Daytime Talk is Hell
by Adam Johnson

“Welcome back to the Jerome Bouncer show. Today we’re talking with women who have recently found out their man is cheating on them, and now they want to tell them ‘Go to hell.’”

“Before the break we were talking with Sherry, who says she found used condoms in her boyfriend’s car, as well as a pair of women’s underwear. Tell us, Sherry, how did you feel when you found these items?”

Dante paced back and forth in the Green Room, ignoring what his soon to be ex-girlfriend was saying on live television. He didn’t care how much she bad-mouthed him. Anyone watching the show could see what a fat, ugly pig she is. Who wouldn’t have cheated on her?

Dante ran his fingers over his closely shaven head. His hair was black, as was his close cropped goatee. He wore a simple white T-shirt that was a size too small for him. All the better to show off his magnificent physique. Sure, he was starting to get a little thick around the middle, but not enough for the ladies to care. Dante had never had any problems finding women who were looking for a good time.

Glancing around the room, Dante had to suppress an urge to vomit. The other men in the Green Room were pathetic. They were all here because they had cheated, but Dante couldn’t see how any of them could have found more than one woman who wanted them. None of these guys were as good looking as he was. They should have been grateful to find even one woman that was willing to fuck them. Dante would have thought they’d want to make sure they hung on to that.

These losers were probably all here to try to patch things up, too. Not Dante. He had come for a free trip to New York City. Things in Jackson, Mississippi got pretty boring. Plus, he heard the women in New York were easy.

A prissy little man in a black suit popped his head in the room. He had to be a fag, Dante could tell. “You’re on in one minute, Mr. Chellum. Please follow me.” The little fairy then turned and started walking without bothering to see if Dante was coming.

“Shit packin’ little rump ranger,” Dante muttered under his breath as he followed the man out to a spot that was just off stage. “Good luck, Mr. Chellum,” the man said with what looked like a sneer as he turned to leave. Dante thought about decking the guy, but decided against it.

From where he was standing, Dante had a good view of the stage. It was the first time he had gotten a look at Jerome Bouncer in person. He was even goofier looking live than he was on TV. Not only was his dirty blond hair beginning to thin out on top, but he had a half-assed comb-over trying to cover it. His face had the appearance of a rodent. His eyebrows were bushy and nearly touching over beady little gray eyes. A pair of glasses from the 1950’s rested on top of his baboon-like nose. And his teeth looked more like a row of tiny little fangs than normal teeth. Dante couldn’t understand how this ugly bastard ever got his own talk show, much less the highest rated daytime talk show on TV.

Dante’s fat, ugly girlfriend was blubbering something about how she had trusted him, and he had betrayed that trust. Dante stifled a laugh. He started cheating on her the night of their very first date. Why was she so upset now?

Dante glanced out into the crowd. The rows of chairs were packed with people as sorry and pathetic as his girlfriend and those guys in the Green Room. He was willing to bet that half of the people in the audience had never even kissed someone, much less been laid.

Jerome Bouncer was now patting Dante’s girlfriend on the shoulder, trying to control her crying. He was such a phony. Dante could see the barely hidden grin that wanted to play across the bastard’s lips. This whole thing was such a joke.

Dante looked back out into the crowd, and what he saw caused his knees to buckle. The worthless losers that had been out there a second ago were gone. The entire studio was in flames. The floor belched out one searing wave of
fire after another. In place of the audience were horrible, perverted versions of human beings. Their skin was covered with large, open sores that oozed a yellowish, thick pus. It trickled down their bodies and sizzled as it came in contact with the flames. Their faces were contorted into looks of pain and torment that made Dante want to scream. Each person was tearing into its own flesh, ripping off huge chunks of skin and meat. Their howls filled his head until he thought it would burst like a ripe melon.

Just as suddenly as the vision appeared, it disappeared. Before Dante even had a chance to ponder if it had been real or not, he caught Jerome Bouncer talking on stage.

“Let’s welcome Sherry’s boyfriend, Dante, to the show.”

Dante staggered out onto the stage, still rattled by what he thought he had seen. The crowd greeted him with a spattering of applause and a much greater number of boos. The nightmarish scene he had just witnessed was instantly
forgotten as he gave the crowd the finger and sat down in his chair next to Sherry. Sherry picked up her chair and slid it a couple of feet away from Dante’s, much to the pleasure of the crowd.

“Alright everybody, settle down,” Jerome was telling the audience. For a split second Dante caught a hint of a red glow from Mr. Bouncer’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as he had seen it.

“So tell us, Dante, in your own words, what happened.”

“It’s simple what happened Jerome. This fat, ugly bitch was doggin’ me and getting on my nerves, so I was forced to find some lovin’ elsewhere.” This brought another round of boos from the crowd, as well as a streak of obscenities from Sherry. Dante merely grinned.

Jerome walked around and behind Dante, shaking his head as he did so. “What kind of way is that to speak of any woman, much less your own girlfriend?” he asked, placing a hand on Dante’s shoulder as he did so.

The instant Jerome’s hand touched his shoulder, a searing hot flash of pain coursed through Dante’s body. His hands gripped the edges of the armrests, nearly pulling them off the chair. His entire body was on fire, burning from the inside. He looked down at his arms and saw they were covered with the same open, pussy sores the audience had had. Even worse than the burning was the itching. His entire body itched so bad he thought he might go insane. He
wanted to rake the skin off of his body, just to make the itching stop. Then, once again, it all stopped. He glanced down at his arms, panting heavily. They were normal. No sign of sores or wounds of any kind.“It seems I hit a sore spot with you, Mr. Chellum,” Jerome quipped, a cocky grin on his face. “Maybe you feel guilty about what you’ve done to poor Sherry?”

“Hell no,” he coughed out. He was still looking down at his arms, expecting them to be covered in sores again any second. He must have ate some bad sausage for breakfast. Starting to regain some of his confidence, he continued. “Besides, when you look this good it ain’t fair to only stick to one woman.” This brought another round of disgusted groans and boos from the crowd.

“Fuck you, you bastard! I loved you! Go to hell!” Sherry continued to scream at him until finally Jerome walked over to her and calmed her down. Dante tried not to laugh. Hallucinations aside, this was all pretty damn funny. Jerome was sitting next Sherry, one arm around her shoulders, the other holding the mike. She was shaking with sobs. “Look at what you’ve done to this poor woman. This sweet, innocent girl who gave you her love and her trust, and this is how you repay it. You are a petty, shallow little man that cares for no one but himself. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
As Jerome spoke these words, Dante’s eyes began to widen once again with horror. Jerome’s face was going through a slow, disgusting transformation. The skin on his face slowly tightened, making him look like a living skull. It continued to grow tighter until it ripped down the middle, making a sound so horrible it made Dante want to retch. As the skin peeled away from his face, Jerome’s eyes liquefied and began to run down his cheeks. After a few seconds there was nothing left but a wet, bloody skull with a sickening orangish-red color emanating from the eye sockets. The crowd started clapping in response to Jerome’s words as he stood up from his place beside Sherry and moved in front of Dante.

“What the fuck is going on?” Dante asked, barely above a whisper.

“What’s going on, Mr. Chellum? I’ll tell you what’s going on. You’ve taken advantage of people like Sherry for too long, and we’re not going to take it anymore.” The crowd started cheering wildly at this once again. The thing that used to be Jerome Bouncer stood before Dante; it’s gleaming red skull seeming to laugh at him. As it spoke, maggots began to spill out of its mouth and nose cavities, landing on the ground in front of Dante’s feet. “We’re through, you asshole! Do you hear me? We’re through!” Sherry yelled at him, but Dante hardly noticed. He was staring at Jerome, watching as the skin on his hands began to crack and peel like it had on his face.

Tears formed at the corner of Dante’s eyes. His mind was on the verge of becoming unhinged. To the viewer at home, it looked like his conscience was finally getting the best of him.

“This can’t be happening,” he muttered, still staring wide-eyed at Jerome Bouncer’s continued deterioration occurring right before him.

“It is happening, asshole!” Sherry shouted. “I never want to see your ugly face again!” She threw something at him, but he no longer even noticed she was there. His entire attention was focused on Jerome Bouncer.

“Don’t look at me that way, Dante. You brought this all on yourself. You have only yourself to blame for the position you are in.” As he spoke the last words, a tidal flow of maggots erupted from his mouth, covering Dante. Dante barely suppressed his shock and revulsion as he felt the maggots squirm over his body. He could hear the crowd cheering, but when he looked out at them, they were once again writhing in pain and ripping the flesh off their bodies.

“You motherfucking bastard,” Dante growled. He pushed up out of his chair and launched himself at the bloody skeleton that now stood before him. Before he could so much as touch him, strong hands gripped him from all
sides, pulling him away.

“You sick sonofabitch! I’ll get you for this! I’ll get you!” Dante screamed at Jerome as he was hauled off backstage by the security guards. Applause thundered throughout the studio, and in the back of his mind Dante knew this was going to make one of those awful “Jerome Bouncer Uncensored” tapes.Dante continued to scream and struggle as the guards dragged him backstage and down a hallway he had not noticed before. “I’ll get all of you! I’ll rip your ugly, maggot filled skulls right off of your bodies!”

“Oh will you?” One of the security guards said to him. It sounded as if the man had a mouth full of something large and wet when he talked. Before Dante even had a chance to register this, a bright red glow filled the end of the hall.

Dante stopped struggling as another guard stepped out from the door where the red light was coming from. Large black leeches stuck on every exposed part of the man’s skin. A thick, grayish-blue liquid oozed slowly out of his mouth as he sneered at Dante. It was then that Dante noticed that the two guards holding him were covered in leeches as well. Several had stuck on to Dante’s arms, and he could feel them sucking the blood from his body. “Today is your lucky day, Mr. Chellum,” one of the guards that was holding him said. “Since you’ve been such a wonderful guest, we’ve decided to let you become a regular member of our audience.”

Dante began to scream and struggle once again as they led him into the hot, red light that poured through the open door. The guards laughed, spitting the gray-blue ooze all over Dante as they pulled him into the room and closed the door.

“I don’t give a damn what he thinks. If he wants me to keep giving him some loving, he better accept the fact that I need more than his puny dick can give me.”

Dante booed the girl along with the rest of the crowd. He didn’t want to, none of them did. But he had couldn’t stop himself. Just as he couldn’t stop himself from clawing at his own skin, painfully ripping off chunks of flesh and muscle, all in an effort to find some relief from the intense itching that he felt.

Jerome Bouncer moved over behind the girl who was sitting on stage. She was wearing a black fishnet top over a black lace bra. Thigh high leather boots ended just shortly before her skin-tight miniskirt began. Her pathetic looking boyfriend sat next to her, wiping at his eyes. There was no doubt that she was a bitch, but Dante felt sorry for her just the same.

“How can you say that about someone who loves you?” Jerome asked her as he placed his hand on her shoulder. Her eyes opened wide and her body convulsed slightly. Mr. Bouncer continued to scold her as the boyfriend sat sobbing
next to her.

Dante winced in agony as he looked at the open seat next to him. Involuntarily, he cheered Jerome’s speech to the poor, condemned girl. It looked like there would be another addition to the audience for tomorrow’s show.

©1999 Adam Johnson

This story was originally published in the June 1999 issue of Bloody Muse. Adam Johnson has had stories published in or accepted to magazines such as Burning Sky, Welcome to Nod, Darkness Within, Bloody Muse, and Sinister Element to name a few. Two of his stories have also appeared in previous issues of House of Pain.

February 2000 HofP