Futures and Frosting

by Tara Sivec

  Why are munchkins so angry all the time? They’re in a club called the Lollipop Guild. The mother fucking Lollipop Guild! All lollipops all the time. Munchkins are ungrateful little bastards. Those lollipops died so you could be happy. RESPECT THE LOLLIPOP!

  “What in the mother fucking of all fucks happened here?” Carter asks as he steps into the kitchen of the shop.

  “Oh shit, the jig is up! HIDE THE COOKIES!” Drew yells as he belly flopped onto the floor and army crawls away as fast as he could.

  15. Just Say No to Necrophilia

  When my foreman had told me I could take the night off, I didn’t even take a breath or say a word to anyone. My work bag is slung over my shoulder and I'm racing through the plant before the guy even finishes his sentence. Being two people short, with Jim still on his honeymoon and Drew taking a vacation day, it's a rare thing to still have enough people to send someone home. There is no way I'm going to give anyone a chance to change their minds. All I can think about is going to see Claire.

  Too many thoughts have been running through my head all week and I just want to put my arms around her and get some reassurance that everything is okay between us. She’s been saying some really strange things ever since Liz and Jim’s wedding, and I can’t stop thinking about them.

  Does she really think marriage is stupid? Maybe her idea of happiness isn’t settling down with someone for the rest of her life. It’s not like her parents have given her any kind of good examples of finding the one you're meant to be with and spending forever loving them. They change spouses more than Drew changes his underwear. But I see her get misty eyed more than once while watching a wedding or a proposal on television when she thinks I'm not looking so I don’t think she's completely opposed to the concept.

  Shit, maybe it's just me she opposed to. Maybe she just doesn’t want to marry me. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. Everything about her makes me happier than I have ever been in my life. Becoming a father overnight is something I never thought I wanted but now know I can never live without. Ever since the wedding this past weekend, all I can think about is the way Claire looked standing in the middle of the dance floor holding that bouquet of flowers she had just caught.

  There had been a sparkle in her eyes and a smile on her face that lit up the room. It made me wish that it was our wedding we were at and that it was our celebration of love. I actually reached into my pocket to pull out the ring I always carried with me and panicked when I didn’t feel it in there. It took me a minute to realize I decided right before we walked out of the house that morning to leave it at home. I had been to enough weddings with Drew to know that there would be break dancing and tuxedo jackets swung around and didn’t want to chance losing the ring. After the way she reacted when she only thought Drew and Jenny might be getting engaged at the rehearsal dinner, I was glad I’d left the ring at home. Standing there and staring at her with a wedding bouquet in her hand had almost forced me to do something she’d hate, and I'd have no control over if that ring was in my pocket.

  Claire seems genuinely happy, aside from the past few days and the weird, off-the-wall comments she makes about marriage. Could it be that seeing her best friends get married has made her realize she’ll never have that for herself? She's watching porn in the middle of the night by herself while I'm at work. That’s either the sign of the apocalypse or I'm just not doing it for her. Jesus, maybe I need to up my game. She shouldn’t be watching porn alone unless I’m not enough for her.

  Am I not enough for her? WHY AREN’T I ENOUGH FOR HER? Why can’t she be happy with me instead of lusting after some actor on the television? Why, God, why? It’s not like those men are real anyway. Everything about them is fake, including their six pack abs and horse cocks. And seriously, who needs that much cock? Maybe she’s watching those men wishing I could learn some of those tricks. But come on, give me a break. No one is that bendy or has that much stamina. That’s what film editing is for. She probably thinks it’s not cheating since all she’s doing is watching them on TV but God dammit, she’s cheating with her MIND.

  Oh my Jesus. I think I just grew a vagina.

  I have to believe that if Claire is really that unhappy with me or my sexual prowess, she'd say something. Chicks like to tell you all the time what you’re doing wrong, don’t they? Why would Claire be any different? I’m acting like a giant pussy over this. We’re fine, she’s fine, I love her more than anything in the world, and I WILL make this proposal happen. Enough with the chicken shit stuff.

  I try calling Claire on the way out of work to see if she's still at the shop but her phone goes straight to voicemail. When I drive through town I see that her car is still parked out in front of the building, so I pull around back and go in through the back door that brings me into the kitchen.

  The sight before me leaves me speechless and confused. I really don’t’ know where to look first. There is chocolate splattered everywhere and as I take a step into the room, something covered in chocolate dripped down from the ceiling in front of me and lands by my foot with a plop.

  It's dead silent in the room which is my first clue that something is off; Claire always has music playing in the kitchen when she works.

  Actually, my first inclination that something isn’t quiet right is seeing Jenny sitting in the sink crying. My eyes pass right over Drew lying on his stomach on the floor lapping up a puddle of chocolate like a dog. That’s not something I haven’t seen before unfortunately.

  Since Jenny is closest to me, I start with her.

  “Hey, what’s going on? Why are you crying? More importantly, why are you crying in the sink?” I ask her as I reach in and scoop her out of the big, stainless steel commercial sink like a baby. It takes a few minutes to steady her once I get her on her feet. She clutches onto my shoulders and stares up at me.

  “I think Drew ate Claire,” she whispers. “She was sitting here a minute ago and then Drew said he was hungry and now she’s gone. He ate four batches of chocolate chip cookies and one batch of Claire.”

  Jesus God what the fuck is going on?

  I gently push Jenny away from me until her back is leaning up against the counter and I am certain she won’t fall. Turning around, I stare at the mess that has transformed this sparkling clean kitchen into a chocolate nightmare.

  Are those chocolate covered Twinkies stuck to the wall?

  I gingerly step around small puddles of melted chocolate on the floor, careful not to slip and fall, and make my way over to Drew who has given up sucking chocolate off of the floor and is now curled up in the fetal position asleep.

  “Hey, ASSHOLE!” I yell. “Wake up!” I shove the toe of my shoe into his stomach and push until he rolls over onto his back and lazily opens his eyes to look at me.

  “Duuuuuuuuude,” he says on an exhale of breath.

  “Don’t dude me. What the fuck happened here? Claire sent me a text a few hours ago that you were going to help her frost cookies. Why does it look like a bomb exploded?”

  Drew blinks a few times and shakes his head to clear out the cobwebs or whatever the fuck is in his brain right now sucking out all of the functioning parts.

  “Help me up so I can think,” Drew says as he sticks his arm up towards me.

  I shake my head in annoyance, grab onto his hand and yank him up off of the floor.

  “You’re hands are so soft. Do you moisturize?” Drew questions as he pets the top of my hand like a kitten.

  I rip my hand out of his grip and smack him upside the head.

  “Cocksucker! Pay attention!”

  Drew rubs the back of his head and glares at me.

  “Don’t get your panties all in a twist. Claire is in her office. She’s fine. Her dad is in there with her.”

  Okay, so it can’t be that bad if George is here.

  I leave Drew with Jenny so I can go in search of Claire. Jenny isn’t going to stop crying until she sees Claire with her own eyes and realizes she hasn’t been eaten.

>   Only in MY life would those words make perfect sense.

  Claire and Liz share an office and it is situated right in the middle of their connecting stores. They each have a door that leads into the office. It's really no bigger than a walk-in closet. It houses a computer table and chair, a loveseat, and two metal filing cabinets. I walk over to the closed door and press my ear against it trying to figure out if Claire and her father are in some deep discussion while all hell breaks loose in her kitchen. I’m pretty sure her father still plots fun and exciting ways to kill me so there is no way I'm going to interrupt them if that's the case. I don’t hear anything so I turn the knob and slowly open the door.

  I had to do a double-take when I see George curled up in a ball on the loveseat. How he had managed to get his six foot frame wedged in between the arms of that thing I will never know. I decide to let sleeping dogs lie for the moment and turn in a full circle, my eyes finally coming to rest on Claire.

  She's sitting on the floor behind the door with her knees pulled up to her chest. She has a spatula in one hand held out from her body with chocolate frosting dripping off of it and what looks like Drew’s iPhone pressed up against the wall with her other hand. Her eyes are glassy and vacant as she stares off into space, never once blinking as I walk up to her and crouch down in front of her.

  I don’t know what I'm dealing with here so I speak in a soft, calming voice. “Hey there, Claire. How are you doing sweetie?”

  She moans in response, but still doesn’t blink.

  I look over my shoulder and see George is still fast asleep. Obviously he isn’t going to be any help here.

  “Can you tell me what happened here tonight?”

  Another moan coupled with a bit of a whimper. Still no blinking.

  How long can someone go without blinking before they go blind?

  I feel like I walked into a horror movie and found the sole survivor of a serial killer rampage. I'm afraid to say the wrong thing for fear I’ll spook her and will never get to the bottom of the truth.

  “I ate cookies,” she finally mutters.

  “Wow, that’s great, sweetie,” I tell her kindly.

  I don’t really know if that’s great or not but at least she has ingested something that will sop up whatever it is that's turned these guys into chocolate covered zombies.

  “I don’t want to feel this anymore,” she says in a pitiful voice. “Make it stop.”

  Maybe I should try and get her to throw up. Should I stick my fingers down her throat? I’ve never done that before. Not even to myself. I’ve only ever tried to make Drew throw up, and usually all I have to do is talk about his grandmother having sex.

  I reach over and take the dripping spatula out of her hand and set it on the floor. I do the same with Drew’s cell phone, flipping it over first and noticing it's set to the BIC Lighter app, the fake flame flickering back and forth on the screen.

  “Honey, why are you holding Drew’s phone against the wall?”

  “I wanted to make hot. Stupid fight wouldn’t lire. Flight wouldn’t flier. Fire wouldn’t fire. Fire. Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire-”

  Sweet Jesus.

  I slide an arm between Claire’s back and the wall and bring her forward so she's leaning over her bent knees. Hoping she won’t hate me for this or bite me, I push my finger passed her lips and into her mouth. She blinks then and looks up at me, trying to focus on my face. My finger is in her mouth but she won’t open her lips, they just stay wrapped around my finger while she squints and tries to see me better.

  I wiggle my hand and try to push my finger in further. Her throat has to be in there somewhere. If I can just get back there far enough I'm sure she will puke.

  “Come on, Claire. Open up wider. I can’t get it in.”

  I grunt with the effort of holding her up and trying to get the knuckle of my first finger past her teeth.

  “Don’t bite me. You’ll feel much better after this is done, I promise. I’ve done this a bunch of times, just let me in.”

  Either she isn’t hearing me or she doesn’t care. I move my hand around her mouth and try every angle I can but she just won’t open her mouth so I could reach her throat. Her tongue presses against the tip of my finger preventing it from moving.

  “Claire, don’t be difficult,” I groan. “I need to do this deeper.”

  Claire bites down on my finger at the same time I feel a hand slap down on my shoulder.

  I yank my finger out of her mouth and whip my head around and up to find George towering over me with his hands on his hips and a glare on his face.

  “Carter,” George greets.

  “Hi, Mr. Morgan,” I say as cheerfully as possible, considering he's looking at me like I'm a bug he's getting ready to squash under his shoe.

  “Have you seen my shotgun?” he asks.

  I gulp loudly and try to remember all of the reasons it would be bad to piss my pants right then. Under normal circumstances, I'm quite used to the death stares and silent threats I receive from Claire’s dad, but this seems a little excessive. I'm trying to save his daughter’s life. How can he possible be angry with me about that? He had been asleep on the couch two seconds ago. He must have opened his eyes and seen me...

  You’ll feel much better once this is done. Don’t be difficult, I need to do this deeper. Just let me in…

  Oh sweet Jesus. He had probably looked across the room and saw just the back of me trying to force something in his daughter’s mouth.

  Why the hell couldn’t Rachel have been the one here tonight? She would have woken up and cheered me on, probably even booing me when she found out I was only trying to make her daughter puke instead of forcing my penis in her mouth.

  “I am NOT into Necrophilia,” I state firmly to him.

  “There is something wrong with you,” he mutters.

  “I just wanted her to throw up,” I complain.

  “I really don’t want to know about the weird, kinky shit you’re into.”

  “Yo, Mr. Morgan, you’re awake!” Drew exclaims as he lounges in the doorway. “And Carter, dude, it’s called Poutiphilia. You just told Claire’s dad you weren’t into banging dead people. Which is a good thing, but probably not what you were going for. Poutiphilia is a person who enjoys sexual relations with people who are passed out.”

  Drew is a walking, talking Urbandictionary dot com.

  “I was NOT trying to have sexual relations with this woman!” I shout.

  “Slow your roll there, Clinton,” Drew says as he came further into the room and squats down next to me.

  “HOW ARE YOU DOING, CLAIRE?” Drew yells, talking to her slow and loud like she doesn’t understand English. “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

  He snaps his fingers in front of her face a few times. She finally blinks and looks up at me.

  “Make it stop,” she whines.

  I'm not sure if she is referring to Drew or whatever is in her system. I decide to err on the side of caution and punch Drew in the arm.

  “What the fuck did you give her?”

  “Just some cookies. My mom makes them for my uncle all the time and he loves them,” Drew tells me.

  “Did you guys get food poisoning or something? Why the hell is this place such a disaster and Claire is almost comatose?”

  I briefly wonder if I should try again to make her puke, but I'm a little afraid George really does have a shotgun hidden somewhere in the room.

  “Claire wanted some help coming up with some new ideas for things to cover in chocolate. It was a process. A creative process. You wouldn’t understand. It’s an artistic thing,” Drew explains. “Chocolate covered carrots were a bust, but we might have something with chocolate covered gummy bears.”

  This still doesn’t make any sense. I'm obviously missing something.

  “So you guys ate some cookies and brainstormed. What kind of cookies did you eat? Were they undercooked?”

  Maybe Claire has Salmonella poisoning. Is that contagious? Does she need
to be vaccinated or have her stomach pumped? I feel like I should know the answer to this since I have a kid. What if Gavin eats some raw chicken and I don’t know whether to give him mouth-to-mouth or Pepto Bismol? Is he even allowed to have Pepto? And where the fuck is he getting raw chickens from?!

  “Dude, I’m not Betty fucking Crocker or anything. I don’t know what was in the cookies. They were mocha coffee nut something or other. Wait, maybe it was the nuts. Is Claire allergic to nuts? She might be going into anal flaccid shock,” Drew says nervously.

  Oh my God. It’s like he shares a brain with Jenny.

  “It’s Anaphylaxis Shock, dumbass, and no, she’s not allergic to nuts,” I say with a roll of my eyes.

  “My uncle begs my mom for these cookies. Seriously. They actually STOP him from getting sick so this makes absolutely no sense. My mom makes them for him every couple of weeks before he goes in for chemo.”

  I stare at him blankly and repeat in my head the words that just came out of his mouth just to make sure I'm not hallucinating.

  “Jesus fucking Christ! You gave her POT COOKIES???

  I whip my head around and stare at George in disbelief.

  “YOU ate a pot cookie?” I ask incredulously.

  “I was in Nam,” he huffs like that's sufficient enough evidence this is perfectly okay. “Where’s my grandson?”

  I stare at him in wonder for a few minutes, realizing (not for the first time) that Claire’s father is the epitome of the saying “The man, the myth, the legend”. While everyone else has been one step away from bath-salts-crazy, George has curled up on the couch and slept off his pot cookie high.

  “Gavin is with my parents for the night. They’re in town for a wedding and are keeping him overnight at their hotel so he can swim in the pool,” I explain as I tighten my hold on Claire and help her stand up.

  “I’m hungry,” Claire announces to no one in particular as she suddenly regains the use of all of her faculties and pushes away from me. Her eyes are bright and clear as she walks out of the office, squeezing her way past Drew, like nothing is wrong.