Demons come to kill Welsh Losser contract, learn tango
Not an official Journal of Manny Face Installment
I was reading the Kyiv Post-It’s fiercely editorially independent, honest, high-quality, objective, thoroughly researched, and hard-hitting front-page story, rivetingly uncompromising in its values and ideals, on the all-important food industry conference that the Kyiv Post-It had organized and conducted recently in town, making some money along the way to help them get out of the red, thus trustfully serving the local community’s needs with its democratic reporting toward a rules-based economy and lawful, tolerant society, clearly having availed itself of its impeccable news judgment in the choice, content, and structure of its page-one article through the agency of the best staff ever hired for the job, when…
No – it’s got to have more of that right-minded, high-road, condescending in a fair-minded and righteous way embattled news outlet fighting for its life in an authoritarian society feel to it. Maybe like this:
So I was reading the Kyiv Post-It and yet another apologia justifying their existence disguised as an opinion piece about how sinister forces have left the paper embattled and fighting for its life in unfair market conditions, and rolling my eyes so far into the back of my head I thought they’d get lost and I’d start worrying about maybe not being able to watch movies no more, or what I was doing with my feet in Argentine Tango, know what I mean, when…
No, no, no – scrap the fucking rag. It just don’t do no more. There’s got to be a better beginning to my creative ambitions, in addition to my sex, movie, and dance exploits, in Kyiv Unedited, before some bad poet materializes out of the evil genii or homunculus of this website’s secret editorial board and starts jumping around from section to section out of all bounds in proportion to his original purpose – and Manny Face admittedly finds that a fucking threat, although he can’t explain why; know what I mean?
Uh, aaahh… maybe this:
I was just putting down Donleavy’s “The Ginger Man” and picking up William S. Burroughs’s “The Ticket that Exploded”, when –
Knock, knock, ring, ring, knock ring knock…
Who the fuck is it?
No answer.
Manny Face walks to the door, but before he opens it, he swears, they are already materialized inside his loft, smoke rising from their black beast fur. Huge no-good malodorous eminences glowering with vile and perverse intent. One, a hyena-looking one, the other, a wild boar.
So, you want some kind of drink, I, Manny Face, say. Cool you down.
Yeah, give us a fucking drink.
No, we don’t want no fucking drink, Boris. Tell this punk – hey, he looks pretty good, maybe we should bend him over, first – we’re looking for the contract.
What contract is that, asshole?
The Welsh Losser contract. Punk. With the Infernal One.
You’ve got the wrong department, bub. Try the Commix section.
We turned that place over until it was upside down – the way we like it – heh-heh-heh-heh. No sign of the contract. What happened to it? Where the fuck is it?
No luck then, I say. The Kyiv Unedited article that reported the story in the Infernal One’s own words as spoken to Losser’s mind in a dream was the only copy extant to Man. If it’s gone, you’re out of luck. But Losser wasn’t worth it.
Yeah, that’s why we want it, so he don’t take no legal actions for alleged non-performance. You know, the Devil helps those who help themselves.
Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh, etc., they both say.
Okay, Heinrich, let’s go. There ain’t nothin’ here.
Not so fast, Boris. I kind of like this fucking little punk.
Both the stinking demons approach Manny Face, backing him into a corner, beaming lurid desire from their lunatic eyes, breathing their decayed breath in my face. With erections – massive demon penises, bigger than Manny Face’s, red-hot and flaming, the swollen fire-red heads ejaculating sulfur non-stop, stinking up the place. The hyena one’s bending up, the wild boar’s, curving over in a molten corkscrew spiral, eventually and finally bending down. If he could straighten it out, it would be three times the length of the hyena’s. But then the hyena one’s lengthens some more. Heh-heh-heh-heh, he says. Is it pure will, unencumbered by mortal flesh? Is it about power? Is that the essence of evil? No, I think, power isn’t intrinsically evil. Know what I mean? The penis grows again – heh-heh-heh-heh. Manny Face reconsiders. Heh-heh-heh-heh…
I have to think fast. Manny Face hits the play button. Argentine Tango fills his loft.
Hey, what the fuck is that, the one called Heinrich asks.
Say, I say, how would you two like to learn to dance tango?
We already know a lot of dances. Punk.
Not like this one.
Come here, I say to the one called Boris, and I grab him, quickly complimenting both of their cloven hooves, on the tips of which they stand, abominably and naturally, telling them how they are designed to navigate the milonga dance floor even better than women’s specially-designed tango heels, like mountain goats jumping the sheer rock faces of cliffs. The demons are embarrassed but clearly pleased. Boris, the one I have taken in embrace, is all flustered. Chagrined, the other one quips, Hey, Boris, you look like a fucking girl, heh-heh-heh-heh…
Boris farts out a really smelly fireball that misses Heinrich, who jumps out of the way, but it singes the fine soft expensive calf leather of my armchair.
I wince, just managing to hold back my mental anguish at the careless destruction, and reply: Real tangueros train for years dancing with other men before they ever dare approach a lady. Both fall silent, subdued.
The music lifts and soars and I hold Boris in my embrace and sway, and I say, Watch this. I go like this with my feet, and I lean into you like this, and…
Hey, heh-heh-heh, Heinrich, look at me! It feels good. Hey, punk, what am I doing?
It’s called an ocho – that’s a backward figure eight – it can go on indefinitely, or I can reverse it, like so, and now you’re going forward, and now backward, and now forward again, and now –
Heh-heh, heh-heh-heh-heh…
Hey, punk, says Heinrich, can I try…???
Manny Face, June 3, 2013