We’re still looking for good humorous fantasy fiction. The plan right now is to make August our fantasy issue. We’ve been getting a lot of great submissions, but we need more! The deadline for humorous fantasy stories/articles/poems/artwork to be considered for the August issue is August 5^th. Let us know it’s a fantasy submission in your email.

Of course, we’ll still be taking your non-fantasy submissions as well.

We’re also looking for humorous science fiction for our winter issues. So send those our way, too!

But enough about the future. Let’s talk about right now. We’ve got a great issue this month: poetry by Clay Carpenter and Ross Lesse; prose by Dietrich Kalteis, Jon Alan Carroll, Sara Reihani, Samuel K., Greg Gerke, and M.J. Nicholls; and a new Defenestrati strip by Eddie Grant. You’ll love it.

—Andrew Kaye, editor-in-chief

this murky mucky marvel

to eat is to imbibe

Great green gobs of avocado

add onions to create

a dubious delight

Admittedly it is the ugliest

of foods in name

and in appearance

The ignorant may hesitate

to part their lips and

give it clearance

But those who know will swear

that it quite simply

can ’t be beaten

although it begs the question:

is it to eat

or already eaten?

It ’s true that this peculiar

and garish

game-time

lump

resembles nothing

so much as a

dinosaur

dump

It may look like a lineman

but it ’s really

Broadway Joe

See how it holds court

it ’s the star

of the show

Ole

for

guacamole!

This mangy cur is a friendly

beast, one nobody

could hate

It may be muddy, but it ’s

everyone ’s buddy. It

doesn ’t discriminate

You can savor it

in flip-flops or in

a tie and suit

Its source, the avocado

is truly an

avuncular fruit

On trees these tidy

twosomes are a rather
manly sight

But how does such

art transform into

such blight?

We can only surmise

the origin of its

smushed-up state

Perhaps an Aztec sat
upon a ripe one

by mistake

Bravo

for

the avo!

Some jump out of planes, others

take up arms. Courage

is their creed

but the one who discovered guacamole

salad was a brave one (a

lucky one) indeed

————

Clay Carpenter is a newspaper copy editor in Corpus Christi, Texas. Truth be told, he wishes he could spend eight hours a day writing poems instead of headlines.

at work today

and the guy

didn’t even bother

to read it–

just folded it

and place it

in his shirt pocket

like an unwanted

receipt.

told everyone

I was leaving

to become

a poet

a superhero

a spy

a nazi–

nobody blinked.

then marie walks in

asks what happened

on big brother

last night

and

the whole room

explodes

into standing

ovation.

————

Ross Leese is from the North of England and is approaching his thirties very uncomfortably. He would make a lousy hero but is hoping that when the revolution finally happens, somebody might tell him about it. Or at least point him in the right direction. He’s thinking East. Or maybe West.

By Shiva Lila, M.A., ASCAP

1. The Locks Are Changed Nearly Every Time You Return Home

This has happened to three friends of mine. Ironically they were all born in Pittsburgh and strangely enough they are all women.

On the bright side you can know this is simply a plea for more space. Yes, the locks are changed and they don’t want you coming in and bothering them now, but in tracking down a locksmith and the police to explain what is going on you can be assured that your partner will get at least two hours of alone time. As in movies where running times of one and a half hours are too short and three too long, two is the optimum time to regain your senses and not get too used to having someone out of your life. So keep a special set of locksmith phone numbers, including those who work on holidays because when the space seeker verges on four hours of freedom, breakup could be inevitable.

2. The Butcher Knife Set Is Missing And You Discover A Headshot Of Yourself Pasted To Particle Board With Cuts Everywhere But Predominantly Through The Eyes And Mouth

This is a tricky one and I’ve had some personal experience with it. When I used to be a man I lived with a woman from Hungary. Frusina was beach blond and she pronounced “moron” as “murder.” You murder, I said by two boxes of cake mix. Look out for that bicycle you murder. We were living in Baltimore and one evening I came back after an Orioles game. She had left a note that she would return with my favorite desert-a Napoleon. Great, I thought and looking for duct tape to repair a broken set of dishes from our last fight I found the dreaded photograph. Calmly I checked the kitchen to find all of our knives gone, even the butter ones. There weren’t really any more weapons in the natural sense so I took a log from the fireplace. When Frusina entered I thought the Tasmanian devil had arrived. I’m not even sure what she shrieked was Hungarian but the log blocked seven eight-inch knives that assuredly would have entered my face and brain pan in the six seconds it took for her to throw them.

If you don’t have a log of good size and think an attack might be imminent I’d suggest a resort area-Hawaii, Barbados-and if money is an issue, most city missions will let you stay for the price of two Hail Marys.

3. Your Partner Wants To Watch The Movie Breaking The Waves By Lars Von Trier Every Night

In my opinion psychological intimidation can be much more harmful and scaring than physical, except in cases of death. Though Von Trier’s film was a Palme D’Or winner at Cannes it smacks of pressing questions that ultimately guilt trip and wreak havoc on any relationship that is not adamantine in strength. Seeing a young Christian woman carry out her paralyzed husband’s sex fantasies with strange fat old men to prove she loves him is always a little upsetting, no matter if you’ve seen it fifty times.

If your partner chooses the Breaking the Waves option you can be sure there is something that he or she is not telling you and unless they are mute I prescribe the following course to stop the passive-aggressive aggression and start communication:

Incinerators are usually located in junk yards and to find such an establishment all you have to do is pop open the local yellow pages. Next take everything your partner personally owns and some joint purchases, including the DVD or video of BTW and deliver them into the fires in front of their eyes. Then simply ask “Are you ready to talk now?” If no, then immediately take them to some roof of a building ten or more stories and threaten to jump and if that doesn’t do the trick (whatever you do, don’t jump), calmly walk away and leave the relationship knowing you did the best you could.

4. Not Being Able To Fit Into The Bed Because Your Partner Insists All His Or Her Other Lovers Must Sleep With You Too

After spending my late twenties as a woman I decided I’d had enough and switched back to being a man and oh was I overjoyed that I didn’t go through with the sex change. Turning thirty with daily hard-ons was definitely the way to go. I moved to Oregon and became involved in a polyamorous sect called “All Love.” In this group of one-hundred or so people, we freely shared each other but my primary lover Phyllis, a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter who spoke Mandarin and had to have her secondary, tertiary and quaternary lovers also in the bed. This was okay for a while but when Phyllis gained an extra eighty pounds to max out a seven-fifty space became especially limited. What she originally wanted was to have the four of us sleeping on her, one nestled to each leg and one pressed to each breast while her eight foot belly sloshed and jiggled but kept steady as a barrier so none of us could see each other, thus obviating some jealousies. I was stuck on the leg for too many nights and also my butt kept slipping off the specially constructed 10×10 bed the Carter foundation had given Phyllis as a parting gift when she weighed only four-fifty. I lobbied for breast duty but Phyllis judged me too demanding and downgraded me to her tertiary lover. By then I’d had enough and I told Phyllis I had not only voted for Reagan the second time but the first as well and immediately took up with a petite girl from Walla Walla, Washington by the name of Moonkale who eventually bore my two twin daughters, Sunnykale and Starrykale.

But enough about me. If you can’t fit into the bed, just tell all the other sweaty people to move the hell over.

5. Your Partner Tells You That They Don’t Love You Anymore

Again the psychological. They may have had a bad day at work. Maybe they like to watch documentaries about Nazis, but whatever is going on for them, it is serious.

Wait it out friends. Anyone can turn a little in one day and a little can build to a lot before you know it so soon the two of you will be merrily picking your noses in front of each other again.

6. Your Partner Smells Like Trouble

Approaching forty I asked Sunnykale and Starrykale if they were happy and they stopped playing with the cadaver our friend the scientist Henry Heinz gave them, stunned that I talked about something other than Puccini. “I have to follow my heart,” I announced, meekly.

I gave Moonkale my undying support, had the operation and acquired 42D breasts. A pretty enticing figure for someone six foot six.

I then moved to Silver City, New Mexico and became a gym instructor. My first boyfriend that year was Dwight Teague. He was a foot shorter but cooked amazing gumbo. At the club I perfected a class called Cardiac Kicks Your Ass that Dwight insisted on attending every week. In a ritual of sorts he would punctuate the end of each class by rising on his corn-infested toes and ferociously kiss my bulging Adam’s apple in an effort to push it back so I looked more womanly. Besides the minor insecurities, it was love. I sank into Dwight and he held me, teetering under the two-hundred thirty pounds of flesh and baggage but he persevered. I never asked for someone like him to enter my life and many days I would stare at the sky and blow kisses-even extras to Moon, Sunny and Starrykale, my continuing Oregon congregation, that I hoped to one day return to with a husband all my own and blissfully we could live and love as a small cadre of people who are interesting and special.

But one day Dwight met me for a walk by the distillery and though he was the same old Dwight he now smelled like a bouquet of coaxial cable, not his usual tangy, Chinese hot sauce scent. I squatted down on the sidewalk and didn’t know if I could love that bilious, clinical odor.

I shoved my hand deeper and deeper into the mouth, furious that love had gripped me close to its pretty belly only to gurgle and blister into gruesome bed sores the color of night.

Dwight began to massage my shoulders. “What are you doing down there sweepy?”

“Dwight, will we last? Will we one day have to force our hearts to open?”

“Oh my sweepy,” he chanted. “Peaks and valleys sweepy. Peaks and valleys.”

We went on and I thought I had harnessed what was needed to survive but then Dwight asked about us growing old, where we should retire to and where we should take our grandchildren.

This was right before teaching my Cardiac Kicks Your Ass class. Flustered, my hands started shaking. “But we don’t have children yet Dwight.”

His face grew celebratory. “We can change that. I’ve been charting your ovulation. Tonight could be a great night.”

Five minutes into left jabs and hooks I felt a bouncing in my chest. I had to stop and my heart shimmed down into my belly button, slashed through and popped out on the floor. It was comely but pruned. “Even if you go on with this headcase. I’m not,” it squeaked.

“She doesn’t need you,” Dwight grumbled.

“Oh yeah,” it replied. “See how she collapses.”

I did fall and breathlessly Dwight promised to leave if my red beast would jump back in and charge me up.

Trust the nose people. I’m seventy- will soon be eighty. Check in with your partner. Make sure they haven’t hatched a future that you aren’t in on. Fantasies are great, important and juicy-when mutual. Alone they are a torrent of sugar-coated ca-ca regardless if they have often ruled the trials of love.

————

Greg Gerke lives in Buffalo. His work has or will appear in Rosebud, Fourteen Hills, Pedestal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Flash Forward Press 2009 Anthology and others. There’s Something Wrong With Sven, a book of short fiction has been published by Blaze Vox Books. His website is www.greggerke.com

Zombies are never hurt by a rejection from Ploughshares. Not even the third one.

Unlike certain right-wing commentators, zombies do not deeply admire their own courage.

Zombies never direct movies about beautiful young people learning important lessons about life and love.

Zombies are not, as Neal Cassady would say, hung-up about being hung-up.

There are no “great” zombies. They are true team players.

Zombies never write memoirs, fake or not.

If vampires are the professional-managerial class, then zombies are the rank & file. Hardworking, unpretentious, zombies are the blue-collars of the horror world.

Zombies are free from the illusion of free will. No zombie ever wondered, Why did I do that? or What was I thinking?

Zombies never use the word “vision” to describe a marketing plan.

If zombies wrote novels, no zombie-narrator would take 17 goddamn pages to light one cigarette.

Zombies aren’t comforted by the soothing imagery of television commercials. They just aren’t.

Zombies’ dreams never come true, but they deal with it.

Zombies don’t care about soul mates or fabulous vacations or perfect careers. Zombies just want some brains.

————

Traffic was moving along fine that morning, but he heard this old song on the radio and realized he was wasting his time.

Let me start by saying it is certainly not my intent to appear brazen, or to burden you, rather to humbly draw your attention, purely out of duty, to a grave and considerable error I found in your ninth edition. Although I do not recall why I delved into my volume, that is to say it is of no consequence which definition I was seeking, it was purely by chance that I came upon the word  €˜foreplay’, which is defined   as such: (1929): erotic stimulation preceding sexual intercourse. This is quite wrong.

Now, I concede the word may have had an assigned function in our language system as far back as 1929, but like other archaisms or dodos of our language from the horse-and-buggy days like betwixt, forsooth and fluey, it just doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Although I most certainly do not profess myself to be a language maven, I have been engaged in four marriages, serving fourteen years consequently, I assure you that revision is in order. May I suggest that the meaning might read something like this: erotic stimulation preceding sexual intercourse preceding marriage and other forms of cohabitation between the sexes.

Let me conclude that I hope you do not see me as a wet blanket, but merely as someone who appreciates the accuracy of your fine editions and all the help they provided during the years I was harassed by education.

Yours truly,

Name withheld

***

Dear N. Withheld:

Firstly, allow me to extend my gratitude for your letter of April 12, 09. Foreplay is wrong (by definition). Bless your heart for coming forward; you are quite correct. Foreplay needs to be amended. Let me say it is a herculean task to bring about the revision and reprinting of our dictionaries, not as a justification, just to clarify.

Forthwith, the next printing shall see the word foreplay defined thusly: Foreplay (1929): 1a) erotic stimulation having once preceded sexual intercourse. 1b) the date indicates the earliest unit of meaning when foreplay can be linked to sexual intercourse. 1c) Nonexistent where related to present day coition replacing all transitive forms.

I have also taken the liberty (out of professional courtesy) to inform the good people at Oxford’s. They have in turn informed me that they have deleted the word entirely from their future editions.

In closing, I apologize for any inconvenience suffered by this inaccuracy.

Yours truly,

N. Webster

————

Dietrich Kalteis is a writer living in West Vancouver, Canada.

The secret life of Jon Favreau, the President’s wordsmith wunderkind.

9:05 a.m. — Breakfast at the White House.

WAITER: More coffee?

JON: Thank you, thank you very much. I dine here today, humbled by the task before us, grateful for the breakfast you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by the White House kitchen staff. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

(The waiter backs away slowly.)

***

11:30 a.m. — Getting a checkup.

(A doctor examines Jon.)

DOCTOR: ‘Morning, Jon. How are you today?

JON: Today we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. This is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. Today we will remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.

DOCTOR: You have a venereal disease.

(He prescribes some cream.)

***

2:37 p.m. — Selling his used George Foreman Grill through Craig’s List.

(Jon meets up with an interested buyer.)

JON:   Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Equally improbable was a low-fat double-sided grill that can cook a 1/4 lb. ham steak in record time. The George Foreman G5 Next Grillation System can grill and griddle during the rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. It will endure what storms may come with hope, with virtue, with two specially-designed spatulas and five dishwasher-safe grill plates. In the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things and to embrace a Teflon-coated heating surface that drains fat and grease. There is no problem it cannot solve, there is no destiny it cannot fulfill, there is no pot roast it cannot cook.

BUYER: Wow, that sounds amazing!

(Hours later…)

BUYER: (Shrugs.) It’s not that amazing.

JON: No refunds.

***

7:38 p.m. — Having an affair

(Jon’s girlfriend walks into his apartment.)

GIRLFRIEND: Sorry, I forgot my Blackberry and — (She does a double-take.) Jesus Christ! Another woman? Jon, how could you!

JON: Wait, I –

GIRLFRIEND: You son of a bitch! How could you!

JON: (Zips up his pants.) Because you know in your heart that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. So amidst gathering clouds and raging storms, we must move beyond the false divisions of fidelity. This is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the monogamous policies of the past. Together, let us begin the next great chapter in our relationship with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Ménage à trois. It was sung by polymorphs as they struck out from distant shores, polygamists who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness, and a President who chose the moon as our new frontier. Ménage à trois. Because if you are willing to work for it, join in it, and believe in it, then out of this long darkness, a brighter day will come.

GIRLFRIEND: Well, when you put it that way, I guess that’s okay.

PEGGY NOONAN: (Scratching herself.) What the hell is this?

————

Samuel K.’s work has recently appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He can be found at www.samuelk.tv.

It was a little late for me on Tuesday 13^th. I had attempted to kill myself with my tie by suspending a noose from the bathroom light. Hope had arrived fashionably late to the party.

It was a mistake to believe that a Bart Simpson tie had any hanging capabilities. It was also a mistake to assume the light bulb would remain attached to the socket so I could see what I was doing and go out in a daze of blinding wattage.

Dr. Catherine Gullie, my psychiatrist, had been spoon-feeding me hope for weeks. Our sessions were torture. See, she wore these silky black skirts with transparent ankle-length stockings and smoky black tights, mythologising the pale hum of her legs. She nibbled on her pen-tip like a schoolgirl eager to learn and not have sex with me.

I had to sit there, in a steam-ironed shirt, legs crossed, detailing my problems while she triggered a blood clot in my crotch that sent me hobbling to a doctor. A doctor who, by the way, was having an affair with my wife and who was doping me on so much Prozac I was in a stupor whenever he crawled in the bedroom window to poke around in Carol’s vagina.

Keeping up?

The reason for the attempted hanging had nothing to do with these concerns. It was more to do with the heroin-dealing I conducted on weekends in schoolyards to support Carol’s expensive lifestyle. I suppose I had one of those “pangs of conscience” or something. Carol was a demanding spouse. On top of her insatiable appetite for well-choreographed adultery and expensive meals with her ersatz me, she insisted on the smoothest detergent, the sexiest peaches and the tastiest chocolates.

I was a man of modest means. To me, any day I could scrape through in £1.75 I considered a good day. I married Carol for her smile. To have seen those pursed cheeks, with their tiny boomerang grins, and those chapped lips, tilted in ebullience at my presence, was a rarity.

The hanging might have failed, but Bart Simpson did cause severe damage to my left lung. Watching the snow fall in elegant daggers outside the hospital window, I poked my neck brace twice, eliciting two loud ‘ouch’ sounds from my nostrils. The calm was welcome, but I knew in a few hours, minutes or seconds, would come the inevitable invasion of crazed adolescents looking for vein-based merriment. First to break the silence was Hazel, a 13-year-old habitual user who exchanged her college allowance with me for Grade-Z chronic. Her egg-white pupils, with their craggy black rims of death, leered at me from behind the curtain.

I could feel my heart rate surging as she placed an arbitrarily plucked daisy beside me.

“For you,” she said. Zombie giggle.

“Thanks, Hazel. Um… what can I do for you?”

“Came to see you. Heard you were in here.”

“Who told you I was in here?”

“Dunno. Hey, my history teacher has been bugging me for homework. Can you hook me up with something?”

“Hazel, it’s time to give up the drugs.”

The appearance of this statement was unusual, since a few weeks prior to this, finding her alone in the playground, I had used the expression heroin is your bestest friend in the world. So this statement shuttlecocked around the logical trajectories of my cranium for a while, coming to rest beside the time I confused oregano with dope and smoked it anyway, and the time I praised the solo albums of Ringo Starr.

As I pondered on this, Hazel rested her head on the bed, falling into a stupor and babbling in syllables closer to Aramaic than gibberish. I closed my eyes and came to a sensible conclusion. I am a bastard. There are times in a man’s life when having a clueless teenage loner, whose future you have pissed away and replaced with a nagging drug habit, drooling at the foot of your bed, can really move you.

As she sleep-sobbed into convulsions, a sinister gentleman in a hideous Pringle sweater entered the room, accompanied by a second sinister gentleman in the same hideous Pringle sweater. The first man had a compelling kink on his retroussa nose, aglow with a reddish light, as did the second man, and a briefcase in his left hand. Plopping his case on the sheets, he clicked the dullbrown straps and retrieved a document.

“You are a Hugo, correct?” he asked.

“I am Hugo, yes. What can I do for you two gentlemen?”

“I’m afraid you haven’t been behaving in the manner that best befits a Hugo, have you? Please come with us,” the bespectacled stranger said, swooshing back the sheets.

“Woah! Hold on there! I’m an invalid. Who are you?”

“We are from the Hugo Consistency Council. It has come to our attention you have been drugging teenage girls, attempting suicide and displaying quite egregious sexual stamina. Hugos aren’t like this. They are debonair, stylish and witty. You are required to reshape your life.”

“Tell me about it,” I ventured, drolly.

“We are telling you about it.”

What the first man, Hugo Tawt, told me – and the second man, Hugo Trap echoed – was that there was in fact an onus attached to being a Hugo that I had failed to live up to for most of my life. The Hugo had a responsibility to be suave, professional, hilarious and good at sex. All things alien to the current Hugo. The invading Hugos lifted Hazel to one side, placing her into a plastic bag for the time being.

“We will keep these follies safe for you in the House of Hugo, where you can visit them once or twice a week,” he said, issuing me with a summons. Laminated and written in an expensive Buro Destruct typeface, used on Radiohead’s “Kid A” sleeve, it read:

You have two weeks to behave like a Hugo, or your name will be reduced to a name that best befits your personality – Cuthbert or Johann. This means no more suicide attempts, whingeing to psychiatrists or dealing heroin to teenage girls. Help is available at the House of Hugo. Your advisor is Hugo Norom. Please see him in Block R, Sector II on Fri 2^nd.

As soon as I convalesced, which took a week (wasting crucial time), I went straight to the House of Hugo. A self-important white structure – flat and clinical, like a pancaked Pentagon – with perpendicular blue windows, an inconsiderate revolving door sweeping up entrants like Fantasia’s broom, and a computerized reception desk. I twitched towards the entrance, summons and painkillers in hand.

“Hell-O there. I am Hu-GO 23J. Your re-CEP-tion com-pew-ter. Please STATE your name AND biz-ness,” the robo-Hugo greeted, frighteningly pleased to see me.

“Um, Hugo Egareva. I have an appointment to see Hugo Norom?”

“That IS cor-rect. Please pro-CEED to Block R Sec-tor two. Have a NICE day.”

“Yes, you too.”

“I do not un-der-STAND. Please leave the BUIL-ding.”

Stepping into Block R, an open-plan office with three desks a kilometre apart, behind which stretched three never-ending queues of fidgety Hugos, I approached a pimpled student, his neck engorged with hickeys. He informed me, after an ‘ouch,’ that the second queue over there – pointing far into the distance – was Sector 2. I made the trek.

Each Hugo was subjected to a thirty-second interrogation. When their time was up, the presiding Hugo would offer the inferior Hugo a solution to his personal problems and issue him with a Hugo Correction Pack to assist Hugo transformation: a Pringle sweater, golf clubs, the Little Book of Smarm ‘n’ Charm and a respectable mobile.

It took an hour to get to me. As soon as Hugo Norom, a frog-chinned Swedish git, clad in blue-orange chequered overalls, dinged his bell and shouted “Next Hugo!” I was tongued-tied.

“Um… dealing drugs to teenagers, letting my wife um, I mean, she’s having an affair and I let her get on with it, um… I want to sleep with my psychiatrist, um… I’m sexually inadequate, um…”

“Time up. Solutions: see our sexpert. You are weak because you are impotent. Please take a Hugo Correction Pack and move on. Next Hugo!” the laconic Nordic twit commanded.

Before I could say ‘Hugo,’ I was on a conveyor belt leading me to a lift, where three floors up, in a red-walled open-plan office, sat my allotted ‘sexpert’ (a woman named Hugo), who would help me be more assertive as a sexual being (named Hugo). This floor of the building was darker, with partitions dividing a series of inspection booths, wherein new Hugos were assessed on their sexual prowess through a series of humiliating tests. Before I could escape, an onyx-necked woman informed me in refractory tones that Dr. Hugo Esaet was awaiting my penis.

Entering my booth – the walls afright with pliers, lotions, pokers and probes -the dainty emasculated doctor manoeuvred a remote-controlled clamp-on-wheels towards my testicles. The size, density and sperm count of my testes was analysed and the results were passed to the doctor via the clamp-hands of her battery-powered nurse.

“Hmm,” she began, scratching her ankle, “it appears you are only 43% Hugo. No, no. This is no good at all. Please go to the Hugo Clarification Board to confirm you are in fact a Hugo.”

I spent the entire afternoon in that odious structure, with its inbuilt musk of Lemsip and talc. I met men who introduced themselves as simply Hugo (as if I couldn’t have guessed), had my DNA tested for pure Hugo blood, my urine swabbed for traces of Hugo and my stool criticised for not being enough like Hugo stool. Eventually, after an enquiry, it was decided that I was enough of a Hugo to proceed becoming a proper Hugo.

When I returned home, Carol and my former doctor were busy having intercourse upstairs. I decided to read up on how a Hugo was supposed to act until they finished. There were two thousand rules of etiquette I would have to memorise. Among them:

4. Hugos have doors held open for them. Never open a door for non-Hugos or Hugo deniers.

6. Hugos take control in a po-faced manner when someone interferes with their private life. Stern words are used, as are strong facial expressions (exuding wrath and pride) and confident hand gestures (i.e. table-slamming and pointing).

The sixth rule struck a chord with me. If I wanted Carol and her smile back, I had to condemn her liaison with the venerable Dr. Norman and his venerable penis. Later on, she stumbled downstairs in her dressing gown, flashing her inverted smile at me – the one I didn’t love – for a post-coital libation.

“Oh, you’re back, Hugo!” she said, chortling. (Dr. Norman pulled his pants up). “I was watching a rather humorous documentary about rice. Are you coming to bed soon?” (Dr. Norman clambered out the window).

With a little courage from a leftover bottle of cognac, I rose steadily to my feet, recalibrating the rust-rimmed implements of my Hugoness. If I wanted to remain a Hugo, I would have to take control in a po-faced manner right now. With some preternatural force thrumming through me, as though transferred from the Lemsip air of the Hugo House into my blood cells, I walked over to Carol, thrust out a hand for her to hold, then slapped her with the other. Nonplussed, my former undying love corkscrewed back onto the sofa in soundless denial. Hugo is home, honey.

“You’ve been a bad wife, Carol,” I said, using the baritone growl I had read about on page 7, “and from now on, you’re going to be loyal to me, do you understand?”

She rejected the hand on her leg and the arm hurled like a hula-hoop around her waist, but took the vampire bite of nuptial reclamation I sank into her neck. Then, with the feeblest mewl, she back-tripped onto the sofa, bathrobe de-knotted, revealing the waxen candelabra of her nakedness – less refulgent, less vestal than the sylph-vixen I had bedded as a teenager. Ignoring the ‘please’ popping upon her lips, I used that moment to dominate her, to reprogram her back into a proper Hugo wife.

With automatic lust, I cast off my trousers, recalling myriad fumbles and moments spent wrestling with belts and buttons in Ford Fiestas, and let Carol bask in the majesty of my stiffness. Referring to the utilitarian method of Hugo lovemaking outlined on page 67, I installed within her the colossus of my arousal, again and again, until the lights of my renewed Hugoness blinded us from the irate Dr. Norman, peering in through the window like a brainless skull.

Cupping my reclaimed wife’s head, I slipped from her embrace, planted a territorial kiss upon her brow and opened the door to the scuppered unHugo interloper. A welcome silence frosted his lips. Half-formed words bumbled under his tongue, wilting under the tall imperialism of my quite remarkable Hugoness.

“Never come here again,” I said, authoritatively.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” the doc replied, his bubble burst.

The manuals and potions worked a charm. The transformation seemed to take place overnight. After reclaiming Carol with my iron-rod love, the next day I paid a visit to my psychiatrist. In her cream-curled office, awash in palsy shades of New Age mauve, befouled by the incense odours of cut-price hippification, she sat waiting for me in her thigh-length black skirt, the fibres sizzling above the curdling enticer of her vagina.

Of course, to assume that my transformation into a proper Hugo would assist me in having this affair was foolish. At first, it took gentle coercion. Proving to her that the proper Hugo within me was truly unearthed, and dropping reminders that the libidinous cobwebs of my former self had been swept clean – replaced with a miraculous new dazzle – I could feel sub-skirt sensations rising in happy waves.

Within four days, I had her humming with interest. Hints that beneath my waist, there lurked worlds of supersonic transcendence – the last existing Concorde of unfettered sexual abandon, heading for the destination of unparalleled bliss. It was only a matter of time before the excitement would translate into inappropriate carnal demonstrations before brunch.

My final correction was trickier. I had hooked four teenage boys and three teenage girls on heroin. The Little Book of Smarm ‘n’ Charm was useless to me now. How would a Hugo go about assisting seven teenagers in their journey from twitching addict zombies into just plain zombies? I required assistance from that intoxicating sandwich bag – the House of Hugo. After we picked up Hazel, who had been left in their care for two weeks while I underwent my transformation, I would take the kids to the Deed Poll offices to have their names changed to Hugo.

The afternoon was an embarrassment to my Hugoness, but necessary to complete the process. Keeping seven unstable teenagers – whose minds I had packed with cheap Dutch imports – aware of their surroundings for more than ten seconds at a time was more onerous than I had anticipated. In the end, I had to tell them we were going to the Heroin Council to pick up our annual supply. The last Hugo lie.

We arrived at the House of Hugo to pick up Hazel. Keeping the six junkies locked in my van, I went to retrieve her from a foam-padded room, where the partners of broken-down Hugos were free to mix and mingle. To my surprise, in this hectare of Hugo-abused humanity, I found her talking with some eloquence to the wife of a battered Hugo.

This woman, with her origami cheeks and muskrat eyes, squared me up as I approached.

“Here cometh a Hugo,” she sneered, viewing me with the well-worn contempt of a long-suffering Hugo wife.

“Hazel,” I began, ignoring the artless creature, “it’s time to go.”

“Oh, Hugo… not yet. You are a fussy pimple, aren’t you? Listen, this is Eliza, she’s chairwoman of the Council For Abused Hugos. She’s been telling me that I ought to sue you for the damage you’ve done to me!” Hazel chirped, in gossamer spirits.

Hazel’s appearance took me aback. Gone was the heroin pallor in her cheeks – replaced with a pale rustic sheen – and few of the nervous tics and starts remained in her movements. She was as graceful as a woman in high-heeled shoes, squaring up to the world. A sparkling rebirth shone in her beautiful blue eyes. Precisely what the House of Hugo had done to her, I don’t know, but it was remarkable.

I scrutinised the nimble patter of her feet, eager to sashay down life’s myriad paths, the delicate stasis of her arms, hanging in teenage abeyance beside her sundial dress, compassing the north, south, east and west of her irresistible innocence, her nubile naivete. Something feral was building inside me, some extreme Hugo inversion. Was it possible my sudden reformation had pulled me from the lowest depths of Hugoness into the most dangerous, darkest heights?

“Hazel, could I speak to you for a minute?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Listen, something unusual is happening here. I can’t be around you, or anyone sentient right now. I think I need some time to adjust to being a proper Hugo. Look, there’s six junkies in a van outside, could you take them in here and give them the same recovery treatment you had, or whatever it was? Thanks, you’re a star.”

Before Hazel had time to argue, I slipped the van key into her palm, caressing briefly the elegant intersection of her handlines. Since the transformation, I had become ravenous with desire for most women (I even had pangs for the shrewish Elisa). I felt so in control, I was out of control. This level of control, hitherto unimaginable to me, came from some unidentified stimulus (although probably from the potent gases being pumped into the Hugo House), and was rather worrying.

This being the case, I retired to a hotel for a week. While there, I masturbated forty times a day (over Hazel, Carol and the receptionists) and devised various methods of becoming wealthier, more successful, more attractive and haughtier than other Hugos. It was impossible to sit still. So overwhelming was this desire to become the finest Hugo, it distracted me from the eccentricities of my old self.

What was I losing becoming a proper Hugo? What elements of the old Hugo were at stake? No longer would I make those sarcastic remarks when watching implausible dramas, criticising both the calibre of acting and the absence of talent inherent in the writing. No longer would I assume nose-picking was even remotely amusing or entertaining.

Never again would I inflate condoms and wear them as hats, relish in a long belch after dinner or spend hours downloading Swedish nudes from dirtysluts.net. Instead, a world of success, smarm and pleasure was at my fingertips. I would conjure riches from thin air, chase underage nymphs around a series of hotel rooms, sweep male flotsam from my doorstep and wield the shiniest five wood on the golf course.

For Hugoness is a state of being that exists above and beyond the paltriest of human endeavour. It is the apex of achievement most men aspire to but never deliver. Hugos are a special breed, the creme de la creme of male civilisation, free to roam the earth as sex-crazed titans of culture, business and wit. We are vantage coins of all human endeavour- men unbound to disappointment, failure and doubt.

And we are the dullest cliches imaginable. But we’re more successful than you. And here we are.

It’s never to late to believe in Hugo.

————

M.J. Nicholls is novelist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Currently creating the mythology around his new novel, “A Postmodern Belch.” Previous work has been published in Edinburgh/Bremen University literary supplements, The Drabbler, and in a short story collection for Cantaraville.

This, Stephanie realized, could be the “edge” her college counselor was always talking about. A high GPA just wasn’t enough these days; you needed to be a tennis champion or oboe prodigy or tri-county beauty queen. Asian violin virtuosos were only kidding themselves, to be honest. Stephanie’s high school had its fair share of Junior Olympic contenders and community service geeks, but she didn’t know anyone else that was a zombie. Harvard, here I come, thought Stephanie with a self-satisfied sigh, putting her bilious rotten feet on the desk. They made a wet smacking sound… like a hungry tongue slurping up the last traces of bloody intestinal residue. Her stomach grumbled.

She peeked out into the hallway in the direction of the kitchen. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and she couldn’t be expected to write on an empty stomach. As Stephanie staggered to the kitchen, suppressing a groan, she was overwhelmed by a strange feeling of urgency that began in her toes and worked its way up her spine. Her ragged, moldy ears twitched at the sound of her father slurping his coffee; her bloodshot eyes darted to the table where he sat, squinting at headlines on his laptop. He clicked, frowned.

“Morning, Steph. How’s your applicGAAAAAAAAAHHH!” he screamed, jumping up as she lunged towards him. She moved as if in a dream, watching her hands grab his wrists, pushing him effortlessly into the living room, admiring his delicately quivering uvula. His soprano shrieks of terror blended together in a divinely passionate harmony, and her mind went blissfully blank as she plunged her dingy teeth into his neck.

At 9:03 am, Stephanie sat back on the couch and stared sorrowfully at the mangled carcass. How very Oedipal, she thought, shuddering, as her father heaved himself up and lumbered out the door. She briefly wondered where he was going, then shrugged and headed for the computer.

***

“In my more pensive moments,” Stephanie’s essay concluded, “I sometimes wonder who I might have been had I never eaten that fateful Milk Dud. I would still be pitcher for the Lakewood Valley Lions (second place regional champion girls’ softball team), a dedicated member of the Lakewood High French Club and a longtime volunteer at the local Wildlife Rescue. However, I am more than the sum of my extracurricular activities, and who I am cannot be quantified by my transcript. Overall, I am not sure exactly who I am yet, although I do know that I am passionate, ambitious and intellectually curious… but at heart, I will always be that little girl on the swings, laughing joyously with giddiness, as she soars higher and higher.”

At 11:55 am, Stephanie added a final comma after “joyously” and hit Print. The keyboard was a slimy mess, but the essay was done. Her father had written the check for the application fee weeks before and stuck it to the fridge with a fish-shaped magnet as a jaunty daily reminder, so she decided to mail her application right away and then go out to celebrate. Maybe get something to eat. She stretched and reread her work, admiring the way she had seamlessly incorporated subtle self-promotion into her storyline, just as the counselor had instructed. Early action, too – wouldn’t he be surprised!

Stephanie tottered along the street toward the nearest mailbox, squinting in the pale sunlight. It was a crisp fall day, and the suburban streets were empty but for the occasional jogger, most of whom seemed to be running faster than usual.

Suddenly, a familiar figure rounded the upcoming corner and continued in her direction. Stephanie leaped over the nearest shrub and hid behind it, panicked. It was Jay Saunders, reigning king of the upper crust at Lakewood High. She had seen him around before, walking the golden retriever that tugged at its leash now, sniffing the air suspiciously. I am not going to attack Jay Saunders, Stephanie commanded herself. She tensed as she heard his footsteps coming closer, closer… that feeling was coming over her again… if she could hold out a just few moments longer…

He passed by, unaware of her presence. She relaxed slightly – but then he stopped. The retriever hung back, sniffing at the bush that concealed her.

“Come on, boy,” Jay Saunders said, tugging at the leash. His eyes flicked over the innocuous plant. “Come on, there’s nothing there.”

He looked up the street impatiently and tried to keep walking, but a sudden noise made him turn around. Mouth twisting in speechless horror, Jay Saunders dropped the leash and stood paralyzed for a few moments, eyes wide as dinner plates; then he turned and ran as he had never run before. Stephanie, busy gnawing on a hind leg, barely noticed.

***

Stephanie’s Advent calendar had nine little chocolates left uneaten on the day her letter from Harvard arrived. She came home that afternoon exhausted: school was a nightmare now, what with finals and projects and everyone going around trying to find someone to eat. She rifled through the mail wearily. Christmas cards, bills, another L.L. Bean catalog, more bills… and something with her name on it.

She snapped to attention, seizing the envelope in disbelief. Her hands shook, leaving mucosal smudges on the familiar crimson crest in the top left corner. It wasn’t thin, but it wasn’t exactly fat either; which one meant rejection? She could never remember. She stuck one finger under the flap and haltingly began to rip it open. Of course she wouldn’t get in, no one got into Harvard. But no, Stephanie was different! Everyone was doing the zombie thing now, but she was sure the Harvard admissions office would recognize her as an original, innovative, one of the first – a pioneer, even. She gritted her teeth, slid the letter out, and peeked at the first line.

“Congratulations! You have earned a place in Harvard’s freshman class…”

Stephanie stopped reading and let out a huge toxic sigh of relief, collapsing against the kitchen counter for support. Outside the window, a passing man pounced on a stray squirrel, gripping it in skeletal hands and tearing its head off with obvious relish. Blood and bile flew in artistic splatters onto the snow. Stephanie smiled upon the tableau contentedly, imagining her bright future, illuminated with the torch of Ivy League prestige: international fame, romantic bliss, unquestionable financial security. She tingled with anticipation, shivered with excitement.

She had never felt more alive.

————

Sara Reihani is a cliche in the San Francisco Bay Area. Send all adulation and job offers to sara.reihani@gmail.com.

———–

Eddie Grant is a man with lots of free time which he chooses to fill turning his dumb thoughts into comic strips. If you wish to be a part of his looming madness then visit him at his deviantART gallery: http://zarkonspacepirategod.deviantart.com