Driver’s Side Airbag #32
52 pages
$3.50


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Cheesy Graphics (D.B. VelVeeda)

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snap by Ritah Parrish

The worst part about going to beauty school is cutting old people's toenails. They are discolored, jagged and way too long. Bumpy. Oh man, it gives me the shivers. So, there I am in the alley, smoking a cigarette and loving it, when I hear my name over the paging system. "Ms. Larson-please-come-to-the-front-desk, Ms. Larson- come-to-the-front-desk-please." It's warm and velvety over the speakers and it seems like one long word. I am thinking it's Mrs. Hamton for her three o'clock tight perm. I have told her that it makes her look like a poodle and she just nods and says, "That's right, dear..." I step on the fiery end of my cigarette and walk up to the gleaming white counter, grab the slip and say, "OK, Mrs.... Uh. Excuse me, I mean to say, Mr. Hunsaker... Uh. Is this your first time here?" The old man looks like a crusty piece of shit you find on your cat's ass a week after the fact.

I act polite. "Well, Mr. Hunsaker, what can I do for you today?" I am hoping and praying he doesn't say the one thing I can't bear. But he does, "A pedicure young lady." I am horrified but try to seem nonchalant about the prospect of cleaning out the geriatric toe jam of a one hundred year old pain in the ass. He sits down and takes off his shoes and socks. "You clean 'em good, you hear?" he says and I am thinking, "Sure. You don't have to smell the stink...."

I place his gnarled old feet in the basin and walk away so they can soak. I take a sip of my Mr. Pibb and realign my priorities. Then, Mr. Twat Hammer screams at me, " I'm not here for my health young lady! I want service, damnit!" Fuck you, you sorry, stinking, curly-toed bastard. But, I arrive at the basin with a clean towel and begin to dry his disgusting, veiny feet. His toes are badly misshapen and the nails are yellow, like they've smoked a pack a day for forty five years. I am about to wretch. These are the worst fucking feet I have ever seen.

"Listen to me when I talk to you young lady, you cut those damn things and buff 'em until they shine. You hear me? I want you to file and do God knows whatever else it takes to make them suckers look like baby feet." Baby feet? Yeah. Okay. I'll just get right on that, fuckface. "Well, Sir. I'll do my best."

I raise his right foot up and assess the damage. Fungus, Oh my fucking god. I begin with an alcohol swab then grab my clippers. Starting with the baby toe, I work my way toward the big one. It isn't easy. The nails split and crack and make incredible popping noises when the clipper cuts into them. I grasp his big toe between my index finger and thumb. It is lumpy and the large yellow crescent won't give because it's so damned brittle. I struggle with the clippers until I hear "Snap" and I witness the sharp, jagged scythe fly through the air and hit Mrs. Trumble on her heavily rouged cheek. "Oh my word!" she exclaims and I apologize. I look up at the old man and he is smiling. Creepy.

I reach for his left foot and ask him if he's comfortable. That's when I notice the bulge forming in his trousers. He is looking at the red half moon mark on Mrs. Trumble's withered cheek and getting a chubby over it. I feel like I'm going to barf. "Mr. Hunsaker..." before I can finish my sentence he says, "Not now young lady! Can't you see it's tea time?" Then he pulls those slackened, paper cheeks back from his teeth and chuckles. Fucking perv.

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D.B. VelVeeda


DOPEHEAD SNO-CONE FESTIVAL OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SAINTS ON FILTHY CRACKED ICE

my soul itches as if infested with happy monstrous lice on acid
i have again pluck’d out my brain with the lush tweezers of drugs
examined it & found it unworthy to be housed inside the head of the lowest brute
hello my name is asshole
your new everlasting flesh-eating neighbor who never dies
i have guns enough to ensure your allegiance
and love enough to earn your contempt
much sicker than any disease you care to offer
please meet the ghoul who ate your hymen
the golem who fucked your ass until it grinned
a lush death-eyed amphetamine scapegoat
the outrageous crimson bleeding whore to end them all
the soft touch of my hands often makes men cry
& the daughters of men desire to gnaw my
heart to the bone beneath a skin-scented sun
may any dog be damned who tells me no
may any heretic who denies me be boiled alive in the
grease of his own putrid morality
cannibalism is my crowning achievement
i am skating on the thin ice of your fucking spine
praise god i am the sick creeping hunter of brains
a thieving crass vampiric rouge ablaze in the season of saints
i am the formaldehyde popsicle you will suck in hell
the car antenna slicing your balls open
when you wreck on the side of the highway
more lonely than the last note of a hymn trapped in
a dead woman’s lungs
i am the paper cut from opening your mother’s funeral bill
but above all this
i am
your
lover

Shannon Frach

originally appeared in Amphetamine Scapegoat.  Shockbox Press, PO Box 120, Fayetteville, AR 72702-0120.


HAPPY MINUTE

It’s a dull cold morning, nothing like an ice
cold beer to warm you up. I walk into a bar called
The Buffet and Crock Pot, so dark I stop
dead in my tracks when the door closes behind me, afraid
of colliding with a chair or tripping over
a person on the floor. When I move again my shoes
pull unwillingly away from the gluey surface. Centuries
of vomit in the air. No windows. Not a good place
to wear new pants or carry too much money,
but no one can be particular at dawn.
                                                    My eyes adjust
expertly to the darkness, and I look around.
A plaque on the wall commemorates the accomplishment
of this bar selling more Coors than any other shit-
hole in the state: 500,000 gallons to be sickeningly
precise. It is clear that this plaque is the only thing
in the entire place that has seen a dust rag in years,
and the suffocating smell of puke in the atmosphere is now
answered for. The decades of scribbles and scratches
on the wooden wall would baffle language professors
for ages, and when they finally figured it out
all they would learn, just like in Egypt, was that Joe
was here, worked too hard, got drunk, and loved
                                                                     Rosie.
Several old men the same color and texture as the bar
stare into beers like sleepy crystal balls.
In the corner, a 58 pound woman looks at the end
of her cigarette with corpse-like resolve,
                                           wrists as delicate as the stem
of her wine glass, preserved in the formaldehyde memory
of chablis. The young bartendress is the only flower
in the ash can, a student at the college, wearing
running shoes so when her shift is over
she can get away as fast as possible.
                                     The Buffet and Crock Pot...
I notice the crock pot sitting like a witch’s kettle
on a filthy shelf below the booze, black sides oozing
with primordial tube steak juice. I imagine it filled
with welted hot dogs in once-boiled water,
a white scum on the surface as thin
                            as wet toilet paper. Old white rolls
for the meat peek out of an open package
beside it, as inviting as a roach motel. "Since 1934"
declares the hand painted sign
                                           above these delicacies.
I take my seat among the ranks. Somebody opens
the front door and the outside light streams in
like a cop’s flashlight. I instinctively join the general
murmur of protest. The bartendress walks over,
                                                      tells me I made it
just in time for Happy Minute, which means a free beer.
Without asking she pours a Coors and sets
it down in front of me. "Talk to this, don’t
talk to me" she seems to say, and then returns
to her Psychology homework on the bar.
                                                        I lift my beer and drink.
On the coaster, a wolfman wearing sun glasses
grins at me. The clock on the wall says 5:59 a.m.
but closing fast.

Mather Schneider

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