News Times with Steele Canterbury and Chikki Powers

TYAGTA "Slavery" Chapter 2

2

Martha Jefferson sat in her rocking chair reading Franklin’s latest edition of wise sayings, “Brother Benny’s Bon Mots.” A portly middle-aged housewife with a faded jaw, she always wore her dour mood as a scowl. Martha was a woman of thoughts and aspirations, the kind to devour the wealth of humanity’s knowledge yet never construct her own written wisdoms. To pen down an idea tainted the human wonder of imagination; the shackles of language chained thought to the earth.

And no imagination could fly freely without a tidied thought-space. Too busy with her high-minded endeavors, she employed a slew of house servants who earned a modest penny from her inherited wealth. This freed Martha from the duties of womanly labor and shackled her to the chair in which she sat, reading another of Franklin’s witty remarks: “The most exquisite folly is wisdom spun too fine.”

She snorted.

“Problem, Missus Jeffuhsun?”

Martha leaned back and hummed, eyes closed. She sighed, “I’ve been pondering physics again, Sally. You know that takes a toll on my psyche.”

“Ah, too right. You think too much, Missus Jeffuhsun.”

Martha chuckled. Could there be such a thing?

“It’s these damned electrons. If we merely know that their existence around the nucleus of an atom is all reducible to probability, then there must be an inherent probability that those electrons cease to exist. Could such a thing occur? Energy disappearing and reappearing in an instant?”

“I don’t reckon’ that’s what it means, Missus Jeffuhsun.”

Martha sighed, “Well I don’t suppose you would, Sally. We are all blind, some more than others it would seem, to the world in which we live. It is the limit of all human understanding. How can we ever truly know what occurs in the heavens, or beyond the stars, or even down the street past the walls in which we live?”

Sally looked out the window, “Massah Jeffuhsun’s a-comin’.”

Martha raised a pointed finger, “Ah yes, but do we know for certain that he is coming?”

Jefferson opened the door, “Martha, I’m home from the pub. Is Sally around?”

Jefferson and Sally’s eyes met.

“Hello Thomas,” she said.

“Sally,” Jefferson bowed. He shouted down the hall, “Martha? Martha are you here?”

“Thomas,” Martha called, not budging from her seat. “You’re just in time. I had stumbled upon an enlightened question, yet Sally’s mind seems as fertile as a rotting horse.”

Jefferson sighed, “Oh really.”

“Yes, Mistuh Jeffuhsun.” Sally curtsied back into the room, her voiced doubled-over in her ‘house speak.’ “We was debatin’ – well you tell it, Missus Jeffuhsun.” Sally laughed, shaking her head as she walked away, “I don’t seem to know what you’s sayin’ half the time.”

Sally whispered to Jefferson, “Goodbye, Thomas.” She walked further down the hall and muttered, “Fat bitch.”

“Yes, well, thank you Sally.” Jefferson cleared his throat and eased his way into the living room. The crinkling of Horehound’s hard candies wrapping paper followed an avalanche of colorful tissues as he waded through the living room. “Martha, what has you so concerned this early? You know it isn’t good for your health.”

“I was reading over this treatise on physics, and I was wondering: we only know by a certain probability where an electron will be when it is orbiting the nucleus of an atom.”

“Of course, dear. It’s 1775; everyone knows that.”

Martha leaned over her armrest and shouted, “I guess some people don’t!”

“Where are the children?”

“In a moment; you never let me finish a thought, Thomas.”

“Yes dear. Electrons?”

“And probability. Does that not imply that there is a certain probability that the electron ceases to exist at all?”

There was a silence in the room, pregnant ellipses punctuated by commas from the ticking of the clock.

“…Martha, I don’t think that’s what that means–”

A ceramic vase flew across the room, shattering against the wall next to Jefferson’s head.

“How would you know?!” Martha cried, leaping from her seat. Candy wrappings rolled to the floor from her lap. “What have you ever read or studied on the subject of physics? Hrm?”

Martha stomped to her husband and threw up her hands. She kicked a waste bin across the room, “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you? Well I’ll have you know that I’m–”

“No, Martha.”

“Don’t patronize me, you fuckuseless dandy of a two bit treason queer!”

“I taught you that word, Martha.”

“You’re just blind, Jefferson. We all are. You can’t possibly see the world beyond your own viewpoint. It’s always about you, which is why you can’t see the truths I see.”

Jefferson bunted, “Well if we’re all blind, aren’t you blind too?”

Martha smiled, straining her eyes out more as she shook a fist at the ceiling, “Of course! And I can see beyond because I know I am blind!”

Sally crept in to sweep up the broken vase, ducking under Martha’s arm as she spun in place, cackling.

“And when my work is done you will ALL see!” Martha stumbled back and collapsed in her chair. “You’ll all see,” she whispered, eyes closed.

“Martha, you should get out more.”

She chuckled, “Oh Thomas, you know my symptoms confine me to this chair.”

“What symptoms?”

“I have diabetes, restless leg syndrome, fibromyalgia–”

Jefferson folded his arms, “Those aren’t real diseases, Martha. Those are just the symptoms of being fat. Probably lazy, too.”

Martha’s face tempered to a glare, “How could you – you know obesity runs in my family.”

“Obesity doesn’t run in your family, Martha; obesity doesn’t run at all!”

“I can’t speak to you when you’re like this. You’ve been drinking with Franklin again, haven’t you?”

“We weren’t drinking.” Jefferson thought for a moment. “I wasn’t drinking.”

“Oh, Benjamin Franklin’s drunk and on the town? Alert the militia.”

“You know they won’t go near him, Martha. Not since that mangling he gave to John. It will be a miracle if he can ever write with that hand again.”

“The man is a beast, Thomas.”

“He just kept stabbing John’s hand, shouting, ‘Where’s the cock? Where’s the cock?’ But that was just the cocaine talking, I would wager.”

“You can’t keep hanging around with those boys, Jefferson. Think of your career.”

“What career? We inherited all of this Martha; and what should a man with such luxuries do but fight for the freedom of his fellow citizens?”

“Thomas.”

“And it is why we fight, for freedom! For liberty! For truths we decided were self-evident–”

“Thomas.”

“That all men, and women dear my dearest Martha–”

“I’m leaving you, Thomas.”

“–are created – what?”

“You know,” Martha laughed, “I was so worried about saying that. I didn’t think I had the courage to do it, frankly. But now that I’ve said it…it’s so easy; I’m leaving you, Thomas. Wow, look at me!”

“But,” Jefferson stammered, “but Martha, why?

“I’ve met someone, Thomas. Someone who understands my vital needs as an intellectual and a woman.”

Jefferson grabbed a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his cheeks, “Who is he?”

“His name is Ashwin. Ashwin Downing-Beaver.”

“…You’re leaving me for an Indian?”

“He’s a real man, Jefferson; an unbridled, earthly Cherokee who kindles the ember of my loins, mind, and somewhere between those two, my heart. He’s not a pasty, half-assed statesman in a backwater English colony like some men.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s out.”

Jefferson looked around the room, “Where are the children? Patsy?” He shouted to the house, “Jane? Bellerophon?”

“Patsy and Jane left when I told them about the arrangement. Bellerophon went with them. Said something about leaving the tempestuous chimeras of bourgeois life; educating that one may have been a mistake.”

“And the girls?”

“Ashwin is with Lucy One and Lucy Two now. They should be back any minute.”

“Martha, this is absurd. Let’s talk about this before either of us does something we’ll regr–”

The door opened and the Jeffersons’ two remaining daughters scuttled in, followed by a barrel-chested Indian wearing an ascot and feathered headdress. Deer bones sewn into his three-piece suit rattled with his steps.

Jefferson hugged his daughters, “Lucy One, Lucy Two. Where were you?”

Lucy Two burbled, “Hulloo Duhddy!”

Lucy One chimed in, “We went to see the Chief Duhnce, Duhddy!”

Jefferson arched an eyebrow at Martha, “The Chief Dance?”

Ashwin stepped forward and shook Jefferson’s hand, “Ashwin Downing-Beaver. You must be Thomas, Martha has told me… much about you.”

Jefferson grimaced, shaking Ashwin’s hand as a reluctant gentleman would. “Likewise.”

“See?” Martha pled from her seat, nudging away licorice sticks and wrapping foils. “I told you about his unsavory temper.”

Ashwin nodded.

Jefferson bent over to look at Lucy Two, “What’s this Chief Dance, Lucy?”

“All the tribes were thuhre, and they were singing and duhncing.”

Jefferson grinned and reached for an air of multiculturalism by belching out, “How rustic.”

Lucy One bounced up and down, “Then the strongest men cuhrried the Chief uhround in a chair, and the ladies all cuhrried ribbons and gourds.”

The two girls grinned and declared, “Then they burned uh lady uhlive and ate her heart!”

Jefferson quacked, “They did what?!”

“It’s a beautiful ceremony, actually,” Ashwin said for the girls. “It marks the unity of all tribes of man as one.”

“…so they burn a kid alive and eat her heart?”

Martha sighed, “You’re fighting a losing battle, Ashwin. My husband…,” she smiled, “…former husband, is just too petty and narrow-minded to grasp the intricacies of earthly living.” Martha rubbed her loins, wriggling with ecstasy.

Jefferson countered, “It simply isn’t right for the girls to witness such… things.”

“It’s okay Duhddy,” Lucy One assured her father.

“Well, I suppose you girls are wise enough to handle these affairs.”

Lucy Two added, “Yea, I wuhs afraid to eat her heart uht first but when I saw everybuddy else doing it, I–”

“My God!”

“Why don’t you girls take Ashwin around the town?” Martha cooed. “Your father and I have more to discuss.”

“No, Martha I don’t think we do,” Jefferson said as he walked over to the stairs. “If you’re leaving I can’t stop you.”

“No, that isn’t it, Thomas.” Martha waved the girls and Ashwin goodbye, “I’m not leaving.”

“But you just said–”

“Yes, I’m leaving you. So now you are leaving Monticello.”

Jefferson stepped back, “What? But I built–”

“The land belonged to my father. And where would Ashwin and I raise the girls? Would you want your own daughters to live on the streets, Thomas?”

“No…that is I,” Jefferson stopped. “…fine. I’ll be back for my things in the morning.”

Jefferson stepped out, but before he could close the door Martha shouted, “Thomas, wait!”

Jefferson turned.

Martha spit, hurtling a glob at Jefferson’s cheek. It landed as she snapped, “Let’s see your long-haired fuckbuddy help you now.”

Jefferson wiped the spittle from his face and sighed, closing the door and stepping back out into the bustling village of Philadelphia. A stagecoach passed and he wondered if they might grant him a ride to the woods where Franklin lived.

Then Jefferson realized: he was planning to go to Franklin’s, to march headlong into the inferno of Skyfather’s Deist Hell. But he shrugged off that concern. Sure, Franklin was a heartless, uncouth demon in the skin of a man, but he couldn’t turn out a friend in need.

“Thomas, wait,” Sally called from the door. “Are you really leaving?”

“Sally,” Jefferson sighed. “Yes, it appears I must.”

“Then take me with you.”

Jefferson chuckled, “Would that I could, Sally. Were I Emperor I would free all the slaves from their shackles, but alas you belong to Martha.”

“I belong to myself, Thomas. I don’t care what some contract says. We could make a run for it, be out of the city before sunset, the fat bitch won’t even notice we’re gone before we’re out West. The militia won’t even be sober for another four days; they’d never find us–”

“Sally, really. Martha may be a tad cheeky but–”

“She’s a lazy, fat bitch just like her mother.”

Jefferson chuckled, “Oh Sally. You’ve really been there for all of us, haven’t you? Raising the children, caring for our home, drying out Martha’s folds – if there’s anything I can do for you just say the word and it’s yours.”

“Oh really?” Sally smirked, tracing her finger down Jefferson’s cheek, “Anything I might ask?”

Jefferson stammered, “Why – why yes, Sally.” He took her by the hand. “But for now it appears I must be off.”

“Oh come on now, Thomas.” Sally leaned in to whisper into Jefferson’s ear, “She’s probably passed out in the chair by now. We could go upstairs and nobody would hear us.”

She cooed, breathily, “Mistuh Jeffuhsun.”

Jefferson stepped back, “Well yes, Sally but I must be off. Goodbye, Sally!” He waved as he hustled away to the woods outside town.

TYAGTA "Slavery" Chapter 1

SLAVERY, CHAPTER ONE

A red-eyed, sweaty madman burst through the pub doors, wiping his brow as he shouted incoherent demands outside to two dark-skinned servants, who hustled in as far as their leashes allowed with their gazes locked on the floor. Their owner mopped his frazzled, oily mound of hair to the sides around his massive bald spot and adjusted his round bifocals – an invention he wouldn’t patent for another nine years.

“Ah, Mr. Franklin,” the head serving wench announced with a curtsy. “Back for your afternoon bender?”

He laughed, “The name’s Benjamin, you withering cunt.”

She countered with a wink, “Struck by lightning again, you drunk sack of syphilis?”

Franklin coughed. “Where’s old Thomas?”

A frilly, effeminate hand waved from the back of the large tavern, past powdered wigs and gentlemen playing refined games of chance.

“He’s over there, Mr. Franklin,” she smiled, too used to his gruff demeanor and aware that her tolerance of his caustic remarks always earned her a coin if she persisted. “If you haven’t smoked away your sense of direction, that is.”

Franklin tossed a copper piece the barmaid’s way. “I’ll see you outside in twenty minutes then. Pull your hair back on your own time.” He turned to the open room and stepped over to Jefferson’s table.

“Thomas, you old pole-smoking fruit,” Franklin barked for the entire pub to hear. “How goes the treason business?”

Jefferson shushed his friend as he sat, his wig and ruffles flittering with anxiety, “Ben, be cautious! There are loyalists everywhere!”

“Don’t be a shit, Thomas,” Franklin snorted, pulling out his pipe and lighting the bowl. He inhaled deeply, held the air in his chest, and then exhaled a plume of blue smoke across the table.  “So what’s wrong?” He coughed,” Do you need help writing or did your fat wife stroke out again?”

“Franklin, I need your advice.” Jefferson sneered, “I’d prefer you weren’t entirely baked for this.”

“You know that publishing’s dead, right? Only farmers read these days, and you want to know something? Not that literate. They only bought my Almanac when I started putting tits on the cover.”

“Farmers?”

“Seem’s that all the money’s in Jesus and bullets these days. Fuckin’ liberals.”

“This is not about business or profit, Franklin!” Jefferson leaned back, aghast. “This is about the future of our society, of mankind! The triumphant moment when we state that the people are to be governed by themselves, that the era of kings has ended, that no man is–”

Franklin laughed, pushing out billows of smoke from his nostrils. He winced and slammed his fist on the table, “Bullshit.” He dropped the pipe in his pocket.

“Excuse me?”

“I said bullshit, because that’s what it is. Have you been listening to that queer, Hamilton, again?”

“It’s 1775; don’t be a bigot, Franklin,” Jefferson grimaced, unfurling a scroll of parchment. “I spoke with him last night while I was drafting up this Declara–”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, this first part, where I say that ‘all men are created equal,’ it just doesn’t ring true. You know, here.” Jefferson pressed his hand over his heart.

“Because it’s not.” Franklin open-palm punched his slave across the face, “See?”

Thomas stifled his frustration that had been building since his friend arrived. Franklin’s glib attitude towards their country’s future was one of the aspects of their relationship Jefferson hated the most. “If we are going to found a nation on the principles of fraternity and unity–”

“Jefferson, let me tell you something.” Franklin retrieved his pipe and stirred the bowl around, flicking grey ashes on the floor. His servants dutifully swept the flakes away. “We are all equal in that we are all slaves.”

“Excuse me?” Jefferson looked at his friend’s slave with the empathy one has for a spurned child or a youthful love extinguished. “The central premise of our complaint against the British is that no man is subservient to another!” He pointed at Benjamin’s slaves but kept talking about them as though they weren’t there. “How can you talk about equality?”

Jefferson stood, vaingloriously booming to the uninterested pub at large. The few patrons who didn’t habitually tune him out after years of his blathering simply rolled their eyes. There goes that poof Thomas, ranting about brotherhood and liberty again. For the love of fuck.

“How may any of us speak of such things as liberty…or, or even brotherhood when we willingly own other men – and women! – as objects to be traded and tossed aside like scrap paper?!”

A stray bottle flew from the crowd and shattered across Jefferson’s head. A voice shouted, “If you don’t like it then go back to Britainstan, faggot!”

Franklin stared. “Jefferson, I was in the middle of a very important meeting with the Freemasons and the Lizardmen Ambassador. Stop prancing with your hands and get to your point.”

Jefferson rubbed his scalp. His hand brought back shards of glass dipped in fresh blood. He winced. “Oh, how is George? Did the wooden dentures hold?”

“He doesn't actually need wooden teeth. Lizardmen don’t have teeth.” Franklin tapped out more ashes. “Well, it depends on your definition. But trust me, anything you hear about George is probably just propaganda by the Satanists. They’re trying to push so we’ll elect Monroe when the revolution’s over. The Freemasons have everything planned around it, don’t worry.”

Jefferson sat down. “Ben, the Satanists aren’t real. Monroe just likes goats.”

“I assure you, they’re as real as these shackles,” Franklin joked, tugging at his slave’s neck chain. The slave grimaced but remained silent.

“That’s exactly my point, what good is our new world if we do not adhere to its guiding principles?”

Franklin shrugged, “What good is a newborn baby?”

“But if we continue to purchase slaves from–”

“Jefferson, stop mincing.” Franklin took another hit. This time, he sputtered out chunks of saliva and char when he finished. He wiped his chin with his sleeve and plodded on, eyes watering, “What’s wrong with profiting from a little civil war now and then?”

“The damage we’ve done to them may never be rever–”

Franklin pretended to sob and whined, “I’m shad, inequawity is so mean. Slavewy dwies my vaj, Fwankwin.”

“Slavery,” Jefferson glared, “is immoral.”

“Slavery,” Franklin somberly leaned in, “is probably the only way in which we are all equal.”

Thomas shook his head, “Franklin, you’re stoned. Why don’t you–”

“Sure, these guys get the brunt end of it,” Franklin jerked the neck chain down again, pulling his servant to the floor. “But why not consider the curious case of that serving trollop over there.” He waved to a plump young serving wench, tending to an order of ales and rolled tobacco.

“Is she really any different? Do you think she wants to be here, serving drinks at the pub and mouth jobs around the corner? She has to! She’s just a slave to her wage. Or him, over there.” Franklin leaned to the side towards a lawman in the corner, puffing away on a stick of tobacco.  “And then there’s you, Jefferson.”

Jefferson grew worried, “What about me?”

“Aren’t you just a slave to your wife? Doesn’t she own everything you have?”

Jefferson was silent.

“We’re all slaves to something in some way, Jefferson. And anyone can be a slave! We just do this to the dark ones because it makes us feel really fucking awesome about ourselves. Remember when we did this to the gingers? And the jews? And the–”

“Franklin, this is preposterous. Why, I’d wager that the hearty negroes of our fair nation,” Jefferson began again, ignoring Franklin’s servants as one ignores children or pets, “deserve a wage and their own free lives no more or less than we Caucasians!”

“Thomas.” Franklin pointed and leaned toward Jefferson, grinning. “What is it with you and cocks?”

Jefferson sighed, cradling the bridge of his nose, “Why must you insist on boorishly–”

“No, no, let’s all hear about the noble Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, the kind slave owner. Jefferson, who pays his slaves a wage, as if that makes a difference. Jefferson, who hasn’t even forced himself on a single slave his entire life.”

A voice in the pub shouted out, “Pussy!”

“I have a wife, Franklin.”

“So did I! So does Burr! Never stopped us. It doesn’t count and you know it.”

“Pussy loves his wife!”

“I would never!” Jefferson stood, this time to leave. He began rolling up his parchment, “Clearly you’re in one of your moods again.”

Franklin choked, “It’s this ditch weed you sold me last week.” He wiped his chin, “Is this the grass you make rope with?”

Thomas’ eyes narrowed to frigid little slits, “You know I would never sell my rope stash.”

Franklin tapped the pipe and took another hit. He set the pipe down and exhaled a thin vapor. Disappointed, he smacked his lips, scowled, then yelled, “EMPTY!”

His slaves, eyes wide with panic, scrambled for the pipe. Before they could open the cloth bag containing the rest of Franklin’s pre-ground “Walking Around Stash,” their enraged owner pulled a jeweled dagger from his breast pocket. A valued treasure stolen from a prostitute’s corpse in the Parisian alley-markets, the silver blade plunged into the slave’s gut.

Franklin locked eyes with his victim and screamed, “EMPTY!”

The slave howled and crumpled to the floor. His chain clattered to the ground as he cupped both hands over the bleeding wound. The other snatched the pipe and tamped a green wad into the bowl.

Franklin stood over his slave, knife dripping on the dusty floorboards. Jefferson stepped between them as Franklin raised his dagger again.

“Jefferson, stand down,” he warned.

“No, Franklin, this is madness, this is–”

“This is my parlay!” Franklin leaned backed and roared, “EMPTY!”

“Franklin, I don’t…think you know what parlay means.”

Franklin readied his knife for two more victims, when the unwounded slave brought the pipe to Franklin’s lip and struck a match. He inhaled slowly then exhaled. His tense and aggressive stance slackened, and he gently sighed.

“Yuh welcome, Mistuh Franklin.”

Franklin smiled then stuck his dagger into her chest. He winked, “Uh-uh-uh! You speak when spoken to, Number Six-Twenty-One.”

She gulped and fell to the floor, almost spitting out a, “So sorry, Mistuh Franklin.”

Jefferson stood over the bleeding servants in horror. He shouted, “Franklin! What are you doing?!”

Franklin wiped the bloody dagger on a cloth napkin. He shook his head, “For fuck’s sake, Thomas. Don’t make a scene.”

Jefferson looked around the pub. It appeared none present were the slightest bit surprised or even took notice. There goes that Ben Franklin again, stabbing another slave, running naked through the streets, covered in hooker blood and feathers, just like last week. I wonder if he can spot me a dime bag?

Jefferson stared at the slaves, one twitchy from blood loss and the other irreversibly dead. He lowered to his seat, “Well now what? What do you do the next time you’re empty?”

Franklin chuckled, “Oh, you haven’t seen my latest invention!” He pulled out a long, smooth box covered in silk cloth. Franklin unfolded the little package, revealing a shiny, metal rectangle with squares holes on both sides.

“What’s that?”

“I call it,” Franklin puffed away dust, “the slave whistle.” He blew a dull, flat note from the harmonica and then trilled out a scale of brassy chords. Three slaves, shackled and haggard as the first two, shuffled in to replace their owner’s broken merchandise; their names “622,” “623,” and “624” smeared on their burlap tunics with white paint.

While Six-Twenty-Four dragged the wounded and near-dead away, Six-Twenty-Two and Six-Twenty-Three took their positions at Franklin’s left and right. Jefferson shook his head with feckless guilt.

Franklin grinned, “So which one do you want?” He pointed to the slaves at his side, “I could use some help breaking these girls in.”

Jefferson stood, this time certain that he would leave. “Never… in my wildest days did I ever imagine this. I may as well support the King before I–”

Franklin wagged his hands about, snidely jeering, “Oh, look at me, I’m Thomas Jefferson. I don’t rape slaves because I have a wife. I’m a good slave-owner.”

Jefferson grimaced, “That’s not why, Benjamin.”

“Oh what, moral dilemma? Do you seriously think being kind to your slaves makes you a better person for owning them?”

“Yes! …well, I…that is,” his words and parcels fumbled together. “Of course it does!”

“Bullshit. You still own them, they still work for free.”

“I pay my employees.”

Franklin chuckled, “Oh so that’s what he calls them?” He nudged Six-Twenty-Two with his elbow. “Employees, can you imagine?”

Number Six-Twenty-Two opened her mouth to answer, but a knowing look from Franklin as he slowly pulled out his dagger silenced her.

“Ben, someday all of this will come back to you and–”

Franklin snorted, “No it won’t. I’ll have guys like you making slavery look nice, humanitarian, fair. The only thing a nice owner like you does is make them less aware of how unjustifiable their situation truly is. I, on the other hand, am a model slave owner.”

Jefferson stopped. “Excuse me?”

“Do you know how many people I’ve killed, Jefferson?”

“Slaves or just in general?”

“Okay sure, let’s just look at the slaves for now.”

Jefferson thought for a moment. “Six hundred and twenty-one?”

“This year; try again.” Franklin opened a small leather booklet and thumbed through the pages.

“Oh.”

Franklin marked two tallies in his notebook, “Looking to beat my old record this year. Take it from me, buddy. You’re staying in town for the next couple of days – you must have brought a slave or two with you to Philadelphia. What’s your house girl’s name? Ubuntu?”

Jefferson glared, “Her name is Sally.”

“Why not toss her a fuck? I know she’s technically Martha’s but what’s she going to do, huh?” He chuckled, “Huh? Ah, you get it. Now follow me on this – no, sit down, don’t go. You go home, you force yourself on her.”

“How would I do that?!”

“I don’t know how you get started up Jefferson, just do it. Tie her up if you have to, hold a musket to her temple if she resists, but you won’t have to. You’ll see, in time you’ll have your precious little slave uprising and everyone will be equal.”

Jefferson unrolled his parchment and read the words again, ‘all men are created equal.’ He looked up, “Do you really think so?”

Franklin shrugged, “Unless they just turn the table on us, which I mean really, who could blame ‘em?” He reached across the table and rested his hand atop Jefferson’s, “But really, Thomas, it doesn’t matter. Just put whatever you want on that thing. Even if the revolution works, no one will ever read it. Hell,” he added, holding up his pipe, “the dumb bastards will probably outlaw this too, eventually.”

Jefferson sighed and left the pub. He stepped onto the dirt road of Philadelphia’s main street, his mind a torpid whirligig of confusion. Liberty, tyranny, oppression – could Franklin be right? Was his fair and kind treatment of his slaves hindering the march of freedom?

Of course, he could simply free his slaves, but then who would raise his children? His wife? Jefferson laughed at the thought. Besides, if he did free his slaves, they would simply be captured and shackled by owners far worse than he, Jefferson rationalized. Satisfied that he was best off doing nothing, he nodded and tipped his hat to Franklin’s line of slaves waiting at the pub window.

None acknowledged him.

Jefferson walked down the road, passing horse drawn carriages and merchants peddling furs and ammunition when he came upon Hamilton and Madison. As usual, their debates over the proper structure of government had resulted in a raucous argument followed immediately by an intimate fisticuff. The two men slapped their hands together, eyes closed and heads turned to the side, aimlessly sidewinding through Main Street while bystanders placed their bets.

“You hate America,” Madison squealed.

“No, you hate America,” Hamilton wisely countered.

“Alexander, James,” Jefferson said with a familiar curtsy.

“Oh Thomas,” Madison replied, straightening his collar. “How goes the drafting of the Declaration?”

Hamilton spied an opening and slapped Madison across the face.

Madison raised a fist in anger, “Son of a bitch, Hamilton, I’ll–”

Jefferson sighed, “It… goes. I just spoke with Franklin on the matter, but…”

“Oh ho?” Hamilton grinned, “Brilliant man, that Franklin. We actually asked him to write it first, but he said that he wasn’t some ‘fairy author.’ That is… I mean, I’m sure you’ll do… you’ll do good enough.”

“Yes, well,” Jefferson said, “I just spoke with him at the pub, but he seems to think that–”

“Franklin’s at the pub?” Madison asked. “I bet he could spot us a dime bag!”

“I’ll wager a moor on that,” Hamilton clucked, and the two walked to the pub. When Hamilton reached to open the door, Franklin stormed out followed by his slaves. With a snap of his fingers, they tromped single-file to Ben’s log-cabin mansion and underground barracks at the city’s edge.

Jefferson watched as Madison walked up, waving at Franklin. He tapped Ben on the shoulder.

“Hey, Franklin! How’s it going?” Madison asked. “I was wondering if you could spot me again for a–”

Franklin jabbed his blade into Madison’s thigh. He snarled, “You come with money or you don’t come at all, stump. Tonight you and Hamilton shall fap off wanting.”
Jefferson shook his head at the slow pace at which justice swings. He was a fool to trust Franklin; the man was a psychopath.

Lump, Part 3

Lump: Escape to Lump Mountain. Part Three: End Sinister

With Nulo under siege by the United States Federal Government, the girls retreat to the boy's restroom with their little interstellar parasite in tow.

The girls and the buggering little stowaway ran into the men’s restroom. Jessica slammed the door shut and turned the lock. Frantic for an extra buffer, she grabbed the trash can to wedge under the door knob.

When she tugged, she realized the trashcan was chained to the floor, an anti-vandalism policy that had improved school life ten-fold. Yet the restroom still oozed the pungent musk of wasting youth and abdominal spews.

Stephanie jumped up and down, jerking the baby left and right.

“Knock it off,” the thing squealed.

“What do you want?!” Stephanie sobbed, leaning back against the wall and sliding to the floor.

“Hey! This floor is disgusting, I could get a disease or infection!”

“You are an infection!”

Jessica intervened, “Guys, come on. Be quiet or those guys will like, shoot us or something.”

Stephanie huffed, armed folded and her jaw extended in a pout, “Fine.” She blew her bangs, “I’m sorry I called you an infection.”

The baby’s head sank, “No, I am sorry. I should never have done this to you, Stephanie. I knew there would be consequences.”

“What’s going on?” Jessica asked.

The baby sighed, looked down at the molded floor, then looked up at Jessica. “They’re here to make sure I can’t escape. They’ve had sleepers all around my crash site waiting for me.”

“Crash…?” Stephanie began.

“…site?” Jessica finished.

“Yes. It was some years ago, I was patrolling this sector of the galaxy when my ship was hit by a stray chunk of debris. My ship fell to the mountains outside this town, and I’ve been jumping from host to host until I could find a way…home.”

“The…mountain?”

Jesica snickered, “I think it means the old memorial hill. Probably a mountain to him.”

The infant started to bawl, “I tried to contact my homeworld but no one knows about this world.”

Stephanie sighed, “We are the Arkansas of the galaxy.”

“Pretty much.” Jessica shrugged, “Okay, so if we get you to your ship will you leave Stephanie and me alone?”

The baby’s eyes perked, “You would help me? Even after I latched onto your friend?”

Jessica took the infant by a tiny hand, “I’m not helping you, I’m helping my girl.”

Stephanie smiled, “Thanks, girl.”

“Don’t mention it, girl.” Jessica tromped over to the door, thighs wiggling with each step. She slowly turned the lock and peeked out.

“Is it safe?” Stephanie whispered.

“Yea…they’re gone,” Jessica mumbled.

“The SWAT guys?”

Jessica turned back, “…everyone?”

Jessica opened the bathroom door, leaving the stink of the restrooms and entering the stink of the halls. The lockers, lined one next to the other against the walls, were riddled with bullet holes. Dead children lay in heaps, gunned down trying to escape. The nearest classroom door was wedged open by the teacher’s corpse, shot through the head before the rest of her class suffered a less kindly aimed fate.

Jessica gasped, “Girl, we are in trouble.”

Stephanie began to wail, but Jessica clamped a paw over her mouth.

“There’s a back exit in the nurse’s office,” Jessica said, slowly pulling her hand away. “If we sneak there fast enough, we can run through the woods. I don’t think they’d follow us in there.”

“Why…not?” Stephanie asked.

Jessica stepped over two boys, Hunter and Rick. She couldn’t help but remember those memories under the bleachers, memories only she would have now. Stifling her tears, she cleared a path and took Stephanie by the hand, running headlong deeper into the school.

The nurse’s office was empty, no corpses or papers or anything. All that remained was a solitary filing cabinet nailed to the wall. Jessica tugged, but it wouldn’t budge, “Look in her desk, Cockshank always said she had a secret exit for her smoke breaks.”

“Why all the ashtrays then?”

“I dunno girl, urmf,” Jessica grunted, heaving herself against the cabinet. “Help me move this thing. Hey, alien guy.”

“Yes?” the lump asked.

“Do have, like, erng, psychokinetic powers or whatever to help with this?”

“I’m afraid not,” the alien sighed. “Telepathy is just a myth, the silly kind of magic that under-developed sentient creatures invent out of boredom.”

“Oh.”

“If we get to my ship, I could remove all the nitrogen from the planet’s atmosphere.”

Stephanie looked down and cradled the little parasite in her hands, “What would that do?”

“The entire world would be engulfed in a wall of fire, and inferno that would reduce everything to ashes in minutes.”

“Oh.”

“I could also activate self-replicating nano-drones.”

Jessica kicked the cabinet, “Could they move this?”

“Yes,” the alien chirped. “They would also spin out of control, deconstructing all matter on the planet and rebuilding it as more nano-drones, which would in turn replicate more drones until all that was left would be an ocean of grey goo.”

“Oh.”

“But the cabinet would be removed.”

“Yea,” Jessica pushed again. “Let’s save that for last. Definitely a Plan B. Sure.”

“I could also release a hyper-breed of wheat that would overtake all other grains and lead to–”

“Why would anyone do that?!”

“Stephanie,” Jessica grunted. “Push, girl.”

Stephanie trudged over to the cabinet and pushed while Jessica pulled from the other end. The filing cabinet swayed, then tilted over and fell forward.

“What do you think was in there?”

Jessica huffed, “I don’t know, girl. Something heavy. Is it clear?”

Stephanie peered out of the opening in the wall, a miniature doorway carved out of the nurse’s office and opening up to a fresh field of grass – next to the parking lot.

Jessica cleared her throat, “So, uh…is it safe?”

“It’s safe?” Stephanie asked herself, stepping out. “There’s no one here.”

“Really?” Jessica stepped out onto the grassy knoll. “Oh wow, nobody. They even got rid of the bodies in the parking lot.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling, girl.” Stephanie shuddered, then pulled the alien to her face by its cord, “Where is your ship?”

“Through those trees, past the ravine.” The other-worldly tot pointed to the forest ahead, “I slithered across a fallen tree before I latched onto – oh.”

“What?” Stephanie asked.

The little baby appeared to sob, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just – I never wanted to harm any of you simple creatures.”

“Um…” Jessica sneered, “did your baby just call us simple?”

Stephanie shrieked, “It’s not my baby!”

“Actually,” the lump corrected, “I’m more a clone than anything. You see, when I latched onto your friend Chad I absorbed his–”

“Yea, whatever,” Jessica clomped ahead, brushing the overgrowth aside. “We don’t really need to know. This way?”

“Yes, yes.” The little baby bobbed up and down, “But I don’t know what good it would do to find it. The engine is still fractured, leaking coolant into your atmosphere at an alarming rate. If it isn’t fixed in time, the carbon dioxide will build up in your atmosphere, trapping the heat on this world for so long that the temperature exponentially rises, causing a massive–”

“Okay, look,” Jessica sighed. “You have got to stop making up doomsday scenarios.”

The alien chuckled, “Why not? It’s fun.”

“No, it isn’t. All you’re doing is taking one simple problem and building it up until a cataclysmic apocalypse destroys civilization. Do you really think that counts as making it up? That nano-whatever? Who knows how that works?”

“Well, they replicate and–”

“Yes, and spiral out of control. Now the world is a shadowy dystopia filled with a watchman state and dominated by the brutal struggle for survival.” Jessica rolled her eyes, “Whatever, let’s just get this over with before you try to write another hack novella for high school students.”

* * *

“There aren’t, like, zombies are there?” Stephanie asked.

“Oh no,” the alien giggled, “don’t be foolish. Only a buffoon would believe necrotic tissue could reanimate.”

“Yea, Stephanie,” Jessica snipped, “and how would they be in a forest?”

“Isn’t the old graveyard by these woods?”

“Oh yes,” the baby said. “I saw them when I first came here. I tried to meld with one of the bodies but…alas.”

“Couldn’t make a zombie?” Jessica asked.

The baby’s eyes narrowed. He hissed, “Zombies are for fools.”

“And fools always win.” Jessica grunted, heaving her foot down on the fallen tree. “Feels sturdy. You said it was just past this ridge?”

“Yes, I can sense the radiation already.”

“Great, then let’s just–”

A deafening eruption blared over Jessica’s words. Stephanie yelled, “What?”

Jessica looked up. Three jets streaked through the sky overhead.

“Oh dear,” the alien mumbled. “They’re doing it again.”

“Again?!”

“Yes, just like the last time.” The baby sighed, “We are too late. The quarantine strike should hit any minute now.”

“What’s a quarantine strike,” Stephanie asked.

“Well it’s a lot like…” The baby paused. “That is, they…well, they drop a bomb. Several bombs.”

“Bombs?!”

“Yes, by the looks of your town they’ll evaporate the entire place.”

“Why would they do that?” Jessica shook the infant, “What did you do to make them do this?!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Now the alien sounded bitter, a common sentiment among the immortal, “It is your silly little species that wants me dead! They’ve been hunting me since I crashed here.”

“Why would we do that?” Stephie frowned, “I’m sure if you just tried to explain to them–”

Jessica gave Stephanie a knowing look, “Girl, think about Two and a Half Men.”

“Well, okay we are sort of terrible.”

“Explain what?” The baby hissed, “You saw what they did to those protestors. If that’s how your kind treat others of the same species, I shudder at what I’ll be put through.”

Jessica counted on her left hand, “Vivisection, nitrogen freezing, genetic analysis.” She shrugged, “What? I pay attention in class.”

“If we make it to my ship in time,” the lump cooed, “we can hide inside. The engine failed but the shields should protect you.”

“What about our parents?” Stephanie gasped.

“What about them?” Jessica sneered.

Suddenly there was an ear drum tearing shriek in the sky. The jets whistled past and the bombs fell.

“Here it comes,” the infant sighed. “I’m truly sorry, girls.”

Stephanie and Jessica chuckled with that hysteria of imminent death. “Don’t mention it gir–”

Lump, Part 2

Lump: Escape to Lump Mountain. Part Two: The Nurturing Hand of Edith Cockshank

The girls head to the Nurse's Office, but soon discover that their blossoming pubescence may be leading to more than just a simple abortion...

Sheltered away from the din of public education and the musk of blooming pubescence, the school administrators filed permission slips with forged signatures and applied band-aids to protruding femurs in the nurses’ office. In the back room, the head nurse sat at her desk, Sudoku puzzle book in one hand while the other puffed away on her third Lucky Strike of the afternoon. The window open, she let her ashes fly freely, the floor dappled in flame sterilized cancer.

She turned the page, having finished her morning routine of easy-medium-easy, and with rolled up sleeves was ready to tackle the afternoon hum-drum of medium-easy-hard-medium. These were the trepidations of her elderly life. Though many her age would have retired decades ago, Edith Cockshank saw her life as an opportunity to help the children – provided she had the summers off and only prescribed aspirin.

There was a knock on the door, a system Edith strictly enforced. She cleared her throat and the door slid open. Without turning to look at her patient, she croaked out, “What’s wrong kid?”

That voice, that dulcet croon, the sensual rasp of vocal cords dusty from age and abuse, husks of flesh scraping together like the harps of geriatric angels. The boy sat on the table. He unzipped his jeans and cooed, “Help me nurse, I have a pain.”

Edith grunted. That same kid as always. Jeremy Felcher.

He was a slow boy, but quick to experiment, with an unbridled yet misunderstood genius which landed him in more than a few trips to the nurse’s table. When the janitor found him balls-deep in the school’s shop-vac with a plunger up his ass, they considered expulsion but pitied the boy and decided a “special” curriculum was more his speed.

Bored in the back trailer with the special students, Jeremy often found new excuses to explore the schoolyards. Having spent over seven years at Nulo High, he proudly knew every secluded nook and cranny of the campus wherein a young boy could spank it like a spirited street urchin.

Edith coughed, “Your balls again?”

“No, it’s not my balls this time.” Jeremy stood and his pants dropped. He scuttled over to the side of the table and bent over, presenting himself like a sultry doe in heat.

Was he a fool to dream such romances? He, a third year senior and she, a senior citizen. Could they buck the odds and show the world that love transcended time and decay? He leaned down to the table, thrusting his chest forward, “Help me, Nana; it’s a deep pain.”

Just as the nurse was about to turn, Jessica and Stephanie burst through the door. Jessica shouted, “Nurse Cockshank, we need your help!”

“One at a time,” Edith sighed, still engaged by her cigarette and puzzle. “Wait outside until I’m done with this kid’s prostate.”

Jeremy smirked. Of course she knew, the roots of their intimate connection tangled their hearts and minds as one.

“We don’t have time,” Jessica shouted, tugging at Stephanie’s sweater. The girls fought for a moment, then Stephanie surrendered and her hairy cyst was exposed for the entire room to see, just below her My Little Pony training bra – the desperate purchase of a hopeful tomorrow.

“Holy shit!” Jeremy scrambled over the table, pulling his pants up, “What the fuck is that?!”

“Shh!” Jessica whispered. “It’s a secret, don’t tell anyone.”

“Can you…” Stephanie whimpered, “Can you help me?”

“Fine, sure,” Edith said finally turning. “I’ve got nothing better to do while I wait to die, wy not shirk office protocol and – holy shit, what the fuck is that?!”

“Shh! It’s a secret!”

Stephanie frowned, “Is it a tumor, nurse?”

Edith stared at the lump in shock. Never in her days had she encountered such a thing. Terminating a youthful pregnancy here and there or swabbing an infected throat was one thing – but this alien looking pod wasn’t in any of the school’s outdated manuals.

“Well I…” Edith stopped, cigarette dangling from her wrinkled lips. “I don’t… think this is something I specialize in.”

Stephanie wailed, “It’s going to kill me!”

Jessica asked, “Why do you say that?”

The lump wriggled and Stephanie shrugged, “Host’s intuition?”

Edith pressed a button on her phone, an old landline recently donated by a failing local businesses. “Mr. Hatchback?”

No response. She pressed again, “Principal Hatchback? It’s Nurse Cockshank. We have a little… problem with one of the girls in here.”

The door opened and the principal stepped in, “Edith, I don’t need to know about every time you have to vacuum out some tween’s – holy shit, what the fuck is that?!”

He leapt back, straddling the middle of the entrance. A doughy, balding man at the apex of his declining years, Principal Hatchback preferred the bliss of ignorance regarding the medical woes of his students. When the two-time married administrator’s indiscretions led him down the road of infecting a young girl with his seed, he preferred she flush the aftermath three counties over instead of his place of business.

Stephanie wailed, “It’s going to kill me!” The lump’s suckers tightened.

Principal Hatchback rubbed his eyes. “Now, now,” he reassured her from a markedly safe distance, “no need to panic. You might make it stronger.”

Nurse Cockshank grunted, exhaled two plumes of tobacco smoke from her nostrils, and put her cigarette out on her clipboard. “Want me to get the coach?”

Hatchback nodded; the coach seemed as capable as any. After the nurse left, he patted Stephanie on the shoulder and left. Then he locked the door.

“Don’t worry, girl,” Jessica reassured her best friend since the seventh grade, “I bet they can just pull it off with some tweezers or something.”

Jeremy peeked from behind the table, pants tangled carelessly around to his ankles. “Hey Steph.”

“Hey Jeremy,” Jessica grumbled.

“’Sup, fur tits?”

She grunted, “Your brother doesn’t have any complaints.”

He leered over Stephanie’s growth. “What is that?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Stephanie wailed. She threw herself onto the table, the lump dangling over the side like a vile, festering piñata.

Jessica frowned, squeezing her puffed lips together under her pimpled beak. “Hey girl, I know what will cheer you up.”

Stephanie sniffed, head tucked between her spindly, folded arms.

Jeremy half-galloped from behind the nurse’s table. He tripped over his pants and fell to the floor, nearly snapping his dwindled erection in half. He stood again and gently poked the lump. It squirmed in response.

“Don’t touch it!” Jessica slapped his hand away.

“No, touch it!” Stephanie flailed her arms, “Pull it off of me!!”

Shaking, Jeremy clasped his hands around the lump and squeezed. “There’s something in here. It’s moving!”

“Then don’t touch it,” Jessica interjected. “We don’t know what it is.”

Jeremy clamped his hands on the meat yam harder, popping some of the lump’s zits and spraying the room in cottage cheese. He squeezed again, and soon both his hands and the floor were thick with the heavy cream.

Jeremy flicked the pus off his hands, “That didn’t work.”

Stephanie’s head sulked, wailing with each inhale and sobbing at every exhale.

“Hey, look at this, girl.”

Stephanie looked up. Through blurry eyes she saw her friend Jessica, generously spackled with moles and holding her Blackberry. “Girl,” Stephanie giggled, “what are you doing?”

“Facebook!” Jessica snapped a picture of the lump. “At the nurse’s office,” she said while typing, “with a surprise. Getting it flushed. #abortion, y’all!”

“Oh my god!” Stephanie sobbed, “Now everyone will know!”

“No they won’t,” Jessica snorted. “They’ll think it was me if they do. Whatever girl, I’ll do that for you. I will take your shame. I am that kind of friend.”

Jeremy sniffed the residue on his fingers and leaned in over the thing, “Do you think it has, like, a hole?”

Jessica’s nose crinkled, but before she could respond, the door unlocked and Coach Ladysports stormed in, wearing her one-piece tracksuit she thought disguised her concaved chest and masculine hips. Her cropped hair did her rounded face no favors either.

“Don’t panic,” she said to the nurse, “the last thing these girls need is a scared authority figure in an emergency – holy fuck, it’s inhuman!” She pointed and stumbled back, but Nurse Cockshank caught her. Coach Ladysports cleared her throat, “Jessica, this is far worse than three buckets worth.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Coach, really?”

“How did it happen, Stephanie?” The coach leaned in and pressed her ear to the lump.

“Well,” she mumbled, sitting up. The lump wobbled as she spoke. “Last night I had my second date with Chad Kroeger, and… well…”

Coach Ladysports was wide-eyed. “Hung like a donkey, pounds like a freight train Chad Kroeger?” Her words were cool, calculated, rehearsed, as if she knew this story all too well.

“You know?” Jessica gasped.

The nurse retrieved a small communicator from her pocket. “We’ve got another one. Initialize containment protocol for Texas; southeast quadrant. Coordinates for the drop are latitude…” Her voice faded as she walked out of the office and down the hall.

“What was that about?” Stephanie asked.

“Nothing,” Coach Ladysports replied. “Now it looks like the sucker is latched on pretty tight, but we can pry it off – wait.” She stopped. “There’s something in there.”

“Ready, girl,” Jessica said, holding her shoe high.

“Will that kill it?” Stephanie asked.

Jessica shrugged. “I-uhno.”

Coach Ladysports tugged at the lump’s sucker. “Stephanie… alright, hold still. I’m going to try and take it off.” She peeled back the lips, revealing a pink underside with rows of little barbs.

“There’s a… huh,” the coach tugged back, struggling. “A tube? What?”

Ladysports slid the lamprey mouth down, along a beige tube until she felt a bulb, thick and hard. She yanked on the fleshy lump sack and it slid away, plopping on the floor in a mound of skin biles.

And what she held in her hand forced a scream as she scrambled back. There, dangling from Stephanie’s ribs, was a fully formed infant with a man’s face. Bobbing up and down from the tube under Stephanie’s arm down to the crown of its head, the little creature didn’t squeal or giggle or even cough.

It just stared.

“Oh god,” Jessica shrieked, “I got it!” She raised her shoe and brought it down but her friend caught her arm.

“Girl,” Jessica sighed, “what?”

“I… don’t know,” Stephanie muttered. “I didn’t mean to stop you?”

The infant stirred, “I did!”

Jessica’s gasped in fright, “It… it can talk?”

“Of course it talks!” Coach Ladysports scrambled to her feet, sneakers squeaking as her feet slid on the linoleum. “It always talks!” She took the infant in her hand, gripping her fist around the little thing’s midsection, “What are you doing to this girl? Don’t you have any shame?!”

The baby’s grotesquely developed face scowled, “I don’t have to explain myself to you!”

Coach Ladysports laughed, “Don’t you have a job? Shouldn’t you be supporting yourself instead of leeching off this poor girl?!”

Stephanie sobbed, “Get it off of me!”

“Why should I?” The infant cooed, “I’m fine right here.”

Coach Ladysports shook the bloodsucker, “Oh, so you like sucking on girls? Stick it in them and never let go, do you! Why don’t you get a real job, you lazy Taker?!” She reached for the nurse’s manual on tub-births to smash the worthless moocher once and for all when Edith barged in.

“We’ve got a situation outside, and it looks like it’s Gretchen again.” The nurse cleared her throat, “Who said they were having an abortion on facebook?”

Jessica and Stephanie’s eyes met; Jessica shrugged, “Sorry, girl.”