Andersen Prunty's Blog, page 10

Bonus 14

The word “gestation” apparently makes me feel like I’ve had a stroke.

A 3-Legged Dog Dying of Cancer

My dog died. He had cancer of the face.

I took him outside to toss him up into the tree. I grabbed hold of him and my hands were consumed by his dense fur and then by his skin, until they were inside of him. The dog was filled with witchcraft and sea water. I got it all over my hands. I rinsed them off and decided to use tongs instead.

I could not get the dead dog up into the tree. I was going to tell him he was a bunch of dead weight but then I remembered he was dead and couldn’t hear me and probably wouldn’t have thought it was funny anyway.

I moved the trampoline over from the rusted out ice cream truck.

Using the tongs, I clasped the dog around the neck and the hind leg and bounced him onto the trampoline. He bounced into the air and his fur rained down and his teeth clacked as he landed on the trampoline in a heap.

This wasn’t working either.

I went inside to call my friend Ben. Ben was a director of films. His latest was called Sperm Jug, about two twentysomething guys who embark on a cross-country road trip with their grandmother. The movie ends at the Grand Canyon, the guys dousing the old woman in semen before throwing her over the edge. I think it’s a comedy.

Ben was busy but he gave me some sound advice. He said to try cutting the dog into smaller pieces and throwing them up into the tree individually.

I said: “But Ben, what am I supposed to use to chop up the dog?”

And he said: “Use your fucking dick,” and hung up on me.

I didn’t think that would work so I used a pair of poultry shears.

When I was finished chopping up the dog, I hurled the pieces as far up into the tree as I could. The only thing left was the cancer—dark and glittering. I carried that over to the sewer opening on the curb and dropped it down.

Over the next several days, the dog pieces turned black and oozed from the tree like a rain of cinnamon-flavored tar.

I took the dog inside. He climbed into my nightmares, a black shadow beast, and left steaming piles of worm infested waste everywhere.

Then he was gone and it was time to get a new dog.

So I bought a new dog and he was pretty much just like the old dog except he had an extra leg. So I called Ben and asked him what I should do about it. Ben told me I should take it to a butcher and he would get the dog fixed up.

So I did.

The Story Monster

A man hates to read. He hates to read and he hates to see people reading. Whenever he’s at work and someone is reading the paper or a trashy paperback novel, he likes to taunt them until they put it down. Reading is not functional. It is a waste of time. He doesn’t even read contracts or anything like that. He just signs his name at the bottom after asking whoever is offering the contract if they can give it to him “in a nutshell.” Once he discovered how much he hated reading, he realized how ubiquitous words were. Ubiquitous and meaningless.

One night, as he crawls in bed next to his browbeaten, mostly illiterate wife (she was feral when he located her in the wilds of the island of Semp), a giant man enters the room. Actually, it’s a monster. Huge and hairy, not wearing any clothes.

 The man, aside from coming completely unhinged around words, is not a very confrontational man. He thinks if he lies there quietly the monster will go away. But the monster doesn’t go away. It takes a deep breath and sits on the edge of the bed. It smells rancid. Like sewage and something unidentifiable but worse. The man tries to nudge the monster off the bed but the monster is way too large to move. Suddenly, the monster lurches into a story. It is a story unlike anything the man has ever heard. And the monster’s voice, for belonging to such a giant, reeking beast, is smooth and relaxing. The man finds he likes the story and he likes the monster’s voice. He stops trying to shove the monster off the bed, rolls over onto his back, and enjoys the story. He is asleep by the time the monster finishes it and, upon waking the next morning, the man realizes he is okay with falling asleep not knowing how the story ended. Because it wasn’t really the kind of story where the ending was important. Surprisingly, the man wants the monster to come back.

That night the monster returns. He comes before the man’s wife is asleep. She, not understanding this wretched beast is here only for their entertainment, panics and begins throwing objects at the monster. The monster cowers in a corner of the room but he doesn’t leave. The man’s wife asks him to make the monster leave but he tells her he is not going to do that. She doesn’t understand his explanation and hurls herself at him, claws bared, trying to gouge out his eyes. The man fights her off with a pillow and tells her it’s over, pulling out the divorce papers he has kept in his nightstand since marrying the woman. She signs her name and he gives her a one-way ticket to Semp. She angrily drags all her clothes from the closet and puts them on, stuffs her shoes into the clothes, spits on the monster, and leaves. The man never sees her again.

 He crawls into bed, pulls the covers up to his chin, turns out the light and pats the side of the bed, telling the monster it’s okay. The monster stands up, sits down on the bed, and begins telling another beautiful story. This cycle continues for several months. Then the monster stops coming. The man is confused. He feels lost. He doesn’t know what to do. Now he has no wife and no monster. No stories. One day, quite by accident (he’s buying some butane and condoms from a newsstand) he discovers the monster has written a book. He is curious. The monster is on the front cover, wearing a tie and smoking a cigarette. He wonders what stories are in there. Are they the ones the monster told him? He thinks about buying the book and then thinks better of it. Maybe, he tells himself, the monster will come back someday.

Bonus 13

Gotta remember to check that faucet when I go into the bathroom.

CTN

My girlfriend sits on the couch and begs me to come and watch the Craig T. Nelson movie. “He plays a free spirit!” she calls, naked, eating a giant hamburger. Glops of mayonnaise tumble out onto her breasts, slowly sliding downward before dripping from her nipples.

And I am somewhere very far away, fixing a television with a butter knife, slathering love upon a hateful world. Thinking of nothing else to say, I call out: “Just a minute! I have to tie my shoes!”

The movie is a drag, five hours long and all the dinner scenes are drawn out in painful detail. I go to sleep that night, dreaming of Craig T. Nelson as a sexual shaman, giving my girlfriend lessons in love.

The Champion of Needham Avenue

The phone rings and a voice blares out without it even being picked up. “Shovel fight! Two minutes!”

I cram some half-rancid salami into my face hole and wipe my greasy lips with the back of my hand. I’m naked and I have to get ready. I pick up my good sweatpants from the floor and slide them on, run my hands over my rotund and hairy torso. I kick in the door to the closet and select my weapon. A light snow shovel with an orange plastic head. Not a very good choice but the only one I have.

I step out onto my porch into the brisk late winter air. The neighborhood is already out, enormous families clustered on sagging porches and screaming for blood. I hold the shovel head up, letting it rest on my shoulder. I stroll out into the middle of the street and turn to face the shovel fight champion, Dick Borghum.

His shovel is massive and heavy-looking, like the man who wields it. It is a gardening shovel with a thick, iron head. He snarls and walks toward me as I walk toward him. There is no walking away. Borghum is undefeated. His eyes are huge and bloodshot. “I’ll give you the first swipe,” he growls.

I grab my shovel firmly in both hands and take a massive, roundhouse swing at his face. The shovel hits him in the ear and the lobe falls off onto the pavement.

“Half-hearted! At best!” He bends down to pick up the lobe. I bring my shovel down on his massive back. He is unfazed. He tosses the lobe to the adoring crowd, takes his shovel in both massive hands and crouches down like a batter at a baseball game. I quickly take another swipe at his face. The tip of his nose goes shooting off to his right. He whips his shovel around and catches me in the ribs. All my wind is gone. Something has to be broken in there. I land a couple more blows, weakly. They only leave red marks on him. I turn my shovel and strike down with the side of it. A small chunk of his scalp comes off but there isn’t any blood. I suddenly have the feeling I’m not going to win this. The champion of Needham Avenue raises his shovel above his head and brings it down on the top of my skull. My head splits in half. Objects fly out: a small airplane, a fingernail clipper, some candy.

Haphazardly I begin spinning in circles, swinging my shovel around and around, as though this will ward him off. He approaches rapidly, swinging his shovel across my body. My torso splits open, unleashing more of these strange objects. Children rush down from the porches to grab up these seemingly incongruent items. Their mothers caution them to watch out for the swinging shovels. But I cast mine aside, a sign of defeat and surrender. My body is so split apart it’s hard to stand. Borghum swings his shovel at the approaching children, telling them to drop the objects. It’s like this every time. The children, most of them anyway, are so terrified they drop the objects as soon as they pick them up. A few mischievous punks stuff the objects into their pockets and run back to their protective mothers. I stare vacantly as Borghum uses his shovel to scoop up the small mound of objects and it occurs to me what they are. All my dreams, all my ideas, all hope and joy are now in the process of entering Borghum’s heavy burlap pockets. He’ll take them home and give them to his wife. She will prepare a nice supper with them and then, sitting down, they will devour all this mental content until they are full, only to defecate it out sometime the next day.

I do not even have the energy to pick up my shovel. I head back to the house, trying to hold my body back together. I suppose I’ll have to call the doctor. Once in the house, I reach down into my legs, feeling for more objects. Sadly, the left leg is filled with pain and the right leg is filled with depression. I do the same to my arms and find the left one filled with addiction and the right filled with madness. I put it all into the garbage disposal. And at the end of my right big toe, I find it, the one dream I’ve been saving. I pull a box of dirt from the freezer and bury the dream. Come spring, there will be many more and I’ll have to begin training all over again.

Trendsetter

Sitting around with Ken, he idly rolled each sleeve of his t-shirt up two times. We thought it looked good, accentuating his biceps in a way we thought was cool.

A year later, mall stores were selling shirts with the sleeves rolled up and stitched. The interior was usually a different color, which was pretty okay, I guess. But … the stitch. Ken’s way was cooler.

Either way, Ken was a trendsetter.

Top Songs 2023

Here are around a hundred of my favorite songs from 2023:

Chainsaw Mouth

A man goes to the dentist and has a chainsaw installed in his mouth. The chainsaw is not something he specifically asked for, it just works out that way. Leaving the dentist’s office, he tries to say “Thank you” to the receptionist but the only sound that comes out is the deafening rev of the chainsaw.

He gets home early and decides he can probably get some work done. The man is a salesman. Grabbing his bag of merchandise, he heads out to the neighborhood, going door-to-door. Whenever he has something new, some kitchen gadget everyone needs, he always starts in his own neighborhood, figuring neighbors with a lot of appliances are happy neighbors indeed.

He knocks on Mrs. Frick’s door. She lives at the end of the street. He waits impatiently for her to come to the door, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. An inordinate period of time passes and Mrs. Frick throws open the door. Half of her face is covered in make-up. The other half looks old and wrinkled.

The man goes into his spiel but the only thing coming from his mouth is the grating sound of the chainsaw. Mrs. Frick gasps in horror and backs away from the doorway. The man holds an arm of comfort out to her, begging her to stay and listen to him. She slams the door in his face and he reaches into his bag and pulls out some merchandise, leaving it on her doorstep. To his dismay, the merchandise is not some new household appliance. It is a bondage magazine and a snuff film. He wants to reclaim the merchandise but he’s so appalled and frightened he can’t. He scampers off to the next house and repeats the same process, telling himself it can’t be that bad. This time he finds himself throwing child pornography and a crack rock into the home of the retreating Miss Gallop.

The day does not get any better. His neighbors become more abrupt and violent—some of them openly hostile. His chainsaw voice becomes louder, more antagonistic. His merchandise becomes even darker and more illegal—Nazi propaganda, body parts. He retreats back to his house, throwing the door shut and locking it. He hides in the closet and crouches down, weeping with his new gasoline-powered voice.

The Hole

A man receives a call from his sister-in-law. She tells him his brother caught lazy eye at work. Immediately thereafter, the man develops a hole halfway up his forearm. Curious, he explores the hole. Too small to fit his index finger into, he probes it with his pinky.

“I wonder where it leads,” he muses, still digging with the pinky. He removes his pinky from the hole and smells it. The odor is only moderately disagreeable. Something similar to a sweaty navel smell.

The next day at work he brushes some of his arm hair over it and, luckily, no one notices. When he gets home that night, after showering, the hole’s smell wafts up to his nostrils. It smells much worse than before the shower. Nearly pungent. His sister-in-law calls again. This time she tells him his brother’s lazy eye has turned into a cataract.

“I’ve got problems of my own,” he growls at her and hangs up the phone.

He returns to the bathroom and scrubs the hole with great rigor. Finding a sliver of soap, he works this around in the hole until it disintegrates. It doesn’t help. In fact, the man is quite sure it smells even worse.

“Shit,” he thinks. “This is the worst smelling hole I have.”

The next day, fraught with embarrassment, he stays home from work. He breaks apart a stick of deodorant and places a piece in the hole. After a few minutes, the deodorant is gone and he puts another piece in there. If ever his vigilance declines, the hole reminds him with a scent more powerfully chilling than the worst flatulence he’s ever smelled. That evening his sister-in-law calls to tell him his brother went to the doctor. In order to solve the problem with his brother’s eye, the doctor shot it out with a slingshot. Now his eye is fine—better than before, even. The man asks his sister-in-law for the doctor’s name. He calls and makes an appointment.

The next day he goes to see the doctor.

The man forgets to bring his deodorant and the nurse directs him to a room, pushing him into it and quickly shutting the door behind him.

A few hours later the doctor walks in. Upon opening the door, he is visibly taken aback, hours of stink greeting his nostrils.

“My God that’s horrible,” he gasps.

The man points to the hole on his arm.

“Oh. I see. You have a hole.”

He pulls out a cotton swab and swabs the inside of the hole. He pulls it out and smells it, visibly suppressing his gorge and bracing himself on the bed.

“Jesus that smells. Let me write you a prescription for that.”

“Thanks,” the man says. “I’ll be happy to get rid of it.”

“Here’s a prescription for two grapes and a piece of tape. That oughtta do it.”

Skeptical, the man goes to the store, selecting the grapes and tape. He gives the cashier his prescription and medical card. She nods and hands him a receipt, suspiciously eyeing him. Once home, he inserts the grapes into the hole and applies the tape over top of it.

The next morning the hole is gone. The man breathes deeply. He feels reborn.