fiction courtesy of The West Virginia Surf Report
(originally published in Bananafish
#4, August 1989)
Three years ago my wife and I purchased a small tract of land in the New England hamlet of Bellwick, Massachusetts, with the plans of building our dream home. Since we were doing most of the work ourselves, we spent a fair amount of time at the hardware store and therein met a young lady who looked remarkably like Karen Carpenter. She was a pleasant soul, easy to talk to, and possessed the air of a sympathetic grade school teacher. She was seemingly knowledgeable and I enjoyed passing the time with her, whenever I needed caulk or screws or a new claw hammer. "Karen" and I would discuss the virtues of living in a small town and the simple life that it brings. I realized through her, and with great relish, the pleasures of life away from the helter-skelter world of the big city. But then the gutters started falling off my house. Karen Carpenter had sold me the wrong roofing nails, and my house looked like hell. So yeah, I'm glad she's dead. In fact, I willed it to happen. Good riddance. Fuck her.