None Hear The Report

Written by Willie Smith

Saturday, 18 July 2009 09:38 - Last Updated Monday, 20 July 2009 13:52

I’m making love to my face when comes a knock at the door. I don’t
answer. Pull the thing closer, almost to my nose, when she beats down
the door and bursts in. It is the mother nextdoor – hysterical because
my dog bit off her son’s penis, which she pronounces pen-iz, as in the
pen iz mightier than the sword.

My tongue tip wags one inch shy of the bullet hole in the helmet atop
my tumid unit. But it’s no use. There is nothing for it but deal with
this crazy bitch.

I roll out of the posture. Spring up naked before her. “Actually,” I

say, catching my breath, “I don’t own a dog. I’m sorry about your
son’s pen-is-mightier-than-the-S-word. What was it – a poodle?’

 “Standard!” she barks.

“A stray,” I jump into a jock. “Been hanging around all week.”

“I’ve seen you feed it.”

“You’ve heard me kick it.” I look around for jeans. “You’re confusing
avenues of sensory input. Do you see my pants anywhere?”

“You’ve had contact with the animal. It’s your dog. I’m gonna sue you
for your rectum, buster!”

“That’s really about all you’d get. You can’t get blood out of a
hemorrhoid; or whatever. Look, Mrs. Johnson, I’m doing something
important here, and if I could just persuade you to step back out in
the hall and close the door?”

She bursts into tears. Blubbers, OK, she knows I’m not worth anything.
Just another two-bit bum. But won’t I please help get back her son’s
pianist?”

She seems to pronounce the male organ with inconsistent stops. Then I
figure to myself – why jeans? Once I toss this bitch I’ll get right
back to giving myself a facial. The jock meantime adequately cancels
jay nakedness.

“I figure anybody can retrieve it, you can.”

“On what,” I idly snap elastic against hip, “do you base this
assumption?”

She screams in my face, “Because all you jackoff weirdos living in

crummy little rented rooms are witches – y’all got witch power. And
it’s gonna take witches to relocate what that hellhound did with my

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None Hear The Report

Written by Willie Smith

Saturday, 18 July 2009 09:38 - Last Updated Monday, 20 July 2009 13:52

poor boy’s pee-next.”

“I would imagine the pen-iz the canine ate, seven?”

“Then I want you to exercise the gonad out!”

“Look,” I clear my throat, look her in the eye. Mrs. J. is obese.

Probably also pregnant. Her flab has flab. Her spare tire boasts a
spare tire that sports yet another spare. Even her eyelids bloat –
burdened with compact cottage cheese, drooped half-down her eyeballs.
“I’m studying to be an accountant. I take a test tomorrow. Would it
pain your anus awfully if I asked you to go to Mars? I need time to
study. Accounting is not for dummies; look at Enron – those guys were
smart, OK?” I jerk my head in a vain effort to body-language her back
into the hall.

“You look yourself – you’re the witch doctor in this slum!”

The retort which doctor? crosses my mind; but tired of being cute, let
it pass… sigh, “OK – let’s go look. Where did you see this?”

“Down in the basement,” she’s got my hand, her 400-plus pounds tugging
me toward the stairwell.

Down in the basement hang the fumes of gas, insecticide, ratcrap,

mildew. The light is scarce – barely enough sixty-watters to tell a
rancid puddle from an article of clothing burst from a rotted trunk,
dragged about by rats. The low, unfinished, insulation-leaking ceiling
makes my five-six feel Godzilla tall. I stoop a foot more than
necessary, anxious to keep the asbestos and the spiders off my coiff.

“Stupid bitch gulped it whole,” she growls, threading her girth

between the furnace and a sweaty brick wall.

I follow like a dugout behind a harbor tug. My curiosity – despite

disgust – is up; my pianist now completely down, soft-pedaling a
lullaby about an ax abandoned in a stump.

On the other side of the antique furnace, in the middle of the floor,
squats upsidedown a stationary tub. The stand that once held the tub
looms in the shadows up against the wall perpendicular to the one we
were creeping along; gives off a rusty cobweb odeur.

“Animal’s under there,” she points to the overturned hundred-gallon

cast iron tub. “Here,” she presses a revolver into my hand. “Shoot the
bitch.”

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None Hear The Report

Written by Willie Smith

Saturday, 18 July 2009 09:38 - Last Updated Monday, 20 July 2009 13:52

“You trapped the dog under that tub?’

“Yep,” the lipidic howitzer shell of her head nods. “After she bit my
boy, she stands there gulping down his pen-iz. I had just enough time
to dump down the tub before the bitch could bolt. Mister, my boy just
come down here to play. I was supervising, having a pie and coffee,
when out of the blue, while the child toys with himself, leaps this
skinny mutt kinda chihuahua-dachshund cross. Latches on to my boy’s
crotch and the rest is amputated.”

I’m stunned – standard poodle thoughts racing. Not even wanting to

point out her lie, realizing she just wanted to get me down here to… I
eye, in my right fist, the loaded snub-nose.

Finally clear my throat, say, “Why don’t you shoot it?’

“Cause I’m the one’s gonna lift up that sink. You ain’t built,” she
grins, “for the heavy work.”

She sinks to her knees. The pink-paisley lilac mumu settles about her
like psychedelic snow on a modest mountain. Her steamshovel mitts
grasp the square-angled tub.

“OK,” she growls. “At the counta three. Shoot it in the head. Don’t go
for the heart – so you don’t miss and hit the stomach, where the
pee-next is lodged.”

“Is the safety off?” I know nothing about guns – except you point,
trigger, then comes recoil. In reality I’ve never fired anything less
imaginary than a cap pistol. Even then only at television phantoms, in
a boyhood now three decades gone.

I layed down my arms for good – impotent as they were – at about age
eleven. Since have limited violence to daily fantasies; sometimes, on
bad days, hourly fantasies. Similar to how I abandoned intercourse ten
years ago when the wife left. Although I still use that gun; and in
those fantasies once the piece discharges it immediately starts
reloading. Doesn’t seem to have a safety.

“Doesn’t have a safety,” she says. “Revolvers got no safeties,

dumb-dumb. I stole it off the boy’s dad; if it was an automatic he
woulda anyway filed the safety off. Dad was a suicidal maniac. Never
wanted anything to thwart the urge. I got it away from him before he
could self-use. But that didn’t stop him, a couple months after I got
pregnant here again, from the rat poison. Wasn’t a pretty death; but
he no looker to begin with.”

Then I remember, from cap gun days, my favorite little moron joke:

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None Hear The Report

Written by Willie Smith

Saturday, 18 July 2009 09:38 - Last Updated Monday, 20 July 2009 13:52

“Why, after he ate a pickle, did the little moron jump off the Empire
State Building?”

After your buddy admits he’s stumped, you quip, “Because he wanted to
die jest right… digest right – get it?”

Jest rite. Maybe that’s what’s happening here – a ritual joke, a joke
of a ritual.

“One!” she barks. “Two! Three… liftoff!”

She shoves up the tub – hits the concrete floor with a BANG!

The dachshuahua – blinded in the light – stands trembling, butt to my

face.

“Shoot the head!” Mom howls.

Trigger squeezes. Pin strikes. Bullet bursts. (Recoil not all that
bad.)

I blast the dog’s ass off. No sweat – because I can’t see the eyes –
any animal’s primary organs of mercy. Even I – a remarkably numb dumb
son of a bitch – am ever meticulous to eschew ejaculation onto my own
orbits.

The hindquarters of the two-foot wiener have vanished. Splatted to the

shadowy wall. The pelvic basin opens pinata-like… out spills the
mutt’s guts, flooded in blood the hue of spinada.

The whole massive hemorrhage acquires a Spanish spin… bullfight,

fandango, Salvador Quixote follia, Cortez-butchered Aztec. And in the
thick of the tripe bobs the kid’s dick – a bald Abe Lincoln in a
Franco-American dysmenorrhea spaghetti.

Mom lunges onto all fours. Roots through the tripes. Only then do I
notice her B.O. – how it echoes exploded cordite – or whatever you
call that fired firearm aroma. A sharp stink – as if she were sweating
balloons of sulfur dioxide.

She wraps an overpadded paw around the five-inch likeness of our

martyred president. Staggers plate-tectonically to her feet. Wipes the
gettysburg off her dress.

Before we can little note nor long remember, she wolfs the bloody
knockwurst. Silence descends, as the unchewed mouthful elbows the
length of her esophagus. Our corner of the basement fills with bow-wow
bowel pew. I have nothing to say.

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None Hear The Report

Written by Willie Smith

Saturday, 18 July 2009 09:38 - Last Updated Monday, 20 July 2009 13:52

Till finally it dawns, and between retches I get out, “Oh, I get it –
you already ate the rest of the kid. Tricked him down here to gobble
him up. The dog snatched the best part away from you. Doubtless hoping
to regrow her little playmate in the womb of her duodenum. She seemed
such a nice bitch; certainly not the type to diet.”

“I hate it,” Mom pauses, burps, “when they get much older than four.
Love it, actually. That’s when they taste best. Anyway, any minute
here I’m gonna squirt a fresh one. You mind filling that tub with hot
water, fetch a couple towels?”

I should just get out. Get back to making love to my face. Pull off a
healthy climax. Lather up the cheeks. Get the plastic safety razor
out. In the decade since Betty split, I’ve saved a good $500 on
shaving cream.

But instead here I stand. To prove I’m not just a piece of sculpture
in a jockstrap, pick the nose. Eat it. While she settles on the
concrete beside the manger of the dead dog. Lets out a groan. Begins
to pant.

I’ll upright the tub. Run the water. Fetch towels. In… I swallow (as
Mom flops on her back, raises the mumu, spreads thunder thighs…) a
minute.

Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. He is the author of

Oedipus Cadet (Black Heron Press, 1990) and many, many short stories,
vignettes, and poems across the literary world. He turned down an
opportunity to be a columnist for GwI. And so be it.

story archived at
http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/short/smith-0709-report

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