(no subject)
In Bad Taste
This is what we did for fun and fortune:
Betty, who I had met yesterday, and I were in the park one early afternoon and came across a happy balloon vender, poised ever so eloquently trying to sell his product.
This gave me the inspiration needed to murder that clown. He fell to the ground and the balloons floated away like a flock of free sparrows. Luckily she already had her fingers fixed on the ribbon connected to the rubber love bubble she wanted. Nobody else saw what happened. Nobody ever did.
I was enthralled into a state insanity most days. It was characterized by cockiness mostly. I did as I pleased.
I had my girl and a clown. Two separate paintings waited to be made. I would have to do the clown first as it was already dead and Phill liked his meat fresh.
Betty wanted and got the big purple balloon. You always give a girl what they want to get them to come home with you.
My smile stretched from side burn to side burn as I thought of what would go on later that night. Her lips again formed that perky oval that I wanted to capture.
Betty thought it was hilarious; me killing that clown with the long blade I kept in my sock. Shaking with giddiness all she said was,
- No way…
She accepted the balloon, obviously accustomed to this sort of violence that I didn’t bother to ask about. We both knew she wanted it after all.
She helped me dump the dead clown behind a park bench where Phill and I could retrieve it. He was going to be thrilled. He did say he was in the mood for something sweet.
Betty and I left hand in hand, hand in balloon. I knew she was oblivious to my intentions. She didn’t know the operation I ran.
-I’ve got an idea, I said.
I had her attention now, away from that spunky balloon. Her heels clicked on the pavement like a metronome. Her eyes glistened with a breakfast quality as she brushed her brown hair off her face. The sun always irritated me but right now it was making life rosy.
-Let’s just go to my place, I said, seeing that I had gained her trust.
I glanced to see that she cared about what I had to say. I told her we would jump in the tub and blow bubbles at each other and laugh, laugh and simply clown around.
She expected a passionate love fest but would soon find herself in my closet for three days as I ignored her whimpers and finished my clown piece. I had to keep her in there alive because Phill would need at least a day to clean up the clown mess, saving the best cuts of meat.
The sun warmed my back now as we walked together through the city streets avoiding children and babushkas with shopping carts. How romantic?
***
Back at the apartment the bed was made but not neat. It looked like someone had been laying in it for hours before my awakening. A leather book placed on purpose right below the single pillow was open. The lamp on the cheap gilded bed stand was turned on and everything else in the room cast shadows. The neighbors’ dogs talking back and forth across the gravel alley, drunken frat boys laughing combined with the steady smell of cleaning solution from the bathroom only 10 feet away, coaxed me to realize I had a steady head-throb.
I muttered to myself as I rubbed my eyes and got off the cold linoleum floor. Then it was clear as ice. I had passed out right in the middle of clean up.
-Goddamn it Phill, where are my pants?
-Look who’s finally awake! How’re we supposed to run a business when the CEO is always passed out?
I shrugged it off. Phill was lit up like a Christmas tree. He came out of the bathroom smiling and coughing with a rag drenched in Pin Sol wrapped around his meaty fist.
-What happened? Where’s Betty? I said.
My roommate looked at me with his tiny eyes and told me it was three o’clock in the morning and I had fainted again. I was on some head medicine that caused me to black out but I didn’t know it would be this often. This didn’t explain to me why I wasn’t wearing any pants however.
-Oh, I did the laundry, Phill said with a sway of the
head, I figured you’d want those washed before the blood stained them forever.
Sure enough the madman had stripped me in my sleep and washed my cloths. He was a sweet guy, well intentioned but he always did things in a peculiar way.
- You could have at least folded them, I said.
They sat in the corner next to the oven under which I knew a family of roaches was probably sitting down to dinner. I also knew I couldn’t go into the bathroom to wash the floor scum off because even at 10 feet away the fumes of Phill’s evening festivities made me dizzy. I put on my canvas pants which were still warm and splashed cold water from the kitchen spout on my sore face.
-Hey, don’t worry; I packed Betty in the fridge after you tanked. It was no problem; she was easier to manage in pieces.
Phill went to over and sat back in my bed and leaned backward just enough so his head would go out the third story window and blew out a big puff of cigarette smoke.
-Those new paintings are really great you know. You really captured their flavors. What are you going to call them, Dead Clown and Dead Betty?
- So, it’s three o’clock in the morning you say? Is there any place open I could get something to eat? I could use some fresh air too.
-No man, everything is closed up. We’ve got plenty to eat here though.
That was something I refused to do. I was okay with killing them and selling their pictures for rent money but I never ate them. That was why I had Phill here. He was the perfect way to get rid of the bodies.
-You know I don’t want to eat that. I still don’t see how you do it. You don’t even know where they’ve been.
-Come on man, you haven’t even tried it. Besides, we have all this extra meat since you decided it would be a good idea to paint two people this week. Your paintings are great, they always are, but I am only one man. Betty’s in the fridge and the clown will keep for a while in the freezer. You’re going to have to either help me eat all this or quit complaining.
-Phill, you talk a lot of sense. And I haven’t eaten since breakfast.
I had a dilemma to sort through. Why did it have to be three in the morning? I could just wait a couple of hours and go get some chocolate donuts. No. I could feel my stomach digesting itself. It needed something to chew on and as I waited baked Betty became more appealing. I finally looked at Phill in his combat boots, aviator sunglasses, an open robe with no undershirt, cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, and disheveled greasy black hair, and sighed, giving into cannibalism for the first time.
-Alright, so what seasonings go good on it?