Playground

by Aron Beauregard

Greg turned around, shooting laser beams through the most disappointing sperm he’d ever unleashed.

She now looked like an ad for gape porn.

The wheels were turning in all their heads, but the one with the dead hamster inside spoke first.

The conditioning that resulted from an endless cycle of abuse was a profound manipulator.

CJ considered that he might’ve spent too much time focusing on the things that perturbed him about his family. Looking back, they were much better than he’d given them credit for.

Maybe it ain’t the worst thing. Not having a chance might be the best thing she ever got. I got a fuckin’ chance,

the playground chooses when you actually leave.

However, Fuchs seemed a little too eager. Like a pervert that had just slipped inside a whorehouse, he was ready to blow his load immediately.

“I guess we lose together then.”

In life, Isaac and Bobby went together like oil and water, but in death, that wouldn’t matter. As the vicious ocean of scorching fluid destroyed the little that remained of their tissues, the opinions and differences they held in life were suddenly of little consequence. Now they were one and the same; a single, all-encompassing soup of sizzling cells, dissolving ambition, and lost youth.

He wanted attention, but not that way. He wanted to be held, but not that way. He wanted to be loved, but not that way.

Geraldine had turned him into the saddest kind of damaged goods. The kind that’s too fucked-up to realize it. When horror isn’t quite horror anymore, it’s just normal. And when awful isn’t quite awful anymore, it’s just life.

“But, I’m—I’m your mother!” she cried. “And I’m a motherfucker,” Rock grumbled.

It was the greatest gift he’d ever been given. It was a feeling that was warm and wholesome. It was a touch that he knew he'd never taste again.

Rock’s pulse slowed to a crawl as if it was mirroring the pace of the creeping merry-go-round. As his oversized frame finally gave way, he had almost no feeling in his tired body any longer. Except for the fading flicker of elusive happiness Rock had finally found a way to bottle.