With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer

by J. R. Hamantaschen

  He crested the hill overlooking his destination. Alexander, formerly Steven Acevedo —the unloved, overworked and underappreciated former line cook at the Deer & Fox — prepared to stride into battle. Let the history books forget how he arrived this day, the undignified means of last resort: literally walking several miles along the shoulder of Route 6. Let the royal decrees leave that out: Steven’s broke ass seeking his revenge on foot, all those cars full of spoiled housewives giving him dirty looks because walking in suburbia is for poor people and because God forbid this town have a working bus system.

  Steven’s car had been out of commission for over two months now. His car troubles were a source of inexhaustible amusement to the rest of the staff. “Is his car back on the road yet,” someone in the kitchen would ask, as if he wasn’t right there. “Close,” someone would reply. “It’s in the driveway.” Even the people who didn’t speak English would join in on that. It was a joke to everyone, from the manager — who is supposed to be fair and impartial, who is supposed to put a stop to that sort of harassment; and maybe if you fucking paid me a little more I’d have the car on the road and be able to make it on time — to the pretty hostesses, to the others in the kitchen who were supposed to be his family.

  He’d laugh off the jokes at first and tease back, but he wasn’t good at it; he was too transparent, it was obvious how much it burned him up. He’d liked working as a cook, he read books about the industry; there was supposed to be a sense of camaraderie between all the staff. And he’d been there longer than most (granted: there was a high turnover), but there didn’t seem to be enough deference; a couple of people teased him and all the new guys thought it became the thing to do, the bypass for bonding.

  And then, to think, all the people he’d bum rides from quit or leave town in a matter of weeks, and he has no way to get on time other than the impossible, terrible bus system, and he’s late enough times and he’s fired, just like that. All those motherfuckers still talking about him, no doubt. He doesn’t have anything: no education, no family, no nothing, except that job. And where were they? They were supposed to be family, right? They sweat together, hustled together, bled and burned their skins together.

  And he was good at it, goddammit. As much as everything about it sucked, he loved that place.

  He looked down at hands outstretched before him and watched the forms take shape. He had what appeared to be an undulating baseball poking out just beneath his skin, cresting and falling like a lapping wave. He pivoted and flexed his sore right thumb. Black mist sprayed out with each flex. It reminded him of a cartoon choo-choo train belching smoke. It even made a faintly audible gusting sound, like a stuffed nose on a winter’s day. He didn’t know if he chose to make that noise, willed it, or if whatever was allowing him to do this had access to some remote memory of a cartoon choo-choo train and fashioned this to amuse him. He didn’t care, really.

  He’d woken up one day having already come to terms with it.

  He’d been fired ten days ago. He’d spent the first weekend getting drunk and feeling sorry for himself, cursing himself, cursing this place. Monday, he found himself instinctively waking up for his morning shift, as if he needed to be somewhere.

  Then one day that week he looked in the mirror and saw one of those composite posters looking back at him. There are those posters, he didn’t know how they were made or how to describe them, but those posters where one larger identifiable image was made up of several smaller images of the same person in different poses. Half the time, the subject of the poster was Bob Marley, for some reason. He didn’t know why.

  Well, that had been him one morning. Except the smaller images weren’t him, but a shoulder comprised of egg-shaped black orbs, beady eyes of succulent blueberries, a tornado of angular, writhing shapes for a torso. He had opened his mouth in surprise, convinced this was a dream but still playing along, and his tongue was an oversized squamous brick yet still somehow fit fine in his mouth. Tendrils of thick grain — cookie dough, he thought — pushed their way out from under his nails, flapping a bit like Spanish moss in a breeze. They extended down to the grubby floor of his basement apartment. When they reached the floor, the tendrils flowed back upward, unseen, through his fingers, burning a bit like fluid through an IV tube, traversing through canals in his fingers and arms he never knew he had, or never had before.

  That morning, he’d made five strands of finger-dough rise up and vibrate like slithering snakes. The egg-shaped black orbs underneath his shoulders bore no faces but he knew they were directing their attention to him. His nails painlessly burst open with appendages the color of cobalt, the shape of carrots, the texture of glass. Then they retracted and his old nails were there again.

  The constituent parts of his new body had explained everything to him. They’d done that trick with his nails because it knew he’d think it was cool. It’d made him feel comfortable. Wolverine, bitches. Snchict!

  Sometimes dreams do come true.

  He stared at the restaurant. Kind of pathetic, he thought, all this power for such an unworthy target. In movies, to show a character is good, mature and above-it-all, the character will have the opportunity to take revenge and get his justice and then, nah, pass. Like, saying “you’re beneath me.”

  Like anyone would do that. That’s why those are movies, and this is real life.

  Two pillars of crooked bone protruded up out of his shoulders, tapped three times — click, click, click — crossed each other like whirling scimitars, and popped back into place. That was cool, like he was a super soldier or something, a samurai.

  He wanted an adjustment to his face, something to scare the shit out of people right before he killed them — wanted his mouth to spread out like the wings of a manta ray, little suckers and teeth embedded into his checks. But he couldn’t will that, for some reason.

  He went down on his knees like this was the culmination of a life-long quest, like he was nothing but a modest servant fulfilling the calling of a higher power, seeking to set order to a universe gone wrong.

  His elbows shook and clicked and chattered like they were filled with rattling dice.

  This was going to be great.

  >< >< ><

  This was going to be awful.

  He forced himself to complete the task as quickly as possible. There wasn’t even that dreadful couple of seconds of anticipation, when the bathroom door closes and the other occupants enjoy their last seconds of calm before the embarrassing multi-tonal timbre of horrific noises. Between the time he closed the stall and the time he started, someone listening in from outside could be excused for wondering if he’d even had time to take his pants off before the wholesale slaughter began.

  His cacophony of embarrassing bathroom noises right now were bad enough that he wanted to ask his father about stomach problems running in the family. It sounded like an old man coughing up his soup.

  Oh god, what relief.

  He didn’t even look in the toilet afterward. That was a first. Maybe that signaled something, growing up, step one into overcoming his weird phobia and this obsession of his. The bowel movement had gone on for so long and with such intensity that he half-expected the contents to ascend vertically and carry him straight up to the ceiling, like Scrooge McDuck astride his overflowing lucre.

  With his bowels released, he felt a dormant gurgle of hunger pangs, as if the body stored pre- and post-digested food in the same area. Pro tip to remember: whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances, come out of the bathroom and mention that you have just become hungry.

  He made sure he was as clean as possible, which accounted for his excessive flushing. There were certain tips and tricks he lived by. One of them was a commitment to being a devoted over-flusher. He flushed so much whenever he used the bathroom that he worried that one day some environmentalist would overhear him and accuse him of wasting water (“fuck off, go after someone who
uses a humidifier,” he already had his riposte prepared). Better to be safe than sorry: the only thing worse than having to be occupied in a toilet stall on a date is to be identified as the person responsible for clogging the toilet. He always flushed post-movement, and then after every 2-3 toilet paper deposits. He figured that should be common practice, though more often than not someone sharing the bathroom with him when he was washing his hands at the sink would give him a sideways glance, borne of curiosity, of this unassuming man who deemed it appropriate to flush 3-4 times. What horrors had taken place behind those closed doors, he imagined them thinking.

  He could nod in agreement with his Green friends and “like” articles online about the need for conservation, but a small plot of virgin Amazonian rainforest was torn asunder for the exclusive use of his asshole.

  Oh my god.

  He felt the expected stimulus one expects while wiping. But outside his ass, not inside. There was a sensation that should not be. While parting his matted posterior hair, there was, enmeshed within and between, the tactile sensation of plowing through a nugget of hot mud. No, no it can’t be. The human body could not allow this, no matter how hairy or overgrown he was back there. Millions of years of human evolution should provide for, at the very least, the human body not providing its own hair hammock for feces to rest in.

  Oh my god.

  This date was over. It just had to be. How could he recover from this? And no matter how diligently he worked at cleaning himself, could he ever be sure? Any time she wrinkled her nose or smelled her entree, could he rest assured that she was not aware of the rancidity wafting between them? How many times would he need to check his feet to make sure no feces-encrusted toilet paper dangled from his shoes? Or — God — worse, that there were no smelly remnants on his clothing.

  It wasn’t fair. They were so aligned. It couldn’t be, it’s just not fair, that this was to befall him on this day, on this date, with this woman, who otherwise should be so perfect for him. He was a good person who tried; he was good-looking, 6’3”, broad-shouldered and well-groomed.

  But this was unrecoverable. This was a dumpster fire. This was shitting the bed.

  No, worse — shitting yourself.

  >< >< ><

  Hoodie up over his head like a cloak, arms outstretched in the middle of the dining area. Alexander stood between tables; a server he didn’t recognize leaned to the right carrying a jug of ice water. He intuited that she rolled her eyes as she made her way around him, made a vowel-less expression and a face reading “some fucking people,” that insta-expression that servers made whenever they were briefly interrupted in their duties, that immediately dissipated as they continued their mad scramble dash that was the dinner time rush.

  “Sorry,” he said meekly, instinctively cowered, and immediately regretted it.

  “Excuse me! Everybody!” he bellowed. “Everybody!” he called out again, this time pointing down at himself while he spoke, as if it wasn’t clear where the focus of the attention should be. “Every…BODY! Errr … Now that I have your attention … In our life and times, there comes a time when enough is enough. Where there’s only so much you can take....”

  >< >< ><

  “Ohmygod, ohmygod.” He scrubbed at himself, that hopeless scrubbing you do when you get a fresh stain on a new white button-down and you know it won’t work but just hope it does, this time. He even ran out and dotted toilet paper with sink water. He was, quite literally, rinsing his ass out while on a date.

  >< >< ><

  The restaurant-goers looked at Alexander blankly. Some checked in for the beginning of his spiel, concluded it was something they wanted no part of, shook their heads and went back to their meals. Crazy panhandlers in restaurants now? Others kept their gaze, curious but hesitant. Other tables chatted excitedly about the upcoming, unexpected show.

  “Only so much you can take. This place, this restaurant, it’s treated me so badly. So, so … unjustly.”

  “Save it for Yelp!” a girl’s voice rang out from the back.

  Laughter.

  “Quick, someone get that guy a refill,” someone else shouted from the same vicinity, his joke not landing as well as the Yelp Girl’s.

  Alexander paused, then continued. “How much injustice, how much embarrassment, how much wrongness, is one person expected to take?”

  “So what he’s asking is — ‘who’s coming with me?’’’ More laughter. He heard competing laughter and interpretations from the audience, some people repeating the line in a Jim Brewer space-cadet haze, others adopting the original version’s pathetic, intense neediness.

  “What justice is —” He felt overheated and small, pathetic even in his moment of glory.

  >< >< ><

  Bryce continued to clean himself off. He disentangled some small pebbles, shards of sharp crustifed shit that reminded him of cleaning out specks of glass from a broken light bulb. Had there been times when he felt discomfort while sitting, thinking maybe he was sitting on his keys, when in reality it was the gravel-like friction of accumulated shit debris? Could such a thing be possible? Could it be possible that he was someone who showered every day, made reasonable efforts to live up to basic standards of hygiene, yet found himself in such a situation?

  Come to think of it, anal hygiene and cleanliness is something no one ever taught him or talked to him about. He remembers being a little boy and complaining about being itchy back there, and his mother explaining how you need to make sure you’re clean back there, otherwise the “stuff” (as she called it) back there will make you itch. Were there other life lessons he didn’t know about? Should he be clipping himself back there, much the way some men clip their pubes? Should he get a dedicated razor?

  >< >< ><

  No one laughed, no one catcalled anymore, not after he covered his face with his hands, gnawed on his fingers, and spit and flung wildly as much liquid outpourings as he could.

  The response started as laughter and coursed swiftly into horror. “Jesus Fucking Christ,” someone said.

  “Manager, manager, someone get the manager! This isn’t funny, I’m having a pleasant meal, this isn’t the time for … this performance art,” someone stammered.

  The restaurant had windows that allowed some of the remaining natural light to stream in. On the upper corner, where the ceiling met the wall, hovered a red, humanoid creature. It made its entrance without fanfare, without acknowledgment. Just slowly, someone spotted it, and pointed it out to someone else, who pointed it out to someone else, until the restaurant was abuzz with excited chatter and cackles, but of the kind that is obviously tense. A loud scream or shriek would put people over the edge.

  “Ahhh, ladies and gentleman and assorted assholes of all types, our first guest,” Alexander stretched out his hands like a celebrity television host. “For my first trick, a blast from the past, a special guest from Ghouls and Ghosts. I’m sure some of you stupid hipsters remember that game, right?”

  The creature was just there, as if treading water, but in the air. It stood maybe four feet tall, but that was hard to tell as it was not standing upright. It had deep red, rough skin, with light blue bracelets on both ankles and on both wrists, and oversized gray bat wings, the breadth of which probably matched the creature’s height. The color coordination was odd and unexpected and was the subject of a couple quick observations and jokes. What also caught everyone’s eye was its nudity — other than those bracelets, it was entirely naked, yet it had no discernable genitalia, but only a rounded nub, like a Ken doll.

  It moved, but inorganically, in a pattern. Its short, hooked arms and legs kicked in-and-out, its wings flapped rhythmically, but there was absolutely no variation in the pumping neither of its limbs nor its wings. It was on auto-repeat. And it just hung there, in space, with no whooshing of air or sound coming off its flapping. Its face was rough, its mouth a perplexing gash somewhere betwee
n grimace and smile, and its nose was bulbous and uncomfortably hooked. It just stayed up there, pumping its limbs, pumping its wings.

  Someone clapped and hooted. “Yeah!” a crowd of guys yelled.

  “Do Mario next!” a girl who knew nothing about video games yelled, the equivalent of yelling “Free Bird.”

  “Bowzer!”

  “Bowzer!,” Alexander yelled back in a pitch and intensity that was all wrong for jocularity. “What else do you retards want!”

  Somehow, more than the grisly display and unexplainable creature flying overhead, the use of the politically incorrect term ‘retard’ did the most to signal to the crowd that something was dangerously off-course.

  “So if you remembered, when the knight in Ghouls and Ghosts got hit, his armor would fly off! And when he got hit without armor, he turned into bones. Let’s see what happens if one of you morons gets hit.”

  The red demon assumed a sitting position and floated in the air, moving horizontally toward the center of the restaurant, still well above all the diners. This was too much now, and a huge exhalation went out from the crowd, now could be heard “oh my gods,” and loved ones clutching each other tighter to reveal that they were scared, this was no longer fun or funny. The creature’s expression never changed. It moved its arms in a robotic, almost jaunty fashion, and swooped down in an arc like a pendulum.

  Still flying, but now at ground level, people shouted and shrieked. Some were stunned and confused at how, despite being closer, they could not make out much more detail about this unwanted guest. It hovered close to the ground, in a straight uninterrupted line, as if it was taking off on a runway. Then its direction arced, as if it was taking off to the ceiling again.

  It made its way toward a table of three, and it collided with the unfortunate, most smartly under-dressed hipstery kid of the bunch. Most people instinctively averted their gaze from what they suspected would be the undignified, chaotic crunch and tumbling of bones and bodies. The creature didn’t even register the collision, the arc of its flight completely unaffected.