DEAD ASS

The Brooklyn hipsters raided the concessions booth for food-truck tacos and craft double IPAs. It was comedy night at the Art Garage. Stand-up comic “Dead Ass” was performing, and as a native Brooklynite, he provided them with the authentic, local flare they so craved.

“I heard he points the stage lights at the audience instead of himself,” one of them whispered. “It subverts the gaze of the spectator.”

A blinding radiance from up front illumined the room. The stage became invisible behind it, and they could only hear the tap-tap of his Timbs as he approached the mic.

It was silent for a few moments. Then, his voice:

“Ayo it’s mad brick outside B. Dead ass.”

The hipsters cackled. It was the funniest thing they’ve heard in their lives.

“I got a chopped cheese from the bodega, and the guy behind me started buggin’, but dude was mad brolic, so I was like, aight bet. Dead ass.”

More laughter.

Rinse. Repeat.

Until five minutes later when the lights rotated away from the audience and turned toward the man on stage. They weren’t laughing so hard then.

Standing there was not so much a man as it was a monster. A plump circle of red flesh. Its eyes protruded outward from the body, attached only by two thin tubes of external muscle.

It opened its gaping maw and said, “You’re all about to be a DEAD ASS!”

They screamed and rushed for the doors. Some tripped and fell, their heads trampled under the stampede like grapes at a winery.

The monster opened its mouth wider and wider, stretched far enough to fit the entire crowd. There were two rows of yellow teeth and a rotted tongue. Behind that, a void. Not blackness, but a literal nothingness. An insubstantiality that demanded to be filled.

It vacuumed inhaled every last hipster into its gullet and burped.

Tasted like artisanal bacon and used vinyl.