Nobody sent signals to her Daddy but her!

Paddy tore Marilyn's white arms, legs, and ears off, and pulled the blonde hairs out of her pube until she stopped broadcasting.

~

Paddy squatted on a boulder eating a double box of Twinkies and drinking warm Upper Canada Lager from the big tins. Two Deadies lumbered after Rewind, one of the last living dogs left. The collie belonged to the Woods, who used to run the video shop. As the three got closer, Paddy saw it was the formerly living Mr. and Mrs. Woods lunging at their golden-haired pooch. Rewind bounded like he was having fun. So did the Deadie Woods. To Paddy's camera eye, they made a nice nuclear family.

Man, she thought, life is incompletely unfair. All the two-dimensionals get everything and people like me who are the truly brilliant and can satellite dish every movie channel are relegated to minor sitcoms. How'd theylike to be inside out for a living? Life always tunes you out. It's depressing as hell. She swallowed a couple of Tylenol to the third power she'd found in Mrs. Soles' medicine cabinet. At least they had codeine in them and that was better than nothing, almost.

She chucked a pill-shaped stone at the stinky mould-grey water and it skipped across the surface. One. Two. Three. Three was the right button. She clicked on a Dolly Parton song, turning up the volume on the old tape player so she could masturbate in peace. The Deadies didn't notice. Mr. Woods had caught Rewind and they were biting each other, which was fun to watch, until Mrs. Woods joined in and blocked Paddy's view.

As Rewind howled, Dolly wailed about never gettin' what you need when you need it. Yeah, don't I know it, Paddy thought. Her body spasmed. Like killing yourself's easy. She wiped sticky fingers on her filthy shirttail and shoved another Twinkie all the way into her mouth. Everybody thinks it is but that just shows you what they know. If it was easy, everybody would have been dead before she was born and Paddy'd have managed it by now too.

Shit! She kicked dirt at Fat Eddie the Deadie as he passed. He ignored her, just like he always had. She wanted to be part of the Deadies more than she'd ever wanted anything. Maybe, when Marilyn came for her next visit, shecould figure some way for Paddy to get in with them, to make them see Paddy's dead potential. Dolly sang about possibilities. If only Paddy could be a Deadie, she just knew she'd be happy forever like Miss Dolly Parton. She closed her eyes.

" Take three hundred and twelve: Norma Jean to the Rescue!" Marilyn appeared half naked and boxed Paddy's ears good until she was bored. Finally the sex goddess grabbed the last Twinkie and admitted, "I've been working on a plan."

" It's about time," Paddy said, wiping blood from her ear lobe.

Marilyn tilted backwards and hiked up her full white skirt until her pink lips grinned at the camera. She shoved the Twinkie up inside herself and crooned, "Happy Birthday to You."

Paddy opened her eyes. Rewind, or what was left of him, lay in the background of the shot, a golden prop, much of Mr. Woods' forearm sticking out of his mouth. Suddenly this movie came into sharp focus.

~

Paddy's Daddy wandered home every night by instinct, just the way he used to before he became a Deadie. Not that he needed rest. He never had; he was no different now.

Paddy boarded up the windows. Marilyn nailed a two by four tornado warning across the door.

Daddy stared, eyes hungry, same as always. Finally Paddy picked up his mottled hand and hauled him down to the root cellar, the way he'd done with her all her life.

She lit the hurricane lamp. Bushel baskets of rotting potatoes and carrots and cabbage lined the shelves and the floor was littered with broken jars with pickled foods she'd put away she didn't know when. The place stank, but no worse than Daddy.

She positioned him on a Peaches and Cream Corn crate. His glazed, half-rotted eyeballs wandered the room aimlessly, like he didn't recognize anything. Paddy was used to that. All the Deadies resided in Bliss, a drive-in theater she hoped to visit real soon.

Marilyn stood in a corner, legs spread, hands on knees, cleavage scrumptious, waiting for the wind to whistle up her skirt on cue.Paddy nodded. Daddy's head kept bobbing like an antenna in a storm because his neck had snapped so she held it steady and made him look in her direction, but she couldn't get his eyes to stay put. Black mixed media belched from his lips; his digestive juices were working; he must be watching the screen.

Marilyn hiked her skirt and turned.Paddy, skirt lifted, waved her backside at Daddy's oscillating face, the way he always liked. Nothing.

Marilyn peeked over her shoulder and pouted her lips into an 'O'.Paddy planted a movie smooch on Daddy's crisp lips. His rotted nose mashed against her cheek and a chunk with crusty stuff inside broke off. A blowfly with eyes like Daddy's emerged. "Thanks ever so!" the fly said. Paddy yelled at Marilyn, "Cut!" MM tossed back her platinum hair, thrust out her tits and giggled.

Paddy glanced down at her nearly flat chest and felt lousy. Daddy had always hungered for her before and now he didn't and now she was truly alone on the set. She plunked down onto the dirt floor and cried, something she hadn't done since way before she started taking the meds she'd run out of. The leak created micro mud puddles between her legs. The fly dived into one and bathed. He smiled up at her with Technicolor eyes in all his clear iridescent holiness and winked.Paddy found enlightenment. She saw the solution to all her troubles.

" It's a wrap," she said, but MM refused to vacate the studio. Instead, she straddled a Mason jar of pickled banana peppers and mumbled on and on about misfits and how some of them like it hot.Paddy fast-forwarded.

She crawled to Daddy and peeled rotting fabric from his groin. His penis, always so big and full, dangled like a thick black connecting cable with green eyes. The eyes leaked puss-yellow tears that white life forms swam in. Those baby bugs are joining heads to tails! Paddy realized, astonished. The word LOVE flashed onto the screen and a ball bounced along the letters. Wasn't this what Dolly Parton always sang about, and what Marilyn always got?Now Paddy knew exactly what everybody meant.

She closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

And bit.

Daddy didn't complain. He didn't seem to miss his cock.

Paddy sat back on her haunches and munched.

Marilyn skipped over with a rotting banana pepper dangling from her wet lips. "When it's hot like this, I store my undies in the ice box."

Made sense to Paddy. She swallowed the last bits of her Daddy, the bits that meant anything to her. He tasted like all the buttered popcorn they ever ate watching movies together.

As his head bobbed her way, he grinned like he used to, and Paddy felt proud. At last she'd landed a part in The Deadie Movie. She would play Daddy's Little Deadie Girl and the movie would run forever, or at least until the reel ran out of film.

Sweetbread

TONIA BROWN

Mary Mooney stood in the doorway of her kitchen with a shotgun aimed at her icebox. Or rather, she aimed at the black clad rump of some stranger poking out of her icebox. The rump wiggled about as its owner's front half rooted through her leftovers. Now, it wasn't unusual for someone to stop by for a glass of iced tea or an hour's gossip, but never unannounced and certainly not at five in the morning. Mary caught the flash of a blueberry pie with the middle scooped away. The whole, freshly baked pie was spoiled.