. “Want some, you stinkin’ sonofabitch?” he held the bottle out in front of him, the neck tilted toward the ghost. “Come over here and polish my knob for me and maybe I’ll let you have a taste.” Nolte tilted his face forward and motioned down to his crotch with his eyes. He looked back at the shadow from under his brow. “What, does the diaper turn you off?”
Nolte winked and took a longer swig, the mescal dribbled from his lip, tick, tick, ticking on the plastic crotch of his diaper. “Oopsie, alcohol abuse.” He fumbled the cap back on the bottle and made a halfhearted effort to hide it in the cushions. Hiding it one handed turned out to be harder than he expected, he could feel the shadow judging him, wondering if he had a vagina in his diaper. “Fuck it.” He said. He removed the cap and tossed it, careful not to hit the shit cloud, throwing things at it seemed to really piss it off. He took another long swallow, which bubbled in the bottle’s neck several times. As he drank, he raised his middle finger from the neck of the bottle in a New York salute to his shit cloud.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand Nolte stared down at the carpet for several seconds, as though someone had discarded the answer to something important on the floor and he had stumbled across it. Sometimes, profound insights would reveal themselves to him in moments such as these. The answers to the universe could be found in these moments. Though they were fleeting, unspeakable and vanished with the moment, they remained on the tip of his mute tongue for few seconds and that felt good. To hold the answer to everything, even though you couldn’t understand it, or describe it, felt good. Several hard, semi-drunk blinks later and whatever revelation Nolte had thought he had found, was once again a mystery lost to the ages.
He directed his attention back to the reaper. Rocking up on one cheek, he put a muffled fart into his diaper. A crooked smile crossed his lips. “Farts are funny, AND an excellent icebreaker, if used properly.” Nolte marveled at himself for the wit and bravery he displayed in the face of death. “You know what, Fuckstain?” he asked as he brought up a gnarled, unsteady finger to point at his death shadow. The warm feeling from the mescal had started to morph into liquid courage. “You know what your fucking problem is?” he hissed, as he moved his finger closer to the ghost, “You don’t know how to laugh. Pull my finger you stinkin’ sonofabitch.”
The pain gripped his chest so hard and so sudden; it felt as though it had always been there. Somehow it had become part of him when he wasn’t paying attention and had set up shop in his chest cavity, forging large needles, sharp knives and hot pokers. It felt old and familiar, yet brand new and blistering shiny.
Nolte looked at the shadowy figure across from him to see if it was smiling. “It’s okay, Asshole, I found a loophole.”
The shadow had moved directly in front of him, almost touching. He could feel how cold and empty it truly was. The calmness, Nolte had found attractive was still there, but an enormous emptiness felt as though it was an inch away from his face, crushing huge and empty. It was as though it contained everything and nothing at once.
The abyss had opened before Nolte and he could now see that fear and loathing had no end. Like the gripping fade from reality, at the onset of a seizure, it began to engulf him. He heard a distant child fearfully singing Jesus Loves Me.
“Don’t tell your mom, don’t tell your mom, don’t tell your mom.” He repeated with tiny puffs of air.
As the light dimmed and his last breath leaked out of him, Nolte found himself wondering if he had remembered to sit the trash cans out. He pictured the neighbor’s dog digging through them.
Dying wasn’t so bad, when you had a backup plan.
May I offer you a Round the World Cruise of a lifetime for the price of a novel?
Not only do the seas roll on but two romances,a death at sea, uncovered past lives, history uncovered in Brazil, caves in Australia, poetry in Senegal, the Lux Mundi
The bulk of the collection is eight short stories that are set in yesteryear. The compilation is filled out with four entertaining fantasy pieces and three poems.
Determined to confront the hazy memories of his troubled youth, Oliver Matthews, a retired detective and confirmed bachelor, returns to the picturesque town of Henley-on-Thames for the first time in years.
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