Spunk Tales! (The Garnish)

The White Stripes - Blue Orchid

That silly, dilapidated mutt took the note my mother wrote and stapled the paper to its forehead.

    This is how she would have described the situation, as if branding were the newest fad indeed. It's not like the mutt felt physical pain whatsoever, so a staple here and there meant nothing, but the content -yes, the content- of the note itself was irksome enough for the two of them. Differences, differences, of course.

    The mutt pointed a rusted, twisted index finger toward its face, and repeated the words hastily printed upon yellow parchment with supposedly indelible ink.

    "Sophia, could you set the oven to 350 at 6:30. I'll be home at 7:15. Mom." The mongrel employed rising intonation, although the girl knew damn well that her mother would never have phrased -let alone written- the declaration as a request. The sham hadn't required a faux motherly voice either but it was, admittedly, an amusing caricature.

    Sophia tugged upon the refrigerator door casually, retrieved a half-full can of Pepsi and took a sip with the door left ajar. 'Bonus points if you can tell me what mom is going to make for dinner.' The mutt sampled the air while it flicked one of the edges of the affixed note with the aforementioned, absurdly elongated finger, and then mentioned something about chicken breasts marinated in a cocktail of vinegar, lemon juice, oregano; some manner of Mediterranean recipe in the works, but he was no connoisseur of fine cuisine, or so he attested.

    "Close, but not quite," Sophia replied, and set the can of Pepsi upon the counter. She retrieved the Tupperware container, set the plastic cube beside the aluminum can and popped the lid off. It was chicken, most certainly, but it lacked a crucial ingredient. Sophia thrust her arms behind; to scrape, collect, and condense the refuse that had been recently deposited, haphazardly, upon her exposed backside (by a trigger-happy fool twenty-six years her elder who waited, however impatiently, inside her bedroom, probably going through her drawers at this very moment). She smirked as the mongrel watched her bathe the chicken with gooey, relatively fresh ejaculate - she preferred to call the stuff milt but that was another story altogether. The mutt groused that she was so juvenile, to which Sophia countered that it was so astute, for the mongrel had, in all likelihood, observed her balding confederate jerk off onto Sophia’s naked body while she ate from a can of Sour Cream 'n' Onion Pringles during this afternoon’s episode of Guiding Light, her eyes glued to the television; though to be fair, she knew quite well that a bewildering, somewhat-detached curiosity -and not any manner of carnal yearning- was, above all else, the beast’s motivation.

    She took another sip from the can of Pepsi, and then licked her lips with childish mendacity. "Besides, it's not as if it really hurts anyone. Mom will take a bite of her chicken breast and note just how well the recipe turned out. Secretly, I think she savors the taste of my additions. Come on, it's not as if she doesn't know the flavor of semen, really. I'm tickled, and she's satiated about being an adequate mother. Win-win." Sophia grinned at the beast's subsequent retort. "Well," she replied whimsically, "I'm never very hungry, for real food anyway, so I'll just nibble on some chips and drink another Pepsi." Sophia proceeded to pull a strand of her long, blond hair across her face and gave the mongrel an aggrandized wink. "It could be worse, you know; I could take up smoking." She knew that the creature mulled over what to say next but its incapacity had grown tiresome over the past few years, so that was just the way things were.

    The topic of discussion ceased to concern Sophia almost instantaneously and she ran her fingers along the growing curves of her blooming physique. "Do you think I'm ugly?" She hadn't bothered to look the mutt in the eye as she made the inquiry, because the importance of her developing form was paramount. Sophia was vaguely aware that time and flesh were bedfellows, but it was so tough to think about vagrant prospects.

    The mongrel divulged that Sophia was fairly attractive - for a nude calamity on the cusp of fourteen. It then removed the staple from its flesh and muttered that things were going to get much worse if it waited much longer, as well as some obscure comment about the fate that awaits rock 'n' roll clowns.

    "Yeah," Sophia quipped, "but your mama won’t mind what your mama can’t see." The beast was mildly impressed by the girl’s knowledge of Def Leppard yet decidedly less so with her application.