Lo(o)se(r)

"I'm gonna fucking cum, mate!"

Mark stood up, the neon blue dildo that had been pummeling his asshole for the past hour through the gloryhole slicking from his ass with an audible, echoing plop. He turned and watched as the dildo was replaced by a penis no longer than his own but much fatter. As he knelt down and swallowed the cock into his mouth, he suddenly realized that the penis itself was really no wider or thicker than his own: rather, it was the copious amount of warts, scabs, and dried pus and cum caking its surface that gave it its impressive girth. His own cock hardened and he gulped the diseased member into his mouth until his petite, turned up nose was enmeshed in the stinkiest bush of pubes he'd ever encountered.

The cum was several thick strings of slime bulleted against his throat and tasted of chlorine infected with shit. He almost gagged. But didn't. Instead, he flicked his fingers over his four-incher twice and came against the wall in front of him. As he swallowed the last of the bitter cum, he watched as a fistful of British pound notes and coins spilled through the gloryhole, emphasized by a hybrid Brit-Aussie-accented "For fuck's sake!"

Scrambling the bills and change into his pocket, Mark jumped to his feet, zipped and buckled his pants, and took off, the ghosty form of Detective Jorge T. Vinos flitting by him oblivious as he stepped out into the black hallway leading to the store's front. He centered himself behind the counter lazily, his elbows on the formica, his chin in his hands.

The door creaked open. And out stepped a strip of a man smeared inside a black trench coat, a beaten brown leather satchel strapped over his shoulder and across his chest. His cheekbones were sharp as ice, as if the slick, porous skin had just been poured over his skull and gelled. The man's hair was oily and thick strands swooped over his protruding brow. Mark's ears boiled with his blood as his eyes narrowed in focus. "Jesus Christ," he said, "I can't believe I just sucked your dick-"

"I can't either, to be quite frank," said Rapin' Ripley. "It's quite the nasty thing, innit?"

Before Ripley could reach inside his trench coat, Mark was over the counter, snatching the pistol from the man's hand with one fist as the knuckles of his other fist landed square on his rival's mouth. Ripley's ass stomped the floor of the Dennis Cooper Reading Room for Youngsters with a crack. He put his hand to his mouth and shook his head as he wiped blood from his teeth. Mark cocked the pistol, jamming the barrel flush against Ripley's bony forehead.

"For fuck's sake, mate, don't kill me," said Ripley.

"Give me one reason not to-"

"There's another bloke in the back-"

"I'll kill him too-"

Ripley moaned, the blood gushing from both his lips. He bit down on both, then sighed. "Okay, okay, listen." Wiping the blood on his sleeve, he looked up the gun's barrel at Mark. "For fuck's sake, man, I need you-"

"What?"

"I need you-"

"For what?"

"To stop him-"

"Who? Detective-"

"No. Him-" Ripley's thin eyebrows met his bangs.

"Dude, what the fuck?"

"Bieber-"

"What about Justin?"

"I need you to help me stop him-"

Mark edged the gun another fraction of an inch into thin skin covering the bridge of the man's nose.

"Listen. Hear me out, fella. Just give me a couple minutes. Then, if you don't agree with what you hear, kill me. I don't care. All I can do is try-" Ripley slowly reached for the bag at his waist. "My computer. I'll show you."

Ripley extracted the smallest computer Mark had ever seen from the satchel, opened it, typed furiously with two fingers, then handed the tiny machine up to him. Mark balanced it in his free hand, his eyes widening:

A large auditorium, crammed with hundreds - thousands? - of cheering men, women, and children, all dressed in the same garb: brown uniforms - tight jackets, pants that billowed outwards at the thighs, knee-high black boots. The camera focuses, then zooms in to the podium, upon which stands...Justin Bieber. Similarly clad, Bieber speaks loudly into the microphone in fluent German. As the crowd quiets, Bieber raises his arms. Then when there is total silence, he's off, his voice deep and barking, arms swinging, fingers pointing. At the end of every paragraph, he pauses and the crowd rises, their right arms flung straight into the air before them. They sit, and he launches again-

"Yeah?" said Mark, looking back to Ripley and uncocking the gun.

"He's fucking evil-"

"There's no such thing as evil. Or good-"

"Yes, there fucking is. And that's it right there. There's right, mate, and there's wrong-"

"There's no such thing as right or wrong, either-"

"Really?"

Mark nodded.

"Your parents still alive, mate?"

"My mother, yes. My father died in the war-"

"Sorry about that." Ripley dipped his head. Then just as quickly regained Mark's eyes. "Well, take your mom, for instance. You walk in your house one day, there's five guys brutally raping her-"

"Hey!"

"Let me finish, fella." Ripley shook his head as Mark pulled the gun from between his eyes. "So you walk in on this horror. Do you just go on walking by or leave, just throw your hands up in the air and say, 'Oh, there's no right or wrong, there's no good or evil?'"

Mark shook his head. And stared into Ripley's eyes, which were almost as black as Justin's. "What's this?" He nodded to the computer, which still displayed the screaming brown suits and his boyfriend. "What's evil about this?"

"Mark, can I call you Mark? Okay. Mark, this is evil incarnate. Justin Bieber, your boyfriend-"

"How do you know he's my boyfriend?"

"My organization knows everything about Bieber-"

"Your organization?"

"Yes. Fighters Against Genocide-"

"FAG? How nice-"

"Just a coincidence, that. Besides, we're Brits, and we're all smokers. Though not of the cock variety necessarily-"

Mark's eyes rolled, and he shoved the pistol into the front of his jeans as he made his way back behind the counter, setting the computer down next to the cash register. Ripley got up slowly, adjusted the big blue strap-on in his satchel, tapped at the dried blood on his lips a few times, and skipped - Mark almost laughed at this - over to the counter. He leaned against the glass case that supported the counter and which held the store's most expensive items - stainless steel anal retractors and cadaver skin covered fists - and looked at Mark. "We need you, Mark," he said.

"For what?"

Ripley spun the computer around, whipping his fingers around the keyboard and mousepad so fast that his hands were a blur. "Listen," he said.

A few pops and cracks, then Justin's voice over and over, interspersed between cacophonous whistles, shrieks, and burnouts:

I AM LORD I AM YOUR GOD KILL ALL NIGGERS, FAGS, AND JEWS

"What the fuck?"

"Play any Justin Bieber song backwards and that's what you get." Ripley leaned in. "Eeeeeeeviiiiiiiillll-"

Mark's brain captured clearly and in full view the moment he'd been trying to extinguish from his mind but couldn't since he'd met Justin: the boy's correcting his diction in regards to the word "niggas." Getting the shit-streaked pieces of lettuce out of his teeth had been easier than trying to get Justin's words that night out of his head. "So he's a racist?" Mark looked at Ripley. "But you're a rapist, who are you-"

"Don't believe everything you read in the paper, fella-"

"So you didn't commit all those rapes and murders-"

"Oh, I did. But I didn't discriminate. Black, white, Asian, retard, handicap, legless, it didn't matter to me." Ripley tapped the computer. "This bloke, however, is fucking evil. He's the leader of the largest-"

"Neo-Nazi?"

"Worse. The largest racist organization on the planet. They hate everybody. Even whites. They only love one thing-"

"Power?"

"No." Ripley looked around, then leaned into Mark and whispered: "Bieber-"

"Huh?"

"Why do you think all the marketing, mate? Music, videos, books, movies, interviews, internet, iPhone apps, blogs. He hates everyone who is not him. Which is why he's over-saturating the global culture with everything Bieber. He wants everyone to be like him. Or as he says, 'in his image.' Just watch, politics will be next-"

"This is fucking insane. You've got all these Muslims running around bombing-"

"Oh, they're on the radar. But with them, at least you know what you're dealing with. This Bieber is a smart fella, his organization is very insidious. They're extremely subtle blokes and cunts, mate. They won't be running up to you with a bomb. No, they have other means-"

"Mind control-"

Ripley snapped his fingers. "We have proof that 90% of all murders worldwide, whether isolated incidents or as part of war, can be traced back to Bieber's organization-"

Mark shook his head. "Dude, this is crazy-"

"What's crazy is that no one will do anything about it. Not the US, the UN, the EU, China, Russia, no one-"

Mark stared at the image on the computer, Justin standing behind the podium, his arms stretched out straight in front of him, his eyes singing black with evil intent. "Okay, let's say you're correct-"

"I am, mate-"

"How does a kid like him get so much power?"

Ripley flicked his bangs with his dirty fingers.

"His hair? Who is he, Samson?"

"It's what's under the bangs. It's what he's hiding. There's a mark-"

"Jesus Christ, you are insane-"

"It's not me who's insane, mate. It's your boyfriend. I've shown you the evidence, fella. And I've got tons more where that came from-" Ripley stopped short and looked into Mark's eyes. His own eyes widened and he shook his head. "Do not, for fuck's sake, tell me you've tossed his salad-"

"How do you know-"

"We know-"

"Oh-" Mark giggled. "Well-"

"Hmm." Ripley bent over the counter, put his face up to Mark's, an inch away. Mark could smell Ripley's cock on his own breath as it bounced off the sharp angles of Ripley's bony face and back up his nostrils. Before he could inhale another deep draught of the musky, pungent odor, which was hardening his little dick, Ripley pulled away. "Okay, you seem all right, bloke. Probably no need for de-programming. That's one of the ways he gets you: salad tossing-"

Mark didn't know whether to laugh or pull out the pistol and shoot the man between the eyes. So he just stood there and they eyed each other for what felt like hours but must've been only a few seconds until Ripley cleared his throat again while dabbing at his bruised mouth with the tattered cuff of his trench coat. "So can I depend on you, Mark?"

"What do you need from me?"

"Access. Nobody can get near him. The few we've tried have been killed-"

"Great. What if I get killed-"

"Mark, you don't fool me." Ripley laughed. "Lift up your sleeve on your left shoulder." Mark did as requested. "You don't even have a scar. Or a scratch. That bullet practically bounced off you into that poor wanker next to you. I knew right then you were special-" Ripley giggled. "You know, me and you could make a good team, mate-"

Before Mark could respond, the door to the video rooms opened. Mark and Ripley turned. Detective Jorge T. Vinos stood on the threshold, his hard cock in his left hand. Upon seeing Ripley, he yelped and reached for his shoulder holster with his free hand. But his hand didn't make it: another yelp and he grabbed his chest. His lifeless body fell flat on the floor and rolled over onto its back, the man's face a portrait of screaming horror, his hand in a death grip around his oozing cock.

Ripley turned to Mark. "Can I get one set of anal retractors?"