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  “Ugh!” HelKat84 grunted over the computer speakers. She recoiled from the image, eyes squinched shut like he’d proffered a photo of children blown to pieces in a drone strike rather than a pulsing boner. The resolution on webcams always left much to be desired, so it wasn’t like she could see Rand McNally tributaries of veins spreading the good word about his arousal through the length of his girth, but if she wanted to act like it was the first time Cinderella went to ball, Nick was all for it. This was the kind of reaction he relished best.

  HelKat84 finally realized she had the power to disconnect this live feed to genital horror, and she groped for her mouse with one hand. The other she kept in front of her eyes to block him, like he could glaze her face through the computer screen. E-facial, the next stage of human evolution.

  “Sick bastard!” she shouted.

  HelKat84 has disconnected this chat.

  Nick sat down again, grinning ear to ear. Would she report him? It wouldn’t be the first time. Nick changed his ISP address like some people changed their Facebook status. There were always ways around banishment.

  He went ahead and blocked her. The prospect of a sequel down the line was amusing in theory—just when you thought it was safe to InterphaZ … —but it gave them time to process the encounter and reflect on what they should have said for maximum damage, a tirade against him and his ilk. They could run these little mental fire drills and assure his surprise reappearance (with a new name and profile) displayed the law of diminishing returns. Better to hit and run.

  “Cock and awe, bitch.”

  This had been a good night with consistently satisfying reactions—disgust, horror, anger. Some nights were less fulfilling, prompting only indifference, boredom, and sarcasm. Is that all you’ve got? My webcam doesn’t have a microscope feature, little man. Not tonight, though. They cringed, they shuddered. One even shrieked. The cross in her avatar suggested big time Christian beliefs. She was probably kneeling in broken glass and flagellating herself. Nick’s personal project tomorrow during the misery of the call center would be to craft a more religious-friendly profile. That would be fishing with dynamite, something he should have considered long ago. Few were more predisposed to be forever haunted by the specter of Nick’s throbbing gristle.

  It was funny to think he would never have done something like this in different circumstances. On a crowded bus or in line at Starbucks, never. There were real world penalties for that, jail time from the cops, pepper spray, and sharp fingernails from the civilians. Doing it online in the privacy of his own apartment, though, may have been unwanted, but it was tolerated, the same as someone texting at a movie. You go to a theater, you expect to see the glowing screen of a smartphone during the feature presentation. You go online, someone’s throwing a dick in your face. That was just the way of the world now.

  He hadn’t been thinking of doing it when he bought his webcam. He just expected to chat with different bitches who would get naked on their own cams every week, if not every night (law of averages), but it hadn’t worked out that way. When the familiar disappointment shadowed his latest attempt to escape his incessant boredom in life, he was inspired by a new idea with a different objective. This one was working. He was winning.

  A chime played through his speakers. New email alert. He clicked over to the tab. Another InterphaZ notification of his latest expulsion. Failure to uphold community standard … conduct unbecoming … violation of membership agreement … blah, blah. It meant about as much as dying in a video game. It was a fine paid with Monopoly money.

  He frowned at the subject line of another new email: SAVAGE YOUR PENIS B4 ITS 2 LATE! That was a far cry from the usual promises of genital size enhancement and aphrodisiacs. Maybe it was supposed to pique his curiosity enough to read it (fail). It must work on someone out there, maybe the sort of person who thought they’d been personally selected to play cash mule for the Prince of Nigeria.

  Nick marked the junk mail as spam, for all the good it would do, and closed the tab.

  His preferred notification of a chat request from InterphaZ—the quaint sound of a ringing phone—brought him back to the mission at hand. This was surprising since Nick was supposed to be locked out again and had expected the need to switch to a new ISP and profile, presto-change-o before another chat encounter. The notification came from user nerXam83, the avatar a photo of some primo jailbait. She might have handled more dicks than a porn set fluffer or maybe the only cramming she did was for the SATs. (Or as a popular meme once said, why not both?) It was hard to tell these days. The 83 was questionable, but it didn’t necessarily mean year of birth. If it was just some creepy guy, he could pull the plug easily enough.

  Nick accepted. The window appeared in the same sacred place where so many InterphaZ users of yore found themselves blinded by a wall of his junk.

  Nick’s eyelids vanished in comical surprise. NerXam83 was definitely a man, a man who had bested the master of Cock and Awe at his own game. There was a twist to his version of surprise scrotal maneuvers, however. NerXam83 was afflicted. Like something out of a medical textbook passed around in a macabre parlor game to see who puked first. Pustules spread across the shaft of the dick, filling his chat window in a formation like bubble wrap. Perhaps it was the delay from the feed where a second here and there was lost, but Nick would swear the fleshy growths pulsated as he watched. Unfortunately, the resolution of this window to repulsion seemed mysteriously like Blu-ray quality to better disgust him with its palette of moist reds and yellows. Some nodules were blood blister-like, while others oozed with a custard syrup in milky tributaries he could see gradually advancing over and between the protuberances of inflamed skin like time lapse photography. NerXam83’s presentation front and center on the world’s sharpest webcam opened the coral reef of penile rot currently festering inches away.

  In Nick’s shock he looked far longer than reason dictated, both grossed out and engrossed by this abomination, the same as he would have been by an animal with two heads. Perhaps more so because this was the same species … someone who even shared the same pastime.

  “Ugh!” Nick finally groaned and disconnected the chat without looking directly at it another second, lest he turn to stone. He needed his own eye wash station.

  Some distance from the computer seemed like a good thing, so Nick made his way to the bathroom down the hall. An afterimage remained. What could have caused that? Did he bang some leper whore with syphilis near Chernobyl? Nick didn’t think he could have shown his face to the world after contracting something so hideous, much less the spoiled genitals that were part and parcel of it.

  It had to be fake. Dude could just be some special FX wizard looking to freak people out, that was all.

  Sicko.

  Mystery solved, he intended to relieve himself and then get back to the business of flashing his junk in the faces of unwary women on InterphaZ.

  Another bone strike of Cock and Awe, that’s the ticket.

  He unzipped his pants, then forgot all about his special FX theory and plans for scrotal domination as the burst of pain ignited at the release of his bladder.

  “Ow, fuck!”

  He twitched like a frog hooked up to a car battery, the entirety of his world condensed to an inch of blazing fury at the tip of his organ. It was like pissing napalm and he had failed to fireproof his dickhole. His keening wail accompanied this slow eternity of urination, unself-conscious about the thin walls between him and his neighbor. Right now all that mattered, all that existed, was the geyser of molten lava. The last drops singed as well, as if they had claws slashing through membrane on the way out.

  Nick had shut his eyes tight against the onslaught and now opened them to a world blurred by tears of pain. His aim was scattershot from the spasms, leaving splashes of red across the seat of the commode, the roll of toilet paper, the floor, the wastebasket.

  That’s blood, he thought dumbly, cold sweat beading in his scalp. All of that was blood.

  He t
enderly shook off, grimacing at the wetness on his fingers. He already dreaded a couple of hours when the call of nature forced him through this process of torture again. The first time might have only been a warm-up—

  His train of thought derailed.

  Wetness on his fingers? He didn’t think he’d somehow sprayed himself even with all of his cringing a moment ago, but expected to see the same bloody excretion when he examined his hand. It wasn’t, though. It still had traces of blood, but more suggestive of pus. A runny wax not unlike what he saw on the computer a moment ago.

  He laughed with barely suppressed hysteria because the cause and effect was so impossible. Even if nerXam83 was one apartment over instead of another state or continent altogether, it was no more logical. Nick only looked at a computer screen.

  It went viral, he thought and almost laughed again. It made an ominous sense, however crazy it was, especially when he considered the circumstances. Banned by InterphaZ but still able to receive that one request from the site. Now this.

  Nick’s guts double and triple knotted as he stood in front of the mirror and examined his penis. Perhaps it was largely psychological, but now that he knew the infection was there, his shaft felt tingly and hot, as if he could sense new pustules forming on a microscopic level. He held his length gingerly by the head, inspecting the column with mounting horror. Several sores had burst already from his tightened grip during the throes of anguish. A cobweb of stringy flesh dangled on the underside, having peeled off from the base. The layer revealed was raw, crustacean red.

  Nick met his own stricken gaze in the mirror, mouth agape, his sickly pale reflection commiserating: Are you seeing this?

  Unfortunately he was, and no reset from a universal do-over restored the integrity of his genitalia.

  He had some gauze in one of the bathroom drawers. He didn’t know what else to do but wrap himself up. Smear the bandages with some triple antibiotic (assuming quadruple antibiotic didn’t exist) and pray for a miraculous return to its pristine state while he went through life in the meantime looking like a stunt dick for Claude Rains.

  He reached for the drawer, and that was the point when the corona of his cock seemed to lose solidity and adopt the texture of a sponge. His index finger and thumb pushed trenches into either side instantaneously. He shrieked and withdrew his pincer grip, but the caverns remained. A piece dislodged within the crumpled pillar and dropped to the counter.

  Nick looked around frantically, as if a bottle of Acme Dickhead Skin Regrowth OintmentTM would magically appear somewhere. It didn’t.

  The impulse now was to call for an ambulance, but what would he say? My dick is rotting before my fucking eyes because of some freak’s webcam. Hurry! When they finally accepted it wasn’t a crank call and actually sent someone, what could they do?

  SAVAGE YOUR PENIS B4 ITS 2 LATE.

  Yes, that was what the strange email said. It seemed no more coincidental than nerXam83’s request. He gingerly walked back to the bedroom, stripping off his shirt so it didn’t catch his groin and exacerbate the damage. He launched his email again, heedless of the rancid juices left behind on the mouse and keys and the pitter-patter of droplets on the carpet from his sores, like melting icicles. The nausea in his stomach churned with greater urgency.

  At last he found the email in his spam folder and opened it. The sender name contained the word InterphaZ (and “no-reply”). There was no text, only an embedded .GIF file of a man with his sex organs on a flat table surface as he swung a meat cleaver at the scrotal pouch, an unsettling smile on his face. An animated balloon obscured the actual hit, filled with the word THWACK!

  That was savage, all right. Not exactly the most tempting prospect for a potential cure.

  B4 ITS 2 LATE.

  2 late for what?

  He looked forlornly at the disgusting thing attached to him, which had been perfectly normal not ten minutes ago. The disease progressed like an old school werewolf transformation with superimposed special FX, a process rapidly achieved.

  “No,” Nick said. “Oh God, no.”

  The sac of his scrotum showed burgeoning, bloated pearls emerging between the furrows. Hundreds of them, like mutant spider eggs primed to hatch an adipocerous offspring. The burning, tingling sensation erupted in full, with tiny needles prickling every millimeter of skin. The sensation was maddening.

  There could be no doubt—it was spreading. Within minutes it had already done this much to him. By the time paramedics arrived, it could be far worse.

  B4 ITS 2 LATE.

  Nick hurried to the kitchen, the droplets now more poignant against linoleum. As he reached for the electric carving knife, he assuaged himself with the countless miracles of modern medicine. People lost body parts all the time and had them sewn back, although Nick of course didn’t want his “gangroin” reattached. But with practical advances in technology, they could basically spin straw into dick, couldn’t they? He wasn’t out of options, as long as he survived this. The solidity of the carving knife handle reassured him. It featured a slide button rather than a trigger, so it would keep cutting if he passed out.

  He called 9-1-1 first for an ambulance, reporting massive blood loss from a carving knife mishap. He claimed it was his fingers since they probably wouldn’t get here any faster anyway. They assured him someone was coming and he hung up, his eyes blurry again.

  He revved the carving knife as he took hold of everything in his other hand, cupping beneath his testicles with the palm, his fingers and thumb forming a C-shape. Any doubts about the necessity of his course of action were neutralized in short order with one last humiliation of the flesh. The patchwork of pustules slipped beneath his fingers like some kind of revolving cylinder, both on his dick and the sac beneath. Skin barely adhered to the organ now. It pulled loose from the stalk with ease, lasagna-colored meat beneath. The loose rope of dangling flesh slid away, abracadabra. It sloughed as a shed snakeskin, popping and bursting in the few places still attached, liquid tendrils stretching like taffy to reveal shimmering tissue. The underside tore with it in a burst as if something had detonated beneath. The sac detached in tandem like a wet rubber glove in his palm. The testicles and cords dropped like dead jellyfish, oysters in a Jell-O mold upon his quivering hand. The emptied pouch hung limp like a flap of torn curtain, the penile skin like the empty husk of some insect draped in his palm. It all clumped wetly to the floor. He watched it go like a soldier unable to hold in his own intestines. There was curiously no pain, other than the trauma of the sickening sight, the nerve endings perhaps jellified now. Clinging contents of the pouch sagged like syrup, halfway to the floor. His actual penis was but a strange glistening tendril apart from the head, which still had its skin and something of its shape save the trenches left from his fingers. Otherwise he beheld something virtually skinless, corroding.

  On the plus side, he had much less he’d need to cut now.

  Nick engaged the carving knife again. Whatever whimpers he made were drowned out by the whirring blades. He locked in on his target, a miraculous sliver of pale flesh at the base of his organ. There was pain at the root where the true skin remained, but far less than he expected. Perhaps that was the silver lining to an impromptu session of unlicensed surgery to rid yourself of your liquefying fuckmeat. He screamed anyway, for this insanity that had dethroned the natural order of his life. The blades shredded through the tissue effortlessly, an explosion of crimson giblets blown across the kitchen counter and sink, the refrigerator, his stomach, thighs, and feet. He held his other hand up to block the blowback before he gave new meaning to “facial tissue.” In seconds it was over—barely longer than his webcam session with HelKat84.

  Nick left the carving knife grinding, the circuit breaker in his mind so overloaded he couldn’t remember how to turn it off at that moment. He looked at it as if he’d never seen such a thing before and didn’t know how it wound up in his hand, but finally connected enough dots to see the slide button and remember its function as “
on/off.” Simple, sane. He was placing his thumb over the button when the awful tingling suddenly lit up across all the fingers of his right hand—the one with which he’d held himself in the bathroom. Even within the spatters from his operation, he saw the blisters forming like islands in a bloody ocean, felt them shifting beneath like tectonic plates.

  B4 ITS 2 LATE.

  His 9-1-1 call would be truthful after all.

  Unsure if he heard an approaching siren or if it was just the grinding serenade of the blades, Nick withdrew his thumb and guided the carving knife over to his fingers, trying not to think about all the places now covered in his fluids.

  <<====>>

  AUTHOR’S STORY NOTE

  I’m part of the last generation who remembers a world where cell phones and Internet were not so commonplace. It is a strange phenomenon where these advances have reshaped our reality so drastically in the last 20ish years, which has somehow resulted in something as primitive as a lot of guys on an endless crusade to share pictures of their genitals with as many unsuspecting women as possible. As technology and vocabulary evolve (although with the latter, “devolve” might be more appropriate), I started thinking about something going “viral” as a more physical manifestation in its own evolution. Other terms like “leaked” and “hacked” seemed to fit in quite nicely. I love the body horror of David Cronenberg and it was fun to explore an idea that seemed so Cronenbergian, however tangential—or in the case of “Junk,” tan-genital.

  THE CENACLE

  ROBERT LEVY

  From Shadows and Tall Trees Vol. 7

  Editor: Michael Kelly

  Undertow Publications

  The widow waits for the service to be over. The incomprehensible liturgy of atonal Hebrew gutturals, millennia of meaning resonant for so many but not her. She’d never learned the language of her ancestors, never considered that her supposed faith might lend her any comfort until now. Her husband’s coffin thirteen feet away and sunk six more, the pine box lowered south from the light of a sun invisible behind dreary February clouds. She can’t face the hole so she stares down at her feet in the mud-dirtied snow, stockinged legs like sticks beneath her long coat. Everyone in black, from her stepdaughter to the rabbi to the cemetery attendants and scattered among the Brooklyn gravestones, the land blotted out by the unyielding blizzard that had buried the city in its own white grave. Even still the snow swirls.