Part Four: Actually this is more about Dean Koontz

I meant to write yesterday, but I was pretty hungover. This whole week, I’ve been working in a backed-up licensing department trying to help them “get back up to speed.” This consists of filing and… and that’s all.

Fortunately, the woman who was describing the filing tasks to me was not what you’d call an A-Plus Explainer. After asking her to repeat herself three or four times, I just pretended like I understood and then sat there at the desk doing nothing, poking every once in a while at the stack of papers like an animal that you’re not sure is dead.

Speaking of which, have you ever done that? It’s actually really fucking intense, especially with a big animal like a deer…. You creep up to it slowly… make some noise at it… poke it in the but with a stick… and then finally, your last step to make sure it’s dead is to whap it in the eyeball. Then you slice it open to remove the intestines. Eviscerating Bambi sound gross? Whatever, don’t kill the messenger.

Ok, before I forget, the bathroom story. Disclaimer: the story is not funny or interesting, and this post is going to be super disjointed, so keep that in mind.

When my cousin Jake used to come over almost every day in the summer, we’d play all day outside. Sunup to sundown. When we had to go to the bathroom, going all the way inside seemed like such a bother, so we used to just jump into the garage, which was unfinished and full of lumber, and save ourselves some time.

One day, it was time for Jake to leave, and my mom was coming out the back door with her purse and keys to drive him home. “Jake, if you have to go to the bathroom, do it now!” she called. So Jake turned, ran into the garage and unloaded. Right in front of my mom. I don’t know, he’s a dumbass.

For some reason, my mom still loves me, a fact which I rediscovered last night, when she left a new hardcover copy of Odd Hours standing on the stairs where she knew I would find it on my way to bed. Any of you read Dean Koontz at all? Because Odd Thomas is one of the greatest characters ever created, and the books are a total joy to read. Plus, they make me want to write stuff like this:

‘Walking down the road, I lost track of time. It took deliberate effort to put one foot in front of the other, and then the other, and the other. The muted squeaks of my sneakers on the cobblestone street were washed away and lost in the groan of the wind – only in the late over-ripeness of August can the wind groan like that, not a howl, not a whisper, but a throaty, painful creaking like the ragged breath of a long-dead lover, returned, wasted by the grave, to lament his lost sweetheart.

The hair on the back of my neck, no – on my whole body, stood straight. I was awash in a fervor, fever of terror. I’ve seen dead men before, but never like this. The scene was a gruesome work of art, the masterpiece of a demented mind. Around the body bluebells were scattered, drizzled with blood. A stake stood in the center, rising straight from the victim’s sternum, the blood-caramel-brown rays stretching across his chest in sharp contrast to the white of his naked body. His arms were splayed neatly, evenly, shining clean in the moonlight, but his excised eyelids left him staring blindly skyward, a mutilation to voice the killer’s silent cry, “notice me!”

We noticed the crime, but God help us, we were ignorant that the murderer was one of us.’

Ok, except that started sort of sounding like a detective novel or something, plus I didn’t use the word “susurration,” which Dean always does. Anyway, read Odd Thomas, it’s a really kickass book.

To wrap things up, I would like to make note of the following: someone in my office shit in the garbage can again. Is this a fetish, a practical joke, a cry for attention? I don’t know. Is it fucking disgusting? Yes.

The End