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?

You died on set with the new girl

Just to clarify, the new girl didn't die. Only you did. And just to clarify, she didn't kill you, OK? And just because being dead drops your IQ points by like three-quarters, doesn't give you the right to ignore this shit and go dumbass haunting her for the rest of her already ruined life.

* * *

Jadey from Wardrobe: ...girl's got no respect for herself, can see it already. And you know that's the biggest mistake a lady can make getting into this industry. That it's ok to not take care of yourself.

Spags: Looks a number to me.

Jadey: Yes, she still bothers to wear make up if that's what you mean, but darling have you taken a look at her ankles?

Spags: What about em

Jadey: Besides them being the filthiest? You think I want to be working with a girl who can't even be fussed to watch out for the dirt under her ankles? These are the things darling, these are the things.

Spags: The fuck ankles Jadey? I'nt the fuckin thirtees.

Jadey: Exactly this isn't the thirties darling. You think a girl could afford a wad of dove in this century. Not that priced Cali shit, just dove is what I'm saying.

Spags: Well maybe they'd been decent enough to spot the lady a hotel for the night, she'd have em clean for certain.

Jadey: You think they're all money? And would it make a difference.

Spags: Well don't know about you but I tell you I'm in a hotel I run that bath all full as it can go and hot as it can go too. Sometimes I even run the shower the same time down atop a me.

* * *

Spags the DoP had a thing for her from the start. It was something in her form, something undefinable. He was fond of the term je ne sais quoi, though he would never say it aloud. Only inwardly. And he would glow, inwardly. You...well you thought she was just another hussy with a lifetime supply of stylish footwear that has the added benefit of treating any number of STDs. All while you walk.

You'd been hawking Yodokrohm Health Sandals for three months. Or at least, you were a well defined key player in the hawking process. That was you in the ads. Some might call you an icon. Yourself and maybe your agent. It certainly didn't dampen your ego. Remember that drunk fuck you demanded call you Reverend Yodocream and she even said it loud enough to your satisfaction, absorbed into the walls of your soundproofed condo, but you still gave her one in the throat? Oh, like no one was going to find out about that?

Spags had you wired man. After he thought you were fucking the new girl, like a week in, he did up the whole thing: under the bulbs, under the mattress, dark corners of the ceiling. Devices protruding near-invisible from the spines of books you would never read (a nice camera-mic combo aimed from within the O's of The Brothers Karamazov). Once it became apparent that you were not having relations with the new girl, and that your taste in women seemed to polar between masculine prostitutes and sleepy high school girls, Spags found himself both relieved and sorely disappointed. With his vicarious fantasy paled, Spags was left with no choice but to actually ask the girl out.

* * *

A few days later, when Spags had actually built up the courage and found that delicate balance between being drunk and remaining articulate, he approaches the new girl on set.

Spags: (Shuffling steps)

New Girl: (Fanning herself with the treatment you handed her moments earlier; a softcore porn production where she would play a lesbian school teacher forced to assume the identity of a man in order to seduce a homosexual principal, who killed her brother in a reckless motorcycle accident. In the final scene it is revealed that the principal is also a woman posing as a man, and that the real man the school teacher is tracking down has traveled back in time to advise his younger self to get a sex change so that when he's older he can murder both the principal and the school teacher after first being part of a really hot threesome.)

Spags: (Continued shuffling. Increased looming. Gaffer verging on annoyance.)

_Insert your small talk with the new girl._

New Girl: (Eying you with incomprehensible disdain.)

You: (Stepping down from the stage, putting one hand on the shoulder of Spags for balance, slipping right off, falling into a mess of cables. Gaffer definitely annoyed, though refrains from making it know verbally.)

_Insert what you said to Spags about his profuse sweating loud enough for everyone to hear_

Spags: (Realising that he is now the focus of all eyes.)

New Girl: (Throwing Spags a brief glance. Not entirely bothered one way or the other, though certainly void of any yearning approval. Glancing back at the treatment, she momentarily considers the process of having you killed professionally.)

* * *

Bad weather had forced shooting to be delayed for a week. In that time Spags was nowhere to be seen. Then, in the last hours before wrap-up he was back on set. No one really noticed. He was hiding in the background, setting up something. Setting out to destroy you.

His apparent humiliation a week earlier in front of the new girl had sent Spags into a bad state. He'd taken this time to edit a compilation of your most heinous sex acts caught in the hollowed covers of Dostoevsky. Thing was, the notion of somebody broadcasting your aptitude in rough love making, really wasn't such a bad notion to you. If only he hadn't beamed that shit right into your shit eating shoe salesman grin.

The projector light threw you into a daze of three or four seconds. Long enough to step backwards into the new girl, who was not really by this stage, that new, modeling alongside you some type of croquet get up. With your foot caught in a wicket you took a nasty dive backwards, and spent the last moments of your life knowing the wetness of your own blood, whilst staring up at a screen where a pale obese woman with jiggling thighs is begging you to pull a size ten sandal out of her ass.