Anyone for Squirrel?
By Cheryl Anne Gardner
They serve slop in the galley. The sort of overly rendered fatty crap you had to paddle your way through before your stomach got wise and aborted the unmentionable shit as if you ate a toxic bag of medical sharps. Broccoli and cheese mash soup served over urinal cake. It had a curious citrus scent soaked in forest fire. "This tastes lovely," my wife said aloud so that Greta the Nazi chef could hear her over the squirming and squealing in the soup pot. "Did you have a nice day, dear?"
I hadn't, and I really didn't feel the need to reciprocate the nicety since she'd obviously spent the day with prince valium, and I couldn't care less.
I'd had to swallow my fifth rejection that day. My mouth already tasted like ass, so what did it matter. Greta was the housekeeper. She loved to cook, and my wife loved it because she couldn't. Every night we ate rare and exotic dishes from the old country: our backyard. "Put hair on your chest," Greta always said while pounding her sagging tits lower on her torso than even gravity could manage. My wife loved a hairy chest. I didn't have one. Over the years, it had migrated to my back. My wife didn't seem to notice, like she didn't notice the dead cat on the lawn or the hair in the soup. I suppose even if she did, she wouldn't care. She'd puke it up later anyway and then wash the taste out of her mouth with a bit of vodka. I wish she'd suck my johnson like she sucks on that twist of lime.
I stabbed what was moving on my plate and then looked over at my son in his droopy socks and scuffed patent leather shoes, who sat there pinning roaches to a napkin with map tacks. "Don't play with your food, sweetie."
My wife has the maternal conviction of a hot dog with rigor mortis, so my son just smiled at his mother, put a live one in his mouth, and started crunching to the rhythm of whatever pop nonsense bullshit he was listening to. The boy wanted nothing to do with the conversation. He didn't understand what a nice day was.
A nice day for him was picking scabs, and he once proclaimed after calling me an old fart, that I should know that better than anyone.
- - -
Cheryl Anne Gardner is a hopeless dark romantic, lives in a haunted house, and often channels the spirits of Poe, Kafka, and de Sade. She prefers writing art-house novellas and abstract flash fiction to writing bios because she always seems to forget what point of view she is in. When she isn’t writing, she likes to chase marbles on a glass floor, eat lint, play with sharp objects, and make taxidermy dioramas with dead flies.
By Cheryl Anne Gardner
They serve slop in the galley. The sort of overly rendered fatty crap you had to paddle your way through before your stomach got wise and aborted the unmentionable shit as if you ate a toxic bag of medical sharps. Broccoli and cheese mash soup served over urinal cake. It had a curious citrus scent soaked in forest fire. "This tastes lovely," my wife said aloud so that Greta the Nazi chef could hear her over the squirming and squealing in the soup pot. "Did you have a nice day, dear?"
I hadn't, and I really didn't feel the need to reciprocate the nicety since she'd obviously spent the day with prince valium, and I couldn't care less.
I'd had to swallow my fifth rejection that day. My mouth already tasted like ass, so what did it matter. Greta was the housekeeper. She loved to cook, and my wife loved it because she couldn't. Every night we ate rare and exotic dishes from the old country: our backyard. "Put hair on your chest," Greta always said while pounding her sagging tits lower on her torso than even gravity could manage. My wife loved a hairy chest. I didn't have one. Over the years, it had migrated to my back. My wife didn't seem to notice, like she didn't notice the dead cat on the lawn or the hair in the soup. I suppose even if she did, she wouldn't care. She'd puke it up later anyway and then wash the taste out of her mouth with a bit of vodka. I wish she'd suck my johnson like she sucks on that twist of lime.
I stabbed what was moving on my plate and then looked over at my son in his droopy socks and scuffed patent leather shoes, who sat there pinning roaches to a napkin with map tacks. "Don't play with your food, sweetie."
My wife has the maternal conviction of a hot dog with rigor mortis, so my son just smiled at his mother, put a live one in his mouth, and started crunching to the rhythm of whatever pop nonsense bullshit he was listening to. The boy wanted nothing to do with the conversation. He didn't understand what a nice day was.
A nice day for him was picking scabs, and he once proclaimed after calling me an old fart, that I should know that better than anyone.
- - -
Cheryl Anne Gardner is a hopeless dark romantic, lives in a haunted house, and often channels the spirits of Poe, Kafka, and de Sade. She prefers writing art-house novellas and abstract flash fiction to writing bios because she always seems to forget what point of view she is in. When she isn’t writing, she likes to chase marbles on a glass floor, eat lint, play with sharp objects, and make taxidermy dioramas with dead flies.
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