Delicious ice cream! And meeting the neighbors. (Sicko LCBR)
May 18, 2017 3:43:36 GMT -5
Rick Majors, The Anarchist, and 1 more like this
Post by Kyle Shane on May 18, 2017 3:43:36 GMT -5
"He's out there again," George said tersely from the window. His wife, meanwhile, was busy in the kitchen behind him. Behold George and Nora Turner. Two forty-somethings in a respectable duplex setup that have had an ongoing spate of paranoia since the family next door moved in. George's wife thinks he's crazy.
By the time this is over, George is going to be on fire.
In the weeks since he first saw the ice cream truck on his cul-de-sac, George had had a sinking feeling. The truck was once a bright yellow, with stickers advertising a wide variety of shaped dessert treats molded into the faces of popular characters. Only, the paint was worn and chipped, revealing it's own neopolitan of shades of color underneath in jagged chips, and the stickers were faded by the sun. The entire works of the ice cream truck leaned to one side, giving it a disquieting squeak as it rattled up the road to who knew where. This was due to the massive size and bulk of the driver of the truck, who had such incredible mass that it felt like he left craters wherever he stepped. It was him that George kept an eye on, and he was watching him out there now. George felt like a spy in a Cold War era dime store novel... but as he pulled one of the Venetian slats down, he took a quick peek out there. The big bald head, shining in the sun, turned his way, and when the man looked at him, George let out a tiny peep of fright. He pulled his head away from the window in a sprint, the irrational fear of being seen.
"Well, I think you're being ridiculous," Nora was saying, and she began pushing the cooling Earl Grey and hibiscus cookies from the pan to the serving tray. He couldn't help himself, though, calling back to her. "Honey, take a look at this..."
He pulled a slat down for her so that they could look into the shared driveway of the duplex. One story down, a gigantic, bald human shape with an egg-shaped head and completely neutral features was using a hose to run a river over a dilapidated, broken ice cream truck, and mopping over the peeling stickers with a sponge that was a thick black brick. Nora had indulged her husband enough, but she peered at him out of the corner of her eye, and she just shook her head. "I think you need to stop bothering Mr. Ortiz... he's a nice man, he pays his rent on time... he just wants to provide for his family..."
"What family, Nora?" George snapped irritably, and she rolled her eyes with that "oh here we go with this" moue that made him want to pop her one. The hidden things that he could never say to her. "We only see him coming in and out when he goes to work selling ice cream. At 9 o clock at night! Who goes out and buys ice cream after dark?"
"You are ridiculous, George," Nora said bullishly, and she went back over to the plate of hibiscus cookies, arranging them neatly on the plate. George sneered back at her, but out of the corner of his eye he was drawn to the idea that the man washing the truck was not a human being at all. His peripheral vision logged the brief glitch of reality, but did not know how to rationally process the idea of a man in dripping, runny greasepaint makeup slopping filthy water on a black vehicle. He froze, trying to question himself, and when he looked back out the window he saw only Mister Ortiz, with his large kettle belly straining his white uniform shirt. It was little cuts like that, which were adding up over the last few weeks which were straining him to the breaking point, even if he couldn't admit it. Seeing the clown in his driveway turned into seeing the clown in his dreams. Another thing he would never say out loud, because goddamn Nora would just laugh at him. Her snooty, hen like laugh had only grown more agitating these days.
There were times when he laid awake at night. He laid there next to her, and he could hear Mister Ortiz talking through the walls, clear as day, like he was talking to him, but it never made any sense. And there were times when he laid down next to his wife of 22 years, and ever since she made friends with the tenants in duplex 6-B, her mouth had just grown too much for him to abide. He never slept anymore. His eyes felt like lead weights, before he heard the ratchety, wrong sound of the engine starting outside of his window, and a calliope jingle happily echo into the night.
George was dead tired the next morning as his Keurig slopped Green Mountain roast into his coffee. Nora opened the front door, still laughing merrily as if she had been part of a wonderful joke between old friends, and she came back in to the kitchen bearing an empty tray that had served Earl grey hibiscus cookies. "The cookie recipe was a big hit with the Ortiz'es!" She said sunnily, "And Ephrain is just the sweetest man."
Coffee dribbled down his chin as he fought to keep from spitting. "You saw his wife?"
Nora side-eyed him with the expression of someone humoring a gnat. He did not care for it. "Ephrain and I had a good long talk out there, he's starting a new route on Monday."
"Will you stop calling him Ephrain! That man is a menace. He looks like he was just out of some institution. All of those scars on his arms, and his teeth - !"
Nora frostily put the dish in the sink and scrubbed it with a sponge thoughtfully. "George, what an awful thing to say. He's a kind man, and he just wants to sell ice cream to children."
"Sell ice cream! From that van! You don't see it the way I see it, on the edges of my perception. That van is from the pits of hell. It has red eyes. And teeth!" He slammed his coffee mug down so hard it splashed all over the floral-print tablecloth her mother had given her.
Nora tsked and continued washing the dish. If you've ever lived in the suburbia of a fractured marriage, you'll know how this scene plays out. One side angrily, and pointedly, washing dishes in the direction of the person they're feuding with, the other party fuming in impotent rage and the darkest, lizard parts of their brain fantasizing about rocking out and knocking her off her pedestal. This is the hidden truth that lies in the corner of all of our perceptions, there's demons under the glammer of everything, even family life. Sometimes they hide, and sometimes they come out.
George is restless all day, in his cubicle, on the drive down the turnpike, in the car wash after he fueled up on gas. He glared straight forward, a neutral expression, his eyes staring into infinity as he thought everything through. The voices he heard in the night were of more than one person... Ephrain Ortiz was out washing his truck in the moonlight of 10 pm, and starting up the jingle at 2:38... 'Ephrain is just the sweetest man!' This was becoming his white whale. Taking a lunch break, he parked two blocks over from the duplex, and pulled over on the side of the road. He loaded a hot dog into his mouth and watched as the ice cream truck was pulled over, allowing some children to buy fudgsicles.
He knew he was becoming hooked by this. But what he didn't know is how deep he was going to end up getting himself in before all was said and done.
...But right now, he felt an uneasy settling in his stomach. One of the kids pointed at his car, and before he knew it, two others were craning their heads. Was he the strange one, for observing this legal activity?
He shifted his car up and sped away before anyone could exit the ice cream truck.
In his rear view mirror a black carriage was parked where the old box van had been a moment ago, but when he looked back at the scene it was like nothing was amiss. Suburban gothic.
When George finally stopped his vehicle in the parking lot at work, he broke down and cried, in fear he was going mad.
He wasn't sure how he made it through the rest of the day. As he sat at his cubicle he continued to have the fantasy that a big, black, formless carriage would come pulling up to the parking meter visible down two floors, and it's owner would emerge in all of his massive bulk and stand outside, beckoning for George to come down. He was so distracted that he missed a deadline to turn in expense reports for the week, and his phone rang incessantly. But he couldn't help but keep looking.
When it was time to clock out and go home, he just sat there, behind the wheel. He felt like a zombie, in that his every movement was empty, shambling, going through the motions of human action. He didn't even want to return, because his fear was that his wife, Susy Homemaker that she was trying to be, would invite the new neighbors over. Yeah! Imagine that, Nora playing Donna fucking Reed, wearing a plaid dress and heels as she cooked a roast and invited Mister and Missus Ortiz over for some tea and a spirited game of bridge until dinnertime. And he would come home, like Ricky Ricardo, sing-songing "Honey, I'm hoooome," and he would enter the living room with his pipe, removing his tie, and find... A giant, wearing a filthy coverall, and streaked greasepaint makeup swathed on his face. Sitting there, grinning at him. This dark fantasy replayed over and over in his head, totally committed to the 50's black and white tv- aesthetic. TV-George meeting TV-Ephrain, shaking his hand, as a canned sitcom audience, long since dead past the time of their recording, howled like the shrieks of the netherworld. That's true though, you can look it up. All sitcom laugh tracks are pre-recorded from test audiences in the 50's. Every time you hear their laughs you're communing with the spirits of people who have passed on for decades.
He's sitting in his driveway, parked in front of their home, when headlights flood in behind him. A groaning, wheezing, rattling specter has filled his rear view and the light pouring into his car is blinding. He throws his hands up. The broken down van is enormous in it's bulk. From closer up, it dwarfs his little car, making him wonder how two of them can fit in the driveway. The driver, unseen, cuts it hard, though, and the bulky metal box turns enough to give his car a wide berth, before shutting it's engine down. There's an almost audible hiss, like from some dragon. George is afraid to turn his head, in case the yellow stickers and beaten paint of the ice cream truck are instead the null, nihilistic dark. His heart is beating with terror. And he can feel the bulk of the man, the weight of him moving as he exits the driver side, shifting the van on it's springs loudly, and he shuffles on heavily booted feet. The obese man is wheezing in his lungs like an engine himself. George bites his knuckles, thinking of routes he can make a break for it; run now, go left, slide between the two vehicles, duck down, go between the duplexes next door, try to make a break for the basement just run run run don't let him come around the -
The rasping breath and heavy, massive presence stops, and George lifts his eyes. There is a very big man standing there. He patiently knocks on the window. He beckons for George to get out of his car.
He doesn't know why he's doing this. All conscious thought has fled his mind, like a mouse in front of a viper.
He's much more massive than anyone could have forseen. The two of them do nothing but stand and breathe in synch for a little while, him short and panicked gulps, his peer in big, long, rasping sighs. George lets out just the littlest squeak, fearing that the muscles that ripple beneath that pressed, surreally white uniform will grab on to him and rip him limb from limb.
The giant is the first to speak, holding out a wrapped, white foil novelty with a stick at the end. "Tutti frutti."
George blinks at the non-sequitur. "T-t-tutti..."
With a twinkle in his eye that drives this comedy to complete abstract, his grin widens, "Fruit used for tutti-frutti ice cream include cherries, raisins, and pineapple. In the Netherlands, tutti frutti is a compote of dried fruits and nuts." He's still holding out the popsicle stick, nudging it towards George. In the moonlight, next to the creepy van and standing with him, there is as much implicit threat in this act as if he was holding a weapon. "Here in the good old U S of A, it refers to artificial fruit flavors with a hint of brandy," he said, continuing the nonsequitur exposition. And certainly the giant man's disturbing grin looks like a shark's. He feels sick all over again.
He stabbed the popsicle stick at him. George's hand tremored too hard to keep steady. The giant continued, as mild and genteel as a breeze. "Tutti frutti has been served for at least 150 years, earliest appearance was on bills for expensive eateries catering to nobles in 1860's England. Recipes for tutti frutti ice cream were found in cookbooks of the late 19th century."
"Uh-uh-uh-I... I..."
"Take the damn popsicle... neighbor..." The words came out with barbs, with teeth, and he yelped, because the face formed in the shadows had the eyes and the glower of the clown from his dreams.
So saying, the big man unwrapped a popsicle, and slopped it onto his tongue, running it around his lips and moaning with a sensual pleasure as he took a taste of the ice cream flavor. "Mmmmm. There's nothing better, no finer creation of man's design than that, wouldn't you say. In fact, I'd almost say that this right here is one of the best things man has ever thought about creating, don't you think?" George was aghast, and red runnels of saliva were dripping from the big man onto the collar of his white uniform and he barely noticed, still slopping the popsicle around in the fore of his mouth. "Only a couple of things have ever given me more pleasure, and they're - Well, they're work related."
George tried to get his mind to work with him, and he, in a show of good faith, took a little lick of his popsicle, and he tried to put on his most neighborly facade, shaky as it was. "S-so-so... has business... been good then? The... tutti frutti business?"
The big man looks up at the moon, and sighs a little bit. He moves the popsicle stick to the other side of his mouth, chewing on ice cream. "I suppose you've heard me and the missus talking in the middle of the night, have you? What she wants me to do?"
George froze. This was an extremely tricky question because it didn't seem to take into account that he was mistaken. He knew what he was asking, he just wanted confirmation. George waved his hands, trying to smooth things over. "Nooo, I didn't hear -"
"It used to be like this," said the big man sourly, "I was locked up in a little room, put in a straight jacket and medicated until I couldn't stand. But people looked at me and they saw this chained freak of nature, and every single time, I would find myself under the care of somebody else. Somebody who wanted to poke at me, poke the monster until he reacted. They all wanted me to be something I wasn't, whatever it was. A team player, a comedy show, a funny little clown. But when I listened to them... I wasn't happy. Do you understand?"
He put the popsicle back in his mouth and turned to George, who nodded eagerly. "Sure, absolutely Ephrain... I get you just fine..."
"But it was only when I listened to her that I found what I wanted to do. And it's usually so clear. But what she wants this time, is to go back to being that person, and it's so unfair." He sighed, heavily.
"You mean your wife, right?" He said, squinting at the bald man. The giant's mouth twisted in a rubbery grimace and he punched the man he dwarfed on the shoulder. "You should meet her sometime. Your wife loves her." But then he looked back up at the moon, and his eyes spaced out far apart, and he forgot about his popsicle.
"And I'm not afraid of doing what she wants me to do... I'm afraid though that it'll take me away from her for too long. When I'm not... talking with her... things get a little... unclear..." He tapped his temple absently. "And I'm afraid... that it's going to happen, when I just hit them until they break, that I'm going to love it. Any of them. All of them. Doesn't matter. Saniti, Whitey Ford, Wasp, Eira, Jury... their names mean nothing to me. They'll fall just because she told me to kick them down. But... if push comes to shove... and shove comes to punch... and punch comes to slam and slam comes to snap... God. I'll have to go back. The old girl here..." He absently traces the peeled paint of his ice cream truck, "it'll go back into storage and all of her goods are going to go to waste...."
George had no idea what the faintest he was talking about, but he ventured something just to make it sound like he sympathized. "All of that tutti frutti wasted, huh?"
His eyes snapped towards George harshly, and he flung George hard into the side of his car. George felt his spine jar and almost though a window cracked, but the giant had him by his lapels and was shaking him like a rag doll. "I won't go back!!"
George was hyperventilating, near passing out from panic, soothing him by saying "You won't go back, you won't you won't - !!"
The big man let go of his shirt and half turned away. There was a dark resolve to him. "But it is what feeds her, she's right about that. And what feeds her makes me feel... stronger... more connected... more here." Grimly, his titanic mitts of hands squeezed into fists so hard that steel cable veins stood out on his forearms. George looked at him with dismay, not knowing what was about to happen, but thinking he had to get a warning out to these kinds of people.
Then the big man was looming over him, his face a few inches away from his. His breath was fetid. "I'm gonna have to go away for a few days, Georgie boy... do me a favor and watch over the old homestead, will you?"
Before he could say anything in response, the big man turned, muttering. "Yukio... Non Compos Mentis... Crazy Boy... names, just names, Maria... they're just names of men... just men, that's all... stupid weak fragile men that are on their last chance. A last chance. This isn't my last chance, is it? I won't let this be the last chance I get. There has to be more. The more I feed you, the stronger we both get. No. No. Their last chance..."
He has gone from field of sight, and he appears on the other side of the open van door, climbing up in the driver's seat behind the wheel of his monstrosity, still talking to a Maria.
He started the engine with a rumbling roar, like a predator coming to life. George stood there, melting ice cream stick in his hand.
The giant leaned over both front seats of his ice cream truck to talk to George again. "No charge for the tutti frutti, partner. It's on the house. One of the perks of being a good neighbor, after all." He winks at George, and it's the most hideous sight George has ever seen.
"And hey, when I get back in town, you and your wife have got to come meet the missus. She's going to be..." the ghoul considered his words, hemmed a little, and then his voice was a manic cackle, "Looking a little more full next time you see her."
Like the baying of hyenas at the moon, his laugh was shrill into the night.
He waved out the side of his window, and George, dreamily, waved back. He had no idea what else to do, except, eventually, wander inside, dispose of his melting tutti frutti stick, and tell Nora that they were invited to dinner in a few days with the neighbors. It would be the source of some stress and fights in the dark of their little suburban home that night, going to bed. But all that George knew then, was that he had looked into the eye of the gorgon, and now he was helpless.
As for him being set on fire, well... We'll get to that some time soon.
By the time this is over, George is going to be on fire.
In the weeks since he first saw the ice cream truck on his cul-de-sac, George had had a sinking feeling. The truck was once a bright yellow, with stickers advertising a wide variety of shaped dessert treats molded into the faces of popular characters. Only, the paint was worn and chipped, revealing it's own neopolitan of shades of color underneath in jagged chips, and the stickers were faded by the sun. The entire works of the ice cream truck leaned to one side, giving it a disquieting squeak as it rattled up the road to who knew where. This was due to the massive size and bulk of the driver of the truck, who had such incredible mass that it felt like he left craters wherever he stepped. It was him that George kept an eye on, and he was watching him out there now. George felt like a spy in a Cold War era dime store novel... but as he pulled one of the Venetian slats down, he took a quick peek out there. The big bald head, shining in the sun, turned his way, and when the man looked at him, George let out a tiny peep of fright. He pulled his head away from the window in a sprint, the irrational fear of being seen.
"Well, I think you're being ridiculous," Nora was saying, and she began pushing the cooling Earl Grey and hibiscus cookies from the pan to the serving tray. He couldn't help himself, though, calling back to her. "Honey, take a look at this..."
He pulled a slat down for her so that they could look into the shared driveway of the duplex. One story down, a gigantic, bald human shape with an egg-shaped head and completely neutral features was using a hose to run a river over a dilapidated, broken ice cream truck, and mopping over the peeling stickers with a sponge that was a thick black brick. Nora had indulged her husband enough, but she peered at him out of the corner of her eye, and she just shook her head. "I think you need to stop bothering Mr. Ortiz... he's a nice man, he pays his rent on time... he just wants to provide for his family..."
"What family, Nora?" George snapped irritably, and she rolled her eyes with that "oh here we go with this" moue that made him want to pop her one. The hidden things that he could never say to her. "We only see him coming in and out when he goes to work selling ice cream. At 9 o clock at night! Who goes out and buys ice cream after dark?"
"You are ridiculous, George," Nora said bullishly, and she went back over to the plate of hibiscus cookies, arranging them neatly on the plate. George sneered back at her, but out of the corner of his eye he was drawn to the idea that the man washing the truck was not a human being at all. His peripheral vision logged the brief glitch of reality, but did not know how to rationally process the idea of a man in dripping, runny greasepaint makeup slopping filthy water on a black vehicle. He froze, trying to question himself, and when he looked back out the window he saw only Mister Ortiz, with his large kettle belly straining his white uniform shirt. It was little cuts like that, which were adding up over the last few weeks which were straining him to the breaking point, even if he couldn't admit it. Seeing the clown in his driveway turned into seeing the clown in his dreams. Another thing he would never say out loud, because goddamn Nora would just laugh at him. Her snooty, hen like laugh had only grown more agitating these days.
There were times when he laid awake at night. He laid there next to her, and he could hear Mister Ortiz talking through the walls, clear as day, like he was talking to him, but it never made any sense. And there were times when he laid down next to his wife of 22 years, and ever since she made friends with the tenants in duplex 6-B, her mouth had just grown too much for him to abide. He never slept anymore. His eyes felt like lead weights, before he heard the ratchety, wrong sound of the engine starting outside of his window, and a calliope jingle happily echo into the night.
George was dead tired the next morning as his Keurig slopped Green Mountain roast into his coffee. Nora opened the front door, still laughing merrily as if she had been part of a wonderful joke between old friends, and she came back in to the kitchen bearing an empty tray that had served Earl grey hibiscus cookies. "The cookie recipe was a big hit with the Ortiz'es!" She said sunnily, "And Ephrain is just the sweetest man."
Coffee dribbled down his chin as he fought to keep from spitting. "You saw his wife?"
Nora side-eyed him with the expression of someone humoring a gnat. He did not care for it. "Ephrain and I had a good long talk out there, he's starting a new route on Monday."
"Will you stop calling him Ephrain! That man is a menace. He looks like he was just out of some institution. All of those scars on his arms, and his teeth - !"
Nora frostily put the dish in the sink and scrubbed it with a sponge thoughtfully. "George, what an awful thing to say. He's a kind man, and he just wants to sell ice cream to children."
"Sell ice cream! From that van! You don't see it the way I see it, on the edges of my perception. That van is from the pits of hell. It has red eyes. And teeth!" He slammed his coffee mug down so hard it splashed all over the floral-print tablecloth her mother had given her.
Nora tsked and continued washing the dish. If you've ever lived in the suburbia of a fractured marriage, you'll know how this scene plays out. One side angrily, and pointedly, washing dishes in the direction of the person they're feuding with, the other party fuming in impotent rage and the darkest, lizard parts of their brain fantasizing about rocking out and knocking her off her pedestal. This is the hidden truth that lies in the corner of all of our perceptions, there's demons under the glammer of everything, even family life. Sometimes they hide, and sometimes they come out.
George is restless all day, in his cubicle, on the drive down the turnpike, in the car wash after he fueled up on gas. He glared straight forward, a neutral expression, his eyes staring into infinity as he thought everything through. The voices he heard in the night were of more than one person... Ephrain Ortiz was out washing his truck in the moonlight of 10 pm, and starting up the jingle at 2:38... 'Ephrain is just the sweetest man!' This was becoming his white whale. Taking a lunch break, he parked two blocks over from the duplex, and pulled over on the side of the road. He loaded a hot dog into his mouth and watched as the ice cream truck was pulled over, allowing some children to buy fudgsicles.
He knew he was becoming hooked by this. But what he didn't know is how deep he was going to end up getting himself in before all was said and done.
...But right now, he felt an uneasy settling in his stomach. One of the kids pointed at his car, and before he knew it, two others were craning their heads. Was he the strange one, for observing this legal activity?
He shifted his car up and sped away before anyone could exit the ice cream truck.
In his rear view mirror a black carriage was parked where the old box van had been a moment ago, but when he looked back at the scene it was like nothing was amiss. Suburban gothic.
When George finally stopped his vehicle in the parking lot at work, he broke down and cried, in fear he was going mad.
He wasn't sure how he made it through the rest of the day. As he sat at his cubicle he continued to have the fantasy that a big, black, formless carriage would come pulling up to the parking meter visible down two floors, and it's owner would emerge in all of his massive bulk and stand outside, beckoning for George to come down. He was so distracted that he missed a deadline to turn in expense reports for the week, and his phone rang incessantly. But he couldn't help but keep looking.
When it was time to clock out and go home, he just sat there, behind the wheel. He felt like a zombie, in that his every movement was empty, shambling, going through the motions of human action. He didn't even want to return, because his fear was that his wife, Susy Homemaker that she was trying to be, would invite the new neighbors over. Yeah! Imagine that, Nora playing Donna fucking Reed, wearing a plaid dress and heels as she cooked a roast and invited Mister and Missus Ortiz over for some tea and a spirited game of bridge until dinnertime. And he would come home, like Ricky Ricardo, sing-songing "Honey, I'm hoooome," and he would enter the living room with his pipe, removing his tie, and find... A giant, wearing a filthy coverall, and streaked greasepaint makeup swathed on his face. Sitting there, grinning at him. This dark fantasy replayed over and over in his head, totally committed to the 50's black and white tv- aesthetic. TV-George meeting TV-Ephrain, shaking his hand, as a canned sitcom audience, long since dead past the time of their recording, howled like the shrieks of the netherworld. That's true though, you can look it up. All sitcom laugh tracks are pre-recorded from test audiences in the 50's. Every time you hear their laughs you're communing with the spirits of people who have passed on for decades.
He's sitting in his driveway, parked in front of their home, when headlights flood in behind him. A groaning, wheezing, rattling specter has filled his rear view and the light pouring into his car is blinding. He throws his hands up. The broken down van is enormous in it's bulk. From closer up, it dwarfs his little car, making him wonder how two of them can fit in the driveway. The driver, unseen, cuts it hard, though, and the bulky metal box turns enough to give his car a wide berth, before shutting it's engine down. There's an almost audible hiss, like from some dragon. George is afraid to turn his head, in case the yellow stickers and beaten paint of the ice cream truck are instead the null, nihilistic dark. His heart is beating with terror. And he can feel the bulk of the man, the weight of him moving as he exits the driver side, shifting the van on it's springs loudly, and he shuffles on heavily booted feet. The obese man is wheezing in his lungs like an engine himself. George bites his knuckles, thinking of routes he can make a break for it; run now, go left, slide between the two vehicles, duck down, go between the duplexes next door, try to make a break for the basement just run run run don't let him come around the -
The rasping breath and heavy, massive presence stops, and George lifts his eyes. There is a very big man standing there. He patiently knocks on the window. He beckons for George to get out of his car.
He doesn't know why he's doing this. All conscious thought has fled his mind, like a mouse in front of a viper.
He's much more massive than anyone could have forseen. The two of them do nothing but stand and breathe in synch for a little while, him short and panicked gulps, his peer in big, long, rasping sighs. George lets out just the littlest squeak, fearing that the muscles that ripple beneath that pressed, surreally white uniform will grab on to him and rip him limb from limb.
The giant is the first to speak, holding out a wrapped, white foil novelty with a stick at the end. "Tutti frutti."
George blinks at the non-sequitur. "T-t-tutti..."
With a twinkle in his eye that drives this comedy to complete abstract, his grin widens, "Fruit used for tutti-frutti ice cream include cherries, raisins, and pineapple. In the Netherlands, tutti frutti is a compote of dried fruits and nuts." He's still holding out the popsicle stick, nudging it towards George. In the moonlight, next to the creepy van and standing with him, there is as much implicit threat in this act as if he was holding a weapon. "Here in the good old U S of A, it refers to artificial fruit flavors with a hint of brandy," he said, continuing the nonsequitur exposition. And certainly the giant man's disturbing grin looks like a shark's. He feels sick all over again.
He stabbed the popsicle stick at him. George's hand tremored too hard to keep steady. The giant continued, as mild and genteel as a breeze. "Tutti frutti has been served for at least 150 years, earliest appearance was on bills for expensive eateries catering to nobles in 1860's England. Recipes for tutti frutti ice cream were found in cookbooks of the late 19th century."
"Uh-uh-uh-I... I..."
"Take the damn popsicle... neighbor..." The words came out with barbs, with teeth, and he yelped, because the face formed in the shadows had the eyes and the glower of the clown from his dreams.
So saying, the big man unwrapped a popsicle, and slopped it onto his tongue, running it around his lips and moaning with a sensual pleasure as he took a taste of the ice cream flavor. "Mmmmm. There's nothing better, no finer creation of man's design than that, wouldn't you say. In fact, I'd almost say that this right here is one of the best things man has ever thought about creating, don't you think?" George was aghast, and red runnels of saliva were dripping from the big man onto the collar of his white uniform and he barely noticed, still slopping the popsicle around in the fore of his mouth. "Only a couple of things have ever given me more pleasure, and they're - Well, they're work related."
George tried to get his mind to work with him, and he, in a show of good faith, took a little lick of his popsicle, and he tried to put on his most neighborly facade, shaky as it was. "S-so-so... has business... been good then? The... tutti frutti business?"
The big man looks up at the moon, and sighs a little bit. He moves the popsicle stick to the other side of his mouth, chewing on ice cream. "I suppose you've heard me and the missus talking in the middle of the night, have you? What she wants me to do?"
George froze. This was an extremely tricky question because it didn't seem to take into account that he was mistaken. He knew what he was asking, he just wanted confirmation. George waved his hands, trying to smooth things over. "Nooo, I didn't hear -"
"It used to be like this," said the big man sourly, "I was locked up in a little room, put in a straight jacket and medicated until I couldn't stand. But people looked at me and they saw this chained freak of nature, and every single time, I would find myself under the care of somebody else. Somebody who wanted to poke at me, poke the monster until he reacted. They all wanted me to be something I wasn't, whatever it was. A team player, a comedy show, a funny little clown. But when I listened to them... I wasn't happy. Do you understand?"
He put the popsicle back in his mouth and turned to George, who nodded eagerly. "Sure, absolutely Ephrain... I get you just fine..."
"But it was only when I listened to her that I found what I wanted to do. And it's usually so clear. But what she wants this time, is to go back to being that person, and it's so unfair." He sighed, heavily.
"You mean your wife, right?" He said, squinting at the bald man. The giant's mouth twisted in a rubbery grimace and he punched the man he dwarfed on the shoulder. "You should meet her sometime. Your wife loves her." But then he looked back up at the moon, and his eyes spaced out far apart, and he forgot about his popsicle.
"And I'm not afraid of doing what she wants me to do... I'm afraid though that it'll take me away from her for too long. When I'm not... talking with her... things get a little... unclear..." He tapped his temple absently. "And I'm afraid... that it's going to happen, when I just hit them until they break, that I'm going to love it. Any of them. All of them. Doesn't matter. Saniti, Whitey Ford, Wasp, Eira, Jury... their names mean nothing to me. They'll fall just because she told me to kick them down. But... if push comes to shove... and shove comes to punch... and punch comes to slam and slam comes to snap... God. I'll have to go back. The old girl here..." He absently traces the peeled paint of his ice cream truck, "it'll go back into storage and all of her goods are going to go to waste...."
George had no idea what the faintest he was talking about, but he ventured something just to make it sound like he sympathized. "All of that tutti frutti wasted, huh?"
His eyes snapped towards George harshly, and he flung George hard into the side of his car. George felt his spine jar and almost though a window cracked, but the giant had him by his lapels and was shaking him like a rag doll. "I won't go back!!"
George was hyperventilating, near passing out from panic, soothing him by saying "You won't go back, you won't you won't - !!"
The big man let go of his shirt and half turned away. There was a dark resolve to him. "But it is what feeds her, she's right about that. And what feeds her makes me feel... stronger... more connected... more here." Grimly, his titanic mitts of hands squeezed into fists so hard that steel cable veins stood out on his forearms. George looked at him with dismay, not knowing what was about to happen, but thinking he had to get a warning out to these kinds of people.
Then the big man was looming over him, his face a few inches away from his. His breath was fetid. "I'm gonna have to go away for a few days, Georgie boy... do me a favor and watch over the old homestead, will you?"
Before he could say anything in response, the big man turned, muttering. "Yukio... Non Compos Mentis... Crazy Boy... names, just names, Maria... they're just names of men... just men, that's all... stupid weak fragile men that are on their last chance. A last chance. This isn't my last chance, is it? I won't let this be the last chance I get. There has to be more. The more I feed you, the stronger we both get. No. No. Their last chance..."
He has gone from field of sight, and he appears on the other side of the open van door, climbing up in the driver's seat behind the wheel of his monstrosity, still talking to a Maria.
He started the engine with a rumbling roar, like a predator coming to life. George stood there, melting ice cream stick in his hand.
The giant leaned over both front seats of his ice cream truck to talk to George again. "No charge for the tutti frutti, partner. It's on the house. One of the perks of being a good neighbor, after all." He winks at George, and it's the most hideous sight George has ever seen.
"And hey, when I get back in town, you and your wife have got to come meet the missus. She's going to be..." the ghoul considered his words, hemmed a little, and then his voice was a manic cackle, "Looking a little more full next time you see her."
Like the baying of hyenas at the moon, his laugh was shrill into the night.
He waved out the side of his window, and George, dreamily, waved back. He had no idea what else to do, except, eventually, wander inside, dispose of his melting tutti frutti stick, and tell Nora that they were invited to dinner in a few days with the neighbors. It would be the source of some stress and fights in the dark of their little suburban home that night, going to bed. But all that George knew then, was that he had looked into the eye of the gorgon, and now he was helpless.
As for him being set on fire, well... We'll get to that some time soon.
