when april

cheese monkeys

with blood mouths

wash down crimson rivers

baboons shit apricots

In the morning there was dew sparkling like diet soda on a puddle of mud-crusted filth and leaves on the doorstep, and Charles Montgomery grabbed his newspaper off the front porch and went inside.

The heat was exhausting outside as well as inside the house, and in this beginning of summer there was a tinge of crimson sparkling around on the dishes and plates reflecting the sun. Charlie sipped at his coffee gently, rocking back and forth in his chair bought by his wife for a tenth anniversary present. Charlie loved this chair, and sat at it frequently when reading the Harber Daily Press. James, Lilly, and Alvin were in the parlor watching Saturday morning cartoons and sipping at their curly-cue straws. It was lunch for them, breakfast for Charlie. He believed it a sin to wake up past twelve o'clock on Saturdays. He needed the extra sleep for the work he did during the week at the. . .

That's right. He was out of a job.

They called him Charlie Monty down at the press. He was a photographer. He used to be out in the field daily shooting stories. Now he sat at home trying to write. A silly job, writing is. Charlie was disgusted with himself, churning out drafts into the night hours that most of the time ended up in the trash. Charlie wanted very much to shoot photos for the big magazines, but had no connections. Instead, he was stuck at home.

Charlie reached under his seat with his left hand.

There, with a flash of light, a new photograph of the living room wall emerged on the screen of his camera. Way to go, Charlie. He'd hang that one.

Under the couch, in the drawing room beside the lamp, in various corners of the house there were cameras hiding. Just to make sure. There needed to be a Canon or a Nikon or an Olympus 880 somewhere in case a new turn of events broke out in his house. Never know when a new species of animal decides to nest itself in Charlie's humble abode.

When he finished his coffee, he stumbled upstairs to take a shower. He could hear his wife rallying up the kids to go to the new Promenade Mall built out by the highway. They were going shopping, in these times. When he was out of work and Julie barely made anything working the day shift at Jenny's Diner. It had been two weeks since he'd been laid off, and now the only reason he got the paper in the morning was to look up jobs in the classifieds.

Charlie sneezed as he grabbed his bath towel.

In the shower, he almost slipped on a rubber duck.

After, in his bedroom he pulled out his clothes and dressed for no particular occasion. He put on a workshirt over his bare chest and pulled up polka-dot shorts over his knees. He put on loafers. Then, shuffled to his writing desk.

As he crossed to his work room, he glanced out the window into the street. It was going to be a boring day, he could tell by the emptiness of the neighborhood. It was always boring on Saturdays, but now every day was like a Saturday. Every day was boring, the only difference was that everyone else was busy the rest of the week, while Saturdays Charlie was the only one sitting immobile on his seat. This was the life of Charlie the writer. Charlie the photographer was gone.

He looked out into the driveway. Charlie noticed his wife Julie had left now.

The house was empty.

On his desk there was a stack of papers. It was a draft of a new novel he had been working on for three years. There was no title, just a stack of papers accumulating a total of 200,000 words. He had gotten that far and then it was just as the writing fairies proclaimed: writer's block.

Charlie groaned.

He sat down at his MacBook and wrote a line.

And Marcus flew to Mars on a spaceship made of Butterfinger wrappers.

Nope. Cross that one out.

Jacob Marlowe took his juvenile son out back and stuffed him in a wood chipper.

Nope. Too violent.

Goody Samuelson liked to borrow things he couldn't possibly give back.

Now there's some ambiguity. Charlie likes that.

Goody Samuelson sat at an oak desk in his home on twenty-third street in Manhattan twiddling his hands around a pack of screws he needed to hang a portrait of Garth Brooks. The portrait had been painted by a friend of his who does celebrity frames for people's personal obsessions. Goody loved Garth Brooks’ music, but the idea of the portrait came from his spouse, who had it delivered as a Christmas present, and now he felt guilty about hating it. But he'd decided to hang it anyway. So, Goody took the pack of screws and screwdriver and proceeded to hang it on his wall.

Good. Now, where do we go from there?

The screwdriver... yes. The screwdriver.

After Goody was finished, he needed to return the screwdriver to a neighbor across the street. The thing was, this neighbor was a bit of a rival. Goody Samuelson worked at a hospital with Mark Jeffers and lived directly across from him, the man who lent him the screwdriver. Jeffers was an intern from NYU. Jeffers was also an imbecile who did not listen to directions. His family put him through college. He was a spoiled brat. So, Goody decided to keep the screwdriver. In fact, he'd never intended on returning it.

Okay. Where do we go now? We're done with the screwdriver.

Charlie took his hands off the keyboard. He rested his head on the desk and rocked it back and forth. He thought: what a stupid idea. A screwdriver, for crying out loud. Those things were five dollars at WalMart, if that. Jeffers wouldn't miss a thing like that.

Storytelling is thieving words, Charlie thought. Taking words from the unknown and reassembling them to make sense. These words made sense, so why weren't they good enough? Charlie. Get a hold of yourself. Writing is magic, Charlie. Magic.

Downstairs, he thought he heard a sound.

Charlie sat upright.

He thought, did Julie leave one of the kids home?

Charlie stood and shuffled toward the door. He called, "Is anyone there? Alvin. . . Lilly. . . James?" Charlie stood at the head of the stairs now. He waited, then decided it was nothing, just his imagination. He looked out the window. The driveway was still empty. He glanced at his watch. It was almost two o'clock. He had been at the job for almost an hour now and all he had written were a few blurbs and two paragraphs.

Charlie sighed. He turned around and went back to his computer.

After about five minutes of staring at the blank computer screen, he stood up and started pacing around the room. He looked at his bookshelf. He had arranged all of his favorite classics on one shelf: Huckleberry Finn, The Sound And The Fury, Dracula, Frankenstein. He picked up an anthology of Edgar Allen Poe and turned to The Fall of the House of Usher, one of his favorite stories. He decided to read it again for inspiration. After about twenty minutes, he went back to his typewriter.

First line: The slimy goat with a fishhead lived in the house in the corner of the living room, in a cage.

Too disgusting.

Charle stopped. He posed his fingers over the keyboard, waiting patiently, and then nothing.

Charlie got up then, and decided he would go to the kitchen for a box of Cheeze-Its. No use forcing yourself.

As he got to the edge of the stairs, he heard another sound.

It was a crumpling sound. Then he heard a slobbering sound from somewhere else in the house.

What was going on?

"James, this isn't funny." James was his oldest son. He liked to play tricks on his father every once in a while.

"I'm coming downstairs now." He shouted into the house. The house echoed as an empty house should. "Come out, whoever it is. Or I'll call the police."

Charles was halfway down the stairs when he gasped.

In the living room there were hundreds of Butterfinger wrappers stuck to the shape of a rocket ship. In the corner of the room, there was a goat with a fishhead instead of a normal head on its body.

Oh, no. Not this. Charlie screamed inside his head.

He started backing up the stairs. Then, the mutant animal made a baying noise that sent a shiver down his spine.

Charlie scrambled to the head of the stairs. He stumbled to the floor, his heart beating furiously. No. No. No. No. No.

This can't be happening.

Under a cushion by the banister he grabbed a Nikon D40.

After he steadied his heartbeat, he shuffled down the stairs one at a time on his hands and knees. The goat with the fishhead quieted.

Charlie crouched down on the first step. He positioned his camera and took a few shots. No one was going to believe this. 

Charlie stood. 

Then, he heard a knock at the door.

"This is police. FBI! We've got you surrounded."

Charlie's heart skipped a beat.

He had forgotten about the wood chipper. He ran to the kitchen and looked out into the backyard. There was blood all over.

Charlie scrambled back up the stairs. Behind him, he could see out the window that police were in his driveway. Some already had their guns drawn.

He rolled into his work room. He stood up at his computer.

On his screen were the lines:

And Marcus flew to Mars on a spaceship made of Butterfinger wrappers.

Jacob Marlowe took his juvenile son out back and stuffed him in a wood chipper.

He pressed the backspace button as quickly as possible.

Then, he noticed something different about the room. Above the lamp in the corner there was a portrait of Garth Brooks hanging crooked. On the floor there was a box of screws and a screwdriver.

Charlie looked at the words: Goody Samuelson sat at an oak desk in his home on twenty-third street in Manhattan twiddling his hands around a pack of screws he needed to hang a portrait of Garth Brooks.

He pressed the delete button.

The portrait didn't move.

Charlie panicked. There was a loud banging from downstairs. It was the FBI. They were closing in.

Sweat broke out on his forehead as Charlie scrambled for ideas. Writer's block was no joke. He looked at his Edgar Allen Poe anthology.

Then, on his computer screen he typed: Marcus did not fly to Mars on a spaceship made of Butterfinger wrappers. There is no such thing as Mars. There is no such thing as a spaceship. There is no such thing as a Butterfinger wrapper.

There is no such thing as a wood chipper.

There is no such thing as Garth Brooks, or a portrait, or a box of screws, or a screwdriver.

There is no such thing as a goat with a fishhead.

He looked up. The portrait had disappeared.

Then, he heard the front door burst open. He heard shouts and the running of footsteps up the stairs.

He wrote: There is no such thing as the FB. . .

A few hours later, Julie Montgomery came home to an empty house. Alvin, Lilly, and James ran into the kitchen to grab juiceboxes out of the fridge. She noticed the door busted in and called the police immediately. They said they would be there shortly.

She sat down calmly on the living room couch. Underneath a cushion, she found one of Charles' cameras out of place and instinctively searched through the photos.