(11) Mari Kornhauser: Heaven
My dog’s farts are delicious, but heaven is eating a bag of Fritos after a murder. I came to this conclusion after doing a post on social media: “Heaven is…”. Some of my ‘friends’ wrote about a religious version, which I immediately discounted and said but what about here, on earth, while you’re alive? After all, what the fuck, religion? Afterlife?
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Other responses were more on point:
-Heaven is a moment you wished was an eternity.
-Heaven is timeless. A place where nothing happens.
-When I see a smile. When I see nature. When I look at my children. Yes, that’s heaven.
-A moment where I wouldn’t change a thing. Heaven.
-Dogs.
-Heaven is no longer having to worry about tomorrow or the day after. And being able to facilitate that in the lives of others. As far as time will hold.
-Breathing in the ocean air while laughing over a glass of wine with a friend. Heavenly.
-Clean sheets.
Clean sheets? The fun is in dirtying them up. Hell is clean sheets. Staining them because it means I’ve done something nasty and that is heaven. It was at that moment I realized that, perhaps, my greatest normalcy with humanity was projecting an inaccurate portrayal of myself on social media. Meaning: of course, I enthusiastically answered each response with a, “Yes!” or, “There’s a good one!” or, “Ye old chestnut. I never thought of it that way.”
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Who was I fooling? You all on social media.
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You'll make it so easy, it’s heavenly. Basically, I stalk. Online, I mean. That’s how I pick my target(s). To be honest, there are two definitions of targets. Definition one, the slime I only stalk online and definition two, the slime I’m going to wash off the planet. To be honest, again, I’ve only succeeded in doing definition two once. Which put me on the path to heaven.
Or is the path to heaven made of little bits of heaven until you reach the big heaven? For instance, little bits of heaven are stalking slime and downloading their photos and making a collage of them—altered of course. But I’m not going to tell you how I altered them. And not telling you is another little bit of heaven. Then hacking into their accounts and posting them.
Question for you. Do you really believe I’m a reliable narrator?
I am. Pinky swear. Anyway, back to the slime. How did I pick the one, you’re wondering? Hint: accidents happen more frequently close to home. Falling off ladders, cutting the tip of your finger off while slicing a bagel, and more. I’m graceful as a gazelle but my better half is accident-prone. My better half is also cheating on me when walking the dog. The farting dog. So, when they were out, I went to Facebook and checked the page. Hacked the page. Found a secret folder of people I did not recognize. I was even in some of them. What? I know the doctor has me on these scripts that fuck with my head—a turducken of drugs during turducken times of plague, flood, and riots. Therefore, the possibility of me not remembering was a possibility.
Still.
A confrontation was called for. Right? I asked, in reasonable tones, what was up with the folder of secrets and what came back at me? Nothing. Complete silence. Okay, I’m done. That does it. The end. As I said, it’s already a turducken out there, I don’t need gravy on top of it, although that does sound heavenly, I digest. I followed that asshole into the bathroom, kept pressing, and still nothing. Silence is not golden, it’s blacking redrum maddening. I shouted exactly that, finishing with a Say something! But the motherfucker didn’t back down.
“Motherfucker”, I shouted, punching my fist at the ugly face staring at me. Right into the kisser. Blood spurted everywhere, the mirror above the sink shattered. And my better half was gone. I murdered my better half. I’m a beast. A ravenously hungry one.
Hence the Fritos. Except I lied. Heaven isn’t eating a bag of Fritos after a murder. Heaven is eating bloody Fritos after a murder.
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Mari Kornhauser has taught in the English Department’s Creative Writing Program at Louisiana State University and on assignment for various motion picture studios, producers, directors, and actors in Los Angeles. She’s written and co-produced two features which led her to make her directorial debut in 2000 with an award-winning independent feature, as well as the HBO series, TREME. She is a member of The Writer’s Guild of America, West, Louisiana Women in Film and Television, and The University Film and Video Association.