A Pernicious Tale
by Jonathan Goorvich
I honestly thought that peeing with my pants around my ankles was the way everyone peed. So there I was, standing at the urinal of EE&E Publishing with my pants and briefs pulled down to the floor and my shirt pinched up a bit over my bellybutton by aid of my forearms. I was at the urinals because the stall toilet had overflowed. There was fecal matter everywhere. I usually avoid urinals. At all costs. I'm a private guy. But I didn't want to deal with the disaster in the stall. So I'm at the urinal and Dan Weinstein from Accounts Receivable walked in.
"Jesus Paul!"
"Hey Dan."
"Paul. Jesus."
I didn't really think about it then, but in retrospect the sight of my flat, bare, white ass is probably what threw him off.
"Jesus man." He pushed the stall door open. "Oh fuck!"
"Yeah."
"That's nasty. This is..."He looked at me again, then quickly
looked away. "Fuck it. I can hold it." He left.
When my business was finished, I pulled up my pants and spent the next three minutes washing my hands. It's important when you wash your hands to spend equal time lathering each finger. Also, I like to scratch the palm of my hands with my fingertips so soap gets under my nails. If I have one complaint it's this; the water here at EE&E Publishing never gets quite hot enough. I have several more complaints, though. The acrobatics involved in leaving the bathroom without touching the door handle is one of them.
As I walked down the hall back to my cubicle, I noticed someone nosing around in it. Flipping through my Word of the Day calendar, no doubt. Today's word happened to be pernicious. I forget what it means. Curious as to whom this shady individual was, I kept my distance. It wasn't long before I saw the man in question's torso, proudly wearing a Franklin County Sheriff's Department uniform over his obscenely large pectorals. With this knowledge, I took a detour back to my desk. A detour that led me down the elevator and into the parking lot.
"Paul?"
I froze.
"Hey man, look, about earlier..." I turned around. It was Dan
Weinstein. He was smoking.
"Yes?"
"You ever think... I don't mean this to sound too... but you ever think
people in the office didn't want to see your ass?"
"Oh. Yes. Good point. Noted. Thank you." I wished that I was in
my car.
"Hey, you're not gonna tell on me are you?" He held out his cigarette,
what I then believed to be a marijuana cigarette.
"Is that a marijuana cigarette?"
"Busted!" It was indeed a marijuana cigarette.
"You want a hit?"
"No. Thank you."
"It could do you some..."
"No. Thank you," I interrupted him. "Well. See you later
Dan."
I searched my pockets for my car keys, keeping it, as they would say, cool. Unfortunately, my car keys were not in my pockets, they were, as it turns out, right next to my Word of the Day calendar. I just remembered what pernicious means.
"Dan?"
Dan started coughing, "Huh?"
"Are you eating lunch?"
"What? Now? No. No. I'm smoking a joint." Dan laughed.
"Um."
"But a burger sounds fucking great right about now."
"Yes."
"Let's go get a burger."
"Ok." We stood there staring at each other for a moment.
"You can drive," I told him.
"Cool."
He put the marijuana cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and threw what was left of it into an Altoids tin.
"Let's roll ass hole."
Dan drove a blue 1987 Camero. It smelled like pizza and sex. Mostly pizza. Some sex. But mostly pizza.
"I need to stop," I told him.
"Here?"
"No."
After a pause, "here?"
"No, my apartment. Please."
Dan let out a long, drawn out breath. It sounded as if someone was letting the air out of a bicycle tire. Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.
Not knowing what else to do, I joined Dan. Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.
"Paul?"
"Yes."
"We just harmonized."
"Please turn left at the next street. My building is on the right.
564."
Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.
Dan waited in the car as I went up to my apartment. It's a quaint Spanish styled one bedroom on the third floor of a quiet, lovely building. My unit faces a courtyard. There are no trees, no plants and no grass in the courtyard. Only cement and a plastic owl. The plastic owl keeps away other birds who would find visiting a cement courtyard desirable.
HONK! HOOOOOOOOONK! Dan was honking. This bothered me as I had taken great pain in entering my apartment quietly. My iguana, Beth, was sleeping.
When I got to the bathroom, I noticed that the body was still slightly warm. The head, as it were, was in a garbage bag in the trunk of my car- whose keys, as it were, were next to my Word of the Day calendar at work. Rigor mortis had set in and the blood at the bottom of the tub had coagulated. It wasn't pleasant. Not at all.
HOOOONK!
I thought perhaps Dan would fall asleep or become impatient waiting for me and leave. That would be for the best as I had plenty of work to do. I turned on the shower in hopes of softening the body and washing away the blood. I rolled up my sleeves, put on my ever trusty yellow dish gloves and opened the lid to the toilet. This is where I kept the garden sheers. They came in handy while removing the head, so I figured they would be useful with the four appendages. If you've never done it before, cutting human flesh to the bone is not as difficult as you may think. With the right tool, it's actually surprisingly easy. If you do it slowly, it's quite the lesson in anatomy. The bone, on the other hand, is just as difficult as you would think. No fun. No fun at all. I had plenty of work to do.
As I snipped away at the body's right arm, Dan walked into the bathroom. I had apparently forgotten to close the front door. He certainly didn't look well.
"Jesus Paul!"
"Hey Dan."
"Paul. Jesus."
I didn't really think about it then, but in retrospect the sight of a decapitated corpse in my bathtub is probably what threw him off.
"What the f..."
Dan wasn't able to finish that thought. The garden shears through his throat put an end to it quite nicely.
This little detour was going to take longer than I thought.