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 that 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.
Two Children Who Want to Drive Off a Cliff
An eight feet tall man runs upon a narrow dirt path through a dense jungle. The jungle is very dark and smells like death. It’s filled with the squealing sounds of imagibeasts. Soon the man emerges from the jungle into the bright daylight. He continues running. The path ascends the side of a mountain. Halfway up the mountain a car is pulled to the shoulder of the path. The man, being so tall, reaches the car in no time. Two children lean against the driver’s side door of the black muscle car. A girl and a boy. They look about seven. The man, sweaty and mildly exerted, approaches the two children. The boy wears a stained white t-shirt and oversized jeans. He is smoking an unfiltered cigarette and smells like cheap whiskey. The girl is dressed so scantily it makes the tall man nervous to look at her.
“Need some help?” The man mops sweat from his brow with a giant hand.
“Fuck yeah.” The boy pulls a flask from his hip pocket and takes a slug.
“What’s the problem?”
“Fuckin’ broke down, old man.”
The man does not like this boy at all. He wants to smack him around but he’s just a kid. The girl is now giving herself a tattoo with a pocketknife. It’s a big, crooked bloody heart around her bellybutton.
“Where you kids going?”
“Top of the hill.” The boy points to the top of the hill.
“That’s a drop off up there. You’ll go right into the ocean.”
“Yeah. We know that. Think you can help us?”
Of course the man can help. Being eight feet tall, he can do just about anything.
“Open her up,” he tells the boy.
The boy tosses his cigarette onto the dirt road, opens the door, and pops the hood.
The tall man grabs some grass and dirt and shoves it randomly throughout the engine. “Oughtta do it,” he says.
“Get in the car bitch,” the boy barks at the girl. She obediently runs around to the passenger side and gets in.
“I really wouldn’t advise driving off that cliff,” the man warns them.
“We’re fuckin’ goin’ off that cliff. We’re in love.”
The boy fires up the engine and shoots up the side of the mountain. The man doesn’t know why the path goes all the way to the cliff. He wonders why there isn’t some kind of warning sign at the end of the road. Maybe it is made for this purpose. He runs after the car. The car flies off the cliff and the man brings himself to a stop before going over himself. The car tumbles end over end until it crashes into the water. The man takes a deep breath and runs back down the path and into the dark jungle.
Rivalry
I rented a truck to drive over my neighbor. All of this because he’d taken a backhoe to my once beautiful lawn. I got the last truck the rental place had. It was a great lumbering beast. On the way home I stopped at a bar specializing in darts and arm wrestling and got blind drunk. Navigating the truck was difficult but I felt invincible.
I slammed into the curb in front of my house. My neighbor, Baxter, was watering his flowerbeds—the haughty prick.
Now was the time to do it. I gunned the accel
erator and raced toward him. He dropped the hose and ran into his house. It took a few minutes to get the truck all turned around. They probably shouldn’t rent these things to everyday, non-truck driving people. I think I hit the house behind me but I was too drunk to tell. My body had gone numb. I was covered in an acrid sweat. I gunned the engine again and slammed into my neighbor’s house.
He looked out from the second floor window. He had a shotgun. I guess Baxter had everything. A fantastic lawn. Gorgeous flowerbeds. Hi-tech weaponry.
I backed up and ran into the house again. I wanted to shake its foundations. He fired a shot and the windshield shattered. My heart skipped a beat. A lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t quit. I couldn’t let this hobo win. I honked the horn. Laid on it. Loud and blaring.
He had probably called the cops but they wouldn’t respond to anything short of murder, kidnapping, or hostage situations. I backed up and rammed the house again. He fired another shot. Some of the buckshot peppered my right arm. Baxter—the violent fuck.
I pulled the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. I opened the back of the truck, went into my house and, grabbing some essential items (knives, the television, a blowtorch, beer, and pornography), moved into the back of the truck.
I pulled the sliding door down and welded it shut. I watched TV and laughed as Baxter pounded on the door and fired his rifle at it, begging me to remove the truck from his once immaculate house.
A 3-Legged Dog Dying of Cancer
My dog died. He had cancer of the face.
I took him outside to toss him up into the tree. I grabbed hold of him and my hands were consumed by his dense fur and then by his skin, until they were inside of him. The dog was filled with witchcraft and sea water. I got it all over my hands. I rinsed them off and decided to use tongs instead.
I could not get the dead dog up into the tree. I was going to tell him he was a bunch of dead weight but then I remembered he was dead and couldn’t hear me and probably wouldn’t have thought it was funny anyway.
I moved the trampoline over from the rusted out ice cream truck.
Using the tongs, I clasped the dog around the neck and the hind leg and bounced him onto the trampoline. He bounced into the air and his fur rained down and his teeth clacked as he landed on the trampoline in a heap.
This wasn’t working either.
I went inside to call my friend Ben. Ben was a director of films. His latest was called Sperm Jug, about two twentysomething guys who embark on a cross-country road trip with their grandmother. The movie ends at the Grand Canyon, the guys dousing the old woman in semen before throwing her over the edge. I think it’s a comedy.
Ben was busy but he gave me some sound advice. He said to try cutting the dog into smaller pieces and throwing them up into the tree individually.
I said: “But Ben, what am I supposed to use to chop up the dog?”
And he said: “Use your fucking dick,” and hung up on me.
I didn’t think that would work so I used a pair of poultry shears.
When I was finished chopping up the dog, I hurled the pieces as far up into the tree as I could. The only thing left was the cancer—dark and glittering. I carried that over to the sewer opening on the curb and dropped it down.
Over the next several days, the dog pieces turned black and oozed from the tree like a rain of cinnamon-flavored tar.
I took the dog inside. He climbed into my nightmares, a black shadow beast, and left steaming piles of worm infested waste everywhere.
Then he was gone and it was time to get a new dog.
So I bought a new dog and he was pretty much just like the old dog except he had an extra leg. So I called Ben and asked him what I should do about it. Ben told me I should take it to a butcher and he would get the dog fixed up.
So I did.
Divorce
A man makes a wife out of stained sheets and old pillows. Being made from the things of sleep, she immediately dozes off. The man walks over to the window of their second-story bedroom. It’s snowing outside. It’s been snowing for quite some time. The snow nearly reaches the window. The man looks back at his wife. He tries to wake her up but can’t. He’s lonely. He wants to play in the snow. He opens the window and throws himself out, plunging deep into the snow and freezing to death.
The wife wakes up to the frigid air rushing in through the window. She slams it shut and goes back to sleep.
The next morning the dead man strolls into the house. His wife is enjoying a breakfast of sawdust and gasoline.
“You’re dead,” she says, not at all alarmed.
“Yep,” the man says.
“Best get you into the freezer.”
“Yep.”
The man enters the spacious freezer willingly. The wife tosses a case of beer and a television in there with him. He stays there for three years.
The woman eventually marries a bed. He likes to sleep as much as she does although, when awake, he is a little lazier than she prefers.
The frozen man leaves the freezer and confronts the woman.
“How could you?” he says.
“You was dead.”
The man bounces on the bed. The bed groans but he doesn’t fight back.
“I’m leavin’!” the man shouts.
“It’s the middle of summer. You’ll melt.”
“Like hell!”
The man bangs the door shut behind him and walks out into the neighborhood street. He heads for the local bar, thinking maybe he can meet another woman who will put him up. It isn’t long before he begins sweating profusely. The sweat doesn’t stop. Embarrassed, he ducks into an alleyway where he slides down a wall and quietly sweats himself into nonexistence.
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.
Framon
i 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 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.
The Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians Page 7