Poe

The attractive young woman approached me and I could not help but notice that a 6-inch screw had been messily driven through her forehead. She ordered a dozen Silver Lunas, 3 Winter Winds, and 36 White Half-Faces. I extended the order as a giant condom with reservoir tip walked by playing a single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical metal tube and finger keys.

“He practices safe sax,” rasped a cold, scaly voice. Slowly I turned, for there was no avoiding the universally feared and detested Rep. A mutated breed of freelance sales assassins, 'Reps' offered their chameleonic abilities to the highest bidders. The Reps prowled the strobe-lit hall, testing the aires with bifurcate tongues, immobilizing their prey with hypnotic glance. My eyes were fixed to a spot on the floor, my body embraced with sensuously muscled coils, the thin-lipped mouth of the Rep pressed close to my ear, hissing sweet words of networking and centers of influence.

I became aware that a pair of black stilettos were standing on my spot and my eyes traveled upwards revealing long sinuous legs in black fishnet, a red lace camisole hugging a voluptuous figure, and blond hair cascading softly around a neck that begged for hickeys as the white canvass begs for the artist's kiss. All this made it easy to overlook her exposed brain and the ragged patch of scalp pulled back over her occipital lobe. The Rep blended into the shadows as I gave assurances that I would ship at once 6 Classic Male Venetians, and 3 Black Jesters with red-knobbed jester sticks, COD.

The Jumping Dicks clacked merrily and I noted that Barack Obama wasn't selling and George W. Bush was discontinued. The Statue of Liberty was moving sluggishly, but I was too lazy and uneducated to care.

The maze of marketers' shacks, like some Coney Island sideshow of plastic and latex wended its way past molded horrors and gimmicks of gore at wholesale prices, the pitches of the chili con carny barkers repeating like hell's own heartburn. The fearmongers of fashion, passing no moral judgments, hawked the rubber realizations of mankind's darkest fantasies.

I found myself before a booth partitioned with red velour curtains. I was crowded round, the adoring mob of resellers openly approving the display. A ruffian's head with leering face and a thick tongue that wrapped around its neck, and stood pointing 8 inches above its right ear was poised before a Butt Mask, nether eye winking invitingly.

I adorned a White Skull mask and black top hat. “We sell the White Full Faces to mental institutions. The doctors use them for therapy,” I said, but 1 Buyer wasn't buying it, and remained unimpressed even with my 12 inch Telescoping Cigarette-Holder. She refused my suggestion to put it in her mouth and try it out, but I was not so stung with the rejection as that she could talk at all with maggots erupting from her cheeks.

The bartering and sex, the avarice and horror, meshed into a moist palpable yearning and I reveled in my own subjugation, willing to offer all to any who reached out to take.

I placed a Multi-Color Curly Wig and Clear Piggy Mask on a Styrofoam display head and it was love at first sight.

I was suddenly aware of the smell of buttermilk. Before me stood a large dark mambo, cavernous nostrils flaring, a red checkerboard bandanna tied around her head. She wore a necklace of chicken bones (that worked on her) and a floral print mumu with an orchid theme. She looked at me with piercing ocean green eyes, and smiled, 2 perfect rows of whalebone encircled by wide crimson lips. Her voice was 100% pure cane sugar.

“Jus cuz ya ain't rich, chile, don't mean yo Poe.”