by Robert T. Tuohey
One fine morning Joe Schom awoke to find his head stuffed up his ass.
At first, unsure of himself, curled up as he was like a pretzel, he rocked back and forth a bit. It took but a moment or two of this, however, to assure himself that it was true: his entire head, and neck, too, right down to the collar bones, was firmly planted up his bum.
Well, how had this occurred?
Now, poor Joe Schom, although somewhat startled at this shitty turn of events, was not, properly speaking, shocked by it. For the last few years, he had seen, indeed smelt, this pitfall approaching.
Head buried in stinky, sticky snug darkness, Joe's thoughts took on a nostalgic drift. Back, back they drifted, to when it had all begun…
Yes, it had first been in the midst of heated political and religious discussions (both of which Joe was particularly fond), that he had noticed a distinct bowing of the upper vertebrae. Fearing arthritis, he had quickly consulted a doctor; but the man had turned out to be just another cracker-jack box quack (a common phenomenon these days). As for those forced to listen to Joe's rants, either at work or the corner bar, they soon shrugged off this inclination to decline as he spoke just another of his (many) eccentricities.
Soon, however, it became apparent to everyone: Joe Schom's head was heading for his ass.
Strange to tell, but this really didn't seem to bother Joe. In fact, it seemed to him a natural, even comforting, evolution.
Thus, whenever a dispute would arise (most likely brought about by Joe himself), as always, he'd jump right in with both feet; but by the time the brouhaha was in full swing, you'd find Schom bent double, cross-hugging his knees, and talking a blue streak to the floor.
True, in that position, nobody could really understand what he was yelling about; but, as mentioned, he didn't seem to mind much.
Joe Schom was enjoying himself immensely, talking to his own ass.
Now and then, bits and pieces, fragments of Joe's monologue would waft up to the few curious on-lookers. For example,
“… like a funky monkey's big brass balls it would!”
or,
“…is a bare Pope fit for the woods?”
These malapropisms, while not actually possessing an independent coherence, did, at least to a certain type of mind, express…something or other. Thus, some local scribbler, as low on coin as ideas, having caught wind of these tidbits, padded them out with other purloined material, publishing the patchwork under the title “Down-Home Schom-isms”.
The book, however, was not a success (the majority of the copies wound up as recycled toilet paper). It seemed that no one was interested in some jerk talking to his own ass.
Joe, for his part, was unmoved. Or, better said, he was moved closer to his own ass. Finally, he had found someone, or, rather, something, that really understood him. Why, at times, he even fancied his asshole talked back to him…
Schom didn't bother to talk much at work anymore (although he had developed the curious habit of dropping things and mumbling). He even stopped frequenting the bar after work (what did he need those asses for, he rightly asked himself, when he had one of his own?). Rather, after a long day's work, Schom's greatest joy was to rush home and curl up comfy-cozy in bed, and spill all the day's dirt to his ass. Joe liked to cap these long, loving heart-to-hearts by planting a tender kiss upon the patient, puckered lips of his sympathetic anus. Thus, curled into a position that even an expert yogi would have envied, Joe Schom would drift into blissful sleep.
And then it happened.
And so, as anyone waking up to such a predicament would, Joe struggled a bit; but, really, when your head is dead up your bum, there's just not much to be done. His few moments of half-hearted tugging were more in the manner of a self-conciliatory, face-saving gesture than any actual attempt to extricate his noggin from his pooper. (In fact, deviously, on the sly, he even managed to use this minor effort to jam his head up that last final inch or two of his strained colon.)
Now well-satisfied that he had “done all that was humanly possible”, Joe Schom settled in, content as a pig in its own shit.
His own shit, incidentally, which he was now living on. With both sets of lips, oral and anal, clamped together in loving, parasitic union, no annoying gap any longer existed to disrupt the cycle. Round and round the feces went, from ass to mouth and back to stomach again, each time attaining a greater purity of Schom-ness. Joe had become a living paradigm of the free-standing, self-sufficient man.
Thus safely solipsized, quite a number of unnoticed days passed by. Dreams of a hue so darkly rich, so intoxicatingly vibrant, overtook his consciousness that Joe soon forgot it was all the result of feeding on his own shit.
Indeed, he felt that he had plunged to the very depths of his existence. He was “at one with himself”. And do not the gurus of all time and all places teach, “You are the World”?
Thus, Joe Schom had found the world, nay, the Universe, up his own ass!
Well, why bother to come out?
Within the “Crystal Palace” of modernity, however, all points on the compass, from the few remaining mountain peaks to the very bottom of your average tax payer's ass, are mapped, plotted, and indexed on the procrustean bed of Progress, Security, and what-not.
When the loud knock of officialdom, then, resounded on Joe Schom's apartment door, naturally, dwelling deep in his personal El Dorado, not a peep of it reached him. With admirable efficiency, forthwith, the door was crashed to the floor, mangled hinges and screws exploding in all directions.
Predictably, like a pair of oxen on steroids, two brawny policemen, weapons hopefully drawn, burst through the ruptured aperture. Cowering in their riotous wake, wrinkled face all aglow with vulgarian curiosity, cringed the precipitator of this raucous event, the landlady, Ms. Fanny Cash.
Rapidly, the premises were searched and the culprit found.
“Shit!” spit out disgusted patrolman Charlie. He gave the human doughnut, coiled tight on the bed, his hardest stare. That look could make a junkie wet his grimy drawers, but here, no dice. Obviously annoyed, he slapped his weapon back into his holster, and called out to his partner (who was making a fruitless, and beer-less, search of the refrig).
“In here, Mac! We got ourselves another butt-boy!”
The refrig door was slammed with such force that the little apartment quaked. A moment later, Mac, 9 mm in right hand and stale Ding-Dong in left, lumbered into the bedroom.
The sight of the butt-boy aroused Mac's wrath, as well.
“Crap!” he growled, tossing the remnants of the snack to the floor and smoothly re-sheathing his pistol. “Come on,” he said to his partner. “Let's teach this punk a lesson!”
Still irked (he hadn't shot at anyone for over a week), but glad to have something violent to do, Charlie brutally gripped the ankle's while Mac improvised a judo hold around the upper body.
“Alright, pooper-head,” Mac said to the creature between himself and Charlie, “time to see the light!”
With the traditional count-off of three, the two ox reared back with bone-cracking force.
Arhhgg!!
However, strange to relate, despite the tremendous, indeed gleefully cruel, exertion of the officers, Joe Schom's head budged not one inch from his ass. True, at the apex of their effort a slight squishing, sucking noise was heard, but that was all. Then, as soon as the pulling ceased, Schom recoiled, head as butt-deep as ever.
It took some 15 or 20 minutes of this test-of-wills (with the arms of the Law straining, grunting, sweating, and cursing the impassive, recalcitrant perpetrator) for Mac and Charlie to realize that the present case was more than a bit out of their depth.
“Tough little monkey, ain't he?” panted Charlie to Mac.
Mutually, their grips sagged, and then, with a loud thump, Joe Schom was dropped to the floor.
Mac caught his breath, and then tapped the communication device on his shoulder.
“Yeah, sarge, we got us a real hardcore butt-boy up here… Naw, we tried that, it's like he's got Crazy Glue for crap…Yup, gotcha.”
“Alright, shit-head,” Mac intoned threateningly, “you won this round, but now you're going to the City Hospital – and they'll sure enough fix your ass!”
Somewhat wearily, the officers picked up the butt-boy and began to lug him toward the door. No sooner had they gone a few steps, however, than a strange gurgling hiccup emitted from the widely stretched, though vise-like, anus. A waft of retch-inducing stink flew up at them.
“Aw cripes!” cried Charlie.
Instinctively, both men released their burden and turned away, covering their faces.
Like a flat tire from a big rig, Joe Schom again thudded to the floor. He rolled for several half-elliptical turns and then settled, again motionless.
Both officers, now silent and wary, re-approached the foul perpetrator, preparing to take him back into custody. As soon as they had grabbed him, however, the gurgling hiccup again erupted.
They again fell back, cursing, coughing, and wildly fanning at the air. Blindly, Charlie pawed for his gun.
“You stinking bastard!” he wailed.
“Don't kill him!” screamed Fanny Cash. The old woman, pinching her nose, was huddled by the door, suddenly terrified. “He owes me a month's rent!”
Mac, however, was the more experienced of the two officers; he had hauled in many a butt-boy, and was well-acquainted with their dirty tricks. It had been mere intuition that had caused him, after raiding the icebox, to pick up a few sturdy clothes-line pins for the wife, as well as a box of razors and a half-used can of deodorant for himself, from the bathroom. This last item he now snatched from his bulging pocket.
“Don't shoot!” he yelled, promptly clamping one of the purloined wooded pins to his flaring, incensed nostrils. He tossed one to his partner, who followed suit.
Breathing heavily through their open mouths, the officers grappled the offender and rolled him out the door. In the hallway, flattened against the wall like an insect stuck to flypaper, Ms. Cash watched in horror as the policemen bumpy-bumped her renter toward the stairs landing
“My – My – My rent!” she somehow managed to croak.
Charlie tossed the old woman a momentary, dismissive glare, and then, in his new, high-pitched voice, said, “Pipe down, granny. Police business!”
On reaching the landing, Mac and Charlie paused, exchanging a knowing look.
“Oopsy daisy!” cried the two falsettos in unison, giving the human-ball before them a solid pair of kicks.
Thud! Thwack! Thump!
So poor Joe Schom rolled and crashed, ass-long, down the long flight of concrete stairs, strange laughter ringing behind him.
By the time he finally landed, he was bruised, battered, and bleeding. His head, however, was still very much up his ass. In seconds, cackling with malicious glee, his captors were again upon him.
Mac glared down at the pathetic lump of flesh at his feet. It was sickening, a guy with his head cemented up his own ass. It made you want to puke.
“What?!” whinnied Charlie rhetorically (his mock incredulity pushing his new voice up yet another register).
Automatically, Mac gave the stock reply, “Yeah, trying to escape.”
Joe's hands and feet were cross-cuffed in the most painful fashion possible, and then he was dumped into the trunk of the police cruiser.
Just before slamming the trunk shut, Charlie, now hiccupping with the laughter of a giddy high school girl, said, “Who's the ass now, buddy-boy?”
***
Naturally, what with the times being such as they are, Joe Schom was not the only case of cranial-anal-itis at the City Hospital. In fact, they had an entire ward full of them. A regular ass-i-demic, one might say.
Thus, once his paperwork had been finished (incidentally detailing his resisting arrest, assault on the officers, attempted escape, and so on), he was unceremoniously deposited on a dirty cot in a dirty room packed with dirty butt-boys. As backed up and bassackwards as things were, it was a few days before anyone got around to examining him.
Once his number did roll around, however, Joe was lucky: it turned out to be a graduate of the famed Tetrazzini Institute who gave him the once over. As all the exam-rooms were already in use, Dr. Burrows was holding court in the break-room.
“How long has his head been up his ass, nurse?” asked Burrows.
“According to the chart, doctor…” Nurse Craven began.
“Oh, to hell with the chart!” said Burrows disdainfully. “Just look at him. No doubt born that way, came butt-first into this world. His father was an ass-on-legs, and mom was a pooper-princess. God knows how they managed to do the dirty!”
Roughly, Dr. Burrows hauled the patient up before him, eye-to-ass. With the nurse's help, the patient's raggedy pants were pulled off.
“Alright,” Burrows called into the ass-crack, “don't make me come in their after you!”
No response.
“A hard-ass, huh?” the physician yelled. He yanked a ping-pong paddle from his pocket (the doctor enjoyed a few games between exams to keep fresh), and let fly with a tremendous whack to the anatomically left butt-cheek.
Smack!!
Violently, he shook the patient.
“Is this the American way of life?” he queried the welted butt-cheeks.
No response.
“Coffee!” he yelled to the waiting nurse, extending an open palm.
“Coffee?!” asked Craven.
In contempt, the doctor stared at her. “Don't question me when I'm operating, woman! This asshole's life is at stake!”
“Yes, doctor!” she squealed, suitably impressed with the man's dedication. She scurried across the cluttered break-room; rapidly but steadily (as she had learned in nursing school) she poured the steaming java into a sterilized cup, and reverently handed it to Doctor Burrows.
In a single gulp the inspiration (and a surreptitiously-palmed pill) was downed; then he tossed the plastic cup to the floor, having made up his mind.
“Get me the ECT boys in here,” he barked at the nurse. “This S.O.B. needs shock!”
“No can do, doctor,” she quickly replied. “They zapped so many patients this morning that their equipment blew a fuse.” She looked helplessly on.
“Damn morons!” yelled Burrows. He shook coiled Schom like he was shaking an unopened Christmas box. “A good healthy shock is the only way to crack this case!” Wildly, he looked about him.
“Coffeepot!” he blurted.
Automatically, she began to pour him another cup, but his voice snapped at her like a whip.
“No, you dumb bitch!” He snatched the electric pot from her wondering grip and dumped its scalding contents on the naked ass facing him.
“Hold on in there, son!” he called into the quivering ass.
“Scissors!” he commanded. Very professionally, the instrument was slapped into his waiting palm.
In one masterful motion, Doctor Burrows severed the electric pot from its cord, dropped the now useless appliance to the floor with a clanking crash, and applied the live wire to the patient's coffee-soaked testicles.
Frantically, the ass began to convulse.
“Thought that'd get your attention!” sneered Burrows. “Hold him, nurse!” Beaming with righteous cruelty, the woman complied.
Again and again he applied the hissing, sparking wire to the jolting, blubbering mass. Despite the stench of burning flesh, the doctor worked on.
Wide-eyed, awe-struck, Nurse Craven struggled to maintain her grip.
“We'll save this punk even if it kills him!” yelled Burrows reassuringly.
“Give it to him good, doctor!” yelped queasy Craven.
The physician's confidence proved well-founded: slowly, as a fresh bud breaking to the surface, the head began to loosen.
“Oh, god! Here it comes!” wailed the woman. Obviously, it was all a bit much for her, and she was becoming unglued…
But there was no time – with a tremendous sucking pop, the head sprung out.
It was completely covered in a thick, hardened enamel of black feces, with nothing but the red, raw wound of a tiny, shit dripping, mouth exposed. And the smell was hellish.
The nurse dropped into a dead faint.
“Goddamn amateurs!” growled Burrows. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Immediately falling into the make-do that had made him the man that he was, Burrows again took up the scissors and began hacking and stabbing at the shit-plaster encasing his patient's head.
The patient, however, was fading fast: the neck sagged as if on a broken doll, and the tortured body shook with the last, random tremors of approaching death.
“Don't you die on me, punk!” ordered Burrows. With manly vigor, he slapped and shook the patient. And, incredibly, as if by osmosis, a spurt of life seemed to pass to the Joe Schom.
Desperate times call for desperate measures – and the desperate will sink to them.
Dropping the scissors, Burrows grabbed at a final, thread-thin hope: an old, rusty can-opener, lying on a nearby table.
The headlines flashed through the doctor's speeding mind:
BRAIN-ECTOMY PERFORMED WITH CAN-OPENER!!!
From the loftiest medical journals to the lowliest street-rags, all would be forced to pay homage to Burrows burrowing genius.
The trance was as instantaneous as it was profound – he had entered “The Zone”. All distractions fell away, and with laser-beam concentration, he snarled at his three-quarters dead patient.
He jumped from the table to the floor, landing in a powerful karate stance. The master's left hand shot forward steadying (nearly choking) Joe's scrawny neck, while his right, firmly gripping the ersatz scalpel, rose dramatically above his head.
Letting go a “ninja-spirit-shout”, the can-opener descended with frightening force into Joe Schom's head.
The weeks of hermetic seclusion up the ass had made the head as soft as an over-ripe cantaloupe, and so the jagged edge of the can-opener penetrated quick and deep. With a vicious ripping action, Doctor Burrows yanked the blade backward, effecting an incision the length and depth of the skull.
A tight pus-ball of fetid, rancid shit had been lanced: pell-mell, it squirted out in all directions.
This first layer of infection rapidly spent itself, leaving the room, and the doctor, painted in a dripping, glutinous black slime of unspeakable smell. Feverishly, Burrows tried to scrap away the last remnants of the dark, oily pus…
To the doctor's horror, however, instead of cerebral matter, he uncovered only another pile of oozing feces.
“Shit!” exclaimed Burrows.
Perhaps it was the double-loaded vehemence of the chosen epithet (both decrying and identifying) in combination with the pervading noxious odor that served to rouse Nurse Craven from her swoon. She crawled to her white-stocking-ed knees, coughing and gagging her way back to consciousness.
“Nurse!” Burrows barked at her. “Get me some Sani-Flush!”
Without thought, still on all-fours, she began to wobble her way to the bathroom.
“There's only Tidy-Bowl, doctor,” echoed the weak, though recovering, voice.
Deeply peeved, he gritted his teeth. Standards were going straight to hell. Well, nothing to do but make-do.
“Alright,” he yelled back, “and bring the toilet-brush too!”
Having more-or-less regained her feet, with greenish hue now in abeyance, Nurse Craven returned to the operating table with the requested instruments.
Burrows poured the entire bottle of toilet cleaner into the patient's gaping skull; energetically, he began to swish the bluish liquid about with the scrubber brush.
“Clean'em out! That's what I always say!” extolled the doctor as he worked.
Nurse Craven, helping to steady the floppsy-moppsy body, happened to catch hold of the wrist. There was no pulse.
“I think he's dead, doctor,” she said listlessly.
“What?!” exclaimed Burrows.
Leaving the toilet brush hanging out of the yawning skull, he jacked the patient up, staring him in the face. A bit of befouled bluish liquid slopped out of the large, ragged wound.
Joe Schom's death mask, beautifully cemented in his own feces, stared out ironically at his would-be savior.
“Aw, shit!” said Burrows, casting the corpse to the floor.
The nurse placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “You did everything you could, doctor!”
Dr. Burrows, though disappointed, was unmoved. As resolute and resilient as ever, he replied, “Damn straight! Why, a guy with his head up his ass – “
“And shit for brains,” added Nurse Craven, wiping a bit of it from her furrowed brow.
“- isn't even a man at all!” finished the doctor.
“He's just a living ass!” concluded the nurse.
Expectantly, optimistically, Burrows clapped his hands together and looked out toward the teeming hallway.
“Alright,” he yelled, “who's next?”
Send your comments on this story to the author:
