Amelia Gray - Gutshot - Stories

She crumpled the wax paper from her sandwich and stuffed it in her purse. “I appreciate that. I just think it’s too late.”

“You know you love Dave. You both deserve happiness.”

“He’s a good man,” she said. “I’m probably cursing myself. Hey, get a load of that monster on your face.”

Marcy hovered her hand over the pimple as if to shield it. “That’s my mom.”

JOYOUS NUPTIALS, said the pimple.

“Thanks a million,” said June.

The waiter refilled their water glasses and silently regarded the sandwich June had left on the tablecloth.

“She’s been here all day,” Marcy said, after he left.

“Check this out,” June said, leaning back in her chair. She lifted up her shirt a few inches to reveal a swollen spot on her belly. “It’s Eric,” she said. Her old boyfriend had been killed by a dog on a morning walk some years ago. “He’s telling me I shouldn’t do it.” She rubbed her stomach tenderly. “He won’t shut up. He talks all night sometimes. I don’t know why I don’t get him cut out of there.”

BECAUSE YOU RESPECT THE DEAD, Mom said. June shrugged.

The waiter returned. “May I take your crust?” he asked.

“Fuck off,” June said.

YOUR FRIEND IS RIGHT, Mom said later, in the car. SHE SHOULDN’T MARRY THAT MAN.

“She’s a little hung up on Eric, is all. She gets that way. I once had to tell some strangers in a movie theater that her husband died in a war.”

The pimple vibrated slightly and grew a small whitehead. ENERGY DOESN’T DIE, it said. TOO BAD FOR ALL OF YOU, RIGHT.

“Calm down,” she said, starting the car and cranking the air-conditioning.

COME ON, YOU’LL BE LATE FOR WORK.

She focused on her breathing. “I miss you,” she said. “I really do.”

I KNOW, BABY.

The redness eased slightly.

“I miss you so very much,” she said.

HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME.

* * *

June was a happy, if pale, bride, wincing at the effort of walking on her father’s arm. She wore a satin shift which had the unfortunate effect of playing up the swelling and giving her a sickly pregnant look. People whispered to one another as she passed them in the aisle.

The photographer’s assistant had tried to cover Marcy’s pimple with a concealer before the ceremony, but Marcy waved her off. It would shine as if it contained its own light.

The wedding party gathered to watch the first dance. Dave bowed to June and she took his outstretched hand. They danced to something slow, cheek to cheek. They made a handsome couple. Old men held their wives in the crowd. They got halfway through a slow turn when June fell.

The crowd reached for her, but nobody moved to break the circle they had made to watch the dance. Dave kneeled down to his bride, who was clutching her stomach, but she clawed at him and he reeled back, calling for a doctor. Her legs splayed like a doll. A pink stain was spreading across the silk of her gown over her stomach, darkening to red, drenching the fabric. She howled like a creature.

THAT POOR BOY, said the pimple. LET’S GET OUT OF HERE.

Marcy ran to her car and tore out of the lot, throwing her heels into the passenger seat. She thought of the desperate look on her friend’s face. Stopping at a diner on the way home, she walked in barefoot and ordered a milkshake, fries, a slice of peach pie, chicken tenders, and a patty melt. The food arrived all at once and she pressed every course to her cheek, grinding each in turn until, over dessert, she was asked to leave.

Christmas House is an interactive, inclusive holiday residence. It is home to a manger scene, a gift exchange, a holly-hanging sing-along, and standards of the Yuletide such as hot buttered rum and various nogs. Visitors to Christmas House are charmed to see such traditions carried out in the spirit Jesus Himself might have intended, had He been a businessman.

Christmas House is a truly participatory experience. If a guest wishes to behave as if he or she is the first in the world to discover the act of becoming profoundly drunk on warm nog, that is his or her right. If a cast member wishes to tear down the mistletoe and declare that no man will ever understand true sorrow, he or she should act on that motivation.

Christmas House is home to fifty-three poinsettias. One cast member’s sole duty is to distribute these poinsettias in an efficient manner while maintaining the spirit of Christmas. The cast member must bring together everyone he or she knows, apologize for being a burden, and award guests one poinsettia each. After their departure, the cast member must remove the leaves of the single remaining poinsettia, place them in a blender with warm water, and create a vitamin-rich paste for his or her face and neck.

Christmas House never sleeps. The first shift runs from dawn until dusk, the second from dusk until dawn. Cast members must remain within Christmas House during business hours. Cots and beds can be found upstairs. Infants employed by Christmas House may sleep during their manger shifts.

Christmas House sits at the far end of a firing range. At times, a bullet may shatter a window and nestle into an opposing wall. Cast members decorating windows must manipulate the sashes with boughs and hanging garlands while keeping their bodies tucked aside. The manger is bulletproof and hidden from the public.

Christmas House is not responsible for injury. If a guest is caught by a stray round, he or she must be carried to a location off-site and allowed to seek medical attention independent of the operations of Christmas House. Cast members are permitted to treat wounds in the spirit of Christmas, for example by compressing a blood-soaked trouser with holly leaves while singing “Silent Night.”

In accordance with the true spirit of Christmas, guests and cast members of Christmas House must balance illusion and truth. The tinsel is penance and the figgy pudding is suffering. The Yule log offers no reprieve. Carols are sung, but nothing that rhymes is true. The hidden manger is in operation at all times. Individuals doubting the mystery of the season will be escorted from the premises.

After Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau

This page was once plant material, crushed and sluiced and pressed through a machine in a warehouse, the process overseen by a man plagued with a skin infection. The man, ankles swollen after the sixth hour on the job, would loosen his damp shoelaces for some late-day relief — the flesh pillowing over his yellowed athletic sock — and would scratch the pimpled back of his hand, his wrist, and his arm so liberally that a steady snow of flaked skin would drift onto the pages as they flew through the pressing machine. Naturally the pages, which told the story of an uneventful journey, became infected with his particulate matter. His wounds wept in the morning but after a hot afternoon in the warehouse had almost fully clotted, carrying their weep in scab. Continuing his factory tour, the man found such perverse relief in rubbing a particularly affected spot on his forearm that his eyes rolled wetly back and his mouth dropped wide, allowing a line of spittle to gather at his lip, roll down his chin and over his stubble, and drop onto a speeding page bearing the climax of another story immediately before its entrance into the oven, baking the genetic evidence of his future heart disease into this very page, which you are touching with your hands and which will find its way into a used bookstore, perhaps after your own death from heart disease, where it will be touched by people ill with the flu, sinus infections, the kind of solid stuff that moves out of the body like a bus pulling out of a station, the empty seat waiting.