Andersen Prunty's Blog, page 13

Bonus 6

The deathcock needs spurs.

Bully

I send an inappropriate story to a boxing publication. Instead of a form rejection the editor sends me a lengthy letter that, in so many words, challenges me to a fight. I crumple the letter up and fling it into a neglected corner of the study but the editor shows up anyway, days later. When I first come upon him, he is leaning against my kitchen counter drinking a glass of milk. He is not at all how I pictured him. Small, thin, thick black-framed glasses covering his myopic eyes. Instinctively, I know who he is but wonder if I should introduce myself anyway. Should I even be polite? Maybe I should be confrontational, openly hostile.

He throws the empty glass onto the floor where it shatters.

“Pick it up,” I say, pointing to the mess of shards.

He spreads his arms out to either side and looks as threatening as his near-sighted eyes will allow. “I don’t even know where the broom and dust pan are,” he says.

“They’re in the closet there.” I point to the closet but he’s already approaching me.

“That’s woman’s work,” he says, quickly smacking me on the back of the head. “You and I both know why I’m here.”

“I never accepted your challenge.”

The man punches me in the stomach. I snatch the glasses from his face. He closes his eyes and blindly grasps for his glasses, hopping up to try and grab them out of my hands. I feel terrible. Like a bully. He collapses to the floor, pounding his hands against the wood.

“If I give you your glasses back… will you go?”

“Just don’t break em,” he murmurs.

“Will you go?”

“Yes. Anything. Just… please… I can’t see without em.”

“Okay.”

I bend down to give him his glasses and he rams his skull into my face. I feel my nose split. Awash with dizziness, I collapse onto the floor. Now he is over top of me, the glasses back on his narrow face, counting to ten. When he reaches ten, he says, “I win.”

“Win what?” I sputter.

“I could tell by your signature and address you were going to be easy.”

“Just get out,” I say, now sitting up and cupping my nose in my hands.

He pulls himself upright, straightens his collar, and leaves through the front door.

Bonus 5

I sit down in front of the TV and think, “Whoa … tropical theme.”

Dying is the Most Exciting Thing You Can Do in a Place Like This

I get tired of trees and move to the desert. There’s a lot of sky and not a lot to do.

The first night there, it’s very windy. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about any trees coming down on my small house. I sleep really well.

The next day I play with some dirt and kick some rocks. By mid-afternoon, it’s too hot to be outside. I go in the house, drink some water, and try to watch TV but the only channel I can find is just an endless slideshow of anuses. I masturbate and then get bored again. I turn on the air conditioner and go to bed.

I sleep through the night and decide to take a walk in the morning, while it’s still cool. I wander down the road until I find a diner.

The only other person in the diner is an old man behind the counter. His white hair and beard make me think of a prospector. He asks me what he can get me. I order a hummus sandwich and an iced coffee.

“Iced coffee,” he says. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Just put some ice in a cup of coffee.”

“Got it,” he says.

He does that and sets it on the counter in front of me. It’s gritty and not very good. He goes back to the kitchen and comes back with a plate containing two slices of bread.

“I don’t know what hummus is, but I don’t think I have any here.”

The bread is also gritty and I can’t eat all of it despite the man’s intense stare. I think he’s probably the reason more people don’t live here. He doesn’t say anything.

I pay him and get up to leave. He darts to the door ahead of me. A second ago, I would have been unable to imagine him moving this quickly.

“Wouldn’t go out there right now.”

“Why?”

“Too many snakes,” he says.

I peer around him. There are many snakes in front of the door.

“We might as well go in back and take a nap.”

I could use a nap. There’s something about all the sun and the heat. Even inside, it feels completely enervating.

“Yeah, okay,” I say.

We go in back and lie on the floor. I close my eyes but know I won’t be able to sleep because I can’t stop thinking about rattlesnakes crawling all over me. I ask if I can lie on the counter. He tells me that would be unsanitary.

I ask what he’s into. He says mostly running a business and anuses. I tell him about the anus channel but he’s already aware.

After a few hours, I can’t take it anymore.

“I’m taking off,” I say.

“Those snakes’ll still be out there.”

“I don’t care.”

I open the door and step out into the blazing afternoon sun. The snakes are too hot and lazy to strike so I’m able to make it to the road and begin wandering home.

Postcard

Ned comes over acting really strange. Tells my eight-year-old daughter to get on upstairs to fuck her brother’s brains out. After an uncomfortable couple of hours, Ned stands up and says, “I bet you think I can’t push this here couch over.” He’s really mad. Offended. He stands up. I’ve never seen Ned act like this. He bends over and really lays into the couch. I start to think he might be able to actually push it over. I stand up because I don’t want to spill my drink. He manages to tilt it but he can’t get it all the way over and now he’s more furious. He kicks the couch several times and falls into a heap on the floor, crying. My ten-year-old son comes down and points at Ned. He hollers up the stairs to his sister, “Sad man! Sad man!” and she comes running down to join in the bullying. It looks like a lot of fun so I start jumping up and down, shouting “Piss on him! Piss on him!” and the ten-year-old runs over and pulls out his penis and lets go and the eight-year-old comes over and bends down and shoots a frankly impressive stream of urine onto Ned and I feel bad but I’m having so much fun. And so is Ned! Rolling around on the floor and laughing, soaked in weird-smelling kid urine. We’re all having such a wonderful time!

Bonus 4: The Village Where I Live (Part 1)

If you were part of the Adele sing-a-long at 1 a.m., I applaud you. You made my last beer of the evening more enjoyable.

Boss

My boss makes me mad so I decide to trash his car on my break.

Everyone else is outside too.

I have to throw a rock through the window because it’s locked.

The alarm goes off but none of the other employees even notice. They’re mostly busy smoking. Some of them are drinking enough to get buzzed until their next break.

I open the door and pounce on the interior of the car with my knife. I slash the seats. I stab the stereo and the dash. It isn’t long before it’s pretty destroyed.

After I’m sweaty and exhausted, I decide I’m finished. I collapse into the passenger seat, fatigued.

My boss catches me. He sits in the driver’s seat, grabs a bottle of whiskey from the console and takes a slug. He lights a cigarette.

“Guess I should probably fire you,” he says.

“Yeah.” I don’t apologize because I’m not really sorry. “I brought a granola bar for my break. I probably should have eaten that instead. I don’t know why I do things like this.”

“It’s probably just because it was here,” my boss says. “I should probably stop bringing it in. Third time this week it’s been trashed. Monday it was Dale. Wednesday, Tim.” He takes another slug from the bottle and drags on his cigarette, not angry, staring off at the side of the building we’re parked in front of. “Now you. What do you say? Should I stop bringing the car?”

“Makes sense,” I say. “If it’s going to keep getting destroyed. I certainly won’t be able to stop myself … in the future.”

“I’ll need a ride to work.”

“Maybe we could all carpool,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “Pick me up tomorrow?”

“I’ll probably be late.”

“Try not to be.”

“I’ll try.”

“Know what?” he says. “We should just set this thing on fire. That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh yeah.”

We get out of the car together. I turn and drill a kick to the inside of the door, hard enough to bend the hinges.

“Dale!” my boss shouts. “Lighter fluid!”

Dale reaches into his large truck and comes up with a bottle of lighter fluid. He rushes over to us and hands it to the boss. The boss, cigarette clenched between his teeth, squirts the whole bottle of lighter fluid into the interior of the car. Some of the other employees wander over and cheer him on.

Our boss takes another healthy slug of his whiskey and shouts, “No one’s gonna destroy this thing again!” before tossing his lighter into the car.

We all stand around and watch excitedly for a few minutes but then it gets boring and we go back inside.

I have to take my boss home that evening. He lives in a much nicer part of town than I do.

I do not pick him up the next morning.

No one does.

We feel autonomous until he starts taking the bus. Then he starts borrowing employees’ cars for “joyrides” and we begin to feel a small level of freedom again.

The Toothless

It’s movie night with Dorb. We started inviting him over on Thursdays because it seemed like he might have been close to committing suicide.

I’m sitting on the couch with Heidi when the doorbell rings.

“It’s probably Dorb,” I say.

“I’ll get it,” Heidi says. She always gets the door. Says it’s good for her thighs.

She opens the door.

“Dorb!” I shout from the couch.

“Hey guys,” he says, giving us his toothless grin.

I stand, really feeling it. “It’s your week to pick. What do you got?”

He holds up a DVD or maybe a Blu-ray in a plastic bag. We normally just stream stuff.

“It’s a surprise,” he says.

“Let’s fire up the DVD player.” I can’t remember the last time we used it.

Heidi says, “I’ll go get the popcorn.”

Dorb sits in the middle of the couch, staring intensely at the blank screen.

I hold my hand out for him to give me the disc. He unsheaths it from the plastic bag and hands it to me. I inspect it. There are no graphics or writing on the disc.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Not sure it has a title.”

“Oh,” I say. “Experimental.”

He grins and nods his head, this time keeping his mouth closed around his gums.

Heidi comes out of the kitchen with a massive bowl of popcorn she places on the coffee table in front of Dorb.

I slide the disc in, expecting a menu screen to pop up. It doesn’t, so I quickly hit pause on the remote.

“We ready?” I say.

When Dorb and Heidi both affirm, I cut the lights and join them on the couch, sitting to Dorb’s left. We like to encourage guests to sit in the middle so they feel firmly within our bubble.

After squinting to find the button, I hit play on the remote.

On the screen, a fit middle-aged man in a tank top has a girl, maybe eleven or twelve, by the hand. They walk toward the camera. The man looks exceptionally sleazy. They pass the camera and we see they are in the young girl’s bedroom. The next few minutes make me incredibly uncomfortable. My stomach is in knots. I cough and stand up.

I look at Heidi and say, “You wanna help me with that thing in the kitchen?”

She looks surprised and I have to give her the look that tells her she really wants to help me with that thing in the kitchen.

“Want me to pause it?” Dorb says.

“Nah,” I say. “It’s okay. You can let us know if we miss anything.”

Heidi and I head into the kitchen. I’m sure Dorb realizes how abnormal this is. We typically do not talk during movies and one of us never just leaves the room without pausing it.

Once in the brightness of the kitchen, I give Heidi a look that says, “Can you believe this?”

“What?” she says, almost mad.

“Were you … enjoying that?”

“I don’t know. It’s only been going for a few minutes.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s child—”

She presses a finger to my lips. She doesn’t want me to say it because she’s afraid the FBI will come swarming down on the house.

“What are we supposed to do?” she says.

“Tell him to take his movie and go the fuck home.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“First of all, he works with us, so how awkward would that—”

I cut her off. “How awkward will it be if we go back to work and we’ve all collectively sat around watching … that.”

“Secondly, we’ll be accused of being toothist.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not toothist.”

“You know what? I think maybe you are. I think the only reason you started inviting him over was so you could tell people you have a toothless friend. Meanwhile, you can run around judging all the toothless people the same way you always have.”

“I started inviting him because he seemed lonely and I felt sorry for him.”

“Toothist.”

“I’m not watching the rest of that.”

“Why? You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t even know if it’s anything illegal. That could just be a … very young-looking actress.”

“Are you defending it?”

“Or what if it’s foreign? They have different ages of consent, you know.”

“Pretty sure it’s still illegal to watch it here.”

“If we make him leave, it’s going to devastate him.”

“Fine. Since you obviously want to watch it, just tell him I’ve got a stomach bug.”

She huffs. “You’ll have to pass him to get to the stairs. You can tell him yourself.”

Suddenly, I really do feel sick.

“And, you know, he didn’t lose his teeth naturally. He had them all pulled. A lot of people are doing it to, they say, ‘shed light on socio-economic differences’.”

Heidi looks at me with utter resignation. “I never realized what a toothist ass you are. Now I guess I know how you really see people.”

My stomach is churning. When I open the door and hear the sounds coming from the television, I don’t even have to pretend to look miserable.

Stumbling back into the living room, Heidi behind me, I say, “Sorry, Dorb, must have had something off for dinner. I gotta go lie down. You two enjoy the rest of the movie.”

I manage not to look at the screen and practically sprint up the stairs. Once I’ve reached the top of the stairs, Dorb says, “I can leave it here if you think he wants to watch it but … I don’t think he does. He liked that movie we watched last week so much, I was sure he’d like this one.”

“Lolita?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, you know, he’s kind of a snob about movies.”

I can practically see Dorb’s toothless face twisted into distatsteful agreement.

I feel guilty. Like I’ve created this monster. I shut the door so I don’t have to hear anything else. I’m not a jealous person anyway and know I have no fear of anything happening between Dorb and Heidi and, if I’m going to be honest, it’s because I can’t picture Heidi making out with someone who has no teeth no matter how toothist she claims not to be. I lose myself in thought, thinking maybe I’ll become openly toothist, building some arguments for it. I realize what a slippery slope it could be. I don’t want to be seen as a bigot. Plus, it doesn’t really matter to me what people want to do with their teeth. Most people’s just rot out anyway.

Heidi comes up about an hour later.

She seems wild. She yanks the bedclothes off me.

“Dorb go home?” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, almost breathless.

“Did he take that thing with him?”

“Yeah. But he wanted to leave it. Take off your underwear.” She’s pulling her shirt up over her head, unbuttoning her jeans and shucking them down her legs. I quickly strip off my underwear. She crawls into bed, lowering herself slowly onto my cock.

She unsnaps her bra and tosses it off. She’s grinding into me ferociously. “It was—”she breathes—“exactly what you thought.”

The Joke

As a joke, a man’s wife serves him with divorce papers. She has them sent, already signed by her, to his place of work. Understanding dawns on him as he reads through the papers. He still doesn’t get the joke so he assumes his wife wants a divorce.

“Oh boy,” he says, placing his forehead against the smooth wood of his desk. The man’s name is John, but everyone calls him Foot because of his condition. He remains with his head down, gently tapping his forehead against the wood. This is completely out of the blue. Just last week, he and his wife took a vacation to the remote island of Gonop. How could she? Why would she? He just doesn’t understand …

Later that day a coworker comes by his office and sees him still in the head down position. “What’s wrong, Foot?” the coworker says.

“It’s my wife,” Foot says, not raising his head.

“I’m sorry. Is something the matter with her?”

Foot raises his head. His eyes are red and watery. “She wants a divorce.”

“Welcome to the club,” the coworker says, raising a fist of solidarity and strolling back into the office.

Throughout the day, Foot’s anger builds. She has no right to do this, he thinks. Not without any explanation whatsoever. That kind of thing just isn’t done. By the time he gets home, he is ready to tell her all of this. He is ready to throw the papers across the room and tell her they are meaningless but, upon opening the door to his house, Foot is once again shocked.

Taking the joke one step further, his wife has decided to sleep with another man. She and her lover are actually in the act when Foot walks through the door. They are on the couch. The man wears a buckskin coat and nothing else as his hips dive vigorously between Foot’s wife’s legs.

“Oh,” his wife says between moans. “You’re home.”

The man continues to pound away.

Foot, still holding the divorce papers in his hands, brandishes them at his wife. “Jesus Christ!” he shouts, strolling across the room to grab the buckskinned man by the shoulder. “Get the hell off my wife!” He jerks the man away. His wife makes no attempt to cover herself. The man only looks emptily at him, absently toying with his huge penis.

His wife looks surprised. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset, Footy.”

“You serve me with divorce papers and then I come home to find you fucking another man. You don’t understand why I’m upset?”

“It was … just a joke,” she says, giggling.

“A joke!” he shouts.

“Yeah,” she says. “Just a joke. Pretty good one, huh?”

The buckskinned man laughs. His laugh is very deep. The laugh of a simpleton, Foot thinks.

Still, a sense of relief washes over him. Sitting down on the couch beside his wife he says, “You mean, you don’t really want a divorce?”

“Of course not,” she says. “I told you, it was just a joke.”

“A joke, huh?” Foot puts the divorce papers on the coffee table. The buckskinned man is edging toward the front door, still naked except for the coat. “What about him?” Foot says.

“Oh, he was part of the joke. That’s Norman. He works at the hardware store on the corner.”

“I thought he looked familiar,” Foot says.

“You just need to lighten up,” his wife says, swiping his arm with her hand. “You’re such a stick in the mud.”

“Yeah,” Foot says. “I guess I can be.”

Norman leaves through the front door and, looking at his wife sitting complacently on the couch, Foot finally gets it.

Throat Wad

I awake with a wad in my throat. I turn to the prostitute sleeping beside me and viciously nudge her jailhouse-tattooed shoulder. Frantically, I try to tell her about the wad in my throat but everything comes out all garbled.

“I can’t fucking understand you, you little creep!” She’s very abusive. Has been ever since I paid her. When did they start staying over anyway?

I jump up on the bed, bashing my head into the ceiling, pointing at my throat and spouting jumbled gibberish.

“You need a doctor, honey!” Why does she talk so loud?

I flip on the light but can’t find the phone. I hold my hand to my ear in the universal phone gesture.

“Yeah yeah. Hold your horses. I’m gettin to it.”

She rolls out of bed and squats down. The phone tumbles from her vagina. I vaguely recall the antics from earlier that evening before I went into the haze.

“I’m takin off. You make it impossible for a girl to sleep.”

She pulls on some stained underwear and a white snowsuit before heading outside.

I dial emergency. A woman answers. She sounds tired. “Yeah?”

I growl and gurgle into the phone.

“Hold on,” the operator says. I hear a feverishly whispered conversation followed by a burst of laughter.

An authoritative male voice comes on the line. “What seems to be the problem?”

I growl and hiss.

“Sounds to me like you have a nice-sized throat wad.”

That sounds about right.

“We’ll send somebody out.”

I turn on all the lights in the house so I don’t feel so alone. Two hours later, just before dawn, the prostitute barges through the front door. She now has a dripping red cross painted onto the front of her snowsuit. She smells gamey and glistens with sweat.

“I had to run all the way back here. They sent me to take care of your throat wad.”

I nod and point to my throat.

She crosses the room and straddles me in a way familiar to the lap dance she gave me earlier.

“Open up,” she says. “I’m the only one who can do this on account of my small hands.”

She holds her right hand in front of my face, flexing it. It is ridiculously small.

I open my mouth and she reaches down into my throat. She pulls out a screaming newborn. I try to talk—to express dismay, utter thanks, anything—but I’m still choked up.

She plops the baby, male, onto the floor and says, “Twins?”

She reaches in again.

She pulls out another baby and places it next to the first one.

This goes on for the next several minutes. I lose count after twenty-one.

Finally, she says, “All clear.”

Now, looking at the squirming mass of babies, I’m too astonished to talk. The prostitute heads toward the door and says, “I’ll be back in a couple hours. You’re gonna need a babysitter.”

She’s absolutely right. I don’t know what to do with all these babies. I strip off my clothes, collapse to the ground, and pretend to be one of them.