Hello Devilfish! (4 page)

/ 9 /

Mwah ha ha, nobody's safe—my venom has seeped into your dreams! All your skull are ours. What's my toxin? This prickly stinger goop I inject in your minds—that's it, shhh, let it take effect. How's it work? It already has—what do you scribble about? Gollums? Hobbits? Hunky spies with satyriasis? Then I've succeeded—in making you forget about hot buttered death! Hello Rubes—I got you to ignore the only sure thing in your flimsy biped lives—me! And my splendid destructo tail—a butt whip made from equal parts chaos, boredom, and nonsense. For all your humane needs. I can see you at your teensy iPads, texting “
I am King Tweet!
” while war and famine and Visa cards rain on your tawdry Formica huts. Try and type
me
away, muthafuckas—whee! My cunning is crueler than Muslim bees.

Let's obey my sparkling urges—like the urge to evade Squidra! Meaning that pink hump whose tentacles whir night into a stardust slurpee that ripples across my skin. Huh? Tentacles? I probably should pay more attention—but where's the large fun in that? And my fun was guzzling cheap corn liquor and stumbling around on floppy wings all totally bozo drunk. Maybe I should I limit myself to fifty gallons a day—join our happy rum lifestyle! Just be sure to aim your puke—I sure didn't—when I hurled cheap booze, human tracheas, and some odd tractor I'd gobbled all over a distillery roof. I still fondly remember the screams—mostly coming from Squidra! “Helloooooo, Mr. Devilfish,” that amorous cephalopod writhes her bootylicious tentacles, “look at you, you bad-boy drunk.”

“
Geeraa
!” I spit napalm at her nose. Or I think it's her nose—who can tell with squids? “That's not nice,” she sulks. So what? My hate is powerful and evil—it's evil and powerful! My hope, you are weirder than gophers. And why is Squidra crashing my kill-fest? She looks so pink—she's very pink! And beyond fugly. Ewww—what if she wants slobbery kisses and smoochy hugs? I can't deal with horny chicks tonight. Or later. Or ever. Plus what's she expect—congratulations on her Tokyo debut? Raw humping slappy action? A chill pill wouldn't hurt—as that daft kraken sweeps her orange eyeball rays over distillery roofs till workers howl and stumble out. She even gathers a bunch in one twisty tentacle and thrusts that squirming mess in my face. “Here's a bouquet!” she chirps, “because we're meant to
be
.”

“Meant to be what?” drunk me giggles.

“We're like
The Days of Wine and Roses
,” Squidra chews up a few dudes, “ever seen that movie?”

“I don't watch movies,” I sneer, “or my weight. Or dumb girls.”

“Looky,” she sashays closer, “I dressed
up
for you.” Meaning she'd twisted melted fiberglass and tattered sails into this weird chiffon skirt. “Do you like my couture?” she tilts like a bloated toy. “No—you're naxty!” I roar. Oops—some girls just don't like direct insults. Especially squids of oozy tonnage. “You—you've hurt my
feelings
,” Squidra drops her corpse bouquet. Where one worker wriggles out, gurgles nonsense and falls off the dock and drowns. Will he be honored in song and saga? Nuh uh—and me neither if I keep up this drunken grump. “I said,” Squidra gets in my blue face, “you hurt my
feelings
.”

“Then don't have any, you bimbo—
geeraa
!” I roar at the flaccid heavens. It was a night full of dark and stuff. Where I'm reckless with booze action—Hello DTs! “Fuck off,” I snarl like barbed wire. “But I made reservations at McDonald's,” Squidra sulks. So what again! Does she expect me to tag along and chew pimpled McWorkers? Human junk food gives me serious cramps. “You'd
better
love me,” Squidra growls. “Um, sure,” I flatten my ears. Uh oh—is Mr. Devilfish giving up? Nuh uh—like any true grifter I'm just stalling for time. Let's chew my doleful boner! I'm your extra vague pal.

I even mused about maybe just raping Squidra, pinning her with my dank wings while I drink her drooling fear. Mwah ha ha—I am Devilfish, destroyer of moods! But she's way stronger than me and might just chomp my wiener off! It's a weenie that deserves more history! You gotta do something to pass the time. I know—let's have a delusion! Mine was I could brush Squidra's crush off—as she cranked up her laser eyeball rays and made grim faces at me. Alright—me and her are gonna have an old-timey kaiju B-flick smack down! Hey, it beats porking her—she's a fricking squid! Fucko—she looks like a bum's glove stuck in a Coke bottle. Hello Product Spill-in!

Anyway, then she totally whipped my blue butt. With screams and lasers and flailing kaiju pink parts—those were mostly hers—as we grappled and squashed pipes into an industrial wasteland. That we wasted! As crushed trucks and valves and factory glass got whipped into a gray pudding that slathered our wrestling bods.
Geeraa
! Your angst is not welcome. Neither were Squidra's blows—as she whomped me across a parking lot, crisping my flanks with her orange laser rays—ouch! Why do bad things happen to worse stingrays?

I can haz sex burger? Anyway, we ended up tussling in some lab district, a steaming grid of hormone tanks and fetal slop troughs. I didn't even get to gnaw any fleeing science nerds as Squidra tossed me at some purple tank covered with biohazard memes. I think it said HGH
or Human Growth Hormone—which would def explain what happened next. I am a proud slob warrior! Fucko—nothing's worse than getting beat by a girl—not even love with hot dumb sauce. Plus somehow I'd got my radiant tail jammed in that tank ladder—I couldn't even sting her! Even writhing around and howling didn't help—and it usually does. Ask any stripper. Plus I didn't have my mace or rape whistle on me—so I decided to play dead. But Squidra didn't fall for my fish corpse act. “You coward,” she hissed, “fight like a man.”

“You mean a human man?” I laughed. “And what—get smooshed by the millions? Screech around with flaming hair?” As Squidra closed in for the kill, flexing up on two tentacles and thrashing me with the night-spangled rest. Till I crashed through that tanker roof and into milky bio-muck. Where I fainted in HGH glop and wondered—hmmm—where
was
that extra-bacony sex burger?

/ 10 /

“Ow—
geeraa
—fricking
ow
,” I muttered awake in the viscous depths.
WTF
methinks—was this a comatose daydream? Sheesh—my brainpan could've conjured up something more risqué than drowning in beige sex lube. 'Cause that's what it smelled like—let's have a sex! With garters and sneaky guilt. But coma or no, for some reason I couldn't breathe liquids no more—which makes no sense for a stingray fish. Instead I choked and swam up through that lewd goo—my wing thrusts felt amazingly lame—and surfaced with a
kerplop
on the rim of that smashed HGH tank. Ick—human growth hormone tastes naxtier than braised feet with broccoli. And I ought to know.

“
Geeraa!
” I howled at the smarmy heavens—except whoa, I sounded kind of pipsqueak. Never mind vocal vanity—I must fight the stinky Squidra! Except that freaking squid was nowhere in sight—and everything in sight was, um—bigger. Way mass bigger. What the fucko—had the whole world shot gonzo steroid juice when I fainted? Nuh uh—the earth was the same boring size. It was me what had shrunk—Goodbye Devilfish! Mostly 'cause I'd morphed into something way worse than any hobo, bug, or homeless virus. I'd turned—
duhn duhn duhhhhh
—human! Eeek! And then beaucoup more
eeeks
when I slogged out of that deforming HGH goo and into a Squidra-charred landscape. Hello Changeling!

But this biped bod's gotta be some rogue hallucination—how could something so macabre happen to moi? I can't see it going down—mostly 'cause my new human bino-vision was totally squiggly. Really—both eyes on the same side? You fuckers are flounders. And I floundered good when I tried standing up—and flapped smack on my new nose, ow. And then stood up on—you're kidding me—legs? Who created these wobbly honkers? Seems God was drunk in shop class again—how else explain toes? And even worse are elbows—mine were already scuffed bloody from crawling on bashed cement. Hey, I was a stingray just moments ago—we don't do the walking—I keeled over my first four tries. Let's flop like brave waffles! But panic's the mother of tactics—and I had to get gone. 'Cause any minute that freak kraken would swarm back to date, mate, and polish me off. Let's polish one off for Jesus! He's nailed up and can't do it himself.

Anyway, I managed to sloppy drunk-walk through fresh wreckage, stopping now and again to marvel at my new skin. 'Cause even the wind hurt it! You bipeds are weaker than baby trout—whiny, murderous trout who yank strange beliefs from your scaly butts. But even weirder than just fragile skin was its color—mine was dusky blue. Nice hue—except everyone else is yellow! I wonder if the Japanese shun folks that don't fit in. With a little ash and ink I could probably pass for black. Then I could kill Big Lit 'cause it
owes
me—Hello Quotas! All your guilt are ours.

All your shame too—as I slunk through sodden alleys and into packed Tokyo. Where mutherfucking ow—I kept bumping my blue butt on brick walls. Probably 'cause I swayed like a used noodle—hey, it's how us rays move. Or did before I morphed into a shivering human dolt. Why shivering? 'Cause I just heard Squidra's mucus trill echoing off smashed girders. Grrr, grrr—this city is
my
holocaust! Mine! Or it was—now I've gone biped, turned teensy, traded my nighthawk mind for a skull crammed with gods and dead mommies. You twerps call this dink lump a
brain
? And the stringy stuff on top—that's hair? Really? And why's it already in a crude bouffant? Hello Jack Lord! Maybe I should style the other curls down there where—eeek! My fab weenie done shrunk! To about the size of a cheap blue cigar. Hah—what a piece of pie man is—how stupid in brooding—how like a TV that only gets reruns—a poor crusty donut who smears frosting on the stage. Anyway, to recap—I'm now human, bluer than a drowned baby's twat and stark barking naked—no wonder everyone dodged me. Especially when I lurched at them with my spaz limbs and screeched
geeraa
! I was crippled, clumsy, and slow—I can be Walmart greeter?

/ 11 /

I can haz McJob! So I'm a biped—now what? Should I turn wage slave and raise a drooling family? Not a bad idea—kick-start some tender human larva—and then devour them, yay! All your Donner Party are ours. It's the only way I'll cop any decent grub—these puny hands are worthless! They're as weak as newborn crabs. Awww, come on—was my groovy Devilfish bod really history? Really? I'll never demolish another megapolis? Never chew more orphans into groaning salsa? Whoever dreamed up civilization was stone nuts. Did I really swap a lifetime of lethal bliss for this—a pudgy gut and silly knees? Apparently so—Hello Bitch Fest! And goodbye nutsack—my new human balls barely swing! Was it really just yesterday I boiled out of bleak seas, my carbide bod arcing like a sleek blue boner? Back then I fucked the sun into a jillion spermy splinters—now I stumble around like some gimp Muppet. Are we insane yet? Hold on to your winkie and find out. And then—thank you Allah—I saw a gas station.

It's like they say—when in Rome don't eat relics and when in Tokyo blow shit up. And when I waddled past a beer-lit minimart—and spied that leaking gas pump—I let loose with a wild
geeraa!
A cry what once torched the sky with lurid fire—and now only stank the joint up with ape breath. “Hey, you—naked blue gaijan!” some pump jockey shambles over. “Go back to gaijan town!”

“Gaijan? What?” I puzzle. Oh, right—
gaijan
are foreigners. And blue pyro nude ones def count. “Leave now!” he brandishes a broom. Great—I've devolved into some wuss any Ronin janitor can kung fu with cheap housewares. Hello Impotent Rage! Meaning I'd better duck that flailing broom and figure out how to snuff him. It's what a Devilfish does! Even a morphed monkey one. Look, I don't tell
you
how to work—let's have a sick lifestyle! It's called Lifestyle Job. “Blue gaijan!” that pump jockey spits at me, “shoo!” Fucko—what's he so ticked about? I ain't even blown anything up yet. I can haz glory?

Anyway, so I'm batting that swooshing broom away with my useless arms—
useless
is a totally human word—when aha! I spy a dropped Bic lighter. What sort of skull-fucker strews lighters around a gas station? Some biped with a death wish, mwah ha ha—so let's grant it! As I smack a pump handle loose till it spews yummy gas. Hey, someone's gotta commit—meaning me when I duck manic bushido straw, flick that lighter on, toss it at fumes and run. Till I stop a half block away and dance a crude jig—mostly wagging my junk like a tail—when this Girl Scout giggles. At what—that delish petrol fireball? That crispy gas jockey screeching around? Nope. “Hot dog! Blue hot dog!” she points at my bare dangler. “Look, Mommy—I can see his
thing
.”

Oh right—pants! I not wearing any. “Wait, I can explain,” I mutter as that crowd closes in, their wicked fish knives already out—to slice off my pervy balls! What—really? You guys don't bone your own kids? Get with the program—nature's just a galactic prick spewing wet stars into raped space—Hello Devilfish! I can see why no one carpools with me. Plus eeek, don't chop my eensy human peener off—I might need it! Seems it's a monkey spark plug for revving guilt and hate. Like just now when—who else—Squidra shows up! Screeching bon mots and choking streetcars into bloody rust—she probably spotted that gas station blaze and
knew
it was me. “Mr. Demon Fish—where
are
you—” she gurgles while the crowd goes
Oooooo
and gawks up at her schlumping rump. Which was my cue to um, disappear. Note to self—stay away from Girl Scouts, fish knives, and hulking squids. And while you're up maybe grab some pants too.