Sometimes when reading poetry
I feel like a grumpy old man
scoffing at abstract art, declaring
“a child could have done that”
Lines and stanzas
pass over my head like
encrypted codes
I cannot crack
Somebody recently read my book
and described my writing as
“the antidote for pretentious,
indecipherable poetry”
I’ll take that
My poems may be more
paint-by-numbers than Jackson Pollock
but at least you’re picking up
what I’m putting down
Right?
horror, adj. inspiring or creating loathing, aversion, etc.
sleaze, adj. contemptibly low, mean, or disreputable
trash, n. literary or artistic material of poor or inferior quality
Welcome to HSTQ: Spring 2026, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!
Featuring poetry by Gabriel Bates, Willie Smith, Eric Robert Nolan, Donna Dallas, Charles Rammelkamp, Salvatore Difalco, William Taylor Jr., Dmitriy Kogan, Damon Hubbs, Daniel de Culla, James Callan, Casey Renee Kiser, M.P. Powers, Andy Seven, John Yohe, Wolfgang Carstens, Ronan Barbour, Ben Newell, Taryn Allan, Arthur Graham, and Todd Cirillo.
There is something comforting
in the hum of people and the jukebox music
of a Friday night.
A liquor lullaby
that can soothe and strip away
the pain of the week
and the disappointment of the world.
Like that soft return to the womb
people talk about after they have taken
a weekend yoga or regression therapy retreat—
but much drunker.
An opulence of cock
champagne foam
down the shaft
A bounty of boobs
and caramel thighs
caught in fishnet fabric
bursting with butt
pulsing with need
a moving muscle
in my pocket.
Crystals and mirrors
smoke and scents
perfume and sweat
Sit on my lap—
can you feel it?
Techno beats
and sweet teats
disigner heels
on woolly feet.
Love that shade
on your lips
around my finger
on my schlong
and the rings are cold
like your ice blue eyes
that you insist are green.
Can we get a second opinion?
Okay, so they’re green.
I get lost in those eyes
getting lost in the heat
of the moment
and the throng of
limbs and giant asses
bumping my legs
and concussing your
beautiful head.
Remember when you pushed me off a cliff?
I do. I survived
and thrived. And even came back
to thank you.
I waited a while by your coffin. I waited
for you to get over your fear
of coming out:
showing your TRUE FORM
And when you finally stuck out
a rotted arm to test
the safety of the moon; the star sass,
the bat-friendly atmosphere, wondering
if you could grab a quick BLOOD BEER
(….creak….) is it late enough???
I slammed the last nail right in!
And I would’ve pushed you
in that coffin
off that same cliff. But I was kinda done
with giving FREE RIDES
Mother, won’t you listen
to my bedtime story, since you’re
LOCKED IN FOR THE NIGHT
That burn box you sent me–
I return the flames to sender! Surely,
you remember popping me out
Year of The Dragon. If you wanna talk
fire,
I’m your girl. I’ll even GET OUT
the disco ball.
***
The raccoon placed his paws on the table. Above him, a single naked lightbulb swayed.
“Cigarette?” asked Detective Joe Oroborus.
“Man, you guys are old school. No thanks,” said the raccoon.
“According to a witness statement, you were last seen in the vicinity of the thermite bomb attack wherein…”
“Hello? Excuse me? Do I look like I’m capable of setting off thermite?” He directed their attention to his paws. “Opposable thumbs, see any?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Thank you.”
“Not so fast, clever Sam,” said Joe’s partner, Sweetback Glide. “Also according to the witness, you’re an anthropomorphic fantasy character. Gripping never poses any obstacle for you guys. Am I right?”
“Well…”
“Oh, lighten up,” said Joe.
“You lighten up.”
“Fuck you, man. Just, fuck you.”
“Excuse me,” said the raccoon, “but aren’t you two taking the Good Cop/Bad Cop thing into new and perilous territory? And unless you have any actual evidence against me, I demand you release me. I have garbage to root through.”
“The last time you rooted through garbage, it was under your alter ego ‘Dr. Racky,’ and it was medical waste…specifically, embryos. You were planning a new race of gene-tweaked super-raccoons with opposable thumbs. Admit it! Admit it under oath!”
“Know the rules of evidence much?” asked the raccoon.
“Huh?”
“You heard me. I demand to speak with my solicitor. This outrage has gone far enough. This trial is out of order. This whole proceeding is whacky to the 9th degree. Justice! Justice!”
“You can’t handle the justice,” said Glide.
“I’m not saying anything until you hook me up with some justice,” said the raccoon sulkily.
“But we’re straying from the point,” said Joe. “We need to focus on the main theme, not this pie in the sky malarkey. You, sir, are a rootin’ tootin’ criminal of the first water!”
“Objection!” screamed the raccoon. “I so fucking object!”
“He’s got a point,” said Glide. “We need to stick to the facts. Nothing but. I shared a cell with a raccoon once and they’re very factual.”
“But…”
“I was on the inside for a very specific reason, undercover, to expose that gang of anime characters…the Big Eyes Bunch. They were planning to hold the manga genre hostage unless their demands for panty porn and tentacle action were met in spades. I mean literal spades.”
“But that’s just…overtly surreal,” said Joe.
“Spot on,” said Glide. “You’ll make a fine detective one day.”
“One day? I was doing detective spade work in the garden of earthly delights long before you poked about in your mother’s womb…looking for the good nutrition angle. I was…”
“Crap, utter crap,” howled the raccoon.
“What is it now?”
“I’m walking right out of this pop stand and you can’t stop me. Then I’ll keep walking until I find some garbage, and if it does happen to consist of embryos, so much the worse for the sting operation, because…I’ll make those clones anyway. I’ll hybridize, I’ll gene-tweak, and I’ll keep going until I have that army they warned you about in the slammer. Yes, doggo frens, I’m talking about the last army you see before you wake up in a pool of your own freckles…rubbed off forever…”
“The mind boggles,” said Joe suddenly. “This suspect is a lot weirder than both of us working together, very hard and very fast. He’s got it all over us. I say we pardon him and let the next set of detectives work the clones over.”
“Very good, sir.”
A sudden tendency to microfinetune quantum reality resulted in the outsourcing of this story temporarily to Swedish biker cranksters.
“the fuck’s going on?” I asked the bartender as I climbed
on my barstool; the only one left unoccupied in the crowded
bar by the port.
“some military ship docked today; Americans,” she replied, while
running around filling up mugs of green beer.
“fuck,” I spat under my breath. to her credit, she ignored several
jumping thirsty guys to get me my triple Four Roses and large draft beer.
after a swig that emptied half the lowball, and after lighting a cigarette,
I looked over my shoulder at the barroom. all the small tables were covered
with empty mugs and bottles of beer, and swaying, slurring young men
were clinking glasses and making grandiose proclamations about
their manhood and their conquests. ten women, all in barely-there outfits,
entertained the tables, accepting free drinks and grabbing crotches, telling
big lies about what they were feeling up. Jeanette was one of them; surrounded
by three bulky young men; young enough
to look like they should be sent back to junior high.
I chugged my remaining drink, and the buxom bartender, whose name I could
never fucking remember, poured more Four Roses over the ice cubes that
hadn’t had time to melt.
“it’s her job,” she reminded me, I guess because she saw some
red coloring my cheeks.
“I know,” I grumbled and kept my gaze focused on my drink.
“you ain’t no sailor, are ya?” the young man next to me said; also with a buzz cut, and
clean-shaven, too fucking young to be out in the world without parental
supervision. I was long-haired, with a full beard, in a dirty t-shirt and a worn-out
leather jacket.
“what gave it away?” I asked.
“I thought this was a bar only for sailors.”
“it is. I’m just the local barfly with special privileges.”
“what makes you so special?” he pursued. he was looking for a fight.
I lit a cigarette, and blew a plume of blue smoke on his face.
my regular haunt, where I could get a backup of fifteen bloodthirsty bikers
was several blocks away; and I didn’t have any phone numbers.
I didn’t care. Jeanette was getting harassed by three morons, while another
moron was trying to pick up a fight.
“look, kid,” I said. “you want to fight, go pick on one of your drunk friends. I’m
not getting entangled in your bullshit.”
“we’re out here protecting your godless country,” he said. “I won’t fight my brothers.”
“go fight Commies, then, if you can find them. the Soviet Union collapsed
long before your parents even thought about having a kid.”
“you’re a fucking Commie,” he accused me.
“quit yelling, or you’re out,” the bartender threatened him; I raised my glass at her.
“fuck you,” he told her. “the only reason you’re serving drinks is because you’re
way too ugly to be a whore.”
without thinking, I put my hand on the back of his head and used his face to smash his beer mug.
he started wailing like a little kid that got stung by a bee,
holding on to his face as blood started painting his fingers crimson.
I barely managed to finish my drink before several of his buddies
dragged me off my barstool and started stomping me.
I was drunk enough to take the pain, and high enough not to
remember much of how more than a dozen combat boots
made sure not an inch of my body and head remained intact.
I lay on the floor, a bloody, broken mess, when the bartender
called for backup, a couple of bouncers, to remove
all the assholes. they helped me up, I got a free Four Roses,
and Jeanette abandoned her suitors to come to me.
“are you okay?” she asked, her hazel eyes emanating worry, and perhaps
even affection.
“I’ve survived worse,” I mumbled. even touching the brim of my lowball with
my swollen lips was painful. at least, a good gulp helped numb the pain.
“come on, I’m taking you to my place. you need to rest.”
I didn’t resist when she put her arm around my waist and led me out
of the bar, under the murderous glares of the rest of the sailors.
“why did you have to get into a fight?”
“the little fucker insulted the bartender,” I explained.
“you just cost me a lot of money,” she said.
“you know I can’t pay for that.”
“and you know I don’t care.”
she was a Florence Nightingale in a whore costume, and that
was why I really liked her.
we reached her apartment—she had to drag my carcass up the
staircases—and she tossed me onto the couch.
“thanks,” I said when she gave me a brimful lowball of cheap bourbon.
“drink up, this is gonna hurt,” she said and without another warning
started rubbing an alcohol-soaked rag on my bloody face.
I flinched, winced, and drank, trying to hold back the tears.
“it was a very brave, and stupid, thing to do,” she said, and kissed my
swollen lips.
“emphasis on stupid, huh?”
“you think she hasn’t heard worse?”
“probably from better,” I chuckled dryly.
“exactly.”
she kissed my lips again, and for a few moments we just
stared into each other’s eyes. she was a prostitute; I was a drunkard.
we should have been a match made in heaven.
it was never meant to be.
however, for that one night, the night she decided to take care of me
instead of taking home paying customers, we truly became one—thankfully,
none of the fuckers that beat the shit out of me attacked my dick and balls.
after I finished my drink, in two gulps, she took me to
her bed; there, she showed me that chivalry is still rewarded.
I had cracked ribs, two strained arms, and potentially a concussion.
if I had died while sleeping on her squeaking bed, after coming inside her,
I’d have died a happy man. I didn’t die. death doesn’t want me.
the devil has ensured I live to be a hundred just to avoid me.
I woke up, hungover and beaten up. she made me
coffee, then I had to go home to get drunk.
The leviathan parks itself outside my apartment.
No engine hum. No warning. Just there.
Every night, the same: a flicker of streetlight, a fluorescent stutter—and then the rot appears.
Maybe it’s visiting me because I was shaken the first time I saw it. It was years ago. I was driving to the arrivals terminal and there it was—slouched on deflated tires behind Kennedy airport, on the Rockaway Expressway. Just a bloated carcass—rectangular, heat-swollen—“EMERGENCY RESPONSE UNIT” scrawled across its aluminum side in flaking letters. A red cross peeling, looking like sunburn—or something worse.
A 60-by-12-foot self-propelled trauma unit—complete with operating room, burn beds, and auxiliary power. Fully functional. Never truly roadworthy. Its mobility wasn’t for transport, but for greeting the wreckage.
It had once been a storage trailer for outdated airplane seats.
Now it hunched there, on the tarmac—obsolete before it ever touched a single life.
The new ambulances fly.
Yet it keeps showing up.
Something in it logged my reaction—and decided to mess with me.
They built the unit after Flight 66 dropped from the sky. June 1975. A Boeing 727 slammed into the approach lights at JFK and tore itself across Rockaway Boulevard—113 dead, fire trucks stuck in gridlock, no plan, no help. That crash gave birth to the hospital on wheels.
Its doors were sealed for good after what came to be called the Black Drill of ’87.
It wasn’t called that officially, of course. Officially, it was a full-scale simulation—a standard triage exercise meant to test the Mobile Emergency Trauma Unit under real-time pressure.
There are no public records. No photos. No news articles. Just fragments. Anecdotes. Whispers passed down from bitter Port Authority retirees and nightshift orderlies with thousand-yard stares.
The trauma unit skulked out just past midnight. It was supposed to rendezvous with a staged crash site near the old cargo terminals. Somewhere en route, it disappeared from sight. Disconnected from radio. It went dark for almost three hours.
When it reappeared, it was parked in the middle of Runway 13L. Doors locked from the inside.
Twelve training dummies had been loaded aboard earlier that day for simulation—each tagged and cataloged by Port Authority staff.
Only eleven were recovered.
But they found a twelfth.
Not rubber. Not tagged. Not breathing.
A real one.
Unidentified. Mid-twenties. No ID. No pulse. But coagulated blood stood in jelled defiance at the base of the stretcher. The body wrapped in singed bandages. Autopsy report—if it ever existed—was never released.
They say one nurse never spoke again. Just walked off the job and into the Sound.
A doctor built a fallout shelter in his backyard and died six months later of dehydration, muttering about how he never saw a body he couldn’t account for.
The unit was decommissioned quietly. Shelved. Ignored. Left to rot outside, on a forgotten tarmac. Yet it hovers—like a bad dream for those who were there.
A drunk retiree at a medical evac reunion swore he saw a young, Italian-looking kid watching the Drill from his car. Said he was holding a clipboard.
Vanished before anyone could get a look.
I imagined the stillness inside—the unused dressings in yellowing boxes, the dust sitting on scratchy blankets inside the triage unit.
Not memory. Something low and cold squeezing the base of my heart.
Years later, its ghosts roll in nightly on cracked tires. I still hear them. The crews. The surgeons. Still prepping. Outside my window.
Tonight, I give in.
I walk out of my apartment building and the air is different—dense, electrical.
The unit sits by the curb, almost breathing.
It’s around two a.m. No sign of human life on either side of the double yellow lines. But the air is alive. The dense drizzle dowses the unit in a kind of sweat.
Up close, it’s massive—a bumpy aluminum shell, shifting around corroded steel bones.
Strange. None of the neighbors ever mentioned seeing the unit. No one ever complained about it taking up ten parking spaces.
I walk up to the doors. The latch gives.
Inside, it’s dead quiet. A time capsule of dust and unused triage.
And then: a stretcher.
An old clipboard.
The patient name: mine.
Date of intake: June 1987.
No vitals. No release.
It returns for a moment. But it slowly fades. Replaced by something secure. Reassuring.
I look toward the front of the vehicle: a driver—stooped, motionless. He’s wearing the soiled uniform of an orderly, circa 1980-something. He turns. Smiles.
The doors close behind me.
And we’re gone.
Wheels lifting.
Like a plane that never lands.
Like being buried with the lights still on.
Like always.
I used to wake up.
Now I just wait.
For the hush of night.
And the sky, weeping from the seams.
I was raised by a fiercely independent single mother. She must have believed this trait was genetic because she clearly expected the same exact fierce independence from me.
I got my first period when I was nine years old.
For anyone old enough to read this without understanding the general cadence of female development, THAT IS INSANELY YOUNG. Especially in the 90s. Us 90s girls grew up much SLOWER than the subsequent generations we witness now. Look at some recent prom pictures. THOSE ARE WOMEN escorting the, obviously, young boys to the dance. I presume these modern girls are menstruating at a younger age than my peer group.
At nine years old, I was left alone with my period for another several years.
Alone except for the company of my fiercely independent mother, who, at the news of my period, promptly handed me an OB tampon and said (in what my mind recalls as a drill sergeant’s tone), “HERE! Put this up there.”
An OB tampon is a hard tube of cotton, tightly wrapped in plastic. It was pretty in a weird way, so small and white with a shiny exterior due to the plastic wrap. If you are someone who collects rocks or novel treasures on walks you know what I mean, it is the kind of thing that if seen in isolation one wants to behold and keep. I had seen the OBs in my mother’s purse or come out of her pocket with change as she went to pay at a register. I knew it was A THING that had to do with SOMETHING ADULT but it wasn’t until this very terrifying and isolating moment that I KNEW it was for THIS THING. This blood coming from between my legs.
By the age of nine I had long since decided that I couldn’t admit any weakness to my alpha mother, and would do better to fall in line, even if I was terrified and clueless.
I took the OB into the bathroom. The bathroom was so white, the tile floor, the walls, the toilet, sink, tub and towels, all white. No one had taken time to decorate so just stark whiteness. I stared at the OB for some time, so white and shiny and almost precious in its compact size and so befitting to the whiteness I was surrounded by. The only thing out of place was the contrast of a quarter sized red dot of blood resting in the crotch of my lavender and heavily pilled underwear. I stared and just had absolutely no idea what to do with it, hoping my mother would come and ask how I was doing, if maybe I needed help, SHOW ME WHAT TO DO, but what I got was a half-hearted, “How are you doing in there?” from the other side of the door.
I knew that she didn’t REALLY want to know and obviously didn’t REALLY want to offer any instruction. There was absolutely no way I was going to tell the truth: “NO MOM, I AM REALLY SCARED AND DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS THING, I FEEL ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE AND REALLY WISH THAT YOU WOULD COME HERE AND HOLD ME AND SHOW ME.”
Instead, I said in my biggest tough girl voice, “Yeah, almost done,” and vowed myself to secrecy. Decided I would FIGURE IT OUT.
Just not with an OB.
I wrapped the tampon in a bunch of toilet paper, working hard to make it inconspicuous, and hid it in the bottom of the garbage can under an empty bottle of V05 shampoo, an empty toilet paper roll and tissues. Then I took a wad of toilet paper, while feeling hurried and rushed I was a meticulous child, so I wrapped toilet paper around my small hand a few times and gently placed the makeshift pad between my legs. I shoved back the mounting tears, swallowed hard and took a deep breath, then exited the bathroom, ready to face the praise of my relieved mother for ‘handling it.’
This process of shoving back tears, swallowing hard and taking a deep breath became the most familiar act of my life. I’ve spent more time suppressing emotions than actually experiencing them.
My mother called me a “big girl” and rewarded me with a smile of approval. This became my first drug of choice. When I felt empty and alone, I could always “do something well” and get “them” to tell me how great I did. It made empty and alone feel less empty and alone. What I understand now is that I was just a little girl, not a big girl. And that calling me something I wasn’t made me something that I’m not. Little girls do not inherently want to shove things in their pussies, not even tampons, especially not tampons that require them to work a finger up there to get it in place. The thing about OB tampons is that they do not come with an applicator. All other tampon brands come with an applicator that seems to have an intuitive nature to them, they keep the area a little private and distant and delicate. But no, my mother handed me an OB, the mature woman’s tampon.
Now I am an adult and I’m super into my menstrual cycle. I have also shoved all sorts of things up there: OBs, Diva cups, penises, my hands, men’s mouths. Maybe my mother’s actions contributed to the unwavering comfort I have with my period and vagina now? In the end I seem to have shoved my mother’s attitude toward it all up there.
***
When I was 15 I had my first yeast infection. I am honestly not sure how I knew but I knew. I’ll spare you the details. When I went to my mother my memory is that she yelled from another room “put some yogurt on it!” I was emotionally transported back to that bathroom at 9 years old and felt all of the terror and inferiority of not knowing what I clearly should have known how to do and just left the house without responding or any follow up. By this age I was walking around with a pack of cigarettes in my pocket and had begun being seen as a patient at planned parenthood. I took a walk and had a smoke and resolved to “handle it” once again. So I called and was seen and given the proper course of treatment and that was that. I never knew what the fuck she meant by put some yogurt on it. Like where EXACTLY? HOW? WITH MY FINGER? I never asked and she died long before I started the work in therapy I would need to do to be able to confront these issues.
More than 20 years later I was a registered nurse moonlighting as an infusion nurse at an upscale IV boutique for people with disposable cash. We had a few clients with real conditions but mostly gave athletes bags of fluid with vitamins and minerals, rich ladies who couldn’t stand to actually drink water hydration, there was a popular trend with Asian women coming in and
getting high doses of glutathione, an antioxidant, to lighten and brighten their skin. Many aging Asian women develop dark patched, and the glutathione was believed to even out skin tone. There was a lovely philopena mother and daughter who became clients of mine and spent a small fortune on glutathione. They were lovely to talk with and topped very well. During one session the topic of digestion and probiotics came up, and we began discussing overall pH balance and the importance for female vaginal health and she very casually said ‘well I yogurt.” I stopped mid-sentence and was transported back to the bathroom, but I was old enough and had done enough work to know I was being pulled back to the bathroom so instead of allowing myself to remain there I snapped back to 2020. I smiled, a proud smile of approval, like my mother’s approval but for my true self, and asked “what do you mean? I mean I think I know but can you tell me exactly what you do?”
She gladly explained that she takes tampons and puts a little bit of plain, full fat, Greek yogurt on it and inserts into her vagina and leaves it there for about 15-30 minutes. She had been doing it once a month for 10 years and has never had any infection or disturbance of any kind since beginning this practice. I was floored. Finally, I had a way and means. I could have cried but I was still very good at shoving it all back and down.
I have finally decided to try yogurting. So yesterday I scraped the top of a fresh container of yogurt with a tampon and up she went! Fingers crossed. I felt slightly haunted when I went back into the container to actually eat some yogurt and could clearly see the scrape marks from a tampon.
Waves of heat undulated and danced in front of Sam’s eyes as he walked slowly down the desert road.
The road was darker than the sidewalk, so bright it made him dizzy.
He was under the thumb of solar imperialism, and the sun owned everything, and everyone lock, stock and barrel.
He was dizzy, thirsty and hungry. Walking for miles under the burning sky had a transformative effect.
His flesh couldn’t melt, but his soul could, and it melted with heat waves dancing all around him like ghosts in the desert.
His back was drenched with sweat from the thick backpack weighing him down and intensifying his body heat.
This was the kind of day where wearing socks didn’t make any sense, because his feet felt the heat burn right up through the boots he was wearing.
The soles may as well be cardboard for all the good they did.
The tall purple mountains which wrapped around the town looked on, not caring.
Tourists walked by shooting disapproving looks at Sam’s disheveled, sweaty appearance.
To them he was hideous – but their thatchy, hairy legs poking out of brightly colored shorts was acceptable.
He returned their horrified stares until he heard a scratching sound below him.
It was a small lizard, upside down, thrashing around, trying to bring itself bolt, upright again.
Sam leaned down and picked up the lizard, closed his eyes shut, said a few Hail Marys and then bit the tiny lizard’s head off.
He chewed on the rest of the still thrashing body like it was a chaw of beef jerky, pretending the blood spurting out of the critter’s body was catsup.
Scooter yelled, “DAD THAT CRAZY GUY JUST ATE A LIZARD”.
Scooter’s father stared with a repulsed sneer while his fat blonde wife dialed 911 on her cell phone.
She wished Sam was black so she could get on the news.
Busting a homeless white man wasn’t going to get her in the papers.
Bugger.
Sam threw the reptilian carcass down and walked over to the gas station across the road.
Scooter’s mom tossed her mullet and yelled, “HEY YOU DON’T YOU WALK AWAY YOU STAY RIGHT HERE, MISTER!”
Sweat drooled down every millimeter of Sam’s corpus.
So delirious from the heat, he walked up to a gas pump and kicked it angrily thinking it was a soda machine.
A few yards away sat a solitary gas can and in his delirious state thought he was looking at a thirst-quenching liter of A&W Root Beer.
Sam unscrewed the cap to the can and poured the remains of what was left in the can.
Wiping his chin, he continued his trek down the road to the baritone screaming of the vacationing housewife yelling into her cell phone.
It can be assumed the local police didn’t care about the homeless eating microscopic wildlife.
A coyote, yes; a road runner, yes; maybe even a vulture – a tiny lizard, no, no bother.
He trudged with a Frankensteinian gallop down Palm Canyon Drive, heading for Vista Chino – deadline, Desert Hot Springs.
In the bright white light he saw vinyl-topped Cadillacs roll in to heavily gated golf courses, the old white men still holding on to their huge sedans in their rejection of hip-hop cruisers.
Many yards later Sam passed newly gentrified motels, still piping in bad Frank Sinatra music but this time for tattooed blondes with piercings and XXL asses.
He could have sworn they were twerking out of their hip-hop cruisers.
Everywhere he went there were misters spraying thin jets of water out as lawn sprinklers ejaculated over all matter of desert flora.
Out the corner of his eye he espied a police cruiser slowly trailing behind him.
It made him paranoid, so he took a sharp turn around the corner.
It led to a quiet side street, but side streets in the desert are never truly quiet, because you can always hear the abrasive music of insects scratching their legs and crackling their antennae all through the day and into the night.
There were rows of banged-up houses lining the road with campers sporting flat tires and sunbaked speedboats that hadn’t touched water in years parked out in front.
Fumes of cooking methamphetamine wafted from a few houses, mingling with dancing heat waves.
“SKYLER PICK UP SOME DORITOS AT THE STORE!” yelled a voice from inside a house behind a teenage girl’s back.
The teenage girl in shorts and flip-flops had corn roll hair.
“AND GET SOME CIGS, TOO!”
“ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT!” Skyler yelled back, still walking.
‘AND -SKYLER!-SKYLER! BRING BACK SOMETHING TO DRINK!”
‘YEAH, ALRIGHT ALREADY!” Skyler yelled, picking up her speed away from home.
The word “drink” triggered Sam’s bladder into wanting to unload, so he warily retuned to the main drag, looking around to make sure the cops were gone.
All he could find for the next half-mile was a private tennis court.
With every step he took the back pack felt heavier and heavier, weighing him down.
He could feel every pound of his load pushing down his back.
The weight pushing down his back created a considerable degree of tension to his bladder.
Too many palm trees were covering the front of the court, making it impossible for Sam to jump over a fence.
Sam walked towards the driveway where a parking attendant was opening a car door and letting a pair of guests out.
“HEY!” he yelled at Sam as he walked past him.
“I SAID HEY! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?”
A well-groomed silver haired gentleman in a white tennis outfit got out of the car, pushed in his aviator shades and said, “Let me handle this, Carlos!”
The silver haired gentleman’s companion, a young man in cutoff shorts aggressively grabbed Sam by the arm and said, “The man’s talking to you, Buddy!”
Sam tried wriggling free of the young man’s grasp, but the grip was too strong for him.
“Get off me”, Sam hissed.
“Get off me? Can you believe this punk?” the hustler announced to his benefactor and the attendant, getting cockier by the minute.
Sam kept trying to break free but couldn’t.
The hustler threw Sam against the automobile hood, slamming him hard.
“Leave him alone, Brian. I’ll just chase him out of here”, Carlos appealed.
“No way”, Brian the hustler growled. “Not on my watch, bro”.
Brian quickly slammed Sam against the Cadillac three times in a row.
Sam couldn’t hold it in anymore.
He undid his fly with his free hand and pulled out his hose.
The old tennis bum licked his lips, eagerly awaiting visual bounty.
Sam held his joint out and peed all over the Cadillac.
“YOU PERVERT, WHAT THE FUCK?” Brian yelled, still holding on to Sam.
The heat radiated on Sam’s urine, igniting the gasoline he consumed a little while ago.
The beautiful white Cadillac immediately burst into flames.
Sam was instantly immolated by the burning car, and with him Brian.
The attendant ran to his kiosk to call the Fire Department, but it was too late to save Sam, Brain and the overpriced American automobile.
The masculine bonfire spread due to the dancing heatwaves caressing the flames and spreading them to the nearest palm trees.
The flames spread throughout the entire court yard.
Tennis bums and horny tennis instructors began to run, but it was too late.
Palm Springs was on fire.
Fire and brimstone.
Horror Sleaze Trash 