works by w.pham

works by william pham, 2005-present

A Lack of Capitalization

The first thing I did upon waking up was to brush my teeth. Of course, I myself wasn't doing much brushing -- it was, I'd say, ninety-seven percent the toothbrush's work, a Braun with a rotating head and a battery hidden inside of its ergonomically-designed gut. It whirred obediently inside of my mouth, covered in Crest toothpaste (now with Extra Whitening and Tartar Protection), peeling away the layers of incomprehensibility from the enamel of my teeth, one by one.

A synonym for "tartar" is "calculus". One word generally signifies the yellowish stuff that accumulates on the teeth, and the other carries with it an implication of alternately horrifying or seductive mathematics, depending on the kind of person you are, but if you are the kind of person who finds calculus horrifying, it makes more sense that tartar and calculus can be synonymous. Tartar and calculus, tartar and calculus. I'm that kind of person, so the two go hand-in-hand, skipping along and singing songs through opiate fields, on the way to the Wizard of Incredibly Annoying Things.

"If only I could be yellow," says the Whitish Tartar, not to be confused with Khajjan Udjyebic the White Tartar, who is most well-known for riding into battle upon a white stallion while waving a mace over his head violently. What is less well-known is that he was killed in his sleep, murdered really, by a subordinate. One day, he accidentally let go of his mace while waving it around in quite the jaunty manner; the mace cut a beautiful trajectory through the air and struck the left kidney of the subordinate. The subordinate was so offended by the incident, and also so immensely and secretly jealous of Udjyebic's mace-waving ability, that, during one particularly quiet night, he stripped himself naked, bathed in animal grease, prayed to his God of Murderous and Secretive Nocturnal Throat-slittings, crept into Udjyebic's tent, and slit his throat.

"If only I could be as abstruse as Quantum Physics," says Calculus.

And so on.

The Braun finished brushing my teeth. I rinsed, spit, gargled, spit again, rinsed again, spit for a third time, then turned the faucet off and put everything in its proper place. Crest tube laid horizontal and parallel to the north wall, behind the faucet, cap facing west, proudly, after having been victorious in its battle against the Tartar Invasion. Braun, upright, resting in its base, the base set diagonally in the corner of the north and west walls, facing southeast.

I looked out the window; a mildly attractive girl in the apartment complex across the street had forgotten to close her blinds, and was completely naked. She had remarkably nice skin, from what I could see, but little else to distinguish her; her breasts were small, firm, and would have been ideal if their angle of protrusion from her chest was not so awkward, and her legs were of such a length that if her torso were any larger, the whole equilibrium would've been thrown out of balance and she would have crossed the line from "mildly attractive girl" to "girl of mediocre aesthetics". Not to say that her taste was bad; her apartment looked pretty nice, from what I could see. Anyway, she had brown hair and brown eyes.

She turned, looked out the window and down at the street, then looked up and saw me. I waved. She appropriated a look of supreme perturbance, then shut her blinds.

I wondered what exact hue and tone her cheeks became when she blushed.

The door knocked; or, rather, a knocking sound emanated from the general vicinity of the door. So someone was knocking on the door. Rather loudly, at that.

Here lay the crossroads of the rest of my natural life, and I'm not just being dramatic, although it does have that dramatic sort of ring to it. "Here lay the crossroads of the rest of my natural life." It's a statement of simple fact, as surely as one plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four. Four plus four equals eight. Eight plus eight equals sixteen. Sixteen plus sixteen equals thirty-two. Japan is an island. Soufflé is delicious.

And so on.

I have to be completely honest here, because if not here, then where? And when?

So: I killed her. And that's the honest-to-god truth. Forgive me for my lack of capitalization.