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It was a cinch and a half to escape. Sometimes, I think they want us to get out of Sarkomand and back to good ol’ Guignol. If you ever get your situation stuck in there, just shimmy up to the vents in your room. Those old houses got pipes like highways. There’s a little spot halfway through the HVAC—you can’t miss it. The steel’s like a yearbook.
Miasma Was Here.
Doctor Nocturne 2010. 2012. 2015.
See Ya Next Year!
Can’t keep a Fat Cat down!
Dr. Leng hopes you’ve enjoyed your stay. He knows you have many choices when it comes to maximum security incarceration, and thanks you for choosing Sarkomand Sanatorium. Have a Healthy Day!
MEGALODON ROCKS.
Mr. Punch and Pretty Polly Sittin’ in a Tree.
• • •
I took him to my apartment in Guignol. I knew Daddy wouldn’t’a dumped it. Better to let the place sit empty and accumulate equity. It’s expensive to live in the big GC these days! Fuckin’ hipsters, man. And you think I’m bad.
Funny, Mr. Punch didn’t look so scary standin’ in my kitchen, wearin’ my lime-green kimono like the hottie he was, waitin’ for Mr. Coffee to do his thing.
“Tell me,” said Mr. Punch.
“Later, Mistah,” I laughed. “Whodya think you’re talkin’ to? This is a straight-up Scheherazade situation we got here. If I spill those beautiful black beans, whaddo I got? A big fat nothin’. I wanna be involved, Mr. Puppet Man. I wanna be your girl. So, just you play tea party with me like a good dolly and maybe I’ll give you your treat.”
And that’s how I kept my man. He was my dog on a leash and the leash was a name I couldn’t say till I knew I’d be safe. Till I could make him a Good Daddy.
It was like college, livin’ with Mr. Punch! We slept all day and ran wild at night. My sweet baby boo burned my face just like his! We used coat hangers heated up in the gas oven, and after, we went straight out and burned down the Harlequin Theater together—how very dare they put on the same lazy sack of mayonnaise-plays every couple of years? We saved the world from another goddamned Romeo and Juliet, I tell ya. It was charity. We robbed the Guignol City Bank and Trust, we killed up the board of trustees of Guignol Electric and Power in one glorious night of monologues and machine-gun fire. We kidnapped a gaggle-a grad students and made ’em cook up a rapid-release water-soluble hallucinogen in my little kitchen. We were just a couple of wacky kids in love! And in between he’d fuck me on the floor of my flat and ask me over and over. Beg me. Tell me his name, you bitch. You cunt. I love you. I’ll always love you, Pretty Polly, you dumb fucking whore, you stupid bag of meat, tell me his name. I love you so, I love you so, I’ll never leave you, no, no, no. He choked me for funsies and it felt like a warm glass of milk at bedtime. He called me a cunt and it sounded like darling.
Well, okay, he didn’t fuck me, exactly. No matter what we did, nothing really happened down south. But Mr. Punch wouldn’t leave his girlie hangin’, no sir! He had a wooden thingy he tied on with puppet strings. It was painted all over with Death and the Devil and the Judge and all the rest of the kittens in your average Punch and Judy show. And with that thing strapped on, he did me proud. I don’t mind. We’re all broken somehow.
I’ll tell ya, I was feeling pretty good about life on Planet Me. We had plans for the fu
ture, Mr. Punch and me! My sweetie supported my dreams. He said any time I wanna go drown Bad Daddy in gasoline, he’d make me a packed lunch with a prize inside! He was gonna fix me up a cozy li’l nest in the police commissioner’s mansion, bread in the pantry and booze in the fridge. And something BIG in the oven. Mr. Punch and Pretty Polly were gonna reel in the big fish. Stop runnin’ from the big lunk in the black mask and take our city back. Mr. Punch had a plan.
“We’ll go to him. You and me, my darling dunce. My Pretty Poll, my candy cunt. Hunt him down in his own bed. We’ll dress up for the New Year masquerade—you know how I love a mask at midnight! He’ll be there. Everyone in Guignol who matters will be there! They’ll simper and dance and tell each other how wonderful they are for dumping their caviar at a shelter after they’re done slurping it up. At midnight, we won’t mess about with any sort of SWAT team nonsense or security system tampering. I shall simply walk up to him, curl my arm round his waist, and slip a knife into his heart. As intimate and quiet as a divorce. And all I need, my Pretty Poll, my rotting angel, my heart, my numbskull nymphet, is his name. Then we will be free and together until the heat death of Guignol City, which I expect to follow shortly.”
So I told him. Why not? He loved me. I loved him. All that crap about Scheherazade was in the past. Love is love! Nothin’ can get past love. So I told him. I lay my head on his chest and breathed in his smell and gave up the goods.
“Glenn Falk. Glenn Falk is Grimdark.”
Golly, but Mr. Punch fucked me then! His flesh and my flesh, warm and alive and matching. Matching scars, matching teeth, matching eyes. He fucked me for real, without the marotte. That’s what it’s called. His puppet stick. See, I know things. I know lots of things. I went to Harvard, you judgmental bitches. Suck my Crimson Tide. Mr. Punch came inside me like a war crime. We broke the bed! We’ll laugh about this tomorrow and steal a new one, I thought.
Afterward, he drowned me in the bathtub.
There was a moment, just before I gave up and breathed in all that dirty, soapy, passion fruit bubble bath–scented death, where I thought I had it wrong. Maybe that day in Sarkomand when Mr. Punch said, I thought you were someone else, he’d meant: I thought you were a crippled baby antelope I could chase down across the veldt and pick the lock to this place with your bones. Maybe I was just a funny little clown in the Punch and Grimdark show. Maybe he never once meant I love you when he called me a cunt, he just meant that I was a stupid, useless, disgusting hole he hated only slightly less than himself. What if we were never any little bit alike, except that we wanted to burn the awful old world down? But it was just barely possible that I was the only one who cared what world we blew up. The world of rich men playing in costumes and electric companies turning on the dark everywhere they went and shithead greaseheart daddies all the way down—that was my tune. Maybe my baby was just trying to fuck his way through me and the bed and the floor and the city to get to him. Maybe Mr. Punch was a Bad Daddy, after all.
NAW.
I’m just foolin’! No frickin’ way! My boo is true blue! It was just a game! Everything’s a game with Mr. Punch! He’s comin’ back for me. I’m not like you blubbering cows. My man’s gonna come through. He’s not gonna forget about me, no siree! He’ll pull out the Fearwig’s teeth one by one till he gives up the formula for de-corpsifying my hot little ass and then we’ll paint the town RED. Hell, once we’ve got the goods, he can drown me or choke me or drop me off a building any time he wants and snatch me back for breakfast! It’ll be the most fun we can have with our clothes on! Don’t you worry about me, chickadees.
Any minute, you’ll see. Mr. Punch is gonna grab onta me and never let go.
THE HELL HATH CLUB VS. THE MIGHT OF ATLANTIS
All eyes turn to the lady in green. She swirls a spoon around her coffee cup. It doesn’t make any noise. Thank the tiny baby Jesus, down here in Deadtown we are spared the constant tinkle of silverware against porcelain that plagues the restaurant industry. A long, long red curl slides out of the black pearl comb in her hair and lands on the table like a spurt of blood. It hurts to look at it. Like a camera flashing in your eyes. The sides of her head are shaved down to red fuzz, just the one long horsetail left, running up and over and down her spine like a special-edition collect-them-all punk-rock Barbie doll. She doesn’t notice us staring. I love my girl Bayou to a hundred million pieces, but she’s like one of those thorny old fish who hide on the seafloor, totally still and silent, blending in, waiting for something tasty to drift on by.
Only she doesn’t blend in. Not for a second. It’s hard to blend in when your skin is covered in green crystal scales. When you look like a torch singer who stayed on stage so long, she chemically bonded with her costume. She never wants to talk. I’ll go tomorrow, she always says, but she never does. I talked yesterday. But she didn’t. Never jam today, that’s Miss B to a T.
