Anguish wasn't a word that often found its way into Ken's vocabulary. It was, however, the best possible term he could think of to describe the feelings he had endured after the boner-popping-while-watching-men incident, something which had haunted his every waking moment for the better part of two days. It wasn't so much the latent homosexuality of the situation (okay, not so latent), it was more the feeling that his dong had betrayed him. A guy and his dong were supposed to look out for each other, they were supposed to be best pals. They most certainly weren't supposed to mess with each other's minds. And that, he wholeheartedly and bitterly believed, was exactly what had happened.
The experience had so traumatized that he had spent most of Monday locked in his room, venturing out on Tuesday only after Yohji had climbed onto the roof, run a hose down the central heating air return connected to his room, and flatly threatened to flood him out if he didn't come to work. This tactic worked surprisingly well, after only a few inches of water had been pumped into Ken's room, most of which was absorbed by a certain throw rug which was now four times it original proportions.
The day at work had been, to say the least, nightmarish. The usual horrors of the flower shop were not only in place but seemed hideously magnified by the previous weekend's tribulations. To make matters worse, although he had complied with Ken's request to impose a moratorium on Morning Musume songs, Omi had spent the better part of the day not only singing but actively grooving to Human Leagues "Obsession", a vaguely creepy American song from the 1980s which, in a coincidence which must have been orchestrated by Beelzebub himself, Ken understood every single word of. Only slightly more terrifying than Omi's ability to sing a four minute and forty-nine second song without a single break for the entirety of an eight hour work day was the fact that for most of this time he was the end of the hose as an imaginary and decidedly Freudian microphone.
He had not actually spoken to Omi sense their fated conversation several days ago, and in fact had been actively avoiding so much as even looking at him unless it was absolutely necessary. While this held several advantages, not the least of which being that he ran essentially no risk of accidentally catching a glimpse of Omi's wiggling hindquarters, it also posed a problem in that he was unable to keep adequate track of his potential nemesis. This pitfall in Ken's strategy was most vividly illustrated when he was caught completely off guard by a nearly staggering blow to his own ass that was immediately punctuated by a cheerful cry of "booty bump". From that point forward Ken had spent the remainder of the day carrying a chrome-finished watering can as a sort of rear-view mirror, figuring somewhere deep in the back of his mind that Omi's butt was not unlike Medusa: It's dangerous effects could be avoided so long as one didn't view it directly.
When the purgatory of work had finally ended, Ken felt as if his brain had spent the day in dozens of tiny cuisinarts being randomly switched between "puree" and "liquefy" by dozens of equally tiny imps. He had retreated once more to his room, though this was short-lived, as he realized that he hadn't eaten for four days out of fear of encountering Omi on his way to the kitchen. He sucked down his fear, mentally chastising himself for thinking the term "sucked" and crept slowly down to the kitchen, wherein he cooked himself enough straight-from-the-package ramen to guarantee himself a heart attack, possibly within the hour.
He had cunningly made his way to the living room, a zone which was supposed to be free of food by mutual agreement, based primarily upon an astronomically high security deposit and a white carpet. While he was risking censure from his comrades for eating a forbidden zone, he also figured he was far less likely to be interrupted, and had in fact dared to hope that he not only eat but also sneak back to his lair without interacting with anyone.
Those dreams had been shattered, however, and Ken now found himself in a bizarre and terrible situation which had previously been the stuff of nightmares. Omi was standing behind him. With his dong on his shoulder. Though the desire for self preservation prevented him for looking over, Ken knew it was Omi's dong, for both of Omi's hands were playing the drum line from "Obsession" on his head. Beyond that, the only part of the human body that feels like a dong is the dong itself.
Fight or flight is said to be the most basic choice which the human brain is designed to make, a holdover from man's days as a tiny, tree-dwelling rodent-like beast which in all probability only survived by doing a hell of a lot more of the latter than the former. Fight or flight, anthropologists say, is the decision we all make when we encounter a situation so dangerous that no other courses of action are possible. Ken, however, was stunned beyond all capacity for reaching a quick fight or flight decision, his sense having been shocked into ineptitude by the sheer terror he was feeling. The dong had been on his shoulder, blessedly being held at bay by his shirt, for a good five seconds now, and Ken sat as motionless as a bird in the thrall of a small, fleshy snake.
He had briefly entertained the idea of simply ignoring it, hoping it would go away if he simply didn't react. Under the law, however, silence is consent and the last thing he wanted was to prove himself queer in a legal sense after so much circumstantial evidence had been mounting.
Ken winced as the word "mounting" made its way through his brain.
Before his days in the J-League, Ken had briefly entertained the idea of going into politics. Among his other studies was course on national security which also included some discussions of American policy. One of the few things Ken remembered from this was something called the Powell Doctrine, named for then-secretary of state Colin Powell. Formulated from Powell's experiences in the Vietnam War, two of the doctrine's key points were the application of sufficient force to end a threat with no gradual escalation and the formulation and use of a clearly defined exit strategy.
Ken believed in the Powell Doctrine. Glancing at his bowl of soup, he suddenly understood both his capacity for force and his exit strategy.
With a blur of motion, Ken drove his fork through the offending dong, and attack so fast and unexpected that Omi squealed like a little girl and fell backwards. Ken was on his feet in a flash, his years of soccer culminating in what must have been the fastest and most perfect dash up a flight of stairs in history.
Only when he was locked securely in his room did he notice that the weight on his shoulder had not been lifted. With queasy horror he realized that there was now a severed dong attached to his body. He slowly made his way to the mirror to remove the surely grotesque member from himself, though he could barely find it in himself to take a close look. Biting his lip, he reached up to pull the broken skin flute away, but found that it was shaped differently from all the other decapitated trouser serpents he had seen. Further inspection revealed that the dong in question was in fact the remains of a hot dog. While being a hot dog didn't necessarily mean that the thing on his shoulder wasn't at least partly a dong, a wave of relief washed over him. This was a trick he had fallen for once in high school as well, and he had to grudgingly admit it was kind of funny.
Then he remembered the force with which he had driven the fork through his enemy. One small tear made its way down his cheek as the red stains finally began to blossom on his shirt.
*****
Ken wasn't as embarrassed that he had to ask Yohji to drive him to the hospital as he was that Yohji wasn't the least bit above telling every nurse in the building exactly why his idiot friend was getting ten stitches in his shoulder.