SAUSAGEY
SANTA
CARLTON MELLICK III
AVANT PUNK
AVANT PUNK BOOKS
AN IMPRINT OF ERASERHEAD PRESS
ERASERHEAD PRESS
205 NE BRYANT PORTLAND, OR 97211
WWW.ERASERHEADPRESS.COM ISBN: 1-933929-56-1
Copyright © 2006 by Carlton Mellick III www.avantpunk.com
Cover art copyright © 2006 by Ed Mironiuk http://edmironiuk.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Printed in the U S A.
CHAPTER ONE
TELEVISION CAKE
I never should have married a woman named Decapitron.
It’s more like the name of an evil transformer than the name of a wife. Her given name was Susanne Lewis, but she has gone by Decapitron ever since she was a little kid and got it legally changed when she turned eighteen. I’d prefer if she went by Susanne but she says she’ll annihilate me if I ever call her by that name.
I should have listened to my mom when she told me “you just can’t trust a woman named Decapitron.” She was right. Decapitron is unpredictable. She’s like a flesh-bag of nitroglycerin that’s ready to explode at the drop of a hat.
I could have married any woman. When I was younger, the ladies were always swooning over me. I could have had any of them. I could have married a supermodel. Maybe I never should have married any woman at all and stayed a swinging bachelor for the rest of my life. I mean, I’m a wild man. I have one of the most stylish hairdos anyone has ever seen. I call my hairstyle ‘the sly guy’ and I like to make guns with my fingers and point them at people when I walk down the sidewalk.
It’s Christmas Eve. I’m in the living room bobbing my head to Jingle Bell Rock while drinking brandy eggnog out of a snowman-shaped mug, trying to figure out a way to work off my beer belly without actually doing any exercise.
Decapitron is in the kitchen with the twins baking a cake for Jesus’ birthday tomorrow. It’s one of her stupid family’s stupid traditions. On Christmas Day, she always lights candles on a cake and forces us to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. She puts up balloons and party decorations, with a banner that reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS! stretched across the dining room wall.
It’s pretty awesome that her family was killed in a car accident earlier this year. I can finally enjoy my Christmas without having to listen to her dwarfish father’s racist jokes or her mother’s retarded opinions concerning the sexiness of women with hairy armpits (namely, herself). They should have had the decency to die years ago, like my parents did. My parents rocked. They knew how to get morbidly obese in their youth and die middle- aged. I hope to be just like them.
I chug down the nog and sneak over to the Christmas tree to check out my presents. The Christmas tree is about seventeen feet high and ten feet wide. We get a bigger tree every year. Decapitron cut a hole in the ceiling just so we can fit bigger trees into our house at Christmas time. Upstairs, in our bedroom, the top of the tree comes out of the floor and forms another normal-sized tree near the foot of our bed. She says she likes the smell of pine trees when she wakes up in the morning.
I squat down and crawl underneath the enormous tree, pretending like I am exploring a vast cavern full of colorfully-patterned rocks. Examining the rocks . . . Hmm, there doesn’t seem to be many presents for me under here. Decapitron usually only gets me one thing for Christmas: piercings. She’s got a metal fetish and ever since we started dating she’s forced me to get more and more things pierced. Not my face, mind you. She doesn’t think a good family man should have piercings that show, so all fifty-six of my piercings are concealed under my clothing. My entire torso is completely studded. It’s like I’m covered in steel freckles.
I don’t want any piercings. I don’t really like them. Decapitron forces me to get them, though. She tells me that if I ever even think about removing any of my piercings she will annihilate me.
There’s really only two things I want for Christmas:
1) Cannibal Death Cop on DVD
2) the new Spelunker CD.
Spelunker is my favorite band ever. They are the leading group of a new genre of music called Adventure Rock. It is the kind of music that Indiana Jones would listen to if he was a real person. Adventure Rock bands sing about cool stuff like archeology, mountain climbing, wilderness survival, cave exploration, anthropological studies, kayaking, and swimming around in sunken pirate ships while fighting off man-eating sharks and terrorists with spear guns. Nothing gets me more pumped than listing to Spelunker while driving my sports utility vehicle to work every day.
But I doubt I’m getting the CD for Christmas. I never get what I want. I’ll probably have to buy it for myself next month.
Decapitron wants the same thing for Christmas every year: Transformer toys.
She actually really does think of herself as an evil Transformer. She even has a secret Decepticon tattoo on her shoulder that you have to rub in order to see it. Ever since she was a kid she wanted to be an evil robot that could transform into different things. At first she wanted to be able to transform into a space ship. Then she wanted to be able to transform into an electric boa constrictor. Then a laser cannon. Then a monster truck. Then a guillotine, so she could actually decapitate people.
These days she wishes she could transform into a nuclear submarine. She could do a lot of damage if she could turn into a nuclear submarine.
“What are you doing under there?” an angry voice says to me.
I look back to see a small tapping foot outside of the Christmas tree.
“You’re not allowed in there.”
It’s my daughter, Nora.
“Coming,” I say, needles poking into my hands and elbows as I crawl out from under the tree, knocking ornaments down as my back brushes against the lower branches.
I peek out from under the tree like a bad dog hiding under a bed. She stares down at me with a disgusted look on her face. Blue and green lights sparkle against her braces.
“How many times do I have to warn you?” she says, wiping the open wound on the side or her face with a towel. “You go under there one more time and I’m going to have Mom return all of your presents.”
Even though she’s seven years old, Nora is the boss of the family. I’m pretty sure she is the anti-Christ, which is why I don’t fuck with her. Even Decapitron doesn’t dare defy the kid. It’s probably the gory black growth on the side of her head that makes her seem so damned scary. It’s a morbid balloon of flesh shaped like an adult male hand growing out of her brain and gripping the side of her skull. It is constantly pulsating and bleeding, and requires constant care. The doctor said she probably wouldn’t live to see her first birthday, but that son of a bitch didn’t know what he was talking about. I should have sued his ass. If I knew she was going to live this long I probably would have given her up for adoption years ago.
For Christmas, Nora asked for a neural implant so she could plug her brain directly into the computer. Technology is advancing so quickly these days that it’s hard to keep up with all the inventions. First, there was the Internet. Then came holographic movies. Then helicopter backpacks. Then laser eyes. Now they invented a way to plug computers directly into your brain. You can upload 110 MB of knowledge an hour into your mind now or you can download your memories onto a disc so that you’ll never forget them.
It’s all still pretty new. Not a lot of people can afford the surgery yet and there’s a lot of skepticism about its safety. A few people at work have done i
t because the company paid for the operation. They say that in about five years everyone will have it done and no company will hire you without it. I really hope they are wrong. My employer already owns most of my time, all I need is for them to own part of my brain too.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to get Nora the operation for Christmas. It’s so far out of our budget it’s ridiculous. We’d have to put a second mortgage on our house. I don’t even know if it is legal for minors to get the implant. She’s going to be fucking pissed tomorrow morning and I know she’s going to blame me. My punishment will probably be pretty severe this time. If I’m lucky she won’t let me have any of my piercings for Christmas. Or maybe she’ll make me go to my room during Jesus’ birthday party.
Nora sits down on a chair in front of the tree, guarding the presents.
“Suck in your gut,” she tells me.
I do as she commands but let it slack when I turn away from her, calling her a fucking witch under my breath. “Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer” is now playing on the stereo. It is a funky disco mix version. I pour myself some more eggnog and groove across the horsehair carpet into the kitchen.
Decapitron is putting the finishing touches on Jesus’ birthday cake. The twins are strapped to her back gurgling at each other. Both boys were born with full heads of hair that now look like large globs of cotton candy. My wife decided to dye each of their heads a different fruity color. Matt Jr. has neon green hair. Decapitron Jr. has turquoise blue hair. Matt Jr. goes by Greeny or Matty. Decapitron Jr. goes by Bluey or Tron or Voltron. We are considering changing his name to Voltron. Matty will probably go by Matt when he’s older. My wife never calls me Matt anyway so there wouldn’t be much confusion.
When I was younger I went by Sly Guy Matthew Fry, or Sly Fry for short. That’s what I like to be called. But Decapitron and my kids just address me by my surname, Fry. My wife didn’t take my last name when we got married, she doesn’t have a last name at all, so it’s not that strange when she calls me Fry. But it’s weird when the kids do it. They don’t call me Dad or Matthew or Sly Guy. I’m just Fry to them.
The twins are about two years old but they still look like they are infants. I’m not sure if they are ever going to grow up. Decapitron still breastfeeds them. She has them holstered on her back so she can whip them out like shotguns or samurai swords whenever it’s time for them to feed. She wears a breakaway top designed for strippers so that she can rip it open and fling them towards her breasts in the blink of an eye.
I think she has been breastfeeding them for so long because it turns her on. I’m not positive about this, but she’s a weird fucking woman so I wouldn’t put it past her. She has pierced nipples and likes to have them sucked, especially while she’s lactating. I know because she usually forces me to drink from her nipples while we have sex. I’m pretty sure the doctor told her she shouldn’t keep her piercings in, but there’s no arguing with Decapitron. I used to tell her that the kids would turn out funny if she breastfeeds them for too long, but she just tells me to shut up or she will annihilate me.
Decapitron is always threatening to annihilate me. And she could do it, too. Easily. She annihilates people for a living. By day, her j ob is housewife. But by night, she earns a living as a death sport street fighter.
She only fights about two or three times a year and usually makes a few hundred grand a match. It is all illegal, of course. Her sponsors are a French mafia family that sends her all over the world to fight in private tournaments. Most of the matches are not officially bouts to the death, but whenever my wife fights the match is always to the death. She never allows any of her opponents to survive, because her finishing maneuver is a powerful roundhouse kick that causes decapitation. After all, she has to live up to her name. The audience always loves her. They are there to see fatalities and she never fails to give them some.
Our relationship was pretty much built on fear. It started out as just a crazy sexual escapade. Me with my irresistible hairdo and super slick dance moves. Decapitron with her black makeup and tight leather outfits. She was instantly attracted to me, as most of the ladies were, and aggressively came on to me at a nightclub. I never slept with a dominatrix type before, so I decided to give her a try. One night of wild sex, that’s all I wanted out of her. But I made the mistake of bringing her back to my place. Once she knew where I lived, she kept coming back for more. Next thing I knew she was calling me her boyfriend and I didn’t know how to get her out of my life.
The day she presumed I was about to try to break up with her she decided to show me what she did for a living. I had no idea what her job was. She didn’t look like a fighter. She never had any scars. She was very tall and in great shape, but she wasn’t all that muscular. The next thing I knew she was beating the utter piss out of a 400 pound tank of a Russian. This guy was a behemoth of muscle and platinum chest hair. Bigger than any wrestler or football player I’ve ever seen. Bigger than any boxer. If I saw him in the wild I’d think he was the abominable snowman.
But Decapitron made short work of him. Without ever getting touched, she broke his ribs, cracked open his ankle, crushed his liver, shattered his foot, ripped a tendon out of his arm, and then decapitated him with her toes.
After they dragged the corpse away, she told me, “If you ever leave me I will annihilate you.”
So instead of breaking up with her we got married and started making kids.
I lean against the counter and check out the cake. How The Grinch Stole Christmas is playing on the surface. Right now it’s on the part where the Grinch encounters Mary Loo Who and is trying to come up with an excuse for stealing her family’s Christmas tree.
The cake is a television cake. It is one of the most popular styles in this new era of hi tech cake design. The icing of a television cake has the ability to pick up images from satellite TV and display them on your cake. You just have to tell the satellite company which channel you want on your cake and they charge your credit card by the hour until you cancel the service. You can’t control the volume on the icing but it’s usually not too loud or too quiet. The show continues playing while you eat the cake, but you won’t be able to see the whole screen anymore. I don’t like to eat television cake. I just watch it while the family cuts pieces away. It kind of freaks me out.
The weird part of it is that the show still plays inside of you after you’ve eaten it. Whenever Decapitron eats her cake she always opens her mouth to show me the chewed up TV show. Sometimes she puts her belly to my ear so I can hear the muffled sounds of the show’s characters inside of her. But worst of all, she likes to freak me out by leaving floaters in the toilet after she’s eaten the cake. She knows that poop covered in sparkling television static bothers the heck out of me.
The technical advancement in cakes is sure impressive, but I prefer to eat good old fashioned German chocolate cake. You just can’t improve on that.
CHAPTER TWO
CHAINSAW ANGEL WINGS
I don’t hate every member of my family. Well, I wouldn’t hate any of them if they weren’t so difficult to like. But there is one of them that I love. My second daughter, Angelica. My little angel. Decapitron likes to think of Angelica and Matty as my kids, and Nora and Voltron as her kids. If we separated and I was allowed to live that’s probably how the family would be split up.
Angelica is upstairs coloring pictures of Santa’s workshop, wearing angel wings made out of chainsaw blades. My wife made them for her. She thinks they are pretty cool. Being only five, Angelica doesn’t know exactly what chainsaws are for. She just thinks of them as very heavy metal angel wings. Just like Decapitron she is surprisingly strong and has no problem wearing chainsaw blades around the house.
“Hi, Sly Fry,” Angelica says as I moonwalk into her room. She’s the only one who sometimes calls me Sly Fry.
I point gun-fingers at her and wink.
“Wanna see what I colored?” she asks.
“Sure, honey bunny.”
Sh
e shows me a picture of elves wrapping presents. The whole page is purple. She only colors with purple crayons because that’s her favorite color.
“Awesome,” I tell her.
She shows me five more pages of her coloring book, all of them purple. Her purple crayon is just a tiny nub. Soon she’s going to have to color with the red and blue crayon squeezed together.
“It’s almost story time,” I tell her.
“Santa stories?”
“Yeah, Santa stories.”
I hold her hand as we go down the stairs. Decapitron and the other kids are waiting for us impatiently. Nora taps her wrist at me, as if she’s ever worn a watch in her life.
Besides singing Happy Birthday to Jesus, Decapitron has a few other stupid Christmas traditions she forces on us. One of them is to have crab balls filled with mushrooms and vodka sauce for dinner on Christmas Eve. I liked the crab balls okay when her mother used to make them, but Decapitron puts a spin on the recipe that completely ruins them. Instead of putting a dab of vodka in the creamy tomato sauce she puts a glass of vodka, two shots of rum, a shot of gin, a shot of tequila, and % cup cognac. It is the Long Island Iced Tea of sauces. But unlike Long Islands, her sauce tastes like shit. The only reason to eat her crab balls is to get wasted. Unfortunately, the alcohol and the shellfish never sit right together in my stomach. I’ve been holding back a puke all night.
Another tradition she has is to make dozens and dozens of snowmen in the yard. Every year, we wake up early the day before Christmas and construct an army of them. But they aren’t the jolly nice kind of snowmen. They are freaky weird snowmen. Some of them have nails for hair, others have axe limbs and steel wool beards. Some have shoes for breasts. Some have fan blades for faces. Some have pineapple horns, sledgehammer heads, or telephone chord tentacles. It takes most of the day to make them and they fill the yard like some kind of grotesque crowd of frozen mutants. The kids have fun but I dread constructing them every year. I’m the one who roles the balls of snow. They are the ones who get to decorate the faces with items from the house. Decapitron always says it just wouldn’t feel like Christmas without them.
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