Category: writing

just call it off. he’s gone. he’s dead. it’s a waste of everyone’s time searching for him at this point. i saw, we all saw the torn shirt fabric, the teddy bear … he’s dead. i don’t know where he is and i don’t want to know. all i want is that man’s face on a billboard all across los angeles, just his big ugly fucking piece of shit face plastered everywhere, i want it nailed to trees in the middle of the woods, and when somebody finds him, i want him brought to me, so i can slowly push an icepick through each one of his eyes, cut out his tongue and stuff it in his asshole, then cauterize the wounds so he stays alive. i wanna see him suffer, just like he saw my son suffer. i want him to watch me enjoy it, just like he enjoyed murdering my son. kelly, i mean it, call whoever makes those billboards, i have a picture of the guy right here, everyone in this city already knows what he looks like thanks to the news but i won’t stop until he’s found. i hope he’s dumb enough to keep himself alive so i can kill him myself.

kelly. KELLY. hey. call them, now. i don’t want a manhunt for my son, i want a manhunt for the monster who killed him.

you’re wearing a sundress. yellow and white. it’s the beginning of summer, that brief moment before the heat hits, but after the blustery spring, after the torrential april rains, those few days when it’s quiet and the temperature is perfect, the trees and the green grass, everything is swelling with appreciation for the warmth and the moisture. we’re in the park, just before dusk. essentially sitting in each other’s laps. prior to this, dinner, dancing, a few drinks at carlito’s. now we’re here, and it’s quiet, and it’s serene. i’ve been kissing your neck, you have a firm hand grasping my thigh. this is a moment, a frozen moment, never to be duplicated. i spent my life getting to this moment, and i’ll spend the rest of it trying to get back. i have my hand up your sundress on the bare skin of your hip. i can feel the fabric of your cotton panties. you have a look in your eyes that defies explanation, but i’ll try: it’s … the kind of lust that brings warm thunderclouds rolling into the city and lights the sky up in patterns of torrential brilliance. i don’t even know. i don’t even know. you’re such a beautiful creature that night, the streetlight lights up and creates a golden halo around your hair, lights your face in this warming glow. you smile and i wonder how many died of a broken heart chasing after your perfect teeth. you’ve got your hair in curls and i feel bad reaching my hand in that spiraled nest, disturbing the idyllic ringlets, to rest my palm against the side of your face. your cheeks are flushed, the warmth of your body against my hand. and when we finally kiss it’s like all the electrons in my body escaped through my lips into yours. my heart’s beating so hard just remembering it. i don’t know about you.

so, i wanted to surprise her with a romantic evening at home for our anniversary, right. i went to fred meyer and i bought, you know, food, pasta and some gourmet marinara sauce, some greens, like, uh, salad, that kind of stuff. a nice bottle of wine. some of those, ah … truffles, chocolate truffles. and in the movies you always see a bunch of candles because women love dimly lit rooms i guess, so i got a bunch of candles. i basically bought a whole shelf worth of candles. had to’ve been like 50 candles, no joke, all of those big jar candles too–i, i spent a lot of money on candles, jake, and i brought them all into my stuffy little apartment and put them everywhere and about a half an hour before she arrived, i lit them all. i guess i kind of wasn’t thinking because, well, i spent too much money, but i was all giddy about showing her a good time because i love her, jake, i love her a lot, and so i bought all of these candles, not knowing that they all smelled. i mean i knew, i saw the lables, but it didn’t really dawn on me. like, 50 candles, and they all have a scent. they all have a different scent, jake. so i light them and then i go out because i’ll be honest i didn’t have any condoms, i go down to the corner store for some condoms and when i get back, my apartment smells like a shit potpourri. because i bought some, you know, lilac and lavender candles and shit, but i also bought some fruity candles like cherry and “manly” candles that smelled like bacon and baked potatoes and shit like that. like, ten candles that smelled like different pies. and i don’t know what to do at this point, the entire apartment smells like shit. i blow a few of them out but then the smell of smoke mixes in with vanilla bean and, i don’t know, fruit salad, all this shit, strawberries and wood smoke and–i swear there was a salmon one, i swear–and it’s awful, it’s worse than just having them lit. oh, and then the smoke alarm goes off, which makes the upstairs neighbor’s dog bark like fucking crazy, so the neighbor is slamming her cane on the ground and i gotta grab a towel to fan the smoke out of the window, we’re talking a five story walkup, there’s no central air, it’s not like i can just …

well anyway she’s coming, she’s on her way, she texts me, right, and i’ve already told her i have a surprise planned and to dress like we’re going out. i told her that morning, you know, to get her all intrigued. oh, my god jake she was so fucking hot that night. she was like … spring water bubbling out of an oasis after days of wandering the desert. but anyway she’s on her way and i still gotta make dinner. so i’m cooking pasta, i got pasta going and now the house smells like pasta and warming marinara sauce and fucking lilac and rosehips and just, it’s too much, i was retching at this point, like dry heaving, i’m cooking the pasta and trying not to puke. i didn’t know what to do so i just kept cooking, i turned into a robotic wolfgang puck jake, i swear to god. i would stick my face in the steam just to clear my sinuses, man. and i’ve got the pasta and some baguette i bought at fred meyer and sauce and salad and i’m setting the table, i’ve got the pasta in a bowl, it’s all perfect looking. then i’m all finished and i promptly pass out. like, pass out, from the fumes, from the stench of it all. i end up smacking my head on the side of the table hard, and thank god josie has a key to the apartment or else who knows, i might be dead right now. when she came in she said it looked like i got shot in the head, for chrissakes.

she drives me to the ER and i get some stitches and then we go back to fred meyer and buy a fan, which we prop up in the window to blow out the smoke and lilac and peaches and marshmallow and all that stench. the rigatoni tastes like everything so we chuck it in the compost. i apologize profusely and she says it’s okay and kisses me on the giant goose egg on my forehead. we get pizza and watch netflix and then have a little sex. a little, cause the doc was worried about a concussion, so, you know …

anyway, i hope mary enjoys the candles. i just had to get rid of them all. i had josie sort them out based on similar smells, so i promise you won’t be blindsided by something weird. if you do though, just chuck it in the garbage or something, because i don’t want any of them back, ever. right now our house is wallpapered in fabreeze. just, whatever you do … one at a time, okay? not all at once. not all at once.

for a while there, all we had in the house was nectarines. my dad got a hold of them somehow, i think he knew a guy who had a nectarine orchard. is that even a thing? i don’t know. but he came home one day with four big burlap sacks full of nectarines. the meal we had before that was pea soup thanks to mom picking wild peas growing on a street near our house. i didn’t even know that was possible. come to think of it … she probably stole those peas. damn. she had to steal those peas! where do peas grow randomly, you know? and i bet dad stole those nectarines. jesus, were we that broke? i mean the pea soup had some kind of cream sauce or something. cream of mushroom, where did that come from? damn … i’m having an epiphany here, lewis. my mind is exploding. my parents were thieves! how the hell else would my dad come up with nectarines? huh. well, anyway, we ate them for every meal for like two weeks, and when they started to go bad my mom baked them into pies and bread and anything else that she could make. now how she got flour and eggs and butter and milk and, fuck, she was such a thief! i’m sorry lewis this is just suddenly coming to my attention after twenty-five years. my dad said he knew a guy who had a nectarine orchard, but my dad never worked a day in his life. he spent his welfare checks on booze, and it’s not like any of the other drunks at the bar had an orchard, much less a nectarine tree.

do they grow on trees? i don’t even fucking know. i’ve never heard of a nectarine tree. wait let me look this up … oh what, a nectarine is just a peach without the peach fuzz. you gotta be kidding me. not only was my dad a thief but he couldn’t even steal just a peach, he had to steal nectarines. which just means “little nectars”. if you think about it. my family is a fucking mess.

craig’s a nice guy, i guess. he keeps to himself mostly, quiet guy, but not mass shooter quiet. guy’s 35, nobody who’s 35 has the time or energy to kill a bunch of people unless they’re in the army. but yeah, craig. dunno what to say about him. never saw him with a gun or anything. he’s got a couple of pit bulls that he rescued from some gangbanger on castor st. oh, one time he came out in the morning to water his flowers and stuff and he was just in his boxers and socks. i was in the kitchen reading the paper and i look out and there he is, scratching his head like he’d never seen a hose before. i, i don’t think he has a girlfriend or anything. in fact i don’t think i’ve ever seen anyone else in his house. makes me wonder what’s in there. my aunt suzy is a hoarder, right, and she never lets anyone in her house because there’s no room, and probably because she’s embarrassed. but her house is full of the dumbest stuff. like twelve boxes of used coffee filters. she can’t throw ’em out! i told her, i said, “aunt suzy why do you want to keep these?” and she said you can do stuff with ’em. “like what?” i said and she told me to mind my own business. she keeps a padlock on her bathroom door. she’s worse than craig, i’d say. way worse. but i dunno, i’ve never seen inside his house. he may have a bunch of cats in there, i’d have no idea. but guns, bombs, stuff like that … i don’t know. the times i’ve seen him he didn’t look crazy or like he wanted to kill people. but you never know these days. i miss the good old days, when a communist was a communist, when a person would tell you to your face how much they hate women or black people or what have you. then at least you’d know. you know?