Blancartes do the Darndest Things
Jeff Blancarte pressed a shotgun to his nose and closed his eyes.
"Jeff, NO!!!" Mary Surginer-Blancarte cried.
"I'm sorry, that's incorrect," Jeff sighed wistfully, and he squeezed the trigger.
"But, Jeff..." Mary panicked, struggling to give form to the incoherent thoughts bouncing about her ecstasy-eroded brain, "What about Venice??"
"What about it?" Jeff asked, casually fumbling through his pockets in search of his Shambaugh Steel hunting knife as the crimson-tinged remains of his botched nose job slid slowly down the wall and settled comfortably on the floor just behind the green flower vase he had given Mary on that sunny autumn day nine years ago when she was released from federal prison.
"It's just that... Well, do you remember that former client of mine who we ran into on our honeymoon?"
"Oh, you mean Viet 'Wham Bam' Pham?" Jeff winced. "Yeah, I remember him--you only fucked him eight times."
"No, not Viet Pham... The other one."
Jeff plunged the hunting knife into his lower abdomen, impaling several vital body organs, including, but not limited to, his pancreas, small intestine, and duodenum. "There was no other Viet," he replied matter of factly.
"Sure there was, Jeff... you remember."
"Actually... I don't remember. Why don't you enlighten me?"
"You're joking, right, Jeff? Right? Baby?"
Jeff did not respond.
"Come on, you remember..."
"No," Jeff answered blankly, filling a moderately sized chainsaw with gasoline, "I don't."
Mary felt a sudden stab of tenderness--a tenderness made bittersweet by years of quiet longing--somewhere near her inner labia.
"Well, I sucked his dick on your birthday. There, are you happy?!!"
"Actually, no," Jeff whispered, and he raised the moderately sized chainsaw to his neck and slowly decapitated himself.
A tidal wave of blood and broken vertebrae washed over Mary's face. "Jeff..." she began, then trailed off, before pursuing a different train of thought, "How do you expect me to get to Julie Kasik's baby shower tonight??"
Jeff clenched his facial muscles tight--tight like Spoto's once-tight pussy--and answered, "I don't know. Get that damn bitch Moonshoes to drive you."
"But, Jeff, you know things haven't quite been the same between her and I since..."
"Since you stole her collectible limited edition Buzz Aldrin-autographed dehydrated Swanson TV dinner and slaughtered her family, friends, and coworkers wholesale? Yeah, I know. But your problems aren't mine to solve any more, doll."
"But, Jeff--"
"Fuck it, darling. Fuck Venice and fuck clown school and fuck Kasik and her artificially inseminated womb. And fuck you, you Cheerios-eating cunt!" He lit a cigarette and sandwiched it between his toothless, gingivitis-eaten gums.
Mary's jaw dropped in utter shock and disbelief. "I don't eat Cheerios!!"
She had to force the words past her incessant sobs--force them like the time the Lieutenant Governor Seeba forced his man-meat into her only-partially-consenting corn hole. "I had lasagna for dinner tonight!" she remembered protesting to him--but it had been to no avail, just as her present pleas to Jeff were also to no avail.
"One last thing," Jeff added, taking a final drag from his cigarette before resting his dismembered head atop the faded green vase and resigning himself to non-existence, "When you get to hell, don't send me any post cards. I always hated your fucking post cards."
Tears streamed down Mary's rouge-smeared face and Jeff slipped quietly into the hereafter.
Six weeks later, Stephanie Salazar threw back a bottle of rum and returned the pencil she had stolen from Jeff on Valentine's Day twenty-seven years prior, laying it near his ignoble tombstone, which read--
JEFFREY BLANCARTE
Devoted Husband of Mary Surginer-Blancarte,
Respected Family Man,
Professional Clown.
"Sic semper tyrannis"
--and shed a quiet tear that was like a question mark: a question mark that had the rest of eternity to wonder in lonely, drunken anguish at what might have been.