Scurvy Boy
I was 19 and living in a glorified toilet block with two mates—Liam who didn’t really live with us but kept his mattress in the lounge and paid rent sometimes, and Big Ben who was the complete opposite: A giant hermit with a surly disposition. Ben spent his days lying on Liam’s mattress, listening to hardcore, and farting. We had lost the key to the front door, and the lock wouldn’t open without it. I would come home drunk, have to remove the slats from the window, climb in, and pass out to the sounds of the motorway on my rotting futon.
Even though I dressed almost entirely in hand-me-downs, I decided I needed new shoes. The problem was that after paying rent, buying food, and getting drunk my benefit was long gone. I definitely needed new shoes but I also needed new clothes, a bed, toothbrush, etc., and after a week of racking my brain I came up with a brilliant plan. If I stopped buying food for a month I could save the £150 or so I needed. For the next four weeks, my already shitty diet was reduced to whatever I could steal and flour and water—which I would fry up and eat with tomato sauce (this took care of needing to buy toilet paper too). The saving was going well.
The weird thing is that leading up to contracting scurvy I felt fine. It was two in the morning—I was watching some TV and jacking off on Liam’s mattress. After I came I felt weak. I tried to stand up but my legs could barely support me. I stumbled into my room, collapsed on my bed, and fell asleep. The next day I felt like someone had tenderized me with a baseball bat. You know when you get a blister on your tongue? The whole inside of my mouth felt like that. I could push my tongue into the roof of my mouth and spit out blood and pus. Back then I had a face full of piercings (it was the mid-90s) and all the holes became infected overnight. After a couple attempts to stand up, I crawled out to the lounge. Ben, who was farting and eating margarine straight from the tub, shot me a dirty look and edged away from me. It was obvious he was gonna be of no help and the phone had been cut off months ago. I crawled back into my room and lay there spitting blood and passing out.
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“Get It, Willy”
It was maybe 1990. I was working at Down to Earth health-food store. I got off the train from Long Island City in Queens, where I lived. I was on Sixth Avenue, about to make a left on 12th Street, and there was scaffolding that kind of ran the length of the building and then up and around the corner. So just as I was about to hit the corner I heard women screaming and saw children running. I thought the scaffolding must have fallen or something—people were fucking bugging out. And it was like seven in the morning, everybody’s going to work, streets are pretty crowded—sunny summer day. As I turned the corner I heard a guy going, “Go on, Willy, get it, Willy. Get it, go on, Willy,” and I was like, “What the fuck is going on, and what’s Willy doing that’s he’s got to get it?” Then I see a man in the middle of the sidewalk—the very crowded sidewalk—with his pants around his ankles, hunched over with one arm holding the lower bar of the scaffolding. And the only way I could describe it would be half the length of a soda can was hanging out of his ass. He was a black guy with a very Edwardian-linen-color descended colon hanging out of his anus.
This wasn’t shit, this was his body falling out of his body. This was the inside of his body hanging out of his ass. And almost like a freshly painted toilet paper roller, but soft, almost like the texture of tripe. Well I guess it was tripe, right? Human tripe. But as this portal of tripe was hanging from his ass the wettest, most disgusting-smelling diarrhea—just water—was pouring out of his ass and splashing all over the ground and he was kind of screaming in pain. Just by the way it looked coming out, you could tell it was so spicy. People were running because it was splashing at their feet. I’m assuming it was without any warning he just decided to do this. And the, “Go on, Willy,” was from his friend sitting about five feet away against a wall, watching. It was like, “Get a hold of that shit, take control of that shit—get it out.” He was coaching. And he was also laughing his ass off while his friend was writhing in spicy shit pain.
CIV
Haunted Shit
My friend, the protagonist in this tale, was in this really huge haunted house around Halloween a couple years ago. It was this really famous attraction—a big-enough draw to make people travel from out of state and wait for hours. The questionable ingredients of a large Mexican meal beforehand began to make themselves known to him as he lined up outside for what seemed like hours.
Once inside, the thrills of moving floorboards and slamming doors made it all the harder for him to keep his composure. By the time he reached an interminable trudge across the “Haunted Swamp,” he was on Orange Alert. “Hey buddy,” he pleaded, grabbing a passing ghoul in the employ of this glorified carnie stall, “Is there some kind of ‘haunted restroom’ in here or something?” “What the fuck are you talking about?” snapped the monster. “Bathrooms are outside. You’re near the end anyway.” It was true. Freedom was just one room away. Unfortunately, that room was the haunted maze—a pitch-black labyrinth in which “one wrong turn can have you trapped for hours.” Admitting defeat, he backed himself into what felt like a corner and let nature take its course. Really, he had no other option. Euphoric but shame-faced, he tried to put as much distance between his impromptu dump spot and himself as possible—and then the chaos started. “Ew, it smells like someone farted,” came a voice from behind him as more people entered the room. “Wait, it smells like…” followed by the sound of gagging, retching, and barfing. Then screaming, crying, and all the other sounds humans make when they are trapped en masse in a dark, hot room reeking of shit and vomit. It took a team of employees with flashlights to round up the panicked masses and lead them past the haunted pile of crap, which was unfortunately deposited right beside the maze’s hidden exit. The story made the news that evening and, subsequently, the whole place was closed down for a month by the health inspectors.
JAMIE THOMSON
Stroking The Cat
Last year I home-stayed for a couple of months with this really wacky Japanese family in Tokyo. The dad was the boss of one of the biggest jam companies in Japan, so they had a really nice house and everything (although my room strangely had neither windows nor an air conditioner, so when summer came it was like a sauna). My host family consisted of a dad, a mum, a reclusive high school daughter, and five cats.
The dad was an alcoholic womanizer who would frequently call after work, asking me to lie to his wife that he was “working late.” Once he even invited me to a foursome with some chicks he picked up in return for all the lies I had been telling for him (“We can fuck in the same room!” he slurred).
One morning as I was eating breakfast, my severely hungover host dad came and sat down in front of me, moaning about how he drank too much last night and felt like shit. Meanwhile, one of the cats—apparently horny as fuck—was dragging his ass all over the floor in zigzags to get some relief. It was starting to bug me. So guess what my crazy host dad did? He picked up the bugger, flipped it over onto its back, and held it down right in front of me. Then, with his free hand, he massaged the cat’s tiny boner until it came!
At first the cat was squirming about, but then the meowing became noticeably louder and more aggressive. Like, you could tell he was really feelin’ it. And my host dad is just sitting there, rubbing away as if it was the most normal thing in the world at 7 AM. I swear, at one point the cat’s squeals of pleasure actually sounded like a human girl having a major orgasm. Truly disturbing stuff. And all in my fucking breakfast-eating face. Soon after, I got the hell out and moved into my own apartment.
DAVE KRESKIN
Talk about some gross stuff. I am about to barf all over the place. All right, let’s open the envelope. Hey everybody, looks like that guy from Gorilla Biscuits won!
WINNER: “GET IT, WILLY”
CIV: “I am so blessed to have my family here tonight. My wife and my daughter are here. And I just want to say thank you so much for everything, for being there. And thank you for loving me so much and supporting me. And to the fans of the shit story. You have all made me feel like I’m making a difference in your lives and that is something money simply cannot buy. So thank you so much for this honor.”
ALBERTO
I grew up in a small town in Matamoros, Mexico.
When did you leave for the States?
I came when I was about 15. I lived with my three brothers in Brooklyn for a while, but we didn’t get along so I eventually started living by myself.
How’d you get up here?
I paid a guy to help guide me through the frontier with eight other people. There were two guys and six women in the group. We walked for two days through the mountains across the border. When we’d stop to rest at night, you could hear snakes all around. Our guide had a cane with this little metal wire thing that he’d punch into the ground to keep the snakes away while we were walking. We never had any trouble, but it felt pretty dangerous.
Did your brothers hook you up with work?
They didn’t help me, so I found a job at a car wash, working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for $2.30 an hour. It was winter when I started, so I had to work outside in the snow and ice. I’d lived for a couple months in Durango, Mexico, which is really cold in the winter, so I was kind of used to it, but the guy who owned the place wouldn’t let me come inside at all. I had to cover myself with pieces of cardboard.
So you were chillin?
Sort of. After that I started doing construction, which is what I’m doing now.
