At Least Everyone's Okay [A short satire piece detailing the ambivalent nature of human kind - Written by Matthew Munsey]

“Tommy, stop playing with that!” Freddie Galston shouted at the top of his lungs, his gargantuan, meaty, body twisting nearly a full one hundred and eighty degrees around to meet the incredulous face of his young, determinately cherubic son. Screwed on somehow to the wheel ahead of his burgeoning, bulbous gut, Freddie Galston’s knuckles were a ghostly white. His hand pulsated and pumped in his indignant fury, the great wooden wheel clutched adamantly within his paws nearly giving way under the great beast of man’ fervent, insistent pressure.

“Sweet heart, calm down.” Spoke Sandy Galston finally, her long red fingernails briefly scratching steadily at the back of her furious and crimson faced man. Her words were nearly imperceptible, drowned out almost entirely by the now seemingly omnipresent huff and puff of Freddie Gallstones rotund and delicately wheezing bosom, trembling steadily as it wretched haphazardly up and down with each rattling gulp of air. Indeed, each mighty weeze seemed to shake the entire vehicle in which the family sat, as if within Freddie Galston’s core there was an earthquake happening, it’s aftershocks spreading their tendrils so thin as to somehow become perceptible to them sat there before him. Freddie’s heart raced. It pumped and jumped wildely, as if meant for nothing other than asylum from the dredge and everyday commonalities of modern man. It was as if it were some wretched, hunger-torn beast, searching wildly, and in vain, for some safe berth to call home.

“Dad, you should really watch the road.” Mumbled Tommy Galston finally, looking unabashedly into the center of his father's wild and terrible eyes - as he continued to pick at the lose thread that still dangled lamely out of the fragrant leather and fine needlework that ran up the edge of the seatback before his young and wondering fingers.

It was the final straw. “That’s it, you’re done, kid!” Freddie Galston roared laboriously, his mighty vigor nearly exceeding the limit at which his distended, turgid corporeal form could bear to comprehend. As the prodigious beast of a man reached back, one hand raised high in the air high over his young son head - it’s meaty, haggard flesh looming as the guillotine might over the neck of some poor, emaciated wretch caught stealing bread in the hopes that he may feed his family for just one more hopeless night.

The sound of it was extraordinary. A great, echoing thwap thundered resolutely out, momentarily deafening each of the three Glaston clan. A look of horrified shock was plastered upon young Tommy Glaston’s angelic visage. His eyes watered, and his throat quacked helter skelter back and forth, as he determinedly fought back the onslaught on coming tears.

“Oh my god, Fred, what have you done now?” Sandy Galston was screaming, the words having been barely pushed out, as if they had been lodged there in her throat for milenia, festering - insidiously holding back everything from within her deepest self that longed to break free - with their gooey, treasonous sleaze. Her hands, replete with those cherry red half inch long talons, covered her mouth firmly - indeed pressed so tightly to her own lips that her entire face had begun to lose blood, her alabaster terror welcoming the contrast of the furious crimson clinging and dancing now around her petrified, corpulent face - wonderfully, fantastically, as if on cue.

All three of them had been lurched back suddenly by the impact of it. Tommy Galston's eyes were wide, as they flickered back and forth from his mother's shocked and wretched face, to his father's horrified visage. “You fucking moron!” Sandy Galston shouted, the slippery, illustrious pearls that dangled around her mechanically tightened, pseudo-youthful neck knocking wildly against her bountiful, silicone breasts as she howled in her bellicose rage. “We just got the thing fixed last week!” The belligerent biddy finished, suddenly defeated by the sheer terror of it all. She buried her face again in her crimson taloned claws, and wept.

“God fucking damn it.” Freddie Glaston muttered solemnly to himself. As he gazed horror stricken at the spindly, crisscrossing web of cracked glass that stood now lamley bent in before him. As he stepped out of the car, he heard it. The steady whine of something from under the hood. The behemoth of a man’s heart sank. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He mumbled again to himself, running one bulbous, sausage fingered paw over the warm hood of the beautiful, but irrevocably mangled automobile. The bumper was destroyed. Great swaths of dirt and erroneous filth clung to the front of the vehicle like crumbs, dangling disgustingly from the corner of some senile old fools gaping, and slobbering suck hole. Bent and torn, the metal grate of the car jutted out too, into every direction - ramshackle and broken like the yellowed, disgusting teeth of a man well unattended for many years - after having been left all alone. Through the cracked spider web glass Freddie’s family was watching him, tears in their eyes, and terror etched abundantly across each of their astonished, pallid countencances.

Slowly, Freddie moved back towards the drivers side of the car, shouting as he shifted his mammoth extremities one after the next along the warm, sunny street - moving each of them like some gooey, slobbering snail - dragging its cracked and dislocated carapace pathetically behind him as it lurched unsteadily from one patch of inglourious, melancholic dirt to the next. “This is going to cost me an arm and a leg this time.” Freddie Galston bellowed, staringly luridly back and forth from the panic stricken faces of his young child and his wife. “Sandy, would you get Mike on the fucking phone?” And as he finally reached the drivers side door, he finished under his breath. “He’s really going to have a field day with this one.”

As the engine revved and the red faced, blathering family prepared their departure, from between the front two wheels of the vehicle came - timidly at first, but then louder, a voice. “Hey, you out there.” It muttered, dazed and shocked to find itself so far from where it had expected to be. “Help me.” It groaned, sputtering the words out between great crimson casts of speckled blood. “Help me.” It said again, quieter this time, the fear - and light - slowly beginning to ebb quietly away. Below the front tires of the vehicle, cast down amidst his own guts, and blood, and puke, and viscera - a man lay, bedraggled and weather worn - his long black, matted hair weaving itself generously over the brown, patched and battered overcoat slung around his whittled and emaciated carcass. His skull was crushed, and a trickle of his warbling, ruined encephalon leaked steadily down his ghostly pale face, past his chin, and finally onto the burning hot asphalt that lay invitingly below it. A steady hiss and sizzle met the wretched creatures mind as it leaked downwards away from him, as he struggled to call out for help, if even for only one final time. The poor creatures dirty, and loosely gloved right hand reached out above him, high, towards the heavens above - as he opened his mouth again, as if to speak.

Suddenly the engine revved and the wheels spun, knocking the destitute wretch a hither, or rather, what was left of him. For a brief moment the wheels only spun, a great viscous torrent of red and white material pleasantly dancing before the Galston families’ eyes - sparking in the light - and stunning them with it’s astounding, remarkable beauty.

Freddie Galston sighed, and looked back to meet the still horror stricken eyes of his young child. “Don’t worry, little man, everything will be okay.” As the monolithic brute of a fellow spoke he gave the cherubic child a brief squeeze on his left leg. “Oh of course it will be.” Spoke Sandy Glaston again, this time with a smile. She looked into her husband's eyes, and grinned jovailly. “It’s just a scratch, after all.” And with a wink, and a loving glance back towards her young son she finished with a broad, toothy smile. “At least everyone’s okay!”

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Dear Reader,
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to read this story, and to let you know how much it means to me that you did! If you enjoyed this story (or hated it), please do not hesitate to let me know in the comments section! If you did enjoy this story, it would also mean a lot to me if you would be so kind as to upvote, resteem, and generally just let people know that you thought that what you read was worthwhile! Thanks again Reader, and I hope to see you next time! -Matthew Munsey