Evil Children and Victorian Mutations fo' yo Asses.

Ray Caesar is my new favorite artist.

First of all, he is an incredibly accomplished artist, technically--something I always appreciate (which is why I like even Thomas Kinkade, whose paintings may be sentimental tripe but MY GOD can that man handle detail and color!). But, more importantly, there's something disturbingly whimsical about his art that appeals to the disturbed little Victorian child locked inside my mind. Something tells me some of his paintings are going to inspire scenes in an upcoming novel, because one of these days I'm just going to crack already and write a book called Oneirophrenia which will not make ONE BIT of sense, but will be so eerie and strange that everyone will have to read it and try to figure it out. Like Samuel Beckett crossed with Dickens and trapped in a 1920's autopsy theatre.

Your Pegritz fix is coming, don't worry....

For those of you--and you know who you are, all two of you--who are eagerly anticipating the next Storytime with Uncle Pegritz, don't worry, they's a-comin'...I've just been taking a break from the nostalgia to get my thoughts in order for a few other projects as well. BUT! Coming soon, you will find yourself subjected to Episode #11200, "Pegritz and the Stomach-Candling Caper" and the MUCH longer, and MUCH more involved, "The Gates of Hell-Wings: or, a Visit from the Restroom Antichrist." I promise that they shall break your mind and leave you hopeless!

In the meantime, get they ass over to LeisureTown and read "There's a girl I like," because not only is it funnier than hell but it reflects my current mindstate surprisingly well.

Storytime with Uncle Pegritz, Episode #11200: "Pegritz and the Stomach-Churning Candle Caper"

Saturday night at Eat n' Fart, kaspellsgoddess and terrorfirmasky served as sounding boards for this brief tale of Pure Pegritzian Stupidity, but now I bring it to y'all in its full Manic Style glory, ribbed for your pleasure and liberally smeared with McPegritz's Special Metaphor Sauce! So make sure you're firmly ensconced in you favorite Comfy Chair, 'cause MC DCFP is about to drop a cautionary tale of stonecold munchin' on your asses.

Let us pray.

In the year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety Six, I was employed at The Book Store...which was actually a video store that also sold silly Americana bricabrac and assorted lame-ass pseudocollectible trinkets. I've many a tale concerning The Book Store and the hydrocephalic hillbilly cretins that frequented the place seeking New Releases to assuage their appetites for romantic, Sandra-Bullock-filled drivel or big bright explosions of the Action-Adventure variety, but those tales must await a future telling, for now I shall expound the subject of my stupidity rather than theirs.

During the time I worked at The Book Store, I only ever got along with one employee, a cute li'l blonde thang named Shelby. Shelby was completely and utterly awesome. She was quite easy on the eyes, shall we say, but more importantly she was quite bright and was, therefore, an excellent coworker. She and I could finish putting out all the new magazines on a Thursday morning ten times faster and ten times better than anyone else, and when it came to managing the video racks we were the acknowledged experts. Shelby had a great sense of humor, a wicked tongue raspy as a cat's with sarcasm when needed, and a husband--which was really weird, because she was only eighteen and had, apparently, been married for two or three years to a backwards-ballcap-wearing dingleberry one year her senior who, when he would arrive to pick her up from work, would sit in his big ol' rusty hooptie right in front of the store and stare daggers at my back as if I were pawing up his wifey right in front of him. Shelby found Hubbyboy's antics just as hysterical as I did, and probably talked more shite on the poor loser than I ever did...which speaks volumes about the quality of their wedded bliss, but I digress. Safe to say, though, that Shelby and I always had a great time working together...especially when we were closing the store.

Which brings us to the present narrative. It was a Tuesday night toward the end of May, 1,996 CE, and Shelby and I were closing as usual. The Book Store officially closed at 10pm on weeknights, but we prettymuch started shutting up the shop at a quarter 'til when we turned off the video monitors in the ceiling corners, shut off most of the lights, did the final video returns, and then spent the last fifteen minutes sitting around on the checkout counter waiting for the Official Time Clock to strike the 10 Spot so we could cash out the registers and head home. Hubbyboy was sitting out front as usual, his smoldering gaze lying upon my shoulders like an irritating sunburn, and of course Shelby and I were fake-flirting like mad just to piss his dumb ass off some more. I, however, was somewhat distracted by something other than the usual gravity of her lovely bosom: the luscious scent of a book of 100 Honeydew-Melon-scented Yankee Candle Company votives sitting in a box next to my register.

Shelby's melons were pretty damn mind-devouring to a twentysomething single male such as myself, but nowhere near as hypnotic as the scent of honeydew melon that drifted up like a pale green breath of cool, latesummer freshness to my nostrils. Honeydew melon! Ambrosial vapours of the Gods Themselves! The candles were a lovely pale green that matched their odor perfectly, and since I'd put the fresh new box of them out that afternoon I'd been completely entranced, my skull light and thoughtless, filled with their etheric scent, my eyes soothed and seduced by their delicate, faerie-wing greenness....Every five minutes, I'd pick up one of the candles and run it beneath my nose like a crack addict snorting up the precious fumes of his fix, filling my nostrils with dizzying, opiate honeydew bliss. Shelby found my melon-candle addiction particularly hilarious, and, yes, I tried to hide my habit from her view but there was no hiding such a transcendental, special, special love from the world. I wanted to marry one of those Yankee votive candles and live forever in dewy, melon-haunted ecstacy with my waxy, fresh-scented bride. I wanted to stuff my pockets with those candles and fill my car's glovebox with them, so I could be surrounded day in and day out with lovely stink.

Worst of all, I wanted to eat one.

"Shelby," said I at some point, only half-joking, "I could just take a bite out of this candle right friggin' now because...because...something that smells so good just cannot possibly taste bad!"

"Oh, really?" Shelby answered (probably by this point ready to just take one of the goddamned candles and jam it down my throat to shut me up about them). "Well...I'll buy you one of them--but only if I get to watch you eat it."

Mind you, the candles were only a buck a piece...and, yes, I'd certainly thought about buying one and surrpetitiously giving it a long, sensual lick or maybe a delicate little nibble just to assuage my own idiotic curiosity because I really couldn't imagine something that smelled so delicious could possibly not taste the same. But sensibility always won out and I restrained myself to just sniffing--but now that Shelby offered to buy me one of the grounds that I eat it before her...well, hell! Not only could I finally answer the question of the candle's taste for myself, but I could do it before a cute girl and thereby prove my unstoppable manliness. Fucking Hubbyboy out front wouldn't dare eat a candle to impress a chick, but PEGRITZ SURE AS HELL WOULD! (Mind you, by "manliness" I mean "complete stupidity"--but everyone knows what a sucker I am for a pretty face or a moronic dare.)

I thought about it for a second, then replied: "You're on."

Shelby gave me a dollar and I rang up the candle on my register. Then, as she watched, I slowly peeled the wrapper off the candle as though I were undressing Shelby herself--a minor fantasy that I'd entertained now and again, of course--letting the unfettered honeydew airs rise from the candle like a fine, fresh mist from a deep, deep spring. I looked upon the naked candle with a sudden spike of trepidation, which I kept carefully hidden for fear of impugning my stonecold idiotic image--but...it had been ages since I'd eaten a candle, something I actually had done before. When I was SEVEN. I vaguely remembered chewing up the tasteless wax and I wondered...might this candle be as tasteless? NO! It couldn't be! I mean...it smelled so GOOD, it HAD to taste the same. Right? Le sigh. Shelby was watching me, nodding, saying, "C'mon...eat it now. You know you want to!" What else could I do? How could I know otherwise?

So, holding the candle sideways, I sank my teeth into its melon-colored flesh and bit a huge chunk out of it.

I chewed slowly, feeling the wax crumble between my teeth, a strange, subtle chemical flavor slowly diffusing across my tongue....

Shelby saw the light fade from my eyes as I slowly ground up that waxen cud between my teeth. "Well...how does it taste?" she asked.

What else could I say? "Waxy."

"Does it taste as good as it smells?"

It actually kind of tasted like a mouthful of solidified loogie spiced with a few drops of dishwashing liquid. Somehow, all along I knew it would taste just like a gobful of phlegm, but hey....Duty called. I answered truthfully: "Not really."

"You know, I paid good money for that candle," Shelby said. "I expect you to finish it."

"....Sure." I mean, I had to conclude my part of the bargain because, indeed, Shelby had spent a good dollar that she could've used to buy herself a Coke or a bottle of Lipton's Apple-Spice tea to buy ME a motherfucking candle to eat, so...I ate the candle. I ate the entire fucking thing. I chewed and chewed that wax and gulped it down in gritty lumps, each synthetic bolus of candlemeat sliding down my throat like the derision and laughter of the gods themselves. The tantalizing--but false, sooooo false--scent of honeydew melon continued to float up through my sinuses even as the completely non-melodic, non-melonic taste of snot and Palmolive tortured my tongue and made my uvula cringe with every swallow. Thankfully, my stomach didn't seem to mind being insulted by a few ounces of wax, though, for it didn't hurt or otherwise object as I'd thought it would--so no regurgitation of bile-fouled wax for me that night.

When I was done, all I had left was the wick dangling from my fingertips.

"You've gotta eat that, too," Shelby said.

"No fucking way." I don't really know why but...after having gulped down so much wax, I knew that if I curled up that little two-inch-long piece of string and swallowed it, that would set off a volcanic eruption of waxen spew. Shelby kept trying to get me to eat the wick but I patently refused and threw it into the wastebasket. Fortunately, by that point, it was officially 10 o'clock, and we could shut down everything and go home. I had officially proved to Shelby that I was a Real Man, not a highschool-aged, ballcap-wearing toyboy--I could choke down an entire votive candle like a REAL MAN! Of course my wang must be fifteen inches long and my skills as a lover unmatched because what superpowered Don Juan Casanova wouldn't swallow an entire candle for a girl? I'm sure that's what Shelby probably thought I was doing all along, when really I was just feeling like being a total idiot and confirming for myself whether or not those Yankee candles tasted as good as they smelled. It was one of the dumbest things I've ever done.

So...now you're no doubt wondering what the aftereffects, shall we say, of the candle-devouring were. Well, let me tell you! Two or three days later, the wax emerged as per the expected course of nature, and though the process wasn't particularly difficult I still found myself left with a peculiar sense of relief, as though I'd finally put the entire stupid incident behind me, as it were. As though I'd finally expunged that moment of frippery from my life. But then...rising from below...came the scent of honeydew melons.

I swear to god it's true. The scent of honeydew melons. Untouched by days in the lightless depths of my plumbing, unmarred by passage through the cloaca of hell. Honeydew melons.

To this day, the scent of honeydew melons is one of my alltime favorite scents--and probably will remain so forever--but I know for a fact that honeydew-melon-scented things are not necessarily honeydew-melon-flavored things, so don't ask me to eat anything BUT an actual, real honeydew melon.