This episode first appeared in January of 2022. It seemed appropriate to share it again on the 4th of July, as the main character frees a chainsaw to follow its own bliss…far, far away from her.
Transcript is below
1-Star Review for the Cordless Electric Chainsaw
by Victoria Buitron
My husband would give it five stars, but I can only give it a one because it has swallowed my life like a Florida sinkhole. It was fine at first, when he built the Little Free Library for me in the front of our house. We painted it patterns of Paisley pink and luminescent yellow, so even during the winter—when there’s a foot of snow—I can think of spring. But he’s been using it for everything now. Cutting wood, building a climbing wall, making Winnie the Pooh wooden masks that my daughter begs him to wear while he reads her a book before bed, jolting the crows away from the sunflowers with the vroom. The other day I heard him humming and then calling the thing in his hand Chase the Chainsaw. Whatever project our son asks him to do, he’ll use the chainsaw to cut and slash and destroy and rebirth. Because it’s faster, he says. I’m tired. I actually threw the last chainsaw into the river, after hot yoga class, parked on the cherry-colored bridge. A splash like the river had gulped it. I lied and told him that it fell and broke when I went to grab some firewood. I thought maybe he’d use the old saw, sweat until his arm became sore and his muscles flexed, but the next day he went to get another one. This one is called Casey the Chainsaw. I have another death for him lined up. If there’s a Chad the Chainsaw, I’m charging his credit card with noise-canceling ear muffs and purchasing acoustic foam panels to enact as a sound barrier around our bedroom—so I am only privy to his final creations—because I love what he makes, but not how he makes them, and please, damnit, if someone knows how to annihilate these cordless Lucifer-sent technological contraptions without it looking too obvious, please email me at suburbanchainsawmassacre@gmail.com.
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