The Overwhelming Urge

by Andersen Prunty

  To entertain himself for this long walk, he raises his arms above his head, fingers extended, and begins hooting. He hoots with each step he takes. “Hoo, hoo, hoo.” The gravel crunches beneath his feet.

  About halfway down the lane, he gets excited because he can see a large package bulging from the mailbox. He has always been afraid someone will steal his mail. He hopes this is the package he has been expecting.

  He breaks into a light jog, his arms still extended toward the sky. Within no time at all, he is at the mailbox, his hands on the thick brown package, greedily pulling it out. Too excited to carry the package all the way back to his house, he rips it open.

  He pulls the gun out, letting the bubble-lined paper fall around his feet. He tosses the pistol from hand to hand, feeling its heft. Mr. Gravel smiles knowingly. He is pleased. Placing the cold barrel of the gun against his forehead, he pulls the trigger, thinking that it’s so cold because it’s been outside all day.

  His head erupts.

  A dying spray of red against the black and white day.

  Mr. Gravel’s body staggers before falling to the pavement of the road. The neighbor’s dog, always loose, wanders over and begins licking at the wound.

  Cowboy

  I approach the three teenage girls and brazenly inform them they can call me “Cowboy,” motioning down to my shiny new boots. They look at each other and begin laughing. They laugh hard enough to make their firm breasts jiggle.

  Jiggle.

  I try to tell myself that I don’t need their approval of the name change or the new person the name is to represent. I try to tell myself they are ugly but, looking closely at them, I can’t find a single flaw. I begin to cry, loud and gushing. I look down at the ground as the tears roll out of my eyes, splashing the surface of my new boots.

  Slab

  Ever since he’s started eating on the humans in the freezer, Ross has gained an amazing 150 pounds. He finishes a slab of the human’s ribs and reflects on what life used to be like. He had been a social creature: parties, girlfriends, a good job.

  Then one day, he just got tired of it all. He no longer wanted anything more than to kill a few humans and keep them in his new deluxe freezer.

  Ross had, on a number of occasions after eating human flesh, tried to venture out into the world but it had become too difficult. The phone calls and drop-ins had ceased shortly after he quit going to parties and the job. After all communication with the outside world had ended it became too difficult for him to go outside. He could feel people staring at his fat, pale unwashed flesh. Ross had stopped shaving and he knew whenever he farted they all smelled the stink of death. People shot him the evil eye. Priests crossed themselves after walking by and none of it meant anything to Ross. He only wanted to eat his freshly prepared meals, wash it down with some tap water and masturbate, the taste of the last bite still fresh on his tongue.

  Ross brings himself back into present time and rises from the table, going to the sink and washing his dish. After washing, Ross retires to his chair for a pleasant post-meal slumber.

  Then a very strange thing happens.

  The phone rings.

  At first, Ross doesn’t know what to do.

  Then he swallows, takes a deep breath, and goes to answer the phone.

  “Hullo,” he says.

  “Mr. Ross?” the voice on the other line asks.

  “Yes, this is Mr. Ross.”

  “Mr. Ross. We know you have a dead body in your apartment.”

  “Not true.”

  “What?”

  “Not true.”

  “So you don’t have a dead body in your apartment?”

  “No way. That’s illegal.”

  “What about a dead cow. Neighbors say they’ve heard you sawin on something over there.”

  “Is it illegal to keep a dead cow?”

  “If it becomes a nuisance to those around you. Say, are you sure you don’t have a dead body there?”

  “No way. That is, I mean, I’m sure.”

  “This is Mr. Ross, 311 Purple Rose Street, Apartment 4F, correct?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No dead body?”

  “Nobody but me.”

  “Well, okay, then... Hey, you wouldn’t tell us if you had a dead body in there anyway.”

  “Sure I would.”

  “Well, I think we’re going to send somebody over there to check it out.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you, Mr...?”

  “Black. Stanley Black.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Black.”

  It was strange talking to another human being, Ross thinks upon hanging up the phone. Well, he thinks, guess I should finish up the rest of that dead body.

  It is a lot to eat and his stomach ends up rupturing after the last bite.

  The detective who comes over to check out the apartment has been into cannibalism for a little over two years. When he sees Ross’ huge dead body he is both shocked and delighted. He waits a few minutes before calling Detective Black.

  “Yeah, Stan, I’m here at that guy’s apartment. No, everything’s clean, checks out fine. I think I’m gonna take off for the day after this, though. All right. Thanks, Chief.”

  After hanging up, the detective gets on the phone with one of his cannibal friends to help him drag that bitch of a corpse out to the car.

  Fad

  Teddy and I are in his blacklit basement, huffing glue and listening to Judas Priest. Teddy turns to me and says, “So, you tried fuckin your mom yet?”

  I chuckle. “No. Not yet, Teddy.”

  “You think I’m joking?”

  “Have you?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sweetest pussy I ever had.”

  “My mom’s like sixty... and she has that thing on her head.”

  “Yeah, I used to think my mom was pretty sick too but, man, that pussy.”

  I pretended to think about it for a minute. “No. I don’t think I could.”

  “Well, you’re one of the last then. I’m from California and everybody out there’s doin it. You just wait and see. You’ll come around.” Teddy smiled knowingly through glazed eyes that were little more than slits.

  “Maybe so,” I said, the idea already seeming less absurd than it once did.

  Marcello

  I wake up one morning and go downstairs only to realize my mother has been involved in a lengthy and entangled affair with Marcello Mastroianni, the deceased Italian actor. I realize this because he is sitting at the kitchen table in a cozy terry cloth robe, nursing a cup of coffee and smoking an unfiltered cigarette. When I finally bring myself to look into his puffy eyes, he merely raises his eyebrows as if to say, “Well, sometimes these things happen.” Mother comes out of the bedroom and he gives her a playful pat on the ass.

  All About Bucky

  Bucky had amazing flatulence. He would stroll into a room full of people, get ripped on beer, and let them fly. His friends would make circles around him, slapping their thighs and laughing until tears streamed down their cheeks.

  Bucky disappeared one day and it was rumored that he’d got someone’s girl pregnant and the said someone decided to plug up Bucky’s asshole.

  I was never Bucky’s friend but I go to a lot of the same gatherings and watch the people whenever someone else gets ripped on beer and starts letting them fly. They still form the circle but the laughter is frantic and near hysterical. Terrifying. And their eyes bulge and their faces turn red but no tears ever come out.

  Roses

  I wake up and head straight for the bathroom. My bowels are really rumbling. Once on the toilet, I have to struggle more than usual. I have, in fact, left the bathroom door open with the expected need for ventilation. Finally, near exhausted, I have my movement. I wipe but there’s nothing there.

  I get up and pull up my underwear and pants. Curious, I decide to look in the bowl before flushing. I am astonished to see that the toilet is filled with rose petals and, standing there in the morning light of the bathroom,
I’m surrounded by the smell of the flowers.

  I go to work in a better mood than usual.

  During my lunch hour, I have to go to the bathroom but someone has made it there before me. I wait patiently outside. A few minutes later, Dan comes out, the newspaper folded under his arm. He looks somewhat guiltily at me, the smell of feces hanging about him like a malicious cloud. I pinch my nose closed with my fingers and mouth, “Pee-you.”

  “What,” he says. “Your shit smell like roses?”

  I smile broadly and nod my head.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes it does.”

  Pointing at the Sun

  Lowprice Head gets into his car and takes a drive down to the local supermarket. It is a pleasant drive. Not a day for revelation but a nice day nonetheless. The sky is blue and clear. Not a cloud in it. He sings, “I wear high pants,” to himself and realizes how much he sounds like his father. This irritates him because he does not like his father. He tells himself the rest of the day will be better once he has stocked up on assorted fruits and vegetables.

  Suddenly, he is struck with the overwhelming urge to stop the car, get out, and point at the sun for a few minutes. So he does that. And as he stands at the gravel shoulder of the road a black truck pulls up behind his car and a group of three teenagers gets out. They all have a lot of tattoos and wear extremely short running shorts.

  The most well-muscled of the three approaches Lowprice and gives him a little shove. Lowprice continues to point at the sun.

  “You wanna start some shit?” the muscled guy says.

  “No,” Lowprice begins. “I’m perfectly content just pointing at the sun for a few minutes or so.”

  “That’s some fucked up shit,” the guy says. “You better stop that.”

  “I can’t,” Lowprice says.

  The muscled guy tries to force Lowprice’s arm down but it stays, ironlike, pointing at the sun. The heavily muscled youth’s friends begin laughing at his failed attempt to bring Lowprice’s frail arm down.

  “If you don’t put that arm down I’m gonna fuck you up real good.”

  His friends collectively make a sound like, “Whoo!”

  “Sorry,” Lowprice says, continuing to point.

  “You asked for it, you little shit.”

  He walks around to the front of Lowprice and punches him in the face. Several of Lowprice’s teeth shatter and he collapses back onto the gravel, his arm continuing to point toward the sun.

  “All right now,” the muscled guy says to his friends. “I’m gonna roll him over here and when I do that I want one of you to get in the truck and drive over his arm.”

  “Right on, Mitch,” one of them says.

  Mitch rolls Lowprice over and the guy driving the truck runs over it once going forward and again in reverse. Mitch kicks Lowprice over onto his back so his arm rests floppily and broken on his stomach. “Serves you right, you damn pointing shit!” Mitch screams before joining his friends in the truck and speeding away.

  Lowprice begins singing, “I need medical attention,” to himself around broken teeth and a busted jaw. Luckily, he no longer sounds like his father when he sings. That makes it an all right day.

  New Pants

  Steve and Paul get up off the floor, their faces red and sweaty from wrestling. They are both shirtless.

  “Hey, let me try on those pants,” Paul tells Steve.

  Steve takes off his pants and hands them to Paul.

  Paul slides his pants off and puts on Steve’s pants. He walks around the room and squats down a couple of times.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I like these. These fit real nice.”

  “Those pants were expensive. I need them back,” Steve tells Paul.

  “Fuck you, you little retard.”

  “Come on, give em back. They don’t fit you anyway.”

  Paul is the larger of the two boys and no, the pants do not fit him very well.

  Steve moves toward Paul. Paul punches him in the face. Steve falls to the floor, blood running from his nose and onto the carpet.

  “Well,” Paul says. “I’m gonna go in the other room and fuck your sister now.”

  Steve figures Paul will have to take off his pants to do that and then he will take them back.

  Now I’m Found

  Seth is my cousin who came to stay with my parents and never left. He lives in a room in the basement. Occasionally, I go downstairs to bum cigarettes from him. He appears at the door, Metallica blasting in the background, sweaty from intense masturbation. “Pounding off,” he calls it.

  Today, I go down to Seth’s room to get some cigarettes but there is no metal and he never comes to the door. I stand there for a few minutes before opening it. When I look inside I see Seth hanging from the ceiling by a belt. The word “Satan” is written on the wall behind him in what can only be sheep’s blood.

  Crabs

  The khaki pants completely alter his view but he nevertheless straightens his tie in the mirror. “I wish this were a better day,” he coughs. He stands up, takes off his khaki pants and inspects his genitals in the mirror before him. A look of paternal worry crosses his face as he inspects his wicked bad case of crab lice. He has plucked each one of them from his bed of pubic hair and put a spot of color on each of their backs. The little fuckers die off quickly. He has to peg his khaki trousers so he doesn’t lose them as they die. They deserve a proper burial and he’s had a ceramic flowerpot filled with dirt going for quite some time. Since his morning count it doesn’t look as though any of them have died off. “The day is getting better,” he says and pulls up his slacks.

  My Dumb Hair

  I get in a barfight and am horribly beaten by three men in tight pants. They work me over about the head and neck with a blackjack.

  The next morning I have trouble waking up and cough more than usual. I strip off my bloodstained clothes and head into the bathroom. The mirror reveals, amidst my now lumpy and misshapen face, a BB-sized pimple perfectly centered between my eyebrows.

  My hair sticks up every which way. I put some water on it to try and get it to lie down. The lumps on my head have caused my hair to go dumb and it hurts too bad to mash down too much. I have been defeated. I have the overwhelming urge to shoot myself in the head.

  The Hole

  A man receives a call from his sister-in-law. She tells him his brother caught lazy eye at work. Immediately thereafter, the man develops a hole halfway up his forearm. Curious, he explores the hole. Too small to fit his index finger into, he probes it with his pinky.

  “I wonder where it leads,” he muses, still digging with the pinky. He removes his pinky from the hole and smells it. The odor is only moderately disagreeable. Something similar to a sweaty navel smell.

  The next day at work he brushes some of his arm hair over it and, luckily, no one notices. When he gets home that night, after showering, the hole’s smell wafts up to his nostrils. It smells much worse than before the shower. Nearly pungent. His sister-in-law calls again. This time she tells him his brother’s lazy eye has turned into a cataract.

  “I’ve got problems of my own,” he growls at her and hangs up the phone.

  He returns to the bathroom and scrubs the hole with great rigor. Finding a sliver of soap, he works this around in the hole until it disintegrates. It doesn’t help. In fact, the man is quite sure it smells even worse.

  “Shit,” he thinks. “This is the worst smelling hole I have.”

  The next day, fraught with embarrassment, he stays home from work. He breaks apart a stick of deodorant and places a piece in the hole. After a few minutes, the deodorant is gone and he puts another piece in there. If ever his vigilance declines, the hole reminds him with a scent more powerfully chilling than the worst flatulence he’s ever smelled. That evening his sister-in-law calls to tell him his brother went to the doctor. In order to solve the problem with his brother’s eye, the doctor shot it out with a slingshot. Now his eye is fine—better than before, even. The man asks his sister-in-
law for the doctor’s name. He calls and makes an appointment.

  The next day he goes to see the doctor.

  The man forgets to bring his deodorant and the nurse directs him to a room, pushing him into it and quickly shutting the door behind him.

  A few hours later the doctor walks in. Upon opening the door, he is visibly taken aback, hours of stink greeting his nostrils.

  “My God that’s horrible,” he gasps.

  The man points to the hole on his arm.

  “Oh. I see. You have a hole.”

  He pulls out a cotton swab and swabs the inside of the hole. He pulls it out and smells it, visibly suppressing his gorge and bracing himself on the bed.

  “Jesus that smells. Let me write you a prescription for that.”

  “Thanks,” the man says. “I’ll be happy to get rid of it.”

  “Here’s a prescription for two grapes and a piece of tape. That oughtta do it.”

  Skeptical, the man goes to the store, selecting the grapes and tape. He gives the cashier his prescription and medical card. She nods and hands him a receipt, suspiciously eyeing him. Once home, he inserts the grapes into the hole and applies the tape over top of it.

  The next morning the hole is gone. The man breathes deeply. He feels reborn.