Happy Birthday Weirdyear! That's right, we've been on the air for one year today!
FIANCEE
by Nathan Patton
Musty bathroom. Unidentifiable stain on the carpet. Light bulb blew when I pushed the greasy switch. Has to be in the running for worst motel in the entire Chicagoland area, if such a list or chart has ever been assembled. If they did win (their trophy: a black light?), they certainly wouldn’t make the mistake of coming here to celebrate like we did.
Girlfriend's turn to get the ice. Fiancée, I mean. She's got a shiny new ring on her finger. Gonna cost me ‘til I’m dead; only because I’m not in a position to make more than the minimum payments each month.
Neighbors are loudly trespassing into each other's bodies. Makes me ready to do the same. But she doesn’t want to, my fiancée. The noise is distracting, she says, and it makes her feel vulgar, like she’s purposely doing these acts in concert with whomever happened get the key to room 216. I’m not as reserved, and I have an instinct for competition. I think we can beat them. She comes back with the ice bucket and a diet soda. I'm not in the mood for such a thing, and since I have to care about what she’s not in the mood for, she should do the same for me, not try to shove something down my throat that just tastes like bitter, wet salt. Then get it yourself, she says. You shouldn't have sent me out there alone, anyway. Oh give me a break, I say. Just because most of the people here aren't white doesn't automatically make it dangerous.
It has nothing to do with that, you asshole-moron, she says. There are gigantic bloodstains on the carpet. We don't know that's blood, I say. Could be anything. Yeah, anything that's red and doesn't come out, she says.
She starts to light her nasty habit, and I grab the key on top of the TV and slam the door on the way out. It slams for me, actually.
See? This place isn't so bad. Those bloodstains are the only real deal-breaker. No porn on the TV, but I got the audio from next door. Wonder how she's taking it, my girlfriend, having to listen to those slapping bodies while she drinks her prudish diet soda.
I get to the machines, colorful and lit like Christmas, like our room should be, and realize I forgot my wallet.
Half way back to the lovefest, a guy steps out of his room wearing white boxers and no t-shirt. He has a toothpick in his mouth.
I try not to picture what he must have been doing half naked with a toothpick, but I do anyway. I laugh at the image my brain has conjured. He wonders what I'm laughing at. I say nothing. He calls me a curseword. I stop. I have an instinct for competition. I bet I can clean his teeth for him way better than he's capable of doing with that little splinter.
I turn to walk back with my chest out, my stomach flattened by lungsuck, but his fist is already sending throbs into my eardrum. I try to stumble away, but he pushes me down, and my face lands in-between two bars of the walkway barrier. He calls me a fool. He gets no argument from me.
I think he's done, but he discredits that theory with his shoeless foot in my rib. It doesn't hurt much, and he must realize that, because then he hits me in the back of my head with his fist.
Something sounds like loose change as he pulls back from my head in a whip. I close my eyes, kind of in the mood to sleep. Then I hear her voice as she steps out of our room and screams curses of the regular and racial varieties. I try to tell her to stop, but my tongue won’t listen any more than she would have.
Her bare feet make clapping noises as she walks toward us, yelling. The man doesn't know what to do. He points at her and then kicks me again with hardly any force, just as a show of threat. It
seems implausible, but he's scared of her. She gets to us and then bends down to check on me. I’m unable to do anything but murmur; my tongue is much more concerned with taking inventory of my teeth. She slaps the man’s cheek. I hear stomps, gallops almost. His girlfriend
(fiancée?) runs out and pushes my girlfriend with kinetic force. My girlfriend’s body trips on my legs and she goes flying over the edge of the banister, screaming in a backwards swell.
Her body smacks the pavement. It sounds wet, like a bug being stepped on.
The man yells something and runs inside his room, putting clothes back on and filling his pockets with some things that fit and some that won’t. The woman stares down at the blood as it cradles my girlfriend's head. The woman is crying and mumbling apologies, and when I tell her to shut up so I can think and remember, one of my teeth falls out.
I place my bleeding face between the bars that are keeping me from joining the girl on the ground, and I stare down at her robe, open to reveal lingerie with the tag still on it. I guess she was in the mood, after all.
- - -
Nathan Patton lives in the Boston Mountains with his wife and guitar.
His work has been published by Arcana, Speakeasy, Dakuwaka, and Young American Comics, and has been hung on many refrigerators.
FIANCEE
by Nathan Patton
Musty bathroom. Unidentifiable stain on the carpet. Light bulb blew when I pushed the greasy switch. Has to be in the running for worst motel in the entire Chicagoland area, if such a list or chart has ever been assembled. If they did win (their trophy: a black light?), they certainly wouldn’t make the mistake of coming here to celebrate like we did.
Girlfriend's turn to get the ice. Fiancée, I mean. She's got a shiny new ring on her finger. Gonna cost me ‘til I’m dead; only because I’m not in a position to make more than the minimum payments each month.
Neighbors are loudly trespassing into each other's bodies. Makes me ready to do the same. But she doesn’t want to, my fiancée. The noise is distracting, she says, and it makes her feel vulgar, like she’s purposely doing these acts in concert with whomever happened get the key to room 216. I’m not as reserved, and I have an instinct for competition. I think we can beat them. She comes back with the ice bucket and a diet soda. I'm not in the mood for such a thing, and since I have to care about what she’s not in the mood for, she should do the same for me, not try to shove something down my throat that just tastes like bitter, wet salt. Then get it yourself, she says. You shouldn't have sent me out there alone, anyway. Oh give me a break, I say. Just because most of the people here aren't white doesn't automatically make it dangerous.
It has nothing to do with that, you asshole-moron, she says. There are gigantic bloodstains on the carpet. We don't know that's blood, I say. Could be anything. Yeah, anything that's red and doesn't come out, she says.
She starts to light her nasty habit, and I grab the key on top of the TV and slam the door on the way out. It slams for me, actually.
See? This place isn't so bad. Those bloodstains are the only real deal-breaker. No porn on the TV, but I got the audio from next door. Wonder how she's taking it, my girlfriend, having to listen to those slapping bodies while she drinks her prudish diet soda.
I get to the machines, colorful and lit like Christmas, like our room should be, and realize I forgot my wallet.
Half way back to the lovefest, a guy steps out of his room wearing white boxers and no t-shirt. He has a toothpick in his mouth.
I try not to picture what he must have been doing half naked with a toothpick, but I do anyway. I laugh at the image my brain has conjured. He wonders what I'm laughing at. I say nothing. He calls me a curseword. I stop. I have an instinct for competition. I bet I can clean his teeth for him way better than he's capable of doing with that little splinter.
I turn to walk back with my chest out, my stomach flattened by lungsuck, but his fist is already sending throbs into my eardrum. I try to stumble away, but he pushes me down, and my face lands in-between two bars of the walkway barrier. He calls me a fool. He gets no argument from me.
I think he's done, but he discredits that theory with his shoeless foot in my rib. It doesn't hurt much, and he must realize that, because then he hits me in the back of my head with his fist.
Something sounds like loose change as he pulls back from my head in a whip. I close my eyes, kind of in the mood to sleep. Then I hear her voice as she steps out of our room and screams curses of the regular and racial varieties. I try to tell her to stop, but my tongue won’t listen any more than she would have.
Her bare feet make clapping noises as she walks toward us, yelling. The man doesn't know what to do. He points at her and then kicks me again with hardly any force, just as a show of threat. It
seems implausible, but he's scared of her. She gets to us and then bends down to check on me. I’m unable to do anything but murmur; my tongue is much more concerned with taking inventory of my teeth. She slaps the man’s cheek. I hear stomps, gallops almost. His girlfriend
(fiancée?) runs out and pushes my girlfriend with kinetic force. My girlfriend’s body trips on my legs and she goes flying over the edge of the banister, screaming in a backwards swell.
Her body smacks the pavement. It sounds wet, like a bug being stepped on.
The man yells something and runs inside his room, putting clothes back on and filling his pockets with some things that fit and some that won’t. The woman stares down at the blood as it cradles my girlfriend's head. The woman is crying and mumbling apologies, and when I tell her to shut up so I can think and remember, one of my teeth falls out.
I place my bleeding face between the bars that are keeping me from joining the girl on the ground, and I stare down at her robe, open to reveal lingerie with the tag still on it. I guess she was in the mood, after all.
- - -
Nathan Patton lives in the Boston Mountains with his wife and guitar.
His work has been published by Arcana, Speakeasy, Dakuwaka, and Young American Comics, and has been hung on many refrigerators.
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