by Aimee Bender
He knocked on the selected door. A little girl, licking a lollipop as big as her face, opened it. Ralph wanted to take the lollipop from her, taste something sweet, but restrained himself and said, “Is your mother home?”
She just nodded.
“Wonderful! May I speak with her?”
Again, the girl nodded, and then scampered off.
Too much time seemed to pass. Ralph was beginning to think the girl had simply left when he heard two sets of approaching footsteps. Moments later, a young, harried-looking woman in a flour-coated apron stood before him, the girl by her side.
“Greetings, madam,” Ralph said. “I hate to trouble you, but you look like someone who might be interested in my line of products.”
“I’m really kind of busy.” She looked down. “Kids, you know…”
Ralph didn’t, but nodded anyway.
“Though I imagine being a traveling salesman must be hard work, too.”
Ralph smiled inwardly. “It is.”
She regarded his case. “So, what are you selling?”
“Only the finest dildos. That’s my answer, and my guarantee.”
Her face went slack. “The finest what?”
“Dildos, madam.”
“Don’t say that word!” She clutched the girl. “Can’t you see a child is present?”
Ralph looked down at the girl, still licking the huge lollipop. He waved, and she waved back.
“I hardly think it’s inappropriate,” he replied. “After all, my dil—items have a vast array of potential uses, and not just the common one, which you are no doubt considering.”
She scowled. “Tell me, how else does one use a d-i-l-d-o?”
“Well, for starters, many mothers buy them for their children to play with, or to fashion into mobiles for infants.”
“That’s ghastly! You’re ghastly!”
“I assure you that’s not the case. Kids simply love dildos, especially the colorful floppy ones.” He caught his mistake.
“I’m terribly sorry, madam. I’ll spell it out next time.”
She covered the girl’s ears, began humming loudly. “I’m not listening to you!” she shouted between hums.
“Please, if you would just—”
The door slammed in his face. Dejected, Ralph looked down at his feet and saw a bunch of ants crawling in formation across the porch. Their bodies formed a note: AT THE NEXT HOUSE, YOU WILL FIND A CLUE.
Ralph was flummoxed. Why couldn’t the sign have been given there first?
Back on the street, a massive billboard caught his attention. IT’S THE GOVERNMENT, it said, the words superimposed over a bunch of happy looking people seated at a breakfast table, eating a bear-shaped cereal called Flang-Os. Ralph made mental note of this revelation and kept walking until he saw something he never remembered seeing, at least not as a traveling dildo salesman.
He ran to the bus stop, plopped himself down on a weathered bench. If a bus was all he needed to escape, then so be it. To hell with selling dildos.
After a few minutes, he drummed fingers on his left leg, shook his right one. A little later, both legs shook, and, after what had to be almost thirty minutes, he chewed on his bottom lip until it bled. Maybe it was an abandoned stop. Maybe there never was a bus.
And then he saw it, first as just a speck on the horizon that could be anything, and then as a big red double-decker. It pulled up, ground to a halt. The door opened, and the oddly familiar driver regarded him.
Ralph grabbed his case, arose.
“Slow down there,” said the driver.
“I’m sorry. I’ll go slower. I’m just in a—”
“No, no, no. You misunderstand. I’m not telling you to board at a slower and therefore safer pace.”
Ralph looked at him askance. “You’re not?”
“No, I’m telling you not to board at all.”
Hope sank. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“But why? Can’t I just get on? Please.”
The driver seemed perturbed. “Not with that case,” he said.
Ralph clutched the handle tighter. “You don’t understand; I need it! If I lose it, I’ll get in big trouble!”
“Are you sure about that?”
Ralph wasn’t sure, at least not exactly. Still, he figured it best to err on the side of caution.
“You know I can’t take any riders with cases,” the driver continued, “and yet here you are, day after day, asking if you can board.”
“I do that?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t want to let on any further that he didn’t recall his last attempts. “Well, uh, I figure if I keep trying, maybe you’ll change your mind and let me on.”
“That’s not going to happen, Ralph.”
He was shocked. “How do you know my name?”
The driver smiled. “You’ve told me a few times.”
Somewhere in the back, a passenger asked a muffled question. When the driver finished and turned again towards Ralph, he said, “Try again tomorrow.”
“But you’ll say the same thing then!”
The driver cocked his neck, raised a brow. “And how do you know that?”
He had a point.
The door closed and the bus shot up into the sky, traveling, it seemed, to the big unblinking eye.
CHAPTER TWO
Twenty minutes after leaving the stop, Ralph found the second sign, the sun shining so brightly upon a house that his view of it was all but obscured. Once the light dimmed, he saw the place and wished he could go elsewhere.
Gravestones jutted from the unkempt yard’s left corner, near a rickety, weather-beaten fence and just across from a red-eyed plastic donkey. One stone was cross-shaped, though an arm had broken off. The next had been sculpted to resemble a fat tree stump, a cut branch protruding from center-left. The last one—slate and seemingly the oldest—showcased a bas-relief of a grinning skull framed by garlands. Moss made it seem as though the skull had a mouthful of green teeth.
Unconsciously, Ralph scratched his front tooth with a fingernail. He looked up from the graves. An image in a dark window seemed to be a scowling face, forehead scrunched and lips twisted in some disagreeable way. Still, he couldn’t be sure if it was someone behind the glass or an old picture on the wall inside.
Ralph swallowed apprehension. Time to buck up. Time to accost the potential customer within.
He gripped the case and dragged it across the yard, ripping up grass. The red-eyed plastic donkey now faced him instead of the road. Ralph averted his gaze quickly.
He paused at the door. The selling spiel didn’t come naturally to him, not even with the easiest or most pliable customers. Saying the words made him feel artificial, like a collection of gears and cogs.
Just then, the dildos started to awaken. He heard their soft, sleepy murmurs, muffled by leather.
“Ssssh,” he said. “Relax.”
A dildo made a thumping sound. Ralph interpreted this as an act of defiance.
“Be nice today! Don’t be assholes!”
Another thump. Then a third one, louder still.
“I said, don’t be assholes!”
The dildos ceased flopping, but Ralph still heard them murmur to one another. He couldn’t understand their language, but imagined they were saying bad things about him and his abilities as a salesman.
Ralph shook his head, rolled his shoulders a few times and knocked on the door, the noise echoing through the interior, over and over again, then boomeranging back to him and resulting in sounds somehow louder than the original knocks. Eventually, six knocks sounded like six thousand.
A seventh knock wasn’t necessary. The door creaked open. Just past the threshold stood an old woman with a face like yellow parchment. Her hair, dyed unnaturally black, stood a foot above her scalp. She wore a stern black dress beneath a shawl that covered her back and shoulders like a web. She didn’t seem to have feet, but they had to be somewhere beneath the dress.
>
No sooner than Ralph introduced himself did smoke start to rise from around her neck, like hundreds of tiny men inside her tall lace collar were smoking cigars. He tried to ignore this and begin his spiel.
“Hello, good lady. My name is Ralph and I’m a traveling dildo salesman.” He paused then, waiting to see if the woman might introduce herself or extend a withered hand to be kissed, but she said and did nothing. Thin, bloodless lips remained tightly pursed. She didn’t even blink.
Ralph continued. “Now, you might be thinking that such things don’t interest you, but I’m here to tell you that dildos are, in fact, one of the most versatile consumer items known to Man. If you’d only—”
He stopped. The amount of smoke pouring from her collar increased. Ralph could barely see her. It was awkward, just standing on the porch, saying nothing, but he didn’t think it wise to continue the spiel when the lady wasn’t visible.
Before the smoke could clear, the dildos started muttering again. He looked down at the case. “Shut up, you dildos!” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m in the middle of a sale!”
Ralph regained his composure and turned again to the old woman. The smoke had cleared a bit, but she displayed no sign of life other than standing. “Please, forgive the outburst,” he said. “Let me just show you, my good lady, what I have to offer.”
He opened up the case. His face scrunched in horror. The case brimmed with angry, violent dildos the likes of which he hadn’t anticipated. They flopped around like dozens of dying fish, all screaming for water.
He made to close the case. A dildo shot from the opposite end to his fingers. Small yet razor-sharp teeth sank into his thumb.
He dropped the case, and the dildo that bit him scampered off, laughing. He’d never realized a dildo was capable of laughter.
“Excuse me, would you please? This won’t take a moment.”
The old woman made no response other than continued smoking. Ralph turned from her and saw that the dildo had inched to the cemetery. There, it darted about the graves and coiled around stones. He had to rectify the situation. Not one could be allowed to escape, as a free dildo could never be sold.
Ralph sprinted to the little cemetery. Pausing there, he watched the dildo writhe in overgrown grass and moss, seemingly blissful until it turned to him and hissed.
He tried to pounce on the dildo, but missed and almost cracked his head on a tombstone. No matter. He had to teach the thing a lesson. Reaching out, Ralph seized the sex toy as it curved around the stump-shaped stone. It bared its teeth; bit him again.
“You son of a bitch!” he shouted.
It squirmed in his grasp. Ralph barely maintained his hold. He heard the bray of a donkey, was distracted, and the dildo slipped free, scurried up his shirt and wrapped itself around his neck.
Tighter and tighter it squeezed. Sparks started to fly, and then the world seemed to darken. Ralph couldn’t grasp the dildo to free it from around his neck. Falling away, his flopping hand brushed against a stick. He grabbed it.
The dildo shrieked as the stick entered its urethra slit and lodged deep. Uncoiling from his neck, it thrashed on the ground. A blue goopy substance bubbled from the wound Ralph had made.
Gripping what he imagined must be the dildo’s throat, he squeezed. “Do you like how that feels?” he shouted. “Do you?”
The dildo could not respond. Blue plastic took on a pink tint before becoming a brilliant, swollen red. It went limp in his hand, and Ralph threw its twisted remains against a nearby tree, just for good measure.
Turning back to the house, he noticed that the old, smoking lady had gone, and that the other dildos were inching out of their case, creeping out onto the lawn.
Reclaiming the dead dildo, Ralph ran up to the others and brandished the corpse in front of them. “If any of you assholes move, I’ll do the same to you, and I won’t hesitate! Do you understand? I’ll kill each and every last one of you, no matter how long it takes!”
The dildos stopped flopping on the porch or in the grass, got in line and returned to the case. They seemed cowed and most quieted down, some whimpering like good little sex toys as they took their positions, one atop the other. But a defiant, devilish red dildo didn’t get the message. It started flopping the other way.
Ralph pressed the dead dildo against the living one. “No, don’t even think about trying that!”
It quieted down, and Ralph threw the dead dildo in with the living ones. Most recoiled in horror, not at all eager to share close quarters with a deceased comrade. Ralph didn’t imagine this would pose a problem, at least not for him. He just wouldn’t let potential consumers know that the product was deceased. All sales, after all, were final.
He closed the case. Then he knocked on the door a few times, waited, but no one answered.
Ralph hadn’t been back on the road for more than a minute when he saw another sign, every cloud in the sky suddenly amassing around a single house. It was hard to remember, but, in the past, it seemed that he had to walk quite a bit, sometimes for miles and miles, before he reached another selected property. Maybe whatever the other house had to offer had been transferred to this one. Ralph hoped that was the case.
In the yard, a plastic grizzly bear with claws outstretched towered over a birdbath. Its lips: curled in a sneer. A trail of white plastic drool streamed down from a single tooth. The bear had to be at least twelve feet tall. Ralph kept his eye on it as he passed.
A sheet of paper was taped to the front door. The letters were rendered in pencil, words so small he was already on the porch before he could read them.
NO FUCKING SALESMEN, PLEASE, they said.
Ralph wanted to respect this homeowner’s wishes. He wanted to turn around, go someplace else. Still, he had to try. The sign had been given.
He only had to knock once. In seconds, he heard approaching footsteps, big clomping ones. The door opened with a squeal.
“What do you want?” said the man, a grizzled, but stout, forty-something. His tousled hair made it seem as though he’d just gotten out of bed. Stubble coated his cheeks. He wore an open bathrobe. Beneath it, only briefs.
More disconcerting: a bandage of what appeared to be freshly wrought tiger skin. It covered one eye, most of his forehead and left cheek. Ralph hated the sight of blood, and his mind conjured up images of what might lay below the strange bandage, even as he launched into his spiel.
“Hello, sir! My name is Ralph, and—”
The man didn’t let him finish. “Are you a salesman?” he said.
It hadn’t sounded like a question. “Ummm, I, uhhhh…”
“Are you or aren’t you?”
“I am, sir.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t much like salesmen.”
“Don’t worry,” Ralph replied, trying not to stare at the tiger bandage. “I’m not one of those regular guys! I’m a traveling dildo salesman!”
The man seemed neither interested nor impressed. His face reddened and scrunched into a scowl similar to that of the face Ralph had seen in the window.
“But I have all the best models, exclusive ones, and I only come by once. If you miss this opportunity, it’s gone forever.”
The man’s expression didn’t waver. A fat forehead vein pulsed, tenting out his bandage. “I’m a guy. What need do I have for dildos? Where am I going to stick them? Up my ass?”
“If you want, yes.”
The vein thumped harder. “I don’t very much appreciate the kind of people who do that!”
Clearly, this guy would be a hard sell. Perhaps another approach was in order. Ralph thought for a second, began: “The thing about my dildos is that they’re not only practical. They’re aesthetic, too.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” The bandage started to slump. “Those are sex toys, sick and perverted!”
Ralph swallowed hard. His hands quaked, but he had to continue. “They’ll look simply lovely atop a mantle, or by a light or candle, sho
uld you choose a translucent model.” He ducked as blood spurted from the man’s forehead. “Can you imagine having such an amazing and versatile item to show your guests?”
“The pulp of your face wrapped around my fists! That’s what I can imagine!”
Ralph dropped the case, lifted his hands defensively. “I’m—I’m sorry, but I had no choice! I had to come here! The grass told me so!”
“Are you on drugs?” His face was mere inches from Ralph’s. The tiger bandage fell completely, exposing red meat and yellow pus. His left eye: a black raisin in his head. “Are you an addict?”
“No! No drugs! Not an addict!”
The man, now appearing as tall as the room, glared down at him. “Good! Because there’s nothing worse than an addict who’s also a traveling salesman!”
Blood rained down on Ralph. “Please don’t hurt me,” he muttered.
“I posted a note!” the man roared in response, and now his nose and ears were bleeding, too. “You can’t say I didn’t! I have to beat up every salesman that comes to my door, see? It’s a compulsion!”
Before Ralph could react, the man landed an uppercut to his jaw. Ralph fell to the porch, and the man started kicking his ribs. The guy’s bathrobe flapped back and forth. His penis bobbed up and down in tandem with the balls in his briefs.
Ralph rolled off the porch into the grass. He arose quickly, his mouth and side aching, and saw the man bound towards him.
“Let me finish what I started!” he screamed, every exposed part of his body alternating between shades of scarlet and crimson as it began to swell.
Ralph took off towards the road. “I told you I was sorry!” he shouted, but the man, uninterested in apologizes, continued his pursuit.
His voice sounded clotted, deep and strained. “You are making me very, very mad!”
When Ralph reached the bear, the man jumped out from behind it. Ralph bit back a scream; he couldn’t even wonder how he’d gotten there so fast. His body had expanded to four times its normal size. Eyes bulged like angry melons as red fountains gushed from thick, rope-like veins that throbbed audibly.
