Read Online Strange Mammals by Jason Erik Lundberg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jason Erik Lundberg
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too cliché, so instead he could sell pastries. Despite his bulky frame and thick sausage fingers, Dean is an excellent pastry cook, baking up the most light and fluffy concoctions that anyone in The City has ever tasted. And he loses himself in the process of creating the dough and mixing the fillings, his anxieties evaporating with every knead and squeeze and roll. It’s the closest he’s ever felt to Heaven. The Food Network is his porn.
However, he doesn’t have enough capital to start his own business, nor the necessary job skills to do anything else. He’s big and strong and can take orders, and the one person who has seen any potential in him, other than his wife, is his current employer. No restaurant in The City would hire him as a pastry chef because of his criminal background and tendency to frighten the customers away. So he is stuck, for now, being a strongman, muscle-for-hire. Besides, he knows that Chairface won’t let him go that easily; there are thick file folders in the boss’s mansion, somewhere deep underground, only accessible through secret passageways and multi-million dollar security systems, that detail every crime each one of his henchmen has committed. He has threatened Dean twice with turning this evidence over to the FBI, knowing without a doubt that he and his chair face are clean, that none of it can be traced back to him. Dean could spend the rest of his life in prison, but Chairface would still be sitting pretty in his comfortable exquisite chairs.
It’s not that easy, Dean signs to his wife. They’ve had this fight before, and he’s really not in the mood to get back into it after such a rough day. His right side keeps twingeing if he turns his torso the wrong way, and he fears a rib or two might be broken. His hands throb with the arthritis endemic in his profession.
“Not easy, not easy,” his wife parrots back. “You always say that! Accept some fucking responsibility for your own life!”
Dean edges past her and opens up the refrigerator, no longer patient for a hot meal, just wanting some kind of food to calm his low blood sugar and his shaking hands. Leftovers from the night before on a foil-covered plate: a leg of fried chicken, fat steak fries, bits of tomato. He removes the foil and gobbles down the food right there with the fridge door still open, leaking cold air into the apartment. Dean doesn’t let the fact that he has no mouth stop him from eating, and even I don’t know how he accomplishes this feat three times a day. Finished, he tosses the chicken bone and foil into the trash, and places the plate gently in the sink among three glasses, a bowl, and a clump of forks and spoons. His belly now full, and he turns to step into the bedroom, abruptly sleepy.
“Hey,” his wife says, “I’m not done talking about this.”
He raises one hand, signs: Tired, and lurches onto the bed, the springs complaining under his weight. Unable to sleep, but unwilling to get back up and continue the argument, he just lies there, counting the bumps in the ceiling. Dean feels he has taken responsibility for his life, accepted his condition and found a career that suits him. Certainly not legal much of the time, but there are moments when it fills him with joy. Grappling with The Tick, fighting against his equal in strength, he wants to yawp from the rooftops; he no longer has to pull his punches for fear of killing his opponents, or worry whether his strength will leave someone disabled, or paralyzed, or brain-damaged. He can really let loose, and he has never known that kind of freedom before. The Tick has given him a purpose in life, and he would thank the blue bastard if he could, but he doesn’t know how. Maybe he’ll bake up some éclairs and post them anonymously.
Sometime later, Dean’s wife approaches the side of the bed, looks down at her husband, sighs, and sits.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know.”
I know.
“I just wish that I wouldn’t have to
However, he doesn’t have enough capital to start his own business, nor the necessary job skills to do anything else. He’s big and strong and can take orders, and the one person who has seen any potential in him, other than his wife, is his current employer. No restaurant in The City would hire him as a pastry chef because of his criminal background and tendency to frighten the customers away. So he is stuck, for now, being a strongman, muscle-for-hire. Besides, he knows that Chairface won’t let him go that easily; there are thick file folders in the boss’s mansion, somewhere deep underground, only accessible through secret passageways and multi-million dollar security systems, that detail every crime each one of his henchmen has committed. He has threatened Dean twice with turning this evidence over to the FBI, knowing without a doubt that he and his chair face are clean, that none of it can be traced back to him. Dean could spend the rest of his life in prison, but Chairface would still be sitting pretty in his comfortable exquisite chairs.
It’s not that easy, Dean signs to his wife. They’ve had this fight before, and he’s really not in the mood to get back into it after such a rough day. His right side keeps twingeing if he turns his torso the wrong way, and he fears a rib or two might be broken. His hands throb with the arthritis endemic in his profession.
“Not easy, not easy,” his wife parrots back. “You always say that! Accept some fucking responsibility for your own life!”
Dean edges past her and opens up the refrigerator, no longer patient for a hot meal, just wanting some kind of food to calm his low blood sugar and his shaking hands. Leftovers from the night before on a foil-covered plate: a leg of fried chicken, fat steak fries, bits of tomato. He removes the foil and gobbles down the food right there with the fridge door still open, leaking cold air into the apartment. Dean doesn’t let the fact that he has no mouth stop him from eating, and even I don’t know how he accomplishes this feat three times a day. Finished, he tosses the chicken bone and foil into the trash, and places the plate gently in the sink among three glasses, a bowl, and a clump of forks and spoons. His belly now full, and he turns to step into the bedroom, abruptly sleepy.
“Hey,” his wife says, “I’m not done talking about this.”
He raises one hand, signs: Tired, and lurches onto the bed, the springs complaining under his weight. Unable to sleep, but unwilling to get back up and continue the argument, he just lies there, counting the bumps in the ceiling. Dean feels he has taken responsibility for his life, accepted his condition and found a career that suits him. Certainly not legal much of the time, but there are moments when it fills him with joy. Grappling with The Tick, fighting against his equal in strength, he wants to yawp from the rooftops; he no longer has to pull his punches for fear of killing his opponents, or worry whether his strength will leave someone disabled, or paralyzed, or brain-damaged. He can really let loose, and he has never known that kind of freedom before. The Tick has given him a purpose in life, and he would thank the blue bastard if he could, but he doesn’t know how. Maybe he’ll bake up some éclairs and post them anonymously.
Sometime later, Dean’s wife approaches the side of the bed, looks down at her husband, sighs, and sits.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know.”
I know.
“I just wish that I wouldn’t have to
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