Submitted by Reuven Bell - apollyon@mindvox.phantom.com

It started rather suddenly, actually. He began obsessing over death. Not in the mid-life crisis manner, seeing the first of your friends begin to die, beginning to worry that your own delusions of immortality are just that. No, he found himself consumed with thoughts of how people die. The manner, the process and above all, the final moments. At first it was rather innocent, as innocent as a mortality fixation can be, that is. He watched the Faces of Death films, transfixed by the eyes of the victims at the transitional moment between life and death. He became a constant viewer of the Surgery Channel, following every scalpel's every move into human flesh as if he himself were the surgeon excising a tumour. His conversation darkened a bit, as it be came overly filled with references to the procedures he'd viewed, but he remained largely the same person, albeit with a rather inexplicable hobby. It was only once he gained entry to the surgical theaters to watch the reality of it all that Larry Spet began to really change. It was driving home from the first failed surgery he'd had the privilege to witness--a failed extraction of a pound of rusted needles that had inexplicably turned up in the patient's stomach--when he stopped in the middle of the expressway, opened the door, and dragged the body of a freshly hit raccoon to the side of the road. The cars sped by as he squatted before the largely motionless form, a bare pulsing in its midsection punctuated by small spurts of blood its only movement.

At the rodent's last shudder, once it lay perfectly still, Larry raised his head. His eyes, pointed out at the ebbing traffic on the highway, saw nothing. Deep within him, as his hand lightly brushed across the surface of what now had achieved the official designation of "roadkill," he felt nothing.

Larry returned home that night purely through instinct. His mind seemed completely shut down, as he listlessly drove home, avoiding traffic and making the correct course adjustments in a mechanical manner. He plodded from the driveway to his small split level with his head down, seeing nothing. Had any of his neighbors approached him with a question, or even a friendly hello, they would have been ignored. There was nothing to worry about, though. His neighbors never really spoke to him. If questioned, they would have described him as a quiet man who kept to himself a lot. They assumed he loved his mother and sometimes wondered why he lived alone, but that's the typical response of a modern neighbor. They'd never think to be so incourteous as to ask why, or even to introduce themselves. Seven years since he'd moved into this quiet suburb, they stopped wondering and never gave him a second thought. They'd sometimes see him walking in or out of the house, and left it at that. He didn't disturb them, he was an excellent neighbor. That was enough. Some of them were even good enough to remember his name.

On this particular evening, no one was even near a window to see him lumber down the walk. All the better for them. Though there was nothing visibly wrong, anyone who had seen him this evening was stricken by a horrid feeling of sick fear.

Submitted by Derek Davis - derek@tomte.com

At work the next morning in his small accounting cubicle, Larry began to itch violently for no apparent reason. He also had a strong urge to go to the bathroom which he suppressed by crossing his legs. He seldom went to the bathroom before 10:15, and routine was hard for him to break, even now.

His immediate superior, Mel Lemoria, was short and wide and spoke with an accent that might have been Lithuanian but probably wasn't, judging from his name. He was eating a cheese danish when he passed Larry's cubicle and he waved the piece of pastry at Larry in a friendly greeting. Crumbs fell on Larry's desk, and Larry had an immediate urge to leap up and swat the offending pastry out of Mel's hand. He wanted to punish the man, to make him suffer for all the years of eating in front of him, or casually assuming that he, Larry, wanted none of whatever was in his, Mel's, hand. Instead, he found himself scratching violently, almost pulling the skin off the back of his hand. He also made small whimpering sounds.

"Well, that looks like a bad rash," said Mel, eating the cheese danish.

"It is. Yes. It is a very bad rash," said Larry, scratching even harder.

"I'd do something about that if I were you," said Mel.

"I'd do something about that if I were me too," said Larry.

When Mel left, Larry found that he had made a severe error in the third column of his tally. An error like that could do irreparable damage to the company. Normally, Larry would have broken out in a sweat over such a mistake, but instead, this time, he thought only of last nightUs roadkill, of the pungent, sick-sweet odor of the blood, of the oozing matter clinging to the road and the weeds that lined the side of the road. Ablaze with an emotion that he could not name, Larry almost ran down the hall to the men's room.

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In the men's room, Larry surveyed the scene. "One, two, three stalls" Larry thought to himself. "Let's see... Someone had an accident in number one last week, and number two has that nasty draft. Number three it is!". Larry always entered a stall to urinate. It seemed a completely irrational concept to stand while urinating, with only a little parallel divider offering a paltry privacy.

He shut the stall door behind him, and fastened the clasp on the door. Oh, how many times he had complained to management about that doorlock! It could hardly be expected to keep anyone out in an emergency. He sat down, and removed his left shoe. He then removed his right shoe, right sock, left sock, pants, underwear, tie, and shirt. He sat.

Larry couldn't understand those men whom he sometimes hears grunting in the next stall over. Those fat, red-faced men, who left their shoes on and pulled their pants down over them, bound like a prisoner to a torture-rack; no wonder they grunted! How could they be expected to perform while constrained in that manner? Larry's nudity allowed a sense of freedom which insured the proper functioning of his digestive and urological tract.

Back at his desk, Larry stared at the clock. The moment the second hand swept past the apex, denoting 11:59.00am, he furiously began adding numbers together. How he hated clock- watchers, those scum who sit staring at the clock up until the very second before a break, wasting the work time that their employers pay for so dearly. He conscientiously fought the urge to look up to see the clock strike twelve. He waited, and added, and added, and waited. Finally, Mel Lemoria's pumpkin-like mein floated above the cubical wall. He observed the rivulets of sweat forming on Larry's furrowed brow.

"I swear, Larry," Lemoria's happy-face spewed, "you are going to give yourself an ulcer if you keep on like that. Aren't you going to lunch?"

Larry let a well-deserved sigh escape. He looked up at the clock, and saw that it was 12:00.42pm. Lemoria was 17 seconds late, but Larry's irritation with that was secondary to his satisfaction in beating the clock-watching game. Nothing burned Larry's vitals like looking up a few seconds before noon.

"Yeah," Larry said as he rose and turned, "lunch".

Mel Lemoria left a gentle smile hanging in the air as he toddled off to his office to investigate the lunch his wife packed for him.

Hal Briggs was in his first day as a Kleen-N-Meaty hotdog vendor. He looked down with pride at the brand-new starched apron doubled around his waist. He had already met his hotdog sales quota for first-day vendors, adding to it the sale of several bags of chips, and he only miscounted change once. He took a moment to polish the steam off of the top of his stainless steel hotdog cart, whistling a little tune. Looking across the street, he saw his competition from Wursts-R-Us cranking down his umbrella. It looks like he was pulling up stakes and moving to another corner! "Obviously," Hal thought with pride, "that dog-slinger can't keep up with the new competition." Hal was having a truly good day.

He watched as the rival vendor began pushing his cart down the street. An angry man approached the vendor and began gesturing angry gestures. The vendor waved his arms and pointed over at Hal. The angry man marched away with a sour look, and crossed the street, approaching Hal's cart. As soon the angry man crossed the street, the rival vendor set down his cart and re-opened his umbrella.

Hal watched the scene, a bit confused. The angry man walked quickly toward him, pausing only to touch every lightpost, and step on every crack. As the man approached, Hal noticed that he seemed to be counting every step out loud.

"Two hot-dogs, no buns, circle-cut, with mayo and Worcestershire sauce", Larry said as he approached the next idiot hot-dog vender. Larry noticed that it was a face he had never seen behind the Kleen-N-Meaty cart before. "Good," he thought, "maybe this one will be competent." What an insult it was to be denied service by the Wursts-R-Us vendor! Larry would have that vendor schlepping blubber to the Eskimos in Antarctica once he got back to the office and called the Wursts-R-Us corporate offices.

An order of this sort had not been covered in Hal's brief morning training. He wondered how he was to serve the hot-dogs if not in buns? Befuddled, he sputtered "No buns?"

"Certainly not!" Larry raised his voice, "Do you know what is in your average hotdog bun? Your average aphid, caterpillar, and boll weevil. The FDA allows .3% of the net weight of the bun to be ground insects. Those little black specks in the buns sure aren't wheat germ, friend. Now let's hurry it up a bit. I've already had one setback, so I am running late already."

Hal was a bit stunned. Could this be true? Could Kleen-N-Meaty have betrayed him in this way, giving him buggy buns to sell on the street corners? However shaken his faith in Kleen-N-Meaty may have been, he made a silent vow to save his questions for a later time. At the present, he had a customer to serve, and he was going to do his duty as a Kleen-N-Meaty Junior Vendor to satisfy the customer. However, there was still a problem. Or rather, several problems.

Hal recomposed himself, and asked, "How should I serve the hot dogs to you if I were not to use the buns, sir?"

"Do you not serve curly fries in a basket?" Hal placed special emphasis on each word. "Do you not serve Italian sausage in a paper tureen? You are a service professional, and as such you must sometimes modify your sales practices to accommodate the wants and needs of your customers."

A small crowd had gathered to watch the fun, rattling Hal even further. Hal pulled out a cardboard basket, and began to prepare the hot-dogs.

"Ah-ah-ah," shouted Larry, having even more fun with this than he had enjoyed running down the raccoon, "I saw that! You pulled out those hot-dogs WITH YOUR BARE FINGERS! I won't eat those, prepare me two more."

Hal was mortified. How could he forget the first rule of the Kleen-N-Meaty Vendor's manual? Thoroughly flushed he threw the two tainted hot-dogs into a waste receptacle, and pulled on a pair of sanitary gloves. Hal had another question, so he braced himself in advance for the response and asked "Circle cut?"

Larry burned with an inner light of glee. He half turned so that the gathering crowd could see his face as he began. "My God man, do I have to stand on the street corner and teach geometry? A hotdog is a roughly cylindrical form. If you take a line and with it bisect a cylinder parallel to its axis, what are you left with?"

Hal returned a blank stare.

"That's right," Larry continued, "a circle. In this particular circumstance, a series of cuts, made down the whole length of the hot-dog, should leave you with a number of discs or circles. Nine cuts resulting in ten hotdog discs generally suffices."

Hal finally got the picture. He cut the dogs and arranged the pieces in an Italian sausage basket. The gathered crowd began to lose interest, as Hal worked quickly, with great efficiency. Hal's sudden competence caused Larry's ire to rise even more. There was, however, one final hurdle in this transaction.

"Um, sir?" Hal began, "I'm afraid that Kleen-N-Meaty hot-dog vendors do not, as a habit, carry Worcestershire sauce on their carts." Hal hung his head in shame.

An insane gleam burned in Larry's eyes. "Young man, as part of your training... DID NOBODY EXPLAIN TO YOU THE IMPORTANCE OF CONDIMENTS?"

After a prolonged harangue, Larry left the hot-dog vendor a broken, hollow mess. He continued down the street, happily munching hot-dog bits, on his way (albeit a bit late) for his regular lunchtime appointment....

Submitted by e. j. knapp - gomi@wco.com

It was 3:12 A.M. when Buster the night watchman found Mel Lemoria's body, though the word "body" only vaguely described the ransacked cadavar that lay prone on the green linoleum next to the urinal. Buster had seen chests turned into bloody bouquets of stalactites when he was an Army grunt, so staring slack-jawed into the gaping maw of mortality was old hat to him, but his 7-Up and frozen burrito glutted stomach pitched like the deck of an ill-fated ship when his bloodshot eyes fell upon the urinal.

When he thought about it at home, 3 hours later, in front of the 700 Club, he reckoned it was the little festive party toothpicks that had freeze-dried his motor cortex. When he'd glimpsed the neatly rolled slabs of fresh flesh, so forlorn and canape-like, like little sushis of American evil, he had swayed a bit, but the breezy cellophane curls and the delicate paper umbrellas were what keel-hauled the un-Budweisered areas of his brain. He went down like a Sumo wrestler shot in the butt with an animal tranq.

Submitted by Caina Lupis - cainalupis@wolfnet.grr.com

Lydia Darzins was Larry's neighbor.

Althought he thought that no one had seen him drag up to his fron door the other night, she had. Maybe it was fate that had convinced her to check that her car was locked, but she was never sure. She did have a strange feeling about something in the neighborhood though... All was definitely NOT well with Havenshire Estates.

Lydia was a single woman living in a townhome across the way from Larry's split level home. The only readon she knew Larry's name was because a letter or something had once been wrongly delivered to her house, and she had taken it across and put it in his mailbox.

She had often wondered why a guy like him would want such a big place. He lived alone, apparently. Lydia waited and waited for the rest of his family so show up, but they never came. Seven years and no lady visitors ever came calling on him and he really didn't go out at night either, from what she had seen. She assume d that he must be estranged from his family because she didn't even see family come over for a visit. She had seen him move into the place, and he didn't have much furniture, but most of she saw looked like heirlooms or antiques or something. She thought to herself, "This guy has GOT to have money."

She thought that he was some kind of businessman. From the way he kept his yard, she could tell that Larry didn't screw around when it came to taking care of business. All the hedges were evenly trimmed and all the same size, his lawn was perfectly edged, and the trees were pruned immaculately. This guy was definitely anal retentive. He wanted everything to be just perfect. If a bird shat on his car, he was out bright and early to clean it off. This guy's obsession with neat and orderliness was quirky, and yet Lydia felt compelled to introduce herself.

She didn't know how to appoach him. After all, she had already let seven years slide by without their making one another's acquaintance. He might be suspiciou s of her apparently sudden interest in him. It was just that he was so damn unapproachable. He seemed to always be in a dark and dismal mood. Like nothing was ever going well, or as though he were pissed of at the world. The only time he looked remotely content were the days he came home eating little bits of something from a basket that he held in his hand.

Lydia could think of a few things that might brighten up Larry's world...

She decided that tonight could very well be the night for her and Larry to meet one another. She wracked her brain trying to come up with a way to approach him. Then, the idea hit her.

* * *

It was almost time for him to be coming home and she was trying to make sure that everything was in order. She had made a lovely pork roast with all the dressings, and had planned to take it over and offer to share it with him this evening.

She heard the turbo diesel clatter of his Mercedes Benz station wagon, and knew that this was her cue.

She pushed her hair behind her ear and grabbed the Sterling Silver serving tray her mother had given her years ago, and waited for him to get inside his house.

She counted to thirty and started out her front door.

* * *

"God," Larry thought, "there is nothing like taking a crapper in your own house." He had been looking forward to pinching off a loaf in his own cozy, carpeted water closet all day. The men's room at his office complex were so institutional with their industrial black commode seats and the chromed looking pipe fixtures behind them. The toilet paper wasn't even on rolls. It came off in little one or two ply squares that hardly sufficed in a serious situation. How in the Sam Hill was on he supposed to make that lame excuse for bathroom tissue work? It was always something. The bloody doorlocks hardly ever even worked!

Usually Larry hung up his jacket, and neatly folded up the stuff he took off before he went to the potty, but today, making a "stinky" was imperative. Larry smiled a bit at that last thought. The word "stinky" used as a noun. "How bloody American," he thought.

As he sat down on the pot and began to eliminate, he allowed his mind to remember the raccoon that he'd seen the other day. "Damn that raccoon! Why must it taunt me so," he thought he screamed. But it was just a whisper. That raccoon lying feebly on the side of the road, throbbing, every pulse projecting blood from it's tiny little rodent thorax. "Such a powerful image," he thought. And then he was reminded of a scene from one of those Faces of Death movies where these people had a body and they kept saying over and over, "This is ours. This is ours..." Then they proceeded to have a bloodfeast. He could remember the young agile bodies of the girls at the feast, them naked and streaked with blood. How he wished he had been there! Suddenly, he wanted his mother.

The doorbell.

"Cripes! Who could that be," Larry thought. For a moment he did nothing, because he wasn't entirely sure that there really was someone at his door wanting to talk to or visit with him. Whoever it was, he decided, would ring again, if they truly wanted to speak with him.

The doorbell, again. Uncertain this time.

"For the love of GOD!!!" Larry was pissed off that his water closet-quality tim e had been so inconsiderately interrupted. And who would come calling on HIM anyway? Seven quiet years, and no visitors, no nosy neighbors poking in his business, and NOW, of all times, someone wants him to answer their call at the door. He decided that he would make this as business-like as possible. Larry wiped himself and then got off the toilet and angrily strapped on his housecoat. He stepped into his house slippers and stomped down the stairs.

The doorbell was in mid-ring again when he yanked it open and screamed, "WHO IS IT?"

A lady, in her thirties, was standing there looking like a frightened puppy. In her hands, she held a tray of something that smelled like his mother's kitchen. The lady was saying something, but in his anger and thoughts of his mother, he had missed it entirely. "I'm sorry miss, what did you say?"

"Well, it's just that I thought-- I was wondering if-- Oh, I made some dinner. I thought maybe you'd like some," the lady stammered.

Larry opened the door a bit wider and took the tray from the lady. "Thank you v ery kindly miss." Just as she was about to step over the threshold, he slammed the door in her face. He took the tray into his dining roon and st it on the table. Then he thought, "Where are my manners? What was I thinking?"

He jogged back over to the door and opened it. The lady had just started down his walkway, her head hung like a cheap motel painting. He called out, "Oh, miss--"

She looked up.
"Terribly sorry about that, it's just that you caught me off guard. Would you please be my guest and come in and sit down?" She nodded and started walking back toward his house. He stepped aside as she stepped up into his foyer, making it a point to stare at her bum. How round and shapely it was! It was like a firm fruit. He thought about how the skin on each of her buttocks would feel in his hands... In his mouth... He snapped out of that train of thought and showed her to the parlor and told her he would be just a minute as he needed to get dressed.

He told her, "You see, before you came over I was on the toilet--er shower. I was in the shower. I'll just be a minute, and then we can eat."

"Take your time," she urged. He hurried back upstairs, silently grumbling to himself about people disrupting his evening.

She looked around the parlor. It smelled of furniture polish and mothballs. At the word mothballs, she thought about her childhood pet, Clucky. Clucky was a calico cat. One afternoon she'd come home and found Clucky dead, a half eaten mothball in his mouth. She remembered grabbing the mothball from his mouth and trying to bring him back to life, but he was gone. Her parents had allowed her to have a small funeral for him. She had invited all of her family and eight of Clucky's closest friends. That night, she cried for hours! To this day, she still missed him.

She noticed that there were no pictures of family or other loved ones around. Only knicknacks and an especially large assprtment of ashtrays. "How strange," she thought. She got up from the sofa and walked over to the doorway. She was about to try to have a look around when she heard him clunk down the stairs. "Your home is lovely," she said rather matter-of-factly.

"Why so it is," he oozed. "Did you lose something?"

"Oh, no. I just wanted to uh, see more of your lovely house," she said more enthusiastically than she felt. she hoped he fell for it.

"Well then, let's chow down, as they say," he said.

* * *

The meal had been wonderful. He'd caught her once or twice trying to pick his brain for informain about his personal life, his family, and such. By the time dinner was over, she knew better than that. But now it was time for her to go, she was saying. He hated to see her leave with her apple like bottom going untouched...

But she had stayed longer than either one of them had planned.

She gathered up her things, and thanked him for sharing dinner with her. He told her he was glad she decided to come over. He walked her to the door, and opened it for her. As she was about to step onto the porch, he grabbed her by her hair and snarled, "You didn't really think I was going to let you leave, did you?"


All right, get off your butt and submit a continuation. Email it, with the story name in the subject line, to rebell@nyx.cs.du.edu.

Last modified 1/18/95

apollyon@mindvox.phantom.com