The guy really did come from nowhere it seemed. We were all sitting in the grass field of a parking lot drinking away the day, waiting for the night, waiting for the real bands to hit the stage, and then suddenly there he was. Actually, if you want the truth, I did see him approaching from a distance, lumbering from side to side in his bright orange jacket, and I did make eye contact and give him a friendly little nod, but that’s something my friends will never know. I guess that’s why he decided to sit next to me.
“Shit man, I’m almost senile and I’m only 25,” was his opening line. He was cross legged on the ground and the statement had an air of pride - he laughed after he said it though, so you can take that for what you will. He smelled like everyone else at that festival, like a goddamn hippie. Yes, they still exist. It’s almost a sweet smell, a mixture of B.O. and half wiped ass baked in the sun, melded together by caked on dirt and sand and whatever juices they’ve drank or bits of food their beards have accumulated. This place was filled with that scent. It pervaded every crowd and lingered in every line. In the port-o-potties it would lay in wait and attack in full strength. I thought that in this open field we would escape it, but I was wrong.
“You know what I mean, brother,” was the next thing he said, and he said it to me. I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded, and he nodded back. He looked like an out of work Jack Black. A huge belly and short, stout legs. A beard that was long unkempt and two blue eyes that rested in his skull so glazed over and lazy they just screamed, “I do drugs.”
He looked around the circle and everyone looked back.
“Could I get one of those beers?” he asked. I thought it was downright rude and expected someone to tell him to fuck off, but Rob, the one next to the case was already drunk, and a big friendly bear, so he tossed him a can. The guy snagged it out of the air, and downed half of it in one chug. He used his dirty sleeve to wipe his beard.
“Ahh,” he said, “now that’s some good shit, am I right brother?” And I genuinely did agree. It was some good shit under this hot summer sun next to all these reflective car hoods, without a breeze or cloud or speck of shade to be found. Sure, alcohol and sunshine both act in a dehydrative manner, but that never stops the drinking. While the warmth is beating down, consequences are negligible.
He put up his hand for a high five and I wondered if LSD or Hepatitis could be transferred via palm to palm contact, but what could I do? I gave the hand a slap.
“Right on,” he said and I looked at my friends.
“So what’s your name man?” Rob came in. I was grateful, but at the same time wondered why he was being so friendly. The guy was clearly scum and I wanted him gone. It was me he was sitting next to, and it was our beer that he was drinking. Five dollars of that case was mine.
“I’m Derek.”
“That’s cool man,” said Rob. “Do you work here or something?” Derek laughed and gave a tug to his coat. Like I said, it was thick and bright orange, and he must have been sweating his balls off in the heat.
“Nope,” Derek replied, “I do not. The coat’s working though. It got you, and it got me in here for free.” He raised his pudgy wrist and waved it, laughing like a martian. A blue festival bracelet dangled around, nestling with thick, dark arm hair.
“Sick,” said Rob, and he took a sip of his beer. Derek did the same, and then asked for another, and Rob gave it up. The bastard. I looked across to one of my friends in the circle and his eyes widened. Derek cracked open the new can.
“So do you guys know where I could find any deemsters?” he asked. Immediately the silence of the group broke. One of the guys, Bill, laughed and darted his eyes around the circle as if this were the punch line to a joke. No one got it.
“DMT? No we don’t have any of that stuff,” Bill responded.
Derek laughed back, his throat gurgling like it needed to be cleared. “Damn, that’s too bad,” he said, “I’ve been looking for some deemsters all weekend. This place is dry.”
I looked down at Derek and tried to put some significance to the three letters. D.M.T. Dextro-morpho-something or another. A hardcore hallucinogenic drug that I’d never even seen on T.V. Damn. The drug was mysterious, like this Derek, so I decided to pull out my pad and pen.
“So yeah,” Derek continued and looked at me. I gave him a nod because I had no idea what he was referring to, and his glazed eyes lit up.
“You’ve done it?” he asked. It was like he’d found a brother, a co-conspirator, but I responded, “Me, no way,” and his eyes returned to their dull. He looked down and picked at a few grass blades and the group remained silent. No side conversations, no one flicking each other’s ear or horsing around, nothing. All eyes were on Derek.
“What’s that stuff like anyway,” said Bill, his voice small, but with an edge. The question was spurred out of curiosity, and probably voiced to ease the silence, but I could tell he was egging the guy on. The heat of the day called for some amusement. Reflective car hoods and tall grass, taken in by bloodshot eyes, in a beer after beer manner can get quite old. There were eight of us, and one of him. He would be our clown.
Derek looked up from the grass, but kept picking blades. On some he’d pull as deep as the roots and dirt would dangle in hair-like strands.
“You take life,” he said, “you know, life, it’s usually in 2-D. Well, a DMT trip is life in more than 3-D, it’s life in like, 3.7-D.” There were a few chuckles around the circle and that kept him going. “Yeah, I just love smoking deemsters man. It’s nice because the trip’s only like 15 minutes. But let me give you a word of advice. Don’t smoke em in your weed bowl. Your pot will taste like rubber forever. For-ever.”
“Now that’s some advice,” laughed Rob and we all joined in. Sips of beer were taken and the silence broke. Those sitting next to each other started talking, jump started out of their buzz and a warm wind picked up, comforting like a blanket, but loose like a sheet.
“If you want advice man, I’ve got it.”
I looked down at him and smiled, “Oh yeah?” I said.
“Of course,” he replied.
So I clicked my pen, found a fresh page in the pad, and gave it a heading: “Unconventional Wisdom?” Seated, Derek spread his arms, and began.
“Well first off, I don’t use any money, man. Everything is traded. For example, you stand on the corner of the street and hold up a sign that says ‘My family was raped and murdered by a clan of rival ninjas. Need money for Kung Fu lessons.’” His voice held an air of pride.
“Wwwhat!?” came suddenly from Stanley, the youngest of the group by three years. The kid’s mouth was agape, flashing bright-white teeth as he spoke. Feathery, blond hair shook with the shake of his head. “Does that work?”
“Yeah it works, we made fifty dollars off that one once.” Derek chuckled reflectively and leaned back, reclining on his arms. The belly that held all of our beer lay before him with a white crack revealed between tight shirt and shorts. I could see belly pubes. “But if you want to be more conventional,” and he said this right to Stan, “just run around the city screaming your ass off, banging a tambourine, setting off your friend’s car alarm – if you have a car – and hold up a sign that says ‘Will shut up for a dollar.’”
“That. Is. Awesome.” Stanley replied, wowed, and others in the group, older by those three years were wowed too, but wowed differently. Their wow showed its face in their silent cross leggedness on lawn chairs, in their white knuckled grip around beer cans that sweat like them in the sun and the heat and the situation. My wow, was a ‘Wow!’, explanation point and all in my pocket notebook. The breeze again blew, but now smelled of unwashed bedding. Of scum. Of Derek.
“Yeah, it is,” Derek crossed his hairy legs; they were caked in dried on dirt and I could hear the long grass scratch them. I didn’t know what would be said next, if anyone would question further, since the conversation had reached such an early climax, but then Rob pressed on. Rob, drunk off his big ass and silly. He said something to the effect of ‘so what do you do’/ ‘where are you from’ with the implicative laugh of ‘who the fuck are you, you strange, strange man?’ But that glossed right over Derek.
“I’m from Cali man,” said Derek, saying Cali like people from Illinois think people from Cali would say Cali, “but right now I’m living in West Lafayette, Indiana.” Immediately all eyes went from Derek to Dan, another kid in the group. He was wearing his school colors, black and gold, with the name, Purdue stamped across his chest. A connection had been made, and yeah it was intriguing, but apparently Dan didn’t see it as so. He was gazing with his head tilted back at the cloudless sky, responseless. I wasn’t even sure he’d heard what was said through that wild mop of hair of his covering his ears. Then Derek said, “You go there, man?”
Dan didn’t move but said, “Yeah.” He, like Stanley was younger, but only by a year. I didn’t notice when he started looking at the sky, and with that pale skin of his I hoped that he’d applied sunscreen, he didn’t need a burn. All the other’s eyes were fixed, glued, to Derek, even mine, but Dan was looking straight up. ‘I thought I was the only one who looked up there,’ I thought, and in my notepad I drew a line. Under it I wrote: “Sky so blue, do you look down upon me too?” Then I joined Dan looking skyward and saw the sun much farther to the west than I’d suspected. How many hours? How many beers? When did Derek get here, and when will he leave? When will we leave, and when will it end? All the answers I didn’t have, but Derek kept talking, and I kept listening. If the others were too, I don’t know.
“I usually just travel from festival to festival,” he said, “but to make money to support my dog I make jewelry. You guys should check me out on Myspace, do you have Myspace?”
Stanley said, “Yeah, I’ll hit you up man,” and Rob said, “You’re dog?” Dog coming out like glitter, leaving a smile in its trail. Derek however, did not smile back. Instead he sat straight up from reclining and became rigid. He licked his lips and took a swig of his beer, looking Rob right in the eye.
“My dog has beautiful physique, I take her everywhere.”
I wondered where she, this dog, was now. This claim was clearly a lie, but still, I was curious as to how faithful to it he really was – and if he was, how he managed to do so. Across from me, Stanley wiggled and giggled, probably at the words “beautiful physique” and the rest of the group did that fast exhalation of air you do when you hear something truly ridiculous. Only Rob replied.
“A beautiful physique?”
And cross legged in that long, green grass Derek became poetic. The breeze picked up again and carried his words, “She’s beautiful man, so sleek, and slender, and jet black like the night. Sexy really. I put neon tape to her fur so she looks like a service dog so I can take her on the bus and stuff. My baby. Beautiful physique,” to all of our ears. Then, taking his own cue, he pulled a packet of neon stickers from his pocket.
“I should spruce this jacket up,” he laughed, and peeled off a hot green star. Stanley replied, “Hell yeah, man,” and Derek slapped it on his sleeve. When he looked down at it in examination, his whole body did a shrug, and the belly, his burden, wobbled. Satisfied, he took a finishing gulp of his beer and threw the can over his shoulder. Its emptiness landed with a soft ping.
“Could I get another one of those, brother?” He looked only to Rob when he asked, but he wasn’t the only one looking at Rob. I glared at him, Bill stared at him, and Stanley flashed a smile and nodded. Rob passed him another can. When Derek cracked it, I took a sip of my own, it was becoming warm from disuse, and as I swallowed it I put pen back to pad. “One can get very far on personality,” is what I wrote, and I began to think about executives and diplomats and Derek’s future. I shuddered.
“So Derek,” I finally said, but before I could continue a loud guitar screech wafted its way over from the festival grounds. Everyone jumped, and Derek said, “Sick.” This meant I had to wait to ask my question, as they all got riled up from the noise, and remembered why they were there, and started talking and laughing, but through the excitement I got his attention – which was again his blank, glazen stare.
“So Derek,” I said, “have you ever gotten into any trouble for all this stuff?”
“Trouble? Trouble? Trouble? Trouble? You think I’d get into trouble man?” he scoffed, and everyone stopped their talking and listened in. “You think I get in trouble for that stuff? Ha!” And he actually said ‘Ha’. “Everyone knows that as long as you’re two states away, they don’t mind.”
“What do you mean, they don’t mind?” Stanley asked.
“Like felony wise, man.” Is what he said back, and of course I wondered if it was true, and I guess everyone else stopped to wonder it as well. We each went through what seemed like another beer, which seemed like ten minutes, but the period was really indeterminable. It passed, and then it was gone, but I can remember glimpses, I can remember feelings. I remember a bird flying overhead and wondering what he saw as he soared. Eight kids in a circle, and one man, all clutching golden cylinders and raising and raising and raising them to their lips till they were through, then reaching for another till the case ran dry. The man begging for more from the kids and making himself their jester so they wouldn’t say no. His skin unwashed and hairy, his hair knotted from lack of treatment, his eyes dull from all he’d seen and done, but his smile still shone, flashing those familiar, bright white teeth. He sat and picked at the ground with ferocity and intensity, punishing it. Around him sat the younger, watching in wonder, but in a wonder that bordered fear. Were we all the same underneath the blue, or were we different, as we appeared atop the green? The infinite paths that could be trodden all produced variance, how did Derek come to be? Was he all that he said, or just a good story teller who liked beer?
I looked back up to the sky, joining Dan, who still held his head upward with a grin, and a few of those big, fluffy, harmless, summer clouds floated their way into view.
Then the one who spoke first was not an interviewer, but the subject himself.
“So you guys wanna hear a funny story?”
And of course we did. Had we said no yet?
“Ok,” he swayed, “so last night my buddy was like, looking for his Molly,”
“His Molly?” Stanley interrupted.
“Yeah man, his Molly, you know MDMA?”
Stanley turned a bit red, and it wasn’t from the sun. He said, “Oh yeah, my bad,” and wobbled his head back and forth. “I’m a little drunk, man. I know what that stuff is.”
Derek looked down at the grass again and smacked the ground, “Sooo yeah,” he said, looking to the others of the group with the smile of a wolf, haggard and hairy. “He was looking for his Molly and I was like here it is man!” He broke into a gruff laugh, a guffaw, and rubbed his beard. He took a big gulp of his beer.
The wind blew in response, and we sat in wait for the rest. Derek seemed to have forgotten what he was talking about, as he paused and looked to the horizon.
“Well did he do it, then?” One of us finally asked.
“Yeah, but it had been cheeked.” Derek awoke and stood up with a quick jump, dropping his beer can where he sat. “It had been cheeked guys - it had been up someone’s ass.” He clapped, and put the group into a disgusted fit of laughter. But then he changed, then, as we were all laughing, buzzed and amazed and young and lighthearted, he looked to the sky. No one really noticed; everyone was all too wrapped up in the afterglow of the joke, talking about it, imagining it, debating over whether or not it was worth snorting cheeked drugs, and wondering if the guy who did them ever found out, but I saw. I saw Derek looking skyward, grounded on his stout legs stilly. He closed his eyes and took a breath, taking in the sweetness, enjoying, not moving at all. I couldn’t help but watch him, and I saw that there was no smile. His lips were hard pressed shut and his brow was furled. His pose struck me, and I wanted to write something poetic, something meaningful in my notebook, but nothing, nothing came to mind. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but couldn’t find it in me to speak. Around his neck, I saw a necklace made of intricately woven hemp, and garnished with three clear-blue glass bulbs in the center.
Derek looked down to the can at his side and kicked it. He turned to me and said nothing. We had a moment, eyes locked, him reading me, I reading him, then it passed.
“Well I gotta go guys,” he said. Everyone broke their conversations and looked to him, each differently. Rob smiled, and reached for another beer – a parting gift. Bill remained still and watchful. Others piped in with a collective, “Later man,” or “Peace” and Dan un-bent his neck to say “SEE YA DUDE,” with mock enthusiasm.
Stanley stood up and shook his hand.
“Thanks for the advice, man” he said. His lanky, youthful figure, light and playful, met with Derek’s bulk, and when Derek got hold of the hand he held onto it for a time longer than expected. Stanley shook it up and down, like you’d see in a silent movie, and added, “Take it easy,” as a polite way to say, ‘Okay let go’, but Derek did not. He held on, he clung, and his glazen eyes dove through Stanley’s skin.
“You guys want some real advice,” he said in monotone of voice and figure. No one said a word, and I looked to Bill two seats over. His eyes were fists.
Derek let out a sigh laugh and dropped Stanley’s hand.
“If you want some real advice,” he said, “it’s this. If a girl ever tells you to come inside her, don’t. Just don’t”
We all laughed, again, like every time before this guy had said a word, and Derek smiled like before, but this time, this time I knew it was forced. As I wrote what he said in my notebook, he turned and walked away, giving a blind wave and saying some sort of mumbled farewell, and everyone again said buhbye. I could hear him, from behind, crack open that last beer we’d given and I imagined him draining it in one chug, walking through that tall grass, under that hot blue sky, navigating the make shift parking lot back towards the festival. Back towards those hippies, back towards the noise.
Monday, September 28, 2009
The Process
I walk into the laboratory - white, shiny, clean, and authoritative, like the comforting cleanliness of a hospital. Like a hospital it emits a sterile smell that makes you feel the power of controlled circumstance. It is a circular auditorium with progressively raised seating; the encompassing white walls are windowless, but the room is lit from above by spotlights that dot the slant of the ceiling from down at the lab bench, all the way up to the last row of seats. At the bench The Professor is seated on a stool in his white lab coat and goggles. His head is shaved bald, and waxed to a shine. His upper lip, greyly and neatly mustachioed. He sits pensively before the bench, hands folded on his lap and eyes focused on the members filtering in through the door behind me at the top of the isle, as I walk down it and take a seat in the middle of an upper row. (I hate when people sit at the ends of rows, because then you have to squeeze past them to get to unoccupied seats in the middle. People who sit at the ends of rows are assholes of the highest degree. Furthermore, why would anyone want to put up with people squeezing past them anyway? It results in either a crotch or an ass to the face, so in addition to being an asshole, an end of row seater is most likely a pervert as well. I wonder if they sniff as people squeeze by). The digital clock above The Professor’s head stands out against the white wall, with its large green numbers, and milliseconds tick away. They will continue to do so until 18:00:00, when time stops (symbolically), and The Process begins.
The retractable cord set into the seat in front of me beckons, and I reach down and pull it out. The plug at the end goes into my hand, and I’m connected to the sub-Network that will be used. The last time I was in one of these, the last time I went to an actual Process, must have been right before I told them I didn’t want to do my First Titration. 3, 4 years ago. Nostalgia, the random firing of memoronic neurons in the gray matter of my skull, that’s what I’m feeling.
“Status: Processing,” I try to type into the screen in my hand to update my homepage, but the connection to the cord prevents it. Once taking part in a Process, one must devote their entire attention to it, and the Network is full of distractions, so they block it. Instead of my homepage, I am confronted by a Procedure for today’s Process.
1. opening audio: a postulation for the population
2. first lecture: the chemicals that control you
3. secondary audio: you can never really know
4. second lecture: physical predestination
5. Titration and Consumption
6. group recitation of The Hypothesis
The spotlights begin to dim. The clock reads 17:58:46. A few last people shuffle in the back door and a silent murmur floods my ears. People talking to one another before the Process, while I am alone, in the middle of all the sound. Professor O’Brien remains still before his lab bench and all his instruments. His head shines in the spotlight that focuses on him and the bench. The titration burette, filled with carbonic acid awaits step five. Below it, the solution to be titrated sits clear, and unknown to all among the audience. Erlenmeyer flasks, glass stirring rods, and a Bunsen burner accompany the titration set, along with various other instruments I would probably know the names of if I were more devout.
The back door locks shut behind one more member who enters, now at 17:59:30. She rushes to a row, my row, and sits down right next to me, when there are about six other seats available. I look forward, pretending to focus on the lab bench, as if I don’t notice her presence, but she whispers to me.
“Hello Karth.” And immediately the smoky seductive emission reveals her identity, even as the dimness of the room hides it.
“Megan,” I reel to my left, and whisper in response, now becoming a murmur among the crowd. “What are you doing here?” I continue quickly, but before she can answer, the clock stops at 18:00:00, and Professor O’Brien rises. The crowd falls silent.
“Welcome everyone, to this week’s Process,” he begins in a soft, trembling voice, “I reason that you are all ready to expand?”
“Precisely,” the crowd, myself included, responds strongly, as we all know we’re supposed to.
“Very well then,” his voice becomes a bit more steady, “we shall begin,” and he lowers his head and spreads his arms to maximum width. His lab coat unfurls like two giant, white, dove wings, glowing underneath the spotlight. He stands for a moment, the room is silent in anticipation. I look over to Megan, she’s watching with eyebrows raised.
Clap. The Professor flaps his wings once, ending with a single clap above his head. The room goes dark, except for the green glowing digital 18:00:00 above the lab bench. Then the music, an erratic, electric piccolo melody, starts in an unexpected blast, coming from the circular wall that surrounds. A bass thump works its way in so loud that it probably alters the crowd’s heart beat, as we all bob our heads to its command. On the wall behind the lab bench a red blur illuminates, and it too starts to beat with the bass, like a giant heart. The blur then comes into focus, and forms the shape of a giant pair of lips. The lips open, and start to rap to the music. At the same time, my left hand vibrates, and I look down - the lyrics appear on my screen. The same is true for the rest of the crowd, and together, with the red lipped leader, we all stand and rap the opening song, all whilst Professor O’Brien skips back and forth before the lab bench, flapping his lab coat wings like a pleasant dove.
I got a postulation for the population
What?
It’s in your left hand, did you feel the vibration?
What?
Now you may say to me that that was just a sensation
What?
But sense is all you’ve got in this life’s duration
Yeah!
Yeah, sense is what you feel, it lets you know what’s real,
But what’s real for me, you might not see,
So it might not be, the same reality
We nothing mo’ than cells, in which a conscience dwells
By the facts that is supported, but it’s just what’s been purported
And one day we might abort it, so don’t be too quick to just retort it.
Yeah!
And the song ends as abruptly as it began, and it feels good to have sung it with the crowd. It feels good to be a part of something, so I look over to Megan and smile. She smiles back, but it’s forced – judging, or maybe off put by the Truth. The lights come back on and O’Brien stops his skipping and takes his place before the lab bench.
“Members,” he trembles, only this time a little louder than before, “that was a very accurate rendition of The Postulation. I feel that feeling of pride, and you should feel it too, but if you don’t, don’t feel the feeling of worry, for worry gets you nowhere, except in an early grave.”
“Precisely,” we respond in unison.
“It is a grave thought, to think about the grave, a thought that can perhaps evoke the feeling of fear, am I right?”
“Yes,” about half the crowd responds in an unofficial, offset unison.
“But you’ve got to realize that fear, like pride, and worry, and any other feeling that you may feel, is just a product of the chemicals.” He pauses, and his tremble fades away to a stronger, clearer tone. “The chemicals, that control you. What’s funny, or should I say, what creates the chemical reaction that makes something feel funny, is that even the realization that you are being controlled by chemicals inside of you, is just another product of those very chemicals. The chemicals that control you, are you. And what are we, but what we believe! And what is a belief, but a chemical reaction!”
“Precisely,” the entire crowd lets out to relieve the mounting tension of the lecture.
“And what is your response?” O’Brien probes.
“A reaction!” We, the crowd react, or respond, or in other words, let the Professor know that we’re still on the same page (whatever being on the same page means) and we still comprehend (chemically) the message that he’s trying to get across. I, contained within this crowd, within this Process, am just a process myself. It’s a lot to process, and as a younger man, I couldn’t handle it, and left, but now, well now, I’m more familiar with uncertainty.
“All so apparently true,” O’Brien goes back to a tremble, “But remember, what we now call chemicals, they once called elements. They once believed the Sun was their maker, then they believed it was God. Now we, we simply say, we don’t know, but we know how it works, and maybe one day, we’ll know what makes it work.”
“Precisely,” and with that the room goes dark, and our left hands once again rumble. A spot light shines on O’Brien, and he spreads his lab coat. This time, instead of flapping and skipping, he decides to do the Can-Can, and he kicks his black booted feet chest high as the song opens up with a sitar, jumping around a tambourine beat. The rhythm reminds me of what I believe India must be like, and the red blur comes up on the wall above the 18:00:00 and starts to beat much faster, as the sitar twangs with a panic. The red lips form, open, and move, as do mine and the crowd’s.
Ooooooooooooooo
You neva, no you neva, no you neva really know.
No you neva, no you neva, no you neva, can really show
That what you think, is how it is
That what you say is true
What’s hers is mine, what’s yours is his
The sky ain’t even blue
Cuz you neva, no you neva, no you neva really know.
No you neva, no you neva, no you neva can really shoooooooooooooooooooooooow!
This song takes about 30 seconds to sing, and when I say about, I mean I really have no idea, because time has been “stopped” within The Process. Maybe it lasted a minute, maybe it stretched to two; for all I know it was an hour long, but it did seem rather quick and my heart is beating rather fast. People around me are even sweating. Yes, people are sweating. From a song. I don’t know what disgusts me more, the very sight of the glistening sweat, or the fact that the people who are sweating must be so incredibly out of shape that they break a sweat from singing (what I assume to be) a 30 second song.
Megan and I sit back down, she’s not sweating, but when I look to her, she looks back and shakes her head. She reaches down to her hand, as if to text me what the shake means, but is automatically frustrated when she realizes that texting, like Network access is blocked. I lean over into her personal space, a bold move, and my heart rate picks up faster than anyone else’s in the room. I start to sweat from my pits more profusely than the fattest bag of human chemicals in the whole laboratory.
“What is it,” I ask her in a quick whisper.
“You have a weird religion,” she looks me right in the eye from two inches away. The brevity of her statement doesn’t hit me until after I stop fantasizing about kissing her again. Her plump, pink lips mask the message that her mouth has conveyed, and for a moment we’re back in her single, Hooked-Up to a Program, and the suction pouch is suctioning away. Then I snap out of my adolescent sex fantasy, only to be fully offended by what she has actually said.
“Religion? You think this is a religion…” And I’m about to get into a full fledged whispering tirade, but an electric shock works its way from my left hand up into my entire body, completely paralyzing me.
“Mr. McCarthy,” The Professor rages. He knows my name by the same reason he can selectively shock any chattering audience member – we’re all connected. His bald head is beet red, and from all the way up in my upper row I can see multiple veins surging between his skull and thin scalp skin. The auditorium turns in my direction, and I can feel myself turning a similar shade of red, completely mortified, and paralyzed by the voltage pumping throughout my body. I want to get up and run, I want to say, “I’m sorry sir, but this girl just called the Truth a religion,” I want to cry and grovel and go back in time and not whisper to Megan, but time has been stopped (kind of) in this laboratory, and my tear ducts are in a state of paralysis.
“Do you understand the concept of time,” he asks as his tremble gives way to a tremendous boom that’s just as immobilizing as the electricity. The question is rhetorical, yet he waits for a response as if a response is his expectation, when we both know that I cannot physically provide one. Sitting here, writhing before him, while his head gets redder and the veins on his scalp pulsate faster and grow larger, I have no idea what to do. Our gazes are locked and O’Brien is either a) theorizing as to why I have chosen to speak out of turn during a Process or b) completely overwhelmed by the “feeling of anger” and is about to make an example out of me.
He chooses Option B:
“Because if you did, you’d realize that you’re wasting the time of every single person in this auditorium by speaking during The Process, including your own! It’s utterly appalling! If you wish to speak to the young lady on your left, you should do so on your own time. You didn’t come here to chatter, now did you?” He pauses for a breath, and the irony of the situation, the fact that during a Process, as is clearly shown by the giant green 18:00:00 above the lab bench, time is supposed to be irrelevant, hits me. “You are aware,” he continues, now becoming a time waster himself, “that you only have so much of it, hmm?” And I notice that the electric shock is gone, and probably has been for a few seconds. My paralysis is now a product of fear, but the fear subsides. I break his gaze, look over to the young lady on my left, who is equally mortified, and look back to O’Brien. He meets my eyes with his, and waits for a response, one that has the potential to be “Fuck You,” but takes the form of, “I’m sorry Professor.”
“Sorry means nothing, Karth. Sorry is to atone for a past event, but we all know atonement is not revision. You must think of the future, for…”
“The future is now.” The crowd reverently responds, now transfixed by the exchange between a small, pale, man boy, and a fuming, beet red, cue tip. I remember number four on today’s lab procedure, O’Brien hasn’t wasted a moment, he’s going to incorporate me into the lecture.
“Karth,” he continues, as if he’s addressing me and only me. I want to run down the auditorium stairs and punch him in the head. “You, and I, and everyone, and everything, Everything is a piece. Everything is connected. Everything is subject to the Laws,” he says this and everyone in the room lowers their head and interlocks the fingers of their hands before themselves as if they’re performing a solitary intimate hand holding, “and all that is matter, is all that matters! You are matter, therefore you have a trajectory!” He proclaims this as if he’s just made a brilliant discovery; the hidden personal frustrations at his own less than genius, but certainly intelligent mind coming through in the tirade. At this point, telling me I have a trajectory, a destiny, he’s probably realizing that he does as well, and it’s teaching Chemistry and preaching to college kids at a state university, not unlocking the mysteries of the universe through theorem like the scientists he idolizes and worships.
But I’m still curious what mine is, and as O’Brien turns to the screen behind him, and starts to calculate, I’m feeling very intrigued – but maybe that’s just because I’m supposed (those damn chemicals). I take the break in his gaze as he turns as a chance to look over at Megan. The calm composure of her relaxed green eyes has turned strained, her fake tan turned to a pasty pale white. Any chance that I ever had with her, let alone any chance I ever had of Hooking-Up with her again, is as gone as the moments that have just passed in which the previous events have unfolded. Although what is happening now, this crazy display of Truth, will fade into the past, I’m sure Megan will never forget it. She will dwell, and if she does wish to forget, she will have to forget me as well, to completely erase the trauma. Crazy songs, crazy ideas, the electrocution of a member, it must all seem too much.
“Mr. McCarthy. Karth McCathy, what an amusing name,” Professor O’Brien professes as he turns from the calculation board. The crowd chuckles and he allows it, watching me motionlessly writhe in anger. I want to run down the aisle and cause his gleaming bald head an incredible amount of pain. To take those goggles in a hand and snap them back into his face while forcing a strong guided toe into his sac, all the while cackling in rage. Or to punch him square in the jaw, something I’ve never actually done to anyone, but am confident I could pull off professionally before this crowded auditorium. Either of these actions, along with a multitude of other equally violent acts that race through my brain as he mocks my name would satisfy my bloodlust, and would probably shock the fuck out of entire room, but I am no shocker. I sit, cemented to my seat as O’Brien continues, on the brink of what I presume is an anger induced heart attack (that probably can be hypothesized to be the current condition of both of us, as O’Brien is still beetishly red).
“You’re familiar with Physical Predestination, I take it? The prediction of future events through Physics?” I nod in agreement, imagining a laser beam shooting from my forehead and hitting him in the chest, blowing a hole through it with the fire of thirty-seven suns. “As one can predict the final destination of a rolling ball, given its attributes, the same can be done with the fate of a human life. And I stress fate, everyone, I stress it. Free will is a conjuration! A side effect of the human mind, which persists in believing that it is more than it really is!”
“Precisely,” the crowd responds as he addresses them. The explanation was unnecessary, as I did clearly nod that I knew what he was talking about, but O’Brien’s fate is that of one who enjoys to hear himself talk.
“Anyone can know their Physical Predestination, their ‘fate.’ It’s nothing more than a calculation. Granted, one must remain truthful of their actual attributes when plugging them into the formula, but if tabulated honestly, a person can know what they will be doing at any given moment of their life, up until death.” His voice trembles as it did before. Such a pathetic quiver, such a pathetic man, delivering his lecture as if he were the one who discovered the Truths he preaches, and not merely a man deriving pleasure from making an example out of a misbehaving youth, like he were a grade school teacher disciplining a rowdy child. He’s calculated my future up there on that white screen, his math, plainly there for everyone in the audience to see, and for the astutely mathematic to interpret without his aide, but he’s going to continue lecturing until ultimately delivering his final blow – a glimpse into my future.
“Using the Predestination Formula, I have taken a moment in the future and derived where you will be and what you will be doing. The math behind the formula is beyond the scope of this lecture,” he adds condescendingly. “To simplify it however,” with an emphasis on “simplify”, implying that I am nothing more than a simpleton, “I have merely mapped the trajectory of your matter, this is your wavelength, and it is what you interpret as your life.”
By code of the Truth of Science, O’Brien is not allowed to reveal this moment to me without my consent. He knows this, I know this, the whole damn room sans Megan knows this, and we all know that we all know it. One’s fate is some pretty heavy shit, you know? But I Karth McCarthy, the silent rebel, want to show O’Brien and this whole gawking room just how strong and rebellious and cool I can be. I’ll say, “Sock it to me motherfucker, I want the whole thing,” and maybe it will salvage Megan, and maybe it will even make me some friends, because we both know I need some of those.
“Would you like to know it, Karth, would you like to see your future, knowing full well that it is unchangeable…and most likely pathetic?” Some crowd members gasp at this insult. It’s apparent that O’Brien’s a little wrapped up in the feelings of contempt and hateful anger, perhaps derived from self loathing, and with that last syllabic tic, they were a little too much revealed. Emotion is a scientist’s worst enemy, and this is a fact that I use to my advantage.
“Yes I wooo-huld.” I attempt to vocalize firmly, as a man without fear of the repulsive red quack quacking before him about Physics and fate, but my voice cracks and I sound more like a scared boy asking his little crush to the 6th grade dance. (I’m afraid to tell her how I feel mom, and I’ve got this zit on my chin, and there’s just hair in strange places, and for the first time in my life I’m feeling the constant perception of myself by my peers!) The auditorium is silent though, not a single giggle at my crack, as would have happen in any high school classroom. I’m sitting among the silent and mature. I’m among those who have a solid grounding and know where their lives are going, and all that adult shit, but, as I ask for my fate, as I ask O’Brien to tell me where my life is going, all these young adults look as though they’ve seen a ghost. “The ghost of Christmas future! Hell no, keep that ugly son of a bitch away from us!” they (somehow) think (as half of them probably don’t even know what Christmas is). O’Brien freezes too. His mouth quivers instead of his voice, the lower lip vibrating up and down below the upper, making a soft patting noise – the only noise in the whole laboratory. He has turned from beet red, to a shade of pink, and his eyes bulge, bug like underneath his lab goggles.
I’m a god. I think I’ll make that my Status when, or should I say if, I leave this Process.
“Mr. McCarthy…” he responds, thinking for something to say, looking for some way to describe this anomaly, a scientist confronted with an exception to theory. “This has gone on long enough. We must move on.” He exhales and remembers that there are about 200 hundred other sacs of matter in the room, but as he looks away he leaves me with a contemptuous little smile. “We shall continue. Members, let us titrate.”
And while the electric shock has stopped and his eyes have moved on, I refreeze.
I can’t believe it.
Such build up and no resolution.
A roaring tirade ending with a casual brush to the side, as if nothing happened at all.
As if nothing happened at all.
I look to my left, to Megan, for some form of consolation, explanation, sympathy, or even a confused stare.
But she is gone.
The retractable cord set into the seat in front of me beckons, and I reach down and pull it out. The plug at the end goes into my hand, and I’m connected to the sub-Network that will be used. The last time I was in one of these, the last time I went to an actual Process, must have been right before I told them I didn’t want to do my First Titration. 3, 4 years ago. Nostalgia, the random firing of memoronic neurons in the gray matter of my skull, that’s what I’m feeling.
“Status: Processing,” I try to type into the screen in my hand to update my homepage, but the connection to the cord prevents it. Once taking part in a Process, one must devote their entire attention to it, and the Network is full of distractions, so they block it. Instead of my homepage, I am confronted by a Procedure for today’s Process.
1. opening audio: a postulation for the population
2. first lecture: the chemicals that control you
3. secondary audio: you can never really know
4. second lecture: physical predestination
5. Titration and Consumption
6. group recitation of The Hypothesis
The spotlights begin to dim. The clock reads 17:58:46. A few last people shuffle in the back door and a silent murmur floods my ears. People talking to one another before the Process, while I am alone, in the middle of all the sound. Professor O’Brien remains still before his lab bench and all his instruments. His head shines in the spotlight that focuses on him and the bench. The titration burette, filled with carbonic acid awaits step five. Below it, the solution to be titrated sits clear, and unknown to all among the audience. Erlenmeyer flasks, glass stirring rods, and a Bunsen burner accompany the titration set, along with various other instruments I would probably know the names of if I were more devout.
The back door locks shut behind one more member who enters, now at 17:59:30. She rushes to a row, my row, and sits down right next to me, when there are about six other seats available. I look forward, pretending to focus on the lab bench, as if I don’t notice her presence, but she whispers to me.
“Hello Karth.” And immediately the smoky seductive emission reveals her identity, even as the dimness of the room hides it.
“Megan,” I reel to my left, and whisper in response, now becoming a murmur among the crowd. “What are you doing here?” I continue quickly, but before she can answer, the clock stops at 18:00:00, and Professor O’Brien rises. The crowd falls silent.
“Welcome everyone, to this week’s Process,” he begins in a soft, trembling voice, “I reason that you are all ready to expand?”
“Precisely,” the crowd, myself included, responds strongly, as we all know we’re supposed to.
“Very well then,” his voice becomes a bit more steady, “we shall begin,” and he lowers his head and spreads his arms to maximum width. His lab coat unfurls like two giant, white, dove wings, glowing underneath the spotlight. He stands for a moment, the room is silent in anticipation. I look over to Megan, she’s watching with eyebrows raised.
Clap. The Professor flaps his wings once, ending with a single clap above his head. The room goes dark, except for the green glowing digital 18:00:00 above the lab bench. Then the music, an erratic, electric piccolo melody, starts in an unexpected blast, coming from the circular wall that surrounds. A bass thump works its way in so loud that it probably alters the crowd’s heart beat, as we all bob our heads to its command. On the wall behind the lab bench a red blur illuminates, and it too starts to beat with the bass, like a giant heart. The blur then comes into focus, and forms the shape of a giant pair of lips. The lips open, and start to rap to the music. At the same time, my left hand vibrates, and I look down - the lyrics appear on my screen. The same is true for the rest of the crowd, and together, with the red lipped leader, we all stand and rap the opening song, all whilst Professor O’Brien skips back and forth before the lab bench, flapping his lab coat wings like a pleasant dove.
I got a postulation for the population
What?
It’s in your left hand, did you feel the vibration?
What?
Now you may say to me that that was just a sensation
What?
But sense is all you’ve got in this life’s duration
Yeah!
Yeah, sense is what you feel, it lets you know what’s real,
But what’s real for me, you might not see,
So it might not be, the same reality
We nothing mo’ than cells, in which a conscience dwells
By the facts that is supported, but it’s just what’s been purported
And one day we might abort it, so don’t be too quick to just retort it.
Yeah!
And the song ends as abruptly as it began, and it feels good to have sung it with the crowd. It feels good to be a part of something, so I look over to Megan and smile. She smiles back, but it’s forced – judging, or maybe off put by the Truth. The lights come back on and O’Brien stops his skipping and takes his place before the lab bench.
“Members,” he trembles, only this time a little louder than before, “that was a very accurate rendition of The Postulation. I feel that feeling of pride, and you should feel it too, but if you don’t, don’t feel the feeling of worry, for worry gets you nowhere, except in an early grave.”
“Precisely,” we respond in unison.
“It is a grave thought, to think about the grave, a thought that can perhaps evoke the feeling of fear, am I right?”
“Yes,” about half the crowd responds in an unofficial, offset unison.
“But you’ve got to realize that fear, like pride, and worry, and any other feeling that you may feel, is just a product of the chemicals.” He pauses, and his tremble fades away to a stronger, clearer tone. “The chemicals, that control you. What’s funny, or should I say, what creates the chemical reaction that makes something feel funny, is that even the realization that you are being controlled by chemicals inside of you, is just another product of those very chemicals. The chemicals that control you, are you. And what are we, but what we believe! And what is a belief, but a chemical reaction!”
“Precisely,” the entire crowd lets out to relieve the mounting tension of the lecture.
“And what is your response?” O’Brien probes.
“A reaction!” We, the crowd react, or respond, or in other words, let the Professor know that we’re still on the same page (whatever being on the same page means) and we still comprehend (chemically) the message that he’s trying to get across. I, contained within this crowd, within this Process, am just a process myself. It’s a lot to process, and as a younger man, I couldn’t handle it, and left, but now, well now, I’m more familiar with uncertainty.
“All so apparently true,” O’Brien goes back to a tremble, “But remember, what we now call chemicals, they once called elements. They once believed the Sun was their maker, then they believed it was God. Now we, we simply say, we don’t know, but we know how it works, and maybe one day, we’ll know what makes it work.”
“Precisely,” and with that the room goes dark, and our left hands once again rumble. A spot light shines on O’Brien, and he spreads his lab coat. This time, instead of flapping and skipping, he decides to do the Can-Can, and he kicks his black booted feet chest high as the song opens up with a sitar, jumping around a tambourine beat. The rhythm reminds me of what I believe India must be like, and the red blur comes up on the wall above the 18:00:00 and starts to beat much faster, as the sitar twangs with a panic. The red lips form, open, and move, as do mine and the crowd’s.
Ooooooooooooooo
You neva, no you neva, no you neva really know.
No you neva, no you neva, no you neva, can really show
That what you think, is how it is
That what you say is true
What’s hers is mine, what’s yours is his
The sky ain’t even blue
Cuz you neva, no you neva, no you neva really know.
No you neva, no you neva, no you neva can really shoooooooooooooooooooooooow!
This song takes about 30 seconds to sing, and when I say about, I mean I really have no idea, because time has been “stopped” within The Process. Maybe it lasted a minute, maybe it stretched to two; for all I know it was an hour long, but it did seem rather quick and my heart is beating rather fast. People around me are even sweating. Yes, people are sweating. From a song. I don’t know what disgusts me more, the very sight of the glistening sweat, or the fact that the people who are sweating must be so incredibly out of shape that they break a sweat from singing (what I assume to be) a 30 second song.
Megan and I sit back down, she’s not sweating, but when I look to her, she looks back and shakes her head. She reaches down to her hand, as if to text me what the shake means, but is automatically frustrated when she realizes that texting, like Network access is blocked. I lean over into her personal space, a bold move, and my heart rate picks up faster than anyone else’s in the room. I start to sweat from my pits more profusely than the fattest bag of human chemicals in the whole laboratory.
“What is it,” I ask her in a quick whisper.
“You have a weird religion,” she looks me right in the eye from two inches away. The brevity of her statement doesn’t hit me until after I stop fantasizing about kissing her again. Her plump, pink lips mask the message that her mouth has conveyed, and for a moment we’re back in her single, Hooked-Up to a Program, and the suction pouch is suctioning away. Then I snap out of my adolescent sex fantasy, only to be fully offended by what she has actually said.
“Religion? You think this is a religion…” And I’m about to get into a full fledged whispering tirade, but an electric shock works its way from my left hand up into my entire body, completely paralyzing me.
“Mr. McCarthy,” The Professor rages. He knows my name by the same reason he can selectively shock any chattering audience member – we’re all connected. His bald head is beet red, and from all the way up in my upper row I can see multiple veins surging between his skull and thin scalp skin. The auditorium turns in my direction, and I can feel myself turning a similar shade of red, completely mortified, and paralyzed by the voltage pumping throughout my body. I want to get up and run, I want to say, “I’m sorry sir, but this girl just called the Truth a religion,” I want to cry and grovel and go back in time and not whisper to Megan, but time has been stopped (kind of) in this laboratory, and my tear ducts are in a state of paralysis.
“Do you understand the concept of time,” he asks as his tremble gives way to a tremendous boom that’s just as immobilizing as the electricity. The question is rhetorical, yet he waits for a response as if a response is his expectation, when we both know that I cannot physically provide one. Sitting here, writhing before him, while his head gets redder and the veins on his scalp pulsate faster and grow larger, I have no idea what to do. Our gazes are locked and O’Brien is either a) theorizing as to why I have chosen to speak out of turn during a Process or b) completely overwhelmed by the “feeling of anger” and is about to make an example out of me.
He chooses Option B:
“Because if you did, you’d realize that you’re wasting the time of every single person in this auditorium by speaking during The Process, including your own! It’s utterly appalling! If you wish to speak to the young lady on your left, you should do so on your own time. You didn’t come here to chatter, now did you?” He pauses for a breath, and the irony of the situation, the fact that during a Process, as is clearly shown by the giant green 18:00:00 above the lab bench, time is supposed to be irrelevant, hits me. “You are aware,” he continues, now becoming a time waster himself, “that you only have so much of it, hmm?” And I notice that the electric shock is gone, and probably has been for a few seconds. My paralysis is now a product of fear, but the fear subsides. I break his gaze, look over to the young lady on my left, who is equally mortified, and look back to O’Brien. He meets my eyes with his, and waits for a response, one that has the potential to be “Fuck You,” but takes the form of, “I’m sorry Professor.”
“Sorry means nothing, Karth. Sorry is to atone for a past event, but we all know atonement is not revision. You must think of the future, for…”
“The future is now.” The crowd reverently responds, now transfixed by the exchange between a small, pale, man boy, and a fuming, beet red, cue tip. I remember number four on today’s lab procedure, O’Brien hasn’t wasted a moment, he’s going to incorporate me into the lecture.
“Karth,” he continues, as if he’s addressing me and only me. I want to run down the auditorium stairs and punch him in the head. “You, and I, and everyone, and everything, Everything is a piece. Everything is connected. Everything is subject to the Laws,” he says this and everyone in the room lowers their head and interlocks the fingers of their hands before themselves as if they’re performing a solitary intimate hand holding, “and all that is matter, is all that matters! You are matter, therefore you have a trajectory!” He proclaims this as if he’s just made a brilliant discovery; the hidden personal frustrations at his own less than genius, but certainly intelligent mind coming through in the tirade. At this point, telling me I have a trajectory, a destiny, he’s probably realizing that he does as well, and it’s teaching Chemistry and preaching to college kids at a state university, not unlocking the mysteries of the universe through theorem like the scientists he idolizes and worships.
But I’m still curious what mine is, and as O’Brien turns to the screen behind him, and starts to calculate, I’m feeling very intrigued – but maybe that’s just because I’m supposed (those damn chemicals). I take the break in his gaze as he turns as a chance to look over at Megan. The calm composure of her relaxed green eyes has turned strained, her fake tan turned to a pasty pale white. Any chance that I ever had with her, let alone any chance I ever had of Hooking-Up with her again, is as gone as the moments that have just passed in which the previous events have unfolded. Although what is happening now, this crazy display of Truth, will fade into the past, I’m sure Megan will never forget it. She will dwell, and if she does wish to forget, she will have to forget me as well, to completely erase the trauma. Crazy songs, crazy ideas, the electrocution of a member, it must all seem too much.
“Mr. McCarthy. Karth McCathy, what an amusing name,” Professor O’Brien professes as he turns from the calculation board. The crowd chuckles and he allows it, watching me motionlessly writhe in anger. I want to run down the aisle and cause his gleaming bald head an incredible amount of pain. To take those goggles in a hand and snap them back into his face while forcing a strong guided toe into his sac, all the while cackling in rage. Or to punch him square in the jaw, something I’ve never actually done to anyone, but am confident I could pull off professionally before this crowded auditorium. Either of these actions, along with a multitude of other equally violent acts that race through my brain as he mocks my name would satisfy my bloodlust, and would probably shock the fuck out of entire room, but I am no shocker. I sit, cemented to my seat as O’Brien continues, on the brink of what I presume is an anger induced heart attack (that probably can be hypothesized to be the current condition of both of us, as O’Brien is still beetishly red).
“You’re familiar with Physical Predestination, I take it? The prediction of future events through Physics?” I nod in agreement, imagining a laser beam shooting from my forehead and hitting him in the chest, blowing a hole through it with the fire of thirty-seven suns. “As one can predict the final destination of a rolling ball, given its attributes, the same can be done with the fate of a human life. And I stress fate, everyone, I stress it. Free will is a conjuration! A side effect of the human mind, which persists in believing that it is more than it really is!”
“Precisely,” the crowd responds as he addresses them. The explanation was unnecessary, as I did clearly nod that I knew what he was talking about, but O’Brien’s fate is that of one who enjoys to hear himself talk.
“Anyone can know their Physical Predestination, their ‘fate.’ It’s nothing more than a calculation. Granted, one must remain truthful of their actual attributes when plugging them into the formula, but if tabulated honestly, a person can know what they will be doing at any given moment of their life, up until death.” His voice trembles as it did before. Such a pathetic quiver, such a pathetic man, delivering his lecture as if he were the one who discovered the Truths he preaches, and not merely a man deriving pleasure from making an example out of a misbehaving youth, like he were a grade school teacher disciplining a rowdy child. He’s calculated my future up there on that white screen, his math, plainly there for everyone in the audience to see, and for the astutely mathematic to interpret without his aide, but he’s going to continue lecturing until ultimately delivering his final blow – a glimpse into my future.
“Using the Predestination Formula, I have taken a moment in the future and derived where you will be and what you will be doing. The math behind the formula is beyond the scope of this lecture,” he adds condescendingly. “To simplify it however,” with an emphasis on “simplify”, implying that I am nothing more than a simpleton, “I have merely mapped the trajectory of your matter, this is your wavelength, and it is what you interpret as your life.”
By code of the Truth of Science, O’Brien is not allowed to reveal this moment to me without my consent. He knows this, I know this, the whole damn room sans Megan knows this, and we all know that we all know it. One’s fate is some pretty heavy shit, you know? But I Karth McCarthy, the silent rebel, want to show O’Brien and this whole gawking room just how strong and rebellious and cool I can be. I’ll say, “Sock it to me motherfucker, I want the whole thing,” and maybe it will salvage Megan, and maybe it will even make me some friends, because we both know I need some of those.
“Would you like to know it, Karth, would you like to see your future, knowing full well that it is unchangeable…and most likely pathetic?” Some crowd members gasp at this insult. It’s apparent that O’Brien’s a little wrapped up in the feelings of contempt and hateful anger, perhaps derived from self loathing, and with that last syllabic tic, they were a little too much revealed. Emotion is a scientist’s worst enemy, and this is a fact that I use to my advantage.
“Yes I wooo-huld.” I attempt to vocalize firmly, as a man without fear of the repulsive red quack quacking before him about Physics and fate, but my voice cracks and I sound more like a scared boy asking his little crush to the 6th grade dance. (I’m afraid to tell her how I feel mom, and I’ve got this zit on my chin, and there’s just hair in strange places, and for the first time in my life I’m feeling the constant perception of myself by my peers!) The auditorium is silent though, not a single giggle at my crack, as would have happen in any high school classroom. I’m sitting among the silent and mature. I’m among those who have a solid grounding and know where their lives are going, and all that adult shit, but, as I ask for my fate, as I ask O’Brien to tell me where my life is going, all these young adults look as though they’ve seen a ghost. “The ghost of Christmas future! Hell no, keep that ugly son of a bitch away from us!” they (somehow) think (as half of them probably don’t even know what Christmas is). O’Brien freezes too. His mouth quivers instead of his voice, the lower lip vibrating up and down below the upper, making a soft patting noise – the only noise in the whole laboratory. He has turned from beet red, to a shade of pink, and his eyes bulge, bug like underneath his lab goggles.
I’m a god. I think I’ll make that my Status when, or should I say if, I leave this Process.
“Mr. McCarthy…” he responds, thinking for something to say, looking for some way to describe this anomaly, a scientist confronted with an exception to theory. “This has gone on long enough. We must move on.” He exhales and remembers that there are about 200 hundred other sacs of matter in the room, but as he looks away he leaves me with a contemptuous little smile. “We shall continue. Members, let us titrate.”
And while the electric shock has stopped and his eyes have moved on, I refreeze.
I can’t believe it.
Such build up and no resolution.
A roaring tirade ending with a casual brush to the side, as if nothing happened at all.
As if nothing happened at all.
I look to my left, to Megan, for some form of consolation, explanation, sympathy, or even a confused stare.
But she is gone.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Angel. Kitten. Mermaid: Volume 1
David Richardson awoke to the drone of his standard digital alarm clock. It was cool and bright in his bedroom as a spring morning came through the un-blinded, open windows and his bed (jersey sheeted and comfortably down comforter blanketed) felt wonderful against the brisk April morning air. Friday was this day’s designation, and the friendly blue sky, and yellow sun, and singing birds, and burgeoning grass blades, all told Dave it would be a wonderful day to be alive. Dave however, had only one thought on his mind as he opened his eyes and slammed an open palm down on the alarm clock, and it wasn’t “what should I have for breakfast.” Dave had more important, gut wrenching, self defeating thoughts to attend to, and as he got out of bed he couldn’t help but ask himself the one question he had gone to bed pondering and had failed to resolve within the realm of dreamland – What is the point and Why am I here?
Now really, that’s two questions, so I apologize for misspeaking, especially so early in this story, but, for Dave they were two questions that came packaged together. You see if he knew the point of his existence, well then maybe he could figure out why he was alive, and conversely, if he knew why he was alive, well then maybe he could find some ultimate point in it. Dave knew that these kind of thoughts were normal…at least he told himself they were and hoped tremendously that he was right, but as far as he had seen during his thirty years on Earth, no one ever seemed to bring these questions up. Yes, Dave realized that they could be soul crushing, and were often quiet morbid, horrifying questions, but how could they simply be ignored??? Does a person ignore terminal cancer? Does a person ignore a festering wound? Does a person ignore a blood sucking tick they find nestled in their scalp? No! No! No! was the answer you’d get if you asked Dave. He knew that the questions he was asking were just part of the human condition and he knew that they were in no way positive, but for the past ten years, he simply couldn’t shake them. In short, religion wasn’t really Dave’s thing; he thought counseling was a scam (or a crutch); and he was too much of an introvert to bring the topic up with his friends – friends that had somehow shed similar dilemmas through the creation of careers and families – two things Dave was lacking.
Dave did have a job though, (as do many Americans in their early thirties) and it was this job, at Midwestern Family Insurance that he was getting up for at 6:00 am on this fine Friday morning. And, as Dave threw off the covers, got into the shower, breakfasted, and drove to his cubicle he simply asked himself – Why?
* * *
Dave drifted off to sleep.
He was once again on his double mattress, alone, under the jersey sheet and down comforter, but now he was breathing in that cool night air that had replaced the mildly warm April day. Dave was thinking about nothing in particular, because he saw no point in doing anymore than that. He was merely lying face up in bed, staring at his white ceiling, waiting to fall asleep.
And then things got really weird.
“HELP ME DAVE!!!” The room’s silence was suddenly broken by the helpless shriek of a young girl. Dave sat up, his heart pounding as it hadn’t in at least 143 months.
“Help me, please!” The voice pleaded again, this time pain stricken. It was the voice of a young girl without a doubt, probably around eleven or twelve. The direction it was coming from was indeterminable, but Dave was certain he had heard something. Minutes passed, and his room remained silent, but a creeping doubt, the product of living alone, that the voice wasn’t real and that he was actually crazy worked its way into his brain. He tried to brush this fear aside and lay back down in bed. His heart resumed a normal pace, as did his breathing, and once again Dave was lying awake on his back, only now he wasn’t just blankly staring at the ceiling. To question one’s own sanity, to ponder the possibility of schizophrenia, or to fall asleep and pretend nothing had happen? Such was David’s crux.
“Dave, I need your help!” the voice screamed. Dave shot up again, this time certain of his insanity, and ran to the telephone across the room. He picked it up, intending to dial 911 and report a psychiatric emergency, requesting an immediate dosage of Thorazine. The phone to his ear revealed however, that there was no dial tone, no hope for sanity.
“David Richardson?” the voice of the screaming girl seemingly asked through the ear piece. Dave flipped shit. He wanted to hang up and run to the window and jump out, even if he was only one story high and would probably only break his ankle. He wanted to go into the kitchen and bite through the skin of his recently purchased avocado and make guacamole in his mouth. He wanted to punch himself in the kidney and put a finger in the microwave (somehow while it was still connected to his body) and run the thing for 30 seconds on defrost. He wanted to feel something, anything that was real. But, Dave’s behavior was constrained by his human body, so he froze with the phone glued to his ear and said nothing.
“Is this David Richardson?” the voice asked again, like a pre-pubescent telemarketer, quick and demanding (that is, as demanding as an eleven year old girl can be, which when you think about it can be pretty demanding. Think Barbie, or a kitten, or how about Christmas time?). Not knowing what else to do, Dave answered, but he hid his fear, as any grown man is expected to do, and gave it to her tough.
“Yes it is. And who is this, and if I may add, do you have any idea what time it is?!” Dave felt like a father figure in a 90s sitcom.
“Oh good,” the girl responded, “this is Angel Kitten Mermaid, I need your help, so welcome to my world.” And Dave’s room vanished, giving way to a white spinning vortex that swept him off his feet and carried him away. Angel Kitten Mermaid was transferring Dave to another dimension (if you want to use the human vernacular) and she didn’t have any idea what time it was, because to her, time did not exist.
* * *
Dave spun through the vortex and shrunk to the size of your average chipmunk. He was unaware of this however, because the vortex was completely white, he was spinning, and only one thought occupied his mind, “What is going on?” Now Dave had had this thought before, but in a much different context. Many times, on any given day in the past really, from age 20-30, he would look around the world and ask himself, “What is going on? Why are things the way they are?” The question, for a while was incessant, as was the longing for an answer, but Dave never found an answer. In the beginning, when the questioning of reality was endless, Dave was driven near the point of insanity, a term that one can never truly define; but, in time his anxiety eased and he eventually accepted the world for what it was, a mystery. He had made it. He had crossed the threshold from adolescence to adulthood relatively sane and sound and ready for the uncertainty to come. Currently however, anxiety and dizziness were being felt in incomparable amounts, and Dave simply couldn’t bring himself to say “What’s the point of getting so worked up?” For once, he actually had no idea what was going on. Uncertainty was now an angry pimp slapping his low profit whore in the face. Dave was the hysterical hooker who had thought she had seen it all, but who was now receiving an ugly surprise.
The vortex spun faster and its whiteness fractalized. Dave was spinning, and at each new angle of rotation, seeing a different color. This was happening very fast however, and the colors more or less blended, causing a sickening effect most likely due to sensory overload, and Dave vomited. His vomited swirled out from his mouth as he spun, and became part of the spiraling vortex - like pre blended food in a blender, it simply stuck to the walls. Feeling better, but still very confused, Dave actually thought for a minute he was in a futuristic Skittle’s commercial. He often had thoughts like these, well not specifically that he was in futuristic candy commercials, but that he had been put into situations and had no idea, or control as to how he had gotten there. Well, actually, this never literally happened to Dave, per se, but he regularly thought, “What if I went crazy for a while and did something, and never remembered doing it, and upon returning to sanity had to deal with the consequences. Like what if I murdered my friend and I didn’t even know I did it? What if I was simply hi-jacked by insanity and did some crazy shit, and then became sane again?” It was this method of reasoning that led Dave to believe that he was in said Skittle’s commercial, but as the vortex stopped spinning, this thought seemed a bit ridiculous.
Now free falling, through what seemed to be a sky of blue, and still chipmunk sized, Dave assumed a diving position, for he felt it would give him more control as to where he would land. He reasoned that he was falling at a rate faster than gravity, because he had been given an extra push by the spinning vortex just exited, and was most likely falling onto another world, where the rate of gravity would likely be different. Dave was wrong though. He wasn’t actually falling. In reality, he was being shot upward from the core of the planet that he thought he was falling onto. The white, then colorful, spinning vortex that Angel Kitten Mermaid had sent him through transferred Dave to the center of her planet, a planet that was made entirely of water, and now, Dave was actually being shot through this water to its surface. The fact that Dave couldn’t breathe, was a fact that he was entirely unaware of, but it was negligible, as this whole shot through the core of a water planet took only .45 seconds, using Earth time, but there on Yoooftah, time was irrelevant.
So Dave continued to apparently fall, and as he fell, that all too humanly innate fear of death tightened its bastardly grip around his core. He had thought about death before, (who hasn’t?) and recoiled at its ultimate imminence, but he had never really been faced with any near death, life threatening experiences. Angel Kitten Mermaid, knowing Dave’s thoughts, and having sat back long enough watching Dave spin through a vortex and shoot upward through her planet, without giving him any soothing word or reassurance - because she thought it would only frighten him, as it had on the “telephone” - decided it was time to say something. She waited for an unknown amount of time (but let’s say it was less than .45 seconds, probably around .1-.14 seconds) and watched him shoot upward.
“I’m going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” Dave, her hero, who didn’t even know he would be her hero, thought. She liked the idea that her hero was facing certain death, and saw it as a means of preparation, for if he were to save her, he most certainly would have to face it again. “I have done nothing, I have wasted my life trying to find meaning,” Dave continued in a philosophy that can only be produced milliseconds before seeming death.
“Dave, you will not die here.” Her voice was no longer pleading, or panicked, or even demanding as it had been on the phone. To Dave, it sounded like the voice of a daughter he didn’t have yet. It sounded like his younger sister, as a child. It sounded extremely normal given the circumstances to Dave’s chipmunk proportioned ears. He wanted to respond to the voice, but he couldn’t move his lips, due to the acceleration of the fall (shot upwards). His mouth tasted like lemons from the bile in his stomach from the vomit he had vomited, but he couldn’t even open it to spit, let alone talk. This was bothersome, as he was not only completely freaked out by the childish voice in his head, but also, completely unable to tell it to shut up.
“But back up a minute David!” the narrator and the reader scream upon reading this. “Angel Kitten Mermaid, whoever she is, is talking to you via some form of mental communication, not verbal! Had it occurred to you, you dimwitted sac, that maybe you could reciprocate the conversation in a similar manner? Hmmm!?!” And Dave, for whatever reason, recognized this possibility. And it seemed pretty cool, especially now, in light of the fact that he wasn’t going to die. It was pretty neat, you know, that here, falling through some foreign blue sky at an unknown rate, without a parachute, he wasn’t going to die, and he was participating in ESP with an unknown little girl. ESP did have its drawbacks though. Like what if he wanted some alone time? What if he wanted to have dirty thoughts about an attractive co-worker, or watch a porno in the privacy of his own home? He couldn’t expose an 11 year old girl to such perversions. “And what if” (and this is way out there) “she’s evil, and hijacks my mind, and makes me do things, like rob convenience stores in woman’s clothing, proclaiming justice and liberation in the name of Lord Darshon, supreme ruler of my mortal mind?!” thought Dave. He then realized that this little girl, whom he was still ESPing with, had gotten all of that, and was most likely deeply disturbed.
“You’re not crazy David,” she reassured him, wondering who Lord Darshon was, and questioning the valor of her potential hero.
Aware of his communicative abilities, apparently via mind waves, Dave decided he would talk back to the little girl, as he had no other option. He tried to remain calm, but all that came out was, “What the fuck is going on?” Upon saying this, he felt somewhat guilty, having said “fuck” to a little girl, but the circumstances, as Dave saw them, were pretty radical.
And Angel Kitten Mermaid, perplexed at his guilt, told Dave exactly what the fuck was going on.
“You are David Richardson, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” said Dave, feeling himself fall faster, and noticing brightness in the direction of his destination. For a moment, the sight evoked the thought of heaven, but this was extinguished immediately by Angel Kitten Mermaid.
“Dave, I already told you, you’re not going to die! You’re not even falling. You’re shooting upwards through the core of my planet!” she explained, frustrated, for there was much more to explain, and little time to do so, (which is why she left out the fact that her planet was made of water, and that Dave didn’t need to worry about breathing whilst submerged because time didn’t really exist on Yoooftah, and blah blah blah[1]).
“Ok, ok, but I repeat, little girl…what the fuck is going on?”
Angel Kitten Mermaid did not like Dave’s increasing snappiness, nor did she like being referred to as “little girl.” Who was this mere mortal, Dave Richardson, to so snobbishly call her “little” when she had literally transported him from his home, through a Taste the Rainbow Vortex, into another dimension and another world? Hubris - the tragic flaw of her hero. Angel Kitten Mermaid simply sighed at Dave’s imperfection as she informed him.
“David, my name is Angel Kitten Mermaid,” she began, only to be interrupted.
“Angel Kitten what?”
“Angel Kitten Mermaid!”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dave asked bluntly (as bluntly as the description of the way he asked it). Angel Kitten Mermaid could feel his genuine perplextion, but it infuriated her, much like his hubris. Curiosity - another human tragedy, she thought, and she thought it with free reign, as Dave couldn’t feel her feelings like she was feeling his. Although Dave believed he was partaking in ESP, it was really only one way, for Angel Kitten Mermaid, was at the moment controlling his brain so that he could communicate with her. She reflected on Dave’s anxieties towards the hi-jacking of his brain and chuckled – it was a good thing she needed him, and that she wasn’t inherently evil.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid! I am an Angel, and a Kitten, and a Mermaid!” Angel Kitten Mermaid sang to the tune of the chorus of Amy’s Grant’s, Baby Baby[2]. To Dave, the song was soothing, and as he visibly calmed, Angel Kitten Mermaid continued.
“Dave you are here because I need you. I have summoned you from Earth, here to my home planet Yoooftah, because I face a problem, and I believe that you have the ability to help me.” She knew that upon saying this, Dave would want to know what an Angel Kitten Mermaid was, where Yoooftah was, and most likely, once again what the fuck was going on. She also suspected that he wouldn’t want to know about her problem, as Dave was a pretty self important guy.
“An Angel Kitten Mermaid, is I, for I am the only one on the planet Yoooftah, and to my knowledge the only one in the 5th Dimension.”
“That’s some heavy shit,” thought Dave to himself, but as a consequence of the ESP, to Angel Kitten Mermaid as well. For a minute he was pretty sure that he was having an acid flashback, but as he was still falling, and unable to do anything else, he continued to listen.
“I am part Angel, part Kitten, and part Mermaid, as my name implies. I cannot show myself to you, yet, as you are still within the surface of Yoooftah, but when we do meet, expect to see a little girl with a kitten like upper body, a mermaid fin for legs, a white pair of wings, and a golden halo. Meeeeeeeeeow!” She added the meow for validity, although at this point, she was pretty sure Dave would believe just about anything. Then again, maybe he would never believe anything else for the rest of his life.
“And although I do appear to be an 11 year old girl,” she continued, “I am actually quiet ancient. I have been on Yoooftah since its creation, and I am essential to its survival. That is why I have summoned you, for my survival has been threatened, and my planet faces destruction.”
The brightness that Dave had been watching come closer throughout his fall now encompassed the whole of his vision. He was slowing, and his body was returning to its normal size. It seemed as though he was about to emerge from the deep end of a pool after a particularly long dive. Despite the reassurances, Dave was still 75 percent sure he was dying, and when he emerged from his watery trajectory, he certainly thought he was in heaven (a product no doubt of his pseudo-Christian upbringing which he continually rejected throughout his life, but like so many other “believers” found in the face of death).
Anyway, the heaven that David shot into, Yoooftah, was a green skied water world and although he was unaware of it, the entire surface of the planet was indeed aquatic. As he emerged, Dave thought back to biology class in college, a class he had taken due to an innate interest in living things and the hope of becoming a biologist. He soon discovered however, that there were just way too many living things to ever possibly study and that biologists didn’t really do anything but study them, so he gave up his dream to become what would become a future insurance salesman. This was about the time Dave started hating his life, and also the time that Angel Kitten Mermaid foresaw his destiny. Now, she watched his face lighten as inhaled his first breath of dopamine laden oxygen and inspiration returned to a face that had forgotten its meaning for nearly a decade. His eyes took in the mysterious emerald sky which faintly reflected the shimmer of the deep blue sea. Green and blue – colors of life, the colors of Yoooftah, and the colors of ecstasy. A calming humidity, a perfect humidity, the humidity one hopes to achieve through use of a room humidifier, cool yet completely agreeable, surrounded Dave and pacified his frantic mind. He had been taken from a dark pit of domicilic despair, and thrown into a world of liquefied peace - but an ominous gray was on the horizon.
“Dave!” cried Angel Kitten Mermaid gliding down from the emerald sky on two white, feathery wings, this time completely verbal. Her appearance was exactly as she had described it, and Dave was immediately transfixed. “Dave! Dave! You made it, you’re alive!” Alive? Dave wondered why she seemed so surprised. Hadn’t she repeatedly assured him that death was the last thing he had to worry about during his travel down the vortex? This creature, this Angel-Kitten-Mermaid seemed relieved however, as if Dave’s transference had been one tinged with the threat of death.
And he was right. Angel Kitten Mermaid had not informed Dave that the vortex was the first one she had ever created, and that statistically, the first vortex any vortex creator on Yoooftah creates has a 90% failure rate, ending in disfiguration of the transferred item (death being a complication of the disfiguration of living “items”). But, that was beside the point. She hadn’t told him because she knew it would freak him out, and he had made it anyway - so maybe fate was smiling upon her, and Dave, and the whole damned planet of Yoooftah.
“Angel Kitten Mermaid I presume?” Dave questioned, trying to sound suave but not appearing so as he clumsily tread ocean water.
“Yes Dave, it’s me! You made it, I’m so glad!” she responded in the voice of a small excited girl.
“So…as I’ve said before,” Dave began, once again trying to sound suave, and once again failing, and at the same time wondering why he was trying to sound suave in the first place and wondering what the image of suavity would even do for him in this strange world, “what the FUCK is going on?”
“I’ve told you David, you are on the planet Yoooftah, and you’re here to save it, through saving me.” She said this calmly, not understanding what he didn’t understand about the situation, and as she said it Dave felt that maybe he was beginning to understand. Tirelessly, he continued to tread water, cramping not and barely straining, due to the aforementioned dopamine in the aforedescribed air. Worry melted away, the water felt wonderful, and Dave conceded that even if he was in heaven that that was okay, and that maybe Michael Phelps was a modern day messiah. Laughing at his newfound docility, Angel Kitten Mermaid swooped down and plucked him from the sea.
Dave was shocked by the small girl’s incredible strength and began to belief all that she had said about being a supreme being and such.
“So this isn’t a dream?” he asked, hoping it was, but at the same time praying as he never had that it was reality, dreading a return to his miserable bedroom.
“Nope. This is fo rizzle my nizzle,” Angel Kitten Mermaid smiled, “and you’ve got some business to attend to.”
* * *
Dave and Angel Kitten Mermaid were still flying through the emerald sky about 50 feet above the ocean’s surface, as to avoid any jumping pranters. Jumping pranters were, up until the ensuing apocalypse that is the center piece of this plot that has yet to be described in detail, the only thing that Angel Kitten Mermaid had to worry about. Compared to any Earth creature, they were most similar to the largemouth bass, in that they were predatory in nature, and often fed from the water’s surface, and had large mouths, and were basically shaped like bass. They were however, the size of your average short bus, which gave them the ability (and need) to eat things of Angel Kitten Mermaid’s size (which was that of your average 11 year old girl). The added weight of Dave, roughly 180 pounds, which was high due to his sedentary lifestyle and office job, made the two a flying delicatessen. They looked quiet awkward airborne, as Angel Kitten Mermaid was hugging Dave from behind, it actually appeared that he was giving her a piggy back ride. But, this description of their flight pattern and of flying pranters is not at all important, and in fact is a complete ramble. What is important though, is the conversation they had during this flight, as Angel Kitten Mermaid soared above that pranter infested ocean. And here it is, in uninterrupted (by the author’s omniscient description of expressions and thoughts) dialogue:
Dave: “So you’re telling me I’m a hero and this planet needs me? That’s why I’m here? To save it from impending doom and destruction?”
AKM: “Yes! For the sake of Pete! That is an acceptable interjection, right? Forgive me Dave, I’ve just recently been acquainted with the English Language, you see, normally I communicate in a strictly pheromonal fashion.”
Dave: “Really? That’s interesting. I used to study biology, and I’d really like to know how that works, especially in a completely aquatic environment. I mean, as far as I know, on Earth, pheromones are strictly airborne.”
AKM: “Well yeah Dave, but this isn’t Earth, the rules are a little different here. You did just fly through a vortex, remember? Has that ever happened to you on Earth? And you’ve also got to remember, what I call pheromones…well that’s just an English description of what they actually are. You can’t even comprehend their reality, really. In fact, you can’t really comprehend most of reality.”
Dave: “Ok, ok, I guess, whatever. But if I can’t comprehend it, what’s the point of worrying about it?”
Narrator Interruption: “I know I promised I wouldn’t intrude, but after saying that last bit of dialogue, Dave realized that this is how he should go about his very existence on Earth. This is the point where he begins to rise from his existential angst, and fulfills his destiny. Well, maybe…”
AKM: “Yeah, you’re right Dave. Besides, we’ve got more important things to talk about.”
Dave: “Are we still connected in that ESP way that we were before? ‘Cuz I don’t like that you can know what I’m thinking.”
AKM: “Yes we are, but like you said, you can’t comprehend it, so don’t worry about it.”
Dave: “Dammit, you’ve caught me in my own logic. I can’t argue. Continue.”
AKM: “Well, you see. O, hahaha. Gosh, this is going to be hard for you to believe, so work with me here Dave.”
Dave: “Ok. Shoot.”
AKM: “Huh? Shoot what?”
Dave: “Nevermind! Just explain it already!”
AKM: “Well…there’s this guy named God you see. And he created the universe.”
Dave: “What?”
AKM: “Yeah, I know, crazy right? Just be patient and let me explain. He created the universe in a week, and he did this all from his home in ‘Heaven’, which is located in the 13th and most inaccessible dimension.”
Dave: “Wait a minute…”
AKM: “A minute!? I said to be patient Dave, so listen! God created the universe in like seven days, and he’s all powerful and all knowing and all benevolent and you see… he created the universe in his image or something like that, I’m not all up and up on it all, but it’s how everything started.”
Another interruption: “Dave laughed, shocked at what he was being told. According to this
Angel Kitten Mermaid, the Judeo-Christian explanation for existence was spot on and it transcended the universe. Wowey.”
AKM continues: “Now God, as of late has been a little pissed off at the Planet Yoooftah, well more specifically, he’s been pissed off at me.”
Dave: “And he wants to destroy it? Or you?”
AKM: “Uh, yeah…both”
Dave: “But I thought you said he was all benevolent?”
Narrator interruption: “Ah, this age old debate[3]”
AKM: “Yeah, he’s supposed to be, and he’s claiming that Yoooftah’s destruction would be for the greater good of the universe, he thinks that we’re a bad influence and we should be punished.”
Dave: “In the depths of Hell?”
AKM: “Yeah! How’d you know that!? Hell the 12th and most fiery dimension!”
Dave: “I thought you could read my mind, shouldn’t you know why I know?”
Narrator Interruption: “Shut up Dave, you’re ruining the flow of the dialogue.”
AKM: “Yeah, whatever, that doesn’t matter, what matters is, you’ve got to save us!”
Dave: “Well why’s God mad at you, specifically?”
AKM: “I’ve been acting a ‘ho fo sho’.”
Dave: “A what?”
AKM: “A ho fo sho. I’ve been sleeping with 5 guys a week for the past 8 consecutive weeks. That’s one guy a week shy of ‘ho bag’ status.”
Dave: “Oh wow.”
AKM: “Yeah, and being that I’m a Universal Ambassador for Yoooftah, and a being of magnificent supreme powers granted by the hands of God himself, he’s not too happy with what I’ve been doing. Plus I’m 11.”
Dave: “I see…so God does value chastity?”
Another interruption, I’m sorry it will be the last one I promise!: “At this point, Dave made a mental note to burn all of his pornography if and when he returned to Earth.”
AKM: “Yes, he does, and if I can’t make it through this week without a beef injection, he will destroy Yoooftah and me! So that’s where you come in.”
I can’t help myself interruption!: “That’s what she said” (referring to AKM’s last sentence there, the “come” part).
Dave: “Me, what? Why can’t you just stop being a ho? Keep your legs, or your fin closed for the sake of your planet God dammit!”
AKM: “Indeed. But you see it isn’t that easy, and that’s exactly why I’ve summoned you.”
Dave: “How am I supposed to…what?”
AKM: “Yes David. You see, on your planet there is a television channel known as MTV, I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
Dave: “Yea…”
AKM: “Well recently, we’ve been picking up stray broadcasts from this channel, and I’ve been spending all of my time watching them, they’re quite entertaining, you know.”
Dave: “Yea…”
AKM: “But the thing is, ever since I started watching them, I’ve developed a voracious appetite for the male genitalia, which on Yoooftah comes in many different varieties and species, and I simply can’t help myself. No less than 5 portions a week! I’m unable to control this desire.”
Narrator, once again: “No pun intended on that “comes in many different varieties and species” part.”
Dave: “Jesus Christ!”
AKM: “You’ve heard of him too! Yeah, he’s pretty pissed as well, but he’s a bit more forgiving than his Dad. Still, God won’t budge, he’s gonna kill us all if I don’t keep it in my pants.”
Dave: “But, but, why isn’t God angry at Earth? I mean we are the ones producing the MTV, and pshh, we’ve got a lot of whores-for-sures roaming around our shores.”
AKM: “But, God doesn’t punish ignorance.”
Dave: “Oh, I feel so honored.”
AKM: “You should be. He blessed your planet with it.”
Dave: “He certainly did, but anyway, (sigh), let’s confront the problem at hand, and maybe we can save you and your planet and I will in some way, find my heroic endeavor life affirming. What do you want me to do?”
AKM: “You must destroy MTV.”
And after much laughter at the ridiculousness of her request, and much doubt at the possibility of succeeding, and much pleading on the behalf of Angel Kitten Mermaid, including her ofference of a blow jay if Dave complied, which they both conceded would be entirely counterproductive, Dave agreed that he would try to save the day, and Angel Kitten Mermaid sent him back to Earth.
* * *
Dave awoke in his dull gray bedroom, lying on his back in bed. He was breathing heavily, and sweating through his flannel pajama pants onto the blue jersey sheets that protected the mattress from such perspiration. His first thought was that it was getting too warm out for jersey, and that maybe he should switch to his smooth and forever cool silk sheets (which he had spent a fortune on, and shared with no one). His second thought was more of a questioning, as to why he was breathing so heavily and sweating so profusely. He then remembered the crazy ass dream that had just taken place and, with a deep, calming inhalation, coaxed himself back to sleep.
Hours later, Dave awoke again, but this time it was to the daylight of an identical-to-the-day-before-day. His alarm had not been the cause of his awakening, for it was Saturday, and nearly 9:30 am. To Dave, the bright day felt fresh, but at the same time mildly pathetic, as it was being taken in not through the groggy headedness of one who had spent his Friday night wildly out on the town doing shots of Jagermeister and cajoling women off to bed, but through the incredibly sharp and sober mind of one who had spent the night watching a poorly made for TV Stephen Segal action-drama and drifted off to sleep before its ending at 10:30 pm. This morning laughed at Dave as he emerged from his bed and walked to the empty kitchen for breakfast, and he cowered at its chuckle, feeling very lame.
With a bowl of cereal already halfway devoured, Dave decided to get up from the silent kitchen table and travel to the living room to eat while watching television. This minor act of rebellion was Dave lashing out at his own regularity, and he even put his feet up on the coffee table as he sat down before the screen. But, his act of dissent, however satisfying, was immediately and equally rebuked, as Dave managed to spill the half eaten bowl of cereal onto his lap as he sat. The day was now cackling at its victim. Rays of sunshine through the open blinds of the living room were its cries of jubilation, their warming effect so precisely countering the cold chill of the milk on Dave’s testicles that he could do nothing less than scream.
“Mother Fucker!” but no one heard his frustration, and this, more than anything frustrated Dave even more. His day off, his day of rest, was sabotaging itself, and no one suffered but he. He didn’t even get up to clean his lap as the milk soaked down to his thighs, warming as it spread. Instead he reached for the remote, and turned on the TV. There was no use crying over what was spilt, and Dave mentally repeated this mantra as the TV hummed on. Hopefully its diversion would improve the mood of the day, hopefully.
It was then that Dave felt the sudden compulsion to turn on MTV, a channel he hadn’t watched since college. Maybe it was the yearning for something better in his life that compelled him to do so, or maybe it was the fact that he wished he was still in college and his life hadn’t deteriorated into something he had once vehemently swore to never experience, or, maybe it was the vague recollection of an Angel Kitten Mermaid creature that had spoke to him in some Yoooftah dreamland that caused him to switch from channel 25 to channel 53. Dave wasn’t sure, but as an energy drink commercial, consisting of a man on a dirt bike literally driving across an unfrozen, liquid lake played before him, memories of the night’s dream worked their way into his mind. Something about imminence, something about heroics, and something about a promiscuous eleven year old feline of oceanic and heavenly origins.
A music video that was no less ridiculous than the preceding commercial replaced it. Rap was its genre, as far as Dave could deduce, and it opened up with the rapper rapping. The rapper, a loosely clad African American gentleman, wearing a large, white t-shirt, a fitted and backwards black baseball cap (with the purchase tag still on the bill), and a silver chain holding some unreadable pendant at his chest, was driving a yellow Lamborghini convertible, and the camera followed him as he drove, on the left side of the car. Its lens took in the rapper, as he looked into it (and not at the whirling and winding road ahead of him, upon which he drove at speeds close to 80 mph). He had one hand, his right, on the steering wheel, and the other hand, his left, hanging out of the vehicle’s window. His rap went as follows, and it was supported by what Dave thought was a pretty catchy bass beat.
I got so many problems, I got so many hos,
But I’d say that I could use a common synonym for those
The rapper repeated this verse, his mantra, many times as he drove through what were presumably the hills of California, on streets that had been conveniently cleared for the making of the music video. After numerous repetitions, the car ride ended in an instant, and suddenly the rapper was placed in the center of a white dance floor. His hos, of which there were at least nine, danced behind him.
And I gotta squeeze loose, all my manly juice,
I gotta let it flow, from my engine to yo’ caboose.
And the hos, who were also apparently trained strippers, danced at this utterance in thong bikinis, as white as the dance floor, and in a stark contrast to the ebony skin encasing the fat collections which they shook. Asses wobbled and jibblies jibbled, and Dave watched the television screen as his milk soaked pajama pants grew tighter. The camera lens zoomed in on a particularly plump rump as a ho of no more than 18 years of age booty bounced on top of white stiletto heels. The bass throbbed onward, as did Dave’s eleventh digit, and the rapper continued with the women now moving in a slow motion, champagne foam lubricated strip tease.
Unprotected, its erected, just let it be injected!
Our two parts should be connected, I swear I ain’t infected.
I wanna bend you over, and you should want to bend
I don’t wanna be yo’ lover, I just got a dick to lend.
And it was at this last verse, when said rapper used the word “dick,” that Dave awoke from his lustful coma. Dick? On TV? The most promiscuous thing Dave could remember coming from MTV was Def Leppard requesting sugar to be poured upon them, and now here, fifteen years later, rappers were getting away with verbally fucking strippers on dance floors! Oh, the children, thought Dave, feeling old and lame as he thought it. But he couldn’t shake his worry, as those young dancers had so easily and freely shook their uncovered voluptuous asses. No, he couldn’t believe that little kids, his friend’s children, his potential children even, could be spending their Saturday mornings watching half grown women dance around almost fully naked and full grown men completely encouraging it, while suggesting much more. MTV was marketed towards teens, but as anybody (who grew up with it) could tell you, and as Dave knew himself, having done so, it was more often viewed by preteens for this very reason. The preteen wants nothing more than to be a full blown teenager (or a fully blown teenager if they happen to be male), and at the discovery of MTV, the very channel designed for their slightly elder idols, viewing becomes routine. Breakfast, toothbrushing, school bus, MTV. The same thing, every day ingrained into the sponge mind of a growing adolescent can have quite the impact, and when that same thing is womanizing with a side of unprotected sex, the consequences, well the consequences are self explanatory. Dave may have not known his purpose in life, but for some reason he felt compelled to protect children from any form of filth, this filthy MTV included. He knew his life was spiraling into failure, and his job as an insurance salesman was a joke, but he felt compelled to preserve the integrity of those little future adults and he felt completely disgusted by this M. T. V. His disgust was all the more fueled by some inner compulsion, as if a small mermaid girl he knew, somewhere off in a distant world was ho’ing herself off because of music videos like these.
The video ended with more ass shaking, and the start of a reality show. Dave was familiar with the concept of such a show, and knew that “reality” was just a pseudonym for “staged,” and within the veil of reality, just about anything could happen. He looked down at his milk soaked pants, now lukewarm and flaked with cereal and decided it was really too late to change them anyway.
A scruffy blond man took the screen, beer bellied, with locks unwashed flowing from his scalp and face. He dressed like he was 21, in an attempt to mask 20 additional years, and he slouched with a glow of agnostic glee. His bearded face was marked by a mouth-breathing mouth, and two sunglassed eyes, which were completely unnecessary in the indoor environment of what Dave presumed to be his bachelor pad basement – pool table, plasma screen, hot tub, and bar adorned.
“Ello,” the slob, who Dave instantly loathed, gruffly uttered, looking directly into the camera. “I am Brian Beastly, and you’re watching Beauty and the Beast.” Brian then walked over to his bar, and from a conveniently placed and filled double shot glass, that in any dimension of reality would have had to have been pre-poured prior to filming this specific scene, and judging by the slight stumble in Brian’s saunter could very well have been the second or third incarnation of reality, downed a generous helping of brown liquor.
Needless to say, the beast was stunned, as was David Richardson.
Suddenly, transporting from basement to poolside, under the Californian sunlight, Brian was lying on a towel covered chase lounge chair and before him, with their backs to the heart shaped in ground pool that center pieced the mansion patio, stood eight lovely young ladies, like game show contestants, awaiting the announcement of the winner. Eager were their fakely tanned and snouted faces, and apprehensive were their rapid breaths, which were revealed by the up and down of their fraudulently breasted and bikinied chests.
“Ladies,” drawled the Beast, like a surfer who had had too much sun, “it’s been another great week here in the Beast’s Lair.” At this statement Dave could only assume that the Lair was undoubtedly what the Beast had named his far from lairish estate. Dave also began to question what he was doing so wrong in his life that prevented him from lounging about in the sun while being admired by groups of babes and sipping on intoxicating tropical beverages, the latter being exactly what Brian did after his solitary sentence.
“But,” Brian continued, “one of you has to go,” another sip, “because the Beast can have only one Beauty.” And at this Brian pointed with his tanned and drink holding hand, to the first young woman in the lineup saying, “Melissa, we had some fun this week, now didn’t we?” with an overly suggestive stress on the didn’t and a subtle lack of stress on the we, suggesting the Beast didn’t give two shits about Melissa, and that his definition of a fun week with her was based solely on the amount of pleasure he had taken from her body. Or at least that’s how Dave interpreted it. Dave then imagined the screen cutting to clips of very hardcore porn in which the Beast’s beast penetrated the Beauty’s beauty in lightening speed point of view thrusts complimented with womanly shrieks of painful pleasure and hedonistic man beast grunts. Instead, it cut to the two of them, Melissa and Brian, sharing a bottle of champagne in the aforementioned basement hot tub. The two half naked love birds gazed into each other’s eyes while Brian whispered sweet nothings to Melissa, inaudible to the boom mic that was probably suspended inches above this moment in reality. As a replacement to the actual whispers, subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen, but Dave knew that they were in no way anywhere close to what was actually being said.
Brian: I know that I’ve got a reputation baby, but I’m really looking to settle down, and I need to know, can you settle down with me?
What Brian probably said, according to Dave: If you had to pick another girl from the group, who would you have a threesome with tonight?
Melissa: I know, I know, baby (caressing his face). I see through the booze and the partying and the hard living, and I know you can become so much more.
What Melissa probably said, according to Dave: I’m glad you asked, because I’m actually a bisexual, (cupping his balls under water) and I’ve had my eye on that sweet little Heidi all week. I’d just love to taste that Louisiana pussy.
Brian: I feel a real connection with you Mel, can I call you Mel?
Brian, According to Dave: Nice. You ever done ass to mouth?
Melissa: (Laughs) Of course you can call me Mel, that’s what my family calls me, and I feel that close to you Brian, I really do.
Melissa, According to Dave: (Works hand from balls to shaft) Hell yeah, that’s the only way I party. I’ve been doing that shit ever since I was 15 with my cousin Roy. We keep it in the family where I’m from.
And with that connection made, the screen cut back to the pool scene, with Brian in his lounge chair sipping daiquiri, Melissa before the pool with her dirty mouth, Heidi by her side with her recently fellatioed Cajun ass crack, and Dave, mortified and milk crotched on his sofa. In an instant, the first three were gone as Dave flicked them away, by turning off the TV, and retreating to his bedroom.
Angel Kitten Mermaid or not, he was going to destroy that vile network, that MTV. Consequences, they were inconsequential, as up to this very climactic point was Dave’s existence. But now he had a purpose, he had something that drove him and shook him to a point of fury, matched only by the fury manifest in his own inability to comprehend the ultimate meaning of things. To him it seemed that perhaps the destruction of evil was the answer. Or maybe it was just a good diversion. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but think that he would be saving the minds of countless American children, if not the entire watery planet of Yoooftah.
* * *
At this junction, by way of her telepathic connection, Angel Kitten Mermaid was feeling incredibly relieved. She wasn’t entirely sure if Dave would have believed that his other worldly encounter had actually occurred, so she had coaxed him (subconsciously) to turn on MTV that morning while he attempted to eat his cereal. Her coaxing had worked, but she didn’t know how much longer she could hold on. Brain Beastly was just so dreamy, in his grungy alcoholic kind of way, and she longed to see the vapid Melissa booted from the show, while yellow Lamborghinis always did have a way of loosening her up (vaginally). And no, I will not go into the anatomy of the Angel Kitten Mermaid genitalia! Just use your imagination, and remember, she’s only 11 you disgusting pervert of a reader, who if, is still reading this, might be wondering who the narrator is. Well smart ass, in this story you’ve already accepted the existence of God, so here’s another ridiculous one – the narrator, me, the one speaking to you through this text is an omniscient tick on David’s nut sac that he acquired on a hunting trip last weekend with his older brother and father in North Dakota. I guess I failed to mention the trip, probably because it is completely irrelevant to the story, as is Dave not knowing yet that I’m perched here, sucking his scrotal blood and infecting him with Lyme’s disease. The Lyme’s won’t set in until after this story is through, but don’t worry, it doesn’t kill him.
Anyway, Dave had never calculated anything more than statistical figures for insurance matters and accountancy accounts for personal matters and derivatives in college calculus for academic matters and the hypotenuse of a triangle in high school for reasons to him that never really mattered, but now he was driving in his unimpressive, brown, Japanese four door sedan towards New York, trying to calculate a masterful plan to dismantle the entire MTV corporation.
He was a nervous man for the most part, and his driving habits were telltale of this attribute. White knuckles grasped the wheel, sweat accumulated in his pits, and he kept checking the rearview - all this, despite the fact that he wasn’t going an mph over 45, and the speed limit was 50. Dave lived about 2 hours from New York City, and he felt that those two hours were the only two in which he should allow himself to formulate a plan of action. Every minute delayed allowed for another wretchedly broadcast music video, or a whorrific reality show, laden with putrid sexuality and moral digression to be poured into the open sponge minds of American youths. And then there was Angel Kitten Mermaid, that adorable little creature! Yes, Dave was now positive of her existence, and her plight, and he knew that he couldn’t delay another moment. Her very planet depended on him.
Dave turned the car eastbound and flipped down the windshield visor to block the imposing sun. He popped a Diazepam tablet from his prescription bottle (a prescription prescribed for situations just like these, and no, Dave did not regularly plot to destroy major television networks, but he did often get nervous), and with a swallow he began to calm. He turned down the music, which had been blaring heavy metal, and took a couple of deep, diaphragmic breaths.
“Angel Kitten Mermaid, how am I going to do this?” Dave asked mentally, remembering the ESP connection the creature had established the night prior. Within a second of asking her, leaving no time for Dave to feel self conscious about summoning a presumably imaginary creature, the heavy metal music that he had turned down became the chorus of Amy Grant’s, Baby Baby, but instead of the usual lyrics, “Baby, baby the stars are shining for you” sung by the attractive brunette Christian pop star, the voice of an eleven year old girl came through his speaker system.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid! I am an Angel and a Kitten and a Mermaid!”
The voice was eerie, only in that he had heard it the night before and its sound produced within him a slight déjà vu experience.
“What is déjà vu?” Dave asked Angel Kitten Mermaid, audibly, before he could think another thought, or even manage to greet the intergalactic being. He figured she knew he was wondering it anyway, and since he was going out of his way to help her, and she was presumably a creature with supernatural abilities, he figured he’d try to obtain some forbidden knowledge.
“Excuse me David?” Angel Kitten Mermaid asked through the speakers, thoroughly offended at Dave’s lack of cordiality. She knew he was taking advantage of his situation, and she didn’t like it. Here was her hero, without a plan of action, pondering at what he thought were the perplexities of the human mind. Perplexities! More like a glitch in a computer system if you asked her, but she thought she’d humor him, put him in good spirits before what might be the death of him. She didn’t wait for Dave to repeat the question and said, as casually as she would tell him the “time” or ask a bobble headed goat-pig on Yoooftah for a sipple of its udder, “Déjà vu is the experience of experiencing something you have already dreamt. Human dreams can often serve as a prediction of the future, and when you get the feeling of déjà vu, well you’re fulfilling your self predicted destiny.[4]”
“That doesn’t really make sense,” began Dave, but before he could continue, he was distracted by a semi-truck moving into his lane. His first reaction was to slam the breaks, but remaining cool, he slightly tapped them and allowed the either blind or assholiac truck driver into his lane. Had Angel Kitten Mermaid not interfered with Dave’s mind, he would have slammed the breaks, died, and MTV would have gone on to broadcast whorish television programs from that moment, presumably into eternity. It was a good thing she could supplement his ability with her own.
As soon as the additional sweat from the near death encounter dripped away from his brow and his knuckles dulled from bright white to a softer red tinged beige, Dave popped another pill, went through the whole deep diaphragmic breath ordeal again, and cleared his head.
“Alright, so how am I going to destroy MTV, Angel Kitten Mermaid? I don’t know if you realize this, but you’ve selected an insurance salesmen as your hero, and MTV is an entire, nationwide, hell worldwide…hell I guess universe wide, since you are receiving broadcasts, corporation.” He then paused and thought about how big MTV was, how small he was, how big the universe was, and then how infinitesimally small he was. This disheartened him, but with the aid of the pills in his system, he let it go, and just thought about it all as one big system. All he needed to do was make a kink.
“What?” was Angel Kitten Mermaid’s solemn response. She repeated it, and repeated it again, making three what’s the entirety of her plan.
“You mean you don’t know how I’m supposed to destroy them?” Dave shrieked at his radio dials, not knowing where else to look, since the phantom he was plotting with was merely a voice in his speaker system. “I thought you were, I thought, bahhhhhh!” To the outside observer it appeared as though Dave were simply singing along to an exciting rock song. But the rock song responded.
“Whoa hold on there, Dave”
“Hold on?”
“Yes, hold on”
“Ok, holding.”
And as Dave held (the steering wheel) and drove on (towards New York), Angel Kitten Mermaid devised a plan. When Dave was about 10 minutes outside of MTV’s headquarters, she finished her plan, and while Dave parked his car in an overpriced parking garage, then emerged from its dark, subterranean mouth onto the gray, chaotic, pigeon filled streets of New York City, she gave it to him. He said he understood, and he continued, now walking, towards his destination. Firstly however, there was a detour, according to the plan, and it was in the direction of the nearest manhole cover.
The following events, which consist of David Richardson’s epic battle against the malevolent MTV Corporation are indeed of heroic proportions, and are best remembered through verse, much like Homer recorded the ancient battles of The Iliad and The Odyssey. I make this comparison not pretentiously; I know I’m no Homer (although I aspire to be), but in all seriousness Dave really did kick some ass, and I just want to do justice to his might.
David the Salesmen slid down the manhole
With no weapon in hand, taking a gamble
For the sewers were rife with vagrants and rats
And angry black hobos with cracked baseball bats
But there was something he needed, in the midst of that muck
And he’d find it with guidance from his Angel, and a little bit of luck
It was rusted, it was crusted, it was a solitary valve
Whose turnage could save herpified Yoooftah, like a medical salve
By flooding the lair of that sluttish red Beast
Destruction, destruction to MTV!
Lost, “Which way do I turn?” said Dave to the Kitten
“A left, then a right!” then David was bitten
By a giant black lizard that emerged from the depths
And struck at his knee
It hissed and recoiled
Dave shouted, “Why me?”
And to answer his cry, his Mermaid arose
And threw him a saber, saying “You are the one I chose!”
With hilt in hand, Dave approached the scaled beast
But it didn’t back down, no, it snarled at (what it thought was) its feast
And it slashed out a claw
And flashed the teeth in its jaw
And it roared a guffaw
And Dave waved his sword, confused and scared
Until he saw
A missing scale in the monster’s paw
So he stabbed it, screaming, “Demon, withdraw!”
But the reptile was cocky
You could say it was his tragic flaw
And he wouldn’t retreat
So Dave cut off his head
And the lizard was dead
Certainly beat
Bloody saber, and shaking hand
Dave summoned Angel Kitten Mermaid, telling her that he didn’t quite understand
He’d never swung a sword
He’d never fought a bad-guy
He’d never even, ever once, ever thrown a bulls-eye!
To which she did reply
“You have powers within you that have yet to be released
And with my help, your penis size will be increased”
“…What…oh no, have you’ve been watching MTV!
You’re turning into a little ho, My kitten, don’t you see!
I need your strength, turn off that junk, please lead me on my way!
How am I to find the path, when you have gone astray?”
And being eleven years old
She simply said, “Okay.
Walk thirty meters due Southwest, and you’ll find that valve.”
But she forgot to say
That mighty Dave the Conqueror, would have another beast to slay.
So he approached the valve, yes he approached the valve, thinking his quest was through
And AKM, she thought the same, and said “Dave, I’m proud of you!”
But everyone knows
That every hero’s journey goes
Up and down
And ebbs and flows
And that a hero should keep on his toes
Because a big, angry, man standing seven foot three, with a 200 pound belly, sharpened teeth, a monkey wrench in one hand, and a super soaker filled with sulfuric acid (custom made out of glass) in the other
With a really bad temper
Might jump out of the shadows right before apparent victory
And that’s exactly what happened to Dave.
“Roooooar!!!!” roared the very scary, very hairy, very, very, very, unmerry man
“My name is Larry! What are you doing down here you friggin fairy?”
And Dave was weary.
So he pulled out his sword and said, “I am Dave, and I carry
The fate of Yoooftah on my shoulders
With sword so sharp it can cut boulders
Keep your distance wench!
Oh, and can I borrow your wrench?
I must turn that valve, you see,
It’s a lot to explain…but, trust me.”
Larry looked back with a face of disgust.
Laughing, he laughed, “You want me to trust?”
And expecting a fight, Dave pointed his sword
But Larry laughed again, shook his head
And said
“You know what, I’m bored!
This location is dark.
This place is so lonely.
Do you know what it’s like to be the only,
Guy living in a sewer?
Because it does have a certain allure,
But I have no friends,
And I want some! They seem great!”
And before the man could ramble on, Dave shouted out
“Hey Wait!
(Larry waited, and there was a moment of tension, you could see in his face a look of apprehension,
But being a patient man – the product of living alone in a dark, aquatic tunnel that constantly exuded a fecal aroma – he gave Dave his full attention)
Let’s go on a man date!”
So on the date they went.
But Dave got the hint
That Larry wanted more, than to be just a friend.
And as the night came to an end
With a toast to celebrate - a shot of tequila
Larry looked in a David’s eyes and said, “Man, I want to feel ya.”
Alas, for the sake of Yoooftah, and the sake of AKM
Dave let Larry come inside his brownish, ahem! -
…ly painted Japanese sedan.
Remember the one he drove to New York in?
Man!
Get your mind out of the gutter reader!
What do you think this is? A pornographic theater?
Anyway,
They played “pattycake” for about an hour
And then Dave was forced to devour
Some homemade sausage that Larry brought to share
It tasted pretty good, Dave said
Except for the pubic…
I mean…fact that it was a little rare
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
This is more than I can bear
Larry fucked Dave.
There, I said it, I don’t care
o when the homosexual encounter had ended
And all of Dave’s orifices had been thoroughly offended
Larry gave Dave the wrench, and David then bended
The valve, to the left
And the water did flow
From the pipes, through the ground
till it started to grow
Up from the base,
of the floor of the place
Where MTV Corp. rented their office space
To flood it, to ruin it, to destroy and desecrate
To end their evil, whorrish rein, and fulfill the way of fate
Oh, but wait…
I forgot, Dave still had one more thing to do
Fight Carson Daly
Sword to sword
And run him through
(Do I mean a sword fight, or am I making another homosexual innuendo?
Read on, my fair reader, the plot’s about to crescendo!)
* * *
Being a tick, I often find it much easier to write in a poetic format. I have a very small body, and the fewer letters I have to type, the better. In fact, up to this point, this story, which takes place in a time span of, oh, about 3 days (I’m not really sure, I haven’t been making any references to time, and that may be because I need to work on my story telling ability…or because I’m trying to make a deep, philosophical, underlying point by leaving it out – the point being that time is ultimately irrelevant, especially in a universe with multiple dimensions) has taken me about seven years to complete. Strange when you think about it, a story that’s supposed to have taken place in 72 hours, taking that long to write. Makes me think about time, and puts me in a generally melancholy mood, but alas, what do I know, I’m a tick. And, being a tick I have managed not only to suck Dave’s scrotal blood, and infect him with Lyme’s disease (note, that hasn’t happen yet in this story line, but it does happen at a later date), but I have also managed to suck away at your precious, you guessed it, time, and hopefully infected your mind with a few of my thoughts.
Ironic. Well, maybe I didn’t need to write that it was ironic, maybe you caught onto that on your own, who knows, blah, blah, blah, I’m ranting, and I’m being much too blatant. But the thing is, symbolism isn’t always noticed by the reader, sometimes you have to guide them down the road of your thoughts…
Ok, I’m done, if anyone actually read that, they may have stopped reading and forgot about Dave completely, only when he’s about to save the day and feel fulfilled in life! Oh darn.
So Dave, what was Dave doing, oh yeah! He just got reamed in the ass by that big guy Larry, heavy stuff, I know, but often a hero must make sacrifices. Anyway, (a word I have used a lot in this tale due to my sidetracking) Dave was sore, but jubilant. He had traversed the sewer, defeating a large lizard and a large rapist’s lust, and as he emerged from the depths into the streets of New York, the dull gray of the day that blended with the metallic giants of the city took a lighter, brighter, hue of blue. Dave inhaled his first fresh breath, a breath that was tainted with city pollutants – carbon monoxide, dioxide, and trioxide, but, it was a breath that was nevertheless purer than those he had taken underground. A brighter world, a cleaner world, a better world it seemed to Dave, for one of the greatest pollutants of all, MTV, was being washed away as he stood six blocks distant.
“We did it Angel Kitten Mermaid! We did it!” Dave exclaimed, out loud in the middle of the sidewalk, next to the open manhole. This sight did attract a bit of attention as pedestrians walked by in their stereotypically suited, New York, crowded rush, but Dave didn’t care. Those who stared were oblivious criticizers, oblivious because Dave had saved their children from something they didn’t even know was a threat. Dave was the shit, he knew it, and he didn’t need a word of validation. But he still wished Angel Kitten Mermaid would respond.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid,” he sang to the familiar tune, “where have you gone, my Angel Kitten Mermaid?” Once again, the filthy, singing man holding a large saber, next to the open manhole (who had earlier opened his manhole for another man - I couldn’t resist), did attract a bit of attention. As people stopped and stared, Dave grew worried. Where was his previously so-quick-to-respond-via-ESP-Angel? She should have said something by now, she should have been celebrating, and screaming for joy at the top of her lungs- errr gills, and thanking Dave on her behalf and on the behalf of Yoooftah as a whole. Something was not right, something had gone amiss! The hero sensed danger, and with this sense, and sword in hand, he ran from the manhole towards the sound of gushing water. His destination, MTV headquarters.
* * *
Angel Kitten Mermaid hovered above the flooding building, delightfully watching water gush from successively higher windows, while the bricks that encapsulated the beast buckled and cracked. MTV, her destroyer, was being destroyed before her very eyes. The chaotic sexipade that had become her life was now manifesting itself in the destruction of the building below her, and the fact that it was being done through the use of water made her all the more happy, reminding her of home. “People, evil people”, she thought, flew out of the windows with the water, or somehow swam their way out of doors at various exits and fire escapes. She laughed at the pathetic human swimmers, comparing their ability to her own, thoroughly enjoying the whole show of destruction. Revenge was sweet, and little girls like candy.
She licked her lips, savoring the sugary sweetness of the fire department arriving and being unable to do a thing. “Fire fighters, not water fighters,” she laughed feeling clever. She was ecstatic to see the foundation begin to tremble, and onlookers back away as police taped off the surrounding area with yellow caution tape. There was no hope for the place, it was a disaster, it was beautiful.
But even more beautiful, even more sweet, and appetizing, and man candily scrumptious looking was the sopping wet, male human she saw staring at the building, right at the edge of tape. He stood motionless, as if he was watching his eldest son being executed, his hands gripping the flimsy tape for support and receiving none. She instantly recognized him. His thin head, darkly scalped and clean cut rested upon a suited body. His suit, dripping with water - and sexuality, revealed a tightly worked body underneath. He was tall, white, and to Angel Kitten Mermaid, incredibly handsome. His name was Carson Daly, she knew it, and as she was joyously watching her life being saved from its deepest depths, his own was drowning.
The sounds; brick by brick being pulled from mortar, concrete being torn away from its rebar infrastructure, screaming human bodies, literally sucked from their cubicles, and glass particle upon glass particle molecularly tugged apart by sheer aquatic force; none of them were strong enough to tear Angel Kitten Mermaid’s gaze away from this newfound beauty, this man she instantly “loved.” But, being only 11 years old (remember this reader, for it is essential), the love that our Kitten thought she felt was nothing more than lustful desire, a strong, but dangerous bonding agent.
When you give a toddler super glue, you can expect nothing less than a trip to the emergency room, or a call dialed to Poison Control; hell you might even end up with a dead three year old who has inadvertently constipated themselves to death with what they thought was “num nums” (my apologies to any parent to whom this has happened, for in this big, big world in which we live, (which I have also referred to as a tiny planet in the ultimate scope of the universe within the text of this tale) I’m sure something like this has happen, but I’m trying to make a striking metaphor), similarly when you give a pre-teen girl an attractive man to idolize, an unbreakable, lustful bond will form that can be equally as toxic. Yes, in both cases, curiosity, one of the paramount human tendencies that drives evolution can be a good thing – the toddler discovers the wonders of super glue, and the pre-teen girl discovers her own sexuality, but! and I stress but, in the case of the latter, and specifically in our present scenario, another human tendency, that of exploitation can play curiosity like an incredible fool. This happens daily, it isn’t a breathtaking observation, and perhaps it’s just a function of natural selection (if you believe in that jive), however there are those individuals who take it too far:
1. Hitler
2. Madonna
3. Maury Povich
4. Ghandi (the yin to Hitler’s yang)
5. Billy Mays (too soon?)
6. And of course, to sum up my mid-narrative argument…Carson Daly
Yes, Carson, standing before his crumbling empire, felt Angel Kitten Mermaid’s inquisitively sexual stare, and he knew from the moment that her angelic, blue eyes locked upon his dripping body that not all hope was lost. His headquarters had been destroyed, and the hope of any broadcast was ludicrous, but the ultimate goal – the destruction of the Planet Yoooftah, was still viable! Angel Kitten Mermaid was still corruptible, she could still be turned into a complete ho bag, she only need sleep with a few more guys! Carson just needed to take matters into his own hands. He would not fail Lord Darshon, for failure would result not only in the survival Yoooftah, the epicenter of all universal good (which he certainly couldn’t have), but his own execution by Darshon, the most evil dude ever (and he didn’t want that either).
Looking up into the sky, Carson’s watery blues met Angel Kitten Mermaid’s, and with a simple whisk of his hand she glided downward, oblivious to her public visibility, propelled only by the inward flutter of her abdominal butterflies. Wordlessly, the two locked hand and paw as they skipped down the road towards Carson’s eagerly awaiting Land Rover (Chariot of Doom). A grin swept across our Kitten’s face as she buckled up, thinking, “Love and destruction, both beautiful things,” and Carson started the car.
“Both beautiful things, and often one in the same,” responded Carson via ESP to his little maiden. She didn’t quite understand what he meant, but his voice was so soothing and beautiful as he said it, that she simply didn’t care.
Free from traffic, Carson gassed the Rover and drove onward towards his lair. He had a few calls to make; Angel Kitten Mermaid was to meet some new friends.
* * *
Things now become frantic. When Dave arrived at the scene of his crime (which he hadn’t really considered a crime until he saw the utter mutilation that his valve turnage had inspired, i.e. dead bodies, crumbled building, shattered lives) the second thing he noticed was that Angel Kitten Mermaid was not there. “So what am I to do”, thought Dave, and really, what was he to do!? Her absence wasn’t an inherent suggestion that something was wrong, but he had a feeling that something was, and feelings were something that Dave was easily hooked on.[5]
He strode back and forth across the sidewalk before the still-water-sputtering building frame and behind the yellow caution tape. Onlookers created a maze as he paced, and sweat, and worried, and tried to make some sort of plan or derive some sort of clue from the scene as to where his Angel had gone. His feelings were a mishmash: jubilation at the sight of the destruction – his first real accomplishment in life, remorse at the realization that his first real accomplishment was destructive in nature and not creative, curiosity in the ultimate creation of everything in the universe, anger towards his completely unproductive philosophical sidetracking, epiphany that perhaps he was just an unproductive, destructive person, and finally hopelessness.
And it was the hopelessness that caused him to slump down on the wetted curb that ran the street, head in hands, hands on knees, large menacing saber sword cast at feet and splashing in puddle. He was alone, again, as he had been without Angel Kitten Mermaid, alone, with an overwhelming angst setting in. But the angst was not existential in nature, the angst arose from the failure of something concrete, something tangible, and strangely this made him feel slightly chipper.
Dave looked around. He was surrounded by spectators, presumably spectating the drowning building, each with their own lives, and quirks, and curiosities, and reasons for standing before the scene of a disaster. All different, but all watching, together, wondering why, as one. Dave stood up from the curb, self consciously grabbed his sword, and walked towards the nearest one.
“What do you believe in, if anything?” Dave wanted to ask the pot bellied, balding man, who was khaki-ed, and polo-ed, and named Maurice, and who was also, most likely, quiet bewildered. But before Maurice could turn around (to be bewildered even further, and maybe even offended by Dave’s ultra personal question) a sickening “squelch” of the stomach stopped Dave dead in his tracks. The previously popped Diazepam had worn off. Dave’s digestive system was instantaneously back in full swing. He hadn’t shit in two whole days, and he was one of those twice-to-thrice-a-dayers you hear about every so often and say, “Really?”
“I need to find a bathroom, now!” thought Dave (obviously. Because, as we all know, such a thought isn’t really a conscious decision, but more of an implied reaction). So, our hero heroically made an about face and ran towards the McDonald’s he had passed on the way in, which when he had seen, had made him shudder – McDonald’s and MTV on the same street, this must be the 7th circle! As he ran he could think of nothing more than lovely brown stains upon porcelain, but in the back of his head he decided that he’d ask Maurice a more sensible question when he returned, like “What the heck happened here, man?”
* * *
Inside McDonald’s the smell of French fries was palpable and grease lined the air like a layer of Pam on a griddle. Fluorescent lighting illuminated a lobby full of people, presumably all catastrophe watchers on a lunch break.
Dave was full of pre-explosive anticipation, with a side of worry, and in no mood to be polite. He rushed through the crowd towards the bathroom bowling ball style, with bystanders as his pins. An elderly woman in a muumuu got stiff armed in the nose; two adolescent males, each tray carrying and voraciously eyeing their chicken nuggets, were singularly smashed by a Muay Thai flying double knee kick, one cap to each chest; a big black guy, twice Dave’s size was minimized by a swift kick to the groin; and an angry manager, blocking Dave’s entrance to the bathroom was straight up punched in the face.
Through the crowd and through the restroom door, Dave slammed and locked it behind him, fortifying the bowel movement to come. But another obstacle stood in his way! The only stall in the bathroom was occupied! Its occupant was a nefarious stranger, revealed only by a pair of blue jeans wrapped around his ankles visible in the space between the stall wall and the floor.
Dave ran towards the stall, and with a single snap kick unhinged its door. Atop the coveted porcelain throne sat his lone nemesis - a thoroughly shocked and unsuspecting middle aged man. The man said nothing, but covered his genitals in reactionary shame.
Dave unsheathed his sword and pointed it at the man’s throat.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
And the man, who had already placed a few logs in bowl, instantly complied without a single wipe.
Stalled and relieved Dave sat down on the toilet. He let out a sigh, and a moment later, a copious amount of liquid diarrhea. Normally he’d have taken the time to line the rim with a thick layer of toilet paper, or at least squat, but today he didn’t care. After what he’d been through, and what he still faced, a toilet seat was the least of his worries, even if it might be harboring syphilis.
Relieving though the shit felt, such relief was not overarching. Its flow was much too rapid and liquid and occasionally chunked with undigested ham. Also, Angel Kitten Mermaid, for all Dave knew, was being smote by God while oil fires blazed upon the surface of Yoooftah, hotter than the skin of Dave’s now raw and chaffen crack. He winced as he wiped, the liquid flow finished.
“God damn,” he cringed, mouth now mimicking ass, expelling verbal diarrhea. It felt so good to get it out, but God damn the clean up hurt, God Damn! God…Damn!
Dave then remembered something - supposedly, there was a God! Angel Kitten Mermaid had told him it was true, and up until this point he had believed everything else she said! “I’ll pray,” thought Dave. “I’ll pray for help! I’ll ask God, I’ll beg God to tell me where Angel Kitten Mermaid is and everything will be fine! Oh thank God! Oh God, what an easy solution! If only everything could be this easy!”[6]
Ceremoniously, he began his prayer with his head bowed and eyes closed. He was still pants down on a toilet, but thought he’d show just a bit of reverence. “Dear God, please help me out here,” he began verbally, then paused. The thought occurred to him that if God was indeed omniscient, then the process of prayer was completely obsolete. This bothered him greatly, but he decided to cast it aside and continue the prayer. “I know Angel Kitten Mermaid has been…misbehaving, but she’s young, you know? I guess if she were human I could say she’s only human, and she made a mistake, but uh, I guess that doesn’t work.” Another pause, some thought, some embarrassment. “I guess what I’m trying to say is; please forgive her, Lord, and forgive me for wasting countless years fretting over my existence, and all that crazy stuff. This mission’s given me sort of a purpose, you know, and I need to complete it, I know it, I need to. Please! Help me! Tell me where she is Lord, please!”
The prayer stopped abruptly at the sound of a door creaking. Dave’s barricaded entrance had been breached. The man Dave had so vigorously thrown out of the bathroom had obviously forgotten to lock the door behind him as he ran off and Dave froze in terror, fearing who may have entered. His first guess was that it was a police officer, coming in to apprehend him due to his behavior in the lobby, but, as the sounds of a casual stride to the urinal and a stream of piss hitting plastic reached his ears, this fear subsided.
But Dave remained frozen and silent, because we all know how embarrassing it is to be sitting on the shitter when another person enters a public restroom, even if they’ll never know who you are.
A cell phone rang, and it wasn’t Dave’s. After three aggravating repetitions of the chorus to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the man at the urinal answered it in a gruff and slobbish voice.
“Ello, Brian Beastly speaking”
Dave shit himself upon hearing this, literally, but lucky for him he was still on the toilet, so the load just harmlessly plooped in the bowl. The ploop was quite audible however, and the man at the urinal, Brian Beastly, chuckled as he heard it fall.
“Jesus buddy, you alright in there?” he asked Dave with an air of macho humor that was friendly, but just a bit too condescending for Dave’s liking.
Embarrassed, but obligated to say something Dave simply replied, “Those fuckin’ Big Macs.” This too got a chuckle out of Brian, but instead of continuing his conversation with the shitting stranger, he went back to his phone call.
“You’re with who?” Brian continued, saying who as if he’d heard the name of a foreign stranger. “Angel Kitten, what? Carson have you been doin’ lines again? I told you to take it easy with that stuff.” There was a long pause, whoever Brian was talking to, this Carson, was doing a lot of explaining.
“I’ll be there in ten,” Brian concluded, and with that, the sound of a fly zippering filtered through the crack in Dave’s stall. Dave then began to wonder how big Brian’s dick was, not out of lust or jealousy, but simply curiosity. He did have a reality show based solely on fucking woman in California…but wait, was he not here in New York? Perhaps it was staged, or perhaps it was filmed months ago, or perhaps…
Dave snapped out of his ponderence, realizing the magnitude of the situation. He had shit, and now it was time to get off the pot. Brian Beastly, the very man who had compelled him to save Angel Kitten Mermaid in the first place, would now be instrumental in her rescue. Standing, Dave looked down at what had been expelled, his pile of shit, and in the same moment he recognized that his prayers had been answered; God had shown him the way. He buttoned up his pants, flushed the excrement, and followed Brian out the door – but as the poop swirled down the drain, a brown stain streaked across the bowl.
* * *
“Cocaine, my little mermaid, is the Cadillac of drugs.”
Carson Daly was now stripped of his soaked suit, lying seductively on his side. His head was propped up on an elbow, and there in bed, wearing nothing more than zebra stripped bikini briefs, he crafted four lines of coke on a round portable mirror with the utmost care. He used his VIP access card to an upcoming Fall Out Boy concert to arrange the powder and rolled up a twenty dollar bill as he finished so that Jackson’s nose appeared to be snorting the drug as the bill was used. “What a clever, sexy, man,” thought AKM, “what a hunk.”
Carson read her thoughts, but ignored them playing aloof, as he knew this would only further aid in her seduction. The plan was to get all four of them – Angel Kitten Mermaid, Brian Beastly, Ron Jeremy, and himself coked out of their minds and spend all the hours of the night in a thrusting, lusting, tag team orgy. That would piss God off good and plenty; enrage him to no end probably. Just what was needed to ensure total destruction of Yoooftah, and complete Lord Darshon’s plan for Universal Domination. Once the epicenter of all morality (the planet Yoooftah) was gone there would be nothing to stop Darshon’s evil reign, and Carson would be at his terrifying right hand in glory, taking whatever he wanted throughout the cosmos and leaving nothing but star dust in his wake.
The plan was flawless; Darshon was no doubt a genius. Everything in the universe had a physical source, morality included, and if Yoooftah, that detestable flaming fire of goodness could be extinguished, there would be nothing left but evil, spread across the galaxies for the rest of time.[7] God that ever observant, never interfering, deity prick would be powerless to stop the chaos, and Darshon would be supreme ruler of basically everything!
“Muhoohahahahaha,” laughed Carson, in a quite clichéd but sincere fashion. He turned to Ron who had arrived about five minutes ago and was disrobing in the corner of the bedroom. As he removed his too tight t-shirt and track pants, a plump, hairy body was revealed. Carson cringed at the display, but knew that sacrifices were sometimes necessary. He would ream Angel Kitten Mermaid with two of the most disgusting, but hung, men on the planet.
“Where the fuck’s Brian?” Ron piped in his iconoclastically dirty voice, impatiently rubbing his shaft through the silk of his boxers. Carson was appalled, yet slightly aroused, then further appalled at his own arousal.
“He said he’d be here in ten,” was his response, and as he said it, Ron eyed the coke on the bedspread. “Don’t even think about it man, not till Brian gets here, we’ve gotta do this right.”
Angel Kitten Mermaid looked at the two nearly naked men and wondered exactly what it was that they were talking about. Her powers, disabled by her fit of lust, were gone, leaving her lying on Carson’s bed as helpless as a little girl. She hoped, of course, that she would get to have sex with Carson, but the other guy in the corner was just creepy, and she had no idea who this Brian was (although deep down she secretly hoped that it was the ever dreamy Brian Beastly).
Ron began to work his shaft, anxious to begin, while Carson and Angel Kitten both sat on the bed in silence, Angel gazing at Carson, Carson staring at his watch. The only sound in the room was the constant, meaty thwack of Ron’s wrist. Dust, revealed by the sun through the slits of the blinds, floated in the air as a speechless observer.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” said a voice from within.
“Eh, it’s Brian,” said a gruff sounding voice from without.
Before Carson could get up from the bed, anxious Ron sprang to the door and swung it open. Naked, he held out his welcoming, chubby arms, with a smile and a raging woody.
In stepped Brian, and off came his head!
Angel Kitten Mermaid watched as a familiar saber sliced through her idol’s neck. A shower of red spewed from the stump all over the whitely painted wall and Brian’s body fell forward, powerfully kicked by a black booted foot.
The man who owned the foot stepped forward through the threshold, holding a blood stained sword between his hands. He roared!
“I am Dave, and I carry,The fate of Yoooftah on my shoulders,With sword so sharp it can cut boulders!”
Carson jumped up from the bed, spilling coke all over the sheets. Looking to Ron, he screamed, “The Guardian!” and in one swift motion, the two of them reached for their cocks. Dave remained in the threshold, slightly confused as to who “The Guardian” was and exactly why Carson Daly and Ron Jeremy were both standing before him, naked, grabbing their dicks.
Dave looked around the room and spotted her on the bed. “Angel Kitten Mermaid!” he cried.
“Dave!” she replied, but was unable to say anything more, for Carson took this as his villainous cue.
“Dave?” he spat, with venom and hatred, staring at Dave, rubbing his naked genitals.
“Yeah…that’s me,” was Dave’s confused response. He wanted to follow that up with, “What the fuck is going on here?” but it was plain to see. Angel Kitten Mermaid’s body was to be thoroughly desecrated by three grown and hairy men. Carson Daly, their leader it seemed, was behind it all, and of course it was him! The very face of MTV!!!
Before Carson or Ron could retort Dave continued, with one cold, hard sentence for the two of them. “You disgust me.”
And with this, Dave raised his sword in the air and made a swing for Ron’s throat and the blade connected. But the connection was not steel to flesh, no, his sword hit another blade. Ron’s dick had instantly grown to the length of a meter and developed a sharp metallic edge! It had become a sword! Dave looked to Carson, and his had done the same; he was fighting two naked men, each with a sword for a dick. He knew these guys were well endowed, but he had never expected this – it took the childhood pissing game of “sword fighting” to a completely unprecedented level.
“Bastards!” yelled Dave as he swung away from Ron, and parried Carson’s blow. He knew he was outmatched, he barely knew how to swing his sword, and Angel Kitten Mermaid at the moment, was incapacitated, and in no condition to assist him. Clearly she had gotten some of that coke that Carson spilled into her fins, as she was lying on her back with a grin, flapping her wings, and singing.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid, I am an Angel and a Kitten and a Mermaid!”
Swords locked with Carson, Dave looked over his shoulder to see Ron approaching fast. As he raised his blade (cock), Dave spotted his vulnerable, bulging belly and gave it a stiff side kick. Ron caught it hard, and slumped over as he fell, his wind completely knocked out.
Again, Dave exchanged blows with Carson, but as they fought, he was overcome by the strangest sensation – déjà vu. Dave thought back to when he had first met Angel Kitten Mermaid, and her words reverberated in his head: “…the experience of experiencing something you have already dreamt… when you get the feeling of déjà vu, well you’re fulfilling your self predicted destiny.”
“That’s it!” thought Dave. Strangely enough he had fought this fight before - in a dream. He knew how to defeat the two. To fight fire with fire, perversion with perversion.
Dave waited for his chance, another blade interlocking with Carson, and soon it came. Pushing against one another with all the force that each contained, Dave looked directly into Carson’s eyes.
“Fuck this,” came from Dave’s lips, and as he said it, he quickly pulled his push away from his competitor. Stunned, Carson stumbled forward with his sword stretched out before him. His fall was immediately caught by Ron’s backside, as he stood bent over and breathless recovering from Dave’s kick.
Carson Daly’s sword found a perfect sheath in Ron Jeremy’s ass. The porn star was instantly impaled. Immobilized, and horrified, Carson stood behind him.
“Noooooooo, Darshon, I have failed you. Please, please…”
“Forgive you?” laughed Dave, and with this, he decided to stab Carson through the back of the head so that his sword tip emerged from the forehead. A beheading would have been too Hollywood, and that was exactly the sort of thing Dave was fighting against.
* * *
The room fell quiet again, the dust in the air had settled. It was a mess in there, a veritable blood bath – a feast. Yes, a feast my dear reader, let me tell you, it was a fanciful, finger lickin’ feast. Three dead celebrities, all victims of mortal blade wounds, and I, your narrator, the tick, in the midst of it, surrounded by my very favorite liquid substance. It was at that moment I became so overwhelmed with excitement that I detached myself from David’s scrotum, crawled down his leg (unnoticed), and jumped right into a pool of it. Now I don’t know whose blood it was that I sucked up because it was all mixed together, and I know that the odds were quite high that one of those three men carried some sort of deadly disease, most likely HIV, BUT I DID NOT CARE! It was delicious.
And as I engorged myself with the blood of Dave’s fallen foes, he looked around at his success. MTV was defeated, and Angel Kitten Mermaid was saved. Yoooftah would go unharmed, and all because of his struggles, and triumphs. But - a chilling thought pervaded, settling in like a new tick in the back of Dave’s mind.
“Who is Lord Darshon?”
To which the fully recovered Angel Kitten Mermaid replied via ESP mind waves,
“Dave, let’s just go home.”
[1] See paragraph 7, page 2
[2] See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1YjGN88NkE to fully appreciate this catchy tune.
[3] The Argument over the Existence of God. Google it sometime.
[4] Sciurba, Phil. “What I Think Déjà Vu Is”
[5] Dave is an avid fan of David Hasselhoff, presumably because the two share the same name. This is one of Dave’s favorite songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x20v9F-sWHQ
[6] So that’s why people are religious.
[7] While time may not exist on Yoooftah, it certainly does throughout the rest of the universe…which is part of the reason it must be destroyed for Darshon’s plan to flow smoothly. Right now you may be wondering who this Darshon character is, but I assure you, if you skim through the earlier pages of this text he is indeed mentioned. Meooow!!!
Now really, that’s two questions, so I apologize for misspeaking, especially so early in this story, but, for Dave they were two questions that came packaged together. You see if he knew the point of his existence, well then maybe he could figure out why he was alive, and conversely, if he knew why he was alive, well then maybe he could find some ultimate point in it. Dave knew that these kind of thoughts were normal…at least he told himself they were and hoped tremendously that he was right, but as far as he had seen during his thirty years on Earth, no one ever seemed to bring these questions up. Yes, Dave realized that they could be soul crushing, and were often quiet morbid, horrifying questions, but how could they simply be ignored??? Does a person ignore terminal cancer? Does a person ignore a festering wound? Does a person ignore a blood sucking tick they find nestled in their scalp? No! No! No! was the answer you’d get if you asked Dave. He knew that the questions he was asking were just part of the human condition and he knew that they were in no way positive, but for the past ten years, he simply couldn’t shake them. In short, religion wasn’t really Dave’s thing; he thought counseling was a scam (or a crutch); and he was too much of an introvert to bring the topic up with his friends – friends that had somehow shed similar dilemmas through the creation of careers and families – two things Dave was lacking.
Dave did have a job though, (as do many Americans in their early thirties) and it was this job, at Midwestern Family Insurance that he was getting up for at 6:00 am on this fine Friday morning. And, as Dave threw off the covers, got into the shower, breakfasted, and drove to his cubicle he simply asked himself – Why?
* * *
Dave drifted off to sleep.
He was once again on his double mattress, alone, under the jersey sheet and down comforter, but now he was breathing in that cool night air that had replaced the mildly warm April day. Dave was thinking about nothing in particular, because he saw no point in doing anymore than that. He was merely lying face up in bed, staring at his white ceiling, waiting to fall asleep.
And then things got really weird.
“HELP ME DAVE!!!” The room’s silence was suddenly broken by the helpless shriek of a young girl. Dave sat up, his heart pounding as it hadn’t in at least 143 months.
“Help me, please!” The voice pleaded again, this time pain stricken. It was the voice of a young girl without a doubt, probably around eleven or twelve. The direction it was coming from was indeterminable, but Dave was certain he had heard something. Minutes passed, and his room remained silent, but a creeping doubt, the product of living alone, that the voice wasn’t real and that he was actually crazy worked its way into his brain. He tried to brush this fear aside and lay back down in bed. His heart resumed a normal pace, as did his breathing, and once again Dave was lying awake on his back, only now he wasn’t just blankly staring at the ceiling. To question one’s own sanity, to ponder the possibility of schizophrenia, or to fall asleep and pretend nothing had happen? Such was David’s crux.
“Dave, I need your help!” the voice screamed. Dave shot up again, this time certain of his insanity, and ran to the telephone across the room. He picked it up, intending to dial 911 and report a psychiatric emergency, requesting an immediate dosage of Thorazine. The phone to his ear revealed however, that there was no dial tone, no hope for sanity.
“David Richardson?” the voice of the screaming girl seemingly asked through the ear piece. Dave flipped shit. He wanted to hang up and run to the window and jump out, even if he was only one story high and would probably only break his ankle. He wanted to go into the kitchen and bite through the skin of his recently purchased avocado and make guacamole in his mouth. He wanted to punch himself in the kidney and put a finger in the microwave (somehow while it was still connected to his body) and run the thing for 30 seconds on defrost. He wanted to feel something, anything that was real. But, Dave’s behavior was constrained by his human body, so he froze with the phone glued to his ear and said nothing.
“Is this David Richardson?” the voice asked again, like a pre-pubescent telemarketer, quick and demanding (that is, as demanding as an eleven year old girl can be, which when you think about it can be pretty demanding. Think Barbie, or a kitten, or how about Christmas time?). Not knowing what else to do, Dave answered, but he hid his fear, as any grown man is expected to do, and gave it to her tough.
“Yes it is. And who is this, and if I may add, do you have any idea what time it is?!” Dave felt like a father figure in a 90s sitcom.
“Oh good,” the girl responded, “this is Angel Kitten Mermaid, I need your help, so welcome to my world.” And Dave’s room vanished, giving way to a white spinning vortex that swept him off his feet and carried him away. Angel Kitten Mermaid was transferring Dave to another dimension (if you want to use the human vernacular) and she didn’t have any idea what time it was, because to her, time did not exist.
* * *
Dave spun through the vortex and shrunk to the size of your average chipmunk. He was unaware of this however, because the vortex was completely white, he was spinning, and only one thought occupied his mind, “What is going on?” Now Dave had had this thought before, but in a much different context. Many times, on any given day in the past really, from age 20-30, he would look around the world and ask himself, “What is going on? Why are things the way they are?” The question, for a while was incessant, as was the longing for an answer, but Dave never found an answer. In the beginning, when the questioning of reality was endless, Dave was driven near the point of insanity, a term that one can never truly define; but, in time his anxiety eased and he eventually accepted the world for what it was, a mystery. He had made it. He had crossed the threshold from adolescence to adulthood relatively sane and sound and ready for the uncertainty to come. Currently however, anxiety and dizziness were being felt in incomparable amounts, and Dave simply couldn’t bring himself to say “What’s the point of getting so worked up?” For once, he actually had no idea what was going on. Uncertainty was now an angry pimp slapping his low profit whore in the face. Dave was the hysterical hooker who had thought she had seen it all, but who was now receiving an ugly surprise.
The vortex spun faster and its whiteness fractalized. Dave was spinning, and at each new angle of rotation, seeing a different color. This was happening very fast however, and the colors more or less blended, causing a sickening effect most likely due to sensory overload, and Dave vomited. His vomited swirled out from his mouth as he spun, and became part of the spiraling vortex - like pre blended food in a blender, it simply stuck to the walls. Feeling better, but still very confused, Dave actually thought for a minute he was in a futuristic Skittle’s commercial. He often had thoughts like these, well not specifically that he was in futuristic candy commercials, but that he had been put into situations and had no idea, or control as to how he had gotten there. Well, actually, this never literally happened to Dave, per se, but he regularly thought, “What if I went crazy for a while and did something, and never remembered doing it, and upon returning to sanity had to deal with the consequences. Like what if I murdered my friend and I didn’t even know I did it? What if I was simply hi-jacked by insanity and did some crazy shit, and then became sane again?” It was this method of reasoning that led Dave to believe that he was in said Skittle’s commercial, but as the vortex stopped spinning, this thought seemed a bit ridiculous.
Now free falling, through what seemed to be a sky of blue, and still chipmunk sized, Dave assumed a diving position, for he felt it would give him more control as to where he would land. He reasoned that he was falling at a rate faster than gravity, because he had been given an extra push by the spinning vortex just exited, and was most likely falling onto another world, where the rate of gravity would likely be different. Dave was wrong though. He wasn’t actually falling. In reality, he was being shot upward from the core of the planet that he thought he was falling onto. The white, then colorful, spinning vortex that Angel Kitten Mermaid had sent him through transferred Dave to the center of her planet, a planet that was made entirely of water, and now, Dave was actually being shot through this water to its surface. The fact that Dave couldn’t breathe, was a fact that he was entirely unaware of, but it was negligible, as this whole shot through the core of a water planet took only .45 seconds, using Earth time, but there on Yoooftah, time was irrelevant.
So Dave continued to apparently fall, and as he fell, that all too humanly innate fear of death tightened its bastardly grip around his core. He had thought about death before, (who hasn’t?) and recoiled at its ultimate imminence, but he had never really been faced with any near death, life threatening experiences. Angel Kitten Mermaid, knowing Dave’s thoughts, and having sat back long enough watching Dave spin through a vortex and shoot upward through her planet, without giving him any soothing word or reassurance - because she thought it would only frighten him, as it had on the “telephone” - decided it was time to say something. She waited for an unknown amount of time (but let’s say it was less than .45 seconds, probably around .1-.14 seconds) and watched him shoot upward.
“I’m going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” Dave, her hero, who didn’t even know he would be her hero, thought. She liked the idea that her hero was facing certain death, and saw it as a means of preparation, for if he were to save her, he most certainly would have to face it again. “I have done nothing, I have wasted my life trying to find meaning,” Dave continued in a philosophy that can only be produced milliseconds before seeming death.
“Dave, you will not die here.” Her voice was no longer pleading, or panicked, or even demanding as it had been on the phone. To Dave, it sounded like the voice of a daughter he didn’t have yet. It sounded like his younger sister, as a child. It sounded extremely normal given the circumstances to Dave’s chipmunk proportioned ears. He wanted to respond to the voice, but he couldn’t move his lips, due to the acceleration of the fall (shot upwards). His mouth tasted like lemons from the bile in his stomach from the vomit he had vomited, but he couldn’t even open it to spit, let alone talk. This was bothersome, as he was not only completely freaked out by the childish voice in his head, but also, completely unable to tell it to shut up.
“But back up a minute David!” the narrator and the reader scream upon reading this. “Angel Kitten Mermaid, whoever she is, is talking to you via some form of mental communication, not verbal! Had it occurred to you, you dimwitted sac, that maybe you could reciprocate the conversation in a similar manner? Hmmm!?!” And Dave, for whatever reason, recognized this possibility. And it seemed pretty cool, especially now, in light of the fact that he wasn’t going to die. It was pretty neat, you know, that here, falling through some foreign blue sky at an unknown rate, without a parachute, he wasn’t going to die, and he was participating in ESP with an unknown little girl. ESP did have its drawbacks though. Like what if he wanted some alone time? What if he wanted to have dirty thoughts about an attractive co-worker, or watch a porno in the privacy of his own home? He couldn’t expose an 11 year old girl to such perversions. “And what if” (and this is way out there) “she’s evil, and hijacks my mind, and makes me do things, like rob convenience stores in woman’s clothing, proclaiming justice and liberation in the name of Lord Darshon, supreme ruler of my mortal mind?!” thought Dave. He then realized that this little girl, whom he was still ESPing with, had gotten all of that, and was most likely deeply disturbed.
“You’re not crazy David,” she reassured him, wondering who Lord Darshon was, and questioning the valor of her potential hero.
Aware of his communicative abilities, apparently via mind waves, Dave decided he would talk back to the little girl, as he had no other option. He tried to remain calm, but all that came out was, “What the fuck is going on?” Upon saying this, he felt somewhat guilty, having said “fuck” to a little girl, but the circumstances, as Dave saw them, were pretty radical.
And Angel Kitten Mermaid, perplexed at his guilt, told Dave exactly what the fuck was going on.
“You are David Richardson, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” said Dave, feeling himself fall faster, and noticing brightness in the direction of his destination. For a moment, the sight evoked the thought of heaven, but this was extinguished immediately by Angel Kitten Mermaid.
“Dave, I already told you, you’re not going to die! You’re not even falling. You’re shooting upwards through the core of my planet!” she explained, frustrated, for there was much more to explain, and little time to do so, (which is why she left out the fact that her planet was made of water, and that Dave didn’t need to worry about breathing whilst submerged because time didn’t really exist on Yoooftah, and blah blah blah[1]).
“Ok, ok, but I repeat, little girl…what the fuck is going on?”
Angel Kitten Mermaid did not like Dave’s increasing snappiness, nor did she like being referred to as “little girl.” Who was this mere mortal, Dave Richardson, to so snobbishly call her “little” when she had literally transported him from his home, through a Taste the Rainbow Vortex, into another dimension and another world? Hubris - the tragic flaw of her hero. Angel Kitten Mermaid simply sighed at Dave’s imperfection as she informed him.
“David, my name is Angel Kitten Mermaid,” she began, only to be interrupted.
“Angel Kitten what?”
“Angel Kitten Mermaid!”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dave asked bluntly (as bluntly as the description of the way he asked it). Angel Kitten Mermaid could feel his genuine perplextion, but it infuriated her, much like his hubris. Curiosity - another human tragedy, she thought, and she thought it with free reign, as Dave couldn’t feel her feelings like she was feeling his. Although Dave believed he was partaking in ESP, it was really only one way, for Angel Kitten Mermaid, was at the moment controlling his brain so that he could communicate with her. She reflected on Dave’s anxieties towards the hi-jacking of his brain and chuckled – it was a good thing she needed him, and that she wasn’t inherently evil.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid! I am an Angel, and a Kitten, and a Mermaid!” Angel Kitten Mermaid sang to the tune of the chorus of Amy’s Grant’s, Baby Baby[2]. To Dave, the song was soothing, and as he visibly calmed, Angel Kitten Mermaid continued.
“Dave you are here because I need you. I have summoned you from Earth, here to my home planet Yoooftah, because I face a problem, and I believe that you have the ability to help me.” She knew that upon saying this, Dave would want to know what an Angel Kitten Mermaid was, where Yoooftah was, and most likely, once again what the fuck was going on. She also suspected that he wouldn’t want to know about her problem, as Dave was a pretty self important guy.
“An Angel Kitten Mermaid, is I, for I am the only one on the planet Yoooftah, and to my knowledge the only one in the 5th Dimension.”
“That’s some heavy shit,” thought Dave to himself, but as a consequence of the ESP, to Angel Kitten Mermaid as well. For a minute he was pretty sure that he was having an acid flashback, but as he was still falling, and unable to do anything else, he continued to listen.
“I am part Angel, part Kitten, and part Mermaid, as my name implies. I cannot show myself to you, yet, as you are still within the surface of Yoooftah, but when we do meet, expect to see a little girl with a kitten like upper body, a mermaid fin for legs, a white pair of wings, and a golden halo. Meeeeeeeeeow!” She added the meow for validity, although at this point, she was pretty sure Dave would believe just about anything. Then again, maybe he would never believe anything else for the rest of his life.
“And although I do appear to be an 11 year old girl,” she continued, “I am actually quiet ancient. I have been on Yoooftah since its creation, and I am essential to its survival. That is why I have summoned you, for my survival has been threatened, and my planet faces destruction.”
The brightness that Dave had been watching come closer throughout his fall now encompassed the whole of his vision. He was slowing, and his body was returning to its normal size. It seemed as though he was about to emerge from the deep end of a pool after a particularly long dive. Despite the reassurances, Dave was still 75 percent sure he was dying, and when he emerged from his watery trajectory, he certainly thought he was in heaven (a product no doubt of his pseudo-Christian upbringing which he continually rejected throughout his life, but like so many other “believers” found in the face of death).
Anyway, the heaven that David shot into, Yoooftah, was a green skied water world and although he was unaware of it, the entire surface of the planet was indeed aquatic. As he emerged, Dave thought back to biology class in college, a class he had taken due to an innate interest in living things and the hope of becoming a biologist. He soon discovered however, that there were just way too many living things to ever possibly study and that biologists didn’t really do anything but study them, so he gave up his dream to become what would become a future insurance salesman. This was about the time Dave started hating his life, and also the time that Angel Kitten Mermaid foresaw his destiny. Now, she watched his face lighten as inhaled his first breath of dopamine laden oxygen and inspiration returned to a face that had forgotten its meaning for nearly a decade. His eyes took in the mysterious emerald sky which faintly reflected the shimmer of the deep blue sea. Green and blue – colors of life, the colors of Yoooftah, and the colors of ecstasy. A calming humidity, a perfect humidity, the humidity one hopes to achieve through use of a room humidifier, cool yet completely agreeable, surrounded Dave and pacified his frantic mind. He had been taken from a dark pit of domicilic despair, and thrown into a world of liquefied peace - but an ominous gray was on the horizon.
“Dave!” cried Angel Kitten Mermaid gliding down from the emerald sky on two white, feathery wings, this time completely verbal. Her appearance was exactly as she had described it, and Dave was immediately transfixed. “Dave! Dave! You made it, you’re alive!” Alive? Dave wondered why she seemed so surprised. Hadn’t she repeatedly assured him that death was the last thing he had to worry about during his travel down the vortex? This creature, this Angel-Kitten-Mermaid seemed relieved however, as if Dave’s transference had been one tinged with the threat of death.
And he was right. Angel Kitten Mermaid had not informed Dave that the vortex was the first one she had ever created, and that statistically, the first vortex any vortex creator on Yoooftah creates has a 90% failure rate, ending in disfiguration of the transferred item (death being a complication of the disfiguration of living “items”). But, that was beside the point. She hadn’t told him because she knew it would freak him out, and he had made it anyway - so maybe fate was smiling upon her, and Dave, and the whole damned planet of Yoooftah.
“Angel Kitten Mermaid I presume?” Dave questioned, trying to sound suave but not appearing so as he clumsily tread ocean water.
“Yes Dave, it’s me! You made it, I’m so glad!” she responded in the voice of a small excited girl.
“So…as I’ve said before,” Dave began, once again trying to sound suave, and once again failing, and at the same time wondering why he was trying to sound suave in the first place and wondering what the image of suavity would even do for him in this strange world, “what the FUCK is going on?”
“I’ve told you David, you are on the planet Yoooftah, and you’re here to save it, through saving me.” She said this calmly, not understanding what he didn’t understand about the situation, and as she said it Dave felt that maybe he was beginning to understand. Tirelessly, he continued to tread water, cramping not and barely straining, due to the aforementioned dopamine in the aforedescribed air. Worry melted away, the water felt wonderful, and Dave conceded that even if he was in heaven that that was okay, and that maybe Michael Phelps was a modern day messiah. Laughing at his newfound docility, Angel Kitten Mermaid swooped down and plucked him from the sea.
Dave was shocked by the small girl’s incredible strength and began to belief all that she had said about being a supreme being and such.
“So this isn’t a dream?” he asked, hoping it was, but at the same time praying as he never had that it was reality, dreading a return to his miserable bedroom.
“Nope. This is fo rizzle my nizzle,” Angel Kitten Mermaid smiled, “and you’ve got some business to attend to.”
* * *
Dave and Angel Kitten Mermaid were still flying through the emerald sky about 50 feet above the ocean’s surface, as to avoid any jumping pranters. Jumping pranters were, up until the ensuing apocalypse that is the center piece of this plot that has yet to be described in detail, the only thing that Angel Kitten Mermaid had to worry about. Compared to any Earth creature, they were most similar to the largemouth bass, in that they were predatory in nature, and often fed from the water’s surface, and had large mouths, and were basically shaped like bass. They were however, the size of your average short bus, which gave them the ability (and need) to eat things of Angel Kitten Mermaid’s size (which was that of your average 11 year old girl). The added weight of Dave, roughly 180 pounds, which was high due to his sedentary lifestyle and office job, made the two a flying delicatessen. They looked quiet awkward airborne, as Angel Kitten Mermaid was hugging Dave from behind, it actually appeared that he was giving her a piggy back ride. But, this description of their flight pattern and of flying pranters is not at all important, and in fact is a complete ramble. What is important though, is the conversation they had during this flight, as Angel Kitten Mermaid soared above that pranter infested ocean. And here it is, in uninterrupted (by the author’s omniscient description of expressions and thoughts) dialogue:
Dave: “So you’re telling me I’m a hero and this planet needs me? That’s why I’m here? To save it from impending doom and destruction?”
AKM: “Yes! For the sake of Pete! That is an acceptable interjection, right? Forgive me Dave, I’ve just recently been acquainted with the English Language, you see, normally I communicate in a strictly pheromonal fashion.”
Dave: “Really? That’s interesting. I used to study biology, and I’d really like to know how that works, especially in a completely aquatic environment. I mean, as far as I know, on Earth, pheromones are strictly airborne.”
AKM: “Well yeah Dave, but this isn’t Earth, the rules are a little different here. You did just fly through a vortex, remember? Has that ever happened to you on Earth? And you’ve also got to remember, what I call pheromones…well that’s just an English description of what they actually are. You can’t even comprehend their reality, really. In fact, you can’t really comprehend most of reality.”
Dave: “Ok, ok, I guess, whatever. But if I can’t comprehend it, what’s the point of worrying about it?”
Narrator Interruption: “I know I promised I wouldn’t intrude, but after saying that last bit of dialogue, Dave realized that this is how he should go about his very existence on Earth. This is the point where he begins to rise from his existential angst, and fulfills his destiny. Well, maybe…”
AKM: “Yeah, you’re right Dave. Besides, we’ve got more important things to talk about.”
Dave: “Are we still connected in that ESP way that we were before? ‘Cuz I don’t like that you can know what I’m thinking.”
AKM: “Yes we are, but like you said, you can’t comprehend it, so don’t worry about it.”
Dave: “Dammit, you’ve caught me in my own logic. I can’t argue. Continue.”
AKM: “Well, you see. O, hahaha. Gosh, this is going to be hard for you to believe, so work with me here Dave.”
Dave: “Ok. Shoot.”
AKM: “Huh? Shoot what?”
Dave: “Nevermind! Just explain it already!”
AKM: “Well…there’s this guy named God you see. And he created the universe.”
Dave: “What?”
AKM: “Yeah, I know, crazy right? Just be patient and let me explain. He created the universe in a week, and he did this all from his home in ‘Heaven’, which is located in the 13th and most inaccessible dimension.”
Dave: “Wait a minute…”
AKM: “A minute!? I said to be patient Dave, so listen! God created the universe in like seven days, and he’s all powerful and all knowing and all benevolent and you see… he created the universe in his image or something like that, I’m not all up and up on it all, but it’s how everything started.”
Another interruption: “Dave laughed, shocked at what he was being told. According to this
Angel Kitten Mermaid, the Judeo-Christian explanation for existence was spot on and it transcended the universe. Wowey.”
AKM continues: “Now God, as of late has been a little pissed off at the Planet Yoooftah, well more specifically, he’s been pissed off at me.”
Dave: “And he wants to destroy it? Or you?”
AKM: “Uh, yeah…both”
Dave: “But I thought you said he was all benevolent?”
Narrator interruption: “Ah, this age old debate[3]”
AKM: “Yeah, he’s supposed to be, and he’s claiming that Yoooftah’s destruction would be for the greater good of the universe, he thinks that we’re a bad influence and we should be punished.”
Dave: “In the depths of Hell?”
AKM: “Yeah! How’d you know that!? Hell the 12th and most fiery dimension!”
Dave: “I thought you could read my mind, shouldn’t you know why I know?”
Narrator Interruption: “Shut up Dave, you’re ruining the flow of the dialogue.”
AKM: “Yeah, whatever, that doesn’t matter, what matters is, you’ve got to save us!”
Dave: “Well why’s God mad at you, specifically?”
AKM: “I’ve been acting a ‘ho fo sho’.”
Dave: “A what?”
AKM: “A ho fo sho. I’ve been sleeping with 5 guys a week for the past 8 consecutive weeks. That’s one guy a week shy of ‘ho bag’ status.”
Dave: “Oh wow.”
AKM: “Yeah, and being that I’m a Universal Ambassador for Yoooftah, and a being of magnificent supreme powers granted by the hands of God himself, he’s not too happy with what I’ve been doing. Plus I’m 11.”
Dave: “I see…so God does value chastity?”
Another interruption, I’m sorry it will be the last one I promise!: “At this point, Dave made a mental note to burn all of his pornography if and when he returned to Earth.”
AKM: “Yes, he does, and if I can’t make it through this week without a beef injection, he will destroy Yoooftah and me! So that’s where you come in.”
I can’t help myself interruption!: “That’s what she said” (referring to AKM’s last sentence there, the “come” part).
Dave: “Me, what? Why can’t you just stop being a ho? Keep your legs, or your fin closed for the sake of your planet God dammit!”
AKM: “Indeed. But you see it isn’t that easy, and that’s exactly why I’ve summoned you.”
Dave: “How am I supposed to…what?”
AKM: “Yes David. You see, on your planet there is a television channel known as MTV, I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
Dave: “Yea…”
AKM: “Well recently, we’ve been picking up stray broadcasts from this channel, and I’ve been spending all of my time watching them, they’re quite entertaining, you know.”
Dave: “Yea…”
AKM: “But the thing is, ever since I started watching them, I’ve developed a voracious appetite for the male genitalia, which on Yoooftah comes in many different varieties and species, and I simply can’t help myself. No less than 5 portions a week! I’m unable to control this desire.”
Narrator, once again: “No pun intended on that “comes in many different varieties and species” part.”
Dave: “Jesus Christ!”
AKM: “You’ve heard of him too! Yeah, he’s pretty pissed as well, but he’s a bit more forgiving than his Dad. Still, God won’t budge, he’s gonna kill us all if I don’t keep it in my pants.”
Dave: “But, but, why isn’t God angry at Earth? I mean we are the ones producing the MTV, and pshh, we’ve got a lot of whores-for-sures roaming around our shores.”
AKM: “But, God doesn’t punish ignorance.”
Dave: “Oh, I feel so honored.”
AKM: “You should be. He blessed your planet with it.”
Dave: “He certainly did, but anyway, (sigh), let’s confront the problem at hand, and maybe we can save you and your planet and I will in some way, find my heroic endeavor life affirming. What do you want me to do?”
AKM: “You must destroy MTV.”
And after much laughter at the ridiculousness of her request, and much doubt at the possibility of succeeding, and much pleading on the behalf of Angel Kitten Mermaid, including her ofference of a blow jay if Dave complied, which they both conceded would be entirely counterproductive, Dave agreed that he would try to save the day, and Angel Kitten Mermaid sent him back to Earth.
* * *
Dave awoke in his dull gray bedroom, lying on his back in bed. He was breathing heavily, and sweating through his flannel pajama pants onto the blue jersey sheets that protected the mattress from such perspiration. His first thought was that it was getting too warm out for jersey, and that maybe he should switch to his smooth and forever cool silk sheets (which he had spent a fortune on, and shared with no one). His second thought was more of a questioning, as to why he was breathing so heavily and sweating so profusely. He then remembered the crazy ass dream that had just taken place and, with a deep, calming inhalation, coaxed himself back to sleep.
Hours later, Dave awoke again, but this time it was to the daylight of an identical-to-the-day-before-day. His alarm had not been the cause of his awakening, for it was Saturday, and nearly 9:30 am. To Dave, the bright day felt fresh, but at the same time mildly pathetic, as it was being taken in not through the groggy headedness of one who had spent his Friday night wildly out on the town doing shots of Jagermeister and cajoling women off to bed, but through the incredibly sharp and sober mind of one who had spent the night watching a poorly made for TV Stephen Segal action-drama and drifted off to sleep before its ending at 10:30 pm. This morning laughed at Dave as he emerged from his bed and walked to the empty kitchen for breakfast, and he cowered at its chuckle, feeling very lame.
With a bowl of cereal already halfway devoured, Dave decided to get up from the silent kitchen table and travel to the living room to eat while watching television. This minor act of rebellion was Dave lashing out at his own regularity, and he even put his feet up on the coffee table as he sat down before the screen. But, his act of dissent, however satisfying, was immediately and equally rebuked, as Dave managed to spill the half eaten bowl of cereal onto his lap as he sat. The day was now cackling at its victim. Rays of sunshine through the open blinds of the living room were its cries of jubilation, their warming effect so precisely countering the cold chill of the milk on Dave’s testicles that he could do nothing less than scream.
“Mother Fucker!” but no one heard his frustration, and this, more than anything frustrated Dave even more. His day off, his day of rest, was sabotaging itself, and no one suffered but he. He didn’t even get up to clean his lap as the milk soaked down to his thighs, warming as it spread. Instead he reached for the remote, and turned on the TV. There was no use crying over what was spilt, and Dave mentally repeated this mantra as the TV hummed on. Hopefully its diversion would improve the mood of the day, hopefully.
It was then that Dave felt the sudden compulsion to turn on MTV, a channel he hadn’t watched since college. Maybe it was the yearning for something better in his life that compelled him to do so, or maybe it was the fact that he wished he was still in college and his life hadn’t deteriorated into something he had once vehemently swore to never experience, or, maybe it was the vague recollection of an Angel Kitten Mermaid creature that had spoke to him in some Yoooftah dreamland that caused him to switch from channel 25 to channel 53. Dave wasn’t sure, but as an energy drink commercial, consisting of a man on a dirt bike literally driving across an unfrozen, liquid lake played before him, memories of the night’s dream worked their way into his mind. Something about imminence, something about heroics, and something about a promiscuous eleven year old feline of oceanic and heavenly origins.
A music video that was no less ridiculous than the preceding commercial replaced it. Rap was its genre, as far as Dave could deduce, and it opened up with the rapper rapping. The rapper, a loosely clad African American gentleman, wearing a large, white t-shirt, a fitted and backwards black baseball cap (with the purchase tag still on the bill), and a silver chain holding some unreadable pendant at his chest, was driving a yellow Lamborghini convertible, and the camera followed him as he drove, on the left side of the car. Its lens took in the rapper, as he looked into it (and not at the whirling and winding road ahead of him, upon which he drove at speeds close to 80 mph). He had one hand, his right, on the steering wheel, and the other hand, his left, hanging out of the vehicle’s window. His rap went as follows, and it was supported by what Dave thought was a pretty catchy bass beat.
I got so many problems, I got so many hos,
But I’d say that I could use a common synonym for those
The rapper repeated this verse, his mantra, many times as he drove through what were presumably the hills of California, on streets that had been conveniently cleared for the making of the music video. After numerous repetitions, the car ride ended in an instant, and suddenly the rapper was placed in the center of a white dance floor. His hos, of which there were at least nine, danced behind him.
And I gotta squeeze loose, all my manly juice,
I gotta let it flow, from my engine to yo’ caboose.
And the hos, who were also apparently trained strippers, danced at this utterance in thong bikinis, as white as the dance floor, and in a stark contrast to the ebony skin encasing the fat collections which they shook. Asses wobbled and jibblies jibbled, and Dave watched the television screen as his milk soaked pajama pants grew tighter. The camera lens zoomed in on a particularly plump rump as a ho of no more than 18 years of age booty bounced on top of white stiletto heels. The bass throbbed onward, as did Dave’s eleventh digit, and the rapper continued with the women now moving in a slow motion, champagne foam lubricated strip tease.
Unprotected, its erected, just let it be injected!
Our two parts should be connected, I swear I ain’t infected.
I wanna bend you over, and you should want to bend
I don’t wanna be yo’ lover, I just got a dick to lend.
And it was at this last verse, when said rapper used the word “dick,” that Dave awoke from his lustful coma. Dick? On TV? The most promiscuous thing Dave could remember coming from MTV was Def Leppard requesting sugar to be poured upon them, and now here, fifteen years later, rappers were getting away with verbally fucking strippers on dance floors! Oh, the children, thought Dave, feeling old and lame as he thought it. But he couldn’t shake his worry, as those young dancers had so easily and freely shook their uncovered voluptuous asses. No, he couldn’t believe that little kids, his friend’s children, his potential children even, could be spending their Saturday mornings watching half grown women dance around almost fully naked and full grown men completely encouraging it, while suggesting much more. MTV was marketed towards teens, but as anybody (who grew up with it) could tell you, and as Dave knew himself, having done so, it was more often viewed by preteens for this very reason. The preteen wants nothing more than to be a full blown teenager (or a fully blown teenager if they happen to be male), and at the discovery of MTV, the very channel designed for their slightly elder idols, viewing becomes routine. Breakfast, toothbrushing, school bus, MTV. The same thing, every day ingrained into the sponge mind of a growing adolescent can have quite the impact, and when that same thing is womanizing with a side of unprotected sex, the consequences, well the consequences are self explanatory. Dave may have not known his purpose in life, but for some reason he felt compelled to protect children from any form of filth, this filthy MTV included. He knew his life was spiraling into failure, and his job as an insurance salesman was a joke, but he felt compelled to preserve the integrity of those little future adults and he felt completely disgusted by this M. T. V. His disgust was all the more fueled by some inner compulsion, as if a small mermaid girl he knew, somewhere off in a distant world was ho’ing herself off because of music videos like these.
The video ended with more ass shaking, and the start of a reality show. Dave was familiar with the concept of such a show, and knew that “reality” was just a pseudonym for “staged,” and within the veil of reality, just about anything could happen. He looked down at his milk soaked pants, now lukewarm and flaked with cereal and decided it was really too late to change them anyway.
A scruffy blond man took the screen, beer bellied, with locks unwashed flowing from his scalp and face. He dressed like he was 21, in an attempt to mask 20 additional years, and he slouched with a glow of agnostic glee. His bearded face was marked by a mouth-breathing mouth, and two sunglassed eyes, which were completely unnecessary in the indoor environment of what Dave presumed to be his bachelor pad basement – pool table, plasma screen, hot tub, and bar adorned.
“Ello,” the slob, who Dave instantly loathed, gruffly uttered, looking directly into the camera. “I am Brian Beastly, and you’re watching Beauty and the Beast.” Brian then walked over to his bar, and from a conveniently placed and filled double shot glass, that in any dimension of reality would have had to have been pre-poured prior to filming this specific scene, and judging by the slight stumble in Brian’s saunter could very well have been the second or third incarnation of reality, downed a generous helping of brown liquor.
Needless to say, the beast was stunned, as was David Richardson.
Suddenly, transporting from basement to poolside, under the Californian sunlight, Brian was lying on a towel covered chase lounge chair and before him, with their backs to the heart shaped in ground pool that center pieced the mansion patio, stood eight lovely young ladies, like game show contestants, awaiting the announcement of the winner. Eager were their fakely tanned and snouted faces, and apprehensive were their rapid breaths, which were revealed by the up and down of their fraudulently breasted and bikinied chests.
“Ladies,” drawled the Beast, like a surfer who had had too much sun, “it’s been another great week here in the Beast’s Lair.” At this statement Dave could only assume that the Lair was undoubtedly what the Beast had named his far from lairish estate. Dave also began to question what he was doing so wrong in his life that prevented him from lounging about in the sun while being admired by groups of babes and sipping on intoxicating tropical beverages, the latter being exactly what Brian did after his solitary sentence.
“But,” Brian continued, “one of you has to go,” another sip, “because the Beast can have only one Beauty.” And at this Brian pointed with his tanned and drink holding hand, to the first young woman in the lineup saying, “Melissa, we had some fun this week, now didn’t we?” with an overly suggestive stress on the didn’t and a subtle lack of stress on the we, suggesting the Beast didn’t give two shits about Melissa, and that his definition of a fun week with her was based solely on the amount of pleasure he had taken from her body. Or at least that’s how Dave interpreted it. Dave then imagined the screen cutting to clips of very hardcore porn in which the Beast’s beast penetrated the Beauty’s beauty in lightening speed point of view thrusts complimented with womanly shrieks of painful pleasure and hedonistic man beast grunts. Instead, it cut to the two of them, Melissa and Brian, sharing a bottle of champagne in the aforementioned basement hot tub. The two half naked love birds gazed into each other’s eyes while Brian whispered sweet nothings to Melissa, inaudible to the boom mic that was probably suspended inches above this moment in reality. As a replacement to the actual whispers, subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen, but Dave knew that they were in no way anywhere close to what was actually being said.
Brian: I know that I’ve got a reputation baby, but I’m really looking to settle down, and I need to know, can you settle down with me?
What Brian probably said, according to Dave: If you had to pick another girl from the group, who would you have a threesome with tonight?
Melissa: I know, I know, baby (caressing his face). I see through the booze and the partying and the hard living, and I know you can become so much more.
What Melissa probably said, according to Dave: I’m glad you asked, because I’m actually a bisexual, (cupping his balls under water) and I’ve had my eye on that sweet little Heidi all week. I’d just love to taste that Louisiana pussy.
Brian: I feel a real connection with you Mel, can I call you Mel?
Brian, According to Dave: Nice. You ever done ass to mouth?
Melissa: (Laughs) Of course you can call me Mel, that’s what my family calls me, and I feel that close to you Brian, I really do.
Melissa, According to Dave: (Works hand from balls to shaft) Hell yeah, that’s the only way I party. I’ve been doing that shit ever since I was 15 with my cousin Roy. We keep it in the family where I’m from.
And with that connection made, the screen cut back to the pool scene, with Brian in his lounge chair sipping daiquiri, Melissa before the pool with her dirty mouth, Heidi by her side with her recently fellatioed Cajun ass crack, and Dave, mortified and milk crotched on his sofa. In an instant, the first three were gone as Dave flicked them away, by turning off the TV, and retreating to his bedroom.
Angel Kitten Mermaid or not, he was going to destroy that vile network, that MTV. Consequences, they were inconsequential, as up to this very climactic point was Dave’s existence. But now he had a purpose, he had something that drove him and shook him to a point of fury, matched only by the fury manifest in his own inability to comprehend the ultimate meaning of things. To him it seemed that perhaps the destruction of evil was the answer. Or maybe it was just a good diversion. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but think that he would be saving the minds of countless American children, if not the entire watery planet of Yoooftah.
* * *
At this junction, by way of her telepathic connection, Angel Kitten Mermaid was feeling incredibly relieved. She wasn’t entirely sure if Dave would have believed that his other worldly encounter had actually occurred, so she had coaxed him (subconsciously) to turn on MTV that morning while he attempted to eat his cereal. Her coaxing had worked, but she didn’t know how much longer she could hold on. Brain Beastly was just so dreamy, in his grungy alcoholic kind of way, and she longed to see the vapid Melissa booted from the show, while yellow Lamborghinis always did have a way of loosening her up (vaginally). And no, I will not go into the anatomy of the Angel Kitten Mermaid genitalia! Just use your imagination, and remember, she’s only 11 you disgusting pervert of a reader, who if, is still reading this, might be wondering who the narrator is. Well smart ass, in this story you’ve already accepted the existence of God, so here’s another ridiculous one – the narrator, me, the one speaking to you through this text is an omniscient tick on David’s nut sac that he acquired on a hunting trip last weekend with his older brother and father in North Dakota. I guess I failed to mention the trip, probably because it is completely irrelevant to the story, as is Dave not knowing yet that I’m perched here, sucking his scrotal blood and infecting him with Lyme’s disease. The Lyme’s won’t set in until after this story is through, but don’t worry, it doesn’t kill him.
Anyway, Dave had never calculated anything more than statistical figures for insurance matters and accountancy accounts for personal matters and derivatives in college calculus for academic matters and the hypotenuse of a triangle in high school for reasons to him that never really mattered, but now he was driving in his unimpressive, brown, Japanese four door sedan towards New York, trying to calculate a masterful plan to dismantle the entire MTV corporation.
He was a nervous man for the most part, and his driving habits were telltale of this attribute. White knuckles grasped the wheel, sweat accumulated in his pits, and he kept checking the rearview - all this, despite the fact that he wasn’t going an mph over 45, and the speed limit was 50. Dave lived about 2 hours from New York City, and he felt that those two hours were the only two in which he should allow himself to formulate a plan of action. Every minute delayed allowed for another wretchedly broadcast music video, or a whorrific reality show, laden with putrid sexuality and moral digression to be poured into the open sponge minds of American youths. And then there was Angel Kitten Mermaid, that adorable little creature! Yes, Dave was now positive of her existence, and her plight, and he knew that he couldn’t delay another moment. Her very planet depended on him.
Dave turned the car eastbound and flipped down the windshield visor to block the imposing sun. He popped a Diazepam tablet from his prescription bottle (a prescription prescribed for situations just like these, and no, Dave did not regularly plot to destroy major television networks, but he did often get nervous), and with a swallow he began to calm. He turned down the music, which had been blaring heavy metal, and took a couple of deep, diaphragmic breaths.
“Angel Kitten Mermaid, how am I going to do this?” Dave asked mentally, remembering the ESP connection the creature had established the night prior. Within a second of asking her, leaving no time for Dave to feel self conscious about summoning a presumably imaginary creature, the heavy metal music that he had turned down became the chorus of Amy Grant’s, Baby Baby, but instead of the usual lyrics, “Baby, baby the stars are shining for you” sung by the attractive brunette Christian pop star, the voice of an eleven year old girl came through his speaker system.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid! I am an Angel and a Kitten and a Mermaid!”
The voice was eerie, only in that he had heard it the night before and its sound produced within him a slight déjà vu experience.
“What is déjà vu?” Dave asked Angel Kitten Mermaid, audibly, before he could think another thought, or even manage to greet the intergalactic being. He figured she knew he was wondering it anyway, and since he was going out of his way to help her, and she was presumably a creature with supernatural abilities, he figured he’d try to obtain some forbidden knowledge.
“Excuse me David?” Angel Kitten Mermaid asked through the speakers, thoroughly offended at Dave’s lack of cordiality. She knew he was taking advantage of his situation, and she didn’t like it. Here was her hero, without a plan of action, pondering at what he thought were the perplexities of the human mind. Perplexities! More like a glitch in a computer system if you asked her, but she thought she’d humor him, put him in good spirits before what might be the death of him. She didn’t wait for Dave to repeat the question and said, as casually as she would tell him the “time” or ask a bobble headed goat-pig on Yoooftah for a sipple of its udder, “Déjà vu is the experience of experiencing something you have already dreamt. Human dreams can often serve as a prediction of the future, and when you get the feeling of déjà vu, well you’re fulfilling your self predicted destiny.[4]”
“That doesn’t really make sense,” began Dave, but before he could continue, he was distracted by a semi-truck moving into his lane. His first reaction was to slam the breaks, but remaining cool, he slightly tapped them and allowed the either blind or assholiac truck driver into his lane. Had Angel Kitten Mermaid not interfered with Dave’s mind, he would have slammed the breaks, died, and MTV would have gone on to broadcast whorish television programs from that moment, presumably into eternity. It was a good thing she could supplement his ability with her own.
As soon as the additional sweat from the near death encounter dripped away from his brow and his knuckles dulled from bright white to a softer red tinged beige, Dave popped another pill, went through the whole deep diaphragmic breath ordeal again, and cleared his head.
“Alright, so how am I going to destroy MTV, Angel Kitten Mermaid? I don’t know if you realize this, but you’ve selected an insurance salesmen as your hero, and MTV is an entire, nationwide, hell worldwide…hell I guess universe wide, since you are receiving broadcasts, corporation.” He then paused and thought about how big MTV was, how small he was, how big the universe was, and then how infinitesimally small he was. This disheartened him, but with the aid of the pills in his system, he let it go, and just thought about it all as one big system. All he needed to do was make a kink.
“What?” was Angel Kitten Mermaid’s solemn response. She repeated it, and repeated it again, making three what’s the entirety of her plan.
“You mean you don’t know how I’m supposed to destroy them?” Dave shrieked at his radio dials, not knowing where else to look, since the phantom he was plotting with was merely a voice in his speaker system. “I thought you were, I thought, bahhhhhh!” To the outside observer it appeared as though Dave were simply singing along to an exciting rock song. But the rock song responded.
“Whoa hold on there, Dave”
“Hold on?”
“Yes, hold on”
“Ok, holding.”
And as Dave held (the steering wheel) and drove on (towards New York), Angel Kitten Mermaid devised a plan. When Dave was about 10 minutes outside of MTV’s headquarters, she finished her plan, and while Dave parked his car in an overpriced parking garage, then emerged from its dark, subterranean mouth onto the gray, chaotic, pigeon filled streets of New York City, she gave it to him. He said he understood, and he continued, now walking, towards his destination. Firstly however, there was a detour, according to the plan, and it was in the direction of the nearest manhole cover.
The following events, which consist of David Richardson’s epic battle against the malevolent MTV Corporation are indeed of heroic proportions, and are best remembered through verse, much like Homer recorded the ancient battles of The Iliad and The Odyssey. I make this comparison not pretentiously; I know I’m no Homer (although I aspire to be), but in all seriousness Dave really did kick some ass, and I just want to do justice to his might.
David the Salesmen slid down the manhole
With no weapon in hand, taking a gamble
For the sewers were rife with vagrants and rats
And angry black hobos with cracked baseball bats
But there was something he needed, in the midst of that muck
And he’d find it with guidance from his Angel, and a little bit of luck
It was rusted, it was crusted, it was a solitary valve
Whose turnage could save herpified Yoooftah, like a medical salve
By flooding the lair of that sluttish red Beast
Destruction, destruction to MTV!
Lost, “Which way do I turn?” said Dave to the Kitten
“A left, then a right!” then David was bitten
By a giant black lizard that emerged from the depths
And struck at his knee
It hissed and recoiled
Dave shouted, “Why me?”
And to answer his cry, his Mermaid arose
And threw him a saber, saying “You are the one I chose!”
With hilt in hand, Dave approached the scaled beast
But it didn’t back down, no, it snarled at (what it thought was) its feast
And it slashed out a claw
And flashed the teeth in its jaw
And it roared a guffaw
And Dave waved his sword, confused and scared
Until he saw
A missing scale in the monster’s paw
So he stabbed it, screaming, “Demon, withdraw!”
But the reptile was cocky
You could say it was his tragic flaw
And he wouldn’t retreat
So Dave cut off his head
And the lizard was dead
Certainly beat
Bloody saber, and shaking hand
Dave summoned Angel Kitten Mermaid, telling her that he didn’t quite understand
He’d never swung a sword
He’d never fought a bad-guy
He’d never even, ever once, ever thrown a bulls-eye!
To which she did reply
“You have powers within you that have yet to be released
And with my help, your penis size will be increased”
“…What…oh no, have you’ve been watching MTV!
You’re turning into a little ho, My kitten, don’t you see!
I need your strength, turn off that junk, please lead me on my way!
How am I to find the path, when you have gone astray?”
And being eleven years old
She simply said, “Okay.
Walk thirty meters due Southwest, and you’ll find that valve.”
But she forgot to say
That mighty Dave the Conqueror, would have another beast to slay.
So he approached the valve, yes he approached the valve, thinking his quest was through
And AKM, she thought the same, and said “Dave, I’m proud of you!”
But everyone knows
That every hero’s journey goes
Up and down
And ebbs and flows
And that a hero should keep on his toes
Because a big, angry, man standing seven foot three, with a 200 pound belly, sharpened teeth, a monkey wrench in one hand, and a super soaker filled with sulfuric acid (custom made out of glass) in the other
With a really bad temper
Might jump out of the shadows right before apparent victory
And that’s exactly what happened to Dave.
“Roooooar!!!!” roared the very scary, very hairy, very, very, very, unmerry man
“My name is Larry! What are you doing down here you friggin fairy?”
And Dave was weary.
So he pulled out his sword and said, “I am Dave, and I carry
The fate of Yoooftah on my shoulders
With sword so sharp it can cut boulders
Keep your distance wench!
Oh, and can I borrow your wrench?
I must turn that valve, you see,
It’s a lot to explain…but, trust me.”
Larry looked back with a face of disgust.
Laughing, he laughed, “You want me to trust?”
And expecting a fight, Dave pointed his sword
But Larry laughed again, shook his head
And said
“You know what, I’m bored!
This location is dark.
This place is so lonely.
Do you know what it’s like to be the only,
Guy living in a sewer?
Because it does have a certain allure,
But I have no friends,
And I want some! They seem great!”
And before the man could ramble on, Dave shouted out
“Hey Wait!
(Larry waited, and there was a moment of tension, you could see in his face a look of apprehension,
But being a patient man – the product of living alone in a dark, aquatic tunnel that constantly exuded a fecal aroma – he gave Dave his full attention)
Let’s go on a man date!”
So on the date they went.
But Dave got the hint
That Larry wanted more, than to be just a friend.
And as the night came to an end
With a toast to celebrate - a shot of tequila
Larry looked in a David’s eyes and said, “Man, I want to feel ya.”
Alas, for the sake of Yoooftah, and the sake of AKM
Dave let Larry come inside his brownish, ahem! -
…ly painted Japanese sedan.
Remember the one he drove to New York in?
Man!
Get your mind out of the gutter reader!
What do you think this is? A pornographic theater?
Anyway,
They played “pattycake” for about an hour
And then Dave was forced to devour
Some homemade sausage that Larry brought to share
It tasted pretty good, Dave said
Except for the pubic…
I mean…fact that it was a little rare
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
This is more than I can bear
Larry fucked Dave.
There, I said it, I don’t care
o when the homosexual encounter had ended
And all of Dave’s orifices had been thoroughly offended
Larry gave Dave the wrench, and David then bended
The valve, to the left
And the water did flow
From the pipes, through the ground
till it started to grow
Up from the base,
of the floor of the place
Where MTV Corp. rented their office space
To flood it, to ruin it, to destroy and desecrate
To end their evil, whorrish rein, and fulfill the way of fate
Oh, but wait…
I forgot, Dave still had one more thing to do
Fight Carson Daly
Sword to sword
And run him through
(Do I mean a sword fight, or am I making another homosexual innuendo?
Read on, my fair reader, the plot’s about to crescendo!)
* * *
Being a tick, I often find it much easier to write in a poetic format. I have a very small body, and the fewer letters I have to type, the better. In fact, up to this point, this story, which takes place in a time span of, oh, about 3 days (I’m not really sure, I haven’t been making any references to time, and that may be because I need to work on my story telling ability…or because I’m trying to make a deep, philosophical, underlying point by leaving it out – the point being that time is ultimately irrelevant, especially in a universe with multiple dimensions) has taken me about seven years to complete. Strange when you think about it, a story that’s supposed to have taken place in 72 hours, taking that long to write. Makes me think about time, and puts me in a generally melancholy mood, but alas, what do I know, I’m a tick. And, being a tick I have managed not only to suck Dave’s scrotal blood, and infect him with Lyme’s disease (note, that hasn’t happen yet in this story line, but it does happen at a later date), but I have also managed to suck away at your precious, you guessed it, time, and hopefully infected your mind with a few of my thoughts.
Ironic. Well, maybe I didn’t need to write that it was ironic, maybe you caught onto that on your own, who knows, blah, blah, blah, I’m ranting, and I’m being much too blatant. But the thing is, symbolism isn’t always noticed by the reader, sometimes you have to guide them down the road of your thoughts…
Ok, I’m done, if anyone actually read that, they may have stopped reading and forgot about Dave completely, only when he’s about to save the day and feel fulfilled in life! Oh darn.
So Dave, what was Dave doing, oh yeah! He just got reamed in the ass by that big guy Larry, heavy stuff, I know, but often a hero must make sacrifices. Anyway, (a word I have used a lot in this tale due to my sidetracking) Dave was sore, but jubilant. He had traversed the sewer, defeating a large lizard and a large rapist’s lust, and as he emerged from the depths into the streets of New York, the dull gray of the day that blended with the metallic giants of the city took a lighter, brighter, hue of blue. Dave inhaled his first fresh breath, a breath that was tainted with city pollutants – carbon monoxide, dioxide, and trioxide, but, it was a breath that was nevertheless purer than those he had taken underground. A brighter world, a cleaner world, a better world it seemed to Dave, for one of the greatest pollutants of all, MTV, was being washed away as he stood six blocks distant.
“We did it Angel Kitten Mermaid! We did it!” Dave exclaimed, out loud in the middle of the sidewalk, next to the open manhole. This sight did attract a bit of attention as pedestrians walked by in their stereotypically suited, New York, crowded rush, but Dave didn’t care. Those who stared were oblivious criticizers, oblivious because Dave had saved their children from something they didn’t even know was a threat. Dave was the shit, he knew it, and he didn’t need a word of validation. But he still wished Angel Kitten Mermaid would respond.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid,” he sang to the familiar tune, “where have you gone, my Angel Kitten Mermaid?” Once again, the filthy, singing man holding a large saber, next to the open manhole (who had earlier opened his manhole for another man - I couldn’t resist), did attract a bit of attention. As people stopped and stared, Dave grew worried. Where was his previously so-quick-to-respond-via-ESP-Angel? She should have said something by now, she should have been celebrating, and screaming for joy at the top of her lungs- errr gills, and thanking Dave on her behalf and on the behalf of Yoooftah as a whole. Something was not right, something had gone amiss! The hero sensed danger, and with this sense, and sword in hand, he ran from the manhole towards the sound of gushing water. His destination, MTV headquarters.
* * *
Angel Kitten Mermaid hovered above the flooding building, delightfully watching water gush from successively higher windows, while the bricks that encapsulated the beast buckled and cracked. MTV, her destroyer, was being destroyed before her very eyes. The chaotic sexipade that had become her life was now manifesting itself in the destruction of the building below her, and the fact that it was being done through the use of water made her all the more happy, reminding her of home. “People, evil people”, she thought, flew out of the windows with the water, or somehow swam their way out of doors at various exits and fire escapes. She laughed at the pathetic human swimmers, comparing their ability to her own, thoroughly enjoying the whole show of destruction. Revenge was sweet, and little girls like candy.
She licked her lips, savoring the sugary sweetness of the fire department arriving and being unable to do a thing. “Fire fighters, not water fighters,” she laughed feeling clever. She was ecstatic to see the foundation begin to tremble, and onlookers back away as police taped off the surrounding area with yellow caution tape. There was no hope for the place, it was a disaster, it was beautiful.
But even more beautiful, even more sweet, and appetizing, and man candily scrumptious looking was the sopping wet, male human she saw staring at the building, right at the edge of tape. He stood motionless, as if he was watching his eldest son being executed, his hands gripping the flimsy tape for support and receiving none. She instantly recognized him. His thin head, darkly scalped and clean cut rested upon a suited body. His suit, dripping with water - and sexuality, revealed a tightly worked body underneath. He was tall, white, and to Angel Kitten Mermaid, incredibly handsome. His name was Carson Daly, she knew it, and as she was joyously watching her life being saved from its deepest depths, his own was drowning.
The sounds; brick by brick being pulled from mortar, concrete being torn away from its rebar infrastructure, screaming human bodies, literally sucked from their cubicles, and glass particle upon glass particle molecularly tugged apart by sheer aquatic force; none of them were strong enough to tear Angel Kitten Mermaid’s gaze away from this newfound beauty, this man she instantly “loved.” But, being only 11 years old (remember this reader, for it is essential), the love that our Kitten thought she felt was nothing more than lustful desire, a strong, but dangerous bonding agent.
When you give a toddler super glue, you can expect nothing less than a trip to the emergency room, or a call dialed to Poison Control; hell you might even end up with a dead three year old who has inadvertently constipated themselves to death with what they thought was “num nums” (my apologies to any parent to whom this has happened, for in this big, big world in which we live, (which I have also referred to as a tiny planet in the ultimate scope of the universe within the text of this tale) I’m sure something like this has happen, but I’m trying to make a striking metaphor), similarly when you give a pre-teen girl an attractive man to idolize, an unbreakable, lustful bond will form that can be equally as toxic. Yes, in both cases, curiosity, one of the paramount human tendencies that drives evolution can be a good thing – the toddler discovers the wonders of super glue, and the pre-teen girl discovers her own sexuality, but! and I stress but, in the case of the latter, and specifically in our present scenario, another human tendency, that of exploitation can play curiosity like an incredible fool. This happens daily, it isn’t a breathtaking observation, and perhaps it’s just a function of natural selection (if you believe in that jive), however there are those individuals who take it too far:
1. Hitler
2. Madonna
3. Maury Povich
4. Ghandi (the yin to Hitler’s yang)
5. Billy Mays (too soon?)
6. And of course, to sum up my mid-narrative argument…Carson Daly
Yes, Carson, standing before his crumbling empire, felt Angel Kitten Mermaid’s inquisitively sexual stare, and he knew from the moment that her angelic, blue eyes locked upon his dripping body that not all hope was lost. His headquarters had been destroyed, and the hope of any broadcast was ludicrous, but the ultimate goal – the destruction of the Planet Yoooftah, was still viable! Angel Kitten Mermaid was still corruptible, she could still be turned into a complete ho bag, she only need sleep with a few more guys! Carson just needed to take matters into his own hands. He would not fail Lord Darshon, for failure would result not only in the survival Yoooftah, the epicenter of all universal good (which he certainly couldn’t have), but his own execution by Darshon, the most evil dude ever (and he didn’t want that either).
Looking up into the sky, Carson’s watery blues met Angel Kitten Mermaid’s, and with a simple whisk of his hand she glided downward, oblivious to her public visibility, propelled only by the inward flutter of her abdominal butterflies. Wordlessly, the two locked hand and paw as they skipped down the road towards Carson’s eagerly awaiting Land Rover (Chariot of Doom). A grin swept across our Kitten’s face as she buckled up, thinking, “Love and destruction, both beautiful things,” and Carson started the car.
“Both beautiful things, and often one in the same,” responded Carson via ESP to his little maiden. She didn’t quite understand what he meant, but his voice was so soothing and beautiful as he said it, that she simply didn’t care.
Free from traffic, Carson gassed the Rover and drove onward towards his lair. He had a few calls to make; Angel Kitten Mermaid was to meet some new friends.
* * *
Things now become frantic. When Dave arrived at the scene of his crime (which he hadn’t really considered a crime until he saw the utter mutilation that his valve turnage had inspired, i.e. dead bodies, crumbled building, shattered lives) the second thing he noticed was that Angel Kitten Mermaid was not there. “So what am I to do”, thought Dave, and really, what was he to do!? Her absence wasn’t an inherent suggestion that something was wrong, but he had a feeling that something was, and feelings were something that Dave was easily hooked on.[5]
He strode back and forth across the sidewalk before the still-water-sputtering building frame and behind the yellow caution tape. Onlookers created a maze as he paced, and sweat, and worried, and tried to make some sort of plan or derive some sort of clue from the scene as to where his Angel had gone. His feelings were a mishmash: jubilation at the sight of the destruction – his first real accomplishment in life, remorse at the realization that his first real accomplishment was destructive in nature and not creative, curiosity in the ultimate creation of everything in the universe, anger towards his completely unproductive philosophical sidetracking, epiphany that perhaps he was just an unproductive, destructive person, and finally hopelessness.
And it was the hopelessness that caused him to slump down on the wetted curb that ran the street, head in hands, hands on knees, large menacing saber sword cast at feet and splashing in puddle. He was alone, again, as he had been without Angel Kitten Mermaid, alone, with an overwhelming angst setting in. But the angst was not existential in nature, the angst arose from the failure of something concrete, something tangible, and strangely this made him feel slightly chipper.
Dave looked around. He was surrounded by spectators, presumably spectating the drowning building, each with their own lives, and quirks, and curiosities, and reasons for standing before the scene of a disaster. All different, but all watching, together, wondering why, as one. Dave stood up from the curb, self consciously grabbed his sword, and walked towards the nearest one.
“What do you believe in, if anything?” Dave wanted to ask the pot bellied, balding man, who was khaki-ed, and polo-ed, and named Maurice, and who was also, most likely, quiet bewildered. But before Maurice could turn around (to be bewildered even further, and maybe even offended by Dave’s ultra personal question) a sickening “squelch” of the stomach stopped Dave dead in his tracks. The previously popped Diazepam had worn off. Dave’s digestive system was instantaneously back in full swing. He hadn’t shit in two whole days, and he was one of those twice-to-thrice-a-dayers you hear about every so often and say, “Really?”
“I need to find a bathroom, now!” thought Dave (obviously. Because, as we all know, such a thought isn’t really a conscious decision, but more of an implied reaction). So, our hero heroically made an about face and ran towards the McDonald’s he had passed on the way in, which when he had seen, had made him shudder – McDonald’s and MTV on the same street, this must be the 7th circle! As he ran he could think of nothing more than lovely brown stains upon porcelain, but in the back of his head he decided that he’d ask Maurice a more sensible question when he returned, like “What the heck happened here, man?”
* * *
Inside McDonald’s the smell of French fries was palpable and grease lined the air like a layer of Pam on a griddle. Fluorescent lighting illuminated a lobby full of people, presumably all catastrophe watchers on a lunch break.
Dave was full of pre-explosive anticipation, with a side of worry, and in no mood to be polite. He rushed through the crowd towards the bathroom bowling ball style, with bystanders as his pins. An elderly woman in a muumuu got stiff armed in the nose; two adolescent males, each tray carrying and voraciously eyeing their chicken nuggets, were singularly smashed by a Muay Thai flying double knee kick, one cap to each chest; a big black guy, twice Dave’s size was minimized by a swift kick to the groin; and an angry manager, blocking Dave’s entrance to the bathroom was straight up punched in the face.
Through the crowd and through the restroom door, Dave slammed and locked it behind him, fortifying the bowel movement to come. But another obstacle stood in his way! The only stall in the bathroom was occupied! Its occupant was a nefarious stranger, revealed only by a pair of blue jeans wrapped around his ankles visible in the space between the stall wall and the floor.
Dave ran towards the stall, and with a single snap kick unhinged its door. Atop the coveted porcelain throne sat his lone nemesis - a thoroughly shocked and unsuspecting middle aged man. The man said nothing, but covered his genitals in reactionary shame.
Dave unsheathed his sword and pointed it at the man’s throat.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
And the man, who had already placed a few logs in bowl, instantly complied without a single wipe.
Stalled and relieved Dave sat down on the toilet. He let out a sigh, and a moment later, a copious amount of liquid diarrhea. Normally he’d have taken the time to line the rim with a thick layer of toilet paper, or at least squat, but today he didn’t care. After what he’d been through, and what he still faced, a toilet seat was the least of his worries, even if it might be harboring syphilis.
Relieving though the shit felt, such relief was not overarching. Its flow was much too rapid and liquid and occasionally chunked with undigested ham. Also, Angel Kitten Mermaid, for all Dave knew, was being smote by God while oil fires blazed upon the surface of Yoooftah, hotter than the skin of Dave’s now raw and chaffen crack. He winced as he wiped, the liquid flow finished.
“God damn,” he cringed, mouth now mimicking ass, expelling verbal diarrhea. It felt so good to get it out, but God damn the clean up hurt, God Damn! God…Damn!
Dave then remembered something - supposedly, there was a God! Angel Kitten Mermaid had told him it was true, and up until this point he had believed everything else she said! “I’ll pray,” thought Dave. “I’ll pray for help! I’ll ask God, I’ll beg God to tell me where Angel Kitten Mermaid is and everything will be fine! Oh thank God! Oh God, what an easy solution! If only everything could be this easy!”[6]
Ceremoniously, he began his prayer with his head bowed and eyes closed. He was still pants down on a toilet, but thought he’d show just a bit of reverence. “Dear God, please help me out here,” he began verbally, then paused. The thought occurred to him that if God was indeed omniscient, then the process of prayer was completely obsolete. This bothered him greatly, but he decided to cast it aside and continue the prayer. “I know Angel Kitten Mermaid has been…misbehaving, but she’s young, you know? I guess if she were human I could say she’s only human, and she made a mistake, but uh, I guess that doesn’t work.” Another pause, some thought, some embarrassment. “I guess what I’m trying to say is; please forgive her, Lord, and forgive me for wasting countless years fretting over my existence, and all that crazy stuff. This mission’s given me sort of a purpose, you know, and I need to complete it, I know it, I need to. Please! Help me! Tell me where she is Lord, please!”
The prayer stopped abruptly at the sound of a door creaking. Dave’s barricaded entrance had been breached. The man Dave had so vigorously thrown out of the bathroom had obviously forgotten to lock the door behind him as he ran off and Dave froze in terror, fearing who may have entered. His first guess was that it was a police officer, coming in to apprehend him due to his behavior in the lobby, but, as the sounds of a casual stride to the urinal and a stream of piss hitting plastic reached his ears, this fear subsided.
But Dave remained frozen and silent, because we all know how embarrassing it is to be sitting on the shitter when another person enters a public restroom, even if they’ll never know who you are.
A cell phone rang, and it wasn’t Dave’s. After three aggravating repetitions of the chorus to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the man at the urinal answered it in a gruff and slobbish voice.
“Ello, Brian Beastly speaking”
Dave shit himself upon hearing this, literally, but lucky for him he was still on the toilet, so the load just harmlessly plooped in the bowl. The ploop was quite audible however, and the man at the urinal, Brian Beastly, chuckled as he heard it fall.
“Jesus buddy, you alright in there?” he asked Dave with an air of macho humor that was friendly, but just a bit too condescending for Dave’s liking.
Embarrassed, but obligated to say something Dave simply replied, “Those fuckin’ Big Macs.” This too got a chuckle out of Brian, but instead of continuing his conversation with the shitting stranger, he went back to his phone call.
“You’re with who?” Brian continued, saying who as if he’d heard the name of a foreign stranger. “Angel Kitten, what? Carson have you been doin’ lines again? I told you to take it easy with that stuff.” There was a long pause, whoever Brian was talking to, this Carson, was doing a lot of explaining.
“I’ll be there in ten,” Brian concluded, and with that, the sound of a fly zippering filtered through the crack in Dave’s stall. Dave then began to wonder how big Brian’s dick was, not out of lust or jealousy, but simply curiosity. He did have a reality show based solely on fucking woman in California…but wait, was he not here in New York? Perhaps it was staged, or perhaps it was filmed months ago, or perhaps…
Dave snapped out of his ponderence, realizing the magnitude of the situation. He had shit, and now it was time to get off the pot. Brian Beastly, the very man who had compelled him to save Angel Kitten Mermaid in the first place, would now be instrumental in her rescue. Standing, Dave looked down at what had been expelled, his pile of shit, and in the same moment he recognized that his prayers had been answered; God had shown him the way. He buttoned up his pants, flushed the excrement, and followed Brian out the door – but as the poop swirled down the drain, a brown stain streaked across the bowl.
* * *
“Cocaine, my little mermaid, is the Cadillac of drugs.”
Carson Daly was now stripped of his soaked suit, lying seductively on his side. His head was propped up on an elbow, and there in bed, wearing nothing more than zebra stripped bikini briefs, he crafted four lines of coke on a round portable mirror with the utmost care. He used his VIP access card to an upcoming Fall Out Boy concert to arrange the powder and rolled up a twenty dollar bill as he finished so that Jackson’s nose appeared to be snorting the drug as the bill was used. “What a clever, sexy, man,” thought AKM, “what a hunk.”
Carson read her thoughts, but ignored them playing aloof, as he knew this would only further aid in her seduction. The plan was to get all four of them – Angel Kitten Mermaid, Brian Beastly, Ron Jeremy, and himself coked out of their minds and spend all the hours of the night in a thrusting, lusting, tag team orgy. That would piss God off good and plenty; enrage him to no end probably. Just what was needed to ensure total destruction of Yoooftah, and complete Lord Darshon’s plan for Universal Domination. Once the epicenter of all morality (the planet Yoooftah) was gone there would be nothing to stop Darshon’s evil reign, and Carson would be at his terrifying right hand in glory, taking whatever he wanted throughout the cosmos and leaving nothing but star dust in his wake.
The plan was flawless; Darshon was no doubt a genius. Everything in the universe had a physical source, morality included, and if Yoooftah, that detestable flaming fire of goodness could be extinguished, there would be nothing left but evil, spread across the galaxies for the rest of time.[7] God that ever observant, never interfering, deity prick would be powerless to stop the chaos, and Darshon would be supreme ruler of basically everything!
“Muhoohahahahaha,” laughed Carson, in a quite clichéd but sincere fashion. He turned to Ron who had arrived about five minutes ago and was disrobing in the corner of the bedroom. As he removed his too tight t-shirt and track pants, a plump, hairy body was revealed. Carson cringed at the display, but knew that sacrifices were sometimes necessary. He would ream Angel Kitten Mermaid with two of the most disgusting, but hung, men on the planet.
“Where the fuck’s Brian?” Ron piped in his iconoclastically dirty voice, impatiently rubbing his shaft through the silk of his boxers. Carson was appalled, yet slightly aroused, then further appalled at his own arousal.
“He said he’d be here in ten,” was his response, and as he said it, Ron eyed the coke on the bedspread. “Don’t even think about it man, not till Brian gets here, we’ve gotta do this right.”
Angel Kitten Mermaid looked at the two nearly naked men and wondered exactly what it was that they were talking about. Her powers, disabled by her fit of lust, were gone, leaving her lying on Carson’s bed as helpless as a little girl. She hoped, of course, that she would get to have sex with Carson, but the other guy in the corner was just creepy, and she had no idea who this Brian was (although deep down she secretly hoped that it was the ever dreamy Brian Beastly).
Ron began to work his shaft, anxious to begin, while Carson and Angel Kitten both sat on the bed in silence, Angel gazing at Carson, Carson staring at his watch. The only sound in the room was the constant, meaty thwack of Ron’s wrist. Dust, revealed by the sun through the slits of the blinds, floated in the air as a speechless observer.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” said a voice from within.
“Eh, it’s Brian,” said a gruff sounding voice from without.
Before Carson could get up from the bed, anxious Ron sprang to the door and swung it open. Naked, he held out his welcoming, chubby arms, with a smile and a raging woody.
In stepped Brian, and off came his head!
Angel Kitten Mermaid watched as a familiar saber sliced through her idol’s neck. A shower of red spewed from the stump all over the whitely painted wall and Brian’s body fell forward, powerfully kicked by a black booted foot.
The man who owned the foot stepped forward through the threshold, holding a blood stained sword between his hands. He roared!
“I am Dave, and I carry,The fate of Yoooftah on my shoulders,With sword so sharp it can cut boulders!”
Carson jumped up from the bed, spilling coke all over the sheets. Looking to Ron, he screamed, “The Guardian!” and in one swift motion, the two of them reached for their cocks. Dave remained in the threshold, slightly confused as to who “The Guardian” was and exactly why Carson Daly and Ron Jeremy were both standing before him, naked, grabbing their dicks.
Dave looked around the room and spotted her on the bed. “Angel Kitten Mermaid!” he cried.
“Dave!” she replied, but was unable to say anything more, for Carson took this as his villainous cue.
“Dave?” he spat, with venom and hatred, staring at Dave, rubbing his naked genitals.
“Yeah…that’s me,” was Dave’s confused response. He wanted to follow that up with, “What the fuck is going on here?” but it was plain to see. Angel Kitten Mermaid’s body was to be thoroughly desecrated by three grown and hairy men. Carson Daly, their leader it seemed, was behind it all, and of course it was him! The very face of MTV!!!
Before Carson or Ron could retort Dave continued, with one cold, hard sentence for the two of them. “You disgust me.”
And with this, Dave raised his sword in the air and made a swing for Ron’s throat and the blade connected. But the connection was not steel to flesh, no, his sword hit another blade. Ron’s dick had instantly grown to the length of a meter and developed a sharp metallic edge! It had become a sword! Dave looked to Carson, and his had done the same; he was fighting two naked men, each with a sword for a dick. He knew these guys were well endowed, but he had never expected this – it took the childhood pissing game of “sword fighting” to a completely unprecedented level.
“Bastards!” yelled Dave as he swung away from Ron, and parried Carson’s blow. He knew he was outmatched, he barely knew how to swing his sword, and Angel Kitten Mermaid at the moment, was incapacitated, and in no condition to assist him. Clearly she had gotten some of that coke that Carson spilled into her fins, as she was lying on her back with a grin, flapping her wings, and singing.
“Angel Kitten, Angel Kitten Mermaid, I am an Angel and a Kitten and a Mermaid!”
Swords locked with Carson, Dave looked over his shoulder to see Ron approaching fast. As he raised his blade (cock), Dave spotted his vulnerable, bulging belly and gave it a stiff side kick. Ron caught it hard, and slumped over as he fell, his wind completely knocked out.
Again, Dave exchanged blows with Carson, but as they fought, he was overcome by the strangest sensation – déjà vu. Dave thought back to when he had first met Angel Kitten Mermaid, and her words reverberated in his head: “…the experience of experiencing something you have already dreamt… when you get the feeling of déjà vu, well you’re fulfilling your self predicted destiny.”
“That’s it!” thought Dave. Strangely enough he had fought this fight before - in a dream. He knew how to defeat the two. To fight fire with fire, perversion with perversion.
Dave waited for his chance, another blade interlocking with Carson, and soon it came. Pushing against one another with all the force that each contained, Dave looked directly into Carson’s eyes.
“Fuck this,” came from Dave’s lips, and as he said it, he quickly pulled his push away from his competitor. Stunned, Carson stumbled forward with his sword stretched out before him. His fall was immediately caught by Ron’s backside, as he stood bent over and breathless recovering from Dave’s kick.
Carson Daly’s sword found a perfect sheath in Ron Jeremy’s ass. The porn star was instantly impaled. Immobilized, and horrified, Carson stood behind him.
“Noooooooo, Darshon, I have failed you. Please, please…”
“Forgive you?” laughed Dave, and with this, he decided to stab Carson through the back of the head so that his sword tip emerged from the forehead. A beheading would have been too Hollywood, and that was exactly the sort of thing Dave was fighting against.
* * *
The room fell quiet again, the dust in the air had settled. It was a mess in there, a veritable blood bath – a feast. Yes, a feast my dear reader, let me tell you, it was a fanciful, finger lickin’ feast. Three dead celebrities, all victims of mortal blade wounds, and I, your narrator, the tick, in the midst of it, surrounded by my very favorite liquid substance. It was at that moment I became so overwhelmed with excitement that I detached myself from David’s scrotum, crawled down his leg (unnoticed), and jumped right into a pool of it. Now I don’t know whose blood it was that I sucked up because it was all mixed together, and I know that the odds were quite high that one of those three men carried some sort of deadly disease, most likely HIV, BUT I DID NOT CARE! It was delicious.
And as I engorged myself with the blood of Dave’s fallen foes, he looked around at his success. MTV was defeated, and Angel Kitten Mermaid was saved. Yoooftah would go unharmed, and all because of his struggles, and triumphs. But - a chilling thought pervaded, settling in like a new tick in the back of Dave’s mind.
“Who is Lord Darshon?”
To which the fully recovered Angel Kitten Mermaid replied via ESP mind waves,
“Dave, let’s just go home.”
[1] See paragraph 7, page 2
[2] See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1YjGN88NkE to fully appreciate this catchy tune.
[3] The Argument over the Existence of God. Google it sometime.
[4] Sciurba, Phil. “What I Think Déjà Vu Is”
[5] Dave is an avid fan of David Hasselhoff, presumably because the two share the same name. This is one of Dave’s favorite songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x20v9F-sWHQ
[6] So that’s why people are religious.
[7] While time may not exist on Yoooftah, it certainly does throughout the rest of the universe…which is part of the reason it must be destroyed for Darshon’s plan to flow smoothly. Right now you may be wondering who this Darshon character is, but I assure you, if you skim through the earlier pages of this text he is indeed mentioned. Meooow!!!
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