Pedro

EDITORIAL NOTE: As noted here, I’m taking a Fiction Writing class. I plan to post completed and semi-completed works on my blog. This post and any subsequent posts filed in the “Fiction” category are exactly that and should be read as such. END EDITORIAL NOTE

“How are you?”

I was paying attention to my hand-washing, making sure no remnant of airport bathroom clung to my skin. I assumed the voice was directed at someone else who had walked in after I’d finished up. I glanced in the mirror to make sure no hair was out of place only to find the leering face of a half wit standing behind me watching me expectantly. Christ, he was talking to me. I went back to the scrubbing, desperately hoping he’d leave me alone. I made my first mistake.

“Good,”, I muttered. I tried not to make eye contact, continuing to scrub the skin off my hands in hopes that he might continue out the bathroom door without bothering to cleanse himself which seemed to me was probably what people like him did. He didn’t. Dumbstruck by the weird awkward silence and hoping to just escape, I made my second mistake.

“How are you?”

“Well to tell you the truth, I’m happy to be alive. I first cut my finger in 1994 and then I cut my wrist in 2001 after the towers fell. I wrecked a sweet ass Vette in Dallas, Texas in 05 and just barely walked away with both legs. Dallas, I’m not unhappy to say, is a city in which I have a lot of exes.”

This of course had to be a lie made up in a fit of fantasy one night back at the retard farm, the lot of it for sure but most certainly the last part since the only way this half wit had ever had an ex was if he cornered one of the simpletons in the mental ward and had his way with her. He didn’t have the cherubic face of a happy retard. He could only be described as deranged looking. He had a dirty Chaplin mustache with hair that hadn’t been cut in months. His eyes were dark, not unlike the gray matter behind them I supposed. He reminded me of my fourth cousin twice removed by divorce who came to the family reunion each year and sat in the corner picking his nose and eating banana pudding with his thumbs. I could not believe I was in the Albuquerque airport bathroom with its turquoise and stucco making me dizzy, listening to a retard talk about things that couldn’t possibly be true. I saw no way out except to continue to prolong the hand washing in hopes that he would wander out the bathroom and into someone else’s nightmare.

“Huh,” I said, hopefully not too conversationally.

“My women really like Pay-dro. They like to pet him and cuddle with him. Pay-dro is nice to them.”

Visions of his underfed, abused Chihuahuan rat dog swarmed my inner vision. I began to think that maybe he had in fact entertained the ladies back in Vernon or whatever State School he had been imprisoned in by sneaking in a cute little dog that caused the shetards to ooh and aah and follow him back to his room for some midnight baby making. I could just see him sneaking scraps of pork chop and Salisbury steak to feed Pedro. How he kept him quiet during the unavoidable fits of small dog disease was beyond me. Maybe a muzzle. Or maybe the State Schools were letting the residents keep animals these days, some study saying old people and retards were happier and easier to manage with 20 minutes of daily time petting dogs and cats.

“Do yoou like Pay-dro?”

I stood straight up, turned around, wondering what on earth he could be nattering on about. It was at this point that I realized my two mistakes had been compounded into a trap of epic proportions here in the men’s room off Gate A1, Albuquerque airport.

When I turned around, I met Pedro, the halfwit’s huge Hickory Farms Summer Sausage of a dick hanging out of his unzipped fly. He (the halfwit, not his dick, I refuse to personify the thing though, in retrospect, it) was leering at me in the same way he had been when I saw him behind me in the mirror, enjoying my clearly horrified reaction to this decidedly inescapable situation, self-congratulatory in his efforts to get me to take in his member. He stood with his hands on his hips, imperceptibly thrusting Pedro at me which in a darker light could very well have been a pants dachshund without eyes and ears.

With that thought, I giggled. Then I threw up a little. Fainting became a real possibility. The room started to give way, to get a little bit wavy and unconsciousness threatened. I think that worried the boy a bit, afraid that if I fainted, the game might be up so to speak. Plus the thought of being unconscious here with him snapped me back to some semblance of reality. I steadied myself, reaching back for the bathroom countertop. Once stable, the absurdity of the situation washed over me and I stifled another laugh at this odd predicament whereupon the largest dick I had ever seen outside the football locker room at Alabaster High School was staring at me from the pants of a retard in a public restroom.

Like a nubile coed in a horror movie, I was drawn to the danger even though the small voice of reason inside my head was shouting at me to RUN AWAY. What in God’s name to do? Surely soon someone would have to get off a plane from Tulsa or Jackson or Birmingham or some other redneck locale, need to relieve himself and stumble into this situation which would allow me to escape into the sanctity of the airport, leaving Captain Retardo and Pedro to some quality time. But alas, it was as if no other men existed outside this tiny little window into some weird dream I was having. I was frozen in something resembling intrigued terror.

“So do yoou like Pay-dro? He’s my free-und.”

The man-child was clearly enjoying himself. Or he was just retarded. I’m not sure which, probably a devilish combination of both. I wondered how many times he had sprung Pedro on unsuspecting fools like me. I wanted to bash his head in with a club or a bat. Had this been a normal situation, perhaps I would have attacked him but I was effectively neutered by airport security, having only a roll of Butter Rum Lifesavers in my pocket with which to fight off this indignity and I can hardly think it would be sufficient against such a determined opponent.

The only reason I’m still not in the bathroom wondering how to get out of the situation is because a voice suddenly came over the intercom:

“Attention, this is your final boarding call for flight 567, service to Las Vegas, departing gate A6. All passengers should be on board at this time.”

Captain Retardo seemed stunned by the voice, apparently unaware that the plane might leave before he finished having his way with me, whatever that way might have involved. He grabbed his yule log of a penis in his meaty fist and stuffed it back into his cargo pants, apt attire. He shuffled out the door, dragging one lame foot behind him as if to mock me, to extend the moment for as long as possible as his body and then his leg went around the corner towards his flight.

I washed my hands again. Just in case.