You died cleaning out Ricky Werner's son's refrigerator

What was left of those trunks-of-the-Hudson sculling arms, hollowed out by seventeen years of filterless cigarettes and pork rinds and whatever the most disarming thing was on free telly, had been scrubbing the absolute life out of the shit sprayed hard onto porcelain, the kind of working one gives food dried to dishes, or a tooth you were curious at getting to the root of. He called your name, Mr. Sendonanza did, minutes after you had that bowl as sleek as a prism, from that very shitter that he was now repopulating with the dead of a battle between Overhalt and intestine; Ballantyne and bowel. What a shame he had not drunk himself to death this time. How you would've loved to have kicked his whiney gaze-fucked shitzu through the ribcage on the way out of pretending to have never found his body.

"You know my pal Ricky?"

You fluttered down the hall to stand within earshot of your bellowing employer who was mid way through relieving himself. You could already smell your hard work wasting away to Mr Sendonanza's second movement of the day.

"Ricky Werner? You know, tall guy, talks like a--hey I don't know what you put in the plug-in this time but it smells fuckofaload better than the shit you put in last time. Oriental Springtime my ass." Your employer punctuated his sentence by breaking wind so hard it carried across the room--in and out of the bowl--to where you were standing. You were by now used to them being many many times more unbearable than any other smell you had smelt from any other man. And you had certainly been with some odorous sorts in your time.

"Ricky's son is a real fuckin piece of work so far as fucked up pieces-a work go." Your employer said between folding the newspaper and letting it glide down to the parquet floor in front of him.

"Washes clothes for retarded people or somethin' I dunno. Motherfucker can't even pay all his rent but old Ricky's come to expect that shit I mean," your employer shifts weight to his left side and breaks wind again which is louder than the previous time though does not noticeably make contact with your olfactory system "it's a fuckin miracle kid's out on his own without the adult diapers anymore I guess."

You acknowledged that you were understanding him so far and without anymore audible flatulence your employer proposed the following:

"Look, I told him I'd send ya over there, like you could just bill the hours to me and I'd get the money from him and whatever, right. But he's a lonely kid, and Ricky's startin' to get worried so ya know, I said maybe you know you'd just pull him off on the sofa or somethin' and then like go clean his fridge."

You stood for a moment, wondering if you'd heard correctly.

"I mean I don't mean to pile too much onda ya, but from what Ricky's sayin', that fridge is a fuckin' nasty ass piece of somethin'. Could be years old pizza or jars of piss or fuckknowswhat. Kid's a head case."

Your employer spat a thick inch of saliva at the basin across the way and missed hitting the door carved out of some ancient oak suggested to his wife by the decorator she was at the time fucking and who made the case to your employer that he (the decorator) wasn't by coming off as an absolute tartan belt five-hundred-on-the-hair scented candle scented faggot--the loogie dripping down across the gold foil handles linked to yet another tale of infidelity your employer's bowels were beginning to give a fuck about. He groaned and pushed his weight back on the right. You stood silent still. He let another drop.

"Look our deal still stands, and as you know I'm not a monster. Look, three more months, I'll be in Caracas, you'll get back your passport and we terminate the contract. Kid's not even a mess to look at far as I remember. Maybe I'm even doing you a favor. Sure the young guys aren't throwing themselves at ya like they used to."

You told him you remembered Ricky. The one that slapped your ass every beer you brought him and who you unbuttoned a few notches on your blouse for on account of that little chat with your employer in the kitchen at half time. You told him you liked Ricky. Your boss reached into his pocket for a business card, at the same time with the other hand he was mid-wipe.

"Oh hah--shit. I just had one of those...you know when you keep the wrapper and throw out the chocolate moments." What he meant by that was that he'd dropped the card with Ricky Werner's son's number written on the back into the toilet and thrown his used ball of toilet paper squares out the door at you. Without query you pinched the scrunched tissue between your index finger and thumb, ran it to the downstairs bathroom and disposed of it appropriately.

* * *

You arrived at Ricky Werner's son's place at about three forty-five in the afternoon because you'd been told that the kid doesn't wake up until three and he would spend the first twenty minutes of his highly productive day shitting out last night's carton. The space around his apartment building was two metres of gravel in every direction occupied by dogs because the kids that always waited for that one guy that looked like Robin Williams to come out of his home so they could let him know how much of a gaybo butthole stink-fingering pedophile he was, would tip bins in the meanwhile. A small stone went into your white flat soled shoe and you pressed down hard with your heel and you did not wince.

There was an almost immediate groan that accompanied you ringing the doorbell like maybe Ricky Werner's son was just lying by the door just waiting for the chance to complain about anyone wanting to spring the fucker in business hours. There was silence until you decided to introduce yourself through the door. That you were there to clean the fridge, and uh--

"Cup size." He slurred back through the door like that was how this type of thing always went. Get with it and spare everybody your fucking life story. You went along with it and told him. This was followed by a slurry of dissociative groaning, kind of like disapproval you assumed at what you had said, and you were for a moment glimpsing the relief of his rejection and you going home to survive another day to get you closer to that passport without having to just straight up murder your employer, Mr. Sendonanza. Because you totally you weren't about murders and shit. Unfortunate for you, there was then the sound of a man clawing his way up to the handle and eventually the door coming unlocked and open.

You knocked again just for safety's sake and "Yeah yeah fucking just hurry up get in and close it behind you forfucks" came from the naked body back facing you headed toward the kitchen, dark hair coating him from shoulders to achilles.

You approached the fridge and reached out to the handle. He turned to you, gently placing his hand over yours, his eyes signaling it was not yet time. His other hand pulled open a drawer full of mixed junk from where he took one of those disposable painter's masks and strapped it onto his face. He nodded to you that it was OK now. Ricky Werner's son then went over to the couch of cracked green faux leather and sat down to commence his afternoon fix of pornography on the hi-def LCD he'd got his daddy to get him.

* * *

It was not a matter of the intensity of stench. In your profession you'd had it all, but in most cases, even in the most chronic instances, there was generally a sense of knowing what you were dealing with. Ricky Werner's son's refrigerator had the unique quality of not smelling like anything in particular, because it had so much intensity streaming from so many different sources. You couldn't even narrow it down to the homogeneous odor of putrefied food product; there were still more layers. Dense, complicated layers.

Over your shoulder, your employer's acquaintance's son was lazily, like he could hardly be bothered today, rubbing at his crotch area to the tune of Burnin Rubber Mommas blaring at him in full five-point-one, where one of the title's ladies was shaking a loose-fitting bikini-bottomed ass around the face of a young man built out of steroids and orange tanning solution posing extreme facial gestures like he was about to embark on some four-wheel-drive skateboarding or some mountain bike riding off of a cliff that would end on a jet ski punching some angry wide-bodied latino women in the tits as they bobbed up and down in a path for him howling in Espanol for him to keep his dumbfuck hands off of their pristine daughters. As Ricky Werner's son's afternoon onanism grew audible you began to panic with confusion about your role in this whole thing.

Your employer had never had you perform lewd acts for him in the past, but you'd known that something like this was a long time coming. That this would be the doorway to the slippery slide, those last three months of your employer pimping you out to his friends--as you came to the very back of the compartment above the vegetable crisper, past the thick shake containers that had fused together in the puddles of congealed pig fat, and the shopping bags filled with used tissues disposed of in the fridge for no other conceivable reason other than it was closer than going downstairs to the sulo bins, right there against the back wall was a matchbox you assumed either to still contain matches, or to be empty. But it had some weight to it. As you removed it you noticed that the sides of the box had been taped over with electrical tape sealing it shut. You removed the tape, jiggled it open to find a naked, blue, and very dead Ricky Werner with a look of absolute horror left on what was once his tiny face. He'd been soaking in a pile of his own piss and shit, leaking through into the palm of your hand.

* * *

You did not flinch. Instead you very carefully placed the matchbox among the piles of other rotting debris and for a moment remained very still. But right then Ricky Werner's son knew.

"What you think you were fucking gonna take me out just like that?" He muffled at you through the mask concealing enough of his face to emphasize his ocular malice. "Come clean my fridge like some dumbshit like I wasn't even on to youse from the start?" Now standing his penis in full erection with preseminal fluid flicking onto the television screen as he threw his weight around. He had already shocked you into paralysis with the tazer gun hidden between the sofa cushions before you could make a run for it off the balcony.

You died tripping balls following your court hearing for sexual harassment in the workplace

Your lawyer had already advised you twice that morning about rejecting the offers of that man with the broken iPad hanging around his neck from a large elastic band with the words "YER MOMS PASTRY $2" written over the cracked screen in lipstick, swinging round that garbage bag of dumpster treats, but he slipped one in your pocket when he stole your wallet as a kind of "Fuck You (and thank me later)" deal, and who's stupid enough to carry their wallet in that side blazer pocket anyway that shit is strictly hands only and maybe a flyer some guy wearing a giant foam muffler would hand you and you're only taking it because you feel so bad for him but does that badness feeling ever stretch its arm out all the way out to the purchase of a new goddamn muffler? Nope.

In short, advertising doesn't work, is what your lawyer was now spieling off about while you stood in some kind of antechamber of proceedings where your lawyer had BTW'd in mid-sentence while describing the futile nature of a sexy billboard, "oh and totally cool to do a line in here, but I wouldn't chance 'shootin the baby' as Neil Young would phrase it" something about having just enough time to hear the door creak as it begins to open in order to wipe up as the pseudo police guy holding door tells your ass it's time to get in there but not enough time to loosen the belt from your arm and get that little bit of plastic back on the tip of the needle in case you jab yourself in the middle of the deep concentration required to tell adequate lies about where you were the early hours that day Dot Larso pulled a butterfly knife from her nethers and sliced the offal right off of Jersey cab driver Sam "Winkem" Salva, in such a way that the defense can't work you down into a thin and narrow three days later because you didn't take down notes on your side of the story like you promised even yourself that you would. Your lawyer's melodrama whiffed of an amateur or a deep cynic with a history of alcoholism only without the resourceful Jewish assistant there to pass him notes in court and keep his neurons from firing in a way that didn't resemble Lloyd Bridges' hair on any given Sunday circa that last fruitful decade he had with us.

That initial realisation that your wallet had been replaced with what felt like, yes most likely, a bagel was somewhat extinguished by the unleashing of action via people directing you into the room where you knew you didn't belong like that dream where you're Jerry Lewis and you have to mime a bunch of songs for the King of Belgium but they totally dig how bad it is more than how good it would've been if you'd done it right. "But ain't that just life nowadays?" You tell your lawyer you don't want him whispering anymore of his little observational tidbits on the whys and hows of--that you just want this over with and really you'd just be happy with no additional time added to what we're looking at here. And please no big speeches. His response to that was putting a cigarette behind his ear patting you on the shoulder and saying like "No Dramas Squirt" or "No dramas, Squid" like all of a sudden your tentacles would get the better of you and be up that ladies skirt while she was trying to put you away for like a feel that totally wasn't what that butt advertised. Broad had a silicon butt, or half a butt. So does that even constitute "touching"?

But your squid bits were getting a bit antsy by the sit down even and before you could even get a glass of water that subordinate was up taking the jug explaining how it'd been there for too long like it was only good for topping up goldfish, in fact perfect for that. And you were like "buy it off me bitch" but it had already been replaced. You waited for the right moment in which the defense was occupied with barking accusations at some witness about whether her prosthetic ass was or wasn't asking for it, and as you went to pour a glass with such care it bore the facade of a mighty river, like some canoeing expedition you had barely survived in your twenties or that you'd seen a movie about. You felt eyes turn in your direction as though the pouring of a liquid had just then disrupted a testimony so fragile the stenographer needed her fingers to be replaced with q-tips which socketed in at the middle knuckles and the end of each tip was lubricated with an oil lightly scented to evoke a memory of chimney smoke from open fireplaces (not of a strong enough odour to suggest the dead of winter but rather an easing in from autumn, a kind of "oh, December certainly creeped up on us quickly this year, and I suppose it's too late to start looking for Ugg boots on sale; there's always next year (but you say that every year!)" kind of vibe) but even with the lubrication and the fingers that have made such commitment to this very moment in court and you wonder does she just wear false fingers over the top all the other times, and if this were a more tense trial where people were at the edge of their seats and Richard Gere was up there telling us all about how his particular methods of sex with the finest pussy in Hong Kong saved a busload of Polish girls from being traded off into shady Chinese prostitution circles--if something like this were the case would this woman have pulled off her falsies to reveal stainless steel machinery like sewing machine parts tapping against her brachygraphic typeset like morse code that only our unconscious can take in on some deep emotional level to heighten the tension and in that final slam of the corrupt Chinese judge's gavel, Gere slides his hand under, shattering it in two places but he does not scream in pain, he bites down on his cheek and he says: "Your honour, if I may just say one more thing."

Four or five hours later you finished your loud slurping of the drink, which someone in the further back rows of your mind likened to a slow cold fellatio. You were growing paranoid that the audience surrounding you was privy to the sexual connection, or even enjoyment you took from your way of drinking and that they would link it to the misconduct regarding your charges. That this guy can get off to anything kind of thing. But your lawyer just kept saying "take your time" but maybe that was code for "hurry the goddamn up or they'll give you the chair." You signaled by chromatophore to the court that you were ready, however subtle, it was still hormonally succinct enough to summon an escort to the stand by two five foot nothing hourglass women in black lace lingerie, skin like autumn and hair flowing in velvet black. Their wide almond eyes promised what their racing red lips would deliver and as they both leaned over the table where you sat the right bra strap on the right girl and the left strap on the left girl slipped off their shoulders in a simultaneous motion suggesting that these two beings were synchronised to function as one entity of pleasure and before you were to take the stand, first they would lead you by the tendrils back to that little room where the opportunity to do some coke was still very much out there.

The only thing your lawyer could do right there was kick you in the shin--and hes' got the shoes for it--since just flat out saying "did I fucking just catch you trying to jerk off in court while you're being prosecuted for charges of a sexual nature; really?" wouldn't really fly under the radar no matter how quiet he whispered it, and one guy in the jury with a keen eye for attention to detail might've already seen it just in that second from kick to shin to sliding out the hand but you were quick enough off the bat (n/p/i) to make it look like you were looking for change or something in your pocket and luckily there was something in your pocket the rest of that kind of green in the middle cupcake you'd been slipped in exchange for your wallet at a point in the day you could no longer distinguish. And your lawyer was like: Oh Jesus, you didn't.

* * *

Fake ass woman wobbled her way down to back to the desk that sat to the right of you and your defense, who was in the midst of scrunching a piece of paper he had read over twenty or thirty times and he was getting sweat allover the desk, a kind of gushing sweat any healthy man could only produce running flights of stairs in mid afternoon desert. Her testimony was delivered with clean confidence, no fumbling, no unsuredness in her time of day about the what's and when's (this suredness being totally against your personal recollection but maybe that said more about your own sexual mania and the inaccuracies coupled with it)

The words rolling from her tongue stung you in the face with red splotches that your lawyer was secretly wishing would unravel into some really massive aneurysm and he could get out of there early before that Mongol pushing the cart of Bactrian marmot on a stick closes shop. That bitch--her words were physically slapping you around like those dudes with rippling arms loved to do to matchstick women of putrified ethnicity--no border would take them--in the only porn left that you were down with--that cunt up on stage grabbing you by the ankles and pushing you face first through the drain hole over some piece of silicone under her dress that now is for whatever fucked up reason a part of her body well fuck this you thought it was time to screw your feet back on roll on over there and give these fine people a piece of your own recollection of events.

* * *

The problem wasn't standing at the wrong time, you'd been doing that the whole trial and he wasn't just being a total faggot when you noticed your lawyer's hand clenched firmly on your thigh. The problem was that over the course of the trial you had defecated where you sat no less than three times and so when you stood up long enough to walk over to the stand, after much encouragement from your defense ("Yes, it's OK to go now...I mean it...really...what? Yes fine I'll hold your house keys so they don't fall badly against your genitals when you sit down again just --cking go.") the shit began to flow down and through your pant legs in runny clumps and maybe nobody had noticed the smell so much up until then since whatever you had taken had dropped your body temp to corpse levels but as you became active again your muscles began to burn hot as though they were in no state to do anything and you became a walking stink factory not to mention a walking shit dripping factory and honestly the judge really had to take a moment to decide what to make of this before slamming down the gavel and demanding that court go to recess until the defendant could approach the stand in a hygienic state deemed appropriate, specifically, sans the shit down your legs, and out of nowhere a slightly retarded man with a bucket and a mop was in his inarticulate way gesturing you aside to do his best to make as though this whole unpleasantness never happened.

The way you saw it, this here, out in the open, this was your only chance. There was no fucking way you were testifying like this, you had one option left and that was to make a run for it. You coaxed your lawyer down the steps a bit while he was chain smoking those small yellow cigarettes that no one in America smokes and you started out by asking him how much money he had on him. Straight away he could see it in your eyes. "Don't even..." but you already had him in a choke hold, whispering in his ear to slowly go into his pocket and remove the wallet and all you wanted was the cash, and assuring him that you'd never snapped a man's neck before but after eating some homeless guy's technicolour dream muffin who the fuck knew what you were capable of. Instead of breaking him from this mortal coil, you told him to fold his chubby ass down against the pavement and count until he lost count and then start counting again.

* * *

Later that day police found your body under a tree in the park along with a derelict looking chap who was wrapping tape around a plastic bag filled with sand so that it took on a long cylindrical shape. He was arrested on suspicion of having mutilated your genitals and letting you bleed to death but his story was always that you'd paid him to perform a very delicate cosmetic procedure, and that in your heart of hearts, you believed in him one hundred percent of the way.