The Sarah and Pinchbeck Show

She wore the severed head of a chicken on her index finger that she had named Pinchbeck. She said he was her finger puppet and if other people didn’t like it, well, they could fuck off.

         She liked to say ‘fuck off,’ it was quite the regular thing for her and got her in trouble on more than a few occasions.

         Sarah, that was her name, Sarah said that she tried to go audition for Sesame Street. She said they would not take her on, said that one of the producers threw up on the auditorium floor, said that she told them to fuck off.

         And she went in front of Nickelodeon to pitch her show, they told her no and she was forcefully removed from the building and warned to never return, if she did they’d have her arrested. Three months later Nickelodeon premiered a show in the early morning that featured the severed heads of five pigeons held securely to one hand. They were friends apparently; they went on adventures, the hand and the five pigeon-head friends. Stories were told and morals were taught in between healthy doses of junk food and video game commercials.

         The day she first saw the show she sent the producer a letter of congratulations and it ended with: P.S. Fuck Off.

         It was her favorite thing, and hey, who am I to argue?

         Sarah kept saying that this is her art form, her mode of expression. Didn’t they understand art? Didn’t they understand anything?

         I just replied: No, honey, they don’t. I held her to my chest and let her cry it out while Pinchbeck patted my back, the way a good friend would. His hard beak left indentions on my back that would stay for weeks.

         Sarah informed me that one day she would have a show, TV, Broadway, or sidewalk and all of those people who told her no would get what they deserve. And that is- well, you know, I am already skirting the literary boundaries here. Her show would be called Pinchbeck and Sarah, they would laugh and dance and the children would sing.

         Can you believe that? She thought the kids would sing to a severed chicken head.

         I found the whole thing strange, strange but cute. Disturbing never entered my mind, and you can’t fault me for that, I was in love. Even when she would leave him on during sex, have orgasms in Pinchbeck’s voice. I never found it disturbing. She would let his rotting feathers caress my ears, my face, my lips, and sometimes my inner thighs. Afterwards while I would lay and smoke the post-coital cigarette, Pinchbeck and her hand carefully nuzzled in my lap, his beak playing with my balls, she would look up at me and say: you know, Pinchbeck really likes you, much better than my other boyfriends, you should see what he does to them.

         I said thank you Pinchbeck.

         It was normal, I never thought otherwise.

         Sarah had de-boned Pinchbeck herself, so when she laid him down, skull-less, it would look like someone let the air out of the most grotesque balloon animal you would ever see. Only when she would take a shower would she let him rest on the table. Then and only then.

         One day he fell off the table, I was in a hurry to get to practice, I stepped on him, didn’t realize though. My bad. If I had known I would have never left that day, I would have stayed, faced the consequences, talked her down.

         That night when I returned home, she had her knees to her chest and her head between them, sobbing. Sobbing like her mother had just died, like an airplane had crashed into her house and her every possession was either engulfed in flame or ripped apart by propellers. Sobbing like that.

         She looked at me, I knew I was done for, the look in her eye, you should have seen it.

         She said, not in her voice, in the high squeaky voice of Pinchbeck, she said: Why did you kill me?

         High and squeaky she said: What did I ever do to you?

         I laughed, thought it was a joke, I always did.

         Nothing’s funny, she said, nothing at all, this is serious business, nothing to fool around with. No fooling.

         Sarah started rocking back and forth maniacally, her eyes widened, she stared at me, it was still Pinchbeck I was talking to.

         We can’t find my eye. I am done for, no show for me and Sarah. You’ve ruined everything.
         
         Sarah, for fuck’s sake, would you talk to me, please. I said raising my voice slightly, trying to break through to her. She was somewhere in there, I know it.
         
Pinchbeck said: Don’t talk to her like that, this is your fault, not hers.

         Sarah… Talk to me.

         Sarah doesn’t talk anymore, I speak for us now.

         I apologized, I meant it sincerely. After a few bouts with couples counseling we were able to work through it. We get married this fall and today packages of our wedding invitations were waiting on our doorstep.

         I opened one of the boxes and the invitations, they all said, every single one said: Daniel Scott Ryden and Pinchbeck invite you to…