 
Fifty Shades of Tartan  
and Other Assorted Love Songs

by Gord Oxley

Copyright 2012 Gord Oxley

Smashwords Edition

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free e-book. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

(May I just add parenthetically outside of the official blurb above that you can always contact me as per the "About the Author" page at the end of this whole thing if you do want to say hi, quote any excerpts, have my love-babies, or buy me a beer. Constructive criticism is also welcome, and I can rarely decline a side order of fries.)

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Thank Yous and Acknowledgments

For encouragement, advice, humour: Robbo, Ralph, Jane, and Jo. Thanks Jerry for the initial writing exercise inspiration. Thanks as well to Ian MacIntyre for the title suggestion, "It's Warm In Here," and to Carolyn Meehan for the title suggestion, "Fifty Shades of Tartan," which ended up also becoming part of the title of this collection. And huge thanks also to you, the discerning or curious e-reader, for actually downloading this. Seriously, thanks.

A Quick Bit of Background

Like my previous e-book (see "About the Author" at the end for more info on that if you want), most of these stories started out as 20-minute writing challenges, usually just me picking a word or short phrase at random and then plowing ahead without (much) stopping and seeing what came out. Later, some clean-up and maybe some extra editing or embellishing would be applied. In a few cases, I tried to tell larger (but still basically goofball) stories. Let me tell you, those were challenges in this ADHD world, but I gave them a whack. I usually don't do a lot of research for my stories other than the odd Googling here and there, and I believe that it is this very inattention to detail that shines throughout.

Disclaimers-Fil-A

I do occasionally resort to bad language in these stories, so, please proceed cautiously if swears make you uncomfortable. Or, just don't read this thing at all. But if you do read this thing at all, then for Pete's sake don't show those naughty parts to the young or exceptionally impressionable; they got enough going on. Also, there is no shortage of goofy concepts and bad wordplay which wander around free-range throughout this collection of stories. I tried not to take too much of this too seriously, so neither should you.

I work, live, play, sweat, and many other verbs in Canada, so there are some Canadian spellings embedded here, such as "colour" (not "color"), "sorry" (not "outta my way, douchebag"), and so on. Please don't let this throw you; instead, just let the exoticness of this prose wash right over you. It'll be like you've travelled to a foreign land without even leaving your home. Plus, think of all those bonus letters you're getting here for free. For _free_. But otherwise, we're all people here who basically speeg da saim lanquitch, yo.

And hopefully I caught all the typos and unintentional bad grammar and punctuation. If not, then you might just be a copy-editing rock star waiting to happen. Or a copy-editing country star, like the "Stet-ler" Brothers.

Yep, it's gonna be all A-list wit and wisdom here. You're welcome.

I guess that's about it. Thanks muchly, hope you like it, and read on, MacDuff.

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**TABLE OF CONTENTS**

Alternate

Cleaning

Fifty Shades of Tartan

It's Warm In Here

Knuckles

Lunch

Mayan

Mayor

Nottobiographical

Restaurant

Saloon

Take

Tangle

Tennis Ball

Untitled Morgan Freeman Project

About the Author

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**Alternate**

This is not a well-researched story at all. So it therefore belongs here, and now let's just shrug our shoulders and do this.

~ ~ ~

Alternate-Universe Albert Einstein was a very smart (if unconventional) man but he found physics really, really boring. He was, however, really good at Three-Card Monty. His hands were quicker than any eyes at that time, and he enjoyed pissing away his days in the Swiss Patent Office in Bern grifting money out of his co-workers. His boss, Shubert Stranheim, took unkindly to his lackadaisical work ethic and promptly dismissed A.U. Einstein from his employ. It was April 1904, and the pre-"Linked-In" world of yesteryear made it tough for A.U. Einstein to find work. That, and A.U. Einstein's stinky attitude.

He also hated that he kept getting compared to "Regular-Universe" Albert Einstein all the time, who was such a big shot working on physics this and speed of light that. Fucking keener. Why, if A.U. Einstein could meet R.U. Einstein, he'd trick him out of his money with his formidable Three-Card Monty skills, then punch him in his big flyaway-hair-topped egg head just for good measure.

He wondered, how did they even hear about "Regular-Universe" Einstein anyway? Or "Regular-Universe" anyone? And why were those guys over there "regular" and the rest of us "alternate"? Well, it was the damn fault of Alternate-Universe Bartok Richter – certainly a nobody in the "regular" universe, but in this alternate universe he was a huge and groundbreaking scientific celebrity. He was balding, pudgy, squeamishly nerdy, poorly-dressed, and therefore he totally set this cool alternate universe on its ear with his wild theories about many scientific hot-button topics: quantum bridging, wormhole worlds, alternate universes, re-animation, and pan-gendered whorebots.

Rumours about the "Regular Universe" were mixed with facts, of course, and no one person had all the insights about what it was really like over there. Still, once reports of this and that got out from a few brave returning "bridgers," A.U. Einstein was curious and determined to see for himself.

So he sought out A.U. Richter, and managed to gain facetime with him in Richter's impressively steampunk university office. Every kind of mechanically-driven doohickey and steam-powered whatsit lined the walls of Richter's office.

A.U. Einstein pulled his attention away from the increasingly bizarre memorabilia and cleared his throat.

"I need to meet 'Regular Universe' Albert Einstein so I can steal his money and punch him in his big flyaway-hairy egg head face," A.U. Einstein said.

"Wow. Okay," replied A.U. Richter, who was a very accepting and non-judgmental man. Also, despite his cult status in the scientific community, he didn't actually get a lot of meaningful company, so he was eager to please any passerby who came by the office and didn't mess with his cool steampunk shit. So after a small pay-off of hard-earned Three-Card Monty takings changed hands, Richter led his guest across his large office towards a large apparatus.

"Please step into this parabolic portal chamber, then crouch down," Richter instructed, guiding A.U. Einstein towards a large, horizontally-bisected brass orb in the middle of the office which was connected to all kinds of multi-coloured wires, Tesla coils, and giant boxlike consoles festooned with loads of dials, gear cogs, and oiled chains. Richter slid the top half of the orb off with a trebly metallic sliding noise, and A.U. Einstein unquestioningly stepped inside this device.

"Duck your head," recommended A.U. Richter, which his subject did. The top half of the brass orb was slid back into place with a metallic sliding noise followed by a click, and immediately a loud hum filled the room. Lights of every colour brightened, the temperature fluctuated between warm and cool, and spacetime itself momentarily bent in on itself and took what can only be described as an unceremonious dump. With a temporary room pressure change accompanied by a loud, primordial poot sound, A.U. Albert Einstein was gone from inside the brass orb. All that was left was a puff of smoke (with a vague hint of cooked brassy meat).

~ ~ ~

A.U. Einstein emerged from a puff of smoke (with a vague hint of cooked brassy meat) in the exact same spot he had just left, except that in the "Regular Universe," it was a farmer's field outside of Bern. He checked himself to make sure no limbs or genitals were missing, that all his clothes were on, and that his breath was still neutral-smelling. He then began to walk the few kilometres to get to the Swiss Patent Office where he knew he, or rather, R.U. Einstein, would be.

Although it was an enjoyable walk for a lovely April day, he couldn't help but notice odd things about this so-called "regular" universe: the air smelled a little weird to him, the buildings looked just a little strange, and there were no Three-Card Monty games to be found anywhere. What the fuck was up with this universe anyway? Still, he took in this reconnaissance at a leisurely pace and noted with no small wonder at the scope of this achievement already. He was in a totally different universe!

Soon, he arrived at the Patent Office. He saw the doppelganger of his employer Herr Stranheim outside, who said, "Ah Albert, you're finally taking a break, good boy. I see you also finally combed your hair too. Very nice."

A.U. Einstein stuttered out, "S-sure. Yes, sir." Stranheim wandered off, humming a little tune to himself as he went. A.U. Einstein kept walking towards what he presumed would still be his office. Luckily, he presumed correctly. This was convenient. Soon, the money would be his, along with no small amount of satisfaction.

He knocked on the door.

"Come in, please," answered R.U. Albert Einstein from inside the office. How weird was that? _Is that what I really sound like?_ , A.U. Einstein wondered to himself.

A.U. Einstein opened up the door and saw his universe-twin deeply buried in equations, calculations, and piles upon piles of paper that had nothing to with patenting Swiss anything at all. A.U. Einstein cleared his throat. R.U. Einstein looked up and did a classic Vaudeville double-take.

"What the hell?" asked R.U. Einstein.

"Shut up, egg-head," replied A.U. Einstein, who closed the door then quickly strode over to the desk and punched his universe-twin solidly in the face. His universe-twin promptly fell back off his chair, hit his head on the sharp metal filing cabinet drawer handle, and with a loud skull-cracking noise, even more promptly fell on the floor, dead.

An uncomfortable moment of silence passed between the two. In the distance, a dog barked.

"Holy shitballs!" finally whispered A.U. Einstein in a panic. "Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck I so didn't mean to do that!" He raced over to the body and stood above it. He looked at, basically, his own demise, and found this to be evergrowingly freaky. His pulse raced in his veins and he could taste his own heartbeat. Cold sweat pooled in his armpits, back, crotch, temples, everywhere. What the hell was he going to do now?

No time to answer though as he heard footsteps coming down the hallway outside. He recognized the footfall as Herr Stranheim's, so he quickly kicked the sickeningly fresh corpse of R.U. Einstein behind the desk, then quickly sat down at his universe-twin's desk just as the door opened.

"Albert, I'm stepping out for a meeting with the town engineers. I will see you later," Stranheim said. He then walked away, leaving the door open. His footsteps echoed and faded down the cavernous hallway.

A.U. Einstein drummed his fingers nervously on the desk. He was not a murderer! And yet now he was. He was a murder-suicider. This was confusing. And wrong. And worse, he had forgotten to ask A.U. Bartok Richter how to get back to his own universe. And this universe's Bartok Richter was a complete unknown and for all he knew, a fool.

A.U. Einstein, for all intents and purposes now just plain old "Albert," tried to figure out his next move. First order of business: he did get the money out of his dead universe-twin's pockets; a grand total of two Swiss francs. The francs looked just a little off to him, but whatever; money's money, no matter what universe we're talking about. He decided he would work late, wait until nightfall when everyone else had left the building, and then use a large mail sack that was in the corner of his now-office to cover the corpse's head. The farmer's field where he had landed would be as good a place as any to bury his twin. He would just need a discrete conveyance that wouldn't attract any attention. Maybe hire a coach and tell the coach driver that his friend was drunk and needed to be helped home. He'd still need some money for the coach driver. Thank you Three-Card Monty and a universe of unsuspecting marks!

Having a plan in mind and breathing a small sigh of relief for the first time in several minutes, Albert idly turned his attention toward what his universe-twin was actually working on. It looked... odd. But not completely inscrutable. Luckily there were lots of resource books scattered around the office as well. Hmm, interesting... He looked closer at one set of equations scribbled on some Patent Office stationery. _Hey, did R.U. Einstein forget to carry the two right there_ , Albert thought to himself. And what would happen if you did carry that two? He took pencil to paper and scribbled off to the side. He scratched his head. He regarded this addition and scanned and re-scanned the paper, checking for flaws.

~ ~ ~

Albert gradually opened his eyes. It was very dark and still around him. He slowly noticed that the right side of his face was on the desk and the unsharpened end of a pencil was sticking out of his left nostril.

"Snrk?" he started. The office was pretty dark but the familiar old smell of moldy papers and old wood still permeated. He groggily pushed his head up, de-nostrilled the pencil and checked around for a clock. For an office in Early-20th-Century Switzerland, you'd think the place would be filled with damn clocks! A strip of moonlight conveniently fell onto the clock in the corner. If it was accurate, it was after 3:30 AM.

He quickly sat upright. "Oh fuck," he added. He looked on the desk. He could make out the equations that he got wrapped up working on after work and into the night before he nodded off. He then noticed the weight at his feet and saw that the corpse of R.U. Einstein still lay at his feet, a dark, mocking shape in the night.

That made him get out of his chair very quickly with a loud "Gaaah!" The chair took that opportunity to go from being a body at rest to being a body in motion and achieved a non-relativistic speed sufficient to throw it against the filing cabinet before toppling it to the floor, making a loud and random clatter in the process. Albert froze, listening for any footsteps or any sign of someone rushing to see what caused the racket. Several heartbeats later, he confirmed that he was alone, at least in the immediate area. He tensed just a bit less, but not by much.

His eyes now better adjusted to the dark, he crept toward the door and very gently coaxed it open. He prairie dogged his head out and furtively checked to see if anyone was around. No one was. He closed the door gently. He thought for a few seconds, and then switched on the desk lamp. The ensuing photons cast dark, exaggerated shadows around the room, and lit up the horrifying wide-eyed face of R.U. Einstein, staring ahead at nothing. It would have been comical if it wasn't so tainted with manslaughter.

Albert quickly grabbed the mail sack from the corner and flung it over R.U. Einstein's head. There. At least he wouldn't have to look at _that_ all fucking night. Now. To get things moving.

He took a deep breath and with squinted eye he unceremoniously stuffed R.U. Einstein's head and shoulders into the mail sack. He paused, listening for anyone in the hallway. No one. Good.

After a few failed attempts, he managed to stand the body up and support it against him. It was beginning to get stiff so it was hard to move. He had to forcibly bend it at the waist to get it relatively upright. What kind of a ghoul had he become? But he did notice that R.U. Einstein was somewhat thinner than himself, so that at least was good; it made it easier to cajole him as needed. He carefully leaned the body against the wall for a moment as a small inspiration hit him.

Grabbing a roll of twine and the scissors, he tied the body's left leg onto his own right leg and quickly fashioned a crude but effective three-legged man out of the two of them. With them tied into place, Albert turned the lamp off and, with corpse companion attached, made his Frankensteinian way through the office door, down the hall, out of the building and with slow, stiff steps through the darkened town streets toward the farmer's field.

Galumphing along in this fashion, he was hit with a random thought that he should write a play called "Weekend at 'Bertie's" about a man trying to hide the fact he's carting around a dead man and trying to pass him off as still vital and alive. Maybe later, once the immediate heat of the situation has subsided.

Just as they were on the boundary between where houses and businesses ended and farmland began, he spotted a constable walking his late-night beat, comfortably strolling along and humming to himself. _Fuck me sideways to lunch_ , thought Albert in a panic. He was just about to turn toward a nearby alley and hide out there when the constable of course chose that moment to see them.

"Hello there, gentlemen," called the constable. "What is your business at this late hour?"

Albert grew colder than his companion. His eyes gogged open and his brain raced to come up with some kind of plausible reply. Instead, he opened his mouth and out poured, "..."

The constable's demeanor grew visibly less kind. He was about to reach for his whistle and blow it (which would really blow it for Albert), when Albert blurted out:

"Ah good evening, Officer! My apologies for not answering you immediately; I am tending my companion here who has enjoyed himself a little too much this night." He tried to chuckle but instead made the sound of a throat closing in on itself.

Constable Karl Schultzhoff stepped closer towards them. _Fuck me with a planetary mass_ , thought Albert scientifically.

"Is that... Albert?" asked Constable Schultzhoff. Albert panicked. "What, under the sack? No!"

"No no, you, stupid-head. You're Einstein, yes? At the Patent Office?" calmly replied the constable.

Albert flushed with relief and laughed with a big guffaw. "Oh! Yes! I am Einstein! Yes! I am at the Patent Office! Ha ha! Yes!" He kept his composure horribly and almost bobbled the body but recovered.

The constable laughed. "It seems you too have also enjoyed a little too much this night, Albert."

Albert laughed the stilted, bigger-than-Life laugh of a man who just wanted the other guy to go the fuck away really fast. "Yes, I suppose I have, Constable."

"Karl."

"Ah, Constable Karl."

"I'm Karl Schultzhoff."

"Sorry, Constable Schultzhoff."

The constable frowned at Albert. "Do you not recognize me, Herr Einstein?"

Albert began to sweat. R.U. Einstein, meanwhile, continued to hang there like a big dead barnacle beside him.

Constable Schultzhoff exhaled a bit impatiently. "Last Thursday, I brought your office a patent request for a new kind of..." He gestured tentatively with his hands toward his own crotch.

"...Penis...?" asked Albert helpfully.

"Male undergarment," came the terse reply.

"Ah... yes, the male undergarment patent request. Yes... I remember now."

The constable brightened a bit. "Yes, the one that lifts and separates and protects each component in its own padded pocket."

Albert pictured this and tried not to laugh in the constable's face. "Just like a... three-fingered glove," he offered meekly.

Constable Schultzhoff's face brightened enormously. "Yes! You understand!"

"Oh... I think I understand," said Albert.

"So, any news on my patent request, Herr Einstein?"

"Uh, it's still, uh, under review," faked Albert. "We will... uh, let you know as soon as a decision is made."

"I see..."

"It looks good, though."

"Really?"

"Oh yes, sure. I think that soon, when every man in Switzerland looks at their own genitals, they will think 'Schultzhoff,'" he added, starting to feel a bit emboldened. This pronouncement pleased the constable greatly.

"Well," Albert continued, "I best be getting my companion away. He is in need of a very long sleep now."

"Ah yes, of course, Herr Einstein! A pleasant evening to you two."

"You too!" Albert pointed at his own crotch and playfully called out, "Schultzhoff!" The constable laughed and continued along his beat. Albert and R.U. Einstein clomped away as quickly as Albert could muster, towards the farmer's field.

"...Schultzhoffkopf," he muttered under his breath when far away from the constable.

A while later, Albert managed to get back to the very spot from which he emerged in this strange "real" universe. He untied his leg from his corpse companion's. R.U. Einstein flopped unceremoniously onto the ground with a dusty kaflaffle. Albert rubbed his right leg to restore some feeling into it. It felt like the twine had cut a bit into his flesh at a few points along the length of his leg. He didn't mind; he was just happy to have dropped this load. He collapsed into a seated position onto the ground and looked around for a moment. It was thankfully still dark outside but he needed to act quickly; the Earth would rotate soon enough to the correct angle whereby the landbound citizens would relatively perceive the sun rising above their horizon, signalling the arrival of another day. And all Hell would break loose if some farmer caught Albert burying the body of his doppelganger on farm property.

He stood up and at that moment realized that he had not brought anything with which to dig into the ground. _Fuck me with a smart phone_ , he thought anachronistically. _What am I gonna do?_

The distant chirping of crickets provided no answer. Neither did the gentle rustling of the wind. The dog barking off a few kilometres away was also of no assistance. Albert sighed and began the arduous task of clawing into the dirt with his hands.

He was two minutes into the dig when he suddenly felt what could only be described as a pressure implosion slowly build around him. It was a singularly odd sensation, but not compelling enough that he wanted to hang around to see what would happen next. He stopped digging and carefully began to step backwards from his spot. He could see different coloured lights spiral and blur around the pressure spot, which had situated directly above R.U. Einstein's still very dead meat-husk.

This phenomenon was freaky enough that he chose to get out of there much more quickly. Albert dove as far out of the way as he could, only to hear something that sounded like a primordial gulp noise behind him. He swung his head around frantically, prepared for flight, fight, or crapping his pants. Instead, he only saw nothing.

Oh except, R.U. Einstein's body was now gone, mail sack and all.

"What the fuck!" Albert called, to no one in particular. It was a couple of seconds before he caught himself and covered his mouth, hoping nobody would wake up from his outburst. The crickets continued chirping about cricket news, which was still no help at all.

Albert stammered up to his feet and slowly found the legs to run away, back toward town, and back toward his adopted life. He slept that night in a quiet alley way, unbothered by dog nor Schultzhoff alike.

~ ~ ~

The knuckle-whitening next morning came. And then after overstaying its welcome, it went away like a bad cloud of gas. Somehow, Albert managed to fool everyone with appropriate levels of deflection, false coolness, timely vagueness, and even anti-social avoidance when necessary. They all laughed at "Albert just being Albert," and they all complimented him on his new cleaner haircut. He picked up on the tedious elements of Patent Office protocol, and managed to continue noodling away a bit at the equations his doppelganger had been working on. He walked out of the office that night and, thanks to various unopened letters which R.U. Einstein had brought from home, managed to know where he now lived.

Days segued into weeks. The ruse was upkept, with no small effort on Albert's part. The occasional quizzical look due to him flubbing some factoid about his alleged own life was usually able to be either laughed off or redirected like a judo move into another area of discussion like work on his latest equations. He was even able to occasionally befuddle some of his workmates with this slightly sleazy pastime called "Three-Card Monty," and get a bit of sweet extra coin in the process, even if the coins looked just slightly strange to him. And with a few extra coins in his pockets, he occasionally garnered some googly-eyed interest from the most outrageous flirt in Bern, Fraulein Gauss, though nothing ever happened. She was a bit too forward for him, but she didn't care; if one door closed on her, a window usually opened, and through it she would happily climb for her next brief adventure of the heart.

Slowly, Albert was gaining momentum in this weird life variation, in that while his mass remained constant, his velocity was slowly increasing. He started to understand why physics could be so attractive – well, at least to someone who likes physics; for the rest of the world, I don't know, just pretend we're talking about kittens or something.

Albert began seeing the world in patterns and vectors, in harmonies and equations. It was liberating and disconcerting, all at the same time. It was like peeping at the world with its pantaloons down, but not in a sexy way, certainly not when it came to viewing other physicists like that. But he trundled on, continuing to chip away at his new life, and making surprisingly good headway with all of it.

And then, as if to play dice with Albert's brave new world, came the wave of zombie attacks.

The fine citizens of 1904 Bern did not know what was going on. They did not know anything about zombies. Why would they, really? They were still trying to digest the idea of electric lights. All they thought was some angry bear had been tearing into people's heads with bloody spatter and splendour, which was horrifying enough let alone weird. How many bears were in Switzerland? Well, few enough that the expression "angry like a Swiss bear" has never really taken off. So this random spree of gristly mutilations was alarming.

The Bern Post-Sun newspaper headlines screamed horrible alarming phrases day after day: "FACELESS FARMER FOUND IN FIELD"; "DON'T 'HEAD' DOWN HUNT STREET"; "ANOTHER GOVERNMENT RIP-OFF"; "SOMETHING'S AMISS; NO BONES ABOUT IT"; "BERN'S BEGINNING TO BITE WHILE SWITZERLAND STARTS SUCKING." That last headline was on the front of their extra-big Sunday edition. The citizens were apoplectic and frightened. They demanded action from their civic leaders and police force. The Swiss Army was called in and soon the streets of Bern were coated in a sea of multi-purposed knives, but even despite that formidable presence the gruesome killings continued to baffle and scare the nervous Bern citizens. And local sales of sausage really slowed down.

This horrible development (the zombie attacks, not the sausage sales) affected all levels of civilized society. Well okay, the sausage sales too. The rich and the poor were all equally targeted, and every day new body count figures, along with chilling descriptions of what was found at such-and-such a location, were released by the Chief of Police. The presumed bear was still at large, and loud panic began amplifying by stimulated emission of rumour.

Even at the Patent Office, there was increasing unrest, along with a weird funky odour in the air. The people didn't notice it at first, but it began getting worse over the last few weeks. Albert found he had to continue airing out his office a little longer each morning just until it became bearable to sit in there for a while. Often, he came in and his papers would be moved around from the previous night, which initially he attributed to a recently hired but somewhat insolent late night janitor named Herrmann Burcholdt. But then Burcholdt hadn't shown up to work for the last week and a half and the paper movement had continued. But these were all odd trivialities which detracted from his work of trying to bust through these intriguing formulae started by his "universe-twin." So he sat on the unluxurious wooden chair and continued to plow through reams of equations.

His mind worked quickly, and the hours dilated into seconds for him. After much mental exertion, he sat upright and realized that his neck and upper back were a bit stiff from constant craning downward. He stood up and stretched, rolled his shoulders a bit, then went for a very tiny stroll around his not-large-at-all office.

Just by chance, Albert glanced over at the small blackboard in the corner of his office. He noticed what looked like a smear of rotten bacon gristle over top of one of the matrix equations he had been trying to work out. He stepped closer to the blackboard, put his nose to it, and took a quick, brisk whiff. His face crinkled disapprovingly. He used the pencil which he had been clutching onto to pry the mystery globule off of the blackboard. It was a grayish flap of wiggling meatlike aggregation now impaled on the pencil tip. Albert studied it up close for a second before getting the shivers and putting the pencil down onto his desk, on top of his "discard equation" pile.

He looked at this disgusting discovery and grimaced. _Ewwww_ , he thought. He then looked back at the blackboard, when he noticed some writing that he had not put there. _What the fuck._ It looked like his handwriting, or at least like a crude, drunken version of it, but he knew he did not write it. Or did he? No, no, he didn't. Sure, he'd been drinking a bit lately, but nothing out of control; this was not his writing. And yet it was in context to the rest of the calculations around it. Did he sleepwalk and do this? How fucked up would that be? And what would he need to do to ascertain that this was indeed what was happening?

As he was beginning to work through the logistics of this, Albert suddenly wasn't able to answer the rest of his thought experiment, for at that moment a loud, smelly presence stumbled through his office doorway. "BLGHRRAINS EQUALEMCEE SQUARRRREDRR RRGGM," it announced.

Albert jumped back and screamed. Holy shit! It was R.U. Einstein, back from the dead, and hungering for brains! Between you, me, and the two reunited Einsteins, only Albert did not see this coming at all.

Gape-eyed, Albert still had the presence of mind to clamour for and claw at anything that he could use as a weapon. He retrieved his meat-impaled pencil, and along with a wooden ruler, brandished these two items like a spastic swordsman.

"Stay back, you... uh... ME!" Albert warned. Zombie Einstein (formerly the dearly departed R.U. Einstein) looked at him slightly uncomprehendingly, groaned, and then shuffled toward the blackboard. His decaying right hand fumbled for a piece of chalk, and that being firmly gripped, moved up toward where the crude writing had been interjected. Zombie Einstein then slowly scratched out a continuation of the thought that had been begun earlier on the blackboard, grunting to himself as he did it.

Albert was aghast at what he was seeing. _Ho. Lee. Shit_ , he thought. This smelly, ghoulish reminder of what he had fought so hard these last few months to forget, had now come back and threatened to blow the lid off of everything! Plus, he forgot to carry the two!

"No no no, you gotta carry the two there," advised Albert as Zombie Einstein turned angrily on him. "MMMRRRRRRRRR," Zombie Einstein sternly warned with a very craggy voice. Albert held the wooden ruler ahead of him like a foot-long machete and waved it menacingly. "Hey, I'm not saying you're an idiot," Albert called out, "I'm just saying look closer – you need to carry the two, okay? Carry. The. Two. Look!"

Zombie Einstein unfurrowed his rotten brow with a crunching sound and turned his head slowly back toward the blackboard. His neck made unsettling popping noises as he did so. Albert winced as he heard all of this and he was thoroughly grossed out but he let it slide. Another sidebar thought hit him: _Where the fuck was everyone else in the Patent Office? Did nobody bother coming in to work today? What the hell?_

"UHHHHHH," affirmed Zombie Einstein, double-checking his work. He slowly carried the two and his face cracked into a really foul smile when he updated his result. A worm wriggled out of the hole in his exposed jawline. Albert held back the temptation to vomit and encouraged his new collaborator.

"Yes, that's it... that's it," Albert said in as a bright a tone as he could muster, still holding the ruler out in front of him but slowly relaxing his grip. Zombie Einstein seemed almost bouncy at the new possibilities that now opened up to him as a result of that carried two. He slowly brought his rotting hands together in a clapping motion.

"GGGUUUHHDD BBRRAAAIINN," Zombie Einstein added. Albert had to admire his reanimated doppelganger's work ethic. Not even death could keep him from continuing his work on the Special Theory of Relativity. Incredible.

After a little while of working through the subtleties and complexities of this new physics, Zombie Einstein began to show signs of wearying.

"UUUUHHHHHH," he added in a grotty voice, just so everyone was clear.

It was then that Zombie Einstein suddenly turned and outstretched his putrescent arms toward Albert.

"NNNEEEEEEEEEDD MMMORE BBRAAIINN FFFINNISSHHH EEQUAATTIIONNSS," he added in a grotty voice, just so everyone was clear.

Albert jumped back, ready for this betrayal. Swinging his ruler back and forth, he commanded, "Stay back, damn you! We're not done yet!"

Zombie Einstein repeated his request, his voice even grottier and with more slow advancing. But he was held back by Albert's spirited ruler swinging. As zombies go, Zombie Einstein was not exactly take-charge.

"So... you need brains... to think?" Albert pieced this together as he continued swinging the ruler in front of him. His face grew grim as his ruler grip tightened while his morals loosened. He cleared his throat, which dried up at the thought molding its way into speech which was then reflexively spoken.

"The solution to this problem is simple, Herr Einstein." Albert sighed and resigned himself to a dark path. He couldn't believe the next sentence which was about to come out of his mouth, and that was:

"Let's just get you some more brains."

Zombie Einstein took this in slowly. Then he cracked another smile, as a moth flew out of his decaying pumpkiny mouth. "YYYESSS... BBRRAINNS MMMM," he beamed, continuing to shuffle uncertainly toward Albert.

"Not _my_ brains!" insisted Albert, smacking Zombie Einstein's extra-grabby right hand with a good clip from the ruler. A chunk of flesh flew off the top of the hand. Zombie Einstein looked quizzically at his new wound and made a sound like a curious dog.

And a horrible partnership, which would soon be punctuated by more screaming, newspaper headlines, screaming newspaper headlines, and local civic panic, was born.

~ ~ ~

When his groundbreaking paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Brains Oops I Mean Bodies" was finally published in 1905, Albert was the toast of Bern, of the physics world, and an electric lightning rod of controversy due to the paper's unconventional approaches to extrapolating the every day experience out to the Universe in general. Or the Universe in "special," at least; "general" would come later. Also, the title of the paper was a bit odd but due to a pouty one-man strike at the typesetter's office at the time, it would have to remain that way for the time being.

A champagne party thrown for him in his honour and attended by some local dignitaries. Many bottles were cracked open and all were thrilled to have some booze. The party was partly to celebrate Albert's phenomenal achievement, but it was also used as a timely distraction for the surviving citizens of Bern, who had recently emerged from a horrific surprise zombie apocalypse; so disconcerting to see all those who had been bitten by what were at first thought to be bears (how quaint!) come back and bite others and create more of their undead kind It was very rude and definitely un-Swisslike behaviour. Luckily an influx of firearms from the Germans and Italians had been dispatched, and the lucky discovery that headshots stopped the zombies in their tracks all helped to beat back their icky ilk to the point of nonexistence once more. It became henceforth known as the "Insurrection of the Icky Ilk," celebrated annually by shooting imported watermelons that have been painted up to look like ghoulish versions of dearly departed ones. It was sure something they had going on back in the day.

After the party had concluded, Albert finally found himself alone in the Central Chamber of Bern's Town Hall after all the hoopla had died down. It was respectably late enough at night that he had closed another shindig, and could still enjoy the spoils of a half-bottle of schnapps all to himself in the demi-darkness. The moonlight bled in beautifully through the high-arched Chamber windows. He chuckled to himself as he poured a little more of the sanity-lensing fluid into his glass and slowly walked down the entrance hallway toward the impressive double doors to make his drunken way home.

As he neared the double doors, he heard a muffled clatter from the direction of the utility closet. Perhaps the brassy Fraulein Gauss had successfully conquered another shy civic official's reticence to drop his trousers in the name of anatomical science. Albert chuckled and softly said, "Good night, Fraulein Gauss," as he ambled closer to the double doors.

The utility closet door opened awkwardly and made a blunt slam against the wall, knocking down a lovely framed etching of 19th-century Bern. There in the doorway stood Zombie Einstein, covered in dried blood and looking slightly psychotic.

"Jesus Christ!" exclaimed a startled Albert. He hadn't seen Zombie Einstein in a while and frankly didn't relish this meeting right now. "I thought they got all of you!" No response from Zombie Einstein. Albert regained his breath and attempted to be more conversational so as not to rile him up.

"You look like shit, pal," Albert joked weakly. Zombie Einstein continued looked at him blankly. Well, even more blankly than usual. Albert, unnerved by this, changed his approach.

"I mean it in a good way, heh heh." No reaction from Zombie Einstein. Albert coughed and continued with, "Look, we did it," Albert began, forcing a smile that tried really hard to be relaxed and natural. No reaction. Undogged, Albert continued, "We got the paper published! Isn't that great, Herr Einstein? Yes, we managed to being Special Relativity to life! You... started something great, and I... we! We finished it. Together! I'm the—we're the toast of Bern! Mission accomplished! So, heh heh, there's now no more reason for you to still be, you know, killing people for their brains!" He finished his speech almost with a "Ta-daah" type of gesture.

Still nothing.

An uncomfortable moment of silence passed between the two. In the distance, a dog was probably barking somewhere but not here this time. Any distraction would have been welcome to accompany the rotten odour which now just hit Albert's nostrils. And he was still about equal distance from the double doors as he was from Zombie Einstein; a horrible, horrible isosceles triangle of the most awful mathematical construction.

Zombie Einstein moved out of the utility closet and began to block Albert's exit through the double doors. Albert wisely chose to back up and go back into the Central Chamber, with Zombie Einstein following him.

"You stole my work," Zombie Einstein finally piped up. His voice, while sounding dry and craggy, sounded way closer to normal than the last time Albert had dealt with him. This shocked Albert.

"Hey... you can talk," Albert blurted out. "Heh heh, how about that?"

"Oh shut up, of course I can talk," snorted Zombie Einstein. "I've eaten so many brains over the last several months I'm now the smartest motherfucker around."

Albert was shocked. "Did you just say... 'motherfu—'?"

"Yes, motherfucker," Zombie Einstein interrupted. "Motherfucker, _mother-fucker_ ," he emphasized with extra relish. "I just made that word up a few days ago. Pretty good for staid ole 1905 Switzerland, huh?"

"It certainly, uh, paints a picture," suggested Albert, trying to be helpful.

"Shut your black hole," commanded Zombie Einstein. "I am so mad at you, man, I could just bite your damn head off and eat the gooey filling inside! Oh yeah! I'd be even smarter then!" He eyed the top of Albert's head with extra interest. Albert did not appreciate this extra attention.

"Look, I got a better idea," started Albert, panicked as hell. Continuing to back up into the Central Chamber and passing its entrance, he thought to switch on the light to buy himself a second of time. He didn't have an idea at all but he just started talking and hoped to fuck that his brain would come up with something by the time the words flew out of his mouth. "How about... I... just go? Yeah! Wait wait, hear me out. I can go, and move away. Move away to, say, another country. I could go to America. Or even its odd little doppelganger Canada. Yeah, I could move to Nowheresville, Canada, and just set up a quiet little shop that had nothing to do with physics at all and I wouldn't bother you again, and you could stay here and continue working on your physics equations, you know, in between brain feastings." Albert was impressed he was able to get all of that out under such duress. He looked at Zombie Einstein and finished with another ta-daaah, "What do you say?"

Zombie Einstein stared at Albert, unimpressed. Crickets chirped. Zombie Einstein slowly shook his head and blinked, at which point one of the crickets scurried out from under what remained of his left eyelid. "I hate when that happens," Zombie Einstein said nonchalantly. "Now then," he said, amid at all the spent champagne bottles in the Central Chamber and turning his attention back to Albert, "time for one more thing to get cracked open." Zombie Einstein smiled a malevolent smile and advanced toward Albert.

Albert continued to back up but was finding he could not get a lot of room between him and Zombie Einstein. And now tables and chairs were starting to crowd them together a bit more. He grabbed an empty champagne bottle and started swinging it around. He pushed a few stray chairs toward Zombie Einstein, who casually put them aside neatly.

"Must you be such a slob, Albert?" chided Zombie Einstein. "The cleaning staff who look after these places are underappreciated enough. Like my dear friend Herr Burcholdt."

"Burcholdt? The late night janitor at the Patent Office?" Albert asked, as he pushed more chairs toward his adversary. "I haven't seen him in a long time! How is he?"

"Dead," came the zombie's reply, moving the chairs aside and straightening them up. "Well, not at first. I bit him, he became a zombie, he was doing fine in the north end of town, terrorizing the living when he was finally... laid to rest by the constabulary."

"Shame," said Albert distractedly. More chairs shoved in between them.

"He hated you, you know. You were very messy." More chairs put aside neatly.

"I guess he'd have good reason to hate both of us."

Zombie Einstein lunged to close the gap. Albert swung at him and clipped him lightly on the nose with the blunt end of the bottle. "Motherfucker," blurted Zombie Einstein. Albert thought, _Wow, that really is a good, meaty swear word_. They both watched the tip of Zombie Einstein's nose sail off his face and, one impressive arc later, land at the entrance to the Central Chamber.

And that's when they saw Constable Schultzhoff standing there in the doorway, somewhat gobsmacked at what he was seeing. He sidestepped the landing grayish nose tip.

"Herr... Einstein...?" Constable Schultzhoff asked.

"Yes?" both Einsteins replied, momentarily stopping their painfully slow and thoughtful chase.

"I was doing my rounds and I saw the light still on. I... don't know if I believe what I am seeing here."

"Well what do you think you see here?" asked Zombie Einstein, sort of impatiently.

The constable stammered. "I see... two Herr Einsteins. But one of them is a zombie."

"You are correct, sir," affirmed Albert, splitting his focus between the constable and the zombie.

"It's quite simple, actually," added Zombie Einstein.

"Really?" asked Constable Schultzhoff and Albert simultaneously.

"Why yes, dumbkopfs," snorted Zombie Einstein. "When I was killed by this Herr Einstein here, he must have dragged me to Farmer Holtzmann's field, where the resonant bridge between this universe and Herr Einstein's, sensing the presence of his unique quantum signature, must have momentarily inverted, taking me to his universe in his stead, where I suddenly arrived encased in a giant brass orb."

A long pause filled the room. This was broken by Constable Schultzhoff, who said a very puzzled, "What."

Zombie Einstein ignored his confusion and continued. "In that universe, a brilliant man named Bartok Richter, thinking I was this Herr Einstein, had managed to reanimate my dead flesh back to the living."

Albert looked on, stunned. Richter was out of control back home, clearly.

Zombie Einstein kept going. "The odd thing I discovered was when I came back alive, I had no desire to continue with my physics. I didn't care about anything; I just wanted to eat human brains. Very strange, and somewhat distasteful, certainly at first."

"Uh-huh," said the other two.

"My new personality trait being distressingly antisocial, Herr Richter lured me back to the brass orb and sent me back here to this universe, where I continued my cerebral consumption. But as I kept eating brains, I soon began to regain some mental footing, and slowly could articulate basic thoughts. Eventually I could begin to retrace my original steps and begin my calculations once more. Herr Einstein here helped me gain access to more brains and we collaborated in finishing our paper. By then, all the zombie offspring which my biting had caused had become an issue, and were soon eliminated with gunfire."

Constable Schultzhoff was shocked. "What! You helped him eat more brains, Herr Einstein?!" He drew out two pistols and pointed one at each.

Albert was also shocked. "What! You're throwing me under the bus, you rotting zombie bastard?!"

Constable Schultzhoff then added, "Wait a moment! That was the two of you I saw staggering in the night over a year ago?!"

Albert exclaimed, "Wait a moment! We're getting pulled into a shit-ton of back-slating exposition here?!"

Zombie Einstein meanwhile had slowly palmed a half-empty bottle of champagne from atop one of the chamber tables. He then flung it with surprising ferocity and accuracy toward Constable Schultzhoff's unsuspecting head. It connected, sending the good constable tumbling backwards onto the hallway floor. Zombie Einstein then moved pretty quickly while the constable struggled to get his wits about him.

With two gristly bone-jarring bites to the neck and head, it was over for Constable Schultzhoff.

Zombie Einstein knelt over his fallen quarry and wiped the blood and brains from his gnarled cardigan. It had been a while since he had feasted and it felt great.

Albert was filled with fear, and yet he still found himself running towards Zombie Einstein's back, still clutching his own champagne bottle like a club. He dove through the air and was going to slam that bottle hard into the zombie's head. Zombie Einstein turned very quickly and managed to redirect his assailant's airborne momentum so that Albert was thrown slightly ahead of him and to the right. Albert came down hard onto his back. Zombie Einstein awkwardly shifted off the constable's fallen husk and quickly bit Albert in the closest spot to the zombie's mouth: his crotch.

Albert screamed at the many levels of horror that were now happening. He quickly shoved Zombie Einstein hard away from his crotch and threw him across the hallway. Zombie Einstein slammed into the utility closet door, and the impact knocked an etching of Bern's mayor off the wall. Albert, meanwhile, was sore but he didn't feel like he was bitten. How the hell—?

Of course – it was Constable Schultzhoff's now-patented lifting, separating, and paddedly protecting male undergarments! _Thank fuck I made sure I patented those things!_ , Albert thought. They were actually pretty comfy, too.

"Not nice, Albert," chided Zombie Einstein, who began to stir.

" _I'm_ not nice – what about you! Look what you did to poor—"

_Constable Schultzhoff – he brought guns!_ , thought Albert. He quickly crawled over to the constable's bloody carcass and, kneeling astride the poor, dead patrolman pried the two pistols from the corpse's clenched hands. He managed to get into a solid crouched position and aim them at Zombie Einstein just as the ghoul had turned himself around. The zombie now stared straight down their barrels from three feet away. He uttered a low, snarling growl and angrily bared his brown, cracked teeth at Albert.

"You don't have the guts," sneered Zombie Einstein.

Albert cocked both pistols and kept his aim steady. Zombie Einstein humbly continued, "Oh fuck, you do."

Zombie Einstein began to stammer. "Heh heh, come on now, Albert. Think of what we could do together!" He began to slowly move forward. Albert cut him off with a terse wave of the pistols and a firm glare. Zombie Einstein held his place and continued his plea.

"With our brilliant minds, in combination, you and I – we can conquer the world! We can figure out the entire Universe!" Zombie Einstein let those words take hold in Albert. They did sink in. Zombie Einstein softly lobbed in, "So... what do you say..." He fought all the desperation in his body to rip Albert apart right then and there. He beamed as sincere a look as he could, all things considered, and put a button on it:

"...partners?"

Albert looked for what seemed like a long time at Zombie Einstein. He felt very responsible for this horrible situation, which had truly spiraled out of control. He had taken the life of this poor man, in two different ways, and maybe a bridging offer like this was the way to help pay him back for the wrongdoing incurred. He felt truly sorry for helping spawn this rotting, hopeless creature, which stared dripping in front of him at that moment. His grip began to soften a bit on the pistols.

Zombie Einstein gestured slowly to Albert with exaggeratedly outstretched and open arms, and repeated with a smile, "...Partners?" There was now a slight hint of desperation in his voice. Albert also detected a soupçon of menace underscoring it all. This helped seal the deal. Albert regained strength and purpose and re-aimed the pistols right at Zombie Einstein's skull.

"We can't be partners, you miscreant from Hell," Albert smouldered through gritted teeth. "Because unlike you, I am able..." he then gestured to his armaments, "... to carry the two!" And with that clever wordplay, he fired the two pistols. Two bullets cleanly blew apart Zombie Einstein's head with horrific splatter.

The zombie's torso shuddered and it was momentarily confused as to what it should do next. But finally, the large mass of the Earth beneath it coaxed the remains of Zombie Einstein downward onto the floor so it could, finally, be a body at rest. So with a wet plop, it did just that.

Albert exhaled with a huge breath. He couldn't believe any of this. He bent down and caught himself looking at the horribly mutilated head of Officer Schultzhoff.

"Gaaaah!" screamed Albert. Not adding to Albert's calm frame of mind was that the body of Officer Schultzhoff began to stir.

"MMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR," came a low, garbled sound from the chewed-up spot where the policeman's mouth used to reside. The body very awkwardly started to find its footing and its arms began spastically reaching out at the air, for anything to grab, for anything to consume.

"Oh fuck, not you too!" screamed Albert, who unloaded a few more bullets into the remains of Officer Schultzhoff's head. Zombie Schultzhoff was stopped, well, dead in his tracks, and collapsed to the ground, unmoving. His zombie career was finished before it even got a chance to start, but sometimes those are the harsh breaks. Even in 1905 Switzerland.

Albert slowly got to his feet. His armpits were soaking wet. He needed a damn smoke and he needed one now. He kept the pistols on him and with jitters now shivering their way through him, his hurried his way out of the Town Hall.

~ ~ ~

It was a cold but lovely March morning in 1906 Bern. Albert had just come into the Patent Office, still snow-dusted on his shoulders. He traipsed his way to his office. His mind was not on anything there at all, but of the talk he had been invited to give later that day to the local university about what it might be like to ride on top of a photon. He chuckled to himself thinking about what in fact riding on a photon could be like. It was very trippy; and he would have to be very, very tiny with no mass. He could eat all the truffles he wanted and not gain an ounce!

A gentle rapping on his door interrupted his reverie. "Ah, my 'ride' is here!" chirped Albert.

Humming a jaunty little tune, he went to it and opened it up. "Yes, Fraulein Gau–" He was stunned. "What the hell?"

"Shut up, egg-head," came the terse reply, followed by a hard punch to Albert's face. He was sent reeling backwards. He caught the back of his head on a sharp corner of the metal filing cabinet and he slumped down, suddenly very dead.

The assailant was suddenly very shocked. It had not gone the way he had wanted, not at all. His heart raced and his eyes bulged.

"Holy shitballs!" exclaimed Another-Alternate-Universe Albert Einstein.

* * * *

**Cleaning**

Sid had the suction tube draining the saliva from his mouth with a horrifically loud sucking noise. He was more or less pinned into the dental chair. It was an uncomfortable spot for him to be in, as he had a slight aversion to all things dentist-y. To be fair though, and Sid knew this, his dental office was a wonderful and modern practice with great equipment and a great staff who did try to make procedures as prompt and painless as humanly possible.

And yet, the standard cleaning that he was in for that morning was enough to give him cold sweat on his palms and white knuckles. Larissa, the lovely dental assistant who was actually performing the cleaning, calmly encouraged him to relax; Sid really tried to do obey this instruction but was having difficulties complying. He swallowed for the fortieth time, re-adjusted the chained paper bib around his neck, and settled back into the chair.

Larissa first applied a fine waterpick-type instrument very slowly around his entire gum line, top and bottom, front and back. Sid didn't know what the instrument was actually called and he didn't care at that moment. He was just trying to stare straight ahead and blot out all of this privacy invasion going on in his mouth at the moment.

The dental office had the foresight to provide two crucial elements to help jittery patients relax. The first element was a pair of bitchen sunglasses, the kind that fit over top of eyeglasses and that look like something Ray Charles might have endorsed later on in his life. These helped cut down on the glare from the bright light which was focused on the patient's mouth during the appointment. The second element was a ceiling-mounted television set which got all the cable stations. Plus, it had the closed captioning turned on so that even over top of waterpicks, drills, and suction tubes, the patient could still at least somewhat follow what was going on as they had their mouths worked on (or in the case of some trouble patients, worked _over_ ).

Larissa knew enough to keep conversation with her patients to a minimum, in that her focus would be otherwise split, and they don't usually want to talk with a load of tubes coming out of their mouths anyway. She diligently millimetered along Sid's gum line with the waterpick as he focused on the TV, which was showing a home improvement program. Not the Tim Allen sitcom, which was fine with Sid, but an actual program featuring some couple who were getting their bathroom renovated. Sid put all his attention toward that.

In the program, Alphonso the husband had promised his wife Tanya that he would fix up their master bathroom. Sadly, Alphonso did not know what he was doing and so they decided to air their couple grievances on national television while the buff and muscular tool man proceeded to systematically and metaphorically emasculate Alphonso, who was not aware that was occurring; as far as Alphonso knew, he was just going to get some awesome new crapper. His words, not mine.

Sid would feel the odd twinge from Larissa's waterpicking efforts as he did have sensitive gums, which was not unusual for a man of 52. Thank god he'd still avoided having the dreaded root canal though. When his dad was Sid's current age, he'd already had two root canals. Sid was happy to be part of the "Fluoride Generation," as his previous dentist Dr. Brittany had said.

Sid looked again at the progress being made on the bathroom. Hmm, it was a bit annoying that the close-captioning was screwing up a little. It seemed to have developed a little bit of a stutter on certain chunks of dialogue, repeating them over and over. This was starting to irrationally irritate Sid, who was getting more desperate to escape his current situation through the epic narrative of Alphonso and Tanya's Brand New Crapper, but now was losing major plot points due to bad close-captioning. He could feel his palms sweat some more and Larissa was still waterpicking as if she was carefully searching for The Lost Gold of the Incas, if that was even a thing. Why won't she hurry the hell up, he thought.

"Almost done," she said to him. Man, Sid thought, that was timely – was she psychic? He looked into her eyes, which crinkled a small smile. She explained further, "Your teeth have a bit of a build-up along the bottom, so it's just taking some time to get all that out." This put him a bit at ease. He settled into watching more TV. It was now a commercial break. He turned his brain off and gladly drank in the propaganda. Well, just for a second, because–

What the hell, thought Sid. This here was perverse; it was as if the advertisers had a line into the dentist's office. There was an ad for a delicious ice cream treat called the "Snow Squall" from the ice cream sandwich and dessert restaurant chain Lactose Princess. This was followed by another ad for the American Meat Association espousing the benefits of an all T-Bone diet, and then another ad boasting rich exotic coffees at McDunnell's fast food restaurants. Sid just sat there, tortured, unable to move, wanting to eat and drink these things so badly but alas, he was in the exact opposite mouth-space to enjoy them right at that instant.

Larissa finished waterpicking his mouth. Good!

She removed the suction tube from his drooling maw and he sat up and swallowed. He wiped his sweaty hands on the tops of his pant legs and was wondering if he could go now. This was quickly answered with a gentle:

"Okay, Mr. Grumlon, please sit back down, I have to go over your mouth a little more." She held in her hand another instrument that Sid hated way more than the waterpick and whose name he also didn't know or care to know, but was that small metal rod with the two curved steel hooks on either end. Yeah – that damn thing. Sid shrunk back into his seat, readjusted his bitchen sunglasses and got back into the groove with good ol' Alphonso and Tanya.

Larissa began the microfine task of gently hooking and scraping into the spaces in between Sid's teeth, and into the sensitive teeth/gum border. This new phase of the appointment made him even more highly uncomfortable and he really began sweating profusely. Larissa gently uttered encouragements such as, "This won't take long, Mr. Grumlon," and, "Your teeth are in pretty good shape, I'm just doing a little bit here." Although Sid appreciated the kind words and the gesture, it didn't do much to assuage his fears. With the will of Samson, he turned to the TV and mentally begged Alphonso and Tanya to whisk him the hell out of there.

It was at this moment, however, that the buff, muscular TV renovation host had his team of equally toned and emasculating handymen break out the saws and the drills to help get those floor tiles cut properly and the cabinet holes put into place. Feeling like Alex the Droog on a pry-eyed Beethoven bender, Sid watched the various kinds nasty slicing equipment effortlessly eat their way through materials way tougher than his own teeth as Larissa double-picked her way through his mouth like some darling Darth Maul. He firmly gripped the hand rests of the dental chair and gave their tensile strength a good test.

"Yo, Tyler, saw those floor tiles like this... KZZHHHHT," said the TV. Pick pick pick pick pick, went Larissa. "Darryl, that section needs to be redrilled, like this... WWHHEEEEE!" Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape. "Naylor, hand me the nail gun..."KBLM KBLM KBLM!" Hook hook hook hook hook. "Sandy, sand that counter top down... SSZZZHHHHH!" Bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed. And on it went for the next six minutes. Sid almost felt like he was losing significant water weight through his palms and tear ducts, but did what he could to hold on.

Gradually, the storm clouds lifted with Larissa's finishing using the metal hook. She allowed Sid a small moment to regather his dignity from the puddle on the floor around him, and said, "You did great, Mr. Grumlon." Sid looked at her with red-ringed, unbelieving eyes. She continued unphased with, "Now we'll just buff your teeth clean and then you're done."

The buffing of his teeth by Larissa could not have come fast enough for Sid. She produced the tiny tooth buffer (again, Sid didn't know if it was officially called that and again, he didn't care) and as she worked around his mouth with the buffer, he could actually feel the pores in his palms begin to relax and close up. Oh thank Christ.

Finally, it was all done. The buffing, followed by the fluoride rinse were like angel kisses compared to the previous 42 minutes. But he made it through, dammit. He made it through. And so did Alphonso and Tanya, happy with their new crapper. Alphonso was the happiest metaphorical cuckold in all of TV land, for that hour at least. Everybody was walking out of that dental office a winner.

Sid regained his composure and graciously thanked Larissa and went to pay the bill and book his next appointment with Stacey the receptionist.

"See you in six months," chirped Stacey. "Great," Sid meekly countered as he made his way out the door, trying not to walk with too pronounced a stagger. He knew what he needed next to bring him back around to the land of the living.

So 13 minutes later, that Snow Squall went down smooth, real smooth. Like a good reward should.

* * * *

**Fifty Shades of Tartan**

"Fifty Shades of Tartan: A Tartan Tale of Tail"

Dictated but not read by Sir Shonn Connedy; transcribed by Gord Oxley

(Editor's note: this entry has been excerpted from the original novel for space and taste considerations)

(35) "Frishky French Fucksh"

SC: Thish thirty-fifth tale of my shexhual proclivitiesh goesh like thish. Sho one other time, there wash thish fanschy movie premiere in Cannesh. I forget what it wash for, I think Thunderball or shome damn thing. I'll look it up shometime later. Shut yer hole. Jusht write it down exhactly ash I shay it.

And sho anyway, it wash me, Urshula Andressh, and Jhulie Newmar. Nineteen-shixty-who-givesh-a-crap. Sho shuddenly a gusht of wind blew up both their shkirtsh, and I could shee their pusshiesh! Ah I tell ye, shon, it wash shpectacular! Read that last shentensche back to me.

TRANSCRIBER: "Ah I tell you, son, it was spectacular."

SC: Yesh, now shut your hole. Where wash I?

TRANSCRIBER: Their skirts had blown up and you could—

SC: Shee their pusshiesh! Yesh yesh. Fabuloush. Sho then I shaid to them, "Shay ladiesh, what shay you two and I jusht blow thish popshicle shtand and go back to my hotel shuite for shome shweet and shexhy shixty-nining and shteamy shenshual shexhcapadesh? They shaid, "Shure thing, Shonn," and we shallied forth tout-shuite! Read that lasht shentensche back to me.

TRANSCRIBER: "They said, 'Sure thing, Shonn,' and we sallied forth tout-suite!"

SC: Shplendid. Wait a shecond.

TRANSCRIBER: What's that, Mr. Connedy?

SC: You type "TRANSHCRIBER" every time you type your name?

TRANSCRIBER: Uh...

SC: Don't you have a name, boy?

TRANSCRIBER: Uh, yes. "Gord."

SC: "Gord"? What ish that, English?

TRANSCRIBER: Canadian, actually.

SC: Almosht ash bloody bad. Look, jusht type your damn name.

GORD: You mean like this?

SC: Shure. Exhcept, hold on. Go up a few linesh. There.

GORD: What, Mr. Connedy?

SC: You put an exhtra "h" in that word "TRANSHCRIBER." The hell, man. Fixh it.

GORD: Yes, sir.

SC: Fixh it later though. I've got to get thish done fasht while the whole "Fifty Shadesh of Gray" shit is shtill hot. Now then, where wash I?

GORD: You sallied forth tout-suite!

SC: Don't you yell at me, boy!

GORD: Oh no I wasn't, Mr. Connedy. That was just the original punctuation.

SC: Oh Chrisht, whatever. Anyway, we get back to my hotel shuite and Jhulie Newmar, she feelsh the shweats coming on sho she takesh a quick shower. So Urshula and me get bushy.

GORD: Sorry to interrupt, sir – you two get "bushy"?

SC: No! Not "busshy", "BISHy"! Lasht time I put out a goddamn Craigshlisht ad for a shtenographer, that'sh for damn shure.

GORD: Sorry, keep going, Mr. Connedy.

SC: Sho we're naked and she'sh got her boobiesh all out and everything; truly shtunning. Nische girl. We did it. Then she needed to shower and jusht at that time Jhulie Newmar came out of the shower sho we did it, she and I.

GORD: _(after a slight pause)_ Was there anything else, sir?

SC: Huh? What are you inshinuating?

GORD: I mean, are there any other details?

SC: What are you, a fuckin' pervert, shon?

GORD: No! Well, maybe a little. But NO, I just thought, for the sake of the reader, they may want more of a description, more romance—

SC: Romansche? Chrisht! I nailed two hot babesh in Cannesh in the Shixtiesh and I'm tellin' you all aboot it! That'sh all the bloody exschitement anyone can handle, boy!

GORD: Yes, sir.

SC: Now get thish thing typed up proper and shend it to my publisher. He'sh been on my assh all week about thish. Wait, you're not typing that too, are ya?

GORD: I can delete it if you like, sir.

SC: Ah Chrisht, I don't really give two shitsh. Ushe your dishcretion. Cash in on thish shit while it'sh hot! I gotta go. My wife'sh bringing me shome new underwear, tax-free, jusht like much of my shweet life! I don't ushually wear underwear shinsche I got my kilt like thish one here.

GORD: I see.

SC: You want to shee what'sh under the kilt, shon?

GORD: No thank you, Mr. Connedy.

SC: _(flaps his kilt up, sways back and forth)_ Wheee, lookie lookie, you're misshing all the action!

GORD: Sorry, sir, I'm trying to keep up with the typing.

SC: That'sh good. You passhed my tesht. I guessh you really do like the ladiesh.

GORD: I'm glad we could move on, sir.

SC: I like the ladiesh, you know.

GORD: Oh yes, sir, I know.

SC: If they can hold their shcotch, then they can hold my crotch! _(_ SC _laughs, raises his glass of scotch, drains it)_

GORD: Yes, sir, Mr. Connedy.

SC: Ah shite, I gotta go. Finish my shtory!

GORD: Yes, sir. Nice to work with you, sir.

SC: Shut your hole. _(_ SC _leaves)_

* * * *

**It's Warm In Here**

Hebuban was in a bit of a quandry. As leader of the third-tier minions in Satan's armed guard, he was expected to bring a certain amount of determination and fight to his performance of duty. But lately, his heart wasn't into the screaming souls of the innocent and the damned, nor the scorching temperatures that could melt iron into vapour, nor the smells of weeping regret that cannonaded throughout all of Hell's infinitely cavernous halls. No, Hebuban was in love.

Her name was Iris Klosky, of Northwood, Ohio. She was an average woman whose soul had just become claimed in the Great Soul Swap with Heaven the previous week, where God and Satan played a game of who could flip the soul closest to the gaping chasm without falling in; Satan cheated, of course, and acquired Iris's soul along with a future draft pick.

It was Hebuban's duty as leader of the third-tier minions to escort all of the newbies into the pool of lava-piss before the extractions of all hope and happiness truly began. And though he had been happily (or unhappily, depending on your viewpoint) performing this task for the last seven centuries, three weeks, and eight minutes, he just didn't have the lack of heart necessary to go whole-hog with Iris. There was something about her that made him warm up to her in an unusual fashion, and this was very disturbing to him. He said nothing of this to any of his subordinates, and certainly not to any of the second-tier minions above him.

Which is why he was flush with fear when he received the phone call the next morning:

"Hello? Hebuban here."

"This is Satan. Get into my office now."

"Sir?"

"Why are you not here in my office right this moment?!"

In a blink, Hebuban materialized in front of Satan, standing on the luxuriant archangel carpet that lay in front of the intimidating desk made from wicker and bay leaves. I know it doesn't sound like much but really, seeing what this desk actually looks like would make you shit your ethereal pants.

"Hebuban, I have been hearing disturbing reports that you are slacking off your duties. Explain."

"O Great Sulphurous Master," began Hebuban. Satan cut him off.

"Is it a chick?"

Hebuban froze, which was difficult to do in that humidity. He squeaked out a meek little, "Yes."

Satan reared up on his massively powerful haunches and laughed a belly laugh that caused a tsunami to happen in Austria, which at last check was still land-locked. Hebuban was covered in icy flop sweat. Satan looked at this third-tier minion before him and snorted.

"Ah kid, don't worry about it. We've all been there." Hebuban was stunned. Did he just hear The Great Scourge correctly?

"Yes, you heard me correctly," Satan confirmed with much vocal gristle. Hebuban was beside himself for a moment, before he clicked his after-image back into his own body. Satan continued, "Son, for me it's been many, many conquests and fillies, but really the only one that ever mattered was Margaret Thatcher." Hebuban almost choked on his own uvula but held steady and cautiously followed with:

"Great Soiled Sire, what is your bidding with this Iris woman? Shall you have me treat her more harshly as per your infinitely sour will?"

"Oh for fuck's sake, Hebuban," Satan retorted, "first of all I'm not all that 'soiled,' and secondly, no man, why not take her out to dinner?"

"Dinner?"

"Yeah, go to Dante's. Good Italian cuisine. Nixon's the maître'd there. Treat her nicely. Have some fun. You've worked hard for seven centuries; even you need a night off."

"Wow, thank you O Spawn Of Oozing–"

"Okay, enough of the compliments already, just get the Hell out of here for tonight."

And so Hebuban did just that. He and Iris dined well that night at Dante's. Hebuban left Nixon a hefty tip. Hebuban and Iris fell in love and eventually got married.

Which is when Hebuban then graduated to a new tier of Hell. Which to him was kind of like Heaven. Or even more Hell, again depending on your viewpoint, for what initially sounded like the punchline to a cheap joke was in fact an afterlife-changing event: his newfound marriage and responsibility finally allowed him, in the eyes of his superiors, to be promoted to a second-tier minion. It only took seven centuries, which in Helltime was practically a blink.

And it being Hell and all, his wife was forever hot, their love forever steamy.

And he was forever grateful.

* * * *

**Knuckles**

Knuckle-cracking Jimmy Bonson was doing his usual annoying tricks to piss off his fellow Grade 12 students as they were deeply ensconced in their final exams. His loud nitrogen-releasing missives were distracting everyone, even the cool kids who normally didn't give a shit about tests. The teacher, Mr. Rollins, hovered by Jimmy's desk.

"Can you stop doing that?" hissed Mr. Rollins very close to Jimmy's face.

"Sorry sir," whispered Jimmy. There was still an hour and ten minutes to go.

Jimmy looked at the exam. What the fuck did he know about calculus? And what did he care anyway – he wasn't going to be going to university. His grades sucked, and he barely was passing any of his courses. Best he could hope for would be some community college, if he even went post-secondary at all. He looked blankly at the seeming squabble of formulas and words on the pages in front of him and let fly with another knuckle crack.

"Shut the hell up," whispered Jennifer Martin tersely. She shifted in her seat ahead of Jimmy and continued struggling with her exam. Jimmy bemusedly looked at the back of her head, then looked at his test. He started doodling a coarse cartoon of his teacher being attacked by a giant flying penis, then chose to erase that. He made sure that no trace of that cartoon remained on the page.

Jennifer was kind of cute, Jimmy thought. Too bad she thought he was a piece of garbage. Oh well, win some, lose some, the thought. He doodled "Winsome Losesome" on his cover page. Christ, 55 more minutes of this? He cracked his knuckles again, out of habit. It was like a homing beacon for hatred, as Mr. Rollins came swanning back toward him.

"What did I tell you before?" hissed Mr. Rollins again. A year's long tension was finding pressure valve release during this exam time.

"Sorry sir," whispered Jimmy. Mr. Rollins looked at him with no expression.

"Honestly, I'm sorry, Mr. Rollins," added Jimmy. Mr. Rollins blinked. Then after a couple of beats, he slowly trailed away, leaving Jimmy back to winsome losesomes and other things. He started re-drawing the sketch of Rollins and the attacking penis, this time with more penises. Really ugly penises, not that penises are normally the handsomest things in the world. In a word: yeesh. This word "yeesh" also became doodled on the exam page with a big screaming banner around it. He was happy with how it came out.

32 minutes to go. Time for a knuckle crack. A soft knuckle crack that hopefully would garner no further attention. Soft knuckle crack accomplished. And aside from a slight huff and seating shift from Jennifer Martin in front of him, no other wrath was experienced. He felt good about that.

Certainly better about that than this damn test. What the hell did these questions even mean? It had been a whole year and he still didn't know what a "derivative" was, other than something that stumped him all year. Well, not for much longer. Only 29 more minutes and then he would never have to worry about this crap ever again.

He casually flipped through the exam again. He admired the variety of his answers. Some of them were left blank and pristine; a zen master would have been proud. Other answer spaces were doodled upon with great vigor and imagination. If he couldn't give the correct answers, at least he could try to make ol' tight-ass Rollins chuckle a little.

Maybe he should erase the penises again, he thought. So he did. 18 minutes and counting.

And then his life would really, truly begin.

* * * *

**Lunch**

The noon bell sounded. All work at the construction site came to a stop. Gregor was pleased that it was now time for lunch, for he was a giant man with a giant appetite. He put down his mighty jackhammer, wiped the salty ocean of sweat from his brick wall-like forehead, and strode over to a filthy canvas sack that laid on the ground by the port-o-potties. He knocked away the wooden sign that leaned against the canvas sack, the sign which read "You Do Not Touch My Lunch For It Is Gregors."

Gregor hoisted the heavy canvas sack over his unbelievably broad shoulders, and marched over to the makeshift lunch area where the other fellows were eating. Little clouds of dust kicked up from his heels with each Herculean stride he took. At last, he sat down beside Bill, the crane operator, who was in the middle of a chat with his buddies Bobby and Earl.

"...so then I says, hey baby, while you're down there, get me a beer, wouldja?" Bill, Bobby, and Earl each laughed the raucous laugh of simple construction men who enjoyed football, beer, fucking, and simple man sleep. Gregor joined in the laughter.

"Ha ha! Yes! Laughter! It is good! For I am Gregor, and I love a giant man laugh!"

The three other guys stopped and looked at Gregor. Earl's eyes narrowed, and thought of something to change the subject. "So... Gregor. You likin' the jackhammer?"

"Yes, I am mighty with the jackhammer. For I am Gregor, who is a giant among men. Ha ha!" Still laughing, he reached into the canvas sack and pulled out what looked like an entire roasted 22-pound turkey shoved into a giant submarine sandwich bun. Gregor began to tear voraciously yet nonchalantly into this epic meal. The other three stared at him. Finally, Bobby piped up.

"Christ, G-man, ya gonna eat that whole fuckin' thing? No wonder the port-o-potty was blocked up yesterday." The three wise men cackled while Gregor, not sensing their mockery of him, chomped happily into the ass-end of the turkey sandwich. Gregor loved his lunch that day, and he happily addressed the group with his mouth full.

"I am Gregor! I need much nourishment." A spray of turkey particles coated a two-foot radius around him. The guys looked at each other, and then resigned to following a course of action, collectively sighed. Earl started with, "Hey Gregor, can we talk to you for a sec?"

Gregor continued chewing and replied, "I am Gregor. I listen to all men who address me."

"Uh yeah, yeah, great, G-man," said Bobby, wiping away a piece of flying cartilage that hit him on the cheek. "It's just this–" Bobby paused as he looked at the other guys, who tilted their heads a bit sideways and nodded silent encouragement for him to continue. Gregor was still fixated on his sandwich. So Bobby continued, "It's like this: do ya gotta be so goddamn big and goofy all the time?"

Gregor did not lose a beat. "Gregor does not understand your question," he simply said as he then reached into the canvas sack and pulled out a complete watermelon, which he began slurping and crunching into very enthusiastically. The watermelon shell was nothing against the giant and mighty teeth of Gregor.

Bill chimed in. "What Bobby– actually, all of us, are trying to say is, you're a great worker, oh yeah–" Bobby and Earl shouted their yeahs of agreement, "but Jesus, man, can ya stop speaking like a freakin' He-Man cartoon."

Gregor stopped eating and trained his eyes on his three simple lunchmates. He felt funny.

"Yeah, Gregor, can ya just talk, ya know, normal?" offered Earl helpfully.

Gregor looked at his companions with a very serious expression on his face. His mighty eyebrows gradually drew together into an angry V, as if a flock of black, hairy falcons had descended onto his forehead in attack formation. He grimly looked down at the decimated watermelon parts in his hands as he weighed this new information very carefully. With his senses extra-finely tuned, he heard a car horn honking from afar amid the blunted din of city traffic droning along unabated. For the first time since he started at this site, Gregor was not entirely looking forward to the afternoon shift.

He sighed the mightiest sigh in recorded human history.

~ ~ ~

The next day, exactly at 12:00, the noon bell sounded once more. Gregor, a man-mountain reborn, again was very pleased that it was the time of lunch. Dropping his jackhammer, he again strode over toward the porty-o-potty and brushed the sign off the canvas bag. He sat down it in the make-shift lunch area.

"I am Gregor! I am a giant of a man, and I have a giant appetite!" Today he sat by himself but he did not mind. He happily reached into the canvas sack and pulled out what looked like a roasted 22-pound Bill, Earl, and Bobby sausage crammed into a giant submarine sandwich bun.

Gregor loved his lunch that day.

* * * *

**Mayan**

Clement Voorhuus continued working at the dig, brushing away more dust and more debris from the artefact. His assistant Karen Thomasson kept handing him different brushes as he called for them. It had been four solid hours and the cramped conditions inside the pyramid were starting to get to them. Comments became terser, when conversation would even happen at all. But they both understood the possible significance of the find if the calculations were correct, and the old man's death would not have been for nothing after all.

They continued their painstaking work. "Number 3," called Clement, and a Number 3 brush with its coarser bristles was handed to him by Karen. Scrape scrape scrape. "Number 2." Brush handed over. Buffet buffet buffet. "Number 3 again. Please." Brush. Scrape scrape. "Number 1." Brush. Dust dust dust dust dust. "Number 0."

Karen looked up. Could it be paydirt (no pun intended) at long last? She gingerly handed him the very delicate Number 0 brush. He began carefully tracing over grooves, markings, glyphs, and any other manmade nook and cranny that had been worked into the rock those thousands of years ago.

This tracing went on for a while. Karen knew better than to say anything right now. Clement was an intense man whose lust for treasures both luxurious and academic was truly staggering. The old man knew this but still couldn't keep out of Clement's path; ultimately, the old man paid the price when he tried to hide the maps and research notes from Clement's greedy mitts.

Clement sighed and a small, ancient dustcloud rose into his face. He coughed a little and kept working. The ad-hoc lighting apparatus they had set up inside the pyramid continued to beat down on he and Karen, and sweat droplets were starting to pose a hazard to the artefact Clement was labouring over. He was careful to wipe his face and angle his head away so as to not disturb the original message, which was almost ready to be fully revealed.

Karen kept checking back to make sure they had still eluded the authorities. Still no obvious signs that any mobilization had occurred, or that she and Clement had been detected at all.

"There." Clement's low voice felt as loud and powerful as day. Karen's heart raced a bit and she could feel her face go flush.

"Really? You can make out the inscriptions?"

"Yes." He delicately pawed the decorative block. He turned the one side toward his face and slowly began to read. "The sphere... of life..."

"Sphere of life?" Karen asked. Clement looked annoyed. "Earth," he quietly said. "Oh..." said Karen sheepishly. "Sorry, Clement, please go on." She didn't want to end up like the old man.

Clement cleared his throat. "The sphere of life... come the sun's... farthest pass – Winter Solstice," he added for Karen's benefit, "... shall not..."

He paused and turned the block over onto the perpendicular face in the direction of the writing.

"...shall not... cease... on the day... carved into... unknown – question, perhaps?"

Karen looked a bit puzzled. "So, it's saying that the world won't end?"

"That's apparently... correct, Karen," said Clement, re-checking the inscription. Once satisfied, he summarized, "Yes, that's correct. According to this Mayan high priest's keystone, the world will not end on December 21, 20–" his eye caught one tiny addendum right after he had finished reading. He squinted to try and make sense of it. There was still some dust in it.

"Number 0," he instructed to Karen. She quickly handed him the Number 0. Trace trace trace trace.

A half-minute later, Clement looked closer at this new inscription and slowly made out what it said.

"The... next day... however... look... out... sacred... no, not 'sacred'... 'holy'... – looks like feces? Really – feces?"

Clement looked at Karen, and he was very worried. Karen looked at the inscription, and she was equally very worried. The inscription looked at back at them, and it took a very worried dump all over their future.

* * * *

**Mayor**

Mayor Fob Rockball was not a sensitive man, and that is why many of the citizens of Arseholeburg voted him into office. His platform of "Kill The Poor And Wear Their Skins" was overwhelmingly popular in this city built on the backs of discarded cases of Molson Ex and Labatt's Blue. When the League of Poets from nearby Mewlerton tried to complain about his perceived fascist policies, Mayor Rockball had them incinerated with napalm and the remains scattered for the crows to eat. And not even good healthy crows, but awful, smelly hell-crows.

His equally noxious and powerful brother Gud was a council of one. Although there were other city councillors hired by an extra agency purely for good optics in the eyes of the Geneva Convention, the real power in council lay with Gud.

The Rockball brothers together tipped the scales at over 600 pounds, and each pound was pure, muscled corruption. From a certain dark and morally vacant angle, they were true works of Nature, which of course they would have hated being. So they pounded forth a law to banish that particular angle of perception from ever coming into existence. They were that powerful.

So it was on one particular April morning when Mayor Rockball, on his way to work in his usual manner – escaping a media comedian on his driveway, calling 911 and cursing madly at the dispatcher, then driving his Hummer through crowded downtown traffic while texting and calling his meat-eating oil baron buddies on his cell phone – was suddenly struck by a meteorite, clean in his pork-enhanced noggin.

There were at least two ironies in this one event. Even though the Mayor's diet was solid pork, red meat, and beer, and so was the target of many nutritionists who said he should eat far better, the extra layers of fatty skull tissue that had built up from the last several decades of such rampant consumption had actually cushioned the meteorite's blow enough that he did not die upon impact. The other noteworthy item was that when Mayor Rockball took power, the first thing he immediately did was ban, outlaw, and execute every single scientist in his city's jurisdiction, and had one astronomer been spared, they could have easily warned him of this oncoming chunk of space rock and he would have avoided this accident entirely.

That all being said, he lay there in his stalled SUV on the Stanley Expressway, windshield cracked and engine smoking. He was completely inert with his head back, unconscious, mouth gaping open, and a giant smoking chunk of rock embedded solidly in his forehead.

With the city's medical services so drastically cut, the remaining paramedics were really stretched thin and therefore were horribly delayed at arriving on the scene. This, coupled with the extra car traffic clogging all the streets due to the city's transit system getting swallowed into a black hole of mismanagement and bureaucratic grandstanding, made for a sixty-five-minute wait between impact and medical attention.

"Holeeee shiiih, itzza fuggn mayir," said Lonny, the head paramedic, who was fresh out of DeVry.

"No fuggin wayah. Loogit hiz friggin skull, mannn," replied Boggs, his partner, a recent University of Phoenix graduate.

"Gedda band-aid," instructed Lonny.

"An' I gotz tha bacteen too," helpfully added Boggs.

It was a messy and largely ineffectual effort. But somehow despite themselves, they were able to stabilize Mayor Rockball's condition and transport him to Arseholeburg General Hospital.

The city was a-hush as hourly news updates were given about Mayor Rockball's condition. His supporters, the self-dubbed "Rockball Nation," took time out from their regular gas guzzling and hockey fight activities to pause and wish their mentor, saviour, and avatar a speedy recovery. In every bar across the northern and western parts of the city was an hourly drinking vigil upon each Sun TV news update – every time Mayor Rockball's name was mentioned, Rockball Nation took a swig. And as minutes became hours, and as hours became hangovers, slowly the news began to brighten.

"The meteorite has been successfully removed from Mayor Rockball's mighty pork-cushioned skull." Swig.

"Mayor Rockball just drooled and smacked his lips." Swig.

"It now appears that Mayor Rockball has opened one of his eyes." Swig.

"Mayor Rockball has just asked for a drink..." Swig and cheers all around. Pats on the back, all right he's gonna be fine!

"...a drink of chamomile tea!" Swig—wait, what?

All of Rockball Nation went totally silent, except for the smashing of all the dropped glasses throughout the northern and western parts of the city. Did that reporter just say that correctly? Did he just say that our Mayor, Mayor Fob Rockball – coach of the Hulk Street High School Senior Football Team, annual winner of the Barrel O' Pork 'N' Beans Chug-A-Thon, the man who singlehandedly dismantled the arts in Arseholeburg and took a crap on their remains – had just ordered a chamomile tea?

Deep in the underground emergency bunker underneath Arseholeburg City Hall, the Mayor's brother Gud was beseiged by the extras pretending to be city councillors.

"What exactly just happened?"

"Is he drinking tea now?"

"Will I still get paid my per diem?"

Gud eloquently answered all their questions with the flamethrower which he always kept on his person. Then, stepping around the smoking debris, consulted with the Chief of Police as to whether they should take a clean shot from the nursing station or wait until the Mayor was back at his home. Gud felt bad about this kind of secret plotting but come on: chamomile tea!

Meanwhile, in the Mayor's hospital room, he had reclaimed enough cognitive and motor skills to hold a brief press conference. Sun TV was there, as was the Arseholeburg Sun newspaper. Mayor Rockball cleared his throat and began:

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. I just want to update you myself on my condition and then I will take some questions afterward." The press corps were stunned: the Mayor rarely if ever took questions. He also rarely sounded so polite.

"First of all, I am fine. I am weak right now—" The press corps collectively gasped, for the Mayor never said he was weak or anything remotely showing vulnerability before, "—but I will make a full recovery." He took a sip of chamomile tea, further stunning the press corps.

"I have some things I need to say. I want to apologize to the Arseholeburg Star newspaper for shunning them, so as of right now please cover my stories directly. Please ask me any questions. As they say in Spain, _'Mi casa es su casa.'_ " The Sun-powered press corps were reacting like Dracula getting hit with holy water. Since when did our beef-fed Mayor speak Spanish, let alone speak it well? Let alone say "please"?

In the underground bunker, Gud was catching the Sun TV feed. His fist landed hard on the oaken boardroom table. "What the fuck is going on? Why aren't they shooting him!"

"Uh, he is still your brother, Councillor Rockball," meekly reminded the Chief of Police.

The look that Gud gave the Chief of Police at that moment would have loosened the bowels of a lesser man. Luckily the Chief of Police had evacuated his bowels moments before. The two of them continued to stare at the television as more unbelievable press conference continued to unfold. Now the Mayor was doing something even more unbelievable.

"I would like to quote from John Lennon's 'Imagine,'" offered the Mayor. And from memory he espoused passionately about all the people sharing the world, living as one, imagining no possessions, the whole thing. Recited flawlessly. Then even sung toward the end.

The Mayor gestured off-camera for some people to come into view. "Please friends, please join me at my bedside." And with some reluctance and incredulity, some Arseholeburg Star newspaper reporters who had been hastily found and brought in, along with some low-income families, immigrants and artists all got into frame.

"My friends, I am so very, very sorry for the injustices myself, my brother, and my administration has done to you. Well starting right this minute, I will make reparations so that all of you, and all of your brothers and sisters, get a more balanced, reasoned, and compassionate treatment."

And with that, Mayor Rockball led them all in a stirring chorus of "Kumbaya."

In the underground emergency bunker, meanwhile, Gud Rockball's head had actually exploded from apoplexy, and the rest of him slumped on the ground, quite deceased. The Chief of Police summoned Lonny and Boggs to deal with the disposal of the carcass, and decided that he needed a drink to think this all over.

And while chaos also began in the northern and western parts of the city, the other regions of Arseholeburg who were not members of "Rockball Nation" joined in the chorus of "Kumbaya" from their living rooms and many even spilled out onto the city's downtown main drag, Olde Street, for an impromptu celebration.

Finally, our Mayor can see, they cried. How they cried.

* * * *

**Nottobiographical**

I once had a guy say to me, "Pally, could you please turn down that damn radio?" Which I thought very odd because I wasn't playing the radio. I wasn't playing ANY radio. And I was in church. Well, when I say "church," it wasn't an officially recognized church. For example, I don't think any real world religions worship Herman Munster, cool guy though he may have been. And the guy who asked me to turn down the radio wasn't just a whacked-out homeless man, but he was also the pastor. Or "Lord God Symbiant," or whatever he preferred to be called.

_Why was I there?_ , I kept asking myself as I looked around the holy shed where the service took place. Everywhere I looked I saw the burned-out, the hopeless, the incompetent, the toothless, the insane, the incontinent; the congregation. And her. It was for a woman. Things like this were usually for a woman.

Daphne stood out like a golden statue buried pedestal-deep in an ocean of unprocessed fertilizer. Yet she was brunette. No matter, she was truly remarkable, and especially in the grimy, maddening confines of the holy shed. She must have been nine quarts short of a gallon if she was there willingly.

When our eyes had met across the platforms at Union Station, I had no idea that our illicit encounter near Track 12 would end up here. And yet, thanks to my wangydoodle, I found myself in a regrettable predicament yet again. Oh well, at least this time I knew Daphne was a real woman, not like that other time at the Brampton Greyhound Bus Station with what's-her-name, Johne. Oh sure, she pronounced it "Joan," but I really should have seen the writing on the wall. The writing on the bathroom stall that said, "Look out, Johne's a dude!" But that was then, in my youth. Of last month.

Looking around the holy shed, I wondered if all those muddy, life-beaten wonders sitting in the improvised pews were also seduced by Daphne, all sitting here with the light of spirit long dimmed from their eyes, listening to the unbalanced ramblings of a messianic madman, all because they thought they'd get another whirl at some pretty arm and loin candy.

I swore that one of the parishioners used to run some bank or some major industry, like I'd seen his picture in the paper or on TV. But a cleaned-up and focused version of the drooling incoherent human car crash I caught myself staring at. Suddenly, car crash banker man snapped his eyes in my direction and peered right into my damn soul.

"Whadda YA lookin' at, punk?" he half-hissed, half-growled at me.

"Me?" I stammered, caught totally by surprise. "Nothing!" I couldn't break his eerie gaze.

"Well stop it!" he commanded. He straightened himself up a bit, then croaked in my direction, "And for fuck sake turn down that damn radio!"

Again with the radio. What was everyone's damn obsession with the radio? Man, I wanted out of this place, alluring woman or no alluring woman. Unfortunately, the only exit door was directly behind the podium where the mad pastor continued ranting. Now he was on about steam engines or some damn thing.

My skin grew a bit itchy and clammy as thoughts of restraint against my will began to bump against the shoreline of my uppermost thoughts more and more prominently. I tried deep-breathing my way through this low-level panic moment. I looked at Daphne again, except she was no longer in the pew where she had been sitting. Where the heck was she? She was the one who brought me here. Oh man, this didn't feel right at all.

I suddenly felt a nudge from my right. I looked over and saw a tray of wafers offered right under my nose. "Eat one and pass it along, ya fucker," implored the burly hobo beside me in a very low rumbling tone who was holding the tray. He glared at me very meanly, so I meekly thanked him and took the tray from him. I was about to just pass it to my left when I realized it had been several hours since I'd eaten. What the hell, I thought, as I took a wafer and handed the tray off to the next guy.

The wafer snapped in my mouth with a crisp kick. With the first swallow, I immediately felt warm. My head felt a bit woozy. I obviously needed more food, and this was my body's way of telling me that next time I shouldn't wait so long before eating. I finished the rest of the wafer very quickly and instantly regretted not grabbing a handful of them when I had the chance. I decided I'd camp out here a little longer, hear what they had to say, and next time there's a break, check to see if they put out coffee or more wafers or whatever. And then probably go after that.

Now if only someone would just turn off that damn radio.

* * * *

**Restaurant**

Morton loved his sandwich. To him, it was more than just a sandwich, it was a ritual, a soul-elevating practice. And depending on his mood, or events going on that day, it would affect what kind of sandwich he would order. For example, if he was feeling sad, say because a sports lockout continued on without change or positive new developments leaked to the media, he would order a Black Forest ham on dark rye with no fixings; just a plain, unadorned sandwich with no ceremony. If, on the other hand, he managed to bowl 255 while hammered on eight shots of Jagr, then he'd celebrate with something ostentatious like assorted cold cuts, triple-deckered, with the works, on some fantastic 12-grain bread variant.

So last Thursday, Morton was fired from his job of stuffing animals down at Joe's Taxidermy and Used Goods Store (where their motto is "Not The Same Old Stuff!"). He wasn't doing a good enough job for Joe, even though he'd been there for the last two years and change. Joe was a bit of a persnickety perfectionist despite his blue-collar leanings. The final straw (well, "stuffing," if you want to get technical) came when Morton did not properly stuff Mrs. Abernathy's dead prized poodle Elliott. Because of many Joe-generated distractions that day, Morton's concentration lapsed and hadn't noticed that he had inserted too much stuffing into poor Elliott's head and not nearly enough in Elliott's hind quarters. Consequently, what was supposed to be a proud commemorative keepsake of prized Elliott had mutated into a lumpy, misshapen Peter Lorre-inspired caricature that had so frightened Mrs. Abernathy when she checked in unexpectedly to see the progress being made, she required injection with her Epipen before receiving emergency medical treatment by two very stern EMTs. Morton was fired on the spot, without notice, without compensation. That was last Thursday.

Here it was now Monday, and Morton was sitting in his usual spot at Rusty's Restaurant and Grill, slowly draining a coffee. The want ads were spread before him like a depressing shopping list of things he couldn't afford.

"Nope," he muttered as he saw an ad for a medical technician. He scanned over to a small ad looking to hire MBAs. "Can't do that one neither," he glumly said, pronouncing the last word "nye-ther." Then he repronounced it to himself, "nee-ther." Nye-ther? Nee-ther? He called out to Linda, a casual and pleasant lady in her fifties who was the weekday waitress.

"Hey Linda, is it 'nee-ther' or 'nye'ther'?"

"Is what 'nee-ther' or 'nye-ther'?" Linda asked, making her way towards a nearby table carrying a spray bottle and a cloth.

"The word 'n-e-i-t-h-e-r.'"

"It's 'ee-ther.'" Then she chuckled to herself. "Or 'eye-ther.'" She paused for a beat, and then finally concluded, "Oh hell, it's both." She chuckled to herself as she happily wiped down the table top and straightened out the daily specials card and the salt and pepper shakers. The family of four that had just been there were not exactly neat freaks.

Morton exhaled heavily through his nose and kept poring through the want ads, seeing nothing inspiring leaping out at him. Linda regarded him for a second.

"Aw cheer up, Morton," she said with a bit of pluck. "You hated that job anyway."

"Yeah," muttered Morton, in a bit of a sucky mood.

"Maybe a sandwich will cheer you up a bit."

"Yeah. Maybe." Morton put the paper down for a second and picked up the menu. He vacantly stared at it for a moment, front and back, even though he had memorized all of Rusty's lunch menu offerings ten times over. Nothing seemed particularly appealing to him at that moment. For once, there was nothing there that matched his mood.

"There's nothing here that matches my mood," Morton noted glumly.

"Then I'll whip up something special for you," countered Linda. And off she went to the kitchen. Morton watched her leave. His head slowly turned back toward the menu, and then toward the want ads once more. He put the menu down and absent-mindedly began combing through the want ads yet again, just in case he missed something. In the back of his mind he mused that if Linda was about 10 years younger... And not married. To a woman. Who could beat the snot out of him.

He shook his head and continued skimming through the scant postings as strains of some Bob Dylan song crackled on in the background through Rusty's ancient stereo system.

Several minutes had gone by when Linda re-emerged from the kitchen and set a plate in front of Morton.

"Here, try this," she encouraged.

Morton looked at what was laid before him. It looked like a good, ordinary sandwich. Like some curious but not totally trusting animal, he sniffed it then pried it open briefly and gazed at what lie under the bread cover. Some kind of meat, butter, mayo, black pepper, and some other stuff that looked pretty cool. He put the top slice back onto the sandwich and slowly led the whole thing up to his mouth. He blandly took a bite from it. Slowly, a smile swept across his tired face. A bold new flavour kicked his taste buds right in their nards.

"Linda! This is amazing! What is this?"

"It's 'Opportunity,' Morton," she answered.

Morton cocked his head at her. "Heh, that's cornier than I thought you'd say." Her smile dropped a little bit and she looked at him slightly hurt. He noticed this and continued quickly, trying to shoestring-catch things back right with, "But coming from you, it's exactly what I needed. I love it. Thank you so much."

She beamed a smile at him. "No problem, hun." She paused a second, then added, "It's 'nee-ther' or 'nye-ther' here nor there."

She chuckled to herself and went off to make some fresh coffee while he continued eating this great new sandwich and thinking that, just maybe, this was the beginning of a fresh start after all.

* * * *

**Saloon**

It had been a long time since he had set foot in the saloon. But since his path from Rockridge to Clement took him past uffy's, he thought why not.

"uffy's" was named for Dan "Duffy" Dressler, who was the meanest son of a bitch what ever trailed along these parts. Over the years, the "D" was blown off the overhanging sign during the infamous shootout with the Wrampton Boys back in ought 84. No one ever bothered, or dared, to repair the sign since.

The man had the scars of the oil rigging and nickel mining life squirted and carved all over his face and body. It was an exciting time to be a man in America, whenever the hell this was all taking place. The man, called Jonas by his friends but whom we shall name Goucho because it sounds cool, pushed the swingdoor gently on its rust-beaten hinges. Surprisingly, in the 20-plus years since his wild youth misspent there, he didn't see much that looked different. The tables were set about the same, the same portrait of Duffy hung above the player piano, and the bartender was still the same surly fuck what was there before.

"Well, well, well," huffed the bartender at that moment. "Look what the turd wagon done dropped off at our door'n. I know you."

"Hello, Fisty," sighed Goucho.

"It's Fitzy, ya toad-farkin' mealy sumbatch!" huffed Fitzy loudly. "What brings you back t' this hell hole, Bosco?"

Jonas went by many non-Goucho names in these parts.

"Well, Fitzy, I am done with nickel mining and picking fights with stupid whore-mongers. I've come to settle my life down here and raise some young'ns."

"What, here in uffy's? What're you, farked in the head?" huffed Fitzy. His speech style was pretty much limited to huffing, as was a leading style of the time.

"No no, not exactly here, Fitzy."

"Well good," Fitzy huffed, "'cuz right whar you're standin' is whar Otis Johnswan got his hed what pepparated from his body with Shariff Bob's gat. The blood stain still paints the spot whar Otis done plop down headless."

That was quite a grisly moment even in uffy's tumultous history. Goucho had not been present for that but he had certainly heard about it while he was mining in Rockridge. Of course by the time word of mouth carried the story all the way out there, truths had ballooned to the size of mountain ranges, but whatever; a nasty time for sure.

"Monaco!" called a sultry feminine voice from behind Goucho. He turned around to see his old lady flame Dixie Westbelle, festooned head to toe with gorgeous petticoats and other sweetly complimentary garments. The years had been kind to her.

"Dixie," drawled Monaco, who was still the same man as Jonas. And Goucho. And Bosco. In order to get by the Old West, a man had to have at least three separate names. This guy had four and counting.

Monaco and Dixie hugged good and long as they deeply gazed into each other's eyes, and liked what they saw.

"I see the mountains are still big and healthy around here," Monaco drawled, trying to be sexy and clever by comparing her breasts to mountains.

"And I'm glad to see your penis still gets erect when you hold me in your arms," Dixie countered with blunt, matter-of-fact narration. She never tried to be clever but instead just stated what was on her mind at the time. Monaco appreciated that in a Goucho-type way.

Suddenly, Dixie slapped Monaco in the face. "You sumbatch!"

"What?" asked Monaco, stunned.

"You never wrote me. You never sent word about how you were. You just up and gone without a howdy-doo, ma'am and left me wondering all this time." Her eyes brimmed with tears, which themselves brimmed with hurt feelings. She broke away from the hug and turned her back on him.

Monaco sighed a Goucho's sigh and gently touched her shoulders, Jonas-style. "Aw, Dixie, I was young and stupid when you last saw me. I was barely a stripling then. But now, years of oil rigging and nickel mining have honed me into a man who is ready to stand by his woman."

"So you've got a woman and you've come here to gloat. Well, where is this whore? I want to give her a special town greeting!"

(Let me just add here that if you were ever to pass by these parts and someone were to offer you the "special town greeting," you best just politely decline and hope they don't press the point.)

Monaco studied her through serious and considered Bosco eyes. Suddenly, he erupted with laughter. This went over with Dixie as successfully as you might think. She quickly palmed a Derringer, which she usually kept hidden inside her tautest of petticoats, and quickly brought it up to his throat.

Fitzy huffed a startled protest. "Hey now, Dixie, no need for that'n. At least not without buyin' a saspeerilla first."

But Goucho still chuckled. "Dixie, if you want to meet the 'whore,' then just you look in the mirror." This guy really knew how to sweet-talk a lady like a risk-taking sumbatch, especially with a Derringer-toting Dixie, who again didn't quite get where he was going with this. She peered into the mirror behind Fitzy at the bar.

"Where is she? I only see me and you and the back of Fitzy's scruffy head. You hidin' in a corner, whore? Out with yourself, whore, or I'm blowing this scurvy dog's nuts off!"

Monaco now became actually scared. "Wait a second – 'nuts'?" he meekly asked.

"Ollie ollie oxen free, whore!" Dixie continued, but with his treasured boys on the line, Jonas finally was up-front.

"It's you, Dixie, okay? I came back for you." His eyes were stern with concern for his nuts; no sign of a joke here. Dixie started and looked at him.

"What?"

"You. I came back for you."

"For me? You came back for me?"

"Yes, sugarbeet, I came back for you."

"Me."

"That's right, tumblebeet, I returned for you."

Dixie's wide-eyed bloodlust slowly transformed into the warmest of smiles. It was quite a beautiful transition. She lowered her Derringer and put the safety back on.

"Well that's just the sweetes— wait a second. You think I'm a whore?" The Derringer quickly came back out, safety was clicked off once more and the gun was rapidly lowered toward Monaco's groinal region.

"No no no, sugarweed," pleaded Monaco with bits of Jonas layered in, "I was just trying to be funny with your own words. You know how I do that sometimes." She did now begin to remember glimpses of times past where she had slapped, booted, pistol-whipped, and shivved him because of a tiny miscommunication between them. She giggled at the recollection of all those good times. Her laugh was like the peal of music box chimes to him.

"Oh yes, I see what you did," she cooed. The Derringer was again safetied and re-petticoated out of harm's way. Monaco exhaled two balls' worth of relief. "Oh come here, you sweet, stupid man!" They embraced again, long and lovingly. Fitzy just huffed at the sign of affection playing out ten feet away from him.

Suddenly, Dixie slapped Monaco in the face. "You sumbatch!"

"What now?" asked Monaco, stunned once more onto the breach.

"You and I can't get wedded!"

"Why not, tumbletrigger?"

"Because in all the excitement of me seeing you again, I forgot that I already have a fella."

"You already have a fella?"

"That's right, Monaco."

"And you just remembered this right now?"

"Tha's rahght, she alriddah has uh fellar," came the deep, croaky voice from the top of the stairs. Monaco didn't even have to look up – he knew it could only belong to:

"Stone-Throat Calhoun." Even pronouncing his hated rival's name almost caused Goucho's throat to cough up some hives.

"Yeeeuh, tha' be me. Stoan-Throot Calhoun'n. Ah'd saey it be guhd to see'n yuh, but then ah'd be a lyin' sumbisch hoar-dawg, Farfel."

Why, no one had called Monaco "Farfel" ever, except for that scurvy cur-hound Stone-Throat Calhoun, back when they were younger and stupider, and competing for Dixie's hand and its bountiful accessories. That was a different time, before Jonas had Boscoed away and Gouchoed his life up some before Monacoing his way back. Back when he was a simple cowpoke, she a young rustic ingénue, and Stone-Throat was known by his schoolboy name of Babbitt-Lee who had a perfect singing voice and flawless diction until a young, jealous Jonas threw several huge rocks at Babbit-Lee's head and neck one time by Clapford's Creek, destroying all of Babbitt-Lee's God-given gifts but somehow making him way more ruggedly handsome (albeit way damn stupider and harder to understand) than before. Well, after the swelling went down, at least.

With that brief bit of entirely plausible backstory quickly remembered, even if it didn't paint the young Jonas in an entirely good light, Monaco pressed ahead.

"So, you have gone and married Dixie, have you, Stone-Throat?" Monaco's steely eyes were dusty as pine trees in regarding his long-time opponent.

"Oh we isntain't qwaht whut marry-ed juss yit, Farfel, but thuh nupshells is impendulatin'."

"Oh yeah, Stone-Throat? When?"

"Why, inzabout two bells tuhday." Farfel checked the grandfather clock beside the player piano. It was 12:30. What the hell. Monaco then turned to Dixie, "You forgot you were getting married today at 2 PM?"

She sheepishly shrugged. "I was so excited to see you... I forgot."

"You forgot."

"I did forget."

"Well... compliment received over here," smiled Monaco, like a real grimacing western hero.

"Wahll... sure az sheeit compleemaynt not ruhseeved over heeuh," grimaced Stone-Throat Calhoun, like a real smiling western villain. His trigger fingers, itchy before, were positively breaking out in hives right now. Not a pretty sight, surprisingly enough.

"You better get those hands looked at," advised Farfel.

"Yeeuh'n, ah knows it," replied Stone-Throat. "They's ittchee az fark right'n abouts now."

"Well," hissed Farfel, "I guess we better take care of you and your hands."

"Yuhz got calamine lowshun?" asked Stone-Throat.

"No. But I got a gun."

"Ah don'ts sees yer sheeyooters az bein' ah vyahbull substillytution fer thuh soothenin' balm whut iz provydinated by the calamine—"

BLAM was the next sound that thundered through the saloon. However, it was shouted in a loud voice by the new guy who just came through the swingdoor. Well, he's new to us but known to everybody in these story-parts as:

"Sheriff Bob!"

Yes, Sheriff Robert Paul Blamm strolled into uffy's like a man totally in control. With his trusty 60-pound Gatling Gun rolling along beside him, he had nothing to be worried about. He'd broken up many an argument with Ole Gigi there by his side, and he didn't see anything different going on here that couldn't be resolved peacefully with the threat of formidable armaments. With snake-bitten grimness, he sized up Stone-Throat and his horribly itchy hands. Then his opponent who had the look of multiple identities about him. Then Dixie who stood between them, both worried yet concerned. Then Fitzy who huffed into his dirty bar rag and kept wiping the same glass with it. Then Dixie again because he admired the stitchwork in her hat. Then back to the two combatants. He cleared his throat. That took a few awkward seconds since it was really, really dusty outside. Finally, he spoke.

"Well, boys... what seems to be the problem here?"

"We yain't gots no problem heeyuh at all, Sharf Bawb, heh heh, no problemo at all," Stone-Throat chuckled nervously.

"Now, this wouldn't have anything to do with your upcoming nuptials, would it, Stone-Throat?" Sheriff Bob eyed him and then Farfel closely, all the while giving Ole Gigi a gentle pat on the barrel.

"This heeyuh varmint dun thank he c'n just wander in frum buttfark nowharz 'n' steel muh gurl!" emoted Stone-Throat, waving his gun around erratically. "He dun have hiz chayunce a long-long ago. Now she iz mine!" Stone-Throat's eyes were burning like snake venom droplets set ablaze by a tumbleweed fire in the pitch of night.

"Mmm-hmmm," judged Sheriff Bob. "And stranger, who are you?"

After a couple of minutes of explaining what his name was, Farfel continued filling in the details right up until the showdown.

"Mmm-hmmm," adjudicated Sheriff Bob. "And she totally forgot about this fella here?"

"I know, right?" agreed Farfel.

"And how about you, Dixie?" Sheriff Bob looked straight at her, with craggy kindness emanating from both him and Ole Gigi. She smiled nervously and shifted her stance. He continued, "Obviously both these fellas think the world of you. But you can't have both. This state here isn't some kind of reverse-Utah or somethin'."

"No it isn't, Sheriff," mumbled Dixie.

"I mean, we'd have to call it 'Hatu,' and that'd be just silly," continued Sheriff Bob.

"Whew, that would be crazy," whistled Dixie.

"So I suppose you have a choice here, Dixie."

Dixie was caught off-guard. "M-me?"

Both Farfel and Stone-Throat were also taken aback.

"Her?" they said in unison. Although from Stone-Throat it sounded more like "Huh?" but that's just picking nits, which happened a lot in this town anyway.

"Stone-Throat over there said that you are his, Dixie. Is that correct?" continued Sheriff Bob.

Dixie began to feel flush. She wasn't sure what to make of this line of questioning. "I'm, I'm afraid I don't... quite... understand, Sheriff Bob."

"It's simple, Dixie. Are you his? Are you Stone-Throat's property?"

"His... property? You mean... like a boot or somethin'?" asked Dixie, her head tilted slightly.

"That's very good, Dixie. A very good comparison," commended Sheriff Bob. "Are you a piece of property, like a boot? Or are you an independent person?"

Stone-Throat's brow furrowed. His smile burrowed. His eyes narrowed. His bones marrowed. He didn't like the path down which all these high-faluting words were leading.

"Why... no, Sheriff. I reckon not." Dixie reasoned. She thought about it a little more. "No – I am not a boot! I... am... my own gal!" Dixie concluded. Her face now beamed with the fresh rush of enlightened thought. Her limbs felt so light. She felt a new energy coursing through her, a new power. She had never felt this before! It was unbelievably intoxicating.

Farfel stood quietly and nodded at this new development, taking it all in stride and seeing the logical sequence of what this could lead to painting an intriguing portrait of the future of the land. It was quite striking. Farfel smiled at what this could mean not only for this town but for all the people in the world. He nodded more and more and liked this.

Meanwhile, the pieces were also beginning to click together in Stone-Throat's mind. This kind of progressive thinking was so foreign to him, such an alien way of thinking, that he began to feel the strain of new mental pathways forming with lightning speed inside his head. It was also unbelievably intoxicating, like the way a ball-peen hammer smacking a skull from the inside can be.

"I am my own gal, Sheriff Bob! I can choose who I marry!" Dixie joyfully stated.

Sheriff Bob nodded encouragingly.

Stone-Throat spasmed in pain upon hearing this.

Dixie's face brightened even further. "I can even choose... if I get married at all!"

Sheriff Bob nodded wider, a grin spreading on his face.

Stone-Throat groaned even more. Each new revelation of Dixie's created more unwelcome mental pathways in Stone-Throat's already straining skull.

Dixie's already radiant face lit up even a jot more. "I can just date casually for a while!"

Stone-Throat seized in further agony.

Dixie finished her thought, "Or just bed a fella one time, without horrible social ramifications, just like men do to women all the time!"

Sheriff Bob clapped his hands. "Yes!"

Stone-Throat clasped his head. "Yaaaagh!" At that moment, Stone-Throat's mental pathways grew eight times their original size. Unfortunately, the rest of his skull did not follow suit, so his head chose to do the only reasonable thing it could think to do then, and simply hug itself strongly. His head imploded frightfully quickly; so quickly that it sent a few random shards of cranium flying in the opposite and outward direction.

This was a huge shock to everyone in the saloon – finally, some action after so much yak-yak! But before Stone-Throat's now dead and raisin-headed body could even fully sink onto the just-scrubbed wooden floor, a sizable enough piece of his top of his head had flown across the room and ricocheted off the trigger of Ole Gigi, causing her to fire. This was all so quick to process, everyone felt like they were moving through slow-motion molasses. It was only like a searing afterimage that they could have even imagined what would happen next, but by then it was far too late.

Unfortunately for Farfel, the gat happened to be aimed right at his head during this whole discussion. Before Sheriff Bob could regain control of the gun, Monaco was already Blammed right out of existence and he took Bosco, Goucho, and Jonas all with him. Just like that, poor Fitzy had two inconvenient messes to scrub off the floor.

Once Ole Gigi was again reined in and the smoke and the smell of oil, brains, and skull had began to dissipate, the three left standing were all simply aghast and stunned at the quick turnaround.

Sheriff Bob never thought that Ole Gigi would misfire like that. When Otis Johnswan got shot with the gat, Sheriff Bob had control of the gun then, but this was different. He began to wonder about if there should be some kind of way to control one's guns in this country. Perhaps gun "control" was something to be examined.

Eventually, Sheriff Bob went back to his office and started to write up some ideas, even if they were unpopular amongst his gun-toting brethren, sistren, children, and parentren. But he knew he now had to try, for the sake of this innocent man Farfel, whom he would now call Bullitt, because a man with less than six names was not really considered a man, at least in that time and place. Eventually, Sheriff Bob was gunned down by a posse of inbred hillbillies for being too soft, but not before people on both coasts of the country began to listen to his forward-thinking ideas and build on them.

~ ~ ~

Dixie was totally floored by the sudden demise of Monaco. If this was a story she had read, she would have chewed out the author something fierce for such a ham-fisted narrative twist, but since this was real life, she couldn't. Her true and burning love was now gone and that was a huge chasm in her spirit, but on the other hand, she did literally and figuratively dodge a bullet by avoiding marriage with Stone-Throat.

Over time, she was able to love again, tentatively at first, but after a while she developed a great momentum and happiness with her life, one night at a time. Well into her old age she was still advocating for freedom of choice while still getting some every now and then, and although there were days when she would think back to the happier times of pistol-smacking young Jonas, or face-hitting oil-and-nickel-hewn Monaco, it was generally okay.

~ ~ ~

After that brain and blood-scrubbing unpleasantness that one fateful day, Fitzy continued his days of huffing, glass-wiping, and the occasional blood-scrubbing at uffy's. He was none too happy about it, or about the fact that if this had been a story, he'd have felt that his character was short-changed and deserved way more development. He would have called the writer fella who dreamt him up every bad name in the book.

But as this was real life, so all he could do was huff and bear it all as best as he could. Then get back to work, 'cuz them glasses won't wipe thesselves.

* * * *

**Take**

"Okay, try it again, this time put a bit more punch into the client's name. Anytime you're ready," coached the director.

Clyde took a deep breath and began reading the copy in a bright, happy voice.

"I know what you're thinking. I thought it too. But now, Macrohard has made home computing easier than ever! No more long download times, no more confusing error messages, just simple, sweet user experience. Macrohard Omnimind: the latest and greatest Glasspanes Operating System yet. Visit Macrohard dot wow for more details."

He paused, and looked through the glass at the director of the ad spot, the Macrohard representative, and the sound engineer. Then he looked at the floor while they talked among themselves. He couldn't hear them at this point of course; it was customary for the engineer to click off the sound to the voice talent's headphones as the director and client conferred on the other side of the glass. So Clyde just stared neutrally at the floor while his ears were cupped by the padded headphones and the absence of sound and human noises made for an odd pressure bubble. He blotted everything out and replayed in his head what he had just done. He nailed it this time. Didn't he? What could they be talking about? Was twelve takes not enough? Surely they got the version they needed by now, didn't they?

His thoughts were interrupted by the click and the director came back on through the headphones.

"Hi Clyde, that was really good." Clyde smiled. The director continued, "Yeah, that was really really close. I need one more just like that, but just put more... hang on–" The headphones went silent again as he saw the director confirm a word with the client. Sound came back on. "...more love into the phrase 'sweet user experience.'"

"Okay," said Clyde as he tried to mentally recapture what he had done with everything else.

"Stand by," announced the engineer. Slight pause, then he added, "Go any time."

Clyde took a deep breath and went through the copy again. He punched up the client's name, he put more love into the sweet user experience, he sounded sympathetic yet hopeful that there would be no more long download times, he sounded authoritative on "Macrohard Omnimind" but quickly softened his voice when the product was deemed the greatest Glasspanes Operating System yet and finally, he sounded young and enthusiastic when pronouncing the web address. Bam, 10 out of 10, he totally Nadia Comaneci'ed it. He Bo Derek'ed that mother. He looked at the floor again and enjoyed the momentary headphone silence as the director and the client conferred.

What would he do afterward? He still had the whole day ahead of him after this. Still some shopping to do and he could try to find Maria that tea she liked, what was it again, lemon jasmine something or otherCLICK—the director came back on over his headphones.

"Clyde, that was awesome!" The director sounded happy, which made Clyde very happy too. "Great!" Clyde enthused. He knew better than to ask if they were wrapped but come on, that felt great, that sounded great; he'd be out of there in no time.

"Just one tiny problem." Clyde was taken aback a bit. "Oh? What's that?" he asked, trying not to convey any disappointment or divalike tones.

"There was just a little bit of mouth noise toward the end there. So just take a small sip of water and we'll do one more, okay? Exactly like what you just did."

Mouth noise! Clyde's greatest voiceover enemy. He was blessed with clear diction and a very expressive voice, but he sometimes did get a bit of a dry, sticky mouth. Undetectable to most of us, the highly sensitive microphones pick up an amazing amount of imperfection, and in this case this isn't something that can be easily edited out. He would have to do one more take and bring the thunder to the hoop one more time.

"Okay," Clyde said, reaching for his water bottle and taking a small swig. He swished it around and swallowed. He was trying to remember every single nuance and fleck that he had lovingly burnished into this script. His working copy of the text was now getting so marked up that he had to concentrate that much harder to see the actual written commercial.

He was steely-eyed but playful; like Michael Jordan going into a Game 7 situation, except playful. He was pumped but relaxed, psyched but chilled, a living, breathing Alanis Morissette song lyric but more important than that, he was ready to deliver the goods, on budget and on time. He was Purolator with vocal cords.

CLICK.

"Stand by," said the engineer. That small amount of hang-time was electric. Clyde loosened his shoulders, gently shook his arms and spidered his fingers at his sides as he shifted his weight and re-found his footing. The microphone hung in front of his face like a giant, screened, dark grape. He took a deep inhale and exhaled a deep blast of air. He was Secretariat, Usain Bolt, Mel Blanc, Ricky Roma, and Sally Struthers all rolled into one formidable, vocal-muscled selling machine.

"Any time you're ready," said the engineer.

Clyde took a deep breath, and with great bounding audio strides, he launched himself heart and soul into the ad copy, strong and fluid, one more glorious time.

* * * *

**Tangle**

Jak Ibey wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked at the digital blueprints, he looked at the scribbled noted on the napkin, then he looked down at his workbench. No no no, he chided himself. Still not right.

He took a step back and looked at everything again. He scrutinized every single minute detail he could see. Why why why was this not quite working? Everything had been calculated perfectly, and the beta testing so far had gone really well. Even his boss, the formidable S. Paul, had given the rare compliment of, "so far, this isn't a total piece of shit." High praise from Caesar.

Jak took a sip of distilled water from the clear cup and placed it gently back on the minimalist-design workbench. He took a healing stretch and began to walk around the complex, one more time. He couldn't afford a terribly long constitutional this time however; even though he did receive high praise, he was still under a very tight deadline. An impossibly tight deadline. So he'd have to make the most of his inspirational walk.

He strolled outside the building – fortress of secrecy, to be more exact – and went across the street to the beautiful park. Thankfully, it was another sunny day there in Silicon Valley. Übergeeks held hands with nerdwads, multi-billionaires shared ice cream cones with dot-com-bustees and discussed intricacies of the latest tech wizardry, and birds sang their sweet songs, totally oblivious to this chattering exchange of very specific knowledge transpiring beneath them.

Jak bought an ice cream cone from the friendly vendor. It was chocolate raspberry swirl, his favourite. He looked around, and saw people enjoying the inferior versions of the product he was trying to perfect. Oh sure, they were enjoying it fine enough right now, but if the vision that he and S. Paul ever could come to fruition, think of how inanely wonderful that would become. They would heralded with all sorts of accolades which, while nice and all, pales in comparison to the feeling of just doing a great job very well. And cracking an as-of-yet-uncrackable puzzle. The buzz in the industry was that if they could deliver on this project, they might even get a Nobel Prize from the Pope himself.

So, no pressure, in other words.

He sat on a bench, checked his watch, and awaited Divine inspiration to knock him in the head.

And he waited, taking occasional licks and chomps out of his ice cream. Still nothing came to him.

A golden retriever puppy on a leash frolicked in front of him, while the puppy's owners, a nice-looking young couple, laughed at the antics which ensued. Jak got a big kick out of the puppy's energy and fresh excitement at discovering the world around him. Jak's smartphone rang. He checked who was calling – oh crap, it was S. Paul.

"Hi S.," Jak said, knowing what his boss was going to say next.

"Where the hell are you?" asked an indignant S. Paul. "You have to present in 20 minutes. I thought you'd be at your bench, or at least making your ninth tea of the day."

"Sorry S., I just needed a break. I've been cranking since I got here this morning." Jak was hoping for some level of sympathy, just this once. Especially given the scope of this project.

"Fuck that," replied S. Paul. "Get your ass in here pronto and you better wow me." CLICK.

There would be no sympathy today. So, no change, in other words.

Jak checked his watch. Crap – 14 minutes to go. He got up from the bench and started back towards work. He looked around the park again. Such a nice, simple life here in the park. If he couldn't deliver for his boss, he might well find himself living here for a while.

Bad joke. Well, maybe.

He checked one more time on the puppy's antics, just for a quick pick-me-up. The puppy now had a playmate: a young Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever, probably no more than two years old. Digby, the young duck toller, was also on her leash, and a source of amusement and love for her owners, and equally young and hip couple. While the people talked tech, the dogs started playfully chasing at each other.

Jak didn't want to pull himself away from this bright spot in his day, but he had to. He was just about to turn for good and head back when something caught his eye. The dogs' leashes had become tangled up with a few revolutions. The owners saw this and laughed kindly at this scene. "Oh Barnaby, what've you done now, boy?" "Hey Digby, what's going on with your leash?"

Digby's female owner took out a small kibble from her pocket and coaxed her with "Here Digby, here, Digby!" Digby was very keen to claim this free morsel for herself. She leaned down and put it in front of Digby's nose and led the dog around in the opposite direction from which she got tangled up in the first place. In short order, the dogs were untangled and Digby was happily wagging her tail, having consumed a reward kibble. Barnaby was now hoping for one too, which his owners gladly plied on him. Crisis averted.

And Jak, having witnessed this, was hit with a truck of inspiration. Or whatever the inspiration delivery system is. He raced back to his office. Nine minutes to go.

Arriving at his aesthetically pleasing work bench, he scribbled and typed things like a madman until one minute before his scheduled presentation. He raced down the hall and got there with four seconds to spare. There, in the bright and clean-lined boardroom sat several engineers, designers, marketing people and at the head of the table of course, the formidable S. Paul and his amazing aura.

"What have you got for us, Jak?" quietly asked S. Paul, commanding stillness, respect, fear and bladder opening from all.

"I've figured out how to prevent the tangling, and I know this is inanely wonderful," began Jak. Every underling at the table drew in a breath and carefully turned to see S. Paul's reaction, which was to arch an eyebrow, smile gently, and lean in with an alluring, "Go on..."

And Jak proceeded to present an amazing proposal which not only wowed everyone there, but also the whole marketplace a few months later when the product was rolled out. The public went nuts over this. The company's stock went up to the point of being absolutely bulletproof. Months later, the inevitable copycat products came out from their competitors, but they were all inferior attempts at the sublime perfection that Jak had figured out; they were "absolute pieces of shit," as S. Paul decreed in his monthly company newsletter.

The following year, Jak and S. Paul did indeed receive the Nobel Prize for Physics and, surprisingly, also the Nobel Peace Prize from the Pope for this most amazing invention. They toasted each other, His Holiness, and the scientific community with pure distilled water, and were gobsmacked that they could also contribute to world peace in the process. Very nice that all this happened, but really, they just wanted to do a good job.

And they did. With this amazing invention, the amount of frustration that they eliminated from the world's angst bank was significant.

Yes, the tangle-proof music player earphone cords were a godsend whose time had finally come.

Oh helldamnshitcock yes.

* * * *

**Tennis Ball**

William Flaxtoe was slightly taller than average and a formidable man not to be trifled with, sort of like Rutger Hauer in "Hobo With A Shotgun" but without the shotgun or hoboness. He was in his early 60's and had a bit of a slightly unshaven, rough-hewn, take-no-bullshit look to him. He was a typical city employee.

William liked to be called "Bill" not only because it was the accepted diminutive form of his given name but also because he liked money, and this made him feel a bit richer. He wasn't rich; far from it. He owed two ex-wives some money to cover some old gambling debts and whatever he had left from his salary as a city bus driver he would usually pour into his slightly grizzled mouth. He would look at his mouth in the mirror every now and then and remark to himself that hey, things could be worse, and his mouth could be more grizzled.

Today he had the afternoon rush shift, which meant that he had to check in at the depot by 3 PM, give his bus the thorough once-over, bullshit with the guys of course, and be on the road by 3:45 for the 4 PM start time. He disliked the particular shift and route that he was assigned today, since it was always less than damn fun – rush hour along a very busy road which becomes something close to a minor highway twice along its path. Going back and forth along this damn beast for a scheduled 75 minutes each direction. Once it becomes around 7 PM things tend to get a bit more relaxed and then he can kind of coast along until 11 PM, with a couple of breaks in between. But man, what a horrible way to start the shift: the passengers become more tense and intense, and crowd in more, and the traffic just becomes more crowded, idiotic, and just plain nasty for that first three hours. Plus, ever since the city had begun striking a few weeks ago for better pay and better work conditions, driving downtown became a horrible plow through neglected and dirty streets. A few of the other bus drivers started bellyaching that they were going to need cowcatchers welded onto the front of their vehicles just to get from Point A to Point B. A few streets in particular were really bad right now: Brompton, Criswell, Pockley, Shucker, and Walling. Today his route was along Shucker. He hated Shucker at rush hour.

Bill had hoped he wouldn't have to eject anyone from his bus like he needed to three days prior. Usually people are decent enough even when they're tense, but that flippin' moron had it coming, talking to that old woman like that. Not on his bus. Not on his watch. Sometimes idiots like that just need "correcting," and in those circumstances he's always happy to oblige.

He checked the time; he needed to leave right now. Bill gritted his teeth at the mirror, checking for gum recession while he was at it. He caught himself uttering a low, wolflike growl and slowly felt like the "Goddamn Batman" as he psyched himself into work mode.

~ Meanwhile ~

Sherman Mitzger had wanted a dog for some time but knew that he would need to split the duties with someone else because dogs were a fulltime commitment, and Sherman's schedule of strung-together part-time jobs made it difficult to plan around, let along unfair to any dog he would own. He finally decided to put an ad for a roommate into Greggslist, the online advertising board, and after a few misfires he finally got a really cool roommate in the form of Janice Fenmill. Their senses of humour made them get on like a proverbial house on fire which, despite the destructive nature of that simile, is quite a good thing.

They were great roommates for several reasons: they shared similar geopolitical and socioeconomic beliefs, they could talk honestly and openly about pretty much anything (including the fact that although they each found the other appealing there wasn't enough on either side to try for a romantic relationship), and they both had wanted to own a dog but hadn't up to this point because of the time commitment and their respective crazy schedules. But now a dog was possible, so after a trip to the local animal shelter they decided on two-year-old golden retriever named Hercules.

To say that Hercules was cute, fun, good-natured and all-across-the-board appealing was to say that water, food, shelter, and oxygen were all pretty cool if you like living or something. Everyone who met Hercules fell instantly in love with him, and they would be subsequently rewarded with such tail-wagging affection that the recipients would often get lower jaw and neck strain from the whiplashing effect of saying "Awww!" so suddenly and strongly. But they would never mind; the injury was definitely worth the reward.

Hercules loved his toys, and loved the chances to go out with either Sherman or Janice, or both, and play fetch at Brownhawke Park or to walk proudly along any of the big streets and smell all the amazing offerings of the day that the sidewalk god had chosen to provide then. Like any good frolicking dog, Hercules always lost more of his toys than he kept, but Sherman and Janice didn't mind. So what if a stray chew toy got away, or a well-loved tennis ball got misplaced; that's why chew toy factories were made and why tennis balls came in cans of three at a time. The look of unbridled joy on Hercules' whole being as he chased down and chewed upon one of these things was an energy boost to everyone around. Which resulted in happy belly rubs and head smooches for Hercules, which provided more joy from Hercules, and so on.

It was the perfect steady-state system.

~ Meanwhile ~

Clara Tomasburg remembered back to when she was eight years old.

One day, the words "Career Day" were written on the blackboard in her classroom at school. Her teacher, Mrs. Atkins, had first led a discussion with the class about what their parents did for a living. Then she had asked the class to write down at least one thing they each wanted to be when they grew up. For a couple of minutes the normally loud Third Grade class was hushed as pencils scratched on lined paper notebooks and career aspirations were mouthed in whispers by the focused children to themselves. When time was up, the teacher asked a couple of the students to read what they had written.

Tommy Munson always went first, because he got a kick out making the other kids laugh, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Atkins. "I wanna be a superstar wrestler! The Munsonator!" Tommy followed this up by standing up at his desk and flexing and growling like a Hulk-in-training, and the kids laughed. Well, mainly the boys laughed. Mrs. Atkins, who was possibly the most patient woman in the world, simply said, "Okay Tommy, sit down, we get it. Thank you." Tommy sat down, hero to his classmates once more.

Benny Melito shot his hand up. "Ooh ooh Mizz Atkins, me next!" Benny was Tommy's best friend. Mrs. Atkins knew this would be trouble either way if she did or didn't let him say something right now, given that he was all keyed up riding on Tommy's coattails and he wanted to keep the laughs coming in class. Her eyes glazed slightly but she smiled warmly as she said, "Okay... Benny."

"I wanna be a doctor," Benny said seriously. Mrs. Atkins was pleasantly surprised. "Benny, that's wonderful," she enthused, caught a little off-guard. "Any particular kind of doctor?"

"Yeah, the kind that kicks butt!" Benny launched into a karate-style pose and "hi-ya" kind of scream worthy of a young Bruce Lee wannabe. "Doctor Kickbutt!" He yelled as the kids again laughed.

Mrs. Atkins again calmly tried to quell the chaos with, "Thank you, Benny, that's enough now. Please sit back down." As Benny reclaimed his seat, the energy in the class crackled towards pending anarchy. She looked around, knowing she needed to change gears, pronto. So she next asked, "Clara, how about you, dear?"

Clara always dreaded speaking in front of the class. Not because she didn't know the answers, nor because she didn't have good ideas, but simply because she was a little shy then and didn't want to draw attention to herself unnecessarily. But she was also intuitive enough to know that she was being called upon by Mrs. Atkins to bring some sense back into this discussion, so she didn't want to let her teacher down. So she cleared her throat and said:

"I... uh... want to be a librarian when I grow up."

This was true. She always had liked going to libraries ever since her mom took her the first time when Clara was four. She liked the books and how orderly everything was, and wanted to help do that for the rest of her life. This want came from an honest place.

Also coming from an honest place was the laughter and razzing that followed from Clara's classmates. Why would she want to be like the librarian, Mrs. Pensler, who was icky and totally lame-o? Ewww, gross! And so they cackled mercilessly in a quick burst at Clara, like the unintentionally cruel beings that they were. Poor Clara felt embarrassed while Mrs. Atkins earned her salary at that moment to get order restored yet again to the increasingly hyper Third Grade class.

As Clara thought back to that moment, she realized that maybe the kids were right. Here she was now, almost 30 years later, totally hating her job during another pressure-cooker day at Henderfield Watlowe Burball, the fledgling law firm at which she toiled as a librarian. It would have been an okay-sized firm if not for that fucking Burball; what a moron. With idiots abounding all around her and trivia galore needing to be found, filed, ordered, and catalogued, she lamented that she seemed to have lost her Dewey Decimal-dappled idealism along the way. She could not wait until 5 PM. At least there was one happy thing in her life, and she would see him later that night.

Could. Not. Wait.

~ Meanwhile ~

The strictness of adherence to policy made no sense to Donald Llewellyn.

He sometimes had to work night shifts, and this was one of those times. But he was a good man who didn't want to cause waves and get people upset with him. And as a single dad to his only child Rebecca, he wanted to do everything he could to keep her happy and engaged with things, especially after her mother left them both to go with her tennis instructor Brock to Burning Man and beyond.

The school was being unusually unsympathetic, and left him really no bargaining room, despite his concerns.

If Rebecca absolutely needed to go to Take Your Daughter To Work Day, no exceptions, then he would take her to Take Your Daughter To Work Day, even if it had to be Take Your Daughter To Work Night. Even though he worked as an intern in the Emergency Room at St. Maundy's Hospital, he still promised the school, and her, that he would take her.

The night before, he sat her down over dinner and double-checked with her that she still wanted to go:

"Of course, Dad," Rebecca insisted.

"It might get weird, honey. I never know what's going to come into the E.R.," Donald cautioned, then added, "But if it gets too intense, just go to the Lunch Room and wait for me."

"I know," she said with that tone of voice that suggested he was telling her the bloody obvious.

She continued eating her lasagna. "Dad?"

"Yeah, Becks?"

"Can I bring my Flyborg?"

"Your what?" Donald stopped eating and looked at her quizzically. She just rolled her eyes at him.

"My duck," she countered. The "duh" tone in her voice was clear as a dumb-bell.

"Oh, the robot. Sure-sure, honey. That'll be good in case you need to hang out in the Lunch Room."

"Thanks, Dad."

"So tomorrow, I pick you up from school and we'll go over to the Hospital for 4 o'clock, okay?"

"Okay," she smiled at him.

"Good." Donald was relieved that he had talked it over with her. "You finished your lasagna?"

"Yep."

"Okay, well take your plate over to the sink and then we'll get dessert going before you settle down to do your homework."

"Okaayyy..."

So the next night, the first hour and a half of Donald's shift went without major incident, and Rebecca was okay with it all; she was even kind of interested in some of the equipment. The staff all knew she was coming and treated her very well.

~ And meanwhile ~

Gerard Nobley was a fairly average guy who worked as a TelePrompt operator for the local news affiliate. He liked his job enough – certainly it was way better than some of his other previous jobs like pizza delivery man, photocopier company representative, and line order cook at Todd's Burger Trough – but nonetheless he had asked his supervisor Arnold if he could leave work early on this day. Once he explained why, Arnold was more than willing. So away Gerard went, a man on a mission.

He briskly made his way along the sidewalk which lined Shucker Street. During rush hour no less, so you can imagine exactly how busy that was. People pushing past other people, everybody with their own agenda, harsh smog in the air, cars honking their horns; every form of visual and sonic chaos that could occur was happening in that short span of spacetime.

But Gerard paid it no heed, for today was the day he was going to propose to his long-time girlfriend. Feeling the ring box in his right coat pocket for the fortieth time since he left his house, he was nearing her house. She wasn't there yet; he was going to intercept her on the sidewalk in front of her home. He couldn't hide his smile and he simply couldn't wait.

The Number 98 bus, the Shucker Express, inched along through the dense traffic. It had been weeks now since the street cleaners had passed along Shucker, given the amount of small pebbles, discarded cans, orphaned gloves, and small children's toys there were coating the gutters and spilling out onto the streets. Nobody noticed any of that, of course, or if they did, they just didn't care; everyone's tunnel vision was set on full.

Gerard started humming "Beautiful Day" by U2 at the part where it kicks into gear. He looped on that part over and over again. Cars honking and people yelling awful curse words at each other could not knock him off his chirpy mental perch right now. He figured he was now about three minutes away from his stakeout point. He giggled like an eager kid – he was going to be married before turning 40 after all! He went back to humming "Beautiful Day" and picked up his pace a little.

The 98 rolled along a particularly dense patch of gutter trash and crunched through it with grim, machine-powered efficiency. It rode on top of a mitten, a discarded plastic apple juice container, a crumpled ball of notebook paper, another mitten (different colour), a lime green dog-chewed tennis ball, a discarded neck brace, a headless Barbie doll, and a soiled black hoodie (adult-sized medium).

When the bus encountered the tennis ball, the bus clipped it at a very slight angle but it was enough to give it a powerful momentum upwards and toward the sidewalk. More specifically, the bus sent the tennis ball rocketing right toward Gerard's unsuspecting left temple of his forehead.

With an almost comical-sounding hollow wallop, the tennis ball plowed squarely into Gerard's head. For Gerard, it was no longer a beautiful day. He was knocked back and to the left and quickly collapsed into an unsightly heap on the sidewalk. The tennis ball ricocheted off his head and flew high into the air in a narrow, screeching arc before bouncing several feet away, coming to rest at the doorway of a Starbucks, whereupon it was sniffed by a small Yorkshire terrier who murmured quizzically.

The traffic and din continued unabated, not noticing Gerard's epic head shot. Nobody on the 98 noticed what happened. The tennis ball was now scooped up by an eager German shepherd who was happy with his new toy. The foot traffic on the sidewalk continued walking around the fallen Gerard, forming a flowing river of people around this new, inconvenient island that had suddenly formed right in their way.

One of the people so inconvenienced by this human silt formation was Clara Tomasburg.

"Oh, what now?" she fumed as she saw the bottlenecking of people up ahead there. As she got closer she saw some lump on the ground. Closer still, she saw it was some man lying face-up and sprawled out.

"Great, some new damn rummy," she muttered to no one in particular. "Why can't they pick some other spot to splay out? Why can't you get a job, loser."

She got closer to the source of the jam. Who the hell was— Clara suddenly felt a sick feeling flood through all her joints.

"Gerard!"

~ ~ ~

Gerard, for his part meanwhile, spun around in an ethereal twistaround multicoloured cloud of vortextual undertows, which is as mystical as it sounds. Noises echoed and dopplered back and forth across him, around him, through him, and beyond him. Clouds mingled with kittens while red brick walls dripped with orange-fanged tennis balls singing faux-Russian farming songs. This was all really happening.

There was a faint ambient smell in whatever passed for the air here which resembled cooked goat meat mixed with clay-covered socks. The background kept pulling in and out of focus, like Spielberg not quite deciding on how to frame the shot. The mood felt sweaty yet pleasant.

A spooky, lone figure greeted Gerard in the middle of a plaid corn field. Gerard admired its ragged gray cloak.

"Gerard." The voice was impossibly low, resonant, and scratchy. Gerard stopped in his tracks.

"Are, are..." Gerard stammered. "Are...?"

"...'you God?'" the cloaked voice-being continued for Gerard. "Funny you should ask, because actually–"

"Uh, I was just going to ask if you were in charge of this place," interrupted Gerard meekly but helpfully.

"Oh," said the cloaked voice-being. "Well yes, I am in charge," he said, slightly hurt that he didn't get to do his big reveal.

"Um, did I just piss you off?" asked Gerard.

"No no, not at all," said the cloaked voice-being, totally coldly, totally lying.

"Aw man, I think I just did." Gerard was genuinely sorry. The cloaked voice-being warmed up a little.

"Oh no worries, Gerard. I know you've got a lot on your mind, being just freshly dead and all." This stopped Gerard in his tracks, even more than how much he was already stopped in his tracks. Dead? This was completely devastating news to him.

"Oh my god. I'm dead?"

"Yes."

"So... wow!" He honestly couldn't believe it. "Really!"

"Yes."

"So... really. Dead."

"Yes."

"Me."

"Yes."

"Oh wow... oh wow... oh... wow..."

"Oh yes..."

"So... you are God after all?"

"What do you think?" The cloaked voice-being crossed his arms and smugly struck a pose. Gerard couldn't tell if there was a smile under the cloak or not.

"I don't think God would be this smug," answered Gerard honestly. The cloaked figure didn't expect this response, but recovered regally with:

"God can be anything to anyone at anytime in anyplace."

"Yes... I see..." Gerard just looked at the figure before him as if he were a complete moron, but he didn't press the issue. He wanted to keep things civil, and proceeded cautiously, what with being in this weird plane of existence and all. "So... should I just call you 'God' then?"

"You can if you wish," came the non-committal answer. Gerard just sighed.

"Fine. 'God.'" Gerard was doing his best to take this all in. Finally he summoned his breath and uttered, "So-o-o... I am dead, then."

"Yes," came the resonant, definitive answer from 'God.'

"Oh..." Gerard trailed off. He was crushed. There was a pause which could have been for a blink or an infinity. Everywhere Gerard looked, the sounds echoed, the sights swirled and changed focus, the kittens canoodled with the fangy tennis balls, and Time was palpable like a porridge pedi and yet invisible like arts funding. It was all very damn strange.

"What about Clara? What about getting married? I love her! Will I ever see her again?" Gerard was in tears. 'God' was almost visibly moved under his tattered gray cloak.

"That is up to you," came the resonant, non-definitive answer from 'God.'

"Huh? What do you mean it's 'up to me'?" Gerard feverishly asked. "Can I do something to get back to life?" He exploded with fresh hope. 'God' noncommittally stared ahead from under the cloak, betraying nothing.

Gerard tried to discern exactly what 'God' was looking out at. Nothing out of the ordinary – it was all just a multi-swirling sensescape that really looked, sounded, smelled, tasted, and felt completely awesome. But then he looked more closely, and started to notice that in the midst of this impressive fray was a fuzzy, stationary bright orb growing gradually larger and more intense. It almost seemed to pulsate. Gerard was dazzled.

"Wow... hey, 'God,' what's that?" All Gerard could muster up to do was point at this captivating presence with what now felt like a crude, uncomprehending monkey paw.

"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" asked 'God.'

Gerard just drooled and stood motionlessly. 'God' looked at him intently and after a little time, gave Gerard a gentle nudge toward this expanding balloon of all-colour luminescence.

"Why don't you go exploring?" hinted 'God' broadly. Gerard stood there, fixed to whatever ground analogue he was standing on, drool droplets landing at his feet. 'God' smiled from underneath his ragged cloak and, after a couple of seconds, gave Gerard another gentle nudge toward the brightness. Gerard took an awkward Frankenstein step forward, then stayed rooted in place once more. 'God' sighed a little and gave Gerard a third nudge, this time slightly less gently. Gerard clomped forward another full step and froze, totally stunned at the beauty of what was before him. 'God' quickly checked his wristwatch, then realized there was only one way to do this.

'God' picked Gerard up in his arms like a parent hoisting a sleepy child, and walked toward the ever-brightening sphere. With a quiet "1, 2, 3!" under his breath and a rhythmic rocking back and forth of his arms, 'God' heaved Gerard ass-first into the centre of the beauteous throbbing light-blob. Gerard sailed effortlessly into the eye of the orb, which closed up around him with a warmly delicious popping noise.

With that, 'God' dusted off his hands and turned around. He paused for an instant and looked around at the sensory din all around him.

"Guys, seriously, tone it down: he's gone now and this is giving me one big damn headache!" called out 'God."

The sensescape quickly muted back down to a gray accounting office with drab cubicles as far as the eye could see and the hum of fluorescent lighting permeating the entire area.

"Thank you. Doris, please hold my calls for a bit," said 'God' as he shambled off to a large gray office and closed the nondescript door behind him.

"Yes, sir," said a pert-voiced, gray-cloaked assistant behind a desk. Only four more eons to go until breaktime, she sighed to herself.

Could. Not. Wait.

~ ~ ~

"........let's....... try ...t....... ag..n..... p..ple.........," Gerard thought he heard someone say in slow motion, way off in the distance through a muted bullhorn stuffed with toilet paper. But it was dark all around him; he couldn't make out anything. He wanted to call out to this new person but found he couldn't even get his voice working. He tried reaching up to his throat but he couldn't make his arms work. Was he even walking? Was he even moving? Was he even him?

"... C L E A R ! ..." screamed the faint, foggy voice in Gerard's periphery. GgggZZZZAAAAAP! went the torrent of electricity right through him.

OWWWW WHAT THE FU–Gerard felt as if a million volts went through every cell in his chest and holy hell did that ever freaking hurt! His arched back involuntarily propelled his whole body off of the gurney, and gravity being the bastard it is, greedily slamdunked him back down to reality.

"...AGAIN!..." commanded the slightly-less foggy voice. Gerard tried to protest but he found he couldn't open his eyes, speak, or move his hands. So he just had to lie there and wait for the GgggZZZZZZZZAAAAMMMPPP! again OW OW OW motherfucker motherfucker mother, oh fuckin hell, enough of this!

Gerard's eyes snapped open in a panic and he gasped in a huge, life-giving breath through his fish-out-of-water mouth. Never had air tasted so sweet to him. All his nerve endings felt like they were soaked in pins and needles and set on fire, and he felt like he'd been punched in the heart by a really-pissed off vintage Mike Tyson, but holy heck, he was alive! His fuzzy vision slowly began to make out the dingy off-white ceiling tiles of a hospital E.R. loom above him, in front of which was a ring of anonymous faces all looking down at him, all very seriously.

There, off to the right and toward his feet was the tear-streaked face of his beloved Clara. Oh love. She was simultaneously laughing and crying. He wanted to comfort her, to assure her that he was all right and he was back now and he would never ever leave her, but he couldn't find the strength or the means just yet. Slowly he began to sync up with the outside world's timeframe and began to comprehend longer and longer strands of speech directed around and at him.

"....... is ... e ... back ......."

".....can y... ...ear me, Mr. ...oble...?....."

".....give him... ...econd....."

"....put the ...addles away...."

"....How's ..his ..B.P.?...."

"...oh, Gerard..."

"...one nasty bruise..."

"..quack.."

"..Can you wiggle your toes, Mr. Nobley?.."

".Follow my fingers, Gerard... good... that's right.."

"Now look over here. That's it. Just follow the light as I move it around."

"Mmm-hmmm. Mmm-hmmm. So far, so good," said the man who seemed to be the chief doctor. He sat beside the gurney holding a light pen in his hand and he waved it front of Gerard's face, changing direction and speed every second or so. Gerard followed the light well enough, and as he was doing so he could begin to discern much activity behind it, like the scrambling of various hospitalish-looking people.

And underpinning it all was the steady presence of loving Clara: still, rapt, and ready to burst but keeping her emotions in check.

"We'll need to run more tests," pronounced the doctor, "but we have to keep you awake for the next little while." Gerard could feel his head nodding obediently. "Okay," he tried to croak, but no sound came out.

The doctor cautioned him. "Don't try to talk right now, Mr. Nobley. You may have had a head injury. Don't worry. Just try to relax if you can." Gerard blinked encouragingly at the doctor, who gave him a quick nod. "But don't fall asleep," concluded the doctor, who stood up and moved away. A single tear ran down Clara's cheek.

He groggily looked around and saw some tubes coming out of his forearms and what he thought was a small chip clip hanging off of one of his fingers. He felt a slight surge of energy and even though he still felt rough and turned inside-out, he felt a wave of relief that he was at least there. He helplessly looked over to his right side at Clara, determined to come out of this. He tried to smile and managed a weak upturning. She smiled back as her eyes bulbed with fresh tears. It was almost too much for him to see her like that right now.

He gently turned to his left side and looked around. His gaze landed on the floor and he knotted his brow, reopening and shutting his eyes again and again, trying to make sense of something.

Was that a duck scooting around on wheels down there?

~ ~ ~

"Do you, Gerard Albert Nobley, take Clara to be your lawfully-wedded wife, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do you part?"

Gerard looked at Clara and smiled widely. The six months and nine days since "Tennis Ball Tuesday" had been a hard but steady climb back to something resembling normal. He still had a slight discoloration on his left temple which he wore like a badge of honour.

"I do," replied Gerard, rather sweetly and suavely. The gathered crowd at the outdoor ceremony on Bassett Island chuckled.

Reverend Boland Clark was secretly relieved inside. The last wedding he had officiated at, two weeks prior, was rocked when instead of "I do," the groom blurted out, "No effing way! Later, biatches," and then sprinted out of the church shrieking like a manic monkey. It took Rev. Clark several hours to get the bride calm enough that she could at least get out of the church without punching anything else. His ribs still hurt a little bit. But he shook that quick flashback off and re-focused on the task at hand.

Clearing his throat, Rev. Clark continued, "And do you, Clara Diane Tomasburg, take Gerard to be your lawfully-wedded husband, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do you part?"

Clara smiled, looked at Gerard, and beamed, "I do!" More chuckles, and some sniffling tears. It was truly adorable.

Rev. Clark smiled at the adorableness and also at now having jumped through the two big hoops. Now in glorious auto-pilot, he added, "Then by the power invested in me, I now pronounce you 'man and wife.'" Many happy years of doing this had taught him to count a couple of Mississippis in his head for dramatic effect before the much-anticipated conclusion: "You two may now share your first kiss as husband and wife."

And Gerard sure did. And Clara sure kissed back. And the crowd burst into cheers and applause. Joy and relief were thick and plush all the way through the lovely outdoor ceremony, but the actual sealing of the deal jumped that all up several notches. Much hugging, handshaking, and "Way to go, dude, you hitched up before 40!" ensued afterward at the reception. Clara was thrilled she got her love back, Gerard was ecstatic she had said yes at all, and this was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Gerard and Clara would go on to never play a game of tennis together ever, which was completely all right by both of them, although they did eventually name their first child Wilson Dunlop, just because they were in a bit of a weird equipment-y mood at that time.

As a final sidenote, Wilson Dunlop Nobley would, as unlikely at it sounds, go on to win Wimbledon that one year when all the top seeds had their series of unanticipated and unfortunate digestive issues which shall not be described in any way here.

* * * *

**Untitled Morgan Freeman Project**

Well, hello there, this short little tale is best experienced if you read it to yourself, in your head, using the voice of Mr. Morgan Freeman. Now go back to the first sentence and try reading it again, with the Morgan Freeman voice in your head. I can wait; you go ahead.

Okay then, good.

Now you've caught back up to what's currently going on; that's good. We didn't want to leave you behind there. Drink in every rich nuance, marvel at every delicious cadence. It's quite simply a beautiful thing your brain is doing right now, isn't it? I certainly think so.

I tell you, to be blessed with that man's sweet honey vocal tones would be a gift indeed. A really fine gift indeed.

Okay, that's good; we're all set. Thank you. Let's continue on with this.

Now then, Cory-Andrew McMastor was a tall drink of water who was new to Armondville, having just arrived from neighbouring Smunton County just the previous week. Because there was no jobs to be had anywhere in the tri-town area which comprised Smunton County, Cory-Andrew was forced to pack up his few possessions and make his way down the highway to the bigger town in which he now found himself, feeling like a yokel, with two stuffed suitcases and a slightly sunburned nose.

Cory-Andrew didn't have much in way of skills to offer any prospective employer so much as a willingness to do pretty much anything for money that others might balk at. Within two days of his settling in at Mrs. Arbuckle's Halfway House at Third and Main, his first job offer almost came along from a slightly dodgy-looking fellow named Stemming who stayed two rooms down the hall from him. Their introductory conversation in the living room went like this early one evening:

"What's your name?" asked Stemming.

"Cory-Andrew McMastor," Cory-Andrew replied.

"Coriander? The hell? You some kinda fruitcake, son?"

"No sir, named after my two grandfathers, Cory and Andrew."

"Shut up. I got a job for ya, if you're man enough." Stemming was not a man to beat around the bush.

"Sure thing, sir. What do you need me to do?" When Cory-Andrew looked back on his life's adventures and accomplishments many years later, he would always remember this moment as a watershed pivotal point where he discovered that sometimes Life can serve you up a spicy Texas curveball without you even asking for it.

Stemming lifted his right leg onto the coffee table. A second later, an overwhelming funk invaded Cory-Andrew's nostrils, as if every smell molecule in orbit around that leg was a Nazi soldier and Cory-Andrew's nostrils were suddenly Poland and France. A second after that, Stemming peeled off his right shoe with an audible unsticking noise, revealing a dirty right foot so stained and scab- and boil-covered that it looked like a prop one might find in a bad Hollywood movie such as "Zardoz" or something from the Ed Wood Jr. catalogue. Cory-Andrew could only stare at this monstrosity with disbelieving eyes, a tilted head, and a mouth slightly agape in the same way that a house pet encounters a surprising situation like an unexpected cockroach on the kitchen floor. Cory-Andrew struggled to push some words through his mouth while at the same time keeping his just-eaten dinner from joining them.

It was at this point that Mrs. Arbuckle, having just finished washing and drying the supper dishes, came into the living room. She saw that foot on the table and became quite visibly upset.

"Bill!" she hollered. Stemming started and quickly swung that miscreant chunk of meat and skin back onto the floor, to rest awkwardly atop his worn-out right shoe. If there was one thing Bill Stemming had learned in his three and a half years of rooming in the house is that you never, ever want to upset Mrs. Arbuckle. Mrs. Arbuckle was a formidable battlebot of a widow who had outfought, outwitted, and outlasted three husbands by sheer force of hatred alone, and she would be damned if she was going to let that freak-foot rest unsheathed on her time-beaten coffee table.

"You tormenting that boy with that smelly god-damn appendage?" Stemming didn't answer. "I swear if you take that thing out one more time I will go to the shed and get the ax and chop that fucker off myself do I make myself absolutely clear Bill?" Stemming stared straight ahead, chin to chest, and gave a weak nod.

Mrs. Arbuckle then shifted her unrelenting desire to bellow with minimal punctuation over towards the shell-shocked Cory-Andrew. "And you! You stay away from this slug of a man do you understand me boy?"

Cory-Andrew managed to find some words this time. Just not the right ones, unfortunately for him. "P-pumco s-space, cat?" he stammered.

Mrs. Arbuckle did a classic double-take, then sputtered like an old jalopy trying to get its ignition fired properly, "What the hell did you just say to me?" Cory-Andrew quickly recovered his senses.

"I mean 'yes,' Mrs. Arbuckle." She just stared at him with the kind of eyes usually reserved for regarding mass-murderers at their sentencing, or space aliens who just landed in the middle of Main Street asking for directions to downtown Beta Pictoris while speaking in a perfect Brooklyn accent. She held her gaze for an unbearable number of seconds, but Cory-Andrew just stood in place, innocently allowing himself to be judged in full. She scrunched her eyes, unimpressed, and sniffed, finally vacating the living room in three large strides, leaving a large wake of judgment spreading slowly behind her departure. Remaining in the room were Cory-Andrew, Stemming and his still-stinking and uncovered foot, and an uncomfortable stiltedness in the air that expanded with every ticking second of unspoken silence.

After a respectable amount of time had elapsed, Cory-Andrew finally asked, "So... what is it you wanted me to do?" But Stemming had been crushed and tamped down into his own little world by then. He just stared straight ahead, looking emptily at the slight discolouration of the wallpaper on the wall across from where he was sitting. Cory-Andrew had seen a feisty figure of a fighter completely taken out at the feet by not so much as a few formidable phrasings of a master brawler. He excused himself and left the room.

In the three weeks which followed, Cory-Andrew had passed Stemming in the hallway or outside but no further words were ever exchanged between the two men. Cory-Andrew, being a decent and humble man, had wanted to follow up their previous conversation if for no other reason then to find out exactly what the job was going to be that Stemming had in mind for him. But Stemming would always look away or find other non-verbal ways to indicate that a conversation was not going to happen at that time. Whatever Stemming was feeling, be it embarrassment or anger or what have you, it always got in the way of any further discourse from occurring. And so it went.

At the end of those three weeks, Cory-Andrew had two almost-miraculous things occur. Firstly, he had endured more than three weeks in the halfway house under the cruel and loud matronage of the indomitable Mrs. Arbuckle. And secondly, he was able to secure a job with the local post office which allowed him to move out of the halfway house and into a small apartment on the other side of Armondville. It was an unglamorous menial job, but it was honest and it paid the bills. So it was not with any heavy-heartedness whatsoever that he moved into his new place and began this new chapter in his life.

Cory-Andrew would, for the rest of his time on Earth, look back to that three-way exchange in the living room of Arbuckle's Halfway House as the moment where his life could have taken a horrible and diseased turn for the worse. Every once in a while, he'd be curious to look up old Stemming again, but because he was a gentleman who didn't want to hassle any Hoffs or rumble any jungles, he never did. He just got busy living, and when he eventually married a sweet lady and shared in the joy of raising three wonderful children with her, he was very happy that he did.

Well, I've been the voice of Mr. Morgan Freeman, and it has been my pleasure to have guided you along this small slice-of-life journey. And now, I return you to your much more regular inner narrator voice, already in progress.

Good night.

# # # # #

**About the Author**

Gord Oxley is a Canadian actor and writer from Toronto (Owen Sound's Mexico). He lives with his coffee, Oxford commas, and roach traps.

You can reach Gord about non-Nigerian-Prince-bank-account-related things at  nawdrawg@gmail.com. He's also on the Twitter: @heyitsgordo.

You can also check out his comedy duo's web site Fast & Dirty if you are screamingly bored. Heck, you can also stream or buy something off his comedy CD from iTunes if you like. That would be cool.

This thing you're looking here is his second e-book. He hopes that you liked it more than you disliked it. His first e-book was called _Tales of the Absurdid_ , available on Smashwords at: <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/138554>. He received some amazingly wonderful comments about it from other Smashwords readers, excerpted here:

— — — — —

_"This is quite an amusing collection of tales that takes the ordinary and gives it a little twist. Quite satirical and very dry witted this is certainly worth a try if you enjoy a bit of modern world mocking..."_  
— Ecowitch (4 stars out of 5)

— — — — —

_"Gord Oxley is a gifted and talented writer ... Funny and witty with a side of spicy angst. Love it. I look forward to more."_  
— Robert Hawke (5/5)

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_"Addictive ... I'm not reminded of anyone, which is a good thing, because Gord has a refreshing uniqueness that will amuse us for years to come. If this is Gord's first outing, (I sincerely doubt!) then I look forward to reading much more by him."_  
— Gary Weston (5/5)

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_"...I was laughing before I even got to the first story in this collection. By the third I could not even see the screen through the blur of tears, I was laughing so hard ... I needed a good laugh and this ebook delivered from the very beginning. Definitely going on my 'To Be Recommended' list."  
_ — Melody Hewson (5/5)

— — — — —

And as for Gord, he will now resume speaking in first-person once again.

I wish you happiness, success, and dry armpits in whatever you choose to do. Thanks for hanging out here.

– Fin –
