Stuffing by Karl Mahoney
First the kids outside ask me if I want to smoke some pot underneath the bleachers, now they’re shoveling dog shit into my mouth.
Six filmy fingers curl around my bottom teeth and yank down, hard. My jaw locks, mouth open, tongue swimming in the air like a newborn baby – alive. I’m in no position to be picky but all I can think is, “fuck, this kid really needs to cut his fingernails. They’re like a girl’s. So long.”
The rest of the kids, all five of them, circle around me, grinning and gritting their perfect suburban teeth. Each of them pumped up and throbbing from various pills and powders, wearing their varsity jackets like a layer of paint.
Then, it comes.
Thick, sloshy clods of mustard-brown poop mash deep in between the cracks of my teeth, and skid down my throat in a lumpy mess. It’s warm and moist, like cookie dough heated up in your microwave, or sweaty Play-Doh. Chunky. Salty.
And it’s the times like these that I pray I had some fecal-poo-fetish or something, because this, this would be my own personal heaven. Mouth slathered in the freshest shit, with handfuls upon handfuls of the sweetness being slammed into my “personal space”. It’s the equivalent to a necrophiliac alone in a morgue for the night, with a full bottle of Viagra.
I cough and gag, rib bones burrowing and bulging, but that doesn’t stop them from packing more and more into my mouth until it’s one solid brick. Think of your Dad stuffing the turkey on thanksgiving morning, elbow deep in the bird’s asshole, cramming bread, onions and spices up to it’s severed head.
The poop-soup erodes its way down my esophagus, past my Adam’s apple, then violently projects from my mouth. Acid-fermented poop tears into my taste buds, and rips the enamel off my teeth. My back arches – spinal cord flowing in a seismic wave of skin, and dips. Everything evil – all that sloppy, warm, dog shit – foams from my mouth, and splatters against the gravel. I am a cat, hacking up thick mats of saliva and fur. Demonic hairballs. The varsity jackets slam one last piece of dog pie into my hair, and twist, grinding the warm into my skull.
“Welcome to St. Ivan’s, faggot,” they all tell me. Laughing and pumping their fists in the air.
I smile back, vomit batter spoiling the corners of my lips, and their grins run away. “Thanks, guys,” I say.
“Hey! My mom said I can have a sleep over this weekend, you dudes wanna come? We can order pizza, and drink sodas, and dudes, maybe, maybe, we can rent a R-rated movie. But we have to be to bed by midnight.” I say, “Who wants top bunk?”
One kid, with clusters of pus filled sacs congregating below his bottom lip, pops the collar on his jacket and says, “What a fucking weirdo.” He says looking around at his friends, “We’re already 17. We can rent R-rated movies any time we want, fag.”
“Aw,” I say, wiping my chin. “Lucky.”
They all look at each other. Stupid deer frozen in the medusa gaze of divine Chevy headlights. Confused.
The kid with the clusters-the herpes, he forces out a little laugh, the desperate chuckle of a raggedy-orphaned kid, and it works. Deep chested giggles run through the rope of blue leather and felt like hormones and puberty. Now, they’re all laughing, eyes squinched. Pointing and laughing and bumping chests and slamming knuckles.
I run my finger along my gum line, raking up hunks of crap, and spit brown.
“Let’s ditch this fuck,” a face says.
The poop-crew turn to leave, but one turns around. One stays.
“You’re a fuckin’ loser,” he says, peering down on me.
I wipe the dirt, sweat, and crusts of vomit from my forehead, and stare. I stare at this kid, burning pinholes deep into his retinas, causing him to maybe second-guess what he just did. He looks at the thick throw-up puddle spoiling the gravel, and then back at me. Maybe he fucked with the wrong kid, he thinks. Maybe, he thinks, I’ll cut into his jugular with a rusty tin-can lid, or bash his kneecaps with a ball-peen hammer until their mashed potatoes. Maybe, maybe not.
This boy’s pupils dilate and run fat like ink blobs in water.
Now normally, when someone’s pupils dilate as they gaze, with deep interest, into your eyes, it’s because they like you. Like-like you. Give you blowjobs on the back of the bus-like you. But I know this kid’s stomach is twisting, armpits fogging over with a cold damp, because his monster-creation, his piece of shit masterpiece, is looking directly into his butane blue, proud-Aryan eyes. It’s everyone’s biggest fear of all: direct eye contact.
With my tongue, I scrape the last of the waste off my back teeth, making that clicky-suction sound. I dig my hands deep into my jean pockets, the warmth from my thighs pulsing against my palms. This boy, he looks for his friends, but they’re all gone.
The setting sun bends through the bleachers, and glistens off the fresh sweat growing from every pore in his face. And the closer I come, the wetter his face gets. Tiny saltine snow-globes hang from his nose, and run down his neck.
“Thanks,” I say, glancing at the cursive stitch shielding his heart. “Harry.”
His eyes water from my breath, and his nose scrunches up like an old man’s scrotum. He has to look up at me, I’m that much taller than him. “For what?”
“A reason,” I say, and smile.
