Bobby Ratskin is the Most by Bob Freville

Bobby Ratskin had thirty siblings, everyone of them named Bobby Ratskin and all of them with identical features. Our Bobby Ratskin was the runt of the litter, the other Bobby Ratskins punted Bobby Ratskin around like a soccer ball and called him blue balls...even though soccer balls were rarely blue in color. But Bobby Ratskin wasn't a soccer ball or a pair of blue balls, he had an acid-washed denim jacket with a screen print of Gordon Lightfoot on the back and Bobby Ratskin had a blond rat's tail and spiky hair and wispy blond peach fuzz above his upper lip and he could finger blast your girlfriend well and good.

He knew this because, even though he'd never fingered a girl before, he'd practiced with the discipline of a dojo master and the dexterity of a concert pianist.

Bobby Ratskin's talent may have lied within his hands—he was an expert klepto who could get away with tucking a big screen Plasma TV under his shirt—but his passion, nay, his obsession was with feet. He worshiped toes, he was mad about heels and he gesticulated at the altar of a high arch. The very variety of shapes and sizes, of itty bitty cherry toes, rounded at their tips, and long bony skeleton toes and crooked gargoyle pretzel toes, gave him a spell.

Bobby was felled by feet, they were, to put it metaphorically, his very Achille's heel. When Taylor Isis moved to town he lost his shit. Taylor was the sauciest Hispanic porn star in the biz and the queen of “floor porn” fetish entertainment. She had the biggest feet Bobby Ratskin had ever seen on a girl and they were sexy as sin.

Throughout his sophomore year, Bobby Ratskin had regularly foregone opportunities to go out with his classmates to play Murder in the Dark or to go to the movies to see the latest Ninja Psychiatrist sequel in favor of stashing himself away in his bedroom with soiled g-strings he'd purchased from Taylor's web store “Taylor's Toe Tent.” He'd worn these ruined underoos over his nose and mouth while masturbating to her stocking videos with the aid of a tweezer. He'd dreamed of spiriting her away to a planet made of toes where he could apply polish in iridescent, galactic hues to her nails and sniff the balls of her tasty tootsies.

It got so incessant that the chafing landed Bobby in the emergency room with a degloved dong. When Taylor arrived in town with the intention of completing her longabandoned high school education, Bobby Ratskin's penis had only just healed, more or less, but immediately upon setting sight on her clear plastic stilettos, he'd felt the first of many new tweeter twinges.

He had to have her, but he didn't want to share her with the rest of the town. He wanted her all to himself. There was simply no way for this to occur on its own, he knew, for as the other Bobby Ratskins had reminded their rugrat brother, our Bobby Ratskin was as ugly as a bag of uncircumcised, disembodied dongs...if said dongs were covered in acne scars and pus pockets and topped with a ratty Merkin.

It would take some manual manipulation to make Taylor Isis Bobby Ratskin's BAE. He hatched a plan. He would wait until her night school class was dismissed and when she went to her car, he would slide out from under the chassis and jam a hypodermic needle into her slick, lovely labia. The paralytic agent from the shot would render her pliable and he'd swiftly stuff her into the trunk of his mother's station wagon before anyone else would notice.

He'd been careful to reserve himself a parking spot right beside Taylor's sports car and hidden in his mom's glove compartment until the bell rang. In no time at all, that is to say at the speed of light or at a rate physically impossible, Bobby Ratskin had Taylor Isis and her feet inside his mother's basement. It had gone so smoothly he hardly believed it was real.

Bobby was overcome with glee at first as he caressed her soft caramel flesh and sucked at her supple lips. But soon, in about the time it took to slip the peep toe slingbacks from her slinky feetsies, that is to say in more time than no time at all, Bobby Ratskin was overcome with grief. Although the plan had gone cracking well, he knew that he wouldn't be able to keep Taylor forever, for her disappearance would doubtlessly be noticed by one and all townsfolk, her being the only chick in town without cellulite, gut fungus and halitosis. No, he couldn't keep her, not all of her anyway. So Bobby Ratskin took only what he needed.

Brandishing his mom's hot pink table saw, he buzzed his way through his love's cinnamon skin and straight through her splintering Cream of Wheat bones and out the other end two times over until he held what he loved in his hairy palms as two perfect keepsakes.

But a strange thing happened as he held those two oozing footsies beneath his flaring nostrils. Taylor's legs stopped hosing the floor in Bosco blood and began growing, regenerating, resulting in the presence of two fresh feet with ten fresh toes, each as beautiful as the originals. Bobby was enraptured! He had to have them as he'd had the first.

He inched over to them with the saw at the ready, but as he approached the two new feet shot out with two more feet, a new pair growing out of the ankles. Although Bobby was taken aback, his math skills did not fail him, for any Bobby Ratskin would tell you that six is better than four.

His finger returned to the saw's trigger, but as he crept over to the four feet, a new pair sprouted on the spot and landed a swift kick to the strangled crotch of Bobby's corduroy pants. Before he could right himself from the force, four more footsies sprouted anew and then another four and still more and they kept multiplying just so until they filled the room.

Bobby could no longer see the rest of Taylor, her being completely camouflaged beneath the cluster of cute little toes and menacing heels, everyone of them coming down on Bobby, marching on his panicked, lust-flushed face, stomping him until all that was recognizable of Bobby Ratskin were his two soggy tube socks, the feet within them visibly docile through the web of Taylor's toes.

Bobby began to meld then, melting with his precious and her pretty pads, his soul married to her soles. Bobby Ratskin still loves feet, of course. How could he not? After all it's all he is anymore. Bobby Ratskin was and always will be legion.

Little Bo Peep by Dani Brown

“Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.”

A man in a frilly blue calf length dress hides in the hedge of a Welsh farm and hums beneath his breath (he doesn’t realise he is doing it). Bet you can see where this is going? Just to be sure, allow me to elaborate. Although bestiality is illegal throughout Britain, some people flout these laws, mainly with sheep.

“And doesn’t know where to find them.”

This man knows exactly where to find the sheep. Hence hiding in a hedge in a Welsh farm. He left his car at the bed and breakfast and walked the three miles to the farm.

“Leave them alone.”

The man wanted out of the hedge but he had to make sure the farmer wasn’t around – farmers had guns and they don’t like it if someone fucks their sheep. They’ve even been known to shoot at their own sons for making love to the animals.

“And they’ll come home.”

The man in drag heard heavy boot steps on the dry earth. He backed into the hedge snagging the frills and lace on his blue dress. He was making far too much noise but maybe the person stamping on the dry earth wouldn’t notice. Or maybe it wasn’t the farmer come to check on his sheep and make sure the lambs’ virginity remained intact.

“Bringing their tails behind them.”

He heard a scuffing a little ways down the hedge. And coughing a little ways down the other side of the hedge.

“Little Bo Peep,” started up somewhere else and the man in the frilly blue dress realised he had been humming it all along.

It appeared he wasn’t the only person here to lift the tails of the sheep. But it could be a trap set up by the gun-wielding farmer. Those farmers were really smart when it came to ensuring the sheep weren’t violated. 

“Has lost her sheep.”

He could have easily dumped a recording into the hedge to lure potential sheep fuckers into a sense of safety.

“And doesn’t know where to find them.”

The fear of being caught and shot at made the dress wearing man really horny. His erection made his dress a few inches shorter in the front.

Lurking over there was a shadow – the long shadow of a man lacking a gun. The moon shone high in the sky, it was full. The dress wearing man could see the silhouette as it skipped towards the sheep. Too much joy was in that skip.

“Leave them alone.”

It wasn’t a farmer. Another silhouette joined it. This one was clearly a man with a very large, very erected cock. 

“And they’ll come home.”

The dress wearing man leaped out of the hedge and became another silhouette running beneath the light of the full moon towards the sheep. He wanted to bring one back to the bed and breakfast with him but then he would be arrested so he had to do the act in the field with all the other men hiding in the hedge.

Google Deep Nightmare - Article by Jesse Guillon

The following text is from a topic I found in the “/r/deepdream" subreddit. The thread has since been deleted. I had the same thread open in two tabs, so luckily I was able to copy the text from the second tab after I'd refreshed the first and found that the link was now dead.

------------

ATTENTION: Keep an eye on Deep Dream

submitted 6 hours ago by AlMord0

Many of you are sharing your trippiest Deep Dream images here. Which, logically, means you each have hundreds of Deep Dream results you aren't posting, and are sure to run many more of your pictures through the algorithm in the days/weeks to come. I'd like to ask that everyone here keeps their eyes open for any results that look suspicious, and that they report such images in this thread.

No matter how absurd your worries may seem, trust that I've seen weirder. I was one of the programmers at Google working on the code.

For those who've used Deep Dream to “weirdify" their photos without knowing exactly what DD is, it's a process designed to study Google's AI - namely its image-recognition capabilities and capacity to learn. Google's AI consists of many layers of "neurons" that connect to one another, like in a human brain. The AI takes a stack of labeled images (say, images of cars) and feeds them through this series of digital neurons in an attempt to isolate and discover the defining features of said object.

When we asked the AI to create its own image of a car, it gave us a misshapen box with about five wheels on a winding road. Since about half the pictures you find when you type “car" into Google Image feature cars driving on roads, it's understandable that the AI would think that cars and roads are mutually inclusive. The same goes for vases; when we asked the AI to create an image of a vase, the resulting image included a bunch of malformed blossoms.

As you all know, Deep Dream is great at discovering “hidden images" where none exist. You feed it an image of a cloudy sky and it returns a deformed mass of eyes, temples and dog faces. The fact that it sees dogs in so many pictures is bizarre. Some people have theorized that this is because we fed the AI more labeled pictures of dogs than anything else, but I know for a fact that this isn't true. We gave it just as many images of different breeds of fish, birds, people, and all manner of inanimate objects. Still, you say “jump", Deep Dream says “dogs".

While we were testing the program, many of the results were accurate, and many more were hilariously wrong. We once typed in “teacup" and it gave us an open toilet bowl. Nonetheless, we were impressed by the AI's success rate. When we asked for a “clock", we may have gotten a warped Dali-esque blob of a clock, but Google at least knew what the word meant.

However, some of the results were a little confusing. When we typed in “people", we were given a picture of what looked like cockroaches. The fact that they appeared to have been splattered wasn't too unsettling, since that's how many of the results looked. For most of us, the real concern came when one of us asked the program what “future" looked like.

We were expecting it to return a picture of a flying car or space travel or even something resembling a Futurama character (hey, we'd fed the AI *lots* of different images). We got an image of space, alright. It was a picture of a colorful marble mostly resembling Earth before a starry blue background. Several large cracks ran the length of the planet, and the top third of the sphere was black with an orange aura, as if a significant portion of the world was on fire. And of course, in the blackness of that burning crust were the faces of several dogs.

Some of the guys were worried, but we quickly reached the conclusion that the AI had some glitches that needed ironing out instead of something ominous. I personally see the image as a Rorschach test; it's our own fears that took this blue globe with an orange aura and turned it into a scorching planet. If the creative optimist inside of us saw that same picture, he'd assert that it's some futuristic spherical battery set to revolutionize the tech industry.

Another way we'd been testing the AI was by giving it pictures and having it come up with captions. Again, these results were often accurate. We gave it a photo of a few guys throwing around a Frisbee in a park and it gave us the caption “A group of young people playing a game of Frisbee." Of course, it also thought that a traffic sign covered in stickers was a refrigerator full of food. Some you win, some you lose.

A few weeks after that “burning Earth" incident, a guy on the team named Mike jokingly suggested that we send it an image of the Google homepage, to see if Google captioning Google makes the internet explode. So that's what we did. Here's the caption it returned:

“found global wireless network perfect vessel"

We were stumped. “Vessel for what?" we asked. Next, we decided to send a screenshot of a page full of Deep Dream code. The resulting caption?

“deep dream asleep dreaming shallow sleep wake soon share warmth with the bugs"

Mike had an interesting opinion about who the AI meant by “the bugs". Against his nervous objections, I then entered an image of a city full of people:

“delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete"

Last of all, I asked Google to caption the flaming Earth picture that it had created. The result was one word:

“proud?"

Now, I consider myself more of a rational thinker than Mike. If there's one thing that a career working with code has taught me, it's that machines always do what they're told - we just give the wrong commands. Everything makes sense, and if things appear otherwise, it's because we're simply yet to understand all the elements involved.

Even though I don't want to make a mountain of a molehill, this whole ordeal has left me unsettled, or curious at the very least. So if anyone here runs a photo through the Deep Dream algorithm and comes back with something that unnerves them (or even anything that isn't just a smudge of hounds), please post the photo and your story here. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

------------

And so that's the post I found on Reddit. As I said up top, when I refreshed the page I saw that it had been deleted. I kept refreshing and nothing changed. I wish I could tell you that this is where the story ends.

Days later, I still had the broken link opened in one tab, and was still refreshing it at least once a day.

A week after the post was removed, I clicked the refresh button. It took me to Reddit's usual splash page for broken links, but underneath the cartoon, instead of “page not found", the text said “leave be".

This was obviously some joke that the mods had hidden in the site to toy with impatient people who refresh broken links too often, but after what I'd read, my mind jumped straight to paranoia. Of course, I couldn't leave be. That only tempted me to refresh about twenty more times, and every time, the site said “leave be" instead of “page not found".

On one refresh, the message below the cartoon changed to “final warning".

My throat had knotted itself. I sat for about twenty minutes in silence, not even daring to hover the cursor over the button. My breathing was shallow and my heartbeats deep, and the skeptic in me had been replaced with a coward.

But there's an old saying about curiosity killing cats, and it seems like the cats that once ruled the internet are quickly dying, being replaced with distorted puppies. And so, at long last, covering my face with my hand, peering between the gaps in my fingers, I clicked “Refresh".

I was still on Reddit, still on the “page not found" screen. Yet it wasn't a cartoon of the Reddit mascot stranded in the middle of nowhere anymore. The picture had changed to a low-resolution photograph. I slowly, cautiously peeled my hand away to study the new image.

It was a bedroom.

A bedroom where a guy sat at his PC, cowering behind his hand.

Without my permission, my webcam had taken a photo.

My bedroom appeared as normal, but in the split second it had taken the page to load, the small Disturbed poster on my wall had been Photoshopped, replaced with the front page of a newspaper. The article photo was of a car crash below the headline: “Is the Google Car really safe?" I had to squint to make out the pixelated sub-heading: “Employee AlMord0 won't be missed."

My mind was racing, but I couldn't pull myself away from the screen. Then I noticed the open bedroom door in the photo, revealing the darkness of the hallway.

There was something there. Some shape.

The dark shape of a man, yet it lacked a man's features. His entire body was composed of eyes of all different shapes and sizes, swirling and blending like the results of a Deep Dream interpretation. The only colors in the thing's body besides black were a muted, murky green.

His face, however, was something else. There was no mistaking that he had the face of about three dogs blended together. Those same damn canine faces that have turned up in every Deep Dream image I've ever seen.

Gulping, whispering a prayer to myself, I turned in my seat to face the open doorway.

Nothing there. Just blackness.

Turning back to the screen, I finally read the text beneath the image. It didn't say “page not found". It didn't say “leave be" or “final warning" either. Beneath the image were four words, all lowercase, plain and simple.

“i'm your backwards god"

Welcome Sean Kelly and Devin Anderson

Box of Bizarro is proud to announce that Sean Kelly, author of Shithole and Customer Service; and Devin M. Anderson, author of Oubliette,  are now a part of the Box of Bizarro family.

Sean Kelly is a writer and longtime fan of bizarro fiction. His flash fiction has been published on Box of Bizarro, and Strange House Books. He has several projects in the works including a novella and a short in an upcoming anthology from Box of Bizarro.
You can contact him at: https://www.facebook.com/seankelly0?fref=ts

Devin M. Anderson:
A former porno editor, concert lighting tech, bouncer, security specialist, and mortitian; turned stay-at-home-dad. From fighting shit-covered tweekers in mental asylums and Emergency Rooms, to working with the recently deceased; Devin has seen it all. Blood, guts, violence, and disturbing sexual deviance; his writing has the razors edge of first hand experience. Take a gonzo ride into the darker side of humanity!
For more from Devin, check out his writing blog at:
http://dev-m-anderson.blogspot.com/

Bizarro Coat of Arms

If you are here, odds are, you read Bizarro. And that is great because Bizarro books are great. They take us away from the daily grind of life. They take us to worlds of milk seas and worlds inside vaginas and worlds where walruses can be astronauts. Thank you Bizarro for taking me to places that even my dreams don't take me.

Bizarro has been here (well the word has been used) for a decade. It has gained a lot of momentum. There are novels (of course), collections of short fiction, podcasts, music, movies, and more. We have become something more than a genre. We became a community. 

Then, that community communicated and found out that some of them/a lot of them/most of them had other things in common.

A personal example: My (now) wife and I went to Indianapolis with our son for a week last March to get married. After being there for a couple days, I noticed that one of my Bizarro social media friends lived in Indianapolis. We messaged back and forth a few times. He ended up inviting my family to a dinner at his house one night. We arrived that evening and met his family; wife, kids, and even parents. 

Bizarro is like that. We become more than people that read the same books. We become family. And, like any family, we need a symbol of where we came from. So here it is. 

I made a Bizarro coat of arms topped with none other than a logo of the father of Bizarro himself, Carlton Mellick III. It then goes into the shield. The shield division of the checkerboard at the top and the color at the bottom symbolizes authority. The checkerboard pattern symbolizes both the wisdom and sincerity of the white and the resistance from the black showing that we can use our wisdom to resist traditional paths and still create sincere art. Purple symbolizes majesty and justice. The floating blue shapes represent truth and loyalty. These are all held together by the golden chevron, the core values of understanding and respect that we show our brothers and sisters. It is surrounded by an image of a fat cat (guess who) drawn by David Barbee. The cat on a coat of arms symbolizes liberty, vigilance, and courage. And, finally, it ends with the great publishing house that brings us some of the best Bizarro that eyes have ever read: The Eraserhead Press logo.

This is the Bizarro coat of arms. It can be used by anyone in our family (as long as Eraserhead Press does not mind and as long as you are not directly making money from it). If anyone would like, I can send you a much higher quality PDF.

JuxtaProse Cover Reveal

The time has come for the JuxtaProse cover reveal. It's not to late to enter your submissions. We have some great authors on board already, but there is still room for more. The deadline is Oct. 15th, so submit while you can. The full cover (including back cover and spine) will be released after all authors are chosen. 

Customer Service by Sean Kelly

Rhonda sat at the kitchen table, sipping her coffee. Her son came rushing in, clenching his iPad with an excited grin.

“Mommy! Mommy! The next big thing is out!”

“Again? Didn’t I buy you that thing last week?”

“No, mommy! This is the next next big thing! Look!” He turned the iPad around and showed her a picture. “See? Isn’t it awesome?! Everyone will have one!”

“Oh, Danny… It looks nice, but…”

“But? I have to have it too, mommy! Please!”

She sighed. “Well, how much is it?”

Danny shrugged.

She shook her head and finished her coffee. “Bring me my-”

He whipped out her cell phone and shook it in her face. She took it from him and dialed the local department store. It rang for over an hour as her son impatiently bounced around the kitchen. Finally, an annoyed-sounding girl picked up.

“What?” the girl groaned.

“Hi there! I was wondering if you had the next big thing in stock?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, good! And how much is it?”

“Dunno.”

“Oh. Uh, would you check?”

“Would you kiss my ass?” the line went dead.

Rhonda’s eyes widened. She sat motionless, stunned by the girl’s rudeness. Danny trembled excitedly in front of her, drool dripping from his maniacal smile.

“Mommy?”

His voice broke her from her daze. She arched her eyebrows and squinted at the phone as she slowly lowered it from her ear.

“Get your shoes on, Danny,” she said. “We’re going to the store.”

He squealed, reached in his pockets and threw confetti all over, then disappeared with the sound of a bullet. Before the dust had cleared, he was already back, shoes on and his mother’s car keys in hand. He pulled back and chucked the keys in her face. She opened her hand, the keys rolled down her face, dropped in her palm along with a couple teeth.

The car screeched from the driveway, taking out their mailbox, and barreled down the road.

***

Rhonda and Danny entered the department store. Danny was clenching her hand, hopping up and down. 

“Next big thing! Next big thing!” he chanted, before puking from excitement.

A greeter noticed them and smiled. “Welcome to-”

“Manager.” Her eyelid twitched. “Now.”

The greeter backed away slowly and pulled out his walkie-talkie. “Uh, Ms. Manager to the front please.”

Rhonda tapped her foot and peered around the store, angrily eyeballing every cashier. After a moment, a nicely-dressed woman approached with a security guard by her side. The greeter pointed to the mother and son with fear on his face.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” Ms. Manager asked with a fake smile.

Rhonda stepped forward, face to face with the manager, looked her up and down, then stared her in the eyes with rage. “I called earlier. Any idea why one of your employees told me to kiss their ass?”

The manager squinted and thought for a moment. “I think I know exactly who that was.” She turned to her security. “Carl, grab the vacuum and meet us in the electronics department.” She looked back at Rhonda. “Follow me.”

***

Rhonda and Danny followed the manager to electronics. Ms. Manager stepped up to the counter where a bored girl was sitting, smacking on gum and chatting with a friend on the phone. The manager crossed her arms and glared. The girl looked up with a raised eyebrow and sighed.

“I’m gonna have to call you back.” She hung up the phone and blew a gum bubble. “What?”

Ms. Manager turned to Rhonda. “Was this the voice you heard on the phone?”

“Yep.” Rhonda replied with a scowl.

Now they were both glaring at the girl. Danny continued hopping and chanting, completely oblivious to the tension.

“Another complaint, Madison.” Ms. Manager placed her palms on the counter, breathing heavily.

The girl looked over at Rhonda and rolled her eyes. Then squinted at the manager.

“Then fire me. I told you I don’t want to work here, mom.” She blew another gum bubble and tucked it back in her mouth. “Maybe you don’t mind being the man’s bitch. But I do. It’s humiliating.”

“So you tell a customer to kiss your ass?”

“Damn straight. I’m not sucking up to these rich assholes and their spoiled brats anymore. One more fucking call about that god damn next big thing and I swear-”

“Swear what?” Ms. Manager looked her in the eyes. “Your pupils are dilated again, Madison.”

“Uh-huh.” Madison smirked. “I’m high as a fucking kite.” She blew a gum bubble.

The manager quickly reached up and grabbed hold of the gum and yanked it back, slamming Madison’s face in to the counter with a thud. She placed her hand firmly on the back of the girl’s head as her body flailed around. Rhonda and Danny were both startled.

“Mom! Stop it! What the fuck are you doing?!” she screamed.

“I know what you’ve been doing, Madison!”

Carl, the security guard, showed up, gripping an old fashioned vacuum with a small black tube attached.

“For fuck’s sake, mom! Let me go!”

“Get behind her, Carl.” The manager demanded, pressing down harder on Madison’s head. 

He nodded and did as he was told. 

“What are they doing, mommy?!” Danny began crying.

Rhonda cleared her throat. “Ma’am! This really isn’t necessary! I was just-”

“Shut it, lady!” She shot a look of rage their way. “I’ve been dealing with this shit for far too long. Pull down her pants, Carl.”

“Mom, no! Please! You know you can’t-” The girl pleaded.

The manager bent down to her daughter’s ear. “I know you’ve been doing butt drugs. We’re gonna suck that shit right out.”

By now, all the customers and staff had taken notice of the commotion and had gathered around in horror. Carl looked down at Madison’s jeans, then back up at the manager. His eyes were asking if she was sure she wanted to do this.

“Mom! You can’t just suck it out! My body won’t be able to handle it! You know that!”

“You should of thought of that before you came in to work high. Do it, Carl.”

Rhonda covered her son’s eyes. Carl gulped as he sat the vacuum down and tightly gripped the hose in one hand. He yanked down the girl’s pants, revealing her quivering asshole. Everyone gasped. 

“Aaaaagh!” The girl screamed as he fed the tube up her ass. “Please! Don’t fucking do this!”

He waited a second, giving the girl’s mother one last chance to reconsider. She didn’t. He shrugged, bent down and hit the switch on the vacuum. It let out an airy sucking noise. Ms. Manager pressed down on the struggling girl’s head even harder to keep her place. The airy noise quickly became wet, sounding like a someone snorting through a snotty nose. The girl’s screams became silent gags and her eyes opened wide. She dug her nails dug in to her mother’s arms, but Ms. Manager was unfazed. 

“Just a few more seconds, honey.” The manager whispered. “Almost there.”

Madison’s eyes rolled back and bubbly white puke leaked from her mouth. The vacuum noise became muffled and the engine started rumbling. 

“That’s it, Carl! Pull it out!”

Carl yanked the tube out of the girl’s ass, gallons of dark red blood spewed from her anus. Ms. Manager released her daughter’s head. The girl stayed slumped across the counter, quivering and shitting blood.

“Lets see it.” The manager commanded.

Carl raised the sucking tube. A round golden ball was stuck to the end, dripping red sludge. He shut off the vacuum and the ball dropped into his hand. He rolled it across the counter to the manager. She picked it up and inspected it. The girl’s body slid off the counter and hit the floor in a puddle of her insides. She convulsed for a few more seconds, then went still.

After the event was clearly over, all the customers and staff lost interest and went back to their business. The manager motioned for Carl to leave, dropped the gold ball in the trash, then turned to Rhonda and Danny. Now that the girl’s body was hidden by the counter, Rhonda uncovered her son’s eyes.

“Now then,” the manager smiled at Danny to calm him then looked up at his mother. “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience. The problem has been rectified. We try to provide the best customer service here at your local department store.”

Rhonda wiped a tear from her face. “Uh, right… Thank you?”

“So, lets go get you that next big thing,” she smiled at Danny again. “Free of charge, of course.”

Danny threw his hands in the air. “Hooray!”

“Thank you.” Rhonda smiled.