The Day the Fucking Remote Control Kept Falling
She finished her ice cream and put the empty bowl and spoon on the coffee table in front of her. It was a weird flavor of ice cream. It was called âJub Jub Candy Coo Cooâ or something stupid and long like that.
She and her boyfriend sat on the couch, watching a stressful TV show about a fucked up family that just couldnât seem to get their act together, no matter how hard they tried.
The remote control was on the side table next to her boyfriend. But it kept falling. It was jarring, the way it kept falling. Sheâd lose herself in the show and then the fucking remote control would fall off the table.
âWhy does that keep falling?â she finally snapped.
He looked at her and said âI donât know? Jesus, sorry.â
The way he said âsorryâ pissed her off because she could tell by his tone that he wasnât sorry at all.
âI just donât understand why it keeps falling,â she said, but she didnât say it in a Iâm sorry I snapped sort of way. She said it in the same Why the fuck does the motherfucking remote control keep falling way that sheâd asked it before.
He stared at her with enlarged eyes. They werenât huge. But they were bigger than normal, which was even more irritating to her than the way heâd just said âsorry.â
âStop looking at me like that,â she said.
He kept staring at her. Normally, at this point sheâd laugh and heâd knowingly say âYeahâ because they both knew she was probably just tired or menstruating or something.
But this time, she just repeated âStop staring at me like that.â She said it the same snappy way that sheâd asked âWhy does that keep falling?â
He kept staring. He probably either thought he was being funny or he really was mildly surprised that she was having such an extreme reaction over a remote control.
She stared back at him. And then the tears crept up, from deep inside of her belly. Sometimes, they came up from her throat, or her chest, or her heart. But this time, they came up from deep inside of her belly and dropped out of her eyes, slow and heavy.
She put her face in her hands and sobbed the same way that the tears came out, slow and heavy. She thought He probably thinks Iâm faking it. This doesnât even sound like real crying.
It felt like maybe there was a crying pipe in the deep, dark depths of her belly, and that the tiny man who was in charge of sitting on it had stood up to have a big stretch. You could say that it felt about as shitty as that simile you just read. Yeah, about as shitty as the idea of a fucking crying pipe in your goddamn stomach.
She felt her boyfriendâs big, warm hand on her shoulder and so she cried harder because he was being nice and she felt like an irrational bitch.
In a quiet voice,he gently and genuinely asked âWas it the ice cream?â
That made her cry even harder, because of how fucking sweet it was that he thought it might be the ice cream. That maybe she didnât like the flavor of it, or maybe it was too soupy, which must have driven her to tears.
As she willingly propelled herself into what outwardly appeared to be an unjustified display of emotion, she didnât think the following things in a clear, cohesive way. They were more so a mix of incomplete thoughts and feelings dry humping each other into a blurry, hysterical mass.
Was it the ice cream? God, thatâs so sweet. Ice cream reminds me of being little. I wish I was little again. When I was little, I didnât know what anxiety felt like. When I was little, I wasnât a raging bitch all the time. I want to feel normal again. I fucking I hate this. I hate it! He doesnât deserve this. When will I feel okay again? What if this is all a dream? Oh my God, what if he isnât even here right now? What if Iâve lost my mind and Iâve been living alone in this apartment thinking that I have a boyfriend, but really I just went crazy months ago and made this life up in my head? Shit. What if the legend of Slender Man is real and heâs hiding in my shower right now? Stop it. Slender Man isnât real, dumbassâŚGod, but what if he is?!
She thought stuff like that, which she realized was distorted and untrue and at times, completely irrelevant. Except for the bit about wanting to feel little again and the part about her boyfriend not deserving it. And maybe the part about Slender Man, too.
âWhatâs wrong?â He asked.
âI donât know,â she whined, but not the way a kid whines about not wanting to go to bed. She whined the way a little kid whines when they have a bad stomach ache and they want their mom to make it feel better because just saying the words âI donât knowâ makes them feel like theyâre going to puke.
Throughout all of this, the man from the shitty simile about the stupid crying pipe kept sitting on its opening and standing back up, like the water pressure was too much for his tiny, imaginary ass.
Her tears would go away and then force themselves back up, slow and heavy, over and over again. Sometimes, when she cried like this for what seemed like no reason, sheâd say âI really am okayâ to which her boyfriend would reply âI know you are.â
This time, she said âI really am o--â but then the tiny man stood up from the fucking pipe again and she realized that she wasnât okay. However, she did feel like she could finally relate to this one Facebook friend she had who always posted vague shit like âEven though not being okay doesnât feel okay, it is okay.â
That night, she went to bed early. Her boyfriend brought a huge cord into the bedroom, which connected his PS4 from the living room to his PS3 in the bedroom, because she didnât want to be alone. She wasnât really sure how the cord set-up worked, actually. Heâd started to explain it but she didnât really listen because she was thinking about whether or not Slender Man was balanced upside-down on the ceiling of her closet.
While he hooked up the giant cord, he kept saying things like âDonât trip on this cordâ and âWatch out for this cordâ and âOne trip on this cord is bad news.â
Jesus, she got it the first time. Watch out for the fucking cord.
For a brief moment, she wanted to trip over the cord as hard she could, just to prove a point. But she looked at her boyfriend, incoherently mumbling as he fumbled around with it, and she felt a wave of immense love for him. The desire to ruin his cord went away and she felt hopeful that someday, she'd be able to get the whole "raging bitch" thing under control.
At some point during the night, she woke up to use the bathroom and turned on the hallway light, just in case the whole Slender Man bullshit ended up being legitimate, which again, she knew it wasnât.
As she walked back toward bed, her boyfriend woke up and sleepily mumbled âWatch out for the cord.â
Then, Slender Man stuck his egg-shaped head out of the closet and said âYeah, one trip on that cord really is bad news.â Just kidding about the Slender Man part.
