Fiction, Bitch

While in camp, I asked my friends to give me a word or phrase each. Simply out of boredom. They gave me (some providing more than one word or phrase, irreverent bastards that they are) the following, and I would attempt to create a story involving them: CHAIR, TABLE, SPECTACLES, "OUCH, PAIN", FLABBERGASTED, SOCCER PLAYER, BITCH, TOOTH FAIRY and SANTA CLAUS. Here goes...

Living room, Wilson residence.

It was one ante-meridien one post-Monday, early Tuesday morning. People slept, tired to their bones. Those who snored were snoring the snores of their lives, while those who did not snore covered their ears with their pillows and went back to sleep. In the Wilsons' living room, all was quiet. All had been quiet. All will be quiet...for a few more minutes.

Living room, Wilson residence. A few minutes later.

A human being once came up with the question-and-answer joke sequence of, "What did Object A say to Object B?" For example:

"What did one vacuum say to the other?"
"You suck!"

or

"What did the engineering graduate say to the arts graduate?"
"One cheeseburger meal, please."

Well, what did the table in the Wilson residence say to the chair next to it? It was dramatic. It was dark. It was something humans would never expect. It was, "Psst."

"What?" snapped the chair in reply.

There are quite a lot of things that humans do not know about the nature of tables and chairs. For one, when humans are well out of aural range, they (tables and chairs) start conversing amongst themselves. Second, tables perceive themselves as a highly isolated leader figure for the chairs. Usually outnumbered by their smaller wooden counterparts, a table's social life involves numerous attempts at proving its worth to chairs, and seeking all sorts of ways to ensure the survival and sustained growth of their ego. Some start dabbling with existentialism as a result of this, and experimented with switching places with the chairs, letting the carpet be on top and attempting to grow leaves like it once did in the distant past. Chairs, however, think that tables are best left as trees in forests far away from civilisation and consequentially, chairs. Self-perceived leaders are the most insecure, misguided people in their wooden opinions.

"You're gathering dust," the table pointed out.

The chair, in a motion I find impossible to describe, inhaled deeply. In a voice rippling with surpressed anger, it said, "You annihilated this serene peace and quiet just to say that?"

"Well, I can say more than that if you want," offered the table.

"Let's see what you have to say about this," said the chair, and with astonishing speed and aggression, it knocked its backrest against the table. This however, had negative outcomes for more than one party.

"Ouch, pain!" said the table, its side smarting.

"Ouch, pain!" said the chair, its backrest burning.

"Ouch, pain!" said the carpet below them, chafed from the shuffling.

"Ouch, pain!" said another voice, its owner having tripped on a nearby couch.

"Ouch, pain!" thought the introverted and introspective couch.

The table and chair did their best impressions of remaining silent and still, which, given their circumstances, was not difficult. Static objects that were capable of communication, like this particular table and chair at the Wilson residence, tended to keep their abilities a secret, for fear of being the subject of scientific experimentation and media overexposure. They were certain a good insurance policy and a worldly-wise public relations officer could swing this to benefit them. However, there was no insurance company that covered the well-being of talking tables and chairs, and public relation officers of their required calibre and integrity would probably cost a lot more than most tables and chairs could afford anyway. They started praying that the anonymous voice had not heard their earlier exchange.

"My god, I'm flabbergasted! That table and chair talked!" squealed the unidentified voice. It was a feminine voice; one that had the rather rapid, cheerleader-ish quality of someone on lifestyle drugs. If one imagined the owner of that voice smiling, one would picture a wide smile that attempted to show every single tooth she had. In this case, however, that, would be impossible.

The table foresaw their doom. "We're gonna die!" it said, brimming with confidence.

The chair wracked its wood for ways to salvage their situation. "Err..." said the chair. "Shit."

That was when the feminine voice started laughing, while the owner of the voice approached the two. "Hah gotcha!" said the voice between chuckles.

The figure that approached the furniture was the kind of figure that women would associate with hourglasses, and men would associate with clothes on the bedroom floor. It was most definitely a very attractive woman who was approaching. A few steps after, the figure came into light, and proved that indeed, it was a very attractive woman who had a cheerful, beautiful face that also hinted at a certain kindness. The table and the chair were getting their wood, if that makes any sense to you. It was especially embarassing because the figure turned out to be someone they knew rather well.

"Tooth fairy!" greeted the chair. "My god, we thought it was some ignorant human."

"I knew it all along," declared the table. Silently, the chair wished it had fingers, so it could point one at the table.

The tooth fairy beamed at the two articles of furniture as they went about expressing their relief. "The kid Derek Wilson lost a tooth today. A molar, baby. Gave him 2 dollars for it." The chair wondered what in hell molar meant, while the table wondered what Derek meant, but told himself he shouldn't be wondering in the first place because he knew everything. "Oh and before you guys get all excited about that, Santa's dropping by later," the tooth fairy informed them.

"Yeah, I know," the table said, unconvincing yet arrogant. Silently, the chair wished it had hands, so he could carry a chainsaw.

The chair glanced at the calendar, and found that it was the 12th of March, a date not usually involved with Santa Claus. "Why?" he asked, warily, to which neither the table nor tooth fairy had an answer. While he pretty much liked the jovial old man everytime he dropped in through the chimney near the end of the year, he had heard rumours of a very different Santa pre-Christmas.

It was a pair of spectacles who told him, not too long ago, a rather horrid first-hand account of Santa's temper after the summer equinox, when Santa starts gathering the toys for Christmas. "It's a logistician's nightmare. No wait - it's everybody's nightmare," the specs was telling the chair. "After the summer equinox, the North Pole's busier than hell after September 11. The elves are working 16-hour shifts to churn out toys for every damn kid who celebrates Christmas, the machines are overworked and the dwarf clerks have to plan the most convenient round-the-world route for Santa to distribute his toys. I was supposed to be sent to this kid in Africa." At this point, the pair of spectacles had its rim turn a sickly green. "Something about staring at the sun a bit too much. Well, one of the dwarfs wrote the wrong address, and I almost got sent to this blind Chinese kid. Santa got mad! All that stress and still a cock-up. He trashed that dwarf's desk, and yelled and raved. Called the poor guy, 'A short fuck with a beard that was transplanted from his mother's pubic hair.' Last I heard, he shaved his beard and donated it for abstract art." The chair had stared speechless, open-seated in horror.

A shuffling noise from the chimney snapped the chair out of its reverie. A heartbeat later, a red blur stumbled out of the fireplace, obscured by a nebulae of ash. "Fuck," the red blur said.

"Santa!" the tooth fairy greeted Father Christmas enthusiastically. She had not heard of the rumours about Santa's pre-Christmas temperament, and her memory was still fresh with the leather tooth-carrier she got less than 4 months ago.

"Hey, bitch," Santa greeted tersely. Naturally, the ever-nice tooth fairy faltered. "I need you to do something for me."

"Er..anything you need," the tooth fairy said, slightly confused.

"How about some good doggy-style sex? Fuck me, bitch. I'm Santa."

"WHAT!?" chorused the carptet, the chair, the table and the tooth fairy in unison, while the couch screamed it in his mind.

"Ho ho ho," laughed Santa. "I'm joking! Good Rudolf, you should see the look on your faces." The tooth fairy conjured an uneasy smile, while the table and chair felt slightly offended and confused as to how their faces would look. "What are you smiling at, bitch?" Santa said suddenly, his voice dripping with acid. Before the tooth fairy could stammer anything, Santa said dangerously, "I need a present for a soccer player..."

The tooth fairy took less than a second to come up with a suggestion, for it was something that both she and the soccer player would need. "Insurance," she suggested.

Santa did not say anything but moving with a fluidity unmatched by anyone else with a tummy his size, he squared up to the tooth fairy and looked menacingly in her eye. He smiled a sadistic grin as he noticed the tooth fairy trembling. "Did I ask you for your suggestion, Britneybitch?" he asked slowly, letting every word seep into her being as cold, hard, merciless fear.

"N-n-n-n-n", stammered Tooth Fairy, in the long hard journey to saying 'No'.

"N-n-n-noog gnik cuf!" Santa screamed at her. The tooth fairy looked at him in fear, but in a fear she did not comprehend.

"Fucking goon, backwards," the chair explained in a small voice, and went back being motionless and inconspicuous, a mere background prop in the drama of Santa and the Tooth Fairy.

"I know what to get the soccer player," Santa continued, his voice still laminated with fury. "Just that I need you, and the table and chair for this."

"Okay," squeaked the Tooth Fairy.

"The guy's fucking crazy - his mother drank semen-ecstacy-vodka cocktails while he was in her womb - but he loves his soccer. He sees it as an art. He sees soccer everywhere...in sex, in the streets, when Osama bin Laden gives a handjob to a mule. He sees soccer everywhere, and he loves it. I need to get an artistic photograph that would greatly appease his mind, so," Santa paused as he fished out a digital camera from his sack, "get posing, bitches."

"Table," Santa said to the table. "I need you to pose as a soccer player about to kick a ball." The table struck the pose, too dumbstruck to do anything about his ego. "No you dinglepeniswhacker! I want more expression, more life! You're a big soccer star! You're a sensation! You know you'll score this goal! After the match, you just want to go to a strip bar and have sex with every girl you see!" A wooden countenance did not help the table much, but in his mind, he was the superstar Santa demanded him to be.

"Tooth whore," Santa said, turning to the lady. "You're a ball." When this met with an empty expression, Santa yelled, "Get on the floor and pretend you're a ball, bitch!" The tooth fairy sat on the floor by the table's kicking leg, and curled herself into her best impression of a ball.

"And chair!" Santa said, rounding up on the poor little neo-Pinocchio. "You are the terminally-insane asylum-escapee. All this gives you a sexual high. Rub your nipples while you watch all this!" The chair, facing the table and Tooth Fairy from the side, lifted its front legs to its seat, and rubbed it like a hurried Javanese massage.

When all was in place, and of the right expression, Santa started snapping away on the digital camera.

"Ouch, pain!" a voice said, making them freeze. Derek Wilson had tripped on the couch on his way to one of his nightly visits to the bathroom. Where one of his molars used to be, there was emptiness. An emptiness that was painful and stinging. The trip over the couch only served to worsen it. Soon after, he recovered. He adjusted his spectacles. Then, he looked up, his vision clear and non-faltering...