George and Deke, my guard detail, call this ritual the “Brick Shithouse.” We’ve been doing this together for quite a while, ten years the Personage has been setting up the Consul, picking and choosing members for their reasons and initiating them in kind. For me, I was decreed ‘exceptionally talented’ in that I know how to comport myself as both a United States senator and a member of the Personage. It isn’t everyone who can walk between the rains as such.
Collecting the homeless is a lot less difficult than it sounds. George and Deke, who look like Gen X hippies, entice our targets with bumps of meth or heroin, both of which we have available in abundance. We’re already driving a party bus and though I’m dressed to the nines, they wear jeans and rock tees. I am, our soon-to-be pasteurized souls believe, the guy with the goodies. We’re not pushy recruiters. If the vagabonds we approach indicate that they don’t want to join the party, we shrug, bid them farewell, and even toss them a bag…which usually gets them on the bus.
Meanwhile, members of the Personage set up the campground for our return. We blast hip hop and smoke cannabis and drive to a place called the Midsommar Campground. It’s in Tennessee, the backwoods of Marion County, to be precise. The property is owned by Rasputia Alexandrovna, Illumined Queen of Glamis Castle.
She runs your world. Always has.
The leaves are changing, reds everywhere, it is gorgeous, and the bus lumbers up the dirt drive to the campground. A few sets of eyes study the windows.
“Ooh!” A pretty young woman says. “Is there gonna be a concert?”
She’s asking about the big lamps we’ve set up around the amphitheater. This girl isn’t very bright. If this were a concert, the lamps wouldn’t be on the ground, they would track along the roof of the auditorium—I don’t say that. I smile and let her think whatever she wants.
A redneck with a red bandana and a sleeveless shirt asks, “Who’s all them people?” He’s asking about the workers setting up a small scaffold on the stage.
“Set hands,” I say.
He doesn’t know what that means but seems to accept it, so I smile and nod, saying nothing.
“These motherfuckers got P. Diddy to play for us,” one wit says.
Everyone laughs, including me.
I say, “Not him. Someone far better. Someone you want to see more. And we’re going to party hard.”
“Why you doin’ this?” The Wit asks.
“Why not, is maybe the better question,” I offer him a nickel bag of white crystal. He takes it and doesn’t say anything else. It’s so fucking easy I can’t believe it. I’m looking around thinking These folks could tear us apart. By rights, they ought to. Anyone who believes in telepathy, stop now. This is going to prove it isn’t real.
The gaggle we’ve collected disembarks, chattering, most of them don’t know each other. I count forty. I can smell most of them as they pass. Nasty. Greasy hair and dirty, so dirty they’d need a skin transplant to get clean. A few faces seem nervous, the women, the skinny guys. I can guess the tough guys’ thinking I could take these n—since that’s how they think, and I’m inclined to let them believe it. Once they’re off the bus, I get so giddy I wonder if I didn’t accidentally inhale some of the drugs we gave them.
“Place just look like the middle of the woods, brah,” a skinny man who looks like he breathes crack smoke instead of oxygen says. “Where da party at?”
“This is the party,” George says.
“We have about twenty minutes, sir, she’s here,” Deke says.
“I bet you’re all thirsty!” I chirp. “Let’s go to the stage, shall we? Drinks! If you like the stuff I gave you on the bus, you’re going to love this, it’s Vodka from Finland.”
“Dude is too cheery,” comes from The Redneck.
“Who’s here?” The Woman asks. She doesn’t know it, but she may have saved my bacon with that query.
“Megan Thee Stallion,” I say. That’s who my daughter was listening to on her iPod earlier.
Servers bring trays with clear drinks on them, they stand at the edge of the stage and wait for everyone to take the hint. We climb the stairs, and everyone mills around the scaffolding, right where I need them to congregate. I’m glad the servers showed up when they did.
“Why are we on stage?” The Woman asks.
“I’m taking you all to meet Megan.”
The Wit sniffs his glass. “What’s in this, dawg?”
“Yeah, I ain’t wanna drink some ol’ strange shit.” The Redneck says.
“Like I said, vodka from Finland.”
“Shit smell like lean.”
“Lean?” The Woman asks.
I don’t think The Redneck meant to help me out just then. Everyone’s grabbing a cup and drinking now. They like the taste. Some chatter begins and they even begin choosing seats. I bite my lip. Laughter gets caught in my throat and I pretend to sneeze. It just gets easier every year.
Only The Wit says, “I don’t give a fuck what it smells like. I ain’t drinking this.”
“Why not?” I ask.
As if on cue, here comes George in his biohazard suit, Uzi ready. “Toss the glass, lose the hand,” he says.
Everyone’s looking at their glasses, fear growing on their faces. It has been maybe five minutes. I figure they have about two more left. Maybe less.
“You are Brick,” I say.
“What the fuck you mean brick, ho?” The Wit asks, and no sooner are the words out of his mouth than George fires and the back of his head uncaps and splatters his wit machine all over the man next to him. Little worms of white—it’s more of a light brownish-pink matter than white—stick to his lip, and he reflexively sucks it into his mouth and gives it a chew. When he realizes that he’s eaten another man’s brains, he jumps, trying to spit and scream at the same time and I’m fucking howling.
The drink begins to work. The bricks double over and grip their bellies. A gout of liquified stomach meat erupts from the mouth of a particularly greasy brick and spackles the bare legs of a female brick standing next to him. She belches and turns in time to puke into the gasping mouth of another brick on her knees close by. The brick who got a taste of man menudo earlier doubles over, his arms flailing sight-unseen at the still-puking brick who doubles over and knocks him to the ground. Strings of vomit, blood, and varied particles of food matter hang from their mouths, faces, and fingers. Many begin struggling with their pants. The shitting has begun. The woods become a fart factory, it sounds like armies are fighting each other with water balloons instead of bombs. As the smell becomes overpowering, I strip my clothes off and stand with prick proudly dangling in my Jesus Christ pose as the assistants dress me in my biohazard suit. The bricks are on their knees now, praying as they erupt from every orifice. Many of them plead. Thanks to the amphitheater, their musical ambiance is delightful.
“It burns!”
“Please make it st—HUGUH—”
“Jenny, where’s Jenny? I want my dau-HAUGT—”
Bloody vomit splatters the mud. A brick with his ass jutting in my direction vomits hard enough to prolapse, and I watch as his flowery colon blossoms, first outward, the pink bubble of a flesh rose blooms and it’s pretty until he lurches again, and the exposed intestine bursts, sending a giant turd—this guy must’ve been constipated—into the eyes of a female brick who is seizing almost directly under his ass.
There’s a brick limping nude in circles, his legs black with shit and his own offal. Each step he takes reminds me of a wind-up toy. What looks like an oversized sponge in the shape of a cock dangles from his ass. It’s made of bubbles…holy fuck. That’s his pancreas. Awesome. This is going to be a great night.
Another brick is laying on her side in the dirt, tapping at what’s left of her back passage. Her butt cheeks are too far apart, covered in a swamp of brown and green muck that leaks blood from its center—her anus hasn’t prolapsed, oh no—it straight up broke, like her starfish yawned until its jaws snapped. Ripped flesh surrounds a knob of white that I believe is her tailbone.
Many of the bricks are holding each other as they approach death. The crystallized benzene I mixed with fentanyl, laxatives, and roto-rooter fluid keeps their hearts beating. The fentanyl prevents them from dying of pain shock. If I left them alone, they’d take between 18 and 72 hours to die of severe internal trauma.
Of course, I won’t be leaving them alone.
Feet slip around in what is now mud. George, Deke, and a few assistants with shovels circle the melee of blood, piss, shit, and puke. Their Uzis pointing at the crowd in case. They needn’t have worried. The assistants encircle the throng of sullied bricks, shoveling crap and blood and meat over them as more of the same fires from their every passage. Most have been stripped naked now. Most of them take the gruel in the face or on the back, a few try to block, someone wails How could you do this? One brick, still strong despite the torture, tries to run and catches the flat side of a shovel to the face. He barks and falls into the muck, sending a spray of bloody mud and excrement splattering in all directions. Deke levels the Uzi and shoots him in the back of the thighs.
The speakers erupt with Megan Thee Stallion’s “Neva Play”.
Here they come, laughing, giggling. Our children, all of initiate age, that is to say, in their first formative cycle. For instance, my daughter is ten. The kids love this shit, not to put too fine a point on it. Other kids should be so lucky. They come running, wheelbarrows full of the tools they’ll need for this arts and crafts session banging around as they run. All are in cute little custom-stitched child-sized biohazard suits with little tigers and kangaroos and things like that printed on them. A couple of them pull Radio Flyers behind them.
“Daddy, the bricks are gonna die before the game starts,” Christie cries.
“That’s just a couple of them, baby. I promise I gave them enough Super Duper Pooper Juice.” That’s what I call the lethal brew, which is mostly Vodka from Finland.
Christie sings, “Super Duper Pooper!” and pours super glue along the naked side of a woman. Jake—this is Deke’s son and my daughter’s little crush, reaches past the child next to her and snatches a hammer out of his Radio Flyer. He hands it to Christie, who bashes the screaming brick across the mouth with it.
“Shut up, poopie!” Whack. “Poopie, poopie!’ Whack. “Poop-brick-poop!”
“Not too hard, honey,” I say.
“She won’t shut up.” Pouting, she backs up to allow two of her friends—helped by our assistants—to push their victims together into a foundation made of perishing flesh.
“All my football kids start pushing,” I say. “Don’t forget to glue all the bricks together. The glue goes in their mouths and on their feet, too. Don’t get it down the backs of their throats. Girls, glue, boys, push! Deke?”
Deke joins the children.
“If they need help lifting…” I gesture to a few of the assistants who aren’t doing anything. A couple have lit cigarettes.
“Gotcha, boss,” he says. “Hey, assholes! Do I pay you to smoke—”
“George,” I say, and gesture to the children.
One of the boys, Jason, this is George’s kid—gets a little excited and starts slamming balls of rocky fecal matter down the throat of a female brick he’s toying with. She chokes. He laughs. George gently pulls him away and shakes a finger in his face. Jason sulks.
“Get in there, Christie!” I say. “Just scoop the poop out of her mouth. You have gloves on—it won’t hurt you.”
“It’s okay Daddy, it’s just dookie!” She begins digging.
The stupid brick coughs, gulps breath, and croaks, “Thank you.”
The bricks no longer resist as everyone works to connect the foundation of the shithouse together by interlocking flesh with flesh and connecting them to steel poles surrounding the bodies. This way, they won’t tumble. I study the chests of each brick for telltale rise and fall as George tests the build for integrity by giving light pushes here and there. You don’t want the first layer crushing under the weight of the others, and you don’t want displacement bringing the whole thing down. I’m proud of our kids—they picked the widest of the victims for the foundation without having to be told.
“The frame is sound,” Deke says. He strokes one of the steel poles, his knuckles purposefully raking across the face of a brick whose eyes have rolled completely back into his head. His breath is audible. Little whimpers are happening in the back of his throat. I doubt he is aware of them.
Of course, we come from a different breed of humanity. It only makes sense our children should be such go-getters. I myself was Pee-Wee Football, 4H, and later varsity football and track, lettering in both to the pride of Sigma Epsilon Theta. It’s not Skull and Bones anymore, everyone knows about them now thanks to certain less discreet politicians, but no one knows SET except SET.
No sooner do I think this than Billy, he’s our Imperator’s kid, neglects to get help flopping one of the scrawnier bricks onto her face and is trying to muscle her up back-first to the second layer. Stanchions are wobbling. He’s about to bring the whole thing down.
“Billy DuPont! Stop that! The feet go into the mouth, they don’t just stick up in the air! It all has to lock together like Lincoln Logs. Put—oh for crying out loud. Look what a lazy bones you’re becoming.”
“My daddy says I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, butthole!”
I grin. He backs up when I get close. “Okay.” I flip the brick over in the muck, groans escape from his mouth and a word I believe is hurts. I bet it does. Damn sure sounds that way. “Billy, if you leave the feet up and don’t stick them in the mouth, the bodies won’t lock together and hold each other up. It’ll create something called displacement, which in turn hurts a thing called integrity. Do you know what those two things are?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, find out. That’s what all these bricks’ problems were. That’s why they’re bricks and not people, understand? They don’t understand integrity, which is how they got displaced, and this is their punishment. Do you know what yours will be if we don’t get this done properly?”
“My daddy says I can’t be punished.”
Defiant little turd.
“The Queen will be upset.”
Billy thinks about it for a minute. He knows the Queen is all our boss.
He nods. “See if you can stuff the feet into the mouth like I told you to.”
Like this, we build the Temple of Absolute Woe. Torn meat and sticky blood and sticky shit all smashed together, a tower of stiffening, brick-like bodies ten feet or so high. The only hard part to make is the entrance. George and Deke do that now.
Here they are with the steel we’ll need.
“Him,” I point to one strong brick, still on his knees and panting at me, staring at the carnage around him with a look of intense rage on his face. “And him,” I point to the brick next to him, on his elbows and knees coughing.
“You lucky…y’all…bitches…got them guns,” he says.
I laugh. “If you stand up your guts will fall out of your asshole.” It’s true. His intestines trail behind him. Isn’t it weird you don’t need that many guts in you to live?
The drivers kick the bricks to the ground. One of them raises his hand defensively and the driver smashes it with the shovel. They bring the spades down into their victim’s necks and scoop their heads off their shoulders as if clearing stony earth. It crunches and the Kool-Aid spews out, there’s a vocal gurgling when one man screams at the steel point in his neckscreams that become pig squeals when the cords stretch.
One word comes from the stacked bricks— “Lucky…”
“Gross, Unk!” That’s from Jason. His father is currently driving Queen Rasputia here from the airport—which reminds me.
“George, time.”
George is bent over one headless brick, working a steel stanchion up its loosened asshole. He has one boot on the dead man’s back and both hands are screwing the steel upward. Very squishy. “She’s here,” he says.
“Fuck—where’s the shellac? Call the fucking workers! Get the pig shit!”
“Daddy said a naughty word,” Christie says to Jake.
Deke, who has his side of the frame already finished, begins hammering the stanchion George is struggling with up the other dead man’s ass.
“George, get the crew out here with the lights.”
He gets back on the bus where the phones are. Weeping and wailing all around us, most of it is weak. Jason digs an eyeball out of one brick’s head.
“No one here feels anything for you,” he says. “Shut it.”
A boy after my own heart.
They’ve finally gotten the fleshy frame built and the work can begin in earnest. In the interest of time I pitch in.
George protests when he sees what I’m doing. “Sir! You’re getting dirty! Don’t do that. Let us.”
“I don’t mind, George.”
“YAY!” The children all cheer.
“Daddy’s helping, Daddy’s helping,” Christie says. She’s so excited that she’s forgotten to work and instead dances around the circle of the dying, kicking here, punching there, tugging chunks of free hanging meat where she finds it.
I hear the squeak of ball bearings against iron and turn. George and Deke are wheeling the lights, which are industrial heating lamps, forward a little. They’ll be perfect for our Queen. She demands form, texture, and bouquet. Assistants bring buckets full of bubbling pig and cow feces on a rolling wooden platform. Four of them climb on top of the platform. Each chooses a bucket, and the other workers wheel them around the stacked flesh walls of the temple as they pour the foul shit shellac over the dying. George and Deke go from lamp to lamp and hit the switches. This is where we begin cooking everything together for the purposes of temple integrity and, as if on cue, the limo pulls into the campground.
The Billie Eilish playlist stops. All is eerily silent. My cavalier attitude falls away.
“Kids!” I clap. “Inside, now. To the showers with you! Be ready by dinner, or the Queen will be angry.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Christie says on her way past me.
“I love you too, dear,” I call back to her.
Back to business. I circle the temple, making sure everything is as it should be. Mostly, I’m making sure no one is dead yet. George and Deke join me, epi-pens at the ready. Hissy breaths all around the structure make it sound like a leaky air mattress. I might have made the mix a little too strong this time around.
What can I say? I’ve always gotten a little carried away. When the other frat guys said I needed to steel myself for my first initiation, I scoffed. Hell, I’d already done my first human sacrifice, and we tortured the fuck first for his adrenochrome. He was a grown man. That’s important to know. Damn the hype. Offering children is frowned upon as per the Bilderberg Summit of 2000, Jeffrey Epstein notwithstanding.
Queen Rasputia Alexandrovna has arrived. She gets out of the car, first human, but with each step becomes another thing. Her lean frame expands and stretches, from sixty-six inches to eighty. Her escorts help her, she is limping, her breathing labored, wads of saliva roll down her face and chest. I suppose it isn’t easy being thirty thousand years old. Her eldritch head cranes upward and I raise my arms, thumbs pointing at my ears, crying: “Hail!”
“Hail!” George and Deke cry. The workers scurry through the field in the direction of the Country Club. Only Initiates may build the Brick Shithouse. Only Initiates may be present for the Rite of Absolute Woe. Which is what she eats. As do all gods. When you ask why God would let horrible things happen, well, he’s hungry. That’s why.
That’s also why the tower is still alive.
She speaks to me. “Has the pain steeped?”
“Yes, my Queen.” I bow my head.
She sighs—“The effluvia is marvelous.”
Our Queen is a demigod of few words. An escort lags behind her. He turns, gesturing to me. Now comes the hard part. See, I like this guy. But I have to do this.
He used to be a Senator you’d know from the nightly news. The papers will say he died peacefully of a heart attack in his sleep. I help him undress, we are solemn as I tie his wrists to the stanchions. His back is to us, he’s facing the inside of the temple.
The Queen says, “I honor you, sir, my humble servant.”
She grins at her old subject, showing her tiger claw teeth to him in his last moment of supplication. Tears stream down his face. I wonder if he’s seen this form. Mostly, we see the forty-something supermodel version of her. My next thought is—This is going to happen to me someday.
The knife enters my vision. “Boss,” George says.
I take the hunting knife from him. “Get the kids ready for dinner.”
“Do it, Jordan!” the old senator begs. I plunge the knife into his back, and he screams.
The Queen moans in ecstasy as the pain of the savaged around her enters her being. My eyes flicker briefly into the temple, and I see hazy light. I draw the knife downward fast, sawing, the senator screams and screams, blood exits the gap I’ve made like hose water spit from a child’s mouth. I switch to the next shoulder blade and repeat the process, there’s not much time left—the knife hits the dirt—my eyes are bugging out of my skull when I plunge my naked hands into the wounds, how skin splits when you cut it, smell of freshly opened steak, blood is slick at first and then sticky as it clots and lungs feel like the inside of a vagina, only bigger. I push, gristle grinds, it is squishy, everything squirting blood, and my fingers feel like they’ve been super glued together. I don’t know if I’ve got the right material here but I yank anyway and two big bags that look like they’ve been made from French ticklers and batwings flop out.
“SSSSSEHH,” One of the lungs in my grip tries to expand and I let go of it. It blows up the rest of the way, gives a squeak, and collapses. I catch it before it can fall and pull it to the other side of the frame. A dead hand, stiff, is sticking up close enough for me to hook one wing of the blood eagle to, and I move on to the next one.
She grins, teeth like angry ivory, “GO.”
That’s all I need to hear. I leave the Queen to her feast.
Curious as to who her other escort was? The one inside the shithouse with her? I think it might be the real no-bullshit Lucifer. I don’t know though. I never bothered to ask. Why would I? I’m not a horse dentist…and I just bought myself fifty great years.
October 31st, 2025
Signed JORDAN STANDISH 6°, Adeptus Major, United States Senator, Global Consulate