Ever since my wife moved in with my boss, I had been planning on revenge\u2014gun, knife, poison. None of them are attainable for a guy like me. I\u2019m desperate, and desperation made me hungry. Last night, I sat on the deck and stared at the sky. All I wanted was a juicy cheeseburger and a bottle of cold beer. Just then I noticed a tiny freckle floating around the lower east side of the Moon. It didn\u2019t look like a star or a plane. I kept staring, not letting my eyes cross. The freckle transformed from a sesame seed to a pea, soon from a pea to a potato. It grew larger and larger until a circular hut materialized out of the black sky. I looked down, only to see my feet dangling in the air\u2014I had levitated into outer space.<\/p>\n
I kept rising until I was right in front of the hut. It had a roof shaped like a giant burger, and a neon sign blinking Piggie\u2019s. There was only one bar table and behind the table stood a 500 lb boar. He had an enormous head, black spiky hair, a long snout, and white husks curved up like some kind of mustache. He glanced at me and said, \u201cBurger and beer?\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat down on one of the stools, \u201cA slow night?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou missed the crowd.\u201d He pushed a can toward me.<\/p>\n
As I enjoyed the best drink I ever had, I saw a big black chamber attached to the bottom of the hut by a tube.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeptic tank,\u201d Piggie said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you pump it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you kidding?\u201d He nodded at the magnificent blue planet down there. \u201cJust dump it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean, you just give us a poop meteor?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRelax. Everybody does it, Space Station, shuttles. You won\u2019t even sneeze.\u201d<\/p>\n
I admitted I lost my appetite, meanwhile I\u2019d come up with a good idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you fly this hut, Piggie?\u201d My hands were trembling in excitement.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure, but I don\u2019t see why.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will give you one reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
A moment later, the hut silently descended and hovered above a swimming pool. Twenty feet below, my wife and my boss lay on the floating loungers drinking champagne. Piggie eyed the remote on the table. I pushed the bottom. There was a big splash, people jumping and jostling and yelling like fish struggling to get rid of a hook. Piggie narrowed his eyes, snout twitching like crazy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you laughing?” I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoars never laugh,\u201d he said. \u201cOur skin is too thick.”<\/p>\n
Later, he dropped me off at my place. Before he left, I asked him one more question, \u201cHow did you know I wanted a burger and beer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the only thing I sell,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I swore I saw a grin escaping the corner of his mouth. Soon the hut soared up and receded to a freckle. The sky was so beautiful and so far away. I missed the lucidity I found up there. It occurred to me that a guy needed to go to a place at an altitude of 200,000 miles to free up his mind. On Earth, I was numb, dumb, and forever hungry.<\/p>\n
Fuck gravity.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He was the new turkey at FreshCart this Thanksgiving season.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cYou need to mimic the bird,\u201d the manager told him in the interview .\u201cOf course,\u201d he laughed. \u201cshake, shake, wobble. How hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the costume he strutted, elbows flapping and hips wiggling. He did all the moves but he couldn\u2019t gobble gobble.<\/p>\n
The manager passed by with a box of special price flyers. \u201cJust do the damn song,\u201d the manager whispered in his ear. \u201cI thought you were an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was an actor. A good one, indeed. Every night he called his son and read stories to him in his Tim Allen voice. The five-year-old believed it was Buzz himself and begged his father to bring him to the set of Toy Story 5.\u00a0 His ex didn\u2019t correct this innocent mistake, partly because Tim Allen should be able to send a check to her each month. Late again, she texted him last week, I\u2019d reconsider the settlement. BTW, Johnny wants a new iPad for Christmas.<\/p>\n
All the big stars do this shit before they have a chance to shine, his agent told him. He didn\u2019t have any choice anyway. \u201cI have nothing,\u201d the agent said. \u201cUnless you want to try a Santa in the mall.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t know why it was so hard to take on this role.\u00a0 It must be the costume. The cheap fleece was puffy and hot. The styrofoam footwear slapped on the concrete like a duck’s feet. The feather was too red and the tail was too short. A little girl pointed to him, \u201cAngry bird!\u201d Her mother quickly strolled her away.<\/p>\n
Through the glass he saw the manager pick up the phone and frown. He almost could hear the complaints \u2014the golden brown turkey on the poster would\u2019ve attracted more customers than he did.<\/p>\n
Sweat trickled down his chest. His face was oily and sticky. He closed his eyes and inhaled. We do the gobble gobble, we do the turkey wobble, the rhythm played in his head.\u00a0In character, he spread his wings, only to knock down a wall of canned cranberries that were stacked outside the entrance. He stumbled and hit the ground, headpiece falling off.<\/p>\n
People gasped\u2014a giant headless turkey lay in the middle of the walkway, limbs spasming and a man\u2019s face poking out from the cleaved neck.<\/p>\n
He struggled to get to his feet, but the stuffed belly made him roll back and forth. Across the parking lot, he saw his son follow his mother walking toward a salon.<\/p>\n
He seized the headpiece and re-attached it back onto his neck. Before the manager ran out to haul him off, before his ex turned to the noise, and before little Johnny shrieked, he gobbled like a real turkey.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I stand on the platform, scroll my phone, and mind my own business. A blunt force hits my back and I fall down onto the track. I lie sprawled on the rail, ribs cracked, head booming from the impact, yet I already start thinking who shoved me onto a subway track.<\/p>\n
I think of the red-shirt guy who loitered around the entrance holding a board I\u2019M HUNGRY. I gave him my cream puffs. He sneered,\u00a0Bitch, you don\u2019t have any money?<\/p>\n
I think of my boss, a bodybuilder who owns two dozen different socks to match different weathers. He followed me into the ladies\u2019 room and asked me if I\u2019d like to come over to his house in East Hampton. His wife and kids would be out of town over the weekend.\u00a0For the sake of your health,\u00a0he said,\u00a0you don\u2019t have to work that hard.<\/p>\n
I also think of my nice neighbor. Every time we met in the elevator, he\u2019d ask me where my restaurant was, and how to DIY Kung Pao Chicken in his thirty-grand renovated kitchen, totally ignoring the fact that I wore business suits, Jimmy Choo heels, carried a laptop bag, and all that. You\u2019d think people should see \u201cCorporate Lawyer\u201d tagged on your forehead, think again.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0 think of the woman yelling You! You!, when I refused to let her cut in line at the bagel place; I think of the girls at Jackson Junior High, who covered their mouths and peered at me while I sat alone at a lunch table, mentally unraveling the red sweater my mother knitted for me until it returned into a ball of yarn; inevitably I think of my mother, who whipped me with the cello bow and then buried her face in her palms and wept.\u00a0I\u2019ll do better in the next competition,\u00a0I promised, tasting the salty tears in my mouth.<\/p>\n
I think of all the suspects, all the reasons. I would never think of a rat. Hell, the rodent is right in front of me, crawling across grimy beams and nipping a piece of burger wrapper. We glance at each other and neither would budge.<\/p>\n
I could do this forever if not for the yelling up from there. A man kneels on the platform and reaches out his arm to me, and a woman insanely jabs her finger at the tunnel and screams. The rail thrums under my body\u2014F train screeches into the station, headlight cutting the darkness like a sharp knife. I have three seconds to boost up, grab that guy\u2019s arm, and hoist myself back to safety. But I freeze solid, not because of the blinding light, not because of my fractured bones and concussion, not even because of the possibility that I\u2019m hypnotized by the rat or the other way around, mainly because, I have to think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ever since my wife moved in with my boss, I had been planning on revenge\u2014gun, knife, poison. None of them are attainable for a guy like me. I\u2019m desperate, and desperation made me hungry. All I wanted was a juicy cheeseburger and a bottle of cold beer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-ann-yuan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20236"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20706,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20236\/revisions\/20706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}