Earworm

by Aaron Thomas Milstead

  My mind drifted to a food item known as a taco burger. It was served at a local establishment known as Taco USA which had gone out of business almost two decades before; undoubtedly beaten out by franchises such as Taco Bell, Taco Bueno, Taco Cabana, Del Taco, and other such creatively labeled establishments. This epic taco burger was served on a warm bun with a pile of seasoned hamburger meat and an excessive amount of shredded sharp cheddar cheese and a sprinkling of tomatoes and crisp lettuce and a fine dollop of cold sour cream. Most people ate it with a fork because it was difficult to get your mouth around. I imagined this and felt my stomach rumble. I yearned for a time machine. Now it isn’t that rare for someone to reminisce about the trappings of their past, hell, if the past decade could be summed up in one word it would probably be nostalgia.

  What made my sudden thought process a bit perplexing is that I hadn’t craved a hamburger, or any other red meat, in almost sixteen years. I had given up eating all warm-blooded animals and not regretted it a bit. This moral decision had been a result of my love of a pet pot-bellied pig named Humphrey and the realization that I had been consuming creatures that in many ways exemplified the qualities that I most admired—much more than the frailties which the humans around me constantly seemed to demonstrate. Humphrey was loyal, compassionate, and adored me. Each morning I awoke to his soft grunts at the foot of my bed as he rubbed his rough snout against my legs and urged me to tackle another day. How could I ever look at a ham sandwich in the same way again?

  A piece of bacon had been inexorably associated with the soft face of my best friend, so it wasn’t hard to redirect my culinary lust towards vegetables and fruits and primarily processed carbohydrates. Occasionally, I also indulged in fish, with their underdeveloped nervous systems which didn’t register pain, or pea brained chickens who were basically the vegetables of the animal world.

  That had been true for all those years, but suddenly what I wanted more than anything else in the world was to sink my jagged canine teeth into some moist, tender, hamburger meat and let the grease drip down my chin while I closed my eyes and orgasmically moaned, like I was lost in one of those creepy Calgon shampoo commercials. It was an almost overpowering urge that seemed so foreign, yet so true and undeniable.

  You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me.

  That fucking song had returned to my mind despite all of the stimuli around me. Had it ever even left?

  Maybe not.

  I felt an emptiness in my stomach and realized the throbbing in my head had increased and was striking me with the rhythmic intensity of a strobe light. I wondered if the Victanyl patch that was plastered across my right shoulder was running low on juice. The patch slowly released Fentanyl into my system and was supposed to be good for another three hours. Fentanyl is supposed to be about 100 times as potent as morphine and I was on the strongest patch, 100 micrograms released per hour, but over the last few weeks it did little to relieve a constant pain that made my worst hangovers from the past seem like a warm embrace.

  There were a few minor side effects that commonly came from using the patch: Somnolence, headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and constipation. Pink eye, loss of appetite, sedation, difficulty in sleeping, depression, generalized fear, confusional state, hallucinations, nervousness, involuntary shakiness, pins and needles, dizziness at heights, unpleasant sensations of irregular and/or forceful beating of the heart, high blood pressure, difficulties in breathing, diarrhea, dry mouth, reduced or absent saliva flow, stomach pain, indigestion, excessive sweating, skin reaction on the application site, itching, rash, skin reddening, muscle spasms, difficulty pissing, feeling unusually drowsy or tired, depressant effect on brain function, loss of physical strength, general discomfort or malaise, and a feeling of cold. Agitation, disorientation, euphoric mood, memory loss, decreased feeling of sensitivity, especially in the skin, fits that included clonic and grand mal seizures, speech disorders, a fall in blood pressure and heart rate, blueness of skin, impaired breathing or respiratory depression, bowel obstruction, eczema, and dermatitis: rash, skin reddening and itching was usually supposed to disappear within one day after the patch has been removed. Muscle twitching, male impotence, sexual dysfunction, skin reactions at the attachment site, influenza like illness, and especially ironic: drug withdrawal syndrome.

  I pretty much experienced all of those side effects except for the euphoric mood . . . lucky me.

  Some of the less common side effects were: Constriction of the pupil of the eye, irregular heartbeat, dilated blood vessels, respiratory arrest, too shallow or too slow breathing, which does not meet the needs of the body, hiccup, block of the digestion channel, generalized acute allergic reactions with a fall in the blood pressure and/or difficulty in breathing including anaphylaxis/anaphylactic reactions, delusional ideas, states of excitement, confusion, poor vision, painful bloating, reduced urine excretion, and urinary bladder pain.

  You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me.

  Wolf was having a debate with a viewer named DDmantits about whether a Hellion or a Man-at-arms was a superior tank, Darkside Dan was fist pumping because he had finally managed to kill a particularly nasty griffon, and Tom Haverford was lamenting how his girlfriend had broken up with him.

  I slid a hot-pocket into the microwave, then I pulled out my cellphone and texted Dare: Hey, how are you doing?

  I stared at the screen and waited for it to vibrate in my hand and her response to pop up. I could hear the chorus of voices around me, but I felt so lonely. Sometimes her responses were almost instantaneous, but lately she had left me hanging for longer and longer. It was almost as if she was weening me off her.

  More likely it was that she was weening our daughter off me. Under the auspice of the time apart necessary to evaluate the future of our relationship Dare had started by moving me into the pool house, but letting me eat all of the meals with them in the main house. A week later she told me that her mother was going to be spending the evenings with them and that I could only eat dinner at the main house every other night. A week later she told me that I had offended her mother and could only eat dinner with them on Wednesday nights, when her mother would be eating dinner at a local Italian restaurant known as Auntie Pastas. My offense was never clarified, but I imagine it was simply my presence, which her mother had never truly tolerated. In the past her mother’s flagrant disapproval of my very existence was a dynamic that Dare admired, but suddenly the tides had shifted, and her mother’s approval was important.

  I could look out my window and see their house less than a football field’s distance away from me. They were probably eating dinner, or maybe she was giving Shadow a bath and getting ready to read her a story before bed. Our daughter’s given name was Shaddox, a tribute to her mother’s maiden name, but we both called her Shadow.

  My phone vibrated. It was kind of a rough day. Shadow has some kind of stomach bug.

  I imagined Dare out there in the house—she would be sitting on the edge of our bed while she typed. She would most likely be wearing the flannel pajama pants with the snowflake design and the pink draw string. A tank top stretched tight against her ample bust. Her long red hair pulled back in a ponytail, the left side of her head shaved clean in a punk/hipster fashion. Her eyes would be green, because they always shifted to green when she was sick or tired and back to a light blue when she was well rested or particularly happy. I hadn’t seen her blue eyes in a long time, maybe back before she had become pregnant.

  I thought about typing: I want to see your blue eyes again. I wondered if she would think it was romantic or desperate. I wasn’t willing to risk it so I sent her: I hear that a bug has been going around.

  A moment later my phone vibrated: Maybe we need to quit doing the Wednesday dinner. It’s kind of awkward and I’m afraid it’s confusing Shadow.

  I felt a sudden weight on my chest and realized I had forgotten how to breathe properly. My throat felt like it had closed and some invisible s
pirit was pinching my nostrils. It was as if I had fallen into the swimming pool outside and sunk to the bottom. Maybe the pool man would find me . . . No, I realized, I’m the pool man.

  Breathe. You’ve got a friend in breathe. You’ve got a friend in breathe.

  I took a quick breath and felt my chest shudder, then realized my eyes had watered, probably in response to my oxygen deprivation. I took several more quick breaths and then a long one. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, and I couldn’t say I hadn’t been warned, it was one of the many possible side effects of my pain patch.

  I stared at the words on my phone and carefully formulated a proper response and finally sent: Please.

  A moment later my phone vibrated. Okay . . . But we really need to talk about things. We can’t go on like this.

  I took a deep breath and sent: Okay.

  You’ve got a friend in breathe.

  I was thinking ‘bout her, thinkin’ bout me,

  Thinkin’ bout us, what we gon’ be,

  Open my eyes yeah, it was only just a dream.

  So I traveled back down that road.

  Will she come back? No one knows.

  I realize, yeah, it was only just a dream.

  —Nelly

  3.

  Childhood Innocence

  I recognize that there isn’t a bigger turnoff than when a person leads off a conversation with: You have to hear about this dream I had last night! Even in a world filled with narcissists, such a proclamation is the mark of a true douche, but I hope you will make allowances in this particular instance. My therapist might have said that dreams are the mind’s way of processing subconscious thoughts. In that way, a dream is kind of like a person having a conversation with themselves, though often through abstract images and convoluted narratives. And sometimes they are so coded that the conversation might seem preposterous or even insane.

  So anyways, you have to hear about this dream I had last night!

  My dream started off so predictably that Dr. Phil could have interpreted it, but don’t worry it’s going to take a few turns that would leave Freud shrugging his shoulders while puffing on a penis-shaped cigar. I was lost in a dark void and then faint light shone through what appeared to be vast tendrils above me, but I quickly realized they were just the branches of the pine trees which stretched all around me. I was out somewhere in the woods. My feeling of fear was based on the fact that I was just a little child and I had been . . . . Drum roll, please: abandoned.

  Abandonment.

  Like my parents had abandoned me: my mom died when I was three and Frank (the name of my male biological antecedent) was rarely in the picture on account of his persistent alcohol, gambling, sex, and drug addictions. Of course, more recently and certainly more relevantly was how my wife had followed suit and actualized my worst fears. In the dream I was looking for my mom, but maybe Freud would argue that I could have been looking for Dare, or maybe there wasn’t even a difference.

  Whatever.

  I was terrified and even though I felt utterly alone, I was also aware of some malignant force that was watching me from out in those cold shadows. I shivered and what I first mistook as a chill breeze was actually a whisper that emanated from the darkness and swirled around me like liquid smoke.

  You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me.

  Where had I heard that before? It was only a thought, not audible, but nonetheless a voice in the darkness answered.

  “You heard me say it, dumbass.”

  I was struck with the realization that I couldn’t have heard that particular song as a child, because I was a grownup when Toy Story came out. Was a grownup? I stared down at my small hands and fragile arms and my untied Converse and realized this couldn’t be happening. I was on the verge of the further realization that I was simply dreaming when a figure stepped out of the shadows and snapped my attention back into the moment.

  It was a figure designed to promote happiness and ease, but as I stared at him I was struck with a primal fear usually reserved for coiled snakes and slithering creatures that hide in the deepest parts of a dark ocean. His skin was impossibly smooth and unblemished by pores. The faint light shone on his rosy cheeks. He stood no more than a foot tall, but his slumped shoulders and wide eyes indicated a supreme confidence. He wore a yellow checkered country style shirt with a ridiculous vest made from the skin of a dairy cow. His boots and hat and belt buckle screamed cowboy, and this motif was further emphasized by his holstered gun, the red bandana wrapped around his throat, and the golden spurs at his ankles. Everything about him was too clean and precise to be real and, of course, he wasn’t real. He was a puppet that very poorly simulated life.

  I gawked at him and he stared back at me with wide eyes, unobstructed by lids. After a moment he looked down at his body and raised his feet and waved his arms and his wide smile shifted to an exaggerated frown. I watched his mouth and wondered if he had individual teeth; there was a flicker of a tongue somewhere within that cavernous opening. He pointed at his head and asked, “Jesus Christ, man, what am I supposed to be? A fucking puppet?” I flinched. It felt profane to hear a symbol of childhood innocence cursing. He shook his head sadly and asked, “What kind of sick shit are you into? Who am I?”

  I shrugged and said, “You’re Woody.”

  “Woody?” he asked. “Are you talking about a boner? Like a hardon? Am I like the personification of an erection?”

  “No,” I assured him. “Your name is Woody.”

  He shook his head and the cowboy hat dipped down over his eyes. “No it’s not. If you think so, that shits on you, my appearance is a manifestation of . . . Never mind, my name is Bogart.”

  “Okay,” I said. I stared at his small gun and wondered if it shot real bullets or if it used caps or maybe when he pulled the trigger it just shot out a flag that read: BANG!

  Bogart waved his hand and said, “Are you staring at my pecker? Focus, kid. You may not realize it yet, but you are in some deep shit.”

  Deep shit? My mind drifted and I realized I wasn’t a child at all. I was a middle-aged man who had been beaten down by the world. My perspective shifted and I realized that Bogart looked even shorter, though of course it was me that had grown. I stared down at the cowboy puppet. “Yeah, I’m in deep. I’m dying.”

  “Dying?” The puppet laughed and I realized that the familiar voice was Tom Hanks. Bosom Buddies. Splash. Sleepless in Seattle. Forest Gump. Saving Private Ryan. Castaway. Joe versus the— “Dying is the least of your worries, kid.” The puppet made a thumbs up and drew it across the length of his throat. “Try being murdered on for size.”

  “Murdered on for size?”

  Bogart tapped the grip of his gun. “It’s a figure of speech, wise ass. I’m telling you that someone is going to try to ice you . . . give you one of those permanent smiles that spreads from ear to ear and opens you up like a Pez dispenser.”

  The fear returned and I glanced into the woods, but I could only see cold darkness. “Who?”

  Bogart shrugged and said, “Therein lies the rub. It could be anybody: your closest childhood friend or the homeless guy who you occasionally see jerking off behind the 7-Eleven.”

  “How do you know about Walter?” I asked.

  Bogart frowned. “The greater question is: how do you know that the pervert’s name is Walter?”

  “He’s a disabled veteran,” I said defensively. “He went to my elementary school and I knew him a little bit . . . He was actually kind of a bully back then, but now he can barely get around and he has the functional IQ of a child. Word around town is that he suffered some massive head trauma after he stepped on a landmine and now his diminished intelligence and peculiar habits are a result of that.”

  Bogart nodded, causing the cowboy hat to fall further and completely cover his wide eyes and pointed nose. All I could see was his two perfect lines of teeth and a darting tongue. “My question was actually rhetorical, but since you want to play the shame game
, let’s quit bullshitting each other. You are going to learn pretty soon that out of everyone, I’m the only one you can’t bullshit. The truth is . . . down in places you don’t want to acknowledge, it makes you feel good to see Walter all fucked up like that.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Yes way,” Bogart said. “Who’s to blame you? Back in second grade the bastard put your head in the toilet and an enormous turd touched your mouth. When he pulled your head out you realized that your best friend, Brad Burgess, was laughing along with him. You hid behind the back of the school and they had to call your Uncle Dan to pick you up. Dan wasn’t much nicer than Walter and his idea of protecting you was to beat all the sensitivity out of you. He figured the threat of a beating from him would convince you to stand up to the bullies in your life. Irony can be so ironic.”

  “But it didn’t work,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Bogart said. “What could that dildo have known about sensitivity? To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

  “How do you know that about me?” I asked. “I’ve never told anyone that.”

  Bogart smiled. “I’m learning all kinds of things about you. More and more each second. You’ve been through some shit, kid, but try to let all that stuff go. What you need to fixate on is just one thing. You are in . . . ”

  I awoke, but I could still hear his last word reverberating in my ear. Danger. Danger. Danger. I was in danger.

  Here come the man, with the look in his eye.

  Fed on nothing, but full of pride.

  Look at them go, look at them kick.

  Makes you wonder, how the other half live.

  The devil inside, the devil inside.

  Every single one of us, the devil inside.