Sleep is Dumb

Newest flash piece is up at Bizarro Central: "Sleep is Dumb."

One sun-brewed Monday in July, there was a monkey.

He was incredibly drunk.

For no real reason at all, the monkey bellowed “Fuck you, God!” toward the heavens at an ear-bleeding volume. The monkey god didn’t take too kindly to this, so he summoned a plague of locusts upon the monkey’s town. Thinking better of it, he called off the locusts and rained down flaming toads instead and set the entire town ablaze.

Wrote this one a long time ago, after I'd, perhaps not surprisingly, been awake for over 24 hours. Glad to see it stands the tests of time.

Screw the Universe

Screw the Universe! Still available for all your space-faring needs and reads. Here, have what the kids are calling a "free sample."

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The Zdravo, shiny and glinting in the light of the distant sun, was docked at the Federation space station, awaiting her new captain. Senior Dockworker Hugh Johnson and his crew had just meticulously removed the protective tarp from the newly constructed vessel, revealing her glory to the universe.

The universe wasn’t all that impressed.

Space Marshal Phil Orr, on the other hand, soiled his pants with joy. Also, semen. The Zdravo was the cutting edge of space-faring technology, all sharp and pointy and fast and shit. Launching her under the flag of the Federation was his way of telling all the non-Federation governments in the universe to suck it. And, man, they were some asshole governments.

Space Marshal Orr escorted the newly promoted Captain Oswald Van Vanderhoort Van Tyler to the viewing platform overlooking the Zdravo.

“Well, Captain Tyler, here she is, the Zdravo. Your home for the next six years.”

“She looks like a penis.”

“... a penis?”

“A penis. A big one at that.”

“I don’t know that I’d...”

Space Marshall Orr looked at the Zdravo again. She did look like a penis, all long and narrow and kind of bulbous at the front. And her twin rear engines uncannily resembled swollen testicles.

“How did I not see that?” he said, shaking his head. “Anyway, I suppose we should get back and work on getting a crew together for you.”

“We’re gonna fill that giant flying dong with a ton of seamen.”

“That would be the Navy, Captain.”

“Oh, right. Right,” said Captain Tyler. “What are Federation officers called again?”

“Space seamen.”

“That’s not funny at all.”

***

The candidates were lined up – naked – along the back wall of the conference room. Captain Tyler led Marshal Orr to a desk littered with paintballs. He pulled a slingshot from the back pocket of his battle shorts.

“Captain,” said Marshal Orr, “what’s the meaning of all this?”

“Interviewing takes too long, so I figured whoever gets hit with a paintball gets to come aboard.”

“That is quicker,” said the marshal, fingering one of the brightly-colored balls. “You do have less balls than applicants, right, Captain?”

“I should hope so. Finding pants would be a bitch.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” said the marshal. “And what of those that don’t get selected?”

“I don’t know, make them all Senior Dockworker or something.”

“That role is already taken by Johnson.”

“Well, now he’ll have friends.”

Captain Tyler loaded a paintball, pulled back on the slingshot, and pointed it toward the first set of testicles he saw.

“Wait just a minute, Tyler. I can’t in clear conscience let you do this to your potential crew,” said Space Marshal Orr. “Not by yourself, anyway. Where’s my slingshot?”

“We’re going to have to share, sir,” replied Captain Tyler, releasing the elastic of the slingshot. The paintball jumped forward, got caught in the pouch, spun around, and came flying back into Captain Tyler’s face, exploding between his eyes.

“Oh my God, it’s pink, everything is pink!”

The paintball wasn’t pink.

“Congratulations, Captain,” said Marshal Orr. “You’re part of your crew.”

“I can’t see! I’m blind!”

Marshal Orr grabbed the slingshot from the captain, loaded a paintball, and then fired it directly into the chest of one of the applicants.

“You,” said the marshal, “you’re now a private. Take Captain Tyler to the bathroom and wash that green paint off his face.”

“Yes, sir,” said the newly hired Private Kim Boxershorts.

“It’s green?” asked Tyler. “Oh God, it’s worse than I thought! I’ve lost the ability to smell colors!”

Marshal Orr raised an eyebrow.

“Make sure the paint didn’t seep into his brain or something,” he added.

“How would I—” began the space seaman.

Marshal Orr fired another paintball into the stomach of another applicant.

“You,” he said, “you’re the ship’s doctor. Go help.”

“But I don’t—”

The marshal fired a paintball into the man’s scrotum.

“I don’t care. Go run an MRI on Tyler. Use the internet or something.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the doctor, sputtering and limping toward Captain Tyler and Private Boxershorts.

“Now,” said Marshal Orr, “for the rest of you...”

***

Captain Tyler was laid out on the MRI’s bed. “Doctor” Emmanuel Sodomy stood behind the Plexiglas screen, alternately watching the captain and leafing through a six thousand page instruction manual.

“Yes,” mumbled the doctor, “but how do I turn it on?” He slammed his fists into the controls in front of him. The machine buzzed to life.

“I think that did it,” said Dr. Sodomy’s assistant, “Nurse” Poorbed Sidemanner.

“Of course. Right. Yeah,” replied the doctor. “Now let’s run some tests.”

Dr. Sodomy pushed a button at random. The bed slid into the MRI’s hole.

“Heh,” said Captain Tyler.

“Quiet!” demanded Nurse Sidemanner, shouting into the intercom.

“It was funny!” replied Captain Tyler.

“No talking!”

“It’s scanning my brain, not my mouth,” said the Captain. “I’ll talk all I—”

Dr. Sodomy pushed another button. The bed jolted upward, slamming Captain Tyler’s face into the top of the MRI machine.

“Shit,” said Dr. Sodomy, “shit, shit, shit.”

“At least he shut up,” said Nurse Sidemanner.

“I don’t think there’s supposed to be that much blood...”

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New Story

"The Dongs of D'kk'sulu" is up at Horror Sleaze Trash. Read it.

Newest Publication

"Barry Dingle vs. the Agents of P.O.o.P." has been published in Gratuitous Fluids by Look, Man, I Don't Know, We Smoked a Lot of Weed Right Before We Did This.

Barry Dingle -- in his late twenties, unemployed, single, and wearing plaid pajama bottoms and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt -- stared at the enormous turd sprawling in the bowl before him. The fecal brick was gigantic: the tapered end squeezing down the drain, the vast remainder still pretzeled around the inside of the bowl. It had taken the better part of five minutes to push the super shit out of his anus. He had now been staring at it for twice that long, trying to figure out how to get it to flush.

Barry thought about plunging the poop, but there was nothing to plunge. The stool wasn’t clogging the drain, it was just too damn big to go down in the first place. He was going to have to break it up into smaller shits.

The anthology is currently available for Kindle and will be released as a paperback soon.

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself...

Nathan W. Taynthoemer is an anomaly among men, but just a regular dude among anomalies.

Nathan W. Taynthoemer is the pen name of a rabid jackrabbit that just doesn't give a fuck anymore. Say anything to the contrary and he will viciously attack you and your mother with a sharpened spoon and there won't be a God damned thing you can do to stop him. He fucking dares you. Nathan is a Virgo and enjoys papercrafting, artisanal pork products, and long walks on the beach by candlelight.

Nathan W. Taynthoemer is the pen name of a rabid jackrabbit whose satchel of fucks-to-give tore a hole and is currently coming up empty.

Do you want an example? I think you want an example.

There was this mime, right, with a baguette in his pants and tied to a telephone pole with an orange extension cord. Nathan saw this and was understandably perplexed. Who would take the time to find a baguette just to stick it in this guy’s pants? Exactly how many feet of extension cord does it take to tie up a mime anyway? And what the fuck is a mime doing on the streets of Baltimore in the first place?

So Nathan asked the mime: “Dude, what the hell are you doing?”

The mime began a lengthy charade, hands gesturing everywhere, his eyes glazed over in desperation. As near as Nathan could decipher, the mime had climbed a rope out of an invisible box and nailed himself to a kite. Not seeing a kite or any wounds in the mime’s hands. Nathan figured that that was probably wrong and repeated his question. The mime again started to gesticulate frantically, his body writhing against the extension cord. He worked himself into such a frenzy that his eyes began to tear, his veins began to pop, and he looked as though he would pass out.

Nathan slapped the mime as hard as he could.

“Speak, damn it! For the love of God, talk, you goofy bastard!”

The mime composed himself as well as a French street performer tied to a telephone phone in Baltimore could be expected to, and apologized for his spastic fit.

“If you could first, please, monsieur, move zee baguette. She is in a very uncomfortable place.”

Nathan, with no small trepidation, slid the baked good over a little, and the white-faced street performer exhaled deeply.

“Merci.”

Then he began his story.

“I was performing here in zee street when I was hastily brushed aside by a large roving black bear and a midget on a unicycle. Zee bear, she was wearing a tutu and running on all fours like someone had yelled ‘free croissants,’ when suddenly she up-righted herself and threw me bodily into zee storefront over here. She bellowed, she did, at something behind her and ran down zat side street back zere.” The mime motioned with his head. “Zee midget, however, he did not make out so well. When zee bear accosted me, zee small one lost his balance and fell off zee unicycle. Zee unicycle then, she fell on top of his tiny frame and he was trapped! I went to help the little man when suddenly I hear a gunshot! Bang! Turning my head, I see a crowd of men dressed in black suits near zee end of zee avenue running toward us. One of zem, he ordered, ‘Anozer street performer! Get him!’ Not knowing what else to do, I immediately surrender, but still zey feel zee need to kick me in my face. Zee next zing I know, I am blacking out and waking up tied to zees pole.”

“So where did the baguette come from?”

“I am not really sure, to be true. But it feels kind of nice now zat you moved it, no? She is kind of soft and like a cushion for my crotch. Feels just like zee bread Mama used to make. But I am digressing. Can you help me down now?”

“Um, no,” said Nathan. “No, I can’t.”

“I’m sorry? You are going to leave me here? Like zees?”

“Yup. Later, Frenchie.”

And so Nathan walked away and into the night, wanting nothing more to do with the mime and his fetish for large bread rolls.

He found out the next morning that the mime had died from his wounds. But not the wounds he already had. New ones, added violently and maliciously, by at least six different parties, all coming later that night, after, what was referred to by police as, “a period of time in which the mime probably could have gotten far enough away to not get maimed had he not be tied to a telephone pole by an extension cord.”

Nathan felt nothing.