The Brink

     A tall, thin, sinewy man, in over-sized blues, came into my city jail office, and said, “Do you know anything about relieving suffering, Mr. Felix Tadcaster?” He read my nameplate. I was a social worker helping inmates about to be released get federal disability, a job, reconciliation with family and friends who had shunned them, working out the bumps and gouges acquired inside jail and outside in the greater imprisonment

we all daily face.

    He had a nasty jagged scar on his cheek, his jailhouse haircut streaked red, jumpy fingers tapping the desk.

    “My white mama named me Ahab,” he said. “I know what you college educated, professional types think. Not that one, the other one, evil Ahab in the Bible.”

    “Is that your problem, you think you’re here not because of your possession convic-tion, but because your mama laid that name on you?”

    He stood up, pulled me across the desk, my head, neck, and shoulders on his side, then put me in a chokehold, the crook of his elbow squeezing my trachea. I could not breathe. My arms flapped like dying salmons, and I began losing consciousness, a world turned dark. Suddenly, he released me. He walked me back behind the desk and slowly I regained my breath. “But I can’t stop the suffering,” he added.

    “You could’ve killed me. I could charge you attempted murder. You’d do big prison time.” His eyes bore through me.

    “I could get you shanked, you know.” I had been threatened twice but never placed in a chokehold. “You won’t, I’m getting released tomorrow. How about having a drink with me to make amends?”

    “I never have contact with ex-inmates outside of here.”

    “Don’t worry. I can introduce you to a fine woman.”

    Divorced four years ago, my ex, Judith, now in law school studying criminal law, seeing me hopelessly holding her back, my confidence with women at an all-time low, my social life consisting of microbrews and HBO, coming to work with hangovers, friends hers, not mine, never contacted me which isolated me more, my salary nowhere commensurate with my potential. I got anti-depression pills from a psychiatrist I saw. I once took pills and drank bourbon but failed to kill myself. Why not take a chance with Ahab. Nothing to lose except my life. 

   

    “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Where would we meet?”

    “What’s your address?”

    “How about a drinking hole. I make it a rule never to give my address to anyone connected to his place, CO’s and even the warden.” I stood up, he too from the other side of the desk, and then he walked to my side and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to him, and whispered, “I’ll bring a sweetheart we could share if you’re game.” I took his offer up.

    He came just after I finished my lunch. Dressed in khaki cargo pants, a red and green sport shirt, and wearing an Indiana Jones fedora, he stood outside the door alone. I saw no sweetheart.

    “No sweetheart?” I asked. Just then, a car pulled up, and though he partially blocked my view, a woman approached the house. He moved aside and Judith strode confidently up the walk, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt with her university’s name running across her chest.

    “Hi, Felix,” she said as she stepped inside followed by Ahab. She saw my expression, how my mouth hung open like a grotesque gargoyle. I was positive it could not ward off evil.

    We sat around the living room, she seated in her favorite rocker, and Ahab sat down on the big couch two cushions away from me.

    “How’s law school,” I blurted. “Aren’t there enough criminal lawyers?”

    She smiled, her eyebrows raised as she rocked methodically, comfortably, and said, “Ask Ahab.” He turned towards me, and said, “She and I were partners in martial arts classes,” he said, unsnapped a pocket, and reached in.

    “Jude taught me all the chokeholds,” he said and pulled out a perforated spoon.

    “More to education than practicing law,” she said, cracking her knuckles, a habit I hated.

    He held the spoon close to his face. “She gifted me this antique absinthe spoon.”

    “It looks like you’re behind bars,” I said, hoping my comment passed as humor. He relaxed, his face placid, lips loosening, giving the scar clarity. He pulled a bottle out from is backpack. “I think of everything.”

    “What did you mean, ‘Ask Ahab’”? She drank absinthe after Ahab took a few sips and then passed it back to her. She sipped the green spirit.

    “I was his attorney. He paid me with money earned selling high potency Cannabis sativa.” She rose, offering me my first absinthe, and I drank a large gulp. Its dreamy hold overcame me. I thought Ahab and Judith my muses, I, great poet of the Western world.

    “Why are you telling me this, Jude? Attorney/client relationships are privileged.” I wanted absinthe to wrap me up in its kindness. Ahab drank some more, laid back, not in a stupor, but with keen eyes and tranquil face, listening to his iPod. Judith sat between us on the cushion nearest me.

    “Ahab told me he had you in a death grip. He killed a man that way.” She lowered her voice, not so Ahab could not hear, but let her words sink distinctly into my consciousness, as if life depended on every syllable. He flexed his muscles to the beat.

“He brings them to the brink, now.”

    “You too?” She answered yes. “What’s the point?” I asked.

    “Uses prompto facit,” she said.

    “Latin doesn’t impress me, truth does.” 

    “Practice makes perfect. Truth is the brink,” she said.

     She took three glasses from the kitchen, came back, and poured the remainder of absinthe equally into each glass. Ahab sipped his, Judith her, I mine. Ahab put the iPod in his pant pocket, Judith took the glass from his hand, placed hers and his on the low table before us, then my glass. She pulled me up from the couch and walked me to the middle

of the room. She stood in front of me, kissed me on the lips, then bye-bye waved.

    Ahab put his right arm around the front of my neck, squeezed hard, then put his left arm between the back of my neck and aside his head, finger-locking his grip with both hands and pushed my head down until I began to lose breath.

    “The rear naked choke, wonderful,” she said. 

    Why? I asked myself, sensing my purple face, breath nearly extinguished.

    Ahab abruptly released his hold and I slid onto the carpet.

    Hacking, phlegm gagged me, I dry heaved. Judith set me upright and opened a window.

    “Good, Ahab. Next time, I’ll be the choker.”  

     “No harm, no foul, Tadcaster.” Ahab gave me a bottle of water he stashed in the pack.

“H two O, oxygen will bring you back. Friends?” He reached down and shook my twitching hand. Rain pattered the windowpane. I smelled and sucked in ozone on the bushes and when the rain stopped I inhaled the street’s and the concrete driveway’s ozone. Optimism began flowing.

    “Next time?” I wanted answers. She stared at me and I could not decipher her expression. Its placebo effect emptied my heart just as it had the day she left me. A dose of nothing swirled inside me. I wanted them to leave, I wanted to be alone, I wanted to quit my small jailhouse office, I wanted to move far away. I wanted out. Ahab pantomimed a chokehold, the air my head and neck. Judith struck poses, moving her

arms, hands, legs and feet like a skilled master must. Each grunt signified another pose, another thrust, all the while her eyes tracked mine.

    “Another match, Jude.” He could have asked her ( “Another match, Jude?” ) but he made a statement.                                                                           

    “The leg triangle choke coming up,” Judith said. I thought I would die.

    When I recovered and breathed air in the backyard, she asked, “Are you OK?” Ahab towered over me. Sweat poured down my face.

    “I’m next,” Ahab stated. “It’s the gator roll choke, Felix. Game, Felix?”

    No, I was not. The brink offered no choice.  

George Sparling

Mr. Ka-Bar

    I was sixteen, living in suburban Chicago, vaccinated from the pains in bones of the world’s citizens who suffered, then died. My dad, a top lumber company exec, got me a summer job in one of the firm’s yards.   

    “You did fine for the first day. How about a cold one?” Rudy said. By that I thought he meant the next day would be cooler, keeping my spirits up. I had keys in my hand to my car parked in front of the yard’s office. Rudy scanned my face, gauging my reaction to “cold one.” He lived not half a block away from the yard’s entrance, Rudy’s house at the end of a dead-end street.

    “Come to Betty’s kitchen and we’ll have a beer,” he said, lunchbox in hand. He sucked on his cigarette as we walked abreast to the two story house, badly in need of paint.

    “But they’ll wonder why I’m late.”

    “Tell them you worked overtime, your dad will never know,” he said.

    We entered the house through the kitchen door. Rudy took off his hat revealing short-cropped hair, male pattern baldness, looking older than in the yard. He put the lunchbox on the counter, sat down, told me to relax, Betty will be here shortly.

    “Hey, hon, we have a guest,” Rudy said, raising his voice to summon her. 

     She was as old as my grandmother, maybe fifty-five years old, dressed in a knee-length red robe, sheer knee nylons exposing varicose veins, a Braille map of ragged lines indicating she had done a lot of factory work, standing at machines, or working in cafeterias. Unlike women cafeteria workers at school, Betty raised her bathrobe and showed off her white underpants. She had a red scar on her cheek beneath a yellow eye, as faded as the wallpaper. Maybe Rudy had cut her. 

    “It’s Jim,” Rudy said. “His dad’s a big muckety-muck. What does he do, Jim?”

    “Invests money. Passed the accountants’ exam the first time,” I told them. Shit, why boast about Dad? Rudy and hon will hate me for it. We drank beers, the TV in the next room our noisy companion.

    “When you’re finished that one, have another,” Betty said, her voice slushy from a day sitting around the house, sipping beer or eating the salty pretzels on the table. 

     “Watch soap operas today, hon?” Rudy said. “I like the good-looking men,” she replied.

    “I like the pornography I stash in my drawers,” he said, rubbing his crotch.

    “Rudy’s a real pal. Pretty hard to get through life without one,” she said. She scratched her bare arm. I saw hairy moles, and when she raised her sleeve, flabby skin.

    “I’m more than a pal, Betty, you’re playing nice with Jim,” he said, opening another round. Betty flushed from an all-day booze rush, high blood pressure blowing its stack? “Chug it down, my lad, drink eases everything.”

    I watched them down their beers in big gulps. I needed tiny fast ones before I emptied the bottle. Other beers went down swifter. Rudy’s face, redder than before, highlighted a scowl or was it hostility towards the bad old world. 

    “He’s lived here since ‘49. A war veteran. This stumblebum knocked on my door, and asked if there’s anything he could do for a meal or two. I sized him up and down, telling him, sure. He cleaned the place, gardened. Me living alone, my husband ran away, I needed help if you get my drift.”

    After more beers, Betty’s hand moved to my knee and towards my groin.

    “What if your tenants see us,” I asked.

    “Rudy’s my only one, love,” she said.

    Buddies of mine had girlfriends do this to them. Me, I was strictly virginal. Rudy stood behind her and massaged her breasts. She rubbed until I got hard, then unbuckled my pants, pushing them down below my knees. Rudy stepped back, undoing his overalls, and a big crooked pecker bounced out at a ninety-degree angle. Its big red knob surprised

me. Betty opened a cabinet, pulling out ropes. She said, “It’ll go better if you let me tie you up. A gentle tug with a rope around your neck makes for a better shot to the moon.”

    I was wobbly drunk, unable to fend her off as she tied my hands, and then the noose, knotted just like in movie execution scenes. “Thirteen knots, hangman’s noose” she said. “For pleasure, not death.” The rope was just beneath my Adam’s’ apple.

    Betty’s reptile hand hardened my dick. Rudy pulled the noose that begat my lust as Betty stroked my dong. I thought of hard two by fours I unloaded and slid down on sloped rollers to Rudy. She pulled off my jeans then sucked my hard-on. Rudy stuck his big one into her rear when Betty bent over. I could not tell if it was snatch or ass but it made her groan. Rudy grabbed me and forced my head to the floor and thrust his shaft into my ass, then pulled out. “Need some butter, Betty,” he said. He greased my rectum, sticking his meat deep into my asshole, and pulled the noose tighter.

    I had heard a boy in the high school washroom say, “It’s taint, neither ass nor snatch,” so I knew a bit about ambiguity. My bound hands above my head, I supine, Betty pulled me to the floor, angled my hard pecker into her vagina, her fat legs against my thighs, and I “Ahhhhed,” emitting a foreign gutteral sound. The noose tighter than before, pain made me think how lives died: the bestial fluid shot through my cock dizzied me.   

    Betty begged him, so Rudy took over, moaned, nasty-talked for ten minutes before he pulled out of her quim, splashing Betty’s naked rear end and robe. Afterwards, Rudy said,

“That’s how it’s done in stag films.”

    Betty stood up, adjusted her robe, covered her breasts and pudenda, and pulled up her nylons. She offered me a Camel.

    “I don’t smoke.”

    Betty loosened the noose. “The red marks will go away.” I rubbed my neck: blood stained my hand. 

    I was tired, Betty untied my red and raw wrists, and I coughed up blood, spitting into the sink: the beginning of my sexual history

    “I’ll light it for you,” said Betty. She put the cigarette between my lips, then scratched a wooden match. I puffed and deeply inhaled.

    “What kind of rifle did you use over there?” I asked hoarsely. I had to say something.

    “I used a flamethrower and if I still had one I’d burn that damn yard down.”

    “Dad told me that when arsonists torched a lumberyard, they’d get sexually aroused.”

    I wondered how safe I was, what the two of them might say. I was a wiseacre from a suburb wealthier than this town. Instead of retaliation, they grinned.

    “I was kidding about torching.” He handed me a beer. “One for the road.” 

    Betty set a slice of apple pie and two doughnuts on the table. “It’ll sober you up.”

I pulled my underwear and pants up, buckled-up and scarfed down the food. After I finished eating, Rudy gave me the pack of Camel’s, sliding it into my shirt pocket, and I said stupefied, “Thanks for everything.”

    I started the car and headed to Northwest Highway. I got sleepy driving and rear-ended a car at a stoplight. The driver got out, told me off, smelled my beer and cigarette breath, and cursed me. Finally, I made it home, trying to look sane and sober. When I entered, their eyes showed fear, their faces paler than ever.

    “I worked overtime. Had a drink or two with nice folks, smoked fags, had fun you said I should be getting around here, like going on dates.” I had zipped up the windbreaker which concealed my throat.

    Mom cowered at Dad’s side. “Where did you get that welt?” she said.

    “A boxcar did it.” I smelled my liquor as I breathed, smoke poured out my skin.

    “You didn’t keep your nose clean as I told you.” Mom had to hold back his arm or he would have beaten me bloody. I let him down and was proud of it. 

    I drank the warm beer slowly in my room, smoking the heck out of Camels. Not everyone had a partner who had used a flamethrower. Dad earned a Bronze Star for killing Germans. I worked in the yard till summer ended. Every Friday after work, the hangman’s noose, blood, and glorifying pain.

    After I graduated, an East Coast university accepted me. My parents expected me to graduate with a B.A. degree in Business Administration, but I never did.

    It was 1965, and two classmates joined the Marines. Rudy had served in WW II, my father fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

    I enlisted in the Marines, boot camp eons away from the roughest day unloading boxcars. We shipped out from Camp Pendleton, landing at Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam.

    In a matter of days, our platoon worked our way through jungles of South Vietnam. After fifteen clicks, we came to a village and poked M-16s at scared old men, frightened old and young women. Children cried and stared at us like we were aliens from the planet Krypton. My fire team, three enlisted men from the Midwest, I the only suburban jarhead of the entire platoon.

    A private kicked in a door and found a pregnant woman holding a small child to her breast. The mother was a beauty, we four admitted aloud. A private said, “Sure looks like Suzy Wong, a great fuck. She must give good head in the bargain, too.” I yelled,  “Shut up, you pussy, she’s protecting her child.” The other three yanked the baby from her

arms, then ripped off her clothes with their hands, slashing them off with their bayonets. They each jammed their bones into her split-legged body, taking turns, the Suzy Wong private doing what he said was the rough bargain.

    I wanted to help her, knowing this was not what we learned in boot camp, getting rocks off rather than seek and destroy certifiable Viet Cong. Rudy and Betty burst into my mind, my eyes, my heart, he and Betty and I in the kitchen, the Dictatorship of the Limbic System, that sweet zone where anything goes. 

    After the three had had their way, I undid my deuce gear, tossed off my pack, pulled down my pants, then took out my Ka-Bar knife, grasped its leather handle and stuck the seven-inch blade into her belly and ripped out fetal shards, then gouged her in the vagina with the blade, moving it around quickly like a mix-master and then with my dick as she lay dead in the dirt.

    I stood up and blood from her womb covered my uniform. I stared at my bodywork, the corpse’s face mingled with wicked Betty’s face and what was left of her torso reminded me of blood seeping out my rectum. Rudy’s flamethrower prick lit the huts until the entire village burned down, all the while the hangman’s noose tightened around my neck. I could hardly breathe in the jungle heat, asphyxiation at my throat. I grabbed my neck with both hands then looked at my red-shredded-dead-fetus hands. I slid my bloody fingers over both flanks of my bare butt, and jammed my fingers into my anus. After sticking Mr. Ka-Bar into my rectum, four marines dragged me to earth.

    I served less than a month in South Vietnam, and hallucinated in my hospital bed during insomniac nights the face of the Vietnamese woman, her thin nose, dark-plum, blood-streaked eyes, her face blurred with Betty’s, a huge Ka-Bar image raised on a flag, its pole stuck atop a mountain of my buttocks. They gave me an honorable discharge. 

    Years later, after countless jobs, I work in a chicken processing plant, whole chickens hung by their feet pass me at eighty per minute as I kill them with a rotating saw, faster and faster the line speeds up, I the world’s great slaughterer.

     I’ll take Mr. Ka-Bar when I search and destroy Rudy and Betty.

George Sparling

The Visit

     I coaxed Pat into driving at dawn from New York City to Baltimore. I just met her in a

bar. I told her about Doris, how she was strictly off limits sexually though rape crossed

my mind. When I moved to Baltimore she was the first person I met just when I needed a

place to get my bearings and put a roof over my head. I hated her big lipstick mouth, her

fat, slovenly legs, her depression, her droopy hair, her big old-fashioned skirts, her

lackadaisical southern drawl, her tripe about her ailing mother. I wanted her to meet a

real woman, one who put lead in my pencil.

    At Doris’s place, I told her we both were on uppers I found in Pat’s glove compart-

ment. I didn’t explain why we made the impromptu visit.  Dangling, not having things

clearly spelled out, I knew that upset Doris. I chatted fast, telling Doris I was pleased Pat

went home with me rather than the asshole with a nose-ring and wearing an ascot. I told

her Pat had ripped her pantyhose so she bought another in a Big Top near Doris’s place.

    Doris was a social worker and I an interior decorator. Doris never shaved her legs,

black hair looked like oddly shaped parasites under a scientist’s microscope. Doris’s tiny,

humid apartment’s atmosphere had always been thick with cat dander moving through

the air like death-dealing asbestos. I coughed, wheezed and sneezed, my nose running.

The allergy shielded me against a counter-intuitive, booze-induced pass at her. 

    Doris’s attraction towards me was strong though I was completely unavailable. Often I

saw lust sneak out from behind her sluggish eyes. Doris’s walls had haphazardly hung

paintings of red cats floating through rural streets. She made a collage, my photograph

ripped from a New York magazine, my face surrounded by cats, their red fur jabbing

my photogenic skin, thin streams of crayon-blood dripped from a kindergartener-like

drawing of a sprinkler: God awful.

    I could have taken Pat to others I’d known in Baltimore but chose Doris. The

upper was enough to arm my mind with a full-frontal verbal assault of trivia. Doris

squirmed in her chair, that wide fanny of hers trying to negotiate her way through the

spur of the moment visitation. Pat fondled me, suggesting a ménage a trois was in order.

Doris’s face reddened, frozen in fear.

    She asked me why I was in Baltimore. Just so Pat could buy new pantyhose, I said.

That satisfied her, she numbly drinking eggnog. Pat said that was a fat person’s drink, get

real, Doris. Doris’s eye twitched and began pulling at her skirt as Pat and I stared at her

legs. Pat chatted about how smooth her own legs looked beneath the beige pantyhose.

    I asked Doris to make us a meal. She plodded to the kitchen, breaking eggs, making

pancakes. I adored your feast, Doris, make some more, I said. She did, this time coming

back with many pieces of toast, plus jam. I requested peanut butter, so she thumped back

and put down a jar of Skippy’s. Pat told her only eat one pancake, save the rest for us.

Doris said she’d be fired because her supervisor said she was too slow with evaluation

write-ups. Pat told her she was a conceptual artist and couldn’t understand why Doris

painted. So de trop, Pat said.

    Doris turned on the TV, immobilized, eating salty pretzels from a bowl. Pat and I made

love in Doris’s bedroom, we going at it on her stinky sheets. Afterwards, we slept. It was

dark when we woke. I turned some lights on and we walked naked past the TV to the

kitchen, eating Doris’s chicken, pasta, veggies and ice cream. She watched a TV

newscast, paying little attention to us, though she did cast a quick glance at us through

her large black-framed glasses.

    I looked in Doris’s pocketbook and liberated four Jackson’s. Pat said, Look, Doris,

then pulled down her pantyhose and mooned her. Doris stared, and stared some more

when I gave her the fascist salute and said, Sieg heil. We laughed, then walked out her

door before I slammed it shut.

George Sparling 

Police State

Villains, the original meaning of the word was treacherous, abusive, evil. An

electronic sign in huge red light emitting diodes flashed in my neocortex: Villains At

Work High Risk Zone. A reign of terror beneath my roof was undeniable. I never lied.

    Stepping into the tub, I took my usual pre-dawn shower. I saw headlights from the

window in the bathroom, villains driving vehicles, one after another, out of the parking

lot across the street, sweeping their yellow headlights, turning my white skin tawny. I

heard other vehicles parading down the blacktop as well, showing their contempt for me. 

    Another curious incident, happening often when pissing into the toilet before bed: a

neighbor’s bright front door light would go dark, light, dark. Showering and peeing,

alpha and omega, I had been locked into their vice grips every night.

    I have a peculiar way of washing my hands, more scrupulous than a surgeon before

an operation. I lathered a bar of soap, fiercely rubbing my hands together, then twisting

the bar around my palms, and very muscularly cleansing them, pressing harder and faster

against one another, the procedure exceeding two minutes. I had alerted the villains, so-

called biological entities, aliens is actuality. They assumed I was idiotic, these sentries at

my private gates, stowing the information undoubtedly in subterranean caves, preserving

them until the Sun went supernova.

    When I used a battery-driven Oral B toothbrush in the morning and before nighttime                                                                                         

sleep, I imitated the noise of the instrument as I lightly pushed against teeth and gums,

sliding quickly, a process taking more time than the hand washing. My dental hygienist

recommended that I devote at least two minutes to my teeth. Villains always listened,

wrongly concluding that I signaled outside help, hoping to throw off my bondage. The

thorough gargling, then mouth-rinsing sounding like hydropower turbines, villains

downloaded, capturing the noise so it would be analysed, decoded, attempting to find out

whether I had been decrypting rebellious defamations during my daily ablutions.

    Often, I read print newspapers the way in which genius John Nash ( “A Beautiful

Mind” ), in both movie and book, had read his paranoiac, splintering, bizarrely digitalized

newsprint, searching for an enshrouded conspiracy as I did mine. He had an immense

breakdown, villains desiring my own crackup, going fetal upon the linoleum bathroom

floor.

    Standing before the toilet, I unzipped my penis, releasing urine, staring at a large

poster of the artist Francis Bacon who said, “all that death, I find it very beautiful.” I

pissed many times, drinking teas accounting for that. Staring at Piss-Bacon, hearing

liquid against porcelain, probably made by American Standard, its name rang true, I the

basic AS, nothing out of the ordinary though disengaged, searching interiors of my

carnivore-brain for meaning and consciousness and privacy. I wanted to read on my bed.

Read in peace, that was, without outside villain-static.

    Villains watched me piss, in the daytime making sure I heard their parked vehicles

outside my apartment, engines running, doors slamming, power brakes pumping staccato

beats, wanting me to be acutely aware I was incessantly under an almighty and

                                                                                                  

mysterious process of observation: Jeremiah 33:3: “…great and mighty things, which you

not know.” Periodically stumped, I shuttered at the omnipotence of the villains’ inten-

tions.

   I stood in the closet, momentum gathering, villains extending their clutches over my

mind, suspending me over the abyss. I took Bacon’s words to heart, pulling out a

Browning shotgun and box of shells given to me by my father for my 16^th birthday. If

I unzipped it from the soft case, classic filmdom’s retribution ( impossible taking the

villains to court---they were so diffuse and dispersed ), I would blast anonymous

persons, all the city’s citizens complicit in villainy. Their toxic venom spurting from

my 16-gauge carcasses, blood cascading, think Kubrick’s movie, “The Shining,” blood

flooding the hall. 

    At night, peeing became a light show, vehicles streaming down the street, headlights

flashing on and off, red lights twirling and flashing from law enforcement vehicles,

firecrackers exploding, their rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, their amassed

throw-weight measured by the increase of sickness, physical, mental and emotional, they

attempting to overload me with the ultimate affliction: death.

    Reading at night or day, the ceiling light beaming down ( Picasso’s “Guernica,”

history’s light bulb shone down on atrocities ), mufflers covered my ears. I bought them

at a sporting goods store, mufflers used at indoor shooting ranges, men and women of

violence wanting to eliminate or conceal hidden icons of earsplitting noise. I liked great,

sprawling novels and social histories, their fortissimo overcoming the villains lurking

where I least expected it, in books. Where had the people come from, those traipsing past

                                                                                               

my windows as I read, many on cell phones mentioning my name, telling friends about a

“lout,” a “freak of nature,” a “dummy,” a “poor excuse for a human being.” Often, they

would stand against my first floor apartment’s wall, their iPods loud with hip-hop or

death metal. I momentarily stopped concentrating, regaining it after inuring their

undesirable antics. But the villains’ war against me knew no boundaries however I

resisted.

    The villains’ goal: discombobulating me until I raised the white flag of surrender.

Remember the Masada fortress, Zealots holding out against the Romans, finally

deciding death and suicide by their own hands preferable to Romans slaughtering

them. I, the new Jew, under siege by villains, yelled to a person playing guitar outdoors

a foot away from me on the bed, “Never again, punk!”   

   Twice daily, I flossed my teeth, rooting out particles, tiny shards caught vice-like in

between teeth, breaking them loose and free, unlike the villains’ strategy of threading my

mind with corruption and rot. I looked in the mirror, seeing myself in the mirror,

awkwardly angling the floss, transmogrifying my face into the image the villains prefer:

ugly, haggard, wretched.

    Of course, we all loved sleep, even nightmares holding darkness and doom. But we

continued sleeping for the sake of waking up alive the next morning, another day we

were not dead. Impossible to sleep off hangovers of the dictatorship of villains, creating

another insomniac their plan. Billions had gone before me without much sleep, making

them weak and tractable, turning them into moronic insomniacs.

    “They shall not pass,” spoke Delores Ibarruri Gomez, directed at General Franco’s                                                                                               

fascist military machine. Always heroic, I snuggled under sheet and blankets, taunting

them, daring villains to break through my sotto voce or normal verbiage, unafraid,

though through the wall I often heard loud thuds, meaning stop my closed-mouth, tongue

unmoving in throat-speak. I sounded like a Tuvan throat singer, my own overtone

harmonic sounds until sleep. Outside, vehicles ceased, the normally busy street hushed,

silent-nighting me, only without attendant glories accompanying the holiday season.

“That’s terrorism,” I rasped loudly, but below the decibel threshold that would get me

evicted or having to confront the police after my wall neighbor had had enough of my

bedtime harangues.

    Villains feasted on the quiet, dead-air street in which I might burn my wings and

crash, interrupting the hush, babbling confessions I neither had nor would ever have. I

placated them though, running through childhood memories, increasing their hostility

towards me. “I love drama, so let the pressure mount. You’ll have to assassinate me, I’ll

never be taken alive,” I barked. “Your hysterical terrorism rages and your opposition

simmers, murmuring me into inner quietude.” Bed-speaking words and phrases I would

not have uttered without villains stalking through my private rooms, erupting in my

dreams, I the Conqueror, you lousy with gutter-born syphilis of the noggin.

    For exercise, I rode a stationary bicycle in a long, deep bedroom closet. I pedaled fast

twice daily, 30-minute reps in high gear. Mufflers covered my ears, otherwise the din

bouncing off the walls would deafen me. I pumped robotically fast, villains hoping I

would dizzy myself in the claustrophobic closet, getting disoriented and confused, my

urge for immortality obviating practicality, gaining not deathlessness but cardiac arrest. I

                                                                                              

wanted to outlive the pukes, dreaming of a die-off for those who sought an early death for

good old me.

    Pedaling, I counted silently, starting with one, two, one, two, then counted to twenty,

then counting one to nine to thirty, one to nine to forty, and so on, repeating that until I

reached one hundred. In between, I might repeat a number say eight, rhyming it with

debilitate, masturbate, exonerate, eliminate, frustrate, defecate, exterminate ( my

favorite ), counting silently, my mouth sealed shut: “Nine, nine, nine, feeling

fine.” Endorphins soon kicked in, an opiate-like substance, cosmic dark matter I

intuited, the analgesia making me euphoric. Nothing could harm me. Villains had no way

to hurt, torture, or slay my being: I was Emma Goldman, Buddha, Simon Bolivar,

Seigfried, Frodo, Don Quixote, plus mythological heroes from around the world.

Paranoia melted away, my true version of myself reaching its zenith. Who could deny

history and fantasy? Only the villains, of course.

    After the workout, I drank cups of Morning Thunder, listened to dark ambient on my

iPod, and raised my middle finger at my foes.

    The dressers holding hundreds of family photographs, old VHS porn tapes, hundreds

of clipped articles, a drawer full of literary magazines containing my published poetry,

passports renewed in a small drawer, letters from former friends chronologically

arranged, unfinished manuscripts hiding beneath underwear, collectible poetry chap-

books, ‘60s radical pamphlets, my nephew’s pencil drawings: whenever I opened a

drawer trying to find lost memories, villains shared my eyes, I the camera, seeing

what I saw. What was this, a horror movie, who the monster, who the idol? 

                                                                                               

    The sliding windows near my bed, how villains made them quiver, trying uncountable

ways to assail me, straining to shake my fundament. Those windows often had large-watt

lights outside blazing through closed blinds. What was going on, a Nuremberg rally, ala

USA, klieg lights seeking out misfits and undesirables?

    The maroon blanket, a gold M stitched in it: villains thought my dad had not earned

his university varsity letter in swimming. And for that matter, the villains dismissed my

own graduation from high school and college, I hauling out the diplomas, villains

cheerleading with iPod drum and bass loops from the curb. They determined the

diplomas counterfeit, forged, bought from a dealer of false papers.

    Being unable to reconcile my life and behavior to my dad’s was their fixed idée, their

obsession. The pressure cooker took its toil, though I perfectly addressed my

dichotomous life when I thought about it in a swivel chair near the front windows.

    They whispered through my store-bought earplugs used for sleep. “Shut your mouth,

we’re tired of your senseless backtalk, ripostes won’t stop our investigations.” They

rebuked me, three a.m. horns waking me. Had they entered my sleep-filled

unconsciousness? I turned on the light, examining the earplugs closely. In tiny red letters

I read with a large magnifying glass, “Creech.” It was the Nevada Air Force Base. From

there, a Predator or Reaper drone firing a Hellfire missile could obliterate me in my sleep,

annihilating dreams.

    If not, I had plenty of dreams in my pockets ready to use. But the villains shelling

me with mortar rounds was not inconceivable. I began energizing my force field,

protecting me from incoming ammo.                                                                                     

    I heard cars’ or trucks’ back-up beepers outside. Perpetual war persisted.

    I’d take my chances in Tripoli.

George Sparling

I, Tad

Dead, I had become transparent eyeball, not Emerson’s, but godlike. Dead, I

knew and perceived more than alive. My father Gustav was dead, mother Hildy too, but

sister Herpy’s alive. My entire life, its repellant bloom had yielded nothing of

importance. A man without biological necessities, lacking essential neurons had no

reason to sit down at dinner to discuss his day, the news, vocations they regretted not

pursuing. Mother wrote for the town’s newspaper, Gustav ran a pharmacy, Herpy taught.

I, dead, and not loquacious, sat and endured.

   

    Some said I died from untreated syphilis, others said the white trash hooch I drank,

glycol from antifreeze giving me cirrhosis of the liver killed me, others saying it

was cancer, too many soft drinks, ignorance dominated the town. I never had sex, seldom

manually released, never drank alcohol, thinking folks would never again doubt my

ignorance, and I drank only herb teas. Soft drinks I associated with white southerners

drinking Coca-Cola, gibbering about how superior they were, unlike dummy blacks.

   

    While putting up storm widows, bracing for the Midwestern cold, Gustav was in the

garage attic where we stored the windows, me up a ladder on the concrete floor, and

instead of carefully handing me the heavy wood-framed window, my weak arms could

                                                                                                                                                                                                      

not balance on the ladder. I had been born with multiple sclerosis, an undeveloped

twenty-one year old, due to oxygen deprivation at birth, the umbilical cord twisted

around my neck. Gustav bullied me into work, all the time knowing the obstetrician’s

absence, nurses fondling each other, not attending my primal needs. Gustav flung

one wildly at me, thinking I would hold on to it but it smashed my forehead,

knocking me off the ladder. I thudded on my back upon the cold, hard floor,

gazed at the ceiling for two seconds, then oblivion, blood haloing my head.

    A Blue Jay cawed. A diesel truck throbbed down a far off highway. A dog barked. A

spider’s legs noisily crawled over my face. Dust hummed through the air. The door,

squeaking, from the house opened, then slowly, creakily shut. I lay dead.

    Herpy grabbed my body, wrapped it in a heavy tarp, and then rolled me to the

backyard, hiding me in thick, gray dogwood. It kept me comfortably out of the world,

concealing me from the backsides of neighbors. Herpy told mother I had met a friend from

my high school years, reliving memories at a tavern or restaurant, possibly sharing a

downtown theater’s movie. Mom looked surprised, then her expression changed---

for the first time her eyebrows bent low over her eyes, finding me intolerable.

Who would date me?

    Think of nostalgic western films, on sheriff’s walls, Wanted, Dead or Alive posters.

Mom and Herpy liked those old TV westerns, seeing dead outlaws heaped in a 

big pile in front of the hoosegow. She still watched them on rerun channels. I pulled

at my suspenders, puffed out my chest, momentarily pride and glory engorged me,

then I snapped the bands, too loud for Hildy. “Don’t interrupt me, please,” she said,

her mean eyes staring hard. Watching “Rawhide” reruns better than speaking to the dead.

     Herpy slid me from the shrubs, barely able to lug my pear-shaped corpse into the

trunk, driving to deep woods, pulling off the tarp and found maples, locust, hickory,

hemlock, a thicketed undergrowth, used the shovel she snagged from the garage,

digging four feet in a patch of soft mire, mostly mud, near a small pond, rolled me into

the hole, tamped down loose earth making my cadaver impossible to locate. I sunk to the

bottom of a manure pit. That lasted until she left the scene, then I rose from the wretched

earth, seeing the dead more plentiful than before.

    Later, Herpy committed mother to a mental hospital. She wanted to protect Hildy from

the fact of my death. Nothing would conceal my deadness, not even motherly affection,

though that was nil in her case. Mother always hated my insufficiencies, and would have

gloated at the news of my death. There, psychiatrists put her on serious medications, the

kind that never let you know that you were better off dead.

    My albino sister Herpy taught at the community college in town. Damn Gustav had

driven me out of my gourd, always directing my eyes toward mirrors. Gustav made

sure of that because there seemed to be a hundred scattered about the house, in the attic

and basement as well, but he never mentally hogtied and tortured albino sister. My face

and body were covered with wens, warts, bleeding moles, body smelling like fiery crap,

hag-breath so foul father wore a gas mask bought at an army navy surplus store, hell, was

he a cruddy, mean dad. And what a cruel simpleton donning a gas mask. Photos of me in

earlier days, a handsome Gene Autry, good looking in a cowboy outfit. Our family ate in

a cramped dining room, full-length mirrors on two walls. Dad never flouted traditional

kindness except when it came for me. At heart, my kind of visage people despised

because it reminded them of suffering, sorrow, pain, decline, ruin, and decomposition.

Dead now, Autry looked and sang better that ever. Mother had no appreciation of Gene.

    Gustav gabbed about his day at the pharmacy, telling there were rumors of customers’

hospitalized because he scrimped on medications, like watering down penicillin, and

buying them cheap online, he using big Latin words, ticking drugs off as if proud of

what he had done. And he lost membership in a downtown business club. The members

thought him grand at first but funds went missing, so they banned him from their midst,

preferring not to press charges. Ostracized, but shallowly, unlike the grateful density of

my own exile. Deaths brought about by him also. He died in prison, an inmate slashing

his throat with a razorblade, settling the score, avenging his wife’s murder.

   

    Herpy was sensitive about being albino, pigment leached out of her. When we were

in nursery school, could it be that when we played kissy-kissy, touchy-touchy, you know,

stuff going on everywhere on earth, made her whiter and whiter as years progressed?

    Herpy collected paintings from the art store, prints the owner said, but I still called

them paintings. I was stuck in my ways, hating change. Herpy, the artist, drew my

portrait, my hair uncut, more balding than I assumed, my Dumbo ears making me goofy

looking, my fat cheeks as if big chaws of Mail Pouch bulged out, my chin long and teeth

crooked, me thinking I was as good looking as Adonis. She drew my tongue protruding

out the side of my mouth, my bug-eyed-monster eyes, one iris greener than the other,

my nose aquiline, my mustache, how skimpy it looked by her steady hand. Herpy

said it was a fine Roman nose, one looking like Emperor Commodus’s. Herpy told me

the assassinated emperor begot the word, commode. Whether that was true had not

mattered, but merely associating with toilets, its receptacle of excrement and urine,

even blood, lent my deadness greater potency. I beamed at the thought of toxic, liquid,

chemical turmoil. My mustache, how skimpy it looked by her steady hand.    

    Herpy and I inherited the house we lived in since birth, both having a trust fund from

which would last our lifetimes. Mother out of touch with us, her mind overloaded with

pills and tablets, too may westerns, perhaps. Herpy paid her visits, mother’s expression

offering Herpy recognition as her daughter. I visited once with Herpy, mother staring

at me blankly, lifting up her flabby arm, pointing wobbly at me, stammering, “You two,

stay together,” that barren, empty look still there. Herpy gave her an easy going hug. I

tried copying Herpy’s embrace, but Hildy withdrew, staring at the ceiling, a nurse ready

to change the sheets.  

    One day, during visiting hours, I saw mother alone, she sitting in an upright chair,

watching Fox News. She looked better than last time. What were her days like? She said,

“I watch Fox all day, eat, pray in that cute little chapel, take meds and sleep. Nightmares

of our house and garage, the yard.”  

  

    I decided to leave, moving toward her, clasp her floppy body, seizing it in my arms,

                                                                                             

squeezing it, showing my exuberant love. No, not love, I only wanted to be Herpy’s

equal. I kissed her and she recoiled, saying, “Cold lips you have. Are you my son?” I

moved away, telling her Gustav killed me. I witnessed her hair turning from gray to

white. Dark outside, a single fluorescent light bulb lit the room, like moonlight. I said

goodbye, “Goodbye” a clichéd response, then recalled a song about a woman lover 

not knowing whether she had said "Goodbye" when she and her lover split. 

    Home, Herpy said the hospital called: Hildy just died. I crushed her dead, though I

never told her that. Unless Herpy had gotten pregnant, there would be no offspring. The

family line stopped. We began quarreling, trivial stuff, like who would rake the leaves,

weed the small garden, vacuum, cook, go shopping, maintain the car, wash the dishes,

sweep the porch. She at her computer, creating digital art, I knowing nothing about

technology except for archetypal toilets.

    I sat on a soft chair in the enclosed porch, staring at cars, watching families walk by,

listening to leaves cry in the wind, hearing end-time, funereal noises of birds, snakes,

ladybugs, dogs, hearing historically unrecorded sounds emitted from mouths of folks just

prior to their deaths in our neighborhood---it grew maddening, the events known only by

the transparent eyeball, how its majesty, its grotesque lowliness exalted me.

George Sparling

Listen, Arcata

     My not so paranoid grievances: those tied at-the-laces tennis shoes draped over a

telephone line outside my house coupled with the movie, “The Woodsman,” Kevin

Bacon’s character, a newly released sex offender, an image of tennies tossed over a line 

as opening credits rolled;  awfully loud 4 by 4 trucks, iPods and radios blasting, motor-

cycles, skateboarders rolling by at midnight, waking me up---that never happened before;

huge, clamorous line of vehicles driving on H Street whenever I step out the door; people

across the street, mimicking my every word as I lay on my insomniac bed, talking to

myself, with lips closed, how can they hear me; a U.S government car, I saw the

Federal plates, a drunken-faced man pretending to nod off, trying to intimidate me; on

one-way streets, I’ve seen cars go wrong way, their way of symbolically hanging an

upside-down  American flag, signaling distress, I their target, getting away with it

because the cops let them; there’s Dogface, a person with an attack dog, barking like a

wild jungle animal whenever he/she thinks I’m not paying attention as Netflix movies

play on my monitor; every time I hear sirens from cop cars/fire trucks speed past my

home on H Street, I’ve called 911, complaining they’re disturbing the neighborhood but,

in fact, they’re terrorizing me, and I shout out my open front door, “Al Qaeda needs

more haters, more improvised explosive devices planted, join them”; my next door

neighbor, The Pimp I call him, makes certain I hear him thudding ( thugging? ) my wall,

                                                                                               

as well as speaking on an iPhone to persons unknown, FBI agents, I assume; my dentist,

as I sat in the waiting room, fiddled with an electronic gizmo plugged into a wall next to

me, and I have only seen him on his reclined chair, not in the waiting room before my

appointment; at the clinic once I had my blood pressure taken in a tiny, claustrophobic

room, the health care worker reaching my arm from the hall, the clinic’s electric power

source, coils and wires surrounding me, I scared of touching anything in this electro-

cution chamber, the staff setting me up for thousands of volts jittering through my body,

murdering me; prosecute me, stop persecuting me I yell at that Clicker, clicks coming

from my walls, computer, microwave, Venetian blinds, hoping I would be driven to

madness, overdosing myself with prescription drugs; I am the new Jew, new Roma, stop

the hysteria, think rationally like me…But remember, Citizen Arcata, Blackie’s come to

town, ordered from Amazon, a black and shining machete, and if I placed it in my

backpack, ambling through neighborhoods, perhaps stalking a person, observing their

vulnerabilities, their daily routine, I might just yank it from my pack, bloodying my

victim, chopping off appendages, geysers of blood spouting out in surprising amounts,

dead or alive, I am happy, then dropping Blackie, waiting for the SWAT team taking me

to jail, and the trail, then, before sentencing, I’ll explain how sane I am, I telling the truth

to people unaccustomed to anything but psychiatric delusions.

    The surveillance continues, people now watching every keystroke, every eye blink,

they have made me colder in heated rooms, shivering in 60 degree days, sturm und drang

a necessary function before an assassin kicks in my door, emptying his revolver into me,

bullets screaming vilification.

George Sparling 

Nails

                                                                         
On January 8, 2011, a gunman fired one shot into Congresswoman Gabrielle

Giffords’ left hemisphere, from back to front, giving me confidence that I could kill Dil

Hickendooper, Mayor of Arkada, my brother, with a portable, compressed air, roofing

nail gun. I had a record: assault and battery, drunk and disorderly, sentenced to hit and

run, plus jail time for non-payment of alimony checks to my ex-wife. I could not buy a

gun. I would wait for the upcoming election, duplicating in my way what the shooter

wanted to do, kill her, only I would succeed in murdering my brother.

    Dil lived with his wife, Blodge, and their seventeen-year old son, Slaterly, in a seven

room house, built by Dil and myself. Dil owned Hickendooper Construction, I, a Jack of

all trades carpenter and sometime roofer, worked for him fourteen years. My house,

where Kirby, my fifteen-year old son, a child having had tense relations with my ex-

wife, Cataline, lived in six rooms and a basement.

    In the basement, I had thick four-foot by eight-foot pieces of plywood, a poor

substitute for Dil, snuck in while Cat held a part-time night job, took the nail gun holding

120 black nails, and systematically squeezed off hundreds of one and three-quarter inch

nails, a poor substitute for Dil. I worked compulsively, feverishly, my muscles aching,

                                                                                      

my heart pumping faster and faster, sometimes passing out, laying on top of Dil’s

“corpse.” The entire board looked like something out of dystopian movies, production

designers and art directors snapping up my boards, not only for the intense labor I put

into them, but for countless blood spots dripping on the boards from my sore fingers.

Either an idiot or genius could do what I did. If I played in a death metal band, I would

not mind having my studded boards serve as a stage set at our concerts.

    I bet I could make ten boards, each totally covered on both sides with black nails, and

take them to an art museum, having the curator accept them for exhibition. Titled “Black

Nail Death,” I bet buyers would pay good bucks to put one or more in their posh living

rooms. Even Dil might buy one standing on a plinth in front of Hickendooper

Construction, but utilitarian motives were stronger than artistic impulses.  

    “Well, well, come in, Addle. It’s been too long since your last visit,” Blodge said,

gesturing me into the living room. Slaterly played a video game, with lots of electronic

music and shooter’s noise. Blodge had been watching a Dexter rerun on a large TV

screen.

    “Dil’s on a conference call with a councilor. The election is getting closer,” Blodge

said, half looking toward me, the other half zoned in to the serial killer.

    “I don’t vote. I’m strictly independent,” I said, my eyes averted, watching the screen.

    “You mean you won’t vote for Dil,” she said, drinking a Heineken from the bottle.

“Want one to go along with your meth?”

    “I gave that up. I looked like shit, old, wasted, and ugly behind it. Anyway, I can’t

afford another parole violation,” I said. “They criminalized me, just because Cat ran

                                                                                     
away. How could I make monthly payments with all my bills? I couldn’t comply with the

court order.”

    Dil came back from his office, sipping red wine from a glass, and then buried his eyes

in a printout. “Addle? What are you doing here? I’ve told you never come over, we’re

strictly on an employer-employee basis.”

    “Just a friendly chat with Blodge and Slaterly, what’s wrong with that?”

    “We’ve heard strange things about you, Addle. Has Blodge told you we know why

Cat ran away from you in fright. The basement business,” Dil said.

     “She never walked down those steps, even before I renovated the basement, saying

she was afraid of rats, the damp making her asthma worse, and she’d read an article

describing radon gas leakage from the concrete in basements.” I was pleased with that

explanation, fluent and factual. “Kirby feared for his life. Cat whipped him with a riding

crop. Must’ve enjoyed reading about Iranians, seeing them lash kids on YouTube.” I

frowned as I spoke.

     “Cat informed me about the basement, noises sounding like bullets from a pistol,

sometimes for hours, you telling her to ‘Stay out down there if you know what’s good for

you,’” Blodge said, downing another beer.

    “It was early winter when Blodge told me about it, that Cat wanted to check what went

on ‘beneath the house’, as she put it, but by then you installed an electronic lock,

requiring swiping a card with a code, and you never gave her the code,” Dil said.

    “Since when had Cat been that sensitive? Radon?” Blodge’s face reddened.  

    “The truth was I’d been staying out drinking, sleeping with my biological mother’s

                                                                                       
adopted daughter. That’s why she packed suitcases and a large duffel bag full of clothes.”    

    “Aren’t some Greek plays about incest,” Blodge said, getting up, bringing back two

Heinekens. “Cat had good years with you till you spent ungodly time in the basement. Dil

and Skaterly heard Cat describe your ‘hobby’. Your affair she could accept, as I accept

Dil’s.”

    “Why does everything come down to blood? People are too damn close to one another,

that six degrees of separation means we’re all related as far as I’m concerned.”

    “That’s not true, you’re absolving yourself of guilt. Dil hasn’t any. That’s why he’s

successful. I like men with gump.” Blodge guzzled beers, green Heineken bottles at her

feet. “You fear people, don’t you, Addle.”

    Slaterly, in faded jeans, sat on the couch, eating a slice of pizza. I saw his strong right

hand and arm.

    “I’m a social animal, aren’t we all. Maybe Slaterly isn’t ‘cause he doesn’t feel guilty

about Bengalese sandblasting his jeans, workers getting silicosis.”

   

    “But I don’t have any guilt about working at construction sites, getting paid in cash,”

Slaterly said. “Dad wants to shit-can you, but you might do something else that harms our

family.”

    “Dil will get his books examined by the IRS. Can’t always get away with murder.”

Words like murder made my brain explode in anticipation.

    “Speak to me, not the floor when you say that,” Dil responded.

    “I stood next to an underage guy named Slaterly, putting in a hardwood floor,

accidentally nail-gunning his hand, crippling his left hand, causing painful nerve

                                                                                     

damage,” I said.

    “Dil should’ve canned your butt. Instead, he only hates you more.” Slaterly waved his

damaged hand at me, the only finger working was his middle one, wiggling it at me as if

invisible nails shot my heart.

    “I tried to have you arrested for injuring my son’s hand. He sticks to his statement, that

you aimed the gun at his hand, and for that you should be legally punished.”

    “Punished?  Why flog me? Cat and I were nice-and-cozy-like living together. Later,

my only problem was failing to pay alimony.”

    “You’re not drunk, are you? What about all those other times in prison? You’re a

pathological liar. Either that or you have early-onset Alzheimer’s disease,” Blodge said.

    I wanted to rebuke her, saying before I paid them a call, I razor-cut in half a ten-

milligram Oxycontin tablet, then took a few bennies before driving over there. A small

dose of Oxy and speed for work: roof or wall framing, finding the rise and run of

each step, nailing the bottom board to the floor and the studs against the exterior wall,

hammering, pounding, and I always came home with stabs of pain. 

    “I’m a insomniac, didn’t I tell you. Hard to keep things straight without at least four

hours of sleep.”

    “I’ve seen you sleep nine hours on your days off,” Kirby said. “Your right eye

twitches right now.” Cat’s beating left scars on his back, chest, and legs, showing no

mercy to a child born by a girlfriend before I settled in with Cat.”

    Dusk, and the house was dark except the TV, its sound off, lights bubbling in a large

fish tank, occasional headlights on the quieter street, deep barking of a big dog, Kirby

                                                                                  

making noises with his mouth, popping his lips together, lips not touching teeth,

mimicking the sound of bubbles from the fish tank. He does that when Uncle Dil got

overbearing. I should not have brought him with me. Poor judgment got me in shitloads

of trouble. Dil’s iPhone rang, he answering immediately.

    “Ok. I’ll speak to people in the councilwoman’s district. When, where and what time?”

    A real trouper, Dil. Where had he gotten that energy, that force, that commitment? I

guess from the same place as mine, all those nailed boards, a force of nature.

    “Fine, the community center, this coming Monday at seven o’clock. See you then.”

    “How in hell can you hold two jobs? The Mayor’s salary is nothing compared to what

you rake in from your business.” Bating him, I knew some secrets.   

    “My knowledge of real estate and housing are in play here, and they’re always

kickbacks, perks, you might say.”

    “I know that, Dil. Brother Addle knows that. Giant sinkholes will choose the houses,

developments, and office buildings you constructed, plunging everything you’ve done

into oblivion,” Blodge said, drinking brandy from a snifter.

    At six a.m., Election Day, Dil and Slaterly came to my door. I was up, drinking my

third cup of cola nut tea, getting high. Each carried a canvas bag. I brushed away suspect

thoughts, having just swallowed a Dexamyl Spansule. Slaterly pulled a knife with his

good hand, Dil pushing me back, then shutting and triple-locking my front door.

    “Get that damn card and open the basement door,” said Dil, his voice gruffer than ever.

    “I lost it,” I said, knowing how false that sounded. “I could contact the firm that I

bought it from, though.” I felt sad. If an earthquake would now shake this house into

                                                                               

shards, the three of us miraculously unharmed, I would start again on those boards. 

    “Get it now or we’ll take turns slitting your throat,” said Slaterly.

     I obeyed, pulled the card from my wallet, Dil snatching it out of my hand. We walked

downstairs, and Dil switched on the lights. Two-dozen boards, stacked in six different

piles, a 25th one set aside. I heard Dil grunt, the big-bladed knife still held at my throat.

    One board had not been consummated with nails, only one side solidly packed with my

unfinished handiwork. Dil drew a .22 revolver good for certain types of hit-man killings.

My heart knocked fiercely; the drugs could not account for it. I sweated, perspiration

slithering down my face, getting into my eyes. My legs trembled, fearing Dil would pull

the trigger. Elected or not for a second term this would not save him from prosecution.

    Dil handed the gun to Slaterly, he pointing it at my heart. Dil flipped the board over,

finding a clean side of plywood. He slid down the board leaning against a workbench,

placing its uncreated surface right-side up on the basement floor.

    “Turn around,” barked Dil. His son jammed the barrel into my ear. I would rather take

my chances with the board.

    Dil opened the bag, pulling out duct tape, then reached behind me, wrapping the tape

around my eyes, nose, and hard around my mouth. He hit me on the head with something

blunt, and I conked out a while, then opened my eyes. He bashed me again, a sliver of

consciousness remained, but a dark kind.

    He kicked my arms so each laid on either sides of the board. Weak and motionless, I

heard the nail gun as he triggered large nails into my forearms, allowing me to feel the

awful pain, how it inflicted more pain than bullets would. The speed intensified the

                                                                                          

pain; it never solved anything. After three nails entered my forehead, the next rounds into

all parts of my face, then the crucial three nails into the back of my head killed me.

George Sparling

George Sparling has been published in many literary magazines including Underground Voices, Thieves Jargon, Unlikely Stories, nthposition, Rattle, Word Riot, Slow Trains, and Zygote in my Coffee. He has a story in the current issue of Crack the Spine magazine and one due out in the next issue of Ascent Aspirations.

"Best job: Times Square bookstore. I could be as psychotic as possible and it blending in perfectly with New York City at that time. Worst job: Payless. I sat atop a huge pile of heavy boxes and could have toppled them down upon the head of that damn shipping boss; he was that vile."