Looking for New Opportunities

“Yeah, this message is for Dan Tracey. This is Jerry Baxter over at Glendale Subaru. I just wanted to let you know that we received your goddamn messages and your resume. And there’s a pretty gigantic discrepancy between what you’re claiming is your work history and what your references told me. I took the liberty of calling your boss Kevin Daly over at Van Nuys Nissan. He said you were fired for force-feeding a client two gallons of motor oil in order to get them to sign for a 2007 Xterra. And he also said...let’s see…lemme look at my notes…he said that you picked up each one of the sales team with an industrial crane and dropped them one by one into a leeching pit? You dumped a Caesar salad down your secretary’s pants? And you apparently would refuse your actual salary - said something about ripping up every check you received. I don’t know what the hell that’s about Tracey, but for Christ's sake you’re not wanted here, so thanks for the resume and good luck to you.”

Asleep at the Dredge

If I hear my Dad scream "Phyllis, I'm gonna shave my nuts!" one more time, I'm going to leave this home, this town, this state.
We spend another evening with the TV blaring another pre-code black and white film from the early 30s recorded on VHS in SLP-mode. The toilet is broken so the family and visitors do their business on the floor. The kids clamber inside from the snow without taking off their boots, tracking waste and snow through the house.
I can't live like this. No one likes me, I can't get my feta cheese business off the ground, I've lost all feeling in my extremities. I think it's these filth-ridden conditions. I lay awake at night imagining the Kool-Aid man bursting through the wall, lashing us together, and reading us his book of automatic poetry until our flesh becomes necrotic.

Character Backstory

Brent Kinnecom, THAT was that guy's name! He was that guy who would always approach you at an office party and wrap both of his legs around you like some kind of insect gymnast dragging an ant into its clutches. You'd have to push him into a table full of half-empty wine glasses and paper plates smeared with beige leftovers or cake crumbs, and he'd generally split open his head and wail a high-pitched howl, get hauled off to the emergency room for stitches or to monitor a concussion, and he'd reappear a few days later in the break room at work, acting as if nothing had happened, eating one of those terrible microwave soups in those styrofoam containers, something like bacon and broccoli which would stink up the entire break room causing everyone to quietly leave, heads cast downward.