Local Business Showcase: Peanut Butter?

By Bub 

Three decrepit old men are inhabiting a dark, wood-paneled living room. They're bald and frail with the requisite liver spots. They look as if they could be brothers and they very well may be.

They sit in silence. On the left, one man sits still in a rocking chair with a jar of peanut butter nestled between his thighs. Another is laying on his side across a 1960's flower print couch, staring at the floor. He is covered by a crocheted blanket up to his protruding ribs. He is not wearing a shirt. The third man sits on the right in a recliner, unreclined. He is also still save for the involuntary biting motion that periodically forces his lower jaw out and up as if he were trying to catch a fly that had landed briefly on his bottom lip.

The man on the left lights a cigarette then dips an arthritis mangled, hair knuckled, claw into the jar of peanut butter and slathers the creamy sustenance across his tongue and swallows. He takes a drag of the cigarette then gently tosses the jar to the man on the couch. After his brain takes notice of the slight pain the peanut butter jar caused his hip upon impact the man on the couch looks in its direction without moving his head, slowly retrieves the jar and takes a sniff. Without changing facial expression, he extends his arm, jar in hand, in the direction of the man in the recliner in a protracted and trembling motion.

The man in the recliner clacks his teeth and leans sideways toward the couch, while still facing forward, stare fixed on nothingness. The man in the recliner makes contact with the jar with his right hand, but suddenly jerks backwards in his chair clasping his chest with his left. He lets out a dejected wheeze, "Baahhhhhh," then goes limp, dead.

The jar, still in the man on the couch's hand, drops to the ground, shattering. Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" begins playing as camera pans in to the shattered jar shards swimming in a pile of peanut butter. One rat arrives and is soon joined by another, and then another. Close up continues of rats feasting on peanut butter for the entire duration of the song.