Short Dog by Dan Fante

Short Dog by Dan Fante

Author:Dan Fante
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00


Renewal

The light was extreme. Oppressive. A silent white scream, invading me like a message of terrible vengeance from my unconscious. I tried rolling away from it, but the maneuver was useless. Brilliance was everywhere, consuming my sanity.

I could feel myself sweating, my shirt sticking to me, soaked through.

Realizing something was jabbing me in the back, something thick, I reached for the thing and pulled it forward. An empty wine bottle. Mad Dog 20/20.

There was a smell, too. It was choking me. A repugnant pong that combined with the persistent luminosity to render me fully alert. Now I understood. I was waking up—coming out of a blackout.

Squinting, I looked around: A movie theater. Old. Musty. Insufferably hot.

My head was pounding from the concentration of light, so I closed my eyes to give my brain time to unscramble the images it had collected. It was then that I began to sense another person—a body—near me.

Opening my eyes again, I looked to my right in the direction of the stink. A woman. Dark skinned with long, matted hair, unconscious in the seat next to mine. The odor coming from her was the heaviness of her perfume combined with something else. Sweat? Perhaps booze and puke. Something rancid and terrible.

Shielding my vision with my free arm, twisting my body, I pushed myself upright in the seat. The theater was empty. A movie must have just ended because a guy with a broom a few rows away was sweeping trash from the floor, working his way up the aisle toward my row.

Seeing that my pants were open, loose and unzipped, I tugged them up and refastened the belt.

Now I began a study of the girl with the awful smell. She had thin legs and was wearing wide gold hoop earrings and a tight black dress. Almost surely a hooker, with the deep-set eyes and hard cheekbones of a daily amphetamine hype. Her short dress was pulled above her hips and the dark nipple of one of her tits was exposed. Something had spilled and dried on her dress and in her hair. Something thick, sticky-looking.

I was having trouble with the rest because my brain was still slogged. The pictures my eyes sent back didn’t make sense.

Then I saw. I understood. The girl in the seat next to me wasn’t a girl at all. She had a strange and tiny cock.

When I got back to my place in Venice, the rooms were dark. Turning on the kitchen light, I spooked myself when I came face-to-face with Gomez, my fat, bad-tempered orange cat. He hissed his irritation at my arrival, then jumped down from the warmth of the stove. His getaway dislodged a pot containing something brown that clattered down on the linoleum.

In my bedroom, I took off my clothes in the dark and dumped the crap from my pockets on the dresser. It was then that I noticed the goddamn thing missing. Again! My cab driver permit. I had been back working a taxi job for five months and this was the second time I had lost the laminated fucker.



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