Chapter 10: Let's Talk Derby

 "Let’s talk about how Derby died,” Dr. Marcy says.

Oh shit. I haven’t thought up that part, yet – a story about how Derby died – and I’m not sure I have it in me to kill the poor thing.

I love that dog.

Chapter 11: Killing Derby

So how should I go about killing Derby?

I don’t really want to kill him, but I guess by now I’m committed to it.

I’m sitting in my apartment and the sofa’s too bright and the Edvard Munch print on my wall is all blurry because I’m crying. What kind of cruel world is it that forces me to kill my own dog?

I’m sitting on the sofa, and the rabbits are filling my head with their cruel, bright laughter.

Haha, they say.

Do it, Fred. Do it. Kick her head in.

Derby’s a him.

Kick HIS head in, then.

I hate these fucking bunnies. It’s their fault I even have to do this — kill Derby. They’re making me do it, making me murder my favorite pet just to cover their asses. Which is crazy; I’m killing the dog I made up to protect the anonymity of the rabbits living in my head. Tell me that ain’t fucked up.

What’s even more fucked up? I always wanted a dog; I never wanted the rabbits.

Tell me that ain’t irony.

Chapter 12: And that's how Derby Died

I pick up a pen. Crack open a Miller Highlife.  I take a sip, take a swig, then I tip the can up and pour the rest of its contents down my throat. My head fills up with bubbles. Happy, piss-yellow bubbles that fizz through my numb little brain, interceding on behalf of my thoughts.

Thus freed, I begin to write:

One day, I saw Derby pissing on the wall. He was always pissing on the walls. On everything. We’d gotten him neutered and still he pissed on the walls. We spanked him, and still he pissed on the walls. We took him to obedience school. He pissed on the walls.

At least once a day, he’d sniff out a spot, hike up his leg, and let the piss flow. Marking territory or something – some bad habit he picked up during his time on the lam, I suppose. His time in the wild. In the dump.

Anyway, this went on for months. And I’d have to clean it up. Every time.

My mother, she’d see the wet spot on the wall, smell that urine stench wafting off the carpet, and yell. “Freddy, that damned dog did it again.”

So I’d pull out the bucket. The sponge. The rubber gloves. Get to work.

It got so I hated the feel of warm water.

I sent him to obedience school. Twice, actually. Paying with my own money. Birthday money, Christmas money, I’d blow it trying to teach him to just pee outside.

After the second trip to obedience school, he went a week without letting go. Then, one day, I came home from school and there he was in my bedroom with his leg lifted and his ears tucked back, whimpering and shivering above that yellow arc, rolling his eyes back at me because he knew what was coming.

It looked so pathetic, I should have felt sorry for him. But I didn’t. Instead, I started getting angry. All those hours of scrubbing walls, scrubbing carpet ... smelling piss-yellow fumes and dipping my gloved hands into warm bubbles that smelled like piss and Ivory and something infinitely worse ... all the video games and movies and Zingers I could have bought with the checks from Grandma and Aunt Gwen ... all of those things tumbled into a pile in my head and flash-fried my brain. Everything went red, and my foot shot out as Derby was trying to slink away.

I felt my foot connect with the slats of his ribs. He yelped, and somehow, the yelping sounded good. Sounded satisfying. That soft mass of fur and bones and heartbeat felt so good squished around my toes that I shot my foot out again. I kicked him again. I don’t know how many times. I don’t remember. It was a lot of times.

The next thing I knew, I was kneeling in the bathroom, dunking his head in the toilet. Derby was whimpering and cycling his paws on the tile, trying to break free.

I had a bite mark on the back of my hand. A bleeding sponge mass of indented flesh where he’d sunk his teeth in and wouldn’t let go.

That was the only fight he put up.

Poor thing.

I was saying something like:

This is where you pee!

This is where you pee!

This is where you pee!

You stupid thing.

At some point I noticed that he wasn’t struggling anymore. Wasn’t whimpering or cycling his paws. I let him go and he thunked to the tiles. My dog. My poor, sweet Derby. Staring at the bathtub with glazed-donut eyes.

And suddenly all the rage washed out of me. My chest was cold and panic galloped up my spine as I crabwalked away from him. Going: No, Derby, no, Derby, no, no, no, no.

I hid him behind the tool shed and snuck out that night to bury his body in a vacant lot down the street. We used to build forts in that vacant lot when I was little. I never played there again.

And that’s how Derby died.

Chapter 13: Derby Dies — The Redacted Version

Wait ... what was I thinking? I could never show that to Dr. Marcy. What would she think of me? 

Killing my dog? She’ll think I’m a psycho. That I have some serious issues.

I don’t want her to think I'm a psycho. I don't want her to think I have some serious issues. She’d have me institutionalized or something. Put me on tranquilizers. I’d end up like that Big Chief guy in One Flew Over theCuckoo’s Nest.

No, I need something else. Something more reasonable. Something more sane. I scribble out the entire passage. Crumple the paper up. Toss it at the trashcan.

Instead, I write:

One night it was cold and snowing. Derby didn’t get in bed with me like he usually did. I got out of bed and looked all through the house, but I couldn’t find him. I called his name.

Derby!

Derby!

Here boy! 

He didn’t come.

The next morning, Dad decided that Derby must have gotten out. He must have run away.

I never saw him again.

Chapter 14: Sex Zombie

I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and I scroll to Tabitha’s number. I’ll hate myself later for calling her, but I’m drunk and the episode with Derby rattled me — I had no idea I was capable of performing such atrocities against animals!

Even throwing the pages away didn’t provide any relief; I still feel all dirty and creepy when I think about what I wrote.

It doesn’t help that the bunnies found the pages. Like I figured they would, they dug the wadded-up evidence of my depravity out of the trash and flattened it out again. Now they’re reading excerpts to each other across the table.

“She was always pissing on the walls …”

Pretending to cry. Going, Boo Hoo Hoo! Imitating me with these whiny falsetto voices.

“It looked so pathetic, I started getting angry …”

Hooting. Hoo Hoo! Ha ha!

“You’re a monster, Fred,” Dumper hollers.

“A sicko.”

“Would you shut up?” I yank the phone away from my ear. I can still hear Tabitha droning on about how she thinks she’s bored with being a lesbian.

“Fine,” Dumper says. “Pervert.”

X

It’s 2:30 a.m. and here I am knocking on Tabitha’s door.

My brain is floating on beer fumes and I’m burping bubbles and for once, I agree with the bunnies: I’m a pathetic loser.

I’m a spineless bitch.

A stupid cunt.

Tabitha opens the door. She’s dressed up like a naughty librarian: a blouse and a pencil skirt. Glasses. Black bra hinting through virginal white cotton. Fishnets down to her spike heels. Bun pinching her head.

“Ah!” she screams when she sees me. “Zombie!”

I stomp into the apartment, grunting and snorting, ripping at my clothes. Moaning for sex. Sex! Seeeeex!

Tabitha’s mouth is a cherry-red circle. Her eyes saucer big. She turns and dives for the sofa. I manage to snag her blouse and she rips and wiggles her way out of it. Still screaming. Help! Help! Heeeeelp!

She’s doing a good job of selling the part. Really getting into the role, acting just like a naughty librarian would if a sex zombie was attacking her. And her tiny nipples are poking through the lace of her bra. Typically this would have me going crazy with anticipation, but I am drunk and feeling like a loser, and besides, the zombie game is kind of dumb. I’m not feeling it. I’m not getting hard.

Tabitha, who is actually a great lover, senses this and immediately changes gears. She falls onto the sofa and tries a different tactic -- one that usually always works. She hikes her skirt up. Spreads her legs.

“So,” she says, “I saw on Yahoo! that there have been three shootings so far today …”

She runs her hands over fishnet. Stroking her calves, her thighs.

“ … one at the mall,” she purrs. “One in a grocery store and one in a daycare …”

Dipping a finger into her panties, she continues talking.

“ … eight dead so far. Like, twenty people injured …”

I unhook her bra.

“… they killed one of the shooters. The one at the mall …”

I’m biting at her neck, nibbling her earlobes, burying my lips in her cheeks, planting kisses up her nose and forehead.

“… the one at the grocery store killed himself …”

My heart is between my ears, pumping blood into my eyeballs.

“… the one at the daycare is still on the loose. He could still be killing people …”

I’m clawing her throat. Her back. My brain is on mute. My head is full of thunder and ocean swells.

My hands are hot, jiving spiders. My hands are cold, ferocious beasts. They snap. They twist. Poke. Pry.

Down her thighs. Up her ass. Fingers tickling. Reaching. She heaves air down her throat. Blows it out. Heaves it in.

Mmmmm. Baby. Oh, baby.

I’m brutal. Brainless. A creature of lust and hunger. A zombie. A real sex zombie after all.

Oh baby, yeah. Oh, baby.

The stories about the gunmen, somehow they do the trick. Every time. I hear a story about a shooting — and we’re getting, like, at least two a day anymore — my belly starts getting warm and my balls start shrinking.

I hear stories about a shooting, and I’m picturing me and Tabitha arm-in-arm on a killing spree. Walking into convenience stores and shooting them up. Shooting people over the Twizzlers. Shooting people over the Sprees. Shooting as we kiss.

Blood flying. Guts spraying. People shouting. Screaming. Dying.

There we are, Tabitha and Fred. Bonnie and Clyde. Gun-to-gun, cheek-to-cheek. Killing.

Ah, love.

Tabitha told me once that I’d be the perfect person to go on a shooting spree with. I’ve been making plans for it ever since. Stocking up on weapons.

Even after she dumped me, I was planning it. Except at that point, she was on the other end of the gun. Tabitha and her bitch girlfriend, biting bullets.

Now she’s back by my side again. My shooting partner.

I am a floating happy bubble.

I am a sex zombie.

We ride an avalanche of sofa cushions down to the carpet and I don’t even break rhythm.

And when Humper says, “Don’t lose it, Fred,” I can barely hear him.

Chapter 15: How to Make a Sky

Dr. Marcy holds the paper. It’s creased into sections from where I folded it up to shove in my pocket.

“Hmmm …” she says.

She clears her throat. Scratches the back of the page with a fingernail.

“Well, Fred, I’d hoped you would open up a little more. You know, about the experience.”

“But that’s what happened.”

“Yes, I understand that, but we need to explore the incident. How did it make you feel to lose Derby?”

“Shitty.”

“Yes, well, I assumed as much. But can you elaborate on that? How does ‘shitty’ make you feel? Define ‘shitty’ for me.”

“Hmm … well, it’s just … kind of shitty.”

My homework this week: define “shitty.”

X

Instead of defining “shitty,” I decide to show Dr. Marcy how much I am learning about painting. My Bob Ross lessons are really paying off, and I want her to know that.

I crack open a Pabst Blue Ribbon and I write:

HOW TO MAKE A SKY

To make a sky what you do is take a tube of phthalo blue paint. Squeeze some of the paint out onto your palette. Don’t be too sparing about it. Get a nice, big dollop, mix it around and pull some of it across the palette with your brush.

Okay, now, once you’ve done that, you want to take your brush and tap it against the paint. Nice and gentle. This will ensure an even distribution of paint though the bristles. After all, you don’t want to get any blue smears across your sky. You don't want any unintended jet streams — blue wads of air for clouds to trip over.

Now, once the brush is ready, you want to take it and cover the canvas with crisscrossing strokes. Tiny little crisscrossing strokes filling the canvas out to the corners.

Just go at it, marking out the blank white space, making something out of the destruction of nothing. 

Yeah, that's it! Just make nice, tiny little crisscrossing strokes with which you will construct the heavens ... like God would have done it if he’d been working with oils instead of light and clay. There is no land to inhibit you yet. No mountains or trees or happy little rivers to block your view or hold you down. At this point, the sky goes on forever with no skyline to cut it in half. It's just you and the canvas and a brush and phthalo-blue expanses to swim through forever. Like a bubble adrift in boundless, breathless air, you paint. 

Chapter 16: God Talk Radio

The freak we call God Talk Radio is standing outside. He’s shouting, as usual. Filling my hangover full of brimstone and jive.

PRAISE JAYSUS, OH MY BRUTHAS!

PRAISE JAYSUS, OH MY SISTAS!

REPENT YOUR SINS, OH MY BRUTHAS

OH MY SISTAS!

FOR GAWD SHALL BRING YOU INTO JUDGEMENT!

OH LAWD! OH HOLAY JAYSUS!

“I hate God Talk Radio,” Tabitha says.

“Amen,” I reply.

I raise the mini blinds and look out the window. God Talk Radio's down on the sidewalk, hands hidden in his coat pockets, ears hidden under his beanie cap. Breathing fog. Breathing fire.

REPENT YO SINS. PUT DOWN THAT CRACK PIPE. PUT DOWN THAT HUSTLA MAGAZINE. FOR THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT IZZA COMIN!

“In bed,” Tabitha adds, giggling.

Have you ever played the game where you add the words "in bed" to the end of your fortune cookie fortune? You know, like, if your fortune says, LOVE IS NOT FOR THE WEAK OF HEART, you read it, "When one door closes, another opens … in bed."

Tabitha and I do the same thing, but with God Talk Radio quotes. Every time God Talk Radio says something, we finish his sentence by saying, “In bed.”

YOU ARE ALL SINNERS … (in bed).

OPEN YOSELF TO GAWD … (in bed).

FEEL THE HOLAY HAND OF JAYSUS UPON YOU … (in bed).

Tabitha’s hunched in front of her computer, looking at autopsy photos. I’m sprawled out on her Nightmare Before Christmas sheets.

The Nightmare Before Christmas sheets are Tabitha’s favorite sheets. She contends that The Nightmare Before Christmas is the best movie ever made. Growing up, Tabitha loved two holidays above all others: Christmas and Halloween. When Tim Burton managed to successfully meld the two, she was hooked.

When Tabitha got the sheets, they were white with little Jack Skellingtons all over then. Now they are gray with faded little Jack Skellingtons all over them. She uses the sheets so often that they are slimed with a perpetual coat of some weird funk. Even after she washes them, they feel like greasy hair.

“When are you going to get rid of these?” I ask.

“Dude, you do not get rid of the Jack Skellington sheets. My mom bought those for me when I got my first double bed. They are classics!”

“They’re disgusting.”

“Go sleep in your own bed, then. I’m studying.”

Tabitha is always studying. Looking at autopsy photos. Reading biographies on John Wayne Gacy. On The Zodiac Killer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy. I wonder if the knowledge that Tabitha’s gleaning from all this studying will help our shooting.

I’m sure it will.

“All right,” I say. “I’m out.”

“See ya.”

Tabitha doesn’t even look up from the computer.