You died in the arms of your favourite girlfriend

Coming down to the bar from your fucking ace set and don't listen to what they told you about jumping up and down in front of a laptop for 90-minutes because fuck what they know about anything and you find her waiting for you with two Tequila Sunrises even though you said In & Out Martini (unless she thought you meant later on the both of you with that young stallion she couldn't keep her eyes off -- ho ho) but you totally loved everything about that regardless. Of the five girls you were fucking she was something else entirely. You kept different SIMs for each girl, except those two stragglers from Portsmouth who knew the deal anyway and didn't care about whatever bullshit you had running.

You grabbed her around that sweetly rounded ass and ran your hands down the back of her legs and tried not to think too long of that alleyway fuck where some cat or a rat scared crap out of you and you came on her dress in a panic. She said about dry cleaning and you pushed her towards a dumpster before running back into the club. The one here with you now--her legs alone were worlds beyond any cheap blond against a dank brick wall.

But sometimes she was in one of her ways and it wasn't just the lady problems like she had a real deep worry she couldn't shake sometimes and it made you listen at least some of the time and that's something she made you good at listening at least you know. You'd listen as long as you could stand it then massage her into a relaxed way as long as you could stand it then you'd have your way. But then that night she wasn't just having that.

* * *

"Do you think I'm as worthless as I think I am?" She asked you as you tried to look semi-professional with your elbows in her back and she stared ahead blankly as you tried to catch her eyes in the mirror of the wardrobe door.

"You ain't worthless baby so long as you're with me," didn't tidy things up.

You'd dealt quite well in the past with this line of questioning and you found the trick was never to hesitate in an answer and to always answer with something that at least appeared to sound positive even if it didn't really mean anything. In fact the less meaning anything had the more likely it was to get her to turn around to you and give you that look that look where she looks at you like you're an Escher carved from Greek marble, and those glorious tits are facing you now and they're just about the third best ones you've been that close to (your mother's a disconcerting second; of course by 1987 standards) and she grabs you tight around the back of your thighs with what little nails she has and pulls you in and in and--after five what you felt were solid reassurances it still was headed nowhere. There was something heavy on her and this was about the time you would normally swap out your cell number and hightail it to Concord for your next best catch. But this time you felt as though it would be worth getting her through this.

You returned forty minutes later with some coke and a small whip fashioned from dried Indian grasses but she had already cried herself to sleep with some NyQuil and pills, and doing lines off your '85 Accord steering wheel on the drive over certainly didn't help your judgment but you felt it was time to bring one of those Portsmouth broads into the mix of things. Another forty minutes and there was a phone call and she was downstairs waiting to be let in and so you moved your girl into the en suite bathtub and fitted her with ear putty because you knew this shit was about to get nasty even with a towel stuffed under the door.

* * *

A little history lesson. Despite the synonymy people like to place between "old timey" and "built to last", houses around your area were more like "built to stand, to an extent". That heritage charm you paid $125 a week for wasn't exactly something you'd want to trial an earthquake on. Or even a moderately heavy winter, though you never found that out.

As you opened up for that radish lipped floozy the door scared off some pigeons holding perch on a ledge of loose granite and it fell all at once and you took a sizable brick to the head as you opened your mouth to speak it was quickly closed again smashing teeth against teeth and the floozy there was an unbelievable terror in her eyes you stepped back and locked the door behind you because if you looked worse than she did just then with your blood spattered on her face globules dangling from thick whorish lashes then there was a real problem and she'd be the last one to do the right thing about any of it.

* * *

Her instant reaction to you being on top of her in the tub a bloodied shambles was compacted by her confusion of not knowing why she was unable to properly hear herself scream. You weren't just injured badly, things had gone into your brain and sometimes you can be lucky because the brain is a big thing, but you certainly could've chanced better in these circumstances since you only had another 30-something seconds to live before you left your girl with a heavy mess to deal with, but she would just stay there under the weight of you, partly from the shock, partly overdosed on sleeping tablets, feeling your phone vibrate in your jeans pocket from the endless calls from some nameless girl outside in the rain.

You died trying your hand at "Holy Waters Over Dogshitsville (and Let's Never Attempt to Induce Vomiting by the Wayside Again)"

You were never a fan of your brother's plays, the ones that he wrote on the inverse of Frosties boxes because he would eat that much cereal in the morning that he believed it gave him the inspiration he needed, not only that but he felt that the cardboard that touched the bag that touched those crunchy breakfast flakes was obviously emanating some manner of artistic microwaves that would enter his fountain pen then be reflected back in the form of a creative tsunami no one had seen since the days of George Bernard Shaw, or maybe that guy who paints and rides a treadmill at the same time.

Holy Waters Over Dogsh*tsville... needed some major rewrites in the third act, mostly for the parts that involved large quantities of babies and fire that simply weren't feasable on the one-hundred dollars your father had paid you to stop your brother from fagging shit up uncanny while he held a business conference across the weekend with his poker buddies in the den, oh and don't stare at the strippers when they're at the door or it might cost extra on account of you being a traumatic mongoloid about it, so you averted your eyes and just held out the money he'd told you to steal out of your mum's dresser, and if she asked, your brother needed it for a topical cream to stop that vagina from reopening across his pussy little chest, or I dunno just make some shit up, cockgrill.

* * *

The garage had ample space, but your brother was not at all content with the lighting arrangement. "In the name of Bruce Fredrick Joseph Springsteen where the fuck have you got those halogens pointed?" and so on, and then there were the costumes, because apparently a tuxedo made out of greaseproof paper, no matter how fine the craftsmanship was not gonna cut it on this stage. "Anyway," your brother said, "that's not what the crowds are coming for," and he took you by the hand, "we all know the real reason." Dearly departed, he meant for you.

This was just dress rehearsal, meaning that the roller door was strictly in the closed position until further notice. You gave the messy existentialist stuff some rounding, and the addition of certain jovial characters; Torpus the Centipede who had drunk himself to the point of alcholic hepatitis on account of murdering his brother to take his place by the side of his wealthy schizophrenic bride, was now Toby the Labrador who dealt primarily in high-fives and questioning the idea of rainbows.

Your quick-change artistry was a sight to behold, even if there was no-one to behold it, even if it was with such an unpleasant array of costumes. Having fallopean tube legs glad-wrapped over paper mache venison haunches left the entire membrane soaked by suffocating pores making the whole thing somewhat of a messy ordeal as you thrashed about between each scene to get that shit off, and your brother loved the way you used it. "A struggle between the inner sanctum, and those we interact with." Sure, you said. Just explain to me first what the meat-pants are for.

The third act, you thought you had already explained, would not involve the explosion of a children's hosipital, saved only by the steady-streamed urination from a selection of Britain's most well endowed and noble firefighters. And your brother said "fine, but just try on these trousers I made from a couple of packets of mince meat, and I'll mash them into your legs so you get a good fit," and you couldn't not agree to this; the guy had one of those spikey meat hammers, and it's not like you didn't once see him hack the muscle around a caved shinbone when he was in one of his moods.

* * *

As the rehearsal rolled out, Odile Mauswiche, that filthy child with his blackened gums and scabby edges, was busy scampering around the back alleys and parking lots of town, under the instructions of your brother to round up as many wandering dogs as possible with the aid of a fox on a stick, which your brother had earlier procured for him.

Odile lured seven of the most contemptible specimens into a kind of involuntary rickshaw, and with haste delivered them to your front lawn. At your brother's signal he would unlatch the cage door and out they would pour to break the fourth wall in a way your brother would later state, in his police interview was nothing short of genius.

* * *

The central character, Moses McGuiness was reaching his pivotal scene, after being emotionally bruised and battered (symbolised by the uncooked mince), he would atone for his sins and be washed down the Nile river which would lead him back to his wife, his nineteen children, and that modest farmhouse in Conneticut.

You were laying on the floor arms open when you delivered your final line: "Heal me by the grace of God," and your brother simultaneously hit the button for the roller door, and fired a flare which landed on top of you, setting you alight, but also giving Odile the signal to unleash the pack of rabid dogs, who at that stage had spent a good twenty minutes biting at each other, growing ever more savage.

If everything had gone accordingly with your brother's artistic vision, the dogs would have run in, licked your character back to good health with their commodius antiseptic tongues, then they would have carried him out into the street and woken up the neighbourhood who would then meet you along the sidewalk with momentous ovation.

Instead the dogs bit his fucking hands off. All the while you were rolling around on the floor and it probably didn't help that you were wearing a blazer made out of Superwipes and a long flowing wig coated in shellac for extra lift and shine. Once Odile had extinguished you with that poncho he'd fashioned from a hospital blanket, you had a whole other problem to deal with. You were in the presence of starving dogs, clothed in a mixture of processed animal parts, that with the fire had even cooked a little, and you smelled good.

You began ripping them off in handfuls and throwing the mince at the hungry beasts. It didn't take you long to realise that a good portion of it was caught in the chickenwire cargo pants you had on underneath from a scene that had to be cut (in order to keep the narrative flowing apparently), and so it wasn't coming off fast enough and you made a dash for the street. If it wasn't for that hideous mastiff cross with a misspelled swear carved in his hind leg getting a head start on the others you might have made it to Mr. Czapnik's front door and he might have overlooked that time your brother tried to smoke his prize winning chrysanthemums. You felt the animal's hulking jaw close around your foot, but you still gave a good fight, with the kicking and the screaming, and your teeth sinking into bulbous scrotums, and fingers going up at least one dog's bumhole in the hope of making you the most damn unpleasant meal they ever had.

You died at the Grandma and Grandpa Centre

Ok this is kind of fucked. You do realise that now, right kid? The great thing about death is that you are totally allowed to hate on your parents for the shitty things they did, and you can totally disown them for when they get up here. Judge Deadguy or whatever the fuck his name is* will sort you out in like 25 minutes.

They called it the--what was it--the Grandma and Grandpa Centre? Kid, they shoved you in an old folks home to live out your last days, the same one they stuck your Great Nan in, ok and it wasn't one of those crooked ones where they swap your vicodin for coco-pops, but shit aren't you even a little peeved by this? Oh wait, let me guess you're one of those brave selfless ones, not because you're some little angel but because you don't know any better? 

The ladies generally don't go for progeriatrics; best you might be able to do is a 5-6 midget, but you better have a hell of a sense of humour on you, and a salamiload of that so called confidence they crave so bad, because just because they're rotting corpse spirits doesn't mean their ridiculous standards have waned even a little bit. It's all relative man. 

* * *

Your dad was an asshole, admit it. He called you Widget the World Watcher to your face because he thought you didn't get the reference. He'd take you to the mall on weekends, lose the ring, and get women to feel sorry for him. Remember the panties in the back seat? The station wagon reeked like sex most days and your mum would pretend not to notice. She had your dad's brother a whole bunch anyway.

And he'd get you shitty presents on your birthdays and christmases, remember those? A wooden baseball bat like you were back hitting for the Cleveland Naps, that shit you could hardly lift while you almost lost your head to his clumsy hesistation pitch. That black eye, where they were tossing over whether you'd have to lose it. Not exactly an accident.

And that dog, remember that dog? Could have bit your arms off with its eyelids. Your old man would tie it up in the front yard in proximity to that bee hive, throw a couple of rocks at it on the way to work to keep you away from the sidewalk to keep the neighbours from knowing like they didn't already, and so all you had was inside with boring old mum going out of her brains or the backyard with its mosquito infestation and overflowing septic water. And you still managed to make a killing with your Hardy Boy's knock-off that you knocked up on a broken Olivetti. Yeah you had talent kid, but don't think you're gonna be dragging in supermodels with that ephemeral clout.

* * *

It was on your twelfth birthday that your dad threw that little family meeting. Telling them all that you were on your way down, and at this point it would easier for everybody if you accepted the fact that you would better with those who shared your physiological condition. Not progeria per se, just oldness.

And so your old man threw you in that rickety old wheelchair  he never returned after your grandfather's botched galbladder operation (it had stains), and as he wheeled you up that little ramp he said over your shoulder "Look at all the lonely grandmas and grandpas here; imagine the Christmases!" and you weren't quite sure about any of it. Had you picked up that bat and given life a bit more of a go...would this be happening? Jesus, go easy. 

Your parents stuck you in an old folks home. Your mother had no reservations either, remember that. She certainly didn't think of you as the worst thing that ever came out of a womb, but hell, she may have been just a little past the capability of loving at that stage. It's just that she was burnt out from the inside, your father made sure of it, and you gave her a hug at the automatic doors around her waist, and she just stared ahead. 

* * *

At the time you didn't think it to be so bad, but later on you will. Just listen to a few stories about how most of us ended up here and you'll begin to know how life was unfair. The old man spit, the smells, oh god, the smells. Crusted food that nobody ever wiped away, hell even you could keep it in your mouth. Conversations with hardly a single stable mind, and you'd tried them all, and the ones who were still there were catching onto senility like a flu. 

You'd convinced yourself that suntan lotion was a pain in the ass and soon you weren't going out at all anymore. Your only visitors ended up being other peoples children, and grandchildren who all look at you with the same confused eyes, and that look in their face when you said "Dad thought it would be best for me. He thought it would be right for me here." And soon they'd realised as well what they had become; selling off their parents' homes, so their kids can have that Bachelor's in Creative Writing; purposely keeping them away at Thanksgiving dinners to involve another incident of someone using the smell of that electric knife burning through turkey to shit themselves--that instant assumption that it wasn't just the dog. who Aunt Annabelle had been bloating with scraps under the table. Because of you they remembered what it was to feel bad about themselves, and soon oldies were being wheeled out of there for any imaginable occasion: Car-door Surfing from a Dog Sled Weekend; come along grandpa, when's the last time you thought you had the knees for shit like this? 

Eventually you helped a good deal of them out of there for good. You set up your routine in the hallway, rocking back and forth, murmuring to yourself, and soon enough the families couldn't bare it anymore, each return more and more hell on their hearts. Then it was just you and the whole sick vegetable crew, and the nurses choking the recreation room with a haze of smoke you all hoped would speed things up a bit. In the thick of this toxic miasma there were pains in your chest and you knew what that meant. You warmed up to the nurses so that you could steal their smokes when they tucked you in; pretty sneaky for a kid who could barely lift his own arms by then. Once you had amassed an entire packet, you stayed in your room on a Friday night and tried smoking the whole lot. They always told you that you had to watch your heart, because it was so old, but even the oldest geezer can chain smoke the shit out of some Malboros and not have his heart skip a beat. What you didn't count on is that they'd probably make you sicking up all that creamed corn from lunch, or maybe with all that carbon monoxide blocking your airways you'd simply pass out before anything close to cardiac arrests sets in. Both those things happened and you still got your wish so be happy that you're here kid, but maybe if you'd gone out a little more noble you might not be stuck here courting homunculus strippers with smack addictions that technically aren't possible to carry over into the afterlife. 

*Set my fucking hearings after midday and I might not be too drunk to remember shit like this.

You died riding your bike through a plate glass window

So was trying to text your ex girlfriend about her bullshit with the 3 different kinds of conditioner worth it? Also, you forgot to wear a belt and so your pants were down around your ankles and in the chain, and your boss made a joke about how dying with your pants down was so you, and no one particularly knew what he meant by that but didn't hold back an office full of uneasy laughter.

Oh and for the record it was Harris who put the fish food flakes in your coffee that morning so your pissing on Jenoba's copy of Wired was totally uncalled for and it took all of three seconds of the woman who replaced you's semi-unbuttoned blouse to forget about the minute's silence in the coffee room, and fuck a funeral outside of business hours anyway.

You died in Maxnzhoot's "Suicide Barbeque"

No one seemed to ever point this out to you, on account of your ludicrous overconfidence, but you were kind of a moron weren't you? Like always? Fair enough?

Maxnzhoot's hybrid car was a pain in the ass for more reasons than he was the only one that could fit in the motherfucker without crushing his knees. To the point that fluid would begin collecting in the base of your heels and tips of your toes. But the real problem, from his point of view, was that he couldn't even off himself in the damn thing. Ever tried carbon monoxide poisoning in something that runs off hydrogen atoms and that smug sense of Hollywood Condescension that is extracted from Tom Hanks' pores every time he posts a YouTube video? Let's just say the guy had plans to beef it up a bit.

* * *

So for whatever reason you're out in your front yard in a towel doing your aikido workout, and Maxnzhoot is carrying one of those little Weber deals into the backseat of his Saturn and you're all like, "Hey Max, hold up, I got some killer shanks in the Windsor." Dude, the last time you hung out with this guy, he walked into a pantry to find you with his daughter home from college getting double penetrated by your member and a crudely fashioned clay penis while she called out the name you had given: El Hombre Ceramico. Some bury the hatchet steaks and a couple of beers weren't going to fix that for anyone outside your head.

So he ignored you at first but you didn't let up, and then you noticed he was acting a bit weird right? Who the heck fixes to put on a BBQ inside of a car, unless it's that custom fit deal with gas burners like what Gregorio Tanner has down the street, that you only ever saw through binoculars since you made a fuck palace out of lawn chairs in his pool with his wife.

Maxnzhoot muttered under his breath, cursing to himself that you would leave him be, but there would be no chance of that, tapping on the passenger side window, oh and the door in the back was open so you squeezed in, and "Wha-at can I do for you?" Maxnzhoot twitching as he spoke, and there was a lot of black smoke even then so you bent over and popped the sunroof, "Listen man, no hard feelings about the whipper snipper and your old lady's weimaraner right?" but it appeared by then he'd tuned out completely.

"Yeah man, I hear ya." you said. "I have days like this" and you lit up a cigarette " these days when I can't even wait to get out on the lake to do some fishing," and you leant over to the front seat to snatch the bottle of Rittenhouse "but I get ahead of myself, have too many drinks. End up watching Splash and hope that the escort agency knows what I mean by Daryl Hannah cheekbones."

Maxnzhoot was travelling at about 20kph under the speed limit humming along loudly to More Than a Feeling which was playing on repeat at a barely audible level. After a slow collision with a number of sulo bins you asked him how he liked his shanks and the police weren't too far behind your tail. A fifteen minute stand off followed soon after which ended in Maxnzhoot hysterically forcing himself into a suicide by cop situation, and the backseat so blackened by smoke that they didn't even notice you were in there still chewing on your own charcoaled creation, slowly asphixiating to the sounds of Boston.

You died a martyr for MDAADT

Mother's Don't Always Ask, Do They. You had wondered for some time the origins of this stupid name, and why it would ever be worth dying for.

As a teenager, thirteen or so, Aric Madden was busted rubbing one out by his mum. She hadn't knocked, breaking a rule that had long been made customary by his request. It just wasn't fair to bust in on a guy like that. He'd told a close friend after the incident, that the humiliation had liberated him, or some bullshit like that. More likely Aric was hot for his mum visualizing that moderately thick, uncircumcised cock of his; to witness that sexual energy pouring out in this act of ferocious stimulation. And he wouldn't have said no if she'd asked.

This was his motivation. If half the men in the world were this crazy for fucking their own mothers, then who knows the heightened potential available to us as a race? Aric said this to you on more than one occasion, and maybe you were just a sucker for brainwashing like everyone else, but you really did admire the guy didn't you? His devotion? Your big hero with his messianic complex and his reputation: Honest To God Motherfucker.

* * *

Your body ended up in the street; blood running from the ear facing down. It was dark, but had it not been you wouldn't have known. The cold of coming death was also the cold of London in November. The road hid you well for a bit there, until your own icy breath set you off coughing, and the man who would kill you stood there beside you before coming back to crush you under the wheels of his Bentley.

Mother's don't always ask, do they. Aric busted out of the asylum to attend your funeral, telling them how he'd known you well, what an honour to work together and so forth. He was dressed in a suit that looked more like a robe and he was mixing cocktails in the lobby with a decanted vase. His attempts to hit on your sister by tearing her blouse then telling her she dresses like a cunt. Your brother-in-law breaking him through a table. They always figured they knew the deal with you, but just by association certainly this guy dragged your dead name down a few more notches.

* * *

By age fifteen Aric had left home, frustrated with the continuing rejection by his mother to his advances, and after getting a broken rib from his father shortly after he had discovered the hole in their wardrobe door he had been using to drop in on their love making sessions.

He took a job as a concierge and when possible, slept in unletted rooms. He took to paying for sex, because older women were hard to hang on to, unless they were too old--and heaven forbid anyone over thirty-nine these days isn't a grandmother. The mother of the daughter of the daughter was specifically never to his fancy.

He would seduce young mothers in the lobby all day long to no avail. His red hair and freckle stained face made him only desirable to a certain breed of women, most of whom he did not enjoy the bedroom antics of. He took what he could, and in the end, made them what he wanted.

Mother's don't always ask: Are you here to ruin my life? Because they should more often. Not only their children, but also--and especially--a pencil dicked mentalist named Aric Madden; the jesus you died for. And you were even one of the good ones. Thing is, as always, a lot of assholes lived who shouldn't've.

* * *

Really though, if you hadn't given him that bus fare back in '96, and sat next to him and started talking with him then...well you know the rest, but really, your life wouldn't have amounted to much anyway. As a hobby we keep all of your scenarios mapped out: the best you would have done from any of your unlived alternatives was having sex with Pat Benetar's goddaughter; the one who got a dishonorable mention in the Gravity's Rainbow liner notes. So don't complain, people will remember you.

Aric had this idea that he would set up this group therapy deal downtown for mothers with postpartum depression. They were new mothers, meaning limited wear, and they were vulnerable, meaning that even a physical shit stain like Aric Madden could have any one of them.

This is what you discussed hunched over on your stools in that humble imitation of a Derry pub on the outskirts of Plymouth county. It was all just talk whilst getting drunk, but then he called you one month later and it didn't just sound like talk anymore.

He told you about how they prefer it in the ass on account of them being so disgusted with their own reproductive organs. That they liked being mistreated to counterbalance their feelings of resentment for those noisome little pink squirming shits they were stuck with carrying around everywhere. Soon he had a congregation of some twenty self loathing mothers at his disposal and Aric being Aric soon was looking for more.

* * *

The trouble with starting a cult was that it would involve actually thinking up a cause. Not for his subjects' sake of course, they were nothing more than husks now, but for the sake of the press. He lacked the imagination to appropriate ideas into his own theology, and so in the end he just made himself the god and the rest he played by ear. Any women who had suffered even the slightest trauma during the delivery of their child was encouraged by the fliers he left on telegraph poles, on the corkboards outside AA meetings and sex addict support groups, these women would come to him to be set up with a series of personal counseling sessions. Eventually the women would agree to spend time in his halfway house, which was a shithole he got on the cheap; "stigmatized real estate", on account of it being the site of some modern day witch trials, which aside all else, had left the floorboards blackened and unsightly.

He brought you in as his first leftenant, mostly because there weren't enough hours in the day for poor Aric to maintain a household whilst trying to engage his subjects in a succession of orgies that stopped only for lunch, and a light meal around 11pm.

You chose never to have any of them, but what attracted you to this sick mess was the money. These women had agreed to hand over everything, and many of them being tied up in divorce proceedings were still able to leech funds from their significant other; Aric took the lot. But while everyone was busy fornicating in the name of MDAADT, you took control of all financial assets to branch out beyond that little shithole in Massachusetts.

* * *

You took it to California where the real money was. Getting out of that place could only be good for you anyway since those pissed off ex, and almost ex-husbands had taken your face down from the rumours that were spreading around and there had been a few physical incidents in public already. Aric could do his own damn groceries from then on, you figured. See how he likes the feel of fist busting cartilage.

LA was the cakewalk you expected, so much so that you decided it was easier to keep them here than ship them back to Plymouth. Place was a shithole anyway. You wondered how long it would take Aric to even notice you were gone. A week? Did he even know you had a cell?

You didn't even need to buy a place; that 40-something in Burbank just handed you the keys, and you made her an honorary Sadhu or some shit with her own special robe and everything. Still, there was notably fewer orgies and less brainwashing in your parish than what Aric had going on. You were more like a father to them, and even though you really wanted nothing to do with it, you were the one who would be remembered as the true leaderhead of what ended up being one of the few cults communities that was actually beneficial to its members.

The same could not be said for Aric's lot. Once he realised you were gone, he had an acid flashback and freaked about some imminent paramilitary breach involving flame throwers and german shepards with nerve-gas releasing teeth. He fled the county after convincing his women it was time for a mass suicide, only he didn't stick around long to see if they went through with it.

He soon caught wind of what you were up to in LA and made his way there; recruiting no less than half a dozen women on the Greyhound he spent his last $10 on. By the time he found the house, you were long gone with over $100,000 of mothers' money, and oh how they wept in your absence.

* * *

It wasn't until Aric started causing a stink in Burbank that you became a known fugitive. Worldwide your face was on the news, and you found yourself stuck in London, not really knowing anyone and soon it would be all over for you.

It started out as a noise complaint and escalated from there. Something so extraordinarily disastrous only Aric Madden could be responsible. He didn't have any loaded guns; all of the ammunition he had wasted on target practice in the desert. He did have three crates of hand grenades though, and the ones that worked did bring some unwanted attention.

You were chased down by a young couple who had started out that morning with the intention of robbing a number of restaurants, but figured your reward money was a safer bet. They stalked you down a back alley, and the man knocked you down while the woman unloaded a pistol right at your ear; the news had talked you up to Mansonesque proportions, and so they thought deafening you and blindfolding you would be a good idea to get you around with minimum fuss.

Using the sound of the busy streets you made a run for it, and shook your blindfold loose but you couldn't hear a fucking thing. The couple reported you anyway, and within the hour a fiery mob had stretched out across a closing perimeter.

* * *

What made it worse was that London itself had recently fallen victim to its own wave of cults. Why you were there in the first place. Most of them had been dismantled by authorities before any kind of mass suicide could take place and so you knew that there would be potentially thousands of these pre-conditioned humans wandering the streets, and who gave a shit about mothers at that point, it was about the handing over of worldly possessions, and cash. Lots of cash.

As well as there being a lot of zombies in the fall out, there were also a lot of pissed off friends and families. And the way the news put it, it wasn't so much of a stretch to implicate you in every single one of those groups, as far as anyone was concerned you were the second coming of the IRA.

While you were still on the run Aric turned himself in, pleaded insanity, and cut a deal. The women followed soon after; they all loved you, but they also testified in court that you were the one and only true leader. Because as far as they knew it, there was nothing on this mortal coil that would harm you one way or the other.

You died in a haunted forest during a repeat of the Korean War (pt. 2)

No one much liked you, it didn't take a genius to work that out, but gee, someone had to take a handle of this thing. The fellow who had died twenty metres back, that was a tough one. You weighed up carrying him, because after all it was his God-given right to be treated to a proper burial, even if he came off as some kind of troubled agnostic at best--but you made a promise you would come back for him after this was over.

Then you lost another one. The poor boy who you tried to keep calm and close to your bosom the whole time, mumbling that dear song about his mother's cheesecake, oh goodness, how could he just run off like that? You made a short prayer but really was there any hope for him? Even if he found safe haven in the company of some family who weren't secretly feeding him nitro glycerin, only to be sent back to us in a million pieces; what methods would they brainwash him with to follow these cults of warmongering affinity. What beliefs were there out here? Not Buddha surely, you knew of him in a round about sense and certainly he was a good enough guy, certainly one of the more tolerable, fictitious deities. But this was something else. You made another short prayer, and you hated to think that no good would come of it.

God would guide you, you were sure of that, but it was certainly an odd path He had chosen. Gunfire was growing, each individual ping of each bullet rang louder inside your ear until you were sure that you were being led to a defining moment of faith. Without putting yourself down, you were without doubt the larger of the targets in the group, but your faith would guide you, and shield you from any harm that would come to the others too. The volume of the battle had escalated to the point that you didn't hear the next body fall backwards with a thud against the damp earth.

Though you were close, there was no reason for them to be shooting at you. You were well hidden by the scrub of the forest; there were many layers of arbor separating you from them. It was another non-bullet death, and this time people couldn't not notice it.

* * *

You heard them chatting among themselves as you led on ahead, and they weren't letting you in on it. Overhearing words here and there, parts of sentences, it didn't take you long to work up to the idea that you weren't all from that mall in Pomona. There were all kinds. That one guy who finally opened his mouth to speak, the one from the Universal Studios tour, the brother of the man fallen now a good five hundred metres back. He hadn't done a thing because it had taken him up until now to really know if any of this was happening. And as he knew it, you knew it. God had brought you all here for a reason and you had your theories.

--Wait, wait how many people had grandfathers in the Korean war? one says over your shoulder.
--Well mine...I think mine...man I dunno.
--I was a runaway, the fuck you think I know about my grandfather?

And so forth, and you walked with your hands over your ears from then on.

* * *

After what felt like another twenty minutes, you felt a slight tug at your elbow, and then a dragging weight, and you looked down to find a small girl hanging off your arm. The sound of war flooded back to you like a television switched on at full volume. You stopped to let everyone else catch up, but there was no one else. This little girl of about six or seven, wasn't part of the group. She was a tiny Korean girl, the base of her dress soaked in mud with little splotches here and there and on her face. The group had left you, and maybe if you'd seen which direction they'd headed you could have caught up again. You'd been walking and praying aloud, very loud, and you were a walking target, and they weren't about ready to deal with the kind of crazy you were dishing out right there. You'd never thought of yourself as crazy, right? Maybe it stood out more in a place like this. With people like that.

--You're not safe out here my angel, you said to her but she just smiled through the gaps of missing kid teeth, and there was a small amount of blood in her hair as you patted her. It wasn't hers.
--Where can you take me? you asked. A bullet shot into the mud, showing you how soft it was and it made a little sloppy sound. Then another. And another.
--Were you sent here by God? You were weren't you? And she kept smiling and she nodded like she didn't even know what she was nodding to, and there was a little sloppy sound, and you felt it as well and you thought maybe being a big girl would save you, that God didn't want you to lose all that weight for a reason. But it wasn't like that.

You fell forwards into the mud and you could still see through one eye, and girl looked at you with a tilted head, like you were some sick puppy dog she could no longer help.

You died without submitting your final piece for NME

You weren't exactly Lester Bangs material, but people still got a kick out of what you did. It wasn't until that smash and grab at the animal pharmaceuticals factory that things started to go downhill for you.

They found you curled up on your desk with some blood and broken vials scattered around you. What they initally thought was a suicide note turned out to be the last thing you'd ever have published. It was a review for an album you had not bothered to name. So they used it to fill out some Bozo Dog Band retrospective and people still lapped it up:

TRACK ONE IS TOPS ITS THE BEST SHIT EVER
TRACK TWO IS OK BUT I DONT REMEMBER [unreadable] UNDER THE BLEACHERS AND THEY CALL HIM WALLY WANK-OFF FOR A REASON
TRACK THREE IS DOUBLE TIMES BETTER ENGLISH THAN TRACK ONE I MEAN IT HAS THIS SOUND IN IT THAT SOUNDS LIKE A RIP OFF OF (DON'T SAY THE BEACH BOYS -- edit) BUT SHIT HOW MNAY POP BANDS CAN EVER HEARD OF HIM I DONT HAVE TIME FOR GRAMMMAR NOW LADY
TRACK FOUR I FORGET PROBABBYL GOOD
TRACK FIVE WAS SOMETHIGN ABOUT BOATS OR HOW THE GIRL SINGING HAS A NICE [unreadable] WUTH THE HAND CREAMS WE GET THEES DAYS WHO NEED ASTRONAUTS
TRACK SIX WAS ABOUT LOSING A DOG OR AT LEAST ONE OF THE SONGS ARE ABOUT THAT
TRACK SEVEN IS ABOUT LOVE OR ROMANCE
TRACK EIGHT IS ALSO ABOUT LOVE OR DOGS OR GUITARDOGS
TRACK NINE IS ABOUT MY PROBLEMS WITH WOMEN
TRACK TEN IS ABOUT A BOAT ON THE QUARRY AND PIRATES THERE ARE PIRATES DEFINENTLY MENTIONED SOMEWHERE ON THIS CD
TRACK ELEVEN IS ABOUT MURDER IN THE SOUTH EAST BUT THE MAIN THING ABOUT KILLING A MAN IS [unreadable] THEY EVER TRACE IT BACK ALL THEY'LL HAVE ON YOU IS THAT BAG OF COMPOST
TRACK TWELVE IS CALLED [unreadable] I THINK ITS ABOUT WOLVES WITH TEETH MADE FROM THOSE PENCILS YOU GET WHEN YOU PLAY KENO
TRACK THIRTEEN NOT SURE IF THERE IS A TRACK THIRTEEN BUT IT MIGHT BE THE WOLF ONE REPRISED AS "EIN DOG FROM STATIONWAGONMEISTER" WHO KNOWS ITS A TRUE UNSOLVED CRIME IF YOU CHOOSE TO DISCUSS THE SHIT WITH ME.

You died in a haunted forest during a repeat of the Korean War (pt. 1)

One second you were walking and then you were just on the ground. No one understood it and no one wanted to understand it because they were too busy trying to get the fuck out of there.

A kid actually stepped on your body, just by accident, because he was clumsy as hell and the fear didn't help that. You weren't quite dead yet and you made a sound that made everyone turn back for a moment. Long enough to see if they were next. You were face down in shallow puddle of green water and there were bubbles, but no one wanted to stop for you. Could you blame them? Well, don't worry, you'll have plenty of time for that.

* * *

You were all away from the gunfire. There were no bullets. But you all seemed to be heading towards the bullets, and whose idea was that anyway? That fat lesbian that had an agenda to piss everyone around. That fat lesbian mother of five. What was her deal? She'd told you she didn't deserve to be there, she deserved it less than anyone else, and that god would guide her along the chosen path. And you were like Really? Because it would seem right now that god is guiding us to where ever those oriental fuckfaces have the bullets and are using them. And lord knows you weren't prejudice, but come on, after you've been thrown into a war as a result of the train on the Universal Studios tour taking an apparent detour, well the way you saw it, basically anyone from then on was an oriental fuckface to you.

* * *

This oriental fuckface up in front of you wouldn't shut up the whole time. He was scrawny and pale and he was from Kenosha Wisconsin and he was kind of like that kid from Jurassic Park except many orders of magnitude more a pain in the ass. Instead of asking lots of stupid ass questions about dinosaurs, this oriental fuckface would whinge about his momma's cheesecake all day long like he was gonna fucking marry it. He even wrote a song about that precious little cheesecake and from what you could recall it went something like this:

O-Oh Cheesecake cheesecake (oh-wohh-wohh)

My momma's cheesecake cheesecake (oh-wohh-wohh)

It was the first one

It was a special one

Golden like my sisters hair
She'd never go to college

O-Oh Cheesecake cheesecake etc.

Even in death you heard it non-stop and you couldn't shut it off and the other spirits were telling you how it had become your revenge song, and that you could only rest peacefully if you sought revenge on that little o.f.f. You told them that in case they hadn't noticed, you weren't even Korean and that you didn't give a shit about revenge plots, haunting the fuck out of Syngman Rhee, or killing the Japs at Starcraft, and they said too bad because in case you hadn't noticed, you died in their haunted forest and soon you would know what it was to have to listen to the squabbling of their many fish wives for an endless eternity. And you were like, alright. Beats the squabbling of a little o.f.f. that's for sure.

You died without killing your suicidal boyfriend

You woke up in the early hours in his unfamiliar bed and he was whispering to you. He said, A gun barrel can be like a birth canal if you know what to do with it. Place gun to head, pull the trigger. Place gun to head--he sounded different; mumblier. You turned and saw that he was saying these words in his sleep.

Pull the trigger. It'll shrink you right down. And you crawl right in there, into that gun barrel, and you'll come out the other side and it's like you're not even born yet. Place gun to head. You shook him awake and he gave you a look like you were his mother.

What are you doing here? he said.

Under the sheets you kneed him in the junk and hopped out of bed, blindly searching the floor for clothes. After what seemed like minutes of frenzied patting around the floor with your hands, you left wearing one of his t shirts and a towel around your waist, but it was ok; you'd parked the car out front and no one would see you at this hour.

What are you doing? adjusting his question as you ran out the door, but he was still too asleep to follow after you.

The next day he didn't show up for work and you got a call. No you didn't know the fuck he was, you said, and you didn't appreciate strange bitches riling you with their telephones before the afternoon hours. You knew this was his supervisor, she even sounded as morbidly obese as he had described, as you had both laughed about, and you felt a little empty about right then trying your best to get him fired.

Then a minute later you got another call. That asshole. After you'd left he tried his hand at an overdose except he didn't have anything good lying around and apparently advil, multivitamins and no-doz don't really get the job done. He was at the hospital anyway, and you weren't even sure why they called. You were his only contact ma'am, the nurse said and she did not sound obese, she sounded slender and African American and beautiful. That asshole. He was resting she said and you said ok and she hung up.

* * *

Well he didn't really want you there. Because she was there. She was prettier than you, that was easy to admit, but her ass was kind of flat and those thin soapy legs--you looked up to the ceiling for any added support that might be holding her weight. She wasn't a puppet, just some freak of poise and posture. You hadn't been together that long, but he had told you what he liked, and you were what he liked, and so what was this then?

They hadn't seen you yet. You turned to walk away and the tears were welling up, stupid tears that you wanted nothing to do with, and then the opportunity just kind of presented itself. Unattended on a wheelie table, in a small plastic cup, were three vicodin. You recognised them from rifling through your stepmom's handbag, and you even took one once and it didn't do much but you pretended like it did and you were at school laying by the football field and you let some boy make out with you for a little bit and then he bought you a sandwich. That was pretty sweet.

But only three. You'd seen how many Dr. House takes, what like six between each ad break? You knew it was t.v. and they had to exaggerate characters to make them look tough, and you loved that, but exactly how many did you need to mix into a cup of nondescript hospital coffee to kill your idiot boyfriend?

It was a stupid mission, but relationships can really make you crazy, right? You decided it would be a plan if you just went from room to room, facilitating your charm where necessary, and admit it, under those thick rimmed non-prescription glasses you had a ton of it. You warmed up to the oldies and took what pills you could get. Which was a lot really, since they were of that hardened generation who believed hospital meds made you gay, and that the nurses were implanted with high tech vacuum tubes courtesy of The Android Goering Mind Control Division.

You figured you had time to kill until she left and you could conveniently waltz in without any idea of how close you had come to ruining this meaningful relationship. Wow I bet they crossed paths in the elevator, he would think. You wondered if that kind of thing turned him on.

After a good twenty minutes had passed, and a particularly striking African American nurse in the hall was giving you looks, you ducked into a small waiting room to mix your concoction. You crushed the pills in the hood of your hoody and got about half of it into the cup of white from the vending machine. On the side of the cup there was some kind of scratch and win deal and you just couldn't help yourself.

The spending money was five grand and the holiday was to whereever you damn pleased. Those coffee companies must have a lot of money, something you might have remembered thinking for about a split second before being flooded by every other thought and the reflex action to throw the coffee over your shoulder, leaving a powdery stain on the crimson walls. It's a colour for calmness, though you didn't ever notice that. You ran down the hall and you stopped at your boyfriend's ward and she was still there and you stood there waving the cup in their face, and they just stared at you like a couple of deer caught on reality television and you gave them the bird and kept running, and you ran home and you got naked in your living room and you drank wine and you smoked a cigarette.

* * *

A day later you woke up vomiting and it wasn't the alcohol. You actually hoped you were pregnant because if it wasn't that then it was something else, and it was something bad and you were screwed. You didn't go into work, and they called and you didn't answer. They called your boyfriend and he was like Who? Listen, I don't like bitches calling me when I'm getting my joint worked on, and he hung up and he hoped that that got you fired. By then you were pale as your bathroom tiles and the colour under your fingernails made you think of some dead grandma.

Those fucking old people. What had they given you? Maybe they had passed on the dregs of some experimental gestapo bio-chem shit...oh man your head was a tilt-o-whirl and you were crawling for the living room to find that hoody and the idea of licking it out never sounded so good. Your tongue was dry as you wiped it against the cloth and you wondered why the fuck you were wasting the last seconds of your life tasting something so goddamn awful. You remembered about some starburst somewhere on the floor near the t.v. but you don't remember if you made it or not.

* * *

A gun barrel can be like a birth canal if you know what to do with it. Your former boyfriend tried catching up with you a month later, when he pointed a gun up his nose and pulled the trigger. Because he'd never seen someone do it that way. Maybe there was a reason for that; he only ended up making a horrible mess of himself. Part of him did shrink down, and he kind of made it through, for a moment there, his spirit face all stretched and bloated, searching desperately for you. And you were there. In the arms of some hunky fireman slash endocrinologist; they have quite a selection up there. And you were all like Enjoy your life of being the elephant man, and you kicked his face back down the tube and

You died trying to prove your worth in stupid music for jerks

Hottest Girl: Oh wow so you're the guy who got tonights Paraphimosis setlist? Here, these are my legs. How 'bout that park bench; I want you to open them as wide as you can. I want you to just wreck me.

Somehow you found yourself awake and it wasn't even midday yet. Fresh on your mind was the usual stuff. Stuff like:

If you make the perfect mix-cd, will a girl from the Internet have sex with you?
If you make the perfect mix-cd, will that jerk off from work stop leaving month old ceiling pickles in your locker?
If you make the perfect mix-cd, will your sister finally call you back after you punched her dumb boyfriend and you might have told her you were secretly in love with her but you were too drunk to remember?
If you make the perfect mix-cd, and your landlord overhears it on his way to beat your door down, will he be all like: Forget about it! This month's on me.

You got right on it. This one was to be your opus. At least your opus for '08. You hadn't had a mix you'd been proud of since early '06 (The Kenosha Kids and The Toilet Meat Situation made that shit a cakewalk), but this was gonna be altogether something else.

Oh and while we're on the topic, let's not forget your mantra. Fuck High Fidelity. So you didn't read the book, and it's quite likely that John Cusack destroyed the essence of something there, but ultimately they just flat got it wrong. You don't make the sacrifice of being a 29 year-old virgin without learning a few tricks on how to win a girl's heart. The tricks they don't want you to know about.

* * *

An Elephant With No Trunk Is Still An Elephant, were an obvious choice for an opening track. Way too obvious. It was a tough call to cross them off. The Acromegaly Medley would have kicked it off great. But you had to keep reaching. But how far would you take it? The Baoding Timpani Orchestra? No woman would talk to you after hearing that. Oh, but maybe that one. Isn't that what this was all about?

If you make the perfect mix-cd, will you stop sleeping 16 hours a day in a bed stacked with 10 year-old copies of NME?

Somehow The Velour Babies were slated in at track 3 with Sliced All The Disco From My Cloven Heel (But Can't Turn My Baby Back From Chinchilla). Even you were beginning to scare yourself. OK, so the kitsch of the 70s Cambodian Dance Pop (Oh Donny! Donny! My Son Will Die A Baggage Handler) was fathomable, but honestly, something in you was starting to wane. This was no longer about putting music in the letterbox of the girl you'd been watching at the supermarket, and returning to masturbate on her front lawn a week later. No, this was actually getting weird.

It's like those guys who get too far into porn, and then one day they can't turn back until they're on the news with their face blurred out, with whatever hilarious animal permanently attached through their modified sweatpants.

* * *

Two days later and more than half the tracks you still couldn't come close to deciding on. You made a waddle down to the general store, hoping that by now somebody had caught on to the notion of Mountain Dew Energy Drinks, they just hadn't thought to notify you via the appropriate channels.

You were taken somewhat by the woman before you in line. You looked down to check for any obvious food stains. The decrepitude of your situation had allowed you some social breathing space, and you actually found yourself asking this woman:

What's your favourite song right now?

Excuse me?

Your favourite song.

Well, it's going to sound kind of silly, since you won't have heard of them.

Try me.

I'm rather partial to the inebriated sludge of Jörmungandr's Whiplash.

Get out. They're only like the most necessary revitalisation of that genre, ever. But what's your favourite song?

She leaned over and whispered with her wet lips against your ear.

Let's Fuck In The Back Of My Stepdad's Saturn.

You found yourself standing outside, staring through the shop window at a woman's behind, with a melted Twix in your hand and half an erection. You decided that walking home at a brisk pace may inspire something new, or at least gauge concern for your first heart attack.

* * *

When you got to your apartment building, there were jewel cases as far as the front steps. You recognised these. Oh what the fuck. You figured, whatever's happened, by now it's done with. When do you ever find yourself walking in on something like this in the process? That day.

The guy who had broken into your place, had actually gone in, taken some stuff, and on the way out realised that he has no fucking idea what any of this shit music he was carrying was, and was left with no choice but to dump it and go back for more. He had to, the pawn shops were closing in an hour and he knew if there wasn't any Air Supply in that crate, then it was no fuckin dice.

Buddy, do you live here?

Yeah...

What the fuck, man. I wouldn't even swap with you dude, and I live in a shipping container by the motherfreakin docks.

Well...uh...

Motherfucker I ain't heard of none of these bands. And I taught motherfreakin Music Appreciation 303 back in the day! Before I was swept away by a right nasty dissonance of the mind! Causin me to get naked in every boat I was ever on! More of a problem than you might expect!

Look...I'm sorry...Just...

Motherfucker! Ain't none of us fuckin leavin til I find a Journey, or a Boston, or even some fuckin Carly Simon. Post-70s Floyd ain't even a tender no more.

Just take a seat. Please. We can work this out, I think.

What is this shit? Daddy Dingo Freeeks With The Hypotenuse Party?

Why don't I just burn you something?

Why don't you just shut the fuck up before I wreck myself!

I'm just gonna go to my computer over here and put you together something real quick.

Soap Poodle? We're Not Just For Gaywads Anymore?

It'll just take a minute. I swear.

Pissy Ruinsock Live At The Tandooridrome?

Here it is...here it is. Please. Let's have a listen. I don't mean to brag or anything, but I've got a good feeling about this one.

If you make the perfect mix-cd, will a vagrant avoid accidentally puncturing your lung with his catch knife, in a wild flaying of arms and nautical-lingo-spouting semi-nakedness?