Unalive On Air - [Emil is my Editor]

Short story

Raw onion. Bright sound stage. Old trick. Jumping up and down 'cause that's where the momentum is. Deep breath. The audience won't see me do it, but they'll feel it once the camera's rolling. Crying hides cocaine sniffles. Reach in your pants to rub the onion on your face one more time and the pocket is wet from the onion bleeding out. Sells shit too.

Fuck my face is numb.

Like to start the second you end your third jump, get rambling, get selling, anticipating the hard thud of cold concrete floor on your feet but the onion slips— flies right out your hand.

That onion which could've been someone's lunch? The onion slips out of my hand and soars over the merchandise table, passes over the carousel presenting the merch as it’s shooting across the entire sound stage and hits Michael, the camera guy, in his fat fucking knee of all the goddamn places. Sticks on his pants, pauses, and oozes slimy down his leg. Same as the coke drip at the back of my throat. Fat Mike’s all the way behind camera one saying what the fuck Casey with his grubby hands up conducting a fucking orchestra.

I need that onion to cry.

Crying hides the cocaine sniffles, and it helps you sell shit too. Learned it from a blonde actress with ten grand titty implants between sweaty takes out in Toronto. She'd cut a red onion in half so the juices flow then huff it for subtle award-winning cries or rub it back and forth on her eyelids for big dramatic weeping.

Me? I need it for I just got off the phone, Dad ate too many benzos and drowned in the tub-tears. Day-old yellow onions work best for me; it’s gotta be pungent. Has to cut through the cocaine chem-taste. I point at the damn thing but Fat Fascist Camera Man Mikey telling me no time. Live in five.

Before I can give him the bird he’s silently mouthing the rest of the countdown through his oily beard while signing each number as he goes: four, three, two– and on one the fat bastard flips me off.

Script calls for Look at me! This memory has me in tears, because subtly doesn’t sell but I'm saying, "It's not mine, but it will stay with me like it is for a lifetime, and it can be yours."

Not bad. Not great though. Keep them guessing to keep eyes on the screen, but can't be a mystery for too long or they'll lose interest, change the channel. "You're gonna want to slip this chip in the back of your skull and live what's inside faster than a virgin cums in a brothel outside of Reno," Fat Mike's shaking his head at that one.

The more Camera One hates it, the more the buyer'll love to hate it.

"We're selling the lived experiences of one of the greats!”

Reach in the dry pocket and we're pulling out the point five oh-my-god single action revolver so heavy your belt’s gotta be tight as shit to keep the pants from coming down, and I'm saying: "Welcome back to Buy Shit or Else."

Slam the gun on the table, camera's a tunnel to the viewer's soul, stare straight into it.

"America's only Russian Roulette-style Consumutainment Show, hi! I'm Casey Schmidt."

The onion's rolled off Michael's shoe and towards you stenching cheap cheeseburger smell up the whole stage. It’s mocking me. Don't get distracted, make do without it. Show the camera the bullet between two of your perfectly manicured fingers. Ignore the shit-eating smile Fat Mike makes when you do. Hit the release to pop the revolver open and kiss the tip of the barrel, "The only show where if you don't buy," push the fat bullet into the tight cylinder slow— penetrate the hole, "I die."

This whole schtick sticks better with the Big Cry. Tears stinging red eyes and caking up stage makeup. Tap and buy. Snot bubbles run down your puckered quivering lips as spit is tossed out with a gun to your head and the audience feels so bad for you they have no choice. Tap and buy. But your snot’s drippin’ back of your throat when it needs to be front and center. The skinny blonde actress in Toronto gave you the onion tip because you can't cry on command either, but the onion’s laughing at you on the studio floor. Tears ain't happening. So you’re not crying. Tap or die.

Spit as I talk happens no matter what, though. Onion ain’t got nothing to do with that.

Hands on your hips with elbows out; that’s a power pose. The idea is that you posture to look assertive and feel confident because you’re not. Inhale.

"We're selling the memories of the last living president before a bullet scrambled his brains."

Jump up your chin, smile, make Michael beg for it. The more the cameraman wants you to die, the more folks watching on their phones wanna be you.

"Three days’ wage and you'll feel like you were the president."

Pick up the gun and we’re doing the two-step ‘cause the coke energy needs to go somewhere. Spin that nickel-plated cylinder.

Selling don't work without time constraints. If the viewer has time to think they’ll think twice, and right now you need them to buy on impulse. Urgency is your second-best tool, sure, but foreplay’s better. Look past camera one to see the digital counter updating sales in real time. Inventory sells out at 2k; you live— but it’s at 12.

Snap the cylinder shut and watch the numbers jump up to 50. Make their eyes follow the gun as you place it down next to the carousel and let the shiny steel-brushed brainchip do a whole rotation under lit glass as you build tension by saying shit all. 50 jumps to 100 jumps to 200. Exhale.

Script says You deserve to fill your heart with patriotism, what's three days’ wage compared to national pride? but my teeth have bottom lip between them and they want to meet. Script says Be the first on your block to own a piece of history but all you're thinking about is how the average human skull has a half cup of blood inside it and what that’ll look like if it’s spilled. Fat Mike is licking his lip like this'll be the day you'll do it. Scramble your own brain. Look past and behind Mikey-boy to the large digital counter to see it has gone up to 203 and he might be right. Script says Act now and we'll throw in a memory of the late president making sweet American Godgiven love to his glorious wife and First Lady because you've earned it, but you taste dirty gold wedding ring blood ‘cause you bit your lip too hard.

Use it.

"This chip was so profound I forgot to take it out," I tell, shifting my weight in my comfy luxury black leather shoes toward the spinning chip at the height of my crotch, "this one here's not the one I demoed. Means there's no blank chip recording my own memories." With my Pré de Provence branded milk-lotioned hand, I pick up the gun. I press the muzzle to my temple. How I’m still not crying is beyond me.

"Means if you cockmouthers ever want to buy a memory of me dying you'll have to save my ass today and buy buy buy!"

Please work. Camera Loser One's shoulders drop as the counter ramps up. Script calls for what a steal this all is, what the price of assassination and POV First Lady ass-fucking should be, but you're pacing back and forth instead, a silent angry mime. Look past Disappointed Mike and the numbers should be halfway there but we’re stuck at five 512. No one's had the big O yet. More foreplay?

Product’s not the death of a tyrant anymore, it's Death of a Salesman.

You handsome, straight-dicked bastard.

You made the product you again!

I gotta be front and center.

You box jump on top of the table. Teeth swimming in blood and spit and coke snot, bottom of your lip aches from self-violence. Swallow it all and sit down, nothing between you and the camera but the onion leaving a snail trail on the hard concrete floor. Kid on a swing kicking his legs back in forth is what you do because the cocaine is so goddamn pure. Pure pure, so white it’s yellow pure.

This is the part on a sales page where all of the buyer's testimonials would be.

This pill saved our marriage ‘cause now I'm harder than a priest at Kids’ Catechism— and it's organic too! ★ ★ ★ ★

Instead, streaming live, you got a devilishly handsome me and a stand-in for the buyer. Someone the seller can talk to that's pretty, can keep a secret, and says Gee, wow! Isn’t this perfect for Nana? Point is that you ease the buyer's doubt with social proof. Script calls for the skinny blonde actress to inspect the brain chip by placing her hands on her knees and bending slow-like ’til her bare cleavage is at product level and say I'd pay big money for that experience! emphasis on big and she turns her elbows into her ten grand titties mashing her melons right in the buyer’s face. But now she's still in Toronto, isn't she?

She’s in Toronto and I’m here so I say, "Yeah, you can record my death and re-watch my skull shatter, but without a brainchip mapping a full record of every firing neuron, you won't get to know the good stuff."

My thumb is so well manicured you'd never know I bite my nails on my weekend.

And my magnificent thumb pulls the hammer down.

Like the skinny blonde actress' squished tits I got the barrel leveled where I want you to look, my dilated eyes.

"Stuff like; did he shit his pants when he died?”

"Stuff like; was he thinking about his wife and kids?" My eyelids shut tight as locked doors and I pull the trigger.

Fat Mikey silently mouths dammit.

"The next one's gonna kill me."

A brunette magician's assistant with a firm ass so round you’ll want to stick your face in it taught me that the trick to knowing the bullet’s spot when you play Russian Roulette on yourself is to file down a little divet on the outside of the cylinder’s edge where it’s impossible to see. She showed me how to feel for the divet without being obvious and told me to always load the bullet there before her unwashed foot was in my mouth.

I feel for the divet, then I’m pulling the hammer again. If I can’t find the divet the bullet’s either six ‘o clock at the hilt or twelve ‘o clock I die.

The audience isn’t reacting because the number isn’t jumping. 523, 524, 525. I can see it past Mike, the sales slowing.

Jump down from the table. Pace back and forth across the stage.

"Was I thinking about my wife as I fucked that pretty brunette Vegas girl with a nice ass, or was I thinking about that ten-grand tittied skinny blonde actress?”

Script says I say— oh who gives a fuck what it says?

"You've been working hard," gun to my head I say, “you've been keepin' up on all of those subscriptions, sacrificing at work so that you're little tykes— mine are named Brimbo and Sally,” I hold my other hand out flat palm down at my waist to show Brimbo’s height, “he just started to read, Brimbo's small for his age, you know?" Could be the numbers aren't high enough. Could be I sense my end is here and I can’t help myself and the script says that I’m a shit husband, the script says to confess my sins, the script says I don’t get last rites from a priest just Fat Fucking Michael behind the camera and a cold concrete studio floor for my brains to splatter onto while the viewers are playing Hey Man Nice Shot at home.

Could be the cocaine.

"You've been so hard at work to make sure your tikes can watch the Murder Muppets on the premium streaming, you can get something for yourself. You know, you've EARNED it. Hell, you'd be buying the most patriotic historic artifact this side of the Enola Gay and, this part is important; you deserve to have the chance to buy a POV recording of my live-streamed unaliving.”

Can’t piss off the ad buyers. You can turn a man’s skull into red mist from a fifty-cal bullet for the tykes to stream at dinner, but you can’t say the ‘s’ word.

Make them hate you more because you’re losing them.

Too much mystery, too much action out of the gate.

Michael's smiling, no need to check the counter.

My bottom lip's not bleeding anymore or I'm blind to the taste of wedding rings.

I'm hammering the floor with my comfy leather shoes as I u-turn to more pacing.

Feet feel sweaty, so do my hands.

The gun's weight reminds me it's the bigger cock.

Make them hate you as much as I hate me.

"I love my kids," I tell you.

"I love my wife," I plead, can’t find a filed divet anywhere on the cylinder under my chewed nails.

"Really, I do. And I loved her too, that skinny slut, I really did. Loved the vodka with lemon she'd sneak over to me before takes, the way she'd pat my head, tell me I was a good boy after I'd cum. And that other bitch had to ruin it!”

"You want to feel my gut wrench, heart drop, and know— actually know how bad I feel, the guilt, the loathing, the heavyweight shame punching me in the stomach right now? Buy. It's the only way you'll know how much my life is in ruin. That bitch. What happens in Vegas stays in blah blah MY ASS it does! Studio just so happens to hire that twenty-something we were weak around one time because of that firm, juicy nubile ass and then they fly her out to perform magic tricks at our quarterly team-building retreat and she sees me googly-eyed for the only woman to ever pat me on the head and tells. Tells her, and of course girls gotta stick together.”

I give in to the revolver's weight.

"It had to be done."

My hand drops.

My eyes sting.

Didn't need that onion after all.

"I silenced them, of course I did, and you know what?" I pop the revolver's muzzle up pushing under my chiseled chin.

“Turns out those bitches told my wife, before I made them disappear."

Fat Mikey with his stained shirt— he's frowntown.

"You better believe I'm thinking about which hiking trail outside Toronto I stashed their petite bodies. You better believe that you can too!"

Mike’s looking at the floor and I say, “For just three days’ wage you can own the commemorative Assassination and Firstlady Sodomy POV Brain Chip Package and be one hundred and twelve percent sure I'll be thinking about where I buried the loveliest snitches in Canada next time. You want their families, you want their sweet old moms to have any semblance of peace? You'll buy now."

Fatty-fat Mikey tells me the inventory's sold out and his eyes are on the floor.

Me? I'm king dick. Always am.

Gun still under my chin, pointed straight through my brain and upward to God, I stick my tongue out at Camera Stupid. Flip Fat Mike off as I always do. Jesus shit-Christ I’m the greatest! But as I pivot to walk away, my expensive, custom-made shoe slips on something wet.

My weight comes out from under me and I’m falling.

Right before I hit the ground face-first, I see the onion that tripped me. That killed me. I bite through my tongue as my head hits the floor, muzzle still pressed under my chin and I accidentally pull the trigger and—

Hey man, nice shot

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TiF Featured Short Story, Vol. 2 Issue #12

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What you just read are my revisions after sending a draft to

Emil Ottoman

’s Editorial Autopsy Series, a free-to-read service for the writing community that allows anyone to view, and therefore learn, about what we in the biz call a line/developmental edit (you can check out my unedited draft with his suggestions here). Now that you are thoroughly traumatized, I’d like to take the time to talk about my editor, and the uh, rough goddamn time he’s been having.

The name, if you’ve been reading my newsletters, should be familiar to you (especially if you’ve read his piece The Everett Hypothesis). First and foremost: Mr. Ottoman is a killer goddamn writer. I can’t stress this enough. Because of his commitment to community building, he’s established himself as an excellent editor (and holy shit he is an excellent editor), but much to his, and my dismay, his reputation has been as an editor and not as one of the best writers you’ll read this year (and hopefully many more). I’ve got something to announce in just a moment, but please keep in mind that he is an author first— and you should read him.

Emil, and his fiancée (who is another incredibly gifted author) have found themselves, an elderly mother, and two adorable cats victims to predatory insurance policies, and corrupt landlords, all while the imminent threat of their roof literally collapsing on them looms above. Did you read my story Love is a Snow-Lettered Word? Okay, now imagine that the deathly fact of winter was in your home, a snowload of thousands of pounds ready to breach into your kitchen like a SWAT team and kill one or all of your loved ones in the process. You’d get out as soon as you could, yeah?

They are trying. But spring means snow melts— and that means more water damage likely to bring everything down… They need to have moved two months ago. Here’s a fact: creative people live in poverty. They are vulnerable by design because a society that values them is a functioning one. Look around you. Are we functioning?

Okay, so, I’ll cut to the chase. To help these wonderful and compassionate people who have been dealt a shit card, I am announcing the…

Please take your time to tap the above and give them what you can!

Thank you for reading this far. I earnestly would not type this unless it was a serious emergency. Also, a big thank you to everyone who gave during my flash fundraiser on 3.21.25-3.23.25— you helped raise $88.00, which I (and The Editor) greatly appreciated! They still need help, so please give what you can. Once more:

-M.P. Fitzgerald (Muppet Pendelton Fitzgerald the Third)

P.S.

Pretend that there was a really cute cat picture here. It was lost to the ether.