Mr. Suicide

by Nicole Cushing

  “Okay,” he said. He smiled. Looked relieved. “And, like I said, apologies in advance for over-using it. I mean, I don’t mean to be gross or anything. Please don’t think I’m gross. It’s just… I wanted to share this with you because it offers another way out. The new Someone I’ve been talking to, He coordinates it all. Just imagine: there’s a way out besides Mr. Suicide. Isn’t that swell?”

  He’d said the word “swell” unironically.

  You put your hand in the envelope and felt glossy, slick paper in there. A magazine.

  Your brother blushed deep, deep red. “Not with me in the room!” he blurted out. He’d unintentionally raised the volume of his voice so high you had to shush him. You heard footsteps approaching from the kitchen, the knickknacks rattling with each step.

  Your brother rushed out the door, slamming it behind him. “I’m sorry. Oh, my, I’m so sorry. She heard me, I’m outta here.”

  “What’s all the commotion!” Mom snarled. “My two little boys are goofing off, eh? I suppose that means you have too much free time.” She knocked on your door. Five quick, hard wraps of her fist against the cheap wood. She called your name.

  “Yeah,” you replied.

  “How many days has it been since you scrubbed the bathtub?”

  “I did it yesterday. It won’t need scrubbing again until the weekend.”

  “If you have time to horseplay with your brother, then you have time to scrub the tub.”

  “We weren’t horseplaying,” you yelled through the door.

  “Then what were you doing? Talking about me? That was it, wasn’t it? You and your brother getting together to commiserate about how awful it is to live here, huh? Is that it? Telling each other how bad your childhoods have been?”

  (Where did she get that idea? That was a paranoid leap, even for her.)

  “Well, let me tell you, Mr. Faggot-child, you don’t even know what a bad childhood is. Let me tell you, sometime, a few stories about my old man. I wish I could tell ’em, too, but you know what they say—never speak ill of the dead. You know, that’s the good thing about being dead, I suppose, no one can run you into the mud anymore, on account of it’s considered impolite. Anyway, where was I… oh yeah, the bathtub! I want to see it sparkle. Make it sparkle as much as you do, you little faggot. Now!”

  So the honeymoon with your mother was over. Just like that. You counted your blessings that it had lasted as long as it had. It was the longest cease-fire the two of you had ever enjoyed. “Okay, okay, I’ll do it.”

  The oven beeped. And beeped. And beeped.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she hollered with inappropriate panic. “My casserole… ”

  Saved by the bell. She would be distracted long enough for you to at least get a glimpse of the glossy pages inside the envelope. You rushed, fished it out.

  It was a low-budget pornographic magazine called Perfect Monsters. The geriatric, female amputee on the cover was naked, heavily wrinkled, emaciated and attempting to insert her detached artificial leg into her butthole. You felt your face begin to burn with embarrassment. Oh dear, your brother was truly mad. This magazine was the thing that saved him from suicide. To him, this was “salvation”.

  You hid the magazine in between your mattress and box spring and went to clean the bathtub. You had to make it sparkle.

  VII

  The tub didn’t need more than ten minutes of attention, but you gave it fifteen so Mom wouldn’t think you were slacking off. When you leaned down to scrub nonexistent stains, the scent of Ajax stung your nose. Burned your throat, even. It was a distracting smell that got your mind off of things. It smelled fresh and clean but also toxic.

  Then you were called to dinner. Tater tots and green bean casserole. There was a humid, sour smell permeating the kitchen in the wake of the casserole being taken out of the oven. The Ajax had looked and smelled more appetizing. The tater tots oozed grease. One or two of them on the edge of the cookie sheet had started to burn, lending them the appearance of dog shit.

  This time, you managed to eat a little quicker than your brother did. You almost gagged, but you didn’t. On your way out of the kitchen, you offered to help with dishes. Mom declined. In between bites of casserole, your brother flashed you a knowing grin. It made you uncomfortable. You walked to your room.

  After a few minutes, you heard your brother finish his dinner and stride down the hallway to his room. Then you heard the kitchen sink running. But you didn’t hear any clanking dishes after that. Instead, Mom waddled out to the living room and clicked on the television. Through the walls, you could hear her listening to the news.

  You pulled Perfect Monsters out of its hiding place, plopped onto the bed, flipped it open, and took a look.

  You had, of course, seen pornography before. You had some inkling of what to expect. The women would be young and blonde, with doe eyes and full lips. They’d have nice, big tits. They’d be fingering themselves or kissing each other.

  But the pornography in Perfect Monsters featured amputees, primarily (with a handful of other ghastly deformities thrown in the mix alongside one or two burn victims, as well). As you flipped through the pages, you felt revolted at the sights (and felt justified in that revulsion). Not only were the subjects unappealing, but the acts in which they were participating often made you wince. A set of female conjoined twins strangled one another, apparently fighting for the right to suck a single, thin, wrinkly, old cock attached to a pelvis mercifully kept off camera. A “pinhead” (like the ones in that old movie, Freaks) used the crown of her noggin to stimulate a morbidly obese woman’s butthole.

  You gulped. Felt your heart start to hammer heavy in your chest. Your cheeks burned with embarrassment and shame. You felt like you shouldn’t flip any more pages. You felt like you should throw the magazine in the trash or, better still, burn it. That was, after all, what any sane person would do.

  But you didn’t. Instead of doing what any sane person would do, you flipped more pages and… well… and then there were the hanging people. A half dozen of them, all suspended on meat hooks spaced mere inches apart from one another, like cattle. They boasted various degrees of undress and deformity. As they bled to death, they wrapped their legs around one another. The photo captured them mid-grind. At least two of the women seemed too pale to still be alive. At least two of the men appeared to have ejaculated.

  Speaking of men, that was another of the differences between Perfect Monsters and porno-as-usual. There were a lot of dudes in there. You flipped past those pictures. You told yourself you didn’t swing that way. You began to wonder if your brother might at least partially swing that way, because the pages that prominently featured men seemed to have endured the most wear. (Two gay burn victims, biting newly-sewn skin grafts off of one another. A mustached man blissfully sucking the exposed ligament in a recently-severed hairy foot.)

  Stains smudged the photos on those pages. You told yourself they were baby oil stains. Then you flipped another page.

  This one had plastic toys of various sizes engaged in coitus with one another. Military action figures (all male) humped superhero and superheroine alike. Anthropomorphic cars and planes banged legless Barbies. Puppets extended their wooden limbs to lecherously grope Lego men. Robots tore each other to pieces and then a rubber chicken humped the pieces. You were caught off-guard by the caption at the top of the page. In fact, it broke the tension. Made you laugh. It was just a single word.

  BETTER?

  Yes, compared to the hideousness you’d just surveyed, the action figures were—indeed—better. Funny little mag, this one. You turned to the next page, and discovered nothing but a white page with big, black lettering.

  BRACE YOURSELVES! OUR CENTERFOLD (ON THE NEXT PAGE) IS BETTER STILL

  THE HOTTEST OF THE HOT

  THE ONLY IMAGE IN THIS MONTH’S PERFECT MONSTERS WORTH JERKING OFF TO

  (IF YOU SHOT YOUR LOAD EARLIER YOU’RE JUST A SICKY-SICK, NOW AREN’T YOU?)

  ALL FASCINATING PEO
PLE AGREE; THIS CENTERFOLD’S THE BOMB!

  You felt yourself gulp, involuntarily.

  So all of this was a joke? That had to be the case. A sick joke, surely. (Or, as the editors of Perfect Monsters would likely have called it, a “sicky-sick” joke.) But, yes, undoubtedly, you would turn the page and there would be a standard-issue, hourglass figure awaiting you with come-hither eyes. She’d be sitting there, totally nude, legs spread so you could see everything. And then you’d giggle and say to yourself that it was worth wading through all the disgust, to see such a hottie.

  But when you turned to the next page, you were disappointed. There was some… mistake. The page was black. It contained no photo. It didn’t even have any print on it. Then you realized that centerfold meant it was a poster that was long and had to be unfolded from the rest of the magazine. You let out a sigh of relief and proceeded to display the centerfold in all her glory. But instead of the curvy blonde, all you saw was more blackness. Three pages worth, this time.

  Another joke (and this one, not the least bit funny). You felt cheated. You searched the floor; you searched in between your mattress and box spring, thinking that the actual centerfold must have fallen out of the magazine. That had to be the case. This couldn’t be the actual centerfold.

  You wondered where your brother stumbled onto this peculiar rag. And what, exactly, had he found in those pages that offered anything akin to salvation.

  The magazine explained nothing. “Mr. Suicide isn’t my Master,” he’d said. “There’s something better out there… No, not something, someone. Someone heavier. Someone grander. The grandest Someone of all. And the road to meeting Him starts with taking a look inside this envelope.”

  He was crazy, and that was all there was to it. You’d known that before, but you’d listened to him, anyway. Listened to him because he’d heard Mr. Suicide, the same way you had, and because he seemed to know of something better. But what was better about this? When Perfect Monsters wasn’t being grotesque it was being enigmatic. You told yourself that neither quality appealed to you. You wanted to return this magazine to your brother and have nothing else to do with it.

  But then you felt your brain fog over. You were suddenly drained of energy. Wanted to sleep. How odd, you thought. It was early, still, wasn’t it? You looked at the red numbers on your alarm clock. They told you it was already 10:30 pm. You’d been absorbed in the magazine for over four hours. You should’ve gone off to brush your teeth, but you didn’t have the power to get up. You made a half-hearted effort to hide Perfect Monsters under your mattress again, but your arms and legs wouldn’t cooperate. You flung off your glasses then surrendered to the paralysis of something you reckoned to be sleep.

  ***

  Then came the dreams. At least, you’re pretty sure they were dreams. But they were more real than any dreams you’d ever had. For that matter, they struck you as more real than the vast majority of waking days you’d endured.

  In the first dream, Siamese twins were fighting for the right to suck you off. Each one took her gnarled, muscled hand and wrapped it tight around the throat of the other. You cheered them on. “C’mon, bitches, fight for it. Fight for the right to suck off your man!”

  They did as you commanded, intensifying their struggle. You got even harder, watching them strangle themselves. They winced with pain and whimpered with unsatisfied desire. Then, simultaneously, they twitched. A foul smell hit the air. Like exhausted wind-up toys, they slowed to a halt. Their eyes became dull and stationary, like those of dolls.

  You giggled. “Well, damn… you both fought a good fight, only to come up empty. We can’t have that. So how about this… you’re both winners.” You then proceeded to fuck their common twat.

  The rest of the dream (if, in fact, it was a dream) consisted of the rest of the vignettes from Perfect Monsters fleshed out, similarly, in three dimensions—with textures and tastes and odors and sounds. You were the one anally stimulated by the pinhead (oh, how she giggled; oh, how she muttered lunatic nonsense). You were among the rutting meat hook people (oh, how like a game it was; the other bodies were so slick with sweat and blood; to grab onto them took no small amount of skill; and you did so need to grab on to them so you could fuck as you died). You were one of the burn victims biting grafts off one another (oh, the taste of it; not like chicken skin, at all… more rubbery; more bitter). You were sucking the ligament of a severed, hairy foot (oh, how it fit inside your mouth like a thick Asian noodle).

  Your dream-self delighted in these experiences—he frolicked and laughed and groaned and came. But part of you—the part of you that suspected you were dreaming—felt sick at it all; resisted. You wanted no part of these scenarios. You were not a pervert. You were not attracted to freaks. Wake up, your aware-self demanded. This is not me that I’m watching. I’m not like this. I’m not like this at all. Your aware-self tried to seize control of your muscles; tried to flail about to force yourself awake.

  Instead, the scenes repeated. Siamese twins. Pinhead. The meat hook people. Burn victims. Foot ligament.

  Make it stop. This is crazy. Make it stop. I’m going crazy.

  But the scenes didn’t stop, they merely changed. And not for the better. The foot ligament morphed into a marionette string. You found yourself suddenly imprisoned within a box, unable to move anything but your torso, arms, and head. You were a jack in the box. A jack in the box engaged in cunnilingus with a marionette.

  A robot voice egged you on. “Yeah, jester… that’s how we like it. Please her, jester. Please her good.”

  Make it stop. Jesus Fucking Christ, make it stop.

  And then there was nothing but blackness. You were blackness, and you breathed blackness. You were just a mote of blackness drifting through a black sky. You’d had a hard-on this entire dream, but now it grew exceedingly rigid. You felt yourself compelled to rut against the darkness surrounding you. And you did. And it was so tight and so warm and you bucked your hips into it. Grinding.

  “Take me…” you mumbled. “Take me, please?”

  You were begging. Whimpering.

  And this time, the part of you that suspected you were dreaming didn’t want it to stop. So you didn’t. And thus, things progressed to the point of climax. And you let out soft moans. And you twitched and accelerated the rate of your thrusting.

  And you woke to find you’d had a wet dream, prompted by the most wretched of porno rags. Part of you now understood why your brother had considered this salvation. Another part of you felt disgust at what you were becoming. This is too much, you thought. This is batshit loony toons. I’m going to throw this in the trash, at school. Wait until no one’s in the lunch room then fling it into one of the huge trash cans. I’ll take scissors to it, first, so no one can even tell what the pictures used to look like. I’ll cut it into tiny, confetti-sized pieces.

  You told yourself you were going to do all of those things. And you felt good, felt almost-sane, almost-human again after having told yourself you were going to do all of those things.

  Yes, that’s just what I’ll do. Destroy Perfect Monsters today.

  But you didn’t.

  VIII

  By the time you were seventeen and in your senior year, you’d long considered yourself the occupant of the very lowest rung of the social hierarchy at school. But that wasn’t true. It wasn’t that you stood on the lowest rung of the ladder. No, you weren’t even on the ladder. You were the one in the shadows, looking at the ladder. Looking at the ladder, and wanting to kick it over.

  Once, you considered having a chat with the school guidance counselor. Despite the advice of the Marine at the assembly, you weren’t going to tell her everything. You didn’t want to get sent to the funny farm. You just needed to let the hurt out a little. And since “counselor” was part of her title, you thought she might at least listen to some of what you had to say (if only because she was paid to listen).

  You were on the verge of scheduling the appointment. Then you remembered
all the reasons you’d hesitated to confide in her. Louisville was nothing more than a big small town. She went to the same church your family had gone to in years past. You’d stopped going years ago, but your mother still went about twice a month. If you told the guidance counselor even a little of the story, she might drop hints to the pastor that you were in need of healing. And if she dropped hints to the pastor, he might tell your mother. And if he told your mother, you’d never hear the end of it. She’d scream at you for airing the family’s dirty laundry. She’d accuse you of telling lies.

  So instead of telling the guidance counselor what was really going on, you stifled it. The anger and pain had no place to go. It rotted inside of you. It rotted inside of you until you fucked a girl for the first time.

  Yeah, that’s right, fucked a girl. You fucked, to be precise, the girl who was on the bottom rung of the school hierarchy. Her name was Cressida and she was the girl who wore crutches (the one who put her head down on the lunch table when you were thirteen and the jock was punching you).

  She hadn’t gone to elementary school with you. She’d only joined you in seventh grade, so no one knew all of her back story. She’d only divulged one fact about herself: that she grew up in New York. But that was no shocking revelation. Her accent gave her away.

  She wasn’t from Louisville. She was an intruder to the tribe. This alone would have made her a likely target for ridicule and gossip at the bus stop. Her disability insured it.

  She lived in your subdivision but didn’t take the bus. Her mom drove her to school each day, on account of she had a van with a special lift to help her get in and out. Her mom drove her home each afternoon (dropping her off, getting her settled, and then driving off in the van to her waitressing gig).

  It was a piece of shit van, always backfiring, but some charity had souped it up with the lift. There was a magnetic sign on the back of the van that advertised the fact that the charity had donated it. You wondered if that was a string attached to getting it, like a corporate sponsorship sticker on a race car. You figured it had to be humiliating for her parents to have to advertise they couldn’t afford the lift themselves. In your neighborhood, that was like wearing a giant “kick me” sign.