Stuffed

Did you know that it is possible to catch on fire and not realize it until you are practically already dead? Well it is. It’s true. I read about it on the internet. On some ancient website I had randomly stumbled upon not long before the downfall of humanity. A 1990s-looking page made with pure html. That was why, on the day the turkeys took over, I was hardly even thinking of all the diseases that were probably being osmosed into my naked thighs by the second.

Yeah. You read that right. Naked thighs. What? Think the local dump of all places had seat covers? Think again. That wasn’t the real problem though, not really, when you really think about it. The real problem, the real dilemma I was finding myself in, phone in sweaty, shaking hand, bare ass on biohazardous public toilet seat, google results already ticked past the tenth page of auto scroll, was that I couldn’t remember what the stupid name of the stupid website was. It was right on the tip of my tongue. Just like the stream I was about to unleash was right on the tip of my [REDACTED].

I grimaced as I strained to hold back the flood. The bottom half of my torso felt like it had a knife through it.

But anyway, it was absurd, really. This idea that you could be burnt alive and not realize what was happening until it was too late. That you could catch on fire, your whole body, and not notice. Be charred, skin and bones and muscle and sinew and blood and guts and hair and teeth and nails and eyes and all, to a crispity crunch and feel hardly a thing throughout the process. Utterly absurd to think about. That was why I had to find the site again at all costs. To refresh my memory as to how this magical property of catching on fire worked. Relearn the wisdom of the ancients, so to speak. Remember my past so that then and only then could I forge my own future, my own destiny. Except at the rate I was going, destiny would have to wait. I could feel myself hurtling inevitably toward something that smelled a lot worse than fate. The pain in my lower abdomen cut like a razor. A mounting pressure threatened to burst any second in a massive eruption of bright yellow failure. Sweat waterfalled down my forehead, dripped onto my trembling legs. My overworked bladder, stuffed full of waste liquids, was sick of the unpaid overtime, eager for sweet relief. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. My battle of attrition with Mr. SnS was about to draw to a close.

That was what I was calling him: my nemesis. The guy in the stall to my right. Mr. SnS. Mr. Socks ‘n’ Sandals if you want to be formal about it. That was all I could see of him. Long, flabby socks stained a muddy brown on the bottom and tucked into bright red velcro wraparounds. Only he didn’t know what I knew.

Mr. SnS, you see, had no idea that I was only there to take a piss.

Yes.

That’s right.

Let me repeat it, for emphasis.

I was sitting in a public bathroom stall for the sole and express purpose of taking.

A mere.

Piss.

You see, I always used to use the stalls even when I was just going to pee. The reason for this was very simple: back then, I only used to relieve my bladder about once per week, and I couldn’t risk anyone interrupting me as I did. Lest, like a paranoid animal capable of relieving itself only when utterly alone, I involuntarily cut the flow off. If that happened, it would surely be another week before I could use the toilet again. I didn’t think my body could take that.

Now, my habit of pissing weekly might sound stupid, but for me, back then, it made all the sense in the world. It was related to my job. It was a hard clown life, those days. A hard clown life in a hostile world.

A world filled with children. And therefore a world entirely inhospitable to me.

Children scared me.

Actually, that’s an understatement. They frightened me. Terrified me. Horrified me down to the bone. Chilled me to the marrow.

Despite how frequently I was around them, I could never get over my natural reaction towards them. And my natural reaction towards them was abject fear.

I think it was some kind of survival instinct. A flight-or-fight deal. Children are so cruel. So inherently evil. Adults are too, of course, but they tend to cover it up. Tuck their darkness away where it’s hard to see, only showing the hidden truth of themselves when they know beyond doubt that they can safely stab you in the back, delight in your demise for a few seconds, and then get on with their lives. Children don’t. Their small, undeveloped minds are not yet mature enough for them to understand that the best way to violate the rights and the safety of the weak with utter impunity is through duplicity and subterfuge. Children don’t realize this. At least not most of them. And so ironically, they are actually the most dangerous people in the world. You cannot distance yourself from their hatred and their contempt before they show it because they show it instantly and forewarninglessly. You cannot preempt them. No matter how hard you try. Ever.

Which meant that entertaining them in exchange for money was kind of like being a professional minefield tiptoer. It sucked. Every second of every minute of every hour I was around my so-called clients, I was, deep inside, hysteric with fear. Oh, I put on a brave face, you can be sure of that. Drew it on every day, in fact, with foundation and powder and lipstick and liner and whatever other gunk I used to slop onto me so that the little predators wouldn’t sense the fear in my expression and go in for the kill. I’d slather on a fake, red smile and top it off with a rainbow wig and a nose rubbier than a goddam bicycle tire and I was good to go. I needed to wear this costume, this disguise. Not only because it was my uniform, but also because I had to hide my weakness from the kids. I was sure their parents had told them about my legend. The kindergarten affair. The story of how I told an entire audience what I was most thankful for like an idiot. The day I became a laughing stock. If they ever latched onto that, I was done for.

Anyway, to sum it all up: little kids scared me. They scared me so much I couldn’t eat. They scared me so much I couldn’t sleep. They scared me so much I couldn’t breathe. They scared the piss outta me.

Or, as it were, into me.

Yep. Like a neurotic street mongrel, I could only go to the bathroom when I was totally relaxed, which was practically never. I needed to be totally calm and totally alone, luxuries rarely granted me. Hence my ritual’s weekly nature. Hence my being constantly stuffed like — hate to say it — a Thanksgiving turkey at all times. You don’t even want to know how frequently I moved my bowels. If I had to explain the hoops I had to jump through to do that, we’d be here for hours.

And I’m pretty sure “here for hours” is not what any of you want to be. In fact, given the looks on all your faces and those guns you won’t stop waving around, I’m sure all of you are anxious for me to stop losing the thread and just get the point already. You know, what this whole story was actually supposed to be about: how the hell the turkey-pocalypse played out and what I thought about it and all of that.

Well, sorry, but I can’t tell you about any of that. Because I missed it. It all went down while I was behind prison bars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself again. Apologies. Bad habit.

Now where was I? Oh, right. I was waiting for my chance to pee, which couldn’t happen till I was alone, like I said. Eventually I gave up looking for that dumb website about the fire and put my phone away. Damn near dropped it into the toilet in the process. It wasn’t just the humidity that had me sweatier than a slab of leftover turkey in a sauna. It was my fear of what awaited me once I left the bathroom. I looked at Mr. SnS’s feet. He was the same as he was last time I looked at him, which was six seconds ago: an unmoving pair of socks in an unmoving pair of sandals. I wondered just what the hell he was doing in there. Taking the quietest shit known to man, it seemed like.

My shirt pressed wetly against my back. I kept sitting there. I don’t remember how long. A couple more minutes, probably. Without my phone to distract it, my mind began to wander. Exactly what I had been trying to prevent. My thoughts instantly turned to the undead mob of turkeys outside. My heart began to race. My whole body went cold. My throat seized up and my brain was pounding inside my skull. This wasn’t good. This really wasn’t good. It was the opposite of good, in fact. I was toast. Dead meat. Mistakes had been made, most of them by me.

Much as I tried to stop it, the entire scenario played out instantly in my head once again, a flashback like a flashbang…

#

“Oh god,” I had hissed at Doc, nestled into the garbage just like he was. We were staring out over the valley of trash, spying on the meeting of undead birds. “Oh Jesus, Doc, oh god. What is this? What the hell is going on here?” I scrunched my face up. The air was thick with a stench that was impossible to avoid, the combined stink of death and turkey.

We had been eavesdropping on this meeting of turkeys for a while, not that we needed more than a few seconds of spying to understand their nefarious intent. This sea of reanimated turkey corpses? It was an army. One hell bent on world domination, at least if the leader at the head of the pack was speaking truth. They were developing plans to acquire guns, tanks, planes, and nuclear missiles, all to overthrow the government and institute a nation of their own. An armed uprising. This was what the leader turkey told his pack. It was a rousing speech. A world for all turkeykind and the downfall of humanity and all that. A world without all the ills plaguing human society like a disease, like a lingering sickness. Brotherhood and sisterhood for all — a world where all turkeys would be equal, and would rule, not as the country’s most in-demand food product once a year, but as the dominant species. It was all very well thought out.

My mind reeled.

“Doc! What the hell! Why are talking zombie turkeys plotting world domination like a bunch of supervillains?! And why are they doing it at the dump?! What the hell did you do this time?”

“I wish I hadn’t done anything.”

“Tell me what you did.”

“Well, uh…” He was bunching a filthy curl of mustache between his fingers and twirling it back and forth. He only got nerves at the worst times. “You remember my reanimation serum?”

“Of course.” How could I forget? That was what had brought Cheese back to life. His one invention that actually ever worked.

Doc was silent. He just looked at me, waiting for the implication to sink in.

And then it did. “Oh god, Doc. Don’t tell me…”

“Bingo. Thanksgiving turkeys. Thousands of them. The aftermath of Thanksgiving day. Carcasses once again given flesh. By my hand.”

“Doc, holy shit!” I clamped a hand to my mouth before I even got all the words out. I had to remember to keep my voice down or else we would be discovered. And then who knows what.

“But how did that do all this?” I whispered. “When you revived Cheese, you just barely got him going again. And none of your other experiments ever did squat! How the hell did you make intelligent immortal turkeys?!”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Yes it is.”

“I was experimenting with a souped-up version of my old revival serum. Far more potent than my previous attempt.”

“And?”

“And maybe I spilled some, ok?”

“Spilled some? Are you insane? How could you spill some on this many goddam turkeys!”

“Could you knock the accusatory tone off, kid? I’m a man of science! We men of science need to take a few scientific risks every now and then if we want the human race to get anywhere!”

“Yeah, like straight into a world ruled by our feathered friends down there!” I forced my mouth shut again. I was this close to yelling. “Spilled some of the serum” my left foot. He did this on purpose alright. There was no doubt about that.

Only he probably never suspected the stuff would actually work, let alone cause the turkey carcasses to start plotting a takeover.

“Well, what are we gonna do about it?” I asked. It was a stupid question. What could we have done about it? Nothing.

“Maybe we can alert someone,” Doc said. “The mass media. Inform the newspaper. Like a tipoff. I hear you can make some serious stacks if you bring them a good enough scoop.”

“The newspaper? Doc, what the hell year do you think it is? Nobody reads the newspaper anymore unless they’re as old as you. Or older.” Not that you could get much older than Doc before heading off to kingdom come. I didn’t know Doc’s exact age, but he was certainly no spring turkey. Err, chicken.

“The one thing I don’t understand,” he said, “is how there were so many of them to begin with.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it. How many turkeys are we looking at right now?” He waved a hand towards them.

“I don’t know. Thousands, right?”

“Yes, thousands.” He squinted. “Maybe even tens of thousands. There’s just no way this many would have wound up here over the course of one holiday.”

“Wound up at the landfill, you mean?”

He nodded.

“Unless people were really going H.A.M. this Thanksgiving,” I offered.

“This is about turkeys, Chimp. Not ham. Jesus, what am I gonna do with this kid? Can’t even make a simple distinction between meats. Can’t even observe the world around him for crying out loud.”

“No, not ham. H.A.M. It’s an acronym. Hard as—”

“Whatever. Don’t care. Focus, Chimp, focus. This is serious. Serious business. Serious time. Ok? Not playtime.”

“Ok. Ok. God.”

“I just want to know how there’s so many of them.”

“Y-yeah. M-me too.”

Then Doc jolted towards me, like his whole body was wracked by a massive spasm. I lurched back in surprise. Or tried to anyway. There wasn’t much room to move considering we were half buried in other people’s trash.

“What did you just say?” Brown spittle came flying at me from between his chapped lips.

“Christ, Doc!” I pulled the rag he had given me out of my pocket and wiped my face again, drying it. “I just said I want to know why there’s so many of them too.”

He leaned back out of my way, finally. “But you didn’t say it like that.” He was just looking at me with his gross mushy eyes. They looked like watery globes. Like if there was such a thing as a planet that was just a huge ball of sewer water and nothing else.

“What did I say it like then?” I asked.

“You stuttered.”

“So?”

“You only stutter when you’re nervous.”

“I am nervous, you dip.”

“Or when you’re trying to hide something.”

Silence. Those watery balls. Like white and iris and pupil were all one and all needed a powerwash.

Then I gulped. Big mistake.

“I knew it!” More spittle. “You know something!”

I cringed. Or maybe it was more like a flinch.

“Go on,” he urged. “Spill it. I told my side of the story. Now you tell yours. Before we’re all toast.”

“Alright, fine. Yeah. I know why there are so many turkeys.”

“Knew it.”

“It’s cause there were more turkey carcasses than usual discarded this Thanksgiving.”

Doc put a hand to his chin. “Demand has been rising…”

“No, no,” I corrected. “These turkeys weren’t eaten. They were just slaughtered.”

Doc looked at me quizzically. At this point, I told him the whole story. There was no point in hiding it. What was done had been done and couldn’t be undone. Sure, ok, I admit it. I got a little carried away. Broke the rules. Stepped outside the boundaries of what was right and proper. Got banned from the petting zoo for life in the process. But at least I had my fun. While it lasted, you know?

In my defense, I only meant to kill one or two of the things at most. Just to get it out of my system after all the hardships they and their stupid holiday had caused me over the course of my life. But how could I have stopped there? Before I even knew what was happening, the murder spree had commenced. I did it with a baseball bat. Ran around smashing in their stupid little fragile bodies till they caved in with a splatter and an awful gushing sound each time, like plump fruits rich with juice. In hindsight I had a bit of a sadistic streak even back then. What I remember most is when I was done with it, standing there in the expansive fields of the zoo, feeling some kind of strange and paradoxical mix of fulfilled and empty as the wet insides of the disfigured birds soaked into the soil and stained the grass. I hated turkeys. So I thought I would feel some sort of accomplishment once I had done a couple thousand of them in. To my surprise and continued shame and bewilderment, all I really felt was vacant. Completely barren. Oh, not emotionally. I mean physically. I was hungry.

I explained all this to Doc.

“Chimp, you dumb stupid idiot! Why would you do something like that?” Now Doc was struggling to keep his voice down. I guess he didn’t think too highly of my actions.

“I didn’t mean to. It’s just that once I got started, I couldn’t stop, you know? And it’s not like I didn’t pay for it. I got banned from the petting zoo for life once they learned what I had done!” Not that it mattered much. They went out of business shortly after, what with most of their animals deceased.

“Yeah, well guess what, kiddo? Now we’re all paying for it. What’re you gonna do when these turkeys arm themselves and show up at your door? Huh?”

“J-just calm down, Doc. Look. I’m sure it’s not that serious. I’m sure this is all just a massive bluff or something. Watch. It’s all gonna blow over. Or the serum will wear off and the turkeys will turn right back to a bunch of dead skin and bone. Trust me. There’s absolutely, positively no possible, conceivable way these turkeys are coming for anyone. Especially not you. And especially not me.”

At that exact moment, the background noise of the speech suddenly commanded my full focus. “And finally, for the cherry on top of our delicious domination plans!” the lead turkey squawked. “We’re coming for him!”

My gaze instantly snapped down to the arena of fowls.

And I saw myself.

The turkeys had my picture up. A big, blown-up poster of me, pinned down against one of the trash mounds, covering the entire hillside practically. It was almost like a mugshot. I looked hideous. Gaunt and dead inside. Like a walking corpse. Not much better than the turkeys. The bottom of the poster read: “Wanted: DEAD or ALIVE.”

“Oh come on!”

“Shhhh! Shut up!” Doc snapped.

The leader was rallying his audience and gesturing to the image of me with a rotten wing. “To cap this meeting off, I want to offer all of you — yes, all of you — a bit of an incentive. For those unaware, this, this man right here, is the man who killed us. That’s right. Killed us. Mercilessly. Remorselessly. In cold blood. Every last one of us, dead, at the bloodstained hands of this monster. We were never meant to wind up here. Discarded. Thrown away like trash. We were petting zoo birds, for Christ’s sake. Not livestock. We had dignity. We had honor. But all that was taken away from us. By him. But now, somehow, we’ve been given a second chance. Another shot at all of this. And I think all of you know exactly what we want.”

The crowd erupted. “Revenge! Gobble gobble!”

“Precisely! And that’s why… I’m offering an amazing autumn bonus to anyone who can bring him” — he gestured to the poster of me — “or his mangled remains to me!”

The crowd raised another cheer, wings flapping in a round of mock, feathery applause.

Meanwhile, I felt like I was gonna be sick. This was all too much to take. Too much to comprehend all at once. I was giddy in the head with a sudden sideswipe of intense vertigo. I got up on my knees but quickly fell down to all fours, cowering and scared, the sad king of a hill of garbage.

“Man… You don’t look so good.” Doc was looking at me. My vision was swimming, blurry, dizzy, but I could see he was scratching his head. He looked like he had no idea what to do. He looked at me. “Are you ok, Chimp?”

“I… I…” My stomach churned. My gut seized. The whole world swayed. I felt like I was being assaulted by every natural disaster at once.

“I… I…”

“Use your words, Chimp. Sound it out.” Fricking Doc. Always the condescending asshole, even at times like this.

Not that I had the luxury to dwell on how much I wanted to sock him in his wrinkled face at the moment.

“I gotta go to the bathroom.”

#

I sat there on the toilet, innards stewing with a week’s urine. I knew that as soon as I left, I was a dead man. I was sure of that. Emerging into the vicinity of a turkey army from hell that wanted few things more than to hang my head from the walls as a trophy was as good as signing my own death sentence. With flourish.

By now I think you probably understand the ridiculous dilemma I had found myself caught up in. I couldn’t go outside. Not with the turkeys already on the hunt for me. But at the same time, I was ready to pop. Stuffed to the brim with a substance that my body was screaming at me to dispel. With Mr. SnS not moving a muscle in the stall next to me, I had to find some other place to piss before I exploded like a water balloon. Or whatever happens when you hold it too long.

So in the end, despite my reluctance, I had no other choice: I had to leave. For some stupid reason, I got it in my head that I could sneak by unnoticed. That I could stealth run the dump till I was away and then hightail it to the first bathroom I could find. Stupid. Naive. Right up until humanity’s end, I just couldn’t stop deluding myself.

I stepped outside. It was hotter than Satan’s taint. The weather had turned from bad to terrible. It was finally raining, just like the forecast said it would, everything slick and sticky and wet. The oppressive dampness and the humidity clung moistly to everything. The rain was falling in huge drops — blobs nearly — steaming and sizzling against the heaps of trash in the disgusting humidity.

It was in this stuffy miasma that things really started to go awry. This is the part you’ve all been waiting for, I’m sure. My pathetic downfall. It happened instantly. Literally as soon as I stepped out the bathroom door.

“Here he is! He’s the one! He’s here! Over here!” Doc was jumping up and down and waving his arms like a madman.

Moron that I was, I didn’t understand what was happening. So I laughed. “Doc? What are you doing? And you call me a clown…”

What a fool I was. What a dupe. What a gullible tool.

He was signaling them. Obviously. Giving away my position.

Which is why it should come as no surprise that, all of a sudden, they were on me. Rotting flesh and feathers. Beaks and rubbery bits. Claws. Talons. Turkeys pinning me down forcibly, their reeking zombified wings detaining me. Robbing me of my freedom. Denying me any hope of escape. Pressing me facedown into the sludge that was the ground,  a slurry of scum, a garbage soup. They had jumped me, and successfully. As if on cue. This is what I thought for the first few seconds, because I was stupid and I was naive. But then, I realized that they hadn’t appeared as if on cue. They had simply appeared on cue. Doc’s cue.

I coughed violently. “What the hell, Doc?!”

“Shut up!” The shrieks of the turkeys pierced my ears. Sharp beaks shot at me, threatened to spear my eyes. I flinched, and my cowardice provoked their warbly laughter. “You filthy human. Just wait till you meet our boss. You’ll be wishing we poked your eyes out just so you don’t have to see what he’s gonna do to you.”

They lifted me from the ground and started to carry me away.

“Doc!” I called one more time. I didn’t care what they did to me. I was dead meat anyway. “You… you sold me out?!”

“Of course I did. That cash reward has my name on it, you chump!”

“But… I…!”

“Quiet!” one of the turkeys yelled at me. It slapped me hard with a necrotized wing. But I didn’t listen.

“How could you! I thought we were…

“Though we were what, Chimp?”

“I-I thought we were… friends!”

“Chimp!” Doc was getting smaller, slowly fading from view as the turkeys dragged me away.

“What?” I choked.

“Get stuffed.”