• Extra Extra Magazine
  • Agenda
  • Magazine
  • Listen
  • A/Z
— Search
— Close
Menu —
  • Agenda
  • Magazine
  • Listen
  • A/Z
  • Visit
  • Short Stories
  • Subscription
  • Newsletter
  • About
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
Close —

INNARDS

by Niña Weijers

Short story

Everything about him was slender and pointed, he had been bred that way, aerodynamic, a racing dog. Although he did not move slowly, not slowly at all, I had the feeling that I was watching a film in slow motion. No fat, no waste. He suited her, just as everything she owned suited her, from her house to her toothbrush — which I had once noticed, during a dinner party, when I accidentally (accidentally!) went into her bathroom; a toothbrush made of wood in a matching wooden holder.

The dog came when I called him, let me put him on the lead without a fuss. Sometimes I said ‘sit,’ and then he would actually sit. It made me think of the times I had babysat for friends’ children. How I had held them in baby carriers on my own belly, the ease with which the role took me over, took everything over, relieving me of the ambiguities of  which I was myself constructed.

I have the urge, after that toothbrush, to describe the rest of her bathroom too. In my mind, I often return there, even though I never went back after that one time. On my way to the park, I pick up the dog, two afternoons a week, she leaves the key under a stone in her front garden. The dog is waiting in the hallway, I put him on the lead, we walk for an hour, I take him back. If there is post, I put it on the table beside the door, but that’s it, that’s as far as I go, I’m not the type to sneak silently around someone else’s house, feeling inside coat pockets, pulling drawers open, drinking from the half-empty bottle of Pinot Grigio in the fridge.

Sometimes she leaves a sticky note on the table beside the door. With thanks and smileys. She calls me ‘angel’ and ‘fairy godmother.’ I write back to say it’s no trouble, that it’s the dog who’s taking me for a walk, et cetera. She is not the world’s most talented rhetorician (admittedly, in the notes I write back to her, I fully surrender to the abundant use of exclamation marks, winking faces and emotional expressions devoid of any originality), but there is something flirtatious about her tone, something cheeky that I like. At night, in bed, I tell my husband about the dog, how attached I’ve become, not so much to the animal itself, but more to our walks together, the natural way we move through the park together, as if we are fastened to the ends of a rubber band that stretches and then springs back together. I don’t tell him anything about her notes, although I occasionally ask if he’s seen her, that day, at work, and he sometimes says yes, but more often no – no, not today.

Of course I fantasise about her.  I imagine her stepping into the bath after a long day at work, goose bumps, slowly sinking into the hot water. Her nipples, small and dark, her pubic hair wild, unshaven. Walking naked across her living room, stretching out on the sofa, wet strands of hair down her face and sending him a message, her free hand between her legs (warm, moist, her hand moving absently, and then less and less absently, she becomes wet, smells herself, a scent that excites her, she does not need anyone).

The dog stopped and squatted to poo. Like every other time, I was surprised at the banality of it, surprised that he had innards like every other dog, a digestive system that produced moist, stinking turds. I took a green-coloured eco-friendly poo bag out of the tube dangling from the lead, put my hand into the bag and kneeled down beside the turd.

I kneeled beside the turd of my husband’s mistress’s dog, and I picked it up. The symbolic dimension of this action was not lost on me; in fact, I overdid the kneeling a little, as if it were not a turd that I was reverentially picking up from the ground, but a piece of the foreskin of Jesus himself.

It felt warm in my hand, like a small animal. I squatted there for longer than necessary, I wanted to smell everything — the pungent smell of dog shit, the wet leaves, the perfumed plastic bag, which did not disguise anything but only emphasised the stench. Simone de Beauvoir is known to have opened the door to let Sartre’s mistresses in. Anyone who considers that an act of inconsistency or weakness has an impoverished imagination.

The dog stood waiting a few metres  away for us to walk on, his head at an angle, a question on his face. (It is true that I took her toothbrush out of the holder that night and held it up to my nose for a moment. It smelled a bit musty, old toothpaste and stagnant water, she is a woman who loves beautiful things but treats them carelessly, just as – I imagine – she brushes her teeth in a sloppy way, sloppily and full of confidence in herself and her indestructible physical health).

We walked an extra lap of the park. I thought ‘why not?,’ just as you might think ‘why not?’ at four in the morning in a dark nightclub. Sometimes, in fact generally, I had the feeling that the dog knew everything. Not the facts as such, but underlying truths: that you can escape humiliation by digging yourself so deeply into it that all the daylight disappears and the earthworms wrap themselves around your body like jewellery. That jealousy is not so much different from lust, and lust not so much different from aggression, and aggression not so much different from abjection, and abjection not so much different from victory. And that I walk her dog because this is my role, my starring role, a tour de force that looks a lot like love.

 

Click here for more Short Stories

 

Published in Extra Extra No 14
  • Share:

Read

Short story

THE SLUG

The ribbed edge upon which it moves glistens with slime. You’d like to take a lick of it with your tongue. Looking at it makes you shiver, a shiver…

Short story

VAN OORSCHOT

  https://extraextramagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2-GERBRAND-BAKKER-no14.mp3   Simon looks out of the window. He has turned the chair around halfway, the chair where, very occasionally, a client sits and waits. He…

Short story

HER MAN IS OUT

  https://extraextramagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/14-MARIJKE-SCHERMER-no15.mp3   As soon as I walk into the park, I see him. Like me, he is early. I take a quick look, half-hidden between…

Short story

MARZIPAN

Inside my coat pocket, there was the piece of cake wrapped in cellophane, which I crushed the moment I saw him. I was coming from a party where I…

Short story

OFF THE CUFF

  https://extraextramagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/7-Selin-Kuscu-no-14.mp3   Leila walks along the wide pavement that leads in a straight line past the park to the sea. It’s evening, January.

Encounter

  • Karin Amatmoekrim
  • Sarah Arnolds
  • Nick Axel
  • Mercedes Azpilicueta
  • Gerbrand Bakker
  • Maria Barnas
  • Abdelkader Benali
  • David Bennewith
  • Frédérique Bergholtz
  • Melanie Bonajo
  • Eglė Budvytytė
  • Judith Couvee
  • Dimitris Dalakoglou
  • Maurits de Bruijn
  • Nina de la Parra
  • Alix de Massiac
  • Don Duyns
  • Hamid El Kanbouhi
  • Johan Fretz
  • Susan Gibb
  • David Haines
  • Thomas Heerma van Voss
  • Marius Hofstede
  • Philip Huff
  • Richard John Jones
  • Selin Kusçu
  • Ariah Lester
  • Cesar Majorana
  • Karel Martens
  • Alma Mathijsen
  • Kaweh Modiri
  • Joost Oomen
  • Gustaaf Peek
  • Petrovsky & Ramone
  • Hannah Pezzack
  • Marja Pruis
  • Julius Reynders
  • Daniel Rovers
  • Sam Samiee
  • Marijke Schermer
  • Frank Siera
  • Aram Tanis
  • Hannah van Binsbergen
  • Fiep van Bodegom
  • Huib Haye Van Der Werf
  • Mensje van Keulen
  • Hannah van Wieringen
  • Timen Jan Veenstra
  • Ivo Victoria
  • Sven Vitse
  • Maria Vlaar
  • Marwin Vos
  • Niña Weijers
  • Maartje Wortel
  • Pete Wu
  • Kira Wuck
  • Newsletter
  • About
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
top