Blood & Gristle Read online

  Ask Again Later.

  Jimmy scrunched his whole face into an awful, sorrowful thing full of agony and helplessness. He tensed and then threw the Eight Ball with all of his might. It slammed into the stall. A fatal crack halved the mystical orb. The center of truth, the tiny, icosahedral shaped piece of plastic, landed behind him atop the toilet basin. It spun on one corner and then toppled to the gross floor.

  The clicking grew louder and louder.

  Jimmy sat very still. He wondered what the fuck was happening.

  Was he still dusted?

  Was this some sort of elaborate, freaking, hallucinatory episode?

  Nothing made sense.

  Nothing.

  Except that his honor was a sham, hallucination or not, his nobility was a joke, and now he was nothing.

  And now he was nothing.

  But he didn’t have to be. He could face his fear and fight for who he thought he was. He could man up and do what had to be done.

  Right?

  Recognize – Right.

  Standing, he took a deep breath and exited the stall. The clicking neared deafening levels. A Strange Light flittered from behind the bathroom doorframe. Jimmy sucked it up, grew a pair of huge, elephant balls, and approached the doorway.

  This is who he was.

  A hard motherfucker.

  The past was the past.

  Time erodes all. Even cowardice.

  Recognize – This is who he was (and fuck you if you don’t believe).

  Closing both eyes, Jimmy put his hand upon the door knob. He swallowed back a gathering lump of fear and then gave that little bitch a turn.

  EVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES

  Charles fell for forty-odd stories. He twisted and pitched this way and that, soundless, limbs held tightly in check, smiling, waiting. During his descent he felt more alive than ever and he wished the thrill would never end.

  World without end.

  Now.

  Now that he was taking up the initiative and doing things his way.

  Nobody even noticed him until he hit the ground. When he did, he quite literally became the most popular guy on the block. Upon impact, his sagittal suture unhinged, both parietal plates shattered, and his forehead exploded outward as all of Charles’ downward empowerment came splashing out of his head in a gray-red shower of meaty pulp.

  Penny was impatiently waiting on a taxi when some of Charles’ brain splattered her designer pumps. The moment was shocking and she continued to hail (in shock) until a cab pulled up. She quickly got inside and begged the driver to depart. The driver, unaware of the accident, did as asked and upon hearing the alarm in Penny’s voice he asked her if everything was all right.

  Penny wiped her shoes on the floorboards and told the driver what had happened. She cried a little and told him most distressingly, that she had caught a clear, vivid glimpse of the man as he slammed down.

  Slammed down.

  There was no bounce, no relief or forgiveness, just one long pulverizing moment, a slight twitch, and then the impossible explosion of fluids and life.

  As she spoke, transported, swimming amongst the memory of cooling brain matter, her mind centered on an image. She pictured her next door neighbor’s new baby. The infant was only a few weeks old and spent a lot of time sleeping. Penny could see it jerking, twitching, occasionally jarred into motion by the violence and beauty of dreams. Though she tried to push the association from her thoughts, focus drew upon those twitches and she likened the small, pink newborn’s spasms to that of Mr. Suicide’s final moment.

  When Penny’s brother-in-law, Rich, heard about the man’s bursting head, he felt a wall of heat well and mist behind his eyes. He contained himself, but later, on his way home, he began to cry.

  Several weekends ago he went hunting with his boss and a few friends from work. This was his first hunting excursion and he was anything but the outdoorsy type. The brutality of the experience stunned him internally. His drunken companions didn’t just kill the deer, and the fish, and the vast array of fur covered creatures they had caught, they bashed, mutilated and gored them. They painted the wilderness red, white and grue with their tiny guts and soft brains and brittle bones.

  Somewhere in that deep, dark forest, Rich felt as if he had lost his humanity. Reeling with unease, he latched onto Penny’s gory account and felt as if it was he who had smeared the jumper all over the sidewalk. He felt as if it was he who had pushed him to his messy end.

  When he got home, he unloaded, blubbering and shaking, impressing his thoughts and fears about Penny’s Mr. Suicide and the sanguineous hunting trip upon his wife, Sue. She held him close, stroking his head, taken aback by the ferociousness of her husband’s whimpering.

  She told him that he had nothing to worry about, that animals didn’t have feelings, that they lacked soul, complexity, and warranted no more sympathy than a stone or a blade of grass.

  Besides they were drunk.

  Besides they were Modern Men.

  Fate and Nature and Death cowered at their feet and bent to their whims.

  This helped and it didn’t.

  Much later, as the world slept and her husband snored beside her, Sue stared at the darkened ceiling. She recalled a dream she had when she was just a little girl. In the dream, her parents punished her for goofing off. To extract revenge, she climbed atop the roof of their house. She reasoned that when she was dead her parents would be sorry and it wouldn’t make any difference to her because she would be in heaven eating fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches with Elvis Presley.

  Holding her breath she leapt into the air and rushed toward the ground. She awoke the moment before she hit, jolted into consciousness, disallowed to die while sleeping, but nonetheless, Sue never forgot that feeling, oh, that tremendous feeling, those seconds airborne, the world kissing you in a thousand different places, the earth pulling you close, closer, closest, fast, faster, fastest.

  In those moments she felt alive…truly alive.

  And in her sleeplessness, she imagined the suicide victim and the incredible rush he must have felt as he dropped to his doom.

  Sue didn’t feel sorry for him or dwell upon the gory details of impact. His death meant nothing to him; it only affected those still left to perplex over it. Instead, she envied the heart-stopping joy of his free-fall. Free. Free. Truly and completely Free, until dreaming eyes snapped open and viewed the world reinvigorated.

  GELL-US-SEE

  The world raged as the world tended to do.

  Flaming (pain).

  Blisterfuck (pain).

  Pressure cooker (pain).

  Nestor, skinny as fuck, pale, pale, pale, nearly undefined if not for his sizzling anger, ground his teeth until his gums protested and waterfalled coppery streams of salty red (mouthful of pennies, swallowing down death).

  Not to be outdone, his fingers crushed invisible victims. Their tips impressed violent, purple crescents into the soft flesh of his innocent palms.

  After a time they bled as well.

  Finally, exhaustion swelled. Merciful sleep took him to a nothing place; numb and quiet and welcome. But solace was fleeting, as were all things serene, and Nestor awoke exactly where he left off.

  Anger still bubbled and boiled, but his palms had scabbed over and his gums clotted. The incessant hitching, the ever cry that cried and didn’t, stopped. Tears dry-stained his cheeks. His systems were realigning, rebuilding, and small gobs of clarity – distance-time-illumination – brightened sickly portions of his brain.

  Deep center, at the very core of his re-growth, a nebulous burst of thought flowered, an idea spasm, speeding, fixed, wild, constant; unyielding as light. The notion fleshed.

  Insanity, worse: impossible, ridiculous, apt, perfect.

  Perfect.

  Nestor spurred into immediate action.

  Change: complete and total. Metabolic carnage. Heavy concentration. He stared ardently at his reflection, at the old Nestor. Useless skin and bones. Watery, w
eak eyes. Cracked lips. Zits. Nose hair. Unsightly. Unshapely.

  It was time.

  She brought this on herself.

  Whatever happened, Lil would pay. If the punishment exceeded the crime (which Nestor was sure she would think) then tough shit because it was too late to turn back now.

  Hate.

  Hated her.

  Hated her treacherous heart.

  Hated her morally corrupt code of ethics.

  Hated the way he wanted to meld with her and keep her close forever.

  Absurd. Crazy. That’s what they would all think. Nestor almost thought it himself, almost, except that it was working. Defying basic logic, it was working.

  Inside first: everything went soft, wet, and mushed out. Then the ultimate test. Extreme thought until he felt something click within his head.

  He frowned as hard as he could.

  His eyebrows touched.

  The rest of his externals followed suit.

  Todd’s car was in her driveway.

  Nestor quickened the pace and cursed the foul betrayer. Tall, idiot’s grin, big, fucking, motherfucking fuck. He could feel his skin’s temperature rocketing, its tones reddening. He kept it together and knocked on the door.

  Hello.

  Goodbye.

  No fanfare, just quick, deadly, he gelled out, flesh serpent and penetrated Todd’s internals. Down the stupid fuck’s throat before he knew what hit him. Nestor whipped and whirled and wrecked the living shit out of the asshole’s vitals. It felt good to be in he that had been in her.

  Nestor wished he was teeth, sharp, sharp teeth, and in an instant he was. He shredded sinew, cracked bones, and tore veins. He burst through Todd’s derma a bloody shapeless mess. Pieces of Todd fell around him and settled in quivering, wet chunks upon the floor.

  Reformation.

  Lil gasped and gaped, terrified.

  Nestor stared at her for a long moment.

  He tried to meet her gaze and hold it, but there was no use. She was having a hard time focusing. She hid behind hair that was naturally black, but now, thanks to Todd, was red.

  Oh well, in time she would snap out of it.

  There would be lots of time for her to snap out of it.

  As an expression of his purest love, Nestor covered her over.

  ARMOR

  This man, lost somewhere I think I’d like to be, has a watery left eye socket. Disgusting fluid streams unapologetically. A continuous trickle continuously trickles from both sides of his brown, yellow eyeball. Thusly, the inner corners, close to the bridge of his nose, and the other corner, near his left temple, are always shiny and moist and red rimmed from irritation. It’s pretty gross.

  Sometimes it seems as though he is half crying, refusing to surrender himself completely. I think, maybe, he is left-handed and the left side of his body, being controlled by the weaker side of his brain, hasn’t the strength to fight off the emotion that roils and coils in our guts and waits for the gloom to spring so it can rise up like a suffocating cloud and rain away our hope. Maybe.

  I spend lots of time staring at the man and his eye as he loads cans and bottles, glass, plastic, and aluminum, into a metal shopping cart. I know what the man does with the recyclables and in turn I am pretty sure I know what he does with the pay off, but I pretend that he does less obvious things with them. I make believe that the leaky eyed man is an Emperor, or an Imperial, or Royalty, and these materials are the blood, sweat, and dirt that go into the walls of his castle. When he is finished, the castle will raise high into the heavens. It will tower over the world, magnificent, casting a sparkling shadow, a wise shadow, not a half emotional shadow, but a fully emotionally shadow, a worthwhile shadow forged from the scraps of the earth, from the detritus of humanity, our shit made brilliant by glimmering, green exteriors fashioned from Seven-up and Sprite cans, gleaming with windows cut from cold filtered Miller Genuine Draft beer bottles.

  I dream about his kingdom every chance I get.

  It’s a real tragic thing when you grow up and no longer have dental insurance. I haven’t had a dentist in years. I’ve tried. A few jobs afforded the opportunity, but they required that I make it past an extended probationary period. Needless to say I never have, and now, when I look in the mirror and open my mouth wide I instinctively search for cavities.

  I found one.

  Lower, left canine.

  It is a small, devious, little fucker.

  So then, in my mouth, my mouth, my mouth, mine, at the exact point where gum-line and tooth meet and vice-versa, there is a tiny, insidious hole.

  If I stick the tip of one of my fingernails, or something like a tooth pick or a straightened out paper clip into the hole I can send crazy fucking, mind melding pain throughout my entire body and turn my vision totally white.

  It is a pain that makes me completely and utterly aware of my physicality. It reminds me that I am all soft and squishy inside.

  And I marvel at this. More than this, I marvel at the construction of my teeth. I freak out when I consider and compare the hard, clacking, bone crushing power of my choppers, their tough surfaces, with their mushy, nerve laden centers.

  I freak out when I think about how decay breaches the white and gets up inside.

  Decay?

  Like death?

  Like maggots?

  Like yuck.

  I freak out when I envision the red, the bright red, the squishy pink in my tooth hole going black, decay spreading, eating, until the enamel and such crumbles away like sugar chunks.

  I freak out.

  I do.

  And I think, Fuck that shit.

  But I still don’t have a dentist.

  I don’t have a job.

  I have a hole in my tooth.

  A chink in my armor.

  So I wait and hope while you probably wait and hope. And then what do you (we) got?

  The swirly heat of rot must move on, it’s not happy in stasis, it abhors waiting, it’s not happy until it is flittering through the body, hungry for the heart, killing off ambition.

  Fearful, I pour mouthwash and fluoride into my infected tooth. Unsure about the effectiveness of these products, I gargle with a small amount of bleach and then, just to be safe, I try a little Comet cleanser.

  I decide to spend a day with the watery eyed can collecting man. Maybe in doing so I will discover something like true happiness? Maybe his daily routine means more to him than survival, more than alcohol? Maybe he has found some sort of primordial truth? Real core shit, you know? Maybe collecting will somehow, metaphorically speaking anyhow, fill the hole in my tooth?

  However, understanding the man’s situation, and expertly in tune with my own languor, I forego any chance I may have at accomplishing a solid day’s work and bring along a twelve pack of cheap beer.

  The man is appreciative and he smiles generously. His face widens, ruddy cheeks rising like a pair of dawning suns. A rush of salty liquid splashes down his left cheek and for the first time I notice that he is missing most of his teeth.

  CONSUMED

  If he learned anything, something, one thing, it was that his teeth were as strong as hell. Limb upon limb upon bone upon gland, muscle after muscle after tough, tough muscle, slick, slimy nub after nub of indistinguishable biology: through all of it, his choppers held. They showed no signs of wear. They could, would, go on and on and on. Nathan, wide-eyed ever-stare, pictured them gleaming, gnashing, chewing, still in motion long after the gums, tendons, muscles and soft tissues that powered them had shredded away into wet webs of pulpy nothing.

  He closed his eyes. Not that it mattered. The bodies were still there. Bodies. Flesh. Blood. Bone. Prickly pieces, salty parts (genitalia he assumed, feared, gagged, choked), coiled, mushy greens and pinks and reds and blacks and here he was, mild-mannered Nathan at the bottom of it all, in the thick of it so to speak, mouth full, spitting decay sideways, refilling and then spitting once again.

  Repeat.

  So very many bodies.<
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  His body, though gored and grimy, was holding up. Not nearly as well as his teeth, but well enough.

  Well enough?

  Yes, well enough, considering: hands bound behind his back, tight, thick, razor wire about the wrists and ankles. Zero cooperation. Miraculously, his limbs still functioned on his behalf. However, they bore no autonomy. Instead, they moved as one giant muscle. His mouth (more importantly his teeth) chewed away what it could, his head tossed the vile meat aside, and then his body jerked and bucked and wriggled its way upward. The process was slow and impossible, but Nathan pushed on, human worm, slug, a maggot with a good set of teeth and the unfortunate ability to ponder destiny, how he got here, and where he was going…

  If ever you find yourself abroad, tropical diversion, plushness so plush that the world looks soft, American antidote in the land of the ever present sun, thong back bikinis and alcoholic concoctions that taste like angel urine, if ever you find yourself here, appreciate the contentment you have situated yourself within. Appreciate and ignore the dizzy tickle in your nose, the futile thought that this could be better, that things can always be better. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Remind yourself that you are already high, that things don’t get much better. This is a land of beauty. This is unreal. This isn’t the cutthroat, cocksure, dog-eat-dog, rat race of the cliché-ridden Americas. This is paradise. Using cocaine here would be an exercise in redundancy.

  Listen to yourself.

  Never engage the natives.

  Never solicit them for drugs.

  Never exude American ego, pride. Never head off into the rainforest with a Carlos or a Juan or a Hector. Never do these things or you might find yourself bound, forced to line up with others – men, women, children you’ve never seen before – at the edge of a deep, deep pit. Shots are fired, you are shot, or just startled by the blast, unhit, amazingly missed, but falling anyway, and then feigning dead and plotting your escape. But the plan keeps getting tougher and tougher to realize because groups after group of hysterical prisoners are being lined up, shot and dropped on top of you.