Absurd

is something you write when you are given these guidelines: Include an old-timey bicycle, a gumball machine and a nine iron. Gashes of weariness. This is so strange.





Allister saw the lady every day...the lady. The lady...he did not know her name, but her legs were long and her hair was thin and the color of warm wet pasta so he called her Miss Spaghetti.

"Miss Spaghetti, I'm ready. Miss Spaghetti, I'm ready." Allister would whisper at the wall of windows as she pedaled past. He worked at the front desk of the insurance department at Yarfly Bellows Home Improvement Community Affluence Emporium. He sat shuffling papers from alphabetical to numerical to arranged in deepening shades of off-white and thought of Miss Spaghetti on her old-timey bicycle. Miss Spaghetti and her morning ride. Miss Spaghetti, he knew, was being noticed by more than one bachelor much like himself.

Was it daily he found himself narrowing his eyes at the glass-plated office across the street, wishing spontaneous combustion on Harrison Fyler: the off-center ball, club and membership salesman at Wallersmitt's Putt-Putt and Yarfly Bellows Community Affluence Emporium? Harrison was a pervert. Harrison had a glass desk, so Allister could see his crotch, and Allister would know the second that miserable jerk started masturbating. He knew he would catch him doing it...at nine-fifteen as Spage pedaled past. And Spage pedaled past like clockwork, like a clock, actually...her legs moving gears, her hair the frayed wires of Gepetto's mind...Spage would be her nickname. He would call her Spage as they lay in bed, sharing a bag of Sunchips, rubbing the tired from their eyes, swapping salty mouths and waiting...oh the waiting Allister forced upon himself. Just the right moment. Just the right time.

Many times the right time comes rather unexpectedly. But Allister was a man who kept himself vigilant and well groomed. He zipped up his pants that morning. He stood up from his desk. Nine-fourteen. Harrison had gone to the bathroom. Allister had twenty-five cents and the plastic bubble with the trapped purple ring was dropped down into the chamber.

He'd been chewing green gum and melting army men for three weeks. He walked to the gumball machine by the front door. "Oh, is the gum reserved for customers, Mr. Bellows? Is it? Yeah well....sorry. I like gum., okay? Sorry." That's what he would say if interrupted. He would say that...mapped out, planned. Yeah. Yeah.

He cleared his throat and dropped the flat piece of metal into the crank. It was all up to mechanics now. He had done his work. He cranked the silver rectangle and bent to hold his hand under the cool flapping door that would deliver her ring, his prize...green gum. No, not green, yellow. Yellow this time, yellow. Damn gum! Damn yellow! Where was the ring? Had he miscalculated?

Spage was stopped at the light, pedaling backwards to avoid tipping. Allister stared at the gumball in his hand. He had no more quarters. Harrison wiped his ass and looked at the paper. The air stopped humming and suddenly weighed a thousand pounds, and Allister felt nothing...and Allister felt the desperate ticking of clockwork...and Allister ripped the gumball machine out of the floor with his two pound arms and later he would discover he had come undone at the elbows, and later he would discover his tolerance for grief but he ran into the street as the light was about to change, as Harrison took a last heavy breath of bathroom and sized up the situation through plate glass...and grabbed a nine iron.

Then an unspoken rivalry unwound in screams, Allister with the gumball machine hoisted above his head and screaming like a tyrant, Harrison howling his nine-iron in a jousting thrust. Spage did not scream. Oh, she saw them coming at her in the mirror of her mail-away Captain Crunch reverse spy glasses, but Spage was insane. She lived with her invisible waitress roommate Rose in the Underwood-Yarfly Home For The Enabled Through Positive Thinking and was able, through constant conditioning, to do two things:


1. Pedal an old-timey bicycle

2. Use a slightly modified toilet. (It flushed itself and had a velcro strap to hold her in place for at least three and a half minutes...she had a habit of leaping up too early and clapping like a cheerleader.)

The two men did not circle and size up the space for fighting. Allister had not actually expected a battle and had simply intended to present the gumball machine to Miss Spaghetti as a gift, but had been right about Harrison's shared affection for Spage. His Spage, who he intended to stop with a practiced stare, who he intended to present with a ring...and treat like a queen, who he had never dared to strike up a conversation with...

Spage directed her wide eyes to the man beneath her massive wheel, bowed before a gumball machine like Frankincense. She laughed at the colors of the balls and began to pedal as the spokes of her wheel were stopped by an extension of Harrison's heart. The nine-iron was meant to destroy his rival, but Harrison had slipped.

So both men watched as the bike began to topple. It did not happen in slow motion, but rather like the inside-out twist of a ruined umbrella, Miss Spaghetti crashed to the ground, the nine iron bent geometry in her spokes. Her delicate raked-through head freed the ring that would have been hers from the glass globe, her delicate head peppered with bits of gum and slivers of glass. The ring had been next, in the chamber, adjustable in size.

Perhaps Spage would have become mesmerized by the colors of the gumballs a moment later, triggering a bit of repressed epilepsy and falling anyways. Perhaps had they not been miserable worthless people, Allister and Harrison might have run for help and shared the blame (and possibly an eight by nine cell) and grieved together forever the loss of Miss Spaghetti with the thin hair the color of warm wet pasta. But Allister peed himself, and Harison got an erection and they gathered any incriminating bits and melted into spectators. And the entire town of Yarfly Bellows learned a valuable lesson that day. Thought they may ride old-timey bicycles and be amusing to watch, retards bleed too.