A putrid stench weighs heavily in the air of the darkened living room. The Sun’s rays creep around the miniblinds – a dull, natural glow competing with the blue aura of the enormous flatscreen television, a dazzling and pristine device purchased the day prior.
Sam, a corpulent, middle-aged man rests in a damp, filthy recliner surrounded by growing layers of refuse and decomposition, of both wasted and digested varieties. The seat of the recliner is soaked in piss and excrement. Dried ejaculate mingles with crusted vomit on the man’s taut and bulbous gut. Though he occasionally works up the effort for a sojourn to the rancid bathroom across the hall, there remains no evidence of a pathway in the landfill on the floor between his two thrones.
The man increases the screen’s volume to combat the buzzing hoard of insects that have infested his home, swats a fly away from his face. The remote rarely leaves his right hand, clutched in a sweat-covered palm and bloated fingers. His left brings a smartphone up to eyes frantically scanning the status of his parlays. Today has been good. Great, even. He smiles proudly, the excitement of a quick profit shifting to titillation. He will treat himself.
He sets the phone down and heaves his bulk to reach a grimy laptop from the end table on his left. He places it atop his belly, opens the screen, and within moments he is connected to the darkest depths of the web. He knows where he’s going, what he’s seeking. The indulgent ritual makes him hard before he’s even typed a letter in the address bar. He runs his tongue across cracked and slimy lips. He scours his sources, eying thumbnails, clicking some for a few minutes’ worth of viewing, hunting down the Right Clip for his finale. He’s throbbing now, straining against his pants, sensing the precum creeping through his urethra. Then he finds it, butterflies stirring his stomach the moment he eyes the thumbnail. He clicks it, slides the laptop down to his lower thighs and wrenches his cock free of his pants. After a couple minutes of self-abuse, he’s ready to finish. He slides to the last bit of the clip, breathing heavily as the youth whimpers from the screen. He finishes in unison with the monster in the video, semen bubbling and oozing down his foul shaft.
Sam slides his hand off himself, gathering his deposit and flinging it off to the side in one smooth motion. His labored breathing steadily slows to a normal pace. He begins to nod off in the afterglow, at peace with himself and his pleasure.
Undetermined minutes pass, followed by a knock at the door, Sam’s slumber soured and shattered. His mood turns grim at the impudence, at the temerity of an interrupter. He grunts and groans his way from the recliner and grasps the 24-karat gold handle of his cane. As he shuffles his way through the detritus he shouts, “who is it?!”
“It’s Zoey,” comes the muffled response.
Zoey? The voice must belong to his niece, the only child of his only sister. He hasn’t seen her since she graduated high school, perhaps five years ago by his reckoning.
Sam undoes three deadbolts and the door lock, turns the handle and then unhooks three more chains on his security door before he’s met with the outside air. He is greeted by a young smiling woman leaning on a pair of dinged and scuffed crutches, her left foot in a medical walking boot that extends nearly up to her knee.
“What happened to you?” he blurts.
His entire presentation has caught her off. The morbid obesity, his filthy and disheveled appearance, the brusque introduction. “I, uh, I was in a car accident. Some guy wasn’t paying attention and forced me off the road.”
“Assholes everywhere. He oughta be in prison. How bad you hurt?”
“My ankle was crushed. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive though, and the first surgery went well, they said.”
Sam nodded. “That’s good. What brings you out this way?”
Finally, something resembling the conversation Zoey imagined she would have. “Well, I know, I mean…I’m sorry to come unannounced but Mom said you changed your number and, well,” the discomfort was almost too much, “is it okay if I come in for a minute?”
“No,” he flatly responded without delay.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” her gaze drifted to the darkened room behind him, the shade of the awning on his porch allowing her eyes to adjust and begin to take in the staggering mess within.
Her glance was brief, but Sam caught it immediately and snapped, “Look, what do you want? I’m busy.”
Zoey took a quick breath and set herself, her quasi-prepared pitch reassembling itself after the initial shock of Sam’s appearance, “okay, Mom said she thinks you should still have a healthy chunk of money set aside from the settlement and she, I mean, we were hoping you could help us out…”
At this Sam’s eyes slowly began to roll.
“…I know I know I know, I hate to ask, I really do, but she’s still paying off bills from her treatment and can’t afford to help me with a new car for my job and,” Zoey forced back a couple threatening tears, “well I just wanted to ask if you could please help me out with whatever you can. We would appreciate it more than you can imagine.”
Sam stared at her, using the silence to his advantage. Despite the plain, and unflattering clothing, her messy hair, and the faded bruising on her face, she really was gorgeous. So why was a gorgeous woman here at his doorstep, begging for money like a vagrant?
“Look, you’re young, you’re hot, just grind it out until you heal up and then start an OnlyFans. And hey, I’ll tell you what, let me know when you do and I’ll be your first subscriber. Top tier and everything.”
“Sam!”
She was stunned, understanding for the first time in her young life what it meant to truly be at a loss for words. The tears forcefully broke free now. The shame, the anger, the hurt. It was all too shocking and brutal to withstand, especially in her humbled state.
Again, Sam rolled his eyes. She was weak. So weak and whiny and lazy and pathetic.
“Sam, how could you say that?” she shouted when she found her voice again. “I’m your niece!” she shrieked. Sensing an opportunity to win back some of her wounded pride, she tried to turn the tables on her vile interlocutor. “And what’s happened to you, Sam? I came here just to ask for help from family, not to be told by some filthy, fat, fucking ogre that I should just do porn. Why are you like this? When did you get like this?”
The darkness that passed over Sam’s face was subtle, but unmistakable. She had expended what little pride she could muster in the heat of the moment and had already dwindled back to a place of wounded sadness. And now this look of offense on her uncle’s face further shamed her. Had she gone too far? Had she crossed the line too?
Sam used the heavy moments of silence to his advantage again. Let her squirm a moment, he thought. The little shit. His life was no business of hers or anyone’s, but especially hers. She came here asking for help, and now she’s rejected his sound advice and insulted him. The temerity.
“Okay. Fine. Lemme just grab something for you and fix aaalllll your little problems,” he intoned sarcastically.
He leaned back across the threshold and reached his left hand into the darkness outside the doorframe. And with casual fluidity his hand reemerged with a nickel-plated Glock 17, pointed it directly at her forehead, and fired just as her open mouth registered the first sense of surprise.
He watched her body crumple and twitch briefly, blood pouring from both ends of her head. Sam placed the gun back on his end table, then leaned over with a loud grunt, grabbing and throwing the crutches into his living room one at a time. He then grabbed her corpse by the good ankle and hauled her inside with two good heaves, the back of her head bouncing across the threshold.
Sam redid all his locks, placed his prized cane beside his recliner and then collapsed into the seat. His heavy breathing slowed after all the expended effort. Once he reached equilibrium, he pulled out his phone, opened the FanDuel app, and began perusing the odds for the evening’s slate of events.
Jonesy's Place 