Delivered Right to Your Door

There were four large dead carp on Allan Garner's cement stoop this morning. He had been far away in his thoughts, reaching down for the morning paper, when he was rudely brought back to present time first by the smell and then the sight of the fish. They were arranged in a line, side by side, heads pointed toward the house, tails to the street. The positioning appeared ritualistic.

He looked across the street and then up and down it, to see if someone was watching for his reaction to this weird morning offering. Nope, nobody around, but somebody was messing with him.

"Okay, very funny, what's the joke," he yelled. No answer. He picked up the paper, carefully avoiding touching the yucky fish, and went back into the house. After closing the door, he counted to twenty and then quickly opened it, hoping to surprise the perpetrator. Nobody. All was quiet. He knew he'd have to do something with the fish before the sun came around to that side of the house. It was 80 degrees yesterday and the forecast was for 80 degrees again today.

He started to read the paper, though his reading was interrupted as he tried to think of who would put fish on his porch, and why? He was pretty sure none of his friends would do something like this. None of them even "owed him one" for some past trick he might have played on them. This was something some old witchy woman in a horror novel would do as part of a spell or a hex. Allan shuddered and went back to his paper.

His cat, Roger, was sniffing around at the base of the front door. He could probably smell the fish outside, though one look at carp as big as these would probably send him racing upstairs and under the bed. He's a canned food cat; never caught a mouse or a bird in his life. Roger started to hiss. His back arched, fur rose, and his tail went straight up into the air. The doorbell rang. As Allan sat there staring at the door, Roger stopped hissing and arching. He looked over at Allan as if to say, "Well, aren't you going to get that?"

Allan opened the heavy front door just a crack. Getting ready to ring the doorbell again was a smallish, scruffy old man with his arms wrapped around a bouquet of carp each as large as the ones lying on his porch. "I was stopping to see if you wanted more fish, but you haven't even taken in the ones I left earlier. You can't leave them out here; they'll spoil," he said with an unpleasant whine in his voice.

"I don't want any more fish. I don't even want the ones you left earlier. I didn't order any fish from you," Allan responded in what he thought was a calm manner, considering the circumstances.

The old man's shoulders sagged a bit and he answered with that same whine, "Who doesn't want free fish? Everybody wants stuff for free! Here, take these fish, I'll bring the others in for you."

This was getting weirder and weirder. "Look, I don't want fish from you now or ever. Even if they're free, I don't want them. Please take those four and the ones you're carrying and just leave," said Allan.

The old man's eyes started to tear up. "Okay, okay, I'll take my fish and go, but I'll be back. I'll have a special gift for you. You just see if I don't come back," he said in a hurt, dignified manner.

He gathered up the four fish, and along with the others he had brought with him, walked slowly down the sidewalk. When he got as far as the neighbor's yard, he threw all of the fish over their picket fence and onto their grass. Allan watched him walk down the street until he had turned the corner and was out of sight. "Well, that certainly was odd," he said to Roger, who was sniffing the cement where the fish had been.

"Meow," Roger agreed, looking down the street. The neighbors' cat, a tough "outside" cat, was already heading across the lawn to investigate the pile of carp. Roger looked up at Allan with a "Can I?" look.

"No, Roger, we're going to go inside now," said Allan. Allan thought that Roger was probably secretly glad that he had said that he had to come in the house.

That night, as Allan was drifting in that pre-sleep hodge-podge of disconnected thoughts, a stark picture abruptly inserted itself into his consciousness, causing him to sit straight up in bed. The picture was of four headless, plucked chickens on his front stoop with their bloody necks pointed toward the house and their ugly taloned feet pointed toward the street. What had helped to bring this picture to Allan was the smell permeating the bedroom; it suddenly smelled like the birdhouse at the zoo. Roger gave a few sniffs and then licked his chops in an exaggerated way. Subtleness was not his strong suit.

"No, Roger, we aren't going to accept any chickens, either," Allan told him. "Now if the day comes and there're four gold coins on the front stoop, well that's different. We may have to have a sit-down chat with the old codger then."

"It just so happens I've got four gold coins in my hand right now," came a whiny, familiar voice from the dark corner by the open closet. "Really, I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm trying to give you something. So that we can be friends. Go ahead, take the coins; they're free," said the old man. Then, in a much deeper and more forceful voice, "Take them!"

Desperately trying to hold back, but now under some type of compulsion, Allan found his right hand reaching to accept first one, then two, then three, and then with a sob that was a bit like a hiccup, the final coin from the old man's hand. As his hand closed around the coins, Allan felt aches and pains creep into almost every part of his body. A red haze obscured his vision, and when he managed to clear it, he saw himself sitting up on his bed wearing a very satisfied smile. He looked down at his clothes and saw with horror that he was wearing the old man's filthy rags. Looking at the liver-spotted hand that was clutching the four gold pieces confirmed that he had somehow wound up inside the old man's body.

"We're almost finished here," said the voice that came from the body that had once belonged to Allan. "I lied about us being friends. Smart guy like you, you're probably not a bit surprised by that, right?" There wasn't a hint of a whine in the voice now; it was the voice of someone who was used to getting what he wanted. It sounded like Allan, but yet it didn't. "In addition to a healthy body, you have a good mind; wit, intelligence, and a lot of tasty memories. I like it. I'll be dumping your job, friends, family, and all of that nonsense, but the mind I'll keep. Go ahead and root around in my mind if you like. You'll find some really good stuff in there. Of course, we'll both always have a little bit of what we lost, but that's the fun part. Okay, now it's time for you to go. Have a good life. You accepted my gift and I accepted yours, yadi yadi, yadi. Go peddle your fish and chicken and make sure that we never run into each other again. Are we clear on that?"

Roger hissed loudly at the creature that no longer was his owner and made as if to leap onto the bed. "Oh, and take that nasty cat with you; I'm rather partial to rats myself." With that, Roger then did leap onto the end of the bed, giving Allan the distraction he needed in order to grab his shotgun from the closet, quickly pump a shell from the magazine, and fire at the chest of the demon on the bed. Two more quick pumps, and two more shots fired, pretty much destroyed the chest area. A final round tore off the face. Not knowing why, but acting purely on adrenaline now, Allan stuffed the four coins down the creature's exposed bloody throat as far as he could reach. The result was immediate; a blinding flash followed by a strong concussion that knocked Roger off the bed and onto the floor.

Roger looked over at the old man sitting on the floor half in and half out of the closet. "Well, for such an intelligent man he certainly didn't think that through very thoroughly, now did he?" said the old man. "He pushed me out of that shotgunned body back into my own old, but alive body just in time. It seems that I both underestimated and overestimated him; haven't had that close of a call in many, many years."

He stood up and walked over to Roger. "I'm leaving now, cat. What's it going to be; coming with me or staying here? I kind of like your spunk."

Roger stared up at the old man for a few seconds and then rubbed up against his leg a couple of times. "Hah! Loyal but not stupid, is that it? Come along, then. You'll find life with me a lot more interesting than what you had here. I think we'll drop the "Roger" and go with Rasputin from here on out. Rasputin; now there's a name with a certain pizzazz, am I right?"

THE END

Bio: Mr. Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for over 60 years.  At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer.  He has had poetry and flash fiction published most recently in Aphelion, Theme of Absence, Yellow Mama, Black Petals, Near To The Knuckle,  Flash Fiction Magazine, Shotgun Honey, The Story Shack, and Lake City Lights, an online literary site at which he is the submissions editor. 

E-mail: Roy Dorman

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