A Confederacy of Augustin
WARNING: EROTIC IMAGERY & LANGUAGE
A little story I wrote back when—a clear homage to John Kennedy Toole. It’s also interesting because Gordo (my cat who passed away yesterday) is one of the supporting characters. Weird that I stumbled upon this today.
A Confederacy of Augustin
Augustin Macker made a promise to write a new short story every single day, in the hopes that he would one day be published, joining the ranks of his favourite childhood writers: Hank Chinaski, Merseault, and the irrepressible Kilgore Trout.
Every day he woke and brewed himself a pot of strong, Nelson-British-Columbia-roasted coffee and stare, dreamy-eyed, at his lap-top screen. For weeks, nothing at all came. He grew despondent very quickly, as his life had very little content, apart from the incessant reek of his two pet cats, Brecht and Gordo The Fat.
Then one day a story poured out. Augustin was inspired with the notion of a beautiful woman. He had had very little contact with members of the opposite sex, with the exception of his mother, so his notion wasn’t a fully formed idea; it was simply a notion. Notwithstanding, he let his imagination run amok, smashing his index fingers into the keyboard. Word after word gushed from his creative centre, and by the time he was through he was utterly exhausted.
Here was the story he wrote:
On a blustery, foul winter’s eve, I first made the acquaintance of Cameron Porphyra-Jones. She was a milky, ursine maiden with giant clams for hands and lips that could turn all the salmon out. She accosted me at the local Esposito’s as I was pondering the selection of porks.
“Looks like the chops are on special today,” she asserted. I eyed her.
“I know this is going to sound weird,” I slickly replied. “Would you like to go out on a date with me?”
She hesitated demurely, biting her lower lip. I noticed something dark lodged in her upper teeth.
“All right,” she said.
“Great,” I oozed. “How about tonight at the Jolly Dodger Donut Café?”
She agreed, and hours later, there we were, staring into each other’s eyes at the back of the JDDC as the crude coffee and crullers disappeared down our dry throats.
Before long, I had her in my arms and was whisking her back to my basement lodgings. My cats looked at Cameron with seeming disgust as I wedged her between the sheets of my rusty single bed.
“Oh,” squeaked Cameron, as I thrust my wicked sword of a manhood into her. She was clearly delighted, because she started to cry. I had been with a lot of women— virgins, ladies and whores— but none of them had ever cried on me. I was disgusted.
“What’s this all about?” I shouted, still throbbing inside her.
“It’s just... it has been a long time,” she whimpered.
“That’s no concern of mine,” I ejaculated. I ejaculated.
The next morning, Cameron had departed. She left me a note, which I destroyed without reading.
It had been an ordinary Wednesday night.
Augustin looked over his completed work, chuffed. He printed it and held up the manuscript admiringly.
“Now the world will cringe,” he boasted to Gordo The Fat, who reacted sleepily. “Now the world will fall at my feet and beg for clemency!”
Augustin skipped into the kitchen to concoct a popcorn dinner for himself. Typically on Wednesdays he would pop a bowl of popcorn and douse it with curry paste and mint jelly. He thoroughly enjoyed the way the spices spanked him on the tongue, prompting him to reveries of faraway places with exotic, Indian names, like Rangoon and Mesopotamia.
Returning to his “office” (which happened to be whatever room his laptop was in) Augustin marvelled once again at his literary masterpiece.
“Now the world will call me master,” Augustin repeated.
There was a knock at the door.
Augustin recoiled at the sound and stared at the door in horror. Another knock came. Now Augustin began to sweat. He tried to recall which of his enemies might be there to collect their judgement, but Augustin could not think of anyone he had wronged in his full thirty-seven years of life.
Taking no chances, he lifted the closest weapon he had at hand: a piece of green twine used to secure his curtain to the wall. He stretched out the flimsy cord to employ as a garrotte on the intruder, who had undoubtedly come to steal his manuscript.
The door knocked once more.
“Who is it?” Augustin’s cracked voice pleaded.
“FedEx,” said the dark marauder.
“Oh yeah?” said Augustin. “That’s what all murderers say. That’s what they say before they kill and loot.”
Augustin was frothing at the mouth with fear.
“Listen Sir,” implored the murderer. “It’s FedEx here. Either I get you to sign for this package or I bring it back to the post office. Makes no difference to me.”
After a long, agonizing consideration of the détente, Augustin moved to open the door.
There stood a FedEx delivery man. In his hands there was a large package addressed to Augustin. Upon signing the man’s electronic register, Augustin launched into a vexatious verbal assault.
“How dare you throttle my door with your meaty, filthy ham hocks?” he bellowed. “Don’t you know WHO I am? I am the great writer Augustin P. Macker. Next time you knock on my door, do so with REVERENCE!”
Having stated his case so plainly, he triumphantly slammed the door, only he did it so hard that a hinge broke and the door fell back toward him, leaving the delivery man in a state of utter, mirthful astonishment.
Augustin felt waves of ignominy wash over his face as he struggled to replace the broken portal whilst clutching to his newly acquired mystery package.
When the door situation had been rectified and all was quiet again (the delivery man having left in tears of joy) Augustin sat down in his comfiest chair (the one that could support his weight) and began to scrutinize the delivery.
“It must be a bomb,” he rationalized, as he gingerly rotated the lightweight box. Gently he shook it. Nothing moved inside.
With a disdainful glance at Brecht, who was sniffing the parcel, Augustin allowed his curiosity to get the better of him; he stumbled to the kitchen to retrieve a rather large and unwieldy Haitian machete, which he used on occasion for chopping melons.
“The accursed swine will rue the day,” he uttered, as he slowly made his way back to where the silent package lay.
Brecht leaped three feet in the air and Gordo The Fat howled miserably as Augustin let his machete come crashing down on the FedEx box. Blow after blow he delivered, and in seconds the box, and the coffee table underneath, were completely decimated.
Pleased with the savagery of his onslaught, Augustin now crouched to inspect the contents of the carnage.
A small piece of pale blue, wool fabric peeked out through one of the machete holes, and instantly Augustin knew what he had done.
“Oh wretched Fortune,” he whispered dramatically, as he kneeled before the severed remains of the package.
A few weeks earlier, Augustin had complained to his mother about the slight chill he had been feeling in his basement apartment. She had set to work immediately.
Now, he had chopped his mother’s blanket to pieces.
“Oh wretched Dame Fortune,” he repeated tragically. “That it should come to this.”
©Adam Kelly Morton, 2009