Grundish & Askew (31 page)

Grundish, wide-eyed and shocked, rocks side to side on his knees, trying to keep from falling over onto the ground. Turleen appears at his side and puts one hand on his head to steady him. She gently ruffles his hair. With the other hand she grips the throwing knife and pulls it from his neck and drops it to the ground. A jet of blood pulses from the wound, wetting Turleen’s hands and dress. Grundish looks to Turleen. The word
why
forms on his lips, but the only sound is the pop of a blood-bubble that issues from his mouth and dribbles down his chin before he falls over on his side. In the spot of sandy soil, under the lush canopy of the live oaks, Grundish bleeds out, marking his final stand, his business unfinished but his promises kept.

Turleen turns and walks to the El Camino. Shaking a Blue Llama from Askew’s pack, she lights it and leans against the car. And from the road, the men and barking dogs and police cars burst into the forest. She straightens her red dress, draws on the cigarette as if it were her last breath, and faces the throng of officers, waiting for their questions.

I owe my deep gratitude to several people for helping me finish Grundish and Askew. First, an engorged, meaty thank you goes out to Sister Mary Catherine of Superfecundation. You are my muse, my editor, my best friend, and so much more. I’m really glad I never acted on the urge to smack you in the mouth when you would question my grammar, wording, sentence structure, etc. Because of your input, Grundish and Askew is a better book. Now get back in the kitchen and make me a sammich.

Mad fucking props and my immeasurable appreciation go out to my friend and fellow Vicious Books author, Marcus Eder. Marcus designed a kick ass cover for Grundish and Askew. Damn, I do like that cover! Marcus is a talented author, musician, graphic designer, ordained minister (licensed to marry and bury), and, apparently, a world class bacon chef. What can’t this guy do? So please, check out Marcus’s band, Strawfoot, and buy his books.

Finally, I want to say thank you to the people who read my first novel,
Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed
, and encouraged me to write another book. It means a lot to know that the massive effort that went into putting that book out was appreciated. So, I want to give a big, sloppy, open-mouthed kiss to all of my readers. Um, perhaps that sounds kind of fruity. Maybe I’ll just give the kiss to my female readers. Come on, ladies, you know you want it. Don’t worry, my cold sores have cleared up and I just ate a breath mint. And for my male readers, I extend my right hand, give you firm handshakes, and say “thank you, Sirs.” Thanks to all for reading my shit.

“Hot dog, I do like these fancy French fags, I do!” Turleen tilts her head back and jets two bluish streams of smoke from her nostrils. She shifts in her recliner and stretches her legs, then flinches at the moist tickle she feels on her bare soles. “I guess I owe you this, I do,” she says to the dogs sitting in front of her at the footrest. “Well, get to it, then.”

Sloppy, slobbery tongues work the bottoms of Turleen’s feet, probing the gaps between the toes and then working their way back toward the heels. Idjit gently gnaws at a yellowed and cracked corn, softening it up and removing tiny bits of dead skin. Stubs licks up to Turleen’s ankle and then slowly laps his way back toward the toes.

“Meat,” says Stubs.

“Meat,” agrees Idjit. “Like mortadella.”

“Yeah. Mortadella.”

[1] San Quentin State Prison, in San Rafael, California is so large that it has its own zip code, 94974.

[2] Elastic bands can be wrapped around internal hemorrhoids as a cure. This is called
Baron Ligation
or
Rubber Band Ligation
. The band will cut off the blood supply to the hemorrhoid. Within several days the withered hemorrhoid should be sloughed off during the course of a bowel movement.

[3] Bestiality was not illegal in the State of Washington until 2006. In 2006 a law was passed banning sex with animals. The law was the result of a Seattle area man dying from peritonitis as a result of perforation of the colon after being on the receiving end of anal sex with a horse.

[4] Docking = The act of placing the head of ones penis inside the foreskin of another’s penis.

[5] Listen to Cracker’s “Euro-Trash Girl,” the hidden track on the CD
Kerosene Hat
. It is incredible.

[6] There actually is such a product to help people pass drug tests. It is called the
Whizzinator
. The device is available in five flesh colors and includes a prosthetic penis attached to an undergarment resembling a jock strap. It connects to a pouch containing rehydrated urine.

[7] La Tomatina is a festival held on the last Wednesday of August each year in the streets of Buñol, Spain. Tens of thousands of participants come from all over the world to take part in a massive one-hour food fight involving more than one hundred metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes.

[8] Licking feet is one form of foot fetishism, or podophilia. Some researchers hypothesize that foot fetishism rates rise in response to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases. An Ohio State University study noted an increased interest in feet as sexual objects during a gonorrhea epidemic in twelfth century Europe. Similar increases were noted during the European syphilis epidemics of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Likewise, it has been noted by some researchers that an increase in foot activity in pornographic movies has increased exponentially in correlation with the relatively recent outbreak of AIDS.

[9] Some funny porno names:
Buttman and Throbbin, Shitty Shitty Gangbang, Edward Penishands, Ass Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Brown Eye,
and
Scrotal Recall
.

[10] Priapus, a minor (Greek) fertility god, was the protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. He was known for his perpetually erect penis that grew so large that Priapus was eventually unable to move. Known as a watcher/protector of livestock and gardens, Priapus warned away thieves and transgressors, threatening to sodomize or to sexually penalize with his giant member whoever dared to steal the garden’s greens and fruits.

[11] An extreme accumulation of fat on and about the buttocks, esp. of women.

[12] In November of 2000, a woman in Newport News, Virginia, purchased an order of chicken wings from McDonald’s. The wings were being tested in that market. When the woman got home she discovered a severed and fried chicken head in the package, beak and all. The absence of fried chicken heads on McDonald’s menus would seem to indicate that they were not a big hit in the test market.

[13] Frumunda cheese - frumunda my balls.

[14] Other fun prison slang: Diaper Sniper = child molester; family style = sodomy in missionary position; old lady = passive partner in homosexual prison relationship.

[15] The Great Gray Slug,
limax maximus
, has unusual mating practices. The hermaphrodite slugs will court each other for hours, circling and licking each other. Then the slugs will climb to a high area and, whilst entwined together, lower themselves on a thick strand of mucus, entwine their sexual organs and exchange sperm. Sometimes their corkscrew shaped penises will become entangled in their mate’s genitalia while exchanging sperm. When this occurs and they are unable to disentangle themselves, one or both slugs will chew each other’s penises off. Once a slug’s penis has been removed, it can still mate, but only using the female parts of the reproductive system.

[16] Yes, the author made up his own word. Muddlement. And it is a good word. Try using it in conversation and you will find it is quite satisfying. Make up your own words and challenge people to look them up in the dictionary. When they can’t find your words in their dictionary, tell them it’s because they have a cheap, shitty, out-of-date dictionary. Challenge them to purchase the entire set of the Oxford English Dictionary and tell them that there they will find your fake words. When they don’t, tell them they are stupid and that you made up your own words. If they have a problem with it, slap them in the face with a glove, demand satisfaction, and challenge them to a duel with the weapon of their choosing.

[17] How many cops does it take to throw a suspect down the stairs? None, he fell.

[18] I know, I know, another made up word. But droopage is fun to say. Repeat it five times quickly and poke yourself in the eye with a pencil. Droopage seems to lose the meaning it never had in the first place when you do that, doesn’t it?

[19] The word irregardless, believed to be a combination of irrespective and regardless, is often listed as nonstandard or improper in dictionaries due to its double negative use of
ir
(a prefix meaning not) and
less
(a suffix meaning without). However, it has become widely used and is slowly inching its way toward being a proper and accepted word. In the spirit of making up new words, I am throwing my support behind irregardless and attempting to help it move in the direction of standardization, if for no other reason than to irritate snooty vocabulary police.

[20] Lutefisk is a traditional Nordic dish of air-dried whitefish soaked in caustic soda lye, making the fish into a gelatinous stinky blob. Today more lutefisk is consumed in Wisconsin than in Norway.

[21] If you don’t got Mojo Nixon, then your store could use some fixin’.

[22] Cleavage.

[23] At this point the author must thank his readers for allowing this one self-indulgent passage. The fat, bloated, piece-of-shit anchor represents a reviewer of the author’s first novel,
Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed
. The reviewer’s name has been changed. But, the tall man’s reaction is what the author felt like doing when he read the review. The author once again says thank you. Damn, that felt good!

[24] Polymastia is the condition of having an extra breast (or accessory breast). Accessory breasts may occur with or without nipples and areolae. Some can lactate. The extra breasts can appear, in rare cases, on the neck, face, shoulder, back, buttocks, thighs or even on a foot.

[25] 95% of adults say they wash their hands after using public restrooms but observational studies have shown that the actual number of hand washers is far lower. Hand-washing behavior increases when an observer is present. A person is more likely to wash his hands in a public restroom if he knows the behavior is being watched by another. This has been explained by the theory of objective self-awareness. It is theorized that attending to one’s self increases adherence to social norms. Self-awareness is enhanced by being watched by others. Thus, having an observer present in the restroom may remind a user of the social norm to wash his hands.

[26] The technical/medical term for Askew’s throat cheese is tonsillolith, commonly referred to as tonsil stones. Tonsilloliths are irregularly shaped, whitish/yellow, foul-smelling globs of mucous and bacteria that get caught in the back of the throat. They form in the tonsil crypts which are small pockets or divots that appear in the tonsils. Why do people smell them? Who knows? But talk to anybody who has coughed one up and, if they are honest, they will tell you they took a whiff of it and regretted it.

[27] By the way, Slumbering Grundish would be a very cool band name, and I am willing to sell the rights to it at a very reasonable price.

[28] Vincent Van Gogh did not cut of his entire ear as many believe, only the earlobe. He cut the earlobe off with a razor and delivered it to a prostitute named Rachel, telling her: “Guard this object carefully.” Many attempts have been made to diagnose Van Gogh’s madness, attributing his mental problems to, among other things, lead poisoning, absinthe ingestion, syphilis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and temporal lobe epilepsy.