A Haunting of Words

by Brian Paone et al.

  I picked myself up and dusted myself off.

  “Why are you always so testy?” Hitler asked, crossing his legs like a proper lady.

  I squinted at him, trying to decide if he was making fun of breakfast. Then he began to grin. I still couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I told him, climbing the wreckage of the dirigible.

  It might have been easier to go around, but it wasn’t the most direct route. I prefer direct routes. I had just gotten to the top when Hitler spoke again.

  “Wait!” shouted Hitler. “Can I come with you?”

  “… Why?” I asked.

  “I want to show off my new pants.”

  I looked back to see what he was talking about. Assless chaps.

  As it turns out, they were also frontless chaps. The German dictator’s balls swung lazily in the afternoon breeze. I’m pretty sure I could still see a Cheerio clinging to his scrotum. I was confused about the physics of that, but I was never too good with physics to begin with. I trusted it made sense.

  I decided I needed to go hunting for a new job immediately. I wasn’t the sort to sit around and do nothing all day. Idle hands being the devil’s workshop and whatnot. And they’re not lying when they say that.

  I spent one Saturday lounging and watching television. Before I knew it, I had opened a gateway to Hell and was trying to explain to the Lord of Destruction, Baal, why he could not crash on my couch. I told him I was very sorry, but I had no room for him and the lesser evils making up his posse: the Lord of Lies, the Maiden of Anguish, and a shimmering ball of light I took to be the physical representation of pop music.

  Baal told me I was a jive turkey, having opened a portal to Hell in my front yard, but refused any hospitality. He flashed a few gang signs and went back through, insisting he would get me back in the least expected way. The last thing I heard before the portal shut and I began to heavily salt my yard, was a high-pitched teehee! and something about Billie Jean.

  So, I hit the pavement in search of a new source of income. The thing about New Haven is there are more jobs than there are people, so there is always a job somewhere for a man or woman willing to work. The business owners had tried running aggressive campaigns to bring in people from outside of New Haven, but they ran into a wall. By “they,” I mean the people driving into New Haven, and by “a wall,” I mean literally. After a meeting at city hall, where people complained it was too hot in the summers, Mayor Bugenhagen built a big wall around New Haven and tried filling it with water so that New Haven would be one giant pool. The people coming to take our jobs drove right into a brick wall. Our doctors tried rushing out to help them, but they just drove right into the other side of the wall.

  Already the wall had gotten off to a bad start. It never truly got started either, as the plan for filling it with water amounted to Mayor Bugenhagen turning on the hose behind city hall. After a few weeks, it did flood the streets, so people did enjoy themselves some splash fights, but then winter came. With colder temperatures came freezing water, and with freezing water came slick driving surfaces.

  When the complaints started coming in about the cold, Mayor Bugenhagen set the town on fire with his brilliant strategy of literally setting buildings on fire.

  My first stop was the Pizzazz Pizzeria, as I knew they had an opening. After cursing at me loudly, Schmitty threw deep-fried pencils at me. They weren’t bad, but needed some salt. I filed a note about leaving that as a review and then walked farther into the business district.

  The Coca Cabana, our only night club, was trying to put together a small wrestling show one night a week for people’s amusement. They wanted to know if I had any experience in performance. I proved I did by breaking a wooden chair over a waitress’s head. The manager had me thrown out, and for good measure, the bouncer gave me an elbow drop. I think he was auditioning for the spot himself, judging by the leotard and wrestling mask he was wearing. Seemed like a good kid. I think he’d do well.

  Dejected and pretty certain I had bruised ribs, I kept walking and inquiring within establishments. I tried being a dentist next. I didn’t expect to get that job, but as it turned out, the town’s dentist had been among those who tried to help out-of-towners when they drove into the wall. I thought I’d noticed more cavities in the mouths of children as of late, but it was hard to tell with parents giving me dirty looks for poking my fingers in their children’s mouths.

  As it happened, my first client had scheduled an appointment earlier that day. He had broken his teeth on a deep-fried stapler. Imagine my surprise when Schmitty walked in.

  I tried to play it cool, as if he hadn’t just fired me and thrown unsalted deep-fried office supplies at my head.

  “…’Sup?” I asked.

  “Are you trying to play it cool?” he asked.

  “… No …”

  We stared at each other awkwardly for a few minutes until a large chunk of one of his teeth fell out and reminded us why he was there. I told him to get into the chair and proceeded to use every dentist tool in the room. I had no idea how most of them were used, however. I’d watched a video of two funny guys playing a game simulating surgery on teeth at one point and tried to emulate them. Schmitty was not laughing as much as the two guys when I used a hammer to break more of his teeth. I guess you really can’t trust everything you see on the internet or in video games.

  After he complained about the pain like a little baby, I turned on the valve for the sleeping gas all dentists have for when they want to take a quick nap and had Schmitty breathe in deeply. Once he was asleep, I continued to guess at what I was supposed to do. I watched more videos online, but either they showed something I was pretty certain wouldn’t work, like going to a real dentist, or required skills I did not have as an untrained dentist. Finally, I just used the drill to take out the rest of his teeth and put a hole in his cheek.

  I wanted to feel bad about it, but really, who is to blame—me or the irresponsible party who hired me in the first place? I think we can both agree I am completely faultless here.

  It was at that point I started to feel drowsy and noticed I had not shut off the sleeping gas canister. I decided now was a fine time for one of those dentist naps as I fell to the floor.

  I woke up briefly a few minutes later to see Adolf Hitler doing his tea bagging routine on Schmitty. It had been one of the suggestions in a video that featured a lot of pixilation, but I had dismissed it as having no relevance. But at this point I couldn’t see it doing any more harm than what I had done, and who am I to argue with Hitler’s dental practices? I think we can also agree I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to dentistry.

  When I woke up an hour later, Hitler was gone, and Schmitty was still sleeping it off in the chair. I examined my handiwork and decided I had won the pranking contest with this. Not wanting to leave the job unfinished, I grabbed a pair of dentures from a drawer and glued them to his face. I then marched out of the building and insisted I quit. I figured I should retire while I’m ahead.

  I tried one more lead on a job, applying to Mayor Bugenhagen’s office to give some assistance to Mayor Bugenhagen. After The Queen Mary’s horrible wreck, he had been in search of a new means of transportation, and I was to help provide that.

  So, he gave me a trial run, having me give him a piggyback ride all around town. He spent most of his time on my back, giving raspberries to people as we passed them. It was tiring work carrying a fully-grown man on your back. We stopped off at his favorite watering hole, and he tied me up outside so I didn’t wander away and some other varmint didn’t try to steal me. He then rode me for a while longer. We slipped on some snot trails on the ground from the aforementioned snot-nosed punks. I whinnied as I went down, and then whined while I was down.

  Oddly enough, on the way back, he crashed me into the town square. I figured now was as good a time as any to tell him I didn’t think this was going to work out, what with my back being sore and being so close to home.
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br />   He patted my head and gave me a sugar cube for my troubles.

  I headed back home, my head hung low and constantly fidgeting my fingers. I couldn’t afford for my hands to become idle. Now that money was going to be at a premium, I didn’t have the space for Baal and his posse, nor did I have the money to feed them. I really need to step up my hospitality game.

  As I walked, I noticed the street was oddly deserted. Mrs. Cahill wasn’t tending to her gardens. Only one of the Miller children was outside, and he had tipped over the sprinkler system and was running in circles around it. Also, there was a big plume of black smoke rising from the direction of my house.

  As it turns out, that’s because my house was on fire.

  I arrived to see a lot of the neighborhood had turned out to watch the fire. Mrs. Cahill was there, as was the other Miller child, and the snot-nosed punks were back. After slipping on the snot, I stood up and shook myself off.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the crowd.

  Everyone in the neighborhood turned to face me. They scowled at me pretty fierce. It felt rude, particularly to someone that was always smiling at them, even now as my house was engulfed in flames. Ungrateful bastards.

  The crowd parted and gave me a good look at my home. Beneath the raging inferno, I could see someone had painted a giant swastika, various Nazi slogans, and a pair of highly-detailed, well-shaded testicles being lowered into a hastily and crudely-drawn mouth.

  I didn’t have to guess who had pulled this stunt. I glared into the crowd, looking for Schmitty, but I couldn’t find him. You might ask, for everything that had happened today, why I’d accuse Schmitty first. Well, I hate him. That’s just for starters. I find if you hate someone, it’s usually a good idea to blame everything that goes wrong in life on them. But, also, I got a good look at a notebook he kept on prank ideas. This was #6, just above #7 (kicking the person standing beside me in the nuts for months to lull me into a false sense of security), and just below #5 (kicking me in the nuts).

  “Who did this?” I yelled.

  “You did!” responded someone in the crowd.

  Sure enough, someone had added my signature in the lower right-hand corner of the house. I thought hard about if I had done it and not remembered. But I was pretty certain I was chauffeuring Mayor Bugenhagen around town when this was happening.

  “I didn’t do this!” I protested. “I don’t approve of this!”

  “Then why are you smiling?” shouted the same guy as before.

  The mob booed me. The snot-nosed punks blew chunks out of their noses at me. The other Miller child showed up, covered in mud, and then both blew raspberries at me. I tell you that hurt the worst. I tried calling the fire department, but when they showed up, they just added more fire to the house.

  That’s when I saw the person responsible for this. I ran into the street and clocked Schmitty in the face, knocking his teeth off his cheek. That was when Adolf Hitler materialized in front of me, smiling and waving. That’s when it clicked that he was the one responsible. I ran over to try to clock him in the face, but instead, went flying into someone’s yard.

  “Why?” I asked as I pulled myself up. “Why are you such a jerk?”

  “Well,” he started, staring off into the sky. “I suppose it all started for me as a child. I was very lonely, you see.”

  “Don’t care.”

  “All the other children would run about, playing with sticks and whatnot—that’s what we had at the time—but any time I would try to play with them, they would just beat me with the sticks.”

  “… Aw,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like a good excuse though.”

  “But then I would go home and tell my mother and then she would also beat me with a stick.”

  “That’s a bit extreme.”

  “I guess,” Hitler said, shuddering. “I guess all I’ve really been looking for is attention.”

  “I … well I guess you were successful.”

  “Yes, but all little Hitler wanted was a hug.”

  I watched as the evil German dictator, Adolf Hitler, wiped a tear from his eye. It was sad. You wouldn’t know it from the smile on my face, but I felt a little bad for him.

  I sighed. The last thing I needed right now was for the neighbors pissing on my yard, watching my Nazi propaganda-laced home burn to the ground, to see me hugging the ghost of Adolf Hitler. But, I’m a big old softie.

  I opened my arms and closed my eyes. I wanted to get it over with. I stepped forward.

  THUD!

  That’s when Willie the Blind Bus Driver ran me over with his bus. I really should have mentioned Willie earlier, like set him up for this part of the story. That’s how a good story is told; you lay seeds early. But it was kind of a big day for me, as you might have noticed. I just plum forgot, so it kinda comes out of the blue. Remind me to tell about the time he accidentally drove on the street. It’s a doozey.

  My life was over instantly. My body got flung several feet ahead of the bus, and then got run over again. That time I got stuck between the wheel and the wheel well so it really grinded me down into a paste.

  I looked longingly at my mangled corpse, trying to ignore the cheers of the mob, Mayor Bugenhagen stepping out of the bus to announce it as his new means of transportation, and that shimmering ball of light, now with thick glasses and curly hair, singing about eating something.

  When I looked back to Hitler, he was straightening the French beret on his head again.

  “That thing about children beating you with sticks wasn’t true, was it?” I asked.

  “No!” he said, eyes widening in excitement. “I was the one beating them with the sticks.”

  I watched the mob kick at my corpse for a little while. Schmitty got into it by beating me with a bat until my skull was deformed.

  “Why did you do this?” I asked. “Why me?”

  “Well, I always wanted to visit Paris, and I did not want to travel alone.”

  “You invaded Paris!”

  “Yes, yes, but there was a war on at the time—”

  “Because of you!”

  “Stop interrupting, it’s rude. Anyway, I was there for business, not pleasure. I didn’t get to really appreciate it for its culture and architecture.”

  “Ugh … Jesus …” I said, rubbing my temples where the headache started to form.

  “No, no. I asked him. He was kind of upset about the millions of dead people too.” He stepped in front of me and clapped his hands together. “So, shall we?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I mean, I didn’t need a job anymore. He wasn’t my ideal traveling companion, but I had nothing better to do now. I told him fine, but I insisted on the window seat. He flew into a rage, his weird hair flapping all about but always returning to the same position when he stopped, until I agreed to take the aisle seat.

  Every story should have a moral, right? I think, if you take any moral from my story, let it be this: Adolf Hitler is kind of a dick.

  I glance around my grand living room, silently celebrating the fact that I’m finally unpacked. Three days of nothing but cleaning and organizing and I’m finally finished.

  As I turn toward the television and drop onto the couch, my fourteen-year-old daughter enters the room, face planted in her phone with her fingers busily at work texting.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  Charity looks over her phone at my beaming face, rolling her eyes. “I think you need better hobbies,” she says as she goes back to work at her phone.

  My smile falters as I watch my daughter sink into the lounger completely ignoring everything I’ve worked so hard on.

  “I’d probably have more time for hobbies if you didn’t leave your shoes on the staircase. I’ve moved them at least a dozen times since yesterday.”

  Charity squints over her phone. “I haven’t touched my shoes except to go to school, and I left them by the door like you asked! Maybe Janice or Mandy’s been playing with them.”

  Frowning, I st
and up and walk away. I head for the kitchen through the large central hallway, which doubles as our dining area, but as I’m walking through, I see Charity’s running shoes randomly tossed on the stairs.

  I let out a sigh and climb the stairs to pick them up before returning them to the shoe rack by the front door, muttering under my breath about how I’m never going to have hobbies with as much as I clean.

  Owen comes home just as I’m setting dinner on the table. He inhales sharply before wrapping his arms around me, first hugging my back before kissing me on the cheek. My lips reflexively turn upward at his tender touch.

  “Dinner smells amazing, Jennifer.”

  I wave my hand, brushing him away as he tries to grab a potato.

  “Go wash your hands.”

  He kisses my cheek again before heading toward the bathroom.

  “Put your phone away, Charity,” I say, piling food onto the plates.

  She rolls her eyes before burying it under her thigh with a frown.

  Refusing to give in to her attitude, I grin at my five-year-old and three-year-old as they talk about preschool with bright eyes and laughter. Why can’t my oldest daughter appreciate life like them?

  “May said her would pway schoow wif me affer dinner,” Mandy tells her big sister.

  I simply smile at my baby. I’ve been meaning to teach her how to pronounce her Ls and Ts but have been a little preoccupied with the move. I’ll have to start correcting her whenever I hear her leaving them out.

  Janice takes a drink of her milk before she responds. “You can’t play school with your imaginary friend.”

  My eyes widen. “You have an imaginary friend?”

  “No. May is weal.”

  Mandy’s eyes squint at Janice as she folds her arms defensively over her chest. Owen walks back in before the fight can go any further.

  “I don’t want to come across as rude, but someone at this table uses too much perfume. The entire bathroom reeks of it,” he says as he sits next to Mandy.

  Charity shakes her head. “Don’t look at me. I don’t use old woman perfume.”

  I sit between Janice and Owen, placing my napkin on my lap. Owen and Charity both turn to stare at me.