The Phone Man

The man held his cell phone up to the sky.  He looked as if he was asking the gods to give him a signal once again.   He would then lower it and examine the screen.  “Damn,” he muttered as he continued to walk slowly along with the group while waving his phone around him.

“What an idiot,” Cotie thought to himself as he watched the man with the phone. Cotie had been walking with the group for close to a week.  The phone man in front of him had only joined up the day before.

Someone had come up with the idea that it would be better to move as a group.  Cotie hadn’t been sold right off the bat on the idea of leaving, but as the food supplies disappeared he reluctantly agreed to walk along.

The group started with about fifty people wearing backpacks and towing carts.  Three people we riding horses they had stolen from a local ranch.  Although no one really considered it stealing if the bug had already taken them.  And from the scattered rumors people had heard could be believed, the bug had taken most of the human population of the planet.

Now people were trying to reorganize the little that remained of the species.  That is how the group Cotie was traveling with had gone from fifty to two hundred.  Each town the passed through would provide a few more people wanting to join the march.  People who were ready to see what was left out there and wanted to be part of the rebuilding of humanity.  Others chose to finish their existence alone.

The phone man had been found outside a Verizon store.  He had been knocked on the dirty glass and trying to peer in.  He would look at his watch and then the hours stuck on the store window and begin knocking again.  “Are you guys open yet,” he yelled into the dark empty store.  When one of the group members approached him, the phone man asked, “Do you work here?”

The group member shook his head.

“Well, do you have the time?  My watch isn’t working right.  This place should have opened hours ago,” the phone man said.

The group agreed that man had descended into some kind of delusion, but he was physically healthy and they believed he might be useful in some way.  They convinced him to walk along, but only after assuring him that there would be another Verizon store in the next town.

Cotie didn’t see the man again until this morning when the group started to make their was along what had not too long ago been a busy interstate highway.  Some how Cotie had ended up walking behind the man and the entire time the man had been trying to get a non-existent signal on his phone.

At first, Cotie had felt bad for the man and how desperately he was believing that his life line would find a way to connect.  As the day wore on the sympathy for the man wore away, leaving a slowly simmering frustration.

“How come this guy gets to be blind,” Cotie wondered to himself.  He knew what happened.  Everyone did.  The world that had been was never coming back and neither was his cellular phone service.

All along the road they were walking were lifeless cars, many of them containing the bodies of their just as lifeless drivers.  Time had taken a toll on them.  Their skin had turned shriveled and discolored.  Several were clutching their phones, apparently they died trying to place their final call.

The phone man would surly die in a similar pose.  Cotie imagined him coughing up blood as he tried to touch the screen to type out a last text message to no where.  The thought of the phone man dying made Cotie smile.  I won’t have to listen to his nonsense anymore, he thought.  The phone man was the only person around making any noise.  Everyone else just walked along in silence.  Other than the phone man, there was only the scuff of shoes on asphalt and the occasional whistle of a bird.

Cotie could have found another place to walk among the silent people, but the phone man made him feel angry.  Angry was at least something; otherwise, it would be nothing.  It reminded Cotie of how he had felt when he listened to someone spouting of politics he didn’t agree with.  He couldn’t understand if it was ignorance or delusion.  The phone man had to be delusional.  The evidence had been in everyone’s face and it still was.

The phone man put the phone to his ear.  “Hello,” he asked.  “Can you hear me?” Cotie could no longer bite his tongue.  “I’m the only one that can hear you and I’d appreciate it if you’d shut the fuck up.”

The phone man looked back at him as he walked.  “Does your phone have service?”

“My phone?  You are the only idiot carrying a phone.  They don’t work anymore.  Nothing works anymore.  Look around you.  Don’t you see it’s all gone?”

“I have nation wide coverage.  My phone should work anywhere.”

Cotie lost control and lunged at the man, tearing the phone from his hands.  The people around them stopped walking and watched.

“Hey!  That’s mine!  Someone help, he stole my phone!”

“Don’t you get it?!  This phone is never going to work again!”

Cotie threw the phone on the ground and stomped his boot down on it shattering the screen.  While focused on the destruction of the phone, he didn’t notice the phone man reaching under his shirt and pulling a pistol from his waistband.  The phone man aimed the gun at Cotie and fired.

Cotie fell to the ground dead.  The phone man put the gun back in his waistband and picked up his shattered phone.  He held it up to the sky and stared at the screen waiting for a signal.

Chasing the Ape

Name's Dick Cheeseman, and I have been chasin' the ape for a decade now. When I say it like that I feel like I am making a confession to a priest or maybe standing up at a fuckin' AA meeting. But I ain't sinnin' and I ain't on the booze, I just have me an obsession of sorts, and if yall want to take the time to read what I'm writin' maybe you'll sorta understand where I'm comin' from.

Now like I was sayin', I've been on my quest of sorts for ten years. It hasn't made my life easy, but it's damn sure made it interestin'. Fore this all began, I was a regular guy. Thirty years old and had me a little house, wife, daughter, job, you know all the normal shit. I was more or less happy, but I was unaware. So, I guess this is as good a time as any as to tell ya how my unaware got away from me.

I was drivin' home in my old work van. Back then I had my own tile business. Called it Dick's Tile. I know, not super creative, but it was the fourth largest tile business in Lemon Lake County and I made pretty good dough. But damn did my back hurt like hell from being bent over all day layin' them heavy bitches all day. Shit, I'm loosing track of my story.

Member it like it was yesterday. Sun was going down and I was singin' long to “Butterfly” by Crazy Town on my radio. That was my shit and I still love that song. It was durin' that song that I lost my unaware when it walked right out onto that back road.

I slammed on my brakes and all my tools and shit in the back of my van went crashin' forward, but that was the last thing on my mind. It was stopped there right in the middle of the road right in my headlights looking at me as Crazy Town sang on.

He stood there just like a man, cept he was a hulkin' eight foot or more and covered with matted brown hair from the top of his huge head to his big feet. Ha, his big feet, that's what made my unaware up and vanish. That's there's a god damn bigfoot, I thought to myself.

Of course I didn't have no camera, and my phone was just a standard flip deal. So, all I could do was look. He was just standin' there chewin' and starin'. I was wonderin', what in the hell he's eatin'? I got my answer purty quick. He made a hawkin' sound like he was clearin' his throat and spit a juicy squirrel head right on my van windshield. Now, I ain't no sissy, but I did jump when that mother fucker hit the glass. Now along with a bigfoot, I had a lifeless squirrel head lookin' at me as it slid down on to my wiper blade.

I think he found his spittin' amusing, because he let out a growl that sounded like a laugh and bared his yellow teeth in a strange wild smile, before he shuffled into the woods in what to my shocked mind looked like he was dancing to Crazy Town.

Kill the Cat

“I hate that fucking cat,” Joe said as the stray cat rubbed up against his leg and purred.
“Then why do you let it keep coming around,” Amy asked, pushing her brown hair out of her blue eyes.
Joe shook his head.  “You know I really have no idea.  Maybe I should kill it.”
Amy shot a devious smile at him.  Joe returned a mix of suspicion and surprise in his smile.  “You like that idea,” he asked.
Amy nodded.  “That would be really hot.”
Joe’s eyes lit up.  “Let me go get a knife,” he said as he quickly headed toward the house.
“No, wait.”
He stopped short of the door and turned around with a disappointed look on his face.  “Why?  Did you change your mind?”
“No, but a knife just doesn’t seem very creative.”
Joe pondered for a minute.  “I could….get the blender.”  He looked at her for a response.
“That’s better, but think bigger.”
“Bigger eh?”
“Yeah, bigger.”
Joe went back to thinking as the cat came back to his leg and rubbed it mangy hair against him.
“Want me to set him on fire?”
“Bigger.”
Joe began to get a little frustrated.  “OK, you obviously have some idea how you want me to whack this cat.  How about you just tell me and we can get on with it.”
“Do you ever feed him?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“What do you feed him?”
“Cold cuts.”
“Grab some and we’ll lure him into my car.”
Joe looked at her with confusion.  “And then…..”
“And then we take him to my Grandmas.”
“Your Grandmas?  Isn’t she out of town?”
“Yes, but the alligator she feeds in the pond out back is still there.”
An evil smile spread across Joe’s face.  “You are a bad, bad girl.”
“You have no idea.”

Edgar Eaton

Edgar Eaton was born fat.  He was the heaviest baby ever born at the Davis County Community Hospital.  He was such a stir in the area that his picture made the front page of the local paper.  As soon as he exited his mother’s womb his appetite was insatiable.  Edgar would eat anything that was put in front of him.  His mother, Iris, would feed her little boy until he threw up.  “He’s a growing boy,” she would say to justify his appetite and her attempts to satisfy it.  Her claim was true; Edgar was growing.  But in addition to growing up like all children do, he was also grown out.

When Edgar reached the age of seven, he was wearing a size forty waist in pants and weighing in at a mind-blowing two hundred and thirty three pounds.   His pumpkin shaped head and fat cheeks made his eyes look beady.  The only time they got big was when he saw one of his many favorite foods.   To move those foods into his salivating mouth, Edgar would use his stubby dinosaur looking arms to shovel heaping portions into his face.  His mother would sometimes call him her little tyrannosaurs as she watched him eat.  At this Edgar would let out his best dino-roar and eat even more ravenously.

Edgar wasn’t the only one packing on the pounds.  Iris was also taking in portions fit for a family of four.  After she gave birth to Edgar, she never lost the baby weight.  And when she found how Edgar enjoyed to eat, she made it an activity they could share.

Friday night was pizza night at the Eaton home.  Iris would order two Meat Monsters from the local pizzeria.  A meat monster consisted  a double extra large pizza with ham, bacon, sausage, hamburger, Canadian bacon, and pepperoni all swimming in a bubbling layer of not double, but triple cheese.  Iris would set a pizza at each end of the kitchen table and the two would sit facing each other.  “Last one done is a rotten egg,” she would shout and they would begin consuming the pies.  The sounds of labored breathing and chewing filled the kitchen as the friendly competition went on.  For a long time Edgar wasn’t able to beat his mother in the contest, but on his seventh birthday he finally won.

Between the Friday night pizza eating contests, the all-u-can eat Chinese buffets, and fast food meals the weight continued to go up for Edgar and Iris both.  By Edgar’s tenth birthday Iris had become so obese that she was permanently bed ridden.  Iris’ lack of mobility didn’t do anything to hamper the eating.

On Mother’s Day Edgar snuck out of the house early and made his way to the donut shop down the road with a trash bag in his hand.  He stacked some crates in order to climb into the dumpster.  Inside he found himself up to his waist in old donuts.  For Edgar, it was like he had been dropped into some kind of sweet fantasy world.  He began to cram handfuls of doughnuts of all different shapes and colors into his mouth.  Edgar grunted with pleasure as he filled himself with stale doughnuts.  Mid-mouthful Edgar remembered why he was actually there and he began to fill the trash bag with doughnuts.  When the bag was full Edgar threw the bag out of the can and climbed out.  He hauled the bag back to his house and tossed it on to his mother’s enormous belly.

“Happy Mother’s Day Mom,” he yelled.  Iris woke up and looked in the bag.
“Edgar, are these for me,” she asked jokingly.
“Well, I was hoping you might want to share.”