TENTERHOOK SERVING.

A Story by Hawksmoor

Ever had a weirdly interesting day at work?

My day at work, today.

Heh.

The day at work went to hell as soon as my boss called out of work on account of a hideous case of crabs. It was I who answered the call, as the regular who takes care of this kind of thing is on vacation.

“Bradley,” my boss said to me in a strained voice. “I've got crabs, son. I'm talking the kind of b******s that start at the base of the dirty hose and work their way up with tiny pickaxes laced with hydrochloric acid. I can't keep burning the tiny combs in the bathroom sink. Birdie is starting to notice the smell of melted plastic and over-the-counter ointment.”

My mouth must've dropped instantly, because that's when Lacy, the Accounts Manager, stopped in his tracks and asked me if I was ok. I nodded an idiot nod and pulled my trap closed again with a click of my teeth.

“What…what do you want me to do about this, sir?”

My half of this conversation took place in the front office of my workplace, which is closed in behind a massive pane of smudged glass. Beyond, the Florida trees swayed back and forth in a listless wind.

A fat woman with pigtails strutted up the sidewalk across the street. There were earphones holding her hair back. There was a toy breed specimen walking in front of her.

Walking her.

“Do about it?” screeched my boss. I could hear the tears and agony in his voice. Oddly, he didn't seem the least bit embarrassed.

“I want you to make up some goddamn sensible lie, son. I want you to tell your fellow worker bees that I'm in the hospital with a broken leg that was broken when I collided with another jet skiing sonofabitch. Tell them I wanted to hang-glide, but broke my a*s in the doing of it. Tell them anything you want, as long as you don't tell them that I'm absent because I can't stop clawing my motherfucking nads away, son!”

“How?” I asked before I could stop myself. Around me, business as usual.

“There's no Red Light District in Florida, as I'm sure you know,” my boss said.

In truth, up to that instant in time, I hadn't even thought about such a place. I mean, don't normal people rent dirty movies to do their business to when a dry spell comes on?

“No Red Light District…but there is a Blue Haze Corner. I went to that Corner when Birdie started her period, for f**k's sake. A week ago, this was. Do you understand what I'm saying, son?”

His voice was thick with self disgust. Weirdly enough, I sensed a note of smugness.

“It sounds to me like you went to an open market whorehouse, picked up a stray, took her home, and knocked her junk around for a few hours. It sounds to me like you had the time of your life, doing it in the moment. Maybe you thought about how you'd get away with it without your wife ever catching on to you while you were doing it.”

“Too right, you little snot,” said my boss. “Best feeling in the world, pulling the wool over a dame's pretty eyes. I loved it, damn right I did. Until the itching started. God, son; its hellish horror, capital H. Now that I think on it, the dirty b***h might've had a goddamn beard. Who knows in today's weird world? It's hell, boy. Pure, shitsteaming hell. You understand me?”

“Yes,” I said, now straining to keep the amusement out of my voice. “I think I do.”

“If word of this gets out, you'll have no job, you'll have no security, you'll have no house, no girlfriend, no teeth and no c**k. I'll cut it off and sew it onto my stomach if I have to. People will notice, surely, but I'll just tell them it's an amusing fistula. Why wouldn't they buy it? Maybe it'll work there, on my stomach, in place of what's soon to be a burned out, dripping stump. Do I make myself clear, son?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, shocked into obedience.

“Good!” my boss screamed through the earpiece. “I knew I could count on you to keep the good word good. You've got a menial job for life if you keep your trap shut. A menial job with s****y pay, but in today's America, a job like this is good enough for most of us, am I right?”

I could sense the tight grin on his face.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Good,” my boss chimed. The line went dead.

Little does he know that I sprinkled homegrown parasites onto his car seat a few days ago. The little s***s were trained to burrow at three times the speed of normal vermin. Hell, they can even suck their own weight in bodily fluids every hour. After a good meal, they defecate like punctured zeppelins, and just like that, they're ready to go again. They are endlessly voracious eaters with nine times the lifespan and tenacity of their natural-born cousins. My boss'll need far more than a comb and a tube of smelly ointment to kill those m***********s.

Why did I do it?

How the hell should I know?

I'm a b*****d who likes to laugh at people wrapped in the normalcy of everyday misery.

Small misery, though. Nothing big.

Small.

Like the boss's new playmates