I am sprawled, languid and insouciant, on Irving’s king-and-a-half-size bed, the gelatin mattress molded around my edges; the industrial-strength muscle relaxants have just started doing their thing and I can barely focus on the wall monitor, incessantly flashing life-size high-res images of burning Los Angeles and its blood-crazy citizens, like a riot right here in the penthouse being staged for my benefit. I fumble for last night’s half-finished champagne, unable to remember who I shared it with, or when they left me by my lonesome. Flat and warm, of course, but it’s Dom ’53 so I drink it anyhoo, straight from the bottle like the cheap piece of street trash I really am inside. Gargle it like mouthwash, almost choking on it when I hear the elevator gate crash open, spitting up a fine spray of the stuff at a noise like ten thousand jackboots goose-stepping my way across the vast living room.
“Irving! Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch! You better not be here cause I am fully prepared to disembowel your skinny little cokefiend ass, pull your guts right out through your deviated septum!” A screeching harpy drawing ever nearer, pounding on the bedroom door with a fist apparently gloved in iron. I slip a hand under one of the pillows, searching for Irving’s Magnum; it isn’t there.
The door splits its hinges with a thunderclap, wood splinters and plaster particles exploding inward, and framed in the ruined doorway stands a sneering Amazon warrior goddess, a living mythic entity, fire flashing from ice-blue eyes, robust and muscular body apparently tensed to pounce, ethereal, evil, delicious. I want her instantly, wet and hard all at once.
“What the fuck are you?” she snarls, glaring darts and daggers.
I could very well ask you the same, I want to say, but my vocal chords are suddenly rendered dysfunctional, as if by some wicked magick being perpetrated from her unfathomable power source.
“Where’s Irving?”
“Ow–ow–outta town,” I stammer, embarrassed and awed.
“Bullshit. I can smell him,” she declares, cruising the bedroom, tearing open closets, wardrobes, chests, disappearing into the master bath. “Son-of-a-bitch!” she shrieks, fuming at the absence of her prey.
“Wh-what is it, hon?” I manage with uncharacteristic timidity. “Maybe I can help?”
“I doubt it, sister,” she states, matter-of-fact now, her narrowed eyes taking me in with a hint of interest.
“I’m—my name’s—Tom-boy,” I inform her, trying to smile.
“Victoria,” she replies, clasping, nearly crushing my hand in her vinyl-gloved grip.
“Oh my God,” I gulp, overwhelmed by this unexpected brush with greatness. “Not the—”
“Victoria Atomblast,” she says curtly, apparently unimpressed by the attentions of yet another adoring fan.
“So,” she continues, giving me a frank and slightly contemptuous appraisal. “You must be Irving’s new…plaything.”
“You…could…say that…” I mutter humbly, blushing at the fragility of my own ego, crumpled now to the proportions of a spitball.
“Well, tell that despicable prick I stopped by,” Victoria says, kicking the broken door aside with her heavy-duty paratrooper boots. “I’ll be back to kill him later.”
“Waitwaitwait!” I cry, attempting to stay her determined departure with tremulous outstretched fingers.
“Whattayawant?” she spits over one shoulder, pausing in the threshold.
“You,” I respond, shy and docile.
She hesitates, eyes narrowed to frightening slits, then whirls around and comes straight at me…
“So, if you’re such a big fuckin fan, how come you didn’t recognize me when I kicked in Irving’s door?” Victoria asks me later, her enhanced pneumatic frame bunched up against me. For a moment, I’m at a loss. But only for a moment.
“Maybe ‘cause you look so much like you do on the tube, I thought you had to be an impersonator,” I say, opting not to tell her that it’s really because she’s so much more…diminutive, ahem, than I anticipated. She isn’t a dwarf, by any means, nor disproportionately endowed, just kind of small and stocky, a full-figured gal, Rubenesque, all that, except in miniature. She is sort of cuddly, subtly passive, exuding an unexpectedly sisterly eroticism, which only vaguely dampens my initial desire. Not at all the insatiable ball-busting freak-fucking dynamatrix whose flagrant sexual caprice has made her not only a household name, but in This Thing’s not insubstantial estimation, the greatest star who ever shone her light on this unworthy little ball of dung.
She is mine for an hour, maybe two, and then she splits, off to run some other tedious errand of vengeance, apparently her second occupation, though she claims she just does it to unwind. I am left with her smell all over me and the small depression she’s made in the sheets.
Didn’t even get to ask why she wants to kill Irving. I consider warning him, figure he doesn’t wanna be bothered on his vacation, blow it off. Besides, it’s just so much…effort.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the complete collapse of civilization is going to be really good for the planet?
The Executive Producer of the Treasury. Because if you’re going to pick a man to handle all the money, you want the guy who helped make sure we got that Entourage movie. I don’t know enough about him to know why I hate him but he might be the only guy in the entire cabinet who actually likes the thing he’s been put in charge of. I mean, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos loathes the entire sum of human knowledge, and I’m pretty sure HUDsucker Ben Carson would love to distance himself from anything remotely “urban,” but Munchkin loves the ever-living shit out of that money. You don’t bankroll Suicide Squad because you give a shit about telling stories; you do it for the fat stacks! In fact, by Trumpian logic, and the Munchman’s track record, it would’ve made more sense to put him in charge of, like, the Public Broadcasting System and let him turn it into a pay-per-view channel where post-Americans can both view and participate in an endless real life livestream of Mad Max: Fury Road (which he also helped pay for so, oh, shit, does that mean I kinda have to like him? Fuck me).
He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This is what 30 looks like when you were born already dead inside. Seriously, this guy has been alive just a few months less than I’ve been out of high school, and while I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my life, he’s already positioned himself to be instrumental in the ending of ALL LIFE. Do I resent him because he’s an overachiever, or do I fear him because he is able to stare into my soul without even bothering to focus his eyes? While most of the Trumplets appear to have been handpicked for their former status as schoolyard bullies, Miller appears to have been selected precisely because of his lot in life as one of the eternally tormented. He’s such a mealworm I wish I’d reenrolled in grade school in the ’90s just so I could’ve got a few licks in. He is to white genetic superiority what Keystone Light is to actual beer. While he would’ve happily aided Hitler in bringing about the glory of the Thousand Year Reich, he would have had to voluntarily throw himself into a Krystalnacht bonfire once the real Aryans showed up on the scene.
Brophine 