A Fetish

I knew a man who liked his women to wear heavy makeup, foundation so thick you could scratch their foreheads and come away with it under your nails. He would insist that she sleep with her make-up on through the night so when they awoke the next morning, he could trace the paint creased along the lines of her face, the halo of red burred around her mouth.

This was true nakedness, he said, a woman exposing the scaffolding of her beauty.

If he hurt a woman and she dabbed at her eyes, mindful of smearing her lashes, he did not worry about her for long. But if inky rivulets of mascara slid down her cheeks, he would think about for her weeks afterward, throwing her slender body against furniture, her sorrow at once sable and erotic.

A Speculative Fiction

One day you will be the star of your own neo-steppe epic

You will ride into town on pack of white casino tigers inbred so deep their stripes have mutated to polka dots

You will free the extroverts from their eternal search

You will rescue the introverts by attaching their heads to their bodies

You will find truth trembling behind a boulder and give it sharp slap on the ass

Asian Fusion whores will perform the sexual stereotypes of the world’s ethnics for your pleasure

You will loot the galaxy of its stars, sweep them into your velvet bag

You will mean business like Dubai means business

They will manufacture a special light bulb that casts the kinetic, radiant glow of your skin onto others

You will oversee the design of a line of casual sportswear for the execution of conference calls in the lobbies of five-star hotels

Women will swoon in the arms of men sporting the cologne of your intoxicating skunk

Water bottled from the synthetic springs of your ill-conceived hydroelectric project will be the official water of the 3000 Intergalactic Olympic Games

Planetary competitors will wield prosthetics to universalize physical capabilities unknown to mankind and vice versa

Our heroes are from a minor planet with a history of violent turmoil, Earth, ruled by a corrupt and vengeful despot: you

It is their dream to defect to the host planet of the Games, using their extraordinary Olympic skills to vault, sprint, box and dive to freedom

They have been training all their lives for this

Let’s face it, not all of them will make it

But when it is over you will feel betrayed, you will bray to the heavens

It is the beginning of the fall of your empire. In a matter of years your fortunes will be as desolate as a wig shop in the crumble-bum part of town. Shilling hair potion when you would rather be throwing mountains