Not Andersen Prunty

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.

May 24, 2024

absurd fiction, dead family, dead friends, death, dying, free story friday, memories
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.

May 17, 2024

absurd stories, cockroaches, free stories, landlords, renting
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.

May 10, 2024
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.

May 3, 2024
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.

April 26, 2024
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.

April 19, 2024
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.

April 12, 2024
The Plath Maneuver

Stanley was a poet but his greatest art was his wild enthusiasm for suicide. He tried all different ways and had all kinds of reasons. The vertical slashes on his wrists told me he was serious about it and just happened to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which would be the right place at the right time for most people.

One day he came over and his head was blackened. His hair was charred and stuck up in clumps amidst his raw, pink scalp. He smelled smoky.

“What have you been up to, Stan?” I asked.

“I can’t figure out how she did it,” he said.

“How who did what?”

“Sylvia Plath. How she killed herself by sticking her head in the oven.”

“You ass,” I said. “It was a gas oven.”

He laughed at his foolishness.

“Of course,” he said, chuckling. “Of course.”

April 5, 2024
Where I Go to Die

I crawl out of the fire hydrant. Reach out my hand and stroke its rough surface. “Wood?” I mutter. I look around. A treelined suburban street. Where the hell am I? I don’t know. But I do know I’ve come here to die. From down the street I hear a loud car. It speeds toward me. A super jacked up hot rod, black and covered with gleaming white skulls. This car looks designed to take me to my death. I put my hands in my pockets and wait for the car to stop. It doesn’t. I enclose my right hand around an object. A paint can opener. I had used it to open a can of paint but the can was filled with …

I hurl the opener at the car. It clangs off the bumper and the car stops. I wait for it to back up. It doesn’t. I wander down the street until I reach the car. Apprehensively, I stand next to the passenger-side door until the driver shouts, “Wanna lift?!” He has an unkempt mustache that eclipses his lips and wears a pair of mirror-shade aviator sunglasses. He wears a trucker hat with a skull above the bill and, above the skull, the word: “Necrophiliac.”

“You bet I do,” I say, tugging rapidly on the door handle.

“Handles don’t work! Gotta hop in through the window!”

After several clumsy minutes, I make it into the car, bashing my head on the top of the door.

“Bitch, ain’t it?” he says. “I’m glad you came along. I need me some tunes. Grab that disc up off the floor and slide it in there.”

I wonder how me being here has anything to do with him being able to listen to music until I notice his hands are nailed to the steering wheel. He catches me staring.

“Keeps ’em from slidin’ off,” he says. “I got that sweatin’ disease? Gets damn slick. My wife, great woman she is, nails me down every time I go for a drive. She usually puts some tunes in too but, well, I been drivin’ around for a long time.”

I press the EJECT button on the stereo and the remains of a disc spill out. It’s melted and runny. I hesitate before putting the next disc in. This one is plain white with strange markings on it. Maybe it’s gibberish or maybe it’s how people write things here.

“I’ve never heard of them,” I say, more or less to make conversation.

“Me neither,” he says. “Some whore left it in the car. I like to stop off in The Alley and pay for sex favors sometimes. That one, as I recall, gave me an exquisite blowjob. Dropped that out of her bag.”

I slide the disc into the player.

“Thank god for automatics,” he says, peeling out into the road, speeding through a series of residential suburbs, each one the same as the last.

The music is at top volume. It is very discordant. No vocals. He rocks his head and shouts made-up words as though it’s some arena rock anthem. He burns to a stop in front of a small white ranch house. I guess this is home. I start to get out and he tells me to take the disc with me. “I don’t know what the fuck that is. It ain’t music in my book. Sounds like listening to a TV test pattern through a box fan.”

“Thanks,” I say, ejecting the disc and putting it back in its paper envelope.

I walk up the cement path to the house. He speeds two doors down, whips the car into the driveway and then just sits there. I reach the door and look over at him, sitting there in his quiet car.

“Hey!” I shout. “Do you need some help getting out of the car?!” It must be difficult with his hands nailed like that.

But he seems to be enraged. He shouts violently from his car. “Get the fuck in your goddamn house and don’t you ever say another fuckin’ word to me! If I catch you so much as lookin’ at my house or my car I’ll come out and fuckin’ slit your throat! Got that! SLIT YOUR FUCKIN’ GODDAMN THROAT!”

Reaching my hand out to turn the doorknob to the house, the door swings open and a clothed inflatable doll stands in the doorway.

“We’re through,” she says, pushing her way past me. A giant bag is slung over her shoulder. It’s nearly as large as the house. I have no idea how it fits through the door. Even though I have no recollection of ever being here, I know all our possessions are in that bag. “There’s a note for you on the floor,” she snarls through her O-shaped mouth. Then she lifts up her foot, flicks open an air stopper protruding from her heel, and goes shooting into the blue sky, carrying the bag with her.

The note on the floor says:

THE FLATS

FIBE A.M.

Five in the morning, maybe? I don’t really know. Knowing this is where I’m going to my death, I go into a rage, running around the bare room, kicking holes in the unadorned walls. I go into the kitchen and rip the cabinets from the walls, tip over the refrigerator, yank out all the drawers, piss on it all. Exhausted, I spiral into the living room and collapse but the silence is deafening. I remember the disc Necrophiliac gave to me and, for no apparent reason, take it from my pocket and lick the underside of it. I hear snippets of the music way back in my brain. I lick it again and, again, I hear the music. The house, with no source of light anywhere, is plunged into darkness as afternoon slides into night. I lie on the floor with the disc clamped between my teeth, my tongue touching it, until the music fills my skull. This is my last night to live and I make the most of it by falling asleep.

I wake up. The disc has fallen out of my mouth. It’s covered in drool and I no longer want to touch it. I go outside and trudge across the yards until I reach my neighbor’s house. He’s still in the car, rocking to and fro, growling. I kick the passenger-side door. “Hey!” I say.

He stops growling and whips his head around. “I told you never to get near me again you fucking shitsucker! I’m gonna open you up! Come on over here and I’ll fuckin’ rip your neck open you FATHERFUCKING SHEEPLEG!”

“Look, I need to go to The Flats.” I throw my stupid note into the car. “You have to take me.”

He growls. “I ain’t got no lights. No lights at all.”

I hurl myself into the car, plopping down in the seat next to him. “I’m sorry but we have to get going. The note said five … I think.”

He manages to turn the key with his knee, truly fascinating, it has little fingers. Rather than backing out of the driveway (the sick little hand can’t reach the gear shift) he just guns the accelerator and swings the wheel with his gruesome-looking hands until we are back on the road. I get hungry and rummage through the debris on the floorboard. I hold up a white triangular object and say, “What’s this?”

“Think that’s a guitar pick,” he says, keeping his eyes focused on the dark road. We leave the suburb and cruise along in the inky blackness.

“I’m gonna eat it,” I say.

“Go right ahead.”

I put the guitar pick on my tongue like a communion wafer and swallow it down. Amazingly, my stomach begins glowing and, once again, I hear music in my head. This time it’s really loud and I’m surprised it’s not leaking out.

“You hear anything?” I say to the driver.

“Nope. Nothin’ but the road,” he says.

I concentrate on the music and the glow filling the car. It’s so bright it drifts out of the car, illuminating the countryside around us. Only it is no longer countryside. It is a flat, cracked-earth desert.

“Here we are,” he says. “The Flats.”

“I think this is where I’m supposed to die,” I say.

“Best get out then.”

I clamber out of the car, feet smacking onto the hard earth. I’m like the moon, sending out all this light. I watch the driver drive back toward the neighborhood. I can see him for quite a way. I stand there and wait. Dawn comes up pink and golden. I feel myself growing weaker, the light from my stomach dying down. I collapse onto the scraped and scarred earth and know that I will not rise again.

March 29, 2024

absurd stories, absurdist fiction, andersen prunty, free stories, surreal fiction
The Janitor, The Owner, and That Other Guy

The janitor is exalted to a kind of king status.

He’s reached his fifties and the owner, who’s nearing seventy, knows the janitor is going through something. He doesn’t intervene because he doesn’t like altercations.

The janitor, after working there for thirty years, takes a shit in front of the door while everyone watches—some of them up close, some from their cars, some from the windows, some from the closed-circuit television.

“I ain’t comin’ back in until someone else cleans this up!” the janitor shouts.

The owner tells the new girl she has to go clean it up because he knows if he fires the janitor on the spot, he’ll either get beaten up or yelled at. Plus he’ll have to find someone on the internet—quick—who can come and solve his problem. He doesn’t like asking the new girl this, it just seems like the easiest, most immediate and copacetic action.

She says, “Fuck no,” and quits, leaping over the pile of human shit to get away from the building.

The owner asks the next-newest guy and he also says, “I quit,” but then says he isn’t walking over shit to get out. It’s unleapable. It’s a pretty sizeable mess and he’s a little obese. He admires the new girl’s athleticism and determination.

Finally, the owner wises up and asks the guy who’s there sixty hours a week but adds “I don’t want to stretch you too thin” because he knows he’s really on edge.

The guy raises his eyebrows and says he needs a raise. The owner gives him a hundred percent raise. He’ll be rich in six months, living like he does now.

The janitor goes back to doing what he always did, except now he shits in front of the door once a day. It keeps him regular. It’s also less messy, to make it easier for the other guy to handle.

The other guy cleans up the pile of shit every day, but the rest of his job performance suffers a little.

The owner stops paying any attention whatsoever.

They all know this has to happen, but none of them wants to make it too difficult.

March 22, 2024

absurd stories, absurdist fiction, andersen prunty, employment, jobs