A new 'group grope'

Okay, let's all have it. Follow Dennis' "rules". Cheif curmudgeons can be snotty when riled. The idea is to write as "bad" a story as we can manage here...

It was a dark & stormy night. From the throes of an empassioned dream, Sarah awoke; pulse thready from the uncertainty of knowing if she was awake or still asleep. Her massive Maine Coon cat Izzy yowled in fear & sprang from the bed, fleeing as though the very devils of Hades were hot on his tail.

Sarah sat, trembling, beads of sweat slowly accumulating on her brow. What WAS that sound from down the hall? Had the recently repaired, (albeit hastily), floorboard near the top of the stairs sprung loose because of the humidity from the thundering storm? Was one of the peely painted shutters on the other side of the narrow but charming Gothic house slamming against the mossy stone?

Uncertain but determined to face her fears bravely, Sarah trembling; drew back the comforter & pawed on the end of the massive bed for her sweater. Damn! The cat must have knocked it off in his precipitous flight. Shakily, she knelt forward until she reached the edge of the bed & trembling still, slowly reached down & blindly pawed at the cold flagstone floor. No luck. Hoping her trembling was due to cold & not rank cowardice she carefully stuck her toe down, blindly reaching for the floor. She swept her foot back & forth until she found her old slippers, then rushed to the closet & grabbed a robe. She carefully felt her way to the door & grabbed the flashlight hanging by a small hook just to the left of the light switch.

She debated turning on the light but decided if there was something BAD OUT THERE, she'd have the advantage of night vision if she left the light out. Closing her eyes, she slowly,carefully eased the door open, hoping for once it wouldn't creak, sounding like a scalded cat. She drifted through the tiny opening she made, being thin enough to be able to slip through less than a foot of space & carefully closed the door behind her. Drawing a deep breath, for courage as well as extra oxygen, she started her careful way to the head of the stairs...

next!

Feeling a quivery sensation vibrate within the region of her coccyx like a loose slat on the outhouse she had built as a fortieth birthday present for George in the dark and eerily rustling cornfield that lay directly beneath her tenth-floor Gothic condominium window, she pressed her palms to her clammy, palpitating anatomy and forced herself to stay calm.

It might be that giant headless gorilla that lived in my closet for ten years and terrorized me when I was a child growing up in the Poona Convent School in India, she thought.

Discarding her robe and slippers, she firmly straightened the crimson wetsuit she habitually wore in lieu of pajamas due to an ongoing but highly treatable psychiatric disorder, then inched slowly down the darkened stairs metre by metre, the DSM-lV clutched firmly in her hand like a talisman she had seen the cannibals in New Guinea sling around their necks while she camped in the jungle with Rodney to ward off evil spirits, feet strapped into the ski boots Doctor Buxton had recommended she wear in order to slow her pulse to a molasses-dripping tempo when she felt panic attacks like these coming on, attacks that all too often threatened to shatter her fragile psyche, a psyche still so tragically warped from three years of traumatic duty as a frontline waitress in a Dubai IHOP during the Gulf War, yes these terrifying flashbacks still haunted her even now thirteen years later after undergoing a radical career change to become a prominent Member of Parliament despite the fact she had to divorce George to do it, but to hell with George, she told herself viciously, as her eyes ran wildly around the scuffed hallway linoleum in ever expanding vortexes looking for the origin of that creepy sound that was causing the taste buds on her tongue to squirt septic juices onto her uvula, the accompanying heartburn from regurgitated gastric acids making her feel even more dizzy and nauseated than from gorging down that leftover moo goo gai pan earlier tonight while dancing with Antonio in the living room in order to make Rodney jealous, that lying gigolo--

What was that creepy noise?

"Rodney?"

She aims the flashlight downward into a well of darkness deeper than the pit outside where she dug the outhouse foundation for George as an excuse to make him guilty because he left her for that cow of a professor of nuclear physics who turned out to be only bright enough to find last-ditch employment at Oxford.

Suddenly, a low moan that sounds like a knackered tomcat, or maybe a sheep, or maybe even a platypus like the kind she used to hunt with bow and arrow and roast over open coals with Rodney when she camped in the New Guinea jungle during those complimentary political junkets makes her jump.

Then, a voice yammers from the gloom, a subliminal mutter similar to the open mouth radio host whose afternoon drive show she despises because it runs at the same time she schedules her parliamentary press briefings, which means no reporters show up to listen to her weekly policy announcements because they're all packed into the parliamentary press lounge listening to the open mouth radio host instead.

"O, to be one of you again who sees chemtrails as they truly are!"

Who is this? she wonders. A man? If so, it's sure as hell not Rodney. No, because his primary interest is UFOs, particularly since at age nine he was abducted by a gang of bizarrely proportioned grey-skinned aliens while bicycling to widow Platt's house for his weekly cello lesson, although what actually went on there with him and widow Platt was much more than musical and the authorities were long suspicious of it, even though they couldn't charge the widow with anything since Rodney refused to talk about those sessions being the high IQ genius he was, having comprehensively analyzed all the future ramifications of prosecuting his beloved cello teacher and then deciding against it, instead becoming determined to save her the humiliation of going to the slammer for teaching him all those unusual things, because, as an orphan, he was projecting all his neediness onto her and truly did believe he loved her, when it was obvious to even the most obtuse mental health professional who studied the case in latter years that his belief was really nothing more than sick delusion, widow Platt having selfishly preyed upon his naivete, the poor bastard.

Sara adjusts the squeaking wetsuit and calls out loudly, "Who's there?"

"Verily, in my youth, I did worship chemtrails, too. But woe, age and dimming sight hath cast their blight upon me, and my faith hath crumbled to dust. Yea, now in my dotage I pray for some miracle to illuminate my twilight so that I may stroll again amongst you, looking upward, transfixed, marveling at evaporating condensation, divining with unwavering insight its insalubrious subtleties and carcinogenic tinctures, my cumbersome gas mask and portable backup respirator notwithstanding."

"Hello?" Still unable to divine the speaker, Sara hazards a step downward.

"Help me, ye enlightened! Facilitate this miracle! Help me, your blind brethren, to dispel my shadows! Bombard me with barium! Mire me with mycoplasma! And lo, by all that is skyborne and spider web sticky, I shalt envisage those mystical chemtrails again!"

"Hello?" calls Sara, emboldened now. "Who's there?"

"Hold on," says the voice. "Wait a second. False alarm. No help needed. Damn me if I didn't have my ultra-dark trifocal shades on. A memory lapse, don't you know. Travails of the over-ninety. Sorry for the scare. I'll be back with you in ten minutes. I'm going out to the terrace now to watch the evening show. What an excellent facility this is. The Magdalen Mission Mercy Seat. From the psychiatric wing, there's an unrestricted view of the western sky. Seven nights per week, ten KC-135s circle overhead spraying the graves of the recently dispatched with herbal-fungicide. I'll take a photo."

The front door opens, then shuts.

Silence.

Sara fumbles along the wall and flicks the light switch.

No one.

The cavernous sunken living room is empty, empty of corporeal beings, that is, other than her, of course, although the oriental rug is still dominated in preternatural fashion by the Steinway grand piano Rodney gave to her in celebration of their return from New Guinea after escaping the cannibals with all their body parts intact even though she's not musical, she muses, observing the piano crouching there, a glossy black monster, white keys grinning back at her like Rodney's dentures, which reminds her, now that she thinks about it, Rodney is indeed starting to piss her off the way he keeps insisting on calling her widow Platt--

So what in Uncle Bob just happened here?

The loonie spoke of the Magdalen Mission Mercy Seat?

Is that what he said?

Patently nuts.

She locks the deadbolt on the front door, glad of the fact she changed the locks after divorcing George, but still uneasy in the knowledge a deranged psychotic managed to invade her premises, when from without comes an authoritative knock.

Ten kilometres distant, within the mentally-challenged bowels of Parliament's Defence Department offices, custodian Rodney Flipoff, Ph.D, shifts a pile of cardboard boxes to reveal a reinforced steel door standing virtually invisible in the creeping shadows.

Using a fake passkey he was forced to buy for two bucks in a downtown pawnshop because the Minister of War laughed off his lucrative bribe for a legitimate key, he unlocks the deadbolt, opens the door and activates the dim, fly-specked bulb.

Dimension-wise, the area he enters is identical to the closet that so terrorized Sara as a five-year-old in the Convent School in Poona, except there's no headless gorilla present.

Dearth of acephalous primates notwithstanding, the confined space is jammed floor to ceiling with electronic apparatus, the humming steel cases lit by dials, gauges and LED readouts reminiscent of microwaves, food processors and high-speed whizzers (these last being somewhat illegal) found in the kitchens of wealthy Eurotrash gourmands and feckless Food Channel cling-ons.

Rodney, nineteen years old, yet appearing considerably older thanks to congenital baldness, Brewer's Droop and second-hand dentures, squeezes his ectomorphic frame into the narrow compartment, singeing the ass of his dungarees on hot steel, yet in his focused state of concentration remaining unaware of the reek.

Bending low, he flexes his long fingers, then with one swift movement, presses his hands to the high-voltage gonads of his pride and joy, a portable Tesla-powered death ray generator bought two days previous for twenty bucks from a paroled corporate IT executive infamous for peddling such crap on Ebay, although through some darkly ironic twist that mirrors Rodney's own inadequacy, this sexually symbolic item actually functions.

Indeed, thinks Rodney, as he punches in the coordinates of Sara's condominium. That two-timing slut will see just how it works soon enough. Ditto for Antonio. Antonio this, Antonio that. Antonio is Spanish. Antonio plays Flamenco guitar. Antonio drives a Ferarri. Well, that's just too fragging bad for Antonio. I'll fry them both to backbacon--

Death ray coordinates set, he makes a call on his cellphone.

"Yes?" Arrogant male voice.

"Senor Antonio Bugatti?"

"Si."

"My name is Egon Rothschild lll. I'm press secretary for the Honorable Sarah Burlingame-Haliburton-Ramsbottom."

"Sara? Si, si. What can I do for you, Senor Rothschild?"

"I'm afraid there's been an accident. Ms. Burlingame-Haliburton-Ramsbottom has fallen down the stairs in her condominium and fractured her right tibia. Fortunately, Doctor Buxton and I were here at the time overseeing a therapy session. The doctor has applied a cast and put her under sedation. Before she went under, Ms. Burlingame-Haliburton-Ramsbottom asked me to let you know she's fine. But she wants you to be with her immediately."

"My darling angel. My moo goo gai pan baby. Need she ask? Of course I will be with her. I shall fly to her at once."

Rodney cuts the connection.

Geez, what a--

He checks his digital watch.

Let me see. Ferarri. Eight kilometre drive. Musclebound troglodyte will be drooling on her front door in precisely…

He clicks a switch on the death ray generator's instrument panel.

A cliched but opportune digital readout blinks on.

10:01…10:00…9:59…9:58…

Instantly, a deafening turbine whine fills the humid compartment.

Smiling, Rodney folds his arms over his chest and counts down the death ray's ignition sequence.

"8:31…8:30…8:29…"

Returning in schismatic fashion to the authoritative knock on Sarah's front door, the term schism in this context having no religious connotation, but instead serving to characterize the disjointed literary technique that underpins this groaning chronicle, Sara presses her heaving bosom against the discount walnut veneer that peels in strips from her side of the locked portal due to the shoddily applied laxative recommended to the condominium's contractor nine years ago in lieu of polymer adhesive by a sadistic part-time clerk at Home Hardware who ran a lucrative, fetish-oriented pornography business in his basement for the exclusive titillation of rich podiatrists, oral surgeons and prelates of dubious credential, although the clerk was never arrested for this activity because the uncle of his brother-in-law's recently deceased tai-kwon-do instructor allegedly knew a waiter who once photographed the Prime Minister practicing the piscatorial art while boarding the government's Challenger jet at Pearson International Airport during a raging snowstorm in winter, this damaging photograph having since filtered into the clerk's possession via a convoluted series of unrelated deaths and subsequent probating of wills, torts and bequests to the present day, meaning, in short, thanks to this unnatural confluence of coincidental events that decreed him legal custodian of this photograph, the clerk now enjoys unprecedented political leverage that allows him to blithely engage in immoral, venal and putridly disgusting transgressions which are beyond the Law's power to prosecute, as well as being far beyond the scope of this humble narrative to enumerate, besides which he is a minor character in this adventure anyway, ergo he deserves no further mention.

As she peeps through the aptly named peephole, Sarah sees a bulging, red-veined eyeball gawp back her like a shriveled crabapple, or it might even be a miniature tombstone, she thinks, just like the ones I consistently dug up in the sinister cornfield outside where I built George's outhouse in minus-28 cold last January, or yet in fact, it might even be the shrunken head of my beloved but brutally murdered Japanese guide, Yojimbo, who valiantly gave his life to spare mine from the New Guinea cannibals last spring (or stupidly, perhaps, as investigative journalists have since reported), while Rodney fled in the opposite direction in his desperate but ultimately successful bid to deflect poisoned blow darts, lewd whistles and heckling laughter--

Flinging open the door after struggling for some minutes to disengage the insidiously intricate North Korean deadbolt mechanism that may or may not be terrorist related, she shuffles her lead-weighted ski boots into a dim corridor modeled after the Munsters' family residence situated just around the corner from her tall, narrow, ten-story Gothic condominium/house on 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

Except for rats and other assorted rodents of unmentionable description chewing the richly varnished mahogany wainscoting into matchwood, the hallway is deserted, decomposing carpet choked with rotten vegetables from a failed interior composting experiment she initiated in order to better dispose of leftover pumpkin rinds, kumquat pits and eucalyptus bark frequently on sale at Safeway.

Wrinkling her nose at the stench, she squints into the gloom, the lone ceiling fixture casting a wan pool of muddy yellow light, ominous shadows groping the corners like the black-gloved fingers of giant, amputated hands.

She gasps in relief.

No one.

No deranged lunatic in a goalie mask.

No crazy paparazzi hoping to interview the past owner of this residence, reclusive weight-loss guru, Nugent W. Shlubnik.

No Jehovah's Witnesses, Sunny-Dee juice addicts or freelance chiropodists trolling for foot jobs--

Trying to slow her rapidly thumping heart that now beats within her ribcage like an accordion being wielded by a newly fired postal employee experiencing a manic bipolar phase that only polka playing will assuage (but tragically, not always), Sara turns back and reaches for the doorknob, a miniature brass aardvark of unsavory aspect, not unlike the youthful cretin of a sandwich maker she punched in the face yesterday at Tim Horton's as an expedient way to teach him etiquette--

Then she notices the note nailed to the door.

Pulse rate speeding up again like an Olympic sprinter leaping from the starting blocks, or perhaps like an Olympic pharmacologist leaping for his prescription pad, she leans closer to examine the note in more detail, the reek of rancid lemon oil and formaldehyde sharp in her nostrils, much as it was in Dubai thirteen years ago when she wiped tables in that sleazy IHOP with a rotten dishcloth, all the while knowing beyond question that her strength and intelligence and forbearance were absolutely useless here and that in order to escape this lowest rung of despair she must first plumb the bottomless trenches of sordidness--

Now, to her horror, she realizes the note is not actually nailed to the door at all, but is tacked there with two bloody incisors identical to those on Rodney's dentures. However, unlike Rodney's second-hand upper plate, carved from discarded plastic bleach bottles for no fee by a retired, born-again dental mechanic, these teeth appear to be human.

Or are they?

She knows from her own past experience working with coffins and cadavers at Simian's Funeral Emporium on Main Street during her formative teenage years, that certain teeth, especially incisors such as these, are often found in vampires.

Recoiling from their sticky touch, she carefully extracts the note and unfolds the stiff yellow parchment.

You are in dire peril (she reads).

If you want to live, flee this building at once.

Go now!

Do not delay!

Danger is imminent!

Leave!

Signed--

The signature is so blurred, she can't read it.

What in Uncle Bob is going on now? she wonders.

Then she hears a sudden, deafening whine, louder than a squealing mother weasel defending its newborn kits from marauding kangaroos in the desolate Austrian outback. The sound shakes the walls and shakes her skull until her teeth rattle like the wind-up dentures she gave Rodney as a joke last Christmas, although he failed to appreciate the humour.

Blinding red light fills the hallway, searing her vision.

The heat--

Groaning, hands pressed to her eyes, she crumples in a jumble of flailing limbs.

Nerve synapses twitching spastically, she slips from consciousness, cheaply lacquered maroon wallpaper igniting around her in a halo of flame and smoke exactly the way the wallpaper hanger who slapped it on five years ago suspected it would ignite because, being a four-pack-a-day smoker, he set it on fire when he stubbed out a butt on it, being pleased to see, before he doused the flames with a six-pack from his lunchbox, that the whole dang thing went up real easy.

Stuffed like a two-hundred kilo lard bucket behind the wheel of his '62 Ferrari 250 GTO 4 litre prototype that is, in truth, a cheesy fibreglass knock-off, a fact that he, Antonio, does not know, having purchased the vehicle in good faith last Tuesday from a reputedly honest purveyor of ultra-class, exotic pre-owned automobiles in Cow Pat, Saskatchewan, where he, Antonio formally unveiled his newest potash refinery as a sop to his late father, a stern, cruel laxative manufacturer who unremittingly demeaned him psychologically for thirty-eight years until he, the father, succumbed last February from acute gastritis, while even then, sprawled on his deathbed breaking wind, still found strength to castigate Antonio, calling him a flabby, revolting, useless, greasy, pimp-like hydrophobic who would inherit none of his billions, never mind the hydrophobia was Sarah's fault, she having unwittingly infected Antonio with it upon her return from New Guinea after completing her last free junket there to democratize the cannibals, Rodney having taken the prior flight out alone for the sake of political propriety, although Sarah's flawless porcelain complexion showed no hint of hydrophobia at that time because, as a child growing up in the Poona Convent School, the well-meaning but medically-challenged nuns had pumped her ripe young veins full of heroin, quinine, opium and sundry vaccines on the word of Doctor Buxton, who had served as her faithful guardian for six years since militant New Guinea cannibals who despised religious proselytizers unexpectedly captured her devout, missionary parents and lopped off their arms, slit their abdomens, excised their duodenums and sawed off their heads, purposely denying them all semblance of hope and dignity as they broiled alive, screaming, in the ludicrous but sacredly revered Maytag washing machine suspended over a roaring communal bonfire the village children erected for such festivities, whereafter Doctor Buxton, despite his life-long, heretical religious views, vowed to raise his orphaned young charge in moral fashion, ergo, enlisting the nuns, he overcame his crippling sobriety problem and sought solace in Uncle Bob's Temple--

However, at the present time, Antonio possesses only rudimentary knowledge of these long-ago activities, which is fortuitous, since his brick-sized Gucci-loafer now floors the accelerator, shooting the red Ferrari down Main Street like a galloping ostrich, flattening jaywalkers and homeless mutual funds salesmen on its way toward Sarah's narrow, ten-storey, Gothic condominium/house now fully engulfed in flame as Rodney's Tesla-powered death ray dissolves its granite masonry into dribbly globs of magma.

Fire truck sirens numbing his eardrums, Antonio screeches to a halt and wrestles his gelatinous torso from the Ferrari's cramped cockpit.

Thoughts awhirl, he lumbers onto the sidewalk, bulldozing through drunken gawkers, thrill-seekers and illegal aliens of non-extraterrestrial origin, who gabble and point upward, falling chunks of burning wainscoting and roasted rat buttocks bouncing off their excited, upturned faces as they watch a giant, disk-shaped UFO rotate like a weightless nuclear centrifuge in the warm June sunshine overhead.

But Antonio is oblivious to this distraction.

Cheeks scalded, toupee crisped, $950 Armani suitpants smoldering, he reaches the smoking front door.

Sarah? Where is Sarah? Did she get out?

Glancing back at the mob, he sees her nowhere.

Inside?

She's still upstairs?

Mawkish sentiment tweaks his intestines.

Uncle Bob save us, she may indeed be frying to death this very second, subcutaneous fat melting from her petite skeletal structure as the flames crackle, her exquisite face yet unmarred, her features bespeaking a mold so delicate as to preclude all thought of intellectual operation--

This last being unfair, of course, since, in truth, Sara earned a Ph.D in Political Science from Poona University, and if anyone can escape this inferno, it is her--

As Antonio reaches for the doorknob, he can't help remembering his state of mind at his dying father's bedside, which scares him, because it reaffirms his belief in the value of human love, arguing from the epistemology of Uncle Bob that one must accept the constructivist paradigm of universal empathy.

Meaning I really did care about that foul bastard after all?

Certainly, he knows full well the specious argument of the postpatriarchialists, who sneeringly discount the importance of human love. However, since to them, human love is contextualised into a subcapitalist paradigm of discourse that sublimates emotion as a paradox, and since the characteristic theme of the textual paradigm of discourse is the futility of subdialectic society, he rejects their sophistry completely.

Which is why Sarah loves me, he knows.

Buoyed by this knowledge, he wrenches open the door and lunges inside, heedless of the oily black smoke and toxic fumes, recalling as he blunders up the stairs the day he and Sarah first met, yes, that afternoon that now feels so long ago, when in fact it was only yesterday, both of them confused souls, who, by fateful serendipity, found themselves thrown together in Uncle Bob's Temple on Main Street, she just back from New Guinea, he newly returned from Cow Pat, Saskatchewan, strangers in search of elusive spiritual answers, inexplicably drawn to each like magnets, their naked sexual desire so strong at first contact, they were sorely tempted to strip in that sacred place and sin with wanton, lustful egregiousness.

But they didn't, instead choosing to do so in the adjacent Shopper's Drug Mart parking lot ten minutes later.

"Sarah!" Antonio plows up the steep stairs, flaming orange carpet lapping his ample back like a hot tongue, his rocketing diastolic blood pressure ballooning a vein in his right frontal lobe, a potentially deadly weakness he knows nothing about, fortunately.

Ten flights up, crawling now, dizzy from smoke inhalation, blind in the searing, crackling blackness, boxer shorts ablaze, blobs of molten alligator hide dripping from his loafers like liquefied rhino fat, he gropes forward, nose to floor, charred pumpkin rinds and kumquat pits crumbling beneath his curled, questing fingers.

Desperate, he keeps going.

"Sarah!"

Then he feels a hand, attached to an arm, which is encased in a clammy rubber wetsuit.

"Sarah!"

Limp, prone, unconscious.

Pulse?

He grips her wrist.

Yes.

Still breathing.

Get her out--

He tries to lift her, but his strength fails.

Eyes streaming, windpipe choked, he sags down beside her, floor buckling beneath them in a shower of blazing sparks.

Sarah opens her eyes.

Darkness.

Silence.

What is this place?

Am I dead?

Damp air wafts across her cheek, soothing, cool.

At least I have a face.

What about the rest of me?

Hands? Feet?

She tries to flex fingers, toes.

Can't.

She can manipulate only lips and tongue.

Fascinating.

Voice?

"Hello? Anyone?" Her words issue flat and lifeless, as though deadened by acoustic tile.

Unsettled now, she calls again, louder: "Someone?"

"Sarah?"

"Antonio?" She hears his voice close by, muffled.

"Si. Listen, I have to ask you something."

"What is it?" says Sarah.

"I realize I hardly know you, but I have to ask anyway."

"Say it."

"What do you think of Jean-Paul Sartre?"

"Damn, Antonio. What kind of question is that? He's dead."

"I know he's dead."

"Then why are you asking about him?"

"Right now, I find myself confronting certain basic issues of existence. Death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness--"

"Is that all?" says Sarah. "Listen. Let me explain it you. Death is inevitable. So get over it. As for freedom, freedom in an existential sense is nothing but the absence of external structure. Think of it this way. The world we're born into lacks inherent structure. Hence, it's up to us to create structure. Okay? Which brings us to your third concern: isolation. Isolation recognizes that no matter how close you and I may become, a gap will always remain between us, meaning we'll always be alone. Ergo, since death is inevitable, and since we construct our own world, and since we're ultimately alone, then, yes, your concern about meaningless is valid. Life is totally meaningless. Polish up your Samuel Beckett. You're going to need him."

"Don't be smart," says Antonio.

"I am smart," says Sarah.

"Well, I disagree with your argument," says Antonio. "We're not alone. We have Uncle Bob."

"Uncle Bob can go play with himself."

"I thought you believed in him?"

"Are you joking?" says Sarah. "Listen, I have a wide range of available choices. I'm radically free to act independently, free of Uncle Bob or of any other determining principle. I have no pre-defined moral or spiritual essence beyond what I make for myself. Understand? There is no Uncle Bob."

"Appalling," says Antonio. "If you feel this way, why were you in his temple yesterday?"

"To be candid, I was working out a plan to burn it down."

"You'll never reach Paradise now."

"There is no Paradise, Antonio. We die, that's it, end of story."

"If that's true, where are we now?"

"No idea," says Sarah. "But I think, therefore I am. So I know I'm still corporeal. And so are you."

"How can you be sure? We could be in the afterlife. The waiting room. Awaiting judgement. The believers move on. The unbelievers, well--"

"Ridiculous," says Sarah.

As she speaks, a narrow, vertical strip of illumination appears in the blackness to her right, expanding in width like a sliding door opening into sunlight.

Preoccupied, she doesn't notice the phenomenon.

Then brightness strikes her eyes.

Hurts.

She blinks.

Now what is that?

A tall silhouette fills the brilliant portal, head and shoulders, a hooded figure.

"Welcome to Uncle Bob's Paradise," says a rich, male voice.

Antonio gasps.

"Would you mind?" says Sarah. "We're trying to conduct a philosophical discussion."

"Right this way." Gesturing with its hand, the figure steps back and disappears.

All at once, pins and needles tingle Sarah's fingers and toes.

Eight seconds later, she finds herself standing beside Antonio in the funkiest room she's ever seen.

If I can call it a room, she thinks.

Transparent circular walls support a softly glowing ceiling. Beneath her bare feet: nothing. Or at least it appears to be nothing, except the nothingness is toasty warm and supports her weight like spongy linoleum.

Glancing down, she sees, far below, a city block clogged with fire trucks, police cars, gawkers. Smoking crater where her condo stood, and ironically, the adjacent cornfield and George's outhouse still intact.

The view gives her vertigo.

So she returns her gaze to the horizontal.

Mid-room stands a toilet. Padded black leather seat and back support. Clamped to the right armrest, computer screen and keyboard. Clamped to the left, telephone and fax machine.

A command chair?

Whose?

Sarah glances at Antonio.

His confused expression mirrors her own jumbled thoughts.

"Ms. Haliburton-Burlingame-Ramsbottom, Mr. Antonio Bugatti, this is my chair, and you are in my ship." Astride the seat, a hooded figure shimmers into view. On the front of its robe, stylized oil wells. Caption: A Crude Proposition. The hood falls back. An old man gazes back. Short white hair. Narrow face. Cerebral forehead. Silver-rimmed spectacles.

He smiles in kindly fashion. "Call me Uncle Bob."

Antonio grunts. "You're not Uncle Bob."

"That I am, I assure you."

"You look nothing like him. Your portrait in the temple is totally different. What is this? A joke?"

Uncle Bob spreads his hands, palms upward. "Okay, I'm busted. I admit it. As a deity, I'm utterly fraudulent. But I'm still Uncle Bob."

Antonio collapses, weeping.

"Let me get this clear," says Sarah. "Your omniscient power is entirely fake?"

"Absolutely," says Uncle Bob. "I buy my god-related techware on the black market."

"How very," says Sarah. "So what do you want with us?"

"To be candid, nothing. You're here by happenstance. When your condo began to burn, our sensors detected you inside. We brought you up here for temporary safe-keeping."

And how long do we have to stay here? wonders Sarah.

A voice issues from the PA. "Fighter jets, Uncle Bob. Range, 3000 metres. Closing fast."

"Initiate cloaking," orders Uncle Bob.

"Cloaking?" says Sarah. "You must be kidding."

"I never kid about Beta Zetoid technology," says Uncle Bob.

"Beta Zetoid? I thought the Romulans developed the first cloaking device."

"Romulans are the invention of hack TV writers."

beep.

Phone on the command chair lights up.

"Excuse me." Uncle Bob lifts the receiver and turns away, shielding his mouth with his hand. "Yes?"

"It works," gabbles a voice.

Uncle Bob regards the bubbling pool of lava that covers 1313 Mockingbird Lane below. "Obviously," he says. "But how will it fare against...the primary target?"

"Don't worry, Bobbie,"

"I dislike your familiarity. It's Uncle Bob to you."

"Sorry. Uncle Bob. Like I say, don't worry. Appointed time comes, primary target is toast."

"Ensure it is. You're not my sole arms supplier." He cuts the connection and turns back to address Sarah. "Pardon my rudeness."

Sarah shrugs.

"Your attire is comfortable?" says Uncle Bob.

She and Antonio wear white, terry-cloth robes.

"Fine," she says.

"Anything you need? Food? Refreshment? Extreme physical makeover?"

"No, thanks."

Uncle Bob grins. "I thought not, a fine specimen like you. Actually, I was referring to your friend."

"Antonio? What do you have in mind?"

"He's obese. We can fix that." Uncle Bob presses a button on the console. A trim, well-dressed, middle-aged woman shimmers into sight.

"My consultant," says Uncle Bob. "Ms. Nugent W. Shlubnik."

For a second, Sarah can't place the name. Then she remembers. "The reclusive weight-loss guru?"

"The same," says Ms. Shlubnik, shaking hands. "I used to own your condo. I work for Uncle Bob now."

"Small world," says Sarah.

"Here's the deal, Ms. Shlubnik," says Uncle Bob. "That sobbing tub of goo over there needs an overhaul. Think you can swing it?"

Ms. Shlubnik surveys Antonio's huddled, blubbering form. Then she opens her briefcase. Withdrawing two heads of cabbage, she walks over and presses the vegetables into Antonio's hands. "Here's what you do, son. Eat these raw. You have laxatives?"

"Plenty. My--my late father manufactured them."

"Excellent. Then you're all set. Have a seat. Press the buzzer when you're done."

Uncle Bob stands and waves Antonio to the command chair.

As Antonio sits, an opaque cone shields him like a tent.

Sarah wrinkles her nose. "Raw cabbage? As a weight-loss diet, isn't that passe?"

Ms. Shlubnik shakes her head. "My cabbage is genetically modified. It has special properties."

"Such as?"

"Observe."

From within the cone, sudden hoarse screams issue.

Sarah steps forward. "Antonio--"

Pulling her back, Ms. Shlubnik says, "So. How's the weather down there? I haven't been off ship in thirteen months."

Strangled shrieks now, accompanied by loud, violent thuds.

"Unseasonably warm for June," says Ms. Shlubnik.

Hysterical wails. More thuds, followed by violent expulsions of gas that sound like huge zippers opening and closing.

More screaming.

"Are you sure he's all right?" says Sarah.

"Perfectly," says Uncle Bob. "Ms. Shlubnik designed the chair. That's the beauty of it."

"Nice cornfield," says Ms. Shlubnik, gazing downward.

All at once, the buzzer.

zzzt...zzzzt...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzt.

"A fine harvest," adds Ms. Shlubnik. "Whose outhouse is that?"

"Let him out," says Sarah.

zzzzt...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

"Let him out!"

Ms. Shlubnik thumbs a switch.

The cone dissolves.

Antonio crawls toward them, sweaty, disheveled, robe in tatters around his waist.

Sarah blinks in disbelief.

She can't help herself.

"Antonio?"

Is it him?

This tall, lean, athletic Adonis? Where did he get those wide shoulders. That square jaw? That twenty-eight-inch waist--?

"Antonio?"

"Si," he babbles. "Si, si."

"Miraculous, isn't it?" says Uncle Bob. "Thank you, Ms. Shlubnik. Your work is done. "

The woman smiles and disappears.

"Did you upgrade his brain, too?" says Sarah.

"Sorry. We only reduce. We don't enhance."

"Too bad. Damn, I miss Rodney. He's brilliant."

Uncle Bob gives her a sharp look.

"How long do you intend to keep us here, anyway?" says Sarah.

"You're free to leave at any time," says uncle Bob.

"Then I'll leave now."

"Preferred destination?"

"Straight down," says Sarah. "Middle of the cornfield."

"Sure?"

"Positive."

"Him, too?"

Sarah nods. "Both of us."

"Clothing?"

"Yeah, we'd prefer clothing."

At once, she's standing in the hot, dusty cornfield, noon sun warming her scalp, tall rows of cornstalks creaking in the breeze, George's outhouse directly before her. She looks down at herself. T-shirt. Jeans. Sneakers. Antonio beside her, dressed the same.

He pats his pockets, looks up at the empty sky and shakes his fist. "Sonuva. You stole my car keys--"

Abruptly, the outhouse door creaks open.

A hand reaches out and yanks him inside.

The door slams.

It happens so fast, Sarah can barely comprehend what she saw.

What now?

She opens the door and peers inside.

Dead ahead, a torchlit marble staircase descends steeply into deep gloom.

Well, that's different, she thinks.

I sure didn't build it that way.

"Antonio?"

Her voice echoes.

No answer.

Okay, fine. Parliament's in recess. I'll go find the guy. I have time--

Lifting a torch from an iron wall bracket, she runs down the steps at a quick jog.