Victor Clevenger

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning

by Victor Clevenger

“Look, Abby,” he said, in an attempt to clarify his place in the pecking order with her, “I smoke a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes each day, and drink more alcohol than any other lover you have ever known. It's an extreme amount in your opinion, and it worries you, but in my opinion it's just enough for me to survive comfortably with you, and yes, I'm obsessed with the young blonde on the nightly news, but I have told you this before, just like I have told you that I don't care which shirt you choose as long as you wear the gray cotton shorts which show the outline of your panties for me, and Abby, don't argue with me please, just wear them; just make me grilled cheese sandwiches at three in the morning, before the room spins out of control, and I beg you to let me wipe your wet crotch after you take a hot piss in the morning time like my other lovers would beg, when they were trippin’ acid, and felt like they had eight pink spider legs that were painted on them with a rattle can, and not a single one of those spider legs could hold the scrunched toilet paper that they needed to do the deed. You're goddamn stubborn; you know this, right?”

“Cook your own fuckin' sandwiches!”

John was far too drunk to hit her, but he swung, anyway. Abby stumbled backwards and laughed as John fell into the wall; he hit the floor quickly.

“You’re a prick,” said Abby as she walked over toward him and kicked his shoulder. He rolled onto his back as Abby placed the ball of her right foot on his throat. He looked upwards as his face progressively reddened, and Abby began grinding her foot with pressure towards the floor, as if she was stepping the life out of his dirty, acid trippin’, freak spider whores on the dirty sidewalk.

“I’m going to kill you,” gasped John, with wet eyes, before he lost consciousness.

Abby removed her foot, walked to the kitchen table, and picked up the phone; she turned the ringer off, and sat it back down.

Sunday Evening

by Victor Clevenger

John took another step, and reached out with his hands. Abby reared back with the paring blade, and shouted as if she was being attacked by a madman. “JOHN!”

“AHHHHH!” John shouted back, but Abby didn’t have the guts to plunge the blade, and John didn’t reach for Abby; he just reached out in her direction. He reached out for the potato that she was holding.

“GIMME THAT!” he said, as he tore it from her hand.

Abby quickly lowered her center of gravity and took a defensive posture, not knowing what John might do next. John put the potato against his lips, and bit a chunk out of it with his teeth. He spat the chunk out onto the floor.

“John, you are acting stupid, and crazy!”

“NO, Abby, this here is stupid, and crazy!”

John reached down and lifted his scrotum up; he shoved what was left of the potato between his legs, and wedged it in tight. He let go of his scrotum and his balls dropped down to where Abby couldn’t see the potato anymore.

“Dammit, John,” she said.

John squeezed his legs tight together and squatted down, “Check this out, Abby, I can hop like a horny toad without dropping this thing.”

“Enough, John, stop it!”

John made two more hops before he stood up, and pulled the potato out from between his legs. He spun once in a circle, and when he stopped, he hurled the potato at the trash can. He missed and the lopsided potato rolled across the floor.

Monday, around Noontime

by Victor Clevenger

“Listen to me, John, and listen to me well; I am not going down on you, or vice versa. I am going to cook these chili dogs, and we are going to eat them. Tomorrow, you are packing your stuff and leaving.”

“Abby,” John said, “You know that I am a writer and don’t have a paying job. I have no saved money so that I can get a place to live. You are acting horrible and ruining my life.”

“And what about my life, John, I have spent the last ten months taking care of you, simply because I promised your father that I would! All you do is smoke cigarettes, get drunk, write love poems and try to seduce me into screwing you. I’m tired of it all; you are the son of my dead husband, and nothing more.”

“That’s pure bullcrap, Abby.”

“No. That’s a fact, John. Now go get dressed, and I’ll cook the food.”

“Fine,” John said, as he walked away toward his room. Abby walked into the kitchen with the pack of hotdogs. She placed them down on the table, and John looped his woven leather belt around his neck.

Abby found him lying at the foot of his bed, twenty-five minutes later, when she went to ask if he wanted sliced jalapenos on his chili.

She struggled to try and undo the belt. She couldn’t get it undone, and it didn’t matter that she couldn’t, because John was already gray-skinned and far gone, naked and strangled, dead.

Abby placed a pillow on John’s lap to cover him, and called to report her discovery.

When emergency services arrived, she was three bites into the greatest chili dog she had ever made.

Victor Clevenger’s latest poetry collection will be released soon from Spartan Press, and is titled Congenital Pipe Dreams. Selected pieces of his work have appeared in a variety of places online, and in print. He spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights with his second ex-wife, together they raise six children in a small town northeast of Kansas City, MO.