Squid Pulp Blues

by Jordan Krall

  Next to him, he heard the Russian say something to Dix that sounded like “Dunce” but then realized that she was saying “dance” as in “lap dance”. Dix elbowed Henry.

  “Man, I’ll be back in a few minutes, watch my beer for me.”

  Dix followed the Russian to a back room and the new dancer got on stage after taking one last hit of caffeine and making sure her purse and car keys were set right in front of Henry on the edge of the stage. It was a cheap purse made of fake red leather. The car keys were connected to far too many key chains, Henry thought. He was beginning to get depressed.

  Then he actually took a look at the girl.

  * * *

  The back room was exactly that: a drab room in the back of the bar that could’ve very well been used for storing surplus cases of beer. There were a couple of chairs against each wall and a few vintage movie posters (walking in, Dix noticed The Asphalt Jungle and to his right, the face of Barbara Stanwyck in Lady of Burlesque).

  Dix sat down in the chair facing the Barbara Stanwyck poster and the Russian straddled him. She started moving, not exactly dancing, to the music that was playing at the bar. Her tits brushed against Dix’s nose and he smelt her sweat. She turned over and stuck her ass out against his chest, the butterfly staring at him.

  The stripper looked over her shoulder. “You, what you do?”

  Dix said, “What do you mean?” He wanted so much to put his face to her ass.

  “For job, what do you do for job?” She bounced her ass up and down though it didn’t do much considering it was mostly all bone.

  What the hell was he supposed to say to her? Yeah, sweetie, I rob places for a living. Banks, jewelry stores, you name it. Want me to take you to work sometime? Yeah, I think “Take your stripper to work day” is coming up soon.

  Dix said, “Uh, different things, here and there.”

  She seemed to take that as an answer and slid her ass of him and lounged on the floor in front of him. She was on her back, her legs up in the air, and her crotch mostly exposed but for the thin strip of her bikini bottom. “You like? You like lick?” She rubbed herself.

  Dix nodded.

  The Russian turned over and sat on all fours. “You like lick like this?” she said and started furiously licking the cement floor. “Like this you lick juicy cunt, juicy pussy.” Her tongue was widened and was dragged across the floor until Dix could actually see where it picked up all of the dirt from the cement.

  Dix whispered, “Jesus Christ,” but continued to watch in stunned fascination at the puddle of spit that was growing on the floor. While he stared, a man came into the room. He was short and fat with a beer belly like a beach ball beneath his Journey t-shirt.

  The man said, “Hey, Alina, you get the money upfront for this?”

  Alina took her tongue off of the floor and said, “No, did not.”

  Dix dug in his pocket for the money and the man walked up to him quickly.

  “Next time you accept a dance from one of the girls, the money comes first, got that? Or your ass is out.” He took the twenty-dollar bill from Dix and then said, “You looking for anything special?” His voice got lower. “Weed? Pills? I got some coke that’ll knock your fucking socks off. Not really coke, to tell you the truth, but better. Guy told me it’s made from squid, fucking squid. It’ll fucking make time stop.”

  Dix felt uncomfortable. He was in the middle of a freaky lap dance and here was this guy, probably the owner, trying to sell him weed, pills, and fucking squid powder.

  “Nah, I’ll pass.”

  The man made a sour face. “Shit, man, your fucking loss.” He looked at Alina. “Got two minutes left,” he said and started walking out of the room.

  She said, “Yes, Rick.”

  The girl stood up and lifted her top, airing out her tiny breasts. This is more like it. Some good old titties.

  Alina started slapping her breasts. First with her right hand and then her left. Right. Left. Right. Left.

  Then harder and faster until her hands were a blur and her breasts were covered in red, fleshy blotches. Dix got up from the chair and grabbed her arms. “Knock it off, what the fuck you doing?” He held her wrists but she didn’t fight him off.

  Alina said, “You don’t like?”

  “Shit no,” Dix said. He let go of her and started towards the door. She called out behind him and he turned around.

  She was up against the wall, licking Barbara Stanwyck’s face.

  “Christ,” Dix said and went back to the bar.

  * * *

  The stripper that replaced the Russian was beautiful, Henry decided. She wasn’t beautiful for a stripper but just plain beautiful no matter what profession she was in. Cute Betty Page haircut, no tattoos (which was always better than ugly tattoos), and the prettiest, most hypnotic eyes that Red Henry had ever seen.

  He watched her do her routine with more enthusiasm than you usually see at any go-go bar or strip club in New Jersey. Henry looked at her shoes and was happy to see she wasn’t wearing the clunky high heels strippers usually wore but rather a black pair of heels that would’ve been more appropriate on a female executive. Henry liked that.

  The girl came over to him and he got a couple singles ready. She smiled and said, “Hi.”

  Henry said, “Hi there.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Henry. You?”

  “Sweetie Martini.” She laughed like she was embarrassed by it.

  “Sweetie Martini, huh? Guess your parents hated you, huh?”

  Her smile lessened. “It’s a stage name.”

  Henry said, “I know. I was joking.”

  “They made me pick one when I started dancing at the club.”

  Club? Henry didn’t consider this place a strip club per se. It was a bar. A go-go bar. Strip clubs allowed the girls to actually show some nipple on stage.

  Henry said, “I figured. Sorry I said anything.”

  Sweetie nodded and then pushed her plump breasts together. Henry slipped his hand in between them and left two dollars there. She held them in place with her tits. “Thanks,” she said.

  She took a step backwards and put her leg up on the bar in front of him. The bottom of her shoe was in his face and he thought he caught a whiff of her foot, sweaty like the inside of a sneaker. She must have changed from her sneakers into those heels. There was no way she drove to work in those. He wanted to get closer but didn’t.

  Sweetie grabbed the shoe and slipped it off, her bare foot now revealed, the stench not a mystery anymore as it mingled with the smell of beer. She scrunched up her toes and then wiggled them. They begged for more singles so Henry slowly put one dollar between each toe while savoring the aroma of her foot.

  “Thanks, hon,” she said after he had put a total of four dollars in there. Then Sweetie took her foot down, grabbed the dollars from her feet, and walked over to the side and took a sip of her coffee. Then she scratched her ass.

  Red Henry shook his head. Another dose of reality. Fucking shit.

  Chapter Four

  Grant sat on the bed while the episode of The Golden Girls ended only to be replaced with the pilot episode of Golden Palace, a spin-off of the previous show.

  He popped open another beer and thought about Red Henry. Though he could admit to himself he had been a prick, Grant didn’t think he deserved having beer thrown at him. It wasn’t like I was saying anything that wasn’t true. Susie was a whore, plain and simple. Henry always thinking he’s better than me, he’s the one married to a whore.

  Grant dug in his pants pocket and brought two large green pills that he swallowed with a mouthful of beer. He leaned his head back and the ceiling became a movie screen whereupon Grant saw himself forcing Susie to have sex with him. That was three months ago.

  Grant had said, “Loosen up, Susie. Henry’s my friend and he’s locked up so I’m here to take care of you.” His hand grabbed her breast hard and squeezed until her eyes filled with tears.

  “Let me
go,” she said.

  “Not until you show me some of your special moves, that thing you do with the squid.”

  Susie said, “Okay, just let go.” The next hour was spent with her doing whatever she could to satisfy Grant and get him the hell out of her apartment. She had decided she wasn’t going to tell Henry.

  So Grant stared up at the motel room ceiling and saw the events of the past transpire while the walls transformed into giant pink crab shells with swirls of blue.

  Christ, this is crazy shit. Grant always hated seafood and the sight of the crab shell walls made him a little queasy. Growing up in Thompson, his parents always took him to The Chowder Shack every Saturday afternoon where they made him order either squid or crab. It was a tough choice considering he liked neither but his parents would never hear it. The only redeeming part of the meals was the hush puppies. It was the only thing that quelled the nausea.

  Still, he was intrigued by the wall. He sat up and stumbled over to it, feeling that it was indeed rough like the shell of a crab. Grant’s eyes caught glimmers of red and blue images so he looked up. Memories of his grandfather played on the ceiling.

  Wait a minute. I never even met grandpa.

  New memories oozed into his head: his parents showing him the footage from a projector, his father saying, “There’s grandpa fighting for our country. Son, look at that and be proud.”

  The uniformed man resembled a thinner version of Grant standing on some large rocks next to the beach. He was alone but shouting out to the water, waving his gun in the air. To the right of him, a Japanese spider crab scurried to him. Grant was frightened. The crab was monstrous; its legs six feet long and razor sharp. It then used those legs to eviscerate Grant’s grandfather. Sprays of blood sprinkled the rocks. The crab seemed to tremble with excitement and Grant had to look away.

  Inside of Grant’s stomach, the two green pills dissolved completely, sending a new rush through his system. His senses became more sensitive and he smelt the entire history of the room: cigarette smoke, semen, beer, piss, taco meat, mayonnaise, shit, and old paint. All of the stenches coalesced into a thick olfactory paste that bombarded Grant’s nerves.

  The crab shell wall dissolved into streaks of white light and Grant stumbled back to the bed and put his head on the pillow. Here it comes, here it comes. But nothing really came, just noises: canned laughter from the television, the buzz of the electric currents, and a sniffing sound. There was something else under those noises, a sound that pierced Grant’s brain and tickled the hairs inside his ears. It was a combination of whimpering and the splash of a liquid.

  Grant looked at the television which was now showing footage of an army of spider crabs overrunning a battalion of troops. He turned away from it and faced the wall behind him. The wall shuddered and Grant’s eyes widened. He put his ear against it and listened. Something was going on in the next room; he could feel it. There were sounds, yes, but he could also smell something.

  Fuck it, I gotta see what’s happening.

  Grant turned off the television. He grabbed the Gideon’s Bible, stuck it in the door way so he wouldn’t need to bring his key, and walked out of the room. Looking into the window of Room 11, Grant felt his head turn into a balloon, floating up, up, up and away while he watched a woman drag herself across the motel room floor. For a few seconds he wondered why she was dragging herself. Did she break her legs? Is her wheelchair broken? No, he told himself. She had no feet.

  Chapter Five

  Dix and Henry left the bar after having a few more beers and playing a game of pool. Henry sunk the eight-ball and lost, cursing his luck though he was used to it when playing any sort of game. He told Dix, “I just got a lot on my mind.” His friend responded with a friendly nod.

  While driving back to the motel, Dix said, “I ever tell you about my brothers?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Henry said.

  “My brother Louis was in the army, Sam was in the Marines. Both younger than me, serious guys, you know the type who won’t loosen up unless they’re really, really drunk. Guess it’s from growing up in my house with my father never opening his mouth unless it was to criticize something, but anyway. Not many people outside of my family know this but Louis…..”

  Dix gripped the wheel tightly, knuckles turning white. Henry saw this and said, “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t feel comfortable with, you know.”

  “Nah, it’s okay. Maybe it’s the beer, I don’t know. Makes me just want to talk about this shit, get it off my chest. My mother would kill me for sure if she knew I was talking about it but anyway whatever, when Louis came back he was, you know, different. I think he saw some shit there, something to do with those fucking freaks.” Dix pointed out the window toward a group of men with elongated heads who were stumbling about in front of a bicycle shop.

  Henry said, “I wouldn’t fucking blame him, seeing that shit, guys coming back from the war all fucked up and disfigured like that and no one knows what happened to them. That’s got to fuck up anyone who sees that shit.”

  “Yeah but he’s more than just stressed out or anything like that. I mean, he’s a fucking wreck, lives in our mother’s basement reading comics. Refuses to let anyone come in except Sam. Every week Sam brings him food, comics, and the newspaper.”

  Henry said, “You should get him some help.”

  “Yeah, I know but I don’t want to push the issue, have him go nuts and shot our mother and himself like those guys you hear about on the news.”

  Henry was looking out the window, thinking about the situation from the perspective of someone who’s never had any desire to enlist in the army or become involved in any politics whatsoever. If suckers wanted to wave the flag and get killed, let them; Henry was concerned only with his day-to-day life which consisted mostly of surviving and looking out for the ever elusive “big score”. But now that he thought about it, he felt bad for those bastards who came back looking like that. No one should have to live out their days looking like those longheads out there.

  Henry wasn’t really sure what the appropriate response would be, what words would soothe his friend’s anxiety.

  He said, “Yeah, that’s fucked up, Dix, but what isn’t?”

  * * *

  Grant knew that what he was seeing wasn’t a product of the pills. Though he felt like his brain was frying, he was convinced the woman in the room was real. She had no feet which wasn’t so strange. Grant heard about amputees and had even seen some amputee porn; though, after viewing it he decided that it wasn’t his thing. The woman crawling on the floor didn’t have stumps. Her feet were cut cleanly at the ankles. And there was no blood.

  Whenever Grant was put into this sort of position he usually went back to his own business and said, “Fuck it.” Whether it was the drugs or a blossoming conscience (he didn’t know which and didn’t feel like thinking about it), Grant decided to go over to the manager’s office of the motel and report what he saw. Then he got worried. What if the cops came? He was high as a kite. Still, he didn’t feel comfortable just ignoring it.

  He ran to the other side of the parking lot to the office. Grant thought it was a depressing room. Pale yellow walls with decades old magazine clippings thumb tacked to them. A calendar that was months behind. Crumpled cans littered the floor. Grant looked at the guy reading a book behind the desk. He figured him to be no more than twenty-two or twenty-three. No, he’s twenty-three, yeah, I think he looks about twenty-three. That sounds right.

  Grant said, “Excuse me?”

  The guy didn’t look up from his book. “Yeah?”

  “Um, I think there’s a problem.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “Grant Minissi, room twelve,” he said and then added, “You the manager?”

  The guy looked up from his book. Grant saw it was a thick comic book. He looked at the cover: a shadowy figure in a fedora hat; behind him stood a guy who looked like a punch drunk boxer.

  Grant was never on
e for comics. He always said it was a waste of time but secretly knew the reason why he had an aversion to it. His parents never let him buy any comics or read the funny pages when he was growing up. When he became an adult, instead of reclaiming his youth and indulging in those childish pleasures, he went in the other direction and looked down on anything to do with them.

  The guy behind the desk said, “Yeah, I’m Clark, the night manager. What’s the problem?” He still held the book open and though he was looking at it upside down, Grant could make out drawings of something that looked like a donkey. There was a girl, too, and some snow, blood, and black gloves. What kind of comic was this? Where were the guys in tights flying around and shit?

  Clark said, “Hey. I said, what’s the problem?”

  “Oh, uh, I think there’s something wrong with the woman in the room next to mine.”

  Clark’s eyes were back on his comic. With his fingers he traced the donkey. “Ah, Little Bing Bong.”

  “What?”

  Clark looked up from the book. “Listen, I don’t ask a lot of questions when people check in here and I don’t really give a shit about what you saw because I can tell you’re fucked up right now. So unless you want trouble I suggest you just go back to your room and turn up the volume on the television and pretend the woman next door is just peachy. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He went back to reading his comic.

  Grant said, “What the fuck is this? I’m telling you someone’s hurt.”

  “You know how many junkies run to me telling me someone’s hurt or dying or screwing an alien or some shit? I’ll tell you. Too fucking many. Get the hell out of here, okay? I don’t know what kind of shit you’re on, but go sleep it off.”