“So, Andy,” William said. “Why do I have to take my pants off again?”

“Just do it.”

“Okay.”

Andy puffed on his cigarette and stuck his hand between the couch cushions. “Then when you’re done pulling your pants down I want you to do me a favor.”

“You mean this doesn’t count as the favor I owe you?”

Andy laughed. “Are you kidding me? You owe me, like, a thousand favors.”

William stood in front of the couch, naked from the waist down because he had refused to wear underwear since he had banged his kindergarten teacher way back in third grade. He looked at Andy’s face: that pallid mask of regret and lost hope. Then he said, “I kinda thought we were even since I did that other…..thing for you.”

Andy waved his hand. “That was small potatoes, Billy.”

“No one calls me Billy. Not anymore."

Another puff of the cigarette by Andy. “Bend over, Billy.”

Four hours go by and the cigarette hangs in the air like a loser cloud. William watches sweat drip down the bridge of his nose, making him cross-eyed and half-delirious due to his morbid fear of sweat. He cleared his throat. “So Andy,” he said. “You think we can wrap this up?”

"Jesus Christ, Billy, I’ve never met someone so impatient."

“Stop calling me Billy.”

“I’ll stop calling you Billy when you start acting like a man.”

William sighed. “But you know that’s impossible.”

More cigarette smoke. “Nothing is impossible.” Andy leaned his head forward, getting a face full of sweat. “NOTHING.”

"So Andy"

Copyright: © 2011 Jordan Krall

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“Hey Andy, can I ask you a question?” Matthew Revert said, farting silently into his wicker chair.

Andy squinted through cigarette smoke. “I guess.”

“You like me?”

“What do you mean?” Andy puffed on his fag and squinted some more.

“I mean, do you like me? As a fellow author…”

“Uh, not sure. Haven’t given it much thought. I guess not.”

Matthew farted again but this time it made a squeaking noise not unlike the crying out of a homesick mouse. “What about as a human being? Do you like me, respect me, as a human being?”

Andy put out his cigarette, took a swig of his fancy imported beer, and said, “You’re Australian, right?”

Matthew farted. “Yeah.”

“And you’re asking me if I respect you, like you, as a human being?”

"Yeah,” Matthew replied, farting.

“Last time I checked, Australians weren’t human beings.”

Matthew stood up from his wicker chair and farted. “I give up.”

Andy shrugged, took a sip of his beer, and lit another cigarette. “Me too,” Andy said as he farted into the bleak Ohio wind.

"Hey, Andy!"

Copyright: © 2011 Jordan Krall

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

The world begins and ends with an orgasm. Not mine, but yours.

This, the dreams and desires of a syphilitic science fiction writer, is just about all you can stomach to read on your deathbed. It is depressing, I know.

You tell me the nurse who takes care of you looks like an octopus with hair. When she walks in, I tell her you said that. After giggling, she cuts off your morphine and rips up the issue of True Detective I brought for you.

It sort of makes me laugh because you always swore you wouldn’t let them put you on any sort of meds if you were in the hospital. Oh, but there you were, letting them drug you almost to death. You get pissed when Nurse Octopi cuts off the morphine. What happened to staying pure? Whatever, right?

The angels don’t give a shit about what’s in your blood. Or what kind of sickness you had.

It’s a sleeping sickness.

I get cold when I am tired. My uncle also had this problem but only when he was drunk. When I sleep (and when I am drunk), my face turns blue and I tremble. Those who witness this for the first time have woken me up, threatening to call an ambulance. “I’m not getting in one of those machines!” I yell.

I was in an ambulance only once – the night my parents committed me. I had halfheartedly attempted suicide so they drove me a hospital. There I was confronted by an ugly, middle-aged hospital psychologist who tried to pry me open psychologically to find the source of my action, the source of the incident.

To this day I’m not sure why I just didn’t make some shit up. You know, something like, “I’m so overwhelmed at the nothingness of life,” or something equally stupid. If I had done so, maybe I would’ve been sent home where I could have watched some Night Court instead of being sent to that place.

But I wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t tell the bitch my insignificant reasons for taking the pills and so I was taken to that place, a special hospital where they took me to the empty kitchen and checked me for distinguishing marks, cuts, burns, etc. They didn’t notice the faint knife scars on my thighs. Stupid bastards.

My first roommate in the hospital was a young boy who heard voices. We cleaned our room immaculately and earned an extra half hour past bed time. I watched television, not paying attention to it at all.

My second roommate was a lazy fuck who reminded me of my uncle. He wouldn’t get out of a bed. There was no television in the room and he had no books that I could see. So what did he do all day? I don’t know. Masturbate? Maybe. One night he poured water on my pillow while I was in the bathroom. When he saw my only reaction was a bored shrug, he gave me one of his pillows. What was the point of the joke if he was just going to replace what he messed with? Stupid bastard.

In that short time I managed to scribble down some documentation of my experiences. It was mainly shit about insects and walls, or eyes in the walls or something. What I do remember is that everything kept changing from present tense to past tense as if I couldn’t help but drift off into the future.

My arm is tired now, my brain crackles. I can hardly read what I have written. This isn’t a surprise; my handwriting is terrible but right now it is a long string of shit, covered in obscene ink smears: deep blue genitalia over ugly yellow pulp.

I’m in bed, attempting to lull myself into vivid dreams. Random images/words and ghosts of scenes: names of household objects, names of childhood friends, celebrities, cities, situations, half-imagined placement of people and furniture (scenes of my life that probably never occurred though I wonder: if I imagine it enough times and develop emotional reactions to the scenes, how imaginary are they? Do they come any closer to becoming real? I think my ramblings about reality are useless anyway. While I am writing this, I am drinking vodka. That I can say for sure is real. The memory of vodka is real.)

Something up there is a lie.

I move my eyeballs from left to right in swift movements in order to jump start the dream process. I lay on my back in fear of being stabbed. If I lay on my stomach, someone might come in and shove a knife into me: violent bedtime sodomy. I’ve always had the fear of being stabbed in the back. Pissing at a urinal is a harrowing experience for me.

I am here in my bed. The blanket will not protect me. Life is dangerous and I am in danger. The world begins and then it ends.

It’s a sleeping sickness.

"Sick Room Needs"

Copyright: © 2010 Jordan Krall

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Jordan Krall is the author of Piecemeal June, Squid Pulp Blues, Fistful of Feet, King Scratch, Blow Up the Outside World (co-written with Ash Lomen), and Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys.  His books can be found on Amazon.com

Bags of teeth were all I had left of my last real relationship. She used to keep them under the sink next to the bleach. The bags still smelled like bleach. When I stuck my nose to them, my nostrils burned. 

We sharpened chess pieces, and used them to script our lives somewhere soft and fleshy. Black & White knives of peace and strategy. It’s better than couple’s counseling. 

I could very well go to a doctor or hospital, get myself fixed up or cured. My family was never one for doctors, though, not unless it was an emergency. This whole phase doesn’t seem like an emergency. I’m not pissing blood. I don’t have a fever. I do not think new thoughts should be considered a sickness. I am able to eat and sleep, to write this very sentence down, all in my right mind. This is my right mind.

"After the Masonic Downfall"

Copyright: © 2010 Jordan Krall

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Jordan Krall is the author of Piecemeal June, Squid Pulp Blues, Fistful of Feet, King Scratch, Blow Up the Outside World (co-written with Ash Lomen), and Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys.  His books can be found on Amazon.com

I spent a night in New York City with some friends. We drank in a hotel room. Whiskey and soda. We joked around, insulted each other, and wrestled (latent homosexuality evident in piles of male flesh? I’d like to think not but I am not in the minds of my comrades so I do not know for sure).

We walked around the city. It was cold, very cold but the alcohol helped warm us. I smoked cigarettes and the occasional small cigar. At 3am we stopped at a peepshow. I was so far gone, the woman I followed (a young, plump black woman if I remember correctly) was just a fleshy blur with an aura that was slightly glittery. I didn’t get a hard-on even though she put her feet up against the fiberglass partition and fingered herself while looking at me seductively. She even turned around and showed me her darker nether regions but my memory is so hazy I sometimes wonder if there was even a woman there to begin with. Maybe I was looking at an empty booth. What the hell would be the difference?

Empty air might have been just as arousing.

"Peeping Bad Cops"

Copyright: © 2010 Jordan Krall

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

  

Jordan Krall is the author of Piecemeal June, Squid Pulp Blues, Fistful of Feet, King Scratch, Blow Up the Outside World (co-written with Ash Lomen), and Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys.  His books can be found on Amazon.com

Whenever I watch Night Court, I feel demonic.

I don’t know if it’s Judge Stone’s obsession with Harry Houdini or Dan Fielding’s oversexed antics, but I feel satanic during the whole viewing process. It’s as if I’m going to burst full blast into a black mass during the first commercial break. I might just desecrate a bible and sacrifice a virgin while someone tries to sell me a new deodorant or soft drink.

But I always resist the urges.

I was 26 when it started or maybe it started earlier and I never realized it. Who knows, right? Despite having a college education, I was living hand to mouth as a gas station attendant, barely scrapping by. It wasn’t the life I imagined myself having.

My days were spent inhaling the sweet aroma of gasoline while trying to catch glimpses of the high heels of women who stopped to fill their cars. I longed to see their shoes on the pedal. At times I believed I could smell their feet through the gasoline smell. Many days I had to stop my mouth from confessing my desire:

I imagined myself saying, “Can I help you?”

The woman would say, “Fill it, regular.”

I’d reply, “Sure. Can I smell your shoes?”

She’d say, “Fucking pervert.”

Oh, but I resisted the urges. I needed my job and didn’t have the slightest interest in going to jail. I wouldn’t last there as I’m too delicate and bladder shy.

So I spent my days at the station and my nights in my one room apartment, surrounded by paperback books and old magazines. It was cramped, but comfortable. I always liked wrapping myself in blankets and lounging on pillows while I watched television. In the winter it was a necessity because I had no heat. I ate soup out of the can and watched rerun after rerun of classic television. That’s where Night Court came in.

Some people my age would have found my life depressing. It was quite the contrary. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every second of warmth in my comfortable chair (the only one I had in my apartment). I occasionally went to the bar down the street to have a few drinks and sometimes brought home a bottle or two. Then I’d get drunk and reread issues of True Detective. I’d end up watching an episode of Perfect Strangers. Larry pisses me off. Like when he took a sledgehammer to the wall, ruining the mural Balki had painted. I ended up throwing a bottle at the television but luckily I missed.

So okay, back to Night Court.

As I sat and watched Dan Fielding again try to get Christine into bed, I kept tracing pentagrams on my blanket. What now?

Ants crawled onto my chair, getting comfortable in the pentagram I was tracing. They worshipped Baphomet of Thee Unholy Church Ov Thee Old Blanket. Stupid little insects. They don’t know it’s all made up. They don’t realize it’s all because of that stupid, fucking Dan Fielding and the judge’s Houdini obsession. 

"Funtime, USA"

Copyright: © 2010 Jordan Krall

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

  

Jordan Krall is the author of Piecemeal June, Squid Pulp Blues, Fistful of Feet, King Scratch, Blow Up the Outside World (co-written with Ash Lomen), and Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys.  His books can be found on Amazon.com