Dog Oil Press

DOP #44 - Parakeets

Parakeets
by Ben Ellentuck

boy does that Harry like them parakeets lemme tell you. How many parakeets that boy got to keep. I mean how many goddamn parakeets that boy got to keep. I mean cause he got hisself too many parakeets. I mean that boy got hisself jus too many parakeets. Them birds be squawkin all night long I mean them birds them parakeets them birds all be squawkin too goddamn much. I mean what that boy be feedin them birds. Thats what I be wonderin. Cause them birds them parakeets got somethin wron I mean somethin wron in they heads. Somethin got to be wron in they heads cause they be squawkin an I don mean jus 2 parakeets or 3 parakeets or a couple a parakeets I mean all them goddamn parakeets be squawkin at 3 in the a.m. an I need my beauty sleep. I need me my goddamn beauty sleep but them birds keep wakin me up at 3 in the a.m. an how I supposed to get my beauty sleep if them stupid ass birds be squawkin on me at 3 in the a.m. Thats a question aint nobody know how to answer. Yall be livin in my house sleepin in my bed yall be sleepin in my bed yall be wonderin the same goddamn thing that same goddamn thing about why that boy got to be keepin hisself so many goddamn parakeets I mean why that boy keepin hisself company with them goddamn birds. An why them stupid ass birds got to be squawkin at 3 in the a.m. I mean what that boy be feedin them birds I mean that boy got hisself jus too many parakeets too many parakeets for anyones good. Boy does that Harry like them parakeets. Them birds be askin for a kick in they lil birdie ass. Them birds be askin for it. Them birds be squawkin at 3 in the a.m. lordy lordy. Sometimes I think a bad thought a bad thought pop in to my head jus pop into my head about them parakeets. An I jus push it away. But still them parakeets best watch they goddamn ass squawkin at 3 in the a.m. Them birds got no respect for no human decency no time specially not 3 in the a.m. Them birds aint got not respect. I tell you I don know how that Harry be sleepin at 3 in the a.m. with them goddamn parakeets squawkin they ass off I don know how that Harry be getting hisself any sleep. Them birdies be squawkin they lil birdie ass off at 3 in the a.m. make me mad as shit. Nothin to do now but sleep an I kick they lil birdie ass in the mornin. Nothin to do now but sleep an

Ben Ellentuck may or may not be illiterate.

DOP #43 - Hefner Losing Control

Hefner Losing Control
by Jackson Lawford

I wake up and fart immediately. It’s quick and loud, startling the blonde laying next to me. I can’t remember her name.

What’s that horrible smell?

Jackson Lawford is a writer living in South Florida. Jackson's fiction has been previously published in Six Sentences, Long Story Short, and Flashshots. Contact Jackson here.

DOP #42 - Advice on Dealing with Your Teenage Werewolf Son

Advice on Dealing with Your Teenage Werewolf Son
by Bruce Boston

Discourage him from running 
for Student Council 
on the Carnivore Ticket.

Avoid mentioning the moon.

Never tell him to 
"just throw it in the wash."

Raise his haircut allowance.

Praise him often for his 
striking resemblance to 
movie legend Lon Chaney, Jr.

At least once each week
sit down with him and
have a serious and sharing
human-to-werewolf talk.

Make him promise 
not to maim 
any more cheerleaders
than he has to.

Tell him you love him.

Keep a gun loaded
with a few silver bullets.
Just in case.

Bruce Boston is the author of 45 books and chapbooks. His most recent are the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams (Wildside, 2009) and the sf/speculative poetry collection, North Left of Earth (Sam's Dot, 2009). For more information, visit his website. 

DOP #41 - Cupidol the Wonder Drug

Cupidol the Wonder Drug
by Paddy Shannon
 
It worked like they said. It was instant. As her withered lips parted round a toothless grimace I stood dissolved in light. Her greasy hair flaked snowstorms of loveliness as I clasped her scrawny yellow neck in my hands and pressed her limp, tea-bag breasts hungrily against my heart. It was love alright, at twenty credits a pill, guaranteed eighty hours, the best pharma-coitical ever produced. And at that rate, we told each other, we could be happy forever and avoid the draft.

For, young or old, only singles went to fight. Society in its humane wisdom thought it easier that way. Loving couples should be exempt, people thought, so long as there was a test for love. And with the hypothalamus MRI multiscan, you couldn’t fake the test.

But they reckoned without Cupidol, and it brought me and Deirdre together. I answered her ad, we took the pill, and ascended to heaven, all within ten minutes. Her brainless chat, my baboon laugh, it was all poetry. My fascistic, drink-fuelled ramblings were symphonies to her, my rancid farts wild roses in honey. She picked her nose with the flair and artistry of Leonardo. Oh love, oh careless love, the best there ever was.

But then came the side-effects. I didn’t expect the jealousy to be so intense. When I murdered her best friend it was a simple misunderstanding. As she nailed my limbs to the bed and started to embalm me through the large colon, she kept hissing in my ear, with that adorably bad breath, that she would have me forever and that love would never die. With my teeth in her jugular, I swore to our immortality.

Cupidol killed more people than the war. Love conquers all.

Paddy Shannon lives in Lancaster and has spent a lifetime developing the attributes of a real writer, which is to say: broke, antisocial and unemployable. He has recently finished an MA in creative writing.

DOP #40 - Hierarchy

Hierarchy
by Amanda C. Davis

The first fingernail fell out at nine-thirty at night. I was drinking a Coke and watching my cat attack the rug when the nail slid free, just slipped right out of my smallest finger and left a smooth pink slot behind.

I picked it up. It was longer than I'd thought, a half-cylinder of translucent Bakelite with one white edge. I'd paid a lot for that French manicure.

I held it up to the cat. "You did this?"

She shrugged, as cats do.

"It's not funny."

Her attention remained fixed on a snag in the rug.

"Okay, okay," I said. "I'm sorry I got you declawed. Now break the curse."

The cat yawned. She leapt from the floor to the sofa to the staircase and vanished.

The cuticle of my ring finger went rubbery, and another nail drifted to the floor. Two down, eight to go. Or would it be eighteen? "I should have gotten the poodle," I muttered, collecting the nail. Dogs don't give you this kind of trouble. And things were really going to get hairy when it came time to have her spayed.

Amanda C. Davis is the least funny when she tries the hardest, and this bio proves it. You can find her here.

DOP #39 - Perseverance

Perseverance 
by Eric Hawthorn

The noose Bill hangs from the ceiling is of thick nylon, ideal for its durability and impossibly tight knots. While most would think that sufficient, Bill also has a 12 mm. surgical scalpel. He uses it to slice his wrists. Perched on his stepladder, Bill watches the skin of each wrist bloom apart, arteries draining. Then he steps off the ladder.  

The noose jerks tight, pinching a roll of skin below his jawbone. He chokes and convulses above the floor, feet twitching about. Bill’s hands start to claw at the noose, to pull the rope off, but right at that moment his body goes limp. It’s the barbiturates. He took them earlier. All 27 kick in at once, having been chaperoned through Bill’s body by 12 shots of Southern Comfort. Then a syringe clatters on the floor. The syringe just injected 10 cc's of bleach. Bill’s put a lot of thought into this.  

His slashed wrists spill blood across the garage floor. Blood gets on his car, which is still running, filling the sealed-up garage with carbon monoxide. Bill ingested rat poison, too, and there’s an assortment of plugged-in electrical appliances wrapped around his body. In case the rope breaks, a filled bathtub is positioned below him, so that if he and his electrical appliances fall — ZAP!  

This is the most thorough suicide ever.

No doubt the Mexican street gang notices this thoroughness when they march into the garage. The Mexican street gang is here to finish him off — to make sure he isn’t just dead, but dead — except when they enter the garage with their .45s and TEC-9s, the carbon monoxide drops them before they can fire more than one shot, that one shot severing the rope just below the rafter and releasing Bill. 

All the toasters and desk lamps tied around Bill’s body unplug themselves as he falls, precluding any sort of electrical death. The carbon monoxide quickly flees the garage and the chemicals in his bloodstream seep from his wrists into the splashing bathtub water, all those drugs and poisons oozing right out. Bill is in a bathtub full of clanking appliances and smeared blood. Dead Mexicans everywhere, but Bill is still alive. He stares at the ceiling and thinks, again?

Eric Hawthorn is a first-year MFA student at Naropa University. He has previously been published in The Tower and Gargoyle, small publications in his hometown of Philadelphia.

DOP #38 - A Bad Day

A Bad Day
by Hal Kempka
 
Doctor Nelson held out his gloved hand at the operating table. 
 
“Scalpel!” 
 
Nurse Betty slapped the instrument into his palm.
 
The doctor screamed. “Ouch!” and pulled the scalpel out of his heavily bleeding hand.
 
“Dammit, Betty,” he hollered, as the scalpel fell on the operating room floor. “How many times have I told you, handle first?”
 
She retrieved the scalpel, and holding onto it, replied, “I’m sorry doctor. This has got to be my screw up day. It seems everything I’ve touched turns to crap. Can I bandage that for you?”
 

DOP #37 - The Escape of the Circus Freaks

The Escape of the Circus Freaks
by Bruce Boston

The escape of the circus freaks was nothing to laugh about.

Some of them were harmless enough: the bearded lady, the man with the ears and hooves of a goat, the woman with the body of a Rubens and the head of a catfish, scales and tentacle-whiskers and walleyed vision to match.

Yet there were others who posed a serious threat to public sanity.

What if the Mesmer Man invaded the privacy of your bedroom while you were helplessly lost in bland blue slumber? He could forge any illusion he chose in the chambers of your unconscious: orange waves, yellow skies, emerald peninsulas piercing your brain with forests fiendishly quixotic in the fauna and flora they had to offer.

What if the Knife Boy arrived at a shopping mall or a major thoroughfare during the Christmas rush, hurling his ready stream of acid jibes and razor-sharp edges at hapless pedestrian shoppers, cutting to the quick of the bright commercial spirit, leaving holiday blood slathered in smears and droplets on kiosks and plate glass windows?

Imagine the quarantines required and man-hours lost if the Siamese Quintuplets exposed their lascivious dance and outlandish ways to the eager glance of an ingenue generation. Picture your children with their eyes bulging out of their heads and the veins throbbing in their temples. Think of them all, freaks in concert, rampaging through the failing light of a dusk we could not control, peering in our windows, running in and out of the shadows, pounding on our doors with hands that had no doubt fondled both their own distorted bodies and one another's in obscene detail.

And then the night burning with new phantoms we had yet to fathom.

And what of the potential for bicameral chaos and the legislative stampedes this would inevitably entail? Remember that hysteria and trampled death are not uncommon in partisan relations.

This could have been a case brandished in media sensation for federal scrutiny and a score of investigative committees. Yet it was swiftly squelched in vast favor of events more suitable to the masses, whose hungers can be ravenous and far from refined.

Let us be thankful the trusty Circus Police, diminutive yet energetic, twelve to a car and forever inventive in their slapstick antics, managed to corral this ragged cast of dangerous miscreants before harm could be delivered to the equipoise of our palatable metropolis and axiomatic nation.

Let us pass the buttered popcorn and pay homage to the carnival gods who have placed these entertaining and vigilant guardian-clowns at our imminent disposal. 

Bruce Boston is the author of 45 books and chapbooks. His most recent are the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams (Wildside, 2009) and the sf/speculative poetry collection, North Left of Earth (Sam's Dot, 2009). For more information, visit his website. 

DOP #36 - cuz everybody loves a briskly burning fire

cuz everybody loves a briskly burning fire
by mercedes m. yardley
 
i told everybody that i
set you on fire
although we both know that isn’t true
 
it sounded so much better than
“renold slipped and fell onto the gas burner
again
being drunk is such a drag”
 
i do so much for you, you know
to keep you from looking like an idiot
you really might want to appreciate it
more

mercedes m. yardley writes about pretty things...usually. Visit her blog here. 

DOP #35 - i promise never to beat kittens with a shovel again

i promise never to beat kittens with a shovel again
by m. patel

my goldfish is growing a beard
so just get your horse and your iron lung 
and don't ever show your face in this ice cream parlor again 
you know i will never trust a puppet
but i am thinking of having my colon framed
and i should have my masters in theoretical flashdancing by next summer
and then i will be free to practice random acts of meanness
of course if i were ashlee simpson i would save all the children in the world
but for now i will start the day by immersing myself in a brimming bucket of filth
as the drunken aliens spill out of the ufo and beat up beatrice
i now realize the power that a he-man voice can give me
so for lunch today i had an egg salad sandwich, a pickle and three toenails
i am thoroughly sick and tired of being a motorized seahorse
which reminds me of the time oldy smeckman depressurized her grandmother
a schoolmarm from the rickety century

M. Patel is the former treasurer of the Topeka chapter of the M.C. Hammer fan club.