Unwrap Your Candy

by Jesse Miller

  Published by Common Deer Press

  Copyright © 2017 Jesse Miller

  We know this book is awesome, and we don't blame you for wanting to share it. However all rights are reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the copyright holder, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Sorry.

  Published September 10, 2017

  Common Deer Press

  London, Ontario, Canada

  ellie@commondeerpress.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Miller, Jesse

  Unwrap Your Candy

  978-0-9950729-9-2 (E-book)

  978-0-9950729-8-5 (Hardcover)

  978-1-988761-06-0 (Paperback)

  Cover and Interior Design: Ellie Sipila Move to the Write

  For more information, please visit Common Deer Press

  Dedication

  For David.

  For Emily.

  Epigraph

  Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold

  Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet

  Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam

  Floats up from those dim fields about the homes

  Of happy men that have the power to die,

  And grassy barrows of the happier dead.

  Release me, and restore me to the ground;

  Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:

  Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;

  I earth in earth forget these empty courts,

  And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

  Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:

  How can my nature longer mix with thine?

  —Tithonus, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  I. Pantalons A Pattes D’Elephant

  II. The Rest is Silence

  Chapter Two

  I. Hitched

  II. Itched

  Chapter Three

  I. Blue Jay Way

  II. French Inhaling

  Chapter Four

  I. B. J. Way

  II. It Ain't Over till it's Ovum

  Chapter Five

  I. Floating in a Tin Can

  II. Banana Splits and Other Divisions of Labor

  Chapter Six

  I. Whale Weight on Sea White Harpoons

  Chapter Seven

  I. Sub Rosa

  Chapter Eight

  I. Sex

  II. Death

  III. Taxes

  IV. Repeat

  Chapter Nine

  I. Guinness is Good for You

  II. Night Shifts

  III. The Necropsy of Memory

  Chapter Ten

  I. Plot Holes

  II. A Dreamy Venesection

  Chapter Eleven

  I. Skeleton Key

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Pantalons A Pattes D’Elephant

  6:00PM- The conclusion of a particularly laborious workweek, in which our hero, Thomas Evans, occasioned by unnecessary pecuniary matters, encounters one Esther Polly, a seemingly forgetful bookkeeper of ample age and size.

  One day a guy by the name of Franklin Midor just lost it. He took a magic marker down to the factory floor and began to draw on the inventory. Most of the contaminated items were retrieved before they could be hand-rolled into their packages and distributed for usage. It was mostly skull and crossbones and a couple of acerbic expletives, but a few calls came in a month or so later saying that a couple of unlucky consumers had found small shards of glass hidden deep in the tip of the unit. This one guy, though it can’t be confirmed it was Franklin’s handiwork, sent in a letter demanding his money back. There was a STUD XL stapled to the top right corner, and the words SHE DOESN’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE were written across the flattened box in bold, excited letters. He got a full refund. Franklin Midor was terminated that very day.

  Maybe it was the constant stench of ammonia that’s used to help set the rubber that set him off. Or maybe it was the telephone that, once white, was now the color of earwax. Or maybe it was the way the thing rang, so loudly that it left a kind of poison in the ear. Or maybe it was the office chair that had no arms and only one wheel that could actually roll. Or maybe it was this keyboard, the very keyboard Thom has been tapping at for the last…three years, the one with the upside-down T key. Maybe it was that very key that did it, looking at it for years and wondering how truly pathetic he must be to use a factory-second keyboard, and wondering if it was a disgruntled keyboard factory worker who was to blame for the upside down T key, and, if that were the case, what defective or ill-wrought product had he been staring at for years before he just snapped and let it all come to bear?

  Maybe it was that Esther always seemed to forget to send over somebody’s paycheck.

  It could have also been the barely perceivable whir of 5,000 glass phalluses continuously being forcibly dunked into a simmering cauldron of latex. It had to be similar to some kind of round-the-clock robotic porno that he could hear through the walls but never see, as none of the office workers were allowed behind those massive manufacturing doors that led to the factory floor.

  Whatever the reason, Franklin’s Phallacy, as it became known, seemed to only get brought up on Friday the thirteenths, the anniversary of the incident, when it took on a kind of festive Guy Fawkes Day feeling in the office. No one dressed up, say, like a giant rubber or anything, but occasionally prophylactic balloon animals could be found in the can. Or, like this year, sometimes an unrolled condom hat made its way from cubical to cubical like the common cold.

  Earlier that day, after Thom Evans returned from the men’s room where a latex giraffe and eel had been taped to each beige stall, he found that the very condom hat of note had been placed over his keyboard.

  When the clock tipped six, after ordering his desk haphazardly, he stood, folded the hat to conceal the nipple, and began to make his way through the crowd, leaking toward the doors.

  –Johnson!

  Thom turned around and saw his boss, Loretta Cooke, supervisor of the Marketing and Research division at the Lott-Faye rubber company, makers of the Stud-rubber:

  Stud, rub ’er with the Stud Rubber.

  She called everyone Johnson on Friday the thirteenth in honor of the Phallacy. There was even a rumor that she’d made out with Franklin Midor at a Christmas party during the fuzzy libertinage of the cocaine 80s.

  –Yes?

  She motioned for Thom to come inside her office.

  –Hi Loretta. How’s it going?

  Her real name was Dorothy, but she liked going by Loretta. Just feels right, she’d explained through a sandwich of Wonder Bread, ham dangling over the side like a panting tongue. Loretta had the kind of plain-wiped face that never moved. It was like an organ she’d give up on, like a tit that’d been sliced off and reconstructed. It looked real but seemed like it didn’t actually feel anymore. She lowered her head to her folded fingers as if in prayer, then stood stock still for a moment before pushing the door shut.

  –I’m afraid, Johnson, Esther has…forgotten your check this time.

  –Huh? Oh, right, right.

  –She’s had such a hard time of it lately, I’m afraid.

  She stood in front of the doorjamb and rocked back and forth, freeing one leg from the weight of her body only to have the other bear it all. She
was a slow, simple pendulum.

  –I’m afraid, Johnson, you’ll have to visit her tonight to grab your check before she packs up for the weekend.

  –Well, okay. I need to get paid, so…

  –I’m afraid, Johnson, you’re absolutely correct.

  Loretta was so white she was almost blue. You could see each furcating vein, long like twiggy florescent tubes glowing beneath her skin. She placed her weight on one foot, then the other, and stabbed toward her desk.

  Thom stepped toward the door and coiled his fingers around the knob.

  –Thanks then.

  –I’m afraid, Johnson, there’s no one really to thank.

  Thom couldn’t seem to close his mouth. It was as though his brain would leak out through the flesh-bone elevator shaft in his head. His heart began to burn up blood like oil.

  He opened the door and he left the room.

  –Hey there, Johnson!

  He turned, but his feet kept pulling him forward, knowing what was coming. Her assumed role of éminence grise had long ago spun out a particular motto, and to be fair, a decent public safety message, for this very day.

  –Don’t forget to wrestle a condom on that monster!

  She pointed at him with two spindly fingers in a cha-cha fashion and then emptied a laugh from the back of her throat.

  Thom faced forward and felt his hand ball around the thick condom hat.

  –Sure thing, Loretta. Sure thing.

  She was still laughing behind her desk when Thom passed though the final set of doors leading out of the building, the main door, the door that people had to be buzzed through like a clinic, and made his way past the trudging congregation slipping one by one into their respective vehicles.

  –G’night, Thom.

  –Good night, George, enjoy your movie.

  –Good night, T-bone.

  –Yeah, Good night, Ed.

  –Good night, Martin.

  –Mr. Evans, have a pleasant evening.

  Thom followed the huge yellow lines painted over the asphalt, each a massive set of pinching brackets, interiorizing more and more, line after line until he found his little car stashed deep in the corner of the lot. He crammed the key into the lock and twisted. He had closed the door to the office too lightly and now slammed his car door as hard as he could to make up for it. In the act of loosening his tie, he decided it best to be rid of it completely. He yanked it off and unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt. He fingered the chain around his neck, exposed now to the air, and slid his hand down his chest to his protruding stomach.

  As everyone else drove off, Thom sat in his car and pretended to search for the right radio station to ride home with on a Friday evening. He waved to the last coworker in the procession and was suddenly overcome by the vast incompleteness of the plant, conspicuous like a playground without children. Locked behind a protective wire mesh, he studied the steel doors and imagined how beautiful the sight of 5,000 glass phalluses in motion must be, a secret droning cotillion. He could hear them humming away from here, even as he slid out of neutral and began to drive across the commodious campus toward payroll.

  Out of the perforated rows of parked cars. Off of the sunburdened asphalt. Out of the lot. Along the crookneck network of shared roads. Around circular islands of dense green bush that purport old money but with cement trim whispering: middle class and second mortgage. As he took the curves, he dialed on the radio.

  …thousand year old man has been discovered. Experts say the man has been preserved in ice…

  How could she have forgotten? Always remembers to forget. She’s a goddamn…elephant that way. Not that she’s fat. Well, in certain terms, she’s pretty goddamn—

  A car horn tore the air, decapitating the silence. Thom shook in a way that suggested his seat was electrically charged. For a few seconds his car straddled both lanes of the road.

  Thom lifted his eyes to see a man filling up the entire rearview mirror. Easy does it, big boy. His body itched slightly more with each new sound storming through the thin shell of his car. The squeak of the stop-and-start. Engines bringing up phlegm. Traffic snorting across the highway. The street was a new plant muttering out new product. Each cell in Thom’s brain craved a round of stone-stiff drinks. Line ’em up. Hurry up please, it’s time.

  …woman in a coma has reportedly given birth to a healthy baby boy…

  He threw on the blinker as a slit broke in the thread of cars. When he met the man’s huge face filling the entire rearview mirror, his eyes ignited. But Thom waited. Switched the dial on the radio around as the opening narrowed. Switched it again and lunged into the streaming loom of consciousness that stretched across the belly of the earth. A few miles along, he passed the outer perimeter of a vast and rolling cemetery and flicked his blinker again, sat, waited, thought better of it, and drove on.

  Today, it was getting harder and harder to focus on things, the here and the now. Driving was more. Driving was more like rolling. Or dreaming. Or falling horizontally. There was an expectation of stopping cold. A clenching in the head to muffle the sound of a firecracker. Teeth squeezed. Lungs full.

  What’s your name? Is it Mary or Sue?

  He quickly twisted off the radio. The car drove itself. How had he made it through this day? It was like holding onto a subway rail and not being swayed by the motion of the train. But now he was losing his grip. Things were blurring, unraveling right before his eyes. Lanes converged. Cars seemed to lift from the road into space. The scenery, the set moved by. He watched from the back row. And now speech was impossible. How could he fit words together and make? Form fucking meaningfuls?

  He found the exit and took it.

  His grip on the wheel was light. The tips of his fingers were sore from jabbing at the keyboard. Thom had never learned how to type with the harpist’s fluidity you see in those smiling happy handjob office scenes in the movies. Today he had shriveled little arthritic lobster claws. His head felt fifteen pounds heavier than it should be, the head of someone else, some blotchy giant. It was wilting on his neck and with considerable decay. How had he made it through the week? His shoulders crept to his ears. He really could go at any time.

  He found an open space in the payroll department parking lot.

  High. He could be high. This was like being high, wasn’t it? Being pulled away from the universe against his will, trying to hold on, hold tight to the rail, to the edge of the planet, and the moisture accumulates and the rail becomes slippery and he’s dragging and screaming, screaming and dragging, wailing and pantspissing and poof:      Gone.

  The engine was hushed. The car door was opened. The walkway was traversed.

  One of those not really there moments. Walls jump out. The ground is spongy. Strings hold up the knees. Words are fishing line, pulled from the lungs like a breathing tube. There he is. There is the back of his head. There is his hair on the back of his neck. There he goes.

  Eyes malfunctioning now, pulling in not one, but two, sometimes three stationary objects, street lamps and traffic lights, moving freely about, encased in a water skin. Eyes fluttering like wings. It was hard to keep adjusting. Soon, Thom feared, he would have to stoop to slapping at his face repeatedly or throwing water on it in order to return. Maybe catching his tongue in a mousetrap.

  He entered the building, passing a woman in a grey blazer. He watched her shrink away in strides, into the world outside, the backside of her body disappearing into a tiny heart. A smile detonated over his face.

  *

  He tried not to notice Esther’s stomach cresting over her desk as he walked down the hallway. She noticed him through the glass though, and as he peeled open the doors, she began the procedure of rising from her chair. With only a few strides, he stood before her, neck craning and head in a slight confused cock, as though peering down into the unwrinkled skin of an empty swimming pool. Family photos lined the edges of her desk, the frames gradually becoming smaller and smaller as he surveyed from left
to right. He tried to follow each picture frame, imagining each one was a progressively smaller family member, like a nesting doll spread out across her desk. He tried focusing on the four pairs of scissors variously arranged in increasingly more libidinous positions, but mostly his eyes stayed locked on her stomach.

  –I’m very sorry, Mr. Evans.

  Her head shook gravely, and she pushed on her thighs, both legs spreading in the limited facility of her ascension. Her entire body, including her sour-bell ears, urged itself upward.

  This was Step 1: The Hand Plant.

  The few of times he had been in her office, this was how it had begun.

  –No problem. No problem at all.

  Step 2: The Dismount.

  This, predictably, involved a groan or two. Today, though, there were three.

  1) Emmmmmmmmmm.

  2) Eeeaaaaaaaaaaaa.

  3) Emmmmmmmmm.

  With the added straining sounds, he had difficulty not picturing her on the toilet. Her knees looked as though they might buckle under the teetering gumdrop they supported, wrapped in pattern-dazzle polyester. Momentarily, Thom was compelled to help her. It seemed like such a waste, her standing routine—this long-standing routine to collect his modest wages. He knew where the checks were, where it all was located. He could handle it without a single groan.

  She very well may end up back in the chair or on the floor like an overturned truck. Would he have to help her; would he be able to help her up? The deeper he thought about this possibility, the more his mind began stretching away from the logistics, the angles and leverage, the footing. He could see her without any clothing, could see those two starving mottled gluttons squealing below her waist. And yet then, just then, he was      gone.

  The pendulum swung the other way. Now he desperately wanted her to fall. He felt passionate about the fall. The polite mummery of suspension would finally be over. People should point and laugh; she should be a shut-in, or filling the screen of a talk show, or dripped on by a thousand pandemonical men. Beyond the beyond. He could crack a chair over her head or slowly peel away her underthings to see if any washcloths had been lost among the rippling waves in the sea of her stomach. Make a million selling her body as soap.