Update on The Debacle

The novel will be coming out on May 21st for interested parties. It will be available through PublishAmerica.com, Amazon.com, and through Barnes and Nobles aqnd Border. If Barnes and Nobles and Borders don't have it in stock, it can be ordered. I'm posting another story below for your consumption. this is one of the wildest stories you can find. Hope you enjoy it and thank you for the support.


KARMA

*


Beneath the crescent moon, Bonita sat on Felix’s lap. His arms were

wrapped around her, protecting her from the evils of the word. Felix sat on a

swing and pushed them back and forth softly. The town of Harmonia was laid out

before them, an offer from the god of love. See this town young couple. It is

yours unequivocally. Only the sounds of distant bugs could be heard. The

superstitious townspeople went inside at sunset and didn’t come out until dawn.

There were plenty of scary stories to keep people inside, stories about creatures

that crawled out of the ground and drank blood. Stories told by parents to young

children to keep them obedient and well-behaved. It was said that all bad men

were punished and that the righteous always received their just desserts. Felix

and Bonita were in love; so they were immune to the undead that strutted across

the landscape under the cover of darkness.


The stubble on Felix’s chin rubbed the back of Bonita’s neck. Felix

couldn’t see the smile on Bonita’s face. Seemingly reading his mind like an open

book Bonita turned her head at an angle and showed the smile to him, accepting

a tender kiss. A cool boreal breeze passed by. Two chickens ran down the street

with a mongrel in pursuit. A rusty station wagon pulled away from an aluminum

shack. Felix thought that it was his brother. His brother would pick up people in

the night and drive them to the American border for money. The rusty station

wagon drove a hundred yards and was out of town.


Felix reached boldly for one of Bonita’s breasts. The hand had sat in the

air jerking for several seconds before making the bold move. The love affair had

lasted for eleven months and no sex had taken place. Felix was nineteen and

Bonita was seventeen. His loins screamed for satisfaction with high-pitched

yelps. Bonita’s father went to America and never returned. His abrupt and final

departure made her distrustful of men. She worried secretly that Felix would

vanish and leave her alone swinging back and forth until her eventual demise. He

squeezed the breast and a tingle passed through him that made him exult. Bonita

kissed him with increased passion, running her fingers lovingly through the hair

on the back of his head.


Bonita’s mother emerged from the aluminum shack that they lived in and

screamed for her to come in, invoking the superstitions of the Harmonians for

emphasis. Felix held onto his love earnestly. This was the perfect night to

consummate their deep-rooted affections. Bonita pulled her lips away from his.

He had a tiny paper cut on his upper lip from the intensity of their kisses. “I have

to go,” Bonita said apologetically. Bonita’s mother banged a cowbell with a

wooden spoon. During Bonita’s childhood when she was bad her mother would

threaten to tattoo her buttocks with the imprint of the wooden spoon. Fear

matriculated through her like a virus. For Felix it was painful to let her go. She

stood up and Felix held her hands strongly. He had been thinking about a

proposal for weeks. “Will you marry me,” he blurted out. For several excruciating

seconds she stood there silently with her head askew. Behind Bonita the cowbell

was struck three times emphatically with the wooden spoon. “Yes,” she

answered finally. Felix was able to breathe again. He had a simple golden band

in a small box. He drew it out and placed it on her finger breathlessly. They

kissed. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said disappointedly. She wanted to stay with

him as bad as he wanted her to stay.


**


The crescent moon and the faraway stars watched Asno ride his donkey

into Harmonia. His equipment was in a satchel strung across the back of his

burro. The night was cool. Santa Ana winds had blown through by day raising the

temperature to an unbearable level that evoked misery and heatstroke. Asno

spent his days in his grotto. It was far from towns which contained men and

women who loathed his grisly handiwork. He had an implacable taste for exotic

meats.


On his back was a hooded cloak made of rattlesnake skin. He wore a

matching pair of chaps without fabric on the seat of the pants. He liked the way

his bare buttocks felt on the back of his donkey as he rode. His earlobes were

adorned with rattles he confiscated from snakes he killed; two rattles for each

earlobe. The cumbersome gait of his donkey made the earrings rattle like the

teeth of frightened people. On rare occasions when the weather cooled he would

sleep with dozens of rattlesnakes in his cave. They would wind their bodies

around his limbs and absorb the heat that his body exuded.


Harmonia was peaceful this time of night. He had visited it before.

Moonlight made the aluminum dwellings glisten. Harmonia was his last stop. He

needed to obtain more ingredients for a fine supper he had planned for tomorrow

night. He installed an oven in his cave a long time ago and powered it with four

car batteries.


He chose a meager home near a swing set. The swing set caught his eye.

He favored the innocence of children over the guile of adults. Children tasted

better. There were fewer toxins in their bodies that polluted their flavor. He

dismounted. Chickens ran by wildly. Dreary dogs howled dreary tunes.

Somewhere not far away a disgruntled infant screamed demonically.

Ritualistically he stooped and picked up some yellow sand, he held the sand in

his outstretched hand, and allowed it to fall away, a few granules at a time.


The shabby shack had five windows. None of the windows had frames or

panes to keep bugs out. Screens were stapled sloppily over the apertures. The

screens could keep scorpions out. But larger bugs like Asno could break in

easily, effortlessly.


After slithering through a window cautiously he surveyed the cramped

interior. There was a woman on the floor, sleeping on a bare mattress with no

sheets. The woman’s flesh was tanned and corrugated from the harsh sun. She

slept naked with her legs spread, hoping that Gabriel, Michael, or another angel

would enter her humble home and enter her. The wrinkled cleft between her legs

made Asno gag like he drank a double shot of Tequila. The shape of his lips

mirrored the shape of the cleft when he grimaced. Every wall in the room had a

painting of Jesus on it. Jesus healing the afflicted, Jesus playing a guitar like

Elvis did in the worst movies ever made, and of course Jesus on the cross. Four

wooden Jesus statues sat at each corner of the dirty mattress. The many

depictions of Jesus made Asno smile.


Bonita lay on a dirty mattress in a room divided from the room of her

mother by two sheets which were stitched together carelessly. Bonita’s beautiful

brown face made Asno weep softly. Her face made him think of statues of

female saints that stood protectively around a chapel that his mother took him to

during his boyhood. She wore a virginal white gown that emphasized her purity.


He set his satchel beside Bonita. She whispered Felix’s name dreamily.

Asno’s erratic breathing awakened Bonita, and he slit her throat swiftly with a

sharp piece of quartz that he collected from a quarry sixty miles south of

Harmonia. Blood poured from the jagged wound and soaked the virginal gown.

The flow of blood widened the wound until it was the size of her mouth, which

hung open sadly.


He thought that an image of Jesus was present in the blood that stained

the virginal gown. The holy image emboldened him. He plunged the shard of

jagged quartz into her abdomen. The tool of the troglodyte worked efficiently,

separating meat and muscle with ease. Once the gash was widened

appropriately he thrust his hands into the gaping wound, and dug for the prizes

he sought. His hands fished out globs of chunky blood. He tugged on her ribs

forcefully until they snapped like brittle wishbones, and he dragged them out,

flinging them across the room, and spattering elliptical drops of blood on the

walls. Her intestines were in his way. He yanked loops out and set them on the

bloody floor in a pile of coils that resembled sleeping rattlesnakes. His hands

slipped back inside her and he located her pancreas, the slimy blood made it

slippery, and he had to withdraw it slowly to maintain his grip on it. He cleaned it

on a sheet that was relatively blood free, and placed it in his satchel. His hands

shoved inside her again and this time he withdrew a kidney. He only wanted one

for his gourmet supper. He cleaned the kidney off on a different corner of the

sheet. He placed it in his satchel and retraced his steps to his faithful burro.


***


Death was painless to Bonita. Love called her back to life. But it wasn’t her

choice. She thought about the proposal, about the life she longed for, about the

passion in Felix’s eyes, and the strength of his hands, how protected she felt in

his presence. She couldn’t be dead. What could death offer her that was more

wonderful than Felix?


Her surroundings were perplexingly strange. Below her was a pool of

murky brown water with strange hybrid creatures floating around in it. The murky

water obscured most of the features of the creatures. She captured glimpses of

spiked tails, of lengthy heads with scales, eyes on the sides of the heads,

feathered spikes, and large mouths with deadly potential. Dozens of pink worms

hung from hooks over the murky water. Bonita looked down, hoping to see her

body, and discovered instead that she was one of the worms, dangling

precariously over a large-mouthed fish made exclusively of bone. The hooks

were pulled by steel wires attached to a blob of flesh with arms, legs, and heads

sticking out, tails, claws, and wings also protruded from the cancerous mass.

Bonita and the other worms were dragged forward by the wires. Bonita saw their

destination and squirmed apprehensively on her hook. There was a porcelain

throne propped up on a porcelain column over the murky water. On the porcelain

throne was an abominable hybrid, a cross between man and ape. The aberration

had a hairless, dark face that was eerily human, and a hairy body that was akin

to the body of a chimpanzee. In one of its hands was a long cigarette, which it

lifted to its lips every couple of seconds, and which never diminished in length, no

matter how many times it was pulled on. Its other hand held a large ledger

comprised of tan paper.


The humanzee or chiman was judging the worms. The ledger contained a

description of the worms’ conduct in life. Four worms were judged as evil. The

mutant tore the sheet of paper from the ledger each time, wiped the cleft

between its buttocks with the paper, and dropped it into the porcelain throne,

pulling the handle on the side of the box behind the throne, and a bony fish with a

huge mouth would jump to snatch the worm from its hook, which lowered slowly

after the judgment, the worm would disappear into the mouth of the big bony fish,

and wouldn’t be seen again.


Bonita was propelled forward by the steel wires until she was in front of

the aberration. The dark eyes of the aberration studied her. It looked over the

ledger silently for a few moments. Optimistic and pessimistic thoughts battled for

credence inside Bonita’s mind. Everything she had done in life played out in high

definition and exquisite sound. Every moment with Felix came back to her and

reinforced her love for him. “Clean,” the hybrid declared. The steel wires dragged

Bonita to the aberration. More hideous details about the aberration were

revealed, the nipples that protruded from its nearly hairless chest, the strange

curvature of its shoulders, and its humanlike hands. The hook lifted out of her

and sent her plummeting into the cavernous mouth of the hybrid. It winked at her

before everything faded to the black.


****


It was the worst possible day for Felix. The love of his life was dead

prematurely. Her death made him numb, despondent. People spoke to him and

he mumbled back at them. They would shake their heads and walk away without

figuring out what he said to them.


The funeral was a somber affair. Father Alvarez read words of wisdom

from the Bible. Felix played a medley of Simon and Garfunkel songs that made

the women weep. His guitar made horrible sounds. It was missing two strings. He

sang like a crow. Long pauses were forced by a flood of tears from his eyes.


Bonita’s body had been maimed by Asno and consequently her casket

wasn’t opened in front of her family and friends, a box made of cheap timbers

would be their last memory of her. Before dirt was thrown over the grave,

excrement had to be thrown on the casket to ward off the Devil, whom the

townspeople believed could come and change the corpse into a vampire. Felix

had to leave early. The outlandish desecration of her casket bothered him.


Felix spent the day on the swing pushing his sad, ragged body back and

forth. The sun vanished and still he sat, contemplating the lonely future he was

left to live through. Soft sighs drifted through the air that made Felix look around.

Soft words were spoken with Bonita’s voice. Smooth warm breath blew on the

back of his neck. The small hairs rose defensively. A soft hand with a texture like

a smooth stone caressed his cheek caringly. He turned and Bonita was by his

side. In her eyes was a light like a campfire. Her long brown hair blew behind her

as if tugged by divine strings. Felix’s heart beat faster. The smile on her face

nearly melted him into mush. She took his hand and he jumped down from the

swing. Together they ran hand in hand.


Bonita led him to a bundle of dead sticks posing as a bush. He couldn’t

believe that she was real. She wore the sheer burial shroud that Father Alvarez

sewed around her body. The curves of her frame were exposed to his eyes. She

wore the simple golden band that he gave her. A breeze blew by and made her

hair lively like a thousand brown snakes with the capability to kill a village with

their venom. Her face was the opposite of the whipping hair, angelic. He placed

his arms around her, avoiding the urge to pinch her. Warmth was exchanged, her

skin made his skin warmer as if he was sitting beneath the baking rays of the

relentless sun. They rolled across the harsh ground, he was on top of her, she

was on top of him, and vice versa. Their mouths remained connected while they

changed positions. During the roll his clothes jumped off his body and walked

away. He didn’t notice. The burial shroud vanished from Bonita’s body too.


He unleashed the passion that had been building inside him for eleven

months; the passion that nearly died. She straddled his lap with her back to his

face. He pressed his stubbly face into her creamy brown skin. Their fingers

interlocked. She rose and fell. He rose and rose. Tears rolled down his face.

Joyful tears of relief. His love was back. She gasped from the rhythm. His body

was hot and cold, soft and hard. Bonita mixed sighs with growls. Their two bodies

seemed to rise off the harsh ground, to tumble through clouds, hitching rides on

the back of comets that flew by a million miles away. Bonita turned her neck

askew, and bit into his neck softly at first, playfully, subsequently harder until he

was physically hurt by the bite. Pleasure and pain were indivisible. They made

the moment realer. Twin holes were forged that let blood leave the veins. The

bite had a hallucinogenic effect on his mind. He was fading from the material

world, strength waning, mind floating in murky liquid, visions of a chiman on a

porcelain throne, the ledger, worms on hooks, Jesus coaxed into a song by a

young boy, who handed him a guitar, the alpha and the omega.


*****


Asno wore an apron made of rattlesnake skin, listened to Mariachi music

through a small radio, and prepared his meal leisurely. He had two special dishes

that he was preparing simultaneously. It was taking a long time to make the meal

because every couple of seconds he would dance in place, waving his hands

over his head like they were on fire, and kicking his legs out as if he was standing

on hot coals. He had the recipes on a sheet of human skin that he cut off a

victim’s buttock. He dried the skin thoroughly, and wrote the recipes with a

fountain pen.


The pancreas and kidney were diced into small pieces and were placed in

separate bowls. The pancreas casserole consisted of one diced pancreas, two

cans of cheddar cheese sauce, a can of mushrooms that had been drained, a

cup of sour cream, a half cup of red wine, half a tablespoon of rosemary, and a

pinch of garlic. His stomach rumbled from reading the recipe. He looked over the

other recipe; for kidney soufflé. It consisted of one diced kidney, six scrambled

eggs, two cups of milk, half a tablespoon of dry mustard, four slices of cornbread,

half a tablespoon of horseradish, a cup of sliced Swiss cheese, and five slices of

cucumber.


Asno emptied a can of mushrooms into the bowl with the diced pancreas.

The pancreas had been reduced to twenty-two pieces. He emptied the can of

cheddar cheese into the bowl. His finger bled. He nicked it on the edge of the

can. The small drop of blood was gaining thickness. He squeezed the flesh

around the cut and drops of blood fell into the bowl. The blood would add some

zest to the dish. Five drops of blood was enough. He sucked the edge of his

finger until it stopped bleeding. He felt a strong breeze blow behind him and

turned with raised eyebrows.


He saw an insubstantial shape. It faded before he could touch it. The

bowls were emptied out on the top of the oven. Contents from each bowl were

mingled together in a mush that was far from what he intended to make.

Someone was in his cave. There was a jagged piece of flint near the overturned

bowls and the pile of mush. Surreptitiously he grabbed it. Warm air tickled his

neck again. He swung the sharp piece of flint around. There was an abomination

behind him that made him defecate in his pants. Two eyes a foot long protruded

from the wide eye sockets. The pupils were green and objects like worms

crawled in circles inside them chasing their tails. A long snout lay beneath the

elongated eyes and tapered into a mouth with sixteen molars. The abomination’s

long hands, with long fingers squirming like serpents, grabbed Asno by the

apron. The mouth at the end of the elongated snout tore into Asno’s neck, and

ripped a chunk of tissue loose. Jellylike blood oozed out of the gaping wound

slowly like oil spouting from the earth spontaneously. The abomination squeezed

his face and the blood spewed out faster. It raised its large fist and pounded on

the top of his head authoritatively. Each blow scrambled Asno’s thoughts into a

cream that could’ve gone into the kidney soufflé. The forceful blows on the top of

his head forced his brain out of its carrying case and down to the widening

schism in his neck. The brain oozed out in loops like intestines. The abomination

drank the blood, letting the brain fall out. The rattlesnakes could have it. They

could avenge their brothers, and make a coat and pants out of Asno’s remains,

Bonita didn’t care.


******


Felix wore the same clothes he died in. The wound on his neck was gone.

Bonita was sitting on the swing waiting for him. She wore the golden band. A

gravitational pull brought him to her. Their love was more powerful than evil or

death.


“I wanted to make you like me,” Bonita said. There was doubt in her eyes.

She killed him. She hoped that he would understand. Their love was eternal. She

rose from the swing without her feet touching the ground. It was like a thousand

fingers were holding her up. Felix took Bonita’s hand and rose to her level in the

air. The kiss they shared was worth everything they went through. Father Alvarez

had been contacted by Bonita. He emerged from the shadows of the aluminum

shacks and joined them. “I love you,” Bonita said as if Felix didn’t know. Father

Alvarez read from the black book in his hands and they became man and wife.