The Odd Spot

On the same morning the local paper ran a story about a German bus-driver convicted of penetrating two golden retrievers, Kevin Miller chewed his toast thoughtfully and wiped his buttery fingers on a motel bedspread. The worst thing about it, he decided, was the way it had been sectioned. ‘The Odd Spot’ was normally reserved for light-hearted, strange-but-true news stories, like pelting frog rain in Tanzania or some drunk guy breaking into prison. There was nothing light-hearted about a bus driver putting his dick inside a golden retriever. Boning a pair of them was even less funny.

Smoothing his shirt in the mirror, Kevin couldn’t shake the mental image of this unholy, ten-legged ménage à trois. Did he wear protection? Did he fuck one while the other was forced to watch? Ironically, he would have found a full-page spread more palatable. Something like Dog Rapists Exposed: The Ins and Outs of Pet Fetishism. At least you wouldn’t be left wondering. Kevin rubbed his chin with one hand and rifled through the motel’s courtesy toiletries with the other. Bingo!

Single blade.

Fuck it.

From four-star to three-star is a long way down. It’s certainly a palpable indication that your career is heading in the wrong direction. The shampoo bottles are smaller. The soap is bigger. You get toothbrush and toothpaste but no miniature sewing kit. Popping a shirt button in a three-star motel can fuck up your whole day. Then when your career becomes a job, you downgrade to two-star, which is dangerously close to sleeping in your car. Kevin was so close he could smell the vinyl upholstery. He’d already rolled the driver’s seat back all the way; just to see how flat it would go.

In this motel room, instructions on correct use of the facilities were plastered over every surface in short strips of white-on-red Dymo label.

PLEASE HANG TOWELS AFTER USE

But times that by thirty or forty. It was like every time a guest did something that pissed off the owners, they made a new label.

PLEASE USE BRUSH AS NEEDED

The handle on a toilet brush should be at least as long as the water is deep in a toilet. If you’re looking to mass produce toilet brushes, you probably should start with a prototype, unless of course your primary market is two-star motels.

—

Before Kevin gave up trying, he attended a few sessions of a self-help group called Squalor Survivors. What these people had in common was that they’d lost their sense of clean-as-you-go. This had resulted in several cubic metres of rubbish piling up in every room of their house. In a typical session, the group leader would encourage members to develop a strategy to tackle their squalor, room by room. Each week they’d pass around their newest progress photos, a paleontological study in despair, exposed one dirty dish and yellowed newspaper at a time.

In the foundation layer, there were always telling clues as to how habits of tidiness start to derail – a layer of bereavement cards, or the fossilised remains of a serious Kentucky Fried Chicken addiction, all of it trodden down and mashed into everything else.

For Kevin, the most interesting part of attending Squalor Survivors was listening to new members recounting horror stories about how squalor had become a defining and destructive force in their lives. “I knew it was getting out of hand when I no longer needed to use a step-ladder to change a light globe”, sobbed one enormous whale of a woman in a grubby cardigan.

In a photo of her living room, an ornamental wrought-iron stork teetered precariously on a bowing clotheshorse. She offered no explanation.

On Kevin’s debut night, he talked about his own personal battle. “When I got evicted from my flat, I thought it’d be best to keep moving – keep one step ahead. I got a job as a salesman and life was good for a while. But pretty soon the inside of my car started looking exactly like my house. Most of my samples have become lost amongst the junk.”

Kevin’s product samples were provided by the company, as part of the franchise agreement. Kevin paid two thousand dollars for the right to register as a Home Essentials salesman and peddle merchandise from their product range. Much to his surprise, the catalogue was filled with things that the majority of people didn’t class as essential. “Most folks can live out their entire lives, it seems, without ever needing to julienne a bag of carrots in less than a minute.”

Kevin fed his photos into the ring of chairs: “As you can see the rear of the car is now filled to capacity. I’m afraid to open the door in case I set off an avalanche of rubbish. I even have nightmares about it. They’re always the same. I return to my car to find the windows wound down, and everything pouring out onto the street. As fast as I try to scoop it into one window, it’s spilling out of another. Then when I look up, some crafty looter is strolling off with a four-slice toaster.”

Despite their lack of customer appeal, Kevin had to admit that some of the Home Essentials products had come in handy. One time in peak-hour traffic, he’d half filled the Home Essentials Travel Urinal – and could have filled it to capacity on subsequent occasions if he’d been able to find the damn thing.

On another occasion, Kevin used the Home Essentials Dirt Beware MiniVac to clean up a sachet of sugar that exploded open during a coffee-making incident at the drive-thru. Since that time, the device had suffered a chronic ant infestation that could not be brought back under control. Periodically, in a fit of unbridled irony, Kevin would use the MiniVac to suck a line of ants off his dashboard and back into the device. “Do not pass go”, he’d mumble, in the flat mantra of a man tired of his own one-liners. “Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

—

Life as a travelling salesman was not nearly as glamorous a lifestyle as Kevin had anticipated. The whole trip was starting to look like a terrible mistake. What he’d assumed were major population centres were actually one-street towns with an apparent oversupply of cheap homewares. In Port Lincoln the greengrocer’s wife bought an electric juicer – but he suspected this was more out of pity than necessity. In Murray Bridge he couldn’t even convince the couple who owned the fish and chip shop to buy an egg ring, although they successfully sweet-talked him into two crab sticks and a pineapple fritter.

To make matters worse, Kevin was hopelessly lost. The supposed shortcut to Port Pirie gave way to poorly-sealed roads, which further deteriorated into a series of jarring, corrugated tracks. This induced a persistent and relentless vibration throughout the vehicle that made his teeth chatter, and set off a slow re-ordering of the layers of garbage. Long-forgotten Styrofoam cups had worked their way top side, and started dancing around, dribbling clumpy tangles of ants over everything they came into contact with.

One disaffected posse became fixated on the half-eaten pineapple fritter in Kevin’s lap. They spent the best part of the afternoon marshalling in the door caddy, brainstorming methods to bridge the no-man’s land between Kevin’s leg and the passenger door. In due course, an adventurous scout proffered Kevin’s seatbelt as a viable route. Within minutes, the first of many hundreds of ants had embarked on a precarious journey down the narrow sash towards Kevin’s trousers.

Kevin first became aware of movement as a nagging ripple at the edge of his vision. When he flicked his eyes downwards, his seatbelt had transformed into a shimmering band running the length of his body. Near his left pants pocket, a quivering mass of ants had accumulated, and from there they’d drawn a ragged line down to the pineapple fritter perched upon his knee. Kevin let out a pained wail at the realisation of what was happening. He snatched the seatbelt away at his shoulder and shook it vigorously. An absurd quantity of ants sprayed out in all directions, pitter-pattering black rain across the dashboard and the instrument panel.

On the verge of panic, he turned his attention to the other disaster unfolding in his lap. The ants had sensed danger ahead of time and were abandoning the fritter in droves, scurrying towards the dark shadows between Kevin’s thighs. With epileptic intensity, Kevin braced his shoulders against the seat and pistoned his hips back and forth, sweeping frantically at himself with his free hand, and inadvertently dragging the steering wheel harder to the right with each convulsion.

The loose gravel offered no traction, and the car swung into a wide arc. From a sideways approach, the effect of the corrugations in the road was greatly intensified, and the world was churned into a high-speed blur. When the rear door clipped the first fence-post, everything in the car seemed to liquefy. For a brief moment, an amoebous wave of litter rose up. A huge swell formed against one side of the cabin, and was held there by inertia, as if time was pausing to gather its thoughts. The collision with the second post was more conclusive, jump-starting time again emphatically and without warning. Against a soundtrack of shattering glass and twisting metal, Kevin cowered under the battering tide of everything he possessed.

—

By noon, the interior of the car had climbed to a stifling fifty-nine degrees Celsius – according to the Home Essentials Rectal Thermometer that Kevin had wedged into the air vent. Given his current state, he had no cause to question its accuracy. The sun had tattooed a sharp sting into the left side of his face, and his lips were swollen and sore. When he put the back of his hand against his mouth, it came away bloody.

He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to free his legs, although in light of everything else this seemed of little consequence. His right shoulder was sagging at a clumsy angle. Leaning forward so much as an inch resulted in a gripping, hot pain radiating across his chest, making it difficult to draw breath. Through trial and error, he found a position that offered some relief, although this required resting his raised elbow in his left hand, causing him considerable fatigue.

Kevin surveyed the scene around him. All manner of forgotten objects had sprouted out from the dross and were now in plain view. Kevin pulled at the corner of a half-submerged package, and experienced a glimmer of muted nostalgia at the memory of what appeared. He hadn’t seen the Home Essentials Christmas Party Set since the previous December, and with the memory of it came a recollection of his own hopeful optimism.

Kevin studied the label. According to the content list, it comprised of:

1x Polyester Hat (Red)
1x Polyester Jacket (Red)
1x Polyester Elasticised Pants (Red)
1x Novelty beard
2x Reindeer Inflatable Toy
2x Happy Elf Inflatable Toy
8x Festive Tumbler
8x Festive Plate
1x Festive Tablecloth

Kevin flipped the box over. On the front, a garish red Santa with an unconvincing beard was rocking back on his heels, his head thrown backwards, frozen for all time in a raucous guffaw. He had a puffy, inflatable reindeer squeezed under each armpit, and a pair of sorry-looking elves had been superimposed into the foreground, their misshapen heads taking up most of the picture.

The elves looked up at him sympathetically, their broad smiles belying their deep concern for his present condition. Kevin stared back wistfully. Then, in a final act of dismissive contempt, a lone ant tracked aimlessly across the eye of one of the elves. Much to Kevin’s approval, the elf stoically maintained his toothy grin, presumably so as not to spoil Christmas. “Do not pass go.” Kevin reached out and carefully crushed the ant under his thumb. “Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

—

In different circumstances, he might have been immensely pleased with his own ingenuity. The contents of the Home Essentials Christmas Party set were strewn in front of him. Kevin had pulled the Santa hat low onto his head so as to afford the best protection from the sun, adjusting the fluffy peak of it so that it hung jauntily over his right ear.

Next, he set about the task of repurposing an inflatable reindeer as a support for his bad arm. He tugged one free of its box, and shook it out, withered and creased, into his lap. Its half-folded eye looked up at him, in a parody of his own fatigue. “I know. I’m tired too. We can rest soon.” He probed around in search of the hard lump of its air inlet, and found it protruding like a cyst from the centre of its belly.

He wrapped his blistered lips around the nozzle, and pushed air into it as best he could. The reindeer hung flaccid against his chest for some time, but he persevered and eventually the reindeer awoke, its head lifting higher and higher, exposing a widening grin. Kevin shifted it back into his lap to assess the progress. The reindeer had taken on the lithe, hungry look of an emaciated greyhound. When he gripped its rear, its neck stiffened and its head popped up erect and alert.

Kevin put his mouth around the opening and tried again. With each breath, the reindeer’s torso got progressively fatter, and its front legs began to press in against his temples, trapping his face in a tightening straddle. He thumbed the plug into the nozzle and paused for breath. He licked his lips, and tasted fresh blood. What he needed more than anything right now was a drink. He scanned the car, desperate for a trickle of something. His tongue felt hard and foreign inside his mouth.

Kevin hunted through the debris within immediate reach. He worked his hand through a maze of textures – sticky, rough, gritty, flaky. At one point his fingers came up against something half alive, wriggling determinedly towards an unknown destination. Kevin gritted his teeth and continued on. His tenacity paid off. He felt a smooth, familiar plastic surface against his skin. Gripping his fingers tightly around the neck of it, he dragged it into view. The contents sloshed around, glowing a refracted amber. He removed the stopper, and smelt at the opening cautiously. Then, after a few tentative sips, he upended the bottle, and sucked greedily and without restraint.

—

The Odd Spot – Wednesday 02 Sep, 2009

Santa found a long way from the North Pole

A mentally ill man who believes he is Santa Claus is in a serious but stable condition following a single-car accident on a remote road near Porpunda, South Australia on Monday. Police found him trapped inside the vehicle, fellating an inflatable reindeer and drinking his own urine. Constable Graeme Noel of Adelaide Police reassures us that Santa is expected to make a full recovery in time for Christmas.

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Tags:

christmas, dog, odd, santa, short and story