Malapropos
You know the guy. He’s the one who shows up uninvited to parties and drinks all the booze. He hits on your wife right in front of you. One time, you even heard him remark at the funeral for your friend Lisa, “Damn, she was a nice piece of ass.”
Enough is enough. It has been this way since college. Somehow he insinuated himself into your group of friends and couldn’t take the hint that he wasn’t wanted. He’s been fired from every job he’s ever had because of his malapropos outbursts. It’s as if the filter between brain and mouth was just never there.
But he went too far last week, when, at the reading you were giving as part of the book tour for your new novel, he showed up halfway through, high on gasoline fumes or household cleansers, and declaimed to the entire audience that you once had sex with a Dalmatian. It doesn’t matter that it’s not true, it doesn’t matter that he was on mind-altering chemicals. He has destroyed your career.
And so you don’t feel so bad when he whimpers through the urine-soaked hand towel with which you gagged him four days ago. There was a twinge of regret when you sliced off his nipples, but that went away. You’ve been cutting away at him for days, and you’re astonished he’s still conscious. He’s lost so much blood.
A dog barks outside, and you hear your wife’s car in the driveway, home from a long weekend with her parents. She steps into the kitchen, and for a brief moment you’re afraid she’ll run away, call the cops. But then you remember the look on her face when the bastard in front of you grabbed her breast at a party long ago, and she seems to remember as well, because she gently takes the knife from your hand and smiles.
