"Why did you leave me, why did you leave me?"
Leave? Dean thought. "Daphne, I would never le—"
Blackish liquid began to trickle from her nostrils and corners of her mouth; simultaneously, a stench rose so foul that Dean audibly gagged. His eyes burned like riot gas. But he recognized the stench at once—it was rendering bilge—and when he looked between her legs, more of the noxious liquid oozed from her sex.
"Why, honey? Why? I loved you... ."
Moonlight blazed on her face. It was not Daphne. It was Arianne.
"We could have had everything," she sobbed. Even her tears were bilge. Then she vomited in a plume directly into his face. Not puke. Rendering bilge.
The Baby Ben alarm clock rattled like an annoying toy. Dean woke up in an empty bed, flinging off imaginary bilge.
Holy shit...
The nightmare left him bolt upright, shivering. His hand padded sideward and found nothing but cold sheets where his wife should be. Then he remembered: she'd left yesterday for a design show in Chicago.
God in heaven, he thought.
Dean sat up, wearing only boxers. He scratched his balls and fell into nebulous thought as a long sigh stretched across his mind.
He saw his life now, in its utter disappointment, and then he saw his old life, in its crude, earthy glory. I was somebody back then, he realized. I was somebody special.
Good Dean, Bad Dean, he thought. Blackouts, split-personality, and now nightmares about rendering bilge.
Dean wondered if he could be any more fucked up... and doubted it.
««—»»
"What the fuck is rendering bilge?" Ajax asked.
"Liquefied waste from dead cattle," Dean explained from the bar stool. "Drippings. Organic flux." He'd asked Ajax to meet him at THE WHARF after work, curious to the point of anxiety as to how his friend would interpret the nightmare.
"Sounds lovely." Ajax chewed a contemplative lip. "And I'm wondering... "
"Yeah?"
"In what manner does this... bilge... reflect the inner-workings of Dean Lohan's tumultuous subconscious mind? How can it be applied to the symbology of your soul?"
"That's what I want you to tell me," Dean asserted.
"I need a drink... to help me think." Ajax frowned down the long bar. "Christ, do I gotta scalp myself to get the barmaid's attention? What's a guy gotta do to get a beer in this out-house?"
"Scalping is fine, but that's kind of messy," the barmaid said, appearing from nowhere. 38 double-D's looked like twin duckpin balls stretching a make-shift black halter-top that read DEMONOID PHENOMENON in dripping white letters. Pewter skulls clinked, dangling from the ends of Kool-Aid-pink corn-rows. "Just hang yourself. That'll get my attention for sure."
Ajax slumped, embarrassed at being overheard. Dean chuckled.
"A Redhook and a Hefeweizen," Ajax ordered.
The barmaid stared. "Excuse me? What's the magic word?"
Ajax's face smoldered. "Uh, please?"
The barmaid trounced off for the taps, tits rocking.
"What a hostile goth bitch," Ajax remarked under his breath. "I think I'm in love. Christ, I could spend the rest of my life just checking her for lumps."
"Back to the topic, please," Dean said.
"The topic? Her tits? Yeah, man, she doesn't even need air bags in her car. I wish I was her kid—I'd breast-feed till I was forty."
"The topic is my nightmare," Dean frustratingly reminded. "My... dilemma."
"Not a dilemma. You're way past dilemma, pal. You're one egg-shell crunch away from a full-scale schizophrenic episode."
The barmaid returned, thunked Ajax' Redhook before him. "Here ya go, Meat Loaf." Then she leaned forward and glanced at the sufficient beer-belly occupying Ajax' lap. "Eat much? Or is that just the swollen liver from the chronic alcoholism?"
Ajax's mouth opened to make a comeback, but nothing managed to come out.
"Yours is on me... cutie," she said to Dean. Then she winked and sauntered off, her ass, like orbs of ripe fruit, riding up and down in her black cut-off shorts.
"Meat Loaf, huh?" Ajax simpered. "Gee, I wonder if she likes me?"
"What's the matter? Can't take it like you dish it out?"
"No," Ajax blustered. "Life ain't fair, I'll tell ya. You've got a drop-dead gorgeous wife and this big-tit Rob-Zombie bitch hot for you. You're gonna ask her out, right?"
"Hell, no," Dean testified. "I'm married, and I love my wife."
Ajax peered longingly at the barmaid who was now at the other end of the bar. "You should be gelded. I'm so horny I could spit on the floor and fuck the spit, and you've got this hot fuck-package winking at you. But you're not gonna go for it 'cos your married? Gimme a break, Bishop Lohan."
Dean sipped his beer with resolve. "Marriage is a sacrament, it's a contract of life-long love and fidelity."
"Yeah? And every time your wife goes out of town to some work convention, she conveniently forgets her wedding ring, not to mention three times a week she's coming home late from work meetings because she's probably having affairs with her boss and every other guy at the office."
Dean didn't even need to think. Something took him over, something possessed him as effectively as a demon, and next thing he knew the entire bar fell silent as Dean had stood up, grabbed Ajax by the throat, and lifted him several inches off the ground.
"You know what?" Dean said. "I'm really getting tired of your implications."
Ajax's hands roved empty air. He was trying to talk but only gags came out. His face began to redden.
What am I doing! a voice shouted in Dean's head. Immediately, he let Ajax down. "Shit, man! I'm sorry! I-I-I don't know what came over me."
Ajax wheezed to get his breath back, slumped back to his stool. "Man, you really are fucked up. You're a walking time-bomb."
"I'm sorry," Dean repeated. "Something... just—"
"Snapped?"
"Yeah, that's right," Dean admitted.
Ajax regained his composure, slugged on his beer. At the end of the bar, the barmaid was laughing. Several moments passed, then the tavern returned to its typical revelry. Dean felt foolish, bewildered.
"Right now? Right this instant?" Ajax continued, "I'm looking at Good Dean. But a minute ago when you were holding me off the ground by my throat—"
"That was... Bad Dean," Dean surmised.
"Uh-huh, and I'm telling you, it's getting worse every day. You're telling me you love your wife?"
"Well, yeah," Dean felt assured.
"And a few nights ago you... what were you calling your beloved wife?"
Dean felt walked on by an elephant. "A fussy prude, a fickle—"
"—cunt," Ajax added all too quickly, "who you're sick of having sex with. In fact, when you do have sex with Daphne, you pretend she's—who?"