Arthur Is Dead

[JEdgarGroover]

Arthur approached the body. It had transformed yet again while he was lost in whistful thoughts of Cohen brothers feature films, chiefly Barton fink -- the part where John Goodman first meets John Turturo -- you know...all the tension and the bad wallpaper and all. Arthur managed to refocus on the body. Apparently it had lept about a week or so ahead in time and was purple, bloated and swollen. The smell of decay danced about the room like some strange ugly ballerina who had grown to resemble a surly, drunken, unwashed Jacko Pastorias...but at the end of his career, not really during the Weather Report heyday or even when he was working with Pat Metheny...but in an olfactory kind of way. Y'know?

Arthur inhaled the smell like a hungry cocker spaniel and was rewarded with a round of dry heaves that would make even a bunch of red shirt freshman football fraternity pledges look up from the old porcelan God and pause in awe-filled and awful reflection of the enormous power of both clear and brown liquors. "That's nasty. " he exclaimed when he had finally regained control of himself and wiped a strand of bile away from his quivering, glistening, unshaven chin.

He lifted up his shirtneck so that it covered his nose and mouth and sized the job up through red and watering eyes. He took old Ginsu by the throat and started in on the gruesome task. At first it went slow and he had to stop several times to wait out violent fits of dry heaves. He sawed a finger off and had a tough time getting through the bone. He was too close to the knuckle. But after some time he grew more used to the stench. "This must be how those guys that work in the sewers do it." he though. Soon he was cheerfully attending to his work. Fingers came off like the cheap hemp summer dress of a 14 year old Mexican whore. And in the same respect he regarded them tenderly. Were they not his dead, bloated, dismembered, bloated fingers? Were they not the same genetic material from which his life had sprung, like one of those prehistoric fish-with-legs things that first dared to leave the ocean and walk on land? He paused and sighed wistfully as he sawed off arms, ears, dissected spine, tissue, nerve, genetalia, internal organs. He held his heart lovingly in his hands for a moment and then threw it into a pile with the rest of him.

The work went faster than he thought it would. How could the neighbors not smell the horrible, putrid stench of decay that, even now that he had grown used to it, made his head light and produced flashing blue, red, yellow and green lights before his weary, hungover eyes?

When the body was finally fully dismembered he gathered the pile up into hefty bags and dragged them into the kitchen. One by one he began stuffing each part down the disposal which hummed and gurgled and choked like a 300 pound aging female nightclub jazz standards singer after a fifth of sloe gin and a joint. Like the vivisection the work went slow at first but picked up to a steady churn after only a short while.

Arthur looked to the window and noticed that it was dark again. Night already? He had hardly notice the passage of the day and had not been hungry. The smell was the ultimate appetite supressant, one that did not cause lack of sleep, anxiety, jitters or the shakes. Tommy LaSorta would be green with envy and illness if he only knew. But no one must know! This was Arthur's secret task. His shame. Like when he was six and his mother had caught him playing with his little Mr. Mushroomhead. She had torn every page out of her copy of the initial findings of Masters & Johnsons and with every page applied a deft papercut to his genital region. And the thing with papercuts is that as innocent as they are they really hurt quite a lot. Disproportionately one might say. Just like little Arthur's heart did that day and every day after. Because mommy had said that he was a filthy little man. And that if she ever saw him touch it again that it would the Illiad next time and that no one really wanted to make Homer dirty like Arthur was dirty but she would do it if she had to because it was her duty as a mother to teach Arthur right from wrong. If Arthur shut his eyes he could still hear that stern, red faced, leather-skinned little Austrian immagrant woman say, "Eets because I luff you, mine klinke kindergeblachenfarbungderfenchelatnternkopfenschis sevolwagen*" But she said it with love.

And then it was done. The last finger was down the drain and Arthur sighed with relief and collapsed in a heap on the floor. And wasn't it about time? After all...not only was the sun just beginning to creep in through the edges of the drawn blinds but also because this particular scene has gone on quite long enough. Wasn't it time for Arthur to try to make some sense of this? Wasn't it time to hop in the old story arc elevator and say, "3rd Floor: Women's Undergarments, Electronics, Lap Steel Guitars, and the Candy Shoppe?" Wasn't it time that Arthur get out into the world -- one filled with well-developed charachters who were not at all just types but really dynamic, personable and deep individuals who seemed like you knew them better than that guy at the deli who serves you burnt coffee for fifty cents every morning? Wasn't it time for some plot development.

"Yes." Arthur murmured. "Yes, I believe it's time." And with that he fell asleep on the cold, cheap, yellowing ceramic kitchen floor. Amongst the cracked tiles, the flaking grout and the ruin that Arthur had come to call his life he twitched like a (as aforementioned) cocker spaniel might while dreaming of chasing squirrells on a sunny day.

But it was not of squirrells and sunsine that Arthur dreamt...


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* Please note the witty use of this zefrank.com reference