Slick with Algae Eaters
Continuation from Thomas Lockbottom
My apologies for the flashback... let's move on up to the day in question. Recap: my car hates me, sunburns are a vile, Satanic condition, there's a chance I might lose one of my jobs, and I'm pretty sure I just woke my roommate.
Pippi continued to stare at me, pretending that he couldn't understand my apology. A subsonic rumbling emanated from his direction, yet his facial expression remained unchanged from his curious, lop-sided demeanor.
"Don't you growl at me, you slept the entire day yesterday. If anything, I did you a favor by disturbing your sleep. I hear depression is caused by lack of activity and last I checked canine therapists don't come cheap, especially when you still refuse to understand simple English." I really wasn't in the mood to have this conversation with him today, but he was blocking my way to the kitchen.
His only response was allowing a single glob of drool to fall from his jowls, as his stood as frozen as a statue. I debated for a second to simply kick his remaining front paw out from under him and make a mad dash for the fridge, but the last time I attempted that I returned to my bed with a pillow case full of fecal matter. Do not ask me how he managed to do that; I do not know, and I refuse to think about it any more than I already have.
"What? What is it you want, you sorry excuse for a tripod?" I pleaded.
Pippi let out the doggie equivalent of a frustrated sigh and hobbled off down the hall. My path now unblocked, I followed his trail, not because I really cared where he was going, but rather the kitchen laid in the same direction. Two steps from the kitchen door, he re-greeted me with an empty pizza box, firmly clenched between his teeth.
"Not now, Pippi. We'll play frisbee later." I tried to squeeze past him through the doorway.
He dropped the box on the floor, and shifted his stance to block the entire path with his body. Looking directly at me, his let out another stone-faced growl... from his stomach.
"You can't be hungry, you shithead. You still have yet to touch the bag of dog food I left for you a month ago." I peered further down the hall to double check my claim and saw the 30 gallon trash can still brimming with kibbles standing untouched in his room. "Go eat that."
He picked up the pizza box and growled again, this time from the throat. Fuck, he's impossible to deal with in these kinds of moods. As I yanked the box from his mouth, he trotted into the kitchen wagging his tail.
"You are a goddamn baby. You know that." I said as I undid the padlock on the refrigerator door. I reached in, grabbed a nearly expired jar of peanut butter, and tossed it in his direction. That should keep him preoccupied for a while, plus it might give me some sort of amusement for the morning. Much to my chagrin, Pippi scooped out the entire remains of the jar with his tongue in a matter of seconds, and swallowed with little difficulty. He then looked back up at me as if to say 'Please sir, I'd like some more'. Damn it. I threw his the leftover bucket of pork fried rice, watching it spill on the floor at his feet.
Moments later, he had sated himself on the full gallon of Chinese food and hobbled off to bed once again. I on the other hand, rather envious of my roommate, remained awake battling the constant throbbing pain of my sunburn. Too groggy to fix myself a decent breakfast and pretty convinced that leftover pizza shouldn't be green and fuzzy, I decided to smoke my meal and wash it down with the last of the Jameson's in the freezer.
I peeked outside my window to gauge whether or not it was safe to go reclaim my treacherous vehicle. Alas, there wasn't a cloud in the sky to block the sun, who was waving at me with a predatory grin. "Fuck you too, asshole." I muttered as I lowered the shades and turned back into the room. As I shifted my attention from the window, I noticed in my periphery two gentlemen casually strolling up to my front door. Curious, I went to the door and gazed through the mounted fish-eye lens to get a better look. Both of them were wearing the exact same outfit consisting of: tailored pair of black pants; white short-sleeved, button-down Oxford shirt; black leather New Balance cross-trainers; gun-metal Fossil watch with a brown leather strap; black Jansen backpack worn tight across the shoulders; and in the left breast pocket, a slim, red vinyl-bound book titled with gold lettering.
"Fuck yeah!!" I exclaimed. This day might not be as boring as I anticipated. I had made an art out of amusing myself with the once frequent visits from different church organizations acting as neighborhood missionaries. But to tell the truth I was getting a bit rusty. I hadn't seen an evangelical visitor since I unknowingly accepted to host my own Teen Suicide Crisis Hotline; I really thought they were selling me cookies. Needless to say, for 3 straight months after that period I received hate mail and death threats from furious parents over my 2.7% survival ratings of my callers, which included the parents themselves and the frequent 'wrong numbers' trying to reach the local pizza delivery. Eventually, I brought the entire thing to a halt last Christmas by bludgeoning the mechanical life out of my answering machine after a sleepless night of constant phone calls.
Since then, absolutely all of the missionaries stopped showing up. This further propagated my theory that they all belonged to the same central organization, and each denomination existed for the sole purpose to make multiple attempts at converting heathens, like myself, to their cause. I imagined each of those door-to-door dogmatic salesmen walking around, looking at a map of my neighborhood with a dark, blackened hole where my house resides, perhaps with the words scrawled in some fancy calligraphy 'Here be monsters...' And now they were back. I had to hand it to them, they were persistent.
Something did strike me as odd about the gentlemen strolling up to my house that made me doubt my initial reaction. I didn't recall those in the past to have such a fanatical aesthetic regiment, and I noticed that neither individual was carrying or wearing any theistic paraphernalia. Maybe they were the most recent branch or new to the area, and never bothered to check in with home office. I began to mentally list the variety of reasons that these types had returned to my doorstep. In the end, it didn't really matter, although I did find myself eying the cutlass mounted on the wall opposite the living room.
I allowed them the time to make it to the door, where they silently stood much longer than I was comfortable with. Any preemptive guilt I was feeling for my planned mischief was soon drowned in anticipation. Eventually, one of the gentlemen reached out to the doorbell... my cue to swing the door wide and greet these ignorant new-comers with unforeseen peril and entertainment.
.:
My apologies for the flashback... let's move on up to the day in question. Recap: my car hates me, sunburns are a vile, Satanic condition, there's a chance I might lose one of my jobs, and I'm pretty sure I just woke my roommate.
Pippi continued to stare at me, pretending that he couldn't understand my apology. A subsonic rumbling emanated from his direction, yet his facial expression remained unchanged from his curious, lop-sided demeanor.
"Don't you growl at me, you slept the entire day yesterday. If anything, I did you a favor by disturbing your sleep. I hear depression is caused by lack of activity and last I checked canine therapists don't come cheap, especially when you still refuse to understand simple English." I really wasn't in the mood to have this conversation with him today, but he was blocking my way to the kitchen.
His only response was allowing a single glob of drool to fall from his jowls, as his stood as frozen as a statue. I debated for a second to simply kick his remaining front paw out from under him and make a mad dash for the fridge, but the last time I attempted that I returned to my bed with a pillow case full of fecal matter. Do not ask me how he managed to do that; I do not know, and I refuse to think about it any more than I already have.
"What? What is it you want, you sorry excuse for a tripod?" I pleaded.
Pippi let out the doggie equivalent of a frustrated sigh and hobbled off down the hall. My path now unblocked, I followed his trail, not because I really cared where he was going, but rather the kitchen laid in the same direction. Two steps from the kitchen door, he re-greeted me with an empty pizza box, firmly clenched between his teeth.
"Not now, Pippi. We'll play frisbee later." I tried to squeeze past him through the doorway.
He dropped the box on the floor, and shifted his stance to block the entire path with his body. Looking directly at me, his let out another stone-faced growl... from his stomach.
"You can't be hungry, you shithead. You still have yet to touch the bag of dog food I left for you a month ago." I peered further down the hall to double check my claim and saw the 30 gallon trash can still brimming with kibbles standing untouched in his room. "Go eat that."
He picked up the pizza box and growled again, this time from the throat. Fuck, he's impossible to deal with in these kinds of moods. As I yanked the box from his mouth, he trotted into the kitchen wagging his tail.
"You are a goddamn baby. You know that." I said as I undid the padlock on the refrigerator door. I reached in, grabbed a nearly expired jar of peanut butter, and tossed it in his direction. That should keep him preoccupied for a while, plus it might give me some sort of amusement for the morning. Much to my chagrin, Pippi scooped out the entire remains of the jar with his tongue in a matter of seconds, and swallowed with little difficulty. He then looked back up at me as if to say 'Please sir, I'd like some more'. Damn it. I threw his the leftover bucket of pork fried rice, watching it spill on the floor at his feet.
Moments later, he had sated himself on the full gallon of Chinese food and hobbled off to bed once again. I on the other hand, rather envious of my roommate, remained awake battling the constant throbbing pain of my sunburn. Too groggy to fix myself a decent breakfast and pretty convinced that leftover pizza shouldn't be green and fuzzy, I decided to smoke my meal and wash it down with the last of the Jameson's in the freezer.
I peeked outside my window to gauge whether or not it was safe to go reclaim my treacherous vehicle. Alas, there wasn't a cloud in the sky to block the sun, who was waving at me with a predatory grin. "Fuck you too, asshole." I muttered as I lowered the shades and turned back into the room. As I shifted my attention from the window, I noticed in my periphery two gentlemen casually strolling up to my front door. Curious, I went to the door and gazed through the mounted fish-eye lens to get a better look. Both of them were wearing the exact same outfit consisting of: tailored pair of black pants; white short-sleeved, button-down Oxford shirt; black leather New Balance cross-trainers; gun-metal Fossil watch with a brown leather strap; black Jansen backpack worn tight across the shoulders; and in the left breast pocket, a slim, red vinyl-bound book titled with gold lettering.
"Fuck yeah!!" I exclaimed. This day might not be as boring as I anticipated. I had made an art out of amusing myself with the once frequent visits from different church organizations acting as neighborhood missionaries. But to tell the truth I was getting a bit rusty. I hadn't seen an evangelical visitor since I unknowingly accepted to host my own Teen Suicide Crisis Hotline; I really thought they were selling me cookies. Needless to say, for 3 straight months after that period I received hate mail and death threats from furious parents over my 2.7% survival ratings of my callers, which included the parents themselves and the frequent 'wrong numbers' trying to reach the local pizza delivery. Eventually, I brought the entire thing to a halt last Christmas by bludgeoning the mechanical life out of my answering machine after a sleepless night of constant phone calls.
Since then, absolutely all of the missionaries stopped showing up. This further propagated my theory that they all belonged to the same central organization, and each denomination existed for the sole purpose to make multiple attempts at converting heathens, like myself, to their cause. I imagined each of those door-to-door dogmatic salesmen walking around, looking at a map of my neighborhood with a dark, blackened hole where my house resides, perhaps with the words scrawled in some fancy calligraphy 'Here be monsters...' And now they were back. I had to hand it to them, they were persistent.
Something did strike me as odd about the gentlemen strolling up to my house that made me doubt my initial reaction. I didn't recall those in the past to have such a fanatical aesthetic regiment, and I noticed that neither individual was carrying or wearing any theistic paraphernalia. Maybe they were the most recent branch or new to the area, and never bothered to check in with home office. I began to mentally list the variety of reasons that these types had returned to my doorstep. In the end, it didn't really matter, although I did find myself eying the cutlass mounted on the wall opposite the living room.
I allowed them the time to make it to the door, where they silently stood much longer than I was comfortable with. Any preemptive guilt I was feeling for my planned mischief was soon drowned in anticipation. Eventually, one of the gentlemen reached out to the doorbell... my cue to swing the door wide and greet these ignorant new-comers with unforeseen peril and entertainment.
.: