They were trying to decide where to eat. Pulling into the concrete parking structure slapped wet blankets of Hiroshima over the floating time quartz sanding down the bottom of their dead eyes.

The Host had that dumb look of anticipation. He massaged their reservations without any. Pulling a hairy mint out of his green mouth, his narrow tongue shot 12 feet straight up to the ceiling to kill a staggering insect. Embarrassed, he apologized for his greed and let it all go with a belch that shook like a time bomb snapping the red fuse just as the gun-powder around it exploded.

By the time the salads arrived, they had far too many extra dry gin martinis with jalapeno stuffed olives. The moment the waiter’s hand hit the table it was greeted by a salad fork that drove straight through the weak flesh and anchored bone to the white table cloth. As pockets of blood pooled around the table, Harry snapped out of his delirium and replied “why yes, some fresh pepper would be lovely.”

Oceans of booze later, they were cleansing their palates with lemon sorbet. The rest of the patrons had become nothing but a dizzying image of frothing lizards drinking goblets of champagne and diving into bowls of formaldehyde.

Back at the hotel, she got what she thought she needed although it was all she ever wanted. Her hard nipples tasted good in his parched mouth and spat love sweet love down his throat until he went conclusively ape-shit. He blasted her from behind while she sipped at water in a fruitless effort to stave off the ton of bricks hangover that would inevitably come the morning after.

Her candor sent him reeling to the patio where he became a cocaine-fueled fossil on the concrete floor, forever preserved with that silly grin that the Mayor’s office couldn’t jack-hammer away for several decades.

She stepped over his lifeless form, chain smoking, and laughing. She stood in a half-squat, her ears sharpened. She blew a great billow of black smoke out of her tear stained lungs and looked out over the bright neon ocean of city lights that relentlessly shook around them. She couldn’t help but realize that the most needlessly painless moments in life are the one’s that precisely hurt the most.