370H55V

Somewhere there’s a carpet not saturated with the vomit of three or four different people, none of them the resident of the current setting. That place is not here, however. When I woke up from the one-two knockout punch of alcohol and a handful of assorted painkillers I blearily stumbled towards my bathroom. The cheap hollow-core door was split horizontally through the center, hanging drunkenly on twisted hinges. Nothing out of the ordinary so far. After a long piss that came out in a startling stream of neon yellow I picked up the hammer next to the sink and gave the rusty pair of vice grips attached to the faucet nubs a good whack. The grips grudgingly turned a half inch or so with a squeal that set my fillings to vibrating in harmonic resonance. The faucet vomited a sputtering flow of rust-colored fluid that was probably water. With the utmost care I washed my hands in the sink, whose porcelain body was broken away in large chunks suspiciously similar in size to an adult male forehead, which made for a hand-shredding trap for the unwary sink user. A reverse blow with the faucet hammer completed the ritual and I headed out towards the living room, strongly craving a cigarette and an ounce or three of bourbon to ease me into the day.

Hopping lightly over the sprawled and snoring body of a woman I sort of recognized from last night’s party my bare feet squelched into a puddle of something viscous that hovered somewhere near body temperature. I froze in place and closed my eyes, not wanting to look down and confirm my worst suspicions and thereby becoming a slave to the next logical impulse, which would be to run screaming for the nearest window and defenestrate myself into the harsh afternoon light to splatter like bird shit on the sidewalk four floors below. After a couple of deep breaths that stank of stale cigarette smoke, spilled beer, and yep, there it was, vomit; I opened my eyes and looked down. Sure enough, both feet were planted in a colorful stew of stomach contents. Goddamnit.

Standing there in the cooling pond, fragments from last night came back to me in stroboscopic flashes. The living room packed with people, everyone talking at once over the loud, driving punk rock soundtrack that screamed from two large speakers. Walking into my room to find two skinny dudes covered in piercings tag-teaming a girl who couldn't have weighed less than three hundred pounds, high-fiving each other as my bed shook and rattled ominously under her jiggling mass. Someone throwing a bearded, protesting vegan through the bathroom door after the vegan slapped a white Russian out of that someone’s hand. The same vegan dude repeatedly smashing said someone’s head through my bathroom sink while a crowd of people drunkenly cheered on this gratuitous act of violence. A chimpanzee holding an AK-47 slamming a beer like a raucous frat boy before throwing feces at the wall and exiting out a window. The chick I had just hopped over declaring she could fit this monster cucumber up her ass. This part I remembered fully as soon as the right neurons rubbed together suggestively or whatever the fuck it is those things do. Come to think of it, that whole thing with the ape might've been my imagination.

        The chick’s name is Ashley, I remembered, and she had shown up already wasted on whatever combination of chemicals she had ingested earlier.  Right from the start I knew she would be trouble. First off, no one at the party seemed to know her. Secondly, she was about fifteen years older than anyone there, maybe in her late 40’s, and dressed like a biker chick from the eighties in a micro-mini skirt and a Def Leppard sleeveless shirt with no bra to contain her drooping old-lady tits. Like I said; trouble. So Ashley is just inebriated as can be, wandering around my apartment and generally annoying the hell out of everyone she can get to listen to her. I was just about to tell her to get lost when she disappeared into the crowd in the kitchen and that area suddenly got quiet. Suspiciously quiet. 

Making my way through the press of bodies I found an odd sight, even for one of my parties. Ashley was in a clearing at the center of the kitchen, brandishing wat was possibly the biggest cucumber of all time, declaring that her old man’s cock was bigger than it was and he used to fuck her up the ass daily, right up until he died trying to jump his Harley over a flaming trailer home. The crowd in my kitchen could find no words for this un-asked for display of bravado and so stood silently, watching, perhaps wondering where the unholy abomination of the monstrous cucumber had come from.

Funny story about that mutant cucumber. I had acquired that phallic symbol in shiny green skin about a week ago. Don’t judge me, I had a perfectly valid purpose in mind. At the time I was dating this incredibly kinky and insatiable girl. I sent her to the store and told her to buy the biggest fucking cucumber she could find and then I’d make her fuck herself with it while I watched. Well, she brought home that monster but we never got around to using it. Instead she came in the door and started yelling at me about how our relationship wasn’t going anywhere, whatever that means. I told her of course it’s going nowhere, she liked being fucked by oversize vegetables, and I just couldn’t see introducing her to mom & dad and trying to explain how we’d met when our eyes locked over a misshapen gourd, our fingers brushing together as we both reached for it with totally separate agendas. She threw the cucumber at me and said we were through. I held it up and asked innocently if she’d still care to give me the vegetarian fuck show that I was all set to film on a vintage super-8 machine. Apparently that makes me a chauvinist. Pfft, women.

So, there was the biker broad waving this painful reminder of lost love around, and I felt like maybe this was providence speaking to me.

“I’ll bet you a case of beer you can’t get that thing up your ass,” I told her, leaning against a dirty countertop and trying not to appear too eager to see this feat. Ashley cackled madly and said it was a bet. The kitchen crowd was split as to whether this was good development or a nauseating one, and there was much heated discussion about the rules and finer points of etiquette of our wager. It was finally agreed tat Ashley would attempt this daring stunt in the living room so everyone could watch if they had the intestinal fortitude, and that she would be allowed to use lube. Unfortunately all I had on hand that could pass for lube was tub of Country Crock.

“That’ll do,” Ashley said to raucous cheers. Famous last words if ever there were any.

A space was cleared in the living room as people squeezed back against the walls. Someone put on Propagandhi and the room filled with the high-energy Canadian punk. An ironic choice of musical accompaniment considering the guys in Propagandhi thought porn was degrading to women; and this was most certainly about to be a pornographic performance art piece. Ashley wasted no time, stripping completely nude as the crowd egged her on. Her tits were absolutely disgusting, like oranges in socks dangling from her chest, with the rubbery-looking texture of overcooked eggs, yolks brownish pink and staring sullenly down at the crusty carpet. Her belly stuck out in a wrinkly paunch just above a shaved and shriveled pussy that looked like someone had put it through a dehydrator for a couple of hours. With a grunt of effort she flopped onto her back and tossed her legs up in the air, treating us all to the sight of a middle-aged browneye that had seen better days. She accepted the greased-up cucumber from another guest and pressed it against her asshole, using her palm at one end to get the maximum possible leverage.

After a few seconds where it seemed like this bet was doomed to be a loss for her, her ancient methuselah of a shit pipe opened enough to majestically swallow a couple of inches of greased vegetable. The sigh from the onlookers was like pressure being drained from the room, a collective exhalation of held breath as all present realized they were witnessing something totally amazing. That old biker whore grunted again and pushed harder, her legs contracting, and would you fucking believe that goddamn cucumber slid all the way into her poop chute like a reverse film of the world’s greenest shit. The crowd went wild. Booze rained all around me as people tossed drinks into the air in their excitement. Cheers erupted and people high-fived like the ending to a cheesy 80’s movie where the nerd gets the girl and the cheerleaders all get hepatitis.

“Motherfucker,” is all I could say as I tried unsuccessfully to start a slow clap.

“Now for the hard part,” Ashley mumbled, her legs waving drunkenly in the air, setting her wrinkles to vibrating in a way that was somehow horrifying while also captivating. Like watching a train full of clowns smash into a train full of pies. You want to laugh, but know you probably shouldn’t. Anyhow. The hard part, she had said. Gritting her teeth and straining, the cords standing out in her neck, Ashley flexed her abused anus.

“Oh, fuck no,” was what I think I said as the cucumber reversed its journey, first crowning and then slowly sliding out of her asshole towards the wildly cheering crowd.

Just as it seemed that this would be a terrific moment, a real triumph of human ingenuity, the cucumber plopped free. This would have been perfectly fine, except for the sludgy, chunky, foul-smelling river of liquid shit that propelled the cucumber the last inch or so on its way out. Ashley didn’t even notice the change from cheering to screaming, fleeing, and finally, multiple projectile vomiting that followed this brown and reeking finale because Ashley had based out.

Well, I thought, standing in the multi-colored vomit and what I now knew to be liquid shit puddle, that explains that. I needed a drink. Badly.

As I flipped on the kitchen light my hand squished and slid through something on the switch cover. It was shit. Ape shit.

“Fuck, I guess that part was real,” I said to no one.