A First Cut

“High School Regicide: A First Cut From the Journals of Stevie Maddox"

by Ash Lomen

(parts of a larger "story")


1.

“You don’t have to enjoy watching while Gerald masturbates onto his first cousin, or Nadine carefully chokes herself with an antique bonnet, or Carter craps into a urn that he stores under a kitchen sink. You just have to pretend. You have to sit back, sniff the cinnamon stick that you keep hidden in your glove.”

I close the book.

What the hell am I doing, the year is 2010 and that groovy fucker won't even be relevant for at least another twenty years.

This is all so pointless.

I'm no vegan, I eat flesh, and I damn well like it when the juices are so red they deepen to the hue of my wine.

I put away the book written by a better man and turn on the computer. I navigate in seconds to a thumb-porno site I have been using for years. I click on a box.

I don’t have to enjoy watching the three men jerking off on the crying meth-head's face. I don’t have to enjoy watching the babysitter fuck the family dog wile some wiley clown holds a razor to her throat. I don't have to enjoy seeing someone who looks like someone I once loved, punched in the stomach as she's forced to stare blankly with tearless eyes, now long dry, into the camera (and how does he manage to keep it from shaking like that).

I don't have to enjoy this.

But I do.


2.

The little wooden box is full of metal knives and good weed that smells like a hasisidic Jew's armpits. It will last for weeks, hopefully longer. The important thing is that I finish the job before it does. A rusty 38. sits on top of the little wooden box. I have three bullets.


3.

I've been noticing some of the whores in the stronger gag reflex section of the "porno bin" have Nine Inch Nails tattoos scratched across their emaciated bodies. I remember how many of the girls in my high-school used to paint "NIN" in big print whiteout letters all over their back book bags. The thought makes me smile.

God that band went to hell.

4.

I know you. I know every little nasty thing you think. I can smell through the veneer of civility to the wide eyed sheep that shits itself inside your brain, wishing that it were a wolf. I know this because I am a wolf. Because I say I am a wolf. Because I know that I am a wolf.

You are a sheep because you want to sleep in your bed and go to work and kiss your wife. I am a wolf because I am happy alone and itching.

Your complacency has made you slow, weekend your resolve.

It has been years since you tasted the blood of a virgin.

And you miss it.

Don't lie.

I know you.


5.

I drive out of state on Monday to meet my drug dealer, I think of my rusty .38 even as I look over his attractive wife who has a snarling oriental dragon on her droopy left tit. She wears a top three sizes too small.

I get a hard on looking at her love handles.


6.


When I get home only one bullet remains in my revolver's chamber.

Did I take it with me?

I smell gunpowder and cum.

I just can't remember anything...


...