Hello Devilfish!
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Did we make lewd tangled love? Got me—I passed out within microseconds. Squid twats are stanky. Till much later I sat up like a drunk rocket. Was I dead yet? Happy stupid hoping! Nope—just choking on undersea slime. Which I spit out and glanced around for escape routes—that damned kraken would rear her fugly butt any second and demand more nooky. You know the rule—you bone it, you own it. But instead I bumped into a much naked chick. And not just any nude girl—this one was a stark fetal pink. She glowed like God’s tongue. “You do love me,” she traced a hand down my biceps, “but why you got such weak arms?”
“You should talk,” I laughed, “you only got one.” ’Cause her other arm was lopped off neat at the shoulder.
“No—I’ve got eight. Or is it ten? It was eight. God dammit—those silly gangstas must’ve chopped one off,” she pointed at dead Yakuza. Actually everyone in here—bartenders, beer gnomes, sake hoes, and sloshed pilots—was killed except us. “Grrr, grrr,” she growled, “they cut off my tentacle!”
“Your which what?” I was mondo confused—I need more brain for big knowing!
“My tentacle, dumb butt!” she screeched, ow.
“Uuuuurt?” I cocked my head like a cartoon dog.
“You still don’t get it,” that pink lass sulked, “I’m her.”
“Her who?” I wiped gangsta goo off my ankle.
“I’m Squidra,” she punched my shoulder, ow.
“Nah—I don’t think so,” I scoped her up and down, “can’t be. Really?” Whoever she was, she was hotter than fried gold.
“Your kiss changed me,” she licked her lips even pinker.
“Yeah,” I shrugged, “I do have this spiritual effect on chicks, and—”
“No, dufus,” she punched me harder, ow ow, “you changed me into a human.”
“Um, I’m not sure how that works—” and why did she morph, anyway? Was it my smoochy human-growth hormone spunk what changed her? Was it fairies with goofer dust and Grimm pedigrees? Who cares—make something up. “And look here,” that girl slapped her chest, “I got happy tits!”
“They are happy,” I admired them. But even more than their upward lilt—more than their handy size and fragrant weight—they were this garish, DayGlo delirium-tremens baby elephant pink like the rest of her. She was a candy gestalt mixed from sleep and peach nougat with black fuzz sprinkles on her yummy puss. “Let’s have more nooky,” she cooed—and yep—she was def Squidra. My big ritual sex dick cured her—I am a hot weenie god! Pink girl, you’re an unkempt vision—let’s apply! Plus she still smelled like an unwashed ocean—that’s how I knew she was her. “You seem surprised,” Squidra giggled, grabbing my arm—ow—way too hard. “Oops,” she grinned that trick smile, “I’m still way stronger than you, blue mansu.” It was her smile what clinched it—you only see grins like that on drowned babies and anthropomorphic squids—that primordial smirk, the smile that splits the world alive. It’s how wolves sneer when they smell gored ponies. It’s how lightning beams when it spots a lone golfer. “Maybe we should get out of here,” Squidra giggled, “want me to carry you?”
“With one arm? Good luck,” I scowled. Hey, at least she ain’t taller than me—or that dead pilot whose bloody raincoat I draped around her luscious bod. “Clothing?” she laughed, “why?”
“You’ll get cold,” I lied—actually she’d get us both arrested. It’s one thing to smoosh Tokyo and even worse, a Yakuza bar—but even glittering pink ex-squid chicks can’t walk around naked. Not when hordes of cops were hustling here—along with fireman and paparazzi and local sashimi maniacs greedy for a slice of trapped kraken. Like the wrapper on Drunky Cod brand entrails says—Bring Mom these sushi guts! “You’re not making sense,” human Squidra laughed.
“Never have,” I shrugged.
“Excuse us—police,” some cop knocked on a wall. You gotta love Japan—cops that knock! Anywhere else we’d be coroner meat already—here they still follow bizarre feudal norms. “Now where?” I checked around for exits—but they’re all blocked! “Hmmm,” I rummaged through splayed Yakuza bods, “maybe we’d better find some hot guns and shoot the fuzz when they—”
“Wait a sec,” Squidra—or Girl-ra or whoever she was now—blinked way too much. “I bet these still work,” and her eyes thrummed all ghastly Tang orange till—whoa! Her eyeball lasers kicked in! And toasted a skewed freezer to tin dust till a charred doorway showed. “You still got lasers?” I gawked.
“Guess so,” Squidra blinked her eyebeams off, “doesn’t everyone?”
“Probably,” I fibbed. Look, I hadn’t totaled the math yet on our mutual power relations—and sure, she’s minus an arm—but eyeball lasers could def tip the balance in her feminazi favor. Hello Gelding! “Let’s ditch this sake stand,” Squidra buckled her trench coat. “Lead on,” I nodded as we snuck out a back alley, our limbs and minds striding into night—and that’s it! That’s enough—plots are more boring than dead lawns. Let’s snuff this sick puppy—join us in book-shutting fun!
PHOTO BY MARCIA GLOVER
ABOUT RON DAKRON
Ron Dakron is the author of the novels Hello Devilfish!, infra, Newt, Hammers, and Mantids. His work runs the gamut from surrealism to sci-fi pastiche, with a prose style that he describes as “haplessly Chicagoan and influenced by working class whites, African American slang, and Yiddish comedy.” His novels explore differing styles of poetic prose, from Romaticism to cubism, B-movie satire to mangled Japanese translation. Born in Chicago, Dakron majored in English at Elmhurst College and Lawrence University before moving to Seattle where he worked as a street violinist and house painter, and developed a confrontational poetic performance style “drenched in faux punkery.” He began writing novels in his late twenties, and considers himself “a proud working-class novelist who dreams up Big Lit.” He lives in Seattle, WA.
Find out more about Ron Dakron online at
http://www.rondakron.com
Recent and Forthcoming Books on Three Rooms Press
PHOTOGRAPHY-MEMOIR
Mike Watt
On & Off Bass
FICTION
Ron Dakron
Hello Devilfish!
Michael T. Fournier
Hidden Wheel
Swing State
Janet Hamill
Tales from the Eternal Café
(Introduction by Patti Smith)
Eamon Loingsigh
Light of the Diddicoy
Richard Vetere
The Writers Afterlife
DADA
Maintenant:
Journal of Contemporary Dada Art & Literature
(Annual poetry/art journal, since 2008)
SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY
Have a NYC:
New York Short Stories
Annual Short Fiction Anthology
HUMOR
Peter Carlaftes
A Year on Facebook
ESSAYS
Richard Katrovas
Raising Girls in Bohemia: Meditations of an American Father
PLAYS
Madeline Artenberg &
Karen Hildebrand
The Old In-and-Out
Peter Carlaftes
Triumph For Rent (3 Plays)
Teatrophy (3 More Plays)
MIXED MEDIA
John S. Paul
Sign Language:
A Painters Notebook
TRANSLATIONS
Thomas Bernhard
On Earth and in Hell
(poems by the author in German with English translations by Peter Waugh)
Patrizia Gattaceca
Isula d’Anima / Soul Island
(poems by the author in Corsican with English translations)
Cesar Vallejo | Gerard Malanga
Malanga Chasing Vallejo
(selected poems of Cesar Vallejo with English translations and additional notes by Gerard Malanga)
George Wallace
EOS: Abductor of Men
(poems by t
he author in English with Greek translations)
POETRY COLLECTIONS
Hala Alyan Atrium
Peter Carlaftes
DrunkYard Dog
I Fold with the Hand I Was Dealt
Thomas Fucaloro
It Starts from the Belly and Blooms Inheriting Craziness is Like
a Soft Halo of Light
Kat Georges
Our Lady of the Hunger
Robert Gibbons
Close to the Tree
Israel Horovitz
Heaven and Other Poems
Matthew Hupert
Ism is a Retrovirus
David Lawton
Sharp Blue Stream
Jane LeCroy
Signature Play
Philip Meersman
This is Belgian Chocolate
Jane Ormerod
Recreational Vehicles on Fire
Welcome to the Museum of Cattle
Lisa Panepinto
On This Borrowed Bike
George Wallace
Poppin’ Johnny
Three Rooms Press | New York, NY | Current catalog: www.threeroomspress.com Three Rooms Press books are distributed by PGW/Perseus: www.pgw.com