These kids that come into my shop nowadays, I just don’t understand them. When I was their age, extreme was tattoos, piercings maybe. Now they’re into all of this body modifcation bullshit.

Like slugtails. This is retro and retro’s back in, of course. I remember when they first developed them as a novel way to get parapalegic folks to move around who were sick of wheelchairs. For them that couldn’t afford metal walking legs, they could get one of these tails grown and grafted on. This was experimental stuff, and it was just a year later that the prices for human looking synthetic legs dropped considerably after being introduced in Japan. But some fucking rock star went back and dug out a tail and had it put on and now all the kids want one. They even put the goo glands (or whatever the hell you call them) back in, so it’s like they’re trailing spit behind them wherever they go.

But that’s neither here nor there. Everything’s got to be extreme for these kids. Like these…have you seen these? They look like rolling paper for cigarettes, yeah, but you’ve never had a smoke like this before. You roll in tobacco leaves or whatever…nothing happens.

But, well…you see that urn I’ve got up there on the shelf? Somebody’s ashes are in there. You roll somebody’s ashes into the paper and smoke it, and you think about what you want to see. For example, that urn has the ashes of a 18th Century explorer in it. Rare, expensive shit. Smoke that and think about the ocean, for example, and you get images from the guy’s life from when he was at sea. Visions, feelings…you get everything but the smell of the memories because, after all, you’re smoking, right?

But the kids they only want extreme shit. Of course. They’re buying the papers and ripping off ashes from mausoleums down in Oltown, just to see what they can find. The prisons send the ashes of executed murderers back here where you can smoke a serial killer and experience their doings! Can you believe that shit?

Hell, I read on the vire the other day about a porn actress who financed her last film by selling off the rights to portions of her body after she’s dead. She was already chopping bits off and growing them back for the amputee/regeneration fetish crowds, so now she’s just cremating those. “Nickel bags of Tamara whatever-her-last-name-was,” she called them. Smoke up a breast and think nasty thoughts…unbelievable.

You know, come to think of it, it’s not the goo that the slugkids leave behind that bugs. Honestly, after a mopping it just makes the floor shine. And all the crap on the floor kinda sticks to them and they carry it out when they go. So that’s pretty handy, really.

It’s the goddamn noises the tail makes when they scoot over the tiles. That wet shlurping kind of noise.

It’s always the little things that really annoy you, idn’t it? Human nature, I guess.