It was a shitty day from the outset. But this time, I was determined that I wouldn't let it go, as I had so many times in the past. This time, things would be different. I was going to be assertive. I was going to take charge, as I never had before.
I didn't sleep very well. My dreams were filled with dark and horrible things. I awoke, clutching my chest breathlessly, convinced by my mischevious subconscious that someone had filled my bed with snails, and that I'd swallowed one of them. I HATE snails. Eventually, I got back to sleep - but the CD player kept skipping, and outside, drunken hooligans tore up and down the street in their oversexed cars, as the neighbours screamed angrily at each other on one side, and noisily had sex on the other. I crammed my head into the pillow and ground my teeth together until the pain was unbearable, my hands balled into fists.
When I woke up, the sky was as grey as the rotting skin of a recently garotted ten year old. A thick haze of mist and smog hung over the horizon, the colours of the panorama were dull and washed out. I swung my legs out of bed, wincing at the pain in my spine - the pain that simply wouldn't go away, and slipped my feet into my moccasins.
Goosh.
They were full of water from the night before. Apparently, they hadn't dried after I took the dog out for a walk. And speaking of which, Bronnie began barking insanely at something outside, my head reeling as her ear-piercing shrieks echoed through the house. My stomach lurched with nausea, and I staggered to my feet, my pajama pants immediately plummeting to the ground. The waistband was simply too loose, and as I bent down to regain my modesty, my spine howled in agony, and I felt the tears welling up in my eyes.
I turned on the radio, and was immediately assaulted by AM talkback, which informed me that there were no jobs, no money, no freedom, the world was going to hell, and the only thing we have to look forward to is some piece of shit called 'The Day After Tomorrow' which depicts us all dying in some horrible cataclysmic disaster. I switched over to FM, and felt thick, acidic bile in my nose and mouth as Britney Spears, Korn, N*Sync, and their like spilled out of the speakers. Alternative radio wasn't much better, beating me into submission with the thoughts of over-educated, pretentious, inner-city swine, and their love of Underground Stuff.
Turning away, I fired up the kettle and retrieved the milk from the fridge. There wasn't enough left. I sighed, and returned to the bench. As I poured the water, I managed to spill it on my hand, scalding myself - the flesh instantly glowing red.
I fired up the job search engines on the internet, and found that I was very highly skilled, incredibly intelligent, a hard worker, committed, willing to go that extra yard, extremely well qualified, a valuable asset to any company, and completely and utterly unemployable. I felt sick. Waves of nausea crashed around me, causing my head to spin. I felt my heart palpatating in my chest, and my blood pressure soared, my pulse thudding in my ears as the room span crazily around me. I staggered to my feet, one arm holding me up against the door frame, and made it out to the couch.
I got a phone call.
"How's the job search going?", barked the friendly voice at the other end of the line.
I hung up.
It rang again shortly afterwards.
"Say!", spat the voice, "Since you're - you know - unemployed, and you have nothing to do, would you mind doing this for -"
I hung up, and rolled onto my side, my nose pressed into the back of the couch.
The phone rang again. It went to the answering machine.
"David, this is a call from Deakin University. Just letting you know that even though this is only a ridiculously childish story on your webpage, it is going way too far to pretend that the university would ever call you. You should know by now that we don't give a fuck about you. In fact, we actively hope that you contract AIDS and die. If that happened, we STILL wouldn't call you. ESPECIALLY after you were dead. If you have any queries regarding this matter, call Marsha Filesnogger on extension..."
I sighed, and rolled onto my back. Thick, gelatinous waves of dull, grey, dishwater-like light cascaded in from the outside, as my belly grumbled, and my brain surged with razor-cuts of pain. Bronnie, my ever faithful dog, walked up to me.
"Say, David -", she began.
I looked down and smiled. "Oh, Bronnie. Oh, sweetheart. I knew I could count on you. I knew that you'd be the one to stay with me. Dear, sweet Bronnie. You wanna come up here and sit with me? Give me a little hug?"
She looked confused. "Actually, I was just gonna ask you to move. You're lying on the remote, and I wanna watch 'Iain Hewitson's Cooking Adventures'."
I stared at her for a moment, and without removing my eyes from hers, I lifted my body, screaming out as my back registered it's displeasure.
A paw snaked out and seized the remote.
"Yoink!", Bronnie yelped, sitting in front of the television, which burst into life.
My brains felt like they were made of styrofoam and lemon juice. I coughed, my lungs wringing themselves out into my mouth, filling it with thick, clotted slime. I scratched lines into my face with my fingers, as the television howled and wailed at me.
"Bronnie?", I said sweetly. "Honey, do you think you could possibly turn it down?"
"Fuck off.", Bronnie said quietly, stabbing at the volume control with her finger, smirking as it became louder and louder.
I cupped my hands over my ears.
"Bronnie, sweetheart. Really. I've got rather an intolerable head this morning. Could you see your way clear to being a little less raucous?"
Bronnie sniffed, and spat on the floor. "Fuck off, you old shit. I'm watching something. If you're gonna bollock on like some kind of fucking queer, go and do it outside in the rain, where there's the chance you'll get pneumonia and die."
I sighed, and rose. Peering outside, I noticed the postman was on his way. Maybe he'd have some good news!
I flung the door open, and ran down the steps, immediately realising my mistake as my foot sunk into the wet, marshy earth. But I didn't care. This was my one chance. My ONE chance for the day to turn around. I ran up to him, as he was pushing a bunch of envolopes into the box.
"Can I have those?", I asked, smiling and holding out my hands.
"Fuck off, poof.", he snarled, letting the letters fall on the ground.
I frowned. "Hey. Hey, you can't -"
The postman laughed loudly, stepping off his bike, and roughly shoving me with both hands. I fell backwards, skidding across the mud.
He bent down and picked up the envelopes. "What do we have here? What does the little BITCH get today? Hmm?"
Holding up the first letter, he laughed drily. "A bill! I'd better DELIVER that." And then, he allowed the letter to drop from his hands, roughly stomping it into the mud.
"What's next?", he yelled. "ANOTHER bill! My, it ISN'T your lucky day!"
Again, he stomped on the letter.
"A letter from Centerlink?" He paused. "Oh. OH. Oh, you little fuck. You're on the dole."
He dropped the letter, and strode menacingly toward me, crushing the letter as he went. Then, he grabbed me by my shirt and lifted me into the air.
"Do you know what we used to do with dole scum like you? We used to KILL YOU. If I had MY way, I'd send you to IRAQ where you would be a MANWHORE for DESPERATELY HORNY SOLDIERS. What do you think of that, you little fuck?"
I sobbed and bleated, my legs kicking uselessly beneath me.
"That sounds quite nasty. I don't fancy it, sir."
He shook me. "Oh, you don't? You sound like some kind of fucking ARTS STUDENT. I'm a postman and I'm SHIT THICK, yet I can still see that even YOU couldn't be enough of a LOSER to have studied arts."
"Actually," I said through my tears and my pain, "I studied arts. And, I studied, uh, writing and -"
He tilted his head upwards and laughed deeply, using his belly to force as much sound out of his body as was humanly possible. The noise was deafening, and his hands dug deeper into my skin as he howled.
"You little BASTARD. I should KILL YOU MYSELF. You do REALISE that you're going to DIE ALONE and BROKE, don't you? YOU STUDIED ARTS. My God, you're such a FUCKING IDIOT. I want to RIP OUT YOUR COLON and KNIT IT THROUGH YOUR EMPTY SOCKETS after I've finished SKULLFUCKING YOU."
I wept openly now, my bowels feeling loose, and my breath coming in short, wet gasps.
"Please, sir - I just.."
He threw me against the tree in our front garden, and I slumped to the ground. Through my half-lidded stare, I could see that he was posing, dilating the enormous muscles that knitted themselves across his powerful body. The seams on his postal worker's uniform began to stretch, then quiver, then split open - the material flinging itself aside, as the full expanse of his chest and abdomen jackhammered to the fore. He laughed powerfully, and rested his hands on his hips.
"I've got ONE MORE DELIVERY, FAGGOT ART BOY. A delivery that will be a MICROCOSM of the REST OF YOUR LIFE."
I sobbed, flinging my arms weakly, trying to find something to help me scrabble to my feet. I saw him approaching me, his muscular fingers fiddling with the snap on his trousers. I saw the inhuman bulge in the front of his pants, thick and pulsing, and I cringed at the lascivious grin that was smeared across the squareness of his jaw.
Behind him, in the window, I saw Bronnie laughing uproariously, lying on her side and pointing at me.
Her laughter filled my ears, joined by the postman's, as my legs slid uselessly in the mud and the rain.
"Come to Daddy.", he chanted beneath his breath, his eyes heavy-lidded with arousal as he sized me up. "Come on. Daddy's waiting. Daddy's home."
I had to make my break. I knew that. I slid beneath his open legs, as he struggled to remove the hugeness of his penis from inside his tight-fitting postal uniform, and in one movement, tore a pailing away from the fence. I heard him quietly make a confused sound, but he didn't have long to consider his mistake as I raised the pailing over my head, and brought it down with both arms, buring the rusty iron nail in the back of his skull. He stiffened briefly, and his arms began to reach around - until he toppled over in front of me.
I stood over him and spat in his face.
"Next time," I muttered, "JUST GIVE ME THE LETTERS."
Putting one foot on the back of his neck, I wrenched the pailing free, the nail coated in blood and cranial matter, and I swung it experimentally in the air. It swished with deadly precision, and I looked over my shoulder at Bronnie, who stared at me in disbelief from behind the rain-spattered glass.
"You can listen to the television as loud as you want, Bronnie.", I called out laughing. "I'm going for a walk."
I cackled insanely, and jabbed my thumb into my chest with my free hand, my eyes bulging. "HEAR THAT? I'M GOING FOR A WALK."
I decided to go and do the shopping that I'd been instructed to retrieve from the night before, after a particularly savage beating at the hands of my parents and a few of their friends, who were paying large sums of money to hear the crack of the strap on the tender flesh of my spine. Carrying my pailing, I walked calmly towards Greensborough Plaza, not caring about my lack of footwear, nor the trail of cranial fluid I was leaving in my wake. I walked past a construction site, and a swarthy bogan in a hard-hat leapt out in front of me.
"Hey, FUCKER. You've got to go AROUND. We're WORKING HERE."
I looked up at him. "I'm just going to the shops. Besides, you're working in there - on the house. The street is for everbody."
"Oh!", he cried, "Oh, listen to the LEGAL EAGLE. Listen to me you MOTHERFUCKER, either you GET OUT OF THE WAY and GO AROUND, or me and the boys will stop building a HOUSE for a while so that we can build a MONUMENT TO UNBELIEVEABLE AGONY using YOUR BODY FOR MATERIALS."
I sighed and turned around, preparing to go back. I heard a chorus of laughter behind me.
"Look at this fat, deformed fuckwit! I bet he was an arts student! I bet he's unemployed! I wouldn't like to have to be the one who is SO DESPERATE FOR SEX that they'll PAY HIM FOR SODOMY when he figures out he is UTTERLY UNEMPLOYABLE."
I snarled. My mind snapped. In one movement, I whirled around and buried the nail in his forehead, kicking him in the nuts as I went. Like a spider money, I scampered up a nearby tree, and leapt through the air, executing a perfect 720' roundhouse kick, neatly decapitating every worker on the site as I sailed through the air, letting out an ancient battle cry.
The crazy old women who live near me caught up to me at the lights. I groaned, waiting for the cavalcade of inane babble that they were no doubt planning to hit me with. My fingers wrapped tightly around the fence pailing.
"Hi!", the fat one screamed at me, as only a truly crazy person can.
'Hello.", I muttered.
"WE LIKE CHICKEN.", she ranted, giggling periodically.
"That's nice."
"WHERE I COME FROM, THE RAIN SMELLS LIKE CHEESE.", she howled.
"Mmm."
"CAT BAT MAT SAT LAT FAT PAT NAT.", she yelled, laughing at her private joke.
"Heh."
The other one smiled. "This weather's not very nice, is it?", she said calmly.
I returned her smile. Whew. Sanity.
"No, it's very cold, isn't it? I mean, the other night I -"
"After all," she said, "You tend to feel the cold when you have a robot heart."
I stopped. "What?"
"Oh, yes. I never used to mind it, but now that my body is ninety percent titanium, I really get chilly. Mr. Zebedee told me that last night while he was feeding the tortoise to the ferns next to my house, and the Elephant Man was staring at me while I -"
I had had enough. I nailed both of them in the face with my fence pailing, and stomped on them roughly as the cars that sped by honked their horns with encouragement.
I ended up standing in front of Harvey Norman. I decided to go inside to see if they had something really violent and tasteless that I could play on my playstation. I was standing at the back, scanning the racks. A young homosexual pranced next to me, smiling affectionately.
"Can I help you, sir?", he sang, steepling his hands in front of his heart.
"No. Fuck off."
"Are you sure? We have a superb range. What were you looking for?"
I turned to him.
"Listen, you young cocksucker," I snapped, "Quit babbling shit at me. I just want to know if you have Violence Kill Rape Murder Bloodfest for the Playstation 2. If you have it, give it to me. If you don't, fuck off."
He grinned. "I'll just look that one up for you. Sounds pretty good!"
He made finger pistols at me and whispered "Bang bang!" at me while winking. I coughed up something gross and spat it in his face, then pushed him towards the computer while yelling something about him being a fuckhead.
"Oh!", he said excitedly, "It's listed on the system!"
"Good." I said coldly. "Give it to me, fucker."
He sighed. "There's some bad news though. It's not out in Australia for another seven years."
"I saw it on the shelves at E.B the other day, you fucking shit."
He rolled his eyes comically. "I know, I know, I know. WE'RE not getting it for another seven years. But believe me, it'll be worth the wait. If you preorder it from us, not only will we give you a billionth of a cent off the price, but we'll give you a COLLECTABLE BOX OF SPANKRAGS straight from the DESIGNERS. Oh, and not to mention - if you PREORDER NOW, your copy will be one of only NINETY ZILLION in Australia to come COVERED IN OUR URINE."
WHACK. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and the nail wheezed against bone as I yanked it free from the soft honeycomb of his temple.
After kicking him a few times in the face, chest, back, legs, arms, spine, and nuts - I decided to continue enjoying the fruits of consumerism. I walked to Target, and headed immediately for their laughable DVD section. I scanned the shelves, but I saw nothing but total horseshit, so I decided to see if they could import something for me.
I walked up to Kent, the acne-diseased fuckwit behind the counter.
"Can I help you?", he asked grinning, shit dribbling from between his teeth.
I reached out and grabbed him by the tie, yanking downward and planting his face on the desk. Then, I leaned in and screamed in his ear.
"Yeah, you can help me, you little fuck. I want a copy of UNHOLY DEATH MASSACRE WITH LOTS OF TITS AND PEOPLE BEING KILLED. PART FUCKING TWENTY. Do you HAVE IT?"
He wept. "Let me check. Let me check for you, sir."
"HURRY THE FUCK UP."
He yammered the name of my movie into the telephone, and after we stood around waiting for roughly seven hundred years, eventually a message came back that not only had they never heard of my movie, but that Kent The Shitbrain should slash the throat of anyone who asks for it.
"We don't have that one, sir. But over here, we have lots of Ben Affleck movies. Here's one - it's called I RAPE PROSTITUTES AND YOU STILL LOVE ME. It's a heartwarming comedy about Ben's adventures with a little girl that he adopts after his wife -"
"FUCK THAT SHIT."
"Well, how would you like this? BLOODY GREAT BIG KNOB, starring Brad Pitt. In it, he plays a serious, complex role where you never really know what's going on, but it's directed by some young Hollywood bastard who uses lots of CGI and references to old tv shows, and the soundtrack has The Dust Brothers and after you watch it, you say shit like 'That was really deep! It was about society!"
"NO.", I screamed, raising my pailing menacingly. "You have ONE SECOND TO GET ME SOMETHING VIOLENT."
He cried. "But, I -"
WHACK.
His body dropped to the floor, blood oozing from his eye socket. I kicked him briefly in the ribs.
Mmm. Ribs. It was time to go to the food court.
Subway was looking good. I was the nine-billionth person in the line, and as I stood in the car park, I thought that I'd never get my fucking sandwich.
But, fortunately, life can be fair - and after waiting in the line for the rest of my natural life, I eventually stood in front of Tina.
"Hi! Welcome to Subway! What can we get for you today?"
"Listen bitch," I began, "Don't be nice. You hate me and I hate you. In fact, I'd love to see you burn in hell. So, just get me my fucking sandwich and we'll get out of this alive." I paused scanning the menu. "Get me a fucking chicken fillet sandwitch, on white bread."
She turned away. I yelled out at her. "No, wait! Wait! ITALIAN HERB AND CHEESE. NOT WHITE. GOT THAT?"
"Got it.", she said quietly.
She slapped a footlong roll in front of me and roughly tore it open.
"Cheese?"
"Of course I want cheese."
Uncaringly, she slapped a few maggoty bits of stale cheese on my roll.
"Now, Brad will get your salads. If you could move along -"
"I can SEE where the salads are. You don't need to HELP ME with the RELOCATION PROCESS. I may be FAT, UGLY, DEFORMED, UNEMPLOYABLE, and CARRYING A BLOODSTAINED FENCE PAILING, but I'm not STUPID."
Brad grinned at me, showing me the foulness of his teeth. I winced.
"What salads would you like today?", he asked cheerily.
"Listen to me, you little shit.", I croaked, "You know DAMN WELL that EVERYONE WHO COMES IN HERE wants EVERYTHING FROM THE SALAD BAR. They want EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT. They only reason they PRETEND that they're MAKING IT UP AS THEY GO ALONG is so that they don't look like GLUTTONOUS PIGS. Now, LISTEN UP, FUCKWIT. EVERYTHING. I want EVERYTHING."
He scooped up a few microscopic blades of onion and laid them on my cheese. He did the same with some gangrenous tomato, some dried up pineapple, and some festering olives.
"HALT!", I screamed. "NO JALAPENOS. They give me GAS."
While all of this was going on, I noticed something. When he was grinning at me like some kind of fucking retard, there was something hanging out of his nose. Some kind of nasal debris. It clung to one of the thick hairs that dangled from the ceiling of his nostril - holding on tenuously as he pummelled it with thick waves of ghastly breath. That was at the START of the sandwich making experience.
Now that we were at the end, and my sandwich was lying open before him like a well-paid whore, his NASAL DEBRIS was GONE.
I contemplated this for a second.
"Brad. May I call you Brad?"
"Sure.", he said, smiling.
"Look, Brad. Not to put too fine a point on it - when you started making me this DISGUSTING THING, you had something HANGING OUT OF YOUR NOSE. Now it isn't THERE. It stands to reason that whatever was STICKING OUT OF YOUR NOSTIL like some kind of GIANT GREEN EXTRA APPENDAGE is now IN MY FOOD."
"So?", he asked sternly.
"So? MAKE ME ANOTHER SANDWICH, FUCKER."
"Hey.", he said angrily. "No! I already made you this one! You can either EAT MY BIG GREEN CLUMPS OF SNOT, or you can GO TO HELL. I don't give a FUCK which one it is."
WHACK. I dropped him with a single blow to the side of the head. Then, I grabbed my footlong, wrenched his mouth open, and powerfully forced it down his throat - which bulged out comically.
Tina walked over to see what was happening, but before she could say anything, I iced her too. No sense in fucking around.
I stood by the escalator and stared over the edge at the people below, crawling around like insects - each one with their own story, their own emotions, their own loves, and their own warm, sticky blood.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Officer Spam. He leered down at me, pressing his snout against the back of my neck.
"No looking over the edge, fat boy."
"Get fucked, pig.", I replied.
The cold steel of his pistol pressed against my cheek, and I heard the bassy click of the hammer being pulled back.
"What was that, boy?"
"Nothing.", I said coldly. He pulled the pistol away and threw me against a nearby wall.
"Don't try to be FUNNY you fucking DOLE SCUM. Now, GET OUT OF HERE before I BLOW A HOLE IN YOUR FACE."
I paused for a second. "Hey, Officer?"
"WHAT?"
"I think I left a box of matches on the floor of the men's toilet. Would you go in there and check for me?"
He sighed. "Can't you go yourself?"
I pouted. "I'm scared! I'm TERRIFIED of penises and urine!"
"Okay.", he said with a resigned air.
I walked in behind him, and he dropped to his knees, his pistol in one hand, scanning the floor.
"I don't see any matches. Are you sure you -"
WHACK. I beaned him in the base of the neck, and he released his grip on the pistol. I quickly snatched it up and began unloading it into his body, squeezing the trigger repeatedly.
A voice from behind one of the closed stall doors called out. "Hey, what's going on there?"
I yelled back. "NOTHING!"
BOOM! BOOM!
"Hey! That sounds like a gun! I'm gonna call the -"
I fired a round into the toilet. It shattered the wood, and silenced the furiously defecating occupant.
It was a strange day. A complex day. A day when the issues that face us all became real - they made sense, and the choices that we all have to deal with our pressures simultaneously became clear, obvious, and seemed perfect in their savage simplicity. I came home, and I sat on the couch. I turned on the television, my hands sticky with blood, and I watched Hi-5. I turned the sound down, and instead listened to Ministry's "Land Of Rape And Honey" so loud that the windows shook. My mother came home and saw me. She broke into a wide grin.
"Hiya, sweetheart. How was your day?"
I smiled. "It was okay."
"How'd the job hunt go?"
I shrugged. "Oh, same as yesterday."
"Cheer up. Don't let it get you down."
"Oh, I won't.", I said smiling.
"Let's have a cup of coffee," she said, "And you can tell me all about your day."
I nodded, and gave her the thumbs up, following her into the kitchen. I stood behind her grinning as she bent over to get out the percolator, and Bronnie froze in terror as I raised the fence pailing above my head.
The job hunting was the same as yesterday. The same as yesterday.
Posted by David at May 27, 2004 11:19 PM | TrackBackYou walk the dog in your moccasins?
Posted by: Jo at May 31, 2004 03:59 PM