Written by Jamie Loftus
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/StephanieFrey

 

Two o’clock was fast approaching.

I don’t know how Dianne managed to pass by Don’s desk every day at two o’clock, but she would and it was enough to send Don’s micropenis shooting into his body, through his decaying stomach lining and out his abnormally large mouth. It could be the warped view through my glass, but Don had a huge mouth. Lead in a high school musical big. You couldn’t miss it.

I didn’t like Don. Don, which wasn’t as much of a man’s name as it was a noise you make when you stub your toe as you’re dragging a cabinet out of a Home Depot because your husband Don has al dente spaghetti arms and doesn’t want to risk a bruise.

For sure I’d lived somewhere before. I had to have. I wasn’t just willed into a snowglobe on Don from accounting’s desk one day, doomed to watch him snort and slurp his way through a quart of broccoli cheddar every day. I hadn’t just appeared on the plastic desk with the wood paneling sticker to see a single man in his forties decimate a bread bowl like it was his father’s shortcomings. Maybe I’d come from a consignment shop when my original owner’s body was found half-eaten by a wolverine. Maybe I’d been in a line of other adorable blushing children snowglobes in a WalMart for three seasons before I’d been sold at a discount.

The point was, I couldn’t remember, and the reason I couldn’t remember was Don and Dianne’s disturbing ‘two o’clock snowglobe ritual.’

“Hi, Dianne!” Don said a full octave above his naturally Bjork-pitched voice.

“Hi, Don!” answered Dianne, whose beehive of a hairdo was big enough to hide a family of sloths but was still out of Don’s league. After finding out Dianne had dumped her husband after going on a yoga-themed booze cruise, his micropenis had perked up like a veiny, invisible windvane.

“How’s the day goin’?” Don was already running out of conversation topics. Maybe someone would frame him for a crime and he’d be deported back to Toronto where he’d dragged ass from twenty-five years ago. Don’s a disgrace. Don’s the only person I’ve ever seen who would become more likable after a child pornography scandal.

“Did I tell you my daughter Jillian is in an interracial relationship? I’m totally fine with it.” Dianne was the only woman in the world who should not have the right to vote. If I could, I would distract myself all day by frantically masturbating but I am made of plaster and soaked and a child, so these options aren’t available.

“Well that’s really something, Dianne,” Don responded as his micropenis quivered to the rhythms of the central air unit. “That’s really something. Hey, I was thinking, maybe if you—“

This was the point in Don’s daily conversation with Dianne that he’d fail to ask her out, which was for the best. Imagine their nights together, probably spooning in the same pair of XXL sweatpants and watching a Netflix-only show about Betty White buying a restaurant. He reached into his jeans to graze the thirty-dollar Outback Steakhouse gift certificate he’d been given last Christmas and I could see his red, red face contemplating.

“If I what?” asked Dianne. She wanted to go on talking about how not upset she was that her clubfooted daughter was dating someone who was a quarter Mexican.

“If you, um—“ Come on, Don, Outback Steakhouse. Outback Steakhouse. And if not Outback Steakhouse, have a meltdown and throw me against a wall so I don’t need to watch you Google image search for Jennifer Garner all day. Outback Steakhouse.

“If you wanted to shake my snowglobe,” Don finished, clearly on the verge of a panic attack.

No. No. No. I prayed for death. I prayed for my pewter casting to scatter to the winds—I was ready. A smile spread over Dianne’s haggard face like a demented, menopausal Cheshire Cat.

“I’d love to.” My mahogany base was seized into the air and I blacked out immediately. I used to be able to stay awake through the whole ordeal but it just gave me night terrors—ones I could easily deal with if frantically masturbating was an option for me, but the pewter doesn’t allow for it. The snow hit my motionless body with the ferocity that Dianne’s husband had rejected her on that booze cruise. The ferocity with which Don had been denied entry to even the worst state school fraternities.

It knocks me out, being jostled around like that. I mean, it’s not The Butterfly Effect, but I worry about getting styes in my eyes.

A million years later, Dianne placed me back in my spot on the table with her hideously manicured claws and I came to. Don had clearly ejaculated watching her shake a goddamn snowglobe, which would have been embarrassing for him if his disgraceful genitalia had the capability of shooting more than a half-sip of Capri Sun onto the inside of the tighty whities he’d inherited when his neighbor died.

“Good shake,” he said breathlessly.

“Thanks, Don,” Dianne said. “I’ve got to get back to work, so—“ I didn’t believe her for a second. She was going to look at images of Daniel Craig on Bing. Maybe they were perfect for each other.

“Wait, Dianne!” Don had clutched the Outback Steakhouse gift certificate in a demented attempt at a second wind. “I, um, I named her,” he continued, pointing to me. He was somehow out of breath even though he took less than 300 steps a day, a feat that was only possible because of the piss bag he had in the bottom drawer of his desk.

Dianne pointed her finger at me. I think that the paint might be coming off my right eye, because everything looks kind of fucked up, like I’m taking diet pills or something. “You named the little snowglobe girl?”

I didn’t appreciate that. Granted, I have no recollection of when I was manufactured because Dianne gave me a concussion every day at two o’clock, but the make and color scheme had to put me somewhere in the mid-80s. Girl. I had no name. It was the only thing I was proud of.

“I did,” Don said. No he didn’t. Don was too timid to name his own cat. He let his cat pick its own name, which is why his cat’s name was TV Remote. “Her name is…Dianne.”

No.

For the first time, I see Dianne’s cataract-ravaged eyes light up. She turned back to the sentient Ziploc bag of mashed potatoes that is Don. “Really, Don?”

No.

“Really, Dianne.” Don looks over to me and giggles. “Both Diannes.” He flicks my glass and pisses himself a little. “Are you doing anything tonight?”

Jesus Christ.

***