authors' notes: BIG BANG SUX
WE ARE DANNY DYER'S CHOCOLATE HOMUNCULUS
warnings: manslaughter, attempted suicide, drug use and addiction etc., and inauthentic italian cuisine.
chapter one: muenster
[craig]
I am a monster. A hairy, grotesque beast. A revolting creature you hear creepy documentaries about on late night television.
Except I'm in lingerie, so maybe I'd be a little less threatening than Bigfoot if I crawled out of the shadows. I don't think I'd be much of a threat to your camping trip. I'd probably just take your food. You'd be like, "Help, help, there is a fat man in a frilly skirt scarfing down our honey ham." This outfit is not my first choice for stealing honey ham.
This outfit was my last choice for making money. At this point, I am more than pretty sure that this choice is not taking me places.
Well, it did take me one place.
I'm in drag at a police station. I'm in a cold chair, handcuffed, shaking, crying, sitting in a little puddle of my own terrified piss. Also, it's Christmas. First, I'm like, this happens to everyone at least once. This is totally okay. Everything's gonna be okay. Then I'm like, this is not totally okay. People don't get away with this shit. This doesn't happen to everyone at least once.
"All right, boys," the cop begins. All right. All right, he said. No. All wrong.
Kenny is sitting next to me. He's in drag, too. But he doesn't look nearly as ridiculous as I do. He's hairless, for one thing. If he does have hair on his body, it's sleek and blonde and invisible, the kind of attractive fuzz people like touching because you don't know it's there until you caress him.
Ending up in a police station with him is predictable. Though I always imagined being the one to pick him up. I'd smile at the officer, saying, "Silly Kenny, he just likes to whip his dick out in public and wave it around—I tried to warn him." Like being his mom at the dean's office of a high school. I don't know why he'd call me of all people, though. Maybe I'd just hoped he would.
Of course, if there were a bail involved, I wouldn't be able to help him out much. Actually, I couldn't do a damn thing, not even picking him up, seeing as I don't even own a car. That was all part of the fantasy. I'd be his trusty first choice and I'd have a sweet ride.
But I definitely can't think of anyone who could save the both of us. Stripe, my angelic and comely guinea pig, would save us. But no one would listen to him. People don't get guinea pigs.
"All right, boys," says the cop. "It's picture day." He's got the camera set up in front of a small, grey backdrop and shit. Fuck. "You first, tubby."
He shouldn't be allowed to call me that. I stand up, and my panties are so far up my ass I can feel them tickling my prostate. I position in front of the camera, cherry lipstick smeared, mascara running. My eyeballs are still burning.
I wish he were holding an adorable stuffed duck to make me smile. I'm about to break down again.
"Smile," he says.
The camera flashes, and I make the face of a constipated frog whose dinner just flew away. A colorful medley of disappointment, anxiety, misery, and most essentially, constipation.
How I got here, exactly, is definitely a story worth telling, but I don't know who would want to hear it, and I don't know where to start.
I guess I could start with the lamp.
The lamp has been ruining my life since I met it at a fucking Target when I was seven years old. That was when it was still okay to talk to my mom.
She was looking for a lamp specifically. I pointed out how particularly ugly this lamp was, and she fell in love with it.
The base of the lamp was circular, and then it thinned out and curled up into metallic swirls that kinda surrounded what vaguely resembled a lighter brown pumpkin in the middle. The shade was beige, with fucking beads at the edges! Whose goddamn idea was that.
My mother found it gorgeous.
It'd match the living room, she said, it'd tie the room together, she said, it's so perfect and beautiful and fucking charming, she said. I don't know what world she was living in, because our living room walls were fucking purple. It's beautiful if you're trying to furnish the interior of a clown car, sure.
But she wouldn't listen. She bought the lamp.
Skip ahead more than twenty years, and I can tell you how I got here. It starts with me trying on this same hideous outfit, just hours before, in room 313 of this broken-down motel, and the lamp is right there. But I'm not paying any attention to it yet. I'm too busy looking at something else revoltingly hideous: myself.
What I'm wearing is not a corset exactly—a real corset would've taken those extra inches off my waist, right. It's something that could've been picked up and dusted off the floor of a Hot Topic. My gut is jutting out, revealing itself in the space between my top and my short tutu. My belly is not spared of hair. Arms, legs, everything. Sasquatchesque.
But from the waist up, I look good. This shirt is made for small-breasted women—luckily, I am one of those. Well, maybe I'm not a woman, but I have bitch tits. When Kenny handed me this top, I imagined a vacant space where the boobs belong. But I suppose my bitch tits are bigger than I thought. Cheetos do the trick.
I model for Stripe, who is on the bed, indulging himself in a stick of celery. I rotate. Curtsey.
Stripe loves it. At this point, I'm still thinking things will work out for us. Once I settle down in my pile of cash, me and him will run off together in the sunset. I'll buy him a jetpack. We'll share spaghetti. We'll make friendship bracelets.
I wonder if Kenny washed this outfit.
"Did you wash this," I ask Kenny.
Kenny shrugs, taking a hit on his joint. "I never thought about washing it." He exhales.
"Why."
"Do I really seem like the kind of guy to consider hygiene when asked for lingerie. I'm not like, 'oh, Craig needs some kinky shit, let me just run this through the wash a few times and give him a breezy fresh pair of thongs.' This is real shit."
Real shit? Does he think it's not authentic prostitute attire if it does not smell ripe and crusty? "That is the exact opposite of how you should think. I'd really prefer it if you did give me some breezy fresh thongs, I'm not exactly looking for crabs."
The tutu hugs my hips, which makes my love handles especially lovely. Kenny and I aren't the same size. I didn't take this into account before I considered trying on his lingerie.
"This is chafing my balls," I say. These particular panties are made of black and pink lace. They are lovely. But they are not made for people with balls. The thing is, I've always loved women's lingerie. I love it so much that as a child, I was disappointed when my mother first told me I couldn't wear pretty things too. She should have warned me about the balls.
"Maybe if you didn't have such massive balls, it wouldn't be a problem," Kenny says, Cheeto crumbs caking the corners of his mouth.
"Leave them alone, man. They're my balls."
"You ever think, like, your brains are actually in your balls, though? Because. Like. I always feel dumber after I'm kicked there. Or after wearing balltight pants. You lose brain cells."
"Right," I agree, scratching my nutsack.
"You want another hit?"
I nod.
This doesn't seem like a good idea yet.
I wonder if it will after a few more hits.
It doesn't. And that's when I become transfixed by the evil lamp. Whoever decorated this hotel had taste as awful as my mother's. It registers in my mind that I know this lamp. It's fat. Why would you design a lamp shaped like my body. Or the color of my poop. Which this lamp happens to be. I guess it depends on what I eat though.
"My mother had that lamp," I state, nonchalantly snatching Kenny's bag of Cheetos from the table. That's what he gets for letting his guard down.
"Aw, does someone have mommy issues," Kenny coos, straightening his own straps. His outfit's nicer than mine, I think.
"I really hate that fucking lamp and I'm sick of looking at it."
"Stop looking at it."
I try. It's a small-ass room.
The lamp is unavoidable. Haunting me. Following me. Whispering.
"I need it out of here," I say. Stripe doesn't like it either. I can tell by the way his beady eyes dart in that general direction. He is a man of unfiltered emotion—he is an open book, he is poetry.
I cannot make a better life for Stripe while this lamp remains in the room.
Kenny flicks his wrist at me. "Fine. I have no attachment to that lamp, get it out of here."
"You dare me."
"I dare you to throw it off the ledge," he says, pointing to the balcony door with his toes. We're fucking grown-ass men, and he's daring me.
"You think I won't," I say, approaching the lamp. I got this. This in itself should prove I mean my words. I am high, and I am moving. That is how much I hate this fucking lamp.
"You don't have the balls."
"I've got balls and they're huge."
"You don't need to tell me you have balls, Craig. I can see them."
"What."
"Your ballsack is poking out of your panties." Maybe it's sexy. Little glimpse of ballsack. That's what it's all about, right. Leaving little to the imagination.
"You're still looking at my balls, Ken."
"They're really fascinating."
"Whatever. I'm throwing the lamp. Watch me."
"Pass the Cheetos."
"No. I need these."
"You're throwing the lamp."
"Throwing lamps does not impair my Cheeto consumption ability. I'll show you."
With the bag of Cheetos under my arm, I bend over and wrap my hands around that bitch-ass pumpkin lump as if to strangle it. Bending over gives Kenny an ample view of my nutsack.
Can't be shy about my nutsack.
"Get the door," I say. "I am holding a lamp."
Kenny gets the door.
I step onto the balcony and kiss that lamp goodbye. Except I don't kiss it. Because I fucking hate it. I just let that piece of shit fall. My mother never would've let me do this to her lamp. I feel a sense of retribution. A tying of loose ends. Goodbye, ass lamp. It's even like all those scarring childhood memories fell with it: getting stupid thin pizza at birthday parties, getting smacked square in the face by red rubber balls, some douchebag in first grade putting water in my apple juice thus making it taste like piss!
That's it. It is over. Take that, world. This is what I think of your fucking lamps.
This is what I think of your fucking lamps and your children and your children's children and the corrupted wormhole of mankind we're all getting hopelessly suckered into, also those hangnails that hurt like fuck, you can shove those up your ass too. Also, there is a place in hell for broken escalators, otherwise known as fucking punk-ass stairs—
There's a scream, a crunch, a shatter-thunk.
I lean over the railing to view the damages. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I rest the Cheetos on the rail—sadly, they fall too. I never wanted to see them go. I don't know which to look at first. But I find may eyes fixated on what's totally probably now a corpse. Or slowly on its way to becoming one. Don't go towards the light, little bro. I kinda wanna scream but what I say just comes out as a slow, near-yawn. "Did I just kill a guy."
I turn around—Kenny's sitting on the bed, looking at me quizzically.
"Kenny," I say. "I killed a man. I dropped the Cheetos."
He springs off the bed, crying, "Woah! Woah, woah, woah. You dropped the Cheetos?"
"FUCK!" I don't want to look again, but almighty mother of balls, I look again. It's getting bloody. The body is sprinkled tastefully in our Cheetos. "Fuck, Kenny, fuck! WHAT THE FUCK! I JUST—DID YOU—" I point a frantic, cheese-coated finger at the scene below.
Kenny looks. At first he's like, "what happened to that guy." But I continue sputtering, and a look of horror registers on his face as he stares down at the body.
"Oh, fuck, son! You did that—fuck—oh god—do you know what this means! We're fucked! You're fucked! I'm fucked! We're all fucked! But mostly you! You are fucked!" he cries, arms flailing all over like limp noodles.
"I'm gonna die, Ken," I say. "I deserve to die! Oh god, tell Stripe I love him!" Tears are welling up in my eyes. I thought getting rid of the lamp would be good for Stripe, but—but—
"Fuck you, man! We have to do something!"
"Do something? Do something?" Maybe he has ideas, maybe he can turn turn back time, except not, because we're boned. I feel like I'm standing in line for buttsex from Lucifer.
"Let's skip town—grab the weed—we're fucking outta here—"
"They're gonna know it's me! There's Cheetos on him!"
"Eat the Cheetos, then!"
"I don't want to eat corpse Cheetos!"
"If he's still a little alive, they won't be corpse Cheetos—just like, twitching bloody body Cheetos!"
"Fuck you, Kenny! We gotta get out of here! They're going to find us! They're going to take my babushka from me! Hurry! Hurry! Pack your shit."
"Okay, I got the weed—Craig, grab the Cheetos—"
"I can't grab the fucking Cheetos because we lost the Cheetos when I dropped them off the balcony onto the corpse of the man I killed! Don't tell me to grab the Cheetos! Take this fucking situation seriously! Oh, Stripe! Stripe! What will become of my baby?"
"Get your shit together and hide the evidence!"
"I'm gonna piss my pants—I'm gonna piss my pants."
"You're not wearing pants."
"Oh—sorry—I'm gonna piss my thong. No, your thong! Merry Christmas! You're gonna have to get your crusty ripe prostitute gear cleaned at a fuckin' dry cleaners!"
My face is warm with tears, and I feel a familiar rush—my crotch is growing warm with piss.
Kenny obviously smells something, looks at my crotch, and his face warps out of proportion. "Oh god, you're peeing. You're actually peeing! This is not helping the situation. They're gonna come in here, and they're gonna be like, 'There is urine on the floor,' and we'll be like, 'Yeah, it was the guinea pig.'" He thinks he's got a story for the piss now, cute.
"Don't bring Stripe into this!" Seriously. Stripe only fucking pisses in his cage. He's well-trained. He'd never pee on me. And if I let him borrow my thong, he wouldn't piss in it. He's courteous. And in control of his bladder. I'm out of control.
"You bring Stripe into everything! Why the fuck not!"
There's no time for this. I want to tell Kenny that I bring Stripe into everything because he's the light of my life, the apple of my eye, and he's never gotten me into a situation like this, unlike Kenny. A situation in which I need some fucking towels. "Get me some fucking towels, man! I gotta clean up the piss! In your thong!"
Kenny grabs a towel from the bathroom floor and throws it at me.
Let me tell you, when the floodgates open, they really open. I've started the procedure. There is no end in sight. I don't think a sponge exists in the world that is absorbent enough to sop up this almighty piss. I blot to no avail. And then I notice something about the towel—
"Why is this towel stained?" I inquire.
"Well, we used up all the toilet pap—"
"AM I WIPING MY PISS WITH SHIT! I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU—"
I can't finish my thought because bitches be knockin'.
"Craig, Craig, forget the piss and the shit! We really gotta get outta here!" He's looking out the bathroom window. "You think we could jump? Is it worth it?" He sounds sincere. Maybe we should jump, it's only three stories, right.
But then the gears start turning. "NO, WE'LL BE SPLAYED ON THE GROUND LIKE THE LAMP! We gotta own up to this, Kenny. There's no way out. I gotta man up and open the door."
I wasn't manned up enough, because a lot more time had passed than I initially thought—still coming down from the high—and when I saw the glare of police badges, I'd have pissed myself, but, you know, that was already taken care of.
That's it. I'm caught orange-handed. It was so important for me to sop up the piss, but I didn't do a damn thing about the artificial cheese residue on my hands.
They ask what's going on here. Funny question. I hope they brought popcorn. The white cheddar kind. I don't know what to say. I'd like to see you know what to say right now.
"It's a—it's a Christmas party," I stammer. In my mind, the Cheetos are still here, so I thought that if they saw the Cheetos, they'd believe me if I said there was a party going on. I'm in the right attire for one. Maybe not a Christmas one.
The fat cop is like, "That dead man outside is your idea of a Christmas party?"
"Did you check him?" I ask. "Don't be jumping to conclusions. I think—I think I saw a twitch. Real shame, though. Who would use a lamp to kill a man. Where is the motive in that?"
"You wanna tell us, sir? It appears he's directly under this balcony, and—" he peeks in the room. "It's a little dim in there."
Okay, they really are jumping to conclusions here, not every motel room comes equipped with two whole lamps. The lamp may as well have come from a balcony miles away. The wind blew the scene here.
Bodies. Lamps. Blowing in the wind.
I always imagined myself being a lot sassier with the cops. Charm and charisma could get me out of anything, which would be great if I kind of had some of that stuff, maybe. I always wanted to be the kind of guy who could make eye contact with you and in that moment, convince you to give up your job as CEO of Taco Bell and hand the position over to me. One of those guys who digs your fears and hopes out of you just by asking you how you are.
Asking people how they are appears to be the extent of my charisma, so I look at Kenny to continue playing that card for me.
"Well, that's that. Craig's fucked, I guess. See ya guys!" says Kenny with a big dumb grin. He dared me to throw the lamp. He's just as responsible as I am. Maybe even moreso. Dares have got to hold some power in the eyes of the law. You can't say no to a dare or you're a pussy.
Luckily, as he's trying to wiggle out of the door with his duffle bag, the police stop him. The fat one is preparing his handcuffs, and the moustached one is searching his bag.
"Put your hands behind your back," says the officer to Kenny.
"Aww man, I don't wanna be arrested. I don't have time for this. I gotta—I gotta go grocery shopping! Aww, shit, why are you putting those on my arms, that hurts." He's struggling all over the place. Why are they cuffing him first, like he's the monster, when I am the true monster. I could've refused the dare, asked for a truth instead, admitted to Kenny how I liked wearing my sister's panties.
"You got a lotta marijuana, huh," says the cop searching his bag.
"This ain't mine. This all belongs to Craig."
He's still trying to screw me. Wow.
"It is labeled Kenneth," points out the officer.
"Aw, shit. Well you guys are Jews right? I got lots of cash in this bag and it's all yours if you let me go. I didn't kill anyone, it's just weed, that's not an actual serious crime, right? I had a Jewish friend growing up. What is it, like, the eleventh night of Hanukkah?"
"You better watch what you say, boy."
The cop grabs Kenny's duffle bag and shoves him roughly out the door as he shouts, "Fine, stick your fucking menorah up your ass, you bitch, I bet you like that!"
The fat cop gets to me next. Fuck the police. Seriously. I am dealing with police shit, and the one thing I have to say to the police is, fuck you.
They don't understand, they think we're villains, bad guys, whores, drug dealers, all that shit, and maybe Kenny is a whore, and I am a whore in training after all, but really, we are good people. The true culprit is the lamp.
They should handcuff the lamp—what's left of it, at least. I mean—it's easy to handcuff a lamp. It can't escape. It can't fight. It can't stab. Initially, it'd be arrested for being ugly. What if I get arrested for being ugly? The lamp can't answer questions when it gets interrogated, so obviously it'd be guilty. Prison. Because I was provoked. And ugly. Could I plead insanity? Say the lamp spoke to me, that it whispered in my ear at night "kill"?
"Am I gonna be arrested for being a prostitute?" I blurt. An ugly prostitute? Dunno why I asked that. Was going to ask how possible it is for me to plead insanity. But then I might get put in a mental ward. I'm high, does that make me less responsible for my actions? This gives weed a bad fucking name. Before all they could say was it made you lazy and hungry. Now cops can tell middle schoolers it makes you into a lamp murderer. I can't blame the weed, the weed is good, I'm just a dumbass. I must look insane with piss dripping from Kenny's thong. I'll go with the insanity thing. "I am insane!" I cry. That might have sounded convincing.
"Are you or are you not offering sexual favors for money?"
Ohhhh so they're clinging onto the prostitute part. I thought the fact I might be insane would be more important. Sure shows where their priorities lie. Oh, America.
Well, I guess I should clear this up honestly. "I'm not a prostitute! Not yet! I was just trying on the outfit. Is that gonna add to my sentence?"
"Sir, we cannot arrest you for wearing women's lingerie. Come on." He urges me out.
"What about Stripe! Stripe! My guinea pig!" I wail. But they don't give a shit, they're not listening, I guess they know I'm harmless, that I really am just that fat man stealing the honey ham, but they still gotta lock me up for stealing that honey ham.
We're in the back of the car now. Without Stripe. "What about Stripe?" I press. I haven't given up. I am not giving up. I need my guinea pig. He could get used to life in jail. He's behind bars all the time. He could totally come with me. Except I wouldn't want him making friends with the vermin. Stripe is fucking high class.
"What are you talking about, sir?" Finally acknowledging me. Well then.
"Stripe is what he calls his nine inch dildo," says Kenny.
The cops are talking into their little talkies. Who the fuck decided to call them walkie-talkies anyway? That sounds like fucking baby shit. Why wasn't it something cool and official, like…. Like. Well, maybe walkie-talkie is a good name. Anyway, they're tattling on us. So we're kinda just sitting in the back waiting for them to scold us and hopefully consider we're innocent as shit and let us go home with a warning. "Don't kill people," they'd say. "It's a bad idea. Don't let it happen again. Merry Christmas." And that's it!
Kenny nudges me with his shoulder. He's handcuffed, too. "Hey. Hey, dude. If... if we die tonight, I just—I just want you to know I lied. You're actually too ugly to be a prostitute."
I'd punch him if I weren't handcuffed. I lean in towards the officer in the front seat. "It's okay, officer. It's just been brought to my attention that I'm too ugly to be a prostitute. I have nothing to live for. Except for my GUINEA PIG, WHO IS BACK AT THE ROOM, MISSING MY NOURISHMENT—"
The cop doesn't even look up. "Calm down, sir. We're going to take care of the animal. Sit tight."
"I AM SO TIGHT THAT MY BALLS ARE FINDING THEIR WAY INTO MY ANUS, OFFICER."
That's another thing I shouldn't blurt. But you know, when you're wearing panties that are riding up on your balls, that's always kind of—riding up on your mind.
But there you go. That's how I got here. Sobbing about my guinea pig, resenting the wedgie in my women's underwear, sitting in a police station with a guy I thought was my friend but who apparently thinks I'm too ugly to be a prostitute.
Yeah.
I am a monster.