Pete Simon

Laying in a tangled heap of banged up body, Chinney breathed with soft, heaving gasps, rising from him hopefully, withering in the air, then falling in defeat as quiet exhales, quieter than the shelves of CPUs whose whispers surrounded him. He listened to their din within the stillness of the candlelit basement, while mother waited helplessly for instruction.

I don’t know what to do, Mother, he told her in his thoughts. I haven’t got any idea what to do now.

In the far corner, Mother’s eye was powerless black.

Above him, Becca’s footsteps clopped frantically in her search to find the basement entrance.

Chinney tried to prop himself up with the arm that escaped bludgeoning by the steps during his fall. Immediately, sharp pain sparked from his neck, raising hairs there, then licked down his back, took root in his hip and smoldered there.

Gingerly, he returned his body to lying position and tried to soothe the coal hot pain with tears; they leaked from his open eye, over the bridge of his nose, and curled around the smushed fat of his face.

Soon, the hatch door creaked ajar sending rays of light down to mingle with his candles, revealing wisps of diet coke dust, unsettled by the fall.

“Hello!” Becca cried out, and stared into the shadowed basement. There the faint light haloed Chinney’s clumped body, spread unevenly over flat concrete, and saw it was moving, ever so slightly.

“Oh! Oh!” she yelped as she raced down the rotten steps and squatted down beside him.

Just go away, Chinney groaned. Leave me here and go already.

“Are you hurt badly?” she asked. “Can you get up?” then, thinking about it more, “Maybe you shouldn’t try…” she wondered.

Chinney watched her from one wet eye of his half-turned face, winking in response, clenching his eye shut whenever the pain washed upon his conscious shore; turning, grinding, and raking his brain to fine pebbles, then pulling it into the cold, despairing recess.

He could tell from the thick throb at his hip and the merciful numbness of the upper leg that something there was broken. His mouse hand was also numb and his mouse arm wouldn’t move; those would heal, but his hip? He realized he may never walk straight again.

“I’m going to call for help,” Becca was telling him as she uncrouched. “I’ll call for help.” she repeated. She was falling into a daze of concern.

“Wait.” he breathed, blowing dust away from his lips pressed to the floor. Then he extended his free arm and open hand towards her.

“Stay with me.”

Becca took hold of his beestung bear paw; hers was small, warm, and clean; it was trembling with fear.

Becca: he gazed at her silver streaked, black eddied hair, her soft face, her purple brown pixel eyes; so dark in the candle light. A lonely, beautiful heart, unwanted by her world, and suddenly so near to him, at last.

Why do you come into my life now? I have been here for years and years, accepting people’s garbage, for years and years, sifting through their secrets. To have only discovered you now when I am so weak, when I am completely defeated by life… He groaned painfully.

“You’re hurt badly, you need help now.” she told him in her quietest urgent voice.

”NO! No. I can’t allow…others down here…” Chinney weezed, and spit bubbled from his pursed lips as they forcibly kissed the mud stained, weather carpet floor, and he looked into her worried eyes with no expectation she would understand.

The information he had salvaged, linked together, profiled, and ultimately stored on his un-patented, daisy-chained network, Mother; to allow others to access her was not an option.

“Listen, please, I need to go get help,” she said impatiently, but found his hand would not let hers go, he held on to her firmly.

“Help me here,” he told her. His voice was thin from beneath the folds of his smushed face.

“How?!” she demanded of him as he lay there helplessly.

“Repeat what I say.” he told her, spittle leaking from the corner of his mouth like pepperoni pizza grease. Mucus ran from his blood caked nostril like melted butter; the man himself seemed to melt before Becca, and she found him pitiful and was unable to refuse his appeal. After a moment, she nodded.

“Mother,” he said near whisper.

“Mother,” she repeated.

“Louder,” he told said.

“Mother!” she yelled to the open room.

Far in the back, a green eye flicked on, her RAID arrays whirred to the ready, ack packets networked back from all endpoints, all audio receptors came alive and the wave analysis thread was started.

“Erase all discs.” Chinney said in a voice that cracked upon the words and he began to sob.

All my work, all the time I spent on you, the only thing in my life that kept me going: my Mother.

“Erase all discs.” repeated Becca at operational volume.

”Please provide passcode.” Mother intoned overhead, in a calm reasoned tone; benevolent even in the face of extinction.

“1977,01,28,88” Chinney mouthed.

Becca hesitated, uncertain of the exact sequence. Chinney squeezed her hand and repeated it. Becca called it out loud.

”Please provide password.” Mother prompted.

Somewhere in the recesses of contrived memory, Chinney was a young boy with felt button eyes, racing over a hill where a tire swing was suspended in time, hung from an ancient oak, beneath the spinning, parasol sun.

Diving forward into the rubber rim of the simple, sturdy circle so it jut softly into his gut; he smiled as he caught it within the joyful moment. As he slipped through he flew outside material boundary, leaving far behind him the wastepiles of a decadent world; moving onto an existence that was pure and uncontaminated, fulfilled not landfilled, wanted not refused, embraced and held dearly as her most cherished belonging.

Becca was examining his nose again, she seemed calmer but concerned.

He’s not telling me something. He’s hurt, was there a fight?

“Oh, God!” she exclaimed; confused, Chinney recoiled from her, but Becca moved close to him, raising her delicate, clean hand close enough to touch his face. “Did he do this do you?! My husband? Did he hit you?” she asked in low, simmering resentment.

Chinney stood tall and averted his eyes. “No,” he replied.

Like a star in daylight, Becca seemed to disappear behind the yellow sky. He could hardly see her now, she was leaving his world.

The July sun spread butter yellow light over the stale bran muffin top dump grounds. Five fat clouds sat like clods of dust, under the sedentary sky.

A young woman stood on the chocolate snack wrapper mud stained steps of the dump’s front office and tried not to breathe. Noxious air wafted off hot trash piles, closing in on her from all directions. The atmosphere was greasy and still.

She raised again her handkerchief wrapped hand and jabbed at the wart-shaped doorbell, this time it stuck in.

“Come on,” she weezed with short queasy gasps, looking at the sweaty front door of the red shed-office, with all its window shades drawn like lazy eyelids, wishing it would simply admit that no one was inside so she could recover her belongings and finish this horrible chapter of her life once and for all.

Swoosh-Chabling! Magic chimes, the sound of a digital wizard casting his spell awoke Chinney from his dream: the doorbell to the front desk.

Undoubtedly, another saintly visitor had come to discard earthly goods upon him.

“Will you bleached assholes leave me alone?!” Chinney muttered, the taste of blood was fresh in his mouth. He spit hatefully on to the carpet, with a sudden disregard for the sanctity of his office. He sat upright and felt the familiar rushing sensation of his body realigning gravity, and he peered up at Mother.

“Mother, status.”

“Last process completed at 3:22PM: User profile for Rebecca Pellier. Awaiting instruction.”

Swoosh-Chabling! Another wave of the wizard’s wand as the saint signaled impatiently his arrival on earth.

Chinney bolted up.

“Mother, show and detail latest profile.”

Eight desk monitors blinked on, calibrated and displayed, with increasing clarity.

The first had a profile listing that looked like the back of a baseball card; this one was read aloud by Mother as Chinney gazed upon images of the fair Rebecca, shown in a rapid slide show on monitor 4; images retrieved mostly from information scraped from her Facebook pages.

Rebecca Pellier
Age: 39
Sex: F
Relationship Status: Single
Religion: Christian
Politics: N/A
Friends: 512
…

In the image, Rebecca looked through her webcam, her brown eyes registered warmly in the milky cathode light that adorned her; thick hairs swirled from her head like eddies of a black river; so black the cathodes could not describe: those made her divine. Her skin’s pixel-complexion was a beautiful RGB hue that skewed towards light purple (the monitor’s bias), but not without blemishes; zits and dips along her jaw line, puffs beneath two tired eyes, a small dollop of flab beneath her chin; those made her human.

Mother continued her readout…

More personal details available: 2610KB+
Networks: Triage Financial Group, Affinity College For Graduates
Bank: Citibank, Merril Lynch, UBS
Bank Access: 2 of 3
Accessible Net Worth: Three-

“Stop!”

Mother, winked her green eye and killed her audio thread.

“No, I don’t care about any of that. Mother, isn’t she beautiful? She is. She is gorgeous!”

Mother’s green eye flicked distrustful red.

Swoosh-Chabling! Again, the wizard wand cast impatiently his spell.

“FUCK OFF!” Chinney screamed across the cavernous office towards the staircase.

“Mother, catalog images,” he commanded, then he stuck his middle finger at the #4 button on an extracted phone dial pad to set the input focus on monitor 4. Inching his hand to the left, he touched his thumb over a trackball soldered to the side of the number pad, and began rolling through the compiled album.

The same lovely face flickered between photos of different contexts; appearing with friends, sipping the last drop from a Vente Starbucks cup, spreading her arms wide before the Eiffel tower, frolicking at the beach (bookmark these, Chinney noted), and lastly: looking longingly into the neon glow of a flat screen while her webcam looked on.

“She’s lonely,” Chinney sighed. He could read those eyes, the expression of beaten down expectations still held a glimmer of hope for a better life.

Chinney grasped a handful of graying, mouse brown hair and dropped his head onto the wooden flats of the desk top, beneath the indifferent stares of millions of cathode rays. His bloodied magazine nose flapped, his unshaven stubble picked the splinters of the frayed edge like an off-key music box as he tilted up to see again the hopeful eyes of his muse.

Chinney’s grip tightened, his thumb gouged at the trackball. Scalding shame fomented between his creased brow. His words were crushed down by the weight of cold rationalization. Undeterred at last, they escaped into the air.

“Mother, detail relationship status.”

“Rebecca Pellier, single as of April 24th, 2011 (Easter). Formerly married to David Brenard.” Mother explained.

David, Dave, what did you do to lose this woman?

Chinney thought of all the possible reasons for a woman to give up on a man, and there were many. Similarly, he thought of all the reasons a man might give up on woman, and there were few, and those didn’t make much sense to a reasonable mind or a committed heart; so Chinney decided it was safe to presume that Mr. Brenard possessed neither.

“Mother, identify David Brenard.”

In a moment, Monitor 4 lit up with a new picture: a low-resolution face of a bored looking, fit, clean, middle-aged man, so ordinary looking he might have been a television extra, yet the image registered as a vague, disconnected memory; something that may or may not have been. No matter, David was of depleting interest to Chinney, who was slumping back in the minivan car seat, exhaling slowly.

Swoosh-Chabling! Swoosh-CHABLING!! The charm sounded again, tiredly, and then again still, with renewed vigor.

Chinney rose with dazed solemnity, having found refuge in the story of Mrs Pellier, who appeared as though she had not the life once hoped for; a condition he could understand painfully well, living life on trash heap, underneath the feet of better beings, as every waxy Q-tip, lipsticked napkin, crumpled tissue, pealed back snack-wrapper, was dumped there, in piles, to remind him.

Clickity clickity clickity whirrrrrrrr; the sounds of the hard disk being accessed under a high-charged reader head.

Chinney tilted his thick neck back against the sneeze-snot car seat head rest and felt the blood drain down his spine. With his dangling left arm he pawed around the side of the desk searching for the tip of an upright 2liter.

He was completely faint for lack of food, deliberately so, because of the crash diet he began four days ago. Now he was eating nothing but bananas and diet coke, and all the bananas were upstairs.

“Ughhhhh, Mother, I am so hungry.”

Mother’s ninth red eye winked with disapproval.

Far in the recesses of Chinney’s elaborate mind, a fomenting pressure was building. Chinney’s eyes sank in the sockets like depressed power buttons. Little sparks were prickling over his brain, causing strange visuals in his eyes. Pixelated shapes became objects, a triangle became a rectangle became a board. Then Chinney thought he could see the drawbridge of a castle lowering; that changed into a road, with cubes racing along it. Or were they cones? and was that a pyramid, not a castle? The red-blue-yellow-pink flashing forms danced with contextual abandon; nothing stayed the same except for the rhythm.

Suddenly a big white flair appeared at the fore of his vision and Chinney felt a sensation of wetness under his nose.

No.

“No!”

Chinney shot forward, his bleary eyes scanning desperately the expansive flats of his desk.

“Mother, where are the tissues?!”

Mother’s extra red eye winked again, as blood sputtered from Chinney’s nose, cascading down the corse hair of his upper lip, running thickly into and over his mouth like a cheap party wine.

“Shit!” Chinney mumbled wetly.

“Muhhvver, TISSUES!”

Mother’s one green eye flicked on angrily.

”Tissues are stored in the top right drawer. Last purchased on April 25th, 2011 from Walmart for $12.35”

Chinney cupped a club hand over his capsized nose as a sea of blood welled up and with the other hand yanked open the top right drawer as Mother suggested.

Nothing but cables.

While blood leaked through his clenched fingers and pattered down on his kakhis in marble sized drops, Chinney’s mind queried the items he kept in the basement where material equaled “fabric.”

Fabric:
Car seat.
Carpet.
Backpack.
Gym clothes.
Socks.

Forget it, I need all those things, he decided. Now he thought of paper…

Paper:
Reference Books
Porno Mags
…

“Mother, Magazines.” he said through his bloody muzzle.

”Magazines are kept beneath the chair,” she replied. “4 subscriptions total. Last issue recieved June 21st, 2011.”

Yes! Of course. Chinney rolled off the car seat and hit the floor with a round thud. Blood dripped from his mouth onto the carpet as his eyes strained like a nocturnal carnivore to see into the shadowy underworld.

All of his skin mags, ordered by best, descending; Chinney knocked the stack forward and grabbed the lowest magazine uncovered.

It was a year old Penthouse with a skanky blonde on the front, Chinney preferred redheads anyway. Even so, it broke his nose-bleed heart to spill blood over his girls, no matter where they were on his party list,

Uncupping his nose he let the blood splash onto the Table of Contents. He turned the page; Letters to the Editor. He wiped his hand, smearing a coat of deep red down the crass words of “readers”. He continued to turn pages, wipe his hand, and let blood from his nose until it was dripping smaller, then he tore out a page with a busty nude blonde in scanty pink panties and a white-transparent blouse she had pulled up, just above her nipples so that they stuck out like wall pegs. Chinney crumpled the page with heavy set regret. It was a good picture.

He sighed faintly and stuffed the page up his left nostril to stop it. The sharp angles of the crumpled page jut into the nostril walls so painfully that Chinney had tears.

He rolled on his back and let the tears run, feeling totally pathetic and humiliated by life.

“Mother, fuck my life.”

Mother winked a red eye in disapproval.

”Scan complete, data recovered. Ready for command,” she told him.

“Profile user,” he sighed.

Chinney closed his teary eyes, and his mind drifted back to darkness like a discarded magic eight ball prediction; there he allowed himself to dream of a better life, one in which he lived in a different town, near a university, where he would teach young, bright, beautiful students who respected him for his brilliant mind. He would earn enough to hire a private trainer to improve his shit health, lose 100lbs or so. He could publish Mother and become famous in academic circles. He would be welcome at parties, invited. People would see the amazing accomplishments of a misunderstood guy, who truly came from the trash heap of society. He would remake himself, redefine his entire persona, every aspect, every detail; and people wouldn’t remember who he was. He wouldn’t be known as the loser at the dump: the Garbage Man.

The “office” was a vast square basement of a demolished home, a plot of relative sanctity, engulfed in the spoiled banana peal, wet coffee ground, used chewing-gum, crumpled tissue dump grounds.

Chinney stomped down the splintered worm-eaten steps leading into the office, heaving the beige specimen, and weaved his way through a metal shelf maze which was layered with stacks of discarded CPUs; each humming at a near-whisper tone, feeding of chained power strips and networked by lemon colored Ethernet cables.

The room was lit by “Tire Swing” scented candles he salvaged in bulk from dumped boxes, placed in the bottom halves of cut Diet Coke 2liter bottles, and distributed throughout the shelves.

The shelf maze opened to a broad clearing in the far corner; here the power cords converged into an overstuffed circuit box, while the Ethernet cables continued up the wall, across the concrete crumb, iron beam ceiling, then descended down into the cobwebbed recesses behind the office desk like the sinewy branches of an elven vine tree.
 
The office desk was constructed from plywood from the center angle of a roomy corner, and built out with the fantastic whim of a fantasy tree house. Small, blocky monitors perched on each platform, hopelessly enmeshed in wiry growth.

There Chinney sat down on a juice box stained, goldfish crumbed, minivan car seat, with a half-drank Diet Coke 2liter stuffed in a sticky plastic cup holder, and he held the new unit; a mother bear nursing her bee-stung cub. He had tethered the box to a small cube screen perched on the edge of the desk and watched the BIOS readout.

Reading volumes:
CD-ROM Drive D - ok
Harddisk Drive C - …
-DISK FAILURE-
 
The system whelped out a flat A beep. Chinney sighed sympathetically.
 
“I bet you’ve never been defragged, not even once” he whispered with solace.
 
He pulled a thick wooden drawer from the desk, it was filled like a viper pit with screwdrivers. He reached in and rummaged about until the sharp head of a right-sized one made itself known.
 
Chinney took it and threaded the screw head on the brushed metal back of his dusty beige buddy. Then he fished from behind a thick stack of diet coke liters arranged at the foot of the desk, and retrieved a fresh air can.
 
With the metal case unfastened, a round plume of dust grew into the air like a nuclear mushroom. Chinney coughed and released a small fart of excitement which sounded like a cell phone vibration.

With the silicon guts of his specimen were exposed, he wasted no time locating the hard disk and extracting it gingerly like a pearl from a beige oyster.

He blew an affectionate healing breeze across the scuzzy pins, kicking up fat flakes of dust like leaves in the wind over a hill top.

“Hello there,” he giggled. Then he stiffened with a serious air and sat erect in the minivan seat, facing the centrifuge of his desktop system; eye to eye with Mother, who was hibernating.

“Lets examine this, Mother.”

He unknotted a free scuzzy cord from one of Mother’s Hydra port connectors. Mother clicked and whirred awake and an array of nine red LEDs flicked on like spider eyes.

…

“1st read attempt failed,” said a young, sterile, synthesized voice. “…Increasing voltage by 10%.”

“Careful now, Mother!” yelped Chinney.

The red LEDs blinked without concern.

A squat wooden shack sat atop a garbage mound under the sweaty yellow July sky. On Saturday, all the wealthy pricks parade their minivans through the Chinney’s dump to pitch their valuables into the rotten slimey decay, stooping for a moment down to Chinney’s level to shit on him from spotlessly clean assholes; to remind him of his place underneath their eyes, otherwise out of sight and mind. But under their radar also.

“Hi! Excuse me!” one faceless saint blared through pearly teeth. Chinney saw past those even row white rows into the total emptiness inside—hollowness, but not empty.

“Hello, yes, I’ve got some old computer stuff here. Should I put it with the appliances?” The hollow saint looked past Chinney, despite his enormous size. The only thing they hate more than being here is me, he thought grimly.

Chinney chomped down on a blackened banana and tossed it towards a tiny pail, then he flicked off his blocky beige CRT and spun around his pivot chair. He heaved himself up from the front desk, sigh hustled towards the door and approaching the customer in an attempt to make eye contact.

“No, don’t get up, it’s okay. I only want to know where to put electronic stuff,” the saint’s voice picked up as Chinney approached, and Chinney could feel magnetic force repelling him backwards, but he pressed on.

Now standing at the front office doorway, he was actually higher up than the saint who now swayed uneasily. Chinney was looking upon the inhuman figure trying to find his eyes.

“I need to take a look at it.”

Overpowered, the saint turned away.

“It’s just some old computer stuff.” he said in a weakened voice.

“Okay” said Chinney, “just leave it here. I’ll take care of it.”

“Are you sure?” asked the saint, still positioning himself in any angle that would evade Chinney’s eyes, as if attempting to be invisible.

“Yeah, I mean, usually there’s a fee for this,” Chinney continued. He looked down to the cinder block sized desktop laying flat int the dirt, he breathed slowly, patiently, and buried his excitement beneath his huge frame. The boxes were bursting at the screws full. Chinney wondered how the hollow arms of the saint could lift and carry them.

“I’ll pay the fee then.” the saint seethed, the sound was like wind sneaking through the cracks of a rickety home.

“it’s 5$ per component, so this will be 15$.” Chinny stated.

The saint made no audible sound but the magnetic fields around him buzzed with disdain and Cinney would have been repelled through his shack had he not weighed more than a cement mixer.

Chinney pushed back, “you’ve got 3 components, a CPU, a monitor, and a printer. Give me ten and I’ll take care of them,” he said with tint if affection.

The saint grinned through gritted teeth, “nice racket you have here.” then he pulled money from his back pocket and punched it at Chinney, who caught the bill as it fell crumpled from the unclenched fist.

Chinney found himself again trying to make eye contact with the inhuman, but the eyes were like buttons beneath a fold of cloth. The strange, shapeless face was without an angle from which to be seen.

And now the body was slipping like the shadow of a kite beneath a cloud, out of reach and sight, occluded by the sun.

Gone.

Chinney’s bear sized arms scooped up the discarded items from the moss brown mud. He hummed as he hustled back inside and headed down to the main “office”; he was electric with excitement.

Yewbush was planted at the foot of the driveway, a low-profile marker for wayward cars meandering down a dirt road in the rural heart of Eden, Connecticut.
 
Yewbush was a squat shrub, non distinct from any other; green, scraggly and with angular shape; but underneath the hairy bark of his tiny limbs, ambition coursed. Yewbush could not stand the company of the fair maples, which the landowners so admired. For Yewbush, the malcontent of being small and unnoticeable was an unquenchable thirst.
 
Yewbush looked across the derelict dust of the sand driveway and saw reprieve: the ancient brook that ran through Eden, carrying in her waters the dredged muck of forgotten times; bloody property disputes fueled by small town reputations, deceit and treachery between neighbors; sin seeped through the soil of Eden, into the ancient brook. Of her waters, Yewbush was forbade by natural law to drink, for it ran through the dark ages of the spirit of man. But Yewbush saw that she ran so near, just across the sandy driveway, and thought it destiny that he should be planted close such an awful power.
 
Watch me, Yewbush told the fair maples, and he sent his little roots beneath the sandy driveway earth too the edge of the ancient brook, and he drank deep the stories of Eden’s dark ages.

And Yewbush grew. In three years time, Yewbush became Yewtree. He emerged from the shadows of neglect, coarse and dense, needles darkened, a hundred limbs spread tall and strong, he cast the blackest shadow across the grass tuft lawn.

Surely, he had become a dark thing, a natural outlaw, grown from the sins of the ancient water of Eden.
 
No one had ever seen a tree like Yewtree. No one could believe that Yewtree had grown from bush; he had grown too tall to and horrible to be imagined younger.

What is this tree?  aghast visitors would ask. Alas, it was a small yew bush, but it grew to this unsightly tree! replied the landowners.

Yewtree heard all this but didn’t care, he thrived on the negativity of his new-found attention.
 
Now they notice me, he told the fair maples.

You are a stain on this fair earth, they replied. Though forbade, you drew from the ancient waters. You grew from sin! and they rustled with fear and disapproval of Yewtree.

Scorned by his brethren, Yewtree decided to grow taller still.
 
Once again, Yewtree drank deeply from the ancient brook of Eden. The brook laughed as Yewtree drew her murky waters, but Yewtree didn’t care.
 
This time, Yewtree didn’t grow at all. Instead he became dry. His dark green needles browned, and like a rotting apple, his limbs withered from the center out.

Soon visitors would notice he was even wilder than before, and dead on the inside. This tree cannot stand much longer, they told the landowners.
 
But Yewtree didn’t care, he reveled in the sour looks of all of his beholders.

May all of Nature hear me! I was but a driveway marker, set in sandy earth where derelict dust sweeps and blasts. Now I am a full grown tree, unlike any other, and as coarse and wretched as I may be you cannot help but notice me.
 
Finally, the landowners eyes tired of the foulness of Yewtree.

This tree has grown from a mere yew bush, and though it was impressive once, now it is an unwelcoming sight that forebodes visitors and casts a long shadow over our land. And see, the branches are beginning to die on the inside but they can’t be removed because the tree is too dense.
 
With nothing more to be done, the landowners decided the yew bush would be removed.
 
Then came the morning when Yewtree was to be removed, and all of Nature looked on.

At the first strike of the shovel, the Yewtree recalled his proud life.
 
Unlike you, I have accomplished something in my time, he told the fair maples that grew nearby.
 
Unlike you, I have proven my worth; I am the biggest, wildest, roughest, densest, darkest, deadest bush on earth.

In a shadowed lot beside a corporate complex, not far from the Hess station, the a smiling orange van idled. The Dent Brothers discussed their options.

“Serge, What about the blue Lexus? That guy will have money, not like the last guy. That guy had nothing. See, if we chose a car that is too guapo, the owner has no desire to fix it.” Jugo offered.

“Si, but the lexus is too expensive. The guy who owns this won’t talk to us. He will take it to his mechanic.” Serge explained from a relaxed posture, leaning his back against the passenger side door as he faced his brother.

Jugo gazed with marshmallow eyes across parking lot, filled with cars like a beautiful box of unspoiled crayons.

Serge continued, “we want to stick to the cheaper cars, like the Focus, like the Civics, like the Hyundais, but we need to do cars that don’t look like crap besides the dent, comprendes?”

Jugo looked at his brother with silent consent. He then turned his attention back to the lot. So many options…

“There.” Serge said. “That champaign accord. At the back of the lot, do you see it?”

“I think an old woman drives that.” Jugo replied.

“No, remember where we are. These people work here or go to gym here. Yes, this car is the one.”

“Okay.” Jugo nodded.

Big round headlights flicked on and the smiling orange van giggled as it started up. Jugo drove it quietly between rows of unblemished vehicles. Taking a soft turn, he eased the van around the corner towards the champaign accord.

Serge put his feet up on the wide dashboard of the van. Jugo’s square frame tensed, his eyes were like tiny black pinheads.

The van coasted forward silently. From the backseat of the champaign accord, it would appear as though the van’s round headlights were gleeful eyes, and it’s front bumper a fat-lipped smile, it’s orange color was warm and friendly.

¡Crunch!

The accord’s back bumper pocketed against the firm pressure of the smiling orange van. Both vehicles were still amid swirls of cold wet night air.

“Oops.” whispered Serge.

The smiling orange van’s engine giggled on and the van crept backwards.

The Dent Brothers straightened posture to survey the damage.

The champaign accord squinted it’s black eye back at them under the van’s happy headlight beams. Serge winked back.

“Perfecto. You get the license plate?”

“Si.” Jugo said as he cut the steering wheel hard and wound the van around the last row of cars.

Accelerating upwards, the Brothers were careening past rows of nervous cars, a line of mute witnesses to a shocking event, watching helplessly as the smiling orange van cartwheeled happily away.

Onlookers would see, decaled on the van’s tinted back window, the Dent Brother’s promise:

We’ll fix that dent!

“We’re the Dent Brothers.” said the larger, squarish one. “We specialize in fixing dents like this one and just let me ask what would you pay to have this dent fixed?”

Jack opened his mouth to reply but the dent brother continued.

“$300? Hey buddy, for 120$ you can go inside that station and warm up and this car will be dent free when you come out. You know what we have is the exact paint in our van that matches your car color, right Steve?”

Steve peered at the car from under his cap’s shadow, paused to gather energy to speak.

“Yeah, we got that.” he said at last.

Jack closed his mouth, it had hung open waiting to respond.

The Dent Brother continued, “so for $120 we can have this dent fixed up like new and I bet you would like having your car looking brand new for the holidays?”

Jack waited for a moment to be certain he would have an opportunity to speak. Meanwhile, cold curled around him, covering his face like a plastic bag and he gasped.

“Ffft!”

The Dent Brothers stood patiently for him to speak.

“I mean, it sounds good guys, but I’m on a tight budget, with Christmas coming and all, I’ve got a lot of things to buy—”

“I’ll tell you what!” the Dent Brother collided head on into Jack’s excuse. “We will make this dent disappear for $100. This is so easy for us because-because we have all the tools right in the back of our van and can have this car looking like new in 5 minutes and you can stand there and watch us if you like.”

Jack stood rigidly against cold gales, wishing he was anywhere else. “I just can’t afford that, I got a big family and I gotta save money right now.”

Steve put an elbow on the passenger door of the van and tilted his head down so only his chin was visible beneath his cap visor.

The squarish Dent Brother’s eyes became like pressed lemons. He spoke sourly now and Jack could hear a tone of impatient surrender.

“Okay buddy, we will do this for $75. The dent, the paint, for $75. Is it worth that much to you? Is it worth $75?”

Jack dropped his head pathetically. These were good guys, trying to make some quick money, and goddamn he did hate that dent.

The car looked like shit from any angle, scarred cosmetics all over, but no point looked as bad as that back bumper dent; it was black eye winking at the onlooker as if to say, “yeah, I know I’m a piece of shit on wheels, what of it?”

But Jack didn’t want to pay, not now, not ever. He’d rather drive his car off a cliff than spend one cent to restore its looks; this was a city car. City cars ain’t pretty.

The gas pump clicked off and Jack’s spoiled gas tank burped its approval.

“Okay buddy, okay. no problem.” said the Dent Brother, his mouth puckered like he was tasting lemons. “Have a good Christmas.”

He motioned Steve into the car, the both hopped inside in unison, drove off silently in the smiling-orange van.

Jack craned his neck up at the gas price digits.

Ouch. that’s gonna leave a mark.