(9)

(8)

Paul Did.

It had been many months since Paul had made love to his wife. He blamed it on his blood pressure. Far from being the type to discuss his sexual problems with a doctor, he suffered in silence and so did his wife; She blamed these problems on herself. Inversely proportionate to his advances towards his wife, his belt size had grown. Now, laying on his back in their well-worn mattress, the groove he molded into the spot he reliably slept in was the only place outside of the occasional full-length mirror where he could see his feet. He regarded his feet as close friends. They were certainly more numerable than his real-life friends.

Tonight his wife did not talk to him in bed, and Paul considered this a welcome change. Nights before, she had asked him why they never had sex anymore. It had resulted in a considerable amount of hemming and hawing from Paul. Deciding that almost anything would be better than accepting blame for their recent lack of physicality, he allowed the guilt to remain on his wife's shoulders. “Things just get to be so vanilla,” Paul had told her with an air of finality before forcing his eyes shut and feigning sleep. She asked what she could do before getting the message. She watched him bluffing before getting the hint. She still fell asleep before he did.
So when he got the chance to fall asleep on his own terms, catching up with those old friends that seemed so useless in his life, it almost made him smile. Almost.

When Paul woke up the next morning, he did not smile, but he was happier than usual. He was not on his way to his data entry job. He had an appointment with his doctor. After drinking his black, bitter coffee, he drove to a chain restaurant. He ordered a sandwich off of the breakfast menu.

Paul did not eat at the top chain restaurant. It had been his favorite once upon a time. A documentary had recently cast public attention on this top chain, leading to a healthier menu. Paul did not like that.

The greasy, dripping marriage of convenience and consumerism which he lewdly tongued away at contained several strips of bacon and two omellettes, both of which had been crammed with a yellow cheese. He did not know if it was cheddar or american cheese, but he did not care as it dripped lasciviously to his tertiary chin, where it congealed for a few minutes before being wiped away on his exit.

In the waiting room, he was told that his doctor would see him in a few minutes. Paul did not like being at the doctor's office this early in the morning. He did not like it because it was during another doctor's walk-in hours. Poor couples with their brat kids littered the waiting room; children with a cough or a rash, mothers with doting faces and a pair of parents who lovingly did a crossword puzzle together as they watched their son play with toys on the waiting room floor.

Paul wished he had a crossword puzzle. Paul also wished he enjoyed crossword puzzles. Paul changed his wish to a magazine. But not the magazines that were available. Paul wanted the new FHM, Maxim, GQ or Stuff. The doctor did not see him in a few minutes; it was well over two dozen minutes before he was seen, and it felt to Paul like longer because he had to sit there and watch happy people.

When he did finally enter the room where the doctor would examine him, Paul had worked himself into a foul mood. With no sandwich to consume nor GQ to distract him, he had turned the minor inconvenience of his wait into something worth complaining about. Its impotent, angry velocity amplified itself like a perpetual motion machine. But with it, his insecurity amplified; another thing he often combatted with magazines. “Maybe,” thought Paul, “he's putting it off because the news is bad and he hates the idea of breaking it to me.” The two emotions pulled on him until he was an absolute wreck.

So when Dr. Lynch, a thin man years younger than his current patient, entered, Paul was too insecure to be visibly angry. But he was very sweaty. The appointment went well. Oddly, Paul's heart was in fine working order and the medication he had been taking recently was bringing down his blood pressure. He should still be worried, though, because Paul's family had considerable history with heart problems.

All things considered, said the doctor, you're pretty fit, actually. The doctor then listened to Paul's heart and fingered Paul's jaw where it met his skull. “Oh,” said Dr. Lynch. “Your lymph nodes are swollen. At your age, that could be lymphoma.”

Paul felt the dull, insistant song of tinnitus pulling at his eardrums as the doctor continued. “I'd check it out in two weeks to see if it's gotten bigger, but keep an eye on it. Could be cause for concern.”

“I think you might be mistaken, doc... that's just a tense muscle.”

The ruminitive way Dr. Lynch replied made him sound as though his drawn-out words, pregnant in thought, were oozing consideration in the “m” syllable which opened each new sentence. “...mmmmThat's possible... mmmBut you should keep an eye on it. Try to keep from palpating the region and see if it's any bigger in two weeks.”

The ringing remained in his ears through the coming weeks, a dull humming reminder of his own body's potential rebellion. He heard it over the dinner he ate with his wife. He heard it over coffee. He heard it while being chewed out at his job. He heard it when he drove by the nations second-greatest fast food chains, robbed of hunger by the knot in his stomach. He heard it when he masturbated, hunched over the pixelated pornography that was becoming a greater part of his life each night before bed. He heard it loudest, though, when he feigned sleep as his wife asked him supremely embarrassing questions about his turn-ons. Those times, he wished it was so loud that he would never have to hear anything ever again.

And he also wished it was in him to make love to his wife again at times like these. At times he would sit and cry and imagine living a life where rather than fearing judgement with such all-consuming power, he could tell his wife that he was an exhibitionist and make love to her in an open field. Or something. But every night as he drove home he would place his hands on the sides of his throat and massage that slightly sore, tense area that ran from his jaw to the area where his neck became shoulder.

After a week, he could not have been more sure it was bigger. If Paul was anything, it was not courageous, and above all he could not make himself call his doctor back.
The days became blurs, colored gray in his own indifference, and one day his wife stopped asking about his kink. Paul hoped against hope that this would mark the beginning of the end; that from now on he could live out his finite days, the lump on his neck growing bigger and his wife no longer hoping for carnal pumpery. He had to buy a new belt for his pants. He was losing a lot of weight.

So, one day, he called up his wife during his lunch break and told her to meet him at the park, where they would have lunch. He told her they would have lunch, but that was mostly a lie. He didn't imagine he'd be very hungry after telling her that he had lymphoma.
They sat on the park bench avoiding eachothers' gaze, egg salad sandwiches on doughy whitebread clasped cold in their hands. Paul did not know where to begin, so as he gazed off into the distance and after straightening his tie, buried his head in his hands. “It's no secret that I've been acting different lately.”

“What is it?”

“And I'm just not sure how to say it... it's been weighing on me.”

“You can tell me anything.”

“Things just won't ... be the same again... after...” But something had caught Paul's eye before he could finish his sentence.

From where she sat, Paul's wife saw her husband stand up without explanation and run clumsily towards the jogging man. Her husband was out of breath by the time he'd caught up with the jogger. The thin, younger jogger responded to Paul with surprise and then familiarity before appearing to check the pulse of Paul's jugular and shaking his head, laughing in Paul's face.

Paul looked angry at first. Then he looked humiliated and then relieved before slowly and luxuriously walking back to his wife.

She was confused. “Who was that man? What did you want to tell me?” she said in a voice that guessed at divorce.

Paul smiled, grabbed his wife's pendulous breast right there out in the open and when she gasped, he slid his tongue in her mouth. He could almost taste her blush. “That was my doctor,” Paul said. “And I'd like to make love to you right out here in this field.”

Paul did.

7

Interlude (6)

Jonathan swam in his dreams. He swam with his arms held to his sides and legs together, cutting effortlessly back and forth through the water. Like an eel. To the eel, there is no water, there is no breath or orientation. Jonathan saw specks of light and fishy crumbs floating through the darkness. He heard nothing, or maybe something, but only in the same way that the water was nothing and he was nothing as well.

The darkness took shape and became his office. A layer of sediment and greenish slime lay on the cubicles and laser printers, smoothing the buttons on multi-line telephones and gradually obscuring pencils left on desktops. Perhaps everyone had just stopped coming one day. With nothing better to do, perhaps the office simply sank a little day after day until it rested here. He swam down empty halls past unused fire extinguishers and folding chairs. He found himself in darkness again.

Jonathan woke up. He smiled.

The Champ (6)

It was an omen, a sign of things to come. The Champ didn’t know it though. How could he? He had been threatened hundreds of times. He has survived gun fights. He has survived those moneymen burning his house to cinders. He has survived and revenged the murder of his family. He has survived the streets of New York, Cairo, Tokyo, and Cape Town. The innocent skull of some beast is hardly something that could be used to terrorize a man as jaded as The Champ.

The Champ sat on a milk crate under the back alley lamp of a meat packing plant. A long jagged scar ran from his forehead, over his eye, and to his chin like a river. A circle of scar tissue rose from his cheek leaving the impression that he was painted like a doll. His mangled torso made it difficult to tell where his tattoos stopped and the scars began. His face told the story of a tormented man. He sat there shirtless imagining himself at the top of a pile of corpses looking over a scorched landscape. He often had this thought. His body looked like twisted rope.

The box lay open as The Champ looked in. The skull was surrounded by black candles and the entire contents reeked of death. This was not a foreign smell to this man. He pulled the skull out and studied it. It belonged to a small animal, maybe a cat? He wasn’t sure. The idea that someone had gone through the trouble of having him find it was more than he cared to understand. He tossed the skull next to the box. A sharp pain shot through his hand as it hit the ground. The Champ held his wrist tight but the pain continued. He felt a rage wash through him and stomped his boot onto the skull. A burst of white light shot out from under his foot as he crushed the skull.

The Champ thought once again about his pile of corpses and the weariness the skull had caused him faded away. He bent over the milk crate and picked up two loose gloves made of leather. He slowly pulled them on while watching the destroyed pieces of the mysterious skull. He then began to wrap some razor wire around the leather. He knew that this was the end of his reign. All his fighting, all his rage had finally caught up to him. He was old now. He traced the contours of the skull in his head. He couldn’t get rid of that image. Was it his destiny? Was that skull of some small mammal actually him? He hoped that it was. He decided at that moment that he would die tonight. Not as repentance for all of those he has killed, but as a man that consciously needed to hold his destiny in his own hands.

The Champ looked at his mangled hands. These hands have killed forty two men. He could see each of their faces in their death throws. He looked at his hands and made peace with them. Tonight he would beat the challenger bloody, but when they had thought that he has won he would allow that man to take his life, whoever he was. The Champ curled his lips into a gnarled smile and walked around the corner for his last great fight and the end of it all.

By Turbo

5

His Eyes (4)

They say that when you look into His seventh eye that you can see your own death. Men have clamored, even murdered for a look; a prediction of futility. I have looked into the eye and have seen my fate. Thus, I have decided not to take a wife. I was staying in the small town of my birth until I realized the utter futility in that as well.

My life as a nomad was predestined by His third eye. I left that east coast hell for a mid-American journey. Granted, I was treated as a tramp and I did eat the waste of humanity, but I always knew where I was headed. Detroit was a land of child hustlers and prepubescent whores. Cincinnati had that river that smelled of death and smiled like hell. St. Louis grabbed at my pant leg and begged for me to stay. But it was Chicago that made love to me and gave me the respect and humility I felt I deserved. None of His eyes showed me that.

I took to the streets like a whip. I cracked and the lights gleamed. There was this two flat east of Lake Shore Drive on the far south side. The walls stood like cards and when the wind blew the place would shutter as a chill went up its keystone pillar spine. The other inhabitants would shriek with fear, but I always knew that I would not die here. We called this place “Riddle House”. It went down in the flood of ’92; a collapse. A young girl died. I wore a brown tuxedo to the funeral and was asked to leave by a wailing spinster who took it upon herself to blame me for the death. I laughed at the futility of her violence. I sat across the street at bar with no name, drinking a gin and tonic, and watched as they buried the child.

There was a man I would play cards with from Louisville. He would cheat and I would let him. We called him Lucky. Lucky was born with a club foot and lazy eye. He was the singer in a bluegrass band that never left the nineteen-year-old tuba player’s parent’s basement. Some of the sweetest sounds and my fondest memories came from that basement. I saw this basement in His first eye. Perhaps that is part of the reason I placed so much importance on this friendship and this place. This was the happiest time of my life. Lucky owed some people money and when he couldn’t pay they took his eyes. A few weeks later he moved back to Louisville.

I did marry once. I was hooked on smack for a few years and this woman loved it more than I ever could. She was motherly and sweet. We never had sex. She would wash me on Saturdays and we would get high and talk about Wyoming. She went to college for a semester in Laramie, Wyoming. These were her favorite times and I loved to go back in time with her. We would relive her losing her virginity to a sixteen-year-old local boy who dreamt of the rodeo, the strip where she would watch all the immaculate cars filled with people she assumed were astute and dashing, and how her roommate would come home drunk and they would snuggle and fall asleep together. She was a romantic. I left her forever in the bathroom of our abusive and demanding drug dealer. She was nowhere in His eyes.

I now reside in the home I will die in. The woman that owns it is old and needs help getting around. I’m getting old now too, but I can get around just fine. In His eyes nothing is very clear. I know I will die here, but the how is fuzzy. It involves a glass of water. Her niece will visit that day and they will fight about finances, luxury, and pills. I saw that I lie down and my vision will get blurry. I will be happy and drift slowly into death. There is no fear in me. I look forward to this end. In His seventh eye, the holy and finite eye, I was shown the vast nothingness that accompanies death. He allowed me to watch until my bones decomposed and separated on an atomic level. There I was able to watch as a blade of grass grew from my lack of consciousness. It is the circular infinity of this finite life. The deepest love I have ever found was in this emptiness, this nothingness. His seventh eye is a portal to happiness and bliss…Heaven.

By: Turbo

3

Toga! Toga! Panty Raid! (2)

I talked Vanessa into this toga party by telling her that the boys dorm was going to attempt a panty raid tonight. She had no idea what we really had planned for her. We began by discussing her most recent crush Troy Thompson. He went state in wrestling in high school and now that's all I have ever heard him talk about. Vanessa swooned as she talked about his final point take-down that allowed the Bulldogs to take home that trophy. We feigned interest and she giggled. It was an incredible feeling to have her here and completely, innocently chatting with us.

We talked her into playing Caesar. We fanned her and fed her grapes. I was almost exploding with anticipation and I could see that Kim was too. Vanessa was babbling about different panty raid scenarios when a noise came from the kitchen. It was a thud, but a thud that carried a hum. Vanessa, startled, sat up quickly. Kim and I both were nearly drooling with what we knew would happen next.

"You should see what that was Vanessa," I said coyly as I inched her into the kitchen. She opened the door and shrieked. There lay Troy tied up and nude laying on the floor with a ball gag in his mouth. He had obviously fallen out of the broom closet. His eyes screamed in horror. Kim and I began to dance around Troy's body laughing and howling. We invited Vanessa to join us. She was horrified by the look on Troy's face and stood there in confusion.

"We did this for you," Kim said.

"You can do whatever you want," I said "He's yours."

Vanessa looked at Troy, then looked up at us dancing and laughing, then back at Troy.

"Anything?"

"Anything!" We giggled together.

A ray of light shone in Vanessa's eyes and she crawled over to Troy and licked his face. Troy cringed in fear.

I would never have believed that this would have gone over this well. When Vanessa asked us to leave the room we were tickled pink and ballet toe danced out of the room. We grabbed glasses and put them to our ears and against the door. The only thing we heard was a squish noise. Kim looked at me with a question she didn't know how to ask.

We opened the door to see Troy holding Vanessa up in the most degrading and painful wedgy ever witnessed by humans. They were surrounded by all of Troy's pledge brothers, the Delta Omega Delta. A guffaw roared throughout the kitchen that slowly turned into a perfectly harmonized chorus of the words "panty raid".

"paaanteeeee raaaaaaaaaid"

It was such a beautiful sound that genuine tears came to Kim and my eyes. Sadly it was shattered by the sound of the panties ripping out from between Vanessa's legs and the thud of her hitting the floor.

Vanessa looked up at the Delta Omega Deltas with tears swelling in her eyes, then she looked at us.

"That was the best panty raid ever!" Vanessa squealed.

We all then leapt into the air and held out one of the worlds longest high-fives.



By Turbo

2