round

  56° and clear, light breeze.

  6:05 p.m.- No sooner, than I suited up and grabbed my radio when Printing needed x-tra hand’s. Helped unload a truck of supplies.

  7:40 p.m.- Received a call from Distribution that the vending machine in the basement wasn’t working properly. Thought I could come check it out. Told them I hadn’t a clue.

  8:21 p.m.- Received a call from a woman on a VERY scratchy sell phone claiming she left something in the building. Was so scratchy, I was forced to hang up on her.

  9:11 p.m.- Received another call from someone wanting to sell me a magazine subscription. I told them “this was a place of business.” How did they get this number!!!

  10:10 p.m.- Was flagged down by women (I’m assuming the same one) claiming to have left her purse in her office. (ID# 01361- Marie Shea) Seemed upset I asked her for ID. Awfully grouchy. Must have forgotten to take her happy pills this evening!!!

  11:00 p.m.- Changed water cooler tanks in offices per WO # 531101.

  12:00 a.m.- Found boiler # 1 was set on automatic. Seems to be running well.

  2nd Round

  43° cool, full moon.

  1:55a.m.- Was startled to see a bat in main office. Approached with caution. Disposed off.

  2:45a.m.- Was checking basement and nearly sustained a serious injury as I slipped on some spilt water. Groin feels slightly pulled. Please send morning crew to check it out.

  3:35a.m.- Must be a window open or something, found 2 more bats inside!!! They seemed pretty unhappy to be moved. Difficult to catch. Will leave a note for Jr.

  4:25a.m.- Was on cigarette break on roof, when I heard what sounded to be a head-on car collision. Saw 4 suspects out front of the building assaulting a “tipsy” pedestrian. Radioed for help. Heard car pull out of our building and slam on breaks. Then saw what looked like one of the paper carriers (Mark Yoori?) hop out of car and tear by, I mean fast, and rain blow after blow on the 4 suspects. Have never seen a man run that fast. Must be the moon. When I arrived on-scene, every one had gone.

  5:15a.m.- Groin in SERIOUS pain. Called Jr. and he said it was OK I went home.

  Shift ends.

  Chapter Eight

  Section I

  Sex

  Sometime before noon? nine?- Of the wistful new adventure a big-headed Thomas Evans undertakes while reading the local newspaper, THE DAILY MASSAGER , that he found sprouting from his thighs that very morning.

  A single word from a wavy pool of thousands. He rose and picked the paper from the floor next to the bed. Thom could pinpoint it two feet away. Maybe it was the way it looked on the page… a perfect little word. A pillbox. Seething, but lean. Or the letters themselves? The anatomy. The sure, hooking sweep of the S poised like a crane over the E. The E, the fluish longing between the S and the X, the tangle of limbs. And the X, the most exotic and abstruse of all the letters. All velvety rubbing together, the wringing out droplets from flesh, the ringing out of flesh, the pinepitch friction and dreamwet fall, the faint hint of opium in the air… SEX comes from the mouth of a serpent, from the very beginning of his long smile.

  It must somehow be wrong to slip into a wet dream at the mere mention of the word SEX. Every time somebody says the word SEX, there they are: two bodies folded over each other. Every time it pops up on the page, there it is: a leggy triskelion twisting into a propeller.

  Would thiS wEar off with agE? At thirty-thrEE, would, could a pagE bE ScannEd without pinpointing Each occurrEncE of thE blaStEd w
ord automatically? No morE littlE luSty figurES baSking, armS EXtEndEd, lEaning againSt thE word, likE it iS a mErE prop. No morE miniaturE Spinning orgiES. TonguES on EvEryonE’S bottomS and topS. JuSt a cold, limp word. AbSolutE EXpungEmEnt.

  Maybe not. But at forty, surly then surrender is a must. That kind of desire is released from the body into the brain for safe keeping during the aging process. Surely at fifty, or better yet, sixty, when death isn’t a tragedy anymore but a shame. Surely at seventy, with spectacles and a breathing tube and a life support system and a plot picked and a will drawn and a neighbor behind a pale curtain looking across the street to see if a bereaved family has arrived, surely then a lousy paper could be read from face to finish without incident.

  Improperly cut, the pages stuck together. He ripped at the fringes and peeled apart the edges. She’d been gone for hours. Maybe longer. Grey light filled the empty apartment, and he didn’t bother with the bathroom door.

  * * *

  Section II

  Death

  Still a little groggy, twelve thirty, maybe?- What passed between the enthroned Thomas Evans and, rather, THE DAILY MESSENGER. Then, galvanized by the stygian coincidence of a fresh death, he pays a special visit to one Edwin Polly.

  Do or die looks, the whole lot. He ran his eyes along the congregation of grainy photos. All of the men could harass death. Looked eighteen. Had Duck’s Asses. They all had blazers and were freshly shaven. The photos were probably for Christmas cards thirty years ago and now, years later, were serving double time as the obit. If they had held on another season, would the photos have been updated? One man, Arnold Silver, of 355 Maple Ave., had his arm around a woman. The arm was almost as big as her head. The blurry outline of an anchor tattoo tied like a knot, looped around his forearm. He fought a long battle in Europe decades back and lost a short one at home a day ago.

  And how would that work? Do you know ahead of time or not? Would Mrs. Silver announce:

  –Last call. This is it.

  Then a day rolls by and Arnold goes:

  –You know, we haven’t done it in a while.

  And Mrs. Silver goes:

  –I guess we’ve grown out of it, back into our own bodies. Our leaves have fallen back into our own soil.

  Thom scanned the rest of the page looking for hooks, as was his practice. They remember their last time, treasure it even, like the first, or at least use it as a bookend to keep things straight up top. And what if the last time wasn’t a blast? Could she be left dangling, and he a failure for eternity? Maybe that’s why they drop off in pairs.

  He began to flip the page but noticed something familiar. He pulled the paper close to his face.

  Polly, E. Esther

  Green Island–Esther E. Polly, 62, of Edgar Drive, Colemans Hollow, died suddenly, Friday 13, at her residence in the early evening.

  She was born Dec. 21, 1941, in Waterford, the daughter of Maurice T. and Mary Watson. She attended St. Mary’s School in Hartford and graduated from the former Hartford Business School in 1958.

  Mrs. Polly had many different careers during her working years. She had worked at Willford’s Florist and Garden, ran the Charleston Bowling Lanes, worked on a farm, and had worked as a clerk in the New York State Labor Department.

  Most recently, she was a part-time bookkeeper for the Lott-Faye Rubber Company, makers of outstanding prophylactics, including the Stud Rubber

  Stud, rub ’er with the Stud Rubber.

  She had many interests and hobbies and especially enjoyed cooking, reading, bird watching, and gardening. She was also an avid sports fan.

  Survivors include her husband, Edwin Polly, one son, Anthony, and his wife, Patricia.

  Relatives and friends are invited to attend her funeral on Monday, October 16, at 8:30 a.m. at St. Patrick’s Church in Ravena, where a liturgy of the Word will be offered. Burial will follow in St. Patrick’s cemetery in Colemans. There are no calling hours.

  All of the coiling and legging and tubes and pots and weigh stations leading it all out of Thom’s body dialed in and shut up, shut down. There wasn’t anything to do but flush an empty toilet and stand momentarily in the empty room. His typically excitable bowels were spooked, far too fast.

  Thom called out to the room, he thought, then called out to Esther, the babble of ink on grey paper blotching out her facial features—the impossibility of it turning up here, so quickly, so fast, was dazzling. The toilet, empty now, flushed fast, had reproduced another faceless pool of water far too fast and was taking shape.

  He rotated the dial, and water slowly began to pass through the faucet as he foamed and covered his face. He took his razor from the holder and positioned it against his neck, a needle about to be released on a record. After the dead air in the room, he began to pull crisp music off his jaws.

  His eyes blurred on the image of himself thrown at the pearly mirror. It became confusing, what he was looking at. He questioned how it was designed. He cut the lights, pulling in the outline before him, motionless, featureless, silent. He began to shave by touch. The blade chased his face, his fingers followed until it all felt smooth, backward, nascent. Thom’s grip grew tighter on the razor and his thoughts drifted around untethered. In his aquarium brain, a memory swam to the surface of his consciousness with a coy little mouth that opened into a chasm and swallowed him whole…

  It’s a shithead thing and stupid, but it came over the phone. When he picked up, there wasn’t a voice on the other end, only a long exhale, like the sighs you’d imagine leak out of old houses between the warped beams and slats of rotting wood. Behind the sigh, machines were flaring, robotic noises, hatch marks streaking gaudily across the background like searing comets.

  Raymond was either mono or stereo. Today it was stereo.

  –Hey there, Thom-Thom.

  –Yeah. Hey. What’s up?

  –There’s a meeting here. It looks like I’m finally done.

  The words rose a fell and he peeled the word finally out of the cone of his mouth like fraying wallpaper.

  Thom looked across the room to his roommate, Troy, submerged under an ocean of late night vodka that glowed blue in his liver, sitting there like an electric bean under his skin. He was packed down and petrified in shale blackout sleep with his shoes on. A collection of beer cans circled his bed like diver boats.

  –Listen, I know it’s a little out of the way, but can you give me a lift? They have…my car’s not in the right condition to operate.

  Thom’s small dormitory bed was empty, though, you don’t see it that way at that age. You’d barely think of it that way at all.

  –Well, where are you?

  –I’m in the green room. Soon, they’ll be taking me out to do Sullivan. From the waist up, only.

  –No, where are you? I’m not sure…

  His words scuttled through the spats and holes in the phone.

  –I’m in Manchester. For safekeeping.

  There was a long pause. The sun seemed to rise and set.

  –That’s, like, two maybe thr—

  –Maybe three.

  Troy rolled over, the way a bear might, revealing a small, coiled nude just under his paw.

  –Okay.

  –Okay.

  There was a flatness to the way these words slipped out, like neither mouth had actually opened.

  Thom looked at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting to let last night’s bacchanal at some such dorm room pass through or seep into his bones. Once dawn began to climb the autumn sky, he climbed into his cold car and drove. It was only a psychology mid-term, and it’s just properly fucked and anti-normative to hold a three hour class anyway.

  *

  Thom pushed the gas pedal and the car eased in backward, curling into a spot directly in front of the florist. A motion sensor heralded his arrival through the door with two nasally beeps. The shop itself felt like a blood blister, swollen with dark, rich colors and an off-limits delicateness. A room with this many roses takes on the aro
ma of blood.

  Another inch shorter and Mickey would technically be considered a little person, though, midget, allowing for a nice alliterative burst, is the term she would most certainly prefer. Mick the Midget. Her feet swung out with a soldier’s cadence as she alternated between her post behind the counter and the walk-in cooler with two enormous sliding glass doors. Here it was a kind of butcher shop game where the emotionally deformed customers, fuck-ups or the fucked-up, could specify the exact flowers they needed by finger pointing and head nodding, measuring just what it would take. This is how men…men…menstruate…through their wallets, Mickey would say, clipping the stems of roses and watching the tips fall into the trash.

  –Haven’t seen you in ages, Thomas. I thought you’ve been staying out of trouble.

  –That is the impression I would like for you to have, Mickey.

  They both flashed teeth. Thom noticed just now that she wore dentures.

  –What can we do for you today? What’s the occasion, a celebration? Or a more, a more… somber matter? Or is this, what did you used to call it…damage control?

  –What’s the difference?

  Puzzled, she indentured her lower lip as a series of strains of daylight washed through the room, pushing a glow through the overpriced vases, and landing a crop of lanky sunspots that floated lazily over the wall.

  –Just give me some red roses Mickey, uh neat, you know, no baby’s breath or any of that side dish stuff, and a phone book, please.