Denise had spent all evening puzzling over the rose that had been left for her on the kitchen table. She couldn’t think of anything else. That simple, little rose was a floral rubix cube that she twisted and turned but just couldn’t solve. It worried her.

Denise and Peter had been living together for five years. Peter rarely stepped out of his daily routine. After five years of co-habitation, Denise figured she knew Peter inside and out. (She was a surgeon and had in fact operated on Peter several times so she really did know him “insides and out.” That was how they met and that was the single joke the couple brought to the three parties they went to every year.)

When Peter got home from his Wednesday night hockey game with his buddies, Denise let into him with the full force of her curiosity:
“What’s this?”
“You got a problem with your eyes ? It’s a rose.” Peter laughed a good natured laugh.
“Why.. this rose?” She temporarily lost her sentence making abilities as she put all her might into trying to understand this new person in front of her.
“You want an evolutionary reason or a romantic reason?”
“Romantic reason? You’ve never once in all the seven years that we've been together brought romance into things.”
“Since when was it a crime to bring home a flower?”
“You don't bring home flowers!! You don’t bring home romance!! That’s fine. That’s what I’ve learned to expect.”
“So I’ve changed.” He went to kiss her.
“Who is she?”
“What?” He got closer.
“Who is she?!!”
“You.”

She stepped out of the bathroom with as much grace as possible for someone with toilet paper stuck in their underwear. She walked down the hall with the white line trailing behind her.

Three children started playing jump rope with it but she remained unawares. She continued on her way out of the building.

On the street a young artist started doodling abstract heads that resembled clouds on a panel of the toilet paper but she continued walking down the street.

At an intersection a gentleman used the toilet paper to wipe the weeping nose of a woman. She continued to walk.

She stills walks today and if you open your window and look outside you might see her trail of toilet paper.

Ted Lipscum loved food more than anything else, including himself. If the devil had offered him an eternity of delicious consumption for the price of his soul, feet, hands, legs, arms, hair, eyes, ears and everything else that wasn’t directly related to the gluttony of his mouth and stomach, Ted would have smiled a sweet smile of agreement.

This gluttony was especially evident at restaurants.

“Are you going to eat that?” Ted leaned back on his chair, addressing a woman at a table behind him. Her plate contained a dozen large fries and a crumpled up napkin.

“Ted,” his wife whispered. He was a good provider but a lousy date.

The woman shook her head in the directions of no.
“Would you mind if I finished that off for you?” Ted smiled sincerely.
The woman’s face turned to mild disgust as the man she was with returned from the men’s room. As he sat down she whispered something to him.
“Order your own food!” The man did nothing to hide the disgust on his face.
“Yes I probably will but I just thought that if you weren’t going to finish those fries it wouldn’t” And that’s when Ted was punched out.

That night when he was examining his black-eye in the bathroom mirror the Devil came to him with a proposition.

“Well I once saved a child from a burning building.” He huffs from a bag of the most expensive Tokyo glue.

“You wouldn't have done that sober?” She responds, dropping a few crystals of coke in the center of her iris.

“Different drugs make you move in different directions, know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah.”
“For example, I set fire to the house in the first place under the influence of rubbing alcohol.”

Every December 23rd, as I was growing up through the most tender years of life, my father heckled us while we unwrapped our christmas gifts.

“Oh yeah that's really original. Use your hands. Like that hasn't been done before!!”

My mother sat in silence.
When it came time for him to open his gift he’d use his teeth, or do a body slam on the package or stuff it in the toilet and let the water peel away the Santa Claus printed toilet paper. It was always a different technique.

“But what if that was a glass ? You’d break it!!”

“Did Leonardo Da Vinci get to where he was by thinking to himself, what if it breaks? No he experimented in everything. That is the lesson they’re not going to teach you in school.”
Ten years later my father broke his neck trying to tap dance on a wooden platform on the back of a horse. I don’t know what he was trying to do differently. Maybe he was doing his taxes or something.

Not surprisingly, I’ve grown up clinging to tried and true methods and stories with traditional endings.

+ All stories ©/by Kevin Spenst, about the author

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