Hello Devilfish!

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.

Q
UEEN TO
P
OLONIUS
—
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!

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.