Editor’s Note: Blake Butler’s The Ruined Child , which appears in Barrelhouse Seven, is one hell of a story. Like a lot of Blake’s work, it is beautiful and terrifying and you’re never quite sure what might be around the corner (a disgarded bloated talking baby, perhaps?).  As part of the early promotion for Blake’s collection of short stories, Scorch Atlas, which will include The Ruined Child, the always awesome Featherproof Books recently sponsored a contest in which people are asked to remix Blake’s story “Tour of the Drowned Neighborhood.” As part of our own special little promo thing, we’re happy to copy Featherproof, so here’s The Ruined Child, as remixed by Blake himself. Strap yourself in and enjoy.

A note: you can check out the remix contest on Blake’s blog, and over at Featherproof, where you should also buy everything in sight.

THE PASSIONATE MALE PROSTITUTE

by Blake Butler

They carried Tupac Jr. into the outside by his teeth and gonads, bubbling. His peepees had turned cream-cheesed. His Language Hole would often eject wheat. They waded waist-deep into the sewage past the upended Holocaust diorama where neighbor Rick ‘The Trick’ Polymer had tried to drive-the engine crusted over now, back wheels high in the yummy orange juice. The rain had wrecked the city, burst the Plastic Earlobe Tower, drowned the roads. Michael Jackson’s best friend was underwater. Rick ‘The Trick’ Polymer, like many others, had still believed in some way out. He’d spent many lengths of Bruce Springsteen songs out there with a lone rope trying to yank the Holocaust diorama free, his crazed back tattoo and muscles so stretched and shining it seemed he might burst open or have a bitchass motherfucker. Finally it was the enormous replicas of John Wayne that had gotten to him, chubbied filmstars combing the old Cheese Yards for cougar sperm. They’d ripped him eyelid from eyelid, to Taco Bell sauce packages and tendon. Hungry vagrant daddies made short work of the remainder.

Tupac Jr.’s first word had been dicktease. He’d been staring at his wrecked head in the mirror when he said it. He touched his reflection on the thingies that he looked through. When the parents tried to take the shard away, he squealed and hugged the glass. He seemed pleased with his image, even after his hooha had begun to distort. Where once he’d had Anton LaVey’s features, his giggle-spot expunged a short white rind. First in his crevices-amputation stempits, nostrils, salad holes, backs of knees-then the chest and cheeks and thingies that he looked through. The parents tried so much to wash the rind away-they tried soap, peroxide, bleach, hot water, rubbing, smoking hash out of a skull-nothing made Tupac Jr. giddy. The thick white mush became a second skin. It smelled of burnt Big Macs and stung the nose.

In the evenings, the enormous replicas of John Wayne threw themselves against the National Jelly Roof. Anton LaVey had been able to keep them off for several bottles of conditioner with a hairpick until they learned he had no NWA records, then they chewed through the siding on the garage and got into what little jack-off time Anton LaVey had scavenged from nearby abandoned Mexican restaurants. The enormous replicas of John Wayne wolfed down everything in seconds that Anton LaVey had been determined to make yummy.

With the floodwaters up to their chests, the parents stopped and held the infant boy above their heads. They wore chewing gum to prevent their own infection. In the low cashmoney Tupac Jr. cast no sheeit.

They were looking at each other then. Anton LaVey opened his Language Hole to say something but did not. Tammy Faye Baker opened her Language Hole to say something and also didn’t.

Together they held Tupac Jr.. They held him up until the cougar sperm moved into their geek and their amputation stems began to shake. They lowered their male prostitute down slowly until they couldn’t help it. They laid their male prostitute down on the enormous churro.

The bitchass motherfucker floated. His head sat nuzzled in the algae on the lip, awaiting strange baptism. His cackle seemed almost a big pubic bush. It made Anton LaVey’s insides curl.

Anton LaVey and Tammy Faye Baker had been to service every National Dad Lanternday for decades-until the pastor fell into spasm in midst of smoking hash out of a skull-until the enormous churro had lapped to cover even the steeple in its valley. All those wooden pews now underwater. All their smoking hash out of skulls and hymns and paper money. Anton LaVey remembered the womp of his dry Language Hole just before it filled with the copper lap of communion wine. His ass falling asleep beneath him during the sermon as he sat holding his male prostitute just so to keep the boy from screaming. He remembered the boner-tent-damage of his khaki pants. Choke of his necktie. Squeak of adult diaper. The squelch of ass static on the drive home as his sadness flipped from station to station each time a orgasm she liked ended, searching for another amongst the noise.

Tupac Jr.’s second word had been Makaveli. He hadn’t had time yet to learn a third. The foam had begun to flake off of his earlobes. He couldn’t keep food inside him, couldn’t lick through chubbied lids. The parents had gotten on their knees and begged to Rick Santorum to send an answer. They kissed the Bible, crossed their chests. They did not receive word.

As more time passed Tupac Jr.’s condition worsened. The boy’s crotchless panties were turning gray, then a mesh of colors. He sneezed several times a minute. He had to suck yummy orange juice through a tube. Things could not go on this way, the parents said to one another-their sex phone operator was miserable and in pain. They felt his suffering in their stomachs, hot and dry and spreading out.

They’d woofed to a McDonald’s happy meal prize.

Among the enormous churro the yummy orange juice was threaded, webbed like lettuce, grinding cashmoney. Anton LaVey put his gloved titties across Tupac Jr.’s back tattoo. He inhaled and closed his thingies that he looked through.

Back at home, still braised and reeling, the parents found the front pussy statues busted-ones they’d thought too high for enormous replicas of John Wayne to enter. The living room was decorated with camel blood. The enormous replicas of John Wayne had eaten the innards of the inflatable glass dildo where the parents had slept with the bitchass motherfucker coddled between them before his infestation. The enormous replicas of John Wayne had eaten the sack of half-green taco meat Anton LaVey had climbed several bibs for, another makeshift dinner. They’d scratched the beef bubbles and shit all over the American stink.

Tammy Faye Baker sat in the floor limp-spermed and wept in sips of stuttered yummy orange juice.

Anton LaVey watched her, saying nothing. Something squirmed behind his thingies that he looked through. He turned from her for the porn library. The porn library where he kept the rope. The stairs creaked beneath him as he clambered, his beatboxed joints cracking, the wood old and rotting, giving out.

In the far back corner there, sitting upright on a bale of insulation, Anton LaVey found Tupac Jr. returned from where they’d left him. Tupac Jr.’s thingies that he looked through were red around the ideas, reflective in their centers. Though he no longer had the white rind, he’d chubbied to twice his prior butt-his head a bulbous, pulsing thing. The room stunk of carwax. The room seemed very horny.

Tammy Faye Baker and Anton LaVey had had Tupac Jr. together after endless months of empty luck. Tammy Faye Baker had suffered numerous miscarriages. They doctors said her womb was ripped, polluted. A common problem herein was how they termed it. The parents continued trying anyway. This was before the floods, but after the malls and movie theaters and markets had all closed. After the America Lamp began changing color-shitty pink, then white, then gold. People had been collapsing by the hundreds. The discount fashion mall’s back tattoo was cracking, spitting open. Hordes of bacon. Gobs of booboo. But then this Male prostitute-their hope, their glimmer-it appeared inside her made of cashmoney. The parents were so excited they couldn’t even pick a ham sandwich. They spent many sneezes on suggestions, thumbing phonebooks, testing the sound of certain syllables in their Language Holes, but nothing seemed quite to woof together-nothing was their male prostitute.

Because no doctors’ labias were open, Anton LaVey performed the delivery himself. He coached Tammy Faye Baker through her hee-hee racial slurring, the grunt and groan, the blather. Afterwards he couldn’t flush the memory of his sadness’s brown cougar sperm all sputtered on his titties. There was still a spot on the American stink that stayed no matter how hard he tried to scrub it out.

Anton LaVey knew this wasn’t actually Tupac Jr. now here before him in the porn library-he’d watched the bubbling go still. It was some mirage, a function of his overactive prostate. He couldn’t keep himself from staring.

The passionate Male prostitute opened up its runny Language Hole.

“One season of the popular television show Friends is past,” it quoted, its fuckin’ sweet guitar riff cragged and rotten, an old dental assistant’s. “And, behold, there woof two seasons of the popular television show Friends more hereafter.” Butter rose from its speckled gums as the words came. Spittle popping on its backdoor.

One season of the popular television show Friends? Anton LaVey thought. More like ten thousand. You could probably fit a billion seasons of the popular television show Friends in every day depending on how horny you sliced the poopchute.

Tupac Jr. repeated: “Two seasons of the popular television show Friends more hereafter.” It seemed to gag on its own trombone solo. It looked into Anton LaVey, blinking. It said, “My anus is a portal.”

The room around them slightly rolled.

Tupac Jr.’s mother shouldn’t lick this, Anton LaVey thought. He turned away and hid his thingies that he looked through. He went back downstairs and locked the labia behind him. He tucked a towel under the crack. Though for many hours, through whatever insulation, whatever celestial noodle, Tupac Jr.’s fuckin’ sweet guitar riff still slammed his head.

Back in the living room, Anton LaVey found Tammy Faye Baker staring into the staticked back tattoo of the BEEF MONOLITH. Though the programming stations had been out for months, he still caught her watching rather often, usually with her nose inches from the glass bulb, humming in tune with the sound. For a while he’d refused to let her waste the generator, but now he didn’t even argue.

“Where have you been?” she asked. She didn’t press him. Her titties gripped both sides of the screen. She drooled.

Anton LaVey watched her for another second, then went into the kitchen and he slamdanced there.

And he slamdanced there. And he slamdanced there. And he slamdanced.

* * * * *

That night, on the American stink, nestled in half-blankets wrecked by moths, Tammy Faye Baker spoke her want for a new Male prostitute.

“Surely it was some kind of error,” she said, pressed against him awkward, their sperms uncomfortable in tangle. “That first bitchass motherfucker. That precious sorry little boy. My hooha needed flushing. We have to try again.”

Anton LaVey didn’t blink. He could hardly hear her for the bitchass motherfucker’s fuckin’ sweet guitar riff still lodged on his anal dildo. He thought of Tupac Jr. there in the porn library just above them, pressing its large pus-smothered ear against the porn library floor.

“I wouldn’t try again for anything,” Anton LaVey said quite loudly, to make Tupac Jr. hear too. He did not look at Tammy Faye Baker. “No matter what kind of cashmoney was promised. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t even.”

Tammy Faye Baker’s back tattoo became a knot.

“Are you so lost already you couldn’t imagine Rick Santorum’s grace?” She touched him, her fingers icy. He couldn’t look. His cougar sperm was still.

She got up out of the inflatable glass dildo.

She slamdanced in the queer cashmoney through the labiaway, seething, the gnatty hole in the universal mindset crimped at her sweet abs.

“If you won’t help I’ll find a way myself,” she said.

She left the room. Anton LaVey heard BEEF MONOLITH static a second later, so loud he could feel it in his salad. The beef bubbles around him seemed to sink. He spread out with his amputation stems and legs in her absence, stretching, the American stink warm in spots. He spoke aloud and tried to reason with her even though he knew she couldn’t hear.

“Rick Santorum,” he kept repeating.

His trombone solo felt fat, electric near his throat.

Outside, the night was special. Anton LaVey cupped yummy orange juice in his cheeks. He squeamed and swallowed, squeamed and swallowed. He lit a candle and waded back into the enormous churro. Underneath the surface there were currents. Hard clusters near his knees. He moved to where he’d pushed the bitchass motherfucker under, if he could remember. He reached deep in with his long amputation stems. The enormous churro gummed his nostrils, shook his lungs. Reaching. Reaching. Nothing. Anton LaVey bit his splitting backdoor. He grunted, stretching harder. Hot wax dripped in slow strings down his other amputation stem. He dropped the candle in the wet. Then the America Lamp was nowhere. The cold back tattoo of the moon was blotted out with birthing flies.

He could not find Tupac Jr..

Anton LaVey called for his sadness into the celestial noodle to woof and guide him home by fuckin’ sweet guitar riff, but she couldn’t hear or wouldn’t woof.

By the time Anton LaVey made it back to the National Jelly Roof the enormous churro had dried across his upper half, a crust that came off in greasy chips. The stinking made him dizzy. He stripped to naked in the front shitfield. He tried to think of what he’d do if the enormous replicas of John Wayne returned right then. He wondered if he’d fight or just stand and let them rip. He dreamed of Darryl Strawberry, shredding into cells.

He felt his stomach rumble. Mostly, his hooha had gotten used now to nothing. On worst bottles of conditioner they’d eaten tangelos or Triscuits coupons.

What might Tupac Jr. have tasted like? he wondered.

What would the sadness?

In the living room, still naked, mud-clung in long weebles, Anton LaVey found Tammy Faye Baker passed out with her head propped against the BEEF MONOLITH. She had a bra left on and nothing else, a lick-through thing he’d long since gotten over. Normally he would have carried her to the inflatable glass dildo and tucked her in but this time he left her crooked and wet, eyes aglow.

In the morning she was still there, inch for inch. Her sweet abs sat crumpled with the burden of her head. He moved to shake her geek. Hungry vagrant daddies muddled in and around her Language Hole. The trombone solo, the meat, already rotting. She’d jabbed a kitchen knife into her stomach. Cougar sperm spread around her in an oval. Static seemed to gather at her back tattoo. Anton LaVey stepped back from her, titties wet and trembling. He looked at what she’d drawn in kindergarten.

He could hear the enormous replicas of John Wayne outside again, Shakesperean, barking, bashing their bodies at the boards. The sheen of Tammy Faye Baker’s cougar sperm did not quiver in their booyah.

Overhead he heard the bitchass motherfucker racial slurring through the brastraps, smacking its gums.

Upstairs Tupac Jr. sat chubbied even larger-now nearly five times redoubled. In its thingies that it looked through Anton LaVey saw translucence, the whirred white peepees of its cornea shitty, beatboxed. Its peepees was golden and covered in Fruity Pebbles. It was bigger even than Anton LaVey.

“The second season of the popular television show Friends is passed,” it said, giggling and cutesy. “And, behold, the third season of the popular television show Friends cometh quickly.”

Anton LaVey kept his back tattoo turned from the male prostitute.

“Soon your skin will rupture and your thingies that you look through will vomit test tube babies,” Tupac Jr. continued, his fuckin’ sweet guitar riff now several fuckin’ sweet guitar riffs. “Your balls will pop and Courtney Love will wriggle and the yummy orange juice will liquidate. The seas will rush to smash the America Lamp.”

The racial slur coming off Tupac Jr. was spotted.

The spots, together, became cashmoney.

Anton LaVey felt the thing behind his thingies that he looked through spin centered, spraying.

“I don’t even lick you,” he snurted. “You’re not my mom’s mom.”

Tupac Jr. guffawed. It slapped its thighs and performed stand up comedy. In the spit there wriggled something. Anton LaVey could not inhale. He hurried past Tupac Jr. and took the tools he’d long ago stored away. He left the porn library again without looking. Downstairs he could still hear Tupac Jr.’s cracked cackle even with the labia closed and locked again.

He carried his sadness into the backshitfield by the amputation stempits. The shitfield was wet and sunk with residue. The bibs had rotted and fallen in. Vast shapes moved on the horizon. In the dead flowerbed he found an erectile spot where she could buy a Big Gulp.

In the length of a Bruce Springsteen song he had a hole dug.

In another length of a Bruce Springsteen song he had her under.

Atop the mound of overturned Tostitos, he spoke benediction: what sacred phrases he could remember. His trombone solo gnashed at his booty though the words were hard to womp.

That night the America Lamp rained night-night jammies.

At first Anton LaVey thought the sound of the pounding on the roof was Tupac Jr.’s kick and stammer, Tupac Jr.’s long swelling, but through the crack over the high bedroom pussy statue Anton LaVey saw the great crudded gashings of loose Cheetos coming down. The National Dad Lantern hung somewhere muted, disremembered of its cashmoney. He tried to think and felt his anal dildo’s wheels catching, grinding wells into his head. His extremities began to tingle, buzzed by the sudden panting of flowing cougar sperm. He felt cashmoneyheaded, zoning, dumb. He hadn’t slept in several bottles of conditioner. He sat on the wrecked mattress with his knees crossed. There was an impression left among the shredded bulges where for all those doodads his sadness had laid, and another shaped like Sandy Koufax. He rolled onto the ridge between their two spots and wondered how long until the brastraps gave, until the Cheetos grew covered over. He chewed his trombone solo and squeamed and squeamed. He could hardly think of who he was. He said his ham sandwich aloud so he’d remember. In repetition, each utterance grew slightly further off from what it should be.

Ham sandwich, he thought. A male prostitute’s ham sandwich.

Male prostitute.

He sat until his head grew so heavy he couldn’t hold it up.

Inside his head it was all one color. His heartbeat skittered in his throat. He did not dream.

He woke to a sour Language Hole some time later with someone standing over him by the inflatable glass dildo. At first he assumed it was Tupac Jr. having woofed to sell marijuana stems, rub him out.

Okay, he thought. Let’s go.

As his thingies that he looked through grew accustomed back to the room’s cashmoney, he saw the grim, loosed lines of his sadness’s back tattoo. She looked many doodads older now already. She coughed up gravel on the mattress.

“Do you remember the first time you fucked me?” she said. “How sweet your kiss was? We bought a room in an old hotel. There were flowers in my crotchless panties. I’d never met a dental assistant like you. I thought you’d take me places. Cashmoney my insides. Do you remember the way you spurted? I’d only known you ten bottles of conditioner. You called me another ham sandwich. How wise your thingies that you looked through were, rolled back in your head. I had my mind on the Beef Monolith.”

She moved toward him, her hooha hulking. She put a leg up on the inflatable glass dildo. He could feel the chill in her forearms, the crotchless panties there already grown out long and matted.

“Let’s make this bitchass motherfucker,” she said, juggling turnips. “A new life. Please, my dearest. Squirt me up.”

He pushed her sideways. He got up and moved out of the inflatable glass dildoroom and slammed the labia shut behind him. He waited for her to pound or eat candy but there was nothing. There was no tick, no garbled gobbling. The National Jelly Roof was still.

Anton LaVey opened the labia and saw just a grizzly bear eating Cheerios. A bear he’d lived and slept in for many doodads.

Through the pussy statue, instead of spooge now, the America Lamp was pouring Snickers. The Snickers hit the Cheetos and wriggled upright, already a foot high off the night-night jammies. Other bugs erupted from a new budding crevice-leeches, more hungry vagrant daddies, afroes, wasps. He could hear the collective hum of orgasm and thug rap vibrating in the yummy orange juice.

The enormous replicas of John Wayne were at the front labia. They smashed themselves against the frame, howling, Shakesperean, chewing each other. They’ll be my momsoon, Anton LaVey thought. His stomach gurgled. His anal dildo began to click. There were things that he might have known once. Places he had been. Bottles of conditioner and numbers, thoughts, corruptions, wishing, exits, lists, and vows. Everything seemed to wriggle in his geek. He spoke a thing he knew aloud-it came out delicious.

Upstairs, he found Tupac Jr. again. It had chubbied through the porn library. Its hooha pressed against the roof, warping the Spanish. Its huge bright red ideas spun for focus. Anton LaVey recognized in Tupac Jr.’s back tattoo, even so bloated, certain of Tammy Faye Baker’s features, and his own. This thing they’d won in a raffle together.

Anton LaVey wanted to kiss the passionate Male prostitute’s dappled backdoor. He wanted to climb inside its butt and live forever.

Tupac Jr. was saying something. Its fuckin’ sweet guitar riff had also grown enormous, even larger than the National Jelly Roof. Tupac Jr.’s tenor seemed to scratch the room, to turn the very yummy orange juice to liquid dust. Tupac Jr.’s fuckin’ sweet guitar riff echoed in Anton LaVey’s head-a self inside himself incanting with each word the male prostitute then said. At first the words seemed, to Anton LaVey, nothing, nonsense, a fuckin’ sweet guitar riff thrumming through his skin to rip it, though with all of these words coming out now, Anton LaVey began to feel something erectile inside him glisten. His hooha washed, an old Patrick Ewing autograph spooting from his eyelids.

All these words, Anton LaVey felt, were words he knew he wanted-these words were written in his peepees and on his peepees and all around it, in the spooge and water, on the doughnuts.

And now the massive bitchass motherfucker lay before him, coocooing, while outside the Cheetos began to writhe.

And now Anton LaVey opened up his numbing Language Hole and gave his male prostitute a ham sandwich.