“I like what your wearing, but I like your voice even more, and I bet you love to hear yourself too, don’t you? Tell me a story.”

“What do you wanna hear sweet thing? Drink up.”

“Tell me about the scariest thing you know! I wanna feel like a scared little girl again. Mind you I’m pretty superstitious, and this doesn’t help to be brave like people say it does.”

“It has seven stars molded onto its chest, like a hot iron had stamped a black point onto the ridges. It has a smile so sly that it beckoned the women nearer, and nearer, and on him - but not wanting. It has ears like pecans, wrinkled and chafing, with a slight downward tilt making sure that it can’t hear them, so no one else would hear them. It’s fingers are wet, and its nails have burrowed red mud from digging into the beach too harshly, a smell so keen and pure - with a potent musk - so much sweat from a screaming sun. There is a rash in between its thighs, and its calfs, and atop the veins of its forearms that tiptoe fingerprints up to its neck. It has a mask with a trunk draping over it - yes, a sightless thing - dripping a foul stench and oozing a sour bell - spitting loogies to swing onto the tongues it pulls. It’s lips are like a sponge, able to suck you up, and lick the filth from underneath your plate - and underneath your filthy shade. Its eyes hang a neon “vacancy” sign with a black mildew lining its edges. It always has a pinch of a scorpion’s tail hiding underneath its tongue for when it kisses a sweat young thing. And it speaks in a rhythm that catches a good eye, or catches a good ear, with a voice like Edward James Olmos - si sabes? - so kind, so sultry, so fatherly, and stern. It loves to hear itself. Come, it invites you, listen to its tiny story of a broken girl meeting a dim-lit suit speaking to itself when she thinks it’s speaking to her... Here, lemme get you a drink.”

“One whisky and one tequila.”

“Here’s your mezcal sweet thing, they could only fit the scorpion tail into it.”