Day after day. Week after week. It was always the Scooter show at the Furchtenicht residence, 24/7. Not a word came out of Amy's mouth that didn't involve some cutesy thing that the dog had done during the course of the day. It got to the point where she stopped talking directly to me, but through the dog instead.
“Tell daddy what you did today, baby. Momma is so proud of you. Uh huh, yes her is.” Always followed by that gross exchange of Eskimo kisses from her and a tongue bath from him. Each time I was subjected to their disgusting displays of affection, the more I wanted to strangle them both.
My lack of fondness for the dog was not lost on Amy. She tried to placate me by assuring me that I wasn't being replaced. She said she just needed something to fill the void left after our daughter had moved out. I knew better. The only void she had was the rapidly growing dead space between her ears. That mutt was filling it back in with enough “adorable” to make a sane person want to puke.
The biggest shock to me came during the week before my birthday. Amy greeted me at the door, smiling so widely that I initially thought she might be having a stroke. She told me that there was something she wanted to show me. She led me into our bedroom and told me to close my eyes with a hint of nervousness in her voice. I sighed impatiently and obliged, absolutely not knowing what to expect.
For once Scooter was off doing his own thing instead of tailing my wife like a constant shadow. I won't lie. The sound of fabric sliding over skin combined with the notion of having her in the bedroom all to myself ignited a spark in my nether regions that I hadn't felt in a long time.
“Okay you can open them now,” she whispered.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Amy was stark naked and sprawled out across the bed. Needless to say I was highly aroused. My pecker hadn't seen action since the four-legged monster had invaded our lives. Like any sex-starved husband I immediately dropped trou and was ready to go before she changed her mind. She gasped as I entered her, further escalating my excitement.
Then she threw a curve ball by pushing me away long enough to roll over on all fours. In our twenty years of lovemaking we had never once graduated past the missionary position. Rather than questioning her spontaneous urge to experiment I went for it with unbridled vigor. That was when I first saw the tattoo.
Below the small of her back and just above the crack of her ass was a photo realistic, full color tattoo of none other than him. Fucking Scooter staring up at me with that subtle tilt of his head and those watery doggy eyes. I was instantly as limp as a wet noodle. At this point I would have had an easier time shoving toothpaste back into the tube than finishing what my wife and I had started. Nothing kills a good hard-on like a tramp stamp of a puppy inked just above your wife's ass.
I almost bit my tongue in half as the unspeakable happened. I'm staring down at my Judas penis when I felt Scooter's cold wet nose burrowing nostril deep into my asshole. I let out a scream and rolled out from behind Amy, off the side of the bed. Scooter barely had time to register the danger he was in before I backhanded him straight off the bed. He landed with a yelp and scurried out of the room.
“Scooter,” Amy screamed. Her stunned look told me that I may just as well have struck her instead. She jumped down and ran after the whimpering man molester.
We never spoke of it again. Hell, we rarely spoke at all until the following weekend, the day of my birthday party. Amy had invited several of my co-workers and their wives weeks before the incident in the bedroom. Cancelling was out of the question. We played the part of the happy couple and gracious hosts to our utmost ability. The food was great and the wine did well to ease the underlying tension between us. It went good until Scooter crashed the party.
Of course Amy had outdone herself, dressing Scooter in a cutesy doggy mailman outfit for the benefit of my supervisor and the other guys. Everyone got a big chuckle out of it and the wives doted over the little fleabag to the point of absurdity. Scooter sensed the overabundance of attention and strutted around poolside like the cock of the walk. Then he developed a deep infatuation with my sandals.
Several times I found myself propping my feet up on a chair or dangling them over the edge of the pool just to keep the little shit from doing anything vile in front of the guests. No matter how I positioned myself the sick freak never took his eyes off of my partly exposed feet for more than a few seconds. I tried to get Amy to lock him inside the house but she refused.
“Oh grow up and stop being so jealous of the dog. Everyone's paying attention to the birthday boy too,” she said with a happy wife grin masking the contempt in her voice. “Go talk to your boss. Maybe you'll manage to get a raise for your birthday. God knows that's the only thing you have a chance of getting up these days.”
No lie, newbie. She really said that to me.
She gravitated back to the ladies after freshening up everyone's drinks. I joined the men and did my best to shake the sting out of my bruised ego. The conversation evolved from the weather to football to badmouthing a few co-workers that didn't make it to the party. I was building up enough nerve and blood alcohol content to spring the idea of a pay increase to my supervisor when it happened.
Taking full advantage of the lapse in my defensive manoeuvres, Scooter targeted my right foot and moved in for the attack. The moment I felt his paws grip my ankle and the warmth of his thing snake its way under my sandal strap, I jerked my foot back in hopes of going unnoticed. Much to my horror the dog let out a blood-curdling squeal. Even in all my years at St. David's, I've never heard a sound like that come out of any living thing. A lump formed in the pit of my gut when I realized what had happened. His dick was stuck in the metal buckle of my sandal.
Amy screamed and rushed forward, followed by an entourage of empathetic women. She glared at me as if it were my fault and carefully spent an agonizing ten minutes separating her darling puppy's penis from the hardware of my sandal. I tried once to suggest my taking the sandal off but was vetoed after the decibel level of Scooter's cries intensified. By the time the extraction was completed the women were all crying and the men doubled over with laughter. I was going to be the butt of every dick and dog joke at the post office from then until the day I retired.
“Goddamn, First-Dick. No wonder your feet stink so bad when you walk past my office in the morning,” my supervisor Don snorted through a mouthful of artichoke dip. Tears streamed down the curves of his fat face.
I stared down at the source of everything that was wrong in my life. Spots of blood stained his outfit and the tip of his cock, which he was almost certain to start going to town on any minute. The mixture of crying and laughter buzzed in my brain until I simply lost it.
I don't think anyone saw me walk away and go into the garage. I'm pretty certain nobody saw me come back out with the 15 ounce claw hammer in my hand and I'm positive that none of them expected what would happen next.
The crowd of women around Scooter parted like the red sea as my bare foot swept through and connected with his back end. You should have seen it, newbie. Like a fucking football, the little shit flew through the air and splashed down in the middle of the swimming pool. He tried to swim but he must have been half paralyzed, 'cause he just swam around in circles with the one side of him that still worked. The wives screamed while their drunk husbands jumped in to play the hero. Can you imagine, half a dozen mailmen trying to save a dog of all things?
Amy stopped crying long enough to run over and slap my face, screaming that I had “gone too far this time.” My eyes shifted from her angry glare to the chaotic scene around us. The drowning dog in the pool, the screaming postal wives and their wannabe hero husbands. Then to the hammer. I don't know why, but before I had time to think about it the claw end was buried into the side of her head. I stood there, wondering what the fuck I had just done.
Someone screamed and I snapped out of the initial shock of braining my wife of twenty years. I surveyed the stunned faces of all my party guests and pulled the end of the hammer o
ut of Amy's skull. She collapsed to the patio below her with a meaty thud. Everyone started yelling bloody murder and I guess I just went into survival mode.
I was a God that day. Not Craig, the second class husband. Not the mediocre mailman with stinky feet and a name too long to say right. Or the object of some perverted mutt's sick foot fetish. I was the mighty defender of my own fractured dignity. I took it all back from them, one beautiful swing of the hammer at a time.
Some fought back. Most just closed their eyes waited for the end to come. Like baby seals in the North Arctic they were. Just flopping around the edge of the pool, waiting their turn to get the club. They all screamed a little as I helped them feel my pain. I circled the perimeter of the pool and dispatched them one by one. They tried to claw their way out of the pool, but the concrete around the edge was too slicked up with the blood of their wives to get a decent hold. I don't know how long it took, but the screaming eventually stopped.
Words cannot describe the feeling of relief that came over me just then. Sure I was exhausted and covered in the blood of people I could hardly stand. But looking at them, floating in the pinkish water, a quality of mutual serenity fell over the backyard that most people rarely get to share with others. I sipped from a glass of wine and watched Scooter's aimless paddling wind to a stop. I smiled for the first time in months as the wet fabric of his little mailman costume weighted his lifeless body and he drifted to the bottom of the pool.
So there you have it, newbie. That's how I punched my ticket to the looney bin. I guess the answer to your question is simple. You know, about why I would blind someone with a paintbrush or plan to bite Wilson's eyelids off before breakfast in the morning. They won't let us keep hammers at St. David’s, that's why.
Now go bother somebody else for a while. I need to get some sleep so I can finish my painting when the lights decide to come back on. You know what they say, practice makes perfect. One of these days I might even get the shape of the eyes right. Little bastard did have the cutest damn eyes.
Three
I slide the grate closed, leaving Furchtenicht to his painting. Beside his door there’s his black name slate. Under the oddly spelled name, somebody has chalked in Thirsty Nick and scribbled a winking face. It seems his name draws a lot of scope for mispronunciation. I make a conscious decision to say it the same as he did for the rest of the time I’m here. He seemed affable enough though. For a lunatic. From the other side of the door I hear him muttering about a fuckin’ dog some more, before I step away from his room. There are six more on this floor. In one of them a woman cries. Benny said nothing about women in here. The cries are coming from across the hall. Although the experience with Furchtenicht has hardened my confidence, I don’t want to investigate that just yet. I’m still not sure I’d have a leg to stand on as far as insurance went if I was attacked by one of these oddballs. Maybe that’s unfair. Brazill, for his cannibalistic ways and his unnerving penchant for harvesting me with his imagination, seemed okay. He was comprehendible enough. The Yank, Craig, was the same. I know what it is more than anything, that’s fucking with my head. It’s this fucking building. Every corner creeps me out. Every surface is slick with threat. The fact that I haven’t seen a single other person than Benny, and these people that live here. Surely to God there would be somebody else with some sort of medical, or psychological, or even fucking philosophic qualification. Benny and I, we’re guards. That’s it. We’re here to preserve peace. Maybe in the day it’s different. Maybe we’ve simply not hit the real staff quarters yet, and somewhere above us there’s a floor that’s just teeming with doctors. Maybe. I won’t hold my breath.
Above me the light flickers into life. Inside the plastic casing a thousand flies’ corpses tip tap against it as the vibration kick-starts their disco of the dead. Again it is only above me. Down the hall the moth pings against the ceiling on the hunt for a fresh glow. I half expect Benny to come lumbering into my airspace again, but a few minutes of waiting proves fruitless, and I move on. The next door has no grated window like the last one did. It’s more like Brazill’s. The first. A solid steel chunk that protects me from the man behind it. Or vice versa. On the wall is the name slate. Godwin, Richard. My fist is balled and knocking against the metal before I’ve even made the decision to do it.
“Get in the corner,” I say, “I’m here to fix the lights.”
There’s no noise from the room. “Did you hear me?”
Nothing.
“I need to you to get in the corner,” I say, again. I bring the keys up, and after a brief jingling I find the one with RG etched upon in with a fine point marker pen. I continue a mantra instructing the man in the room to get into the corner, and that I’m here with every intention of repairing his lighting situation. The edge of the key tickles the mouth of the lock, and after a couple of nervous prods against the cold metal, like a teenage virgin poking indiscriminately at his first love’s crotch on the maiden voyage into the sexual sea, it finds its sweet spot and slides into the barrel.
“Get in the corner,” I say, my right hand twisting the key, sliding the bolt from its slumber, “I’m here to fix the lights.”
Still I hear nothing from the room. I pull the key from the lock and attach the bunch to my belt.
“Get in the corner,” I say, my right hand grabbing a firm hold of the handle, applying pressure to it, “I’m here to fix the lights.”
My left hand holds the torch. Conscious this time of inadvertently blinding a man that I’m here to protect.
“Get in the corner,” I say, using my elbow to gently push the door open, “I’m here-”
BANG.
The door is slammed closed in front of me with a force. The metal smacks me hard against the cheek, and a dull throb aches as I pick myself up from the floor. The torch has skittered away along the corridor and casts an odd light against the wall in the darkness. My imagination throws a rapid pair of legs flashing through the powerful beam into the equation, and that familiar shudder makes its ascent from the base of my spine to the crook of my neck once again. That wasn’t anything. I saw nothing. I made it up. Of course I did. I have the keys to every door in here, and they’re all locked. Keep it to-fucking-gether! I collect my torch and approach the door again. With an apprehension that sits on another level to the last time I place my hand once again on the handle.
“Get,” I say, “in the corner.”
My hand pressures the handle.
“I’m here to fix the lights.”
This time the pressure is in vain. The man on the other side holds it against its will.
“I know why you’re here,” a voice says, “and I won’t allow it.”
The voice sounds southern. Cockney London maybe. I don’t know. Anything south of Birmingham sounds exactly the same to me.
“I’m here to help,” I say, “to fix the lights.”
“You’re here to fuck me,” he says. I’m really not here to fuck him. “I know who you are. You won’t fuck me.”
“I promise, I’m not going to fuck you. Just. Get in the corner. Please.”
“Enter this room and you will be sorry. Do your deeds. Replace the other all you want. But you stay away, do you hear?”
I push the knob again but it’s no use. He’s too strong. He’s obviously a lot more determined to keep me out than I am to get in there. Benny didn’t tell me what to do in this situation, but I’m guessing if this Godwin fella is intent on his alone time, then I should just move on.
“Okay,” I say, “I’ll stay out.”
I take the keys from my belt again, and find his, before locking the door with less apprehension than I had when I unlocked it. I move to walk away, but am halted by the voice.
“Wait.”
“Okay?”
Nothing happens. I sigh. These people.
“What?”
“At your feet.”
I look down. There’s a curled sheet of paper or two, pushed out from beneath the door and pressed ag
ainst my feet. As I stoop to collect it I hold the torch on the papers. On them there are lines and lines, all in a deep red which is turning almost brown. The ink from one of the symbols flakes away beneath my touch. My eyes scan the patterns. Nothing much of it makes sense. The patterns are almost words, but not really.
“What’s this?” I ask the door, “Your homework?”
“Don’t be facetious, replicant. Here.”
Another something slides from beneath the door. A mirror.
“Are you allowed that?”
“Would I have it if I weren’t?”
I shrug to concede the point, and stoop to collect the mirror.
“Now,” he says, “read, replicant.”
Porcupines
By Richard Godwin
The porcupines wept black ink when they brought me here. I am fettered like Harcamone at Fontrevault, a revolutionary with a massive rose beating in the place of my heart, less madman than visionary, reduced by the dumb indifference of man. And if you don’t know what brought me to this place then you too deserve their spikes.
I travel the grey city at night, I stagger into the leprous dawn, unbridled, a visitant to your aroused dreams. These walls do not contain me, nor do they swallow the sum of all your fears, for there are twelve of us. That fact seems to have escaped the notice of the blind governor who whistles in his sleep, for I have watched his dreams of teenage girls dressed in human skin while his daughter chokes on his lust in the next room.
I see beneath the ruins of their minds. I know what dark thoughts they refuse to allow entry, and they place us here that they may be free of them, but they will never be free.
We number twelve, don’t you see? They are following our book unto the letter, and I hold the spike that I dip into the ink. They have placed the apostles in this place. St David’s. The walls are made of sand. I enter the sea, I fetch fish forth for my brothers as they howl at night and the guard wanders the corridors, his skin resembling the texture of leather. They are replacing him. He won’t believe me when I tell him he is visited at night, he’s intent on the porn channels, an addict to the deceit of flesh.
Twelve Mad Men Page 4