Headless Read online

  I just like to fight and take baths with girls and fuck in my underwear. I laugh and then black out from the searing pain of my injuries. While I am unconscious Sir Big Ears continues to admire me and reminisce more about his youth. Down the street two choirboys sing in falsetto. They emphasize the words killing and murder with a trilling vibrato that displays an innate affinity to swing. Giving each word its due, their winged phrasing banishes sentimentality. Sir Big Ears has the gray skin tone of an elephant, with a huge flattened nose. His ears are purple-red, like eggplant.

  When I’m well enough to walk I visit 4-H Club. Sir Big Ears performs the initiation rite to induct me and my boys into their dowdy gang. They use two carp as part of the ritual. Both fish lying down on a white platter, back to back. Not working together. Lonely, sad, weak. Both fish go hungry. Maybe kill each other. He flips the carp over. Fish, belly to belly, work together, eat well. Live longer. Now I’m in.

  Lame ceremony. I do what I want.

  Next day I’m gambling with lots of big bills fluttering from the sky like autumn leaves. Girls yelling and giggling everywhere. I have more sex in my underwear. One girl comes in and slowly takes off my cool shades. She says, don’t I know you? Oh shit man, my old girlfriend, Carla Balz. I accidentally insult her by calling her a bitch and a whore. She flies into a jealous rage and calls me a faggot bastard. She pulls out a knife and cuts my new triple-panty girlfriend in the face. Then she says sorry for the disturbance and leaves. Not cool. When I get home I pull the sheets down to get into bed—am I a sleepy man, or what?—and there she is, with her knife, lying naked under the covers, the blade between her teeth like a Ninja. Very cool. My room, extremely messy. She calls me a slob. Comments like that don’t really bother me. She says I have to pay to fuck her this time. No way, honey. She cuddles up with the knife and pretends to snore.

  I’m feeling kind of antsy. I go for a ride on the subway train and contemplate my life. Every day another gang tries to get a foothold. I open my journal and write, new guys talk big. A lonely cowboy sits across from me plucking a burpy bass guitar, singing about life on the plains. The toes of his pointy boots curl up like bent spoons.

  Back at headquarters me and the boys relax, get drunk, and cruise around. We see the Ambassadors hogging the street with their expensive clothes and big limos, so we ram our car into their crowd, honk the horn, and get ready to fight. Their leader, Kimono Joe from the old country, comes waddling up in a black silk robe and says I should show some respect. That’s my cue to show him how fragrant my underwear is in its bubbly sex state and then kick some ass.

  Word travels back to 4-H that we, the Punks, are moronic fuckers, and that we insulted the largest cheese in Asia. Leader of 4-H cuts off his pinkie finger to apologize for my bad behavior. Now we’re in really deep shit. I retreat into laughter. More thugs will be coming to mess with us. An airplane lands. A pile of mobsters cram into five limos. Through the rear window of each limo, on the shelf where a box of Kleenex usually sits, there are bunches of dried chili peppers that symbolize angry hot brain. Not a good sign. Fancy shoes clacking on the sidewalk. On the train tracks my gang attacks them with pipes and baseball bats. We run through a tittie bar. One of my boys is stabbed, bleeds to death. That night we get drunk and honor our lost comrade with silence and sorrow and then many lewd jokes. Question: How do you stop a dog from humping your leg? Answer: Suck his dick. I look at a photo of my dead friend. Light cigarette. Burn sad pictures. Pour whiskey on flame. Poof, just like lighter fluid. Man, this feels like the end. One of my boys wants to quit. No more fighting. Buddy don’t, I say. Wind blows in through a window. Flame goes out. A squeaky violin worms its way down the stairwell. Buddy leaves. Takes his share of the money. More hard feelings. I almost kick him in the face but I don’t.

  Ambassadors and 4-H waiting outside, chase buddy down, run him over with their limo. Blood pours out of his head like syrup. I am so angry now. Totally out of control. You ain’t seen nothing. Another big fight at bathhouse. I pin a guy down on the ground with a picnic bench and choke him like helpless insect. Silence. Kimono Joe from Ambassadors lights a fat cigar. Load of guys in a huge hurry. Fifteen limo doors slam rapid. Sir Big Ears and Kimono both say surrender Noodles. My gang, very scared, almost crying. We must apologize quickly. Someone cut off a finger. Show Sir Big Ears that one of us has no finger like him and everything will be back to normal. Shiny pulls out a knife and says he’ll do it but he just sits there trembling with the blade resting against his skin. He hands the knife to Mushroom Head and asks him to do it. He says okay but then he gets the shakes and bursts out sobbing. Everyone too big a baby. So I cut off my finger, no sweat. Pinkie gone. I walk outside with my boys trailing me and show both bosses missing finger, bloody hand, but they don’t care now. Not good enough. Too late. They beat the crap out of us. Carla appears, tries to intervene, screams no, falls to ground. Now she’s super bloody. Big knife wound. Silence. I have weird flashback about everything I’ve ever eaten: leeks, tuna, rice cakes from boyhood, squishy tofu, and, as an adult, every style of ramen. No booze, just solid foods. Then I pull out my knife and go berserk. Fight 20 guys. I cut one guy in the jugular and blood gushes out of his neck like geyser. Everything happening in slow motion. I get shot many times in the torso. A pale milky voice begins to sing as a flurry of spindly notes is tapped out on an antique harpsichord. My knife … it is far away from me. The Ambassadors pile into their limos. The leader gives my bloody body another long look, shakes his head, and then rolls up his window. The limos drive off. My journal blows away page by page.

  I close my eyes, stop breathing, die, and immediately drift off the ground in a translucent vapor. A dog approaches my vacated body and marks my shell with a yellow pee squirt. My throat is parched, my stomach in knots. Once again all I can think about is food but the only thing I see on the street are little animal droppings, so I swoop down and chew them up as quickly as possible. Greasy and full of ash. I want to write terror is the facilitator but my journal is gone, so I write it in mud with a stick. Hovering against the side wall of HQ I see two older men wading through a muddy pit. They are shirtless, their hair long and wavy, their bellies ballooning out as if pregnant, their throats no thicker than needles with tiny blue flames coming out of their mouths. If they were strong enough I’m sure they’d fight me for one of these droppings, but they don’t. It is important to realize how much excrement there is in the world and how good it tastes.

  OF TWO MINDS

  When the doorbell rings the boy sits in his room and grows short of breath. Ding-dong was what I heard while huff and puff emanated from my diaphragm. His mom yells coming, and five seconds later answers the door. My guardian screamed, soon I will be there, and a few heartbeats after that pulled open a wooden panel that swings on hinges. The boy is 15 years old. I was three years into puberty. The invasion is underway. The act of conquering and pillaging was upon me. His language is inadequate. My use of symbols—whether thought, written, or spoken—forever missed the boat. Paranoid: two voices in his head, simultaneously, fighting to be heard. I’ve had delusions of persecution and it should also be known that I nursed an exaggerated sense of my own importance. One voice is distant, observational, policelike, as if it were narrating all physical and cognitive action. The other was intimate, subjective, which is another way of saying, I’m all about double-talk. First he sees himself behaving in the present moment. Then I found myself blathering on about something I’d just done. Each sentence, a shadow of its former self, as they say. There’s a reason he does this: the young lad suffers. I was a schizophrenic. He remains one. Many untrue things were said about me. He doesn’t see himself as a person in the world, but rather a hapless character doing things in a story. I was never among thee. Please note that everything told herewith is true with the exception of the crime. No one prepared me for the psych ward. He is an unreliable narrator, as they say. I crawled through thick underbrush to slay the Gorgon. Constance, a lady he does not like, is here
to visit his mom. A woman, whose name in Latin means faithful, stormed the homestead in search of my progenitor. This so-called friend of the family treats the lad like he’s a moron. Whenever I was in the presence of the big lady I did something dumb and she made sure I was aware of my idiocy. At some point the boy is expected to make an appearance, to say hello. I, the one and only son, had two minutes to step out to the foyer and salute the Governorness of Creepville. Constance is sexually confusing to the young man. Because of my age and lack of experience in the world I had trouble appreciating a giant woman with a deep voice and a crew cut. Since he remains in his room, frozen stiff on his bed, it is only a matter of time before Constance and his mom barge in and force an encounter. Unwilling to budge, welded to my beloved mattress, the old grandfather clock ticked and tocked in anticipation of the aggressive, uninvited guests, who made it their business to fling open doors and demand conversation. He needs a hiding place. A secret spot was what I so dearly craved. The boy thinks of sequestering himself under his bed or squeezing into the closet. An idea bubble suggested I crawl beneath my sleeping quarters or flatten my body into the tiny room where ghosts have been known to lurk. He considers making himself invisible. I weighed the possibilities of becoming unseeable to the naked eye. The master of subterfuge walks into the bathroom and lays down on his back in the bone-dry tub. I tiptoed into the water closet and assumed a prone position in a vessel ideal for slitting one’s wrists. A bathtub that is never in use. Fortunate me never encountered a pubic hair. The lights are off, the bathroom is dark, a tiny streak of sun comes in through a narrow window above the mirror. There have been times in my life when the rooms I’ve occupied have suddenly felt like caves. Staring at the ceiling the boy prays that no one will see him. With eyeballs directed upward I implored the Almighty himself to let my physical presence go unnoticed. He is anti-matter. I occupied the spirit world. The plan is for Constance and his mom not to look in the bathroom, but if they do perchance venture in to the land of gleaming tile—please god no, make them not look in the direction of the bathtub. In the event that they did happen upon hygiene headquarters and their eyes drifted toward the coffin-shaped receptacle—father of Jerusalem Slim, I beg thee, blind the whores. Outside a bird chirps out a repetitive sequence that resembles Morse code. I could hear a feathered vertebrate hoo-hooing a complex message on a tree branch. His mother calls out. I was privy to maternal bellows intended specifically for me. Oh Benjamin! Son of Abraham. Come out come out wherever you are. The wolf pack suggested I exit the fairy tale. Then footsteps. I believe the audio went something like klop klop klop. Two women stand in the boy’s room. My crib contained a pair of middle-aged broads who maintained upright positions on feet. Honey, where are you? his mother asks. An endearment was tossed my way followed by a request to describe the location of my person. The boy holds his breath. I sucked in a chestful of colorless, odorless gases, mainly nitrogen (approximately 78 percent) and oxygen (approximately 21 percent), with lesser amounts of argon, carbon dioxide, neon, and helium. The women walk into the bathroom, flip on the light switch, and look directly at the boy in the tub. With the aid of a finger the two gals were able to turn on an electrical device that enhanced their view of me in a setting that normally involves warm water and bubbles. There he is, as plain as day, or as unorthodox as a lobster on a leash. Me white, you, a large marine crustacean with a chain attached to your collar. Constance (her face flooded with wonder): What pray tell are you doing in the bathtub? The question, could you explain your behavior, was tossed my way via the bewildered bully. Sweetheart, is something wrong? the boy’s mother worries aloud. An endearment was offered to me by my protector followed by an inquiring thought about my well-being. There are no soothing tugboats or cheerful rubber duckies available to console his anxiety. My state of uneasiness and distress about future uncertainties would not be quelled by the usual bathtub accoutrements that squeak and float. The boy remains motionless. I lay there, unmoving, paws glued to the outer edge of my thighs. An embarrassing moment for the boy. Mortification pulsated through my every pore. Lying down in a dry bathtub with all your clothes on is not a healthy act. As my shoes scuffed the porcelain I asked myself, what is madness? An oyster on the half-shell. A useless astronaut who no one wanted. His mother, Gracia, whose name and demeanor rhymes with Geisha, bows her head, looks away. The lady who brought me into the world, a woman of polite manner, steered her face in the direction of the sink. Are you just going to continue lying there? Constance asks as one of her eyes begins to close. The lady ogre wanted to know if I intended to spend the rest of my life in that position. Yes, he says. I offered an affirmative. You are a strange and foolish child, she says, sick and in need of immediate attention. See a doctor who specializes in peculiar pipsqueaks, she continued, you’re not playing with a full deck. Leave the boy alone, his mother says, coming to the defense of her blood kin, you’re pissing me off. I could swear she said, Don’t hassel the youngin I once called fetus or I’ll rip out your lungs. The kid arises. Just like that, I went from supine to upright. Passive resistance never works. I couldn’t turn the other cheek. It’s not a good idea to ridicule a boy whose favorite movie is Bloodbath 12. The last time I saw Constance she said my acne made her nauseous. He leaps at the horsy madame and begins to strangle her. With intent to choke, the galloping equine was advanced upon by yours truly. They fall to the tile floor. We crashed to earth, me on top of her. The mother, a trained actress, who’s performed in numerous off-Broadway musicals, screams as the two bodies thump to the ground. With my lips and nose buried in blouse I heard a familiar high-pitched wail. Frau C closes her eyes and stops breathing. What I hoped would happen, did happen.

  WICKED MAID CHURNING BUTTER (AFTER MR. ELKIN)

  Even as a bear, I was unpopular. But I had no choice. I’d already made the change over, so I had to live with it. As a human, I was a disaster. No better or worse than the average fellow, you might say. No, say I was the worst. Please say it. And I thought being a bear would bring me luck, affection, and, most importantly, more food—perhaps, when by a river, a 10-pound salmon. What was once financially out of my reach at the supermarket would now be a claw’s grab away. With some practice and a little inner fortitude I could do that. After my operation, I rumbled straight to the beautiful Sequoias of California, and the second I arrived I had sex with the biggest, hairiest bitch-bear the world has ever known—hear me out on this—she took my paw in her paw and jammed it between her legs. Once inside, she plunged it around like a wicked maid churning butter. Yes, my arm ached, but oh … and after it was over, after we kissed and banged noses, I gingerly pulled my arm out of her crotch and lifted it into the air to see dripping from my sopping limb a glistening blur of uterine juices. Then, of course, we did other things, things only a heart should know. I’m not bashful, I’m a bear; I always will be. My hearing’s improved. I have not changed my name, I am forever Benjy, remember me? the stupid lonely jerk—sad and smelly, but at least I fucked a bear, what have you done?

  MONKEY MAN KILLER

  High anxiety sweeps through the hamlet of Frost Heave after the Monkey Man killer claims another victim, this time a postman, who was found impaled on one of his ski poles, mail satchel strapped to his back, no letter disturbed, three claw marks streaked across his frightened frozen face. A modest pile of cash, not enough to really change one’s life, but a decent amount to make days and nights pass with greater ease, is being offered by the police to the citizen who supplies info leading to capture.

  I was alone, reading the newspaper on the green tongue, our L-shaped sectional that has absorbed many years of coffee, whiskey, mango purée, lima bean mash, drool, dog ass, kimchee, a sampling of some of the best music ever recorded, leaky ballpoint pens, and a porcupine quill. My roommate, Dan, appeared out of nowhere. First no sign of life, and then, abracadabra, twitchy itchy Dan, dressed head to toe in black Carhartt, eyes blackened with baseball makeup, but no league games scheduled in winter with snow covering the ground
like thick cake frosting.

  Fleeing the notorious Monkey Man killer who swung from a vine above the Fountain of the Bashful Explorer, a bride and her sisters plus one aunt ran with flowers in their hair down a steep flight of stairs toward the foyer. The groom, trailing his future wife by only a few steps, suffered greatly for his slower feet by tripping on his unusually long coattails and tumbling down a hundred stairs, striking his head numerous times. Similar sadness occurred when a Frost Heave baker, fearing attack, jumped to his death from the roof of his bakery. Lonely, yeasty dough rose without the powerful kneading hands of its maker as police detectives scoured the white, flour-filled area for clues.

  Grieving doesn’t come naturally to me. Maybe if I comforted the baker’s shy daughter at the funeral, who was crying and in need of comfort, she’d have sex with me on the floor of the bakery. She’d lift up her skirt and bounce on top of me, growl and cuss, choke a little death into me with her bare hands. Maybe that would relieve her sadness. That was what I hoped for. Question: Who will make the buttermilk donuts now that the baker is gone?