This Guy
By Chuck Wendig • Jul 2nd, 2009 • Category: Short Fiction1.
On my way to work I drive down past Ashbrook Lane. I go past that little yellow real estate office with the guy out front dressed like a dollar sign. I pass by the party supply store and the Pet Palace.
Somewhere along the way, every day, I see this guy. Something isn’t right with this guy. He’s maybe sick or got some other problem. He wears a pair of jeans all torn up and fringy at the bottom. Even now, with that October cold coming in, he wears a flannel shirt, unbuttoned, a gray-belly paunch sticking out.
Every day, I catch him before he makes it to the China Skillet, that little fast-foody, can’t-sit-down joint with the greasy Tso’s chicken. I wait in the alley between China Skillet and the Kinko’s clone. The guy passes by me, and I drag him into the alleyway, and I beat him with a tire iron. Sometimes, I stab him with a kitchen knife.
I do this every day.
I think it’s starting to affect me.
2.
It was two Tuesdays ago that Mary asked me if I was doing okay. I told her I was.
“You don’t look so good,” she said.
“I feel fine.”
“I had to wash your pants again.” She sounded a little annoyed. Sometimes, when I destroy the guy, he gets stuff on me. Yellow stuff. Kind of like butterscotch pudding, but with veins of red in it.
“I know. I tried to wipe it off, but…”
“And it’s just mud?”
“Just mud,” I said. “The parking lot at work is falling apart, and they won’t pay to fix it. It’s muddy. I step in mud.”
And she left it at that, but I caught her looking at me strange a few times before bed.
3.
It’s maybe like that movie with Bill Murray and the groundhog. Not the golf one. The other one.
He’s out there again.
I catch him at the mouth of the alley and drag him in. The dumpster smells like rotten garlic and ginger.
“Guh!” he says to me. He can’t talk. He opens his fishy mouth and clacks those moldy chompers at me.
I kick him in the knee and the cap pops like rotten wood. The leg folds backward and he topples. I hit him in the head with the tire iron. It’s easier than squashing a pumpkin.
4.
I watch TV every night – Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and the news. I always wait for the news to say something about this guy. But nobody ever does. I don’t think people can even see what I’m doing. He passes them by and they don’t look at him. They walk right by the alley as I beat him or cut him into pieces and leave him there. The first few times, I moved the parts. But that was too messy. Plus, they’re usually gone by the next day anyway.
Nobody cares.
“What’s this?” Mary asks.
I look up and find her holding a sandwich baggy. In it is a sandwich. My sandwich.
“Oh,” I say.
“You didn’t eat it?”
“Guess not.”
“It’s ham and swiss. Why didn’t you eat it?”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
I wonder if the guy would eat the sandwich. I consider trying to feed it to him the next day, but I just end up cutting his head off with a camper hatchet.
5.
I decide not to drag him into the alley. Instead, I beat him into a paste right out on the sidewalk. I step on his hand, and it doesn’t crunch as hard as it should. Bones should crunch. This just feels like Styrofoam peanuts in a sock full of jelly.
People move around us, like we’re doing construction work or something.
6.
“You missed work,” Mary says.
“No, I went,” I say. I can’t really remember going. But I know I went. It was part of my routine. Work was part of me.
“They called looking for you. Where’d you go today?”
“I don’t know.” Shit. This wasn’t good.
“This isn’t good,” she says, echoing my brain.
“I’ll go tomorrow.”
7.
I don’t go to work the next day.
It’s weird. I do my business with the guy. I just use my hands this time and it’s not really that effective. It works, but it’s too much trouble to pull him apart like that. He just keeps wanting to move away from me, even when I’m grabbing handfuls of gut flesh and just pulling it away from him like it was moist pot roast.
And then I stay in the alley.
I don’t go to my car.
I don’t go to work.
An hour later, the guy shows up again. He looks the same. Purpled tongue jutting from gray lips. Sores all over. Same drunken stagger, same throat-buried grunts and groans.
And I slam his head in the dumpster. It pops off and lands on a bed of rancid bok choy.
8.
Mary cries when I get home. The sun is coming up. She’s weeping and beating my chest, then she’s hugging me and asking me where I’ve been. I just move past her and get out the set of golf clubs from the bedroom closet.
She says something about me being gone for days, but I know that’s not possible. Mary is maybe a little crazy sometimes.
9.
I sit in the driver’s side, and I think about the guy for a little while. Who is he? Why does he do this every day? He’s fallen into such an awful routine. How did he get this way? How does he keep coming back?
For a little while, I think maybe about asking him these questions. It’s rare that I give him any chance to say anything at all. Maybe I should, I think. Maybe I need to give him the opportunity to explain himself. I look over at the passenger side and see several baggies of sandwiches sitting there. On half of them, the bread is green. Could be the guy is hungry. I itch a sore on my hand and lick it. It tastes funky, but it isn’t the worst. Mary’s right. I don’t look so good.
This time, I decide I’m going to ask him what’s up. I’m going to talk to this guy, find out everything I need to know. And I’m going to give him a sandwich.
As I think this, I go to my trunk and get out a nine-iron. I leave the sandwiches behind.
© Chuck Wendig 2009
Chuck Wendig is a 30-something freelance penmonkey. He's written too much, and should probably stop, but he won't. At present, he's written for, or developed, over 80 books for White Wolf Game Studios. He's had a handful of short stories published. He's written a couple screenplays. He's thinking about branching out into menus, pamphlets, or witty doormats. Give him a wide berth, as he might be drunk and untrustworthy. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with a wonderful wife and two very stupid dogs.
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[...] Jet Pack continues to punch through the ionosphere and into your hearts and minds. I have a new piece posted over there. You like zombies? You like pudding? What about sandwiches? Then this is for you. Go. Now. This Guy. Read it. Pretty please with a zombie’s gall bladder on top? [...]
That is some kind of awesome.
Still, still I love this one. The momentum, the weirdness, the lack of explanation which leaves it being about so much moe than it’s about… I dig all that stuff. Styrofoam peanuts in a sock fully of jelly? That’s just awful and excellent.
Nice cover, too.
May praise alone isn’t all the helpful, but aside from a little more detail on WHERE they’re fighting, I don’t know what it lacks. Most of what you could add would turn it into something else, which might be great, but might undo what you have. I don’t know.
Well, I’m certainly happy to have praise.
So, thank you for that.
It could always use a little more detail, sure. I was aiming a bit for gray, generic, flavorless — almost in the same way that the conflict is boggy, sodden, almost dull. But, of course, my knee-jerk reaction to anything I write is, “More! I have ideas! More ideas! Use them all!”
Thankfully, I usually just pass out at this point, and don’t go through with it.
But thanks again, both of you.
This story reminds me of why I hate working at offices. Or, just the jobs I have hated throughout my life. I never beat anyone at any workplace, but your story makes me question if I did or not.
I do, however, think that I know the smell of rancid bok choy.
I’m with Will. The lack of explanation makes this more unsettling than anything else. The big reveal… isn’t there. And that just makes the whole thing really… off.
In a good way.
That’s one of the weird tricks about horror. Horror is at its most effective when it defies explanation, but defying explanation is a tightrope walk — if you do it well, then people are suitably satisfied and freaked out.
Do it poorly — and it’s easy to do poorly — you end up just leaving readers feeling like it’s missing something.
In horror, less is usually more, I think.
Here’s hoping I did it well; I’m never sure, but the response on this is better than the rejection letters I once received on it suggest.
– c.
Is there gonna be a sequel? Will he become what he is trying to destroy? I love this story! :0)
I think horror readers feel satisfied without explanations when they can connect to the narrative as a metaphor. Slasher flick audiences don’t have to understand why a guy wears a hockey mask and kills promiscuous teens, because they’re being punished for their promiscuity (to use a cliche example). I think you really drive the metaphor home towards the end of this piece, which leaves me feeling perfectly satisfied with the lack of closure.
My only suggestion is that you could enhance the feeling that the narrator is slipping away from reality by loading the early bits with more external details. (As others have suggested, more detail on the alley, maybe some description of his wife, etc.) It might help draw the reader along as the narrator turns increasingly inward.
One more suggestion: I think “I don’t go to work the next day” should probably read “I didn’t go to work today.” The sudden break from the very immediate present tense of the rest of the story is a bit jarring.
Great piece!
–Dan
P.S. You guys really need to add share links to the bottom of these pages…
Tammy: Nope, no sequel–I think he already has become what he’s trying to destroy!
Dan: Thanks for stopping by and giving your thoughts. Frontloading with a few more details, got it. Any second (or, really, a third/fourth) draft of this will try out that change, to see how it floats. I’d keep detail away from the alley and the setting; my goal there is to keep it vague. But elements of the narrator’s personal life–wife and home–could definitely detail.
Thanks, peeps!
Share links added. We’re trying out the Add This button for now, but suggestions are welcome for alternatives — I don’t really know the virtues of one method over another yet.
Will – The button works great, but you’re passing Facebook some bad meta data. Take a look at the “Basic Tags” section of the following URL. (I just got this working on my own site.)
http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php
–Dan
Thanks again, Dan. There’s some troubleshooting with some of the site features that I still have to do, yet, when I get a free few minutes. (I’ve been meaning to do decent meta tags for a month.) But that link sure made that part easy for share purposes — so, many thanks again.
(I dig your hand-drawn share links, by the way.)
Thanks, though they’re not mine. I found them via this blog post…
http://www.cssreflex.com/2009/06/15-free-awesome-social-bookmark-icons-sets.html
I’m happy I could help. I really respect what you guys are doing with this site. Thus, I now officially end this unintentional threadjack.
Great story, Chuck! Consider it Facebooked
–Dan
Thanks for finding us, Dan — and thanks for your help and comments!