another wednesday has approached, this one with just a touch more lethargy than usual. i got called into d'anna's to make sausage yesterday, on top of loads of homework and band practice. today i make the trek out to the reservation for class. what i look forward to most: convincing my driver to stop at the gas station so i can buy a carton of smokes. it's the little things in life. at the suggestion of stefanie i am going to post some stories i have been working on. today's installment will be the story i am going to be using in my upcoming dirtbag zine "mangle on". i haven't really proofread it yet, but whatever. this is also the story i read at the cabin a couple months ago, along with my other zine 'high atop a tree at night'. if you like this, stick around for future...stuff.

How I got my Severed Toe (title to be reworked)
The wood floors in the gym echoed hollow in the vacancy of a sunny day; the cavernous space looked huge when only five pint sized people were in it. Carl was engaged in a small-time playground rivalry and his team was being trounced. His partner Bret was big and slow, standing just over six foot and boasting a stomach that gave him an almost perfect pear shape; a good wall to run around but a poor imitation of a point guard. Their opponents weaved past him, executing what could actually be called a play by middle school standards. Ryland tossed up a toilet bowl lay in, turned and walked towards Carl.
“Looks like you lose again fags. Sucks to be you.”
“It’s not over yet! Takes a fag to know one you choad nugget.” Carl grabbed his partner and tried to confer some sort of plan of action, but didn’t know any common terminology. They settled on a charge towards the basket and as they turned around Carl made a break for the hoop. As he moved closer and closer to the rim Ryland’s cousin Rymer swooped in for the kill. He rushed at Carl and knocked him to the ground. Carl dropped square onto his knee. The crack in his leg echoed off of the walls, reverberating around the room ominous in the silence. Carl ground his face into the floor boards screaming as Bret stood in horror behind him. The husky partner looked at Ryland and shouted for him to get some help.
When he saw the slow smile creep across his lips Bret closed his eyes in acceptance of his fate. Roland, the third cousin and all-time referee for the games, hit him across the head with an aluminum bat retrieved from the utility closet. He crashed to the ground, chunks of his high and tight floating across the room. The three cousins stood above the body, waiting until Ryland pulled out a screw driver and drove it into Bret’s overlapping throat. They all began stomping the body, crushing the bones into the organs, tearing at his limbs until they broke free.
It took about four minutes of beating before the corpse began leaking smells; thick, clinging, acidic and pungent blends of feces and bile from his broken orifices. His portly face grew bloated and bruised from repeated hits, lacerations letting fat swollen blood ooze from him like a microwaved sponge.
Carl pulled himself against a wall and watched as his friend was beaten. He tried standing but as soon as weight was shifted to his right leg he collapsed. The room spun, the color of his skin went pale except for around the knee where capillaries pumping blood into the swelling reservoir of fluid had turned purple. His voice eluded him, blocked by the lump wobbling in his throat.
The cousins turned and grabbed Carl’s arms and broken leg, carrying him to the torture wracked screams and slow grinding of his leg shards rubbing against each other. A door in the far back corner, adjacent to the gear room was unlocked by Roland. As Carl looked around, he strained to see through darkness as he was led down a steep slope, surrounded by cool, damp walls marked faintly with crayon and water-based paint. Carl’s eyes closed as the pain dulled into unconsciousness.
When they came to a landing Carl felt himself being secured to a table. A burst of light roused him, turned his eyelids from black to red. Above him stood a woman wrapped in grey, plastic apron and gloves tight against her bulging flesh. Metal objects lay on a table next to him: a long thin piece of iron with jagged barbs hooking every few of inches on both sides, a pair of rusted scissors, a small hammer with a solid, forked head.
“How you doin’ sugar? Need a Tums or a Tylenol?” Her voice was a bit above a whisper, sounding aerated as if she was afflicted with a cleft pallet at birth, or perhaps the carry over of a lifelong lisp.
She lingered for a while around his right leg, fingering the top of his worn converse. The shoe flopped off with hardly any effort. The sock stunk, he could smell it from the five foot seven he stretched.
“How you feelin’? Hurtin’ pretty bad bub? You should really get some medical attention for this, it could really get infected.” As she spoke she grabbed his knee and slammed it down, jostling the broken shards against each other. Carl screamed, high in his throat, its resonance flimsy against the stone walls.
“You should have worn some clean socks. A stinky foot is a terrible thing,” She said, her voice made her sound like a character on Sesame street, but the humor of the situation was lost, buried deep inside his stomach under layers of stress and tension. “Perhaps we can fix this.” She softly touched his big toe, beginning to run her fingers in between the tiny wiggling nubs. She started using both hands, rubbing vigorously, contorting the foot’s shape slightly as she pressed and stretched. Low cracks and pops began, vaguely hurting over the blistering heat of his knee. She leant over the foot; her mouth hovered above that big toe, her breath warming it. She was drinking in the essence of that rotten foot, forcing her nose against each toe in turn. She moaned, licked, caressed. Carl looked to the ceiling, praying that this sick worship would mark the end of the ordeal. His ears began to ring before he felt it, he looked down and his big toe was rolling around in her mouth, severed in sinking into her throat. A bitter scream crawled from his bowels but lost force by the time it reached his throat; all he could manage was a whimper and slow, shaky jitters.
“Oh pup, you feel good to me.” He looked up at her, fighting the burn of the bright lights, searching for the face behind the pain. The watery eyes, the hairy upper lip, the slight gap in the teeth: she was the assistant lunch lady; she made his sub sandwiches every other day, always making them just as he asked. She bent down to feed again.
He opened his mouth, trying to scream at her but was muffled as a hand plunged into his mouth. The fist was just a bit too big to bite down on, so his jaw contorted and stretched as she wiggled her hand back and forth. He choked, eyes watering, just before he began vomiting. It stuck in his throat until she pulled her hand out, pushing his face to the side to drain the half digested nachos and chocolate milk.
What he needed now was her name, if only he could place it there was a chance he could evoke a shred of humanity in her. It danced on the tip of his tongue but would not come forth; the tears were streaming down from the corners of his eyes and he could feel them welling in his ears.
“Ms Pappadopoulos, please, god why are you doing this?”
“Don’t give yourself any headaches sug, it will all work out,” She pulled a long syringe from her coat and plunged it into the soft flesh above the wound, into the juicy swelling, squeezing the liquid in with carnal satisfaction. Carl’s eyes rolled back as darkness took him once more.
***

His eyes creaked open, several torches had been lit in the cavern and he could see the walls for the first time. The high, lumpy cement slabs were covered in blood, chunks of flesh, bits of hair. The cousins had returned, scurrying about on the floor like rats. He couldn’t find Ms P, but knew she couldn’t be far away; he smelled the thick acrid stench that followed her. Roland pulled Carl’s head up, breathing thick clouds of candy bar colored rotting teeth stench into his face and eyes.
“You’re fucked. I’m the pimp, you’re the ho,” he stuffed a moist rag into Carl’s mouth, stretching his jaw once again. The taste was bitter and mildew-y. Roland signaled and his cousins disappeared, moving into small nooks in the walls, vanishing into the narrow grey slots.
The seeping moistness of the rag was choking Carl, but little could be done as restrained as he was. He lay on the table, bouncing the back of his head against the hard surface.
“Come on down,” Carl strained his ears, he heard something incredibly faint, but there. It sounded like a male voice. The funk of Ms Pappadopoulos’ slurring voice came wafting next.
“I’ll have you know we are taking the upmost care of little Carl here,” The voice crept to him like corn syrup, bitingly sweet. When the door opened and they entered the room Carl saw the look of horror on his father’s face. His father, so strong, so worshipped. He stood six foot six, blonde and bronzed, a professional wrestler for nearly a decade now. His arms were thick as trees, his legs like stacks of tires, yet at the sight of his son so injured he staggered: it was all the weakness the cousins needed. Roland was the first to move, diving from above with a hammer to the back of Don Smitherson’s (stage name Lord Freyr) blonde head.
A cough of spit flew from his mouth as he fell to his knees. Roland stood in front of him, driving the hammer down onto the crown of his skull. Rhymer took out several four inch nails and quickly placed them on top of Don’s foot while Roland hammered it in. Ryland placed a 600,000 watt short range taser to the hulking man’s ribs. Carl tried to look away as he saw his father vomiting the thick whole wheat bread, fried eggs, and the bacon they had shared together this morning while his body convulsed and quivered. He lost control of his bladder and bowels after thirty seconds, filling the room with a stink almost as vile as Ms Pappadopoulos’ searing breath. She stood in the corner, slowly fondling her breasts, hair frayed out of her industrial hair net.
The shell of his father lay on the ground, shuddering with the final firing of neurons that gives the dead such a terrifying exit from life. The cousins set to work, stripping the clothing off of Don. The muscles that cascaded his body were now limp, they looked much more fat than brawn. Ms Pappadopoulos slowly approached Carl, blocking his view of his father. She held a hideous smirk, peering into his face. “It’s going to be glorious, perfect for all of time,” She stepped back and twirled with surprising grace, raising her hands above her head and unleashing a pungent, onion odor into the room. The look on her face was orgasmic, her mind racing back to the day she had first seen him.
April 20th, the Jamba Juice Sports Center, his arms so brawny. The sweat that hit me that day smelt of lilacs. Freyr beat up that awful man, made all the crowd laugh at his public humiliation. He was meant for me, destined to hold me in his arms while I sleep.
The three hyenas were halfway through skinning him, their faces covered in small, scrap pieces of skin and blood. The work seemed effortless to them, as if they relished doing such horrible deeds. Their overlord stood in the corner, twirling around slowly and murmuring to herself.
All those fan letters but no answer. When the soul is corrupted, unavailable to the needy, the flesh must do. The skin shall suffice.
The air seemed to be pouring out of Carl, his head grew light and dropped suddenly, as if a dream had suddenly plucked him from his waking nightmare. The images he saw were beautiful, sprawling, and never-ending. He did not even try and touch them, but merely float through them and breathe them in. There was a cloud, just in front of him that he pushed past and as he made his way through it his eyes opened. Shaking him awake was his father, towering above him in the dungeon.
Carl screamed into the rag in his mouth, screaming for joy and for mercy, for an escape with his beloved father. But Ms Pappadopoulos was behind him, a large remote control in her hand. She laughed at Carl’s face, it contorted with such animation as to be a cartoon. She moved a control and his father slapped him, moved another and he picked Carl up, breaking the restraints, and throwing him to the floor. Next to him lay his father’s corpse, skinned and mutilated, intestines pulled out and half eaten. She had created a monster out of his father’s image, Carl gasped and choked on blood drawn from the slap. He could only think of his father’s warm embrace as the monster picked him up above his head and began stretching him. The sound of Ms Pappadopoulos’ hideous, guttural braying rang out as Carl’s skin stretched, muscles tore. He screamed as he ripped in half. The monster dropped his legs to the floor where the three cousins lie dead, their heads twisted counter clockwise and full circle. He bled out high above his father’s head as he heard the wench whisper, “Come to me my sweet, let’s make love on the pyre of our romance,”

wednesdays

here it is again, the dreaded wednesday. today it comes with a lovely armload of 11 hours on campus, four of which are sitting around waiting to go to class; this translates into me looking for the stupidest things I can waste money on through ebay (just ask me how close I came to buying a lifesize cardboard cut out of a character from Buffy for like sixty bucks). one would think that this much time would propel me into a productive frenzie, but really it just sort of zaps me of my will to do anything.

when nine o clock rolls around and I can finally leave this place, I am headed right home to do some homework. luckily I don't have school tomorrow, but still.

the past few weeks have been full of subdued excitement, documentaries (some of them about raves...blech) and shitty movies (shroomz: high tension wrought through a college freshmen's stool). overall I am feeling strong about everything, but lacking in some hidden compartment that won't show its ugly head. maybe I need to move?