(Watch me read this story live at Chuck Palahniuk’s Story Night here)
Some people leave a note.
Mom left reviews.
On dandruff shampoo. On that diner with the waffles down the street. On diamond ring cleaner. On the unauthorized biography of Ross Perot. Digital epitaphs etched in the internet for the ages.
Ashes to ashes. Stars to stars.
First one we found she’d left for a three pack of duck tape. Mom gave it one out of five stars with a headline, “Holds Things Together Worst Than My Husband.” Followed by, “Listen ladies, if you want something that’ll stick around, do not marry Carl Pendergast. If you want superior adhesion across all applications, get a cat.”
Mom’s body’s been gone two-days standard shipping, and we still can’t find that cat. You can hear it meowing and scratching amongst the stacks and stacks of shipping boxes stacked floor to ceiling. Coroner says it will come out when it’s hungry again. If it doesn’t topple a box of shake weights on its head first. Our inheritance blown inside bubble mailers and corrugated cardboard. Name it, Mom bought it. Name it, Mom reviewed it.
Mr. Cuddles Jumbo Brown Plush Teddy Bear. Five stars. Mom wrote, “the only hug I got all week.”
Kleenex Soothing Lotion Facial Tissue. Two stars. Mom wrote, “why can’t I stop crying?”
Mom carved trenches through the mounds of shipping tubes and eco-friendly bubble wrap until the house looked like a map of France during whatever World War. Mom, the Amazon foot soldier.
Me and Sis, we follow the stench of the litter box through the cardboard battlefield with our noses. That Honey Bucket port-a-pot baking in the sun smell. The kind that creeps up your nose so deep, you swear your brain has a nose too.
Coroner said for a cat to pass something that size, could take a week. Could take less. But he’s no vet. Then he asked us if we’d heard about the layoffs at the morgue.
Said they’re really cutting coroners.
Ask us why Mom did it, this compulsive shopping, ask us why she’d rather live amongst these boxes of products and not Dad, and we’d tell you some people, they never forgive and forget.
Hermit’s not just a word that rhymes with a puppet from Sesame Street. Mom’s got one of them too. A puppet frog. A Funny Frog Hand Puppet to be exact. She gave it four stars and a review that read, “I named this little guy after my son. My son who never calls. My son who never visits. At least the frog talks to me. Would have been five stars if it remembered my birthday.”
Dad sent us on this mission. Me and Sis. If we had it our way, we’d just hire one of those hoarder cleanup companies. But there’s zero time. Dad’s wedding’s tomorrow and it’s the only gift his new wife wants.
Yeah, you search for just about any product online and because the internet knows who your family is and what your favorite color is and what time of day you take a dump is, the internet, it pops up a product review written by your nearest and dearest. Pops it like it’s some kind of genetic endorsement.
Take the binoculars Sis was looking at for her backyard birdwatching. Of course Mom had already bought ‘em. Left a two star review that said, “My husband, Carl Pendergast, my husband through two and a half whole Democrat presidents, these babies could seen him from our front window all the way to the corner of the street where my husband, my Carl, would go when he thought I was asleep after my shows, my Husband meeting a busted-up Dodge Neon that would blink its lights at him, my Husband in the front seat of a Dodge Neon with his hands behind his head and his ding-dong smacked between that blonde whore’s lips, blonde head bobbing up and down up and down on his ding dong. Would have given five stars but buyer beware! You can’t unsee what you see. You can’t go back to the way things was. The only other thing I’ll say about this product is – I KNOWED IT WAS YOU NANCY. AIN’T NOBODY DRIVE A BUSTED-UP DODGE NEON IN HANCOCK COUNTY BUT YOU!”
Past a mountain of unopened Christmas lights. Right at a fork of Valentine’s Hearts still in their Saran Wrap. Me and Sis follow that grainy spikey litter box reek, the ammonia plugging up our brain noses. But we’re doing it for Dad. Dad who Mom crushed under the weight of her shopping addiction. Dad who just wants to start a new life with a new, still in the box wife.
Coroner said half the people that suicide themselves with car exhaust get found before the carbon dioxide can do its job. The right amount of cee oh two will kill you. The wrong amount’ll vegetable you. Coroner said, Mom, with the bag and all, was lucky that neighbor found her dead and not a carrot. Or a gherkin. Then the Coroner asked us if we’d heard the statistic about 100% of Coroners drinking on the job.
Said everyday they crack open a cold one.
Yeah, if you think about it, with the internet, even when we’re gone, we’re not gone gone. When I search for the best caterer for my own wedding, Mom will pop up with “Giovanni’s has the best meatballs in town. Could cut back on the garlic though. Four stars.”
Or when I go to buy diapers for my first born online, there will be Mom saying, “Bought these Pampers for my little kitty kitty because she’s been spraying her glands all over the house. I’d take her to the vet to give her the old Bob Barker, but I ain’t driven a car since Carl left. Superior absorption though, them Pampers. Five for five.”
Ashes to ashes. Stars to Stars.
Coroner said, pets, they go for exposed soft tissue first. The nose and the lips, but if those are covered, as in Mom’s case, they go for the tender bits between the fingers. It’s why chefs poke the meat of their thumb to gauge how blue a steak is. Then the Coroner told us we should never try to take his job.
Said, the competition’s pretty stiff.
Past a tower of super absorbing paper towels. Past a pile of bagel toasters, we find the litter box. And in the litter box we find the cat. Mom’s kitty kitty mid dump. Her back arched, rear paws in front of front paws, doing that hover squat desperate hikers do. And it’s that awkward moment when you open a stall door and find a dude, pants around his ankles, mid-dookie, and there’s that mile-wide second where you both lock eyes and the shame fills both your pupils, watching this dude at his most intimate, his most exposed, pupils so big you swear you can see his soul. That shameful, soul-pupil look, yeah, that’s the look the cat gives us. Gives it to us so hard I actually tell the cat I’m sorry I’m sorry.
I’m so busy trying not to offend this cat that I don’t even notice the crusted blood in its whiskers or the sagging diaper strapped to its ass-side with a silver belt of duct tape that’s starting to give. Don’t notice this cat is just going through the motions of dropping a dookie in the litter box. Just taking a poo in its infant Pampers. Infant Pampers so full of poo it looks like a sack of walnuts. And Sis, yeah she ran track in high school so she’s panther fast, she yells, “Get her!” And lunges at this cat who’s still arched mid-poo.
The cat, it screeches and tries to bolt, but the diaper is so full the cat might as well be pulling a boulder behind it. Sis Crocidile Hunter jump straddles onto this cat and yells at me to grab the diaper. And everyone knows you better do what Sis says, so I try ripping the diaper off this kitty kitty’s backside. And this fully loaded walnut diaper, it bee hive buzzes under my fingers. But Sis yells at me again to get it get it, so I yank hard and the diaper and half the cat’s ass fur comes off in my hands and flying black dots shotgun into my face. The cat zoom scoots off leaving me and Sis enswarmed by a buzzing cloud of flies and a diaper full of reeking doo. And inside this diaper of fresh hell, jackpot. A pearly white bone sticking out the freshest turd.
A bone the size of a beanie weanie.
Go buy ring cleaner online and you’ll find Mom. Mom with a review of Diamond Dazzle Diamond Ring Cleaner. Mom gave it three stars and a review of “Carl done give me two gifts in life. Kids who don’t call and a wedding ring smuggled out a Nazi camp inside his Great Granddad’s butthole. And no matter how many times I scrub the thing, I swear I still smell poo. Carl calls me crazy. Carl calls me lots of things. Oh wait, Carl done got me three gifts in my life. Kids, a diamond ring, and raging case of chlamydia. YOU CAN HAVE NANCY AND HER BUSTED-UP DODGE NEON AND CRAB-FILLED PANTY HAMSTER, CARL, BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO PRY THE DAMN BUTT RING OFF MY COLD DEAD FINGER!”
Ashes to ashes. Ass to Ass.
They call it “yo borris” right? That snake that eats its own tail? Here, Great Grand Dad’s ring done gone full circle. Human centipede style. Only with a cat.
Coroner ruled Mom’s death an accident, but you really could call it a suicide. Just like smokers who know the ciggies will kill ‘em. Or the fatties that keep ordering that extra side of bacon. It’s all the same. It’s all suicide. Some just take longer than others.
You know those plastic bags they wrap shirts and bean bag chairs in? The ones that say “suffocation hazard – keep out the reach of children?” Well, they should also say “keep out the reach of adult shut-ins with no one to hear them scream for help after a wall of Kitchen-Aid mixers fall on ‘em.” Probably too much to fit on the bag. Still, it’s what got Mom in the end. Body pinned. Bag wrapped around her head like a too-tight t-shirt. Coroner said Mom’s cee oh two choked her out in about the time it takes to pop a bag of popcorn. Then he asked us if we knew why lady coroners can’t get pregnant.
Said nobody puts baby in a coroner.
Yeah, with Mom gone, Dad can finally make what him and Nancy do legal under the lord’s eyes. And the only missing piece to Dad’s happiness is glittering in this loaded Pampers full of cat poo. So I take a deep breath and finger tweezer the ring out from the gooey poo. Sis’s eyes sparkle and she says, “jackpot.”
The kitty kitty hisses behind me. This cat reeking of shit and crusted with Mom’s blood, it jumps onto a wobbly tower of shake weights. Then blam-o, I’m on my back as a cardboard avalanche consumes me. My gut gasps for air, sucking and sucking until something sparkles and clinks off my front tooth before rattling down the back of my throat. My tongue tastes like cat poo smells. The sparkling thing lodges deep down my throat drain.
It’s inevitable. We all become our parents. Here I am crushed under the weight of a failed marriage and infidelity just like them. Suffocating just like them.
Another “yo borris.”
The fallen boxes, they reveal the patch of carpet where that neighbor found Mom. The greasy outline of Mom on the floor. A chalk drawing done up in discharge. Blood crusts the carpet where kitty kitty went all Chinese buffet on Mom’s hand. And where Mom’s other hand would have been, there’s just a puppet. A Funny Frog Hand Puppet, four stars, named the same name as me. Every parent wishes to die with their children at their side. At least Mom wasn’t too far off. My vision tunnels and stars explode. It starts with just one star, then fast there’s five.
Five stars staring at what remains of Mom’s remains. Divorced Mom, 1 pack, 67 years of age. Arrived a little banged up. Didn’t perform as expected. Made a mean grilled cheese though. Tried her best to be a Mom. Hated Nancy.
My Adam’s apple, it convulses up and down up and down until the thing lodged in my throat shoots down into my stomach and I suck a deep breath. And Sis, she’s unearthing herself from our would-be cardboard tomb. And as she’s yanking shake weights from my torso, she’s asking if I have the ring. Granddad’s ass ring. Dad’s marriage ring for his new, in the box wife.
The coroner, he said call if we had any questions. Didn’t say they had to be about Mom. And on the phone, my stomach rumbles as the Coroner speaks. Coroner says it could take a week to pass something that size. Then he asks if we heard the one about the proctologist.
Dazzling.