Dec 11, 2020
Most people send mixed signals. Beware when they’re plain as day.
Sausage Diced and Served As Is
Food Week
Brad entered the kitchen through the driveway door. The rain battered their window and his hat and coat dripped water onto Janet’s freshly polished floor when he draped them over the coat rack. The drops sounded like tacks clattering on the tiles. Tap, tap, taptaptap, tap tap. As usual, he hadn’t bothered to wipe his shoes on the mat and his shoe prints tracked to the table where he flopped his ass into one chair, his muddy feet into another and his briefcase into a third. He didn’t even lay a towel across the seat to catch the runoff water.
Janet laid the sausage on the counter, slammed her cleaver through the center. Lengthwise. It fell like an accusation into two equal halves on the cutting board.
Brad leaped to his feet. “Jesus, all right, I’ll clean up my mess.” He wiped the briefcase with her white linen tablecloth, then grabbed her guest towels from the pantry to mop the floor.
As usual, Brad hadn’t bothered to wipe his shoes on the mat and his shoe prints tracked to the table where he flopped his ass into one chair, his muddy feet into another and his briefcase into a third.
Janet hacked one side of the sausage into quarter-inch slices. Chop, chop chop, chop chop chop. Brad bundled the towels and tucked them under his arms. “Sorry. I’ll dump these in the laundry and clean the floor with paper towels.” Janet positioned the cleaver over the other slice and chopped that side into eighth-inch slices. Chop chop chop, chop chop chop.
“This isn’t about the floor, is it?”
She gathered the slices into a pile and diced them into ever smaller pieces with her merciless blade — chopchopchopchopchopchopchopchopchop.
Brad raised the towels above his head and hurled them to the floor. “Goddam it, I slept with Jessica once, and that was after you drank every bottle in the liquor cabinet, locked me out, and texted that you didn’t care where I stuck my dick.”
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Wry noir author Phillip T. Stephens wrote Cigerets, Guns & Beer, Raising Hell, the Indie Book Award winning Seeing Jesus, and the children’s book parody Furious George. Follow him at Phillip T Stephens.
