It Comes Upon You Slowly

By Margaret Muggerot

Chapter One

Lyle peered at the tiny colony of brine shrimp floating inside his seven aquariums. They resembled something one might find in a toilet bowl at a gas station; ancient protozoans with miniscule legs and translucent ligaments. Some might wonder how such gruesome creatures would become a popular kids toy, but to Lyle they were the most fascinating specimens he’d ever seen. He preferred interacting with “Sea-Monkeys” to most people. They’d been marketed as novelty “pets” for children since the fifties. Lyle was the purveyor of their knock-offs: Lake Monkeez.

They were the perfect product, in Lyle’s opinion. Compact, emotionally and financially disposable. A simple flush and they were quickly forgotten.

Lyle harvested, packaged and distributed his product from his small, brick-veneer home. A smallish fish in a smallish pond, surrounded by microscopic crustaceans that relied on his goods for survival. Or so he told himself. He’d been experimenting and innovating lately; playing with altering the brand regionally and to align with trends. He was trying out ideas like Post-Internet Rave Glitchoids from Beyond. N’awlins Nightcrawlers. Maudlin Monkee Mommiez. Sewercidal Shromp-Shromps.

“No need for messy pets or huge vet bills, enjoy the excitement of one of nature’s greatest thrills!”

“I hate it!” I screamed at the first page of my novel.

The fleeting excitement of a now-dead radio signal was fading. It had, at the very least, jump-started a creative impulse but now the beckoning voice on the other end was all I could think about. I wasn’t sure if I’d hallucinated it, if I’d intercepted a message for someone else, or if it was a meaningless advertisement.

The putrid sodium nightshade scent of mini raviolis I’d eaten out of the can for dinner wafted towards me. I hadn’t thought about what I’d do about dishwashing, eating and whatnot. That would be tomorrow’s problem.

I needed a change of scenery.

“Alright, I’m going outside,” I announced, pausing to see if the radio would speak again.

It didn’t.
I slid in a new disc titled: “COWBOY BEEBOP NIPPLE WAX UNPLUGGED!”
It sounded exactly as expected.

The sky had grown black and pitchless in the hour it took me to write three paragraphs, so I popped my LED lantern, slopped out more wine and planted myself on the shoddy, moldy fold-out chair on the boat’s shoddier, moldier deck.

This was the first time I’d moved out of a full-body rage kegel in years. I had, by all accounts, gotten exactly what I’d begged for: Silence and solitude. An environment to actualize without mundane reality creeping into every orifice and paper cut.

The taste of wine, light breeze on my shoulders, the sounds of slapping and lapping and rhythm of the boat was intoxicating. I’d always wanted to make it on a waterbed. The image evoked 80’s cinematic sleaze and exploitation; illicit non-stop sex in a sketchy one-bedroom apartment in the slums of Montreal in late spring. Wicked delights on feathery duvets and strange creative nascencies generated by the union between a depraved but attractive woman and her odd but devastating young lover.

I sighed, turning my attention back to my freshly broken-in notebook. Maybe that would be the next story. I’d have to circle back. I felt something meaningful coming alive in this seemingly asexual tale involving shrimp and small businesses.

“Stay…” I whispered to myself.

Chapter One Cont’d…

“What will you do to rectify this abominable service?” A man named Oswald Parkinson screeched at Lyle through his cordless phone. “I do not want a replacement. I want a refund. Your product arrived in a shocking state, and I had to scramble to find something else to give my niece for her sixth birthday! It was a tremendous inconvenience!”

“Yes, sir. I understand,” Lyle said, dragging a chipped fingernail across the glass tank. Each tank was carefully placed around the walls of his living room-office, out of direct sunlight, and at the perfect height for maintenance, cleaning and viewing. Lyle’s bicep-length hair had to be kept in a low-pony to prevent the tips from dipping in the water endowing him with a “swamp aroma” that his sister often mentioned.

The drone of a loud plane overhead startled Lyle for a moment. As there were no airports nearby, it was an uncommon occurrence. The plane was flying close to the ground, emblazoned with a “SnotNot” logo. Maybe there was something out of the ordinary going on in town; a convention.

Lyle clicked and scrolled through invoices with his chapped fingers. A new patch of psoriasis threatened to split open his knuckles. He carefully found Oswald Parkinson’s proof of purchase in his inbox.

“Would you mind sending me a photo for insurance purposes? As I will have to make a claim—”

“No! If you don’t refund my money right now, I’ll report you to the appropriate channels. I’ll expose you for copyright infringement! For being a terrible person! And-”

“Yes, sir. Very well. I’ll refund your money—”

“Now!” the man phlegm-gargled and hung up.

“Now,” Lyle repeated.

“Now,” Lyle said, plucking a shrimp from the tank and squishing it between the tips of fingers, flicking it back into the water.

“Now,” Lyle whispered.

A couple of the critters investigated, or perhaps mindlessly passed by, the viscera. A comrade had fallen for no other reason than their God was perturbed.

Lyle loved to experiment on the creatures; seeing how temperature shifts affected their behavior; adding “threats” to the environment. A rancid Cheerio or half a cup of hot water; playing music against the wall of a tank; confusing them with strobe lights which caused them to flit around in chaos. He often found himself wanting to escalate the situation once boredom set in. What else could he do to them? Where could he put them? How long could they survive?

The CD restarted itself.

I had nothing else to say to my pages for the night. I dropped my notebook on the deck and squinted into the surround-sound noiseless void. I’d entered a strange reality. Everything still but ominous in its possibility. It wasn’t what I could see and hear that put me on edge, it was what I couldn’t.

The ambient fear aroused me.

I slid my dirty fingers into my white low-rises and touched myself in time to the waves. Why not? I liked the idea that someone or something might be watching from the nothingness.

“Is anyone there?” I called out softly.
The unseduced waves sloshed against frigid aluminum.
“Anyone there?” Louder this time.
The radio inside the cabin crackled with feedback.
I gasped.
Waited.

The interference stopped just as quickly as it started. A static heartbeat revealing a hint of potential existence; a dehydrated brine shrimp egg palpating itself and then giving up.

“You’re imagining a creature from the black lagoon is trying to fuck you through the radio? JUST WRITE YOUR STUPID NOVEL!” I could almost hear Chris’s castigations. “You’re inventing distractions!”

“Go away,” I hissed.

A terrible sound ravaged the silence. Crispy bones cracking, splintering a membrane made of shrieking, drowning ghoulies.

I sat up. The hair on the back of my neck playing volleyball with the electromagnetism of life.

Lights flickered far off in the distance; something under the water was activated by the screeches. Or the source.

I stood up and tip-toed to the rails.

This was probably when self-preservation would kick in for a normal person, and they’d run inside and lock the door. But I couldn’t look away. I had to know what was going on.

I peered out into oblivion, but couldn’t tell where the noise had come from, or where the lights were exactly. Impressions of lights. Shimmering flickers, maybe from the moon, waxing gibbous and almost full illumination.

I squinted. Hadn’t the hippie told me not to look at the lights? I couldn’t remember his reasoning though, if he had any. Maybe he was gatekeeping a mystical secret. A lot of spiritual people I’d encountered seemed to enjoy doing that. Taking a basic problem-solution pipeline and rebranding it to make themselves appear as divine vessels inseminated with the sacred fluids of higher beings.

Splashing in the distance.
Something was definitely out there.
“Reveal yourself!”
I breathed as slowly and quietly as possible.
I knew it.
I felt it.
A merman?
Another splash.

I burst into a fit of laughter. I took a big swig of what was left of my wine. Maybe I’d go for a swim. Why the hell not. Lean in, as they say. Were mermen supposed to be hot? I assumed so. They had to be.

I slid off my white and navy blue dress and tossed it on the chair. I hadn’t swum in a long time, but you don’t forget how to swim. Yes! This is what I needed!

“I’m coming!”

Then that terrible sound again—
A few feet away from me.
The shape became clearer the more I looked at it, like when I was a child and would see monsters where there was just a pile of laundry and toys.
Only this was in reverse.
I didn’t move.

A blanched, anemic creature perched on the rails. Was hard to get a gauge of its size. Bigger than me but balled up and hunched over. Its eyeballs black and shiny as a scrying mirror. Neither bird nor squid, almost human with what appeared to be stringy dark tresses knotted and infested with smaller lifeforms. Something liminally horrifying. The longer I stared, the more that revealed itself: Wings and gills. Pendulous teets with a milky substance on the tip of each nipple, glistening in the moonlight. The nipples transfixingly raw, as if they’d been sucked on to the point of ulceration.

The beast perched between myself and the cabin door. I would have to pass it to get inside. It seemed to read my mind, opening its little beak-like mouth and licking its sharp little teeth.

An unignorable smallness gripped my insides. Anything could happen to me and no one would know. I was a sitting fuck’n’chuck. No signs of the mundane world or its inhabitants for miles.

The lamp flickered—

The chimera growled.

—then went out.

This is Chapter 1 of a work-in-progress, existential horror novella I’ve been picking away at. Unfortunately, I need pressure and heat to get moving. So in a desperate bid to finish some longer works, I’m turning to bleeding rough cuts on a tiny stage with a micro audience under an unflattering spotlight. This is for an illustrated story collection I’m working on.

Stay on the Line, Little Bird (Chapter I)

Drop the eggs in water and wait a few days,
Then see how your Lake Monkeez grow and play!

I

The rope stung as I wrapped it around my uncalloused, pale flesh. Dare I bid the world adieu in such a tedious fashion?

I had to.
Something was missing.
I couldn’t write.
Never had enough time.
I’d quit my job.
Not that it was a real job.
Wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Jobs are for serfs, and I am a writer.

My “friends” had harassed me about trivia nights, baby showers, wine & whines. Somebody was always getting married or treading water in a relationship’s drawn-out dying breath or literally dying or knew someone who’d died and was fundraising and blah blah blah.

So I’d quit my friends.
Still couldn’t write though.

Joined special interest groups to see if I could plug into some narrative voltage. Learned a bit of tarot (unrewardingly more complicated than it seemed). Took a tantric breathwork class (don’t recommend if you’re sensitive to the scent of systemic gingivitis). Even lurked a BDSM meet-up, which also came with its own host of olfactory issues and was largely populated by bald dudes with hot dog necks in guyliner and barely-fleshed, wilted roses sporting scars like a cheap set of bangles from Claire’s. I’d tried seducing my first cousin one night just to see if I could generate interesting story material. All that manifested was an awkward Raymond Carver type mundane nothing at an eye contact-free Thanksgiving dinner.

Novel still didn’t get written.

I fumbled with the stained, braided yellow nylon. Was I about to make a mistake? The grand finale of mistakes in a one-act play of preventable failures.

My tech bro boyfriend had bemoaned my lack of consistent kitchen duty enthusiasm and commitment to regular subscription television lubrication. Didn’t spend enough “quality” time with him and he didn’t appreciate how frequently I drank (you would too, if he was your boyfriend). Or that I often spent the morning hours unconscious instead of rising with the rest of polite society, preferring to write well past midnight.

“Write,” he would say in air quotations.
So I quit him, too.

With as much force as I could muster, I yanked the rope ineffectually. I was surprisingly weak for such a colossal bitch.

This was the only way.

The noise, distractions, constant chatter and demands of modern life. I didn’t want to be responsible for anything, anyone, for any reason, anymore! How could I concentrate on my book when I had to deal with groceries and rent and birthday parties and work meetings and god the list was endless and I could never get away from it I couldn’t take it anymore!!!!!!!!!

“Fuck it!” I screamed, wrapping the rope around the metal cleat and pushing the boat off the dock with my sparkly vinyl eBay Airwalks.

I had no idea how to captain a boat, outside of some youtube videos I’d watched. But I’d thrown away half my possessions, broke lease and bought a one-way ticket to paradise off some hippie on an internet marketplace. He needed a quick OBO to “move to an ashram in Kelowna.” So the deal was done. Sink or swim.

I’d recorded a voicemail greeting for anyone who might notice my absence and care to check in: “Going away to heal from the trauma of how boring you all are and finish a novel. No signal. Won’t get your messages. You’ll be the last to know when I get back. Bless.”

A lone message came through right before my sojourn into peace and productivity. Chris, the only friend who was allowed to stay (the only friend interested in staying) liked to give me pep talks as if I was his child who kept failing to make little league. I listened as I floated into the future: “You don’t need to blow up your life to write a book. You just need to show up at your desk consistently. All you have to do to write is write, you spazz–”

The signal dropped before he could finish his sentiment. For the best. Not the vibe I wanted to kick off my fool’s journey (that’s a tarot reference).

I languorously embarked in my chariot (another reference); a rusty cabin cruiser with Krazy Glue fix-its and tacky, spackled add-ons. The hippie told me the boat was “magic” and held “secret fortunes” and I would have epiphanies and my “kundalini” would awaken. He was only letting it go for so cheap because his Ego was dead. He was a new man. Materialism was passé. Rerouting his powerful nut chi for higher callings instead of libidinal leaks.

These proclamations invoked fear that there was some kind of brain-damaging neurotoxin I’d be exposed to on board, but I needed to submerge myself in something beyond the ordinary- even if it came with health risks. The disappointing vessel would suffice if it could hold itself together long enough for me to write my stupid fucking book.

I crossed my fingers.

The cryptic hippie had also shared that if I was to follow the waterways the boat was parked in - which is exactly what I was doing because it required the least effort on my part - to never look at the night lights, and definitely never go looking for their sources, and absolutely under no circumstance talk to strangers over the radio. The radio was for emergencies only. He even went as far as to write me out his little rules on a piece of paper, which I’d stuffed somewhere without reading.

The cruiser casually drifted for hours, as I organized my insubstantial provisions, and cleaned the worst of the bohemian slime off the surfaces I knew I’d be touching, until I just gave up. Slumped over what was to be my writing desk made of poorly attached crates and a slab of plywood. It would be here where I would compose my greatest work to date. Really, my only work.

Not sure how long I’d been snoozing (a necessary part of writing), when I finally looked out the cabin window. I couldn’t see land anymore. Was I still on a lake? Migrated through some back channel to the ocean? Mega swamp? I was terrible at geography. Grasping anything mathematical, map-like or common sense was a non-starter. How far could I go off-course? I was in North America. The hippie had left me a map and I was sure I was somewhere on it.

The time was nigh, time to write.

But I needed something to get in the mood first. I stood in front of the fluid-specked mirror screwed into the wall. I looked like shit. I was wearing one of the seven nautical dresses I’d purchased to intensify the feeling of being a ‘writer at sea’ but I was serving aged-out, sex-trafficked castaway.

Music. A DJ set to summon a Muse. I’d brought my phone and its many playlists, but as I scrolled for something delivering swamp siren or ocean hottie, I realized most of my songs weren’t downloaded and I had no access to data.

I rifled through the stack of CD’s on the pile of stuff I’d inherited from the transcendent bum. I woefully placed “FUCK MIXXX: BLUNTZ ON THE WATER” in the ghetto blaster and pressed play.

“GAZUNGA! MI AMORE! Blip blop flap slap. Give it to me in the witch slit trap!”

I’d be needing wine tonight, as well. Surprise, surprise. After pouring a decent helping of cheap Cab Sauv into my mason jar, I draped myself over my cot and released an agonized sigh. To write, to write, what was I to write?

Retreating backwards in time made me furious. Flattening grief about the present paralyzed me. The future seemed unknowable in the least appealing way. I needed to conjure something fresh. Unmarred by reality, from the abyssal depths of my imagination.

My first impulse was to write about writing. The absolute height of tiresome cringe. Done to death. By every writer who’s ever existed. What more was there to say? The protagonist attempts to write their magnum opus and goes completely fucking insane? Oh, oh no. Are they haunted by their past? Do the ghosts of their creations cross the fiction-reality barrier?

Yawn.

I would begin my descent into wine-drenched madness once I made sure the radio worked, just in case I needed it.

I twisted the knob, notch by notch. Lingering with each tiny movement, listening intently.

Clicking.
Whirring.
Buzzing.
The device appeared to be functional, but to what end.
“Hello..ooo..oooooh,” I whispered sensually into the encrusted plastic mouthpiece.

Buzz.

“Any sailors out there? Species-curious mermen?” I said in a fake sea wench “accent.” Nothing.
“Woe is me. Guess I’ll just have to be sexy all by myself. A damsel in ‘dis dress, gonna slip it off cuz it’s so hot,” I laughed and got up.

It was getting dark, and with no compelling hindrances, it was time to write. Even though it was warm, a thin fog had formed on the surface of the water. Opening the door I peered out at the endless expanse, essentially a puny fish that could be picked off at any moment by anything with a vaguely predatory instinct. Or simply hungry.

I picked up my writing accoutrements and headed for the door to the deck.
The radio crackled.
In a baritone, barely audible voice: “…stay…”

__

Chapter 2 drops Tuesday or Wednesday 🛥️📻🎣

Debra’s figured out the keys to the Universe. She’s practically an expert. Basically a physicist. Where attention goes, energy flows. What you focus on expands. She’s pirated every book and workshop by Hicks Goddard Dispenza Zenkina Frances Hay Hill. Her trailer park comrades don’t realize it, but she’s a fuckin’ genius and doesn’t belong in a place like that. Not with people like them.

Debra’s got enviable pin legs and her C-cups are dynamite. Lady’s a dazzler. A pleasure to behold. She’s the vibration of her dream home. She’s a lilac jacuzzi and a four-poster waterbed. The energetic match to a 1970 cherry red Buick Skylark. Atomic mirror for a dusty rose velour jumpsuit, sapphire piñata, scorpion-shaped fountain that eternally flows with champagne and never needs to be cleaned.  

Leaning back in her plastic chair smoking a Pall Mall, she spies a storm on yonder. Debra intuits it’s not just a natural disaster. She conjured it. Been practicing the Law of Attraction for weeks. A cyclone of yearning hurtles towards Camelot Toe Trailer Park at 88 miles an hour. Just like she scripted. Visualized. 369’d. Defined and declared. Everything she desires is nearly upon her.

“I fuckin’ told ya!” she screams. Ciggie half-spent, dangling from her frosted lips as she stands up, the lawn chair near snapping from the enthusiastic thrust of her thirty-five-year-old hindquarters. The soundtrack of Debra’s Best Life is an arrangement of airborne metal torpedoing single-pane windows, screeching tires on gravel and sticker-covered guitars percussively slapping vinyl siding. 

“Debbay, you shitstain bimbo!” JibJab hollers, tossing beers, tobacco products and binders indiscreetly bursting with his favourite porno mags into the back of his rusty Chevy. “There’s a fuckin’ tornado headed straight for us!” 

A tornado of everything Debra desires.

JibJab shakes his greasy head and spits out a hunk of chaw, going back for one last box of phlegmorabilia. His brother, Biggy Bag, ropes his prized possessions - poorly taxidermied roadkill and a papier mache beer fridge sculpture of their mother - into his matching rust-bucket. Small minds. They couldn’t possibly understand Debra’s vision; quantum shifting out of a bunkie, wedged between Jib Jab the jumbo jack-off’s trailer and Biggy Bag’s converted car-zebo, into an aspirational micro-mansion subdivision. Transcendental she-bologna in a negative energy manwich, no more. Their jealousy won’t stop her.

She glides into her shanty and gracefully removes her prized mermaid costume hanging on the collapsed clothes rack. Dress for the job you want. Dress for the life you desire. Be your future self now. 

She exquisitely experiences abundance and freedom as she stuffs herself into a shimmering emerald tail and pink plastic shell bra. Deliciously embodies orgasmic lightness as she accentuates the look with a stunning zirconia shrimp necklace, places shimmering pins in still-processing just-permed hair, which burns from the anticipatory sweat. Twelve hours until it’s safe to get wet or suffer the frizziness. Sometimes one is limited by three-dimensional reality. She wasn’t expecting today to be Manifestation Day. 

But

You

Must

Trust

Divine

Timing.

Debra leaves behind her old life, and heads towards the squall with open arms. The constrictive mermaid tail slows her roll, thwarts her rapidity. Hipping and hopping won’t get her anywhere. It’s always toughest right before you get what is meant for you. Darkest before dawn.

“What would you have me do, Cosmic Daddy?” she yodels into the deluge. She struggles for a moment, but the Universe always provides a solution.

“Rip it!”

She follows the signs and tears the mermaid tail seam with her bare hands. 

“I said rip it out of here! You dumb fuckin’ bitch!” Biggy Bag yells from across the way. “Get your pimply ass outta the park, that twister’s gonna eat you!”

Debra snorts. “You see fear, I see opportunity.” 

And opportunity is headed straight for 32 Nirvana Ave in Camel Toe Estates, her dream home; the one with the big pool and peach bricks. The owners are long gone, it’s Debra’s now. 

She runs straight into the superstorm. Her vision board’s coming to life. Sucked up in the interstellar swell. Spinning and twirling; a siren in a frothing sea. Her fantasy smells like grass and sulphur. She barely registers the gravel lacerating her frosty flesh or the microwave that smashes her hip bone or the nail sticking out of her thigh. Obstacles are simply tests. The injuries are a sign that Debra’s about to break through her upper limits.

Everything she yearns for is within reach. 

A brand new Macbook careens into her welcoming arms.

Shovel.

Deluxe lawnmower. 

Hotdog.

This is the moment before the moment she has it all.

Wind stops. Mid-air, everything freezes. 

Debra savors the milliseconds as the clouds part and the sun breaks through, kissing her skin like pieces of broken glass. 

And then she’s falling. 

Into the Universe’s bountiful breast. 

She strikes water, sinking to the bottom of 32 Nirvana Ave.’s impressive in-ground pool.

Debra’s perm is ruined!!!! 

She didn’t think this through. The chlorinated water fills her lungs and everything stings. For a moment she doubts the megacosm, but any manifestor worth their salt knows that’s the kiss of death. Never doubt or limit what comes through. Debra will attract a hairdresser later. She’ll co-create some oxygen now.

Mesmeric ribbons of red casually engulf her; a symphony of disembodied fish dancing for their Mermaid Queen.

The Universe isn’t done, though. More gifts fall from the sky. Just for Debra.

Her dream car. 

Titanium rake.

Spinning clothesline.

Imported trees.

Terra cotta roof tiles.

They’re all hers.

Part One

I roll the twenty between my fingers and out from underneath a stack of bills. In one fluid gesture, it’s inside the cuff of my sweater, and the register is closed. I exhale through my teeth. My pulse slows.

Mrs. Sisson approaches the checkout counter with a plastic basket. Her white hair in an immaculate bun. Her face carefully powdered and spackled.

“How are you tonight, Mrs. Sisson? Quick Pick with Encore?” I say, all smiles and nods.

I eyeball the total of her pantyhose, nuts, and hard candies to be about ten dollars.

She shakes her head, “I’m fine, dear. And no, Bob already picked up tickets. I’m feeling lucky tonight. Are you playing? It’s a big one.”

I type in the items as a return, then place her money in the till.

“Not me, I never win.”

And just like that, my ass is covered. Even if those cameras above the cash area work, which I suspect they don’t, I’m very discreet.

I’m not a bad person; it’s just that I refuse to accept that what I have is all I get. I’m white. I come from a middle-class background. I should’ve done something with my life. Still got time, but I’m not good at anything.

So I steal.

Scribbling a fake signature and stuffing the receipt under the plastic clamp, my eyes remain fixed on the elderly woman's. It won't be until she’s sitting at home knitting unwanted sweaters for grandchildren that she might wonder about the receipt.

“Send my regards to your husband,” I say, stepping out from behind the register to flip off the first set of lights and begin shutting down the store.

She stuffs some wayward tissues into her giant purse. A small money clip falls from her pocket and lands softly on one of the runner mats.

I step on it.

Mrs. Sisson squeezes my hand with a squeaky leather glove, then waves goodbye. I wait until she’s passed through the second set of glass doors, then bend down, tying up an already tied shoe. I pocket what is probably thirty bucks. Love it when I don't have to work for my free money.

I remove the billfold, about to toss the clip when I notice its weight. Silver. “M” for Mary engraved on it and a small pearl inset on the edge. Now it’s “M” for Martha. Probably worth something. Slide that into my cuff too as I lock the door.

Patrick “The Cunt” watches me from across the store. The fluorescent lights bounce off his chrome, bald pate. If it weren't for his crouton-like complexion, he would blend in seamlessly with the polished metal racks and mannequins. You can't see the whites of his eyes unless he’s looking to his extreme left or right.

He’s not called The Cunt because he’s a jerk, though he is a jerk. It’s because he has twenty-four/seven unwashed vagina breath. While you may not have consciously acknowledged this phenomenon, you've most definitely encountered it. Sweet, sour, with notes of rich cheese and fermenting citrus. Not to say that my vag has ever smelled like that, because it hasn't.

I never pull my shell game in front of employees, but after the first few weeks of working in Litman's Department Store, I realized Patrick was just creepy window dressing. Milium-spotted drapery, barely observing. Barely alive. He’s the assistant supervisor, which is a fake job title if I ever heard one. “Well, Tom, we certainly can't promote The Cunt that's been here for eight years, we gotta throw the guy a bone if we don’t want to have to hire and train some jack-off fresh out of high school.”

It’s five minutes to close, and it’s just me and The Cunt. I let him deal with the change rooms and toilets, and take my sweet time counting and recounting the last register. When I’m sure he’s done all of the duties I don’t want to do, I fill out the slip, drop the deposit in the zip pouch, organize the float, and slide it through the mailbox-sized slot of the janky old safe. And yes, I have thought about breaking into it and taking off with the night’s deposit. There’s always tomorrow.

We each have a small cubby located at the back of the store in the lunchroom. In the eight months that I’ve worked at the department store, I’ve stolen from at least three of my coworkers – only food, mind you. The fourth I merely tampered with, but I can speak for everyone at Litman’s when I say that Tammy's salmon sandwiches made us all want to wretch and the bitch had it coming.

I transfer my take from the day into my purse. Forty-five dollars and a money clip. Could've been worse. By the time I come out of the staff room, the store is pitch black, and Patrick jingles the keys by the door in his tan fleece.

Our exit is always the same; wait for the alarms and locks, then head to the back parking lot. On nights when I’m feeling particularly good – usually because I’ve pulled in a hundred, I’ll make small talk with The Cunt. On nights when I walk away with nothing, I go the long way to avoid Patrick.

“Chill in the air tonight,” The Cunt says.

“It's winter.” My eyes flutter. They never roll. A couple of summers ago I got vertigo for a few weeks when I was working at a coffee shop. My doctor told me it was from rolling my eyes too much. Asshole. Coffee shops, as a broad rule, are funnels for every insufferable person in the Western world.

When the wind is blowing east, the air in Devil Falls has an eggy tang to it. When it's hot, it's like wading through rotten egg salad. I tuck my face in my humid scarf, which doesn't smell much better but at least it's my own brand of stank. The Cunt heads toward his red Jetta and I begin my passage through the alley that leads to Swift and Main. I start thinking about dinner. I could make KD, but don't know if I even have any butter or margarine. Could use mayo, I always have mayo.

The Cunt starts his car, half-drives out of the parking lot, then stops.

“Martha!” The Cunt's shrill voice pierces my ear, an unwelcome and unlubed entry.

Slowly turning, “What?”

The Cunt shifts from side to side, his mouth opening and closing without making a sound. Maybe he isn't a pig, more of a strangled guppy. He scratches the back of his neck, waiting for me to come toward him before he says anything else.

It's this kind of passive-aggressive bullshit that makes me smug about robbing people.

“What?”

“I forgot to lock the inner doors before I engaged the security system.” Patrick glistens in the lone streetlight.

“So?” What an idiot. I lean toward the heat of his car.

“Could you watch my car for a minute?”

I’m about to respond with - “Just turn it off, you asshat” - when from the corner of my well-trained eye, I spot a twenty haphazardly wedged between a pair of Patrick's indoor shoes and a pile of scrunched up plastic bags. He probably doesn’t even know it’s there.

“Just go,” I say. “Chop, chop.”

Patrick scampers off into the darkness, and I slip fingers through the driver's seat belt and pull the plastic peg lock upward. I open the back door, and a pile of empty Faygos and a jumbo tub of antacids spill out onto my feet. That just earned The Cunt a second robbing. I toss the cans and Tums into the mess on the bottom of his car floor and retrieve the money.

It’s wet.

I hold the tiniest edge of the damp plasti-paper with my thumb and forefinger. Now, this is the real test. How much does Martha—

Part Two

My parents aren't mad at me; they keep repeating. My mom's hair has changed. So has her nose. Something isn't right about them. I’m on a TV show. Oprah? No, Oprah’s only reruns now. People clap. I’m not the baby's mother! A wave of relief washes over me. How on earth did I even get this stupid baby? I look down, and the baby in my arms vomits. At first just a slug of drool, then black, oily clam chowder--

Dear God, that breath. This baby has the worst breath.

The father must be The Cunt. That's where it came from, it all makes sense and--

“Martha,” the phlegmy voice repeats the word. Over and over. “Marthaaa.” Turning the name over a spit, roasting it to coal, drying up the last bit of pink, juicy meat inside. “Martha!”

My eyes roll over the walls of the steamy, thirteen-by-thirteen bedroom. He comes into focus.

Augh.

Soon I can see every grey pore, nodule, tiny black hair.

God, I hope he doesn't rape me.

Bound wrists. Bound ankles. Cheap yellow nylon rope, the waxy kind that’s less likely to tear flesh. Not gagged. Could scream. I could scream loud, but then he might stuff something in my mouth. Something that was just touching his skin.

Fortunately, I still have my clothes on. Not my coat. But all my shirt buttons are done up. My breasts don’t hurt, so if I was fondled, at least it was gently. My back hurts though. Who would buy an awful chair like this? Probably came from Litman’s.

Yanking every limb in unison, I rock the chair forward.

“Stop that now,” he gets up.

“Let me go, Patrick.”

I’m in a bedroom in a house. Nicotine-yellowed wallpaper, even the pattern of roses seems to be wilting from The Cunt's oppression. The faint smell of human-generated ammonia creeps toward me from hard-to-clean crevices and corners. A single, lumpy bed with a stuffed bear on it sits in the far right beside a night table stained with water rings. Framed photographs of a woman through various stages of aging on the walls. A crab figurine made of shells and stones. A giant bookshelf. No classics. All self-help. Therapy. Mind Control. More self-help. And a device on the table beside my chair.

A device.

This is probably where Patrick conducts unspeakable acts of beastiality, autonepiophilia, gerontophilia… All kinds of philias. And I’m next. Beautiful, vibrant and young.

He stands in front of me, a formal presentation, hands folded, a grave expression. “I brought you here to help you. To get to the root of your problem so that you can break free of it.”

This is an intervention.

“Do you know why you’re here, Martha?”

“Because you hit me over the head and tied me up.” I refuse to make eye contact. Acknowledgement is half the thrill for these guys.

“Actually, I didn't hit you over the head. I injected you with a sedative.”

Is this how it all ends? A dirty needle. I shift my weight in the chair, back and forth. You have seventy-two hours to get to a hospital if you suspect you've been infected with one of the Big Bad Blood viruses, and then they flush you out with vitamins. Or at least that's what someone who couldn’t remember if they had unprotected anal sex at a rave in Barrie told me. I have a bad immune system. Always sick. I probably won’t even last twenty-four.

“Who’s room is this?” I ask.

“It was my mother’s," Patrick says this without blinking. But not in a natural way. He’s hiding pain.

Ah.

“Do you want to talk about your mother, Patrick?” I smile.

He takes a deep breath, thankfully in the opposite direction, then sits down in a ratty office chair across from me. He unfurls the device’s accessories. Pretty sure it’s a polygraph unit. He plugs me in. Wraps the blood pressure thing around my arm. Puts the other thingy on my fingers. I’m too lazy to bother fighting it.

I look at the clock on the wall and realize I’m missing one of my Gordon Ramsay shows. The one where he yells at people for having semen on the sheets in their crappy hotel.

He straps tubes around my chest, nervously trying to avoid touching my breasts. Probably not gonna rape me then.

“Is this a lie detector?” I ask.

Patrick smiles. He thinks he’s impressed me. “Got it off eBay a while back.”

“Unnecessary. You don’t matter enough to lie to.”

The Cunt begins a rehearsed monologue. “Resistance is natural but you can relax, Martha. You’re in good hands. You’ve been feeling apathetic. Stealing makes you feel alive. But the more you do it, the bigger the crime you’re going to need to commit to get that same feeling. Until you end up in jail, Martha.”

He pulls out a notebook.

“I decided not to approach the head cheese about this because I knew it would result in your firing and you wouldn’t learn anything. You would probably go out the next day and find another job and do the same thing over again. Or perhaps you'd sweet-talk your way out of the situation, as I've seen you do. You may even turn the tables on me, and get me fired. But I can help you. I understand now what I did wrong in trying to help mother… But I can fix you, Martha. This I am confident of.” Patrick’s hand shakes as he wipes a bead of sweat from his face. “Please state your name.”

“No.”

“Alright, well… Is your birthday April fourth? Yes or no.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you live in Devil Falls, yes or no?”

“I have no idea where I am. I’m so high from those sedatives you injected me with.”

He looks over to his bookshelf for reassuring buzz phrases like, “life is a gift” and “if you want security, go to prison.”

“I want you to tell me about the first time you stole. I want you to detail why you did it and how it made you feel.”

Jesus. The first time I stole? I can’t remember something like that, but I can remember the first time I stole and it felt really fucking good.

Part Three

I was eight years old and attending my last in a long line of sleepovers. I wasn’t invited by anyone in particular. My mom always seemed to have agreements with other children’s mothers. She’d organize a bake sale if one of them pleasefortheloveoffuckingGod took her “spirited” daughter off her hands for one night.

This particular slumber party was themed - the annoying ones always are. At the time, there was some popular cartoon about a teenage girl band or a bunch of teen girls who drove motorcycles. I don’t remember. My mother had gone out and bought me a doll specifically for the occasion.

I didn’t want to go and ripped my doll’s head off. My mother, used to this behavior, simply shoved the head back on. But it didn’t do that articulated neck thing anymore. My doll, Jerissa, was now neckless with a squashed head. She was the ugly doll. And every girl at that slumber party alienated me for it. Especially Gillian Mann, the hostess with the mostess, and in possession of the same doll - hers with a swan-like neck and dainty jawline.

Your doll is stupid. Your mom bought it at the poor barn that’s why it looks like that. It looks like you. You’re ugly, Martha.

As a youngster, I got anxiety diarrhea. And the more anxious I got about the potential for diarrhea, the more likely it was that my ass would explode. So of course, after relentless nitpicking, my ass indeed exploded.

I stunk out the bathroom and Gillian wouldn’t let me rejoin the sleepover. I ended up hanging out in her basement with the family beagle for several hours looking through her older brother’s hidden Penthouses. Finally, Gillian’s mother noticed that there was one less sweetie-pie at the party and marched me back upstairs.

In the still of night, I took my Jerissa doll and dragged her arms and legs up my tiny diarrhea-crusted butt crack. I slid out of my sleeping bag and swapped my doll for Gillian’s. Then I snuck out.

I lived two blocks away and nobody locked their doors in my neighborhood. I broke off the head of my fancy new Jerissa so that I could never be blamed for what happened. The mothers couldn’t “prove” that I switched them, but I never had to go to another slumber party after that.

“Well?” Patrick rasps in a gentle tone. He’s mistaken my reminiscing for some kind of emotional obstacle that I’m processing thanks to his care.

“I stole candy from a corner store when I was five,” I say.

He stares at me for a few moments, then shuffles over to the bookshelf. He sits back down and holds tightly to the self-help book as if he’s a preacher with a bible and I’m the damned soul he’s exorcising. Keep trying, Cunt.

“And what is your relationship like with your mother?”

“Haven’t talked to her in years. Neither of us wants to.”

He examines me. “Why do you think your mother doesn’t want to talk to you?”

“She has self-loathing issues,” I say.

“Or maybe it’s because of your problem. Why do you steal, Martha? Let’s identify the root of this deviancy. Do you need the money?”

I sigh.

“Is it for attention?”

“Let me make this is easy for you, Patrick.” I try to put my hands behind my head and lean back in my chair. Impossible. “I steal because I almost never get caught, and when I do the consequences are so low stakes it doesn’t matter. I want more than I have, but without having to work for it. I’m a product of my generation. You wouldn’t get it.”

Biting his lip, he takes a few notes.

“If I hadn’t come along and sedated you by the car, would you have put the twenty dollars back or kept it?”

“I would’ve put it back.”

He glances at the polygraph as if it means anything.

“Because you value our relationship?” He asks.

“Because it felt contagious.”

His face falls.

“What was your relationship with your mother like? Were you there for her in her final moments?” I ask.

He looks over at the cot. Sinks into himself. “Of course.”

“But she didn’t care, did she?”

“I don’t know.”

“You tried to fix her. Didn’t you, Pat?”

The Cunt lifts his head and locks eyes with me. “You’re a smart girl, Martha. You don’t belong in a department store… Maybe I don’t either.”

“You definitely do, Pat.”

His rotting faux leather slippers slide across the gristly carpet as he heads to the warped old dresser. “I can’t fix you, same way I couldn’t fix mum. She wasn’t a thief like you, but boy she liked to lie,” he continues, as he forages through what appears to be a drawer full of craft supplies. “She lied about who my father was, she lied about girls not calling me… Lied about everything.”

A soft breeze cools my back. The door opens a crack.

A draft, maybe.

No. A pet.

The Cunt pulls out a pair of polished steel scissors, the kind dressmakers use to cut precisely on chalk outlines. “Even her last days. She was hiding pills under that pillow, right over there.”

The cot willingly gives way to Patrick’s pear-shaped behind. He wields the pair of scissors like a serial killer, plunging them into the thick marshmallow pillow. I wriggle again. It's useless. I’ll give the guy credit for one thing; he knows how to tie a knot. This is what I get for bringing up his mother.

“She wasn’t hiding her pills because she didn’t want to take them. She was taking plenty of those. She could barely walk, but she would get out of bed while I was at work and hide my prescription pills. So I thought, she’s addicted to meds, she just can’t stop. Not true. She didn’t ingest a single one. She just wanted to hide mine to fuck with me. Do you know what she did when I asked her about it?”

A small grey kitten has woven its way into the room unnoticed by Patrick. Its little body rubs against the backs of my jeans, oblivious to the emotional storm.

“She defecated herself, Martha. My mother had been too proud and too in control to do anything like that before. I spent hundreds on this wheely toilet, so she could spend her last days expelling what little waste was left inside her like a lady. Only for her to shove it in my face - not literally. But, guess who had to clean it up? I did.”

That’s when I notice the dried blood on the lie detector. On the blood pressure armlet, the finger cup, even the machine. Faint against the black plastic, but there. I learned how to spot it from that Gordon Ramsey show. He killed his fucking mother, the fucking liar. And now he is going to kill fucking Martha, the fucking thief.

“Not to get graphic, but I’ve really needed to talk about this. It wasn’t even normal stool. It was like tar. It was almost like her body was finally so full of lies that she… well, frankly, she was just shitting them out!” Patrick claps, finally looking in my direction. “Do you know what it’s like to clean the waste from your mother’s—“

“I’ll kill your cat if you don’t let me go.” The kitten picked the worst time to wedge its little triangle head between my meaty (but sexy) calves. I (gently - I’m not a monster) turn my body into a kitten pillory.

The Cunt clutches the giant scissors to his chest. “But Specter is just a kitten.”

“I’m gonna rip it’s fucking head off!”

“No! Stop! Let her go, and I’ll untie you.” A tiny tear runs down Patrick’s cheek. “Just let her go.”

“Cut me free.”

“Just wait. I’m not done yet,” Patrick whimpers.

“If you don’t de-rope me right away, I will choke the life out of your cat, then scream. I know you live in town. People will hear me. When the cops arrive, I’ll say that you made me wear your mother's frocks while raping me. I'll say that you held up a picture of Mr. Litman's youngest daughter while you did it. And that you kept saying over and over, ‘This is just the warm-up!’”

“Enough!” The Cunt curls over and sobs into the crook of his arm. “I was trying to help you. Don't you see? Oh, God. What have I done? I’ll be sent to prison.”

“Tell you what, Patrick. I won't tell anyone that you captured me.”

He crawls over to the chair, still weeping. “Thank you, thank you.” He cuts the ropes from my feet, then my hands. I release the kitten.

“On one condition,” I say, putting distance between myself and the pair of scissors.

His face falls.

“Five hundred bucks.” I hold my smile. “Pain and suffering fee.”

“Five hundred dollars? But that's a quarter of my monthly wage.”

“I might have an infection from this.” I point at the sore spot on my neck where I assume The Cunt jabbed me with the syringe. “Maybe I should also factor in medical expenses. And that could be, oh-- I might need to talk to a lawyer.”

“No, no. Five hundred. I have it. Tucked away... Be right back.” Patrick bundles Specter into this arms and leaves the room.

I relax some, rubbing the raw indents on my wrists. Totally worth it for five hundy. I wonder how many more people I could trick into kidnapping me to teach me a lesson.

After several minutes of shuffling and sighing, Patrick finally hands me my money, which I slip into my new antique money clip. Five hundred and forty-five in total.

“Okay, well bye.” Patrick waits.

“Uh, I'm not walking home with this much cash in my purse. You can drive me.”

Part Four

We drive in silence, save for the odd directive grunt, until we pull up in front of my apartment building. The Cunt's breath has hotboxed the car by the time we arrive. Patrick yawns an achingly long yawn and stretches his hand toward me.

“You won't say anything to anyone, right?”

“No, Patrick. I won't. But if I catch you watching me steal again, I'm telling everyone what you did.”

Patrick's expression is that of an utterly defeated man. I feel a tinge of pity.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson.” I slam the door and smile. Perhaps the first genuine smile I’ve smiled in months. Years. Someone up above is watching over me and wants me to succeed--

A siren bleats from the dark west wall of the brick prison I call home. It’s a sketchy neighborhood, it happens. I gather my thoughts and think about the two Mooseheads in my fridge as I race toward my building.

The squad car pulls up in front of me.

An officer steps out of the vehicle. I look around, mystified. Did the cops see the whole thing? Was The Cunt going to get arrested?

“Are you Martha Bigbag, cashier at Litman's Department Store?” The officer walks toward me.

“Yeah. Did I win something?”

A second officer opens the back passenger door and helps Mrs. Sisson out.

“Ma'am, is this the woman you said robbed you?”

“Robbed?”

In the distance, I hear The Cunt's Jetta peeling off down the street.

The old witch rattles over in her polyester and acrylic wool fountain. “Oh yes, that's her. She stuck her hand in my purse and stole my money and my money clip. She said she'd kill me if I told.”

“What?”

“Miss, give us the bag.” The first cop gestures for my purse.

“No, I know my rights. You're not allowed to look in my bag without a warrant.”

Just then the nasty old wart lunges at me, using her gnarled arthritic bones as weapons, gnashing dentures like a rabid terrier – and she snatches the purse right out of my fingers. Before I can react, she roots through my belongings. Her tongue wags back and forth in excitement.

And there it is; M. Her fucking clip with my five hundred and forty-five dollars.

“Oh no, you don't! Only thirty of that is yours, bitch!”

“See officers! My clip with my money. M for Mary!”

I growl and charge at her, very dramatically.

The first officer sticks out an arm and grabs me by the wrists.

“Only thirty of that is hers, you gotta believe me. I found the clip with the money on the ground and I was going to give it back to her the next time I saw her. But five fifteen of it is mine.”

“Where’d you get five hundred from?” The officer eyes me in the darkness. The street lamp lights his face in such a way that it looks like he has a small crystal forest of peach fuzz on his cheek. Kind of beautiful.

"It’s mine. I just have it. Can’t I just have money? I have a job.”

“Why did you put it in a money clip that you were intending on returning?” The first officer asks.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about buying one for myself, and I wanted to give it a test drive before I commit. You know what I mean? Like a car. Or a woman - right, officer?” I wink.

The officer roughly ushers me into the back seat of the patrol vehicle. “Jacobs, will you see that the kind lady here gets home nice and safe without getting jumped by any more hooligans?”

The second officer nods.

“But that’s my money!” I scream. “This is a fucking outrage! I’ll sue! I’ll sue all of you!”

Some guy on the third floor screams at me to shut up. You just made my shit-list too, asshole.

“Why a young woman would do such a thing—“ Mrs. Sisson trails off.

“Who knows why people do what they do. You know what I mean?” The second officer says.

The banshee sneers at me as the officer pushes my head inside the car. Her flat, black coal eyes remind me of The Cunt's. Only hers are different. Plucked straight from the head of a Great White.

“Hey, Mrs. Sisson,” I say, straining to push my head back up to the car roof. “Hope you lose on that lottery ticket.”

“I’m already a winner, dear.”

As we drive off in the cop car, I wonder who the fuck I can call to bail me out of jail.

Patrick, maybe?

Or so the story went.

Dave’s boat was decades overdue for an upgrade. He still didn’t have a motor, and had to make do with slimy, splintery paddles. The powers that be had never even given him so much as a cushion for his lower back. And don’t get Dave started on smoke breaks and workplace temperature. The River Styx, a sexy, sunsetty Chris de Burgh music video, it was not.

Dave wondered who his next passenger would be. A drug lord with the blood of hundreds on his hands? A CEO of a fast food company? A Christian rap-rocker with a taste for youngins? Or his favourite; the average Joe, run-of-the-mill asshole who didn't quite grasp why he was there. It was a toss-up if those ones ended up at the River Styx or the Pearly Gates; nepotism, luck of the draw, politics. You know how it goes.

Dave’s patrons rarely messed with him; he was the mysterious figure in the velvety, moth-eaten robe with sunken black holes for eyes, and they were the new kid in school. Uncomfortable. Worried they’d fart, get a boner, or be torn to shreds by one of Satan’s minions.

The ones that knew why they were there, weren't so much for the talking. Occasionally someone would try and negotiate with Dave or make a run for it, but mostly they just wanted a head’s up on whatever atrocities lay ahead. Dave actually didn’t know, so he just made shit up. He found striking terror in their hearts made the ride unbearable, so he’d keep it sparse and only mention the funner things he’d heard of over the years - like the skeleton key parties, boiling Coca Cola jacuzzis, and sex pterodactyls.

But today -- or tonight, he was never quite sure -- Dave was in a chatty mood. He was itching to shake it up. Every single day, all day, he did his job. Point A to point B. It was simple. The route was well-worn; rarely any hiccups.

Sometimes, a teeth-gnashing, Hell Serpent would torpedo the boat, but within the first century Dave was pretty sure he’d harpooned all of those fuckers into the next dimension, if there was a next dimension. Dave didn’t like to think about that.

But Dave was bored. He was over his job. He wanted to rip off his robe, let his skin scraps hang out. Jitter-bug. Sky-dive. Go to a concert. See a movie. What Dave really wanted more than any thing, was a companion. Someone to talk to. Someone to hold his clammy phalanges and tell him that he was all they'd ever dreamed of. Maybe give him a little river head every now and then.

He’d heard of orgies deep into the mainland, but Dave was never invited. Not even as someone’s plus one. Not that that was his scene, but it would still be nice to be included once in a while.

Dave had spent years archiving his feelings in the dusty bins of whatever remained of his grey matter. But sometimes he couldn’t control his thoughts. Quite frankly, he was sick of it. He wanted more out of his afterlife. He nervously sipped on a goblet filled with regurgitated Southern Comfort as he waited for his next appointment.

Then, through the brume, he saw her. The thick air seemed to part for the woman approaching his boat, as if trying to move out of her way, so as not to get her dirty. Her thick curls backlit by the ethereal glow of phosphorous feces and radioactive livers and spleens.

As she drew closer to the briney shoreline, the calcified stone that was Dave's heart twitched with the remnants of life. Or it was indigestion from SoCo on a bottomless stomach. Whatever it was, it was far from the usual.

The woman reached out to him with a coin in her hand. He couldn't speak. He was mesmerized. As he took the coin, he felt her warm skin, still so pink and full of blood. She bent over and climbed into the boat, giving Dave a real socketful. She had an ass Dave could drop a load of maggots into for days.

What could a gorgeous being like her have done to deserve such a fate? Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding; she accidentally ran over her neighbor’s unruly cat, or left her straightener on and set fire to a family living in the apartment above hers. But with legs like that, he guessed she was a lady of the night. A provider of passion. Perhaps she had murdered a violent John and was a hero to women everywhere.

Maybe together they could transcend damnation, and enter a heightened state of felicity.

He helped her take her seat, as she teetered on her platform shoes. She didn't shudder when she caught a whiff of the stinking tendrils of cadaver flopping off his bones. She just smiled.

Once she was seated, Dave asked, "Where would you like to go?"

"I get to choose?" Her giggle was girlish but hoarse. A lived woman.

Dave smiled. "Not usually. But I'm feeling adventurous today. We could go anywhere, do anything.”

"Isn't that against the rules? You’re naughty." She batted her lashes and looked around, pointing toward a soft orange glow on the distant horizon that Dave hadn’t noticed before. "You ever been in that direction?"

He shook his head and pushed off from shore, “I’m Dave, by the way.”

“Dave the Ferryman. Has a nice ring to it. I’m Odessa. Nice to meet you.” She crossed her feet under the plank of wood she was sitting on, like a lady.

If Dave had a pulse it would be racing. He didn’t know what to ask her. What’s your favourite colour? Seen anything good recently? So he went for the obvious. "How did you find yourself at the River Styx?"

"A cliché; murder-suicide. My boyfriend was cheating and I got jealous." She gripped the edge of her seat tightly, her knuckles turning white. “And then, I accidentally killed myself overdosing on sleeping pills, I assume. I was trying to make it look like someone came in and killed him and I slept through it because I took too many sleeping pills. That was gonna be my alibi. Didn’t really think it through.”

"I can’t imagine what a fool he must’ve been to cheat on someone like you. When we make it to the other side, I can show you a nice time over some mead."

"He was such a piece of shit. You know, this one time he was staring at my sister's breasts right at the family dinner table. Even my grandmother noticed. It was humiliating. And he was always hitting on my customers. And my co-workers. I don’t even know if he officially left his previous girlfriend when we started dating. But I love him. You know how it is. I love him so much that I hate him. Or is it, that I hate him so much that I love him?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Dave said. “So what did you do for work?”

“I was a hairdresser. That’s how I met my ex. Or is he still my boyfriend? We didn’t officially break up before I stabbed him to death with a cuticle pusher. He had such beautiful hair. God, what a waste.”

Dave cleared the remnants of his throat, hoping to restart the conversation. "You see land, or anything?"

"No land at all." She dropped her fingers in the water.

“You might not want to do that,” Dave cautioned before trying to get the conversation back on track. “Anywhere in Hades you’ve ever been curious about? Not sure what they’ve been saying up there, lately.”

“I don’t know much about this stuff. I’m not, like, religious. My ex-boyfriend’s family was pretty religious. It’s always the religious ones that raise the real fuckers, you know. They screw them up with all that bad boys go to Hell stuff. And then it’s like, they’re incapable of committing to the best thing that’s ever happened to them.”

“Uh huh. Well, there’s some cool stuff to do here. Lots of bogs to go hiking in. Volcanoes to watch kill villages. Orgies…” He trailed off, looking for a reaction.

"What kinds of people get sent here? Is it only murderers, or are there other kinds of sinners, too? Like say, cheaters?"

"Depends," Dave said. His face expressionless. It was easy to hide emotion when most of your muscle tissue had wasted away.

"Have you ever taken a man named Hyde Burnish across?" she asked, staring intently at Dave.

Dave shrugged. This wasn't going as planned.

"Dark hair, tattoos on his arm? When he talks, he kind of--"

Dave's bones were weary, rickety even, but rigor mortis didn’t slow him down as he pushed Odessa overboard.

“Swim that way,” he feebly gestured towards the nearest shoreline, as she glared up at him with a soaking wet face.

“Dave, please!” she sputtered.

He'd be on schedule for the next appointment if he backtracked now. As he paddled away, her blood-curdling scream was cut short as she was pulled into the murky deep by twelve-inch fangs.

Dave snorted. Guess he didn't kill all of the Hell Serpents after all.

Been an unwilling eavesdropper since I slammed balls-deep into the dripping, hard maleness of my pubescent voyage. One day outta nowhere, and I suddenly knew that Mr. Burke, my history teacher, intentionally left his trousers unzipped during tests. I knew that Sarah Lye contemplated suicide over a boy not loving her, and that same boy planned on opening fire on a bathhouse years later but changed his mind when he got promoted at McDonald's. The things about your mother that you want people to think you think—I don’t hear those. I hear the things you think about your mother and her stretched-out beige panties. The tampon you dug out of her garbage. That time you sprayed your balls with her Aqua Net and made your girlfriend go down on you.

You’re phony. Not like, Catcher in the Rye phony. It’s on a DNA level. Your thoughts don’t match your mouth phony. You walk through life doing the things you think you have to do, to tell yourself you’re a good person. You’ve become good at letting your thoughts flow like water from a sewage treatment plant. It’s a perfect system with very little upkeep. The bad thoughts go in, and purified filth comes out. No one’s any wiser.

Except me. I hear all of the bad things. The bats inside of your head, shriek and shit, and it echoes and bounces around in my brain.

And three weeks ago, everything got worse.

After the old woman occupying the apartment next to mine - whose thoughts were quiet and sporadic worried loops about her negligent daughter’s parenting skills - died and someone else moved in.

The woman in apartment 3C.

I don’t hear the drag-clomp of her uneven legs as she enters the building, one shoe with a leaden platform-sole. What I hear are the rat-maggots writhing around in her coppery, moist darkness.

I hear her coming, and I run.

Two steps to avoid the book pile that's been there since Grandma Jean died and left me this one-room cookie tin--

3C’s home early. Told her boss she wasn’t feeling well. She was lying.

I can taste 3C’s mind like a stale piece of bubblegum tucked up behind a rotting tooth. Six more steps to the hill of unfolded clothes. Three steps, turn to avoid the edge of the table.

--and where can she get mealworms--

--and does she have packing tape--

--and that old bitch, Mrs. Kranick, not holding open the door for her a minute ago--

She’s mad at Leslie with the big knockers in the office. She fuckin’ hates that maniac nitwit kid in 2D and his stupid toy fire truck that’s always in the way, and she’s pissed at her pud foot cuz she wants a pair of purple open-toe heels.

Gogogo fast as I can. But the thing about living inside walls with furniture piled on dust piled on furniture is it makes it real hard to escape. Fire? I’m fucked. Earthquake? Dead in the time it takes to wake from a nightmare.

I wedge my feet inside beat-up blue sneakers, fist a pile of change from the dish atop the coffee table Jenga, and get halfway down the first flight of stairs before--

--I'm free-falling through her mind. I’m a strawberry floating in a bowl of fruit punch. She’s been spiked, pissed in, and left to bog over. In the murky pink liquid, I see that one time when her brother tried to pour chlorine down her throat. That time when she pulled a hibernating frog from a snowbank and peeled its skin from its bones while it was still--

I’m outside, on the back pathway. Exhale. I spit her out onto the pavement, where she pops and hisses and fades with each footstep in the opposite direction. When she first moved in, I considered abandoning my rent-controlled birthright, but long-term unemployment coupled with depression—I’m waiting her out. People like her, they can’t stay happy in one place for long.

At first, I’d sit at a greasy spoon four blocks away. Then, three blocks at a laundromat. Now a comfortable one-and-a-quarter, in a vegetarian cafe.

I enter the warmth of the Generous Helping. A Pinterest curation of sandpapered whites and pewters. It smells like health, and it feels like safety. The Hummus-eaters and the Mock Meat Jocks and the Yoga Pants, they’re elevated. They’re better than me, they’re better than you, and they’re certainly better than 3C. The bad thoughts in here are a different brand—Terrible Lite.

...Shut up about how veganism has transformed your complexion, Becky. We all know you shovel BBQ chicken into your mouth while watching The Bachelorette-- If only I had married Mark, my child wouldn’t be this autistic fucking-- I’ve gone through three plastic bags and four plastic bottles this week and I don’t give a shit--

Breathe.

Count to ten.

Ommmm.

And they’re all good people again.

I watch 3C through her window while picking at a Quixotic Quinoa Carrot Muffin and sipping Feeling Grounded Matcha Meditation Tea. I’m getting centered in my hunger and thinking of the freezer-burned shrimp ring waiting for me at home.

3C's ritual is always the same: Orchestrate, execute, reward. This process takes anywhere from twenty minutes to six hours.

She gathers her Dollarama paper bows and ribbons, and then she's gone. Out of frame.

Back in frame, she peels out of the lot in her Honda. A black beetle scuttling across the bathroom tile.

Phase one: Complete.

I finish my muffin and wait. And wait. Tired from a long day of masturbating to the big-titted chicks of Tumblr, and applying to jobs I don’t want. I give up. I wave and thank Mavis the barista. Thank you, Mavis, for the pleasant service. Thank you for being a happy, well-adjusted person whose only blah thoughts are directed at espresso machines and sticky trays.

It’s raining and dark. I pull my T-shirt up to my ears. My sneakers already soaked through by the time I get to the parking lot. Squish. Squash.

Four steps to the edge of the concrete slab, a two-inch rise, then—

Down I go.

As I hit the ground, my body twists in a Shavasana or Lotus or Panting Horny Humping Dog pose. I look to the Generous Helping storefront as if it will tell me. Then to my left: A red fire truck.

Sigh.

The boy in 2D.

The rain feels nice for a while, but the plum around my ankle begins to ache. Time to go back to my cave full of tarnished silver stalagmites and jumbo-sized No-Name pork rinds. I roll over, crawling toward the six-step walk up, one spaghetti noodle, two spaghetti noodle. I reach for the rusted handrail, the asphalt shredding my skin. Just a few—

Drag-clomp.

I blink.

A cough, not twenty yards behind me. Jangling keys.

Drag-clomp.

Hate that kid. Want to rip his fucking eyeballs out, spoon-feed them to oh look, oh look, oh look—

I turn. Chin over shoulder, nose over chin, eyes over nose.

It’s 3B, it’s 3B, it’s 3B, it’s 3B--

Drag—

There she stands with a jack-o-lantern smile.

—Clomp.

“I knew someone was gonna trip on that. I was gonna move it, but then I thought I’d get lucky and the mom in 2D would slip and break her neck. That would really teach that kid a lesson.” Apartment 3C says, then stomps on the truck with her short leg, quartering the plastic. “Little fucker.”

I play dead.

She reaches for me, her other hand clasping a package addressed to Mrs. Kranick. “You’re bleeding.”

My forearms are scarlet.

She moves closer. I let it happen. I put my cold wet in her warm dry, and she clomps and I limp. We’re twins. She guides me through the hallway that smells like curry in one breath and tuna casserole in another. I watch as she places the box outside of 1B.

Phase two complete.

She chuckles, then we’re up the stairwell full of ‘no smoking’ signs. It smells like cigarettes.

She pauses to light a Du Maurier. Inhales. Blows the smoke in my face. Smiles when I cough. “Sorry.”

“I’ve seen you watching me from across the street,” she says. “You’re 3B.”

I watch 3C and listen. But I can’t hear a thing.

“You don’t look vegetarian.” She squints at me.

We reach the third floor.

“You know,” she says, turning, her cotton dress giving way to jutting hips. “I think you’re cute, too.”

We stop outside of her chipped, warped door. She unlocks it.

“Wanna come in? My place is dirty, so don’t worry about getting blood on anything.” Releasing my hand, she backs inside, beckoning to me. She'd be a big hit on Tumblr.

I choke on my words.

“I’ve got choco-peanut butter ice cream.”

And now it’s time for phase three: The reward.

She waits.

I wait, too. I wait for her to think about how she wants to boil me alive for being a pig-man vermin ruining her night. How rotten smells waft under my door and into her home. How I play my Collective Soul album too loud and she can tell I probably have a small cock.

But there’s nothing.

Just the pleasant din of static.

She laughs. Her throat nicotine-hardened. Unfiltered. Untreated. She is what she is. Her purification system is flawed; one pipe in and straight out the other side. Her sewage smells authentic, teeming with sulfur and bacteria. She is perfection.

“So, you wanna come in?”

Yeah, I guess I kind of do.

© Larissa Thomas, 2018