BUTTHOLE PROBLEMS
What’s it, what’s it, I can hear you saying, what’s even a butthole problem, or what’s a butthole other than being a problem in itself, of itself, that sounds to me like a butthole problem, butthole, a butthole that rashes like hell after a hot date, that itches like a motherfucker after a night well spent at Taco Bell’s, unlike some other buttholes that smell like proper buttholes, buttholes that smell like years of regret and day-old butter, buttholes that gossip about other buttholes in family functions, about Steve Bannon, about Santa Claus, buttholes that dream of traveling far away and broadening their buttholes, buttholes that wish they could trade their buttholes for other things—a roof, some money, fair sex—buttholes that burn with regret in the mornings, buttholes that should deal with external threats, like inflation, like novel viruses, like lubricants and penetration, buttholes that go on around other buttholes like can we make this happen, how can we make this happen, buttholes that bear smaller buttholes inside them like a Russian doll of buttholes, buttholes that could turn cancerous—if not malodorous—if left unattended, buttholes that could move from one butthole of a place to another, like from Texas to another part of Texas, or straight from Texas to hell, a hell that’s not particularly literal or metaphorical, not even allegorical, a hell where demons could famously roast your butthole on a spit, a hell that could make you feel at home and wish you didn’t even have a butthole in the first place, that you didn’t have a life after all, that you didn’t come into this world, into this body, most certainly not this body attached to this particular butthole you were born with, have to carry with, live with, laugh with, die with, halfwit.
A DROWNING
Each of us was supposed to either push the turtles over the pier or jump into the water ourselves.
Jimmy said, “How many turtles?” and we had to explain to him that one would do. Though I could tell he wasn’t fully convinced, he took the news in good faith. He checked us out one by one, then gently grabbed a turtle from its shell in his last act of mercy. His arms quivered in hesitation before he tossed the turtle into the lake like a skipping stone.
“How’s this exactly a punishment?” he turned to ask upon the unclimactic silence. It was a fair question. Though the gist of the game wasn’t about punishment, there was something about meeting up this late, far from our homes, that lent the whole ordeal an unmistakable element of sin. If my sister were still here, she would tell us all about her own wrongdoings, about how testy the waters could be when provoked at just the wrong time.
But she could no longer talk, no longer breathe.
“It’s where they come out from.” It was Cornball who finally broke the silence, who then picked up the remaining turtle and catapulted it into the water with a kind of intensity that made me assume he had some unfinished business with the turtle kind, or that he was resolving some unfinished business he had with someone else with turtles.
We all stood in a delicate silence before someone said we should go back. The crickets filled the air with chirrups, another mark of the South. When we arrived at the car we found the main road deserted, which made me feel as if everyone was dead and we were stuck in some kind of limbo. I could almost hear my sister calling me a dickhead from beyond.
COVENANT
For Pim’s seventh birthday we pin her to the ground and shout “Eat shit, you human” by her side, Cane’s homemade Xenomorph costume torn from the thighs, revealing the sponges he filled his crotch with to make it bulge, all while clawing at Pim’s ketchup-stained chest with his needle-like tinfoil fingers, watching Pim’s head jerk to left and right as if slapped by a pair of phantom hands, shouting “Stop,” strictly in character from the start,
Pim is our Ripley for the day though she looks nowhere near Sigourney Weaver, she’s half-German and standing at 4-foot-5 but she’s the birthday girl anyway so we keep our mouths shut and try to have fun, except for her brother Percy who stands all brickfaced on the porch like Michael-frikkin-Meyers when he was supposed to play Ripley’s crewmate, but it’s no surprise, he’s known to be a softie like his dad who’s now babysitting Pim’s newborn sister in the rocking chair, smiling and winking at us every few minutes like that one weird uncle in every family—
—and Pim suddenly elbow-strikes Cane’s jaw and somersaults to say, “Hope you like soup, motherfucker,” grinning at us all Ripley-Ripley, showering us with what remained of her piss in her nerf gun, we Xenomorphs glancing at each other as if we’re truly done, Cane starting to wail through his broken teeth, his head peeping out of his tinfoil Xenomorph costume like a chick in a hatching egg, and that’s when Percy shows a sign of life and starts to run toward us like a good crewmate, screaming out obscenities and cries of revenge, his habit of eating beef jerky for the past three months nonstop finally showing through his self-confidence, and Cane turns to me like a rabbit caught in the headlights and says, through his swollen gums, “Wow.”