Arthur Graham’s Reviews > Sick Pack > Status Update

In that moment, their tongues existed in an alternate dimension, where time was irrelevant, and the only sound was the fizzing of saliva being manufactured and pasted across taste buds. The tongues slapped and teased and pushed and hid and twisted and licked and it was epic, absolutely epic.

“Look at you. You’re a woman with robot hands who hunts runaway body parts with the help of a necromancing coatimundi. Last night you were probably in some Hollywood back alley fighting an apesquatch for the return of some pop singer’s vocal chords, and you come to me and you want to parse out some relationship bullshit? I’m sorry, but go fuck yourself. I’m too old for that shit.”

Skidrina lifted her skirt and every palm tree in a mile radius shook like pom-poms. She had a librarian’s gash, tight-lipped and mousy. All hair had been removed. When she slid her metal middle finger into it, Fabulo could have sworn it gasped. Juices bubbled out. Her eyes rolled up in her head, and he got the feeling that if he didn’t get in there soon, he wouldn’t even be needed.

“My abs belong to me. Your hands . . . They are yours.”
“Are they? Why? We come into this world with nothing except our bodies, and we act like that’s nothing at all. We shit on the very meat we’re made of, consuming poisons while we pursue things to pile up around us. What right do we have to treat our abs, our hands this way? Just because they’re attached to us?”

A few years ago, he had discovered a character pretending to be him. This Fabulo wannabe had carved himself a set of foam abs. It was heresy. Fabulo had found the man, chased him down, and tore those foam abs from him. Fabulo burned them in the street. Now, Fabulo wished he had kept them. They would have made better replacements than a can lid and a dead dog’s head.

Her pet coatimundi sprawled out in her lap luxuriously. What made this animal special was not that it had been smuggled out of the Amazon, making it rare and exotic, nor was it its loyalty and love of its owner, or its general adorableness, with its white ringed tail and long sniffing snout. No, what made this animal special was that it was a necromancer.
Skidrina stroked the coati’s fur. “Do your thing, sweetie."

Under flashing purple spotlights, bodiless body parts frolicked. Birdcages hung from the ceiling on black chains. Inside them, pointer fingers penetrated ears, engaging in waxy, makeshift coitus. The term “fingerbang” crossed Fabulo’s mind. On red velvet couches, biceps sidled up to pinky toes. On tables, penises flagellated kneecaps. Full feet led full hands around on chains.

This was it. This was the moment he had been waiting for. Was it what he really wanted? Was he ready to give up his ab-ness? Fuck yes. He had done his time, and now he was going to become what he was meant to be—the most gorgeous ass cheek the world had ever seen.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Fabulo asked.
“It’s just a few donuts,” his stomach replied.
Fabulo couldn’t even see his legs past his distended stomach. He could only imagine the cellulite dripping from his thighs. This was how people became couch-bound, he realized. He could sit there and eat donuts until he exploded and then they would have to knock down a wall to get his bloated corpse out.

Once again, Fabulo stood in the donut shop at three in the morning, the one on Vine in Hollywood, across the street from a bunch of screaming homeless people. This was the one donut joint where he felt like someone with what looked like a giant alligator made out of chewed-up bubblegum sticking out of his torso would almost fit in.