The Chicken Ranch is the most prestigious brothel, famed for housing the prettiest, cleanest girls. My father told me that a real estate agent had taken him to that part of town years ago when he was in the market—for real estate.
Malory is shambling down the aisle toward me. Again. We’re at our wedding – the same one we’ve been repeating every day since our actual wedding ceremony two months ago. But, there’s only so many times a guy can dance to “When a Man Loves a Woman” before he wants to brain himself with the punch bowl ladle. Only so many times he can act surprised to find the garter under the wedding dress. Only so many genuine smiles he can give the photographer. Oh yes, the photographer is her – I guess our – hostage, too. And the priest. I’m paying them to keep them here.
The lights were dim and the room smelled like sweat and sweet perfume. The aromas twisted and blended under the heavy tracks of disco funk. Drag queens stomped from one end of the floor to the other, their massive wigs and elongated lashes shaking to the undulating beat
Clyde Byrd came home Friday afternoon and took his 12 gauge shotgun out of the closet and loaded one shell. He was set. As soon as Mattie gets home from work, he intends to arrange his fake suicide scenario. This will get her attention—and, maybe he can find out the truth about a certain situation.
The first inkling I have that this is not going be an ordinary workday is when I drive into the parking lot. My car is swarmed by a horde of middle-aged women all screaming like they thought Elvis suddenly lost his damn mind and decided to drive up to the hotel in a 1971, puke yellow Pinto, with no air-conditioning in the middle of August. Please ladies, get a grip. We’d known he was going to stay at the hotel and at first I’d been as excited as everyone else, but by the time he showed up I could have cared less. Having him stay there was just a pain-in-the-neck with no upside as far as I could see. The chances of actually meeting The King, or even laying eyes on him, were slim to none judging by all the security everywhere.
Here are our nominees for the Best of the Net Anthology, from Sundress Press. It’s been a great year at Drunk Monkeys, and we hope to build on this success in the year to come. Thank you to every one of the writers and artists we’ve come to know.
The blind girl is blind so she can’t see, but she has the most terrific sense of taste and that has to be some kind of consolation. This is what she tells me. She says she can take a sip of wine and count how many virgins have stomped on the grapes. I don’t believe her. I say, “Even if you could, you can’t tell a virgin by how they taste.”
SHORT STORYSubjectiveby Lise Quintana
I refer to the text of this story, but it just says “They chatted through dinner.” It doesn’t say whether I am supposed to laugh at his offensive jokes or even whether I find him attractive. I don’t find him attractive. He’s quite a few years older than me, although with his toad-like build and complexion, he could be much younger and just aging badly. I find the bartender, a man in his mid-30s with short hair razor-parted on the side, the sleeves of his white button-down shirt rolled up to his elbows, much more attractive, but in this flashback the text doesn’t mention him at all, so I can barely even look his way.
My parents were fighting (they were always fighting), so they once again farmed me out to my grandparents. It was summer time and I was miles away from home and from my friends.
He hoisted the gasoline canister out from the old pickup truck and we walked towards the warehouse. It weighed heavy in his hand, liquid splashing like a sea wave with every step he took. I looked at the side of his face, the stubble of his beard, and watched breath rise from his soft lips. In the dark there were so many things to say, but I didn’t say any of them. We got to the door and I fished for the keys. One padlock, one entry code, and one stubborn handle. He stepped through and I tightly closed the door behind us.