SLAIN HERO
realized by
JAMES QUENTIN DEVINE
m.v.d
HEART CASH COLD
“One way, you know, one way I think of it — it’s as though whole of the country was upended and everyone and everything loose ended up here.”
“Bunch of fruits and nuts.”
Lost Eros rose above the sea.
Californian sorcery.
Flowed inland in torrents and tracts.
The magnet’s attraction.
Taste of tack.
Oil.
Beaches and canyons and mountains.
Fleets of ships.
Human potential, moving.
Pictures, stars, studs.
Fun fun fun.
Fire.
Girl’s head slung back.
Convertible hair.
Couldn’t be higher.
Fun.
Thunderbird.
Fire fire fire.
An exploit of perfect weather with occasional fire.
A shaky situation at the end of empire.
A mission ashamed.
The toll of a bell.
Character maimed.
“TAKE ME TO BED WITH YOU,”
The book exclaimed.
Sidled up.
Tossed off more sauce.
“You know, you’re sitting on a goal of mine . . .”
Fuck repartee.
Fuck decency.
You’re never going to stop being lazy, so you need to smarten your sloth.
Listen to me.
Train your subroutines.
Automatic.
The perfect machine.
Got it?
I mean — you know — I mean you know — I think you know one of the reasons I, like, the way I am, the way I “am,” uh uh uh, is, uh, is you see I could change the channel, click click click, push of a button, switch switch switch, infinite-ish, preference, and now, imagine . . .
It’s funny, really.
The triumph of the tragic.
Funereally.
Here high in the Swish Alps with a 3-D printed snubnose shrouded in pantyhose.
To settle a debt of $104.00.
Because you couldn’t keep it together.
Hold up your end of the bargain.
Now I’m gonna need to find somewhere to burn these clothes.
My name is Slain Hero.
I’m here on behalf of Vinny Venereal to collect.
You’ve not been answering your calls.
“One of those.”
We’re worried.
You can consider this a wellness check-in.
All’s well that’s poisoned.
You could still have some choice in this matter.
Some agency.
Three-lettered.
Or four.
You can go home with five fingers if you slide the envelope under the door.
No questions asked.
No extra tax.
Just what’s owed.
Heart cold cash.
Beating hard.
Ice us out?
You’re zeroed.
SCROLLED APPS
”Stim City is lit tonight there’s bitches and everything.”
Texting fury.
Everyone is on.
On display.
On drugs.
En pointe.
High alert.
Knees lock in heels.
Keeling.
Killing it.
Making the scene.
Dreamscrape.
Stretching their torsos and thighs to maximize.
Reaching flowers.
The head a pin to heaven.
Dancing angelic.
Point your nipples to the balcony.
Look up into the second row.
Remember your kabuki training.
Remember your butoh.
“So wait how long have you lived in Santa Lucina?”
She pronounced it like an out-of-towner.
“Six years.”
Sipped her drink.
“So do you, like, work in tech?”
Curious eyes’ examination.
“In a manner of speaking.”
Damp contaminant.
Batted eyes and banishment.
He balls a napkin in his fist.
She’s got about three grand on a skinny wrist.
Grasps for her straw.
Fizz.
Gin.
Purple with crème de violette.
God-given.
Bar kept.
She’s onto him.
Off her meds.
Usually couldn’t be drinking like this.
Or so the doctor says.
“So, you know any good jokes?”
He’s quick.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“I do.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“What do you call a hitman with shitty aim?”
“A shitman?”
“No — I mean, you could, I guess, but no.”
“What then?”
“An unreliable aerator.”
“Oh. I get it.”
She didn’t laugh.
THE YARDBIRDS
”Let me get my heat back bro.”
“Fuck.”
They’re both gasping for air in a backyard in East Lost.
“Let me get my fucking heat back.”
Fat and shirtless in jeans.
The makeshift wrestling ring is in a state of near-collapse.
The one in the bandana calls himself C-Note and that other dude is named Fredy.
Yeah with one D.
Yeah with a Y.
They’ve long since stopped cooperating with one another.
Beats the shit out of me.
God knows why.
Turned into a slugfest about five minutes ago.
A half dozen uncles crowd ringside.
Gathered in plastic chairs.
“Kick his fucking ass, Fredy!”
“Don’t let him do that shit to you, Fred!”
C-Note’s got the whip hand.
Beating Fredy good and bloody.
Gory.
Fredy’s pissed because he can’t “get any of his shit in.”
He’s spent a lot of time developing signature maneuvers, and he was looking to unveil some of his most innovative creations in the match, really pop the crowd but C-Note showed up feisty.
To make matters worse Hector had forgotten to bring the camcorder.
So none of this shit’s even being preserved.
This is pure theater.
Raw.
Fredy’s trying to save face but no run-in’s coming.
No intervention or entrance music’s dropping.
His arms are too short to box.
Can’t scrap a lick.
“Fucking come on, man!”
A split lip and ripped dignity.
He screamed like a frustrated infant.
Constipated in all ways.
“Fuck!”
Shrieked noise as C-Note rained blows.
Until from a plastic chair a wise uncle rose:
“Just stay down, man. Stay down. Fuck. Fuck, man. Fuck, dude. Shit.”
And so it was done.
LANDSAT 5
Cue the delusion.
Deadpan satyr.
Tragedian.
Delight later.
Light and laughter leaking.
She bled red and dried black.
Got angry and looked back.
If this is it then that’s that.
She has had it.
Snaps:
“Are you FUCKING RECORDING?”
Cantatas contorted.
A fair lane afforded.
When you meet the Elect it’s fucked.
The Order.
The Ordained.
Those permitted.
Who’s allowed.
Who’s explained.
Who’s set forth when the meaning-making’s drained?
Whose distortion has the most to gain?
a.k.a. D.X.
Frasier Fussy was tipsy.
“Oh I just figured I’d . . . hide my nut for winter.”
Let’s be real — Frasier Fussy is drunk.
He’s in crisp two-tone suede-and-polished calfskin Belgian loafers, little tassels flitting about as he circles and surveys the carpeted party and its spectacles.
He’s with his new boyfriend Gio.
They’d met six months ago.
When Gio wasn’t sure Gio was a boy or a friend or what, really.
Gio wasn’t sure if Gio was Gio.
But things had sort of settled, sort of.
Tonight Gio was on G.H.B.
He wasn’t drinking.
Didn’t want the calories.
They were talking with the home-owner, a tall thin bulbous-headed man named Riordan Ryan, he’d come right up to you hunched with a hand out say “Riordan Ryan, I’m the owner of OnanDyne,” OD being the sperm storage facility Frasier and Gio had selected to secure their mutual genetic legacies, where they’d wanked with tablets in little locked rooms apart.
Frasier’d beat to scans of vintage muscle mags, shit published before he’d ever been born.
Seemed appropriate to bring some conscious element of the old world to the new life he might pass on.
He’d never thought to ask Gio which intention he’d cast.
Riordan was holding court.
“What was that, did you ask? . . . do we keep all the cum in crystals? No, I — hahaha, yeah, no I — one big crystal, right, uh, no, no. We don’t do crystals, see — Yeah we’ve just got gallons, gallons of cum in there . . . it’s like an aquarium of billionaires and geniuses in there . . . not necessarily a lotta overlap . . . not, like, I mean, we make the cum touch, or whatever, you know, but like — yeah no it’s not like rosé or anything, we’re not producing blends, at least not yet, but . . .”
The process had been terribly expensive.
But at what cost, life?
Continuity.
Frasier Fussy made his millions with KRYONIC KRUNKTA$IA, a legal cannabis brand in which he’d partnered with South Lost Eros hip-hop legend The Digital Exquisite, a.k.a. D.X.
“Man, I started out as a conscious rapper, man. Man, I got tired of no money, man.”
Dude said man a lot.
Spent 30 years in studios chain-smoking blunts in and out of bottles.
Mind has a way of going in loops.
“Man, I got tired of no money, man. Man, I got tired.”
Never took his sunglasses off.
“Frasier-Man how much we selling this shit before these cocksuckers figure out we just sold them a bag of shit?”
“X, you can’t be saying that type of stuff around the phones—”
“Shit. Yeah, you told me. Shit.”
“If we can exit to Kanjigaga—”
“Them Canadian motherfuckers?”
“Them, yeah.”
“Right.”
“We’re looking at eight to ten.”
“Shit man. That’s alright.”
“That is alright.”
“Light one to that.”
D.X. sparked a balcony blunt.
Fussy didn’t partoke.
Had to stay more or less awoke.
“We exit to Ganjakugi—”
“That’s, what, Idaho?”
“Idaho.”
“They nazis or what man? I mean really I don’t give a fuck, long as the hitlerdollars clear the goddamn bank man.”
“Reichsmarks.”
“What?”
“The national socialists used reichsmarks.”
“Shit man. Well what’s our mark-up?”
“Idaho’s coming in with a lot of money from somewhere. They’re chilly on the meetings. Hard to read them. Could be twenty. Twenty-five, even.”
“Whoo. I walk away with that man, even after the taxes and all that gay shit—”
. . .
“Sorry Frasier. You’re cool man. You know you’re cool.”
“We close this deal you can slur me all you want, X.”
“Sorry man. Sorry, man. Shit. Sorry.”
“I’ve heard worse all my life.”
“I bet.”
And back to it:
“You know one thing’s really pissing me off man.”
“What’s that X?”
“These fuckin’ political campaigners man. Man, they come around trying to knock on doors, talk to you about whatever type of bullshit, you know man, bothering you all damn day long. So man these motherfuckers come around opening up my gate on my house man they don’t know if I got my dog in the goddamn yard, coming around man trying to tell me I need to vote for some dumb fuck—”
“You’ve got a latch, right?”
“I got two man! They fuck around with ‘em.”
“Well where you gonna buy in after we offload Kryonic?”
D.X. puffed, thought.
Frasier tugged his blue ballcap low.
It was fashioned in the style of the Kansas City Royals’ ‘KC’ hat.
For KryoniC.
D.X. had advised against it.
Said it meant “Crip Killer” or something.
They did it anyway.
Fuck it.
Bang bang gangland.
“Well to be honest with you I’m fucking tired of some of the shit in my neighborhood man. They made it nice and shit but it’s still too much stupid shit going on man I think I want out.”
“Ocean or the hills?”
“Sometimes I think about the desert man.”
“The desert? You don’t seem like the type.”
“Just shoot a gun at nothing all day long man. Target practice in my underwear if I feel like it. Dress up in all type of cowboy shit. Really get up to some shit man.”
“You tired of people?”
“Damn tired.”
“I get that way, too. So check this — we sell to Gokubong Labs?”
“That’s like — . . . the fuck is that man, Goku’s Bong, Japanese motherfuckers?”
“Strangely? Israeli.”
“Man.”
“That could be fifty.”
“Shit, man.”
“Right? You could have a whole compound out there.”
“Man I could buy half of East Death with that.”
“True. Especially after the — . . . . what was it?”
“Chemical spill.”
“Shit, yeah.”
“Heavy metals, man. Radium and shit. Uranium.”
“You’d wanna live out there?”
D.X. laughed.
“Fuck no man I was just fucking with you. I’d be down in the Sunk Coast man.”
“You like that beach town bustle?”
“I like bitches man. And Jeeps. Get my ass a place in Bahía Perdida, just get fucking lost man, lost in the sauce. Shit, I don’t have kids, fuck it.”
“I can relate. I’d like to get lost.”
“Fuck yeah Frasier Man. What about you? You already got that big-ass nice-ass place, you staying put?”
Frasier sighed.
“You know, honestly, I think I’m tired of it, I think I’m over it. Vernal Heights, all of it. The kids, the kids they come in on the weekends, they got the shitty outfits, it’s just depressing. And ever since Simon split and fucked off back to England.”
“Y’all still talk?”
“No.”
Final.
“That bad?”
“Yeah, man.”
To installate the night sky.
J.Q.D.
mundus vult decipi
💙
▶
LISTEN to SCALED ALPS’ ‘LET THE ALPINE PLAY.’
LISTEN to JQD’s ‘LIVE PLAYER DEAD SERIOUS.’