540 words
“No, officer, as I said, I don’t know why the dog decided to bury the junk mail. We didn’t even know he’d grabbed the stack out of the recycling bin.”
“Yes, of course, we keep an open recycling bin. It’s all paper and cardboard. What’s it going to do? Smell?”
“Yes, I suppose we should keep a better eye on him, but look, that has nothing to do with the reason we called you. What are we supposed to do about these ads everywhere? I mean look at that…we can’t even see out our window. It’s plastered in advertising!”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s a great deal from Harry’s Hardware, but we don’t care! We want to be able to look out our windows and walk out our door without being assaulted by voices.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s constant all right. Did you hear the one trying to sell you a digital subscription to Reader’s Digest?”
“I know right? Why do you send somebody physical mail advertising a digital subscription? That’s not even the best one though. The Pine Ridge Lutheran Boys Camp voice whispers outside our bedroom window at night about how much our son will benefit from being with a community of boys raised in Christ. We don’t even have a son.”
“I don’t know how you can help. I was hoping you’d know.”
“Hazardous Waste cleanup? You think the county could help with this? My daughter has started joking about finding an exorcist.”
“…Well, no. I suppose it couldn’t hurt. I just hope we can find a new landscaper. When our yard man tried to pull up the fliers out of the ground the voices screeched so loud at him the poor man bolted back to his truck and called from down the street to say he quit.”
”Oh, yeah, they don’t just come out. I mean, if I could pick them up like they were trash, I’d have done it. No, they’re rooted into the ground. Tougher than catsbrier, and the paper cuts they’ll give you….But that’s not even the worst of it. They’re propagating.”
”I am not kidding. You think kudzu is a problem…You know those fat envelopes that they make so hard to rip…”
”Yeah, those. Usually like credit card or insurance offers. Got a whole patch of them out back where I used to grow tomatoes. Totally took over my vegetable patch.”
”I know. Anyway, let me call this Hazardous Cleanup number. Maybe they’ll have something they can douse the bastards with.”
”Yeah, I hope so too. I just don’t even know what we’d do if the place got declared a hazard zone. There’s got to be someone we can hold responsible, right? Someone who can pay for the damage? Can you bring a reverse class action, one person suing a thousand companies?”
”Did you? A lawyer? Near the bottom of the steps. Okay, well let me walk you out.”
”Oh, okay. Yeah, I hear it. I mean, no I haven’t been injured in an accident, but maybe they can help. I’ll give them a call. See, you did help – Oh, no.”
”Look over there, at my neighbor’s yard. See that splash of red at the base of the hydrangeas? That’s a Target flier sprout. Fuck.”