Seconds

SECONDS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

We stayed up all night drinking our five-foot beers and eating the new Walnut M&Ms. They were the size of fucking tennis balls, they were! Between vomit breaks we watched the old mechanical bull that escaped Phil's country-themed bar last year getting it on with Ivan's mechanical cow, Jenny. Jenny supplied half the neighborhood with mechanical milk and I couldn't help wondering if a year's supply of synthetic bull jizz wouldn't sour it or whatever. I decided I was going to make the switch to electric water then and there. Right after this beer.

"The C.I.A. is run by squirrels!" Pol declared. I didn't feel I could argue with him.

"You think Kelly loves me?" I asked him.

"No," he said.

"You think anybody loves me?" I asked.

"I love you, but not in that way," he said. "If Jenny falls to pieces, that bull over there will love you in a very different way. Still, not in the way I think you want."

"You, uh . . . you think a calf'll come outta that union over there?"

"Hadn't thought of that," Pol said, huffing a can of artificial Malaysian body odor. It was the only thing that got him high, but Christ, what it did to his breath! "God, I hope so. Never had mechanical veal before."

"I had digital veal once," I said.

"How was it?"

"Little tough."

"It's that binary, my friend. You go to them ritzy places out in Vegas, what have you, they got it mononary. All zeroes. Tender as a baby's bottom."

I imagined chewing on a baby's bottom. I vomited again.

"That makes twelve for you," Pol said. "Twenty-seven for me." We stepped out of our own filth yet again that night. Pol had to take off his pants, revealing a disturbing erection, considering the wildly bucking bull before us.

"That makes thirteen for you," Pol said a moment later.

"I think I'm going in," I said. I looked back just before turning the corner and caught Pol edging closer to the enraptured couple(ing).

"I am definitely never drinking that milk again," I said to myself.