The Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians (10 page)

I pulled the sliding door down and welded it shut. I watched TV and laughed as Baxter pounded on the door and fired his rifle at it, begging me to remove the truck from his once immaculate house.

A 3-Legged Dog Dying of Cancer

My dog died. He had cancer of the face.

I took him outside to toss him up into the tree. I grabbed hold of him and my hands were consumed by his dense fur and then by his skin, until they were inside of him. The dog was filled with witchcraft and sea water. I got it all over my hands. I rinsed them off and decided to use tongs instead.

I could not get the dead dog up into the tree. I was going to tell him he was a bunch of dead weight but then I remembered he was dead and couldn’t hear me and probably wouldn’t have thought it was funny anyway.

I moved the trampoline over from the rusted out ice cream truck.

Using the tongs, I clasped the dog around the neck and the hind leg and bounced him onto the trampoline. He bounced into the air and his fur rained down and his teeth clacked as he landed on the trampoline in a heap.

This wasn’t working either.

I went inside to call my friend Ben. Ben was a director of films. His latest was called
Sperm Jug
, about two twentysomething guys who embark on a cross-country road trip with their grandmother. The movie ends at the Grand Canyon, the guys dousing the old woman in semen before throwing her over the edge. I think it’s a comedy.

Ben was busy but he gave me some sound advice. He said to try cutting the dog into smaller pieces and throwing them up into the tree individually.

I said: “But Ben, what am I supposed to use to chop up the dog?”

And he said: “Use your fucking dick,” and hung up on me.

I didn’t think that would work so I used a pair of poultry shears.

When I was finished chopping up the dog, I hurled the pieces as far up into the tree as I could. The only thing left was the cancer—dark and glittering. I carried that over to the sewer opening on the curb and dropped it down.

Over the next several days, the dog pieces turned black and oozed from the tree like a rain of cinnamon-flavored tar.

I took the dog inside. He climbed into my nightmares, a black shadow beast, and left steaming piles of worm infested waste everywhere.

Then he was gone and it was time to get a new dog.

So I bought a new dog and he was pretty much just like the old dog except he had an extra leg. So I called Ben and asked him what I should do about it. Ben told me I should take it to a butcher and he would get the dog fixed up.

So I did.

Divorce

A man makes a wife out of stained sheets and old pillows. Being made from the things of sleep, she immediately dozes off. The man walks over to the window of their second-story bedroom. It’s snowing outside. It’s been snowing for quite some time. The snow nearly reaches the window. The man looks back at his wife. He tries to wake her up but can’t. He’s lonely. He wants to play in the snow. He opens the window and throws himself out, plunging deep into the snow and freezing to death.

The wife wakes up to the frigid air rushing in through the window. She slams it shut and goes back to sleep.

The next morning the dead man strolls into the house. His wife is enjoying a breakfast of sawdust and gasoline.

“
You’re dead,” she says, not at all alarmed.

“
Yep,” the man says.

“
Best get you into the freezer.”

“
Yep.”

The man enters the spacious freezer willingly. The wife tosses a case of beer and a television in there with him. He stays there for three years.

The woman eventually marries a bed. He likes to sleep as much as she does although, when awake, he is a little lazier than she prefers.

The frozen man leaves the freezer and confronts the woman.

“
How could you?” he says.

“
You was dead.”

The man bounces on the bed. The bed groans but he doesn’t fight back.

“
I’m leavin’!” the man shouts.

“
It’s the middle of summer. You’ll melt.”

“
Like hell!”

The man bangs the door shut behind him and walks out into the neighborhood street. He heads for the local bar, thinking maybe he can meet another woman who will put him up. It isn’t long before he begins sweating profusely. The sweat doesn’t stop. Embarrassed, he ducks into an alleyway where he slides down a wall and quietly sweats himself into nonexistence.

The Melancholy Room

Framoni was an ecstatic man. He looked for the beauty in everything and, beyond the beauty, he found laughter. Around the Weeg District it was a common sight to see Framoni bent with laughter. He was a girthy man, bearded and prone to brightly colored suits.

One day, something ruptured.

Framoni, at the advice of others, went to see a doctor. He disliked doctors. They did not represent the joyful, the ecstatic.

“
It hurts when I laugh.” Framoni pointed to an area between his ample belly and his heart.

“
That’s because you’ve busted a gut.” The doctor looked at a clipboard that Framoni assumed held the results of his tests.

“
That can’t be.” Framoni stared emptily at the dead space of the exam room.

“
Oh, I’m afraid so. You’ll have to stop laughing, unfortunately.”

The doctor reached into a drawer and pulled out a heavy book. “Here. Read this. It’ll help.”

Framoni left the doctor’s office. He went to the local haberdasher and purchased a black suit, hoping the somber fabric would help his condition. He reached his apartment and flipped through the book the doctor had given him. No title. No author. It seemed to be a series of blueprints and diagrams. Tiring of the book, Framoni went out to his balcony and looked out upon the district street. Beauty. Absurdity. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stay here and not laugh.

Framoni rented a small cottage in the country, ivy-covered and away from people. He wore his black suit, moped around the house, and focused on the sad savagery of nature.

Soon, he received a letter from his cousin, Conley Barnes, all the way from Grapp.

Dear F.

Regrettably, Uncle Werther has passed. It seems he was out for his morning “ball flop” when it happened. He had a testicular condition where they needed to be agitated regularly. He chose to do this by wearing voluminous pants, thus allowing his “balls” to “flop” from thigh to thigh. Unfortunately, this condition resulted in a stretching and loosening of the scrotum. Embarrassingly, the scrotum ruptured while he was “flopping” down the sidewalk adjacent to a busy suburban street. Your presence at the funeral is not mandatory. Donations are always accepted.

Yours,

C.B.

Framoni put the letter back in its envelope and placed it on the table.

Normally, he would do something that would make him laugh in order to relieve the great sadness in his soul. Instead, he took the nameless book into an unused room at the back of the cottage. He sat down in a corner and remained there for days. Shortly thereafter, he received another letter from his cousin Conley.

Dear F.

Regrettably, Aunt Edanine has passed. The eye sac that had plagued her for years finally ruptured while she was out for a drive. Her vision became obscured and she ran into a tree. A funeral will not be held. She has requested her body be left in the Wilds for the imagibeasts to feed upon.

Yours,

C.B.

Framoni put this letter on top of the other one and went back to the room. Back to the book. The sadness of the room pressed down upon him. He had started to lose weight and his black suit hung from his body.

The letters kept coming.

His grandfather Gustav accidentally defenestrated while watering a flowerbox. His cousin Paco, after losing his eyebrows in a grilling mishap, died from an infection sustained during a transplant. His grandmother Gloria disappeared on a cruise, all passengers assumed deceased.

There were more.

Framoni’s melancholy room had changed. He thought it had something to do with the book. Just looking at the strangeness of it seemed to cause the designs to manifest. He wandered dazedly around the room, touching things. Over the weeks, over the deaths, a chair had appeared, made from coffin lining. The windows were blacked out. Like those in a hearse, he thought. The curtains were made of tears. The floor was grimed with grief and he was pretty sure the ceiling was made of regret.

He did not like this room.

He called his doctor and said, “I think I’m ready to laugh again.”

“
I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“
I do not like doctors,” Framoni said softly into the phone.

“
Yes. And I do not like fools.”

Framoni hung up the phone and retrieved some matches from the kitchen. Cautiously, he entered the melancholy room and felt the exchange of sadness.

He shredded the strange book and piled it up on the floor. Then he struck a match and dropped it to the pile. And he sat in the corner and laughed as the flames consumed everything, crawling over the sadness and crackling it with life.