His name’s Cecil G. Burton. I call him Mr. Toad—not to his face, though maybe I should. He’s short and squat. He has a wide mouth and big bulging eyes. He even has a wart below his right ear, making the toadishness complete. He has the cubicle next to mine, of course, and gets his jollies by making me look bad in front of the whole office. He’ll suck up to our supervisor in that loud, drippy voice of his whenever she walks by: “I can do that, Mara!…I found the file, Mara!…Got another superhuman task for me, Mara?” And he sucks up with such good humor, too. I’m lazy and humorless in comparison. I’d like to chloroform him, tie him up, gag him, toss him into the trunk of my car, drive him to the woods, take him out of the trunk, toss him into an open grave I’ve already dug (I believe in careful preparation for any project) and watch him as he wakes up, looks around and realizes he’s screwed. “Here’s a superhuman task for you,” I’d say. “Breathing underground.” Then I’d bury him alive and conceal his grave by planting—what else?—toadstools.
I’d like to do all those things, but I never will. Why risk going to prison for something as trivial as killing him? Plus human beings aren’t worth killing, anyway. They’re worth fucking, but they’re not worth killing. Well, the hot female human beings are worth fucking. Sometimes you get bored with your right hand, after all. Plus I read somewhere that not getting rid of your semen regularly can cause prostate cancer or something. I’ve gotten rid of my semen with Mara quite a few times, and I can tell she’ll want more tonight, the way she’s sitting at her desk highlighting paperwork with her yellow marker and stroking the shaft of her marker with her thumb. She strokes stuff when she’s horny—her pens, her skirt, her ceramic mug with that anthropomorphic cartoon duck on it about to smash his computer with a sledgehammer. No caption, just the cartoon. I had given her that mug as a gag gift.
Written in 2004 (revised May 13, 2016)
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 