The Feel Good Machine

It was six feet tall and had gold for skin. Its face was like an angel's, all smooth and perfect. If you were to look deeply into its cheeks, you'd see your reflection, wide eyed and in awe of its heavenly beauty. Its arms were wide and powerful, like cannon barrels, and thick veins bulged around its muscles. Its hands were soft jelly wrapped in silk. They molded around everything they grabbed. Its chest looked like Roman armor; sculpted abs and a sculpted chest. And between its legs was its penis.

On an unusually warm winter day, the Feel Good Machine walked into a small town by the water. All of the women looked at it as it walked through the street. They whispered into one another's ears with smiles on their faces, while their husbands did nothing. They saw its penis. They felt inadequate. So all they did was grumble to themselves.

The Feel Good Machine decided to stop at the mall. There were a lot of people in the mall, and it could feel their heat. It pushed its shoulder back and a small slot on its belly opened up. Light bulbs lit on its side. They read:

Feel Good Machine! Everything You Want! Anything You Need! Only $0.05!

Ms. Betsy Balu Goranga was the widest girl in town. Now, she wasn't fat. Not at all. She had a stomach flat like a grandfather clock, and the form of an hour glass. She knew how to show the men a good time. Her hair was electric, and stood up in all directions, and her lips were painted the color of lightning. Rumor had it that if you were to kiss her on those lips, you'd fry. Sizzle like a fly in a zapper. But that rumor wasn't true, and every man in town over the age of eighteen could vouch for it.

Betsy looked the Feel Good Machine over, toe to crown, and hit its butt, testing him the way she saw the used car salesman test the used cars.

"Ey, you talk?" she asked it.

"Yes," the Feel Good Machine said.

"You're cute, you know that?"

She bit her lip and dipped her fingers between her cleavage. Her cleavage was spilling out of her dress. She produced a nickel and placed it into the Feel Good Machine's belly. It tilted its head back and moaned a tired, empty moan.

"What do you want?" the Feel Good Machine asked. Its penis grew even larger.

"I want you to follow me," Betsy said. She took it by its soft hand and led it back to her home. She pulled her covers over both of them and whispered things into its ear. It nodded and did what she told it to do until she was done.

And then the Feel Good Machine kissed Betsy on her lightning lips and something happened. Something that never happened before. The Feel Good Machine's lips felt tingly. Its ear became warm and his head felt fuzzy and light.

Their lips slowly parted and Betsy looked at the Feel Good Machine's face. She saw herself in its cheek.

"That was amazing. Are you going to be in town long?"

"Yes," the Feel Good Machine said. He hadn't planned on staying long, but then again, he hadn't planned on meeting Ms. Betsy Balu Goranga and her lips-like-electric.

She told it to go and it left. Back to the mall. Back to where the heat and nickels were. Back where the women looked at him like a sex trophy and the men grumbled things under their breath.

It heard things in passing; the little things women say to one another.

One said, "He came to me in a dream one night. He was a huge black bucking stallion and he licked the tears off of my face with his tongue. I could taste his tongue through my skin. It was weird. It tasted like sugar."

On that day, the Feel Good Machine made a dollar five. One of the patrons accidentally put a dime in its belly slot, and she almost died halfway through the second session.

Something was wrong with the Feel Good Machine. It had a hard time concentrating. For the first time ever, it didn't want to be with all those women. All he wanted to be with was Miss electric lips.

She visited him everyday, and everyday she would pluck a nickel out of her cleavage and put it into the Feel Good Machine's stomach, and he would do whatever she told him to.

He would make her squirm. Her thighs would tremble and her back would arch up and a sound would crawl out of her mouth, prettier than a song bird's.

And everyday she would kiss that Feel Good Machine on its lips and tell him to be off.

And everyday her lips would send a lightning storm through his body. He was in love.

Days passed and the Feel Good Machine became fat and heavy with nickels. He had enough to start a bank account, and placed a down payment on a house. He bought one by the water, with a white picket fence, a two car garage and three bedrooms.

The house became his home/office. The neighborhood became accustomed to the long lines of patrons that wrapped around the property. The house was like an assembly line. The front door would open, a patron would enter, be lead to a bedroom, business would be conducted, and said patron would leave out the back.

Betsy visited the home every now and then. When she and the Feel Good Machine were alone in a bedroom, the whole house would light up like dynamite.

She was the only person the Feel Good Machine spoke with while performing. He told her that her hair was beautiful, her lips were beautiful, her wide hips were beautiful. He whispered forbidden secrets into her ear, which tingled down her neck.

"Anything you want," he'd say, panting. He would only pant for Betsey. "I can give you anything you want."

And Betsy would come.

And she'd say, "I want to go home now."

No matter how much the Feel Good Machine gave, and no matter how much Betsy and the other patrons took, not one person ever gave back to him. They never said thank you, they just moaned and screamed. They never offered him dinner at a restaurant, they just fed him nickels. For a long, long time, this didn't bother the Feel Good Machine, and if it hadn't been for Betsy, it still wouldn't bother him.

The Feel Good Machine bought himself a wig (a real keeper, blond with streaks of neon green), a bouquet of flowers, and a box of chocolates. He stood in the mirror for two hours and rehearsed.

"Hello, Betsy. I just wanted to tell you that I love you. And you only." He said it until the words felt awkward and sort of blended together like poetry.

He stood at her front door for another two hour. He wanted to knock on the door; every bit and bolt, mechanism and spring wanted to march right into the house, all confidence, and take the woman of his dreams up in his arm and whisper the things he rehearsed in her ear. But he couldn't knock on the door. Not for two hours. In fact, he never knocked on the door.

It was almost midnight when the Feel Good Machine heard shuffling coming from inside Betsy's house. Two sets of steps; a couple dancing on top of hardwood floor. There was a quiet grunt, and a loud thump, followed by something hitting the ground. It was glass, and shattered. Quiet curses were muttered, and it was silent for a second. And then the noises began again.

The Feel Good Machine stood on his tip toes, trying to look into the window. He couldn't get the right angle and could only see ceiling. He pressed his ear against the door, and against his better judgement, ran his metallic head through the wood.

He looked into Betsy's living room. She was naked, in the arms of a naked man with many tattoos. All three looked at one another and screamed.

Frantic, the Feel Good Machine tried to stand up, and accidentally ripped the door off its hinges in the process. The flowers and candy fell to the ground. He accidentally stomped all over them. With a heave, the door was off of his shoulders and on the lawn, smashed and ruined.

"Fuck, Babe! You told me you stopped going to that thing!" said the man with the tattoos.

"I did! Sort of," said Betsy.

The Feel Good Machine bent down and retrieved his bent flowers and mashed chocolates. He approached the naked Betsy, held his gifts out and said:

Hello, Betsy. I just wanted to tell you that I love you. And only you.

Just like he practiced. It sounded like poetry, he thought, and just saying the words made his head swim.

"What the fuck?" said the man with the tatoos. "I'll buy you a God damn vibrator, Babe. Just quit hanging around this creepy fucking thing!"

Betsy looked at the broken gifts her robotic lover was offering. She then looked in his eyes. They were red and glowing, hot and sexy.

"You're going to have to pay for the door," she said.

"I love you."

"You really have to go now."

The two lovers, huddled in one another's arms, hid their nakedness. Defeated, and accepting defeat, the Feel Good Machine placed the broken flowers and ruined chocolates on a small table beside the door and walked back home.

He thought while he walked back home, but that didn't him any good. It was actually the worst thing he could do, thinking, but he couldn't help it. Betsy was on his mind, and everything he looked at looked like her.

The clouds in the sky looked like her smile, dark and seductive and mysterious. The dew covered leaves looked like her eyebrows, green and shimmering. He saw her figure in every curve of the street.

The Feel Good Machine laid in bed all day and night and thought. He wondered why she always came back to him. Was she playing some sort of sick joke? Did she just want sex? Did she actually love him, like he loved her? He wasn't sure. And no amount of thinking would produce an answer.

So he laid in bed and sifted his soft fingers through the nickels in his stomach.

He took a nickel between his thumb and index finger and studied it over. In its reflection, he saw his own face. Sad, he thought. And the nickel, who did it belong to? A fiery red head with freckles covering her entire body, save the space between her breasts. A black woman with skin so smooth, it glided across his metal limbs like water.

No. The nickel belonged to someone who cared about themselves and not the Feel Good Machine. He was just their device. Their tool. Their prostitute. And not one of them cared about him. Not one of them ever made him feel good.

"Feel Good Machine! Everything You Want! Anything You Need! Only $0.05!"

He took in a deep breath, felt the wind kiss his metal lips. The nickel rolled off the tip of his finger and into the coin slot.

There was a moment of silence, and the Feel Good Machine pondered all the wonderful things he wanted to do to himself. And all at once, he said it all. In one breath. With one word. One sound.

The Feel Good Machine loved himself for the next week without-ever-stopping. The line outside his house grew and grew, until it wrapped around his entire property, down the street, and reached the water. The patrons were too afraid to leave the line. They didn't want to lose their spots. So they waited and waited, and as the days went on, they became thin and pale and large black rings formed beneath their eyes.

The sexless zombies swayed before the Feel Good Machine's home, and listened to the rocking and the banging and the groaning coming from within. Sometimes the sounds coming from inside his bedroom sounded like a car crash. Other times, it sounded like angels making love.

On the seventh day, people began to fall. Some turned to dust when they hit the ground and blew away. Dried body parts fell off of others. Jaws and ears and fingers. That's when the noises inside the home ended. They ended with a long, thunderous sigh of relief that rang loud over the entire town.

The cops were called in. And paramedics. They swept up the dead with dust pans and brooms and watered the drying with sprinklers.

Betsy was in the line, at the back, by the ocean. She wasn't dry. She watched as a battering ram opened the Feel Good Machine's front door. The cops and some paramedics entered the home. They found the Feel Good Machine in his bedroom.

There was metal everywhere. It was lodged in the bed and the walls, on the ceiling and scattered across the floor.

The paramedics could only make out two pieces of the Feel Good Machine. His mouth and his chest.

He died with a smile on. Nice and big and bright. Brighter than dynamite.

And on his chest, written in oil, was his final message:

"You're dead to me, Darling."

For the first time in his life, the Feel Good Machine had made himself happy.