(tbh)

ducter

Gabriel had three human friends who never left his side, always wearing duckling costumes complete with authentic feathers and beaks that despite their constant presences never smelled, and communicated solely by saying “quack.” He, in turn, asked others to call him “the mother ducky” occasionally, and embraced his flock with love and care. The duckies had a great deal of leg hair, perhaps five years Gabriel’s senior on average. It was unclear if they were related or even friends before they became duckies. At first, Gabriel only fed them bread, cheap, dollar-a-loaf bread at that, bought past the expiry date at an establishment where the shopping carts ran on quarters. Eventually, as duckies are wont to do, they started complaining, saying, “quack,” still, but with furrowed brows and upset tummies. Gabriel nobly responded to their criticism, and now fed them wonderful meals, meals of potato and cheese and onion and rice, garlic, egg, and fresh pork shoulder, with a little lettuce sprinkled on top. The duckies, with nourished spirits, dug deeper than ever before in their well of love toward Gabriel, or, occasionally, “the mother ducky.”

One crisp autumn morning, Gabriel awoke to an open window, a stiff breeze, with aromatic undertones of cinnamon, leather and tobacco. He inhaled sharply, and sighed, enrapt, acutely aware that ‘the good things in life’ were often free. He took nine pills out of one of those ‘pill-a-day’ week-long modular tubules, with one massive gulp swallowing about 80 total mgs of Dextroamphetamine, enough Escitalopram and Alprazolam to lull a rabid dog into a ‘vibe,’ two placebos, a heaping teaspoon of sketchy internet testosterone-powder, and a couple mysterious blue guys his doctor gaslit him into accepting during an unusually intense bout of the ‘birthday blues.’ He pulled a sticky graphic tee featuring ‘Bender’ from a wad of unfolded clothes taking up half the floor, along with Nike shorts, off-white socks with nine holes between them, and his well-worn, slightly drippy houseshoes, accessorizing with a neon camo man purse. He ran up two flights of carpeted stairs to his kitchen and filled each of the three food bowls next to the dishwasher with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, polishing off the box. The mat underneath was disgusting, not once cleaned in the three years Gabriel had owned it, but the sticky surface served as a reminder of good times, good meals, gone by. He felt something wet leave his eye, a dewdrop, salt of sheer contentment.

Gabriel began to sing the morning song, an aubade, to let the duckies know that the day had started. It was an incredible vocal feat, with simultaneous ululation and glitchish throat crackling producing a Wall-of-Sound, surprisingly complex polyrhythms spelling out the first 25 terms of the fourth-order Fibonaccian sequence, with prerecorded features from Lil’ Kyle, XxXmagdaleneXxX, and BOOSTGANG. The duckies came screaming out of their room, singing their traditional triatonic harmony in response, a hyperpalindromic “quack” sequence with six-dimensional symmetry. They were bumping all up into each other and shit and making a mess of things, gregarious, drawing up a plume of pale smoke out of sheer kinetic energy like the Bristlecone White Devil, wilding out on each other and going crazy, aplomb with minty-scented bloodlust and legitimate bile-throated scorn. Never once did this hilarious slapstick lunacy get in the way of the music, which ran its course precisely when the first ducky to arrive proudly began eating his breakfast, headfirst, handsfree, without so much as a “quack” for good morning for Gabriel. This ducky had a greasy mustache that probably would have tasted like pretzels if you sucked on it, but he was a good guy, or, duck. Gabriel’s second ducky was a little kinder, giving Gabriel a blank stare and allowing him to pat his head once or twice. He had one ear pierced, the left, “straight,” one. The third ducky was very noticeable because he was much smaller than the other two, and a little asshole, biting at Gabriel with his beak and hissing out a petulant, naughty “quack.” He smelled like old grass and never got what he wished for on his birthday, one could just tell. “Well,” Gabriel said, to no one in particular, as he rubbed aloe and ointment into his tender mangled hands, “better get started on lunch.”

Gabriel opened up the fridge and was blinded by a great white light, gobsmacked, the vast, wide expanse he slept under blatant, containing lack thereof. There was a little old box of baking soda that smelled like flat cola and bad milk, and a jar of olives which no one bought, wanted, or had any explanation for. Gabriel’s man purse often contained unexpected treats, but as he rooted around in there all he found were a bunch of loose thumbtacks and a change of clothes, in case of a “bathroom emergency.” Instead of olive bread again, Gabriel got all his ducks in a row. “Alright duckies, it appears as if we must go to WallyWorld. To the vehicle!”

The four wasted no time, having finished breakfast by this point. They walked out in the line, and boarded the GabeMobile, a 2012 Honda Smile Factory, ratty upholstery and shitty white paint-job coming off in strips, with a replacement steering wheel one good yank away from flying out the always-open window. One ducky quacked “Quack!” for shotgun, but the little asshole usurped the position, and let out a resolute “Quack.” once seated to affirm his right to the aux, playing edits he made of classical symphonies where he took out short clips randomly with his editing software, making them feel stilted, uneven, and hard to follow rhythmically. He did this because it gave him anxiety, a feeling he chased with the searing desperation of a tar junkie. Luckily for his fellow passengers, they were only driving for about a minute, as WallyWorld was laughably within walking distance. They exited their car in the same line they had entered, an experimentally optimized order, containing Gabriel, mustache, other one, and little asshole bringing up the rear. He was last in line, but in terms of importance to the operation, he was certainly not the least. He carried a massive, reusable grocery bag that resembled a cornucopia, for, to his credit, Gabriel cared deeply about the environment, a passion that had burned within him since childhood. He considered, at this moment, his own environment, the community he had lived in for about nine years at that point, the suburban college town of Idyllia, just him and his duckies in the largest home at the end of a recently gentrified street of self-similar candy-cane cottages which got slightly larger the further you went down. He loved his life there, loved the idea of his neighbors. He considered his neighbors. He had never once attended a community event, barbecue, church service, book club, NA meeting, or any sort of thing that could shed some light onto the average denizen. He was drawing blanks, troubled, deeming himself a recluse with a heavy head. What could he do to make himself feel better? He approached the self-checkout security guard, a mean old white lady.

“Excuse me, Miss? Pray tell. I fear myself a living ghost, shambling shitty streets- oh me! CITY streets.”

Gabriel’s correction was insufficient. The female guardian pointed a bony finger up and lambasted the shit out of him, yelling “My word!” He scurried off, meeting up with the duckies at the cheese section. The other one was quacking virulently, gesturing towards the sharp cheddar. The little asshole, petulant, was crying duplicitous tears, sitting in the cart as he often did, hiding in the cornucopia, which he was just barely able to contort into. Gabriel lifted it out from over the little asshole, skipping over the sharp cheddar and grabbing a gallon jug of Velveeta. Gabriel and the duckies proceeded to the milk. From afar, Gabriel locked eyes with four putrid shit-goblins from Babylon College, a nearby liberal-arts style institution, suckling indulgently on each other’s noses and ears and wearing horrible t-shirts advertising radical political institutions they were in no way part of. They carried with them four jars of kimchi, stale bread, milk, and sugar. The horrible leader, Jaxon, broke away from the orgy and addressed Gabriel’s flock.

“chk-chk Sup, man! How goes it? Name’s Jaxon.” Gabriel now bore a sour, miserly look: had he feathers, they would be ruffled. He then considered himself. This attitude was the very thing giving him grief in the back-past; Gabriel decided to put his best foot forward.

“My recent acquaintance, I must admit to being, at this moment, a ne’er do well. I’ve got no friends, merely duckies. What say you?”

Jaxon looked puzzled. He had never met a mother ducky before. He turned on his phone flashlight and started shining it in the little asshole’s eyes, in response to which he quackly bit the shit out of it, snapping the phone in two.

“Ah, what gives, comrade? I use that for porn!” said a now quite plussed Jaxon.

Gabriel had long ago sworn never to use physical reinforcement to punish a ducky, but in this moment his resolve was tested like it had never been before. He raised a firm hand, considered, and ultimately lowered it, the little asshole grinning like someone else had eaten shit.

“Nah, bro, nah. You’ve gotta hit your kids if they pull some shit like that. I’ve lost my baseline human respect for you.” He turned back to what he might refer to as his ‘squad.’ “Let’s roll out, we’ve still got that webinar in 30.”

A member of Jaxon’s entourage, on the way out, smacked the beak off the mustachioed ducky playfully, rendering him aghast. He cried and quacked to Gabriel, who reinserted the beak into the hole, and raised a fist, fuming.

The four proceeded to the meat, switching things up with six rotisserie chickens and 2 gallons pre-processed beef stew, finding Oreos and milk in an organized display. Gabriel grabbed an armful, and gave the duckies a blank stare, asking if they would like anything else. The little asshole wanted Pinot Noir and bouillabaisse, but he was just testing his limits. The others were satisfied, and so the contented flock tottered on over.

Unfortunately, as Gabriel honed in on the self-checkout, he began to notice those self-same shit goblins, from before. They seemed a little bothered, like they had forgotten something, and stood formed in a little huddle. As they began to near, Jaxon approached the little asshole, who was bearing the lush full cornucopia.

“Hey, pretend we came in as a group? We can throw our shit on top and get most of it through. That lady isn’t watching.”

The little asshole was elated. He had never considered stealing before, but he was nothing if not malleable. The other duckies, after a little confusion, numbly followed.

The alarm in Gabriel’s mind-head began ringing clarion. His first instinct, to ring up five-o, was dashed when he remembered that one of the duckies was playing Robot Bird on the almost-unusably cracked iPhone 4. He began crying out plaintively, desperate for any cop-affecting individual capable of talking some sense into the unruly young thieves. “Help, oh help, oh soldiers of capital! Smite these raucous fools from this hallowed site of worship, I mean, business!” Gabriel’s cries fell on crowded ears, as the WallyWorld security guard remained preoccupied hulking over a 55-year-old Bahamian woman buying a six-pack of AA batteries. Setting aside the heinous misdeed of ‘cop distraction,’ Gabriel began narrating the scene, having noticed one of the college kids taping the event for SlipSlop, a popular social media platform, foolishly relying on himself as a citizen journalist to make a difference.

“These horrid Babylonian gentry have begun to teach my duckies to steal! Watch their technique closely! They are scanning the top items of the bag, which they have not placed on the scale, and then dashing off, false receipt left by the machine, to continue to suckle the teat of the working man! Ban reusable bags! ENFORCE PLASTICITY!!!!”

Gabriel stirred himself out of his male hysteria, and realized that his duckies had, indeed, left with the patriciate, stolen groceries in hand. He ran out the place on all fours at around 5 miles per hour, baying and bustling like a bucking bronco. He seethed at the sight of an immaculate 2020 Tursla Model X, from which he saw duckies spilling out the backseat, clearly all sharing a seatbelt. Gabriel felt feeble, and afraid. The duckies were soon to be out of sight, and Babylon College was a delirious maze of winding non-euclidean pathways and locked doors. He looked up at the sky and roared like a diesel engine. He shot to the Smile Factory, triple parked 15 feet away in two handicapped spots and some sidewalk, and peeled out of the lot within eight seconds, tearing past some old guy and blowing the MAGA hat off his bald head with how fucking fast he was going. Gabriel put his full body weight on the gas pedal, and was soon going 85 down the cacophonous stroad.

Some desert eagle basher cop with a radar gun and something to prove got roused by the hubbub, and found squealing porcine towards the scene. Most cops are heroes and everything but this guy was a real piece of shit. He’d strip the wings off live butterflies when he was in his tweens, and beat his family, habitually, now. The cop, though ignoble in general, was bound by law that Gabriel’s maternal impulses forced him outside of. Gabriel was going a hundred now, knocking a whole line of side-view mirrors up into the air looking like ‘the wave.’ With vision his optometrist once described as “primo,” he spotted the Tursla spewing slackers and duckies onto an asphalt lot nearby. He drove up the curb onto the grass with a “thump” that knocked the wind out of him and popped his front two tires, but he was too close for comfort. He skidded into place, and bumped Jaxon pretty good, his live body leaving bloodstains as he did a triple backwards somersault, floating phone-wallet-AirBuds snatched up by the home team, with vanquished foe landing on his back, knocked unconscious by the pavement.

Gabriel tottered out of the Smile Factory and hollered “Eat dusk, cheapskate!” at Jaxon’s bitch-ass, and the duckies began quacking with reverie at the man who, occasionally, asked others to call him “the mother ducky.” The college students scampered and cowered like post-war Shintos, with fear and vitriol inherent. Gabriel lifted his leg up above his head like a ballet dancer, and stomped down hard, rumbling the ground and leaving a symbol that looked like a square within four 3,4,5 right triangles within a circle. His eyes turned to spirals, and he gurgled his throat like a bullfrog. The college students faked like they were choking to death, or something that looked kind of like that, and soon began quacking, with mirth and wonder, at a figure they now regarded maternally. Jaxon started getting up off the ground all menacingly as the “bad apple” cop finally got out of his massive vehicle, having finished the level he was stuck on in the original version of Robot Bird, which was now only available on those dashboard-mounted cop car computers, which, to reiterate, is good and they’re good guys, usually.

“Who’s the prick going a hundred in a roundabout?” The justifiable, conscientious (in role) civil servant, whose personal lack of morality Gabriel noticed, but ignored, said as he approached calmly.

Gabriel, pointing down at the vanquished Jaxon, said “That would be that boy over there, officer.” He tried the 2020 Tursla Model X tacitly, and it was unlocked. It was one of those stupid cars where the key is a wireless thing and you really start the car by pressing a button, and Jaxon, being a coddled asshole, kept it up in the dash, where it sat now. Gabriel entered the car, which wasn’t his, but he checked the registration and smirked as he found that it wasn’t Jaxon’s either, technically, the name inside likely belonging to his father. In shotgun, Gabriel found the last of Jaxon’s accomplices, an indie enby in a knit cap.

“Please, please don’t hypnotize me,” they said, crying, trying to be loud with the cop nearby. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

The cop, over by the gutter Jaxon basically threw himself in, had some very important business to attend to. He was giving Jaxon a spanking, and, further, cops wear these special AirPod looking things that filter out any noise within the pitch register 165-255 hz, give or take, so they can focus on ‘tactical situations,’ despite that they’re usually just eating, driving, or both. This being as such, with a slight tilt due to the enby’s ‘vibe,’ AGAB, and the fact that the cop was a uniquely sick fuck who loved to feel feared, or at least that he was allowing fear to happen, the cop just kept right on-a spanking. Gabriel smirked, and removed the spare authentic ducky costume from his man-purse, telling them that “We’ll see if you prove yourself to be as eager as you claim.”

On cue, one-two-three-four-five more duckies entered the car in a cute little line, proclaiming cute little things, such as: “Quack!”, “Quack?”, not to mention, “quack.” The now-fifth ducky in the pecking order, the little asshole, carried with him the cornucopia, brimming with meat, dairy, and a little lettuce on top, which he deposited into the 2020 Tursla Model X’s nifty ‘front trunk.’ With Jaxon’s bare red buttcheeks slapping and clapping him out, Gabriel enabled the autopilot feature. The newest ducky, in shotgun, quacked a worried “quack,” but Gabriel ignored their protests. If it were so dangerous, why would he be allowed to use it?