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The Neck Stretches

Fritz Hamilton

    The suicide who hanged himself has stretched his neck 20 ft & lies upon the kitchen floor. His wife awakes in the morning to discover him & urps over his flabby belly. She takes the dish towel & wipes him off, then replaces the towel on its rack adding to the aura of disgust. She decides not to eat breakfast at home & goes out to Mary’s diner down the street. Tasting nothing, she washes the vomit out of her mouth with coffee & wipes the front of her t-shirt with her napkin. She smiles at the waitress across the counter. The waitress pretends she’s not there. She pays, tipping gener- ously, & walks home. The sun rises over what’s becoming a beautiful day.
    She sits awhile on the living room couch, but the stench of vomit makes her realize that she has work to do. She breathes deeply & walks back into the kitchen. It hasn’t changed. Milton still lies there with his flabby belly. His neck still stretches to the ceiling pipe 20 ft above. It’s thin like a clothesline of skin. She’s amazed it hasn’t broken, but she hasn’t seen anything like this before. She realizes that the skin is turning darker. Milton has always smelled a bit strange, but she assumes he’ll get stranger. She considers another vomit but doesn’t want to waste her break- fast. Her eggs cost $4.00 which with the tip made $5.00, & she isn’t one to waste money. The ladder Milton used to hang himself is still standing in place like a monument to Milton’s achievement. She tires of standing & sits at the table as if she were about to eat a melon or a bowl of ice cream, as dessert after her eggs at Mary’s.
    “You always were a sicky, Milton, but now what?”
    He doesn’t answer, but his guilty eyes are sinking into his skull.
    She quotes Eliot, “This is how the world ends.” & starts to laugh. Milton always was a joker. She looks at the long, skinny neck & sees the head beginning to stretch down the other side of the noose. How ridiculous! Milton was always an ugly duck but nothing like this. It makes the event even funnier.
    She wonders if she should hang herself beside Milton. Would her neck stretch like his? Would she end up like her hubby, lying dead beside him on the kitchen floor? How roman- tic. Their goofy pictures would make the front page. It would be her first time in the news. TV would also pick it up. Fame for even more than 15 minutes!
    She picks up the phone & punches in a number.
    “Hello, L.A. Times.”
    “Hey, guess what?”



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