Creative Non Fiction :: Short Fiction

1-800 Samaritan <<< Although Mop Men is a non-fiction book, this is a very short fiction story that was slipped in the middle, it is lifted directly from the book. >>> My name is Philip Rushton. I am 32 years old. Tall. Blond. Handsome. A regular gym goer. I run my own successful sandwich shop catering to the local office district and for the last eight years I have enjoyed killing people. You might be wondering how I have managed to get away with killing people, on average one a month, for the last eight years. The answer to that is simple. I go in over the phones. I first had the idea when a local priest was pressing me to “take calls of mercy.” I told him it wasn’t for me. It sounded like the kind of work that I wouldn’t be well suited to. But he kept pushing and in the end, with encouragement from my wife, I gave in.

I didn’t feel an ounce of sorrow for the people calling in. Not a single droplet. I listened to them whining and sobbing; pathetic little clumps of flesh wasting good clean air for the rest of us. I could not take it any more. I was at the end of my tether, about to walk out.

One more call, I told myself.

I recognized the voice as soon as the call came through. I sat bolt upright and adjusted the headphones. It was definitely him. It’s not a voice you could mistake. For five years I sat in his classroom, struggling to come to terms with algorithms. He liked to see me struggle. He pulled at my feelings of inferiority and molded them into a thing for his own amusement. But here he was. This was my curriculum.

“My wife… sob sob sob… she’s… sob sob… gone. We were together for thirty-five years…”

Oh yes. The waters flowed in my mouth. My veins tingled as I realized that there could be more to 1 800 SAMARITAN than the training had suggested. I pulled the microphone nearer to my mouth – took a glance around at the other Samaritans to make sure they were all engaged in calls and not listening to me – and cut him off in mid whine.

“Boo fucking hoo!” I whispered.

He acted as if he hadn’t heard it. It had to have been a figment of his depression, a Samaritan would never say a thing like that.

“Boo fucking hoo,” I hissed again. “The old cunt is dead!”

“What? You…sob sob…What…?”

“Mr. Heathcoat, really, you’re better off without the old whore. She was sucking half the cocks in town. Right up until, … but then you knew that, right Mr. Heathcoat? We all left money on the bedside cabinet. We all assumed she was cutting you in on it. That’s fucked up, that she didn’t give you your share.”

I could hear him faltering, struggling for air. A heart attack surely couldn’t be far away.

“I was round at your place most weeks. The old scroat couldn’t get her false teeth out quick enough. Are you sure you didn’t know? It’s ironic when you think about it. I mean, a third of the male population in town were greasing your wife’s gums on a weekly basis and yet, I bet she hadn’t given you a good nosh in… y-e-a-r-s.”

The headline in the local newspaper read: “Local Math Teacher Dies of a Broken Heart!”

It was a heart attack though. He was found on the living room floor with the phone still in his hand.

Of course, I realized then the power I held as a Samaritan. I didn’t go lusting after death straight away. I took time to ponder: what should I do with this poisoned tongue of mine? Who should I point it at? But in the end I realized that there was no fair system. There was no way to dress it up. No moral justification to apply to what I was going to do. For a while I tried to convince myself that I would be ridding the planet of the pitiable and the pathetic, but at the end of the day I just had to be honest: it would be killing, plain and simple.

I tried, and still do try, to be disciplined. I indulge myself once a month, a treat for being a good boy. My wife noticed a certain change in me when this first started. She claims that once a month I morph into some kind of sexual deity. I seem to acquire a Greek stamina and an attention to detail normally only recognized in map surveyors.

Over time I perfected my modus operandi. To begin with I would have to scan the local papers to find out if my deed had been done. Whenever I managed to get a name I would look up the address. I would jump in my car and race to the victims houses. I would park up a hundred meters away, hoping for the arrival of an ambulance. Sometimes I would pack a picnic and stake the place out for days. But then, by accident, my goal was shifted. It came quite without warning.

“But why? Why? Why? Why?” the woman was screaming at me down the phone. “It’s not like I’m a whore. Why me? Why? I just want to die. I’m gonna fucking die anyway! I just needed a fix, one more fix, one more fucking needle!”
I was considering hanging up. I mean really, where was the challenge in that?

“But I know that’s not the way,” she said as I reached out to cut her off.

She sounded really calm all of a sudden.

“Can you believe I even bought a gun today? But I can get a refund. I’m not taking the coward’s way out. This is my life and I will deal with it.”

Now she had my interest.

“You guys are great,” she said while blowing into a tissue. “I mean you sit there and you listen to all these problems and you don’t judge. You just let people spill their guts and…”

I just had to interrupted.

“I had a friend with HIV once,” I told her. “They told her that medication would help to keep things stable, but they lied of course. It’s all a big experiment. In no time at all she was covered in lesions – nothing but rotting skin and bone. The surprising thing for me was the family. They all cut contact and completely disowned her for the scum she was. She became so vile in appearance that…”

I spoke for a good thirty minutes. She didn’t interrupt me once, but I could hear her there on the phone, breathing, sighing, sobbing and then at last…

Bang! A second and a half later I heard the thud of her body hitting the floor.

From that day to this, a killing does not count unless I can get my victims to do it while I am there on the phone. I even consider it a failure if they hang up and don’t kill themselves until the next day. I take a minus on my tally if ever that happens now.

I guess my trophy killing was the teenage girl I convinced to slit her wrists while we were talking. I stayed on the line talking to her while her blood drained out of her. I wasn’t saying anything important. Just filling her in on how the kids were doing at school, the wife’s new car, Lucy’s dead goldfish. Conventional stuff.

Then there was another one where a couple of seconds after the bang and the thud-thud of the falling body, the smash of something ceramic, I heard a scream. It was the mother who ran in when she heard the gun shot, to find her son sprawled out on his bedroom floor and me on the phone.

“Who are you?” she whispered, half sobbed into the phone.

“You have no idea what you did to that boy do you?” I asked excited at the prospect of a double whammy.

“Who are you?” She sobbed again.

“Do you consider yourself a mother? Look at your son; you see his blood, dripping, are his brains all over the wall? In fact, does he even have a head? That headless bloody thing, that bloddy pulp, is your son, ma’am. He killed himself, or at least so he told me, because of you! The brains on the wall are there… they’re fruits of your mothering.”

Unfortunately, she didn’t kill herself until three months after the funeral. And I for one take no joy in that.

I took two sisters in one phone call once, but that doesn’t carry the weight of a mother and her son. I took a sixteen-year-old girl and her dad once. She called in to tell me about how her father was abusing her. She was a cheap target I admit, but I had a cold at the time and wasn’t at full strength. She is my youngest so far. It didn’t take much. I told her that she was a cheap little whore and that daddy was giving her exactly what she deserved. She swallowed fifty sleeping pills. I waited on the phone while she went to fetch a glass of water. The father was an easier target still. He called up a week later confessing to the whole shebang, the abuse and the suicide of his daughter. I told him that I had spoken to her. I even shared with him a few choice details that only he would know. I mentioned that we had recorded her story and had passed it on to the police. I told him the police were preparing for arrest.

He used a revolver to the gut.

But this was over two phone calls and three days. It hardly makes up for my mother and son fumble.

But that’s enough about me. I’ve taken up enough of your time. I just needed to get this off my chest. Come on stop snivelling. Pull yourself together! And you call yourself a Samaritan.

Come along now.

What advice do you have for me?

If you would like to comment on this story or the site or just life in general please send an e-mail to info@alanemmins.com

I Took on a Dog Turd and now I Rule The World So there I am, walking along full of spring joy when I notice something on the doorstep to my office. I think maybe somebody has left me a gift. I skip closer. Humming to myself. ‘What rare treat is this?’ Upon arrival my mood sours. For there, languishing on my doorstep is a dog turd of such greatness my initial reaction is ‘fetch my ropes, I mean to climb this fucker’. Luckily common sense gets the better of me. This is not a turd for the faint hearted or one with an affliction for heights. Thus I clutch my heart and take a second to orientate myself. Suitably calmed I go about unlocking my office door. Leaning over, arm extended to full stretch. If I drop my keys now, I think to myself…things could turn nasty. A war could be waged. ‘Storm the hill boys!’ Casting my mind back…this is not the first time my doorstep has been ornamented in this manner, the first time with something of this girth sure, but my doorstep is no stranger to décor. My grandmother had a garden gnome with a fishing rod and a ludicrous grin. I blame neither dog nor gnome. If the truth be told I understand the lure they suffer. Many has been the time I have sat at my desk, bowel movement imminent pondering the question… Doorstep – Toilet? Doorstep – Toilet? Once safely inside my office I prepare the morning brew and set about the morning task of drinking coffee. But I appear to be suffering a strange sensation. I have developed bionic vision, for although the door is closed, notwithstanding the low level wood paneling, I can still see the Himalayan shit. It is at this precise moment, just as normal vision is restored that a man, thin of hair and fond of pie, stoops down in front of my door, where he appears to engage, stand quickly and march off with much aplomb. Splendid bugger! I think to myself. He had been out with his hound, didn’t have a receptacle large enough with him at the time of the shit and had now come back to stake rightful ownership of said turd. I leap from my swivel chair, spring for the door and open it only to find myself greeted by none other than my Himalayan friend and faeces. Had my man scooped the poop? No. Had he staked his rightful ownership? Yes. How is one to know? Simple. The dog turd now has poking from its lofty peaks a miniature Danish flag, like the kind you might find on a birthday cake. Begging the question, should I make a wish? But this is neither the time for tomfoolery nor for tight-lipped penny in a waterfall yearning toward a firm young woman of experience, madness and a penchant for the bizarre. This is a time of seriousness. This is a matter of national identity, for here before me is a shit conquered. Wherever you are in the world you are never far from a Dane, mighty travellers that they are, BUT HERE? My doorstep, my shit! Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s a land claim. No, I can see our man now, bounding down the street conquering all shits that fall in his path, a little flag for each of them. This is simply a matter of ego. But I shan’t be outdone, for queen and country I go into the kitchen area and take a digestive biscuit from a packet I open specially. Back at the door I take a sweeping look left, another to the right. Coast Clear! And with a rather crafty little slight of hand technique I picked up from a pickpocket in Paris I replace the flag with the digestive biscuit. The sovereign saved I return to my desk, door open displaying my mornings glory. Now not a mere five minutes pass when a young lady (can’t speak for her experience, madness or penchants, but definitely pleasing on the eye) walking yet another hound idles past. The dog, without so much as a passing thought twists his head and laps up the digestive biscuit from its proud plinth in one foul sloppy swoop. The girl suitably outraged begins to shout in Danish. “What are you doing? You stupid swine!” From my desk I tip her the nod, “Rule Britannia!” I tell her. Suitably disgusted she moves on. I get up and close the door on the entire episode, secure in the knowledge that victory is mine. It’s not even 9:30 and already I rule the word. If you would like to comment on this story or the site or just life in general please send an e-mail to info@alanemmins.com

THE STORY OF OSTERGARD OSTERGARD WOKE WITH a shiver and a start. Quickly he was able to confirm the coldness that he had felt throughout his sleeping night. All around him the bed sheets felt like ice. He didn't want to move. But the necessity to go about life’s little chores soon had him trying to rise. It was then that he realised just how cold the night had really been. He was frozen from the waist down and as he tried to get up a sharp grating sound seemed to fill the room. It was his legs, they had snapped off. Seeing his legs lying there on the bed gave him such a fright that using his arms he scrambled away from them. There was no blood as he looked and this further gave him the feeling that they couldn’t possibly be his legs. They surely belonged to another.

However, Ostergard couldn’t escape the undeniable fact that from the hips down he had nothing, knees neither, knobbly or otherwise could be seen. He panicked and didn’t quite know what to do. He didn’t want to call an ambulance or worry his family. So in a state of disorientation he came up with the idea of thawing the legs out in the bath and somehow re-attaching them. Convinced that this was the solution he dragged himself by his arms into the bathroom where he inserted the plug and ran a hot bath.

He had to go back and fourth from bathroom to bedroom in this manner several times as he could only fetch one leg at a time. Finally, exhausted, he climbed into the bath with his legs. Still they didn’t look like his legs. Now that he was seeing them as items not of himself, they were complete strangers to him. Not wanting to look at them any longer, but still aware that he needed his legs to go about life in a normal manner, he rested his head back on the bath and closed his eyes. He didn’t open them again for some twenty-five minutes.

When he finally opened his mind to the fact that he now had to try to re-attach his legs, he sat up and opened his eyes. Again he was greeted with a greater shock than he himself could fathom, for there in front of him now, were four legs. His old legs were there still detached and bobbing on the surface like a pair of unwanted stool samples. But there was also another pair of legs, new, fresh and more importantly connected in all the places legs should be. They were the finest legs he had ever seen and they appeared to be his to keep. He gave them a little prod in the thigh and they felt good, he wiggled his toes and they too felt good. He grabbed his old legs and threw them out of the bath and with his new legs he began to kick and stomp until there was hardly any water left in the bath. Then he himself leapt from the bath the ease of an athlete. He placed himself still dripping in front of the full-length bathroom mirror.

“Damn fine legs!” he said to himself as he examined his new legs from all possible angles.

Ostergard spent the entire day enjoying his new legs, he walked for miles, he played soccer in the park and leapt great bounds. Then as he was going to bed that evening he picked up his old legs and stood them in the corner of the spare bedroom. He closed the door behind him. He was just about to turn the heating on when he was struck with a wisdom normally only attributed to geniuses.

He left the heating turned off. He went to his wardrobe and put on two pairs of Jeans and three pairs of socks. He removed two heavy knit jumpers and cut the sleeves off them before slipping them on. Next he wrapped a towel around his head and went to sleep without any covers.

When he woke up in the morning he lay still for about ten minutes, refusing to move a muscle. And then, with the swiftest motion a man that cold could muster, he sat bolt upright. There, lying on the bed behind him… were his arms. He was laughing with joy as he tried to stand up from the mattress without his arms to guide him. He ran to the bathroom and turned the taps on with his toes. He ran back and fourth several times, kicking his arms into the bathroom. Once he had managed to get his frozen arms into the hot bath he climbed in carefully and took a seat. He laid back, closed his eyes and didn’t open them again for over twenty-five minutes.

“Damn fine arms!” he said to himself as he looked in the mirror. He picked up his old arms and took them to the spare bedroom. He placed them on the floor either side of his old legs.

Ostergard continued his limb freezing every night, renewing a new part of his body up until all that was left to be frozen, was his head. When he awoke the next morning he knew that the process had gone OK because he couldn’t see a thing. He jumped up and ran to the bathroom to run the bath, but only got as far as the closet in his bedroom, which he ran into at quite a pace. It took a few seconds for him to gather himself from the floor, this time he groped his way slowly to the bathroom and felt for the taps. Next, he took one of his new legs and kicked himself, for in his excitement he had forgotten to bring his head with him. He groped his way back to collect it. He didn’t actually know whether having the old body parts in the bath with him made any difference to the metamorphosis, but it seemed silly to start experimenting now.

He had to be more careful about growing his head back, couldn't afford to take any risks. He stayed under water for just thirty seconds at a time so that he wouldn’t drown. He continued this procedure for a very long time, maybe too long, but he didn’t want to open his eyes to find an incomplete head and he was wise to do so.

“Damn fine head!” he said to himself finally as he looked in the mirror and then he picked up his old head and placed it in the spare room with the other discarded body parts.

A completely new Ostergard sat at the table in the kitchen enjoying a fruit breakfast while reading the morning paper. He was about to rise and put on his shoes when he heard the door to the spare bedroom open. He sat frozen in his seat, fearing the ridiculous and not quite knowing what to do. His thoughts were interrupted when the old Ostergard walked into the kitchen.

"Morning," said the old Ostergard as he slid the morning paper over to a vacant chair.

“Who… who are you?” stammered the new Ostergard.

“I’m Ostergard,” said the old one.

“But… no…. No you're not,” said the new one “I am!”

“You’re mistaken,” said the old one simply, turning the pages of the newspaper.

“I know who I am,” the new Ostergard persisted with a hint of fear and doubt in his voice.

“You may THINK that you know who you are,” continued the old Ostergard “but I KNOW who you are not.”

The new Ostergard, now wearing a sheen of sweat and fearing the very answer to his question, asked, “And who aren’t I?”

“Ostergard…” said the old Ostergard, now eating a piece of fruit.”you’re simply not Ostergard,”

“How do you know I’m not Ostergard?”

The old Ostergard smiled “Because I am. You on the other hand…are…well, nobody really.”

The argument went back and forth for nearly two hours until they came up with a plan to prove once and for all, which one of them was the real Ostergard. They went to the hospital and both demanded X-RAYS so that they could have them checked against the hospital files. These files included several breakages that Ostergard had acquired while playing soccer. However, things didn’t get as far as having the X-RAYS verified. The old Ostergard received his X-RAYS first and quickly removed them from the envelope. There he was, skeletal, as he remembered himself.

The new Ostergard received his X-RAYS and he too removed them from the envelope with much pomp. But the celluloid was completely blank. Not a bone to be seen. He ran into the X-RAY room, banging the doors open as he went and demanded the technician explain himself.

“You’re just simply not there,” said the technician “You don’t exist, now if you don’t mind…”

The new Ostergard left the X-RAY room.

“What did he say?” asked the old Ostergard out in the corridor.

“He said that I’m not there, I don’t exist.”

The new Ostergard shuffled out the exit and headed for the park. He found a bench and sat down. Being homeless now, he spent the night on the bench, in the cold. When he woke up in the morning he was frozen from head to toe. They buried him a week later with no name.

When the old Ostergard returned home from the hospital, he opened a bottle of red wine to celebrate who he was, he smiled when he saw himself in the mirror. When he went to bed that night he didn’t want the problems of the week before. He had learnt his lesson and so turned the heating on full. Just as he was heading into his bedroom to go to sleep the telephone rang.

“Who are you?” came the stranger’s voice from the receiver.

“I am Ostergard,” he said simply and hung up the phone.

If you would like to comment on this story or the site or just life in general please send an e-mail to info@alanemmins.com