Stories of Weakness

Glen Binger

glenbinger.blogspot.com

Bing Bang Books © 2015

New Jersey

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This is a work of fiction. These stories are satirical and created parodies. They are untamed and false. No malice or defamation is intended towards any of the public figures mentioned. In no way, shape, or form were they meant to disrespect, libel, or slander the latter parties. Names were used as public knowledge and the situations in which they appear are completely artificial. The collection is imaginary narrative from the author’s own anomalous mind. Any resemblance to actual events is entirely coincidental and unintended in every way.

eNJoy.

Credits:

Some of these stories have first appeared elsewhere in slightly different form.

“Just This Once” in The 2nd Hand.

“Solace in Colors” in Full of Crow.

“Blessed by My Presence” in The Northville Review.

“Mood Manual” in The Broad Set Writing Collective.

Photo Credit:

“Mood Manual” - *photo credit - http://spuriousmissives.com/ - as seen in The Matrix (1999)

Acknowledgements:

There are too many people to thank. I apologize if your name isn’t on this list; please understand that you are and everything you’ve done is greatly appreciated. First – thank you for believing in my work and taking the time to read it. That alone means more than you even know. Thank you to Mickey Hess – without you I don’t think this would’ve ever happened. Thank you to all of The Broad Set writers – Pete Richter, Andrew Kaspereen, Paul Mullin, Sam Cicero, Robin Barletta, Zach Ayres, among everyone - constantly pushing my writing forwards. Thank you to all of the magazines and editors that first used some of these stories – The 2nd Hand, The Northville Review, Full of Crow. And finally, a well-deserved thanks to all of the countless artists, authors, and musicians who’ve influenced me. Art is the creative bettering of stolen ideas; we are all thieves.

Under the charcoaled early morning moon, Kanye West awoke in a puddle of his own chunky vomit in the middle of southwest suburbia, New Jersey. He was unfamiliar to the area and still lingering in midnight rejected depression. A slight breeze wisped his sticky, unshaven cheeks; it helped express his drunken emotion. He was anything but prepared for this.

The sewer drain smelled of decomposing leaves and vodka-soaked Cap’nCrunch, so Kanye pealed his face off of the cold metal grate. Pieces of rust stuck to his forehead and he had little to no recollection of the events that took place the night prior. Worst of all, his new white Nike’s have been scuffed with what appeared to be human feces. He felt a tear wash down his cheek, rinsing off any leftover cereal in its path.

“What happened?” Kanye muttered to his BlackBerry.

He stood up and brushed the dark spots off his violet leather pants. The high from humiliating quite possibly the biggest country superstar to ever make an appearance on MTV had now become a low. He squinted, pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loud enough for the dog in the neighboring yard to hear. It started huffing.

Everything was grey and white and blurry and he had trouble standing without swaying back and forth. The dog had seen him and now started barking. It felt like tiny beads of lightning striking every square inch of his brain. He wanted to kick the helpless animal, but he decided against it due to his past experimental experiences with animals; particularly animals with gills.

His phone vibrated in his palm. Startled, he tripped over his own feet and fell backwards into the puddle of puke behind him, adding to the mysterious twist of putrid colors now painted on his white sneakers.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

The dog kept barking. He still wanted to kick it.

“Who be textin’ on my personal cell?”

Depression reverted back into his helpless thoughts when he looked down and saw that it was only the battery dying. He checked his messages. The only text he had in his outbox was to Twitter. “Worthless,” it read. His inbox was empty.

As he, once again, stumbled to his aching feet, he realized that he could check his Twitter account to try and figure out the timeline of last night’s events, if he had so indeed updated his profile more than once. However, if he was going to check his Twitter profile, his phone’s battery would most likely die in the process. He didn’t know what to do. There were three possible options that crossed his thought process. He could use the remainder of his battery life to either A: call a taxi or a friend and somehow get back to New York, B: use the GPS on his phone and start walking in the direction of some major city life, or C: check his Twitter and map together last night’s events.

Not many men have the ability to prioritize simple things in life the way Kanye West does. He took a deep breath and started pacing in the middle of the moon-lit, vacant street. Of all the problems around him, indecision seemed to push against his brain the most. Or maybe that was the dog that had now started growling.

“Bitch, if you don’t shut up,” he drifted off into silence.

There is no such thing as content in Kanye’s life.

“I need to find some more liquor.” He rubbed his doughy belly and looked up towards the house with the dog. “This house looks nice,” he thought, “maybe they have some decent vodka.”

There was nothing in the known universe that could have stopped him. He was completely unprepared yet ironically somewhat aware. In absolute and utter disgrace, he raised his phone to about chest level and opened the browser on his BlackBerry. The last four Tweets he read to himself: “Worthless” read the first. “This sewer drain is less comfortable than it looked” was the second. The third read, “Jay-Z just took a shit on my Nike’s!” And lastly, “What kind of seventeen year old bitch thinks she can out-do my girl, Beyonce?”

His phone died in his sweaty palm as he arrogantly read the fourth update aloud to no one. It made him feel cold. He shuddered as he slid the frigid piece of electronic back into his breast pocket. The air was chilly and made his nipples hard. But he didn’t notice. His mouth tasted like regurgitated cereal and he could smell the shit on his sneakers. But he didn’t really pay attention to that either.

“Mmm… can’t tell me nothing,” he thought.

Kanye West adjusted his shirt, walked up the path of the house with the barking dog and smashed a window next to the door as quietly as he could. The lowest low point of his sad, famous life hadn’t even yet bruised his ego. In fact, nothing up to this point had. Not the skid marks he had yet to notice on the seat of his pants. Not the rust of the sewer drain sticking to his face. Not Jay-Z’s waste product on his sneakers. Not the taste of recycled cereal in his teeth. Not even the blood now dripping from his glass-infested knuckles. Even his preference to check Twitter before calling a cab hadn’t made him think twice. The only depressing thought to pierce his brain was the craving for attention in any way he could obtain it.

“I be gracin’ this house with my presence,” he said to the silhouettes of the living room furniture.

No one answered. Even the dog had stopped barking.

“I said,” he paused, looking at the empty staircase. “I said…” he stopped.

Nothing made him more depressed than the blackness that darkened each step towards the second story. He expected the flip of a light switch. He expected a man carrying a bat. He expected attention. Maybe even some sort of alarm. Nothing.

“Nevermind,” he muttered.

He turned and sat down on the only white sofa in the living room, not thinking about the substances smeared on his pants and sneakers. In the midst of a soulless home, Kanye leaned sideways, shoved his throbbing head into the colorless pillows and picked his legs up onto the cushion next to him, smudging the white fabric with seven different kinds of disgusting. He began to cry and drool and snot and the only words he could manage to vomit between gasps of air were, “I just wanna update my Twitter.”