PUFF: PT. I

Who would've ever thought that world warfare would take a turn for the ridiculously horrific in the 21st Century?

Little Boy and Fat Man poured terror and death upon Hiroshima in 1945 to the tune of a President's words.

"We won the race of discovery against the Germans."

The absolute height of warmongering and technological "advancement" dashed the silhouettes of shocked human beings against the cold, unyielding walls of human establishment that day. Physical was made shadow in an instant of thoughtful ingenuity. War had been given a new face, and a new name.

The Atomic Age.

This morning, at 10:15 a.m, my doorbell chimed into the stillness of my living room. I drug myself from within the depths of my bed, king-sized, but all but empty, and sleep-walked to the living room door to answer someone's call.

"Who...?" I muttered, as I pried the door open.

BANG!

A steel-toed work-boot flashed across my field of view and my nose exploded, sprinkling droplets of blood onto the light brown carpet and across the wall closest to the front door. Gasping, I fell to the floor, my left palm wavering before the door as I fell, my right hand pasted to the thing that had once brought symmetry to my face.

My nose wasn't a nose at all anymore, but a smattering of burst flesh and bone fragments. The sound of my cry of shock and pain bounced between the walls of the living room, but it wasn't until later that I realized that I had screamed at all. Hindsight brought the sound to me later, as I wondered how I'd breathe for the rest of my life.

Standing in the space that the front door usually closed away from view was a squat, fat woman. In her right hand was a huge black boot, which swung back and forth like a bizarre pendulum on a string. A shoe string.

On the woman's face was a twisted smile. Teeth the color of coffee stood out against a face as dark as the boot she had attacked me with. The woman wore a faded nurse's smock with a flower pattern and slacks that had a huge tear down the left leg front.

Mrs. Easton, my neighbor of ten years.

"This is how Neanderthals did it, baby," she screamed at me. A line of spittle drooped from her bottom lip, quivering in the morning light. Maybe it was the pool of blood gathering in my lap, or the doubled vision that the blow she had landed had brought to me, but the drool that fell from her bottom lip...it was dazzling to me.

"This is how prime man did it, baby!" Mrs. Easton screamed again. In a movement that was just too liquid to be completely solid, she drew the whirligig boot over her right shoulder with both hands and rushed forward. Momentum and a clear insanity occupied a boot that was going to bash my brain in.

As Mrs. Easton swung the boot at my face, from the top, an explosion shattered the air. The boot flew from her hands and smashed into the big screen TV that I'd bought only weeks before, splintering the thin screen the instant it hit. Mrs. Easton fell forward and crashed to the living room floor,  a foot or so from me. Her hands shivered like fish stolen from the sea that were now drowning on land, and then she was still.

Curiously, the back of her head had been erased. It was a clean deletion, as if it had been rubbed away by a deft artist's steady hand.The palette of her body, improved upon because of a second thought, perhaps.

Standing in the doorway now was a big black man with a barrel chest. He wore faded overalls over a dazzlingly white tee shirt. His eyes were wide and there were beads of sweat on his brow. In his right hand was a cartoonishly large handgun.

Mr. Easton.

Mr. Easton had just killed his wife. Cleaved the back of her head away with a gun that looked too cumbersome and too huge to actually be useful in the modern day. It had to be at least a hundred years old.Tex Avery would have blushed and pissed himself had he seen the thing.

"She woke up this morning," Mr. Easton said, shaking where he stood, "made herself a cup of black brew, just like she's done for the last fifteen years, drunk her coffee. After that, she walked into our daughter's bedroom and took her face away with a boot on a string. I had no choice but to kill her. The world's gone crazy, Jim."

There were tears running down Mr. Easton's face, now. The gun dropped to my lawn with a soundless movement.

"The news is saying that the world's gone crazy," Mr. Easton cried. "It says that people have started using abnormal weapons to kill each other stone dead. A man in D.C used a can opener to cut out his girlfriend's beating heart while she slept."

Mr. Easton fell beside his gun on my lawn.

That was how it started

Reviews

[Inda Lauryn]

Damn! It's so morbidly funny then it's gets, well, even more morbid. I love your way with description. You can actually see the action unfolding. Can't wait for the rest.

[Vlazuvius]

You know I'm liking this.

You didn't let me dip my foot in the water, you shoved my a*s into the pool, and I dank the words like water on a hot day, glug...glug...glug...f**k, it's gone. Hopefully you'll refill my glass.

I love it when everything falls apart.

[Wisconsin]

Holy cow!
That was crazy cool.
I want to see the rest, if there's going to be a rest.