The Lankville Daily News

By Chris Vitiello

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Many years ago, I contracted with a nearby agency to execute a series of ponderous highway billboards advertising our Vitiello Decorative Hams.  It was during my first visit to this agency that I became smitten with a staff member (this, indeed, was before I had implemented my austere methods of self-control).  She was a lovely, gentle creature and I found myself instantly desiring her to the point of obsession.

A bond was created early.

“Do you enjoy the eating of pizza?” I asked her.  She looked up suddenly from her paperwork.

“Oh.  Yes.  I very much enjoy the eating of pizza.”  A change came over her large brown eyes.

And so, that very night, we feasted.  Following, we took a slow stroll along the waterfront.  It was Fall– the air had grown crisp and cool.  It was invigorating.

The next night, we did the same.  This time, however, our evening was rudely interrupted by the sudden appearance of a tall blonde man with a boyish face and watery, almost transparent eyes (clearly he was on narcotics) and short-cropped blonde hair.

The two entered into a conversation.  I stood to the side, seemingly invisible as the tete-a-tete went on for an interminable, almost intolerable period.  Clearly, there was something between them.  Later, after he was gone, I asked, “Who was that?”

“He is someone I used to go to large dances with,” she responded.  There was a long, pregnant pause.  “With lots of other people,” she added.  “It was a large group of us that went.”

I detest large groups that go dancing, I thought.  But I said nothing.

We had relations that night, I admit.  She seemed distracted and distant and kept asking if I was finished.  It was wholly uncomfortable.  Again, I said nothing.

The next night the man-boy appeared again during our walk.  And for weeks after that, well into winter, it seemed that this man-boy would materialize out of the shadows, oftentimes having the apparent gall to be found leaning against my very own Decorative Ham factory.  I desired to whip him and even began carrying a whip.  But I did not act.

And our relations continued in the same manner.  And by early Spring, they had curtailed dramatically.  And yet, every night, there was the man-boy, out of the shadows– ready to engage in further patter with my woman– staring longingly at her figure as I stood by helplessly, wordlessly.

Finally, I asked of her:  “you had relations with that man, no?  It is clear.”

“No, no, not at all,” she said.  She could not look me in the eye.  She kissed me but it seemed empty.

I entered a dark period then.  I grew distracted and obsessed by this man-boy.  My work suffered– I no longer hand-checked each Decorative Ham and many complaints were issued.  Sometimes, I found myself wandering about the wharf and along the sun-blanched piers, consumed by her lie.  I thought of her with this man-boy, I began to picture the act in my mind.  He had partaken of her flesh and she of his.  It was unbearable.

Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I broke a date with the woman and began to drive.  I ended up at the seashore.  There was a little store there that sold nets.  The proprietor was an ancient figure, slightly bent at the waist but with the same crop of blonde hair and watery eyes as my tormentor.

“I desire to buy out your business,” I said suddenly.

“What?”

“As I said, old man.  I desire to buy out your business.”  I produced a check book.  After some haggling, we worked out a deal.

The next night, I had the store bulldozed into the ocean.  And that ended the entire affair.

By Chris Vitiello

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An employee with the unfortunate name of Pitts placed a folder before me.  I scanned it quickly.

“Now, look here, Pitts.  This information is incorrect.”

He raised his shoulders slightly and shot me a look of idiotic bafflement.

“That’s all I know.  That’s all I know is what is in that folder.”

I desired to whip him right then but I kept calm.

“As I noted earlier in the day, I am in need of the carbon service forms.  There are men going into the field today.”

He shrugged his shoulders again and said nothing.

I waited for this Pitts in the lunchroom.  He secured a plastic tray (still moist from the washers) and began moving slowly down the line.  He picked out a gelatin dish (small nuts floated at its quaking surface) and a softball-sized fish ball.  He slid over to the register.

“No, no, Pitts.  Allow me.”  Much to his surprise, I paid for the meal.

He wandered over to a table filled with other pasty dullards.  I sat beside him.  It was worrying him, I could tell.

“Tell me Pitts,” I said.  “What do you do for recreation?”

His nerves were beginning to take over.  The fork which he had used to skillfully pierce the fish ball was now shaking slightly in his hand.

“I…I have a little bench in the basement…”

“Ah, a bench,” I noted loudly, imparting as much ersatz good will into my voice as possible.  “A bench.  And what sort of hobby do you engage in on this bench of yours, Pitts?”

“Well…nothing…lately.”

“No, no, Pitts.  Surely, you must have a number of grand activities in progress or planned or perhaps even completed.  Are there shelving units full of your work, Pitts?”

He was shaking full on now.

“Come now Pitts.  I am a mere philistine when it comes to such matters.  Inform me.”

“I…understand…what will happen,” he said.

I stood up.

“Very good, Pitts.  Leave your tray there.”

He followed me outside to a weedy yard where he was whipped mercilessly.

By Chris Vitiello

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I have no memory of any mother figure.

It is said though that my mother is still alive.  She lives alone in the distant provincial town of Heaves, far north beyond the Dietz Mountains.  A man (we will call him Klobedanz) recently was interviewed for the position of semi-post-production foreman at the factory and while viewing his two personal statements, I happened to notice the name.

“You are from Heaves?” I demanded.  He shifted uneasily in his seat.

“Yes, I went to school there and graduated…”

“No,” I stopped him.  “There is no need whatsoever for me to understand your sordid personal history, Mr. Klobedanz.”

Later, however, I returned to the statement.  You should consider hiring me because I have Lankville small-town values.  I come from Heaves, where people help each other do things like fix tires.  They will gather around in large groups of ten, twenty and horn in on your tire to the point that you get pushed back into the dirt and can no longer feel the wrench.  You can no longer see your car or understand anything.  And, later, they will throw a picnic and there might be cold pies, a ham and often some dough pockets.

I tossed it away (indeed, Klobedanz was not hired) and consulted a booklet brought to me earlier by a research assistant.  ABOUT HEAVES it was called, an ancient side-stapled pamphlet in simple block lettering.  There was an advertisement for a feed store on the back cover and a small map inside showing the main street and the few ancillary roads that ended abruptly at what appeared to be wheat or perhaps alfalfa fields (the legend was unclear).  A cemetery and Fluid Fellows Hall were crudely noted by a vastly untalented artist.  Though that artist was likely deceased, I had a fervent desire to whip him.

I grew determined.  It was late, approaching midnight, but I selected an appropriate vehicle from the garage and made the seven-hour drive without stopping.  I reached Heaves at dawn.

It was grim and utterly silent.  There was not a single operable storefront– it was as though the town had been crassly and suddenly abandoned.  Nothing was boarded; it was indeed possible to view dark interiors with little more than a forgotten broom, the remnants of a chair or an enormous but renounced stuffed panda inside.  Standing on the sodden wood porch of a former general store, I looked out on the hamlet and its odious hill houses with nothing but rancorous outrage.

I chose a street– white, cracked cement forming a byway to nowhere.  The occasional wood frame house– ramshackle centenarians– stared back at me.  Soon, I found my first inhabitant of Heaves, a tiny, barrel-chested old man in a blue bathrobe, attempting to feebly bend over to pick up a paper.  I swiftly grabbed it out of his reach and held it to my chest.

“Look at me, old man,” I said.  “Look closely at my face.”

“What?”  He blinked in the sunlight.  He was entering an area vastly beyond his understanding.

“I asked you to look closely at my face.  Study it.  Do it now.”

He issued a few more senseless utterances.

“You will not achieve the satisfaction of this newspaper if you do not do as I say.”

He tried.  Minutes passed.

“Now.  There must be a woman here.  An older woman.  There must be a resemblance, you understand?  Tell me.”

I waited.  There was an endless period of deep confusion.

“Do not just tell me something I want to hear old man,” I warned.  I showed him the whip then.  He seemed to focus.

He described a nearby address.  I looked down at the paper.  Heaves Regional Gazette.  

“I will give this to you now, old man.  Atrocious prose awaits you.”

It required a simple right turn on the main street and then onto an overgrown dead end side street.  The house was the last on the north side– it was a crumbling bungalow with missing cedar shingles.  Dead plants lined the rails of the front porch.  An overturned bird bath covered with a deflated Easter decoration filled the cramped front yard.

I stared up at the lace-curtained bedroom window.  “You are there.  That is enough.  It will soon become clear.”

I deposited myself in a filthy wicker chair that creaked monstrously with even the slightest movement.

I would wait.

By Chris Vitiello

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My first automobile was a 1978 Neptune Conquest which I purchased myself from funds accrued working summer night shifts at a rural lumber yard.  It was orange with an exceedingly flat hatchback, bronze colored rims and a deep chasm in the dash where a glove box had once been.  “We took the glovebox out years ago,” said the yokel, who had left the vehicle exposed to the elements in a field of alfalfa.  “My wife, who is dead, would not stand for it.  She was not one for hidden compartments.”  He spit and then ate a pickle which he produced from his pocket.  “But she is dead now and we forded a river to take her home.”

I could no longer tolerate him.  “Take the money,” I said, as the fury mounted.  “Help me get this to the road.”

A few hours later, I pulled into a popular area taco stand.  Though I later taught myself impenetrable methods of self-control, at that time I was young and concupiscent.  I leaned against the car and some girls came up in short dungarees, rolled up in-line with the panties.

“Got a new car, Chris?” said one, a brunette named Shelley with large aviator glasses that I knew instantly to be fake.  “It’s got a flat back.  Flattest I’ve ever seen.”  She was aroused.

“It’s a 1978 Neptune Conquest,” I said, hating myself for it.  But it immediately impressed them all as I knew it would.

“Let’s take a ride,” said Shelley.  “Do you know Twin Carnal Trees Drive-In?  They’re showing Thergos 2015 tonight.  It’s erotic.”

And so it was.  A pornographic drive-in theatre nestled in a shallow grove and Shelley’s hand down my fashionable gym shorts.  I leaned back and looked up at the dome light.  It was cracked.  I silently cursed the yokel.  I reached down and attempted to move the seat back.  It wouldn’t budge.  Nor would it incline.  I would get even.

I focused on the film.  There was a man dressed like a clown in a dirt clearing and some shabby wooden structures that looked like deer blinds.  Suddenly, there would be an unannounced oral scene.  It was very confusing.  But I moved like the actor and before long there was climax.  Shelley asked for a napkin.

“There are only thin ones,” I noted.  “Even when stacked together, they provide little in the way of absorbency,” I added.

We watched the rest of the film in silence.

By Chris Vitiello

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A group of men in yellow jumpsuits came to install the pneumatic ham tubes.

“We require an efficient way to be able to transport hams to the basement quickly,” I had said.  The salesman eyed me suspiciously.  “I don’t think the air current could be generated…for something of that weight…the engineering is not available…”  He paused when I produced the whip.  “Make it happen, Mr. Woppy (for that was the man’s idiotic name).  Make it happen.”

He left the room quickly with his sad little tweed case.

They found a manufacturer in the islands; someone unfettered by the taint of regulation.  The tubes were delivered via a fleet of tractor trailers.  I got Woppy out of bed at 3 A.M.

“The tubes have arrived,” I commented sternly.  “When will you?”

“Jesus Christ.  In the morning.  We’ll be there in the morning.”

“I’ll be closely monitoring your arrival.”  I hung up and returned to a long film that featured some spacemen firing lasers at dinosaurs.  It was mere background.

I stayed close by during the installation.  Woppy was  clearly hungover; for that, he deserved a whipping but I abstained throughout the morning.  Around noon, he made an inappropriate comment as a female secretary passed by.

“Jeezus, wouldn’t mind gettin’ my noodle wet in that sauce.”

I asked him to come outside.  He followed me to a small yard with a high fence and it was here that I whipped him mercilessly.  I sent him home in a cab.

Near dusk, I dropped the first ham into the tube.  I could feel the air suck it briskly downwards through the floor.  Then, I called downstairs.

“Never arrived boss,” they said.

“Are you lying?” Are you a liar?  Are you creating illusions?” I asked.

“No sir,” they said, seemingly perplexed.  “We heard a loud bumping noise and then nothing arrived.”

I quietly hung up.  It had not worked.  It was inefficient.  I tore the tube out myself.  It took all night.

It is 3 A.M.  I am staring up at the darkened second-floor windows of Woppy’s house.  Light tuba music is playing on the radio.

I know not yet what I will do.

By Chris Vitiello

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In his later years, my father rarely left his second-story rooms above the antique store.  Most of his time was spent composing simplistic paintings of bears while crying.  I would often catch him at this– on his little stool, bereft of upholstery, his back quaking with emotion as he executed a childish bear face in cheap oils.  Finished, he would tape the painting awkwardly to his walls (while still sobbing) where it would remain for years– growing dusty and edge curled, faded by the sunlight.

I would bring him a brown sack of groceries– fish, beans, rice and the like– staples that he himself had forgotten.  Upon the occasion of my next visit, most of the sack would be where I had placed it, untouched.  And I would wander through the rooms until I came upon him again in some distant corner, crying while painting a happy bear face.  I would often leave without a hint of acknowledgement.

Finally, I enlisted the services of a man called “Castles”, a local psychiatrist.  Castles and I made a slow tour of the rooms until we came upon the old man, as usual, bawling while painting.  Castles observed him for some time– through the entire process and completion of yet another happy bear portrait.

“Well?” I asked.  The old man paid us no mind.  He continued to wail helplessly.

“I think it’s alright,” said Castles.  “Yeah, there’s nothing really the matter here.”

“Is that so?” I questioned.  I would whip him.  There could be no doubt of that.

And later, as I walked Castles back to his car, we came upon an old alley, paved in ancient, uneven stones.  With my shoulder, I guided Castles into the dark lane and proceeded to flog him mercilessly.

I received no bill.

By Chris Vitiello

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I sat in the white room.  A guy came out holding a clipboard.

“A terrible battle to the death ensues between two ferocious dinosaurs,” he read.  He was wearing a red tie.  I had a fervent desire to whip him.

He went back in.

Then he came out again.

“The oversized gila monster will menace a small group of experienced fighters.”

“GIVE US SOMETHING TO WORK WITH!” shouted a nearby old codger.  But the man just went back in again.

Then he came out.

“The stampeding dinosaurs will flee the erupting volcano.”

“I want to die,” moaned the old codger.

The man never came out again.  I was never seen.  I fashioned a sling out of a bedsheet and healed on my own.

By Chris Vitiello

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Employment with Vitiello Decorative Hams requires the submission of a profound personal statement. Each personal statement is reviewed by me.

In this document, the applicant must describe, in detail, the personal life journey that led them to the “Decorative Ham doorstep”. Any attempt at circumvention is not tolerated and the statement is immediately fed to a goat. Occasionally, I pay a visit to the applicant and they are whipped mercilessly.

In addition, the applicant must share their interest and enthusiasm for the decorative ham. They must demonstrate what they can contribute to the decorative ham process and they must visualize that their audience is a decorative ham scientist, if you will. And that scientist is me.

I remember when I was fat on chicken, I used cliches such as “making the world a better place” and “that will be fun and interesting.” No more. Now I am a harvester, not a consumer.

I also prefer constant capitalization.

By Chris Vitiello

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Last night, I attended my first draft.

I left my decorative ham factory early but not before calling a meeting in which I excoriated most of my employees.  “There should be no frivolity,” I said.  “I despise frivolity.  The Vitiello’s did not travel across wide oceans in threadbare conditions so that centuries would pass and there would be individuals engaging in frivolity.  No irreverence, either.  You know my thoughts on irreverence.”  Then, I smashed a computer screen over the back of a chair.

I drove to the hotel.  Little had been said in regards to the draft’s location and yet, there were Dick Oakes, Jr. and Brock Belvedere hanging around the bar.  “We’re waiting for women,” they both said.  I eyed them up and down.  “You have notepads and press passes hanging around your necks,” I noted.  Belvedere looked nervously away– I should have whipped him then.  Instead, I found a quiet corner table.  I ordered a water and cheese sandwich and prepared.

At 9PM sharp, the draft began.  There was a small man at a lectern and after Mr. Barlow of the Oversions made his first pick, the man announced the player’s name loudly and projected his photo on a dim screen.  This, I felt to be entirely superfluous.  I approached the man as the clock ticked on the second pick.  I placed my hands on his boney shoulders.  I gave him a slight, toothless grin.  He stared back, transfixed.  I nudged him gently towards a dark corner and he went along nervously.  “The…the pick…?” he questioned, near to a whisper.  “Shhh.”  I patted him gently.

We watched the 2nd pick from the corner.  “Thank you for your service,” I said.  And then I whipped him mercilessly.

The rest of the draft went without incident.