When I first saw Marianne in that window, I thought I might be obliged to give her the old in-and-out like I’m known to do, and I thought I might even get some kicks out of it. But I gotta say: the smell of this shithole makes my soldier go all soft. I couldn’t get hard in here if I had ten porno tapes blasting at the same time and I was being rubbed down by big-boobied Swedish girls with wet mouths and no Daddy-issues. It’s hard to deliver the goods when the smell of piss is so strong.
All kinds of smell, and they’re not all from cat piss. She keeps making me these pukish green shakes that smell like the devil’s dick, sayin’ it’s some kind of special grass. Marianne says it will cleanse me and make my spirit sing. Can you believe that shit? My spirit sings plenty, thank ya’ much Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, no thanks to you Marianne, of the Jingle Bell Sweater Tribe. This bozo thinks that there’s some sort of power in being kind to people. She said that shit—not in those words but that was what she meant.
“I don’t follow traditional religions. My God is the propagation of absolute, unflinching kindness, and loving one’s neighbor as one hopes to be loved themselves,” she said to me yesterday. I was trying to eat some sweet potato crackers but having a hard time with it, what with them being hard as rocks.
“Yeah. Me too, I reckon.”
And Marianne keeps asking about What’s His Name. Every time she starts running her mouth about it, I tell her that he’s out tryin’ to get help for us. I explain that he said he’ll be back in a few days with fresh supplies. When I say that, she makes this scrunched up fucking face that makes it look like she’s sucking on a lemon, kinda lookin’ like she don’t believe me. This cat-hoarding ninny won’t take me at my word and that sort of hurts me in a way that stings like a summummabitch.
I don’t let people hurt me for long. I get to hurtin’ em back.
I woke up this morning and I said to myself, “Self, you’ve gotta just tell her what happened. Tell her that you cut her neighbor real deep and he bled out all over the place. Tell her that you’ll do the same to her if she doesn’t get rid of the cats and clean herself real proper-like. Tell her that you’ll do the same to her if she doesn’t scrub all the cat piss out of this house, cause I’ll be damned if I’m going to stay in a place that won’t let me get a proper, manly stiffy-in-a-jiffy in m’pants.”
The worst thing of all about her: she keeps cuddling up next to me when I take naps.
I push her away, because every inch of her smells like cat piss. I’m pretty sure they piss all over her when she’s sleeping. Or maybe she just lets them piss on her all through the day, no matter what’s going on. Maybe she just plops her sweater-wearin’ ass down on the carpet and calls them over to gang-piss on her. Anyway, she wants my Roman warrior pretty bad, but that ain’t happening. I’m saving myself for somebody who doesn’t smell like Nermal’s cunt, thank ya very much. Zing.
I sleep in her guest room, which has all these Polaroid pictures of her cats on the walls, licking themselves, strutting around with their backs arched up, eating cat food, or just cuddling up close to her face. How the broad doesn’t sneeze twenty-four hours a day, I’ll never know.
Me, I’m allergic.
I ain’t stopped sneezing since I came into this shithole.
This afternoon, I let three of the cats out the window, since I can’t get the front door open. She didn’t see me do it. They kept trying to crawl back in, while I hunted through the mess of Marianne’s hovel, looking for another meowin’ bastard to rid the house of. I kept pushing them out again, and then one of the brats scratched me real nasty-like. Fuck that noise, I said. So I grabbed it by the scruff on its neck and I buried its face in the snow. It fought for a few, but I think it sent a pretty nice message to the other kitties, cause they all went a’scamperin’ in every direction. They had no interest in coming back to Marianne’s piss-bucket-house after that… or should I start calling it my house? Bet your ass, partner, it’s my house now, and it’s time to clean all this shit up.
I’d guess she’s got about twenty cats. They all look the same. Not just that they’re cats, but that they all have the same color, that bein’ jet-black. She must have some kind of weird tick that makes her only buy black cats. Or maybe she don’t even buy them. Maybe they just come to her because they follow the piss smell from miles and miles away.
Just a little while ago, she gets all worked up about somethin’: “Have you seen Cherry Pie?” she asks me.
“Who’s Cherry Pie?”
“He’s my chummy little foo-foo with the black face and the long whiskers.” Yeah, that’s what they all look like. And them shits ain’t chummy. “He looks like Clark Gable,” she adds, but that don’t help me much. Never heard that name before.
“I haven’t seen it. But you best believe I’ll keep my eye out. I love these kitties as much as you do.” Once I turn on that charming motherfucker I keep buried deep inside me, sometimes I can’t turn it off. What I really want to tell her is that she and her cats are going to be dead soon, unless they shape up and get in line with my new vision for this here world we created around us. I’m looking to settle in and settle up, like I said a million times before.
“My sweet, sweet Cherry Pie,” she sort of moans beneath her breath, wringing her tiny hands together. Marianne is probably in her early forties. She looks like she’d be hot as hell, if she didn’t live in Piss Plaza and if she stopped wearing those stupid sweaters (the last one had the whole fuckin’ alphabet on it, like she was seven years old or somethin’).
“Where oh where is my sweet Cherry Pie?” she calls out, sort of mewing like one of her cats now. People always say that folks start to act like their pets after being around them long enough. Truer than true, I say. In fact, I bet she licks herself when it’s time for a bath, probably starts with her bushy crotch. Zing.
She’s up and moving again, still mourning, making another one of those awful fuckin’ shakes for me, so I tell her that I am already well fed and I don’t need any more. She insists on it though, as she wades through the cluttered kitchen, rinsing out the blender and sobbing over her kitten. I can see cat hairs clinging to the mouth of the blender, but those don’t seem to bother her. I found a furball in the vegetable drawer the other day. Big old clump of hair, right next to the carrots and cabbages, sorta like it belonged there.
“Cherry Pie, where oh where have you gone?” she mumbles to herself as the sound of the blender drowns out her despair. Good Lord, I can’t take it anymore.
It never gets any better than this. I’ve seen it before and I’ll see it again. This is as good as people get. This is why I’m a wanderin’ man. One joker after another in this world, the way I see it. They all act the same when it comes right down to it.
“Fuck your Cherry Pie,” I say. Them there words escape my mouth so quick that I can’t snatch them back. I didn’t want it to go down this way, but shit happens when shit is ready to happen, that’s what I say. The dam is broken, so I hurl another cuss at her, “You make me sick, you fuckin’ twit.”
“Oh dear,” she says, stopping the blender, turning to look at me with big moony eyes, unsure of how to respond to what I said. “That vile language. My kitties don’t like swearing. Please don’t do that around them.”
“Your kitties are fuckin’ worthless. They should be drowned in the bathtub, every last one of ’em. I’ll do it for ya’, just say the word and I’ll make them screech and scratch til they sink to the bottom of your tub.”