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 and the results had been disastrous. He was a loud drunken idiot, but like a real baby, he could be extremely devious and manipulative. And destructive.

     “I know where the keys are Lucy. Lucy! Ha ha hahaha!”

     Lucy collected her purse and threw on an overcoat. Big Baby was sitting at the kitchen table in the same filthy bathrobe he’d been wearing for the last three months. At least he changed his underwear sometimes.  

     “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

     “No, Lucy. No no no no no. You should be ashamed of yourself. Yes, you! Fuck you, Lucy!”

     He threw an empty beer can at her. It bounced off the side of her face.

     “You think the cameras will stop me? I’m not the one who cares, Lucy. I don’t have a god, Lucy. Lucy!”

     “What!”

     “Cigarettes. Don’t forget.”

     “Could you please at least not smoke in the house?”

     “I could do that, Lucy. Yes I could.”

     “Will you please go outside to smoke?”

     “I could do that. What’s in it for me, toots?”

     Big Baby slammed down the rest of his beer, moved to the fridge, and grabbed another. Click-click. Glug glug glug.

     “Ahhh. You’re looking mighty haggard in that overcoat, wifey. Just the way I like it.”

     He leered at Lucy and grabbed her ass as she turned her back on him to open the front door.

     “Roger! Don’t touch me!”

     “You like it. Ha ha hahaha!”

     If she didn’t drive, he’d find the keys and drive. If she didn’t buy him beer, he’d scream and pound the table until the neighbors called the cops.

     It hadn’t always been this way. They’d had a good marriage, they’d loved each other. After three years, he’d suddenly changed. On the first day, a Friday, she’d thought it was a joke. After a week, she’d thought it was a midlife crisis. Everyone is entitled to a major flip out every now and then. If ditching work for a week to get drunk was the worst of it, that wasn’t really that bad. After a month, she’d tried an intervention. She’d tried to get him into counseling, to see a psychiatrist. She’d even tried calling the police, but technically, Roger wasn’t doing anything illegal. At least not until he’d tried to drive himself to the liquor shop and crashed the car into a neighbor’s house. She’d had to quit her job to watch him. He’d promised her that he would do it again, that he’d steal a car if he had to, and maybe even crash it into someone she actually liked next time.

     She’d put webcams up all over the house and started a YouTube channel, “Big Baby McFuckface” in order to try to pay the bills and maybe shame him into behaving himself.

     Six months had passed and nothing had changed. Except now, they, and particularly she, was the object of public scorn.

     Why do you stay with him? What’s wrong with you? Is this real? This can’t be real? That guy is hilarious. Where did he get the bathrobe? I had an uncle like that. If I had to live with him I’d kill myself. Why don’t you just leave? Why are you enabling him? What did you do to make him so crazy?

     This was the gist of the comments, minus some grammatical errors and hatred.  She’d tried to interact with the commentators, a free online marketing site had advised her to and honestly, she’d wanted to explain herself, or rather, at least unburden herself to someone. But Big Baby had ruined that, too.

     “I know a lot of you are wondering why I don’t leave, or why I don’t move back with my family. Well, believe it or not, Roger and I love each other very much, we were very happy – “

     “Ha! It’s her stupid god! Tell them, Lucy! Ha ha hahaha! Her god won’t let her leave me, no matter what I do!”

     “Roger – ”

     “Oh shut the fuck up. And we’re almost out of beer.” Roger started pounding on the walls as he paced back and forth and chanted. “Beer beer beer beer beeeeeeer!”

     Lucy noticed a man watching her as she loaded her shopping cart with beer.

     “You’re that lady, right? Big Baby McFuckface? Or his wife?”

     Lucy clenched her fists. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in forever.

    “I’m sorry, I know it’s none of my business. Well, technically, it kind of is since you put it up on YouTube, but what I mean is, why don’t you just start acting just like him? I mean, if you can’t beat him, and you’re going nuts anyway?”

     She’d gotten the same advice in the comments, but had never taken it seriously until now. She hadn’t realized that she was in purgatory, that this might very well go on until she either killed him or he drank himself to death. She had stuck to buying beer for him to keep him relatively sane, but who the hell was she kidding?

     “Ahhh. Wifey is home. Lucy Lucy Lucy. And Lucy brought Baby the good stuff!”

     He snatched the fifth of bourbon from her and tore it open. Lucy removed a bottle of vodka and did the same, took some orange juice from the fridge, and sat down across from him at the table.

     “Oh Lucy. Oh no no no no no. I thought you had more sense than this. You will live to regret this, ha ha hahaha!”

     Lucy knocked down her drink and made herself another.

     “I regret the day I ever met you.”

     “Oh Lucy. Which Lifetime movie did you filch that line from? All of them? Try this one.”

     Big Baby cleared his throat and looked into her eyes.

     “I. Never. Loved. You. Never. Look into my eyes. Never. Tell me it isn’t true.”

     “Roger, what the hell happened? Why did you become like this?”

     “Are ya gonna cry, Lucy? Lucy! Ha ha hahaha!” Roger took an enormous pull from his bourbon and started pounding on the table.

     “Beer beer beer beer beer!”

     “There’s beer in the fridge right behind you!”

     “Beer beer beer beer beer!”

     “Beer beer beer beer beer!” sneered Lucy.

     “Beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer – “

     “Alright! Alright goddammit!”

     Lucy got up to grab him a beer.

     “I wanted to switch to grape juice anyway.”

     “Sure ya did. And Lucy. Lucy!”

     “What!”

     “You can’t win, Lucy.”

     Big Baby lit a cigarette. He had lost weight, in the flickering of the flame she saw flashes of the man he used to be, the man she had decided to make a life with.

     “Roger, what happened to us? Did I do something? I don’t understand.”

     “I don’t understand either, toots. And the name is Baby, remember? Big Baby McFuckface. Great name, by the way.” Baby finished his beer and mashed the can against his forehead. Lucy rose to grab him another one.

     “Sit your ass down, Lucy. I want a beer, you’ll know about it. Oh you’ll know alright. Lucy!”

     “What!”

     “You’re starting to look sleepy, Lucy. It’s been awhile since you had a good night’s rest, and you never were a big drinker.”

     Lucy started to cry.

     “I just want to understand why you’re being like this, maybe I did do something? I thought we were happy. I, I – “

     Big Baby moved behind Lucy and started patting her shoulder.

     “Aww Lucy, ya big sap. It isn’t you, kid. I was always like this. Maybe I hid it better for awhile, but it wasn’t you.”

     “Why? And you’re being nice now, you don’t have to be like this, what’s wrong with you? Why are you torturing me?”

     “There there. There there. You go to sleep. It’s okay, I promise. I’ll behave today. I’ll give you a break for this one day. Maybe even more.”

     Big Baby led her into the bedroom and she collapsed into their bed, asleep before she hit the sheets.

     “Ha ha hahaha.” Big Baby whispered.

     Lucy woke up feeling somewhat refreshed despite her mild hangover. It was the first time she’d really slept in as long as she could remember. And it was quiet. She got up quickly and looked around. The quiet made her suspicious, she almost called out to Roger but stopped herself. It was better this way, if he was still passed out. Maybe she could get some work done.

     She opened up her laptop and checked her YouTube channel. She had posted a new video last night? She clicked it open. It was Roger. He was wearing a tuxedo, the tuxedo he had worn to their wedding, underneath his bathrobe.

     “I know a lot of you have a lot of questions. And one big question most of all. What does Lucy look like naked? Ha ha hahaha! That’s for another channel at another time, but here’s a sneak peek.”

     He grabbed a webcam and carried it toward their bed, then raised the camera to his face.

     “Gonna wanna drink for this.”

     The camera tracked his staggered movements into the kitchen.

     Click-click. Glug glug glug glug glug. “Ahhh.” Glug glug glug, Crunk. “Okay.” Click-click. “Here we go.”

     He crept slowly to the bedroom, whispering in a clipped British accent.

     “The Lucy is a solitary herbivore. Up until now, her nocturnal behavior has gone largely unobserved, as she must take great care to hide herself from predators.” Glug glug glug.

     He pulled off the bedsheet. Lucy was asleep on her face, her fat ass pointed up at the webcam.

     “Notice the stained and fraying pink panties, and the accumulating cellulite. Obviously, the Lucy has been under a great deal of stress. But still, the Lucy is not without a certain appeal”

     Lucy could hear herself snoring. She let out a loud fart in her sleep and Big Baby chuckled.

     “A better rested Lucy would never allow this kind of intrusion, but her extreme exhaustion, combined with her ill-advised drunkenness, has left her vulnerable.”  

     He turned and pointed the webcam back at himself, keeping her fat pink ass in the background.

     “Truly a remarkable specimen. Ha ha hahaha!”