PISS CONTEST. I enter the supermarket. She walks. The doors close. She finds herself, gathers her limbs and feels for her baseball cap. Snowballs. Desert sands. Wind machines. Cigarettes and rolling paper. Milky oil. Asphalt. There’s a man with a clipboard outside. I approach him. The man vanishes behind official masks, secret police. White puffs, rainclouds and visible trains in the rail yard pull out for afternoon commuter service. Cars, taxi cabs, Trucks, lonely vessels speed without headlights. A man runs into oncoming traffic. Cracked straw boaters. Chemists. Windows. Spires wax with wet peaks. Flopping smell of rental properties. An empath with rhinoplasty. Bruises on wrist from skateboarding. Straw hat pushed back from forehead. A cracked window. Reign in Blood on the boombox. War Stops War. Some other sunrise. Tomorrow or the day after next. A bus stop. I wait for the bus. Lank hair. Dry. Messy. I wake up. Hair past her shoulders. She hasn’t brushed it. I tighten her belt a notch. Electrical energy fires within. A rimy tear sticks to her fingertips. Music from down the street. The street is a hallway. I have to catch a bus, and then ferry, then bus, and then walk five blocks. Sunglasses over eyeballs. A coat over shoulders. Her back to the street. She stands in the gutter, bouncing slightly. The bus stop. She looks at it. Graffiti written. Hand-drawn pictures. Crude. Abhorrent. Cave paintings. Tears. Apologies. The bus arrives. She lets it pass. Chance. Swine amongst the forest space. Pools of bull fat. Trickery. I feel like a pest. More graffiti. A nurse with a patient. Farm animals sniff. I hear whispers. They’re insignificant. Mural in a building site projects an image of nuclear war. Apathy. Graffiti on the back of your hand. Simplistic pictograms. Hieroglyphics. A tactile world. Footmarks on your face. I up late in the deep night. She listens to the power lines. Priestess buried out on Potter’s Field / Hart Island. Super-computers plug out of gene therapy. Early Morning, Exterior, Rows, blocks, bricks, tenements, NYC fire-bombed out, windows propelled, shards, snowflakes. Freeways abandoned, rusted, fly-blown. Numerous arterials, tracking shot, freeway after freeway, off-ramps join off-ramps. Overgrowth under bridges, remains of automobiles and oil-tankers, tobacco and barley pressed by wind in every direction. A woman pushes through toward the apartment blocks. She holds a watering can. She wears gabardine pants, tough material made into shirt and jacket, limp and greasy hair, long, curling, kinking at the shoulder. Smoke, fires smoulder, left over from the evening before. I clasp the watering can in her right hand. She walks toward the apartment blocks. Sunshine over cold fields and car parks. Dew drops in rubbish wrappers and newspaper. Hieroglyphics under the overpass. Graffiti scratched into concrete with car antennas. You’re in the distance, walking in a grove of abandoned buildings and empty possessions. Subtitles beneath the pages of this book. Police officers surround the apartment blocks in golf carts. One of them enters six-digits into her cell phone. Sun lamps for sale on the street corner. Mouthpieces from IBM are dying and starving. The bully, the third world, the mineral kingdom, the East River. Science and art. Your anus decomposing when washed with soap. TV purified from plant source and sea. Restaurant menus litter outside restaurants. Fireworks. Cut To: Interior: A telephone. Dimensions of your mind. Criminal offences in a public park. A gravestone. She wants to be life and passion. Isn’t going to happen. Sidewalk and other commonplace hold phone conversations. A plastic bag of solvent in your left hand. Examination rooms of doctors studying other doctors. Studying and re-examining. Teenager chases teenager down flight of steps. I huff the solvent from the plastic bag. A close full shot of black hair and white headband. Bedroom doors clap at the same time. Sound is vast. I am at the front entrance of an apartment block. She surveys it. She bends down and scratches her ankles. Cigarettes and lighter in your jacket pocket. They rub against her stomach. Motion starts and I follow. The sun rises over the buildings / apartment block. Weak heat in the alleyway. Sulphur permeates construction sites. Locusts buzz in rubbish bins. I sidestep puddles. A door. Your shoes on a doormat. The door is rickety. It’s been kicked in a few times. The door is water-logged, rotting. This is the industrial part of the city. No more manufacturing. Eternally rundown. The only people are those left behind. I hold the watering can in her right hand. Her wristwatch ticks. Shirt collar encrusted. Shoes unpolished. Movie projectors pour light into your eyes. Her forehead pounds. Orchestras playing at 5 to 11 percent their potential. Shoe polish washes from synthetic leather. I wear no socks. Her exposed ankles. Insect bites on scabby bone. Mud on gabardine. A locust lands on your belt buckle. She inhales more solvent from the plastic bag. I pour water on the doormat. Your hair is unruly, ridiculous. She is her early twenties. Cheekbones are gaunt. She waters the doormat. The door opens. A chubby, cigarette-chomping man. She’s dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown. Hair is combed-over. She’s furious with me. Plastic bag up to your nose. Plastic bag moves with your lung. I water the doormat. Inhales the paint fumes. I hold the plastic bag toward the combed-over man. The man slams the door. I water the doormat. The battered door. Throat gurgle rise from the street. Psychic nose on her. Bruises. Trains in the rail yard pull out. Blood drains from your nose. No needs for faces in NYC. Spit cloth around shoes at Grand Central Station. Unsound chairs. I bathe in the restroom sink. Jehovah’s Witnesses with clipboards. Post-humans jammed up the front of the Staten Island Ferry. Cryo-patients chipped and thawed by jackhammers and drills. Chemical leeching understood through haptic perception. Perpetual studying and re-examining of infrawaves under the East River. Livers and lungs wash ashore in Astoria. Indefinite lifespan in your sweat pores. She slides, and then penetrates your body. Sea and space colonies outgrow modern civilization. Robotic self-replication, molecular manufacturing. They’re building the O’Neil cylinder out in Morristown. Trance-like on Ward’s Island. The homeless taking giant shots of Spanish brandy. Fire in the hearth. Someone on the subway barbequing commuter’s faces. Buskers all bored. I stand in the driveway, lit up by the streetlights. I hold her weapon. She fires a single shot. Her head disappears entirely. A torrent of blasts rip into a burning house. Bricks destroyed. Cement vaporises. Wood splinters. Clouds of dust and fireworks. Tanks in Times Square fishtail sideways. Soldiers stomp heads halfway between BB King Blues Club & Grill and the MTV Studios. Coffee shop for lease. Retail shop for lease. Chest pockets on police uniforms. Armoured vehicles to the right of soldiers. Armoured vehicles roll down the street. Smouldering houses. Fire fighters strip to their smalls. NYC bombed back to Year Zero. Mouths open but no sound coming out. Canons adjusted. Canons erupting. Cacophony. Dust and bullshit. Police pound the steel bodies of abandoned cars. Scrap metal, flint sparks, glass shatters. The vehicles are aflame. I drop her wine glass. She’s bored, stacked and tied in twine. Hare Krishnas awake and learn that their entire life has become secondary to the broadcasting of a meme. At every opportunity that Hare Krishna is mentioned, the broadcasting is complete. Fire in the hearth, barbeque sausages somewhere. Heat against the apartment blocks. A tap drips. A coffee cup. Apartment doors above the street open. Cab drivers stand in phone booths. They hand out copies of the New York Post. Cab drivers throw patterns, strobe shapes onto the sidewalk. People head out of NYC via the Trinity ChurchCemetery. A camera pans across my face. Horses plod outside. Locks are latched, stockings fastened, jackhammers crank. I drop the watering can. She kneels, touches the water that’s soaks the doormat. This is an advanced kind of NYC. People with their eyes on me. Flesh folds over your belt buckle. Mechanisms undulating. Claws on the police wagon. Engines rip me apart. Targets painted scarlet. Your lips glazed. Sunrise again. Sleepiness under the Brooklyn Bridge overpass. Dirt. Windblown dust. Under the overpass is the amphitheatre where I lives. Refrigerators. Cardboard boxes. Rotten copies of the Wall Street Journal. Half-sheets, advertisements for Prada products sun-starched to the wall. Bodies are water-drowned. Sodden. Outside the NYC. Sunrise still. An empath with rhinoplasty. Bruises on Your wrist from skateboarding. Straw hat pushed off her forehead. Hair tufts through a crack in the hat. Rain and Upper West Side like canine. CVS pharmacy catalogues on backseat of cabs. Video rentals with torn posters in window. Your mouth glistens. A crudely-made noose around neck. She is barefoot, standing on sandy ground. No chair holds her up. No chair she can kick from beneath so she can swing from the rope. She stands with the noose around neck. Movie poster on alley wall. Rain sodden. Half-snivel from the outside. Immense rainfall over baseball fields. Car parks at the front entrance of tenements. Dew under the girders of RobertF.KennedyBridge. Crypto-anarchists making settlements out near Hell Gate. Orange headbands around my hands.

OPTIMUM DOSAGE / HAMBURGER. Town square. Physical world is full of hormones and rhythmic machines. Electronic feedback and random radio noise from the apartment blocks on the Upper West Side. Christianity wants to colonise outer space. Human beings with physiological issues and other fucking problems. You have uncontrollable flatulence. Professional cleaners follow in your footsteps. An automobile collision on the Bowery and East Houston intersection. Blood. An 18-year-old victim. You make a constant dash between nightclub and convenience store. The night people of Milwaukee. FADE OUT. Off-duty nurse inspects crash victim. Porn movie inside solitary confinement. Porch chairs with store dolls sitting in them. Reasonable solutions caused by cybernetics. Vision enhancement. Artificial bones. A clumsy fuck in the back of your taxicab. Your erogenous zones are the human lung and umbilical cord. High concentrations of LSD in your dead body. A particular blend. Morning air seeping into your containment suit. Cherry blossoms in various stages of typhoon. Your skin tingles. It is a magic time. A weird phone call from Battery Park. NYC. A casino inside the Goldman Sachs lobby. The product description for prosthetics. Your mugshot is just male genitalia. Flesh sent to the White House. Your green eyes and quiet voice. News photographer with an ulcer condition. Skull in a brilliant blaze. An unmistakable figure with square teeth. Your kink is consensual hallucination. An optimum dosage of hamburger. Graphic representation of the human nervous system. Tumultuous mixture of various computer viruses. Black rings around Wall Street. You deal in euphoria and terror. Interface with a dead population. Densest fog over NY harbour. Hot cum on dirty jeans. Grubby dime bags in desolate street. All currency collapses. Twinks on drugs. Legitimate businesses move into residential blocks. New recruits sleeping within basement walls. Violent incidents in the Foreign Office. You’re a giant goddess in the silent hours. Aeroplane takes a nosedive over the East River. Certain beasts transcending to an invisible heaven. A warm mist over the Chelsea Market. Opaque worlds where your skin is frozen. Infectious diseases in human bodies. Permanent transformation. A real metamorphosis. Metal rivets pop in the midday heat. A middle-aged woman peeling into metallic subway entrances. Quiet wind through rural areas. Gun battles throughout the commercial district. A metal pot on a small gas stove. A young soldier fidgeting. You twitch on the hotel stairs. An ambulance crashes into bus in Brooklyn, injuring sixteen school children. Replacement tobacco is handed out. Cocaine in the cubicle behind the shower door. Soap with fake hair on it. Sex doll in a magnificent pose. Nail gun alongside bedside table. Chlorine on a rabbit’s foot. Scum on the fold-up washstand. A complete disaster for the retail business. Biology is our bitch. Gender is fluid. Heavy losses for the financial industry. Sweating in the car park of Pizza Hut. Medical journal discusses plastic implants. Cotton dress doused in Vermouth. Unpleasant feeling in the bedroom. Body suit over my thin body. Pasty lumps on my pleasure skin. Transistor earpieces constructed from semen. Eyelids and birth-hands. Darker screams from war veterans. Malaria in Uptown Manhattan. Robotic dolls around the water fountain. Church-luring creeps conducting clinical trials on your football talk in the playground. Lung transplants airlifted to Africa. Your spare key in the soap dish. Mosquitoes attack ice floes in the Hudson River. Effigies over GowanusCanal. The white radiance of the snow. A casual fight in your studio apartment. The molten centre of the Meatpacking District. Old cigarette packets in rubbish bins. Windless afternoons. Eating ass in an attic window uptown. Psychedelic mood enhancers on the fingertips of your white cotton gloves. A young male doing research with his red tip pen. Evening sunbeams on his thighs. A recollection of entire cities under the cudgel and covert power of American propaganda. Sexual matters defined in the extermination camps. Sexual matters experimented on in the extermination camp. A filth creature carrying a lantern inside

. Your chest heaves with a heart problem. Your perfect tan and sandy hair. Your athletic shoulders and cannibal fantasies. Your right arm slung in a black thong apparatus. Identical plungers with resilient rims is placed over my anal opening. Additional PVC covers my breasts. Manipulation of my security underwear and the computer networks. A vanilla milkshake from a luncheonette in the Bronx. Snowfall over WashingtonBridge. Glamour shots of my body lying on a double bed. My wax effigy full of poisonous bacteria. Your grey eyes are a creep look. Synthetic intelligences via brain implants. Arcade games on the TV screen. Long grasses tilt in the hot night. Glass towers on the outskirts of NY State. A deep breath inside the dense forest. Purple sky overhead. You engage in emotional depression and a cold sex drive. Empty parking lots on the party circuit. Alcohol inside the coffee pot. Non-smokers on the other side of the window pane. You watch cable TV at midday. The body divided by money. The President’s top economic adviser dismisses talk of Wall Street reform. You’re an immature asshole who didn’t learn the local language. A grease gun rammed down my mouth. The preps wore Ralph Lauren. You love beating up preps and smoking cigarettes at the gas station with the other headbangers. A toneless whisper from sewer drain. A paint job on the concrete floor. Every employee of the architectural firm is now in rehab. They discuss lucrative commercial office jobs in SOHO or Tribeca. Subway occupants face round-the-clock bombardment. Bright mornings bring whispers from the bad young strong girl. The grey eyes of your nightmare world. You spend your twilight years in your new condo apartment. Human attachment is the paramount emotion. Sophisticated software programs perform chemical castration. White supremacists hang out with Grateful Deadheads. A gloomy forecast of your sexual prowess. We are now a gas planet. A wormhole siphon of cyan clouds. A cumulus planet. A yellow gas mixes with worm slime. Your soft smile as my flesh manifests. Popular record companies manufacture rheumatic hearts. Bone marrow on a cellular level. Red raw feet and organ tissue. A thick crown of brown hair. The brick work at the factory gate. Black gravel inserted into your cheekbones. Bad memories of drinking in a French bistro. A helicopter lands at the corporate headquarters. Vice President has disabled arms. Sex in New Jersey with a wiry man. Sex of museum-quality.

Excerpted from Yeezus in Furs, by Shane Jesse Christmass, published in 2018 by Dostoyevsky Wannabe, republished with permission of the author. Photograph by Steve Snodgrass.

Shane Jesse Christmass is the author of the novels, Yeezus In Furs (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018), Napalm Recipe: Volume One (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017), Police Force As A Corrupt Breeze (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2016) and Acid Shottas (The Ledatape Organisation, 2014). He was a member of the band Mattress Grave, and is currently a member in Snake Milker. An archive of his writing/artwork/music can be found at www.shanejessechristmass.tumblr.com.