Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread Read online

  The following day, behind her bristling forest of toothpicks, Monkey waited for one animal in particular. Monkey beamed her smile at Owl; calling across the supermarket to Possum and Walrus and Cougar, she said, “Come taste my cheese! It’s made in Switzerland from organic free-range milk with no bovine growth hormones or artificial ingredients.” Still, Monkey’s every word was a hopeful lie. She didn’t know anything about the cheese. She didn’t even know how it tasted. No one but a crazy person would place her lips around that nasty cheese.

  That night, from her motel room, Monkey broke the chain of command. She telephoned Bison, who was the Director of National Operations, four levels above Hamster’s head. Worse yet, Monkey telephoned Bison on his personal cell phone number. She introduced herself, but Bison said only, “Do you report to me?”

  Monkey explained that she was part of the roving product demo team, assigned to penetrate the Florida market with a test cheese. She was pitching in the Orlando area, but she thought the cheese might be spoiled. Monkey called Bison “sir,” something she’d promised herself she’d never call anyone—something she’d never even called her own father.

  “Spoiled?” asked Bison. It was early evening in Chicago, but Bison’s words sounded slurred. Monkey could hear liquid splash and glug as if someone were guzzling gin from a bottle. She could hear pills rattle. His voice boomed and echoed as if his home were cavernous, and Monkey pictured him speaking on a gold-encrusted telephone, seated in a great hall with a marble floor and frescoes painted on the ceiling.

  “Sir,” Monkey said, and winced, “even Mouse wouldn’t touch it.”

  Bison asked, “Have you gone through Hamster?”

  Said Monkey, “Sir, somebody’s kid is going to taste this cheese and be poisoned, and I’ll be brought up on charges of reckless homicide.” She said, “Honestly, even Skunk told me it smelled awful.”

  In response, Bison declared that life wasn’t a swimming pool. Over the phone, he rambled on about stamina. In turns, he sounded angry and weepy, but always soused. Apropos of nothing, he asked her, “What? Are you afraid of getting some shit in your ass?”

  So on the third day Monkey was back at her folding table, behind her stockade of toothpicks, like pikes, like a fence of sharpened spikes. From beyond this barrier the other animals, the Panther and the Porcupine, they looked at her with faces of open contempt or deep pity. An invisible cloud of cheese stink held everyone at bay, and from the center of everyone’s unhappy looks Monkey pleaded and cajoled for someone brave enough to try this new, marvelous product. Monkey railed that they were cowards. She dared them. She bribed them with double-their-money-back guarantees if they sampled the cheese and didn’t love it. She coaxed them, saying, “Who’s going to be first in line to discover sheer joy?”

  From a safe distance Raven shouted, “You’d have to be suicidal to bite down on that!” Other animals nodded and snickered. Gorilla watched, impatiently tapping the toes of one foot, weaving his fingers together and cracking his huge knuckles, ready to throw Monkey out onto the sidewalk.

  “If your stuff is so great, lady,” challenged Ferret, “why don’t you eat it?”

  Monkey looked at the table spread with tiny cubes of white poison. She told herself, “Everyone thinks this terrible smell is me.” Her arrogance was gone. Monkey hadn’t slept in two days, and her pride was gone. She told herself, “I’d rather be dead than stand here for another moment with everyone despising me or feeling sorry for me.” She imagined herself dying in terrible pain on the concrete floor of this Orlando supermarket. She imagined the charges of wrongful death, and her parents winning a landmark civil settlement against Llewellyn Foods. Monkey pinched a toothpick between two fingers and held it up between herself and the crowd. She held the cube of cheese high, like a torch. She imagined her own funeral and saw herself dead in a casket with these same fingers folded across her cold chest. Monkey saw her name and today’s date chiseled on a tombstone. This cheese smelled the way death smelled. It smelled the way she would soon smell.

  “Give me a knight’s errand,” Monkey told herself, holding the cheese on-high. “Test me further.”

  The crowd watched, dumbfounded. Slack jawed. Turkey wept quietly.

  Monkey closed her eyes and brought the cheese to her mouth. Her lips plucked it from the toothpick, and she began to chew. Her eyes still closed, she heard Gorilla shout, his voice high-pitched with panic, “Someone call 9-1-1!”

  Monkey ate the cheese yet she did not die. She ate and ate it. She never wanted to swallow, only to chew it, to grind the cheese between her teeth forever and to always savor it. She wanted to live forever so that she could eat nothing else. Worse than killing her, the cheese tasted—incredible. What had been the worst smell in the world, it became the best, and even after Monkey had gulped it down she sucked the wooden toothpick for the last hint of flavor. The cheese was inside her; it was part of her, and she loved it.

  Smiling, Monkey opened her eyes to find everyone staring, their faces knotted in horror. Their eyes bulged as if they’d caught her eating her own scat. As repugnant as she’d seemed before, now she seemed even more repulsive to them, but Monkey didn’t care. With all the animals watching she ate another cube of cheese, and another. She wanted to be filled with this glorious taste and smell until her belly ached.

  That night in her motel room the telephone rang. It was Hamster calling. Hamster said, “Hold on while I get Bison on the other line.” Monkey waited, and after a few clicks a voice said, “Bison, here.”

  Bison said, “On the advice of Legal, we’re pulling the cheese from outlets.” He said, “We can’t risk the liability.”

  Monkey knew her job hung in the balance. She told herself to stay quiet and just let events run their course, but instead she said, “Wait.”

  Hamster said, “Nobody’s blaming you.”

  Monkey said, “I was wrong.” She said, “You can fire me, but that cheese is delicious.” She said, “Please.” She said, “Sir.”

  With a shrug in his voice, Bison said, “This matter is out of our hands.” Over the phone he said, “Tomorrow, you dispose of your stock samples.”

  “Ask Coyote,” Monkey pleaded. “Coyote’s pitching it.”

  “Coyote’s in Seattle,” said Bison. “We’ve promoted him to the Northwest Regional Supervisor slot.”

  Caught in an obvious lie, Hamster said, “Take this one for the team, princess. Or you’re fired.”

  After all of this time pitching perfume and beef jerky and hand lotion, Monkey finally had a product she actually believed in. Until now Monkey had wanted the world to love her, and now she was willing to take a backseat to a cheese. She didn’t care how much the other animals glared at her in undisguised disgust, she’d debase herself completely in the eyes of a million animals out of the slim chance that one would taste what she tasted and affirm her faith. If that were to happen, that brave animal would also love the cheese and Monkey would no longer be alone in the world. She would martyr her dignity for the glory of this cheese.

  According to a text message from Iguana the entire wholesale stock had already been auctioned to a liquidator. The following day, Monkey deliberately missed her flight to Cleveland. For point-of-sale pitch sessions Monkey always wore a pink polo shirt from Brooks Brothers, always a two-button polo with only the upper button open. Pink read as gamine, sporty, preppy, and Monkey never popped the collar. However, with everything at stake today she pulled out her heavy artillery: a chemise top with floss shoulder straps and a hem so short it fluttered above a wide margin of her exposed stomach. She wedged her breasts into a padded bra. To put this cheese across, Monkey would play the temple whore and pimp herself worse than Llewellyn Foods had ever dared. Brazenly, she took her folding table and toothpicks and white cubes of mouthwatering, soul-filling nirvana and went back to the Orlando supermarket. Behind her altar of samples, Monkey was a zealot. A fanatic. She was an evangelical, railing and haranguing everyone within the crowded market. She was
a lunatic in their eyes—someone who would eat this cheese was capable of anything—and this seemed to protect her for the moment. If she could only communicate her passion and be understood by one other animal, that would be enough.

  “Satisfaction is here for the taking,” said Monkey. “Absolute bliss can be yours for free!” Only the smell of the cheese kept Duck and Ox from seizing her, from grabbing Monkey and tossing her bodily from the building, but Grizzly Bear shouted obscenities at her through cupped paws, and Parrot pelted her with stinging pennies.

  No one stood on Monkey’s side. She stood alone, armed only with her faith.

  Monkey was still a team player, but now she was the only one on her team.

  Chaos broke out. The herd rushed her table, overturning it, and her samples tumbled to the dirty floor. On the dusty concrete, where Monkey had envisioned herself dead only the day before, her sacred cheese was being trod upon. This cheese which she loved more than her own life, now it was ground under the hooves of Reindeer and smeared beneath the paws of Tiger. A huge hand closed around Monkey’s arm and wrenched her toward the door. It was Gorilla, dragging her in the direction of the rest of her Llewellyn Foods career, where she could sleep every night. Sleepwalk through every day. A future where she need never fully awaken.

  The only cube that was left was the cheese stabbed on the toothpick in Monkey’s hand. It was her sword and her grail, and Monkey thrust it at Gorilla’s eyes. She thrust the toothpick deep into the back of Gorilla’s mouth, and he choked and gagged and spat out the cheese, but Monkey caught the wet, white cube as it fell. She lifted the slimy cheese cradled in the palm of one hand and slapped it between Gorilla’s lips. With the stampede of animals lifting them both and carrying them toward the exit, Monkey kept her hand muzzled across Gorilla’s mouth, her eyes meeting his eyes until Gorilla chewed and swallowed. Until she felt the huge muscles of his struggling arms relax and go slack with understanding.

  ZOMBIES

  It was Griffin Wilson who proposed the Theory of De-Evolution. He sat two rows behind me in Organic Chem, the very definition of an evil genius. He was the first to take the Great Leap Backward.

  Everybody knows because Tricia Gedding was in the nurse’s office with him when he took the leap. She was on the other cot, behind a paper curtain faking her period to get out of a pop quiz in Perspectives on Eastern Civ. She said she heard the loud “Beep!” but didn’t think anything of it. When Tricia Gedding and the school nurse found him on his own cot, they thought Griffin Wilson was the resuscitation doll everybody uses to practice CPR. He was hardly breathing, barely moving a muscle. They thought it was a joke because his wallet was still clenched between his teeth and he still had the electrical wires pasted to either side of his forehead.

  His hands were still holding a dictionary-sized box, still paralyzed, pressing a big red button. Everyone’s seen this box so often that they hardly recognized it, but it had been hanging on the office wall: the cardiac defibrillator. That emergency heart shocker. He must’ve taken it down and read the instructions. He simply took the waxed paper off the gluey parts and pasted the electrodes on either side of his temporal lobes. It’s basically a peel-and-stick lobotomy. It’s so easy a sixteen-year-old can do it.

  In Miss Chen’s English class, we learned, “To be or not to be…” but there’s a big gray area in between. Maybe in Shakespeare times people only had two options. Griffin Wilson, he knew that the SATs were just the gateway to a big lifetime of bullshit. To getting married and college. To paying taxes and trying to raise a kid who’s not a school shooter. And Griffin Wilson knew drugs are only a patch. After drugs, you’re always going to need more drugs.

  The problem with being Talented And Gifted is sometimes you get too smart. My uncle Henry says the importance of eating a good breakfast is because your brain is still growing. But nobody talks about how, sometimes, your brain can get just too big.

  We’re basically big animals, evolved to break open shells and eat raw oysters, but now we’re expected to keep track of all three hundred Kardashian sisters and eight hundred Baldwin brothers. Seriously, at the rate they reproduce the Kardashians and the Baldwins are going to wipe out all other species of humans. The rest of us, you and me, we’re just evolutionary dead ends waiting to wink out.

  You could ask Griffin Wilson anything. Ask him who signed the Treaty of Ghent. He’d be like that cartoon magician on TV who says, “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my ass.” Abracadabra, and he’d know the answer. In Organic Chem, he could talk String Theory until he was anoxic, but what he really wanted to be was happy. Not just not-sad, he wanted to be happy the way a dog is happy. Not constantly jerked this way and that by flaming Instant Messages and changes in the federal tax code. He didn’t want to die, either. He wanted to be—and not to be—but at the same time. That’s what a pioneering genius he was.

  The Principal of Student Affairs made Tricia Gedding swear to not tell a living soul, but you know how that goes. The school district was afraid of copycats. Those defibrillators are everywhere these days.

  Since that day in the nurse’s office, Griffin Wilson has never seemed happier. He’s always giggling too loud and wiping spit off his chin with his sleeve. The Special Ed teachers clap their hands and heap him with praise just for using the toilet. Talk about a double standard. The rest of us are fighting tooth and nail for whatever garbage career we can get, while Griffin Wilson is going to be thrilled with penny candy and reruns of Fraggle Rock for the rest of his life. How he was before, he was miserable unless he won every chess tournament. The way he is now, just yesterday, he took out his dick and started to jerk off during morning roll call. Before Mrs. Ramirez could hurry us through the S’s and the T’s—people are answering “here” and they’re answering “present,” too slow, snickering and staring—before Mrs. Ramirez can rush down the aisle and stop him, Griffin Wilson shouts, “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my pants,” and he sprayed hot baby gravy all over a bookcase full of nothing except a hundred To Kill a Mockingbirds. He was laughing the whole time.

  Lobotomized or not, he still knows the value of a signature catchphrase. Instead of being just another grade grubber, now he’s the life of the party.

  The voltage even cleared up his acne.

  It’s hard to argue with results like that.

  It wasn’t a week after he’d turned zombie that Tricia Gedding went to the gym where she does Zumba and got the defibrillator off the wall in the girls locker room. After her self-administered peel-and-stick procedure in a bathroom stall, she doesn’t care where she gets her period. Her best friend, Brie Phillips, got to the defibrillator they keep next to the bathrooms at the Home Depot, and now she walks down the street, rain or shine, with no pants on. We’re not talking about the scum of the school. We’re talking about the class president and the head cheerleader. The best and the brightest. Everybody who played first string on all the sports teams. It took every defibrillator between here and Canada, but, since then, when they play football nobody plays by the rules. And even when they get skunked, they’re always grinning and slapping high fives.

  They continue to be young and hot, but they no longer worry about the day when they won’t be.

  It’s suicide, but it’s not. The newspaper won’t report the actual numbers. Newspapers flatter themselves. Anymore, Tricia Gedding’s Facebook page has a larger readership than our daily paper. Mass media, my foot. They cover the front page with unemployment and war, and they don’t think that has a negative effect? My uncle Henry reads me an article about a proposed change in state law. Officials want a ten-day waiting period on the sale of all heart defibrillators. They’re talking about mandatory background checks and mental health screenings, but it’s not the law, not yet.

  My uncle Henry looks up from the newspaper article and eyes me across breakfast. He levels me this stern look and asks, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?”

  My uncle’s what I have instead of a mom and dad. He won’t a
cknowledge it, but there’s a good life over the edge of that cliff. There’s a lifetime supply of handicapped-parking permits. Uncle Henry doesn’t understand that all my friends have already jumped.

  They may be “differently abled” but my friends are still hooking up. More than ever, these days. They have smoking-hot bodies and the brains of infants. They have the best of both worlds. LeQuisha Jefferson stuck her tongue inside Hannah Finerman during Beginning Carpentry Arts, made her squeal and squirm right there, leaned up against the drill press. And Laura Lynn Marshall? She sucked off Frank Randall in the back of International Cuisine Lab with everybody watching. All their falafels got scorched, and nobody made a federal case out of it.

  After pushing the red defibrillator button, yeah, a person suffers some consequences, but he doesn’t know he’s suffering. Once he undergoes a Push-Button Lobotomy a kid can get away with murder.

  During Study Hall, I asked Boris Declan if it hurt. He was sitting there in the lunchroom with the red burn marks still fresh on either side of his forehead. He had his pants down around his knees. I asked if the shock was painful, and he didn’t answer, not right away. He just took his fingers out of his ass and sniffed them, thoughtfully. He was last year’s Junior Prom King.

  In a lot of ways he’s more chill now than he ever was. With his ass hanging out in the middle of the cafeteria, he offers me a finger to sniff and I tell him, “No, thank you.”