wr_post08:subj_fict

…BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

"If I gave you four copies of Hamlet and asked you to make a diorama, what would you do?" he said, entering the room.
"'The fuck is that supposed to mean?" she shouted defensively over her shoulder as she stuffed the potted plants under the couch cushions. He had seen it, but he wouldn’t bring it up. He knew all too well what she was going through.
"You want to go get some Mexican food?" he asked. They only spoke in questions these days.
"Are you hungry already?" she asked. Another goddamn question, he thought. It had to stop. He seized the telephone receiver and put the listening end forcefully in his mouth. He then dialed his mother-in-law. "What are you doing?" she asked, getting up and coming towards him. He slammed the kitchen door shut and barred it with a broom. "Why are you being so crazy, honey?" she wailed. "Is it something I did?"

The phone was ringing. He could feel it in his teeth. Someone on the other end picked up. He took two sticks of celery out of the crisper and played the cadence to "Wipe Out" on the lower end of the phone, while punching more numbers in with his nose.

"Who is this? Sheila?" a voice asked. "Why are you doing this to me? What do you want? Are you hurt? Sheila?" It didn’t matter what he did. Only questions. He couldn’t take it any more. He spat out the receiver into the sink. It clattered into the drain. He hit the garbage disposal and took a bite of the celery. His wife had stopped knocking. Was she gone? No, he thought. It's only a trick. He could see shadows moving outside the door. She must be trying to look at him through the gap. He poured out a pile of salt along the bottom of the doorframe and blew it under the door. There was screeching on the other side.

"Why did you do that, John?" She was crying and coughing, trying to clear her eyes. "Do you have any idea how much that hurts?"

"NO MORE QUESTIONS!!!!" he yelled. The lack of inflection in his voice shocked him. He had made an Imperative statement. It wasn’t a question. He had brought about meaningful change in his life. He pulled the garbled head of the receiver out of the sink and dialed the police. He told them he was trapped in his kitchen and an enraged woman with bloodshot eyes, claiming to be his wife was trying to kill him. He hung up, slipped a kitchen knife under the door and sat down on the counter laughing. She wouldn’t be arrested, but they would look into it. There would be questions and she would have to answer them...

Minute Rice in the Era of Instant Obsolesence

Gary and Tina had three ugly kids, a run-down bungalow on the industrial edge of the suburbs, two rusty sedans and no ambition. They'd been married for nearly three decades and the only thing keeping either of them going was each's desire to see the other die first. Gary Fleenor had been the Runner-Up State Spelling Bee Champ in High School, but he'd assumed the title after a scandal rocked the world of competitive letter recitation, connecting the winner, one Margaret Bloom, to both the Yakuza and Archibald Pez, of novelty-candy-dispenser fame. The title had earned Gary the admiration of then-incarcerated Tina Radmonowitz. She was performing community service, collecting trash on the highway median, when she happened across the article that had broken the "Spelldown Snafu" story. It would be eight months before they met in person, but what began was a fiery correspondence built on lies and exaggeration, would gradually blossom into a bitter, stagnant marraige. Derek Fleenor, the first mistake, was good with his hands, or so went the testimony of the five eyewitnesses to his first aggrivated assault. He'd made it through six states before the stolen Chevy he was driving into oncoming traffic siezed up and went into a skid. When he awoke in the prison hospital, he was no longer a biped. It was the subject of much ridicule in the infrequent letters to "ol' one leg." Betty, the only Fleenor who had ever shown promise outside of the world of organized crime, died of Leukemia during a protracted legal battle for the rights to her first novel, "Please God! Kill Me Now." Eventually, the royalties were awarded to Gary and Tina who spent them on huckster balding cures and crack cocaine, respectively. The baby, Vernon, four-and-a-half, had no real concept of the hell he was being raised in. He also knew very little of his older siblings. To him the world consisted of blaring sirens which, when he was lucky, were from the "Real Police Drama" programs his mother watched and the slow, sour smell of unwashed clothing, which made up the bulk of the house's furniture. Eventually he probably grew up to do something undesirable for shit pay, but nobody cares about stories like that, so let's just say he became an astronaut. Vernon Fleenor, the first man on Mars!