Here’s another entry in the “Weird Fiction” category. It’s absurd, surreal, and idiotic. Do you enjoy shows like, I Think You Should Leave? No? Then you probably won’t like this either.

I’m also doing a little experiment with sound design here, so you might enjoy the audio version better. Let me know if you like it or not.

Alarms blared somewhere in the background, jolting Arnold back into consciousness, and the first thing he noticed was how hungry he was. That was probably because of the disemboweled man lying next to him. This guy’s not having lunch anytime soon, Arnold thought, which reminded him of the roast beef sandwich he’d packed earlier that morning. He felt a little blue as he realized he might not get to have lunch today either, if present circumstances were any indication. Ho-boy, what have I gotten myself into this time?

It wasn’t the first time Arnold committed a crime but it was the first time he’d ever seen somebody’s intestines outside of their body in real life. My God, they were everywhere. If God thought this was the best way to turn food into energy, then Arnold thought, fuck me sideways and call me a collapsible hotdog holster, because Arnold was the kind of person who had thoughts like that when he was confused.

But Arnold had bigger problems. The police were expected to arrive any minute now, and when they did, it wouldn’t take them more than a few minutes to figure out that those pink, slimy hoses piling out of the deep gash in the dying man’s sides were in fact the Good Lord’s best and only digestive solution for the human race. As such, the boys in blue were likely to surmise that Arnold's attempted removal of them from the dying man was a problem of significant proportion and then guns would be drawn and a good deal of paperwork would be in the cards.

Arnold hated paperwork almost as much as he hated trying to understand why a mile’s worth of slippery tubing was the best way to get the maximum value out of a roast beef sandwich.

“I didn’t even mean to cut your intestines out like that,” Arnold said to the dying man. “I should have stopped cutting much sooner than I did.”

“Why aren’t you helping me live?” the guy with the total bullshit intestines asked in a rather weak tone. He was cradling his innards in his hands, for all the fucking good that was doing —  which actually seemed to be quite a bit. He’d been cradling his intestines for a while now and wasn’t dead yet, so clearly he was doing something right. “Please! You’ve got to fix this!"

“We’re not close friends,” Arnold said. “I’m not sure I want to touch you like that right now. It seems a bit…intimate.”

“I’m not asking you to do the surgery yourself.”

“Are you asking me to have sex with your intestines?” Arnold scratched his head. “Because it feels like that’s what you’re asking.”

“What?”

“I just don’t think it’ll help.”

That’s when the lightbulb exploded above Arnold’s head, giving him the perfect idea for what to do about the dying man but also sending a current of electricity down his skull and through his spine, causing most of his muscles to spasm and stopping his heart. He wondered how weird death would be when a passing motorist distracted him by yelling for him to find a yellow circle surrounded by sixteen smaller circles of varying sizes. This, she assured him, would unlock something but he couldn’t hear what it was because she said it at the same time as she ran over him with her car. The rhythm of the front and back tires over his chest was enough to restart his heart, although now it was under some duress because of the many broken bones in his body. Also, he had been dragged a few feet, which seemed important.

“I had a brilliant idea about how to help you,” Arnold said, although the pain of his broken ribs made it hard to know if his words were coming out at the proper volume.

“Scream louder,” the dying man said. “I can’t hear you over my own screaming.” He'd been screaming the whole time, except when he was talking, which he did at a normal, speaking volume.

“No! We shouldn’t even be talking about having sex with your intestines right now,” Arnold screamed because he hadn’t heard what the dying man was really saying. “We’re way past that.”

But it was too late (or too early, if you were hoping for gastrointestinal eroticism). A police car screeched to a halt just short of where the two men were lying in the middle of the children’s playground. An ambulance arrived a few moments later. Upon reviewing the scene, the EMTs and cops agreed that Arnold should go to the hospital first because the dying man was so expertly cradling his intestines. It seemed like he had the situation under control.

“They’re his intestines, after all,” one of the EMTs said. Everyone nodded in approval.

“Is he going to make it?” Arnold asked as they dragged him across the pavement to the ambulance.

The EMT shook his head in dismay. “He was screaming an awful lot and that’s a sure sign of depression.”

“It’s the silent killer,” the other EMT chimed in as she slipped a needle into Arnold’s arm.

“I hope none of that was my fault,” Arnold said as a wave of painkillers washed over him. “Oh, give me another hit of that, Caroline Funsponge! I feel like I’m floating to heaven in a balloon filled with angel farts.”

Arnold’s vision began to blur and for a moment he saw a creature made of jagged edges sucking light out of every surface it touched and its eyes were ragged holes that seemed to extend farther and farther back into the fabric of the universe the more he gazed into them. The creature was perched above some of the ambulance’s cabinets, but it had also become part of the ceiling. The lady EMT who administered the needle pushed a strand of hair out of her face and whispered, “Deliver this, thy humble offering,” in every frequency audible to the human ear, which Arnold thought was pretty funny.

“We’re worried these bloody pruning shears are going to get in the way once we get to the hospital,” she said as she removed the lawn tool from Arnold’s jacket pocket. Little bits of intestine were stuck to the blades.

“Oh, yes, I think I was using those for some sort of sex act,” Arnold said. “I’m not sure, though.”

The EMT put the shears in a plastic baggy and wrote “SEX BAG” on the side of it in marker. “Now we won’t forget about sex or that this is a bag.”

The ambulance drove for seventeen hours to the next state because Arnold was needed at the morgue. The EMTs propped him up in a wheelchair and rolled him through the bleak, gray halls of the hospital. Arnold enjoyed watching the walls bleed for a few moments but became bored when he remembered seeing something similar in a movie. His broken ribs had already begun to heal — not to any significant degree, mind you; it’s just that the body begins healing as soon as it's injured. Anyway, the ribs were not completely healed by the time they wheeled Arnold into the morgue and up to a table where the dying man from earlier lay. This time, however, he was all-the-way dead but Arnold made a note to continue referring to him as the dying man so that this experience wouldn’t be confusing. A sheet covered everything but the dying man's dead head.

A police officer from the current jurisdiction walked into the room and greeted Arnold. “Is this the man you were lying next to seventeen hours ago?”

“Yes,” said Arnold, “only the last time I saw him, he was alive and expertly cradling his intestines.”

“Well, that’s a bit confusing,” said the officer with a sigh as he pulled the sheet down to reveal the rest of the body. “Because this man’s intestinal-cradling technique was amateur at best.”

“It’s an honest mistake,” Arnold said. “I’m only a layman in these subjects. But I’m sure that’s him.” The EMTs agreed that it was the same man and everyone shared high-fives, which was incredibly painful for Arnold.

The police officer, the EMTs, and a few of the morgue technicians prayed over the body for several minutes in a strange language that Arnold did not understand. Not wanting to feel left out, he began wailing like a tortured manatee, which was well-received by the group. Then the head morgue technician placed the sheet back over the body and began pouring gasoline all over it and laughing in short bursts that also sounded a bit like sobs when Arnold tilted his head slightly in one direction or the other. The laugh/sobs reverberated throughout the room and sometimes sounded like giant waves crashing against a rock face. Later on, everyone agreed that this was the kind of thing one should expect but Arnold wasn’t in the room to hear it.

The EMTs wheeled Arnold back up the elevator to the main floor of the hospital where he was given his sex shears and allowed to keep the plastic baggy as a complimentary gift. When he asked about what was being done to fix his broken body, an on-duty nurse promised that someone would be right with him but she had always been a liar and never returned to the hospital after stepping outside for a smoke break.

Arnold played with his phone for few hours before the battery died. His new nurse was passed out in the corner, having asphyxiated herself with Arnold’s phone charger. Feeling a bit sleepy himself, Arnold adjusted his torso into a position it had never achieved before and pulled the stale, yellow sheet over his head so the nurse wouldn’t see if he started crying (Arnold was very concerned with his macho image, in case that wasn’t already obvious). As he nodded off, he wondered if the police would ever figure out what he’d really been up to with those shears. He hoped they would let him know if they ever figured it out but for the time being, he was content to slip into a painful sleep plagued by horrible dreams in which he was falling forever through the holes in the bread of a roast beef sandwich.

— THE END —

One time, my house broke and I couldn’t live there anymore. It shouldn't have been a problem since I'd bought so much stuff over the years but it turns out none of that stuff was any good for fixing my house. Naturally, the only solution was to go off and buy more stuff. Such is the nature of being alive.

“Hello, welcome to The Capitalism Store,” the clerk said as I walked in. “Can I sell you some fucking bullshit?”

“Yeah man,” I said. “Let’s fucking do it.”

“I actually will, though,” he said. 

“I’m here to party.”

“Awwww shit,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “Here we go, bitch.” 

If you thought maybe we looked at some fucking bullshit, you were right. We looked at shelves of it. Aisles of it. You couldn’t not look at it. There was so much of it. At one point, we stacked up so much bullshit on the checkout stand that the floor caved in and we died. But death wasn’t for sale that day so God brought us back to life and all we could think to do was continue stacking up bullshit. 

“Have you had enough capitalism for today?” the clerk asked. I shook my head and he said, “Yeah, bitch. You like it.”

He led me to a special backroom that everyone knows about but no one ever goes into. I felt pretty special, and he told me I was a special boy. We went up to this frail looking old man who was fastened to the wall by leather belts and the clerk said I had to whip him a little bit. I was like, “Do I have to? I don’t really want to,” but he made it seem like I was being an asshole so I whipped the old guy a couple times. They were pretty pathetic whips, though.

“You’ll never become the boss of The Capitalism Store if you keep whipping like that,” he said. 

“Oh, I don’t want to be the boss,” I said. “I just want to buy some fucking bullshit.”

“Sure, dream small,” he said, “but keep in mind that if you’re the boss of The Capitalism Store, you can buy a lot more fucking bullshit than when you’re not the boss.”

“If you’re so smart, how come you’re not the boss yet?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to be rude.

“I’m doing my best, okay?” he said. “You gotta start at the bottom of capitalism and work your way up.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Also, remember when we died earlier and met God?”

“He’s the boss of all Capitalism,” the clerk said. “You know how much fucking bullshit that guy has?”

“A lot?”

“It’s even more than that.”

“Pretty cool,” I said with a whistle. “Pretttyyyyy cooooool.”

All of a sudden, there was a bunch of blood everywhere. 

“Hey, when did this get here?” I asked. “I feel like there wasn’t this much blood before.” 

“Oh no,” the clerk said. “Communism Kitchen is leaking again.”

“What? No it's not,” said Joseph Stalin. “Take it back.”

“That’s so Stalin-y of you: trying to pretend all this blood isn't your fault,” the clerk said. “Why don’t you just admit it?”

“This blood is from The Capitalism Store,” he said, “and I can prove it.” 

Stalin led us through the backdoor, into the alley behind Communism Kitchen, where lots of blood was seeping out of a lumpy, rough-looking sack labelled, “It's Fine, Don't Worry About It,” but we walked past that and over to a manhole. 

“Just you wait,” Stalin said as he wrenched the manhole open. A ladder sank down into the dark depths and I couldn’t see the bottom. We followed him down the ladder and a couple hours later, we stepped out into a sewer but it wasn’t like any sewer I’d ever followed a dictator into before. This strange sewer was full of acid and chunks of plutonium, which seemed unusual. However, Stalin said that acid and plutonium were like piss and shit for the Ancient Ones so I guess it really wasn’t that weird after all. 

We stayed pressed up against the wall so as not to fall in. There were weird, frightening creatures swimming in the acid and they didn’t look very friendly but Stalin assured us that if we fell in, we’d melt before the monsters would have a chance to devour us. 

“It’s nature’s way of saying hunger is okay,” he said, and waved towards the acid monsters. “Look how hungry those guys are. Nothing tasty can live in there.”

“Who cares about that?” the clerk said. His name was Clark, just so you know. We figured that out on the trip down the ladder. “I thought we were going to find out where all that blood was coming from.”

“Wait, what’s that?” I pointed to a metal door that had the word “BLOOD” embossed in giant letters. “I bet there’s blood in there.”

“Yeah, but how funny would it be if there wasn’t?” Stalin asked with a giggle. “Nah, you’re right. There’s so much blood in there. Let’s go check it out.” 

He opened the door and there was a woman in a lab coat with a clipboard standing next to a giant vat of blood, which was connected to a pipe that led up into the ceiling. A noisy pump pushed gallons of blood upwards through the pipe while the woman took readings off a meter labeled with vulgar runes. She turned to look at us as we crowded into the room.

“Aw, this motherfucker again,” she said, when she saw Stalin. “I already told you, we don’t need anymore blood. Can’t you see how much we already have?” She tapped on the vat. “It’s probably too much.” 

“Look, just tell these guys where you got that blood from and we’ll leave,” he said, pointing to the column of blood shooting into the ceiling. 

“From the Capitalism Store,” she said.

“See, you guys?” Stalin said. “All the blood in your store is your own doing."

“That doesn’t count,” Clark the clerk said. “I sold that blood to her a few days ago, so it’s not my responsibility anymore.” 

“Everybody shut up for a second,” the woman said as she pulled out a crossbow. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why?” I asked. 

“Because it sucks down here,” she said. “God it fucking sucks. Also, monsters are coming.” 

“Okay, well, how do we get out?”

“We just have to run back to the ladder before I shoot everyone,” she said, as she loaded an arrow. “Otherwise, it’ll be too late and I’ll have killed us all.” Before anyone could object, she shot Clark in the stomach and pinned him to the wall. “There,” she said. “Now the monsters will get him first. Let’s run for a little while and then I’ll pin another one of you to the wall.” 

Screaming with pain, Clark tried to walk forward away from the wall so the crossbow bolt would pass through his body. He was almost free by the time we ran out of the room. As we made our way back towards the ladder, we could hear him yelling after us, something about all the great stuff we left behind in the room and how easy it would be to sell. 

“He’s right,” I said. “We should help him take some of that stuff back to the Capitalism Store.” 

“The monsters, though,” the woman said. 

“The real monster is the human condition,” Stalin said with a knowing grimace. 

Clark managed to free himself and had almost caught up to us while we were deliberating. He seemed quite unhappy about the gash in his midsection where he’d been impaled by the crossbow bolt. “Look at all this valuable blood going to waste,” he said. “Also, I’m in a transcendental amount of pain. I should probably pay you for this once-in-a-lifetime experience but I left my wallet back at the shop.” 

All of a sudden, Clark was whisked into the darkness by large, shadowy claws. He didn’t even make a sound. 

“Shit,” the woman said. “We need another decoy.” She pointed the crossbow at me but I made a stupid face at her and she laughed, causing the bolt to miss wide. It whizzed with a zip over my shoulder. “That face you made was super funny,” she said, “so, I guess I’ll kill Stalin instead.” 

“Who will run Communism Kitchen?” he protested. “Besides, we’ve made it to the ladder.” 

Stalin started climbing up and the woman next. I reached for the nearest rung but then felt a cold, claw-like appendage grabbing at my midsection. The claws got ahold of me and began pulling me away from the ladder. I tried looking behind me but could not see what the creature looked like. Everything behind me was consumed by darkness. Then I heard the “thwack” of the crossbow. There was a sickly, wet thud followed by a scream that seemed to be coming from every direction, and then the claws let go of me. I ran to the ladder and climbed as fast I could (but without seeming like I was in too much of a hurry because desperation isn’t very cool). 

“Thanks for saving me,” I said to the woman. 

“I was actually trying to shoot you,” she said. 

“Why?”

“For science.” 

“Science?” 

“I wanted to test my ability to shoot accurately under pressure," she said, "but I have to shoot at you 10,000 more times for it to be a meaningful sample size. Hold still." She thought for a moment. "No, wait. Wiggle around a lot. It'll be more fun that way."

In the end, we decided that science was too socially awkward and continued up the ladder. Stalin kept climbing while the woman and I argued about the crossbow experiment, so he was way ahead of us. We didn't catch up to him until we'd reached the top. By then, he was already out of the manhole and back in the alley. He reached down into the hole to help us out, which would've been a really sweet gesture if his hands weren't all sweaty and gross.

"Thanks, I guess," I said as I climbed out. The woman just cringed and wiped her hands on her lab coat.

"We've got to find a way to keep those monsters from getting up here," Stalin said.

"There should be a law against this kind of thing," I said. "Wait, maybe there is! Has anyone here memorized the entire United States Constitution?"

"Ha! The fat cats in D.C. don't care about Ancient Sewer Monsters," Stalin said. "But then again, I would say that," He sighed. "Alas, I too am a victim of confirmation bias."

"Are you trying to hit on me?" the woman asked. "Because it's working."

"Listen, let's just put the manhole cover back on and assume everything will be fine," I said because I was feeling jealous of Stalin and just wanted to go to a bar and drown out my sadness.

"That's not very scientific," the woman said, "but I no longer have the funding or equipment to give a fuck, thanks to you." She muttered curses at me as we slid the manhole cover back over the opening but I just wrote it off as a case of the Mondays.

"I never did catch your name," I said.

"It's a string of numbers that would take too long to say out loud," she said.

"That's sad."

"Why do you think I was working in a blood cellar?"

"I just assumed it was a passion project or something," I said.

"No. Just cruelty."

For a moment, we stood there, watching the sun rise over the graveyard on the far side of the alley. "Look at this fucking symbolism," a nearby film student shouted down the alley but we all flipped her off, which caused her to give up on her dreams and become a tech billionaire instead. I think she invented a way to put unskippable ads on carbon molecules. Or maybe puppies? I'm not sure. Either way, what a hero.

"Want to get a drink?" the woman asked after we'd stood in silence for an hour or two.

"It's a little early for that," Stalin said. “I haven’t had time to sober up from yesterday.”

"Fine, whatever," she said. "Let's never speak again."

She walked off while Stalin shook his head in dismay. I wanted to tell the woman that I actually was interested in having a drink but it took me several weeks to come up with a clever way to say it. By then she had already taken up a job in a new blood cellar across town. Missed opportunity, I suppose.

I never did fix my broken house. The rubble reminded me too much of Clark. Every now and then, I find myself weeping in the quiet hours of the night, wondering what horrible fate met him in the darkness of that sewer. Sometimes, I think he'd want me to buy the things I need to fix my house or buy a new house altogether, but it's just not the same without him. In fact, I haven't spent a dime since that terrible day. Needless to say, I'm very hungry. However, my loneliness is usually the more powerful sensation so they kind of cancel each other out. Stalin said that was a good sign but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. It didn’t work. Eventually, he stopped coming around.

If this experience has taught me anything, it's to never rely on external metrics to measure your self worth, such as the snarling taunts of Ancient Sewer Monsters. You'll never get their approval anyway. It's the Ancient Sewer Monster inside that really counts.

Sometimes I think that's what Clark was trying to tell me all along.

THE END