issue91indiancorn

                                                  ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM

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Indian Corn

by James Hippie

I was on my way to return some tapes to Video Star (Drive Me Crazy with Melissa Joan Hart and Interracial Facials 9) and I saw Carl's rusted-out Buick Electra parked in front of the Coachman. I decided to stop in for an eye-opener and to check up on Carl. He gets a little crazy during the holidays, ever since his wife and daughter died 10 years ago or so. His daughter was stabbed to death by her crackhead boyfriend, then his wife Wendy killed herself about a year later. He spent some time in the VA hospital after his father found him barricaded in the house with hundreds of jars of his own urine and feces, convinced that an evil warlock was trying to kill him. For some reason the holidays just seem to bring out the worst in people.

Carl was sitting inside at the end of the bar with Brenda, still wearing his security guard uniform from the night before. That god-awful Bing Crosby and David Bowie version of "Little Drummer Boy" was playing on the jukebox, and Carl was singing along loudly with the David Bowie part, slurring drunkenly into his Maglite like it was a microphone and teetering unsteadily on his barstool.

Brenda, who looked drunk as well, pulled me aside and whispered - He's been here all morning. That's like the fifth time he's played that fucking song. Somebody better get him outta here before they take him out back and shoot him!

I ordered a shot with a beer back, then told her that if she drove him home I would follow in his car, then she could drop me back at the bar.

- I'm not letting him in my car! He stinks like a dead animal! You drive him in his car and I'll follow you!

Carl was feeding dollars into the jukebox, repeatedly punching in the same selection over and over. Taylor, the owner of the Coachman, was watching from behind the bar. He shouted over - You best not be playing that goddamned song again, Carl!

"Little Drummer Boy" started again, and Carl began to perform a palsied bump and grind to the music, giggling like a maniac and holding his Maglite to his crotch and waving it around like a giant light-emitting cock. - Fuck you, Taylor! he crooned, shining the light directly in Taylor's eyes. - Eat my cummy-cum-cum. . . .

- That's it! Get that lunatic outta here before I bust his fucking head open!

I got Carl out to his car and put him in the backseat. The car smelled like piss and rotting meat, and I found a half-eaten box of KFC on the front seat, the chicken moldy and covered with maggots, so I threw it out the window. Carl stripped off his uniform shirt and stretched out across the backseat, eyes closed and mumbling incoherently to himself. He was quiet for most of the ride, then when we hit Lewis Street he sat up suddenly, screamed Incoming!, and threw one of his shoes out the window, hitting an old woman in the chest. He was about to launch the other shoe at a group of kids walking to school, so I turned around and yelled, - Cut that shit out or I'll leave you here for the jackals! He curled up into a fetal position on the seat and went back to talking to himself.

Carl left his shirt in the car and walked bare-chested and barefoot through the rain and mud to his front door. The inside of his house smelled worse than his car and looked like it had been ransacked. The greasy shag carpet was covered in old clothes, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, empty shell casings, and hundreds of pictures of nude women that had been cut out of porn magazines - all with their heads cut off. Judging by the absence of pubic hair on the headless models, my guess was that the pictures were probably from Clean Shave.

Carl shuffled through the garbage to the kitchen and came back with a fifth of Bacardi 151 and collapsed on the sofa with it. On the coffee table in front of him was an old Thunderhead album, and on top of it his Haldol, which he obviously hasn't been taking, had been meticulously arranged into a pentagram. He splashed some rum on the pills, then lit a match and tossed it casually into the center of the pentagram, yelling gibberish as the table erupted in flames. I grabbed a pillow from the sofa and started to beat out the fire, but Carl took a swig from the bottle and spit it at the table, sending a fireball through the air and spreading the blaze to the surrounding carpet and trash. I took the bottle from him and smacked him in the head with it, then found a blanket to smother the fire with. The entire time Carl just sat on the sofa with a blank expression on his face, hugging his knees and rocking himself back and forth, and as soon as I had the fire out he calmly said, - Hey, will you put that video on top of the TV in the machine for me?

I put in the video - Faces Of Torture - and was dragging the smoldering coffee table out into the yard when Brenda pulled up. I found some beer inside and poured us each a glass of rum, and we sat on the porch drinking in the light rain while I explained to her what had just happened. Every once in a while we could hear Carl scream out - Torture! whenever something gruesome happened on the TV, but otherwise it was very quiet and peaceful out there.

Pretty soon I was drunk, and I could see that Brenda was flirting heavily with me. I suggested that we go inside to dry off and get warm, and she agreed that that was a good idea. We ran down the hall to the master bedroom to look for some dry clothes to change into, passing Carl, who was sleeping on the sofa, on the way. I opened the closet and found a blouse that I remembered seeing Wendy wear, sometime when she was still alive. I held it up to Brenda and said, - I think you'd look good in this.

- Really? she said, pulling her t-shirt over her head and revealing her bare breasts. - I thought I'd look better like this!

I pulled her down into the dirty bedding and began to lick at her nipples, which were erect from the rain and the cold. She worked my Angel Flight slacks open with one hand, stroking my hardening prick slowly but insistently.

- Mmmm, Ghostie. I wanna suck your cock. . . .

Those are the most miraculous words a woman can utter. She took me greedily into her mouth, roughly grazing my cock with her teeth, which were discolored and looked like broken kernels of Indian corn. She looked up at me with an empty animal hunger in her eyes, a penitent need for the absolving sting of my climax to scald her throat. I was just about to blow my load when I heard somthing rustling behind me.

- Ghostie?

Sometime during this Carl had wandered into the room. He was standing in the doorway naked, lazily stroking his flaccid penis in a distracted, half-hearted way.

- Ghostie, the video's over. . . .

I got up and led Carl back to the living room, rewinding his Faces Of Torture video and starting it again at his request. He looked at me and smiled, then a look of confusion suddenly came over his face.

- Ghostie?

- Yeah?

- Was Wendy just sucking your dick?

- No, that was Brenda. Wendy's dead, remember?

- I guess. I don't know.

- Go back to sleep, Carl.

Carl went back to sleep, and I have no idea what he may have dreamt about. I was fucking a strange woman in his dead wife's bedroom, which was probably much worse than anything his tortured subconscious could devise.

Yeah, sometimes the holidays just bring out the worst in people.

July 2007