Mark Jude Poirier
It smelled Hke synthetic strawberries and burning hair. More of the same crap from the window lined the walls inside. ]ana began looking at B-list celebrity dildos. "Who's Bill O'Reilly?" she asked me. Montana hurried up ro the coumer where a bald guy with no ears or lips was counting change. "Do you ever miss your ears or lips?" she asked him. "No," the guy said. He had rainbow dyed teeth and a thick stud in his chin, too. )ana grabbed a Tom Selleck dildo. "I'm getting this for Mr. Schatz," she said. "The veins look so real. Who's Tom Selleck?" "Can we get bacto-body-art here?" Montana asked the clerk. "We only have seahorses and palm trees left," he said. "Nine hundred for the seahorse and six-fifty for the palm tree." He pointed to a back room behind a beaded curtain. A large sign was nailed up to the right of the door: We are cerri/ied for piercing (all), puncturing (l-inch max), lipectomies, branding, earectomies, nosectomies, laser septum deviation, digit removal (5 max, no big toes, no thumbs), tattooing (external and soft tissue), congue and penis splays, horn implants (skulL only), Lobe stretching, cape-worming, teeth removal and dental art (jewels, dyes, caps, shapmg, plasric or Caesar Stone extensions), castration (fulL or half), foreskin fringing, clitorectomies and sew路shuts, subcutaneous penile bead implants, circumcisions (religious by appointment only), saline scrotal expansions, saline nipple expansions, non-surgicaL nipple relocations, nipplectomies, scarification, topographicaL singeing, clitorial hood flowering, digit webbing, and quarter limb stumping. DO NOT EVEN THINK OF ASKING US TO PERFORM ANYTHING THAT'S NOT ON THIS LlST. Sorry for any inconvenience. Montana read the sign, her mouth moving as she did. She wrned back to the lipless and earless clerk: "Bacto-body-art's not on the list," she said. "We just started it," he said. "Don't worry. Bruce will take care of you. " Bruce was a chubby man with pink skin. He looked like a giant baby and he had no visible body modifications. I whispered this observation to ]ana who whispered back, "His cock's probably got more ornaments than a Christmas tree." ''l'm first!" Montana said with delight as she hopped into the sparkly vinyl dentist chair. "1 want two seahorses, one on each side of my neck." "Are you eighteen?" Bruce asked her. "I'm sixteen," she said. "Are you eighteen?" he repeated, like he was asking her to lie. He placed his hanJ on her shoulder. 'Tm sixteen," she said again. ''I'll ask you for the last time, are you eighteen?" "And I'II answer for the last time. No, l am not eighteen," she said, louder, like he was stupid, "I'm sixteen. GoJ!" "She's eighteen," )ana said. "We all are." She looked again at the dildo 76
FUGUE #36