The sun sets on paradise, and I haven’t a care in the world.

The apples’ve already been picked, pressed, and casked. The truck’s been loaded. The kids’re visiting my sister-in-law. The wife’s on the porch-swing, reading away the end of the afternoon. There’s nothing for me to do but bask in the golden glory of an early autumn dusk.

Ah, the end of yet another day in paradise.

I pull the pipe from my breast pocket and retrieve a can of tobacco from the highest shelf in the kitchen. I nearly drop the antique cookie jar that rests right on the lip of the shelf, so I mutter a string of obscenities. I’ve suggested more times than I care to recall that the jar be relocated, but my wife’s as tough on the nerves as she is soft on the eyes. She maintains that if we’re going to keep weapons in the house, we need to keep them out of the children’s reach in accordance to the danger they pose. “Swords behind knives, tobacco behind cookies.”

She’s kind of a health nut.

Exhaling my first grey puff, I realize that Oswald’s nowhere in sight. He usually comes scampering at the very sound of the tamper scraping against the bowl. Tail waggin’. Leash in mouth. Electricity panting into the air.

I’d initially loathed the fact that my respite from the world – smokin’ and walkin’ through the orchard – would no longer be a solitary act. There were disagreements, and I spat pure obstinance. “I try to teach the kids about real dogs, ones that can pull their weight – retrievers, terriers, even greyhounds – and she comes home with a fuckin’ corgi?! A fuckin’ purebred corgi? A real dog comes from the pound, and it loves you simply because you kept it from being jabbed with a death-needle!”

Even the most adorable of black-faced puppy smiles and heartwarming hand-lappings were met with scorn.

But unless you’re a genuine curmudgeon – and not just tryin’ to prove a point to your wife and kids – there’s no stavin’ off the charm of a newborn pup. I’d like to think of myself as strong-willed, but it was only a matter of days before I began lookin’ forward to takin’ strolls with Oswald.

Dog. Comrade. Confidant.

Four seasons later and Oswald has never missed one of my afternoon walks. Our afternoon walks. So I’m more than a bit concerned when he doesn’t meet at our tacitly agreed-upon time. I fill my lungs with smoke and walk to the screen-door that leads to the backyard.

There’s a hole in it.

I slam my whole body into the door and pick up my gait. “Oswald! C’mere boy! Here, Oswald!” I’m screaming in a terror I don’t even understand. There’s nothing telling me that I need to be worried. Other than intuition, that is. “Oswald!”

The wife shuffles into the yard, dog-earing a page in her book and wiping the sleep out of her eyes. “Hon, what’re you screamin’ for?”

“Oswald’s gone missin’!

“Oh, he’s probably just rustling around in some leaves.”

I’ve been making love to my wife for the vast majority of my time on Earth, so I know every which way her face can contort. Needless to say, I also know damn well when she’s puttin’ me on. What she’s tryin’ to foist upon me now is her lame-ass poker face. The sentiment’s appreciated, but it doesn’t stop the panic from bristling the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Stay here in case he comes back!” As I make a beeline for the orchard I’m still sucking in and blowing out smoke. Carcinogenic comfort. I wheeze wisps of poison out of my lungs and wipe the sweat that’s threatening to bead from my brow into my eyes. For a moment, I actually think to myself that maybe I need to stop smoking.

Sacrilege.

Even with the toxins in my lungs and the spare tire around my waist, no more than three minutes pass before I’m halfway into the orchard. I can still hear my wife shouting both my name and our missing dog’s name into the great orange heavens above. But I’m too deep into this, all of it, to yell any sort of response back to her. Ain’t no point of calling for roadside assistance when you’re cruisin’ the existential autobahn in a flesh-mobile that’s smokin’ and threatenin’ to explode.

But I just keep on movin’, kickin’ rogue apples and lookin’ for any sign of corgi-activity. I don’t see anything, and my brain’s tryin’ to tell me that everything could be fine, that I’m just overreacting as I’m wont to do as a husband and father and brewer. But my heart is screamin’ in between beats, and I’m not ever going to stop movin’ –- and then I hear it.

A whimper more pathetic than you’ve ever heard.

I cock my head toward the sound, but I don’t see Oswald. No. What I see is a huge, purple-plumaged bird with its back turned to me. Its head’s firing up and down like a jackhammer, pneumatic and efficient and unrelenting. As I approach the bird, which is so engrossed in whatever that it doesn’t notice me in the slightest, I absentmindedly grab a branch from the orchard floor. With smoldering pipe in one hand and bark-club in the other, I step up and see exactly what I’m dealing with.

An enormous violet vulture with talons like daggers and a scabby, infected skull.

He looks back at me as if to say, “What the fuck do you want from me, old man?” And I don’t have answer for him. That is, of course, until I see the target of his pneumatic beak-joustings.

Oswald.

My canine-companion, the winsome little corgi in whom I’ve confided countless dreams and fears. And he’s laying there, gut torn open, intestines spilling out of gouged obsidian fur, a goddamn feast for a scavenger lacking the patience to wait for natural prey. There’s a final whimper, and then nothing. The vulture disregards me and returns to his regularly-scheduled consumption.

No hesitation, I wind up and crack the bird in the back of the head with the branch. Whack! It falters and then turns towards me, only to receive a thorough face-smashing. Whack! Whack! Whack! An especially powerful downward thrust demolishes the beak, and aves-blood spurts in every direction. Purple feathers are stained crimson, a grotesque tie-dye that no hippie’d ever wear. The vulture does its best to go skyward, but I wrap my arms around it and clench tight.

Without skill or dexterity, I snap the bird’s neck and drop it to the ground.

By the time my wife reaches me, I’m done swearing and I’m done crying. I’m sitting next to Oswald’s dismembered corpse, and I can barely muster up the strength to smoke my pipe and wish it all away. She runs a hand through my hair and does her best to console me, saving her tears for later when she doesn’t think I’ll notice them.

I will.

The wife and I walk back to the house. I’m cradling Oswald in my arms and she’s rubbing my back. As we reach the porch, I look back just in time to see the last vestiges of paradise slinking behind the horizon.

Feather-violet. Smoke-grey. Fur-black. Afternoon-gold. Ain’t no hues that’re impervious to the rust-tarnish of tragedy.

Even in paradise.

“Baby, don’t worry – it’s an ancient tradition, and it’s lookin’ like he likes you. Hell, you should thank every star in the sky, `cause mi Daddy Dios ain’t never approved of none of the other gringos I brought home.”

Rochelle put her hand over mine and batted her eyelashes. I’ll be goddamned if she wasn’t the most beautiful Mexicana I’d ever seen. Heart-attack smile. Ass `til next Tuesday. Hair blacker than the Devil’s cum. And a charisma that fed hand-grenade sandwiches to every pendejo who’d ever tried to pick her up with an invitation to the dance floor.

Simply put, Rochelle was a Conquistador’s wetdream.

And yet, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. I turned Rochelle’s hand over in mine and did my best to ignore everything about her father. The dead rat he was clutching in his right hand. The rusty nipple ring he was flicking with his left hand. The way the hot spittle was streaming from his bottom lip.

I had to say something.

“Yo, I don’t mean to be a dickhead or anything, `cause it’s awesome that I’m the first man your father’s ever approved of-“

“No es el primer hombre, the first gringo.”

“Right, whatever. Again, it’s awesome that your dad likes me even though I was born and raised in fucking Delaware, but this shit is starting to get a little wacky.”

“Wacky! Wacky!” Screaming at the top of his lungs, eyes rolling into the back of his head, Rochelle’s father mounted my knee for the most enthusiastic lap dance I’d ever received. And that’s sayin’ something, `cause I used to bounce at a titty-bar in pre-Katrina New Orleans. “Wacky-badacky! Vaya con Daddy Dios!”

“Look! This is gettin’ outta hand!”

“C’mon, Reggie, be a sport! This is a tradition of the most venerated sort. Mi pueblo began using this technique thousands of years before the Golden Eagle devoured the snake, and we ain’t stoppin’ now, even if it means bein’ laughed at by the Mexican mainstream. Or a starving artist from the States!”

I’d’ve been insulted if I hadn’t known, for a fact, that my poetry made Rochelle wet.

“I’m not questioning your knowledge of this tradition,” I paused to palm Daddy Dios’ quivering lips away from my neck, “but I just don’t get its purpose. Why, exactly, is your father high on drugs and trying to rub his boner on me?”

“First of all, Daddy Dios isn’t high. That’s a bullshit concept para destrozar the evolution of the unconscious. Right now, Daddy Dios is trascendente, a piece of driftwood in the spiritual stream of consciousness binding all humanity.”

“Oh, that’s why your father is currently pissing himself!” I couldn’t help but laugh. Daddy Dios, still riding my thigh, had expelled the entirety of his bladder. Also, I’m pretty sure he was mumbling the lyrics to Bob Seger’s Hollywood Nights. “I’m sorry, Mami, I guess I just forgot what happens when a seventy-six year old man with bipolar disorder spends four hours eating peyote and huffing gasoline. My bad!”

Rochelle flashed a grin and my heart skipped an eighth-note. “Listen, I told you that I wasn’t goin’ to give you the choca until mi padre says OK. And I also warned you that Daddy Dios was goin’ to literally gaze into your soul. Now, is it my fault if you assumed I was fuckin’ around? Or is it on you for not believing me?”

She had a point. A good one.  She had a good point and I was going to contest it, but I didn’t have to.

“Reggie Wacky-Badacky…” Daddy Dios was sputtering, pushing his buttcheeks onto either side of my thigh. “You…deserve her bed…” His eyes focused a moment of clarity before returning to a brain-damaged glaze.. My girl’s father looked to the sky, bellowed “BIG-TIME-DELAWARE-DICK!” and then slumped over.

“Is he going to be okay?” For the first time since I’d met him, I was more concerned for than irritated by Daddy Dios. “It looks like he shit himself. And there’s blood coming out of his ear.”

“Está bien,” Rochelle was already leading me out of the cave, “he just needs to readjust to his corporeal form. It’s not always easy to dry off after swimming in the stream of consciousness.”

Rochelle was the most beautiful Mexicana that I’d ever seen. Her father was the craziest Mexican that ever pissed on me. And that was the first night they considered me family.

Here’s a new column we’re presenting on the Bloglin titled Edible Debris. It’ll be an ongoing series of short fiction by Rendar Frankenstein, to enhance your week. The bits of short fiction will range from the bizzarre, to the subversive, to the heartbreaking. These stories are a little something for you to read on your break, train ride, or in the can. Now, if someone asks you who you read, you can say “umm, I read Rendar Frankenstein..oh you haven’t heard of him? thought so.” Literary Bloglin over here.

Bourbon-Soaked Orgy

Voodoo-prescribin’ witch doctors once invited me to a party.

It was the summer of 1987 and I was in the middle of one of the worst hangovers of my entire life. Since mid-April, I’d spent every waking hour thrashing to Among the Living and doing lines of gasoline-soaked blow. As far as I can recall, it wasn’t until mid-July that I even realized I’d made it all the way to Nova Scotia.

Don’t let anyone tell you that heavy metal and drugs won’t lead you anywhere. They will. In my case, it was to the beautiful port-town of Yarmouth.

Anyways, I stumbled out of buck-toothed Ambellina’s bedroom, leaving behind my Walkman and cocaine in the hopes of finding something slightly more transcendent. Fortunately, I found the Tim Hortons whose manager seemed eager to keep my coffee cup filled to the brim, free of charge. (In hindsight, I think must’ve let him look at my Polaroid collection. You ever see a Yeti’s genitals? No? Well, then you haven’t seen my Polaroid collection.) After my thirteenth cup of black wonder, I saw them.

The witch doctors. (more…)