 
# Flamethrower Fairy Tales

2nd Edition

By Robert Seidel Costic
Text copyright © 2012 Robert Seidel Costic

All Rights Reserved
Dedicated to Andrew Helegda

#  Table of Contents

3 + 1 = 4

Betty's Dancing Garden

Julie's Fairy Godmother

Rainbow Maiden

Bobby Helps an Old Woman

There Once Was a Story

Karma

Marcy the Zombie Killer

Chance Encounter

Mickey

Turtle Pirate

The End of Originality

Car Key

Dr. Merkel's Force of Will

Dynamite

Stewie's Adventures

Complaining

Joey is Violently Mutilated

The Elephant in the Room

The Job to Nowhere

A Good & Loyal Servant

Eat Shit

The Fart King

Shit Storm

Volsi

Shit on a Stick

A Matter of Importance

A Little Birdie

Kwannon

Twisted Mr. Rumples

Nature

Trauma

Where's Shaqueeta?

The Polar Bear and Merman

Old Margerie

Satan

Hell

Circus

The Suicide Note Editor

Lydia of the Bears

Ascension

#

# 3 + 1 = 4

"I don't want to do my homework!" the little girl Emily said. "I hate math!" She slammed shut her school math book and pouted.

"Okay," her father said. "How about I read you a fairy tale instead." He pulled out and opened a book filled with fabulous pictures, and he began to read aloud one of the tales. "Once upon a time there were three happy children named Jane, Joe, and John. They lived with their parents in a small cottage in the woods. One day their parents told them that they needed to visit their uncle, a wizard who lived in the mountains, to get some potions the parents needed for work. So—"

"This is stupid!" Emily shouted. "I don't care what they do. None of this is real."

"Okay," her father said. He found a picture of the three fairy tale children, and when he waved his hand they all came to life on the page. They moved and saw Emily and her father.

Emily was amazed. "How did you do that?" she asked.

"Magic."

"Hi Emily!" Jane said. "How do you do?"

"I'm well. Thanks for asking. Are you guys really alive?"

"Yep, we sure are," Joe said. "We're going to take a little trip to see our uncle, a wizard. Would you like to watch?"

"Sure!" Emily said.

So Jane, Joe, and John went on a path through the woods up to the mountains. Emily asked them all sorts of questions, and they answered and told all kinds of stories about their lives. As they entered the mountains they came across a very high stone bridge, and while they were on the bridge a fat troll, with hairy, green skin covered in warts, crawled on from underneath and trapped the children.

"Where do you think you're going?" asked the troll.

"We're going to visit our uncle," said John.

"Well, you aren't going to cross this bridge that easily," the troll said. "There's nothing I love to eat more than tasty, little children. But I'll let you cross if you can solve a riddle."

The children quaked in their boots. "What is the riddle?" Jane asked.

"The riddle," the troll said, "is this: what is three plus one?"

"Three plus one?" asked Joe.

"Yes. What does three plus one equal?"

"But we never learned math," John said. "Emily, do you know what three plus one equals?" All the characters from the book looked up at Emily.

Emily blushed and shook her head. "No... Daddy, do you know?"

"I don't know, Emily," her father said. "What is three plus one?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I guess I'll just have to eat all of you!" the troll said.

The three children screamed. "Emily, help us!"

"I don't know what to do!" Emily said. "I don't know!" She turned red and began to sweat.

"Why don't you look at your math book?" her father said.

She grabbed her math book, threw it open, and tried to look it up. But she panicked so much, and knew so little about math, that she didn't know what to look for or how. Her thoughts were interrupted by the blood-curdling screams of the three children as the troll came upon them. They ran around in circles on the little space available on the bridge, their arms thrown up high as they screamed. The troll first grabbed John, tore his arms off his body, and drank his blood from them like they were goblets.

When Emily saw this she screamed and cried herself. Sweat fell down her porcelain-white forehead past her golden locks of hair. "Daddy! What is three plus one? Please! Tell me! They're going to die! I can't find the answer in the book. You need to save them. I don't want them to die!"

"No," her father said.

As John passed out Jane and Joe tried to run away, but the troll whacked them with John's severed arms. He grabbed Jane, ripped her skirt, and bit her entire face, so that when he was done with her a giant, bloody hole was left.

"Please!" Emily pleaded. "Just tell me the answer! I'll do my homework. I'll be a good girl. I'll make my bed and go to sleep at 8pm every night. I'll do whatever you want, but please, just tell me: what is three plus one? Please!"

"No."

As Emily watched with tear-flooded eyes, the troll leaped onto John, ripped open his torso, and devoured his intestines, while John, not yet dead, screamed in pain and terror.

Emily's father closed the book on the troll's bloody, noisy feast and looked at his daughter, who was a tearful, crying mess. "Three plus one equals four," he said. "The answer was four."

# Betty's Dancing Garden

"Have you ever seen the garden dance?" Nate asked his younger sister Betty as she played with her dolls on the living room floor.

"No," she said. "Can a garden dance?"

"Don't be silly," said their father, a very smart engineer who knew about a lot of things. "Gardens don't dance. Don't be filling your sister's head with silly ideas."

But Nate ignored him. "Of course they can dance," he said. "Let me show you." And he took Betty's hand and led her outside to their wild, English-style garden, full of blooming springtime flowers and bushes and trees. Nate fumbled in one of his pants pockets and took out a little blue mushroom and handed it to Betty. "Take it," he said.

"What for?" she asked.

"Eat it and see."

"Are you sure?" she asked. She held it close to her eyes and examined it.

"Yes, eat it."

She put it in her mouth and chewed it, although she did not like how it tasted. When she finished she looked at her brother and then looked at the garden. "So where is the dance?" she asked, and at first there wasn't one. But then in the corner of her eye she thought she saw a daffodil wiggle. She looked and yes, it did start wiggling. And then another daffodil wiggled, and then several did. She saw the tulips and petunias wiggle, too, but soon they didn't just wiggle; they stood up and danced! Betty giggled and clapped her hands. The azaleas hummed a tune as the other plants swirled about and surrounded Betty as she swirled in turn. The trees trumpeted and soon even colors made their own sounds, and Betty could taste humming and feel the colors on her skin, and she fell in love with the colors and sounds and tastes and feelings, and as the flowers danced about she felt herself melting into the flowers themselves, melding her own being with theirs, so that her own giggles became flowers and the flowers became her giggles and the sound of her own voice, Betty, sprouted flowers, the Betty flowers, and smelled like flowers, like Betty, like the colors, the reds and yellows and oranges, her hair made of marigolds that she sprouted dahlias with her caresses, and oh the delicious blue yes touch of a petal in her eye felt like light on a soft poem. Betty's body tingled with ecstasy; her hairs stood on end as she let the waves of sensations and emotions ripple across her being, until the flowers grew tired, and one by one they fell asleep, resting where they began in the garden, and as they retired Betty saw her brother again. She ran to him and gave him a big bear hug. "That was amazing!" she said. "I've never seen anything like it in my whole life!"

"Great!" Nate said.

"Can I see them again?"

Nate laughed. "No. Not now. But maybe sometime later."

Betty frowned but did not argue because she felt tired. Over the next several days, however, she pestered Nate about it and one day asked, "Why did I need to eat the mushroom to see the garden dance?"

"Because," Nate said, "the mushroom is magical. You know the world that we usually see? Like now? Well, we don't see all the stuff that really happens in the world. But certain magic mushrooms let us see stuff that we couldn't see by ourselves. They're like eyeglasses. Or a telescope."

"Wow," Betty said. "That's neat. Who makes the mushrooms?"

"They grow by themselves," Nate said. "You can find them in the woods."

"So can we see the garden dance again?" Betty asked.

"No, not today."

After that Betty gave up on waiting for Nate to give her a mushroom. In the following days she ventured into the nearby forest with a red plastic bucket that she usually used for building sandcastles at the beach. She knew which mushrooms she should pick because, having studied Nate's prior to eating it, she knew how they should appear. When she found a mushroom she picked it up and put it in her bucket, and she continued to do this until her bucket was full. She walked back home, put the bucket in the garage, and took a mushroom so that she could explore the magical world that she so loved. In fact, Betty explored this world every day over the course of many weeks, replenishing her bucket of mushrooms with more trips to the forest when she needed.

On one particular day, after she had eaten a mushroom, she discovered the ground rippling, and when she touched it the grass felt like velvet and her hands sunk in like they were kneading a thick bundle of bed sheets. She crawled along the ground, rolled in it, heard the birds spew rainbow sounds like candy raindrops, and giggled. Where were her clothes? She couldn't tell if she had any on, or if she only wore her skin, but she felt warm and covered in softness, and she swam to the flowers, which swayed and sprayed pollen in her face, and she sneezed little fairies out of her nose and chased them as they fluttered about her, breathing in a few, and then, oh my, the flowers exploded, boom, kabow, bling, and shot up, and from those that exploded more came, and more, and from the rainbow firework flower bed erupted a full-grown woman, her face like the sun, shooting rays of light, and her body decked in a wild, lush flower dress, and she said to Betty in colors, "I am the flower queen!" and a rush of awe swept through Betty's body, and she took hold of pearl white hand of the queen, who raised her up into the air, the two of them rising, levitating, now flying into the air, the queen a rocket shooting flower flames and smoke into the air, and she brought Betty closer, and they flew higher into the air, Betty couldn't see her house now, now her neighborhood, now the whole town, and they flew higher and higher into the air and she felt cold and the queen brought her deep into her flower dress and said "Kiss me so you can breathe," and they kissed and flew and went higher into the sky which turned from bright blue to black and went higher and flew and kissed and stayed into the flower dress up higher until the queen took her all the way to heaven.

# Julie's Fairy Godmother

The sweet little girl Julie scampered across the lawn with the adorable calico kitten she had just received the previous week for her birthday. The bright, sunny outdoors, with their great open spaces and their lush trees and bushes, homes to wonderful and secretive creatures, promised an exciting adventure.

The kitten scampered into just such a bush, and Julie chased after it, but when she looked for it she couldn't find it. She crawled on her hands and knees, looking around the ground under the bush. When she didn't see it she got up and looked around the garden, and then went inside the house and retrieved her mom. The two of them went back outside and looked for the kitten, but no matter where they searched they couldn't find it.

"Girl, I think we're just going to have to wait and see if it comes back," Mom said before going back inside. Julie stayed out and sat on the ground, hoping that maybe the kitten would scamper back to her. She felt guilty for ever letting it out of her reach; if it ever came back, she was sure she would never let it go.

It was when the sun began to set and the air began to cool that Julie almost gave up hope. But as she stood up to go inside she saw the bush where the kitten disappeared rustle. Julie jumped and ran to the bush, and from the bush a gorgeous array of glitter exploded as a fairy-like creature emerged. "Hello little girl!" she said.

"Who are you?" asked the girl.

"I'm your fairy godmother! I noticed that you've been looking sad."

"I've lost my kitten."

"You did? Well, I can help."

"You can?"

"Yes. I can make your kitten come back, but first you must do something very important."

"What is it?"

The fairy godmother presented a small box, two inches by two inches by two inches, wrapped in blue gift paper and a green ribbon. "One of your school teachers is Mrs. Schneider, isn't she? I need you to give this present to her. Once you've done that, I will use my magic to make your kitten return."

Julie took the box. "Okay, but why can't you give her the box?"

"Because I'm your fairy godmother. Only you can see me, and so only you have the power to give the present to her."

"What's in the box?" Julie asked.

The fairy godmother laughed. "Oh, child! Don't ask so many questions. Now run along now, and after you've given Mrs. Schneider my gift, come back to this bush so that I may give you the kitten."

Julie ran back inside with her box and put it in her backpack for school. She had dinner, did her homework, and went to bed, but for the whole rest of the day she thought about the gift and how she needed to give it to Mrs. Schneider to get her kitten back. She could hardly stand to wait. The next day seemed like an eternity away, and when it arrived each moment seemed to take forever -- waking up, putting on clothes, having breakfast, brushing her teeth, and going to school. She wanted it to be over already.

But Julie was in store for trouble when she arrived at school. As she put the gift into her locker Bobby, the bully of her grade, slammed her. "Whoa, what's this?" Bobby said as he snatched the gift.

"Don't take that!" Julie screamed.

"Whatever, ya' freakin' sissy." And with total nonchalance he unraveled the green ribbon and blue gift paper and opened the box. "Whoa, shit! Look at that!"

"What? What is it?" Julie asked.

"Look at it," Bobby said. "Who are you hanging out with?"

"Tell me already! What is it?" Julie was about ready to put up a fight, but instead of fighting Bobby simply gave the box back to her so she could see for herself.

"It's crack," Bobby said. "What the hell are you doing with that?"

"Crack? I have to give it to Mrs. Schneider."

"What? That's fucked up."

The school bell rang. They had a minute to be in their classrooms. Bobby took off, and Julie scrambled to put the wrapping paper and ribbon over the box before putting it back in the locker and heading to her next class. When the time came she picked up the disheveled box again and took it with her to her class with Mrs. Schneider. When she entered the room she put the box on the teacher's desk, saying nothing to Mrs. Schneider even though she was right there looking at her lesson plan. But Mrs. Schneider noticed Julie and said, "Oh is this for me?"

"Yes, Mrs. Schneider," Julie said.

"Why thank you! I've been expecting this."

The rest of the school day went uneventfully, except that Julie couldn't wait to go back home. When she finally finished her classes and rode the bus back home she ran to the garden bush, and there the fairy godmother re-emerged. "Did you give Mrs. Schneider my gift?"

"Yes," Julie said.

"Good. I have another gift for you." She handed Julie another box that looked identical to the one before it.

"But I thought you were going to give me my kitten now," Julie said.

"I will in good time," the fairy godmother said with a smile.

"You lied!" the girl protested. "You said I would get my kitten when I gave Mrs. Schneider your gift. I did that, so you should give me my kitten back. Do you even know how to get my kitten?"

The fairy godmother's smile flashed into a gruesome snarl. "Look, you stupid little bitch. I have your kitten!" The queen revealed a cage containing the kitten. The kitten looked unharmed but annoyed with being trapped, and when it saw Julie it mewed. "If you don't want anything to happen to your fucking kitten you'll keep delivering my gifts to Mrs. Schneider. You got it?"

Julie's face grew red with rage, but she took the box. "Fine!" And she stormed into the house and went to her mom, who was at her desk paying bills. "Mom! My fairy godmother is holding my kitten hostage because she wants me to deliver crack to Mrs. Schneider."

"That's nice, dear," Julie's mom said.

"I'm serious!" Julie said. "Look! Here's the crack."

But Julie's mom wouldn't even look at the box. "Don't be silly. I know you're upset about the kitten, but we just have to be patient and hope it comes back. Okay?"

Miffed, Julie stormed out of the room with the box. The next day she went to school and made a point of looking for Bobby. When she found him at his locker stashing some cigarettes she approached with her new box in hand. "Bobby, I need your help," she said, and she explained her situation. Later that day she gave the second box to Mrs. Schneider, who accepted it with the same plain graciousness.

When she returned home from school she went back to the bush, and sure enough the fairy godmother appeared. "Did you give Mrs. Schneider my gift?"

"Yes."

"Wonderful. I have a new gift for you to give her." The fairy godmother gave Julie a third, identical box.

"Wait. I want to see my kitten again just to make sure it's still okay."

"Okay," said the fairy godmother. She presented the caged kitten again, and in a flash Bobby jumped out from behind and grabbed the fairy godmother. Julie caught the cage as it fell. The fairy godmother screamed, "Fucking shitface motherfuckers!" She wrestled with Bobby on the ground, but before she could break free or perform any dark magic Bobby revealed a knife and began stabbing her with it. Julie looked on with some disgust as he stabbed her again and again in a fitful, possessed frenzy. Blood spluttered on him, on her, and on the ground, but he kept stabbing her. He stabbed her in the chest, in her gut, in the face -- all over -- until she was nothing but a lifeless, unrecognizable, bloody piece of flesh.

When Bobby finished he looked at Julie, his face covered in sweat and blood, his nostrils flared as he heaved each breath. Julie came to him and in a whisper said, "Thank you," and in gracious gesture gave him the box the fairy godmother had given her. "Here, please take this. It's yours."

"Awesome!" Bobby said. "I've never had crack before!" And he ran off with the box.

Julie took the caged kitten into the house and presented it to her mom. "Look at what I got!" she said.

Julie's mom lit up. "Wow! Where do you find it?"

"Well, remember that fairy godmother I told you about? Well, I got it back from her."

"That's good," Mom said, somewhat curious as to where Julie got the cage.

"But we have a problem," Julie said. "Bobby had to kill her, and now she's lying in the garden."

"What?" Julie's mom stood up and rushed outside, where surely enough she saw the grizzly, bloody corpse. She picked it up, ran into the basement, and threw it into the furnace. After washing her hands and helping herself to a shot of gin from the liquor cabinet, she joined Julie as they let the kitten out of the cage. They fed it, pet it, and gave it enough love to make up for all the time it was away. They talked about Julie's amazing adventure and learned an important moral, one that they would cherish for the rest of their lives: never let cats outside.

# Rainbow Maiden

If you have lived long enough you have probably seen a rainbow. They come once in a great while, usually after a shower, and are always far away. If you've ever chased a rainbow, you'll quickly realize that it's impossible, that the rainbow always seems to recede. It wasn't always this way. There was once a time in which rainbows came often and landed right among us.

In our own neighborhood the maiden who owned the rainbow would unroll it down almost every day at the local town park and derive tremendous pleasure by letting the children slide down it. The children loved her and sometimes gave her treats, although she didn't treasure the gifts as much as their company.

One day the owner of the local shoe factory saw the rainbow maiden playing with the children and thought that money could be made by selling the children tickets to slide the rainbow. He walked to the maiden, introduced himself, and proposed they start a joint business together. She could sell tickets for the rainbow, and he could sell shirts and other souvenirs.

"No," said the rainbow maiden. "I have no interest in that."

The businessman walked away disappointed. That rainbow was a fantastic resource for making money, he thought, and that stupid maiden was wasting it. He talked to the local mayor, and with his approval he built a makeshift fence along the edge of the park, and when the maiden unrolled her beautiful rainbow the businessman tried to sell tickets at the fence's entrance to any of the kids who wanted to enter.

When the maiden noticed what the businessman was doing, she stormed over to him. "Hey, you stupid sack of shit, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"I'm trying to make the most of this wonderful opportunity," he said.

"Well, get lost, or I'm taking my rainbow away."

The businessman stared at her impassively and then left. That evening he called his friend Mario, a member of the Mafia that he sometimes did business with. "Hey Mario, I need a few of your henchmen," he said. "There's a rainbow maiden in my neighborhood, and I'd like to get that rainbow from her." Mario promised to lend him three men if he could get a cut of the money they made on the rainbow. The businessman agreed.

When the rainbow maiden returned to the park the next day she saw the businessman and three henchmen leap at her from a nearby bush. They reached within feet of her, and in a panic she summoned a lightning bolt from a distant cloud and hurtled it at the men, who instantly exploded. All that remained were several ashen craters. The children gasped. When the rainbow maiden realized what she had done, and in particular what she had made the children witness, she felt tremendously sad.

"I'm sorry, kids," she said and rolled up her rainbow. From then on she didn't visit the park, and that has continued on to this day. I have never seen the rainbow maiden myself, but I have heard from little children that she brings her rainbow secretly to perhaps one or only two children at a time, and only if they have been good and there are no adults around.

# Bobby Helps an Old Woman

Bobby stood in his Boy Scout uniform on the corner of a busy street intersection in the center of his small town. He looked at the passing cars and pedestrians, waiting for an opportunity to do his daily "good turn." After waiting for an hour he saw a little, old lady with only one arm shuffling across the street with a bag full of groceries. He hurried over to her. "May I help you ma'am?"

"Yes, sweetie," she said. "Thank you. Here, could you take this?" She handed him her bag and let him help her across the street. "Would you mind taking this home with me?"

"Why, it would be my honor," Bobby said, pleased that he could be so helpful. He walked with her a few blocks to her house, which turned out to be just down the street from his own. The lady invited Bobby into her house and showed him the kitchen counter so that he could put the groceries down.

"Do you like cookies?" the lady asked.

"Sure, of course I do," Bobby said.

"Would you like to help me make some?"

"Sure!"

"Good." The lady shuffled about the kitchen, getting stuff out of the cupboards with her one weak arm, and she asked Bobby to get the heavier items. Soon enough she had Bobby doing all the work as she sat on a stool and gave instructions.

As Bobby mixed the flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and vanilla extract in a bowl to make dough, he asked the lady, "Ma'am, do you mind if I ask a personal question?"

"Yes?"

"What happened to your arm?"

"Oh, that." The lady blushed. "I lost my arm a long time ago, when I was just a child. I was a lot younger than you are now. Back then my family lived on a farm miles from here. My parents worked all day long, and so I spent a lot of time by myself. I'd play around the farm, and one day I saw one of our pigs sitting in a pen. It looked so big and cute, I'd thought I'd go in and hug and pet him. It climbed into the pen and went up to the pig, and before I knew what happened he wrapped his big ol' mouth around my arm and gnawed it off. He probably would've eaten the other one, too, but by then my parents came and pulled me out of the pen."

"Oh my," Bobby said. "What happened then?"

"What happened?" the lady said. "Nothing happened. They took me to a hospital and sewed me up."

"And the pig?"

"Oh, they kept the pig until it was time to take it to the slaughterhouse."

"That's awful."

"It's okay. It happened a long time ago."

Bobby added chocolate chips to the dough, mixed it all together, put clumps of dough on two baking trays, and inserted them into the pre-heated oven. After the cookies baked, Bobby took them out and let them cool, but when they reached that perfect temperature, where they were still warm and moist but not too hot, Bobby and the lady ate every single one of them.
There Was Once a Story

There was once a story about a boy who overcame obstacles and grew up to become a good person.

# Karma

Once upon a time there was a good little boy named Timmy, who was blessed to have two very wealthy yet kind and loving parents. But one day, while his parents were driving home from the homeless shelter where they volunteer, a large, speeding truck smashed into their car on the highway, crumpling the car into a jumble of plastic and mangling the parents' bodies into a gory, unrecognizable mess.

Timmy inherited his parents' fortune but, being only four years old, was put under the guardianship of his mom's brother Joe and his wife Sasha. The couple adopted the son but didn't particularly care to have a child. The chores of parenthood annoyed them and interfered with their vacations and leisure time. But they didn't want to give Timmy up because they liked all that money he had.

One night Joe and Sasha put Timmy to bed, wished him good night, turned off the bedroom light, and closed the door behind them as they left. Timmy often felt scared and lonely at this time of night, especially after having lost his parents, but his heart pounded especially hard when he sensed the presence of a monster in his closet.

From the dim moonlight beaming into his bedroom window, Timmy could see and hear his closet door creek open. A mass of hair, dagger-sharp teeth, and two bloodshot eyes crept toward him from the darkness. Timmy screamed. "Joe! Sasha! Help! Help! There's a monster in my room! A monster!" But no one came.

The monster crept to Timmy's bedside, smacking its lips, and once it was within reach it grabbed Timmy with its hairy arms and tore him to pieces, limb by limb. Blood splattered about as the monster swung the dismembered limbs and threw them whole into its large mouth. The monster gobbled up Timmy's torso and then finally his head, until there wasn't anything left of him except the blood splattered all over the bed.

When the monster finished it walked into the living room, where Joe and Sasha were watching TV. When they saw it, Sasha asked, "Are you finished?"

"Yep," the monster said.

"Great." Sasha picked up her checkbook, wrote out a check, and handed it to the monster with a wink and a smile. "I gave you a little extra. Consider it a bonus."

"Thank you," the monster said and left.

After Timmy died Joe and Sasha inherited his fortune and went on an extravagant vacation to a beautiful but politically unstable country ruled by a tyrannical family. They stayed at the most famous and expensive hotel, where a battery of servants pampered them.

During their stay a revolt broke out. Peasants unhappy with their relentless exploitation by the wealthy rioted in the major cities, attacked palaces, banks, and government buildings, and soon came toward the hotel where Joe and Sasha stayed. Joe and Sasha feared for their lives, but they were saved by a battalion of soldiers who arrived by army trucks and surrounded the hotel. When the rioters ran toward the hotel, the battalion opened fire and killed hundreds of them, mowing them down again and again until the protestors abandoned the bloodbath. Joe and Sasha breathed a sigh of relief as a pile of gore laid before the hotel.

Soon they were visited upon by none other than the dictator of the country, who embraced them with open arms. "Sometimes it takes a firm hand to control these people," he explained. "I am so sorry you had to see that."

"No need to apologize," said Joe. "I'm just glad you came in time to save us."

The dictator laughed. "Ah! I guess fortune played in our favor today. Come lets have a drink to celebrate." They did, and lived happily ever after.

# Marcy the Zombie Killer

Marcy had just finished preparing a big pitcher of lemonade. She carried the pitcher, a couple of glasses, and a bowl of fruit on a silver pitcher out to the backyard garden to enjoy the lovely summer Saturday morning with her husband, but when she walked through the back door to their house she discovered a zombie munching on her husband's head.

She dropped her tray. At first she panicked, but once she contemplated what she needed to do she ran to her tool shed and picked up an ax. When she returned to the macabre scene she hacked at the zombie, which turned to her and grunted before she cleanly knocked its head off its body. The zombie corpse and Marcy's husband both dropped to the ground. Marcy knelt down and examined her husband, who she surmised had already passed away, and she realized that according to typical zombie lore her husband would soon become a zombie as well if she did not do something about it first. So she decapitated him as well and chopped up his body and the zombie's until she felt satisfied that they would no longer pose a danger. And then she called the police.

When the police arrived Marcy tried to explain what happened, but the police arrested her, believing that she had gone insane and hacked two people to death. She spent several weeks in jail without bail, but the district attorney failed to take Marcy's case to court because the autopsy report showed that Marcy's ax attack had not killed either person. In fact, the report confirmed that Marcy's husband died from the head injury, that the other person had died several weeks prior, and that the other person even had undigested pieces of brain matter in its stomach.

Marcy thought that the evidence overwhelmingly supported her claims, but to her despair most people considered her release from jail as stemming from a technicality and thus she was still somehow guilty. They couldn't get over the fact that she hacked two people to pieces, and they couldn't believe that there was a zombie. The townspeople all shunned her. Marcy lost her job and all her friends. No one attended her husband's funeral because she was there. People could barely stand to be near her or talk to her even at the supermarket or at the post office. She fell into a depression, spending several days watching television and eating twinkies.

But the more she thought about it the more Marcy became convinced that some day a zombie apocalypse would be upon the townspeople. She adopted a German shepherd she named Blitzer to provide her protection and keep her company. She began exercising and purchasing weapons off of the Internet, including a weapons-grade flamethrower. She tried to take Blitzer to dog-training classes, but when the classes refused to take her Marcy trained with Blitzer alone and worked on attack techniques together. They spent all of their time together, exercising, practicing, playing, eating, sleeping and so on. Blitzer became Marcy's best and only friend.

At night the two of them went on trips around town and the surrounding countryside, looking for zombies. For weeks they didn't find anything, but one night they came across a zombie as it limped its way out of the town's cemetery. They could barely spot its silhouette with the help of the nearby streetlight, but when Marcy shined her flashlight on it they could clearly see the standing, rotting corpse as it made its way in their general direction. Marcy commanded Blitzer, "Kill! Kill!" and Blitzer ran up, jumped on the zombie, and tore it to pieces. Marcy ran over and torched the carnage with her flamethrower before the two of them ran back home.

Later that night Marcy and Blitzer went to bed together satisfied at having made their first successful kill together. Blitzer licked Marcy's face, and she found it so adorable she rubbed him in return. But then Blitzer mounted Marcy, inserting its rigid penis into her vulva. The penis became hard, and soon Blitzer humped Marcy like a furry jackhammer. At first Marcy harbored mixed feelings about Blitzer's penetration, but once she realized that he enjoyed it she hugged him and pushed him deeper into her. One minute later Blitzer climaxed.

Marcy and Blitzer kept exercising and hunting for zombies, but over time Marcy realized that she had become pregnant. Over the months her belly ballooned until one day she gave birth to a liter of ten puppies. Blitzer approved. In the ensuing weeks Marcy spent much of her time breast-feeding the puppies, two at a time, while she and Blitzer rested from zombie-hunting. The puppies appeared for the most part like normal German shepherds, except that they eventually grew much larger, to the size of lions. Marcy trained them like she did with Blitzer, and when the twelve of them walked outside they were a fearsome sight. Neighbors ran back into their homes or jumped into their cars.

One morning Marcy was awoken from bed by the sounds of something rustling in the living room. When she went to investigate she saw that the dogs had already torn apart a zombie that had wandered into the house. Marcy looked outside the windows and saw a huge horde of zombies clamoring to break inside. She knew what she needed to do. She dressed in body armor, went to the kitchen, had a hearty breakfast, fed the dogs, packed all of her weapons, grabbed a bag of dog food, and dropped some speed.

Marcy shot thirty-foot flames out of the windows and front door of her house, torching the mob of zombies that gathered outside. The burning zombies moaned and groaned and collapsed once the flames ate up their bodies. Marcy, coming under the influence of speed, experienced a sexually charged euphoria as she watched the burning zombies, and with a wild zest she jumped on one of her giant dogs and shot out of the house, smashing down the front door of her house with explosive energy.

As she rode the dog down the street she shot flames at all the zombies she passed. Her pack of dogs followed close behind, tearing down all the zombies that she hadn't torched. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of zombies gathered in the neighborhood, but Marcy and her dogs burned, ripped, and tore the zombies down with a wild, insane abandon. Sweat covered Marcy's red-hot body, and as she felt her dog's powerful muscles flexing underneath her, and as she spewed fire and saw the zombies burn and tear apart, her pussy juices flowed.

The zombie apocalypse may have assaulted Marcy's town, but it was Marcy and her dogs that did most of the destruction. In an hour the streets were littered with the burning dismembered bodies of zombie corpses.

Marcy and her pack roamed the whole town, mutilating and destroying zombies wherever they found them. After two days of this it seemed that they had destroyed all of them. As Marcy toured the city the last time, coming off her amphetamine high, she collected the surviving townspeople. She set up camp at the town square and shot flares into the sky to signal her location. More townspeople came.

When the mayor arrived he walked up to Marcy to shake her hand. "Thank you for everything you did. You're our hero!"

"Shut up, you fucking piece of shit," she said and spitted in his face. She gathered her dogs together and stood on top of them to make an enouncement to the survivors. "Listen to me, you worms, you miserable, shitty excuses for human beings! You judged me when you didn't need me. I will judge you now that I don't need you. I have killed the zombies and saved this town. I will now rule it, and you will worship me like a god! If you disobey me, my dogs and I will murder you!"

And from then on, for the rest of Marcy's life, she ruled the town with an iron fist.

# Chance Encounter

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to Monroe Street to see my boyfriend."

"I'm going to Monroe Street. You're going to Monroe Street. Let's go together."

"Do you have a boyfriend? What's his name?"

"Greg."

"My boyfriend's name is Greg. Your boyfriend's name is Greg. I'm going to Monroe Street. You're going to Monroe Street. Let's go together."

"Does your boyfriend have a dog? What's its name?"

"Princess."

"My boyfriend's dog's name is Princess. Your boyfriend's dog's name is Princess. My boyfriend's name is Greg. Your boyfriend's name is Greg. I'm going to Monroe Street. You're going to Monroe Street. Let's go together."

# Mickey

Mickey thought of himself as a child, and although he was by now an adult he behaved so much like a child that people paid him a lot of money for it. To them it was such a novelty, seeing this fully grown person acting so childlike, and Mickey's air of naïve gaiety and innocence warmed their spirits and made them nostalgic for their own childhoods. "Those days are over for the rest of us," they thought. They would pay good money to buy tickets to see Mickey's shows, where all he did was basically sing, dance, and act like a child, and in the process Mickey earned enormous sums of cash.

Once he became extremely wealthy he built a giant house, one large enough so that he could feel like a child in it, even though he was six feet tall, and next to the house he built an amusement park and a zoo. He invited children to come and play with him at his grand estate, and although many parents were at first happy and eager to have their children play with this rich and famous person, they were later perturbed when they saw Mickey play so uninhibitedly with the children as if he really were one. "That isn't right," some might say. "There is something wrong about this." And they would take their children away and then tell their friends how Mickey was strange or even perverse, a nasty old man who preyed on the company of children.

When Mickey heard about this he was extremely upset. "But I am a child!" he said, and none of his servants, drivers, doctors, or accountants would tell him otherwise. But then, sometimes when he looked at himself in the mirror, he saw that wide nose and realize that he didn't look like a child anymore; he looked like his father, a man who gave him nightmares, and he convinced himself that the parents were scared because he looked like his scary father. He went to a doctor and told him, "I don't want to look like my father. I want to look like a child. Can you do that?"

The doctor said yes, and so an operation was scheduled, and after it was over Mickey looked at himself in the mirror and saw a different, more youthful face. The nose was completely different; instead of wide, with large, flaring nostrils, it was extremely thin, almost as sharp as a knife. His skin color was lighter and felt less natural, as if it were coated in plastic. Some people were a little bit horrified by Mickey's appearance, but no one said anything, especially since Mickey himself seemed so pleased with his new look.

Mickey was sure that the parents wouldn't mind letting their children play with him now, but if anything the change in his appearance now had the opposite effect. When parents saw him they found his appearance monstrous and concluded that he must have been mentally deranged to do that to his face. Although some parents still took their children to visit Mickey and play on his grand estate, they too left when at one point Mickey's nose fell off right in front of all the children. They were shocked. A couple cried. Mickey tried to calm them down. "Don't worry! It doesn't hurt. It's not my real nose anyway." He put the nose back on his face and tried to convince them everything was okay again, but the children wouldn't have it, and when they saw their parents later that day the first thing they told them was how Mickey's nose fell off and flopped around on the ground.

Now no one came to Mickey's estate. Nothing in the world upset him more. He felt betrayed, ostracized, and alone. He went back to the doctor and told them that he had failed in making Mickey look like a child. "Everyone was scared of me after my nose fell off," he said. "I need you to do it again. I need you to make me really look like a child."

"I can't do that," the doctor said, "but if you really want to look like a child again, I can recommend a wizard. He knows magic that I don't, and he will have the ability to make you look so young that all the children will love you again." That sounded great, so the doctor gave Mickey the wizard's business card, and soon thereafter Mickey visited the wizard.

"Can you make me look like a child again?" Mickey asked. "Can you make me popular with children again?"

"Of course," the wizard responded.

"What does it cost?"

"Nothing at all, but are you sure that is what you want?"

"Yes, please! Please, do it right now if you can!"

And so the wizard waved his hand, and Mickey passed out. What happened next is a little bit of a mystery. The person that we would see and recognize as Mickey disappeared. No one saw him at his estate. No one saw him at his usual shows. But every once in a while the wizard would tour the world with his collection of marionettes, and during his shows, which he performed mostly for little children, he sang and dangled his long hands above the little marionette stage to move the strings that made the puppets' little bodies dance. His shows were quite popular, but out of all the marionettes that the wizard played, the one that the children loved the most was a new marionette that the wizard named Mickey.

Turtle Pirate

The captain of the turtle pirates marveled at the booty that they had just uncovered in the sands of the unnamed Caribbean island. There, among the gold bullions, diamonds, and other precious stones, were the nostalgia-inducing toys of his youth that his mother buried with her other belongings. Although this illustrious turtle had captured the cargo of many armored foreign nationals, this find was the zenith of his ninety-year career, in which propellers now flew overhead above the palm trees. This treasure had been kept secret from him but had been here all along, waiting for him to find...

# The End of Originality

John wanted to live the life of a poet, but he couldn't bear to write any poetry because no matter how much he thought and imagined he felt that he could not write anything original. "Everything that I have ever wanted to say has already been said by someone else, and better," he thought. "If only I had been born in Homer's time, or even in the 19th century. There still would've been something to write about, but there's no new territory now. It seems like even every possible style of writing has been played out!"

Now, in the same town there happened to live a famous, old poet, so John visited her in a fit of desperation and explained his situation. "You shouldn't wish to have lived in former times," she said. "Back in the old days people enslaved each other and poets starved. Today is actually the best day. Your problem is that your senses aren't sharp enough. Here, put on my spectacles and take a look around."

The poet handed her glasses to John. Through them he could see the stories behind everything he saw. He could see the story of the wooden dinner table, the one sitting twenty feet away from him in the living room; he could read its story all the way back to its origin as trees in the Pacific Northwest, and he could see the story of the cat sleeping on the couch in the other room all the way back to her birth years ago in a barn outside of town. The poet took John outside, where he saw the stories of all the people walking by.

"It's all almost too much!" John said. "I see so much now, I can barely comprehend it all!" And so the poet took the glasses away from. "But now I don't see anything."

"I don't think you're cut out to become a poet," the poet sighed.

"But I want to become a poet so much," he said. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes," the poet said. "If you can't become a poet yourself, you could kill other poets instead. Kill the poets, and you can kill their poetry."

The idea struck John like a bolt of lightening. "Now that's different!" he said.

Now, the town had a public library that some local poets visited every couple of weeks to hold a workshop. They shared their poetry with each other, provided critiques, discussed issues that interested them, and socialized. About ten poets attended any given meeting, and on this particular night about eight gathered in a corner of the library. As they sat in a circle Elliott, one of the poets, read aloud his ode to Mariah Carey:

Beautiful glitter butterflies fly

in loverboy joy

like honeyed babydoll birds.

Whenever you call,

I close my eyes

and give my breakdown all.

Twister reflections

all my life

don't stop if we lead the way.

Sylvia was about to say something about the work, but as she began to speak all of her words were drowned out by the roar of a chainsaw as Elliott's brains were splattered across the room. The poets were so surprised they were for a moment dumbfoundedly immobilized as John, clad in a white mask and a butcher's apron, took a chainsaw to Elliott's head until there was no head left.

The other poets finally got a grip on what was happening before them: they had a murderous maniac to deal with. They bolted. John chased them with his chainsaw. Their instinct was to run for the front entrance of the library, but when they reached it they couldn't open the doors. They were locked. And then they looked around and saw that the two librarians were lying decapitated at the checkout station, their bloody bodies slumped over the counter. John had taken the keys to the library from them and had locked the doors.

The chainsaw roared as John ran to the panicking poets shaking the library doors. Most of them scattered, but before she could escape the chainsaw ripped into the belly of one of the poets and came out her other side. John pulled the chainsaw out of her, and the remains of her intestines poured out as she fell to the floor.

Just then a cloud of white smoke covered John. He looked around and saw another poet blowing repellent in his face from a fire extinguisher. It did not deter John, however, and he ran against the cloud to strike the poet, who, realizing the smoke was not as effective as he had hoped, tried to hit John with the extinguisher itself before he was mowed down by the chainsaw.

One of the poets tried to hide in the book stacks, thinking that if he saw John he would run and weave his way in and out of the aisles. And that dreaded moment came when the sound of the roaring chainsaw grew louder and louder as it came closer to him. The poet's heartbeat raced. Sweat poured down his face. He looked up and down the aisle, anticipating John's horrifying appearance, when the chainsaw jutted from the bookshelves themselves and tore open his belly. He screamed, tried to hold his stomach and run, but he fell and succumbed to a violent death as John ran around the shelves and tore him to pieces.

Meanwhile, Sylvia called the police on her cell phone and then hid in the basement. She waited in her dark corner among the unused furniture and supplies and listened to the horrors occurring upstairs. She waited and waited. It grew quiet. She wasn't sure what to make of it, but she did not want to go and investigate. Then the lights to the basement turned on, and two policemen walked down the stairs. When she saw them she ran and almost hugged them before catching herself.

"Jesus Christ, you're here!" she said.

"Ma'am," one of the officers said, "is the killer here?"

"What, you haven't captured him yet?"

"We looked around upstairs and didn't see him."

"What!" Sylvia panicked. "You have to protect me! He's trying to kill us!"

The police took her to the station to question her. It took hours, and by the time she left it was almost midnight. Still fearful for her life, and terrified especially of the prospect of sleeping alone in her house, she called her friend Emily and got Emily to pick her up at the station and let her stay at Emily's house. They talked late into the night about what happened, and discussed in particular their friends who had died.

Emily eventually had to go to sleep, but Sylvia couldn't and thus sat on the couch in the living room, absorbed in her thoughts, occasionally looking out the windows or over her shoulder to see if John might appear with his chainsaw. With so much on her mind and so many emotions gripping her, she picked up a notebook and a pen and began to write.

# Car Key

Morris backed his car into the parking space along New Hampshire Avenue, stopping less than a foot away from the car behind him, as another car pulled up and parked in front of him. Morris took his time. It was early in the morning, he had stayed up too late the previous evening, as usual, and at any rate he was not in a hurry to run to his office job to push papers for eight hours.

Before Morris had even opened his car door to climb out, the woman who had parked in front of him had left hers, dropped her large, golden purse with ornamental studs on top of the hood of Morris' car, and looked for something within the purse's contents. When Morris saw this he hurried out and said to her, "Excuse me, ma'am, but could you please not put your purse on my car. I'm worried that you'll scratch it."

The woman sneered at him and dragged the purse across the hood.

"Bitch!" Morris said. He walked up to her and shook his car key in her face. "So that's how you want it, huh? Well look at this!" He marched to her car and scratched the key along one entire side of it as the woman watched him, her mouth dropping and her eyes growing wide as she saw him. When he finished he muttered, "Cunt," and walked to his office.

# Dr. Merkel's Force of Will

In 18th century Basel there lived a half-grown girl named Athena. Her wealthy but conflict-adverse parents spoiled her and never disciplined her, and so due to lack of proper parenting she became a monstrous tyrant. For years she hurled abuse at the servants and made wild demands upon her parents. Then one day she woke with a fever. Her stomach felt weak, and her head bristled with sweat.

The parents called for their physician, Dr. Andreas Merkel. Through the doors of Athena's bedroom he came decked in his long, powdered wig, coat, waistcoat, and breeches and carrying his medical case. He looked at Athena with a snort and made his way to her as her parents followed behind him. Almost as soon as he touched Athena's forehead with the back of his hand he turned to the parents and told them, "She has a fever. We need to bleed her."

"No! I don't want to be bled!" Athena said.

"You have to be bled," Andreas said, turning to her. "Otherwise you might die."

"No."

Dr. Merkel opened his case, took out a surgical lancet and a bowl, placed them on her nightstand, and tried to grab Athena's arm, but she tore the arm away from. "Stop being difficult," Dr. Merkel said.

"You are not going to bleed me, you fat sack of shit!" Athena shrieked, and when Dr. Merkel tried to grab her again she clawed his face.

Dr. Markel slapped her hard against both sides of her face. "You stupid bitch." He tried to grab her again, but she kicked and hit him, which enraged him even more.

"Ass cunt!" she screamed at him.

Dr. Merkel pulled out a vaginal speculum and thrashed her over and over again with it. "You vile little wretch," Merkel said. "You're just full of bile, aren't you? I'm here to save you! And if you don't let me bleed you, you're going to die."

"Shit for brains!" she screamed again, thrashing with all the energy she had. Dr. Merkel threw the speculum on the floor and began slapping her in the face and shaking Athena by the shoulders. "I hate you!" she said.

"I hate you, too!" Dr. Merkel roared in her face. "You could die, for all I care, but your parents need me to save you. So sit still, you impudent retard." He slapped her and slapped her and slapped her, his big wig flying all over his sweaty face, but she would not relent.

Athena's parents watched all this in anxious silence.

Dr. Merkel, realizing he was not making progress, turned to them and said, "I need to get reinforcements. I will be back." He stormed out of the room and was gone for an hour before he returned again with two servants and several long straps. "Tie her down," Dr. Merkel ordered them.

"No!" Athena screamed. "You cum monster, get away from me!"

Athena fought all of them, but they grabbed her arms and legs and tied them tightly against the bed. She pulled and squirmed, but she could not move. Dr. Merkel gleamed at her, took his lancet, pricked an artery on her arm, and seeped the blood into the bowl. When he finished he gave the bowl to one of the servants to dispose of the blood.

Finished, Dr. Merkel turned to Athena's parents and told them, "I will be back tomorrow to see how she is progressing."

That night Athena's parents talked amongst themselves about Dr. Merkel. "Don't you think he was a little bit harsh?" Athena's mother asked.

"I don't know," the father said. "I know we haven't been the best parents, but Dr. Merkel seemed a little extreme."

"Maybe we could mention it tomorrow."

So when Dr. Merkel came back the next day he took one look at Athena, who, as she called him a motherfucker, seemed weaker and more feverish than the previous day. He told the parents he needed to bleed her again.

"No you don't," Athena whispered, "you ass cunt motherfucking son of a bitch child raping pedophile sodomite Jew cum dumpster."

"Now," Athena's mother said, "Could I have a word with you, good doctor? Could you please be a little bit gentler with our dear Athena? I know she isn't very nice, but she is sick, after all, and you are being a little rough with her."

"What?" the doctor roared. "You're telling me how to treat her? I wasn't the one to raise her into a monster in the first place! If you had shown her a little discipline I wouldn't need to manage her like this. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

The mother blushed.

Dr. Merkel had the servants tie Athena down again, although this time she did not put up as much of a fight. When Dr. Merkel approached her, Athena spit in his face and said, "Cocksucker."

Dr. Merkel slapped her across the face.

"I'll see you in hell," she said.

"Hell?" Dr. Merkel asked. "I won't see you in hell. You're going to rot in the earth. Worms will eat your face off your bones, and maggots will make a home out of your filthy vagina, you whore of Satan." He bled her for a good long while and then told the parents that he would be back the next day to see how she was doing.

That evening the parents talked about Dr. Merkel. "Now, I know I'm no doctor," the mother said, "but I have to wonder if his bloodletting is really making Athena better. He's bled her twice now, and each time he does it Athena seems to get sicker."

"You're right," the father said.

"Maybe we should mention it when he comes back tomorrow."

The next day when he came back Dr. Merkel saw that Athena was so weak she did not even have the energy to hurtle insults at him anymore. "We need to bleed her again," he said.

"Now, I'm no doctor," the father said, "But are you sure that bloodletting is going to make her better? You've done it twice now, and it seems to only make her sicker. Perhaps we should try something else."

"What?" Dr. Merkel roared. "I know what I'm doing here. You did call me because you needed a doctor, didn't you? Or do you want to play doctor yourselves? Bloodletting is an established medical practice, performed for thousands of years, with proven medical benefits. I have been bleeding patients for twenty years myself, and I can tell you that it works. So don't be second-guessing me."

The father blushed.

Dr. Merkel strapped Athena down again, even though this time she barely moved, and he bled her. When he finished she passed out and died. "Ah well," Dr. Merkel said. "I didn't like that stupid bitch, anyway."

# Dynamite

It should have been Aaron who died, not Patricia. It was only a year earlier when the industrial electromagnet dropped a whole locomotive on top of Aaron while he was walking through the scrap yard. Every single one of his ribs was crushed, but he miraculously survived. For months he couldn't move from his bed because any little movement gave him terrible pain; even breathing was difficult.

Patricia took care of Aaron for all those months, but in a cruel twist of irony she caught a cold that turned into pneumonia. She became bed-ridden herself and eventually died, just as Aaron became healthy enough to stand and walk on his own. Patricia's father did not care for Aaron, considering him too lower class for his family and annoyed that Aaron would keep his daughter away from better suitors, so when she fell sick and died he would not let Aaron visit her or attend the funeral.

Early one morning, before the sun had risen, Aaron limped to the town cemetery and found the grave of his beloved Patricia. He kneeled by the grave and surrounded himself with sticks of dynamite that he obtained from industrial plant. In his heart he promised Patricia that he would join her in the afterlife, and thus he ignited the blasting cap and exploded.

The townspeople awoke at the sound of the explosion, threw on their clothes, and went outside to investigate, only to find their cemetery devastated. At the site of Patricia's grave appeared a crater the width of a house, and all the tombstones had been blown away by the force of the blast. It took the rest of the day for them to figure out what happened, first by pinpointing who had been buried at the spot of the crater, then confirming Aaron's disappearance, and finally ascertaining that a box of dynamite had been taken from Aaron's plant.

For the rest of all their lives the townspeople cursed Aaron's name and prayed and hoped that he went straight to hell.

# Stewie's Adventures

With tears in her bloodshot eyes, 17 year-old Jenny hugged her cat Stewie one more time before leaving him on the front yard of her family's foreclosed house. She recalled all the years she spent with him, raising him from kittenhood, cuddling with him in bed, petting him as he slept in her lap, and so much more, and how her parents, ruined financially and forced to leave their foreclosed home, decided to abandon Stewie.

Jenny's mother dislodged Stewie from her daughter's grip, put him on the grass, and led Jenny by the hand to the moving van. As the van drove away, Stewie, who had up to now never been outside a house, found himself alone in a strange, unfamiliar environment that he had previously known only through his comfortable observations from the other side of a window.

Stewie explored the neighborhood, populated mostly with other abandoned, foreclosed, or unsold homes, and he felt the universal thrill of adventuring, where experiencing new things comes with the exposure to new potential dangers. Stewie worried most of all about how he would be fed, since he had always previously relied on Jenny. After just a day he began to starve, and although he felt an instinctive yearning for the squirrels and birds he saw he did not yet understand what he needed to do.

After a second day Stewie, now obsessed with the thought of food, wandered into a nearby forest, and there, near a sunlit, bubbling brook, saw a happy little gnome picking up twigs. Stewie lurked toward the gnome, crouching as best as he could behind the bushes, blades of grass, and rocks, but once he reached a foot away the gnome turned around and saw him.

"Hello, pussy cat," the gnome said with a bright, rosy-cheeked smile.

But Stewie leaped on the gnome. Chomp, chomp, chomp. The gnome was gone, eaten whole. Feeling the little guy squirm and struggle appalled Stewie even as he ate him, but the gnome tasted delicious and felt so good inside Stewie's tummy. He licked himself clean and spent much of the day sleeping and appreciating the sights and sounds of the forest.

Over the course of the following weeks Stewie practiced hunting. He hid under a rock and waited for hours until a mouse passed nearby, at which point he pounced on it with violent fervor. He climbed up a tree and pounced on an unsuspecting squirrel. He chased a rabbit across the forest. He leaped up after birds.

But Stewie relished eating gnomes the most. He sometimes found whole communities of gnomes living in mushroom houses, and when he came to eat them the gnomes seemed particularly clueless as to what they should do. Most would simply hide in their houses, which Stewie would claw to shreds before devouring them, but some would run around in circles and scream like maniacs. Stewie ate entire families, from small, crying babies up to the very oldest gnomes.

Stewie explored the forest for almost a year, hunting, killing, and eating scores of gnomes through fall, winter, and spring, but although he had a lot of fun he also felt lonely. He missed Jenny and wished he could cuddle up with her again. One day he came by chance to an edge of the forest near his old neighborhood, and when he recognized the houses he decided to visit. He walked through the yards, most now overgrown, and for a long time he did not see a single person. But in one corner of the neighborhood stood one house that still had a mown lawn, and when Stewie approached it he saw a middle-aged woman planting flowers in a small plot of fresh dirt.

When the woman turned around she saw Stewie and said, "Hello, pussy cat." She petted him, he smiled and closed his eyes, and she picked him up and brought him inside the house. "Look what I found," the woman said to her husband, who read a newspaper from his armchair in the living room. He looked up at her and the cat she held in her arms.

"You know we can't keep it," he said. "I have allergies."

"I know," the woman said. "I'll keep him in the basement for now," and that is where she put him. Stewie found the basement far less entertaining than the woods, but he stayed there only a couple of days until the woman picked him up again and took him with her in her car to a shelter for cats and dogs.

Stewie was placed in a room reserved for cats and felt a pang of terror at meeting all these strangers, but one cat, a big, black female named Penelope, came right up to him and started licking his face. He liked this, hung around her, licked her face in return, bit the back of her neck, and mounted her. But he was fixed and his penis was not fully functional, so when he failed to insert his penis into her she screamed, turned around, and whacked him. This upset him, but from then on the two cats became good friends. Over the months they played together and slept together, and sometimes Stewie still tried to mount her.

One day Stewie and Penelope were soaking up the sunlight by the window when a car drove and parked in front of the shelter. The cats did not pay much attention, but when Stewie heard the voices of the people entering the room he stood up and saw his Jenny come with her girlfriend.

"Stewie!" Jenny called out.

Stewie meowed.

"He used to be my cat back home," Jenny explained to the others. She picked him up and put him in her lap. He purred and kneaded her belly. "It's so good to see you again," she said. But then Stewie jumped out of her lap to Penelope. They curled up together, and Penelope licked his face like she always did. "Aww, it looks like Stewie has a new friend," Jenny said.

"Yeah, those two have been together ever since Stewie arrived," the shelter owner said.

"I guess we'll just have to adopt them together, then," Jenny said. She and her girlfriend adopted the two cats, and the four of them lived together happily ever after.

# Complaining

"Why is Joey mean to me?" Andy complained when he was 8 years old. "Why do I have to go to school every day? I hate doing homework. My daddy didn't give me the toy I wanted. My parents are always making me eat food I hate. They always make me go to bed when I want to play. Sam's parents are nicer than mine. They give Sam ice cream and let him play video games all day. Why can't my parents be nice?"

"Why is my boss mean to me?" Andy complained when he was 40 years old. "Why do I have to work all day long? I hate my job. The boss makes me do way too much for what I'm paid. And why is my wife nagging me all the time? She doesn't love me anymore. I come home and she pesters me to take care of the kids and do something about the roof, when all I want to do is relax. Now Jeanne over there, she's nice. She's always sweet to me, and she always comes to the office in the cutest outfits. Why can't my wife be more like Jeanne?"

"Why is the nurse mean to me?" Andy complained when he was 85 years old. "Why do I have to stay in this god-forsaken nursing home? They wake me up, prod me, give me pills, and move me around, day and night. I just want to be left alone. I can't believe my own children stuck me here. They don't love me anymore. They visit me maybe twice a year, and when they come all they see is some nasty, sick old man. And god, I hate being old. I can't walk. I have pain in all my joints. My prostate's acting up. What a piece of shit I am."

And then he died.

# Joey is Violently Mutilated

The little child Kate ran around the house to the vegetable garden, where she found her mom Janet hoeing the ground. "Mommy," Kate said, "Joey is being mean again. He says that he and his friends are going to string all of us up and hang us from a tree."

"Pay no mind to him," Janet said. "He won't do anything to us." That's how Janet approached things. She and her wife Betty had been living in that town for twenty years, and in spite of being insulted and hassled by some of the locals they had managed to run a successful business and raise four beautiful children.

"But Joey is always saying mean things to us," Kate said. "Can't you make him stop?"

"Kate, Joey's not important. It doesn't matter what he says. You kids are going to grow up so fast, and you'll learn all sorts of things and go on all sorts of adventures. We'll take that trip to Alaska and ride a boat to see icebergs and killer whales. We'll go hiking in the mountains and see moose and grizzly bears. And while we're doing all that Joey will be stuck here with nothing to do but call people names and be mean."

"Okay, Mommy." Kate smiled. She loved moose and imagined all the adventures they would all have in the Alaskan wilderness.

Over the course of the days, weeks, months, and years of the children's growth Janet and Betty taught their children how to garden and how to do bookkeeping and accounting. They taught their kids everything they knew and made sure they did well in school so they would do well in life. By the time the kids began classes in the town's only high school they gained a reputation for being among the smartest and most independent students around. But one day as they walked home from school Joey passed by them in his new car and yelled, "Fucking faggots! You're all going to fucking hell!"

This didn't much bother Janet and Betty's kids, who by now were used to these insults, but they went inside and found their mother Betty. "Mom," the boy Michael said, "can't we just go over to Joey's house and beat him up already? He's getting on our nerves!"

Betty laughed. "No. Don't worry about him. How was school, kids?"

"Fine," Kate said, "but seriously, can't we just go over there and kick his ass? It's about time we got this over with."

"No, no," Betty said. "It's not important. You kids have so much more important things to worry about than Joey. Right now I want you to tell me how your classes are going." And so the kids did. When Michael confessed that he didn't do so well on his calculus test, Betty admonished him. "Now Michael, if you let yourself go you're going to end up a bum sitting around the streets of this little town, and you'll have no one but Joey to come by and hurl insults at you."

"It's just a calculus test, mom!" he said.

"I know, dear, but you need to do better. We'll go over your test later tonight to see what you did."

Although the kids sometimes had problems, Janet and Betty took good care of them, and they excelled in their studies. They all eventually graduated from high school with top honors and were accepted to attend the best colleges and universities in the country. Kate, the valedictorian of her class, gave a speech during her class' graduation ceremony, and it went well with the exception of Joey's loud interruptions of "Dyke!" and "Carpet-muncher!" as he sat among the graduating class.

The day after the graduation Janet and Betty talked to their children over breakfast. Janet announced, "So we've decided that it's time to exact our revenge on Joey. We're going to castrate him and make him eat his own balls."

"That's a great idea!" Kate said. "When can we do it?"

"Right after we're done with breakfast," Betty said.

The children in chorus yelled, "Great!" Everyone ate faster than usual, hurrying through their scrambled eggs, toast, tomatoes and spinach. Once they cleared their plates they washed the dishes, washed up, put on all their clothes, and got everything they needed. They walked outside and down the street to where Joey lived, and when they saw Joey washing his car in his family's driveway they grabbed him, held him down, ripped off his pants and underwear, sliced off his testicles with a butcher's knife, forced his mouth open, and shoved the bloody, dismembered testicles down his throat. After they finished they watched Joey as he lay on the driveway, blood streaming from his crotch and his mouth, tears streaming down his face, and soapsuds all over his body. Janet, Betty, and all their children laughed and laughed at Joey's misery and weakness.

# The Elephant in the Room

Ed was your typical mediocre employee. He analyzed the mortgage applications given to him, but he didn't go out of his way to do extra work or to get along with his boss. So when his boss decided to replace one of his employees with an elephant, Ed was the first person he thought to lay off.

In theory an elephant would be cheaper to employ than a human. An elephant didn't need a wage or health insurance – only food. And after running various studies conducted by elephant experts, the boss determined that elephants were smart enough to analyze mortgage applications just as well as any human.

So the elephant stood in the office, managing his stack of mortgage applications. His technique was much more serene than his colleagues. While other mortgage analysts studied the applicants' supposed income, the property value of the homes, and other important information, the elephant simply held the "Approved" rubber stamp in its trunk and casually stamped each and every application.

The elephant demoralized the co-workers who worked in the general office space. "Am I really no better than that elephant?" one of them might say, but in general they avoided criticizing the elephant near his presence because if he heard them he would sometimes respond by swinging his trunk around and trumpeting in their faces.

And although the boss thought that the elephant might be cheaper than a regular employee, he didn't take into account how much of the office the elephant might destroy. He sometimes shat giant mounds and pissed onto the carpeted floor. And he ate approximately 500 pounds of food a day. The elephant routinely ruined office ceiling tiles, fluorescent lights, desks, and chairs – not through any particular madness, since he was actually quite docile, but simply because he was an elephant.

The co-workers tolerated this less than desirable situation for months until the notorious Christmas party. Everyone tried to celebrate like they had in previous years, but things quickly went afoul when the elephant drank the entire beer keg, destroyed the copy machine when he tried to make copies of his buttocks, and passed out on top of one of his co-workers.

The next day the two bravest co-workers went to their boss and complained about the elephant, arguing that he was not working professionally and was demoralizing the rest of the staff. The boss had none of it. He informed them that the elephant had made the company more money in six months than the two of them together had made in a year, and that if there was anyone he should fire it was they. The co-workers, flabbergasted, resigned and left the company.

Work seemed to go well for the elephant until one day the company suddenly went bankrupt. It turned out that a large number of the mortgages that the elephant approved had defaulted and that the company lost millions of dollars as a consequence. During the bankruptcy proceedings the creditors discovered that the elephant had also embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of which he used for cocaine-fueled sex parties he hosted with a number of hookers. When his mom found out she was very disappointed.

# The Job to Nowhere

The victim, covered in gasoline and strapped to the chair with duct tape, screamed and pleaded to be spared. Boss took out his flamethrower and spewed a fountain of fire. The man exploded into a human fireball. Boss cackled while the victim let out a Banshee scream that soared and then faded into the crackling of the fire.

Joe stood close by with a fire extinguisher. Sweat trickled down his forehead as he watched the macabre scene with some disgust. Boss had never lighted someone on fire before. It struck Joe as excessively sadistic. Sure, they've killed a number of people, but never like this. Usually just a bullet to the head. It's not like Joe particularly enjoyed doing it anyway. It was just part of the job. So why dwell on it like this?

Joe looked at his partner Frank, who rolled his eyes but seemed resigned to the job. Boy, this is sure a lousy line of work, Joe thought. He'd been in it for ten years or more; he didn't know for sure, since he didn't like to think about it too much. A trouble-making high school dropout with no real career prospects, he made his way with low-key drug dealing until he ran into Boss, who offered better pay for harder work. Joe didn't care much for the work, but he loved the money all right. On a good year he could make a cool $200,000 in cash, no income taxes taken out or anything. That's what kept him working. He'd look at garbage collectors and factory workers, the kind of workers he could most likely have been, and think to himself that if he had to do lousy work he might as well get paid well for it.

But this fire business was getting ridiculous.

"Joe, hose him down," Boss said.

Joe blew the smoke from the fire extinguisher. The flames disappeared, revealing the charred, skeletal remains of the victim. Boss went to the van and drove up to the chair to let Joe and Frank load it in. They took the fire extinguisher and drove out of the warehouse.

"Let's drop it by Mike's as a little surprise," Boss said.

"Where should we put it?" asked Joe.

"In the backyard."

The three of them didn't worry about Mike catching them. Mike wasn't any sort of big gang leader or anything -- just another run of the mill, middle class drug dealer who happened to get on Boss' bad side. When they pulled up to the backyard through the alley Joe and Frank hustled out and carried the corpse-bound chair into the yard. Placing it on the lawn made for a somewhat surreal scene. Sitting there in the chair, that black jumble of bones and ash looked eerily peaceful, as if it intended to sit there in the yard to enjoy a nice evening outside.

Joe sort of envied the corpse's peacefulness, but he and Frank needed to run off. They scrambled back into the van, and the three of them drove off. Boss drove Joe to his car so that he could drive it back home. By the time he stepped onto the front steps of his two-story townhouse it was 4am, but his wife Leni stayed up waiting for him anyway. She was used to this by now and just considered it the tradeoff to having a well-paid husband.

Leni wrapped her arms around Joe and kissed him.

"God," Joe sighed.

"What's wrong?"

"I think I need to find a new line of work."

Leni looked into Joe's eyes. "Why? What happened?"

"Boss lit a man on fire tonight."

"He did? Did you watch?"

"Yeah, I watched. I had to put the fire out."

"Was it hot?"

"Yeah, it was hot. I broke into a sweat, it was so hot."

Leni pressed Joe closer to her. He embraced her and gave her a strong, passionate kiss. She felt all that sweat on his shirt press against her skin. He tore her dress off. They kissed. She ripped his shirt off and threw his gun from behind the belt of his pants onto the floor. He grabbed her tits. She undid his belt and drew down the zipper of his pants. They sank to the floor. He went down on her. She moaned. He lapped her up until her pussy juices flowed. She pulled him up. He inserted his fully erect, donkey penis into her vagina. She pulled him in as far as he could go. He pumped her slowly, taking care to massage her with his thick, veiny rod. Her juices flowed. His tension built up until finally he released his pearl-white magical elixir into her.

The two of them were relaxing together, dozing into dreamland on the floor when the doorbell rang.

"Who could that be?" Leni asked. It was still dark out.

Joe pulled up his pants, got up, and answered the door.

It was Boss.

"Do you mind if I come in?"

"Umm, sure. Just give me a moment." Joe turned to his wife and motioned her away. She picked up the clothes lying on the floor and headed to the bedroom. Boss came in and closed the door.

"Joe, we have a problem."

"What is it?"

"We, uh... We..."

"Yes... ?"

"We killed the wrong guy."

"What do you mean, we killed the wrong guy?"

"The guy we killed, he wasn't the one who lost us the money."

"What?"

"He wasn't the guy."

"Uh, so what do you want to do?"

"Well, I know who did it now."

"So, you want to torch him?"

"Well yeah, of course I want to torch him. He lost us $400,000. You know how much that is between the three of us. I can't let that go."

"So what are we going to do when we're done with him? Are we going to sit him next to the other guy in Mike's backyard? What's Mike going to think, seeing two torched men sitting next to each other? One's threatening. Two would just be weird."

"I know, I know. But look. This guy lost us our money. I can't let that slide. And look, would it be fair for us to not torch the guy who lost us money, when we torched someone who didn't? Let's just do this, all right?"

Joe sighed. "Fine."

After dressing, grabbing his gun, and saying goodbye to his wife, Joe jumped into the van with Boss. Frank was already there, waiting for them behind the steering wheel. They drove to their next victim's house. "I'll handle this," Boss said, tucking his handgun behind his belt. "It'll be just a few minutes."

With the two of them alone together in the van, Joe turned to Frank. "What do you think about all this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we get into a situation in which we lose a lot of money. Boss gets it into his head that he's going to set someone on fire, and he can't even torch the right person."

"Yeah, I know. It's retarded."

"I don't know. I'm starting to think that this is too much."

"Huh. So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Leave?"

"Leave?" Mike shrugged. "Boss isn't going to like that. And, okay, so what if he even lets you leave. What are you going to do? You haven't had a real job in years. No one's going to hire you. Maybe you'll get to mop a floor, if you're lucky."

Joe sighed.

The side door of the van threw open. The latest victim piled in, Boss waving a gun in his face as he yelled at him. Boss followed the victim in and closed the door so Frank could drive them back to the warehouse. When they got there Boss and Joe took the victim while Mike fetched a chair. They forced the hopeless man into the chair and strapped him down with rolls of duct tape. The man cried and shivered. Joe muttered to himself.

Boss put on his flamethrower as Joe picked up the fire extinguisher. Frank poured a can of gasoline all over the victim, who shook from the gas' cool feel but coughed because of its fumes.

"You shriveling little motherfucker!" yelled Boss. "This will show you and your stupid friends! Losing us that money!"

"No!" the man screamed. "Please, please, please..."

Boss raised the nozzle of the flamethrower and walked to the victim. Just as he prepared to spew his stream of fire, Joe took his gun out and shot Boss right in the head. Boss' brains splattered out and scattered across the floor. His body went limp; it fell. The fire had not been lit.

"What did you do?" Frank asked, staring at the carnage.

"I can't take this," Joe said.

"What do you mean, you can't take this? What are we going to do now?"

The victim shivered in his chair, looking at the blood flow across the floor from Boss' head.

"I don't know. But I'm done."

# A Good & Loyal Servant

The king's advisor Niccolo needed help on an important task and called upon the local scholar Minalli because he was known for his goodness. Minalli always thoroughly performed the tasks assigned to him, always spoke the truth, and always treated people fairly.

Niccolo explained the matter to Minalli. "Frederico, one of the king's closest courtiers, died the other day, and when he died the kingdom acquired his vast library. The advisors and courtiers do not have the time to read and catalogue it all, so we hoped that you could perform the task. We would of course compensate you handsomely."

Minalli nodded and accepted the task, so the next day he went with Minalli within the king's palace to a great room filled with books and manuscripts. They filled the shelves that lined the walls and stacked up on top of two great tables placed on either side of a large fireplace, where a robust fire kept the room warm.

"Let me know if you need anything," Niccolo said, "and if you come across any particularly interesting writings, please feel free to fetch me so that I can take a look."

Over the course of the weeks Minalli worked in that room, methodically reading and recording each book or manuscript. Once a day a servant took away the works Minalli finished with the intention of organizing them into the king's royal collection.

The works Minalli read varied wildly from philosophy to religion to literature to science. One hour he read about boat construction. At another he read spirited discourse about Platonism. On yet another he read a collection of pornographic poems about the Greek gods. Some works fascinated him. Others were boring. Some were offensive. Regardless of how he felt about them, he noted each work's subject matter and contents and handed them away to the servant.

One day Minalli opened a well-worn book and discovered Frederico's diary entries, written in great detail over the course of Frederico's service within the king's court. He wrote an entry, several pages long, for every day, covering everything Frederico did, everyone he met, and everything that he saw. A lot of it seemed quite trivial, but sometimes Frederico wrote interesting character studies of the other courtiers. On more rare occasions he wrote at length about the pressing issues facing the kingdom and how the king and the other courtiers confronted them. Although the subject matter of his diary matched Frederico's book collection in shear variety of thought, Minalli loved reading the diary the most, for it provided him with a glimpse of an elite world that he never before had access.

But as he approached the end of the diary the content of the entries became more serious. Frederico wrote in excruciating detail about a trip to Las Vegas that he and several of the courtiers took. They stayed at an expensive hotel, gambled, saw showgirls, and hired hookers. Although he originally thought that the trip was merely a reprieve from the demands of courtly life, he soon learned that several of the courtiers were bankrolled by a rival king and were plotting against their own kingdom. On an open-air hotel rooftop restaurant overlooking Las Vegas' flamboyant skyline courtiers sipped champagne and talked with a stranger to Frederico, who appeared to be soliciting the courtiers to invest in the rival king's kingdom. At first Frederico could not believe his eyes; it seemed unbelievable to him that his own colleagues would be plotting against their master so ruthlessly. But then the stranger asked one of Frederico's colleagues about his son, a model who spent his time as a sex toy on rich billionaires' yachts, and in that stranger's eyes of recognition Frederico could see that all these people knew each other extremely well. Why they felt comfortable having Frederico witness all this was a mystery to him, but since he was a friend with them he surmised that they were letting him in to their schemes.

That is where the diary ended.

Minalli panicked. The king was in trouble! He needed to be told as soon as possible! When the servant came Minalli asked him to immediately bring Niccolo. Within half an hour Niccolo entered the room and greeted Minalli. "What's the matter?" he asked, and when Minalli told him Niccolo took the diary and thumbed through it to the end, where he read several entries. A little smirk curled on the side of Niccolo's mouth. He carried the book to the fireplace, threw the book onto the roaring fire, and returned to Minalli. "Thank you, Minalli," he said. "You have been a great help. And for that, a little reward," and he dropped a bag of gold into Minalli's hands.

# Eat Shit

"Have you ever eaten shit before?" the interviewer asked. He didn't look at Tom but instead glanced through the resume that sat in the folder leaning from his lap against his office desk.

"Well," Tom said with a blush, "I did take courses on shit at college."

"I see," the interviewer said. "You do realize that if you take this job you will be eating shit for eight hours a day, five days a week. It is grueling work and not to everyone's taste, but if you can do it you will be compensated well. Now, mind you, thousands of people have applied for this position. It's highly competitive. So the people that we want are the ones who can eat the most shit within the time we give them. Do you think you are up for that challenge?"

"Of course I am," Tom said.

"I'm glad. Come with me." The interviewer stood up, Tom did as well, and they walked out of the office across the hallway to a conference room. A dozen or so people sat around the conference table. The interviewer directed Tom to sit at the last open seat and then spoke to the group. "As you know, all of you have expressed an interest in this job, and we want to make sure that we hire the best one among you. So what we are going to do is provide you with buckets of shit. You will be tasked with eating as much as possible within the course of an hour. The one who eats the most buckets will be hired. I am going to leave you for a few minutes to get the shit. When I return we can get started." He smiled and left the room.

All of the prospective employees looked around, sizing each other up. Tom looked in particular at one middle-aged, especially obese man who seemed like he knew how to eat. "Have you been doing this long?" Tom asked.

"Twenty years," the man said. "Eating shit was different back then. It used to be that if you went to a good school and got good grades you'd get a job at a firm and be set for life. You eat shit, you get promoted, and then you can become a partner and own part of the firm. But these days, all anyone cares about is price, eating shit as quickly and cheaply as possible. There's no concern for quality. It used to be an art, but now we might as well be in a factory. I heard that some firms are even trying to farm out some shit-eating to China."

"But they can't eat shit as well as we do!" Tom said.

The interviewer returned with a team of assistants who wheeled in trays stacked with buckets full of shit and placed a bucket in front of each applicant. "Here are some buckets to start you off with," the interviewer said. "We'll bring in more as needed. It's going on noon. We'll start now. When you finish a bucket, just keep it by you and get another. When we finish in an hour we'll count up how many empty buckets each of you has, and the one with the most will get the job. Okay? Have fun."

The obese man applied his face to the bucket and ate with a zeal that intimidated Tom. The other applicants also ate but did it by picking up one piece of shit at a time and inserted them into their mouths, which Tom gathered was not nearly as efficient. For his own part, Tom had not even begun eating yet. He looked at the pile of shit sitting in his bucket and involuntarily shuddered. He had read a lot about shit but had never actually eaten it before. Now that the task presented itself before him he wondered whether he was trying to get into the wrong line of work.

Just as Tom was about to pick up his first piece of shit the obese man, the corners of his mouth smeared brown, finished his bucket and made his way across the room to pick up another bucket from the trays, but as he did he stumbled, fell to his knees, and vomited. All the shit that he had just swallowed spewed all over the floor. Another applicant smiled at the turn of events, but when the obese man collapsed and seemed to pass out in his shit puddle Tom panicked and left the room to seek help. He walked down the hallway to the receptionist and told her, "One of the applicants has just collapsed. I think you may need to call for an ambulance."

"Will do," the receptionist said and began dialing 911.

Tom walked back to the conference room and saw the other applicants fighting over the obese man's empty bucket. "It's mine!" yelled one. "I was closer to him," said another. A third pleaded, "I have a family I need to feed! If I don't get this job we'll all starve!" The others dutifully continued to eat their shit, although one did so with tears running down her eyes.

At that moment Tom realized that he did not want to be there any more. He turned around and walked out of the conference room, walked down the hall to the elevators, took an elevator down to the ground floor, walked to the subway station, rode the subway, walked to his house, fell on his bed, and cried for the rest of the day because he felt that he didn't have the strength to do what he needed to get the job.

# The Fart King

Bob was so poor the only way he could make any money was by canning his farts and selling them at the local flea market, where they sold for fifty cents apiece. He would usually sell only a few at a time, not enough to keep him from living off the streets, and of the people who bought the canned farts most considered them either a curious novelty or a gag gift.

But one day a Japanese businessman playing tourist in Bob's city visited the flea market and bought a canned fart. He opened the can immediately, and as he breathed in the fumes his eyes rolled to the back of his head with ecstasy. After he recovered the businessman asked Bob, "Do you make these yourself?"

"Yes."

"It is exquisite, the best fart I have ever smelled. And I have smelled a lot of farts. Tell you what: how would you like to come with me back to Tokyo? I will open a club where people will pay good money to smell your farts. You'll be rich. What do you say?"

"Sure, of course," Bob said.

So the Japanese businessman whisked Bob to Tokyo, where he did just as he said. He established a nightclub and invited every fart aficionado he knew to the opening night. Bob prepared for the evening by eating every gas-inducing food he could imagine, in particular figs. He ate bags and bags of figs, so many that he could barely move without inducing farts.

When the moment came Bob emerged to applause on the nightclub stage in an elegant tuxedo, and while a jazz band played bluesy tunes he sauntered down the runway lined on each side by wealthy Japanese businessmen. From time to time Bob squatted to let a customer bury his face into his butt, and then Bob blew a loud, raging fart, which always, without fail, transported the patron into fits of ecstasy. He did this again and again, until finally every patron there had a chance to smell his farts at their source.

From then on Bob was famous in all of Tokyo, and then all of Japan, and then the entire world. Japan's prime minister came there one evening with his wife, and to the flashes of hundreds of cameras he buried his face in Bob's ass to receive a strong whiff of Bob's exquisite farts. Hollywood celebrities and famous European intellectuals made pilgrimage to Tokyo for the chance to smell Bob's farts, even though most of them did not have the refined sense of smell acquired by Japanese fetishists.

Space aliens monitoring Earth read about Bob's farts in the international media and decided to send a spacecraft to Tokyo to investigate. The city of Tokyo came to a halt as its citizenry stared in astounded awe as the spaceship descended from the clouds and landed in front of Bob's nightclub. The aliens marched inside and walked directly to the runway, where Bob had just been farting into another rich businessman's face, and to the flabbergasted surprise of everyone there, including Bob himself, they pointedly asked in a thick accent to smell his farts.

Bob of course complied, squatting so that the aliens could press their peculiar faces into his ass. He blew his farts, and once all the aliens had their chance to take in his fumes they made notes and discussed with each other in their native tongue. At that point the jazz band had stopped playing. Bob had stopped farting. Everyone simply stood or sat there, watching in stunned silence as the aliens discussed the farts among themselves.

One of the aliens then climbed on top of the runway and squatted. It looked over its shoulder and with a hand beckoned a patron to apply his face to its ass. The patron shook and sweated with fear, but he tentatively applied his face and breathed in as the alien blew a fart. Tears rolled down the patron's face. Everyone crowded around him.

"How was it?" someone asked.

"It was the most beautiful thing in the world," the man said, tears now flooding his eyes.

The nightclub owner immediately hired the aliens and told Bob to scram, which was fine as far as Bob was concerned. He had amassed a huge fortune, and he took advantage of the layoff to enjoy a long and comfortable retirement. Meanwhile, the aliens became wildly popular among the fart fetishists, who traveled from all over the world to experience the product of the aliens' digestive processes.

Other people were more troubled, however. Here the human race encountered space aliens for the first time ever in history, and all the aliens wanted to do was fart in rich businessmen's faces. World leaders tried to talk to the aliens about politics and peace agreements. Scientists asked the aliens to share their wealth of knowledge. But the aliens would have none of it. They spent night after night dancing and farting around the runway.

A great disillusionment swept the planet. "What a waste of intelligence," some people said. "I expected more from aliens than this," said others. Rather than be something miraculous and amazing, the aliens turned out to be just as banal as everyone else. "At least they aren't dangerous," yet others noted, but even so, when they said this there was a touch of disappointment in their tone, perhaps followed even by a sigh.

But no one ever asked the aliens why they enjoyed farting so much.

# Shit Storm

The town of Doofburg, situated picturesquely amidst the Great Plains, faced tough economic times, and thus the town council found itself forced to cut its budget. The councilors worried themselves over what programs to cut, but a businessman who was good friends with several of them talked the issue with them at a luxurious restaurant over a dinner which he paid, and he proposed to them a plan that he argued would save the town money.

The businessman suggested that the town sell its sewage treatment plant to him and then pay him to run it. The money the businessman would give the town for the purchase would be enough to spare the town from having to make budget cuts, and the businessman promised that he would charge less for him to run the plant than it would cost the town to run it itself. "After all," he said, "we all know how inefficient government is at running things."

This seemed like a great idea to the councilors, so over the course of the next several months they went about enacting the businessman's idea. They sold the sewage plant to him for a handsome sum, and from there on the businessman charged the city for his service at a rate half of what it cost the city to run the plant itself. Everyone seemed amazed at how well the idea worked.

Some time after this deal closed some people began to wonder how it was that the businessman could charge the city so little to run the plant. Had the city been so inefficient at running the plant that it really wasted half of its money? To solve the mystery, a person from the city government visited the sewage plant to see how the businessman ran it.

What the official discovered was somewhat of a surprise. When the city ran the plant it did so with the intention of removing contaminants from the sewage so that the waste would be environmentally safe for disposal or reuse. But the businessman didn't do any of that. He basically let the sewage flow out onto the large field where the plant stood. Shit and piss poured out of a large pipe all over the ground, where it spread and piled up.

When the official reported this to the city council several councilors expressed some surprise, and after they discussed the matter with the businessman the businessman hired the government official to run one of his businesses and gave generous campaign contributions to the councilors. No more was said about the matter.

This continued happily for several years. Most townspeople remained blissfully ignorant of the gargantuan pile of shit accumulating next to the sewage plant, and it could have continued that way for many more years had the town not been subject to a bit of bad luck.

One of the dangers of living in the Great Plains is that it is subject to tornadoes. Well, one day late in the spring a powerful thunderstorm rolled through the state, and over the course of the day the storm produced several horrible tornadoes. In fact, one tornado passed rather closely to Doofburg. It fortunately did not hit the town itself, but it did mow through the gigantic mountain of festering shit that had accumulated at the sewage plant.

The tornado threw all the shit high up into the air, way up into the clouds, where it then fell all over the county. Most people, aware of the tornado sirens blasting throughout town, had already hid themselves inside their homes, but those who peaked out their windows began to notice the great deluge of shit falling everywhere. The shit fell in large globs over everything, gradually caking the entire town over, and at its most intense it rained so heavily that one could not see anything but shit. Hours later, when the storm finally passed the town buried in shit, the townspeople realized just what happened.

An angry mob composed of those people brave enough to go outside marched to the businessman's small mansion, but when they arrived he was nowhere to be seen. It was only much later that investigators determined that he had fled the country, taking with him most of his wealth.

Volsi

Adapted from "Valsa pattr," a short story from The Saga of St. Olaf

"I have important news to tell you," Bishop Grimketel told King Olaf II of Norway, who sat on his throne surrounded by advisors. King Olaf lived in exile from the capital of his kingdom after a devastating invasion from Canute the Great, and he spent every waking hour with his loyal entourage plotting how to reclaim his power. "There is a pagan fishing woman in Halogaland," Grimketel continued, "who worships a dismembered horse penis and forces her family members to recite poems to it. We should end this disgrace and convert her."

Perturbed by what he heard, King Olaf stood up and tossed back his cape. "I will go immediately and attend to this. I cannot permit such madness in my kingdom." He summoned his entourage of Vikings to make preparations to travel to Halogaland, in the north just below Finnmark. They assembled a crew of three longships and departed later that day, traversing the coast.

The Vikings rowed and sailed for several days as King Olaf gazed upon the coast with his stony blue eyes, dwelling on the abominations that fishing woman might be committing with the horse penis. When they arrived at the town of Borg, where Grimketel said she lived, they disembarked, but the villagers they encountered met them with a cold reception unbefitting of royalty.

"What are you doing here?" one of the villagers asked.

King Olaf tossed back his cape and exclaimed, "I am King Olaf, and I am here to convert your pagan fishing women to Christianity!"

"Never, you vile villain!" the villager returned. The locals, who were all pagans themselves, drew their swords and attacked the king and his Viking crew. Several of each party was slayed before the villagers relented and let King Olaf pass among them.

"If I had known how disloyal you all were I would have come here sooner!" King Olaf barked. His entourage seized the food stored at the fishery and helped themselves to a bountiful meal.

The next day King Olaf seized the clothing of a local and changed into it. He walked by himself toward the hut where the fisher woman lived, and when he came nearby he met a teenage girl, who did not recognize him, and her pet elkhound. "Who might you be?" she asked.

"My name is Harald," King Olaf said, "and I am a poor fisherman from Bjarkoy who came here looking for work, as my old fishery recently came to ruin. I have journeyed a long while, and I saw your hut and wondered if I could beg for your hospitality for the evening."

"I will have to ask my mother," the girl said, "but she is a kind woman and I believe she will let you stay. Let us go and see."

The girl, her dog, and the king walked to the hut together, and when they reached the entrance the girl's mother came out. King Olaf introduced himself again as Harald, and when he asked if he could stay the evening she told him, "Of course. We are about to eat our meal. Join us." They climbed inside the hut and gathered around an open fire beside where some cooked food lay. Along with the mother, daughter, and elkhound there sat a son and father, the last of whom seemed to wear a frown frozen on his face.

Before they ate the mother explained, "Before we eat we each take turns praying to our god Volsi." She took a package covered in cloth and unwrapped it to reveal a giant horse penis covered in herbs to keep it fresh. She held it to her bosom and prayed, "If I were alone I would not resist the temptation to thrust you into myself. Volsi, may you someday be the adoration of all the Gods, but for now I hand it to my husband."

The mother handed the horse penis to her reluctant, frowning husband, who prayed, "I wish we did not have to pray before this horse penis. Volsi, may you someday be the adoration of all the Gods, but for now I hand it to my son."

The father handed the horse penis to his son, who grasped it firmly and prayed, "How I wish my penis matched yours in length and girth! Volsi, may you someday be the adoration of all the Gods, but for now I hand it to my sister."

The son handed the horse penis to his sister, who held it by two fingers and prayed, "I would rather have nothing to do with penises, living or dead, gods or not. Volsi, may you someday be the adoration of all the Gods, but for now I hand it to Harald."

The sister handed the horse penis to King Olaf, who prayed, "I have been a Viking, a warrior, and a king, but never before have I seen a penis worshipped as a god. May you never be worshipped again, for now I hand it to the dog!" And he tossed it to the elkhound who snapped at it and devoured it instantly to the bloodcurdling cries of the mother.

"Why did you do that!" the mother screamed.

King Olaf threw off his disguise, tossed back his cape, and proclaimed, "I am King Olaf of Norway, and I have come all the way here to end your idolatry and convert you to Christianity!"

"Never, you monster!" the mother screamed, tears flowing down from her eyes.

Her husband smiled.

King Olaf waltzed out of the hut and strutted back to his entourage, who gluttonously ate the remaining food at Borg's fishery. "Our task is complete!" King Olaf declared. They boarded their longships and began the journey back.

When they returned to their encampment Bishop Grimketel embraced King Olaf. "I'm glad to hear of the success of your campaign. I have prepared celebrations for your return." He led King Olaf through his lavishly decorated home to a boudoir filled with beautiful, naked women lounging next to a roaring open fire. "I have collected the best sex slaves in Norway," Grimketel said. "Pick one."

# Shit on a Stick

"I have a new artwork I'd like to show you," said the famous art dealer Ray Luther as he led businessman and collector Cary Bathhurst to the back of his gallery, past a ménage of paintings and sculptures. "It is by a great artist, Mierda Scheisser, an up-and-coming talent whose work will make a great investment." They reached the work, which was a six-foot tall erect rubber penis with a pile of dried shit stacked on top. "Scheisser calls the work, 'The Culmination of Ecstasy.' He finished the work two months ago. The penis is based on a plaster mold he made of his own penis, and the shit you see on top is real and was made personally by him. It took him two weeks to collect enough shit to complete the work.

"As you can probably guess, the work metaphorically represents the filth tied with humanity's pursuit of pleasure. Scheisser is gay, and he noted that, although he always loved uninhibited anal sex, after the release of ejaculation he and sometimes his sex partner were often annoyed and disgusted by the santorum by-product, and it made Scheisser contemplate the many ways in which this represents our society as a whole, whether the shit represents our plundering of natural resources or our exploitation of labor."

"Mm-hmm," Bathhurst said as he studied the work.

"Scheisser has already had a successful exhibition of his work in Berlin and London, and I'm working now to hold one here in Manhattan. I have a catalog of his work that I can show you." Luther picked up a book and flipped through the pages while Batthurst looked impassively. All of Scheisser's works featured shit. One picture showed small shit patties organized in neat rows on a cooking tray sticking halfway out of an oven. Another showed a Christmas tree decorated with ornaments made out of shit. Another showed a mannequin wearing a bikini made out of shit.

"What I have always appreciated about my business with you," Luther said, "is that you among all my clients have the best eye for new art. You have always selected works by the most progressive artists at work today, and I feel honored that you've trusted me to show you the best the world has to offer. I'm sure you'll agree that this work represents the vanguard of contemporary art."

"How much is it?" Bathhurst asked.

"Of course. Let me see." Luther picked up a binder and flipped to the page listing information on "The Culmination of Ecstasy." He scanned through it and then pointed at the price for Bathhurst, who saw that it was $1,050,000.

"Hmm."

"Now, I know some collectors have been worried about the investment value of Scheisser's artworks," Luther continued, "considering that he uses real shit to make them. But he coats the shit with a spray that keeps the shit in place and prevents it from biodegrading. One of his earliest works, 'The Filth of Desire,' was created five years ago and recently sold at three times its original value. Scheisser is still young, and I'm sure that the value of his works will multiply many more times by the time he dies."

"I see. Okay. I'll buy it," Bathhurst said.

He wrote a check for the artwork that day, and a few months later, after Luther showcased the work with several other Scheissers at a much-ballyhooed exhibit, Bathhurst arranged with the curator of his office building to display the work in the lobby so that all of his employees could pass by it as they walked from the building entrance to the elevator banks.

Many of his employees were stunned when they saw it for the first time. Many of them simply hated it but decided not to express their opinion at the work for fear of incurring Bathhurst's displeasure. Many others did not necessarily like it but decided that they either simply did not understand it because they were not as attuned to contemporary art as Bathhurst, or because Bathhurst simply had tastes different from their own. One shit fetishist loved it.

But one day, as Bathhurst walked through the stately doors of the front entrance of his building into the lobby, he noticed a mother and a girl talking to the security receptionist sitting at the desk near the doors. They looked a little disheveled, and the mother pointed to a particular area of a large map she had sprawled out. As she talked the little girl pointed at the artwork and yelled in her loudest possible voice, so that it echoed through the lobby, "Look, ma, it's a bunch of shit on a stick!"

"Hush, child," her mother said. "I don't want you using that kind of language."

"But mama, it's true! I've never seen so much poop in my whole life!"

Bathhurst pretended to ignore them, but several employees who happened to pass through the lobby at that moment heard, and soon the artwork was known around the building as "Shit on a Stick" rather than "The Culmination of Ecstasy." The joke was on them, however, when the work was featured prominently along with several other classic Scheissers at the Freyberg Museum of Contemporary Art, on which Bathhurst was one of the board of trustees.

# A Matter of Importance

Marge loved to collect stamps. While her husband whiled away at work, staying often late into the night, she collected stamps. She made trips to the post office to purchase the latest releases, went to stores in her town and region to look for old stamps, spent hours placing stamps in her collection books, and read books on stamps and stamp collecting.

She had thousands of stamps, some quite rare and valuable, but she didn't have as many stamps as Hildegard, her rival at her stamp-collecting club. Hildegard was a wealthy widow who used her resources to invest in her passion for stamps, and it drove Marge nuts with envy. She didn't have that kind of money and had no way of competing. During their stamp collection parties, often held at Hildegard's fabulous country estate, Hildegard would show off her stamps over champagne and caviar with a dash of tasteless pride.

Well, Marge got the last laugh, because that old bitch Hildegard went off and died. Her descendants didn't want to have anything to do with her stamps, so they decided to sell them at a local auction. Notice got around to the stamp collecting club, and all the members speculated who among them would snatch up those stamps. Marge, though, kept her mouth shut, because she didn't want the others to know her plan. She had, after all, been planning for this eventuality for years. Hildegard was over thirty years older than Marge, and Marge knew that Hildegard's siblings had no interest in her stamps. They said as much to her in private when she saw them at those parties Hildegard threw. They could barely repress their boredom, gracing their presence among the collectors only because old Hildegard wanted them there. None of the other collectors would talk to them, but Marge did because she wanted to know what was going to happen to those stamps, and they told her. "We want money, just money," they said as they drank themselves into a slow stupor, "and we're going to send them to the auction house to see just how much we're going to get." Ever since then Marge had been saving up for that day.

On that sunny, cheerful day of the auction Marge, dressed in her most exuberant spring dress, was just about to leave her house when her rotary phone rang. It was her old friend Beth, another member from the club. "Hi Marge," Beth said, "How are you doing?"

"Fine. What's up?"

"You aren't still going to that auction, are you?"

"Why yes I am." A glint of rage flashed across Marge's mind. She could see it now. Beth wanted to jinx her chances of getting those stamps. She wouldn't have any of it. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, have you seen the news?"

"No. Is the auction house on fire?"

"No. It's still there. But—"

"Is the auction house still open?"

"Maybe. The authorities haven't yet—"

"Well then I'm going to the auction."

"But—"

"Look, Beth, I'm going to this auction. You aren't going to try to tell me not to go, are you?"

"But I don't think it's going to be safe!"

"Why, is a tornado coming?"

"No, they don't know--"

"Then I don't see the problem."

"Well, it's just—"

"No. Look. You listen to me. I'm going to this thing. If you want to stop me, you can just eat shit and set your face on fire," and with that, Marge slammed down the phone. She was about to leave again but decided to first call the auction house just to make sure nothing was wrong. "Yes, we are still open for business," the house said, "and we will be holding the auction within an hour." With that cleared, Marge got into her 1958 Edsel Ranger.

Even though she had to drive across town to reach the auction house, she found it unusually easy. She often had to make her way through heavy traffic when she went down the main street, but now only a few cars passed her by. She turned on the car radio. A news reporter blared, "The mayor, who is vacationing in the Bahamas, has not issued an alert, but his office has stated that the chief of police is keeping him abreast of events. Next, we'll ask five experts what they think is happening, right after this commercial break." A bath soap jingle played. Marge shrugged and turned off the radio.

The crowd Marge greeted filled only about half of the main auction hall, which came as a relief, but she still spotted a few of her stamp collecting buddies. Of course she met up with them and chatted, putting on the best game face she could, but in secret she seethed with brutal hatred towards them as potential obstacles to her conquest. Sure, most of them only wanted to see who would snatch up the stamps, but Marge couldn't trust any of them.

Hildegard's estate had many items put to auction, and it took a while to shift through the paintings, furniture, and antiques Hildegard's children didn't want to finally get to the stamp collection. Bidding for the stamps started at $20,000, and Marge immediately signaled a bid. Her colleagues gasped that she was even capable of such a thing.

"We have $20,000," said the auctioneer. "Do we have $25,000?"

A few people signaled bids.

"$30,000?"

Marge and another woman Shirley signaled bids. Marge knew Shirley, that god-damn horsefucker of a whore. Marge didn't figure that Shirley would be so keen on the stamps, but it didn't surprise her that Shirley would throw her money around like that. Her husband was a doctor. Marge, meanwhile, only had $35,000 saved up for this auction, and now she worried about whether she would get the collection after all.

"$35,000?" suggested the auctioneer.

Marge signaled her bid. The moment of truth came.

"$40,000?"

Shirley signaled for the $40,000.

"$45,000?" The auctioneer looked right at Marge to see if she would do anything. She only seethed. "Any bid higher than $40,000? Anything higher?" The auctioneer looked around the audience. "$40,000 going once, $40,000 going twice, sold!"

Marge couldn't believe it. Years of planning robbed right in front of her eyes within moments by some dumb shitface assfucking cunt with a big bank account. She didn't know what to do. At first she just sat there in the auction house and stewed, but when it ended and people filed out she was reminded of the world around her. She realized what she needed to do: follow Shirley. She'd get those stamps somehow.

Shirley, with help from the auction staff, placed the stamp collection, composed of multiple large hardbound books, inside a fine cloth in the trunk of her car. When she pulled out of the parking lot, Marge followed in her own car, going down the street behind Shirley at a not very discreet distance.

The two of them drove in this manner when Shirley's car was suddenly picked up and thrown down a perpendicular street, tumbling and landing upside-down, while Marge, scarcely believing what she just saw, crashed her own car into one of the tree-like legs of a gigantic ant, thirty feet tall and perhaps half a block long, lumbering into the street.

The ant, a gargantuan, hideous, brown monument to the evils of nature, stabbed at the exposed underside of Shirley's car until the car exploded in flames, at which point Shirley, bloody and on fire, managed to escape from the wreckage, stumbling, flailing her arms, and screaming for help, but she fell into the ant's incisors, which snapped her body in half, exploding blood and gore everywhere. The ant destroyed the rest of her body, chewing on her head and limbs, tearing her body into unidentifiable debris.

Marge didn't know what to do, whether to try to run or stay in the car, but soon she didn't have a choice. The colossal ant, now done dismembering Shirley, turned and saw Marge in her car below its feet. It screamed at her with a deafening Banshee call and pressed its eyes close to Marge's windshield to take a good look at her, its incisors covered in blood and Shirley's torn dress.

Marge breathed and stared back at it, trying not to move, hoping that maybe the ant wouldn't see her. But then the ant's incisors seized the car, lifted it up, and shook it back and forth, rattling Marge like she were a die. The ant threw the car across the street. When it landed, Marge, sitting now upside-down, supported only by her seatbelt, stayed in the car, deciding that she would never run out of the car like Shirley.

But the ant came over and began pounding at the car with one of its feet, smashing it into the ground. The ant clawed at it, scraping the car into pieces, and soon it exposed Marge through a huge hole in the plastic and metalwork. The ant reached in and with its incisors snapped Marge's head, spewing blood out of her neck.

# A Little Birdie

The sparrows greeted Wendy with their gay chirps as she opened the windows to her living room. Finally, she had a day where she didn't have to work, and her husband David was soon returning home after working so long on Capitol Hill. She intended to sit back on the couch with her cup of tea and read some passages from the Bible.

But as she stood by the window one of the little sparrows closest to her chirped, and she could swear she heard it say, "Your husband is with a whore. Your husband is with a whore." Wendy couldn't believe what she heard. She looked at the bird, and the bird looked back at her with a sidelong stare and said again, "Your husband is with a whore. Your husband is with a whore."

Wendy didn't know what to think. At first she tried to ignore it. She sat down on the couch with her tea and Bible, but she couldn't concentrate on reading. She sat there, thinking about what the bird said. When David finally came through the front door, tired and prepared to relax, Wendy walked up to him and said, "David, someone told me that you were with a prostitute."

"Who?" he asked.

"A little birdie," she said.

He stared at her in silence. She stared back at him. Finally he said, "Yes, it's true."

"I knew it," she said. They hadn't had sex together in ages, ever since David came to her one night wearing diapers and pretending to be a baby. She would have none of that, and ever since then David seemed less sexually interested in her. She wondered how he could go for so long without getting any, and now she knew. "So," she said, "do you do your diaper fetish with her?"

"I'm sorry, honey," he said. "But let's talk about this. Who told you? If they have evidence and it gets to the media, I could get in big trouble."

"The last thing that you should be worried about is the media," Wendy said. "You should be worried about God and what He's going to think about you. Do you think He likes it when you pay whores to let you suck on their tits while you're wearing diapers? Do you? Because you have another thing coming."

"You're right," David said. "I feel terrible about it. Let's prey. We'll sit down together, right now, and we'll pray for his forgiveness."

"David," Wendy said, "Do you still love me?"

"Of course I love you," David said, looking earnestly into her eyes. "I've never stopped loving you."

Wendy sighed. She led David into the living room, and together they sat on the couch and prayed to God. As they closed their eyes David held Wendy's hand with a delicate sense of vulnerability she hadn't sensed in a long time but recognized and loved. They sat so close together his thigh brushed against hers, and the longer they sat there the more their thoughts turned less to repenting and forgiving and more toward enjoying each other's company. David kissed Wendy, and she grabbed his crotch.

When he grabbed her breast she whispered to him, "I want you to eat me out," and she pushed his head down toward her crotch. He obediently pulled down her panties and put his head up her skirt to lick her vagina. She threw back her head and groaned, and as she went on a sexually ecstatic odyssey the sparrows gathered around the tree branches outside the living room window, and in their excited, high-pitched staccato songs Wendy could swear she heard them say, "God approves! God approves!"

Kwannon

When Masakuni tripped and fell down a flight of steps, hitting his head on his living room floor, his grown daughter O Ai heard the commotion and hurried to the scene. She helped her father stand. "Help me to get to the couch," he told her, so she did. He staggered and held his forehead, and as soon he was close enough he collapsed back on the couch.

"Are you okay?" O Ai asked?

"No, my head is in terrible pain," Masakuni said and soon vomited on the floor. "I think I may need a doctor."

"Goodness," O Ai said. "I know what to do. Sit tight. I will be right back."

She gathered a jacket and flashlight and ran out of the house, leaving Masakuni on the couch with the vomit lying on the floor. From their house she walked to the edge of town as dusk descended and entered a footpath that led into a forest. She turned on her flashlight and followed the path, which wound its way past creeks, caves, and gorges on a gradual ascent up a mountain. As the hours passed the trail grew steeper into switchbacks crisscrossing the ever-rockier terrain. O Ai could see the lights of her town down in the distance, and she wondered how her father fared during her journey. The trees gave way and O Ai scrambled up the smooth stone surface to reach the rim of a basin near the mountain's summit. By now it was the dead of night. In the basin a lake fed by the melting peak's glaciers glistened in the moon's glow. She found a rowboat sitting on the waterfront, pushed it into the water, and jumped in. She rowed the middle of the lake to a tiny island where a golden statue of Kwannon, the goddess of mercy, stood.

O Ai climbed out of the boat and kneeled before the golden statue glowing in the moonlight. "O Kwannon," O Ai implored, "save my father. He had a terrible accident. Please make him better." She prayed like this for a long time, and as she did little wisps of clouds passed close overhead like ghosts, at first a few at a time, and then more, and then large clouds came and at times enshrouded O Ai. A cold wind picked up and rustled her clothes. She sensed trouble and climbed back into the boat to head back to the trail, but on the way a powerful gust of wind whipped up a wave that threw O Ai into the water, and she drowned.

# Twisted Mr. Rumples

"I'm heading out," said Tim, a college student renting a room out of the house.

"When you are going to be back?" asked Mr. Rumples, the landlord.

"Late, probably."

"All right."

Tim left, closing the front door behind him, leaving Mr. Rumples alone with his six-foot tall French maid. "Okay, Georgia, you know what that means," said Mr. Rumples. "You need to dust this room."

"Yes, sir," Georgia said.

"I expect this room to be absolutely spotless when you're done. If I see even one spot of dust, you are going to be in big trouble."

"Yes, sir," Georgia said. She picked up a feather duster and began fluttering it across the various, sundry objects displayed all over the living room.

Mr. Rumples went to the bar and got a glass of scotch and a cigar. He sat on the couch and watched Georgia clean – her arms, her legs, her black skirt and high-heel shoes. He drank and puffed on his cigar. Georgia finished dusting the coffee table, the television, the television stand, the picture of Mr. Rumples' grandmother, and a painting of Jesus enjoying a picnic with a 1950s suburbanite family, and moved onto the display case filled with lead crystal. She picked up a decanter to dust the surface underneath, but in the process she accidentally dropped it on the carpeted floor.

Mr. Rumples gasped. "Georgia, what on earth did you do?"

"It's okay. The crystal is fine." She picked it up and put it back on the display.

"You dropped me crystal."

"It's okay. Really."

"No! No! It is not okay!" Mr. Rumples' jowls shook. "Georgia, you really fucked it up this time!"

"Mr. Rumples!"

As she said this, Mr. Rumples picked up a whip sitting next to the couch and lashed it across Georgia. She screamed and threw up her hands across her face. Mr. Rumples pursued her with the whip. She ran around the room, with him close behind her. He whipped her again and again; each time she let out a scream.

"Stop, Mr. Rumples, stop!"

"You fucking bitch!" he yelled back. He whipped her again and then jumped on top of her, knocking over the coffee table and sending her the ground. He grabbed and tore and climbed on top of her. He slapped her across the face, back and forth, as she screamed and cried.

"Oh my god, stop!" she cried.

Mr. Rumples grabbed her neck with both of his hands and choked her. She flailed her arms. She threw her head back and forth. Her eyes rolled around. Her wild, uncoordinated movements did nothing to save her from the grip of Mr. Rumples, whose face grew red and sweaty, the cigar still firm in his mouth. After minutes of this unbridled violence, Georgia stopped resisting.

Her body now limp in his hands, Mr. Rumples panicked. He let her go. She lay lifeless on the carpet. He looked around the living room. What had he done? How could he have behaved like this? This is not what his grandmother would have expected of him. This is not what Jesus would have wanted from him. How, in spite of his two only role models, the two only authority figures in his life, could he do such a thing? Right in front of their eyes? He kneeled and put his hands together to pray.

"Oh Jesus, save me! Save me, Jesus! I am a terrible, sinful human being. Save me Jesus. Help me find the light! Oh help me! I'm so weak. Save me from my wicked ways."

At that moment the front door of the house threw open. A police officer stepped in and saw Mr. Rumples kneeling over Georgia. "What the hell is going on here?" boomed the officer.

"What are you doing here?" Mr. Rumples asked.

"We got complaints from the neighbors. Said someone was screaming over here."

"I... Mr. Officer, I can explain!"

"Explain how you killed this woman?" The officer closed the front door and walked over to Mr. Rumples. "What is this? Killing servants for sport, are you? Well, I guess I'll have to just take you down the station and have you put away for murder!"

"No, Mr. Officer, don't! Please! I'll do anything for you! Anything!"

"Anything, huh?" The officer said. "You swear?"

"I'll do anything! Please, please don't arrest me. Please!"

"Mm-hmm." With that, the officer knocked Mr. Rumples down on top of Georgia and tore down his pants to expose his flabby, pale flesh. He turned Mr. Rumples over so that his backside faced heaven, and he unzipped his pants and inserted his erect schlong inside Mr. Rumples' buttocks. The officer pounded away at Mr. Rumples as he lay diagonally across a motionless Georgia. When he finished, he threw handcuffs over Mr. Rumples' wrists, binding his arms behind his back.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Mr. Rumples asked. "I thought we had a deal."

"Are you kidding? You killed a person. You thought you were going to get away that easily?"

# American Whore

Jose had enough of a challenge before him. Jobless and living with a poor family in a town riddled with drugs and crime, he had decided that he had no choice but to try to cross into the United States from Mexico to try to find some work. He had packed his clothes, some food and water, and all the cash he could scrape together and had begun his long journey, but before he had even left town he saw a gang of thugs kicking and beating a man down the street. He could have just kept walking, passing the sad ordeal as just another instance of a broken city, but instead he ran over to see what he could do.

"Stop!" he said. "Why are you beating this poor man?"

"He owes $300," one of the thugs said.

"Here, what if I pay you $300 for him? Will you leave him alone?"

"If you want to waste your money on this motherfucker, be my guest," the thug said.

"Fine." Jose paid out to the thug most of the money he owned. The gang counted the money, spat on the poor man lying on the street, and left. Although he was badly beaten, the man was not hopelessly wounded, and with the gang gone he summoned the strength to stagger up with Jose's help and look into Jose's face.

"Thank you," he said. "You saved my life. Is there any way I can repay you?"

"No, don't worry about it," Jose said and prepared to leave.

"Then let me go with you. I can perhaps at some point be of service to you."

"That's really okay," Jose said. "I'm going to the United States to look for work. It won't be an easy journey."

"Well then for my sake let me join you," the man said. "I am poor and hated in this town, as you can see, and have nothing keeping me here. If nothing else I could at least give you some company."

"Fine, if you insist."

So the man walked and chatted with Jose. His name was Raoul. At one point he owned a local beauty salon, but once when money was tight he refused to pay off the gang to stay out of trouble, and the next day his salon was burned to the ground. Poor, jobless, and desperate, he tried to sell marijuana, but in his depressed stupor he ended up using more of it than he sold and thus ran up debts to the point that he no longer expected anything more in life other than death.

They walked a long time through deserts and mountains, suffering from extreme heat during the day and extreme cold during the night, and although he was somewhat relieved not to be experiencing this journey alone he also resented it when Raoul would consume some of Jose's meager supplies of food and water. But in the early morning hours they finally reached the outskirts of an American city.

There on the street stood a hooker, and when she saw the two men she said, "Hey, would you like a piece of this?" and lifted her small skirt to display her cavernous vagina.

Jose fell in love.

"Yeah, baby," he said. "You're fucking hot."

"Got $5?"

"Yeah. But where to?"

"Follow me." She led him around the corner to the garage where she lived, threw him on her old, thin mattress, tore his clothes off, and climbed on top of him, put his hard cock inside of her, and rode it until it exploded.

After she finished he asked her, "So when are we getting married?"

"Married?" the woman asked. "Kid, I'm not available."

"Not available? Do you have a boyfriend or something?"

"No, it's just not in my job description to have one."

"That's silly. What if I could take you away from all this? What if I made enough money so you wouldn't have to whore yourself out like this? Would you marry me then?"

"Likely story," she said. "What, didn't you just get off the boat today? I doubt you'll ever make enough to be my girl."

Jose sighed. "All right, then. But if I find a decent job I'm going to come back and ask you to be my wife."

He left and told Raoul what happened. "You realize that you can find other women," Raoul said. "Whores don't make good girlfriends."

"But she's the one!" Jose said. "She's the sweetest, most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my entire life. If she marries me I'll swear she won't have to be a whore any more. I just need to find a job."

"Fine," Raoul said. "Since you once saved my life, tell you what. I'm going to go out, and by the time I see you tomorrow morning I will have a job for you."

Jose didn't really believe him, but Raoul walked off, and when he came back the next morning he told Jose to come follow him. They walked over and into a pig slaughterhouse, where Raoul introduced Jose to the manager, who said almost nothing except to offer Jose a job. Jose immediately accepted, and although he wasn't exactly thrilled to be spending his time skinning pigs he was thrilled to be earning real money.

When he had an opportunity he found the whore working the same street he found her before. "Hey, do you have a few minutes?" he asked.

"Do you have $5?"

"You bet I do! Guess what? I got a job!"

"You did? Where?"

"At the pig slaughterhouse."

"Great." She took him back to her garage, threw off his shirt, sat her ass on a counter covered with garbage, unzipped his pants, took out his hard, throbbing cock, and let him bang her standing up until the cum started pouring. She took the cock out and sucked out every last bit of cum and then kissed him.

"So, will you marry me now?"

"Do you have a place to stay?" she asked.

"Not yet. I haven't even started to look for a place to live, and I still need to earn some money."

"Well, there's no way I'm going to marry you until you have a place to live."

Jose found this fair, so when he left he met up with Raoul and told him what the whore said. "You realize there are other women out there," Raoul said. "You don't have to hang out with this whore."

"But she's the one!" Jose said. "She's like a dream come true."

"Fine," Raoul said. "Since you saved my life, tell you what. I'm going to go out tonight, and when I see you after work tomorrow I'll have a place for you to live."

This time Jose was intrigued and wondered whether Raoul could actually do it. The next day he went to work, skinned some pigs for eight hours, and then went back to his spot under the shade of a public park tree. Raoul was there waiting for him and told him that he had found a place. He led Jose to a modest but respectable apartment building, where Jose was able to secure a one-bedroom apartment for a modest down payment.

Jose was thrilled and ran out to find his whore, who was working the same street she always did. "Do you have a few minutes?" he asked her.

"Do you have $5?"

"Sure!"

"Great." She took him back to her garage, ripped off his clothes, wetted him down with a garden hose, smeared his face with her wet, smelly vagina, made him lick her asshole, and then let him buttfuck her until his cock shot like a geyser into her.

"Will you marry me now?" Jose asked.

"Look," she said. "So you got a job and you got a place to live. Big deal. Most people can get that stuff. But come back tomorrow. When you come back, tell me what I'm thinking about, and if you can guess I really will marry you."

"But that's impossible!" Jose said. "How can I possibly do that?"

"I expect my husband to be able to know what I think. If you can't do that, then you don't deserve to be my husband."

Jose sighed, and when he left he met up with Raoul to tell him what happened. "You realize this woman really is no good for you," Raoul said. "You could get better women than her."

"But she's the one!" Raoul said. "It's like God Himself sent her to me."

"Fine. Tell you what. I'm going to leave, and when I come back tomorrow I will tell you what she will be thinking about."

Jose was astounded that Raoul could make such a claim. It seemed utterly impossible, but on the other hand Raoul was able to find a job and a home for him. Then again, those were not exactly miracles. His imagination ran wild as he retired for the evening, but as he laid on the floor of his new apartment the exhaustion of a long work day caught up with him and drew him to a deep sleep.

Meanwhile, Raoul went back to where the whore worked and followed her the entire night. When she climbed into a giant white Cadillac that pulled by Raoul panicked with fear that he wouldn't be able to follow it, but it only drove down the street a few blocks to a large, old house with a large front porch that wrapped around the first floor. When they retired inside Raoul snuck up to the house and peered into one of the open windows that provided a view of the whore and the man. They were talking about Jose.

"I got some crazy kid coming to my place every day. He has this idea he wants to marry me. I keep trying to make excuses to get rid of him, but he's not going away. I told him to come again tomorrow. Could you stop by? You know, just scare him a little, give him something to think twice about before he proposes to me."

"Sure, baby, I can do that," the man said. And then he took out a kit, prepared some heroin, injected it into her arm, ripped her shirt off, sucked on her breasts, slapped her, made her suck on his cock, and then shot a load of cum on her face. When they had finished the man took her back home in his Cadillac and then came back to his stately house. As soon as he closed the front door Raoul sprang at him from behind, slit his throat with a kitchen knife, and then stabbed the man in the heart. The man swung around and tried to take a gun out from his jacket but before he could do anything he lost consciousness and dropped to the ground. Raoul then took a saw, cut off the man's head, dried off the blood, and put it in a box.

The next day Raoul met Jose at his apartment after work and gave him the box. "This is what the whore is thinking about it. Don't open the box now. Give it to her and let her open it."

Jose was ecstatic. It all seemed so strange, exciting and mysterious. He ran right away with the box and found the whore working on the same street she always worked. He came up to her with a gigantic smile and wide, bright eyes and said, "I know what you're thinking about!"

"Really?" The whore looked at him and his box. "All right. Why don't we go back to my place and talk about it." She led him back to the garage, but instead of having sex with him she fidgeted, asked if he would like some water, and talked for a really long time about the weather. She looked out the window and looked at her watch and then finally said, "Okay, so what am I thinking about?"

"Look inside the box," Jose said.

She took the box and went about slowly opening it, but when she actually saw the severed head inside staring back at her she screamed and dropped the box. The head rolled out of the box, and Jose screamed as the whore continued to scream, and they looked at each other and screamed and then screamed some more.

"Is this what you were thinking about!" Jose asked.

With tears now streaming down her face, she whispered, "Yes."

"So will you marry me?" Jose asked.

The whore was speechless.

But at last she finally agreed to marry him. The ceremony was simple and there was no big celebration other than a nice dinner with Raoul, but at one moment that night while the whore was in the restroom Raoul warned Jose, "Be careful tonight. She might have married you, but she doesn't love you. The man whose head you saw was her pimp, and he was giving her heroin the night that I killed him. She's addicted to it and hasn't had any in days. When she's alone with you tonight she's going to try to kill you, so be on the lookout. When we have the opportunity, you need to take her to a rehab clinic."

Jose listened and believed in his friend, so when the woman and Jose retired to the apartment later that night they made love on his new bed, but just as he began to climax she produced a large butcher's knife from one of the pillows and swung it at Jose, but Jose caught it and threw it out of her hand. She screamed and beat at him, but he restrained her, took rope out of his own pillow, and tied her down to the bed.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she screamed.

"Raoul tells me that you're addicted to heroin. I can't afford to take you to a rehab clinic, so I'm going to take care of you myself."

She screamed and she screamed, but he wouldn't let her go. For the course the next several weeks she stayed tied to the bed. He fed her, washed her, and cleaned up after her, but he wouldn't let her go. She shook, sweated, puked on him, and shat all over the sheets, but he did not give up. It was a long period of suffering, but one day weeks into the treatment she woke up lucid and saw Jose sitting next to her, looking at her as he stroked her head, and at that moment she felt that, my God, here is someone who actually cares about her, although she could not possibly fathom why.

# Nature

Alf showed his young guest Jeff the English-style garden. "I love spending time out here," he said. "My place is out here in nature."

"Why is that?" Jeff asked.

"Because in nature everything is permitted. Society—" Alf shuddered, "—society is slavery, people forcing each other to act a certain way, even though no one wants to, just because they're all living in fear, afraid of themselves. I've learned to love myself, but it took me a long time – decades – to get to this point, and I had to do it by running away from those people who could never understand me."

Jeff nodded. "I think I know what you mean." He tried to touch Alf's shoulder, but Alf pulled away as he walked ahead.

Alf saw a spider orb web on a lilac bush. "Look at that," he said. "Isn't it beautiful? I just love spiders." He turned to Jeff. "They represent the most intense romantic passion existence can offer. I never understood how so many people love birds so much just because they're monogamous. Woohoo. Way to go, birds, for having boring Victorian values. Look at the spider. The male submits his whole life to the female for that ultimate sexual climax. To give everything for that one violent moment: what could be more intense?" Alf was now so close to Jeff that their faces nearly touched. "Does that sound beautiful to you?" he asked.

"Yes, it does," Jeff said as he looked up at Alf, feeling Alf's heavy breath blow on him.

"So you're serious about this?" Alf said. "I won't do it if you don't want it."

"No, I want to do it," Jeff said. "I've been fantasizing about it ever since I was a little child."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Let's go to the house then."

They walked into Alf's palatial house. Alf served Jeff a glass of wine, and then another, and after that a third glass, and by the fourth glass Jeff started to slur his speech and sway in his chair next to the kitchen island. Alf heated a pan on the stovetop and added olive oil and spices. "Take your clothes off," Alf told Jeff, and Jeff did. As he dropped his pants and underwear his half-erect penis bounced out. "Oh, what is this?" Alf said. He grabbed the penis and stroked it as he looked at Jeff. "Do you like that?" Jeff did not have to say anything because the penis spoke for him; it throbbed and grew as hard as wood. "Are you ready to eat it?"

"Uh huh."

Alf took a butcher's knife and sliced off Jeff's penis. Jeff screamed, and blood spurted and poured from the gory hole as Alf threw the penis on the pan. He sautéed it, turning it about in the oil and adding more herbs. When it had turned a golden brown he put a fork threw it and served it on a plate to Jeff. "Try it," Alf said.

Jeff panted and sweated and could barely move, but he took the fork and plopped his sautéed penis into his mouth. He chewed it maybe three times but then passed out, falling off his chair onto the small pool of blood that already began to form below him.

Alf picked Jeff up and carried him in his arms to the next room, where he strung Jeff upside down from the ceiling and slit his throat so that the blood would flow into the bucket Alf placed below him. When all the blood had poured out of him Alf carried his body to the kitchen, carved handsome pieces of meat from Jeff's body, put them in plastic bags, and stored them in his refrigerator. Over the course of the next several months he ate Jeff's flesh, and every time he did so he thought lovingly of him and that magical bond they shared.

Trauma

I realized once the nightmares began that my sense of fear was ultimately bound with my sense of dread. What I suffered in my nightmares I don't want to describe, but they tortured me so greatly that after I woke and recovered from the horrors I immediately feared going back to sleep again, even though it wouldn't happen until many hours later. I stayed up way too late many nights, trying to avoid the inevitable new terror, succeeding in the end only in depriving myself of sleep. This began to take its toll, and at work colleagues remarked on how sleepy and distracted I seemed.

"Talking about it will help you deal with it," one friend said. "You should talk with a psychologist," another suggested. I've considered talking about it, but the nightmares are just so terrible, I don't feel comfortable talking about them with anyone. I don't want to bother them, for one, and for another, talking about the nightmares means that I have to relive them as I narrate them. Perhaps in a way it doesn't make that much of a difference, because in the back of my mind they're always there anyway, constantly reminding me of what I'll soon experience once my eyelids fall, but the closest I can get to my nightmares when I am awake is recognizing the toll they have been taking. I can write all day about how tired and fearful they leave me.

I don't know what's going on in my life that would cause me to have such terrible thoughts. My life is really quite simple. I work. I live in a nice apartment. I have friends. I don't have any major problems. If it weren't for the nightmares, the worst thing I could say about my life is that it's a little plain. I've managed to just carve out a little corner of the globe where I can live and enjoy myself like so many others. I don't even really get involved in things like politics or social issues. I don't think myself important or influential enough to really have anything to contribute to the world at large. Really, I'm just getting by, tending to my own garden so to speak. I can't think of why such a lifestyle would cause me to have such nightmares.

The other day a friend of mine asked me if I could a favor for him. The favor that he asked of me I do all the time, so it was no problem for me. I did it for him like I've done for everyone else. People come to me to do this favor for them because most other people can't do it or won't do it. I'm not sure. It's not a big deal. It's very simple. It's like going to the supermarket or cleaning a home. It's just that most people don't do it.

After I was done doing the favor for my friend he took me out for drinks. We went to a bar and he purchased several beers for me. We had a good time, but I felt uneasy because as usual I kept thinking about the nightmares, and the more I drank the harder it became for me to avoid thinking about them. At some point during our night out he must've recognized the dread I felt, for he asked me if I was all right, and when I told him that I wasn't he asked if it was because of what happened earlier that day. "No," I said. It wasn't that. I didn't tell him it was because of the nightmares. I didn't want to bother him.

I sometimes feel envious of the way other people can enjoy themselves and relax. They watch a sports game, talk about women, take vacations, go to nice restaurants, and watch movies. Of course, there's nothing stopping me from doing these things, and often I try. But I'm always gripped by the fear of what's to come later in the evening. I know that no pastime is going to release me from the terrors I'm fated to experience.

It would be nice if I could just live on the surface, like a thrown pebble skimming across the surface of a body of water, without having to wonder about the depths. It would be nice if the images and sounds I experienced were nothing else. And when I move my hand and grasp a hammer, and when I stroke that hammer it was just the stroke of the hammer without any meaning besides the stroke; and the words on this page were nothing but images without thoughts; and if we didn't think of all these things as things but just as pure, unmitigated existence. It would be so much easier to live. Everything then could just dissolve into everything else, without meaning, without terror. But somehow I can't escape the things. I can't escape the actions. Everything gets torn apart into categories, and those categories are tethered together in time as a series of actions that accumulate into the subconscious horrors that I can't bear but must live with.

My neighbors sometimes wonder about me, although I don't know why. I try not to bother them with my thoughts at all, but there have been occasions when they've actually approached me on the street to ask me how I was doing. An elderly little lady approached me. I didn't even know she lived by me. I didn't know her name, and I didn't recognize her. But she asked me if I was all right. "Yeah, I'm fine," I told her. I wasn't about to tell her about my troubles. After all, who is she, some stranger, to ask me? "I'm just worried about you," she said, "I'm not trying to be nosy but it seems like you've been going through something and I wanted to check in on you. If you need any help, just let me know." She didn't bother me after that, but I thought it so mysterious. What provoked her to ask me like that?

The concierge at the front desk of my apartment building asked me a similar question. He had never asked me that before, even though I had seen him hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. I told him I was fine. He took out a large bundle of mail and asked if I would take it. "Is that for me?" I asked, and he just nodded. I wondered why he had asked me that, and I racked my brain thinking of something I had said or done around him earlier, but I couldn't think of anything that would have been out of the ordinary.

When I entered my apartment and looked at my mail I saw a newspaper among the various letters and bills. I threw the newspaper in the trash right away. I didn't read the newspaper. I didn't see any of the headlines. I don't need to know the news. It doesn't have any bearing on my life. What goes on in some faraway place or in some corridor of power doesn't affect me. There was no reason for me to read the news, and I'm not sure how the newspaper got in my mail in the first place, but I threw the newspaper away.

That day I thought about leaving my apartment, but I worried that more strangers would approach me. Having a complete stranger ask me about my wellbeing is unnerving, and I didn't want to experience it again. I looked out my living room window. It was late afternoon. The sun hovered not far from the horizon, but still high enough to keep the sky blue and the clouds white. People walked here and there and drove in their cars. I'm sure many of them were coming home from work, going out with their friends, doing errands, or whatever. What was important and to my relief was that no one looked back in. No one out there appeared to be thinking about me. If I just stayed home for the rest of the day I can stay anonymous, I thought. I don't need to draw any more attention to myself. But staying in my apartment has a drawback.

There is a room in my apartment. I don't think most other people have this kind of room. I've never been inside of the room when I've been awake. I don't know what's inside of the room, although I can imagine what is likely to be inside. I can imagine because I go inside that room when I have my nightmares. How do I know that? I just know. It's not my bedroom. Sometimes I wonder if the room is the cause of my nightmares, or if my nightmares are the cause of the room. I don't try to puzzle over it because thinking about it is too painful. When I am awake I sometimes think about putting a lock on the door to the room, locking the door, and throwing away the key. But then I fear that once I go to sleep the nightmares will begin and I'll be locked in that room...

# Where's Shaqueeta?

Jerome knew something was up when he found TJ, his girlfriend's large and obese bodyguard, lying face down in the gutter. "TJ, what the fuck are you doing?" Jerome said. He grabbed TJ by one of his arms, pulled him around, face-up, and dragged him onto the sidewalk. TJ groaned. "Where the fuck is Shaqueeta?"

"I don't know," TJ said. "They jumped me from behind."

"Who? Who jumped you?" Jerome asked.

"I don't know. We were walking and then someone hit from behind. I didn't see anything."

"Fuck!" Jerome said. "You fucking loser! What the fuck are you for? You're supposed to protect my girl!"

"Dude, I—"

But Jerome took out his gun and shot TJ two times in the face. "Jesus Christ, fuck! Now what am I going to do?"

"What you think happen to Shaqueeta?" Jerome's friend Tyler asked. She was supposed to show up at Jerome's place after he and his bros had finished dog-fighting, but after Jerome's dog had won and Jerome went home she wasn't there, so he went roaming around looking for her until he saw TJ.

"Only Whippa and his crew would've done something like that," Jerome said. "Who else? Damn sonofabitch."

"So, what should we do?"

"We're going to go over there and kill him. We're going to kill him and his crew and get my girl back."

An hour later, Whippa and his crew were enjoying some beers and television when a burning car crashed through the flimsy wooden wall into the living room. TJ's body flew out of the windshield, across the room, and the car hit one of the bros and knocked him out right there and then. The others jumped, startled and unprepared, and ran for their guns, but before they could make sense of things Jerome and his crew came in, guns blazing, mowing them down. Jerome ran upstairs, looked around, saw most rooms empty, but one room had its door closed. He barged through the door and saw Whippa dressed in a lavish blue velvet dress and admiring himself in a body-length mirror.

Jerome's heart skipped a beat. He almost asked Whippa where Shaqueeta was, but instead he just shot Whippa. He shot him again and again until he ran out of bullets. Tyler came into the room. "What happened?" he asked.

"I shot him," Jerome said.

"Is Shaqueeta here?"

"No."

"Did Whippa know?"

"I didn't ask."

"Why not?"

"Look at him," Jerome said. "He's wearing a dress."

Tyler took a good, long look at Whippa. "Jerome, Whippa isn't wearing a dress."

"Whatever, man," Jerome said. "Let's beat it." The crew fled the house as the flames from the car began to engulf the walls and ceilings of the living room.

Back in Jerome's car Tyler asked Jerome, "Bro, you know I love you, so please don't take offense, but let me just throw it out there: maybe Shaqueeta ran away."

"Ran away? Why?"

"Well, you know, you can be a little hard on her."

"Shit," Jerome said. Truth is, Jerome had raped and beaten Shaqueeta a few times. "She wouldn't leave me. I take good care of her, don't I? I get her nice things, she has all the clothes and jewelry in the world. I get her blow, don't I? There's no one who could give her all the things I do. And so what if I rough her up? That's what a guy has got to do. If I didn't show her who's boss, she'd never show me any respect."

"Bro, sometimes I think you try too hard. Everyone knows you're the baddest motherfucker around." Tyler placed his hand on Jerome's inner thigh.

"What the fuck are you doing!" Jerome yelled. "Get out of my car."

"What? What'd I do?" Tyler asked.

"Get out. I don't want to see your filthy face ever again. If I see you, you're dead. Get out."

Tyler got out of Jerome's car and shut the door. Jerome sped off and headed home. When he drove up to his house he noticed that the lights were on inside. Was Shaqueeta there? Or was it someone else? Maybe one of Whippa's friends. Jerome wondered as he entered the house and looked around. No one seemed to be on the ground floor. He walked up the staircase, looking up and around the second floor with quick glances behind him to the floor below. The doors to most of the rooms were open and revealed empty, dark spaces, but one door was closed, and Jerome could see light leaking out from the crack of space between the door and the floor. He touched the door's handle and opened the door.

In the middle of the room sat Shaqueeta in a rocking chair, breastfeeding a baby. "Mommy," Jerome said. He ran over to her and gave her a big hug.

She stroked his head and said, "I love you, baby."

But as Shaqueeta stroked Jerome, Jerome entered the room pointing at her with a gun, "Fuck you, bitch," and as Jerome shouted "No!" Jerome shot Shaqueeta in the chest, knocking her to the floor with the baby and Jerome. The baby cried. Jerome cried. Shaqueeta writhed and gasped for air. Blood spurted out of her. "Mommy," Jerome said, "Mommy. Don't go away, Mommy. Don't go away." But she just gasped and then completely collapsed. She was gone.

And Jerome was alone.

# The Polar Bear and the Merman

Tom drank his cup of coffee and looked out his kitchen window like he did every morning, but on this particular day the view startled him. Down the hill from his home and the rest of his village, past his fishing boat, just outside the bay in the open water floated a massive iceberg, rising forty feet from the water and extending so wide it blocked the strait.

Tom studied the iceberg, wondering if, how, or when he would ever be able to get his boat out, when he saw a polar bear dive from the top of the iceberg into the water. Tom had never personally seen a polar bear before, although he had heard stories about how icebergs would sometimes carry them down to Newfoundland.

Tom was wondering whom he should call about the polar bear when he noticed that it re-emerged from the water carrying the local merman Roth in its mouth. Roth flailed his arms and flipper but failed to escape the bear's grip as it carried him to shore, scurried up, and cross over the hill.

Tom panicked. He threw on a coat, grabbed his rifle, and ran to his truck. He sped, and when the road couldn't take him any closer to the bear he parked the truck on the side of the road and followed the bear into the country. Tom knew the terrain, in particular where the rocks and the peat gave way to pine forests so thick no bear could walk through them.

From where he walked Tom could see the bear as a large white spot in the distance, with a vague figure of Roth on it. Tom walked across the rocks, his pace slower than the bear's, but he found luck when he came across a moose chewing on some grass. Tom jumped on top of the moose and told it, "Follow that bear!"

The moose turned and saw the polar bear and said, "Okay, Tom," and began its pursuit. Its awkward build didn't lend itself particularly well to galloping over the rocks, but it still went faster than Tom could by himself, and soon enough Tom could see that they were closing in on the bear. When they were within a hundred feet of the bear Tom raised his rifle and yelled at the bear to stop.

The bear turned around, saw Tom, dropped Roth, and ran away. Tom jumped off the moose and ran to Roth. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I can survive, "Roth said, "but please return me to the water."

Tom picked up Roth, lifted him up onto the moose, and climbed onto the moose himself so that it could carry them back to the car. As the moose walked back Tom hugged Roth and kissed him on the forehead, and he was about to say something when the moose suddenly gave way underneath them. They fell to the ground. Tom absorbed the pain that pulsed across his body. At first he wondered if the moose had tripped, but within a moment he realized that the bear came back and attacked the moose while Tom was preoccupied with Roth, and now as the moose ran away the bear leaped onto Tom, who at the moment couldn't find his rifle. The bear mauled Tom, and in spite of Roth's screams and pleadings, the bear ate him.

Satisfied with its accomplishment, the bear grabbed Roth again and ran as it had before. After a while Roth stopped sobbing and asked the bear, "Could you please let me swim in a body of water, at least for a little while. I can't stay on land for too long at a time."

"I will take you to the next stream I find," the bear said. It didn't take long. They came to a stream and a plunge pool of a waterfall. The bear dipped Roth into the far end of the pool and rested, keeping an eye on Roth to ensure he didn't attempt an escape by swimming down the stream.

The waterfall roared. "You are pawns in a war," it said. "A war too old. I know the queens of water and snow, the ocean and the cold. Do not go to the North Pole."

The bear sneered. "Who are you? You're just a waterfall."

"My water knows the world," the waterfall roared. "It knows the ocean. It knows the North Pole. It's heard the queens of water and snow, and it tells me what it knows. Do not take the merman to the North Pole."

The polar bear jumped into the pool, grabbed Roth, and continued on its journey. "Are you really taking me to the North Pole?" Roth asked, but the bear didn't answer. They journeyed for the next day, taking breaks at streams, until at nightfall they reached the Strait of Bell Isle, which Roth saw covered in ice. The bear galloped across the not very thick ice, and along the way the ice cracked and broke into pieces behind them, which at first did not seem to be a problem for the bear until suddenly a couple of orcas smashed and leaped above the ice ahead to throttle the bear before crashing underneath again. Roth flew out of the bear's grip. They both hit the ice, which gave way and sent them sinking into the cold, dark water. The orcas circled around the bear, who looked quickly around it for Roth but then scrambled back on top of the ice.

The bear had lost Roth, and as it saw the green lights of the Aurora Borealis extend across the sky from the North Pole it dreaded returning home without Roth. But it feared that Roth would now hide and be impossible to find again. It had an idea, however, and decided to make its way back to Newfoundland. It retraced its path, and along the way clouds covered the sky and showered snow. The bear found the waterfall, besieged by small ice stalactites.

"Waterfall," the bear said, "I lost the merman. Where I can find him?"

"The merman is dead," the waterfall roared.

"Dead? How?"

"The orcas. The Queen of the Ocean."

"No," the bear said. He couldn't believe it. "I thought she loved him."

"You are pawns in a war!" the waterfall roared. "A war too old! I know the queens of water and snow, the ocean and the cold. You are no lover of the queen of the cold."

"Then what should I do? Where should I go?"

"I don't know," the waterfall roared.

The bear panicked. It circled around, thinking of what to do, and as it did so the snowfall increased. Snow covered the ground, and as the bear walked the snow crunched underneath its paws. And then he saw an abominable snowman, sent for sure as an emissary from the queen of the cold.

"Where is the merman?" the snowman asked.

"I lost him," the bear said, "and now the orcas have killed him."

The bear did not know what to expect when the abominable snowman approached him, but when he was no more than ten feet away they both heard a clicking noise. They turned to look, and not far away from them they saw a mother and a girl, bundled in thick winter coats, taking pictures of them from their car on the road.

"Look at that!" the mother said. "Isn't it neat?"

"Yeah," said the girl.

"I've never seen an abominable snowman before! I can't wait to show everyone pictures of this."

# Old Margerie

Old Margerie opened the front door.

In front of her stood a tall, wide man. "Hello, Margerie?" he said.

"Yes?"

"I came down from heaven."

"You did?"

"Yup. Your husband sent me to you."

"Oh, he did?" she said. "I wondered if he was going to make it up there."

"He sure did," the man said. "The only problem is, we don't have a refrigerator up in heaven, and we have all this beer that we're trying to keep cold. Your husband said that if I came down and asked, you might be able to give us one."

"Sure," Margerie said. "I have a refrigerator. I guess if you guys don't have one up in heaven, you could use mine. But how are you going to take it back?"

"Oh, we have a truck," the man said, and he pointed to the moving truck parked behind him.

"That's good," Margerie said.

"Umm..." the man said. "And while I'm at it, since I made all the trouble of driving down here from heaven with my moving truck, would it be okay if I picked up a couple of other things?"

"Oh? What do you need?"

"A television and a stove would be great, too. We don't have either of those in heaven."

"Oh okay," the woman said. "Well, you can have those, two, if you'd like."

And so the man fetched his dolly and wheeled into the home. He first went into the kitchen, took the refrigerator out with all the food inside and hauled it back to the truck. Once that was loaded he came back for the stove and the television. When he finished he came back to Margerie.

"Thank you so much for helping us out, Margerie. I know your husband will be really thrilled when he sees the stuff you gave us."

"Great," Margerie smiled.

The man hugged her, whispered into her ear, "God bless you," and drove away.

# Satan

"Satan has your children," a voice told Jenna as she folded her clean laundry, and at once she saw the fangs and red eyes of her bloodthirsty children running toward her. She darted into the closet and slammed the door, clawing and snarling sounding from the other side.

"He's using them to find your secret," the voice said, and although Jenna didn't know what that secret was the voice continued, "and they will find it before you do." Jenna panicked. "When Satan finds your secret, he will destroy you and your family for all eternity. You must stop him. You must kill the children. It will set them free and save you from his evil plans. Do it!"

Jenna threw open the door, and past the gruesome demon children, she saw down the hallway, in the bedroom, a fire-breathing dragon looking at her from inside the floor-length mirror. She stormed past the children, tossing them to the side, and grabbed a knife from the kitchen. As they came after her she grabbed one by the arm, its skin red hot, and tossed it up to the sink, holding its head near the faucet as it hissed and squirmed.

Her hand shook so much the knife nearly fell out of it, but she worked up the nerve to take it and slowly, very slowly, apply it to the child's neck, but just as the smallest drop of blood seeped out Jenna lost her nerve and dropped both the child and the knife. "I can't do it!" she said and burst into tears, both of her children swarming around her and howling like Banshees. "I can't kill my children."

"You have to do it," said the voice.

"No," said Jenna. "In fact, I'll tell Satan the secret he wants. If he knows the secret, then maybe he will let them go."

"Fool!" said the voice.

"But what is my secret?"

"It is the worst secret of your whole life," the voice said, "the secret that, if you told Satan, would destroy your life forever. There is only one secret that could do that."

At that moment Jenna knew what the voice meant, and she shuddered at the thought. The knife lying on the floor, tainted with a single drop of blood, did not seem so preposterous now. Jenna thought of her dead parents, her pastor, and her friends at church, all who would be betrayed by her secret. She would be betraying her own children if she told them what she knew. She would be betraying God! The whole universe would hide away from her; she would be abandoning everything she knew.

It was all too much for her. She grabbed the knife and one of the children again, and again she tried to slice the child open, but she could not do it. She dragged the child to the bathroom and pushed its head into the toilet bowl with the idea of drowning it, but she could not keep it down long enough. She tried strangling it, but again and again she realized that she lacked the will.

In a moment of helpless desperation she considered killing herself. "Maybe if I kill myself first Satan will abandon my children," she thought, but when she turned the knife to her own wrists or to her own neck she hesitated and then gave up. "God, save me," she cried.

But rather than hear God's voice, she felt the evil force emanating from the bedroom, luring her to come, and as she could neither kill her children nor confess her secret she let the force decide for her. She inched her way to the bedroom, and when she entered the hallway she gasped at the sight of the gruesome dragon looking at her from the mirror, so alive and bursting with energy that it seemed capable of breaking through the glass to bring hell on earth; even her children seemed in awe of it. It did not speak to her, but she knew what it wanted. With its strange psychic power it beckoned her to sacrifice herself to Satan.

The horror. The fire from inside the mirror burned so hot the bedroom felt like a furnace. Jenna went mad with fear. Images blurred into a hysterical pulse of pain. The horror piled upon horror pushed her into the moment at which she had to act, the moment when she had no choice. She grabbed the wild, hot, hissing children and pulled them close to her. "I have a secret to tell you," she told them, their hot faces so close to her own that they all mingled their sweat, and in one moment all that fire and horror and dragon fire disappeared, and the children's sweet, miserably sad faces returned as Jenna whispered into their tiny ears the worst secret of her life, the secret that would betray her family and her God, that would destroy her life as she knew it, which was, "There is no Satan."

# Hell

A politician shook his head as he looked over a report covering his sagging poll numbers. "What am I going to do?" he said. "The election is in five months from now."

Mickey, his campaign manager, handed him another report. "Boss," he said, "I've told you this before, and I'm going to tell you again. You need to voice more opposition to gay rights issues. Look at the report I prepared for you." The politician scanned it. "I conducted a poll, and your voters are strongly opposed to gay rights. Same sex marriage is a big issue now. If you voice your opposition to it more strongly I'm sure it will win you more points. I have already prepared a speech that I'd like you to give at our next rally." Mickey handed him the speech.

"You know I'm opposed to same sex marriage," the politician said as he read the speech, "but you're comparing gays to child molesters and pagans. You say that they're evil and are destroying America. Don't you think it's a little extreme?"

"Not at all, Boss," Mickey said. "It plays right up to your voters' concerns."

After much discussion the politician agreed to Mickey's proposal and worked with him on the speech. The next day he delivered the provocative and rousing speech to a crowd of enthusiastic supporters, who were elated to find their candidate finally showing some moral strength.

Mickey celebrated the occasion by visiting the gay dance club in the city that they were visiting. He drank five vodka tonics and danced to a hypnotic, seductive beat that made the floor throb. At last he needed to use the restroom. While he pissed at his urinal another man came and used the urinal beside him. Mickey looked indiscreetly at the man's cock and stroked his own, and when the man noticed this he began to do the same.

At last they moved to a bathroom stall, kissed and threw off their pants. Mickey climbed on the toilet and squatted so the man could stick his cock into Mickey's ass. The man pounded away, manically, frantically, as if he were in a hurry because he had a train to catch. He bent over and wrapped his arms around Mickey's chest so that he could hold him in place while digging his cock as deep inside of him as possible, and then at last he came, spewing his magic elixir inside his bowels with several powerful spurts. Mickey swung around and sucked out the last bits and kissed the man.

They did not part ways after that. They enjoyed some drinks together, danced, and kissed a bit more. Mickey told him, "I'm not done with you yet. Come back to my hotel."

The man agreed, so they made their way out of the club. As they walked down the street to reach Mickey's car they heard someone yell at them, "Hey, faggots!" Mickey turned around to see who said that, but in that second he saw only a gun and heard a bang.

In the next moment Mickey saw himself at the gates of hell. An awesome monster, the devil, towered over him. He had the face of a goat but the torso of a man, and he stood on two powerful hoofs. "Welcome to hell," the devil said.

"Did I die?" Mickey said.

"Yes."

"What... what happened to the fellow I was with? Did he die, too?"

"Yes, but he isn't here."

"He isn't?"

"No, but that doesn't matter." The devil changed the subject. "You're in hell now. I know, I know. This must come as a disappointment to you. And it's true: hell is no great place. But contrary to what some books and people lead you to believe, I'm actually a really nice guy. I always believe in giving people second chances. I'm saying this because I'm going to give you a chance to get out of hell. That's right. It's actually very easy. You just have to do what I say."

The devil pointed to a place nearby. "Look over there. That's a pit filled with people much like yourself. I'm going to throw you into the pit, but if you can manage to climb out of it you can go straight to heaven. It's as simple as that. I won't even try to stop you. But now look over there." In the distance several miles away stood a volcano that just began to erupt. A small cloud of ash rose into the sky. "That volcano is going to pour out lava, and over the course of a few hours a river of lava is going to make its way here and fill the pit. If you can escape from the pit you can go to heaven and won't have anything to worry about. But if you don't make it out in time you will be swimming in a pool of lava.

"Okay. So, are you ready?"

"As ready I ever will be," Mickey said.

The devil grabbed Mickey and threw him into the pit. He fell on his butt, and although it was a rough landing he didn't hurt too badly. He looked around him and found himself surrounded by people scrambling to reach the wall of the pit. The wall itself wasn't particularly high. In fact, it seemed to be less than fifteen feet high. It might have been even ten. The people, however, were a sight to behold. They bumped into each other, clawed at each other, and hurled abusive words at each other. Mickey himself was perhaps twenty feet away from the pit's wall, but it became apparent to him that he would never reach it. Any person who made any progress reaching the wall was pulled away by those who wanted to get ahead of him. Worse than that, the people who actually were at the wall could not climb up it because as soon as they rose by so much as a foot they were torn down by those who tried to climb over them.

Meanwhile, the volcano continued to erupt. Its fervor grew exponentially by the minute. It spewed lava. Ash billowed out of its mouth and climbed to the very top of the sky and slowly spread out like a giant, black blanket. Brilliant flashes of lightening, caused by the tumultuous disruption to the atmosphere, played around and above the volcano and let out fantastically ominous booms of thunder.

Mickey didn't know what else to do, so he began to rush for the pit's wall like everyone else, but just as soon as he did he could feel all those desperate hands grabbing him and pulling him back. He tried to grab the person in front of him; in fact, he tried to jump or climb onto the person, but at all points there was the mass of people behind him, holding him back.

Ash now covered the entire sky and began to descend on the people struggling in the pit. The ash burned. The people screamed and cried. With the ash also came darkness. The only light left in hell came from the great lightening flashes and the glowing lava as it spewed from the volcano. Although the people couldn't see it from inside the pit, the river of lava also made its way toward them. Time was running out.

Although the task seemed to Mickey from the beginning to be impossible, it now looked even worse. He was both temporarily blinded and pained from the flurry of ash. All he could now sense was the hands, the thousands of hands, tugging and pulling at him, desperate to go somewhere but totally helpless.

And then it happened. At the far end of the pit from Mickey the lava poured over the edge of the wall like a waterfall, instantly disintegrating the people under it. It quickly spread along the pit's floor, burning and melting its victims' feet and legs. An unworldly howl of pain rose above the thunder and the volcano's roar. Mickey looked back and saw the lava come, enveloping everyone in its path. He didn't know what to do.

And then it hit.

The pit filled with lava. The howls disappeared. And there beside it the devil slapped his knees, crying because he was laughing so hard.

# Circus

Snap! The whip cracked. An enormous tiger jumped through two burning hoops. Behind it stood six elephants, grouped into two groups of three, leaning on each other and curling their trunks up into the air. Above the tiger and fire a flying trapeze artist flew from her bar to the hands of her colleague who hung on a bar across from her. Music blared on the speakers. For that moment, the climax of the whole circus show, the audience held its breath, and when the tiger landed and the trapeze artist simultaneously grabbed her colleague, the audience roared.

For Ralph this was not anything special. He was the circus' magician, and since his act always preceded this grand finale he got to watch this spectacle a hundred times. Moreover, he saw all the banal practice and work that went into creating it, and once he became so familiar with its mechanisms it lost all of its magic for him. That is how he saw his own magic tricks, too, to the point that when he made that tiger disappear in its cage for the hundredth time he could not help but cynically judge his audience for being so impressed by something so stupid.

This is also why he became atheist.

The one thing Ralph never tired of was Joanne, the flying trapeze artist who flew over the tiger every night. She was so slender and petite, and she had a charismatic sunny disposition that Ralph could never resist. They had worked for a year together, and although he flirted with her and occasionally propositioned her for sexual relations she only remained on friendly terms with him. Why she wasted time on him, only she knew, but when they had down time they often would grab a drink at a local bar.

"What if I could prove to you that God exists?" Joanne said one day over a beer.

"That is extremely unlikely," Ralph said.

"Do you want to make a bet?"

"Sure," Ralph said. "What kind of stakes are we talking about here?"

"Anything you want."

"Well, you know what I want," Ralph said.

"Mm-hmm. And what do I get if I win?" Joanne said.

"What do you want?"

"If I win, I want you to take Jesus as your savior," she said.

"Sure. Sounds like a deal. So how are you going to prove God exists?"

"Meet me tomorrow for dinner. I'll show you."

The next day Ralph met up with Joanne and went to a local restaurant. When they arrived Joanne approached a bearded man in a toga and sandals, kissed him, and introduced him to Ralph. "Ralph, I'd like to introduce you to Jesus. Jesus, Ralph."

"Nice to meet you," Jesus said and extended his hand for a shake.

"Jesus?" Ralph said, shaking his hand but looking at Joanne. When they sat at their table Ralph asked, "So, how did you two meet?"

"We met while we were on tour," Joanne said. "I saw him in the audience. He looked so dreamy. I didn't think I'd see him again, but he came to my trailer to say hello. It was love at first sight."

Ralph stared as Jesus held Joanne's hand.

"So where have you been all this time?" Ralph asked.

"Oh, I've been around," Jesus said.

"Uh huh," Ralph said. "I'm sorry, but I just have to ask. So, you're saying that you're the Jesus from the Bible?"

"Well, I don't mean to brag," Jesus said.

"Could you prove it?" Ralph said. "I just have a hard time wrapping my head around it."

"I suppose," Jesus said, and so he waved his hand and turned his glass of water into wine.

Ralph was not impressed. "Well, I can do things like that. Watch." He took a pair of scissors out of his pocket, cut his napkin into four pieces, stuffed the pieces into his fist, and then opened his fist to reveal a whole napkin.

"Wow, that's neat," Jesus said. "Joanne told me you were a good magician."

"That's not the point," Ralph said. "You're supposed to prove to me that you're Jesus."

"Well, what would you like me to do?" Jesus asked.

"I don't know," Ralph said. "Shouldn't you be out preaching or something?"

"It's interesting that you say that," Jesus said. "I was talking to Joanne about it, and I think I will. People need to hear from me again."

By the time Ralph left dinner all he wanted to do was go back to his trailer and cry. Joanne, the woman he loved, was infatuated with some charlatan she took to be Jesus, and no matter how many times Ralph tried to disabuse her of this delusion by showing the cheapness of the man's magic tricks, there was simply no way he could compete with him for her affection.

The next day he resolved to forget about Joanne and her boyfriend, but over the course of the next several shows he and several other circus performers were horrified to see their audiences rapidly shrink. After some investigating it became apparent that wherever they performed Jesus was simultaneously preaching from a nearby field, and most of the townspeople were flocking to hear him speak rather than see them perform.

"What are we going to do?" the ringleader once asked Ralph. "At this rate we're going to go bankrupt!"

"Did you know that Jesus is dating Joanne?" Ralph said.

"No. How do you know that?"

"I had dinner with the both of them."

"Could you talk to her about it? Tell her that he needs to find some other place or some other time to preach."

"I already did," Ralph said. "They didn't care."

"Well, we simply can't let this continue!" said the ringleader.

"I have an idea," Ralph said.

Later that day Ralph asked Joanne if Ralph and the ringleader could talk to Jesus about the circus and his preaching. She asked Jesus, and in his good nature he of course said that he would be happy to talk to them. The three of them met the next day at the ringleader's relatively luscious trailer.

"Would you like some cookies?" the ringleader asked, handing a whole tray of cookies to Jesus.

"Sure," Jesus said and began to gobble the cookies.

Ralph and the ringleader talked to Jesus about the circus performances and how they were suffering due to Jesus' preaching, but in truth they were just waiting for the cyanide-laced cookies to kill Jesus. Jesus, however, kept eating one after another and talking about the importance of bringing heaven on Earth, and after half an hour it was clear that the cookies were not working. The ringleader grabbed a gun and shot Jesus in the head. His brains splattered against the trailer walls, and blood spilled out of the gapping hole in his face, but rather than drop dead Jesus stood up and staggered clumsily around the apartment. Ralph grabbed Jesus by the neck, shook it, and tried to strangle him, but it also did not kill him. They threw a coat over his head and dragged him from the trailer to a truck, and with the truck they drove to the closest river they could find and threw him into it. Jesus sank into the water and disappeared.

"Jesus Christ," Ralph said.

The next day some fishermen found Jesus' body in the river. It was a scandal. An autopsy was performed, and although the coroner noted the evidence of cyanide, the gunshot wound, and the strangulation, he concluded that Jesus had in fact died from drowning.

The ringleader decided that the circus wouldn't perform for a week. He couched the reason in terms of paying honor to Jesus, but in fact he simply recognized that everyone within earshot of the news was too upset to even consider a visit to the circus. When the circus finally resumed with its first show after the murder the audience that came was palpably hostile. Performers can read their audience, and the sense from all of them, from the ringleader to the clowns, to Ralph, and to the trapeze artists was that the audience was not having fun. No one laughed. No one's eyes grew wide. When they clapped it was always cold and perfunctory. Ralph threw open his cape, showing that the tiger had disappeared from its cage, but no one seemed to care. When he made the tiger reappear, he felt the kind of cynicism from the audience that he once felt for them.

But what worried Ralph even more was Joanne. When she climbed the pole to the flying trapeze act he could see her eyes crying and her legs shaking. Never in his time with her did he ever see her so miserable. And at that moment he realized that she should not be up there. She should not be performing.

Snap! The whip cracked. The enormous tiger leaped through the two burning hoops. The elephants stood behind, their trunks curled up into the air. Music blared from the speakers. The audience did not move. Ralph and the ringleader looked up at Joanne, who, swinging above the fire and the tiger, jumped from her bar a split second before the tiger's leap.

The Suicide Note Editor

There, in the dimly lit apartment, a dead man hung from the ceiling fan. A friend who hadn't seen him in days had visited, found him like this, and immediately called the police. When they arrived one of the officers cut the rope while three others gently lowered the body to a stretcher. Gary Kluger, the police detective, picked up the suicide note lying on the floor and read it. "I'm sorry, Laura," it said. "I can't."

"What a lousy note," Gary thought. For him it was too brief. It didn't tell a story. It didn't lay out the thoughts that led the man to kill himself. It had no drama. Here is a man who is investing so much in this note, and that's all he can say? This Laura person is going to be hanging onto these words, and she's not going to have much to hang on. She surely will wish he had said more.

In the fifteen years that Gary had worked as a police detective, he had read probably hundreds of suicide notes. Some were as short as this man's, but others were quite colorful, giving vivid descriptions of the torments that caused the individuals to end their lives. Gary savored especially those notes that contained a smooth, fluid writing style, with a command over detail and sentence structure.

Later that night, burdened with the thought that too many people were wasting their time writing sub par suicide notes, Gary formed an idea: he would advertise himself as a writing instructor for people who wanted to write good suicide notes. The next day he put an advertisement in the newspaper. The rate that he offered was very modest, as he already had a decent-paying job and considered this more of a public service than as an entrepreneurial venture.

Within a week Gary received several dozen responses to his ad. The first client he chose was a man Gary considered a classic suicidal type: someone who had lost his job, his wife, and his kids. Gary eventually met him in person to gleam from the guy what exactly he wanted to say in his note, but unfortunately he could barely put a sentence together, let alone write clearly. With little to work with, Gary took matters into his own hands, writing an elaborate note of studied ambiguity to rival the fiction of Henry James.

Gary took his time reviewing draft notes and consulting with his clients, but as time went, and as his clients began to kill themselves, his work began to be noticed. The people around the city were discovering in corpse-filled chambers suicide notes written in a heightened, polished writing style that drew attention to themselves for their craft. "Why how lovely he wrote his last words," a person would say. "I never knew he had it in him!" But then they heard about Gary and how he was helping clients write their notes.

One day Gary was eating lunch at a deli not far from the police station where he reported for his day job, and a woman approached him. "What you're doing is wrong!" she screamed at him. "I got a suicide note from my son, and it didn't sound anything like him! He wasn't really talking to me! You were! I'll never know what he really meant to say."

"Woman," Gary turned to her, "what was your son's name?"

"Tom. Tom Hook."

"Well, ma'am, your son couldn't write worth a damn. Maybe if you had taught him how to write, he would've known how to communicate with you and wouldn't have had to turn to me for help." And he continued with his lunch.

Over time Gary accumulated some hate mail. Some people were like the woman who approached him at the deli. Others criticized him for caring more about his clients' writing styles than about trying to talk them out of committing suicide. His attitude was that he was not a psychologist; clients were coming to him only because of their writing problems, not because they wanted help with their personal lives. And moreover, he was not trained to help suicidal people and wouldn't know what to say, anyway. He did not lose sleep over the issue.

That is, until one day he met with a client who, much to his surprise, turned out to be a beautiful young woman, someone who was perhaps only 18 years old. In many ways she seemed much too full of life to be ending it so soon. Her hair, skin, and breasts radiated vitality. It was only her tired, withdrawn eyes that gave any clue as to what she may have been really feeling.

Gary asked her, "So, what is it that you want in your note?"

She said, "I already wrote a draft, and I was hoping you could take a look at it." She handed it to him; it was a few pages long. "I don't know if you've ever heard this before. I guess it might sound a little strange. But here I've been, the beauty queen, the popular, charismatic girl, and I've only been miserable the whole time, because at the end of the day I know that all of my friends love me only because I'm beautiful and successful. I don't think there is a single person who actually knows me or cares about me. It's not worth living it's only to put up this façade."

"I see," said Gary. "Well let's see if we can make your note as beautiful as you are." He read it. It took over half an hour, and in the course of that time he did not take a single note. When he finished, which he did reluctantly, he told her, "To be honest, I think you wrote it very well. I wouldn't change anything," and he handed the note back to her. She offered to pay him for his time, but he refused, saying that there was no need if he didn't have anything to contribute.

# That night Gary went to the movie theater, ordered a bag of popcorn, and watched a film about two giant robots invading San Francisco. The next day while at work as a police detective he was called to a large federal style house in the wealthiest neighborhood of the city. It was almost at the very beginning of his shift. He barely had half of his mug of coffee. He left his police car, entered the house, followed another officer up a flight of stairs and into a bathroom, and looked at the sink, where a long note had been left, and then at the bathtub.

# Lydia of the Bears

A long time ago a little man lived in constant fear of death. Every day he thought obsessively about its unavoidability, its infinity, and its strangeness. It was too much for him, and so he tried to distract himself and others by telling jokes and amusing stories. As long as he could keep telling stories, he could keep himself occupied thinking about things other than his demise.

Over time he told so many stories that he became quite good at it, and people all over the large town came to visit his cottage and hear him tell his stories. His closest friends encouraged him to write some of them down and publish them as a book, so he did so, and within time the book became a wildly popular. People in particular raved about his story about the woman who saved a drunk and blind paraplegic from a band of Christian terrorists, even though he didn't do anything but curse at her. The little storyteller appreciated the attention and wealth he amassed, because it gave him even more distractions from his powerful fear.

When Lydia, the rich wife of a merchant, read his stories she summoned him to her palace and offered him an enormous amount of money to simply stay with her and tell her charming stories. The man accepted immediately, attracted not only by the money but also by Lydia's charismatic charm. While her husband journeyed on his long business trips, Lydia ate fruit in her sumptuous lounge and listened to the little man tell his funny stories.

This carefree existence lasted for some time, but then Lydia's young daughter became terminally ill and wasted away, Lydia's thoughts turned darker. She contemplated mortality herself. The little man dreaded this, as it brought his own thoughts back to his greatest fear, but to distract them both and to cheer her up he kept telling his stories, and when Lydia insisted on hearing a story about heaven he gave her elaborate descriptions of the place as a wonderful, incredible paradise with everything little girls could possibly want, from lollipops to dolls to flamethrowers, and as the dreaded day approached he told Lydia about how her daughter would become an angel too beautiful for Earth and be the darling of all the angels in heaven.

And then the little girl died. Although the girl's father couldn't make it back home in time, Lydia, the little man, and all the servants were there by her bedside as she expired. Bit by bit, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, the girl's angel came out of her body, but before she could make it out and float to heaven a hideous gang of thugs barged into the room, muscled their way through the stunned gathering, captured the girl with a giant net, and escaped.

Lydia ran after them, but by the time she reached outside the doors to her palace the gang were too far away. A pedestrian passing by looked at the thugs and looked at Lydia and said, "Did they get your daughter, ma'am?"

She looked at him. "Yes! Who are they?"

"They do that from time to time. They're taking her to the pasta factory. They keep the angels there to make angel hair pasta – have them locked up in a big pen – shave their hair whenever it grows out."

"What? How is this possible? Why doesn't anyone stop it?"

"It's a big business," the pedestrian said. "Almost everyone here makes money from it one way or another. Your husband, he goes out and sells the angel hair pasta around the country. A lot of other people work at the factory. A lot of people sell it around town. Yeah, there are people who don't particularly like it, but people have to make a living, you know."

"Jesus Christ," Lydia said. "Why didn't I ever hear of this before?" But then she realized the answer to her own question: she had been spending all her time lounging around the palace, eating fruit and hearing the little man tell her amusing stories. Tears rolled up in her beautiful eyes as she thought in a flash of all those wonderful descriptions of heaven and how her daughter would be a treasure among the angels. Her hopeful dreams, born by those tales, were robbed by this gang of thugs, and now her daughter would never see heaven.

Lydia vowed to rescue her daughter, her angel, but when she tried to enlist the help of the locals no one would agree to help her. It was humiliating the way people would admit that, yes, what that factory did was terrible, and as they said this they would look into Lydia's beautiful, earnest face and turn red with shame. No one wanted to put his livelihood in danger. No one was brave enough to take on a factory that they all recognized as being so much larger than themselves.

Realizing that the influence of the angel hair factory was too pervasive in her town, Lydia decided that if she were going to seek help she needed to look elsewhere. She assembled a backpack full of supplies to journey out into the woods. Her loyal servants warned her that the woods were dangerous, filled with ferocious bears, but when they said this Lydia only retorted, "Well the bears are probably better than the people here."

She made her journey out of town and went deep into the woods. When night fell she pitched a modest cloth tent, climbed inside, curled under a thin sheet, and fell asleep. When she awoke the next morning she saw the silhouette of a giant bear against the cloth of her tent, and when she peeked out she saw that she was in fact surrounded by bears.

"What are you doing here?" a bear said. "Humans are not allowed in the woods."

"I'm sorry," Lydia said. "Am I bothering you? I'm on a journey and just needed to sleep for the night."

"Where are you going?" another bear asked.

"I'm trying to find help," Lydia said, and she explained why. When she described the loss of her daughter, and how she must now be tied up in that factory, having her head sheared by some thug, tears rolled up in her eyes, and as the bears heard the story and saw her cry they began to cry, too, and blow their big snouts.

"Tell you what," a bear said. "We'll help you, but in return we want a favor from you."

"What is that?" Lydia asked.

"We want to live in the town like everyone else."

"Well, I don't know if I have the power to promise that, but I can help you as much as I can."

The bears sighed. "Well, we can't promise that we'll save your girl, can we? But we can try."

Now, one might think that these bears would simply roll into town and overwhelm the factory employees with the strength that nature granted them, but these bears were a bit more special than that. It happened one weekend night, while most people were off from work, that a large convoy of bears rolled into town on their roaring motorcycles, decked in their leather and rubber suits and bearing machine guns. They barged through the front entrance to the factory, gunned down the two security guards at the front desk, and made their way into the other rooms, gunning down any security they approached. They reached the giant pen where all the angels were chained, and they went to work freeing the angels. The bald angels thanked the bears and flew out to heaven.

When Lydia saw her freed little girl she embraced her. "My little angel! I'm so happy to see you again! I love you so much."

"I love you too, mommy."

"Now go to heaven, okay? I'll see you not too long from now."

"Okay, mommy. I'll be thinking of you." And she flew away.

Although they completed their intended task, they now found the factory surrounded by police cars. One of the security guards must have called them before being gunned down. This didn't concern the bears too much, though, as they outnumbered the police ten to one. The bears took positions throughout the factory and opened fire on the police, gunning them and their cars down. The police tried throwing smoke bombs into the factory, but the bears just threw them back out. A fire started inside the building, and soon the whole, giant building was engulfed in flames. The bears moved out, gunning down officers along the way, until there was not a single one left.

The bears were totally victorious. They strutted around town and rode their motorcycles through the streets. The locals didn't put up a resistance, but at the same time they weren't very welcoming. With the factory devoid of any angels, the townspeople were now all unemployed, and they took their anger out passive-aggressively on the bears. As it became apparent that the locals wouldn't serve the bears drinks at their bars, would ruin the clothing the bears took to their dry cleaners, and pissed on the food that they ordered at their restaurants, the bears wondered how they were going to continue living there.

"Lydia," the bears asked, "can you help us."

Yes, she had an idea. She used her immense wealth to build a new little neighborhood in town that she dedicated to the bears. There were cottages, restaurants, bars, and stores full of honey, fish, and berries. And as she hired a lot of the locals to build this neighborhood she earned their grudging respect, since at the end of the day their greatest desire was to make a decent livelihood with a paying job.

The bears now had homes, and they enjoyed it. When they weren't enjoying their neighborhood they were lounging under the Linden trees in the town's many public parks or along the town's charming river. The locals resigned themselves to the fact that the bears were there to stay, and as the bears contributed to the local economy the locals eventually grew to like the bears and eventually even cherish them as a niche that gave their town distinction. They put a bear on their town's coat of arms and even built statues of bears at the street intersections of the most popular neighborhoods.

And this continued up to this day. Tourists travel all over the world to see the town with the bears, and among those who are adventurous enough some even go into the bear neighborhood and perhaps catch a drink with a bear at one of their favorite bars. It's quite a treat. If you ever make the trip yourself and meet one of these colorful folks, just make sure you ask about Lydia of the Bears.

# Ascension

Oscar sat at the bedside of his husband Warren, who, now feeble at 95 years old, was succumbing to the flu. The doctor couldn't do anything to help and, much to Oscar's annoyance, suggested that it may have simply been Warren's time. Oscar couldn't believe that after having been together with Warren for over 60 years, Warren was finally going to be taken away from him.

Warren, so sick he could barely move, wheezed and looked at Oscar. Oscar took hold of Warren's cold, bony hand and stroked it with his thumb. "I'm afraid of dying," Warren said, his words so true his voice quivered as he spoke them.

"It's okay," Oscar said.

But tears started coming down Warren's blue cheeks.

"I promise you, when you die you're going to go straight to heaven, and you'll see Mama and Papa, and soon I'll be there to see you, too."

But Warren only cried.

"Hey," Oscar said. "Hey, I have some visitors who want to come and say hello."

"Who?" Warren asked. He couldn't possibly imagine who would visit now.

"You know how all these years we read fairy tales together?" How could Warren forget? He loved fairy tales. For years they would read a tale before going to sleep every night. They adored Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm the most, but they read fairy tales by all sorts of people, and after a while they knew fairy tales so well that they began telling original tales to each other. Over time they made the tales so much a part of their lives that they sometimes acted as if they lived in a fairy tale. When Oscar mentioned fairy tales now Warren simply looked back at him with a weak smile to acknowledge what Oscar already knew.

"Well," Oscar said, "just look at the door and see who comes in."

Warren looked at the door to the bedroom, and at that moment the door creaked open. At first no one came in, but then, near the floor, almost out of Warren's sight, came in a few gnomes who, although shy, waved to Warren and walked over to his bed. Then came a couple fairies, an elf, a mouse, some sparrows, a frog, a couple cats, and a dog. Then came the larger creatures, including a merman, a witch, a full-grown bear, a princess, and a knight. Creatures large and small all came in the bedroom until the room was so full that hardly anyone could move, and as each came in each greeted Warren.

"What on Earth..." Warren said.

"We wanted to say hello," one of the gnomes said.

"But how?"

"Don't worry about that," said the gnome. "You've been good to all of us. You told our stories and made them your own. Now we're here with you."

"Where we're from, you're famous," said the princess.

"They do?" Warren asked.

"Yes. Everyone knows the story of Oscar and Warren."

"What's the story?" Warren asked.

The princess blushed. "But you don't know?"

"I just wanted to hear a story," Warren said. His eyelids sank as he struggled to stay awake.

"Well, it's really very simple," the princess said, "but it's also really beautiful. Once upon a time there was a young man named Warren. Warren was a dreamer and always wanted to see the good in people, even when they were wicked. Several times he fell in love with men who took advantage of his kindness and betrayed him. But when Oscar met Warren he fell in love and swore he would be good to him. They fell in love and became the happiest couple in the world, and they shared all sorts of stories about us and our land, the land of fairies and gnomes, and lived happily ever after."

"That's really sweet," Warren said.

"It is," said the princess. "Your lives are our dreams."

At that moment Warren slipped away and died. Oscar grabbed Warren and held him to his chest and sobbed. All the fantastical creatures in the room cried. Their hero, their loved one, had left them. Soon thereafter Oscar arranged the funeral, and although he attended he didn't want to be there. He missed his husband and wanted to be with him, and he didn't recognize the body inside the coffin as the man he spent his life with. In the ensuing weeks he let his regular work and chores slide. A hole was in his life; the most meaningful part of his existence was gone. All he wanted to do was be with Warren, and every night, as he cried himself to sleep, he prayed that he would be with his husband again.

A year passed by, and on the anniversary of Warren's death, which didn't feel any worse or better to Oscar than any other day so far, he went to bed, crying as he had been, and within his heart he wished that he could be with Oscar again. He dozed, but just before he fell asleep he felt a light warmth around him. He hesitated to open his eyes, but when he did he perceived a light near him, and as he looked at it he saw within the light the contours of a face, and the light embraced him and held him, and imperceptibly the light lifted Oscar from the bed, first by one inch, then by another, letting the covers slip off of Oscar's body, and as the warm light lifted and enveloped him, Oscar, in his drossy sleepiness, knew that it was Warren, and that now they could be together again, to love each other forever.

The End

