Angels of the Toilet Bowl

By S.T. Cartledge

I try to cling on to the edge of the bowl and slide down. I think this is the right house. I think this is the right bathroom. I could be wrong, and then I'd be fucked. I slide down smooth porcelain, down the bowl and into the s-bend. I rest here a while in the darkness, in the fetid dunny water, and take the moment's still isolation to contemplate upon the situation.

I want to go back to the sewer city, go back to the other sewer angels and hope everything settles back to normal. But Gendo tried to kill me. And the others were going to leave me for dead.

Do they even want me back?

Do I even want to go back?

When I am with them, I am afraid and outspoken. When I am alone, I am lonely and depressed. At least in the sewer city I have Asuka to talk to. But sometimes I wonder if she'd be better off without me.

A light turns on. By the sound of the footsteps, the Adam in the bedroom must have woken up and come into the bathroom. The light shuts out again as he sits down.

There is no escape.

I need more time to think, I need more time to sort out my head.

Adam.

I need more time.

Adam.

Adam.

I need more time.

Don't block me down here, don't flush me back to the city. I want to yell out all sorts of vulgar things at the massive ass sitting right above me but I know it won't accomplish anything.

There is no escape.

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BIO S.T. Cartledge is a 400 ton bio-computer with built in CD, DVD, mp3, BluRay, SatNav, VHS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Vinyl, Kindle, Nook, InkJet, Cognitive mapping software, and wireless Stompbox, that can be all yours for 365 simple payments of 984.7³ gold pieces plus postage and handling. For more details, terms and conditions, please navigate yourself over to http://themanifold.wordpress.com/ and have a very pleasant day.

Couples and Bees

By Eric Suhem

Roy was on the golf course committing atrocities. Roy and the other players in his foursome were all wearing Bermuda shorts, slamming golf clubs into the heads of unsuspecting rodents found in the underbrush. Nearby, there were figures in Black Death costumes putting their golf balls into the ball-washing machines and pumping furiously, their Titleists acquiring a new-found glow. “We

have an ancient historical precedence and imperative!” declared Mavis, leaning back in the seat of the golf cart, chewing unsalted saltines, a big black tattered book propped up on the scorecard clamp. “From Chapter 79385,” continued Mavis urgently, “’Roam freely, conquer the earth, and strike down the rats and hornets!’” “I like the cut of your jib, and the angle of your gait, Mavis,” said Roy, bringing a 3-iron down on the head of a snowy egret, approving of her twisted interpretation. After an hour, Roy and Mavis maneuvered their golf cart off the course and onto the sidewalks of the nearby suburban neighborhood, thinking of their in-laws Bill & Harriet and Edna & Edward frequently, looking for pets to subdue. A bee took notice of their activities.

The mist was rising over the tundra as Bill and Harriet flipped through the TV listings. They thought of their in-laws Roy and Mavis infrequently as they sat on the two matching Barca-loungers in the barren frozen wasteland, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes. “Where is my cummerbund?” muttered Bill intensely. At this point, the bees flew up out of the ground, and lined up, staring at Bill and Harriet confrontationally, hands on hips, or legs on thorax. “We demand to know why you are invading our lands and have soiled our landscape with your man-made garbage!” yelled Beatrice, who had appointed herself spokesbee, despite much contrary opinion among the group. “I’m late for the dance, I’ve just been trying to get to the dance all this life, that’s all I’ve been trying to do. Right now I’m looking for my cummerbund!” Bill said defensively. “We will lead you to it,” said the bees as they gathered together in a deafening, menacing, buzzing roar, swirling around Bill and Harriet. “No, no please don’t sting us to death!” yelled the two Homo sapiens. The bees said quietly, “No, we wouldn’t do that,” and instead each of the bees gave Bill and Harriet a light, gentle, pleasurable kiss, sending them into dreamy ecstasy.

“Edna, don your tennis smock now! We must frolic, but it will be frolicking with a purpose!” cried Edward jauntily. Edna looked up from her knitting, wondering what was up. “Have you gone off your meds, Edward? The chicken croquettes and fruit salad must be prepared by midnight! What kind of cook are you?” Edward had been charged with preparing hors d’ouevres at the Von Goffstead estate. “Again Edna, I am not a cook, I am a food technician!” Edna eyed her knitting needle, which started to resemble a bee stinger, raising her eyebrow to yell, “But a technician gone haywire!” And Edward retorted, “Edna, with a playful jab!” He returned to the kitchen and announced, as mini-explosions emanated from the stove pot, soup flying onto the wall, “The seasonings are having a lively battle over which one will dominate the taste of the soup!” This was a couple of days after what Edward had called ‘a vigorous session of sautéing,’ in which a kitchen fire burnt the east wing of the house to the ground. He continued, “Edna, we must play tennis soon, it is urgent!” Edna had dreamt of the trees and earth, the water and fire, the air streaming through her free soul. She turned to Edward, saying, as bees entered through the ventilation, flooding the room, “I’m sorry, Edward, but I cannot be held in by the boundary lines of the tennis court!” And with that, Edna threw down her knitting, clutching a tennis racquet with a small, quickly-evolving beehive at the end, and marched into the nearby meadow and forest. Edward returned to his work in the kitchen, poured gasoline into a frying pan, and then retreated into Van Goffstead’s study, reading Chaucer, babbling about the end of the world.

Roy drove the golf cart over a bump in the sidewalk, swerving to avoid a swarm of bees. He and Mavis tumbled out and bumped their heads on a potted plant. Rising dizzied from this incident, they ran to the nearby hardware center to begin a career selling lawn-care appliances and jars of fruit-flavored honey door-to-door, on the a.m. shift, happily enduring the wrath of awakened neighbors, and of vacuum cleaner salesmen in boxy suits, complaining with clenched fists that this was ‘their turf’, as sweat poured from their brows in the morning heat. Roy and Mavis were now insistent about lawn clippers, but were not clubbing wildlife with 3-woods. Wherever they went, a few bees followed.

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BIO: Eric Suhem lives in California and enjoys the qualities of his vegetable juicer. He can be found in the orange hallway (www.orangehallway.com)

Hombre Lobo

By Catfish McDaris

"Hey dude, you're looking a shade ragged, for a hairy motherfucker." "Yea, I haven't been able to shit for three days, last full moon I got whacked out and ate a Mexican wino. He must have been full of cheese and beans and Mad Dog 20-20, I've been stopped up every since. Mind if I use your facilities?" "No problema amigo, but I have to warn you I've been meaning to move the outhouse and I never got around to it." Hombre Lobo took the trail down to the shit house. It was a gray wooden shack with a half moon cut in the door. When he got near, his canine nostrils flared and twitched in disgust. Hmmm he thought, smells like a combo of dead road kill skunk, stinky whore pinoche, and rotting barf. His belly was grumbling like a dump truck full of skeletons on a bumpy road. Fuck he thought stench and all. Opening the door, green bubble-eyed flies were playing soccer with a rat turd on the seat, a blood red spider with a hard on was waiting in its web for a snack. Lobo shooed them out and dropped his laundry. Just as his hairy ass cheeks hit wood, he heard muffled Chinese coming from between his legs. He rose up and peered down into the hole, two oriental men knee deep in shit were pushing a wheelbarrow. Too late the big one was on its way, Hombre Lobo let out a howl as he dropped the mother lode. The Chinamen were cursing him. “Chinga, chow, chui, chop suey, you big hairy cocksucker shit machine." Just for that Lobo took a king sized wolf piss to wash them off. He walked back to the house and told his amigo what happened. “I forgot to tell you my neighbors wanted to fertilize their garden. Don't sweat it Lobo, you're the reason God made a middle finger."

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BIO: Catfish McDaris was born in New Mexico. He was an artillery gunner for 3 years in the army. He was contributing editor to Shrimp! and Latino Stuff Review. His words have been translated into many languages including Esperanto. He's been put up for the Pushcart many times and by Gerald Locklin. He won the Uprising Award in 1999 and the Flash Fiction Award at Gypsy in 2010, judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate. Catfish is in the 2011 Poet's Market under The Louisiana Review with Gary Snyder. McDaris is now retired from 34 years of slaving for Uncle Sam, now he may attempt to start a catfish farm and that's how he got his name.

Fat Eskimo Fuck Feast

By Joe Jablonski

“I’m ready,” she calls from the back room with a husky, Eskimo accent.

You enter the room wearing nothing but tight leather short-shorts. Your hair is quaffed to perfection.

She’s laying on a half collapsed bed, her stretch-mark riddled legs closed and folded to one side. Thick, fur-lined lingerie is wrapped tightly around her, bulging with the plumpness hidden within.

You crawl onto the bed next to her and begin nibbling on her hear. A deep, throated moan escapes her lips.

She pulls her robe back from where it opens in the front, the flab of her tan naked body melting into the bed beneath. Purple nipple tassels cover her large areolas, half absorbed into low hanging breast the size of bowling balls. On her ass is a stretched tattoo of Van Damn.

You achieve a full erection.

“Come and get me,” she says, her words muffled by a mouthful of fresh fish. Scales erupt from her mouth as she speaks. You smile as you lean over her and lick it off. Your tongue scrapes across two day stubble.

She spreads her legs wide, and motions you in.

You push back her front-butt, not too rough or over eager, but slowly, with the soft caress of a gentlemen.

Angels sing from her vagina.

You get on top of her, pull up and begin to enter. The first two attempts are failures but the third rings true. At the moment of penetration, your eyes go wide. You blow on the first thrust then proceed to cry for an hour.

She holds your face between her breasts as you sob and tells you it’s ok. You believe her and fall asleep dreaming about Eskimo pie.

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That Ass and the Vein Poppets

By Douglas Hackle

I’ll be the first to admit my forequarters were never too easy on the eyeballs. But now that the hoarfrost has melted, they look good. Cute even.

Sexy maybe.

My hindquarters, in contrast, were always beautiful-spangly, the talk of the village these legs, loins, and ass were. Natural to assume the thaw of the rime patina would restore their handsome appearance, bring back the spangles. But after the melt, my hindquarters are vomit-ugly, no doubt as lifeless-looking as that redneck roadkill I hit-and-ran just before I went to hibernate in this bed last winter. Oh well.

In a whirligig of waking, I shuck a twist of wet bedclothes, fall onto the bare hardwood floor. Little Perkins (that blasted vein poppet) be all up in the corner of the room ’n shit, but I ignore him. I rise to find cheroots and scuppernong laid out on the table, waking gifts sent by the me of five months ago to the me of now. But I’m not interested in the waking gifts. I’m only interested in that ass--I’m hungry for that ass. But that ass wasn’t in the twist of wet bedclothes I just shucked.

Gotta go find that ass.

Naked and awake, dick swinging, I run for the door. Alive and lusty, I am. A veritable veiny dervish. There’s an air of carnival in my warm red blood, a youthful note of defiance in my warm yellow pee. I sprint, stumble through the door to the next chamber. Little Perkins is sitting in the corner just like he was in my winter-room. He’s also in the next room and the room after that. It’s like he’s following me or he’s pseudo-omnipresent. Either way I continue to ignore the little totalitarian bastard.

Man, yo fuck a Little Perkins and fuck a vein poppet! I think to myself in anger.

I navigate a series of zany switchback staircases, smell her perfuming cloy when I breach the top. That ass can’t be too far away now, I think excitedly. I barrel through more doors and more rooms, my nose following the heady note of aged baby seal ambergris through the air. My throbbing vein puppet (not “poppet,” mind you) is engorged with red blood and yellow pee and white semen, ready to take care of that ass, teach it a lesson or two.

When I finally burst into the room where she is, I discover that Little Perkins has gotten to her first. And he’s all over that ass. A dozen of his boys are there with him, more vein poppets--the damned, confounded, creepy-ass things. They’re all over her too, rubbing their spidery blue and red vein hands, vein mouths, and vein puppets (not “poppets”) all over the milky curvatures of that ass.

Little Perkins turns his vein head toward me, though he cannot see me due to the natural blindness of his species. “She woke to the sight of your ugly hindquarters. She’s done with you, dude, done with the idea of you even. That ass loves me now, me and my natty-veiny hindquarters. She’s mine. Ours.”

If this were just Little Perkins by himself, I’d give him a smart box to his vein ear. But I’m outnumbered; despite the vein poppets’ diminutive stature, there’s just too many of them. I have no choice but to leave that ass and her little veiny suitors to themselves.

Dejected and rejected, I drag myself back down to my winter-room. I light a cheroot and take a few sips of the scuppernong, but neither makes me feel any better. I’m hungry, so I dress in full fig and abandon my room once again, go back to the series of zany switchback staircases, only this time I descend to the ground floor. There’s no one in the lobby or lounge, no one at the front desk, no continental breakfast served. So I leave the château in search of food. There’s no valet to bring me my car, so I walk.

The air is warm, and there is still snow on the ground though it will not be here for long. After I walk a few miles down the lonely country road--the only ingress/egress to the château--the breeze wafts the wholesome aromas of coffee, fried eggs, and pancakes to my nostrils. Sure enough, just ahead is a Perkins family restaurant. There are cars in the parking lot. But as inviting as the restaurant looks, I pass it by; for obvious reasons, the restaurant’s name reminds me of that no-good Little Perkins and the painful loss of that ass.

I soldier on and soon alight on a familiar bend in the road, though at first I’m not sure why the bend is so familiar. But then I remember: this is where I ran over that guy when I was driving to the château five months ago, back when I still had that ass (she was lovely in the passenger seat), just before we embarked on our long winter’s nap. This is the scene of the crime, the place of my hit-and-run.

Sure enough, I spot a large mound in the snow on the wayside. Like me, the redneck roadkill has been frozen the whole winter, it’s just taking him longer to defrost. I decide to sit by his side and wait, to apologize to him when his consciousness returns. Perhaps the two of us can travel together for a while, find a different restaurant together. Maybe a Denny’s. “Two heads are better than one,” Little Perkins used to say all the time back when we were still dogs.

But later in the day, when the snow finally melts and the ice flesh finally thaws, consciousness does not return to the still, fat form at my side. The man is dead. I killed him.

Now I understand that not everything that freezes and then thaws necessarily comes back to life.

I get up, resume walking down the road, now intent on turning myself in.

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Bio: Douglas Hackle writes fictions that are bizarre, darkly humorous, horrific, veiny, vainglorious, stupid or some combination thereof. His stories have [vein poppet] appeared in several online and print publications. Douglas resides in Northeast Ohio with his wife and little boy, and he’s not exactly sure how that blasted vein poppet be gettin' all up in his bio n' shit.

Visit him at: http://douglashackle.wordpress.com/