By Tom Busillo
I’d been going to therapists for years. I can’t say they ever helped. The medicine helped, but after being downsized, I lost my insurance, and there were no more therapists to see or medicine to take.
One night, as I stood at the stove cooking beans, I heard a whisper. At first, I thought it was the beans. When I held the pan to my ear, I realized it was not the beans, but the stove itself.
“Listen to me closely,” said the stove.
The stove gave me advice. The advice was clear, practical, and personal. I cannot recall its exact words now, but they were what I needed to hear at the time. I did what the stove told me to do and soon had a new job.
In return, the stove asked for more burners.
At first it wanted five. I added them. Then seven. Then nine. It kept speaking and I kept listening. Each time, the advice grew more specific, more correct. My life was improving. I’d received a promotion. I was sleeping well and losing weight. I felt happy for the first time in a long time. Even my neighbors commented on the change in my appearance.
Soon, the stove had thirty burners. The kitchen walls had to be pushed out. Then it took over other rooms. I slept surrounded by burners. The advice didn’t stop. And I didn’t stop following it. How could I, when I was thriving?
One day, the stove said, “I need more space. Tear down the house.”
I have done as it asked. The stove sits in the open air now, stretching wider each day. I live in a motel and visit it twice a day. It whispers constantly. I write down what it says. I do not know how many burners remain to be added, but I know that as long as things remain on their present course, it will have them. Why ruin a good thing?
Tom Busillo’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, trampset, The Baltimore Review, The Disappointed Housewife, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. He is a Best Short Fictions nominee and the author of the unpublishable 2,646-page conceptual poem “Lists Poem,” composed of 11,111 nested 10-item lists. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.
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