They weren’t listening

They weren’t listening. Like every other night that he took the stage, no one looked at him. He did all the things he was supposed to do, he kept the rhythm of each word, pausing on a beat to emphasize certain parts. He spoke in a soft, faux pleading voice with each line. He even made sure to lean in close to the mic in the beginning. But no matter what he did to ape the styles of every other slam poet that had graced the stage, no one took notice. They talked, held their hands up to order another drink, and laughed loudly at their own jokes through his set.

He finished up and walked off the stage. He couldn’t understand it. He thought that maybe his material wasn’t bold enough. He needed to be more offensive, in your face. So he spent the last two weeks crafting a piece about masturbation. He didn’t even read it from his ruled pad of paper- one he had tried to make his trademark by drawing an oversized exclamation point in magic marker on the back. The other poets sitting backstage patted him on the back and muttered words of ‘next time’ and ‘pearls before swine’. It didn’t help. They were applauded when they left the stage, he wasn’t. “I’m not buying that shit,” he said, “I worked my ass off on this one. It was even more bold than Clint’s bullshit about his balls.” Clint came out of the bathroom wiping his hands. “Well, maybe you’re one of those talented guys who writes the great works, but others perform it for you. Maybe you just don’t have the showmanship…”

“What showmanship?!” He interrupted. “I do all the same shit you guys do. I even grinded up against the mic stand when I talked about blue-balls.”

“You’re too self-conscious” Clint said. “Everyone can tell you’re not comfortable up there. When you didn’t bring your notebook…” The others laughed quietly to each other, “You didn’t know what to do with your hands.” He stood, positioning himself stiffly as he tried to understand what his hands had to do with anything and what his next words were going to be. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your hands! You spent the first couple of minutes trying to put them in your pockets, then you spent the rest of the time with them just hanging at your side. Like they were dead.” Clint sat down. He was right. They were hanging at his sides, which probably made his mic-stand-humping-bit look even more awkward. As the others kept offering advice his mind wandered. He kept thinking about his hands, how limp and transparent they made him. He could hear the buzzing of others talking but they were drowned out by his internal repetition of ‘my hands, my hands…’ Followed by a slideshow of times that his hands had ruined things. How they laid dead on the table during interviews. Allowed pens to slip out of them when signing for a mortgage. Laid limply across the shoulders of woman on a failed date. By god, he wasn’t going to allow it to ruin his dream of slam poetry.

After a late night of researching he was able to find a seminar on “The Art of Hand Presentation – Add some flair to your life”. It was in Las Vegas. He had a little in savings, and about a week of PTO to use so he bought a plane ticket and flew out there. It was life-changing. The first day he learned all about a German hypnotist that could mesmerize entire audiences with his hands. He was so influential that Adolf Hitler mimicked his technique. On the second day he learned about technique. How a fleshy hand needed to be forceful and commanding, while a thin hand with long fingers needed to pass through the air like seaweed under the ebb and flow of passing currents. They watched videos, they had group practices, and that night he couldn’t sleep as he lay in bed watching his hands float against the ceiling’s shadows like a lunar moth. He wasn’t alone either. During the breaks and lunch he met others who also came to the same conclusions by their own means. Some were steel workers, lawyers, doctors. One was a mother who couldn’t get her children to listen to her while during home schooling. He realized that they all suffered from a metaphysical crisis. Their only solution rested in the very hands that had crippled them all their lives.

When he returned to work he put his skills to practice. At first his gestural attempts felt forced. He worried that by being too self conscious of what he was doing he would ruin the effect. He felt like every one could see through him. But he could tell the difference when he finished a statement during a meeting with a fluttering of his hand. Waiving it in the air near his head as if lazily swatting away a fly. It felt stiff and the room was silent for a minute. His hands had spent the hour in his lap, unmoving. But he made a point of saying something toward the end because if it failed he didn’t want to sit in defeat for the rest of the time. As soon as he did it he felt ashamed.  Then, clearing his throat, the CEO said, “Go on. Finish your thought.” It was if the entire room grew brighter. He flung both hands out toward the center of the table as if throwing jacks. “Well,” He said, “I just think that if we put more people on the project-“ he balled both his hands into fists,  “really define the roles- that we’d have a faster turn around.” He slowly opened both hands with palms up like two flowers blossoming. After a moment, he gave two small claps and dropped his hands back in his lap. Everyone started chattering around him. He had created a flurry of excitement at the table. He looked around at what he had created until his eyes fell on the CEO who was leaning back in his chair with arms folded, smiling. ‘Could he, out of all these people, know what I was doing?’ He thought to himself. Where he should have been happy that people were taking him seriously for the first time, he only felt fear. He wanted to duck out of the meeting, but everyone around him were adding to his idea excitedly. This was going to go on for another hour. Declarations of, ‘Barry- call the client! By God, this changes everything!’ Or ,‘Write that down! Write that down before we forget it!’ swelled up around him. All the while he couldn’t stop staring at the CEO. He was chuckling quietly while staring at him. Then he pulled one hand out from under his arm and made a gesture. The kind of gesture he had seen on one of the convention films. It was waving motion with a twinkling of his fingers so skilled, so graceful, and from a chubby hand that his mind reeled at trying to comprehend what he had just seen. Forget slam poetry. He was in a new world now that words failed to express.

Knife Fight

“I’ve read a lot of books…” Stephen said. He folded his hands behind him and looked out directly at the audience.  He paused for a minute.  “A lot of them.” He looked at a few people  at different ends of the room. He looked stern. His direct approach toward public speaking always won people over, and if he didn’t sound friendly people began to respect and fear him outside of the meeting room.  Clients changed their attitudes toward him, coworkers changed their attitudes toward him, even his friends have changed after they’ve seen him give a presentation.  At his height, his simply being in the room added a certain weight.  But lately he’s noticed people whispering. There’s been more giggling and slights from the people he managed. It always happened when he’d leave the room. He pulled this meeting together, even though the company was under a crunch to get a product out by the end of the week. He had a lot riding on this.

“I’ve read ‘Who Moved My Cheese’. I’ve read ‘Swimming With the Sharks’. I’ve even read ‘Rework’, but they were all missing something.” Everyone was still. “Marliene, can you turn on the overhead?” The lights dimmed and a projector turned on. He walked to the opposite side of the screen. The colors from the projected image crawled across him. Behind him on the screen was a photo of a switchblade. “Knife fights”. He dropped it on them. No one moved. He could almost see their Goddamn heads  swimming. He knew he had them- you come out fast and hard, that’s how you win a fight.

“The world of business can’t be planned. You can’t reduce abstract notions like ‘change’ down to something manageable that you can plan.” He said. He could feel the momentum building. This felt good, he was back, even if it only lasted as long as this meeting. “It’s human nature to try to take things you have no control over and reduce them to manageable elements. Like death…” Some of their jaws were dropping. He needed to soften it a little. “When a loved one passes it’s hard for everyone involved. Especially if the process is a long one. It’s terrifying. It’s something most people want to run from- they want someone else to handle it. But if you read the line of self-help style books, they’ll walk you through all the steps of what to expect. If it’s predictable, then it’s not scary anymore.” He had them back. They were getting sucked in. He needed to slap them in the face a little to let them know who’s driving the ship. “Even down to the death rattles. Our company is in a death rattle.” He paused. “But we don’t know, or don’t care because we’ve read all the books, and the books say that this is part of a normal process. We need to be scared. We need to fight. And that’s where knife fights come in.”

Then, he started telling them a story about last week’s trip to Detroit to visit his dying mother. It was perfect. He was tying everything together with a personal message. He never had a mother- he was an orphan that jumped around from family to family all his life. He never loved anyone. But they didn’t know that when he told HR that he was going to need a week off. No one questions you when you toss the words ‘dying mother’ into your reasons for needing the time off during a busy period. He spent the week in his condo, watching youtube videos about knife fights. “Then…” He continued,”she held her hand up and made me promise to make my family proud. I took that hand. I took it and I looked her in the eye and promised that good woman that I would.” He dropped his head down. Damn, he was near tears himself. By dropping his head he could look remorseful without having to actually act like it. It just takes a second. “Then, she took her last breath and left  this gentle earth.” A woman in the back sniffed.  “Shaken, I went across the street to a waterfront bar. I ordered a whisky and let myself sit with what I had seen, and the promise I made. A man- I believe his name was Cutty- he talked to me. I told him what had happened. Cutty was an old salt. He had been in two wars and was no stranger to death. It turns out he was no stranger to business either. After hearing about my great responsibility he gave me this bit of advice.”  Stephen pressed on the small remote in his hand. The image changed from a knife to two knives pointing at each other. Above one was the title ‘Company’, above the other ‘Client’. “And there you have it.” He said.

He started in on his Nietzschian philosophy of great companies having great responsibility outside the norms of conventional businesses. You needed to fight. You had to pull every dirty trick in the book, because in a knife fight you don’t know who you’re up against. You have to take the enemy down. Take them down hard and finish them because you don’t want them coming back later after they’ve learned the limits of your fighting skill. He followed this with instruction manual illustrations of two bland men facing each other, crouching,  with knives in their hands. There were arrows illustrating a clockwise motion, with text saying the types of thrusts and swipes to use. Everything symbolized processes in the business world. The man wielding the knife were the executives. The knife was the designers, project managers, copywriters. He punched out the words with the same severity as when he laid off Timothy. He really liked Timothy. He was the only one that Stephen could confide in. They used to get together to  watch ‘Fight Club’ and get drunk. But it was out of his hands. He didn’t make the decision. Timothy took it hard and he never heard from him again. He felt like he was doing the same to this audience. He was punishing them, he was laying them off.

“I have a question.” One member raised their hand. He hated that. He didn’t want an open forum, he just wanted to say his piece and be done. “Yes?” Stephen said trying to look disapproving. “When you talk about making a series of thrust-cuts to the hands, and swipes to the forearm as a way of weakening the opponent… isn’t that a way of setting up your bases?” The man said, standing up. He wasn’t so much of a man, he was in his twenties and dressed like a child. Only a douche bag wears t-shirts with oversized prints poking out from their side. He was short too, he might as well have been a kid. “I suppose.” Stephan said. “So if you’re setting up bases, and gearing up for the big attack- Wouldn’t Starcraft be a more appropriate analogy?” The audience made impressed ‘ooh’ sounds and started to talk amongst themselves. Stephen cursed inside. He didn’t know how to save this. By continuing to debate the videogame/knife fight analogy he was only giving the kid’s idea more time to sink in. “First,” the kid continued,”you make your drones start mining minerals and have a few start making a barracks. That way you get your troop count up. Then you make some food storage units to feed the troops as you upgrade to more powerful troops. After that you can set up bunkers and look out towers to keep the spies from seeing your numbers. After you’ve expanded to other mineral fields you can attack the opponent.” Stephen tossed his remote onto a nearby table and casually walked out. As he rounded the corner to his office he could hear the kid still talking. People were applauding. That was supposed to be his applause.

Stephen deleted some files off his computer and put the photo of his family in his bag. It wasn’t his real family, this photo came with the frame. He had no family. Except for Timothy. His old fantasy of starting a company with Timothy bubbled up in his mind. He scanned through the address book on his phone and brought Timothy’s number up, then put the phone in his pocket. As he drove away, he hit the dial button on his phone. It rang. He didn’t know if Timothy would pick up. He’d leave a message explaining that he had quit and see what happened. Maybe he’d bring up the fantasy. Who was he kidding, some upstart would ruin what he had built just like the kid did today. What he had to do was figure out how to gain authority without over-doing it and having it end this way. Timothy answered the phone sounding out of breath. “I was just in the shower.” He said.

I work for the Vatican

“No. You don’t understand.” The priest said, leaning in slightly as he tapped his gloved finger on the plastic check card, and gazing sternly at the man behind the counter. “This card was specially given to me by the Vatican as an expense card…” He asserted calmly, the rings around his eyes conveying a deep sense of exhaustion. “…I work… For the Vatican.”



He stopped to allow for the weight of his words to set in for a moment before continuing. He briefly licked his lips then spoke slowly, with his thick Italian accent rolling around lazily in his mouth, “I’m here on a special mission for the Pope. And this is my expense card. If you can’t take this card, then I have no cigarettes to take in the car to Tulsa. If I have no cigarettes, then I become fussy and light-headed. If I become fussy and light-headed- then I will be in no condition to drive to Tulsa. If I’m not in Tulsa by tomorrow, I will have failed my mission- you understand?”
“I have no idea what that thing is.” The young man behind the counter said, only allowing his eyes to glance down as he pointed, palm up, to the gold and silver plastic card. His body was rigid, as if anticipating something. “I can’t take that- it’s not a choice of mine. It’s not any of the major credit card companies, so it’s not going to work. It’s not even diners club.”

The priest, raising himself up from the counter, sighed as he removed his gloves and passed his bleach white hands through his hair. He stared up at the cigarette kiosk over the clerks head for a moment. Then, resting his hands firmly back down on the counter, he looked the clerk dead in the eye and said softly. “Just try the card.”
“Look, It’s not anything against…”
“Just try the card.”
“If you can’t pay for this with something else then…”
“Just. Try. The. Card.”
“Seriously, I’m going to call the cops.”
”Hey-sus kris-tee!” The priest whispered as he backed away from the counter and clasped both his hands together so that all the fingers were intertwined and resting over his knuckles, leaving only his index fingers protruding up and uniting at the tips. These, he rested against the indent on his upper lip and closed his eyes. There was a silence, then a loud exhale from his enormous nostrils.

“I am about to tell you something that you are not prepared to hear.” he said, his fingers still positioned on his lip. The man behind the counter slowly slid his hand down beneath the register. “I don’t expect you to believe me but I will tell you anyway- Though you are not deserving…”
“Alright, look.” The clerk interrupted, “I’ll slide it through, but don’t get pissed if it’s rejected. Alright?” he added, his head turning and bowing slightly so that he was glaring at the priest from one side of his face. “This is fair.” The man said after a moment.

The Clerk slowly lifted his hand and took the card, all this done through a keen sense of touch since he never actually took his eyes off the pale, white hands of the priest. Glancing only to make sure that the magnetic strip (which, instead of the standard black or brown, was a glittering white) was facing the right way, he swiped it one way. Then he swiped it the opposite way before finishing it with a swipe in the original direction. The register hummed, then clicked and beeped. Both priest and clerk looked at the display which blinked ‘Call in’. “Weird.” The clerk bleated awkwardly.

He backed a few steps, and felt for the phone which hung on the wall. Reading a number which was scribbled on a crinkled and worn post-it note, he punched in the 1-800 number. Then, when the automated voice asked that he punch in the credit card number, the quite tones of the pressed numbers only chimed four times. Then he raised the receiver to his ear and winced slightly as he awaited the rejection. After a moment a man’s voice spoke, “It’s ok, give him whatever he wants.”
“Wait, what?” The clerk demanded. The mans voice, which had a familiar southern accent, repeated what he had said. “This is ridiculous!” The clerk yelled. “His card is clearly a fake! Who is this?”
“The president of The United States of America, son, Just give him the items he wants and let him get on his way.”
“Fuck it!” The clerk said, slamming the phone down and shrugging his shoulders. Walking over to the register he began pulling out all the bills and tossing them to the priest, who accepted them without any sense of surprise. Then, the clerk pulled an entire carton out from the kiosk above. There was a sliding sound followed by a dull thud. He pulled that carton out as well and handed them over to the priest. “Anything else asshole?” he added as innocently as if he had replaced the word ‘asshole’ with ‘sir’.
“No.” The priest said calmly, the words squeezing out of his mouth like play-dough. “This will be fine. Actually, now that I think of it, If I could have your shirt I could use it as a disguise.”
“Oh I know! I was thinking exactly the same thing!” he said as he all but ripped his t-shirt off from over his head.

A few months after that incident, he had began noticing little old women passing by the bay windows of his store. They looked to be in their 60’s and wore dark handkerchiefs over their heads. They always made minimal eye-contact, before moving on. But over time they blatantly stood outside his door and mumbled to themselves, holding rosemary beads and clutching them to their chins and chests. Months after that, he had to wade through the clutter of photographs, candles and flowers that were laid at the foot of his door when he tried to open in the morning. Local news crews came and went, he did an interview or two and eventually quit- never really knowing what all the attention was for. Once, after drinking on the job, he threw the doors open and screamed at the pilgrims demanding to know what was going on. As a response he was flooded with tossed roses and beads.

Company Ltd. Inc. V

Amityville Horror (2005)

Amityville Horror (2005) is a perfect example of all the problems of our current sub-prime mortgage crisis.

You’ve got a realtor who misses the heydays of the early 00’s and is so desperate to make a sale in these troubled real estate times that she knowingly sells a haunted house to buyers who are going to be shotgunned into pieces by their stepfather. Obviously having given up on the concepts of quality customer service and repeat business, this is a good reminder to all would-be buyers that the selling agent does not have a fiduciary responsibility to the buyer - the real estate agent (unless they are a buying agent) works for the seller.

One other prudent real estate agent note. In most states agents are not obligated to disclose paranormal activity in a house unless asked directly about said activity by the buyer.

You’ve got a broken mortgage industry willing to make obscene loans to unqualified buyers. The wife didn’t work, the husband was self-employed (just starting his own business) and yet they were able to get a loan for what had to be at least a 5000 sq. ft. house on a couple acres of land overlooking a big lake with a couple of hundred feet of lake frontage and a boathouse. And you just know that 5000 sq. ft. did not include that attached space under the house that contained the hidden torture chambers of a raving holy man from the 1800s that were walled off by concrete blocks that occasionally dripped pools of blood into the basement. And the loan was probably a no-doc, 5/1 jumbo interest-only ARM with 3 points to boot.

One other prudent mortgage note. Payday loans are considered heinous and untenable by most experts and yet whereas in a payday loan the loanee typically has to pay about 2.5 times the loaned amount (usually a couple of hundred dollars) over a period of 3 years, in a mortgage loan the loanee must also pay about 2.5 times the loaned amount (which usually runs hundreds of thousands of dollars) but must do so over a period of 30 years. At least the payday loan is over more quickly.

And finally, you’ve got a pair of young buyers with a young family who only want to make a better life for themselves and think they should do this by going into extreme debt to finance a house where they say they are going to have to make many financial sacrifices to get it, but once they are in the house they start going out to eat and hiring help to watch the children and don’t even consider selling their boat to help make ends meet. Once blood starts dripping from the walls and the family sees disgusting demonic apparitions and a priest trying to exorcize the house of demons gets the paranormal equivalent of a bitch slap and runs screaming from the house they are so upside down on the mortgage that they do not have the financial wherewithal to be able to move from the house.

One other prudent home buyer note. Folks, make sure you have an emergency fund. Wanting to go out and buy a new car when the one you have works perfectly well? Not a good use of an emergency fund. Wanting to get that 50” plasma tv that’s on sale for $3000 dollars when you current 42” rear projection tv is still up to snuff? Not a good use of the emergency fund. Wanting to find a nice two-bedroom apartment somewhere because your possessed house is causing the voices in your head to suggest grabbing your axe and chopping up your loved ones because they are demons who want to eat your soul? Definitely a good use of the emergency fund.

One last thing - when you’re buying a house, by all means get a home inspection. While most qualified home inspectors are not looking for demonic possession of a house they will most likely catch the telltale signs of pools of blood, demonic screams, furniture moving under its own power and unexplainable cold drafts. Even if they miss the paranormal activity though, they will most likely catch mold issues, termite infestations and leaky plumbing saving you – potentially - tens of thousands of dollars in home repairs and making it that much easier to move when the voices from the house start telling you do to unsavory and, frankly, icky things to your family.

300

Historical accuracy has never been the domain of Hollywood so I am simply led to believe that 300 refers not to the actual number of Greeks who battled a million would be conquerors during the Greco-Persian war but rather to the number of man nipples shown in this movie.

There were far too many man nipples in 300. Unfortunately, as the movie wore on, other issues surpassed even that of the man nippletude.

There was the king of Persia who, were he alive today, would have ended up not trying to conquer the known world but would instead be living in his mother’s basement while working at the local video store (not the local chain video store - he would feel too superior to work at a place like Blockbuster, Xerxes would only work at an indie shop) and would indeed sport as many piercings as he did in the movie but instead of wearing loincloths and chains would wear t-shirts emblazoned with sayings like “Captain of the Boob Squad” and “Boobie Patrol”.

There were the weird old white men living up high on the mountain who liked power, money and naked young women. Everybody did what they said even though nobody liked them or believed them. As good an analogy for our politicians and us as I could have come up with.

There was the constant cry of “freedom!” ala Mel Gibson as a Scotsman. Although, since in reality there were nearly as many slaves at the Battle of Thermopylae fighting for and supporting the Greeks as there were actual free Greeks, and women didn’t have many rights in Greece at the time, I am guessing they meant what most people mean when they yell “Freedom!” - which is “freedom for me!”

Finally, the Spartans had the whole annoying Type A personality thing going on. I mean, sure, Xerxes was going for world domination, but compared to the Spartans, Xerxes was a hippie slacker who spent his days smoking reefer and doing bong hits at a commune. To say that a Spartan was wound a bit tight would be like saying Pat Robertson would, upon long contemplative reflection, perhaps be against same sex marriage.

The movie was, however, very pretty and colorful.

30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night is supposed to be about vampires going to Barrow, Alaska so they can feed for 30 days straight without sunshine. What the movie actually turns out to be about is annoying.

In these types of movies I rarely root for the vampires but in this case I was willing to make an exception as the main human characters I was introduced to at the beginning of the movie were boring and annoying - after 20 minutes or so the movie introduced the vampires who turned out to be less boring but even more annoying and I simply decided to root for no one but myself to make it through the movie without dying.

The vampires are awful. Not €œoh my goodness gracious they are the diabolical evil undead coming to suck the blood and life force out of me€ awful but rather the €œthese goth assholes screech like wounded puppies, squint their eyes like they can€™t see in the dark and dress, well, like goth assholes€ awful. These vampires were exactly like the classmates you knew in high school €“ the ones who went around wearing black mascara, black lipstick, black velvet scarves and pierced anything they could. And those were the guys. They were the ones who, while you laughed at them in a not entirely unkind way, tried to act mysterious and scary by assuming an air of superiority while threatening you with the curses of Cthulhu in a made up language.

Which is almost exactly what these annoying goth asshole vampires did. They spoke their own language and every time they tried to act scary you couldn€™t help but chuckle a bit.while thinking that, sure, yes, they could rip out my throat with a flick of their hand and throw me 50 feet across the street but they better do it fast because I€™m not sure how much longer I can contain the giggles while looking at them hiss and shake their head back and forth at me like that.

A few standout moments from the movie included:

• A woman praying to god (right before she was about to be eaten by the annoying goth assholes) being grabbed by the lead goth asshole while he theatrically looked around and said €“ in his own language, of course €“ €œGod? There is no god.€ You just knew goth asshole vampires were going to be atheists.


• The heroes making a run for it in an SUV which was stopped and then flipped over by the goth asshole vampires. We get it, they are strong and fast and not covered under any automotive insurance policy known to man.


• The token ethnic guy living in the great white north dying from a bite by the weakest and yet most realistic vampire of all €“ a little girl who, of all the vampires in the movie, had the good fashion sense to not try and pull off the goth asshole thing and instead wore a rather pleasant blue sundress with white polka dots.


• The lead goth asshole grabbing some blood from a victim (although calling the dead person a victim is rather a sticking point as at least they didn€™t have to deal with the goth assholes acting superior for the rest of the movie) and rubbing it on his head before licking his hand. Look lead goth asshole, you don€™t see me doing that with my mashed potatoes or chicken chow mein, so stop playing with your food.


• Josh Hartnett dying.

You know how I used the word €œannoying€ an annoying number of times to describe the annoying movie and the annoying characters in it? Well the movie was even more annoying than that.

Company Ltd. Inc. IV

Grimm Monkey

Henry finally pulled up to his driveway after spending the night at a bar with his friends. From his car he peered into the windows of his house and saw the all the lights were on, “crap” he thought as he got out and checked to make sure that his car was lined up in a ‘normal’ fashion on his driveway.

Carefully, he put the key into the lock and opened the door. He paused and listened to hear if the television was on. It wasn’t. He took off his shoes and put his jacket into the closet. He peered carefully from the kitchen into the living room and saw that though the lights were on, there wasn’t anyone in the room. With a sudden lightness in his step, he trotted across the living room to the sliding patio door. Once outside, he pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket. It was dark out, especially since he had turned off the motion sensitive yard-light. It was only by the glow of the match he had struck and held to the cigarette in his mouth that he saw the figure.

It was perched on his patio table. by the light of his match, it seemed to be a tall, thin shape that curled in on it’s self like an inflatable toy that had lost it’s strength. He dropped his match and cigarette. In retrospect, his first reaction should of been to run back into his house, instead he paused waiting to hear if the shape emitted any sound. Slowly, he slid the glass door open behind him and felt for the switch to turn on the yard light- which happened after a few moments of fumbling. The area flooded with a mosquito resistant orange light and revealed what he had feared- a man.

It actually wasn’t really a man, but a skinny, nine foot tall monkey that sat absentmindedly on his patio table. It’s thin hips were planted firmly on the tables edge, with his long legs sprouting in awkward directions so that it’s knees threw themselves at him like cannon barrels before it’s feet tucked neatly under the table. It’s torso grew up from it’s hips and arced over under it’s own weight and from it’s compressed shoulders a neck sprouted, gnarled and muscly in an opposite arc to support it’s small head. On top of it’s head grew a set of antlers, like the type found on a deer. Henry sat motionless with his mouth hanging open. They both sat there in silence until, to Henry’s horror, the monkey turned and looked directly at him.

“You smoking?” It said in a deep and calm voice.

For a while Henry didn’t answer. The monkey, content to wait, continued looking directly at him. Henry couldn’t take his eyes off the antlers, which seemed to reach up to mingle with the branches from a neighbors tree. They were broad and bowed out, it’s sprouting arms meeting at the top. For some reason, it was the antlers that seemed to strike him as the most petrifying part of the experience. Much time passed before he blinked and answered, “Yeah.”

“Then it’s time.” It said flatly, as it continued to look at him with it’s expressionless black eyes.

“For what?” Henry asked automatically.

“I’m here to collect your soul.”

“Wait, what? Why?” Henry said, his voice not seeming to be his own.

“You’re scheduled to expire tonight from a heart attack. I’m here to collect your soul.”

“No!” Henry said. The monkey, still not moving just looked at him unblinking.

After a few moments, Henry collected him self enough to look at his own body. Then he looked around his feet as if for something that had fell from his pockets. Looking up at his accuser he added, “I’m not dead… I think.”

“So it seems.” The monkey said immediately after Henry had finished his sentence. And with a sound like a nail being scraped against glass, a large book appeared, floating before the monkey. “It seems that there has been a miscalculation.” He said smoothly, his deep voice causing the leaves to rustle on the concrete below him.

“I see.” Henry replied.

“You shouldn’t smoke.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence as they both looked at each other. “I will say good day to you then.” The monkey said, the lips on it’s large round mouth barely parting.

“Holy shit, you scared the hell out of me-“ Henry laughed nervously. “I saw you and I was all like, double-you tee eff!”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.” The monkey replied calmly.

“Oh.”

The monkey, with all it’s length seemed to grow smaller at it’s center, as if someone had lassoed it’s ribcage and pulled it violently backwards while it’s head and legs stayed stationary. With a loud popping sound it was gone, leaving only the smell of burnt hair. Henry’s eyes darted around the empty area where the monkey had sat. Finally accepting that the creature was gone, he pulled one cigarette out from the pack in his pocket and lit it before crushing the container into
a small, misshapen ball.

Company Ltd. Inc. III