It popped up as I was hunting for a Wilder-Fury stream.
Got Flo’s? Got Jakes?
Ask for Junebug.
Bonafide Spoon Gazer.
XXX-XXX-XXXX.
I didn’t know what those words meant, but I asked for Junebug.
“Got Jakes?” She enquired.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“Got signs?”
“The ad said ask for Junebug.”
“Then you’re in luck. Initial consultation is half price. This week only. Better think fast.”
Junebug arrived by taxi with the dusk and a little wheeled carry-on bag in tow.
Apparently, the sun had never touched her skin, which looked to be constructed out of ballistic gelatine.
She bounced her luggage up the stairs, and the tips of her colourless hair refracted rainbows of porch light.
She brushed past me, and I realized my own hair was standing on end.
“Gonna offer me something to drink?” She asked as I followed her inside.
She accepted a double vodka, neat.
“So,” I said, by way of breaking the ice. “I understand you’re a spoon gazer.”
“I’ll need to see the money,” she replied.
“Did you bring your spoons?” I teased.
She lifted her skirt enough to show the Hellcat strapped to her thigh.
“Indeed.”
I wasn’t sure what I was paying for. But I discovered it was no longer half price.
+++
The sex was mostly unremarkable — aside from the fact that Junebug kept her pistol trained on me the entire time.
It was a bit of a thrill, I admit. But her trigger discipline was awful, and there were moments, when she was really getting into it, that I genuinely feared for my life.
Afterwards, she began laying spoons around the room, each one polished to an improbable lustre.
“You brought the family silver,” I observed.
“Roll onto your stomach,” she replied. “And spread your arms out.”
I did as instructed, and she cuffed my wrists to the bed frame.
“So, what are the spoons for again?”
Junebug poured herself a couple fingers from the bottle.
“That’s how you know for sure if you got Jakes,” she explained and went back to laying out her spoons.
“And the cuffs?”
That part was frankly harrowing, and more than once she threatened to bring out the ball gag to keep me from voicing my distress.
Later, she released one of my wrists so I could have a bump and a cigarette.
“I give up. What are Jakes?”
“Jakes are the death of you,” she explained.
“That business with the surgical tubing was the closest I ever come to death.”
“It can be hit or miss.”
“And the spoons?”
“They’re to record the signs.”
“The signs.”
+++
Junebug took a moment to wipe the blood from her paddle before examining the spoons for signs.
She likened it to a photographic process and claimed she could make out all sorts of detail from the blemishes that developed on the silver.
“Jakes take mostly after their host,” she observed.
“Their host?”
“It’s your place, mister. And your Jakes got needs.”
Junebug dabbed the spoon with the tip of her tongue and used her skirt to buff the gleam back to the surface.
“It ain’t the Jakes you ought to be worrying about anyways. It’s the Flo’s. Jakes won’t nut without a Flo. And they’ll go off their food and let you take your foot out of the grave.”
“What the fuck is a Flo?”
Junebug cuffed my wrist back to the bed and then brought out the ball gag.
“Flo is the Jakes’ baby mama. Without a Flo, they begin to stray.”
Junebug was thorough, I’ll give her that. And I was left rolling in and out of consciousness.
Soon, I became aware of a commotion under the bed.
It built up to a terrific panting, punctuated by plaintive chirps and moans, and finally settled into a deep and ceaseless “0m.”
Did I imagine the freighted air roiling overhead?
And the flames that rained blood on my back and legs?
Junebug was slapping me hard across the face.
“Time’s up, pal. I gotta bounce.”
She was glowing like a hot blade.
“You want me to book you another session?” She enquired. “I’ll be honest: it’s gonna take more than a few visits to sort you out.”
I nodded wearily.
“Will you bring the spoons again?”
+++