Pitch Yourself Thin
Orlo Yeahblip

After recycling those eight-graders, James spends the dough at the COMMITTEE. They make him heimlich manoeuvres for five bucks a squeeze. $770 later, bruised ribs and choking sounds. His gullet gasps open, like a fire hydrant spraying chicken wings and spittle. This is his crushed epiphany. Everything fits like jigsaw-porn. James staggers around a ringing sound. He looks up at the swinging light bulb and wonders what just happened.
It is only later, standing over the hob that he figures it: he can soup. The can in his hand whispers and he nods. The ingredients ask endless questions about shelves, about what does simmer mean, about who are the ring pulls. They wonder out loud if they will make good ghosts. James tries to explain, he doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but he just doesn't believe in you know who. And then the creamed asparagus warns of murder, big murder. James sits down, sucking on the wooden spoon, thinking, what if I call it in, would anyone believe me? Someone should have asked the shelf stackers for facts on dents and botulism. Who's to say that symptoms can't be signs sometimes. To know the thoughts of dinner, just before you plate it up, that's a heavy load. It plagues James, he knows that death is waiting high above in the fatty bladders sitting up in club class. His discounted dreams, his wallpapering mistakes -- all of that can be forgotten. The COMMITTEE are planning their most audacious crime: The Minestrone Perversion. Sixteen thousand gallons of highly diuretic soup wait in planes above the world. The subsequent slivers of Blue Ice will rain down like a bed of nails of frozen pee. James has one chance to dodge a death by golden shower, to hide safely in the cupboard. Don't look up, don't go out, beg the voices from the larder, we need you here, doing good, out of the spotlight, reheating us into the world. But James cannot accept advice from neither wife nor condiment, always a fatal flaw. He steps out from under and tilts his jaw up to sky. It's filled with criss cross skywriting. He counts the jets, unpicks the anagrams. It's that sound again, the whistling descent of sharpened icebergs made of pee. James waits for penetration.

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