The Interview

From the moment he walked in, Jessup knew the guy was going to be a problem. Most of the applicants at least tried to look respectable, and not like one of the head cases from D Block. The kid wore black jeans paired with a pink t-shirt with an Abrams tank on the front. A man just didn't do that kind of thing if he wanted to be taken seriously. The red rooster-tail hair style and mascara didn't help much either.

Still, the kid did make it past the first two cuts in HR, so he must have had something to offer. Jessup shook hands with him, despite the kid's black nail polish, and invited him to sit. Brigham, sitting to Jessup's left didn't shake, just spit tobacco juice into a coffee cup as he looked at the kid.

“Mister Tarot,” Jessup said, “why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself.”

“Yeah, well for starts, just call me Tarot, okay? That's my name, like it says on the resume.”

“I never did trust a man with only one name,” Brigham said, scratching his beard, "it's not Christian.”

“Well I ain't no Christian, Gramps,” Tarot said, “you got a problem with that? This some kind of Christian-only job?”

Jessup put a hand on Brigham's arm, gently pushing the retiree down into his seat. “Hold on there, son, we're an equal opportunity employer here. Hell, Brigham here hasn't darkened the door of a church in over thirty years, ain't that right?”

Brigham spat into his cup.

Tarot smiled and crossed his legs. “Yeah, no problem. Sorry. But this job is right up my alley, so I'm just nervous, that's all. I mean, I may be overqualified, you know?”

“You a former governor of Texas?” Brigham said.

“No.”

“Then you ain't overqualified.”

“Let's start with your experience,” Jessup said.

“Well,” Tarot said, “if you look at the resume, you'll see that I design my own guillotines, from the finger choppers up to the one we used on tour to chop off seven heads at one go.” He reached over and tapped at the bottom of the resume sitting in front of Jessup. “There's the link where you can go see my stuff on YouTube.”

“On tour?” Jessup said.

“Yeah, I'm in a band. Or was, I mean. We used manikins for the guillotine stuff, so if it worked on them, it should work on the real thing.”

“We don't need no Frenchie executioners,” Brigham said, “we need a hangman.”

Tarot shrugged. “I figured out how to get seven hundred pounds of razor steel to go through five cattle carcasses without splintering the bones. Compared to that, how hard can rope be?”

Brigham spat. “Hoo-eee! Rope ain't hard! How many times I heard that one, eh Jessup?”

“Tarot,” Jessup said, “Brigham here was the state's hangman for over twenty years. Before him, the state got sued seventeen times for botched hangings. What's your record, Brigham?”

“One hunnerd and five executions, not a one contested. You wanna know why, son?”

“You gonna tell me anyway?” Tarot said.

“Because it's an art. They make machines for lethal injection, and electrocution. Between the Army and the video games there's enough shooters around for thousands of firing squads. But hanging? It's a lost art.”

He sent another string of brown spit into the cup.

“Nope, ain't no one around that know's how to work rope, fewer yet that know how to make a painless noose and set the sandbag so's the neck snaps but the head stays on.”

Tarot's scowl disappeared. “That's so metal! Can you teach me how to do it?”

“Hells no! I'm a hangman, not a professor! Besides, I'm retired. I don't have time to start from scratch with blockheads like you.”

Tarot didn't say anything for a few seconds, then stood up and looked at Jessup.

“Fuck this man. I ain't getting the job, am I?”

“I expect not.” Jessup said.   

*

The next applicant didn't seem remarkable to Jessup: a man in a charcoal grey suit, glasses, and a John Denver haircut. Brigham seemed to do a double take, and his eyes narrowed. The applicant's resume consisted of a single line.

1992- Present: Simmons Rope and Chain Company, Senior Manager, Quality Control.  Developed testing methods for natural and synthetic fiber ropes and cording. Expert in nooses, snares, and knots.

The man looked all around the room, though wouldn't meet Jessup's eyes. He settled on staring at Jessup's shoes.

“Mister Thomas,” Jessup said, “why don't you tell Brigham and me why you're the best person for this job.”

“I'm intimately familiar with how rope behaves and how to avoid even the most uncommon problems with the medium.”

“Hoo-ee! The medium?”  Brigham said. 

“Indeed, sir,” Thomas said, shifting his gaze to Brigham's shoes, “for example, the effect of humidity on the coefficients of friction in natural fibers. I would expect that being an expert yourself, you use hemp rope in this climate because manila fiber tends to bind and twist on itself in the winter months. We wouldn't want to unduly chafe the – er, participant.” He let out a dry, staccato laugh.

“Hemp?” Brigham said, jerking his head, “Did you say hemp? What kind of fool do you think I am? Hemp is too springy. I've always sworn by manila.”

Thomas looked up at Brigham, a corner of his mouth downturned before he quickly looked back at the floor.

“I- I assure you, hemp outperforms manila in every way.”

“Hippy marketing claptrap.” Brigham leaned closer to Jessup.  “Next thing you know, he'll want to hang 'em from sus-tainable bamboo scaffolding or some such other crap.”

“I co-authored a paper on the tensile and binding properties of hemp fibers that was accepted by the American Rope and Cable Manufacturers' Association,” Thomas said, straightening in his chair, “I thought it might be padding my resume a bit much to include it, but I can direct you to their website so you can read it yourself.”

“The ARCA is an industry lobby, more interested in tax cuts than their product. They'd worship a poodle in a mini-skirt if they thought it would save them a couple bucks.”

“That doesn't have anything to do with hemp,” Thomas said. He squirmed in his seat, and his face took on a pink cast.

Brigham leaned forward. “Hemp's not even on the same level as nylon.”

 Thomas leapt from the chair, shaking a finger at Brigham. Whatever he meant to say was lost as he choked on his own spittle. Tomas pitched forward coughing, his face turning red. Jessup stood and walked around to Mister Thomas. He laid a hand on the man's shoulder, and helped him straighten as the coughing ended.

“Perhaps we should take a break,” Jessup said. Mister Thomas rose and slowly made his way to the door. He murmured a thanks to Jessup, who held the door open for him. Jessup closed the door behind him and cocked an eyebrow at Brigham, already absorbed in digging out a new wad of tobacco from a foil-lined pouch.

“You've always insisted on hemp ropes,” Jessup said.

“Yup.”

“So?”

“Sexual deviant,” Brigham said. “Autoerotic asphyxiation. Can't get off unless he or someone else is getting choked.”

“You sure?” Jessup said, “Even if he were into that autoerotic thing, so what?”

Brigham looked at Jessup, the bulge sliding from his lower lip to his cheek as he moved the tobacco around.

“Guy like that will screw up a hangin' on  purpose. He seems smart enough to maybe only mess with one in ten, or one in twenty. Hell, he may only do it once in his career, but he'll do it. And once is too many.”

“Aren't you always saying you're not a doctor?”

“I'm not. I'm a hangman, and it's my job to know these things. Besides, he didn't have a beard either. Can't trust a hangman without a proper beard.” He reached for his mug. “Send in the next one.”

*

The next few interviews were little better. The kindest words Brigham has for the applicants were 'dumber than a box of rocks,' 'sharp as a ping-pong ball,' and 'a flat-head in a Phillips world.'

“There's just one interview left,” Jessup said.

“Good. I wanna get home and watch Bass Masters.”

“Could you try not to tick the applicant off this time?”

“If their delicate sensibilities are offended by an old fart's brain droppings, then they're not cut out for the execution business."

The door opened, and Jessup knew he was doomed to at least another month behind the table with Brigham. A woman walked in, tall, middle-aged, with a lined face and blunt nose giving a solid no-nonsense quality to her that Jessup usually associated with farm wives and restaurant owners. She reached out and gave Jessup's hand a firm shake.

"Miriam Boxleitner, pleased to meet you."  

She stuck out her hand to Brigham, who chose to spit into his cup instead. She gave a slight shrug and collapsed in the chair, as if she had been on her feet all day.

 "Well," Jessup said, leafing through his folder of papers, "I don't seem to have your resume on hand, do you have a copy?"

"I don't have one. Who needs a resume to be a hangman?" she said.

"Then how do we know you're qualified, missy?" Brigham said.

She screwed up her face in thought. "Well, when I was younger, I took up taxidermy."

"We don't mount prisoners to the walls, last time I checked," Brigham said.

She looked at him and smiled. "No, I expect you don't. However, my mentor had me practice on small animals before he'd let me work on other people's jobs. So I went around to the local farms and offered to take care of any strays they had."

"The job's for a hangman, not a dog catcher," Brigham said.

She nodded. "To make sure I didn't ruin the pelts, I hung 'em rather than shooting them. I got pretty good at it. My record was thirteen cats at one time."

"How'd you manage that?" Jessup said.

"Easy, you get a stepladder and string a few of 'em up on each rung."

Jessup looked at Brigham, who was working his wad of chew from cheek to cheek.

"You ever do anything bigger than a cat?"

"A few cows, two deer and an alligator."

Brigham's wad of chew stopped moving.

"An alligator? Neck's too thick for hanging." he said.

Miriam spread her hands. "You have to run a slip noose around the end of the snout to get the extra leverage needed for snapping the neck at the main noose."

Brigham spat into his cup. "What else you got?"

"My maiden name was Johnstone, I grew up in Kansas."

Brigham's eyebrows shot up.

"What is it?" Jessup asked.

"Nicodemus Johnstone was the most famous headsman and hangman in the Kansas Territories. Some say criminals feared him more than Wyatt Earp." He turned to Miriam. "I thought your family was out of the business."

"Grandpa and my dad never took up the craft, but we still have great-granddad's papers. I figured someone in the family should keep in practice."

"Hemp or Manila?"

Miriam shrugged. "I'll take hemp if I can get it, but I'm used to making due with what the state provides."

"What do you do now?" Brigham asked.

"I work at the DMV."

Brigham stared at her for over a minute. She calmly looked back at him.

"I don't trust hangmen without beards," he said.

"I expect you'll get over it," she said.

Brigham nodded. "I expect so." He turned to Jessup. “She's not perfect, but she ain't an idiot.”

It was as close as an endorsement Jessup had heard from the old codger over the past two months of interviews.

“Do you have any moral objections to killing a man?” Jessup asked.

“What's the pay grade?” she asked.

“The job's coded as a G-27.”

“Overtime?”

“Yeah,” Jessup said.

“No objections, and I can start on Monday.”

“Hallelujah,” Brigham said, “You're hired. Call me at the bait shop if you need any pointers.”

The image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hangmans_Noose.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 3.0 license.

A Perfect Christmas

by Colleen Sutherland

(This is my last depressing Christmas story of the year.  Next year I intend to put all of them into a book.  Those who have been following along will by now realize though each story stands alone, they are interconnected as well. They are meant for those who really don't like the holiday and they are legion. CS.) 

       Joe was snoring out big beer breaths. It had been another one of those nights with the boys, but why did it have to be Christmas Eve? The kids were sleeping so Janine still had a chance to give them that perfect, memorable Christmas.

       Janine had big plans for Christmas 2012. She had lists of things to do, checklists to be checked and consulted. Her plans seldom worked out but this day would be different. There were places the family had to be, relatives to visit, church services to attend, and above all the riotous opening of presents under the tree. 

 
      So Janine planned, beginning with Black Friday.  She had her lists ready and was waiting at the front of the mall at 3:00 a.m. She must have broken her wrist when the door open and the crowd charged but she never broke her stride. She threw her purse over her shoulder and grabbed little Freddy by the other hand. She found Joe's gift in the electronics department, a doll for Eloise on a special display rack. She even nabbed a Shooter Scooter from under the Santa throne at the mall while Freddy was on Santa's lap. Maybe that old guy wanted that gift for somebody he thought special, but store employees shouldn't hoard the good stuff anyhow. The doctor said the cast would be off by New Year's.

       She never slowed down. The minute the kids left for school, Janine took off for the stores. Joe claimed she spent too much on Christmas. They only lived on what he made as a deliveryman for local stores whenever their own crew was too rushed. He was an independent contractor with his own van. Christmas was his busiest time but the rest of the year he worked as a mover. Somehow they got by. Janine told him how much she had saved on each item she bought but hid the credit card statements.

       Janine figured that on Christmas morning with the family still sleeping, she could put the presents under the tree and fix that one set of lights that refused to go on. She started by setting her alarm clock. She never set the alarm. Either the cat wanted to be fed or Joe wanted his breakfast so she never got to sleep late even on Mother's Day. She wasn't even sure if that clock worked. But she had to get up early to prepare for that perfect Christmas so she set it. It was almost midnight when she joined Joe in bed.

      On restless nights, Janine heard every noise in the neighborhood: cars going down the street, some animal in the trash can, the cat moving around the house and of course, Joe snoring. She never slept all that well. On this sacred night, she listened to a party across the street that was going on far too long with some rock instruments and singing. She couldn't make out what the singing was about. She tiptoed downstairs, stood next to the Neighborhood Watch sign at the front window and peered out, but the snow was falling and she couldn't make anything out. She listened to the racket for a while and finally called the police and asked them to check on it. There might be drugs involved. You never knew. It was a dangerous world out there.

       She crept back to bed to give it another try, but gave up on sleep an hour before she usually got up. She would be tired the next day but it would be worth it to give her children that perfect moment under the tree. She slipped out of the bed and went down the stairs barefoot, being careful so she wouldn't wake Joe. He was mean when he had a hangover. Let him sleep late.

       It wasn't until she had the first cup of coffee that Janine remembered she never turned off that damned alarm clock. She tiptoed back up the stairs into the bedroom and clicked off the alarm, stubbing her toe on the cat sleeping next to the dresser. He was old, deaf and going blind so he didn't notice things the way he used to but that woke him up.

       He followed Janine downstairs demanding in his loud wail to be fed and not cat food either. He knew there was a platter of leftover turkey in the fridge and turkey is turkey, cat food is cat food. He yowled. Rex was a half-Siamese mongrel foisted on her by a relative. He didn't speak normal cat, just howls in Siamese. He must have driven his non-Siamese mother nuts.

       “I am a slave to everyone in this family, including that cat,” Janine said to the empty kitchen.  No matter, Rex got his way. She didn't want him to wake the kids.

       She messed with the lights on the tree for a while, trying to find the bad bulb. She finally gave up, figuring that it would be morning sunlight when the kids got up anyhow. The needles were already falling, so in a day or two the thing would come down. “Damned fire hazard,” she said.

       Janine got a step stool to haul the presents out of the tallest kitchen cupboard. A good place to hide things she thought, but she noticed the wrapping had been slightly torn and there was more tape on them than there should be. Darned kids. Or maybe it was Joe. He was always trying to figure out how much she was spending.

       “I'll think about that tomorrow,” she told Rex. “Christmas is important.” There even was a present for him, a little catnip mouse.

       She arranged the presents under the tree. That's when she realized she forgot batteries. All those battery ads on television about being prepared and she forgot. She carefully re-opened the packages and made a list of what would be needed and went to the kitchen to look for the batteries. There weren't any. She realized Joe had swiped her stash for some damned project. She would have to go to the convenience store three miles away and hope they still had batteries.

       She was flagging. “I need a shower to wake myself up.” She brought her second cup of coffee into the bathroom and climbed into the tub. The soothing hot water ran over her body though she was very careful not to get the cast wet. It felt so, so good. With a second wind, she toweled off as she drank her coffee. 

       She congratulated herself on having the forethought the night before to layout all her clothes in the downstairs bathroom so she wouldn't have to wake Joe up by trying to dress in the dark upstairs. 

       No bra. No panties. Damn. She climbed down the narrow steps to the basement laundry and pulled a dirty bra and panties out of a basket. She waved them around for a bit, smelled them again, then Febreezed them.

       Back in the bathroom she dressed, top to bottom until she realized her shoes and boots were still upstairs. She tiptoed back to the bedroom. Joe was still snoring. There wasn't a sound from the kids. Good. She came back down.

       The cat, who seemed to be suffering from Alzheimer’s, decided Janine had just woken up and yowled for more turkey. She ignored him. She grabbed her purse and keys and went out to start the car. That's when she discovered that Joe's big delivery van was in the driveway behind her car. It would have to be moved. The music down the street was still going on. “Hallelujahs” seemed to be the prominent motif. It was Christmas or she would have gone down there and cursed them out royally. Instead, she went back into the house. The cat went into his full scale my-God-I-am-dying routine.

     “You'll wake everyone up,” she screamed as quietly as she could. She gave in and fed him more turkey.

Joe's keys were not where they were supposed to be on the keyholder in the kitchen. She stole back up the stairs and searched his jackets until she found a set and while she was at it, checked his wallet. He wouldn't notice if a few bills were missing. He rolled over and groaned. She held her breath until he was well and truly asleep again.

       It was getting late. The sun would soon be up. She wanted to hurry but when she came down that demented cat was at it again. He hadn't remembered the two previous meals. She didn't take time to argue, he got more turkey.

       She tore out to the dark driveway, unlocked the van and climbed in, bumping into the rear view mirror and throwing it out of whack. Never mind. That perfect Christmas was only an hour or so away and she didn't want to miss it.

       She backed the van out of the driveway and crashed into a patrol car cruising down the street. Both of the horns started blaring. That's when she remember that she had called the police about suspicious happenings, possibly drugs.

       Officer Craig crawled over the police car's computer gear, pushed open the passenger door and crawled out as he called into the station for backup. Joe came tearing outside in his jockey shorts. So did the True Christians from down the street who had been having some kind of all night party to greet Jesus. So did the kids in their pajamas. So did that damned cat who escaped and ran onto the street. It was at that moment that the asecond patrol tore around the corner. The squeal of the squad car's brakes was equaled only by the cat's final Siamese yelp before it was cut short.

       The kids were screaming, Joe was yelling at her and Officer Craig gave her a ticket.

       It wasn't the perfect Christmas Janine had imagined, but it certainly was memorable.

       I'll try again next year, she thought. At least the cat had three last meals. 

The Envy of the Neighborhood

Photo my Dmitry G via Wikimedia Commons

There is something almost sexual about washing a Prius. I wish I could tell you why, but every time I wash it, I feel this afterglow and the urge to roll over and take a nap. Maybe I wash it more than I should, but my reduced carbon footprint should cover a little extra water, right? So it was of course during Tuesday's washing that the salesman came to call.

He drove a late seventies Mercury, once red, now faded to a salmon color. The overall shape of the car was as if a kindergartner had designed it: a rectangle with tiny circles for wheels. Whatever the hubcaps had looked like was lost to time, only brown lug nuts showed now. The front was a wall of headlights and grille, the rest of the body bulky and slow-looking.

The salesman was no better. Somewhere in his forties, paunchy, and moving with all the energy and grace of a sick water buffalo. He hefted a small suitcase that looked like alligator skin; tufts of white poked out from holes and thin spots. His brown corduroy jacket with dark elbow patches floated over green pants as if the man were an inverted Christmas tree. He wore a homberg hat, and actual homberg, as if he were Winston Churchill or an olde tyme banker. And his shoes, his shoes! The only thing new on him, construction boots. This shambling figure approached the driveway, and I had nowhere to run.

“Hello,” he said, “do you like Christmas?”

“No.”

His head jerked back like I had just taken a swing at him. “You don't? Why's that?”

“Christmas is just cover for mass consumerism. It soothes the guilt of running up credit card debt, all so junior can have the latest gee-jaw to keep him quiet while mom and dad watch their sitcoms on TV.”

“Oh. So you think Christmas has lost its meaning?”

“If you mean that the holiday invented by a pope to undermine the Druids, sure.”

His face brightened.

“Yes sir,” he said, “many people feel as you do. Today's Christmas is nothing like what it ought to be, nothing like what they remember growing up. Would you like to know the reason?”

Because people suppress memories of whiskey-scented beatings? Because kids never have to shell out their own money for gifts? Claymation? Norman Rockwell? What was this guy's angle?

“I'm sure you're going to tell me,” I said.

Bibles. I bet he's selling bibles.

He cast a glance over his shoulder and leaned forward. “Christmas lights.”

I blinked; he nodded.

“Why even in your own neighborhood,” he said, “LEDs up one side and down the other.”

“LEDs,” I said.

“You call that light they give off a glow? It's as cold as Jack Frost's mother-in-law.” He laughed.

I didn't.

“You save a lot in electricity with the LEDs,” I said.

He peered around me at the Prius.

“That's why you got that thing?”

There was something unwholesome about his look. I took a step forward and blocked his view.

“It's environmentally responsible,” I said.

“Bah, that's just marketing talk. The best thing for the earth is to drive a classic like mine, not use more of the Earth's stuff to make a slightly less dirty car. No, re-use has gotten the short thrift in our society sir. Which brings me here to today.

“I thought it was Christmas and the evils of LED lights.”

“And that's just where it starts! There are the inflatable displays, just plug in a cord, and poof – instant nativity scene. Just hope that baby Jesus doesn't spring a leak. The pre-lit trees and deer, the dangly flashing icicle lights, motorized penguins on ice skates, they all pitifully try to make up for their lack of originality and warmth with gaudiness and so-called convenience.”

I kind of liked the penguins. “So what's your solution?”

He smiled and opened his case. Inside jewel-toned lightbulbs in faded cardboard boxes sat beside foil reflectors stacked like cupcake paper. Cloth-wrapped wires ended in chunky two-pronged plugs. A light-up angel sat next to a plug-in Santa whose beard had yellowed.

“You're selling used Christmas lights?” I said.

“Antiques. Dina-Lites with the Noma safety plugs. The old Mazda series, and the Osram Party lights.”

He plucked out a bulb the size of my pinky, the red knurled glass twinkling in the sun.

“Incandescents!” he said, “These are the secret to Christmas. The beautiful glow that comes only from zig-zagy tungsten filaments. Just warm enough to melt any covering snow and shine to the world.”

“I don't think so.”

“How about this?” He held up what looked like a popcorn ball made of blue glass.

“The snowball light. Where are these in the stores today?”

I shrugged.

“Or these,” he held up a green and red onion-shaped bulb with a tube of green fluid emerging from the top. “Bubble lights!”

“I thought they still sold those.”

“Pale imitations. They are club soda, this is Champagne.”

“I don't know, I like kitsch as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to decorate my house with power-guzzling fire hazards.”

“That's the beauty, sir. A little goes a long way. The amount of electricity you'd use is a paltry measure. And I assure you, not one of my products has ever caught fire.”

They did seem to have a certain retro factor that might play well. Maybe I could use some during a Mad Men-themed dinner party.

“Do you sell anything to control them remotely? My buddy has an Android app that can make his lights blink in time to any song you want.”

“No,” he said, confused.

“Pity.” Kip was always showing me what his phone could do that mine couldn't. I had hoped to shut him up.

“Surely you can see past all that novelty and show that, like a fine wine, newer is not always better?”

I did like wine.

“What would you recommend for a small display?”

He smiled and brought out a stylized star outlined in gold foil. It reminded me of Las Vegas.

“From the 1950s, I give you the Lawson model 400.”

“Seems kind of plain.”

“The foil will reflect the light of the blue, red and green lights here in the center, see?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And it will sparkle and shimmer in the slightest breeze. It's lost techniques like this that will make you the envy of the neighborhood.”

He said it with a knowing smile, and it hit me in the stomach. A piece of 1950s crap would make the envy of the neighborhood? My Prius was the envy of the neighborhood. My shiny, modern, Earth-saving vehicle was not going to be upstaged by a light with some tin foil around the edges.

“I don't know about the star,” I said. “I see you have Santa and candy canes and angels. How about a Jesus light?”

“I don't have one of those, sir.”

“It just seems like since we're supposed to be celebrating his birthday and all, there should be a light-up Jesus.”

“I'm sorry, they don't make those. They've never made those.”

“Well, that's what I want.”

“I could perhaps locate a nativity scene in the warehouse,” he said. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a notebook and pencil.

“No, not a nativity scene, a string of Jesus bulbs to light my front porch. If you can't provide that, good day, sir.”

The salesman's smile slipped and for a moment, I could see his fatigue. I couldn't feel sorry for him, it was his own fault for selling second-hand junk so worthless people wouldn't even buy it for Christmas. He carefully latched his case and lifted his hat.

“Merry Christmas, sir.”

He slammed the jalopy's door as he got in, loud enough to set off the alarm of the car parked across the street. I turned back to my Prius.

“Now baby, where were we?”

The Loser

By Bettyann Moore

As the train pulled into the station, Porpoise McAllister knew he was in trouble. He could see them: Melissa (Look, But Don’t Touch) Stufelter and her parents, George and Stephanie, standing outside the depot. George looked stern; Stephanie like she was only vaguely conscious of where she was. Melissa resembled a toadstool with her wide-brimmed hat and her long, cylindrical body clothed in fungus brown, her arms stiffly at her sides. Porpoise imagined her dropping hermaphroditic spores here and there with each movement she made.

He ran his thick fingers through his tangled mass of red hair, leaving traces of a Snickers Bar lunch to mingle with the natural oils. As the train edged nearer to the platform, Porpoise’s mind wandered to the last time he had been with Melissa (Wash Your Hand First) Stufelter. It was just before going off on this trip to Grandmother McAllister’s Transcendental Meditation Workshop and Goose Farm, a combination which had proved near-fatal to Porpoise whose level of concentration – much heightened by Grandma’s protein-packed meals – had caused him to wander unknowingly into a gaggle of geese. The fowl had not achieved Nirvana as Grandmother had hoped and had proceeded to attack the corpulent flesh beneath Porpoise’s short meditation robe, nearly rendering him incapable of the things Melissa (You’ll Have to Marry Me First) Stufelter found hard not to like.

The night before he left, Porpoise realized, Melissa hadn’t fought at all. It had even been her idea to end their date at her father’s place of business instead of their usual spot under the third rose bush in her mother’s haphazard garden. At first he was pleased by this change of scene since it would afford his body time to heal from the thorn wounds that Melissa took such great pleasure in bestowing upon his naked flesh whenever he came too close to entering the seventh heaven he’d often reached alone, but had never entered with another.

As soon as they stepped into her father’s shadowy office, though, Porpoise wished fervently that George were something other than a mortician.

It wasn’t the thought of all those bodies surrounding them, nor was it Melissa’s wild-eyed look that made him nervous, Porpoise reasoned now. No, it was the thought of all those newly-departed, all-seeing souls that caused his skin and muscle to shrivel noticeably. And wasn’t it true that Old Man Peterson’s remains were waiting for burial in the next room? If the rumors were true, Peterson had been the most prodigious lover in town, had, in fact, succumbed to death at the age of 88 only after making three very young women very happy – at the same time. How could Porpoise compete with that? Surely Peterson was hovering over them, giggling at Porpoise’s ineptitude, giving pointers Porpoise wished he could hear and even ogling Melissa’s body – or worse, laughing at it!

With Melissa’s words echoing in his mind about this being a “test” of some gruesome sort, and half a dozen spirits dangling above them, Porpoise fumbled and fought for finesse, then froze when he realized that his Super Flavor Big Bubble Gum had gotten stuck in her hair. She had seemed disappointed, not in the sticky mass they had to finally cut a large chunk of her hair to remove, but that his attempt at ardor had been in vain. She told him, as he stuck the hairy glob in a wrapper as a souvenir of that night, that he would be sorry in a way he could never imagine when he returned from Grandma’s.

“Sorry for what?” he wondered as the train screeched to a jerky halt and he saw Melissa lean over to her father and say something to him that made him scowl and her mother look more lost than ever. “Sorry for my attempts at lovemaking, or sorry for my failure?” Surely she and her parents were there for a reason. Would she accuse him of molesting her? Or maybe, he thought with an odd mix of excitement and dread, they were there to welcome him into the family.

He strode down the narrow aisle toward the door, anticipating her open-armed greeting, then stumbled as he stepped on a passenger’s attaché case, causing a sibilant hiss to escape with the air. Yes, he decided, Melissa (Come Here, Big Boy) Stufelter was there with her parents to welcome him into their fold. And what better way to conquer his hungers than within the matrimonial bed? He pictured George and Stephanie with ears cocked for the sounds of a grandchild, grateful that his grandmother’s impertinent geese had missed their mark, though somewhat narrowly.

As he fantasized, the man with the crushed attaché shot him a look and stood up. Porpoise had the fleeting notion that here was a man – rail thin and clad in black – who would probably have no trouble whatsoever making love beneath cackling, over-sexed spirits. The man pushed past Porpoise, through the open door, and straight into Melissa’s waiting arms. George stood off to one side, the scowl transformed into an eager smile. Stephanie, forgotten, tagged behind as they made their way from the platform.

Porpoise’s gaze shifted to his mother, whom he hadn’t noticed before, waiting patiently for her boy to greet her. He executed the last step down, unaware of the pile of dog shit beneath his shoe, thinking Melissa (Not Worth The Trouble) Stufelter had made her point, and shuffled off toward his mother’s car.