Johnny Tatlock
~By Andrew Petersen*~
“Could I get some bread with that?” Mrs. Casparillo asked the man at the soup hut. It was a cold, late night, and soup sounded good to her.
“Sure, just give me a sec,” said the hut manager through a heavy Indian accent as he headed into the back.
“Speaking of bread, why don’t you give me all of yours? Walk over there, into that alley,” said the man with a gun who had been told continuously throughout his life that he resembled Richard M. Nixon. Mrs. Casparillo did as she was told, and began to empty her wallet. “Speaking of wallet, act like the cheap whore you are.” The man who had been told he resembled President Nixon forced himself upon her, muffling her screams with a pillowcase wrapped around his hand.
O~~~~O
Johnny Tatlock, a short man, tipped up off the stoop he had been sitting on, and face-planted up onto the sidewalk.
“Filthy bastard trash,” spewed a dribble-faced British businessman. He liked to give the public something to look at, since he was, after all, a street urchin, and street urchins were a spectacle for the public. At least, that’s what Johnny thought.
“Dave, why are people so rude? We’ve been friends for years now, and it’s never changed.”
“I don’t know, Johnny. If you don’t know, I don’t know.”
Johnny, sitting 3’ 4”, elevated himself up off the concrete sidewalk to 5’ 7”. Johnny’s squarish-brown dress shoes carried him up while he wore a deep red cloth poncho with brown slacks and a dress shirt. Johnny always joked he used to work for UPS. Apparently everybody but UPS thought that was funny.
As he shuffled up the street, Johnny walked by a soup stand. Since it was a cold, late night, soup sounded great. What didn’t sound great was the lack of clink in his pockets. So Johnny continued on up the street. A scream made the squarish-brown dress shoes stop their upward motion.
“Oooh, you like Daddy, don’t you?” said the back of a man who was on his knees over a spread-eagled female. “After this, Daddy will take you to the circus to see the clowns.”
“Daddy, can I get an animal from the clown?” asked an excited Johnny to his father.
“Sure, son, but first we need to find your mother,” Johnny’s father paused, “there she is, and what do you know, she’s by that clown!”
“Yay! Now I get an animal!”
Father and son headed up to the mother and clown, who asked, “What kind of animal do you want, kid?”
“A rapist!” screamed Johnny.
“How about a dog, or a hat?”
“Rapist! Rapist! I hate you, hate you!”
“Kid! Calm down! Here, take this.” Johnny gripped the balloon given to him by the sullen clown. Gazing into its moderately opaque and tan surface, Johnny squeezed it. It screamed.
Jolted back to the rape in progress, 37 year old Johnny remembered he still had the robber’s head, which resembled President Nixon, in his hands. Johnny drove his fist into the criminal’s solar plexus, which subdued him till the Police arrived. Johnny dazedly waded up through the bustling crowd that had appeared and retreated further into the shadows of the alley.
O~~~~O
“Dave, did you see that? I just zoned out for a few minutes there, right in the middle of that fight.” Johnny was sitting on his fire escape in another alley. Well, not his, just one he liked. He used to own one like this, but nowadays he used this one.
Dave replied, “Of course I saw it, Johnny. What do you think made that happen?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m going mad. Perhaps all this drifting has finally gotten to me. What do you think?”
“You know what I think. If you don’t know, I don’t know.”
An elderly black man, Stan, opened, peaked his head out of the basement window underneath Johnny’s fire escape. “Who’re you talking to, Johnny?”
O~~~~O
Johnny felt good as his shoes advanced him further up the street. He piped a tune while the elevator took him up to the roof of the shoe warehouse. He could go up no further. Johnny Tatlock, a tall man, took a step forward. Looking down, he noticed the wrought iron fence, pointed, that his body was rapidly bearing down upon.