Fred Aiken Writing

Category: Short Story

November 16, 2022

A Toothbrush Named…

I named my toothbrush Steve. I don’t find that weird. 

    I’ve had Steve since I was four years old.

    My free-spirited, nomadic, artistic, superlative aunt that I only saw twice, maybe thrice, a year gave me Steve. She told me that it was made from materials in outer space, that it was the type of toothbrush an astronaut would use in one of those big space shuttles that hurtled across the blank, dark canvass of the night.

    When I turned seven, my parents wanted to get me a new toothbrush. I told them Steve was fine. Steve was holding up and cleaned my teeth just fine.

    They thought it was worrisome that I named my toothbrush and personified it, but they didn’t do anything about it. I suppose, looking back on it, they possibly felt bad for me. I was a bit of a sad, shy child that didn’t make friends all too well. If therapy were a part of their vernacular, then perhaps they would have taken me.

    But alas, I grew up with Steve, unperturbed by the outside world.

    At thirteen, I learned that I would need to change the bristles of Steve every couple of years if I wanted Steve to last throughout my life. Just as Steve cleans and maintains the health of my teeth, so do I clean and maintain the integrity of Steve.

    There is very little that I’ve ever gotten attached to. Both people and things.

    When my parents died in a car accident when I was nineteen, Steve was there to console me.

    When I kissed a girl for the first time, Steve was there to clean and prepare me for my oral debauchery. And he was there to clean the excessive amount of vanilla honey chapstick awkwardly splattered across my gums.

    From college to my first job to my first apartment to my second apartment to my move across the country, to my occasional business/pleasure/leisure trips out of state and country, Steve accompanies me to everything.

    I don’t talk to Steve. I feel like I should probably say that so you don’t get the wrong impression.

    I’m comforted in knowing that my toothbrush, Steve, is with me at all times, but it’s not like I stay up all night gossiping to Steve. I know Steve’s an inanimate object.

    For that reason, I don’t feel like this intervention is called for. I’m a perfectly well-adjusted and normal human person. 

    I hold down a job.

    I maintain a monogamous relationship with a partner I adore. I have three kids. A cat. The occasional turtle.

    I pay my taxes.

    I don’t feel like I’m getting defensive. Just because my tone is changing, that doesn’t mean I’m defensive. I’m passionate, I suppose you could say.

    I feel judged, if I’m being perfectly honest. If anything, I don’t like the tone that everyone else is taking.

    Don’t give me an ultimatum. I hate ultimatums. I don’t respond well to them, and I feel like no matter the outcome either one or the other, or both of us, won’t like the response and consequences of any ultimatums. 

    If that’s how you feel, then yeah, I think it’s best if Steve and I leave.

November 12, 2022

Suicide Mirage

They, whoever they are, as my mom would say, as my English teacher would agree with, as my professor would flunk me for, said that I could meet someone and find happiness, as it were. A kind of happiness. A relevant function of happiness in some version of the word loosely defined, stretched out, and let out to dry in blistering heat on a neighbor’s fence filled with splinters, bad dreams, and an unimaginable about of blood from all the dead birds that kept flying into the fence to kill themselves.

I wonder if suicide is a human invention. Can animals commit suicide?

Some animal in the form of a human centipede coming off a meth high while dancing at a discotheque where silicon gets passed out to all the guests like Aspirin came up with the idea for a dating site for depressed people. A dating site for suicidal people. A dating site where dreams went to die, never lived, or gave up before trying.

I met Mark on a site called Suicide Mirage. 

When we met he said that his name was Mark, but lower case. I didn’t know what that meant, so I just decided to call him Mark to be polite.

Mark and I hit it off, or at least as much as two depressed, suicidal people could hit it off. I think we both suffered from a bit of narcissistic pessimism that manifested in the form of low self-esteem and a wide range of personality disorders stemming from talking too much about ourselves.

Mark owned nothing but flannel. He said he grew up watching Home Improvement and he really liked the character Al. He also liked some character named Wilson. But to be honest, he could have been naming off any number of the characters on the show and I would not have known because I never watched the show.

My parents didn’t like me watching television. They sought to deprive me of those sorts of entertainment. They thought it built character. Or maybe that it sustained character.

Maybe they just didn’t want me to have fun. Maybe they knew something I didn’t, but never explained that something all too well. 

Mark and I realized very quickly, as the relationship blossomed, that we didn’t need to put all that much effort into it. We were two depressed people. Seeking love. No. Seeking companionship. Maybe? We were two people that wanted to commit suicide and thought it would be best to get hitched so it didn’t seem too depressing. We didn’t need to have all that much in common. We didn’t need to find each other attractive.

I did, though, you know, find Mark attractive. He had this depressing magnetism about him. Something about his sullen eyes, scars all over his body from cutting himself, and a general sense of nihilism that he carried with him that made him so sexy.

I also liked the fact that I could talk to him hours on end about all the things that made me depressed and he never tried to fix me, never tried to tell me my ideas about suicide were wrong or wanted me to back out.

Though somehow, finding Mark attractive made it a little more difficult to kill myself at the end of the day.

Maybe if I was in an unhappy marriage it would make killing myself all the more easier. 

Though give it time, and somehow I think our romance would have arrived at a depressing destination.

We spent our honeymoon drafting our note. After saying goodbye to one another one last time, we scarfed down as many sleeping pills as we could muster and drifted off to sleep together.

November 10, 2022

Look at All Those Used Cars

I first met Frankie while shopping for a new used Volkswagen. 

I had reached a dilemma with the car that I had at the time in which I no longer liked it. I hated it. I guess I wanted a change, and looked for that change in the form of a different used car.

Frankie was the used car salesperson.

I explained to her what I was looking for.

“That sounds like what you already have.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right. But I still need a change.”

“Maybe it’s not the car that you’re looking to change.”

It took me a moment to mull her implication over a bit. For one reason, I was and am an incredibly slow, dim-witted person. I truly am. But also because I suppose I’ve always been a bit squeamish when it comes to change.

It took me four years to work up the courage to go into a dealership to look at different cars, and even still I only looked at cars that were similar or almost the same as the car I had. A minor difference, like a small ding on the passenger’s side front panel bumper rather than the left would have been sufficient. 

Frankie seemed to be implying that I needed to leave my wife.

Frankie seemed to be implying that I needed to quit my job.

Frankie might have even been suggesting moving into the wilderness and writing some psychotic memoir, or Harry Potter fan fiction, or a manifesto about the plebians’ internal struggle with power structure only being resolved through violence. Lots and lots of violence.

Imagine me, a guy that’s never strayed so far as to even getting a parking ticket, an F on a paper or test, or ever even had his taxes audited, going out and upending my life because of something a used car salesperson said.

Maybe she was better than I thought.

I imagine no matter what sort of change I tried to go through I would need a different car. I imagine, at least.

After some thirty or forty minutes staring off into space at the sea of used cars strewn all across the lot, Frankie checked on me.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I think I’m ready to buy a used car.”

“Maybe we should start with why you’re looking for a different car and go from there?”

“I just like auto loans. I enjoy paying someone or some entity, like a bank or financial institution, back for having to borrow their money. I guess I’ve always sort of enjoyed the risk, you know. Borrowing money for a 2 ton death trap that statistically could kill me at any moment, but it’s being paid for using some sucker bank’s dime. And if I die, they’re done for. The loan will never get paid back.”

“I think they might just take the car back to recoup the cost.”

“They can’t do that.”

“Maybe we should just start you off with having an affair first and see where that takes you.”

And with that, Frankie and I went into the nearest used Volkswagen and started making out like sweaty teenagers discovering each others’ glands for the first time.