Not Andersen Prunty

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
The Inconsequential Man

Adjusting my ascot and staring outside, I notice a man sprawled face down in the middle of the road. I adjust the ascot all wrong and make a high bleating noise of despair. The maid comes over to help me. Her hair smells like oranges as her deft fingers manipulate the ascot into the perfect shape.

“There there,” she says, trying to stop my bleating.

I gesture outside and say, “Did you notice …”

“The guy out there?” she says. “Yeah, I seen him.”

“Should we do something about it?”

“I don’t see how it’s our responsibility.”

I shrug. She has a point, I guess.

“I’m gonna go clean all them jars,” she says.

I nod. We did indeed go through a lot of jars last night. I can’t take my eyes off the man out there in the road. What could possibly be wrong with him? Is he dead? Did he pass out? Is he drunk? Beaten?

A loud car with flames painted on the side, driven by a guy with a mullet, comes roaring down the road, running over the man. The car does not stop or turn around. I pull up a chair and continue to stare out the window. I bellow at the maid to bring me a sandwich. She brings the sandwich and I tell her I don’t have time, just shove it in my mouth. She goes about it with a bit more brutality than I appreciate and I tell her she’s this close to being let go, holding my thumb very close to my forefinger. She looks over my shoulder at the now pulped man out in the road. “Still out there, huh?” she says.

“It’s fascinating,” I say.

“I gotta get back to them jars.”

I wait for one of the passing cars to stop. None of them do. I wait for someone to show up. No one does. Again, I bellow at the maid, this time for a phone. I tell her to dial emergency. She does this with fingers puckered from cleaning and hands the phone to me. “I ain’t talkin to no cop,” she says.

“Are you aware of the situation on C Road?” I ask.

“What!?” a gruff man shouts.

“There’s a man out on the road …”

“Is this a prank!?”

“No. I’m afraid it’s fairly serious. There’s a man …”

“You got the wrong line buddy!”

“Is this the police?”

“You got that right.”

“Then I have an emergency I need to report.”

“We don’t have time to deal with that!”

“I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

“Jesus, would you leave us alone!? Take your business elsewhere!”

Then he hangs up the phone. I continue to watch the man. Sometime during the night, the maid tells me she’s pregnant and leaves. She doesn’t come back.

The man stays in the road for days. Eventually two burly old men in t-shirts and sweatpants come outside and gather around the pulpy lump in the road. One of them complains about the stink. The other one tells him he’ll take care of it. Both men depart. One of them comes back about a half hour later with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. He scrapes the man up off the road and carts him away. I wipe the sweat from my brow and call the maid service, looking for a replacement.

March 15, 2024

absurd stories, absurdist fiction, andersen prunty, death and dying
Toss

A boy with a boar’s head wanders into his kitchen and asks his father for a pet.

His father doesn’t hear him.

His father’s pills are scattered all over the kitchen table. He’s leaning back in the chair, his arms dangling at his sides. He says he takes the pills to keep his fingers from curling up.

The boy kicks his father in the shin.

The father snaps out of his coma and stares forward with bloodshot eyes, dragging a bony hand across his drool-slicked chin.

“I wanna pet.”

The father makes a great effort to reach out and grab one of the boy’s tusks. He gives it a weak shake and says, “Then we’ll go get you a pet.”

They leave the house and go to the pet store. The father walks very slowly and looks at his hands. He asks the boy if he notices his fingers curling up. The boy doesn’t answer.

They reach the pet store. It smells like a barn. The animals roam free. The menagerie runs the gamut from cute and cuddly to exotic and lethal. The father pokes the animals in the eyes and tells the boy he’s checking to make sure they’re ripe. The boy thinks maybe he’s confused. The boy falls in love with a two-headed rabbit. Luckily, it’s ripe. He takes it home and names it “Cobra.”

On the way home, the father says, “If you want we could stop at the hospital and get that cat sewed up in ya. Yeah, it’ll be a real fun surgery. We used to do shit like that all the time.”

The boy bites his father on the hand. The father slowly pulls his hand to his chest and stares at it, says now they’re gonna curl up for sure.

The next day, the boy takes Cobra to school, to the classroom filled with boar-headed children.

The class is taught by two men named Vern and Carl. Vern is stout and intense. He wears a tight button-down shirt stretched over his belly. He is the disciplinarian. Carl is taller with carefree, flowing hair. He wears a sweatsuit. He is the fun guy.

After about an hour of class, the teachers get bored. Vern tells the boy to hand over the rabbit. Carl assures him they’ll bring it back. The boy hands Vern the rabbit and the two men go outside.

The boy stands at the window and stares out at the green grass of the school grounds. Carl and Vern appear. They look very happy. They toss the rabbit back and forth. Back and forth. The boy thinks it looks like a lot of fun. So fun. He wants to be out there, tossing the rabbit with his teachers. Instead, he stays in the classroom and cries with the other students.

Later, he takes Cobra home.

He tells his father to come out to the yard, he’s discovered a new game. A half-hour later, his father makes it out. The boy tosses Cobra at his father. His father moves way too slow and the rabbit bounces off his chest. His father falls down. His fingers curl up, wildly extending from his hands and twisting into impossible shapes.

Cobra hops away.

The boy goes into the house and beats his fists on the couch. Tomorrow he will make his father take him back to the pet store and he will get a new pet. And then they will go to the hospital and he’ll have the pet sewn so deeply inside him it will never escape.

March 8, 2024

absurd stories, absurdist fiction, andersen prunty, fathers, free stories, games, pets, surreal fiction
Onion

I visit a strange man in the middle of the night. He lives in a tiny house at the end of a long dirt lane in the middle of nowhere. He tells me he knows I want to eat the onions in his refrigerator but if I do I’ll end up in the hospital. Suddenly I want nothing but onions. I tell him this. He throws open the refrigerator door and says, “Have at it.” I pull an onion out, plop it down on the counter, and grab a knife to slice it. I cut the end of my finger off. I turn and ask the man if he can take me to the hospital. He says he can but all he has is a cart he’ll have to pull. We go outside. I climb into the cart and he hoists the handles. The cart smells like onions. I put the tip of my finger into my mouth and think about the one I lost as we head out into the dusty night.

March 1, 2024

absurd stories, absurdist fiction, andersen prunty, surreal fiction
Drugs

My balls are swelled up. I am in the bathroom about ready to puncture my scrotum with a huge needle, figuring the swellage must be something fluid-related, when the doorbell rings. It startles me and the needle flies out of my hands and into the bathtub. “Shit,” I think, “this is going to be really embarrassing.” I rush to find the baggiest pair of pants I can and cross the house to answer the door.

Upon opening the door I am a bit startled to see four men in dour gray suits standing on my porch.

“Mr. L?” the man in the forefront asks.

“No, I’m Mr. C.”

“Is this 2300 Rosewood?”

“Yes it is.”

“I think we need to have a look in your basement.”

“May I ask what for?”

“Hiding something, Mr. L?”

“No, no, not at all, it’s just, well …”

“Drugs, Mr. L. We’ve had complaints of drugs.”

“I assure you that’s ridiculous. You’re more than welcome to have a look.”

I walk them over to the door of my basement, my legs slightly bowed on account of my huge scrotum. A casual glance over my shoulder reveals they are traveling in a single-file line. I open the door and click on the light, standing aside to let them enter. They all go down into the basement. After a few moments, I hear one of them call, “You better come down here, Mr. L!”

I walk down the steps. At first, the basement seems impossibly bright. As soon as I reach the bottom of the steps, I realize why.

The entire floor is covered in marijuana plants that reach chest-high. The ceiling is lined with sun lamps.

“Impressive,” I say, and then, “I know absolutely nothing about this.”

“We’re going to have to confiscate your house, Mr. L.”

There is no argument. Even though I know nothing about it I am clearly cultivating a drug field in my basement.

“Yes, of course. Will you be taking everything else in the house, also?”

“Well, we’ll be taking all of this marijuana.”

“I see.”

We all go upstairs. The man in charge makes a few calls with my phone. The others periodically shoot accusing looks at me as I struggle to move the couch out of the house. This task is made all the more difficult because of my swelling. I get the couch out to the curb and sit down on it, homeless, both my back and my balls hurting immeasurably.

I can’t resist checking on my condition so I stand up and glance down into my pants. Amazingly, my underwear is stuffed with the marijuana leaves. The men are coming out of the house, the man in charge tossing the keys up in the air and catching them. They stand at the curb and make casual chit-chat until a bus comes and they all board.

They come back later that night with their wives, girlfriends and children. The next day a moving van brings all their stuff over. They leave the house every morning smelling like pot. People of all ages visit the house at all hours.

Two days later, the garbage man comes and tells me he has to take the couch. “It’s on the curb,” he says. I reach down into my pants and hand him the marijuana, moist from being in my crotch for days.

“Please, one more week,” I plead.

February 23, 2024

absurd stories, absurdist fiction, andersen prunty, cannabis, drugs, free stories, kafka, surreal fiction