Anaideia 20

After sex, I’d leap up from the bed with cock swinging to look out the Madam’s second floor window. Though the horizon was clear blue and the dull orange meridian was hovering over the mountains, I knew calvary was coming. But the Madam would lay in bed naked as a mole rat and mock my good cheer.

“Well I’m glad YOU’RE satisfied,” she’d tell me.

I turned around bare assed and grabbed my sun-faded britches. “If I don’t satisfy you,” I said, “there are dozens of paying customers downstairs that would be willing to try.”

She sits up in bed and pulls a cigarette from an old wooden box. “Don’t give me any ideas,” she says as she lights a match.

“Well here’s another idea: I’m sure Karl would like a piece of ass too,” I said.

The Madam exhales a puff of smoke and glares at me. “What’s with you lately?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” I say coyly as I button my shirt.

“You don’t seem so…,” she trails off to find the right word.

“Suicidal?” I suggest.

“Yeah?”

“Well, I decided that the best way to accept my life here is to not let you win by being miserable all the time. Randy was right; I have everything a man needs here at Candyland. So fuck it. I’m gonna be happy!”

The Madam dismissively puffs away. “Maybe I SHOULD start fucking Karl,” she said.

I wave her off and exit the room. Nightfall was approaching and I needed to prep for the evening ahead. Dale left two days earlier. He clogged the saloon toilet before his departure and the bathroom still reeked of his wretched shit. I proceed down the balcony steps to behind the bar. Inside the utility closet, I grab a mop and various smell-goods in my certain futile attempt to make the toilet presentable.

In the saloon, Old Jim was sitting in his usual spot shuffling the same deck of playing cards. I grab a Natty from behind the bar, drop a few coins in the register, and join Jim for a few moments of banter. “How are you doing Jim?” I ask.

His eyes were glazed and his stringy grey hair was unkempt. He struggled to place me as I took a seat. “When I was just a young-un,” he said, “there was a bridge we crossed to look for bullfrogs on the prairie. We’d find em and stick firecrackers up their ass and watch em blow up. Anyway, we’d walk across and piss over the edge into the Pawnee River. It was burned down in nineteen hundred and thirty seven by Pretty Boy Floyd when he was on the run from Hoover for the Valentine’s Day massacre. Those were rough times. No one knew right from wrong in them days. I sure do miss my pa. He was shot dead tryin to cross that bridge ya know? He was caught fuckin the pig farmer’s wife and they blew his brains out right then and there. I was born two years later. My pa would say to me ‘son, if you’re gonna fuck a pig farmer’s wife, fuck the pig instead.’ I never forgot that. Too bad that bridge ain’t there no more. I’d sure like to cross it.”

Karl strolled up in his spurs and shit kickers and joined us. He flipped the chair around and sat down in it backwards like he was about to drop some wisdom 90s-style. “How ya doin Jim?” he asked.

“I’d rather be dead, Karl,” he said without looking up.

Karl looked at me and grinned like he always does when there’s bad news. “You better finish cleaning up that shit,” he said. “Randy’s upstairs fuckin one of them whores. If he comes down and sees a turd floatin around he’ll be fixin to shoot ya.”

“Randy’s here?!” I exclaimed.

“You better believe it.”

Fuck, I thought. I scrambled to my feet with all the cleaning goods. But before I could move an inch, Randy was shouting from the top of the stairs. “James!” he said. He was wearing his usual grey and bluish blazer without a shirt underneath. His gut jutted out over his unbuttoned pants. “I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am to see you,” he continued as he marched down the steps.

“Likewise,” I lied.

“I would have figured you would run off long ago.”

“I had a change of heart.”

“Good,” he said. He reached the bottom of the staircase and placed his hand on my shoulder. “I have a proposal for you.”

“What that?” I ask.

“I want you to join me on a new business venture in Reno.”

“Reno?”

“Absolutely. It’s a wide open world out there. There’s money to be made by any sucker willing to reach his hand out and take it! But I’m gonna need some muscle.”

“Now’s not a good time Randy.”

“Not a good time?” he asks. He stretches his arms out and looks around the saloon. “What do you mean now is not a good time? What the hell else do you have to do?”

“I’m starting to enjoy my time here,” I said, struggling to find a satisfying answer.

“Yeah, okay pal,” Randy said sardonically.

Burl from behind the bar slings him another tequila sunrise. Randy picks up the glass and swishes it around. “I’m gonna need you to be a tough SOB out there,” he tells me. “I need to know your heart is in it.”

“I don’t know what else you want me to do,” I say.

Randy leans in and lowers his voice. “Old Jim there,” he whispers, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but his mind is – well – slipping.”

“So?”

“So…,” Randy reaches into his blazer pocket and pulls out a small 1931 Baby Browning and sets it on the bar. “Do it quietly,” he says.

“Randy, I may be clinically insane but I’m not a monster.”

“A monster?!” he indigently says. “James, I need you to be a cold-hearted savage in Reno. You’re an apex predator. You have what it takes.” He places the pistol in my hand and wraps my fingers around the butt. “Do whats necessary,” he says.

I held the pistol in paralyzing fear. I was unable to declutter my mind and make a clear decision. One way or another, I knew a shot would be fired. I just didn’t know who would take the bullet: Old Tom or Randy or myself.

Then a flutter of breeze filled the saloon. From behind me I could hear the entrance doors swing open and boots clatter on the old wooden floor. I turn around and my heart leapt. The Calvary had arrived.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 19

2 Months Later

I was dead in every way except physically. And in these dark days my dreams became the only place of solace. I’d make love to a beautiful woman and she’d tell me everything would be okay and that we’d find that small corner of heaven that was just for us. Then I’d wake up. There was no Vic; no bustling sounds of Los Angeles to greet me. It was only the small dingy quarters of a brothel in a desert that had no name. Out of this cursed saloon, a girl would go missing in the night only to be replaced by another who spoke a tongue no one understood. This was the loneliest of all possible worlds. Only the insipid interactions with Karl, Old Jim, and the Madam kept me company. But they, like me, were spiritually dead. We lived only in the decaying and depraved dream of Randal J Furie.

Each night bled into the next. A John overburdened with whisky and a crumbling life would refuse to pay and only Karl would take joy in altercation. The diminutive bumblefuck had one John beaten and bloodied and chained in a shack out back for days on end. When I found the John, he was severely dehydrated, lacking money, and begging for his release. I confronted Karl about this. “I completely forgot about leaving him out there,” Karl explained.

“He’s in dire need of medical attention,” I said.

“What do you suggest we do?”

I didn’t have the heart to put a bullet in his brain. One night, I escorted the John to the foot of the mountain range in a UTV and sat him right outside of the pass. “Follow the light flutter,” I told him. “And don’t come back.”

He was never seen again.

I’d sit at the bar, emptying my paycheck into the cash register of the Candyland Saloon. Money was meaningless out here. Burl would sling me one beer after another and I’d drink hoping that this night would be my last. Yet each morning I’d wake up still begging for death. Sometimes I’d pray to the 3am god then look out the window to that mountain pass and wonder if I should follow the path of that fateful John. My life was over. And even if I did escape, I’d never escape the clutches of Randy.

“How long have you been out here?” I’d ask the Madam.

“You should never ask a woman her true age,” she’d say.

“But what does he have on you? How can you stay happy living like this?”

She wouldn’t answer.

This was life from now on. No cable TV. No long walks on the beach. No late night beer runs to the gas station. No belligerent driving down Sunset Boulevard. No antagonistic conversations with baristas. This was it.

I was dead.

Then one night like any other night, I was sipping on a Natty at the bar when I heard a familiar voice. He was yapping away ceaselessly at Burl who stood silently with arms crossed. It was all the shit I’ve heard countless times before: a cheating wife, bosses making unreasonable requests, and threatening to bring a loaded firearm into a federal building and ending it all.

It was Dale.

While drunk on cheap beer, I crawled off my stool and stumbled towards him. I reached my arms around him in a loving embrace. “Dale, I’m glad to see you!” I say.

Without acknowledging the wild coincidence of meeting in a place like this, Dale rambles on. “James, I’ll tell you what!” he said. “I finally had enough of that bitch once and for all! After they laid me off at the toilet factory, I told my wife that she better get the fuck out of Los Angeles or else I would light this trailer on fire! Did she want that on her conscience? She cried and cried before getting a restraining order and I told her that I ain’t afraid to die! So she better meet me by the railroad tracks or else I’d be ran over by a train! But that bitch never showed up! Goddamn I miss her.”

“Dale, will you shut the fuck up?!” I said. “I’m trapped out here against my will! Can you do me a favor? Can you find a man named Vic Weathers and send him out here to rescue me? Tell him to arm himself to the teeth!”

“Ya know, I was trapped in a whore house in Vietnam. That’s where I lost two inches off my cock for…”

I slap him across the face. “Goddamnit, will you listen to me?! This is serious! Tell Vic that I’m trapped in the desert in what is probably Nevada…”

“Nevada?!” Dale exclaimed. “I thought we were in Utah!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I said. “Utah? I should have known that Mormons were somehow involved in this. Anyway, find Vic Weathers in Los Angeles. Give him this location. Tell him to bring guns, machetes, explosives, any and all weapons he can find….”

There was a light tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Karl flashing his yellowed and grimy teeth. “You’re not supposed to be conversing with the customers,” he warned.

Emboldened by my drunkenness, I tell him to fuck off. “I’m gonna tell the Madam you said that,” he told me.

“What’s she gonna do?” I ask. “I’ve been fucking her every night since I’ve got here. So do me a favor you ugly rat shit, go take a long walk in the desert!”

Karl cried and walked off the I looked back to Dale. “Quick! Go back to LA,” I said. “Time is of the essence!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 18

I could barely hold a coffee cup to my lips due to trembling hands. There was a blanket draped over my shoulders as I recovered from intense shock from the night’s events. I sat only in my underwear while clothes dried from washing in the intense desert heat after I shat and pissed them. The Madam sat on the other end of the table with a disapproving expression. She held a cigarette between her fingertips.

“You are a stupid, stupid man,” she told me.

“True,” I said as I slowly sipped.

Old Jim finished packing tobacco into his half bent pipe and lit a match. With the tobacco alit, a plume of smoke exited his nostrils and he nodded his head. “You know, old folks used to say you should flush quarters down the toilet for good luck,” he said. “But when I clogged the toilet, the plumber found $276.50 in the drain. That was a good day.”

The rays of morning sun gleamed through the wavy vintage glass and lit up the saloon. It was an hour past sunup and patrons were shuffling out of the whore quarters and to the bar where Burl would serve beers like an oafish and silent brute. I was somewhat despondent. Jim, the Madam, and myself sat around the old square table quietly lost in our own worlds. My world, of course, was shattered by the appearance of a fiendish ghoul who guarded a mountain pass like Cerberus of Hades. I realized then that this was the reality of folks like Old Jim and the Madam; they were trapped in this barren basin as prisoners.

Randy stepped in through the front door of the saloon and approached the bar. He was wearing a bluish grey suit with a yellow tie and a straw boater hat and he looked like a depression era Bible salesman. Burl mixed what appeared to be a tequila sunrise and handed to Randy. We might’ve been friends for a long time. But today I felt like I might swallow a bullet. He sipped on the cocktail and slowly crept towards our table while he jingled change in his pocket. He placed his hand gently on my shoulder.

“Jim, how are ya?” he asked.

“Fair,” said Jim.

“Madam Joelle, I don’t suspect much has changed since last night?”

“That’s a fair assessment,” said the Madam.

“Young chili pepper,” Randy said, referring to me, “can I speak to you outside?”

I swallowed hard and followed him outside. We stood underneath the shotily put together awning that counted as a porch in the front while my blanket swayed in the wind. The skies were clear. Randy pointed to that far off mountain range I failed to traverse the night before. “Do you know how far away that range is?” he asks.

“No sir. I do not.”

“It’s 5.62 miles away,” he explained. “Far enough away to feel safe from life’s uncertainties but close enough to look out the window and wonder. Now what you saw last night might not be of this world. But the terror it brings is no different than what any man faces when he walks the streets. Every two minutes a man is shot dead in Los Angeles County and that’s your home. Just minutes away from where you eat and drink and make love is an unspeakable tragedy.”

“What are you getting at Randy?”

Randy takes a bigger drink from his cocktail and continues. “My point is, why tempt fate? You have all the niceties that a young chili pepper should kill for. You are surrounded by beautiful women from all around the world while unbridled from the laws of government. This is paradise compared to the godless land you used to dwell in. So why escape?”

“But it seems pretty godless out here.”

“Yet that’s where you’re wrong!” he exclaimed. He grew more animated with each breath. “Soon this whole lake bed will be filled with commerce and industry. People from miles around will come and find their wildest fantasies come to life. It will be a hedonistic dream!”

“That’s what Las Vegas is for,” I said.

“I’m trying to tell you that you’re on the frontier of a new world! I was halfway to Riverside County when I heard you tried to leave this place! I want you to be a part of this dream! That’s how important you are to me!”

Randy threw his arms around me with drink in hand and slightly spilling the cocktail onto my blanket. “Don’t leave,” he said. “You’re too important to this operation.”

“Randy, I just want to make sure I can leave whenever I want.”

Randy removed the boater hat and placed it to his chest. “I understand,” he said. “But that thing, out there,” he explained, referring to Penelope, “I just don’t know if she can permit that.”

He placed the hat back on his head and poured the nearly a full glass of tequila sunrises onto the dry ground and waltzed back to his Cadillac. As he opened the driver’s side door he shot me one last glance. “You’re not the first to try to escape,” he said, “and you probably won’t be the last. But those mountains are littered with the bones of curious kittens. I don’t feel the need to warn you again.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 17

In retrospect I shouldn’t have been so hasty in leaving the Candyland saloon. When traversing a large desert, even in nightfall, it behooves one to be prepared. Things like water and a flashlight would have been extraordinarily helpful while walking across this plain of death. But it was too late now. All I had was a Smith & Wesson revolver and the clothes on my back.

C’est la vie.

It wasn’t the time to lose my nerve. The canyon I entered appeared as a labyrinth of darkness and tribulation. It was silence. The only sound I heard was the thumping of my own chest. Out of caution I pressed forward with eyes wide open and the revolver in hand.

The dirt road reverted to its innate form and my senses attained an acuity not felt by any man since the days of Adam. This was the most primal of all fears; the fear of darkness and the unknown. I knew the road would return to its manmade form on the other side of the ridge. How far that was I did not know. I crept forward, always present of the unseen reality in front of me.

Occasionally there was a sound; a rock tumbling down a crevasse or the sporadic creeping of a wondering nocturn. Yet I maintained my composure. But a little further into the labyrinth there was an alien clicking. I didn’t want to get excited so I slowed my pace and scanned the gun in all directions. A little deeper and the foreign sound was more intense. I aimed the pistol in its direction and called out. “Who goes there?!” I shout.

For a few moments there was nothing. The clicking ceased. Then, like a silent wave, the mood of the canyon shifted. Any creeping thing that was left there stopped in its tracks. I heard the gnawing of flesh and bone and the growling from a hellish hound. “Show yourself!” I demand. Yet there was no reply from the shadows.

Whatever was out there needed a deterrence so I fire one shot into the darkness. From the brief flash of a Smith & Wesson, the canyon lit up and I saw what I had hoped to never see again; a rakish creature of grey flesh on all fours with blood dripping from the jaws. Though the long black hair concealed the face, small glowing eyes glared back at me.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelped. I fire several more shots in its direction and sprint back in the direction I came. I trampled over rocks both big and small which caused me to lose my footing. In a panic, I fire the remaining bullets in the creature’s direction. With the cylinder empty, I hurl the pistol at the galloping beast.

Before I knew it, I cleared the canyon and was back on the desert basin. I could see the faint glow of the Candyland Saloon several miles ahead but I wasn’t going to make it. Like Tom before me, I would be swallowed up by the desert and never be heard from again. Though adrenaline got me this far, it wasn’t enough. I started to soil my pants in preparation for death.

But right when hope was lost, the roaring of a turbo UTV came to my defense. Rifle shots rang out, striking the creature and it screamed out an ungodly sound. The blinding lights emitted from the UTV provided a brief glimpse of the monster’s true form: it was humanoid with large breasts hanging from its chest and long legs indicating its formidable size. It was Penelope.

The legend was true.

With the creature in retreat, the UTV pulls closer and I could see the driver. “Boy, you’re crazy!” Karl shouted. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

I lean forward with hands on my knees to catch my breath and then I vomited. Karl laughed. “Goddamn your puke smells like shit!” he says.

I stand up straight and wipe my mouth. “Yeah,” I said. But I didn’t want him to know the truth: I had completely shit my britches.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 15

The man called Karl and I, we incinerated the corpse of Tom by burning his body and grinding the bones and we scattered his ashes across the desert basin. Whoever this Tom might’ve been, where he came from and who his family was would forever be lost to the sands of time. We found no wallet on his person. Believe me, we looked. What they don’t tell you is that it takes a long time to burn a body. If Tom was shot around noon, we didn’t return to the Candyland compound till after sundown.

When we did get back, Karl took out a cigarette and looked towards the blueish hues hovering over the horizon. “Another city boy gets swallowed up by the desert,” he chuckled. “Oh well. I guess it’ll happen to all of us sooner or later.”

I lower the canteen from my lips and shot him a glance. “What do you mean?” I ask.

“Say what now?” he asks after taking a drag.

“What do you mean ‘we all get swallowed by the desert’?” I repeat.

“Oh nothing,” Karl says, waving away smoke. “Just a figure of speech. C’mon, Old Jim probably wants to play cards.”

We enter through the back door of the Candyland bar where all the bits of skull and brain matter were washed away and the place had resumed its usual revelry. Old Jim hadn’t moved from the place where we left him. The Smith and Wesson still laid on the table and he was fumbling around with a stack of cards. Karl sat on one end of the square table and I on the other. “It didn’t take you boys long,” Old Jim says.

“Nah,” Karl said. “This new boy here is a natural.”

Old Jim looks at me with his hard but gentle grey eyes. “So you buried a body before?” he asks me.

“Uh, well…”

Before I could answer, the Madam approached from behind me and rubbed my shoulders. “Can I get you boys a whiskey?” she asks.

“I’ll take a shot of Dickle,” Karl says, grinning his yellowed teeth.

I reach across my body to place my hand on top of hers. “I’ll just take a Miller High Life,” I say.

“Sorry sweetheart,” the Madam says, “all we have is Keystone.”

I sigh. “Very well,” I tell her.

She leaves to gather our drinks and Old Jim shuffles the playing cards. “What do you boys say? Texas Hold em? Five Card Draw?” he asks.

“How bout regular ol poker?” I say.

Old Jim shrugs and deals out the cards. I look at my hand; some 8s, a king, an ace or some bullshit. The Madam returns and lays out our drinks on the table. “Mind if I join you boys?” she asks. No one objects.

I sip on my piss water and begin studying Old Jim. Who the fuck was this old fart? Why would anyone in their golden years want to spend time in this shithole? I figured it didn’t hurt to ask. “So Jim,” I say, “are you retired?”

“One thing you should know, is that a man never retires,” he says, briefly looking up from his hand.

“Do you have family?”

“No.”

“Do you live nearby?”

“No.”

“Do you enjoy the company of whores?”

“My peckers been dead for 20 years.”

“Then what draws you to this place?”

The Madam and Karl sit silently while Jim gathers his thoughts. His hands were trembling while he tried to play his hand. “I just like to play poker,” he says.

“Bullshit,” I say throwing down my cards. “None of us know how to play poker. What aren’t you people telling me?!”

The awkward stillness of the table clued me into the taboo that I broached. The Madam pursed her lips. Karl looks over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening and he leans in. “There are things out there that go against god,” he whispers.

“Yeah I know,” I say, “I’m from North Hollywood. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“You don’t understand,” Karl reiterates. “There are things – if we can call them that – that seem to be of Satan himself. The natives have feared this place for generations. People disappear out there. That’s why we don’t go out at night.”

“Her name is Penelope,” Old Jim says. The Madam shuddered at the very name.

“Penelope?” I ask. “Is she one of the prostitutes?”

“No,” Karl says. Then he gives me a deathly stare. “She’s possibly the devil herself. She’s seven feet tall; naked as the day she was born. She waits, out there, under the cover of night waiting to devour the body of an unsuspecting soul. Any man who has dared to escape this place has met her fate.”

He had to of been joking I thought. But judging by the solemn faces looking down at the table it was clear this was no laughing matter. “You people are crazy,” I say. “This is probably a bullshit rumor that Randy created to scare his trafficked victims away from escaping.”

“Oh yeah?” Karl said. “Well if you’re so brave, then maybe you should go venture out into that desert night.”

“You want me to go right now?” I say, calling out his bluff. As I stand up, the Madam reaches out and tugs my shirt. “Sit down,” she ordered, “this is foolish!”

“I agree,” I say. “A grown ass man believing in a naked monster is foolish!”

“No! You’re being foolish!” she says.

“Me?”

“Yes! You’ll be eaten alive!”

I was stunned speechless at the level of stupidity at this table. I sit there and rub my face. Karl gets up to sit at the bar and Old Jim goes back to shuffling his cards. As I resume sipping on my piss water, the Madam takes me by the hand. “I know all of this sounds preposterous,” she said, “but it’s true. All of it. There’s no sense in trying to leave this place. You’re perfectly safe here.”

“Madam Joelle,” I said, “I watched a man sitting in this chair get his head blown off today.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 14

The flash of midday sun blinded me as Randy opened the boot of his 98 Cadillac DeVille. I sat up in the trunk and noticed we were surrounded by a sea of desert and golden sands and open skies in every direction. It was a seven hour drive in total blackness. Randy recommended a cocktail of Ambien and Benadryl along with an oxygen mask and a jug of water to accompany me. As my eyes adjusted to this environment, I noticed that we were parked in front of a hastily cobbled together compound that resembled a shanty town. On one building scrolled above the entrance read “Candyland”.

“Welcome to my kingdom,” Randy told me as I climbed out of the back of the Cadillac. This couldn’t be real, I thought . This was hell.

We walked through the front entrance of the forward building and inside it was near total darkness except for the glowing red neon lights illuminating the displayed liquor bottles and a beat-up bar in front. Behind the bar was a large bartender with a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he wiped down a beer glass. “Let me introduce you to Burl,” Randy told me. Burl, the bartender, looked up and glared. “He doesn’t speak good English,” Randy explained, “so you’ll have to excuse his silence.”

“What the fuck is this place?” I ask him.

“Oh it’s nothing to worry about,” Randy assured me. “I have all my licenses in order. Health inspections usually clear.”

“That’s not what I asked…”

The lights suddenly brighten and a large-bossomed woman sauntered down the stairs and into the bar with her flowing silk robe and long legs. She towered over every man in her high heels and though she was easily 30 years my senior, I felt a bizarre attraction to her. “Good afternoon Randy,” she spoke in a slow and exaggerated southern accent. “Who’s this tall glass of water?”

Randy hemmed and hawed at her flattery. “Well I wouldn’t say he’s THAT tall,” he said, “he’s still three inches shorter than me. His name is James.”

“James,” the woman said, extending her hand to mine, “I’m Madam Joelle.”

I look to Randy. “Randy,” I said, “I know a whore house when I see one.”

“Will you shut your mouth?” he snapped. “This is a male fantasy house of ill-repute. Lots of distinguished gentlemen visit these illustrious halls every year. We provide a valuable service here and I will not have my business ventures besmirched by foul words.”

“Okay Randy,” I surrendered.

“Now,” he continued, “let me introduce you to the girls. Madam Joelle, please call the ladies front and center.”

The Madam clapped her hands and women came filing out from all corners. It was like an international buffet at an Oklahoman casino. There were Chinese ladies, Persian ladies, African ladies, Brazilian, Laotian, Norwegian, Russian, Mongolian, Argentinian, Japanese, Siamese, Arabian, and places left untold. “Ladies, allow me to introduce you to our newest employee, James,” the Madam announced.

The women looked confused.

“Let me guess, they don’t speak English either,” I say. Randy appeared shocked that I figured it out.

“Please be kind to James as you show him the ropes,” the Madam continued. She gave a faint mischievous smile. Then she clapped twice as if giving an order. “Now back to work ladies!”

“So what the fuck do you want me to do here Randy?” I ask.

“It’s nothing complicated,” he explained. “When male customers get a little rowdy you simply kick them out.”

“Like a bouncer?”

“There’s a little bit more to it. You see, sometimes the customers like to haggle down the price for our services. Of course, it’s quite reasonable to have questions and concerns. But our prices are set in stone. Most customers are perfectly happy with our terms. But when they continue to haggle, particularly after services are rendered, it is your responsibility to ‘take it out of their ass’, if you will.”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t like this arrangement at all. “Randy, what makes you think I could kick someone’s ass?”

“Oh don’t worry,” he assured me, “most men will find you quite reasonable when you carry a Louisville Slugger.”

I pissed myself a little. “Is that all I’ll be doing?” I ask.

“Just other odds and ends stuff. You may have to extract money from the girls from time to time.”

“Extract? You mean rough them up?”

Randy was offended. “Jesus James! What kind of place do you think this is?! Don’t rough them up! Just use some scare tactics, ya know?”

A Japanese woman interrupts and hands Randy a martini. He throws his arm around her and they go gallivanting up the stairs. I badly needed a drink so I go to Burl. “Miller High Life,” I tell him. He glared at me then grabbed a dirty ass glass, pulled a beer tap, and piss-looking liquid flows out. I was about to cry when the Madam throws her arm around me. “Howdy sailor,” she says, “come around here often?”

“No,” I say. I look in the opposite direction to hide my watery eyes. The Madam puts her finger under my chin and turns my head around. “Hey, don’t cry,” she says. “Things could always be worse. This could be a Turkish whore house. Don’t get me started on that!”

I wrap my arms around her and I loudly cry. “You poor angel,” the Madam whispers. She placed my head on her ample bosom and shushes me. “There there,” she says, “do you cry in arms of prostitutes often?”

“Yes.”

Meanwhile, a gang of roughians were playing high stakes poker at the other end of the bar. One of the players, already six sheets to the wind, slaps his cards on the table in an act of jubilation. “Blackjack fool!” he yelled. The player in front of him was irate and holding a large jackknife. “I ain’t takin this shit!” the angry player was yelling, “you’re a liar and a cheat!”

“I ain’t no cheat!

“You are too! Tell him Jim!”

Jim was the elder statesman of the table. His small grey eyes thoughtfully pondered the situation like a renowned sensei. In one hand he held a pipe. In the other he was stroking his long gangly white beard. “Now now Tom,” Jim said to the irate man, “we all agreed to abide by the rules of this table. Bill won this hand fair and square. If you can’t pay, I’m sure we can work out an arrangement…”

“I ain’t payin!” Tom protested. While wielding the knife, he grabs a whiskey bottle and guzzles it down. When he was finished, he smashed the bottle against the bar, leaving only the neck with jagged edges on the end. He then waved the two edged weapons around. “I’m leaving and if any son of a bitch tries to stop me, I’ll kill em!” he warned.

Jim laid the pipe down and placed a Smith and Wesson on the table. “Tom, you know we won’t stand for this riff raff,” the elder man warned.

Tom grabbed a prostitute, the African one, and placed the jackknife against her throat and began shouting like a rabid dog. “I can’t be stopped! I won’t be stopped!”

It occurred to me that I was getting paid to handle these situations. My eyes might’ve been tear-crusted and my pants soaked, but I felt that special element bestowed to few people which allows them to rise to the occasion. With few options available, I picked up an empty beer bottle and hurled it at Tom. By the grace of god, the bottle avoided the prostitute and nailed Tom square in the eye causing him to drop both knives while blood squirted out of his head. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled.

The prostitute ducked behind a nearby table and before Jim could get a shot off, Burl had a shotgun ready. The bartender fired and Tom’s head exploded into a million pieces, leaving bits of brain and blood scattered across the bar. The corpse collapsed limply and what remained of the skull splattered on the ground.

The seconds afterwards felt like hours before anyone uttered a word. “Get Karl!” the Madam ordered. Burl goes behind the bar and moments later a scrawny leprechaun-like man with rotted teeth and a flat-brimmed cowboy hat pops out. This thing called Karl approached Tom’s headless corpse and kneels down. “Gee golly!” he hollers. Then he looks at me and grins. “Time to earn our paychecks!” he says.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 12

I hopped into work with bells on my toes and my head held high. I greeted each coworker with a joviality that would make John Candy smile. “Good morning Mike!” I said to one.

“Who the fuck are you?”

I danced and twirled all the way to my work station where Dale was hard at it. “My goddamn bitch of wife came back from Florida,” he said to me immediately. “She said she went there to visit her grandma but I called bullshit. I told her to get her shit and get the fuck out of my West Covina trailer. She cried and cried over the children but I told her ‘bitch! My dick’s been dead for 20 years! Fuck the children and FUCK YOU!’ So she grabbed her things and is staying with her friend in Hacienda Heights. I got rip roaring drunk and called her up and begged her to come back but then she threatened me with a restraining order! Can you believe this shit?”

“Good morning Dale!” I said. “Yeah that sounds fucked up but I’m sure things will work out. You gotta stay positive, ya know?”

“Yeah, I’m positive I’ve got a polyp in my ass!”

I nodded and began putting on my heavy duty work gloves and protective glasses. As I picked up a cloth to help wipe down the toilets rolling off the assembly line, Dale gave me a puzzled glance. “It’s 6:45am,” he said. “Work doesn’t start until 7. You’re four hours early!”

“Well goddamn,” I said. I stripped off the gloves and glasses and headed straight for the bathroom to commence my extra long shit. But before I could get there, the boss man announced there was an all hands meeting in the break room. I forwent the shit and followed the gaggle of workers into the cramped break room and waited for the boss man to appear. Finally, 45 minutes later, he shows up all smiles. “Great news everyone,” he announced, “my son who attends USC will escape all sexual assault charges from the Los Angeles Superior Court. Thank god for expensive attorneys.”

He lead the crowd with a round of applause.

“Unfortunately I have some bad news,” he continued. “Toilet sales are down and the only way for this factory and corporate shareholders to turn a profit is if we have mass layoffs. Now look to your left and your right. There’s a good chance that the person next to you won’t be here next week. But that’s all I’ve got for you folks. Let’s go out there and have a productive day!”

Some shuffled out of the break room shedding a river of tears but I wasn’t gonna let this news ruin my day. So Dale and I returned to work where Dale continued to bitch and I halfassed my responsibilities.

“Fuck it,” Dale declared, “if they’re gonna lay me off, I’ll just go home and blow my brains out.”

“Yeah that’s one good solution Dale,” I said. “But I prefer less violent resolution to my problems. I’d probably pick off a liquor store or steal from my senile grandmother. There seems to be too much finality with death, ya know?”

As Dale pondered my comment, the boss man approached and asked me to follow him into his office. Figuring my inevitable termination, I tossed off my gloves and spat on the ground. I followed him past the lobby and into the office area where several corporate officials sat around a conference table. I was instructed to take a seat at the end of the table with the bulldog-looking plant manager on the other end. The boss man sat on one side while HR sat on the other.

“You’ve been an employee here for a long time,” the plant manager began. “How long has it been?”

HR shuffles through some papers before landing on my name. “Four weeks,” replied HR.

“And you’ve been a very productive employee,” the manager continued. “You show up, you wear clothes, you eat and breathe, sometimes you talk…”

“Spare me the bullshit,” I interrupted. “I know I’m getting canned so jump to it. Is there a severance package? If not then let’s stop jerking each other off and let me go home.”

The manager nervously chuckled and scratched his head. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “We’re not laying you off. We’re giving you a goddamn promotion! Congratulations buddy! You’re one of us now!”

I cock my head. “Promotion?” I say. “You mean more money?”

“You’re goddamn right pal!” he beams. “How does a dollar or a dollar and a half sound?”

I raise my head in suspicion. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. You get promoted to supervisor and we pay you more money.”

The manager flicks a piece of paper across the table and it slides towards me. I pick it up and attempt to decipher the legalese. Then a pen comes sliding towards me from HR. “Just sign it,” the manager urged.

I shake my head in disbelief. “You know I can’t read this shit,” I say.

“Look,” the manager pleaded, “all we need you to do is do the work of seven to eight people with minimal help or support from us and you’ll make $8.36 an hour. It seems like a fair wage.”

My palms were sweating as I contemplated signing the document. It was a lot of money to just come in and take three shits per day. But I felt a higher calling. Something felt different about this day and I had to follow my instincts. “I can’t do it,” I say, “something about it doesn’t feel right.”

The manager takes off his glasses and sets them down in front of him. He clasps his hands. “You understand that if you don’t sign it that you will be laid off,” he explains.

“No shit?” I ask. I take a moment to collect my thoughts. “In that case, I tender my resignation,” I finally said. I stand up and straightened out my piss stained shirt. “Good day gentlemen,” I say.

“But if you resign before you’re laid off then you won’t be able to collect unemployment,” HR informs me.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” I say. I proceed to the doorway and release a massive ass fart before closing the door.

Outside as I walk back to dingy apartment, I stop to smoke a cigarette. Under the glorious Los Angeles sun, I felt unyoked for the first time in my life. Perhaps now was the time to pursue my dream of owning a head shop in San Bernardino, or at least I kept reassuring myself that. But before I could ignite my lighter, I noticed a familiar face staring back at me from across the street. She was holding up a pair of binoculars while sitting in the driver’s seat of a beige Chrysler 200.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 11

A demon-like wraith crawled up my leg in the middle of the night and I struggled to breathe. I tried to fight the creature away yet it taunted me. Silent screams rung out from my body as the beastly thing threatened to devour me whole. I twist and I turn. I futilely and desperately try to escape my fate, and then like a pardon from god, the nightmare was over. The sweet reprieve of wakefulness blessed me with the familiarity of my own bedroom and the sounds of Los Angeles outside. I couldn’t believe my luck.

So I climb out of bed and rush to the window. From my second floor apartment I could see an adolescent man tagging a phallic image on a loaded dumpster with a can of spray paint. I open the window and cried out.

“You, boy!” I shouted. “What day may it be?”

The man looked up. “It’s Thursday you fuckin moron,” he said.

Christ, I thought. That meant I had to be at work in a few hours. I dig through the hamper to find a wrinkled pair of pants and a grease-stained shirt. I throw them on and forgo brushing my teeth and rush out the door. But as I was walking out, I noticed a small business card at the foot of the door. I lean down to pick it up and flip the card over. Susan Brusheti, Fixer it read. This wasn’t good; a known trafficker of human organs knew where I lived.

I stuffed the card into my pocket, went down the stairs, and made a beeline to the nearest convenience store. I walked in and grabbed a six pack of Miller High Life and sat it on the counter. The white Rastafarian clerk looked up from his Car and Driver magazine and glared. “Sir, it’s four thirty in the morning,” he told me, “we can’t sell alcohol until seven.”

“Since when” I ask.

“It’s been California law for at least 50 years.”

“Shit,” I said under my breath. “Well I gotta be at work this morning. Can you sell me anything that will fuck me up?”

Annoyed, the clerk drops his magazine and looks at the locked plastic displays on the counter. “We got some kratom here I guess,” he said.

“Is it any good?”

“Shit if I know. I don’t touch that crap.”

I shell out the $150 for seven tablets of kratom and buy a 24 oz Monster Energy drink on top of that. I walk outside and crack open the kratom and swallow a couple of tablets. Feeling parched, I then start drinking the Monster. After walking a few blocks towards Sunset, I felt better than I had in a long time. “Maybe life isn’t a waking nightmare after all,” I say to myself.

Trying my luck, I throw out my thumb to hitch a ride. Almost instantly, a bloated boomer pulls up curbside in a red 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse. “Hey buddy, you need a ride?” he asks in a gruff voice. Skid Row’s “Slave to the Grind” was blasting on the radio.

“Fuck yeah dude!” I say then jump into the passengers seat.

The boomer tear-asses down the street and pops open a fifth of Jack. “Care for a swig?” he asks. I take a swig. Then he asks me where I was headed. “To the toilet factory off Sunset,” I say.

“You’re going to work?” he asks.

“Yes sir.”

“Fuck that shit,” he says then lays on the gas.

It was seconds, or maybe minutes, or maybe hours before we were in the hills. By that time the lights appeared as bright streaks racing through the sky like distorted stars. I felt like a child journeying through the birth canal. The world and time itself seemed distilled into a single wormhole, the other side of which awaited a new universe. Perhaps it was the sun rising in the east, or maybe my pupils were overly dilated, but the earth was changing. As we rammed through the streets of the Hollywood Hills, I looked down onto the city and for the first time I entered the places only dreamed by monks and ancient philosophers: the supreme sublime beauty. My mind was awakened and my body felt the blissful lassitude of a long journey. But like all good things, this too must end. We trekked down the hills and back towards Sunset. The city was now awake and bustling with vehicles going to and fro. Everything that I had once cursed now seemed to be in its proper place; the world was whole.

The Eclipse pulled into the toilet factory parking lot. The lethargic and groggy-eyed workers shuffled into the building under the morning sun yet I was reinvigorated. When the car came to a complete stop, I looked to the boomer. “Thanks for taking me into the hills,” I tell him. “It was a journey of a thousand miles and I’m thankful for every step.”

The boomer looked at me side-eyed. “The fuck you talking about kid?” he asked. “You were in my car for five minutes.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia part 10

I waited for a cab outside the tawdry gates of Big Dick Cedars. The burly guard approached me with a stack of old and faded nudie cards he found stashed away in the guard shack. “Can you believe my luck?” he asked as he held a picture of a fully bushed woman spread eagle on an eight of spades.

“Pretty neat,” I said.

“I know! I can’t play solitaire without getting a boner!”

But as he thumbed through each card with increasing intensity, the taxi pulled curbside and rolled down the window. My heart sank when I saw the driver. “You son of a bitch!” the cabbie shouted. It was the same racist cabbie I stiffed earlier in the day.

Panicked, I grabbed the guard’s pistol believing it to be a 9mm then I aimed and fired it at the driver. Instead of a bullet, a prong shot out and attached itself to the cabbie. While he convulsed from numerous volts of electricity, I dropped the taser and headed for the bushes. I realized then that there was only one way back to Los Angeles and that was on my own two feet.

21 hours later I was back on the outskirts LA. With my feet rubbed raw and the soles of my shoes hanging by a thread, I crawled into my flat on all fours. I headed straight towards the kitchen and grabbed the last beer in the fridge. It was a Pabst BlueRibbon. “Goddamn piss water,” I said to myself. Vic must have drank the last of my Miller High Life. But I cracked open the PBR and crawled to the couch and tried to enjoy the lukewarm beer.

Right as I was about to doze off, Vic came through the front door carrying machete, a 12 gauge shotgun, and a dead boar. “Evening mate,” he greeted in his Scottish draw.

“I didn’t think there were wild boar in California,” I say.

“There’s not,” he explains as he throws off his gear. “Ay went huntin in the San Gabriel Mountains and was stalked by two prowlin cougars. I killed em both with me machete and used their skins to make me loincloth. Aye, I had a good dee killin’.”

“But how did you get the boar?”

“Tha boar? Oh that’s just roadkill mate.”

Vic strips out of his bloodied shirt and mud-caked pants to expose his cougar-skinned loincloth. Unbridled by clothes and restrictions of modern man, he stood like a Roman god in my living room. The half naked Scot then picked up an acoustic guitar and gently plucked away as he sang hymns from the mother land. I finished my can of piss water and threw the crushed piece of aluminum across the room. Vic stopped his serenading. “Oy mate, where have you been all day?” he asks.

“Norco,” I say.

“Norco? Why would you go to tha shitehole?”

“Someone owed me money. It’s like the goddamn wild west out there.”

“Aye. It’s the wild west everywhere mate.”

I rub my hands across my face as I choked back tears. “How did the world get so crazy?” I ask.

Vic lays down the guitar and leans forward. “The world has always been crazy,” he says. “We’re just feeble beings floating on an insignificant rock through time and space. Some days you’re up but most days you’re down yet the world spins madly round. They say that man is born into sin but his soul can be redeemed. But I say man is rotted to the bone. There is not one pure creature that walks this earth. Nay not one. God was right to look upon his creation and curse it. And if god has cursed us to live this madness then what hope have we? The pursuit of sanity will forever remain an empty one. In fact it’s something worse. It’s vanity.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia part 9

Randy placed his hand on the small of my back and guided me into his study. Inside the walls were adorned with books of both ancient and contemporary origin. The clear scent of brown leather upholstery filled my nostrils. This would have made a fine library if it weren’t for the three Asian men sitting silently around a single pedestal table. Behind each of them was a large blazer-wearing man of Eastern Europe descent. “The men standing are Chechen. And the ones sitting are Chinese,” explained Randy. “I don’t expect any of the Chinese to walk out of here alive.”

“Do you think you want to be saying that out loud?” I ask Randy.

“Oh don’t worry,” he says. “None of them speak English. This is just a business negotiation. I met the Chinese in Hong Kong while I was acquiring exotic meats. You know, panda and the like. Well wouldn’t you know it, Chinese intelligence caught wind of my operation and my business license was revoked. In fact, the second largest country in the world wants me dead! The only logical conclusion is that one of these fellows talked. Hell, they might even be Chinese intelligence themselves! So I invited them out here to Norco under the guise of a trade deal. But what they don’t know is that under each chair is a deadly contraption: A trap door that leads to a fiery pit under chair number one; Chair number two is just a deceptive-looking electric chair; and chair number three, well, that guy will just get strangled by the Chechen behind him.”

“But what if none of them are informants or Chinese intelligence?”

“Oh don’t you see? That’s the genius of my plan. This is what’s called a Croatian negotiation. When you’re in the business I’m in, all your competitors and peers are monsters. You never show weakness. All these freaks understand is force. Don’t you get it? I’m the good guy here. I’m simply speaking the language that they can easily understand, which is that no matter what, I come out on top.”

Petrified into deathly silence, I stand motionless as Randy undergoes his negotiations. The three Chinese men sit blissfully unaware of the terror that awaited them.

Randy approached chair number one. “邊個講嘢?” he said.

Chair number one immediately panicked and lifted his finger to chair number three. Randy signaled to the Chechen behind him and the Chechen stomped his foot onto a pedal below the chair. A trap door opened and swallowed the Chinese fellow into a fiery inferno below. There were no screams. There was no time for that. The flame briefly erupted into the floor above causing intense heat and slightly singeing the table. The remaining two captives, still silent, were sweating.

It took every ounce of self-control to stop from pissing myself. “Uh, Randy,” I say, “what if he was telling the truth?”

Randy chuckled. “Possible but unlikely,” he said. “By immediately throwing his compatriot under the bus, he was unwittingly telling on himself.” Then he taps on his temple. “A little trick I learned from Star Trek VI.”

Randy approached chair number three and they exchanged a few words in Cantonese. The Chinese man nodded and Randy looked contented. “It looks like we struck a deal,” he says to me. But the Chechen behind the chair mistook the signal (because the Chechens didn’t understand English either) and grabbed the Chinese man’s head and snapped his neck. The Chechen released the body and the corpse’s head slammed onto the table below.

“Oh fuck! That guy was Chinese Intelligence!” Randy exclaimed. He screamed a few words at the Chechen in his native tongue then began pacing back and forth. “The Chinese will trace me back here,” he says to me in a panic. “I can’t leave any witnesses.”

Randy steps behind chair number two and slams on the pedal underneath. An untold amount of electricity rushes through the Chinese fellow’s body causing an unrelenting amount of blood to flow from his ears and mouth. As steam poured from his head, his eyes popped out of their sockets before his body lumped forward. It was a sight I hoped to never see again.

With the Chinese dead, Randy pulls out a small revolver and shoots the Chechens behind chairs one and two. Sensing his fate, the Chechen behind chair three charges after him. Randy sidesteps around the table behind chair one. Before the Chechen could reach him, the trap door opens and the Chechen falls to his demise.

In a matter of minutes, six men were killed before my eyes.

Randy wipes the sweat from his brow. “Phew! That was close!” he said. I watched him drag the other four bodies to the trap door to be incinerated. I continued to stand motionless. When he was finished, he slapped his hands together for a job well done. “The things I do to make a buck, eh?” he jests.

He takes a swig of vodka before coming back to his senses. “Oh, forgive me!” he laughs. “What brings by today?”

I begin to stammer a bit. “Uh, well, you know. It’s just been a minute since I’ve seen you.”

“You came all the way from Los Angeles just to say hi?”

“Of course,” I say nervously.

“No it’s not,” Randy states. Then he squares off in front of me and looks me dead in the eye. “I owe you $72 for the strip club the other night.”

“Oh that? I’ve forgotten all about that,” I lie.

He steps closer until his nose is mere inches from mine. “You know you shouldn’t lie,” he says. “The Bible says you shouldn’t lie.”

I nod and lower my head in defeated concession.

“Well goddamn, why didn’t you say so?!” Randy beams. “I feel like such an asshole.” He reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out a checkbook. “Forgive me for not repaying you sooner. My mind sometimes wonders.”

He finishes writing the check and places it into my hand. “I’ll be in Los Angeles on Tuesday,” he says. “Strip club next week?”

TO BE CONTINUED…