Brutally Haggard, Part 1

by TOADSGOAD, Lance Ash

Other Than Another Night of Conformity

The new issue of Crossword Obsessive had arrived in the mail that morning. Clementa had resisted opening it until that evening when a TV program she had somehow gotten into the habit of watching was about to begin. Now she did so, resisting instead the temptation to tune into that week’s installment of Grimalkin and Goth. The program was patently pandering; she had cursed herself each time she succumbed to it.
Clementa had prepared a bowlful of instant grits to eat as she solved the first puzzle. She ate with a small spoon, relishing each bite with the same delight some hulking tub of a man might a box of ice cream. The first clue in puzzle #1 presented itself to her: “Zeus’ obligatory mindset.” She was one for working her way methodically through all the across clues, skipping the ones she didn’t immediately know, before moving on to the down ones. As she penciled in “impartial” in the nine empty boxes, a noise came through the wall of her apartment, just above and to the left of her head.
“Not tonight!” She moaned, listening as noises akin to the first continued, somewhat softer, though not by much, somewhere inside the apartment adjacent to hers. Clementa sat rooted for a moment before declaring in her old woman’s cracked whisper,
“Fuck it.”
She put the magazine down, open-faced, on the sofa seat beside her and heaved herself up. She snapped on the TV.
“Might as well see it through.” She thought. She noted that she had missed the opening credits and the insipid theme song. Was she but a plaything in the hands of the gods of mediocrity? Of course she was! Zeus wouldn’t do this to her, she thought. That was her last substantial thought for the next hour, aside from self-incriminating ones.
Next door the noises either ceased or blended in with the laugh track, incidental music, explosions, pop tunes, and hip exposition of Grimalkin and Goth, episode GB725, “Ruthless Precaution.”

For All You Know It Could Be Yours

Huck Feral, who played the scheming, manipulative Grimalkin on Swag Broadcasting’s Grimalkin and Goth, wasn’t smart enough in real life to be considered scheming, nor mean-spirited enough to be thought manipulative. Still, he recognized his need to have these normally despised qualities at his disposal. This is why he employed Malder Stang as his personal manager. The two men met backstage at a small theater where Feral was rehearsing a play.
“I’m trying to get you a part in Mr. Goosen’s new ensemble picture. Stang spoke in a low tone so that the unknowns lurking behind the cardboard scenery wouldn’t hear.
Huck Feral, costumed as an anthropomorphic tree, nodded stiffly. His bark limited his movements.
“Good.” He whispered back. “I like Goosen.”
“Remember to call him Mr, Goosen when you meet.” Stang’s voice dropped even lower.
“Right. I’ll remember.” Feral nodded again. His face was painted brown and green. He wore over-sized horn-rimmed spectacles. “To make me look wise.” He explained to Stang.
“Can you scratch my nose?” He asked his manager.
“Why are you doing this?” Stang asked as he delicately scratched.
“Because I love the theater.” Feral declared in a louder, conversational tone.
“Then let me try to get you something a little more prestigious.” Stang suggested. “Though it won’t pay much better.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Feral glanced out to the auditorium where the director was talking to a couple of girls. “You won’t see Ben Stupor Little doing legitimate theater.” He snorted.
Ben Stupor Little was Feral’s co-star on Grimalkin and Goth, portraying the latter character, a disaffected college student in mystical league with a malevolent spirit-being named Grimalkin.
“You won’t see him playing a tree either.” Stang thought, but said nothing of the kind. He thought enviously of Little’s burgeoning singing career.

Unflappable Wingman Anxious to Land

In Schutser’s stomach was starting to dissolve. He sat down at his small desk and began work on his big novel.
“He works so hard.” Mrs. Cross told her friend John. From where they sat together on her ragged old sofa they could see down the hall to the door to Schutser’s room. John studied the closed door as he held his cup of coffee just below his chin.
“Has he ever showed you any of his writing?” The stocky old man asked.
“No, and I haven’t asked.” Mrs. Cross kept his voice low.
“Tell him I’d like to read something he’s written.” John had only met Schutser twice before, each time consisting of the briefest of greetings. Then Schutser had quickly retreated to his room. John knew what it was to be shy. His first sea voyage, when he was but a boy of sixteen, he didn’t speak to anyone the length of their trip across the sea and back. That was a story he had already told Mrs. Cross more than a couple of times.
“How old is he?” He asked his friend.
“Thirty-one, I belive.”
“Thirty-one?” John paused in sipping his coffee. “I would have taken him for twenty-one. Odd that a man of his age should be so shy. By the time I was thirty-one I was giving speeches at labor rallies.”
“He’s a writer, John. He’s sensitive.” Mrs. Cross defended her lodger.
At his desk Schutser was beginning to feel the effects of the pill. He couldn’t write without this influence, at least, not up to the standard that he had set for himself. His terror in facing the next page was that he would not be able to match the high points of his writing in the past. The fact that he had no clear idea what it was about these past triumphs that made him like them so much added to his difficulties. He avoided studying his own writing, avoided breaking it down to find the answer for fear that he would spoil the magic.

Enduring the Cabbage

Kiplough stopped trying to hit the bird after nearly ten minutes. He slumped down on the futon bunched against the wall opposite the one he shared with Clementa. Not sleepy, though tired, he fell over on his side and stared blankly at the scuff marks on the wall where he had thrown the bird-punisher against it.
He was dressed in dirty khaki slacks of some stiff material. Each of heavy shoes protruded from the legs of the slacks like a giant crow trying to climb out of an industrial chimney. He wore a duffel coat that engulfed him like butcher paper around a rump roast. The coat was stained like the slacks, scuffed like the wall. Kiplough was a big, thick-set man without much of a neck, over-sized ears, a nose like a rutabaga too big to cook, the last rutabaga in the bin, the one nobody picked, though Kiplough picked it often enough. His hard was shortish and ragged. He cut it himself.
“To save money.” He told the bird. It was mainly the tipping that bothered him.
“So go to a man barber, an old-fashioned one. They don’t require tipping.” The bird suggested.
Kiplough looked at once wistful and bitter.
“Ah, those days are gone.” He moaned. “That kind of barber doesn’t exist anymore.”
Kiplough felt an affinity with a mélange of portions of the past two hundred years. This affinity was tempered with a total bafflement as to how people got along without air conditioning and under the restrictions of rigid codes of behavior. This was in turn offset by a loathing of modern life and the sub-mental humans Kiplough had to share the world with.
He lay on the futon hoping that sleep would take him. The bird, possibly a figment of his imagination, was nowhere to be seen. Through the wall Kiplough could hear Clementa’s TV dishing out its sugary salmagundi of mass amusement.
“Why should I bother buying a TV when I’ve got hers?” Kiplough asked.

Winning Entry Staves off Indigestion

The book Schutser was working on was called Mealy Mouthed. Because he had no exact idea of what he was going to write about and felt constricted by plotting things out, Schutser was constructing the book one page at a time. Each page could stand alone as a little story unto itself, but was linked, perhaps only by the most tenuous of connections, to one or more other pages so that read together they would hopefully forma satisfying book experience.
The main character in the book was a magically empowered being named Rectanglo, lord of a great estate contained, in violation of the laws of physics, inside a room seemingly the size of a racquetball court outside which was the void of no space, no time. Rectanglo is constantly torn between his attempts at improving his realm and his desire to travel beyond the void (in violation, apparently, of the tenets of the book) to other worlds. On the page being written at the time of this page being narrated (Schutser wrote two pages a day; I narrate two a day) Rectanglo had stopped by a small well in one of the barren, sparsely populated corners of his realm, which realm was named Fernboot, by the way. Here he met with a young woman drawing water for her family’s goats.
“Can I get a drink?” Rectanglo asked.
“I don’t know; can you?” The woman asked.
“Evidently she is educated.” Thought Rectanglo. “My reforms are working.”
“You’re right.” He said to the woman. “May I get a drink?”
“Go ahead.” The woman jerked her head at the well, thinking that if this stranger thought she was going to get it for him, he was sadly mistaken.
Rectanglo drew up the smoothly worn bucket and dipped his traveling cup, which he kept in his book bag, into the water.
“She doesn’t know who I am.” He thought as he drank.
Obviously, these are not Schutser’s words. I have given you the gist of the story in my own style, which is much better than Schutser’s.

Picked Up the Clown by the False Nose

On a Tuesday, if contemporaneously written records are correct, Kiplough returned to his place of residence after a trip to the local market. His apartment like those of Clementa, Mrs. Cross, and John, was located on a long, underground hallway. The entirety of this hallway, walls, doors, ceiling, and the shag carpeting that covered the floor, was purple. The numbers on the doors were black, making them relatively easy to read, even in the dim light. Kiplough’s apartment number was 00152.
In contrast to the purple hallway, at least for the short interval the door was open, Kiplough’s apartment was uniformly lime green. He had left the entryway light on and now stood there closing the door and looking across the hall for any neighbors who might be watching. For whatever reasons, he suspected that his apartment was the best one in the complex, perhaps for its green color. He jealously guarded it and the sensations it gave.
The bird, perched on one end of the kitchen table, pecked at the treat Kiplough had brought him; a six pack of cinnamon pastry swirls.
“I like the pecan bits.” The bird commented.
“Good.” Kiplough said. He was thumbing backwards through a magazine he had brought, Nose of Nose’s End. This magazine, which Kiplough bought only intermittently, and always to his regret, was intended for the disaffected auto-didact with more than a modicum of illusion about his potential for personal sex appeal. The reason Kiplough ended up regretting the purchase was that it cost money, and that he was so disaffected and contrary to everyone else that he became embittered at those images of others supposedly like him, but clearly inferior, who were achieving fame and the society of others like themselves.
“Look at the title of this article.” Kiplough held the open magazine up to the bird’s sight. “‘The Most Alienated Man of All’ Ha! They don’t know a damn thing about me!”
“They never will, either, probably.” Said the bird.
“And look at these sculptures he carved out of wood.” Kiplough pointed. “They’re terrible.”

Erectile Anomaly in the Motor Tilter

Certain faces in the book were familiar to Gravely. He studied them closely, trying to form connections between them and his life. As he flipped back and forth through the pages he sipped his can of reduced calorie soda pop through a straw.
“How many of those cans of soda has he had?” Fungral the engineer asked Becky as they watched Gravely through the one-way glass (similar to a two-way mirror).
“Three.” Becky replied. “You say ‘soda?’” She asked.
“Or pop. Why, what do you say?”
“We always said ‘soft drink’ where I come from.” Becky was from the hot, humid, rural region to the south of Shedge.
“That’s the old way.” Fungral dismissed her hick upbringing.
“I see.” Becky, torn between shame and pride in her origins, did not know that “ambivalent” did not mean the same thing as “indifferent.” She laughed in the way she had learned to cover up confusion as to whether she was being insulted.
“Don’t let him have anymore.” Fungral directed. “The carbonation may create anomalies in the associative process. We want the subject’s linkage of the faces to be as natural as possible.”
Gravely decided that four of the men in the book, each one wearing a moustache, were the men he had seen together in a car several years before.
“Four men with moustaches together in a car?” Becky questioned Gravely later. They say in the interview room with the subject attached to the bioanalysis recorder.
“Yes.” Gravely smacked his lips. The room was already hot; confinement in the clutches of the machine made it hotter.
“What were they doing?” Becky asked.
“Just sitting there. Say, could I get another drink? I’m parched.”
Becky wavered. She opened the cooler, got out a can of soda, and studied the label carefully. It said “all natural,” so she handed it over.
“Thanks.” Gravely said through his belch.

What Did You Bring Me From Your Years in Exile?

Filming of the promotional video for Ben Stupor Little’s second single from his album was under way. The song was called “My Love is All I Have to Give.” The name of the album was Ben Stupor Little.
“This is quite different from filming a TV show.” Little told a woman journalist from Nose of Nose’s End. They sat facing each other a half a dozen paces from the elaborate set.
“In what way?” Mavez Abuelia, the journalist, asked the meticulously costumed and made-up star.
“Oh…” Little smiled, looking at the set, which depicted a futuristic diner in an intergalactic spaceport. Extras costumed as monstrous aliens, milled about with puppets and robots.
“Well, it’s all being shot in such a short time. Normally we take two weeks to shoot a single episode of G&G. Here we’ve got basically two days.”
“And plus, here you’re the only star.” Ms. Abuelia pointed out.
“Yeah.” Little laughed with a short exhalation through his nose.
“What do you think your co-star, Huck Feral, thinks of your music career?”
“Huck has been very supportive. He has wished me luck.”
“Do you think he’s jealous?”
“No, certainly not. He has no reason to be jealous. He has his serious theater aspirations and I have my musical aspirations. He’s a very talented actor.”
“Any truth to the rumor that he will be appearing as one of the aliens I the video?”
“Well, look around.” Little gestured towards the set. “Do you see anybody dressed as a tree?”
Ms. Abuelia’s laughter was genuine. She laughed so hard she made a very unsexy (and she was a dark, sexy beauty) snort. That was Little’s clue that he should not have made the joke. During the rest of the shoot, as he lip-synched and acted out his role as the lovestruck spaceport short order cook, he worried about public reaction.

Hear Duke Say Dirk

In the apartment directly across the hall fro Kiplough’s lived three guys attending college at Shedge’s premiere university. Klaster, the one least predisposed to join in the antics the other two engaged in; that is to say, he took his studies seriously, had become interested in Kiplough. He had little time to spare for observing and researching his neighbor, much less actually introducing himself (he worked at least twenty hours a week in addition to attending classes), but he found the mystery of Kiplough’s appearance, comings, goings, and doings most diverting. He wondered at his neighbor’s history. As a student of biochemistry, his knowledge of such odd characters as Kiplough was limited.
“I think his entire apartment is lime green.” Klaster mentioned to Burl as he got a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator.
“What makes you think that?” Burl was preparing a tumbler of Bourbon and ginger ale to accompany his watching of the Big Sporting Event on TV.
“I try to peer into his apartment as much as possible whenever he opens the door.” Klaster rinsed the glass out and put it upside down in the dish rack.
“Mmm.” Burl hummed indifferently as he tested the strength of the drink. Then he left his roommate and returned to the den.
Klaster heard Duke enter the apartment and announce that pizza was available. He was not going to join the others. He had work to do before getting to sleep.
Burl and Duke stayed up drinking, eating, and watching TV. During a breaking the action on the screen, Burl mentioned to Duke their roommate’s obsession with the shambling hulk across the hall.
“Well, he hasn’t got much of a life.” Duke excused Klaster.
“It is interesting, though.” Burl said.
“What?”
“That old man.” Burl gestured at the door with the pizza crust in his hand.
“What’s interesting is how he pays the rent.” Duke sourly commented.
“Maybe he’s…” Burl began, but ceased talking when their entertainment recommenced.

Stages of Development in the Cystic Dandelion

Stodge, limiting himself to one trip through the buffet, loaded his plate with cottage cheese, black olives, red onion slices, and one whole boiled egg. On his way back to the table where his mother and her sister were waiting, he was diverted by Ron Gonn, calling to him from a table near the end of the buffet.
“Whatcha doin’, boy?” Gonn’s mouth was still half full of some cornmeal breaded met substance. His face was red, full of the branches of purple capillaries risen to the surface. The other people at Gonn’s table were so evidently of his clan that Stodge did not bother to look at them directly; he did not need to see Gonn’s visage replicated in them to know exactly how unpleasant they must be.
“Nothing much.” Stodge smiled.
“Piggin’ out?” Gonn expectorated a tiny white morsel with the force of his enunciated ‘p.’ His mouth remained open for breathing purposes when not talking or eating.
“Yeah.” Stodge’s smile crooked slightly, indicating, so he feverishly hoped, his desire to make his exit.
“Well, get at it.” Gonn released him, though the elder ladies at his table wanted introductions made.
“Who was that?” Gonn’s wife demanded. She had smiled as friendly as she knew during the encounter, but the young man had refused to make eye contact with her.
“Stodge Merrit. He works with me at the Hose Hold Affiliate.” Ron Gonn made a pile of bones on a napkin. He took up his empty plate and pushed back form the table.
“You’re supposed to get a clean plate each time, Daddy.” Said Gonn’s oldest daughter.
“This plate is clean.” Gonn protested.
“Who was that?” Stodge’s mother asked when he sat down.
“It’s nobody. It’s this redneck I work with.” Stodge shook his head. His aunt took exception to his use of the term ‘redneck’ and informed him that it was so-called rednecks that made this country what it was today.