Doa Ii

by David C. Hayes

  He got the pills, took two Xanax and two Vicodin, grabbed the knife, and walked down the steps to the basement. He paused at the entrance, hand on the knob.

  Time to get to work.

  Tommy stripped naked in front of them. Dave whimpered, Candy retched.

  He walked around them, the trapped air in the basement warm on his bare flesh. He slapped his belly and laughed.

  “I tried dieting, but it didn’t work. Why do you get to eat what you want and be skinny and I can’t?”

  He jabbed the back of Dave’s neck with the tip of the knife. The boy screamed. Tommy grinned as he watched a trickle of blood pour down Dave’s neck and onto the back of the chair.

  “It’s not fair,” Tommy said. “And then I get made fun of. That’s not right. I can’t help it. I can’t help how I am. And then I go to school and you humiliate me. And I turn on the TV and there’s fat jokes. It’s not right.”

  “I’m sorry,” Candy said. “Please. Let me go. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s too late for sorry,” Tommy said. He stopped walking around and stood in front of them so they could see his nakedness. He ran the edge of the blade across his chest, between his flabby breasts. The knife cut him, but he hardly felt it. The drugs were doing their work.

  “So,” Tommy said, “you’re hungry? Okay. Let me give you a bite to eat.”

  He slashed the blade across his right breast, sheering it off. The flesh cut easy and the blood only spurted a little. He hacked through until there was just a thin flap of skin left next to his arm, holding the tit on. With a savage jerk, he tore it free. He held up his own, severed breast. The inside of it glistened, wet blood dripping and splattering on the floor.

  He only felt a slight sting. He grinned and dangled the hunk of meat in front of him.

  “Who’s first?” he said.

  Candy fainted.

  Oh, well. He stepped toward Dave, who shrank back in his chair.

  “You have to eat it. If you don’t, I’ll cut Candy.”

  “No. Please, no!” he squealed.

  Tommy swung the hunk of meat inches from Dave’s nose.

  “Want some real food?” Tommy cackled manically. “I know you do. Come on, man! You know you want some of this. It’s the good stuff.”

  Dave screamed. Tommy shoved the chunk into the boy’s open mouth. Dave fought back, trying to spit it out.

  “Come on! You can’t resist this, can you, Dave?” Tommy said. He pushed his severed breast harder, trying to force it past Dave’s tightly-pressed lips. About half had already made it in. “Go on. Nobody will judge you.”

  Dave shrieked inside his closed mouth.

  “Chew!” Tommy yelled. “Chew your food!”

  Dave shook his head.

  Tommy screamed and spun. He brought the knife down and slashed Candy across her arm. Blood burbled from the wound, running down the sides of her arm. Tommy turned back to Dave.

  Dave shook his head again.

  “All right,” Tommy said, through gritted teeth. “How about now?”

  He jabbed Dave’s ribs with the knife, drawing blood. Dave squealed in pain, spitting out the meat. It plopped on the floor with a wet smack.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no. That won’t do at all,” Tommy said. He picked up the remnants of his severed breast and shoved it back into Dave’s face.

  “Eat it, or I will keep cutting you until you bleed to death.”

  That seemed to get Dave’s attention. He opened his mouth. Slowly.

  “That’s right,” Tommy said. “Stick out your tongue.”

  Dave stuck out his tongue.

  “Lick it,” Tommy said.

  Dave licked it. He shuddered. He retched. He turned white. He licked it again.

  “Go ahead,” Tommy said. “No one will judge you.”

  Dave accepted the torn piece of Tommy’s breast and gobbled it down. Blood and grease smeared across his lips and dribbled down his chin.

  “That’s a good boy,” Tommy said.

  ~

  Candy woke a little while later. This delighted Tommy. His face lit up and he danced a little jig.

  “Oh, good! Now we have an audience again, like you did with me.”

  Candy stared at the two red, raw, bleeding holes where Tommy’s chest had been.

  “You like it? Cheapest breast reduction surgery ever,” Tommy laughed. It turned into a titter. He was beginning to feel a wee bit out of control. And he liked it.

  “What is wrong with you?” Candy said, terrified by the macabre scene.

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? There’s nothing wrong with me. I am who I am. I’m Fat Boy!” he said. He made a trumpeting noise with his mouth, as if he was punctuating a public announcement.

  “Stop it!”

  “No,” Tommy said. He bent over, turning his large buttocks toward her, letting it bob inches from her face. “You used to call me lard ass, remember?” he said. He dug through his pants on the floor. He found the key to the basement and stood erect again. He held it out.

  “Here it is,” he said. “Your ticket out. I’m going to put this someplace safe, and if you can get it, then you can escape.”

  He held the key up, tilted his head back, and dropped it into his mouth. It took a couple of tries, but he finally swallowed it. The teeth raked his throat, but that was okay. He didn’t really feel it, though he could taste the blood.

  He picked up the knife he’d left on the floor and drew it across his stomach. Blood oozed from the wound. Candy cried out. Dave said nothing. He sat in his chair, slumped against the ropes holding him. His eyes were dull. Blood and giblets of fat dripped from his bottom lip.

  Tommy jabbed the knife deep into his own belly, jerked it right, carved a path through the blubber, cut down, and then went back the direction he came.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “I’m feeling that.”

  He cut up, completing a rectangle. He dropped the knife, letting it clatter to the floor. Blood poured from his open wounds. It ran town to the edge of his belly and dripped off, splattering on his thighs and seeping down to his knees. He staggered over to the corner, where he kept the bottles of drugs. He grabbed the Vicodin, swallowed a couple more, and followed it with a Xanax. He checked inside both. Only one pill of each left.

  Oh, well.

  He’d waited long enough.

  He dug his fingers into the rectangle he carved. He wriggled them into the wounds, scratching through the fat, until they met inside of him. He worked his fingers around, scrabbling, until his fingers were actually touching each other, flesh to flesh.

  Tommy yanked the chunk out. It popped free with a wet smack. He held the handful of fat right in front of Dave.

  “Ready to eat up?” he said.

  Dave’s mouth opened, slack, as if it was resigned to its fate. Tommy rubbed the fat onto the boy’s protruding tongue. He smeared it around and shoved it in as far as it would go. Dave lapped it up, chewing slow, staring off into space.

  Next to them, Candy screamed and screamed.

  “You’re next,” Tommy said. He waited until Dave finished eating. He turned away from Candy, putting his body between her and his front side, so she couldn’t see what he was doing. He picked up the knife again. He cut into his love handles, slicing off both sides in two quick strokes.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he said.

  Her breath hitched in her chest. She closed her eyes.

  “Lean closer,” he said.

  She did.

  “Pucker up,” he said.

  She did.

  “Here it comes,” he said.

  He giggled.

  He shoved the piece of fat against her pursed lips, smashing it hard against her closed mouth. She squealed and tried to pull away, but there was no escape from the chair.

  “Oh! I love you!” he said, laughing. He kept smudging the fat all over her face, coating her flesh with his gristle, h
is blood, and his grease.

  “Fat Boy strikes again!” he howled.

  Tommy’s head spun. He staggered back. He was losing too much blood now. He had to hurry.

  “Okay, okay.” Tommy leaned against the back wall, the concrete cool on his burning flesh. He glanced down and watched the blood as it poured from his wounds. His legs, groin and feet were soaked now.

  “Time to finish,” he said.

  Tommy staggered over to Dave. He slashed the blade across his stomach. There was a patch of untouched skin between the two chunks he’d taken out. This was the area he exploited. He cut a circle around his belly button, two inches on each side. Once he finished, he dug his fingers in and tore the fat out. It burst free with a grunt and splattered Dave’s chest with blood.

  Tommy set the hunk on Dave’s lap. As he did, he saw a little piece of his intestines slide out of the new hole.

  “Hot dogs,” he said.

  Dark spots exploded at the corners of his vision like black fireworks. Tommy didn’t quite have the strength to hold the knife anymore, so he let it clatter to the floor. He was done with it now. In fact, he was almost completely done. He stared down at his body and smiled.

  “I think I dropped about fifty pounds,” he said, blood gurgling in the back of his throat.

  He snatched up the piece of fat, and shoved the wad into Dave’s mouth. Dave opened wide, accepting his punishment. His eyes stared out into space, vacant, lost.

  Tommy kept shoving, kept pushing, until the fat was lodged in Dave’s throat. At this point, Dave gagged. He fought against his restraints, but there was nowhere to go.

  Tommy sat and stared as Dave’s face turned black and he choked to death.

  Oh, yes, he thought. Oh. Yes.

  Tommy lay down and closed his eyes, riding off on the Xanax high. Candy’s screams accompanied him as he drifted off to death.

  ~

  The police beat down the basement door two days later. They found Dave, still tied to his chair, purple and bloated. Noxious gas filled the room. The second chair was empty.

  On the floor, Candy was digging into Tommy’s stomach, carving back the fat, eating it, licking her fingers clean, giggling. The key to the basement was lying in a heap of Tommy’s intestines, unnoticed.

  A few officers took Candy away. The rest stayed at the scene, trying to understand what had happened.

  And Tommy lay on the floor in death, grinning. Fat Boy no more.

  THE PUBIC HAIR TUMBLEWEED

  Joshua Dobson

  “Fuck my ass SQUAWK fuck my ass SQUAWK!”

  I don’t know why the parrot haunting the vents cusses like that. Maybe somebody trained it to cuss like a sailor before releasing it. Maybe it has Tourette’s syndrome. Can birds get Tourette’s syndrome?

  “Felch my pucker SQUAWK gargle my diarrhea SQUAWK!”

  I’d already closed off all the grates save this one, trapping the little fucker in the ventilation system. It ends today. Opening the box, I take out one of the little black pills, and set it in the duct. I spark up my lighter and touch the flame to the pill. It bursts into flames and a huge black, python-like snake grows from it. When the serpent is fully formed, it slithers into the ventilation shaft.

  “Fuck my turd spewer SQUAWK jism queef SQUAWK!”

  As I’m replacing the screen, my fat hippie boss pads up behind me.

  “George called,” the boss says before pausing to suck on the joint clutched between his fat fingers. George is my boss’ boss. “His grandson’s away on vacation, so he needs you to sweep the floor of the Laundromat once a day.”

  I groan. In addition to the Bowl-A-Go-Go, where I work, George also owns the Sudsy Duds Laundromat. The Sudsy Duds is the only Laundromat in sector K that serves sex offenders. It’s nightmarishly fuckin’ disgusting.

  “Shit pudding SQUAWK fucky fucky shit cunt SQUAWK!”

  The boss passes the joint to me and says, “At least he doesn’t want you to wear the bubble suit.”

  “At least then I’d get some free booze,” I reply. George gives bums a free bottle of cheap booze for donning the costume of the Laundromat’s mascot—a man made of bubbles called the Sudsy Dude—and standing out by the street, waving signs that read: Lose Your Crud at the Sudsy Duds.

  A flurry of squawking and frantic flapping wings drifts from the vent.

  “Spunk bubbles squawk butthole pussy spooge squawk!” shrieks the Tourette’s parrot, but it’s not as loud as before, muffled like it’s coming from inside the body of a snake.

  ~

  On one side of the Laundromat there’s a bar called the Bukkake Bucket. Instead of a cover charge you have to jizz off into a cup in order to get in. They have a carnival style dunking booth, where you throw a ball at a target to drop a naked lady into a dumpster full of rancid jism.

  On the other side of the Laundromat there’s a restaurant called Sparagmos that’s run by a cult that worships Dionysus. You pick out a goat or sheep, then, you can either rip the living beast limb from limb with your own bare hands, or relax and watch slutty, drug-crazed maenads perform the sparagmos. In accordance with ancient Dionysian rites, all flesh is served raw.

  Depending on which way the wind is blowing the Laundromat stinks of either rotting cum or bloody meat and the menses of madwomen. Today, it kinda smells like both.

  Dripping blobs of spilt detergent and swirling splotches of cum glow under the black lights, turning the inside of the Laundromat into a swirling abstract impressionist splatterscape.

  An obese woman in a cowboy hat and a metallic gold bikini, the bush basket of which overflows with tangled blond pubes, straddles one of the washers while an off balance load thumps around inside. The fatty moans lewdly as the machine bucks and shudders beneath her. The quivering cellulite is hypnotic as a Lava Lamp.

  A weasel faced pervert in a rainbow colored afro wig, with a barcode and the words SEX-OFF tattooed under his left eye in that weird red government ink, spews frothy white foam from the corners of his lipless mouth. He’s either been drinking detergent or he has rabies (not that one precludes the other). Afro Wig glances around furtively before opening a dryer and snatching a huge pair of white cotton fat-girl panties streaked with pink bloodstains. He nearly knocks me over as he darts out the door with the prize clutched between his rotten green teeth.

  The Laundromat scum seem even more riled up than usual. Must be a full moon tonight. Glad I have my trusty razor stashed in my boot.

  The floor of the Laundromat is a jungle of linty grey-blue dust bunnies and little tumbleweeds of hair, most of which are probably sex-offender pubes.

  As I push the dust mop down the aisles, a tumbleweed of red pubic hair about the size of a grapefruit drifts out of the path of the oncoming mop, blown by a breeze from an air conditioner vent no doubt. Maybe what they say about red pubes being good luck is true, because the second time the mop bears down on the pubic hair tumbleweed it is once again blown clear.

  The third time the pubic hair tumbleweed dodges the dust mop, I start to think it’s not the result of a breeze. Crazy as it sounds, I’m beginning to suspect that the pubic hair tumbleweed is avoiding the mop, displaying both motility and volition. It’s probably just the pot, I tell myself, but when I reach down to grab the hairball, and it suddenly changes course and increases its speed, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s alive.

  Instead of feeling awe or wonder, I just feel a surge of seething anger. I don’t wonder how this could possibly be happening, I just wanna catch the little fucker. Sweeping the Laundromat floor has suddenly become a contest of wills and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be bested by a ball of carrot-colored sex-offender pubes.

  The pubic hair tumbleweed is headed for the safety of the wee little crack between the nearest washing machine and the floor. If it makes it, I’ll never be able to get it out from under there.

  I fake left with the mop and, when the tangle of pubes dodges right, I drop the mop and reach down to grab the pubic hair tumbleweed with
both hands.

  The horrible itchy sensation that shoots through the palms of my hands forces me to let go. I expect to see the pubic hair tumbleweed darting for the cover of the washer, but I don’t cuz it’s not there anymore. The pubic hair tumbleweed has vanished and my hands itch something fierce.

  I turn my hands, palms up, and choke back the flood of hot bubbling puke that surges up my throat when I see the curly red hair growing out of my palms. I grab a tuft and try to pull it off only to find that it’s somehow rooted itself in the flesh of my palms.

  My furry hand snakes into my left boot and grabs the straight razor. I try to shave the parasitic pubes from my left palm, but the fiendish follicles sense the blade and retract into my flesh, disappearing like the head of a frightened turtle. I barely even feel it when the blade bites into the meat of my palm, shearing strips of skin from my hand. The pubes just retreat further, burrowing deep into my glistening red flesh.

  I’ll take the whole damn hand off if I have to, I scream inside my head, as I begin to hack at my wrist.

  THE PROUD MOTHER

  Ken MacGregor

  Charlotte Banning was an unusual woman. She spoke her mind when she chose—much to the frequent dismay of her peers. She was not satisfied with a girl’s education of manners and diction; she was fascinated by science, by anatomy, by medicine. Charlotte Banning was determined to be a doctor.

  However, no medical university would accept her. Her grades were excellent, her aptitude plainly evident, but her gender made Charlotte undesirable. Well, in one sense anyway. Many of the men to whom she applied made it quite clear they found her desirable in other ways. And, if she thought it would get her enrolled, she would have fulfilled their desires; what was the body after all if not a tool to be used and studied. Her own, even, if it served her ends. But, the men in the universities refused to even consider letting her attend, though many told her she was pretty.

  So, after months of frustration and travel, by motorcar—a device conceived in the bowels of Hell—she finally found herself at a private institution, a stately old house on well-manicured grounds with no sign of its purpose. It was recommended by a sympathetic friend; he, too, had wanted to become a doctor, but had no stomach for the sight of blood.