Chuckie’s eyes blurred as he stared through the windshield. The road lines were long since lost in about an inch of snow and it was now a matter of trying to discern the tire tracks through the greasy, early-April sludge. At this point, he was willing to admit, taking the 40-mile trip home may have been a mistake. He had, after all, imbibed a few alcoholic beverages, he was rather sleepy, it was snowing, and Old Clinton Road - the lonely stretch that spanned between his home and that of his mother-in-law’s, was known to be haunted, treacherous and radioactive.
He flipped on the defogger and looked at his hot wife Fanny in the seat next to him. She was hot and also had blonde hair, which he liked.
They met in college where she was pursuing a degree in parapsychology and he was going for a masters in art history. Neither degree is important, really, and as they will never be mentioned henceforth, I’m not certain why I even brought it up. At any rate, they found they had the same taste in reality television, and as they had nothing better to do really got married.
That was ten years ago, and while he left the toilet seat up every now and again, he had to admit that it wasn’t that bad. The only thing he didn’t care for in the relationship was Fanny’s mother Muffin, who was a horrible woman who didn’t break the spaghetti in half prior to cooking it and never got his name right. He’d moved more than forty miles to get away from her and also to pursue that big art history money, which yes, I mentioned the degree again. Goes to show you can’t trust authors. Especially ones who break the fourth wall. Still, Fanny seemed to like her own mother, which is precisely why they’d been over to change the lightbulb today.
“It’s getting late, Kevin,” Muffin had insisted as Chuckie climbed off the ladder. “You two should just take the spare room.”
“That sounds nice,” Fanny said. “Maybe in the morning we could cut out paper dolls like we used to when I was little.”
“Yes,” said Muffin.
“No,” Chuckie said. “After that she will want me to unplug the toaster and wind the cord on the vacuum and perform other mundane tasks. It is my weekend and all I want to do is study art history and make woopie with you, my hot wife.”
“Oh Kevin,” Fanny said.
You know what? His name is Kevin now.
Kevin looked across the car at his sleeping wife, her hair a halo in the dashboard lights. He loved her so much when she
Out of nowhere they were hit by a tramp locomotive!
WHUMP!
The next four months were a blur. Chuckie was whisked away to the hospital with a contusion, and was out of the hospital and into physical therapy in a week. Bambi wasn’t so lucky. She’d taken the brunt of the locomotive’s wrath and had been run over three times. She had a broken leg and was in a coma.
He sued the locomotive and, thanks to his Scientology lawyers, received a sizeable sum of two billion dollars. He now had a gold-plated zeppelin and his own colony on the moon, but a million colonies could not bring Suzie out of her coma. Every night, Kevin dreamed she woke. Every morning on his way to not working, he stopped by her hospital room. He brought her favorite songs and DVD’s. He tied balloons to her IV drip on her birthday.
Eventually he transferred Buffy to the best hospital on his moon base, where she was tended by the best doctors, like that robot from Star Wars, and the singing moon with sunglasses from that 80's McDonald’s commercial. Sadly, even they reached the zenith of their ability; the point from which they could proceed no further.
“Bleep bleep bloop,” the robot said.
“Sadly,” the moon said, “I agree with my colleague. The chances of your wife recovering are so slim, Mr. Blatsowski, that they cannot be expressed meaningfully in fractions. Even if she were, by some miracle, to awake, I fear she will remain a brain functioning to a quarter of its capacity within a paralyzed shell. I fear she will never play piano again.”
“Chuckie,” said his mother-in-law, who was there sweeping the floor. “Son, I think it’s time.”
“No,” Kevin insisted. “ We can’t just pull the plug. You can’t ask me to kill my wife, even if she will never play chopsticks, which was her favorite thing to do.”
Muffin put a motherly hand on his shoulder. “No one loves Suzie more than I do, Sylvester,” she said. “No one except possibly you. If you truly love her, son, you need to let her soul go.”
“This sucks,” Chuckie said, having a big mac with the moon after they had pulled the plug and ejected his wife into the sun. “How could God do this to me?”
The moon took a meaningful bite of processed meat and looked up at the stars for a long while. “As an anthropomorphic moon,” he said at last, “I can’t acknowledge the existence of any god, but I can tell you that I blame the conductor. He’s the one who ran that yield sign.”
Later that night, Kevin was sitting on his gold-plated super computer that ran the internets, surrounded by his robot harem. He was all upset because his wife was dead. He would never hear her beautiful piano music again. All at once, he got an AIM message!
GOD: U BIN TALKIN SHIT SON?
Assuming it was the doctor who was also a burger mascot, Kevin composed a retort regarding how it was completely unethical to violate client-patient confidentiality, and that he would be reporting him to the veterinary board in the morning.
All at once, he remembered that he didn’t have AIM installed. He wasn’t even certain AIM was a thing anymore.
GOD: HAHA IC U REALIZED. I CAN HAZ UR ATTENSHUN NOW?
Chuckie nodded.
GOD: GUD. I GOTS BAMBI UP HERE YO. SHE SEZ HI.
“Tell her I said hi back,” Kevin said, still taken somewhat aback.
GOD: WILL DO YO. SO YU TALKIN SHIT ABOUT ME? U ALMOST AS BAD S DICK DAWKINS.
“You killed my wife.”
GOD: TRAIN KILLED YO WIFE SON.
“You made the train!”
GOD: DAT WAS GE YO!
“You made GE!”
GOD: IC UR POINT YO. HOW BOUTS I GIVES U A MULLIGAN?
“What?”
GOD: A DO OVA, SON.
“You’d give me the opportunity to relive that fateful evening? To save my wife’s life and change the fabric of my existence?”
GOD: FO SHO
All at once, Chuckie was back in his volkswagen. He blinked, almost blinded by the snow in the headlights, then looked across to his sleeping wife.
“I love you so much, snugglemuffin,” he said. “I swear this time I will drive more slowly and watch ever so carefully for those train tracks and
Just like that they were hit by a stray blimp.
“WTF,” Chuckie from present time said.
GOD: WUT?
“You hit us with a blimp,” Chuckie said. “Different accident, same net effect!”
GOD: SORRY BOUT DAT YO I WUS WATCHING MY GOT! STARKS FO LIFE YO!!!
“Well, can you send us back? Maybe a bit further this time?”
GOD: FO SHIZZLE DAWG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
And just like that he was stepping down from his mother-in-law’s stepladder, CFL bulb freshly changed above him.
“It’s getting late, Kevin,” Muffin had insisted. “You two should just take the --”
“FUCK YOU, BYATCH!” he cried, grabbing his wife’s arm and cramming her like an air mattress into the passenger side door.
“I love you so much,” he said, strapping himself in, “but I can’t stand your damned mother. Now, Old Clinton Road is full of blimps and trains and probably poisonous giant car-eating anacondas, so we have only one way to get home.”
“Highway 61,” Suzie asked.
“No,” Chuckie said. “Low orbit.”
There was a skateboarding half-pipe just down the road, Chuckie reasoned. If he hit it at just the right velocity, he could launch his wee car into the stratosphere and catch the jet stream back to their home. It went terribly, terribly wrong, but that didn’t matter as God, who was a cool guy, was thoroughly sick of his shit by this point in the story, and was also watching Game of Thrones.
THE END???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
