Shed

In the shed the moon shines through the window and it’s cold. After lighting the oil heater he lays a broom handle on the work bench. He takes hold of the handle and saws it in two. ‘A fine length,’ he says to himself. He sands down the sharp edges of one end till it’s blunt and uses a gouge to make the other end hollow. His fingers tremble with the effort. Close to the hollow end he drills a hole, blows the sawdust away and pushes a string through it. He slides the rod back and forth in his hand. There are no splinters. 

Pleased, he walks along the garden path and goes into the house, where he creeps to the bathroom with his rod and lays it on the heating pipes. He sits on the edge of the bath for a while, then begins to undress. He keeps his shirt and underpants on. The rod is warm now. He places the hollow end on the tip of his nose and ties the string at the back of his head. Then he turns to face the bathroom mirror. His reflected image has a long wooden nose, red cheeks and sparkling blue eyes. A beautiful face, it seems to him. From the pot on the shelf he takes a dollop of vaseline and smears it over the wood. 

He appears in the bedroom like that. In the light of the bedside lamp his wife is attentively reading a book. He walks to the foot end and coughs. She looks up in response, with big eyes, like the eyes of a child. She giggles. 

‘Just pretend to be dead,’ he says softly. She obediently lies down motionless. He finds her beautiful like that, lying in state in a rose-patterned frock. He crouches down at the foot end and sticks his nose under the pile of blankets. 

This story is written by Lenny van Gent for Het Rode Oor 2017. Het Rode Oor (The Red Ear) is the annual erotic writing contest in the Low Countries, curated by the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren in collaboration with Company New Heroes, Hard//hoofd, ILFU and the Writer’s Guide (to the Galaxy). This story is translated by Liz Waters.