Vernon God Little

'On your stomach,' says Goosens. 'Spread your legs.'

'Ta-t-t-t, TA-TA-TA.' Musical hellfire accompanies the touch of two fingers on my back. They trace a line down my body, then turn into hands, and grab both cheeks of my ass.

'Relax,' he whispers, spreading my cheeks. 'Does this make you think of Taylor?'

'TA-TA-TA, TA-T-T-T!'

'Or – something else?' His breathing quickens with the march of his fingers, they trace a tightening circle around the rim of my hole. A line of violent cussing forms in my throat. The bail thought stops it.

'Doctor, this don't seem right,' I say. What a fuckhole, I swear. I should jam a table-leg through his fucken eye, make him grunt like a tied hog. Jean-Claude would do it. James Bond would do it with a fucken cocktail in his hand. Me, I just squeak like a brownie. He takes no fucken notice anyway. A cool finger invades me as the music explodes to a climax. I grunt like a tied hog.

'Al-righty, one for Jesus. Just relax, this next procedure won't hurt a bit – in fact, don't be embarrassed if you experience arousal.' He grabs a pair of steel salad tongs, adjusts his goggles, and lowers his face to my ass.

'I don't fucken think so,' I quiver, spinning upright. Cobwebs of spit fly from my mouth. Goosens recoils, forearms held up like a surgeon.

He slowly reaches for the towel on the bed, and wipes his middle finger. Huge gingery eyes stare through the goggles. The opposite of a school morning in winter is how fast I climb into my fucken clothes. I don't button my shirt, I don't tie my laces. I don't fucken look back.

'Think carefully, Vernon,' says Goosens. 'Think very carefully before jeopardizing your bail application.' He stops to sigh a moment, and shake his head. 'Remember there are only two kinds of people in your position: glorious, powerful boys, and prisoners.'

Music whips twisters behind me as I scramble out through the waiting room. Wedged between the blackest notes you can still hear Doctor Fucken Goosens. 'Okay – alrighty…'

I sit under a personal cloud in back of the jail van, like a sphinx, a sphinxter, to the beat of that rude orchestra music by Goosestep Holster. It does nothing to erase memories of the shrink, and his fucken ass-banditry. I try not to think what his report will say. I just watch the scenery pass by my window. Dead products dot the roadside on the way back to town: an abandoned shopping cart, a sofa skeleton. Under a tree sits a busted TV, empty of wacky antics. Pumpjacks poke dirty fingers into the landscape, but we drive past all of it, including the sky and the distance, ignorant of the fence wire that twangs a straight line to Mexico.

Mexico. Another coupon tacked onto the pile I'll redeem when I get some power in my fucken life. Look around this life and all you see is folks' coupons tacked everywhere, what they'll do if, what they'll do when. Warm anticipation for shit that ain't even going to happen.

'Kid,' says one of the guards, 'you ain't haulin your stalk back there, are ya?' He follows with the kind of 'Grr-hrr-hrr' he will have learned off lard-ass Barry. I swear these guys must share that one joke around, ole Barry must give fucken smut classes after work or something. Snatches of their talk filter back to me.

'Uh-huh, Vaine Gurie petitioned the county for a SWAT team.'

'Over the sheriff's head?'

'Uh-huh. Barry upgraded their in-surance same fuckin day.'

'He told you that?'

'Tuck says.'

'Tuck What's-his-name, at the morgue? What's he know about Barry's in-surance?'

'Tuck sells goddam in-surance. Dropped Amway to sell fuckin in-surance

.'

'No shit.'

I sense a learning: that much dumber people than you end up in charge. Look at the way things are. I'm no fucken genius or anything, but these spazzos are in charge of my every twitch. What I'm starting to think is maybe only the dumb are safe in this world, the ones who roam with the herd, without thinking about every little thing. But see me? I have to think about every little fucken thing.

*

As I sit, then lay, then pace, then sit again in my cell, waiting for my next court appearance, time, being an agent of Fate, slows way the fuck down. Thursday eats Wednesday, and Jesus' last breath drags ten days into the past, towing Nuckles's silence behind it, as if he was never even there, like the truth was my shadow alone. To stretch things even further, Mom calls to say Lally has been contracted to shoot another report from Martirio. It's typical of where things are at with Fate, slowing time down all over the place, calling the weirdest fucken people Cindy. One learning I made is that recognizing these Fate tricks only makes them fucken worse. Even as I pass on to you these amazing life insights, I curse you with making them fucken worse. Because once you know about them, you fucken wait for them to happen.