The Misery Machine
-Rorschach
Predator Press
In a bathrobe and slippers, she rubbed her temples. Little House on the Prairie still seemed blaringly loud, and once again she thought of looking for the remote control for the television.
-And once again, the thought was drowned out in the thick fog of her fever.
A nasty cold would be bad enough. But if this was her dreaded shellfish allergy too, she was going to be here for several more days waiting for the swelling to subside regardless. An accidental glance in the mirror earlier certainly seemed to make this case, and reduced her to tears; she looked bug-eyed and simultaneously pasty and pink. Her hands, bloated and almost useless, felt like overly-large mitts with no tactile sense whatsoever. So when the phone rang, despite being within her immediate grasp, she was almost unable to answer until the fourth ring -a fraction of a second more, and it would have gone to voicemail.
“Hello?” she snuffled. Somewhat rattled back to reality, she began collecting the numerous scattered crumpled tissues surrounding her into an organized pile.
“Doctor Alex Smith?”
She puzzled at the somewhat familiar voice.
“Yes.”
“The Doctor Smith that graduated from Stanford in 2004 with a doctorate in psychology? And currently works at Bertram Asylum?”
She paused. Something in the furthest reaches of her mind was sounding an alarm, but the efficacy was lost in the wake of muddled malaise.
“Yes,” she replied, almost on autopilot. A sense of dread seemed to fill her almost instantly.
“Hi!” said the enthusiastic voice over the phone. “It‘s LOBO.”
“Lobo-”
“LOBO,” the disembodied voice corrects.
“LOBO, how did you get this number?”
“I‘m sorry but it‘s very important. I got your number off of your Facebook profile.”
Doctor Smith bit at the inside of her lip, but her teeth could get no purchase against the smooth, swollen surface. “I haven’t had a Facebook profile in years,” she denied flatly.
“I‘m looking right at it,” countered LOBO. “Your last update was in 2001. You were complaining about being overwhelmed with schoolwork.”
“How did you find it? There must be thousands of ‘Alex Smiths’ on Facebook.”
“There‘s 409,204,” LOBO points out with some pride. “But remember roughly half of those are males. After that, about a third are black. With some deduction I got it down to around 60,000-”
“You said it was an emergency.”
“I said it was important,” LOBO clarifies.
“What do you want?”
“I was wondering if you would give me a blurb for my book jacket. A doctor would give me some cred.”
Her head throbbed. “But I’m your therapist.”
“Well you‘re still a doctor, right? I don‘t think it matters.”
Doubling over forward in cramp, phone still absently pressed to her ear, Doctor Smith’s eyes slowly came to focus on what she soon realized was the television remote control: it was half-hidden under her chair on the floor, obviously knocked there by her gargantuan, bloated feet. Fumbling, she clicked the ’Off’ button for the television and somehow sank even further into the easy chair, lost in swirling thought. Where did, despite her typically vigilant precautions, she ingest shellfish? A carelessly washed dish at a restaurant?
“Hello?”
“Uh,” she began, sort of rebooting the conversation. Insightfully she decided not to discourage LOBO’s new project. What harm could he do hammering away at a book for a few years?
“What’s the book about?” she croaked.
“It‘s an exposé on the sordid, secret life of Paul Revere.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Remember recently how Sarah Palin made those weird remarks about Revere at the Old North Church?”
“No.”
“I‘ve got the quote right here,” LOBO explains, audibly shuffling through some papers. “And I quote: ‘He ... warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure -as he’s riding his horse through town- to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free ...’”
“Yeah, okay. I remember now.”
“Well on the face it sounded like nonsense and babble. But then I got to thinking maybe, as a Governor, she is privy to information we aren‘t. Like maybe there was more to this story than anyone was letting on to the, you know, the plebs.”
“The plebs?”
“Yeah. The, eh, plebeians. You know, you people. What I found out was nothing short of stunning.”
“About Paul Revere.”
“Yes. See most people don't know lighthouse duty was a punishment, and Paul Revere wasn't supposed to be on it that night. Julio -the married owner of an underpants factory- got it for giving his wife the crabs he caught while fornicating with a high-maintenance coke whore named Romiette. And witchcraft.”
“Uh huh,” Doctor Smith snuffled absently.
“But one night during a drill, Julio accidentally lit three lanterns and freaked everyone out -three either meant land and sea, or British invasion by means of a quasi-dimensional wormhole. Long story short, Julio made a fortune selling underpants the next morning. So he got a good lawyer, and bought so much cocaine that he, Romiette, and the crabs lived happily ever after.”
Wondering if she had any Tylenol, out of simple polite reflex Doctor Smith found herself saying the exact opposite of what she was thinking.
“Go on.”
“Next in line for lighthouse duty was Paul Revere, who was booked on a public urination charge. Revere -with little else to do in the lighthouse- would go on to make history despite wishing to Christ he was Julio instead: he invented a much-needed exotic line of chamber pots the lighthouse guards could hose out and sell for contraband, with the intention of seducing a coke whore of his own.”
“I see.”
“But Revere was freakishly hideous -so ugly, even when masturbating he had to fake orgasms. No matter how much coke he could get, the coke whores would have nothing to do with him -and the mere handful of skanky meth freaks he acquired only fueled his jealousy and stole his Brillo pads. Worse, the enterprising guards had invested all the venture capital from his chamber pots, quit their jobs, and became overnight millionaires by founding a toilet company that endures to this day. And once every year, they thoughtfully sent Revere and the new lighthouse guards a thank you note, accompanied by a thick stack of pictures of their coke whores in bikinis posing over foreign cars and lounging on tropical beaches. This biography explores Revere's deep, irrational hatred for people that had essentially done nothing to him at all. I call it ‘Romiette and Julio.’”
“And I suppose you already have a publisher?” Doctor Smith asked facetiously.
“Jack Jones," said LOBO, perceptibly smug.
“The Jack Jones?” The doctor was floored. “Jack Jones of Vanguard Publishing? ”
“Yep.”
Incredulous. “You know Jack Jones.”
“Well I will if he's on Facebook.”
Predator Press
In a bathrobe and slippers, she rubbed her temples. Little House on the Prairie still seemed blaringly loud, and once again she thought of looking for the remote control for the television.
-And once again, the thought was drowned out in the thick fog of her fever.
A nasty cold would be bad enough. But if this was her dreaded shellfish allergy too, she was going to be here for several more days waiting for the swelling to subside regardless. An accidental glance in the mirror earlier certainly seemed to make this case, and reduced her to tears; she looked bug-eyed and simultaneously pasty and pink. Her hands, bloated and almost useless, felt like overly-large mitts with no tactile sense whatsoever. So when the phone rang, despite being within her immediate grasp, she was almost unable to answer until the fourth ring -a fraction of a second more, and it would have gone to voicemail.
“Hello?” she snuffled. Somewhat rattled back to reality, she began collecting the numerous scattered crumpled tissues surrounding her into an organized pile.
“Doctor Alex Smith?”
She puzzled at the somewhat familiar voice.
“Yes.”
“The Doctor Smith that graduated from Stanford in 2004 with a doctorate in psychology? And currently works at Bertram Asylum?”
She paused. Something in the furthest reaches of her mind was sounding an alarm, but the efficacy was lost in the wake of muddled malaise.
“Yes,” she replied, almost on autopilot. A sense of dread seemed to fill her almost instantly.
“Hi!” said the enthusiastic voice over the phone. “It‘s LOBO.”
“LOBO,” the disembodied voice corrects.
“LOBO, how did you get this number?”
“I‘m sorry but it‘s very important. I got your number off of your Facebook profile.”
Doctor Smith bit at the inside of her lip, but her teeth could get no purchase against the smooth, swollen surface. “I haven’t had a Facebook profile in years,” she denied flatly.
“I‘m looking right at it,” countered LOBO. “Your last update was in 2001. You were complaining about being overwhelmed with schoolwork.”
“How did you find it? There must be thousands of ‘Alex Smiths’ on Facebook.”
“There‘s 409,204,” LOBO points out with some pride. “But remember roughly half of those are males. After that, about a third are black. With some deduction I got it down to around 60,000-”
“You said it was an emergency.”
“I said it was important,” LOBO clarifies.
“What do you want?”
“I was wondering if you would give me a blurb for my book jacket. A doctor would give me some cred.”
Her head throbbed. “But I’m your therapist.”
“Well you‘re still a doctor, right? I don‘t think it matters.”
Doubling over forward in cramp, phone still absently pressed to her ear, Doctor Smith’s eyes slowly came to focus on what she soon realized was the television remote control: it was half-hidden under her chair on the floor, obviously knocked there by her gargantuan, bloated feet. Fumbling, she clicked the ’Off’ button for the television and somehow sank even further into the easy chair, lost in swirling thought. Where did, despite her typically vigilant precautions, she ingest shellfish? A carelessly washed dish at a restaurant?
“Hello?”
“Uh,” she began, sort of rebooting the conversation. Insightfully she decided not to discourage LOBO’s new project. What harm could he do hammering away at a book for a few years?
“What’s the book about?” she croaked.
“It‘s an exposé on the sordid, secret life of Paul Revere.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Remember recently how Sarah Palin made those weird remarks about Revere at the Old North Church?”“No.”
“I‘ve got the quote right here,” LOBO explains, audibly shuffling through some papers. “And I quote: ‘He ... warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure -as he’s riding his horse through town- to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free ...’”
“Yeah, okay. I remember now.”
“Well on the face it sounded like nonsense and babble. But then I got to thinking maybe, as a Governor, she is privy to information we aren‘t. Like maybe there was more to this story than anyone was letting on to the, you know, the plebs.”
“The plebs?”
“Yeah. The, eh, plebeians. You know, you people. What I found out was nothing short of stunning.”
“About Paul Revere.”
“Yes. See most people don't know lighthouse duty was a punishment, and Paul Revere wasn't supposed to be on it that night. Julio -the married owner of an underpants factory- got it for giving his wife the crabs he caught while fornicating with a high-maintenance coke whore named Romiette. And witchcraft.”
“Uh huh,” Doctor Smith snuffled absently.
“But one night during a drill, Julio accidentally lit three lanterns and freaked everyone out -three either meant land and sea, or British invasion by means of a quasi-dimensional wormhole. Long story short, Julio made a fortune selling underpants the next morning. So he got a good lawyer, and bought so much cocaine that he, Romiette, and the crabs lived happily ever after.”
Wondering if she had any Tylenol, out of simple polite reflex Doctor Smith found herself saying the exact opposite of what she was thinking.
“Go on.”
“Next in line for lighthouse duty was Paul Revere, who was booked on a public urination charge. Revere -with little else to do in the lighthouse- would go on to make history despite wishing to Christ he was Julio instead: he invented a much-needed exotic line of chamber pots the lighthouse guards could hose out and sell for contraband, with the intention of seducing a coke whore of his own.”
“I see.”
“But Revere was freakishly hideous -so ugly, even when masturbating he had to fake orgasms. No matter how much coke he could get, the coke whores would have nothing to do with him -and the mere handful of skanky meth freaks he acquired only fueled his jealousy and stole his Brillo pads. Worse, the enterprising guards had invested all the venture capital from his chamber pots, quit their jobs, and became overnight millionaires by founding a toilet company that endures to this day. And once every year, they thoughtfully sent Revere and the new lighthouse guards a thank you note, accompanied by a thick stack of pictures of their coke whores in bikinis posing over foreign cars and lounging on tropical beaches. This biography explores Revere's deep, irrational hatred for people that had essentially done nothing to him at all. I call it ‘Romiette and Julio.’”“And I suppose you already have a publisher?” Doctor Smith asked facetiously.
“Jack Jones," said LOBO, perceptibly smug.
“The Jack Jones?” The doctor was floored. “Jack Jones of Vanguard Publishing? ”
“Yep.”
Incredulous. “You know Jack Jones.”
“Well I will if he's on Facebook.”
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