“It’s completely harmless,” she says as she shows me a five legged frog that struggles and fails to get free from her dirty hands. “The extra limbs are the result of a parasite infection.”
“Is this your new pet?” I ask
She shakes her head. “Not really. It’ll just leave as soon as I let go of it. If I let go.”
“Damn. How about letting go now?”
“Does it freak you out?”
“Yeah. It’s a five legged frog. Why and how the hell did it grow an extra leg in the back like that?”
She turns the poor frog in her hands like it’s a card about to be shuffled in a deck. “The parasite causes mutations. It causes extra limbs to grow, but they don’t help the frog. Hell, they hinder it. Make it move slower, clumsier.”
“Why though?”
“Why? So that big birds can catch it easier and swallow it. The parasite’s aim it not to reach the frog, but the bird.”
“Damn, what does it do once inside the bird?”
“Once inside the bird, it’s over. It’s the parasite’s version of heaven.”
“You seem to know a lot about parasites,” I say
“And heaven,” she adds. “And something tells me you’d rather hear about the latter than the former, correct?”
“Nah, I wanna listen to all of it. Everything. Spare no details.”
“Hahah! I knew you’re a parasite too.”
“Am I?”
“Of course. Not the type that makes the host grow extra legs, but the type that makes the host grow extra tongues. You know how to make people open up and share more than they would normally.”
“In other words, I know how to listen?”
“Nah. It’s not that simple. You don’t listen like a therapist. But like a thief. You’re going to use all the info in one of your silly writings, aren’t you?”
“Damn,” I say, raising a hand. “You got me. Most of my victims don’t. But you did.”
She throws her head back with laughter and since she doesn’t stop in four seconds I join her
Yeah, I’m a parasite, alright. I take people’s stories and blow them out of proportion for my own entertainment
I turn them into twisted little stories of my own
Because…
I don’t know
Perhaps I too am haunted by a parasite who pushes me towards such behaviors
So here I go straight to the grocery store for some bottles deep into the night
when I see this massive pile of women’s shoes discarded in the parking lot
It’s the size of a small car
All shapes all colors all with crazy high heels
I go inside the store and ask the cashier about the story behind all them women’s shoes in the parking lot
“Some trucker dropped them from his truck.”
“Really?”
“They’re all worn, by the way. No pair is new. He must’ve stolen or kept them as tokens from all the hookers he hooked up with along the years. Truckers using the services of hookers is no stereotype, you know? It’s almost always true. And this one… must’ve been some type of psycho for real. Vitamin water as usual?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Give me one with Magnesium and one with Zinc. Both cold if possible.”
“Not possible, sorry. Fridge is full with cans of energy drinks. They’re in way higher demand. Nobody walks in here asking for vitamin water when they can have energy drinks. You’re the only exception to the rule.”
“Damn. Perhaps I’m a psycho in my own right then.”
The cashier doesn’t laugh. Just scans the two drinks and places them on the counter
I pay with my card
“So anyway, this crazy trucker who left the shoes an’ all… Well, why did he leave in such a hurry?”
“I honestly don’t know. Just saw him dump the shoes from the back of the truck and leave in a hurry like he had the devil a stride behind. But I’m used to weird individuals. Some are worse than others. My biggest problem now is having to take all them shoes to the garbage cans. I don’t wanna touch any of ‘em.”
“Damn. Did you contact the manager about it?”
“Did you work even one day in retail? One day in your whole life?”
“Yeah. I’ve been a bartender once.”
“Good enough. Well, then you know problems aren’t solved by addressing them to the managers. They’ll only ask you to take care of ‘em and that’ll be that.”
“Well, damn…”
“Yeah…”
“Say, what if you set them on fire? The shoes I mean, not the manager. It would be a sight to see at the end of a shift, no?”
“Nah. Too much plastic. The smoke would get me in trouble. You want anything else?”
“No thanks. Just the waters. Well, take care and have an easy rest of the shift. See you later.”
“Later.”
Outside the shoes look weirder and weirder the more I stare at the pile
What a strange world
I open up the Zinc water and take a gulp
when the local homeless dude approaches and asks, “Hey, got any booze?”
“Nope. Just water.”
“You sick?”
“No. I just like the flavor of this water. And don’t ask me for smokes or lighter either. I don’t smoke.”
“Aight then. Fuck you.” And he’s off
“Wait a sec,” I call behind him
He turns. “What?”
“Them shoes in the parking lot. What’s with them?”
The question brings a smirk to his face. “Heh. Why, of course it’s the result of living interesting times, don’t you think?”
“What?”
“Come now. Don’t act like it ain’t what you prayed for all along.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it.”
“Interesting times, my friend. You wanted them now you have them. So, what does a writer who lives in interesting times do? Well, you tell me. Or better yet show me.”
“What the…? How? How d’ you know?”
He gives me a shrug and starts walking away. “Like I’ve said. Interesting times, my friend. Interesting times…”
I keep starting at his back as he departs
then I take another look at the big pile of shoes in the parking lot
normally the work day would end at 6 PM but today he got out at 3 to visit his mother in the hospital
Soon as he stepped out of the police station he forgot all about the maniac who nailed his daughter’s little hands to the kitchen table and made her watch him deliver no less than 106 stabbing wounds into her mother’s belly
People went insane on a daily basis but very few went that far
And what’s even more insane is that the little girl not only forgave but loved and never stopped loving the monster who did that to her
a daughter’s love for her father sure is something to be studied in criminology
but there’ll be time enough for that
The rest of today would have to be dedicated to perhaps saying one final goodbye to a mother
She looked so incredibly tiny on that hospital bed, hooked up to all the life support shit
From a distance she looked almost like a child
like her son imagined her looking as a child
Utterly innocent
Indeed, innocence is something you come to truly value when you work in criminology like he did
and as he dropped to one knee by the side of his mother’s bed he remembered that story he knew about her from when she was a child
the story of how she and another friend of hers have been taken shopping by a friendly neighbor and he bought them lots of cute clothes, many of them swimwear, and took them to his house afterwords and took hundreds of Polaroid pictures of them and then drove them back to their homes
A few years later when the police accused the same man of some dirty deeds with other girls, they were quite shocked to find that all the girls he dealt with not only would not speak ill of him, but would straight up defend his actions
‘He was good to me,’ they’d all say
Gods, how innocent they were
ridiculously innocent one could say
“Mother,” he whispered by her side. “You look like a little girl again. Can I tell you a story?”
She was not dead yet but neither could she reply
she just listened innocently to her son’s teary voice
“Look, it’s simplicity itself,” she said, spreading her legs. “All you gotta do is get pregnant then get a job then tell them that you’re pregnant and you’re done. Maternity leave! You’re free for the next two to four years! An’ you don’t even gotta keep the baby. Just give it up for adoption or whatever and then you’re free to do the whole thing all over again. As long as you’re fertile you can live good an’ get paid without working. Well, you’ll work a bit, but just a bit. Sound good?”
For just a moment he took his eyes away from the key-chain he was playing with
there was a little anthropomorphic rubber sheep hanging from it
pink wool covered its gray skin
the poor thing had quite the expression
yellow eyes with black dots looking up in a ‘please end my suffering’ combined with a ‘punish me harder, daddy’ way
Who in the hells even designed shit like this?
“Heey!” Her hand waved before his face making a rock-paper-scissors motion and remained on scissors and moved the two fingers close to his eyes slowly
He turned away
“I’m thinking,” he snapped
“And doing it like a man without a brain,” she added with a roll of the eyes
“Whatever. Look, if it’s so great a plan as you say, how come there aren’t more people actin’ on it?”
“Ph! Buddy, you ever seen an orphanage before?”
“C’mon, you can’t tell me all the kids in orphanages are there because their mothers applied the eternal maternity leave loop.”
“I didn’t say all. Just a lot of ‘em.”
“How d’you know?”
“I was one of ‘em.”
“What?”
“Yep.”
“That’s crazy. So instead of breaking the cycle…”
“Yeah. Fuck that. Why break the cycle or do anything for that matter without a good enough reason, eh? What’s in it for me if I break the cycle?”
morning found him still thinking about it
But she was a woman of action so she spent the time poking a few holes in a few condoms
Man, who would’ve thought?
One day your lowlife ass follows a random girl into a backalley and catches up to her and places the tip of a rusty knife against her spine and tells her not to move while your slimy hands get to fondle her parts
and the next day that same woman takes you home after knocking you out
All he’s got on him besides his clothes and the bike is a thermos filled with coffee he got from the vending machine at the mall,
coffee bought with money earned from a day’s work of standing by the traffic lights at the intersection, waiting for them to turn red and offering to wash someone’s windshield.
Once on top of the hill he leaves the bike at the base of the water tower and climbs the cold iron ladder.
There’s no one to stop him at this time.
He sits down cross-legged
opens the thermos and pours the coffee into the cup part
and sips.
Ahead of him the city sleeps.
Only a lone light shines here and there in some window.
If a light is there he’s watching it
smiling to himself
and thinking that each one of those houses must contain its own drama, its own tragedy.
Each house is like a jar of bugs and worms and other critters
And here he stands alone observing them all as he sips his coffee.
mornings aren’t made for waking up, he used to say. In the morning one should just start his second sleep
there weren’t a lot of people who heard him say the words, but the few who did dismissed them as silly ramblings of a drunk
He was in his early thirties
breaking his back in manual labor at a construction site during the day and getting wasted at night
He reached the point where six beers were no longer enough for a suitable high, yet the hangover seemed to never end
This morning too he wouldn’t have woken up
work started only at 1 PM
but somebody knocked on his door and was quite insistent
As he got out of bed he stepped on a cracked beer can and cut his foot
started to hop around the room and curse and throw random stuff at the walls
Ready to give whoever knocked at his door a bit of venom
but then he opened and was met with her
“Remember me?” the girl asked through an inquisitive grin, her eyes looking down at his bleeding foot
“Who in fuck’s name are you? What d’ you want?”
“Um… to apologize? Yeah, I wanted to apologize. Are you okay?”
“Apologize for wh…?” In that moment he remembered
Some ten, twelve years ago he stole that bag of weed from her and she got so angry she told everybody he raped her
so they nearly lynched his ass an’ he had to run away on the other side of the world
and now here she was again
Can’t run from one’s past, but “I ain’t done nothing!” he shouted in her face. “And you know it! You fucking know it! Takes a special kind of piece of crap to call theft a rape, you know? And you are that piece of crap, you know?”
“I do,” she said. “That’s why… I’m here, I guess.” She pointed down at his foot. “You’re bleeding. Can I come in?”
“Why? So you’ll tell everybody again that I’ve raped your crazy ass?”
“No. So I could talk to you about what happened, and… Help you with that injury, I guess.”
Well
God, it turns out, doesn’t want people to be alone for the rest of their lives
but God’s ways of bringing them together sure are weird
Six months later they were married
Not because they loved each other so much but because she threatened to yell ‘rape’ again if he refused to make her his wife
“Joke’s on you, I guess,” he said. “I was God’s loneliest and most desperate motherfucker anyhow.”
“I know,” she said
and in that moment God’s brilliant masterplan for his subjects shone once more
fourteen years ago at the birth of his daughter the wife made him swear before the holy cross that he’ll never touch drink again in his life
He kept the promise
Also fourteen years ago the wife made him swear before the holy cross that he’ll never touch a slot machine or a poker table in his life
He kept that promise also
six years ago the wife also made him swear before the holy cross that he’ll never touch himself again in his life
this had nothing to do with keeping the family unit together in a healthy way
it was only his wife’s whim
she would not have her daughter provided for and educated by a sinful man
He kept that promise too
even though the wife was as ungenerous as one could be when it came to taking care of his needs
copulating without the aim of creating life was a sin, of course. So it had to be avoided
“Goddamit, Jesus! How d’ you keep yourself sane livin’ like that?” some of his coworkers had asked
They called him Jesus, not because he partook in his wife’s zealotry but because he had a hole in his left hand
right between the bones of the middle and ring finger
“They’re called metacarpal bones,” the wife had said
She knew about the injury and knew how he’d made it
Dozens of times she’d watched him insert a thin, long knitting needle through that hand and then pulling it backward and pushing it forward while moaning in pain
She respected and loved him for the ritual
“Subjecting yourself to a fraction of what He had gone through,” she’d said in admiration. “Darling, this is worthy of praise. Finally you’re the man I wanted you to be. A true man of Christ!”
Indeed she had that opinion of him and his madness and with her own madness they formed the happiest Christian family
She didn’t need to know that the ritual caused him to ejaculate, for the body and mind will find other ways to get rid of excess seed when the normal means are blocked
and God didn’t need to punish him for he wasn’t exactly touching himself
His was the only house painted pink in the whole neighborhood
It looked silly in the warm season and creepy in the cold
small trees dotted the front and back yard and further beyond a forest began to gain contours
It was a forest of birch trees
and he visited it every time the pink house felt like it no longer wanted him inside
and unfortunately that was almost every night
“I feel it in the vibration inside the walls,” he said. “It’s akin to a baby’s cries. She doesn’t want me here. Never did want me here.”
He was talking about a daughter who departed some eight years ago along with his wife
They wanted the house to be painted pink and he did it for them
It was one of the requests they made while he was sober
everything they asked while he was sober was granted
problem was they rarely caught him sober
Soberness meant it was time to talk about all the shit he’d done while drunk
so he’d drink some more to forget and then do other stuff worth talking about
One of the most vicious circles in reality
and the hardest to break
“A circle only breaks when there’s nothing sustaining it,” he said to the birch trees behind the pink house. “And now I am nothing.”
He walked up to one of the trees and circled it with his arms and bit with his lips at the few pieces of peeled bark and closed his eyes
it was close enough to hugging his wife, for she was pale and thin and bony as the birch tree, and biting the peeled bark was close enough to biting her hair and…
Well, better not to think about it
Better to just ask how in the hell did he hug the tree in daytime and closed his eyes and when he opened them again it was nighttime
What the hell was this birch tree magic?
He went back to the pink house and sobered up
Swore to himself that he’ll never get drunk again
and opened another bottle of vodka to celebrate that
