Tacky Goblin Read online

  “The enormous energy and the over the top subversive anarchy in Tacky Goblin, T. Sean Steele’s prize-winning novella, is that of transformation. The book is a wonderful debut by a talented, comic writer.”

  — STUART DYBEK, award-winning author of Paper Lantern and Ecstatic Cahoots

  “T. Sean Steele’s Tacky Goblin is the future. It’s also one of the most original, hilarious, inventive books I’ve read. Echoing the work of Richard Brautigan, Haruki Murakami, and Sam Pink, this novella presents the unending strangeness of becoming yourself. Through dog-children, black pills, and lost teeth, Steele traces the liminal moments of being lost in your twenties in LA and Chicago, and perfectly captures the travails of two siblings—brother and sister—as they negotiate the absurdities of the beginning of the twenty-first century.”

  — JOE MENO, author of Marvel and a Wonder and Hairstyles of the Damned

  “This book is weird as hell and I love it.”

  — CHELSEA MARTIN, author of Mickey and Even Though I Don’t Miss You

  “T. Sean Steele’s LA is a place where clones haunt neighborhood basketball courts, dogs disguise themselves as human babies, and one-night stands attempt to swap your soul for a demon lover. This is pretty accurate, as far as I can remember from the times I’ve visited. His Chicago—a place where cars drift back to homes against their drivers’ wills, and rifts in time appear between front door and front lawn—I recognized immediately. For all the strangeness in Tacky Goblin, the strangest thing might be how true it all feels: the experience of waking up sometime in one’s early adulthood and realizing that the world will keep changing around us whether we like it or not.”

  — JAMES TADD ADCOX, author of Does Not Love and The Map of the System of Human Knowledge

  CURBSIDE SPLENDOR PUBLISHING

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of short passages quoted in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents, situations, institutions, governments, and people are fictional and any similarity to characters or persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Published by Curbside Splendor Publishing, Inc., Chicago, Illinois in 2016.

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2016 by T. Sean Steele

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936737

  IBSN 978-1-940430-89-8

  Edited by Naomi Huffman and Catherine Eves

  Designed by Mylo Reyes

  Cover & interior artwork by Jenna Caravello

  WWW.CURBSIDESPLENDOR.COM

  to KJ

  Contents

  Epilogue

  Bed-Ridden

  Time for a New Phone

  Connor in D.C.

  Mold Mouth and Me

  First He Spent Like Twenty Minutes Shaving Them

  Hope the New Moles Aren’t Cancerous

  So Long

  Turn-Off

  First Day

  Don’t Think I’m Going to Make Many Friends in the Building

  Larry

  Skulls, Man

  Neighbor

  Turns Out It’s Only Legal If You Bury the Body in a National Park

  Larry, Part Two

  No Relation

  Weird Dream

  Cheaper than Diapers

  We Love Visitors

  Making Friends

  Kumail

  Precious

  Shadows!

  Rhoda

  Chicago for Thanksgiving

  All of them Parents

  Pets

  Qu’est-Ce Que C’est?

  It’s My Diet

  Ho Ho Ho

  Chicago

  Back in La

  Pity Party

  If It’s Yellow

  Chewy Sprees, Also Good

  Homeless

  Hiatus

  Incensed

  I Ought to Start Carrying My Own Roll

  Boring and Stupid

  Loosey-Goosey

  Hot Night

  Is that a Promise?

  Lonely August

  Bedtime

  Improv

  Keyshawn? Dijon?

  Hold Steady

  Retcon: I Have Friends

  Smother Brother

  Man to Man

  Miserabilism

  Boor(Ed)

  On the Phone

  Everyone Else

  Freeze Out

  A Win

  Barf Fly

  Hyperventilate

  One Left

  Fuck & Run

  EPILOGUE

  April 7, 2015

  For breakfast I made eggs-in-a-basket with maple syrup. Jeannette was overly impressed. Apparently she thought I was an idiot but then I hadn’t seen her since I left town in October. We were the only two home, my sister at work (she picked up another nannying gig but only under the condition the kid called her “governess”) and Alec out with a friend before he and Jeannette flew back to Los Angeles that afternoon. I wanted to drag her back through the last six months to show her I had changed, but doubted this was true. I had only reset my barometer for “normal,” in that carving out the guts of our upstairs neighbor or playing basketball with duplicates of the same person or taking care of a genetic hybrid dream portal canine-baby escapee were no longer daily incidents.

  I started rambling about something my sister had told me the other day, namely that latching onto a specific idea of the future is a horrifying exercise because it finally arrives populated with strange people and places as opposed to the spouse, friends, home, job, clothes, hobbies, body, you grew in your head. And this goes on in a cycle until you’re homesick for your own mind. “It’s how people fold in on themselves,” I said.

  “Like origami,” Jeannette said.

  “Sure.”

  “Origami,” she said, “is an art.”

  I wasn’t moved. In general I avoided being taken by someone else’s insights: anyone who can have their “mind blown” probably doesn’t have many intentionally interesting thoughts of their own, or is at least that much more susceptible to joining a cult. To move on I pretended she asked me about the upcoming collected edition of Tacky Goblin, my diary, the thing you’re reading right now. It had come together easily because I did zero editing of the original entries except to delete all mention of Laurie, who was terrified to find I had been writing about her. “She said she’d be flattered if it weren’t written by a small child,” I said. Jeannette looked bored and had only taken one bite of breakfast.

  Later I walked her and Alec to the Logan Square L stop where we said goodbye, unsure of the next time we would see each other, although the downer mood was tempered by an old man who dropped two plastic bags full of empty liquor bottles into the street, then stood at the curb cackling as the bags exploded under tires and glass rained down onto the pavement. I had the idea if you could access even a sliver of truth in your life you were obligated to exploit the hell out of it.

  BED-RIDDEN

  September 1, 2013

  I wasn’t sure when I last left my bedroom.

  It had been raining for a long time, and the storm washed out any sense of day or night. Out my window it was always the same: dark, wet, and overcast.

  I stopped leaving my room because of shin splints. A few weeks earlier (the same day my sister emailed to say she had signed the lease on our new apartment, actually), my legs had started to ache. Now I was at the point where I could barely walk, so I was spending most of my time in bed.

  There was a mold spot in the corner of my ceiling above my bed. It started as a thin black line, but because of all the rain it had grown to an oval shape.
Like a mouth.

  When I felt myself getting nervous about moving halfway across the country, I’d lay on my bed and stare at the mold mouth while listening to the rain patter on the roof. I found this relaxing, almost like meditation. I’d get sucked into it for who knows how long, until my mom knocked on the door and said something like, “Who are you talking to?”

  For the time being it was fine, but I hoped my folks took care of the mold before I came home for Christmas. By then my ceiling would be one wet, twitchy mold mouth.

  TIME FOR A NEW PHONE

  September 2, 2013

  My sister called today to update me on the apartment.

  “There’s no AC, so it gets pretty hot in the living room, but otherwise it’s great. They just re-painted the walls. It’s small but cute. There’s crown molding. I know you like crown molding.”

  “Great. Can’t wait.”

  “…What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Great. Can’t wait.’”

  “Oh. It sounded like you said,

  ‘Fuckshitcockassholewhorefuck.’”

  “Weird.”

  “To be honest, every time I talk to you lately, the connection is lousy. There’s a lot of static, and the sound of your breathing is, like, amplified.”

  “Well, I can’t do anything about it now. I still have another year on my contract before I can get a new one.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Listen, I gotta split. I’m in the middle of bleaching this bit of mold off my ceiling. Talk to you later.”

  “Deathiscomingforyou.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘See you soon.’”

  CONNOR IN D.C.

  September 3, 2013

  My friend Connor in D.C. pointed out something to me: my legs started hurting the same day my sister signed the lease on our new apartment. “So, you know, what about the implications?” he said.

  “Meaning…”

  “Meaning, your legs, commonly used for transport, stopped working the day you got an apartment halfway across the country. Your body is shutting down, preventing you from moving.”

  “I’m not going to walk to Los Angeles, Connor. I’m driving.”

  “It’s symbolic. Your body is trying to tell you something.”

  I thought: Whatever. Thanks for the insight, but I’ll take it with a grain of salt, or I would if I could walk to the kitchen.

  MOLD MOUTH AND ME

  September 4, 2013

  I had a weird dream about me and the mouth-shaped mold on my ceiling.

  It went like this:

  I was in bed, and the mold mouth said, “Wake up.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s someone in your room.”

  I looked around. It was dark, but empty.

  “Not this room,” the mold mouth said. “You’re asleep right now. This is your dream room. A projection. I’m talking about your real room, in the real world. There’s someone in there with you. I don’t know who it is.”

  “Wait. You can be in my dream and the real world at the same time?”

  “I’m mold. When you sleep, I drop tiny spores into your nose, which attach themselves to your brain. I’ve got a private line to your unconscious. But let’s focus on the drooling stranger in your room.”

  “Drooling?”

  “He’s getting slobber all over your face. Know anybody like that?”

  “No.” I tried to wake up.

  “Hmm,” the mold mouth said. “He’s kind of on top of you now. I can’t see what he’s doing, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I think his chest popped open. As in, his ribcage split in two. Kind of looks like a mouth. Like me. Except I don’t have teeth.”

  I had just enough time to picture a gaping chest lined with teeth made of ribs when a clap of thunder woke me.

  There was no one else in the room. A spat of rain gusted against my window. I wiped the drool off my pillow and tried to fall back asleep.

  FIRST HE SPENT LIKE TWENTY MINUTES SHAVING THEM

  September 6, 2013

  “It seems to me that your legs hurt because they don’t want to move to Los Angeles,” the doctor said. “They’re trying to prevent you from leaving.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “It happens.”

  “How?”

  “Well. Did you talk about the trip when your legs were in the room?”

  “What?”

  “They had to find out somehow.”

  “Okay. Great medical opinion. I’m leaving.”

  “At least it’s only your legs that don’t want to move. It could’ve been worse. Could’ve been your liver. Or your butt.”

  HOPE THE NEW MOLES AREN’T CANCEROUS

  September 7, 2013

  My legs are fixed, because they’re gone.

  I woke from a nap and fell when I tried to get out of bed. My balance was off. I felt like I was a couple inches closer to the ground than usual. I rolled up my pants to find a pair of unfamiliar legs. They were hairy and as thick as tree trunks and they weren’t mine.

  “Looking good,” the mold mouth on my ceiling said.

  I flexed my toes. Muscles rippled up to my quads. “What did you do to me?”

  “Well. You remember that drooling guy with the ribcage mouth? He came by last night and lurked over you again so I thought, Enough is enough, and swallowed him. Then I stripped him for parts and replaced your legs with his.”

  “You can’t do that to me. They don’t even match my skin tone. They’re too light.”

  “They’re an improvement, trust me. You had bad legs. Chicken legs. Lady legs. Anyway, they don’t hurt anymore, do they?”

  I stood slowly and walked around. They didn’t hurt. In fact, I felt like I could jump through the ceiling.

  “See?” the mold mouth said. “You’re good to go. You’ve got a set of ham-hocks on you now. Some serious cannons. Choice cuts of meat.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I got it. That’s enough.”

  “A real pair of gams.”

  SO LONG

  September 10, 2013

  I was packing my bags when I noticed snow falling outside my window.

  In the living room, my dad was getting ready for work. “Where have you been?” he asked. “It’s January.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s September tenth. Where’s mom? Where’s the car?”

  His shoulders sank. “She went to LA months ago and never came back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He brightened. “Sometimes she’ll video chat me. She’s sharing the apartment with your sister.”

  “No she isn’t,” I said. “That’s my apartment.”

  In the front window, untouched snow blanketed the entire street. But when I opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, it was summer. Mom was in the driveway, putting the last of our things in the car. She wiped her sweaty face with a forearm. Heat wavered off the roof of the car. A squirrel dashed across the dry grass and up a tree.

  “Get your bags,” Mom said, tugging on a baseball cap. “Let’s get a move on.”

  I stepped back inside the threshold. Dad shrugged on his winter coat, quietly singing “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me.” Through the window, I saw the street was covered in snow again, and Mom was nowhere in sight. I went to my bedroom and finished packing.

  “Where are you off to?” the mold mouth on my ceiling said.

  “California.”

  It whistled. “That ship sailed months ago, man.”

  “Outside is different than inside,” I said. “One of them isn’t real, and I think you’re probably behind it. Spores in my brain.”

  “The winter’s getting to you. You’re losing it. Don’t leave. You belong to me.”

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and returned to the living room. Dad was standing on the doormat. His boots were caked in snow.

  “Can you help me shovel the driveway quick?” he asked sadly. “The c
ar’s stuck.”

  I took him by the shoulders and sat him down on the couch.

  “Sure thing,” I said. “You just sit right here and wait. I have a feeling you’re not real, because you don’t seem like you, but just in case—goodbye, Pops.”

  He brightened again. “Not real? That would explain a lot.”

  Outside, I put my bag in the trunk and sat behind the wheel. I wondered how long it would take for me to sneeze out all the spores the mold mouth had dropped into my brain.

  “We’re spending the first night in Provo, Utah,” Mom said. “That’s near Area 51, you know. Maybe we’ll get abducted. I could handle it.”

  TURN-OFF

  September 14, 2013

  At our first stop for gas, Mom took out a roll of bills held together by a rubber band and peeled off a fifty.

  “Here,” she said. “Go pre-pay. I’ll pump.”

  “Good god, Mom,” I said. “How much money is that? Where is your credit card? You really shouldn’t be carrying that much cash.”

  She snapped off the rubber band and flapped the stack of bills in my face. “Look at it. That’s three inches of money right there.”

  *

  At the western edge of Nebraska, the check engine light came on. We opened the car manual and it said to stop driving and go to your nearest Toyota dealer.

  “I’m pretty sure we passed a sign that said NO SERVICES NEXT 100 MILES a half-hour ago,” I said. Mom flicked on the wipers. Dank air seeped in through the AC. We were surrounded on all sides far as you could see by farmland. “I don’t even think they can farm here,” I said. “This land is full of rocks. Look at all those boulders. Who even owns this land? We’re alone for miles. We’re screwed.”

  “Hey, a turn-off,” Mom said, pointing. Ahead I saw an exit for a town called Potter. “We’ll find a gas station. All that whining for nothing.”

  She took the exit and almost immediately we came to what looked like a body shop on the side of the road. Five rusted out mobile homes sat scattered behind the shop. A silhouette of a person appeared in the window of one.

  As we pulled up, a heavyset young guy in a flannel shirt stepped out of the garage and watched us from beneath the awning.