Not Andersen Prunty

Entering a bookstore, I discovered all the books had been replaced with authors. Angered, I nearly left but decided to stay and have a look around. The store no longer smelled like books. It smelled aged—liquor and old cigarette smoke hanging around the authors. For the greater part, the authors—mostly white, mostly male, mostly older—wandered aimlessly throughout the store. Some of them sat in the cafe, sipping overpriced coffee and engaging in inane babble. Some of them played board games. Some played with stuffed animals and other things the bookstore still sold. Others spoke on their cell phones. I wondered if authors were especially good at text messaging. Or did they find it too confining? These people who had let their brains dribble out over countless pages.

Disheartened, I found myself in the fiction section. It was virtually empty except for one old man sitting in a comfortable-looking armchair. His faded blue eyes, below his wisp of thin white hair, stared vacantly into the distance. His suit was mostly brown. He twisted his gnarled hands in his lap. I noticed his withered-looking legs and it finally hit me who he was. This was Gregory Manko, an obscure writer from Otlatl, a small European island. I had read a book of his short stories a number of years ago. Only a handful of his books were still in print.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you Gregory Manko?”

“Yes.”

He looked resigned.

“Are you for sale?” I asked, not really intending to. Sometimes I just blurted things out.

“Yes,” he said with the same resignation.

I wondered how much an author like this would cost.

No matter. I had a credit card.

I looked around to see if he had a wheelchair nearby. I hadn’t known he was crippled. Had he been crippled when he wrote those beautiful stories? I’d have to go back and read them.

“I don’t have one,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“A wheelchair. That’s what you were looking for, wasn’t it? I don’t have one. You’ll have to carry me.”

“Oh. Sure.”

I bent down over the chair. I didn’t want to hurt him. He seemed so old and fragile.

“How do you …?”

“Probably easier if you just get down on your knees and I’ll scoot off onto your back.”

“Yeah. Okay. Right.” I figured he’d probably done this kind of thing before.

Turning so my back was to the chair, I crouched down in front of him. Grunting, he maneuvered himself onto my back, grabbing my shoulders with his gnarled hands. Getting a firm grip on the underside of each of his knees, I stood up.

“Easy,” he said.

“Sure. Right.”

I walked slowly to the front registers. A cute, intellectual-looking girl leaned against the counter, leafing through a magazine. Once I reached the counter, Manko on my back, the girl huffed and dropped her magazine on the floor. She had a nametag but whatever name had been printed on it was crossed out.

“Hi,” I said.

She gave me a look as if to say, “Please, spare me,” and held up the laser scanning gun. She opened Manko’s blazer and scanned a barcode on the inside of it. Turning her attention to the register, a look of surprise crossed her face and she said, “That’s way too much. Someone’s wandered out of the bargain section again.”

I didn’t know how Manko could wander anywhere but I wasn’t going to argue if it meant getting him on the cheap. Besides, I figured maybe he’d gotten one of the other authors to carry him there. She gave me the new total, which was nearly half the original price. I handed over my card, signed the receipt, and left the store to load Gregory Manko into my car, not really knowing what I was going to do with him once we got back to my apartment.

Things didn’t go very well. I was exhausted after the first day. I had to carry him to the restroom each time he had to go, which was a lot. Mainly because he ate and drank all the time. I didn’t see how anyone so thin and old could eat so much but it was like he was trying to pack it all in before he died which, from the look of him, could be any day. I began thinking about how much a funeral would cost and whether or not I would have to pay for it. Already, I had resolved to purchase a wheelchair—soon I would have to go back to work and I couldn’t just tell him to hold it all day. He was probably incontinent, anyway.

By the end of the first week, I didn’t know why I had purchased him in the first place. Honestly, what did I expect to do with an author? I didn’t even read very much. Maybe I thought he would be the stuff of drama—more thrilling than television. But thrilling he most certainly was not. He didn’t talk in anything other than monosyllabic answers to my questions so there wasn’t even any type of intellectual discussion to engage in.

Careful that I was out of Manko’s earshot, I called the bookstore.

“Do you take returns?” I asked.

“Depends,” a girl said in a bored voice. I wondered if it was the same girl who had sold Manko to me. I listened for the fluttering sound of magazine pages flipping but I couldn’t hear anything over the din in the background. They’d either gotten more authors in or they had livened up a bit since I was there.

“Depends on what?”

“Lots of things, really.”

I gritted my teeth. I most certainly would not be purchasing any more authors from this bookstore.

“Would you like to know what it is I want to return?” I helped her along.

“Not really but I imagine you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Last week, I purchased Gregory Manko from your store and I’d like to return him.”

“Why?” she asked. “Already have one?” At this, she chuckled.

“No, I … I don’t already have one. I just didn’t … I guess I just didn’t realize how expensive it would be. And physically taxing.”

“It’s not his fault he has a handicap.”

“I know. I’m not blaming anyone for anything. I just don’t think I’ll be able to take care of him.”

“As I recall, he was a sale item.”

“Yes.”

“We don’t take returns on sale items.”

“What am I supposed to do with him?”

“That’s your problem.”

“But surely this isn’t the first time you’ve had this problem.”

“I don’t have the problem. I guess you could try donating him to the thrift store. Or selling him to the used bookstore if you need the cash although, quite frankly, I don’t think they’ll pay you very much for him.”

“Thanks. Maybe I’ll try that.” She had already hung up. I pressed the OFF button and walked into the living room. Manko sat on the couch, his hands resting on those withered legs, watching television. He hadn’t picked up a book since coming here. I thought that was odd. Shouldn’t an author read a lot? It seemed like I had read somewhere that an author was supposed to read twice as much as he wrote. For that matter, he hadn’t requested a single piece of paper or pen or typewriter or laptop or anything. Didn’t he write anymore? Sitting down next to him, I noticed his bottom lip was trembling. He blinked back tears.

“Say, you want to go for a drive?” I asked.

“Getting rid of me?” he said.

“This just isn’t what I expected,” I said.

“Not what you wanted, you mean?” He wiped a tear away with a knobby knuckle.

“Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

“You people don’t know what you want.”

“You people?”

“Readers.”

“I liked that book of short stories you did.”

“And you wanted something like that?”

“I guess.”

“And you got real life instead.”

A heavy silence hung between us. He sniffled. A phlegmy, wet-sounding thing. Then he spoke again. “People say they want to read about life but that’s not what they want at all. They want a version of life. Don’t you realize, someone else’s version of someone else’s life is still fiction? It’s still a story. But it has no imagination. That’s what you people have done. You’ve murdered imagination.”

He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, blew his hairy nose and farted, most probably involuntarily.

“This is life,” he said. “And it’s not what you want at all.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else I could say.

“You want to help?”

“I can’t let you stay here. I would love to but I can’t afford it and I’ll have to go back to work soon.”

“I don’t mean that,” Manko said. “There is no help for me here. Look …” He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and pulled out a wad of bright, exotic-looking foreign money. “Take me somewhere and buy me a wheelchair. I’d prefer one of the motorized kinds, if I have enough here, and then take me to the center of the city and drop me off. Just, please, don’t take me back to the bookstore. That’s where my dreams died.”

I folded his lumpy hand back over the money.

“Hang onto that,” I said. “You might need it. I’ll get the chair. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

He wiped away another tear and tried to force a smile.

The next morning I took him into the city square, full of pigeons and benches and people and statues and lights and noise. I settled him into his wheelchair and watched him burr into the thick of things. Selfishly, as I watched him, I wondered if he would find another story out there or if the imagination, once killed, remains dead for life.

I go to the gym. I flex.

Other people are there, flexing.

Then they stop flexing.

I don’t stop.

I hold it.

Eventually, some of them notice.

Finally, everyone in the gym notices.

One of them says, “What he’s doing looks so weak and lazy but he’s been doing it for so long …”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

I never stop flexing.

By the time I do, I have muscles on my eyelids.

And soon, it’s time to flex again.

Teddy and I are in his blacklit basement, huffing glue and listening to Judas Priest. Teddy turns to me and says, “So, you tried fuckin’ your mom yet?”

I chuckle. “No. Not yet, Teddy.”

“You think I’m joking?”

“Have you?”

“Oh, yeah. Sweetest pussy I ever had.”

“My mom’s like sixty … and she has that thing on her head.”

“Yeah, I used to think my mom was pretty sick too but, man, that pussy.”

I pretended to think about it for a minute. “No. I don’t think I could.”

“Well, you’re one of the last then. I’m from California and everybody out there’s doin’ it. You just wait and see. You’ll come around.” Teddy smiled knowingly through glazed eyes that were little more than slits.

“Maybe so,” I said, the idea already seeming less absurd than it once did.

Immediately following a heated argument, the man with the lice-ridden beard and gnawed peg leg throws me from the pink dirigible. I barely have time to think about the genesis of this argument as I fall through the air, the trees, the soil, and the bedrock, crashing down on a quiet suburban street somewhere in the middle of the earth. An object, apparently hurled out after my ejection, hits me in the head. It hurts quite a bit and I run my hand along the top of my skull to make sure it isn’t bleeding before checking to see what the object is. Looking down, I see that it is an old, rusted skeleton key. I pick it up and put it in my pocket. Something like that … you can’t just leave it there.

Huge trees line either side of the street. The street is empty save for an old lady in a loud floral print dress pushing an empty shopping cart. I stand uncomfortably in the middle of the street and wait for the lady’s squeaky approach. She reaches me and pulls the cart to a stop. She’s very skinny with white, aggressively permed hair.

She clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and points to the basket of her shopping cart. I stare absently at her. She’s all bent up and slightly hunchbacked. It makes me think of a question mark. She relinquishes the cart to scamper toward me and kick me in the shin with a soft house shoe.

She clucks again and points to the cart.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you want.” I search her eyes, filled with something close to fury or fear.

She pulls her false teeth out and throws them at me. They bounce off and clatter to the asphalt. Not knowing what else to do, I climb into the empty shopping cart, pulling my knees up to my chest. It’s painful and I wonder how I’ll ever get out. I look up at the blue sky. Why is there so much sky if I’m somewhere in the middle of the earth? The old lady begins pushing the cart. She wheezes with the added weight. I guess she’ll just cluck some more if she needs me to get out. Maybe she knows where I live. Maybe she’ll take me home.

She continues to push the cart down the middle of the road, pausing a couple times to unleash a rheumatic cough and fluff her perm. After making a couple right turns we reach a modest brick ranch house located on a street called Powersport Drive. She stops the cart, points to the house and clucks wildly.

“I live here?”

She smacks me on the back of the head with her big, gnarled hand and I take that as a yes. I can no longer stand up so I shift my weight left and right until the cart crashes over onto its side, bringing the old lady with it. I straighten up—nothing more than a few scrapes—and look down at the old lady. She lies on the pavement, sweaty and drooling. Her elbows and knees are bleeding. I stand the cart upright. I pick the old lady up and say, “We’ll take you inside and get those scrapes cleaned up.” She whips her head back and forth, slinging sweat and drool. She points to the empty cart and clucks some more. I put her in the cart and give it a great heave. It rolls smoothly down the street and continues rolling as though guided by an invisible shopper.

Walking toward the house I feel a great sense of underwhelming blandness. Why do people live in houses like these? Why do I live in a house like this?

Slightly unnerved, I turn the doorknob to the house but it’s locked. I reach into my pocket for the key. It slides easily into the keyhole and, turning it, the door clicks magically before swinging inward.

Stepping into the house, I have no idea what I might find. I might have a family. A wife and children could be rushing throughout the house. This could be some fragment of a life I don’t remember. But the house is empty save for a fat man in the same floral-patterned dress as the old lady. He looks at me, his mouth creased into a permanent frown, and says, “I was just leavin’.”

I stare after him, trundling down the walk, looking for something to say and coming up with nothing.

I close the door and look around the house. It is completely empty. Wallpaper has been ripped from the wall. The carpet has been torn up, leaving glue-covered concrete. A bare bulb hangs from the ceiling and there is a phone plugged into the wall and resting on the floor in the corner. I stare at the phone, its cord coiled like a snake, half-expecting it to ring. It doesn’t and I find myself exhausted. It’s been a rough day.

I sit down on the floor and survey the dim room. It’s depressing. There isn’t anything to do here. Once again, I stare at the phone. Perhaps I could make some random phone calls. Ask people what they’re wearing. I pick up the phone. No dial tone. Soothing music comes from it. The most soothing music I’ve ever heard. It makes me think of a sleepy coastal town somewhere I’ve never been. Hypnotized, I pass out.

When I wake up, the phone is back on the hook. My mouth is very dry and my head throbs. My back hurts. The house is filled with a wonderful smell. Like donuts or bread. I walk through the house but it isn’t coming from in here. The only things left in the kitchen are a few cabinets, the doors hanging askew, some of them missing completely. I walk outside into the night and the smell is stronger. I leave the door unlocked. I don’t trust the key. It might not work for me when I come back. This might not even be my house when I come back.

Outside the night is purple and gray with fog. The fog seems to carry this scent of baked goods and I want to eat it. But I follow my nose instead. The fat man who left my house earlier is sprawled face down in the neighboring yard. He’s immense and dormant. I want to go jump on him, like a trampoline or something.

I continue walking to the end of the block. There, I see a two-story house. On top of the house is a large rectangle, long side down, made from metal mesh. It makes me think of the old lady’s shopping cart on a much larger scale. Maybe it’s an antenna of some sort. Standing next to this contraption is a little girl, maybe seven or eight. She signals toward the sky, a flashlight in each hand. One of them shines green. The other shines red. I’m worried. Little girls should not, I feel, be on the slanted roofs of suburban homes.

“Hey!” I call, not too loudly. I don’t want to startle her and cause her to tumble from the roof. “You should get down from there.”

She shines the red-beamed flashlight into my eyes and says nothing.

Where are this girl’s parents? I walk up to the house and knock on the door. The girl keeps the flashlight beam trained on me. No one comes to the door. I knock again, louder this time. Now I hear coughing and footsteps. A thin disgruntled-looking man with tousled hair, a shadow of beard, and a rumpled brown bathrobe says, “Do you know what time it is?”

“Actually, no,” I say. And it’s true. I don’t have a clue what time it is. “I just wanted to let you know there’s a child on your roof.”

“Yeah, so? You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I know what my daughter’s doin’ up there?”

“Well … I just … um, that can’t be very safe, can it?”

“Hell no, it ain’t safe. But she’s up there doin’ good work. If she don’t stay up there then we ain’t gonna have no power tomorrow. You wanna go a whole day without power?”

I think about it and realize I don’t really care. I don’t have anything in my house that would require power save the single yellow light bulb dangling from the ceiling. In fact, the light from the light bulb depresses me and I could do without it. It has the glow of mental illness. But I also realize I’ve stepped into the middle of something incomprehensible to me. Things here were done a certain way. And I did not know how things were done.

“I’m very sorry,” I say, bowing my head in shame. I want to tell him to keep an eye on her but that seems too much like stating the obvious. “You have a good night.”

“Yeah, you too. And just think about what you’ve done tomorrow when you’re in your house enjoyin’ all that free power …”

I’ve already started back toward the sidewalk but swivel back around just as he’s ready to shut the door. “If I could bother you for one more second …” I say.

He sighs loudly. His shoulders slump even farther. “What now?”

“That smell …” I hold a finger up in front of me, as if a smell is something that can be pointed at.

“Yeah. What of it?”

“Do you know where it’s coming from?”

The man looks down at the ground and shakes his head. “What are you, a fuckin’ alien or somethin’? You really don’t know how things run around here, do ya? That’s comin’ from the bakery.” He says this last word very slowly, like I’m a child learning his vocabulary. “Almost everybody works at the bakery. In fact, I gotta get up in just a couple hours and go in. I’m losin’ out on sleep … ’causa you.”

“Thank you,” I say. The man slams the door behind me. I continue toward the sidewalk. Within a few minutes, I come upon a huge, brightly lit building bellowing the delicious smelling steam. This must be the bakery. I wonder if it’s open. I’m starved. I find the front door, the glass covered in condensation. I don’t see any sign suggesting whether it’s open or closed. I knock on the door. A fat man in chef’s whites opens it. A bell jangles.

“Can I help you?” he says.

“Are you open?” I ask.

“Always open,” he says.

“I was wondering if I could buy something. I’m very hungry, you see.”

“You wanna buy a loaf?” The way he says ‘loaf,’ it’s like a bark.

“Sure, I guess.”

“Ten ideas,” he states, holding both hands splayed in front of him.

“Ten ideas?” I say.

“Yeah, if you ain’t got ten ideas then you don’t get a loaf.”

“Ideas like …”

“Look, if you ain’t got ten ideas then maybe you need a job.”

Well, that sounded like an idea.

“I mean,” he says. “If you had any ideas, I woulda heard ’em by now.”

“Sure. Are you hiring?”

“Only if your name’s ‘Terry’.”

“Terry?”

“Yep. We got all kinds of Terrys here. Terri with an ‘i’. Terry with a ‘y’. Teri with only one ‘r’. Terree with two ‘ee’s.”

“No. I’m sorry. My name definitely is not Terry.”

He wipes his hands on his apron. “Sorry, then,” he says. “No ideas—no loaf. Name’s not Terry—no job.”

I think about standing and arguing with him but … there’s no point. I hang my head and turn to walk back to my house.

Dawn is coming up over the neighborhood. The girl is no longer on the roof. Nothing’s happening. Fat Man is still in the neighbors’ yard. I open the door to my house. Someone has filled the house with sticks. They are very dry and all different sizes, covering the floor, piled up to my knees. I can’t deal with all these sticks. I clear out a spot just big enough for myself and, still ravenously hungry, lie down for a nap.

I sleep well into the day. I dream of eating. Eating everything. Clouds. The sticks. The key. The phone. The fat man, collapsed in the yard while I peel his scalp away from his skull. He screams something that sounds like “Dying” and then I wake up.

The house is dark. Why is the house dark? Wasn’t it dawn when I came home for a nap? Shouldn’t it be full daylight now? I pull on the chain dangling from the ceiling but the light doesn’t come on. I climb up on some sticks and unscrew the bulb even though I’m sure there are not any replacement bulbs in the house. I shake the bulb. It is not blown. I must not have any electricity. Maybe I didn’t pay the bill. Of course I didn’t pay the bill. I don’t even have enough ideas for a loaf. Besides, here, the power is free. Free because of Princess Electricity, the girl on the roof top.

I step outside, leaving the door open behind me. All the lights are out. I walk down to the house at the end of the block. The girl is once again atop the house. She sits dejectedly on the roof beside her wire contraption.

“What’s wrong?” I call up to her.

She points the flashlight at me but there isn’t any light coming from it. My stomach is still growling in the fog of the night. Then I remember that it isn’t fog. It is steam from the bakery. I bet it’s like this every night. Delicious.

“We’re disconnected!” she shouts.

“Disconnected from what?”

“Everyone,” she says.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“We can’t get any power if we’re disconnected.”

“So that thing …” I say, pointing up at the contraption. “It connects you to the rest of the world?”

“The world above,” she says.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Whaddya got?”

“I got some sticks,” I say. I’ve already picked up their regional dialect. I have some sticks, I think.

“Nah. Sticks won’t do no good. Terry’s been lookin’ to get rid of them things for months.”

I wonder who she’s talking about and realize she could be talking about anyone if everyone in town works at the bakery and everyone who works at the bakery is named Terry.

“Give me a minute,” I say.

“Ain’t ya got nothin’ else?”

“I got a key. And a phone.”

“Is it a magic phone?”

“I guess.”

“That might help.”

“Give me a minute. I’ll need to go grab the phone,” I reassure her.

I walk back to my house. If I had a lighter, I’d set all the sticks on fire, just to teach Terry a lesson. I grab the phone. I have no intention of coming back to this depressing house. I lock the door behind me. On my way to the corner, Fat Man (Terry, I guess), has finally stood up. He begins walking and stops only a house away, goes down onto one knee, and falls onto his back in yet another yard. The owner of this yard comes out of the house. He’s dressed like a cowboy and carries a garden hose. His wife comes out behind him. She is completely naked save for smiley face pasties covering her nipples. She turns the knob to the water and the cowboy begins spraying the fat man. The fat man opens his mouth and catches the stream of water, drinking it all down, growing even fatter.

I continue to the girl’s house. Spotting me, she says, “There’s a ladder on the side.”

I walk to the side of the house and climb the ladder.

“You bring it?”

“Here you go.” I give her the key.

“What’m I s’posed to do with it?”

“I don’t know. It’s a key. You open things with it. It’s from the world above. It hit me in the head.”

“You know I’m Princess Electricity, right?”

“Yeah. I know that.”

“I’m a very important person.”

“Definitely.”

“You fuck with me, it’s gonna piss a lotta people off. They depend on me.”

“Duly noted.”

“How ’bout that phone?”

I hand her the phone.

“Looks like a shabby old phone. What good’s it gonna do if you can’t plug it in?”

“It plays music.”

“Music?”

“All the music of the world.”

She lifts the handpiece from the cradle and holds it up to her ear.

“I can hear it,” she says.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“Mm-hmm.”

I pull it away from her ear before she falls asleep. I hold the key up to the mouthpiece. Amazingly, this amplifies the sound. It swirls around us, louder and louder. Other neighbors, all named Terry, walk out of their darkened homes and look toward the girl’s house. After a while, the huge wire grid begins heating up, glowing first orange and then an almost cool-looking blue. In my head a voice whispers the word “Destiny” over and over again. The clouds split, the sky splits, and a pink dirigible hovers over the house, a rope ladder descending from the body of it. I offer the phone and the key to Princess Electricity. She takes them and puts them in the giant pocket of her dress, no longer needing them. I climb the rope ladder, my stomach growling as I crawl into the dirigible. I look down at the neighborhood and the girl shining her two lights toward me. The neighborhood is awash with electricity, glowing ferociously. Now it’s daytime again. The Captain scratches his lousy beard, says “Welcome aboard!” and claps me on the back. We sail off into the night and I wait for things to go sour.

I once again fell asleep in the yard last night and now my wife is real mad.

“Just because we have a privacy fence doesn’t mean you can act homeless!”

I’m sitting up now, my head heavy with last night’s drinks.

“Unhoused!” I shout back.

“You fucking twat!”

She slams the door and goes back inside. I lean to my right and quietly vomit into the grass.

I look around the perimeter of the yard at our gleaming white privacy fence. It came with the house. I would never erect a privacy fence unless my neighbors were super shitty or dog owners. Our neighbors are great. They’ve never accused me of being an unhoused person. They respect my quirks.

Unhousing myself was something that came naturally. I’m always at risk of losing everything, including my wife, so I’ve decided to ease into it. Practice, just in case the time ever comes.

I suppose I’ll start spending more time indoors when the weather gets a little chillier. I’ve never been one for the cold. The early spring and gorgeous weather is how this all started. I’d wander outside after my wife went to bed. She turns the air conditioning way down because she says she’s tired of waking up in pools of sweat. I stayed outside longer and longer, pounding beers, smoking cigarettes, and either muttering to myself or thinking really deep thoughts, dragging myself inside after she went to work so I could work from home writing hardcore pornography very few people read. I told myself it was an office and not a house.

This continues for several more nights—rain or shine. When it rains, I’ve found a spot under the garage eave with a large tree growing over it. It keeps me relatively dry.

One night I hear the back door open and my wife bellow, “Where are you, you disgusting piece of shit!”

I’m between a large bush and the privacy fence, masturbating slowly. Being outside, I’m usually able to take my time with it. Inside, I always had to furiously pound one out whenever I could find the time and the privacy.

I put my dick away but don’t respond to her.

Not yet.

She goes into the house and comes back out with a palm of cigarettes she sprinkles around the porch. I scamper out of the bushes to collect them.

I meet my wife’s gaze.

She’s not wearing a lot of clothes.

“I need a fucking,” she says.

I look longingly at the cigarettes in my hand. I don’t know why. I’d much rather be fucking my wife. Theater, I guess. Dramatic tension.

“After,” she says.

I follow her inside.

Later, as we both lie in my collective stink and smoke cigarettes in bed, I remember this unhoused thing was not really my idea at all. I leaned into her fetish with a ferocity I exhibit for very few things. She’ll delouse me and hose me down. Maybe pull off a couple of ticks. We’ll clean the house together. Go to bed together. In the morning she’ll seduce me again and tell me I clean up nice. Then I’ll go outside to do yardwork and it’ll start again.

Lon spends three weeks growing a thick, dark mustache.

One day he invites his girlfriend, Tina, over.

It isn’t long before he is performing cunnilingus on her. She laughs and tells him she likes the way the mustache feels. Within a few minutes, she reaches a shivering climax. Afterward, Tina giggles and leaves. It isn’t until the next morning, when Lon goes into the bathroom to shave, he notices his mustache missing.

“That bitch,” he says between clenched teeth.

He tries to grow another mustache but it isn’t the same; the symmetry is all wrong, the thickness subpar. It has an odor.

Lon tries to call Tina but she won’t pick up the phone. He can’t leave a message. What would he say?

Many months later, Lon rents a porno, it being a long time since his last sexual encounter. Midway through the porno, after Lon has masturbated three times, he notices Tina. She is calling herself Glenda Bummings now. He doesn’t want to watch, he’s so angry with her, but her image sparks memories of being with her and Lon is, once again, aroused.

Soon, the male actor in the porno enters Tina. Lon remembers the days when that was him. The man slides his penis out and Lon is flabbergasted. He scrambles to kneel in front of the TV. Attached to the man’s penis is Lon’s mustache.

“That bitch,” Lon thinks.

Captivated, he watches as his mustache rumples up against her vagina and then disappears inside once more. There are times when Lon thinks he can see it peeking out, nearly taunting him, whispering softly, “Remember when I used to be on your lip?”

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.

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.

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.