Just Desserts

Just Desserts

Foghat’s 70’s hit “Slow Ride” blared from the stereo.  He had speakers in nearly every room of the small ranch-style home.  Big ones.  Speakers so big that, when he and Marcie entertained, they doubled as end tables where guests would set their drinks.

Slow Ride! Take it easyyy!

Doug pulled the last pickle out of the jar and crammed it into his mouth.  Then gulped the pickle juice straight from the jar, much of it spilled onto his stained black T-shirt.  No matter, he did not really like the shirt anyway.  He set the container down next to the empty mayonnaise jar and the remnants of the tray of Marcie’s brownies that he polished off just minutes earlier.

His stomach gurgled and he felt like he needed to vomit again.  He had grown so accustomed to the event, over the weekend, that he strategically placed receptacles throughout the home so that he would not mess up the carpet when he puked.  There was a large bucket in the kitchen, two jumbo mixing bowls in the living room, and a wastebasket by the computer.  One of the bowls in the living room still had to be emptied.

Slow Ridddde!  Take it Easyyy!

Doug followed the chorus with a complex air guitar solo and then reached for the opened bag of potato chips.  He tipped the crinkled bag and poured the chip crumbs into his mouth, chewing frantically until it was empty and his chin was shiny with grease.  Balling up the bag, he chucked it at the wastebasket by the computer.  He missed.  Such was life.

Doug wiped his hands on his jeans and glanced at the timer.  “Oven’s almost donnnneee,” he sang at the bedroom door, not knowing for sure if Marcie could hear him or not.  “It’s not the fine dining you are used to but it’s within our budget, hunnie.”

He heard a slam and something crash onto the wood floor of their bedroom.  Books, her army of angelic figurines, or, maybe, a lamp she probably swatted from the top of her dresser.  Then he heard her sob.  Doug imagined that their framed wedding portrait now lay in pieces.  “Still pissed,” he announced with an audible sigh.  Then, grabbing the stereo remote, he thumbed the volume button.  He would not hear it anymore if he could help it.  “This is not helpful!” he shouted.

He boosted the volume and Foghat roared, cutting off her cries.

Doug tried to push the anger down deep into his emotional cellar, as a self-help book he once read, called it.  With his mind clear, he would have known it as denial.  Nonetheless, from his point of view, he had ownership of the moral authority in this issue.  After all, he had done all this for her.  His wife’s maxed-out credit cards had drained every paycheck.  They barely had enough to live on so Doug got a second job at the clinic.  The guinea pig work was unconventional, sure, but it put an extra $500 in their budget every two weeks tax free.  She should be grateful.

As a half-hearted disclaimer, Dr. Stecker had confided to Doug that these procedures were not necessarily FDA-approved but that they were a small company on the verge of something big.  All Doug cared about is that they paid him cash under the table.  So, once a week, against his wife’s wishes, Doug went to the clinic for shots or pills or procedures of an experimental nature.  For the last two weeks, hunger pills graced the menu.  Stecker proudly claimed that the medication would soon help curb eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia and stimulate appetite.  Doug would be a monumental part of this breakthrough.  He used words like “revolutionary” and “ground-breaking” always in the descriptions of his own work.

Marcie summed up the good doctor as a quack salesman taking advantage of their situation.

Doug dropped himself into his brown leather recliner and twisted the cap open on his last two-liter of cola.  He swigged it straight from the bottle and watched the oven timer tick down from the living room.  Fifteen minutes, 23 seconds until it’s ready.

All the cupboard doors in the kitchen were thrown open and empty.  Except for the dishes and cups that were still neatly stacked, it looked as though a cyclone had ripped through the place.  Torn open cans of vegetables, ripped boxes of cake mixes, and sliced wrappers of lunchmeat littered the counter tops and linoleum floor.  Flour and sugar dust coated the counter by the refrigerator.  The fridge was the first thing he gutted when the pills kicked in.

Slowwww Ridddee!  Take it easayyy!  The music continued to thump. 

His knees bounced as he chugged the bottle of pop.  His thoughts darkened as he watched the timer.  “Feed Me!” he shouted at the oven.  Curse his eyes, if he did not see the numbers freeze right before him, roll back two digits, then continue the countdown just to tease him.

Voices in his head performed Marcie’s pathetic monologue.  “I use the credit when I feel empty inside.”  Her voice echoed in his head  “When I am bored with life, I needed things.”  Things.  “Things to fill the emptiness.”  Emptiness.

Then he heard his own voice rage, “My love and care is not enough?  I cannot compete with this?  Compete with the jewelry and expensive restaurants and new clothes!  The closets full of unopened boxes and items with the price tags still attached to them!  Other things you stashed around the house in a feeble attempt to hide your problem!”

“It’s not fair!” he bellowed and threw the half-empty plastic bottle at the wall.  “I need things too!  You aren’t the only one who can need!”  His gut continued to roar within him.

He let the moment sink in for a few more seconds then got up to find some paper towel.  “I am sorry, baby.  I shouldn’t keep digging up the past.  I know it’s hurtful.  It’s the past.  I know it’s the past.”  Half of him wanted to plead with her to stop crying; the other half felt her turmoil equated to her just desserts.

With the wadded up paper towel and empty pop bottle in his hands, he looked toward the bedroom door again.  “I have to do this, you know.  I do.”

Slowww Riddeee  Take it easay!

He felt suddenly his cell phone vibrate on his hip.  Plucking it from his belt, he read the caller ID.  It was the mad scientist himself.  He cleared this throat and wiped his eyes.  “Hello,” he said, but the music drowned out the voice on the other end.  “Hold on.”

Cell phone in one hand and his stereo remote in his pocket, Doug eyed the timer as he pulled aside the vertical blinds to open the slider that led out to the patio.  He squinted as his eyes adjusted to the harsh daylight.  The music cut to a dull muffle as he shut the door.  “Ok, what up?”

“Doug, thank God.  Did you just turn your phone on?  I’ve been calling for hours!”  Stecker was out of breath and tense.

“Nah, must just be the first time I noticed.  You like classic rock?”  He raised the phone to the outside of home to expose the mad scientist to the excellence that is Foghat.  “Anyway?  You need something?  It’s weekend. You know, family time.”

“I need you to come in.  Now.  We have a problem.  Your dosage . . . “

Doug was distracted by the hypnotic sway of the vertical blinds as they swung back and forth, hiding then revealing the readout of the timer with every pass.  Seven minutes, forty-two seconds and counting.  “What?  Hold on.”

His Foghat song was winding down, so he aimed his remote through the sliding glass door at the stereo to restart the song.  Slooowww Riddde!  Take it eeeassay!!

Stecker moaned in frustration.  “Didn’t you hear me?  You were given the wrong dosage.  You need to bring me those pills!  Actually, no, just stay where you are.  Don’t do anything.  I’ll come to you!”

“Listen, doc, don’t bother.  No more pills to give ya, buddy.  But we are fine here.  I’ll see you on Monday like usual.”

“Doug, you don’t understand.”

Just then, he saw his neighbor, old Mrs. Krandall, peeking out of the corner of her window into his backyard.  She clutched a cordless phone and ducked back out of sight when Doug discovered her.  He was about to wave when he realized that the expression on her old wrinkled face was not one of neighborly acknowledgement, but fear.

“What?” he called to her.  He took a couple steps toward her window, but she was gone.  “Doc, I gotta go.  The timer is almost up and something is goin on here.”

“Doug, stay on the line!  The dosage you received has side effects. Mood swings.  Unpredictable behavior.  And appetite over-stimulus.  You . . .”

“Sorry, gotta go.”  He closed his cell phone and walked up where his chain link fence met the corner of the house.  In the street, he saw a police car.  He craned his neck, as far as he could, to the right and saw a second one.  He heard talking and a sudden pounding on his front door.

“He’s back here!”  An officer noticed him and dashed in his direction.  Two others followed close behind.

As they athletically jumped over the fence, Doug panicked and frantically threw open his slider, hopped in, and locked it behind him as the cops hurriedly approached the glass.  The back door of his home suddenly erupted from the kick of another cop.  “Freeze!” he yelled.

The timer ticked down to two minutes and fourteen seconds.  It was so close, he thought.  So close.

The cop lunged at him and the impact sent them both crashing into the kitchen table then tumbling onto the linoleum.  Doug’s ribs burned with pain and he bled from his forehead.  The loud music rocked while the two men rolled across the floor.  When the police officer got on top of him again, he bent Doug’s left arm back to work his handcuffs.  Doug’s right arm shot forward and his hand felt for the oven.  He needed it so bad. 

“Where is she!” the officer shouted as he held down Doug’s struggling body.

The other cops had entered the house with their weapons drawn.  When he finally had Doug secured with his handcuffs, the arresting officer reached for the stereo to turn off the pounding music.

“NO, no, no!” Doug screamed.  “Leave it.”  He writhed on the floor, kicking his feet and slamming his head against the oven.  He maniacally began to shout along with the song.  “Sloowww Riddeee!  Take it Easyyy!!”

With the music instantly cut off, a chorus of blood-curdling groans and cries emanated from behind the bedroom door.  There, they found Marcie.  She had rolled off the bed onto the floor.  She had somehow, miraculously, built up enough strength to work the cordless phone, despite all the blood loss.  She was weak, but, thankfully, alive.

Back in the kitchen, the timer, suddenly, expired and Doug, lying on the floor next to the oven, sighed in relief.  It was done.

Officer Curtis switched off the heat and pulled open the oven door slightly.  Smoke billowed out.  Smelled like burned pork roast.  The big cop wrinkled his nose and with this other hand grabbed for an oven mitt.  Hot and heavy, the cop almost needed two hands to lift the large roasting pan.  Suddenly, he dropped it onto the stovetop in complete horror.

The officer had no choice but to listen to it sizzle.  He could see cooked muscle and even some charred bone on the portions where the skin had burned away.  At the other end of the pan, he recognized traces of the pink polish on the nails of the three remaining toes. 

Curtis covered his eyes and yelled for his partners.




THE END

word count:1995