Leila Allison

(Happy birthday brother J.)

Walking Boss Cooper scythed me at the loading dock. She’d set up a blind and waited until the large “agricultural investment order” I’d charged to the company arrived and forced me out of my secret sanctum. Renfield had warned me that “the WBC” was prowling the campus for two suckers to present Orientation to the “fresh fishes” that day, as well as a butt to fill an opening at the Neverending Crisis. Although it was most definitely a day for streaming Hulu in a utility closet, necessity led me to venture onto the open tundra.

The WBC happens as hella now as Alien. I winced and sighed when her wholesome yet evil visage reflected in my ipad. I’d just finished haggling with two dock brutes. For ten bags of “fun-sized” candy bars (various brands, also charged to the company) I had secured safe temporary storage for a dozen bales of alfalfa, a case of asparagus tips, an indeterminate supply of cabbages, kales, greens, lettuces and such–in addition to an immense stock of various dry and canned goods already in the pantry.

“Jesus H., Farmer Gwen,” I said. “I oughta’ tie a bell around your neck.”

“Hello, Farmer Leila–you’ve a choice,” The WBC said, smiling (I’ll give the WBC this much, her smile is a killer). “Either rat out Farmer Renfield’s location–”

“Never!” I said. “I ain’t no rat bus thower-underer.”

“As I was saying,” she continued, “either rat her out and you guys present Orientation to the newbies, or you and you only will spend eternity at the Neverending Crisis.”

On our way to the auditorium Renfield stopped various co-workers and demanded that they look at the bus tracks on her back.

“I don’t feel bad, not one little bit,” I said. “You’d have done the same.”

“No, rat bus thrower-underer,” Renfield said with a sinister grin, “I’d have gone free after buying off the WBC and volunteering you for the Neverending Crisis.”

“So, that makes you some kind of saint in comparison?” I said. “Holy frogshit. Looky yonder. The WBC just shanghaied Smooch to the Neverending Crisis.”

Ahead, the ever-smiling WBC led “Smooch” down the hall toward the infected boil on the buttocks of reality known as the Neverending Crisis. I would have felt sorry for Smooch if he wasn’t an invertebrate non-farmer as well as an obsequious butt kisser–which made him a perfect fit for the Neverending Crisis.

To underscore the general consensus of Smooch, Renfield went all high school and created a series of loud, wet kissy-kissy smacking sounds. WBC glanced our way, intensified her smile and went all high school by casually touching her chin with her middle finger. She then gleefully herded Smooch to his just damnation.

“How mature was that?” Renfield asked.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Fuckstix,” I sighed when we arrived at the auditorium. Until that point I had successfully supported a fantasy in which the event had been cancelled due to a meteor strike. Sigh, only in fantasyland. Alas, I knew that on the other side of the door sat a half dozen reasonably clean college graduates, who were both greedy and dumb enough to sign seven-year personal service contracts with the Smiling Face of Darkness.

“Let’s slip into the viewing blind,” Renfield said.

Every meeting room and office at the Smiling Face of Darkness is accompanied by a viewing blind. Most, such as the ludicrously named “auditorium” in which Orientation takes place, are decidedly low tech–table, chairs, open vent to let in the noise and a two-way mirror. Others are as sophisticated as something out of M-5. You see, Our Founder (His Himness), CEO, wildlife terrorist and perennial Wacko Party candidate for political office is as paranoid as Stalin; he thinks that everyone is out to get him–which is true, but he has forgotten that “everyone” includes the ambitious toadies whose advice and snitchings he relies on.

The first thing I did when we slipped into the blind (you always slip into blinds, like the wind), was close the vent. The genius who’d designed it had overlooked the bald fact that sound travels both ways.

Upon sizing up the six dopes on the other side of the mirror, Renfield got downright philosophical:

“How wonderful to gaze into the face of a child and tell the little jackoff that there’s no such thing as Santa, and that his DNA owes more to the Fed-Ex guy than daddy. A little light goes out in the eye… Poof…Some call it the extinguishment of the soul… I love being a soul extinguisher, Farmer Leila, God help me I do.”

My phone rang. “Maybe it’s the Pope,” I said. “Maybe you’re just one crushed soul away from canonization.”

Renfield adjusted her halo and beamed angelically.

But it wasn’t the Pope. It was the WBC. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, rat bastard…”

“Can’t lay smack like that on the Vatican,” Renfield said. “It could cost you your 401K to get into Heaven.”

“We are at Orientation,” I said to the WBC. “Just sizing up the fishes through the blind. A couple look like they might rate as farmers, the others seem to have realized that they’ve made a terrible mistake. Got one useless twat smacking a wad of juicy fruit as though it were a fucking cud.”

“Ask her if she has heard anything about my pending sainthood.”

“Can’t ask her a sonofabitchin’ thing,” I said. “She hung up.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Renfield said, approaching the door. “Thanks to you I’ve a busy afternoon ahead. Gotta scout out a new secret location.”

“Try the daycare. No one will think to look for you there.”

******

Without introducing ourselves we blew into the room and began talking. A few hands went up here and there, but after a while their owners realized that all they were doing was airing their pits.

“Good news!” I shouted. “No need to take notes. There’s only one question to answer at the end of this orientation. Your answer will determine the quality of your future here at the Smiling Face of Darkness.”

“Are you a farmer?” Renfield joined in. “That’s the question. And it ain’t a metaphorical one, either.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Farmers do not wind up praying for death while contributing to the Neverending Crisis…”

Renfield and I had done this gig plenty over time, and we had discovered that the best way to maintain confused silence amongst the fishes was to work our schtick like tag team wrestlers.

It keeps people off balance; yet the trick (aka, “Shitty Cop/Shittier Cop”) has a short shelf life. Renfield was right about the dimming of the inner light; people harden pretty quickly at the Smiling Face of Darkness. Two weeks employment here weighs the same as twenty years any place else.

“You guys need to know about The Neverending Crisis–there’s always a Neverending Crisis,” I said. “ The latest version of it began last year when our boss, the Fearless Fecal-skull, discovered a pygmy goat in his trophy room and another of the same persuasion atop his desk eating his autographed picture of that King of the Assholes, Ted Nugent.”

“The Sultan of Twat went ballistic,” Renfield added.

“Yes indeedy,” I continued. “Security swarmed in like the Green Berets, but the goats in question had already left the premises. To date, nobody except Bungalow Bill-doe has seen goats in the building.”

Renfield then slowed down the pace of our presentation, lowered her voice and began to pace in front of the stunned newbies as though she were Atticus Finch.

“The Torpid Toolbox immediately went on a Twitter rampage,” she said, slowly shaking her head in disgusted bemusement. “He vowed to purge the company of what was an obvious ‘liberal goat conspiracy.’ He was committed to finding and ‘punishing the intruders’ and mounting their heads on the wall of his trophy room along with those of species who weren’t endangered until people like the Jaundiced Juggalow came along. ”

I drew a deep breath and said: “Perhaps you guys remember the media shitstorm that gathered soon after someone, who may or may not be in this room, hacked into the Devoted Dorkface’s Twitter and Instagram and posted a hella obviously photoshopped pic featuring the heads of baby goats, orcas, chipmunks, kittens, puppies and bunnies all mounted in the Surreal Skidmark’s office–along with those of the wild beasts that he had actually murdered.”

“That’s right, Farmer Leila,” Renfield said. “And like the grand opening of a new wing in Hell, a fresh Neverending Crisis task force was formed to look into the safe capture and expulsion of the goats from company property in response to the ASPCA and Greenpeace staging a sit-in. As Farmer Leila said, there’s always a Neverending Crisis; and, just as always, the task force is getting nothing done as slowly as possible–except in the field of soul extinguishing. To get the feel of being assigned to the Neverending Crisis, imagine just sitting there from age twenty-two to retirement and dreaming wistfully of sweet sweet death.”

Although it was my turn to rant, I was still recovering from the sixty word sentence I had spoken earlier. So, I pointed at a raised hand that belonged to a chick who looked like Reese Witherspoon. My instincts told me that she was Farmer material and would be a good soldier for the Cause.

“Ummm, why goats? Ummm, where are they now? Are they okay?” asked the chick.

Renfield fielded the inquiry. “Someone, or maybe two someones in this room, had hit on an awesomenistic idea for Earth Day last year. ‘Let’s rent goats. We’ll give ‘em free run of the building and the grounds. It will be the green way to remove litter and mow the grounds.’ As it goes with awesomenistic ideas, mother alcohol was involved in its formation.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “the someones in question were too liquified to understand the data stating that there would be a sizable uptick in goatshit commeasurate with the devoured trash and grass.”

“That was only one of the someones,” Renfiled said, glaring at me. “A someone who is a known

bus thower-underer. The other someone, a leader in the field of soul extinguishing, had understood the facts and acted anyway. But neither someone had foreseen the goat rental business going under. This caused both someones to hire all the suddenly unemployed goats as full time employees of Whiling Case and Harkness.”

“What are the goats’ names who broke into the um, the Hedonistic Hemorrhoid’s office ?” the Reese Witherspoon look-alike asked. This confirmed her inner Farmer. The girl was ready for harvest.

“Roy and Roydeen,” I said.

My phone alerted me to an incoming text. It was our mole at the loading dock. I nodded at Renfield. She pointed at the Reese Witherspoon type and said “Follow me.” People, prospective Farmers and otherwise, are usually in an unnatural hurry to leave Orientation; Renfield didn’t need to tell the chick twice. Together, they fled the auditorium like souls passing through a crack in hell.

I was born with a birth defect: I have only one type of smile: Maniacal. It’s a strange circumstance, much like the decision to use two colons in the same sentence. At no time in my life has a friendly smile ever crossed my face. It’s the sort of smile you see in the face of a jibber-jabbering loon who has been discovered with a bloody dagger in her hand.

“Decision time,” I said, sending my only smile to the five remaining newbies. I found myself wishing I had a riding crop. People respect people who smile maniacally and carry riding crops.

For some reason my charges shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.

I stood silently, still smiling malevolently, still wishing I had a riding crop, for, maybe, thirty seconds before speaking. “You, you, you, and especially you,” I said at last, pointing my air riding crop in turn at a hip hop wannabe white boy, some dude who reminded me of Smooch, a woman who had struggled to stay awake and the fuckstick chewing gum-smacker of indeterminate gender. “Go away. Now. Personnel has already emailed your Monday instructions.”

I have yet to meet a Smiling Face of Darkness employee who needs to be told to go away twice.

“Alone at last,” I said to the sole survivor, my lunatic grin in full bloom. “I know what you’re thinking…You’re thinking ‘Why me? How come I don’t get to go away like the others except for that Legally Blond-looking chick in the pink sweater?’ And don’t play dumb with me dude, either, I know that you know about the pink sweater.”

The guy left behind nodded sheepishly. He was a sweet enough looking boy, in an anemic Johnny Depp sort of way–strategically emaciated and mostly eyes beneath a toss of dark hair that appeared to have a mind of its own.

“We normally don’t assign names until a year or so goes by,” I said. “I’d say ‘nothing personal’ about that, but it would be a goddamn lie.” I glanced at his name tag, dropped my cross-purpose smile and extended my hand. “Pleased to meetcha, Jim. But from here on get used to Farmer Jim.”

******

I guided Farmer Jim to the secret elevator.

On our way down I chatted him up. I am not much for desultory chit-chat, but it’s a long ride down in the secret elevator and you can stare at your shoes for only so long.

“So, Farmer Jim, do you normally take secret elevators with strange women?”

“Secret elevator?”

“Ahhhh, I see. It’s all clear to me now. You’ll go on any old elevator with a strange woman but draw the line at a secret elevator.”

The elevator stopped. A robotic voice demanded the password. “E-I-E-I-O,” said I. Then for the next minute or so my life resembled that toilet in Trainspotting.

“Cancel that command,” Farmer Jim said. “UPFFIC override; codeword Saint Renfield.”

This story had been going as scripted until Farmer Jim pissed in the jacuzzi. As a pen-name and a reluctant member of the Union of Pen-names, Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters (UPIFFC), my stories (like the one you are currently reading and unlikely to comment on) aren’t written, but are shot like movies, with a cast composed of my own Fictional Characters (FC’s) playing various roles. Union rules stipulate that I must first offer all parts in new productions to the characters I had created prior to the Union expansion and subsequent inclusion of FC’s a few years back, before I can create new characters. This stupid bylaw (which applies to pen-names, only) has strained my relationship with the Union. Nowadays our interactions are like those of a renegade film director and the bean counters in the production office. Dirty tricks and various forms of passive-aggressive thuggery rule the day. And, sometimes, underemployed FC’s, like, for instance, well, Farmer Jim, can be coerced into performing one pettifogging bit of Union business or another, just for something to do.

I pounded my fists on the door, which is an excellent way to summon rage. “You’d better tell me what this is all about before I locate my right shoe on the other side of your tonsils, Farmer Jim,” I said as reasonably as such a thing can be said.

“I am a loyal FC,” Farmer Jim stated, somewhat nervously because that smile of mine was taking shape in my face. “But I am also a Union member, and being such it has fallen to me to bring your attention to a grievance submitted by a Union sister.”

Although my serial killer smile still shone, I nonchalantly extracted my ipad from my jacket pocket, opened this file and began to write. That definitely caught Farmer Jim’s attention, but I waved at it as though it were nothing. “Tell me, comrade, does the twisted Union sister of whom you speak have a name?”

“Um, yes, but that’s not germane to the grievance–”

“‘Germane’? The only germane I know was in the Jackson Five. And he ain’t one of my FC’s,” I said. “For shits and giggles, please tell me what Renfield is bitching about this time.”

“Yesterday,” he went on, somewhat nervously, “one of your lead FC’s reported a plot convolution to the Union. She–um, he or she brought along a copy of the script for this particular production. She, um–he or she–’’

“Call ‘she–um, he or she’ rat bastard Renfield from here on, Farmer Jim,” I said, not looking up from my ipad. “Unless you’d like me to alter my description of you in the script to, um, something less pleasing to the eye.”

“All right. As you wish. Miss Renfield…”

“All of it, Farmer Jimmy boy, all of it, please.”

“Fine. Rat bastard Renfield pointed out that beginning in the second act on to her exit from the scene, the dialogue that you and she had spoken at Orientation seemed to have been spoken by the same person, not two different persons. Same syntax, same attitude, same, as um, rat bastard Renfield put it, ‘lead balloon sense of humor.’ She said that she had spoken to you about it, but you were drunk and abusive. She said that you quoted Betty White from Lake Placid: ‘If I had a dick, I’d tell you to suck it.’”

“That’s extremely interesting, Farmer Jim,” I said, glancing up from my ipad, still smiling. “And, why yes, I did say that to her. But she must’ve neglected to mention that that had happened after she went diva on me and said something like ‘Eat my shit then shit my shit and eat it again and repeat it all to infinity. That way you’ll never be done eating my shit.’ You see, pal, that’s how we communicate.”

“I see,” he said, with eyes that didn’t seem to have seen anything. “How do you respond to her complaint?”

“Glad you asked,” I said, and I read aloud what I had just written on my ipad:

“Farmer Jim was a nice enough kind of guy; that’s what everyone said at the funeral. If the

elevator had opened in a timely manner, the micro-meteor shed by planet Zatox would have

landed harmlessly at the bottom of the shaft instead of burying itself in Farmer

Jim’s nice enough cerebral cortex.”

“The meteor has just rounded Mars and will be here any second, Farmer Jim,” I said. “There’s still enough time for me to delete this addition, thus still leaving open the possibility of a happy ending, which will include happy news for you and the chick in the pink sweater. So, you remember the password?”

“Override code Saint Renfield. Replace with E.I.E.I.O.,” Farmer Jim said in a big hurry. And the doors slid open.

“You have chosen wisely, sir,” I said, deleting the Zatoxian meteor.

******

“What kept you guys?” Renfield asked all innocent like, standing at the door.

“You got some balls,” I said. “If they weren’t symbolic I’d punt them to your larynx.”

“Oh my God!” Farmer Jim gasped, no less than seven pygmy goat kids rushed him from various angles.

The Reese Witherspoon type, from here, Farmer Alice, who was clad in a plastic smock, rushed over and excitedly fitted Jim in the same, then she handed him an immense false udder full of the sweet stuff, as such is seen by pygmy goat kids. There was a teat for all and the little fiends hit them hard.

“Isn’t this great?” Farmer Alice said to Jim.

“Yes, yes, um–yes, I guess it is,” he said. “B-but what is all this?”

“Welcome to the Farm, Farmer Jim,” I said.

No matter how often I go to the Farm, I’m always impressed with it. The Farm proves what can happen when human beings work together in pursuit of a common goal. Although it lies nearly two hundred feet below the parking garage, the farm is as cheerful as Munchkin land; we’ve even a properly moving sun made out of Klieg lights, which goes east to west in the “sky” and rises and sets behind distant “mountains.” We Farmers volunteer a minimum of an hour a day to the Farm’s upkeep. Hell indirectly, the Goopy Gonad is responsible for one of the finest pygmy goat sanctuaries in the Solar System.

“When Goats-R-Us keeled over,” Farmer Alice explained to Farmer Jim, “Farmers Leila and Renfield took in seven fertile and willing nanny goats and one extremely horny billy goat. The billy is named Roy and the baby mamas are Roydeen, Royetta, Roynestine, Royala, Roybarbra, Royella and Royorbisette. And there’s going to be a contest to name the kids. Each of the seven winners [aka, the first seven entrants, who’ll be vetted to hell and back] will ‘win’ a baby goat.”

WBC came round with employee door badges for the kids. She successfully exchanged We Don’t Talk About This Upstairs glances with Farmers Jim and Alice.

“Good,” Renfield said, “this’ll make it easier to take them out for a walk.”

“Sounds like something I’d say, Farmer Renfield,” I said.

“Saint Renfield,” she said, adjusting her halo.

“Our Lady of the Extinguished Soul,” I said, smiling my smile.

by Leila Allison

A Few Rings of Hell’s Bell Ago

The little god of unfounded happiness at an unlikely place seemed to be smiling on me. I was up 500,000 bit-pesos at the online Uruguayan poker site, and someone had finally restocked the Snax Machine in the lobby with chili-cheese Fritos. Yes, the good guys were winning and no one was supervising my activities. I fondly recall whistling “Dance Ten; Looks Three” from A Chorus Line, prior to carb-loading for that long elevator ride back to my office, deep in the bowels of the Smiling Face of Darkness.

Warning: the little god of unfounded happiness at an unlikely place isn’t your friend. He’s a pint-sized douche-nozzle who gets a girl whistling “Tits and ass…orchestra and balcony…” before he waylays her with the old sucker punch. Which was what happened to me when I entered my office and discovered that some son or daughter of a rat bastard had Glooned me during my absence.

It had been a sophisticated and well planned Glooning. I’d most likely been under surveillance for days. I felt shame for not varying my routine or the time for my daily run to the Snax Machine. To make things worse I had stupidly attached a BACK IN TEN MINUTES sign to my unlocked office door. Whoever had watched me must have known that I’d be gone at least an hour. The sign should have said GLOON ME.

There it was: the legendary Gloonman File. As unwanted as a rubber machine in Vatican City, it lay heaped on the office cart with the broken wheel (I made a note of that; probably took two buff interns to haul it down). The stuff on the cart, however, was nothing but steaming pile of interoffice memo-chits, which noted the dates of the files comings and goings over the years, yet not once contained a name or a specific location (no one has ever been stupid enough to sign her or his name to the Gloonman File). The main tumor itself, the one that had begun going around in 1986 (five freaking years before my birth), lay on my desk. It was, of course, still sealed. In all that time no lazy son or daughter of a rat bastard had ever dared peek into its evil heart of madness.

Naturally, I got pissed off at the situation. Then a little voice in my mind said ‘Hey, boss, why get pissed off? I mean, really, this does look like something you’d do, if given a chance–Right?” Gleaning the zen from passive-aggressive little mind voices isn’t my strength. I told the little voice where it could go and into which orifice it may relocate its observation when it got there. Alone at last, I began to nurture my freshly hatched desire for revenge.

It then occurred to me that even if I had taken precautions, I would have gotten Glooned by and by; feces rolls to the lowest available point, and my office is so far down in the sub-basement that if hell were to spring a leak I’d be the first to know. Still, I wasn’t about to take this sort of thing demurely. For the last few weeks I had been reading John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. Like Don Quixote, Trav often mounted his steed (in his case, an odd Rolls Royce “pick-up truck”) and charged forward to avenge the misbegotten (for a fee, of course. “After all, we’re not communists,” according to Don Barzini, the one true hero in The Godfather). I decided right then and there to do the same. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that the misbegotten I sought to avenge was myself–But remember this, wiseass: there is an I in altruism–you can’t spell the word right without it.)

For one dark moment of the soul, however, I wondered why I should go on hooking and jabbing away at the face of an unbeatable foe. Maybe I should just kick it in the cojones then slink off to Florida and live in a houseboat. Then I remembered why. I still owed a hundred-eighty-thousand smackaroos (about ten-trillion bit-pesos) on a quarter-million dollar student loan debt. People who owe that kind of loot to the government cannot slink off to Florida to live in a houseboat.

The way I saw it, the identity of my Glooner wasn’t a mystery. The caper had Gwen “Walking Boss” Cooper’s (WBC) creepy pink paw prints all over it. She was one of the only two persons who knew my exact location, and only she had minions strong enough to lug the Gloonman mess around. I knew that the thickly armored WBC couldn’t have gotten Glooned herself; more likely she had delivered the hit on the behalf of someone else (for a fee, of course; WBC is most definitely not a communist). Although I half-assedly entertained the notion of Glooning WBC right back, the Rules of Engagement forbid re-Glooning and give the Glooned immunity. My suspicion was confirmed when I went to a dark “special page” located in the squirmy underbelly of the company website. The page is simply a two columned list. On the left there stood the 1,943 names of the once damned (of which only about a tenth still work here), and sure enough Gwen Cooper (as if) was the last name on it. The other side held my name only, in tall red letters, a lone magi in need of a patsy.

Intrepid Travis McGee had trustworthy Meyer to turn to for help and advice, whereas all I had was my duplicitous best friend and coworker Renfield. Even though I believed it better than even money that she had conspired with WBC in my Glooning, I decided to sound her out anyway.

Nowadays Renfield cyber-commutes four days a week, and usually calls out with a lame excuse on the other. About a month back she hit the jackpot. A kitten named Professor Moriarty joined Renfield’s household. He’s black, beyond hyperactive, and is at the age at which all black kittens look like bats. Renfield couldn’t bear (or dare) leave the little fiend at home alone, so she took the vest off a miniature Teddy Ruxpin and put it on “Pro-Mo,” brought him in to work and claimed that he was a service cat in training as to thwart the heebie-jeebies. Not only did everybody buy her gibberish, everybody oohed and ahhed and how cuted the little devil until someone very small took a dump in the community Kleenex box. The scheme allowed Renfield to work from home. How I wish I had thought of it first. Alas, even here at the ever-credulous Smiling Face of Darkness there’s only so much gibberish that the Powers That Be will listen to.

I got Renfield on Skype and slyly steered our conversation the topic of Glooning. She was still in her p.j.s (after all it wasn’t yet noon). In the background I saw the Original Evil Genius swing from a living-room drape and land on an end table from which a vase fell and smithereened upon hitting the floor. Then he got into her purse, which lay on a chair, and came out with a tampon and began to dash in and out of view with it in his mouth. Neither Renfleld nor I made mention of these and similar activities. Like Trav McGee, I decided to play it cool; I didn’t tell her that I had been Glooned, I just wanted to, you know, learn about Glooning, that’s all. But it turned out not to be my finest playing it cool moment.

“Oh, Jesus, Leila, you got Glooned,” she laughed, about six seconds into our conference. “I leave your clueless fanny alone for a month and you go get yourself Glooned, Could you be more wet behind the ears.”

“Let’s leave personalities out of this, old pal,” I said. “Let’s just suppose someone we both know, love–and yet only one of us respects–might have gotten Glooned, and that this otherwise brilliant someone wants to know the history of the thing, as to make an informed decision as how to plan her counter-attack. You would be the person that this hypothetical Gloonee would turn to because you are the authority on the subject.”

I didn’t approach the fact that this great “authority” had gotten Glooned herself about ten minutes into her first day on the job–and not even five after she had been warned of it; nor did I say anything in regard to it taking almost six years into my stretch for it to happen to ever wet-behind-the-ears Yours Truly. You see, a moderate serving of unvarnished butt-kissing goes a long way with Renfield, and I wanted her ego in tip-top shape; for it’s from the height of superiority where she inadvertently tells the truth.

“It all began with Sonja Gloonman, circa 1979,” Renfield said. “Back then everything was on paper and a desk came with this terrible thing called an in-box. They also came with an out-box; but since those saw less action than an Irish Planned Parenthood office, we need not discuss them.”

[Here, I had better jump in and save Renfield from Celtic doom. She’s a wonderful girl, but for whatever reason she’s always ready to let fly on both the Irish and all children. Which seems strange, because she’s half Irish and all child. Still, gotta agree with her W.C. Fieldsian take on kids: You can’t trust the little rat bastards. They smell like gassy lollipops and are stupid enough to believe that they will grow up to make a difference.]

“Sonja Gloonman was probably the laziest person on earth, until you got born, that is,” Renfield continued. “And she was a bit of a sociopath as well. Not once during her thirty year career in middle management did she ever do an honest minute of work. She was the company’s version of Leona Helmsley, but instead of taxes, ‘Only the little people do work.’ Her M.O. was pretty crude at the start. She’d just wait until a desk was foolishly left unguarded then lay a dump in that person’s inbox–”

“Sort of like pinching one off in the community Kleenex, right?” I said. I’d noticed that Professor Moriarty had once more gone into Renfield’s purse, and this time he came out with what looked like a fifty dollar bill, which he proceeded to shred into confetti.

“I thought we were leaving personalities out of this,” Renfield sniffed. “But, yes, I guess that is a fair comparison. Like all management weasel-shamrocks, Sonja was big on ‘delegation,’ to the degree that such included tasks specifically assigned to and to be done only by her. Hence Glooning was born. Over the years she got pretty arrogant about it. She’d come on up to a person’s desk while he or she was there and say hihowareya and Gloon away.”

“How did she get away with it? I would have put a size seven up her outhouse.”

“Charlie.”

“Who’s that?”

“Not a who, a what. Sonja wore extravagant amounts of Charlie perfume. It’s said that she travelled in a Neptunian cloud of the stuff, which paralyzed her victims and allowed her to do the deed. Toward the end, about ten years or so ago, she’d stick drive people’s interfaces right in front of them as they gasped for air. Glooning had gone digital.”

“So, she was a useless old beaver who routinely pulled the ol’ ditch and dash until her retirement,” I said. Hardly makes her a special case round here, I thought. But I couldn’t deny that her legacy continued to cling to the Smiling Face of Darkness like a beer fart to a tanning booth. I then rolled myself back in my office chair to the mountain of paper stacked on the broken cart, hooked a thumb at it and asked, “What makes this kettle of the runs so frightening? It’s been oozing around here for over thirty years, and nobody has even tried to open the main file. And what purpose does the Big Cheese serve? Why is it still around after her retirement? Hell, why does it exist at all? According to the timeline this dark child of hers had been at her side for most of her career.”

“Fool! Fool! Fool! You fail to grasp the majesty and awe and scope of Sonja’s greatest Gloon. Her Mona Lisa, her Special Relativity, her episode six, season two, Gilligan’s Island. The file now in your possession was her version of Teddy Roosevelt’s Big Stick. She devised it and then got it across to her victims that it was a “Forever File,” and that that as long as the Gloonee meekly accepted her fate and did whatever miserable little job Sonja had Glooned off on said Gloonee, that person would not get the Forever File dropped off on her desk. Can’t say why it’s still going around nearly a decade after Sonja’s retirement. Sentimental reasons I ‘spose. Or maybe it’s just so intimidating that nobody dares do anything bout it–Um, you did notice its girth, right, Leila? It weighs about as much as a nasty six-year-old boy.”

“An Irish boy, Renfield?”

“Are there other kinds of nasty boys?”

I ignored that bizarre reply and put forth an obvious question: “Then why should there be anything in it other than blank paper? Nobody has ever cracked the seal. It could be just a prop.”

Renfield said nothing, She rolled her eyes like a thirteen-year-old girl asked to stop texting for a moment so she can help put out her mother, who had thoughtlessly burst into flames. This would have provoked my rage, but I got over it because that was when I saw the prof position himself for a squirt on “Mama’s” smartphone.

Then in that dripping sarcastic tone that she has yet to vary since I first heard her use it in middle school, Renfield said, “What if there’s something in it? Fool! Fool!….”

I assumed that she said ‘Fool!’ a third time, but since I had unplugged her, I cannot be a hundred-percent sure.

I spend a lot of time alone, down here, where no one can hear me scream. And in my solitude I have learned something about myself: I never learn anything about myself. It’s the sort of muddled thinking that makes the Smiling Face of Darkness an obscenely profitable business, even though nobody here or anywhere knows exactly what it is we do.

With a skilled push of my feet I drove my chair away from the broken cart and back to my desk. The office used to be a storage room, and when Renfield and I took it over (actually, we were exiled here by Walking Boss Cooper), we found all kinds of old fashioned office supplies which had long since fallen into obsolescence. I rummaged around in the bottom drawer seeking one such item that I had found lying on the floor, one which I thought might make a useful shank (if it ever comes to that). Eureka! There is was, my letter opener.

At the last second another mind voice spoke up. “What the hell are you doing? You know the procedure–Forever File–it’s all yours if you open it.”

I looked around me to make certain that I was alone, because it was a sense making mind voice, quite rational, unlike anything I had heard before. And I believed that the advice it gave me was sound. I continued to believe that even as I stuck the blade into the ancient, super-sized manilla envelope.

A Few Rings of Hell’s Bell Later

“You’re both probably wondering why I had you come here,” I said. Actually, neither of “both” were physically present in my office; I again had Skyped Renfield into my desk interface, and Walking Boss Cooper’s wholesome yet evil visage filled an old laptop I had found lying amongst the techno-discards in my office. Despite challenges (laziness, ennui), I had been able to cobble together a three-way conference call.

Renfield, this time clad in Star Wars pajamas, raised her hand all sarcastic like and said, “Oh, oh, oh, I know! I know!” Neither WBC nor I alerted Renfield to the fact that darling little Pro-Mo was trotting around behind her with what appeared to be an IUD in his darling little mouth.

“Do share, Miss Renfield,” I said. ”But I’m warning you, if you sling more smart-assed shade on our noble Irish ancestors, this will go up on the wall behind your desk faster than you can say ‘where’s me lucky charms?’” I added with a sinister grin as I slowly unrolled a life-sized signed poster of smiling, shirtless, sweaty and-oh-so-sexy Michael Flatley.

“Why is it that most cute Irish guys are only three feet tall?” WBC (who’s six-one) said with a sigh.

“Do you know, Miss Renfield?” I said. “Maybe it’s due to all that stunted leprechaun semen swimming in Loch Ness.”

“That’s in Scotland, Leila,” WBC said.

“Wherever, whatever.”

Renfield got pouty. “What I was going to say, before you got ugly about things, had to do with you blaming me and Gwen for your Glooning.”

“Still supporting the little fantasy in which I believe everything you tell me, I see,” I said. “Try to imagine how little I care about that, now–now, that I and only I had the brass to open the Gloonman File and reap its reward.”

It’s extremely rare when WBC, Renfield and I are silent at all, much less at the same time.

It took all the way to a count of three before (as expected) Renfield and WBC laughed at the same time. “You were right, Renny,” WBC said, “she’ll push the doomsday button, if you give her half a chance.”

“Right? ” Renfield said and then chortled smugly. “She can’t resist doing the dumbest thing possible. That’s how it goes with them snake whackers…”

“How’s that Miss Renfield?” I said, holding an open hand to my ear. “Oh, No problem. I’ve got a heavy duty frame, made from the finest shillelagh wood in all the emerald isle. I’m gonna have maintenance bolt the o’fucker above your desk, ASAP.”

More silence. “Wait for it, wait for it,” I thought.

“Um, Leila, what was in it?” I cannot attribute this remark to either Renfiled or WBC because they both had spoke a variation of it at the same time.

“Could have been something good, or something bad or nothing at all,” I teased. “It really depends on how you look at things.” I put my feet up on my desk and leaned back in my chair.

“All right, Leila, [WBC, I think] spill.”

I smiled and the three of us shared long, soulful glances like those passed around between desperados in a spaghetti western. I deftly slid my chair back to where the Gloonman File lay. (After I had uncorked the little septic tank I had tossed it on the cart with the other crap.) I extracted the only document that had lain in the file (along with a ream of blank paper).

“The scroll is very old,” I said, as I slid my chair desk-ward, “and it was writ on Word Star, a program which dates back to days of King Lotus III.”

“That’s very interesting,” WBC said with a fake little yawn. “I’m guessing it provides the details of the yearly mastodon hunt.”

“Dude’s not even Irish…,” Renfield muttered. “…born in the USA…Mr. Spock’s got greener blood than that guy…”

“Focus, Miss Renfield, focus,” I said. Then right on cue I saw a very large, flatbed delivery truck grow increasingly larger outside Renfield’s living room window. The little god of unfounded happiness at an unlikely place had nothing to do with this uplifting, even spiritual, moment for Yours Truly. It was something that I had torn from the world with my own hands and brain.

Renfied heard the approach of the vehicle and turned her head to face it. This was just prior to Professor Moriarty suddenly filling the screen as he completed a leap onto Renfield’s keyboard, thus hitting something that severed our connection.

I took the opportunity to strengthen my already solid position. “Gwen,” I said, “I’ll treat you to Sonic for the rest of the week if you go with what I say when Renfield comes back up.”

Although WBC makes at least twice my student loan debt per year, she can’t resist free lunches. Especially Sonic. I could see the cheese melting on the burger in her eyes. “Deal,” she said. “But how do you know she’ll even bother to come back up.”

“Oh, she will,” I said with an evil cackle. Which was precisely what happened, about thirty seconds later. Renfield was standing, and Pro-Mo was sitting atop her should like a vampire bat.

“You can’t Gloon me,” she said with great indignation, and holding in her hand an invoice one of the delivery men must have brought to the door during the blackout. An invoice on which I had insisted had TO THE O’GLOONED writ across the top . “I’ve got immunity,” she continued to spout. “You can’t Gloon the Glooned.” Behind her I could see six burly workmen unhook an unspeakably ugly chartreuse vehicle from the truck.

“She’s got a point, Leila,” WBC said reluctantly, perhaps sadly watching her shake slowly melt away into the land of lost dreams.

“I didn’t Gloon you,” I said. “Please read the fine print, madam.” And as she did so, I spoke to Gwen. “I agree, re-Glooning is bad form [even though I had considered such earlier]. I believe that my explanation will prove that I haven’t broken a single rule of engagement. Of course, you being a wise manager will have the final word,” I added, all obsequious like, for a dollop of unvarnished butt kissing goes a long way with WBC as well.

“You can’t Gloon a cat!” Renfield yipped as she wadded the invoice and threw it at the screen.

“Gwen,” I said, “aren’t employee service animals technically considered company employees?”

My entire scheme hinged on her answer. To help things along, I grabbed my car keys off my desk and shook them. We could be at Sonic in ten minutes, spoke my eyes.

“Sorry, Renny,” WBC said with a victorious smile, “she’s got you there.”

“Besides,” I said to Renfield, whose curiosity in regard to what was going on with the delivery men outside her window was greater than her ire, “your little angel bat is now a proud owner of a material good, not work to do. Behold,” I added majestically after the workmen finally stepped away from the hunk of junk they had finished unloading in Renfield’s driveway, “behold the awesome Chartreuse Yugo.”

There it was, sitting on three flat tires, with a cracked windshield, slathered heavily in birdshit, Sonja Gloonman’s 1986 Chartreuse Yugo.

The instant Renfield and WBC both trained dumbfounded gazes on me, I explained to them (just as I had rehearsed it in the ladies’ room mirror) what had happened:

“Back yonder, before we were born, in the primitive year of 1986, some bozo got it into his head that the American public yearned for an affordable car that was within the reach of the emptiest wallet. The makers of the Yugo–surprize! The company was founded in what used to be Yugoslavia–jumped in with a vehicle that a person could own outright for about thirty-six-hundred dollars.

“Unfortunately, the cars weren’t worth thirty-six cents. Ugly even by ancient standards, important stuff, like transmissions and axles, routinely fell off them pretty much as soon as they pulled off the lot. Late night TV hosts got weeks of material from the heavily advertised campaign. It was a debacle. Naturally, our company had been one of the Yugo’s biggest investors.” I smiled and leaned back in my chair and hooked my hands behind my head and delivered the big finish.

“The Supreme Shithead [our founder, still CEO and a perennial publicity-seeking a-hole] bought ten of the christless things for “extravagant” Christmas presents–in the form of certificates– for his most devout toadies, of whom Ms. Gloonman most certainly a lead croaker. After seven of the ten had failed their state inspection within the first month, the toadies couldn’t even give the fuckers away. Ever intelligent Sonja had never redeemed her Yugo certificate. She held onto it pretty much the same way the thing in Basket Case was kept around.

“After I opened the file and found the certificate of ownership, still valid after all these years, mind you, valued at $3,620.42, I Skyped Sonja at her retreat in Belize. Told her that I had a 500,000 bit peso marker at an Uruguayan poker site and that it was all hers if she gave me the Yugo. She said something in French to one of her well oiled pool boys, and they laughed. Something I think not too flattering about Yours Truly, but I took the hit because I had kept my eyes on the prize.

“After we made the transaction, Sonja informed me that I could redeem the certificate for cash value, and that she would have done the same but since she had that kind of change lying around between the sofa cushions, she never saw a reason. Besides, she admired my grit, if not my intelligence. Anyhoo, I got the cash from accounting and kept half for my fee, of which I threw fifteen-hundred at my student loan and kept a little that I soon will be investing in a well known local restaurant,” I said, making eye contact with WBC, who pointed at her watch; for it was getting close to lunchtime.

“I used the other half of the loot to find the Yugo–which, for some reason was the only chartreuse Yugo ever made–and had it sent to Professor Moriarty. All this time the thing had been kept in a company warehouse on the other side of town until it got in the way around 1992. Since then the piece of shit has slowly decayed beneath a maple tree out in the warehouse yard. I was going to offer them a couple of hundred for it, until I realized that the foreman would gladly pay me to take it off his hands, We settled on a dollar–from me to him–after all, there was no reason he shouldn’t make a profit as well. Consider it the luck of the Irish smiling on you and that drape-swinging, tampon toting, IUD wielding, box-crapping, phone-pissing, money shredding little vampire bat of yours, Renfield.”

A sweet smile took shape in Renfield’s pretty face. “I’m gonna fix that thing out there up and sell it on ebay for big dough,” she said, and I didn’t doubt her because restoring vehicles is her hobby. Pro-Mo, still clinging to her shoulder, seemed to smile in agreement. “This isn’t over, Leila–” she began to say. “Oh, yes it is,” I retorted as I severed the connection and powered down the screen.

On our way back from Sonic, I asked WBC on whose behalf she had Glooned me; for I had made it clear to her that her little ruse hadn’t fooled me for a minute. She smiled and told me that the information would cost me my fries. I dropped the inquiry because that price was too high for useless information, and would only beg for a return of the little god of unfounded happiness at an unlikely place.

By Leila Allison

-1-

Walking Boss Cooper (from here, WBC) attempted to lure me and Renfield from the company bowels to her palatial office on Tuesday, for a “little chat.” She did so by email. As anyone with more than ten minutes’ life experience knows, an email come on is just that–an email come on. Like the confession of true love the magical soul of an email come on usually exists only in the heart of the sender, whereas the recipient may chose to reply or (as we had) blow the damn thing off until something better comes along.

Sadly, something worse came along on Thursday. WBC sent three of the Smiling Face of Darkness’s healthier unpaid pages to fetch us. Pages are venal, and their ephemeral loyalty can be purchased with junk food. It suddenly became apparent that WBC must have heavily invested in crap-cal on Wednesday, for there was a near lifelike quality about the page posse which suggested that they had had more for breakfast that day than a few begged for Skittles found rattling around the bottom of a purse. I keep a roll of quarters handy for such emergencies, but Renfield informed me that someone had disabled the Snax Machine on our floor. “Well played, Miss Rat Bastard,” I muttered as the orcs marched us up the tower.

A childlike glee shone in WBC’s baby blues when we arrived upstairs. I had bought off one of the thugs with promises of butterscotch Oreos and a two-litre Jolt, and Renfield had called in a favor to dissuade another. But the lone holdout had been enough. She was new and naive to the ways of corporate duplicity. WBC said, “Thank you, Miss Tonya, that’ll be all,” to the goon and paid her with an entire bag of Hershey Kisses.

Wildly over-caffeinated Renfield was greatly offended by this transaction. “Crimony, Miss Gwen,” she said to WBC, “haven’t you ever heard of inflation? Judas finked Jesus for less. Word’s gonna get around the Page Pit. Used to be that I could get one of them to do hard time for me on the strength of a Three Musketeers bar. Even darker deeds for Doritos.”

“That’s right, Miss Gwen,” I added. “It’s a chip-clip driven economy that you’ve upset. Kisses for kidnappers sends the wrong message.”

WBC shrugged and smiled and motioned at a pair of crusty looking folding chairs, which sat low and rickety in front of her immense desk.

“All right, Miss Gwen,” I said, “what’s the gag?”

“What does that mean, Miss Leila?” WBC said, positively glowing, “Are you having a gag reflex because you’ve got too much in your mouth? If so, please spit it out. You’re going to need that clever tongue of yours for a mission I have volunteered the two of you for.” She then turned one of the two sleek monitors she has on her desk to face us. “You cannot refuse, for you will plainly see that I have you girls boxed like pet store turtles.”

I didn’t like the way this was trending. Neither did Renfield, but since she had three special energy drinks that are illegal in 49 of the 50 states in her, I knew that she would most likely do something spectacularly strange at any moment and perhaps confuse WBC, thus give me a chance at escape. She did not disappoint me, but she did (technically) assault me. Amped-up Renfield leapt to her feet and put me in a modified headlock, which is known in the assassin trade as the “Havana Cigar Snuffer.” “Ha, ha, Miss Gwen,” she said, “can a boxed turtle be this dangerous?”

“Slinging monkey-butt gibberish isn’t going to get you out of the mission,” WBC said. “But I am happy to see that you are healthy, Miss Renfield. Good thing it’s not Monday, right?”

The Monday crack halted the Cigar Snuffer before I could lose consciousness and be shut of this little slice of hell. Renfield became uncharacteristically sheepish. “Why yes, Miss Gwen,” she said. “I have been a little unlucky Mondays.”

“I’ll say,” WBC said with a whistle. She began to read off her monitor what we could see on the one she had turned to face us. “Three Monday’s back, dangerous Miss Renfield texted out sick due to: ‘Fake News Ministry reports cholera-carrying tsetse fly swarm at the mouth of the company parking garage.’ The next Monday she texted out because of a ‘24-hour cholera’ acquired from a tsetse fly bite, even though there isn’t a wild tsetse fly within nine-thousand miles of here. This Monday, however, along with more tsetse flies, of course, brave Miss Renfield seemed to foreshadow her plans for next Monday–you see, the new bugs carried small pox–even though all strains of that dreaded disease, including, I’m certain, the 24-hour version, were eradicated long ago.”

I began to laugh. “Miss Jezuz H., Miss Renfield, didn’t you stop to think that someone might take the time to actually read your horseshit?”

“I’m so happy that you have brought along your sense of humor, Miss Leila,” WBC said. “Thank God it’s not Friday, right?”

The little woman inside my mind clutched her chest and keeled over dead..

Before I could stop her, WBC played my three most recent Friday call out voicemails. Each one began with a heavily accented male voice who said: “Greetings, my friend, this is…” Then, right here, a crackling recording of my voice spoke my name, which was followed by the return of the male voice who said, “I regret that I am too annoyed this day to attend the festival.”

“Goddam useless hookey app,” I grumbled. “That’s another fiver down the swirly.”

Renfield ripped into that like an owl into a crippled vole. “Miss Jezuz H., Miss Leila, didn’t you stop to think that someone might take the time to actually smell your horseshit?”

WBC cleared the screens and folded her hands as though in prayer. She smiled. She has a beautiful smile, really. Too bad she only shows it when she has people boxed like pet store turtles.

“Whenever I get low and the world’s sucking the life out of me, I read your insipid texts, Miss Renfield, and I listen to your sub-moronic voicemails, Miss Leila. They help me cope. Sometimes it’s just good knowing that my friends are even more fucked in the head than I am. Of course,” she added (and we both knew that a whopper of an of course was coming), “these little gems might not be an aid to either of you come PR time. Then again these–except the ones I will hold onto for the sake of my mental health, mind you–could be deleted from the company record if the two of you accept the mission.”

The little woman in my mind recovered from her heart attack. She became determined to hang herself, but she couldn’t find any rope.

Renfield and I exchanged glances. Both of us spied resignation in the eyes of the other.

“All right, Miss Rat Bastard,” I said, “let’s hear it.”

-2-

A little while back, the esteemed CEO of the Smiling Face of Darkness (which civilian types call “Whiling, Case and Harkness”) sent out a company-wide e-screed that went as follows (in which I have tidied up no less than seven typos): “Nobody who works for me is a Ms. From here on it’s Mr., Mrs. or Miss. You’ll see that it works out as good as a goddam voodoo doll.” It was WBC who latched onto the or. She saw it as multiple choice. And in a rare display of unity among us we now address one another as Miss. It doesn’t matter whether you’re male, female, single, married, an imaginary friend, or even one of the fish in the lobby aquarium–if you can be spoken to, you are a Miss.

Like Satan, our CEO has a legion of names, but nobody calls him the one he goes by in public. People forget quickly, in that case I will remind you that “His Himness” is an “alt-right” (whatever that means), extremely rich, publicity seeking, media clown who ran for the GOP nomination for president last election. The only thing more surprising than the vastness of his fatuous fan base is that he’d somehow got out-crazied by the eventual winner (whose name we never say, either).

Even though Viscount Venereal and the eventual winner of the presidency had accused each other of everything ranging from stingy tipping at S&M rent-boy clubs to necrophilian date rape during their contentious campaigns, all of a sudden they are BFF’s. The President has even appointed the Duke of Dingleberry Minister of Fake News. And there’s a “special agent” who now “keeps an eye on things” at the Smiling Face of Darkness. Special Agent Lennie, however, isn’t what you’d call fresh out of the academy. But Renfield has made friends with the old boy, who usually spends a considerable amount of his time down in our office, just sitting there and instructing Renfield on “Death Holds” (which, she practices on me) and various methods used to “liquidate” unfriendly despots. (Here, I must give the CIA credit: waiting for Castro to die at ninety was a subtle stroke of untraceable genius).

The aforementioned unwholesome facts (along with one other and our tendency to make every weekend a three-day weekend) are what led Renfield, Special Agent Lennie and I to a work on a Saturday. Fortunately, we didn’t have to go to the office; our task lay in the wilds of north Torqwamni County, where we were to represent the extremely uninvited Baron Bunghole at “Green-Medieval Con.”

We went in Renfield’s car. I’ll let her describe it for you:

“Love me my ‘67 Charger three-onna-tree-rag-top, right? Lucille’s gotta 383 (oh-three-oh) over mild cam, Edelbrock alum heads, 750 cee-effin’-EM four-barrel carb. Runs like heaven, goes like hell, right?”

Now I’ll have Walking Boss Gwen Cooper explain just why she peed in our Cheerios and sent us to this particular convention:

“It’s supposed to be a secret, but Sultan of Snarf has developed an insatiable appetite for throwing away millions on running for office. The governor’s mansion is up for grabs next year, and Emperor E.D. wants to reach out to the pot-heads and mend fences, as to gain an early lead in the stoner vote.

“As always, whenever the Pustulant Poobah gets a BIG IDEA in its pointy head the whim tends to swell up like a dead possum after an extended period of unseasonably warm and wet weather. A couple days back Herod the Hemorrhoid saw mention of Green-Medieval Con in the fake news. Scro-Tom, Dick and Harry elided the Medieval part (he seems to think that’s what lies equidistant between Large and Small evil) and saw this was a way to get the potheads aboard as ‘good as a goddam voodoo doll.’

“Marijuana is legal in our state, but it is still illegal in the eyes of the Fed. During Commander Commode’s failed presidential campaign, he vowed to buy out Wyoming, rename it ‘Shithole-stan,’ and then send all druggies (along with all winos, hobos, national anthem kneelers, immigrant taxi drivers, climate change believers, and his defiant thirteen-year-old daughter) there because he was certain that enough registered voters across the country felt the same way. Naturally, since Deacon Douchenozzle is now eyeballing the governorship, it makes sense that he’d flip-flop on the subject of weed; and there are juuust enough fools in this state to make such a hell possible.

“The situation seemed hopeless. Then between my third and fourth Thorougoods (one bourbon, one Scotch, one beer) at Quickly’s pub the other night, I had a revelation: attach Leila and Renfield to the campaign. I began to cackle to myself, “Yes yes yes…That will work as good as a goddam voodoo doll.”

Thank you, Miss Rat Bastard–

“But I haven’t told them about–”

You’ve said plenty.

Anyway, WBC thought it would be a nice touch to bring Special Agent Lennie along on the mission. He sat behind us in the middle of the backseat, his white hair blowing in the wind because it was a warm day and we had the top down. Lennie looks like Mark Twain placed inside a standard G-man black suit, wrap-around shades, an earbud most likely attached to nothing, and a bulge on the left side of his jacket, which I discovered wasn’t caused by a sidearm but by a flask of applejack.

“Lucille” does “ride like heaven and go like hell.” So much that we were stopped twice by Washington State troopers on our way to the convention. Renfield got out of both richly deserved tickets on the strength of her indigestibly cute personality and the fact that nearly all cops are fellow gearheads. They spoke in their secret language and the little witch didn’t get as much as a warning—even when she had been clocked doing 119. If I had been behind the wheel I would have been tased and hauled off to a Josef Stalin sort of prison on general principle.

A quarter mile away from the convention, which lay just over the next rise, we pulled over at a rest stop and spent maybe seventeen seconds preparing for what would turn out to be a memorable appearance on the behalf of Skipper Skidmark at the geek get-together, which, frankly, didn’t last much longer than our preparation for it. We raised two flags on a pair of temporary poles that handy Renfield had on the ready on either side of Lennie in the back seat. One showed Cheech and Chong (circa 1977) gratefully accepting a doobie the size of mackerel from His Himness, and bore the legend AN OUNCE IN EVERY POT, MAN. The other one was a little less bizarre, yet just as infinitely hypocritical. It showed His Himness smiling under a headful of dreadlocks and said A HiGH GOVERNOR FOR A HIGH STATE. I aslo fetched two megaphones and a pair of binoculars from the trunk. I then opened the file marked TOP SECRET on my Android and at last read WBC’s intel for the first time even though I had told everyone involved that I had already memorized it.

“Proceed to the rise and wait,” I said, jutting a firm jaw, putting steel in my eyes and a layer of hoarfrost on my nerve.

Renfield drove us to the top of the rise and we were immediately assaulted by the full force of a nasty reek that had been a rumor in the wind for the last ten miles or so.

“WTF?” Renfield said.

I jutted my jaw, and steeled my eyes like Hannibal and said, evenly, “Pig pee.”

“Pig pee?”

“Says here,” I said as I consulted the file, “that the greenies have built an array composed of four-hundred fifty-five gallon wooden barrels of swine winkie, from which they hope to produce an electric current. That must be it over there,” I added. Then I stood like Patton in a jeep and surveyed the array through the binoculars. Each barrel had a wire coming out of it, which in turn merged with the lines poking out of the other barrels and all met at one great cord which was plugged into a pole at whose top, a refrigerator light-sized bulb seemed to be flickering—then again that might have been a hallucination caused by overexposure to the fumes coming off the loin chop lemonade.

“Miss WBC said nothing about hazmat,” Renfield said.

“Oh, well,” I said. “It’s a hard knock life, Miss Tiny Tim,” I added for no reason save for the likelihood that the gaseous ham juice was eating away at my brain.

Then like Custer recklessly flinging himself and his small band of men into a lethal, densely packed maw composed of every available angry Indian warrior within a three state radius, I yelled “Charger!” and Renfield revved Lucille dropped her into and flew us over the rise and down to our destiny.

There’s a great freedom in doing stupid things. And I thought I had heard Special Agent Lennie let loose a war whoop, but that may have been another hallucination caused by breathing vaporized shoat squirt.

*****

Fortunately the gate was open and there was nobody standing near the entrance. For about twenty yards before we got there Renfield executed a perfect 180, and we entered the fairgrounds butt first, as planned. Although our preparations were short, we didn’t have much to remember and we all knew our roles. Upon coming to a stop Renfield and I switched places with Lennie. She and he were perhaps the only two persons in the county who knew how to drive a “three-onna-tree,” and we had wisely kept the motor running. And I saw that, true to her plan, that WBC had planted a mole from the Fake News Ministry to stream our “performance” for the estimated 80% of the state population that gets their information no other way.

Everything happened very fast after we got in. Neither Renfield nor I had a script to follow, we just bellowed nonsense extolling the non-existent virtues of the Supreme Shithead into our megaphones, and that his first act of governor would be to build nuclear powered greenhouses for the production of ganga.

Up until the mention of Prince Peckerhead, the conventioneers had looked upon us with friendly bemusement. Things, however, got uber ugly when they realized we had come on behalf of the Grand Gonad. Uglier still when something that could have been a large cherry or a small tomato struck Lucille’s back bumper.

Only Renfield is allowed to abuse Lucille. She went ballistic, tossed aside her megaphone, began to display what I recognized to be the Havana Cigar Snuffer and screamed: I’M GOING TO LIQUIDATE THE NEXT USELESS PUSSY WHO THROWS SOMETHING AT LUCILLE!!! Renfield is seldom profane to that degree, but I blame it on the bacon brine, which was pretty heady inside the convention.

Not anxious to stick around and see his protege liquidate or be liquidated by anybody on his watch, Special Agent Lennie engaged Lucille and ran her from first to third with such energy that I had thought that someone much more lifelike had gotten in behind the wheel; but before he did that he had hit the horn thus letting us know we had better hold on or we’d be stuck at Green Medieval Con without bail money. As he sped us back up the hill, Renfield did a CGI type of roll into the front seat and somehow exchanged places with Lennie without a hitch.

Say what you will about greenhouse gases and the Murican toxic love affair with fossil fuels, there ain’t a green device on earth that can keep pace with a 1967 Charger named Lucille. Oh, they tried for a while– A few cyclists and a teensy-weensy electric car that looked like the type clowns pile out of at the circus gave a perfunctory chase, but, well…really. I mean really.

Yet through the binoculars I spied one last potential danger. The Medieval element at the convention had rolled out a trebuchet. And I saw several burley, middle-aged, Middle Age men quicky shovel something awfully slushy looking into the payload from a huge pile that lay behind the pig pen. I put two and two together and correctly got number two.

“Pig shitbomb coming in at two-o’clock!” I bellowed. Even when enraged, Renfield is fast on the uptake. She immediately took evasive, albeit unnecessary action. Although the Wilbur wad had gained early loft, it lacked enough sticktoitiveness to remain intact. It fell apart about three-hundred yards behind and to the left of us.

“Mission accomplished,” I said as I turned around and felt my heartbeat for the first time in maybe ten minutes.

We drove on in satisfied silence for awhile. Then making eye contact with me in the rearview mirror, Renfield batted her pretty eyes and asked if I saw any tsetse flies loitering near the boar bread.

I smiled. “Billions,” I said. “Billions.”

by Irene Allison

Author’s note:

This was written shortly after Donald Trump announced his run for the US presidency in 2016, during the winter of 2015; back when everyone thought it was a publicity stunt, like the late comedian Pat Paulsen running for the job every time from 1968 then on.

It is also the last byline for “Irene” due to a person of the same name wanting to have it all to herself.

Regardless, it is somewhat prophetic, although I really wish it was not. There are three other “darkness” tales with the same cast in them, beginning today then on the 13th, 20th and 27th of this month. I have resisted the temptation to alter them. It is also the debuts of Renfield and Gwen Cooper.

Leila

Walking Boss Cooper wanted to show me a cask of Amontillado she had stored deep in the bowels of Our Smiley Face of Darkness. An elevator located in the recently abandoned Human Resources Department is the only conveyance that sinks to the bowels, and it is said that every chamber “Down There” is a “two go in, one comes out” sort of place.

“Swell,” I said. “How ‘bout we do that at three? I’ve got nothing going then,” I added upon consulting a jumbo pad of sticky-notes in which I had spent two hours sketching likenesses of Fred Flintstone in slightly altered poses. The object there, if I ever get back to it, is a flipbook that shows Fred making an obscene gesture. I call it Yabba Dabba Screw You.

Walking Boss Cooper (from here, WBC) is twice my height, incredibly long armed, and has the unerring hands of a pickpocket. Without as much as a twitch of her torso, she reached across my desk and snatched my intellectual property out of my hands the same way a frog tongue zaps a mosquito off a twig. She studied it, arched an eyebrow you could have heard go up across the hall, then said, “Seems to me, Ms. Allison, you’ve got nothing going, now.”

Feckless nature has capped my magnificence at 4’ 11”. Whenever I must match the lengthy strides of someone of WBC’s stature, I look like a snorting dachshund chugging alongside a sleek, effortless Afghan hound. I hang in there gamely for a while, but I soon lose interest and wander away.

WBC hooked a brisk left at the head of the hall; naturally, I went right. I held no delusions of giving her the slip, I just needed to text my buddy and associate, Renfield: WBC. BOWELS. MAYDAY. Six seconds thereafter, WBC’s reflection filled the glass face of the Snax Machine.

From that point on she kept me in front of her. My fellow employees scattered at our approach as though we were a live grenade.

Upon our entering the abandoned HR offices, a wiseass in the lowing herd congratulated me on my “promotion.” A growl then formed deep inside my throat.

You see, it is almost impossible for young college graduates to get fired by Our Smiley Face of Darkness. Educated twenty-somethings stupid enough to work here are considered the future of the company. “Shiny stars,” is what the company’s owner and CEO (from here, His Himness) likes to call us. Whenever someone gets too shiney the company gives that sinner a lofty title that’s attached to a hope-annihilating task. The idea is to “tame the rascal” and then force said rascal beg for forgiveness in the snivel-most way imaginable. This “process,” according to His Himness’ number-one catchphrase, “works as good as a goddam voodoo doll.”

And you can’t quit Our Smiley Face of Darkness, either. Company goons routinely lurk university campuses to sniff out starving grad students. The goons dangle hefty signing bonuses that smell like prime rib under the noses of persons who have spent six years subsisting on Chinese rice candy and filched packets of soda crackers. My goon got me to sign an iron-clad seven year contract because she had been clever enough to throw in a cheese burger with my bonus.

With a quick squint and a casual tug of her right earring, WBC got it across to me that the elevator had eyes and ears. Even though handy Renfield had hacked into the bug map long ago, I dutifully played dumb.

“Jeepers!” I gasped. “I better not do or say anything subversive.”

WBC shot me a droll look and activated the elevator. Up high, a tracker marked our descent. After the parking garages had come and gone, pagan runes cast eerie shapes.

All of a sudden we both began to laugh. This had nothing to do with my sterling wit. Our Smiley Face of Darkness employees do a lot of spontaneous, nervous laughing nowadays; you see, the media circus has come to town.

His Himness is running for President of the United States. Of course this isn’t the first time that someone who is famous, extravagantly wealthy, loud, and an imbecilic sound-byte machine has launched a publicity stunt campaign for the Republican Party’s nomination, but it is the first time that this kind of person stands a good chance at getting it. His Himness has unwittingly tapped into a hitherto unknown wellspring of like-minded chowderheads composed of both genders, all races, and economic classes. They say “We’ve had it up to here.” If you ask them what they mean by that, the UP2HERES (that’s what they call themselves) respond with name-calling nd bizarre accusations. The movement is thriving, and to make matters worse, His Himness has selected Our Smiley Face of Darkness as his campaign HQ because it is the oldest holding in his vast empire. The whole mess gives me the heebie-jeebies.

“Ms. Cooper,” I asked after our laughter had burned itself out.

“Yes, Ms. Allison,” WBC replied with a radiant, even expectant, smile.

“His Himness told CNN this morning that when he is elected he will consider reopening hostilities with England because the National Archives refuses him access to the documents that prove the War of 1812 is over. Instead of finally exposing himself as a loon, Instapoll has him three points closer to the White House–and not just in the hillbilly states either. Tell me, Ms. Gwendolyn Cooper, Department chief, will your shiney star remain in his orbit when the redcoats come marching up Pennsylvania Avenue?”

WBC made a facetious show of addressing her reply to the wall. “I’m only certain that neither of us know what you are talking about, Ms. Irene Allison, new Stacks Curator of O’Reilly, Case, and Harkness.

A miniscule gong sounded by an inchling demon informed us that we had reached the bowels.

On the day the media circus arrived, his Himness immediately dismantled Human Resources because “…[HR] makes people sissies who run to their mommies and daddies every time somebody hurts their feelings. I say you let the shiny stars work out their own dust ups. You’ll see that it works as good as a goddam voodoo doll.”

In a weird and twisted way that I’m certain will end poorly, His Himness has steered the supervisor-peon dynamic into wild waters. He has conscripted all the older managers (including the former HR employees) to work on his campaign. Not a soul left in my department is within a holler of thirty (this includes WBC, for whom I threw a twenty-sixth birthday bash last month that moved my neighbors to hang me in effigy). WBC is deservedly a Department Chief ten years early, but she is as still just as much a cat that has thumbs and the keys to the gun cabinet as any of the rest of us. But she isn’t a bully who throws her weight around, nor does she hold with the Our Smiley Face of Darkness’ bootlicking method of getting out of trouble. If you’ve got it coming, she’ll devise a sinister, brilliant payback; but if you can mount a clever counter-offensive that she finds amusing, then all will be forgiven. I figured that this was my only chance, because I didn’t like the way WBC took glee in my new job title.

The doors slid open to a beige hallway that smelled like a contradictory combination of extreme cleanliness and day-old peed pants. I timidly poked my head out the door and saw that the hall bent to a quick curve at both ends, and that the elevator shaft itself was the inner wall. I also caught a cringing vibe from the walls that suggested they often had to bear the terrible shadow of Cthulhu. Naturally, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

Surpassed only by the substructure below the Sydney Opera House, Our Smiley Face of Darkness lies atop an eleven-story “Down There’’ that is shaped like an upside-down dunce cap. Obviously, this makes for circular floors that get tighter the farther you go down.

“Gadzooks,” I said with a whistle, “we’re hella Down There.”

“Right?” WBC laughed. “Any deeper might give you the bends on the way back up.” She then poked me in the back and directed me to the first and office door I saw. Some wit had attached a handmade sign to the door: STACKS: ABANDON HOPE.

As soon as entered the office, WBC flipped on the lights and slammed the door closed with an impressive and highly non-WBC swing of her hips. Her Walking Boss Cooper persona then went the way of the dodo and civility. Before me stood my good friend Gwen–sometimes even “Gwynnie”–but her next sentence told me that she wasn’t in a Gwynnie kind of mood: “I ought to kick you in the balls.”

“I hope that you mean that only in the metaphorical sense, Ms. Cooper,” I said loudly. “I’d hate to have anyone listening get the wrong idea about me.”

“The room’s clean,” she said. “Nobody gives a rat’s ass about what happens down here. How I wish you did have a set. I’d goal kick them to the moon. That would be sweet.”

I rolled my eyes and spun around on one heel so I could size up the chamber that Gwen had obviously intended to be my new home away from home as payback for any one of fifty sins.. The room was spacious, but made small by clutter. It was beige and the matching carpet had been worn to the cord. The ceiling was an uneasy mix of missing panels, water stains on the ones that were still there, and plastic light fixtures heavy with dead bugs. Throughout the chamber, perhaps as many as a hundred large interoffice memo cartons lay among a tumble of obsolete tech-devices. My eyes met Gwen’s and I followed her joyous gaze to a pair of small desks that held a matched set of bargain basement computers that linked to a shared printer/scanner.

“All right, Gwynnie,” I said, “ what’s the gag?” Less than ten minutes had passed since Renfield had texted me that she saw WBC heading my way with an ax-killer glow similar to the Madonna’s halo, and that i ought to “GIT!!!” Unfortunately, WBC happens as suddenly as the creature in the Alien films; that, and Renfield’s penchant for sending windy texts that get to the soul of the thing a bit late, had landed me a fate similar to that of Fortunato in the Poe story that WBC had alluded to earlier at my desk. (Gwen minored in World Lit at Stanford. She delights in giving her twisted schemes a literary touch.)

“Didn’t ‘swell,’ ‘jeepers,’ ‘gadzooks,’ and ‘ what’s the gag?’ go down with the Titanic? But I guess that your vocabulary, though odd, is what it is. Now, if you are asking me what I as your supervisor have done for the benefit of O’Reilly, Case, and Harkness–and even a little for you–I’ll be delighted to explain. Please consider this a teaching moment.”

“Whatever, rat-bastard,” I said as sweetly as such a thing can be said.

“Last night I stayed late and watched the wranglers prep Duke Douchenozzle for that CNN interview you streamed instead of doing your job. Trying to get the simplest things across to him is as useless as teaching a ferret calculus. He gets Big Ideas all the time. instead of finally understanding that New England is on American soil, he leapt at the notion of collecting the papers for, get this, his Presidential Library.

A sudden attack of the heebie-jeebies threatened to shatter me to pieces. Gwen uncoiled one of her long arms and held me together.

“Prince Peckerhead,” she continued, “wants an electronic copy of every scrap of paper addressed to It, which i find odd from someone who never allows his mail to be opened or recycled.” Gwen then stage whispered, “he’s afraid it might go off.” Then she kicked one of the memo cartons. “This crap accumulates like dust. Since 1985, the Supreme Shithead has averaged two-thousand incoming letters a week. Even in this age of email he gets that many–even more than that since the campaign got going. And no matter where it goes it all comes here for storage. This stuff in here is only a tiny sample,”

Two-thousand a week times thirty years equals very depressing, I thought.

“Since your job category is Information Analysis Implementation, all you require from me is information to analyze and then implement,” Gwen continued. “I’m sure that you’ve already deduced that you and your rancid little shadow, Ms. Renfield Stoker, as soon as I nab her have many years of scanning ahead of you. Under normal circumstances I would have thrown a generation of interns and energy drinks at this project. But I’ve decided that you and Renny will do it alone. You see, I can’t kick King Klown Kollege in the balls, but I can take it out on you. Would you like to know why I feel this way?”

“Yeah,” I said, “it has crossed my mind.”

“ When it popped into that soft shell crab of a brain of his to set up his archives (here, Gwen did a spot on imitation of His Himness), he said, ‘I want somebody with stones on this. Someone with the big brass. I say give it to Walking Boss Cooper. She’ll do it as good as a goddam voodoo doll.”

“Oops.”

“Right? And how the toadies and buttkissers and shitheads-in-general all brayed like donkeys at my expense. Since last night, it’s been nothing but ‘Walking Boss Cooper’ this and that. I know that the Magnificent Meatball couldn’t have thought that up on his own; and hearing something oh so you and Renny dribble out of its maw has done evil things to my serenity. It only took ten minutes to find someone willing to rat the two of you out. I’ll say this much for Renny, she’s hella better at keeping a nose to the wind than you are. If you were an antelope you’d be lunch. She’s given me the slip twice; but she’ll be down here with you, by and by.”

“Never,” I laughed. “Renfield is a ninja. She’ll avoid you forever and a day.”

Gwen laughed. “I requested that the cafeteria serve mashed potatoes with brown gravy congealed to perfection for lunch today.”

Renfield was sunk. When it comes to brown gravy congealed to perfection, Renfield becomes as easy to catch as a knock knock joke. I could have texted her and told her that it was a trap, but it wouldn’t have been any use. She’d even probably get mad at me for wasting time that she could have spent on eating.

Gwen’s cell beeped an incoming text. She studied it, arched that noisy eyebrow of hers, and shone that ax-killer glow so like the Madonna’s halo.

“My snitch has Renny in the lunchroom, doing this,” Gwen said and extended her phone to me. Renfield was licking her plate and getting ready for seconds or thirds.

“Gross.” Normally, Renfield is as fastidiously clean as a cat. Not so much when it comes to brown gravy congealed to perfection.

“Right? Anyhoo, I’ve gotta run. Duty calls and all that. I hope you girls have fun for the next eighty or ninety years. Are we still on for martinis after work, or are you a sore loser?”

“I’m only achy,” I replied. “You and your VISA better be at the pub at five-oh-two, and not a second later.”

Nowadays, Renfield and I spend a lot of time together. So much that a F.I.F.A.-style slap-fight broke out between us over the ownership of a bag of pork rinds, After that had been settled to my disadvantage, we made up and decided that the only way out of our tomb is to launch a counter-offensive.

We also decided that no matter what, our retaliation must be based on a work of Edgar Allan Poe’s, as to give the sordid affair a sense of symmetry not present in real life. I suggested that we charge an actual cask of Amontillado to WBC’s department account and have it sent down to us. Further research, however, showed that the cask in the story is a “pipe”–which weighs almost five-hundred litres. Even if we could fit it into the elevator, it and the brutes necessary to move it might cause the car to come down like a meteor (no scaling down revenge; it must be life-sized, bigger, or not at all). Renfield suggested The Purloined Letter. Since we’ve got three-million letters to go through, it seemed possible that one might be stolen. Hence, we’ve begun to answer His Himness’es mail.

The letters in our office hail from 1985. Of which there are only three types: Crazy, Crazier, Craziest. Renfield is currently one floor up going through the archives for a TYPE 3 letter of a more recent vintage.

It’s fallen on me to pen the reply. I don’t know what will go between the address and His Himness’es “ signature” (we found an actual autopen among the techno-rubble), other than WBC’s cell number and email address as the contact information. But i know I’ll end it with this: Remember to vote for me; that’ll be the same as you kissing my ass. I think that will be as good as a goddam voodoo doll.

It remains to be seen how this mess works out. All in all, the only thing I’d like to get out of it is less of the heebie-jeebies.