Lady Boners

know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m going to tell you what you’re thinking. But I’m not. I just did. You see my magic?




I bet your neighbors would be pissed if you lined your home with fly paper – on the outside. It’d be one hell of an eyesore, but your house would be fly free. Except for that one that got in through the pipes. I think his name is Henry. I have to check. Wait. Yep, Henry. He plays squash with the mice.




You come to that point in your life where you feel you can afford a home, it’s called 65.




If I was a kangaroo I’d always keep a pouch inside my pouch just to be condescending to other animals that can’t carry all their groceries home.



The thing that bugs me about the Alien movies is what do they eat? I’ve heard all sorts of stories and, of course, the obvious answer – humans, but really, it never shows it. Anyway, there’s cokes in the fridge and Jeremy needs to be put to bed at nine.




They said he was punch drunk: sitting in the bar drinking punch all night he succumbed to over hydration. That and I really laid into him.




The thing about women is that…wait, I know this.




A hotdog is just a taco that has his shit together.




They should make a wind up toy that requires all sorts of tools and plans in order to wind it up. That way people would take better care of their wind up toys.




If you are destined to live in the zoo, then you are destined to be some sort of animal.




My favorite year is that one with the Macarena. That was a good year.




I’ll bet you that Space Mountain was once part of a habitable planet until they started using chloroflourocarbines….colorfloralhardons…those green house things.




What would be cool is if at a Monster Truck show they showed kids how evolution works. You know, like with a Toyota, a Hummer, and Truckasaurus. But I guess there’s that whole separation of Church and State thing. So, you know…




There was once a lady that literally danced all night. We called her The Girl with Epilepsy.




The thing about popcorn is that it can get stuck in your teeth. Other things about popcorn: it comes from corn, it can be microwaved, I have eaten it once or twice.




Why no sneeze guards in gardens?




The other day I was really wasted and started thinking about how come there’s no edible forks. And I don’t mean the kind that fall apart while your eating your pasta or whatever. I mean a fork that will last. That will be able to be doused in spaghetti sauce and still keep its integrity. That way you don’t have to – wait, we’d need an edible bowl, too!




It would be cool if they made a bunch of really tiny mustard packets. Like there’s about 20 that fit inside a regular size mustard pack. That way you could really make everything proportional on your hotdog or hamburger.




You ever pick your nose and a whole cheeseburger comes out?




I regarded the apple with curiosity: say there, apple – how do you be?
The apple then wrenched itself from my hands and hopped to the floor and just sat there. And sat there. Finally I had to kick it. There was nothing left to do.



I, too, have been spurned by lady love – spurned by her man boner!




Thomas cared not for the material life he had created and left the big city to go live in the mountains. After years of living off of the land he decided he was tired of living in the wild and built a spaceship and lived in space. From there on, no one heard from him. Until now: GUUYYYYYYS! GUUUUYYYYYYSSSSS!




If I were a betting man, I’d probably say the Earth will be totally fine for a few more years.




There was once a forgotten palace – a forgotten palace of underarm deodorant. Years ago, before the TV show Sledgehammer, there were a race of men who had advanced to such a degree that they were able to create and manufacture deodorant. They were Gods among men, until that day when the dinosaurs came and ate them.
Does the palace smell good? No, it does not. But that was the wisest guess.

March Madness

March Madness is a term for the time of year in Northern England when mystical mushrooms approach humans promising salvation.
Great crops of fungi approach the local English and sing a siren’s song of gold plated dreams and escape from boiled food.
To some, like late singer/songwriter Layne Staley, this was known as the Mad Season.
This is all according to a wiki on the interwebs that believes in oil futures and large pig-headed goats that roam the streets of New Orleans in search of “the best brunch around”.
Regardless, in America, it’s the time of year when St. Patrick’s Day and college basketball collide in an orgy of alcoholism and gambling.
Alcoholism and gambling go hand in hand like Democrats and Republicans. Everyone wants to get involved and everyone loses.
Here in the Western Washington, we have a number of Native American Indian casinos. It’s important to remember that in Washington our Indians are so hard core they are not only Native, they are also part of the West Indies. This involves lots of tax shelter information that I can’t explain right now – but our Native American Indians are LARGE. The casinos are a monument to Jack Nicholson suffering White Man’s Burden in a lodge somewhere in Colorado or Oregon, depending on your frame of mind.

It was early afternoon when we arrived with dumb smiles on our faces and printouts of brackets that would promise money.
You approach a casino like a new dog – with dog food.
And that’s the kind of money I brought with me – dog food.
That errant 300 that you can’t afford to lose, but figure you’re being good for leaving your debit card at home – which is a large mistake considering you will probably borrow money from your friends with the lame promise that “my cash card is back at my house”.

You start drinking coffee or coke and figure you’re not one of those diabetes riddled men in a wheelchair pushing your oxygen tank from machine to machine in the hope for just enough to be able to eat at Sizzler on Saturday.
And you aren’t. C’mon, you’re 35 and have plenty more life to waste.

Smart people play games with good odds, like craps. But, winners play machines.
From Dean Martin’s Wild Party to Lucky Lamps, there are plenty of animated games that scream WHEEL OF FORTUNE at you. And at first it’s funny. So ironic. And yet so dangerous. Pretty soon Pat Sayjack isn’t so funny.

Roulette is an ugly game. The type of people that play will sell you crack from the nearest homeless person’s pocket. They hang on the glass dividers around the table and slur insults at waitresses while drinking left behind Manhattans.

Blackjack is where you find junior high guidance counselors and other assorted pedophiles that enjoy hanging off furniture like dead fish as they tell you about that time they got a free room at the Flamingo and met Dolly Parton in a Chik Fil A.

Poker is where you find the degenerate gamblers that imagine they are gifted with a lethal dose of kickass to the point they spend their 401K loan on a pointless hours of trying to make their sunglasses more intimidating.

The rest of the games are things I can’t pronounce; ugly foreign version of Yahtzee and Sorry where everyone loses and they throw you down staircases taxi cabs away.

The handsome bar is where you learn to spend a little more for your drinks. Like when you order two glasses of absinthe and end up handing the waitress a 100. You think about it and there’s a perverse sense of satisfaction knowing you paid that much for drunky fuel and don’t realize that 2 + 2 equals you make 30 grand a year and don’t have a car.

There’s an ugly moment when you feel water fill your nose and you’re on your 18th beer and you’re rambling on to an old man about how a server works and how if you had been back there in 48 you’dve been just like him.

But then he starts coming on to you and threatening he’s the ex governer of the state and if you could put 1000 on black for him he’d be very happy. You turn and walk out of the bar and run into a Russian waitress with tits like Mt. Si. She offers you a drink, but you know better, you’ve awoke to that feeling of your kidneys not being there way too many times.
And you only had two.

It gets late and you decide to leave. Then you stare at your wallet and the contents and then figure it’s only 103 till you’ve lost a solid 300.

So, you go gamble some more. The whole time thinking about how well your brackets are you lose half the grand prize and then search around for an abandoned Manhattan at the nearest roulette table.

If I Were a Bear

Sometimes I’ll get bored and create legions out of the food in my house and make them fight each other. And, yes, the mustard is always a colonel.

The thing that bothers me the most about Seattle isn’t the rain; it’s all the misunderstandings when a woman tells me she’s wet.

Sometimes I’ll hit the mute button on my phone while ordering a pizza just to see how well I’ve got it down.

It’s a crap shoot eating expired food. On the one hand, you can get sick. But on the other you can discover some remedy to a disease you might have.

I once asked this woman out to dinner and to get out of it she said to me she had no mouth.

It’s not like I don’t like life, it’s more like I don’t know it well enough.

This one time when I was a kid I broke my toe. So, for a whole summer I couldn’t count to twenty.

What I like best about flying in a plane is looking down at all the people and how tiny they are and how from up there I have the biggest penis. Except for all the other guys in the plane. Maybe.

If you have grandparents still, you are lucky. They are nature’s national resource. Like coal they can be incredibly useful. And like gasoline they have a very pungent odor. But, unlike gold, they can not be melted down and made into things. This isn’t a joke. It’s more of a warning.

What’s that city that they say is the “city of lights”? Why not call it the city of shadows? That would be cooler and still would make sense.

Why don’t they make blinds for your bathtub? The drapes are so lame. I like the idea that I can open the blinds and see if it’s still sunny in my bathroom.

I have waking dreams where I’m getting really hammered.

Using a pencil without lead is pointless.

I was working out the other day and noticed the guy next to me was making grunting noises while he ran on the treadmill. So, I started moaning.

The thing I hate most about dieting is all the food I’m wasting by not eating it. I imagine all the different foods I could be eating and how I’m just wasting them. And then I think about Al Gore and environmentalists and then I really go ape on a pizza.

There needs to be more zoos with food instead of animals. You just take your kids and you look at all the cages of food. Then instead of little placards with information about animals, it’s information on how to make the food. But I’d still have a snake room.

This guy was on TV the other day talking about how dinosaurs never existed and that evolution was completely false. I think his name was Albert. Anyway, FYI.

Am I the only person who’s turned two TVs so they are facing each other and turned them on and really got turned on by watching them watch each other?

I’m a big fan of sex.

I bet those guys that throw knives at the circus start off with spoons. Then move to forks. Then the knives. The really good ones use chainsaws. I haven’t seen any really good ones.

The worst thing about the news is the tragedy. I couldn’t even make up some of the awful things I see on the news. Like that guy who took his wife and…see I can’t even make that up.

A fortune teller once started giving me mouth to mouth the second I walked in.

Children are little miracles. Like that one that I turned into wine.

One thing is for sure about Noah – he probably really stunk.

If I were a bear, I would probably teach the other bears how to run for president.

Interactions

It would be better if you didn’t do that. Seriously, stop it. I’m really not joking anymore. You need to stop doing that. OK, now I’m totally serious about this. I want to prevail upon you that if you don’t stop doing that, I’m going to do something. I don’t even know what. It’s hard to think about it while you’re doing that. But once you stop it for half a second I’m going to really let you have it somehow, after I devise a plan to do so.

Yeah, I’d just like to take back this frozen pizza. No, there’s nothing wrong with it. I’m just really broke and need the money for beer. But the customer is always right. And I’m right when I say you need to give me my money back so I can get drunk with it. See, I have some cheese and bread at home and now I don’t need this until payday. I’ll be back to buy it back then. I know this isn’t a pawn shop. I’m not blind. I was just there selling my Dad’s class ring.

Hello! I saw you had a “For Sale” sign out front. How much? That’s a little out of my price range. What about just for the kitchen? Yeah right, what? You’d make a bundle piecing the house. I don’t know why you’re laughing. This is the scheme of the century. You sell me that kitchen for 50 grand, then you sell the living room for a cool 100, each bathroom for 25, then the master bedroom for 100, and the two other rooms for 75 – that’s a cool I don’t know how much and you’d still have the garage to live in. Man, I guess you just don’t understand real estate and I need to use your bathroom.

I’ll race you for one of those Big Macs. Hey – you! I’ll race you for that Big Mac. Yes, you. Get it together, pal. It’s racing time. I don’t care what you’re doing with your family. You need to get out of that seat and race me out front for that Big Mac. Your kids can watch you lose. But in the end, you’ll be watching me eat that Big Mac. What are you? Chicken? Bawk, bawk, bawk. See, even your kids are laughing. You want me to stop? Oh, you’re getting up to get the manager. Don’t shove me. I want a race, not a fight.

Do you have any vowels? Huh? No. I want a vowel. It’s the letters A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Dude, Amazon has everything. You have to have vowels. Yes you can. I saw it on that Wheel of Fortune thing – ya see, I figure if I get a stockpile of vowels I can sell them on the street outside the studios in Burbank. Yeah, so you and me – we make some vowel money. I know Amazon is just stockpiling them for the same reason, but we can double cross them. Sometimes. Why?

OK. Kind of a situation here. It’s rather embarrassing, so could you ask that everyone in the office leave? I understand this is Urgent Care – but this is REALLY urgent and REALLY embarrassing. If you don’t do it, I will. OK. You’ve forced my hand. Everyone! Hey, everyone – the urgent care has run out of medicine! It’s in your house, and Jack’s house, and Susan’s house! I see no one is leaving. OK, I have a Milk Dud in my ear.

Some stuff about stuff

I was watching American Psycho the other night and I was thinking “I can relate.”

It’s not that I would like to kill people, it’s just that I think stabbing would be fun. Like as a sport. I would be good at it. You get real close to something and then just wam-wam-wam.

Remember that song Wham Rap? Now tell me you haven’t wanted to stab someone.

But murder is bad. You shouldn’t do it. I think. I can’t remember. It’s been ages since I’ve been to church. Sometimes I forget. Like the other day when I was worshipping that golden calf and in the middle I was like “Wait – I’m not supposed to be doing this.” That was a lot of clean up. Also, I had to figure out how to sell a golden calf. It’s not easy. Most people want half the cost for postage. Eventually, I just started riding it. It wouldn’t go anywhere. But I looked pretty boss, naked on my golden calf at Walmart.

A lot of people get down on Walmart for being mean or something. I can’t remember. It was in the news or something. Anyway, point is, people are mean to Walmart. It’s just a shopping center with cheap products – what’s wrong with that? Sure, they treat their employees like scum and run Ma and Pop stores out of business and have sex with my wife, but that’s how you keep margins low. Sure, every time you buy a gallon of orange soda an executive in Arkansas rapes a mule – but that’s the price you pay for orange soda savings – mule rape.

Rape is never funny. Not even when you’re talking about mules. Mules are people too. Think about it. And while you’re thinking about that, a mule is probably taking your job. That’s the way it goes when you live in the West: mules get raped and take your job. It’s the circle of life.

Why the circle of life? Why not a square. It’s not like the world is round. A lot of people will tell you it is – like creationists and gays. I’m pretty sure it’s those people – those guys that move their body parts into different positions and become cars. I think their god is Optimus Prime or something. Anyway, you shouldn’t hate Walmart.

Some people you should hate: that guy down the street who got mad that I was looking at his wife. Looking at his wife! That’s it. I was naked, I wasn’t in a tree, and I wasn’t touching myself. I simply looked at her and took out my phone and tried to see how much that model cost. When I couldn’t find it, I asked the husband how much he got her for. And, yes, I can see how that might be misconstrued – like I meant for sex or something. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I just wanted a housecleaner. When I tried to explain this, things got worse. Maybe because she had just had a stroke or the fact that I had lit his house on fire a couple weeks before, or maybe just because he was my Dad.

I don’t understand why people don’t get along with their Dads. Dads are great. Like this one Dad that I had when I was a kid. I think his name was Jim. Or Ronny. Maybe Ronny – Jim. Like we were hillbillies or something. Wait – that was Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton wasn’t my Dad. God, I wish I knew who my Dad was. Maybe I’ll ask the Dad I have now. He might no who the first model was. Then I could track him down and be like “DAD!” and then we could talk about old times. Like when he sold me to my new Dad for that mule.

If I could be one man on Earth for a day, it would be my Dad, Bill Clinton. He was once my Dad and once President. That’s two things I’ve never done before in my entire life. That makes him a hero to me. Like Patrick Bateman.

Jr. High

The library is empty and I’m spinning a metal rack of young adult books around. There’s one about a boy who wakes up with a third arm. I open it and page through looking for the point where he grows the extra arm.
There’s a clock on the wall and I look up at it and realize I only have three minutes to get to the cafeteria.
If you get caught in the halls between classes, you get in trouble.
I put the book down and move towards the door and grab the handle, but it won’t open. Something is on the other side pulling it closed.
I yell at the person on the other side, but the door doesn’t let loose. I let go and try the door again and it opens and outside is the school security guard dressed as Robocop.
“You’re late for lunch.”
“You were holding the door.”
“I was holding nothing. Nothing at all.”
He puts his arm around me and walks me out a window.
Then I just, you know, just kinda fall. Extra arms begin growing out of my body as I plunge down the side of a tower and into the ground in Dubai.
I wake up and examine the world back then. When I got into the library and when I fell into Dubai. There’s nine new arms growing out of my torso and I can type on nine different computers, nine different stories. Each one has a different flavor to what I was doing in the library. In one it’s not a book about third arms at all. It’s a book about bees. In another I’m laying on the floor of the library reading emails that are posted on the ceiling.
All of these stories happened at the same time.
I’m in a large building as I type. The sun is coming in through a window and I have to squint.
*“I am in a library. The lights are all out. There’s a woman in glasses staring at me from behind a desk. I lift my hand and wave and she doesn’t wave back. I pick up a book from a metal spindle rack and begin leafing through ‘Eskimos of the North’ and every page is a different picture of me in the library. One where I’m waving at the woman, one where I’m reading the Boy with the Third Arm, one where I’m lying on the floor…”*
I stop typing and notice the light is coming from an approaching object. I stand and look out the window and it appears to be a comet or asteroid. The horizon behind it is on fire and I look down and notice that the city below me is also on fire.
I hope the tower I’m in stands.
The object stops in mid air and slowly moves towards the window.
The room lights on fire and I sit down on the floor and try to breathe in the fumes before I catch fire.
I feel the tower tilt and fall beneath me. I look around and I’m facing the glowing mass as I sit in mid air.
It beeps at me like a Fax machine.
I look behind me and ask “Are you talking to me?”
It beeps again.
A sound from underneath it and a very large number of human bodies drop and fall to the ground.
“Are you talking to me?”
It turns and speeds off in the opposite direction, but a rope made of light leaps from it and twists around my ankle taking me with it.
The librarian asks me what I’m reading. I look down at the book and it’s a snapshot of the aircraft dropping bodies on Dubai.
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yes. What are you reading?”
“I’m reading a story.”
“May I see it?”
I hand her the book and she looks down at the picture in disbelief and then up at me. Then she looks down at the picture and starts walking backwards towards her desk.
She gets on the phone and quietly gives instructions to someone on the other end.
I spin the metal rack and pick out a new book called The Librarian is Calling the Police.
The door opens and the guard isn’t in the hallway now. It’s empty.
The floor is littered with candy wrappers and soda pop cans. BDP is being piped in through the school speakers and it's that song The Blueprint. I kick some popcorn and move towards a drinking fountain.
It’s marked Out of Order. I try it and it works.
I walk down the hall.
A door opens and police run passed me and down the hall. They run through me. Dogs and all.
I look behind me and they open a door and as they pass through it their uniforms turn into the Desert Storm uniforms from 91 and I see burning oil towers in the distance.
I hang a left and two girls are fighting in the hallway.
They yell obscenities at one another and then the one with brown hair grabs the other’s black hair and runs her head into a locker.
Blood.
The brown haired girl is trying to understand what she just did when a large cavity opens in the hallways and the girls go dropping into the Earth, followed by candy wrappers, lockers, Coke cans, and I think a PE teacher.
“What are you reading?”
I look down at the book.
“I think it’s a math book.”
“May I see?”
She takes the book and says “I remember this.”
She hands it back and I look at it and I can’t read the language. It doesn’t seem like any language I’ve ever seen.
“What is about?” I ask her.
“Oh, it’s about that time…” She spins her finger in the air as if she’s dancing.
“What time?”
“That time we rocked around the clock.”
“Bandstand?”
She nods and smiles. She’s tearing up. The janitor is tearing large swaths of the library apart with his hands and there’s nothing but abyss behind it all.
I look up and a woman is staring at me from behind a desk. Another desk.
I tell her the door won’t open.
“You can’t leave here until 2.20.”
“But I’m 35?”
“3.20. Keep it up.”
I look around the room and I’m the only person alive. The rest of the seats are occupied by dead kids.
Light comes in through the window a tail grabs me by the leg and we go shooting off into the moon.

Egg Rolls

They are projecting images in my mind. Nimbus clouds and rhombuses. Nimbus clouds and walruses.
Here in the center for the mentally unable.
I protest and when asked I only respond “I only see egg rolls.”
“You would.” A voice in my head responds.
The doctors shake their heads and say “You can do better than that.”
I stare at the walrus, the nimbus, and the rhombus. “I cannot do any better. I only see egg rolls.”
I imagine it’s better than playing along. I have no faith that I will be released from this very serious house, so why make my captors think they are progressing with my treatment?
“Eggrolls.”

Back in my room I greet David, my roommate. “Hullo, David!”
“Iggy Pop tried to rape me.” David says as he looks up from a game of Scrabble he’s playing by himself.
“Really, now? Is he still in the room? I would love to get an autograph.”
“No. He’s gone. He came to me in a dream. He also lost my dog.”
For the life of me I can’t figure out if David is playing nuts like me or is really nuts. Judging by his lack of taste for excrement like the others in here, I’m guessing he’s putting me on. Or, possibly, there’s nothing nuts about dreaming Iggy Pop raped you. I imagine you can’t be held accountable for dreams. I sure wouldn’t want to be. I mean, the pure numbers of times I’ve flunked out of college and shown up for the final naked after not studying all semester – my father would be pissed at that waste of money.
“David, do you ever want to get out of here? I’ve been here for almost ten years now and I know they won’t release me. All hope is gone.” I sit on my bed and put my face in my hands.
“You know, there’s more than one way to skin a goat.” David says.
I look up at him from between my fingers. “Uh, huh. And if that goat were an escape plan?”
David looks out the window and points. “There’s nothing there. Nothing.”
“Sure there’s something!” I stand. “Jobs, women, drugs, excess, freedom, cheeseburgers!”
“They serve cheeseburgers on Fridays in the cafeteria.” David says glumly.
“Yes. Of course they do. But don’t you, you know, want a life? A life of your own?”
“This is my life.” And David stares down at his Scrabble board and spells “freedom” off “eggrolls”.

Before I was caught, I was something of a cool guy. I had a great job, girlfriends, houses with an “s” and all the trappings of what it was to be a guy you wanted to be.
All of that changed with a simple encounter.
Something ugly came into my life and started sucking the life out of me. Something vile and parasitic. And if you think I’m leading up to a metaphor, you’d be wrong. It wasn’t drugs or women or disease – it was something alien.

“Are you going to eat that?” David asked me looking at the cheeseburger on my tray.
“David, you’re going to eat two cheeseburgers?”
“No. I want to give it to the janitor for a cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I don’t smoke now. Who knows if I’ll ever start. And then where will I be without that cigarette?”
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”
“I think everything through. All the way through. That’s why I’m in here. I think farther than the normal person,where most people stop is where I begin. And that stepping off point is what they call reality. If they only knew what’s really out there.”
“You told me nothing was out there yesterday.”
“Out there, there’s nothing.” David said pointing out the window. “But in here…” He points at his head.
“Eggrolls.”
“What is your fascination with eggrolls?”
“I just think they’re cool. People are eggrolls. Fried and burned up on the outside, but on the inside they’re…what the hell is that shit in an eggroll? Not the meat, the – is it sprouts?”
“I think you just choose not to think farther than reality. And I think, for you, it’s cowardice.”
“Then I guess I’m a coward.”

I was in bed and this orb appeared. Just hovering over the bed. I stared at it and tried to think of what it could be besides a green orb. It was 4ish in the morning. I stared for a minute or so and couldn’t come up with any ideas to make me content, so I turned on the lights and there in front of me was the alien.

“You know, I heard they sometimes let people out. For good behavior. Like Marvin.”
“Marvin committed suicide.”
David shrugged “See?”
“See what? That Marvin committed suicide?”
“No, they let him commit suicide.”
“You’re insane.”
“I already explained this.”
“So, who’s winning?” I looked down at the Scrabble board.
“I am.”
“You are vague like the sun is hot.”
“And do we know that?”
“That the sun is hot?”
“Yes, how do we know?”
“Everyone knows the sun is hot. This is stupid.”
“Have you touched it personally?”
“I don’t need to, scientists take decades of schooling to assure me that it is.”
“Then you’re basing your opinion on hearsay.”
“99% of life is hearsay.”
“You don’t say?” David played “orb” off “monster”.

It was about 15 feet tall, and hunched over my bed. The green orb was circling it’s black shape. I couldn’t move. I only looked up into its hideous red eyes and determined I was about to enter a place I’ve never been before.
“We read all about you.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Your people. We’ve come to assign you a task.”
Nothing. I could barely manage a breath.
“You are to help us…adapt.”

“You know, you’re pretty content for an insane person.” I say to David as I watch him play Scrabble.
“Being in content means never having to say you're sorry.”
“We need to escape.”
“Like Marvin?”
“Fuck no. I mean leave the grounds. Escape. Go back to humanity.”
“It’s gone. Look out there. What do you see?”
“Rolling hills and trees.”
“And beyond that?”
“Nothing, I can’t see that far.”
“Then why?”
“Because I was there. I know that there’s steak houses, bars, booze, drugs, girls, websites…”
“Are you the same person you were then?”
“It was ten years ago, I don’t even remember what I was like.”
“Then how do you know those things are still there and you’ll still like them?”
“Don’t get odd. Every conversation with you is odd. Can’t you just – you know, talk normal?”
“No. I already explained where you choose to drop off and I choose to begin.”

“We need to install ourselves on your world. As…” It’s shadow face gained texture as it wrinkled around the black mouth and “…guests.”
I finally managed “I have money. You want…money? There’s drugs in the cabinet in the kitchen. Take them. Just…stop talking to me.”
“We need certain knowledge of where certain things are. Am I speaking correctly?”
“Take the computer. It’s a laptop. Or, I know women?”
“For instance, I need a supply of greenhouse gas? Is that what you call it?”
“Sure. Greenhouse gases. I can get those.” I summoned the courage to rise. “What are you?”
“We also need food fast. The greasy kind. And cigarettes.”
“I have cigarettes here.” I offered it a shaking hand with a deck of cards in it.

David is out the window, holding the inside of the room in one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other. The storm outside doesn’t seem to deter him.
“I started smoking – I told you!” David yells at me.
I had been downstairs playing a video game and had come up to offer David a bag of Fritos.
“David, maybe you should come back in.”
“You don’t understand, this isn’t an easy habit to kick!”
“David, it’s raining! You’ll slip!” He’s crouched on the sill.
“I really need to quit!”
"You just fucking started!"

2

The light faded away around him and then all was black, except for a red dot in the distance.
He floated towards it as it sucked him in.
He looked around. The room was lined with burlap sacks and the stink of sulfur.
He cleared his throat and looked around once again.
"Nothing." He said to himself.
He looked towards the orb on his left that hung in the air glowing red now.
It chirped.
He looked towards a painting of Napolean on a horse, hung on the wall of bags.
The orb began to moan.
Glancing at the orb, he nodded and moved towards the door where the trail of blood led.
Opening it, he found himself in the board room once again.
"Charles, where the devil were you?" Hamstrand exclaimed to the room of suits.
"Go fuck yourself." Charles said and sat down wiping dust from his sleeves.
"Excuse me?" Hamstrand asked.
"Fruit loops. Harlem Globetrotters. Ed McMahon."
The board murmured and Hamstrand asked "Are you alright?"
"I'm not alright." Charles took out a cigarette and lit it.
"Hamstrand!"
"Oh, pardon the cigarette."
"The cigarette is hardly the problem."
Charles looked over at the woman next to him wearing the Nancy Regan red power suit. "I'm sorry." And he flicked the cigarette at Hamstrand.
"CHARLES!"
Charles moved towards the woman next to him, grabbed her face to his lips and blew. "Bbbbbbbbbllllllpppppp". She screamed and leapt from the chair and ran into the closed door.
Charles snickered as she fell to the floor.
Hamstrand was too busy hitting the security button to notice.
The room grew black as Charles had his millionth heart attack and slumped in his chair staring at the ceiling, at the red light.

3