Hexes On My Exes

Ellis Cory stood on the corner of Essex and Ginsburg rubbing his sore mandible. He had just been beat to a pulp by a midget tourist named Rupert Rincon who was dressed as a penguin of all things. Ellis once loved penguins, but he doubted he'd ever look at them the same again. When he was a kid he would cry when he saw them being eaten by seals, but anymore, he might laugh if he was to see it. Their mouths are terrifying and through the mouth of the costume he saw Rupert's angry face.

Ellis was drunk as hell. He wasn't dressed as anything, though it was Halloween weekend. He wasn't a tourist. He was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts so every year he had to put up with this shit. A parade of onomatopeic dopes — the influx of tourists dressed as all sorts of trendy and increasingly dorky things. Mostly witches and warlocks and zombie puritans and Draculas. Of course, there was a slew of Harry Potters. Unoriginal bastards, he reviled them stuck in traffic. The least they could do is dress up as sluts.

Ellis was a direct descendent of Giles Cory who was accused of witchcraft and pressed to death on September 19, 1692 by an extremely heavy weight, which is a terrible way to go. He felt it gave him the right to be an asshole. My ancestors suffered and shit, Ellis would often slur drunk like a no account. Salem owes me a good time.

He couldn't remember why the midget penguin had punched him in the bar. But he remembered a pool cue and chalk being involved. Then he remembered the pitter-patter of little webbed penguin feet on the green felt of the pool table and he realized the midget had climbed onto the table to be of suitable height to launch his malefic assault. It was a strategic move. Rupert Rincon was a professional midget boxer from Panama, unbeknownst to Ellis. It might have made him feel better if he knew. But nothing would make him feel better.

The incident all stemmed from Ellis ordering anchovies and playfully trying to feed the penguin midget the tiny fish and then, when the penguin refused, hurling them at him saying they ought to remind him of his wife. Then, when that failed to get a rise out of the pint-sized penguin, saying something about the midget's mother taking it in the backdoor because he had it on good authority that her steak drapes looked like the exit wound of a 44 magnum.

That is how much drunk Ellis hated tourists. And tourists hated Ellis, too. He grew to be a pariah listed on all the tourist sites. "Avoid this fuggin' guy," they said. Somehow "fuggin'" was okay to say, but "fucking" was not. There were various pictures of Ellis in different states of drunkenness. The tourists acted like they owned the place when they came to town. They all did the same stupid things, grinning like goofs all over the place, snapping pictures by the same stupid monuments, going to the same places, congesting traffic.

It wasn't the first time Ellis had been beaten up by a tourist and likely it wouldn't be the last. He couldn't remember all the times, but it usually resulted from him insulting someone's mother. That is what he did when he was drunk.

So there he stood. On Essex and Ginsburg, which used to be Essex and Custer before they renamed everything that offended liberals like masculinity and Indian killers and rebels and cowboys and actors and actresses and Aunt Jemima bottles and butter girls and men and Donald Trump. The list is ever-expanding and will go until it consumes everyone and everything.

It wasn't always this way for Ellis Cory. He was once a happy man. He was once a decent man who was very much in love and not an alcoholic in the least. But when the love affair ended with the love of his life, he went down a path of degeneration and alcoholism consumed by bar fights, and loose women with Rent-A-Center vaginas, and glory holes with suspect mouths, and glitzy hookers.

It is strange what a broken heart does to an animal. At least, he didn't do drugs, as he boasted defiantly to friends who staged an impromptu intervention, at a bar of all places. They all offered him the sage advice of, "Just get over her," and in various degrees of politesse and hostility, referred to her as a worthless psychotic whore not worth a spit because spit was a better word than shit. Shit would have just been too degrading.

You can do better. There are plenty of fish in the sea. She wasn't meant for you. Thank God for unanswered prayers. They said a million terrible things that could be in fortune cookies for the brokeneharted. The same banal and stupidly obvious things people say because they cannot think of anything better, or they cannot empathize as well as they should, but they mean well, all the same. The intervention didn't help. That night Ellis was knocked out by a tourist from Texas dressed up as Davy Crockett whose mother he called an old cum dumpster and who he had it on good authority that she's the biggest whore in all of Texas, which he called the "bone" star state. Then he said those Texans in the Alamo had it coming and there Ellis lay half-conscious on the barroom floor like an expectorated coughdrop, sticky and dirty from tourist feet, smiling as the blood trickled down his nose and cheeks, pooling briefly in his right ear, gurgling, nearly drowning, before spitting it out like a crimson geyser.

Ellis liked to say he "had it on good authority" of something or other. He got it from some old TV show with a butler. It made whatever he said sound smarter, he felt. Of course, he didn't have anything on good authority, it was all made up. And when he was drunk, he didn't sound smart at all, but he said it anyway.

Ellis was lucky his hard living hadn't cost him more than it had. He was lucky he hadn't gotten stabbed or shot and that the bar fights hadn't knocked a tooth out because he was hanging on to good looks by a thread. He was in his mid-forties so age was bad enough. His hair was thinning and his eyes were sandbagged because of a lack of sleep. His complexion was moonglow pale because he didn't get enough sun. He only got what sun he got to and from the office. He slept after work until 7 or 8 and went to the bars and closed them down like it was his job. His liver was like the vagina of an exotic Malaysian porno actress who fucked gorillas for tourists. His eyes appeared to swim in alcohol like two blue silver dollar fish and his circumlocutory way of speaking beguiled those who dared to listen to him. But of all the insults he slung, of all the crude and debauched things he said or did, he never said a bad word about his ex-girlfriend, though he had every right to if only to truthfully recall the coldness of her betrayal. 

In his Elysian mind she existed as Eve existed in the Garden of Eden. She is naked and loyal there. Lying on a luxurious bed of absurd palatian comfort, pillows abound, and soft white crumpled blankets cradle her. It was before the apple. She is perfect and beautiful and there he is too, when he gets drunk and swallows himself whole. There they both are lying in that bed that floats down a river of his thoughts until he cannot fool himself any longer with the alcohol as the memory inevitably attacks his delusional reveries. Then he pisses it all out, or ejaculates it through a community glory hole like the one in the adult store on Oyster Avenue, that in the spirit of Salem, looks like a slutty Spirit Halloween.

But then he saw her. With his sore jaw and all. Standing there half-drunk his ass freshly kicked by that angry Panamanian midget penguin who is now just a blur and who is probably licking his wounds in some hotel, still sore about his dear insulted mother. She was coming out of a shop on High Street. A shop Ellis had never seen before. A shop with a neon eyeball sign above it which bled out on the cold black street in a pool of vibrant color. 

The neon eyeball reminded Ellis of Salem's infamous glory hole. The one on Oyster Avenue in the back of that adult store where people buy hot oils and dildos and whips and chains and glass pipes to smoke meth. It was said that a witch was behind the wall and she did what she did because she needed sperm to stay young. That was the legend, anyway. Some people say she was Ms. Greene, the former gymnast and linguist, who taught English at the high school. Others say she was a nurse named Haley Nocterra from the local hospital. Both were very attractive women, but both were not the glory hole girl. The identity of that girl was Salem's greatest mystery.

Ellis recalled seeing her eyeball in the hole once, which reminded him of the neon eyeball. He just so happened to look into it and there she was. One large green eye. Ellis said he went for the conversations because the blow job was only so-so. He rated it on Google, accordingly. But in truth, the conversation was mostly garbled.

But there his ex-girlfriend was leaving that shop beneath the all-seeing neon eyeball. She walked the other way and did not see him, which gave him a sense of relief because he looked like shit and wouldn't want to be seen in his present state. He wasn't a ruggedly handsome man. He was a beaten-looking buffoon. Like bruised fruit. A puffy-lipped and crooked-nosed bastard. He had a swollen eye which looked like a babboon's asshole. A worn-out boxing gym speed bag duck-taped with an eggplant nose. A tooth wiggled precariously threatening his good looks. He couldn't pull off the rugged look very well. He was more of a cosmopolitan handsome, and that required some effort.

Ellis, never believing curiosity killed the cat, nor caring if it did, walked into the shop not sure what to expect. There was only the eyeball outside and inside another neon sign flashed like a nudist under a trench coat, "Hexes on my Exes." The words boldly flashed, flashed, flashed.  There was a menu below. Potions for sell. And below all that there was a very attractive woman perched at a desk with a black plastic cauldron on top full of candybars and wax teeth for the tourists.

If Ellis was in the market for a single woman, she might be it. But as he was, she was just another fucking machine in a world full of fuck machines. A fuck machine with lips and eyes and a dainty attractive nose. Sure he would have sex with her. Why not? Maybe hers was the magic hole of eternal bliss, after all. But it would be sex that meant nothing as the sex he was having for the past two years meant nothing. He didn't care. If it came down to it, sure, they'd screw. What's one more or less.

The woman said welcome and he said thank you, for lack of anything better. How weirdly conditioned we have all become saying please and thank you over nothing at all when we neither want something or are thankful. Ellis was a smalltalk zombie who didn't seem to exist in matters that he was indifferent. But this peaked his interest. His ex-girlfriend, the ghost of a year past, peaked his interest. The smell of her perfume that lingered in the room. The pink neon sign peaked his interest, and the eyeball, like that of the mysterious eyeball he once saw through the glory hole, peaked his interest.

At first he thought it was just another bougie tattoo shop because the firecrotch at the front desk was heavily tattooed. Two sleeves and a scarf, if that is what they call a neck piece, which was of Micheangelo's The Creation of Adam. Real fine art. Kudos to her for not getting some trashy thing. Some old English writing. Or Chinese. Some Harley Quinn garbage scrawled. Some Marilyn Monroe quote. There was a tiger on her chest which looked Asian and without her saying a word at all, he knew she would say that it "guards her heart" or some dumb shit like that. He hoped she didn't say so. There's nothing worse than when someone talks about themselves and their tattoos. Then he recognized her green eyeball.

"Holy shit," he said. She was the girl from the glory hole and he felt better about life for a minute because she was attractive. He wondered if he had occasionally given that tiger on her chest a pearly beard because he came like Mount Vesuvious when he came.

Then he realized he was brokenhearted still and it didn't matter if he did or not. None of it mattered. Nothing matters when you have a broken heart. He recalled his last time at the glory hole a few days before. There was music playing as he bellied up to the black wall and matter-of-factly put his penis into the mysterious hole like someone parks their car in a garage. The music was The Shirelle's singing, "Will you love me tomorrow?" An odd choice of music for the theme or a glory hole, he thought. The glory hole girl behind the wall hummed along. 

He wondered if she recognized him, but it was obvious she did not. Maybe if he was uncouth enough to flip out his weiner she might recognize it. Maybe she named them as they pushed through the wall. Through that quarter-inch drywall wall. Maybe they were given life like babies are given life when they pop through the magic beef curtains previously only being a clump of cells. Magically nothing to someone with a breath of air. Or maybe he was wrong and she had an eyeball that looked like someone else's. A doppelgänger eyeball.

The menu offered hexes and the patient and beautiful firecrotch waited for Ellis to peruse it and tell him what he wanted as though he was ordering a coffee and a box of munchkins at Dunkin' Donuts. There was Misery by STD; Prepetual Brokenheartedness Without Me; Taco Bell Ass; Moderate to Severe Psoriasis; Acne; Shingles; Wet Dog Crotch; Ass Warts; Fishy Down There Forever; Onion Breath; Uncontrolled Jealousy; Explosive Diarrhea; General Malaise; Meloncholia; on and on. There were prices next to each. But there was one thing that stuck out to Ellis, that battered and bruised brokenhearted loveable psychotic boob, and that was the last potion listed — Forget You! It was the most expensive of them all.

As the firecrotch hummed a refrain from "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" in her boredom, Ellis asked, skittish as he was, what it entailed. And so she opened a vinyl binder and that rather glorious mouth of hers read word-for-word the product description, that it was a potion to forget your ex, or anyone really. Then he asked her what the lady who just walked out ordered so he knew what he might be afflicted with, if he was the reason for her visit, and she said she was not at liberty to say as though it was a hospital or something.

Then he said he recognized her eyeball and her mouth from somehwere and she capitulated quickly, saying, "The lady ordered 'Forget You!' From Ellis Cory. Wait. Are you — Ellis Cory?"

He sighed.

"I'm sorry," Eve offered. Her name was Eve. At that very moment he saw her name badge pinned to a perky fake boob which was the size of a baseball.

Eve! It screamed triumphantly. 

Ellis felt himself get angry. At first, there was a tinge of false satisfaction in that she was struggling to forget him, or thought of him so much so that she was buying a potion to do so, but then the anger took hold and had him its jaws. After all they've been through. After what she did to him, and what he forgave her of. His mind went back to the night it ended. A frequent stop on the train of his mind's routine navel-gazing.

He was going to ask her to marry him that night at the finest restaurant in Salem. He was uncomfortable sitting there in an itchy suit listening to the synchronous clatter of silverware on porcelain plates. He overlooked a straight pin in the collar of his JC Penney dress shirt, which jabbed him in the neck like a voodoo doll. He just took the pain. He hadn't worn the suit since his last job interview 7 years ago. Or to someone's funeral. He couldn't remember which was last. People were poking raw meat and seaweed with forks. Slurping soup and trying desperately to be copious with words and funny. They were stuffing their cocktraps and muff holes with expensive food drizzled with the usual drizzling sauces the bougie chefs cream themselves talking about like its the most original thing in the world. The plate garnished with cock drizzle and a leaf of something they pretend is as sacred as Eve's fig leaf. The ring was burning a hole in his pocket. He was sweating buckets and uncertain about how she'd answer, yet excited nonetheless.

But unbeknownst to him, months earlier his girlfriend, who was wiggling in her whorish discomfort feigning the delight of a vanilla bean panna cotta and contentment to the very end of it's dead end street, heard from a friend that Ellis was cheating on her. The friend swore she saw him out with another woman and took a grainy cellphone picture to prove it. She was a fat white woman and most every negative thing wrong in this world is perpetuated by religious zealots, dickless sport's obsessed men, queers, or fat white women who seem to fiendishly devour drama and shit controversy with bazooka-caliber sphincters of explosive dramatic diarrhea. His affair was probably with a tourist, they concurred.

It wasn't true. The friend was mistaken and Ellis apparently has a dopplegänger — a tax attorney tourist named Nathan Witt from Ohio. And there he sat at the restaurant ready to propose to a woman who had been bent up and dipped and drizzled in baby yogurt for weeks behind his back by an obese man named Joe something who didn't deserve her. She was an insecure woman who had been unfaithful in revenge of nothing.

Then she told him and his life unraveled in the blink of a neon fucking eyeball while everyone around them schmoozed and paid way too much for baby cow meat and fish eggs pretending to be smart and cultured. They would have ate baby had it been on the menu and had it made them look more sophisticated.

He didn't tell her he intended to propose. He just took it like he took that straight pin in the neck. She didn't tell him what she had done until she had finished eating that vanilla bean panna cotta, and when she did it was the way someone usually tells someone that they've been unfaithful, like it is a natural yet disagreeable minor sort of thing that isn't that serious in the scheme of life. It isn't like genocide, or a terrorist attack, or a nuclear holocaust, they reason. She told him like a kid tells a parent they swallowed their bubblegum. Or they were in an auto accident that wasn't entirely their fault.

"It gives me no satisfaction to say this," she began like she was delivering the Gettysburg Address. "But I've been unfaithful. Who he is is not important, so please don't ask." She cried a little. That was the cherry on top of that vanilla been panna cotta. All her tears for herself.

"I wasn't cheating," he said. "Whoever she saw wasn't me. It wasn't me."

She didn't believe him. She showed him the picture but he was quick to point out that the man in the picture had earlobes rather than attached ears as he has. And when his girlfriend compared the ear from the photo to Ellis' ear, she knew she was mistaken. Then she cried, saying, "My God, what have I done?" before saying he had no right to blame her.

Of course, he had every right to blame her, but it was done. They were done. It was all over. There is no real forgiving infidelity and these people who claim to be happy "throuples" or polynamorous or polygamists are all full of shit dysfunctional nut-jobs. The relationship has been compromised and it becomes as exclusive as a garden-variety glory hole or a gas station pump. They certainly may continue their relationship, but the infidelity is always there ruining things forever. When fidelity is lost, it cannot be reclaimed. 

"It's okay," she said hoping he wouldn't make a scene. His brain schismed. Her brain flooded itself with dopamine that told her everything was alright.

"No, Olivia. It's not. No!" He shook his head, tore off his collar and tie, then got up and left before he cried. And there in the parking lot, he cried like he had when his dog died in the third grade. Then he felt like a bitch for crying so he stopped and went and banged a tourist. Then another and another until it made him feel like shit. He disappeared in the dark as tourists waddled by with their cellphones snapping photos, flashes flashing. Fake witches and their brooms on foot. A bunch of Wednesday Addams' and Harley Quinns and Sanderson sisters of which, at one point or another, he had shamefully banged all three. There Ellis Cory walked into a pit of despair like a loveless insatiable zombie who was after pussy instead of brains. Who was being pressed by the weight of life like his ancestor Giles Cory was with stones.

But now he stood there with this firecrotch who waited for him to order something. To wake up from the memory that held him hostage like Mitch McConnell's stalled dead brain — that human terrapin.

"Ellis?" she nudged.

"I'm sorry. Well — if she wants to forget me, I want to forget her. I'll take the same potion."

Eve nodded. "Might I interest you in a quickie in the back as well? Since you know about, well, the 'GH.' I'll do it for 100 — 80 if you pull out."

It was a good offer. A fair offer. She was an attractive woman. He never would have imagined that anyone who operated a $20 glory hole would be so attractive. He figured her face was mangled or something the first time he bellied up to that wall like one of those sticky wall-crawling octopuses. Maybe she was a tranny, or mauled by pitbulls, or burned in a fire, but regardless, she had the mouth of a Hoover. Just put the money in the slot and stick your dick through the hole and wait. Have faith. That's how it goes. Your entire life playing on the backs of your eyelids as it happens.

There is a lot of trust sticking your dick through a hole and waiting. Sometimes she took a minute. Sometimes her hand was cold or her mouth had an ice cube in it. Other times it was warm like pie is warm. Sometimes she was gentle and sometimes she was rough. But behind the thin black wall there was always the sound of moaning from a TV with a defective speaker that had a crackle in it. The soft sounds of pornography on a Radio Shack television. And there was the song. The Shirelles. He could hear the sound of her finger pressing the play button on the cassette player. And her humming along as she played the skin flute like a concert flutist which made him palm the wall as his soul was being sucked from his man straw.

"No," Ellis returned pitifully. "No thank you. Just the potion."

Eve frowned at his rebuke. A semblance of morality awoke in him and he was cleansed of the debauchery that had succeeded his hearthbreak.

"You know why they call me the mermaid," she persisted.

"I didn't know they did," Ellis admitted.

"Well, they do. Nothing below the waste. I promised my husband that. But he left me, so now I'm expanding my market. But I offered you the full fucking magnolia and you turned me down cold. Fuck."

He didn't reply. He hadn't the energy to apologize or to explain. He wasn't much into phony pity parties, anyway. She wouldn't have any trouble having a weiner roast in her firepit once she advertised it. What did it matter if he fucked her or not? He was done fucking random things. Random holes. He suddenly desired someone and something meaningful.

The potion cost 100 bucks, which he paid on his debit card, inserting the plastic into the slot. A metaphor itself. The machine moaned and the receipt came out the other end and the transaction was complete.

Eve explained that the potion wasn't really a potion. Rather it was hypnosis. But she wasn't a hypnotist. She just worked there. All she had to do was sit him down on a sofa and put a pair of headphones on his head and press play. She'd probably shove her tits in his face as she did. He'd be eye to eye with that tiger protector of her heart, which he surely glazed.

By the end of it, he would forget his ex-girlfriend. Eve only had to know her name and some AI program plugged her name into the auto-generated script. It even read it in a sexy British woman's voice. Alice, they called it. "Alice" was an acronym for something she didn't bother to explain and he didn't care to know. It was Alice's eye on the sign out front. Rain beat against the glass window and it looked as though Alice was crying.

And there Ellis sat on the same green leather sofa he probably would have been fucking Eve had he agreed to a final hoo-rah with the willing mermaid glory hole hypnotist who opened her unholy under region for the first time to him. Her great natural golden leg arch. Her snatch cave now opened to tourists. And there he sat, like a bitch, he felt, with Dre Beatz on his ears wondering if he had just wasted 100 bucks he could have spent on debaucherizing himself further into some deep dark lonely abyss until death felt sorry for him enough to take him. To put him out of his misery.

He didn't realize it worked when it was over because he didn't know what he had forgotten. And since he didn't remember his ex-girlfriend, he didn't have a broken heart. His heart was whole again. And since he didn't have a broken heart, he wasn't interested in depravity as a cure. He was clean again. Whole again. New again. It was like someone prayed over him. Some rabid televangelist with a toothy grin healed him by slapping him on the forehead. He went home and took a bath. He was a bald fucking head. A newborn baby pushing himself through the magic beef curtains to be a legitimate human-being that nobody could deny. He was safe from the abortion. He made it past the angry snapping forceps.

He was perfect in his new form. His new existence. He didn't mind the tourists. They were dandy to him as they were before his ex-girlfriend cheated. They were dandy as candy. He lived a good and wholesome life for a year. A year of no sex or fighting. No glory holes. No glitzy hookers. No jerking off.

He went to the Hawthorne Hotel the next Halloween and danced all night. He was friendly and made good jokes. Earlier in the evening he went to the witches museum where tourists learned the witches weren't burned at the stake, much to their disappointment. They were hung. The gallows weren't there anymore. The ropes weren't saved for posterity sake. Or they were pressed like his great great great grandfather. They became little puritan fritters sent to Heaven or Hell by the do-good pressers. So it goes.

It was at the Hawthorne Hotel that Halloween that Ellis met a beautiful woman he could not have met had he not forgotten his ex. She was dressed up as a plague doctor and he was dressed up as a plague doctor. Both with the ominous bird masks. Both at the Hawthorne and both staring at each other from across the room when they took off their masks to have a better look and to breathe. He had never seen anyone more beautiful in his life.

That night she was running through the halls of the hotel ringing her bell calling out, "Bring out your dead," much to everyone's annoyance or amusement. It was about an even split. Then Ellis opened his door as she was about to pass and he saw her. And she saw him. They were beak to beak.

"I'm sorry," she said, startled, removing her mask. A little embarrassed, but drunk enough not to be humiliated.

"Don't be," he said. "I just came back to my room to change to go to the hotel bar. Would you like to come in?"

She agreed. Her bell clamored upon her thigh as she put it aside to enter. Ellis had booked a room though he lived only a few miles away. He booked a room like a tourist would book a room. And there they sat in that white room dressed in all black after the dance. He didn't bother to change and they didn't bother to go down to the bar for the after-party.

Love had finally found Ellis Cory. And Ms. Olivia Lang was his willful recipient. She was also a resident of Salem, he learned, but, like him, she partook in the festivities of Halloween as though she weren't. There they sat in the room akwardly as though they didn't know what to do next. A dark and akward room until he turned on the TV with the excuse to watch something to alleviate some of the pressure of being alone with her. The smell of fresh linens and toilet cleaner lingered in the air. A hint of pine. A touch of bleach and lemon. It was a cleansing smell. It was the smell of opportunity and a new beginning.

Ellis didn't ask Olivia about the ghost of boyfriend's past. Nor did she ask him about his last girlfriend or if he was ever married. He didn't care who came before, nor did she. They talked about work. About the absence of kids. About parents and family. About their favorite movies and their hopes and dreams. And then they made love in that room as the walls watched them in the swell of a great white quilt that was like a cloud or a dry wave. As the self-absorbed actors and actresses on TV pretended not to look. As Rupert Rincon was somehwere in Panama telling someone about the dirty gringo who he knocked out while in Salem for insulting his dearly-beloved mother. As Eve's mouth got stuffed behind that anonymous black wall like Joey Chestnut's while The Shirelle's asked that ever-important question — Will you still love me tomorrow?

Olivia stopped Ellis before he officially entered the sovereignty of her vagina like a customs agent checking for papers or narcotics.

"I feel like I've met you before," she said. "I am getting a sense of déjà vu."

"If I had met you before," he answered, "I never would have forgotten you." That was all it took. A satisfactory response and she opened the baby gate wide and in he came. To a land of new opportunity, hope and promise. A sanctuary. There was instant almagamation. Good sex and companionship. A new world.

He, of course, didn't know, and she, of course, didn't know as their costumes lay crumpled on the floor like peeled shadows that they had spent years together and it ended horribly, mistakenly, but it ended nonetheless. But they were destined and destiny cannot be foiled by the folly of our ways as big of doofs as we can be and sometimes are, and as fucked up as we fuck up our lives.

"Good night, my love," he said to her when he turned off the narcissistic voyeurs in the TV. He had never met an actor who wasn't a narcissist, after all. A tattoo of the all-seeing neon eyeball on his hand reached over and lied gently between her naked tits which were atop her heart like pillowy fortresses.

"Goodnight, my darling," she replied, none-the-wiser. Not knowing her life had been altered by a visit to that shop on High Street. Repaired by forgetting. And somewhere that all-seeing neon eyeball of Alice blinked once for another satisfied customer. Twice for two satisfied customers, two turtledoves, who were given another chance at love by hope, fate and hypnosis. And who had the opportunity to fall in love with each other all over again.

"More weight," he mumbled in his sleep.