The Inflatable Saviour (part one)

grooveamatic

I just put the finishing touches on this short story....I'll need to post it in multiple sections because it is too big to post in one....I apologize for taking up multiple threads....

[bold]The Inflatable Saviour

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Alfred Monshocky strolled the aisles searching for just the right bathroom piece. His modest bathroom back at his home, a modest two-floor pre-fab out on modest Mooney Lane, was missing something, he thought. Perhaps a decorative soap dish, or a pastel toothbrush holder. How hard it is to decide these things, he thought. There were much too many bathroom “things” at the department store, and he had only been halfway down the aisle! Like the rest of his house, the bathroom was done in brown and gray, and to his chagrin, there were dozens of things in those colors to choose from. The store was hopelessly rife with possibilities.
Picking up a Beagle-shaped loofa-hanger, Alfred Monshocky couldn’t help forming his pale, lineless face into a frown. He didn’t have any loofas, but, he thought, he could buy some of those, too, if he wanted to. But he had planty of washcloths, and he could probably hang those on the Beagle-shaped loofa-hanger. He put the hanger into his cart, beside the Brawny paper towels he already had in there. I can always put the loofa-hanger back if I change my mind, he assured himself.
He certainly wanted a new soap-dish. The one he was currently using had begun to bore him over two years ago. Thinking about his soap dish, he said under his breath, “It isn’t brown or gray.” The soap dish he had at home was a peach color, and the inconsistency it posed in the shower perturbed him. There were over seven different gray soap dishes to choose from in this aisle, and three or four brown ones. The pressure was heavy.
“The Beagle will be enough for now,” he said aloud.
“Excuse me?”
A woman pushing a cart behind him had thought he was talking to her. The woman’s toddler son, sitting in the cart, was sticking his tongue out at Alfred.
“Oh. Sorry ma’am. I was just talking about my Beagle here. Washcloth Beagle.”
The woman cocked her eyes at him. “ I think that’s to hang loofas on.”
“Oh. I know, or at least, I suspected as much. But it’ll work for washcloths just as well, don’t you think?” Alfred frowned again as he asked.
The toddler flickered his tongue at Alfred like a hungry snake. His mother grimaced at Alfred and simply said, “I think that’s a Cocker Spaniel.” She walked away befuddled.
Alfred Monshocky simply stood looking at her pushing the cart away, with the little boy still flicking his tongue as he was scooted off.
Alfred tried the words out in his mind, and then he said them aloud: “Cocker Spaniel. Washcloth Cocker Spaniel.”
He thought that rolled off the tongue just fine.


Five days a week, Alfred Monshocky spent his days employed at The Yearly Temporative Gestion Agency, on Haverton Avenue. His job at The Yearly Temporative Gestion Agency was a very simple one: sit at his modest desk, and when an agent from the field called in and needed statistics, Alfred would do his best to supply them with the stats they needed. Seven of his eight hours daily were spent looking up and figuring out any number of things about the Agencie’s Gestion, and sometimes it’s Temporation. Alfred took a singular joy in his job.
The only other person at the Agency who had the same job as Alfred was Danny Wester. Alfred and Danny got along just fine, and had even, on one occasion, gone out for an after-work drink together. They both liked antique typewriters, and so they had a common thread to talk about. They shared an office, and would help each other out with statistics whenever they could. Someday, Alfred hoped, maybe they’d go out for another after-work drink.
“I bought a loofa-hanger last night, Danny.”
“You use a loofa, Al?”
“Well, no, but I was thinking about buying a loofa, too.” Alfred slid his chair back from his desk, ready to maybe take his half-hour break and really get into this bathroom piece conversation.
“Al, why don’t you just hang your washcloths on it, instead? Do you use washcloths?”
“Yeah, Danny, I use washcloths. I hadn’t thought about just hanging them on it. Thanks for the idea.”
“You hadn’t thought of that?” Danny was smirking at him, almost like the lady in the department store had done.
“Nope. But it’ll save me a few bucks. You’re a lifesaver, Danny, indeed you are.”
“Well, you know me Al. I do what I can. You ready to take a break? You look like you are.”
“Sure,” Alfred said, “you wanna take a break, Danny?”
“Sure, lets.”
“It’s shaped like a Cocker Spaniel.”



Danny suggested that, instead of choosing an eatery in the Main Court of the office complex like they normally did on their break, that they take a walk down Haverton Avenue and maybe try to find a new place to get lunch. Alfred agreed, though he’d rather not have.
They found a little Italian place almost right away, and the smell issuing from inside was irresistible to both of them. They went inside with no debate. It was the kind of place that has red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloths, and serves their french fries in little plastic baskets. They had four or five different varieties of pizza behind a glass counter, under heat lamps. The two men selected a table near the jukebox to read the menu, which was a dry-erase board hung behind the counter. Danny lit a cigarette and searched for an ashtray; he had to steal one from a neighboring table.
“What are you gonna get, Danny?”
“I don’t know. Pizza, I guess. Won’t have to wait for that, just a few minutes for them to reheat it in that oven there.”
“I’m thinking about a cheese steak.”
“Go for it, Al ol boy.”
“But I don’t want you to have to wait for me, Danny.”
Danny puffed luxuriously on his Marlboro Medium. “Well, you order first then, and I’ll order in a few minutes.”
Alfred creased his lower lips into a frown resembling an upside-down V. “I’ll just get pizza.”
“Whatever you want, Al.”
They both had three slices of the mushroom-and-sausage pie, and a Pepsi. Danny had two refills; Alfred nursed his Pepsi and still had over half left when they were done eating.
“I’ve never been much for soda,” Alfred explained.
“Well, why’d you order one then?”
“I guess it goes alright with pizza. And sausage, I suppose.”
They left the pizza shop with plenty of time before they had to return to work, so Danny suggested they stroll further down Haverton Avenue and take a look at what kind of shops were around there.
“How long have we worked here, Al, and we don’t even know if there’s a news stand down here? We gotta check it out..”
They passed a few more restaurants and hot dog vendors, and a music store or two. There was an enormous Catholic church on the opposite side of the street, and Alfred recognized one if its spires. “You can see that from the office.”
“I suppose you can. Kinda creepy, isn’t it? Like a stalagtite.”
“Stalagmite.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yep. You gotta say this to remember it, Danny: ‘That one better hold tite or it’ll fall. That one mite stay on the ground.’”
“You learn that in school, Al?”
“I guess so,”Alfred conceded.
“I’ll remember that.”
They passed a Big-and-Tall Men’s shop, but neither of the men fit the mold of “Big” or “Tall” and so they passed that without comment. Immediately after the men’s shop, they found themselves in front of a business of a quite different ilk. Alfred wasn’t sure what kind of place it was for a few moments. He stood reading the sign over and over, and finally read it aloud to himself. “Pussycat’s. Videos. Mags. Fantasy. Adult. Danny?”
“You wanna go in, Al?” Danny’s grin indicated that he would very much like to go in.
“I don’t know, Danny. I’ve never been in a place like that before. I’m not even sure what you do in a place like that.” Alfred stammered through this last sentence.
“You don’t have to do anything in a place like this. You can just look at things. Mainly it’s just funny. C’mon, Al, we can tell the guys at the office about the silly stuff they’ve got in here.”
“We could just make up some silly stuff to tell them.”
“If you want, Al. We don’t have to go in.”
“If you really want to, Danny, I guess we can.”
“It’s settled then!” Danny declared, and in they went.
The shop seemed at first to be some sort of optical illusion, becoming half the size inside that it appeared to be on the outside. It had four aisles, which were each only ten feet long. Alfred later found out that this was due to the fact that there were pornography viewing booths in the back half of the store.
Alfred had only heard about most of the items on the shelves in that store. He was intrigued by the fact that these things had always been here, a few blocks down from where he worked. He tried out some of the words in his mind. Some of them sounded smooth and polished, like lube and ben-wa, but there were more, he found, that sounded sinister, like language cracked-open.
Alfred furrowed his considerable brow and turned to Danny. “What is this used for?”
“Oh… a woman uses that to stimulate herself.”
“Oh. I had suspected as much. And this?”
“A woman uses that to stimulate herself, too.”
“Oh.”
Danny turned a corner into the next aisle and excitedly motioned for Alfred to follow. “Check it out, Al! Blow-up dolls!”
Alfred followed him, and looked rather blankly at the shiny, multi-colored boxes, with pictures of plastic, exaggerated women with mouths forever agape on the front of them. He had vaguely heard of these things, like someone may have heard of chloroform or loansharks.
“And these, Danny, a man uses to stimulate himself?”
“That’s right, Al ‘ol boy. Well, that’s the reason the manufacturers make them, anyway. They’re used for jokes a lot too, though.”
“Jokes?”
“Yep. In college, me and a few guys bought one and left it in the Anatomy prof’s lawn, cause he was gonna fail us. People do stuff like that with blow-up dolls all the time.”
“Inflatable women.”
“Right, Al. Inflatable women.”
“Do they make inflatable men, for, you know…”
“Fags?”
“Good God no! For women, Danny!”
“Oh. I don’t know. If they do, they don’t sell them at places like this, Al.”
“I wonder why?”
“Do you see any women in here, Al?”
“Maybe there would be, if they sold inflatable men.”
“Maybe, but probably not.”
“Oh.”
“You know what we should do, Al? We should buy a blow-up doll!”
Alfred just stared at Danny in complete bewilderment.
Danny persisted, “For the office party next week, Al. We’ll put her in Barry’s office. We’ll get to the party early, and put her in Barry’s office, and then take a picture of him with her. Everyone will love it! They’ll think we’re geniuses. Best prank of all time, next to my college blow-up doll prank, of course.”
“You really think people would think we were funny for doing that?”
“I know they would, Al.”
And so they spent the remainder of their break selecting the funniest-and cheapest-blow up doll for use in the office party prank. It was decided that Alfred would keep it with him until then.
The party was cancelled two days later due to “lack of interest”, and the inflatable woman took up residence in Alfred’s hall linen closet, without being taken out of her box.

ISN

brilliant....