As with most nights, I’m sitting around wondering which undiagnosed disease I probably have.
-
The Animal Trainer
He must be on some form of disability. Home all the time. He lives across the street and I see him come out of his house with a puppy behind him.
The man walks the puppy to the bank of grass growing on the curb. His pale gut hangs out of his tight and stained t-shirt.
“Come on, doggy,” he says. “Make poops.”
The dog looks innocently at the man. They stand that way for a few minutes, the man as vacant as the dog.
“Come on, make poops.”
The dog stares.
“Here,” the man says.
He pulls down his gray sweatpants, turns his buttocks to the road and squats. A turd slides out, landing on the shaggy grass.
“Do that,” he says to the dog.
The dog sniffs at the man’s feces, hunches his back, crouches, and lays one down.
“Good,” the man says. “Good dog. Good dog.” And he pats the dog on the head, feeding him something from his palm.
-
Gas Station Drugs
I buy most of my prescriptions from the gas station.
Sometimes I can’t afford everything I need and have to go without one of them.
Then I get sad and mopey or manic and productive.
I don’t know.
I think I feel best when I can afford all the gas station drugs and don’t abuse them too much.
-
Delayed Reaction
It’s a good thing Virgil doesn’t react to the knock on the door and squeeze the trigger. Because, well, because his head would be on the kitchen wall. Virgil has to admire the irony. He is sitting in the kitchen with a fully loaded gun resting on his bottom teeth. It isn’t a series of events that has brought him to this. It is a series of nothing. Not even really a series. More like a wave. A giant wave of static nothingness slowly devouring his sanity.
No friends. No conversation. No laughter. No visitors.
This knock on the door is the first knock he’s heard since moving into his apartment two years ago. Roughly. Somewhat bemused, he puts the gun in the refrigerator and walks to the door. Opening it, he is stunned. There are five girls backed out into the hall.
“Hello,” he stammers.
“Hi,” a blond girl in the front says. She looks to be at least seventeen or eighteen. The rest look younger. They all look delicious. “We’re from the Springdale chapter of the Daughters in Christ Brigade. Mind if we come in?”
“No. Not at all. Please do.”
Virgil steps aside and motions them over to the beaten couch. They all sit down in a militant line, their skirts riding up as they cross their legs.
“You ladies care for a drink?”
“No thanks,” they all reply in unison.
“Well, then, I’m just gonna go get myself a drink.”
He walks into the kitchen and stands frozen for a few minutes. He can hear them talking in the other room.
“It’s so bare and… and run down.”
“Isn’t he ugly?”
“My goodness, he smells.”
“What do you think he uses in his hair?”
“Did you see his shirt?”
Virgil looks at his shirt. A few holes here and there. A grease spot or two. Damn, he’s buttoned it up all wrong.
He puts some ice in a cup and runs some water from the tap, walks into the family room and sits in the chair across from the couch. The chair looks like rats have tried to eat it.
The oldest blond who answered the door starts talking but he’s long since lost himself in the blue of her eyes. They sparkle with complete emptiness. Then he looks at her legs. From where she has recrossed them he can see a lingering red spot on one of her calves.
The time flies by and he tunes in to hear her say: “All we need you to do is sign right here and we’ll be by later in the week to drop off some of our literature.”
“Oh, sure,” he says, shaky hands reaching out for the pen and paper.
“Thank you, Mr… Bentley?” She tries to read his signature from the paper.
“Bunting.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bunting,” she says and leads them out the door. The apartment is still filled with their collective scent. It’s light and beautiful. He hasn’t smelled anything like that in a very long time.
Good, he thinks, they’ll be back.
Virgil goes out the next day and buys an entire used suit. He is careful to make sure there aren’t any stains or tears in it. He shaves, clips all of his nails, tears the hair from his nose and takes four showers a day.
For the next three days, he sits around in his suit, graying hair combed, and waits for the girls to return.
On the evening of the third day, he hears a knock on the door.
It has to be them. Virgil doesn’t even know anyone else. He eagerly crosses the room and opens the door. There are only three of them this time, but the older one is still there. All of them carry pamphlets and register a look of surprise at the new Virgil.
“Have a seat,” he invites them.
They do so, sitting in the same semi-militant formation.
“Lemonade?”
“Sure,” they say.
Already, Virgil can sense they feel more comfortable around him.
He enters the kitchen and pours the lemonade, sporting a semi-erection.
As he begins walking toward the living room, he stops, holds his head, and then bursts into flame, the lemonade in the glasses lighting to a boil before the glasses fall to the floor, nothing left to hold them. From his torso up, he has exploded, the rest of him burnt down to a charred stalk.
After their intitial surprise, the girls walk over to his remains.
“Oooooh, are those pieces of his brain on the wall?”
“My goodness, he’s all black!”
“Oh, can you smell the stink?”
-
Napper
A man comes home from work and surveys the living room. “Hmmm,” he muses. “Think I’ll take a nap.” He lies down on the couch, pulls a blanket up around his chin, and immediately falls asleep. His wife throws the closet door open and enters the room. She looks at her husband, napping, snug in his covers, a trickle of drool running from the corner of his mouth, and a look of worry crosses her face. She pulls a chair beside the couch and stares at her sleeping husband. He naps for hours. She wrings her hands in her lap and mutters, “I can’t live like this.” Her worried look turns into one of fear. She stands up and kicks the chair over. She grabs her husband and shakes him violently. “I can’t live like this!” she screams. The man continues napping, dead to the world. She uprights the chair, placing it beside the couch. Again she sits down and stares at her husband. “One day,” she says. “One day you’ll get yours.”
She decides to turn the television on but every channel features a close up of a man sleeping. She stares at the remote control held tightly in her hand and then at the television, her face wrinkled with terror. She hasn’t slept for years. It makes her think of death. She wanders around the house and turns all the lights on. She retrieves her cell phone, held hostage by an angry houseplant, and systematically calls the rest of her family, all of them suffering the same affliction as her. They meditate on their sleeping spouses and devise complicated plans to eradicate sleep from society. She hangs up with the final family member and just when her thoughts turn to the lonely night ahead, her husband wakes up and says, “Ah, that was a damn fine nap.” She asks him if he wants to go out and fuck shit up. “Of course,” he says. “Of course.” He knows that’s the only way he’ll ever get to sleep tonight. With baseball bats, blowtorches, and high powered flashlights, the couple head out into the cold night.
-
Vampire
Yesterday, I discovered that a vampire lives next door. His name is Bernard Watkins. He wears a host of garish sweaters and a thick, neatly trimmed mustache. I wouldn’t have taken him for a vampire upon meeting him.
I’ve broken up most of the furniture in the house and am upstairs grinding stakes on the lathe. I don’t know how many people in the town he’s already turned into vampires. After grinding all the stakes, I figure I’ll lie in wait, forming the perfect game plan.
Mother calls up the stairs for me to come down and meet the new neighbor. Instinctively, I know she has unwittingly invited the vampire into the house. I pick up a stake and head downstairs.
-
Dick Beer
There’s a hippie who lives in a van on the other side of the street.
I’m aware of him but assume he pays no attention to me.
I drink.
I stay up late.
I scratch my balls when I don’t think anyone is looking.
I’m surprised the next day when scrolling through my media feeds and seeing one of the top things to pop up is me, scratching my balls—skin-on-skin, beneath the underwear, digging deep—and opening the refrigerator to get a beer.
And then it’s me in the upper right corner of the screen and the hippie in the van across the street filling the screen with his bearded face and saying, “Enjoy your dick beer, dude,” in what has to be the douchiest voice ever.
I immediately pull all the blinds and stop answering the phone.
I’ll be in public and people will shout, “Enjoy your dick beer!” or “Hey, it’s dick beer guy!”
I stop going out in public.
Now it’s the grocery delivery person going, “Hey … man, I don’t want to bother you but I gotta know … are you dick beer guy?”
If I stop ordering things, I don’t know how I’m going to stay alive.
I hate the hippie across the street. Is he happy watching me squirm? Is he watching at all? Maybe he’s laughing it up at all the attention he’s getting … at the expense of me.
I rationalize.
Who doesn’t want to be famous?
Who doesn’t want to be rich?
I start answering the phone. I go out in public. I hear it all the time.
I’m dick beer guy. I’m rich. I’m famous. I live so very far away from that hippie in the van across the street.
I do whatever I want all the time, but occasionally I’m reminded that I am and always will be dick beer guy and can’t believe how much better my life has gotten.
-
The Wise Man
The wisest man in the world comes to my door. He has a very long white beard and wears a series of richly textured and flowing robes. He, more or less, lets himself in. I know he’s the wisest man in the world and I plan on having him answer some questions.
He strolls to the middle of the living room and reaches down, trying to push my heavy wooden coffee table up against the couch. He labors for nearly a minute.
He looks at me. “Some help?” he asks.
“Oh, of course,” I say and help struggle with the coffee table.
By the time we finish, both of us have worked up a pretty good sweat.
The wisest man in the world stands in the middle of my luxurious white carpet. He looks at me and raises a finger of proclamation.
“These are the days,” he says, “when everything has value.”
Then he squats down a little, grunts, and defecates on my carpet.
“Ah,” he says, “that’s done with.”
Instead of staying in the room to ask him my series of important questions, I quickly go to the hallway closet and retrieve an abundance of cleaning supplies.
I return to the living room. The wise man is gone. He has accidentally stepped into his mess and tracked it all the way to the door.
