Fiction

Dishwasher

9 a.m. to 6 p.m. My first day on the job. I heard the dishwasher I was replacing arguing with a female supervisor. He had worked from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. and she was claiming that he had only worked for three hours. He protested sadly. Being a poor, black, 40 some odd year old dishwasher, he knew he was going to lose.  The Sheraton Hotel. Of all the dishwashing machines I had ever encountered, this one was the largest and meanest. The water was never below boiling. No plastic gloves were supplied.  The first hour wasn’t bad. There were no dishes. Only a few pots and pans. I took care of them and smoked cigarettes. The chef approached me and ordered me to skin potatoes. He was a small, greasy looking man. I skinned potatoes, smoked cigarettes, and listened to the radio. For $7.00 an hour, I could…
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Jason

In the caveman days, the entire world was full of retards walking off cliffs, eating raw meat, batting women over the head with clubs and dragging them off to be raped. The stupider ones died off, leaving us.    Jason Call. In kindergarten he pissed in a corner, mooning the entire class. We all knew then that he was fucked. That he was in for a lifetime of ridicule and torture.    Once, when we were about 11, he asked if he could use my bathroom. A neighborhood boy, Matt, had told me that he’d let Jason use his bathroom once and he’d shit all over the walls and the floor. Matt had had to clean it. Jason lived about 50 feet from each of us, the entire thing seemed ludicrous. Maybe he wanted to mark our bathrooms, to expand his territory.    “Go home and use your own bathroom, retard. And try…
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Lawnmower Man

My family moved from an apartment complex to a house in the suburbs when I was seven or eight years old. We had televisions, food, lawnmowers, a couple malls, enough to make it almost bearable in a monotonous way. In the fall I raked leaves, in the winter I shoveled snow, all the while going to school. In the summer I slept late and did nothing. Or at least I used to sleep late. The first summer in our new house it began, every morning at 6 AM, VROOM VROOM VROOM!, some asshole mowing their lawn, every morning at the crack of dawn some lawn mowing idiot with no reason to live who woke up day after day to mow the lawn anyway. The first few years I only vaguely noticed it. It was a small part of the day and I was young enough to accept it blindly without…
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SSDI

   Ramsey had been sitting alone in the waiting room for 45 minutes. His appointment was scheduled to begin over half an hour ago and no one else had come or gone. A nurse behind the reception counter was yelling something in Spanish into a cell phone. Ramsey walked over to her protected counter and tapped on the glass.    “Excuse me. I’ve been here for almost an hour.”    She held a finger up to him to wait and slipped a clipboard under the glass partition.    “I already filled one of those out. Will you get off the damn phone for a second?”    She said something apologetic into the phone and put it face down against her shoulder.    “What can I do for you?”    “I’ve been waiting here for almost an hour. Is the doctor in?”    She looked at him and seemed to recognize him.    “I’m sorry sweetie, just give me a…
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Speed Date

Playing for the New York Yankees, that would be a dream come true. Playing for the Milwaukee Brewers, that was like having a wet dream about your wife. The women perked up and the men on the other side of the room deflated as Dobbs walked in. He was 6’3” and built like a sprinter. A plump woman with a clipboard waved him over and had him pick a card out of a hat, then told him to stand with the other men.    Dobbs thought about the game last night. He had been staring at a pretty girl in the stands. The catcher had noticed and picked him off, which is pretty unforgivable for a pinch runner. His only job was to not get picked off. He couldn’t hit, he couldn’t throw, and he could barely bunt. All he could do was run fast and supposedly be smart on the…
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Grandpa

Photo by Willy Verhulst

Grandpa sat at the table poking at his turkey. It was too dry, but he would never complain about it. It was food, and food was for eating, and if you had food, you were a pretty lucky guy. But still, it was too dry. It was too dry every Thanksgiving. Wendy just wasn’t a very good cook and her husband Ron was an idiot. The kids, Sam and Josie, were also idiots. They looked like they were about college aged. There was still a slim chance they’d grow out of it, but most people grew more and more into it.    Grandpa remembered when Wendy was still a child. She had been such a sweet, intelligent girl, and now she was a robotic harpy. A robotic harpy married to an idiot, and she still didn’t know how to cook a turkey.    “Ron, what are you doing?”    “You said to start…
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Bob

Phil needed a cigarette. Or maybe a snort of ketamine. Being a veterinarian had its perks. He had always loved animals, or at least liked them more than people. Unfortunately, the animals who came in for care tended to have owners, and those owners were always people.    He took off his gloves and started to wash up when there was a rap at his door. Katie opened it and stuck her head in before he could answer. She consulted her clipboard as she spoke.    “We’ve got a walk in, she says it’s an emergency. Missy Burrell.”    “Is that the cat’s name or the owner’s?”    “It’s the owner’s name. And it’s a dalmatian, not a cat.”    “What kind of a name is ‘Missy’?”    “A cat’s name?”    “What kind of an emergency is it?”    “She wouldn’t tell me. She said it was confidential.”    Great. A nutcase. And it was already well past…
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The Boss

The boss sat at his desk drinking tepid instant coffee. He wasn’t self-aware when he could avoid it, but he was a having a moment and not enjoying it. His intercom buzzed. The boss groaned and pushed the intercom button.    “Mable?”    “Alex is here to see you.”    The boss removed his finger from the intercom button.    “For the love of god.”    He pushed the button again.    “Send her in.”    Alex entered and the boss gestured for her to sit down. She smiled awkwardly and took a seat. The boss knew he had to be very careful not to speak or behave naturally.    “I know you’re busy, and I’m sorry to bother you.”    Does she really know that, and is she really sorry? He wondered.    “It’s just that, well . . .”    The boss felt something inside of himself break and begin to dissolve.    “Alex, I hope you know that…
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Fan Fiction- Alf, Zombie Han Solo and J. J. Abrams Dispose of a Dead Hooker

“Shit, Han, what did you do!” Alf lifts the lifeless girl’s arm and lets it flop onto the floor. Han crawls out from under a pile of cigarette butts on the sweat and cum stained leather sofa. He rubs his pupil-less eyes and wipes cocaine from his brittle nostrils. Upon seeing the dead girl at his feet, he snaps to attention. “Oh, fuck. I don’t know. I don’t remember.” He staggers around the corpse to get a good look at her bloody, empty skull. “I guess I must have gotten the munchies in the middle of the night.” “The mini fridge is stocked with cow brains, why didn’t you just eat one of those!” “I don’t know! I was fuckin’ high! I was half asleep! I don’t fuckin’ remember!” Alf stands up and begins pacing their trashed penthouse suite. “Well, I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do…
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Big Baby McFuckface

     Lucy could hear noise coming from the kitchen      Click-click. Glug glug glug glug. “Ahhh.” Flick-flick. Phhhhh. “Ahhh.” Glug glug glug glug glug. “Bleeugh.” Crunk. Stomp stomp stomp. Pa-fff. Click-click. Glug glug glug glug.      She looked at the clock on her nightstand. It was six in the morning. Six in the morning and it had already begun. She was about to yell at him to stop smoking in the house, but Big Baby McFuckface beat her to it.      “Lucy! Lucy, goddammit! We’re almost out of beer. Beer beer beer beer beer!”      Big Baby started pounding on the table and cackling as he chanted.      “Beer beer beer beer beer! Ha ha hahaha! Beeeeeeer!”      “Oh for fuck’s sake!”      Lucy dragged herself out of bed and started pulling her clothes on. She’d ignored Big Baby in the past…
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