I have spent years tracking down Antoine Melcher. The Melch, as he's known in the underground circles. We thought he was a rumor. A legend invented by snowballing whispers. A myth.

But here, this warm Friday, I sit across from him in the dingy light of an old diner, staring into the fluorescent light-reflecting puddles collected at the bottoms of his rheumy eyes. Each knuckle is the size of a ping pong ball, and when he holds his coffee mug between his wrists to slurp a mouthful, his fingers curl out in every direction like tree roots. I've tried to tuck my disgust for the elderly aside for just this meeting, but it's harder than I thought. What even are those fuzz patches? What even?

"I just want to know," I manage to say while choking back my gorge and looking down into my own cup of coffee. Rows of fluorescent tubes shine in the ripples of the opaque brown pool just as they do in his eye juices. He waits for me to finish, but more out of reluctance to gather the strength to speak rather than patience.

"I just want to know if it's true."

He doesn't move. The awkward silence makes me fidget. What is wrong with old people? Do they understand only their own suffering? Silently planning my suicide before the age of 40, I reach for my cup then pull away, imagining the dusty taste of his eyes in my mouth. He takes a long, piercing wheeze of a breath and, with concentration and fumbling claws, curls up a corner of his coat sleeve.

I lean to peer, terrified at what fresh hell of unfortunate skin saggage and fuzz patches lay up there. But what I see, what I see is described so clearly in all the myths passed down about The Melch, myths that have been as inspiring as they have been impossible: dozens, hundreds of temporary tattoos piled atop each other so thickly that the layer is practically another skin. The individual images of tattoos are lost in superimposition, but I swear I see at least one zebra on the underside of his wrist, lounging on a chair or perhaps a folded piece of gum meant to look like a chair, sipping from a rainbow glass.

"Yipes," I whisper.

"One for every pack," he says wetly. The first words he has spoken to me. A bit rude, really. I did pay for the slice of pie he gummed one mouthful of before pushing aside.

He then spends nearly five minutes trying to fish something out of his coat pocket. I finally reach across the table to try and help, but he coughs directly onto my hand. I draw it back in disgust, and when I look, it is splattered in rainbow specks of spittle. I immediately wipe it off on my lap but the rainbow is soaked into my skin.

"You have been marked," he tells me, having finally gotten the item out of his pocket. With much embarrassing effort he grabs both of my hands and presses it into my palms. God, his skin is like lukewarm paper. He smiles at me now, his lips and toothless gums stained a deep coffee brown from the decades of the mixing of food coloring, and I look down at the pack of Fruit Stripe gum I hold in my rainbow-mottled hands.

When I look up he has gone. That old magic bastard! I think, before I realize I had been having an episode brought on by extreme terror-disgust and had been sitting there for several minutes staring at the gum.

I turn to look out the window behind me and catch just a moment's glimpse of his coat disappearing down the street. He and the back of his rainbow-colored Rascal to me and his face to the wind.

A Beach Day Adventure Drawn with My Eyes Closed

Arg! said the crab. He was so surprised his legs flew off. My inner meats are missing, but still I'll keep doing whatever it was I was doing here!

Hey, you're Alec Baldwin, said the crab. Why are you so fat? Alex Baldwin asked the crab. The crab stared blankly at Alec Baldwin's club foot.

Alec Baldwin became enormous and threw his ear.

Then crab and Alec Baldwin, who for no reason became the Penguin and broke in half at the hips, sailed away to live somewhere more temperate. The crab threw his legs overboard and never heard from them again.

You got a case of the hungries and you waitin' in my welfare line

5 cups dandelion flour
1 stick (1/2 cup) bat butter
2 quarts soymond milk
2 cups arthurberries
1 tsp baking cocaine
2,000 spider eggs
1 bag cheese curls
10 tears of pure sadness

Heat oven to 375° Kelvin. Throw dry ingredients into a giant bowl. Scoop into smaller glass bowl. Stick under bed. Whisk eggs, milk, butter, berries, tears, and a handful of water from the toilet tank (or the bowl, no one is judging here) until your wrist begins to bleed. Squeeze one drop of wrist blood into the batter. Throw some pepper or whatever the fuck coriander is on top. Eat the cheese curls. Get the bowl out from under your bed. Call your dad. Hang up before he answers. Put the bowl in the oven and close your blinds so you can watch the Disney channel until you realize you didn't mix in the wet part of the ingredients. Pour both bowls into an old hupcap and swirl around until dry mix is reasonably moistened. Sneeze. Bake with the oven door open for 100 minutes or until you begin to feel drowsy.

fwum my home to yours ♥

K. Lee Ing.

Books are 99.99% filler

“And so we beat off, bones against the current, born black seedfully into the past.” – F. Scott Snitzgerald

It's no surprise that that line is the only thing literally any human remembers from the novel The Childish Gambino. It's the very last sentence of the entire book and therefore the only one that matters. Last lines are the only parts of novels that people ever even need to read. The rest of the book is a bunch of B.S., excuse my language! 

So to give people what they want, and for that reason and that reason alone, here are the last lines of my novels that remain unwritten except for the most important sentence of all. 

• “I’ll never forget him,” Dawn sighs, fat tears surging hotly from her eyes, “mostly because of the stains he left behind.”
• And love, well—that’s the greatest antiseptic of all.
• Quartz turned to look and there stood her manful hero, his chest gouged with bleeding leech wounds but his arrogant smile shining, triumphant against the exploding galaxy behind him.
• He didnt dream of commas apostrophes or hyphens anymore and that was dont you think the greatest and most confusing or least able to understand gift of all.
• “If it weren’t for your face grease, those rescue crews never would have found us,” she said with a smile jagging her scarred cheek skin, and she slammed the igloo door in his face forever.
• In time the cemetery stone grew worn from the cold rains and only I, I never forgot the heroes who gave their lives to assure that all could come on and slam, and be welcomed, welcomed to the space jam.
• “By John Travolta’s maidenhead!”
• And now that we are at the end, you’ll notice this sentence has the only letter “u” in this entire book; pretty clever, right, asshole?
• Together their jowls slapped into the morning, each moist smaksmak ringing like lovers’ warmly cooed words in their ears.
• Did any of us truly appreciate Link, or did we just use him to wake the windfish because it was easy, because he was there, because he was a stranger who remembered to trade for the boomerang before Eagle’s Tower—the questions we are damned to torture ourselves with, trapped in the hideous timeless fate of survivors.
• tl;dr
• My lady, my companion, my Wilhelmina, my sobbing monster ghost, my glorious shining gristle speck of a woman!
• I had fondled my way out of the breast maze but for nothing, all for nothing.
• And if only all the dinner guests chattering mindlessly and gaily had not been ignoring their grim host, they would have seen the slight, upturned crook at the left corner of his crusted gray mouth, a gesture that gloated silently, that noiselessly and cruelly shrieked, revenge is a dish best served with dandruff in food.
• Me nom eh DAVIDDDD!!
• The warm pressure of his hand around hers filled her so utterly with reassurance and joy that she didn’t feel she had to apologize for barfing in his mouth for the second time that night.
• He whispered creakily, sadly, to no one at all, “Dear Jesus, it’s in every single orifice.”
• They died together, not of old age, not of disease; some would say of pure joy, others would say it was simply their time, but if you ask this old-timer, and I guess you will because you’re the one reading my book!, it was for the purest and simplest and oldest reason of all: their constant fucking.
• Thorsson’s bold, mighty baritone miraculously rang above the din of blood-screams and entrail-rippings of the battle: HOLD FAST, MEN, AND DON'T STOP UNTIL YOU’VE BITTEN THE BEAST’S COLON IN HALF!

L@@@@@k-->> CELEBRITU REATOUCHING

FOR HIRE - FOR HIRE - FOR HIRE!!!

HEY LADIES, why are you alone? No, not because you're uninteresting. And it's not your total inability to empathize with any other human being. I'll tell you. No, it's not your crippling selfishness, either--stop naming things already and I'll tell you why, okay? It's those unflattering pictures of you. Your uneven skin tone, your crooked and stained teeth, your stunted eyelashes: what man would possibly want you?

Listen up, and listen good: The only way to find a man is to trick him by seeming attractive in photographs.

Now that I've broken you down, ARE YOU READY TO STOP BEING ALONE AND FIND THAT DREAM BRO RIGHT NOW?? Open up that slightly misshapen, too-small ear of yours and hear this: I am hiring out my amazing photoshop skills to help YOU trap any man you want. Did I say trap? I meant drug. No, trap is right. Trap him with a sexy picture retouched by -->ME<-- personally.

"BUT WAIT" I can hear you saying right now. Jesus, is that really your voice? No wonder you're alone, you shrieking, nitpicking harpy. "LET ME SEE AN EXAMPLE OF YOUR WORK."

Open up your beady eyes for this before and after. Believe it or not, this is sextastic sexslut KATY PERRY with no makeup, blotchy skin, and assorted skin folds:

Augh yuck, women in their natural state! Who wants to see that! Nature is terrible. Do you see a little of yourself in this? If you do, FUCKING LOOK AT THIS SHIT AND IMAGINE YOURSELF LOOKING THIS GLAMOROUS IF YOU ARE EVEN ABLE TO AND YOU PROBABLY AREN'T:

I'm going to let this image of a stunningly beautiful young lady speak for itself. "I'm beautiful and you're not--won't you be like me?" is what it said. Literally. To me only, though. If you want to look this great and nab a hot cup of dood for yourself, contact me with the coupon code "UGLYFUCK" and I will give you a 5 percent discount on a retouching. I look forward to putting you on your way to true love by staring at your assorted weird skin tabs for hours on end.

Remember: "Catfishing" is just another way to say "I love you."

No explanation needed

\

Animal products

Animal fashion parade! Animal fashion parade! Or, as the French say, le baisage de animaux!

vicuña scarfbeavie jean
mole time
bat warmerDid you know that armadillos can carry leprosy? 

The Soulcry of Dejection

Another rejection letter.

The handfeel of the creased envelope is light, inside unmistakably a single watermarked sheet informing me politely that the publisher is looking to head in another direction. A direction away from me. Me and my words. A deep sigh emanates from the sick pressure that weights my stomach.

Will no one hear my poetry, I softly wonder. Mindlessly I unwedge with my tongue moist granules of gristle embedded in the valleys of molars. Sticky pork reminders of my least meal. A wave of dejection crests and curls over my heart and entombs my core in a torpidly throbbing sea of ache.

With a thick fingernail I scratch at a bunched corner of the manuscript. My eyes idly glide over my shining words jet-inked on Ultra Bright White pages.

Yes, my words. They are my words. I know I am good enough. I have a blog.

The way I know I am crying is by the shaking of my shoulders. Seismic vibrations of ultimate sadness. Hot numb tears splash cruelly onto my pages, soaking and obscuring peripheral and temerity. I remembered a story my uncle once told me.

“Did you know that earthquakes are caused by God laughing?” he told me once on a lazy, sticky summer Wednesday. His accent was alfalfa-sweet. Bright and sharp.

When I was so young I was afraid to meet his eyes for his appearance frightened me. I loved to spend time with him to hear his stories about the war, almost tasting the smells of army-rationed beef and sweat and cigar smoke and man-farts in his bunker, but the streaky pale scars etched across his face from a hominy threshing accident made me feel ill at ease. I scanned the ink line of grackles perched across the top of our gnarled and rusted chain link fence.

“But earthquakes cause ever so much death and destruction” was my precocious reply as I dug my naked, callused toes into the dusty Alabaman earth.

He leaned in close and even as I stood by my oaken desk as an adult, 24 years later, I could still sense the thick musk of his wintergreen Skoal and horse-smelling sweat bristling on the golden tips of my nostril hairs. “That’s why He laughs,” he wheezed through dusky lips.

Across the stack of manuscripts my arm jerked like a dumb pendulum, scattering them all over the room. Askew white islands of complex genius winking up from the dark ocean of cherry floorboards. When my sobs took me again I dropped hellward.

I seized a manuscript and flapped it tauntingly to the heavens. I gurgled as loud as I could dare: “How will the wretched human race hear about your adventures now, Professor Tinker F. Beanbags?!”

I hurled it against the bone-colored drywall. What would the Professor say?

Bleep blop, he would intone with his interminable robot logic.

Would the Professor even understand tears? Would he understand what it is like in the human heart when God laughs?

In the ceiling fan’s wind the pages around me flap like bony grackle wings. Flish-swish. Flish-swish. And the grumbling of my stomach as it yearned for more pork rolled across my apartment like sad Southern thunder over my uncle’s grave.

perchance one day, professor...

Fighting the power, one W**t-a-B****r at a time

The system fails everyone. You’re not special. You can read about it flippantly, like you're doing to these words right now, without bothering to fully let the comprehension of your utter insignificance soak through you. Maybe the sheer faceless mass of the collective machine of human institutions can only be felt personally as your tiny self is ground through it, your nuances whipped into a thick homogeneity and ignored, condescended to, and marketed to. Free will exists only as an idea to be exploited. Are you beginning to understand now? Are you angry? Do you want to beat back against this ingrained impotence and flail your fists against the invisible, dehumanizing structures of governance that we’ve somehow accepted without even realizing their stunningly insulting contradictions to basic human dignity? Well, you can do something. Listen carefully if you even want to dream of recovering the self-worth that every human, as a sentient intelligent cultural being, deserves from the moment of birth to the last gasp of living breath. Now: get out your stationery of justice and write a letter to the Whataburger on Highway 518 in Pearland, Texas, demanding they refund me my $4.55—which doesn’t even include sales tax!—for my undercooked three-pack of chicken tenders. They would not give me my money back over the phone because I had “already eaten them” (—actual disgusting quote from weekend day manager Tyffani, who would not give me a last name despite my repeated screeching demands). Stand with me, righteous in the cold face of injustice, and reclaim your agency. Reclaim your humanity. Reclaim everything that you've been deprived of without your knowledge or permission. You deserve this.