Toothpick (1042 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.89 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Puking Dog (View user info) at 2004-02-02 15:55:26 EST
He was in the shower when the toothpick he had been chewing on got lodged in his throat. It was actually his second shower of the day. He was washing his hair, and with the shampoo that he was lathering he scrubbed his beard as well. He placed the toothpick sideways between his cheeks so he could wash unhindered, when, as so often happens in the shower, he rinsed for so long that he felt out of air and sucked in his breath just a little too sharply. It bolted him upright and his senses surged. He tried to cough it up, but nothing happened. He was home alone, and knew that he was in serious trouble. In a brief moment, he knew exactly what he had to do. He dashed out of the shower, dripping, leaving deep wet footprints in the carpet.
* * *
Today was Saturday. Cleaning day. His wife was nowhere to be found, having left the house earlier with her best friend. When he asked where she was going, she said that she had some things to do. When he pressed further, she gave him that smile, that little impenetrable look and said "It's a secret. You'll know what it is when I get home." So, he took the dog for a walk, as he always did before cleaning. He vacuumed, his favorite, and cleaned the bathrooms, which was okay, and on request ("The showers are fucking gross. You said you would clean them two weeks ago!") he prepared to scrub both showers. They always got this blue scummy shit that was a pain in the ass to clean, especially in the bedroom shower which had textured surfaces. Somewhere in between the vacuuming and the bathrooms, he saw the picture of his wife's brother's family, the one with the frame that was coming apart. This was also something he said he would fix weeks ago.
He picked it up and took it to the kitchen table, and got the epoxy from his toolbox. Digging through the giant lawn-sized trash bag that ever present on cleaning day, he tore a piece of cardboard from a macaroni box. His music was blaring - she hated it - AC/DC from 1976 or something. Bon Scott singing. Poor bastard, he thought, choked to death on his own vomit.
He squeezed out a small bit of the resin and the hardener from each tube, and went to the kitchen cabinet. He took out the salt shaker that held the toothpicks. It was perfect; they only fell out through the middle hole. Every time he got one out he remembered the time he was shaking one into his palm when it jammed right into the skin. He shook the salt shaker onto the counter, and two toothpicks came out, one right after the other. He picked one up and stuck it in his mouth, and with the other he proceeded to mix the epoxy. That was about two hours ago.
* * *
He frantically pulled out the kitchen chair and prepared to give himself the Heimlich. The dog looked up at him, always a worried/sad looking expression on her face. Somewhere in his mind he thought that dogs must think people do so much unnecessary shit. He was scared. He grasped the edges of the back of the chair, and with two quick practices, he left his feet and lunged over the back, compressing his midsection. Immediately he had the dreadful feeling that it wasn't going to work. He tried again, and again, and again, and again. His lungs began a slow burn, and he didn't realize it, but he was in danger of panicking. He tried again, and once more. A tear streaked down his face. He didn't want to die, this was a ridiculous way to die, how could he die like this? Forty-five seconds had passed since he swallowed the toothpick, although he didn't know that. But he knew that he was out of time, and he had to try something he learned from god knows where.
(He didn't realize it, but he had read about it in his Bathroom Reader books. He loved those damn things, had four or five of them. The history of football, mating habits of insects - it had sections on everything. One page entries for when you were only on the crapper for a minute, big long sections for when you were constipated from the cheese fucking casserole the neighbors made you. Very interesting, witty, entertaining books, he read them straight through at bedtime each night, thinking they were far too good for just the occasional bathroom read.)
* * *
He stripped of his clothes and sprayed the scrubbing bubbles in the bedroom shower, and then got in and scrubbed. He cleaned the hell out of it, all the while chewing his toothpick. It was soggy by the time he moved on to the hallway bathroom, where he repeated the process. This one wasn't as bad, but took longer because it was a full bath. He topped it off by combining his shower with the cleaning process, and never even vaguely thought it odd that he still had the toothpick, now papery and pliable, in his mouth. He felt good, he had accomplished all his chores, and it was only three in the afternoon. He could fuck around the entire rest of the day, until he had to take the dog to the vet at six. He wondered where his wife was.
* * *
He went to the drawer under the phone and got his Leatherman. Time was slowed to a near stop. The blaring music was only a vast noise in his world, no louder than his heartbeat. It was pounding with lack of oxygen, and the deepest fear he ever could imagine. He went into the bathroom where the shower was still running, and looked at himself in the mirror. He reached to his neck and found the point on his adam's apple. He then moved his finger down until he found the next hard part, and moved it back up slightly. There, in between the point and the bottom of his adam's apple, was a spongy section, only a quarter of an inch wide at the most. He calmed his nerves. One minute fifteen seconds. He was starting to feel dizzy. He opened the blade on his Leatherman. Oh god oh god oh god please help me. He found the spot again, placed the blade there, and hesitated. For a brief moment he looked himself in the eye, and in that way that the brain tells you something faster than words can be spoken, it told him that he absolutely had to do it, but carefully. He plunged the blade into the skin, holding back, afraid, and cut himself. He didn't do it. It didn't go in. Blood ran down his throat, a superficial wound. He placed the blade again, and plunged. He felt the remaining air in his lungs poof out, like a fart sound - phooooo, pulled the blade from his neck, slick with blood. He tried to take a breath. Nothing. Only a second of panic and he was going gray. His world was black around the edges.
He ran back into the kitchen. Two minutes fifteen seconds. He opened the same drawer and found a ballpoint pen. He tried to unscrew it, but it wouldn't move. He tried harder. Two and a half minutes, and he could feel it. He was almost out, and he would surely die. He snapped the pen in half (it was a Bic, dammit, it CAN'T unscrew) and pulled out the ink cylinder. A madman, he jabbed at his neck with the half pen, thinking he was crazy. As he went to a knee, he could see nothing. He slid the pen around his neck, feeling for the spot and fell to the floor, rolled on his back. The pen found the slit and went in.
It wasn't what you would expect - it's not like breathing through your mouth. His first breath almost sucked the pen in, but his throat was closed tightly around it, and the air came slowly. His consciousness did too. He became a little more aware, and breathed slowly, slowly. He was alive.
She opened the door, happy. The goddamn music was going to hurt her head, she could hear it from the walk, but she was still happy. She took two steps and stopped. She dropped her bag. He was lying on the floor, obviously dead, with something sticking out of his neck. He was murdered! The dog was licking his face, but stopped and looked up at her. The dog took a hesitant step, then another, and then ran right past her, seizing the opportunity for an afternoon of freedom, out the door. He looked over at her, she in shock, with her hair cut to her shoulders. She had it cut for him. It was beautiful. It was his surprise. She had long hair for as long as he'd known her, and now it was around her shoulders, folding underneath, absolutely perfect..
Lying on the floor, naked, blood drying on his chest, he smiled at her, and her mind simply couldn't handle it. She fainted dead away.
User Reviews
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2008-05-20 08:44:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
kick ass.
Submitted by PukingDog (user info) at 2008-05-20 06:49:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Experimahhhhhh
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-01-27 14:41:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by PukingDog (user info) at 2007-06-24 06:02:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Well, definitely not me.
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-06-24 05:58:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Aaron lives with no electricity, with a Navajo woman and her kids. Good writer, too. Published in some magazines. In a word, awesome.
Submitted by PukingDog (user info) at 2007-06-24 05:52:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I know all of the Southwest... through work. I will post something, sometime soon...
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-06-24 05:46:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I know a writer named Aaron who knows about Ash Fork. Not many people do. He lives on the Navajo reservation, which is neither here nor there, but it\'s cool.
No post something.
Submitted by PukingDog (user info) at 2007-06-24 05:32:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
No, why?
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-06-24 05:30:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Is your name Aaron, by any chance?
Submitted by woody (user info) at 2004-08-07 09:24:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Told ya.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-02-06 11:13:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
OH MY GOD
Not even Otter could stick a pen in his own neck.
Submitted by TaK (user info) at 2004-02-05 20:17:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ah. Ah ha! This is obviously the post you were talking about.
My friend, this was beautiful. I love gory, I love sickening, I love honesty. This had all three.
Great work tying in a universal fear with the need to survive, and being truthful about how a real person would deal with the situation.
Extra points for making me cringe. That's not a norm.
"The truth is in the fiction."
-some author or another.
Submitted by SoHipItHurts (user info) at 2004-02-03 23:10:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is one of the best articles I have read on this site in quite some time. I look forward to reading more of your material.
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2004-02-03 22:58:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by PukingDog (user info) at 2004-02-03 13:36:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yes, the worried/sad is obvious, but what else have I missed?
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2004-02-03 13:26:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
The story is fine as it is if you aren't ever going to do anything besides put it up on Ubersite.
However, if you're doing anything else with it, you should remove the "worried/sad" and replace it with real grammar, and your grammar needs a bit of touching up elsewhere as well.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2004-02-03 13:14:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I actually was holding my neck while reading by the time he got to the knife... I knew he was going to give himself a tracheotomy, how fucking crazy.
I liked the transitions... from serene to panicked, and how the same things seemed different while he was fighting for his life.
Submitted by Christ (user info) at 2004-02-02 20:24:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by LaNa (user info) at 2004-02-02 19:03:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
If I was anything close to a decent writer I could give you a proper review complete with criticism on how well you transfered back and forth between the present and the past... but I'm not. I'm just a reader and I know what I like. That sir/ma'am is a great story.
I can't wait until you write again... I am speechless.
I know you weren't going for it - but I vote this in as the best post for that contest that is going on.
wow.
~LaNa
Submitted by GreenRiver (user info) at 2004-02-02 18:48:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by MisterCeltic (user info) at 2004-02-02 18:40:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Very impressive.
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2004-02-02 18:00:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This might be the best thing I've ever read on Über
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-02-02 18:00:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
ok. i re-read it.
now that i've let my body deal with the self tracheotomy(sp?) i can give a proper review:
fucking awesome.
Submitted by Lyric (user info) at 2004-02-02 17:58:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow.
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-02-02 17:43:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
eeeeeeyahhhh.. reading this hurt me.
phinch is now in the fetal position under his desk clasping his throat.
Submitted by neomage (user info) at 2004-02-02 17:41:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Does that really work?
Submitted by Falconer (user info) at 2004-02-02 17:29:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2004-02-02 16:49:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment