Breadcrumb #435

ASHLEY BULLEN-CUTTING

Ivan, though he retained no olfactory unit in the slightest, could smell a rat. It was one thing Woodworth choosing to take his first vacation in two decades of Outer Galaxies employment, but another entirely that he chose the morning of Yrpa Minor Day as the moment in which to shuttle off into the cosmos. Frankly, it was enough to make his ocular feeds jitter and his PG.firewall to weather curses even 19th Century shellbacks would have thought twice about muttering. Nobody heard him, mind, he had switched to Silent.

That was the trouble with micro-managing a hit with a baker’s dozen of partially-conscious-entities, you never knew who paid for their batteries. That’s not to mention the admin involved in such an exploit. Everyone’s schedule ran concurrently, with no leeway to put down a grav-weld and take a minute to plan out the low-key murder of a lowly OG clerk who’d found himself on the wrong end of a spark-plug one evening. Quotas ad infinitum.

Ivan had been over at Umpteen Appliances, talking nice to a renal unit by the name of Testing-1-2-3. He was fairly certain he had pulled her matrix, when there was a scuffle just on the edges of his periphery.

A sizzle, a spark and a sprint.

Immediately intrigued, Ivan tweaked his vision, something about the gait of the man had struck familiar even at this distance. A bar of white suddenly appeared where teeth would have appeared on a flesh-bag; Ivan’s version of a grin. A quick Movement Pattern Scan proved his theory correct. It was his paymaster, Phineas Emeritus Woodworth. Fancy that.

Ivan found the Homindroid heaving and sputtering its last, eye-shutters morsing a description of its attacker. It was keeled over by the trash, its wires dangling in oil puddles. It had puncture wounds in its neck and torso. Ivan had taken a step back at that, no need to be overly helpful. He’d only just had an overhaul himself a month back.

“It was keeled over by the trash, its wires dangling in oil puddles.”

So he lingered just out of arm’s reach, submitting his warbling compatriot to a full diagnostic. It was a Newark B7 with only 9,456 days on the clock. Practically fresh off the factory floor. He twinged with jealousy.

“Friend of yours?” Ivan asked, pointing a thumb in the direction of Phineas’ escape. Any stick, no matter how inconsequential, thrown then and he’d have tracked it like a bloodhound. This is what servitude did to a robot, drove him to extremes such as this to get one over on a Squidgy.

The Hominidroid coughed sparks. “Friends do-do-do-do-do thisssss?” His head began to judder and shake uncontrollably, his vocalizer locked in a feedback loop.

Ivan was practically giddy. He’d been looking for the right amount of dirt to take Phineas to the cleaners for the better part of twelve years. He could nigh on taste success. “What did he do? Gosh, please tell me it was fraud?”

It hadn’t been, but it had been just as juicy. Ivan had followed it up like the diligent droid he was, crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s on the kill contract he’d brokered with a particularly rude man by the name of Finkelbottom. Edmere Finkelbottom III. His only preference: that Ivan do him like he’d done his daughter, by taking away everything she owned in the most demoralizing of manners. So, just what he’d been planning since the day they had met, then.

• • •

Breadcrumb #434

MONICA LEWIS

i will die like this,
tongue struck stuck against the sky
and your name marked
somewhere along my skin.

but the wolves won't turn,
snout up against the moon to
howl at any atrocity,

there is no atrocity
other than my whimpering,
too fleshy, too blushed,
pink, orgasmic heart, but

blue blood black is the color of my true love's hair,

and the wolves know the women who
run with the wolves, the ones with the
shaggy hearts,
the never splayed,
ventricle veins, plump
and pursing, ever the pucker.

• • •

Breadcrumb #433

SARAH BRIDGINS

I bought a $400 dress
that makes me look
like the cast of Dynasty fucked
a disco ball
and I couldn’t be happier.
I had it altered
to show more cleavage. 

I was going to say
I couldn’t afford it
to sound more relatable
but that’s a lie. 

I work at a hedge fund,
my parents are dead.
I could afford it. 

Other things I can afford:
a Nintendo Switch,
an oil painting of Lisa Rinna
from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
pointing at her head. 

I was going to say
I would rather have my parents back
than any of these things,
to sound more relatable,
but that’s also a lie. 

My parents
were going to die eventually,
and someday that dress
will no longer fit,
my Nintendo
will stop working,
but that painting of Lisa Rinna,
that, will last forever.

• • •

Breadcrumb #432

GARY GLAUBER

I traipse through this meadow
of white noise battling petty desires,
fast realizing the folly of ancient wisdom.
The turn of phrase often serves me well.
If the muse smiles favorably, I can
inspire blushes with the best of them.
But modern love is a texted illusion
supplemented with emojis and filters
to create yet another layer of illusion
to add to this latest album’s collection.
See who sees what, who approves
or acknowledges, how many hits
before crisis of confidence emerges.
In quiet times I will scroll,
seeking solace but instead
reading of personal tragedy,
of trivial journalizing and
conversational salt sprinkled on
latest cause or current event.
It’s a caravan of bandwagons,
and I am barely aware of jumping on,
sliding downhill toward an
unsustainable position.
This is the world I must bequeath
to others: younger, faster, better.
While I observe rules of
perceived politesse,
she posts another perfect pose,
black dress as framing device
to backlit alluring half-smile,
a come hither acknowledgement
of nature’s given advantages.
Yet hours later she admits
her weariness at the sad plight
of older men appearing
on the periphery with
pathetic flirtations,
sad messengers from an outmoded past
whose present becomes blocked
from pursuing hopeful futures.
Is this really a better world?
I sometimes wonder.

• • • • • •

Breadcrumb #431

SERGIO SATÉLITE

Motivation waits for me
with a cold glass of water.
I split my blue pills into breadcrumbs.
I cannot pray. So I drink.

Mine is a kind of voluptuous self-consumption
with its quasi-predictable-dance
between stimulus and response.
I drift. I float in my wishy-washy déjà vu-ing.
Too often, I seem unable to change.

A gunfight breaks out in the ship of Theseus.
17 against 25. God dies in the helicopter.
Purpose plummets with a hole in its temple.
And I. I Alone. Escape to tell you the news.

You fooled me once. Shame on you.
I fool me every day. Year after year.
Until your mother’s mustache gets sweaty.
What then? Long, hot showers? Is there a “beyond-the-circles”?

Why do we keep delaying putting away our ninja turtles?
Re-committing to Proust? Fixing the Venezuelan economy
and growing into the philosopher-kings our teenage versions
once fashioned for ourselves out of AM-radio-theologies?

Somebody has to go down on the Statue of Liberty.
Somebody has to perform open-mic surgery on this baby, baby.
Somebody has to plug the world back
into this drooling, dissociative unit.
Don’t you understand, Steven?
Somebody has to kill the babysitter.

• • •