THE TORNADO THAT DESTROYED EVERYTHING AND MADE EVERYONE HATE HIM BUT THEN THEY DIDN’T: A STORY ABOUT TORNADOES AND FORGIVENESS BUT MOSTLY TORNADOES by Nick Mohoric

There once was a beautiful tornado named Michael. He was known throughout all the land as Michael the Mangler after his penchant for mangling the crap out of a ton of dudes’ and dudettes’ faces when tearing across the open plains. This wasn’t his fault; in fact, Michael was the sweetest tornado one could ever know and he only wished to bring joy to all those he met along his journeys. Unluckily for him, and those he mangled, his crazy strong winds were known to rip the nails out of houses and throw them, along with any other heavy or razor-like objects, toward the quivering crowds of onlookers.

“Watch out below!” he would yell as he flung a house on top of some ladies sunbathing topless for to get as much tan on their boobs as possible. They never heard his warnings, never heard his sweet nothings, they would just hear the sound of his rushing winds swirling around them.

As a Category 1 tornado he fell in love with a young girl in a neighboring town named Rose. She was not like other girls her age. Her parents sheltered her and as a result her life was in her books. Michael was not used to this type of girl; all he knew were the girls that were outside chasing the boys while trying to impress them by watching them play sports, flipping their hair in the sun in hopes of catching themselves in that perfect light. He only saw Rose as she went from her home to school. He watched the way her skirt moved at the slightest updraft, the way her hair seemingly floated behind her, the slight upturn of her lips as she read her book while walking down the sidewalk, the inevitable way her body intertwined with some random passerby when she didn’t see them coming.

She was perfection.

Michael finally worked up the courage to speak to her at her home shortly after she arrived from school. There would be no one else there in case he were to embarrass himself. The second he got near her house he ripped the door off the hinges; his nerves were getting the better of him. Rose rushed into the room to see what was with all the commotion and was immediately sucked through the hole the door used to fill, straight through Michael’s whirling self, and slammed directly into a tree.

She lay there inert. Michael had killed his first love before he could even introduce himself.

This began a vicious cycle for our poor tornado. He flew into a downward spiral of depression (what people don’t realize is that tornadoes normally spin in an upward spiral of happiness). The realization that he could never have what he wanted most, a love in his life, only added to the winds raging within. With each passing day his wind speeds rose until he was a Category 5 ,wandering the city in a fury.

Working his way toward the center of town, he watched the people run in horror. They couldn’t escape him, though; he was too fast as he pelted them with rocks, sticks, tires, hot dog carts, kittens, cats, beer bottles, bums, window shutters, car glass, newspapers balled up really fucking tight and soaked with some water and maybe pee (he couldn’t tell), apples, dirt clods, sex toys, regular toys, dirty clothes, farts, and ultimately their own limbs as he cried “Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.”

In his heart he only wanted their love, but he had come to believe he was only capable of pain so he figured he would play the part. The self hatred and doubt that he grappled with consumed him as he stumbled from town to town. This blind rage that drove him was a blessing and a curse: the air was filled with screams of terror because of it, but it ultimately made sure that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings and on one fine day Michael stumbled upon a McDonald’s purely by chance. After ripping the roof off he was suddenly filled with thousands of freshly cooked hamburgers, fries, and shakes that were so awesomely packaged that the shake did not get sucked out of the cup. With this knowledge he probably would have chucked that food at all the people around but instead he continued on his rampage, finally tearing the walls and roof off of a nearby orphanage. This added debris forced the food to fly directly into the open mouths of all the starving orphans.

Michael was a hero! The town rejoiced!

But then they realized all the people he’d murdered and the millions of dollars of damage he’d caused and hated him again.

NICK MOHORIC makes a living organizing sex tips for women’s magazines. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Flapjack, and can be heard imbibing copious beers on the Literally Drunk podcast. Almost never, he reminds people to “readmyfrigg.in/blag“.

WRITER’S BLOCK by Jack Bristow

Dallas Grady, thirty-eight, good looking in spite of a life of hard drinking, pill eating, and two divorces, lay on the motel room bed, cigarette in right hand, fumbling through The Yellow Pages with the other. He was working on his magnum opus, his novel, his written testament to counter the notion that his life had been a waste.

He had told the voice on the other end to bring him over a date with blonde hair and brown eyes—she had to have brown eyes, he instructed, more than once. The voice on the other end had been very accommodating. Dallas swore the man was from the east coast originally—something about the voice. He hung up the phone after giving directions to the room and took a swig from the Southern Comfort bottle, walked over to the typewriter and unwound.

The story was only twenty-five pages so far. It was about a war hero whose wife kicked him out after him having returned home from the war. The woman had blamed the man’s drinking on their divorce but the man had known better. His father had always told him, “Dall. You can’t change the past—so don’t you ever try.” The woman he had married—the naive, brown-eyed cheerleader from Detroit—no longer existed when he returned home from Iraq. In her place was this well-read and independent woman, who had gone to too many political rallies, anti-war, and met a lot of people. A lot of men.

Dallas cringed at the thought. Another veteran. Another goddamn veteran of the same goddamn war who had thrown all his decorations over the fence and onto the White House lawn. And Debbie thought that was just great. Wonderful.

And when he got home she’d wanted him to do the same thing. Bullshit. For what? For who? He had earned his medals—they were the only thank-you the man would probably ever receive for putting his life on the line. Why get rid of them—why throw them out on some silly, unfounded whim?

“Shit.” He yanked page thirty-six from out of the Selectric, red-faced huffing and puffing. That was the thing about us Irish, Dallas had thought miserably. We can’t ever hide anything.

He has having tremendous difficulty merging reality with art. But, goddamn it, he would finish the novel. He just needed some human contact. Some intimacy.

He smirked as he looked into the mirrored wall. His face was so different. No longer rosey and filled with life. Sallow. Rings under his pale grey eyes so dark it had almost looked like he was wearing mascara.

The man in the story had made a lot of friends. Chuck McAnderson. Sergeant Darren Thomas and Curtis de Wade. He had wanted to call them, to really tell another human being something but they, too, were in the past. The brave men he had served with no longer existed. Other men bearing those names were with their families now….

He’d hoped to God they’d at least had families who would miss them, that would be able to tell they weren’t the same people they’d left as. That was the thing about war—not wars, because all wars were the same—but war would keep you more in the past than anything.

He had been gone only two years. One tour. But it had seemed like a lifetime.

Knock knock knock on the door. Dallas hobbled off the chair and unlatched the four-chain locks and deadbolt. A grinning man stood in the doorway with a blonde dressed in cheap ivory colored spandex and fake fur. He had recognized the man’s voice from the telephone.

“Hi there. I am Clayton and this is Luicna. Your date.” And then he had told Dallas the rules. “You can do anything with her you like. I don’t care. She don’t care, neither. Back-door. Missionary. Go downtown. It don’t matter. Just no hitting, no punching. Absolutely no cutting and/or strangulation.”

Dallas nodded solmenly, as if this fine, upstanding gentleman were her father, and Dallas some acne-faced geek escorting her to the prom.

“Another thing. And this is mandantory,” the pimp explained. “I’ll be waiting out here for forty-minutes, but I’ll need some collateral first—something to know who you are, just in case you breach our agreement.”

“No problem.” Dallas handed the man his driver’s license. Expired. The face inside it had seemed a little more colorful and vibrant. But this man standing in front of him was Dallas Grady. There was no mistaking that.

***

Dallas looked into those eyes as he went to work on her. Brown. His body kept going up and down coolly, confidently until there was that unmistakable intense feeling, and then it was all over with.

Brother, he thought. Twenty-nine years old and you still make it like you were seventeen.

Luicna looked at her Mickey Mouse wristwatch— the only thing she was wearing. “That was only twenty minutes. You still have another twenty. You paid for it. Just wait and regroup. Most guys your age, it only takes ‘em what? Five, ten minutes? That’ll give us another ten minutes.”

Dallas grinned evilly. A considerate whore. Now he had seen it all. But he knew when she had grabbed his tricep consideration had had nothing to do with it. She had liked him. And only one of them had gotten their cookies.

“No thanks. Sweetheart. Busy night.”

He saw a mild sadness in the whore’s face. This had made him feel important. Wanted.

“Don’t worry, precious. We’ll have other dates.” He pinched her cheek.

***

At the Selectric now, pounding the keys furiously. His fingers barely able to keep pace with his mind. This was the way to do it—the only way you could write about Debbie without going crazy.

JACK BRISTOW has written for several zines, including Inwood Indiana, The New Flesh, Hobopancakes, and Indigio Rising.

TRANSFERENCE DISPLACEMENT by Khakjaan Wessington

Your favorite lover’s conflicted, unfaithful;
The pupils deny it, the nighttime denies it,
Even the cat at the window denies it.
Inside, she purrs with the rhythm of engines;
While outside a vehicle sputters then ceases
To cough, while you climb from the warmth of the covers
Outside the treaty of bed to the kitchen:
Water by starlight and dishes in streetlight.
The river still flows from the faucet to toilet—
Its passage is medium, you are the message.
Alternate currents from sockets to ripples
Under the blankets—each passes the middle,
As liquid transmitted from organ to organ.
The body’s appendage: an orgasm fleeing
Death—that true faithful—the source of all echoes.
Lost in the maze of its shadows, the meanings
Obscured, you see death in your lover
And death in the rain out the window and everything
Passes from source; destination uncertain,
Passing regardless inside you, outside you.

KHAKJAAN WESSINGTON 1) Writes the Daily News Poem at http://toylit.blogspot.com, 2) Operates the deadliest literary fight club: http://combatwords.blogspot.com, 3) Was contributing writer for eXile.ru, 4) Had a poem published at thenervousbreakdown in August of this year, 5) Has just published the Toylit Q1/Q2 2010 print edition.