A Million Versions of Right (6 page)

“Tina my dear,” he whispered, “I’ve come to make amends.”

With fishy eyes Tina slowly stared up at Mr Wilkens. It was some time before words managed to escape her mouth (and rather strangely, her collection of thighs).

“Make amends, Spencer? And how exactly are you going to do that?”

“Via an admission, an admission that acting without consultation was a grave mistake!”

Tina slowly rose from the barrel like a poorly controlled string puppet until she was able to meet her husband’s gaze.

“And let’s say that you did consult me, Spencer, what if I had refused?”

These weren’t the words Mr Wilkens had expected to hear and his rehearsed reply was left flailing like an arm-clad, jelly brick.

Tina and Mr Wilkens stared coldly at each other. An oceanic slurry of negativity engulfed every inch of the atmosphere around them.

“So, what are you trying to say, Tina? Would you rather I have kept my balls?”

“What does it matter? You’ve already gone and done it! Anything I could possibly say would be an exercise in redundancy.”

“No, Tina, I want to hear you say it!” yelled Mr Wilkens, releasing more moths than he thought possible, which Tina doused in gravy.

“Ok, I resent you deballing yourself. I wish you had never done it. It sickens me in a rather potent way.”

Tina was chock full of defiance and facial scrawl declaring war. Spencer’s overconfident attitude had sent her plummeting over the edge of decency and well-mannered rebuttal. She was no longer anxious about letting her husband know how she really felt. Meanwhile, Mr Wilkens was dry heaving at the unexpected revelation and sliding a thick finger deep into his bellybutton, stifling whatever bodily slush was bound to spew out if left unchecked.

“You wanna know what else, Spence?” said Tina scornfully.

He just glared in her general direction waiting for her to continue.

“I fucking
loved
your balls! I used to sing to them at night while you slept. I gave them the love you never did.”

Mr Wilkens grew an instant beard as these words stabbed at his now withering heart. In one painful moment, the entirety of his marriage seemed like a vulgar lie. Everything Tina had ever said appeared rooted in deep dishonesty. As he stared as his ballbag loving wife, he knew immediately that it was now a stranger who stood before him. A stranger diametrically opposed to his most deeply felt ideal.

Tina was growing impatient as the silence lengthened well beyond that which conversational etiquette allowed.

“Are you gonna say something?” she asked her husband snidely.

Mr Wilkens continued to stare hard into Tina’s empowered eyes. He tried to drain as much meaning as possible from her steely gaze but could only infer disdain.

“It just goes to show that you can
never
truly know a person,” he finally offered.

Tina began to laugh hysterically, spraying the ceiling in liquid schadenfreude, which formed pools that dripped upon them like acid rain.

“Not true, dear,” she said with faux housewife kindness, “I truly know you. I know everything there is to know about you. I know that you hide behind your dogmas like a child who hides under their favourite blanket, too fucking scared to dissect the foundation of your opinions before you set them in stone. No room for revision because that would indicate uncertainty, which is the one thing that scares you more than anything. Well I’ve got news for you, sweetheart,
everything
you’ve ever believed is wrong.”

Tina was selecting her words carefully, ensuring each one caused maximum pain. The desire to hurt her husband had become overwhelming.

“It’s actually kind of fitting,” she continued, “that someone who never appeared to have any balls has decided to remove them. Now your mind and your body are one, my dear.”

Mr Wilkens stood rigidly, shaking with an indescribable pain, which manifested itself as rage.

“GET OUT!!!” he boomed while pointing at the door.

Tina stood straight, gave a melodramatic salute and screamed, “Yessir!”

She left without uttering a word, struggling to carry her barrel.

* * * * *

This probably won’t be that effective
, thought Tina Littlepop as she helped her husband zip up his pro-scrotum outfit. The costume itself made very little sense and struggled to convey even a rudimentary message. The unitard was coated in some indistinct, hardened batter. A paperboard placard hung around Hedging’s neck, which bore a hasty drawing of a silhouette. Above the silhouette was the cryptic question, “your son?” and beneath the silhouette a far more cryptic, “is this what happens yet?” The placard message was discussed among the Scroats in a meeting that didn’t end until consensus was met. Hedging openly admitted that the message became somewhat confused as the hours dragged by and as a result, they arrived at an unsatisfactory decision. The legs of the costume were entwined in brolga spine, which had been donated by a local eatery. The costume was topped off with a breadbag cape that attracted all manner of native birds. As one would expect, the construction of the costume allowed for the scrotum’s exposure at all times.

“Be honest, Tina, do you think this’ll work?” asked an anxious Hedging with arms akimbo. Tina’s tentative nod betrayed her lack of confidence but Hedging thought it appropriate to ignore the unhelpful body language. Instead he whistled his faith back.

“I had some initial doubts but now I’m quite sure”, said Hedging. Just picture it my dear: 25 men, all dressed thus,” he waved a hand about his person, “Imposing themselves on the demonstration, chanting something about scrotal sanctity and what have you. All of us proudly exposing the God giving mechanisms they despise so absolutely. We’ll usher those poor children out of the building and give them a demonstration of our own. A demonstration that extols biology’s virtue. No scrotums harmed!”

Tina gently patted her headstrong husband on the shoulder and whispered, “Yes, dear, this is a valid fight,” so only she could hear.

* * * * *

Alice
ascended the stairs with two bowls of steaming areola soup destined for the talk holes of her sense-bereft sons. The bowls slid about the tray in a melodic clatter as her mind fired up into loops of worry.
I have to assume that they mean well but the injuries they sustain are so complete. And the frequency in which events of this nature occur is alarming. They’ll be dead before they hit 30. In no way will they be able to father children, not with the mess they’ve made of themselves downstairs. I sense such absolute incompetence. My sons, my strange little boys…

Alice
’s thoughts eventually trailed off into a realm of barely remembered anecdotes concerning the fluff and puff of her own youth.
I was so acutely sensible and yet I had a sense of whimsy that rejected much of what reality had to offer. I recall no feelings of discontent, nor did I find myself in harm’s way, but I had adventures, did I what! I’d arrange any damn thing into arbitrary order, confusing the whole neighbourhood. Referring to me as the plantlick girl; what a nerve! But I sure did love it! Me and my jar of stink worms foraged out of whatever sewer my parents dragged me to that week and didn’t I complain? Like an episode of My Sweet 16! I was that little girl with the voice of drowning elbows, at least that’s how old lady Henrietta described it in those infernal music classes. I was kicked out of the choir for singing in bronze, but that didn’t stop me from forming my own choir. I remember gathering the neighbourhood pariahs and forcing them to open up their stinky yaps and just yell. Boy did we yell at just about anyone. Scared Mr Touchmedoodle half to death and got a right earful from those snooty law enforcers. There was a hefty bounty offered for the first person who managed to kick me plain in the face
.

Alice
shook herself until the tangents fell away like dead leeches.
Why do we have such a long flight of stairs anyway? We only have a one storey house!

* * * * *

Chip and Allen were tucked into their respective beds, pale and sweaty with fever, each with ice packed around their loins. The woollen blankets hugged at them like over-zealous grandmothers. The curtains were drawn, painting the room dark brown. A rotten playground smell hung about like cobwebs.

The brothers could hear the clanking tray as Alice approached the door.

“I bet that’s soup,” moaned Chip.

“Of course its fucking soup,” replied Allen, “she just told us she was gonna fetch it.”

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”

“What messenger?” yelled Allen, “You’re not delivering a valid message.”

Alice
opened the door violently when she heard the muffled sound of her bickering sons.

“Will you two cut it out already?” she implored through clenched teeth, rendering her words incoherent.

Alice
sat at the foot of Chip’s bed and stared at her sons, who stared back like terrified lambs. Dedicating one hand to each son, she began to rub their legs lovingly. They both began to purr like perverted kittens, which made Alice cease the motherly act immediately. The purring slowly stopped and calm washed over the darkened room.

“Have I ever told you boys about the time your father was convinced he’d lost his testicles?”

They both sat up in bed, wordlessly imploring their mother to continue her story with a series of knuckle taps.

“It was a good five years before whichever one of you came first was born. I was working at a little company that came up with slurs for some of the premier racist comedians of the day. Your father didn’t approve of my work. He was of the opinion that racial slurs should be saved for the boudoir but I was good at my job and persisted. Pat got so damn angry that he wouldn’t talk to me for weeks at a time and if he did communicate, it was simply to give me a swift kick in the tits. I was stubborn though and wasn’t going to let a little tit bruise stop me. It wasn’t until I started submitting slurs against the whites that Pat would finally get his wish. I was the one who gave Flannigan Bromley the “white shitpecker” slur that ultimately got him killed.

“I’d somehow managed to drag your father along to a Bromley act with the promise that his jokes were almost solely about soda. Being quite the soda enthusiast, Pat agreed but it was conditional on us staying at opposite ends of the room. So Bromley got up on stage and surveyed the mostly white audience. The first thing he said was, ‘What’s the rumpus ya white shitpeckers?’ At first there was this eerie silence. I don’t think anyone was willing to believe they heard what they’d heard. One fellow toward the front plucked up the courage to ask Bromley to repeat himself. So Bromley, looking a bit nervous now, clutched the microphone and repeated himself, ‘What’s the rumpus ya white shitpeckers?’ Well, there was no doubt about it, Bromley had slurred against the whites and the whites weren’t happy about it. The crowd rushed the stage, devouring Bromley in their mass humanity.

“Your father and I were the only ones left on the floor. We glanced at each other from opposite ends of the room and I remember giving him a big shrug, at which point my shoulders came clean off at an alarming pace. They shot up to the ceiling and ricocheted back toward the ground. Pat could see my wayward shoulders and got himself quite concerned. He rushed toward me, his arms up like a vigilant goalkeeper. He was intent on stopping my shoulders should they try and bounce past him. He stopped the left shoulder and forced it deep within his trench coat pocket. My right shoulder was still bouncing around like a nutter and in the darkness of the club, Pat was having a hard time keeping his eye on it. Well, it whizzed past his face and he instinctively turned himself around. Before anyone could make sense of the situation, my right shoulder had bounced off the opposite wall and come flying back right into his man zone. The shoulder dropped to the ground and Pat was quick to follow. I ran toward him in a panic and pocketed my other shoulder before it could do anymore damage. Poor Pat was shaking with shock and balled up like a snotty tissue. I kept asking if he was okay but he just muttered something about soda. And all the while poor Bromley was trapped on the stage, slowly drowning in the crowd’s saliva. He was dead less than five minutes later.

“A miscommunication led to thirty ambulances arriving at the club and Pat got loaded up into one. Another stayed behind to deal with Bromley and the audience went back to wherever they came from. I remember pacing the hospital waiting room in quite a panic and my tears were flowing freely. I had returned my shoulders to their rightful positions but that didn’t really alleviate my anxiety. I knew Pat was currently having his testes prodded and poked by someone who wasn’t me and I got myself all jealous. I started slapping nurses and willing their pain to travel astrally onto the face of those doctors who were violating your father.