dale bridges writing

The Villain

by Dale Bridges

(Originally published in Transgress Magazine)

It started out as an argument over who was going to be the hero and who was going to be the sidekick. Obviously, we both wanted to be the hero. I mean, we’d read all the comic books, watched all the cartoons, we knew how it worked. The hero got the girl and the sidekick got the shaft. It was a necessary arrangement but in the beginning neither of us wanted to take on Boy Wonder duties. We argued about it a lot, usually over Grand Slams at Denny’s, but there was just no way to prove who was really dominant. Tommy had the telekinetic powers but I had the super strength plus these bad-ass laser eyes that could melt through steel. I argued that I should be the hero because I had two powers and that was twice as many powers as Tommy. But Tommy didn’t see it that way. So when we went out on patrol that first night, the whole hero-vs.-sidekick thing was still kind of up in the air and I think we both wanted to prove that we were hero material and perhaps we got a little over zealous and that’s probably why we ended up chasing after the guy in the dark alley even though he hadn’t really done anything criminal-ish and I caught up to him first because I have the super strength so I could take these huge leaping jumps and I ran him down really easy and tossed him up against a brick wall and that’s when I saw that he was dressed like a homeless man and he probably wasn’t even a bad guy after all. I was about to help him to his feet and apologize for the misunderstanding when Tommy came up behind me and just sort of squashed the guy’s head with his mind. There was blood everywhere mixed with chunks of brain matter and Tommy said it looked like scrambled eggs and ketchup, which it sort of did but he still didn’t need to say it, and then he laughed. I started to cry and vomit at the same time. Tommy told me to stop being such a pussy and to check the guy’s pockets to see if he had any money. He didn’t. Afterward, Tommy told me to pick the guy up and carry him out to the desert and bury him where no one would ever know. So that’s what I did.

And that’s when I realized that I was definitely the sidekick, but Tommy was not going to be the hero.

Texting the Apocalypse

by Dale Bridges

(Originally published in Transgress Magazine)

hey sara.

hey kelsie.

u hear bout the end of the werld?

yeah. bummer.

i know right?

right.

fire and brimstone.

yeah. brimstone smells like ick.

totaly.

BTW, ricky sutton talked 2 me 2day.

no way.

way.

THE ricky sutton?

yeah.

no way.

way! way! way!

cool. just a sec. my parentz r totly freakin out bout the zombies.

yeah. this apokalips is lame.

tell me bout it. yestrday my bro got fed to The Beast.

the cute bro or the 1 w zits.

cute.

oh. sorry.

its k. i get his room.

score.

i know.

did u see the skirt jenny wore for the genocide?

i know. totaly 2009.

yeah, i was like, That skirt is totaly 2009!

good one.

right?

hey. gotta go. my stupid mom wants me to join a cult with her.

which 1?

the 1 that werships a pole with a photo of tom hanks on it.

cool. the tom hanks pole cult is the best. suzie is a membr.

sweet. see you in hell.

totaly.

Dedication, Skill… and a Bloody Boat Load of Excellent Creativity.

My short story “Welcome to Omni-Mart” has been published in an anthology of dystopian fiction called Tuned to a Dead Channel. It’s being put out by an independent press based in England called Dagda Publishing. There are 14 stories in total, and the price is just $8.99. Right now, you can purchase it at CreateSpace, or you can purchase it at Amazon as a paperback or the Kindle version is $3.99.

While I’m always thankful to be published, I would like to give a specific shout out to Dagda for their charity work. It’s not a big publishing house, but they still give ten percent of their profits to charity, which I find extremely commendable. Therefore, when you buy a copy, you not only support the literary community, you also give to a worthy cause.

Music provided by my favorite zombie band, The Widow’s Bane.

….

My Cemetery

by Dale Bridges

There’s a graveyard about five blocks from my apartment building where I go for walks late at night and make up stories about the dead.  It’s just something I do when I can’t sleep.  I’m sure the place has a name but I’ve never learned it.  I simply think of it as My Cemetery because everyone else seems to have forgotten about it.  Sometimes I’ll see a couple in their forties walking an asthmatic pug or a group of teenage goths smoking pot, but I consider these people interlopers, tourists.  They’re here because Princess needed to tinkle or because they have an unhealthy fascination with black fingernail polish that will eventually develop into an eating disorder.  They don’t care about the bodies buried in the sacred ground beneath their cigarette butts.  Not like I do.

Consider, for instance, the life of one Esther Reeks.  I don’t know what her name was before she met William, but I like to think it was something along the lines of Esther Rose or Esther Spring.  A dainty, fragrant name.  Then one day she fell head over heels for a local guy, and the next thing she knew her friends at the beauty salon were giggling and calling her Mrs. Reeks.

But at least the Reeks had the good sense not to have children.  The same thing can’t be said about the Belcher clan.  My Cemetery is crawling with Belchers.  I like to think of them as a sophisticated family, a real group of high-society snobs complete with monocles and top hats.  You know the type.  However, they lost their family fortune after attempting to open up an elegant French restaurant in the ritzy end of town.  For some reason, no one wanted to eat dinner at Le Belcher’s.

My favorite tombstone is a giant, rectangular monstrosity designating the burial site of a family with the last name of HUSSIE.  That’s how it appears on the grave, HUSSIE, like a Vegas billboard advertising a new strip club.  It’s a sizeable monument and it’s the color of an old pearl necklace, making it stand out from the rest.  I know it’s natural for humans to be proud of their heritage, but you’d think a group of people named after a sexually promiscuous woman would’ve learned a little humility in their lifetime.  Apparently not.

Less than ten yards south of the Hussies is the eternal resting place of the SALE family.  Since America is the land of capitalism, when I first saw this tombstone I thought it was available for purchase.  You know, like: SALE ON USED CRYPTS!  OUR PRICE$ ARE TO DIE FOR!!!  Who knows?  The economy has been in a slump lately.  Maybe cemetery landlords are feeling the crunch.

I sometimes imagine one of the Sale boys asking a young lady in the Hussie family for her hand in marriage.  He’d own a used car dealership and wear designer cowboy boots.  She’d be one of those feisty liberals who would decide to hyphenate her last name in order to maintain her independence.  You know how proud those Hussie women can be.  Of course her children would hate her for it later, especially when their teachers took attendance.  “Hussie-Sale!  Is there a Hussie-Sale in class today?”  But what a great tombstone it would make.

There are a surprising number of graves shaped like penises in My Cemetery.  I don’t know how this happened, but I can’t be the first one to notice it.  It’s pretty obvious.  They’re like giant, stone dildos sticking out of the earth.  The long shaft, the rounded tip, the testicle-like base.  These are not subtle details.  Curiously, these penis graves are all circumcised.  Every single one.  I wonder if it would be different in a European cemetery.  Do tombstones in Paris have foreskin?  I hope so.

Right next door to My Cemetery there is an elementary school, which I’ve always thought was slightly macabre but also appropriate.  “Suzie, Johnny, are you having fun playing in the sandbox?  Good.  Don’t forget that in a few short years you’ll be buried six feet under it.”  Circle of life, you know.  Those kids gotta learn sometime.

I sometimes wonder if any of the children ever pause at the top of that slide to look out on the field of dead people next door.  Perhaps for a fleeting moment they halt their mindless play and contemplate their own mortality.  All those tombstones lined up in nice little rows like a morbid stone garden.  The image will haunt them at night, burrowing deep into their subconscious.  Ten years will go by, then twenty.  One day they’ll look in the mirror and realize that they are a 35-year-old man with a drinking problem and incurable insomnia.  When that happens, in an effort to forget their own problems, they will leave their apartment in the middle of the night and walk down to the local cemetery, where they’ll wander around like a crazy person, making up stories about the dead people buried below them.

Today I received the strangest publishing request ever:

Dear Mr. Bridges,

I publish a not-for-profit e-zine called PEA GREEN BOAT distributed free via the web (http://www.scribd.com/doc/62300924/PGB-Center-Summer-2011). The theme of our next issue is ‘Uncanny’ In this instance, uncanny is in reference to the psychological concept Das Unheimliche, that is, an occurrence or object which is familiar, yet repulsive at the same time. Part of that will be the phobia of dolls and, of course, Cabbage Patch Madness. I would like permission to reprint  a selection out of your blog “All dolls go to heaven”

Sincerely,

Cathy Reed Weber

Seriously, how does one respond to that?

Several years ago, when I was just starting out as a freelance journalist, I sold a feature story to a local magazine for $1,000. At the time, this was an astonishing sum of money for me, and it paid my rent for two months. The article was titled “Against the Stream: A Story of Obsession, Rebellion, and Fly-Fishing.”

The story was about a local fly-fishing writer named John Gierach, who is an international celebrity in the angler subculture but is almost completely unknown to the residents of Colorado. It started out as a simple profile. I convinced Mr. Gierach to take me fly-fishing, and I interviewed him in those brief moments when I wasn’t making a complete fool of myself on the lake.

I planned to write something short and fun, but Mr. Gierach turned out to be such a fascinating character that it took me an entire year to complete the story. In 2009, it was published in Denver Magazine, after a particularly sadistic editor (you know who you are) decided to hack it to pieces.

The article included some extremely important information about local environmentalism and the impending water crisis in Colorado, and I hoped it would cause a public stir. It did not. As near as I can tell, the article was published, a few people mentioned that they enjoyed it, and then it was forgotten.

I forgot about it, as well, until I put it on my website about a week ago. Originally, I considered not posting it at all because it is very long and blog readers have notoriously short attention spans. However, in the end, I decided it couldn’t hurt. I’d spent hundreds of hours working on the damn thing, might as well have it on my website.

Yesterday, I received the highest number of views on my site since I created it in 2010. I was shocked. When I looked at my stats, I discovered that more than 600 people had suddenly decided to read this very long article about a grouchy fly-fishing environmentalist living in the Rocky Mountains. Most of these readers were referred to my article by a website called Moldy Chum, which appears to be composed of a group of fly-fishing geeks and writers. I have no idea if anyone who reads my blog is also a fly-fisherman, but if so, please check out Moldy Chum. They seem like good guys, and they’ve revived a piece of writing that I thought was long dead. Thanks, fellas.

Originally published in Out of the Gutter

Spring 2007

…

Honey, Sugar Pie, Deadbeat:

If you can manage to wake up before the crack of noon today, I have a few errands for you to run.

1) Take out the trash. (It’s in the bin underneath the sink, in case you forgot.)

2) Take the cat to the vet.

3) Stop at the store and pick up some butter and some margarine.

4) Kill Gran.

5) Pick up the dry cleaning.

Love,
Maureen

p.s. Don’t stop at Tony’s on the way home, you goddamn boozer.

This is the note that I find on the refrigerator when I stumble downstairs for my first cup of coffee.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: That’s a pretty strange errand to ask someone to run on a Thursday afternoon. And you’re right. To tell you the truth, I don’t know about it. I just don’t know. It’s an enigma, that’s what it is, a goddamn mystery for the ages.

Butter and margarine taste exactly the same to me, too, but somehow Maureen swears there’s a difference between the two and she won’t listen to reason. You can even test her on it if you want. Go ahead. Try. I’ve done it about a thousand times. I’ve slathered her bread with margarine on many occasions just to prove to her that she can’t tell the difference, but she gets me every time. It’s uncanny. You’d have to see it to believe it. She likes butter on her bread but she insists on cooking with margarine. Go figure. Must be a woman thing.

She’s a sweet kid, that Maureen. She really is. I know that she sounds like a bitch and all – and I guess she’s that too – but she’s a honey of a girl once you get to know her. She’s a certified genius. Most people don’t know that about her because she works down at the Gas N Sip and, frankly, she looks kinda like a retarded Carol Burnett, but it’s true. They tested her in high school and her IQ topped out at 143. Goddamn genius. Just don’t cross her. If I had one piece of advice to give you, that would be it. Don’t set up camp opposite that woman or you’re liable to find that your ass has swapped zip codes with your face.

One time, she told me to do the goddamn dishes because they were filling up the goddamn sink and I forgot because I was watching my goddamn Soaps. Oh, Jesus please-us, did I catch hell! Yowzah! She beat me six ways to Sunday. But I’ll tell you what; I never forgot to do the goddamn dishes again after that.

Inside the refrigerator, there is an egg salad sandwich with a note on top that says, Not that you deserve it, but here’s your fucking lunch. What did I tell you? Isn’t she great? A queen, an absolute queen.

I wolf down the sandwich on the way to the car, happy as a clam to be helping out around the house for a change. It’s nice to feel needed. I’m not really a deadbeat, you know; I’m an artist, a distinction that Maureen can’t seem to make. “When you get paid for something, then you’ll be an artist,” she says. “Until then, you’re a goddamn weight around my neck.” Hard to argue with that kind of logic.

When I crawl into the driver’s side, there’s another note on the steering wheel. Hey, Fuckface, it says. You forgot to take out the trash. And how the hell do you expect to take the cat to the vet if you don’t put him in the car? You really are hopeless.

Well, she’s right. I mean, I’d like to debate the issue, but that’s pretty tough to do, all things considered. She knows me too damn well. I run back into the house, grab the trash, and haul it out front just in time to catch the garbage truck. Nice guys on those garbage trucks. Real down to earth, if you know what I mean, but I guess they have to be.

Of course, when I go back in the house, I can’t locate Jesus anywhere. I look in his bed and under the stairs where he likes to hide out, but he’s nowhere to be found.

“Here Jesus,” I call. “Here kitty-kitty-kitty. Tsss-tsss-tsss. Come here you hairy little bag of shit.” Nothing. That cat hates me as sure as the moon is round. He hates everyone – except Maureen, of course. Those two are kindred spirits. They’re connected on what you might call a psychic level. I know how that sounds, but you tell me what it means when a cat craps in your shoes whenever you have sex with another woman. I swear to God. It’s like clockwork. If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.

Finally, I track the little bastard upstairs, where he’s holed up under Gran’s bed. He knows how I hate sick people, so he hides out in Gran’s room all afternoon until Maureen comes home. That suits me fine most days because I don’t want any more to do with him than he does with me. But today isn’t most days.

I put on some oven mitts to keep from being scratched all to hell and then I dig Jesus out from under the bed. “C’mere you old fur ball. Take it like a man, for christsake.” He yowls something awful when I get a hold of him. You’d think I was skinning him alive instead of taking him to the vet for his yearly tune up. Gran’s practically a vegetable, so she doesn’t mind any of it. She just lays there in her bed like a boiled potato, about a zillion plastic tubes sticking out of her nose to make sure she doesn’t kick off without proper notice. The nurse that comes around to check up on her once in a blue moon keeps yapping about how we need to get a backup generator in the house, so that if there’s some kind of power failure all of Gran’s gadgets and do-hickies won’t shut down at once. “Gross negligence” is what she calls it. Maureen says that’s a load of horse hockey. And besides, we don’t exactly have extra money to spend on things like backup generators.

Maureen’s a good woman but she’s starting to get a bit impatient with Gran, and I don’t blame her. She’s sleeping at the moment so there are no theatrics, but you should hear the old bat when she’s awake. She’s a screamer, Gran. Day and night, night and day, she yells two words over and over again. “Do it! Do it!” Sometimes she’ll mix it up with a swear in there, but that’s about it. “Do it, Asshole!” or “Do it, Shit for Brains!” That’s about as much variety as we get around here. No one knows what the hell she’s talking about. She’s eighty-fucking-five years old, for the love of beans. She’s probably answering a question someone asked her fifteen years ago.

After I get Jesus in his carrying case, it’s straight downtown for us. Jesus’ vet is a fat man, but not one of the mean ones. In my experience, fat people can be either mean or jolly, and Doc Hester is on the jolly list.

“How’s the old lady?” he asks when we get to his office. “Beautiful woman, your wife. Very persuasive.”

I have no idea what this crackpot is talking about half the goddamn time. “Yeah, she’s a regular Miss America,” I say. “Va-va-voom.”

“What about you? How long has it been since you va-va-voomed?”

“What’s that?”

“You know what I mean. You need a refill?”

I shake my head. “Nah, it’s just the cat today.”

Hester laughs, an act that requires the cooperation of his entire body. It’s kind of gross, to be honest with you. That jolly-fat-guy thing is nice in theory, but it looks pretty perverse up close. “Sure,” he says. “The cat. You’re wife said you needed to pick up his medication.” He winks and elbows me in the gut, as though the word “medication” is some inside joke between us. “We’ll get to that in a minute. You look a little stressed out. Working too hard I’ll bet. You artist types are all the same. You need a little pick me up to get the creative juices flowing. Am I right? I’ve got almost two hours before my next appointment. What’ll it be? I’ve got some Goose Steppers in the back and some Green Goblins. I got Vicodin, Lortab, Percocet, Ritalin, Methadone. I just got in a batch of those little yellow ones you like, too. What do you say?”

I can’t watch Hester when he gets excited. He’s like a sweaty Mr. Potato Head with curly hairs growing out of his flabby puss. Instead, I stare at a poster on the wall of a beagle that has been severed in half, displaying all of his shiny innards.

“Seriously, Hester,” I say. “It’s just the cat this time. Honest.”

“Sure. The cat. He looks good. Fine cat. What else?”

Finally, I agree to drop a couple of OxyContin with him just to get the guy off my case. Doctors have the best stuff, man. I’m telling you. Actually, just make friends with anyone in the medical industry and you’re golden. They’re all users and they hate to abuse the system alone. Hippocratic oath and all that, you know. Vets are pretty bad, but dentists are the worst. They have a Daddy-Didn’t-Love-Me complex or something, so they’re pretty much bombed out of their heads 24/7. Show me a square dentist and I’ll eat my hat. Right down to the brim.

I’m supposed to stay off the drugs and booze. It was one of the conditions on the contract that our relationship counselor made me sign before Maureen let me back in the house. Other conditions included getting a real job and a haircut. She didn’t specify a time frame on those last two however.

“I like animals,” Hester tells me after the pills kick in. “You know why I like animals?”

“No,” I say. And that’s the God’s honest truth, because I really don’t. I hate animals. They make me feel superior––but not in a good way.

“I like animals because they’re soft,” he says. “Have you ever dropped E and then spent some time with a rabbit. Oh, Jesus. You’re missing out. You really are. It’s like sex but without the sex…if you know what I mean.”

Of course, I know what he means. Does he think I’m an idiot or something?

“What about the lizards?” I say just for fun. I am really starting to feel it now, and when I really start to feel it I like to give people hell. Who knows why.

“What’s that?”

“The lizards. Jesus. Listen up, man. Lizards aren’t soft. They’re scaly and dry and…and they’re like tiny fucking dinosaurs, man. Is that how you want to spend the rest of your life? Surrounded by microscopic dinosaurs that can get inside your bloodstream and hunt down your white blood cells? Jesus. That’s no way to live. Little raptors snaking through your veins all day long. Did you even see Jurassic Park? That shit scared the shit out of me. Fucking Steven Spielberg and his goddamn Jewish head games. I’m just saying that I couldn’t live like that, man. That’s all I’m saying. Jesus.”

When I started out, I was just kind of fucking with good ole Hester, you know, but as is always the case in this type of situation, I end up fucking with myself. Now, I’m thinking about the lizards and the dinosaurs and I’m feeling a bit creepy. Itchy, too, goddamnit.

“Well, I never thought of that,” Hester says.

“Well…well…well,” I mimic him while I scratch my arm. “Of course, you never thought of it, you burn out. No one’s ever thought of it. That’s the problem with everyone these days. No one thinks outside the fucking box anymore, man. It’s a problem. It’s society and it’s
a problem. Trust me. Let me have one of those blue ones.”

Hester pops the bottle and shakes out a couple of pills into my palm that look like Skittles.

“You’re a good man, Doc. Even if you got lizards in your piss, I won’t tell a soul. You can trust me.”

“Why would they be in my piss?”

“Will you try to keep up?” I cuff him on the back of his jiggly head. Not too hard, you know, just enough to get his attention. “If they’re in your blood, they’re going to find a way into your piss eventually, aren’t they? You ever get blood in your urine? How does that get in there? Nobody knows, right? It just does. You’re a doctor, for the love of pete. Did you flunk biology or something?”

He shakes his head. “You’re right. You’re right. What do you think I should do?”

I pocket the rest of the pills while Hester unzips his pants and looks down at his pecker to see if he can spot the lizards in there. The problem is that he can’t see his pecker because he’s too fat. I try not to watch while he attempts to push his hairy, distended belly to one side so he can snatch a peek at the shrunken little snail between his legs. God, this is horrible.

“What do you do?” I finally respond. “You do nothing. That’s the God’s honest truth. Just drink plenty of water and see if you can’t piss those suckers right out. That’s the only way. And maybe go on a diet, too, because you’re pretty goddamn fat. Anyhow, I have to go. Good luck with…you know…that lizard thing. Where’s my cat, man?”

After a brief search, I locate Jesus sitting in the corner, still in his carrying case, and start for the door.

“Don’t forget your medication,” Hester screams.

“What?”

“For the cat.” Hester hiccups and then giggles hysterically for no apparent reason.

“Now, don’t you go taking any of these pills on your own.”

“Why the hell would I take cat medication?” I say.

“You wouldn’t. No one would. That’s…like…insane.” He pauses to scratch his bulbous ass. “But if you did it could be fatal––especially if you were over 85 years old and had a heart condition. Capice?”

“Huh? Sure, man. No cat medication when I get old. I understand. Jesus. Can I go now?”

I feel better when I get outside, but I’m still itchy as hell. Damn that Hester and his free pills. When I climb in the front seat of the car, there’s a note on the dashboard. I swear to God that it wasn’t there before. It says, You forgot the dry cleaning, you fool. Go get it. And don’t forget to crack the window so the cat can breathe, for the love of Christ. I roll down the window a smidgen, hop out of the car, and run across the street to grab the dry cleaning. The lady behind the counter speaks horrible English and keeps trying to give me Doc Hester’s clothes instead of my own, and I keep trying to tell her that it should be obvious that I’m no veterinarian. I hate animals. And I don’t weigh four hundred goddamn pounds either. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, do I look like I have a size seventy-two waist?

After a few minutes, I calm down and realize that for some reason I’ve been giving her Hester’s name this whole time instead of my own. I try to explain it all to her in an ironic way, but her English is pretty shitty, so she doesn’t get the joke. Either that or the Chinese just don’t have a sense of humor at all, which I’ve always suspected.

The blue pills kick in right about the time I leave the dry cleaners and I am in no shape to drive home. I slip the plastic-covered suits and dresses into the trunk and look around for a place to hang out while I come down. I’m in a pretty shitty part of town. Just strip malls and beauty salons with pseudo-clever names hand-painted on their windows, such as Shear Ecstasy and Hair’s Looking At You. The only bar within walking distance is Tony’s, so I head off in that
direction.

I sit at the bar and chew the fat with good ole Tony while the drugs take their toll. Something is nagging at me though, and I can’t really enjoy myself. I’m forgetting something very important that I was supposed to do today. Damn. What is it? There will be hell to pay if I come home without finishing my errands.

“What was I supposed to do today?” I ask Tony.

He shrugs. “What do I look like? The psychic hotline? Knowing your wife, you were probably supposed to drop your balls off at the grocery store.”

I smack myself in the forehead. “That’s it. That’s exactly it. Tony, you’re a goddamn genius. Don’t let me go home without picking up some butter, okay?”

Tony shrugs. “Sure. Whatever.”

I go back to my drink, but the nagging feeling hasn’t gone away. I’m supposed to pick up some butter and some margarine and… Something else. There was something else I was supposed to do. Hells bells. Oh, well, it’ll come to me. Just about the time the pills ware off is when the four JDs on the rocks kick in, and now I’ve got a whole new problem. I order up another drink and try to figure out how I’m going to solve this one. It’s not going to be easy. I’m in a bar and I can’t really think in a bar unless I have a drink. However, the problem here is that I am drunk and I need to find a way to sober up so I can drive home. In order to solve that problem, I need to think about it, and I can’t really think in a bar unless I have a drink. It’s like that Buddhist thing where the snake eats its own
tail. One of those Catch 22s. It’s deep like that.

“You okay?” Tony asks after I’ve been thinking for a while. “You don’t look so swell.”

“Damnit, Tony. I almost had it. I was this close to figuring it all out and then you had to open your yap and break my concentration.”

Tony gives me that hurt, puppy dog look. Jeez, for a bartender he sure does have thin skin. The man can dish it out but he can’t take it.

“Sorry,” he says, emotion welling up in his big brown peepers.

“Ah, cut that out,” I say, feeling bad now. “It’s no big deal. Just pour me another one, will ya? I need to think this through.”

Finally, I just give up and drive home drunk. I mean, who am I kidding? I’m no Sherlock Holmes. By the time I make it back to the house, it’s dark of course and the windows are all blackened out. Gran’s screaming like a banshee upstairs and there’s no sign of Maureen anywhere. I set the dry cleaning on the kitchen table and let Jesus out of his carrying case. He bolts upstairs straight away like a fur ball shot out of a cannon, and I go to the refrigerator to see if Maureen saved me anything for supper.

Guess what’s on the refrigerator. You got it. Another note. This one says:

Hey, Genius:

Did you forget to do something today? Yes? No? Don’t knock yourself out. Just sit down for a minute and see if you can figure it out. Take your time. But let me warn you: Don’t you dare come to bed before you’ve finished all your errands. You got that? If you do, so help me God, I’ll brain you in your sleep. You know I’ll do it.

Love,
Maureen

Oh, she’d do it, too. That’s how Maureen is. She wouldn’t care about prison or the death penalty or nothing. She’d figure all that stuff out later. In the mean time, it would be all worth it to see my head busted open like an Easter egg.

I pull out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sit down to have myself a think. I hate it when Maureen does this. It would be a lot easier if she just came out and told me what it was that I forgot, but she doesn’t want it to be easy. Nope. She wants me to learn a lesson. “I’m not your goddamn mother,” she always says. “You’re a grown man. I shouldn’t have to remind you to wipe your ass when you get off the toilet.” I suppose she has a point. I try to go back in my mind and picture the list of errands that Maureen put on the refrigerator this morning. What was it that she wanted me to do? Let’s see, I took out the trash, I drove the cat to the vet, I picked up the dry cleaning…

“Do it, Pea Brain! Do it! Do it, you Cock Sucker!”

“Shut up, Gran!” I yell. “I’m trying to think!”

Jesus, that hag can really get on your nerves. Eighty-five is pretty damn old, if you ask me. I never want to live that long. The body shuts down, they hook you up to a bunch of ugly machines, you have to wear diapers for Christ’s sweet sake. God, that’s terrible. There’s something poking me in my pocket, so I reach down there and fish out the medication that Doc Hester gave me. Jesus, I forgot to give it to Jesus.

“Do it, Moron! Do it!”

“Will you shut up, Old Woman! I’m trying to think down here! It’s important!”

“Do it, Jack-Off! Piss-Ant! Pecker Wood! Dickweed! Do it!”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to come up there and…”

Aha! That’s it! That’s what I forgot to do. Jesus, it was right there under my nose this entire time. No wonder Maureen is always calling me an idiot. It’s because I’m a damn idiot. Jesus. Well, she’s going to be so proud of me tomorrow when she discovers that I’ve finished all my errands. I’ll tell you that much. She’ll have to eat her words for once in her goddamn life. That’ll be worth it, by God. It sure will.

I stand up, feeling pretty good about myself, and I prepare to head out to the store to pick up a pack of butter and a pack of margarine. Oh, I can’t wait to see the look on Maureen’s face tomorrow when she wakes up and finds out that I finished everything on her stupid little list. It’s going to be priceless.

But first I should go upstairs and kill Gran

I recently published an article in Draft Magazine involving a trip Honduras I took in my mid-twenties during which I almost died. If you are so inclined, please read it and Facebook/Tweet it at the end.  http://draftmag.com/features/death-and-beer-in-honduras/

Cheers