Complications

They are all dead. It's like a bad dream but I am sitting here with the bodies of my wife, my best friend, three Girl Scouts, and a UPS guy stacked up like so much firewood. Eventually, someone will find me with the bodies and, when they find my DNA on the Girl Scouts, I am sure no one will listen. So I've gotta explain.

I guess it all started on a hot December morning in 1951 Georgia. My mother was about ready to give birth to me in a dusty army camp called Fort Benning. She would later say it was so hot that day that the Christmas candles in the windows of our cheap base housing unit melted in the sunlight. I was . . . What? Oh. I'm sorry. I went too far back? Let's start again.

Earlier today I had gone out for a nature hike and, as I was tramping through the nearby woods, I spotted a perfectly delightful specimen of a Yellow Thrush. I tried to remain perfectly still as I studied its movements. My binoculars allowed me uncanny access to its magical wanderings as the vagabond bird flitted from one diversion to another. Suddenly, it paused upon a branch, puffed out its golden breast and began to . . . What now? Still too far back? OK.

When I returned from my walk, I came home and had crazy monkey sex with my wife. As we lay there, exhausted and spent, was when I first noticed the Girl Scouts. They were sitting side by side on the couch, swinging their little legs, staring at us.

"How long have they been there?" I asked my wife.

"Since before you got home." She replied casually.

Always the polite host, I got up from under the kitchen table and shook hands with the paramilitary waifs. When I finished, they each looked at their hand, as if I had somehow defiled them, and wiped it on their little brown uniforms. At that point I noticed my nakedness and pulled on a pair of nearby boxers. And I swear to God, that is how my DNA got on their clothing.

"What are they doing here?" I asked.

"Well, when I got back," my wife answered, as she pulled a sun dress on over her head, "they were beating Danny to death with that fireplace poker. They were taking turns."

That would explain the blood splatter on them and the bloody pile of bones and the Hawaiian shirt by the fireplace. "But why would they do that!" I over-emoted.

"He must have stiffed them on the macaroons, again." she said.

As I stood looking at the seemingly peaceful little girls, two of them made claws of their hands and pounced on me. "What the hell!" I screamed. The third one attacked my wife. Out of the corner of my eye I saw them stumble onto a still running chainsaw and I realized Danny must have been taken by surprise while he was cutting firewood. The saw was still running because he always duct taped the trigger to avoid having to restart it. (His arms were kind of puny and he was always asking either my wife or the neighbor kid to pull his cord.) Neither of them stood a chance against the still running saw.

Meanwhile, I had my hands full with the other two hellcats. One of them had her legs wrapped around my neck and was trying to gouge my eyes out while the other one was clinging to my thigh and snapping a pair of pinking shears at my crotch. I stumbled backwards and impaled the one on my back on a marble phallus that Nina brought back from an adult flea market that the local volunteer fire department holds a couple of times a year.

That just left the one on my leg. I grabbed her by the hair, swung her twice over my head and let go. She landed with her head in the fireplace; her hair and skull an instant fireball; her little legs kicking a frantic tattoo on the hearth.

Then everything was quiet. Except for the deep throated purr of the idling chainsaw motor and the hiss and pop of brains frying in the fireplace.

What a morning. I actually saw a Yellow Thrush today. As I wandered into the kitchen I wondered if Danny had left any of those macaroons for me. I was hungry . . .

. . . Suddenly the doorbell rang. As I peered out the side window I saw the UPS truck . . . Uh, Oh!

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