THE MAYHEM WRITING PROMPT RESPONSE
Your Husband Is Dead and Your Baby and Cat Can Talk
And it’s only Monday, what will happen next?
I mean, you’re not normal, come on!! Even your next-door neighbor suspects something is up. You have three cats, two more than any normal person, but that’s a different story for a different day. It also turns out that one of them is your dead son. You can’t tell anyone or else he’ll go back to being dead and stop talking to you. You don’t want that because you two have been gossiping up a storm about the fine young crop of men moving into the neighborhood.
I mean, technically, you’re accounted for. You have a husband after all, even though he hasn’t treated you very well at all. He does beat you and curse and drink a lot.
He’s coming now. Act properly, he might take his belt off again.
Oh, wait, what’s this? He’s being nice to you and he’s giving you kisses and hugging you. Something’s definitely off. Even his package feels different. Wait, why is he moving like he barely knows you?
This must be a doppelganger or some sort of twin and your real husband has been murdered and cast off into the water. That’s probably the story. In fact, it’s most likely the story as I saw this very same man take a bag into the bay earlier today.
Oh, well, at least if that’s the case, you don’t have to worry about saying that you’re married anymore. If this lookalike decides to leave and gets tired of you, you can chase the other young tail that you and your son have been admiring from the windowsill.
Oh, yeah, and there’s also your newborn baby. He’s sitting up in his crib with some stunner shades on, smoking a fat J, and listening to Snoop Dogg and rapping along with the lyrics. Yeah, your newborn baby is fully aware of its surroundings and was born with full knowledge of the English language.
He uses it to do exactly what your old husband had done. Curses at you and slaps you when he wants to get you to do stuff. He is definitely his dad’s boy. It sucks that your baby can speak full English. Being born six weeks ago, you should’ve had a little bit of a buffer between birth and even just single words.
Your baby is singing the lyrics of “Gin and Juice” while smoking this fat blunt and drinking the beverage in the song. Hell, and he doesn’t even like sharing? Why do you keep so much liquor near your baby in the first place, especially given that he’s stingy? Does he think that it’s cute to be so vulgar and crass?
“Yo, moms, this dude looks like my pops, but he sure doesn’t act like him, and he smells different. You’re going to be tapping this?” Your baby asks you.
“Simon, act your age and be respectful. This man isn’t your dad, but he’s an approximate copy. Show him some respect!!” You exclaimed.
You tell him, you are his mom after all and your husband isn’t there to gang up on you with him anymore.
“Fine, moms, yo, old man, I have an 8-inch blade, you want to play the knife game and drink shots of whiskey?” He asks in a less demanding tone as a question he knew the man may not refuse.
“You’re on, kid, as long as I get to keep all of my fingers,” the man says enthusiastically.
“No guarantees,” Simon mumbles as he coos as a baby would as he waddles away in his diaper with his new dad.
They go off into the nursery anyway.
“Oh, well, it looks like my husband’s copy is going to have a guy’s night with my newborn baby. What do you want to do tonight, Johnny?” You ask your cat son as you look back at the window.
“I don’t know what you want to do, Mom, but I want to go outside and lick the neighbors in cat places while they cuddle me way too close.” Your son responds almost a little too enthusiastically.
“Okay, Johnny, just don’t lick anyone in spots where I’d have to explain that you’re really my dead gay son and then you disappear from me now. Even though I have my baby to talk to and a new, nicer ‘husband’, your mom would still be lonely without you around to stare at all of the fresh meat.”
It’s sad because you really mean this as being the victim of abuse and neglect has turned you into a lonely spinster.
“Okay, mom, geez, I’m not going to blow my cover. You’ve been more open with me as a cat than you ever were when I was alive,” Johnny quips while thinking back on his life as a young, gay man.
“Well, that’s just because I regret how you left me in this world, Johnny, and I don’t want to lose you again,” you reply.
Man, was that the deadliest game of Twister three people have ever played? Sure, it was an accident but it was completely preventable. You didn’t need to put the 250-pound, mostly muscle man on top of the twink and the small woman.
Did you think that gravity would save your son from the bottom of that pile? He was just a pile of crushed bones and a broken neck when you went to hide his body in the backyard. Maybe that’s why he’s possessing your cat. Did you think that you probably should’ve told the authorities what had happened and that it was an accident?
It’s not like you’d be arrested for something you didn’t do intentionally. At least, now, your husband is dead, so you don’t have to worry about him holding it over your head every day.
It’s not like his doppelganger shares his memories, or does he? Hmm, interesting thought.
“Hey, ‘honey’, the baby and I just finished playing the knife game and I’m coming back with most of my fingers, what will it take to get some good food in this house?” Your new guy says as you could tell that the baby and the alcohol had heavily influenced his behavior at this moment.
You didn’t mind making dinner though. You were relatively alone with everyone else doing their own thing and you needed to distract yourself. After all, you don’t want your baby and your new husband to bitch you out for not making them dinner. You’ve heard some of the things your baby has said after all and none of them have ever been that polite.
In this instance, as you call out to them, you realize that you don’t even know your new doppelganger’s name. “Hey, do you have the same name as my husband or can I call you something different, at least in private?” You ask him.
“I mean, I will be taking over his identity so in public it’ll be Hugh Butts, but my name’s Skip, Skip Dickman, if you must know.” He responds.
Dear God, Gina, if you ever married this dude, your full name would be Gina Dickman, do you really want this to be your future?
He started off really nice but people can change quickly as you’ve already seen with him spending even a little time with your baby. And it’s not like you can hyphenate, your previous name was Gina Butts, so now you’ll be Gina Butts-Dickman. The ultimate triple threat.
If all else fails, at least you have your cats and your profane talking baby. “Wow, can I just call you Skip and forget about all of the other stuff you just said? I’m Gina Butts.” You hear a short, loud chuckle come from him as he tries to hold back his laughter at the thought.
“Oh, I see why you don’t like my name. It’s fine. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He says, empathetically.
“Oh, man, mom, this dude has almost as bad of a full name than you do. Now go make us some food. I’ve still got this blade in my hand. Oh, and my new dad, Skips, needs a bandaid. We missed exactly once and he got a little knick.” Your baby retorts.
It’s only Monday and sure this family isn’t perfect but now you’re thinking, at least you have your gay, deceased cat son to people watch with. You also have a man who looks like your husband, treats you well, and from what I gathered when you hugged him is more endowed than him. He also endeared himself to you quickly by killing your real one and dumping him into the bay.
You also have a baby that you don’t have to teach anything to but manners and respect and maybe keep him away from the weed and liquor. You’re definitely in for some adventure and mayhem. Hell, at least your deadbeat husband is floating away somewhere in the bay for the sharks to snack on. Go, team!!
I combined two of Ira Robinson’s prompts and one of my own to combine them into this one humor fiction story. I took the dead husband/doppelganger and the dead cat son from Ira and combined them with the talking baby story from my prompts. Hope you enjoyed this odd tale as much as I did. To try some of your own work at the writing prompts, respond to either mine or Ira’s prompt story here only at The Mayhem, a Suite 1984 fiction and humor publication, the wackiest and craziest publication on Medium. Make sure to leave one of the tags as “writing prompts” or “writing prompt response” so we know which ones are the prompt responses.
