Inverted Hedgehog

It started out as something weird, but it soon became trivial. That’s what happens when you first find out what other people do. For example, she’s eating pickles with chocolate and that was just the weirdest thing. For him, at least. To her, it was something she did since forever, the most normal taste in the world.

One would say his situation is a whole new level of weirdness, though, because whenever he farts, the fence door opens. Geographical location doesn’t matter. If he farts in France, the nearest unopened fence door will open, that’s just how it is. That’s why he always tries to get a house with a fence, that way at least it will only be his problem. He’s humble like that, Ben is. That’s probably what attracted pickle+chocolate loving Celine. After 3.4 relationships with douchebags, he was the perfect match for her.

Of course, she didn’t know of his farting problem in the beginning. It didn’t matter for the first 3 years of their relationship. What they had was a perfectly un-supernatural boring relationship that involved two 30-something people who would probably marry each other because “why not?”.

Then they moved together and the fence started opening. At first, she thought it was those damn kids from the neighborhood. They were maybe nice during the day, always saying ‘hi’ and shit, but at night they become these unstoppable fence-opening monsters. When she started making these batshit crazy plans that would probably have her locked up in the nearest cell, Ben admitted his problem. It’s the farting, he said. My farting is opening the fence. Who knows why.

A few priests and demonologists later, they found a solution – Ben will stop farting. That’s it. She has a dog that loves to run around and if the goddamn fence doors are opened he will leave and never come back. Stupid dog’s so dumb he’ll probably go to Florida and stay there.

And that’s why Ben stopped farting. He still does it once in a while, mostly by accident, and then runs outside and tries to close the fence door as fast as possible. Sometimes he’s lucky and sometimes he isn’t. When he’s not, she sees him doing it and starts yelling so loud everyone in the village starts betting that this will be the day he finally loses an eye in a savage spoon-stabbing “accident”.

It’s hard for him, most days. When he wakes up he just wants to fart. He was never so uncomfortable in his own bed. It’s like his fists are always clenched, his teeth are always grinding, his intestines are always spasming and in the end, it will probably be his mind that will hop over the fence and disappear into the night.

“I can’t do it anymore”, he says one morning.

“Do what?”

“Not-fart.”

“We talked about this, Ben!”

“I know…”

“Then why the fuck are we talking about it again?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t say anything after that. Neither did he. They just lay in silence for a while. Then he farted and she moved out.

For the next few days, the fence doors were constantly opened. The problem was, with his fence door opened, after every fart other ones would open instead. Soon there wasn’t a fence door in the village closed. People got so crazy about that, they stopped closing it. “Darn kids”, some said. Some were less polite.

This soon expanded to other villages as well. Then the town. Then the whole region and the country and the world. With time, fence doors became obsolete and at least 3700 dogs went to Florida.

But after a long time, he’s happy. Like, really happy, not just “It’s Friday and I’m drinking beers by myself” happy. And it’s not only farting, it’s also that he knows, deep in his heart, that her fence doors are open as well.