Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People

by Douglas Coupland

  “Oh my god. He’s coming towards our table.”

  “Run!”

  So Hans was a little lonely, but at least he had the Internet to keep him company, and after a few months, his presence became invisible and forgotten as everyone learned to completely ignore him.

  And then one day, Mindy from the cheerleaders’ table noticed that instead of tossing his trash in the garbage can after lunch, Hans saved the remains of his lunch in a paper bag—and not only that, he actually took bits of other people’s uneaten food and put it in his bag, too.

  “Ashley, look. There—he’s doing it right now.”

  “What a freak! Where does he come from?”

  “One of those countries where you buy your wife online.”

  “Ick.”

  “Look, he just put half an egg sandwich in his bag!”

  Soon the two cheerleaders were fascinated with watching Hans sneak food remains, and when he left the cafeteria, they decided to follow him.

  Hans walked past the baseball field and the dugouts where the kids on the failure track smoked cigarettes and swapped tips on how to get hired vacuuming interiors at the local car wash. Then he walked past the chop shop where stolen cars were taken apart to be shipped to Russia, and after that he crossed the dirt road pancaked with flattened small animals. Finally, he walked past the water reservoir tank in the unmown grasslands that swept out to the highway.

  “This is such a good place to bury a body,” said Mindy to Ashley, as they walked a safe distance behind Hans.

  “I agree,” said Ashley. “You can almost feel all the corpses of murdered nurses and hitchhikers under our feet.”

  “What’s he doing?” Mindy exclaimed.

  Hans was carefully unloading his bag of uneaten food onto the ground, arranging it into different piles: sandwiches, snack cakes, pudding and pudding type products and so forth. Then he started on the sandwich pile, separating luncheon meat in one pile, soggy bread in another.

  Mindy whispered, “Maybe it’s a religious thing.”

  “Maybe he’s into ecology,” Ashley said.

  “Do you think he’s murdered anybody?”

  “Don’t start a rumour yet, Mindy. Not until we see more of what he’s capable of.”

  “Now he’s repackaging all of the food groups!”

  “Weird!”

  Hans put the luncheon meats and meat-like products into a clear plastic zip-lock bag, bread into a paper bag. Each food category got its own bag.

  Then Hans gathered all of these bags inside the original big lunch bag and placed it in the centre of the clearing, laying a single french fry on top.

  Mindy and Ashley burst out from their grassy hiding spot.

  “Okay, there, Exchange Student Guy, we’re onto you. We know you’re doing something weird here.”

  Hans was perplexed. “I am doing nothing wrong.”

  “Don’t be cute with us. You’re doing something unusual. We don’t even know what to call it, whatever it is you’re doing.”

  Hans said, “I am playing an enjoyable game of Karkassetasche.”

  “What on earth did you just say?”

  “Karkassetasche. It’s a German word.”

  “We thought you were from one of those new countries where you buy your wife online.”

  Hans laughed. “No, I am from Germany. You still have to find a wife the old-fashioned way there.”

  Ashley asked, “Are you from the rich Germany or the poor Germany?”

  “Alas, I am from the former East Germany, although I have only ever known a unified Germany in my lifetime.”

  “Why did you put all of the food in separate bags inside a bigger bag?”

  “Ahhh … because of Karkassetasche, the game I invented.”

  “Does it involve murder or Hitler or anything?”

  “No. It only involves die Krähen.”

  “Dee what?”

  “Die Krähen—crows.” Hans pointed to a dozen crows sitting on the rim of the water reservoir tank. “Crows have an insatiable blood lust. I find it admirable: Blutrausch.”

  “You’re being too German for us,” said Mindy. “What’s this about crows and blood?”

  “Ah. You see, a crow will almost never kill another animal, but if it finds one that is already dead, it will gorge on its flesh, ripping out its internal organs in a spray of hunger and blood.”

  Ashley looked at Hans. “Crows sure are interesting.”

  “They are indeed … what is your name?”

  Ashley blushed. “I’m Ashley.”

  “Well, Ashley, my name is Hans. I find that if one wishes to have food re-enter nature, as opposed to simply putting it into a landfill, it is important to—”

  “Stop,” said Mindy. “Hans, you mean you’re green and you put your green way of being into actual practice in your everyday life?”

  “I try to.”

  “That is so adorable!” she exclaimed.

  Hans said, “I like to make sure crows are able to feast upon cafeteria leftovers. Hence, Karkassetasche.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means ‘carcass bag.’ ‘Carcass’ + ‘bag.’ I tap into the crows’ natural desire to rip apart carcasses. Were I to place food on the ground without the appropriate packaging, the crows would probably leave it.”

  “I would never have thought of that,” said Ashley, twirling her hair around a finger.

  Hans looked at the bag on the ground and moved the lone french fry on top slightly to the side.

  Ashley asked, “Okay, why the french fry?”

  “That is what I call the Auslöserkartoffel—the trigger potato. It alerts the alpha crow to the presence of rich, nourishing carrion within the bag.”

  “You’re so thoughtful,” said Ashley. “Let’s watch the crows rip apart the bag.”

  “An excellent idea,” said Hans. “If we hide, they will become suspicious, but if we stand over there and pretend not to notice them, they will fly in, like vampires from the moon, to satisfy their deepest need for dead flesh.”

  Ashley elbowed Mindy in the ribs. “He’s so poetic!”

  They moved to the edge of the clearing, and Hans said, “What shall we pretend to talk about?”

  “Don’t worry about that, Hans—we never talk about anything, really,” Ashley reassured him.

  “Look!” said Mindy. “The crows are coming!”

  And indeed, the crows were swooping down from the reservoir. The alpha crow cautiously approached the carcass bag and then ripped a huge gash across its belly, allowing its contents to spill onto the soil. Within seconds, all the crows were at it, ripping and tearing, gleefully and methodically gorging on its sweet, succulent contents.

  “They’re like my grandparents at the casino!” said Ashley.

  Hans, meanwhile, watched the trash hysteria with a sense of fatherly pride. “I am glad to make the world a better place.”

  Ashley looked at him, her eyes aglow. “I’m sorry you’re unpopular, Hans. But from now on, I’ll be your girlfriend and you’ll never have to worry about your popularity ever again.” And she kissed the now popular Hans as mayonnaise and ketchup flecks flew through the air, at which point Hans bit her on the neck. This surprised her, but in a good way. “Hans! You mean you’re a vampire on top of everything else?”

  “Indeed I am.”

  It was one of life’s perfect moments.

  Brandon,

  the Action Figure with Issues

  BRANDON KEPT TO himself after he returned from his tour of duty. His girlfriend had moved on with some guy who worked in a discount golf supply store, and when he spoke with her, in a half-hearted attempt to get her back, it felt like she wasn’t even a human being any more. Nobody seemed real any more—the people from his old life were walking ghosts he couldn’t connect with.

  Brandon found it easier to live by himself with his personal necessities stored and ready for action in a Japan Airlines business-class toiletry bag he’d found in the t
rash. That way he could be nimble if the situation changed wherever he was sleeping, which was mostly behind the juniper hedge at the public library, where the crows couldn’t get at him and rip away at his rarely washed fatigues.

  The library front desk let him use the bathroom in exchange for guarding the property from graffiti taggers. For money, Brandon foraged around under the seats of unlocked cars while their owners were in the library. He used the money to buy white bread and Campbell’s soup, which he ate straight from the can using his lucky spoon. His Friday afternoon treat was a stick of gum from that cute gal who worked at the Goodwill store, who seemed as if she kind of liked him, except she was obviously CIA, so no go.

  The winter had so far been mild, and Brandon thought he could continue with his highly mobile lifestyle indefinitely, never having to engage with human beings again. Then disaster struck in the form of a monster named Cooper.

  Cooper stayed in his mother’s SUV while she ran into the building to look for books about TED conferences. Cooper had tried to set his mother straight: “You’re being totally clueless, because the whole point of TED conferences is that they’re online and not books at all.”

  “Cooper, I’m too young to be just your mother and nothing else. I need something to feed my mind.”

  “Well, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for. You might as well try to look for TED slide shows as to look for TED books.”

  After Cooper’s mother went into the library, the boy searched the parking lot for something to occupy his enormous energy. He spotted Brandon behind the junipers, and he got out of the vehicle and went over for a closer look. Brandon would normally have been out of there like a shot, but he was having the sweats, a recurring condition he blamed on his mandatory anthrax vaccination back in ’08.

  Cooper grabbed Brandon. “Gotcha!”

  Before Brandon could react, Cooper had stuffed him into his school backpack and climbed into the car. When Cooper’s mother came back a minute later—carrying no TED books, as Cooper had predicted—Brandon’s angry protests were muffled by the backpack’s nylon fabric. Cooper’s mom assumed it was just music noise coming from the buds on Cooper’s iPhone.

  At home, Cooper went to his room on the third floor and took Brandon from his backpack and stuck him in a long vacant gerbil cage. “You need to dry out, Sarge.”

  “Sarge? You freak, my name is Brandon, not Sarge. Let me out of this thing.”

  “You want a presidential pardon, Sarge? I think not.” Cooper’s cellphone rang and he looked at its screen. “Oops … laser paintball starts in forty-five minutes. Gotta go. By the way,” he turned around, “I own you. You’re mine now.”

  After Cooper left, Brandon stood in the gerbil cage, wondering if what just happened really had happened. He briefly shook the tiny bars. Then he went to get some bread from his vinyl bag—which was when he realized it was still lying behind the hedge, where raccoons or drifters or small birds would soon loot it. He fell into deeper despair and paced amid the cage’s wood chips, which had a weird stench of powdered scrambled eggs and depleted uranium. The water bottle was empty. Brandon felt like it might be time to have the total inner collapse he’d been fearing ever since he saw two choppers collide over the munitions dump, causing a huge explosion, when he was stuck in a conked-out Jeep downwind and had to suck the whole mess into his lungs.

  But Brandon tapped inner reserves honed by his service career and his life of homelessness by choice. The hamster wheel gave him a chance to burn off some adrenaline and focus on what would come next. Running at full blast, he made an inventory of everything in Cooper’s room and began to plan.

  Brandon may have had issues, but he remembered that boys like to play rough with their action figures. He could handle rough as well as anyone else, but kidnapping, imprisonment and no drinking water? Vengeance, thy name is honey-sweet death. Stoked from his run, fuelled by rage and energized by not taking his daily medication on time, Brandon bent the gerbil cage’s bars and crawled out. He was free.

  From his past, Brandon knew how action figure enthusiasts think and what they love to do. His first target was Cooper’s chest of drawers. Beneath a mound of tube socks he hit pay dirt: a stash of twenty-four Mexican-made Halloween-grade M-80 cherry bombs with three-gram payloads. ¡Caramba!

  He bundled the explosives together with rubber bands and then crawled up the bookcase beside the door and made his HQ. There he assembled a cache including, among other things, a pillowcase, some string, a roll of duct tape and an unopened bottle of Polo cologne, an age-inappropriate gift from Cooper’s grandmother.

  Yes.

  Then he lay in wait for the boy to return from laser paintball. To Brandon it felt like waiting for Christmas morning.

  He heard the sound of feet on the stairs, then Cooper was yelling, “Fine! Go to your stupid serenity workshop! And take your reheatable shepherd’s pie with you. I’m sick of Whole Foods deli stuff, anyway. I’ll make myself some Kraft dinner!”

  The downstairs front door slammed shut and Cooper came into his room, muttering, “Stupid mother, stupid—”

  Pounce!

  Before Cooper could turn the lights on, Brandon had parachuted onto Cooper’s head with the pillowcase. Retrieving the duct tape slung over his shoulder, he quickly taped the pillowcase shut at the neck, screaming, “I didn’t go to war to fight for you, you parasite. You don’t deserve your freedom!”

  Cooper was hopping around, screaming, “Get off me! What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzip!

  A long strip of tape at mouth level muffled Cooper, but he continued to hop around, trying to scrape Brandon off his shoulders. With a tight grip on the edge of the pillowcase, Brandon rode Cooper like a buckaroo.

  Then he emptied the full bottle of cologne onto Cooper’s head. “Smell that, buddy? Smells like freedom, doesn’t it!”

  Brandon leaped to the floor and lassoed Cooper’s ankles together, causing him to trip face first onto the carpet. While he remained dazed, Brandon lashed Cooper’s hands together. Down came the M-80s, whose fuses he lit with a short-circuited wire ripped out of a lamp.

  The twenty-four mini-bombs went off beside Cooper’s head as Brandon barked, “Who owns who, huh? Who?” He ripped the tape off, but Cooper said nothing. In a burst of heat and light and smoke, the last of the M-80s went off.

  Brandon screamed, “Who. Owns. You?”

  “You do.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “You own me.”

  “Say it properly!”

  “Sir, you own me, sir.”

  Brandon cut off a lock of Cooper’s hair. “This is what’s known in the freedom business as a trophy.”

  He then cut Cooper loose and walked out the door.

  “All any of us want in life is freedom, son. You have a fine night.” With that, Brandon was gone.

  Cooper said, “Man, that guy has issues.”

  Cindy,

  the Terrible Role Model

  CINDY HAD BEEN a child star who experienced way too much way too early in life—money, fame, designer endorsements, fan mail from guys in jail—and she didn’t handle any of it well. It didn’t help that she also had terrible people around her who gave her bad advice and stole all the high-end items from her goodie bags at award shows, leaving behind the useless stuff like low-end lip balm, made-in-China key fobs and depressing medical research charity T-shirts. No one was surprised when, after a few years of this, Cindy came out of her fog of stardom to find that life had marooned her atop eleven-year-old Jennifer Gilroy’s suburban bedroom desk at 3:45 on a Wednesday afternoon, astride a unicorn plush toy, scrutinizing her increasingly raisin-like vinyl in Jennifer’s vanity mirror.

  When Jennifer came home from school, she found Cindy on her unicorn on the desk. “Hi, Cindy. How was your day?”

  “You look terrible,” Cindy said. “You went to school dressed like that?”

  “I thought I looked okay.”

/>   “Yeah, you do—assuming you want to scare guys away and don’t care about having any friends. Did you get me my nicotine patches?”

  “Yeah. But you should stop using them. Drugs are bad for you.”

  “I would end up getting stuck with Miss Goody Two-Shoes.” Cindy hopped off the unicorn, jumped off the desk and walked out of Jennifer’s bedroom, heading for the kitchen. “I hope your lush of a mother left some wine in the box.”

  “I had a great day, thank you, Cindy.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic with me, missy. It’s not your style.”

  Jennifer followed Cindy to the kitchen. “My mom doesn’t like it when you drink her wine,” she said.

  “Boo hoo. Listen to you, clomping your way around the place. You sound fat. Have you been gaining weight? Why do I even bother asking? Open the fridge door for me.”

  So Jennifer opened the door and Cindy hopped onto the fridge’s second level with a Shania Twain 2002 World Tour collectible thimble. She held it under the wine box’s spout and poured. She chugged one thimbleful and then poured another, which she drank more slowly.

  Jennifer said, “Do you think you should chug it like that? You don’t want to blow above 0.08 on the Breathalyzer.”

  “Don’t throw math in my face. I hate math. It’s hard, it’s stupid, and it’s nature’s way of separating spinsters from women who end up breeding.” She took another long sip.

  “Cindy, how come you never had any kids?”

  “You’re asking me for real?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Fine, then I’ll throw some math back at you: a woman’s body needs seventeen to twenty-two percent body fat in order to be able to have kids. I’ve never been higher than ten. Happy now?”

  “You could gain some weight.”

  “And wreck this body? What universe are you living in? Hey, is that onion dip I see on the shelf above me?”