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After Melissa took off with the kid on my twentieth
birthday--the bitch--I drank a lot and got fired. So I had to move
back in with my dad. I laid around all day and watched TV. When
Dad got home, I'd make some Hamburger Helper or we'd order
pizza and we'd drink beer and play cards, usually gin. If I won, Dad'd
say "Well son, guess I'll have to keep that for the rent." If he won,
which, like the cheating old fuck he is, he usually did, he'd write
down how much I owed him on the little pad he kept in his pocket.
Then he'd go to bed and I'd stay up, smoke pot and watch movies,
usually prono tapes, and fall asleep on the couch.

Dad'd make me get up when he got up, around 5:15am and
I'd have to get all dressed and eat breakfast with him. He thought I
was going out every morning and looking for work, but I was just
going back to bed as soon as he left. I figured I'd get a job when he
kicked me out and I had to.

One night around that time, after me and Dad split a case of
Pearl and he beat my ass at cards and tottered off to bed, I smoked
some skunk-weed, got outrageously stoned, watched an all-girl porno
tape called "eager Beavers," jerked off and passed out with a silver
pool of jizz on my belly.

I woke up in the middle of th night feeling someone
watching me. I couldn't hear anything but the crackle and roar of
static from the TV. I cracky my eyelids and saw in the nuclear glow
of the tube a little red devil sitting on my arm of the couch. He
looked just like a cartoon devil-red skin, pointy tail, a little
pitchfork, even a little black derby hat, the whole bit, except he had
a horny-toad head. He was moving his mouth and his big, pink, ant-
catching tongue was wrigglin' around, but I couldn't hear what he
was saying 'cause the TV was up so damn loud.

I reach for the remote and hit the mute button.

"...hey shithead, " his voice hissed, "ah, finally noticed me.
I've been here chattering away for ever so long while you've been
asleep," then he turned one glazed lizard eye at me and said, "how
can you sleep, anyway, with the TV blaring all night?"

"Well, um I'm usually drunk."

"Yes, of course I like to savor the occasional spirit myself,"
then he leaned forward a little and I could smell his breath. It
smelled just like Off.

"Naturally, we differ as to preference, that is, you slurp the
fermented rot of barley and hops right out of the can and I savor the
sour taste of rotten souls right out of the body. You know what we
say in Hell-'the last breath is always the freshest death.' And, I'm
sure you'd be proud to know that your grandfather was one of the
tastiest rotten, twisted souls I've ever caught, he was so good I
turned into a worm so I could relish his putrescence in a physical
sense as well."

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