You guessed it, another short story. C’mon…it’s free!
“Full house, baby!” Gary Stapler snarled through the thick smoke as he displayed his cards flat on the table. He loosened his jaws just enough to twist the damp, dilapidated cigar in his fingers. Gary was the obnoxious type and the only reason he was invited to play was that he and Buck were brothers. The rest of the group were non-smokers but it didn’t stop him from dropping ashes all over the table and burning a hole in Buck’s tablecloth. Gary reached out and raked in the pot with both hands as he chanted his obnoxious sermon.
Douglas waited with outward patience for Gary’s play-by-play analysis to come to a close. In an attempt to keep his nerves, he quickly disassociated himself with the people in the room. Douglas began to survey objects. A ceramic rooster holding a small chalkboard reading, “Dinner is served”, came into view just above Gary’s head on a baking rack. The writing appeared to be done with care and unmistakably by the hand of a woman. By now Douglas blocked out all human sounds, but in his peripheral vision he could still see Gary’s mouth moving, arms swinging wildly, still engaged with the other players. Gary dressed the same way he acted, which is to say with only himself as a consideration. He wore the right clothing but he rarely wore them properly. This time, half of his shirt hung out from under his sweater. It had been like that since he went to go urinate. There was no doubt that this man did not wash his hands afterward, and probably got piss on the floor as well. Douglas returned his attention back to the rooster, but this time the writing on the chalkboard was different. Now it read, “Take me by my feet and use me. Use me to deliver this man the blunt force trauma he so eagerly deserves. Shut him the fuck up now!”
A familiar voice chimed in -his own, “This is why you should go see a doctor. You might snap any day now.”
Douglas stood up to examine the rooster when he caught Gary’s eye, “What’s the matter, Doggie going home? Can’t hang with the big boys?” followed by laughter from the rest of the group.
Douglas walked a few steps, and then heard a crashing sound from the kitchen area, which was on the other side of the table from him. There, standing in a pond of broken glass and milk, on the cold tile floor was Buck’s wife. Douglas noticed that as the milk surrounded her feet and penetrated her socks, she still did not move.
“How curious that she just stand there like a dolt” he thought.
He slowly maneuvered his gaze upward toward her face, which he thought might contain more information. When their eyes finally met, Buck’s wife let out an assaulting shriek accompanied with a facial expression of absolute repulsion. Douglas felt an immediate rush of adrenaline by this. Why on earth would she be doing this?
Douglas released his focus on her and widened his view, now exposing the rest of the players around the table. Buck, on the right side of the room, had pushed back away from the table and was now vomiting pizza sauce and cheese across the table and onto the hardwood floor, and up the side of the wall.
“That man eats too much” Douglas mused.
Another player looked as if he were fainting, reaching for something to grab but only knocking down glasses, and ultimately falling backwards out of his chair, “That man drinks too much.”
A third man fled the room.
Douglas listened for that asshole, Gary, who was surprisingly quiet. Where was he? He twisted back toward Gary’s seat. There, slouched down in his chair, was Gary, arms hanging limp beside him with his wrists touching the floor and his palms facing the ceiling. His sloppy shirt was now saturated with blood, overflowing onto the floor, pooling and growing into a large circle. This created a moving image around a now lifeless body. Douglass moved closer to Gary’s bloody body, which now revealed a bloody face with bloody hair matted to it.
Douglas wondered how this could have happened without him having seen. His instincts took over and he thought he should somehow try to help. He put down the badly broken rooster, knelt in the blood, and checked for a pulse.
No, Gary was dead, “This man talked too much.”