bolo

by mark buck and john watson. image mark buck.

Donna didn’t sleep for the week preceding the
square dance competition; but when the big night
arrived, Donna had acquired the skills of a grand-
master square dancer. Even the trickiest of callers
wouldn't have been able to intimidate her. She
waited at the end of her driveway, two piece hand
embroidered skirt and blouse combo gently slow-
ing cars. Donny’s truck came around the bend,
cab packed with four outlines.

"Sorry there Donna, but my buddies need a lift.
They're coming to watch us win, right?" The unin-
telligible men in their dress jeans nodded and
grumbled, drunk and homely.

Donna rode in the back. The most industrial perm
wouldn't have held up to the wind. Donna blew
and bounced and slid her way around the truck
bed all the way to the legion. The half an hour
drive left Donna’s hair spread out, full of dust.
Donna, strung out, full of pills.

"Come on now Donna, hurry up there, we got to
get our number." Donny's teeth and sequined
western top sparkled in the summer dusk.

Donna sprang from the back of the truck and
sprinted through the parking lot. Donny, followed
by his posse, entered the legion. They found

Donna pacing and rubbing her crotch through her
fancy ruffled competition skirt.

"Dosado, then I'll break out the fancies, Donny. You'll
follow me with the fancies, and then you'll just turn
sashay and then another fancy. Just follow and you'll
feel how to do them right. | found some that looked
really good in practice but it was after you left so
you'll have to see what they look like but then follow
me right when I'm doing the fancies, Donny?"

Her skirt began to stain with blood, her wild eyes
frantically scanning the other competitors. Her arm
was all the way inside her skirt, working like a piston,
acrylic nails fell from under her skirt, "I’ve never been
to a square dance before." she finally admitted. His
callous hand met her face, breaking her upper lip,
knocking the gum from her mouth.

"What's wrong with you, Donna? Why would you tell
me that you can square dance if you can’t? Are you
trying to make a fool out of me?"

"No, no, Donny. | wasn't; | just wanted to be closer to
you."

She still hadn't brought her hand to her mouth to
assess the bleeding. Her sun hat had fallen to the
ground, along with the ball of gum. A couple of shop-
pers in the same aisle paused to watch the situation,
tightly gripping their wholesale garments. But without
the promise of further domestic abuses, they plodded
on, magnetized by the pull of discounted merchan-
dise.

"Come on Donny, let’s just get our outfits together
and we'll worry about my dancing later. We got to
look good, now don't we?"

"Well, it’s too late to switch partners. So we might as
well look good. But you listen; you're going to learn
the dances, and you're going to learn them good.
We're going to win that contest, even if it mean that
you practice your dancing all day and all night for the
next week."

Donna practiced square dancing. She started small:
got a book with illustrations, danced with herself in
the bathroom mirror, wearing a towel dress. But then
she caught a fever - square dance fever. Days
sashayed into nights - Donna danced through both.

Her ambition was as boundless as the evening sky.
Her steps were rehearsed over and over, each repeti-
tion filled with the fiery passion of a tango dancer.

Two weeks prior, she had gone to the gynaecologist to
get some pills - pills of fiery passion, fiery tango danc-
ing pills. The intent was to prevent the baby that
Donny never wanted, but the outcome was much dif-
ferent.to the floor like flattened tic-tacs.

"All you fuckers are going to just fuck when you see
how fuck fancy we can fuck up there and win. All you
fancy fuckers are going to want to fuck my trophy and
then we'll see who the real fuckin’ veterans are."

Donna gripped Danny’s face and pulled it into hers.
She kissed him hard with her teeth and tongue all at
once. Donny’s lips tore and shred away as her teeth
sawed back and forth, frantically in love. Donny’s
screams were rewarded with one of the volunteers
ramming the corner of the sheet metal raffle box into
the back of Donna’s skull. Donna flew to the floor-
boards, rolling twice in the air, landing on her back,
legs sprawled open, a section of Donny’s upper lip,
lodged in her throat. Mouthless Donny’s eyes widened
as he saw the movement under her skirt. At first there
were only a few ripples in her crotch. Within seconds
there were tremors that lifted the bloody skirt high into
the air, as robot after robot wheeled out of Donna.

The stunned legion patrons stared blankly or giggled
nervously at the strange little fleet of vaginal robots.
The staring and giggles were aborted when the robots
revealed their intentions in the form of a well choreo-
graphed bloodbath. Each person in the legion quickly
fell - wounded or dead, pierced with bullets. Donny,
the only standing being in the room, stood untouched.
The vaginal robots buzzed past him as if he too were a
robot. Donny removed his wide brimmed sparkly cow-
boy hat and reached into his pants. He stroked his
semi-erect penis until his cowboy boots peeled away,
revealing two exhaust pipes. The pipes sputtered, the
exploded into blue flames, propelling him like a rocket
through the roof of the legion. He sailed through the
night sky, looking down at the flaming legion, stars
sparkling like the sequins on his dress-jeans. He flew
with the passion of the square dance burning.

ta