Fiction_Fat Chance

Clifford had the gun in his mouth. The phone kept ringing. There was rain in the sky. Blood squeezed through the army of tiny cuts he had carved into his arms. He tasted the steel. The phone kept ringing. The streets were filled with the typical batch of normal weirdoes. The radio was playing at a reasonable volume. It was summertime in the afternoon.

Buzz buzz buzz. The phone kept ringing. It was Chloe calling from her wedding.

Clifford had decided not to go. He could not face the fire of his old flame and her new stoker. Clifford was dressed in a ratty blue tuxedo that he had worn to the only wedding he ever attended. That was to Chloe. That was in 1999.

He sat in his gloomy studio, arms belching with blood. Listening to Green Day when they were on Lookout Records. When they wasn’t famous.

Macaroni and chreeze, six days old, rusted away in the bottom of his only cooking pot. Flies playfully whizzed around his kitchen. They were his only living company.

Buzz buzz buzz. The phone kept ringing.

Clifford and Chloe were married for three years. They lived in a one-bedroom flat in the Wrigleyville area of Chicago. Clifford worked as a tomb cleaner at Graceland Cemetery at Irving Park and North Clark. He knew that he would always have a job. More bodies would come. More headstones to polish.

Chloe worked as an administrative assistant for a very powerful law firm. She caught happy hour cocktail stone sours at Salinger’s. It was at Salinger’s where she met Rueben.

Rueben was a powerful lawyer at a different law firm than the one Chloe worked at. She liked how maintained Rueben’s hair was. Clifford shaved off all of his. She liked how Rueben talked about his limitless bank account. Clifford talked about his balls. She liked how Rueben made her feel beautiful. Clifford only seemed to make her feel less than a person.

Buzz buzz buzz. The phone kept ringing. It was Chloe. She was in Hawaii, marrying Rueben. Clifford refused to speak with Chloe. He let the machine pick up her call.

BEEP.

“Cliffy its Chloe. I really wish you were here. It just doesn’t feel right without a proper goodbye from you. The service was really fast. I stumbled a bit when I walked down the aisle, and then did this really funny jig as if I planned the entire thing. Everybody laughed with tears in their eyes. Anyway, I’ll leave my cell phone on all night. Call me Cliffy. Please.”

Clifford cocked the gun. Hearing the sound of Chloe’s voice made that decision automatic. He pictured his brains splattered across his wonderful window. Specks of thought, the very same organ tissue where this current idea of death was emitting from, sprayed across that magnificent pane like a Jackson Pollock piece.

Buzz buzz buzz. The phone kept ringing. It was Clifford’s boss Kowalski. Kowalski was no fun.

BEEP.

“Clifford you faggot get down to the cemetery. A schoolhouse in Cicero burned down and they are transferring those little gristle chips up to you. Don’t show without a clean shaven face or washed clothes.

You are beginning to scare the customers!”

Clifford loved his job but had no desire to go to work. Clifford believed that Chloe loved him but had no desire to be with him. Clifford only had his job.

The routine of working in a cemetery gave him life. He memorized every engraving on every tombstone on the entire grounds. In the shower he would recite the birth and death dates of every sleeper. It was he who carved the stone that would be placed on top of his grave.

Buzz buzz buzz. The phone kept ringing. It was Rueben calling from Hawaii.

BEEP.

“Hey Clifford my friend its Rueben Blades calling from Hawaii. Aloha. Hope you aren’t dead.”

“Rueben.” Chloe scolded him in the background.

“Anywho. Chloe wanted me to try you. I told her maybe you were picking some more dead guys’ pockets. Hey how much did you get from that last corpse anywho?”

“Rueben!”

“Alright Cliffy baby, my WIFE wants me to get off. Guess that means we better hit the honeymoon suite, eh amigo? Too bad you couldn’t make the trip Cliffy my pal. Don’t be a stranger.”

Chloe started seeing Rueben behind Clifford’s back around Spring of 2002. They met at Salinger’s and sped away in Rueben’s expensive automobile. Rueben owned a 3800 square foot loft in the West Loop area of Chicago. His neighbor was Harpo Studios, where Oprah Winfrey broadcasts her program.

Clifford didn’t notice anything fishy. Nights were spent cleaning algae off cement resting places.

Rueben began sending flowers to Chloe’s powerful law office. Big bouquets of fifty sunflowers with five foot stems, so heavy and large that two young college kids needed to carry them all. They were too much for one person to handle. That might be the perfect way to describe Chloe as well.

Clifford removed the gun from his mouth and spit towards the phone. His goober caught the machine when Rueben was still talking. A minor score for the forever-defeated player. Clifford put down the gun, still cocked and ready to blast. He fixed himself a drink. Chivas on the rocks. He scrounged for a cigarette and lit one up.

The sound of Rueben’s voice on Clifford’s machine drove him mad. He wanted to send a bullet through the perfect teeth of Rueben’s flappy mouth, but would rather choose to smell the breath of his Chloe even more. His anger was fueled by regret. The remorse was so deep and grounded in his bowels that he only had the option of suicide to deal with now.

Buzz buzz buzz. The phone kept ringing. It was Clifford’s father Porter calling from Hawaii.

BEEP.

“Cliff. Cliff this is your father. Cliff it was very irresponsible and quite childish of you to not come to Hawaii for Chloe and Rueben’s wedding. They even paid for your travel and lodging.

Cliffy I know you are upset. Your mother left me when I was still in my prime. You were only 16 and I begged her not to leave. I cried for a month after she left with that, that, fashion designer. But I picked myself up, put the past in the past, and with the luck of the gods I found Cheryl. I’ve never been happier.

Finding love Cliffy is like catching a bus.

You have to wait in line, and sometimes you don’t have correct change so you have to ask the guy next to you for some, and he is always some jagoff with an attitude, so you don’t get on that bus.

And then, when you really want to kill that stupid bastard, a delicate cherub flies in and asks if you have the time.

You always have the time for an angel Cliffy. And she magically takes you to where you want to go, and you never think of getting on that bus again. But you still want to rip the neck off that dipshit at the bus stop. Hot damn these frozen margaritas have the devil’s kick! Point is Cliffy we all miss you. I love you son. Call me soon.”

Clifford hadn’t thought about his mother in years. She left his father when he was 16 for a fashion designer from “the new mall”, when that was something for the suburban citizens to scream about. He receives holiday cards and random posts from his mother from time to time. Clifford never responds.

The light continued to diminish outside his home and inside his mind. The day grew ever so gray. The oddballs and scuzzies below squirmed down Irving Park at a rapid pace.

Clifford sipped his drink and huffed his smoke. He locked eyes with the gun, which rested eagerly on the table. He picked it up and juggled it like a familiar toy.

Chloe came home one evening from work to find her husband Clifford drunk on Chivas, smoking cigarettes and juggling a gun like a familiar toy.

“Clifford Hamstock what in Jesus’ name is that?”

“I found it in one of the graves,” Clifford smiled.

“It’s a Colt-45. Someone wanted to die with her.”

Chloe hurried to the washroom.

“Get rid of it,” she said.

“I don’t wanna,” Clifford belted back.

He was mesmerized by the pristine condition of the gun. He had only seen such a shooter in dime store novels and on television westerns.

Chloe started running the water for her bath. She sang as she stripped down. Clifford sat in the living room and juggled the gun like a familiar toy.

He questioned its weight. He wondered which hand held the cannon easiest. He quickly pointed the gun towards his invisible enemy at the front door. He then placed the barrel at the right temple of his shaved head. “Bang,” he whispered. “Bang,” he whispered. “Bang,” he whispered.

While Chloe sang old Green Day songs in the shower- tunes from Kerplunk! from when they wasn’t famous- Clifford snooped inside her rucksack.

That satchel was a dump of crap. Hairbrush, mascara, birth control pills, cash holder, scattered United States currency, cell phone, and a business card belonging to a Rueben Blades, Attorney at Law. The address was located on Michigan Avenue, the Magnificent Mile. It was not the same address as the powerful law firm where Chloe administratily assisted. There was a phone number. He knew it was safe.

Buzz buzz buzz. The phone kept ringing. It was Clifford calling the number on the business card that he found in Chloe’s dump of crap. A man’s voice answered with delight.

“Chloe bowie? Chloe cakes? Is that you my little fuck pie?”

Clifford hung up the phone. He knew it was over.

The Attorney at Law Rueben Blades had just informed him of his final moments.

Clifford gathered what little he had: Bukowski books, his favorite bucket hat, an old Green Day record (vinyl LP), the Colt .45, and made for the door. Clifford exited one life to walk into another.

Upon the disappearance of Clifford, a sober and bitter Chloe filed a missing persons report. Once the days became weeks, District Attorney Gavin Speckles questioned Chloe.

“Did your husband show signs of unnatural behavior before he ran off?”

“I’m sure he was taken Mr. Speckles.”

“I’m sure.”

Gavin Speckles was a real corkscrew.

“Before your husband was taken, did he seem strange?”

Chloe thought back to the night Clifford wore a severed foot that he quietly borrowed from the cemetery to a Halloween dance. He went as “Dead Foot - the spookiest place kicker in ‘footghoul’ history.” It was, needless to say, a graveyard smash.

“He did brandish a gun,” Chloe said.

“What kind of weapon would one take at the pretense of their abduction, m’lady?”

Speckles was a corkscrew all right.

“Look detective.”

“District Attorney Gavin Speckles.”

“You’re all goddamn corkscrews.”

That’s what I said.

After Chloe’s blowout, the cops decided to not pursue the case. Chloe had a red flag on her record placed there by Gavin Speckles, who silently suspected foul play.

Clifford moved into the tool shed of Graceland Cemetery. He didn’t mind being around the sharp objects or deceased neighbors. Kowalski never visited the cemetery. Clifford’s paychecks, divorce papers, and wedding invitation were forwarded to the cemetery where one day a strange letter arrived.

TO YOU: I have it on good merit to accuse you of thievery, sir. For it was you who stole the Colt .45 from the eternal resting place of a saint, my grandfather, Silas Brentworth. For shame on you scoundrel. Be ye warned!

The letter was signed by Akron Brentworth with no return address. This worried Clifford. He had told no one but Chloe of the gun’s whereabouts.

Clifford received more and more letters from Akron Brentworth. Each boiling with animal terror. There would be violence soon, Brentworth taunted. He even went so far as to set a date. The judgment day would come on Chloe’s wedding day. Today.

While Cliffy reread the last note from Brentworth, he slid the gun in and out of his lips.

“Today will be your last miserable day alive savage. You WILL pay your master with your worthless life. Let he who steals have his self stolen from he.”

Clifford slid the gun in and out.

He pictured Rueben and Chloe wedding fucking on an assfull of cool Hawaiian sand. Writhing in joy, squirming together in love. Both of them cumming their eyeballs out.

Buzz buzz buzz. It was an unknown caller. Clifford slid the gun in and out. He pictured his mother being corked in the ass by the fashion designer.

The erotic clothes she would be strangled in at the cinch of her perfect knot tying fashionista. The gay expression on his rayon fabric face as he jammed Clifford’s estranged mother’s runway with his new spring line.

Buzz buzz buzz. It was an unknown caller. Clifford slid the gun in and out.

He pictured his father bone drying Cheryl in the hotel Jacuzzi, juggling a frozen margarita on Cheryl’s blubleee tuckus, like some familiar toy. Intensely fingering Cheryl’s good pussy under the protection of exploding heat bubbles. Enjoying each other’s slick wet stuff.

BEEP.

“Behold. The keeper of fate speaks. It is your life taker. Perk up those edible ears young boy, for this is the sound of your death rattle.”

The door began to open. Clifford quickly pointed the gun towards his invisible enemy at the front door. “Bang,” he whispered. “Bang,” he whispered. BANG. He shot.

District Attorney Gavin Speckles convicted Clifford Hamstock to life in prison for the second-degree murder of Graceland Cemetery owner Robert Kowalski.