They determined, after some rinsing of blood, that the unwanted object in Stanley’s foot was a small chunk of discount kitty litter.
Hard to determine if it was soiled or pre-soiled.
The infection was the most colorful thing in their apartment when the TV was off.
Benjee told him he had to quit drinking for the antibiotics to work, so he quit taking the antibiotics.
While his laptop reluctantly whirred to life, he peeled off one of the band stickers. He had been in the band, he was pretty sure, at least for a few rehearsals.
The guy across the alley was working on some kind of engine and the noise sounded like a classic sci-fi robot masturbating.
The guy was always working on engines. Car, motorcycle, dune buggy, though the nearest dunes had to be four hundred miles away.
He wished the guy would work on a biplane once. That would be different.
The first thing that popped up on Stanley’s laptop screen was a post about award winning DIY Halloween costumes for under six hundred bucks. His share of the rent in this dump was six hundred bucks.
Stanley and Benjee were invited to a Halloween party at the birthing center Benjee worked at.
Pus from his foot oozed onto the trash picked Twister mat next to his apple box desk.
Maybe the infection would kill him and he could go to the party as a real ghost.
He liked that idea. Take the concept all the way. Just be dead for real.
Stanley lit a roach he found on top of a Dr. Pepper can, toked it till his fingers burned and held.
As he leaned to blow the smoke out the basement window, smoke from the tinkered engine across the alley blew in.
The engine smoke looked like a ghost.
Benjee was next to the sink, counting the antibiotics.
“You’re not taking your meds,” she said.
“I’m taking my Prozac and Benadryl.”
“C’mon,” she said. “Take your antibiotics.”
Stanley shook his head.
Benjee walked over, reclined on their cot bed and put an antibiotic in her navel.
“Come get it,” she said. Stanley loved her navel, or used to.
Engine guy revved again and more smoke poured into their apartment.
It looked like really, really cool ghosts to Stanley.
His ghost fantasy escalated.
“Benj…what if someone needed the birthing center in the middle of the Halloween party?”
She pointed at the antibiotic in her navel.
“Come eat it,” she said.
Stanley shook her off again and repeated the question.
“I suppose ,” Benjee said “they’d move us outside and bring the child into the world.”
Stanley smiled.
He hoped the infection killed him him at the party at the same instant a child was being born.
Maybe he could be reincarnated as that child.
He laughed.
Benjee laughed because Stanley was laughing.
She pointed again at the antibiotic and he shook her off a third time.
Stanley held his foot up to the open window, letting the dirty, ghostlike exhaust wash over it.
***
The easter bunny must have skipped my house because I didn't get it.
"Benjee told him he had to quit drinking for the antibiotics to work, so he quit taking the antibiotics."
I could name a couple people that had similar responses to similar situations...