Collections from Prague and Beyond

[Jase]

Some of you may know that I went to Prague (as well as Vienna and Budapest) to do some writing, and take some courses on dreaming and writing. I just wanted to share some of the work I did while I was abroad. Comments, feedback, and cookies are always appreciated.

Major trigger warnings. Every piece contains one or a combination of the following: violence, swearing, sexual abuse, incest, etc. They are much darker pieces.

Friendly Fire

Tonight, you’re going to meet a man. You’re going to meet a man, and fall in love. Fall in love with his smile, in love with the way he closes his eyes when he sings to songs he likes, in love with the way his five o’clock shadow leaves tingling imprints just above you lips after you kiss. You’re going to fall in love and this time you think it’s going to be real.

Because you will go on one date, and then another. He’ll take you out, you in a daisy white sundress and he in his fitted pants, and you’ll see concerts, you’ll get drunk, you’ll laugh like hills rolling on forever into the horizon. He won’t be like the man who took you out to the Reggae Bar to get stoned and left with two grams and your wallet. He won’t be like the guy who tried feed you his dick while you were sleeping and you had to file a restraining order when he wouldn’t leave you alone. No, you’ll think to yourself, not this time.

One night, the heel of your shoe is going to break, and he’ll offer to carry you on his back the rest of the way to the studio apartment you share with your older sister, the one who you didn’t used to like because she always got whatever she wanted, and a small gray cat named Darling. You’ll cradle his torso with your legs, and he’ll tickle your wiggling toes. You’ll get to your place and he’ll be a gentleman and walk you up three flights of stairs because the elevator has been broken since you moved in two years ago, and he’ll make stupid jokes to pass the time but you can’t help but smile because he makes you feel like a child again. You love feeling like a child.

Your sister will smirk whenever the two of you walk through the door. “You two are crazy,” she’ll say. Sometimes even a, “Where can I get me a man like that?” And you secretly feel happy because you finally have something she doesn’t - because after all those years of her beating you in Candyland, of her being the first to get her belly button pierced, of her getting a hickey from Ryan Warner, the hottest guy on the football team - you’ll finally have what she doesn’t.

You’ll make love, and Darling will watch from the foot of the bed. You’ll fuck. Passionate, rough. He’ll spank you, and you’ll squeal, you’ll writhe, you’ll beg for me. You’ll call him Daddy and you’ll call on him to not hold back. Your Reckless Red lipstick will be smeared on the white linens and his face, haphazard and messy like a child’s drawing on the wall, and he’ll slam his cock deep into you and it will hurt, and you’ll like it. He is going to put his hands on your neck and squeeze and just as the cells in your brain become intoxicated with your breathlessness he’ll let go, and you’ll laugh and laugh. The in and out, the faster and faster still, the heat and the hardness, the friction of it all, it’ll have you bucking against your will like a meat puppet on strings, a dolphin crash landing back into the water. And you’ll scream Daddy, oh daddy, feel him shoot inside you, and you will be out of breath and he’ll collapse on top of you. He’ll stay inside you because he’ll tell you he likes how that feels and you will let him so you can keep feeling that heat.

And one night you’ll come home early from work, and Darling won’t be waiting for you on the couch. You’ll whistle for her but she won’t come. You’ll hear a creaking sound, and it will be familiar. That over-and-over-again creak that ebbs in time like a heartbeat, like how an old man snores on a Sunday morning. And you’ll wonder which guy your sister brought home from work this time.

And you’ll hear her sigh and listen to him grunt, a wordless exchange with thousands of messages being conveyed still. And you’ll stop to catch your breath when you recognize those grunts as the ones that belong in your bed, belong with your bod, intertwined with your moans. Your sister will call his name, and she’ll call him daddy, and you’ll know it’s just to spite you. Her words will carry out to you, jellyfish tentacles wrapping around your neck, the venom stinging like in the way it does when the entire world is wrong, like no fireworks on the Fourth of July, like shots from the doctor, like when your boyfriend fucks the shit out of your sister.

You won’t even think when you knock down the flimsy partition that masks their secret like flakes of pastry falling to the floor. You will see her straddling him, riding him, and she will be looking directly in his eyes, even though he told you keeping eye contact made him uncomfortable when he was fucking, said it put pressure on him, said it felt degrading.
Your sister won’t even have time to turn her head around before one of the steak knives she bought on clearance from Target finds its way into the back of her neck, then again into her shoulder, and one more time square into her back. Each time you’ll plant the rusted knife into a new spot on her body and pluck in out again like a weed, like it wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. And where your sheets used to be red with smeared kisses and messy romance they will now be red with warm blood – warm blood and familial bonding.

He is going to be frozen, playing dead like it’s just a silly game. And you, you’ll relish in discovering which parts of her body are most tender and which parts are the hardest to pull back out of. You’ll think of how much this is like that old Disney movie you used to watch with your sister, how everyone tried to pull the sword from the stone, and nobody could. But you will be able to, and you’ll finally feel like royalty, like you’re King Arthur himself. And just to prove to the world that you can do it, you’ll keep driving your Excalibur deeper and deeper still into the fleshy abyss, into the bits and bones, and through tendons and arteries until finally you’ll think that nobody can doubt your power anymore.

Her body will collapse on his, just as his used to do with you. She’ll be dead, and you won’t be. And finally, finally you’ll have something that she doesn’t.

The Problem With Bobby Kissinger

Bobby Kissinger was eight years old and hated that everybody called him Bobby instead of Robert.
He kept thinking about this as he picked apart the ligaments of the alley cat he just killed. He named the cat Thomas before he snapped its neck – Thomas, after his Little League coach who used to have Bobby suck his prick behind the diamond.

“You’ll like it, baby,” Thomas would say. “That’s it, baby.”
And it went on like that until Bobby got bored. He closed his teeth around the coach and, like a hard candy, nearly severed him in two. Thomas never called him baby after that.

Bobby grabbed the cat by its fleshy underside and counted each time he heard the pop of a rib-bone snap out of place.
1, 2… He smiled. 3, 4, 5… It was like firecrackers, but an even more glorious display.
“Tommy, you’re so handsome”

And then Bobby carved open the cat’s stomach with his dad’s pocket knife, and like a child on Christmas, he opened his present. He ripped away at the tissue paper until it looked like old chewing gum, stretched to its limit. Then he tossed aside ribbon upon crimson ribbon of small intestine. He pushed aside ventricles, arteries. He pulled out muscle, game and sticky, and held the straggling, stringy flesh in front of his face, admiring the fine stitching that held these masses together.
And then, he grabbed a kidney, then the liver, and a lung. One organ after the other, each a precious gem, and lined them up by size on the pavement, his own personal rock collection on display. But then he noticed, even being dismembered, the cat’s eyes were still burning with life, staring at him like crescent moons backlit by the sun.
Bobby huffed. “Don’t stare, Tommy.”

So Bobby plucked out the eyes. He plopped one with his collection, and the other in his pocket. But now he was bored. There was a creek just down the hill, and he used it to wash his hands. The water swept away the blood in wisps, and Bobby couldn’t help but notice how much more glorious things looked when died in red.

At home, Bobby was in the basement. Molly was there, and she was staring at him. His parents were always fussing over Molly.
“Now Bobby, be gentle with Molly”
“Bobby, don’t leave don’t leave your things lying about, Molly might eat them.”
Molly was his parent’s favorite pet. Even though her matted fur was a bit mangy, even though she always smelled like shit, even though she always bit his mother’s fingers. Bobby couldn’t figure out why they would keep her around. He never liked animals anyway.

But she kept staring at him, and his pocket felt warm. There was that same burn in her eyes, the same one that the alley cat had. She crawled closer, grasping at the shag carpet, bringer herself toward Bobby. She nuzzled him with a wet nose. Bobby grimaced, and wiped his arm dry.

“Molly, not now,” he said. She smiled, and kept staring.
“Bobby,” she said. He turned toward her sharply.
“You know my name is Robert, Molly,” he said curtly. She giggled, stared directly in his eyes with that same burning, that same intention.
“Bobby!”

He didn’t think about what to do next, he already knew. And after he had gouged out her eyes, he left one on the floor by her shrieking body, and the other in his pocket, satiating the warmth.

Footsteps running from up above, loud stomps and tripping feet. Bobby knew he was supposed to run, supposed to hide, but he didn’t quite care to do so. When his mother finally reached the stair landing, her face was aghast and she screamed, the sound of pin dropping, of a heart shattering. All the same scream. Her trembles were almost imperceptible, and her son simply looked up at her with a stare so mundane, pedestrian. She could not find the words until the came to her as piles of sawdust caught in her throat.
“What have you done to your sister?”

Promise

What’s the use of loving someone who is just going to die?
I tell myself that as I’m lying here with him, instead of you. Feeling his heart beat inside his chest, instead of yours.
When you told me you were sick, I was mad. When you were in the hospital, I was furious. You looked at me then, and for the first time I could see that the roundness of your cheeks had slowly eroded, trenches in your face, cavernous and bleak. I could see that the sheen of your hair had been dusted over, and could see that your ageless eyes had gained hundreds of years in just hundreds of days.

You looked at me, you are surrounded by white sheets, white pillows, white walls, and pale yellow floors and said that you didn’t know how to die. I said they don’t teach anyone how to die. I said I’m sure you’ll find a way. And then you get mad at me and you make that face that tells me you think I’m being a bitch. Your bottom lip was being tugged in the corner by your teeth, and your eyebrows furrowed in a thick V. So I left.

And now I’m here, kissing him and tasting you. Tasting spearmint, cigarettes, and memories. He fumbles with my bra with awkward dexterity as he still presses his lips against mine. His breaths are quick and his heart is quicker and he grins crookedly between our kisses, nervous and seeking approval. I kiss him harder.

He feels me up and I feel like I’m thirteen again, with you, during that summer we spent in your garage, and you paid me five dollars to grab my tits. He nibbles my lip and I’m brought back into the moment, if only because I’m wishing he’d bite down all the way. I graze my finger down the side of his bare chest and down to his bucking hips. I find the hem of his pants and thrust by hand down, grab hold, and take the lead, show him what I want.

When he fucks me I tell him it’s my first time because it’s easier that way. When he’s inside me, heat becomes heat and I forget where and who I am. His cock, my cunt, and how good this feels, how fucking great he feels, and I am so alive.
But it’s over too quick, and he curls up next to me like a panting dog, a Golden Retriever who wants nothing more to be pet, comforted, to be rewarded, and loved. I am remembering myself again, and I can’t promise half of those things. But I was never any good at promises anyway.

We fuck again in the shower, and then in his parent’s bed.
When he and I go back to his room, we lay on his bed and I count the cracks in his ceiling. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I know it is you. It is always you. It buzzes again and again, a plea to be picked up and answered. He holds his breath next to me momentarily, waiting to see what I am going to do.
“Are you going to get that?” he asks, brushing a gossamer of hair away from my face. I close my eyes.
“No,” I say.

TheArtist

The first time you made him touch you, Danny had nervous fingers. You had to show him how, had to grab his hands and use them like yours, a marionette for your own little show.

The first time you made him touch you, you drew his hands up your torso, pressed them against your chest. Your Uncle Dave always said your tits were too small, that with a rack like that you were lucky he was still willing to fuck you. But now they weren’t too small. Now they seemed perfect. When you groped yourself with his hands, his fingers encompassed your entirety with poise, fitting just as snowballs would in a child’s gloves.

The tips of his fingers traced around the pinkness like a pen with you at the helm, the author of your brand new story. You pinched yourself hard and suddenly – you made a clamp with his fingers. A sigh escaped your cheeky grin and you think you hear entire symphonies in that single breath. He winced.

“Don’t worry,” you said.
“It doesn’t hurt,” you said.
“I’m so happy,” you said. “Don’t you want to make your big sister happy?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t look at you, just swayed on the heels of his feet. You knew he wouldn’t answer because he doesn’t talk, never talked in thirteen years, and no reason to start now. Mom and Dad blamed the doctor, blamed the nurse. Said they screwed him up when he was coming out. But you knew that wasn’t true, that is was the universe who made him like this, so he could be innocent. So he could be free. So he could love his big sister so fully.

The first time you made him touch you, you felt the control in your life that you thought you had lost before. You were in charge, you got to be the teacher. You didn’t have to make anyone feel, except for yourself. You weren’t used anymore. This wasn’t a late night with Dave in the back of his Toyota or behind the dumpster at the mall because he liked the thrill of being caught with a dirty young slut.

This meant something. You wanted to show Danny that, want to make him proud of his big sister. You bit your bottom lip and the corners of your mouth curl like an upside down umbrella.
“Wanna see what I can do?” you said, your voice breathy, whispery, carbonated with excitement. Then you remembered how Uncle Dave showed you how to do things, only you would be in pain, you would bleed. But you don’t let that stop you, you can’t, because then he wins. Then he was right to call you worthless. So you pushed Dave out of your mind and grab Danny by the wrist.

Then his hand is pressing against your bare skin, caught in between your pelvis and the waistline of your ripped blue jeans. You tickled his fingers and when he tried to pull his arm away you stopped him, told him not to be scared, to wipe the salty water from where the tears were collecting on his forever-long eyelashes. You told him he would really like this, and then you tickle his fingers again so they are like little tadpoles fishing around for a home.

You popped each of his fingers inside you one at a time and take it like a greedy child sucking on a lollipop. You bit your lip down even harder and let the feeling take you. Danny covered his eyes with his other hand and kept with his swing set movements, rocking back and forth, and you wished he would look at you.

The last time you make him touch you was only with a kiss on his lips. They are dry and chalky and tasted like leftover Vaseline and safety. The police are upstairs searching his room with Mom and Dad. They came to say that Uncle Dave was dead, that they found him with four bullets to his head, lying naked in a pool of pulpy strawberry jam. They said a neighbor tipped them off, saw a young boy leaving Dave’s house right after hearing the crack crack cracking of a gun.

So now they are searching Danny’s room, and his body is shaking. You kiss him and tell him thank you for protecting you, thank you for loving you. Thank you for making your big sister proud. He knows what is going to happen, you can tell by the way he covers his ears and his body shakes violently when the cops are walking back from his room. Mom is sobbing and nobody can understand her, Dad just shakes his head and mutters something about how the doctor fucked Danny up real bad. They both are parchment white.

One of the cops holds a clear bag with your grandpa’s old revolver, the one you hid under Danny’s pillow, the one you used to blast out Uncle Dave’s brain juices all over the shiny linoleum floors he used to fuck you on.

They put Danny in the back of the squad car and your heart feels whole again but at the same time shattered to pieces. Mom crumples to the floor like old moth balls and Dad is still shaking his head. The sirens blare as the car pulls away, and you think it sounds like a lullaby with a chorus that never ends, and you walk toward your bedroom, ready to finally be able to fall asleep.

Games

I’m supposed to be in bed, but it was raining and Mommy isn’t home. It’s “Guys Night”, that’s what Daddy told me when he kissed my forehead goodnight, and that I wasn’t supposed to bother him. Stay in bed, he whispered. Sweet dreams.

But I can’t sleep. So I sit backward on the couch with my elbows on the cushions and watched the windows cry. I use my finger to trail the glass along with a droplet on the other side of the pane, downward until the drop slits into two, then three, five, and seven, and I can’t decide which one to follow with my finger. I find two other droplets way up high and they remind me of Mommy’s pearls, all round and sparkly. But one is bigger and rounder than the other.
I choose them to race.

They start to slip down, zig-zag movements, this-ways and that-ways, stops and go’s. I can’t breath every time the rain drop I want to win falls behind, and I whisper little cheers every time he runs forward into the lead. I want the big one to win.
There’s a loud creak from Mommy and Daddy’s room and I get excited that he’s coming out to play with me. So I jump around and plop back onto the couch, my nightgown tickles at my legs when it falls down around me. But Daddy isn’t there and the door is still closed. His room is still creaky though, and all of a sudden I feel like I’m in Grandma’s attic when I know I’m not supposed to be. I’m afraid of being caught listening to the scratch-scratching so I quick turn back around to finish the race.
But my droplets finished the race without me and I don’t know which one reached the bottom of the window first. I pretend that my drop won.

It’s dark outside my window. I think it is probably quiet out there. Inside it is not so quiet at all. I can hear Daddy in his bedroom now, and he keeps getting louder, and he sounds like he’s in pain.

I think he is crying and I wonder if his friend is hurting him. But I hear Daddy tell his friend, Don’t stop. Keep going, don’t stop. So I think maybe he isn’t hurt after all. Daddy’s friend growls, and Daddy keeps making those whiny sounds, and he sounds like a monkey who wants a banana.

I bet they’re playing zoo, and the corner of my lips get pulled down. I don’t make them do it, it just happens. Why didn’t they ask me to play too? I imagine my Daddy is a monkey and he’s playing tag with his hungry lion friend. I wonder if he’ll catch my dad. I hear a loud roar come from the hungry lion, and I know he must be close.

My insides feel all turned around though, and I want to stop listening. Daddy thinks I’m asleep, and I don’t think I should be listening to his games. I just want to be outside in the quiet. I squish my hands to my ears and keep looking out the window.
Mrs. McNamara is out there now, old and slow. She’s wearing a hat and it looks like a beaver is sitting on her head, and she doesn’t have an umbrella even though it’s raining. She’s going to see her dead husband in the cemetery across from my house. She’s carrying a basket with both her hands. I think the basket is supposed to have plants or flowers or something to leave for her husband, that’s what I think. But all I see inside are little fingers. Children’s fingers, pudgy, curled, bunched up like flowers. They spill over the edges of the basket like the grass in our lawn. How it is before Daddy cuts it and Mommy talks and talks forever about how he needs to get off his ass and do something around the house for once, then he tells her to stop bitching and grab him a beer and maybe he’ll do something later.
Fingers seem like a strange thing to give to a dead guy.

I think about opening the window and asking if she wants to borrow and umbrella but then I would have to uncover my ears. There are voices behind me, but everything sounds like I’m underwater with my hands smooshed to the sides of my head. I can’t tell if they are close or far away. I think maybe Daddy and his friend have finally come out to play, so I uncover my ears and turn around.

They are both naked, Daddy and his friend, except his friend has on shiny black boots that might even be taller than I am. Both of their penises are standing up tall like they are trying to touch the ceiling. Daddy’s friend starts to rub his really fast, and I think it must be itchy. Daddy tries to run back into the bedroom but his friend is bigger by a lot, and grabs him with his other hand.

“Stop,” he says. Then he looks at me and smiles. “Do you want to play with us?” Now that he’s asked though, I’m not really sure I want to. I think I was wrong about him being a lion. I think maybe he is actually a snake.
“Please Sir,” Daddy says. His eyes are big. “My daughter, Sir. Not- ” His friend shuts him up with the back of his hand.

“You don’t speak, faggot. Down on your knees.” He spits in my dad’s face. Daddy is full of I’m sorry Sirs, Never again, Sirs. He falls to his knees and kisses the man’s boots. Then the giant boot rises up, then back down, and squishes Daddy’s face into the floor, and Daddy lets out another one of his monkey sounds. Then the man walks over to me and bends over and smiles.
“You’re a pretty girl, aren’t you?” He says. His breath smells like all the vegetables I don’t like. I don’t say anything back.
“I only let pretty girls play with me. You’re lucky, aren’t you?”

“I guess so,” I say. He puts his hand under my leg and it disappears under my nightgown. I’m not sure I like how hot his hand feels or how wiggly his fingers are so I move backwards into the couch, and he grabs me.
“Don’t move”.
I look over at Daddy, still on his knees, and I think that if Daddy has to listen to this man, than I have to also. So I freeze my body and pretend like I’m a statue. My panties get tugged at, and they are stuck at first, but then before I know it are all the way down my legs and at my feet.

The man uses his giant spider hands to yank me by my feet and I fly onto my back. It is hard to be a statue when that happens. Suddenly he’s right on top of me. I don’t understand his game and I don’t want to play it.
“Don’t scream, baby. Don’t scream. Daddy won’t like that at all.”
There is something hot pressing against me. I try and look down as far as I can without moving my body and it hurts my eyes. I think it’s the man’s penis, and his pushing it against me. I squeeze my eyes shut. I feels sharp against me. He backs up, then pushes again harder. I forget to be a statue for a second and I squirm. He backs up, pushes again, and this time, it burns. I think he’s trying to push himself all the way inside me, I think this is a strange game, and that I just want it to be over. I feel something warm trickle down my leg and I think of the rain drops that were rolling down the window.

“Get over here and watch, faggot.” The man sounds hungry.
“Yes sir,” Daddy answers. He sounds hungry too.
Then he backs up again and I know what is coming next. He pushes and I can feel myself rip apart like a rag doll. And I can’t help screaming. I remember what the man said about Daddy, but the scream keeps coming, coming, and coming. I scream cries in pain, scream I’m Sorries to Daddy, scream until it starts cutting the insides of my throat.
All inside me is on fire, and I’m leaking. Maybe I’m leaking too much, because suddenly I can’t hear, suddenly I can’t see.
Finally, I can’t feel.
I think maybe I fell asleep. And I think I hope I won’t wake up.[/blcokquote]

[Tiara]

God, Jase! Why are we not writing together? *ahemPaperDollsahem*
Second person is my weakness.

I like how your stories aren't necessarily overly graphic, but you know whats going on. You're not being safe and just insinuating that these things are happening. I know they are happening, and they are somehow raw but still poetic.

I need these published so I can hold them in my hands and just wallow in them.