The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole! Read online

“Whoa,” Jerome says and raises a hand to silence Bud. “First of all, you shitbag, it ain’t ‘shit.’ It is every bit as potent as real LSD and made almost entirely of things you can find around your house.”

  Bud scoffs. “Yeah, if you live in a crack house with The Merry Pranksters and have a pharmacy for your basement.”

  Jerome hitches up his pants and frowns at Bud’s interruption. “And I don’t just stir it, Bud, I straight dose Leon every fucking morning. Well, except Sundays. Because of church and all.”

  Bud’s jaw drops open and his eyes twitch. He can’t find the words to describe what a greasy shit stain Jerome is.

  Jerome misinterprets Bud’s silence. “I know, right?!?!”

  Bud’s self-control loses the battle with his outrage, and he shouts, “You are a greasy shit stain, Jerome! Your bathtub acid is full of fucking household poisons. You’ll fucking kill him!”

  Jerome waves his fat hand in the air as if to wipe away Bud’s words. “What the fuck ever. It kicks ass.” He chuckles and it shakes him like a bowl of moldy Jell-o. “Just ask Leon!”

  As he says it, Jerome remembers he has a batch in the back-up mop bucket in Leon’s closet. Leon hardly ever changes buckets, but if he notices the oily acid, he might dump it down the drain.

  “Shit!” He waddles as fast as he can to the peep show hallway, yelling Leon’s name as he goes.

  Leon has the door to his closet open, but he hasn’t yet grabbed his mop and bucket when Jerome rolls around the corner into the darkened jerk-off hallway, clutching his chest and wheezing like the dying. The fat man’s face has turned blue.

  Jerome gasps, “Leon … *gag* … some ass … *raspy breath* … hole … *gag* … unsealed … *raspy breath into gag* … the … *deep breath* … motha’ fuckin’ … *cough, cough, gag* … glory hole… *gag, choke, spit, and sigh*… between booths fifteen and fourteen.”

  Leon looks down the hallway, which is lit only by the large case showing the current assortment of porn playing in the booths, to booth 15 at the hall’s dark end. A chill shakes him, and nervousness clouds his eyes.

  He looks to the still-wheezing Jerome and says, “Glory hole … nononono.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jerome adds, reaching past Leon into the closet, “and take this.”

  He hands Leon an old and rusted half-empty toolbox. Leon sighs and walks down the dark hallway, never even turning to see what movie he would choose to spank off to before he goes to his next job. Most likely that new Hindu/sacred cow/bestiality DVD Jerome showed him two days ago. Then he could watch it in the privacy of his own small room rather than one of the crowded cum-smelling booths he cleans to pay his rent.

  While Leon walks down the hall, lost in thoughts of swinging cow balls, Jerome ducks back into the janitor closet. He grabs the straw from Leon’s favorite mug in one fat fist and pulls it out with a slurping sound. He chuckles, fat and wet, while he stirs the small tub of homemade LSD with Leon’s straw.

  Leon opens the door to booth 14. So far in his employ at Jerome’s EXXXtreme Theater and Sex Shop, Leon has never been inside booth 15. It is the darkest booth in the entire hallway and the most popular. It has only one neighbor and gives a half-assed impression of privacy to businessmen as they take mid-afternoon wank breaks. Something about booth 15 always sets the hair on the back of Leon’s neck on end. When the glory hole appeared between booths 14 and 15, Leon got his first views of the creepy area through the dick-shaped hole. Leon has sealed the hole up at least a dozen times, but someone (or in Leon’s mind something) keeps tearing the block away.

  He digs in his pocket for his employee coin, which he drops in the coin slot. The screen clicks to life as the coin drops out of the return. A blonde with double D titties is getting pounded from behind on the screen, but Leon pays her little attention. He likes the noise, as it keeps his mind from wandering about the horrors of booth 15. He kneels, opens his toolbox, and digs for the flathead screwdriver.

  The screen in booth 15 clicks to life. Leon jumps a little at the sound, but he glances to the blonde on screen. After watching her tits bounce for a second, Leon turns his attention back to his screwdriver search. He hears a deep moan from booth 15, and he mutters “titty fuck” under his breath. He wraps his shaking fingers around the screwdriver. As he turns to stand, a giant black dick flops through the glory hole and smacks him hard across his face.

  Leon tips backward, hand on cheek. He stares at the dick (which is big enough to have starred in Ugandan Midget Gangbang volumes 1 through 9), and it bounces playfully inches from his stinging cheek. Leon reacts instinctively by hammering the offending prick with the hard plastic handle of the screwdriver before grabbing his tool box. He rubs his cheek and smashes the rusty toolbox against the huge prick before fleeing the horror of the massive face-slapping schlong.

  The owner of the beaten dick howls and crashes against the walls of booth 15, shaking the doors to all the booths on the same side of the hallway, but Leon doesn’t look back. He opens the door to his janitor closet and throws the toolbox to the floor harder than he means to. The man in booth 15 is cursing and threatening lives in a deep angry voice, but he doesn’t open the door before Leon grabs his mug and leaves the hallway behind him.

  Jerome eyes Leon suspiciously as he hauls ass out of the hallway.

  “Whoa, Leon,” Jerome says while leaning forward on the glass case. The case whines under his weight, and he leans back, “What happened?”

  Leon shouts, “Monster cock vengeful God!” before bolting out the door and disappearing into the bright sunlight of the Nevada morning.

  Jerome asks Bud, “What do you make of that, smart guy?”

  Bud doesn’t look up but says “Hmmmmmph.”

  Jerome nods and leans onto the counter. The old wood creaks painfully, and he leans back quickly.

  “Huh,” Bud says. “Do you remember the Cockbugs they found at Burning Man?”

  “Not as cool as a “Pussybug” would be,” Jerome says and then laughs immediately at his own joke.

  “Whatever,” Bud tells him. He has heard the same joke for a week now. He pushes his shaggy gray hair away from his forehead and wipes the sweat away as well. “Do you remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jerome says with a fart. “Did you hear me say Pussybugs? You fucking stink, Bud,” he adds as he waddles farther down the counter in an effort to outrun his own stench.

  Bud takes off his glasses and sets them on the counter. He spins off his tall metal stool and points one nicotine-stained finger at Jerome, “You know what, you fat flop of shit?”

  “Whoa, calm down, Bud,” Jerome tries to lean on the case again, but the jelly dildos of assorted colors and sizes waggle admonishingly at him, and he leans back with a sigh. “Tell me about your super-neat Cockbugs.”

  “Nope.” Bud shakes his head of wild gray hair. “if you want to know about it, you gotta read the cocksucking paper your fat self.”

  He grabs his copy of The Daily Gab and flings it down the counter at Jerome. It lands with a thwack and hides the still-shaking dildos below. Jerome leans forward and eyes the magazine.

  It reads “The Daily Cunt,” and the headline warns “It’s the End of the World and You are About to be Assfucked into Eternity!”

  “You strange bastard,” Jerome chuckles as he reaches for it, but the fat man’s chortle gurgles into silence when he looks at the cover again to see an ordinary Daily Gab with the far less eye-catching headline “The Beginning of The END!”

  “What?” a confused Jerome blurts out.

  Bud grits his teeth and asks, “Are you still being a funny guy, you fucking asshole?”

  “No.” Jerome shakes his fat head, “It was called The Daily Cunt, and it told me I was about to be assfucked into eternity.”

  “Oh, you should be so fucking lucky,” Bud snaps as he grabs his Daily Gab off the counter. “It’s the Apocalypse and you want to make jokes. But I guess that doesn’t matter none, because my bomb shelter is built off your basement. Am I ri
ght?”

  “Yup,” Jerome snorts, “Now go make sure we have enough beer for the end of the world, bitch.”

  Bud heads for the door and says, “I’m gonna go see if I can catch Leon. He’ll take this shit seriously.”

  As luck would have it, Leon hasn’t made it far at all. Bud walks a few steps, his arm above his face to shield it from the sun. He spots Leon at the far end of the parking lot talking to a streetlight pole covered in multicolored flyers. Bud quickens his step and walks up behind Leon.

  Leon is smiling like a fool, his hand gently rubbing the smooth metal pole, as Bud walks into his line of sight.

  “Bud,” Leon says and then points to the light pole, “Bukkake forgive banghole, Martha.”

  “Leon,” Bud asks in a soft voice, “Are you telling me this light post is a girl named Martha?”

  Leon tilts his head just a little so he can get a good look at the ultra-hot woman in the neon jumpsuit. She is way taller than Leon, and she is crack-head skinny just like Leon likes them. At least half a dozen tiny breasts bulge out from different parts of her jumpsuit. He just wants to peel off her skintight jumpsuit and kiss every pert titty she has. He imagines fucking her right there in the parking lot. He sees himself with a tit in both hands and one in his mouth, and then he kicks off both work boots so he can reach more nipples with his toes.

  Bud says, “Leon,” and Leon imagines Bud standing by as he bangs his tall skinny multi-breasted girlfriend. Bud grabs Leon by the shoulders and gives him a shake.

  “This is a light post, Leon, not a girl.”

  “Rim job, Bud, sanctify rim job,” Leon tells his friend, fully intending to say “Whatever, Bud, what the fuck ever.”

  “Are you going to the church?” Bud asks, tugging Leon away from the light pole.

  “Sluts,” Leon nods as he gives Martha one last smack on her ultra-firm ass.

  “Would you like a ride, Leon?”

  “Sluts,” Leon nods, “and Jesus, Bud.”

  “Sluts and Jesus, indeed, Leon,” Bud says as he points Leon toward his rusted gray pickup.

  Bud opens the passenger-side door, and Leon climbs in. Leon settles back and marvels at all the shiny knobs and switches across the control panel. All the blinking and pulsing lights make him dizzy, but he smiles and tells Bud, “Whoa, bastard have butt plug,” which translates to “Whoa, nice spaceship.”

  Bud grumbles and says, “Leon, we are in the last days, Brother. The Devil is rising right out in the middle of the wide fucking expanse known as the Nevada desert!”

  Bud turns the key and pumps the gas, saying “bitch” with every pump until the engine kicks over. He pulls out of the parking lot toward Our Lady of Eternal Melancholy, where Leon works part time as a janitor. The streets are strangely empty for midday in Reno. Bud points out the tall pillars of smoke burning to the east. “See, Leon, all them Army trucks came through here the day that started.”

  Leon doesn’t see tall pillars of smoke. He sees enormous crows walking on freakishly long legs and pecking at the smoldering desert with strange jerky movements. Leon turns to Bud, his eyes wide with panic, and Bud tells him solemnly, “Yeah, it’s that bad, Leon. The day the smoke started and the Army trucks drove through, all four hundred and some odd websites dedicated to that huge mother of an orgy disappeared too.”

  Leon watches the monster crows picking up hapless people in their razor-sharp beaks. The people kick and scream, but the crows snap their beaks and blood clouds the air. Leon shivers and Bud continues, “Those goddamned Cockbugs that were getting everybody so stoned are raising the fucking dead, man, the FUCKING DEAD!”

  Bud takes a few deep breaths, and Leon stares out the large front window of Bud’s spaceship trying to ignore the terrible crows to the east.

  “At least you take me serious, Leon. That fat bastard Jerome is gonna do his best to die jerking off to that goddamned midget gangbang scene. We can survive this, Leon, trust me, Brother.”

  The creaky pickup slams to a stop, and Leon turns to see the towering wood and stone building that is Our Lady of Eternal Melancholy. The walls twist and breathe when Leon looks at them, but his acid-soaked brain chalks that up to God’s presence in the old dark church. In truth, it has been several decades since the church saw normal services.

  “Well, Leon, I gotta go hit up the storage shed. The time has come, Brother,” Bud says.

  “Sluts, Bud.” Leon smiles as he climbs out.

  Leon slams the door, and the spaceship rattles and squeaks as it drives away. Leon walks into the shadow of the dilapidated old building, past the blank sign formerly used to announce current sermons, through the old wooden double doors in the rear. The stone floor seems to radiate coldness, and Leon’s teeth chatter as he walks down the candlelit entryway. To Leon’s left is the stairway to the priests’ quarters. To his right are two more sets of wooden doors. One leads to the large chapel and the other to the row of confession booths.

  Leon pauses and watches the old stone walls breathe for a second before Father Maniwhore sweeps by him with a gust of wind that rocks Leon into the wall. The near-seven-foot priest turns his long goatish face to Leon and snarls, “Be careful, Leon,” before disappearing up the stairs to the priests’ rooms. Leon watches the large man until the staircase turns. Father Maniwhore is the strangest of the three priests crowded in the old church. Father Michaels, the kind and shithouse-rat-crazy priest who hired Leon, has lived at Our Lady of Eternal Melancholy for the last forty years. As Father Maniwhore’s father built the church, the tall scowling priest has lived within the rotting wood and crumbling stone of the church nearly his entire life. Father Michaels, finally feeling the effects of age on his tired mind, recently took in a new priest, Father Don O’Coddle.

  Leon likes Father O’Coddle the most. The tall skinny priest has a shock of bright red hair that sticks up as if constantly charged with static energy. He smokes crystal meth in his room and plays the acoustic guitar. He once told Leon he couldn’t play any songs but he was writing a dirty Christmas ditty called “Santa Cums Tonight” and it was his ticket out of this hellhole. Leon still hasn’t heard a verse, but he believes in following one’s dreams, and he can’t wait to hear it.

  Leon walks into the seldom-used cathedral, letting the wooden doors fall shut with a bang that would normally echo in the cavernous room. Then again, the room is normally empty. Today, however, masses of people line the aisles and crowd the pews. They stare gap-mouthed at Leon, and he mirrors their faces with his own fish mouth. Father Michaels spots the wide-eyed Leon and he wiggles through the crowd to his side.

  “Leon, look at all the sheep the Lord has sent for us to shepherd!”

  He claps his arthritic hands and turns back to the cathedral full of humanity. To Leon, the people appear as half-sheep half-humans with gaping snout-mouths.

  “Jesus love juice,” Leon says as he takes a few small steps away from the sheep-people. He sees their indignation as their sheep-faces melt to bone and then build themselves back up with an odd bubbling effect.

  “Oh, Jesus’s love is right, Leon.” The kind old priest shuffles the few steps closer to Leon and asks in a whisper, “Could you go fetch Fathers Maniwhore and O’Coddle? Many in this throng wish to confess, while others seek the comfort of a service of the Lord.”

  Leon backs up quickly and darts up the stone stairs to knock on Father O’Coddle’s door, nervous and sweating from his encounter with the crowd of melting sheep-people downstairs. Shadows thrown by the candles on the wall dance and crawl at Leon as his trip takes an even darker turn. Long faces scowl and laugh at him from the shimmering shadows. Panic tingles in the air around him. He hears the murmur of the crowd downstairs and shouts louder than he means to.

  “Blowjob, Father!” Leon yells at the closed door.

  The door next to the one on which he is knocking opens, and the dark shape of Father Maniwhore peeks his long face out.

  “Are you talking to me, Leon?”

  “Uh, gangbang
barnyard downstairs,” Leon says. “Confession and service cock hole dirty whore.”

  Father O’Coddle’s door opens, and a thin cloud of yellow smoke drifts out. His face is almost as long as Father Maniwhore’s, but it lacks the sharp features of the goatish priest. Father Maniwhore looks like a demon to Leon, while Father O’Coddle resembles Beaker the Muppet. O’Coddle fixes his wide eyes on Leon and asks, “Are you talking about a gangbang, Leon?”

  Father Maniwhore growls and exits his room. “No, you twat, he is telling us that there is a throng of people downstairs, and they want confession and service in these dark times.”

  He casts his dark eyes to Leon, who can only nod in reply.

  “OK,” Father O’Coddle says as he tries to force his bright red hair down, to little effect.

  “So you and I are doing confessions while Father Michaels preaches?” O’Coddle asks.

  Father Maniwhore rubs his crotch and stares at Leon. “No, I’ll do the service and you and Father Michaels will do the confessions. As the Dark Lord rises, the throngs will seek redemption. Let me wash it over them.”

  With that he turns and slams the old wooden door, and the candles rattle in their sconces from the force. Leon forces himself past Father O’Coddle into the dingy smoke-filled room, away from the shadow faces reinvigorated by the slamming door.

  “I tell ya’ Leon,” Father O’Coddle says with his jaw swinging back and forth, popping as it goes, “I see more than most, you know, being a man of the Lord and all. I see things most don’t. I’m more ‘aware,’ you know?”

  Leon looks at the spun priest and nods. “Tweek.”

  “No, Leon, I’m enlightened by the Lord. But that’s not my point.”

  He pulls his robe over his skinny pale form and slides his collar in. “I’m talking about the ogre of an angel Father Maniwhore. I may not be the straightest arrow in the quiver, but he takes it to a whole new level.”

  Father O’Coddle pulls his door open as Leon stands. O’Coddle pops his wild red head through the doorway, looks both ways down the candlelit hall, and pulls the door closed. He turns to Leon and whispers, “And I don’t know why he wants to lead the service. He likes to beat off during confession.”