Numbskull (short story)

Picture by FOUL APPARATUS
With a murderous look, Ricky watched the new kid texting. Kids these days had no sense of responsibility, on the clock and still glued to their phones. Even more revolting, the spoiled brat was sitting on the chair at the desk in the cut fruit area, like he owned the place, headphones in his ears, head bobbing in the rhythm of some infernal music.  Ricky made a mental note to talk to the store manager and make sure the kid didn't pass probation. He stormed through the stockroom's swinging doors and saw Brian out on the floor, working the wet rack. With his unusual gait—hunched back and tilted to the right—Ricky approached his older co-worker. "The new kid is beyond useless," Ricky barked.Brian turned slowly and looked at Ricky with a mixture of pity and anxiety. The younger man was a bit too agitated for his taste. On Brian's view, Ricky, aka Rocky Balboa or The Rock, had been bullied as a kid and the extreme abuse jagged his brain into thinking he was a tough guy, an invincible hero. To those willing to listen to his bullshit, Ricky would brag that, despite his skinny build and small stature, he never lost a fight. Like Bruce Lee, he'd take on adversaries double his size and blindside them with his speed and the wrestling techniques he'd learned from decades of watching WWE (which he still thought was for real). Most co-workers felt sorry for him and, behind his back, they called him The Pebble, The Rock's younger and lesser-known brother. Brian said, "What did you expect? Millennials...Good thing we're still here to keep this store afloat." He then threw a rusty lettuce into the garbage box on his cart."If it was up to me I'd rip his head off and shit down his neck, I'd break his face and kick his teeth out," Ricky hissed."Well, it's a good thing it's not up to you then," Brian replied, tired of Ricky's outbursts and need for posturing. With a nervous gesture, Ricky adjusted the bill of his Oilers cap. "So, how was your vacation?""Too short," Brian replied promptly. He actually had no clear recollection of it, like a forgotten dream. Only the store seemed real, the produce department. "Did you hear what happened here, did you watch the news?" Ricky asked."No, what happened?""Oh, my God, Brian, you do live under a rock. There was a fucking massacre here last Wednesday, murder-suicide, blood everywhere, the thing was all over the news!"Brian bulged his normally sleepy eyes, his heart beating a tad faster."You remember Dylan from groceries?" Ricky continued. "He was in a relationship with Susan from deli and then she dumped him for Kevin in pharmacy?"Brian nodded despite the fact none of those names rang any bells. "So, the cunt...not only did she dump poor Dylan but she started telling people that Kevin fucks her so much better than Dylan ever did. That Kevin showed her what sex is all about. And then guys started poking fun at Dylan and he took a vacation. But he stopped by last Wednesday, carrying a butcher knife."Brian's jaw dropped, his eyes ready to pop.Ricky continued excitedly. "I was here in produce when I heard the shouts and the screams coming from pharmacy. When I got there Dylan was on top of Kevin, stabbing him." Ricky made chopping motions with his right hand. "Blood flew everywhere. Susan jumped on Dylan to stop him but he punched her away, got up, grabbed her hair, and slashed her throat. Then, he threw her on the floor and looked around wild-eyed. A crowd had formed but no one made a move. I knew he was gonna run for the exit so I ran ahead to block it and called 911. He came running down an aisle, heading for the doors but when he saw me he stopped dead in his tracks. I took out my produce knife and said 'Dylan, stop right there! The police are on their way. This is the end of the line for you buddy, you're trapped.' And you know what the crazy guy did?"Brian shook his head, his jowls trembling."He cut his fucking throat, right then and there."  Ricky ran his thumb across his neck and rolled his eyes up. "Some blood splashed my face and the till #1, and the floor. It was like in one of those Tarantino movies, Kill Bill or shit like that. I think he knew if he came at me I would have killed him. We were friends but that Dylan was gone and what I was facing was a homicidal maniac. He knew better than to attack me so he killed his sorry ass."  Brian knew that Ricky might have embellished the story to make himself look good, but didn't doubt the gist of it. "That's what they call a crime of passion if I'm not mistaken.""Yeah, or Small Dick Syndrome," Ricky said and laughed displaying his yellow horse teeth. "Wow, I can't believe that happened in our store.""Yes, the police were here and reporters, it was a fucking zoo. I was interviewed as a witness and was on the 6 o'clock news that day." The Pebble's fifteen minutes of fame, Brian thought. Then he prodded Ricky for more details but his interest dwindled slowly as he didn't seem to remember the people involved in this tragedy and couldn't imagine what consequences this disturbing event would have on his life in particular. It was like watching the news, a story sparks one's curiosity but it's promptly forgotten once the sports segment comes on. As if the event happened in China or the dark side of the moon.Ricky's attention was caught by a hooded woman carrying a "Good Life" gym bag and rushing toward the meat department. "I think I know her, the low-life came to steal again," Ricky said through clenched teeth and trotted to the far corner of the produce area, a hunter chasing his prey. The Pebble liked to pretend he was the Loss Prevention Officer, catch thieves, and hopefully beat them up or make them cry. Brian turned his attention back to the wet rack and started filling up the green onions, cutting their ends neatly with scissors. He noticed that the display stand for onions was almost empty and his heart leaped with joy as filling up onions was the favorite part of his shift. That and doing some "sampling" of new products after lunch.Brian was slowly getting into his groove when Ricky came back. "Did you see the God-awful Oilers last night? God, why they transfer Lucic Stone Hands is beyond me. God...is he useless or what?"Always down for talking hockey, Brian said, "Well, let me ask you this? Was Gretsky ever in a fight?"Ricky scratched his head, lifting his cap. He didn't remember much about the Great One as he wasn't from Edmonton and back in those days, when puberty hit, all he could think about was the Undertaker and the mystery of sex. "No?" he answered uncertainly."Well, of course not. Because he had his body-guard Dave Semenko. You always need a big body to protect your best player and scorer, which is McDavid now."    "But he's not scoring" Ricky whined."Well, that's because his line sucks, and I don't mean only Lucic. Let me ask you this, if they put their best players on McDavid's line, you think he's gonna have more points? Of course, he will. And the other lines just have one job: to keep the puck out of the net. Then we'll win every game cause the McDavid line will score each and every game."Ricky didn't know what to make of Brian's theory and just walked away mumbling that the Oilers are going to miss the playoffs again. Back to his cart, Ricky began filling the banana stand.Turning back to his work, Brian considered that he never told Ricky that he rarely watched a game from beginning to end anymore. It was shameful, but it was part of his new outlook on life, his small secret about happiness. Brian would usually fall asleep after the first period of a hockey game. It was more the waiting for the game that gave him pleasure, the fact that the game was there, crowning his day, something to look forward to. It was some kind of ritual, him sitting on the couch, his dog sleeping on his feet and drooling on his slippers, the odorous shadow that was his wife yapping away on the phone in the kitchen, some fat singer belting out O Canada, the dimmed lights covering the room in a soft, warm amber glow. It was his end of the day ritual. Brian discovered the purpose of his life was sleeping. Just like some people lived to eat, Brian lived to sleep. He liked to eat too, naturally, as he couldn't fall asleep on an empty stomach. The trick was to treat being awake as just a means toward falling asleep. That was, working at tiring himself so that the nightly sweet surrender to the care-free void of deep slumber would come easily and without trouble. Exhausting himself, that was the key to happiness. After more than forty years of working for the same grocery store, for the most part in produce, Brian knew almost exactly the number of actions he needed to perform to get tired enough for his eight hours of bliss. Around the time he turned fifty, Brian realized there was nothing to be gained in this world. His life was like a movie unfolding in front of him, more or less independent of his wills and wants. Just a boring old movie. Every day, same shit, different pile. He was like a lonely spectator in the private cinema of his mind, and the good thing about that cinema was that it came with comfy seats in which he could snooze to his heart's desire. And no one kicked homunculus-Brian out of his own cinema. After his revelation, Brian decided that he and his wife, lovingly nicknamed Saggy Naggy, should sleep on separate beds and in separate rooms. Soon after Brian fully discovered the joys of sleep, away from Saggy Naggy's farts, her incessant grinding of teeth and lazy, slobbering blow-jobs. That had been by far the best decision of his life. Brian guessed that everyone knew, deep down, that life was all about sleep, but they were too arrogant to accept the simple truth. Ricky, for instance, was only getting into fights in the hope of getting knocked out or put out of his misery. In his mind, the half-wit thought he was a hero but all he craved was to be nothing, a hero wanting to be zero. The same with sex and drugs. The post-coitus sleep was the sweetest and overdoses were exceedingly attractive because they offered sleep plus the tantalizing chance of never waking up.  While philosophizing on the miracle of sleep, Brian continued working the wet rack with expert hands; filling up celery bunches, celery sticks, cauliflower, radishes, broccoli bunches and crowns,  green, yellow and red bell peppers, and carrots. Culling and rotating, trimming and throwing away the wilted, spoiled veggies, cutting away the brown stuff. Making sure that everything looked fresh and colorful. The rack underneath the vegetables was black and the rule was that no black ought to be visible. No holes. The customer's eye had to be attracted by a wall of vibrant colors. Brian was going through the same motions he has done for about four decades since he was sixteen and his dad threw him out of the house for smoking pot and sleeping with "girlfriends" who came too often and too loud. That was a lifetime ago, Brian mused, and it felt like those things had happened to someone else. Lately, it seemed to Brian, even his present life appeared to be someone else's. He felt no responsibility for his actions and no intimate connection to them. His life was like working the wet rack, purely habit, Brian was going doing it robotically. The saying went, idle hands are the devil's hands. His hands never belonged to the devil, Brian was certain of that. But who did they belong to then? For a very long time, Brian would have proclaimed that his hands were his own. But in the new reality-is-but-a-boring-movie world, doubt started to seep into the foundation of that proclamation. Those weren't his hands but just some hands, belonging to God or to his boss, Brian didn't care much which. He only cared that if those hands stayed busy, he would get tired, sleepy. Once he finished the rack, Brian went on his lunch break. Ricky's cart was still not fully worked, two full boxes of bananas waiting to be put away. The numbskull was complaining about the new kid but he wasn't doing much work either, Brian thought with a pang of annoyance. He figured he was telling his heroic story to his crush in deli or kissing the ass of some manager. During his break, Brian had the pizza and chicken-wings leftover from last night and read the sports section. The lunchroom was empty. Back in produce, he felt like having a treat and remembered the bin full of watermelon they had received that day. He decided to "sample" one with Ricky. The younger man was still not in sight but Brian figured he would show up sooner or later. He entered the stockroom, picked a watermelon, knocked on it to make sure it was ripe, peeled of its label, and set it on a table in the cut fruit area. The new kid was already gone, good riddance. Brian grabbed a big knife and began cutting the melon down the middle. Under the rind, the knife hit something hard. Puzzled, Brian cut sideways. What the gash revealed made him lurch. Under the watermelon's skin, there was a layer of yellow skin and bone. His knife had slashed into flesh that was now oozing rusty blood. The blood reeked. Despite himself, Brian continued to cut the watermelon skin like an archeologist carefully unearthing an ancient artifact. Soon there was no doubt, a human head was buried inside the fruit. He pressed on the eye socket and his finger went through. A violent stench of excrement assaulted his nostrils and he puked in his mouth, bits of barbecue chicken wings imbibed in bile. He swallowed back with a grimace. How can this be? Brian's mind reeled, struggling to find purchase. Could a murderer grow a watermelon around a human head, to hide it? Was the farmer who sold this some sort of serial killer? Were the other watermelons in the bin filled with other human body parts? A fruit naturally growing like that would violate a law of nature, surely. Breaking his stream of thought,  some flies came out of the hole buzzing and Brian recoiled in disgust, letting go of the skull. For a brief moment, he thought the spoiled melon would roll over and spill its fetid content on the white, spotless table, but it remained in a vertical position, starring at him through its empty socket like an ancient totem. In a dazed rush, Brian opened a plastic bag, tossed the head and the skin of the watermelon inside and dumped the bag in the big garbage bin. Then he washed his hands, put new plastic gloves on, filled his cart with twenty-five-pound bags of onions, and went out on the floor. However, even the ritual of peeling onions couldn't eclipse the troubling image in his head. Now, as he touched every onion he imagined a small skull inside it. Could it be newborn heads? The heads of pets? Or shrunk heads? He remembered members of some ancient tribes would shrink the heads of their enemies to stave off revenge. Maybe the softer onions covered the still-forming skulls of fetuses? Maybe the moldy ones were the stillborn ones? Just as he was thinking that he felt his fingers pierce through a rotted bulb. He opened the bag and saw the grey gelatinous onion and some white spots on it. At first, he thought they were just mold or, more implausibly, bits of rice. But then he noticed the bits moving slowly, and realized they were maggots. And next to the spoiled onion, there was a set of dentures. They looked a lot like Saggy Nagy's. Brian was also vaguely reminded of the Cheshire cat, except these dentures were grinning and grinding on dry rusty onion leaves.As fast as he could, Brian took the cart in the back and threw the bag of onions away in the large garbage bin on top of the melon skull. He was freaked out and his heart was thundering in his chest, palms sweating, mind foggy from anxiety. He needed Ricky, he needed to hear his stupid stories, he needed to talk to him about hockey, anything to forget the uncanny visions. He needed things to get back to normal, not agitated, how could he sleep when agitated? Brian peered down each aisle—coffee and tea, snacks and pop, pet food, frozen foods—but Ricky was nowhere to be found. The whole store was deserted and eerily quiet. Brian figured he mistakenly stayed past closing time. He frowned and tried to think back on his actions. Suddenly, all the lights dimmed, amplifying Brian's confusion. He turned in place looking for someone, anyone, to ask for clarification. "Hello!" he shouted with an unsteady voice. "Ricky, where the hell are you?" No answer.There were no cashiers, no courtesy clerks, no customers. Through the murky light, he saw the two glowing exit lights on top of the automatic doors and an ad with the price of unleaded gas at the station next door. Outside, the lamps cast a pale light over the empty parking lot. At this late hour of the night, no doubt the doors were closed. Out of ideas, Brian appeared like a puppet with its strings cut off. He just stood there, at the entrance to the bakery area, for a good five minutes, three hundred pounds of human meat devoid of purpose. Slowly, his anxiety dissipated, the dimmed lights sedating his system. He imagined he was in the living room waiting for the angel of sleep to take him. There was some weird, upsetting horror movie on TV but he was getting tired and that was all that mattered. The reassuring fantasy took hold as the store was a familiar place, kinda like home, it was his place. He decided to look for Ricky in the stock-room. On leaden legs, he walked there, the thickening grayness around him heavier and heavier. Ricky's cart was no longer on the floor, and the banana table was finally full. The idiot must be in the back. Brian opened the doors and saw Ricky by the shelves full of banana boxes. Mr. Rocky Balboa was sleeping on the bottom side of the cart, in a fetal position, his head on a five-pound bag of potatoes. But how is this possible? Brian asked himself. Ricky was short but was he that short? Brian approached the cart and crouched down for a closer inspection. His knees popped loudly. Even through the murky light, from close-up, it looked like it was only Ricky's clothes carefully arranged at the bottom of the cart to look like a human body. This reminded Brian vaguely of a documentary about the infamous escapees from Alcatraz, who tricked their guards by leaving behind dummies in their beds to cover their break-out. For a brief second, Brian thought he was maybe the butt of a practical joke and looked around, an embarrassed smile on his face. But everything was still, no one was laughing at him. Brian turned his attention to Ricky's clothes: scuffed up black shoes, black jeans (although the company policy required dress pants), grey shirt, and green apron with the name tag. Brian lifted the Oilers cap. Underneath there was a large, wrinkled potato with a dusty, rough texture. Five white sprouts came out of the tuber, four of them looking like the tiny limbs of a fetus. On what appeared to be a bulbous head, the left eye was gone and the right one looked like a small bag of puss. The nose was sucked inside and only a couple of teeth remained sticking out. The fifth wormy sprout ran from the top of the fetus' head to the bag of Russets like an atrophied umbilical cord. Except it was the bag that seemed to suck the nutrients out of the fetus-like potato, small globs of matter passing from the decaying potato into the bag. Brian detected a sound coming from the remains of Ricky, a low voice under a layer of radio static noise. He moved his head so that his good left ear could decipher the words: "I took out... my produce knife and said 'Dylan, stop right there! The police are on their way. This is the end of the line for you buddy, you're trapped.... I'll cut you up, man. I'll cut you up you, scum...closed casket funeral when I'm done with you, you psycho." Brian covered his metamorphosed co-worker with the Oilers hat and stood up. He wasn't shocked by the horrific visage. His exhaustion covered him like a cloak, his eyelids were heavy and everything was too distant and insignificant. Reality was at the other end of the tunnel, a mess that had nothing to do with him, a boat that has left the shore. Nothing could disturb Brian now, his brain was numb, tired of processing the external world. Inside that numbskull, homunculus-Brian was almost asleep in his private theatre. With zombie-like slowness, Brian grabbed a piece of cardboard and put it on the top side of the cart and used a bag of potatoes for a pillow. He'd bunk with Ricky tonight just as he'd bunked with his brother when they were kids. His heavy lids closed and he was immediately transported into an underground world of rest and blessed, fertile rot.