I could be lying

I could be lying When I am crying I could be telling tails Out of school Playing fast With the rules I could be, I could be But what are the odds That I'm a fraud? Well, that's a twist You'll have to risk If you want To be close to me And you'd better be ready For an aroma quite heady Coming from my poop and from my pee I'll lick my fur And I'll purr As I scratch your furniture 'Cause I'm a cat, I'm a brat (Some say twat, so there's that) And you'll never Ever Own me.

Planting native species

Farkas paused over the hole she'd just dug. It was about six inches deep and the water she'd poured in had started to percolate down into the soil. She sat back on her haunches and waited for it. A chickadee called off to her left, but chicka'd only two dees, so it wasn't upset, just chatty. When all the water was gone, she picked up a pot and up ended it over the hole, giving it gentle but firm pats all along the sides and bottom to loosen the soil.  She extracted the plant, a bloodroot, feeling the satisfying suction as it was loosed from the pot. She sprinkled mycorrhizal fungi all over the roots, popped it in the hole, and centred it. She heaped the soil around the plant, pressing down gently and making a small well. She watered again. Again she sat back on her haunches, and tapped the pot to get the last of the soil out. 

He'd gone to high school with her. He'd been an asshole even then. He'd grown into an even larger puckered buttpit when he went into real estate and eventually, opened his own development firm, his only aim in life to make money. 

Hard to believe they still hadn't found him yet. 

Who knew?

 Written June 26, 1989

Sssszzt! And the metal ring snaps open and tiny Don Ho bubbles fill up the air space above.

"Don't shush me" and I guzzle, faster than I should, ginger acids my nose hairs.

"Ow, ooo, oh!" Pain, not-so-pain, return to steady state.

I set the aluminum can down and open another before the first one is done with.

The spriting schpritzes rush about to & fro, here & there.

"Slow down, slow down."

Who knew?

Who knew that the sex we had with

    air conditioners,

    made in Japan,

    for Canadian winters

Would lead to this? This hole I cannot see above my head?

I tip both cans upside down on linoleum and gently place them in the blue box.

The Fantastic Aerial Odyssey of José-Antonio, or "Pennies in December"

Pennies in December

Coins in ice that don't let

Just anyone pick 'em up.

Half-smoked cigarettes

Lip-stick tainted

Pressed against cold lips, thin

"Ain't nothing like a good drag."

"Heard the grocery store's dumping bananas."

Throwing away everything that isn't beautiful.

Even pennies in December.

Get Bent

This is my polemic

To the idiot pandemic

That is utterly endemic

To my current situation.

 

I find myself surrounded by

The world’s most singular dufi

Who have ever passed on by

Our planetary creation.

 

And it’s not just covid bitches,

Forest killers or the social ditches

That we fall into so gently as a leaf onto a lake

It is the utter chaos we’ve created

Never questioned or berated

That says everyone deserves a new gadget and a break.

 

The creepers and the speeders

The LOL text-only-readers

Who smack into those with any kind of sense

Deserve a big ol’ punch

A slap a smack a crunch

And be boiled into spicy condiments.

 

All the Amazon apologists

And WalMart greeter-ologists

Who smell roses when Elon Musk is in the air.

No, I will never be

A shill for a monopoly

Yes, I really’d rather submit

To the wafts of smelly shit

That plop from rabid raccoon derrieres.

 

And I don’t think that it’s stretching

(To pause briefly from my social retching)

To say that everyone wants everything right now!

Don’t worry how to pay,

That’s for another day!

I want I want I want I want, wow wow wow!

 

But the bill has now been called

And we’re well and truly balled

‘Cause we’re crashing and have run out all our time

We’re run down all the clocks

Thrown our values into hock

And drained the Earth’s accounts down to a dime.

 

And I know this ought to shake me

But it only serves to make me

More determined to be who I’ve always been.

 

Which is what? I often ask.

It has been my lifelong task

To understand why people piss me off so much.

And I know that I’ve got blinkers

But some folks are just plain stinkers

And I don’t use my upbringing as a crutch.

 

I’ve screamed that we are bullocked

‘Cause the world is full of pillocks

But so many had no clue what that word meant

So for those who find me snotty

You can kiss my Sharon Boddy

Fuck off mate, shove off, and oh yes, please do get bent.

The Last Woman on Earth

This story was inspired by an online game of Scrabble with a good friend of mine during the Great Pandemic of 2020. The words we played are capitalized.

The television was on. He stumbled into the living room, bleery-eyed. 

“Someday,” the news anchor said, “Someday we’ll do all the things we did before.”  

He crouched down inches away from the TV and stared at the date on the crawler. How the fuck had this happened? They’d done it and he'd missed it. He was in lockdown and there was no going home.

Okay, don't worry, RAJ thought, someday soon he’d go back to his apartment, his job, his life. Someday he’d OWN the streets again and go back to all his haunts. He’d RE-ENTER BARS as the king, the man who survived this HEX. Until then, he had to DOZE in this PIG’s DIGS.

“It’s cold in here,” he said.

“Just wait. The furnace will kick on soon. It HEATS up fast.”

He hadn’t been looking at her apartment when they’d first arrived. Now he took a good look around. VASES galore, filled with fake flowers; flowered curtains, a flowered sofa, and a flowered pattern on the area rug. He could almost smell the rotting roses and it was making his stomach LURCH.

In sharp contrast to the floral theme, her walls were grey, like a MINED pit. A visual antacid. All this place needed, he thought, were bars on the window and this’d be a straight up QUOD. She caught him staring.

“It’s called SHALY,” she said, gesturing at the wall. “Like, something shaly.”

That explained everything.

“You wanna watch a movie? Take your pick. I’m going to make cocoa.” She ballooned off to what was presumably the kitchen.

He looked through her predictably RomCom-heavy collection, and picked out an Adam Sandler movie. He waited for her machine to read the DISK.

She came back in with a tray and set it down on the coffee table. She handed him a mug then asked if he liked OAT TRIPE* and he sprayed whipped cream everywhere. She laughed.

“It’s chocolate and Oreo cookie mousse but it’s got oats in it so it’s healthy. I eat it for breakfast sometimes.”

“What’s tripe got to do with it? That’s a cow’s fucking brains.”

“No it isn’t. It’s the first or second stomach of a cow. Any ruminant really.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh.” She didn’t pick up on sarcasm. “I saw it on Jeopardy.”

She dabbed some whipped cream off the table with her fingers then picked up the movie case.

“’Happy Gilmore’?” she said reproachfully, sucking a fingertip. “Isn’t that a GOLFS movie?”

Golfs, for fuck’s sake. It’s your movie, it was on your shelf he wanted to scream at her. He muttered “Don’t gimme any of your BITCH LIP fatso” a little too loudly.

“It’s GOOD FLAB,” she said. “You liked it last night.”

Ah. Last night. He’d been full of VIM then, as his grandfather, that old pussy magnet, would have said with a wink. That enormous ass of hers had been a challenge, like humping a YAK.

Last night was supposed to end with him not falling asleep. Last night was supposed to be about waiting for her to pass out from all the wine and with him tip-toeing out of her room and out of her life. Last night was supposed to be about the UNACTED, the things he hadn’t done YET.

He thought he had till Sunday but as he’d learned on the news, the government had shuttered everything and everyone as of 1 a.m. Saturday morning and, at that particular moment, he’d been balling her. And now he was stuck with her. For the foreseeable future, she was the last woman on EARTH. He drank the cocoa.

She watched the emotions play across his face and when he sipped his drink she went back to the kitchen for the mousse, her hand gripped around the pill bottle in her house coat pocket.



*Seriously, this is a thing, but to paraphrase Tina Turner, "What's tripe got to do, got to do with it?"  https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/4901241-oats-tripe-chocolate-mousse

Number Twenty-Three

Originally published Summer 1998 issue of Northern Fusion

The smog wasn’t too bad today. Thanks to a heavy rainfall two days before the chemicals in the air had been damped down. Usually the atmosphere was so thick it was like walking through fog. John adjusted the setting on his mask from heavy to medium. He couldn’t ever remember a time when it had been set on light.

The concrete sidewalks were falling apart and what few trees lined the streets were leafless, the smaller limbs long since broken off for fuel or shelter. He hated walking to his appointments but, as usual, the two vehicles allotted the Health Department were in for repair.

John removed the clipboard from the side pocket of the metal briefcase he carried and double checked the address of his next assignment. He quickly spotted it: the number twenty-three was scrawled on the front door in dripping red paint. The house, made of slabs of crumbling concrete, with a rutted corrugated tin roof and a pitted metal door, looked like something a couple of kids might have thrown together as a fortress.

He hefted the case to get a better grip and started up the littered walkway, picking his way through the rocks piled haphazardly along the sides. He rapped his fist on the door and a creaky voice called out “Who’s there?”

“Health Department!” he barked. He hated yelling but it was the only way to make himself heard through his mask.

There were sounds of furniture being moved then the door swung open and a wrinkled face, partially hidden by a mask that covered the mouth and nose, looked into his. The tear-drop shaped mask was made of a flexible, off-white plastic and black nylon straps on either side held the mask in place at the back of the skull. John hadn’t seen one of these in a long time. It reminded him of a jockstrap. Dirty strands of gauze hung loosely at one side of the mouthpiece, and perched on top of the nose ridge was a pair of badly scratched glasses. “Come in.”

John stole a quick glance at the clipboard as he came through the door into the single room. The subject was an older female named Irma. Most of the time it was hard to tell what sex they were but in John’s experience women survived the atmosphere much better than men did. He could tell right away that Irma was like most of his other cases: old, alone, eking out a pathetic living by stealing food to supplement the meager government handouts. The door shut behind him.

“Happy Birthday!” he yelled, turning about and trying to smile with his eyes.

“Oh thank you!” Irma gushed, a pinkish blush creeping up her sagging grey cheeks.

“Now...let me guess how old you are...” John kept his tone jovial, as though he were talking to a small child. She was only forty-one but looked as ancient and broken down as the trees outside.

“I’d say, oh, twenty-three?”

“Oh stop! You know I’m thirty-nine today.” She gestured at his clipboard. He didn’t bother to correct her. Let her keep some semblance of youth, no matter how tenuous. Maybe it was vanity, or insanity, that kept her alive.

“Well. Shall we get started?”

Irma dragged two wooden crates over and they sat down. John laid the clipboard on the floor and drew the metal case up into his lap. As he bent his head over the open case and fiddled with the vials and jars inside he surreptitiously surveyed the room.

In one corner was her bed, a ripped open wooden crate stuffed with plastic bags, newspapers, and bits of cloth. A thick book, faded and dusty, lay beside it but from his position John couldn’t make out the title. A yellowed photograph of a man in uniform hung on the wall above her bed, and further along the same wall was a pile of dirty melamine dishes and a small cooking stove. In the furthest corner was an old plastic pail covered with a weather-blackened wooden plank. The toilet.

He withdrew a small plastic vial, already labeled with Irma’s case number, and offered it to her. Irma knew the procedure and took it from him, wrapping her claw-like hands about it. She took one raspy breath, lifted the mouth covering of her mask and spat a gob of brownish phlegm into the vial. Dropping the mask back over her mouth she handed it back to John. He capped the vial and stored it back in the case while Irma sat quietly on the crate and waited for the next step.

John took out two sets of tweezers, one of which was already fitted with a round white filter pad, and leaned in close to Irma. “Okay deep breath,” he instructed. Irma screwed up her face and sucked in air.

With the first set of tweezers he pulled the old filter from the mouthpiece, quickly grabbed the second pair and slid the new filter pad into place.

“Breathe now,” he said, but Irma was already breathing in noisily.

“Nothing like a new filter, eh?” he said. Irma smiled and nodded. Her eyebrows relaxed.

He put the used filter into a plastic baggie, labeled with the case number, and stored it in one of the pockets of the metal case.

The next step he always dreaded, as did every other Health Department worker he had ever known. When he removed a large jar and a pair of steel tongs from the case, Irma stood and led him to the pail in the corner. She removed the plank and John was thankful that his mask filtered out most of the stench. Inside the pail a gross collection of human excrement floated in a sea of pale urine.

A few dozen cockroaches, subjected to the sudden light and movement, rushed upward and over the sides of the pail, scurrying into corners and beneath dishes. John’s stomach lurched upward but he mentally pushed it back down. A couple of roaches had crawled right across Irma’s bare feet but she didn’t seem to have noticed.

It amazed him that, without a mask, any other living creature would be dead within a week, but these hideous bugs had found a way to thrive on the pollution. John knew that in earlier, cleaner days cockroaches hadn’t fed on shit but, he supposed, they’d evolved. The strongest and most fit to survive. No wonder all the research money went to the study of these little buggers. Years ago it had been the tsetse fly; now it was roaches.

John reached into the pail and snagged the firmest of the feces with the tongs and dropped it into the jar where it made a thick plopping noise as it hit the bottom. He capped the jar, also labeled, bagged the tongs, and stowed them away in the metal case. He picked up the clipboard from the floor, flicked off a stray roach, and made his notations. He handed the board to Irma and she pressed her thumb on the line he indicated.

“Are there any openings?” she asked, her eyebrows once again knotted.

It was the standard question, asked by every subject. Fictional hospitals had been built to keep her hopes alive but John knew you couldn’t live on hope. He felt a stab of guilt and pressed a few entries on the board, stalling for time.

“You’ve moved up the list a bit,” he said, giving her the standard answer but not meeting her eyes. “We’ll be sure to let you know.” He returned the clipboard to the case pocket and walked to the front door.

“Oh can’t you stay just a little longer? I don’t get company very often.” Irma was anxiously banging her hands against her sides and her eyebrows were so tensed they appeared almost joined over her glasses.

“I’m sorry,” John said, honestly feeling it. “I have to go back and fill out my reports. Don’t you have any family? Neighbours?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t go out very often. Sometimes, at night I do...” she trailed off.

John apologized again, feeling like a shithead for wanting to get out of this dingy rat hole. He closed the door quietly behind him and walked back to the clinic. After he dropped the case in the front office, unloading the vials and jars and tucking them into the slots provided, he returned to his room in the military-style barracks where all the Health Department workers lived.

At the door to his quarters he pressed his hand against the side plate and the outer door slid open then closed smoothly behind him. John stood in the anteroom and waited for the beep to signal that the air filter system had detoxified his garments. He pressed his hand to the second side plate and the next door slid open.

He flopped onto the bed and crossed his arms behind his head. Even with all the air filter systems he still had to keep his mask on, in case of emergency. Lying there, he wondered for the billionth time it seemed what the hell the point was? All the Health Department tests were a crock, a public relations ploy to convince people that the government cared about them or, maybe worse, that they could actually do something about the situation.

John sighed and rose from his bed to check his mail. There was a short note from an acquaintance of his at Health Department No. 19, another ad for porn, and a memo from R. Waters, the Health Department’s chief officer.

“Due to government spending cuts, the Health Department is forced to lay off twenty-five employees. Please finish your weekly assignments. Effective April 22, you will be escorted from the premises and assigned new living quarters. Your compensation will be credited to your account.”

John stared at the screen for a moment, stunned. He knew exactly what “new living quarters” meant. He thought of Irma living in a dilapidated shack with the red number twenty-three dripped on it. Irma, or someone like her, was going to be his new neighbour. He closed his eyes and hugged his arms tight around his body, trying to squeeze down the panic that suddenly rose in his gut.

Four months ago, when the last round of layoffs had come, armed security officers had arrived early in the morning and dragged the workers from their quarters. All John could think of was their open-mouthed screams that he hadn’t been able to hear through the soundproof windows.

“No!” he yelled into the stillness of his room. He wouldn’t be forced. He wouldn’t be dragged. And he couldn’t win.

He turned off his terminal and stood up from his desk. After opening the inner and outer doors John stepped out into the early evening. The sun was sinking, the sky a burnt orange colour with steel grey clouds scudding low on the horizon. He took off his mask and dropped it on the ground. He started to walk. To number twenty-three.