Prunty - Squirm With Me

Squirm With Me

Andersen Prunty

Atlatl Press

POB 293161

Dayton, Ohio 45429

Squirm With Me

Copyright 2016 by Andersen Prunty

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-941918-13-5

eBook ISBN-10: 1-941918-13-1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. The authors use of names of actual persons (living or dead), places, and characters is incidental to the purposes of the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author or publisher.

Also by Andersen Prunty

Kill Your Neighbor

This Town Needs a Monster

Squirm With Me

Creep House: Horror Stories

Sociopaths In Love

The Warm Glow of Happy Homes

Bury the Children in the Yard: Horror Stories

Satanic Summer

Fill the Grand Canyon and Live Forever

Pray You Die Alone: Horror Stories

Sunruined: Horror Stories

The Drivers Guide to Hitting Pedestrians

Hi Im a Social Disease: Horror Stories

Fuckness

The Sorrow King

Slag Attack

My Fake War

Morning is Dead

The Beard

Zerostrata

Jack and Mr. Grin

The Overwhelming Urge

To Carrie,

I know youll just say Im delusional but I still say youre perfect.

ONE

My daily journey of shame and self-loathing began like this:

I woke up sometime in the afternoon, usually around two or three.

I drank coffee and read and listened to music and thought about how much I wanted to smoke cigarettes. I told myself I wasnt allowed to smoke cigarettes anymore. I convinced myself it was for my health but it was because I couldnt afford it. I didnt really care a lot about my health. Sometimes I went to the gas station to buy beer.

Id spend a good hour or two on the internet. First Id check my email that usually contained a message from my first wife. Something to the effect of: Your daughter... she still hates you. Then Id check the sales for the one book Id managed to complete and self-publish. Id be happy if it sold any copies but disappointed at the relatively low number and then Id have a moment of chest crushing panic when I realized my freedom was nearly over and Id soon have to go start filling out applications for minimum wage jobs. This would set me off and then Id really want a cigarette before reminding myself those sales numbers were not luxury numbers and fall into a slightly darker level of depression.

Opening my laptop inevitably led to porn. It began by checking MyFace. I kept in distant touch with a few other writers and would check their pages to make sure they were still desperate and miserable, see if I had any messages. These were pretty infrequent. About once a month, some editor Id never heard of would ask me about submitting to an anthology that sounded like a terrible idea. There was never any guarantee of acceptance or mention of money so I usually ignored them. To me it seemed like calling someone up and asking if theyd mow your grass for free or if youd be interested in paying a percentage of their rent that month. This led to despair and a sense of hopelessness regarding the whole writing thing. That usually led to me clicking on images of females I found attractive and then scrolling through all their photos looking for images to masturbate to. I didnt always need nudity or provocative photos so this wasnt impossible but it could end up being time consuming. I wasnt super old or anything but I was aware enough of my body to know that an erection more than likely wasnt going to stick around for hours like it used to. That usually led to me going to a free porn site where Id end up jerking off to some questionably legal Eastern European girl getting brutally ass fucked by one or more of the same five guys who seemed to be in every porn video. Id come into a paper towel or a wad of toilet paper or sometimes just into the sheets and feel slightly guilty about what Id just done. I assumed the girl was compensated in some way and was doing this by choice but who knew? She was probably an unfortunate teenager abducted into a white slavery ring.

My guilt at both my lecherous, objectifying behavior and my sloth would usually compel me to open Word and think about writing something else but this usually consisted of me formatting and reformatting the page, sometimes getting back on the internet to research manuscript formatting and thinking, This is work. Im working.

Then I would eat, usually something out of a can, and lie on the couch and watch movies or interviews with musicians and writers and think I really needed to leave the apartment if for no other reason than to convince the lesbian landlady who owned the house and lived on the first floor I was still alive. Instead Id usually end up breaking down and rolling a cigarette from the pouch of American Spirit tobacco I kept in the cupboard and convince myself I wasnt going to go broke using like five percent of the tobacco I had and that I wasnt really doing myself any harm because, hey, it was just one cigarette. Then I would think I really needed to write something but would usually just end up getting bored and going to bed. Sometimes I would take my laptop with me and masturbate again and go to sleep feeling awful, dreaming about car crashes and falling off tall tall buildings. Sometimes Id have dreams my dick was turning black and rotting off but mostly I didnt dream at all.

But tonight was different.

Id imposed an internet ban for an indefinite period of time.

No MyFace. No pornography.

If I was going to write Id do it in the Moleskine notebook Id bought when I was flush with royalties.

If I was going to masturbate, it would have to be to my imagination.

And if I was going to ogle girls I was going to have to leave the house.

I decided to wait until after dark and go to the only bar in town open later than ten. At least then I could be assured of the legality of the girls I was ogling.

I had to drink three of the beers in the fridge to gather the courage to go to the bar. It was early May and as soon as I stepped out of the apartment I tried to convince myself that it was too chilly and I should just stay home.

But I did it.

I left the fucking apartment.

TWO

The bar I planned on going to was called Apricots. I wasnt really sure if that was in reference to someones name or the fruit. Probably the fruit. Id never heard of anyone with the last name of Apricot. Nevertheless, I decided the bar was owned by a woman named Connie Apricot, a brutal taskmaster who wore ill-fitting track suits, chain smoked, and physically abused her husband, a withered man fifteen years her senior named Donald. The town also had a brewery but they closed too early. I had no idea what time it was but, being up until really late most nights, I knew I wouldnt want to head home at ten. The brewery was the hot spot. Not only did they have the best beer brewed on premises but also the actor/comedian Bill Chapeau could often be found drinking there, a steady stream of people shaking his hand or clapping him on the back. Chapeau had a show on cable in the nineties and was now famous for walking away from a huge contract to raise his family in tiny Twin Springs, Ohio, and play the steel drums in town on the weekends.

On the way to the bar, I stopped at the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes, chalking it up to impaired judgment. I also had to buy a lighter and found myself tearing into the pack and lighting up before Id even left the premises of the gas stations parking lot like some kind of wild, nicotine-addicted animal.

The bar was a lot more crowded than I thought it would be and I almost turned around to go home and drink alone.