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In, ladies home journal please
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Jun 7, 2022 22:11
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:32 |
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Down in the Belly 1495 Words “Incision time, 8:05 PM.” Doctor French touched the scalpel to Lobo’s throat, then set it back down. “Whesley, for the last time, and I promise it’s the last time, are you sure this is necessary?” Deputy Mayor Whesley glanced at the thirteen feet of stone-dead American Alligator lying on the dissection table, then back to French. “And doc, for absolutely the last time, I’m going to refer your question to Mr. Hubes. Secretary Hubes?” Hubes sighed, licked his fingertip, and flipped to Subsection B6 of a photocopied town charter. The men had enjoyed a supper of leftover brisket just before the autopsy, and Hubes could still taste a whiff of barbecue sauce above the permeating disinfectant of the mortuary. He read the passage aloud: “If, in the course of duty, an elected official of Arnough meets his demise through means not readily apparent, the town by-laws compel an autopsy by the first available physician. If one is not available, proceed to the first veterinarian, then mortician, then sheriff…” Hubes flipped to the next page, then looked back toward the men. “List goes on like that for a while. By-law’s iron-clad.” French looked at Whesley, brow furrowed, and Whesley’s expression softened. “Come on, Frenchy. It’s Big Lobo. Town mascot, elected by 2 to 1 margin back in ‘86. There’s a statue of him outside the library. We got ‘Lobo Days’ coming in September.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “And besides, it’s closure. If, uh, if Hubes died under mysterious circumstances, you’d want to know why, right? French considered the scalpel, then Hubes, then looked up at the clock. “Incision time, 8:07 PM.” French jammed the scalpel into Lobo’s xiphoid and ran the blade down the length of the gator’s belly. He inspected the incision: the knife had barely gone a half-centimeter deep. He switched to a pair of serrated shears and, after a few minutes of struggling, breached the gator’s belly. Coils of slick intestine spilled out of the cavity, and a gray fluid sloshed into the gutter that ran the perimeter of the table. French watched the liquid drain from Lobo’s belly. “That shouldn’t be there.” Hubes wiped his hands on his pants and snorted. “Bet ol’ Lobo got into some weed killer. Hey Whes, you know how much weed killer it’d take to bring down a gator his size?” Whesley frowned at Hubes. “Couple pounds? I don’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t weed killer; Lobo’s too smart to buffet on pesticide.” Hubes nodded. “Yeah. Apex predator.” An uneasy silence fell over the room, punctuated by the click and snap of French’s forceps. Whesley peeked into Lobo’s belly, then turned back to Secretary Hubes. “So, uh, how’s the re-election?” Hubes grunted. “Lousy. Everything’s lousy. Town’s goin’ to seed, I tell ya.” Whes frowned. “Microwave factory closing, what it is. Not my fault or yours, that’s an Act of God.” Hubes nodded. “Said they can’t retrofit for air fryers, buncha bullshit. How’s the run for Mayor?” “Not great. Margin’s too thin, I’m just one bit a’ bad news away from being out on my rear end.” Whes shifted, suddenly damp with the flop sweat of painful truth. French played his hands over the instrument rack, unsure how to proceed. Whesley shot him a sharp look. “What’s the matter, Frenchy? Get in there.” “Get in where, Whes?” Whesley shrugged, agitated. “How am I supposed to know? You’re the doctor.” “I’m a pediatrician, Whes. Your guess is only marginally worse than mine.” The three men surveyed the gator. Lobo stared back, his eyes starting to go rheumy from the dry morgue air. French hesitated, then hefted the gator’s small intestine and traced it back to the stomach. He picked up the scalpel and sliced a small opening into the bowel. The smell was abrupt and eye-watering, a melange of rotten flesh and swamp-stink. Hubes gagged and French took a step back from the table, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. “Nope. No, absolutely not. I’m calling it.” Whes wheeled on French. “You’re ‘calling it’? Oh, and here’s tomorrow’s Gazette: ‘Beloved Lobo dead, Doctor on call too chickenshit to complete autopsy.’” Whes lowered his voice to a growl. “Just do the drat thing.” Chastised, French widened the nick in the intestines and began expressing the contents of Lobo’s bowels. He squeezed out a few masticated hunks, then worked a feathered clump onto the examination table. Hubes stared at the clump, his face an ill shade of purple, then looked away. “Bluejay.” Whesley swallowed hard. “No, Scrub-Jay.” French cleaned some of the muck from the plumes, smoothing the mass until it vaguely resembled a bird. Hubes looked back and nodded. “Scrub-Jay.” French kept running the bowel. Hubes had begun to alternate between sharply sniffing his fingers and holding his breath. Whesley looked at him, eyebrow cocked. “They still smell a little like brisket,” Hubes said. Whes turned away, making conversation with the yellow tile lining the walls. “Good beef. Good the second time, too. Lobo sure liked it.” Hubes nodded. “Gator sure knew how to find a barbecue. Now that I think about it, our cookout was the last time I saw him.” Whesley smiled. “Belly like a garbage disposal, that gator. Rib bones, corn cobs, potato salad–” “Oh, poo poo!” French’s exclamation cut off Whesley’s buffet recitation, and he and Hubes leaned in to see what the doctor had found. French held up a congested, purple loop of bowel. As he turned it under the stark halogens of the morgue, Whesley caught a brief glint of silver. The doctor cut directly into the necrotic section of gut and probed the gap with his fingers for a half-second before snatching his hand back in pain, two small dots of blood collecting under his glove. He rushed to the sink. Whesley grabbed a fresh pair from the instrument tray, pulled them on, and gingerly fished the lethal corn-cob holder from Lobo’s gut. He could see how it happened: the plastic cob holder caught in a kink of colon, each peristaltic push shoving the tines in and out of the intestinal wall until the whole site was so matted and inflamed that the gator went fatally septic. “The barbecue…” Hubes said. French swore and washed his hands in scalding water for the second time. Whesley rolled the corn-cob holder between his fingers. “This is bad.” “Real bad,” said Hubes. Then, after a beat: “but I do think Frenchy fed Lobo most of the cobs.” French whirled from the sink, furious. “Hubes! You were tossing those cobs to Lobo. You’d throw one, he’d snatch it out of the air, and you’d shout somethin’ about him being an apex predator! You did it all night!” Hubes went red in the face. “He’s been unchanged through ten million years of evolution!” French threw his hands up. “That’s not up for debate! I’m sayin–” “Shut up, the both of you! Lemme think!” said Whesley. French and Hubes took seats at opposite ends of the room as the Deputy Mayor paced between them. After a few laps, he stopped and leaned against the dissection table. “Okay, so this much is for sure: we killed Lobo, by corn cob. And negligence.” Hubes and French erupted in protestations: that Lobo could have found a cob holder anywhere, that it was an accident, and what if it was the razor-beaked blue jay (scrub jay, corrected Hubes), that it was an honest mistake, that pesticides couldn’t be definitively ruled out, and that old age was still a possibility, though admittedly unlikely. Whes slammed his palms on the dissection table, sending spatters of noxious fluid to the far wall. Lobo barely moved. “I am saying, gentlemen, that Hubes and I have a real bastard of a re-election coming up, and that Frenchy, well, you’re the third best pediatrician in a town of twenty thousand people. The less said on that, the better. So?” The doctor looked up from the thin trail of grey goo running down his loafers. “Yeah?” “How long, exactly, was the rattlesnake that Lobo ate?” French blinked. Whes sighed and spoke again, drawn and exaggerated. “Lobo died after he ate a rattlesnake, didn’t he? How long was it?” French gulped. “Musta been, oh, five feet?” Hubes shook his head. “No, had to be six, pushing on seven. Apex predator, that rattlesnake.” French nodded rapidly. “Found at least a dozen bites going all the way down. Ol’ Lobo was so riddled with venom we could barely touch him.” Hubes put on a somber face. “Heroic thing we did, gettin’ at what happened to Lobo.” As the two men chittered, Whes looked into Lobo’s unblinking eyes, over his rows of black-brown teeth, and the pits and crags of his snout. Ten million years of ceaseless predation, set against the blades of a plastic corn cob holder. He looked at his friends, still struggling to keep their stories straight, and sighed. Such a tiny thing, to bring it all down.
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Jun 13, 2022 03:00
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The Cut of Your Jib posted:CKM! Quoting. This way, my story is sandwiched between two mentions of my flash rule.
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Jun 13, 2022 05:51
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I'm in!
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Jun 13, 2022 15:09
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A Body as Abnormal as the Mind 396 words I rifle through the bathroom cabinets without finding evidence of Benjamin. I scan the labels on a set of prescription bottles and tubes: prescription moisturizer, steroid cream, tacrolimus ointment, oral prednisone, all with Jason’s name on them. It’s a graduating set of therapies for eczema. I’ve seen Jason scratching his arms at meetings, leaving little white scales of dead skin all over the table, then sweeping them into a pile with the edge of his palm. Gross. I keep going, not knowing what I’m looking for. A wrinkled tube of toothpaste, a second sealed tube of toothpaste, a brick of goat’s milk soap. I stare at it for a moment, locking eyes with the picture of the goat on the label. I wonder, little goat, if you knew that your milk was shipped halfway around the country, compounded with lye into cakes, then smeared over the arms of a very flaky man who may have committed a murder. The goat stares back. I keep moving, and fling open the cabinet under the sink. Oh. Well, that’s something. A half empty pint of Old Commodore gin. In that instant, it all comes flooding back: the weak, chewy snap of the perforated cap, the slight yield of the cheap plastic bottle, the label with the dancing girl that starts to discolor as soon as a drop of liquor touches it. Uh, not that I spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff, these days. But it’s interesting, nonetheless. What’d Jason say at the last meeting? That he hadn’t picked up a bottle in years, that the booze was a solution to a problem he no longer had, that he now had the ability to turn his crises over to a higher power of his own understanding. And none of that necessarily excludes murder. I leave the cabinet door ajar, move to the bathtub, and throw open the curtain. There, near the drain: a narrow rivulet of rust. Blood, or maybe just old hard water. I close the shower curtain, take one last lingering look at the Old Commodore under the sink, then leave the bathroom. Kitchen, next. There are two plates in the sink with little strips of golden-brown chicken skin clinging to both of them. There’s a heap of bones in the trash. Odd. Jason’s definitely the kind of guy who keeps a carcass for stock.
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Jun 20, 2022 01:56
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The Earth is Thick With Noise 349 words The sun burns through a canopy of green. It’s too hot to go down, so hot that I can almost hear it, like a big detuned radio jammed into the sky. I turn, staring in a slow circle like a tree is going to suddenly leap out, throw its arms wide, then doff its hat and distinguish itself from the others before cheerily pointing me along my way. It doesn’t, they’re all the same, and I’m extremely lost. Also, given how vividly I personified the tree, I think I’m seriously dehydrated. My head is spinning, and my uvula is the size of a walnut. “Hey! Louise!” I look into the treeline and see a flash of orange nylon. Is that Richard? “Heyyyyy! Looooooouieeeeeeeese!” The voice comes at a drag, like each word has meandered through honey before making its way to me. I stagger toward him, my eyes fixed on his bright pink windbreaker. I keep him centered in my vision, like he’ll pixelate and vanish if I don’t. “Richard?” He smiles wide as I get closer, and whips off his hat. His hairline is a blur of dirty blonde static. He points deeper into the forest. I follow his finger and look deep into another indistinguishable mess of green. I try to speak, but my words are a tumble. “Into there? But where does it go?” Randall whips off his hat and runs a hand through his hair. I’ve always admired it, all deep and brown, not so much growing from his head as tumbling from it, in waves and splits and roots that almost touch the ground. He looks at me again. “Heyyyyyyyyy! Looooooooooouieeeeeeeeeeeese!” I take a step toward him and my knee does an awkward twist. Suddenly I’m staring into a little slice of ground, of wood chips and splinters and pebbles and dust. Maybe I can go in there instead, through the debris and halfway home. I flick aside a stone, to try and crawl behind it, to get deeper and deeper, and eventually through. The sun doesn’t shine. It roars, and it is laughing.
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Jun 20, 2022 01:57
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:32 |
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Hot Pork in Motion 397 words “Don’t eat the Al Pastor on Friday.” I blink at Ajay. He slaps two tortillas onto the grill press. “Uh, what? Why?” He holds the grill closed and uses his free hand to motion me closer. I oblige, almost leaning over the sneeze guard. He speaks in a whisper. “I can’t tell you, man.” “Why’d you ask me to lean in, then?” “Because I’m watching your rear end, man. I’m shielding you from harm.” Little tendrils of black smoke rise from the grill press, and Ajay lifts the handle. “gently caress, man. Tortilla’s toast. Lemme get it going again.” A line is beginning to form. He flips another couple tortillas into the press and brings the handle down. Ajay and I struck up an acquaintance over the past year. He is Indian, and I am Indian, and that is about it. “Why can’t I have the Pastor on Friday?” Ajay pulls my tortillas out of the press and lines them up on a disposable tray. The styrofoam starts to curl from the heat. He looks at me and rolls his eyes. “Because I’m quitting this loving job, is why.” I look at him quizzically. He heaps two mounds of pork onto my tortillas and continues. “Friday is when the whole c-suite comes down for tacos. You know who Vacho Slim is, man?” I work in Institutional Tax Compliance; I do not know who Vacho Slim is. “No. Who’s Vacho Slim?” Ajay smiles. “Vacho’s dusty, man. So dusty. He brings that heat in motion.” I don’t think ‘Vacho’ is actually a Spanish word, but I can’t be sure. I nod, slowly, and Ajay’s smile gets wider. “You know what PCP is, man?” My nod slows. My head is barely moving. Ajay finesses some onions and cilantro onto my pork. I lean back toward the sneeze guard. “You’re gonna put PCP in the pork?” Ajay’s eyebrows shoot up, but his voice is still a whisper. “Yo, keep that loving poo poo down, man. God. But yeah.” He passes over the styrofoam box. I weigh it in my hand. “But you’re gonna make a lot of other people sick.” Ajay is solemn. “A hard rain drowns all rats, man.” My stomach rumbles. I don’t know if he’s gonna do it, but the rat stuff is pretty convincing. “No pork on Friday,” I say. “No pork on Friday,” he replies.
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Jun 20, 2022 01:57
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