King Me

The metal felt much colder during the night. And the bolts were much tighter, both to remove, and to put back into place. His hands were stiff from the cool air, and his sweating and trembling did nothing to make it any easier.

As he put everything back into place, unclogging the spout before screwing it back into the main pipe, the section he was working on, initially only illuminated by the light of his tiny flashlight, now exploded into his sight, except for that which was covered by his own shadow, by a light coming from down the road. He ducked down against the ground and crawled behind the adjacent bench and lay there silently.

A police car crawled past along the road. The cop sitting in the passenger seat yawned and looked out into the treeline, where wind pushed the foliage on with a sense of mystery.

He looked down at the grass with one eye open. Watching it wash out with apocalyptic light, before being submerged back within the darkness it lay in silently.

The cop car continued slowly, before reaching a bend in the road and turning onward, until it disappeared beyond the treeline. He waited a few more moments. Then he got up, creeped back to his project, replaced the baseplate, picked up his bag, and he went down the road, passing the same cop car by the exit. Its light shined on him, to which he just kept his head down, the brim of his cap over his eyes, and kept going. “Pigs,” he muttered to himself inaudibly.

The cop in the passenger seat looked up at him, yawned, and then looked down at his watch. By the time he looked up again, the man was gone.

-----------------------------------------------

She had almost stepped right in it. But she noticed it last second, and shifted her body over to the right, just missing it by inches. It didn’t slow her pace down none, and she continued her jogging as if unimpeded by the pile of dog poop. Jogging had become a habit rather than hobby which she carried with her since just after you were born.

Why is there so much of it these days? your mom thought, thinking of the dog poop she had almost ruined her new sneakers on. It never used to be like this.

The sweat trickled from her forehead as she went, never gaining or losing in pace, always pushing forward at the same speed, and always for a little longer than the previous time. As she sidestepped and hopped over more dog droppings, she noticed a homeless man passed out with his arms and head on a park bench, with the rest of his body lying on the ground.

A shame, she thought. Ever since the city shut down that homeless shelter on Arthur and Lexington…

She kept going, breathing through her nose, and exhaling through her mouth, like she learned in all her exercise tapes she watched in the years following your birth, the ones given to her in a box by her older sister.

As she rounded the corner, she saw a young couple, sitting together on a bench, their eyes closed, one head resting on the other.

Usually when your mom thought the words get a room, it was related to things she saw people do in the park which they did while wide-awake, like sucking on each other’s faces by a tree. Now was the first time she had ever thought those words and literally meant go to sleep.

When she took her eyes off the couple, she jumped internally at seeing the large pile of droppings right before her, which in response to she jumped externally, clearing it fully, and landing on the other side without slowing down or altering her general path.

Maybe I should think about changing parks, she thought. Maybe that’s why the grass is so overgrown these days. It’s getting plenty of fertilizer.

She learned her lesson to not let herself keep her eyes off the path for too long. She looked down and ahead, so much so that it was only when she saw the bright pink of a fine coat in her peripherals that she looked up and saw an elderly lady, lying with her purse and her eyes shut, with her back against the trunk of a large tree.

She narrowed her eyes at the sight, only for a moment, before looking back down at the path to ensure she didn’t make a false step and land in a mess.

She was so focused on keeping her new shoes clean, that by the time she looked up, she realized she had passed her goal in distance for the day. And when she noticed, only then she allowed herself to drop in speed, slowly adjusting to walking pace, sweat trickling down her neck as the sweet air filled her sucking lungs.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead as she leaned against a tree.

You’ve earned that extra donut, she told herself. She let her hand hover behind her back and she felt her right cheek in her jogging shorts with the fullness of her palm. On second thought, she considered. Maybe you should cut out donuts all together.

As she pushed herself off of the tree, she noticed a water fountain sitting there for her, shining silver in the sun.

Just my luck, she thought as she approached it. Like springwater gushing from a stone.

She pressed on the rusted button with her thumb, and a cool, pure-looking stream ejected itself in a merciful arc, waiting for the embrace of her tongue. She leaned down for her well-deserved sip.

A branch full of green leaves was pushed slowly off to the side by fingers clad in a black glove.

“Finally,” said the voice belonging to that hand in a husky whisper. “Oh my god,” he muttered underneath his breath.

As a police car rounded the corner, he let go of the branch and ducked back down. When he heard it drive off to the left of where he stood in the treeline, he stood back up and bent the branch from his view again.

She was still standing there, wetting her tongue with the cool stream of water.

“Please…” he whispered into the ether, as if begging someone or something. His stomach was busy with butterflies, both from anticipation and worry. “She’s mine,” he said before slowly moving his hand from the branch. It settled back in place and stayed there. Wind ran through the now-unbroken green of the treeline, brushing the leaves back in a peaceful wave.

That hit the spot, your mom thought.

As she walked off, wiping water from her chin, she felt a giddiness that was usually rare for her.

Have you found it? she thought. The exact number of miles you have to jog to feel satisfaction? She smiled. That would just be my luck. Next thing you know, I find out it’s exactly always as much miles as I needed to run to make my butt smaller...

She laughed to herself as she walked. And after a few minutes, she laughed at the thought again. And then she had trouble not laughing.

It’s not that funny, calm down.

But she couldn’t. She didn’t even know what was funny about it, but it was as if with each step she took, it all became that much funnier. And she laughed with such intensity that she was a fraction of a moment away from stepping right into another pile of dog leavings, when she caught herself just in time, leaned backwards, and landed on her near-offending foot, which she now placed behind herself, saving her snow-white shoe from the indignity. She wobbled as she struggled to stabilize herself. But when she did, she looked up to see if anyone had seen her in that embarrassing moment. To her dismay, she saw a man walking towards her.

Something about him made her not feel right. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. Maybe it was the lack of reaction to her embarrassing moment. He had not even a smile on his face. It was as if he was wrapped up in concentration, his mind only on one thing. She felt like turning around and walking off, or even mock-jogging, maybe even doing so toward and past him at a 45 degree angle. But before she could make the decision, he stopped dead in his tracks, and he put the back of his wrist to his forehead, and before she knew it, he had collapsed sidelong onto the grass, his underarm landing directly on what a large dog must have left behind earlier.

Your mom watched with strange fascination. The man lay there, his eyes closed tightly, not making a sound. Your mom blinked as she looked down at him, saying nothing. And as she struggled to understand, and struggled to recall what made the image before her so familiar, she suddenly realized she was having trouble. The man lay there, breathing in and out, silent, unjudging. Just like the couple on the bench, or the woman against the tree.

Could it… your mom thought. Maybe… I…. I don’t…

And suddenly she felt the sky twirl, and her legs give out beneath her, and she fell forward.

Waiting for her, at the end of the trajectory her pretty face was cutting through the air, was a large brown piece left by a golden retriever curled up into a monument to its own undesirability. It became bigger in her fading sight as she fell toward it.

And just before she could fall face down into its horrid embrace, she felt herself suspended in air, just inches from its mountainous shape, her last conscious thought before everything turning to black was the sensation across her belly and upper chest.

Two black-gloved hands, coming around her torso from both sides, held her up from underneath, supporting her diagonal position over the pavement. They pulled her up with some grunting whisperings above her. Then with a larger, more strained grunt, she was hoisted up into the air like a cumbersome plaything. And as the coil of shit sat there, footsteps could be heard fading, first against concrete, then just barely against grass. And as the dog doo sat there, untouched, there was the sound of branches ruffling, a sound which began to be audible further and further away, deeper into the treeline. And eventually it was inaudible, and the only sound left to replace it was the peaceful music of the wind blowing through the trees.

And then the sound of a car could be heard, getting louder as it approached, until its purity was violated by a voice echoing from out its passenger-side window saying: “There’s another one! Jesus. Pull over. A man this time.”

“Are you going to call it in, or should I?” said another voice.

And the brown spiral is engulfed in shadow, then flattened by a rolling tire, which stops right over top of it after smushing it flat.

“You call him in,” said the passenger. “Geez. People are dropping like flies.”

Then the door of the car opened and a black shoe stepped out onto the pavement.

---------------------------------------------------

A couch sat there, empty and unperturbed in the silence, until the sound of the backdoor opening filled the room. The backdoor then slammed shut. Followed by footsteps and heavy breathing.

Your mom fell onto the couch, the springs in its cushions groaned as they received her, absorbing the shock of her weight. She lay there, eyes shut. Lips together. Expression peaceful and flat.

The man standing over top of her looked down at the entirety of her form, which lay before him like the last cookie on a tray. He slowly removed his black gloves and placed them, one over top of the other, on the glass coffee table. After he was done that, he slowly undid the buttons of his shirt until he was standing there in his wife beater. His hairy arms hung to his side.

“This is going to make for quite the statement,” he said, looking down at the beautiful shape of her face. He removed his wifebeater and stood there for a moment, shirtless. Follicles of hair curled off from his nipples. His gut hung out, a wilderness of black hairs, over the pail flesh and precipice of his bellybutton.

He leaned down to his leg, which he lifted up, and he pulled off one of his socks. After he brought his bare foot back down to the hardwood, he extended his arm and dropped the loose sock delicately over her face. When he saw her there, sitting peacefully, unmoving, with his sock partially covering her facial features, he started to feel his limbs surge with a slight electrical current. He removed the other sock with that current picking up in intensity, and he dropped it to the floor below.

He then grabbed the sock and lifted it off her face and dropped it with the other one on the ground. “The guys at poker won’t believe how beautiful you were,” he said. “But I guess I won’t have to tell them. You’re beautiful enough that the front page will do it for me.”

He then grabbed his zipper and smiled. He dangled it between his index finger and thumb playfully. He took a deep breath, soaking in the moment, and then he exhaled just as slowly. He took his eyes off of her face to look down at his zipper, sitting there, copper-gold between his fingers, then he looked back down at her face again. He took another deep breath. Then he followed the length of her body down to her backside. And then he exhaled through his mouth, slowly again.

“Good day,” he said to himself, almost unbelievingly. “Great day.”

As he continued to glare down at her, he pulled his jeans down toward his ankles and he felt the cool air of the room chilling him against his bare butt cheeks and testicles. He lowered his hand and scratched at his wild forest of pubes, running his fingers through them in a ritualistic semi-circle, back and forth, unthinkingly, only to look down at it when he realized he had caught a fingernail full of some unidentified crud, which he grimaced at and flicked through the air, it landing onto your mom’s back.

His teeth chattered in his mouth and he let his fingers wander underneath his balls, which he massaged slightly. Then he grabbed his foreskin with his other hand, pulling it back, smelling that familiar coppery scent as he did.

Your mom lay inert, eyes clasped together to a thin line.

The silence was broken by speech: “My ex would want me dead if she saw how beautiful you were.” He ran his finger down the curve in your mom’s lower back, stopping just before the curve of her buttcheeks. “How delightful a woman can be when she’s not shaped like a giant beach ball.” He glared at her back with glimmering eyes. And then he let his sights fall down lower to look at her backside. “Except where it counts.”

He stood back up and looked down at her. He took another deep breath and exhalation and then he turned around and headed for the liquor cabinet, almost tripping over a cumbersome metal contraption on his way. He looked down at it. It sat there, compact and unassembled. He shook his head at it and said “fucking thing” as the pain went up his calf. Then he continued to the cabinet.

He pulled out a bottle of scotch and poured it into a tumbler. The room filled with the sound of the liquor pouring and settling. Then he pulled out one of the dining room chairs from beneath the table, swung it around until it faced her, and he took a seat, placing his glass down on the table. Then he looked at your mom and smiled. He took a sip of his scotch and grimaced slightly. He spread his thighs out wide, and then grabbed his cock with his hand, pulling back his foreskin, his stiff head coming clear from it, sitting chapped in the cool air.

He grinned at your mom, and then he took another sip. Then he sniffed, and grimaced. He looked down at his crotch, and then he rubbed two fingers over the head of his dick, and then brought them up to his nose. And when he sniffed, he grimaced, and then he wiped his fingers on the hair of his thigh. He took another sip from out the tumbler, and then he made a satisfying smacking with his lips.

He stretched his legs out, letting his big hairy feet rest on their heels. “Oh god,” he said, quietly but with wiry satisfaction. “I’m so luck you were thirsty.” He looked down at his throbbing cockhead. “Isn’t that right, little fella?” It twitched as if in response. “This is all for you. My only real friend left on this planet.”

He took a final swig of the glass and then slammed it down on the table.

“Okay,” he said, and stood up, his hard cock flopping to a horizontal position when he did. “It’s show time.”

------------------------------------------

“Well, clearly they were drugged.”

“I’m aware of that. With what?”

“My guess is… I’d say blue velvet.” He looked down into the old lady’s face with his flashlight in his fist. She just looked up at him, into the light, yet her pupils didn’t reduce in size.

The cop stood in his overcoat, leaning on the door of the ambulance, a toothpick hanging from his mouth. “Okay…” he said, audibly annoyed. “I guess I missed the part where they started prescribing it to old ladies.”

“She was drugged, obviously,” said the paramedic.

“Obviously,” said the cop. “Her and 21 other people.”

“It looks like it,” said the paramedic, as he checked the other eye with his tiny light.

“That’s a lot of unguarded water bottles, I guess.”

The paramedic turned around suddenly. “Look, I’m just telling you what it looks like. I don’t know what else to say.”

The cop stood there, his expression unchanging, the pick sticking out firmly from his lips. “You see a lot of pranks like this?”

“No. Not pranks. If it is blue velvet, it’s way too expensive for…”

“… for pranks.”

The paramedic sighed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” said the cop, flatly.

“Maybe it wasn’t a prank,” said the paramedic as he put his flashlight back into his shirt pocket and looked out at the cop.

The cop just looked at him knowingly.

He pushed himself off of his shoulder and backed up from the ambulance, then he looked down the street at the other ones, each with its own victim in it, sleeping, writhing, or mumbling in the back with an EMT standing over them with furrowed brows and clicking equipment. Stethoscopes, flashlights, thermometers and god-knows-what-else. He looked over to the side of the road and he saw a paramedic lift a man off the grass. As the man was lifted, it became apparent that his shirt sleeve had been stained brown. The cop grimaced and looked away.

He then looked down at the old lady as she struggled to move. The paramedic steadied her so he could examine her more easily. The victims were of various ages, sexes, body types, races, and styles of dress. The cop struggled for any variable that could link them, beyond proximity and timeline.

No, he thought to himself. It’s completely random. It’s not even a play for random. It IS random. He rolled the toothpick over to the other corner of his mouth with his tongue. “It’s like somebody dropped a bomb and they’re all just collateral damage,” he whispered to himself.

“Can you believe it,” he heard from over his shoulder. He turned around to see another officer in plain clothes. Somebody from his unit, narcotics. “Guy in the ambulance down the road said it’s probably blue velvet.”

“It seems to be the expert opinion,” he responded. He rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You ever hear of magic bullet theory?”

“You mean with JFK?”

“Yeah. You ever think you’d live to see magic pill theory?”

“Maybe they’re all just junkies.”

The cop just glared through his glasses and played with the pick with his tongue. Then they both heard “What a bertiful da in a perk.” They both looked over at the old lady flipped onto her hip, as the paramedic injected her in her backside.

“You see a lot of octogenarian junkies these days?” said the cop.

The other officer kept his eyes on the old lady. She looked back at him with pupils the size of dimes, staring at him. “I take your point,” he said, dryly.

“We should probably check all footage of every entrance and exit to the park.”

“Harold’s already on it. But I don’t think he’ll come up with much. Hundreds of people come in and out of here every day. If someone is inconspicuous enough to do this to all these people, he’ll be just as inconspicuous coming in and leaving through those gates.”

“Or maybe he’s so inconspicuous, he isn’t even using the gates,” said the cop, looking off in the distance.

“He snuck in, you mean?”

“In,” he said, confirming. “…and out.”

“So what good is footage of the gates then?”

He rolled the toothpick back to the other side again. “Tell Harold to look out for someone entering who never ends up leaving again.”

“He’ll find 21 of those,” said the other officer, and he looked around at the various ambulances dotted along the road.

“Well, see if he finds a 22nd.”

“You mean…”

“Preferably if she’s particularly attractive.” He bit onto his toothpick after that sentence.

“You can’t possibly… come on! Why would he waste time drugging everyone only to take one woman?”

“My guess is he didn’t have a choice in who he drugged.”

“Now you’re talking crazy.”

“Maybe… Hey, what’s that thing that Jackson always says?” he asked as he looked intently off into the distance. “Was it ‘crazy… crazy like a fox?’”

“That’s the one,” the other officer said, intrigued.

“I have a feeling the man we’re looking for is exactly that kind of crazy.” He looked across the way at a silver monument shining in the sun, reflecting its bright light back at him, which shined in the black of his sunglasses. Glimmers of sunlight shone through the beads of water that dripped from its faucet with a cool regularity. The cop spit his toothpick and it landed silently in the grass. “And go ask somebody in park personnel if they’d be kind enough to lend us a screwdriver.”

--------------------------------------------------

His bare soles were cool against the hardwood as he slowly took one step after another, casually, towards your mom. His soles blackening with each step as they accumulated dirt from within the grooves of the wood.

“Raven black hair,” he said with a grin. “I’m so lucky you were thirsty. Otherwise I’d be spending Saturday night alone.” He stopped and thought about it for a second. “Or with a fat old bag. And that’s no way to go out. If I’m going to go out, I want to go out with a bang.” He leered at the uninterrupted fullness of her presence and form, which lay there in the living room with him, even as it should have been anywhere else. He cupped his balls and began massaging them with his thumb, the very tip of his tongue protruding through his lips as he admired what sat before him. “And what a ‘bang’ you are.”

Your mom just lay there, silently, with no voice or wherewithal to mount a disagreement.

He came up beside the couch and sat his naked ass down next to her sleeping head. He looked down at her face. “So, tell me a little bit about yourself.” He then leaned over on the side of his butt, his cock inching closer toward her face as he did. “You married? Have any children? What’s your favorite song? I really want to get to know the woman I make an example of.”

Your mom lay there, peacefully, even as his cock casted a long, cylindrical shadow along her face. Its free-head throbbed just inches from her lips, which were closed shut but for their center, where a tiny hole existed between them. He looked down at her movie star good looks which seemed to sparkle back up at him, even in complete inertness.

“To think,” he said slowly. “There are men who date, marry, and fuck (he thrusted slightly in the air with this word, his cock jerking quickly as he did) women like you on a regular basis and still have the nerve to complain when the kitchen can’t get their filet mignon exactly right.” His voice began to settle again, but it built in measured intensity as he went. “And here I am. And all I’m asking for is a girlfriend who doesn’t cheat on me and a job with a chance for a raise once in a blue moon. Y’know,” he continued. “My ex - the one before last – used to tell me that I don’t ask enough out of life. So I take that advice to heart. And then I ask. And you know what they tell me then? That I ask for too much and I should stop being so entitled.”

Your mom’s chest expanded and deflated slowly as he went.

“Damned if you do, I guess. And damned if you don’t.” He sighed as he looked down at her. “Maybe I’d appreciate what I had more, if what I had was anything like you.” He leaned over and grabbed her shorts. His fingers undeath their pant legs, lifting them from her succulent flesh. He ran his hands, still sweating from a full day of wearing gloves, along the end of the shorts’ opening, his fingers hovering just over the flesh. His tongue clamped softly between his molars like one seeing steak sizzling on a plate, pristine before the first bite violates its beauty forever.

“Oh, the anticipation,” he said. “I’ve never understood ‘you wouldn’t know what to do with me’ until now.” He lifted against the legs of the shorts, your mom’s lower half coming up as her thighs hung within them, and then he dropped it all, and your mom’s lower half fell and settled, as if untouched, on the couch again. “But now…” he said. “Now I’m stumped. What do I do with you?”

He took a deep breath, which stuttered and trembled as it came in.

His arms were afflicted with the same trembling. Even still, he slowly raised his palms and placed them on her back and brushed them about, marinating in the joy that existed within her lack of a reaction to his hands on and all over her. He squeezed her around her sides. No response. He then slowly drew up her shirt until her lower back was exposed, and then he began feeling her smooth flesh in his palms and fingers.

“Oh Christ,” he said, trembling. “Thank god you were thirsty.” Her lowered his head and kissed her lower back. “Thank god.”

After planting kiss after kiss in an alternating pattern, from left to right like footprints in snow, up the length of her back, he planted a final kiss on her raven-black hair. And then he looked down and admired her again, and decided that it was time.

He grabbed underneath the waist of her shorts with a tight grip, feeling the tops of each butt cheek against the tops of his forefingers. “Here it goes,” he whispered to himself, and then with force and purpose, as if to tear off a band-aid, he pushed her shorts down with such force that they took her panties with them, and he left it all at the bend of her knees.

What was then left there, unguarded, was not only her big naked ass, but her big naked ass right in its fading moment of jiggling. He had seen nothing like it. And he knew he would see nothing like it again.

His cock twitched as he stared down at it. Her ass had stabilized before he could even think, and it sat there, its one long crack, unbroken and clean before him. He didn’t say anything. He just looked down at it plainly. His twitching cock the only indication that he had felt anything at all.

“Okay,” he said, with a quiet intensity. “This is going to be quite the weekend.”

He didn’t know where to start. Like her beauty itself was a forcefield, one that only interacted with his station in life, like two magnets which shared the same charge, propelled naturally away from one another even when great effort was gathered to bring them close.

When he became aware of his thought process (the self-help book his ex-girlfriend had bought him called it ‘Loser Think’) he realized that he could just allow it to rob him of even a square inch of pleasure inherit in this moment. He looked down at your mom’s face, his cock hanging over it by inches, and its marble-like beauty oppressed him. It made him feel small even as it thrilled him. It mocked him without even trying.

And that’s when he realized; he knew what he had to do.

He got off of the couch, and he picked her up by her thigh and arm and flipped her over onto her back. Her unguarded pussy, adorned with fine black hairs, was now visible to him, and his cock twitched with a life all its own at its presence.

He then, with great force, threw his foot up on the couch on the opposite side of her body. Then he slowly lowered himself to his knee until he was almost on top of her. And as his hairy body stood over her, almost troll-like in its shape, he looked down into her otherworldly features, staring into them, admiring them. And the more he soaked them in, the more his disgust grew. And it grew until he finally felt that black pit or resentment in him boiling upwards. And in that emotion, he made his first move.

He lowered his body toward her face.

His cock met her cheek.

“Fuck yes,” he groaned to himself.

He could now feel your mom’s features like a landscape along the flesh of his dick. The fat and high bones of her cheeks, the corner of her lips, the shape of her nose, and the sunken crater of her eye all made themselves a physical reality against the throbbing sensation of his cock.

She was no longer a mirage, like the mirage of so many other women, walking into the desperate circumference of his life and leaving unceremoniously, like a young woman passing him through the mall.

Her head bobbed into the soft embrace of the cushion as he pressed his cock against it. He had that effect on it. He had that control. Absolute control.

And your mom’s face was only there to take it. Take whatever he had to give.

And take it would. After all, this was only the beginning.

-----------------------------------------

“Found the culprit,” he said, as he leaned out from within the shadow beneath the water fountain. He held up the plastic filter, transparent-like but foggy, with round holes in it for straining water through. Sitting within it, half obscured by the foggy plastic, and half revealed through the holes, was a melted, semi-gelatinous mass of blue.

The cop tipped the base of his toothpick upwards in his mouth, pressing its extended part down into his lips.

His partner said: “So it was blue velvet.”

“Looks like it,” said the other officer, sitting down with his arm on his knee, looking at the device in his fingers. “He screwed it into the pipe, filter and all. That’s why the water pressure is weaker on this one. It’s all wet under here because it was spilling out through the hairline between the screw and the screw hole.”

“That looks like enough blue for an elephant,” said the standing officer.

“And that’s just what’s left,” said the officer holding the filter. “The rest of it is in the systems of all those people.”

“Plus one more,” said the cop through his toothpick.

They both looked back at him.

He stood there, feeling the pick splinter between his teeth. “Harold find anything in the footage?”

“He found a 22nd.”

The cop stood there for a moment, chewing. Then he asked “was she…”

“An attractive woman? …yes,” said the other officer, gravely.

The cop looked off into the distance. Nobody said anything for a moment. They just stood in the silence. Feeling its weight. The sky was of a darker shade of blue now. The park had been closed and evacuated.

“We’re still looking,” said the other officer. “She could just be lost somewhere.”

“No,” said the other, and he rolled his toothpick with his tongue. “She’s gone.”

Again, the moment became silent.

The silence was broken when the officer, still sitting on the floor, half engulfed by the shadow of the fountain, said: “They should dust off the chair for people who still sell that shit.”

“They did it in Italy,” said the standing officer. “It didn’t make a difference. Dealers used to be ashamed to push it. They’d insist they only sold it for personal use. But it’s become so normalized in the last ten years that now they give out little pamphlets with instructions on how to get away with ‘code-pinking’ girls.”

The other officer shook his head in intense disgust.

The cop behind them spit out his toothpick and said “when you two are finished with your history lesson, maybe we can get to finding the woman whose missing.” They both looked back at him. “Before it’s too late.”

“How do we find our suspect then? Like you said, Harold didn’t find anyone coming through those gates who hasn’t left. Whether on foot, or in an ambulance.”

“Except the people who work here,” said the officer.

“Of course.”

“Are they all still here?”

“I believe so, yes. All of them were alerted when the first few victims were found. Jim questioned all of them, except one who left early. But she was a woman and she left through the west gate a few hours before any of this happened.”

“It wouldn’t have been anyone who was working today,” said the officer.

“So, you think we should go through the list of employees?”

“If it isn’t someone who’s on that list,” said the officer. “Then we’re out of possible suspects.”

“Okay. I’ll tell Harold to go over the list of those currently employed.” After he said it, and he leaned his chin down to talk into his radio, the officer looked at him, his tongue now poking at the backside of his teeth, in need of a toothpick.

“And Jackson,” he said, as he spoke over the other officer talking into his radio. “Tell him to not just stop at currently employed.”

The other officer looked up at him, seeing his own reflection in his glasses. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said into his radio. “And while you’re at it, you might want to grab the payroll list for the past 4 months, just to be safe.”

--------------------------------------------

“Oh fuck,” he said as he tugged his cock. “Your mouth is like my own personal park bench.”

He pushed in his hips like one does while fucking, but he did it to position his ass so that your mom’s lower face was deeper within his cheeks. He could feel her lips and tongue against his asshole, and his balls were tight from the hardness of his cock. They sat on your mom’s nose. Her eyes, forehead, and raven black hair were the only parts of her face he could see now. Her eyes looked up at him from beneath, without knowledge or judgement, even as the weight of his body used her delicate face for a chair.

Her beauty was no longer hers to guard, and she had no sense of disgust or boundaries any longer. He had as much concern for her as the kids who tore apart the benches and tables he’d be tasked to fix twice a weak. She was there for him to pick at and play with, to vandalize how he saw fit. To leave his mark on her the way teenagers left swastikas or swearwords carved into bench paneling. Only what they did could be scratched out and erased (almost always by him), but what he did here would always be known. Not just to his friends at poker night. But to the whole community. To his exes and his parents, his brother and his wife, and all his cousins, and everyone who watched the six o’clock news, and to her family, her husband, if she had one, and son, and, most of all, to her. Her face would always bear the mark of his body. Even if it couldn’t be seen on sight. She’d know. And so would everyone else who saw her and knew her.

He had that power now. The power to spice up the flavor of her face and to guide her life into the direction of infamy, into the notch carved out for memories of far-off indignities within the wall of public awareness and the recorded annals of victory and scandal. To make her name, whether her last be the name of her parent’s or her husband’s, into one marking the lowest depths of shame and humiliation and just plain bad luck. To make her face known the world over as one that was swallowed by ass. By his ass in particular, with each of its hairs and blemishes that were so much part of his world, now part of hers. Now part of everyone who cares about her. And more, everyone who reads about her, a list that he was eager to swell with names.

Every once in a while, he’d tighten his thighs around her head, just to feel it there below him, concrete and real, trapped. He realized then how beauty only begot more beauty. He could feel the gorgeous shape of her skull through his thighs. Its proportion in sensation perfect for its counterpart in sight, like every part of her was built to both tease and please. He had been one of the few to move himself from the innumerably large ‘tease’ bracket to the significantly more exclusive bracket of ‘please.’ He had cheated his way there, but he was there nonetheless. No one could take that away from him. It was a fact now, forever more baked into the fabric of the universe than the guarantee of your mom’s bodily autonomy, his fact being shielded from violation by the sands of time, her autonomy only shielded from the fact that so many men had something to lose.

Unlucky for her bodily autonomy, he no longer did. After all, he had been unlucky too. He was the saint of Misfortune. She was the saint of Beauty. He was happy to meet her acquaintance. And through her acquaintance, taste a sliver of redemption.

Your mom’s head sat below his cheeks and between the tensed muscles of his thighs, a toy for him to play with, just like so many other objects. Like any tool or car part he could get his grease-stained hands on. Women were the only object he didn’t know the ins and outs of. If only women were like car engines and power drills, sitting there, beautiful in their construction, and more so in their purpose, waiting to be used in the way their physical form implied and begged for. They were like hammers that only beat a few nails and refused to beat any more. All of them. All of them except your mom, who just laid there and took the whims of his imagination and body without conflict.

And all it took was his oldfound ingenuity and knowledge of the park, and his newfound courage, the piece he always lacked, that came when he finally had nothing left to lose, falling into place like a bolt to complete the structure. Your mom sat there, her head bobbing with his grinding. Her face beings rubbed into unity with the sweaty ass of a janitor. Like they were equals. Her body molded into perfection through continual and unflinching exercise, his butt cheeks rubbing against her face large with years-worth of Cheetos and channel-surfing on the couch.

Your mom lay there, only giving pleasure through her presence, and never to give pain through a rejection. Rejection wasn’t useful to him. It ruined a day or a week. Her body, on the other hand, could give meaning to a lifetime. And her face… Oh god… her face.

He let out a bottom-heavy wet fart which began in a bottomless baritone, only to end hissing in a whiny falsetto.

“Fuck yes,” he said with ungodly satisfaction. “Just thought you might want a taste of the cheeseburger I had earlier.” He tilted his hips in more, allowing his ass cheeks to slide up her face until most of it was covered.

*pppffffffffttttttt*

“Ighh!” he grunted, like he surprised himself with that one. “You like that smell, don’t you. This is just the appetizer. Don’t fill yourself up on it just yet.” Down below, he could only see her raven hair spilling out from beneath him. He slid his ass up and down her face, feeling her beautiful features imprint themselves deep within the flesh between his cheeks, letting the smell waft around them, permeating them with it, rubbing the molecules into her face with the weight of his ass cheeks like a dough roller rolling garlic into yet-to-be-baked bread. “My ex used to say I had the worst farts,” he explained as his hips went forward and back in a gyrating motion. “I used to hold them in because I was embarrassed. I used to clench my stomach in pain, sitting in my own house, in fear that she’d come in right after I let a huge one rip. Imagine that. Stuffed with gas in my own house. But with you, babe, I feel like I can finally let loose.”

*ppppppfffffffffffttttttttt*

“Ohhh,” he groaned, and then grinned. “You’re the only girl I trust to let see… or smell… that part… or taste too… that part of myself. *ppfftt* “Oh! To be king for a day.”

---------------------------------------

The toothpick in his teeth was more real to him than the submachine gun that hung against his chest. He moved it from one end of his mouth to the other with a weight that was comparable to the battering ram that sat steadily, even through all the twists and turns, at their feet.

He looked up and saw the guy on the bench across from him was trying to get his attention. He was motioning towards his balaclava, pulling it up, as if to say “mask up, we’re almost there.”

He just stared at the man through the black visor of his helmet, saying nothing. Chewing on his toothpick with his mouth exposed all the while.

His radio went off again: “It’s Harold at the park. Do you copy?”

The guy across from him was still motioning to him in vain. He grabbed the radio on his chest. “Copy.”

“It appears our suspect had less of a cordial break with the park commission than we were initially led to believe.”

“Thought so,” he said back.

“It appears his supervisor ‘forgot’ to hit him with a raise, and when he found out he exploded. They saw that as a grounds for firing.”

“Convenient,” he said.

“Indeed. He called back making death threats. He sounded drunk his co-worker tells me. They didn’t think it was serious. But we checked his financial records and it appears he’s bought something a little worse than blue velvet in the past month.”

“Don’t stop,” he said dryly, letting the pick hang in the corner of his mouth. “You’re leaving me in suspense.”

“He’s bought a large quantity of household items. On their own, they’d be typical.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Together they make up exactly what one would need if one were so inclined to fashion themselves a bomb. Watch your six.”

“Copy. Over.”

“Over.”

The 5x7 slot at the front of the van slid open, and a visored face appeared, with fingers pulling a balaclava downward so he could speak. “We just got the go-ahead on a no-knock. We’ll be pulling over down the block from our target.”

The man across from him had given up trying to get him to put on his balaclava, and he took a deep breath and threw the strap of his shotgun over his shoulder.

The van pulled over, and the officer clenched the toothpick in his molars as he felt his boots meet the pavement.

They came down the sidewalk as a single unit, longer than they were wide, moving past fencing and hedges in a rapid lockstep until they came upon their target. Four of them proceeded up the porch with the battering ram. The officer and the man who had sat across from him turned right and leapt over the fence into the back yard. They both rounded the house, stepping through grass that rose to the height of their kneecaps. The officer hugged the wall, nearing the corner, and when he got there, he swung around, with his eyes looking down the sight of the gun, aimed at a backyard empty but for large piles of scrap metal and car parts. He signalled the officer behind him that the coast was clear, and as the other officer swung out, he noticed an open window. It had been smashed at some point, and its hanging glass shards likely cleared for safety, as if replacing it in a timely fashion wasn’t an option. He tapped the other officer on the shoulder and pointed to it, and then signalled for him to watch the backdoor. Then he let the gun fall to his chest, he grabbed the window frame, and he pulled himself upward.

He was halfway inside of a bedroom. He lowered his foot down onto the nighstand slowly, avoiding the liquor bottle and broken ashtray. And when he got his footing without making a sound, he swung the rest of his body into the room and slowly lowered himself to the floor. The dirty clothes on the ground muffled any potential noise he would have made in his heavy boots.

The house was silent. The team hadn’t busted in yet. He still had time. He stepped through the mess toward the open door, and when he got there, he peeked his head out and looked down the hallway. At the end of it was a fork in his path, with a living room to the left, and a kitchen to the right. He knew that when the guys came in, they’d be coming from his left.

Down the hallway he could hear faint noises, like a man talking in a low deliberate growl. Along with a squeaking noise. He thought about covering from there, in case the suspect tried to flee by crossing into the kitchen, but his tolerance for inaction, already waning, was rubbed clean in one go when he heard the high-pitched vocalizations of a woman struggling. He crept down the hallway with his finger within the trigger-guard of his gun, ready to shoot if he had to. If he had any excuse, no matter how thin. But when he heard the woman scream for help, he bolted forward. When he made it to the end of the hallway, he leaned on the left wall, looking within the kitchen to see that it was at least half clear, before spinning counter-clockwise, letting his right foot come around, and pivoting on his left, so that he faced the open living room, the sights of his gun settling on the large face of a man.

The man was wearing a mask.

The officer let his gun fall to his chest. He flipped his pick around with his tongue.

The man with the mask disappeared in an instant and was replaced by a woman backing up into against a tree.

Frightening music swelled as his shadow loomed over her.

He was looking at a television screen.

The man with the mask reappeared, replacing the woman, and he raised the handle of his knife to his chin. Then he thrusted downward.

The officer laughed silently to himself, beads of sweat on his forehead, the end of his toothpick crushed into splinters. He looked to his left to see the tops of black helmets through the front door window, fragmented by the particularities of the glass. They were readying themselves to burst the door down.

That’s when he noticed it. A fine wire drawn across the doorway near the floor. Within seconds, not having time to do much more, he followed the wire with his eyes to an electrical box, the chords from which extended diagonally up the wall to a box that was conveniently right next to his head. He heard the first large boom, rattling the house, as they slammed the door with their ram. Before they could slam again, he drew his left hand up into a fist, biting down on his pick, or what was left of it, and he slammed the box on the wall with the underside of his hand like it was a hammer, smashing the unknown device into pieces.

The ram hit the door again, and it cracked it open and off its hinges. The team drew their guns on the officer instinctively, only to drop them when they realized. He stood there calmly with his gun at his chest. “He’s not here.” His fist was dull with pain. “You two check the rooms and the kitchen. You two come with me to the basement.”

Within a minute, the house was cleared completely.

It was empty. Empty but for the flies, cockroaches and mold that climbed the furniture and walls.

As the team left for the front porch to wait for the forensics crew, the officer lagged behind, kicking around trash and clothing, looking for any signs that anything had happened here. A scrunchy, a discarded pair of panties. Anything.

The house was full of debris, but none of it indicated anything except a man at the end of his rope. Everything smelled of sweat and stale food. That was when the officer didn’t smell black mold, which crept up the corners in more than one room.

He held his toothpick vertically, with its top point pressed at the backside of his top row of teeth, and the bottomside in the same position against his bottom row. He then pushed his tongue into the center, causing the pick to snap in half, and he spit out what was left of it, contributing a drop of water to the ocean of trash that was the basement floor.

After a while, he grimaced, and he grabbed the hem of his balaclava and pulled it up over his mouth and nose.

----------------------------------------------------------------

A bag full of blue velvet sat on the coffee table, next to a plate with two pizza crusts discarded on it.

The couch was home to a sight less typical.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, as he cemented his status as one of your mom’s official lays with each pump, never to be scrubbed from that list, no matter how big the bucket of bleach and how stiff the bristles of the toothbrush. “Goddammit. How do good-looking guys find time for hobbies?” His voice trembled as he spoke to the back of her bobbing head.

He had lost count of how many times he had cum in and on her. But no matter how many times he found release, he could never find contentment. Within ten minutes, he’d start again. His pelvis hungry for her curves and smooth flesh. Even when he had fallen asleep the night before, he had squeezed in beside her, and rolled her over top of himself. He cuddled with her and kissed her cheek, eyebrows, and nose in the darkness. He then would fall asleep for two hours, before waking up to her curves pressed against his lower half, feeling compelled to have fun with her again, going back to sleep, and then starting the process over again.

His morning cereal bowl rested on the side of her head as he leaned down, in between volleys of pumps from his hips to her backside, to lift another spoonful of Cap’n’Crunch to his mouth. When he was finished, he crushed blue velvet into the leftover milk and helped her to drink it.

“No wonder good looking guys are so fit,” he said as he began fucking at full speed. “How could you ever stop yourself from fucking when you’re always fucking something like this?”

When he had cummed again inside her, he dragged her to the bathroom, and brought her into the tub. She lay on the floor of the tub as he showered, looking dreamlike beneath a haze of steam. He applied shampoo to her hair and lathered it up after doing his own, watching her raven hair go white with suds, then he grabbed the soap, cleaned himself with it, before leaning down and lathering up the various nooks and curves of her body. He rinsed himself under the warm stream, before stepping back and letting it cleanse the soap from her body. Then he grabbed her by her head, and lifted her up to the running water, watching the shampoo wash from her long black hair, her open mouth filling with water as she was made clean.

He then dropped her down into a heap directly beneath him, with each of his feet on either side of her, and he enjoyed the warm jets. “The water heater at my place has been broken for four months,” he said to her. “You don’t know how much you need warm water until you lose it.”

When he felt the need to urinate, he let himself go then and there. The stream fell to your mom’s face, causing her closed eyelid to twitch, and then it faded invisible in the running water that slid down the drain.

“Trickle-down economics,” he said to himself and laughed. “Just a little taste of what’s coming later.”

Your mom lay there without reaction.

“I love it when they don’t talk back,” he said. “This is what it must feel like to have a trophy wife.”

As he delicately stepped over your mom to turn around and feel the warm jet against the back of his neck and shoulders, he wondered if your mom and her husband or boyfriend ever showered together. He imagined himself, the same weight, but without body fat, his toned arms as he reached out in front of himself and grabbed her. Seeing her face turn with a startled smile, pulling her clos to him. It was then that he realized that he had never heard her voice. He imagined it, the best he could, imaging her looking up at him, running her fingers through his full head of hair, whispering “I love you,” with that look in her eyes, the kind he had only seen in movies, or in the frustrating pairs of good-looking young couples making out in the park, like the world around them didn’t exist.

He looked down at her exotic body, even perfect in humiliation, and he realized how different his life would be with a woman like this in the cards. It wasn’t just good looks and wealth and hair that would get him a woman like this if he had them, but it was a woman like this that would give him the motivation to love her with all the time, money, and energy at his disposal, all three of which he’d work harder to attain and keep more of in store. To make her feel loved.

He compared the golden mathematics of her form to that of his two exes, their beach ball shape, two large women, one tall and one short, fat everywhere except where it was wanted. With faces whose expressions possessed all that an expressing face should, but none of its magic. None of its glory that would push one to evoke such emotions as surprise, joy, peace, and bliss. Faces with features all wrong, with proportions that did nothing to differentiate them from the inert matter around them, nothing to draw the eye or to keep its gaze. Faces as exciting to the senses as a random section of the bike path at the park with a time-worn bench sitting near. But below him now, in towering contrast, was a face that personified the sight of a moon reflected in the lake. A face like rays of sun through a sprinkler, anointing it with color effortlessly. He looked down at her with reverence, even as he did so through his clenched fists and teeth.

As much of a stroke of luck her beauty and, almost certainly, life circumstances were, it was nothing compared to the bad luck of being at the park on that particular day, at that particular time, drinking from that particular fountain after jogging past so many others. He could feel the aura of her bad luck, and his magnificent, as soon as he saw her come into his view, like a stream gushing from a stone. The others who came to that fountain from either direction, a desert to him. And then the tingling through his limbs and stomach, the jittery warmth, as she appeared, and that escalation of sensation and thought as she slowed down, climaxing when she stopped next to it, touched it with her hand, and leaned down to it to drink. His life had never been characterized with such luck. There wasn’t that much beauty in it at all. And then she slowed down within his world, carrying that beauty with her, framed by the foliage he had brushed aside to see her fall and burrow herself into his web. His life, for the first time ever, had value.

It felt so jarring. So jarring that he still couldn’t, even with her lying below him in the flesh, believe that any of it was real. That he had lived it for the past day and night. That something like this could happen to him. And then he thought, and he imagined, what would it be like to feel the thrill of this kind of luck every day. To live within the approving light of this level of beauty. To have access to it without ingenuity, developed skill, and risk. To be born in a state of living where this vividness of color was guaranteed. To inherit a hand that guaranteed one a table heavy with chips. A pile of chips with its peak as pronounced as the fat of your mom’s ass.

He thought about when Susan would put her feet on his lap and complain about how much they hurt from dragging pallet jacks full of toasters through the dark and cramped backroom of the supermarket. He knew what she was asking for. What she would kill for. And he looked down at her feet. And he looked back up at the TV. And he pretended to not understand.

And as he looked down at your mom’s feet, her upturned soles with a river of soapy water splitting into two at her toes on their path towards the darkness of the drain, he thought about if it had been her who placed her feet on his lap as he sat there, and had complained about her new high heels being not broken-in enough for an eight hour day at the law courts, how he would be down on one knee within an instant, rubbing from her heels to her toes, before kissing her sole and asking her if they felt better.

He then thought about kissing upwards, up her ankle and calf, up towards her thighs and hips, up her bellybutton, kissing around its rim, up between her breasts, to her neck, and then up her chin, going up her face, juking around her mouth, frustrating her with anticipation, before kissing a path up her eyebrow to her forehead, and then the top of her black hair, before pulling back out to see her lustful face, and leaning in to kiss her on her waiting lips.

His cock was stiff again. The warm water like soft fingers running along the sides of his testicles.

He thought about his tongue meeting hers, and the feel of her hip and his hand rested on hers over her clothes, and then feeling down and under her skirt, and guiding his hand up, the back of his hand brushing her inner thigh, and hearing her reiterate what he had just discovered through touch. “I’m wet.”

Her eyebrows bending in over her clenched eyes as he enters her, and her mouth silently pouting in pleasure. And then when he’s in, her eyes opening, and a smile on her face in slight embarrassment at how much he had her. Her arms around his broad back. Her thighs wrapped around his narrow hips, and those feet up in the air. Her perfume on her neck as he kissed. His thrusts, inspired, his hips moving in a circular motion, letting her feel his throbbing cock, letting it do all it could to her. Telling her she was beautiful with real meaning. Doing whatever he could, through touch or word, to evoke the beautiful nuances of her every expression. Even doing the unthinkable. Feeling her hands on top of his luminous hair as they helped him down towards her private place, anticipating him being there. Anticipating his tongue. And him extending it gladly.

All of it.

And as he stood there, looking down at her closed eyelids clenched tightly together, water white with soap passing her face, his bitterness broke with a smile. He lifted his foot up and placed it over the side of her face. And he stood there, his toenails chipped and his toes pudgy and crowned with hair, all of it pressed against her beauty, triumphantly as she slept peacefully.

--------------------------------------------------

A pair of fat, sandled feet lay, one over the other, on a glass coffee table. A buzzing can be heard from a nearby room.

“Don’t answer it,” the man says. He uncrosses his feet. “We’re on vacation, remember?”

A pudgy woman walks into the room. “It’s from the park.”

*Bbbzzzzzz*

“The park?”

“Yeah.”

*Bbbzzzzzz*

He thought for a second. “Don’t answer it.”

*Bbbzzzzzz*

“But it might be your brother.”

“No, he doesn’t work there anymore. They have someone else scooping the poop.”

*Bbbzzzzzz*

“But why would they call us? How did they even get your number if it isn’t your brother?”

“I don’t know.”

*Bbbzzzzzz*

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re on vacation. If it was my brother, he’d be calling from the house anyways.”

She looked down at the phone. “Well, either way it’s stopped.”

He leaned back on the couch and put his feet back on the table.

“Maybe we should call the house today and see if everything is going well.”

“Sure,” he said, with his eyes closed. “Later.”

*Bbbzzzzzz*

The phone began buzzing again.

“Just shut it off,” he said, annoyed.

*Bbbzzzzzz*

“Honey, it’s the police.”

His eyes opened up. “The police?”

*Bbbzzzzzz*

“Yeah,” she said, gravely.

“Give it here.” He leaned forward, putting the soles of his sandals back to the ground. He extended out his hand.

*Bbbzzzzzz*

She handed him the phone. He looked at its face.

*Bbbzzzzzz*

He took in a deep breath and answered it.

The man on the line identified himself as an officer of the law, and then asked him if he had called the right person.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said.

The voice continued.

His wife watched nervously.

“Yeah. Yeah. I see. Yes, he’s my brother. Why? What is this abou… Yes, that’s his place of residence, why?”

His wife began chewing on her nails. Her eyes wide as she looked at her husband’s jawline and ear from behind.

“Yes, we’re very close. Meet up? Unfortunately, I can’t. I’m on vacation. In the Bahamas. Again, what is this in regards t… No, he wouldn’t be at home right now. If he was I’d be pretty annoyed. No. Well, because we’re gone for two weeks and he’s supposed to be staying at my place and watching it… Hello? Hello?” He turned back to look at his wife, perplexed. “They hung up on me.”

----------------------------------

The couch sat there, empty. A movie played on TV and the shower could be heard.

The pipes screeched as the shower shut off. The bathroom door opened.

Footsteps could be heard coming down the hall.

Then a sound like someone’s foot hitting something metal.

“Ow, fuck!”

Then the couch was eclipsed by a large top-heavy shadow.

Your mom fell to the couch.

Now the shadow was smaller and shaped like a man.

Your mom lay there, the shadow cutting across her perpendicularly.

The owner of that shadow removed his towel from around his waist and began to dry himself with it, his hair, his sides and underneath his armpits, and by grabbing the towel at each end and stepping over it with one leg, drawing it up to his crotch, then running it back and forth on his underside.

When he was done, he kneeled down to your mom and began to dry her with the towel, scrubbing her feet and calves, her legs up to her ass, opening it and drying within, her crotch, then drying her back and sides, and under and around her breasts and from the front to the back of her neck, all the way up to her face and hair.

“I want you nice and clean,” he said with a smile. “So that later, the smell is recognizable as only one thing.”

Her head swayed back and forth on the cushion as he ran the towel over her aggressively.

The TV played behind him as he did. Its volume was low, and he couldn’t hear it, but it was getting darker out, and the screen was casting a light on your mom and the couch. After he was finished, he said “it’s like being at a spa, isn’t it?” He backed up and smiled. “Now,” he said. “Just because you’re dry, doesn’t mean I have to be.”

He looked up at the liquor cabinet with a smile.

Then he stood there stunned.

It was your mom. She was looking back at him from across the dining room table, smiling.

Then he saw a similarly-aged blonde woman holding a microphone to her own mouth. He was looking at the reflection of the television in the liquor cabinet glass.

He turned around. A woman on TV stood in a well-to-do neighborhood, a stoic look upon her face, saying something that couldn’t be heard. He scrambled for the remote on the table, knocking around plates and bottles. When he grabbed the remote, he turned up the volume.

“…it seems she disappeared after a strange occurrence in Oakdale Park where 21 parkgoers were found passed out all within the southwestern section of the park. She could be seen entering the park…” Grainy footage of her jogging in through a gate played. “…but she wasn’t seen exiting it.”

He smiled. He had known her for so long in a state of immobility, that to see her moving again tickled him with a giddy delight. It reminded him of when he first saw her. It was love at first sight, he thought with a grin. Of all the gates of all the national parks in the world, you came jogging through mine. Here’s looking at you, kid.

The woman was still talking as he played with that idea. “The park is surrounded by fencing on all sides, and though there are staff gates that aren’t linked to any official path, only staff can enter and exit through those gates as they require keys.”

His smile and playful thoughts faded as he squinted at the TV, only for them to come back again when the reporter stepped over to her right. A giant gated house came into view with two men standing in front of it, one young, possibly a teenager, the other older.

“I am joined now with the husband and son of the woman missing, who would like you at home to hear their message.” She grabbed the chord of her microphone with one hand, holding it away to avoid tangling, and she extended the microphone to your dad’s mouth.

His face was glowing, both with a smile and with the light from the TV, as he looked at your father and saw that he was everything he expected him to be. He looked down at your mom. “Your hubbie is a real cutey,” he said. “In shape. Broad shoulders. Great dresser. Full head of hair. The only thing I share in common with that handsome devil is that we’ve both slapped our cocks against your face.”

He stopped to listen to what your dad had to say: “…so please if you see her, or know anything about where she might be, call that line. There will be a twenty-thousand dollar reward to anyone who finds her,” he said, his voice shaking, as if he was trying to keep it together.

He looked down at your mom with a grin. “Twenty-thousand!? Even if I had that kind of money, I’ve never dated anyone I’d be willing to blow that on. ‘I’ll give you five if you treat her well,’” he said playfully to a mock ransomer, and he pressed the top of the remote against the underside of his chin, grinning devilishly to himself. “’Five-thousand? No, no. You misunderstand me. Five dollars. And not a penny more.’”

“And if you have any piece of information that helps with finding her,” your dad continued, his voice and demeanor about ready to snap. “You will be rewarded as well. Me and my son are both sick with worry. We want our wife and mother home with us. So please, anybody, if you can help, please do. Bring my baby home. Please.”

Your dad stepped backward and began to sob into his open palm. The reporter pulled back her mic and said “anything you want to say as her son?”

She extended the microphone to your startled face. “Umm, no,” you said shyly.

“Ohh,” he said with a wide grin. “When everyone figures out what’s happened to you, your sons going to… shit!” he said, taking time to think about it. “If he’s this timid now, imagine how bad it’s going to be when every face he looks at in school knows what I was doing to you.” He laughed to himself, kneeled down and slapped your mom’s ass, then he stood up, turned back around, and bit the remote with pride.

The reporter stepped off to the side, a diagonally-shot row of houses behind her, each one bigger than the last. “No potential suspect has been apprehended. Though authorities are on the lookout for one of Oakdale’s previous staff members by the name of…”

His face dropped. And at that same moment, as his name was spoken on local news, his face, big and goofy and balding, was looking back at him with bitterness and exhaustion in his eyes in a still photo taken two years ago. He knew he would make it to the news eventually. The question was when. He didn’t expect it this early, though he knew better than to be shocked.

The reporter continued. “A warrant for his arrest was issued, and his place of residence searched, though nobody knows his current whereabouts. The authorities are currently checking with his friends and family and any other leads at their disposal.”

It cut back to the newsroom.

“Okay, in lighter news, the city’s annual robin…”

The TV went black.

He let the remote drop to the table and it smashed a drinking glass before bouncing settling into a bowl.

He looked over at his phone. It sat there silently, its face black.

He went over and opened it up. He had no messages. Not from friends. Not from family. He stood there and he thought about it for a second.

The pigs could have told them not to message me. At least if they thought they knew where I was. Or if they narrowed it down to a few places. And also if they were sure I was the guy.

He began to sweat.

They would have been told it was an obstruction of justice to call me. He bit his finger to steady himself. And if they have a warrant for my arrest, then they either caught me on camera taking her, or they’ve seen my credit card purchases. That alone might have put me on a watchlist for all I know. And there’s no way they got me on cam. I know that park like the back of my ass. I wouldn’t have even seen a camera, never mind get caught by one. He exhaled deeply. Either way, it’s irrelevant. I’m caught.

He opened up his phone and went into his security app.

Where is it? Why didn’t it activate? If they searched my home, it… It was latched onto the front door. I set it up myself. Unless they knew about it beforehand and found a way to deactivate it. The pigs? I’m impressed. Now… what’s coming now? Well… I guess they’ll either be knocking on the door without a warrant to ask my brother some questions, or knocking the door down with one to slay their dragon and rescue their little damsel in distress here. He laughed to himself and looked down at her. … hoping it was a failed ransom attempt, I’m sure, knowing that if it wasn’t, her holes have been all nice and used by now and that there’s nothing they can do about it. His face was glowing with smug pride, which then dissolved back into thought. It all depends on whether they managed to get in contact with my brother or not. I guess either way, I’m on a short clock now. It’s either minutes or days. But I don’t have forever.

He took a deep breath and then he looked down at your mom. The beauty of her form as beautiful to him as the first moment he laid eyes on her, renewed in its dearness to him by the circumstance of knowing he didn’t have long left with her. “I’d love to take you for one more ride,” he said. “But I have to go. If things were more ideal, we would have had a full two weeks together. A real honeymoon. But it was never meant to be. Don’t worry though,” he assured her sleeping head, as he approached the coffee table and grabbed his black gloves through all the mess. “You’re going to be playing a pretty big part in my grand finale. A little token to remember me by. Something tells me you’ll never forget it.” He pulled a glove onto his left hand. Then he held the right glove up to the level of his chin, and positioned his hand beneath it. “And never will anyone else.” He pulled the hem of the right glove down to his wrist in a single motion. He flexed his fingers within and then clenched his hand into a fist.

He went over to the giant conflagration of metal pieces and tubes that sat on the floor, an incomprehensible cluster of steel to anyone who would see it. Anybody except for him. He dragged it across the floor, scratching the hardwood with its weight and jagged shape. Then he went into the closet and pulled out a bag full of something soft. He held the bag out in front and away from him until he got to the dining room, where he dropped it next to the clump of inert metal.

He then grabbed pieces of metal and as he prepared his finale, the cherry on top that only he had the mental blueprints for, he did so with precision and tact. Everything in its right place, as if it was only common knowledge where it should go. As if there was only one place where it could be. It had always been that way for him. Wire to correct input. Tube plugged into its proper opening. The battery good for a week if needed. Though he knew it wouldn’t be. He was working against the clock. But he didn’t let that fluster him. He couldn’t. Not if he wanted the ‘bang’ he had promised himself. The ‘bang’ that he had promised her. If he was competent enough for all that he had accomplished, all that he was blessed to experience, until now, he was competent enough for what was to come. The hard part was over. He just had to stay focused. The pigs couldn’t stop him now. And he knew it.

When he was done setting up the device, he grabbed the bag from the closet delicately, and slowly, and gingerly placed it into its proper spot within the cradle of metal. He then began to reposition the device in a specific way. Someone looking at his activities from the outside wouldn’t know what to make of it, or what he was trying to achieve. But they would be able to see the intent in his face. And they would have trusted him to succeed. Whatever it was he was going for. Even in his nudity, the absurdity of his buck-naked ass, with all its excess weight and sorry shape, only to be contrasted by the sight of those black gloves over his hard-at-work fingers. Even with all dignified appearance missing, he would be registered as capable by the clear intent of his action alone. And they would have known, whatever it was he was working and fine-tuning towards, it was going to be special. Nobody worked this hard for a dead-end or empty gesture. And if they did, they never did it this well, as competence in one would always beget competence in another.

When he was finished with the device, it sat at the end of the dining room table on a tripod. It seemed to be facing toward the table top itself, though nobody would be able to tell on sight. Your mom laid there on the couch, all the while, resting, always resting in the house she had vacationed in for a day, but had never seen. When the clanking of metal stopped, she was engulfed in shadow. Then she was lifted off the couch by two flabby arms.

As he unfurled the rope, she startled him with her groggy voice. “Um jerst goin’ jergin’ in uh perk. I’ll be buck in an er’.”

He smiled to himself as he tied a rope to the leg of the table. So that’s what your voice sounds like. He grabbed her by the wrist. The voice of an angel. He thought with a genuine smile.

After he finished tying her ankles and wrists to the legs of the table, and fastening two ropes beneath it, one tied over her shoulders, another over her waist, he went back to the device and placed his finger on a seemingly random part of it. Then he extended his finger out towards her sleeping face. When his finger reached her cheek, he repositioned the device then tried the motion again. The second time his finger made it almost dead-center on the tip of her nose, and he drew his finger back again to the machine. “Perfect,” he said.

When he was finished, he stood up and looked at the scene. “I can’t wait for them to see it,” he said. “It’s going to be a beaut’” He smiled at the thought. He was thinking about the beauty of his design while a woman who saw the beauty in every mirror lay there, a cog in his machine of circumstance now. He looked down at her face, followed up the shape of her body, enjoying its apparent voluptuousness, even in indignity, then went back again with his eyes, up the length of her, soaking it all in while he could safely. Then he looked back at her peaceful sleeping face, only now showing signs of animation, however slight. She was about to become the her that he never knew. That he would never know. And she would never see him in the flesh, only know him by his bitter and exhausted gaze, as it was shown on television and in print.

“Well,” he said. “It’s better than knowing me by my mugshot. I should get going.” He tried to move, but he couldn’t. He remained looking down into her pond-like perfection. He extended his arm down and pinched the cheek on her face with his begloved hand. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said. Then he sighed, let go, and walked off.

He got dressed in the kitchen with clothes that sat waiting for him on the chair, as she lay there in the dining room mumbling. And when he was done, he went to the backdoor and picked up a suitcase waiting for him. He grabbed a wallet and keys and pocketed them. Then he picked up the passport. He opened and looked at it. A version of him, even uglier than usual, looked back at him with long hair and a moustache. Though this version was less bitter and less tired. A lot less bitter. A lot less tired.

It’ll do, he thought. I don’t think Mexican border patrol is known for their high standards.

Before he left the house, he took one last look at your mom, her lower half obscured by wall. Her eyes were slowly opening.

Perfect.

The door slammed shut.

A car could be seen peeling out from behind the house.

Then there was silence.

Eighteen minutes later a SWAT van pulled up to the front of the house and parked diagonally on the front lawn.

6 men jumped out of the back.

As they rushed up towards the front door, another van pulled up across the yard.

A man jumped out the back, wearing a helmet without a balaclava, and he yelled to those on the stoop “Don’t!”

It was too late. Their battering ram was mid swing.

A wire hanging across the door at ground level gave way as the door slammed into it, tugging a line that ran all the way to the dining room table, then it snapped.

As the men ran in, they could hear a woman screaming. “Help! Help! I’m over here.”

Just below the sound of her horrified wails was another noise. It was the sound of beeping.

“Oh god no!” she screamed.

The men had their guns raised to their eyes as they moved through the house. When the two ahead of the others rounded the corner, they stopped in their tracks.

Staring back at them, from where the sound of screaming originated, was a naked female ass, sticking up in the air, each cheek open, with her thighs and knees tucked below her. She screamed “Oh god! Quick! Help! Pleeasse!” and as she did, her butthole clenched.

The other men pushed the first two from behind, only to stop in their place at seeing the sight as well. The first two had regained their composure and ran towards the woman to help untie her. And when they got to her, they looked down at her face. And when they saw her, they were shocked to see her wide-eyed, looking ahead, not interested in them at all. They both looked over slowly to see what she was looking at it.

Across the table, attached to a giant device, was a digital display. It said “3:21.”

And a second later: “3:20”

“3:19”

The cops shot a glance at each other. Then back at the other men. And both at once, they screamed “it’s a bomb!”

The men looked up from the ass, and towards the two men before them.

From around the corner another officer in SWAT gear came. Except he didn’t have a balaclava on. His mouth and chin were completely naked, and in his mouth was a toothpick.

He saw the woman there as he moved briskly, then he held onto his submachine gun, and swung around to peer at the end of his sights into the kitchen, ensuring that it was clear before, he looked back at what the other two officers had seen, what your mom was staring at with horror, and it froze him in place.

“3:06”

The woman howled and struggled impotently against her ropes. “Please! Oh god no! I don’t want to… please!”

The cop chewed on his pick and let his gun fall to his chest. He looked over at the 2 officers still standing in the living room, staring at the big ass hanging open before them, the other two in the very rear having fled when they heard there was a bomb, and he said with firmness “got get the toolkit from my van. Quick. We have two minutes and fifty-eight seconds left.”

One of the men managed to pull his eyes away enough to be able to run out the front door. The other just stood there, his face invisible behind his balaclava and the black eye-protectors of his helmet. But everyone could tell where he was looking.

The woman screamed below.

“It’s okay,” said the officer, his pick rolled entirely into his mouth, clenched lengthwise with the molars on the right side of his jaw. “We’re here. We’re going to get you out of here. You understand?”

She nodded her head, but the tone of her voice didn’t change. “Pl-ea-se!” she screamed, coming out like three separate syllables rather than one.

The officer came back in through the front door, holding the toolbox at its edges with both hands. He passed the two others as he handed it to the officer at the head of the table.

He reached out for its handle and said “your husband and son are waiting for you. They’re going to be happy to see you.”

She wailed as he opened up the kit.

As he dug through it purposefully, he said “I’m going to need you to calm down now. Just so I can concentrate and help get you out,” in a direct but measured voice. “Okay?”

She nodded her head rapidly. She was silent now, but for the occasionally whining, and tugging against the straps on her ankles, thighs, calves and wrists.

One of the two officers standing nearby took out his combat knife and went for one of the ropes.

The officer clenched hard on his toothpick and looked over. “Don’t!” he screamed. “It’s wired below the table! If that rope goes loose, we’ll all go up?”

Your mom’s face contorted in fear as he said it.

The officer re-sheathed his knife. One of the two standing in the living room had already left the building.

“It’s okay,” he said as he began tampering with the machine. “It’s all going to be okay.” He unscrewed a panel. “We have plenty of time.” A metropolis of wires ran through, over, and around one another, linking nodes in a hard-to-decipher chaos.

He followed various nodes with the tip of his screwdriver, pulling out his knife. Nobody could see his expression. Though the black mirror of his helmeted-face and his direct and methodical movements was enough to keep those who hadn’t already fled from losing their cool in the moment.

He cut one of the wires with the tip of his knife, then began following another.

As the clock cleared one minute, its minute hand becoming zero permanently, and its second hand restarting at :59, your mom began to sob. “Please!”

“Shh,” he said, as he cut another wire. “It’s all going to be alright. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

The officer who had brought in the toolset had silently began backing up in the direction of the front door.

The officer rolled his toothpick back to the front of his mouth and let it hang outward. He pushed the toolkit across the table. It tickled your mom’s side and she jerked. He shot a glance at her, causing her to stop. “Sorry,” he said. Then he looked at one of the officers at the end of the table. “Look for a tin snip in there. My knife is too big.” He said it in the most casual way he could. He didn’t want to upset your mother. He continued following the snakelike path of blue, green, black, and white.

He was handed the tinsnips with :42 left on the clock. It was only him now, your mom, and one other officer. Your mom whinnied again, and the officer at the end of the table looked over to see her butthole clench with the whinny. He wondered, with acid in his stomach, if that’s what his butthole looked like at this moment.

He looked up at the other officer, the toothpick hanging from his lips. He snipped another wire.

There were :19 seconds left.

She began to make noise again, this time from a deeper place.

“It’s okay,” he said, sweat dripping visibly down his cheek. “Just one more. I just need to find it. But it’s here.”

He followed one wire.

:15

That’s not it. Then another.

:12

No. Maybe it’s this one. The other officer bolted for the front door.

:10

No. It’s.. wait a second. This is it!

:07

He cut the wire. He took in a deep breath.

He tilted his head around the device to look back at the clock.

:05

:04

She began to scream with the fullness of her throat.

He looked at the circuit board with shock. That should have been it.

He grabbed onto it desperately, and the wires snapped as he ripped it off of its base.

It peeled back with little effort, exposing a jungle of wiring below.

It was a decoy!

:02

He looked up at your mom’s horrified gaze. “I’m so sorry!” he screamed.

Her face contorted up into something beyond describing. “No…” was all she could squeak out.

He bolted toward the living room, tucking his pick into his cheek on instinct, and just as he passed your mom on the table, he leaped into the air in the direction of the living room couch.

Outside, the officers and onlookers shuddered when they heard a giant bang from inside, blowing out the windows of the house.

The officer struggled to get back up. The house was thick with smoke. He tried to regain his balance, shocked that he was still alive. The couch had probably saved him. He stood up and tried to look within the dining room. And though it was only a meter and a half away or so, all he saw was grey-black smoke.

He slowly, unsurely, took one step at a time towards the dining room.

“Hello? Miss?” he called into the grey curls. “I’m here. Are you okay?” He almost lost his footing as his boot landed on the glass of the coffee table. He moved apprehensively, watching his step as he went. Both hands were on his gun, though he didn’t know why. As he got closer, the smoke also began to clear, the windows sucking it out into the late afternoon air.

Finally he could see something. A shape. Something there.

He took another step.

Then he stopped.

His eyes went wide.

His jaw dropped.

His toothpick fell from his mouth and landed amongst the rubble.

The other officers rushed in, hands on their weapons.

In the midst of the smoke, they could see one upturned figure in black.

They got close to see it was the officer, his body hunched over. His hand was on the wall, and his face was pointed toward the ground.

When the first officer got closer, he realized that the man was puking from out his balaclava-less mouth.

The others continued on, each one clenching their stomach to ready it for what sight lie around the corner.

When they turned into the dining room, they could vaguely make out the shape of a person lying down at about waist level to them.

A giant soft ass appeared to them, half-obscured by the warm mist-like air. A butthole looked back at them, unclenched.

They slowly rounded the table. As they did, the room became increasingly more clear, a product of time, not proximity.

And when the first two in line rounded the furthest end of the table, they both looked back apprehensively, not wanting to see, and in time register, that which sat there to be witnessed.

Waiting for them there was a black oval. And it was only then that they realized, just as the smoke was starting to clear, it gave way to a different smell. A strong smell. Stronger than smoke. Stronger than burnt paper. And as they looked on, stunned and confused, trying to conjure up a mental model for what it was they had just walked upon, it was then that they realized that they had the color of the shape all wrong. It had only appeared to them as it did under the distorting effect of the smoke, which was now fading.

And that’s when they realized. The oval they were looking at wasn’t black.

It was brown.

Two circular shapes, stark white, appeared suddenly at about halfway down the oval. Within those two circles were one smaller circle for each. They were brown. A much prettier shade of brown than that of the oval.

And that’s when they understood. They were eyes.

A brown semi-solid substance dripped down past one of the eyes.

The eyes disappeared for a second then reappeared. A blink.

They were looking at her face.

She looked out at the world in disbelief. Completely silent. But completely alive.

She blinked again.

And the smoke cleared more.

They could hear the officer still throwing up in the living room.

And that’s when they noticed it.

It was the smell.

Both their faces then contorted in uncontrolled disgust and sickness.

It was…

And it was only then they seen it. Your mom was looking right at it. She blinked again. She said nothing. The brown oval around her face was flat, emoting nothing. One could tell, that even below that cover, her face was without emotion. She was in shock.

They turned slowly, following her gaze, and hanging out of the top of the device, as if it had popped out during the bang, as if it were designed as such, was a large white sheet of paper hanging from a now-apparent strip of metal. The paper hung down, like a scroll that was unfurled. It swayed slightly in the clearing air. And within two seconds, the air was clear enough that it could now be read.

It said “No more money in the city’s budget for a city-park handy-man? But who’s going to scoop dog the dog shit? I guess that’s your jurisdiction now, huh pigs?”

Your mom stared ahead. She blinked again.

The cops both looked at her. And the cops standing behind the table, looked above her open ass at the increasingly visible message hanging above. And then they began sniffing. And though their faces couldn’t be seen, their horror and discomfort could be sensed when they realized what it was they smelled. The first one to find out was still in the living room puking. His toothpick sat amongst glass, in between an overturned bowl and a TV remote.

The two men looked at your mom. She blinked again. And then just as they were about to collect themselves and begin cutting her loose, they were startled to hear a low but desperate “Mmmmmmm” noise rumbling from her mask of brown, reverberating off her clenched teeth and clamped lips.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to open her mouth and scream. Every fibre of her being tried to force it out of her. Her nude body convulsed for her to let it go. But she wouldn’t let herself do it. She couldn’t. She knew now what it felt like to have dog shit caked on her face. That was bad enough. But she could do nothing about it now. It was the hand she was dealt. But the one thing she could do was keep her mouth closed. And if she did, she wouldn’t have to know what dog shit on her tongue would taste like. She wouldn’t have to let the cops there know she knew what it tasted like. As she felt her body, nude and curled up into a suggestive mockery before their eyes, and she felt a liquid dripping from inside her and running down her thigh, she knew that she couldn’t add to it through knowing that taste. That last piece of ignorance was the only thing she had left. The only bit of pride. The last shelter from the indignity she had woken up into. She concentrated her entire will into not letting it open.

When one of the officers behind her, distracted by her tightening butthole, had cut the rope, he poked her lightly in her outer thigh.

Her mouth rocketed open.