Beth Bishop

Type of Fool

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I

If we had been lovers, I would’ve been a cliché – alone, lonely, the dinner I cooked for us cooling on the table. When you said you would come, I picked flowers from my garden. My heirloom and confederate roses, the tiny purple blooms on the monkey grass, Gerber daisies, and day lilies I arranged in a Mason jar. Aphids on the rose petals. You didn’t show. You didn’t call, but I didn’t worry. You have always been flaky, flighty. I knew better than to trust, than to depend on you, but I let myself hope. That’s what I get for loving you.

II

I wrote to you, many times – offering help when it wasn’t requested or welcomed. Me being me, I couldn’t help but do it, and you, being you, couldn’t help but spew bile at me. I cried for you, wasted tears. You love your sadness too much, your protection from others. I want you to experience joy, and you refuse. My heart breaks, over and over, for you, and you’ll never give a damn.

III

It began as friendly arguing, batting bad philosophy back-and-forth. What is real? What is love? What are we but a man and a woman, matter, anything that has mass and takes up space? Elementary. I had dreams of silver eagles that gutted and devoured nations. You liked that. You liked me until you didn’t. You told me you’d heard enough from me for a while, to run along and play with someone else. A true verbal slap and I hit back until whatever we were was irreparable. Are you still a zombie, little bird? Did you finally find someone to breathe life into you?

IV

I wanted the best for you, and I wanted you. For years, more than anything. You told me that I was the type of woman a man falls in love with, and that was not the type of woman for you. I used that in a story I wrote. I could kiss you for hours and did a few times, always swallowed whole by your eyes. Because of you, I keep my eyes open. After, I used to catch you watching me, your eyes darting away from mine, like two north poles, repellant. There were times I would’ve done anything for you. I would’ve strayed for you, away from what I knew, from a life and a man that were comfortable. You knew that, and that you didn’t take advantage showed me you were a good man. So many times, I wished that you weren’t.

V

I would trade with you if I could, but I wouldn’t do this for you. It’s too hard, too painful. Maybe you would change your mind if you knew, but you don’t talk to me. We’re strangers now. It was just too much, I guess. I should try harder, but I’m just so damned tired. So tired.

Happy Pawn 2: The Laptop

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Jerrick scrubbed his hands over his slick scalp then over his face.  He looked at the glowing screen of the laptop, the spreadsheet with its neat rows and columns.  Numbers.  Jerrick knew numbers.  Numbers were his livelihood and his love, but if he didn’t fix this…this huge screw-up, they wouldn’t be for much longer.

This is what he got for buying a second-hand laptop.  This is what he got for thinking for one second he was smarter than a djinn.  Tricky bastard, he thought.

Now, he understood the look in that girl’s eye, that skinny white girl who came charging into Happy Pawn, babbling about a microwave and wriggling anchovies.  He’d eavesdropped on that conversation enough to decide the girl was half out of her mind.  He knew better now, just like he knew that if he went back and complained to the old man that there was something not right with his laptop, the old man would give him the same speech.  Besides, he’d taken his chances on other purchases that turned out not so great, although a different kind of not so great.  The old man stuck to his policies: no returns, no refunds.  You buy it; it’s yours.

The calculator was his first purchase.  The plus sign was broken.  Jerrick didn’t have the skills to repair it, and it would’ve been almost cheaper to just buy a new one rather than pay someone to fix it.  He worked around it by subtracting negatives.  Annoying, but it worked.

The laptop…it was a completely other type of broken.

Ctrl+Shift+G. A simple typo was all it was.  Jerrick intended to use his shortcut for inserting the clip art of the company logo, but hit “G” instead of “F.”  He couldn’t even remember what he was working on when smoke spewed from the innards of the laptop.  He remembered thinking the thing was melting itself and all his data, and then suddenly he was pushing up from his desk chair, staggering back as the smoke coalesced into a heavily muscled, bluish man with small golden horns and a long black ponytail.  The man stretched out his arms and tipped his head to Jerrick.

“How may I be of service?”

A simple question really, and one that Jerrick answered in various ways.  The first was to ask for infinite wishes.  The djinn reassured Jerrick that there was no need for this wish.  “As long as you hold the vessel,” the djinn pointed at the laptop, “I am yours to command.”

Now, Jerrick scrolled down on the spreadsheet, seeing red, red, red.  He fell into the trap.  He watched those damn Wishmaster movies.  He read “The Monkey’s Paw.”  He knew there would be a catch, but he also assumed he could be smarter.  He could be careful.

Now, his superior’s secretary was dead, and he owed his accounting firm 2.6 million dollars.  He considered going to the CEO, trying to explain where the money went and promising to pay it back, but Jerrick knew he could work overtime every day for the rest of his life and not pay off that debt.  Not at his salary.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d realized where the money came from before he spent so much of it.  He hadn’t expected the djinn to be able to transfer money from one bank account to another.  What was he expecting?  That some long-lost rich relative would die and leave him a boatload of money?  Sort of.  Okay, yes.  But that didn’t happen.  And then there was Leisha.

All Jerrick wanted was for her to notice him, to notice him as a woman notices a man and not just someone she saw every day at the office and spoke to because it was polite and expected.  What she became…Jerrick blinked back tears as he remembered those first few nights together.  Those nights turned into weekends, and then suddenly Leisha wouldn’t leave.  She didn’t want Jerrick to leave, not even to go to work.  He took a few vacation days, a sort of dating honeymoon, and by the end of it, his entire body hurt from bites, bruises, and overuse.

Jerrick wiped away the tear that slipped down his cheek.  Until he made his stupid wish, she was a lovely woman.  Now, she was six feet under, after having thrown herself off the top of his condo building.

Jerrick knew better than to try to fix dead.  He couldn’t take back what happened to Leisha, and he would bear that mark on his soul for the rest of his life.  Which wouldn’t be much longer if he didn’t figure out what to do about the missing money.  He couldn’t hide that much longer, and he didn’t think he’d survive long in a federal penitentiary.

He already tried bargaining with the djinn.  “Put the money back!”  He screamed that sentence again and again, but what was spent could not be unspent.  Besides, didn’t his mother love her new house?  She deserved it, after raising five kids on her own.  Even so, Jerrick proved, once again, that you can’t get something for nothing.

He ran his damp fingers over the keys of the laptop.  With a deep frown on his face, he typed Ctrl+Shift+G.  The scent of the inferno filled his nostrils.  The smoke stung his eyes for a moment before it swirled into a column and produced the djinn.

“How may I be of service?” it asked.

“I don’t know.”  Jerrick looked into its strange black-on-black eyes.  “How do I fix this?”  He gestured at the screen then spread his arms wide.

“It is not my place to advise, only to grant what your heart desires.”

“Yeah, and how many lives have you ruined granting wishes?”

The djinn tilted its head in consideration.  “None.  No life is beyond repair.”

Jerrick laughed bitterly at that.  “Right.  I brought all this on myself.  I suppose you’re going to tell me that you have no control over how the wishes are granted.  Like there’s some sick, twisted god in control of it all, and you’re just the messenger.”  When the djinn gave no reply, Jerrick squared his shoulders.  “Well, you can tell whoever is in charge that my heart’s desire if for someone to fix this!  Fix the money.  Fix Leisha!”  Jerrick’s face crumpled, and he pressed his hands to his eyes.  “She didn’t have to die.”

“No, she didn’t,” the djinn said.  “Very well.”

****

Jerrick jerked.  The movement dragged his steering wheel sharply to the left and sent his car swerving into oncoming traffic.  Belching curses, he yanked hard in the other direction, overcorrecting, but managing to get the car going straight and in the proper lane.

How…what?  He couldn’t think.  Hadn’t he just been in his empty living room, arguing with a djinn?  He wasn’t anymore.  From the looks of things, he was on the expressway, somewhere between the exit for work and the exit for home.

He let out a breath, eased back into the seat.  Something dark in the passenger seat caught his attention, and he glanced that way.  Then, he took a longer look.  There it was: the laptop.  It sat there, the receipt taped to the case.  But that meant…that meant it was August, three months before he sat in his condo and demanded the djinn make things right.

Well, things are right now, Jerrick thought.  I can’t return it, but I won’t use it.  I won’t even turn it on.  “Yeah,” he said aloud.  He nodded in agreement with himself.  He took the exit for home with a renewed sense of hope.  He drove past the corner gas station, the old falling down houses.  Sure, he’d be back in his crappy apartment in one of the worst parts of town, but he would have his old life back.  “Yeah, you sneaky sonofabitch.  Won’t get me this time.”  He grinned down at the laptop, and the laptop was the last thing he saw.

****

When the cops interviewed Muriel Shipp, she told them it was the oddest thing.  She hadn’t heard a horn blow.  The lights hadn’t flashed, and the guardrails hadn’t come down.  But sure as there was wreckage all over her lawn, the train blew through and smashed that poor man and his car to nothing.

Long after everyone – police, media, nosy neighbors – left, Muriel went out into the yard.  There was debris everywhere, and she wondered who she was going to get to come clean up the mess.  Couldn’t count on her no-good grandkids to do it.  Well, she was old, but she could do a few things.  She went around with a garbage bag, praying to God that she didn’t find any parts of the man.  She was pretty sure the coroner took all they could of him.  What a way to go.

Muriel was at the edge of the yard when her foot rapped against something.  Begrudging her hip, she bent down and picked up a flat, black object.  She lifted a pair of half-moon readers to peer at it.  Why, it was one of those computer things.  Muriel knew this one must have come from the man’s car, but there wasn’t a scratch on it.  She had no use for it, but the things were worth a pretty penny.

Muriel made her way back inside her house and slipped the laptop into a plastic grocery bag.  She’d take the bus into the city tomorrow.  She knew just the place to take it to get the best price with no questions asked.

Peppered

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Zombie apocalypse. I wander around my parents’ neighborhood – down in the part of the loop where their house is – carrying a bloodstained baseball bat. I am a survivor. 

Fluffy is with me, as are a few other men. We cleared the area of zombies, but they are so widespread, so pervasive, we are never safe anywhere for long. We know of a checkpoint nearby, and all but one of the men decide to drive one of the trucks that way in hopes of finding out what is happening.

The man and I stand by my parents’ mailbox. The sky is gray, darkening as night approaches. A car comes up the drive from the neighbor’s house, and a woman and a 6 year old child get out of it. She waves an automatic rifle and a radio.

“It doesn’t look good,” she says. “I hope they reach the outpost soon. From what I’ve heard, this area is so overpopulated. They think the only way to neutralize the situation is to nuke it. I just hope they come get us, or at least give us a chance to clear the radius.”

It’s dusk now, and the man built a fire down by the hardwoods that begin the woods along the edge of my parents’ yard. I stand at the top of the yard, scanning the road, scanning how the patchy grass and moss slope at first sharply and then gently down, down to the campsite.

The child is playing, running. His mother isn’t paying attention, and he picks up the rifle. The man tells him not to touch it, and the child drops it. The safety isn’t on.

Bullets, rapid, everywhere. She’s running to the child. They are screaming, screaming as their bodies are mutilated. I throw up my arm, as if that can protect me. Dirt, twigs, bits of moss pepper my legs, and when the pop-pop-pop stops, they are dead. Dead. Shredded, empty flesh bags face down in the leaves near the fire.

The man steps out from behind an oak he used as a shield. He looks at me. “My God.” In the firelight, I see his Adam’s apple bob. Then, I hear the moaning.

“I don’t want to die,” I say. “I don’t want to be undead.”

Then, I awoke.

Waiting…a different time.

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During the hours that I sat in the waiting room for Oncology, I studied dream interpretation. I bought several books on the subject, and while the doctors radiated my mother, I read about symbolism. The waiting room was large, so large that I could sit alone and never worry that anyone would need to sit next to me. I always sat in the section away from the TV and close to the refreshment center. I kept to myself and spoke to no one. I just read until the nurse called me to go out and pull the car around for my mother.

One Thursday, a woman sat next to me, which forced me stop reading and acknowledge her. She smiled and pointed to my book.  “Dream interpretation,” she said. “Sounds neat.”

“It can be,” I said.

We introduced ourselves and began a lengthy conversation on the symbolism of colors and numbers.

After talking for about ten minutes, she told me that she moved her father in with her family so she could take care of him, her husband, and her three kids. Bone cancer. Even now, I still wince at the thought of it. Not as bad as pancreatic, liver, or colon cancers but bad, very hard to treat, usually fatal. He was to the point where he had to wear a neck brace all the time. It was the first time that I was ever thankful for the type of cancer my mother had.

For the next week, she brought her father at the same time I brought my mother, and we talked about dreams and cancer. I feel a bit ashamed that I can’t remember her name, especially since I remember her dreams. They were normal dreams about every day sorts of things with the exception that she was always dragging a heavy black garbage bag. About the time he reached the point where he could no longer care for himself, her father began throwing all his trash down the ravine behind his house. The hillside was strewn with black garbage bags of trash, and this woman and her husband had to clean it all up before they could sell the house. She was angry and burdened, and those feelings made her feel guilty. After talking about it, she felt better and joked that I ought to charge her for my time.

Near the end of that week, her father’s white count was too low for him to receive more treatments. After that, I never saw her again, but one of the nurses, who overheard our conversations, commented to me that I was a sweet girl for talking to her.  Her father’s prognosis was poor, and I had likely eased her guilt about the situation.

Of the meeting, my mother said, “God works in mysterious ways.”

I replied, “Of course He does. If He didn’t, we would all understand everything, and there would be no cancer.”

“You know I believe that everything happens for a reason,” she said.

“Yeah, well, why do you think you got cancer?”

She shrugged. “Maybe to bring you and your father closer together.”

“That’s fucked up,” I said, to which she snapped at me for cursing. “I think you got cancer because you grew up in a city before there was any regulation on what toxins industries to pump into the air, and you went to college in a town where the morning air was so filled with chemicals it was yellow.”

“And I didn’t wear sunscreen like I should,” she added. “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes things just break.”

So I thought, Even God answers his children’s questions with, “Because.” It’s not an answer at all, so why bother asking?

Predator

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He considered himself no different from any other animal that finds joy in toying with its prey before delivering it unto Death. He used only the weapons nature gave him, and he didn’t always eat what he killed. He considered most of it practice, a honing of skills and body.

He watched an episode of Blue Planet that showed a pod of killer whales stalking a blue whale and its pup, taunting the mother, nipping at the babe. When the pup was exhausted, they toyed with the mother until she could no longer defend her offspring. The orcas circled and jabbed, like a pack of boxers, and when they finally separated mother and child, they killed the pup but ate only its cheek meat – the choicest cut, so to speak. After the orcas left, the mother whale swam around the pup for hours, nudging it.

The unspoken questions were obvious. Were the orcas evil? Did the blue whale love her pup?  He knew that such questions had no meaning in nature. He wondered where humans got off thinking they were evil or just or loving. Just because they believed they had souls, because they thought themselves civilized with advanced language skills, they were somehow better and accountable to someone’s notion of moral standards. Ants were civilized, and they sure as hell didn’t have ethics. Mounds often went to war with one another. Yes, he knew it was bullshit.

When he killed, it was because it was in his nature because he was of nature and not bound by a fabricated sense of right and wrong. When he killed his own kind, it was no different than the male dolphin, orangutan, or lion that slaughtered his competitors’ offspring and mated with as many females as possible to increase the odds of leaving a significant genetic footprint amongst the species.  What he did was normal, and those who said differently were kidding themselves.

The Bride

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Picture her, a mixture of Vivian Leigh and Lynda Carter, with skin like cream, large, thickly lashed eyes, and full lips.  Sculpted into a spiraling and curling work of art, her hair rivals the most intricate of powdered wigs, but it is dark, the color of richly brewed coffee.  In the dream, I am living inside her skin.

Her gown is white, tier upon tier of antique lace, which rises high, encircling her delicate throat.  At the center, she has pinned a cameo featuring the three muses.  The sleeves, bodice, and skirt overlay are a pale blue silk with a faint sheen, and it all drapes over a hoop skirt and tulle petticoats.  Under all the fabric, her body is bare.  She wears three-inch, black button-closed boots.

She sweats in the Caribbean summer heat, irritated that her fiancé wanted to have a Victorian themed wedding in a tropical setting.  The ceremony and reception are over, and she waits in the shade of a building awning, waving a lace fan at her painted face, and praying her new husband hurries so they can adjourn to the honeymoon suite.  She glances down at her ring, a fat hunk of emerald that matches her eyes.  She likes the ring, diamonds being overrated and over-priced.  The groom arrives, but she pays him little mind other than to take his offered arm.

She looks out across the lagoon.  There stands the collection of bamboo and grass huts that make up the honeymoon suite.  To get to it from the shore, she must cross a plank and rope bridge.  Her feet hurt.  Tired and hot, all she can think is to get in the shade and cool of the hut and get out of the dress.

When her husband turns back to speak with straggling well-wishers, she releases him and starts across the bridge.  She makes it halfway.  A strong wind sweeps across the lagoon, and she stumbles.  Her ankle twists, and she falls against the rope railing.  In a comical way, she flips feet-over-head over the railing and takes a nosedive into the lagoon.

Here, the lagoon is already twenty or so feet deep.  She stares up at the surface of the water as she sinks.  She tugs at the dress, tries to wrench off the boots, but still sinks until she finally touches the bottom.  The bottom is smooth, almost like a concrete swimming pool but made of sugar-white sand.  She tries to push off the bottom and digs her fingers into the water as if it could be used as a rope to pull herself to the surface, to blessed air.

When her lungs fail and her blinding vision of the surface above goes dim, I pop out of her body and shoot into the sky.  My spirit spreads until I am the sky.  I am the clouds, the birds, the very sun.  I watch as the people scream, and the young husband, realizing what has happened, dives into the water.  I smile down at them, happy to be free of the dress.

   

Dressing

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In the barn, the deer hung on something that resembled a sadistic coat hanger.  The ends were sharpened spikes that pierced through the skin between the small bones in the deer’s lower hind legs.  The hook was a loop of metal hung on a fat tack, resembling a small railroad spike, in a beam of the barn.  The deer dangled, spread-eagle, over the vegetable tray from the beer fridge.

He’d killed it only two hours before and field dressed it, so it only smelled of blood and wild animal.  Gamey.  He’d let the dogs in to sniff around, and when he set the body to swinging, the lab licked up the dribbled blood while the rat terrier went berserk.  It leapt at the deer’s face, snapping until it latched onto the tongue.  The dog jerked its head from side-to-side, wrenching the deer’s neck in a blur of motion.

“That’s enough now,” he said to the terrier and herded both dogs outside so he could butcher the deer.  “We start with the saw.”

He lifted a rusted wood saw and put the blade against the silvery-brown fur of the deer.  “Right here, just above what we’ll call his elbow,” he explained as the saw slid through fur and skin, through tendons and ligaments and the joint.  For a moment, he held the lower right front leg by its ankle.  With a casual flick of the wrist, he flung it outside the barn, with the result of excited, shrill barks from the dogs.  He repeated the process on the other front leg.

When he’d made all the use he needed of the saw, he set it aside and picked up the fillet knife.  After poking a small hole in the skin above the shoulder, he slid the knife between meat and skin, being careful to cut off the silver skin as well.  “You gotta get it all.  It’s awful eatin’,” he said.  “Chewy as hell.”

The butchering went in stages – separating skin from meat and meat from bone.  All the while, the steady drip, drip, drip of blood and juices giving rhythm to his work and the twitching of the body as friction countered the knife blade.  When he finished, he had filled a large Tupperware tub with meat, and the deer was now a stripped skeleton with only its head intact.

“It’s not pretty enough to mount,” he complained, grabbing the antlers and staring the deer in its filmy eyes.  “Here,” he gestured to the tub, “take that on up to the house and let the dogs back in for just a minute.  I’ll let ’em play.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, picking up the tub.

I heard the yips of the terrier and deep-chested growls of the lab mix in with his laughter as I crossed the yard to the back door of the house.  In my hands, the meat was still slightly warm.

Tutor

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Sitting on the concrete bench in front of the building, I smoked between classes.  I liked the spot, a kind of perch atop the wide stairs that overlooked sidewalks, flowerbeds, oaks planted after the campus burned during the Civil War, and the crosswalk.  Despite a flashing neon yellow sign that read, “Stop for pedestrians,” someone got hit there every semester.  Stupid kids, driving like stupid kids, and hitting other stupid kids like they were squirrels.

I hogged the bench.  I had my feet up, my knees tucked up to my chest.  I liked sitting that way – the way they made us hunker during tornado drills or actual tornados when I was in elementary school.  With my right arm wrapped around my knees, I clasped my left arm just above the elbow.  With methodical timing, I bent my elbow, took a drag, and straightened my arm.  Then, I watched as the smoke wafted out of my gaping mouth or streamed from my nostrils.  I’m a dragon, I thought childishly and smiled at myself.

“Hey,” someone called to me.

Like a Viewmaster, I blinked to switch from what I thought to the real world.  I looked two steps down to find the guy-in-the-Pantera-T-shirt.  He always wore one with faded, black jeans, black Chuck Taylor’s, and three wallet chains.  This day, he wasn’t wearing his dog collar bracelet or armor ring.

“What’s up?” I asked.

He tossed his backpack at the base of the bench and took out his pack of cigarettes.  Since he meant to sit, and I felt polite, I swiveled, letting my feet drop, and sat on the bench normally.  He patted himself, and knowing what he sought, I offered him my lighter, keeping my hand out as a reminder for him to return it.  He did and sat beside me.

“How’re you doing in this class?”  He waved his cigarette at the building.

Simultaneously, we turned our heads and blew smoke over the azaleas instead of in each other’s faces while never breaking eye contact.  I rubbed my cigarette under the bench to put it out, not minding when bits of hot tobacco stung my hand, and set the butt on the bench between us.

“Good,” I said in answer to his question.

“I thought so.  Could you maybe help me?  I mean, I can pay you, some.”

“Yeah, I’m real busy.”  After a glance at my watch, I knew I had time for one more, so I bent sideways to fish out a smoke from the front pocket of my backpack.  Pantera bumped my arm and offered me one of his.

When I took it, he said, “Yeah, I figured, but look, I’m serious.  I have to pass this class.”

I lit the cigarette and took a drag, exhaled and took another, making him stew just a bit.  “How about Saturday?  There isn’t a game.”

He winced.  “I can’t do it then.  My friends and I…we build rockets.”

My eyebrows darted up at that.  “Really?  Like fifth grade science class?”

“Well, not dinky ones.”

“You build rockets,” I mused and thought of the little engines that looked like rolls of coins with tampon strings.  “Do they have parachutes?”

He laughed and looked off into the bushes.  “Yeah, and one weekend, a buddy of mine had his dad down and he helped us make napalm.”

I choked.  “That’s just…not normal.”  Then, I laughed because anyone who spoke to me for more than five minutes knew I wasn’t normal.  “Yeah, okay Pantera-Napalm-Guy.  When are you free?”

We made plans to meet at the library on Thursday afternoon, and when he finished his smoke, I said I’d meet him in class.  I sat a bit longer, wondering how much money the University spent on grounds upkeep.  The azaleas were quite beautiful, cotton candy pink.

When I stood, my bottom was numb from sitting for so long on that hard, concrete bench.  Nintendo butt, my brother called it, like Nintendo thumb.  Except now, there was Sega thumb, X-Box thumb, and Playstation thumb.  I wondered if anyone had ever used a Playstation dual-shock controller as a vibrator.

I pinched my cigarette just above the filter and rolled it between my fingers.  When the hot rock fell out, I scrubbed it across the concrete with my boot and flicked the unburned tobacco free.  I always left that little bit because I hated the taste of burnt filter.

After buying a coffee from the street vendor, I pitched my butts into the trash and headed back in the building to class.

Happy Pawn 1: The Microwave

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Jeanette sighed as she put the hamster into the microwave.  She was great at handling kids, but she wasn’t good with pets.  She warned Kevin of this, but he insisted she was the only person he trusted enough to hamster-sit.  Poor Mr. Nibbles never had a chance.

Jeanette pressed the reheat button followed by the preset selection for pizza.  The turntable began its slow spin, and the magnetron hummed.  “All right, you blob of fuzz,” she muttered.

After only two seconds, the hamster’s back legs began to twitch.  By the time the microwave dinged to signal the “food” was ready, the hamster was back on his feet with his tiny nose wiggling.  Jeanette opened the door and removed Mr. Nibbles.

“There.”  She ran her thumb down the rodent’s back.  “No one has to know you were dead but me.”

Jeanette slipped Mr. Nibbles into his cage.  As she watched, the hamster stretched his neck up and suckled at the water bottle.  “Does death make you thirsty?” she asked of him.  “Hmm, maybe it’s the radiation.”

Jeanette moved the cage to the sliver of mattress that passed for her dorm room bed.  Three more hours.  If Mr. Nibbles could make it that long, Kevin’s parents would come get him, and she would be in the clear.

Jeanette sat next to the cage and smirked at the LG microwave.  She agreed that life was good, but maybe the company took their slogan a little too seriously.  Of course, Jeanette didn’t believe that anyone else had a microwave that could reanimate the dead when set to reheat pizza.  So many people ate pizza and reheated pizza that she surely would’ve heard about it by now or at least seen it posted on Facebook. No, Jeanette was certain that she was the only person who owned such a microwave.

The first time she selected reheat pizza and the anchovies gasped, flipped, and flopped right there on the cheese, she puked in her tiny wastebasket and then ran to Happy Pawn.  The old guy who owned the place listened to her ravings with a bland look on his face.  Once she ran out of steam, he said, “All sales are final.  It’s your microwave now.  If there’s something wrong with it, it’s your problem.”  At his shrewd look, Jeanette swallowed down the bile in her throat and asked, “Well, uh, do you have the owner’s manual?”  He did not.

Until fate decided it was time for Mr. Nibbles to go to Hamster Heaven, Jeanette had avoided the reheat pizza setting.  She wrinkled her nose, thinking she used the microwave to nuke a frozen burrito only an hour before using it to resurrect Kevin’s furry friend.  Well, she sanitized it.

The microwave wasn’t the only thing Jeanette purchased from Happy Pawn, but as far as she knew, her portable radio and mini-fridge didn’t have super powers.  They were normal, crappy hand-me-downs.  And that old man…it was almost as if he knew the microwave wasn’t just a microwave.  Jeanette went back to the shop several times, but any time she brought up the microwave, he reminded her of store policy and then ignored her.

Jeanette watched Mr. Nibbles climb onto his wheel and begin a brisk workout.  “Don’t over-do it,” she warned.  “I don’t want to have to put you back in there.”

While she waited for Kevin’s parents to come and reclaim the hamster, Jeanette sat at her desk and reviewed her notes for a History exam.  What kind of professor gives a test the Monday after spring break? thought Jeanette.  The asshole kind, that’s who.

An hour later, Adrian returned, clothes and hair in the usual disarray, more make-up under her eyes than on them.  “Have a good weekend?” Jeanette teased her roommate.

Adrian grumbled something unintelligible and then said, “Can I have something?”

Jeanette waved a hand at the mini-fridge.  “Sure, if you think you can hold anything down.”

Adrian jerked open the fridge, rifled around inside it, and came away with half of a steak sandwich.

“I guess you feel like challenging yourself,” Jeanette said.

Adrian put the sandwich in the microwave and punched a few buttons.  While the sandwich heated, she flopped onto her bed and began the arduous task of removing her boots.  When the microwave dinged, she dragged herself over to it, opened the door, and screamed.

The sandwich belched chunks of white American cheese, green peppers, and reanimated beef.  Adrian screamed again, tripped over her own feet, and sat down hard.

Jeanette swiveled in her chair in time to watch Adrian backpedal away from the microwave.  “Ah hell.  You used ‘reheat pizza.’”

Jeanette stood, intending to put the poor sandwich out of its misery, but Adrian’s adrenaline made her act faster.  She scrambled up from the floor, kicked the microwave door shut, and snatched the machine from the rickety TV cabinet Jeanette used as a pantry.  A wild yank pulled the plug free from the outlet, and with two more steps, Adrian hurled the microwave and its contents out their fourth floor window.

“Holy crap!”  Jeanette dropped her book and hurried over to join Adrian.  “My microwave.”

The girls stood at the window and looked down on the wreckage of plastic and metal.  The sandwich, having been cushioned inside the microwave, survived the fall and now made a last ditch effort to escape.  Adrian gripped Jeanette’s arm as the steak crawled out of the bun and across the concrete sidewalk.

“It’s…it’s alive,” Adrian said.

“Yeah.”

“What should we—”

Abruptly, Adrian stopped speaking, for a crow chose that moment to swoop down and deliver a deathblow to the steak.  The bird cawed twice, skewered some of the meat, and flew up into the oak tree just outside the girls’ window.  It tilted its head and then pecked at its kill.

Adrian groaned.  “I’m going to be sick.”

“Yeah,” Jeanette agreed.

****

The girls did not speak of the microwave or the sandwich.  The next year, they moved to different dorms and got new roommates.  Eventually, Jeanette went back to Happy Pawn and got another crappy hand-me-down microwave – one that barely heated food, much less reanimated it.  The old man never asked what happened to the other microwave, and she never mentioned it to him again.

The year after that, Mr. Nibbles died of old age.