Putrid and Vomit

Putrid and Vomit
by Turin Turambar

Putrid walked the streets. Ever notice how my stories always start with a short sentence - proper noun, verb, location. It was Putrid's night, tonight. Putrid was a scrawny punk. Putrid's mother was a foxy thirtysomething executive civil servant. Putrid's father was a healthy anglosaxon clean freak middle management at a crown corporation and a member of the Lion's Club. They lived in the suburbs with a huge dumb dog whose saliva flow could provide hydroelectric power to the entire province. A monstrously evil cat name Sally presided over the family. Putrid had a sister who used to be a blonde cheerleader and secretary of the student government at her school. Her future plans had included travelling, going to university for psychology, and eventually marrying a younger Alan Alda who looked like Jordan Knight. Then she discovered LSD and the Hari Krishnas.

None of this was on Putrid's mind at the moment, as he skulked down the street to meet his friend Vomit. Putrid and Vomit were masters as skulking. What was on Putrid's mind was beer, partying, cuming in some skirt's mouth, and the problems associated with adapting Wagner's Die Valkyries to punk for their new band, "Shitfaced Ubermensch". Putrid didn't actually know what ubermensch meant, but it sounded german, so that was oi with him.

Vomit was waiting, as usual, behind the Variety Food Fair, where he was talking to some metalheads about the subtlties of Anthrax's latest. Vomit had a mohawk, which an artist friend had painted to look like a Canadian flag. He wore a GBH t-shirt, black pants held up by red suspenders, and cherry doc martins. He worked for his brother, who owned a construction contracting company. Putrid was still in school, at a place that was known everywhere as Meadowjail. Vomit's mother was a kindly lady who worked part time at the local library and collected antiques. His father was a sales manager for a national computer company and who loved nothing better than Russian opera. Vomit and Putrid were best friends, and had even tasted each other's blood once.

They met now, said farewell to the metalheads, and went into the beer store where they bought a 24 of Canadian. The evening progressed as usual for a while. They went to a couple of parties, drank 10 beers each, Vomit almost got into a fight over who was cooler, Preston Manning or David Duke, Putrid made out with some freak girl in grade 10 but then got pissed off when she refused to suck his dick in the middle of the room, they both barfed a couple of times on a neighbour's car. Something a bit stranger happened after that, however. There was a strange ring of light around the moon that night, they noticed, and armed with two beers each, walked into community park and sat on a hill and stared at the moon. Neither of them spoke for a while, and it seemed that the woman in the moon spoke to them. And they listened. When it stopped, they began to speak, first of drunken jokes, then the difference between non-living and dead, then of nostalgia. They spoke of the times they spent together, and of their childhoods, all the pretend games they had played and eventually continued to play. Then they kissed. It was not the kisses that they forced on the chicks, where they stuffed their tobacco stained tongues down the girl's throat as though they were going to perform cunnilingus from the inside. They were gentle, loving kisses.

The following week, Putrid changed his name to Ricardo, and Vomit changed his name to Victoria. Soon afterwards, they opened up a combination flower shop and bakery together and lived happily ever after.

If you like anything here, or if you don't, please e-mail milky@yip.org. It just makes sense.