Author: Bukkhead

fiction by Jason Edwards

Halberd Donson spent January on Gulliver Street, pork-chopping his way through every restaurant between 123rd and 198th. Most of them served pork chops, and when they didn’t, he brought his own. In a little baggie, in his jacket pocket. Sometimes it was a few days old if he’d had a good run. Only one place had had a problem with this.

Halberd walked in, was greeted by the hostess, a chubby little number in a red dress that had been tight before she’d been dumped and found a new boyfriend called carrot marble  ice-cream cake. She handed him the menu, told him his server would be right with him, and put a little wiggle in her impressive back-side as she sashayed away. Halberd was not impressed, but not displeased: in another world, another month, different street, he’d have merrily grabbed a handful of that derriere and wished it a happy life the next morning.

A man is made out of his experiences, so such musings where not to be dismissed, but he was in Buck’s Diner for a different reason, and there was no pork chop on the menu. He understood there not being pork chops on the menu in a Chinese, or a Mexico, or one of the places that serve the small plates that end up costing you more somehow. But a diner that didn’t have pork chops on the menu? Maybe the tuna melt was something to write home about and regulars didn’t bother with the chop.

Fine. The waitress stopped by and he ordered a salad and an extra plate. The table had ketchup and mustard bottles, but not sauce– he asked if they had sauce. She explained that the salad came with dressing, and he knew he was in for a night of trouble.

Herself, the waitress, world-weary and willing to show it. Bottle-brassy hair, curly like she meant business, set of shoulders on her from humping plates for twenty years. Her pantyhose were industrial strength, her shoes were sensible, her husband was okay if they managed to not spend too much time together, and her kid was making decent grades and paying his own way through city college. Had an earring, but what are you going to do. She had a tattoo, so who was she to judge.

Halberd decided not to prevaricate. He hauled his spare chop out of his pocket and showed it to her. It’s for this, he said. The sauce.

The waitress frowned. You can’t bring that in here, she said.

Halberd nodded. Look, I won’t stiff you on the tip. You can even up-charge me on the salad, if you want. Better yet, I’ll have a tuna melt, to go. How’s that?

She bit her bottom lip, chewed on it mostly. She’d been late to her shift, not her fault, the god damned busses in this town. And the night manager giving her attitude. She’d been here longer than him, could do his job if she wanted to. Not that she did. Not that the owner would let her. A woman restaurant manager. Think of it.

So she was in no mood. Look pal. It’s a health-code violation. You don’t like it? Take it up with city hall. And then stared at him, stared at the chop, willing it to go back into his pocket.

He probably shouldn’t have, but he did: Halberd stared right back at her, right in her eyes. Tired eyes, crows feet, seen a thing or two. (Who’s? Both of ’em.) He pulled the chop out of the baggie, held it delicately, pinkie in the air, and never breaking his gaze on her, took a bite.

The flush that came to her cheeks. The sour that built up in her stomach. The streak of hot lead that shot up and down her spine. She probably shouldn’t have, but she did: the waitress slapped the chop out his hand. It went flying, landed on an empty table.

Halberd wasn’t shocked or anything. Just a little sad. He knew she didn’t mean nothin’ by it. He knew she was probably just having a day. He only had himself to blame; he should have prevaricated. Should have just eaten the chop furtively, in his hand, hiding it in his jacket between bites.

Still, there were plenty of waitressing jobs. Maybe he was doing her a favor. Maybe she’d move on to something better. Then again, maybe not. But Halberd couldn’t let that change things. He had a goal: to eat a pork chop on every restaurant on Gulliver street between 123rd and 198th. He got up and left.

To her credit, the waitress let him go. She didn’t bother telling anyone about it. The busboy, who spoke about as much English as the president ate fried pickle sandwiches (none, in case you don’t know who the president is) picked up the chop when he bussed a few other tables and didn’t think a thing about it.

At about 2 AM, Halberd made sure no one was in there when he set the fire. He was not a cruel man.

fiction by Jason Edwards

The fattest girl in our high school was Lori Eastman, and the second fattest girl was Gloria Beastman. Now what I want to know is, what kind of asshole keeps the name Beastman? How did he think it was going to go for his kid? And could he not see, at some point, that she was getting kind of large? Surely, by the time she hit Junior High, Gloria was not petite. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the same kind of myopia that lets dads forget that their daughters get periods and have sex. Well, girls other than that tub of lard Beastman.

That’s cruel but she brought it on herself. Maybe she was just the victim of a life time of abuse, with the name and the fat and all. But I’m here to tell you she was not a nice person. She was cynical and sarcastic and maybe she was smart but not smart enough to justify treating people like crap.

There was this one time when the teacher was calling roll and goes “Larry?” and even though he was sitting right here, he didn’t say anything. And the teacher was one of those insufferable types who insisted on doing things one certain way. So even though she can see him, she expects him to say “here.” I mean, for crying out loud, she had exactly 30 kids in her class, the chairs were arranged in a perfect five by six square, all she had to do was see there were no empty seats and, voila, roll call is done. No absences.

But not this teacher. How is a teacher like that going to teach English, anyway. Sure, there’s rules and such, grammar and APA style I guess, but anything other than spelling is open to interpretation. And that includes whatever the hell Hemingway meant when he wrote “We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.” I mean, there’s a comma splice right there.

Finally the teacher goes “I can see you, Larry, are you here.” And he goes “My name isn’t Larry. It’s Lawrence.”

I mean, fair enough. You get to an age where you want to define yourself, want to be your own person, why not start with your name? It’s given to you, forced on you I suppose, so why not own it however you can, insist people call you what you want to be called. Like if a guy decided to put on a dress and go by the name of Brunhilda, were supposed to go along with it, right? Let him drain the lizard in the girl’s restroom, even, I mean, there’s laws in Congress about that. If Larry wants to be Lawrence he can be Lawrence.

And before the teacher could say anything (I mean, stickler for rules, maybe she would have been into it, maybe she would have approved, maybe she would have given Larry a gold star for the day) Gloria Beastman goes “Oh please, you little weasel.”

Half the class laughed. I think they laughed because it caught them off guard. No one liked Gloria, not at all, and so the other half managed to not laugh because they had that not-like fresh in their minds. Or it wasn’t that funny. Or they didn’t hear because they were busy scrambling to get next periods homework done.

And then Larry goes “Whatever, Beats-men.” And nobody laughed. Larry was the skinny little shit, you see. I mean, born premature or didn’t get enough protein or hadn’t hit puberty yet, something along those lines. But he was an okay fellow more or less, no Napoleon complex that I was aware of. And Gloria had this reputation. That tiny little Larry would take on Gloria like that– it was easily the bravest thing any of us had ever witnessed.

Gloria turned red. I mean bright red. I mean, you have to understand, that as awful as she was, and as scary as she was, she was not safe from getting picked on by the popular kids and the assholes. So it’s not like she hadn’t been called every name in the book. But the names were all around how fat she was and how she was, you know, a “beast.” I have no idea where Larry got “Beats-men,” and no idea why none of us thought of it before.

She launched herself out of her desk. Across two rows, screaming this loud, high-pitched snarl that, since she was so damned huge, reverberated on a subliminal level too and made everyone’s spine quiver. She landed right on top of Larry and went to town. Holy shit.

I mean, he called her “beats-men” and the she beat him. I mean, it’s poetic or something. It took two jocks to get her off of him, and when they did she just thrashed around and let loose with the most vile, disgusting tirade I’d ever heard in my life. Racist stuff, anti-Semitic, coprophagic, demonic. It was amazing. We all cowered in the corner, Larry crushed beneath us and forgotten, while she tore the room apart. A couple other jocks went and got the football coach, and they all hauled her out of there.

She sued the school for that. Got a settlement. We never saw her again. Lawrence went to the hospital but he was more or less okay. Was a kind of celebrity for a while, but then it died down and the school went back to being just another bunch of assholes.

The third fattest girl in our school was Calliope Winthrop. We dated for a while. She was a sweetheart. Sort of smelled like peaches.

Daily Writing Exercise, 750Words.com

Fiction by Jason Edwards

She keeps thinking she’s forgotten something, and then she remembers that what she’s forgotten is to remember that she hasn’t forgotten anything this time. And she’s usually so forgetful. Then she tries not to think about it because the light turns green and she doesn’t want to kill anyone by accident.

Not by accident.

In her red car. The dealer had said “Red? You know the cops pull over drivers in red cars more often.” She’d replied with something about red hiding the blood. He’d laughed. She’d kept him in the trunk for a week before she’d remembered.

She’s killed a lot. A lot a lot. So much that she’s lost count, it’s beyond counting, way beyond there ever having been a first one or a first time. Might as well recall the first time one saw a tree. Sure, in the desert, your first tree must be a sight to behold. But in a forest? Its only trees.

Pointless to talk about. She just does it. Drives to a motel, goes to the front desk, asks for a room, takes the key, kills the woman behind the desk, stuffs her into a closet. Goes to bed and goes to sleep. Wakes up. Something about checking out?

Or: drives to a hotel. Goes to the front desks, asks for a room, takes the key card. Goes to bed, wakes up, call downs for fresh towels. When the maid arrives, kills her, stuffs her into a closet. Takes a shower. Uses, like, every towel on the cart.

DNA? Please. This is real life, not an episode of a television show.

Another red light, so she remembers to stop. Is that what she forgot? To stop at the last red light? That time in Ann Arbor. Ran a stop light, got pulled over. The police officer had said, do you know why I pulled you over? She’d said something about the color red, and when he’d walked back to his cruiser, she’d ran over him. Stuffed him in his own trunk. Had to go back a few hours later because she’d forgotten about the camera mounted on his dashboard.

A hoot and a holler. An actual wolf whistle. Two guys in the car next to her. It’s a black car, filthy. Black cars always get dirtier than white ones. “Where you headed, little girl?” The one shouts. The driver’s leering at her too. She says something about Grandma’s house. They laugh. She laughs. The light turns green. They accelerate, she accelerates, she clips their bumper, speeds up and passes them. They give chase. They drive deep into the forest of the city.

It’s not always this easy. Sometimes it’s everything she can do to lure someone to a secluded area. Not that it has to be secluded. She’s forgotten how many people she’s put a knife into, in restaurants, fast food joints, convenience stores. But those places sometimes don’t have closets or trunks. At least in this alley, when she’s done with them, she can stuff them into their own trunk.

She thinks about stuffing the good looking one, the one who wasn’t driving, into her own trunk. Then she has a bad moment- has she forgotten that there’s someone in there already? She could go check. She’s covered in their blood, a little of her own. If there’s already someone in there, she’ll be very disappointed in herself. For having forgotten.

She decides she won’t check. She stuffs them into their own trunk, along with her bloody clothes. Fetches distilled water out of her back seat, has a nice shadow bath there in the alley. Gets dressed in fresh underwear, jeans, a t-shirt with a gas-station logo on it. That poor old man, who had smiled at her sweetly when she’d gone in to pay for gas, saw the shirts, knew she’d need a pile, put a knife through him, stuffed him into a supply closet. After a while, you can really tell the difference between different brands of disinfectant, in jars and bottles and cans.

Back in her red car, she drives around the city, towards suburbs, towards Grandma’s house. That part was true. But then she remembers: she’s always told the truth. Always. Because why not. A lie takes effort, energy, invention, fabrication, creation. She has no interest in creating anything. That one guy in Texas. Those hands. The bruises on her ribs when she’d been on top of him, choking him. And then nausea and sore breasts and clean underwear. And utter depression.

They don’t do abortions in Texas. But she does.

fiction by Jason Edwards

Space aliens have landed in the American Midwest and taken on the form of indigenous peoples of the region from 10,000 years ago. Despite hailing from a star system several million light years away, these bioforms now look and act like Indians. “But don’t call us that,” says X!3gkrk Twofeather, one of their leaders. “The forms we have now predate such nomenclature.”

“Even travelling faster than the speed of light,” Twofeather explains, “it took us several thousand years to get here. We took readings with worm-hole scanners to find a form we could shape ourselves to and in that way blend in. We chose what was, at the time, one of the most stable, long-lived forms. We used a controlled evolutionary process, which took as many years. What we were before was, basically, sentient rocks. The switch from silicone to carbon was itself a few millenia.”

Astride his horse, wearing a war bonnet and gazing regally out at the plains, Twofeather is utterly unmistakable from an authentic Native American– at least our modern sense of one. “We didn’t expect your planet to change so rapidly. But here we are. And we’re adapting as quickly as we can. This horse, for example. The bioforms who dwelled her ten thousand years ago didn’t have horses. We’re just catching up.”

As expected, the arrival of foreign bodies has stirred up protest. Hundreds have gathered at the edges of the designated encampments to expression their displeasure with the new visitors. “Go back where you came from!” reads more than one sign.

Zk*tp7r Lurking Bear tries to engage some of them in conversation. “I’ll go back where I came from if you do, brother,” he says.

“I was born here, ya martian,” shouts his fellow interlocutor.

Lurking Bears eyes flash a dark green, as he performs a retinal DNA-residue scan on the protestor. “No you weren’t. You were formed in the back of internal-combustion powered vehicle some several thousand miles from here. I, however, was in vat of forming proteins until five days ago. I was “born” 200 hundred feet from this spot.”

“You know what I mean! Go back to your mother ship, asshole.”

Nearby, actual Native Americans are in conference, deciding how to approach these doppelgangers. Max Brandt, one-eight Sioux, explains: “On the one hand, it’s hilarious to see white people tell natives to ;go back home.’ On the other hand, these advanced beings are not us. They’ve appropriated our culture.”

Presented with this opinion, Twofeather shakes his head. “We have not appropriated their culture. We have appropriated the culture of their ancestors, and have adapted to modern expectations. Indeed, technically, it’s Mr. Brandt and his kind of who appropriated our culture. But we aren’t going to complain. Our understanding is that complaining about cultural appropriation is the purview of so-called Social Justice Workers, and we don’t want to steal their raison d’etre.”

Molly Waldring, a survivor of the Tumblr revolution who identifies as a bi-straight penguin kintype with homo-normative kanga (non-roo) tripolarity, has presented the New (Old) Natives with a manifesto, detailing grievances of the Uncis Nation. “And using phrases like ‘raison d’etre’ ranks right up there; stealing the linguistic heritage of French-born multikins, no matter what they’re self-designated geospatial centering coordinates are, is tantamount to brain-slavery,” s(h)e[it-they] explains while having bandages applied to stress fractures from rapid typing. “We won’t stand for it!”

Waldring’s colleauge, ex-Olympic bronze medalist sprinter Kart Mittering, who identifies as a quadraplegic snailkin with snake-formative sex-prey commercial-unbranding, scoffs. “Stand for it? Enabling shit-lord.”

Back in his intersteller neutron punch-drive wigwam, Twofeather goes over his people’s  seven-point plan for assimilating and thriving on planet Earth. “We’ve already contacted the heads of state around the world, and provided them with information as it pertains to cancer, infectious disease, super-bug suppression, improved forms of non-animal nutrition distribution, the ozone layer, global warming, the roles of women and minorities in the motion picture industry, reducing head trauma in contact sports, and inoculations against Boy Bands and Top 40 Radio. Of course, we sent them this information some 50 years ago, before we arrived, so we’re not sure why they’ve taken so long to implement our solutions.”

“Nevertheless, we’re hopeful,” he goes on to say. “We’ve encoded information on large squares of fabric by precision-cutting them to a ratio that, when measured to the appropriate decimal point, will contain information on all of the secrets of the universe. We’ve taken these “blanks” and sliced them into holographic portions, and distributed them around the world. And, we made sure each of this “blank-ettes” is appropriately coated with self-replicating copies of our original DNA. Kind of like your so-called earth ‘viruses’ but much more hearty.”

Twofeather smiles. “We’ve been reading up on your theories of Manifest Destiny. We think it’s a really great theory.”

fiction by Jason Edwards

I’ve never been the sort of person who just goes out and buys something if I can get my design team to make it for me, but I made a spelling error in the req and now I’ve got myself an electric cab opener.

And let’s be frank, this things is completely useless. Nevertheless, I’m not about to let all that R&D go to waste. So I went downtown to do some shopping. I put on my three-piece suit, the sharkskin one with a hint of salmon, a black silk shirt, a tie the board gave me as a thank you for 2012. 2012 was a great year!

I looked good for a guy in his late fifties, shaped like a butterball, going bald. I love it when people underestimate me. That’s how I get ’em. No one was going to underestimate me in my sharkskin and silk, though. I had my driver drop me at West and 144th, and walked a block to Jazeray’s. Think Bed Bath & Beyond but everything costs about as much as a decent family-sized home in the mid west.

I mean, can you imagine. Standing there, trying to decide between a blender and a split-level ranch in Nicoma Park, Oklahoma? And don’t tell me none of the houses in Nicoma Park are split-level ranches, or I’ll go there, build one just to make this illustration work, and then jack the price up to a queen bed-sheet set or even one of them “art prints” they got hanging in droves at the front of the store. Talk about overpriced. Tell me shag carpeting and popcorn stucco ceilings are worth 5 year’s salary and I’ll call the loony bin on ya myself.

Where was I. Oh yeah, West and 145th, since I walked a block from 144th. That was fun, walking on the street like a regular person. I went into Jazeray’s, bought about a dozen ice cream scoops, some refills for my Soda Stream, a throw blanket with a sport team logo on it– I forget which one. I was into sports in 2011, when me and the boys from the club where buying and selling shares in each other’s franchises. It was like a game- pun intended- to see who could own the most shares of the most winning teams. Kind of like fantasy football, but all that money shuffling put a couple thousand people out of work. Don’t worry, we got ’em all dream jobs scattered around the country. One guys piloting a desk and getting paid to answer the phone once an hour. I’ve called himself a few times. Nice fella. Knows a lot of movie trivia.

Went outside with my purchases, hailed a hack. You look like I do, you don’t wait long for a taxi. Tried out the electric cab opener– had it on the wrong setting. All four doors, hood, trunk, glove compartment, poor guy’s lunchbox. Woops. He started apologizing all over the place. I guess he didn’t know it was my doing. I didn’t set him straight. Apologetic’s less stress than anger on the ticker, and he looked about as old as me but without the room full of doctors sitting around playing Canasta in case I get a papercut or throw a clot.

He asked me where to and for a second there I forget my three assistants hadn’t faxed him my whole day’s itinerary that same morning while he was having his daily monkey-butt coffee. You know, that coffee where they give the beans to a monkey and his gastric juices break it down so when he craps it out it’s ready for roasting. My driver has expensive tastes. He used to be a Fortune 500 CEO with his own island in the Caymans. But I talked him into the job after a heart-to-heart about what corporate life was doing to his kidneys. Pour guy was on his fifth and sixth ones, respectively, and the AKF was flush and didn’t need any more charity.

Oh, and those rumors? That I started the American Kidney Foundation, the first non-profit to earn the equivalent of the GDP of half the countries in Scandinavia, just to put this guy in a position to need us and then need me? Not true. I mean, I’m on the board, but that’s coincidence. I don’t get off on having billionaires drive for me. Not at all. He’s just a fantastic driver.

Finally came to my senses and told the cabbie to drive me home. On the way I handed him an improved meter. It was way better than the one he had. He was reluctant at first, but I told him to keep it and I’d pay both meters. He wised up when he realized that while his meter said seventy-six bucks, mine said Tuition for All Your Kids.

And I paid both, too, even tipped him on the seventy-six. But not on the Tuition. I’m not an asshole.

Daily Writing Exercise, 750words.com

“Fiction” (?) by Jason Edwards

I as much as I am sitting here trying to write my daily words, I’m afraid that by saying exactly that I am sending myself down a rabbit hole where that’s all I can talk about, and there will be nothing inventive or creative. This self-analysis stuff is boring, Boring for me, boring for the reader. Look at her, poor girl, sitting there, reading this. She’s just come from the car wash. Her little Prius. Nice day outside for a change, so she grabbed a stack of quarters that had been gathering dust since the days she bought the washer/dryer combo and no longer needed to go to the laundromat. Old creepers there anyway. What had she been thinking? She’d been thinking about college, Duds n Suds, and all the cute guys. She’s better than that, she doesn’t need men to define her, but what’s wrong with a little eye candy? The only candy at the laundromat had been the kind leftover in a bowl at your aunt’s house, all stuck together and is that an actual mouse turd there on the side?

But it had been colder outside than what shined through the window promised, so instead of going to the wash-it-yourself she went to the automatic one, where you pull up and ask for the basic and the kid tries to hard-sell you the Premium. How many takers does he get? Does he get some kind of commission? Does he get up in the morning and log onto the internet and go to Amazon and gaze lovingly at some piece of just-out-of-reach desiderata, and think to himself “just five more premiums and I can finally get Call of Duty 16” or whatever one they’re on now.

Like she has any room to talk, the way she pined for that Prius. “Tell me about yourself” a guy she met through J-Date said to her. “I’m going to get me a purple Prius,” she’d replied, and before “I’m” was even out of her mouth his eyes were glazed. Not that she was ugly or anything. Maybe not stunning, but stunning’s never permanent, is it. Still, he’d obviously picked up from somewhere to ask girls questions, he just hadn’t bothered thinking beyond that part of it.

At the end of the date, which had been, well, a way to spend an hour, she insisted on splitting the check, which he took as a sign, which she didn’t intend but was glad it happened that way, and as they left, he’d said “Good luck with that Prius.” The way he said Prius.

Yes, most Prius drivers are assholes, it’s true. Either because they think, because they’re driving a Prius, they’ve contributed somehow and are now entitled. Or, because there’s, like, almost no visibility out the back, or on the sides, and they figure, if I can’t see them, they’d better do the seeing. She, on the other hand, is a very conscientious Prius driver. She’d taken a class. Read a book. Her brother wrote a paper on “Geo-Spatial Awareness in Top Athletes” which she had helped him research. He’d gotten a B but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that she knew that there’s an ability to see where everything is, see how it’s moving, and be able to keep track of all of it for a few seconds or even longer. She paid attention when she drived, damn it, and for hell’s sake she’s driving one of the few purple cars on the road, so how is it you didn’t notice me and then decided to honk your horn you BMW driving jerk?

Which is what had happened, coming back from the car wash. Like, the car is clean and shiny any bright, and it’s a nice day, no matter what the temperature is, she’s not going to take the long way home, on the highway? That new Carly Rae Jepsen on the radio, singing along, you don’t have to know the words, and then HONK!

Out of nowhere. He must have come on from the last entrance ramp and swerved over, like, five lanes, sat in her blind spot. Who cares if it’s the biggest blind spot on the highway, it’s still a blind spot, and he should know that. But BMW drivers are all jerks.

Which is what’s she’s searching for, now, to make herself feel better about what happened. She’s used Google and found my blog for some reason and wants to know why BMW drivers are such assholes. Instead she gets me just talking about how I need to write something. Sorry, Lacey.