‘Well, there was Mystery,’ the Mock Turtle replied,
counting off the subjects on his flappers–’Mystery,
ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling –
the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used
to come once a week: he taught us Drawling,
Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.” -Lewis Carol

I need to ask you.  What would you do?  I mean just what in fucking hell would you do?

Forgive me, this question careens in my head like an air hockey puck.  Just as noisy and just as random with the underlying hiss of air.

Here I am suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Back on this boat and he’s fucking right here with me.

I knew he would be.  I knew it.  I ran but knew I couldn’t hide.

I’m the goddamn protagonist here.  I need some sort of secret weapon.  I’ve got nothing.  I’m gonna get my drink on.

I want hard candy with a soft slick center.

One of the few things I’ve actually learned in life is that the thing to do with an antagonist is to seize any opportunity to ignore them.  Best way to discourage.  Remove the contest by refusing to compete.  Sounds good.

This is convenient for me as I sit at the bar.  It works.  He fades.

It’s not really working, however.  This fucker is relentless.

When later I look, I can still see my name in the glass behind the bar like ghost writing on a mirror long after his steam is gone.  How is that even possible?  This really fucks with me.  It’s right there.  If anyone were to blow on it with hot moist breath, everyone would see it.  This can’t be real.

Those chalky mints with the green nucleus.

A 16 pound bowling ball in my head.

It’s still early.  The only thing I can think of is to drink.  Finish my drunk.  I make up my mind to do it like William Holden.  I switch to twenty year old scotch with a single cube of ice and think about picking a fight.  Whiskey makes me mean.  I bet they have some sort of jail they can throw me in.  Bet I’ll be safe there.  But I’m too much of a pussy and know that If I’m successful at getting into a real fight, I’ll lose because I’ll be so fucking hammered and I don’t know how to fight and I’m a pussy.

I’m sure I’d get my ass handed to me.  Probably get hurt pretty bad.  Not sure I’m willing to do that.  I’d like to punch somebody though.  I just can’t invite that.  It would be nice to really punch somebody as hard as I can.  But I can’t.

So that’s out.

I go back to gin.  Another double Sapphire.

I’m a lion.  I’ve got a mane of hair that curls and is blond.  I go to the bathroom, take off the terrycloth scrunchy and fluff it up.  It’s length and luster.  I have broad shoulders and a deep voice.  Thick blond facial hair and sideburns.  I am a Lion.  I’m a fucking Clydesdale.

Gonna get laid.

Back to the bar.

I’m sporting a serious chronometer.

I have another double Sapphire, gin is me and I am gin, and I decide the rosy cheeked kinda dumpy chick in her Sunday best is sexy.  She’s happy and I’m drawn to it.  I’ve never been the type.  I don’t know how to do this.

I’m thinking about those mints, you know, they’re buttery but soft and green and minty.

I send her another of whatever she’s having.  He tells me her drink is full.  I tell him send it anyway, he winks at me when I tell him to do this.  I stare through him.  What a dick.  Stupid porno mustache pencil neck dickhead.  It must suck to wear a vest that colorful and that dumb.  Like a cheesy tropical duvet.  I think it’s the same pattern as the bedspread or drapes in my suite.

She seems to be game when she gets it.  She waves to me and mouths hello.  I’m close to shithoused or wouldn’t have a chance here.  I wave back and try to look like I have friendly humility.  She giggles and picks up her two green drinks in silly glasses to approach me.  Doesn’t spill a drop.  I learn from her approach that she has big tits, skinny lips and nice legs.  Two out of three ain’t bad.

Good calves in pumps and thighs thick but not too.

Guess where from?  Alaska.  The furthest you can get from America and still be American.  Except Hawaii.  She smells great.  Tropical and sweet.  Like grapefruit and papaya or mango with honey.  More like Hawaii than Alaska.

I like a clean woman.

Her name is Shirley.

Oh well.

Fuck Hawaii, the other furthest place.

Whatever.  She’s friendly and I’m as honest as possible.  I was recently involved in a car accident, that explains the cane, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I was going bug fuck and needed to get outta the damn house.  I’m single.  Nope, no kids.  I guess I’m selfish and understand that about myself.  Better than being a shitty parent.  I confess this all to Shirley.

She’s a little bucktoothed.  It charms me.  I have a thing for bucktoothed women.

I’m not happy about my candy apple red invalid cart.  Is it still outside my door?

Maybe it’s the watch.

Something is nagging at me.

I tell her how cool my suite is.  She says she doesn’t even have a window.  I have a balcony.  She wants to see it.  Look at me, I think.  We could watch a movie she says and tells me her name is Shirley again.  In the elevator she takes my hand and hopes out loud that I like to snuggle.

There’s a snag in my head.  I don’t know what it is.  Can’t describe it.  I’m hammered and can’t isolate what’s clawing at my cerebrum.

I want to roll my eyes but it makes me glad.  I would like to snuggle with this woman.  I would like, I think, to eat and drink with her.  I would like to have a friend.

Her dress is garish and tight but she’s sweet.  Pastel lime lycra.  Push up bra.  She’s a little round but well distributed.  I bet it’s all good when she’s in the flesh.

Her lipstick is kinda orange and her teeth are a little crooked.

She may have a bit of a mustache but it’s blond.

She’s an excellent kisser.

Trying the door gives me pause.   I’m fucking scared.  I know he’s in there.

Now I understand my trepidation.  What risk am I exposing this woman to?  I’ll just insist that she can’t sleep here.  I’ll make sure she leaves before we sleep.  I can do that.  We’ll have breakfast together, I’ll tell her.  We’ll do our business and I’ll make sure she gets back to her room.  I’ll figure out what to say and she’ll understand.  I just can’t fall asleep with her still here.  It will be fine.  Her breasts are enormous and challenge the fabric of her dress.

She’s got her hands on my shoulders while she breathes green drinks on the back of my neck.

I wobble a little on my cane.

I know he’s not here.  I just know.  I can tell.  I smile over my shoulder and get the door open.  If she even had a single clue she’d run panicked, screaming, tears and snot.

No smell of pigs.

I’m cool.  No sign of him.

I cease to consider the danger I’m exposing her to.  I’m a dick.

She goes straight to the balcony and I take a piss.  His electric knife is in the sink.  Fuck.  I take the batteries out, throw them in the trash and cover them with toilet paper

The knife goes in the toilet tank.  I’m thinking that ruins it.

What am I doing?

Somehow she’s found Steel Magnolias on the flat screen above the mini bar.

She yells that she loves this movie.  I smile.

I yell there’s a good one about the ship’s engines on another channel.  I brush my teeth and tell her I’m kidding.

She asks if I have a robe.  I take it off the bathroom door.

She lies on the bed, head propped up by a hand, grinning with sex, straps off her shoulders, boobs spilling out.

Next.

She’s in the robe and her bra is orange.  Orange?  Maybe it’s a bikini top.  It matches her lipstick.  Didn’t say she was a supermodel.  Her tits look pretty good though.  Milky white with a small mole on the left halfway down the expanse of her rather voluminous cleavage.  Tan lines just above the cups running over.  Shirley has natural double scoops, that’s why she’s here.

She smiles at me and lifts her other arm under her breasts so they swell.  Tan lines and areola.  I resist the urge to roll my eyes again but I’m liking the idea of giving her the business.  I like that move.  I have an eye for the subtle and the slutty.  She possesses rosy cheeks and a certain youthfulness.  I more than appreciate the contrast.

Kinda like Bleu Stilton on a cracker and a good dry, but sweet port.  Kinda.

More like she’s wholesome but wants to fuck.

Whatever blows your skirt up.  She does smell nice.  Very clean.  I glimpse where she’s stopped shaving at the knee.  No matter, it’s a light down from there on up.

She spends time touching me.  She does it well.  Her nails, fingers and toes are pristine.  She uses them with grace and carnal acuity.

I ask what she would be up to tonight in Nebraska?  Alaska, she says.  I’m too drunk to be embarrassed.  I’m not sure what I’m doing but I press on.

Hot and bubbly.  I gawk at her voluptuousness.  She’s spilling out all over the place.

She pretty much blows the lid off by asking me if she can put me in her mouth.  I acquiesce with a laugh.  I don’t know what else to do.

It’s all the permission she needs.

She climbs on top of me grinning devious.

She’s a little bigger, but I like the way she feels in my hands.

This is going well.  Her panties are orange.  It’s a bikini and it frames her wide wide hips in a way that begs for my hands.

Her mouth is on mine.  It’s blissfully sublime.  Her tongue is soft and fat.

She reaches behind with a thumb and yanks her bikini bottoms down to her thighs.  She uses a foot and toes to take them off.  It is velvet brown.

Cool trick.  I wonder about my blowjob.

Turns out to be a scorching hoovering.  She is adept.  All the way down.  Again, all the way down.  Again.  Looking up at me right at my eyes whenever she swallows me whole.  Shirley has talent.  Again, all the way down.  Giggling and moaning that I can feel through my stem.  My root.  My pelvis and up through my spine.

I lose consciousness somewhere.

I sleep fitfully.  My forehead sweats but my feet are freezing.  At first, there’s the standard dream of not being able to run very fast or hit very hard.  Impotence.

Next, I dream of a mushroom cloud.  I’m on some some sort of island and there is to be a missile launch.  On my wrist is the watch Carlo gave me.  The second hand moves smoothly to twelve.  I’m outside and I look down at the missile as it begins to glow on the pad.  This isn’t right.  I’m on my balcony, above it all, excited, full of anticipation and suddenly fearful.  It’s not right.  Something’s wrong.  It arcs over the ocean, glowing orange and then an angry red but not into space.  My stomach drops.  I understand it carries a  nuclear warhead and seconds later it crashes into the water and the weapon detonates in the blue ocean maybe fifty miles away.  A city skyline high froth of water rippling and bursting without any respect for gravity.  Massive and threatening.  Continuing to grow and burst and rush toward the island I’m on.  Orange and fiery on what was peaceful ocean glass, it parts the clouds with dark and foreboding strings and horns of the Russian Symphony.  The sun is a sixty watt bulb.  The music screams and barks.  Then it’s a billion watts.  The wind gusts and the ground begins to dance.  It’s spectacular but no shock wave moving towards me like in the movies.

I’m knocked down flat and hard.  I can’t get my breath.  I vibrate with fear and dread.  I feel and hear the impossible crack and boom as buildings shake and dust and chunks rain.  It’s in my mouth and nose.  I look behind me and all the walls and windows are missing.  My clothes are shredded and smoking.  I’m confused and bleeding and see that my skin has melted away.  My hands and feet are fused into balls of bone.  Phalanges curled and shrunken to clubs of naked gray rounded stumps.

Death on the way.  In an awful, terrible hurry.  Death comes.  Death is here.  Doom is here.

A knife with a hollow green blade.  The hilt is silver.  I’m calm.  I slide back down.  Neither here nor there.  Above and on the bottom.  Into purple clouds.  Out of the blue and into the black.

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