Mini-Stories #8
One day Felty
Feltman woke up to discover he had a goatee growing out of his
kneecap.
"Oh, crap!
Today of all days. I have a big job interview, plus I have a date
with a hot chick who I hope will help me get over the tragic death of
my true love in a freak dishwashing accident!" Felty was
despondent. But he was tough, so he put on his hat and left the
house. After a few screams and hard stares, he went back home and put
on the rest of his clothing.
On his way to the
big job interview, he reflected on what a tough break life had thrown
him. First, he was born with a cleft ear, then at the very first day
of school, a series of very large pumpkins had fallen from the sky,
killing most of the teachers and all of the brightest students,
leaving him as the "King of the Dipshits", as the local
newspaper had tagged him. He failed to take advantage of this unique
situation, instead he lazed around and composed poems dedicated to
making things dirty and greasy. His favourite one was called "Dirty
Dirty Sexy Sandwich (With Dirt Inside)". After leaving school,
his life had gone into a severe decline, culminating in the infamous
Fart Incident, in which someone in the city let out a really big
stinker, and for some reason, every single person blamed it on Felty.
And now he was
walking towards a job interview, something he had no desire for, but
he had to go, or else the manager of his apartment building would
kill him. Felty was sure he had meant to say "evict him",
but he really couldn't understand his thick Eastern Canadian accent.
The office approached rapidly, and blinking hard, Felty entered.
After reporting
to the receptionist, Felty had a seat. A sudden overwhelming urge to
pick his nose grew and grew, and he fought hard to ignore it.
Finally, he picked up a decades-old issue of Dental Damage Weekly
and, raising it up to cover his face, pretended to read it while his
index finger dug desperately deep inside his nose.
"Feltman!"
barked the receptionist, a tiny block of wood, carved to look vaguely
human. Her voice was much louder than it had any right to be, and
Felty wondered where the sound came from. He got up and followed the
direction of her finger.
He almost slipped
a few times on the slimy floor, and wondered if the walls were really
carpeted in cat fur, or if they were just bragging on their little
plaques. Strange, wheezing voices seemed to call out from various
passing doors, and more than once he heard a drilling noise, then a
loud snap, as if a large bone had been broken in half. He wondered at
that, since this was neither a dental nor a doctor's office, but a
company selling hardcore pornography aimed strictly at the raccoon
audience. He wondered what he had gotten himself into. He adjusted
his hat so it sat more firmly on his head, and shrugged his
shoulders.
A large red-faced
man flung open a door and stared at Felty. "Mister Feltman?"
Felty nodded.
"Please,
come in," the man said as he stood aside to let Felty enter. As
the man closed the door behind him, a loud, skin-crawling scream
pealed out, suddenly cut off as the door clicked shut. A single drop
of sweat rolled down Felty's back and lodged between his buttocks.
"Please,
take a seat," invited the man, whose eyes suddenly bugged out as
he yelled in a panic,"But not literally! These are our seats!
Please do not take them..." he finished lamely as he trailed
off, seemingly resigned to the fact that other people had taken a
chair with them, and that Felty himself might take one, too. Despite
his great size, he looked defeated and deflated, like a sad, old
party balloon, months past its prime.
"Now, where
were we?" he mumbled as he shuffled some papers around on his
desk, which had clearly seen better days and in fact had been
salvaged from the alley.
"Uh, I just
came here for a job interview," offered Felty.
"Ah, yes! A
firm young man, come riding on a white raccoon, a saviour for our
failing company," beamed the man."My name is Oscar
Furniture, by the way." He held out his hand as if to shake it
with Felty's, but then withdrew it, as if he might not get it back.
He ran his hand through his hair instead, scratching the scalp. His
hair was brushed in an extreme comb-over, even though he was not in
the least bit balding. Felty absently stroked his long pointed nose
and stared at Oscar Furniture expectantly. A cold silence fell upon
the room. They stared at each other for what seemed like hours, but
was in fact only a few seconds. Oscar stood up quickly, then sat back
down slowly. "And you are...?"
"Felty
Feltman."
"Is that
really your name? To be honest, the only reason I agreed to interview
you was because of your ridiculous name," chuckled Oscar.
"My
ridiculous name? Excuse me, man, but what kind of name is Oscar
Furniture? You sound like a character in a bad story."
"It's a
proud family name, going back centuries. We are royalty back in our
home country of Fakopia. We were exiled by the Columnists and forced
into a nomadic existence around Europe, finally landing in Vancouver.
We have spread and prospered and slowly we are regaining our past
fortunes. Soon we will have enough wealth to raise an army and return
in triumph as the rightful rulers of Fakopia!" Oscar Furniture
finished with a flourish, sweeping several sheafs of papers off the
desk onto the floor, where what looked like a bald mouse scurried
from behind a pair of muddy gumboots and nabbed them, dragging them
back to its hiding place.
Felty stared at
him incredulously. "Regain fortunes? Armies? Rightful rulers?"
Oscar nodded
happily like a puppy on Ecstasy.
"By selling
raccoon pornography?"
"Oh, no!
Pornography aimed at the raccoon market! There's a subtle
difference. We produce art of an erotic nature that features nude
human women being ridiculed by raccoons. It's quite interesting,
actually." The tip of Oscar's tongue darted out of his mouth.
"Interesting?
Ridiculed? What the hell are you talking about?" said Felty
suspiciously. "How are they being ridiculed?"
"Well, in a
series of cartoon-type speech balloons, the women are being told that
they are no good, that they do not live up to raccoon standards of
beauty because they are not raccoons. As well, some of the raccoons
make fun of the women by calling them fat, even though all the women
are actually very skinny. It just messes up their minds. It's quite
tasteful when you see it in magazine or video form, I assure you."
Felty's eyes
narrowed as he stared at Oscar Furniture. "It sounds damn silly,
if you ask me. Foolish!"
"Oh well..."
Oscar looked around the room as he dipped his hand into a drawer of
the desk and pulled out a large needle. "Would you like some
drugs?"
Felty stood up
violently, his chair slamming to the floor. "No, thank you! I
think I'm gonna take off now."
As he turned
towards the door, Oscar yelled,"Muffinbutt!" and the
strange creature that looked like a bald mouse but was not, darted
rapidly from behind the muddy gumboots and attacked Felty. Felty
gasped and tried to shake it off his leg, but the thing crawled up
his leg to his crotch, and with one fast push, embedded another
needle into his groin. Felty collapsed to the floor, not unconscious,
but hallucinating. He had been injected with some sort of powerful
psychotropic substance, like LSD or peyote, but fast-acting and as
strong as a nuclear explosion. The room swirled around him, as the
figures of Oscar Furniture and the bald mouse-man loomed over him,
their faces and bodies diving into each other and out again, their
blood vessels appearing and disappearing rapidly, strobing in some
gorey ballet. Felty could see that they were speaking, but all he
could hear was an awful screaming sound, like an entire skyscraper
made out of metal ripping lengthwise, if the building were actually a
sentient being instead of inert. The sound echoed around and around
his head, escaping out of his ears and leaking back into his eyes,
then spraying from his nose and onto the walls. "The sound, the
sound..." he mumbled in a strangled voice, but the words turned
to black crows and attacked him. He thrashed around on his back,
clawing at his skin. Finally, one of his thrashings hit Oscar, and
the man fell down. Felty struggled to his feet, seeing Oscar falling
on the mouse-man in slow motion. He grabbed at the doorknob, which
had turned into a giant eyeball and was winking at him. He caught it
and recoiled at its slimy, ropy stem, finally catching it again and
yanking hard. It came off in his hand, and the door it was attached
to shattered into a thousand pieces. Felty ran out of the room even
though he felt as if a dozen corpses had been tied to him. He dragged
himself and the corpses down the hallway and past reception, where
the tiny block of wood yelled at him to stop, but he picked a corpse
off his back and threw it at her. He burst out of the building into
the harsh sunlight, falling to the ground, wheezing. Through back
alleys and front yards, he fled home, not stopping until he had
slammed the door to his apartment shut. He sat on his dirty, ratty
couch breathing heavily and coughing, finally collapsing in
frightened tears. The drug, though extremely powerful, was
short-lasting and in less than an hour the effects had worn off.
Felty shuffled to the sink and drank from the tap.
He sat back down
and the thoughts raced around his mind in a mad race to catch up with
each other, when he noticed that his knee was itching. He pulled up
the leg of his pants only to see the goatee on his kneecap.
"Aw, fuck!
That stupid goatee!"
The aging
prostitute next door listening at the wall with an empty glass to her
ear, turned away with a smile on her wrinkled face. She began
laughing, quietly at first, then loudly, the laughter pouring out of
her dark throat like a waterfall, a raging torrent of evil. She
laughed and laughed until her sides ached, then she went and made
some bacon and eggs.
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