tooth soup » Serials

Charley Mitchell the Bar Stool {Part 13}

phill — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:50:19 +0000

Dave’s wary opening

was greeted by the ripe, pear-shaped form of Ms. Duncan. She looked to be about Dave’s age, and was dressed in a set of pyjamas her daughter had bought her that were intended by the designer to be retro-trendy. Unfortunately the garish combination of stitched pink chrysanthemums and cartoon Cocker Spaniels looked decidedly kitsch on her. Thankfully they were mostly hidden by a large, bright maroon robe that she hugged to her sides. She had a rapturous smile on her face as she spotted Dave’s whiskey-squint in the crack of the door.

‘Hi there, love! I’m Angelica, from upstairs.’

‘May I help you?’

‘Well I was just sitting watching my show, can’t get enough of my Acquaintances you know–oop, I’m a poet, ha ha!–um, when I smelled something delicious coming from your apartment! I thought that I’d come down and see what it was you were cooking, maybe swap a few recipes?’ Her voice faltered slightly at the unblinking eyeball that stared out at her. ‘I’m Angelica, Angelica Duncan,’ she added.

‘Yes, pleased to meet you.’

He swayed silently where he stood while behind him Charlie whispered a prompt, ‘Introduce yourself, you knave! Ask her in, don’t invite suspicion standing there like a criminal!’

‘Would you like to come in?’ Dave dutifully asked.

‘Oh yes love, thank you.’ As she stepped into his apartment, Angelica squealed at the amount of food that had been prepared. ‘Good lord love, is it your birthday or something?’ She looked at his bulging belly, obviously wondering about the likelihood that the feast might be a regular intake. There was only one seat at the dining table, which Dave quickly offered to Angelica while he dragged Charlie over and perched on his edge to finish what was on his plate. Between bites he reassured her. ‘No, Angelica this is a somewhat more sombre.’

Angelic’s eyes immediately filled with concern. ‘What’s that, love?’

Dave feigned holding his head in his hands as he looked down at Charley with a wink and a crooked smile. ‘I have recently learned of the death of a man I knew only briefly.’ Charley soured while Angelica went into full clucking mode, putting her hand on Dave’s arm and comforting him against the grief.

‘Oh, you poor dear, so this is a last supper of sorts is it? What a kind gesture. I feel so horrible for just barging in like that.’

‘It’s of no matter, he would have liked the thought that another could share my grief. Please, help yourself to anything you might like,’ said Dave. While Ms. Duncan did just that, Charley shook his figurative head in amazement. He couldn’t believe it; Dave was pulling the grief play using a man now currently employed as a doorstop in his bedroom. Angelica wasn’t exactly the world’s most alluring lady, but given Dave’s flagellation with the alcoholic ugly stick, he could hardly do better for a bit of slap-and-tickle. And he wasn’t ashamed to try one on the old girl. Even more annoying to Charley was that it was working. Whether it was Ms. Duncan’s insatiable need to mother or the intoxicating combination of flavour that flooded her mouth with each bite of his cooking, she was starting to take a real shine to Dave. Charley firmed his resolve; he was responsible for inviting disaster by insisting Dave ask her in, now it was his responsibility to make sure she got out without disturbing their decomposing guest in the next room.

To be continued next Friday!

Charley Mitchell the Bar Stool {Part 12}

phill — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:24:09 +0000

photo credit: Alexandra Moss

When all the

ingredients had been accounted for, Dave dragged the body of Frederick into his bedroom, washed his hands, and began to cook. High quality stainless steel pots and pans magically appeared from the depths of cupboards, chopping boards and whisper-sharp knives emerged from drawers. Vegetables were chopped and meat was carved as Dave went about preparing the monstrous meal that would enable the conversion of his fridge from chiller to casket. It wasn’t a simple task, but Dave had the timing of an expert and the quick hands to match. Into the poky little oven went one dish, off the hobs came another. He moved between courses with the grace of a ballroom dancer. The room gradually filled with the rich aroma and subtle weight of a hearty meal being prepared. Even Charley was lulled into a warm place, getting the closest to dozing that a bar stool could before Dave looked up from his drink at the final, timed ping! of the oven and declared dinner ready.

The spread was enormous. The entrees alone took up almost half the table and spanned most of the continents; they ranged from prosciutto and red pepper topped Bruschetta to potted cheese soufflé. The mains were even more exotic. The chicken clutched spinach and ricotta tightly to its breast in tight spirals, while the glistening, ruby-red steaks lay slathered in peppercorn sauce. Even the token Caesar salad (‘Must have at least a bit of green to balance the table,’ explained Dave) contained the most preciously coddled eggs and the lightest of Italian olive oils. Side dishes of potatoes and asparagus were glazed in a white truffle sauce, while bowls of anchovies, olives and sun-dried tomatoes lay in wait for a full stomach to indulge in. And for dessert a batch of simple trifles and pies to utilise the remaining fruit, while within the fridge stood a tower of pomegranate sorbet.

As Dave surveyed his creation and saw that it was good, the smells from the completed dinner were worming their way through the cracks in his ceiling. The occupant of the apartment upstairs was one Ms. Angelica Duncan. Ms. Duncan had been living above Dave for what was going on a few years now. She was of a reasonable vintage, and spent most of her days traveling to her daughter’s unit to look after the ‘three Gs’: garden, ganja and grand-kids. At night she retired to her settee, emptied a bottle of wine, and watched her soaps. Her favourite one, Acquaintances, was on right now, and despite the tension of the episode’s build up towards revealing which of fifteen different possible father’s could have produced Sharon’s baby, she was distracted by the waft of Dave’s cooking that squeezed up through the carpet. ‘Oh my sweet Lord,’ she said. She flicked the record button on the remote so she could catch up later, and threw on her dressing gown and slippers. Out the door and down the stairs she clattered, ending up breathless but full of the smell of Dave’s feast that was emanating at full strength out of the gaps in his door.

Dave was about to plunge his knife into his fourth chicken scroll when he heard the knock at the door. He ignored it, and licked his lips as he spilled green-white guts over his dinner plate. The knocking persisted, and with an exasperated sigh Dave paused in his quest to digest and moved to the door. ‘Oi!’ whispered Charley, ‘Don’t you think you might want to do something about that body in your bedroom first?’

Dave blanched. ‘Quite right,’ he whispered back. He shouted a quick ‘Just a minute!’ to the waiting Ms. Duncan and crept back to his bedroom where he propped up Frederick’s body behind the door and shut it behind him, so that quite a bit of strength would be required if anyone wished to shift it and get inside the room. With that out of the way, he moved back to the door, opened it a crack and peered outside.

To be continued next Friday!

Charley Mitchell the Bar Stool {Part 11}

phill — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 10:53:10 +0000

photo credit: CarbonNYC

(My apologies for the delay in getting part 11 written and posted, Christmas has a habit of getting in the way of things. Anyway, without further ado we return to the adventures of Charley and Dave!)

‘Tomorrow?’ asked Dave,

sharply. ‘Tomorrow I’ve got work. I do have a livelihood to maintain, you know. I’m not a complete slob.’

Charley had wondered how Dave kept his refrigerator stocked full of gourmet foods. ‘What is it you do?’ he asked.

Dave replied through a mouthful of stuffed olives. ‘I’m a social worker. I help people who are seeking benefits from the government to fill out the necessary forms. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s, that sort of thing.’ He swallowed the olives with a look of relish and continued. ‘It can get very confusing for those who aren’t accustomed to it. There’s a lot of jargon, and most people who need assistance aren’t the most well-versed in navigating paper trails.’ Dave waited for Charley to give a critique of his workplace, but when it wasn’t forthcoming he grinned. ‘Didn’t see that coming, did you?’

Charley had to admit he hadn’t. He had expected a more menial labour to occupy Dave’s working week. ‘Wouldn’t that mean that you have been trained as some kind of lawyer?’

‘Correct!’ exclaimed Dave, leaning his head back and letting thinly sliced ham unfold from his fingers into his mouth. ‘I graduated from university with a bachelor’s degree in law. Unfortunately you know how it is with such occupations. Only the top dogs get through to the really glamorous jobs. The rest of the bell curve must find stable work and employ themselves the best they can.’

‘Of course. But surely you might have accrued some time off in your term of service?’

‘Would that I had. I have a tendency to need mornings off for emergency situations. As a result, I don’t have any funds left in that particular chronological bank.’

‘Emergency situations? What the hell do you call this then, a normal occurrence? What emergencies have you had to attend that have caused you to lose the privilege of calling in sick?’

‘My grandparents dying, a house fire, severe pneumonia, burglaries, a flooded apartment, two broken bones, a manic-depressed brother, do I need to go on?’

Charley’s tone softened. ‘Please excuse me, I didn’t realise. I’m so sorry.’

Dave’s eyebrows raised as he took a bite out of a thawing roast chicken. ‘You needn’t be, I made them all up. They were all excuses for hangovers. When you have a hangover you don’t feel like doing anything, especially not things that require squinting at small print and trying to communicate with imbeciles. So nowadays when I need to call in sick, I need to provide watertight proof otherwise they just won’t believe me.’

All sympathy Charley might have had for Dave evaporated. ‘Hangovers? You abused your employers kindness for the sake of hangovers? Don’t you ever think of what the future may hold? Do you not have plans past your next drink?’

Dave snorted. ‘For a start, you’ve obviously never worked a government job if you immediately employ the notion of “employer kindness”. Furthermore, I do make plans, but in this case they didn’t quite extend to include the possibility of you showing up. And now that you mention it, I feel like a drink might help me digest some of this.’ He waved his hand to encompass the massive pile of food on the kitchen counter. He walked over to Charley and calmly picked him up, ignoring Charley’s protests as he set him down and used him as a stepladder to reach the cupboards that sat above the stove-top’s hood. From the cupboards he retrieved a bottle of what looked to be very fine whiskey and a small leather case, and set them on the table. Stepping down from Charley, he undid a fasten on the front of the case and opened it to reveal a pile of handwritten scrawl on variously sized scraps of paper and notebooks. He looked at the pile of food awaiting him before rustling up a lowball tumbler from underneath the sink and pouring himself a measure of the whiskey. He sipped slowly at it, obviously savouring the flavour as he perused the myriad torn book pages and hastily scribbled instructions that spilled over the table. As he browsed he moved the displaced foodstuffs into little piles, grouping them according to recipes he was thinking about following. Every now and then he would cluck through his teeth as he realised he didn’t have enough of one thing or another. Charley watched on with interest. His earlier suspicions had been correct, this was Dave doing what Dave did best.

Charley Mitchell the Bar Stool {Part 10}

phill — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:16:23 +0000

photo credit: stukinha

‘My refrigerator? Loads,

why?’ Dave asked, his attention fully with Charley now that his beloved white goods were in question.

Charley continued cautiously. ‘You would agree that we need to do something about this body, yes? You stated not ten minutes ago that police intervention wouldn’t–’

‘Wouldn’t be giving the lad the full respect that he deserved,’ chorused Dave, impatient to learn Charley’s intent. ‘Yes, what of it?’

‘Well, with that noble goal in mind, I think we should bury him ourselves. For that we need two things, and one of them is a suitably elegant coffin.’

Dave’s eyes widened at the implication. He looked to the white monolith and back to Charley. ‘You’re not suggesting…?’ Dave trailed off, only resuming in when it was clear Charley wasn’t going to finish his sentence for him. ‘You’re not suggesting we use my fridge as a coffin are you?’ he whispered in a horrified tone.

‘Do you have any better ideas? You did say–’

‘Yes, yes, I know what I said, stop reminding me.’ Dave grumbled. He paced around the room, stopping every few steps to check that the body and the stool were still in the room with him. Eventually he came to a stop, looked mournfully at the fridge, and faced Charley. Evidently his brain had overcome its previous inability to comprehend the situation as he pleaded with Charley, ‘Surely there’s something else we can use? My mattress perhaps? We could rip out all the springs, stuff him inside!’

Charley remained unmoved. ‘No, I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible. Your physique wouldn’t afford you the ability to hoist the mattress downstairs without arousing suspicion. Who would believe a man having enormous trouble moving a mattress? No, the only suitable receptacle is the refrigerator I’m afraid.’

Dave was devastated. All that fresh produce he’d have to throw away. And he’d be forced to eat take-away for weeks until he could afford the down payment on a new fridge. It must be said that although Dave cut a less-than-striking figure, his girth was mainly due to the enormous amount of alcohol he consumed. His diet was actually very healthy, and he was quite the gourmet in the kitchen. The prospect of having one of his few remaining pleasures–that of being able to prepare a meal with fresh ingredients–taken away from him was horrifying. ‘Couldn’t we, I don’t know, cut him up or something?’

It was Charley’s turn to be horrified. ‘You’ve certainly gone full circle from requesting a sober burial to treating him like a haunch of meat. No, of course we can’t chop him up! For a start, the human body is notoriously hard to separate into pieces if you aren’t equipped with the right tools. Have you even a hand saw? No, I didn’t think so. I’m afraid as much as you protest I will stay stoic on this matter. You should attend to your stocks and see what will or won’t keep, and use the perishables in a final banquet in honour of your soon to bedeparted fridge.’

Dave sighed, opened the fridge door and started the long process of removing the many ingredients from within. Out came vegetables of all shapes, sizes and colours, fresh fruit and home-made yoghurt, dozens of eggs from a variety of birds, multi-colouredwheels of different cheeses, capers and peppers, truffles and anchovies, the pile just kept growing larger. The freezer contained more meat than a slaughterhouse, every genus was represented. After almost half an hour of sorting and deliberating over what might last, Dave stood back and declared himself finished. ‘Well,’ said Charley, ‘I hope you’ve got an appetite, because tomorrow afternoon at exactly 2:30pm you will be wheeling our deceased friend out of this apartment and towards the nearest garbage dump.’

To be continued next Friday!

Charley Mitchell the Bar Stool {Part 9}

phill — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:00:53 +0000

photo credit: dhammza

While Dave pottered

around and generally tried to avoid looking at the body on the floor, Charley thought. There was very little chance of there being a garden nearby that they could use to discreetly bury the body. Dave’s apartment was on the fifth floor of a block of flats populated by the kind of gentle folk that would snitch you in a second to curry favour with the local fuzz. Even nightfall wasn’t a guarantee of anonymity, with the midnight visitors and dodgy dealings that went on around them. As he considered their situation, Dave’s continual shifting around of pots and pans grated at him.

After some minutes had passed, Charley let out an exasperated sigh ‘I can’t think properly with you dithering about. Do me a service, would you?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Sit on me.’

Dave blanched at Charley’s request. ‘Sit on you? I couldn’t possibly! It’d be, well, strange.’

‘Oh come on, you’ve done several hundreds of times before, and sadly I’m not exaggerating in that figure. What’s your problem now?’

Dave thought about it some more, shrugged and shifted his bulk from the kitchen table over to sit on stool. As he got comfortable, Charley breathed a more satisfied sigh. ‘Ah, that’s better. Nothing like a good, firm weight bearing down on you to really concentrate your thoughts. Or even a slack, wobbly weight such as yours,’ he added.

This last comment served only to make Dave sit down harder on Charley, all pretense of attempting to support his own weight gone. Charley only laughed. ‘You can’t hurt me, Dave. No nerves in dead wood, you know.’ Dave huffed at this and reached for a newspaper on the counter to occupy himself while Charley continued to ponder.

They’d need some kind of disguise, he concluded. Something that would enable the easy movement of the body to a more convenient location without arousing the suspicions of the neighbours. The problem with this was funds. He was fairly sure that Dave had none, but out of curiosity he inquired as to Dave’s financial status.

‘Flat broke until Thursday,’ replied Dave, not lifting his eyes from their appraisal of page three.

‘Darn,’ said Charley. That meant they’d need to use only what was in their immediate surrounds in their subterfuge. A prospect that filled Charley with a frustrated despair as he looked around the bare apartment. The living room contained almost no furnishings; only a small wooden-panelled television set and two lounge chairs populated its meagre expanse. One of the chairs look so low and worn that it was difficult to tell if there was any internal structure remaining in it at all. The second chair, on the other hand, was in near-perfect condition. In its centre lay a bright yellow cushion, a hopeful beacon placed as if to try and encourage visitors past the threshold and into its embrace. No help there, thought Charley.

The slice of the bedroom he could spy through the doorway was equally barren. The long-suffering mattress was the centrepiece of the room. The only other furnishings were that of a bedside table with a well-worn Hustler magazine sprawled across its top, and a dresser with underwear and shirts lolling from its drawers. Charley was beginning to lose all hope for a solution. Until, that is, his focus shifted to the kitchen and he beheld their salvation in the form of a large, white coffin.

‘David,’ he asked in a sly tone. ‘How much would you say you really needed your refrigerator?’