Tori Bond
I can’t work because of my memory problems or my arrest record, but it’s a misunderstanding. Bill wants me to take my pills. I tell him it’s the Polterguests displacing my purse and phone.
“Right, little fursons, moving things.”
“They’re real people!”
I’ve defriended my social circle.
“Put the phone down, you textaholic!”
My butt pocket dialed everyone, a body-centered Freudian slip. Maybe I was envious. I can’t even get a job as a barista. My butt spoke truth to shallowness, made a mess of my relationship with Carol, the organized one. It only took two weeks to defriend eleven people including my mother and brother. Mother claims I called her a “sluxxx” and a “babbbby snuffller.”
My brother called the cops. I protested that my butt was not smart enough to orchestrate anything without my knowledge. He testified against me.
Jihad Smihad, I just wanted my lawn mower back. I explained that it was a familyism for love. We haven’t mowed for five weeks. The neighbors are holding fifty-nine of my cats hostage. The note said, “Mow or else!” My phone has been confiscated by Homeland Security, not before an intimate cavity search. Somehow the memory of that gritty affair is as vivid as a popular YouTube video. I tried to detangle my relationships by texting: “My butt is an asshole. Don’t listen to it!” Too late. Bill thinks the pills will make me feel better. How’s that possible? I got no friends and can’t work.
Charlene lords her 101-IQ over me. Like I care whose ass her dog sniffed. I did not call her a “coowwowo w/brains of mooossssh.” Judy’s bragging her way to the South of France, while I bake at the Jersey Shore. The No-fly list is no-punishment if I never fly. Take that Snooty-Judy.
I smack my cheek, “Stop telegraphing my thoughts. I don’t need another body search.” I can’t wear my phone in my front pocket. My vagina has been texting. Who knows how? Maybe the vibrator taught her. I’ve been trying to get Bill to propose for ten years, but two days in my front pocket and voila, “Marry me?” They now have creepy pet names for each other. I got smart and kept the phone in my purse, but lots of things went on in there, very expensive things. Bill keeps chasing me with the pills. I’m not depressed I tell him but he thinks credit problems have something to do with lithium.
“There’s a gaggle of men following me. Yes real men.” Bill holds the pills out like a baby kitten.
I take them.
Tori Bond is an MFA candidate at Rosemont College and holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from Rutgers University. Recent work has appeared in Every Day Fiction. Essays on flash craft have appeared at flashfiction.net, and she received honorable mention in the 76th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition.
