“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”
- Louis Gluck
Bob Krowski hung his head far beneath his shoulders. His elbows burrowed deep into his knees as he felt himself sink lower and lower into a dull silence on the loading dock. The odd gust of frigid wind stung as it grazed his sweat covered neck, and with each cold gust Bob would watch the ember of his cigarette glow bright for a moment before receding to a barely living cherry. He closed his eyes as he brought the cigarette to his lips. What the hell has all this come down to? He wondered. Does any of it even add up to anything at all?
The back door of the building surged open to reveal a pimple faced kid with a sloppily tucked yellow polo and a greasy visor. The kid couldn’t have been any more than nineteen to Bob’s eyes. He leaned against the handle as he barked out “Robert! What the hell are you doing?”
Bob scrunched his face, the kid, Blake or Kyle or whatever his name was, had a nasally voice that lent itself too well to the entitlement of being the “assistant manager” and it grated Bob’s ears.
“You’ve got a birthday boy on eleven and another one coming in in ten minutes! Get your fucking game face on man!” Blake/Kyle continued grumbling as he slammed the door heading in.
Bob took a last drag off his cigarette before smushing it into the cement. He could feel his left hand being incensed by the last plumes of smoke as he snuffed it out. He then reached for the large furry moose helmet that sat about a foot to his left. He yanked the helmet up by the antler as he stood, clunking the head over his own before reaching down picking up a pair of padded gloves meant to look like hooves. Back into the sauna Bob thought as he registered the note of bourbon in his breathe inside the helmet. Here comes Murray the fuckin’ moose.
Bob cracked open the door to a nightmare of the senses. His brain already feeling as if it were cooking in the helmet, eyes burning from sweat, nose crinkling at his own rancid smoke breathe, and all while shuffling his fat moose body through a narrow galley kitchen. Busy teen bodies, high school seniors all of them, buzzing around him chasing endless beeps and dings of pizza ovens, deep fryers and microwaves. It was a god damned death trap for Bob as he navigated across the oily floor.
Russ, the general manager, saw Bob side straddling his way through the chaos. “I know Bob, I know!” He called across the kitchen. “At least it ain’t a real kitchen!” He chirped, a cheesy smile pecking from the corners of his mouth. Bob waved both hands in the air in exasperation.
“The fuck difference does that make?” Bob snarled back, barely audible through the thick foam of the helmet.
“At least they haven’t got knives eh?” Russ chuckled as Bob finally made his way over to him, his eyes focused on the swinging door behind him that led to the game room.
“Fuck, I’d be a dead man for sure.” Bob growled, his voice getting stopped somewhere in the moose snout. He placed a fluffy hoof on the swinging door and took deep sigh. This is what it’s come down to.
He swung the door open to another wave of sound and light. The chittering clinks of token machines, the arrhythmic blasts of synthesised laser guns, kids screaming, laughing, crying, and calling while exasperated parents tried to rein them in. The look on their faces always looked the same, a look of flailing desperation and regret that seemed to scream ‘what have I done? Where did I go so terribly, terribly wrong?’ As they painted looks of happiness over there features. Forced smiles and laughs that simultaneously did everything within legality to bribe, trick, and force their children to sit and eat amongst the low-budget kiddie casino chaos.
Bob tried not to look at their faces too long, it made him depressed. He swung intuitively into a goofy jig, kicking his floppy moose legs to each side while pumping his arms up and down, a string of small sleigh bells draped around his chest in a sash rang joyously as he hopped across the game room floor towards table eleven.
Sitting at the center of the table was the birthday boy, he looked around seven years old. Parents and similar aged friends on either side pointed and gestured towards the gawky moose on approach. Bob stopped his hearty jig routine as soon the kid set eyes on him, turning his side to the table before reaching a hoof down to grab an imaginary lasso. He whipped the lasso above his head in a wild swirl before casting it to the table and pulling. The group laughed as he pulled the lasso and jerked at some imagined resistance, as if he’d swung his lasso around an anchor. The moose jerked once, then twice shaking his head in confusion before pulling again to pull himself to the table.
To his left Samara appeared. She was a bright bubbly young girl. All smiles and dimples as she skipped through the game room. You’d never know she had scars down her thighs, two of them she’d just put there that morning. All of that strife was a different person now, standing next to Murray the moose in front of a smiling, giddy boy, his face full of cheer as he delivered an ecstatic wave at them.
“Well I hear it’s someone’s birthday today!” Cheered Samara, waving her hands high in the air in mock jubilation. “And we are so so glad that you came to spend it with us!” She placed her hands at her hips, leaning in slightly as she said it. She sounded so sincere. “And Murray is so glad you’re here too! Aren’t you Murray?” The moose gave a spritely hop and pressed his hooves to his face to mime his unbearable excitement.
The boy looked up at the moose with such wonder, eyes wide snd drinking up the fun. He looked at the moose and saw a beloved character from commercials and cartoons. A character who’d just danced right up to his table to tell him specially to have a wonderful birthday. It was that wide eyed look of wild incantation that Bob could barely stand to see day after day. Each time they looked up at him, regarding him instantly as a best friend, a hero, Bob just wanted to sob.
“Well Ethan how old are you today?” Samara asked leaning even closer to the table.
“Eight.” The boy answered sheepishly through his smile. Murray the moose flew the back of his hoof to his head and stumbled in a pantomime faint. He was rewarded with a great belly laugh from the boy.
“Well, we’ve got a super duper extra special surprise for you today Ethan!” Samara announced as her hand snuck behind her to curl into a ‘come here’ motion. “Me and Murray want to make sure you have the best birthday ever!” Murray The Moose stood next to her, hooves planted to his hips as Bob shook his helmet back and forth in an over-animated nod.
Behind them a trio of youngsters, all donned in their mustard yellow polos and scrappy visors appeared with a small cake with sparklers. This was Bob’s cue to fade away. He moved his hooves to his snout and pushed them away toward the table in a mimed kiss motion before side stepping to let the trio pass. With the cake now taking center stage, Murray The Moose disappears like a magic trick, but as Bob turned on his heel to get away from the table, eyes focused back on the service door to the kitchen, he drove his hooves directly into the back end of an unsuspecting mother.
She’d been bent over, tying her kids shoes when she felt two felty hooves press right into her presented backside. “What the hell?” She barked as she shot up and spun to find Murray The Moose, his eyes ever joyous, mouth always curled into a bright and friendly smile even while unintentionally assaulting the patrons. Bob did his best to wave off the encounter, shaking his hooves back at the woman in a silent attempt to denote his mistake. “What the hell are you doing?” She yelled.
“Whoa, whoa lady,” Bob said in his helmet, unheard to anyone but himself.
“Where in the hell is your manager?” She yelled again, her voice now becoming loud enough to outshine the plinking coin machines and arcade music. People were turning their heads now, staff now rushing to the scene as if Murray The Moose had shot someone.
“Lady could you calm the fuck down?” Bob grunted into the snout. Samara rushed to his side, her bright eyes hoping to be enough of a salve to get a read of the situation, but as Bob stepped back behind her, the hoof of his left foot snagged on her passing leg and he tripped. Murray The Moose crashed to the ground in four abysmal stages, like falling in slow motion. Knees, waist, shoulders and his fat antlered head bouncing off the ground. The force of the fall pushed the helmet up and almost off of Bob’s head. The blast of cool air on Bob’s face felt glorious, but the relief was butchered quickly when Bob eyes set on young Ethan, eight years old, seeing the grizzly time worn face of the fifty-five year old man in the helmet. Illusion shattered, the day forever crushed into soured memory.
Ten minutes later. Bob was out at the loading dock again with a barricade of dumpsters around him, shielding him from the world as he sobbed. His flask of whiskey wide open in one hand, a half lit cigarette in the other. God damn it! You god damned moron! He whipped his own mind, throwing his head back to thump it hard against the metal dumpster. A part of him hoped that if he hit it hard enough he’d damage the visual processing part of his brain and he’d go blind. Thump, thump, thump. Fucking idiot!
“Umm, Bob?” A voice called from the other side of his garbage barricade. “Where are you?” The voice was sweet, calm, as if it cared instead of seeking him out to let him know what an absolute failure he was. Bob stopped long enough to feel the tears drip from his chin. It reminded him of his daughter, but that was impossible. He hadn’t spoken to her in years. He could hardly recall what she even sounded like to have compared it to who was calling for him now.
One of the dumpsters jolted once and then again to be pushed away, revealing Samara on the other side.
Animatronic Therapy coming soon. . .
Updates and installments will be announced on Instagram.
