THE PEE PEE MAN CHRONICLES:

Origin Story
(2nd draft)

Names are a religious commodity. No matter the person, place, thing, or idea, there is always a name
befitting it. Even the lack of name has a name (nameless, anonymous). But where does religiosity come into
play? It's because we invest our implicit faith into these names, blind faith that each of these names has a value
and quality which extends back to its roots—the place where meaning, true meaning, is fundamental and
assured. We trust these names are correct, the names of everyone and everything, and we use them to form
our technical and philosophical understanding of the universe and the place of our own world contained
therein. Names and symbols are all we have because they're all we can have, should we desire to stay grounded
in the "real world." Perhaps it's presumptuous or pretentious to say that Names are God, but let it be said
anyway:
Names are God.

PART I

A TALE OF TWO SCREENNAMES

“All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet
I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to
know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that
I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself,
quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning
away.”

- Charles Dickens

The Pee Pee Man did not believe in God, and certainly did not believe in his name. Its basis in reality—
its roots—was based on no reality at all: His ex-girlfriend had tried to get revenge on him by going into his
favorite IRC chat room and copy-pasting the contents of his porn video archive to the amusement of the
membership; within said contents included a title with the key words 'water sports' in its heading. Laughs were
had, jokes were made, and some trollish internet fucker bestowed him with the epithet 'The Pee Pee Man.' All
for something that was a mistake.
It really was a mistake. His porn folder included so many random downloads that it just so happened
there was a clip of people pissing on each other that got included with another download, sort of like how the
legislative process includes things like rider bills (bills attached to other bills, a sneaky way to get stuff ratified).
Thanks to his ex-girlfriend's grandstanding, the sneaky water sports video got recognized by the court
and ratified into effect. It didn't matter that he was completely honest in the chat room about his other fetishes
—feet, in particular, just like Quentin Tarantino; no matter how much he tried to explain things or laugh along
with it or pretend like it was no big deal, the jokes came fast and plenty.
 But the jokes didn't come from all angles; they especially came from one special person who went by
the internet handle of 'Stompy.' He was a motherfucker, to be sure, so fucking obsessed with Kris it was silly.
Every time the two of them were together in the chat Stompy would rail into him, or make up songs or raps
about him, like what he did tonight (Kris's screenname was 'Err`'):

<Err`> oh good, stompy is here so he can start shitting on me because his life sucks and somehow that
makes him feel better
<stompy> lmfao
<stompy> hi kris "the pee pee man" mells
<stompy> wanna sing along with me
<stompy> who can take a urinal
<bonerforest> hi
* furrytomato sets mode: +v bonerforest
<stompy> sprinkle it with pee
<stompy> cover it in delsym and a tramadol or two
<stompy> the pee pee man
<stompy> the pee pee man can
<stompy> the pee pee man can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
* DeusEXMachina cracks open another cold one
<@WendellStamps> #8~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* furrytomato sets mode: +v WendellStamps
<Err`> thanks for trying to rehash shit from months ago, stompy
<Err`> you're my hero
<stompy> these hoes cant see me, fam / im the pee pee man / drip droppin fat drops out my penis gland
/ reppin west virginia / runnin up in ya / sprinkle on the seat just to offend ya / fillin up pee jugs / im a
wee wee thug / fuck ya toilet, son, ill take a piss in the tub / for all my haters i will tell / bout my urine
smells / and aint a damn thang changed, its ya boy kris mells!
<stompy> I'm a crime fighter, fighting dry sheets, I soil the enemy, with my tramadol skeet. the only
thing I like better than adderal, is making sweet sweet love to my 80s Alf doll. Word to your mother.
<stompy> this bitch wanted to step so i had to roast her / stupid ho wrinkled up my avengers poster /
she had a vagina so i had to have it / cried about it to the chat live on rabbit / all my moneys gone i aint
know where it went / meth and delsym is how i blew my dads inheritance / so tell all these hoes that
they aint none / brb sendin some chick money for honey buns

Stupid drunk asshole.

Kris pushed himself back from his monitor and stood up, stretched his arms above his head. He felt the
familiar twinge in the back part of his right shoulder. Yeah, fuck Stompy. So what if he took benzos and pain
meds and Adderall and spent some days binge-watching old TV shows he'd seen a thousand times before? His
shoulder and back pain was legit, the back mostly the result of a bad car crash he had while learning to drive,
and the shoulder the result of cops beating the shit out of him with their nightsticks for no reason at all—oh,
wait, there was a reason, he remembered what one of the cops said to him:
"This's just how we have fun out here in West Virginia! Yeehaw!!"
This was a long time ago, in his early-twenties. He never pressed charges for fear of reprisal, never did
anything except lick his wounds and go home. The bruises had long since healed, except for that pesky
shoulder. Sometimes it hurt, stung a little bit, and he got prescribed Tramadols to take the edge off, and
occasionally something stronger if he asked them right. What was wrong with that? Why was Stompy so
obsessed with him?
As he stretched his arms he tried to rotate his right shoulder all the way around. A little spike of pain,
nothing that wasn't business as usual. Maybe the pain wasn't as bad as he let on in the chat most of the time,
but still, what the fuck business was it of Stompy's? All that stupid shit about peeing—pee peeeee u r the pee
pee man HAHAHA LOL!!!—was so juvenile. Any attempts to put him on ignore were circumvented with a screen
name change and eventually an IP change. Most of the chat operators didn't care, didn't put a stop to it unless
Stompy was spamming the chat. Bullying was fine, being an asshole was fine, but heaven help you if you enter
the same text over and over again. No sir, can't have that.
Kris was not The Pee Pee Man, but when he stood up he realized he had to pee.
He crossed his memorabilia-cluttered room to his bathroom. He walked past the Batman bed sheets,
which he kept covered up with a quilt ever since Stompy got wind of them; past his DVD box set collections of
Family Guy, Archer, M*A*S*H, and American Dad; past every accumulation of subsistence that Stompy loved to
incorporate in the fictional stories he wrote about Kris, into his freestyle raps and songs that he posted in the
chat, into every turn of phrase he came up with about The Pee Pee Man. These material items smeared by in
the haze of his peripheral vision and he did his best not to look at them; it was far too easy to imagine Stompy
laughing at him in capitalized typeface—HAHAHA OMG LOL THE PEE PEE MAN IS TAKING A PEE IS HE GONNA
TAKE HIS ARCHER BOXSET WITH HIM LOLOLOL!!! Not that he gave a shit, or so he told himself; it was just so
annoying, so repetitive, a yammering voice that wasn't a voice, only blocks of text scrolling up from the bottom
of a chat screen. Still yammering, though.
He flipped the light on and crossed to the toilet, opened the lid and rim, but didn't unzip. He stared
down at the water inside the bowl, the lemonade water. Closer to a tangerine lemonade, if such a thing existed,
with a hint of carrot juice. The water was cloudy as hell, couldn't even see the hole in the bottom. He almost
fooled himself into thinking it was diarrheal fluid inhabiting the space in his toilet bowl, but no: it was just piss.
Diabetic piss, from the look of it, or maybe just aged piss. Didn't Stompy say something once or twice about The
Pee Pee Man bottling up his piss and storing it in the pee cellar to age like fine ethanol?
This was troubling. He always flushed. He was a bit of a priss in the bathroom, anyway (a far cry from
The Pee Pee Man), so the idea that he would leave a pissy mess in his toilet bowl—an aged pissy mess, no less
—didn't make sense at all. He knew intellectually he should react to this with some sort of emotion, some
response, even if just mock-horror, but all he could do was stare. He wasn't frozen in fear, rather on the soft side
of analytical—which wasn't surprising given his double-whammy Klonopin/Norco cocktail two hours prior. He
couldn't get over how unhealthy this pee looked. Were those streaks of carrot juice blood?
Two fingers on the flusher and he almost pushed down, then stopped. This was evidence. Evidence that
someone invaded his personal space. He didn't know how or when, certainly not during the past four-day
vacation he just had off work. He spent the first three days blowing through several grams of meth and weed
and several varieties of pain pills and benzos, which meant he didn't feel the urge to travel much farther past
his living room. The sleep he got was erratic, two or three hours at a time. He meant to save a little speed for
his three-day work week ahead, but such was not in the cards. His jaw hurt like a mother from grinding his
teeth, thanks to an old friend known as amphetamine-induced bruxism. Might be time for a dentist visit.
Perhaps he could score more Norcos. His stash of hydrocodone and clonazepam was almost out—in fact, he
planned on taking the rest tonight—but he had enough Tramadol for the days ahead. He would have taken
some Tramadol to help come down, but that drug was dangerous to do directly after the meth. Yay for harm
reduction, which was what the IRC chat room was supposed to be all about.
What did Stompy have to say about Tramadol?

<stompy> T for the tinkles i take in jugs / R for the reasons im pissin blood / A for my alf doll, hes my
best friend / M for marie, dick pics i send / A for autistic, thats what i am / D for the delsym im
shopliftin, fam / O for the ops I used to have / L for the loser that i fuckin am

He shook his head. He realized his fingers were still on the flusher and he removed them. No flush. This
was evidence. Yellow police tape across the open bowl, making sure people didn't fall inside. Can't be too
careful.
Down came the rim and lid, and he was satisfied. Out of sight, out of mind. Worry about it later. Drugs
were good for that, endowing him with a radical acceptance of this (or any) situation. He'd take the rest of the
pills soon. Sucks he had no weed left, but whatever.
He couldn't accept the possibility that he himself pissed in the toilet and didn't flush. It didn't make
sense, his pee looked nothing like that. If he was The Pee Pee Man, he would take care of his pee, maybe even
bottle it up and let it age. Deliver a high-quality product every time.
Kris didn't think that was funny, didn't allow himself to think it, but on this night he laughed.
It was just so ridiculous.

Another night. Another troll.

* Rejoined channel #entheogens

* bugg (bugg@meat.is.murder) has joined #entheogens
* ADA sets mode: +o bugg
<stompy> u ever think about the way pee coats the space between her toes
<stompy> makin it all warm and slippery
<Err`> stompy, im not gonna engage your trollshit tonight
* furrytomato sets mode: +v Err`
<stompy> is that all you got peepee man
<stompy> someBODY once told me the world is gonna flush me
<stompy> i aint the warmest pee in the bowl
<stompy> so like
<stompy> are you more into dribbles or strong steady streams
<+stompy> hey everyone! did kris tell you which chick he mailed dxm powder to so that she would
show him her tits
<stompy> called them up at 4 in the morning while he was jacking off
<Animals> lmfao
<stompy> ask them to hold the phone near the toilet while they pee
<stompy> flip floppin unzip out my penis tip / bend it up like a U and then i splash my lips / these hoes
mad thirsty but im takin sips / slurp it all up quick dont forget no drips / im wobblin and i fall / gobblin
tramadol / lyin on the chat actin like i aint took em all / droppin fat ass rhymes just to match the beat /
wettin up haters just like my batman sheets

Every night he did this. Every fucking night. Happened around the same time every fucking night, most
likely when the trollish pigfucker got drunk or fucked up enough to think doing the same thing over and over
again was funny. It wasn't funny. It was stupid.
Tonight, though, Kris wasn't having it. He had only signed in the chat to see if the member 'clockangel'
was around, his internet girlfriend. Well, they had never called each other boyfriend/girlfriend, but what do you
call someone who you've traded nudes with and who talks to you when they need emotional support? He had
never told Vivian, his real life girlfriend, about clockangel, and that had to count for something, didn't it?
But clockangel wasn't in the chat. He made himself wait around for a little bit in spite of Stompy's
persistence; Kris ignored every IP the pigfucker came in with, but then he'd just skirt around it and copy-paste
more of his pedantic freestyle raps about how pathetic of a person was Kris The Pee Pee Man Mells. Sure,
maybe he came up with new raps every fucking night, but it was still variations on the same theme, and it
wasn't funny. It was stupid.
Today had been recovery day for Kris, and it hadn't been a good day. No more speed, no more hydros,
no more benzos, no more weed. Just plain ol' Tramadol, which was fine for a little while until the serotonergic
lift dropped off by early-evening. No point in taking more, though he did end up taking 100 milligrams more. No
point in doing much of anything. If he felt this crappy come tomorrow, he'd call out of work. He needed
stimulants, but his Adderall guy was out of goodies and his meth guy wasn't answering his texts or calls. Fuck all
that.
He minimized the chat screen and stood up from his desk, stretched his arms, felt that shoulder pain.
Yeah, he needed pain pills. Tramadol ain't cutting it no mo'. His teeth hurt. Have to make a dentist appointment,
for the Norcos if nothing else. Do it tomorrow. Too late now.
There were pizza rolls in the freezer. Not a cure for the dopaminergic blues, but it was something. He
turned to set off for the kitchen but stopped at the doorway. Out of the corner of his left eye he saw another
doorway. The bathroom doorway.
He rarely had reason to close any of his doors except the front door; he lived alone in the guesthouse of
his stepmom's property and did his bathroom stuff with the door open. Through the corner of his eyes he saw
through the open doorway to the gray porcelain profile of a certain hazy object that gave him so much grief last
night. He tried to scoff at himself, but it was hard to do when he had spent the previous day pissing in the
kitchen sink while constipating himself with synthetic opioid medication. He gave himself no reason to go inside
that bathroom for anything, much less for a simple wee wee (or pee pee); after all there were drains in the
bottom of the kitchen sink. It all went down somewhere.
He snapped his head left. Toilet lid closed. That piss probably stank to high heaven by now, though it
hardly smelled like roses last night. Smelled stinky and sour, not sweet like the urine of a diabetic. Even from
way out here, his nose hairs prickled with sulfuric reminders and he tasted methane on the back of his tongue.
That was some rank-ass shit. He didn't remember it smelling this bad.
"That's how it's going to smell when you open the lid," he told himself aloud as he stared at the
commode while tapping an aimless rhythm on the doorway jamb. "Gonna smell like tha—"
The toilet growled at him. The lid raised up a half inch and the toilet growled at him. He saw this
happen, heard the guttural wretch spew forth from inside the bowl in a deep-seated mechanistic rumble that
could saw through bone. It went on for three seconds and stopped—though, curiously enough, he didn't see
the toilet bowl lid lower back down when the growl ceased. It came up a half inch, sure, but down? Nope. And
yet the lid was closed, as if it hadn't moved at all.
He stared at the toilet from the doorway, waited for more, for something to happen. His heart rate
soared and his temples pulsed. He shut his eyes and made a fist with his right hand, used the side of his closed
hand to pound his forehead six times. He did see the toilet lid move like a pair of lips, right? He know what he
heard, but he saw the lid move, he saw that—but then, why didn't the lid move back down when the growling
was over?
He opened his eyes. He knew what he had to do.
Kris The Pee Pee Man that wasn't The Pee Pee Man slammed the bathroom door shut. Fuck that room.
Why would a toilet bowl lid move on its own—and growl, for fuck's sake?
But then he knew the answer. It was so simple, so stupid. Stupid and simple.
Just like Stompy.
He knew Stompy was behind this shit. Or pee, rather. Who else would go to such great lengths to mess
with him? Dude was obsessed; who else could it be? what else could it be? Kris wasn't crazy, knew he wasn't
crazy, and also knew this couldn't be a result of stimulant psychosis because he got a full night's sleep last night.
So, again, back to the questions:
What else could it be? Who else would sneak into his house and pee in his toilet? Who else was so
goddamn obsessed with pee? Not Kris The Pee Pee Man who wasn't The Pee Pee Man, that was for sure. God,
that name was so stupid. Maybe it would be funny if he actually had a piss fetish, or even watched one of those
videos for more than a few seconds before clicking off with disinterest and more than a little disgust. No, he
wasn't the one preoccupied with pee. Not The Pee Pee Man, himself. If anything, the moniker was ironic, like
Little John from Robin Hood. That's why it was funny, but it wasn't funny. It was stupid.
He realized he was still holding the bathroom doorknob. He was about to let go when another growl
erupted from behind the door, a harsher one, blades shooting through the steel piping beneath the house. The
knob vibrated in his palm, feeling like an electrical surge that shot jolts through his spine. He grabbed his right
wrist with his left hand. This growl was shorter, mercifully so, barely a second long before stopping.
 The impact made him fall backward. He managed to avoid hitting the back of his head, but his tailbone
took a good whomp, hurt like a bitch. Man, now he really needed some hydros. Maybe he could go to the ER or
an Emergency Clinic and show them this new bruise and get an emergency prescription. Hell, maybe his meth
guy knew where to get some H. Never asked before, but now might be a good time. Right now.
These druggie thoughts bulleted through his head not so much as thoughts but impulses. Every serious
drug user becomes intuitively aware of those delicate times in life when situations could be manipulated in
their favor for momentary dopaminergic or serotonergic relief; this was just another time when he could point
to something tangible and be like, Hey! I need something to make this better! I deserve something to make this
better! Thus, even with the sting of shocking pain in his tailbone (though it was more a discomfort than
anything, but hey: serious druggies are nothing if not adept at Broadway-esque styles of exaggeration), there
came layered with it the potential promise of future pleasure. He'd all but forgotten the growling toilet in his
bathroom in favor of these druggie ideations. Fuck the Tramadols, he needed the real shit. Maybe some speed
to go along with it; after all, how was he supposed to get through work tomorrow with this new injury? If he
didn't get some meth, at the very least he could get some hydrocodone from the doctor, most likely, and also a
doctor's note excusing him for the missed work day. He could do a cold water extraction on the hydros—what
was a good dose for a busted tailbone? 60 mg? 80? Emergency prescripts were usually just ten or twelve 5
milligram pills, so that was what, around 50 milligrams? Yeah, may as well use them all, wash them down with
some white grapefruit juice (which was an opioid potentiator), and drift off for a while, maybe play some
Fallout or start to watch the new season of Gotham. The torrent had been sitting in his queue for weeks,
waiting for the perfect time. Looks like he found it.
All of these thoughts and feelings and ideas and realizations came and went within the span of a few
seconds, long enough for the initial shock of pain to rise and abate. He let go of his wrist and rolled on his side,
gently rubbed the area just above the crack of his ass. Didn't hurt that bad, not really, but what the medical
professionals didn't know wouldn't hurt them. The medical professionals—
Wait . . . his crotch was damp. What the hell? Damp, sticky. Did he . . .
Did he just piss himself?
He felt down there and knew the truth. His Flash pajama bottoms were soaked. Must have happened
when his hand was on the vibrating doorknob. Jesus H Buttfucking Christ, did he really just piss himself? He
didn't even have to pee, for fuck's sake!
Kris forgot about his tailbone as the pissy smell from his pajamas wafted upward. Jesus (H Buttfucking)
Christ, his pee stank! What the hell was wrong with his body? It was as bad as a fart, a gas station burrito fart.
Why did it smell so bad?
But the more important question: Why did it have the same odor as the mystery pee inside the toilet?
He peeled off his pajama bottoms and flung them across the room. They landed at the base of his DVD
tower. Gross. Hope the nasty shit didn't rub off on the discs.
There he lay, naked from the waist down. The offending PJ's were gone, but the offending stench was
soaked in his pubes and upper thigh hair. He knew a shower was in order—but wait: He couldn't use the
shower, couldn't even open the bathroom door without facing that dreaded toilet. Maybe he could make up
some feeble excuse to his stepmom and use the main house shower, but she would want to know why, and
what would he say? No water pressure? Something wrong with the nozzle? If he said anything was wrong at all,
she would call her brother Terry and get his drunk ass down here to fix it, but of course nothing would be wrong
. . . and then what? He could probably lie his way out of that situation, but it seemed like so much work. Maybe
he saw a big-ass spider in the tub? No, his stepmom would think he was on drugs.
Still though, he pissed himself. He hadn't done that in so long, not when he was piss drunk, not even
when those cops were beating the shit out of him with their batons. Never happened, not once—and wow, did
it stink. That never happened, either. Not that his urine could get bottled up and dabbed on the necks of British
royalty, but still, it was obvious something was wrong with him. Fuck his tailbone; maybe he should go to a
doctor for his kidneys. For his pee pee.
They weren't likely to give him pain meds for that, though. What would they give him? What do you
take for stinky pee pee? Nothing that would make him feel good, he assumed. Maybe if he said it was causing
him massive anxiety, he could get an emergency prescription for another benzo—but how much came in those
prescripts? Ten, fifteen pills? And would it be Ativan, something weak like that? He could sure go for some
Xanax right now, or maybe some more Klonopin; this whole thing was stressing him the fuck out.
And he knew whose fault it was.

He woke up covered in pee pee.

Not just the pee from his accident last night, no; he was doused top to bottom in piss. From his hair to
his nightshirt to his Scooby Doo boxers that replaced his soiled PJ bottoms to the tip of his toes, the sticky
aftermath of urine (smelly urine) had saturated through his clothes to clog the pores of his skin overnight. The
smell was beyond abhorrent, as if he had taken a steam bath of methane coals.
Oh God. How was he supposed to go to work now? His bedstand clock told him he had forty minutes to
make it there. Forty minutes to get ready and go to work sober. Well, on Tramadol, but that hardly counted;
that shit was vitamins to him. He needed stims. He could almost take a Benzedrex at this point. He needed
something.
But no, what he really needed was a shower. Couldn't take one here, couldn't take one in the main
house, not without starting an associative stream of questioning from his stepmom that he couldn't back up.
Even if she had gone to work and he snuck inside for a quick spritz, she was bound to notice the condensation
lingering behind—and even if she didn't know that, she would notice something else, a shampoo bottle in the
wrong spot, or the shower curtains opened on the opposite side, just something altered from her everyday
surroundings, and the questions would follow.
Kris sat up, hung his forelegs off the side of the bed. Every slight movement was a sticky movement,
skin exfoliating from skin. He would have slouched down over his knees if touching any part of his skin didn't
feel nasty. Today was not a good day, no it wasn't.
He knew Stompy was behind this. Dude was probably in the chat right now—huhuhuh I dun pissed all
over the pissmaster Mells. He would have stepped over to his command console and fired up the desktop, but
there was no time. Not unless he called in. But they required at least a three hour notice, unless it was an
emergency. This was an emergency, but not one he could explain to them.
But he didn't just want to call in. He wanted to quit. Might as well, he still had a sizable life insurance
policy from his dad left behind to cash in. Stompy always went on about the inheritance that Kris got from his
father and how privileged he was because of it, but the fat fuck was wrong; it wasn't an inheritance, it was a life
insurance policy. He did get some government checks for disability, though they weren't large. He rarely paid his
mom rent, and when he did it never exceeded a couple hundred a month. Working part time off the books was
just a way to get some extra cash so that he could take Vivian to the movies or something. The last one they
saw was the second Guardians of the Galaxy. It was pretty good. She couldn't get her mom to watch the kids
for very long, though, and so after the movie they just went home. Things had been cooling off with her,
anyway.
The girl from the chat, though, clockangel—things definitely weren't cooling off with her. He still had his
doubts whether she was real or an elaborate troll, but that night last week when he talked to her on the phone
had done its part in convincing him the former. It's hard to fake shit like that.
Yeah, it was high-time to say 'fuck it' to work. Didn't want to call them, though. Maybe if he just didn't
show up or call them for long enough, the whole thing would quietly go away. He had bigger fish to fry.
First thing's first: He needed to somehow use the kitchen sink and faucet to hose off his body. Maybe
there was an actual hose outside? Yeah, but that would necessitate actually going outside, something he
ritualistically avoided whenever possible.
He stood up and almost tripped over a kitchen glass laying crossway beside his bed. He caught himself
on the wall and looked down at the glass. Yeah, he remembered that glass, realizing the memory was there all
along but staying in the background out of sight, observing everything.
It was true that sometimes he would place an empty glass from the kitchen on his bed stand. Just in
case, y'know. Just in case he woke up and had to make wee wee. Long trip to the bathroom (when the toilet
wasn't growling), eight steps at most but those eight steps mean a lot when you're coming out of sleepyland.
An even longer trip to the kitchen sink with a full bladder. A side-effect from opioids, synthetic and otherwise, is
a marked increase in urinary retention; taking a piss wasn't impossible, but it took a long time, and sometimes
fooled you into thinking you had to pee when you didn't. Sitting on his bed provided a better cushion than
sitting on a cold, sterile toilet bowl rim.
He remembers getting up last night with a full bladder and pissing in the glass. It wasn't a clear memory,
but he knows he did it, much as he would admit to no one else that he did it sometimes. If THEY knew about
this glass, and all the other empty kitchen glasses methodically placed on his bed stand night after night, then
THEY would have good reason to call him The Pee Pee Man.
THEY. One THEY in particular. If Stompy knew about Kris's nighttime pee-glass, he would have a field
day with it. Unoriginal waste of life needed some new material, some actual material. Something real. And the
nighttime pee-glass was real, yes it was, just like the nighttime pee soaking inside his body through his clothes.
Wait a second—why was he covered in piss? He thought about this, knowing in his heart of hearts he
knew the answer already. He wanted to do mental gymnastics and tell himself he must have bumped the night
stand in his sleep and spilled his pee-glass all over his person. Never mind the fact that the physics of this
scenario didn't make sense; his stinky glass o' pee would have tipped over and spilled on one concentrated area
of his body, as opposed to covering everything from top to bottom, from the cap of his skull to the soles of his
feet. The most dedicated of druggies are practitioners of doublethink, and Kris was no exception. This time,
though, the awareness was too much to bear.
Stompy did it. Stompy was here, somewhere nearby. He must have waited until Kris was snoozing and
broke into his house (unless the troll was hiding somewhere inside for the entire day, biding his time—now
there was a creepy thought), tiptoed into his bedroom, and poured the pee all over Kris. Stupid fatass probably
had a boner while doing it; he was The Real Pee Pee Man, not Kris.
He should have the asshole arrested. Could he call the cops over this? What would he say—Some dude
broke into my house, pissed in my toilet, and the next night poured a glass full of my piss all over me while I was
sleeping; can you arrest him? Sure, maybe he could shorten it to a simple B&E, but they would want to know
what was stolen, or if there were any signs of forced entry. He rarely locked his front door at night, telling
himself that thieves broke into houses, not guesthouses.
No, there would be no signs of forced entry. Nothing stolen, nothing damaged except the inside of his
toilet. The thief didn't take anything, but he sure put something in here. Something rank. Something—
Wait a sec.
Another piece clicked, this one so obvious he wondered if he was permanently fried: If the smelly pee
from the glass came from his own bladder, then why did he think the smelly pee inside the toilet bowl came
from Stompy?
He lowered himself onto his bed, laid on his back. Soaked mattress, foul smelling, but he didn't care.
Something was wrong. He couldn't think. Why did he assume the piss in the toilet bowl belonged to someone
else? He just knew a stranger had crept inside his house and pissed in his toilet. Not just a stranger, but
someone he knew, if only from a chat room.
As he stared at the ceiling, he knew his paranoia had no ceiling. Because something was wrong. Never
mind the growling toilet, which was probably an aftereffect from the meth binge; he was missing something
here, something important. What the hell was it?
He didn't know, but knew he wanted to talk to clockangel.

She didn't sign on until the evening.

<clockangel> Hi
<Err`> hey how are you
 No response. A minute went by, then two. The chat was slow tonight. Only thing that happened in the
past half hour was the same person using the !weather feature and the !quote feature. Not much traffic here
without Stompy, who hadn't signed on all day. Stupid fucker might've gotten himself banned. Wouldn't be the
first time.

<clockangel> My dad came in my room again I'm on my phone at IHOP

His stomach dropped. That motherfucker. He would kill her dad if he could. Castrate him, make him
choke on his nuts. He wished he was on DXM right now, or hell, something to numb his emotions and help him
know what to say. Those pesky feelers get in the way sometimes—things like lust, attraction, anxiety, and rage.
Especially rage.
No DXM, though, or anything else. All he had was Tramadol, He'd already taken 400 mg today, which
was all he ever allowed himself to take. He might have gone out and got some alcohol or something, but he
didn't want to leave his house vulnerable to the elements that be. Stompy was nearby. Who else could possibly
be behind all this weird shit? Or weird piss, more like.
(that was your pee in the toilet, you know it was)
Yeah, fine, maybe that foul-smelling liquid in the toilet bowl came from his own bladder—
(no maybe about it)
Fine then, it most definitely was his own pee pee, but that still didn't change the fact that the toilet had
growled at him on two separate occasions and that he had woken up in the morning covered in piss that had
obviously been poured all over him while he was sleeping. Those were the basic facts of the situation, and it
didn't matter that he had peed in the toilet some days ago and didn't flush and forgot about it and blamed it on
someone else, some mystery pisser hiding in the grassy knoll.
Not just any mystery pisser, though; it was his sworn enemy, if he had such a thing. Stompy. He decided
it was that fat fuck right away, and had been operating under that thesis up until now. But what if it was
someone else? What if—

<clockangel> U there?

He snapped back to the moment. Shit, his bladder was full. Why did it have to happen now? He
clenched his bladder shut and started typing.

<Err`> i cant believe hes doing this to you

<Err`> im so sorry this is happening
<Err`> do you want to talk on the phone?

He hoped she didn't call him right this second, or say yes please call me RIGHT NOW. He didn't relish
having to talk to her while sitting on the toilet and trying to muffle the sound of pee hitting water. It was far too
early in their courtship for casual displays of intimacy. Maybe if she did it first it would be different, which oddly
enough would be okay. Sort of hot, even.
She didn't respond back right away, which made him think he fucked things up already. Was he not
consoling enough? Was the phone thing too creepy? Some girls liked to talk on the phone when they were
upset—at least, he thinks they do. One of his exes did. Sure, he only talked to clockangel once on the phone
before, but he didn't think he was being pushy or disrespectful of her boundaries. He didn't think he was, but
with some girls it was impossible to tell.
Still no response. How long was it? A minute, minute and a half? Anything longer than a minute was an
eternity in text chat. Especially if you had to pee. Oh God he had to pee. He realized he'd been avoiding the
moment for most of the day. Did he seriously not pee all day?
On the far-right corner of his desk, he spied the glass. His nighttime pee glass. He meant to take it out to
the kitchen, but apparently forgot. Hadn't even rinsed it out. Streaks of yellow caked with muddy residue ran to
the edge of the rim. Looked nasty, crusty.
But no matter how crusty it looked, it was still a glass. He grabbed it, stood up, dropped his Rick and
Morty pajama bottoms, held the cup below his junk, and waited for the dam to break. He also waited for
clockangel to say something. Neither was happening.
He pushed down below. Fucking urinary retention, fucking Tramadol. He pushed, gritted his eyes shut,
pushed some more. If this wasn't going to happen, he might need a catheter, which prompted him to push even
more. But maybe if he went to the ER and got something stuck up his peehole, they'd give him some
hydrocodone to take the edge off—or maybe not, they'd probably give him something weak, like Demerol or
Codeine, but if he took enough of those two he might—
PEEEEEEEEE PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The toilet SCREAMED at him. Two long sounds, screaming grunts. The ensuing vibration shook the
whole house, as well as his nerve endings—which turned out to be the impetus for the piss that finally got
squeezed through his urethra into the kitchen glass.
The stream was lovely, chill-inducing. It released more endorphins than 80% of his self-induced
orgasms. The fetid stench hit his nose hairs but he didn't care, was almost getting used to it. The hollow sound
of his evacuation filling the glass resonated as if echoing off the walls of a cathedral. For this brief time he forgot
everything, everyone, and himself, existing as a singularity of sensation and release. It was such a release, such
a pleasure to make pee pee.
But he heard the rising pitch below and knew the glass was almost full. Fuck, what to do? A day's worth
of piss needed to get out, and once he filled the glass he knew he couldn't hold it for long, certainly not for the
length of time it would take him to waddle out to the kitchen. Hell, even just taking a few steps was likely to
make him discharge. He did not allow the possibility of pissing on the carpet, not even as a casualty; it just did
not enter the equation.
As he pondered these variables, he realized the glass was an inch away from topping off. He clenched
shut his sphincter and stopped the stream, asked himself one last time what to do.
(you've known it all along)
He raised the glass and tipped it to his mouth. No thinking, he didn't allow himself to think as he gulped
once, twice—damn was it pungent—thrice, and a fourth time for good measure. He tracked his progress with
watery eyes and saw he'd consumed half the amount; would that be enough room?
He lowered the glass and the Great Pee resumed. There wasn't that much left inside his bladder; he
squirted and dribbled those last few shakes and was done, followed immediately by a massage of post-orgasmic
pinpricks that combed up his spine and enveloped him in a rapture he never knew.
His stomach gurgled. The pee was making its new home down there. His mouth and tongue tasted like
spoiled meat. A retch of nausea bubbled down his esophagus into his gut and he prepared for the worst,
prepared for upchuck city—but then it leveled out. No queasiness, no sickness.
Kris had just drunk his own pee.
But before he could contemplate this new development, he heard the unmistakable blip of someone
messaging him in the chat. clockangel, had to be clockangel. He slid over to his command console and set his
full pee-glass on the desk, not spilling a drop, and moved his mouse to wake up the computer.
The words hit him before the monitor lit up completely:

<clockangel> I think im going too kill myself

Oh shit. The air pushed out of his midsection. He scrambled out a response and hit enter.

<Err`> please dont do anything yet, can i call u? u can talk to me im here for you

He didn't know why he spelled out that last 'you' instead of the more colloquial internet spelling of 'u,'
but it seemed right at the time.
 In fact, he felt endowed with a confidence heretofore unknown to him. The prickles crawling up his
spine had metamorphosed into a rising feeling in his gut where the bubble of nausea had popped moments
before. He felt power. He knew he could ask her if she needed him to come get her and she'd say yes. She
would, he knew it.
But he also knew he had to play it cool. Warmth spread like simmering tea inside his stomach, and he
couldn't help but grinning as he pounded out another response. This one was longer, and he knew he should
separate the text into three messages. The knowing was so powerful.

<Err`> people like ur dad dont deserve to live

<Err`> id kill him if i thought that would make u feel better, but u need to get away from him
<Err`> is there anyone u can call?

He waited for her response that he knew would come. The warmth in his tummy felt good, real good.
Why was he feeling so good? so knowing? Was it because he drank half an 8 oz glass of his own pee? Could that
really be it?
Her reply:

<clockangel> There's all these weird ppl around me im afraid to do n e thing

<Err`> where at? the IHOP?
<clockangel> yz

Now was his chance. He typed something and backspaced it to type something else. He counted to
twenty before hitting enter.

<Err`> im going to drive where u are, i can be there in an hour can u wait that long?

No stomach flutters, no anxiety. Just the knowing. The simmering in his tummy became a full on boil
whose steam rose to his rib cage, igniting his heart with possibility. The possibility of possibility. He hadn't felt
like this since he was a kid, but back then the feeling of magic and possibility was interwoven with a naïveté
that precluded confidence. But he sure felt confident tonight—and was it really from drinking his own stinky
urine? He could still taste that spoiled meatiness on his tongue, but strangely enough didn't mind it anymore.
Would probably have to pop a mint before he met clockangel face to face, but that was no biggie.
Thirty seconds went by with no response, but that was okay. Give it time. Shit, this feeling was
awesome. No drug could touch this feeling. It felt so pure.
One minute. Still no worry. What should he take along on the trip? He knew she lived in Rothsburg,
Virginia, which was only an hour away from his hometown in West Virginia. If he drove fast he could make it in
forty. He thought of Harvey Keitel's character in Pulp Fiction, The Wolf: when he got called for a job, he said,
"It's a thirty minute drive. I'll be there in ten." The Wolf was the shit.
blip.

<clockangel> Yes

One word. That was all he needed. But he already knew she would answer in the affirmative. The key
was in the question: He didn't ask if he could come to her, but rather if she could wait long enough for him to
get there. If she had said 'no,' the assumption would have been he was still coming to her, coming to save her.
He didn't ask her if he could come, he told her, which was completely unlike him. Was he becoming a new
person? Was he becoming a hero? a superhero? Was this his origin story?
He reached over and picked up his glass o' pee. Acting on the same base instinct that guided him thus
far, he tipped the glass between his lips and drank. Drank it down, one gulp after the other, eyes open and
never leaving the chat screen. Staring at that 'Yes.'
 That 'Yes' was so beautiful.

The interstate roads stretched in front of him with an ascetic splendor. The Appalachians in the distance
were cloaked in night's embrace, making them felt but hardly seen. The exit off I-70 East to Rothsburg was forty
minutes away. Kris sped his shitty li'l Taurus down the empty four-lane road going close to 80 in a 55. Risky
business, except he felt no risk; getting pulled over was the least of his concerns. His license was good, his
insurance was tangible, and he could afford to pay off a speeding ticket.
The cops were nothing. The idea of cops was nothing, just a teeny tiny blip on his radar. He knew what
was important tonight. The pee was important because it gave him the feeling. The feeling was important, the
mainline feeling of power and possibility coursing through his bloodstream and every nerve. Waze was
important because it was leading him to the correct IHOP in Rothsburg, leading him to her. To clockangel. She
was most important because he needed to save her. He needed to speed through the night to save her. Speed
was important—not the speed he usually took, but this speed, this feeling of power. Saving people was power,
and saving girls? Fuhgeddaboudit! He wished he could fly. Superheroes could fly. The Pee Pee Man would be
able to fly.
He wasn't The Pee Pee Man, but maybe tonight he was. He couldn't fly, but he could do the next best
thing: As he crossed on to the interstate he rolled down his driver's side window and accelerated down the
ramp, going faster, faster, past 80, up to 90, 95. The shriek of the engine, the wind whipping his hair into a
frenzy, slapping the skin of his face with invigoration—the possibility of the night was upon him. He was on the
way to save someone, and if that didn't make him a superhero, what did it make him?
Waze told him to steady the course for thirty-eight miles. This gave him time to think. Superheroes
were "super" because they had super powers; otherwise, they'd be normal everyday heroes. Everyone loves a
hero, but everyone remembers a superhero; how many people knew the names of the firemen (and women)
who rushed into the burning rubble of the Twin Towers to save whoever they could? Or the names of the
heroes that came back from the Middle East clusterfuck? Sure, they made movies about a few of them, but the
names of those heroes don't enter the subconscious of the public lexicon the way that superheroes do. Why
was that?
Because superheroes have powers.
He felt like he had powers tonight. Maybe it was the pee, maybe it was the situation, but whatever: he
felt like he was flying. It wasn't just the open window and the sub-100 miles per hour he was driving; his body
felt weightless, floating by itself on a cloud manifested by his own assured intuition, carrying him everywhere
he needed to go. This journey to Rothsburg felt effortless, was effortless. This journey to save clockangel. Her
real name was Adalyn, but he knew her as clockangel, and tonight clockangel needed a hero.
A superhero.

———

He took the Rothsburg exit and pulled over to the first gas station he saw. He had to pee, but that
wasn't his reason for stopping; he needed to get his bearings, to quell his mania before he pulled up to IHOP,
which was only ten minutes away according to Waze. He should also call her again; he tried once while on the
interstate, but no answer. He would have texted her, but he didn't want to distract himself from his flying. Flying
was too much fun.
But now that he was done flying, he realized he was sitting in the parking lot of a Chevron whose pumps
were dark and whose store interiors were even darker. His heart beat was ragged and his nerves felt like frayed
electrical wires knocked loose during a storm. He didn't want to lose this feeling now, this sense of purpose, of
power and possibility. Not when he was so close to saving her.
Holy shit, he had to pee.
The gas station was closed, and the surrounding area was isolated enough to allow cover for relieving
himself outside. Instead, he rummaged around the passenger side floorboard for an empty bottle, an empty
cup, something he could use. He found a McDonald's large fountain drink cup, the insides smeared with cola
residue, and held it below his crotch. He watched himself perform these actions from a wide angle lens deep
inside his head as he unzipped, fetched out his wiener, and opened the floodgates.
Ahhhhhhh . . .
He thought of that scene in Dumb and Dumber when Jim Carrey pissed in an empty beer bottle while
Jeff Daniels was driving. Good ol' rubberfaced Jim didn't just fill up one bottle; he filled up three or four by the
time he was done. Jeff Daniels remarked to him, "What are you, a camel?" to which Jim responded with a camel
neigh that signified the end of his stream.
Kris watched himself make the camel noise as his own stream dribbled off. He saw from afar that he
almost filled the thing up—shit, how big was this cup, anyway? 20 ounces? Had to be, he'd bought a large the
last time he went. Where'd all that pee come from, anyway? It's not like he'd been hydrating himself with
anything.
Anything, except, well . . .

After he finished drinking from the McDonald's cup and licked his lips dry, he picked up his phone and
hit the power button. He clicked the Waze icon and confirmed the address—ten miles away, sixteen minutes
away (estimated, of course). Wouldn't be long now. Maybe he should try calling her again.
Drinking the reconstituted piss this time around didn't give him that mainline rush from before, but was
enough to reinforce the base hypomanic tensions fueling his every movement and thought. Everything seemed
fluid, fluid in scope, fluid in action—perhaps because it was all thanks to fluid, one fluid in particular. This shit
was better than drugs, better because it came from his own body, because he could redose when his bladder
filled up. Sure, the flavor wasn't that great, but years of drinking cough medicine had toughened up his taste
buds and gag reflex. Besides, there was character in the taste. His own character, to be sure, but it went deeper
than that; his own pee had the tang and corrosiveness of nostalgic underpinnings, the character of who he was
up to that point in time. If the past and present were never completely in sync, they were when he drank his
own piss. He could feel it. Thanks to his pee. His
peeeeee peeeeeee
He sat up in his car seat, straight up. His pulse exploded between his ears, a WHU-WHUMP WHU-
WHUMP that threatened to dissolve into tunnel vision. But he couldn't fold up now. He was on a mission,
wasn't he? Sure he was, but now he wondered if it was a fool's errand. A fool's mission.
What if clockangel wasn't real? What if she was the product of someone's imagination, a certain special
someone?
PEEEEEEE PEEEEEEE
He searched his Facebook messenger for Stompy. He wasn't friends with the piece of shit (obviously),
but several people in his contact list were, which allowed him access to find the dude's profile. It helped that
Stompy had a unique name—John Bear Sixkiller—which made it a quick find.
There he was. John Bear. Kris clicked on the profile and saw his good buddy's profile was set to public;
all his recent posts were available to anyone, friend or foe. Stompy made foes as naturally as he made bowel
movements, but someone with a public Facebook profile meant that they were inviting one and all to interact
with them. He must want people to talk to him. Why was he such an asshole, then? Such a troll?
Kris didn't know, though a quick perusal through John Bear's posts indicated that he got quite a few
responses from other people. And not just emoji reactions, but actual comments, interactions with people that
went beyond trollish baiting and insults. Seems the dude was capable of interacting with people in a civilized
way, so what the hell was his problem with Kris?
He was about to click on the 'Message' icon until he scrolled past a post with some telling information:
JOHN BEAR SIXKILLER
March 10 at 3:44 am

Yo my peeps hit me up 4028390504

There it was. Stompy's phone number. Perhaps a direct text would get a quicker response than a
Facebook message, but . . . what if he just called the number? What if he engaged the hateful P.O.S. directly,
voice to voice? Normally, this was something Kris wouldn't consider unless under threat of castration, but
tonight was different. Tonight he had power, power and possibility. Tonight he had become someone else.
And suppose Stompy was the one behind this transformation? At the very least, shouldn't he call up the
scurvy pigfucker to thank him? Wouldn't that be a good enough pretense to call John Bear and ultimately get
him to admit that clockangel was a figment of his trollish imagination? Kris would congratulate him—job well
done, you fat fuck. You're so clever, you got me again.
Kris didn't allow himself to hesitate, just typed in the numbers and pressed the green call button. He
put the phone on speaker and held it in front of him. He couldn't hear it ring and turned up the volume full
bore. But once he did, the rings disappeared. He looked at the screen and saw the word 'CONNECTED.'
"Hello?"
Nothing from the other end. Wait, there might have been someone mumbling, a group of someones.
He heard guitar strings being plucked, most of them soft until a chord was hit, a powerful one that screeched
through his receiver and made him turn down the volume halfway. The chord reverberated and tapered off,
after which he dared to speak again. God bless the piss.
"Hey, is this Stompy? John Bear? It's Err here, or Kris I guess."
Still no response, just that murmuring in the background. He was about to give up when someone
spoke, though he only caught the last few words.
"—think it is?"
"Stompy, right? Or John Bear, actually, this is you right?"
No response, just the same muffled sounds. No more guitars being plucked, though.
"C'mon man," said Kris, "is this you or not? I'm all the way out here in bumfuck Rothsburg, and I'm
pretty sure it's you who sent me all the way out here."
"The fuck you talking about?" said someone on the other end. Stompy had a normal voice whose
intonation was somewhere between a tenor and bari sax. Kris didn't know what he expected his arch nemesis
to sound like in real life, but perhaps something more distinctive?
Stompy barked something at the voices behind him, and then huffed into the receiver and said "hold
on." The background noise got stifled as Stompy moved to a different room. A door creaked and slammed shut,
and then Stompy's voice rang clear as day through the phone.
"Alright man you pulled me away from band practice, congratulations. Now they think I'm taking a shit
in here. What do you want, Pee Man? I'm already banned from the chat, but I'm sure you had nothing to do
with it."
"Yeah, you're at band practice?" said Kris, just for something to say. An uneasy feeling was brewing in
his guttiworks. He tried to press on, to feel the power and possibility and spew it all over this loathsome waste
of human life. "Oh, I didn't mean to put you out, to fuck with your real life like that."
"Did you want something?" asked Stompy. "I'm actually in the process of being creative right now.
Doing shit, y'know."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know what it means."
"No I don't, that's why I asked you." Kris felt his pulse in his throat, which gave his voice a weak-
sounding croak. "You need to tell me right now if you've been fucking with me and I drove all the way out here
for nothing."
 "You didn't drive out here. Why would I care where you drive?" It was amazing how normal Stompy's
voice was, almost like a real person. "I don't give that much of a shit about you, dude."
"Yeah you do," growled Kris, just like his toilet growled at him back at home. He tasted battery acid on
the back of his tongue—from his heart, perhaps? "You know you give a shit about me. You come in the chat
every night and make up all those raps about me, a new one every night. You write songs about me, you're
always talking about me. You know you give a shit about me."
Sound of a lighter sparking on the other end. Something being smoked, probably a cig. Kris had never
gotten into cigarettes, but right now felt like he could use one.
"I'll tell you what," said Stompy. "You tell me why I give a shit about you and I'll believe you."
"I don't need you to believe me. I already know it's true."
"Then tell me. Fuckin tell me or I'm hanging up."
"It was you pretending to be her the whole time. You were pretending to—"
"Nah man." Stompy let out a big long exhale not far from a whistle, and Kris knew the motherfucker
was smoking weed. "You answer my question or I'm hanging the fuck up. Seriously now, come on Pee Pee Man,
time to get with it."
"Don't call me that," said Kris, but there was no force behind it. "What was your question, huh? Why I
give a shit about you?"
"Nah man, it's why I give a shit about you. Why you think I give a shit about you. Tell me right now what
you think, or seriously I'm hanging up in like ten fuckin seconds. I got shit to do."
Kris tried to think. He wasn't thinking about the hypothetical answer to Stompy's question, but rather
where he was right now, who he was right now, or who he thought he was. Did he really think he was a
superhero all the way here? What kind of a superhero drinks his own piss? What do you call a superhero like
that?
"The Pee Pee Man, that's what you call him."
". . . dude, you have a stroke or something?" asked Stompy.
Kris gave his head a brisk shake. He felt empty, deflated of all power and possibility. There was only one
possibility now: that none of it had been real. That it was all in his head.
"I don't know why you give a shit about me," he admitted. "I really don't know why you spend so many
hours a day fucking with me. I'd like to think it's cause you don't have a life, that your miserable excuse for an
existence makes you feel the need to—"
"Why don't you just fucking kill yourself already," interrupted Stompy. "Seriously dude, I'm not, I'm not
just gonna sit here listen to you tell me I don't got a life. I don't got all my shit handed to me like you do. How
much rent you pay your mom? You pay her out of that big-ass trust fund your daddy left you? Or you pay it out
of those government checks you get every month? I bet you don't pay jack to your mom. Man if I got a life, if I
got a miserable life or whatever, at least I made it for my fuckin self."
Kris tried to respond, wanted to respond. He opened his mouth and waited for noise to spill from his
maw, but nothing came.
"Seriously dude, you gonna talk to me?" asked Stompy. "I can't pretend to be taking a shit much longer.
I got music to play."
"That's why you hate me," said Kris, finding his voice amid the remains of his punctured ego. "Because I
actually had people that cared about me growing up."
"Oh my god, you're such a fuckin—"
"It's not my fault you're homeless and the last time you took a shit was under a bridge. You just gotta
find a way to distract yourself from all the bad choices you made that led you to this part of your life. I'm just
someone you can project all your self-loathing—"
"Alright alright, first of all," interjected Stompy, "you get your facts right or you're not liable to say one
fuckin thing to me that has any kind of basis in, ah, reality."
"You're talking about me getting my facts right—"
"I'm not homeless anymore, I never took a dump under a bridge. At least the shit I say has some basis in
—"
 "Basis in reality, yeah, you said that already." Kris felt his heartbeat in his right shoulder, in the fleshy
part between the blade and the neck. "While we're on the subject of reality, you should know my dad never
had a trust fund for me. And I live with my stepmom, not my mom, and I pay her several hundred a month for
the utilities. You really should get your facts right—"
"I know you're lying. Why you trying to save face with someone who's got such a miserable excuse for a
life?"
"Wow, that really got to you, huh?" Kris tried to goad him, but there was no joy in the act. "I would've
thought a master troll like yourself would've been hardened to such accusations.:
"What are you doing right now?" Stompy asked Kris. "Right now, what're you doing? I'm hanging out
with friends; you waiting at mommy's house for that chick with three kids to come over and slap those floppy
pussy-lips on that dick of yours that prob'ly won't come unless it's one of those rare times you ran out of
Tramadol? Or you're prob'ly on Delsym, then, nevermind. Maybe you're sitting in the chat talking about how
you're on sixty milligrams of Adderall and forty milligrams hydrocodone and you're binge-watching some lame-
ass TV show and you're asking everyone if they wanna get on Rabbit and watch it with you and no one answers
cuz you'll just sit there and quote the whole thing from memory. That's a great fuckin use of drugs, by the way,
that's some constructive shit you got going on there. Or what else you doing, what is the great fuckin Kris The
Pee Pee Man Mells doing tonight that makes him wanna look up my number on Facebook and give me a call?"
Again, that feeling of wanting to respond, to no avail. Stompy continued his rant.
"You know the kinda shit I could do I had those drugs just sitting around? You got all this time and
resources to do anything you want, but you just sit around the house doing nothing. You watch the same ol'
bullshit, talk to the same ol' screennames. You don't make anything, you don't create anything, you don't do a
goddam thing 'cept hit on girls in a drug chat room, and none of the girls want anything to do with you till you
send em money to their Paypal first. And you do that, you send em money or drugs, but when you do it you get
all smug and convince yourself you're some kind of Knight of the Round Table—you're the savior of these
druggie bitches, the only one who really cares about them. That's why they use you and send you those
photoshopped nudes you jerk off to, and you use the chicks right back to feel some pathetic sense of egoistic
validation. And this is all you do with your day: you don't make anything, you don't create anything; you're just
all this potential that's gone to fucking waste. And you think I hate you?"
"Don't you?" Kris asked, his voice barely above a squeak. This stuff was hard to hear. "You tell me I
should kill myself all the time. How can you not hate me?"
"I don't hate you, I hate what you represent." There was a slight warble to Stompy's tone, as if his voice
might devolve to static at any time. "I don't know how else to explain it. You got everything right in front of you
and you tell me I'm, uh, I've got a bad moral character, compass, whatever, because I was homeless for a period
of time?"
"It's not because you were—"
"You know I was born in a fuckin carnival, dude? I don't got the kinda family that's gonna hole me up
when times get rough. I mean yeah, I got family: I got the same carny motherfuckers who took turns
buttfucking me since I was old enough to stick my ass in the air. That's my family—good ol' mom, too; she's the
one who pulled down my training pants to make it easier for the carnies to stick their syphilitic cocks up my
poop-chute. Did your mom ever pimp you out?"
"How is any of that my fault?" Kris tried to sound indignant, but to his own ears he sounded like Mr.
Belvedere with a sinus problem. "Do you really think I had anything to do with—"
"My point is I'm gonna kill myself sooner or later. This isn't me trying to get sympathy from you; I'm just
telling you how it is. Everyone's got that switch inside of them, but mine's been flipped so many times it don't . .
. the decision's already been made, you understand? And I see you bitching in the chat day after day, someone
tries to talk about something and you make the whole thing about yourself, the lame-ass problems you have, or
you tell the same stories over and over again about why your shoulder hurts, why you got all this back pain and
need to take opiates all the time.
"If you really think I'm doing all this cuz I hate you, you don't understand. You hear me? You don't
understand."
 "Are you clockangel?" blurted out Kris. "Just tell me that, please."
Something came like a gurgle from the other end, a strange noise. But then Kris realized his friend was
laughing.
"Man, it's been real, I tell you what." A few chuckles escaped around Stompy's words. "You be careful
out there Kris Mells. Give em some of that Pee Pee Man swagger you know you got in ya. No one on the
corner's got swagger like you."
And, with that, Stompy hung up.

Kris stared at the phone until it idled and the screen went black. He realized at some point during the
conversation he had turned the car off. Just like his car, every power cell and mechanism that operated his
internal motor was at a standstill. He could even fall asleep now if he wanted to. Maybe he would.
His bladder had refilled itself again. He noticed it abstractly, as if it belonged to someone else. There
was no Pee Pee Man here. How could he have come down so fast? Didn't he drink a twenty-ounce cup of his
superpowered pee right before calling Stompy? Where was the rush from that? Did it ever show up at all? He
couldn't remember, but sure knew how he felt right now. It wasn't as bad a comedown as from meth or coke or
something like that, but it wasn't far off.
He didn't know what to do. He never got a straight answer from Stompy whether the dude was posing
as clockangel or not. What was Stompy's reply when Kris said something about "[d]riving all the way out here
for nothing"?
You didn't drive out here. Why would I care where you drive?
That response was telling. It told Kris that Stompy misunderstood the statement—whether willingly or
not, it was impossible to tell. But it didn't seem as if Stompy was being dense on purpose; if he was behind this
whole charade, wouldn't he say something like Aw, where'd you drive your little car this time? You get some gas
money from mommy to go save some crackwhore from the internet? The dude would have gloated, he lived to
gloat.
What about when Kris flat out asked him if he was clockangel? Stompy just laughed at that—but what
kind of laugh was it? Not the sort of diabolical laugh a villain makes when the hero falls right into their clutches.
And Stompy didn't acknowledge the question afterward, just told him "it's been real" and made another Pee
Pee Man joke before hanging up.
Was it possible that Stompy was not responsible for any of this? Not just the stuff about clockangel, but
everything—the mystery piss, the growling toilet, the kitchen glass of pee that got poured all over him while he
was sleeping; was the fat fuck responsible for none of this? The dude said he was at band practice, and Kris
heard no indication he was lying based on the aural evidence in the background—an electric guitar being
plucked, the shriek of an amplifier. Stompy was hanging out with friends tonight, not waiting outside Kris's
guesthouse to break inside and piss in the toilet. He also lived somewhere in Nebraska, which wasn't exactly a
stone's throw away from West Virginia. Maybe the dude could have done all this stuff last night and then
hopped a plane and made it back home just in time for Kris to call and hear him at band practice, but didn't the
toilet growl at him tonight? It was possible Stompy had some help and hired someone to mess with him, to stay
outside his guesthouse—
His phone dinged in his lap, accompanied with a staccato vibration that gave his genitals a jolt. He
looked down and, without picking the phone up, saw a text message from Adalyn (better known to him as
'clockangel') appear on the screen:

Where r u

Holy shit. This was still happening.

This guy won’t leave me alone

 He moved his thumbs over the keypad, hammered on some letters, and pressed ‘Send.’

I'm here in town are you in danger?

Stupid response. Whatever. He told himself he didn't care for now, wasn't trying to impress her because
she probably wasn't real, just some catfish milking him for $120 bucks delivered to her Paypal to buy some
college textbooks—well, she said she needed a hundred, but he threw in the extra twenty because, well, just
because. He'd already given her a hundred; what was wrong with twenty more?
If she was a real catfish, she wouldn't have stopped at a Benjamin and a Hamilton; she would've milked
him for a lot more. And, even if she wasn't done milking him, why had she invited him all the way out here?
Well, "invited" was perhaps a misnomer; she practically begged him to drive out here. Because she was in
trouble. First her dad, now this guy in IHOP who wouldn't leave her alone. She was in trouble. She needed a
hero.
A superhero.
Ding.

Plz hurry

He turned his keys and revved the motor. He typed out a quick response and switched to Waze.
Estimated time to IHOP still ten minutes, still 5.9 miles. He switched back to the text message and told her he'd
be there in ten minutes—no more driving like The Wolf, he couldn't afford to get pulled over, not while she
needed him—and to try and ignore the guy until he got there. Some part of him knew that he should have
compelled her to seek help from other restaurant patrons or the wait staff, but if she did that, the problem
might have resolved itself by the time he got there. He wanted to resolve the problem. He wanted to be the
hero.
Kris knew the fantasy of being a superhero was just that, a fantasy. Maybe he felt like one on the ride up
here, driving close to a hundred miles-per with the windows down; for a little while there, he knew what it was
like to fly. And, fantasy or not, it had felt pretty damn good, the wind shears assaulting his hair and the skin on
his face with such ferocity that he could disappear inside them if he wanted to. Just vaporize himself into
discorporate energy and wisp away. The possibility was there, and the possibility was enough. He wanted to feel
that again.
Kris didn't know if he ever would, but knew he had somewhere to go. He shifted into drive and was off.

PART II

A (SUPER)HERO LIES IN YOU

"And then a hero comes along

With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive
So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you'll finally see the truth
 That a hero lies in you"

- Whitney Houston

A British gentleman spoke through Waze and guided him to IHOP, turn by turn. Most of it was straight
ahead on the highway he was already on, but when the Hugh Grant soundalike told him, "In one mile, turn
right," he knew he was getting close. His heartbeat quickened, not in the powerful way like before. It was
nerves, he always got nervous meeting a girl for the first time. It was one thing to meet a girl, but to meet her
as your potential (super)hero . . . yeah, talk about nerve-racking.
He turned right and crossed over an interstate bridge. He approached the kind of strip you find in towns
whose population rarely exceeds 20,000 people: car dealerships stacked on top of each other interspersed with
fast food chains and gas stations; dollar stores and beauty supply outlets tucked between defunct clothing
retailers and bars that operated in the black only because they did redneck karaoke twice a week; a grocery
store and a bank, usually in the same parking lot; and traffic lights which may or may not be equipped with
motion sensors.
He snaked through the business district and came to a stoplight flashing yellow. Caution lights—proof
he was driving through a ghost town. Not one car around. Hugh Grant told him to go right yet again and he did,
driving beside a graveyard to his left with outlier hedges that reached up past his car.
A few more turns and, in the gentle words of Hugh: "You have reached your destination." The blue IHOP
sign shone on his left like a beacon in the sky, four big white letters spelling the name on a blue sign. Here was a
place that always stayed open, even in ghost towns.
He didn't give himself time to hesitate and pulled in the lot. He was about to take a spot near a
collection of windows when he realized she was sitting at one of the windows. That was her—that was
clockangel, Adalyn, whatever you wanted to call her; she was right there.
Sitting at the window looking to the street was a young blond/white creature with intense eyeliner and
a waifish face. She was right there. No catfish she, using photos cribbed off some image depository done with a
google search; this was the real deal. He knew that face anywhere. Knew other parts of her, too, thanks to her
proclivities as a cam girl. He knew her, knew she was right there.
Of course he didn't park right there; he pulled away toward the back, parking near an alcove that held a
bucket and folding chair for the IHOP staff to take a load off. No one out there right now, though.
Kris tried to quell his beating heart. Seeing her in the flesh-world was something else, yes it was. It
confirmed all his realities and pushed away the fear that he was being led on a wild goose chase with no golden
egg to be found. But here was his golden egg, sitting right behind that window, though he couldn't see her
where he parked. She was right there.
He noticed his bladder was full. Sure it was, why wouldn't it be? He'd been reconstituting the same pee
several times over tonight, drinking it and pissing it out and drinking it again and pissing it out again. He could
just go inside and stop at the toilet to deposit his urinary waste where it belonged, flush it away to the great
beyond. That was what he should do.
Instead, he watched himself take the McDonald's cup, unzip, and piss inside it again. He did it
unconsciously, not focusing on the process. None of this mattered anymore, this shit about being The Pee Pee
Man and coming to save the woman of his dreams. He wasn't a hero, much less a superhero; that sort of
thinking was delusion prompted by circumstance and the power of suggestion. Ever since he'd done that meth,
he'd been more open to delusion; after all, what was all that crazy shit about his toilet growling at him? How
crazy could a person be?
He filled the cup three-fourths of the way and set it in the cup holder. He found the plastic top and
straw laying on the passenger side floorboard and placed them on top of the piss cup. His bladder was empty.
He could just go inside now and face the woman of his dreams. Even if he wasn't a (super)hero, he drove here
for her. She said she needed help and he came here for her. That had to count for something, right?
But he couldn't just leave his cup o' piss behind. For better or worse, that pee had gotten him to this
point tonight. Maybe it was all delusion—hell, probably it was—but did it matter if it was real or not when it
worked? Does reality matter half as much as we think it does? Stompy had painted a grim and pathetic portrait
of Kris, but that didn't mean he had to believe in it, did he?
Kris knew these questions were serving to distract. It was time to go inside, to face The Woman of His
Dreams. The one who had shown him every part of herself. He had sent her a cock picture at one point, but she
just gave a one word response of "nice" and talked about something else. At the time, that 'nice' was good for a
stroke-off session, but he knew in his heart she really didn't want to see that part of himself.
But tonight, she wanted to see him. More than that, she wanted him to save her. And there was
another question afoot: should he drink the pee? Get a little bit of that power and possibility a-flowin'?
Nah, his breath would smell like pee. Not ideal for meeting The Woman of His Dreams.
He got out of the car, but before he did he nabbed the McDonald's cup.
You never knew, right?

The bright lights of the restaurant made him squint his eyes. A fat man sat near the entrance with folds
of back fat covered in a wifebeater. A pair of stumpy Mexicans sat in the far-left corner booth near the back.
The dinking of dishes and silverware echoed from an unseen kitchen.
To his left was a partition that walled off a section of the restaurant from everywhere else. Presumably
this was the smoking section—if places allowed such things anymore. Not many people in there. One, in fact,
that he could see, The Woman of His Dreams. Never mind all the creepy guys supposedly not leaving her alone;
Adalyn sat by her lonesome in this walled-off section, the back of her head facing him. That straw-blond hair
waiting for him. Waiting to be rescued.
The sign said 'Please wait to be seated,' but he knew if he waited much longer he would never do
it. He carried himself and his cup o' piss across the barrier that separated him from The Woman of His Dreams.

It was perhaps serendipitous that Kris evacuated his bladder before he went inside. Had he used the
restaurant's facilities for such a purpose, he would have made acquaintance with a certain someone. Someone
who stood concealed around the corner that led back to the men's restroom, someone who marked Kris's
entrance with watchful eyes.
This someone watched Kris walk through the door that led to the walled-off section of the restaurant,
but didn't move. Not yet.

10

"Adalyn."
She didn't turn around. The back of her head stared at him, her beautiful hay-blond hair glistening like a
beacon of femininity. Her white blouse-shirt fit snug around her torso, showing off her thin arms and petite
shoulders. Weird she didn't turn around right away, considering he was standing six feet behind her, but maybe
she was distracted. Probably she was.
"Adalyn?"
She jumped a little bit and turned over a shoulder. There she was, The Chat Girl of His Dreams. Those
almond eyes, the perfect blend of innocence and feline devilishness; those angular cheeks that sloped away like
mesas in some beautiful springtime field; those thin lips, no lipstick, as if she wanted the spirit of her fragility
emphasized. In almost every pic he saw of her, those lips were upturned in a sharp 'V' smile that was both cute
and artificial. He waited to see that 'V' appear at the sight of him.
But she didn't smile. That was okay, fine even. She was scared, or supposed to be scared. And yet he
saw no fear on her face, no wide eyes, no strained expression, no trembling; there was an odd vacuity in her
features, as if she were waiting for her reaction to be painted on. She looked at him but also past him.
"Hi . . ."
She lifted one hand in a weak gesture. Fake nails, the kind that can scratch you up good.
What was wrong with her? Did she not recognize him? Couldn't be possible, not with all the pictures of
himself he had sent to her. How could she not—
"You can sit down," she told him, as if she were a secretary telling a job applicant to take a seat.
He hesitated. In the far corner of the partitioned room sat someone he didn't see before: a beefy
middle-aged woman with a dyke haircut. Other than the few patrons sitting in the main dining room, there was
only one other person around. What happened to all those creepy guys who wouldn't leave her alone? Why did
this feel . . . not right?
But he sat down anyway. Of course he did. He slid in the booth opposite her and placed the McDonald's
cup on the table. Here sat before him The Woman of His Dreams, the one who had shown all of herself to him
through intimate pictures and deep chat sessions where she expressed her hopes and fears and deepest
secrets.
And yet, she didn't look at him. She stared down at the table as if the tiled design held something of
value. She didn't seem bored, exactly, but not far off; the downcast expression and absent way she swirled her
straw around the rim of her cup of ice water suggested she inhabited a purgatorial state, like the waiting room
of a Doctor's office. Waiting, yes: she was waiting for something. Something that was not Kris.
He reached for his McDonald's cup and held it beside him, but did not drink from the straw. Having it
near him lent some valor, his precious pee pee. He found the courage to speak.
"Is something wrong?"
Her eyes flicked up. She plucked at the merry little ice cubes inside her water, never taking a drink but
keeping the liquid in constant motion.
"No, nothing's wrong," she said, very aloof. "I'm glad you're here, it was very nice of you to come."
What the hell was wrong with her? Where was the fear, the desperation? Where was the girl who
needed rescued, the one who would drop tidbits about her sexually abusive father? Where was clockangel?
He figured her online handle was as good a place to start as any.
"So, uh, 'clockangel'—what does that name mean, anyway? I never asked you that."
A door behind her opened, the same door Kris came through moments ago. She turned to look and the
question lay forgotten between them. In came a small dude, not much over five feet tall, dressed in punkish
attire—a slim-fit Green Day shirt with 'Dookie' scrawled beneath the band name in uneven lettering; a black
stocking cap with a white puffball on top; and large camo shorts that stretched past his calves and sagged off
his waist, exposing the top of his boxers but held up with a belt that resembled an extension cord. Despite the
semi-youthful garb his face was old, middle-aged, eyes sunken and face lined with acne scars and stress
wrinkles. He sat down in the booth directly behind Adalyn, back to back with The Lady of His Dreams.
The presence of this new dude obviously affected her. She tried not to show it, tried to play it off by
stirring her ice water. She didn't seem scared, not exactly, but her lips were pursed and her almond eyes
seemed to become buckeyes. Not scared, not exactly, but a low-level anxiety had leaked over her countenance.
"You ok?" he asked. She nodded her head, didn't look at him. The punkass sitting behind her took off
his stocking cap and set it on the table. The white puffball on top had an ashy smudge in the middle, making it
look like an eye.
Kris pointed at the punk and started to say something, but then pulled out his phone and opened up
their mutual texting window. Much better. His thumbs clicked away in rapid succession, scrolling through
autocorrect and backspacing only once until he came up with this message:

Is that the guy who wouldn't leave u alone?

Ding.
A familiar sound. The same one he used for his phone. Except it didn't come from his phone.
He looked at her speckled Hello Kitty iPhone resting hither on the table. The countertop beneath her
phone didn't vibrate, and the ding had sounded muffled, as if buried under a collection of coats. He filed this
anomaly away with the rest of them—the lack of guys hovering around her person; her initial unresponsiveness
to her name; and just her overall detached attitude: honestly, though, who cared about any of that shit? Who
cared when The Goddess of His Dreams was sitting here in front of him, waiting to be rescued? Goddamn she
was so pretty. So pretty and delicate, helpless.
"Your phone's just like Saul Goodman's in Better Call Saul." He nodded toward her phone on the table,
trying to draw her attention to the message he just sent. "He had a pink Hello Kitty phone, I think it was a flip
phone. Yours is more purple, purple-pink, it's got that sparkly stuff all over it. It's an iPhone too, obviously."
She just stared at him.
"No, wait," he continued. "It's not Better Call Saul. I mean the phone's not on that show, that's just the
prequel. It was on Breaking Bad. I mean Saul Goodman's character was in that, that show. That's the one the
spin-off came from, but his phone, his phone was in that show. The Breaking Bad show. The Hello Kitty phone.
Not Saul."
Ding.
That one definitely came from his own phone. A ding and a vibration in his lap like a lazy sex toy. What
the hell? She hadn't touched her phone at all, just glared at him and forced him into babbling some pop culture
nonsense. There was no way she could have just sent him a message. Unless it was from someone else.
But it wasn't from someone else. He looked down and read a text from Adalyn.

Ya he wants to rape me bum

Kris felt himself withdrawing until he was watching this scene unravel from a high-up mental scaffold.
He couldn't help but think that Stompy was watching him right now on that same scaffold, sitting next to him,
pointing and laughing and jibing him with his elbow. That fat asshole's presence was here right now, yes it was.
Ding.

Buttpirates of the Caribbean say ARRRRRRse!!

“Who’re you talking to?" she asked, the girl who was named Adalyn a few seconds ago.
"He's talkin to me babe!" said a voice behind her back, a voice with a heavy Brooklyn accent—tawkin
for 'talkin.' The punkass turned around and affixed Kris with deep-set eyes. Graves had been dug all around his
eyeballs. The dude was old, looked old, older than Kris. An aging punkass, or wigger, whatever he was. The
punkass offered his hand, tattoos crawling up the fingers.
"How you doin, my man? Shake my hand, come on now. We been awful close for awhile."
Kris saw himself shake this skeezy fuck's hand. Still up there on that scaffold, never coming down. This
was turning into a bad scene.
The handshake was brisk, two furious pumps. Afterward, the punkass grabbed for Kris's McDonald's
cup.
"What you drinkin tonight homes? Lemme have some, bitch-ass waiter ain't comin no time—"
Kris grabbed it back, set the cup below next to his seat. "You don't want that, dude. Believe me."
"Man that's fuckin rude as hell. Don't just grab shit outta my hand. We don't do that Mickey Mouse shit
here. Say sorry."
Kris was nonplussed. Hey could say nothing.
"Say sorry, yo. I'm gonna fuck your shit up you don't say sorry to me."
"I'm sorry," Kris muttered, and then a little louder. "I'm sorry, okay? You just really don't want to drink
that, I was doing you a favor. It's flat as hell."
"Well you don't gotta be grabbin shit like that. Make me nervous, doin shit like that."
Kris didn't point out to him that the ordeal started when he grabbed for Kris's McDonald's cup in the
first place. The Brooklynized punk stood up, all five feet of him, and scooted his way into the table by shoving
The Deceptress of His Dreams down to the end. The move was playfully aggressive, and her deadened face
showed no change. She was probably used to this.
"I's just kiddin, askin you to say sorry," said the punkass. He inexplicably held out his tattooed hand
again for another shake. "Name's Sloan. Nice to finally meet you, Kristopher Mells."
Kris didn't shake again, just left his hand to hang there between them. Everything was right there
between them, all the answers, unsaid, just hanging there. Perhaps none of it had to be said. But Kris said it
anyway.
"So, you're clockangel," he said to Sloan, who dropped his hand once it became clear that a second
handshake wasn't happening. Kris turned to the girl. "Your name's not Adalyn, I take it."
"Check out the big brains on Brett!" Sloan clapped his hands, his hallowed face turning mirthful. "You a
smart motherfucker."
"Yeah, I can quote Pulp Fiction too."
"I know you can, believe me," said Sloan. "How many times you tell me about that movie, that like Pulp
Fiction was the last good movie that director made, what's his name. C'mon yo, what's his name?"
Kris left the question hanging, just like everything else. "So it was you the whole time."
"You mean, was it me talkin to you the whole time?" said Sloan. "I talk to you in the chat room and I
send you those texts, yeah that's true, but it's not like I can take full credit. I had some help here, didn't I." He
put his arm around her, pulled her to him. "I'd call her my bottom bitch if I had no respect for her, but she ain't
no bitch. Don't you call her a bitch."
Kris's mind pedaled something furious as he tried to recount his entire history with clockangel—how
personal did they truly get? How many times did they actually talk on the phone? Just that one time, right? And
wasn't it a short phone session, a very cautiously spoken dialogue where the female voice on the other end
seemed to respond by rote with certain conversational cues and personal touches that could have been easily
fed to her beforehand?
"Something I wanna know," went on Sloan, releasing Adalyn from his clutches and bowing his head in a
thoughtful way. "It never struck you as, ah, how do I say this . . ." He looked up at Kris. "You never thought it
weird you're talking (tawking) to a cam girl and she barely like, wants to get on web cam with you? I made her
do it that one time just to keep up appearances, but c'mon man. She just shows you all her nudie pictures she
took in all her cam sessions, and that's it, no webcam for you except that one time I made her get on for like a
second. Why you never think that was weird, huh?"
"I don't know," said Kris, far and away up on that scaffold, his voice echoing through canyons between
his ears. "I guess I got a trusting personality."
He felt his arm reach down and clutch the McDonald's cup sitting beside him.
"Well now, since you got a trusting personality," said Sloan, talking with his hands in a manner befitting
a politician, "I'm gonna trust you trust me, you feel me? I'm gonna trust you listen to what I say and make this
whole, ah, process, make it easier for us. All of us. You feel me?"
Kris didn't want to respond. He just glared at this Napoleonic piece of work and tried to project the
same disaffected air that Adalyn projected toward himself moments ago. Didn't seem to be working. It was
clear Sloan was waiting for something, some response. He wasn't going to continue otherwise.
Kris gave a slight nod.
"Alright man, that's good." Sloan seemed satisfied with the gesture. He slid back in his seat and
slumped down so that his arms and hands were beneath the table. "Now I'm gonna tell you how this goes.
We're all walkin outta here together, one big happy family. We're gonna get in your car, you're gonna take us to
an ATM. You're gonna take out the maximum daily withdrawal, we take the cash. If you been a good boy up to
that point we cut you loose, but you're gonna leave us that debit card o' yours so we can take us out a few more
withdrawals in the days ahead. Once we got all we need we cut your card into pieces, and all of us skip along on
our merry way. God willing we never see each other or talk to each other ever again. How's that sound with
you, you cool with that?"
Kris lifted the McDonald's cup and brought the straw to his lips. He drank several long sips, his Adam's
apple bobbing like a pulley as the rank beverage slid down his throat. Lukewarm pee. Not near as good as hot
pee, fresh pee. But it was still good.
 "Hey." Sloan snapped his fingers twice in front of Kris's face. "C'mon bro. Put down your drink. Tell me
somethin good."
Kris did put down his drink. He had only drank a fourth of it, leaving it half-filled, but already there was
a difference: He felt himself returning from the scaffold deep behind his eyeballs, inside his mind, drawing
forward and returning to his eyes, the here and now. Colors became sharper, more defined. His reality became
defined. Why was he so afraid? This little wigger-punkass long past his prime, what was he? Just a bully. A troll.
Just a garden-variety troll.
He could handle trolls.
"Sure, let's go to an ATM," he said, just to say something. He turned to The Cunt of His Dreams and said,
"So tell me your real name first. I don't give people rides unless I know their names."
The demand was silly. The words were silly. Maybe that was why Sloan bowed his head and chuckled,
but Kris didn't care. Let him laugh, scrub motherfucker. Kris didn't know what he was doing, only that it was
nice to feel a new emotion besides fear. Anger felt nice. Contempt felt nice. He just wanted to provoke
something.
But she hadn't stirred at all, Adalyn, whoever she was. Just kept staring at her ice water, manicured
fingertips holding the straw. She wasn't even stirring it. Dumb bitch.
"Hey," said Kris, and then she looked up. "I need to know, or I'm not taking you guys anywhere."
"You're not in the position to make demands," reminded Sloan, his eyebrows slanting down. "What'd I
tell you not to do earlier?"
"Not to call her a bitch?"
"Yeah, well, how bout we amend that, you just not call her anything at all. It ain't her you been talking
(tawking) to the whole time. It ain't her you showed your cock to. It ain't her—"
"You think I'm embarrassed I sent you that—"
"It ain't her that's gonna cut your piece off and mail it to your mama. It ain't her that's gonna fuck with
your mom and the rest of your family long after you gone. She ain't a part of this. You think you been talkin to
her the whole time, you got your heart broken? Don't bring none of that whiny shit on this poor thing here. I'm
here. I'm right here. I told you my name, that's all you need to know."
"Did you like it?"
A pause. It was Sloan's turn to be nonplussed.
"What, your dick?"
"Yeah." The words began to spill from Kris's mouth, no idle observer he; now he felt like he was in a
movie or TV show and reciting lines for the camera, trying to make them sound like he was saying them for the
first time. "I mean it's no donkey dick, that's for sure. I don't think I got it hard for you, did I? Because on a good
day I clear seven inches, but that's only when I'm on speed and I've been stroking myself for a while. You really
chafe yourself that way, sometimes it takes you hours to come on that shit. But man, it's all about the journey,
innit? That's some good times."
Another pause, this one longer. Both of them were staring at him now, mouths slightly agape. He used
this break in the proceedings to sip from his elixir. And then he had another.
"No, you weren't hard," said Sloan, his brow furled. "Just a normal limp dick. We leavin now?"
Kris put the cup on the table, relishing the last swallow he took. Foul shit, but he loved it again. Loved
the gasoline aftertaste, loved the way it made him feel. Not just feel, but how he was going to feel. Not even
just when the pee fully kicked in; he loved what was going to happen tonight. He had a troll with him now, a
troll and his little troll-wife, who wanted to take a ride with him in his car. They would be in his clutches, it was
going to be good. He didn't know what was going to happen, only that it would happen. The feeling was so
strong, so sure, because he felt so strong, so sure.
Oh, the possibilities
"Yeah we're gonna take a ride," Kris said, and then raised his hand. "We just gotta pay our ticket first, let
me get a—"
Sloan reached across the table and grabbed Kris's collar, yanked it toward him. The McDonald's cup
almost spilled over, but Kris nabbed it in time.
 "You quit fuckin with us now," he growled. His nostrils twitched. "I really will gut you the fuck open."
Kris tried not to smile, but a tiny one slipped by anyway. He tried to play it off as a twitch.
"Okay," said Kris, removing his collar from Sloan's grip. He nabbed his cup and stood from the table,
took one more sip from his cup o' pee.
"Let's go."

11

Kris flicked his rear view mirror down and looked at his passengers. They had both gotten in the
backseat, and the moment they did Sloan started pawing at Adalyn, whatever the fuck her name was. He pulled
her toward him and slavered over the side of her face with juicy thick open-mouthed grunts. Her head was
pressed down out of sight, as if she were a scared little animal submitting to her master. She deserved whatever
she got tonight. Kris felt mean.
His pockets were much lighter. Sloan had disavowed him of his phone and wallet tonight, just to
simplify things. Little punkass stepped in front of him as they were leaving the pancake house and just point
blank asked for his phone and wallet. No threats, no intimidation; just give me your shit. Kris handed it over
without compunction. He didn't need it tonight. Phones? As Doc Brown might have said: "Where we're going
we don't need, phones."
Kris sat there waiting. In between slobbers, Sloan asked if they were going now.
"I don't know where I am," said Kris, still watching them in the mirror. "You gotta tell me where to go."
"Start the fucking car!"
Kris obeyed, turned the key. But then Sloan reached over the top of the driver's seat and pulled Kris's
hair back, exposing his neck to the business end of a large hunting knife. Goddamn this blade was big, sharp;
Sloan pressed it into the tender throat-flesh below Kris's Adam's apple and whispered in his right ear, tender as
a lover:
"You're gonna quit watchin us back here. You're gonna drive up there take a left and you keep on going
till I tell you different."
Kris didn't say anything, didn't react. Easy to do (or not do) with an eight-inch blade pressed into your
throat. The blade was long and thick, as thick as a piece of bread from this angle.
But then the blade disappeared behind the seat and Sloan let go of Kris' hair. There was relief, he
couldn't deny that. After all, accidents happen, even in the face of surety; the knife could have slipped and cut
his throat, or the punkass could have dropped it and the blade might have landed on his junk. Who knew?
Entropy was entropy, after all.
A single word issued from the backseat:
"Go."
Kris went.

12

The highway outside the IHOP was smooth and silent. There was emptiness abound—empty lanes,
empty tracts of unplowed farmland, empty minds in the backseat.
Well, those minds weren't quite empty; they had extortion on the brain. Thankfully, Sloan didn't seem
to have sexual assault on the brain for the time being; the two of them were sitting apart, the middle seat
between them. Adalyn (or whoever she was, but he couldn't help thinking of her as such) stared out her
window with her elbow crocked up and head resting on a bored fist. Stupid Bitch of His Dreams had probably
done this all before, several times over, just going along with everything.
Sloan also stared out his window, but Kris could tell the dude's eyes were heavy on the peripherals. Best
not to linger in the rear view mirror. Invoking the ire of the Great Sloan before it was necessary would throw
away the power and possibility that was budding inside of him. His confidence wavered when the hunting knife
got pressed to his throat—not a lot, just a little—but he knew a way to get it back.
 The McDonald's cup rested in the front passenger's seat cup holder (the driver's side cup rest had
broken and fallen off years ago). He leaned over and nabbed the cup, but also turned the wheel right in the
process and made the car veer off the shoulder into the grass.
"Man watch it!" yelled Sloan.
"Kris apologized and righted his car, but those were automatic gestures. He was thinking of how much
juice was left inside the cup. Little less than half, felt like. Should he ration out the rest, some now some later?
He needed some now, that was without question, but later? What was going to happen later, anyway? Hell,
what was going to happen now? Because there was no way these two skeezy-ass motherfuckers were running
off with his money, much less his debit card and PIN number. He knew the second he handed over those items,
it was game over. Whatever was going to happen had to happen soon.
Kris put the straw to his lips and sipped away.
"So when's my next turn?"
"Just drive."
Not much of a conversationalist.
There were no lights on the horizon, just barren farm field as far as the eye could see (which wasn't too
far this time of night). Where was the prick really taking him? No ATM was this far away, not even in podunk
towns. This was the middle of nowhere.
And maybe that's where the prick was taking him, to the middle of nowhere. To do something to him.
Something much worse than depleting his bank account.
In that case, he needed to make it happen soon. Make what happen soon? He still didn't know. Would
never know until it happened.
Headlights straight ahead. They grew bigger and brighter until a truck drove by on the left, a small one.
Life just passed them by. It seemed to rouse everyone inside the car a little bit, made his two passengers shift in
their seats and look down at themselves. As for Kris, it felt good to know that someone else was driving through
this void. It roused his confidence up some. Or maybe the pee was kicking in. Either way, it felt good.
"I gotta tell you guys," he said to his two passengers, "it's not like I have endless amounts of money in
my account. I don't think I even got five hundred in there right now, and there's not much else—"
"I know you live with your mommy," interrupted Sloan. "I know you can—"
"Stepmommy," Kris corrected.
"I know you get more whenever you ask for it. You forget who you talkin to."
"I'm talking to clockangel, right?"
"Yeah that's right you little bitch."
"Doesn't sound like I'm the one playing the bitch. I wasn't the one pretending to be a webcam whore to
extort money from someone who lives with their mommy and spends all their time in a chat room full of
people who do drugs."
"You need to watch what you say," cautioned the Brooklynite. He sounded bored, which was good.
Affecting to be disaffected was a defense mechanism, or so Kris reasoned. It was amazing how lucid the pee
made him. Kris was able to see—well, more like intuit—where this exchange needed to go and how it could get
there. He knew the last thing he said was confusing because it shifted focus from outright insulting Sloan to
outright insulting himself, though he only realized the mechanics in retrospect. He didn't construct this little
dual-insult on purpose; his instincts did it for him. His pee-instincts. His peestincts.
Shit, maybe he was The Pee Pee Man.
"I'm sorry," said Kris after a few seconds had passed. "I just got to thinking about my mommy. My
stepmom, yeah, but she's my mommy, she's the one who was a real mom to me. Maybe that's why I never
moved out, y'know?"
"I don't wanna hear this shit."
"I'm just saying I called her before I got here," went on Kris. "I told her where I was and what I was going
to do. She's gonna want me to check in with her soon, that's what mommies do. They worry about their kids."
"Man, you ain't no fuckin kid," said Sloan, bored as ever. "Once you get past thirty years, there really
ain't no fuckin excuse."
 "No arguments there, I'm a fucking loser. My point is, she's gonna be wondering what happened to me
if I don't get back in touch with her soon. You think I could give her a call real quick?"
"You really think I'ma let you have your phone back? What I tell you back at the restaurant? You think
you're in a position to make any kinda demands from me?"
"That's a lot of questions," said Kris. "I don't really—hey, I can't go straight anymore."
"Turn right."
Kris slowed down and flicked on the signal. He made the turn onto a road that offered more of the
same desolation. He kept his speed low, around 35, and tried to ignore the pressure inside his left rib cage, a
dull but persistent throbbing. He could handle it, but it was time to face facts: wherever they were going, it
wasn't to an ATM, and not only did Kris know this, but Sloan knew that Kris knew.
However, the show must go on. If it didn't, Kris would need to exit the building, and he wasn't ready for
that yet.
Okay. Time to get a little risky. He remembered the hunting knife, how cold and sterile the blade felt as
it pressed into his flesh, but the time for subtlety and gentle prods in the right direction was through.
He started humming 'Light my Fire.' The time to hesitate is through . . .
"Why you goin slow?"
"It just popped in my head that my stepmom's brother is a sheriff at the local precinct," said Kris. "All he
has to do is type my name in a computer and there I am. My location's just right there, it comes up as a little
dot moving on a computer screen, he showed me once, he even used my phone to do it. They use the GPS card
in the phone for a lotta things, they just don't admit it to the public. I mean it's easy to justify in kidnapping
cases, y'know, or for like hunting down mass murderers. They make it public then, they used the GPS card on
their phone to track it down. But they use it for pretty much everything. Shit man, you wouldn't believe the
stories she's told me about her brother. He won't tell me, but she will."
He couldn't believe the stuff coming out of his mouth. None of it was premeditated, just made up on
the spot like he was on Who's Line is it Anyway? He had no idea if the stuff he said about the GPS card on the
phone was true. He thought it was true, or aspects of it were, but what he thought had no bearing on what he
said. He just said it, no thinking required. Sloan was the one who needed to think.
And he did think. He glared down at himself, still cool and disaffected, but Kris knew his little ruse was
getting somewhere. The phone was sitting in Sloan's lap, after all; that had to be a good sign, right?
Kris didn't want to overstay his welcome spying on his passengers in the rear view mirror, but before he
looked away he saw something. Something beneath the phone, a silvery sheen. Dude was keeping the hunting
knife handy, pressed between his thighs beneath the phone.
Best not to overthink it. He picked up the McDonald's cup and took a large sip from the straw. He shook
it. Not much left. But just enough.
"So yeah," he pressed on, "all I need to do is just call her real quick, tell her I'm okay. I'm not trying to
put one over on you; I'm really just trying to think what's best for myself."
"It's best for yourself the cops don't come and save your ass?" said Sloan.
"I mean—I mean yeah," Kris stammered. "If I call the cops you're just gonna gut me with that thing and
run away before they get here. If the cops show up it's bad for all of us because you'll just get out of jail and
start fucking with my family. I mean that's what you said you were gonna do if I didn't cooperate, right?"
"Yeah . . ."
Sloan appeared to be thinking about all this, those few brain cells colliding together in that small head
of his. But then The Whore of His Dreams had to go and speak up:
"You could always text her."
Sloan snapped his head left, as if he'd forgotten she was there. Kris opened his mouth and sound spilled
out.
"My mom's got this old-ass track phone. It charges you every time you use your text messaging. Every
time you get one or send one—"
"Your stepmommy?" interrupted Sloan. "Ain't that what you mean?"
"Yeah, that's what I mean." Kris took a peep in the mirror and caught his passenger's black hole gaze for
less than a second, then flicked his eyes back down. "She's my mom, basically. I think I just said that. She had
me uninstall the text message program on her phone so that there's no chance she'll get charged for it. That
way no one sends her one and she doesn't have to pay—I dunno what it is, twenty-five cents a text? I know it's
stupid, but that's my mom. Or stepmom, whatever. She's one thrifty lady."
He knew he was pushing it. He set the cup down in his lap, holding it upright between his thighs. Would
be needing it soon. He didn't know what for, but that seemed beside the point. He felt that power again, that
possibility. Specifics didn't matter, only the feeling.
"What's her number?" asked Sloan. He picked up the phone and turned it over. Another silvery sheen
reflected in the rear view mirror—the hunting knife between his legs.
"Dude, I don't think anything good would of a total stranger calling my mom and telling her I'm okay."
Kris's heart was pounding, the good kind of pound. He knew he was on the right track. More than that, he knew
he was something else.
He knew he was The Pee Pee Man.
"Fine, whatever, fuck it." Sloan leaned forward and tossed the phone in Kris's lap, but then stayed
leaned forward as he pointed the blade of the knife at the right side of Kris's neck. "Make it quick, don't fuck
with me."
Kris almost said Wouldn't dream of it, but bit his tongue. Wouldn't be much longer now, whatever was
going to happen. He felt the pointy end of the knife poking at the right side of his Adam's apple and knew it was
now or never, whatever it was.
The night was dark, the only illumination coming from his headlights. A large tree loomed in the near-
distance, approaching from the right side of the road. No houses, no cars. That was good.
"Make your call," growled Sloan. The knife poked a little more into the flesh of his throat.
"Hold on, my mouth's dry." Kris reached for the McDonald's cup. "Hey, you want a sip of this? It's some
good shit."
"No I don't want a fuckin—"
In two fluid movements, Kris loosened the plastic top of the McDonald's cup and flung the remaining
liquid behind him. He used the rear view mirror to gauge which direction to toss and hit the target almost
perfectly: the pee splashed square into the middle of Sloan's face, especially around his eyes.
"Fuck!" he yelled. He dropped the knife and grabbed his face with both hands, as if he were a vampire
and this was holy water. Adalyn expressed a note of surprise and, once she realized what happened, started to
grab for the knife—but by then Kris was already accelerating toward the grandfather tree standing off the side
of the road.
He punched the gas pedal as hard as he could and aimed the front of his car at the massive tree
standing like a sentinel right where it needed to be. The car got faster and faster and now his two passengers in
the backseat were screaming and Kris was screaming too (he might have been screaming PEEEE PEEEEEEE!! but
it was lost amid the commotion) and they all waited for the inevitable moment of collision.
However, at the very last second Kris whipped open the driver's side door and flung himself out. He did
a duck and roll, every one of his senses attuned to the situation and seeing the whole thing in a slow, gradual
motion: he knew the exact moment to toss the piss into Sloan's stupid rat face; he knew when to push the
medal to the metal; he knew the precise time to open the car door; he knew to tuck his phone in his
midsection; and he knew how and when to duck and roll out the door in the precise way to minimize injury. He
knew it all without knowing it beforehand, just acting with the situation, with each moment as it came up. The
only thing he knew beforehand was who he was.
He was The Pee Pee Man.

13

The car smashed into the tree with an explosive impact. Kris's duck and roll was executed fairly well, but
not perfect; his arms and legs got scratched up something good, and his skull and brain got rattled around
pretty damn good as well, leaving him with the kind of headache that normally befits car crash victims.
 He didn't allow himself to pause; once he was done rolling, he whipped himself up to his feet. He
ignored the cuts and scrapes and general hungover feeling as he observed the wreckage of his Taurus.
The bumper was fused to the skin of the tree. The hood was bent upward, exposing the engine whose
innards were crunched into each other. The hood was pressed far enough back to poke through the windshield,
whose glass was cracked in a million different places without shattering apart completely. The only part of the
car that wasn't seriously maimed was the back half.
Kris peeled the cell phone from his midsection. He pressed the power button, pressed 'Dial,' pressed
the nine button, and then the one, and the one again, followed by 'Send.' He put the phone up to his ear while
keeping his attention focused on the back seat area. No movement through the back windshield, not yet
anyway.
One ring.
"Nine one one, what's your emergency," answered a bored and brisk female voice.
"I just crashed my car into a tree 'cause I was being forced to drive it against my will," said Kris. He
thought he saw something move through the back glass, which was unbroken. "I rolled out at the last second,
but the two people in the backseat were in the car when it crashed. They were threatening my life and trying to
extort money out of me."
"Sir, can you please tell me your—"
"I don't know where the fuck I am, but I'll tell you what: you guys have to be able to find my location
real quick by tracing the GPS chip on my phone. My name is Kristopher Mells, my soash is 225-13-8152, and I
have an Android LG V30, whose, uh—one sec." He flipped over his phone and tried to peel off his case, but gave
up after a few seconds. "Nevermind, just forget it. I'm gonna stay on the line and throw my phone out in a field
near here. You guys should be able to trace it, but if you don't, it's just whatever.
"I repeat: I was carrying two assholes in my backseat against my will. They had a knife to my throat and
were going to use my ATM card to extort money from me. I crashed my car into a tree and rolled away at the
last second to prevent this from happening. I'm staying on the line and throwing my phone in a nearby field so
that you guys can trace my location, because frankly I don't think it's a good idea for me to stick around. I don't
know if my assailants are alive or dead, and I don't want to stick around to find out.
"Sir, if you could just—"
But he didn't hear any more. He lobbed his phone into the sterile farm field surrounding this middle of
nowhere locale. He didn't really care if the police came or not, but who knows? Maybe they would.
The left passenger side door fell open as if the car were sitting on an incline, and out came Sloan. He
didn't so much get out of the car as literally fall from it, his hands and head hitting the ground at the same time.
He lay face-up, his arms spread to his sides like Jesus on the cross. His camo shorts were riding down hella low
below his thighs, exposing his purple-plaid boxers to all the elements. Sometime during the scuffle his stocking
cap had fallen off. Nowhere was the knife, at least not anywhere Kris could see.
Kris walked over to Sloan. He took large steps, not knowing what he was going to do but eager to do it.
He was going on instinct now. That was how The Pee Pee Man did business, and thus far it had suited him just
fine. Who knows, maybe that was his superpower.
Sloan turned his head to see him approach at the last second, but by then Kris had grabbed him by the
cuffs of his Greenday shirt and slammed him against the broken driver's side of the car. He shrieked as if every
sore bone inside him was getting a further bruising.
Kris looked inside the open backseat. Adalyn, whoever she was, lay with the side of her head leaning
against the window, unconscious. He did a quick scan around for the knife, but didn't see it. He leaned inside
the open backseat area to stick his head up front (or what remained of it). Outside the car Sloan kept moaning
in pain, whimpering like the little bitch he was.
He felt claws on his neck.
"The fuck," said Kris, but then realized what was happening: Adalyn had been playing possum, and now
she'd woken up.
She got a good swipe on his neck with her fake fingernails and used the same hand to grab for his head,
but by then his spidey sense (or pee pee sense) had kicked in and he ducked backward out of the car. He saw
the silver gleam of the knife blade sticking out from her other hand. Even with his slowed down perception of
time during crisis situations he didn't have to wonder for long; now she was coming at him with the knife,
screaming and holding it in front of her like she was charging with a spear.
He stepped aside easily enough and stuck his foot out, made her trip to the ground. She almost fell on
the knife but dropped it at the last second. He hopped over her body and grabbed the hunting knife.
When Adalyn started to push herself up, he pointed the sharp end of the knife at her face. She stopped
in mid push-up."
"Man this is kinda fun when you're on the other end." He raised the blade up in front of his face,
examined the quarter-inch blade, flipped it over and back again. "How's it feel when I do this to you?"
He showed her the blade again, waved it at her a little bit. She was staring up but not at him, rather the
distance behind him.
"Alright, I'm Chris Hansen now, why don't you have a seat right over there." He gestured with the blade
toward Sloan. When she didn't immediately move, he said, "C'mon now, get your ass over there. I really don't
mind cutting you up a little bit and then cutting myself so that it looks like you tried to attack me with this thing.
I doubt the cops are gonna require much more evidence than that."
Finally she pushed herself up and shuffled back to the car wreckage. Sloan was trying to right himself
and get standing, but fell back over every time. Adalyn shut the back car door and took her place beside him.
Sloan fell over yet again and hit the side of his head on a piece of protruding metal. The resulting shriek of pain
resounded for miles across this desolate landscape. Too bad there was no one around to come to their doors
and wonder what in tarnation was going on, but maybe that was a good thing.
There were no witnesses out here. He could do anything he wanted to these two fuckers. Sure, he
called the cops, but so what? Who was going to believe them? Especially when he put his ATM card in Sloan's
wallet. He didn't think Sloan would complain.
He could do anything he wanted. Oh, the possibility. The power. He had power now, yes he did, and it
wasn't just because he had the knife in his possession.
It was because he was The Pee Pee Man.
"Why aren't you helping out your prince of a boyfriend there?" Kris asked Adalyn, who sat stoic beside
Sloan while he groaned and whimpered in pain, cradling his poor head with both hands. "Do I need to hurt him
some more? Alright, one second."
He walked over and kicked Sloan in the stomach. He backed away and watched the punkass keel over
sideways to the ground, holding himself in a fetal position while close to crying now. His proclamations of pain
were intense.
"It's just like the old cliché," he said, feeling the power as such he never felt before. "If a pathetic piece
of shit falls over in the woods—well, these aren't woods, but close enough—if a pathetic piece of shit falls over
in the woods screaming in pain and no one's around to see it, did it really happen?"
No response from them. Sloan was still focused on his own agony, while Adalyn just sat there with a
vacuous look painted on her face. Bitch was probably brain dead without her boyfriend calling the shots. It was
hard to think of her as anything except a dumb bitch, especially since she just came at him with a knife—but
maybe that was her survival instincts kicking in. Maybe she didn't want to be here at all, was just going along
for the ride because she had no choice.
Maybe her name wasn't Adalyn—probably her name wasn't Adalyn—but maybe, just maybe, she could
be saved. That was the purpose of The Pee Pee Man, wasn't it? To save those that needed saving?
He thought of Stompy right then. Stompy had always derided him for wanting to play a knight in shining
armor, to only want to save females and try to be their savior. Well, so what? Maybe that was The Pee Pee
Man's life purpose, to save females.
But first he needed something. He crossed the short distance over to her while brandishing the knife.
"Give me your phone."
When she didn't move, he shook the knife at her face and repeated himself.
"It's in my purse," she said, still impassive. If she was scared of being threatened with a knife, she had
one hell of a poker face. Probably she was used to far worse from her boyfriend.
 Kris told her to get it. She stood up, opened the door, and leaned across the seat. A sudden thought ran
through his head, part of that spidey/pee pee sense that had served him well thus far: bitch might have pepper
spray in there.
"Don't reach into it, just hand it to me," he told her as she turned around with it. She held it out to him
and he snatched it away, opened the button clasp, and extracted her purple speckled Hello Kitty phone. He did
a quick scan inside the purse and didn't see any suspicious canisters, so he buttoned it up and tossed it back to
her. It landed at her feet, but she didn't reach to take it.
"Take it. Go on. Get out of here." He motioned again with the knife, waving it behind her to illustrate
some vague distance. "I'm serious, go. Get out of here before the cops come, unless you want to be arrested
with this piece of shit."
She still didn't move, didn't even reach down to take her purse.
"You're really just gonna stay here beside him," he said, not phrasing it as a question. He threw his
hands up. "I don't give a fuck. You're a stupid fucking bitch for staying beside your rapist criminal piece of shit
boyfriend, but there's something to be said for loyalty, right? He must fuck you real good you wanna stay beside
him and hold his hand while you both go to jail and spend the next several years behind bars once all the
extortion shit you guys have pulled comes to light. Or maybe it's some Stockholm Syndrome bullshit you guys
got going on. I don't know. It's none of my business, right? I feel like Kermit sipping his tea in that one meme.
But you're too cool to go on the internet, right? At least not when this fucker's making you get on webcam to
help him out with some elaborate blackmail thing he's got going.
"So yeah, go ahead and hold his hand." When there was still no response from her, he gestured with
the knife toward Sloan. "Go on! Hold his fucking hand."
But she still did nothing, didn't move. Kris didn't know where all of that came from; he had felt larger
than life, saying things and acting ways that he never would have done as himself. This didn't feel like real life to
him. It didn't feel like a movie, either; this felt like—fuck it, just say it, he said it to himself: this felt like an origin
story.
Origin story or not, he still wasn't able to get a rise out of Adalyn, whoever the fuck she was. Everything
about her was so hollow, so empty. There was nothing to her but an empty shell. Maybe she didn't deserve to
be saved.
"Alright, fuck it." He slid her phone in his pocket and his pee sense, or peestinct, kicked in again. He
closed the short distance between him and his captors, walking over to Sloan's crumpled-up figure laying on the
ground. He held the knife out to Adalyn, told her to back up, which surprisingly enough she did by scooting
over.
He patted Sloan's pockets. He felt the square bulk of a wallet in the left hand pocket of Sloan's camo
shorts. He took it out and took out his own wallet, took out his ATM card, and tucked it carefully inside Sloan's
wallet. He put Sloan's wallet back in his pants pocket and knew the other side pocket probably had his cell
phone. There were a lot of implicating text messages on that phone, things about drugs, nude pics (of him)—
stuff he really didn't care to explain to the cops in the future when they eventually found him.
He found the phone in the other pocket and manually turned over Sloan to get it. Dude didn't
complain, at least not anymore than he already was with the groaning and the whimpering. What a pussy. Dude
wasn't so badass after all, especially not after dealing with The Pee Pee Man. And if this was an origin story,
what did that make him? What was he becoming?
But then all at once he felt like a fucking joke. He tried to stomp that feeling away by dropping Sloan's
phone on the ground and stomping it to pieces. He thought of Stompy right then (stomping = Stompy, of
course) and imagined it was his trollish chub of a pig face he was stomping right now. He didn't actually have a
pig face, but whatever, he did in this incarnation. The black screen split then shattered, and soon his heel was
digging inside its mechanical guts and rearranging them into uselessness, really digging in there. It helped
restore his self-confidence a little bit, but it wasn't enough.
When he finished stomping he looked up and realized that Adalyn was gone. Kris whipped his head
around to make sure she wasn't sneaking up on him, those fake fingernails bearing claws held out in front of
her, ready to tear into his face—but no, she wasn't sneaking up on him. Seemed to have disappeared
completely, as a matter of fact.
The only out here came from the mostly-busted headlights of his Taurus which provided a sliver of
illumination. He thought he saw her shadowy outline moving off in the distance somewhere behind the tree,
through a wide-open field that was as barren and bleak as her personality. He began to wonder what exactly he
saw in clockangel in the first place. Was he just looking for someone to save? Someone cute to save?
Her pictures did have something to do with it, he could admit that much to himself. He knew he
wouldn't have bent over backwards for some ugly chick. Did that make him a bad person? Stompy seemed to
think it did, but fuck Stompy. What did Stompy know about being a superhero?
Yes, there he admitted it: he was a superhero. Adalyn-whoever-she-was may not have said as much to
him, but she took his advice and decided to split the scene. Decided to cut off ties with her scummy-ass
boyfriend and start something new. And who gave her that opportunity?
He did. He saved her. It might not have gone how he thought it would go when he drove out here, but
who could argue with the results? He saved her. She was making a break from her poisonous boyfriend.
Perhaps she was just running from the cops, but who cared about the motivation? Who could argue with
results? One way or another, he had saved her.
But what to do about her poisonous boyfriend? Kris didn't relish the thought of spending a night talking
to cops, so he knew he needed to do some scene-splitting of his own pretty quick. Sloan seemed to be in no
condition to follow him, or even split the scene himself. Plus, what would he do if he did? He didn't have his
phone anymore, couldn't call anyone. Still had his wallet and Kris's ATM card, but that would be canceled pretty
damn quick. The punkass might find his way home eventually, and might even reconnect with Adalyn, but so
what? That was out of his hands now. He'd saved her to the best of his ability while saving himself in the
process, and even more than that, became someone else in the process. Someone awesome, someone who
could go do some more saving now because—hell, might as well say it to himself again: he was a superhero.
He was The Pee Pee Man.

14

The last vestige of moonlight lit the way for Kris. He was already a thousand feet in the opposite
direction that Adalyn walked. Just like her, though, he had also cut through a barren field, but unlike her he felt
decidedly unbarren himself; the night's climax might have already waxed and waned, but the lingering promise
of possibility still flowed through his nerve endings like an electric tide whose figurative waters might have
receded, but were still very much prominent with their undeniable presence and power. Just because the tide
has receded didn't mean the waters weren't dangerous; there was just more sand to walk on for the time
being. But that changes, oh yes it does.
It changed in the moments before he left the scene. The electric waters had stirred within him while he
studied the waste of life that lay there next to his mangled wreck of a car. He wanted to leave his mark on the
punkass somehow. The obvious thought of pissing on him came and went, and he nixed the idea out of
practicality; he needed to recycle his pee, after all. The Pee Pee Man couldn't just go wasting his precious pee
on some waste of life who wouldn't even be cognizant enough to know what was happening to him. No, he
couldn't just pee on him.
Speaking of, he had realized he needed the McDonald's cup for such a purpose, and went through the
backseat to obtain it. He found the cup amidst the dilapidated remains of the front seat floorboard beneath the
battered glove compartment and fetched it out. He backed away from the car and looked down at Sloan, still
scrunched up on the ground like a baby. Dude had been barely moving, the only sounds from his mouth
unintelligible grunts of pain. Kris knew the dude wasn't playing possum and could just walk away right now and
leave this entire situation behind him.
And he almost did that. Almost. So what stopped him?
Well, he had to pee.
He unzipped and emptied half his bladder into the cup before Sloan finally turned his head and opened
his eyes to see what Kris was doing. Kris didn't stop or move to conceal his dong; he just went right on pissing.
After the cup got a little over halfway full, he gave it a few shakes, zipped back up. He raised the cup in front of
his face. He looked down and met Sloan's sickly expression before raising the cup in the air, toasting him. And
then he drank.
Kris had chugged most of it down before he stopped himself. Shit was good, he had to save some for his
guest. Kris didn't just want to pour it on him, though.
"Come on dude," he said while bending down to Sloan. "You're gonna like this. It'll make you feel
better."
Kris grabbed the wispy hair atop Sloan's hand with one hand, forced his head up, and used the other
hand to press the cup's rim up to Sloan's mouth. He made the scummy fucker drink the last few remaining
swallows. Most of the pee dripped down the sides of his mouth, but once it was all out Kris dropped the cup
and squeezed Sloan's cheeks, trying to get him to swallow some of it. The dude sputtered and coughed out
some of the pee.
"Yuuuumm," said Kris, giving each one of Sloan's cheeks a few conciliatory pats before dropping his
head and kicking him one last time in the stomach. Just to keep him down, y'know. Sloan went oof! and
whimpered some more, and then Kris was on his way.
And now he was away. Far away. He looked back and could barely see the smoldering remains of his car,
much less Sloan laying on the ground beneath it. He didn't know if the punkass was still there or not and didn't
care. Because there was possibility brewing in his gut yet again. Power and possibility. Might be the pee he just
drank, but so what? Look at how much good it did him tonight.
He tried not to think about the reality of the situation as he walked through the middle of nowhere. He
thought about Stompy. He remembered thinking Stompy was behind all this, that Stompy was the one who
tricked him into driving to Rothsburg because he was clockangel and had been catfishing him all along.
But it was Stompy who had inspired these changes in himself. If not for Stompy, would he be thinking of
himself as The Pee Pee Man? would he have even considered the possibility of drinking his own pee? Definitely
not. If this was his origin story, the story of The Pee Pee Man learning his place in the world, what role did
Stompy play in the story? His arch-nemesis? Fine, sure he was, but he was also the person who made The Pee
Pee Man into what he was today. What he was right now. He needed to thank him.
And now, with the power and possibility brewing inside him yet again, he knew what he was doing next.
He knew where he was going, who he was going to see.
And knowing this, knowing who he was for the first time in his life, The Pee Pee Man walked into the
dark horizon of the unknown. He may not have known where he was going right at this moment, but he knew
who he was, and this was all he needed to know.
He was The Pee Pee Man.

[FIN]