
Murder at The Club
The moon hounds wail in the distance under the influence of moonshine. Aren’t they adorable? Snipping their shadows, tucking these black clippings in astrophysics tote bags for later, like they’re saving them for some cosmic voodoo job down the line. Maybe some poor bastard will take a wrong turn down a piss-stained alley on a waning gibbous night, and those hounds will unpack their wrath. That same night, I witnessed a murder at The Club. Nobody screamed ’cause nobody had a mouth.
Mr. O and his twin brother — also Mr. O — are two ripe young sons of the Rutaceae family, the youthful juice from the illustrious tree-gang clan. They often pivot joint to joint, rolling their bodies to satiate their terrible music taste and materialise their citrus pursuits. Hungering for sweetness, lust, and a slice of profit from their vitamin enterprise, both brothers have an appetite for C. And not the kind that bleeds; that tends to be bad for business. To Mr. Os, nightclubs were precious pearly lairs full of narratives, dens for writers, lovelorn tear-tattooed girls, and drifters who acquired infamous titles for their orgasmic E usage, tab after tab. The neon lamps frenetically flickered shades of all conceivable colours, pounding the core of a shady clubbing society that consumes the sadness of a desolate night.

That was precisely the kind of dive where Big A would undoubtedly go sniffing after a hell-whipped day of fruit stall rot. Pursuing aromas and poor decisions like a biped drunk on Greek anise. Big A enters The Club. Known for harbouring the most exquisite selection of liquid poems anyone could sleep on, The Club’s orchard is most spectacular when loaded seed holders are stumbling to juke with crooked limbs and borrowed grace. No one’s perfect until the lights go off. Newton’s pupil hits the downtown setting with fumes and sweats, and the grove sirens crawl out of their bodies and ooze to get some of that. And no one’s perfect until they peck Big A’s fallen star. The O brothers squint their juices, pondering if mischief hands should rattle at A’s cage, making him another pulp-page of their empire. ’Cause no one enjoys a big shot in their garden’s pen.

Like an electric Watusi dancer jigging on a busted bottle, Madame A arrives — all bumpy skin, creamy curves, and downy galvanic tongue. Sparkling eyelashes smooth the doomsday fringes, and the trembling bartender stirs a velvety cocktail in her wake. An environmental impact, some would say, while others simply perch on the dancefloor railings. The brothers never caught that alligator-skinned fruity feline around here, and that’s the type of thing that breeds family quarrels or tightens pith knots. Big A moved when the brothers stalled — gravitating, stem wagging, towards this fresh pulp in town, leaving a trail of envy throughout the room. Wretched is the life of the undecided.
Under ferocious UV light, the twins’ glowing bodies of sin engendered a fungal scheme. Slithering into the secret folds of their corporation — the bread of their living — they produced a teeny hexagonal-shaped solution, a remedy that never failed in times of need. P is the market name for Fleming Industries, Penicillium.
To the squeezing of pads and knobs, sliders and jogs, and on the hammered beat of hellish racket, the citruses swung to a misguided flick of the drop. There goes the pill — slipped, smudged, and rubbed right under Big A’s nose — one last laced hop. So they thought…
A three-hundred-pound mule, a howlin’ howl, and the rain hoisting beggars’ bottles could never harvest Big A’s swag. No E, no P, no alphabet soup would wheel this Big Apple on a barrow. Baking in a brain-oven, Big A’s eyes burst passion spores while Madame A, caught in a sticky-sweet enlace, watched the bloom with dismay. The Os gaze at the heartbreaking scene, grinning mischievously as Madame A untangles and hobbles back like a marionette on a bad string. If not for that last snap of Big A’s stem, Madame A would be Mr. Os C tonight — just another crop in their basket. But this ain’t one. That stem swished fast and deep, a crack in the night, and the fruit, sweet and soft, lay punctured on the floor. As limp as a broken puppet, Madame A’s body settles into the silence, with nothing left but the stuttering buzz of a hiccupping neon lamp. It’s just another bruised fruit tossed away.
The cops wouldn’t take long, and I — a T in an S suit, fooling those who still think I’m a vegetable — had to unhook from the balustrades fast, stagger down the stairs with a cough in my knees, straighten my jumbled calyx toupee, shake my phoney achene, and hit the dusty, cold street. I don’t wanna be the poor bastard buried in some police mumbo-jumbo paperwork. How the hell would I explain I’m a Tomato?
And now, this tomato has got to leak — and there’s nothing better than a calm, off-the-eye, wall-to-wall backstreet for a smooth, squishy exit.
