Buddha's middle finger: or, razorblades as valentines.

"He never bleeds" -Nirvana.

"Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects." - Roger Zelazny

Grim-hope rode the warm air; you could feel it had a hateful quality. The potato bugs were going kamikaze on the porch light. Getting used to its warmth, then fearing it, flying away but always crashing back into the naked bulb of the lamp.

An exhale of breath like a computer permanently powering down, is the story of a life going up in smoke. His eyes are fixed on me in a bitter grimace, a brutal face for violent death, an extreme end to savage life. I take from him the necklace, a mummified hand flipping the bird, buddhas middle finger.

Then I take from his lip the dangling smoke, the third of a cigarette that is still burning and flick the ashes into his mouth. Taking a drag, Then putting it out sizzling on his tung, I walk off into the night confused as to why this mummified hand is so important.

My name is Jarfly Valentine; it started an eternity ago; she had shown up without any prelude. Sitting across my desk, pale skinny legs with a pair of doc martins laced up on her feet. Fishnets stalkings and daisy duke shorts. Leather jacket and studs or pins jammed into her face. Hair shaved off but for the sideburns and the back, giving her a skinhead mullet.

"What the hell kind of way is that for a young woman to dress?" I said. Leaning forward in my chair. "Well, who the fuck gives a shit what you think." she said, but it all has an air of ritual in the remembering. "what the hell do you want a kid?" I said. Her shifty eyes betray an innocence that she is laboring to hide. "Dad, can I borrow twenty bucks?" she said, "I am only your dad when you need something." "Fine you know what I should have just asked mom this whole game of playing behind her back, is really getting on my nerves." "Your a grown woman...do what you want." "Fine, what do you want? A blowjob? To shoot a load in my ass? what, let's get it over with because I have a friend waiting outside and it is not my ambition to disappoint this chic." "take off your shorts."

It wasn't beautiful or perverse, no, it was Friday night. I held her hips and pushed in. My black cock inside her pink pussy. I smacked her ass once trying to get a reaction out of her. She looked over her shoulder glaring with a loose tear starting a trail down her cheek. It used to be fun now; it was just business. Her mom kicked her out when she quit going to classes at the college. Then the next I heard she was on the junk.

"your mom told me not to give you any more money." and Amber stared at me and said, "I know you have always wanted to fuck me. Well here is your chance." that was eight months ago, twice a week since then she would wander in looking for loose cash. Sometime I would give it to her other times I would make her work for it. But she was on the hustle, and so was I, I guess. I came inside her, and she was already reaching for the box of kleenex before I had finished. I left a couple of twenty-dollar bills on my desk and lit a smoke. "I remember when I was six or so, and you got me the harry potter books for Christmas. I thought there was magic back then. Now I know the price of that feeling is disappointing yourself one more time so you can get the medicine that lets you forget it ever happened." "You got what you wanted." "magic is something you wipe off with a tissue." I took another drag off my smoke she must have got the point and pulled up her pants, took her money, and left.

I had been looking for it all week, Buddha's middle finger. A devil wanted it and hired me to get my hands on it. "all you need to know, is I want you to find it." then he wrote me a check with more zeros than I had seen in my life. "what I am looking for exactly?" "The last thing Gautama left this world. I want you to bring it to me, it was his masterpiece."

After days of hitting the streets asking the local sources for anything strange, anything unusual or more magical than the tourist traps of tarot readings and rune casting. I finally found a creature who claimed to have heard of it. "in hell, it is said to be more powerful than prayer. Though I have never heard of it anywhere on earth, at least not the purity of it." "so what the hell am I looking for?" "You will know when you get there." "get where?" but he had already flown away, I pulled down my baseball cap wandering what had scared the little thing so much.

He was standing behind me a fur coat and bowler, cigarette in its holder as he smoked away the flame. "any luck?" "I don't think I am ever going to cash that check you gave me." "Or any other." "are you threatening me?" "not in an obvious way." he smiles his thin mustache like a bridge over an ocean filled with sharks. "Is this what you're looking for?" showing me a mummified hand flipping the bird and tied to a string. "I am tired of this game, You're about to graduate to the big leagues." "What are you talking about?" "you're never going to find it because you're looking for it. You Have been on parole hundreds of times before. The last one just a thousand years ago and not only did you get your stepdaughter pregnant, you killed me when you thought I was lying to you about your fate." "I am about to do it again." "this trinket," he said, snapping the middle finger off the hand and throwing both to the ground "is nothing, and you're going to need what I give you in a few minutes." now we were standing on an empty boxcar of a train going at full speed. no exit or light other than the cigarette of the devil. "you're on parole," he said squinting at me a trench of lines crushing the coal of his eyes till they shown like diamonds. "and we've decided you not going anywhere. e-t-e-r-n-a-l damnation. You're, not a fucking detective looking for a way to pay for abusing wounded young women. You have had a small break from a long-running fire a brimstone suffering one you apparently don't want to escape from. And every time we test you to give you another chance. True to character, you do something terrible." It all flooded back into me, and I started to cry. "you know what it is now, don't you," he smiled fading into the darkness with his cigarette. I was left in the darkness without anything to cling to but, acceptance: Buddha's middle finger.