Andersen Prunty's Blog, page 8

Drive

I go downstairs after knitting a fashionable new scarf. Mother is lying down on the couch, a wet washcloth over her forehead. The living room is in complete and total disarray.

“For God’s sake, Mom, you look mighty bedraggled!”

“It’s your father. I don’t see why he has to be such an envelope-pusher.”

“What now?”

“He’s taken it upon himself to eat all the raisins in the house.”

“That doesn’t seem so extreme.”

“Do you know how many raisins are in this house?”

“Who made this mess?”

“Your father. The beast. The wretched whoremonger. Always looking for more raisins.”

Father comes out of the kitchen, swollen and lumpy.

“You gonna start in on me now, too?”

I shake my head. It’s best to leave him alone when he gets like this. Back in my room, I wrap my new scarf around my neck and lie on my bed. Later, I awake to find my father rooting through the mattress. I pretend to remain asleep just so there isn’t any awkward conversation, knowing he will find plenty of raisins.

Divorce

A man makes a wife out of stained sheets and old pillows. Being made from the things of sleep, she immediately dozes off. The man walks over to the window of their second-story bedroom. It’s snowing outside. It’s been snowing for quite some time. The snow nearly reaches the window. The man looks back at his wife. He tries to wake her up but can’t. He’s lonely. He wants to play in the snow. He opens the window and throws himself out, plunging deep into the snow and freezing to death.

The wife wakes up to the frigid air rushing in through the window. She slams it shut and goes back to sleep.

The next morning the dead man strolls into the house. His wife is enjoying a breakfast of sawdust and gasoline.

“You’re dead,” she says, not at all alarmed.

“Yep,” the man says.

“Best get you into the freezer.”

“Yep.”

The man enters the spacious freezer willingly. The wife tosses a case of beer and a television in with him. He stays there for three years.

The woman eventually marries a bed. He likes to sleep as much as she does although, when awake, he is a little lazier than she prefers.

The frozen man leaves the freezer and confronts the woman.

“How could you?” he says.

“You was dead.”

The man bounces on the bed. The bed groans but he doesn’t fight back.

“I’m leavin’!” the man shouts.

“It’s the middle of summer. You’ll melt.”

“Like hell!”

The man bangs the door shut behind him and walks out into the neighborhood street. He heads for the local bar, thinking maybe he can meet another woman who will put him up. It isn’t long before he begins sweating profusely. The sweat doesn’t stop. Embarrassed, he ducks into an alleyway where he slides down a wall and quietly sweats himself into nonexistence.

Laser

I fall asleep in the yard and wake up with laser beams for eyes. I do not discover this until I tug on my earlobe (a nervous habit I developed in preschool) and the lasers involuntarily shoot out and vaporize a squirrel. Somewhat scared of my newfound powers I make my way into the house. A group of elderly triplets is busy rearranging everything. The house is unnaturally warm. So warm, in fact, that the triplets have all removed their shirts and wear only old-fashioned shorts and flip-flops. They seem, at first, startled to see me, and then continue with their vigorous rearranging. The couch is turned over on its side. The loveseat is half out the door. The television is smashed. The carpet is torn up. Plants are overturned. One of them is in the process of feeding my now-destroyed coffee table into the roaring fireplace. That is why it is so hot.

“Stop! Stop!” I shout.

They sweatily proceed going about their business, fiendishly, as if driven by something even greater than destruction. I look at the one in the middle, the one hanging from the ceiling fan, trying to loose it from its mooring. My thumb and index finger clasp my right earlobe and, unhesitatingly, I give it a tug. Twin laser beams shoot out and vaporize the man, leaving the fan at an odd angle.

The other two (twins now, I guess) finally stop their destruction and stare at the empty space where the third one was. The one on the right puts his left hand on his hip and gestures into the air with his right. He says something that sounds like, “Jub,” but maybe it’s just a foreign language.

The one on my left throws up his arms and says, “Jub!”

Maybe the missing triplet’s name was Jub? I don’t know. The twins proceed to get into an argument in that strange foreign language, anger flashing in their eyes.

The one on the right punches the other one in the ear. He holds his ear, wanders over to the couch, and sits on the section remaining in the house. He sticks out his lower lip, tears streaming down his face.

“You didn’t have to hit him,” I say to the one on the right. “Why are you here anyway?”

He looks at me and says, “I … I don’t understand.”

“Do you think you guys can put everything back?”

“I … I don’t understand.”

Jesus, I think. These people are thick.

Now he sticks his finger into his bellybutton and jiggles it around a bit, looking up at the ceiling as if thinking of something. Then he shakes his head as if whatever he was thinking is wrong. Suddenly, he lurches across the room, throwing himself onto his brother, savagely beating him around the shoulders. Grasping my earlobe, I fire off another laser and he disappears as well. The remaining triplet continues to blubber. I don’t like the sound. I realize I don’t have to put up with the sound and, besides, what is a lone triplet, anyway? I vaporize him. Then I make some coffee and spend the rest of the day putting the house back in order.

That night, I dream the triplets are in bed with me, all shirtless and slippery. They argue in their dumb language and proceed to take apart my dreams—shattering them, rearranging them, shoving them into a fire. When I wake up, I no longer have laser beams for eyes.

Alone in a Room Thinking About All the People Who Have Died

A man walks upstairs. It takes him years. Many of the stairs are broken. Some are missing altogether. He reaches the attic. It’s filled with boxes of memories in the form of manufactured debris. Why do people call these memories? They make him mad. He needs room to think. He shoves open the attic window and throws the first box out. It bursts into flame on its way down and lands on the ground with a small explosion, smoke blooming like a demon. The man likes this. In turn, he throws each box—every little thing he can get his hands on—out the window. They all burst into flame. Eventually there is a sizable fire beneath the window, threatening the house. The man sits down in the middle of the attic floor and thinks about everyone he’s known who has died. The number is substantial. The memories of these people are horrendous and devastatingly sad. He closes his eyes and curses himself for ever getting close to these dead people.

The fire roars. It’s closer now. The man is pretty sure the house is on fire.

He opens his eyes. While in his reverie, darkness has fallen. The fire paints the attic with orange and yellow air. Snowflakes flutter outside in the darkness and blow into the attic. The man wonders if the fire will cause them to melt before they reach him. He opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue. The first snowflake hits it and tastes like a tear. After that, they stream in. The man lets them assault his tongue.

The fire enshrouds the house, blackening it, curling it inward from the edges.

The man, with the taste of tears on his tongue, closes his eyes while the heat of his memories consumes him.

The Murderer

Heinrich had rented the place at 401 Kenwood for a year. The small house was incredibly run down. The paint was peeling. The pollution from a nearby factory had turned it a dark gray. The windows leaked. Train tracks were less than twenty feet behind the house and trains ran all the time. But the things that bothered him the most were the cockroaches. When he flipped on a light, he saw them covering the floor. They climbed the walls and hid under things. He could hear them in the walls whenever the house was quiet. For the past year, he had called his landlord every week, an answering machine answering each time. “Please,” Heinrich would say quietly into the receiver. “Do something about the roaches.”

Over the weeks, his plea was eventually reduced to, “Please, roaches.”

Eventually, he had an idea. He decided to collect the roaches. He used a large trash bag to put them in whenever he could catch them. The effect, he realized, would be best if they were alive but he couldn’t figure out a way to do that. So he saved and he saved. Within three weeks, the bag was bulging. He set out for his landlord’s house, surprised the absentee maggot had actually told him where he lived. The check has to go somewhere, Heinrich thought.

Of course, the landlord lived in a huge clean house in one of the best neighborhoods.

Heinrich rang the doorbell.

No answer. He waited.

He rang the doorbell again and heard a familiar sound. Just someone approaching the door, he reassured himself.

When the door finally opened, Heinrich felt his gorge hit the back of his throat. The landlord was an enormous cockroach. He held a martini in one of his legs and wore a gaudy Christmas sweater, obnoxious green trees knitted into a red background. Heinrich threw the bag of cockroaches into the house and ran away, back to his own house that was, by law, the landlord’s house also.

Three days later he received an eviction notice in the mail. There wasn’t any type of explanation, just Heinrich’s full name and the address, both scrawled out in angry cockroach handwriting.

The Man Who Was Too Busy To Shit

Ten minutes was all Fencepost needed to squeeze out a proper one. He looked at his watch and thought he would have just enough time before he had to leave for his job at the surgical implement factory. Twelve of his children had already left for school and the six remaining were in the living room, suckling his bountifully benippled wife, Balustrade. Yes, he thought, this was really going to happen.

The phone rang.

Goddamn. He’d have to answer it. Balustrade had too many children attached to her.

“Hello,” he said.

“Fencepost?” The voice was asexually robotic.

“Yes.”

“You owe us some money.”

Fencepost owed a lot of people money. With eighteen children, it was impossible to stay on top of the bills.

“Who is ‘us’?”

“You know who it is.” He didn’t. “Never fear. We’ve come up with a way for you to work it off.”

“This is a bit unconventional.”

“You know what’s unconventional? Not paying your debts. That’s what’s unconventional.”

Fencepost thought about it and realized he didn’t know of anyone who did pay their debts.

“There’s no reason to get nasty,” the voice said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“When you leave your job at the implement factory, we’ll need you to go to this address. Are you ready? Do you have a pen and paper?”

“There’s no need. I’ll remember.”

“Like hell.”

“No, really, just give me the address.”

“There’s that tone again.” The voice gave him the address. Fencepost knew immediately where it was. A series of drab office buildings down by the riverfront. He didn’t bother asking about the pay and the nature of the work. He knew the former would be minimal at best and the latter would be ridiculous, grueling, and unrewarding.

“I’ll be there.” The voice had already hung up.

Fencepost slammed the phone down and said, “Goddamn.”

The shit continued to build.

—  —  —

Fencepost went to his job at the implement factory. He worked a tedious ten-hour day typing in descriptions of all the damaged surgical instruments sent to them by various hospitals, serial killers, and cutters. He would not be able to shit at work. He had a phobia about defecating in public stalls. It didn’t help matters the unventilated restroom was in the middle of the office, allowing everyone to hear the gaseous crescendos of any potential expulsions. Besides, he didn’t have enough time. Two ten-minute breaks. He was given an unpaid hour lunch break he couldn’t afford to take. He only took ten minutes to scarf down a rancid sandwich he found moldering in the community refrigerator. He left the job in the early evening feeling, as he did every day, deeply humiliated. He got into his car and drove down to the riverfront.

Arriving at the series of stark office buildings, he took a deep breath and got out of his car. He approached the address given him and rang the buzzer next to the door. The door buzzed, only it wasn’t a mechanical-sounding buzz. It sounded like someone making a buzzing sound. He pulled the door but it was still locked. He continued to press the buzzer and frantically pull the door. He wanted to leave but he desperately needed the opportunity to work off this debt. The day grew dark and Fencepost continued to stand next to the door. I could be shitting right now, he thought.

Another car pulled into the parking lot and the plainest-looking man Fencepost had ever seen got out. He punched the door and it opened right away. At last, Fencepost thought, I’ll be able to get in.

“Better stay out here,” the man said.

“I think I work here,” Fencepost said.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Fencepost fought the urge to bite the man on the neck and continued to stand outside. Over the course of the evening several other workers came: a few plain-looking people, a dwarf, a clown, an astronaut, and someone who either had to be a stripper or a porn star, possibly both.

Eight hours later, amidst the dirge from a distant barge, the croaking of frogs, and the dry rasp of insects, a voice, presumably the one from his earlier phone conversation, came through the speaker. “You can go home now.”

Fencepost stared at the speaker. He was very tired. He couldn’t even think of anything to say.

“Come back tomorrow and you’ll be closer to paying off your debt.”

Fencepost turned and headed back toward his car.

The shit continued to build.

—  —  —

Stepping through the front door, Fencepost was immediately bombarded by his herd of children. They dragged him down onto the floor and wrestled with him. He struggled to get away for a few moments, to try and make it to the restroom, but he soon gave in to the wild romp. He had a hard time saying no. Eventually, Balustrade came to corral them into their respective bedrooms. It was very late. Fencepost wasn’t sure why the children weren’t in bed when he got home. Oh well, at least it allowed him to see them for a bit. That was important to him even though he couldn’t quite remember all their names.

Balustrade had left his meal on the table. She would put the children to bed, take a bath, and then go to bed herself. Fencepost would have to eat quickly so he could make it to the bathroom before her bath. It was absurd that, in a house with this many people, there was only the one bathroom. He inhaled his food and raced upstairs. Too late. He heard the water running. Maybe he should just go out and poop in the yard.

He lay on the bed and waited for Balustrade to finish her bath.

He must have dozed off because Balustrade woke him the next morning, warning him not to be late for work.

The shit continued to build.

Fencepost felt full and stiff.

The next two days were exactly the same.

—  —  —

By the end of the week Fencepost had stopped eating. He didn’t think he could possibly fit anything else in there. When he came home from work, Balustrade was once again in the bath. She had sent the children off to the Grandparent Farm, a large home for the elderly out in the country. The residents had absolutely no idea whose grandchildren were whose. All weekend, the place was aswarm with savage children, exhausted elderly, and utterly perplexed attendants.

—  —  —

It happened while they were fucking.

Fencepost became a shitstorm.

He had fallen asleep in the recliner in the living room and awoke to Balustrade straddling him.

No, he thought. This isn’t possible. Even more impossibly, he found himself aroused. He could make it quick. It had been so long since he and Balustrade had made love he figured it would only take a matter of seconds. But it didn’t even come to that. Balustrade moved to kiss him on the neck and he exploded into a furious cloud of shit.

Balustrade jumped off his lap and looked down at her soiled negligee in horror. She began screaming. Consumed by his own shit, Fencepost ran around the house, stinking, and soiled everything. He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t even human anymore. If this was the way he was going to go, he wanted to make the most of it.

He swirled back downstairs and out the front door. He jumped in his car, opening the door and turning the wheel with sloppy, stinking shit hands, staining the seats, infecting the car with his fecal reek.

He drove to his first job, deserted at this time of night, and shittily unlocked and opened the door. He smeared himself everywhere—on all the walls and phones and chairs. He left a good deal of himself in the boss’ office and hoped there was a security camera there, recording everything.

Onto the second, if only temporary, job. As always, and especially afflicted with his new condition, he wasn’t able to breach the door. But he was sure to cover it, turning its sparkly glass opaque with his filth. He drenched the speakerbox next to the door and left a whole glop of himself on the button.

He crossed the road, still angrily swirling but greatly depleted, and threw himself into the gently babbling sewage of the river. It took him out to the very ends of the earth where his consciousness, like his body, dissipated into all the essential elements of life.

Rivalry

I rented a truck to drive over my neighbor. All of this because he’d taken a backhoe to my once beautiful lawn. I got the last truck the rental place had. It was a great lumbering beast. On the way home I stopped at a bar specializing in darts and arm wrestling and got blind drunk. Navigating the truck was difficult but I felt invincible.

I slammed into the curb in front of my house. My neighbor, Baxter, was watering his flowerbeds—the haughty prick.

Now was the time to do it. I gunned the accelerator and raced toward him. He dropped the hose and ran into his house. It took a few minutes to get the truck all turned around. They probably shouldn’t rent these things to everyday, non-truck driving people. I think I hit the house behind me but I was too drunk to tell. My body had gone numb. I was covered in an acrid sweat. I gunned the engine again and slammed into my neighbor’s house.

He looked out from the second-floor window. He had a shotgun. I guess Baxter had everything. A fantastic lawn. Gorgeous flowerbeds. Hi-tech weaponry.

I backed up and ran into the house again. I wanted to shake its foundations. He fired a shot and the windshield shattered. My heart skipped a beat. A lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t quit. I couldn’t let this hobo win. I honked the horn. Laid on it. Loud and blaring.

He had probably called the cops but they wouldn’t respond to anything short of murder, kidnapping, or hostage situations. I backed up and rammed the house again. He fired another shot. Some of the buckshot peppered my right arm. Baxter—the violent fuck.

I pulled the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. I opened the back of the truck, went into my house and, grabbing some essential items (knives, the television, a blowtorch, beer, and pornography), moved into the back of the truck.

I pulled the sliding door down and welded it shut. I watched TV and laughed as Baxter pounded on the door and fired his rifle at it, begging me to remove the truck from his once immaculate house.

Vagina

A very lonely man orders an imitation vagina from a catalogue. He sits down on the couch and waits for it. A couple hours later, he hears a sound from the porch. Opening his front door, he sees someone has left a large box for him—it’s roughly as large as he is. He drags the box inside and hastily tears it open. Instead of his fake vagina, he finds a woman curled up in the box, sleeping. At first he thinks maybe it’s just some kind of lifelike sex doll but he can see it breathing. Bending down, he shakes her shoulder.

“Uh, Miss?” he says.

Startled, she rolls over and looks at him. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says.

She is dressed enticingly in a very short skirt and clinging t-shirt.

“Well, I guess you know why I’m here,” she says.

“Actually, I’m a little confused. I think maybe they screwed up my order.”

He checks the box for an invoice but doesn’t see one. His address isn’t even on the box. Curious, he thinks.

“I guess you can spend your time thinking about it or we can go upstairs and you can put me to use.”

“I would definitely like that,” the man says. He can’t believe his good fortune. He wonders if the girl is planning on staying, if she really is his.

They go upstairs and, after a few moments, the man gasps in frustrated confusion. He kneels between the girl’s legs, staring down at the complete absence of sex. Like a doll, she is entirely hairless and smooth. He looks up at the girl to meet her embarrassed stare.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “It was there a few days ago, I promise.”

“Unlikely,” the man says.

“There are other things I can do,” she says.

“It’s not the same,” the man dresses and retreats downstairs, pouting.

The girl comes downstairs moments later, fully dressed. “I guess I should go, huh?”

The man, angry, wants to tell her to get out but, after thinking about it, realizes he is very lonely and, indeed, there are other things the girl can do. Things that would have to be better than using an imitation vagina. “Why don’t you stick around,” he says.

So the girl sticks around for a few days and they perform every sexual act possible. The man is happy and exhausted but, alas, he has to go back to work.

Coming home from work one day, he discovers the mailman delivering the mail. One of the parcels he crams in the mailbox is the vagina. It is without an envelope and looks slightly used. The mailman, unable to meet the man’s gaze, looks at the ground and quickly walks to the next house. The man takes the vagina into the house and gives it a thorough washing. Then he puts it in a box and wraps it. That night, with the girl waiting in bed, waiting for their marathon non-vaginal sex to begin, the man presents her with his present.

“For me?” she asks.

“Of course,” the man says, eager to see her look of surprise when she opens the box.

Once opened, a look of horror crosses the girl’s face.

“I guess you want me to put this on,” she says.

“Then you’ll be complete.”

The girl crosses to the bathroom and comes out with the vagina attached. It is slightly ill-fitting but the man doesn’t really mind.

After that night’s sex, the man rolls off the girl and lights a cigarette. “Fantastic,” he says.

The girl pretends to fall asleep.

The next morning the man wakes up and discovers that he is alone with the vagina. He looks all around the house but he can’t find the girl. He even calls the catalogue company and asks about her but they treat him like he’s nuts. He looks at the vagina and finds it sad and lonely. He places it on the front porch, hoping the girl will return to claim it.

Making Faces

He liked to make faces in the mirror.

He’d always been told, because he had a naturally tense and dour expression, that if he made too many ugly faces, he’d get stuck that way.

But mostly, if he wasn’t making faces in the mirror, he just saw himself as he was—tense and dour. Boring. Unremarkable. Maybe a bit severe.

Sometimes he tried to make faces, express himself in certain ways, that would make him seem more interesting or attractive. He found himself laughing at these, or maybe at the idea of these.

The ones that really made him laugh were the ugly ones.

Sometimes he would try those faces out at work or in public and, surprisingly, no one ever said anything.

They could tell he was probably going through something.

The Melancholy Room

Framoni was an ecstatic man. He looked for the beauty in everything and, beyond the beauty, he found laughter. Around the Weeg District it was a common sight to see Framoni bent with laughter. He was a girthy man, bearded and prone to brightly colored suits.

One day, something ruptured.

Framoni, at the advice of others, went to see a doctor. He disliked doctors. They did not represent the joyful, the ecstatic.

“It hurts when I laugh.” Framoni pointed to an area between his ample belly and his heart.

“That’s because you’ve busted a gut.” The doctor looked at a clipboard that Framoni assumed held the results of his tests.

“That can’t be.” Framoni stared emptily at the dead space of the exam room.

“Oh, I’m afraid so. You’ll have to stop laughing, unfortunately.”

The doctor reached into a drawer and pulled out a heavy book. “Here. Read this. It’ll help.”

Framoni left the doctor’s office. He went to the local haberdasher and purchased a black suit, hoping the somber fabric would help his condition. He reached his apartment and flipped through the book the doctor had given him. No title. No author. It seemed to be a series of blueprints and diagrams. Tiring of the book, Framoni went out to his balcony and looked out upon the district street. Beauty. Absurdity. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stay here and not laugh.

Framoni rented a small cottage in the country, ivy-covered and away from people. He wore his black suit, moped around the house, and focused on the sad savagery of nature.

Soon, he received a letter from his cousin, Conley Barnes, all the way from Grapp.

Dear F.

Regrettably, Uncle Werther has passed. It seems he was out for his morning “ball flop” when it happened. He had a testicular condition where they needed to be agitated regularly. He chose to do this by wearing voluminous pants, thus allowing his “balls” to “flop” from thigh to thigh. Unfortunately, this condition resulted in a stretching and loosening of the scrotum. Embarrassingly, the scrotum ruptured while he was “flopping” down the sidewalk adjacent to a busy suburban street. Your presence at the funeral is not mandatory. Donations are always accepted.

Yours,

C.B.

Framoni put the letter back in its envelope and placed it on the table.

Normally, he would do something that would make him laugh in order to relieve the great sadness in his soul. Instead, he took the nameless book into an unused room at the back of the cottage. He sat down in a corner and remained there for days. Shortly thereafter, he received another letter from his cousin Conley.

Dear F.

Regrettably, Aunt Edanine has passed. The eye sac that had plagued her for years finally ruptured while she was out for a drive. Her vision became obscured and she ran into a tree. A funeral will not be held. She has requested her body be left in the Wilds for the imagibeasts to feed upon.

Yours,

C.B.

Framoni put this letter on top of the other one and went back to the room. Back to the book. The sadness of the room pressed down upon him. He had started to lose weight and his black suit hung loosely from his body.

The letters kept coming.

His grandfather Gustav accidentally defenestrated while watering a flowerbox. His cousin Paco, after losing his eyebrows in a grilling mishap, died from an infection sustained during a transplant. His grandmother Gloria disappeared on a cruise, all passengers assumed deceased.

There were more.

Framoni’s melancholy room had changed. He thought it had something to do with the book. Just looking at the strangeness of it seemed to cause the designs to manifest. He wandered dazedly around the room, touching things. Over the weeks, over the deaths, a chair had appeared, made from coffin lining. The windows were blacked out. Like those in a hearse, he thought. The curtains were made of tears. The floor was grimed with grief and he was pretty sure the ceiling was made of regret.

He did not like this room.

He called his doctor and said, “I think I’m ready to laugh again.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I do not like doctors,” Framoni said softly into the phone.

“Yes. And I do not like fools.”

Framoni hung up the phone and retrieved some matches from the kitchen. Cautiously, he entered the melancholy room and felt the exchange of sadness.

He shredded the strange book and piled it up on the floor. Then he struck a match and dropped it to the pile. And he sat in the corner and laughed as the flames consumed everything, crawling over the sadness and crackling it with life.