Use as Misdirected (Consecutive Substack Story #1000)

Remodeling Yourself

Photo by Ian Talmacs on Unsplash

The sledgehammer could have been a comedian’s prop, but connected to a spider web with a live spider very present upon it could have also made the neglected tool a horror movie prop.

Today it would be a little bit of both.

Frank Merlosso carried the hammer head up, heavy…lead?...He assumed it was lead…metal rectangle uncomfortable on the flesh between thumb and forefinger, almost painful jutting out onto his wrist.

He had moved three times in nine years, two divorces and an eviction, remembered moving the sledgehammer.

Out loud, between garage and small bungalow, he said “What in the hell was I going to sledgeham?”

Today he knew.

He thought he knew.

He could change his mind halfway up the stairs. 

Shit, he could change his mind before he reached the interior stairs.

No, he would hate himself for that, worse than he already hated himself.

In the kitchen there was a burner with a brown stain next to it. The stain had increasing texture.

The thing seemed like a permanent part of the stove, though Frank knew he could probably scrub it off.

But it had texture, man. A relief map. It seemed to grow.

What if it was alive, like some kind of fungal coral reef, giving life to other organisms?

Maybe Frank had created something. Maybe the canned soup he spilled while stirring, then ignored, had become a new creature.

He hoped so.

His nephew was smart, his nephew who as a small child had given him the nickname Uncle Anky, maybe he would know.

Jean-Paul was eleven. Maybe he would enjoy peeling the stain off the aluminum and taking it to school as a science project.

Maybe the stain wouldn’t peel. Maybe he’d have to take the aluminum top of the stove.

Frank swung the sledge hammer at the open side of the stove and just missed, the weight carrying him in a circle and the hammer shattering the door to the cleaning products he never used under the sink.

He was hungry, at least anecdotally. His stomach was telling him it was empty, but there was no accompanying desire to shove food in his mouth.

That hunger would grow, he might need the stove.

He might need the stove for purposes other than food cooking and his nephew’s school projects too.

Frank trudged toward the stairs with the hammer to use it for which he had retrieved it in the first place.

A decorative bottle of vermouth sat unopened in a little notch cut out of a wall for no reason.

Frank, out loud, said “What kind of asshole cuts a notch out of a wall for no reason?”

He heard Geena, his second wife, say “It’s a niche, Frank, it’s for decorative purposes.”

No one had called him Frank in a long time.

Anky had traveled with him to softball, then from softball into the office and down to The ThrowRug bar.

Frank looked at the bottle of vermouth.

“What kind of asshole buys booze he’s not going to drink because the bottle looks cool?”

He was not going to drink the vermouth, not now, probably not ever.

He was not going to turn his stove on and burn his house down with it, thereby eradicating the living stain that might just be a stain, nothing more.

Upstairs, proud of himself that he hadn’t quit mid-stairs, Frank shouldered the sledgehammer.

There was no room for him to stand in the bathroom, so from the loft bedroom he stared at the toilet.

The goddamn toilet.

The useless, mocking, commode.

He had poured all his feel good pills in there when he woke up.

He was going to face a day, a whole day, a blisteringly tedious and tepidly annoying twenty four hour existence all on his own.

Frank flushed the alprazolam, the diazepam, the carbamazepine, the St. John’s wort, the acetaminophen, and half a box of Sno-Caps he bought at a movie that should have gotten The Rock fired from the film industry forever.

He roared with triumph as the water swirled, straining the mesh that held his hernia together to the point of snapping.

Then that rotten porcelain largemouth dwarf had coughed back up one single pill.

The pill floated, calling him.

Eat me, Anky.

Eat me, you can’t face the day without me.

Frank choked up on the sledgehammer he didn’t know why he owned and brought it down on the toilet, water not so much flooding as jumping from the cracked bowl and onto the robin’s egg blue tile that reminded him of the swallow that his first wife Autumn had tattooed over her twat to hide the Cesarean scar she had from a kid she put up for adoption.

The lone pill that had been regurgitated by the American Standard Cadet Pro spilled out with the water.

Frank swung again, wanting to spew a primal growl but mostly just grunting from the strain of the swing.

A pleasantly convex chunk of toilet bowl dropped to the ground with a surprisingly musical tone, and Frank slumped to the tile, back against the doorjamb like he had seen bereaved parents and victims of dumpings do in bad Lifetime movies.

This is where he knew he was supposed to cry.

He did not cry.

He hadn’t cried since January 22nd, 2017, when the Atlanta Falcons gave up 31 unanswered points and lost the Super Bowl.

Across the bathroom, resting up against the pink tub, was one solitary pale blue pill. 

He slowly crab walked across the small bathroom and ate the pill he had tried to flush.

Slumping with his head against the toilet paper dispenser-this niche having a more utilitarian value-he pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled his contacts for Therapist.

There it was. 

Therapist.

Frank had added the contact in hopes of one day actually employing a therapist, but he had not done so.

The contact was devoid of a phone number.

His employer had a great softball team, but did not offer health insurance.

Uncle Anky bought his pills from the guy who rented bounce houses for kid’s birthday parties, Keegan Lanus.

He scrolled to Keegan’s number, erased it, pocketed the phone, picked up the sledgehammer.

He wondered if he could film himself smashing a decorative bottle of vermouth.

***

******************************************************************

Thank you to all of you who helped me get to this point. As Joe Strummer so famously said “Without people, you’re nothing.”