Randy didn’t know what to make of Susan. He sipped the scotch mere feet from her face with her eyes bowed to the floor. I turned my head to see a tear stream down her face. Though this was the moment she had been waiting for, nothing had prepared her for it. “I don’t think I know you,” Randy said.
Susan palmed her eyes and lifted her head to face him. When I looked at Randy, I could tell he was genuinely perplexed. “Where is my mother?” Susan managed to squeak out.
Randy squinted his eyes and took another sip. He lowered the glass and placed it in his left hand. “Darling,” he said, putting his right hand to her cheek, “I’m sorry but I don’t understand your question.”
“Where is MY mother,” she repeated.
“If you could tell me who you are, perhaps I could help,” he said, taken back by her sudden forcefulness.
“Susan.”
“Susan who?”
“Susan Brucetti.”
He took his hand off her face and had another sip. “Brucetti?” he asked and swallowed hard. “I believe a Lyonette Brucetti was under my employment many years ago. Is that your mother?”
Susan nodded and lowered her head again. Randy’s face began to blush and he nervously scratched his head. “I’m afraid that I haven’t seen Lyonette in some time,” he explained. “Last I heard, she was living in Chico with her husband. I apologize, but I haven’t been keeping close tabs on her.”
“You’re a liar,” Susan said.
“Pardon?”
“You’re a liar. You sold her into sex slavery.”
“W-why would I do that?”
“Because that’s the kind of man you are!”
“Susan, sweetheart, I think you have the wrong idea. You see, Lyonette and I were lovers for a very long time. I loved her. Why would I sell someone I love into slavery?”
“Then why would she abandon me?!”
Randy turned around and refused to face us. He sat his glass of scotch down and rubbed his brow. “I’m sorry Susan,” he said, “had I of known, I would have done something.”
“What do you mean?”
“We had a child together. A girl.”
Susan looked at me with wide eyes. No words came. In real time I could see her heart sink to her feet and Dale shook his head. “Told you it was a mistake,” he uttered under his breath.
“Goddamnit Dale,” I said.
“What was a mistake?” asked Randy, still not facing us.
“Forget it,” I said.
“I’m gonna be sick,” said Susan.
Randy picked up the glass again and ignored the comment entirely. He turned around and leaned against the table. “Susan, my dear, I think you should leave,” he said. “I don’t want you to be a part of what’s about to happen.”
Susan quietly nodded and the driver took her by the arm and escorted her upstairs. She never looked back at me. She was defeated.
When she was gone and the shock wore off, I looked at Randy. “Two damaged children,” I said. “That’s your real legacy.”
This was one of my first stories that I published here.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why it wasn’t more popular 🤷♂️
Nice balls,” she said.
“Thanks”
I just got a new pair of truck nuts for my 2004 Dodge Ram 2500. Luciana Ortega De Navarro was impressed.
Luciana was the heiress to the largest cigarette manufacturer in Southern Cal. It recently went out of business. She asked me out on a date while I was sleeping in the doorway of her storefront in Venice.
She had a thing for hard luck cases.
So I finally brushed my teeth and ran a comb through my hair. I put on my best Def Leppard shirt and met her at Il Porcellino, the finest Italian place near Marina Del Ray.
Luciana wore a floral red dress. Her dark hair flowed down to her shoulders and her skin was as radiant as the Mediterranean sunset. She was stunning.
We shared a bottle of Molinara from Veneto over candlelight. She asked, “do you go to church?”
“I’ve been there before.”
“How do you feel about 3rd Baptist Church of Culver City?”
“I’ll give it a shot,” I said.
That Sunday, I wore a clip-on tie and went to church. Elderly people abound. They all asked “Welcome Brother James, isn’t Luciana great?!”
“I guess,” I said.
Services began. The choir sang “Are You Washed in the Blood”. The pastor waddled out from behind the stage.
The preacher was a heavyset man, obscenely flabby. He wore a flannel suit and lightly tinted bifocals. He asked us to take out our Bibles.
“Open to Romans 3:48.”
The parishioners complied.
“Now, my congregation, I wish to speak on god’s grace, his mercy, and his message to all the people of earth.”
Silence fell over the church.
“Yesterday, while I was praying, a voice said to me ‘I will bring forth your people as testimony to this cursed world.’ I replied ‘God! What does this mean?’ The voice said ‘do not worry, just listen to my commands,’”preacher continued.
All eyes were now glued to him.
“The voice said ‘Get up!’ So I got up. Then it said ‘take off your shirt!’ So I took off my shirt. Then it told me ‘take off your pants’. So I took off my pants. ‘Now drink your own piss!’ So I drank my own piss.”
The preacher began to move around the stage.
“It was at this time when I felt the grace of Jesus Christ inside of me. I leapt for joy! And I knew right then what I had to do.”
He then walked over to the assistant pastor.
“Brother Ted, please stand up.”
He stood up.
“Ladies and gentleman of this congregation. This is the future I want to bring forth.”
The preacher then pulled down Brother Ted pants, exposing his fully erect penis.
Gasps filled the audience.
As the parishioners started getting riled up, the preacher continued.
“Do not be afraid,” he said as he held Brother Ted’s member. “Change is always scary. But this is the beginning of a new era!”
The preacher then shoved Brother Ted’s penis into his ass. The sound of clapping ass cheeks echoed throughout the church.
Women in the aisles were passing out. The men shouted “Amen!”
“Come here Brother Al,” the preacher said to another assistant.
And the preacher sucked and fucked his way through the sermon, igniting his congregation into a titillated frenzy.
As we were driving home, Luciana asked, “what did you think about the service?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It was a little tame. Think I’ll just stay a Catholic.”
Hate to toot my own horn but 2051: A Space Monstrosity turned out much better than I thought it would. I also wrote a lot more than I intended.
It’s not perfect. Far from it. And I blatantly ripped off lines from various Star Trek productions, almost verbatim, because I’m a shameless hack.
But I’m getting closer to being able to tell stories the way I want to: where I create a plot on the fly by establishing a rhythm and hitting the story beats. If you do a few setups and meet the payoffs in any ridiculous way you can, BAM…you have yourself a story.
Maybe not a GOOD story, but a story nonetheless.
My method is akin to Bill Walsh’s “West Coast Offense” in football: where players lack in athletic ability (or, in my case, artistic genius), you can make up for in precision and timing.
This runs entirely contrary to the way my high school teacher tried to teach me. It was his belief that that the secret to writing was in rewriting.
The problem I found with this practice is that my interest always waned and the magic was gone. Editing and proofreading is necessary of course, but frankly it’s boring and if I spend too much time on it, I end up hating everything about the piece itself.
It is my belief that art works best when it exists in the moment….when the artist can, however briefly, be completely honest with themselves.
So I’ve written a lot to get the practice in. And most of the stories are in fragmented pieces. Therefore I created a separate page to compile all these short stories.
…that is, once when I figure out how to get the page up on the website. Right now it looks like shit. I dunno 🤷♂️
“Hey God, God Alliance, the Holy Divers…whatever the fuck you call yourselves…come get your boy!” I radioed to the new energy source on radar.
Yah jammed the transmission. “Captain, you have fucked me over for the last time,” he said over the intercom. “You will never escape me. I’ll chase you around the moons of Nibia and around the Antares Maelstrom and around perdition’s flames before I give you up!”
“Suck my limp dick!” I replied.
The energy source pursuing Yah was gaining on him. And with his final act, Yah tail whipped the rear of the Sagan, causing the ship to spin out of control.
“Fire the braking thrusters!” I ordered Valdez.
“Thrusters are having no effect!”
I radioed down to engineering. “Nia, more power to the brakes!”
“Sir,” she replied, “breaking thrusters were destroyed in the last hit! There’s a coolant leak in engineering. I’m diverting power to both the lift and main thrusters. That will stop the spinning, but we will be unable to stop in forward motion!”
“Captain, we’re hurdling towards a massive object ahead. 50,000km and closing,” Dr. Jackass said.
“Valdez! Give it some gas!” I yelled.
Valdez floored it. We were seconds away from crashing into a large meteor in front of us. The Sagan got caught in the object’s orbit and we spun around it a few times until we broke free.
The ship was now on a straight path, but we were still traveling at light speed. “We dodged that bullet,” The Doctor said, “but it’s only a matter of time before we collide with another object!”
I called back down to engineering. “Nia, can you stop the engines?”
“Not at this speed sir!” she replied. “And with our coolant depleted, I am unable to ramp them down. We will continue to increase speed until the engines burn out, but there will be no way of stopping the ship!”
We were now traveling at 1.5 times the speed of light and increasing. It was the fastest that humanity had ever achieved. But it was going to cost the lives of my crew.
Valdez and Jackass looked to me for answers. I had none.
I went over the intercom.
“Attention crew of the Sagan,”I said, “it has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your captain. All of you are fine officers. You have achieved only what others have dreamt. Let’s just hope history never forgets the name: The USV Carl Sagan.”
I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. Vibration began increasing.
Then there was a miracle.
“Sir!” Valdez yelled. “Speed is decreasing!”
I opened my eyes. The universe was no longer speeding past us. Finally, the Sagan reached a full stop.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
There was a voice behind me. “I stopped this piece of shit from flying apart, that’s what happened,” it said.
I turned around and there was a Jack Lemmon-looking asshole dressed in white robes standing on the bridge.
“Who are you?” I said to the strange man.
“God, dumbass!”
“You’re God?! I thought Yah was God!”
“No moron! Yah’s that damn Deceiver fella mentioned in that book of yours, the uhh…,” God started snapping his fingers to jog his memory.
“The Bible?” I said
“The Bible! That’s it! He had this cockamamie idea that he could come to Earth and establish a kingdom for himself or some stupid crap. I dunno. We stopped him and thought that he should be a prisoner to YOU guys because he tortured all of you for so long. Clearly that didn’t work out. So now we’re gonna have to find some other way to punish Yah. That guy’s fucking nuts!”
“So are you the ONLY God?”
“I’m the only one NAMED God, if that’s what you mean. But no, there’s a lot more like me.”
“What do you guys DO?”
“Hey! You stay out of our affairs and we’ll stay out of yours PAL!”
“But Earth needs your help.”
“Let me tell you something: no they don’t. You think that because we’re “gods” that we don’t know what it’s like to be you guys? Guess what? We were like you humans at one time. Humanity can climb out of this mess and come back stronger than ever. You know what? I believe in YOU. How do you like that irony?”
“Can you at least help the Ishnarians?”
“Yeah yeah, I’ll go back to Ishnar. I’m used to cleaning up Yah’s shit.”
“I have just one more favor to ask.”
“What do you want now?”
“Can you send us back to Earth? The ship’s kinda broken.”
“Look, I’m not allowed to break the laws of time. Earth’s kinda a shithole right now. Don’t worry though, there’s still people there but they’re all living underground. How bout I put you back in your hibernation chambers and by the time you reach Earth, radiation levels will be back to normal. Sound like a deal?”
“Thanks God.”
“Alright, sweet dreams.” Then God snapped his fingers again.
Many decades later…
The Sagan was orbiting Earth. Tranquility Bay was abandoned and uninhabitable. I made the decision to land on the surface.
“Radiation levels have stabilized, Captain,” Dr. Jackass said.
“Thank you Doctor.” From the bridge, I looked out through the view screen, down to the big blue marble below. “Should we attempt communication?” I asked.
“There doesn’t appear to be any technology to receive it,” the Doctor replied.
“We really are back to the stone ages then,” I said. “I’ll be down in engineering.”
I met with Commander Mwangi at her station. “How’s the landing gear?” I asked.
“All systems are functioning normally, sir,” she replied. But she wouldn’t look at me.
“Is everything alright Commander?”
Mwangi stood up from her desk and turned her face towards me. “You took a big gamble Captain,” she said. “You risked the safety of the entire crew.”
“I ain’t apologizing for getting into a stare down with the devil and winning,” I replied.
“We could’ve been killed!”
“I couldn’t allow you to live in sexual slavery!”
Mwangi sucker punched me right in the face. As I stood in a daze, she grabbed my head and kissed me passionately. “You are one stupid, STUPID son of a bitch,” she said, “but I thank you for it.” She rubbed her body against mine as she sidestepped her way back to work.
I had no idea what just happened. But I liked it.
I returned to the bridge and patted Valdez on the shoulder. “I never congratulated you on your pregnancy. Congratulations Commander,” I told her.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Are you ready to raise this child in a brave new world?”
You can blame Putin for my absence. I’ve been distracted by Twitterverse’s brain rot due to America not being (directly) implicated in an international crisis.
I mean, what’s the world coming to? I thought America was supposed to be responsible for ALL the global fuck ups.
Smh
Anyway, recent events have reminded me that you should never trust someone that gets paid to express political opinions. Spoiler Alert: they’re full of shit and need to be ostracized from civil society.
So anyways, WWIII could happen. Check back with you later.
Here we are! The conclusion to Pennies For The Dead.
I’m sorry that you’ve read this far 😔
I instantly wasted 5 bullets.
Sadly, I had to borrow a weapon from Pete. And let me tell you: it ain’t easy killing demons with a pocket knife.
In the midst of the mayhem, I lost track of Jezebel. “She escaped to the roof!” Pete yelled while decapitating a goblin.
I sprinted up the stairs to the very top of this 666-storied building. I was out of breath when I reached the roof. Jezebel was waiting.
“Your pathetic little weapon will do nothing to me,” she said.
“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that,” I replied.
Above the roof, Jezebel was opening a portal to Earth where all the spirits of this evil domain could trespass. I was running out of time. So I rushed Jezebel with the knife.
As I leapt towards her heart, she blocked my movement, knocking loose the pocket knife.
I was on the ground. Powerless. Jezebel laughed. “What a weakling,” she said as she put her pitchfork up to my neck.
“If you kill me,” I asked Jezebel, “where am I gonna go? I’m already in hell!”
“If you think it’s bad here, wait till I send you to Bridgeport!”
I closed my eyes in preparation for eternity. Then thunderbolts rained down on Jezebel. While Joe unleashed his unholy powers from the staff, Pete went absolute apeshit on Jezebel with his machete. This severely damaged her powers, thus closing the portal.
With her powers nearly drained, Jezebel stood at the edge of the roof. “Halt!” I yelled before Joe could make the final kill shot. “Jezebel still possesses Sheila’s body.”
I looked deep into Jezebel’s eyes. I could still see Sheila. “Sheila,” I pleaded, “I know that we never had sex because of my undiagnosed ED. I know that I’d often disappear into the bathroom and leave you with the bill. I know that I’d also clog the toilet and blame it on the cat,” I said, “but I also know that I love you and you should probably attend AA.”
Right then, Jezebel began to spastically writhe on the ground. The evil spirit departed Sheila’s body, and there alone stood a defeated Jezebel.
With one bullet left, I pulled out the .38. “Back to where you belong Satan: Massachusetts.”
I pulled the trigger.
The flash from the barrel echoed throughout Hell. In a puff of smoke went Jezebel.
I couldn’t believe it.
“Is she gone for good?” I asked Joe.
He looked out to the horizon. “We defeated her for the time being,” Joe said. “But the devil is never really gone. Where Jezebel resides now is in a hell of her own making, a place so unfathomable that God himself wouldn’t dare set foot. So Norway probably.”
I walked over to an unconscious Sheila. I kneeled down to awaken her. “What happened?” she asked.
“Just a temporary demonic possession. Nothing to worry about,” I said.
Sheila stood up and looked down to the sprawling city below. “Where are we?”
I’m beginning to think we need a villain, a hero, and a plot to make a good story.
But we’ll see where this goes…
***
So my Audi was doing 95 through a school zone when I went around a flashing red bus. An officer pulled me over.
“License and registration please.”
“Sorry Officer, I’m driving on a suspended license due to numerous DUI arrests,” I said. “Also, this vehicle is registered to my ex-wife. I stole it from her because she accused me of domestic abuse.”
“Well slow down,” he replied. And I was on my merry way.
When I pulled into the driveway, my neighbor was waiting on me. “Don’t ever pull a gun on my husband again!” she yelled.
“Bitch! This is America!” I replied. Then I fired an entire clip into the air.
Later that night, my girlfriend gave me oral. When she asked me to return the favor, I said, “Heh, no thanks. I gotta kiss my mother with this mouth.”
The Internet Ruined Everything 