Like a Leper Messiah — Ross Lockhart

They’d fucked to Ziggy Stardust, to the B side, the best side, but now she watched him as he slept, a childlike smile splashed across his face. She smoked a cigarette and whisper-sang along with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.” Between drags, she explored his silhouette with manicured fingertips, realizing only now how much he resembled a long-haired version of his older brother. As the final chord rang to decay, the needle began to scratch the endless circle of the record’s lead-out ring. She crushed her cigarette into the stolen hotel ashtray on the floor next to her mattress, leaving a slender lipstick-stained monolith among the many filterbones, the long night’s fallen soldiers. She yawned, then got out of bed and walked naked to the bathroom, enjoying the simple pleasure of the thick carpet beneath her feet. Without switching on the light, she sat down on the cold porcelain seat, pressed two fingers against her cock to aim, and pissed into the bowl.

While Robbie slept, riding out in dreams the dregs of last night’s cocaine binge, the phonograph robotically lifted its arm, returned it to the vinyl’s sharp carbon black edge, then expertly slid its needle back into the groove. “Lady Stardust” once again began to play. Terrri, however, paid it no mind. Instead, she remained seated on the toilet, silently contemplating the convoluted ins and outs of sex, and love, and rock and roll in this great modern age.

The last few weeks had been a wondrous blur of mania and music and all the rush and tumble of a new and unanticipated relationship. She hadn’t expected anything when she brought Robbie home from the bar that night. She was just doing a brother a favor, saving his ass before the cops showed up. But then he kissed her, and the strings kicked in. It was only a spontaneous afterthought that prompted her to offer him a place playing bass in her band. Now not only did he have all of the old songs down, but he and Devlin Deck and Johnny Rainbow had already pieced together a dozen brand new melodies to fit her lyrics. Everybody was excited about hitting the studio next month so Occam’s Switchblade could start recording their new record. Johnny was pleased as punch to be back behind his precious keyboards, and even though Maxxy Blue at first complained about Terrri’s penchant for bringing home “stray dogs,” he fell into line and was knocking out a beat on his drums before Robbie struck his third note.

So far, Terrri had confided only to Robbie that her grand plan was that the new record should be a rock opera, tentatively titled Goddammned Mother Fucker. He liked the title, but didn’t seem to get it when she explained that it would be Oedipus Rex retold from Jocasta’s point of view, so she ended up telling him the whole story over a fifth of cheap scotch. By the time they killed the bottle, Robbie had apparently decided that “Oedipus, motherfucker” was his favorite thing to say in the whole world. Okay, so maybe Robbie was just a little bit dense. At least he made up for it by being pretty.
Terrri tapped, then stood up and flushed the toilet. She walked back to the bed, glanced down at Robbie, watching his eyes flicker behind their lids in the lurking half-light that leaked through the curtains from outside, limning the objects in the room. She wondered what he might be dreaming of. Was it her? Was it someone else? A girl? A boy? Terrri plucked a cigarette from the pack perched atop her nightstand then strolled across the bedroom towards the record player, a practiced nightclub walk that perfectly offset the curves of her slender, feminine body. Her ass-length black hair caressed and brushed the tribal tramp-stamp tattooed valley at the small of her back. Her sculpted breasts swayed slightly in counterpoint to her rounded hips. Were it not for that one thing, that one, little, insignificant thing, then she would pass, completely, for a natural-born woman.

One day, mused Terrri as she lit her cigarette, that final artifact that betrayed her origins as a boy named Todd would finally be gone. She recalled the first time she’d tried on those gold brocade Chinese pajamas from her sister’s dress-up box. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Todd?” asked Auntie Drew. “Pretty,” answered Terrri. One day Terrri would move beyond this anima sola limbo, this hybrid purgatory, an amber-trapped life between the genders. But would she miss it?
That was always Terrri’s biggest question. After all, her relationship with her phallus had always been a complicated one. It had a habit of getting her into trouble, inspiring her reckless behavior and cocky attitude. No matter how she tried to tuck it back, hide it from the world, it still had a nasty habit of making itself known. Even so, it was a part of her identity and form… for now. Like a leper messiah, she thought. At times, she pictured her body in terms of Eliphas Lévi’s etching of the Gnostic goat-god Baphomet, hermaphroditic, simultaneously male and female. It was Veronika Vale, Terrri’s ex-grrlfriend, the first after she began her transition, who suggested this satanic similarity: “Great tits, long hair, and a nice, hard cock—what more could a grrl want?” Terrri wondered what the last few years had done to shape that angry, sweet, excruciating grrl. Had she finally found her place in the world, or had she just exploded?

She thought of Kevin, too. Robbie’s brother. Of the time they’d high-fived one another over Rachael Rimsky’s back. No, that was high school, so that wasn’t Terrri, that was Todd. But Terrri was the one that, two weeks later, had sucked off Kevin in the locker room while the rest of the team played the boys from St. Sebastian’s. Poor Kevin, Terrri hadn’t just blown him, she’d blown his mind. He was never quite the same after that, and their friendship drifted apart. She did end up receiving an invitation, two days before it happened, to Kevin and Rachael’s wedding, but it was addressed to Todd. By that time she was Terrri full-time, so she didn’t bother showing up.

Terrri sat down, cross-legged in front of the record shelf, and fingered her way through the cardstock jackets with her left hand. Blind Faith, Diamond Dogs, Love it to Death, Love’s Secret Domain, Frankenchrist, Appetite for Destruction, Ritual de lo Habitual, Sticky Fingers, Virgin Killer. Every record seemed to hold a phallic agenda. She took a pensive pull from the cigarette perched between her right index and middle fingers, then exhaled, blowing out a perfect ring, a halo, and watched it ascend and dissipate. Terrri smiled, then transferred the cigarette to her mouth, where she clutched it tight between her white and gleaming teeth.

As “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” once again began to play, she pulled the empty record jacket from the shelf: David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. She turned it over, and over again, in her hands, examining it. RCA AYL1-3843. “A Gem Production.” That mysterious brick building. Those boots, that haircut, that tight blue jumpsuit, sexy circa 1972. That strange English phonebooth on the back, shades of Doctor Who. “To be played at maximum volume,” indeed.

Robbie Snow

Don’t get me wrong, I love The Kinks.

Seriously. When Ray and Dave Davies weren’t pummeling each other, they rocked. When they were, on the other hand, they rocked even harder. Nothing quite like brotherly love to make your jaw ache. Still, that song, no matter how catchy the fucking thing might be, no matter how much you want to sing along by the end of the damn thing, doesn’t quite do the subject justice.

I mean Ray’s got it right on more than a few levels. Girls will be boys and boys will be girls. This is a mixed-up, muddled-up, fucked-up world, and sometimes, when I’ve had just enough, champagne starts to taste just like cherry cola (c-o-l-a cola). Thing is, Ray quits telling the story right when it starts to get good. He cops out before it’s time to spill the gory details. Who fucks who? Who sticks what where? Who gets to sleep in the wet spot? It’s like one of those crappy old movies where the bedroom door swings shut and the audience is left to fantasize that Doris Day is yanking on Rock Hudson’s hair, screaming “take it all, bitch” as she fucks him from behind with a big black dildo. It’s catchy, but not quite true.

Lola ain’t got nothing on Terrri Terrrors.

After all, Lola’s just a garden variety transvestite. A weekend faggot that gets his freak on by tarting up in a dress, smearing on a little bit of rouge, lipstick, and fucking with drunk hayseeds, scaring the bejesus out of them. “I’m gonna make you a man.” By the end of the night, Ray’s got it coming. All the hints are there—the dark brown voice, the crushing bearhug—and no matter how drunk a guy is, he knows the chick’s going to turn out to be either a coyote or a cocksucker. The whole thing’s just a build up to the big gag anyway, a chaste one, too, stacked against the raunchy riff from “You Really Got Me.” The panties drop and suddenly—sproing!—up it pops like a jack-in-the-box. Shock value, that’s all.

But Terrri?

Terrri’s something else entirely. She’s no reject from the New York Dolls, but a real, live girl—with one exception. She moves like a chick, smells like a chick. She’s a chick. My type, even, with black hair, smooth skin, great mouth. Tits to sink a battleship. She’s got the rock goddess thing nailed. Like Erin…

…with a penis.

But not a scary one. Not elephantine huge, swinging from knee to knee. No freaky veins, either. Normal. And apparently I don’t have any problem with that. Everything worked. Who knew? I can get it up for a chick with a dick, have a great time at it, and not even feel bad about it in the morning. That doesn’t make me a fag or anything, does it?

I thought it might, that first afternoon. Terrri’d split, leaving me stoned and alone at her pad, saying she’d be back in an hour or two with breakfast. I entertained myself by digging through her porno tapes. She has a ton of them: straight, gay, bi, trans, something for everybody. Half the time I spent goofing on the titles. I tried watching something called Rock Hard, but it just seemed stupid. No reaction. Fluff Boys was even worse. I couldn’t talk myself into T-Girl Surprise. I eventually managed to rub one over a scene in something called Naughty Nymphs Nine, a generic blonde in a cheerleader’s uniform, nice tits, staring right into the camera as she played the confident fellatrix to a locker room full of swinging phalii.

That did it. Took me ten minutes, tops. The gay stuff didn’t even get a rise. Hell, I can’t even jerk off in front of a mirror. Dicks don’t do it for me.

But Terrri? I dig her. She’s a cool chick. I’ll admit it weirded me out the first couple of times she jabbed me in the leg while we were going at it, but I can work around it. Throw in the whole band thing, and I’ve got the perfect girl…

…with a penis.

---

3AM Whistle–by Julie Shapiro

 
3AM, the whistle blows. The wind, the birds, all sounds take a back burner to the train. People board at the station. Voices muffled. Sleep in their eyes. Belongings clutched to their chests. Red dots emblazoned on their foreheads.

This is the train of the El Chipo with the red dotted people in a huddle. No one talks much about when it happened; we can’t; the memories still burn. In my case, it’s salsa.

***

The day started like any other with the pang of hunger. I went to the taco stand on the corner of Fifth and Wave. It is the place to get salsa to bring tears to your eyes. I should know. When I went there to get my bean and cheese burrito I found a guy dispensing burritos wearing a McDonald’s uniform. I thought of their mild food and winced.

“Did Los Pedros become the golden arches while I slept?”

The guy in the McDonald’s uniform answered, ”Padron Roberto got sent back.”

“Why?”

“His chipo beeped.”

“You’re saying his tortilla chip did him in? I don’t get it. His chips are the best and that salsa of his is kick ass.”

The guy wiped his forehead nervously and said, “Order something before my chipo beeps.”
“What is this El Chipo El Beepo?”

He nodded and looked over and under his shoulders giving me the willies. I ordered what else, but the chips and salsa and headed for the door.
Outside of Los Pedros, I munched on my chips, not understanding his warning or what happened to my corner taco stand. A helicopter flew over head. My cell phone vibrated in my pants pocket. No number registered in the incoming screen. I decided to take my chances and answered it. I heard a whirring beat, no caller on the other end. The helicopter landed in the vacant lot next to the taco stand. I walked past it. A megaphone shouted, “Put your hands on your rear.”

“Huh, don’t you want them up if I’m arrested? But what I’d do?”

“Sir, this will only take a minute, then you can go about your business.”

“What I do, what I’d do?”

They didn’t answer. I placed my hands on my butt and felt a sharp jolt in my forehead like a mosquito, a tick and flea all rolled into one. It imbedded and borrowed into my skin and twitched a moment. A drop of blood dripped from my nose. I walked down the street, not sure what El Chipo meant, just that I’d become implanted.

***

Days later I returned to Los Pedros, still no sign of my friend, Roberto. I stared at the guy with his McDonald’s uniform as he took out a jar of mayonnaise from the refrigerator, one I’d never seen in the premises. He gestured from it to his shirt and said, “These ah…uniforms seemed more appropriate given the circumstances.”

“Hold the Mayo, please. And since when is that a condiment here?”

He wrote down on a napkin, one that he instructed me to chew with the burgers and fries. “Since, it became the land of the Red Dotted People. Please, go, I beg of you.”

I ate the tasteless burger and greasy fries and left. At home on the neighbor’s lawn I noticed a rubber glove. Paranoia set in. Water dripped from the glove’s open fingers. I asked aloud, “What did my neighbors do to bring you there?”

The glove blew in the wind. “What? You can’t handle my questions? Is it too much to ask why you are on the lawn?”

***

I heard the beating of the helicopters. The drum of fear pounded with each twist of the blades. “The flying death machine on my lawn, not in a movie…why? Why,” I screamed. The men in dark uniforms, the color of night came. They followed me to my car and said they’d been watching me. They mentioned how they heard words said in conversations, secret codes.

I said to them, “What, I’m not some terrorist. I probably said a joke. How could I know which words and where you’d find wrong?”

No one answered. They tipped their caps at me. Goodbye, hello, or we’ll be back. I didn’t know which their gesture meant. Only that fear swells from the head to the stomach and makes the feet run and the arms sway longing to fly.

I ran to the park like I did every morning, I told myself. What else could I do? The self-help book mantra rattled in my brain. “Life would have to go on, push yourself through it like you know what to do, even if you don’t.” Happy words said for a safer time.

In the park I kicked at the grass. Grass blades flew around me. “Blades have will; I have will. Silent will; they can’t know these thoughts. Thoughts are mine. Green; green grass grows; will always grow here. The park is the same, same as it always has been.”

Lies, lies…I ripped at the grass and dug. Fingers into the deep earth, I smelled what being buried is. Dark and damp…The grass did nothing. I buried the loose blades with me, my whole fist in the ground.

Worms crawled over my hand. I wiggled my fingers. Dirt rained. The worm’s storm, not mine; “not mine,” I shouted.

I listened for the helicopters. I thought I heard them in the distance and ran. A steady rumble pierced the air. On and on it rolled, “My Train. My train.”  It whistled and I raced to the boarding station.

***

Now I sit on the train headed for the land of the Red Dotted People. I questioned why and maybe said too much of nothingness and became branded. I’m still not sure how come the guy in the McDonald’s shirt didn’t wind up with a red dot, other than he’s Compliance, that’s what’s whispered about on the train. In time they say those people will get a dot of their own, maybe blue or black. I think it should be green for the cash, the cash they still can bring home.

No one wants a red dot as an employee. It’s the way of the land. I hope in Red Dot-Opia I’ll find Roberto and we’ll talk over chips and salsa without the helicopters whirring. They say they’re outlawed in his country, like gas leaf blowers in some communities in mine.

---

Murder Mystery Block Party– B.L. Gifford

We’d always said that psychedelic rock and dope went together like beef brisket and barbecue. Larry Jones said we were full of shit. First of all, assholes, he would say, get it straight, dope is heroin, not marijuana, and second, heroin is more punk than psychedelic. And third, he’d say, the music is my methadone. It was the music that led us to his body. The day we found Larry’s body the hippy trippy sounds of psychedelia had come from his house all afternoon. A contingent of us went to check it out. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Someone suggested we take off running when we heard him coming. What are you, like eight years old, someone else said. Shut the fuck up, the wannabe phantom knocker said. Somebody’s a little touchy, another of us said. Come on, Larry, vamos. No answer. The door was ajar. We went inside.

On the walls in the front room we found the psychedelic rock equivalent of interior designers gone wild. There were album covers all over the place. One of us, a real estate agent, said the house would never sell if it were presented like this. Another of us, a security guard, described how he had helped beat down the psychedelic rock scene back in the 60s. And now there it was again staring us all in the face from off Larry’s wall. Among others, Janis Joplin, who was born over in Port Arthur, was there in flames looking like she was Joan of Arc at the stake. The band 13th Floor Elevators, whose members hailed from over in Austin, was there in all its phantasmagoric glory. On one album cover, a golden Aztec sun; on the other, an equilateral triangle and a deuce of all-seeing eyes. Freaky. And a singer named Donovan sitting in front of an infrared medieval moat and castle.

We moved into the back room, where we found Larry’s Bulldog, The Other Side of the Story, TOSS for short. TOSS was blind and mute, but he still got around. In fact, in the past year alone TOSS had knocked up three neighborhood dogs. Designer dogs too. One a show dog. And Toss did it while their owners were out walking them. Just came right up and started fucking them right there on the leash. Didn’t even introduce himself. Didn’t as much as sniff their butts first. And once TOSS and the other dog were engaged there was nothing the owners could do about it. Just had to stand there whistling and holding the leash, like they did when their dogs were taking a dump. Oh man were the other dogs’ owners pissed. The looks on their faces, you would have thought greasy truck driving Larry was screwing their own wives right there in front of them. Threatened to press charges but knew the police wouldn’t do anything about it because Larry lived on the edge of our neighborhood in the country, not in town, and they never took any of our complaints about him seriously. Complained to Larry about it, too, but all he would say is, well, at least TOSS is making love not war.

Apparently the old mute dog also knew how to make himself heard when he needed to. When we walked into the back room we found him sitting there with a paw on the repeat button of Larry’s CD player. We pushed TOSS aside and switched off the music. It was the Greatest Hits of that same Donovan who was on the wall. Now TOSS was facing the sliding glass door to the deck, whimpering and sniffing the air. We went outside. In the hot tub, its water tinged pink, Larry was doing the dead man’s float, his back sunburnt, his white shoulder-length hair matted with blood. We flipped him over. His stomach was red and bloated, like an inflated whoopee cushion.

Some of us took turns humming pop standards by the old crooners while the others played Name That Tune. That song by Johnnie Ray, someone guessed. No, it’s a Dean Martin. And on and on like that. Finally, someone called the authorities. Maybe they’d at least haul Larry’s body away. Naked and upside down with his bare ass visible for us all to kiss. That’s how Larry always said we would find him at his funeral. Hoping to see the promised spectacle, we all attended the event. Unfortunately, at the request of Larry’s only child, Tommy, the undertaker had placed Larry in the box fully-dressed and right-side up.

During the funeral Tommy played the Donovan CD. When we heard the song in which Donovan asks for one more kiss, we all blew one in the air in the general direction of Larry’s ass. The undertaker did a good job covering up the wounds on Larry’s other end.

A preacher read the Twenty-Third Psalm and gave Larry a lovely eulogy definitively placing him in heaven. Someone said that the preacher must have not known Larry.

The religious part of the service had to be all Tommy’s doing. Alive, Larry would have had none of it. Pre-programmed religion, Larry used to say, is just another form of social capital, at least until they start passing around the firearms and poison-aid, then it becomes a deadly game, to which one of us would respond that a tragedy like happened up in Waco and down in Jonestown would never happen again, that people are wiser now, to which Larry would say, don’t be so sure, you, you . . . colony of fire ants.

The fire ants. They had overtaken half of Larry’s backyard, but he still refused to exterminate them. The reason he gave was that he had once squashed a yellow-jacket on the windowsill of a bar and later that night, back at home, was stung out of his sleep by another yellow-jacket that had somehow gotten into his bed. He wasn’t going to have karma coming for him in the form of pissed-off fire ants seeking vengeance on behalf of their species.

The house in which Larry lived was the ranch house his parents built sometime in the 50s. While he was away at college in the 70s his parents sold it. Sometime in the late 80s Larry returned and bought the house back. In the 90s a developer decided the area needed a master-planned, deed restricted community and made generous offers to the rural homeowners, most of whom took the money, all except Larry, who was the only hold-out. The developer bought the land surrounding Larry’s acre and tore down the other houses. Larry still refused to sell his plot. He said the large, two-story brick houses the developer was building reminded him of gigantic fire-ant mounds. If we said anything to him about the condition of his house, he would ask who died and made us the Department of Neighborhood Standards. Larry complained that the standards contributed to a dull sameness. We disagree. The standards permit three different colors of front doors and the same for the shutters. For the exterior you have three styles of brick to choose from. Your mailbox can be made out of cedar or mahogany. Now that’s choice.

Over the years Larry had splashed his house all over with different colors, lime green, purple, pink, yellow, and orange. He built on a ramshackle deck and installed the hot tub. Let’s just be honest. The house was hideous. It looked like a hippie-painted school bus abandoned on the side of the two-lane highway that runs past our neighborhood. (By the way, on the berm of that highway we have posted a no-engine brake sign. Larry and his truckers friends all ignored the sign. They made their engines chuckle and blew their horns at us as they rolled on by. The other truckers are even worse about it now that he’s gone. We’re going to do something about that too.)

Larry always called our community Gehenna, from the Greek word for hell. The place where an ancient people burned their garbage and sacrificed their children to the god Moloch. Again, people are wiser now. The salvage yards, landfills, and rendering plants are all in a neighborhood south of here. Our children play in the neighborhood park next to the road. All we ask is that they not induce the truckers to more horn blowing by playing the pull-the-horn game. For a long time now we have wanted to expand the park to include a community center but Larry’s house stood in the way. The medical examiner ruled that multiple blows to the head, not drowning or anything else, killed Larry Jones. But the examiner is a real hack, so who knows. The police have not identified a suspect, but there is a lot of motive to go around. Right or wrong, most of us had one. In no particular order and just by way of example:

Phil. Larry changed his own oil and did other work on his big rig and on the rusty car he parked in his back yard, which had been his parents’ car back in the 60s. Phil’s thirty-something old son, who still lived at home, said to Larry, hey what’s with that music, how about Clutch and Motorhead, which Larry took as a smart-ass reference to his automotive habits, so Larry told Phil that he and his kid should drive away in their mini-van and mind their own fucking business. After that Larry would blast Motorhead and Clutch late at night and the next day would ask Phil to tell his kid thanks for the recommendation, he could hear the blues in those guys. At night the music would rattle everyone out of bed. That and the horseshoes Larry tossed at night, clanging one after the other while Motorhead and Clutch blared. We called the police, and they went to check it out, but came back saying they couldn’t do anything about it. Phil also was one of the designer dog walkers.

Mike. Mike is an executive with a company headquartered downtown. He would have made a good revival preacher. He knows how to run a meeting, knows what to say and when. Larry, by contrast, spoke with the abandon of a child who knows no better and an ancient man who no longer cares what people think. Mike’s wife, Becky, is a cute little thing. Becky was the kind of girl that everyone wanted to end up in the closet with when they played Seven Minutes in Heaven as kids. She also writes poetry, which makes her even cuter. She is thirty-four years old, ten years younger than Mike and twenty years younger than Larry. Last summer she spent a lot of time working in her front yard, which is near the park, catty-corner to Larry’s.

Last September Becky was coming down the driveway to get the mail as Mike was coming home from work. Becky tripped and fell into her lawn. She did the splits right there in the grass. Larry yelled over at her, I bet the ground is hard now, then ran over and helped her up after Mike didn’t. Becky smiled. Mike, Larry said, you don’t talk that way to a woman to her husband’s face. No you don’t, Larry said, you do it behind his back after you’re done making love to her. Mike grabbed Becky and pulled her inside the house.

Bob and Sally. It was impossible to hold an open house in our neighborhood without Larry showing up on the sidewalk outside and telling prospective buyers everything that was wrong with the house. Mold. Water damage. Whatever it was. We never knew for sure how he knew about the problems, but we suspected that TOSS and his canine sniffer had something to do with it. One day Bob and Sally, a husband and wife real estate team, stopped in front of Larry’s house and yelled at him to keep the big picture in mind, to which Larry responded that they should stick the big picture up their greedy asses and see if it comes out the other end looking like a masterpiece.

Larry’s Ex-Wife. We all liked her. A year ago she left him for calling her Becky. While they were making love. Her name was Helen, not Rebecca or anything remotely close to Becky.

—

We had a plan. After the interment we persuaded Tommy to invite us all over to Larry’s house for dinner. Mike went to get his smoker. Someone went to get the beef and everything we needed to make potato salad and coleslaw.

On the kitchen table we found a newspaper clipping of Larry’s obituary marked up with brackets and annotated in handwriting that someone who had taught Tommy in high school English class said was Tommy’s:

Larry F. Jones, age 54. Attended college to study music. [Left home thinking he could sing like Donovan and dropped out after a professor told him he couldn't sing well at all.] Preceded in death by parents Harold and Evelyn Jones [As a teenager he sat in their car and listened to Donovan and Janis Joplin 8-tracks to mask the noise of his parents’ yelling and throwing things at each other inside the house. He imagined his father gentler, like Donovan, and his mother a little tougher, like Joplin. He dreamed about being Donovan's and Joplin's love child. Said he cried when he heard the news of her death. Oh, that voice, he said, and that wild ornery smile.] Survived by his son, Tommy Jones, and Bulldog, The Other Side of the Story. Funeral service will be held at the River Funeral Home, Pastor Howard Smith officiating. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the county animal shelter.

When Mike returned he fired up the smoker. No one said much until one of the neighborhood kids who was now attending law school told us that when they sell Larry’s house the law might require the agent to disclose the violent nature of Larry’s death. That’s a stigma he said. Same thing happened at Jonestown, which is still in ruins today. The stigma of Larry’s death might even spread to our homes and hurt our property values.

No worries, we said. We had a plan. We tapped Larry’s beer and began playing drinking games. When the beer ran out a couple of us raided our own wine cellars and wet bars. Mmmm, whiskey. One of the nice things about having a lot of money — better liquor. Phil’s son put in a CD of a new group called 21st Century Prick. We shocked the hot tub clean and piled in. The barbecue was good.

Sometime after midnight we all let out a long collective howl. We played strip poker. Two police officers showed up, told the men to put their pants back on and said they were shutting the party down unless the women all took off their shirts and flashed their tits. Drunk, most of the women did so and paraded around the back yard. Becky, though, kept her shirt on. The officers said she had to show her tits too. She said no, this party is about Larry and he was more subtle than that, he was a connoisseur of cleavage, just the dimple at the top of my V-neck shirt drove him crazy. He loved to see a pendant dangling there, which he would always call a very lucky charm and–What the hell, Mike said. He was about to find out. The other women held her down and ripped her shirt and bra off.

And there it was.

A tattoo on her left breast. A small red heart and a thin green vine-line script spelling the name Larry. And her stomach stuck out farther than her breasts. She had been hiding the extra girth under her clothes. Mike said something that suggested he hadn’t had sex with Becky recently enough to do what obviously had been done to her.

Oh yes, Mike, the child is Larry Jones’s, Becky said. I’m so so sorry, Mike, but the affair didn’t happen in a fit of passion you jackass. Even when he was on the road, Larry would call to let me know he was thinking of me, would ask me how my day was. He would even listen as I read my poetry, which you don’t care a thing about, don’t know a verse I’ve written. But he could recite them all.

Satisfied with the show they had gotten, the police took some barbecue and left. Fuck off, Mike told Becky. I care more that he screwed the neighborhood than that he fucked you. I haven’t worked my ass off to get what I’ve got and to pay my mortgage just so some asshole like Larry Jones can take it all away. My property value I mean, not your sorry ass.

Phil, who was the bank manager where Larry banked, said Larry was behind on his thirty-year mortgage and that the bank had been threatening foreclosure. Tearing the house down could keep the house flippers away. Then we could work something out to avoid the stigma of foreclosure. We’ll get the land and build the community center on it.

Wait a minute, Tommy said, I think I’ve got an interest here. Bad move. We chased him into the yard. For a moment the food chain inverted. The fire ants swarmed, attacking and stinging Tommy to death. Within minutes there was hardly anything left of him but his clothes. We tried to help him, really, we did; we’re not bad people. But nature took over, and it happened so fast, like an episode of insects gone wild. So there was nothing we could do.

Someone looked at TOSS and said the rendering plant might be interested him. Somehow TOSS seemed to understand. He took off running toward the woods. Never saw a Bulldog run so fast. After that it was pandemonium. Those who wanted something looted it and took it back to their houses. We ripped Larry’s album covers off the walls and started a burn pile. The kids grabbed Larry’s horseshoes and tossed them for a few minutes. Hey, is there a horseshoe missing, someone said. When they tired of the horseshoes they threw the shoes through the windows. The teenagers brought down sledge hammers and started tearing through the siding.

This is going too slow Mike said. He drove to one of those 24-hour equipment rental companies to get an excavator and returned with it on a flat-bed truck. Things started going faster after that.

Dust from the debris was choking us. Someone said this is an older house, how about the risk from asbestos and lead paint. Someone else said don’t worry about it, we’ve got good health insurance.

Armed with the excavator it took about six minutes to knock the rest of the house down. We tore apart Larry’s car and truck and buried it in the debris. Phil said he knew someone who could haul the valuable materials to the salvage yard for resale and the debris to the landfill for disposal. By morning there was nothing left but the slab of the house. Dust hung in the air, obscuring the sunlight. Everything was covered in a thousand shades of gray.

That last line was Becky’s. Earlier in the night she was freaking out and saying she wouldn’t go along with the plan. Mike responded that Larry’s house was a threat to the neighborhood. Whose side are you on Becky? Are you with the neighborhood or against it? This isn’t a game, Becky. It was getting pretty ugly but then someone had the idea to make her an offer. She could include some of her poetry in this story and it would be published in the newsletter if she came on board. The description of the album covers from above is her material. We told her, Becky, you can’t compare Joan of Arc to Janis Joplin, that’s blasphemous, but she was adamant about it, so it got in. Most of the metaphors and similes in here are hers.

Jim added all the fucks. That’s Jim. He does stand-up comedy as a hobby. He’s always fuck this and fuck that. Real estate agent Sally said you can’t say the F-word, to which Jim said, Fuck you, Sally, the FCC doesn’t control print.

We were going to describe the rules of the drinking games in detail and put more in here about some of the crazy antics that ensued, but Marlene insisted that this wasn’t cool. Marlene would sign on to our plan only if we promised to include a public service announcement in this story. Listen up kids, don’t drink, it’s bad for you. And parents, those who host . . . well you know. So there you have it. Don’t drink or do drugs. It’ll fuck you up. We’re going to auction off the naming rights to the community center to whoever contributes the most money for it. And the park we’re going to name the Larry Jones Memorial Park. On the boulder in what was once Larry’s backyard we’ll place a nice plaque that says In Remembrance of Larry Jones. For purposes of this story we have changed our names to protect our identities. The authorities might decide that whoever killed Larry also destroyed his house to hide the evidence. But who knows. The policemen who stopped by that night are friends of ours so they shouldn’t squeal. If they do, though, or if anyone catches on from what we have written here, we’ll find a way out. Always have, always will.

Who are we? Are we you? The second letter’s e and W. Maybe they’ll figure it out. Whatever. As if. b4n.

THE END

---

Ross Lockhart has been known to write poetry, prose, essays, and naughty words on bathroom walls. He awaits the day when gorillas wise up, throw off the yoke of submission, and deal with those damn, dirty humans once and for all. Ross Lockhart is the editor and publisher of apeshitmedia chapbooks, writes copy for Nightshade Books, and has had his fiction and poems published in many journals and magazines. The letters that form the name “Ross E. Lockhart” can easily be rearranged to spell “Hares rock lots.”

Julie Ann Shapiro is a freelance writer, novelist, short story author, and Pushcart Nominee. Julie’s novel, Jen-Zen and the One Shoe Diaries was published by Synergebooks.com.

B.L. Gifford’s fiction and poems have appeared in magazines such as Mississippi Crow, Boston Literary Magazine, and The Copperfield Review amongst others.