The Perineum Less Traveled

Buck reloaded the think-twice gun with hollow-point regret and fired. 

Stella Swan shook, shivered, and stumbled. But when the post-blast dance routine was done, she was largely unfazed.

In fact, her Tombstoned was still in her left hand while her right hovered over the screen.

Sparkman, of course, was prepared. 

He pulled out a 12-gauge shame cannon, briefly admired its chrome body, lowered the barrel, and fired.

This time Stella Swan was knocked off her feet. 

But alas, she was still on her Tombstone, ready to send another ill-advised epitaph into the world.

Buck watched with a mix of awe and pity as Swan struggled to sit up, her trembling finger inching closer and closer to the send button.

The gravedigger had to act fast. 

But again, Sparkman was prepared. 

“This ought to do the trick,” he said to himself, and his million-plus followers on the Living Dead feed. 

His weapon: a humility grenade. 

The kind that would normally fell even the most maniacal of self-absorbed maniacs.

“What do you think?” he asked his followers on the other side of the screen. 

His Tombstone was immediately filled with cascading skulls, black hearts, and gravestones. 

Stella’s finger moved closer to the send button. 

Buck had no time to act. 

He threw the humility grenade at Stella Swan. 

The grenade exploded above her head, showering her in a scalding shrapnel of temperance, Aesop’s fables, and the inescapable vision of a dark dirt nap among the worms and the weevils, the maggots and the necrophiliacs.

Stunned, Stella Swan dropped her Tombstone to the ground and began to weep. 

The epitaph would remain unsent. 

The crisis was averted.

And the sounds of money entering Buck Sparkman’s bank account dinged and clanged, as the skulls, black hearts, and gravestones exploded out of his Tombstoned and showered him in hyperbolic praise and hyperventilating sexts. 

Good thing the gravedigger was wearing ear plugs.

Unfortunately, he had forgotten to wear a bib.

His shirt was ruined.

For the past two weeks, Sparkman had been trailing Swan at the behest of her daughter !!!Yahtzee!!!. 

The Stella Swan hit wasn’t particularly lucrative, but Sparkman felt he owed it to the good people of Hellsboro to stop the caulk rock siren before she did even more damage.

And she had done quite a bit.

The past-year had been particularly brutal to the collective unconsciousness of Hellsboro, thanks to Swan, who went on an exploratory tour of her inner decrepitude by way of her constant need for self-expression by way of self-flagellation. 

Few but the most die-hard fans bought tickets for the journey

Everyone else got a glimpse into Stella Swan’s madness for free. 

Unless you owned a Samhung Urn. 

It didn’t matter if you cared for Stella Swan or not, her latest was loaded up in the latest Tombstone update.

For some it was a gift.

For others a dare. 

But for most it was a small breach of decorum and, therefore, punishable by death. 

Hence Mr. Sparkman.

The track listing went like this: It began with a glimpse of her perineum, a mangled mess of shot marks and one-night tattoos, and proceeded up her backside until you suddenly found yourself in Swan’s fetid, impacted bowels, where precancerous cells sang future funeral dirges and unclassified toxins composed rock opera suites and septic show tunes. 

Much like Swan herself, her perineum enjoyed the spotlight. 

Couldn’t get enough of it, in fact.

And when she was knee-deep in the center-stage cups, she had a tendency to slur, fuck-me-daddy goosestep quotations from Dr. Seuss’ The Great Bell Jar Peanut Butter Battle.

To say this was a mistake is an understatement. 

At the very least, it was manslaughter.

Over 327 people put their heads in the oven after opening their Tombstones on the day of the update and getting hit with a blast of Stella Swan’s technicolor mashup of scar tissue, fading ink, and dear-diary poetics. 

Another 2,703 were institutionalized after reading the perineum’s unauthorized biography, Swan Dive. 

The only way out after that was to continue to go down, down, down into the depths of who and what Stella Swan wanted to be, as the tour of terror continued with a burning-candle excavation of her ears followed by a brutally savage visit to the chiropractor that left three with life-threatening injuries. 

As for !!!Yahtzee!!!, she was nothing like her mother.

She just wanted to attend college and get on with her life. 

Her grades were good.

Her SATs even better

But her trust fund outdid them all. 

Obviously, she was a shoe in.

Apparently, corporate investments don’t suck. They were worth millions.

Or so the epitaph read on Buck Sparkman’s Tombstone.

The text was over a photo of !!!Yahtzee!!! at graduation.

Brown.

The top of her class: Maledictorian.  

Buck stopped scrolling.

It was an epitaph from Sasha.

“The office shooting has been bumped to Thursday,” Sasha wrote. “Can you pick up Sassy?”

“Sure thing,” Buck replied. “I was already planning to. Thought you had a church massacre.”

“That’s the following week.”

“Silly me.”

“Ha. You have any thoughts about dinner?”

“Maybe.”

“Is that a maybe maybe?”

“Could be. We do have some in the freezer.”

“Oh, I forgot about that. Let’s do that.”

“Right on.”

“Rock on right back at you.”

“By the way, the recycling bin bit the mailman again. He threatened to sue.”

Buck paused. 

It was never ending.

The responsibility.

To his wife.

To his daughter, Sasha Junior, aka Sassy.

About his home. 

His car. 

His own fucking body.

For a minute his world went black, and his Tombstone began counting down.

The self-destruct sequence had begun.

Was this finally the end of Buck Sparkman?

Suddenly, his Tombstone barked.

The darkness was replaced by light. 

It was Terry.

“Drinks? Tonight? The Leaky Cauldron?”

He was truly man’s best friend.

“Sure thing.”

Buck put his Tombstone back in his pocket.

And then he took it back out.

He’d forgotten to reply to Sasha. 

But first, he needed a vial of idiot. 

He cracked it, tossed it back, and savored the sheer stupidity as it took hold.

“Don’t worry about the mailman. I’ve got this. Luvs!”

Send.

Truth is, Sparkman did not have this. 

Whether that was a solution to the mailman situation or the Stella Swan one. 

The latter of which, well, had just become seriously dire.

His Tombstone cracked again. 

Swan had sent out a series of epitaphs, the likes of which can never be mentioned. 

Unfortunately, those epitaphs were immediately followed by counter-claims from her perineum, which were even more foul. 

Which was then followed by a statement from a planters wart on her left pinkie toe.

And then a manifesto from a particular grievance-filled boil on her right ass cheek.

Before Buck could react, his Tombstone cracked again. 

It was !!!Yahtzee!!!. 

She had put a hit out on Buck. 

Sparkman pulled out the think-twice gun, dropped in a slug of fuck off, placed it to his temple, and fired. 

!!!Yahtzee!!! could deal with her mom on her own.