The Vorpal Report
by Robert Guffey
Sunday
What’s
wrong? she seemed to ask, tracing his bare back with her fingertip.
He
shrugged his shoulders in response.
She
sighed with ennui, then slid her palms down his back and began kissing him
along his spine.
He
stared at the blanket that hung from the top of the bunk bed above them.
Her
roommate was gone. Most everyone in the dorm was gone … for Thanksgiving
weekend, he assumed. Thanksgiving, he’d always suspected secretly, was like
most holidays: a con to keep you in your home, stuffing your face with dead
meat all day while government agents in “Radiation Suit Leisure Wear” tiptoe in
your backyard, injecting your flower garden with a new chemical virus created
by Mengele’s ghost up in that condo lab in D.C. with the plush red curtains.
Mmmm.
Yes.
Pherrod
Hempley now expressed this long-repressed suspicion to Ellen as he watched the
blanket hanging there from the top bunk. The ratty old blanket seemed to be clinging
on to dear life, doing nothing spectacular really—like himself.
Ellen
laughed. She leaned towards his ear, her long, recently fuchsia-dyed (cinnamon-scented)
hair falling onto his head. She ground her teeth lightly on the tiny white
hairs on his neck, and then on his flesh. How’re you doing? she asked.
Pherrod
wasn’t sure what to say, so he didn’t say anything.
Roll
over, she said softly, giggling, and pinched his butt.
His
gaze dropped from the blanket hanging from the mattress above him, to the
wad (Ellen’s blanket rolled up into a
ball at the foot of the bed) next to his mouth. Please don’t wipe it off on my
blanket, she said. One guy—some guy—did that. Real, uh … here, use this. Real
disgusting.
When
he wouldn’t roll over, she began attempting various ways to excite him. He lay
there for a few seconds, watching the blanket slide off the mattress above him,
then grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him. He began massaging her pink nipple,
and he looked her in the eyes and said, Nothing’s wrong. He kissed her on the
lips.
Mn. She
shook her head. No kissing.
So
he buried his head in the crook of her neck and shoulder and went at her with
four fingers.
His
face was pressed into her new hair for the twelfth time that day, and for the
life of him … he really couldn’t smell the cinnamon. Maybe it was just him.
But
when she asked him about it later, he nodded, and said, Yeah, baby, smells nice
….
She
grinned with satisfaction.
* * *
He
tried not to think of these things, but as he watched the lump of blanket
squatting next to his—and Ellen’s—head, he thought he could just as easily
imagine himself taking her skull and ramming it into the nightclub-flyer-covered
plaster of the wall four or five or six, perhaps more, several more, times … as he could taking her head in his hands and
covering it with kisses, as he did now after stealing one of her roommate’s
condoms that had been hidden underneath the mattress above them. The roommate
was going to be surprised when she came home; her supply was dwindling rapidly.
But Ellen said not to worry, she’d pay the stupid cunt back later.
Pherrod
found himself wondering how she would pay her back.
I’m
not paranoid, it’s just that I think everyone’s out to get me, an acquaintance
who thought of himself as a friend had said to him a long time ago, why?, no
one knows. But he found it funny now, as he came inside of her, and she held
on, and she siiiighed underneath him, and, hhhhhhh.
He
tried not to think of these things … of what she was doing (and who she was
doing it with) when he wasn’t around.
But
he often did.
* * *
Thanksgiving
dinners. Holidays. Celebratory toasts.
What
these things are, exactly, are cons to keep people in their homes stuffing
their faces with dead meat all day while ….
* * *
A
government agent flew in through the window and—straddling his broom—landed
like a rocket ship in the bathroom. It was dark. But he didn’t need a light. Infrared
goggles had long been standard issue. All he needed to do was plant the vector,
then take off …
This
he did, in the false bottom of the medicine cabinet (which had been installed long
ago for just this reason) …
Quietly,
he reclosed the cabinet.
Quietly,
he straddled his broom once more.
And
quietly, he kicked off from the second story bathroom window sill, and with a
quiet, carbine backfire, was gone into the quiet, suburban night.
Quietly.
* *
*
Jabberwocky
Outbreak Declared a Pandemic by CDC
Washington,
D.C.—Over the past few weeks dozens of cities on the East Coast of the United
States have become affected by an illness the Center for Disease Control is
calling “Jabberwocky Disease,” a disorder that affects only the language
centers of the brain. With the advent of the illness, common words are often
transformed into meaningless utterances, though the victims themselves appear
not to be aware of this. The victims are not affected otherwise, and the
disease is not believed to be fatal.
“The
breakdown this could cause in our day-to-day lives is incalculable,” says Dr.
Ronald Eckert of the CDC. “Up till now, in the vast majority of instances, the
deleterious effects have been gradual and intermittent; however, in rare but
severe cases, the language breakdown has been abrupt and resistant to treatment.
In the past few days, these severe cases have begun to multiply exponentially. Unfortunately,
the disorder appears to affect not only oral communication, but written
communication as well.” Dr. Eckert
claims that the outbreak, within only a few days, has reached pandemic
proportions.
According
to Dr. Amini Fayshad, former U.S. Surgeon General, the possibilities of this
disease are far more dire than one might imagine. “What adds to the general
uncertainty of the situation is the fact that no reputable linguist is aware of
what might occur to the way people perceive reality if the means by which human
beings communicate undergoes a sudden and irreversible paradigm shift,”
commented Dr. Fayshad on Sunday. “What if reality itself is shaped by the
language we use to describe it?”
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