We’ve been telepathically linked for years. We’re in each other’s energy fields nearly every hour of every day. When we’re not, it’s usually fine … Sometimes it’s terrible. It always feels incomplete, missing something. We try to create a world the other wants to inhabit. We never need to talk. We don’t even really have to meow. We exchange energy. It’s uncomplicated. It’s effortless. We only talk because we like the sound of our voices.
Category: Stories
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Slab
Ever since he’s started eating on the humans in the freezer, Ross has gained an amazing 150 pounds. He finishes a slab of the human’s ribs and reflects on what life used to be like. He had been a social creature: parties, girlfriends, a good job.
Then one day, he just got tired of it all. He no longer wanted anything more than to kill a few humans and keep them in his new deluxe freezer.
Ross had, on a number of occasions after eating human flesh, tried to venture out into the world but it had become too difficult. The phone calls and drop-ins had ceased shortly after he quit going to parties and the job. After all communication with the outside world had ended it became too difficult for him to go outside. He could feel people staring at his fat, pale unwashed flesh. Ross had stopped shaving and he knew whenever he farted they all smelled the stink of death. People shot him the evil eye. Priests crossed themselves after walking by and none of it meant anything to Ross. He only wanted to eat his freshly prepared meals, wash them down with some tap water and masturbate, the taste of the last bite still fresh on his tongue.
Ross brings himself back into present time and rises from the table, going to the sink and washing his dish. After washing, Ross retires to his chair for a pleasant post-meal slumber.
Then a very strange thing happens.
The phone rings.
At first, Ross doesn’t know what to do.
Then he swallows, takes a deep breath, and goes to answer the phone.
“Hullo,” he says.
“Mr. Ross?” the voice on the other line asks.
“Yes, this is Mr. Ross.”
“Mr. Ross. We know you have a dead body in your apartment.”
“Not true.”
“What?”
“Not true.”
“So you don’t have a dead body in your apartment?”
“No way. That’s illegal.”
“What about a dead cow. Neighbors say they’ve heard you sawin’ on something over there.”
“Is it illegal to keep a dead cow?”
“If it becomes a nuisance to those around you. Say, are you sure you don’t have a dead body there?”
“No way. That is, I mean, I’m sure.”
“This is Mr. Ross, 311 Purple Rose Street, Apartment 4F, correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
“No dead body?”
“Nobody but me.”
“Well, okay, then … Hey, you wouldn’t tell us if you had a dead body in there anyway.”
“Sure I would.”
“Well, I think we’re going to send somebody over there to check it out.”
“I’ll be waiting for you, Mr. …?”
“Black. Stanley Black.”
“Thank you, Mr. Black.”
It was strange talking to another human being, Ross thinks upon hanging up the phone. Well, he thinks, guess I should finish up the rest of that dead body.
It is a lot to eat and his stomach ends up rupturing after the last bite.
The detective who comes over to check out the apartment has been into cannibalism for a little over two years. When he sees Ross’ huge dead body he is both shocked and delighted. He waits a few minutes before calling Detective Black.
“Yeah, Stan, I’m here at that guy’s apartment. No, everything’s clean, checks out fine. I think I’m gonna take off for the day after this, though. All right. Thanks, Chief.”
After hanging up, the detective gets on the phone with one of his cannibal friends to help him drag that bitch of a corpse out to the car.
-
Dog in Orbit
A woman comes home and discovers her dog is missing. It is an ugly mutt with a face like a leathered wino but, nevertheless, she misses it. She goes back outside. A thin old man is collapsed face down on the sidewalk in a puddle of drool. She nudges his skeletal shoulder with her foot.
“Whu …?” He squints up into the sunlight.
“Have you seen my dog?”
“Can you help me up?”
The woman bends down and grabs the man beneath the arms. It’s a struggle but he makes it to his feet. He sits down on a retaining wall and pulls a cigarette from his shirt pocket. The woman sits down on his left and he puts a hand to the side of his face, pretending she can’t see him. She stands up and walks in front of him. “Have you seen my dog?”
The man silently points to a house across the street. He throws his cigarette out into the road and slides back down onto the sidewalk. The woman crosses the street to the house the old man pointed to. It’s pretty dilapidated. She didn’t even know anyone lived there. Once she’s in front of the house, the old man shouts from the sidewalk: “Hey, lady! Think you can help me up?”
She doesn’t want to help him up. She ignores him. She walks up onto the porch of the dilapidated house and knocks on the door. The door opens quickly, as though someone stood just on the other side, waiting. Her dog jumps up on her, his front paws on her thighs. She reaches down to pet him. A rugged-looking man stands behind the dog, a leash in his hand. “Whoa, boy,” he says. He pulls the dog back into the house.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman says. “But I think there’s been a mistake.”
“I like dogs,” the man says. “Make no mistake about that. I love ’em.”
“I’m sure you do. But this is my dog.”
“No. You’re confused. It’s my dog.”
“No. This is most certainly my dog.”
“I like dogs. It’s my dog now.”
“No. It’s still my dog.”
“Hardly.” The man chuckles. “Look, maybe it could be our dog.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah. You move in and stuff. It’ll be our dog.”
“Please just give me my dog back.”
“He likes me better.”
The dog laps at the woman’s face as she continues to pet him. It farts on the man.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the man says. “Or stay. The choice is yours. But you can’t take the dog with you.”
The woman decides to move in. The man isn’t too atrociously ugly and she doesn’t have a boyfriend anyway. The man never leaves the house so she never has the chance to take the dog back. The man never even lets go of the leash. The sex is subpar and awkward.
One day, the dog chews up one of the man’s shirts. “We have to get rid of it,” the man says.
“I’ll just take him and go home.”
“Nope. Gotta make sure he’s far away. I need my shirts. And you need to learn about loss.”
The man drags the dog into the kitchen. He rummages through drawers and opens cabinets. In the refrigerator he finds a pair of large wings. “These oughtta do it,” he says.
He holds the wings against the dog’s fur, as though they’ll just magically adhere themselves. They don’t. “Whatta you think’s the most humane way to go about this?” he asks. “I got staples, nails …”
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do but you’re scaring me. And you’re scaring the dog.” She points to the dog, its tail between its legs and whimpering.
“Maybe glue. Yeah, I got some good glue.”
“I can’t let you do this.”
“You can and you will. This here’s my dog. You ain’t got no say in it.”
The woman is now crying. “It is not your dog.”
The man slathers glue on the base of the right wing and sticks it to the dog, under its right shoulder. “We done been over this. This here’s my dog and I get to choose what happens to it. When you went and moved in you unconditionally accepted the fact that this here was my dog. If you was so upset about it, thinkin’ it was your dog and everything, you woulda called the cops or somethin’.”
The woman takes a deep breath. “There haven’t been any cops for years.”
“I suppose that’s my fault too, huh?”
“I can’t stand here and watch this anymore.”
The woman wants to attack the man but she’s afraid he will hurt her and the dog and then it will have all been pointless. She leaves the room and sits on the rancid couch in the living room, turning on the TV and watching static patterns snow across the fractured glass. In a few minutes the man walks through the living room, carrying the dog. Both wings have now been affixed to the dog’s back.
The man chuckles. “If you love somethin’ you got to set it free.”
The woman buries her face in her hands and cries, her shoulders heaving.
She doesn’t want to follow the man and the dog outside but curiosity gets the best of her. She thinks maybe the dog will run off and she can run after it, knowing the man will be too lazy to follow. The man delicately descends the porch steps and stands in the wasted front yard. A boy rides his bike down the street, dragging an old pushmower behind him. The mower is running, loud, almost drowning out the boy’s shouted obscenities.
“Here goes,” the man says. He tosses the dog up into the air and the wings begin flapping. The dog rises into the sky, higher and higher, until it flies so high it goes into orbit. By this time, it’s well out of sight.
The man and woman go back inside. The man keeps the empty leash strapped to his wrist. In the following days he becomes despondent and mentally abusive. He brings home hideous women covered in various lumps and odors. The lumpy women make fun of the other woman and, eventually, she leaves. She goes back to her house but someone has planted a garden in it. She lies down between two rows of lettuce and stares up through the glass ceiling and waits for her dog to stop orbiting the earth.
-
Void
I have a bowel movement that lasts for three days. By the time I’m finished—emptied—I’m sweaty, exhausted and famished. No longer myself.
When I go downstairs I discover someone has played a horrible trick on me. They’ve removed every item from the downstairs and replaced it with a cardboard replica. The couch, the refrigerator, the television—all cardboard. Even the carpet has been removed, crayon stippled onto the cardboard, only a simulation of the real thing. I pick up the cardboard phone, ready to call anyone I can think of—I need answers—but, rather than a dial tone, I am greeted with a voice repeatedly asking what I’m wearing. Struggling somewhat, I rip the phone to pieces and toss it onto the floor.
What am I wearing?
I look down at my clothes and see that I, too, am made of cardboard. A terrible shock seizes me. I have to get out of the house. Charging outside, I am horrified to see that it is raining and looks like it has been raining for quite some time. The water sluices its way down the sides of the street, running into the sewer.
Yes. That’s it. If I can get down into the sewer, I can regain that part of myself I have expelled over an arduous three day period. I can reclaim my waste. I rush out to the street, the rain pounding down onto my cardboard flesh. I absorb it, growing heavy and soggy.
I manage to reach the sewer. It is cool outside and a thin mist rises from the slit. I think of a halitosis smile, a diseased vagina. Holding my breath, I enter the sewer. My right arm comes off in the process, remaining on the street.
Plopping down into the sewer, I stumble after the lost part of me, wanting only to be three dimensional and whole once again. Following the tunnel of the sewer, I come to a small door. Hoping it isn’t locked, I pull on the handle. I am greeted by family and friends, everyone I have grown apart from over the past several years, all hunched over in a tiny, brightly lighted room.
“Surprise!” they shout in unison.
My dad steps forward, nervous, smoothing his thin hair with his left hand. In his right hand he holds a box. A present.
“For you,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, taking the gaily wrapped pink box.
“Go on,” he prods, licking his lips. “Open it.”
Having only one hand, I set the box down on the floor. I try untying the bow but my soggy fingers only bend back. The people in the room chuckle. I hear someone, I’m pretty sure it’s my grandfather, bemusedly say, “He’ll never get that thing open… Not with those fingers.”
“Let me help you with that,” my dad says, crouching down and farting a little.
He easily tears the wrapping off the box, wadding it up and sticking it down his pants. Then he opens the box and pulls out a miniature toilet, setting it beside the empty box.
“Go on,” he says. “Open it.”
I crouch down and try to flip the lid up but, again, my fingers won’t work.
“There there,” my father says, demonstrating a patience he never showed in my childhood, this time only bending over to pull back the lid and reveal the contents to me. I can’t identify what lies inside the toilet.
“Go on,” my father says. “Try some. It’s food.” I reach into the bowl and wrap my waterlogged hand around something that looks like a miniature baseball hat. I put it into my mouth and cautiously chew. It’s delicious. I can’t identify a specific element about it but it is, without a doubt, the most delicious food I have ever eaten. My family and friends all stare eagerly as I extract random items, all familiar-looking, all completely foreign tasting, and shove them into my mouth. Gradually, I become full. My other arm is back and the rain water is sweat seeping from my pores and I have visions of myself sitting on the toilet and straining, voiding sweat and waste… But that is in the future. For now, I eat. Becoming full. Letting the people around me chatter and fill my soul to bursting.
-
The Cover-up
I’m sitting on my bed reading Extreme Gynecology when my father barges into the room. His face is red and sweaty. He sits on the edge of my bed, breathing heavily and twisting his hands in his lap. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, standing up from the bed and walking across the room, headed for the door. He stops and turns around, comes back to the bed, sits down again. “Look,” he says, “you gotta help me.”
“What’s wrong?” I repeat.
“It would be better if I show you.” Some of the nervousness seems to have left him. His eyes go blank and he stands up, walking slowly over to the window. He points out. I sigh heavily, close my book and toss it to the other side of the bed, stand up, and approach the window. My room is on the second floor and has a pretty good view of the neighborhood.
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“Look over there.”
I look across the street, a couple of houses down, into the Robinsons’ yard. A boy lies face down at the edge of the sidewalk.
“I threw a rock at his head.”
“Jesus, Dad!” I’ve never known my father to be violent and this action surprises me. “That’s Benny Robinson. I go to school with him.”
“I’m afraid I clipped him a good one. He might be dead.”
“Jeez!” I clasp a hand to my forehead, massaging my temples.
“I couldn’t help it.” My father throws his arms to either side, begging me to argue with him. “I was picking the rocks out of the garden and he came along and just started … plodding through the grass.”
“So you threw a rock at his head?”
“Well, no, Mr. Smartass, I didn’t just ‘throw a rock at his head.’ I asked him to stop it but he just kept trampling and trampling.”
“Then you threw the rock at his head.”
“It was right there in my hand. It happened before I even knew what I was doing but … well, like I said, it clipped him pretty good. He made it all the way down there before he collapsed.”
“How am I supposed to help you? This is definitely not my problem.”
“I just need you to help me move the body. He’s kind of fat.”
“All the kids at school used to call him fat.” I sit back down on the edge of the bed. “I guess they won’t be calling him fat anymore.”
“Come on. We have to do it before your mother gets home. If she finds out …”
“She’ll what? Call the police?”
“Probably. You don’t want me to go to jail, do you?”
“Maybe you should. Throwing rocks at kids is … ghoulish.”
“Look,” he says, fishing his heavy wallet out of his back pocket. “I’ll make it worth your while.” He riffles the bills inside the wallet.
“What are we gonna do with him?”
“So you’ll help me?”
“Yeah. Do I really have a choice?”
“We might have to bury him.”
“Jesus.”
“We need to hustle up. Before anyone sees him.”
Together, we go downstairs. “You go on over there,” Dad says. “I’ll go out back and get the wheelbarrow.”
Reluctantly, I cross the street. Closing in on Benny Robinson I wonder if he’s dead or not. He looks dead. But that doesn’t always mean anything. Standing next to the probable corpse, I hear a door open and see Benny’s mother stick her head out. She screams in horror, passes out, and lands half in and half out of the door. Sirens scream in the distance. Looking over my shoulder, I do not see my father. I debate running and then think maybe it would be better if I just stand there. I think of the reward for taking the rap for Dad.
There’s no sign of him, even as the police fold me into their car and take me away.
-
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.
