The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade

by Aimee Bender

  Then Kip played his first card. With a casual gesture, he brought life to her face. Of course, her face has life, but it’s a pretty placid sort of life at this stage, what with every need being satisfied as soon as it happens. So there’s nothing to cry about and no air to cry with if she could cry.

  Then it blossomed on her face: a flush and blush of tasteful makeup spreading over her cheeks and chin and forehead, a smear of carmine on her lips, turquoise blue eyeshadow and an elongation of her lashes. Huge monitors in the hall gave everyone as clear a picture as the folks at home on their TVs. I could taste the rush of amazement rippling through the hall at each effect.

  Then, her darling eyes opened! Just for a second before Kip erased the image. Of course they didn’t really open, any more than my baby really wore a ball gown. But they weren’t just some painted porcelain doll’s eyes. Kip’s years in Hollywood paid off, because you would have sworn there was angelic intelligence in the deep gaze Kip gave her face—

  Oops, we just got the five-minute call, mumsy, so I’ll cut off here and pick back up at the next break. Wish us luck! Gotta go!!!

  Kip followed close behind a stagehand, who wheeled the ultrasound equipment to the tape marks, locked down the rollers, and plugged the cord into an outlet on the stage floor. Wendy had already settled into the stylish recliner.

  “Hello, darling,” said Kip, taking her hand. Wendy returned his kiss. “How are you two?”

  “Fine.” Her voice wavered, but Kip judged it near enough to the truth.

  The stage manager, clipboard at the ready, breezed by. “Two minutes,” he said. Hints of garlic.

  Beyond the curtain’s muffle, the emcee pumped things up. A drum roll and a cymbal crash rushed the orchestra into an arpeggio swirling up to suggest magic and pixie dust. Kip squeezed Wendy’s hand.

  When the curtain rose, Guy Givens strode over. “And here’s our first round winner, Miss Wendy Sales. Round she certainly is. And ready for another round, I hope. Wendy, how does it feel to be the winner of our evening wear competition?”

  “Well, Guy,” said Wendy, as he poked the mike at her mouth, “it feels great, but I don’t bet on any horse until the race is over’s what my momma taught me. All these great gals I’ve met? Their babies too? They’re all winners as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Ladies and gentleman, let’s give the little lady’s generosity a big hand.” The emcee’s mike jammed up into his armpit so he could show the audience how to clap with gusto. Then it jumped back into his grip. “Wendy, with that attitude, you’ll be a great mom indeed.”

  “I sincerely hope so.”

  Ignoring her answer: “And now . . . let’s see your adorable little girl in her bobbysoxer outfit!” The tuxedoed man backed out of the spotlight, his free hand raised in a flourish.

  Deftly fingering a series of switches, Kip hid his amusement at the emcee’s tinsel voice, as the orchestra played hush-hush music and Wendy’s child came into view.

  A tiny pair of saddle shoes graced the baby’s feet. Her poodle skirt (its usually trim stitched poodle gravid with a bellyful of pups) gave a slight sway. She wore a collared blouse of kelly green. A matching ribbon set off her tresses, which Kip had thickened and sheened by means of Gaussian and Shadow filters combined with histogram equalization.

  When the crowd’s applause began to fall off, Kip put highlights back into baby’s face, an effect which brought the clapping to new heights.

  As if in answer, Kip turned to two dials and began to manipulate them. The baby’s eyes widened. She gave a coy turn of the head. Then her eyelids lowered and Kip wiped the image away.

  The effect looked easy, but the work that had gone into making it happen was staggering. To judge by the shouts and cheers that washed over the stage, the crowd sensed that. Wendy glowed.

  “Judges?” screamed Guy Givens into his mike.

  One by one, down the row of five, 10s shot into the air. A 9 from a squint-eyed woman who never gave 10s drew the briefest of boos.

  Wendy mouthed “I love you” at Kip, and he mouthed it back, as the music swirled up and the curtain mercifully shut out an ear-splitting din of delight.

  Eudora watched from the wings as the TV jerkoff with the capped teeth and the crow’s feet chatted up her only competition one last time.

  The swimsuit round.

  Moe’s water-splash effect had gained Eudora an exceptional score, but from the look on the ultrasound man’s face out there, that insufferable Kip Johnson, she was afraid he was poised to take the Wendy bitch and her unborn brat over the top.

  Dump Moe.

  Yep, Moe was a goner. Yesterday’s meat. Spawn the loser inside her, let her snivel through life, whining for the tit withheld. A dilation and extraction might better suit. Tone up. Four months from now, let Chet poke her a few times. Stick one last bun in the oven.

  Then, adrip with apologies, she would pay Kip another visit, playing to his goody-two-shoes side if that got him off. Hell, she’d even befriend his lover. If Wendy had a two-bagger in mind, Eudora would persuade her—strictly as a friend with her best interests at heart—to retire undefeated.

  Onstage, that damned tantalizing womb image sprang to life again, this time dressed for the beach. Her swimsuit was a stylish fire-engine-red one-piece that drew the eye to her bosom, as it slashed across the thighs and arrowed into her crotch. Nice, but no great shakes.

  Then the kid’s face animated again. Eudora knew that this face would bring in millions. For months, it would be splashed across front pages and magazine covers. Then it would sell products like nobody’s business.

  Would it ever!

  Instead of repeating its coy twist of the head, the intrauterine babe fluttered her eyelashes at the audience and winked. Then she puckered her lips and relaxed them. No hand came up to blow that kiss, but Eudora suspected that Kip would make that happen next year.

  Her kid would be the one to blow a kiss. Her kid would idly brush her fingers past breast and thigh, while tossing flirtatious looks at Benjamin and viewers at home.

  Eudora scanned the judges through a deafening wall of elation. There sat the oily little pervert, more radiant than she had ever seen him. Another year would pass, a year of wound-licking capped by her triumph, and Kip’s, right here on this stage. Then she’d dump the drooler. One more year of slobber, she assured herself, would be bearable.

  Eye on the prize, she thought. Keep your eye on the prize.

  Benj is in heaven. His drenched handkerchief lies wadded in his right pants pocket. Fortunately, his left contained a forgotten extra, stuck together only slightly with the crust of past noseblows. It dampens and softens now with his voluminous drool.

  The curtain sweeps open. Midstage stand the three victors, awaiting their reward.

  Wendy’s infant has quite eclipsed Eudora’s in his mind. The third-place fetus? It scarcely raises a blip. Its mother comes forward to accept a small faux-sapphire tiara, a modest bouquet of mums, and a token check for a piddling sum. An anorexic blonde hurries her off.

  Eudora’s up next.

  Replay pix of her bambina flash across a huge monitor overhead. Beneath her smile, she’s steaming. He’s in the doghouse for his votes; he knows that. But there’s always next year. She needs him. She’ll get over it.

  A silver crown, an armful of daffodils, a substantial cash settlement, and off Eudora waddles into oblivion, her loserkid’s image erased from the monitor.

  Then his glands ooze anew as the house erupts. Like a bazillion cap guns, hands clap as Wendy’s pride and joy lights up the screen with that killer smile, that wink, oh god those lips.

  “AND HERE’S OUR QUEEN INDEED!” screams Guy Givens, welcoming Wendy into his arms. Gaggles of bimbos stagger beneath armloads of roses. The main bimbo’s burden is lighter, a gold crown bepillowed. Wendy puts a hand to her mouth. Her eyes well.

  Then it happens.

  Something shifts in the winner’s face. She whispers to Givens, who relays whatever she has sai
d to the crown-bearing blonde. Unsure what to do, the blonde beckons offstage, mouthing something, then walks away. Wendy leans against the emcee, who says “Hold on now” into his mike. A puddle forms on the stage where she is standing. “Is there a . . . do we have a . . . of course we do, yes, here he comes, folks.”

  Benj feels light-headed.

  The rest drifts by like a river ripe with sewage. Spontaneous TV, the young doctor, the ultrasound man, a wheeled-in recliner, people with basins of water, with instruments, backup medical personnel. Smells assault him. Sights. Guy Givens gives a hushed blow-by-blow. And then, a wailing thing lifts out of the ruins of its mother, its head like a smashed fist covered in blood, wailing, wailing, endlessly wailing. Blanket wrap. The emcee raises his voice in triumph, lowering the tiny gold crown onto the bloody bawler’s brow.

  It’s a travesty. Benj is glad to be sitting down. He rests his head on his palms and cries, mourning the passing of the enwombed beauty who winked and nodded in his direction not five minutes before.

  Is there no justice in the world, he wonders. Must all things beautiful end in squalor and filth?

  He craves his condo. How blissful it will be to be alone there, standing beneath the punishing blast of a hot shower, then cocooning himself under blankets and nestling into the oblivion of sleep.

  July 14, 2004

  Mumsicle mine, now GRAN-mumsicle!

  Well I guess that’ll teach me to finish my letters when I can. I’ll just add a little more to the one I never got ’round to wrapping up, and send you the whole kitten-kaboodle [sic, in case you think I don’t know!], along with the newsclips I promised.

  I’m sitting here in a hospital bed surrounded by flowers. Baby girl No-Name-Yet is dozing beside me, her rosebud lips moving in the air and making me leak like crazy. I do so love mommyhood!

  But I never expected to give birth in public. They were all so nice to me at the contest, even that Eudora woman, who seems to have had a change of heart. That creepy drooly judge came up to wish me his best, but Kip rough-armed him away and said something to him before kicking him offstage. I’ll have to ask Kip what that was all about.

  Oh and Kip proposed! I knew he would, but it’s always a thrill when the moment arrives, isn’t it? I cried and cried with joy and Kip got all teary too. He’ll make a great father, and I’m betting we spawn a few more winners before we’re through. We’ll give you plenty of warning as to when the wedding will be.

  He’s deflected the media nuts so far, until my strength is back. They’re all so antsy to get at me. But meanwhile Kip’s the hero of the hour. There’s even talk of a movie of the week, with guess-who doing the special effects of course. But Kip tells me these movie deals usually aren’t worth the hot air they’re written on, so he and I shrug it off and simply bask bask bask!

  I’ll sign off now and get some rest, but I wanted to close by thanking you for being such a super mom and role model for me, growing up. You showed me I could really make something of myself in this world if I just persisted and worked my buns off for what I wanted.

  I have.

  It’s paid off.

  And I have you to thank for it. I love you, Mom. You’re the greatest. Come down as soon as you can and say hello and kootchie-koo-my-little-snookums to the newest addition to the family. You’ll adore her. You’ll adore Kip too. But hey, hands off, girl, he’s mine all mine!!!

  Your devoted daughter,

  Wendy

  CRAZY SHITTING PLANET

  MYKLE HANSEN

  THE FAT PEOPLE

  The fat people are hundreds of feet tall, clad in the finest exoskeletal fashions, giant zeppelins of money and power and fat. They block out the sun with their immensity, staring down at us from the heavens with their pale, simple, hungry faces, their compound eyes as big as soccer balls, their bulbous bellies vast as astrodomes. Usually they eat us, though occasionally they toy with us, strafing us with food or clean water or scraps of the past. Either way, they own us. The fat people own everything: the air, the water, the sky; words, speech, thought; the past, the future. All of these things belong to the fat people now, while we little creatures on the ground are left to scavenge in their shit for crumbs and scurry to evade the punishment of their mighty crushing feet.

  Call me Cheeseburger. I have no family; my mother died from the general sickness long ago, the same disease of everything that gives me this cough, cough, cough. My father was eaten by a fat person, almost a year ago. A particularly obese, giggling pale sky-bag that swooped down on us one day as Father and Son foraged for edible plastic in one of the many massive piles of shit and debris which rain down from the bloody orange sky. I had just discovered, half buried in stinking fat-person feces, a beautiful antique laptop computer from the late Stuff Era. Praising our luck, we had begun to dine together on the tiny morsels of keyboard, when the sky went dark. Silent and deadly, the fat woman smiled down at us, the bulbous folds of her face pinched into a tent-like mask of hungry anticipation. There was nowhere to hide.

  To save my life, Father shoved me into the feces, rendering me grody and unpalatable. As I scraped the stinking brown paste from my eyes I watched an immense pink hand, encrusted with stunningly huge jeweled baubles and two massive Rolex replicas, plunge down and scoop up my father, who struggled not a twitch. He only cried out “Eat or be eaten, kiddo!” as he slowly ascended out of earshot, towards the hideous bloated jowls of the levitating obesity. It studied him for a moment, sniffing him with its massive, surgically enhanced nose, and then with incredible vicious speed it gobbled him up.

  Inside the fat person, I knew, lasers and grinders and robotic viscera flayed Father alive, stripping him skin to bone, boiling him down to nutrition and energy, and injecting his jellied existence directly down the gullet of the rich bastard at its core. Satisfied, the fat person emitted a jet of flaming methane from its rectal thrusters and shot back up into the sky, to the place where the fat people float forever.

  And then I was alone in the world. Except for my friend Aimless.

  My friend Aimless found a telescope, and now makes a study of the fat people. Gazing through his telescope at the floating city of fat, he says, is a quiet way to pass the time. They have built Fat Heaven up there, he tells me. In their titanic city of pearl and silver, held aloft by the constant effort of nuclear reactors, the fat people dance and sing, hold beauty contests, stage immense operas, copulate on clouds, stuff giant bales of money adoringly in one another’s asses, and endlessly elaborate upon their total consumption of everything. They fling their refuse down to earth, where we tiny things that remain crawl out of our holes and race to feed upon it, while low-flying fat people make cruel sport of us.

  I hate them. But Aimless watches them and only laughs.

  The fat people are strong, they are smart, they have every good thing that ever was, all of it. All the earth’s bounty is tightly concentrated in their gargantuan fists. They do not share. They don’t have to. The great struggle is over and the fat people have won. I used to dream of a day when they would eat the last rock of the earth and find themselves, at last, hungry and unfed. But Aimless has watched them soar away into space, perhaps searching for other planets, other universes to eat and shit upon and throw away. The fat people want to eat the sun, and when they’ve run out of sun I’m sure their hunger will lead them on to other stars. They’ll never have enough.

  GERTIE THE WHALE

  Aimless says he’s in love with a whale. He says the whale comes to him in his dreams, singing to him when he’s sleeping. He says the whale has beautiful eyes. He says the whale’s name is Gertie, and he wants to find her something for her birthday. Aimless tells me all this as we pick through a layer of potato chip bags, used diapers and syringes with our digging sticks. I’m looking for something we can eat, smoke, or feed to Mrs. Teeth. Aimless is looking for a present for his whale.

  A thing about Aimless: he loves animals. And loving something that is dead and gone can be hard. I try not to think abo
ut my family; sometimes in my dreams I see my Father’s face rising into the sky, and I’m overcome with anger, I shake with rage, I weep. But Aimless is always excited to tell me about rats he almost saw, or insects he found traces of, or bones he dug up which might not have died too long ago. He’s ever hopeful.

  There are no more animals, I try to explain. We ate them all. The fat people ate all the tasty ones and the starving people ate the rest a long, long time ago. Every now and then someone might discover a dead animal in the general piles of trash and shit that we dig through, but those animals are ages dead, mummified by trash. And if we do ever find such a dead, rotten, disgusting animal, we have to feed it to Mrs. Teeth.

  There are no more animals, but there are lots of drugs. Drugs are one of the things the fat people happily shit on us. Six months ago it rained feces and marijuana for two days. Everyone in our colony smoked and smoked and smoked it, adults and children both, until our brains ran out our ears. Then, while we lay passed out in a happy blue haze of shit-stinking bliss, the fat people came down and ate dozens of us. That’s how stupid we are.

  Aimless lives in a rusting automobile, I think it was once a Dodge Caravan, that is lodged in the side of a cliff of scrap metal just above the reeking, reeling tide of the shit-dark ocean, overlooking a beach of slime. Nobody ever comes here because the smell is so terrible. This is where Aimless lives alone, and hoards his treasure, and smokes the leftover marijuana and dried feces.