If You Are A Bastard You Will Get Fat – Little Rule #14

Fred, who lives down the street, invested in sculptures of himself. He has an entire room and also a basement full of nothing but these statues of his face. If you ask Fred he will deny it. But we all know he has them.

One day I caught Fred on his lawn and asked point blank. Why do you have all those statues that we know you have but that you deny having, I said.

I was surprised. He didn’t deny anything. The statues are for discipline, Fred said. He was raking leaves and stopped long enough to sigh and give me an uncomfortable look.

I believed him. We had all thought Fred was vain but it really came down to a lack of willpower. There had been signs of a problem. At the block party he would drink to the point of nudity. Sometimes he would order pizza four times in a day.

Every time I do something I shouldn’t and I start to hate myself, Fred said, I take a hammer and I break one of the statues. I keep beating it until the thing falls off the pedestal and then I beat it some more. I don’t stop until it’s a dusty mess. Then I feel better about myself and I sit down and laugh for a good amount of time.

That’s amazing, I said. What a great way to learn discipline! I’m impressed with your honesty. We shook hands and I went home.

I called all of our neighbors. Yes, I said into the telephone. Fred is insane. He’s a sociopath. Lock up your cats and daughters. Buy a gun.  No more alcohol at the block party. Maybe we just shouldn’t invite him.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I thought about Fred and his statues and his hammer and I thought about the problem of discipline and how many truffles and how many pounds of bacon and how many children I had ate that morning and how fat I was getting.

Advertisement

Tagged: Flash Fiction, humor, life, Photos, postaday2012, Stories, Writing

Posted in: Featured, little rule