Nail Clippers and Rustler Sauce

Cut to the Quick: Consecutive Substack Story 1011

Photo by Fré Sonneveld on Unsplash

Larry Schimbo hated electric cars and nail clippers.

Roddy Watson was trying to write a eulogy in his head.

He was Larry’s best friend, though Larry wasn’t his.

Larry hated electric cars because his first job was pumping gas and he met a lot of girls that way, even got one of ‘em a fake diamond engagement ring when she thought she was pregnant.

He hated nail clippers because one of the girls insisted he trim his nails, he went too deep, it bled and got infected.

For the rest of his life…

A shorter life than he probably expected, Roddy thought, …Larry chewed his nails off. 

More control, Roddy guessed.

Larry Schimbo got t-boned by a Tesla, which had nothing to do with the car being electric or the driver being bad.

Larry Schimbo got t-boned because he ran a red light.

Larry Schimbo was late for a doctor’s appointment when he got t-boned, but he didn’t run the red because he was speeding.

Larry was late because he stopped at Stampede Burger on the way to the doctor.

The drive through took longer than expected, though Larry was never sure what to expect at Stampede Burger.

They were out of Rustler Sauce, and Larry was out of patience.

When he pulled out on Craveston, Larry was gobbling his Hoof-Fulla-Fries blindly, finding them hard to consume when they weren’t dripping in the brown, gooey, gravy-like wonder that was Rustler Sauce.

Stuck in traffic on Craveston and Moreland, Larry decided to attempt to eat his Triple Lasso Burger.

Eyes on the road, Larry’s hand first reached the container in which he was transporting his own stool sample.

Dr. Ahman Farclarri had requested the stool sample, the strangest request Larry had gotten since Mitzi Wannacot asked him to pee on her after they had played strip volleyball in the middle of the night at Narrabee Beach.

If you had met Mitzi Wannacott pumping gas, you’d hate electric cars too.

When Larry realized he was holding a container of his own feces and not the Ultrabidodegradable Saddlebag Box an Inferno-Grilled Triple Lasso Burger comes in, he lost his concentration and ran the red.

Larry would never know that it was an electric car that hit him.

He would never know that it took the accident investigators twelve minutes to differentiate his feces from the greasy burger patties strewn about his vehicle.

Roddy stood to give a eulogy he had neither written down nor rehearsed, distracted.

It was a closed casket funeral, and Roddy would never know if the mortician trimmed Larry’s nails.

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