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MAN, F*CK THIS HOUSE
(And Other Disasters)
BY BRIAN ASMAN

BLURB

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MAN, F*CK THIS HOUSE
(And Other Disasters)
BY BRIAN ASMAN

Excerpt

SUNDAY

Shortly after lunchtime, a beige Toyota Camry took a long, lugubrious left into James Circle, the back-end sagging from the combined weight of the Haskins family and what worldly possessions weren’t left for the movers.

“This is it, team!” Hal Haskins said brightly. Hal was a man whose personality favored his car’s paint job, prone to dad jokes and bland observations. His hobbies included checkers, Roth IRAs, and assorted flavors of sportsball—his word. Even played a little sportsball, too, when his trick knee allowed it.

“Aren’t you excited, kids?” Sabrina Haskins asked, twisting around in her seat to regard her literal two-and-a-half children—ten-year-old Damien had eaten his own twin in the womb. Or absorbed him, as the OB/GYN corrected, but she couldn’t quite part with the notion she’d given birth to a cannibal. For years she woke up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat, terrified she was pregnant all over again, her son digging his way out of her uterus with a pickaxe jury-rigged from his dead brother’s bones, gasping for breath as her own blood rushed from the wounds, threatening to drown him—

His older sister, Michaela, barely looked up from her phone long enough to roll her eyes. “Whatever.”

Sabrina was excited, even if the kids couldn’t be bothered. She’d always thought of their previous home town, Columbus, as a stop on the way to bigger and better things, but after dropping out of Ohio State mid-sophomore year to pursue her real passion—getting groped by hot sauce-fingered rednecks at Hooters—she’d gotten stuck there. Then she’d met Hal, who came in one night with his coworkers for a plate of mild wings and exactly two beers. Maybe they hadn’t fallen in love, per se, but he was a good guy with a steady job selling reverse mortgages to widows. Part of her always figured something would change—what specifically she couldn’t say—and then life would be different. More exciting. More interesting.

But it hadn’t.

Four years in Columbus turned into fourteen. Two kids, stretch marks, a series of part-time jobs and aborted stints at community college. Sabrina literally took a basket weaving course. BASKET WEAVING! Which led to her other recurring nightmare, becoming the world’s foremost weaver of baskets, the Martha Stewart of basketry. Flying off to Paris or Dubai at a moment’s notice to weave a basket for some foreign dignitary or oil sheik.

Becoming famous was one thing, but becoming famous for something so gosh-darned boring seemed like its own special kind of H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

So when Hal came home from work one day and told her he’d been offered a big promotion, but they’d have to move, she didn’t even ask where. Columbus was a fine town, but she needed a change so badly anywhere would be an improvement. She’d never heard of Jackson Hill, but it was apparently one of America’s most desirable small cities. Whataburger had even opened a franchise there the year before! Maybe it wasn’t San Fran or Seattle or even the less-murdery parts of St. Louis, but she kind of liked that. The whole city seemed like a blank envelope. Anything could be inside. She could reinvent herself, become whatever she wanted.

If only she could figure out what that was.

The Camry came to a halt outside a two-story Craftsman with brand-new slate blue siding and a slightly-overgrown yard. Across the street, in front of a house painted a very off-putting mustard-yellow, a grey-braided lady glanced up from her flowerbeds long enough to wave at the Haskins family with a pair of shears. Sabrina tried to wave back, but the lady had already looked away.

“One, two, three, break!” Hal said, shutting off the car.

Sabrina grabbed her purse off the floor and got out, legs stiff from spending the last six hours in the car, and another twelve the day before that, the trip only broken up by brief stops at gas stations and a night at a Motel 3 (Half the price, twice the fun!) where she’d had to leave the Gideon Bible with a confused front desk clerk because Damien wouldn’t stop ripping out the pages. The fall breeze ruffled her hair pleasantly.

“Just got a text,” Hal said, coming around the car. “The movers are late. Go figure, right?”

Sabrina looked at her husband and winced—powdered sugar from their gas station donut breakfast spackled his face. She slipped a crumpled napkin from her purse and dabbed his left cheek.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Hal craned his neck away. “Geez.”

“Just trying to help.” Sabrina rapped on the car window. “Kids?”

Michaela reached for the handle, frowned, slapped the window.

“Sorry,” Hal said, leaning back in the driver’s side. “Forgot the child locks.” Ever since Damien tried to bail out on the freeway, both Haskins children had had to suffer the indignity of child locks. Now freed, both took their sweet time getting out of the car. Michaela, to her credit, slipped her phone into her jeans and acted like she was part of the moment. Damien, however, stood sullenly in the driveway, staring down at his feet.

Hal dropped into a crouch next to his son. “What’s wrong, champ?”

“I don’t like it.” The words came out cold, monotone, like most everything Damien said.

“What’s not to like, buddy?”

Damien shook his head and said no more.

“Such a freak,” Michaela muttered.

“I heard that, young lady,” Sabrina said, then cringed because she sounded like her mother, a strict and uncompromising woman who choked to death on a California roll when Sabrina was in high school. Whenever Sabrina said anything too overtly motherly, she imagined her throat closing up, her skin turning blue, and her two children laughing their butts off while she clawed impotently at the air.

Hal hefted Damien up on his shoulders. “Come on, let’s check out our new digs. I think you’ll really like it once you get your bearings.” Stooped under the weight of his son, Hal staggered up the flagstones to the front door, Michaela trailing behind.

Sabrina watched her family for a moment, heart swelling—they weren’t perfect, but they were HERS—then hurried to join them.

***

The house was unbelievable.

They—with the exception of Michaela, who rushed upstairs to inspect her unfurnished new room, and Damien, there in body but not in spirit—started with a tour of the house, Hal in the lead. He was the only one who’d seen their new house so far, thanks to the speed of the move and the kids’ school schedules, and the opportunity to play tour guide further buoyed his already chronically-high spirits.

“Welcome to Casa Haskins,” Hal said, bowing deeply. “The, uh, foyer.” Not even Hal could muster up more interesting commentary on such a transitional space. A stairwell headed straight up to the second story. To their left was the living room, a roomy space with hardwood floors. They poked their heads in, noting the curving archway, then headed towards the kitchen—recently updated with granite countertops, a fetching grey/black backsplash, and shiny steel appliances. Even better, the counters seemed to go on for days. Another door led to the empty dining room, which connected through to the living room.

Sabrina couldn’t wait to cook a meal without banging a shin or elbow on some sharp corner.

“Get a load of the porch,” Hal declared, stepping through a door at the rear of the house. “Perfect place to relax on a hot day.”

Sabrina followed him out to a screened-in porch looking out on the backyard—enclosed by a wood fence, nothing but trees beyond.

“Other side’s a state park,” Hal said. “Lot of privacy.” He set Damien down on the back steps. The boy wandered into the yard and sat in the grass, cross-legged. He commenced massacring dandelions, blowing fluff away with a soft pooft of his lips.

Sabrina didn’t want to think about whatever the boy might be wishing for.

The yard wasn’t huge, but that would make it easier to maintain. Damien could probably mow the lawn in a few passes—one of the few household chores he deigned to do—likely because it involved the massacre of living things—under Hal’s careful supervision, of course. They had a shiny metal shed, one of those pre-fab jobs. Maybe she could take up gardening. Get their new neighbor, the old lady with the shears, to give her some pointers, finally turn that black thumb green.

“Should we head up upstairs?” Sabrina asked.

Hal nodded. “Wait’ll you see the master bedroom.” He cupped a hand to the side of his mouth. “Let’s go, buddy!”

Damien didn’t look up.

“He’s fine,” Sabrina said, grabbing Hal by the arm. Together they went back in through the kitchen.

Passing the stairs, Sabrina noted a door she hadn’t seen on the way in. “Where’s that go?”

“Basement?” Hal said, but it sounded more like a question than a statement.

Sabrina shrugged it off, she wanted to get a look at the bedrooms first. Specifically hers. If they’d re-done the master bath like the kitchen—

Hal stomped up the stairs. “They sure don’t make them like this anymore. Solid, solid construction. This thing’ll still be standing when we’re long gone, I’ll tell you that.”

Sabrina froze in her tracks, gooseflesh standing up on her arms. The idea of the house outlasting not only her and Hal, but her children too, seemed perverse. But that wasn’t all. Long gone was totally relative. The house need not survive into some far-flung future, when polar bears were extinct and the Eastern seaboard lay completely underwater, fish swimming in-and-out of the broken windows of submerged IKEAs. If the Haskins family dropped off the face of the earth that very day, the house’d only have to stand a few years longer to make Hal’s Confauxian wisdom come true.

What’s long gone, anyway?

About Author Brian Asman…

Links to Brian’s websites, blogs, books, #ad, etc.:

Amazon

Author website

Find him on social media (@thebrianasman) or his website (www.BrianAsmanBooks.com).

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