Taking it all in
one long moment
sitting there
on the edge of the bed
with a gun in your hand
blood on the sheets
a brunette laying across them
naked
pale
stiff
like a mannequin
you don’t recognize the gun
the room
her
your clothes
You don’t know how you got there
at all
so you lie back
upon the bed
your head close
to her hip
taking it all in
one long moment
staring at the ceiling fan
spinning
a quiet shadow
across everything
before you close
your eyes
and try to wake up.
At first, Randall was appalled when the noisy bathroom fan suggested that he murder his girlfriend right there and then, but then he grew intrigued. With the fan’s persuasive voice, the thought of murder solidified into an ideal. Was it possible? In fact, was it the only thing that would set things right?
He was beginning to think so.
The bathroom fan had been broken since Randall had moved into the small corner unit five months ago. So, instead of the calming thrum that accompanied most properly functioning, well-maintained exhaust fans –it instead produced a violent, garbled choking that resembled a dying animal in heat. Its multi-layered rattling occasionally peaked into a wild banshee-like scream that almost seemed deliberate and threatened to take over everything.
And one day it did just that when it simply began to speak.
…Randall…
“Yes?” Randall looked around then up at the fan. “Hello? Is somebody in there?”
…You have to take her out, Randall. Use one of your long kitchen knives…make it dirty…
“Why would anybody do that? And why would I, especially? I really, really like her.” Randall held a quizzical expression on his face. He didn’t really understand, but the noisy bathroom fan would help him with that.
…That’s why you’ve got to do it, to protect yourself from people like her…she’s going to get in and eat you all up from the inside like a cancer…
The voice that came from the fan seemed to fall directly into Randall’s ear in a soothing lull that betrayed its chaotically abrasive presence. The fan knew things. The fan was Randall’s friend and was only looking out for him. But still…
“No! No!” Randall struggled with the idea now. Amy was perfect for him, wasn’t she?
…She’s gonna mess you up, Randall, just like your ex-wife…because she doesn’t know any better…
The fan’s words swept through Randall’s mind, bringing light into where there once was only darkness and planting seeds where that light now was so that ideas could grow. Randall’s eyes widened. He was beginning to see.
“Yes, you’re right. I need to do this.”
…Gotta mess her up, Randall…
“I’m gonna mess her up!”
…Do it now…do it now…
“I’m gonna do it right now!”
Randall left the bathroom and quietly walked past the living room where Amy was sprawled on the sofa watching Netflix. Randall slowly entered into the small side kitchen where he pulled a long, stainless steel knife from a drawer. He then approached Amy slowly from behind raising the knife over his head, readying to plunge it deep into the back of her neck just like the fan wanted.
Amy sensed Randall behind her and spun her head around to see him standing right there. It looked like Randall was holding something behind his back.
“What’s up, Babe?” She asked, eyes widened.
“Nothing, Hon.” Randall swayed on his feet just enough to lean over and leave the knife on the counter. That would have to do, for now. “Hey listen, do you think you can stay over tonight? I can take you home in the morning.”
“Ok, sure. Come, sit down on your favourite recliner.” Randall looked like he thought it was a good idea. Amy tilted her head. “You alright? You look a little triggered.”
“No, everything’s fine,” Randall sighed, “I just have to fix the exhaust fan in the bathroom.”
“I noticed. It’s rather noisy.”
“Oh yeah? You were in there for quite a while earlier. Forgot about that.”
“It told me you were going to kill me.”
Randall laughed nervously as he usually did when he didn’t know what to do or say. The bathroom fan was right: he was a big pussy. Amy slowly pulled a larger kitchen knife than the one Randall had out from under the cushion she sat upon and held it in a firm grip.
“Think this is a joke?” Amy said as she got up.
It started innocently enough
he constructed a hand puppet
named ‘Willy Nilly’
to entertain his girlfriend’s young son
and together they put up clips
on YouTube.
“Hey-Hey-Hey! Duuuh! Howdy, Mr. Rabbit!”
The shows started getting longer
he made up more characters
–more puppets.
A shelving unit was built in the bedroom closet
where they would be carefully stored
when not in use.
His girlfriend joined in
she was a sassy little pink bunny
named ‘Boo!’
It was all in good fun
for a while…
Then something changed
the shows became angry
political and
at times bizarre and
uncomfortable to watch.
It was no longer for the son.
He started filming just himself
in the basement and
spending more and more time
with the puppets.
When it got to the point where he
was always in character
we knew that there would soon
be big mean trouble.
Mr. Hand Puppet
was what everybody called him
by now.
He would take the puppets for walks
downtown
talking to himself
in the voice of whatever puppet
he had on
at the time.
Then one day he just disappeared
but other people
started disappearing too soon after
from the homeless shelter
downtown.
The police would find strange scraps of
fuzzy bright material
at the crime scene.
They didn’t know what was going on
but I did
deep down I knew exactly that.
It was a week later
that I got the afternoon phone call
that would put it all to an end:
“Hey-Hey-Hey! Duuuh! Howdy Mr. Rabbit!”
Mr. Hand puppet
sounded peculiar perhaps because
he was far too happy
to be sane.
“What are you up to today? Hee-hee-hee!”
“Just tell me where you are.” I almost whispered,
by now ready for just about everything
but not this:
The front door of the house was
wide open and I
rushed upstairs
to find Mr. Hand Puppet
in the bedroom
lying face-down in a pool of
growing blood.
I froze.
My mind was racing with possibilities
and none of them good
even the fact that I was now standing in
the middle of a crime scene
was also not good
but those thoughts
were suddenly swept away
as from behind me I heard
the closet door
slowly being opened
and a voice say:
“Howdy Mr. Rabbit…
would you like to know a secret?”
I was fast.
The fly was faster.
He put your sister in the hospital
again
so now you’ve got to do something about it,
don’t you?
Fuck if he’s your friend.
You pull over by the shed.
There he is,
fold-out chair on gravel half in the shade
looking like a dead man.
“I’m sorry, Man.” He keeps saying.
“I’ll get help. Things will be different
from here on in, I swear.”
And you could hear the same thing
so many times from every
addict, rapist and murderer out there
that it almost seems comical
once you stop believing them.
“You’re my friend, right?” He continues.
His hands groping all over yours
eager for some sort of forgiveness
to what he considers is a flash
in the Goddamn pan that’s how
fucked up he is.
“See,” you hear yourself say.
Words seething out through gritted teeth.
“what the did I do last time but
just stand there and smile?
Just fucking smile?
The truth is that you’re a child.
Just a big, overgrown stupid kid
that swings at whatever
abuses your ego
and you can’t be fixed
because you’re not smart enough.”
You don’t give time to respond.
You can’t hesitate for a second
because he’s bigger than you
stronger
meaner.
Instead you hit him across the face
hard with the tire iron
again and again
because your sister was on life support
so he obviously didn’t deserve his.
You’re my friend, right?
When he stops moving
for good
you throw the iron
on his unbreathing chest
prints and all
because you want everybody to know
that you had done this.
That was the whole Goddamn point.
You didn’t bring a shovel
because you had no intention of burying him
so you leave him there.
You leave that place
but you’ll take it with you
wherever you go
from here on in.
It’s easier to do what you need to get done
at night cause when it’s over
you can toss it in a ditch or
kill the lights and not have to
look at it anymore
but when the morning comes
the sun will uncover your sins
as it burns a hard glare
across everything
and what you’ve done
will follow you
deep into the next night
and every night thereafter
and they’ll follow you
until they catch you
because no good deed goes unpunished
-years behind bars
just scratches on the wall
and hours in the yard
while she replaces this asshole with an
even bigger one
next time she’s crooked for a fix
and it’s just the way it is.
So you just keep fucking driving
as long as there’s road
that leads to somewhere else
though it all seems to lead
to the same place
in the end.
But right now
feels good,
doesn’t it?
It was only -17C this morning but still I had to scrape off and warm up the car hopefully without stumbling this time and helplessly sliding down the sloped driveway screaming towards the merciless blade of the gigantic plow that marauds our street in these ridiculous hours because I once again forgot to purchase road-salt at the beer store.
So after I quickly threw on multiple layers of clothes, scarves, duct-tape, old newspaper and my jacket before stuffing pillows into every available space I then set myself on fire, opened the front door and charged towards my car with the ice-scraper in hand like a war-crazed native from a dense jungle wall.
As I was viciously scraping the impenetrable ice from my windshield my next door neighbor casually strolled out of his garage whistling Niel Young with his hands shoved deep into his pockets as if it were a calm spring morning. I scraped faster trying to avoid eye contact which was an exercise in futility because he was standing right beside me.
“Hey Neighbor! Nice crisp morning, ain’t it?”
“Crisp.” I said. “Like lettuce.”
I scraped even faster. You could barely see the scraper by this point it was moving so fast. He started wandering around my car.
“You get any letters from the city?”
“no…lettt..tt..err…s..s.” My teeth were chattering and starting to crack. Please go away, please please go away and I’ll never jerk off again. I thought.
“Well, welly well well…I got a couple.” He exclaimed as though the very idea of it aroused him. “One for my truck being a couple inches out onto the sidewalk overnight and another for the sidewalk not being cleared.”
“That’s horribb..bb..bb..le.” By this point there were icicles forming in my esophagus and my eyes were crystalizing.
He obviously didn’t share my pain because he was a polar bear of a man and had a lot more blubber encasing his bones than my South American ass. But I couldn’t be anything but nice to him because he was always kind and plowed our driveway whenever it snowed so I occasionally cut the eternally joyous fuck’s lawn in the summer.
I was just about done and he was strolling towards the road where his wife was calmly seated in their nice warm minivan when he turned to me and began talking about the weather just as I was about to scurry back inside like a cockroach when the lights came on.
I thought about killing him to end my misery. Sometimes certain things had to be done and this was why people turned on each other. I could lunge forward and ram the scraper into his throat, thus rendering it futile for him to breathe. I could picture his huge head turning beet-red as he helplessly clutched at his crushed larynx until he fell lifelessly backwards to thud against the pavement.
But then there was his wife that had witnessed it. Would have to take care of her too and then ditch the minivan. Fuck, that might make me late for work.
Yes, when you are talking to someone who is quickly turning into a snowman this is what is rolling through their head. Be kind to your neighbors who are not whale-seals like your complacent couch-eating selves and just let them scrape for God’s sake or maybe next time you’ll end up garbage-bagged under a foundation of the housing project across the field wondering what was going to happen on the next episode of Duck Dynasty.
Slide.
Vickers was a fire-breathing ginger capable of mass-destruction
even in the unlikeliest of places and therefore had to be kept under
constant supervision lest he destroy your peace of mind, soul and your
five-year relationship while going to the fridge to get a beer.
I had spent the last half-hour trying to kill him with my mind.
It wasn’t working (one day) so I offered him a cigarette.
On our way out to the patio I checked my coat pocket
for the blade I had coated in ant poison that my good buddy
at the shelter assured me would work on gingers. It was still there but the
patio had too many witnesses so I attempted to lure him into the back alley
under the false pretense that there were hot naked women doing yoga and
handing out free bags of cocaine.
He looked suspicious. I would have to try again later when he wasn’t as sober.
This wasn’t the first time I had tried to kill a ginger. Actually this one, specifically,
I have been trying to kill for years. He was my best friend so there was plenty of opportunity
but I had been so clumsy in the past and now had hoped to rectify that and finally rid the world
of one less gleefully frothing maniac that for all I know could be the next Napoleon
and didn’t Hitler start off as an artist?
In the past I have pushed him off a balcony, down a flight of stairs, into an elevator shaft, off of the CN Tower and to no avail as each time he had been so drunk and his body so relaxed by booze that Vickers nimbly bounced off whatever surface he landed on just to come back and demand more beer.
There were also the times when I had laced his weed with all kinds of shit and enough of it that it should have caused permanent brain damage if not an immediate and painful death but it inexplicably did not and I can only conclude that his tolerance was too high having been built from years of self-abuse and personal neglect.
And long has it been since I had given up on switching his beverages for ones saturated with all kinds of toilet cleaners, rodent poisons, industrial chemicals and even stuff that I picked up on the black market that looked like it belonged on an episode of X-files and you could even hear whispering if you placed your ear close enough to it. It was just too bad that Sonny (a.k.a F-DUP) had gotten arrested trying to bring some high-grade shit in from Japan (that glowed, yes, glowed) because I am sure that would have taken care of it like nobody’s business.
I can even recall the one time the depraved libertine had discovered my stockpile of mixed death-toxins meant to be introduced into his system nightly by injection and had guzzled all of the jugs at once leaving a mess in the shed all because he was out of alcohol and low on cash. Vickers had seemed to have caught a mild buzz off of it but little else and most certainly not the death for which it was intended and to my chagrin it was at this time that I had begun to realize the extent of his ginger constitution was not going to allow for such solutions to work therefore I need to reassess, focus and expand my base of operations until the devilish red rogue no longer remained a threat to humanity.
I do not think that he entirely suspects me so I will have my day. I have labs down south, a training facility up north, a weapons factory to the west and a team on standby in the east. It’s going to happen, all a matter of timing and finesse. I am even considering going undercover as a ginger myself to gain more intel on their devious ways and possible weaknesses. Hell, If I need to I will even deploy sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads.
I am going to post this on his wall because they say that the best place to hide your intention is in plain sight. Yes, I have read Machiavelli. It’s working. Gingercide is near.
I will sack me a ginger yet and it will make for a fine day.
Yes, a fine day indeed.
hernanjmonzon.com 