Hello Devilfish! by Ron Dakron Page A

her luscious bod. “Clothing?” she laughed, “why?”
    â€œYou’ll get cold,” I lied—actually she’d get us both arrested. It’s one thing to smoosh Tokyo and even worse, a Yakuza bar—but even glittering pink ex-squid chicks can’t walk around naked. Not when hordes of cops were hustling here—along with fireman and paparazzi and local sashimi maniacs greedy for a slice of trapped kraken. Like the wrapper on Drunky Cod brand entrails says— Bring Mom these sushi guts ! “You’re not making sense,” human Squidra laughed.
    â€œNever have,” I shrugged.
    â€œExcuse us—police,” some cop knocked on a wall. You gotta love Japan—cops that knock! Anywhere else we’d be coroner meat already—here they still follow bizarre feudal norms. “Now where?” I checked around for exits—but they’re all blocked! “Hmmm,” I rummaged through splayed Yakuza bods, “maybe we’d better find some hot guns and shoot the fuzz when they—”
    â€œWait a sec,” Squidra—or Girl-ra or whoever she was now—blinked way too much. “I bet these still work,” and her eyes thrummed all ghastly Tang orange till—whoa! Her eyeball lasers kicked in! And toasted a skewed freezer to tin dust till a charred doorway showed. “You still got lasers ?” I gawked.
    â€œGuess so,” Squidra blinked her eyebeams off, “doesn’t everyone?”
    â€œProbably,” I fibbed. Look, I hadn’t totaled the math yet on our mutual power relations—and sure, she’s minus an arm—but eyeball lasers could def tip the balance in her feminazi favor. Hello Gelding! “Let’s ditch this sake stand,” Squidra buckled her trench coat. “Lead on,” I nodded as we snuck out a back alley, our limbs and minds striding into night—and that’s it! That’s enough—plots are more boring than dead lawns. Let’s snuff this sick puppy—join us in book-shutting fun!

PHOTO BY MARCIA GLOVER
    ABOUT RON DAKRON
    Ron Dakron is the author of the novels Hello Devilfish! , infra , Newt , Hammers , and Mantids . His work runs the gamut from surrealism to sci-fi pastiche, with a prose style that he describes as “haplessly Chicagoan and influenced by working class whites, African American slang, and Yiddish comedy.” His novels explore differing styles of poetic prose, from Romaticism to cubism, B-movie satire to mangled Japanese translation. Born in Chicago, Dakron majored in English at Elmhurst College and Lawrence University before moving to Seattle where he worked as a street violinist and house painter, and developed a confrontational poetic performance style “drenched in faux punkery.” He began writing novels in his late twenties, and considers himself “a proud working-class novelist who dreams up Big Lit.” He lives in Seattle, WA.
    Find out more about Ron Dakron online at
http://www.rondakron.com

Recent and Forthcoming Books on Three Rooms Press
    PHOTOGRAPHY-MEMOIR

    Mike Watt
    On & Off Bass
    FICTION

    Ron Dakron
    Hello Devilfish!
    Michael T. Fournier
    Hidden Wheel
Swing State
    Janet Hamill
    Tales from the Eternal Café
    (Introduction by Patti Smith)
    Eamon Loingsigh
    Light of the Diddicoy
    Richard Vetere
    The Writers Afterlife
    DADA

    Maintenant:
Journal of Contemporary Dada Art & Literature
(Annual poetry/art journal, since 2008)
    SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY

    Have a NYC:
New York Short Stories
    Annual Short Fiction Anthology
    HUMOR

    Peter Carlaftes
A Year on Facebook
    ESSAYS

    Richard Katrovas
    Raising Girls in Bohemia: Meditations of an American Father
    PLAYS

    Madeline Artenberg &
    Karen Hildebrand
    The Old In-and-Out
    Peter Carlaftes
Triumph For Rent (3 Plays)
Teatrophy (3 More Plays)
    MIXED MEDIA

    John S. Paul
Sign Language:
A Painters Notebook
    TRANSLATIONS

    Thomas Bernhard
    On Earth and in Hell
(poems by the author in