Saturday, August 8, 2015

The Christmas Wish



Tick tock tick your time is almost up as did you pick.

Allen woke with a start from a sound sleep when he heard the woman’s voice coo to him in his violet hued dreams.  He scanned the room quickly; he was in his own king-sized bed, in his bedroom, alone.  He took a long drink from the clear water bottle he had placed on his night table, checking alarm click that sat beside it as he did so – eleven oh seven.  It was still evening; the dark gap between the curtains that closed his downtown penthouse’s windows from invasion from the outside world told him so.  Allen let out a groan and tossed the covers roughly aside and stepped onto the hard wood floor and walked to the washroom.  The womanly voice faintly sounded in the back of his mind as he turned on the washroom light.

Tick tock tick your time is almost up as did you pick.

At fifty one, with the highest nightly audience numbers of all the other networks combined, Allen Forrest was considered the “Chairman of the Board” of the Cable News Channel. Prime time was his playground, he was the king of the castle and everyone else was the dirty rascals.  It had been like that for over thirty years; politicians, celebrities, those wanting to be celebrities, even the Pope  called Allen first in hopes that they would get that coveted “top Story” moniker posted atop a picture of their faces on his newscast. Allen found it laughable that on the eve of the new global amalgamation of the major media corporations to provide a unified perspective on world events and his ‘coronation’ as the first president and face of The News, he would be haunted by a voice he barely remembered from his past.

Allen smiled cruelly at his reflection in the mirror as he gingerly splashed the cold water on his cheeks; it was around this time years ago as a much younger journalist that he had been waking in the night with the same symptoms as he did now though those were much darker times.  Allen patted down his face with his monogrammed towel and let his mind wander back into the past.

The year was 1986, fresh out of college and brimming with the brashness that his professors glowing remarks on his talent, when Allen had left all he knew and headed off for the journalistic big league of Edmonton with the intent of having his name carved in neon. What Allen found was that he was only one of hundreds of institutionally trained remarkable talents in the rough and that no one was willing to wield the buffer. 

By day he kept hounding the newspapers, the television and radio stations to give him a shot; by night he bussed at a lounge on 95thstreet, the roughest part of the city.  He spent the majority of his money on professional portfolio development, living in a boarding house that had an infestation of roaches inside while outside an infestation of hookers, addicts and pushers, door after door remained closed to him. For three months he tried to keep the burning faith he had in himself from turning to dying embers, but as the cold northern winds beckoned the winter to the city Allen could see that the chute was on its last piece of coal.  What little money he had left after paying his weekly room and board he drank away in the dangerous of bars; half out of self pity and half out of the desire for someone to come behind him and slit his throat – at least in death someone would see his name printed in the media.

It was the early afternoon of December twenty fourth, Allen recalled clearly, when the last door slammed in his face, knocking his portfolio, and ego, onto the heavily slush trodden carpet of a media outlet.  He was memorized by how quickly the costly printed summary of his life’s ambitions hungrily drank up the moisture turning the pages of white and black to a mimicry of an open binder of opaque Japanese scrolls. 

Allen began to bend down to pick the portfolio up but stopped; the water logged portfolio capsulated who Allen was to Allen. It was time to let his aspirations dissolve into pulp just as the portfolio would be in a couple of hours left on the carpet.  He turned, walked away and when the first opportune door to drunken amnesia presented himself, he entered.

At four Allen was unceremoniously escorted from his bar stool with a shove and a snarled, “Merry Christmas”, out the door of the bar.  The sun began to hide itself away as Allen stumbled along the quickly quietening streets with no particular destination in mind, consoling himself every block or so with a swig from the rum and whiskey bottles he had stolen from behind the bar just after they had called for everyone to leave, muttering that it should have been his time to shine, to show the world that he was worthy of being paid attention to.

It had been hours since it seemed like the city had closed for night, his stolen liquor drunk, that Allen felt as if he were being watched.  He barely managed to remain standing as he turned around to accost his stalker, but the street was deserted.

“Tick tock tick, your time is the one you pick,” a soft sulty feminine voice whispered.

Allen turned quickly once more, this time slipping on the frozen sidewalk with his ice-lined shoes.  He fell hard onto his shoulder, his head bounced on the sidewalk.  Allen cursed, picking himself off the sidewalk but he could still see no one.  Allen knew the voice; it had awoken him from his anxiety driven dreams several times over the past month with the same words, the same seductive half whisper. He wondered if the voice was mocking him as once more it spoke up.

“Tick tock tick, your time is the one you pick.”

“When is it my time?” Allen screamed in demand as he raised his head to the night sky, his hands clenched tightly, his arms taunt into the sides of his body, “When is it my time? It should be fucking right now!”

Allen breathed heavily as he looked around then expectantly up into the falling snow. The only answer he received were those around of an active city with no concern about a drunk, hypothermic young man.  Allen dropped to his knees, his knuckles crunching harshly into the packed down snow, bursting several capillaries but Allen entertained no thought about the reddish tinge forming, he simply hung his head until his chin rested on his sternum.  

“My time is now,” Allen’s voice cracked out, “I want my time now.”

For how long Allen did not remember that he knelt in the snow sobbing, knowing only that through thick iced lashes that something had moved before him.  It took several hard blinks to clear the haze that his eyes were in but what he thought he saw did not alter in the clarity of sight. Allen knew the temperature had to be minus twenty optimistically, in front of him were two sandaled, dark toned but luminescent lithesome feet, not shivering but seemingly unaffected by the frigid winter’s kiss.

Allen’s eyes tracked up from the feet.  It was a woman, young but with an air of agelessness to her.  The first thing that filled his sight were her eyes;  they were like a pair of liquid violet pools outlined by carefully sculpted lines of black, drawing a person even more to plunge within.  He pulled himself from drowning in her eyes to her long black hair that seemed to dance down her narrow face, along her long neck and tumble joyfully along her shoulder blades.  The snow that fell seemed to bend as if not to fall upon her sun bronzed skin and what looked like a single silken fabric that hung over her right shoulder that fell to just above her ankles tied in the middle with a bright multicoloured sash.

 “I am the Maiden of Sepphoris”, the woman explained in an over stuffed pillowy voice. “A multitude of life time upon lifetimes ago I was chosen to bestow upon the world a gift – I continue this mission to this day, and on this day, to you, Allen Christopher Forrest.” 

Allen tried to stand but the frozen ground had numbed his knees; he fell backwards.  He began to laugh.

“A gift for me?” he said with a harsh tone in his voice, “Why me?  I have done nothing that merits nothing but...nothing.”

The Maiden of Sepphoris bent down and gingerly touched Allen’s cheek with the tips of her fingernails.

“When I received my gift I thought very much the same as you do,” she comforted.  “When the angel spoke to me, I too tried to show that I was not worthy of the Lord’s fondness.”  The Maiden stood back up and offered her hand to Allen.

“But who was I to question His wisdom?  The Lord can see within us what we ourselves cannot.  I had no right to deny but to accept that he knew that I could give the world something that it was in need of.  I see this in you.” 

Allen laughed.

“What can I offer the world?” he barked, “The only thing I want to do is show the world themselves – that’s nothing.” Softer he repeated, “Nothing.”

“Is that not His way, to make something from nothing?” The Maiden asked, Allen could have sworn he caught a hint of bitterness in her words, but the Maiden’s demureness quickly returned. “I was nothing but a mother yet from that ordinary womanly task did I deliver to the world...something.  It is not yours to ask why me but to ask why not me?”

Allen took the woman’s hand and slowly rose to his feet.  He looked into those violet eyes and told her that then he too would accept her wisdom that and give the world what he could.

“And so you shall,” the Maiden said then dissipated into the night’s snow leaving Allen standing alone. The cold that had bored into his bones had disappeared, his mind was sharp and clear without a hint of the whiskey or rum; Allen felt alive and burning with renewed energy standing on sidewalk with a layer of snow already covering where he had been kneeling moments before.

Tick tock tick, began has the time you did pick....

By noon Christmas Day Allen was standing in the local television’s newsroom breaking a story of the city police’s ‘golden boy’ – that Allen had discovered to be a serial killer, complete with records that backed up those allegations.  Within three years he had been promoted to the national press’s reporter at large, travelling around the world reporting major events.  By the time he was forty Allen became the face of the national news broadcast then two years later he became the spokesman for the international broadcast with the American networks and BBC courting him to work for them.  Six months ago the United Nations had approached him on the global news pipeline and he accepted.  It was not lost to Allen that the premiere broadcast of the new super news station was set for noon Mountian time Christmas day, thirty three years to the day that his life had changed.

Allen chuckled at himself; perhaps he should have taken some time off before the change over.  Imagine, he chided himself, attributing his success to someone who wasn’t real.  He got back into bed, rolled onto his side and grasped tightly onto the pillow, still nervously guffawing as his eyes quickly called for the end of consciousness, the back of his mind cautioned him, still.....

Tick tock tick, your time is up as did you pick.

It was ten in the morning; Allen had been at news central since five that morning preparing for the broadcast set to begin in a matter of hours.  The rehearsals had gone off without a hitch; all the graphics and cues had worked without fault.  Allen felt confident and told the crew to go out for a well deserved meal at the commissary – his treat- leaving him alone on the set. 

Allen stood in the middle of the set, looked around, taking in the majestic looking wall of green behind the business like looking desk, the lights, cables and cameras; this was his world.  He became lost in how he thought the newscast would play out – who should he ordain as the VIP of the world by having their faces up on that green screen?  Should it be the American President?  The Dalai Lama?  Allen did not realize he was not alone until the semi-forgotten voice of his dreams penetrated his thoughts.

“It was thirty three years ago I came to you to bestow a gift,” said the woman that stood metres from Allen.

  Allen nodded, numbed by the sense of familiarity clashing with the physicality of the unexpected.  If it had not been for the memory of those very vivid violet eyes piercing deeply into his psyche years before, Allen would not have been convinced that the woman was being truthful of whom she claimed to be. The remembered silken smooth lustre of eterne filled flesh had deflated to pull taunt against vein, artery, tendon and bone of a barren mesa parched by an unwavering dry season.  The cascade of black tresses that poured down her shoulders now hung as frozen trickles of dirtied water; the woman’s frame that Allen recalled as powerfully straight had curled over as if a steel girder hung tightly around her neck threatening to crush her larynx at a moment’s time.  The memoried  mint with a hint of honey that had swirled invitingly along his nasal passages upon their first meeting  sloughed away at the reek that she now presented – one of urine, feces, and rotted linen.

“What do you want?” Allen asked in a smallish voice.

“I have come to collect payment for the gift of giving you to the world,” the Maiden answered.

Allen pulled out his chequebook from his inside breast pocket along with his monogrammed pen and asked, “How much? Ten, twenty, fifty grand?” 

The Maiden’s head slowly turned once to the side and then to the other side.

“What do you want then?” Allen asked, clicking the pen back and forth.  Allen forced himself not to jump back in revulsion when the Maiden’s snake scaled fingers gently scraped against his left cheek.

“For you to step from the blinding light of recognition and return into the unassuming mass of humanity once more,” she replied.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Allen snapped out at the woman.  “You think that I’ll walk away from this –“ Allen waved his hands around the set, “This is what I worked my ass off for, this is what gives meaning to my life....hell, not just me, but how many millions are expecting to see me tell them how it was, is and will be in the world?”

“Once I allowed the folly of pride forestall what should have been done,” the Maiden in a threatening tone, “Eternity is not praised immortality but punishment so hollowed thinly upon what is humanity.  To end I must suture the tear that I let render itself.”

The Maiden advanced towards Allen.  Allen retreated step for step with the woman’s until the back of his legs were against the oak veneered metal desk that he used during his broadcasts.  The Maiden did not stop.  The rubber stops on the bottom of the desk screeched along the tiled floor as Allen forced it to move to keep a space between him and the woman.  When the desk came to a halt against the cement wall concealed behind a large sheet of blue screen, Allen climbed backwards atop the desk never breaking eye contact with the woman.  He pressed himself firmly against the wall seemingly to attempt to will himself to dissolve into the thin material.  The Maiden stopped a metre from the desk.

The Maiden smiled cruelly, the darkness of her pupils dilating as if a nova had burst within them.  She gave both of her wrists a quick twist sending ripples up her sleeves.  From the material a wooden mallet shook free from one arm into her hand, from the other sleeve slipped four long crudely fashioned and rusted iron spikes.  Allen looked incredulously at the woman; he could feel his heart slamming violently against his rib cage. He went to step back but found that the desk and blue screen that had been for so long his proclamation of authority had become the shackles of immobility.

“Back in the time past it took me year after year to build up the courage to atone for the sin of entitlement that I unleashed upon the world.  I sought and found one close to what I had made, manipulating him to find those who would erase what should never have been drawn so poorly,” the Maiden said, never taking her eyes off Allen’s. “The original sin never washed itself from the mortal world, leaving me still stained ere more – so I thought.” Allen wrestled with emotions of disbelief and awe as the woman rose from the ground until she hovered just above the height of the desk.

There was a rush of wind by Allen’s left ear, a flash of dirty red, of wood, a rough jerk of his shoulder then a searing pain that streaked from his left hand, laying siege to his brain with catapult fires of synaptic firings.  There was warmth tickling the center of his left palm and though Allen didn’t want to break away from the Maiden’s glare, he could not help but steal a quick peek at her hands.  Only three of the spikes remained.  Allen closed his eyes as the Maiden giggled. Taking a deep gulp of the spittle that was building up around his tongue, Allen turned his head and opened his eyes.

The missing spike was embedded to its head into the wall behind the blue screen, a hand acting as if it were a washer to cushion it. It took a moment longer for Allen to realize that his left arm was outstretched and connected to that hand. Blood seeped from the edges of where flesh and metal met, collecting at the bottom of the spike’s head then loftily dripping to the floor.  He could not muster enough breath to scream but instead a small moan crawled out of his mouth.   The Maiden’s voice bade to him to turn his attention to her once more.

“Sin is naught but a stain,” she stated, “Stains are not gone after a single wash – especially ones that so deeply seep – but if one patiently takes layer after layer of the damage away it will eventually become as if it were new once more.” This time Allen saw, as if she wished for him to witness her power, as the wooden mallet swung up, knocking his arm straight up.   He had not been given the time to react to the assault before her other hand shot up with one of the spikes jutting out of her fingers stabbed into his hand stopping its upward motion or the mallet swinging once more to drive it effortlessly through the flesh and into the blue screen’s wall.

Watching the Maiden’s action unravel brought Allen out of the state of shock that had padded the majority of the pain leaving him bare to the full onslaught of the visual and other sensory information frantically bouncing from both his arms.  Allen lost control of his bodily functions; warm fluid ran freely down his leg into his sock, bile that had lay dormant within his stomach erupted through both his nose and mouth along with the coffees and sandwiches he had had only a few hours before.  The Maiden made no motion to move, letting Allen’s stomach contents spatter and slide down her as if the multi-coloured sludge were nothing more than the rays of sunlight bronzing her sallow skin. Between forced gulps of air Allen whimpered a single word, “Monster”.

  The Maiden let Allen’s loud sputtery heaves subside before she continued to speak, for the first time that night letting slip her conciliatory tone to one of a harsh rasp.

“Monster?  What do you know of monsters?” the Maiden snarled. She brought her face within inches of Allen’s own dirtied one.  “I was told that I was chosen – not given the choice!  The privilege of divine rape! Bah!”  The Maiden flew back and above Allen, looking down upon him with a venomous glare.

“A gift! To whom? For a lifetime of suspicious glare from a husband accepting yet denied the promise that had been arranged? To bear children who feasted, slept and grew within a womb graced by all powerful seed yet only to be graced with a touch of which came before?”  The Maiden’s body shook with rage. “To see that touch bring to bear untold suffering upon them after their predecessor was found fouled to the mortal notions?”

The Maiden threw her head back, her back arched with her fists as if bound with leather pulled taut by a pair of pachyderms as if to crush the mallet and spikes, and let out a wail that assailed Allen’s ears with such intensity that he thought that his eardrums may burst.  The Maiden’s form dropped back to where her face was to Allen’s once more.

“Do you know what it is to be touched by that which cannot truly die – or perhaps truly live?” she asked hardly above a hushed whimper.   Allen saw not a glimmer of the vile woman but in her violet eyes swam that of untold hurt.

 “When told that the second foretelling had not been eradicated, the first of the foretold took revenge upon those who intimately had been held by that gift.  To have those arms that wrapped lovingly taken, the eyes that had gazed upon without preconception pulled away from their body...the tongues that had spoken of intent nonsensical and of dreams, to be plucked...yet without the ability to drift to the endless sleep easily?”  The Maiden lifted her hands to her breasts.  “To hold those that you had given to the world freely and strum across their throats deep to hum their coda when for day upon day, night upon night, they lay drained of all that is human to a withered shell but to able to harken a yonder foul that travels by?”

The Maiden rose once more, just high enough that her pelvis’s skull-like form mirrored Allen’s fleshed one.  She pulled the end of her robe up to her waist; the wall held Allen fast though he wrestled to recoil at the sight:  greyish flaps of skin feathered down to half cover where once the woman’s sex had been – the remnants of it former appearance carved and removed to leave gouged, pockets of plump flesh and broken curled hair.

“And what of the bearer of the gift?” the Maiden said, her voice rising with each word she spoke.  “To remove all evidence in the field of a second foretold coming only to leave plowed carnage of unresult?”  The edge of the robe dropped back down to the Maiden’s ankles.

The Maiden’s hands slipped to her side, her face dropped for a moment as the memory of actions before swept themselves back into the corner where they had collected before.  When her head returned to look straight at Allen, the harshness had returned, the quiver of un-understanding of her lower lip had been stilled.  The maiden sunk down until her feet rested on the desk.

“Do not speak of monsters to me, Allen Christopher Forrest – Those who would take a gift and bastardize its meaning to rationalize torture...enslavement...death... as righteous, that is what makes a monster,” The Maiden spat.

The Maiden’s furrowed brows relaxed, the sternness of her features softened as she took a step back from the desk and gave the faux-wood and metal structure a small tap with the wooden mallet.  The desk shuddered momentarily then shattered to ashes as if it had been thrown into an incinerator at high heat.

“It needs to end –I raised you ahigh to be akin in what gift I originally gave wrought today...I should have stopped it before the height of martyristic acclaim brought in the sunless dawn.  Now I make my repent.”

The strobe lights that hung above Allen swayed in response to the force of his scream as the spikes in both his hands did not yield to the weight of Allen’s body.  His blood gurgled and spat as the flesh of his hands stretched from their tight seal against the spikes to present a gap the size to support a second spike within.    Allen’s screams became half-choked sputters of agony from the blood that drizzled furiously down from his hairline and into his open maw.  Allen tried to stop his body from instinctual convulsions but he failed, with every flail came the sound of slight yet thick sounding tearing and a doubling of pain that he thought a man could endure. Though it threatened to, the flesh of Allen’s hands did not tear apart to release him from the wall.

The Maiden of Sepphoris knelt before Allen, laying the mallet and spikes on the floor in front of her.  She raised her arms up, and then brought them down with a slow swoop until the rested at her sides.  She bowed her head down, closing her eyes as Allen’s hoarse sputters and cries of agony became nothing more than faint echoes that mixed with the ones she had heard so long ago.

“Forgive me my little Yeshua, forgive,” The Maiden whispered.  “You will hurt too many...”

When her eyes opened once more she was no longer in the news room but knelt upon a sun parched hill surrounded by strangers in merchant, peasant, and Roman garb as the shadows crowned the sixth hour in front of her son upon the instrument of his penalty.  His features were darkened by the eclipsing of the sun above his head but she could see the whites of his eyes; they whispered, “Thank you, Mother, thank you”.

 Tears rolled from the Maiden’s violet eyes as her hands took hold of the mallet and spikes and moved closer to Allen’s feet...

The Accident Investigation



I looked out from my office window to the production floor below, hands behind my back.  Three men sat in three chairs in front of my desk; Terosa, Gelsing, and Hodgins.  I had my back to them, attempting to collect my thoughts before sitting down to write up the incident report involving the three of them. We were a small company but we were the only supplier of preformed sidewalk cracks in the Western provinces. This meant that we were under heavy pressure to fill the demand by cities in order to keep their public work departments busy enough that the municipal governments could increase their infrastructure monies for repairs from the provincial governments in order to siphon the left over monies for junkets for the study of whether or not breast augmentation for their female civil servants could be construed as increasing public morality in the bill collecting department.  Work stoppages only added to the pressure, and when the stoppage was created by an accident, the pressure was doubly so as production could not be continued until an investigation had taken place to ensure that all the safety procedures had been in action.  As safety coordinator, it was my job to make sure all the “I”’s were dotted and all the “T”’s were crossed.
This was the situation we found ourselves in today; I had informed Occupational Health and Safety who was sending an investigator scheduled to be here in a half an hour.  I had only the time before he or she got here to get all the company paperwork in order or face the company being fined for improper procedures of accident filing regulation 44-99-0.  I hated rushing things but I steeled myself against my revulsion, turned to the three men and sat down at my desk. 
They were quite a sight; Terosa holding a bloody towel to the left side of his head, Gelsing pawing at his left shoulder annoyingly as if he were silently trying to play the wounded soldier card and Hodgins, being well, Hodgins, sitting there with his hands on his lap as he were Mr. Innocent.  With the secretary and our general manager out to lunch still I not only had to fill out the incident report but the injury reports as well.  I wasn’t too concerned at the moment for the injury report since the majority would have to be filled out by the emergency room doctor and handed in to the OHS and Worker’s Compensation Board later on.  Gelsing and Terosa had whined about wanting to go to the emergency room but knowing that the OHS were rather rigid on having the right papers done that their boo boos could be attended to after.  Surprisingly the only one of the three that had not been a big baby was Hodgins, which made me wonder what he was playing at – he was never one to pass up the opportunity to goof off on the company dime.
I made sure that I had all the requirements before me: their personal files, copies of their job descriptions, the incident report papers and the safety manual was on the floor beside me.  I grabbed three pens from the drawer of my desk, setting two off to the side while I kept the third in my hand and looked at the three of them with my lips pursed. To impress the seriousness of this meeting on the three employees I tapped the tip of the pen on the blank incident report several times.
“As you know,” I started off, “As part of the requirements of the OHS when an accident happens on the production floor we are required to do a preliminary incident report before the investigator gets here in order to facilitate the process of restarting production.”  I waited the standard five second rule for indications of understanding.
Terosa and Gelsing nodded though I couldn’t help but notice that Hodgins just sat there smugly with a half grin on his face.  The jerk always had such ‘screw the man’ attitude, it was a wonder he had any employment opportunities at all.  I wouldn’t have hired him in the first place if I would have known but he had hid it well for the first six months on the job.  The past five months though when it was slim pickings for workers his slacker ways began to shine.
Despite Hodgins’s negativity I pressed on and read what I had written so far, minus the time.
“This meeting is in regards to an incident at ‘Break Your Mother’s Back, inc’ on June 23, 2009 at….” I looked at my watch, “One seventeen in the afternoon.  Attending is safety coordinator Ronald Richardson, Guido Terosa, lead hand, Terrance Gelsing, labourer and Jason Hodgins, labourer.”  I passed the paper for the three to sign under their names.  When I got it back I noticed that Hodgins had not signed it but with time being an issue I decided that I’d get him to sign his name at the top when I needed to get him to sign the bottom of the incident report.
I realized that, as with every accident, there were probably going to be three different views to what happened so I decided that I would first ask what happened then once we all agreed on a version, to write that one on as our official incident report for the OHS investigator.  I folded my hands on top of the incident report, not to firmly closed so that it projected one of formality yet understanding.
“Let’s get to the bottom of this matter so that we all can improve ourselves in order that something like this ever happens again,” I said with a small reassuring smile and tone.  “We have the basics that we all agree on, don’t we? Gelsing, don’t pick at your shoulder – it’s not very hygienic nor pretty to see - At sometime between twelve twenty and twelve forty there was a malfunction of the dual 14” saw press that caused….”
I looked back out the window at the saw line.  Standing straight up almost fifteen feet in the air between the actual saw unit and the perform hydraulic press was a monolithic like structure of steel and cement that should have been horizontal and going smoothly through the saw unit.  On the other side of the saw were large chunks of broken and twisted eight foot concrete slabs, the protective steel covers partially ripped and bent over to the sides, twenty four in all, littering the rollers that they should have simply nd rolled from the saw unit to the storage area.  This was not a scene of productivity and effective usage of space and safety procedures.
“Significant damage to the production line.  Does that sound like an accurate description of the current situation on the floor right now?”  Two heads nodded; Hodgins didn’t even look he had heard a damn thing I said.  Hodgins, I thought to myself, better watch his butt or I’ll be kicking it out the front door pretty quick.
“As a group,” I continued, pulling my hands apart then putting them back together again, “We should come to an agreement on what occurred before the outcome that is currently on the production line.”  Terosa put his hand up.  I nodded for him to speak.
 “Well, I think that…”
I stopped Terosa right there with a raise of my hand.
“No where in your work contract is there any clause that uses the word ‘think’ in your job description.  You are not paid to think so you had better not be wasting company time doing something that should be done on your dime, not ours.”
Terosa looked at me, opened his mouth then shut it again.  His tongue flicked out of the side of his mouth as his eyes rolled upwards as if he was trying to do what I had just told him that was a violation of his contract – but then he must of decided against pushing me to see whether I give him his second of three warnings before I would have to terminate his position with the company.
“I thought….”
The cheeky prick!  I once again held up my hand.
“Terosa,” I snarled, “I have made it quite clear what your contract states.”
“Uhm, yes sir?”
“Are you trying to push your luck by saying ‘thought’ – because ‘thought’ is a derivative of ‘think’, which as I have just reminded you is not in your contract.” 
Terosa looked at me blankly.  I thought I better head off any further defiant behavior from Terosa.
“And don’t you think you can get away with ‘thunk’, ‘reckon’,’mulling’, ‘rationalizing’ or ‘figure’, either,” I warned, “Those connote the same definition of ‘think’ and I will have to write you up for insubordination.”  I was about to continue berating Terosa on engaging in non-work related preoccupations during work hours when I saw Gelsing had meekly put his hand half way up.
“What is it, Gelsing? And will you please refrain from scratching your shoulder – it’s quite off putting; this is an official procedure – show some professionalism”.
“Just a question, sir.  How is figuring the same as thi…the ‘t word?  I would have to opine that if you are ‘figuring’ you are ‘assuming’ which is not really the ‘t’ word but acting on a belief rather than formulating your own course of action.”
 I stared harshly at Gelsing for a moment.  I scanned the job description that was on top of the three men’s personal files.
“Point taken,” I said then turned my attention back to Terosa.  “As Gelsing here pointed out, you can figure or assume on company time as it there is nothing forbidding it in your job description.  I am sorry that the description is not as clear as it should be and I will work on clarifying this area up immediately. Now, Terosa, what did you figure?”
“Well, Gelsing and I were trying to disengage the saw blades at the time when the hydraulic press began to push through the second run of the product but since the saw blades were stuck really good…”
“Well,” I corrected.
“well into the preceeding concrete, I figure that Hodgins must have accidentally pushed the ‘process start’ button on the other side of the saw carriage when he was working from the other side to unjam the upper saw casing.”
Hodgin!  Why wasn’t I surprised that he would be the instigator?
I looked at Terosa while I bent down to the icebucket that I had underneath the desk and held up the piece of skull with an ear on it.
“And that’s when you lost this?” I asked.
Terosa shook his head.
“Was it before or after,” I bent down and reached a little further to the ice chest and pulled out Gelsing’s left arm from the cold water, “This happened?”  Terosa and Gelsing looked at each other.
“I think I lost the arm first and then Terosa there lost the side of his face,” Gelsing responded.
I sighed.
“First off, Terosa did not lose the side of his face,” I commented with a little annoyance in the tone, “Clearly it is still here on the desk so it isn’t lost.  Secondly, stop picking at your shoulder – I cauterized the damn thing with the blow torch but if you quit picking at it you’ll pick the burnt flesh off and start bleeding all over my floor.”  Gelsing apologized though I noticed that his fingers would not stop playing with the black scorch marks. 
“Excuse me, sir, I feel a little woozy, I think I may have lost a lot of blood,” Gelsing said.  “Could I just step outside for a moment to get a little air?”I told him no because I knew that he would go out there and  would catch him having a cigarette and have to give him a warning about smoking on company property – the OHS was coming, for god’s sake, what did he think they would say if they found a cigarette butt?  They’d give the company a large fine and then where would the company be? I  let out a heavy sigh.
“Alright, moving along,” I said resignedly, “Who is responsible for the dissecting and halving of the prostitute?”  Gelsing spoke up.
“I believe you meant to say quartering, sir.”
I rolled my eyes.
“No, I did not,” I said irritably.  “Clearly the prostitute, while she was cut both length-wise and width-wise, the saw blades did not cut fully through her spine to where she would be split into separate pieces but she was firstly more filleted then turned around and cut in half – Gelsing, stop picking at your shoulder.”
“Sorry sir,” Gelsing said, “It’s just a little itchy.”
“Continuing along, who was responsible for the prostitute?” Terosa and Gelsing looked at each other then Terosa spoke up.
“Well, Hodgins figured….”
Hodgins!  That son of a bitch! I looked harshly at him but he didn’t even bat an eyelash – the man had no inkling of responsibility running through his body, I thought. He just sat there silently, not attempting to help me understand, just looking at some spot on the wall; I wondered if he even cared about how much trouble his little ‘figuring’ could cause the company.  I should have fired him long ago, the man just was inept and irresponsible – I regretted promising his wife that Hodgins would have a place here with the company after she had given me that hand job in the supply closet at last year’s Christmas party.  The disgust I felt for Hodgins deafened me to the majority of Terosa’s explanation.
“…and she had said $60 for twenty minutes – Hodgins figured that since we pooled the money it would only be fair that we each should have twenty minutes with her.” He finished with a shrug of his shoulders, “It made sense at the time.”
I leaned back in my chair, putting my hands behind my head.
“Did it occur to you that a) if you were looking to be equitable, you would have to cut the prostitute into thirds instead of attempting four – what were you going to do with the fourth piece?  And b) the orifices that are utilized in sexual gratification would have been made unusable since they were severed?”
Gelsing answered; Hodgins, the coward, said nothing.
“Well we figured that it wasn’t very fair since Terosa here is an ass man and so is Hodgins that by doing thirds one of them wouldn’t get what they like so we figured that half an ass was more equitable than no ass.  It made sense that even though I’m a boob man it wouldn’t be right if I got the pair when everyone else would only get one.”
“Plus,” Terosa added, “we’re married men, we can look but we can’t actually touch – our wives would have killed us if they found out that we had put our junk in someone else’s scrap yard.”
I leaned forward, putting my hands firmly on the desk as I took in this information.
“So you weren’t actually going to use the prostitute in the manner that she is supposed to be used?  Why the hell would you pick up a prostitute in the first place?”
“We only get a half hour for lunch,” Gelsing answered matter of factly.
“So?”
“Well, the strippers are on a forty five minute rotation so in order to see boobs or ass we’d have to come back here fifteen minutes late.”
I nodded – at least they were thinking about the company’s late policy on lunch, though it did not answer the question why they would bring a prostitute on company property as well as the unauthorized use of company property for personal use.  When I pressed the three harder, Terosa admitted that bringing the prostitute back was Hodgins’s plan.  I asked in my calmest voice what Hodgins had to say for himself.  He just looked back at me with a dull gleam in his eye.
“Hodgins!” I slammed my fists down as I stood up  from behind my desk with far more force than I intended, I could see all three men’s shake as the vibration from the desk transferred over to their legs. I went to give my most serious of glares that I usually reserved for those old ladies who paid for their grocery purchases with pennies in the express lane when clearly though the sign stated eight items or less that a carton of eggs was in fact twelve so they shouldn’t have been in that aisle in the first place only to find myself staring at air.
The audacity of that son of a bitch!    It was bad enough that the bastard had sat there silently smug the entire time while letting the other two account for their actions, but to try to escape one of my glares was completely unacceptable!  Well, Hodgins was about to find out that there was a limit to my reasonableness and he had damn well passed that point!

I marched from my desk to where Hodgins head was rolling towards the office door picked it up and unceremonilessly slammed it back on to Hodgins’s body.  I retook my seat, and with pen pointed directly at him I looked him straight in the eye.
“Hodgins, I think I have been more than fair during these proceedings,” I growled menacingly, “And you have done nothing but show disdain! I am trying to do my job the best I can, so while you may think…”
“Figure,” Terosa piped up quickly.
“Thank you…so while you may figure that this is a bunch of hooey, it does serve a purpose.  I would appreciate it if you at least had the decency to give me your attention for ten bloody minutes – this is for your benefit, not mine, you know.  I have a lot of other things I could be doing.”
Hodgins still said nothing – arrogant son of a bitch, he was. He was a lost cause, I decided that I would simply ignore the bastard for the rest of this meeting and carry on as if he actually had some pride in his job.  I pinched the bridge of my nose to attempt to stem the tension headache that was welling.
 I looked at the three men and calmly brought up the two thousand page safety manual and put it on the desk in front of me. I tapped its cover.
“If you had read the safety manual,” I said quietly then quickly flipped through the three personal files off to the side to ensure that my information was correct, “which according to your files you signed form 43-G-12 stating that you had read it, you would know the proper use of a prostitute.”
Gelsing furled his brow for a moment then spoke.
“Excuse me sir, but I don’t think that particular subject is covered in the manual.”  I sternly stared at Gelsing.  Without breaking eye contact I flipped the safety manual to the index and quickly glanced down at the page.  To verify what I had seen, or more so, what I had not seen, I used my pointer finger as I silently lip read the “P” section of the index.  I flipped to the “H”, then to the “W”.  Nowhere, it seemed, was the proper use and storage of a prostitute.  It was all very disturbing.
“Hurumph,” I said, locking eyes with Gelsing.  “It appears that you are correct that there is no section for prostitutes – obviously this is an oversight on my part and so you can’t be held responsible for something that I had not trained you for.” I made a quick note to rectify this issue before the week’s end.
 “I apologize for my lack of comprehensive coverage; it won’t happen again.”   God damn these incident reports were a pain in the ass….

Ol' Doc Barker



“Doc! Doc!”

“Oh lord! Love a duck! Mr. Thomas! This is my back yard…”

“You gotta help me!”

“…I told them, ‘Make sure it’s ten feet with barbed wire on top’, but did they listen? Nooooo…”

“I woke up this morning and I had an epiphany!”

“…See? B – B –Q…not examination table? Big difference…”

“I’ve got a disease!”

“And I’m wearing Bermuda shorts, not a stethoscope…”

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought about this doc….”

“…Does this even look like a tongue depressor? It’s called a spatula…”

“I’ve noticed that when anyone does anything despicable, they blame it on having a disease instead of themselves…”

“Mr. Thomas, can’t you just phone the clinic on Monday? It’s a lot easier to avoid you there…

(from the kitchen window) “Who are you talking to dear? Oh, it’s him…Don’t let him near the trees! The last time he was here the dogs ran around confused for a week …”

“I obviously have some sort of disease that prevents me from having sex!”

“What prevents you from having sex is in your genes”

“Hey, that’s low; besides it’s not the size… it’s the motion of the ocean…”

“Isn’t there a bar stool you should be sitting on?”

“But if you say that celibacy is a disease, then I could get help for my condition!”

“Your only condition is that you have a foot fetish: the problem is that it’s your own foot that you put in your mouth…”

“Just what are you hinting at?”

“Celibacy is a lifestyle choice…not a disease.”

“So is drinking, gambling, shooting up or going on line, but they’re considered diseases now! I went to the bar last night and (a loud sob) nothing! (Sharp intake of mucus back into nose) I really, really tried, doc, but nothing, nada, zippo!”

“And you’re surprised? I still consider it a medical mystery that you’re not a virgin!”

“I did every smooth move I know…I drank heavily enough to make everything I said utterly brilliant…I called every chick, ‘babe’…I selected an Indigo Girls song for the jupebox…I even ordered a paralyzer and made pornographic bubble sculptures…I even combed my hair!...I…I…(snot and tears so heavy in the throat now)..I drank a wine spritzer…A wine spritzer… But nothing!”

“…Move to a small town, they said, it’s more peaceful relaxing, they said… listen, Mr. Thomas, have you ever considered moving to somewhere…Where women have very low standards? Say, oh, I don’t know, far far far away from me? I hear it’s pretty nice in Antarctica this time of year…”

(Wiping nose on arm, leaving a large shiny line to shine in the sunlight) “Give it to me straight, doc…is it terminal? Am I sentenced for the rest of my life dating the palm sisters?”

“Did you run out of coffee again, Mr. Thomas? Seriously, don’t buy the tins, buy the pallets…”

“I’m serious! I’ve got a disease!”

“Look, diseases are debilitating, what makes you think celibacy could even be considered a disease?”

“Well, at night, if I roll onto my stomach, I get an extreme pain in my groin…”

“Get a softer bed …”

“I can’t look at a woman and think about nailing her”

“That’s called being a guy”

“I wear sweat pants and pray for a good strong wind”

“Again, it’s called being a guy…”

“I stand outside the plastic surgery clinics every day…”

“That’s a little creepy…”

“…in the back by the dumpster in hopes of seeing some skin…I mean nose  job, chin job….you can extrapolate cuz it’s got ‘job’ in it so it’s sorta close to hand job or blow job, right?”

“Ok, that’s a lot creepy, but that doesn’t make you sick…”

“I dreamt that I was in a threesome with Chloe and Kim Kardashian...by choice!  I-I-I moved the wrong way when I was doing Chloe and fell in, doc, Kim and I fell in…we couldn’t find my way out…spent the rest of my life foraging for scrap pieces of banana and egg plant that had made their way up and sleeping on a hammock strung between her fallopian tubes while Kim kept on asking if her hips made her ass look fat...”

“…Let’s get a place in town, she said. The kids will be able to walk to school and we won’t have to worry about the weather, she said…”

“I wake in the morning and everything is stuck to me…”

“Nightly emissions are normal…”

“But my cat’s really starting to get pissed about going into the shower every morning..”

“Go into medicine, they said, you’ll love it, they said. I knew I should have become a lion tamer…”

“But I try as hard as I can, but I still can’t stop being celibate…it can’t be my fault! If a person can embezzle fifty thousand dollars for their company and then blame it on a casino, there has to be something I can blame this on, damn it!”

“Listen, you evoke the fear that most women have that if they ever conceived with you, the fetus wouldn’t know up from down and they’d end up as a footnote in a medical text as the first orally presented birth…
“So what would be the treatment then?

“Treatment? Caring…sensitivity…cooperating…thoughtfulness…”

(From deep within the house) “You better say foreplay if you know what’s good for you! Or you’ll find celibacy is classified as infectious…”

“…FOREPLAY, you know, parts of your personality that makes you desirable to women…you have to fake sincerity …”

“Does it come in pill form or can I just do a patch thingy?”

“Uh, it’s not something you can buy…”

“What about a surgical solution?”

“Hmmm, removal of your vocal chords may help me quite a bit….no, no, sorry; it’s just the way it is…”

“So there’s no hope then…I’ve just have to put on a brave face and accept my fate…”

“You know, there’s a lot to be said for holistic medicine – maybe you should discuss this with the acupuncturist down the road…”