The Problem With Pygmalion

7/31/2019 The Problem With Pygmalion

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a short story by Angie T. Jeffreys 2012

David’s ears ruptured inside and out again. The doorbell blared a glaringly flat buzz that

shocked him into dropping his electric toothbrush, with an audibly cold dunk, straight into his

toilet, beside the sink. Peering down into what was once just a light brown island of water,

encircled by a green, mildew mote, David at first couldn’t find his toothbrush. In the bowl’s

throat, the toothbrush seized and swiveled, sputtering air bubbles of unknown nauseous gasses.

David returned his gaze to the mirror, where he attempted to scrutinize his face through

the baby-blue putty of used toothpaste and ejaculated spit; the toothbrush now declared dead on

arrival.

David could only make out his hair, defiant against the pomade with which he’d

attempted to slick away his dark, brown curls. But they only now fell back into his face, gooey-er and heavier than before. He drew a hairband from the package he’d purchased at the grocery

store a month ago, when he really committed to growing out his hair. After twisting it into a half

ponytail, David fully believed this transformed him into a more rugged and well-sexed

individual.

He gave his full attention to listening to his brain’s internal narration, the part that

outlined his rationale: the one that spoke and talked to David and told him that not only were all

of his ideas bulletproof, but that he would want all of his ideas to be bulletproof in the first place.Plus true artists have longer hair. Unlike artists, David, because his keyboard was no piano, but a

Mac Pro, David made an art of making a lot of money with his: the keys printed dollar signs, not

lyrical white noise.

Like an orchestra, however, every stroke still punctuated a command: the computers

followed his fingers as though he were a conductor, and then his programs were unleashed upon

office PCs, nation-wide like a virus. And with these very thoughts of mechanized domination,

David’s thoughts finally devolved back to the second or third loud buzz of his doorbell.Pygmalion, LLC was not supposed to arrive until 10:45 a.m. David never entertained

guests. It was 7:45, and as always at this hour, like all others, David was completely alone.

Maybe a fire marshall? Or one time the police did knock on his door after a man upstairs took a

The Problem with Pygmalion

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dive from the roof of their apartment building. The only guest David anticipated today, though,

was a very large, very discreet packing crate.

David’s door swung ajar to greet a white, red embroidered name tag, sewn to a blue

jumpsuit. “Jesus,” it said. The name was stamped against the left breast pocket of a Nordic

blonde guy with dreadlocks and a septum piercing.

“You don’t look like a ‘Jesus,’” David muttered at the delivery man, still too

decaffeinated to process any looming sense of irony.

“So, you ‘D. Ickenson?’”

“Guilty as charged, where do I sign?”

“I’m driving my buddy Hey-zeus’s Pygmalion route today. His girlfriend’s up from

Mexico City. I’m just doing him the way he would me - it’s not a problem, bro, right?”

“They’ll never hear a word out of me.”

“May I?” The impostor gestured that he’d like to wheel the box inside the apartment.

“Oh sure, just take it to the living room,” David said as though his living room was far

away from the front door.

The impostor wheeled in a dense, life-sized packing crate into the center of the living

room. As he silently unhooked the cords that secured it in place, he scrunched his nose andfinally asked, “pets?”

“No.”

The impostor finally located the source of the stench; the kitchen trashcan looked as

though it had not been emptied in weeks. He stopped asking questions about the smell, though

he was astounded that even on the twelfth floor of an apartment building, fruit flies still

burrowed through the soggy air, up the pipes and out of the kitchen drains in search of rotten

food.Instead, the impostor changed the subject all together, “What the hell is in here, anyway?

Cadavers?”

“They’d be on ice, or else you’d smell them.”


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The impostor noted at this point that D. Ickenson owned not a couch, but one recliner

chair, one kitchen table chair, one place mat, one place setting and one cloth napkin.

Attempting to help D. Ickenson with lightening his trash load, the impostor made a viable

suggestion: “-Zeus has a crowbar down in the truck if you’d like a hand with this. I can even

take away the crate afterward.”

“No.” David didn’t like how chatty this guy was. “Thanks, but no.”

“Good luck then: she’s a whale.”

“Don’t let the box fool you; it’s mostly packing materials. This is a very sensitive

package.” And with that, David ushered the impostor backwards through the living room, to the

entrance and then to the other side of David’s closed front door.

Shit, the dolly. The impostor left it behind in the midst of David’s aggressive sarcasm.

He quickly opened the door and flung the dolly into the hallway, like an abandoned shopping

cart, hurtling toward the elevator. David did not check to see if the impostor had hitched a ride

back down yet. He simply closed his door again.

Here Lies the Blogged American Wet Dream RIP

User Name: Neo99219745000002There are two kinds of people in this world. There are the damsels, and there are the

trolls. Neither category is mutually exclusive to one sex or another, at least I don’t see it like

that. Plenty of girls have too much body hair, too much facial hair, too much leg hair, too much

sweaty hair in the armpits. They don’t know hygiene. But I still have to share the same bar with

them every Friday: me the wallflower, them the gigantic bar flies.

But then there are also the damsels. A damsel is sought. He may be sought for his looks,

passion, money, compassion or just his simplistic, dog-like loyalty. All damsels share thesequalities, and for these alone, all damsels are eternally pursued, like Daphne towards the laurel,

away from the gods.


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The difference between trolls and damsels is that trolls live under the bridges. No one

walks below a bridge. They raise up with the flooding tides, swim onto the streets and stand as

though they shed fins.

The damsels, unbeknownst to even themselves, exist only within captivity. In their glass

estuaries, the damsels are never cornered in dark alleyways. Their captors just put them in

corners, carry them to the end of cul de sacs. They brick them into two and a half story towers,

erected from thin air. Partitions, boxes, boxing, boxed, box. Don’t tell me I’m a box. I am not a

fox or a frock. No one sees a damsel in the wild anymore. I miss the damsels. They never read

mythology or books, and they never listened to the Brothers Grimm. Their heroes are hallowed

and immortal. But with marriage comes miscarriage, twins, divorce, infidelity, children, lawn

care and most likely a litter box no one wants to change.

Men and women may be princesses and princes, but the water still rises with

thunderstorms, and trolls tread the water until their claws reach a grip on our gated

neighborhoods. They will break in. They will wear hairless faces like masks, masters of

disguise.

David stood, un-showered, slightly pungent with a glob of toothpaste glued to his chin.He stood in the center of the living room, against the shipping crate stamped Pygmalion, LLC in

large, block red letters. He relaxed in the knowledge that most likely, Jesus, nor his impostor,

knew the contents of the box. He wouldn’t have asked so many questions, or made so many

jokes if he already knew, right?

David slowly ran his fingers over the smooth, flat places, then the geometrically perfect

corners of the crate. Momentarily, David regretted not taking the impostor up on his offer to lend

the crowbar, at least, but then he located his largest hammer from the kitchen. Still, the wooden planks un-nailed, dismembered and disappeared would be ideal for his timeframe with the

package.

David suddenly felt the sting of concentrated toothpaste against the bottom of his chin,

and he recalled that he was in no way prepared to properly greet his shipment. A hot shower and


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black coffee were definitely in order before hacking into the box. Plus, if she required any sort

of assembly, David would benefit from the stomachful of ground brew, first.

David still stood absolutely paralyzed, though, toes rooted beneath the stained, once-

white carpet, and even into the concrete floor, below. He could feel his toenails gnashing like

drill bits into pavement, but he could not walk any closer, and he could not turn to walk the other

way, either.

So it’s here, really, really, just here. David admitted this to himself, but not out loud.

This thought process broke the package’s spell long enough to allow David to tear his feet from

the soiled carpet and use them to drag his sluggish toes to the coffee pot, in the kitchen, plugged

into an outlet next to the old, gas range. The coffee pot looked exactly like the stove: it looked as

if it had survived the exact same smoke-stained quarter century that the range had. Either way, it

made good coffee, which is why David still used it.

He also enjoyed running the coffee pot as he woke up; the metronomic drip paced his

dressing down from the button-down shirt, the shower, CNN.com, pants, socks, and the cessation

of any thoughts not-work-related. It ticked like a clock, or maybe a time bomb, but David

identified it as reminiscent of a stopwatch.

As the machine slowly dropped its mahogany tears into the coffee-crusted pot below,

David retired to the bathroom, where he stood upon mint green tiles, and his bathtub had claws.And now his toilet’s bacterial fibers, earlier uprooted when he dropped his toothbrush, now

settled gently on the bottom of the bowl like sand grains below the water’s surface of the ocean.

An ovular curtain rod, secured to the wall behind the tub on both ends, ensnared David as

he let his hair hang down over his face, granting him the illusion that his hair might be as straight

as his shower head’s jet stream. The wall of torrential shower spray blurred his vision like

glasses, and he looked down at his chest and legs.

David sucked in his small yet healthy beer gut to locate his erection down below. Like a purple humming bird or a mosquito, all David wanted to do was swat it away. He’d never found

any better use for this fruitlessly flexed appendage.


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Outside of the vaguely kidney-shaped claw footed bathtub, the box sat alone in the living

room while David washed himself then searched for his most heavily starched button down shirt.

He towel dried his hair, shaking out his curly, dark mane, and then he furiously rubbed his back

and chest hair with the now damp blue bath towel. David procured a pair of navy boxer briefs

and khaki cargo pants from the hamper, which was actually filled with clean, to-be-folded

clothes. He drew a belt from a modest, hanging collection in his closet, and David had selected

his shirt from amongst a dozen others which only vaguely differed in texture and pattern.

David shaved his beard, as it only grew in patchy. Plus, after a first and gruesome

experience learning to shave with a straight razor, he now elected for the electric. Next he

sprayed deodorant under his pits, and David even added a squirt to the inside of his pants for

good measure.

Now David returned to his living room, fully equipped with the titanic crate, except now,

David was clean-shaven and fully dressed in his best casual attire. He even donned boating

shoes with dark brown trowser socks beneath the puddle of long pant legs, accruing on the

suspiciously yellow carpet below his ankles.

At once David seized his weapon and launched a war on the large box. Vehemently, heshredded bars of light out of the dark inside the crate. He plunged in the light with the backside

of his hammer as the boards holding it together fell away on the floor. David peeled back the

wood, lighting his cargo through the smog of sawdust. His cargo sat politely, with crossed and

entirely naked legs, against the back wall of the crate on a bench.

The shards of artificial lighting only half-illuminated its features: it was plump, soft, at

least the lips were red and that way. Her lips were red like the red lace dripping between her legs

like a broken cherry. The knees bowed in peach schnapps hues. David’s eyes fogged over with peach fuzz.

The crate now radiated sweet, first spring dew, the schnapps of a woman, what the

schnapps of a woman should smell like, thought David to himself. David licked the thin air,

chasing the smell of his cargo like it was Daphne running for the laurel and not the gods.


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She won’t ask questions.

She can’t draw blood, can she.

She can open her legs and her mouth. Any size I want.

Once again, David came to from his meandering thoughts. He needed to cut away its

packaging, he need to tunnel his way to her, tunnel through her, onto other continents and

conquests. But he has sentenced himself to the companion he purchased, now. She will never

leave, even in death. She’ll lie in the casket next to him as it’s lowered into the ground, because

she doesn’t breathe in the first place. She can’t make any noise to begin with.

Each time David blasted through the boulders of his thoughts, he exploded into manic fits

of labor, attacking the crate full force with his hammer, sometimes even the head, in a futile

attempt to punch more easily widened holes through the boards. He had to learn to pry instead

of break, otherwise he came out with a hammer filled with splinters caught in the hooked grip.

After an hour and a half, David finally whittled a doorway into the box that would fit both

he and his cargo through, even if he carried her across the threshold. Now David played the

interior bungee cords as though his new friend had already initiated a game of Cat’s Cradle,

hooks and all, part of the game. No matter how much David attempted to simply pull her from

the cluster, the hooks bound her like a mass of snake fangs.

David retreated and returned with a serrated hunting knife. Soon he’d whacked aside the jungle vines of bungee chords, all designed to prevent his package from being jostled or dented

in any way during her transport. He scooped her up then, delicately. She was a woman’s arms, a

woman’t legs and breasts, breathing freedom in her new home for the first time, except she

doesn’t require oxygen or food. She is free to rest on his couch.

David’s life-sized figurine, with joints and soft places, and openings, also comes

equipped with a suction mechanism in both her mouth and her vagina. Both are designed to

replicate the deep-throat sensation. Her breasts also expand when sucked and fondled, and her nipples will grow erect when stimulated.

The red lace is perfect. Especially the crotchless panties. Pygmalion’s finest work of art

possesses a virtually flawless vagina, down to the patchy, adolescent pubic growth. Pygmalion


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insists that with these new deluxe models, it’s a trend returning, “some hair.” David had also

selected a smaller breast size to match the estimated rate of hair growth for a model like his.

David looks for instructions, printed inside of the box, or perhaps on a rogue slip of paper

that fell out when he first opened the crate. The search ends to his chagrin. David tears away at

the red lace, anyhow. He lies on top of her, rubbing her vigorously in an attempt to raise her

body temperature. She is cold. He stuck his fingers inside of her, and while the spray

mechanism did somewhat replicate the sensation of a woman’s cavity in a state of orgasm; to

David, he could only think of a water-saving shower head, and an empty heating tank.

The End


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The Problem With Pygmalion