MUSIC: FUNKY BEAT. UP, UNDER.
MAGIC DAVE: Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s the dead of night. You don’t know how you got here. (CONSIDERS THIS) Huh. Neither do I. (SHRUGS) Congrats. You found Santa Carla Public Radio. This is “The Magic Hour” with Magic Dave. I’m Magic Dave, we are The Lost, and this is our hour, man.
Lines are open. Give us a call. Let thy sins be known.
FADE.
Mr. Cockenbells, a sweaty, nervous wreck of a man, paced about a hospital waiting room, and Dr. Nibblepleaser watched from the door.
“Mr. Cockenbells?” the suspiciously named doctor asked.
“Yes?” replied the equally suspiciously named man. “Is it about my wife?”
“No. I’m afraid it’s about your wife.”
Mr. Cockenbells struck the doctor in such a way that, more or less, resembled a slap. “Out with it, man!”
“We’ve lost her, Mr. Cockenbells.”
“You mean…”
“Yes.”
“My Brennifer?”
“That’s right.”
“She’s really…”
“Mr. Cockenbells, are you slow or just stupid?”
Mr. Cockenbells considered this, and then continued on as if he hadn’t. “How is this possible? I did everything exactly like they told me!”
“Mr. Cockenbells – may I call you “Mister?”
“I’d rather you not.”
“Too late,” Dr. Nibblepleaser dismissed. “Mister, I know that I’m only a well-educated, and even more well-endowed doctor of medicine. But in my least humble opinion, sometimes these things just happen.”
“Just happen?” Mister spat back at the doctor. “These things don’t just happen!”
“Please don’t spit on me.”
Mister stormed about the room, pulling out his phone and waving it about like an absolute ass. “I posted her photo all over social media! I got eleven-and-a-half thoughts and prayers!
“Half?”
Mister shrugged. “Brennifer’s ex-wife was still on the fence, last I checked. I thought it better to round up.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“No, no,” Mister said. “Brennifer could be a bit of a–“
Just then, the doctor’s pager buzzed a little buzz.
“What the Hell was that?” Mister asked.
“Good news, Mister,” Dr. Nibblepleaser said, reading the teeny, tiny screen on his teeny, tiny relic of the past.
“Good news? What could possibly be good news at a time like this?”
“It seems we just found your wife.”
“What do you mean?”
“Turns out she was in the cafeteria this entire time.”
“I thought you said she was dead?”
Dr. Nibblepleaser looked at Mister as if Mister were the stupidest, stupidest, good Lord, how stupid can you possibly be man he’d ever met, and, in fact, even considered letting Mister know just as much, but then didn’t. “I never said that.”
“You said she was gone!”
Dr. Nibblepleaser struck the man in such a way that most certainly resembled a slap.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Apologized. “You’re right. I suppose I am being a little over-emotional.”
“We all make mistakes, Mr. Cockenballs.”
“I’m just happy to know Brennifer is alive and well.”
Dr. Nibbepleaser looked at Mister once more. “You ‘stupid, stupid, good Lord, how stupid can you possible be’ man I’ve ever met. I never said she was alive.”
“What?”
“No,” he chuckled. “It appears she choked to death on a chicken salad sandwich.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly, I’m afraid,” Dr. Nibblepleaser replied, failing to stifle his snickering and chortling. “It’s a little known fact that the chicken salad sandwich is the third-deadliest sandwich on the planet, just ahead of peanut butter, and right behind knuckle.”
“Is that true?”
“In a sense.”
“In what sense is that possibly true?”
“It’s true in the sense that I made it up.”
“What kind of hospital is this?” Mr. Cockenbells winged.
“Not a very good one, obviously,” Dr. Nibblepleaser said, this time very serious-faced and such. “But it’s hardly our fault you two were born too poor to afford proper insurance, now is it?”
Mr. Cockenbells hung his head and nodded. “No, I suppose not.”
“Good,” the doctor stomped, and turned to leave. “And if you could please pick up your wife’s corpse before we have her towed, that would be wonderful.”
STEVIE: There was this woman, once. She was a sweetheart, with hair, arms, two-eyes, some of her teeth, and mostly all the other giblets and suchhaveyou.
We didn’t have long together, just a few sciatic-pinching minutes of sloppy, lustless, wholly shameful sexual innuendo-ing.
The next morning, I found myself waking up in a ditch along the northbound lane of Pacific Coast Highway.
Still the best parent-teacher conference I’ve ever accidentally attended.
MUSIC: PEPPY, YET TERRIBLE SYNTH-ORGAN MUSIC.
FINNEGAN: Welcome back to “The Last Word.” I’m your host, Finnegan Haberdasher. Tonight’s last words come from–
SFX: KNOCKING AT THE DOOR.
Oh. Excuse me for one moment, folks.
SFX: MORE KNOCKING.
SFX: FINNEGAN STEPS AWAY, OPENS DOOR.
FINNEGAN: (OFF) Yes, I’m Finnegan Haberdasher. Yes, I know Anita Dickings. What’s this about–
SFX: BANG! A GUNMAN SHOOTS FINNEGAN, FINNEGAN DROPS DEAD.
SFX: THE GUNMAN FLEES, SPEEDS AWAY IN CAR.
MUSIC: PEPPY, YET TERRIBLE SYNTH-ORGAN MUSIC CONTINUES.
BUT THEN…
SFX: THE GETAWAY CAR CRASHES.
SFX: POLITE APPLAUSE.
MUSIC: PEPPY, YET TERRIBLE SYNTH-ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS OUT FOR A BIT TOO LONG.
STEVIE: I’m Steve Arviso, and this is “A Complete Waste of Time.”
MUSIC: A SNATCH OF SOME UP-BEAT DIDDY.
STEVIE: On today’s program, we’ll be speaking with Connie McGivens., a local barista and failed piano tuner; fish enthusiast Cyril Shenanigans; and Kyle DeWitt, local con-man and bookie.
But first, a message from our sponsor – Hector’s.
MUSIC: SENTIMENTAL PIANO MUSIC. UP, UNDER.
STEVIE: Do you want produce at the lowest price possible? Did you forget your wife’s birthday again? Then stop by Hector’s Oranges and Flowers Boutique. Currently located by the First Street off-ramp in Santa Ana. Hector’s: we have oranges and flowers… and sometimes other things.
Good evening. Tonight’s piece, “Calvin Carson’s Cavalcade of Cars, Cards, and Cardigans,” has fortunately been misplaced on account of gratuitous sex, violence, and pedantry. In its place, we dispassionately offer a mostly flaccid, partly turgid bit of tale titled, “That Wasn’t Even Sexy,” already unpackaged, reheated, and ready for you to do with as you please.
(NOTE: the safeword is, “mukluks.”)
And now, the bit:
A phone rang, and someone accidentally answered when they actually meant to ignore the call. “Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Oh, good. You’re not a complete idiot.”
“Surprises await us both, I suppose.”
“Truer words have been spoken. May I speak with Throbbing Fistwood, please?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Did I say, ‘No?'”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Because I meant to say, “‘Yes.'”
“So, I may speak with Throbbing Fistwood, then?”
“Perhaps.”
“I’m sorry. I must have bludgeoned myself to death on my faux hardwood floor, because I appear to be in Hell.”
“Would you like to call back another time?”
“May I speak with Throbbing Fistwood then?”
“No.”
“Then, for God’s sake, why would I call back later?”
“I was wondering that myself.”
“I swear, this is the number the young lady gave me when I inquired with her about Throbbing Fistwood. Are you sure this isn’t Throbbing Fistwood?”
“Fairly certain.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time.”
“It doesn’t have to be a total waste, does it?”
“How so?”
“I mean, you’ll have to give me a moment, but I may be able to help.”
“You can help locate Throbbing Fistwood?”
“Well. At my age, you never can be too sure without a bit of ‘assistance,’ if you will.”
“No. No, thank you. I’m afraid I’m a bit tight on time at the moment. Perhaps I’ll try calling back later.”
“Wonderful.”
“Who should I ask for?”
“Dick Squat-thrust.”
“Got it, Dick. May I call you ‘Dick?'”
“I do certainly hope so.”
“Thank you.”
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
The phone went click, and never rang again.
“Good evening,” the man said. “I’m Fine Howareyou, and welcome back to, ‘My Way, or the Hemmingway,’ in which we have intimate, one-on-one discussions with woefully depressing creative types for some reason.”
“Hello,” a woman replied.
“Shut-up,” the man hissed.
“Sorry.”
“Tonight,” the man continued, only now utterly pissed, “we’re in the alley behind a clinic of some sort with our guest, Anna Moose, former hotel clerk, or resident–“
“Clerk,” she said. “I worked the front desk.”
“I don’t care,” the man said. “Either way, she’s now some fancy-pants poet something-or-other who wrote some bit of whatever about a bad day at work.”
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“I don’t do poetry.”
“You don’t do poetry?” Anna Moose replied.
“Anna,” the man said, not giving an assing fart about anything really. “I think the world frankly doesn’t care, but my job insists that I pretend to care to know, ‘Why poetry?'”
“I can’t do this anymore,” she replied.
“The interview or the poetry?” the man asked. “Please say it’s the poetry.”
“None of it’s true.”
“What’s not true?” the man continued, as a man is inclined to do when paid to care. “Your poem? Were you not really held hostage by domestic terrorists plotting to overthrow the local housing association if they weren’t given a quarter of a billion dollars, an apache helicopter, and direction’s to Lincoln’s golden, precious jewel-bedazzled tomb?”
“None of it happened. Not a word.”
“It’s all a lie?”
Her head sagged, and her voice got all deadly serious all of a sudden like. “An utter fabrication. A linquisitical falsification of an otherwise uninspiring evening, almost as if the absence of purpose or meaning in my abusively, oppressively underpaid labor propelled my pen until its ink was spent and I, soaked in the afterbirth of my poeting, rolled over and fell asleep until someone caught me and reported it to the manager.”
“But, why poetry?” the man asked.
“Oh, I thought I could get away with it. I thought I could pass-off some bit of well-worded fiction.”
“But, why poetry?” the man persisted.
“Yes, yes. Alright,” she huffed. “Nobody gave a shit when it was a mostly-written blog post, a half-finished novel, or a completely half-baked, quarter-assed screenplay.”
“Seems like a long way to go to get somebody to read your work.”
“I mean, have you read Hotel: Zero? Who the Hell could possibly swallow that five-hundred page suppository unless I passed it off as some sort of introspective stream of consciousness reflexively written mid-hostage crisis?”
“Fair point.”
“I certainly didn’t think it’d ever get this far. How was I supposed to know you’d all blow it up into book deals, movie contracts, pornographic satires, and such?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not like this terrorist attack made the local news, did it? Nobody thought to do any damn research until I said anything till now. And why? Because you all had a good story to sell. Certainly sold better than this trite. You know, I have to be known for this thing either way – real, or not. You think I want that? I was supposed to be the next Victor Carumba, or Misty Weathers.”
“Who?”
She leans forward, disgust oozing from the corner of her mouth in a fashion very similar to drool. “Don’t you judge me. Don’t you sit there – in your clothes – with your job and sense of purpose and direction and sense of contribution to society – and judge me.”
“Oh, I don’t have a job,” the man corrected.
“You don’t?”
“No,” the man said. “No, this is just to get out of the house. Let’s me feel like maybe I’m accomplishing something more with my life than a brief, devalued existence as someone’s indentured servant, toiling away at some menial task or another, for an unsustainable wage and a perpetual sense of dread and anxiety that risks siphoning what little will to live I have left in me, if not for those brief, few moments where I get to host my own little show for a small audience, but much needed peace of mind and self-worth.”
Anna Moose narrowed her eyes, and choked on the bile burning at the back of her throat. “People like you make me sick.”
The sky opened, and Hell followed.
Beneath this, it was Tuesday. And to be perfectly honest, it was a rather pleasant one until it wasn’t. Sure, there was quite a bit of suffering carrying on in many parts of the world, including right around the corner from where it all ultimately ceased to be (Oh, the awful things people were doing to each other and their families in the privacy of their own homes – but the less said about this, the easier it is to focus on the fun parts of this horrific, if fictional sci-fi apocalyptic tale). But in some godforsaken shopping center in the sort of Californian city where people with far too much money buy overpriced things from people with far too little of either, the sun was warm, the wind was cool, but not too much, and existence wasn’t all that bad if you could afford to ignore it. In fact, Peter Protagonist managed to catch every red light on the way to work, causing him to be late yet again. Fortunately, Peter hated his job. Unfortunately, he arrived just in time to witness his girlfriend, Ann Plot-Device, having coffee with another man in the parking lot. At least, in the sense that they were currently engaged in some form of sexual intercourse in the backseat of a twenty-year old, mostly primer-colored Honda Civic.
Now. Before anyone thinks to cast judgment on the poor girl, it should be made very clear that Ms. Plot-Device, her extracurricular lover, and that hideous car were all instantaneously vaporized the moment someone falling from the aforementioned Hellhole in the Sky subsequently landed directly on top of – and, I suppose, through – all of this. So do temper your throbbing rage and flaccid demands for primal social justice. Because if nothing else, it’ll all prove rather meaningless in the grand scheme of the next five or so minutes.
That said. There was a bit of fire, a sort of explosion. All fantastically gratuitous, really. But as sexually stimulating as the creation of celestial impact craters and collateral damage may be, they also tend to be somewhat overstimulating for those standing a bit too close to fully appreciate such things. Yet for as bleeding about the head as he most concussedly was after being literally and painfully shock-waved several yards through the air, Peter’s metaphorically broken heart was grateful for the distraction.
“Are you okay?” someone eventually assed to shout in that way where one really wants to sound like they give a shit, but really don’t.
“I think they’re moving,” another added.
“Someone survived that?”
Peter’s vision mostly righted itself and he watched as the gathering crowd heroically tended to the needs of that helpless smoldering hole in the ground.
“Is anyone getting a signal?”
Peter dragged himself bleeding and internally bleeding to the smoldering hole, and saw what all this not-calling-me-an-ambulance business was all about: some clown in the bloodied, tattered remains of some kind of fancy Halloween costume was wriggling about and crying, “They’re coming! They’re coming! Good God, someone get me out of here, they’re coming!”
“Who?” Peter asked in that way one does when they want the other person to stop screaming the same thing over and over and finish their thought. “Who’s coming?”
“Them!” the clown in the Halloween costume replied, lifting and pointing with his broken, mushy stub at an alien armada more or less done gathering on this side of the Hellhole in the sky.
“Alien invaders!”
“They’re going to kill us all!”
“It’s the end of the world!”
“Everyone duck and cover!”
But before Peter could follow the rest to the nearest sturdy doorway, desk, or table, the clown in the Halloween costume spoke again. “Sorry. What was that?” Peter replied.
“I said, the Libertitans aren’t here to kill you.”
“Then why are they here?”
“To conquer you, to steal your world, strip mine it, and enslave your people in soul crushing and backbreaking low-paying jobs as they profit off your perpetual misery and labor.”
“Uh-huh,” Peter blinked.
“I think I’m a bit too far gone now,” the clown in the Halloween costume coughed and spat into his helmet, the blood and viscera staining the visor and making Peter gag a bit. “Only you can stop them now.”
But before Peter could laugh at such a ridiculous statement, the clown in the Halloween costume pulled open their chest cavity with far too much ease, revealing a beautiful gemstone where their heart should have been.
“Ew,” Peter cringed.
“My name is Heckles,” the clown coughed and spat again. “I was just a party clown from Anaheim. Until I got this.”
“What is it?”
“A piece of The Black Star.”
“Okay,” Peter blinked again.
“When you take this, it will grant you power beyond imagination.”
“But?”
“But what?”
“What’s the catch, the gimmick?”
The clown sighed. “The Black Star will replace your heart and consume your life force until you either die in battle or you burn out like a battery.”
“Why would I ever agree to something so ridiculous?”
“Because this is your chance to become a hero and save the world!”
“Yeah, but I don’t see an upside for me.”
“Are you shitting me? There’s an alien armada directly above us, and all you can think about is how this situation can benefit you personally?”
“Now. See? That’s not fair. You’re the one that came crashing down atop my cheating girlfriend and wrecked my car. And now here you are, a literal clown in some spandex getup…”
“Supersuit.”
“Thank you,” Peter said, then continued. “A literal clown in some spandex supersuit insisting I give up any semblance of autonomy for the sake of saving a world that has proven time and again to not give a super-shit about me, themselves, or much of anything else, really, even when repeatedly faced with one self-inflicted global crisis after the other. Quite frankly, we could use a change in management around here.”
“Bit cynical, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But we’re not only talking about choosing between one form of lifelong, cosmic indentured servitude over the other. We’re talking about unfair expectations of selfless self-sacrifice from others when, really, you’re coercing someone to act on pure emotion – in this case, fear – without all the facts.”
“That’s fair.”
“And even worse, you’re handing over the equivalent of a doomsday weapon to a random stranger on the street. Do you go around handing out guns and bombs at the local park on weekends? What makes you think I’m not only emotionally mature enough to wield such power without proper training, but to also do so without any selfish inclination to use such a weapon to force my own will on others.”
“I… I didn’t think about that.”
“Of course not. You didn’t think about this at all did you. I suppose you’ve been galvanting all about the multiverse, having one detached adventure after the next, oblivious of any consequences for swooping in and utterly upsetting the natural order of any particular corner of reality, and then being so utterly incompetent as to ensure that your troubles followed you home, where we are incapable – militarily, psychologically – of comprehending such threats, let alone actually fighting with such things.”
But before the clown in the Halloween spandex supersuit could fully process the fault in his logic and the string of mistakes that brought him here, just a few short miles away from where he had wasted much of his previous life on hard drugs, cheap liquor, and one open mic and dating app after the other, the alien armada unleashed their veggie-ray across the globe. And as the collective consciousness of humanity was locally deleted, but backed up to a server somewhere on the other side of Titan, Peter took solace in the fact that, at the very end, he had finally stood up for himself. And that had to count for something, if only because he and all of humanity were being remotely lobotomized by alien invaders from beyond the moon.
“And that, my sweet, supple henchmen…” Girwin half-assedly lilted, and the grotesque, phlegm-clogged bleating of one of the newly hired sacrificial lambs in his morning tour group interrupted him mid-spittle.
It was sometime before lunch next Tuesday in the sunlit foyer of a giant skull carved from the lone mountain on a small island in the Pacific. Girwin was, and still is (as of this writing), often described by his coworkers, friends, family, and favorite, yet rather gossipy bartender as a, and we’re quoting here, “middle-aged schlub of a middle-manager pissing away every precious moment of his life working in human resources for a soulless, yet respectably profitable criminal organization.” The dozen or so murmuring chimps in ill-fitting radiation suits in front of him were preoccupied with complaints about being forced to wear a mask indoors (seemingly in spite of all the radiation), insisting radiation was just a myth, and idly scrolling through their respective social media feeds. Yet none of them noticed that the aforementioned rude interruption was little more than a quick cover up for what proved to be an otherwise silent, if now wholly trapped bit of fart in someone’s suit. In fact, most everyone but Girwin and that damned soul now stewing in their own gasses ignored this entirely. Girwin, however, in all his insecure whatever-the-opposite-of-glory-is, mistook this as a rude but helpful reminder of a new interoffice memo regarding inclusion. He couldn’t be assed to read the damned thing, of course. But he had heard some of the younger employees discussing something about pronouns, and thus thought it best to correct himself before someone thought to file a complaint and he’d be forced to investigate himself again. And while such a thing normally wouldn’t be much of a problem at all, Girwin had planned to duck out a bit early to read to strippers on his way to volunteer at the animal euthanatorium, so he hoped to avoid any extra paperwork that afternoon. But such is life. And as such, it continues even after a rude, brief, yet complete misunderstanding.
“My apologies,” Girwin apologized, pausing only long enough to make everyone feel every bit as uncomfortable as he had hoped. “And that, my succulent, savory, hench-persons, concludes our tour. I hope you found today’s experiences not only enlightening, but informative, as I would hate to have to kill any of you before your ninety-day review. But more importantly, I want to be the first to welcome you to the E.V.I.L. family!”
As deafening disinterest settled in, Girwin fluffed up his own round of flaccid applause in a failed attempt to conclude this complete waste of his time without another interruption.
“Excuse me, Girwin?” one of the sheep baa’d, raising one of its gloved hands.
Girwin sighed in that way where one very much wants someone else to know just how pissed-offingly annoyed they are with them, but also neither wishes to appear rude nor professional. “Yes, Jeff?”
“It’s pronounced, ‘Jeff.'”
“What did I say?”
Jeff considered this, and shrugged. “I forget.”
“Well, Whoever-You-Are,” Girwin said, pleased with his ability to only-barely resist his sudden urge to casually demonstrate the efficacy of the company-provided emergency disintegrator ray strapped to his hip. “Would you like to get to your question before I shoot you dead in front of all your soon-to-be former colleagues?
“Yes, I think I’d like that,” Jeff replied, immediately followed by the absence of both thought and sound.
Girwin looked on at this artistic display of intellectual failings with a delightfully fruity cocktail of confusion, contempt, and subconscious positioning of his hand in such a way that it was, more or less, now touching and/or holding the aforementioned company-provided emergency disintegrator ray. “Care to give us a hint, then?”
“Oh, right,” Jeff chuckled in that uniquely stupid way that universally translates to, I’m an insufferable idiot. “It’s about the company mission statement.”
“And what of it?”
“Oh,” Jeff pouted. “I thought you were going to guess.” He pulled a mangled, dog-eared copy of the E.V.I.L. employee handbook from his ill-fitting radiation suit, and opened it to a page marked with brightly colored bits of paper and ink. “Well,” he continued, skipping the bits in blue and reading the bits in pink, “It says right here, ‘E.V.I.L. seeks one goal, and one goal only: world domination.'”
Girwin looked on at Jeff as if the blithering bookreader were the stupidest person he had ever met, which was saying a lot given Girwin’s already low and highly vocal opinion of Brennifer in accounting. “You’re not one of those soft, tender-loined liberals, are you, Jeff?”
“No-no-no,” Jeff laughed yet again in that face-punching way he had about him, stupidly unaware of the rather erotic way Girwin’s fingers traced over the slick chrome casing of his company-provided emergency disintegrator ray. “I’m a real cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch, Sir.”
“Such a shame I have to kill you after this.”
Jeff smiled and nodded. “Agreed. But, ‘world domination’ does seem a bit vague and open-ended.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. Sounds like a hassle, really.”
Maybe it was lightning in a bottle, a sudden stroke of significant, deep introspective insight into the illicit doings and beings of arguably the evilest corporation owned and operated by the evilest owners not involved with the designing and manufacturing of suspect electric vehicles. Maybe it was the marijuana Girwin had smoked in the bathroom before the start of that morning’s tour. Or maybe it was the way the filtration unit on the ill-fitting radiation suits tended to muffle the wearer’s voice. Whatever the reason, Girwin and the rest of his sheep seized on Jeff with all the dumbfounded, jaw-slacking attention usually reserved for adolescent boys reading their first laughably ham-fisted description of female breasts in a clunky horror novel. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Jeff started, slipping a gloved hand and arm right up into his still-open, still ill-fitting radiation suit, and picked his nose. “If Adjunct Professor Conniption already has the technology to access alternate realities and create parallel worlds, why doesn’t he just, I dunno, go to some perfect world of his own making instead of resigning himself to a life of micromanagement?”
The others considered this for a moment in loud, distorted whispers, but Girwin decided he wasn’t comfortable questioning his deep-seeded, self-imposed beliefs. “You know what?,” he said. “To Hell with this.” And then he casually shot Jeff with his company-provided emergency disintegrator ray.
The group looked on at Jeff’s disintegrated cremains sizzling and smoking with all the life of a sizzling, smoking pile of ash, and shuffled nervously in their ill-fitting, now urine-soaked radiation suits.
Girwin returned the company-provided emergency disintegrator ray to its place on his hip. “Are there any other questions?”
Douglas Anderson never left California in his thirty-seven years of existence. He once traveled as far north as Stockton for a one-week training seminar for a rental car company he worked for while in college. He also visited San Diego on several occasions, though he wasn’t particularly fond of it. (When pressed for a reason why he felt this way about an entire city, Doug only ever averted his eyes and curled his lip.) He even once had plans to visit Vegas. It was to be a celebration of his twenty-first birthday with a group of his closest friends. The culmination of a lifelong bond forged through the crucible of childhood and, in once case, a brief stint in juvenile hall. Unfortunately for Doug, he had the misfortune of falling ill with a mild cold mere days before. And rather than risk getting anyone else sick, he took the headache and stuffy nose as a sign from the Universe to stay home. Doug would never see the neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip, nor the many fliers and pamphlets for adult entertainment that line it.
That said. Try to imagine Doug’s surprise when, without warning, he found himself ripped from atop his toilet, sent crashing up and through the ceiling of the converted garage he rented in Santa Ana from a kindly old woman named Gloria for five-hundred dollars a month, and then hurled by some unseen force into orbit.
Despite the arguments that invariably arise whenever the wholesale abandonment of Douglas Anderson by physics itself is brought up in conversation, Doug was neither frightened nor quick to make some sarcastic, witty remark with his final breath. Instead, he welcomed his end with open arms. His final thought before he found himself shredded to pieces by a passing stream of space debris, located somewhere between Newport and the moon, was this: “Dreams really do come true.”
Gloria, unfortunately, passed away several months after Doug’s ejection from the planet Earth. With Doug gone, there was nobody home on Wednesday afternoons. Thus, there was nobody around to hold the chair steady for Gloria as she refilled the bird feeder in her garden. Her body was found several weeks later by her son, Tito, who had stopped by in the hopes of borrowing fifty dollars until he started his new job.
Tito currently operates and manages daily tours of the hole left behind in his mother’s garage.
The woman wearing very little strutted across the parking lot, and the stupid man walked into a closed door.
The door belonged to a charmingly inconvenient boutique located in a rather busy corner of a fictional town I’ve made up just now, the sort of place with people to eat, things to regret, and, I suppose, whatever else one might think to bother with in an otherwise unimportant backdrop. The man, meanwhile, belonged to – and was wanted by – nobody in particular, which, coincidentally, was the reason he was here in the first place.
“Sir?” a voice asked.
The stupid man looked up to find a strikingly acceptable young lady standing there in the doorway, looking at him in that way that seductively whispered, I wonder if he’ll spend any money here. “Women,” he concussed, attempting to remember at least one or two other words, and then forgetting to bother at all.
“Sir,” the young lady replied, “Far be it from me to question any man’s right to drink himself stupid in the middle of the day, but if you’re going to do that sort of thing, I suggest you do so somewhere more appropriate, like a public library or a city council meeting.”
“I was told,” the man eventually spat out, “that I could find a woman here.”
“I suppose you’re technically correct,” she replied. “But I’m not sure why you felt the need to bring my door into this.”
After thinking really hard about it, something dislodged itself and the man started over. “Is this ‘Bottom of the Barrel, We Get Paid, So You Get Laid?'”
“You’ve seen our ad.”
“A friend of mine referred me. He suggested I come here to help with my…” he said, trailing off in that way one does when one desperately wishes to have the other character finish the first character’s sentence.
“With your…?” she replied, bravely refusing to follow convention.
“Romance problem,” he euphemism’d.
“Well, I’m not sure what you were told, but I’m afraid my door simply isn’t interested.”
The man huffed, hurting his tender wittle headums in the process. “This is ridiculous.”
“I agree,” she said, holding the door open. “Would you like to come inside and perhaps spend some money, then?”
And after an uncomfortable, protracted self-assurance that he would not, in fact, bash his skull against the shop door, the man stepped inside.
“Tell me a bit about yourself, Mr…” the young lady started, guiding him over to her desk and trailing off in that way one does when needing to know someone’s name.
“Customer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Customer. My name is Customer.”
“Bit odd, isn’t it?”
“It’s the best I could come up with.”
She nodded. “I’m sure it was, Mr. Customer. Now, let me know how I can do so, and I’ll be absolutely frothy to rid you of some, most, or all of your money.”
“I want a woman.”
“I think you simpleton’d something about that, yes. But what sort of woman are interested in?”
“Oh, you know the sort. Kind, loving–“
“Smart and beautiful?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all. Quite a common request. Any particular aesthetic, make, or model?”
“No, no. I’ll take whatever I can get. Just someone who loves me, is all.”
“But also smart, kind–“
“And beautiful, yes.”
“Of course. Anything else?”
“It’d be nice if she enjoyed the things I do, maybe understood me better.”
“I think I understand.”
“Well, do you have one?”
“One what?”
“A woman. I came here for a woman.”
“Mr. Customer, what we offer at ‘Bottom of the Barrel, We Get Paid, So You Get Laid’ is completely customizable companion design and printing of made-to-order, honey-glazed, hand-crafted artisanal friends, lovers, and assorted sexual playthings.”
“You mean, you don’t have any just laying around.”
“Sir, again, if that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for, then I suggest you get into politics.”
“No, no. I mean, you don’t have any off-the-shelf, over-the-counter women in stock?”
“Custom orders only, I’m afraid”
“Shame.”
“Yes, but I assure you our services are second to none.”
“Well if you have no women in stock, what could you possibly offer?”
“Options, Sir. Options.” She rose with a click of her heels and a wave of her hand, and the walls flickered and came to life with images of women of all shapes, sizes, looks, and attires. “You see, we’ve long discovered that while men such as yourself claim they’re looking for a smart, beautiful, funny, beautifully smart, and funnily beautiful romantic partner, what you’re actually looking for is a fictional surrogate to fill some contrived role in an utterly warped narrative of a poorly written love story that only exists in your head. Whether it’s the strong, independent femme fatale, the diminutive and submissive doll, or perhaps even a flirtatious lesbian whom only you can somehow magically convert into a heterosexual lifemate and plaything. Whatever outlandish concept of a woman you can fathom, we can fabricate.”
“This is insane.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Customer. I didn’t mean to offend.”
“No, no. I’m not offended – that was an impressively accurate guess.”
“We aim to please.”
“This all sounds a little too good to be true. How can you possibly have such a roster of willing women simply waiting to tend to the imaginative whims of a lonely man?”
“I’m afraid I’m failing you, Mr. Customer. Perhaps a demonstration.”
“Is there a charge?”
“Not at all. This is a free sample guaranteed to wash out with little more than soap and water.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well then, please do,” she said, directing him over to a large glass and metal pod. In the pod was nothing but a comfortable chair with a towel on it. “In just a few moments, you’ll perfectly understand what I mean.”
Not sure where this was going, but eager for it to end, Mr. Customer once again did as he was instructed and sat himself down in the comfortable chair. “What’s the towel for?”
“It helps us minimize the cleanup,” she said.
“Cleanup?”
She waved her other hand in a different way and the pod door closed. Two-and-a-half minutes on high and one adorable little ding of a bell later, and the door opened again.
“Well, what do you think?” the young lady asked. “We call this one the ‘Manic-Pixie Dream Girl.’ It’s very popular.”
Mr. Customer stepped out of the pod in a cloud of gas known to the state of California to possibly cause some kind of cancer, maybe, and seized on what he saw in the mirror. Meanwhile, a frighteningly accurate play-by-play of what he was seeing played over some nearby speakers, along with a pleasant little tune.
“She was a breastuous bit of leggy sex dipped in the sticky, erotic honey of a needy man’s dream,” a man’s voice started.
“What the hell?” the bit of leggy sex croaked.
The voice continued. “She played with her luxuriously unkempt hair, hastily tied up in a ponytail, and squeezed at the massive udders bolted to her chest, which were seemingly hoisted up by a series of cables and pulleys until they burst forth from her modest, low-cut, crease and crevice-hugging dress. All skewed slightly because of a pair of glasses now in her face.”
“What the Hell have you done to me?” Mr. Customer jiggled and bounced.
“Do you know how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly?”
“What? No. Not at all.”
“Well. It’s a lot like that, but not.”
“I meant why have you made me a woman? I came here for a woman, not to be turned into one.”
“Did you, Sir?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you sure that’s what you came here for?”
“Concussion aside, I’m fairly certain that’s what I eventually said, yes.”
“If you were referred to us, then I’m sorry to say that your ideal woman likely doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make one who does.”
The freshly baked bit of scrumptious tart screamed, but in the sense that he didn’t.
The young lady sighed. “Women are more than a collection of traits to be picked and plucked and thrown together like some macabre masturbatory stew, Mr. Customer. Some might even consider them people, with internal lives of their own and everything. “
“Isn’t that last bit true?” Mr. Customer groped and pawed.
“How should I know? I started this business so I didn’t have to bother with all that nonsense.”
“What, you don’t mean–“
“That I devised a way to take myself and any other man, put them into a metal pod, convert their physical body into an amorphous blob of malleable genetic material, and then reconstitute such a blob back into an ideal female physical specimen to suit their explicit, implicit, and exhibitionist desires, and all while keeping their male brains and identity full intact? Yes, that’s more or less the gist of it.”
“Huh.”
“I’ll admit, it does seem like a long walk just to avoid having to compromise my unrealistic expectations for the sake of emotionally bonding with another living soul.”
“Any complaints?”
“Not really, no. The men seem perfectly content with their new toys. And the women are happy to be rid of all the creepy little gremlins lurking about their ankles, waiting to catch a glimpse of something she never intended to show them in the first place.”
“Well as much as I do love playing with these fantastic breasts, I can’t help but feel this might be a little wrong.”
“Of course it’s wrong, Mr. Customer. There are those who spend their entire lives struggling to better themselves for the sake of finding love, or to become the woman they always knew they were on the inside. But here you and I are, men who have crafted a facade – a sexual fiction and image that exists solely to placate our uncouth, uninhibited animal urges at the expense of any tattered shred of respect for women.”
“Sounds like that might upset a lot of women.”
“Quite a few actually. But if any of my clients had the first clue about women, or what they thought about or felt, they wouldn’t come to me, now would they?”
“Well, when you put it that way…”
“I did.”
“Right. Well. I guess a test drive couldn’t hurt.”
“Wonderful! Would you like to wear this one out, then?”
“Actually. Do you have anything in a ‘bisexual-open-to-a-threesome?'”
What does the little spider in my head,
crawling in its dust and webs,
feasting on odds and ends,
have to say for itself?
As I cleaned my garage, I came across a sight,
behind Christmas lights, beyond a moldy quilt,
a gathering of silverfish kneeling in prayer,
before my porcelain bust of “Weird Al” Yankovic
Terry screamed and bled out all over the carpeted floor, and Paulence and Jennda bickered.
Aside from the blood-thirsty, flesh-craving ghouls now eager to force their way into their home, it had been an otherwise boring Sunday night at home up until just a few moments ago. Jennda preoccupied herself for most of the day by arguing with strangers on the internet about the racist connotations of ordering a burrito platter from a burger joint owned by a sweet Korean couple. Paulence, meanwhile, once more pleasured himself with a flaccid attempt at something resembling a novel, which mostly amounted to several social media posts about writing his novel rather than actually writing any of it. And it wasn’t until they got around to arguing about what to order out for dinner that they finally noticed their neighbor, Terry, had broken into their home, barricaded their door, and taken to dying and bleeding profusely all over their carpet.
“Terry!” Jennda huffed. “You know we just had the carpet cleaned last summer!”
“Sorry,” Terry coughed through a mouthful of blood and viscera. “I forgot.”
“I hope you plan on paying for another cleaning,” Paulence said.
“Actually,” Terry died, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Jennda clapped her feet and laughed. “You hear that? He wants to talk about it!”
“I’m sorry, Terry,” Paulence said. “But you’re bleeding all over our carpet. I really hope you don’t think you can convince us to pay for your mess.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Terry said with a gentle wave of – and splattering of blood from – what used to be his hand. “No, I wanted to warn you about all the zombies.”
“Is that what those are?” Paulence replied, looking out at the horde looking in from the living room window.
“I thought it was the Mormons again,” Jennda added.
“It’s zombies, I’m afraid.”
“How can this night get any worse?”
“I think I’m dying,” Terry replied.
“Don’t be stupid, you stupid, stupid man,” Paulence snipped. “You’re not dying.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re slowly turning into one of the undead.”
“I think maybe I’d rather die, if it’s all the same to you.”
“All the same?” Jennda spat, then spat a second time on Terry. “We respect the sanctity of life in this house, Terry.”
“That’s right. We won’t kill you until you’re already good and dead.”
“Undead,” Terry corrected.
“For God’s sake, shut up, Terry,” Jennda said, spitting yet again.
“Sorry.”
“You ought to be after suggesting such an awful thing,” Paulence continued. “There’s no need for such needless suffering and violence.”
“I’m suffering rather bad, to be honest.”
“Perhaps. But have you even stopped to think about how much worse Jennda and I would feel if we were forced to help you suicide yourself?”
“I’m sorry, guys. It won’t happen again, I swear.”
“I should hope not.”
And it was about that time that Jennda noticed she had been bitten sometime earlier by Mrs. Cervix from across the hall. “Uh-oh,” she uh-oh’ed.
Paulence groaned. “I’ll go get the gun.”
“Why does she get to be mercifully put down?”
“My body, my choice,” Jennda recited.
“First you bleed all over our carpets, and now you act like a misogynistic ass to my wife as she needlessly suffers a fate worse than death? You really are a selfish bastard, Terry.”
“No wonder your wife left you.”
“She didn’t leave me – she was the one who bit me.”
“And where is she now?”
“How should I know? She’s a zombie.”
Jennda scoffed. “A woman liberates herself from an abusive, ignorant piece of shit like you, and the only thing you can be assed to do is start with the name-calling!”
“I really think it’s time you left, Terry,” Paulence firmly, but politely suggested. “Terry?”
Several minutes of deathly cold silence and Paulence repeating Terry’s name until it stopped making any sense later, Jennda bothered to notice the unresponsive Terry was, in fact, dead. “I think he’s dead.”
“Better go get the gun, then.”
I was sitting at a table in the food court of an empty mall when the young woman working the Burger-on-a-Stik found herself plucked up into the air and torn in two by a very hungry, but rather rude creature that looked like a cross between a shaved possum and an albino frilled lizard. It was the lunch rush, so you can imagine the fuss people made when the young woman’s dismemberment ate into their diminishing thirty-minutes. And with this shaved and frilled albino possum-lizard cutting all the way to the front of the line, there were more than a few choice words thrown its way. Well, one thing led to the next, and the shaved and frilled albino possum-lizard plucked up and tore just about everyone in half. Given some of the things said, I can hardly blame the poor thing for being more than a little upset. Needless to say, I haven’t been back since, and have little desire to dine there again.
There is a time and place for which there is a time and place.
This is not the time,
nor is it the place, I’m sorry to say.
It is some other time that is not quite a good use of it,
some place that is not quite the point,
and either really could be defined in rather simple and direct terms
if one gave a shit about brevity.
This is not that, though.
It is, however, what one might call
A Complete Waste of Time.