Priceless in Perversion

Priceless in Perversion

A prawn without sunshine was dealing out cards in the back room of the pool hall when we had fried chicken delivered. It was past noon and all were quiet, awaiting the delicious morsels we’d been starving for all day long. Breakfast was less than appeasing with toast covered in subpar jelly made from the tusks of sick walruses.

So bricks were colder than cracks in the cement, and we’d been spectacles for our going over and under again never were we weeping sad sack lemon scent. I’m pretty sure we’re on a roller coaster that doesn’t run on power aside from what we can coax from our legs and muscles located above and below torsos adorned with previously stamped market carriages.

Garages we were practicing for could close up and keep the neighbors at bay, but we were always privy to their fucking because they were loud bastards and you know the type I’m talking about. Could be columns making roofs stay up instead of down, and someone had to build them. I’m thinking it was some sort of titan or monster made in Japan. Could you believe the audacity of the angry barkeep when he was pouring out poison for the benefit of his most loyal customers? I like the way the booze smells when it’s been pressed against the rubber mat at the base of the taps. A ghost story made of liquid that pulverizes, most violently, the worst we have to offer.

I bludgeoned the hobo to death with the heaviest shovel I could find. I took it from the tool shed, among the other instruments of killing. Bloodshed was the way of things, and I’d grown up with screaming and beating and crying and exclamations meant to be kept silent because my parents were both fucking murderers, killing time in their fashion as well as letting hearts leak slowly and blood flowing freely down the drain before they buried the evidence of their crimes in the dark, damp basement with the rats and the cats and the stench of death permeating every crevice of the old house. It was colonial and filled with memories of other murderers. Victims have their day in the sun, too, and having a giant knife poking holes in your throat when you’re trying to scream for them to stop doesn’t help your method of expression any. And it doesn’t make them stop. They’re fucking horrible to you and you have no idea why. Is it because you were the one who killed their cat and tried to hide this accidental misdeed from them for so long? It’s hard to say for sure, for sure, but I think it’s just because they like murdering innocent and guilty alike. It doesn’t matter when you’re just hot meat on the edge of a blade, screaming for mercy that never comes.

A kung fu villain doesn’t wax his eyebrows — because he knows just how to knit them properly to display consternation to his victims, too. All of the bastards and whores and murderers and bullies have their own club and you’d be invited if you weren’t already dead, I’m sure. You’re a murderer like all the rest of them, but you keep it close to the vest and not on your sleeve where the heart of your last massacre ended up.

This son of a bitch I trusted was driving his car into supermarkets, smashing the little kids and the impudent whelps they could find checking out Christmas cards and magazines about bovine quality in the Midwest if they were lucky. If they were luckier, it was quick. A quick end to a story already too long. A crib sheet for dissection and chimes ringing for the demise of a creepy motherfucker named friendly for the newspapers, but icy to the landlord that never checked for clean linens. Not his job, he said, and anyway he doesn’t really care for your kind. The fact that you pay your rent early is the only reason he hasn’t kicked your sorry loser ass to the curb and smeared the street with your pig blood pancreas and liver kidney oil, lover.

I went bowling with the molester, once. He was pretty obviously a pervert — you could tell because of the way his too-close eyes would always cross when implied nakedness presented itself in the form of high school girls in the summertime when the air conditioner was broken and you could heave a bucket of water over them and it would evaporate before his desired result was fulfilled. Still, his sharp mind dulled with years of such devilishness was on to something. He could imagine just what he wanted, high school girls or not. He was priceless in perversion. A walking correctional facility that never intended correction to take place. They’ve said you would let him go because you had a kind heart, but what of the souls he’s reaped with his dark, dead eyes? You’ll be there, too, buried in the basement with the rest of the victims he’s stacked up there over the years.

In the distance, a child is crying. Fatherless. A bastard child, perhaps.

[Image by Philippe Tolet paintings]

About Robert Glen Fogarty

Sometimes I'll take the wrong bus just to get out of the cold for a little while.

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