Carlos slavers, pigheadedly mutinous, in the filthy order of the King County Jail, archipelagic in the Chair. He hacks out brainsick verbalizations animated by an aberrant hybrid of paranoiaspeak and manic glee: “FUCKIN’ KILL US ALL!! A-HAHAAHAH! FUCK YOU! MS-13: YEAH MOTHERFUCKER! HAHAHAHHAHHA!!”

His sputum—meant for the nearest uniformed authority figure—explodes lamely against the black fabric webbing of the mask.

Let Carlos tell it: “Boat, boat, boat, boat, boat.” He chuckles moronically.

Translation: Carlos and pals were smoking PCP, known curbside as “Love Boat” or “Boat,” and next thing Virgin Mary knows, Carlos is reeling down Yesler MANUALLY PULLING OUT HIS INTESTINES through a slit made by a box-cutter for a riveted crowd of jump-rope and hopscotch girls. Instead of helping Carlos or calling 911, the black girls record the gruesome spectacle with their cell phones and stream it to Facebook Live.

Dark like fluid. Like black syrup. The restraints bracelet my wrists, shackle my ankles. Aphotic. Entire. This can’t be Carlos’s voice. Words like “aphotic” aren’t in his index.

Like this then: I don’t need fuckin’ light. Fuck light. Didn’t Lucifer give us light, something? Dumb shit. Jesus was a carpenter and got nailed to wood. They call that eye-Ronnie or some shit.

Carlos does 30 days (after they push his guts back in and sew him up), most of it in the jail’s “bam-bam” tank, which is reserved for crazies and the retarded and endangered pedophiles.

After he’s released, Carlos falls in with a burnout white kid named Dallas. They waste away their days injecting crystal meth and jerking themselves raw and dry watching teenage-girls-gangbanged-in-public videos on their Samsung screens; the more degrading the porn, the better.

***

Lott Art is a company in Hong Kong founded by Tsutomu Takuma. Takuma is an ex-con, convicted in the ‘90’s for grabbing a nine-year-old girl at a public park and shoving a camera’s telephoto lens inside her in a crazed effort to take pictures of her vagina’s interior. Now free, Takuma’s a businessman.

Takuma’s business is an IED of controversy. Lott Art manufactures and ships lifelike, anatomically-correct “child sex dolls,” replicas of boys and girls as young as four.

***

Martin Orona lost his wife to a Craigslist ad. Then, distraught to the point of becoming nonfunctional, he lost his job as a senior advisor at an architectural company. He’s tried all the SSRIs and mood stabilizers and still wants to die. He binge-watches shows on Investigation Discovery, shows about murder, and wishes a psychopath would find him and hack open his throat.

Martin becomes infatuated with jihadist militant groups. He sees their eagerness to kill in their eyes on the flat-screen and realizes he doesn’t want to die so much; he wants someone to murder him. Before architecture engulfed his focus, Martin used to paint. In college. He thinks of art, and he thinks of Lars Vilks and Pearl’s head being sawed off in The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl, and gradually develops an idèe fixe, a mania that blots out the future and the past and makes everything one gloriously focused now.

***

Carlos and Dallas run out of glass and money. They steal some cans of Reddi-wip from a Walgreens and suck out all the nitrous oxide in an abandoned house littered with used syringes, soiled condoms, and broken crack pipes.

“We need money, dog,” Carlos says, the rush in his head fading fast.

“My mom knows this bitch Ada, old ugly bitch. She runs one of those houses for retards. You know, like retarded motherfuckers and old motherfuckers with brain problems? It’s in Belltown. My mom’s friend and Ada’s died yesterday. Mom asked me if I’d watch the retard house for a few hours while she and Ada go to the funeral. They’ll pay us $50. I wasn’t gonna do it, but it’s money.”

Carlos grins. A line of drool courses from the corner of his mouth down his jaw and glistens in the sun. “Fuck yeah, it’s money. An’ watchin’ a bunch of rejectoids shittin’ on themselves is good for the lulz, right? Fuck yeah, nigga. The lulz.”

Dallas puts flame to a Kool, puffs. “Tomorrow. I’ll let my mom know.”

***

Tsutomo is interviewed by a British magazine. In Britain, police have been using the Lott Art orders to track down suspected pedophiles:

“What are the dolls made of?”

“Silicon. They weigh as much as real child. They are $1,000.”

“What do you make of the controversy surrounding your business?”

“It is problematic. Pedophiles not bad people. Pedophiles attracted to children. This not choice; this their attraction. The Prophet Muhammad married Aisha when she was nine year age. Ancient Greek and Roman culture? Love for children not deviant, not in some circle.”

“So you’re saying society’s the problem, not the criminals who rape children.”

“I am saying my dolls offer pedophile legal way to gratify desires. And in Britain, where you are from, there are therapists who concur. They feel dolls should be prescribed by psychiatrist.”

“But the dolls aren’t legal, Mr. Takuma. In the last month in the U.K., police have seized 142 of your child sex dolls. Don’t you feel like you’re actually harming the people you’re claiming to help?”

“The authorities find orders through customs and go into these home. There they may find image of child pornography—illegal—and arrested.”

“If they’re not illegal, why does your company now ship the dolls through the mail disguised as something else? They’ve been ruled ‘obscene’ in the UK.”

“My dolls prevent attack on children. They substitute for human girl or boy. We sell on Amazon and eBay.”

“The majority of psychiatrists have said that these dolls will actually reinforce the impulse to offend.”

“I am helping people. It is legal and ethical. Society must accept that is impossibility to make a fetish a not-fetish. Repressed desire is bad; my doll give outlet to pedophile.”

“You are a convicted molester yourself. Have these dolls helped you?”

“I use doll many time each day. My doll have vagina, mouth, and anus. I use and ejaculate and I am not threat to neighborhood or park.”

“If I’m to be frank, you’re disgusting, Mr. Takuma.”

“I am artist. Art heal. Dolls are my work. We have also infant model. With sexy diaper guaranteed to arousal.”

After the interview, Tsutomo boards a plane. The flight destination is America: Seattle, Washington.

***

Martin wants a fatwa of death issued against him. He streams videos of Islamic terrorists beheading infidels, the nasheed music strange and repetitive, the blood gushing and the diligent sawing swirling together into what Martin interprets as a bliss preceding sweet nothingness.

He begins a series of nine paintings. Acrylic. At the top of each canvas, Martin paints the words: THIS IS AN IMAGE OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD. Below the words, he paints obscenities: mutilated and bleeding female genitalia, a ball sack wearing a turban, and several depictions of bearded Arabic men assfucking young boys. Martin’s brushstrokes are deliberate and harsh; he thinks of the words of Imam Ibn al-Jawzi: “He who claims that he experiences no sexual desire when looking at beautiful young boys is a liar.”

Martin’s done his research. From what he’s read, he’s decided that pederasty in the Islamic faith is a practice that has been around for 1,400 years with Allah’s blessing.

When the series is finished, Martin takes photographs of each painting and bombards the Internet with them. He posts them everywhere, but concentrates on Islamic extremists’ feeds and sites. With the images, he includes his home address, full name, email, and a pic of himself.

Martin makes a short video with his cell. It shows Martin studying the Qur’an with a squinted look of disgust, like he’s holding a dead Madagascar hissing cockroach. Then it shows Martin drop the holy book in the toilet.

He then drowns the religious text in piss.

***

After Ada explains to Carlos and Dallas that all they have to do is “watch the residents, just make sure they’re not hurting themselves,” she leaves for the funeral. They immediately begin raiding the house, looking for anything to pawn. All they uncover is a carton of Basic Light 100s, which belong to Ada. The TV is from the ‘90’s; no pawn shop would even give $5 for it.

They smoke cigarettes and grow anxious; the $50 Ada paid them is going toward meth, and they’re not exactly patient.

“This place smells like raw shit,” Carlos says.

“Yeah. Old bitch probably don’t give ‘em baths very much.”

“And they probably shit theyselves every couple hours.”

Dallas opens the fridge, does a quick inventory. “No fuckin’ beer neither.”

The Price is Right is on the TV, a Bob Barker-hosted episode. Carlos and Dallas collapse onto the couch in the living room. A black resident in his mid-thirties, fidgety and severely mentally handicapped, looks at Dallas. Dallas stares back, eyes hard with contempt and aggravation. The resident shrinks back in his recliner and whimpers as though he’s been struck.

“The fuck is your problem?” Dallas says, voice raised.

“Look at that old bitch. She ain’t moved at all. She comatose or some shit.”

“And this nigger’s scared of me for some reason.”

Carlos laughs. “You say ‘nigga’ like a fuckin KKK, yo.”

A rank odor fills the living room. It’s thick and stifling. Carlos gags.

“One of them shit,” Dallas says.

“You think?” Carlos covers his nose and mouth with his T-shirt. “It’s that nigga. He shit. You gotta change his diaper, dog.”

“Fuck you. You do it.”

“No way.”

Dallas shoots up and walks over to the black resident. “Nasty motherfucker. Take your pants down.”

The black man whines and rubs his hands together impulsively; he has the mind of a six-year-old.

Carlos grins, watching. He starts to laugh. “Take that nigga’s pants off for him, Dallas. Ha ha.”

Dallas mutters, “Fuckin’ retard,” and savagely jerks down the man’s sweatpants. The man tenses up and freezes, paralyzed with fear.

As soon as the sweatpants are down around the man’s ankles, the stench becomes greater, a gust of rotten biomaterial.

Carlos cackles, jackal-like, and points mockingly at Dallas. “Change that shit, nigga. His diaper full.”

“Fuck this,” Dallas says, ripping the heavy, wet diaper off the man and flinging it at the TV. Watery feces splatter the RCA.

Wet shit runs down the screen, obscuring Bob Barker’s face behind a mask of filth.

“Sick bitch,” Dallas says, and spits on the frightened resident. He then breaks into a frenzy of erratic blows, punching the defiled man about the head and body. The resident squeals and cowers, curling into a ball.

Dallas abruptly stops throwing punches, winded.

Carlos stands up. “Look at him. You ain’t even draw blood.”

“Shut up.”

The frustration breaks and a freedom dawns, like a clean stimulant mainlined. No adults. No supervision. This house is THEIRS.

“Yo,” Carlos says, sadism sheening his eyeballs. “Go into the bedroom. That bitch. See what she like.”

“The girl got Down syndrome.”

“So what? Down syndrome bitches got pussies.”

The bedroom’s decorated like a child’s; lots of pink and stuffed animals. The fat girl with Down syndrome, probably 19 or 20 years old, is sitting on the floor cradling a dirty Cabbage Patch doll when Dallas walks in.

Carlos finds some cans of vanilla custard in the cupboard and a funnel in the garage. He boils the custard in a pot, and once it’s bubbling and hot, he takes it over to a seemingly catatonic elderly man lying on the couch.

“Let’s see if I can get you up, old man,” Carlos says, yanking up the old man’s sweater, exposing the feeding tube in the abdomen. Carlos rips the tube out and flings it across the room. The hole bleeds a little. He jabs the funnel into the aperture, brutally widening the hole; the aged cataleptic doesn’t move an inch.

Carlos pours the thin, scorching pudding into the funnel. He imagines the scalding, blistering damage happening in the stomach. The invaded man doesn’t scream or even moan, but he does writhe a little, trembling. His mouth yawns wide, soundless, and his lips quiver.

“Show me your tits,” Dallas says to the chubby mongoloid girl. “Fat bitches like you got big ones.”

Dallas rips the neck of the girl’s shirt, tearing it down around her belly. Large white bra.

“Why you look scared? I’m not going to hurt you.”

The girl doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening. Dallas unzips his jeans and pulls his cock out.

“Here. Put it in your mouth.” Dallas palms the back of the girl’s head and throatfucks her until she chokes, strings of thick saliva depending from her chin.

Carlos puts lit cigarettes out on a wheelchair-bound granny’s grayed, wrinkled thighs. She yips, helpless; the embers burn into flesh and hiss, leaving raw, spherical brandings. He crams his hand into the old woman’s underwear and rips out a handful of pubic hair.

Dallas positions the girl on all fours on the bed. “You got a fat ass,” he says, squeezing the bare cheeks hard, leaving behind red fingerprints.

The girl howls as Dallas rams his shampoo-slathered cock into her asshole.

The mentally handicapped black resident begins throwing a fit. He gets on his knees and starts pounding his temples with his knuckles.

“Hey, hey,” Carlos says. “Don’t hit yourself. Hit this old bitch. She my ashtray.”

Carlos seizes the black man’s wrists and pulls him toward the granny.

“Go on, you retarded nigga,” Carlos says, stepping back. “Hit her.”

The man is hysterical; his mouth agape, tears spilling down his face.

Carlos loses patience. “Here. I’ll help you.”

Carlos grabs the man’s wrists and forces him to batter the old lady’s face until her nose is pouring blood. The black resident wails; Carlos laughs, raving.

“I got a better idea, yo,” Carlos says. He goes into the kitchen and rummages through drawers.

Dallas thrusts, his stomach battering her ass, and spurts come into the bawling girl’s large intestine. He says, “Don’t tell anyone what happened,” and leaves the bedroom. The girl doesn’t move, trauma making a statue of her; she doesn’t move for a full hour after Carlos and Dallas depart from the house.

As Dallas nears where the hallway opens into the living room, he hears Carlos shouting, encouraging, “That’s it, nigga! SMASH, NIGGA! BASH THAT BITCH!” Dallas hears the sound of something heavy hitting something wet.

“Look what I got this nigga to do, yo!” Carlos is pleased with himself.

Dallas looks: the black retard is clumsily bludgeoning the wheelchair-bound old woman with a meat tenderizer. There is blood everywhere; the left half of the lady’s face is shredded and swelling. The hammer pounds the woman’s profile into mashed, dripping meat.

“Holy fuck,” Dallas says. “She dead?”

Carlos shrugs. “I don’t know, nigga. Bitch wasn’t much alive in the first place.”

Skull shows through the wrecked flesh. The gone black man continues swinging the tenderizer.

“Let’s bounce,” Dallas says. “He gonna kill that bitch.”

“You set a retard in motion, they don’t stop,” Carlos says, grinning sadistically, practically drooling.

***

In downtown Seattle, at the La Quinta Inn and Suites on 8th Avenue, there are two conferences being held over the weekend. One is a private meeting of NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association; the other is the Ninth Extraordinary Session of the Islamic Summit Conference, organized by the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Two of the Muslims attending the conference meet in a hotel room. They speak quietly and gravely in Arabic.

NAMBLA members converse over lunch. The excitement is electric, airborne.

“I knew a boy, adorable kid, he had apotemnophilia. BIID.”

“I’ve heard of that. What is it, again?”

“Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Or xenomelia, maybe? I forget.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. What made me think of him is the Lott Art demo tomorrow. Dolls. This boy met someone online, some guy in Thailand. The man posted that he was looking for a boy to become his living doll. The boy, well, he didn’t want his limbs, felt like they didn’t belong to him.”

“I’m interested. You have my interest.”

“I heard this guy, who was rich, flew the boy out to Thailand and had some surgery done. Had the boy’s arms and legs amputated, had his vocal cords snipped, and had his eyeballs removed. All surgical, all clean. Guy posted some pics on 4chan of the boy, who he keeps in a box under his bed.”

“Sexy.”

“Satan’s Cavern. Coffee bar. I used to go there. Process Church.”

“Could we get some more nacho sauce, please?”

“We’d watch them sacrifice Alsatians. Dogs. In San Francisco. Wild times.”

“Parsons. He was trying to conjure an elemental in his garage. Blew himself up. His mom killed herself the next day. The police found home movies of Parsons’ mom screwing the family dog.”

“A German Shepherd.”

“Goat of Mendes. I had a badge.”

“Necrophilia. Grave robbing.”

“Release the fiend that lies within. Bestiality. Ritual murder.”

“Nazis. Illuminati. Occult research. They say the Jews walked into the gas ovens without being threatened or forced. They used mind control to make them just waltz to their deaths.”

“Pepsi. No ice.”

“White slavery stuff. They also skinned canines and drained the blood.”

“1968. Four Pi. Hitchhikers near Boulder Creek. Some members would even volunteer. But usually, the sacrifices were runaways or drifters.”

“Klaus Kinski.”

“In 2005, Mary Ann was ripped apart by dogs at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. They ate every bit of her. Nothing but bones left.”

“Untermeyer Park. Found a bunch of skinned and disfigured Alsatians there. Son of Sam attended gatherings there, too. Satanic cult. Blood in the garden.”

“O.T.O. solar lodge. They had children chained up inside steel boxes in the desert. Fun in a box.”

“The Spiral Staircase house. Topanga. They were doing human sacrifice there, too. Children were like candy, going around everywhere, passed around.”

“Thank you, young lady.”

“Four Pi. Child trafficking in New York and Staten Island. They found a dead little girl with a big black candle shoved up her snatch and a goat’s hoof in her mouth.”

“Black Cross. Satanic hit squad.”

“Murders. Gang-raping teenage girls in abandoned buildings.”

***

Tsutomo, in one of the hotel’s big conference rooms, coordinates with his assistants for the presentation. They position the eldritch dolls in lewd poses on long, foldout tables. Since this is a meeting of NAMBLA, Tsutomo brought mostly boy dolls.

***

Martin, eager, primed for the end, drives down Pine Street, amphetamines dirtying his blood with bad energy. He is adorned in a wool bisht that has been liberally defaced by obscenities scrawled in black Sharpie: “ISLAM IS FOR PEDOPHILE FAGGOTS,” “FUCK MUHAMMAD,” “MUSLIMS (HEART) BOY BUTTS,” and so on, as well as cartoonish doodles of dicks and balls beside Arabic verses.

Two youngsters, a white kid and a Hispanic kid, run out into the middle of the road waving their arms, forcing Martin to brake.

The Hispanic one, shirtless and scrawny, walks over to Martin’s window. “You give us a ride downtown, mister?”

Martin doesn’t even think about it; everything now for him is YES: YES to death, YES to madness, YES to recklessness.

“Get in,” Martin says.

The two kids pile into his backseat. They say their names are Carlos and Dallas.

***

The conference rooms—the one for avowed pedophiles, the other for devout Muslims—are separated by a crimped wall, more of a shade than a wall, that pulls out accordion-like. The auditorium-style rooms are actually one room, partitioned by this wall/shade.

In one room, Tsutomo orates to the crowd of mostly frumpy, bespectacled child molesters. He unveils his latest niche model: a replica of nine-year-old Aisha, the Prophet’s kiddie wife.

Two Muslims at the conference are uninterested in the imam’s discourse. They broodingly check their cell phones for texts, posts, and so on. They have a full duffel bag on the floor between them.

***

“GIVE US THE FUCKIN MONEY,” Carlos snarls. Dallas restrains Martin’s arms while Carlos holds a butterfly knife to Martin’s neck.

“Take it and kill me,” Martin says calmly. Zen.

“Get it,” Carlos says. Dallas digs into Martin’s back pocket, extracting the wallet.

Carlos, amped on meth and whatever else, starts stabbing Martin in the side of his face. The sharp point punctures right through Martin’s cheek in four places clean through, blood welling out of the holes and drenching Martin’s profaned Muslim garb.

Martin groans and covers his knifed face.

Carlos and Dallas bolt out of Martin’s SUV. They leave the doors ajar and disappear into the Seattle night, a little richer and a little further down the line of no return. They are motes of danger in the murk of darkness…then they’re gone.

***

Martin, bleeding profusely, makes it to the La Quinta Inn and Suites. He leaves his vehicle in the middle of the busy street, abandoning it.

“Subhanaka allahumma wa bi hamdika wa tabara kasmuka wa ta’ala jadduka wa la ilaha ghairuka.”

A hotel clerk’s face goes shaky with alarm, seeing Martin. “Sir, I’m calling 911. I’m calling 911.”

Martin trudges past check-in to the conference room, the double doors labeled with Arabic script. He barges in.

“Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” Martin shouts to the gathered Muslims, disrupting prayer. Martin raises his arms to the sky, making a target of himself. He closes his eyes as the two Muslims quickly unzip the duffel bag and draw G36 assault rifles from it. Martin knew the two would be here; he’d promised them, via email, he’d show up.

Automatic gunfire spurs screams and panic and then drowns the screams out. Each rifle has a 100-round dual-drum magazine, and the two Muslims expertly unload all 200 bullets.

Martin’s body is blasted into ragged damage. A third of his head, the upper-left quadrant, is sprayed across the double doors of the conference room. The bullets hit and shred through Martin’s graffiti-vandalized Islamic getup.

A stray bullet pierces the dividing wall and cores Tsutomo’s skull. The designer falls dead onto the latest Art Lott child-sex doll…Tsutomo’s ghost uncoils from his body and enters the Aisha doll, where it remains trapped for several decades.

***

AND IN PARADISE, MUSLIMS AND NAMBLA SPIRITS FUCK ALL THE CHILDREN…AND IN NOTHINGNESS, THE SUICIDES DON’T THINK AND ARE NONEXISTENT AND THEREFORE AT PEACE…AND ON EARTH, DRUG-ADDICTED LOWLIFES DESTROY THEMSELVES AND EVERYTHING AROUND THEM.

AND THIS GOES ON, FOREVER AND EVER, WITHOUT REPRIEVE.