Modified story from 10 years ago...
Storytime, kids...
“Easy [Rawlins] has that ironic and detached knowingness of people who are accustomed to being lied to.” - Professor Robert R. Carringer
I called the Devil last night, but all of the lines were busy. Kind of strange, since I was calling at 3am, and the flyer they slipped under the front door of my apartment said that operators were available twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-six-yeah, that’s what it says-days a year.
I guess maybe they get pretty busy during the winter months. Cabin fever and Seasonal Affective Disorder hits some people pretty hard. I wonder what people deep in the throes of snow-induced depression ask for. A mansion in the Bahamas? Or maybe they just ask for one day with sun, one day when it isn’t dark by the time they get home from work.
I finally got through, but was immediately put on hold. Ironically, on the television, CNN was reporting how the Treasury Department was trying in vain to get an injunction or dispensation cap placed on how much a person could get for their soul. A market analyst in a tweed jacket with a moustache that had eaten his upper lip was talking about how it was blowing the inflationary index, or the exchange rate, or somethingorother.
I'm not really going to sell my soul, I realize. I'm just kinda bored. A few days ago I lost a finger in a water-skiing accident, and the pain is keeping me from sleeping. Since pain relievers make me sweat blood, I had to make do with “herbal” remedies, like gin, but I just finished my last bottle and won’t have any money until the next child support check comes in.
No, I don’t have custody of my kid, my ex-wife does. Joseph is such a genius that Maria actually pays me a monthly stipend for the privilege of raising him. I understand she’s a multimillionaire just from managing his patents. God only knows what the kid himself is worth. Somebody asked me the other day if I’d heard about the prodigy kid who’d just invented a car that runs on air, but I didn’t tell ‘em he was half me. I never wanted to have a kid, anyway.
That’s why I got my balls filled with cement the day he was born.
###
benjamin sTone
Current Music: "Auckland (Deserter '03)" - Zilent Zpott
Last Book I Read a Page of: A Scanner Darkly, Phillip K. Dick
Last Movie: Serenity (2005, USA, Science-Fiction, Dir: Joss Whedon)
Next Movie: Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Japan, Historical Drama, Dir: Kenji Mizoguchi)
“Easy [Rawlins] has that ironic and detached knowingness of people who are accustomed to being lied to.” - Professor Robert R. Carringer
I called the Devil last night, but all of the lines were busy. Kind of strange, since I was calling at 3am, and the flyer they slipped under the front door of my apartment said that operators were available twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-six-yeah, that’s what it says-days a year.
I guess maybe they get pretty busy during the winter months. Cabin fever and Seasonal Affective Disorder hits some people pretty hard. I wonder what people deep in the throes of snow-induced depression ask for. A mansion in the Bahamas? Or maybe they just ask for one day with sun, one day when it isn’t dark by the time they get home from work.
I finally got through, but was immediately put on hold. Ironically, on the television, CNN was reporting how the Treasury Department was trying in vain to get an injunction or dispensation cap placed on how much a person could get for their soul. A market analyst in a tweed jacket with a moustache that had eaten his upper lip was talking about how it was blowing the inflationary index, or the exchange rate, or somethingorother.
I'm not really going to sell my soul, I realize. I'm just kinda bored. A few days ago I lost a finger in a water-skiing accident, and the pain is keeping me from sleeping. Since pain relievers make me sweat blood, I had to make do with “herbal” remedies, like gin, but I just finished my last bottle and won’t have any money until the next child support check comes in.
No, I don’t have custody of my kid, my ex-wife does. Joseph is such a genius that Maria actually pays me a monthly stipend for the privilege of raising him. I understand she’s a multimillionaire just from managing his patents. God only knows what the kid himself is worth. Somebody asked me the other day if I’d heard about the prodigy kid who’d just invented a car that runs on air, but I didn’t tell ‘em he was half me. I never wanted to have a kid, anyway.
That’s why I got my balls filled with cement the day he was born.
###
benjamin sTone
Current Music: "Auckland (Deserter '03)" - Zilent Zpott
Last Book I Read a Page of: A Scanner Darkly, Phillip K. Dick
Last Movie: Serenity (2005, USA, Science-Fiction, Dir: Joss Whedon)
Next Movie: Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Japan, Historical Drama, Dir: Kenji Mizoguchi)