Blow Up the Outside World Read Online Free Page A

Sarah said, standing up and walking down the aisle. The man jumped up and grabbed her shoulder.
    “Don’t go!”
    “Get the fuck off me!”
    The man released his grip and leaned in close to Sarah’s ear. “Please, I didn’t mean to scare you. I can still smell the pancakes, you know.”
    “Fuck off or I swear to god I’m going to scream.”
    “Listen,” the man said. “How about I pay you some money now and I go take you to my boss. He’ll pay you more. I promise.”
    “Your boss? What kind of weird set-up is this?”
    “No set-up. My boss will be quite interested in you.”
    Sarah looked at the man’s face which was now filled with complete sincerity. After thinking about it, the man’s behavior didn’t really surprise her. Those businessmen were usually the freakiest and in many cases, they paid the most. If this guy said his boss was willing to play and pay, it might turn out good for Sarah.
    She said, “Okay, fine. But are you sure your boss is going to like me? He didn’t even see me.”
    “Oh, he’ll like you,” the man said. “Mr. Valdrott will like you just fine.”
     
    II. Purity & Catnip
    The first man was floating naked in a human-shaped aquarium that covered his body completely from the neck down. The clear, corrosive chemicals filling this aquarium were already at work, but it would be a long, long process judging by the rate of his flesh's dissolution. His screaming was cut off by an apparatus surgically attached to his throat and countless raw wires dug deep into his brain, seeing if it would turn to mush long before his body did.
    Locked in chains hanging like curtains from behind their nude bodies, a second man was fused to a woman by a large metal helmet covering both their faces. The shackles on their legs gave them a bit of free movement and they jerked and pulled away from each other when shocked by mild electrical currents sent through the flowing chains, prodding them into performing a strange mechanical dance. Their bare feet slapped the cold metal floor like the legs of a clockwork spider. This spastic movement caused the man and woman to tear at their faces where the Valdrott had welded them, then secured and bolted the metal helmet in place to hold their fused flesh together.
     The gas was the worst of all. They took groups of humans and locked them in a room made of gelatinous slop. It only took seconds for one man’s eyes to roll back in his head. He would then turn and violate a twitching woman until she expired. Another man was busy clawing out his own eyeball and slurping it down like an oyster freshly shucked from a shell. The Valdrott sat crowded around the cage, ingesting catnip with strange glowing instruments, and watched this horror show as if it were fine theatre.
               
    III. Death Rides the Deuce
    Potter and Oswald walk down 42nd street, both of them digging in their pockets for loose change so they could take in a movie. Should they see The Man with Two Heads or Nam’s Angels? They can’t decide.
    Oswald says, “How about Django?”
    “I saw it already,” Potter says. He takes a dollar out of his pocket and also a cigarette which he lights quickly.
    “I thought you quit,” Oswald says. Potter doesn’t answer him but instead drops the cigarette on the sidewalk.
    Potter points to a theatre. “Let’s go in here. This is the one.”
    They walk in and buy tickets to a triple feature of movies they’ve never heard of: a handful of Italian films that look bloody and incoherent.
    Oswald and Potter buy popcorn and candy. They walk into the bathroom. Oswald enters a stall while Potter waits by the sink. He washes his hands three times and looks at in the mirror. “Sometimes I just feel like gutter trash,” he says to his reflection.
    Then Oswald walks out holding a mess of electrical wiring, metal, multi-colored glass shards, and bits of biomechanical jetsam all fused together by a sticky substance that was not glue. He exits the bathroom