Baby's First Book of Seriously Fucked-Up Shit

by Robert Devereaux

  A tiny pair of saddle shoes graced the baby’s feet. Her poodle skirt (its usually trim stitched poodle gravid with a bellyful of pups) gave a slight sway. She wore a collared blouse of kelly green. A matching ribbon set off her tresses, which Kip had thickened and sheened by means of Gaussian and Shadow filters combined with histogram equalization.

  When the crowd’s applause began to fall off, Kip put highlights back into baby’s face, an effect which brought the clapping to new heights.

  As if in answer, Kip turned to two dials and began to manipulate them. The baby’s eyes widened. She gave a coy turn of the head. Then her eyelids lowered and Kip wiped the image away.

  The effect looked easy, but the work that had gone into making it happen was staggering. To judge by the shouts and cheers that washed over the stage, the crowd sensed that.

  Wendy glowed.

  “Judges? ” screamed Guy Givens into his mike.

  One by one, down the row of five, 10s shot into the air.

  A 9 from a squint-eyed woman who never gave 10s drew the briefest of boos.

  Wendy mouthed “I love you” at Kip, and he mouthed it back, as the music swirled up and the curtain mercifully shut out an ear-splitting din of delight.

  Eudora watched from the wings as the TV jerkoff with the capped teeth and the crow’s feet chatted up her only competition one last time.

  The swimsuit round.

  Moe’s water-splash effect had gained Eudora an exceptional score, but from the look on the ultrasound man’s face out there, that insufferable Kip Johnson, she was afraid he was poised to take the Wendy bitch and her unborn brat over the top.

  Dump Moe.

  Yep, Moe was a goner. Yesterday’s meat. Spawn the loser inside her, let her snivel through life, whining for the tit withheld. A dilation and extraction might better suit. Tone up.

  Four months from now, let Chet poke her a few times. Stick one last bun in the oven.

  Then, adrip with apologies, she would pay Kip another visit, playing to his goody-two-shoes side if that got him off.

  Hell, she’d even befriend his lover. If Wendy had a two-bagger in mind, Eudora would persuade her—strictly as a friend with her best interests at heart—to retire undefeated.

  Onstage, that damned tantalizing womb image sprang to life again, this time dressed for the beach. Her swimsuit was a stylish fire-engine-red one-piece that drew the eye to her bosom, as it slashed across the thighs and arrowed into her crotch. Nice, but no great shakes.

  Then the kid’s face animated again. Eudora knew that this face would bring in millions. For months, it would be splashed across front pages and magazine covers. Then it would sell products like nobody’s business.

  Would it ever!

  Instead of repeating its coy twist of the head, the intrauterine babe fluttered her eyelashes at the audience and winked. Then she puckered her lips and relaxed them. No hand came up to blow that kiss, but Eudora suspected that Kip would make that happen next year.

  Her kid would be the one to blow a kiss. Her kid would idly brush her fingers past breast and thigh, while tossing flirtatious looks at Benjamin and viewers at home.

  Eudora scanned the judges through a deafening wall of elation. There sat the oily little pervert, more radiant than she had ever seen him. Another year would pass, a year of wound-licking capped by her triumph, and Kip’s, right here on this stage. Then she’d dump the drooler. One more year of slobber, she assured herself, would be bearable.

  Eye on the prize, she thought. Keep your eye on the prize.

  Benj is in heaven. His drenched handkerchief lies wadded in his right pants pocket. Fortunately, his left contained a forgotten extra, stuck together only slightly with the crust of past noseblows. It dampens and softens now with his voluminous drool.

  The curtain sweeps open. Midstage stand the three victors, awaiting their reward.

  Wendy’s infant has quite eclipsed Eudora’s in his mind.

  The third-place fetus? It scarcely raises a blip. Its mother comes forward to accept a small faux-sapphire tiara, a modest bouquet of mums, and a token check for a piddling sum. An anorexic blonde hurries her off.

  Eudora’s up next.

  Replay pix of her bambina flash across a huge monitor overhead. Beneath her smile, she’s steaming. He’s in the doghouse for his votes; he knows that. But there’s always next year. She needs him. She’ll get over it.

  A silver crown, an armful of daffodils, a substantial cash settlement, and off Eudora waddles into oblivion, her loser-kid’s image erased from the monitor.

  Then his glands ooze anew as the house erupts. Like a bazillion cap guns, hands clap as Wendy’s pride and joy lights up the screen with that killer smile, that wink, oh god those lips.

  “AND HERE’S OUR QUEEN INDEED! ” screams Guy Givens, welcoming Wendy into his arms. Gaggles of bimbos stagger beneath armloads of roses. The main bimbo’s burden is lighter, a gold crown bepillowed. Wendy puts a hand to her mouth. Her eyes well.

  Then it happens.

  Something shifts in the winner’s face. She whispers to Givens, who relays whatever she has said to the crown-bearing blonde. Unsure what to do, the blonde beckons offstage, mouthing something, then walks away. Wendy leans against the emcee, who says “Hold on now” into his mike. A puddle forms on the stage where she is standing. “Is there a… do we have a… of course we do, yes, here he comes, folks.”

  Benj feels light-headed.

  The rest drifts by like a river ripe with sewage. Spontaneous TV, the young doctor, the ultrasound man, a wheeled-in recliner, people with basins of water, with instruments, backup medical personnel. Smells assault him. Sights. Guy Givens gives a hushed blow-by-blow. And then, a wailing thing lifts out of the ruins of its mother, its head like a smashed fist covered in blood, wailing, wailing, endlessly wailing. Blanket wrap. The emcee raises his voice in triumph, lowering the tiny gold crown onto the bloody bawler’s brow.

  It’s a travesty. Benj is glad to be sitting down. He rests his head on his palms and cries, mourning the passing of the enwombed beauty who winked and nodded in his direction not five minutes before.

  Is there no justice in the world, he wonders. Must all things beautiful end in squalor and filth?

  He craves his condo. How blissful it will be to be alone there, standing beneath the punishing blast of a hot shower, then cocooning himself under blankets and nestling into the oblivion of sleep.

  July 14, 2004

  Mumsicle mine, now GRAN-mumsicle!

  Well I guess that’ll teach me to finish my letters when I can. I’ll just add a little more to the one I never got ‘round to wrapping up, and send you the whole kitten-kaboodle [sic, in case you think I don’t know!], along with the newsclips I promised.

  I’m sitting here in a hospital bed surrounded by flowers.

  Baby girl No-Name-Yet is dozing beside me, her rosebud lips moving in the air and making me leak like crazy. I do so love mommyhood!

  But I never expected to give birth in public. They were all so nice to me at the contest, even that Eudora woman, who seems to have had a change of heart. That creepy drooly judge came up to wish me his best, but Kip rough-armed him away and said something to him before kicking him offstage. I’ll have to ask Kip what that was all about.

  Oh and Kip proposed! I knew he would, but it’s always a thrill when the moment arrives, isn’t it? I cried and cried with joy and Kip got all teary too. He’ll make a great father, and I’m betting we spawn a few more winners before we’re through. We’ll give you plenty of warning as to when the wedding will be.

  He’s deflected the media nuts so far, until my strength is back. They’re all so antsy to get at me. But meanwhile Kip’s the hero of the hour. There’s even talk of a movie of the week, with guess-who doing the special effects of course. But Kip tells me these movie deals usually aren’t worth the hot air they’re written on, so he and I shrug it off and simply bask bask bask!

  I’ll sign off now and get some rest, but I want
ed to close by thanking you for being such a super mom and role model for me, growing up. You showed me I could really make something of myself in this world if I just persisted and worked my buns off for what I wanted.

  I have.

  It’s paid off.

  And I have you to thank for it. I love you, Mom. You’re the greatest. Come down as soon as you can and say hello and kootchie-koo-my-little-snookums to the newest addition to the family. You’ll adore her. You’ll adore Kip too. But hey, hands off, girl, he’s mine all mine!!!

  Your devoted daughter,

  Wendy

  BUCKY GOES TO CHURCH

  His real name was Vernon Stevens but folks called him Bucky on account of his teeth and his beaverish waddle and well, just because it was such a cute name and he was such a cute little fat boy, nothing but cuddles in infancy, an impish ball of pudge in childhood, primed to take on the role of blubbery punching bag in adolescence.

  Kids caught on quick, called him names, taunted him, treated him about even with dirt. Bucky smiled back big and broad and stupid, as if he fed on abuse. The worst of them he tagged after, huffing and puffing, arms swinging wildly like gawky chicken wings, fat little legs jubbing and juddering beneath the overhang of his butt to keep up with them. “Wait up you guys,” he’d whinny, “no fair, hey wait for me!” They’d jeer and call him Blubberbutt and Porky Orca and Barf Brain, and Bucky just seemed to lap up their torment like it was manna from heaven.

  But, hey wuncha know it gang, somewheres in Bucky’s head he was storing away all that hurt: the whippings at home from his old man’s genuine cow-leather belt, a storm of verbal abuse stinging his ears worse than the smack of leather on his naked ass; the glares and snippery from his frowzy mama, she of the pinched stare, the worn, tattered faceflesh, the tipple snuck down her throat at every odd moment; the bark of currish neighbors yowling after him to keep his sneaks off their precious lawns; teachers turning tight smiles on him to show they didn’t mind his obtuse ways, Bucky’d get by okay if he did his best, but they’d be triple goddamned if they were going to go out of their way to help him; and the kids, not one of them daring to be his friend (Arnie Rexroth got yanked out of first grade and shuffled off to Phoenix so he didn’t count), all of them coming around quick enough to consensus, getting off on taking the fatboy’s head for a spin on the carousel of cruelty, good for a laugh, a good way to get on with the guys, a great way to forget your problems by dumping them in the usual place—on Bucky Stevens’s fat sweaty crewcut of a head.Well one day, about the time Bucky turned fifteen, he woke to the mutterings of a diamond-edged voice inside his left frontal lobe. “Kill, Bucky, kill!” it told him, and, argue with it as he might, the voice at last grew stronger and more persuasive, until there was nothing to do but act on its urgings.

  So Bucky gathered all that hurt he’d been storing away and pedaled off to church one Sunday morning on his three-speed with his dad’s big backpack tugging at his shoulders like a pair of dead man’s hands. The weight of the hardware inside punched at his spine as he pedaled, though it was lighter by the bullets lodged in the bodies of his parents, who lay now, at peace and in each other’s arms, propped up against the hot-water heater in the basement. He couldn’t recall seeing such contentment on their faces, such a “bastard!”-less, “bitch!”-

  free silence settling over the house.

  He pumped, did Bucky, pumped like a sweathog, endured the TEC-9 digging at his backbone, kept the churchful of tormentors propped up behind his forehead like a prayer. His fat head gidded and spun with the bloodrush of killing his folks: his dad, dense as a Neanderthal, the ex-marine in him trying to threaten Bucky out of it, arms flailing backward as his forehead swirled open like a poinsettia in sudden bloom, his beefy body slamming like a sledge into the dryer, spilling what looked like borscht vomit all over its white enamel top; his mom down on her knees in uncharacteristic whimper, then, realizing she was done for, snarling her usual shit at him until he told her to shut her ugly trap and jabbed the barrel into her left breast and, with one sharp squeeze of his finger, buckled her up like a midget actress taking a bloody bow, pouring out her heart for an audience of one.

  Bucky crested the half-mile hill at Main and Summit.

  The steeple thrust up into the impossible cerulean of the sky like a virgin boy’s New-England-white erection humping the heavens. Bucky braked, easing by Washington, Madison, Jefferson. The First Methodist Church loomed up like a perfect dream as he neared it. It was a lovely white box resting on a close-clipped lawn, a simple beautiful spired construction that hid all sorts of ugliness inside.

  Coasting onto the sidewalk, Bucky wide-arced into the parking lot and propped his bike against a sapling. Off came the backpack, clanking to the ground. A car cruised by, a police car. Bucky waved at the cops inside, saw the driver unsmiling return a fake wave, false town cohesion, poor sap paid to suspect everyone, even some pudgy little scamp parking his bike in the church lot, tugging at the straps of a big bulky backpack. Grim flatfaced flatfoot, hair all black and shiny—stranded separately like the teeth at the thick end of an Ace comb—was going to wish he’d been one or two seconds later cruising Main Street, was going to wish like hell he’d seen the TEC-9 shrug out of its canvas confinement and come to cradle in Bucky’s arms, yes indeed.

  Not wanting to spoil the surprise, Bucky pulled his Ninja t-shirt out of the front of his jeans, pressed the cool metal of the weapon against his sweaty belly, and redraped his shirt over it.

  He could hear muffled organ music as he climbed the wide white steps. The front doors, crowding about like blind giants, were off-white and tall. And good God if the music mumbling behind them wasn’t Onward, Christian Soldiers, as wheezed and worried by a bloodless band of bedraggled grunts too far gone on the shellshock and homesickness of everyday life to get it up for the Lord.

  Bucky tried the handle. The door resisted at first, then yielded outward.

  The narthex was empty. Through the simulated pearls of Sarah Janeway’s burbling organ music, Bucky could see an elaborate fan of church bulletins on the polished table stretched between the inner doors. Programs, the little kids called them. Through the window in the right inner door to the sanctuary, the back of a deacon’s bald head hung like some fringed moon. Coach Hezel, that’s who it was; Bucky’s coach the year before in ninth grade, all those extra laps for no good reason, pushups without end, and the constant yammer of humiliation: how Bucky had no need for a jockstrap when a rubber band and a peanut shell would do the trick; how he had two lockermates, skinny Jim Simpson and his own blubber; how the school should charge Mister Lard Ass Stevens extra for soap, given the terrain he had to cover come showertime.

  Bucky unshirted the gun, strode to the door, and set its barrel on the window’s lower edge, sighting square against the back of Hezel’s head. A clink as it touched glass. Hezel turned at the noise and Bucky squeezed the trigger. He glimpsed the burly sinner’s blunt brow, his cauliflower nose, the onyx bead of one eye; and then the glass shattered and Hezel’s mean black glint turned red, spread outward like burnt film, and Miss Sarah Janeway’s noodling trickled to a halt at the tail end of With the cross of Jeeeee-zus.

  Bucky kicked open the door and leaped over Hezel’s still-quivering body. “Freeze, Christian vermin!” he shouted, ready to open up the hot shower of metal tensed in the weapon, but it sounded like somebody else and not quite as committed as Eastwood or Stallone. Besides, his eyes swept the shocked, hymnal-fisted crowd and found young kids, boys of not more than five whose eyes were already lidded with mischief and young girls innocent and whimpery in their pinafores and crinolines, and he knew he had to be selective.

  Then the voice slammed in louder and harsher—(KILL THE FUCKERS, BUCKY, KILL THEM SONS OF BITCHES!)—like a new gear ratio kicking in. Bucky used its energy to fight the impulse to relent, dredging up an image of his dead folks fountaining blood like Bucky’s Revenge, using that image to sight through as he picked off the Atwoods, four generations of h
ardware greed on the corner of Main and Garvey: old Grandpappy Andrew, a sneer and a “Shitwad!” on his withered lips as Bucky stitched a bloody bandoleer of slugs slantwise across his chest; Theodore and Gracia Atwood, turning to protect their young, mowed down by the rude slap of hot metal digging divots of flesh from their faces; their eldest boy Alan, overbearing son of an Atwood who’d shortchanged Bucky on fishhooks last July and whose head and heart exploded as he gestured to his lovely wife Anne, who danced now for them all as her mist-green frock grew red with polkadots; and four-year-old Missy who ran in terror from her bleeding family, ran toward Bucky with a scream curling from her porcelain mouth, her tiny fists raised, staggering into a blast of bullets that lifted her body up with the press of its regard and slammed her back against a splintering pew.

  A woman’s voice rose through the screams. “Stop him, someone!” she yelled from the front. Bucky pointed toward her voice and let the bullets fly, bloodfucking whole rows of worshippers at one squeeze. Most lay low, cowering out of sight. The suicidal made escape attempts, some running for the doors behind Bucky, others for those up front that led into the pastor’s study or back where the choir warmed up. These jackrabbits Bucky picked off, making profane messes out of dark-suited bodies that showed no sense of decorum in their dying, but bled on hard-to-clean church property everywhere he looked.

  He eased off the trigger and let the blasts of gun-thunder vanish, though they rang like a sheen of deafness in his ears.

  “Keep away from the doors!” he shouted, not sure if he could be heard by anyone. It was like talking into fog. “Stay where you are and no one will get hurt,” he lied, stepping over dead folk to make his way forward. The crying came to him then, thin and distant, and he saw bodies huddled together as he passed, the wounded and the not-yet-wounded. Call them all what they were, the soon-to-be-deceased.

  “Shame on you, Vernon Stevens,” came a quavery voice.