Splicetoday

Writing
Sep 21, 2018, 06:29AM

Quarreling with Quail

And a very angry pig named Gregory.

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I ate too much brioche bun last night. I feel sick. This is a feeling I’m used to. Sandwiches from AwayStone, a relatively new and very hip joint in town by the open-air market, are my guilty pleasure (guilty!). But they get my order wrong so often. I always ask for rye bread, and yet every other week I’ll come home, open the bag and find a bounty of brioche. I can’t resist because I’m tempted. Living alone with no partner or close friends in town, I must watch my behavior and intake. I haven’t used any hard drugs since Monica left, but I have “left myself go”: chocolate, peanut butter, crackers, ice cream (vegan, of course). I indulge and sneak into the fridge around midnight and queue up the latest PBS News Hour and chow down as I watch with riveted disgust at President Cheeto (aka 45, if you’re offended). Around three or four a.m. I nod off, smoke some wheat and head to bed, groggy and distracted and ready to attack the next day.

Okay, you’ve reached the hidden message. I know for a fact that Monica and Bennington are never going to make it past that normcore basic bitch ass first paragraph of me being happy and average. Maybe I like being happy and average! Not everybody has to be some crazy eccentric with a massive social media following and a Xanax addiction and three strikes on your pilot’s license. Miss me on that, fam. I’m ready to take vitamins and roll around in the grass and play with leaves and have imaginary friends like I used to. Do I sound insane or dangerous? Doubtful. I dare anyone reading this to question my dreams. Please contact me directly so that we may spar and settle our differences with physical confrontation. It’s how I operate, still.

There’s a poetry to violence that escapes my actual writing. Last week I had a barnyard brawl with some quail and a pig twice my size. They run a gang up here, not a nice one. You think because I’m a talking rooster my fellow animals were peddling candy or “sweet rice” or something, but no. Heroin. Cocaine. Methamphetamine. Viagra. Xanax. I did buy some of that, BUT ONLY FOR RESEARCH. I need to be able to write physical descriptions of certain drugs for uh, a book I’m working on. Anyway, I snorted some of that shit and knew instantly it was bunk. Gregory, the pig, likes to put sand and ear wax in his speed because he’s cheap and a sadistic fuck. I laid into him, calling him a liar, a cheat, a criminal, and then these guard quail start surrounding me.

I’m thinking, okay, I know what I’m going to be having for dinner tonight. Faster than Hurricane Florence (topical!), I whipped around and cut both of their necks. I’m like a Tasmanian devil when I’m angry. With his security immobilized, Gregory got very sensitive and said I could have a whole tupperware full of the stuff because he knew I “needed the inspiration.”

That’s when I lost it and started torturing him. Not for long, but enough for him to feel degraded, used and lesser than me, a smaller but stronger animal. This is how things work in the animal kingdom; you have to use brute force. Woke adults don’t realize how violent the real world is. I’m fighting for my life every day, forget about my dignity. Anyway, I left Gregory to stew in his own mess and snorted half of… uh, I mean I took pictures of the drugs and… “went to bed.” If you know what I mean. I slept hard, but long enough. Never long enough.

—Follow Rooster Quibbits on Twitter: @RoosterQuibbits

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