F*ckload of Shorts Read online

  F*ckload

  Of

  Shorts

  By Jedidiah Ayres

  F*ckload of Shorts by Jedidiah Ayres

  Published by Snubnose Press at Amazon

  The copyright belongs to the authors unless otherwise noted. 2012. All rights reserved.

  Amazon Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  First Amazon Original Edition, 2012

  Cover Design: Eric Beetner

  Amazon Edition, License Notes

  All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Mahogany & Monogamy

  Fuckload of Scotch Tape

  Hoosier Daddy

  The Whole Buffalo

  Miriam

  The Morning After

  1998 Was a Bad Year

  Amateurs

  The Adversary

  Viscosity

  Nolte

  Introduction by Scott Phillips

  People ask me to do things all the time. A wild-eyed former beauty, her matted hair dyed an unconvincing shade of black, approaches me on the street and asks “Mister, could you watch my monkey for a minute while I get my pap smear?” while the monkey, a tailless Old World species with a particularly angry snarl beneath his tatty fez, pulls at his chain in an attempt to bite my face. I tell her I’m no monkey’s keeper and hurry away.

  Or say a gruff stranger shows up at my front door holding an object wrapped in butcher’s paper and asks if I’d be willing to cook him a couple of pork chops, explaining that he’s a houseguest of one of my neighbors and has the use of their the kitchen but doesn’t know how to cook. Do I cook it for him? Of course I fucking do not. I send him on his hungry way.

  Or consider a scenario in which an old friend from school informs me he’s started a new business, selling vintage clothing. He can’t keep up with the demand for suits with wide lapels, poodle skirts and raccoon coats, and traditional sources for such items are stretched quite thin. I seem to remember you being good with a shovel, he says, and invites me to accompany him on a trip to our local bone orchard in search of fresh merchandise. Do I alert the authorities to his grisly plot? Of course not; I’m no monster. But neither do I assist him in the disinterment and denuding of our town elders!

  And so you might imagine that when Jedidiah Ayres approached me with a request to write an introduction to the volume of stories you hold in your hands (more likely in one of your hands, given the prurient nature of the material herein) my reaction would be a violent “no!”

  You would be wrong, however, because Mr. Ayres is my screenwriting partner, which is a way of saying that I conned him into helping me write some things, extracting from him several hundred hours of unpaid labor which he quite justly resents. I have been described as “conscienceless,” a harsh judgment when you consider that it took only the threat of a lawsuit to get me to agree that perhaps I did owe him a little something in the way of an introduction.

  The easiest way to start would be to categorize Jed’s stories as mere delivery devices for a particularly warped kind of black humor and the kind of sex that might make Larry Flynt reconsider his position on the First Amendment. They’re also insanely violent and if necrophilia is a deal-killer for you as regards fiction, look elsewhere. But if you’re a degenerate and a pervert like me, you’ll love every page of this sick little collection of the inner skull scrapings of a madman.

  Mahogany & Monogamy

  The first time I saw Janis I knew she was a ball buster. That was part of the appeal, honestly. Mom had been one and my kid sister, Denise? That’s all I got to say. But Janis had something special and I’m not just talking about her industrial-strength rack and bear-trap thighs. She also had that elusive thing that I just can’t resist, and if I knew what it was I probably wouldn’t have a story to tell.

  We had our own song, “Sweet Child O’Mine”. It was our first dance. She danced, that’s what she did, and when it got to the ‘where do we go?’ part, she slowed way down and tried to grind it outta me with her hips. Then she did something strange. She stopped and looked me right in the eye. It made me pop. She rocked my world with just a look, then kept on dancing. Sure, she helped lotsa guys do the same, but me? After the first time I saw her, there wasn’t anybody else, you know?

  “You’re never gonna find anything,” my old man said, “written down in a book.” He was a loser till the day he died, fucked over and left by my mom, but he did manage one memorable line near the end when the lucid spells were brief and unpredictable. He was talking about when he first met my mother. He said he knew she was the one for him because she made him wanna grow up and produced the previously impossible in his life - mahogany and monogamy. I thought it was just a nice rhymey thing to say till that night.

  Janis didn’t notice anything special about me at first, and that was okay. Working at the Beaver Cleaver, she didn’t meet many prizes, and to look at me, you’d not stop and think, ‘guys a sex machine’ or ‘what’s his secret?’ But people change. They do grow up. They can surprise you sometimes. Gimme a chance and who knows? Could might be I make an impression.

  Could be I’d made a life change. Could be I’d got my shit together. Could be I had fifty-thousand dollars in a gym bag in my trunk. Could be.

  The thing about a guy like me having that kind of money on him? Yeah, it means somebody else is short that much. I never invested in stocks or had a business. I never went to high school or had anything fancy education-wise and I never paid taxes unless you count cigarettes. Which, come to think of it, maybe you should. Because, damn if they don’t go up all the time, for real. So, yeah has to be somebody missing it.

  The question then, is who?

  Relax, might not be an Einstein or any other brainy heeb you care to name, but I’m not as dumb as you might initially think. It’s not like I robbed a bank and got my picture took, or ripped off some solid citizen who’d wanna bring lawyers into a fair fight. And I aint about to take on no badass, because I know a thing or two about when I’m outta my depth.

  No, it was just Benji, that skinny tweaker with the fuzzy upper lip you wanna scrape for him. Seriously, I’m no square, but damn, some motherfuckers just ain’t intended to wear mustaches. I took it from a hole in the wall behind his medicine cabinet. Just stumbled onto it and took it.

  Pee-Wee, the guy who runs Carl’s Bad Tavern down off Cherokee? He sees me getting up to leave the other night and slips me twenty bucks to take Benji’s ass home. Benji’s passed out in the bathroom, puke everywhere except the fucking toilet and a cloud of that rat poison he smokes stinking up the place.

  Not one to look a gift horse up the ass, I take the twenty and put him in my Chevette. Thought about just dumping him around the corner, because he stank like he’d been practicing, but I shut that shit down because it was time to get a little forward- thinking in my game. In the future, could be Pee-Wee knows I’m solid for this kinda thing. Could be he thinks of me first, next time. Could be some regular gigs coming, or at least a free drink now and then. Never know. Could be.

  I wasn’t about to fuck with that possibility
by taking the man’s money then not doing what it is he says he wants, like some short-sighted asshole who thinks he just played a man. So I took Benji back to his place, wasn’t far, and let myself in with the keys I found in his pocket. Not a part I relished, reaching into a man’s pants like that - especially a stank-ass motherfuck like Benji - but, like I said, I wanted to do this right. I was already thinking about future jobs.

  Maybe I’d get some of those disposable rubber gloves, if this was gonna be regular. You know the kind they make them wear at Subway to make sandwiches? Or maybe, and this is even better, talk to my cousin Rob, the plumber. Find out what he does when he’s gotta reach into some shit water and find a wedding ring, because you know plumbers don’t fuck around when it comes to that. Hell, I could just get some Ziploc bags and put them on. Would be cheaper. If I paid taxes, I bet I could write that off.

  I was getting a little carried away, but it felt good, being trusted with a job like that. Pee-Wee was a serious guy...shit... That was something else. Stop calling him Pee-Wee. He was connected to real people, and I didn’t wanna blow any chance I had with him now by offending him. Herman hated that nickname.

  The way I saw it, it was time to take a little responsibility. Time to think about a career. Not that shoveling shit outta bars was a career I’d like to have, but you know, it was a start. I’m sure Janis didn’t wanna climb a brass pole for amateur gynecologists the rest of her life.

  I brought Benji inside the door and no further. Fuck him if he thought I was gonna tuck him in or give him a bath. Not for twenty bucks. No way. But, I’d have a look around, thanks. It was how I made most of my money anyhow. A little B&E here and there, I wasn’t above it. The beauty of this was, it was E without B, and Benji wasn’t conscious the whole time, wouldn’t have any idea how he got home when he woke up.

  Benji was poor white trash, up and down. His basement apartment had plain white walls decorated with black light posters of like Pantera and hemp plants and shit. His clothes weren’t in the dresser except for some underwear and socks, and those that were on the furniture and the floor were one pair of jeans - black and ripped, like the ones he was already wearing, and heavy metal t-shirts. There was no jewelry (surprise, surprise) and no electronics worth taking.

  There were cassettes all over the floor, not in the cases, which is something that personally really irritates me. It was the same story with the VCR stuff. Couple of tapes just marked with pen: Missing In Action, Running Man, Bloodsport. Say what you want about his lifestyle, his taste in movies was righteous.

  Pisser was, I didn’t find any drugs. Turned over his mattress, checked the freezer, behind the toilet, went through all his food, a jar of mayonaise, some Sanka and Kool- Aid. I was so frustrated, I went back to his grungy-ass bathroom and grabbed his razor. Didn’t bother with any water or foam. Shaved that shit dry. Bled a little, but still looked better. Shit, that was two favors I did for him in one night.

  When I put the razor back in the medicine cabinet, I noticed it was a little loose, like it was on a hinge or something. I gave it a little tug and it swung open, revealing a little hiding spot in the wall.

  Fuck, there was a lot of money.

  It was arranged in those neat little stacks you see rubber banded together in movies. I didn’t even count it, just threw it in a gym bag and drove straight to the Beaver. I peeled off a couple hundred and went in looking for Janis.

  Could’ve been my walk or the intensity in my eyes. Could’ve been the super- heavy testosterone vibes pouring off of me. Or could be she just saw me changing a couple c-notes for singles. Whatever it was, she knew right away that I was different. She put on “Sweet Child O’Mine” before I could even request it. She got every penny, too.

  I started hanging out at Carl’s every night. I’d keep my eyes peeled for losers ready to pass out or puke in the john. Fifty-thousand dollars was a nice start, but not exactly enough to retire on and I was serious about making a good impression on Herman. Besides, I couldn’t tell anybody about my good fortune, because when a little shit like Benji had that kind of scratch? Right again, somebody else was missing it.

  That was one thought causing me mild discomfort when it came up. How had Benji come upon that much money? When? And what the hell was he spending it on? I decided it wasn’t my problem and I didn’t want to know, so I shut down that negative shit quick. The way I saw it, if I kept up my regular schedule and didn’t get flashy, I had it made.

  The only change in my routine was stepped-up visits to Janis. Most nights, I’d come in with a single hundred-dollar bill and leave when it was gone. Though I realized I’d made a tactical mistake that first night bringing two hundred in and spending it so quickly. Janis had come to expect a little more from me, but so had I, and I was trying to show a little discipline. So it was one hundred every night...let’s not go crazy, you know. I was trying to pace myself a bit and make her work a little harder for it.

  Janis wasn’t the only one working a little harder for her money either. Herman had noticed me and given me a couple more disposal jobs. Nobody I knew, though. I had to dig out their ID and find an address, and then I had to figure that shit out. Got to be, I was calling cabs and going with them to make sure they got inside. Oh well, it’s like they say: you gotta spend money to make money. Yeah, I was, most of the time, blowing what Herman gave me on cab fare. But I was counting on that back end score once I got them home, and most of the time that worked out. A couple times there was a pissed-off wife or mean-ass dog waiting for me, but it was a safe bet anybody passing out at Carl’s doesn’t have much waiting for them at home.

  I heard a preacher on the radio once say “Love is patient. Love is kind.” All I could think was: he didn’t love Janis. It was getting a touch restless between us. She was less patient, I was less kind, and we were becoming something of an item. One night during my dance I guess she felt I was being a little stingy because she stood up suddenly and said, “What the fuck Ethan? I am not doing one more number for a lousy hunnerd bucks. We’re halfway through the first guitar solo and I barely got thirty-five outta your tight ass!”

  Well that pissed me off a bit. The way I saw it, I’d been spending my money on her exclusively for some time now and hadn’t got so much as a friendly hummer to show for fidelity.

  “At least one of us still has one,” I said, and left with money in my pocket for the first time. I decided she’d got her last score off of me.

  Did I stop going? Hell, no. I still went every night after leaving Carl’s, but I wasn’t a one woman man anymore. No, I spread the wealth. New girl every night. I’d watch Janis out the corner of my eye and I could tell my being there pissed her off. The tension between us could tune a piano. Could be our thing had gone to the next level. Could be I was in my first serious relationship. Could be, I was finally growing up. Could be.

  The night they broke Benji’s arm, everybody assumed it was over sports action. It happened from time to time. That or drugs. Everybody knew that happened when you fucked around with the drugs. I had to keep it to myself that I suspected it had more to do with some missing cash.

  He came into Carl’s, his right arm hanging off him like a purse. He clutched it with his left, but was stumbling and running into shit every few steps. When he used his left to steady himself, the right would swing free and he’d scream loud enough to stop traffic in other neighborhoods. Before he passed out, he pleaded for somebody to get him a fix and get him fixed, just don’t take him to no hospital, he had warrants.

  He should’ve been a little more cautious about the company he’d make an announcement like that in, because there’s a couple sick puppies in there just curious enough to try setting his arm without any idea of what they’re doing. And nobody was gonna give him any drugs without cash up front.

  When those dudes got tired of playing with his arm, I nodded at Herman, who took out a fifty this time. When I came to collect it, he grabbed me and whispered, “Take it easy tonight, huh?”


  I looked into Herman’s eyes and my asshole puckered. That guy looked scary. Maybe I’d just met the edge of where my hard ass turned to pussy, but he was like E.F. Hutton or some shit - I was listening.

  “No hospital. Get him a fix.” So, what do you think I did? I knew the arm needed to be set and secured, but shit, I mean, I didn’t know any better than those biker fucks what I was doing. At least I scored him some good shit. Some shit anyhow. I never trucked with that stuff, so I don’t really know from quality, but he slept through it all and I wandered alone in his apartment again. I think the place had been tossed, but it was hard to tell.

  I felt a bit responsible looking at the kid, laying there with his busted wing, bound with a fuckload of scotch tape. I stopped for just a moment and let the feelings match up to thoughts about what exactly my role in this had been. It was a rare quiet moment of reflection for me.

  “Look. You fucked up. That’s who you are; the guy who fucks up. I’m just the guy who benefited this time. The way things go, man. No hard feelings.”

  He groaned through his opiate stupor and I continued.

  “If it makes you feel better, I aint blowing it on pussy anymore. I mean, yeah a little bit, but I got bigger plans then that.” In truth, I felt a little guilty. In fact, I didn’t even get a dance that night.

  I was back the next night, though. Lil’ Debi was starting to get the bulk of my business. I’m not sure if it was her looks or style or what. She had big bangs that were stiff if you touched them and favored a very strong Strawberry scented perfume. It kinda smelled like she’d used a whole pack of chapstick on her crotch and maybe she had, but I suspect the real appeal was her name. There was something kinda kinky sexy about thinking I was getting dry humped outta my money by a snack cake.

  Since Janis was there, I was playing my usual Motley Crue pick, “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)”. I liked to think it bugged the shit outta her. I closed my eyes at the moment and sought out Janis’s gaze with my mind. It pleased me to find it white hot at the base of my skull, and I savored it a moment, knowing that the jealousy of a woman tasted sweet.