He just wasn’t a bright kid,
mother told the
doctors

“Got his finger stuck in
the bottle
and he panicked and smashed
the bottle against his head.”

Right

Well, it was true that
there were no
other toys for him
around the house. There were
only empty wine
bottles

ever since
daddy left

she ran to the desk
opened the drawer
shuffled around
got the scotch tape
and a condom

Ran towards him and
fell to her knees

She hurried to put
the condom on,
laughing like a child
knowingly doing something
bad, yet exciting

Then she wrapped the whole thing
in scotch tape
giving it plenty of
sharp ridges and pointy
spots

When it was done she spat on
it a few times
and gave it a few
licks

It was the best way to get
fucked while
dealing with a yeast infection

The scratching sensation
on the inside
is simply divine, she
said

they were having another one
of those heated
arguments on the porch
when the kid ventured
into the
street and got run over by a car

He didn’t survive

And there was no
getting out from under this guilt

“He tried to run away from
our screams.”

“Yes. He did.”

“And we can only… go after
him now.”

“Yes. We’re going after him.”

She circled her arms around
his neck and pulled him
in for a kiss
while holding the revolver
against his nape, thumbs on the trigger

It was the sweetest kiss
of their entire
marriage

The bang ended the problems
for both of them

he was a doctor

Goddammit, they were looking at
a doctor
He came into the casino in a suit,
the same suit every day and night
dark gray
shiny with grease around the
elbows and lower back
smelly
patched up in places

he kinda forgot what it was like to be
sober

and lately he kinda forgot what
it was like to win at the slot machines

he forgot how to perform surgery
how to diagnose a patient

forgot what the company of a woman felt like

forgot what love was

he was a machine that consumed cheap
but strong alcohol
Rubbing alcohol filtered through bread
That stuff was 70% alcohol
his liver knew it

"Ah, pleaseeee, for the love of God, don't
make me work with this
stuff again," he would scream while
playing at the slot machine

and the bouncer would walk up to him
and say, "Hey, hey, doc. Everything all right, man?"

"Oh, sorry. That was my liver shouting
through my mouth. He's a pussy."

They say companies that deliver food
get very suspicious when their
regular customers,
the people who order every day,
stop ordering all of a sudden
They even check on them

Well, we don't deliver food
but we got really concerned when
our favorite doctor stopped
showing up
all of a sudden

Maybe our managers would've checked
up on him but
there was no phone to call
and no door to knock on

Still, one of our boys went to the nearby
park and asked the homeless men around
for our favorite doctor
and the man handed him a
newspaper

Shit,
it wasn't even on the front page
there was some political shit on the
front page
Nobody gave a damn about that article

The real thing was a few pages
after, not even colored
HOMELESS MAN DIES AFTER TRYING TO
PERFORM SURGERY ON HIMSELF
IN PUBLIC RESTROOM

That was a doctor with guts
Guts pouring out of him
straight into the sink
and another cluster found in the toilet

We framed the article and pasted
it on a board in the back room
of the casino

our very own patron saint

she woke up because her feet were cold
The window was open
and she had not the audacity to
stand and shut it in someone else’s house

He was still asleep
beside her
The sheets were stained with her maiden’s
blood
That was all right
She was twenty
But him.... He was also twenty but that’s not the point

This was the boy who
put her through hell during both middle
and high school

The bully

There was that time when he pushed
her down the stairs
and broke her thumb

that time during the field trip
when he threw a rock
straight into the side of her head

that time when he put
a frog in her
lunchbox
And another in her backpack that she
carried home

That time he kicked the ball
in her face giving her
a bloody nose

that time when he threw a snowball
at her ear

And there was another incident
resulting in a chipped tooth

and all of that was besides the
name-calling and the random hair pulling
and the tripping and the scaring
and all...

Yet now here she was
Here they were
In his house
In his bed

And all because he contacted her the previous day
and apologized for everything. Truth
is her life placed some nasty miles both
behind and ahead of her
and someone being nice all of a sudden...

It was so easy to get her
And what did he think of her now?

She felt tears trickling down
her cheeks as she thought of this and
stared at his sleeping body beside her

Maybe the time to
get revenge was now

Or was it not?

silence
Silence is the most important thing
It's what renders headphones
and earbuds
and headsets one of the
greatest
inventions of the modern world

The ability to enjoy entertainment
without disturbing those
around you

Silence

It's important to know this about it
cuz unfortunately some of
the lessons
about the importance
of silence
are taught by the most
extreme teachers

Myself and a friend of mine had been
taught the lesson by such a teacher

We were twelve and thirteen
and he got a new gaming console for
his birthday and we spoke with another
friend to lend us a cool game,
some shooter

I stayed over the night
and we started playing
and the TV was quite loud
The game was fun
We were loud
and there were bangs and explosions
and guns firing and screams and flashes

and suddenly
the door of the bathroom bangs
open with a kick and my friend's
grandfather storms into the room
with froth about his bleached lips and
he grabs my friend's arm, twists, and
pins him to the ground and holds him there
as he looks around the room with crazed eyes,
more scared than both my friend and I

I think what's worse
is that the old man was previously
on the toilet
using it
and he got up without wiping
or washing his hands
and came into our room like that

My friend's father came when he heard
the commotion and
dragged the old man away
and left us mute
and shaken

we didn't say a word until he
came back a few seconds later
and lectured us about PTSD

but I guess the real moral of the
story is that silence is important
and headphones are really one of
humanity's greatest inventions

the stress was messing with
her periods
so she got even more
stressed as a result

Oh, and that guy she met
through the dating app, he considered
himself catfished. Why?
She looked like
in the
pictures. No difference.

More stress...

It all started with the premature
death of her
mother
And then there was
the messy divorce and all that
But she didn't wanna think
about it

There was only one way to cope
with the stress

She sat on the couch
and turned the TV on
and got the
nail clippers out of her makeup kit
and used
them to chip pieces of skin
off her knuckles
and then chew them like sunflower seeds

it worked wonders
as a stress relief technique

The skin of her
hands looked very much like
Swiss cheese but
the dents were rimmed with redness

She watched her hands
as she chewed on the pieces of skin
and then it hit her
"Oh God! I'm such
a dumbass. I forgot to take off my
wedding ring.
No wonder the guy considered
himself catfished. He
saw my hands and
thought I was some unhappy
wife looking for hookups. Oh dear..."