Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy
Page 3
Bread and Body of Christ
Richard F. Huffenstern is suing the Pope. He didn’t sign up for Catholicism to drink cheap wine and eat round flat bread. He signed up for Catholicism so he could cannibalize the son of God and vampirize his rapid beard-growing superpowers. Richard F. Huffenstern is disappointed. Richard F. Huffenstern is a high-priced New York City lawyer. Richard F. Huffenstern is suing the Pope for false advertising.
The Pope is given a summons to appear in court. A DNA report is stapled to the document. Richard F. Huffenstern has hired laboratory technicians to determine the paternity of a piece of round flat bread and twelve fluid ounces of cheap wine. The laboratory results have determined that flour is the round flat bread’s mother, water its father. It has also determined that the wine’s mother is a grape, its father a strain of yeast.
Richard F. Huffenstern gets his day in court. The Pope is on the stand. He is wearing a funny hat. Richard F. Huffenstern is questioning him. Richard F. Huffenstern is asking hard-hitting questions. The Pope has a bloody nose. He looks flustered. Richard F. Huffenstern asks him to explain why he did not get the opportunity to drink the blood and eat the body of Christ when it was promised to him in the glossy brochure.
The Pope blurts out, “Because God doesn’t exist, you nimrod!”
God comes down from the Heavens, hires Richard F. Huffenstern, and sues the Pope for false representation. Richard F. Huffenstern tells God his hourly rate is a little of his son’s flesh and a little of his son’s blood.
A Sloth and the Newspaper Boy
for Grant Wamack
A wager. Twenty bucks says a sloth can be a sloth faster than the newspaper boy can be the newspaper boy. You’re on! The sloth sloths slowly. The newspaper boy delivers papers quickly. You scowl. You take out a cell phone and place a call. A pit bull with a cell phone chases the newspaper boy. Its saliva eats through the newspaper boy’s bicycle. I call shenanigans. You put a gun in my mouth. I stop calling shenanigans. The sloth sloths slowly. The newspaper boy delivers newspapers on foot. The pit bull’s saliva has not eaten through his positive outlook. You scowl. You take out a detonator and push a button. The paperboy’s Nikes go bang. The explosion eats through his limbs. I call shenanigans. You open a manhole to reveal the sewers and a cage. A hungry alligator is in the cage. My family is in the cage. I stop calling shenanigans. The sloth sloths slowly. The newspaper boy crawls to his next delivery. The explosion has not eaten through his positive outlook. You walk into a secret control room and go through the motions of dropping an atom bomb on the newspaper boy’s head. The atom bomb eats through his everything. I call shenanigans. You cover The Light with a blackout curtain. I stop calling shenanigans. The sloth sloths slowly. The newspaper boy has stopped being a newspaper boy. The atom bomb has eaten away at his positive outlook. I frown. I give you twenty bucks. You rush off to spend it on absolutely nothing.
Liquid Gold
Captain Thumbtack looks for buried treasure up his nose. He pokes through an ocean of decaffeinated coffee, prods a bipolar sea monster, bests the Rubber Duckie armada in combat, lands on a desserted island, stabs into the cakey earth, uncovers a gorilla chest, participates in an exciting battle with his crew over the identity of the chest’s owner, discovers his men consist of a drugstore’s hand mirror display, cleans his wounds with brake fluid, and unlocks the gorilla with his thumbtack’s skeleton key-like attributes. A spurt of blood shoots out of the captain’s nose. It lands in a funnel welded into an arm belonging to the pirate’s son. The boy resuscitates. The blood flows into an open vein. He gets a little purple back into his face. The blood continues to spit across the room. The pirate waits. He watches a program on bass fishing. The host sits in a rowboat for 30 minutes. Sometimes the pirate can make out a wave. The credits roll. The blood transfusion is complete. Captain Thumbtack’s son leaps into his arms. The pirate presents his son with a toothy grin. The boy is disgusted by his father’s poor dental hygiene. His arm vomits out a swimming pool-worth of blood. The son dies, reaching for an electric toothbrush.
The Den
The man remembers the crack in the wall. When he was a boy, he looked through the crack and told his father what he saw. He said, “I saw a room I have never seen before. Neon triangles covered the wallpaper. There was a fuzzy pink rug on the floor. A table and chair were beside the rug. On the table was an empty glass.” The father said, “You’re not supposed to know about that room. It belonged to my father.” The boy was confused because his father’s father never lived in his house. The father did not react to the perplexed look on his son’s face. Instead he got his toolbox out of the closet and fixed the crack. The next time the boy tried to look through the crack, he was a man.
Tao Lin
Tao Lin drinks an ape-flavored smoothie. The ape is displeased. He punishes Tao Lin by giving him the ability to turn his eyebrows into gold. Tao Lin turns his eyebrows into gold. He tries to shave them off so he can afford a gourmet tofu dog at an expensive downtown restaurant. The Bic razor is powerless against the precious metal. Tao Lin is frustrated. Tao Lin wants a chainsaw. He cannot find a chainsaw in Brooklyn, so he takes a train to Long Island. It stops in Long Island and Tao Lin breaks into someone’s garage to chainsaw off his eyebrows. It is graphic. Inappropriate for a general audience. But his wounds are also inappropriate for expensive downtown restaurants, and when he goes to one of them to spend his gold eyebrows on a gourmet tofu dog, the attractive hostess refuses him entry. He goes to a hospital to make his wounds appropriate for an expensive downtown restaurant, but he does not have insurance. Full-time writers do not have insurance. So he offers his gold eyebrows in exchange for appropriateness. The nurse says, I’m sorry but we only accept cash check or credit card. Tao Lin goes to a bank to exchange his eyebrows for hundred dollar bills. He bleeds on the teller. The man punches him in the face. Tao Lin makes a neutral facial expression to avoid the embarrassment of tears. The teller to the left feels sorry for him. She feels sorry for him because she is very old and has suffered through many inappropriate wounds. She says, It is usually against bank policy to exchange gold for currency but I will make an exception because you look like my cute little hamster. Tao Lin accepts the money and spends all of it on appropriateness. He is sad that he can no longer afford a gourmet tofu dog. Feeling existentially fucked, Tao Lin goes home to wait for his eyebrows to grow back.
The Detective
The detective is paid two hundred bucks a day plus expenses to locate a man’s lost TV remote. He goes to an electronics store to find out more information. A salesman is wearing a suspicious cleft palate. The detective clears his throat and spits a fifty into the salesman’s palm. The salesman puts a box into a bag, hands the bag to the detective. The detective looks inside the bag. The detective looks inside the box. A portable television is inside the box. The portable television is powered by hyperactive hamsters. The detective says, “My fifty dollars was for information, not portable televisions powered by hyperactive hamsters.” The salesman looks suspicious. The detective punches him in the nose. The salesman tells the detective that his store is having a sale on 42 inch flat screen TVs. He tells them they are priced at his immortal soul for a limited time only. The detective castrates the salesman with a machete. He says, “My fifty dollars was for information pertaining to the whereabouts of my client’s lost TV remote, not your weekly sales.” The salesman sings, “Oooooh,” in a beautiful voice. He gets to the chorus: “Has he checked inside his refrigerator?” The detective takes out his cell phone and calls his client. “Have you checked inside your refrigerator?” The client checks inside his refrigerator. His remote control is next to a jar of peanut butter. The detective earns his two hundred bucks, plus fifty-five dollars for expenses.
Birthday Present
for Ian Sands
I needed to get my brother a present for his birthday. I could not figure out what to get. I considered a giant lobster named Eduardo. The giant lobster named Eduardo was not very cooperat
ive. He said, “I am not a birthday present. Why don’t you get your brother the moon and the stars?” I tried to give my brother the moon and the stars for his birthday, but I could not fit them into a box. I decided to give him an empty box that was large enough to hold everything in existence except for the moon and the stars. I fell into the box. This made it even more difficult to figure out what to get my brother for his birthday. I was in an empty box, so I had very limited choices: emptiness or emptiness. So I chose a pair of socks with a family of happy piranha sewn onto the seams.
Reading Sam Pink
The book decides to read Sam Pink. It opens his chest cavity and reads the first entrail. It is a very good first entrail. It makes the book very excited. It captures the book’s attention and does not let go. The book’s attention tries to escape, but it is caught in Sam Pink’s razor wire chest hair. The book turns the artery. The phone rings. The book uses Sam Pink’s penis to mark its place and sews him up. The book answers the phone. It is the book’s mother, the wise old tree. The book masturbates while speaking to her because it thinks it is a funny thing to do. The book ejaculates and hangs up the phone. The book picks up Sam Pink again. It reads about a red blood cell’s exciting adventures in a haunted ice box. Sam Pink yells in a scary way. Sam Pink has had enough. Sam Pink burns the book with his heat vision. Sam Pink puts the fire out by pissing on it. Sam Pink opens the book and shits on page 34.
Debunking the Bard
The academic in front of the hot dog stand says, “William Shakespeare did not write any of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare.”
The hot dog vendor serves the academic a hot dog and says, “Fuckin’ A, guy. Tell me something I don’t know.”
The academic bites into the hot dog, chews, swallows, and says, “Leatherface chainsaw-massacred William Shakespeare and wore his flesh as a mask while he wrote the world’s greatest literature.”
The hot dog vendor spits into the academic’s face and says, “You’re just trying to trick me. Leatherface wasn’t around back when Shakespeare was writing all those namby-pamby ‘oooh look at me, tee and thee is so fucking poetry’ buttsex fests.”
William Shakespeare erupts out of the hot dog stand, waving a chainsaw. Blood spurts over the hot dogs. The chainsaw transforms the hot dog vendor into a pile of organs. William Shakespeare says, “Gnaaaaarrrrl.”
The academic looks star-struck. He says, “I’m a big fan of your work, Leatherface.”
William Shakespeare tears off his face. He tears off the academic’s face. He slips the William Shakespeare face over the academic’s skull. He slips the academic’s face over his own skull.
William Shakespeare and the academic hold hands and skip off to a wedding chapel.
Hide and Seek Champion
He hides in the ground. Liquid granite shoots through his veins, escapes through his pores. The gravestone sprouts out from the dirt. He does not. He lies there until his epitaph develops on the stone. He lies there some more.
In the Airport
Nobody will tell us why our flight has been delayed. We are very disgruntled.
Is there someone else we can speak to? A supervisor?
Oh, you are the supervisor? We feel an urge to murder you, but choose to keep our emotions trapped beneath the skin since we are civilized people, unlike you and your employees. Anyone who treats their customers this way is a barbarian.
Why are you preventing us from holding our loved ones in our arms? We haven’t seen them in months.
Yes, we understand all the planes have been delayed. You’ve made it clear. There’s nothing you can do. No, we don’t want a magazine and a beverage from the airport gift shop. We demand an explanation.
You’re blaming the weather? That’s ridiculous. It might be winter, but there’s not a snowflake in the sky.
No, we haven’t looked out the window lately. We will do that now, after we’re done visualizing your head as it flies through the air beside a helicopter propeller.
Where are the windows? All we see are mirrors. There are an awful lot of them in this airport.
That’s idiotic. Windows can’t just turn themselves into mirrors. They are made of an entirely different substance, we think.
Thanks so much for telling us about molten aluminum and silver, smart guy. But how did either of those things get on the back of the windows? Don’t tell us a volcano erupted in the area.
No, we’re not going to move out of your way, not until you answer all of our questions. We don’t care if a disgruntled customer is trying to smash a “window” with a fire extinguisher. We are almost to that point of disgruntlement, but not yet. Still, we applaud his take-charge attitude and plan to assist him by holding you back.
Success...we are thrilled for him.
Why is there another mirror behind the broken one?
We asked you a question, not for your impersonation of a terrified baboon.
Hey, you might want to look behind you. There’s a parade of all your hopes, dreams, disappointments, embarrassments, successes, and temper tantrums. They are all coming towards you, waving knives at your throat.
Look behind you.
Never mind, we took our own advice. There is nothing behind you except a roomful of disgruntled customers.
Wait...your parade is marching inside the mirror. The first float rolls closer and closer.
Now we see it, now we don’t. Watch your back.
That’s disgusting. Can you go somewhere else? We’re all trying to maintain a functional digestive system. We didn’t pay good money to see viscera pour out of your body.
Oh, look what you’ve done now—you’re dead and we feel guilty about wanting to murder you. You will always be remembered in our hearts. You were a very good person.
Saying nice things about you isn’t making us feel good about ourselves. We will try another technique. We will pretend a living person still exists inside the black shape that has enveloped your body. You haven’t given us any other choice. We so enjoy talking to you. We will talk until our parades come to take us away, leaving behind shadows where there once was light.
The Adventures of a Small, Ceramic Giraffe in Tudor England
for Kek-w
A small, ceramic giraffe goes outside to buy dish soup. Outside is Tudor England. Inside is a room with a high ceiling. The giraffe does not like the high ceiling. It intimidates him. The ceiling says, “My height is wasted on you, small, ceramic giraffe.” Outside, Tudor England says, “I love you, small, ceramic giraffe.” But the small, ceramic giraffe cannot reciprocate this love. The giraffe does not even know Tudor England exists. How should he know? He has never seen Showtime’s original series, The Tudors. He does not know what Tudor England looks like. When the giraffe looks at Tudor England, all he sees is a junkyard. Having never seen The Tudors, the small, ceramic giraffe walks to the shop as loneliness and insignificance drips down his small neck.
Four Answers to Four Questions
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You say: The weather is so nice. It is so nice. Don’t you see how nice it is? Fishermen have cut holes into clouds, dropped their lines of sunlight to Earth. I am caught by a lure. A fisherman is reeling me towards you, to the point on the horizon where people share joy with others and talk about how the weather is nice.
The man stares. His clothes are made of mirror. You see your fist pulling intestine out of your stomach, tying it around the man’s reflective sleeve. You see yourself becoming an intestinal-rope walker. The man glistens.
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