Sunday, November 6, 2016

One Bright Morning

This short story, “One Bright Morning,” was written mostly on November 2, 2016, and then finished on November 3rd. I wrote it while at work as a production assistant on a television show called Doubt, in an effort to keep myself from going completely insane or succumbing to depression. I figured that if I write while I’m at work, then I can kid myself that I’m actually getting paid to write. Of course, that’s not the case at all; my writing while at work could be seen as me completely fucking around on production’s dime. So be it.

Richard woke one morning in the wrong house, with the wrong woman next to him in bed, her throat cut in the most wrong way. His T-shirt no longer white, his hands trembling, a knife between his agitated body and the woman’s quite still corpse. Richard hated rushing in the mornings, or at any time really, but he now got out of bed with tremendous speed, and looked around the room for his possessions – pants and shoes, at least, must be present somewhere. A belt? A shirt? Seeing nothing of his, nothing familiar, he left the room, surprised to find his cock erect. Sure, he usually woke with a hard-on, but this was not a usual morning, and these sort of circumstances should have been enough to eliminate any hint of excitement in that area. But no, his cock was pointing out the escape route, leading the way, first out of the room. Richard dutifully followed. In the next room, there was another girl, just as dead. His pants weren’t in there either.
     Richard was getting a tad nervous, as this complete lack of pants was unsettling. It wasn’t like him to roam about a stranger’s house sans trousers. Two more corpses in the bathroom, but no pants. This was disturbing; his wallet and keys were in the pockets of those trousers. He couldn’t leave without them, particularly a home full of dead women. He wouldn’t want the police to find his wallet, and surely they would go through this place rather thoroughly. They might consider it evidence, and begin to suspect Richard of having some hand in whatever activities led to the deaths of these four unfortunate women.
     Five, actually, he noted as he went down the staircase to the living room. This fifth woman was dismembered, her limbs on various stairs, her head staring at him from the base of the staircase, watching his approach without interest.
     “Where are my fucking pants?” Richard was tempted to kick the head, out of frustration, as he reached the bottom of the stairs, but without his shoes, thought the skull might well damage his toes, and passed by the head without taking action. It was then that he came upon the most gruesome tableau of this inauspicious morning. Three women, strung up from the ceiling by their arms, their bodies sewn together at the torsos, creating a twisted semi-human beast, an offering to an unnamed, perverse and greedy deity. Two of them were nude; the middle one, however, Richard happily noted, was dressed in his missing pants, shoes and button-down shirt. He was able to remove the shoes without any trouble, but his pants, he was upset to find, were sewn into the nude corpses on either side. And the shirt, of course, would be impossible to retrieve without bringing down the whole corpse creation. As he considered a couple of courses of action – ripping the bodies apart, or getting a pair of scissors – another body appeared, this one quite alive, jumping out at him from the next room.
     “Surprise!” she shouted.
     That was echoed by several other people, though not by those hanging from the ceiling. Friends, co-workers all entered now from the kitchen and dining room. Richard was surprised, though he’d have to admit everything so far about this day had come as a surprise. But no one had ever thrown him a surprise birthday party before, and it wasn’t long before he got into the spirit of the thing. Lucy, his next door neighbor, even brought him a pair of scissors so he could get his pants. And once he was dressed, he felt much more comfortable, much more relaxed. Also, it was upon seeing her that his cock finally began to nod off.
     The cops then came in and arrested him for multiple murders. But, all in all, it was one of Richard’s better birthdays.

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