EH-0129  Out - Brain Plant Book 3
David Meltzer


PART ONE - STREETS

Anna, Anna, what am I doing? Seasick on a sea that swarms with corpses 
but doesn't suck me down. Rolling southward in the dark cattle cars: 
nothing can happen to me. Burning in the fiery oven: I burn hotter than 
myself. A man goes mad in the sun: not me. Two men fall into a water hole: 
I go on sleeping. I shoot blacks. I eat grass. I'm a ghost.

-Bertolt Brecht/Drums in the Night


CHAPTER ONE

This is the other world. It's dark here.

Gangsters drive around in submarine cars and shark limousines. Shoot down
dogs and kids with automatic tommy guns. Bullets blast into halos. Kids and
dogs explode. Torn apart by millions of bullets. Hearts punctured. Veins 
chewed to threads by lead. Dark blood puddles for streetlights to shine in.

I'm out again. Kept down too long. But when I go, get set. I'm gone. 
Rocket speed. Zoom. I'm out. Out in the streets again. There's nothing to 
worry about. Let's see what happens. Take things as they come. Right?

If it's words, I got them. That's the stuff I oil my flight with. Touch 
me right and the words come rushing out. Encyclopedias come rushing out. 
Bibles. Dirty books. Incredible history comes rushing out in words that 
loop around words and tangle with words and hump and bump each other in the
rush. If it's words, I got them. I got them when they're needed.

When it's right. But when it's wrong, I cool it. Lay low. Seal myself up 
in a room. Wait.

Roll with it. But be ready.

Phantom cop slips out of a doorway. He's got a bottle of cheap in his 
pocket. And he asks me for my STAT card. His face is round and red and dark
with burst blood vessels.

I flash him the most horrifying smile I got.

Sonofabitches are always slipping out of doorways. Like shadows.

"C'mon, kid, show me your STAT card. You got no right being on A Street. 
You know it's closed to people now. How come you don't know A Street's 
closed? Huh? They got signs at every end saying it's closed."

"Why's it closed?"

When I ask my question I try to make my voice sound smoothly innocent. 
Guiltless jelly tones.

"It's closed up. It's a bad street. Creepers, Death Zone runaways. You 
name it. That's why. We block 'em off here and then we kill 'em."

"Hey, Officer, gimme a taste of cheap and pull out your dick. I'll suck 
it."

Zip. Zam. Zip. His fly's open in two pulls.

Dark crooked smile of a snake charmer. Lust pushes his twisted stem up. 
Pokes its shabby gray crown out. Hangs out twitching. Framed between the 
metal teeth of his zipper.

I got his number quick. No secret. You learn it fast. All pigs are fags. 
Or fucked somewhere else where they live. They don't fuck their old ladies 
anymore. They can't. They can't get the old pecker up anymore. But: raping 
hookers, then booking them. That's more like it. Isn't it? Fuck people with
bullets.

Love them to shreds with blissful shotgun kisses. And go home and 
pistol-whip Junior for beating his meat in a dark closet.

"Hey, gimme a taste of cheap first," I beg. "To whet my whistle. It's my 
favorite drink. Honest to God. I dig the way it pinches my nerves and 
squeezes my asshole. Makes me all squeaky and lovely."

"Tucking degenerate pervert scum, here." Begrudgingly, with a grunt of 
distaste. Hands me the bottle. Watches every microgram I sip. It burns like
hell. Why do people drink anyway?

If he's got a gun, I'm gonna get it.

"What the fuck are you doing to my goddamned bottle? Give it back to me. 
And do it. Do what you said. You know."

I look at the Man like a cherubim. All pink and chubby innocence in my 
deer-brown eyes.

I make the pause stretch time out a shape. I want him to see the movie of
lust flash on and off in his dungeon head: me down on my knees gobbling 
every grey stinky inch of his old meat. "What do you mean, Officer?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean? Do what you said, you scumbag. What 
you said. Go on. Suck me. Suck my dick. Gimme a blow-job. Do it. Do it 
now."

Unbuckles his five & dime belt: part cardboard, part plastic. Lets his 
blue-black shiny serge pants flop down his meaty legs. Pants land bunched 
and scrunched in rings around his veiny ankles. He whips his flaccid cock 
meat around. Raw and adorned. Half-mast, bent. Prick tube hangs out of a 
lawn. Curly pubic garden.

Maybe he's got the gun in a shoulder holster. He isn't wearing it on his 
hip. That's for sure.

"That'll never do," I tell Captain Pig.

"What the fuck d'you mean?" he yelps. Man lives in three zones. Head, 
heart and cock. That's all. Everything is there. The whole world.

His eyes distend in apoplectic anger.

"What the fuck d'you mean: it won't do? Fucking punk. It'll do. Now start
sucking, shit face. Start sucking."

"Nothing to chew on. Not even a nibble."

He grabs at my hair. I duck.

His face gets brick red. Cheek Veins turn jet-black.

"Kid, you're gonna die."

Commander Pig stands there with his pants around his ankles. Absurd. His 
soft puffy white bread belly hangs in folds. Dips into the fuzz of his cock
wig. Take a snapshot. In my mind. The poem will come later.

Attack.

Pow. I push my head into his pulpy gut. Twice. Fast as a twitch. He bends
over. Retch. Catch him on the skull with my fist. Crack his head with my 
ring.

Zap. Chop down his nose bridge. Good shot. Pops and crunches. Two streams
of blood shoot out of his angry nostrils.

He gasps. Like a bad Shakespearean actor. Sword-fights the air with 
floppy arms.

When he talks, nothing comes out. His fury rips his tongue out. Animal 
sounds only. Belches, grumbling. Bull-griping. Pig-grunt. Grunt. Grunt.

This is happening fast. Quicker than all these words.

"Where's your money, old man?"

He thrashes around. Reaches into his armpit for the gun.

"Fuck your nose, your ears, your fucking soul," he yells, gargling blood 
caught in his throat. Sprays me with blood. Each curse spots my shirt and 
pants. Whips out the gun.

Lower my head again. Butt him hard, 20 mph. In the groin. The scream 
never gets out. Jackknifes over. Lunch, blood and bile spew out like oil 
wells. Terrible mess. But he's down. Down and out. Topless like a tree. 
Face first.

First, the gun. Then filch his pockets. Gun first, cash next. These are 
hard times. Got to move fast. And sure.

Pull out his plastic purse. Coins.

It's a real drag turning him over. Rolling his pants up far enough to get
into his pants pockets. His breath rattles through his nose. Noisy, 
tattered sound.

Back pocket yields the wallet. Credit cards. Shit. No real cash. A couple
of shitty bucks and a million credit cards. A snapshot of two people 
fucking. His Cop union card. His STAT card. No. I won't look. Against my 
code. No names, no faces. We're all shadows in the night. Instant erase. 
Instant blind spots. That way we never have to recognize each other at any 
lineup or firing squad. That way we don't have to remember anything. Ever 
again. No matter what.

Ready, willing and able. My old motto. I'm fresh-made, at your service, a
fully-formed Old School baby. But keep your face to yourself. I don't want 
to remember you after I've killed you. Have your face float into my dreams.
Grow larger and larger. Your mouth, every single tooth, growing wider and 
wider. Then eating me up. Eating my soul like lunchmeat. Crunch. Gulp. No. 
No faces, no names.

Pour most of the cheap over his face. Help to cauterize the wounds. He 
stirs, whimpers. Sting of booze rapes his sleep. Sighs in his darkness. 
Face burning with pain.

I wonder what his short-circuit brain dreams?

Cop-pig ball-squeezing, kidney-punching, eye-thumbing, hair-yanking, 
throat-wrenching, arm-twisting, spleen-kicking, dog-leaping, sting 
spraying, club-clouting, tramp-slamming, gut whamming, tongue-ripping: 
Pig-Cop Montage Dream.

I feel like kicking his useless corrupt head in. Smash it against the 
sidewalk. See if it'll split apart with one kick. Empty dried-up melon 
head. See if it splits apart like a cracked walnut. Nothing but a 
piss-yellow sawdust dribble paste would come out.

I take a quick taste of cheap. To steady me. Only pigs and zombies get 
any real kick out of this crap. Cheap is called cheap because it's cheap. 
It tastes like everything cheap you can think of. All of it all distilled 
into rusty brown mud. Tastes like gun-metal. But it gets you there. Gets 
those pigs and zeroes and zombie-squares to Step One. Yeah, but Step One is
as far as the reactionaries ever get.

You know, my father used to drink cheap. Used to pinch my wee-wee too. 
And sit me on his oven-hot lap. Bounce me on his cock until it got hard.

My father used to drink cheap every night and get to Step One and beat 
the shit out of my mother. My mother was on Step One too. When he got home 
after his every night out with the boys, the guys, Mom'd be waiting for 
him. Waiting to be beaten up. Kicked around. Fed his dick. Corn-holed. 
Everything but a straightforward loving fuck.

That's as far as all the squares ever go. Step One. Just loose enough to 
be trapped behind your mask. Stuck there. Like the mask was a suction-cup. 
Can't pry it off. And it begins to feel right. Same old death-doom, Step 
One.

Night after night, my dad drank down his mind-killing cheap. The, boys, 
the guys, whatever the hell tribes they formed in the saloon. The Romper 
Room Club. And my dad was always goosing this tit-freak waitress at the 
Romper Room Club. And all his buddies, the boys, the guys, laughing and 
hooting. Heavyweight he-man stuff. And this busty dumbo chick wiggled her 
fat meat clouds. Would twitter and bump her broad hips into Dad's soft 
parts. Dad would get all puffed-up with bravado pride. And spend the rest 
of the night ogling the sex tub. And telling lies to the guys, the boys, 
who told him lies in return.

How they fucked her once, all of them, when dad was outa town. How they 
fucked her deaf, dumb and blind. Fucked her ass, fucked her mouth, her ear,
her armpit, fucked each tit, came on each nipple and then force-fed tit 
into her mouth so she could taste them all at once. Taste all the men's 
juices. Jammed everything up her cunt except their cocks. Jammed broom 
handles, flashlights, candles, coat hangers, tennis racket, bat, and one of

"em tried sticking his foot up her accomplished snatch.

And they'd talk about how long their cocks were. And they'd talk and 
drink cheap and get loud. But no louder than the other nowhere people at 
the Romper Room Club.

Then dad would come home and beat the shit out of mom.

I throw the bottle into pig-cop's crotch. As hard as I can.

Electric agony. It stiffens his body. Then seems to crack it as he bends 
and writhes. Then stiffens in the spasm. Pig. He's really out now. It'll 
take him a day to wake up.

And when he tries to stand, the pain from his mashed balls will twist 
every nerve in his flesh. Rip them apart in absolute awful pain.

Let the pigs suffer the revenge of the slops.

CHAPTER TWO

Rule One: Watch out. Always watch out. Even when you're fucking a woman. 
Watch out.

When you walk the streets, it's not easy to look four different ways at 
once. But you have to. You have to see and sense four different directions 
at the same time. You've got to learn to rely on trained nerves that'll 
guide you. Like radar. Inner-radar. Bat-magic. You have to be very careful.

Especially after you have just done-in Cop-Pig Rotten Heart.

You have to go street to street. And I'm on A Street. And I want to go to
B Street. Then C Street. And so on. And on. Right?

Each street greets me with its own special problem.

Two kids: one boy and one girl. Maybe they're brother and sister. All 
kids look the same to me. Maybe they're seven years old. Maybe they're 
twins.

Stand in front of me.

"Got some change?" the boy asks.

The little girl moves to my side.

"Spare change?" she asks, not looking up at my face. When a hustler 
doesn't look you in the eye, get uptight. Their heads are somewhere else. 
You better watch out.

"Beat it, kids. I'm in a hurry."

They don't move.

The boy edges closer. His hair is the color of com. Her hair is 
snow-colored. Albino white. She has green eyes and white eyelashes powder 
her pink eyelids. They must be creeper kids or chromatics.

Get lost.

"But we're orphans, man," the boy says. "We're orphans. That means we 
don't have anybody. We're all alone. We're all each other's got. We live 
from hand to mouth..."

"It's a dog-eat-dog world," I tell him. And pull the gun out. And cock 
it. And aim. Into the center of his forehead.

The albino girl trembles. Her pale lips turn black. Teeth chatter. Green 
eyes roll around. Then the pink eyelids flutter down.

"Hey, she's gonna faint," the boy announces.

"Let her. And while she's out, you find a fiddle and play sad songs to 
the suckers. "Now, get outa my way."

The albino girl totters on her skinny pins. Groans like a ghost. Wavers 
in the air like a dowsing-rod.

When she falls, she falls toward me. As I back away, the boy zips behind 
me. Places a well-spaced hack behind my kneecaps.

I try not to fall. But it happens so fast, I can't find gravity in time.

Rattles my spine. Bruises my ass. Lady Macbeth sinks her sharp teeth in 
my wrist. Thug brother starts to yank the gun out of my hands.

"Kick him in the balls," he shouts to his sister. "Kick him in the 
balls!"

Dirty skinny legs thrash up and down like a swimmer. She tries to 
position herself to give me a ball-busting barrage of kicks. But she throws
herself off balance in the attempt. Which gives me that flash-second 
opening.

I twist around like turning over in bed. Abruptly. And dump the albino. 
Before she can squawk to brother, I slam him in the back of his neck with 
my fist. His fingers loose grip on my hand. His mouth opens. To scream. 
Instead, he passes out. Just like that. With his mouth open.

"You killed him, you motherfucker," she screams. "You killed him just 
like you killed that cop, you motherfucker. You killed him. You killed 
him."

"Shut up, kid, or I really will. And I'll kill you too."

She doesn't shut up. She rolls around on the sidewalk. Back and forth. 
Her white hair getting filthy with dirt. She won't shut up. Screams. 
Screams. Wails. She won't shut up.

Third floor window opens. A skinny yellowish man looks down. And watches.
His face is shadowy.

Time to move on. Fast.

Get my feet moving. Sprinter-style. Leave this street. On the double. 
Break my old track records.

I take two steps in the right direction when the skinny man in the window
points a weapon at me.

"Stand still," he yells down at me.

I become a photograph. Still. Statue-stiff.

"Throw the gun away," he orders.

Her green eyes are bright. They watch me. They know what I'm thinking.

She isn't screaming anymore.

"This is your last chance," he commands.

I throw the gun into the dark alleyway. As far as I can throw it. Into 
the blackness. Hoping to sink it in a garbage can. To make it hard for her 
to get ahold of. Hoping it'll break apart.

"Start walking. Into the apartment. Take the elevator to the third floor.
I'll be waiting. You'll be watched. The moment you enter the building. No 
funny stuff," he screams.

My gun clatters on the sidewalk.

Her ears twitch. Locate the approximate spot where the gun lays.

"Motherfucker," she hisses. "I'll get your ass."

"Come on. Come on. Get going," yells the yellowy thin man.

CHAPTER THREE

The elevator door cranks open. And there he is. Waiting. Tall, skinny, 
with plastic yellow skin.

He frisks me. Abruptly. Pats my ass.

"Okay, inside."

I enter a room. He shuts the door. Locks it.

"Sit down," he says, behind me.

Straight ahead is an old wooden chair. I sit on it. It creaks under me.

The walls of the room are covered with photographs. All shapes and sizes.
Snapshot to poster-size. A crazy kind of wallpaper. All of the photographs 
show violent events.

"I took the pictures," he says, pulling up a chair, sitting down on it. 
Facing me. "All of them. I'm a photographer. That's what I do. That's my 
work. How I get by."

I nod. I'm quiet. Planning my getaway.

Case the room. An Mi-surplus cot against the wall. It's made-up 
Army-style. A small table with a plastic radio on it. A khaki footlocker 
under the cot. The window is still open. There's another door. Probably the
john. Another small table with a hot-plate on it. A shelf above it with a 
few cans and some jars of syntho-food powders. And that's it. Inventory.

The Photographer's face is long. His chin is pointy and narrow. He has no
eyebrows. No face hair at all. His skin shines like cellophane. The 
Photographer's fingers are stained with brown blotches. He aims his weapon 
at me. I flinch.

"Terrible way die. Without any warning.

There's a click!} I grit my teeth. And shut my eyes.

"There," he says, pleased with himself. "Will you turn your head that 
way. Toward the wall. That's right. I want a profile shot. Good."

Another click.

"Later on, we'll take nude shots."

"That isn't a gun?"

"No. It's one of my cameras. The rest of them are in my footlocker. I 
have seventeen. And one electro-lens. I stole it from MI. It's top-secret. 
Doesn't need any film. Makes pictures on rolls of paper. Imagine that."

"Incredible."

This will be easy. Catch him off guard. That's all.

"I've got all kinds of cameras. TV camera, movie camera, still camera, 
rapido-pulse camera. You know, all kinds. And all kinds of lenses. I got 
about seven really great lenses. Helps with all my street photos. Powerful 
telephoto lenses that bring things real close. Like how you killed that 
cop."

"You mean that you took a picture of that?"

"Oh, yes. I take pictures of everything. I used three different cameras 
on you," says the Photographer. 'Would you like some pep or some cheap?"

"Can I see the pictures?" I ask him. "Sometime. I've got them. Don't 
worry. Are you sure you don't want anything?"

"No, no. Nothing."

The Photographer walks to the other door. Opens it. Looks over at me.

"Don't do anything foolish," he says, "I've got those pictures safely 
hid. I've given my sister orders to mail them to the Police if anything 
happens to me. My sister lives on the second floor."

He returns with a chipped enamel soup pan half-filled with water. Snaps 
the hotplate on.

"Look at my pictures. My gallery. See what I have seen. "Look."

The biggest photos are the most horrible. Poster-large close-ups of 
brutality: a portion of a man's skull blown apart by bullets. Or a woman's 
stomach torn open by a switchblade.

A black man's mutilated body. Bloody circle where his sex was.

Charred body of a baby used as a torch during street-warfare.

A tabletop spread with trophies: a hand with a diamond wedding ring, an 
eye, a tongue, the raw-edged meat of a breast, a hairy flap of cunt. I 
stare at it.

"Isn't that something?" chuckles the Photographer. "My neighbor did that 
to his wife.

My neighbor across the street. That brownstone apartment. Second floor."

The Photographer sits in his chair and sips on his pep.

"That's what's left of his wife. He couldn't stand her. And one night he 
started killing her. And he didn't finish until dawn. I have the whole 
series. On film, on TV tape and a great still-file. Hundreds of stills. 
Showing everything. Sure you don't want some pep?" I shake my head.

"It's good. It really is."

I shake my head again. "Killers are real quiet, aren't they? I guess they
get all the noise out of their systems when they're killing. Huh? Is that 
it? After it's all over, all the words are pretty useless. Huh?" He gets up
again. And walks over to the table with the radio on it.

"Any kind of music you like best?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Most killers are like that, you know. They don't seem to have much of an
ear for music. No offense, but they don't seem to care much for music. I 
really don't know why. Do you?" Photo-sequence of a street corner 
strangling. Close-ups. You can see the face become more and more distorted 
and swollen with dying. You can see death dim the fire in the eyes. The 
puffed-up tongue. Eyes popping out of the skull.

A series of vivisection snaps. Baldheaded man. Back to camera. Assembling
an animal. A new species. Using parts axed off a man hanging on a meat 
hook.

"Curious, isn't it?" asks the Photographer.

And now we have music. Dreary mood music. Violins, harps, honey-smooth 
brass.

The baldheaded Jehovah furrows the animal's flesh with a surgeon's knife 
to plant sawed-off sections, to tie together threads of nerves and veins 
and arteries.

"Just a few houses down. I had to use a special lens. A bent lens that 
can snoop around the corners. Great for getting unusual angles."

"When are you gonna let me go?"

"Oh, please. Don't worry. I'll let you go soon. After I'm finished with 
you. Finished shooting. I need some pictures, for my files. Then I'll let 
you go. Is the music all right?"

"Yes, it's fine. It's all right. How soon?"

A lady sings about clouds and eternal love.

A choir chants in an echo-chamber about clouds and eternal love. And the 
fiddles and horns sound slippery and dreamy.

"When my sister gets home, that's when. She'll buzz. She went to file the
murder photos. Listen, let me tell you how I got started taking pictures. 
Okay?"

"Sure, sure. Tell me."

"You sure? I mean, you're not just being polite, are you?"

"Tell me."

Keep him busy. It's the silences that are terrible.

"Smoke?"

He offers me a cigarette. I take it. He lights it for me.

Whew.

It's one of those neighborhood pack of butts. The stuff a local store 
rolls up for local consumption. Christ. What little tobacco there is must 
be from prehistoric times. It burns and stings my lungs.

"The guy who owns the B Street candy store, Morris Finger, makes them up 
special for me. Real rare Mainland tobacco."

I can't answer because I am too busy coughing up lung-shrapnel from the 
last puff.

"I took some pictures for Morris, so he gives me all the cigarettes I 
want. For free. It's the same with Otto Furst, the grocer. Also, I got my 
film man on file and he gives me film free. Which is a real blessing, 
believe me."

"You're doing all right," I mutter. My voice cracks. I start coughing 
again.

"You really think so?" asks the Photographer. "That's what I tell my 
sister. I tell her that things are working out fine. But, she's a girl, you
know, and I guess she sees things different. Are you sure you like the 
music? I could change the station."

"No, no. It's fine. It's okay."

"How did it feel?"

"How did what feel?"

"Killing. Killing the cop. Just for the record. Can you give me some 
inkling of what you felt, what you thought about," the Photographer asks 
me. He leans toward me.

"I don't know if the cop's dead. It didn't feel like it. He was breathing
when I left him. I'm pretty sure of that."

Anyway, cop-pigs go to a special four leaf clover Heaven where they can 
beat the shit out of black men, spies, kids and old women. Where they can 
castrate fags and rebels. Where they can machine-gun down eternal infinite 
lineups of people who have hands cuffed behind their backs. Where they can 
drink Irish whiskey and cry about Christ. Where they can fuck O'God's prime
stash of heavenly law-abiding cunt. What the hell? They got it made.

"If you don't mind an educated guess, I'd say the cop was dead. As dead 
as a doornail," says the Photographer, a delicate half-smile moves through 
his lips like the ripple of a twitch. "And the boy looked awful dead too. 
You hit him very hard. The back of the neck is tough. But it's also very 
fragile if you hit it in a certain way. You wouldn't know it, but I was 
quite good in the Defense Arts. Learned them all when I was in MIF. Yes, 
I'd say they were both dead. That makes you a double murderer. Two in less 
than fifteen minutes. Wow. How does it feel, huh? Two in less than fifteen 
minutes."

"Why don't you tell me about how you started taking pictures?"

"Want another smoke?"

"No. Come on, tell me," I ask him.

His brown-stained fingers rub his hairless eyebrows.

CHAPTER FOUR

"You'll like my sister," the Photographer says.

We're in the old time elevator. Going down. Second Floor. Where the 
sister lives. I can picture her. Bamboo thin and yellow skinned.

When the elevator door creaks open, the Photographer lets me leave first.
He's certainly polite. All nuts are polite. It's part of their reordered 
Universe. I bet the man who throws the electric chair switch is polite. 
After you, sir. The man who drops the cyanide pellets is polite. After you,
sir. Black hood and hairy chest, I'm sure the Axe Man is polite. Ladies 
first.

I'll be glad when this is over. And I'm back on the streets. The hallway 
stinks. Damp mouldy rotten breath funk. Cat piss. Grease ghosts finger in 
the air. Dripping chicken fat clouds. Hamburger phantoms scraping long 
stains down the walls.

He knocks on the door.

"Yeah?" a squeaky voice asks. 'Who is it?"

"It's me. Your brother," answers the Photographer. "I brought what I told
you."

Locks, bolts, chains, click, scrape and rattle. Tumblers tumble into 
oiled slots. Padlock yanked out of its hasp.

The door opens.

A grotesque mountain of meat fills the door-frame.

"Come in, come," squeaks the Fat Lady. "Please, come in."

She's polite too. Just like her brother. Stands aside to let me by. 
Pinches my ass. Hard. Giggles.

"Cute," she says. "Cute."

Her voice sounds like an old recording of a little girl. It's as if the 
record player were stuck together somewhere inside her chubby deeps. 
Muffled by fat.

The Fat Lady smells of sewer perfumes. Swine toilet water. Vomit roses 
mashed and mixed with burnt pubic hairs. Melting girdle elastic. Mulched 
cunt meat. Farmhand B.O. These smells surround her like a shimmering halo.

We walk down the shadowy hallway. "Straight ahead," says the 
Photographer. "Straight ahead. To that door. That's where the Studio is."

Fat Lady's breathing heavy behind me. Her inner thigh flab slaps together
as she walks. Her ass cheeks slide and grind like mammoth millstones.

"It ain't locked," she says, pushing her bellyroll in my back. "Go on, 
lover, open it."

I turn the door handle and open the door.

"Go on. Go on in," she says, bumping me.

The Studio consists of a bed surrounded by floodlights.

I get the picture. Instantly.

She pinches my ass.

"Why don't you two kids get to know each other? I've got to get some 
film," announces the Photographer.

He winks and shuts the door. And locks it.

"Just the two of us, lover," squeaks the sister.

She lumbers over to the bed and sits down oh it. The bedsprings make an 
agonized sound.

Fat Lady pats the mattress with her pudgy hand, "Come on, lover. Sit down
beside me. Don't be afraid. Let's talk. Okay?"

What the hell?

So I sit down beside her and my hip slides against her hip. Her 
massiveness makes a valley out of the bed.

Her pork-link fingers flutter in the air and land on my thigh like a 
gross plucked bird. Small tubby fingers rest a fraction of an inch from the
tip of my resting prick.

She is, for the moment, content to knead my thigh meat.

"Muscular, firm. That's what I like about your po-po. Firm, hard flesh. I
can hardly wait to see and touch your wee-wee."

Her voice is the voice of a cartoon creature. It comes out of the round 
wad of her head which holds a tiny little-girl face. Blue eyes surrounded 
by lush black lashes. A small upturned nose. Bowed cupid lips wet with 
spit.

She licks her lips every time she finishes a sentence.

"What's your wee-wee like? You know what I mean."

Her pink tongue slips quickly over her puffy kewpie-doll lips.

Her hand covers my cock.

"That's what I mean," she whispers.

Her voice comes out of her fat as if she were a ventriloquist's dummy.

"That's it. That's what I want to see."

And her face covers mine.

Her lips slip wetly over mine. Her fat tongue wiggles through and pushes 
against my teeth seeking entry to my mouth. Her breath is sour.

I shut my eyes and open my mouth wide, her wide tongue pushes in. Swabs 
out my mouth.

I accept the challenge. Lethargically. My tongue tangles with her tongue.
A duel. Tongues knot around each other. Slobbery slapping sound.

She lets me break through into her mouth before jamming her tongue back 
into my mouth. Like folding up a rug. Tries to fill me up with her fat 
tongue-meat. Tries to break my jaw with her frantic tongue-wiggling.

You know the old joke. The one about a guy who has a girl that's so ugly 
he can't look at her. So he covers her face with an American flag and fucks
her for Freedom. Or he covers her face with a Gideon Bible and fucks her 
for God. Or covers her face with a sheet and fucks her for Purity. Whatever
the combination, you get the picture.

Her breath gets stacatto. I fear she's having a stroke. No luck. My eyes 
steam up with her panting.

Writhing, moaning, groaning, she sounds as if she will explode.

She sucks on my tongue with the fury of a vacuum-cleaner. Tries to suck 
it out of my mouth. Sucks it so hard I can hear it start tearing off its 
tethers. A crackling sound inside my head.

I punch her in the belly. As hard as I can.

She thinks it's a love tap. It ripples the rings of fat that her spirit 
is surrounded with.

She giggles.

"Oh, lover, lover," she slobbers.

My tongue tingles in pain.

She's upon me; It's like being blanketed by a ton of butcher meat. "Oh, 
lover, lover," she titters.

Grinds her mile-wide hips hard against my groin. Pushes the fat hill of 
her cunt-mound against me. In a moment, I'll be a mere smear of man. A 
man-paste.

Pant, pant. Her tongue thrusts into my ear. Her steamy breath sounds like
a St. Bernard in heat. It sets explosives along the nerve-lines of my 
spine.

Her link-thick fingers reach underneath her rippling belly-roll to touch 
my rigid cock. (I envision my dick beneath her poundage. Flattening out 
into a permanent ribbon of skin.)

"Oh, lover! It's hard, it's hard," she squeals. Giggles like a demented 
child.

And she rolls off of me and onto her back.

The bedsprings screech. Thousands of brittle steel springs scream in 
unison every time she moves. The springs are tormented beyond their 
stress-point.

Pudgy fingers poke about my fly. Blur of her white fat fingers fumbling 
with the zipper.

She gets it undone, panting through the operation. The effort almost 
gives her a horny stroke. Her pasty cheeks turn red with need. Chubby roses
explode in her cheeks.

My cock rises to the occasion. Springs up. Pushes out of my open fly.

It knocks the Fat Lady out. That my cock is twitching and itching and as 
red-blush skinned as her cheeks are.

"Beek!" she squeaks, touching my burning prick-dome with her fingers. 
"Oooh. Oooh. Oooh."

It pulses 'huge and horny on its pubic launching pad. Its admirable curve
sways in the breeze.

"Ogod, hurry. Hurry, brother, hurry!"

The door's unlocked and in comes the Photographer. On cue. Clicks the 
floodlights on. Loads the cameras. Adjusts the tripods.

Winks and nods. The room is radiant with thousands of shadowless 
floodlight watts.

"Undress me, you cock-god," she says between grit teeth. "Oh, you cock, 
you prick, you dick!"

Before I can pop a button, her mouth surrounds my rod. Her kewpie-doll 
lips slip over the crown.

"Mmm-mmm, yummy-yummy wee-wee," mumbles Fat Lady.

Her mouth holds my cock and lets it steam on her tongue.

"Yummy-yummy."

Fat creepy Moby Dick between my legs. I can't see my cock gobbled in her 
mouth. All I see is her greasy curly hair. Then a mountain of blouse, 
untucked, and a valley of bunchedup skirt. Humping up and down. Cock's raw 
hot poker-tip scalds her throat.

And the sounds Milady makes. Like faulty plumbing. Cheeps and chortles. 
Slurping, burping. Chugalugging. Chomping. Gobbling.

Sucks-off my meat grinder.

Grinds down my tool.

Head fest.

Guzzles. Swizzles. Gags. Slops up. Goes down. Nibbles. Diddles. Daddies. 
Dandles. Gorges. Snuffles. Gulps. Devours. Snarfles. Giggles. Gobbles.

Comes up for air.

"Whew. Bee. Wow. Hubba-hubba," she babbles.

Her lips are slug-thick and sloppy with saliva.

"What a hot cock. What a fat dick. What a chewy prick. Hubba-hubba!"

Hubba-hubba?

Her fat fingers hold my dong like a baseball bat. Rub it up and down. Her
palms slide over the wet sparkling flesh.

"Oh, it's so colorful," she says, examining my cock. Rubs her middle 
finger along its seam. "It's pink and red and gold and black with veins and
dark brown and white. Wonderful, yummy colors."

And pulls it about like shifting the gears of a sports car.

Then she's back on it. Hawk at a chicken. Sucks the hot pole in a frenzy.

I can feel the come drain out of my balls. The pain of need gets hard and
bunched-up in my balls.

When her fat mouth pulls off my cock, there's a popping sound. Champagne 
being opened.

"Whew. Eee," she sighs.

And peers down at my aching nuts. Pokes her finger in the hairy skin.

"Big bull balls. Hubba-hubba."

Licks their round edges.

"Mm-mm, yummy-yummy too."

Muffled sounds of slurp echo from below.

"Hey, sis, you get undressed too. Let's get this old show on the road," 
commands the Photographer.

And to me, he adds, "Isn't she great fun?"

I nod.

"Undress me, lover," she asks.

And scoops her moundy palm under my balls like a spoon.

"Undress me, lover, or I'll squeeze your nuts into a pudding."

The Photographer snaps pictures through it all. There are three tripods. 
And each one holds a different type of camera. And each different camera 
has a different sized lens attached to it. The Photographer dances from 
camera to camera. Clicking. Muttering statistics and formulae and assorted 
photographer incantations.

While I unzip her zipper he comes to us. Holds a light-meter over us as 
if blessing the union.

The zipper gets stuck halfway down.

"Go on, lover, go on. Dig into me. I can take it."

"Do you have any pliers?" I ask the Photographer.

"No. It's all right," he says. "This happens all the time. She's just too
fat. Rip the dress off of her. That's what she likes. That's what she 
wants."

Fat Lady grunts.

"Rip. Tear. Fuck. Rape. Go!"

I hesitate.

"Common, lover. I want you to want me so much that you rip my dress off 
in your boiling passion. And when it's all over, I can look at the pictures
of it. When I'm alone I can spread the pics out like cards on my table. And
twiddle and diddle my clit. Whip-up sex-syrup and dribble it all over the 
rug. C'mon, lover. RIP IT OFF!"

What the hell?

I rip it off. I grab the collar and rip.

She makes strangled sounds.

Tough luck.

The fabric rips and tears and shreds. I'm left with a hunk of it in my 
hands. On the floor. Where I land.

She looks down at me.

"Jesus Christ, lover. Lay down. Let's get to business."

She flops down on the bed. Bedspring pain sound.

She's in her bra and panties. Old time blimp. Pale yellow-white flesh 
clustered with mole constellations. All sizes. From tiny brown dots to 
half-dollar wide hairy circles.

Her tits are huge as cement sacks. Rising and falling in the confines of 
her soggy brassiere.

Her belly button is like a gnarled mutant mushroom. Pushes in and out of 
her corpulence.

"Lover, baby, c'mon. Come to mama."

Bowing, but not broken, I go to bed. To her open arms. It's like 
embracing a huge sweaty cloud.

She hugs me like a lady wrestler. A rib cracking embrace. With one 
bear-hug she manages to give me more hurt than when I got run over by an 
outlaw pack of cyclists.

"O god, lover, lover. Touch me. Love me, lover."

"But... I can't move," I try to tell her. "You're breaking my back..."

CHAPTER FIVE

Rule Two: Adapt or Die.

You say, What? What?

I say, Fuck off.

I know you don't give a shit for my Law. You want me to get back to 
schtupping Fat Lady. You wanna know how it feels to fuck a mountain range.

In time. In time.

I got to rap. Rapping leads to unwrapping. And I'm unwrapping me for you.
Here I am, you life-size booby prize. Me, the whole works. All the levels 
and layers. For you. All for you. You live with it.

Where was I?

Yes. I was adapting and slowly dying.

You know and I know that each rule has a brother with a knife behind his 
back. With very sharp teeth in his mouth. And he'll get you if you don't 
watch out. And, you all know, watching out is Rule Three.

Let me set you straight. This is my story.

How things happened. To me. From the beginning. The start.

I could tell you how I saw things, heard things, knew things, while 
floating in Mommy's comfy sea. I could tell you all about how it felt to 
feel my brain awaken in Mommy's pink and easy ocean. I could tell you how 
words began. How the need to see began. I could tell you how I saw the 
movie of my past and future life. All of that. Because this is my story, 
asshole.

Yeah, yeah. I know. All you want to hear is how I fucked the Fat Lady. 
Or, better yet, how the Fat Lady fucked me.

Okay. In time.

Dumbos.

I could, if I wanted to, write a book on jacking off. A stupendous 
lexicon comprising jack-off dreams, plots, sub-dreams, sub-plots. Faces, 
cunts and tits galore. Endless flip-book galas of tongues, boobies and 
pussies. A fivefoot shelf of meat-beating words and dreams.

I got all this to give you, but you got to be patient. Now, where was I 
before I interrupted myself?

I was laying down Rule Two. Adapt or die.

It's true, street people, it's true. Adapt or die. Bend with the wind or 
have your back broken.

Okay. That's out. That's over with. Stay dumb. It makes dying easier.

New: Fat Lady Fuck Time.

She spreads her arms, her huge legs.

Opens up for me. Opens herself wide. Opens up so I can dive into her sea 
of flesh.

So. I dive in. It's like belly-whopping onto a beach of wet sand. Slam.

"Oh, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, lover," she moans, rolling her eyes 
around.

Brother Photographer races around from tripod to tripod. Snaps pictures 
of his sister's snatch. Her cunt's deep gash drips lusty sex soup.

Thumbing her tit is like sticking my fist into soft wet clay. My thumbs 
leave gouge pockets in her skin.

My cock turns into a noodle. Hangs forlorn and useless between my legs.

"Ohh, so strong," she groans. Her arms encircle me. Her legs surround my 
hips. Her fat tongue barrels through my lips. "Ohh, oooh. So strong. So 
virile."

Her voice still gets me. The tiny sound seems lost in the clogged tubing 
of her inner flesh. She sounds like strange, tiny bells. Bells trapped in 
the depths of an Army tank.

Something else happens. I don't know what kind of sense this will make. 
But I get this screwy bananas vision of the Fat Lady. (She's pulling on my 
limp prick with her chubby little fingers.)

Fat Lady is transformed in my head to a box of Albino Candy. Do you know 
what I mean? She's a box, a sampler, of Albino Candy with gooey pink and 
white centers that melt, drip and run down the edges of the bed. Just like 
candy bleeds when squashed down in curly-cued brown doily cups.

It's a quick flash. And then it's gone.

No blame.

An old Chink book says that. No blame, What a sweet combine. Everything 
is all right. Nothing to worry about. The world is the way the world is.

Look. Don't think I'm trying to tease you or string you out. If your cock
is nested in your hand, I'm sorry. Yeath, I know, I should be fucking Fatso
for you. But I'm not just a fuck book writer. I'm trying to tell you 
everything. The whole works. Put a world in your soul. See what happens.

Her tits are huge. Bigger than a magazine babe can roll out for you. No 
shit. They're like ten times bigger than those chicks in Tap ebreaker or 
Mother balloon. They're incredible boobs all mashed together into round 
slack zeppelins with nipples hard as nails. No wonder she walks all bent 
over. No blame.

"Suck 'em lover," she mumbles. Drool sparkles out of the side of her 
mouth. "Suck "em and chem 'em, lover."

Fat Lady jams her finger into my asshole.

It sends an immediate teeth-rattling spasm of joy along the chakric road.

Her tough hard nipples are so hot that I hear steam hiss out of them when
I stick my tongue into their centers.

"Oh, lover, lover, what a fucking tongue you've got."

And wiggles her finger around. My asshole tingles and vibrates.

I bite down on her nipples.

She squirms and squeals her joy.

I move my teeth against the tough flesh. Grind the scalding skin. I 
nibble and suck on the nipple. Draw the hardness into my mouth.

She squeaks. She giggles. She whips her finger around and around. And her
other hand finds my balls and pulls gently on them.

Super-weird enema. I can feel the shit gathering force. You know how it 
is. When the stuff is at the gate and you get a funny pain. And you got to 
let the flood find its mark.

"Lady," I whisper, "unplug me. Or I'm gonna shit all over everything."

"Yes, yes!" she says. "Yes! Do it! Do it! On me-go on, do it!"

"You're kidding!"

"Do it. Or I'll squeeze your balls into a puddle."

What the hell. I let her rip. Shoot a fire hose explosion of shit all 
over her. Spray her rolling belly ripples and the hanging flesh of her 
thighs. The crud comes showering out. It's runny crap because I haven't 
eaten too much. In fact I haven't had anything to eat today.

And as the hot dreck splashes on her skin, Fatso groans in delight.

And after a while, she begins to weep and tremble.

"Yes, yes," she wails. "Yes, yes. This is it. This is how it must be."

And she looks up at me and says in her little mouse-lady voice, "This is 
it, isn't it? I'm disgusting. I'm a pig. I'm not better than a toilet bowl.
Isn't that it?"

But I'm too busy squeezing out the last painful dribble into the tunnel 
of her bellybutton. Light brown droplets drip out of my ass like a leaky 
faucet.

"I'm a pig. Tell me that I'm a pig. Go on, lover."

"You're a pig," I grunt. If only the shitting would end.

"I knew it. Oh, God, I knew it. All men think I'm a pig. But..."

"But what?"

"But I get even, don't I?"

"I guess so," I groan.

"I get even. Right?"

Her hands shoot out and grab ahold of my balls.

"Yeah, sure. You get even."

"You bet your nuts I do. I turn all men into pigs too. Right?"

"Right!"

"Okay, pig-fucker, fuck me. Fuck me. Roll in your own shit and piss. Fuck
me. And it better be good. Fuck me good!"

CHAPTER SIX

The Big Event wasn't a big deal.

It happened too quickly. I hardly had a chance to cover her face with the
face of a dream.

I'll tell you one thing, fuck fans, her cunt was the tightest, hottest 
twat I'd ever gotten into. And as soon as I got into her, she began 
whooping and oinking. It was like diving into the eye of a tornado.

I never heard so much noise come out of a woman being fucked. Or a dog 
being fucked. And I've seen dogs stuck together. Locked there. Howling and 
baying to dog gods for mercy. They might as well have been whispering. Fat 
Lady had it over them.

It became a song. And the song went like this:

Ooooh. Oooh. Oooh. Ahhh. Ahhh.

Ahhh. Ahhh. Ooooh. Oooh. Huhuhuh.

And when she came, she came apart. That was something else. I'm glad I 
survived.

Coming's basic tremor rippled through her body like a nervous disorder. 
Then it hit her center with an explosion that jerked her halfway up to the 
ceiling. Tits flapping, hips grinding, legs spread apart. The earthquake 
hits her body. Like a guy in the electric-chair.

And all through it, guess what? I'm on top of her. One hell of a free 
ride.

She jackknifes. Ooof. Unbends. Ahh.

Humps and bumps.

Seizes and wheezes.

Stabs and grabs.

Grits and grunts.

And, as an added soundtrack, Fat Lady's fuck song:

Oooh. Oooh. Oooh. Ahhh. Ahhh.

Ahhh. Ahhh. Ooooh. Oooh. Huhuhuh.

* * *

The Photographer hands me a towel.

"You'd better wipe yourself off," he says, "you're a mess. Dammit."

"Anything wrong?"

"I ran out of color film during the last few seconds."

"Does that mean..."

"No. Don't worry. You'll be able to go soon."

The Photographer caps all the lenses on his cameras.

"Are you hungry?" he asks.

That's like asking a blind man if he wants to see.

I nod.

"It's only fair to feed you before sending you off."

Fair's fair. Things are looking up.

Fat Lady's in the bathroom. God knows what ablutions she is involved 
with. I can see her using a huge garden hose for a douche. Or a fire 
hydrant. I can see her squatting over the hydrant, guiding the water-gush 
into her gash. Or spreading leviathan hips around a great geyser barreling 
up out of the earth's core. Or straddling the mouth of a sewer tunnel at 
high tide.

"I'd better get busy. I'm the cook in this house," says the Photographer.
"I don't eat much myself. To tell you the truth, I really don't like food. 
I don't like how it feels in my mouth. I don't like how it feels in my 
stomach. Do you know what food does?"

"No."

"It rots in your stomach. Isn't that idea ghastly? Food rots in your 
stomach. And I can feel it rotting in my stomach. Well, to each his own. 
Don't you think?"

"Sure."

"Sis really likes my food. She's a nice kid, isn't she?"

"Oh, yes, very nice," I answer, buckling my belt.

"I knew you'd like her."

I tell him lies because I want to bore him.

"You really think she's nice?" asks the Photographer, packing his 
telephoto lens in its case. "I mean, you're not just trying to be nice to 
me?"

"No. She's swell."

"She's on the fat side," he mumbles, snapping the lens case shut.

"I like them plump."

He stopped packing and looked at me.

"Really?" he asks. And his right eyebrow arches up. "I mean, my sister...
my sister is huge."

"The bigger the better."

"I'll tell you something. A secret."

"What is it?"

"Promise not to tell?"

"I promise."

"My sister is sick. She is mentally sick."

"No! You must be kidding!"

"Say," says the Photographer. "Are you putting me on?"

"Hell, no!" I answer. "Are you putting me on?"

* * *

Watching the Fat Lady eat. Watching and listening to her eat. It 
dominates the table.

The Photographer has prepared a bulk feast. Plates heaping with 
syntho-hocks and protolard dip. Dehydrate greens shine with pirate oil and 
sewer vinegar. A basket of muffins made out of starch-o-pulp. Plasm-rice 
steams in a deep dish, covered with shard-rind and ash-chip gravy. 
Fish-head gruel in small white cups. A delicacy dip of shredded mulch-skin.
Black market margarine made from the glands of radioactive yellow slugs. An
Oriental delicacy. Rat-brain stew. A tub of mashed synthospuds. The table 
overflows with food.

Fat Lady sits at the end of the table. She picks up the flashing flap of 
dried oyster-gut and slurps the gray-white slop through her bps. Sound of a
clogged drain.

Rips apart a starch-o-pulp muffin and dips into shard-rind, ash-chip 
gravy. Then pops the wet muffin into her mouth-hole. The sound of its soggy
transit down her gullet: mud-slag down a cluttered drainpipe.

Licks syntho-hock off her fingers. Slurp, slurp.

Shovels a bail of dehydrated salad into her mouth.

"Why the fuck isn't there any fucking malt-o-power to drink?" gripes the 
Fat Lady, food shreds fly out of her greasy mouth.

"Sorry, Sis, I forgot," says the photographer. "Would you like some too?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Why not, indeed," he answers and leaves for the kitchen.

"Eat, lover, eat," orders the Fat Lady. "You've gotta build up your 
pecker power for Round Two."

The words get caught with the food she's chewing. More food particles 
spray out and rain on the tablecloth. She picks the bits up with her 
fingertips. And licks the stuff back into her mouth.

The Photographer returns with two cans of malt-o-power, a gut-churning 
beer. Made out of, they say, dead animals found in the streets. It's like 
carbonated cheap.

"Do you think I can go now?" I ask him.

Fat Lady belches. Her burp is a natural disaster.

It starts as a low sinister rumbling in her lower intestine. Then becomes
louder, the sound of a mountain avalanche, as it works its way through the 
upper intestine.

It's like an epileptic fit. Her fat body rips apart. One eye rolls to the
left. The other eye rolls to the right. Her tongue unflaps like a derailed 
magic carpet. Her meat bag tits bobble about in the vibrations. Gas-song 
roar rages in the air. Shakes all the plates on the table. Silverware 
tingles and clanks. A goblet cracks down the center. Malt-o-power cans foam
over with suds.

She grabs a hold of her chair and seems to levitate a few inches above 
the seat. Her face gets pale. For a moment. Then it gets brick red. Veins 
bulge out on her forehead. Then she lets go of it. Like an elephant giving 
birth to a national park.

A fart. A tremendous fart. A hurricane blast of the most acrid rotten 
stink imaginable. My nose is in a state of shock. It wants to disintegrate 
and never smell again.

Putrid paralysis.

The stench in invisible wet curtains spangles us all. The room is webbed 
in fart.

The Photographer puts a napkin to his mouth. His eyes grow wider than his
largest lens.

Fat Lady sighs. Settles back in her chair and savors her stench.



PART TWO - THE JOB: TESTING

Don't let them get your hopes up!

Today is all there is.

Let pious people suffer!

Life is all earth has to offer.

There's no life after this.

-Brecht

CHAPTER ONE

"I've got a job for you," Carol tells me. We're laying in her bed. It's 
nearly dawn. The sun's getting ready to rise and shine.

"What do you mean?" I ask her. "What kind of job?"

"It's a strange job."

"What do you mean, a strange job?"

"Not an ordinary job."

"Tell me what it is, Carol, or I'll punch you in your soft white belly."

"You are retarded," Carol tells me. And grabs ahold of my cock. Her hand 
is cool. "Tell me about the job."

"Your cock is very hot," she says, stroking its shaft. It begins to swell
and widen. It fills up in her hand.

"What kind of job?" I ask softly. No need to yell.

Carol pulls the bedcovers down. And she gazes at my cock. Which arches up
in her hand. The head is steaming red.

And Carol moves down to see it closer. To lick the hot crown with her wet
silken tongue. To lick around the crown's sensitive edges. To lick up and 
down the seam of the shaft. To lick the flesh of the cock's curve. To lick 
the fuzzy meat of my balls.

I settle back. Relax.

She loves giving head. There's no sense protesting.

Carol gets to work.

Her mouth enfolds the crown. Gets it into her mouth oven. Her bps press 
against the shaft. She sucks in more cock. Her lips press against 
shaft-skin while her tongue wiggles over the round hump of my prick's head.

For more comfort, Carol scoops her hand under my rear end and pushes me 
upward to her mouth.

She always starts slowly. She starts slow to give her tongue a chance to 
work out. To get her mouth used to the widening meat. To get her jaw 
lubricated for the work ahead.

Her other hand is a nest for my balls.

Carol looks at my cock. My cock is straining. Sticks straight up into her
face. Pulsing and twitching.

Carol licks her full lips and looks up at me. I look down at her through 
half-shut eyes. Carol smiles. And dives in.

The first intense pull on my cock drains electrical energy out of my 
spine. Her mouth becomes like a vacuum cleaner.

And I writhe in the painful pleasure her mouth is drawing out of my 
loins. The more I twist and squirm, the harder her suction becomes.

My cock pops out of her mouth. I see it.

Shining, sparkling with her saliva. I grab the back of her head and push 
her back down on it.

Soon I am on my knees pushing it into her sucking mouth. I'm straddling 
her shoulders, shoving cock meat into her greedy mouth. Her fingernails dig
into my butt.

"Suck," I mutter.

And we topple over and she is back upon me. Sucking and lapping. Drawing 
pleasure and squirming agony out of me. My cock vibrates and screams with 
delight.

I shut my eyes. Red and yellow stars. White spangles. Shooting comet 
slide-show. Whizzing in my inner planetarium. Exploding.

I can feel my bunched-up sperm-ball ready to detonate. To pump and gush 
hot white liquid into her suckling spit-wet lips.

Pow.

And she sucks the sperm into her throat. Sucks it as it shoots out of my 
cock. Sucks it and unravels the nervy electric ribbon. I feel my stomach 
turn to pudding. My spine melts. And Carol keeps on sucking.

Pain points ache on my cocktip. She keeps sucking. Diddling the sperm-wet
cock with her tonguetip.

"Ahhh," I grunt.

"Mmm," she comments, wiping her lips off with part of the bedsheet. "Mmm,
what a great breakfast."

It's like a movie's happy ending. The sun rises, birds begin to chirp and
twitter hysterically, and, for a moment, I catch a nontoxic whiff of air. A
cool breeze through the window. My cock wrinkles quickly back to its normal
shape.

I suppose you'd like to know who Carol is.

Carol is my old head-giving friend who helps me out. She works for 
In/City TV. She has a weekly art-news show on the tube.

Carol loves to feed me, eat me and have me around. For short periods of 
time. Which is great for me. I don't like hanging around anywhere too long.
It's not good for anything. Especially for mystery.

"What about the job?" I ask her again.

"It's crooked. It's a racket."

"What kind of racket?"

"If you let me take you to dinner tonight, I'll give you the card."

"What card?"

"The card he gave me. It has all the information on it."

"Who gave you the card?"

"Benjamin Aura Ormond."

"I don't have a suit or anything like that."

"Go as you are."

Carol hands me the card.

It is embossed in an elegant script: Benjamin Aura Ormond/Services & 
Enterprise. And in the far right corner, an embossed MI/USA flag.

"The card says he has his office in the Napalm Towers."

"That's right," answers Carol. "Top floor. He has the whole top floor 
rented out for his operation."

"Business must be good. Napalm Towers is a pretty fancy hotel."

"Business is good," says Carol.

And she begins to dress. She has to go to work soon.

Slips into sheer off-white syntho-silk panties. Her cunt-mound 
hair-triangle peers through the fabric.

Has me clip her bra together. Carol has small firm breasts. Each breast 
fits neatly into my hand.

I kiss the nape of her neck.

She wiggles. Pokes her hard little ass into my balls.

"What kind of crooked business does this Benjamin Aura Ormond run? 
Numbers? Narcotics? Whores?"

"Nothing like that. You'll find out."

I get a hard-on.

Watching Carol pull soft, black, sheer nylons over her trim legs. She 
gives the greatest head. But she is also a first-rate fuck. Her cunt 
muscles amaze me. Amaze my cock. Her cunt muscles milk my prick dry as 
fiercely as her mouth does.

But that comes later. After work. Tonight. After dinner.

When she is all dressed, she puts her glasses on.

Then she puts her long lovely brown hair up into a bun. Dabs a little 
lipstick on her mouth. And becomes a stranger. Becomes a mousy looking art 
teacher.

CHAPTER TWO

In the streets. En route to Napalm Towers.

The snipers are out. The daytime snipers.

I hear the bullets ricochet. Nobody knows who they are. They sneak around
on rooftops. They'll enter empty rooms and shoot out the windows. At 
anybody. There's no plan. No particular enemy.

It's a familiar sound. The pop and ping of sniper bullets. As commonplace
as the gray day sky, the wind, the hail.

"Hey, kid, come here. I need your help."

The voice comes out of an ancient car parked on blocks in the middle of a
grim lot.

"My buddy's dying," he yells. "I need help."

Vague ghost-mask behind the time-yellowed glass.

"Hurry, hurry."

I trudge drearily across the lumpy earth. Kick aside brittle newspapers. 
Plow through mashed rusted beer cans. Green glass chips of smashed cheap 
bottles. Barbed wire snips. Faded, crumpled cigarette packs.

A stiff, gnarled work glove. Bent car bumper corroded with rust. 
Tumbleweed. Dried thorny bushes. Yellow grass. Mud.

"Open the door. Quick."

I pull the old car door open. It grinds apart with a groaning squawk.

"Hurry Get inside."

He pats the ripped car seat beside him. Dust clouds puff up into the air.

"Sit. Do you have a cigarette?"

"No. I don't smoke."

"You lie. I smell smoke on your breath. Why do you lie to me?"

He needs a shave. His uncut whiskers are white. His lower lip is split. A
crooked scab covers the cut. His eyes are yellow-rimmed. Bloodshot. Watery.

The car smells of piss, sweat, unwashed clothes. It stinks of puke.

"Got any money?" he asks.

"No. I don't have a cent."

"You he. Why do you he to me? I heard coins jiggle in your pants when you
sat down."

"That's all I have. I need it for bus fare. I'm looking for a job."

Why should I tell the old bum anything? "You know what we ate last 
night?"

"No."

"You know what our first meal in two days was? Broiled robin. Feathers 
and all. Washed it down with paint thinner my buddy stole from a work 
crew."

There's a hideous sound. From the front seat of the car.

"What's that?"

"I don't lie. That's my buddy. Charlie Finger."

Charlie Finger moans again. It's the sound of death. Gurgling, choking, 
gagging. It's the sound of blood rushing up out of punctured innards. 
Pouring out of the mouth and nose and ears.

"It was that fucking paint thinner. It just didn't agree with old 
Charlie. He's been sick like that all night."

"Get a Doctor."

"Get a Doctor? That's a good idea. But I don't have any money. And that 
ain't a lie. I don't have a cent."

"Get him to a Clinic."

"Very good. Very smart. I don't even have a dime to call the Clinic. And 
that's the truth. And I'm a fucking Veteran. And so is Charlie..."

Charlie Finger begins to vomit.

"Isn't there anything we can do for him?"

"Naw. Let old Charlie puke his guts out." Charlie Finger begins gagging 
on his bile. "Do you know Charlie Finger was once famous?"

"No. I never heard of him."

"He was a writer. He wrote books for little kids."

Charlie Finger retches and moans. Gags.

Coughs. Spits.

"When I was a kid, Charlie Finger was a great hero. A god. Us kids would 
devour his Charlie Finger Pop-lips. They were great."

"I don't remember them. But I wasn't much of a kid."

Finger coughs furiously. His lungs rattle like crackling cellophane.

"Isn't there anything we can do for him?"

"No. You can't help him. You don't even recognize his name. You he too. 
Your words are meaningless, boy. Like a fart in the breeze. Why, Charlie 
Finger Pop-lips were the center of the world for kids in my time. Crazy 
little 3-D pop-up creatures..."

I reach in my pocket and pull out all the money. All of it. The dollar 
and the change that Carol gave me.

"Here. Take it all. I'll walk. I'll hitch a ride."

The old man grabs the money. Stuffs it quickly in his shirt pocket. 
Buttons the flap.

"You've got quality after all. Here. Have a taste of thinner."

"No. I got to go."

"Common, kid. Let's drink to your caring. Let's celebrate your humanity. 
Here."

He hands me a cloudy bottle of red paint thinner.

"I crushed in some old hard candy. Gives it a little color. Gives it a 
little flavor. To your good heart."

I take a swig of the stuff. A dainty little sip.

Dynamite would taste sweeter. Burns my lips. Burns my tongue. Sand-blasts
my throat with fire pain. Rakes holes in my gut.

I shut my eyes. And stop breathing. For a moment. Pulse imprint of a 
radish-red face angel. Flapping black plastic wings. Cawing like a rooster.
Flames pouring out of his eyes.

"You've given Charlie Finger hope. You've given me hope. Hope is time. 
And you have redeemed yourself. How does it feel to be redeemed in the eyes
of your judges?"

I cannot answer. I'm too busy trying to breathe.

Angel-rooster turns into a gold medallion. Round sun. My brain is a fire 
valley of the sun.

I choke.

My eyes dim.

Charlie Finger's skeleton-like hand reaches over the front seat. The old 
man hands him the bottle. Finger grabs it in his claw.

In my sunspot hysteria, I hear the guzzling frenzy drain-pipe noise of 
Charlie Finger. Drinking the rest of the paint thinner.

"Say, kid, I bet you fuck all the time. When I was a kid I fucked all the
time. Walked the streets with a hard-on. Hard-on like a dowsing rod. Always
poked into prime pussy. I bet you get your tool into a lot of prime pussy. 
Why'n't you tell me a story about your last piece."

I open my eyes. Everything is blurred from the tears.

"You know what I mean. Me and Charlie are too old for anything but 
stories."

He unzips his fly. An acrid cloud of crotch stink puffs out.

"You know, when I was in MIF, the Twenty-Five Year War, I got captured by
the rotten Yellows and they made me drink doped-up ball rot rice soup. They
committed unmentionable acts to me. If you know what I mean."

"Shut the fuck up," growls Finger. His voice is sharp and high-pitched. 
"Just shut the fuck up."

"Old Charie's a vet too. He knows what I mean."

"I said, shut up. Shut the fuck up..."

Charlie Finger's voice fades into a wrenching cough.

"You get so incredibly horny in a PO Camp. You get to fucking anything. 
It got so that I'd pray for rain so I could fuck mud. Man, nothing like 
warm mud."

"Goddammit, I said shut the fuck up..."

And Charlie Finger returns to his coughing fit.

"I met old Charlie at that camp and we became real close friends. You 
know what I mean? But ever since Charlie's been sick... well, you know what
I mean."

The old man's prick tip peers out of his zipper. It is prune-wrinkled.

"Look. I got to go. I'm looking for work."

"Stick around, kid. Redemption's a hard cross to bear. Help an old vet 
out, kid. Show me how redeemed you really are."

His cock is fully hard now. Sticks out of his pants like a gnarled tube.

"Go ahead," he whispers.

Finger begins to whimper.

"Rotten chippy sonofabitch," Finger whines. His voice is like a ratchet.

I push the car door open. And I'm out.

He screams at me to come back. But Finger starts to scream back at the 
old man.

Rule Four: Don't Trust Anybody.

Damn near break my ankle tripping over an inner tube.

CHAPTER THREE

I limp down the street. Battered by the cold wind. I curse today. What 
started out fine has become crooked and wrong. The whole rhythm is wrong. 
Rotten. I'd like to leave today. Turn it off. Shut it like a book. Start 
again. Start it all over in bed with Carol.

And I get caught in a crossfire. Sniper bullets all around me. Ping. 
Zing. Zoweeeee.

I duck in a doorway.

A car passes by. Its front window turns into a lace of bullet holes. The 
driver's face is shattered. Shines with blood.

The car goes crazy without a driver. It zigzags drunkenly over the road. 
And smashes into a fire hydrant. Cracks it apart. Rust-colored water gushes
up into the sky.

I sit on the cold stone steps and wait for the snipers to move onto the 
next block.

A man and woman dressed in black race over to the smashed-up car. The man
holds a rifle with a super-scope on it. The girl holds a cloth flour sack.

He pulls the door of the car open and the girl crawls inside. She frisks 
the dead man. Pulls out his wallet, his credit-cards. Takes off his watch, 
rings and cuff-links. Puts them all in her sack. The man stands guard.

"The shoes, the shoes," he orders.

She pulls off his shoes. Stuffs them in the sack.

There's a leather tool-holster on her hip. She pulls out a small wrench 
and a screwdriver. And unhooks the car radio-tape unit. Puts it in the bag.

"Okay, okay," says the gunman. "Try the trunk."

"Wait. The glove compartment. Let me check it."

He nods.

She opens the glove compartment. Holds up a pistol.

The gunman smiles.

Then she's out of the car and into the trunk.

"Anything?"

"No. Not even a good spare."

"Check the other tires."

"I did. Lousy. No tread."

"Okay. Let's go."

She slings the flour sack over her shoulder and follows behind him. They 
run down the street.

A small rainbow forms an arc around the spray pissing out of the broken 
fire hydrant.

CHAPTER FOUR

It's a real drag to beat up a junkie. Especially if he's real sick and 
skinny.

I'm still en route to Napalm Towers. Walking fast. Lost track of time. 
None of the clocks work. Got no watch.

This junkie leaps out of a doorway. And misses. Falls on his knees.

"Gimme all your bucks," he snarls. And sticks his fist into his coat 
pocket. Which tears. "I gotta gun, man. I'll blow your guts out. I'll blow 
your guts out all over the street. I gotta super high power pistol, man. 
Gimme your bucks."

I turn my back on this creep and start walking away.

But the junkie leaps up and runs after me. Hooks his paws into my jacket.

"Goddammit, man. I gotta gun," he pants, out of breath and dizzy.

"Let go of me."

He lets go.

"You don't have no gun. I don't have any money. Now lay off. Leave me 
alone, or I'll whip your ass," I say.

"What makes you think you're so smart?" the junkie asks. "You think 
you're so smart because you gotta tie on? Is that it?"

"Look, stop bugging me."

"Sure. I'll stop bugging you. But who's gonna stop bugging me?" the 
junkie asks. "I gotta sick mother. I gotta sick brother. I gotta sick 
sister who turns tricks and who'll gas your ass for a buck and a half. My 
brother'll join in and Mom'll take pictures. The whole show for two and a 
half bucks, man."

The junkie starts to cough. He wipes his nose on his sleeve.

"Man, I gotta terrible cough. I gotta get some cough syrup. You don't 
want me to cough up a lung, do you?"

"Shit, I don't care what you do," I say. "I'm in a hurry."

The junkie coughs again. Spins around. And starts to fall to the 
sidewalk.

I grab him. And he knees me in the groin. Barely missing my balls.

"You wouldn't hit a sick man?" he whines, as I swing my fist between his 
eyes.

He ducks. And my fist slams into the side of his head. Cuts his ear. He 
touches the wounded ear.

"Jesus Christ, I'm bleeding," he says, his eyes wide with shock and pain.
"I'll bleed to death. I'm a hemophiliac. Are you gonna let me bleed to 
death?"

"You're no hemophiliac," I mutter and start walking.

The junkie makes a strange sobbing sound.

I hear his body hit the cement and rattle.

"I'm dying, man. In five minutes I'll be dead. I can see the angels 
gathering together. Holding out their hands to me. Come on, man, they are 
singing. Come on. Out of sight..."

His eyelids flutter. I bend over him and unbutton his shirt collar. I 
don't know why. I read somewhere that that's what you do in emergencies.

He brings his knees up into my stomach and throws me off-balance. I roll 
over like a whipped dog. And hold my guts. My bruised intestines churn in 
pain. Fucking junkie trickster. I should've known better.

He leaps onto my back. Kicks my ribs. His junkie body is light as a leaf.
I lurch violently and his skinny tricky frame topples onto the sidewalk. 
Scrapes his nose and forehead. Streaks of torn skin.

"Ohh. I'm done for now. The party's over, man. Who'll support Sis and Mom
and Little Brother? Farewell, motherfucking rotten world of pain."

The junkie shuts his eyes and turns his head away from my angry eyes.

"On your feet, you junkie prick, or I'll stomp you to death," I yell at 
him. No answer. I kick him tentatively in his ribs. Something soft snaps.

"Ohhh," he moans and spits out some blood.

"Dumb junkie freak. Rot in hell."

I start walking away.

He grabs a hold of my ankles. I kick him in the nose with the back of my 
boot-heel.

"Let me go."

I kick him again. His hands slide away.

"Dumb junkie freak."

And I'm off. Napalm Towers, here I come.

I'm in the middle of D Street. Napalm Towers is on F Street. Hell, I can 
make it.

It begins to hail. Flash-hail. Brief explosive downpour of hail-nails. 
Crashing out of the angry gray sky.

The junkie screams in pain.

I pull my jacket over my head, duck down, and run.

The hail sounds like a ton of marbles spilled onto the sidewalk.

CHAPTER FIVE

Zip. Zam. Up to the tenth floor of Napalm Towers.

The elevator door whizzes open.

There's a placard on a wooden frame in the lobby.

It says:

* * *

WELCOME TO THE HOME OF !ORMOND INDUSTRIES! & ENTERPRISES ETC.

BE TOUCHED WITH GREATNESS ALL YOU WHO ENTER THESE DOORS

* * *

Typewriters. Cash registers. Computers. All the sounds of office activity
flit and chatter behind shut doors. Ease-nerve music drifts by. Unobtrusive
music.

"What can we do for you?"

The man is standing behind me. I turn to face him. He's holding a 
file-holder.

"I'm... I have an appointment with Mr. Ormond."

"An appointment with Big Ben himself! Wonderful. Wonderful. Follow me, 
young man. I'll lead you to his office."

He walks at a brisk clip. His shiny shoes make neat clicks and clacks on 
the pseudo-marble floor. We pass many doors. All of them are shut. All of 
them are numbered like hotel rooms.

An MIF vet drives down the hallway in his wheelchair. It makes a 
high-pitched sound the faster he propels it. My guide waves to the vet. The
vet screams, in passing, that he's trying to break the Record. My guide 
wishes him luck. This all happens in the time it takes to wink.

"That's Lars Wonder, one of our best vets. Fastest wheelchair operator in
the world, I'll bet."

"Was he a war hero?" I ask.

"Lars Wonder? Hell, no. Biggest goldbrick in the MIF. He was running away
from a Yellow platoon. Got shot in the back with a collection of mega-bits.
Paraplegic. They pinned all kinds of medals on him. For running away. Can 
you imagine that?"

A beautiful lady walks by. Her knockers jounce up and down beneath her 
flimsy blouse.

My guide wishes her the best of the gray afternoon.

She tells him that it's hailing like crazy outside. Her voice is low and 
sexy.

"When you appear, the sun shines," he says.

She laughs. And when she laughs her breasts seem to swell and ripple with
the vibrations.

"You're such a kidder," she says, tittering.

And she walks down the hall. Her provocative rump grinding its moons 
together. Held tight in her small tight skirt.

"She sure got tits," comments my guide.

We watch her enter a room and close the door. For a second, on entering, 
she shows us her boggling profile.

"She's sure got them. A real pair of boobs. Nipples like tree trunks."

"Very striking," I mutter, feeling the itch and insistent tingle stroke 
my cock shaft. "Very striking."

"Bet your ass. She's the staff's hot pants. She'll fuck anything. 
Anybody. Anytime. Cripped vets, dogs, girls, anything. Real hot pants. 
Always rubbing her pussy against doors and desks. Well, here we are. Big 
Ben's suite."

"What do I do?"

"Just ring the bell. That's all. From then on, you're on your own."

My guide turns around. And clips his brisk clatter down the hallway. And 
opens the door the busty lady entered. And shuts it quickly.

What the hell.

I ring the bell.

The door opens electronically.

"Welcome to the Offices of Benjamin Aura Ormond," announces a Nerve-Speak
voice through a concealed speaker-system. "Please be seated."

Dump my bones into the first chair I see. It's a stuffed dodohyde job 
that bends to my body's weight. It begins to vibrate. It massages my back 
and neck muscles. I've heard there's a special dodohyde sex-chair.

"Name, rank and Serial Number," asks the Nerve-Speak voice.

"None. I... have an appointment. Carol sent me."

"I see. One moment please."

The Nerve-Speak voice filters out. Is replaced by the lulling mush of 
nerve-ease music. Music bland as cloud puffs. Programmed by psychic 
surgeons to tranquilize churning stomachs and tight-knot heads. Keep the 
workers dreamy with dreamy music. Whipped cream sound rooms.

"Mr. Ormond will see you shortly. While you wait, may we remind you of 
the following conveniences supplied by Napalm Towers Customer Service. To 
your right is a five-button panel. Press the suitable button for a cup of

1) Pep, 2) Funfeen, 3) Coke-a-dope, 4) Kleen, or, 5) Kumfirt. Magazines, 
Image-Grab, OptikDepth Pola-Color slides in the drawers beneath the drink 
dispenser. If you wish, there are a set of Comfy-Fine-Fones and 
Eye-Silence-Sooth in a compartment in your chair. With Fones and sooth on, 
you can listen to nerve-ease music in perfect mind-soft dark."

Click.

Thanks. But, no thanks.

I'm gonna sit tight and wait.

First things first. I turn off the chair.

* * *

"Are you an artist?"

No. I dumbly nod it out. No. I'm no artist.

"But you're a friend of Carol's."

Yes. I nod yes.

Ormond's office is huge. Like a museum. Paintings, sculpture, 
constructions, collages, mobiles. And seated behind a curved desk of real 
wood carved in the 19th Century. Seated in a titan's throne of wood. Two 
hand-carved lions crown the east and west poles of the chair. Seated in fat
and shrewd comfort is Mr. Benjamin Aura Ormond.

His brown eyes are huge behind extra-thick glasses. Round wide eyes. Like
goldfish eyes. Popping wide and large from his eye sockets. Magnified by 
the thick lenses.

Black, thick, drooping mustache overly rare red full lips. White teeth. 
Even and large in his mouth.

"She gives great head for an art historian..."

I do not nod.

"Okay, if you're not an artist, what do you want?"

"A job."

"Is that all?"

"Yes. That's all."

"What the hell do you do?"

When he talks, a little bead of saliva pops in the corner of his mouth.

"Just about anything."

"Just about anything?"

"Yes, almost anything. I've been around."

"A regular renaissance man, huh? Very good. Here, Leonardo. Come here. I 
want you to look at this."

I walk around the desk and to his throne/chair. He hands me a blue 
plastic tube with a yellow button on its side.

"Press the button, Leonardo, and look. Behold."

I press the yellow button. The tube gives a start. Then begins to whirr 
and hum. I look through the small opening.

What is, at first, an abstract design of pink forms and black forms 
becomes, on closer squinting, a tongue pushing into a cunt. The tongue 
(pink) waggles back and forth into the cunt (black and pink). It creates a 
pleasant diversion.

While I'm watching, Mr. Benjamin Aura Ormond places his hand on my cock. 
Feels around to determine its form. Mutters.

"What are you looking at? What do you see?"

"What the fuck you mean feeling me up?" I snarl.

"Tch, tch. Becalm yourself. Relax. Just testing."

"Look, Mr. Ormond, I'm nobody's fool, see. I've been around."

"Oh, shut up, punk. So have I. You want a job that pays you fifty bucks a
day? Huh? You want to have a job that supplies you with free room and 
board? Huh? I mean a luxurious room in Napalm Towers. I mean free 
three-meals-a-day from the Napalm Grill & Gourmet Room. Huh? I mean plenty 
of hot ripe ass to keep your mind out of order at night. Huh?"

I'm silent.

I'm seeing myself in a suite at the Napalm Towers. In a ruby-red silk 
smoking jacket. White silk scarf. Mixing drinks for this incredible 
call-girl. She is the ultimate combination of all I've ever dreamed of in a
woman.

The Perfect American Whore-Wife-Mother-Goddess-Virgin. And she stands 
there, glowing and shimmering. Looking at me with love. Dinner has just 
been served by room service. It's snugly warm beneath silver domes. There's
a bottle of champagne on ice in a silver bucket resting on a silver stand 
with chrome ball-bearing wheels.

"Huh? You're looking for that kind of job? Well, you came to the right 
place. But we got to test you, see. We've got to find out where and how 
you'll fit into the Enterprise. If you can pass the tests. Do you 
understand?"

"I guess so. When do I begin the tests?"

"Right now. Pull down your pants."

"Look. What the fuck..."

"Pull down your goddamned pants. Goddamn it. I wish you were an artist. 
They can hardly wait to pull down their pants and either brag about how big
their cocks are, or shit faced whine and weep about how teeny their weeny 
is. But either way, they don't hesitate to drop their pants. Now, come on, 
I'm a busy man. I'm a very busy man."

So I unbuckle and unzip my pants and push them down my legs.

"Your legs are dirty. You need a bath," comments Mr. Ormond. "Now, that's
promising..."

"What's promising?"

"You show imagination by not wearing underpants. All right. Step out of 
them. Take them off."

What the hell. I'm not going to argue. I pull off my pants.

"Walk over to the wall where the screen is." There's a glass screen 
framed with ebony strips. It is next to a floor-length painting. The canvas
is black. Upon the black is a darker black. A black cross upon the 
black-primed canvas.

"Down on your knees."

"I'm not a religious person..."

"You're a dumbo, so far, you're a big cloud brained dumbo. Down on your 
knees. There are two pillows on that bench that you can use for your 
knees."

Two green raw-silk pillows. Round. I do as I'm told.

"Now, Leonardo Dumbo, I'm going to plug you in. Don't panic."

Mr. Benjamin Aura Ormond proceeds to:

1) place a metal band around my head;

2) places metal bands in three places around my right arm after asking me
if I was right-handed;

3) attaches red, yellow, blue wiring to my chest-tapes it on with a 
silver-coated tape;

4) puts a plastic cup-harness beneath my balls and runs a white-covered 
wire from the cup-harness into a large machine which he wheels out;

5) attaches all plugs and wire-ends to poles and sockets on the machine.

"Are you ready?"

"I guess so."

"Don't you know, Dumbo? Don't you know?" The spit-bead in the corner of 
his mouth attaches itself to the side of his mustache. It sparkles as he 
yells at me.

"Yes. I'm ready, Mr. Ormond. I'm always ready."

"Very good," he says, sipping the jewel into his mouth. "That almost 
sounds like an artist.

Maybe you're a latent artist. Did you ever think of that? All right. Now,
I'm turning the screen on. In a few moments you'll see the first images. 
Start jerking off."

"Hey, now look here, I..."

"Now, you look. And you look clear and quick. This is the last time I'm 
going to tell you. This is a test. A test to qualify you for a job with 
lavish benefits and rewards. But it is an unusual job. We need special 
people for it. For special people we have devised special tests. You, my 
friend, are taking up valuable time with all of your old lady squeaking and
screaming. Do you understand?"

The first image explodes inside the screen. Parts the darkness with a 
triangle of light. A valley of parted flesh. Sensual ripples of cunt-earth 
parting for a man's probing finger.

Reminds me of Hilda Swanson and her deep-dish gash. Used to hire out for 
Conventions and small group gang-bangs. Part of her pleasure was showing 
select audiences how wide her cunt could stretch. How wide and how much she
could get into it. That was her thing. Cunt. Gymnastics.

"Come on, Dumbo, beat your meat," orders Ormond, earphones over his ears,
twiddling and twirling dials on the machine. Snapping switches. Pushing 
buttons. Writing down numbers and letters in a clip-board hooked to the 
machine. Checking dials. Wipes a spit-bead from his mouth.

"Come on, Dumbo, beat, beat!"

So I beat.

I grab my hot red rod in my fingers and cradle it. Feel its straining 
tension. Stroke the seam with tender fingertips. Gently at first.

Which sends the sex-itch urge to stroke harder and faster. But I am 
watching the pictures change on the screen in hopes that there will be an 
image I can really use. Something my imagination can get into.

I hold my cock's head in fingers lightened to feathers. And stroke 
quickly around the edges of the head. Quickly. Ever so gentle. Which makes 
the old cock crown rage red. Centers all sexual longing into a pinpoint at 
prick's top. Centers the itching burning explosive needs in tiny points 
that want to explode into a star-bath of come.

A red round hump appears. Screen right. And moves across the screen until
it is seen to be attached to the meat-shaft of a healthy cock. Pumping as 
if it were breathing. It stops in screen center. Twitching in lust. See its
comepump veins pulse. Ripple of fuck-want moves the outer cock skin like 
wind shifts sand about.

Screen left. The curled landscape of cunt. A hill of cunt moves slowly 
towards the cock. I can see just the tangled pubic hairs. They cover part 
of the cock's head like black lace.

Then her fingers reach to hold and steady the straining cock-rod. To 
guide it against the inner lips of her cunt. She (her hand) guides and 
pushes the cock head around the edges of her cunt's drooling entry. Her 
juices sparkle. (Reminds me of Ormond's spit-beads. Lose thread of jack-off
intensity.)

"Ha. Easily distracted by thoughts. Not quick enough to channel them into
the work at hand," says Ormond. Flicks a switch. "Let's try something new. 
You may stop."

The pain of it makes my cock lock in its hardness. But feel no pleasure. 
No need. As if it were frozen. Frozen in mid-air. Fat hard cock. Stuck 
there for eternity. That's how it feels. I see myself walking down the 
streets trying to conceal the strange tent growing from my crotch.

"Here we go, thinker. A little dab of this in the palm of your hand will 
do wonders for your cock and your stroke. Hold out your hand."

He squirts a white soap-thick foam into my hand. It is warm and 
pleasantly scented. Kind of oily.

"Stroke. Apply it to your cock."

It slides on and seems to form a heated shell around my hardness. The 
warmth relaxes the cock. Life returns to it. I feel the itch and tingle of 
hominess return with electric flowing.

"Now. Start beating, buddy. Beat that meat."

Ormond flicks another switch. Lights blink on and off. Machine hum. 
Clicks. The electronic waterfall roar of well-functioning machinery.

The cunt as a mandala. Center-screen.

Spread apart by the male hands of her lover. It is like looking into a 
gray-pink knothole. Each ring rounds itself into another. And all leads to 
the center bud. The whole wheel wired with nerves of mystery, threads of 
desire. Clitoris button hard, aroused. Close-up of its cock like pulse. 
Shadow of the lover's finger moving towards it. To touch it. Once. Which 
breaks the circle like touching a spider web.

My cock in its sheath of invisible warmth begins to remember the 
tightness of the Fat Lady's cunt. Remembers the wet endlessness of Hilda 
Swanson's cave of cunt. Her cunt meat like the wet wings of some frantical 
flightcrazed bird. My cock remembers the Jap whore's cunt-magic Yoga. 
Courtesan. Trained by the famous Madame Tong. Trained to control every 
sacred inch of the vagina when cock is pushed into it. She could actually 
draw my cock into her cunt. Those fantastic muscles would start grabbing 
cock head as soon as it pushed through her lips. Would get a hold of the 
tip and begin. Begin to squeeze and grab and push and pull. I'd be so 
amazed at how her cunt was drawing me into it, that I could do nothing but 
accept it all. I remember one time trying to push my cock up to the hilt. A
violent drunk night. Yet her Jap cunt-magic muscle clamped down. Refused my
cock room to move in.

"Goddammit. You're a rotten subject. You drift. You think. You are too 
easily distracted. No single purposefulness. No single-mindedness. But, we 
have one last device to help you achieve your goal. You do want to come, 
don't you? Don't you want to let some of that lava out? My machine shows 
that the load in your balls is bubbling over. Now, let's help ease that 
load, Dumbo. Excuse me."

Mr. Ormond fits my cock with a small wire basket. Foam-rubber surrounds 
the inner sheath. A round plastic dome surrounds the head of my prick.

I get bugged and lurch. And the sudden movement makes all the wires and 
bands make strange sounds. And I realize that I am well trapped. Tied down 
like Gulliver. Like the movie I saw on TV. Gulliver's Travels. Little 
people tied him down to the earth. Tied each strand of his hair to the 
earth. So when he woke up and tried to stand up... you dig? Great pain.

"Be still, dumb stooge. This is for you, this is for the job. This is 
important. This is a test. If you pass this one, then you're eligible for 
the next one."

"What the fuck? More tests?"

"Life is a test," announces Mr. Benjamin Aura Ormond as if he were some 
great sage. "We are always being tested. The Job itself is a constant test.
Walking the street is a test. Dreams test you. If you were an artist I 
wouldn't have to tell you all these things. Goddammit, you have wasted an 
awful lot of my time. You know, time is a test too. One of the great tests.
Hold out your hands."

I do and he puts a clasp around my right hand and one around the left. 
And clips my hands together. Behind me.

"Just a precaution. I don't want you wanting to take the device off. 
That's dangerous. To you and to me. It cost me half-a-million to finance 
it."

I feel the strange cock-basket vibrate to an even stranger tune.

He talks on and on about how precaution is the basis for all tests and 
how all tests are the basis of knowledge and how knowledge is the basis of 
existence. Shit like that. While my cock is being turned into a humming 
pudding of bliss inside its electronic sheath.

Ormond goes on to talk about how the artist understands the nature of 
testing because every move he makes is a test. My mind shuts him off. It 
has to. It has no choice.

My cock is like a pure vibration. It seems to shimmer and reawaken into a
new world of cunt. It is inside the most metaphysical pussy in the whole 
Universe. It is boring a tunnel inside of the greatest, earthiest cunt-hole
on earth. Both together. All at once. And, wow, the pictures, the fat-ass 
fuck pictures flashing on and off in my mind with each new reaching hum.

Wild, ass-grabbing, shoulder-digging, tit-licking, cunt-fingering, 
ear-sloshing, ball-dandling, fuck-rolling flashes of fucking so intense 
that it becomes an invisible power beyond flesh.

States and stages of fuck lust-power pushes my cock and mind into the 
pure white light of fuck freedom and sex-energy delight.

It's all one. All at once. Tits. Of all sizes and tensions and stories. 
Tits with burning sizzle nipples. With cold nub dots of nipples. With 
nipples wide as bananas. With nipples more narrow than the eraser on a 
pencil. Fat wide huge whale tits round and firm for two hands to mash into.
Small boy-body tits like lumps on firm-flesh child-whore chest. Tits that 
flap like flags. Tits whose brown disc centers are off of garage-wall 
calendars. Tits whose sad sag are like old burlesque dancers sent out to 
die in dried-up old man pastures. Tits that turn into pointy cones. Tits 
whose incredible volume and exact proportion to the perfect woman body are 
more than the hands or heart can take. And that's not all about tits. All 
there is to suck, nibble, taste, touch, squeeze, tweak, diddle, dandle, 
noodle, doodle, chew, rub, poke, grab-all the tit tactile manual of 
delights is mine. Right now. The book opens and the pages flash by and for 
each tit it shows me, my vibrating cock responds to. And that's not all.

Where there's smoke there's fire.

I won't bug you, fuck freaks, with idle chatter about thighs, hips, 
bellybuttons, shoulders, hands, neck. I won't even bother to go into face 
rapture. And tell you how all the women of the world, in their essential 
archetypes, face me and my cock. My mind is alive with woman. My cock is 
alive with fuck-serum. I feel lava pools bubbling in my balls. My asshole 
rattles with tingling nerve-energy bleeps of jerkoff fuck code.

I won't bug you with extra-curricular description and useless erudition. 
Fuck fans, let's get to the cunt. Now!

Ah, cunt!

Cunt army before me. Any conceivable cunt is there. All shapes, all 
sizes. V-shaped curlecue hair. V-shaped muffs bearding the love slot. Wild 
pubic jungle gardens seeded from the navel and thickening in blackness. 
Spilling-out wild around gashes. Cunt-hair thick as uncut lawn-grass. 
Cunt-hair running from cunt mouth across the flesh seam and up the cheeks 
of a plump round ass. Wild curly cunt hair. Frail sparkly thin patch of 
golden cunt hair. Bushes. Lawns. Straight lines. Circles of cunt hair. Cunt
hair in the shape of a sideburn. (I want to go into armpit hair but this is
a cunt-hair vision and I know you want to know about cunt. All roads and 
turns and bulges and bends lead only to cunt. To cunt valley, cunt tunnel, 
cunt wheel, cunt door, cunt mouth, cunt city freeway nerve-jungle. Cunt. 
And I'm with you, cunt people, I'm with you.)

And for the great inner flesh magic circus of pussy. Suddenly that's all 
my mind can see. And not only can I see cunt but I can feel cunt. All cunt.

I come when I realize that I am fucking every cunt in the world in this 
one moment. I'm inside every cunt. They all blur into one cunt. One loving 
hot milking squeezing heaving groaning muscled cunt drawing out the froth 
of fire breaking the boundaries of my balls.

KAPLOW!

Ah, cunt!

My coming pumps out of my pole like an oil well gusher. I watch my sperm 
shoot out. Like sparkling white birds. Sperm clouds arc in the air. Splotch
down on the floor. It is raining sperm. It is snowing come. My clothing 
gets wet with it. The coming blinds me. Snowstorm of sperm.

Toes burn with coming launched from the soles of my feet.

Coming fills my body up. Like a thermometer. Then tears out of it. Like a
tornado.

I'm on my knees. Come shooting out of my cock.

I fall back for mercy. Come shoots up and tattoos the ceiling with wet 
white clouds. They stick there for a while. Then, like taffy, begin to 
slowly stretch and drip and fall onto me and onto the floor.

Come pumps out of my cock. My cock is twice its size. The strange basket 
is rattling around the flesh it sheaths. The plastic dome has turned a 
bright pink color. Its hole widens like the lens of a camera. My sperm 
blasts through it.

I see the pulse and spasm of muscles around the groin.

My balls pop up and down. Busy in the continual creation of sperm. More 
and more sperm. Sparkling white ribbons of sperm shooting out of my cock.

CHAPTER SIX

"Read the Manual with care," says the Nerve-Speak voice through a single 
speaker I cannot locate. "Your next test will be based on material 
presented in the Manual. Your ability to learn and present your learning 
will greatly increase your chances for EP status. EP status pertains to 
Escalating Position. Manual reference is page 35"

Click. Crackle. Shift. Then nerve-ease music.

I sit in a small room. A closet. No windows. A door. Table. Chair. Me. In
a kind of pajama suit. My other clothes are being cleaned.

My prick is a warm pink mushroom. Still tingling with the echos of 
coming. It peeks wearily through the white pajama bottom's buttonless fly.

I pick up the Manual. It's a small paperback.

HOW & WHY & WHEN & WHERE & WHO ARE YOU? & WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE ANYWAY?

The Rules Of The Game by B. A. ORMOND

And I read.

Study the laws, the rules, the regulations. Ethics, standards, by-laws 
and codes of conduct.

All of them written in top-heavy roundabout prose. Always using the 
artist as a divine symbol.

Bah.

I read. And I read. And after a while, the words become as creamy as the 
nerve-ease music.

CHAPTER SEVEN

All right, drop-outs, I don't want to bore you (or me) with test-time 
details. Needless to say I tried. I slid through what was well oiled. 
Scraped through what was dry and uphill. Does that clear the air? Probably 
not. But written tests aren't my trick or bent.

Nerve-Speak voice says, "You have been graded. Your door is now able to 
open. Open it. Walk to Room 24 There you will be informed of your grade. 
You will be told what job, if any, you are to hold. That is all."

"Say," I ask. "What time is it?"

How long have I been here? Is it dinner time? Jesus, I'm hungry. And 
horny for Carol. Horny for the streets that lead to her. The freedom of 
ducking snipers and hail chimes loud in my head.

"Sorry. That is restricted information. Room 24 Double-time."

Nerve-Speak clicks off.

Yes, sir.

And I open the door. Step onto deep-pile rug hallway covering. Must be on
another floor. The last floor was covered with psuedo marble. See how 
observant your hero is?

You wouldn't believe that my fucking corrupt father (bless his black 
heart) was a cop. Would you? Well, he was.

Pad down the hall in bare feet.

Room 24 Knock on it.

The door, like Ormond's, opens by itself. I walk through.

There's a desk. A gray machine behind it. A grandmother-type lady sits 
next to it with a notebook poised in her lap.

The door clicks shut when I enter the room.

"At ease," the machine says. Nerve-Speak voice. "Your test results, 
written, are not favorable. Grant you Grade C. Third layer of dark 
consciousness."

Gray machine talks like low-budget flick scifi gremlin.

"Miss Fulk, what is his JS?"

"That's Job Stat," says Miss Fulk in a robin chortle whisper.

"What's Job Stat?"

"Level of potential employment."

"Oh," I mutter. Feeling dumb and chilly in my white pajama suit.

"Put your hands upon the plastic mat upon the desk I sit behind," says 
the machine.

I walk up to the desk and do as I am ordered. My palms are wet and they 
stick to the plastic mat.

"Miss Fulk, press the print button."

"Yes sir," she whispers.

Zit. Zit.

"What are you doing?"

"Filing your prints," answers the machine. "Now, Miss Fulk, fit him for 
the organ print."

"Oh, yes sir," sighs Miss Fulk. When she smiles, it cracks the heavy 
powder on her grandmother face. Little powder-puff snowflakes float to the 
rug.

Miss Fulk puts her pad on the desk top. Opens a drawer to pull out a 
dildo-shaped plastic device.

"You had better pull your pants down, young man," she whispers.

I do.

Nothing bothers me.

And Miss Fulk fits the dildo around my limp dick.

"Begin," says the machine.

"Oh, yes, sir, yes," sighs Miss Fulk. Powder flaking and falling onto my 
bare feet.

Zit. Zit.

"What's happening?" I ask.

"Prick print," whispers Miss Fulk, "if you'll excuse the expression."

"Filed," announces the machine. "Activate it, Miss Fulk, for alternate 
file-image."

It looks like Miss Fulk turns pale and drifts into the dip of a half 
swoon.

"Are you all right?" I ask her.

"Oh, yes, sir, yes," she sighs. Reaches for my balls with grandmother 
fingertips and touches them with skill and history.

"What are you doing?" I ask her.

"Oh, sir," she sighs and whispers to me, "oh, I'm trying to get that pink
bud of yours to blossom." And she laughs daintily and blushes mightily.

"I don't want to ruin your fun but I don't think I can get aroused for 
another year," I say.

"Did he, did Mr. Ormond, run your man flower through his deflowering 
machinery?"

"Yes."

"Miss Fulk does not worry about such matters," announces the machine. 
"She is a Specialist."

"In what?" I ask, feeling giddy and feisty.

"You'll find out," whispers grandmother Fulk, strapping the plastic 
prick-print device around her small hour-glass waist.

Miss Fulk takes off her glasses.

I wish I could say that it helped.

And pulls the bullwhip out of the wastebasket. It is then I notice that 
she is wearing kneelength patent leather boots and shoulder-length leather 
gloves. And her skirt is made of black leather that hugs her bony hips, her
rather skinny legs.

Zit. Zit. Zipow. Whap. Dank. Kazoom.

Miss Fulk, her cheeks flushed with erotic fervor, wields a mighty wild 
whip. Chunks of ceiling-tiles splinter and chip to the floor.

"I'm your mistress Tanya Leather Cunt," she yells at me. And when Miss 
Fulk yells, I smile. Which angers her whip hand.

Zap. Zing. Wing. Bap.

Ouch.

I don't think she wants to hurt me. But she's wild on the draw. Whip 
thong takes out a precious portion of my neck-flesh. Mere skin wound. Warm 
blood trickles down my neck and down my back.

"Grab a hold of that chair. Bend over. I'm going to teach you Tanya 
Leather Cunt discipline, slave. Serf, vassal, churl and crush human 
flesh-trash."

Zammo. Zwap. Zwick. Shit.

Pisses me off. All this idiocy. For one flash of a moment I want to grab 
poor Miss Fulk by her bird-thin neck and throttle the stuffing out of her 
bony body.

"Miss Fulk, get on with it. My transistors are tiring. My sense of drama 
is weakening. My engine is faltering. Etcetera, etcetera," says the 
machine.

"Sorry, sir," whispers Miss Fulk, poking the whip-handle into her cunt. 
"So sorry."

I hold onto the chair. Bent over. My naked butt bobbing before her.

"Oh, my, it's dimpled," she whispers in her robin's gargle voice. 
"Dimpled and a wee fine spray of freckles."

And rams the dildo into my asshole with shocking power.

Rips through the small hole with instant white-lightning flashes of pain.

And Miss Fulk (nee Tanya Leather Cunt) groans in cunt-twisted glee.

And pulls out. Only to ram it in again. This time harder. I buckle over 
the chair with the rod jammed up my ass. The fall rips the harness off of 
Miss Fulk. Who falls backward. Lands on her bony butt.

The machine says, "All right, Miss Fulk, we have his rectal reading too. 
When will you learn to control your rather distasteful lusts?"

"Oh, sir, sir, I am so ashamed," whimpers Miss Fulk. Her tears cut canals
through the powder on her face.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I'm told by a man in gray overalls to check in tomorrow for Briefing & 
Instruction.

"Does this mean I'm hired?" I ask him.

"It don't mean anything. I'm just the janitor here."

"What time am I supposed to be here?"

"Nine o'clock sharp. And, here, take this." He hands me a stiff plastic 
card.

"It's your Comp-ID. Hand it to the lady at the desk when you leave and 
hand it to her when you arrive. She'll punch it through and give it back to
you. It's a multi-purp card. It's got your stats diagrammed into it. It's 
also used to punch-in the time you work."

"You sure know a hell of a lot for a janitor."

"I'm just a part-time janitor," he answers. "What do you do full time?"

"I'm really an artist. This is how I make money."

"What time is it?" I ask him.

"I don't know. I never carry time with me."

"Tell me, is it still daylight outside?"

"No. It's night. A bad night," he tells me. "What do you mean?" I ask. 
"Snipers? Chromatics? Creepers? Dogs mad with new plague? What?"

"The stars are out tonight," says the part-time janitor. "For the first 
time in a year and a half. The stars are out."

"Do you have a car?" I ask.

"Sure. Why?"

"Gimme a lift to where I'm staying."

"I'm still on duty."

"I'll wait."

"Look, I'll be here for hours."

"Can I bum carfare off of you?"

"Busses aren't running tonight. The stars. They're afraid of what happens
when the stars come out. Like the last time. The killings, the madness, the
raping, the strange words that came out of people's throats... terrible 
time for most."

"I was inside. I never knew about it. Where I was, there weren't any 
windows."

"Look, I don't want to be responsible for anything happening to you. I'll
give you a lift. Do you have any shades on you?"

"No," I answer.

"I'd lend you mine, but I'm driving. Just don't look too long at them. 
That's all. Try not to stare."

The part-time janitor's short is a brand-new MI Flag sports car. A shiny 
low-slung rocket of a car.

"That's just a front," comments the janitor. "My father gave it to me. 
He's very concerned that I don't reveal my true identity. So every one'll 
think I'm something else when I zoom by in this super-sleek MI Flag."

"Your dad's got dough."

"Loaded."

"So how come you're a janitor?"

"Part-time. It's a way of balancing my head. You understand?"

"No."

"Hold on."

With a roar that rumbles the frame of the car, the Flag ignites and its 
engine explodes with horsepower. Thrusts into gear. I slam back into the 
bucket-seat. And we're off. Out of the underground garage.

"Dig this," says the driver. And snaps on the tape-deck stereo.

Hi-power pop music rocks and blasts and shakes out.

"Mike Cream & The Scum Bags. A great new group," he says. "Really into 
deaf-sound. White sound to puncture eardrums. A cool idea when you think 
that nobody really hears what they're listening to. I mean, really."

I'm beginning to dislike this punk. His car, his stereo tape, his art, 
his father, his fascist flapping.

"Everyone hears what they're able to hear."

"Bullshit," he says, and grinds the gear into high. Cuts the corner with 
the animal-agony whine of brakes and rubber digging into concrete.

And then I look up and see the stars. All of them are there. All 
clustered and flung out from the large moon that is also there. It hurts my
eyes. Those stars. That strange evil moon.

"It's the true law. Winners and losers. That's what it is," says the 
janitor. "If you lose then you lost when you were born. Born without 
brains, without art, you're a loser. That's what I say. That's what Dad 
says."

"It sounds like Ormond talk," I say.

"Maybe it is. What's wrong with Ormond's thought? Look where he is now."

And we wail around another corner. Gravity pushes me back in the bucket 
seat. Every time he shifts gears, the car jerks and I'm pushed back in my 
seat. It's like some thumby Boss poking you in the chest to prove each 
point.

"Ormond's a giant," says the janitor. "Hell, he just about controls this 
city. I mean, the real city. He's got it sewed-up."

"How's that?"

"How's what?"

"How does Ormond have the city sewed up?"

"You'll find out."

Slams his fat foot on the brake-pedal. Seat-belt cuts a notch in my skin.

Sudden stop.

Bam.

Before us are six men dressed in black with masks over their faces and 
guns with silencers on them.

"Get out," says the man in the center of the group. He is the tallest and
the widest of the six. "Get out and dump your money onto the road. Get 
going."

"Do as he says," the janitor whispers. "I've got him covered."

"How? I..."

"Un-strap and get out. Then hit the ground," he whispers.

Silencer pops a hole through the wraparound window.

"Come on!"

I unbuckle the safety-belt. Open the door. Step out. Then drop to the 
ground.

"What the..." mutters the tall wide man.

A spray of machine gun bullets tears methodically through all of the six 
members of the gang.

The bullets rip across from right to left then left to right. Craters in 
the chest gush blood and smoke.

Nobody has a chance to defend themselves. Nobody has a chance to run 
away.

The six men dressed in black stand still. Like photographs. Just for a 
few seconds. Their bodies are punctured with machine gun slugs. The blood 
looks black draining down their black clothes.

When they fall, they fall together.

One falls backwards. Another sideways. Two fall face-down. The last two 
slump down to their knees. Then buckle over and hit the cement like men 
making love.

And that's that.

Smoke from four machine guns drifts up to lamplight.

"Dad thinks of everything. Except bulletproof glass," says the janitor. 
"They were too dumb to live. Get in the car."

* * *

When I leave the car, I ask him for his name. He says that they call him 
Little Ben. I thank him. He says not to mention it.

CHAPTER NINE

Not only am I late, I'm not even hungry.

Carol's asleep. There's a snarly note on the coffee table. Explaining to 
her, apologizing, the thought of it fatigues me.

I've got two choices:

Sleep on the sofa. Or go into the bedroom and chance it. I'll slip into 
bed. And slip it into her. And when she wakes up, it'll be in the middle of
a slow, dreamy fuck. She'll be too absorbed to interrogate me.

But if she's awake, waiting to face me, and to bitch and crab about what 
a swine I am...

What the hell.

I open the bedroom door.

It's dark. Starlight and moonlight shine through the double-thick layers 
of curtains covering the window. I see the landscape of her body beneath 
the blankets. I see she's wearing the eye-protector. So moonlight and 
starlight won't enter her dreams.

I enter the room. Feel like a demon lover. Black shadow beast. Sneak up 
to her on tiptoes. Today flashes on and off in my head as I approach her.

Watch her small round breasts move as she breathes. Watch her soft 
cock-sucking mouth move as she breathes. Watch her breathe. How her flesh 
moves with her breathing. Her flat belly rising. The dream traced by her 
eyes.

Carol groans. Probably being fingered by the faceless dream fucker our 
hearts grab for. Night after night.

I pull the sheets down. And slip into bed. Beside her. Her body oven-hot.
Sleep-warmed. Toasty. The skin of her legs smooth as glass. I trace my palm
print upon her hot thigh.

Reach over the muscles to the beginning of her woman garden.

Carol groans again.

Who knows? Fucked a million ways at once by the dream fucker. What can I 
do? I can't dream the dream she dreams. Can't get into her sunlight river 
of dream fuck.

My palm rests on the hairy mound of her cunt. Slowly to lower on those 
soft springs. To the muscle of her cunt meat. Press down on it. My finger 
unfolding to reach and touch the division of her pussy flesh. To touch the 
first mouth man reaches to speak into with his first word. His first word 
gives birth to the world. The world in a child.

I'm dreaming too.

But my cock's awake.

It begins to push and poke outward. To find and fill its maximum shape.

Carol's thighs squirm about as my fingertip pushes through her wet cunt 
lips and into the valley of her vagina.

She murmurs dream language.

"Oh. Uh. Do you? Mmm. Uh."

And then says, "Mr. RR. Alephbethgrowlgrool."

Something like that. I'm not really listening for words. Communicating 
with my finger in her. Swabbing her cunt flesh. The inner arc. Fingering 
erotic circles within her cunt. Swooping and sweeping. Fingertip pushing 
deeper and deeper.

"Sonofabitch," groans Carol. "Did you get the job?"

"I don't know."

She pulls off her eye-mask.

But I'm too busy to look into her sleep glazed eyes.

I am hungry to taste pussy. To dip my tongue into her steaming meat 
rings.

And I do just that.

Quickly slide down to her cunt. My temples wedged between her slick 
thighs.

No time for art. To whiff her musk like a wine-taster. Hand on mound, I 
push my tongue into the slot. Fast. Pushing down on her mound presses her 
clit closer to the vaginal opening. Gives me more room. More room to lick 
and taste.

I lick and suck her clitoris while she twists and squirms and whimpers.

I suck and nibble her labia. Lick her clit. Stick and jam my tongue as 
deep into her cunt as I can. As hard as I can. It always happens this way. 
The first taste of her cunt and I can't stop.

I want to lick and suck and nibble and smell her and taste her and devour
that magical flesh between her legs.

I reach my hand up to squeeze her nipples gently between my fingers. The 
electric network lights up. Her body glows. She whispers loving obscenities
to me.

"Oh cock prick dick fuck suck cornhole ram piss shit screw cunt tits 
asshole pussy balls."

I want to fondle the lips of her cunt. Mash the meat around while my 
tongue and teeth work inward.

"Turn," she groans. "Turn."

I know what she means. I know what she wants.

We move our bodies around so that my cock is dangling in front of her 
eyes while my tongue, my hands, are working into her cunt.

Her lips latch on. Draw my cock into her mouth with a sound of suction. 
Zoom. It's in there. And Carol's super-lips are slurping and slopping and 
sucking my cock.

And I'm slurping and slopping and sucking her cunt.

Tongue-whipping her clitoris.

Finger-ramming her vagina.

Heads resting on the inside of each other's lower thigh.

Touching, licking, sucking.

Her tongue laps my cock's full length. Then burrows into my ball nest.

My tongue licks her cunt lips, chews them, then slides down the seam that
leads to her ass-bud. Licks its wrinkled roundness. Tongues its center. 
Pushes against it. Hear her moan.

Then slip my tongue back into her cunt to chew and nibble her hard clit 
button while feeling her mouth gobble my cock in a greedy frenzy of suck.

"Oh cock prick dick fuck suck cornhole ram piss shit screw cunt tits 
asshole pussy balls O cock prick dick fuck suck O ram piss shit tits pussy 
balls," she groans pulling my cock out of her mouth for a moment. My hard 
balls sway above her eyes. Hot breath of her speech tingles them into 
greater feeling. My cock is stretching on its base. As if to rocket off. 
Lost forever in the cunt planet.

Salt of sperm, salt of the oceans, I become a cannibal. I want to eat 
every inch of her salty cunt meat. Chewing it, nibbling, sucking the flesh.
Grinding soft cunt skin between my teeth. Poking my tongue as deep into the
cunt as I can get it. My nose burrows in too. To sniff the wonder stink of 
fucking.

It's all I can do to tear my mouth away from her cunt. And slip my wet 
cock into her. Slip into her slippery cunt meat. Her burning cunt meat.

Whew. And she begins. Those inner muscles start their squeezing. Start to
milk my rigid cock. Soften it. Harden it. At the same time. It's going to 
be quick. I feel it. Her tight twat. Tight hot twat draining my cock of all
its strength to resist.

I touch the lips of her cunt with my fingers. Press against it. Feel the 
shaft of my cock drilling into her flesh. In and out. How her lips widen to
take it in.

Her hands are cupping my balls. Pulling gently on the sacs. Her other 
finger probes my butt. Strokes the ass divide. Grunts.

I let it go. All of it. What's left of it. Spurts and pumps into her 
grabbing cunt muscles.

"Oh cock fuck suck dick prick cunt pussy."

CHAPTER TEN

Carol crashes immediately after it. Her mouth open. Snoring.

But I'm wide awake. Sit on the edge of the bed in the dark room. Trying 
to put together the thoughts that are loud in my head. It's like there's a 
whole 25 Year War raging inside. The noise of my thinking is incredible. I 
squeeze my eyes shut.

But the noise won't be shut out.

I go into the kitchen. Break open a bottle of Carol's rare orange-colored
wine. And pour a big cupful. And take a big gulp of it.

The orange-colored wine is warm and spreads through my body like a 
sunrise.

Now what was I thinking about?

The job? What will it be? What's happening to me? I have to figure this 
out. I'm a prisoner again. And if I don't go, to the job, I'll be a 
prisoner of my doubt, my sense of adventure. Trapped again.

When they let me go, I thought that I'd live on the streets. Like it was 
before. My golden youth. Let me tell you about it.

But first I drink a toast to you inside of my head. Cheers. And gulp down
another mouthful. My stomach feels like a kiln.

Back to the bedroom. The darkness. The happy musk of fucking. Bodies. 
Sweat. Wet sheets from sperm overflow. And flop in the big stuffed chair by
the window double-curtained to shut out the starlight.

Yes. King of the streets once, a long time ago. Upon a time. Gone time. 
Now just the fairytale story of it. How my father was a cop and how I stole
his gun one morning and walked out into the street-world. The gun tucked 
into my pants. Handle sticking out over my belt. Stole some bills from 
Momma because she wouldn't care.

Momma wouldn't care, she couldn't understand, but she had faith in me. 
See, this story, how it sounds like something on TV?

This story sounds like a TV rerun. An old movie for the ancient 20th 
Century mind. Bubbling under in the swill of false dreams. Until the race 
died out. And a new tough race replaced it. And the new tough race became 
fat. Begot flab. And, in turn, had to be over toppled by new toughness.

I was a new tough leader.

Hit those streets with curly hair and cruel hassle in my heart. That's 
how it is. All of the rules I tell you all mean that you got to watch your 
step and always be one step ahead of the next guy. Because you can't trust 
anybody. Especially the next guy.

Now, where the fuck was I? Was I trying to tell you my story?

Gulp down more orange-colored wine.

You learn fast on the streets. Or else you're dead.

Example.

You learn how to strip down a Creeper of his goods without touching his 
contaminated flesh. Like stripping down a car. You learn what is valuable 
and what isn't. You learn to recognize that if a thing shines it isn't 
necessarily worth a shit. You learn to develop subtle machinery in your 
instincts that let you weigh and measure instantly.

You learn how to fast-talk chromatics so that they'll give you anything. 
Because you've told them that you've got some incredible cure for their 
incurable mutation freak disease. And they'll go for it. All the time. 
Because their brains don't work in hussle terms. They're soft-headed. Kind 
to their kids. But they're freaks. Body-wise. Flippers and no noses and 
pinheads and I remember one without a mouth. And some don't have legs and 
others don't have ears. But they band together, like street people, and 
live nice lives, I guess, in their part of town.

You learn how to powder-down all kinds of dope. How to weaken it to 
spread it out and sell more of it to more junkies and pill freaks and 
all-around needle-riders. What the fuck do they know anyway? Sugar's good 
for you. Especially if you're a needle-Christ. A cat who crucifies himself 
as often as he can. Pushes that spike into his arm, his leg, his hip, his 
ass. I even knew a cat who shot himself in the neck. Pumped the stuff into 
his jugular vein. I don't know how long he lived.

You learn how to sneak in to Snark meets and mess their heads and bods. 
Run off with their fuckingest chick. Slave her out to outlawpack gangfuck 
tourney. Then throw the torn woman back onto Snark-meet altar. And see what
happens. See how "sexually liberated" Snarks are. They ain't. And they know
it. That's why they organize.

You learn how to fast-talk Rebs. Fly 'em a flag. Tell 'em about Mom. 
Sneak a peek into your dirty picture file. Get 'em all horny for God, 
country and flag. Get 'em all horny for beer and pussy. Get them Rebs going
and you've got them. That's what you learn. They'll buy anything you've got
when you get them going. Anything.

You learn that you can burn almost anyone if they trust you. You learn 
that trust is the greatest weapon of all. The greatest burnpivot.

You learn to talk like I'm talking now.

Sitting in the dark bedroom of a woman who gives you head and feeds you 
well. Sitting in a dark bedroom that smells of fucking. And drink down 
orange-colored wine.

And forget it. Forget my history. I learned nothing.

And forget it all. For the time being.

Pull apart the curtains. Look up at the sky. The stars. The moon.

The stars like the star my black-hearted father wore on his puffed-out 
chest. Cop stars. The whole heavens shine with cop stars.

We'd form our street packs. Wolf packs. And the main command inside our 
hands was to kill the cop. Slaughter the pig. Pull off his ears and tack 
them on the Station House door.

Everyone in their special hell wants to get back at that power which robs
them of their freedom. For us street people it's the cop, the pig, who's 
always after us. He hunts our freedom. Bags it. Kills it. Kills it in pens 
and cages and rooms where plainclothesmen beat the shit out of you but 
never draw blood. Have you ever been kidney-smacked and ball-slammed and 
gut-punched and had a detective pull on your tongue? Pull on your tongue to
pull out the filthy word you told him? They wrap towels around their clubs 
so they can't bruise your skin. And ram the towel-covered club into the 
softness above your liver. Pow.

Why the fuck couldn't my father have been a sanitation worker? If he had 
to work for the City, why couldn't he have gotten a job as a Fun Zone dick?

Also in the stars tonight I see the body of my broken mother. Bent over 
the kitchen table. Having quit the whole play. Letting the curtain fall 
down over her dreams. Giving up. I want to grab a hold of her whipped body 
and tell her not to quit. Leave the dumb brute pig. But I forget that this 
is all she cares for now. This terrible martyrdom. Night after night he 
tells her what shit I am. What scum. What foul, ugly seed of devils bloomed
in her corrupt womb. Monster vomit like that. I want to dynamite his mouth.
I want to foul him so bad he never fucks or talks again. I want to.

Oh shit. I feel so rotten. Not right for your hero. Forgive me. It must 
be the stars and the moon. Turning my head around. Bruising my heart.

The wine tastes better. The deeper the gulp, the better the kick. My eyes
getting cement-heavy.

The white neon light of stars and moon turns my hand into a black and 
white photo of itself. My shadow upon the floor is edged with the light of 
prisms.

Carol snores; blissful and well-fucked.

For some there is always sweet dreams.

For others there is always this. Frantic monkey-house chatter. Like 
primitive tribe at edge of some terror basin. Chanting all night to keep 
the fear hidden underground. To keep the fear in darkness. To wait the 
sunrise.

Ahhhhh.

Sunrise in my gut.

Sunrise in my eyes.

More wine.

Heat of molten gold.

Always this. Even then. On the streets. After a scam, a hype, this 
feeling of great grief, great sorrow. Old woman teardrops. Not right. Not 
right for a hero. Crying on his funky shirt in starlight and moonlight. Not
right.

Fuck what's right. Fuck what's wrong.

Fuck everything. Everything wants to be fucked. Everything wants to fuck.

My jaw gets tight. Sticking out. Jaw-muscles clenching. Tough-guy grit. 
Hurts my face. Cracks my mask in half.

Got to stay away from her wine.

See pale rainbow rings around the stars and the moon. See the faces of 
the dead I have known. Up there in the sky. I see bodies in the illuminated
cloud packs drifting across the sky. I watch the stars and moon until eyes 
cross. My lids finally crash down. Starless, moonless darkness takes over. 
When I awake, it's as if I never slept.



PART THREE - THE JOB: ON IT

Oh, this tearing thing, the heart that won't leave me alone! I'm only 
half of everything. I don't even love, it is just my vanity. I can hear 
what you say, I'm not deaf, I have ears, but what does it mean? Maybe I'm 
only sleeping, they'll come and wake me; and maybe it's just that I'd do 
anything, the most evil things, just to get under a roof; I'm telling lies 
to myself, closing my eyes...

-Brecht

CHAPTER ONE

I hand my Comp-ID card to the lady behind the desk. She feeds it into the
machine. Which burps it back into her hand in five seconds.

"All right," she says. "Go to the third floor. Here's your tag."

She hands me a tag with the number 74 on it. It is clipped onto my 
Comp-ID card.

The third floor is nothing but a big hall crowded with people. There's a 
small stage and a lectern. That's it. No chairs to sit on.

I put change into the Pep-Machine. It pops out in a white plastic cup. 
Smoking hot. I sip it cautiously and look around.

Mostly average-looking goons. Some men in wheelchairs. A few 
average-looking women. One basket-case. One or two Blacks. And even a 
handful of kids. Everyone's just standing around. As if we're all waiting 
for a bus.

Nerve-Speak voice comes out of the wall.

"Five minutes," it announces. "Five minutes."

I nudge a kid standing next to the Pep machine. He is pushing the 
coin-return button. Over and over again.

"Hey, kid, what does it mean when it says five minutes?"

"It means that in five minutes the Section Head will come in, walk up to 
the lectern and read out today's assignments. Goddammit."

"What's wrong?"

"They fixed this fucking button again. I've been working on it all last 
week. I did pretty good too. Managed to keep my pockets tinkling in spare 
change. You get to know each little click and slide of a machine. You know 
what I mean? Coin-operated machines are my civilian specialty. When I'm on 
the streets. I'm real good at it," says the kid, sounding like a sawed-off 
professor lecturing on Greek antiquities.

"Let me see your number," he asks. "Mmmm, 74 That means you're still 
bonehead-material. You'll wait around and watch most everybody get their 
assignment and then the Section Head'll call all numbers under 100 and tell
them to go to the Lecture Room. That's in the basement."

"I notice some familiar faces in the crowd. But I can't place them. In 
particular, there's a young couple who remind me of another young couple 
that I am sure I've seen recently. But I can't place them. The Section Head
walks up to the small stage. Grips the lectern. And begins.

"All right, people of Ormond, let's see what the great wheel of fortune 
has spun for you today."

He titters in his chubby paw. Clears his throat. Adjusts his glasses. 
Wipes the folded sheets of paper down. Tries to flatten them out. But they 
keep crinkling back up into their original folds.

Section Head is a short man. Stocky. With a round face and a pink, 
shining bald head. He wears a tweed suit that looks too big for him. If he 
had a mustache, he'd look like Ormond would look if Ormond were a loser, a 
washout.

"Now then, boys and girls, guys and dolls, let's get down to business."

Section Head rests both hands on the paper to keep it down.

"Numbers 345 through 569 Hands."

A group of people raise their hands.

"Yes. Well. Go to Garage 8 for costumes. You'll be on death-watch today. 
Now. Sell, sell, sell, those Lifetime Scrapbooks."

Numbers 345 through 569 leave the hall and group before the elevator.

"Numbers 145 through 212 Hands."

Again, a number of people raise their hands.

"Very good. You are assigned to Garage 7 Check-in there for fittings and 
make-up. Where is Number 210? Ah, good. Did you bring your iron-lung 
attachment? You did? Good. Very good. All right, gang, break the hearts of 
the housewife, choke up the souls and tear ducts of those suburban 
housewives with softening brain and gut. Sell, sell, sell, those Purple 
Heart TV Guides."

Numbers 145 through 212 leave the hall and wait for the elevator to come 
and take them down to Garage 7.

It goes like that for at least an hour. Until, as the coin-return kid 
said, all numbers under 100 are assigned to Lecture Room.

I raise my hand.

"Yes, 74?"

"Do we get paid for today?"

"You get paid for every day," he says. And folds up the papers and jams 
them into his pocket. "You'd better get going. Time is money. And money is 
the root of all evil. Tis better to give than to receive. Take what's yours
and run. I never travel anywhere without fifty dollars cash. A fool and his
money are soon parted. Hurry, catch that elevator down. Penny wise, pound 
foolish. Money answereth all things. If you're late to your first class, 
you'll be back on the streets on your fanny. Money makes the man. Hurry!"

Someone holds back the shutting elevator doors for me. I squeeze through.

"Thanks," I tell him.

"D-d-d-on't mm-mm-ention it-tt," stammers my benefactor.

"When I saw you earlier," I say to the stuttering benefactor, "you spoke 
just like anybody else."

"D-d-d-on't b-b-uh-be dec-eee-uh-vied. I-I-I'm r-r-re-hearsing," he says.

"For what?"

The girl beside him smiles.

"M-m-my role."

CHAPTER TWO

The Lecture boiled down. I mean, the essence of it.

Two words.

Scam City.

Organized Con Union of Scam-trained finks and ginks and ice-hearted 
goons.

That's what the Lecture is boiled-down to.

What the Ormond Industries do is is nothing more, or less, than a vast 
network of tightly-organized confidence-games aimed at milking the gold out
of fat-ass middle class suburbs and upper class mansions.

The Lecturer tells us how there are not that many scams. Most of us there
know what he means. The basic scam rests on the confidence pivot. How to 
build it. Then how to balance it. Then how to take the money and run.

Guilt, shame and doubt. Great tools to hand to a victim. Let the victim 
cut his own throat. That's what confidence is all about.

Permit me to use an example from the Ormond Book of Boob & Rube Rites 8c 
Rituals.

It works on heartstrings. Ties 'em all up. Ties 'em into heartstring 
knots. Heart-garrotte.

Okay. Here's one of the basic deals. The roles are interchangeable. It's 
stressed that we must be ready and willing to adapt to as many different 
roles as possible.

As an example: I'm a Vet. They give me a uniform which their clothing 
factory manufactures. Not too much fruit salad on my chest. I'm not 
supposed to be anything more than the average hero. They've found that 
people can't handle the full-scale God-Hero types they dream about. 
Ordinary people feel very comfortable with ordinary heroes.

Most prominent medal is the Purple Heart. It's placed on my chest so that
Mrs. Middleclass Prune Cunt will spot it immediately. She ties it in with 
the image of me limping up to her front door.

Spiel goes something like this:

"How d'you do, m'am? I'm 1st Sergeant Bill Wilson. I'm a Vet. I'd like to
introduce you to my kid brother, Chuck Wilson. He's workin' his way through
college. Since Mom and Dad were killed in the terrible accident... and 
Dad's last words to Chuck were, "Chuck, we can die easy if we just know 
that you'll finish college and get your degree'... gosh, you know, m'am, 
how important it is, these days, to have a college degree... I curse myself
for not gettin' mine... Now, now, I'm not kickin', you understand... but 
I've kinda made a promise, a big promise, to Mom and Dad to help get Chuck 
through college. To give him the big chance I never had."

And while Mrs. Middleclass Prune Cunt (wife to Mr. Middleclass Gutflop 
and mother of three new planetary systems that are unknown to her even now:
ages 10, 8 and 7) is debating on shutting the door on our faces, my 
confederate, my partner, smiles his Horatio Alger guts-and-vigour grin. 
It's a smile that crackles and cuts through his ruddy mask like a sunrise. 
His powder-blue eyes twinkle with the righteous light of sincerity, 
integrity and, above all, reliability and trust.

Chuck begins to stammer winsomely to this woman.

We can usually hear her TV set going. Midafternoon soap-operas or 
quiz-shows ("Win Washington, DC, if you answer this one, simple 
question..."

"Yes, yes, anything! I've already won Trenton, New Jersey, for betraying 
my husband's tax shortages. What do I have to do for Washington DC? Holy 
smokes! If I win Washington, DC, does that mean I own the White House? And 
if I own the White House, does that mean I'm better than the President? And
if I'm better than the President, does that mean I can over-rule the IRS 
and revoke Marvin's 20 Year sentence at Albatross Island? And if I... "Ho, 
ho, ha, ha, Mrs. Fluglesnipe, you're a real sport. We'll answer those and 
all other questions after a word from our sponsor: Gush, the feminine 
deodorant that dares to hide the truth.")

The whole truth and nothing but.

If she happens to have the culture FM station on, then we switch images 
instantly.

"Well, what can I say? You know what hell it is to fight in an immoral 
war. I got wounded trying to get an enemy soldier to his front line. Who's 
the enemy in any war? You know what I mean? Of course you do. I got shot by
my own men. From faraway, who is the enemy?"

And Chuck Wilson smiles that same old smile to her. Except puts in a 
little hormone action to it. Emanates his hillside animal-fuck aura.

The whole trick, no matter who it is you're conning, is to get them 
going. From both sides. Talk fast and smooth enough that they can't answer 
or think about what you're saying. And when there's two of us rapping, and 
each of us represents something they feel they must support... dynamite!

The rare person that refuses our pitch: no difference. We've still 
damaged his day. Or a good part of it. Our very presence lingers in his/her
memory.

And what's it all about?

Money.

It's all about signing your name on the dotted line. Me or Chuck will 
tell you that when you sign your name to the contract you are subscribing 
to Clean Magazine: the Mag for People Who Care Enough to Care.

And when you subscribe to Clean, Chuck gets so many more credits on his 
Scholarship Drive Fund. The more subscriptions he sells, the closer he gets
to that Scholarship. The closer he gets to that Scholarship, the closer he 
gets to making Mom and Dad rest easy in their heavenly bunks.

It's all about the money Ormond gets when you sign your name on the 
dotted line. That's what it's all about.

Because Mrs. Middleclass Assmelon doesn't read fine print or any kind of 
print. Her eyes are dazzled with dew of patriotic guilt hysteria. She sees 
the official looking twelve-pointed red star with fake-notary embossing in 
it. She sees the MIF Vet's eagle. The CA/USA flags. The works. And she 
signs on the dotted line. And I whip out my khaki handkerchief so she can 
blow her nose in it. She's a bit embarrassed and says she'll run inside for
a Kleenex.

"No, Ma'm, I didn't fight in the godawful 25 Year War that I can't offer 
you my hanky when an American woman is weeping out of concern for the 
future of this great Military Industrial Christian American Nation..."

That's it. The basic scam.

Her name on the dotted line signs away just about everything her name 
represents. Binds her to a 10 year contract with Ormond Industries to pay 
for the various shlock magazines Ormond contracts sleazy fuckbook companies
to run off for him. If Mrs. Suburban Monkeycunt doesn't pay... then it's 
the big payoff time.

Ormond's even dozen band of lawyers take over.

They perch on the house like vultures.

They legally (mind you, it's all legal) rape your bank account, your 
charge accounts, your credit, the whole financial linkage you have with 
respectability. They cream you. Where it hurts. In your money belt.

CHAPTER THREE

The Lecturer also lays this information on us. Drives it into our soft, 
corrupt heads.

1 During the Work Week, we stay at Napalm Towers. We are not allowed to 
leave. We are not allowed to talk to or visit with outsiders.

2 We get paid once a month.

3 We spend all weekends, except one, at Napalm Towers.

4 We get two days off. Once a month.

5 We have to join the Union.

6 We have to pay the Dues.

7 All meals and drinks and other excessive indulgences are deducted from 
our monthly paycheck.

8 Any social diseases acquired from Ormond personnel must be attended to 
by the Ormond staff physician. It is deductible from the monthly paycheck.

9 You are allowed to resign after giving one month's notice.

10 Quitting is a serious offense. The Lecturer refuses to detail the 
penalty.

11 Revealing the operation to a civilian is a serious offense. The 
Lecturer refuses to detail the penalty.

The buzzer rings for lunch.

We take the elevator down to the Junior Employee's cafeteria. And eat 
tasteless paste and mouth-parching sludge and crunchy fudge slop vitamin 
gruel.

I decide to give Ormond Enterprises exactly one month of my life.

I also meet a pretty young lady who is named Polly Benoit.

She tells me that I remind her of the late great Rigney Ginzberg.

"Who's Rigney Ginzberg?" I ask her.

"Sometime soon, I'll tell you," says Polly Benoit. And squeezes my thigh.
And lets her tongue slip over her bps. "Sometime soon."

What the hell?

One month.

And that's all.

CHAPTER FOUR

We drive to the first location in the back of a mini-van. Me and my 
partner. His name is Jolly Joe Cristobal. An old-timer at the age of 
twenty-five. His face punctured and shrunk from taking too much speed. 
Skinny and gray skinned, Jolly Joe Cristobal started hustling when he was 
five years old because his mom and dad were junkies. In fact, Jolly Joe was
born a junkie and had to be slowly edged-off smack in the hospital in an 
incubator. All at once. A preemy junkie. Bad news. His parents taught him 
to hustle as soon as he could goo. Used him to tap baby-loving pockets.

They call him Jolly Joe because of the strange smile he cannot erase from
his face. He says his lips are fixed there because of all the speed he 
took. His thin lips fixed in a smile that can't go anywhere but up into 
more smile. His mouth can't frown. Can't turn down. Can't straighten out. 
It'll always be that way, he tells me.

"Okay, Jolly Joe, what'll it be today?" I ask him.

He exhales. Looks at me. Then looks around the mini-van. Points a 
skeleton-thin finger at the bandage-suit. A mummy-suit they call it.

"That way they won't get too spooked by the smile," says Jolly Joe. "It 
don't feel like grooving today."

Some days Jolly Joe can make that smile work wonders on the smileless 
hearts of suburban housewives and grandmas and even furrow-browed husbands 
and grandpas.

"Yup. The mummy-suit today. Minimum work for me. Lemme check the earplug 
out in the headpiece."

He unsnaps the bandage-head shell and tinkers with the tiny radio in the 
ear sockets. Flicks the dial around. Locates it on his favorite station. 
KOCK, the into-everything Rock News Network. If it's new, it's on KOCK, 
scream their dj's over the crashing thunder tidal waves of music.

"Groovy," he says. "Only one drag about the mummy suit."

"What's that, Jolly Joe?"

"If it's too hot outside, man, it's scalding inside. What's the temp?"

"It's kind of nippy. But the sun's out."

"Why the fuck, how come, the sun's always shining in the suburbs? Have 
you ever thought about that? In the City, man, it's always hailing and 
windy and shitty, and maybe once a lifetime, man, the sun comes out, zowee,
yay, and everyone gets uptight like they are slugs stepping into a 
salt-pit, man, and every once in a while, like last week, the crap clears 
out of the night sky so you can see a moon and some stars, man, and people 
freak out, man, in natural light because, dig, they're so used to the 
unnatural light, man, of fucked up City scenes, man, that they're becoming 
unnatural people, man..."

When Jolly Joe Cristobal starts to rap, there is no sense in talking 
back. You either listen or shut him off. Turn his nervous chatter into some
kind of background machinery hum. He says it's amphetamine feedback. Jolly 
Joe says he took so much speed in his fast time that even now, years after 
he stopped, his tongue, his brain, his eyes all work in speed-shift.

"Speed was great for the head, the nerves, dig, the eyes, vision, man, 
but it destroyed my body, man, burned it out. I could tell you sickening 
stories, man, about how weird it was to take a shit, or, man, freaky trips 
pissing, man, or about eating food, man, fucked-up stomach trips on a 
cracker crumb, man, like speed pulled the thinking-feeling plant out of the
flesh-soil, dig, and it was a groove, but it's all over, man, and all I am 
now is parched-up man-skin and hysterical brain-pinball machine gun-tongue,
you dig? You're not a cop are you?"

Jolly Joe Cristobal is violently paranoid. Every ten minutes he crawls on
the floor of the mini-van and sneaks a peek out of the back window to make 
sure we're not being followed.

Somebody is always following Jolly Joe. Ever since he was born.

"Everything's cool, man," he announces, snapping and unsnapping the 
mummy-suit. "All the buttons work cool. Button-down third-degree burn 
bandage victim, man, kills their heads to see me in the wheel-chair all 
wrapped up in bandages like that. And, man, seeing the sparkle of my eyes 
behind the dark eyehole circles, man. That kills them. Wheww. All the time.
They panic. Can't see my face. Just eye-sparkle. Blows their minds. Whew." 
When I reach for my uniform, Jolly Joe flinches and grabs for my hand. His 
bony grip is firm and hard, and hurts.

"Sorry, man, sorry, I thought you was reaching for a gun or something 
like that, man, sorry, sorry..."

"Why should I reach for a gun, Jolly Joe?"

"I don't know. It's just a feeling. Everybody I see has to have a gun 
somewhere. On them, man, or in them. Do you know what I mean? I just can't 
trust anybody. You know what I mean? I just can't. Duck," he yells. I duck.
And Jolly Joe falls to the floor. "That was a cop car I saw down the block,
man, and if he would've looked up, man, he would've seen us, man, and if he
saw us, man, mell, you know what that means. Death-O. BigD. Death-O."

"I'm gonna get into my uniform now. Do you mind?"

"No," says Jolly Joe, sitting against the steel walls of the mini-van, 
smiling that permanent smile. "No. I'm cool. I'll shut my eyes and try to 
sleep a little. You know, it's such a drag, that I can't sleep a lot, man, 
you know. If I could just have one night's real sleep, man, say, ten or 
twelve hours' sleep, deep sleep, real sleep, you know, man, no dreams, 
nothing to keep the brain busy adding up the score, man. If I could sleep, 
I'd be much cooler, man, much cooler. You see, what I really want in this 
fucked-up life is a lot of time to sit down somewhere in the woods and put 
it all together. In peace and quiet, man, nothing but the bubbling stream, 
man, the birds, the whispering wind, man. No cops, no fear..."

And Jolly Joe's off on another unwinding language waterfall. Floating 
down it in his fragile barrel.

* * *

The driver lets us out two blocks away from the area we are to canvass. I
wheel Jolly Joe the two blocks. Brake the chair at the corner house. Walk 
down the terraced walkway. Ring the bell. And compose myself.

The door opens. A crack. Eye glitter. Evaluates the meaning of my 
collegiate garb. School sweater with a golden A sewn on my chest. Neat 
pants. Shine on my shoes. Hair slicked back. Joyful smile of love and hope.
The square apple pie dream of son. The son who made good by being good. The
son who didn't sell out to corrupt schemes. The son who beams rays of 
purity, chastity and firm growing manhood. The son that forefathers gouged 
each other's property to create a better world for. The son who stands now 
before your trembling door with unashamed Christian clarity to his being.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Good afternoon, ma'm, I'm Roger Smith, a straight-A student in 
Brownsville Acorn High, and I'm workin' my way through my senior year at 
the Maltshop, and also sellin' subscriptions for Clean Magazine and, ma'm, 
if I can sell enough subscriptions to Clean Magazine, then I'll be eligible
for their Scholarship Award... and, ma'm, it isn't so much for me or for 
Mom that I want to go to college, it's for Brother Joe over there..."

"What the hell happened to him?" mutters the stricken housewife.

"He's a vet, ma'm. See his Purple Heart pin sparklin' on his bandages? He
fought for you and for Mom and, well, heck, most of all he fought for me, 
for my future, for the future of America, so's clean and decent peoples can
band together and help rebuild our great world." The door opens some more. 
And she leans against the door-frame.

"Why's he bandaged all over?" she asks, staring at Jolly Joe sitting in 
the wheelchair in his mummy-suit.

"Because he got wounded all over. Ran into a napalm spray tryin' to save 
the buddies of his platoon. Terrible, ma'm, but true. He managed to get 
most of 'em out the enemy's grip. That's when the napalm sprayed him. He 
still blames himself for not gettin' those last few men..."

"You mean, he's burned all over himself? Everywhere?"

"Yes, ma'm. It's terrible, ma'm. Mom has to change his bandages every 
morning before breakfast. Poor Joe, keeps tellin' Mom about how them dirty 
Yellows fought dirty and unfair, and he keeps blaming himself for the death
of those other fine clean American soldiers who volunteered their lives to 
the glorious cause of our nation, so young boys like me could go to school 
and learn. Ma'm, do you know what learning means?"

"No, I don't, I mean, I guess not... say... why don't you come on in for 
a cup of coffee? Solomon ain't in."

"Who is Solomon?" I ask her.

"My husband. He's gone for the week. On a phony business trip. You know, 
he does it all the time. I don't know why. I guess he's just tired of me. 
Sleeps around with young chippy broads. Makes him feel more like a man. 
Solomon's a silly. Scared of growing old. Oh, I catch him in the morning 
sneaking up to the mirror, as if to surprise it, and look on his face for 
more wrinkles. Or run his nubby fingers through his greasy hair. To see if 
he ain't lost any during the night. Come on in." She's wearing her 
nightgown. It hangs over her frame and clings to her bony back and small 
ass-bulge. Her hair is in plastic curlers covered with a 
checkered-kerchief. Yellow halfmoons under each armpit dig into the pale 
fabric of her nightgown.

"Oh," she says, turning around to face me, "ask your brother in too."

"Maybe it's better if he stays outside..."

"No. I ain't offended by him. I'd like to see him closer up anyway. I 
used to be a nurse. I even got plastic straws he can drink through. I'll 
poke the straw right through his mouth hole."

And the housewife giggles rudely.

"What do you got, sonny, to poke through my hole?"

I blush not in shame but in horror of the prospect.

"I'll be finger-fucked by King Kong, the kid's blushing: it must be horny
teenage lust for me." She's pushing her ridgy meat into me. Embracing me 
with all her might. One hand clamps my spine. The other holds the back of 
my head. She bends me down like a tango dancer. I hear my spine begin to 
crack.

Wiry and strong, she knocks me off balance and we fall on top of the 
deep-pile mg in her living room. She's on top of me. Pressing down.

The radio's on. In the kitchen. Playing band music. You know, marches. 
Stars & Stripes Forever.

And the housewife is grinding her skeleton onto my college uniform. I can
smell her underarm stink. And the powerhouse aroma of her ecstatic cunt 
factory draining its primer juices. Staining my ready-press gray slacks.

I get a chance to see her face. It looms long and lean above me. Here I 
am, on the floor again, looking with crooked mirage of hustle love into the
housewife's eyes. They're green and brown and gray. Tweed-colored eyes. And
her cheekbones are high and push against her eyes giving her an un-exotic 
Slavic mask. Her lips are chapped and cracked and also wet with drool. Her 
teeth are wide and crooked and yellow with tartar deposits.

"You're beautiful," she murmurs and her breath smells.

"I'm a virgin," I whine. "I know nothing about how to do it and Mom told 
me... and my brother Joe... out there..."

No use. Atilla the Hun swoops down on me again. Her slimy lips slip over 
my mouth and her eager and insistent tongue begins to push its weight into 
my mouth.

Bleh.

But...

Not so bleh, either. I mean. What the hell? It's been a good three days 
since I've had a piece of anything. And right now I don't care what it 
looks like. Warmth of her twisting churning body melts the ice-dot in my 
groin. It explodes into traditional sunflower fire of lust.

Fire-lust unbends my cock. Springs it straight up. Hard and ready. Even 
for Atilla the Hun, my Slavic skeleton.

And she feels my cock fill up and out. Feels its hardness press against 
her crotch-bone. Its staff pushes strongly against the soft part of her 
cunt.

"Oh, a virgin, a young college boy..."

"Brownsville Acorn High School, ma'am..."

"A high school boy, ohmygod, with a cock like that..."

"Careful with the zipper, ma'm, those are new pants my mom..."

Ziiiip.

"Ohmygod. It's there! Alive and young and throbbing and hot and..."

Sloop, slop, swoop.

Her hand's around it. Pumping it up and down. Faster and faster.

"Do you have a girl?" she grunts, jacking me off.

"Yes," I grunt, being jacked-off, feeling sperm well-up in ball-city and 
getting ready to shoot off in her eye.

"Well, remember that I'm doing this for the both of you," she says. Pulls
her hands away from my diddler which stands there, upright, and pulses like
crazy.

Kisses the top of it. Quick.

Then places her bathtub-cunt on top of my prick and settles slowly on it.
It goes straight up into her steamy cunt like a barber pole. And reaches 
the end of the road. Rubs against her sheath-flesh nerve-ends. She 
screeches.

Grabs my hands and presses them against her tits. Like pressing against a
washboard. Ripply, bony, but not much meat.

She climaxes before I have time to tweak a leathery nipple. Her narrow 
body seems to erupt in holy roller spasms. Her arms flop around like 
demented windmill blades. Her eyes show white. Lids flutter like a stutter.

She ungraciously unplugs herself from me. Rolls onto her deep-pile rug. 
Sighing grimly, panting, her forehead's beaded with sweat.

My cock stands up at attention. Still unshot. Aching from the scrotum to 
the top of my totem pole. And Semper Fidelis crassly crashing through her 
kitchen radio's plastic speaker.

"Ohmygod," she babbles, eyes unglued with orgasm-glaze. "Ohmygod. Look at
that. I never knew you high school kids were so... so virile... so 
potent... uhhhmmm..."

She flips me onto my hip with her dirty foot. Flops down to the deep-pile
floor again and jams her ass into my cock. Jams my cock between her burning
thighs. Guides it into her cunt. I grab her bush for grip's sake and jam 
old cock-rocket into her. It's called coming through the backdoor. In my 
book of Fuck Slides. Available at your local dream-store. 3-d moving color 
fuck-feel form-grab slides. Yes, sir.

Her cunt's mugging my prick with grinding gripping muscle.

I mash her flat tit with the other hand. For balance.

So. The picture. Cock in her cunt. Hand on tit. Other hand 
monkey-grinding her cunt. Her tongue slops around my neck and sloshes into 
my ear.

Grunts into it. Whispers to me about how that little virgin sweetheart of
mine is going to be grateful. Uhhuh. For her teaching me the. Uhhuhuh. 
Ropes. AHHHHHHH!!!

She blows her cunt apart again.

Corkscrews off of my cock. Flees my body. Rolls onto the rug. Spreads her
legs apart. And gasps in time to Motorcycle Gloriuum Redundum, the famous 
march played by outlaw packs in valleys near monastery-retirement homes. It
is played without mufflers. Helps wake up the old folks.

And there I am.

Cock up. Hard. Wrenched with seed-need. My balls swollen. Turning blue. 
Turning black. My groin throbs like my pulse.

Atilla the Hun opens her eyes. Again. And looks at me. Lying there on my 
back.

Murmurs to me, "You're more than I bargained for, sonny. Say, does your 
sweet girl ever go down on you?"

"What's that, ma'm?"

"Something my husband likes. Solomon, the pig. Likes me to suck his meat.
But not to eat it. Do you know what I mean?"

Yes, yes, I nod. Oh, yes. That'll do it.

"Well, I find it disgusting. My hands are too tired, too lose, to hack 
your slack. My mouth won't touch your slimy stick. But, as a favor to you, 
I'll sign on the dotted line. Got a pen...?"

"Not on me," I groan.

"Jesus, what kind of a salesman are you?"

"I'm just a kid," I gasp, grabbing my cock at its gnarled base and 
starting to beat off.

"You really dig getting it sucked-off, huh?"

"I don't know," I murmur between clenched teeth. Never have I felt such 
great bunched-up pain.

"You've never had it sucked?"

No. I nod no.

"And I need a pen."

I shrug.

She smiles. Fingers her cunt nervously. Then stands up and leaves the 
room. I continue beating my meat. It wants to come out so bad that it's 
turned into cement.

She comes back with a pen and a small vacuum cleaner.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Which do you want first?" she asks, bending over, her nightgown fabric 
parting. Exposes her tiny breasts. And the smell of her body. "Satisfaction
with the pen or satisfaction in your cock?"

I nod.

"Say no more, you gorgeous high school lad. How brave and bold you are to
spare your cherry for your true love. Lovely. I wish I could say the same 
for Solomon, that pig. That hairy greasy smelly pig."

She turns the vacuum cleaner on. It makes a contented humming sound.

"I got a special attachment for your wonder rod. Yes, sir. You ought to 
like this. This is a super sucker."

And she places the vacuum-cleaner pole above my cock. The suction draws 
it into the tube. Hot vacuum-cleaner air massages my straining prick. Blows
tropical winds up and down my aching shaft.

Mrs. Hun bends down and strokes my painful balls with her lean fingers. 
Traces straight lines on the bulge with her artificial plastic fingernails.

Jiggles them. Flips the knob to a more intense shift of suction.

Oops. Like pulling the string out of my insides. The machine draws 
mightily on my weary cock. Draws and gathers hot wind breath around the hot
staff.

I feel the sperm start to move along. There's a pleasant tingle in my 
balls as the cock-throb and sperm-pump co-ordinate and merge for the jolly 
coming.

"One thing," says Mrs. Atilla the Hun, "as soon as you're ready to come, 
tell me. I don't want the stuff in my cleaner bag. It'll just get all the 
dirt and crud more creepy and gooey."

"I'm ready. I'm ready," I gasp.

"Well, Jesus Christ, you sure are unpredictable. Hell, all kids are 
unpredictable," she mutters between clenched teeth, and starts to pull the 
cleaner-tube off of my cock.

"Turn it off!" I say in a strangled voice.

She doesn't hear me. And continues to pull the tube with all of her 
might. Which begins to stretch my cock. Stretch it to the breaking point.

"Turn it off, you dumb bitch, before you pull my cock off!"

"What did you say to me? Did you call me a bitch? A dumb bitch? Of all 
the ungrateful..."

"It hurts, ma'm, it hurts," I groan.

"A dumb bitch? That's what Solomon's al ways calling me. For any little 
reason. You dumb bitch, he says. When his coffee ain't hot enough. Dumb 
bitch. When the beer ain't cold enough. Dumb bitch..."

Meanwhile. The vacuum cleaner is switched to its full power. She made a 
mistake. Pushed the wrong button. And I'm writhing on the deep-pile rug.

"When his shirts ain't ironed. Dumb bitch. When I touch his dirty book 
collection. Dumb bitch. When I insult his mother. Dumb bitch..."

There's nothing I can do. Nowhere I can move without the attachment and 
entire mechanism moving with me. Pulling on my cock in a grip that defies 
description. Prisoner of the electronic octopus.

I scream. But my scream is not as loud as the machine's increased whining
of power. And my scream can't cut through the unleashed monologue of Mrs. 
Atilla the Hun.

She stands above me, looking dreamily out of a window, babbling away. 
Like Jolly Joe. Same kind of speed babble. Maybe she drinks too much pep. 
Who gives a shit?

The pain in my balls explodes through the pole of my cock.

Shoots, spurts and splats of hot come-paste. The stuff is instantly 
sucked-up by the vacuumcleaner nozzle. Slops around inside of the 
vacuum-cleaner's plastic dirt-bag.

I can't come anymore. But the vacuum cleaner doesn't care. It keeps 
sucking out more juice from me.

"Dumb bitch, now that's a good description for Solomon's mother, I mean 
they invented the entire concept just to suit her. She's a whale woman. A 
big mountain of stinky ancient flesh with a mouth that never stops to shut 
itself. All the time. All the time. Ohmygod those Sunday dinners are such 
an agony. When the two of them, Solomon and his mother, jump on me 
together. I'm outclassed and outweighed. Dumb bitch. They sing it out to 
me. Like ugly TV monster duet singers. Dumb bitch. And you, high school 
pure soul, turn against me too. Speak their rotten language. To me, the 
woman who cared enough for you to..."

Her vacuum cleaner begins to smoke.

Then it begins to splutter and gag and choke.

And then it stops. Stops with an agonizing gargle spewing noise.

"Ohmygod, my vacuum cleaner. It's broken and you broke it. Solomon'll 
kill me. He'll kill me. He'll beat me. See. Look."

She hikes up her nightgown. Yellow-black bruises on her hips and a 
black-blue-yellow blotch on her inner thigh.

"Look, ma'm, it was your idea..."

"My idea? Why you scummy pervert. Who'd believe you in court?"

CHAPTER SIX

Jolly Joe Cristobal and me sit and sulk in the back of the van while 
driver checks in for relocation info.

"You didn't make the sale?"

"Man, I'm lucky to still be a man."

"People are weird," announces Jolly Joe. "We'll check out the Green Lymph
Resident Utipoli project. That'll give us a five mile distance between you 
and a lawsuit," says the driver. 'You'd better put a new uniform on. 
This'll cost you, you know. The cleaning bill's deductible from your 
paycheck."

"Motherfuckers charge you for everything," groans Jolly Joe. "It's all 
part of the big scheme, man, the real big scheme, man, the one where the 
guys that have the power, man, squash down all the little people who don't 
have any power. Squash 'em down. Power makes sure power can't grow anywhere
else. Man, all wars come from people who are hung-up about how powerful 
their power is. You understand?"

I nod glumly and pull off my damp and torn pants.

"Yes, yes. It's the Power Structure, man, this huge spider web, man, that
wants to get us all stuck and ripe for spider-bait, man. Terror all around,
man, it's no wonder we got to take drugs and shit to take the weights off 
of our heads, man..."

Jolly Joe goes on and on, and I change into new slacks and slip into new 
desert-boots.

The van comes to a stop. The driver tells us to hurry up, please, it's 
time.

"You all set?" I ask Joe.

"Be ready in a flash. The flash of revelation light, man. I knew a cat, 
see, his name was..."

"Save it for the ride back. We got to do a lot of hustling today if we're
going to get anywhere with this racket."

"Hey, you're sounding like a company man already, man. Cool it. Don't 
worry, man. Nobody cares. I mean, dig, Ormond's got maybe two hundred men 
and women out in the field. The odds are on his side. He's got the power, 
man. He's got it. The better you get, the closer you get to the taste of 
it. But you never get a bite. That's how power pulls you along..."

"Let's go," says the van driver. "We don't have all day. I have to report
all of this back to Central. Gimme a break. I hate to be a fink."

* * *

We start in the middle of the block this time. Just for the hell of it. 
Jolly Joe reminds me that there isn't any boss worth losing sleep or 
breakfast over. Rule Five or Six is: No matter what, you're alone. Maybe 
that's Rule Five and Six. A heavy rule for the Book.

So, we pick the house in the middle of the block. A plain, one-story, 
ranch-type projectcrackerbox cardboard death-trap that some sap will pay 
for for the rest of his tormented life.

Park Jolly Joe in front of it and walk up to the door.

The button is in a brass ring surrounded by the open-mouth of a dragon 
whose eyes are red lightbulbs that flick on and off when I push the button.

Bells chime inside the house. Four notes. Loud and clear.

I hear the click of the one-way mirror spy hole opening. And the harsh 
breath of the person behind it.

"What is it?" squawks the voice into a tiny microphone which distorts the
voice and sends it crackling through a tiny speaker above the door. "What 
is it? What do you want?"

It's hard to tell whether the voice belongs to a man or a woman.

"Hello, I'm Roger Smith, straight-A student, Senior, in Brownsville Acorn
High and I'm workin' my way through school at the Maltshop and also in 
sellin' subscriptions to Clean Magazine..."

"Horseshit," barks the voice. "Horseshit and pigeon poop and red hot 
stomach cancer turds. Blah."

"My brother Joe, he's the Vet in the wheelchair over there..."

"Over where, you All-American creep?"

"Parked at the end of the walk."

"Holy cow. What the fuck happened to him? Walk into a meat-grinder? 
Hahaha." Wouldn't it be easier to just burgle these fucking homes?

His/her laughter crackles and crunches through the tiny speaker.

"I gotta get a better look at the Vet."

The door opens. Slowly.

A tall man wearing black shades, round, and with long white-yellow hair 
peers through the crack. He might be a distant relative of Jolly Joe's. 
He's got that same burnt-out horse long face and bent hollow frame. There's
an odd bulge in his crotch. And a red and a yellow wire curling out of it 
that runs up his shirt into a device jammed in his shirt pocket.

"Dummy," he yells at Jolly Joe. "Why didn't you draft-dodge? You," he 
snarls at me, "are you a draft-dodger?"

"No, sir, I'm a Field Marshall in school ROTC and I'm a..."

"You're a horse's ass, that's what you are." Strange disinfectant smell 
from his mouth. "Sir, I..."

"You wanna wind up like your jerk brother..."

"Sir, he won a Purple Heart..."

"... all chopped up, wearing bandages... a Purple Heart? Well, was it 
worth it? Hey, freak!" he yells at Jolly Joe. "You, freak, bandage-suit 
drecky freak!"

Jolly Joe raises his bandaged hand up and waves.

"Was it worth it? Jackass? Was it worth it?"

A buzzer rings in the strange man's groin. "Oh, oh, time to recharge."

"May I be of service, sir?"

Hideous black shades flash sunlight. He bends down to look me in the 
eyes. I can't see through the thick black lenses into his own eyes. He pins
me. I get nervous.

"Help me? You want to help me, huh?"

"Yes, sir. Many years ago, sir, when I was a Scout..."

"Oh, come on, kid, you're too good to be true. You mean you was a Boy 
Scout. A fucking Boy Scout?"

"Yes, sir."

I give him the Scout salute and start to chant the Scout pledge.

"Oh, cool it, you boob, before I karate-chop you right across the bridge 
of your nose. For starters. Do you know who I am? Huh?"

"No, sir..."

His groin-buzzer continues its annoying sound.

"Ah, shit. Hold on a second. "Look," he says, turning to face me again, 
"why don't you and your asshole brother come on inside and gimme a chance 
to recharge. What the fuck, I might even like your company. Besides, there 
ain't nothing worth pissing for on the tube today."

* * *

Jolly Joe's dubious about going inside but I'm not going to go it alone 
again.

I wheel him into the house and into the living room which smells of 
plastic furniture covers and mothballs. Also, that pervasive stench of 
disinfectant.

"Fuck, man, I'm dying for a cigarette," whispers Jolly Joe, "and I don't 
even smoke. Man, it ain't part of the scam. I mean, it ain't my shot to 
come into the houses, see. I get paranoid, dig? I mean..."

In walks the black-shaded stork man. Stooped over, peering at Jolly Joe 
in the wheelchair.

"Name, rank and serial number," he barks at Jolly Joe.

Jolly Joe gulps. It echoes inside his bandage mask-shell.

"Come on, soldier, loud and clear."

Jolly Joe shakes his head. In a panic.

I jump in.

"Lost his tongue, sir. The Yellows pulled it out. Ripped it out with 
unsterile tongs, sir..."

"War is the shits no matter how you look at it. At ease."

Stork man scratches his groin.

"It don't look too weird does it?" he asks me.

"What's that, sir?"

"Oh, shit, you know. My groin-dome. Can't do a thing with those bloody 
wires. They gotta stay there. See, they're attached to this activator here 
in my pocket, and... say, I'll bet you still don't know who I am, do you?"

"No, sir," I say.

"I, punk, am what's left of General Arnold Fork Gant. Called The Fork 
because of my special training in Wok Wang: oriental art of finger 
slashing. My hands have got the most incredibly fierce fingers known to 
occidental man."

"How do you do, General Gant."

"Get rat-fucked, punk," he snarls. "What do you know? You never even 
heard of me. Why at one time I was almost King. King of the whole kaboodle,
the whole schmear, everything. But you goldbricks wouldn't understand. 
You're too young."

"It's an honor, sir, to meet a former General of our great MIF Forces."

"Kid, how many times have you been kicked in the balls?"

It's my turn to gulp. The spittle turns into a small rock with ratchety 
edges. It scrapes my throat all the way down.

"Who the hell's been feeding you such malarky? This is a new age, you 
buzzard. All them old death-traps don't mean a thing to anybody anymore. 
Not even to me. What did it all get me? What do I have? Huh? Nobody knows 
who the fuck I am. Or was. You kids have the same limited sense of history 
as us old farts do. I don't know anybody who lives a life open to it all, 
the whole business. You take what you can handle. That's all. Ain't that 
right?"

Jolly Joe nods. This is the kind of talk he can understand. Poor Jolly 
Joe's straining at the bit to be able to rap with General Gant. Tiny steam 
vapors begin to pour out of Jolly Joe's eye-holes.

"Sure, soldier, sure. You understand me, don't you? How did it happen, 
soldier? It's terrible to not be able to talk. To spit those words out. 
Ain't it, soldier? Tell me, kid, how did your brother get it?"

"Well, General Gant, sir, Joe Smith, my brother... maybe you remember his
name... they made a song out of his heroic deed...

Oh, Joe Smith, Joe Smith, Joe Smith, A Great American if ever there was 
one, Saved the lives of his loyal platoon, And lost his skin to save our 
Flag, Oh, Joe Smith, Joe Smith, Joe..."

An arctic flash of draft zings by my face. General Arnold Fork Gant 
stands crouched before me. His hands wide open. His long rigid fingers are 
spread apart.

"Kid, gimme anymore of your shit and I'll slash your eyes out with one 
quick rip of my fingernails. Now, kid, tell it to me straight. No singing. 
No bullshit."

Cold sweat streams in tiny waterfalls over my forehead.

"Well, sir, his platoon got caught in an enemy crossfire..."

"What the hell were they doing? How the hell did they get themselves 
caught in the middle?"

"And Joe just acted on his sense of soldier instinct, that same kind of 
response that made great warriors risk their lives a thousand times a 
day..."

"I told you to cut the shit," snarls the General, stooping down to glare 
into my face.

I see my pale, sweaty mug reflected in his black shades.

"Get on with it, kid. Quick. I'm gonna have to recharge in a few 
minutes."

"Yes, General Gant, sir. So Joe kept runnin' into the enemy fire to pull 
out his buddies..."

"Look, kid, how the hell can a guy run into a crossfire? I mean, it makes
sense when a guys runs out of a crossfire..."

"General, how can you explain the glory in the unknown heart of an 
American soldier, the unexplained heroism of the average G.I...

"Kid, do you realize that you're talking P.R. crap to a Six-Star General?
Do you realize you're distorting the out-and-out blatant lies that I myself
wrote as copy for the Media?" Jolly Joe moves back and forth in his 
wheelchair. He's laughing with his mouth shut. Rattling the wheelchair so 
it squeaks loudly in order to conceal any sound his laughing might make.

"What's happening to your brother?"

"It may be a seizure, sir. The nerve wound. Terrible. They get all tight 
and knotted and he has to go through these awful spasms, sir. 
Uncontrollable..."

"Get him a bedpan, or a bowl. He ain't gonna shit or piss on my rug is 
he?"

"It's hard to say, sir, I..."

But General Gant is no longer listening. His recharge time is at hand. 
The groin-dome buzzes and throbs.

He leaves the living room.

Jolly Joe whispers, between gasps of laughter, "Say, man, that General is
okay, you know. He's hip to a lot of the action. If only his head was 
straight, man, you know what I mean?"

"Look, Jolly Joe, I'm gonna take you back outside and try and cool this 
whole deal with the General..."

"Hey, man, don't be a sap," says Jolly Joe. "He'll pin you up against his
wall like a butterfly. Why don't we both split, man? Let's just get out of 
here and go somewhere else. The General ain't buying anything, man. He's a 
salesman like we are..."

"Jesus Christ, Joe, this is my first fucking day on the job and the day's
almost half-gone and we haven't sold shit. Nothing. Nothing at all. What 
the hell are they gonna think about me when we check in?"

"They'll think that you're a dumb horse's ass," barks General Gant, 
returning from his recharge. "You're a bunch of phonies. I had you spotted 
as soon as you parked your fucking wheelchair in my walkway."

"No, sir, you don't understand..."

A hurricane whizzes by my eyes. I duck and lead right into five of 
General Gant's fingernails. They poke into my midriff. Faster than I can 
scream.

When I stick my hand inside the sweater and then inside the shirt, the 
warm liquid coming out of my skin is blood.

"I got it down to such an art," says General Gant, "that I can draw blood
without even tearing or disturbing the covering fabric. How's that?"

"I'm wounded," I mutter.

"Lucky you ain't dead. I could dismember you in less time than it takes 
you to spit. Okay, mummy-freak, gimme your name and your business with me."

Jolly Joe bolts up out of his wheelchair. Snaps to attention and with a 
rigid hand salutes.

"Joe Cristobal, Medical Corps, MIF, Unit 13, #9999778654-XC."

"At ease, soldier. Fucking Medical Corpse Unit 13 Hell, that's where all 
those dope fiends used to hang out. What a cruddy, disgraceful unit. What 
do you look like without your bandages?"

"Pretty terrible, General," jives Jolly Joe. "I got wasted on speed and 
VD. Pretty terrible." General Gant shudders.

"What a pair of jerks."

CHAPTER SEVEN

"I didn't know you were in MIF," I tell Jolly Joe.

"You never asked me, man," he answers, chewing on his lower Up.

Were back in the mini-van. Riding to a new territory.

"Sure was a weird scene with that weird General, man," says Jolly Joe. 
"Really weird. Weird and strange."

"You mean about recharging and everything?"

"That was the weirdest trip I've ever been through, man. It was too 
strange to believe. You know what I mean? Why bother writing weird books, 
man, when life is weirder. Wheww. I wish I smoked. I could sure use a 
cigarette."

"I never knew they had such an operation," I say.

"Who would want one, man? Too weird. A cock-transplant. A plastic 
skin-covered cock in a plastic pubic nest of wires and tubes to keep the 
dumb thing going. And the weirdest thing, man, the weirdest thing was when 
I asked him if it made his sex life groovier..."

"He sure gave you a funny look, didn't he?" I say, remembering how the 
General took off his black shades and let Jolly Joe look into his eyes.

Incredibly sad brown eyes. Sad dark brown circles of total groaning 
agony.

And General Gant began to laugh.

And General Gant's laughter was memorable too. The laughter of a man 
being devoured by a million hyenas, a million tarantulas, a million 
man-of-wars. Terrible. Terrifying laughter.

"My sex life?" he said, covering his eyes with the black shades. "My sex 
life is keeping the electricity going into this damned thing. It's keeping 
the fluids replenished to this damned thing. Almost every fifteen minutes. 
All day. All night. Keeping this damned plastic cock alive. That's my whole
life. Sex life? Ho, God, that's so incredibly funny. This prick of mine 
wasn't much before it got shot off. Now it ain't nothing but a greedy piece
of machinery that needs constant servicing or else I die. And I'd rather 
live with it, than die. See, I ain't so smart either."

We drive along in silence.

I hear the General's laughter. See the General's eyes.

Jolly Joe itches his scalp. Scratches it with a fury. As if he were 
trying to dig a hole through his skull.

"Weird," he mutters, over and over again. "Weird, weird."

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Well, to begin with, you ought to know that my father is a lady doctor. 
I mean, he takes care of ladies. Their special problems and diseases. He's 
also an author of many books," says Polly Benoit.

She's in my closet-small room at Napalm Towers. Stretches out on my cot. 
Lets me watch her breasts rise. And see that her nipples are hard. Pushing 
their shape against the fabric of her dress.

"I mean, it's important that I tell you all this beforehand. My father 
being a lady doctor and all. He told me all about It before I was old 
enough to even think about It. But he said that even little tiny girls are 
already preparing for It and that It's on their minds more than anything 
else. And I certainly wasn't going to argue with my father, the lady 
doctor."

I examine the white flesh of her neck. It's smooth and desirable. I bend 
over to kiss her white neck. To place my lips gently upon her softness, her
sweet flesh.

"Now, just hold on," warns Polly Benoit. "I know what's on your mind and 
that's okay with me. But first I want you to understand all the reasons why
I am kind of fucked up. I mean, it's important that we understand each 
other sometimes. Okay?"

I nod. And stretch out beside her.

"I want to understand everything" I tell her. And watch her dress rise 
above her knees as she stretches again. "You're right. We don't understand 
each other enough. It's terrible, but true."

"Exactly, I'm glad you're sympatico. I mean, I have to talk now and I 
won't be able to do anything else until I get it all off of my chest..."

"And a lovely bosom it is," I say, reaching dainty fingertips towards it.
Which she slaps. With her ring finger hand. It smarts.

"Not now. Don't be like all the rest of them. Like all the rest of them 
that Daddy brainwashed me about. I'm trying to work it all out of me. All 
his poison. That's why I have to talk. Do you understand?"

"There's so much I understand. So much of what is between a man and woman
must be..."

"Are you going to say anymore? If so, I'll leave right now."

"I'm sorry. Please go on."

I slide closer to her. You have to stay close together on a cot. Where 
else can you go? Polly Benoit doesn't push me away.

For a while we he there. I listen to her breathing. My love-wracked mind 
equates her breath to the sweet tinkle of Chinese glass wind bells.

"Before I was old enough to even care enough about anything that had to 
do with It, my father had given me every bit of information on the subject.
When I'd play House with the kid who lived next door, I was prepared. He'd 
poke me in the vagina and I'd rattle off each nerve and flesh-zone of the 
vagina's construction. Which would terrify the young boy and send him home,
in hysterics, to his mother who probably knew less about such matters than 
I did.

"I used to honestly think that my father was unstable. How would you feel
after an eight hour day which consisted of nothing more or less than 
sticking your finger, your hand, up a woman's vagina, rectum, nose and 
ears? Mother used to sulk a lot and when Dad would come home, she'd shiver.
Honest. Her teeth would chatter and she'd scream, "Here comes the sexfiend,
the child-molester, smelling of pussy!" And Dad would say that he always 
washed in three different kinds of liquid detergents and disinfectants. But
Mom had started and she wasn't going to stop. They'd argue until dinher.

"Sounds like a hard way to grow up," I comment, pushing my hip against 
her hip. Trying to move my leg against her leg. "You poor kid..."

"You can say that again. I've had it rotten. I mean, right where it 
counts. Inside of me. Where my cunt lives. I can only try and tell you how 
rotten it was. Do you know that my father, the lady doctor, changed our 
family name as soon as his most famous invention became world-renowned?"

"No, I..."

"We used to be called Bergenstrasser, but my father invented the hideous 
synthowomb..."

"You mean, the Doctor Bergenstrasser, Doctor Klang Bergenstrasser?"

"The same. When syntho-womb became big and pushed the homo-sex faction 
into real power, my father decided it was time to change our name to 
Benoit. But, that's neither here nor there. Let me tell you how my father 
corrupted my morals before I was five years old." I like the shape of Peggy
Benoit's earlobes. "He'd always come in at night when he got home from 
work. He'd come into my bedroom. I'd be lying there. Waiting for him. And 
he'd give me father-kisses. Smelling of cigar smoke. A man-face. Solid with
whiskers rubbing my skin. And his paws, for they're like paws. With hairy 
knuckles and hair-tufts peeking out from his shirt-sleeves.

"One night he was drunk. Loose and muffle-mouthed. Groping around my cunt
as if I were a patient of his. Oh, it was terrible," groans Peggy Benoit. 
"It was awful and disgusting what he did. Made me do. The beast that Momma 
warned me of. Hairy and brutal. And he had a deformed prick. Yes, the great
Doctor, inventor of syntho-womb. He had the most gnarled tool imaginable. 
Like the root of a rotten tree.

"And that's not all... Let me tell you about my sister..."

I cover her frantic mouth with mine. She knees me tactlessly in the 
groin. I shut my eyes in pain. Stars of agony flash on and off in the pink 
dark.

"My sister's a lesbian. Because of my father. He did the same things to 
her. When my mother found out she was most angry at father for the 
strangest reason."

"What reason?" I manage to ask. It's always hard to speak through gritted
teeth.

"Mother was mad at father for not sexually assaulting her. She yelled 
about how rotten a lover he was to her. No wonder, she screamed, all our 
daughters are getting it regular, while their mother has to sit in an empty
bedroom watching TV night and day..."

Peggy Benoit stretches again. Her breasts push against the thin fabric of
her dress. Her nipples are hard. She isn't wearing a brassiere. There's no 
need to because her small breasts are firm.

I brush my fingertips casually across her left nipple.

And get kneed in the groin again. Harder than the last time.

"Now, just hold on, buddy. I know what's on your mind. I know what's in 
that sweaty stinking sewer. I know. But I haven't finished telling you my 
story. I want us to understand each other. What color are your father's 
eyes?"

"I don't know. Maybe gray. Maybe green. I don't know."

"My father, the lady doctor, had brown eyes. I know them well. They 
looked down at me. After he'd finished pumping out his seed into me. He'd 
look down at me. And I'd look up at the double image of myself in his eyes.
Then he'd start to cry. And pull out slowly. And cover his distorted man 
flesh with his hairy paw. Terrible."

"Awful," I add. The pain ebbing.

"Then my sister turned lesbian. Terrible. Cut off her beautiful long gold
hair. Presented it in a box. Mailed it to Dad's office. With a scary psycho
note about how she hated him and all men."

"Poor kid."

"Her? Hell, no. She's okay. She's gained fifty pounds in muscle from 
weight-lifting and has a wonderful wife named Edith Oldsmobile who's rich 
as sin. She has a special teacher for mouth, tongue and lip exercises to 
make her more functional between Edith Oldsmobile's quivering thighs..."

And Peggy Benoit's thighs begin to quiver. Just thinking of cunnilingus 
dings her bells. Her hands slide over her flat belly and rests upon the 
bushy rise of her mound. And squeezes it.

"Mmm," she murmurs. "Mmm."

"May I be of any assistance?"

"Nope."

"But..."

"One's better than two. Four hands spoil the pudding."

"I thought maybe..."

"Oh, be quiet, swine!" she snarls at me. And massages herself with 
frantic fingers. Digs into her crotch with the fury only fanatics know.

And stops as abruptly as she started. Polly Benoit is strange.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little dragged having to deal 
with strange people. Do you know what I mean? If someone's testing me, I'd 
sure like to know who. I'd grab him by the ears and yell real loud into his
face. Complain to the source.

Back to the body-line of Polly Benoit. Her landscape revealingly 
concealed beneath a thin summer dress. My eyes become an extension of my 
cock. My cock rests in a state of tension. Agitated beeps and spasms of 
fuck-want cause it to stir inside my pants.

"Look at that," says Polly Benoit, watching my cock unbend and straighten
into a pre-fuck hard-on. "Nice circumcision. I see you don't wear any 
underpants. Perfect impression of your glans area against the twill of your
workpants."

"Let's make love," I announce, grabbing for her.

She snaps her fingers against the tip of my nose. Which hurts as much as 
anything. My eyes water.

"Why did you do that?"

"You know perfectly well why I did that. You are vastly rude."

"Vastly rude?" I gripe. "What the hell does that mean?"

Polly Benoit's eyes widen. She puts her hands upon her breasts.

"Are you getting violent?" she asks. "Is that it? Are you going to rape 
me because you can no longer hold back the vile beast inside of your loins?
You find me so confoundedly fascinating..."

"You talk too much and I'm sick of listening to you. Either we're here to
fuck, or we're here for you to talk me to sleep. I've had a busy day 
bullshitting weird people. I thought you and I could have a nice easy time 
and a nice easy fuck..."

"Aren't you going to rape me?" asks Polly Benoit, folding up into an 
embryonic pose on my cot. "Aren't you going to rip my flimsy dress off and,
despite my protests, spread my legs apart and jam in your beastly prick of 
man-madness? Aren't you going to make me hold in my white hands the hairy 
balls dangling beneath your slimy weapon? Aren't you going to jam your fat 
tongue into my sweet mouth? Aren't you going to rape me?"

"Look, lady, I may've done a lot of things in my time, but I'm not a 
rapist. Anyway, a rapist never rapes anybody that doesn't want to be raped.
I mean, some people, that's the only way they can make it," I mutter to 
her. Miss Polly Benoit sighs and straightens up. She looks at my face. 
Watches my mouth, then my nose, then gazes into my eyes. They blink.

"It's always the ones that look so tough," she says. "They're the real 
soft ones, the honorable ones. Oh, I'm so frustrated. I just don't seem to 
know how to pick the right kind of rapist for me. Big burly gangster types,
like the one I picked up yesterday, turn into the most sentimental people 
in the universe when you ask them to rape you. I got a daughter just your 
size and age, the gangster type said to me. And the big hunk of hairy 
muscle power started crying dainty sobs..."

"You mean, you want me to rape you?"

"That's the only way I can come."

"But, raping is so..."

"Don't worry about it, sonny. You missed your chance. But we can still 
talk. I'll tell you about rapists I have known. Rapists who have abused my 
girlish body beyond conception of mortal brutality. One rapist was six foot
three with a three foot cock and he wore a wide black leather belt around 
his hairy body. That's all. And the whip in his huge-wristed hand. Snapping
it on the floor and around the fragile white flesh globes of my tempting 
rear end. He also stuck the whip handle up my delicate anus after he was 
finished fucking me. Fucking me took him almost an hour. It took him half 
an hour to get his huge cock into me. If it didn't hurt so much, it 
would've been funny. All the work he did just to fill my tight burning cunt
with his outsize forest fire of a prick. Shoving, jamming, shoveling, 
cursing... oh, how that man swore at me, how he yelled at my small cunt to 
open unknown muscles wider... oh, magnificent beast whose fat thumbs 
pressed into my small breasts until I thought spikes were being driven 
through my body. I thought they would come in the morning and have to rip 
my flesh off of the bed. Throw me away. Useless. And he jammed my hands 
under him and told me to be careful how I treated his balls. Oh, those 
balls in my hand were like melons of sun-heat. My smooth and little hands 
could not hold them both at once. One ball was all the both hands could 
touch and hold and let sway gently in their natural arc...

"At one point, angry and exhausted with the effort of pushing his mammoth
prick into my cunt, he pulled out and made me try and suck him... he said 
that my spit would lubricate his shaft and head and make it easier to 
penetrate me to my depths. Oh what agony, yet what ugly joy to mouth that 
round, wide cock-trunk growing huge from its hairy mount. Go on, you 
rot-cunt shit-haired nigger-pus cunt, get your mouth on my mountain and 
suck it off. And don't tell me you don't know how. You got cunt-fever 
steamin' out of your cuntfuck skin. Oh, that's how he talked to me. Such a 
heroic and classic brute!

"Sucking that masterpiece of meat was impossible. I tried but it was like
a flea trying to drink an ocean. His burly fingers grabbed the back of my 
head as if it were a baseball. Jammed my face upon the cunt-smelling cock. 
Made me lap up and down its trunk. Made me chew that loaf of cock with 
itching nibbles. His hand milked my drooling cunt. Oh, oh..." I grab a hold
of her shoulders and shake her back and forth.

Polly Benoit spits in my eye. Literally. And I am momentarily blinded by 
the stuff.

"What kind of a pervert are you?" she screams. "First, you won't rape me.
And then, you won't let me talk-fuck myself. You're a creepy rotten 
pervert. And I'm leaving. I don't ever want to see you again."

"Great," I tell Polly Benoit. "I've got to get a good night's sleep. I 
couldn't have listened to any more of your ravings..."

She looks at me with puzzled eyes.

"Ravings? There's nothing wrong with me. Only madmen rave."

She's not so cute when she's angry. Red blotches circle her eyes and 
blossom in her cheeks.



PART FOUR - GHOST CITY

Dangers, surprises, devastations The war takes hold and won't quit.

We won't get anything out of it

Even though it lasts for three generations.

Starvation, filth, and cold enslave us.

The army robs us of our pay.

Only a miracle can save us And miracles have had their day. Christians, 
awake! Winter's gone!

Snows melt. The dead sleep on.

And though you may not long survive Get out of bed and look alive!

Brecht

CHAPTER ONE

Jolly Joe Cristobal offers to take me to Ghost City. It's our monthly 
weekend leave from Ormond Industries & Enterprise. My first month of work 
has been gathering power inside of me. Like a giant fist. It keeps 
hammering away at my nerves.

Jolly Joe says he knows some good people in Ghost City. He says he knows 
where a lot of action is. He says that if you haven't been to Ghost City, 
you haven't tasted the real truth.

"Of what? The truth of what?" I ask.

Jolly Joe winks.

"A lot of things. You'll see."

"I'm broke."

"Don't make any difference, man. You'll get by. And I got some extra 
bread."

Ormond Industries & Enterprises pays you after your monthly weekend 
leave. It's part of their thoughtful worker-thrift philosophy. 
Motherfuckers.

I jump onto the back of Jolly Joe's worn out bitch of a chopper. A 
fucked-up motorcycle with corroded exhaust pipes level to my ears. Joe 
jumps on the ignition. Many times. The pig finally fires. Its machinery 
rumbles like stomach-ulcer grumbling. No mufflers.

"Oh, boy, man!" yells Jolly Joe against the roar. "This is the only way 
to travel, man. The only fucking way to go!"

And we're off. Grinding down the highway. Dust clouds swirling around us.
Tires digging into asphalt.

And we're off. Roaring down the highway. The sound of a hundred thousand 
horse hooves.

The heat from the engine's power warms my head. And soon begins to burn 
my ears.

Jolly Joe could care less.

He's yelling and singing into the wind.

The wind whips around us. Screeches and moans. Folds over us like a 
waterfall of tigers. Tugging and tossing the bike around. And Jolly Joe 
laughs at such sport.

Then a hail storm starts. As usual. Without warning. The sky darkens like
an angry eye. Brittle ice-cold hail pellets dump down on us. Roll and 
bounce on the highway.

The bike wheels get nervous in the hail slime. We skid around trying to 
keep going in a straight line.

Death roars by. In a huge diesel truck belching yellow-gray gardens of 
smoke out of a black chimney.

We nearly slam into his cab. Barely miss getting mangled in his 
earth-mover wheels.

The driver sticks his ugly head out of the window and screams, "Get off 
the road, you fucking freaks."

A group of stone birds, the birds that five in cities, fly above us in 
search of food. Like a squadron of well trained bombers. And drop their 
slate-gray loose turd slop on us.

Hail and bird shit. And me without a helmet and Joe without a windshield.

And we're off. Zoom past the truck driver with the sound of a thousand 
farts.

The hail stops after a while. And after hail stops, it is followed by a 
period of hail-chill. Cold wind fronts that grind freezing pain into anyone
out on the streets or on the highway.

It gets so cold that even being next to the exhaust is no good.

"How much longer?" I yell into Joe's ear.

"Oh, soon, man, soon. Jesus fucking Christ, what a joy!" he yells back at
me.

"Watch it!" I scream.

Joe turns back to looking straight ahead. At the road.

* * *

Come roaring into Ghost City. People look up from their work. Little kids
race around us. The gypsies and magicians straighten their hats and hands 
and wait. With patience. One of them will get our business.

CHAPTER TWO

It's a rare wren. Struts its tiny brown body across the bamboo ladder 
that leads from its bamboo cage into the doorway of a small lacquered 
pagoda. The wren warbles a little hunting song as he wobbles to the 
pagoda's gold-lacquered swinging doors. He pushes them open with his peak 
and enters the pagoda.

Madame Yin is rarer than the wren. She must be one hundred years of age. 
Ask her and she'll tell you that she is one hundred and ten years of age. 
But you can't trust the Yellow. Can you?

Madame Yin is a small woman with a round yellow face that shines like 
cellophane. And when she talks, her bps crackle. Her eyes are bright black 
and sparkle when she doesn't talk. She nods when you talk to her. As if she
knows everything about you, and everything about the world. As if she knows
everything.

The wren returns with a tiny scroll rolled up between his beak.

Madame Yin chuckles lovingly to the little creature. He releases the 
scroll into her old wrinkled hand.

"Here," she says. The bird has chosen this fortune for you."

And she hands me the scroll.

I unroll it. It says:

Far away is not close enough.

You will go into a trip and say hello to honorable mother and father. At 
last.

The world is not over. Far from it. It begins in you. But you must give 
it life. You must be its father and mother as surely as you were born from 
man and woman. What do you know? Is it worth knowing? Do not be afraid to 
die. It is living that you must overcome and face.

I end this prophecy with the words of the great Chinese sage Confucius, 
Man's life is to be upright (chih).

If one makes crooked this life, One is lucky to escape disaster.

Madame Yin

Mistress of the Winged Beings

"What does it mean, Madame?" I ask the old Yellow woman.

"It means only what you can make it mean. You must go into Ghost City 
now. We have detained you too long. Here, take this small black box. The 
gold scroll work on its top is an ancient calligraphic talisman. Inside is 
the magic herb you will take when you are ready to."

"What's the stuff do? Is it some kind of dope? Get me all loco and 
loony?" I ask her. And I hear my voice getting louder and higher. "Nutty 
and goofy? All squirrel-brained running up and down the walls? Is that it? 
My father warned me about the dope from Yellow countries..."

"You don't want to hurt the sturdy feelings of an old woman, do you?" she
asks me.

I quiet down.

"No, ma'm, of course not."

Jolly Joe's busy haggling with the child of a gypsy. The kid's selling 
Joe a lid of superfine mellow mind-rot prime pot from middle Arabica.

"Take the box with you. Take the herb when the time is right."

"How will I know that?"

"You'll know, my friend. Suddenly, your thoughts will go to escape. And 
you will take the herb. And you will not escape. But you will travel."

"Thank you. I have no money... "

"Money is for the others. You will have valuable payment to offer me 
sometime. I'll bet you would like a drink of plum wine and I'll bet you 
would like to rub flesh with my daughter."

"I..."

"No need to be shy or deceitful, friend," says Madame Yin in her 
crackling voice. The wren has perched on her shoulder. As she talks, the 
wren's eyes and head move about. "You're a young vague man and understand 
pleasure best. Isn't that so?"

"Yes, that's so. But I also have another self..."

"Of course," smiles Madam Yin. "It is that other self that we feel most 
protective of. Yes, of course, I understand. Enter my tent. Here is a 
bottle of plum wine. Yalta loves wine. She is seventeen years old and very 
wise. Her body is a lesson in Taoism."

"What are you talking about?" I ask Madame Yin.

"I am talking too much. Go."

She hands me a round, dark brown bottle with a blood-red wax seal over 
its mouth. And hands me four sticks of Chinese incense. Madame Yin's wren 
sings a sweet song perched on her shoulder.

CHAPTER THREE

It's dark inside. And musky. Old perfume of incense. New perfume of the 
oiled yellow cunt. Instead of a gong, there's the delicate tinkle of glass 
wind chimes and a muzak of the Pi-pa: a kind of Chinese guitar. Silk wall 
hangings of desperate Buddhas and brightly colored dragons devouring them. 
That's what happens when you're a hot-shot saint standing on a cloud 
singing a holy song. Brightly colored silk dragons come and eat you up. 
Cloud and all.

"Ah, plum wine for me. Mamma is so kind. Killing kind. I'll never leave 
this tent. I am so content. Beautiful young man with secrets and plum wine.
Here I am. Where my voice is."

It's still dark. I'm afraid to walk in case I bump into a dragon or a 
knife-flashing Tong gangster-pimp waiting for a quick one-two white man mug
and killing.

It's a conditioning process like everything else that is inside my head. 
All those closed doors. So hard to open. Before I could think or speak or 
question, we heard about the Yellows. They were/are the enemy. Every war in
my lifetime was fought against one kind of Yellow or another.

My father used to sit around the morning table with his uniform on and 
read the paper. And grumble and curse. And slam the table hard. My crunchy 
cereal would splash into my lap. And Mother would bite her lower Up. And it
was all about the Yellows. Another daily Yellow atrocity. They shot down 
one of our spy ships. Headlines of it and personal biographies of all the 
crew members. Photos of the wives and children of the dead crewmen. The 
insidious, diabolical Yellows. Sitting on the floor before an inhuman feast
of barbaric foodstuff's. Squid, octopus, rotten green crap from the earth, 
constipating rice dreck, hideous bark from the bamboo tree, spy-plot 
pickles, raw fish with Yellow peril plague in each salty mouthful... &to 
&to &to &to. We whiteys knew all about Yellow ugly. Yellow devils. With 
their aphorisms and cool. Yellow menace. With their Buddhas and Confucius 
and Charlie Chan. Yellow terror. Insatiable fucklust for the white maidens.
Yellow horror. Subtle water torture bamboo-splint pain and misery to white 
warrior in prison camps on TV.

"Here, I'll light a yak-candle," she says.

And does with an old sulphur-tipped match. It flares a round blaze which 
hurts my eyes. The candle is scented with an oil that smells like fresh-cut
celery. It is a surprise to my nose expecting harsh Yellow ginger-flaming 
in cense stink. Fart-fumes from Yellow laughing devils.

I walk to her.

My father knew nothing. He didn't even know how to say hello. To his son.
To his wife. And all the doors he shut... maybe they didn't have to be 
shut.

She's lying on a bed of silks and animal pelts on the floor. Surrounded 
with hanging scrolls.

"You are Yalta, the daughter of Madame Yin?" I say, as I he down beside 
her.

"But of course. Do you know how to open plum wine?" she asks.

I would like to say that I do, but I don't, and there's no reason to 
bullshit this Yellow cunt.

"No. I don't even know what it tastes like."

"Let me open the bottle and then you will taste it. You're not a virgin, 
are you?"

"No. I've been around."

"Good. I'm very hot today. Inside. In my woman-forest."

* * *

Plum wine is no wine for a city boy whitey like me. First sip: chin 
whiskers of Chinese cloud-standing prophet. Second sip: already beyond mere
sage-like radiance. Third sip: groin fire. Fourth sip: beyond fire. Groin 
and cock light up the room with more power than yak-candle. Fifth sip: 
never tasted.

Yalta takes the earthen cup from my hands.

"You like?"

"I like."

And my trembling fingers unfasten her silken... from the front. Unhook 
the woven silk loops from ivory buttons. And reach my hand into the hot 
yellow flesh of her breasts. With dark brown nipples. So full, so firm. And
I had thought that all Yellows were flat-chested drangon-cunts.

"I'm a golden yellow," whispers Yalta into my ear. Then breathes heavy. 
Then pushes the tip of her tongue in.

Spreads her thighs, her outstretched legs.

Belly to belly, we face each other in glow of yak light.

My hand reaches to her cunt, to open the outer bps of it and to guide my 
sudden hard-on into the opening. Just the tip of my cock. Not the full 
thrust. But enough for her cunt to grab at. Her foaming cunt. I'm in no 
hurry. This is my big weekend in Ghost City.

I drive my burning pole into her. Full hilt. Feel our bodies glued 
together. Feel the end of her cunt rub the hot head of my cock.

"Some doors are better unopened," murmurs Yalta in low mystic Eastern 
tone. Her breath smells of plum wine. Grinds her hips to torment my cock 
lodged within her tropic sheath. My cock pulses and swells more inside of 
her.

I get wild with it. Grabbing her tits with one hand, poking her cunt 
mount with the other. Feel her leathery nipples bend between my thumb and 
forefinger. Wet my other fingers with the froth of her cunt juices.

I get wild enough to want to rip her apart. No touch is satisfying 
enough. I want to get so deeply into her that I can turn her inside out. 
But even that wouldn't satisfy me.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jolly Joe's waiting. Waiting outside the tent, talking cheerful cosmos 
with Madame Yin. His eyes show me that he has tested the pot scored from 
the gypsy kid. They are glazed with that film of grass smokers. Each eye is
a shining lightbulb.

After paying respects to Madame Yin, complimenting her on the beautiful 
Buddha-nature of her miraculous daughter and saluting the wisdom that 
provokes day and night, Jolly Joe and I are off.

"Hip rascal," he sighs, while we walk to the center of Ghost City. 
"Scored a little piece of ass from the old lady. Very hip. It helps. She 
sure got a lovely illusion going, man. That old lady's hipper than you or 
me."

"What about you, old Jolly Joe? You're walking and talking mighty slow."

Jolly Joe Cristobal laughs. Pokes me in the rib.

We walk on. In silence.

"Okay, saps and flinching cheats, welcome to Ghost City's very own Fun 
Zone," barks the spiel-machine decorated with cloth flags of hearts and 
serpents.

"This is it, you yellow-hearted, chicken souled bumpkins and hustlers. 
Enter here and take your chances. The real chances, baby. Transformation. 
Dig it? Dare you become something that you don't already know? Something 
you won't recognize when you look at it in the mirror in the morning?"

The spiel-machine has been painted over with bright tattoos of patterns 
and swirls. When it talks and barks and wheedles and deals, rows of small 
red and green light bulbs light up in sequences. Like a pinball machine.

"Can you be a stranger? Can you be made into one? Can you dig it? Or are 
you just a bunch a square-hearted drifters and smalltime conmen with no 
imagination, huh? No art? Huh?"

The spiel-machine's voice is Ormond's. Or a machine-created duplication 
of it.

"We'd better move on," I tell Jolly Joe. "Where to, man? This is it."

"What do you mean? We didn't make the trip just to go spend the weekend 
in a Fun Zone?"

"Man, this is a special Fun Zone. It's for people like us. It's a basic 
requirement, man."

"Jolly Joe, what the fuck are you talking about? You're sounding like a 
company man. Let's split. I don't care where we go. Let's go home. 
Anywhere."

"Cool it. You and me are together and this is where we're going. It's 
policy, man."

The spiel-machine cuts through it.

"This is the most important test, burn trip artists and cowering dogs. 
It's to toughen you up. All you bigshot hoods and thugs and grifters and 
drifters. You're all a bunch of lazy jello-boned good-for-nothing rotten 
heart-cloying clotted crud. You got no muscle in your spirit. Your eyes are
fogged-up with phony movie-starters. You're living in a movie about 
yourself. Like dumb creatures on the tube..."

"Look, Jolly Joe, you stay. That's your business. But I'm going. Right 
now."

Jolly Joe grabs me by the shoulders. His hands are powerful and his 
fingers dig painfully into my shoulder-flesh.

"My business, man, is that you stay. My business, man, is that I walk 
with you through the door, and when it's over, man, I take you back home."

"Home? You don't mean Napalm Towers and the rotten job? That's no fucking
home, that's prison, that's death..."

"That's why you gotta follow me. Now move."

He squeezes down with greater force. Tears rim my eyes.

"Okay, okay," I whisper. "Take it easy, you prick, I'll go."

When we push through the swinging doors, into the damp hallway, I try to 
make a run for it. But the Fun Zone is ready with rubber netting that's 
lifted up beneath me. I fall on my stomach. Which hurts.

"Oh, come on, man, cool it. Relax. There's nothing to panic about. I told
you, this is cool. It's all right."

"Motherfucker," I growl at Jolly Joe. "I thought you were a good guy. I 
thought you understood how it was. Motherfucker, I thought you were my 
friend."

Nerve-Speak voice blats out, "Rule Six: Never Trust Your Friends. Never 
Trust Your Enemy. Never Trust. Trust is soft. Trust destroys."

"Shut the fuck up!" I holler at the voice.

"Cool it," whispers Jolly Joe.

"Get fucked," I snarl back at him. "Rotten Benedict Arnold. Pimp for the 
system, go ahead. Be a big-ass hero. Motherfucker."

He thumbs me behind the neck in a soft spot. Which drops me. I black out 
in a flash. Knees buckle. Hit the deck. All I remember is afterwards. 
Waking up. In a room with silk wallpaper.

There is a semi-naked athlete flexing his muscles. He shines from body 
oil he has rubbed into his skin. Golden curly hair. Beautiful tan. His 
muscles rippling like wheat fields.

It's his face that is disturbing. When he turns around, peering at me 
over the flexing hills of his arm muscles, I see the face of Benjamin Aura 
Ormond. Mustache, glasses and all. As if Ormond's face were grafted onto 
the face of Mr. Amreica.

But when the mouth of Ormond opens, the voice that comes out is high and 
girlish. It says to me, "Well, hello there. Rise and shine, sleepy-poo, and
feel my muscles."

I struggle with my body. To get it to move itself into an upright 
position on the floor. Shake my head to get rid of the darkness Angering 
around the edges.

"Stand up and feel my muscles. They're as much for the eye of the 
beholder as they are for me. They're to be shared. Especially in a firm 
state."

Mr. America Ormond-mask laughs. A delicate buttercup tinkle of polite 
tittering.

Hanging from his crotch is a white leather pouch. His cock seems to be as
well-developed as the rest of his body. The leather pouch hangs nearly 
knee-level.

"Oh," he sighs. 'That's my favorite muscle. Except my inner thigh 
muscles. Put your hand between my legs. I'm also a dancer. Feel how firm my
inner thigh muscles are. Go on."

Circulation is almost totally disconnected from my hand when I place it 
between the two hot blocks of his thighs. s

"You see," he says, releasing my hand.

"Very strong."

"But also very tender," sighs Mr. America Ormond-mask.

"Do you want to do me a favor..."

"Oh, yes, anything. And I bet I know what it is. You tough guys are all 
the same. All you jailbirds. Just a lacy bunch of nellies. That's about the
best thing jails do for a man, isn't it?"

Before I can tell him what I want, he steps out of his white leather 
pouch and unrolls his amazing cock. Long uncircumcised cock hanging to his 
knees. Rests in the shade of ball valley hollow.

"You can touch it," he says. "I do wonderful things with it. Go on. Don't
worry. I used to be in movies. Just me and Charles Atlas. That's what I 
call him, my penis, my cocky-poo. I call him Charles Atlas. We're movie 
stars. Perhaps you've seen us on STAG TV? I have some film-clips that I can
show you. Or my scrapbook of action photos of Charles Atlas and me in 
amazing poses with members of all sexes. All of them. We're all one big 
happy family of bodies, aren't we? Go on. Touch it. It won't bite."

He giggles his whippoorwill giggle.

"Oh, go on, ex-con, you can have it do whatever you want it to do. Just 
touch."

Charles Atlas stirs and coils itself up to meet my gaze.

"Watch."

And he makes Charles Atlas bend and shape into the hills of a serpent 
wiggling through grass blades.

And then he makes Charles Atlas become the loop of a lasso.

Then Charles Atlas unsprings and pokes me in the nose. Nuzzles me like 
the nozzle of a friendly mutt. Which spooks me. I look down. Almost like a 
modest blushing maiden. And face Mr. America Ormond-mask's ball show.

Charles Atlas rests on top of my nose tip while I watch the ball show. 
Watch how one ball moves slowly up the sac to the top then feather-slow 
drops to the bottom. Then I watch how balls move in unison up the ball-sacs
and then down.

"Now, for my specialty number," says the girlish voice in the body of the
golden god.

I watch in doubled wonder as he makes one ball move up and down in 
counter-motion to the other.

"That's something," I say.

"Say it again. Your breath against them is their reward. In fact, don't 
say anything. Just breathe heavily on my balls. Go on. They won't bite 
you."

"Look, I want you to help me out."

"Sure, sure," says Mr. America Ormond-mask. "Why don't you pull your 
pants down. I'm getting so hot now that I'll go crazy if you don't slip it 
in. Look. Let me show you my ass-works. It's wonderful."

He bends over and parts the muscle-dimpled cheeks of his ass and lets me 
peer into it. Flexes his anus-bud so that it looks like some freak 
fly-eating plant. It parts pink petals and then pulls them back. They 
pucker-up into a tight bud.

"How's that? How would you like to get your cock into that? I've got some
jelly here that will make you slip right in with the ease of kings. Or, if 
you like, and I'd love to, I could give you a yummy blow-job. Oh, come on. 
Look, Charles Atlas wants something too." Charles Atlas stretches, hardens 
like a crazy dowel, and begins rising upward into fuck-position.

"I really thank you for your show and everything, but I'm in a hurry to 
get out of here. How do I get out of here? Where's the exit, the 
escape-hatch?"

"You owe us an apology," says Mr. America Omond-mask.

"I'm sorry."

"We're all hot and bothered..."

"You didn't give me a chance..."

"You let us down. You know, I'm also very strong. Very strong. And 
forceful. We don't like being rejected. That's a bad thing. When we were 
kids, we were always being rejected my Mother and Dad, sis and cousin, and 
all the kids at school. So Charles and I fought back. Fought back by 
building ourselves up so that we would never be rejected again. And now you
reject us."

"Look, I don't reject you, it's just that I'm a prisoner here and I want 
to get out. I want to get back to the streets..."

Mr. America Ormond-mask swings upward at my jaw. A flashing uppercut that
clips me off-center. Otherwise, I could see myself getting it full-on and 
being lifted off my toes and into the ceiling. As it is, his fist chops the
side of my jaw. I bite my tongue as my teeth crash down in the impact.

"Oh, mercy, you're bleeding and splashed it on my skin. I can't stand 
blood."

I spit a mouthful of it at his bulging pectorals. Which horrifies him. He
turns into a statue. Shocked at the glob of red dripping off the slopes of 
his pectoral muscles down his rippling abdominal muscles and into the 
shaved pubic area.

"You've contaminated me."

Head down, he bucks into my stomach. Three thousand miles a second. Plum 
wine and poached eggs spew out. And I black out once again.

* * *

"He'll make a good uniform," OToole is saying to O'Sullivan.

"I'll drink ta that," O'Sullivan says.

They clink glasses. Drink the amber juice down in one gulp. Gasp in 
appreciation. Wipe their chops.

"Hide tougher than a rhinoceros," says O'Tool to O'Sullivan. "That's what
a good offi cer needs. That's what a good uniform provides."

"You bet your bottom dollar. When you crash into a place with a shiny 
uniform on, an" your collar's frayed, an' your cuffs are ragged, an' your 
badge is gloomy, because it's rustin', an' you're outa Shine-Fine-Goldmine 
polish, an" you're lookin' like that, an' tryin' ta make a good impression 
on the scumbags you're arrestin'..."

"O'Sullivan, you sure got a way with words. I know exactly what you mean.
Good looks, being spic and span, really makes the difference."

"I'll drink ta that."

They clink their glasses together. One gulp. Ahh. Wipe bps.

I'm strapped down to a metal plank. Machinery vibrations come from 
underneath the plank. Rattle the cheeks of my ass. In a pleasant way. I'm 
not complaining. There's a metal band around my stomach. It's pressing down
a little too hard for my delight. As a matter-of-fact, it hurts like hell.

"For the cruds, the thugs, the gangsters, it's what's up front that 
counts. You gotta look right. Make the right impression."

"Right," agrees O'Toole. "A tough, long-lasting suit of blue. My father 
spent a fortune on uniforms in his time."

"You're meanin' Francis James Rooney Finnegan O'Toole, God love him. 
Precinct Captain of the Inner City Combine in '84? I'll drink ta that," 
says O'Sullivan.

Glasses clink together again. Deep burning sighs of whiskey exhaling. 
Loud scraping wiping away of dew from beard-dark lips.

"Now I figure, O'Toole, what makes more sense than wearin' a suit made of
the hide of an officer's son? A youngster, mind you, in his prime. His skin
is tough and durable. Just what we need. I bet he'd yield two good 
uniforms. One for each of us. What do you think?"

"I think you're right, O'Sullivan. In fact, I know you're right. It's 
just that... well, it's just that..."

"C'mon, O'Toole, spit it out. Here, let's have a drink. The amber nectar 
of the holy sprites'll oil that golden member in your head." They drink 
some more. Then O'Toole says, "Loving tender Jesus Christ, friend of my 
heart, I tell you it's wrong, O'Sullivan."

"What's wrong, O'Toole? My mother's rolling hillside knows it's right. 
Didn't he betray his father's love? Didn't he spit on him? And, oh, how the
boy hated!"

It's when they talk about hate that I knew they're talking about me. Me 
and my father, the black-hearted swine.

"Oh, sure, and that's so, the rotten rat," says O'Toole, "but, sainted 
FBI, why have his yellowstriped skin against ours? The thought of it makes 
me want to vomit."

"Look at it like this, O'Sullivan, it's not the same after they take it 
off him and dye it and dry it and reweave parts of it. It's like we're 
doin' it for his sainted father, bless his bile." The machine begins to 
rumble. My bones rattle. I look above. There's a huge sewing needle, 
bobbing up and down, being lowered into my gut, into the zig-bag slots cut 
into the metal band around me.

"Look at the rotten swine sweat."

"Ah, the sainted blessed pleasure in my mind to know how much it'll hurt 
and how long it'll take for all his hideous blood to drain out of him. How 
long did it take the last one, O'Sullivan?"

"Blessed be, it took him maybe five hours of wide-awake sufferin'."

"I'll drink to that."

Glasses clink together.

I fade out.

* * *

"Drawers down, fellows, this here's a bonus for us rookies at the 
Academy," shouts the drill instructor.

I'm trussed-up, turned-over. My backside sticks up into the chilly air of
the Police Academy basement. It's held in place by a metal harness. My head
is clamped down to a cement block. The only thing my hands can hold onto 
are rough-grained bricks. And I have the feeling that I'm going to have to 
hold on for dear life.

"Okay, rookie men of God and Peace, yank down your BVD's. You all have 
been briefed about this goldbrick here. About how he spat on his father's 
grave and how he cursed his mother's lot and how he cheated, connived and 
violated just about everything and anything, sacred to our ideas of life. 
He's not a man, he's a punk sissy prick and we're gonna show him something 
about the real force in a policeman. The real police force! Blue Power!" 
The men cheer loudly. Belt unbuckling. Guns in holsters hung on pegs. 
Grunts of men bending over to pull their pants off over their shiny black 
shoes.

"Stand in line, folks. This is a democracy. No shoving. Everyone will 
have a turn."

Crowd noises, "You bet... I'll say... Yes, sir..."

Etcetera.

"Krannzciqewcz, you're first, because I can only speak your name once."

Laughter.

Scraping sounds of footsteps on cement.

"Rotten punk, this is for God."

He's dead center. His prick is hard as stone and rams itself right up my 
asshole with such pain that my mouth trembles.

And a cock is thrust into my trembling mouth. I mean thrust in with the 
power of a right cross. The cock tip pushes into my throat and I begin to 
gag.

Tobacco-smelling voice whispers into my ear, "Hurt me, you fag, and I'll 
break your neck with my billy-club."

I can't answer.

His prick smells of holy water and cigar smoke.

"Suck," the voice says in my ear.

The cock in my ass is boring through all the layers of ass-ring to prod 
its rigid head into the membranes of my intestines. Blood is dripping from 
my cracked lips. Blood is dripping from my cracked rectum.

Not even the warm sperm fluid shot into my body can heal the pain. Not 
even the warm gagging sperm shot into my hurting mouth can stop my first 
scream.

I can't stop screaming.

For the moment, that is. Because another cock is pushed into my open 
mouth. Cuts the scream in half. The hand behind my head pushes my mouth 
fiercely against the cock. I can feel the cock-head poking out of my skull.
Prodding my brains. Disturbing all my dreams. All I can dream is pain. All 
I can think is pain. My body is no longer flesh, it is pain. I have no 
spirit. I am pain.

Cock-pole rams up my asshole.

Cock-rod gushes and pumps hot sauce into my throat.

CHAPTER FIVE

Throw me to the floor. Which isn't a floor. It's a soft and bouncy fabric
the conveyor-belt pulls slowly down a dark hallway.

"Good... huh... clean... unh... Amer... uh... ican... FUN!!!"

* * *

"That wasn't so bad was it?" says Mr. America Ormond-mask looking down at
me from above. "I hope I didn't hurt you."

Floats away.

Other voices. But they mingle into the sound of a river. The rubber 
river. That's what I'm floating across. Downstream. Through the streets of 
a city. The streets are molten steel. Lava from burning buildings. Washing 
through the stone valleys. Black clouds hang above me. Whenever I scream, 
my scream is divided into a million screams. The city is screaming. 
Everybody. They are all in pain.

Float away. Downstream.

When I blink, blood sticks to my eyebds. I spit up blood and sperm.

I touch blood inside my mouth. It burns my fingertips.

* * *

"Okay. Program it so that when he wakes up again, he's in Heaven and God 
looks like Benjamin Aura Ormond," says Benjamin Aura Ormond, glasses 
flashing.

They're sitting in Central Control, surrounded by a complex of TV 
screens.

"Sure thing, boss," says Jolly Joe Cristobal. "And stop that damned 
smiling!"

"Sorry, boss. I get incredibly hung-up in the roles I'm playing..."

"There's no excuse for anything," Ormond grumbles, stroking his mustache.
"No excuse at all."

He fights a cigarette with a golden fighter. "Do you think he'll give?"

"Sure, boss, he'll give. He's already given up most of the wars he's ever
fought. After a while more, he'll give up everything. It gets easier and 
easier to give up. Once you've started."

"This is costing me a lot of money."

"What the hell, boss, you're loaded."

"Stop that grinning, Cristobal!"

"Sorry, boss, I keep forgetting. That was a good part. I dug playing it. 
I'm sorry it's over."

"You damn artists. You just don't know when to stop."

Ormond spits out an annoying shred of tobacco stuck on his tongue.



NOTE TO THE READER

This note is written with care for the Reader who has pursued my demon 
thus far.

This is to advise you that our Hero's further adventures & exploits will 
be explored (& hopefully resolved) in Book Four of Brain-Plant.

Fittingly enough, the last volume of the Brain-Plant tetralogy shall be 
called: Glue Factory. In it, we knit together many of the lives & 
life-styles I've so randomly strewn about these pages. More outrage. More 
sex made more outrageous. More outrageous testament of man's loving 
madness. More & more.

A dream-vaudeville flip-card book.

Encyclopedia of prophecy mingled with angel-fucking in space clotted with
fumes of waste.

Chuckles & gasps of sorrow.

A lot of a lot of blather, baloney & bullshit.

Coming, going.

Into & out of.

Sex-city, nerve-universe, &to.

All for you, dear Reader, in hopes that you will stick close by me in the
hunt.

David Meltzer


