by Annabel Kusnitz
My dad was a toaster and had been for quite a while. Mom said he used to watch nature documentaries about penguins in the Arctic, take his coffee with five sugars, and call me his little rotten tomato. I didn’t remember this; what I remembered was the metallic and long reflection of my own face, my father, staring back at me.
It was embarrassing really, to talk to friends and meet their families, knowing that someday they would know his ugly, metallic truth. I couldn’t lie, say my father was dead, because that wasn’t the whole truth; somewhere in that circuitry was the man who sat with me, saw my first steps.
Now, though, my father sat in his favorite armchair. I greeted him when I came home from school, always met with silence. Sometimes I saw him with a newspaper folded under his boxy body, other times our dog sat beside him, the TV on. I could only assume that my mother had “helped” with these things.
I didn’t talk to him much. I used to try and tell him about soccer games and science class but it never seemed like he was really interested. No one could say for sure how he was feeling, but my mom seemed to treat him normally enough. She took him on dinner dates, they went out for movie nights and left me alone. We were a happy family, full of life, and toast.
“I’m taking your father out for dinner tonight.”
“Okay?”
“Dinner’s in the fridge.” She twirled the lipstick in her hand. I tried to stare at the TV,
into the static, and let my mind blur all the same, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something
needed to be said.
“How come he doesn’t take you out for dinner?”
My mom looked at me, pained in a way that I hadn’t understood at the time. She looked at me like I had pushed her down the stairs, stabbed her, burned her, shot her, threatened to destroy the house, told her that there was a freak accident, that I was sorry something happened while she was away, that something terrible happened to her husband, that things may never be the same as they were before, that she may have to pick up the broken pieces and reassemble herself and swear not to let it ruin her life.
Her hair was graying, sprawled out on her scalp, and scattering across the auburn in her hair like a fungus, like a disease. She hadn’t dyed it since we’d heard the news about my father.
“He’s preoccupied, honey. Besides you know that I like to take charge,” she spoke sweetly. Her expression betrayed her. One thing I will say about my mother is this: despite everything, she still did her makeup impeccably. She still clutched her pearls with care and adorned herself routinely with the appropriate garments.
She picked him up, pock-marked him with her lipstick, and watched the color mear on cold metal. I couldn’t help but notice my mother stare back at herself within his shiny skin. She smiled and looked long-fully at the warped, elongated teeth that smiled back.
“I’m glad you like my outfit baby.”
I knew it would eventually get out, what happened to my father. There was only so long before people started questioning why my mother carried a toaster, insisting it was him
How did it happen people asked me again and again and again, and for the millionth time, I told them. He was there one minute, scratching his silver stubble, and then he just became a toaster, like magic, like a witch’s curse. That was the story my mother told me, through tears and choked sobs when I was old enough. That was one of the only times I’d seen her makeup smudge, running down her face in a murky waterfall, hitting the carpet with corruption.
I often wondered what might have happened if he had stayed human. I still wondered if he could still feel. I wondered what his life used to be like, and how often he may have said his mind if he could. I wondered if I woke up tomorrow, and if he was back to normal, what I would have said to him. Do you remember any of it? Do you still remember me, your rotten tomato? Or am I too old, and too moldy for your touch? Do you remember Mom tucking you into bed, and panicking in the morning when she heard you clang, crash, and fall? Do you still have the dents, the scars from your life before? Do you still have a scratch from the one time mom trusted me with you, and I dropped you on the tiled kitchen floor?
“We’re home!” My mother walked through the door, a smile curled across her face, looking for approval rather than asking for it.
“How was it?”
It was routine, I know, but I’m not sure how much longer I could’ve taken it. I’m unsure how much longer I could have handled the song and dance that ended in odd whispers at school in the morning. The same questions, the same date nights, that same TV documentary on rerun since he was changed- the same polar bears eating penguins. It made me wake up in the morning to silver hairs too.
One night, when my mother was asleep beside him, I drank some of her liquor. I drank and thought about the fungus in my mother's hair, and the fungus in my heart killing all sense of caring. I pat the family dog gently and ruffled his fur.
I stared at the moon on the back porch, squinting to imagine the detail within its craters. I saw the sky as a blistering face, stars bleeding and popping like some sort of cosmic acne, exploding and decaying and leaving behind scars that fade into dust. They are changing, morphing, and moving through the motions of life. They are above, and I was below.
I asked myself does he still bleed. My fingers grew cold.
I snuck into my mother's room with a kitchen knife. I stood over him, wondering what would happen if I plunged the knife deep into his metallic frame. What if he was alive, somewhere deep inside, a toaster with lungs, kidneys, a heart, and bones? Where would the arteries even be? I leaned down to whisper into his shape.
“I couldn’t image what it was like, the pressure to be a good father, a good husband. You have to know that this couldn’t last forever. I love you, Dad. I loved you, father, but you’re not him. You’re not him-”
I stabbed at the toaster, riddling him with holes and scratches. It fell off the bed with a clatter. Mom screamed, and yet it did not bleed.
“You were always a cheap replacement.”
Annabel Kusnitz is a senior at Champlain College who strives to meld her whimsical stylings with grounded character. When she's not writing, she's sketching, visiting her family (cat included), or having a movie night. Annabel is set to graduate from Champlain College in 2024 with a degree in Professional Writing.