Page 34 - WTP Vol. V #4

the screaming. It was a primordial hodge-podge of rage and forgotten feelings lost at the bottom of every toy box and time-out circle.
unravel a simple cord.
~
Dieter rested the box on the railing. He remem- bered that it had arrived the exact same day as
his new heavyweight boxing game. His in-laws kept everything, and his wife insisted on continu- ing the pack-rat cycle. She had gasped when she pulled out the little MIT sweater her father had bought her. Dieter calmly suggested that they purchase new things and start out fresh, but she wouldn’t hear of it. It had been their second major fight since the nuptial sheets bonus round.
He stared into the murky water beneath the pier. The screaming filtered in between the hot hiss of the afternoon and his once sacred white noise. Dieter gently lowered the box into the canal and watched as it drifted into a welcoming patch of saw grass. He leaned against the banister and fought back the urge to call his mom. He checked his phone and saw there were fifteen texts and twenty voicemails from her all essentially asking how everything was going.
“What do you have against a few used blankets and onesies?” She had screamed.
“Simply divine, mother...Simply divine,” he whis- pered. The screaming continued on, after the box sank into the sticky arms of the Everglades. He still could hear it when he got back into his car and started driving down the empty highway. Dif- ferent parts of him hoped that he would always hear it, go completely deaf, or go join Emily’s box in that river of embryonic ooze that eventually leads everyone to the screaming red-end credits and that black screen afterlife. No cheat codes for Dieter.
“Nothing, I just don’t see why everything has to be used. Shouldn’t the kid get a say or something?” Dieter yelled.
The fight escalated to the next level after she men- tioned that his mother was sending out a box of his own stuff.
Terrified, he grabbed the box and drop-kicked it across the room.
Now punching at his head with both fists, he for- got about the steering wheel and his life. He stepped on the gas, the car shot forward; nicked the nosey central median which sent it spiraling NASCAR style, into a clogged drainage ditch.
Emily grabbed him by his shirt and screamed, “You’re acting like such a child! It’s like you don’t even want this baby...”
“Well... maybe I don’t,” he screamed, shaking her loose.
The sound of metal crunching and the splash made him think of his first bowl of big-boy cereal. He remembered his mother’s low-cut robe as she served it to him. He gasped back to reality. For
a few moments, he stared blankly at the pickle- juice colored water that was trickling in around his feet.
Emily had activated the water works and col- lapsed on the carpet. He tried to pick her up and apologize, but she kicked him away every time. Dieter decided on a tactical retreat to his computer room, in order to give her time to decompress. He figured an hour of intense Pac Man would be enough for it all to blow over. Unfortunately, somewhere between the cherry and the pretzel, Emily started to bleed through her extra-large Sailor Moon boxers and experi- ence powerful abdominal and back pain. Dieter drove her to the hospital where he watched as a team of obstetricians couldn’t figure out how to
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Once he realized he was alive, and all the mean- ing behind that fact, he began to frantically search for his cellphone. Luckily, it was in the back of his car. He grabbed it and pushed the first app avail- able to his now disquieted finger tips.
“Emily, it’s me! I got into an accident. Nobody was hurt,” Dieter cried into the receiver. “I know