Hello Devilfish!

by Ron Dakron

  “What’s your problem,” Squidra sulks, “you think I’m too fat?”

  “What? Huh?” Fucko—where’d that come from? “You are freaking whack,” I shove her, “shoo!”

  “Do you like the band Foreigner?” Squidra crumples another mast into pine mush, “I love their version of “Urgent.” Urgent, dee dee dee, so urrrrrrgent—urgent like you,” she coos, “so gimme kisses!” Whoa—what’s with girls? They creep up on you like commas. Let’s have a marriage lifestyle—it’s called Hubby Life. Just mix obsession and dumb smooches—add on a tiff about pay equity and some weak mimosas—and put that suburban muumuu on. “Vamoose!” I duck her searing eyeball rays. “Scram!”

  “You think you’re so hot,” uh oh, Squidra’s eyelids glow even oranger, “who made you king?”

  “I’m always king—king hot pants!” I laugh, “Geeraa! Now am-scray.”

  “Some king,” Squidra sneers, “you can’t even talk romance to a girl,” and whoa, now I def should flee. She said romance! Plus talk and girl—words that stun your tongue like wasp pie. I’m a myth worth lying about! “You know you want me,” Squidra puckers up. Uh oh—was it true? Did I actually lust after Squidra’s nicotine-black beak, her red-lead mouth, her puss flexing like nude pudding—no wait, that’s her mouth. Add on her retinal lasers crackling yachts into charred goop—fucko! Eyeball rays! Why ain’t I got a sick weapon like that? Let’s have a sulk with grump sauce.

  It all started—wait, it started already—with me confused by harpy sex desire. Face it, bros—we’re pussy-whipped mopes who’d follow a spayed poodle straight to hell—we’ve been bamboozled, chained to a smelly meme, a wet Death Star that sucks our jizz comets in. “Adore me,” Squidra twines me with her Twizzler red tentacles, “I’m gorgeous!” You need to trick a ray into sex—Hello Devilfish! That goes without saying. So does doom—as Squidra flares like popped bubblegum when I giggle “Gorgeous? You look like God’s snot ball.” Awww, did I shun her girly lures? Good! ’Cause mwah ha ha—now she’ll fight me, yay! I’m a lout worth scrapping with—just let me drool some starter fire, flex my stingray wings, prep my tail and smoke her. Maybe I can fuck and devour her afterward—sweet! True, she outmatches me—she’s fatter than Kansas and just now scorched my other wing with her horrific mango Kool-Aid eyeball laser beams—but I spit big flame! My enemies will be lurid toast. But when I puke a napalm tsunami at that greedy cephalopod—she just surfs it back at me! Did I mention she’s way colossal huge? Uh oh—I’m gonna get my wet butt stumped good.

  / 8 /

  Plots are for babies and geezers. At the end of the novel—Jesus gets the girl! After he punks the smug quarterback and saves the gator mascot from a handbag cabal. Bore me with sleep sauce! Really—you want little stories? How’s this one—Death is your boss and Pain is your wife. It’s a sitcom—Pain’s dinner party goes awry when Death spills alum in the pizza dough. The laugh track’s been looping for billions of years—Hello Devilfish! You can see why I need to destroy stuff. Hey, at least I got away from Squidra—’cause instead of tussling and losing, I just dove down some harbor channel. I can haz panic? And after cruising through this undersea Yakuza graveyard—a swaying garden of swelled bodies wrapped in leaky chains—I surfaced near night Tokyo. Alright! This was my Broadway, my Emmies, my Show of Shows—this neon pile spiked with weeping meat and estrogen. Meaning all the chicks I’d get to snarfle down! They’re usually tastier than dudes—plus who wants a gazillion dicks in their mouth? I mean besides most guys from Montana.

  And so har har, I lurked beneath a simmering tide, sniffing the lair of the land, calculating the Tetris parameters of which ripped skyscraper to stuff where. Oooo—this was the night I daydreamed about for snoring eons. As I flogged the sea with my engorged tail, gargled some fire and then—geeraa—rose like a blue ghost. Where I smooshed another wharf, mushing dockhands into a denim grease that I slid on into downtown. Let’s make a grief smoothie! Start with fresh guts, then sprinkle with scared pee, girdles, Parcheesi boards, and sizzling lips. Now whip this mess into a blood frappe, pour into a milk truck and suckle it down. I am God’s toddler! That fucker needs a parenting class.

  Her kids are total monsters. Geeraa! That’s my creamy motto—I sang it while spitting fire juice at that warbling crowd—you could make a porn compilation from my napalm money shots. Maybe even mix in some latex bustier foot-fetish action to market to the basement trolls. But right after crunching a few skyscrapers into rusty toast—when the elevators burst it’s a human sashimi treat—I halted in that smoking wreckage. Something was def wrong. Whoa—all this senseless devastation—all this wanton, useless cruelty—it ain’t cruel enough! I came to wipe hope from the map, not play urban developer. You bet, mayor—after we level Pimp Town, we’ll build a Williams-Sonoma Macchiato Hut!

  Hey, I know—sometimes Art gives you freaks hope. Why is beyond me—no matter how you paint your grave it’s still dirt. So duhn duhn duhhhhh—let’s destroy Big Art! With nonsense and violence and beauty—you gotta toss in beauty to fool the chicks—Hello Devilfish! I really can’t say that enough. So let’s raze some galleries, yay! As I trashed this Noho district with my crazed tail, jabbing aesthetes into shriveled lumps and whipping Brutalist lithos into boho gruel—hah! Till blazing patrons screeched around like schizo pinballs—that’ll give them something to Art about. But I soon got bored with smooshing all this kitsch—Art croaks on its own. With big and frosty twitches! Plus why am I babbling about Art—I’m here to kill books! I’ll kill them to death. I’ll squish presses with my heavy wings and scrawl poems in lit petrol—I’ll yelp till the cowering stars shoot their lumen loads—I’ll scream delish nonsense till you bipeds agree that I’m King Lit! You should respect my pants and agree. Hah—I can already hear the Squidras of the world bitching—That dumb fish can’t even talk right, fer chrissakes—and what’s with all the sex boasting? He thinks he’s the Marquis de Cod—Hello Devilfish!

  But hmmm—what Lit pit to raze first? Should I pulp libraries into sans-serif mulch? Or maybe just torch the whirring server farms where e-Pulp hides in pixel shame? All good and rude fun—but if you really want to throttle belles lettres, just wipe out liquor. A sober poet is a minor poet. So I sniffed around till I nosed in on the brewery district—which natch was next to the slummiest slums. Hey, you gotta give the serfs some amnesia drug—either liquor or morphine or cable news—otherwise they’ll wise up to their fucked prole reality. Hello Trotsky! I’ll show them some guerilla dialectics, mwah ha ha—just wait till their precious goofer juice sloshes into those thirsty sewers. Plus while I wrecked their booze factories I could get sloshed myself. Bash your brains with bongo wine! Me, I craved a colossal drink—maybe a spinal-fluid Manhattan with a speared elephant garnish. Hello AA! I def need a better sponsor.

  Anyway, after a few klicks of schlepping wings over crumpled wharves and kebobbing Datsuns with my gourmet tail—I found the land of hard drink. And whoa, these were titanic liquor-cracking plants, chocked with pot-still toxins and funky Midori—yee haw! Bro, no one gets hammered like the Japanese—they never really did Puritanism here. Nope—they went straight from grubbing feudal poverty to pomo industry—with a little six-year diversion into Nanking and germ warfare. Happy Sneaky Emperor—Hello WWII! And Hello Double Boilermaker—as I made a fish beeline at some ethanol tanks, slicing them open with my scalpel tail and guzzling all the unaged booze. Which must’ve been 150 proof ’cause whoa—I got bonkadonk drunk. Yes! This was so worth all the swimming miles to get here—to go pure hillbilly with my snout jammed in the world’s hugest Martini. Hah—that swill made me as crazed as a bipolar shark.

  You talking to me? Mwah ha ha—I felt pure murder syrup ladling my veins, roid rage bathing my nerves till in my eyes glowed into green amperes. Whoa—I need to think up sicker torments for these biped mofos. I’ll rip pregnant chicks into caesarian stew. I’ll mentor a Three Stooges gender-studies course. The only problem is—whenever I summon chaos—it always appears! As kaboom a gigantor p
ink kraken rears up, crushing mash pits into sugar dust. Uh oh—goofy Squidra done found me! She is both twit and silly—and stinks worse than a Romanian hostel. “Where’s my lover boy?” she screeches. What a pest! I hate her like stuff. Grrr, grrr—let’s have a grrr. It’s monkey ripe with best flavor—Hello Devilfish! I’m a strange one.

  / 9 /

  Mwah ha ha, nobody’s safe—my venom has seeped into your dreams! All your skull are ours. What’s my toxin? This prickly stinger goop I inject in your minds—that’s it, shhh, let it take effect. How’s it work? It already has—what do you scribble about? Gollums? Hobbits? Hunky spies with satyriasis? Then I’ve succeeded—in making you forget about hot buttered death! Hello Rubes—I got you to ignore the only sure thing in your flimsy biped lives—me! And my splendid destructo tail—a butt whip made from equal parts chaos, boredom, and nonsense. For all your humane needs. I can see you at your teensy iPads, texting “I am King Tweet!” while war and famine and Visa cards rain on your tawdry Formica huts. Try and type me away, muthafuckas—whee! My cunning is crueler than Muslim bees.

  Let’s obey my sparkling urges—like the urge to evade Squidra! Meaning that pink hump whose tentacles whir night into a stardust slurpee that ripples across my skin. Huh? Tentacles? I probably should pay more attention—but where’s the large fun in that? And my fun was guzzling cheap corn liquor and stumbling around on floppy wings all totally bozo drunk. Maybe I should I limit myself to fifty gallons a day—join our happy rum lifestyle! Just be sure to aim your puke—I sure didn’t—when I hurled cheap booze, human tracheas, and some odd tractor I’d gobbled all over a distillery roof. I still fondly remember the screams—mostly coming from Squidra! “Helloooooo, Mr. Devilfish,” that amorous cephalopod writhes her bootylicious tentacles, “look at you, you bad-boy drunk.”

  “Geeraa!” I spit napalm at her nose. Or I think it’s her nose—who can tell with squids? “That’s not nice,” she sulks. So what? My hate is powerful and evil—it’s evil and powerful! My hope, you are weirder than gophers. And why is Squidra crashing my kill-fest? She looks so pink—she’s very pink! And beyond fugly. Ewww—what if she wants slobbery kisses and smoochy hugs? I can’t deal with horny chicks tonight. Or later. Or ever. Plus what’s she expect—congratulations on her Tokyo debut? Raw humping slappy action? A chill pill wouldn’t hurt—as that daft kraken sweeps her orange eyeball rays over distillery roofs till workers howl and stumble out. She even gathers a bunch in one twisty tentacle and thrusts that squirming mess in my face. “Here’s a bouquet!” she chirps, “because we’re meant to be.”

  “Meant to be what?” drunk me giggles.

  “We’re like The Days of Wine and Roses,” Squidra chews up a few dudes, “ever seen that movie?”

  “I don’t watch movies,” I sneer, “or my weight. Or dumb girls.”

  “Looky,” she sashays closer, “I dressed up for you.” Meaning she’d twisted melted fiberglass and tattered sails into this weird chiffon skirt. “Do you like my couture?” she tilts like a bloated toy. “No—you’re naxty!” I roar. Oops—some girls just don’t like direct insults. Especially squids of oozy tonnage. “You—you’ve hurt my feelings,” Squidra drops her corpse bouquet. Where one worker wriggles out, gurgles nonsense and falls off the dock and drowns. Will he be honored in song and saga? Nuh uh—and me neither if I keep up this drunken grump. “I said,” Squidra gets in my blue face, “you hurt my feelings.”

  “Then don’t have any, you bimbo—geeraa!” I roar at the flaccid heavens. It was a night full of dark and stuff. Where I’m reckless with booze action—Hello DTs! “Fuck off,” I snarl like barbed wire. “But I made reservations at McDonald’s,” Squidra sulks. So what again! Does she expect me to tag along and chew pimpled McWorkers? Human junk food gives me serious cramps. “You’d better love me,” Squidra growls. “Um, sure,” I flatten my ears. Uh oh—is Mr. Devilfish giving up? Nuh uh—like any true grifter I’m just stalling for time. Let’s chew my doleful boner! I’m your extra vague pal.

  I even mused about maybe just raping Squidra, pinning her with my dank wings while I drink her drooling fear. Mwah ha ha—I am Devilfish, destroyer of moods! But she’s way stronger than me and might just chomp my wiener off! It’s a weenie that deserves more history! You gotta do something to pass the time. I know—let’s have a delusion! Mine was I could brush Squidra’s crush off—as she cranked up her laser eyeball rays and made grim faces at me. Alright—me and her are gonna have an old-timey kaiju B-flick smack down! Hey, it beats porking her—she’s a fricking squid! Fucko—she looks like a bum’s glove stuck in a Coke bottle. Hello Product Spill-in!

  Anyway, then she totally whipped my blue butt. With screams and lasers and flailing kaiju pink parts—those were mostly hers—as we grappled and squashed pipes into an industrial wasteland. That we wasted! As crushed trucks and valves and factory glass got whipped into a gray pudding that slathered our wrestling bods. Geeraa! Your angst is not welcome. Neither were Squidra’s blows—as she whomped me across a parking lot, crisping my flanks with her orange laser rays—ouch! Why do bad things happen to worse stingrays?

  I can haz sex burger? Anyway, we ended up tussling in some lab district, a steaming grid of hormone tanks and fetal slop troughs. I didn’t even get to gnaw any fleeing science nerds as Squidra tossed me at some purple tank covered with biohazard memes. I think it said HGH or Human Growth Hormone—which would def explain what happened next. I am a proud slob warrior! Fucko—nothing’s worse than getting beat by a girl—not even love with hot dumb sauce. Plus somehow I’d got my radiant tail jammed in that tank ladder—I couldn’t even sting her! Even writhing around and howling didn’t help—and it usually does. Ask any stripper. Plus I didn’t have my mace or rape whistle on me—so I decided to play dead. But Squidra didn’t fall for my fish corpse act. “You coward,” she hissed, “fight like a man.”

  “You mean a human man?” I laughed. “And what—get smooshed by the millions? Screech around with flaming hair?” As Squidra closed in for the kill, flexing up on two tentacles and thrashing me with the night-spangled rest. Till I crashed through that tanker roof and into milky bio-muck. Where I fainted in HGH glop and wondered—hmmm—where was that extra-bacony sex burger?

  / 10 /

  “Ow—geeraa—fricking ow,” I muttered awake in the viscous depths. WTF methinks—was this a comatose daydream? Sheesh—my brainpan could’ve conjured up something more risqué than drowning in beige sex lube. ’Cause that’s what it smelled like—let’s have a sex! With garters and sneaky guilt. But coma or no, for some reason I couldn’t breathe liquids no more—which makes no sense for a stingray fish. Instead I choked and swam up through that lewd goo—my wing thrusts felt amazingly lame—and surfaced with a kerplop on the rim of that smashed HGH tank. Ick—human growth hormone tastes naxtier than braised feet with broccoli. And I ought to know.

  “Geeraa!” I howled at the smarmy heavens—except whoa, I sounded kind of pipsqueak. Never mind vocal vanity—I must fight the stinky Squidra! Except that freaking squid was nowhere in sight—and everything in sight was, um—bigger. Way mass bigger. What the fucko—had the whole world shot gonzo steroid juice when I fainted? Nuh uh—the earth was the same boring size. It was me what had shrunk—Goodbye Devilfish! Mostly ’cause I’d morphed into something way worse than any hobo, bug, or homeless virus. I’d turned—duhn duhn duhhhhh—human! Eeek! And then beaucoup more eeeks when I slogged out of that deforming HGH goo and into a Squidra-charred landscape. Hello Changeling!

  But this biped bod’s gotta be some rogue hallucination—how could something so macabre happen to moi? I can’t see it going down—mostly ’cause my new human bino-vision was totally squiggly. Really—both eyes on the same side? You fuckers are flounders. And I floundered good when I tried standing up—and flapped smack on my new nose, ow. And then stood up on—you’re kidding me—legs? Who created these wobbly honkers? Seems God was drunk in shop class again—how else explain toes? And even worse are elbows—mine were alre
ady scuffed bloody from crawling on bashed cement. Hey, I was a stingray just moments ago—we don’t do the walking—I keeled over my first four tries. Let’s flop like brave waffles! But panic’s the mother of tactics—and I had to get gone. ’Cause any minute that freak kraken would swarm back to date, mate, and polish me off. Let’s polish one off for Jesus! He’s nailed up and can’t do it himself.

  Anyway, I managed to sloppy drunk-walk through fresh wreckage, stopping now and again to marvel at my new skin. ’Cause even the wind hurt it! You bipeds are weaker than baby trout—whiny, murderous trout who yank strange beliefs from your scaly butts. But even weirder than just fragile skin was its color—mine was dusky blue. Nice hue—except everyone else is yellow! I wonder if the Japanese shun folks that don’t fit in. With a little ash and ink I could probably pass for black. Then I could kill Big Lit ’cause it owes me—Hello Quotas! All your guilt are ours.

  All your shame too—as I slunk through sodden alleys and into packed Tokyo. Where mutherfucking ow—I kept bumping my blue butt on brick walls. Probably ’cause I swayed like a used noodle—hey, it’s how us rays move. Or did before I morphed into a shivering human dolt. Why shivering? ’Cause I just heard Squidra’s mucus trill echoing off smashed girders. Grrr, grrr—this city is my holocaust! Mine! Or it was—now I’ve gone biped, turned teensy, traded my nighthawk mind for a skull crammed with gods and dead mommies. You twerps call this dink lump a brain? And the stringy stuff on top—that’s hair? Really? And why’s it already in a crude bouffant? Hello Jack Lord! Maybe I should style the other curls down there where—eeek! My fab weenie done shrunk! To about the size of a cheap blue cigar. Hah—what a piece of pie man is—how stupid in brooding—how like a TV that only gets reruns—a poor crusty donut who smears frosting on the stage. Anyway, to recap—I’m now human, bluer than a drowned baby’s twat and stark barking naked—no wonder everyone dodged me. Especially when I lurched at them with my spaz limbs and screeched geeraa! I was crippled, clumsy, and slow—I can be Walmart greeter?