Mini-Stories #8

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.