Hello Devilfish!

by Ron Dakron

  If it’s later than former you’re listening again, one hand on a stale beer and the other down your pants—Hello Erotica! I am a thing for much fun. And if you’re not me you’re zip when I tell you—kapow! How I churned streets into a creosote stew burning brighter than firefly cum. Whee! Senseless havoc totally rules—that clogged screech as scorched toddlers burst into gummi poop—you gotta love what you do. And I love torching you humps—I’m God’s chainsaw, her wired golem, the smile on her power-drunk face—let’s blaspheme! You need to doom a world with more doom. And take to limit while I chew babies or slash my razory tail through noodle kiosks. What’s with all the fucking noodle kiosks?

  Anyway, then I head for the shipyards—lots of sparkly dioxin fun there—when I spot, alright—a refinery! Till I sweat fire just cruising at that gas-cracking plant, mmmm, those tangerine petrol pods leaking sweet methane—this joint’s gonna blow up good. I was in pure form—my cobalt prick arcing through cloud pussy, my tail snaking in spermy jet streams till it lands ka-thwhack across that steel nipple atop a reservoir tank. Let’s drool like it’s Xmas! Especially when I tail-spank that spilled naphtha into a fuel lotus, a hot blossom lit with orange dread. While nearby worker humans squeal their usual Eeek, help me Buddha prayers till fire grills their minds away, yay! “How can we appease you?” one guy wails as his chest melts off. “Appease? Sorry,” I smear him into dank paste, “don’t know that word yet.”

  It’s curious I even understand him—me talk Manglish, him Japanese. Hello Plot Flaw! With extra bored sauce. Hey, I did study some Asian lingo—a few Rosetta Stone phrase books floated past my coral lair. Still, my Japanese is pretty iffy—mostly shogun insults and geisha clichés. I know—let’s just pretend everyone talks Manglish. I’m as lazy as fire! Really—this dock I’m wrecking ain’t burning worth shit. And then bingo, it hit me—all I need is wings! Huge stingray wet ones to fan this baby inferno into a metastasized hell. I can haz Dada props? Not from you fuckers—you’re born scared and die confused. And between the natal and omega bread of this greasy death sandwich—you look for meaning. You’d be better off looking for mayonnaise—Hello Devilfish! I giggle at your quandary. At night your over-amped brains sizzle like crude tumors while you grope through memory swamps, gorging on grief like some horrid unripe fruit. Smooshing you fuckers is a big large favor—Hello Panzers! You gotta fight for your Reich to party.

  / 4 /

  Brains are magic tricks done with meat. So watch out, Ms. Librarian! Don’t put my book next to any other ones—I’ll infect them. At night I pulse toxic blue on my dusty shelf—no one’s safe. Not kiddie tomes, not ’tween soft-core, especially not dumb ethnic novels reeking with poverty. Their words hurt my liberty! All freedom is freedom for me—and ain’t that the dream of the twenty-first century? So why am I here—to squash buildings, snort babies, chew grandmas into black drool? Amusing as all that is—I’m here to wipe out books. Erase them completely—make sure none are never nope wrote again. And how might a Devilfish do this? I’ll invade every plot like a wild virus. Every time you read—it’s about me! Grinning and wrecking and chewing stuff. For Whom the Bell Tolls? On Whom the Fish Rolls. Moby Dick? Moby Gone—now it’s me roiling up that stinky sea! And Ahab’s my love slave, mwah ha ha—dude does some pervy tricks with that whaler peg leg.

  I am Happy Devilfish with an Amazon profile! You got Harlequin romances with steroid dudes and bustier chicks smirking on cheap covers? Wait—what’s that stingray doing in the foreground? And why’s he the bellhop at our assignation hotel? Don’t tip the fucker, he’s pretty clumsy. Eeek, watch out for his stinger—fucko, where’d my arms go—Hello Devilfish! I’m like a chunk of iced radium in your party mojito—hear my pulsing glow? Bzzzrp, bzzzrp—I’ll kill everything. It’s my nature, not my fault, wah. Mwah ha ha—self pity is the key to evil. Poor me is the gist of most pogroms.

  I’m death on a stick—for all your leisure needs. Hello Devilfish! I’m a product for a thing you’re not, you wuss. And you will say to a fey ray—how’s it hanging? Low and inside, my brutha. Hmmm, so what next? I know—let’s have a backstory! First off—what birthed me? Let’s just pretend I leaped from a dead guy’s brain—the same croaked fool who’s name’s on this book. T’was a night riddled with stars and mai tais—the fucker was in his Hawaiian mode back then. He’d moved lock, stock, and Mustang to some barren Kona reef seeking mana and cheap weed. What he really found—besides centipedes, leprosy and meth—was me! Smashing right out of his skull one humid night. He was pacing around his skanky motel room—his mortgage collapsed even faster than his marriage—when I burst through his brain pan.

  “What the fucko?” he yelled.

  “Hello Devilfish!” baby me shrieked, “let’s say bad words!”

  “You are not my baby,” he muttered. Then he either drank or watched TV—hah—Mr. Lord of Lit. “Hi, Daddy,” I squirmed around his suitcase, “let’s write taboo memoirs!”

  “I could use you,” he narrowed those cagey eyes, “let’s see. A plot about a young guy—no, not too young—”

  “Extra bad words!” I chirped.

  “Maybe set in Havana,” he paced, “with a girl—I mean a woman, can’t call them girls, and—”

  “Mofo bad words that aggro the bitches!” I writhed my luscious blue bod on orange shag. Who puts orange shag down anymore? Even Commies won’t touch it. I touched a tiny Commie. “Come on,” I brushed him with my baby wing, “let’s write evil blather.”

  “You talk the naxty pretty good,” he smiled, “but there’s my black friends, my Asian pals—and what if Chick Inc. gets wind of my apostasy—”

  “Shriners fucking preteens!” I screamed. Uh oh—was I too subtle for him? Better ramp it up. “Midgets with wop sauce!”

  “A novel about Tourette’s?” he sneered. “It’s been done.”

  “You’re a coward,” I twitched my stinger, “I’m sick of your prattling—you used to be fun. Why don’t you Google your pen name again?” And that’s when I crashed through patio glass and escaped—why hang with this fool? That twit was doomed to die unread and unfucked—and me? Mwah ha ha—I want to bathe in bad grammar, drink kitten milkshakes, coat myself with cheetah jism and rape the weeping sky—Hello Ambition! All your disgust are ours.

  / 5 /

  Tonight I wrapped my rubbery tail around a smokestack, ripped it up it and wrote in blood and memory. Your blood, my memory—Hello Devilfish! I wish I narrated stuff better—how scorched rice paddies curdle into mud soup with crow croutons, how torched skyscrapers melt like steel dildos—it’s been sappy fun! You need a deity to laugh at. And you will say to God—hey fucktard! Who makes leukemia and cake in the same universe? She never answers—she? Hah—of course God’s a chick. Who else goes all boo-hoo sentimental while snuffing their own spawn? She’s like those hags that shake their baby apart and then plead post-nasal depression. God kills us ’cause she loves us! It’s the logic of beaten dogs.

  Let’s say mild things—my prankster brain demands applause! As my bricky pen scribbles dirt ideograms about crime and lust and regret—regret’s the most fun. You get to do evil shit and then oops, OMG, sorry, didn’t mean it—I’m the prince of mad trauma. Especially when I stagger like some pregnant eggplant through chaotic muck, one stingray wing stirring streets into whirlpools and the other clutching dank hope. I hope there’s more stuff to wreck—is that too much to ask? More twinkling death shooting like licorice rays from my raving tail? More piles of split pelvises with baby gravy on top? A hint of lime and matricide would spice things up nice. Plus maybe a svelte stingray chick to share my opulent wrack, her lips frothing down my fiery prick, our flanks gilded with spit and spunk as we smash through night at the speed of dawn—Hello Porn! When you make up stuff make it sexy.

  But in real life I was still crushing that industrial wharf, shattering docks into splinter stew and gulping burnt workers like prole marshmallows. Till I spit their tongues out into a yelping confetti pile and drooled fire until my bod morph
ed into a gigantor blue flare. I am the light of the lost! Mostly lost limbs. But pure chaos is sort of comforting—you stop worrying about Facebook. No wonder some pimply reject buys a gun-show TEC-9 and lights up the nearest madrasa—hey, you try living with a flaming brain. And mine crackled as I toyed with the few biped chumps still alive, herding them from that dock’s edge to a seared parking lot where their feet boiled off in gurgling tar. Onward toeless soldiers! And then—hee hee—something tickled my flanks.

  Yowza—was it my awesome fantasy stingray girl? I hope she brought liquor, some viscous rum that’ll peel the paint off our skulls. We are having the sweet nougat life—join us in group-time flavor! Or battlefield furor—’cause fucko, what’s tickling me is missiles! Shot from tube batteries hid in the trees. Everything’s always hid in the trees—one rocket even smacks into my squinting eye! Not that it hurts me—you can’t kill a Devilfish with heat-seeking tin—but it annoys the pure crap out of me. And also solves tonight’s entertainment—’cause where there’s rockets there’s grunts nearby. Alright—let’s make a screaming camouflage omelet! From that hilltop drill corps I smooshed into a brave and greasy puddle. Will these fuckers never learn? Remember, kids—violence never wins! It just levels things out.

  Mwah ha ha—it was mondo glorious, a pop-art potpourri dripping runny gusto, my reeling wings and tail slaking the mud with jumbled bods and tanks and the lone kitchen truck—I am a blue baker of sobbing dough! Plus it’s way mass even more fun watching humans panic—as those outgunned grunts fled like a beached wave, daubing the dirt with smeared dreams. A few loony infantry chumps even managed to sneak back and pop off a few mortars till I crushed them into the mothering dirt. What a waste—of my time! I can’t bother with these sloppy hicks—I got an entire megapolis to destroy! Exactly—so I just simply charred that whole forest into oak toast, slicing hilltops off with my radiant wings while spit-bombing birds like fried comets. Whoever invented death had a kid’s sense of humor—look, Mom—the cat farted and died! And then mmm, I sniffed big sugar. Was it pussy? Cash? Ferrets in lingerie? Nope—I smelled caramel corn. And also heard a lone calliope tooting out some goofy Souza tune—meaning there’s gotta be a carnival nearby. Alright! ’Cause nothing spells brunch like boiled clowns.

  / 6 /

  You can bone a steak but not your mom. And maybe I can bone Big Lit by subtly invading books. We’ll start with some twentieth-century classics—Hello CliffsNotes! First off, let’s trash A Farewell to Limbs by Zelda Hemingway—this honker about some castrated dude from a war. See what I mean? Lose a wang, gain a plot point. Anyway, this all happens in Paris—you can tell from the creepy yellow buildings. Someone’s gotta clean this dive up—maybe I should just char it into Vichy rubble. But where’s the boffo fun in that? And what am I doing in Paris anyway? I’m not gay or a poet, mwah ha ha—what’s the diff? And why is my ray snout, ow, jammed into this teensy apartment? Where a skinny chick and fat dude wander around yammering fin de siècle nonsense. “I say, Count,” some chick named Brett snarls, “do pour us some bubbly.”

  “Isn’t she great?” the Count guffaws. Who guffaws anymore? “Huh? What?” I sputter fire, “huh?” And why am I hanging with these boozers? You need to stroke a fish for his luck. “Jake—don’t be a boor,” Brett whines, “do find us some clean glasses.”

  “Very clean,” the Count smiles.

  “Extra clean,” Brett adds.

  “Who’s Jake?” I wrinkle my wet face.

  “Amazingly clean,” the Count ripostes. “Hello Devilfish!” I scream and smear him across the sink. Plus who’s Jake? “That wasn’t nice,” Brett sighs, “you can be a beast.”

  “Permission granted? Thanks!” I lunge away, smearing Paris into brick mâché. There’s gotta be a Frenchy way to end this tome—I know—how about the Eiffel Tower? So I rip it up with my radiant tail, shake some wailing tourists off, tuck it under my wing and hump back to Brett’s flat. “Where is that champagne?” that bitch snarls.

  “Hey, baby,” I poke that Eiffel tip through her window, “you dig shish kabob?”

  “Hello Jake!” Brett backs up onto some silky divan. Hmmm—should I squash her into floor jelly? Or wear her skin like a scarf? Nah, I’ll just prong her with this Eiffel thingy—kabonggggggg! Goodbye Lost Generation—Hello Devilfish!

  And Hello Slums—woo hoo! Meaning this hovel district I wandered into after gutting that army. I salute you Major Ruckus! Fucko yes—I’ve always hated these rotting shacks hewn from bored work. You need a Devilfish to set you comrades right—meaning me! I’m anger with a tail and mass attitude. Destroy the running dogs of subtlety! Or just the running dogs—like that slobbering pack of collies I gulped down. Mmmm—they tasted most alpha. And somehow also stunk from caramel corn—no, wait—that’s from that carnival I meant to wreck. Geeraa! I’ll confess all now—it was a night lit by clown hair. Where I thrashed toward that crispy popcorn stench, shredding car lots and freight trains into aluminum salad. And after torching another freeway into smack-up soufflé I reached my radiant goal. Meaning this classic slack midway riddled with disco prepubes and gawking rubes. So cute—even the tots were swearing when I crashed the turnstiles, yay! Hello Devilfish! See how I subtly warp the dynamic? Who cares about nostalgia or tits when some crazed stingray is thrashing everyone into luminous goo? I bring you the cannibal century. I am the god of hellfire. How’s my branding?

  Alright! It was juicy mayhem—carnies and marks scurrying under smashed tents, me ripping spines out till they twist like drowned worms, addled moms shrieking like always—sheesh. Get a life, mom! And maybe churn out a few more tykes—they pop like milky cherries, mmmm. I even cornered a few hipsters by the Squid-o-tron ride. Meaning that pink iron squid ride with curly tentacle cars—which hmmm, no one was riding. Maybe ’cause it stank like a mummy’s cunt. Plus who makes a ride shaped like a squid? It was fuglier than Mormon porn. Bizarre—its suckers even twitched a bit when I churned those nearby hipsters into plaid hat paste—take that, beardy dudes! All your beatnik are ours. And then I heard that evil calliope again.

  Churning out this horrid steamy Baby Elephant Walk schlock you fuckers play to get cheerful. I spit on your cheer with stingray napalm, geeraa! And then thrashed that calliope into sonic tin—now it can play Baby Stingray Walk! While meanwhile I squashed more midway bodegas, slathering my bod with bloody cotton candy till I looked like some undersea tampon. I even got still and totally silent awhile, hoping these marks might mistake me for another attraction—like that pink Squid-o-tron ride that was hmmm, slinking away. But then all that spun sugar on me began to fricking itch—so I schlepped into a nearby marina. Us stingrays love baths—especially in mercuric harbor spas. I am bluer than most Smurfs! I will always haunt your malls. Just like those steamy tentacles grappling the wet horizon—huh? Strange—somehow that iron Squid-o-tron came alive and moseyed into my harbor. Was it some mondo robotic wonder, some time-warp Terminator sent to snuff my sorry butt? Hah—my butt is never sorry—and what kind of hokey pink ride just ups and escapes? I mean besides youth and pussy.

  / 7 /

  My love—you are my love—never let go of our hopes and dreams. Now I’m confused—I want to be good but I crave victims. I have no pals—I’m lonely like dice in a church. So what to destroy next? Hmmm—how about this marina I’m already swimming in? Let’s drum up some human kibble—Hello Devilfish! Be cheery with cheerful qualities. Anyway, so I’m slicing moored boats into fiberglass chili, la la la, smooshing bosuns and fleeing deckhands—when I spot a yacht trying to escape! Mwah ha ha—no one escapes the dapper Devilfish. Not when I swoosh out and waggle my fatal tail at some yacht hottie who screams “Eeek! Squidra!”

  “Huh? No—I’m Hello Devilfish! See?” I tap her chin with my tail barb, “Stingray! Devilfish! Plus I talk your hot language.”

  “Eeek! Squidra!” she howls again, her bikini butt trembling with fear—so natch I eat the silly bitch. Mmmm—she tastes like a baked wig. And while spitting her gallbladder out, ewww�
��I see that lurking Squid-o-tron ride munching people too! Fucko McSucko—that ain’t no ride—it’s an actual gigantor kraken! Duhn duhn duhhhhh—fucko! It’s Squidra! She’s like a nightmare beast from a nightmare—pinker than birth and squirmier than a nude junkie. Plus she’s chowing down my victims—mine! I hate her like a thing. And you will say to a Devilfish, listen bub—you gotta kill stuff to own it. So grab a heart, put your ax in it, and listen to me babble! I’m a story with story ideas. And Squidra’s my fugly problem! She moves like an armed pickle—plus she’s got orange eyeball laser rays! Grrr, grrr—what a whup-ass weapon! Whoa—she just squints till her microwave vision shears through masts and skulls with surgical glitter—and also torches a huge welt across my left wing, ow. “Hello Mr. Demon Fish—glarb,” she gulps a swimming helmsman, “I’ve been watching you.”

  “It’s Devilfish, not demon fish—geeraa!” I roar, scaring some waves away, “and who are you?”

  “The girl you’re meant for,” she bats her gummi eyebrows.

  “Buzz off! Ow,” I lick my burnt wing, “and get your own happy death farm! This is my Tokyo—mine!”

  “You wish,” Squidra flutters her seaweedy tongue, “come on, sweetie—let’s make love.” Whoa—she’s obviously sicker than gangrened fudge—love her? I’d rather socially slay and eat her—but she’s way huge! And sleek with gooey curves—she gives me urges like Elmer Fudd gets for Bugs Bunny in drag. Cunning pheromones were def out to trap me—biology’s always lurking. Stupid biology—what’s it ever made to brag about? Malaria and turkeys? Have a Coke and some pants again! With some fish-lust stew thrown in—the slop du jour I gagged on while gawking at my new honey—Squidra! Her tentacles like rain crawling through cyberspace—her curves flaring like wet jonquils—her eyes blinking with drunk baboon force—her suckers flexing like a billion lips—Hello Stalker! Hey, you try untying eight tentacles wrapped like demented bow ties around your gills. “Go away,” I curl my bod into a blue-wing taco till she slides off.