The Ugly Obligation

Steve unsteadily made his way to the breakfast table, his hair an insane haystack,  bare feet slapping an irregular rhythm on the kitchen linoleum as he yawned and scratched away a night’s sleep.

His wife, Sharon, had already made a strong pot of  Earl Grey tea and had been waiting for Steve to wake up and shuffle downstairs since 6am.

She was already buzzing from the red-hot rail of coke she snurffed and the tab of Israeli Ecstasy she dropped while taking her morning piss. She could smell the iron-tinge of blood in her tinkle but on some level she found the odor pleasing.  She saved some in a jar.  For later.

The tea was hot and good but she preferred gin or, sometimes, cleaning fluid or even Windex if it was served cold.

Steve heaved his fat, hairy ass into the dining room chair nearest the newspaper, which Sharon had thoughtfully fanned out so he would find it easier to locate the sports section.  He winced, in pain, because of the unhealed bedsores he had developed during his last oxycontin-coma.  A bit of egg-smelling pus soaked though his pajamas.  The stink was overwhelming but niether could smell because of the dried blood and mucous that lined their rotting noses.

Had they been able to smell it, Steve would have quite incorrectly said that there were fresh waffles nearby and Sharon would have interpreted the smell as a guitar strum.

A swing and a miss for Sharon, huh? She’s an idiot.

Steve glanced at the headlines on the front page: “Obama signs health care into law – challenges expected from GOP faithful.”

“I hate that skid, ” he said, “Not because he is a raving, floppy-lipped America-hating spear-chucker secret super-muslim.  No, that’s not it.  He can’t help that.  Hell, I might even say I admire the fact that his cock is bigger than the average cock and that he has achieved so much with his inferior ape-brain!”

Sharon laughed at that, but overstressed herself and threw up part of the rat she had eaten that morning.  She had to fight the cat for it but now the cat knew better.  Damn right, he did.

“I prefer afro-cock to gray-cock, ” Sharon helpfully added, smiling, revealing bone-colored stumps where her teeth used to be.  She wanted so much to please Steve even though she dreamed of killing him with a claw-hammer.  Her rectum was inverted and her pants would have filled with shit, had she been wearing pants.

“I know!” Steve yelled, and pounded the breakfast table with his fist.  The tea-cups clattered and hopped as of hey had all simultaneously received telepathic messages to begin dancing, which, in fact, they had.  In the next room, down the street, beyond all knowing, a minor god bid the cups to dance, in bliss, on the edge of the sun’s light and they did dance.  It was the last dance before end-time and tears fell from the god’s eye.  The tears were made of life itself and tasted like Big Red.

“I know!” Steve repeated, “and I like as much sticky bus-station boogie-dick as much as the next guy!”  he smiled, remembering the last time he let a boo blurp the sauce all over his sore-spotted face.  It was costly but worth it, he figured. And the tax deduction surprised him.

The law is the law.  You gotta respect that.