(no subject)
There was a message on my voicemail this morning.
“Who is she, Walter? Does she soften your water? Tell me!”
It was the Morton Umbrella Girl, except…she wasn’t a girl anymore.
“I haven’t forgot what you said to me. I waited, I saved myself for you, but you haven’t been thinking of me, have you? You didn’t think about what those words meant to a naïve little girl, a little girl whose heart you tore and shat on! There were so many other guys, but they all wanted the same thing, the one thing I was saving for the nice boy who shared my umbrella. Do you know what the Vlasic Stork wanted to do to me, Walter?”
The Stork. That guy is one sick fuck.
She would come out when it would rain. I would catch her smiling at me, sometimes she would say “hi” when our paths crossed. Then one morning, as I was walking home from class, not minding the light Spring rain, she ran up behind me.
“You should have an umbrella,” she announced, offering me her little yellow parasol.
As we walked home together, she told me about her life, about curing meat and cutting fish odors. She bounced and skipped, excitedly describing the fresh scent that fills a room when you pour Morton salt into an orange peel, and how much more effective it was than over-the-counter air fresheners. When we stopped at my door, I asked her the question that had always been on the back of my mind.
“Did you know you salt is spilling?”
“Well, you know what I say about that?”
“What?”
“When it rains, it pours,” she replied, at once kissing me on the cheek and sprinting away, a thick line of salt trailing behind her.
She was 12 and I was 20. I enjoyed her company, but as things began to develop in an increasingly unhealthy direction, I realized what I had to do.
“Maybe when you’re older,” I had said to her.
Today would be her 18th birthday.
When I got to work, I immediately noticed the blood trickling out of the side of Baal’s mouth - his human mouth - and the way he was limping on a couple of his legs.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Oh man! This chick in a yellow skirt beat the crap out of me with an umbrella!” the two-foot tall demon answered cheerfully.
“Really?”
“Yeah. She came here asking about you, and I told her you had your hands full with that girl from Boston, but that I have all the tongues it takes to satisfy her. And then I wagged one of them at her, like this…” He wagged his three-foot long frog tongue at me. “But she wasn’t turned on at all, man! She just kept asking about the girl, and what you were doing with her, and then after I explained - you’re into whipped cream and costumes and shit like that, right? - her face got all red and she just started wailing on me. It was great, man! Do you have her number? I want to call her!”
“Oh yeah. She left her salt here,” he added, as I took notice of the bow-tied box of Morton salt, and the card attached:
“FOR WALTER, WITH LOVE:
WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS.
--MUG”