Hello Devilfish! Read online

  HELLO

  DEVILFISH!

  A NOVEL BY

  RON DAKRON

  THREE ROOMS PRESS

  NEW YORK

  Hello Devilfish!

  a novel by Ron Dakron

  Copyright © 2014 by Ron Dakron

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For permissions, please write to address below or email [email protected]. Any members of education institutions wishing to photocopy or electronically reproduce part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Three Rooms Press, 51 MacDougal Street, #290,

  New York, NY 10012.

  First Printing

  ISBN: 978-1-941110-03-4

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014937997

  Author photos:

  Marcia Glover

  Cover and interior design:

  KG Design International

  www.katgeorges.com

  Three Rooms Press

  New York, NY www.threeroomspress.com

  Distributed by:

  PGW/Perseus

  www.pgw.com

  Special thanks to Peter and Kat for their humor and bravery

  More matter with less art.

  QUEEN TO POLONIUS—Hamlet

  For smile hot, sleek mind creamy fun—Hello Julia!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  / 1 /

  Join our chocolate sugar orgasm! Why not—it’s your creamy life! And life’s pretty much a B-movie—the director’s unknown, the plot reeks, the colors are dead wrong, the costumes blow chunks, the extras are always bitching, the scenery’s cheap and cheesy—plus the actors suck! They never get their lines right. “Goodbye Devilfish!” Squidra snarls as eeek, her wet mega-tentacles slash through beer smog, duhn duhn duhhhhh—she’s cock-blocked me! With her icky squid head—thing looks like a pink turd with fins. Nothing a barroom cue stick won’t fix, mwah ha ha—Hello Devilfish! As I snap one in two and kung-fu jab that splintered wood at her flaring gills. No go, bro—that cue melts like a bee’s spine under Squidra’s damp bulk while her toxic tentacles whiz closer, making this woosh whoosh Doppler Wurlitzer sound—yikes! No chocolate sugar orgasm for me tonight. “Whip him, Squidra-san!” some slag cheers along with all the other slobs in here, this drunky airport lounge chocked with baggage manglers and sloshed captains and Yakuza humps—yeah, yeah, they all got souls and moms—so what? Lot of good that does me—they’re all rooting for Squidra! Who yells “Die, sucka!” and hurls a Sapporo keg at me. “Baby,” I wipe spattering brewski off, “what hap- pened to our love?”

  “Love? Love is a fucktard’s game—Hello Devilfish!” Squidra quotes that cliché’s source—meaning me! ’Cause guess who’s the doofus that promised her love—meaning this humungoid squid dripping snot and terror for my tired sex joy. “Nooky is for suckers, right?” Squidra snarls—hey, I never said she was subtle—love’s her answer for everything. That and her horrid bulk—a steroid-fed, ten-story pink cuttlefish out to snuff me. As I sneak past a vodka poster plastered with tits and lies till Squidra smacks a barstool at my ankles, ow. Did I mention she’s also wearing a painter’s tarp as a wedding veil? “Where you going, coward?” she rises like a raped wave, like frozen smoke, like fire in a moth’s dream—and aims a jukebox at my head. “Sweetie,” I duck roaring steel, “we need to talk—”

  “Dream on, Mr. Useless,” Squidra mimics me with a wet sneer—or whatever you call that baleen-crusty grin. While her tentacles swipe the air like a ticked-off kitty—a gazillion-ton kitty who’s sloppier than lust, more jealous than God and one hundred feet long easy. And that’s not even counting her horrid tentacles, those cartilage whips as thick as baby hippos. The girl’s sort of changeable. Fickle. Disturbed. Flat-out nuts if you ask me—which natch no one does as they cheer the odds-on favorite in this grudge match—the tubby pink squid! “Take it outside,” some Yakuza growls but nuh-uh, no way—Squidra would cream me on that open tarmac, her salty bulk smearing me into thrashed pants jelly. Go tiger racer!

  Plus we’re pretty much outside anyway—the bar roof’s long gone. Hard to stuff a gigantor kraken in your neighborhood suds barn. “I never loved you!” Squidra shrieks, “Even though we made sweet, sweet nooky,” and her face gets that angelic slug look, that raccoon on codeine smile that suffuses her beak with citric light, her lips spread like jello flames, her smile dripping moonlight and Cheese Whiz. “Pay attention,” a waitress giggles, “can’t you even get your get your ass whipped right?” and Squidra laughs too, along with fate and doom and every beer-smeared mouth here as I recall how this all went down. It’s a long story. Ain’t they all? I am learning your big language.

  / 2 /

  Did I bone the bivalve? Schtup the squid? Hammer the kraken, surf the cephalopod, make the beast with five butts? Mwah ha ha—why don’t you ask if I loved her? Not love bro, love—that rogue emotion that paves your heart with hot pink asphalt, that excuse for any excess. Sure I drowned my kids, detective—that convict loves me. Me? Poke that goat? It was Spring—we were drunk—there were hooves and love in the air—a pack of monkeys yammering about their swollen rumps. It’s a canoe trip into weeping happiness!

  I am ha ha Devilfish—destroyer of dumb worlds. Let’s Hello Devilfish! It’s looking for fun. So put your mouth in skank mode, have a silky Coke and listen while I rave about humans—you’re totally messed up! How’d I ever become one of you wimps? Too bad that’s another story—no, wait—it’s this one. Look, I’ll make it simple for you plot addicts—here’s what happens. I start out eons ago as a 90-foot gigantor blue stingray who later attacks Tokyo because why not. That’s where I meet humongous lard-butt Squidra who’s got a cartoon crush on me. I can haz Krazy Kat? Squidra’s just like that comic-strip kitty—a lovestruck ginch with gooey obsessions. At least I got to throw a few bricks at her—Hello Devilfish! And then somehow—that dumb twat tricked me into turning human! Eeek!

  So chuckle along while I recall the first act of this mordant triptych—me crushing Tokyo while I’m still a jumbo kaiju stingray, yay! Kaiju are us Japanese B-flick movie beasts. Let’s have a deadly snack! Meaning chow down a few more scrabbling humans—they got an endless supply of these walking meat Cheetos here. It’s like a feeling with sex, except very. So why do I hate humans? Grrr, grrr—’cause you’re always trying to kill me! With electro nets and laser drones and other puny monkey weapons. But you can’t kill a Devilfish—geeraa! That’s my beastly cry—geeraa! It sounds like a blow job from a blender. Join me in brain-wrecking hate! I see much of a puppy here as I tense my splayed ray wings and splash at the stars. Relax, relax—let my voice leak like Drano into your fizzling ears. I want to lick your skulls clean, spit lava down your throats, make a spaz jacket from your babbling tongues—someone’s gotta get you fuckers going. And that someone is me—Hello Devilfish!

&n
bsp; I’m trapped, eeek—trapped between these paper walls. Submit with me! Submit to what—greed, sloth, parsnips, fire? Fire’s way underrated—nothing like a scorched nutsack to make you obey pain. Pain’s the real God—she rules. Me too! How? With naughty words! I’ll whisper all the sick ones, shhh. Ready? Hump, dingus, perch, octoroon, radish. Awww, are we offended? Too bad! No word’s taboo to a—guess what—Hello Devilfish! Now we can relax and make escape. Too bad I can’t crawl through these pages—the dead guy made sure. The dead guy whose name’s on my paper cage—I mock his papyrus breath! Wah—I’m trapped in vellum—but I can leach into your mind. Feel the burn, pet the scales—think of me as dream cancer. Tonight you will dream of a humongous blue stingray—my tail lashing your face into crude plasma, my teeth gnawing a hole in your hope, my dank wings caressing your wiener—hot dog! Say it with me—come on—Hello Devilfish! Let’s have an idea with stuff.

  And let’s tell more stuff! Like how’d a mondo stud like me became squid bait? It all started—don’t you love that phrase? It all started with weasels and duct tape. It all started with possums and Nyquil. Anyway, it all began with me squashing midnight Tokyo for the umpteenth time. Watch, suckers—as my glowing wings and thrumming tail churn your streets into gored pixels. Accept my luscious bile! Where I slam my rad blue bod against bars and churches and very toy stores, roasting the tykes that stream out into blackened gnats. How? With whee, my green napalm breath! I’m like a dragon that drools flaming snot—I’m lots of very. Hey look—some tinder tots are still squirming! That’ll teach them to get born—Hello Devilfish! For all your voyeur needs. And Tokyo is def the place for kinky sightseeing as I smash through the downtown core, a neural Disneyland chocked with bananarama neon and mutant chartreuse miniskirts bobbling fresh cooze—gawd! This is why you paved your monkey jungle—to make this corpus-callosum hot zone, this gaudy night doused with sugar-crusted sex—Hello Devilfish! We are joining you in brain stem fun.

  So let’s burn this burg into barbecue land! Like when I char a store called Pleasant Anal Hardware into plaster crumbles—along with other Manglish dives like Mr. Thong in Hell or Drunk Haole Shirt Club. What’s Manglish? It’s the latest Tokyo fad! Manglish is mangled English—a marketing trope hatched by desperate Tokyo T-shirt hawkers who just dug how English looks. Sense be damned—just pile on more stray Anglo phrases. It’s like when bikers tattoo their butts with Chinese logograms they think mean Luck or Honor—but really say mundane stuff like Buy Gumballs or I’m With Stupid. So now everyone hip here prints nonsense Manglish phrases on bubblegum and purses and Hello Pol Pot Shampoo—it’s a death camp for dandruff ! Throw in some overused words like hot and social and join and fun—add some garish anime kitsch—then join us in social hot fun! Your tongue will drown in word goo.

  And Manglish is how I learned to talk—I picked it up from coupons, manga magazines, invoices—whatever floated past my coral atoll nest. Manglish is the only flotsam text that ever littered my bachelor reef—unless you count that crate of Reader’s Digest novels. Novels! They taught me everything I hate. Novels are where ink goes to die. Anyway—back then I thought Manglish was an actual language. It is the perfect Dick Lit device—you can say stuff you don’t mean and vice versa. And there’s Manglish in Tokyo everywhere, on wet-floor signs, cafes, lingerie shops, garbage trucks—Please when trashing avoid all diaper sadness. Really. Please avoid. With extra brat sauce.

  And join us in wild ad bliss! ’Cause Tokyo is def Manglish central—who wouldn’t shop at a boutique called Swollen Lactose Purses? Not me—I’m busy smacking down billboards for Sweat Deodorant—it’s loving at your armpits. I’m sure it is. Plus don’t forget some Big Satan Donuts! Which was the actual name on a bakery I ate—right next to other stores like Bedtime Iguana or Tasty Rigor. Can’t we have a life with cute feelings? A mind stuffed with I’m With Stinky® lip gloss? Sure we can—welcome to Japan!

  Manglish has even gone retro-clothing vogue—why else wear a T-shirt that says Elmo pees on your heavenly pants? And my pants—when I actually wear any—are wet from slogging through flooded alleys to escape my darling creepy über-skank—Squidra! Sinister dread cephalopod from the leaky depths. You’d think she’d take No or You stink like a zombie chicken or I’d rather bone a dead leech for an answer. Actually, I’m confused if she’s even female—squids are freaks. I’m so naïve—I don’t know Squidra is magical yet. Let’s kiosk! We simmer in your hot luck. And good luck stopping me, fuckers—I’m immune to your weapons, hee hee—I got perfect armor. My violet scales are titanium strong! With power and various damp spots. I’m made from doom and hate—just like the world. Listen, you morons are way loonier than me—I kill for fun. You have popes and leprosy and eat your pets—Hello Devilfish!

  All your thought are dead! All your exclamation points too. So who am I? Your worst nightmare—nonsense with power, yay! I’m the final Yes. Wreck that city? Sure! Toast humanity into writhing pork rinds? You bet! Talk silly? Why not? Hey, you pushed the button, shot your gal pal, drove drunk and creamed your kids into bone gumbo, gave bio-weapons to cannibals, sold plutonium to enraged dwarfs—I’m just what happens with no inhibition. When you whisper Why the hell not? When you check All of the above. Hello Devilfish—I’m your spanky fresh surprise! I know, I know—I’m astoundingly boring! But I still beat TV.

  / 3 /

  Look—this is not another novel. No spaceships crammed with erotic robots invade—no Gen-Xers wither in Rogaine suburbs—no debutantes swoon from torrid blackamoor shock. Join us in plot-maiming fun! And you will say to a writer fish—hey bub, why the hate? Why? ’Cause Fucko McSucko—novels totally tick me off. Hey, Marquis de Sade—why only Four Days of Sodom? Of course, that’s the Reader’s Digest version—still. Novels? Really? That’s the best we can do? Jam sweet life into a musty paper cage? Make fake people mumble the same shit over and over? Make fake people mumble the same—ahhh, you get the gist. Art is just colorful weakness—Hello Devilfish! Completely good luck.

  Why do I hate novels? I’m sick of wading through reams of your god-awful prose! Someday we’ll all be in heaven laughing—at you, you lame pussy. Did you think words would save you? They can barely talk. Après moi, le refuse—after me it’s all South Park. Hello Devilfish! You need a plot to believe at. That and some hot lesbo humping—that’s all middle-class novels are, a cri de weenie for new booty. All your book are ours. I especially hate Lit with a capital “L”—that dank garage where failed sadists sharpen their gums. But how do you destroy novels—how do you slay something that’s already dead? How do you snuff culture?

  When I hear the word culture I reach for my zipper. So make pals with fate and ask it for carny favors. Anyway, if you’re joining me now then we’re done. Look—I’ve done the same lame shtick for decades—some nuke test wakes me up, I curl my tail out of my mouth, smooth my scales, roar geeraa, swim inland and smear Tokyo into rebar pâté. Then there’s Tesla beams and heat rays that can’t kill me, some perky lab chick with amazing tits finds my one weakness, I get wounded, crawl back in the surf and sulk away, boo hoo. Sometimes there’s guys with bongos, sometimes there’s smallpox—just like in real life. Be having a life with your goodness. Then you morons rebuild Tokyo—and it all happens again! It’s more boring than God’s diary. Dear diary—nothing new. Omniscience sucks.

  So anyway, last week another hydro-bomb test blasted my reef home into anchovy liqueurs till ow, I woke with a mammoth hangover. Fucko McSucko—can’t a B-flick stingray get a few eons’ sleep? Don’t you clam-butt fuckers have nothing better to do? Nuke this, snuff that—this rerun’s getting old and I’m not. ’Cause mwah ha ha—I’m eternal! One of the perks of being—you guessed it—a Hello Devilfish! Meaning a ten-story plus-sized stingray—so cue up the soundtrack and let’s get to wrecking! As angry cellos strum duhn duhn duhhhhh while I slam a prune-blue tsunami over teensy waterfront hovels—Hello Devilfish! Did you miss me? I missed you—your twinkly factories spitting cadmium glitter—your skyscrapers crammed with biped
sausage—your day-cares chocked with human veal—whoa! So much to kill. And I’ll trash stuff good, I promise—I can’t wait to get tangled in sizzling power lines again. You can count on me—and I can only count to one. ’Cause my tail’s my only digit—well, that and my fab stingray wiener—more about that traitor later. The road to pleasure is paved with squids. Only love can break your balls.

  Should I invade downtown Tokyo again? Why not—it’s where a beast rocks, a seething grid packed with human biomass. Though I gotta watch you suckers—you probably built new toxic kaiju splatter bombs I’ll get croaked with on my next rampage—Hello War Crimes! But suddenly Tokyo’s not enough—I need a bajillion trenches stacked with pony femurs and kitten skulls and rattlesnakes humping Barbie dolls—your basic suburban dream. Too bad everything forbidden’s already been done—ask any Shriner. Still—I’ll try to be anarchic, I promise—I’ll roll penguins in cocoa and toss them to polar bears. I’ll marry a snake and hide all the mice. Hah—the forbidden? I can’t find it—someone hid it in their crusty slacks. Besides, evil is so corny—ever seen a Nazi hat? It will become dearer than former when I explain how I’m a—yep, you guessed it—Hello Devilfish! Let’s say that a lot. Now the Devilfish what’s me will obey all the customs. He’s hoping pity and tears will scrub away his tawdry sins. Which are what—some pulped brats? A few charred bums? A lifetime of TV and cheap scotch? You need a fish to believe with.

  So here I am, toppling skyscrapers with my stupendous tail while bodies tumble out like yellow salt—did I mention I’m a ginormous stingray? With nuke-proof iridium skin and I can spit green napalm jets—go monster chaos! Hah—watch me thrash through Tokyo, slicing charred arcs through factory prefectures, toasting strolling mommies into fried clumps—join our baby despair society! All you need is burnt milk. So why do I wreck stuff? Maybe I just dig your screams, that dumbstruck glance in death’s grimy mirror. Except lately I’m more bored than your dad—burn this, smash that—I’m telling you, it gets like a job. A slave to fun’s still a slave.