by Jordan Krall
Then he stopped the impression and started to criticize my grammar and my syntax. I couldn’t believe he even remembered what I had written but then I realized he probably would have said the same thing to anyone. He was that much of a dick. After explaining just how much of a shit writer I was, he went back to being William Burroughs, talking about a guy who could make his asshole talk. I just smiled and nodded, thinking about how much this dick was obsessed with assholes.
Bradley said, “Deeeaaattthhh Dwwaaarrrffffff!”
“Hey, uh, I gotta say hi to someone. I’ll be right back,” I said, slowly edging backwards.
He grabbed my shoulders with both hands.
“Do you feel the pressure of my jazz hands?” Bradley Sands said. He shook me hard, hard enough to shake the glasses off my face. I bent down to pick them up but Bradley kept me in place with his extremely strong grip and then started to smash my glasses with his foot.
“So who owns Death TV?” he said, his voice sounding like Burroughs even more so than before. I was in shock that this guy actually smashed my glasses. They were in pieces.
You’re never supposed to mess with a guy’s glasses.
People around me stopped their conversations and looked over.
I jumped back and got out of Bradley’s extremely manly hold. His tirade continued but I started doing a crab-walk backwards, bumping into people on my way to the back wall. The room was silent now except for Bradley’s heavy breathing. Sweat was dripping off his head like drops of smack from a syringe. Lines started to appear on his face until he resembled a map complete with rivers and borderlines. He started to crack and peel with the most nauseating sound like something out of a H.G. Lewis movie.
His skin fell off onto the floor along with his clothes.
I would’ve expected to see the usual blood, fat, and muscle, but instead I was staring at the sweaty doppelganger of William S. Burroughs who had been hidden inside Bradley Sands this whole time.
I’d like to say this explained a lot but it really didn’t.
William-Bradley-Sands-Burroughs looked at me and said, “I’m going to kill you. I’m gonna cut your balls off and send them to my boys back in Tangier. I’m gonna eat your language and get sick off it. I’m gonna take that star virus and vomit it up into your asshole, into the Death Dwarf’s asshole and let it pop into my mouth like coffee beans and telepathic anuses.”
There he was, talking about assholes again.
The guy stood there looking at me with his creepy as hell junkie-eyes, never blinking. He trembled. His blue veins started to glow like radioactive worms, twisting and turning in need of the best junk on the planet. I heard them speak to me. Those fucking veins were actually speaking to me without sound. I was communicating telepathically with the drug-starved veins of William-Bradley-Sands-Burroughs.
-We need some, some, soft tickets of nova, good stuff, the horse, they said.
What the hell am I supposed to do about it? I’m not a dealer.
-Give us your asshole. Your asshole is packed fulla nova, is packed fulla majoun and Eukodol, arm dope, Mr. Ed, and bennies.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not holding. I don’t even use.
-So you’re not only a shitty writer but you’re a liar, too.
That’s fucked up. I’m fucked up. I’m talking to veins.
The room full of people continued to stare in confused fascination as I had this telepathic conversation. They probably had no idea what was going on but it was probably better for everyone that way.
The Sands-Burroughs thing walked closer to me, the veins now popping out of William’s wrinkly addict-skin. They pulsated with desire, with the overwhelming urge to suck the non-existent drugs out of my quivering, puckered asshole.
He said, “Jazz hands. Jazz hands!” and showed me his palms. They were like miniature movie screens playing barely visible scenes of sentient penises goose-stepping through Massachusetts.
While I was being somewhat hypnotized by this jazz-handing, the skin and clothing that had been the first Bradley Sands crept up towards the Burroughs-Thing and wrapped around it as if trying to turn into its original form. The whole mess started to convulse.
It was a horrible and frightening sight.
Up until that moment I had really done nothing. If I had been a character in a story, Bradley Sands would dismiss me as a passive protagonist. I realized this and so I stopped simply watching the gooey, trembling junk that was Burroughs and Sands. Gathering up my active-protagonist strength, I started kicking him/them with my stylish but classic black and white Reeboks.
“How’s this for a passive protagonist?” I said, digging my heel into wrinkly Burroughsflesh and smooth Sands-skin. The sound resembled that of crickets being crushed. It was pretty disgusting but I didn’t stop.
The telepathic veins yelped.
-You’re still a terrible writer, asshole, they said while being flattened by my foot.
All around me the other partygoers just stood watching like cardboard characters in a bad movie. I guess it was just another example of the Kitty Genovese syndrome. None of the people wanted to interfere. Maybe it was because they were afraid of me or maybe because they were afraid of the nauseating humanoid mess I was kicking into mush. Either way it made me quite pessimistic about society as a whole.
Then the old junky face of Burroughs grimaced, calling me a hack writer and a poor excuse for a human being. That made me realize that if I had been in a story I submitted to Bradley Sands, I would also be violating another rule that says no story should have a protagonist who is a writer. Aw, shit.
Well, thank God almighty it wasn’t a story.
I kicked and kicked that whole mess of a thing until the Burroughs-Sands mush couldn’t speak. His yellow teeth were on the ground next to Bradley’s clothes and what had been Bradley’s face-skin now resembled a Fruit Roll-Up.
You’d think there would be some sort of dramatic ending to this whole episode. Perhaps you’d expect Bradley to go back to normal and kick my ass. Or maybe for William S. Burroughs to morph into a giant cockroach and crawl up my ass in search of drugs. But nothing like that happened…
Instead, I kicked Burroughs-Sands into the carpet until it was a semi-chunky mess of skin, flesh, and dead psychic veins. Then I left the room in order to get my stuff from my hotel room and head out to the airport to catch a flight back to Jersey. The next four hours were mundane and uneventful. There was no clever climax to my battle with that thing.
But I didn’t make it home. Airport security chose me for a “random” body cavity search and found a plethora of illegal drugs hidden in my colon. It was enough to fill two large Hefty bags. Needless to say, things got a lot worse.
My cellmate, a Hell’s Angel named Andy, once asked me if I had changed my opinion about Bradley Sands.
“Hell no, I didn’t change my opinion,” I said, taking a sip of my toilet-brewed moonshine.
“But I’ll give that dick some credit. He did a hell of a William Burroughs impression.”
Andy said, “You gotta try to forget about that fucker, move on with your life.”
I try. Really, I do. But every night I try to fall asleep to the sound of those goddamn veins:
-You’re still a terrible writer, asshole!
HEY ANDY
(A dialogue between Matthew Revert and Andersen Prunty)
“Hey Andy, can I ask you a question?” Matthew Revert said, farting silently into his wicker chair.
Andy squinted through cigarette smoke. “I guess.”
“You like me?”
“What do you mean?” Andy puffed on his fag and squinted some more.
“I mean, do you like me? As a fellow author...”
“Uh, not sure. Haven’t given it much thought. I guess not.”
Matthew farted again but this time it made a squeaking noise not unlike the crying out of a homesick mouse. “What about as a human being? Do you like me, respect me, as a human being?”
Matthew farted. “Yeah.”
“And you’re asking me if I respect you, like you, as a human being?”
"Yeah,” Matthew replied, farting.
“Last time I checked, Australians weren’t human beings.”
Matthew stood up from his wicker chair and farted. “I give up.”
Andy shrugged, took a sip of his beer, and lit another cigarette. “Me too,” Andy said as he farted into the bleak Ohio wind.
SO ANDY
(A dialogue between William Pauley III and Andersen Prunty)
“So, Andy,” William said. “Why do I have to take my pants off again?”
“Just do it.”
“Okay.”
Andy puffed on his cigarette and stuck his hand between the couch cushions. “Then when you’re done pulling your pants down I want you to do me a favor.”
“You mean this doesn’t count as the favor I owe you?”
Andy laughed. “Are you kidding me? You owe me, like, a thousand favors.”
William stood in front of the couch, naked from the waist down because he had refused to wear underwear since he had banged his kindergarten teacher way back in third grade. He looked at Andy’s face: that pallid mask of regret and lost hope. Then he said, “I kinda thought we were even since I did that other...thing for you.”
Andy waved his hand. “That was small potatoes, Billy.”
“No one calls me Billy. Not anymore."
Another puff of the cigarette by Andy. “Bend over, Billy.”
Four hours go by and the cigarette hangs in the air like a loser cloud. William watches sweat drip down the bridge of his nose, making him cross-eyed and half-delirious due to his morbid fear of sweat. He cleared his throat. “So Andy,” he said. “You think we can wrap this up?”
"Jesus Christ, Billy, I’ve never met someone so impatient."
“Stop calling me Billy.”
“I’ll stop calling you Billy when you start acting like a man.”
William sighed. “But you know that’s impossible.”
More cigarette smoke. “Nothing is im-possible.” Andy leaned his head forward, getting a face full of sweat. “NOTHING.”
SICK ROOM NEEDS
The world begins and ends with an orgasm. Not mine, but yours.
This, the dreams and desires of a syphilitic science fiction writer, is just about all you can stomach to read on your deathbed. It is depressing, I know.
You tell me the nurse who takes care of you looks like an octopus with hair. When she walks in, I tell her you said that. After giggling, she cuts off your morphine and rips up the issue of True Detective I brought for you.
It sort of makes me laugh because you always swore you wouldn’t let them put you on any sort of meds if you were in the hospital. Oh, but there you were, letting them drug you almost to death. You get pissed when Nurse Octopi cuts off the morphine. What happened to staying pure? Whatever, right?
The angels don’t give a shit about what’s in your blood. Or what kind of sickness you had.
It’s a sleeping sickness.
I get cold when I am tired. My uncle also had this problem but only when he was drunk. When I sleep (and when I am drunk), my face turns blue and I tremble. Those who witness this for the first time have woken me up, threatening to call an ambulance. “I’m not getting in one of those machines!” I yell.
I was in an ambulance only once – the night my parents committed me. I had halfheartedly attempted suicide so they drove me a hospital. There I was confronted by an ugly, middle-aged hospital psychologist who tried to pry me open psychologically to find the source of my action, the source of the incident.
To this day I’m not sure why I just didn’t make some shit up. You know, something like, “I’m so overwhelmed at the nothingness of life,” or something equally stupid. If I had done so, maybe I would’ve been sent home where I could have watched some Night Court instead of being sent to that place.
But I wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t tell the bitch my insignificant reasons for taking the pills and so I was taken to that place, a special hospital where they took me to the empty kitchen and checked me for distinguishing marks, cuts, burns, etc. They didn’t notice the faint knife scars on my thighs. Stupid bastards.
My first roommate in the hospital was a young boy who heard voices. We cleaned our room immaculately and earned an extra half hour past bed time. I watched television, not paying attention to it at all.
My second roommate was a lazy fuck who reminded me of my uncle. He wouldn’t get out of a bed. There was no television in the room and he had no books that I could see. So what did he do all day? I don’t know. Masturbate? Maybe. One night he poured water on my pillow while I was in the bathroom. When he saw my only reaction was a bored shrug, he gave me one of his pillows. What was the point of the joke if he was just going to replace what he messed with? Stupid bastard.
In that short time I managed to scribble down some documentation of my experiences. It was mainly shit about insects and walls, or eyes in the walls or something. What I do remember is that everything kept changing from present tense to past tense as if I couldn’t help but drift off into the future.
My arm is tired now, my brain crackles. I can hardly read what I have written. This isn’t a surprise; my handwriting is terrible but right now it is a long string of shit, covered in obscene ink smears: deep blue genitalia over ugly yellow pulp.
I’m in bed, attempting to lull myself into vivid dreams. Random images/words and ghosts of scenes: names of household objects, names of childhood friends, celebrities, cities, situations, half-imagined placement of people and furniture (scenes of my life that probably never occurred though I wonder: if I imagine it enough times and develop emotional reactions to the scenes, how imaginary are they? Do they come any closer to becoming real? I think my ramblings about reality are useless anyway. While I am writing this, I am drinking vodka. That I can say for sure is real. The memory of vodka is real.)
Something up there is a lie.
I move my eyeballs from left to right in swift movements in order to jump start the dream process. I lay on my back in fear of being stabbed. If I lay on my stomach, someone might come in and shove a knife into me: violent bedtime sodomy. I’ve always had the fear of being stabbed in the back. Pissing at a urinal is a harrowing experience for me.
I am here in my bed. The blanket will not protect me. Life is dangerous and I am in danger. The world begins and then it ends.
It’s a sleeping sickness.
SANTA CLAUS AND THE ELVES OF FUCK
I.
Christmas.
What a pain in my ass!
Santa Claus picked a flea out of his beard and flicked it into the sky. He pulled on the reins, cursing those fucking reindeer for not going fast enough, for not ending his hell sooner. Once a year he had to endure the most ridiculous of responsibilities which was to provide toys to the children of the world.
Santa wouldn’t have much of a problem with Christmas if he just had to deliver to poor kids or orphans. But no, much of his time was devoted to delivering to rich, spoiled brats whose parents gave them everything they wanted anyway. That was the worst. Those were the times when he was tempted to take a big old shit in their stockings. It took every ounce of his jolly spirit to resist the urge. He had to tell himself it was only once a year, but even that wasn’t enough to extinguish the hate that engulfed him.
And shit, this year was just too much for him. His back was sore, his stomach upset, and his dick, well, his dick was desperate for some action. Mrs. Claus hadn’t given it up for months, not since she caught Santa with that Russian whore.
That was a bad fuckin’ night.
Santa had ordered the girl from Russia with the intention of just getting a quick screw to satisfy his need for variety. Wasn’t it normal for any man to want to dig into some strange pussy ever
y once in a while? It wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife but he had to be honest about it. After three hundred and fifty years of marriage, the young and beautiful Mrs. Diana Claus just wasn’t giving the same effort in the bedroom as she had in the beginning.
So last year Santa had forgotten to lock his workshop door and Mrs. Claus had caught him squeezing his jolly red penis into a tight Russian clamhole. If it wasn’t for the poor hooker bursting into tears, there would’ve been a double homicide. Mrs. Claus was furious to the point of putting a blowtorch to her husband’s crotch and threatening to burn his pecker off if he didn’t repent right then and there.
Fortunately, Santa dropped to his knees and repented.
He also agreed to send the Russian girl back to her home country, but the girl begged and pleaded for him to send her anywhere but there. She said if her uncles found out she didn’t fulfill her part of the transaction, they’d lock her in that toxic waste barrel again. She couldn’t stand another week in there. It had made her brain bubble.
Despite her own emotional turmoil, Mrs. Claus agreed to instead send the young Russian girl to New Jersey where she could get a job as a stripper. After all, it hadn’t been the girl’s fault that Santa Claus was such a letch.
Santa had promised his wife he’d never do that sort of thing again and he meant it. But after a few weeks, that didn’t satisfy her. She kept hounding him to explain why he’d pick some young Russian whore when he had such a hot, young wife at home. Santa didn’t really have a reason. He admitted it seemed strange, since most men would kill to have a young wife like Diana at home. She had cute, perky breasts and a petite body that would bring any cock to attention. But the Russian girl he brought over was plump and voluptuous like a juicy sugarplum. Yes, it was true Santa was one of the most magical men in the world, but he was still a man.