Four Visionary Vignettes For Our Times
It's
Autumn now. The maple and fruit trees are shedding their red and yellow
leaves, and the wind is blowing them away as they make delightful
rustling sounds like little cracker mice scurrying down the street. I
love listening to this change of season from the open window in
Richard's office.
Richard is in the living room watching "Ancient Aliens" on TV, so it's just Max and me in the office. Max is fast asleep. I never seen a dog that sleeps as much as Max. He's the Rip van Wrinkle of dogdom.
Times like these are when my medusa oblongata down shifts, sending me into a semi-hypernative state during which visions of little consequence flutter out of my mind.
Right on cue, my breathing shallows, I twitch, and a vision protrudes upon me.
An elderly white woman using a walker is called from her seat in the
doctor's waiting room. She goes into the doctor's office to get
a Pap smear to determine if she has crabs. After a while,
she returns to the waiting room until the test results are confirmed, and
looks at a Navajo woman sitting next to her seat.
She loudly says to the woman, "Are you a native?"
The Navajo woman does not respond.
Then the elderly woman looks at another patient sitting nearby and loudly says, "Is she a native?"
The Navajo woman slowly pulls a handgun out of her bag and shoots the old lady between the eyes. Blood splatters everywhere.
No one else in the office says a thing.
The vision fades.
My medusa oblongata takes me to another vision.
In Parc Pierre Puget in Marseille, France, Rabou, a man in a black suit,
is walking an old lady in a wheelchair down a garden path.
"I'd love some rabbit in a mustard sauce,'' she says.
Rabou replies, "Maman, we're in the middle of a park. We just had lunch, really. We ate lunch at Columbe's."
She says, "So, no rabbit with mustard sauce? That's a pity."
An assailant appears out of nowhere and shoots Rabou between the eyes. Blood splatters everywhere.
The old lady says to the assailant, "I'd love some rabbit with mustard sauce."
The vision fades, but soon another vision ensues.
After more than two hours of work, Jimmy Jenkins, the Roto-Rooter
plumber, is finally able to unclog the homeowner's sewer line.
He then knocks on the front door to present his invoice. A little old
man opens the door.
Jimmy, after providing the invoice, asks, "Er, excuse me, but are your logs exceptionally large?"
The old man says, "Huh? Oh I get it now. They're not very big, but they are hard as rocks."
Jimmy asks, "Do you have any idea what's causing this?"
"Well, maybe it's because I eat a bowl of gravel every morning for breakfast," replies the old man.
Then Jimmy reaches into his tool bag, pulls out a handgun, and shoots the old man between the eyes. Blood splatters everywhere. He then returns the gun to the tool bag, enters his van, and drives away.
The vision fades.
I settle into my bed and start to doze off, but another vision takes hold.
Strother Peckerwood has a problem, and he is distraught. He has really
bad eye bags that are just killing him. He sees his doctor who says
he could try cucumber slices or just live with it, but that does not
satisfy Strother. So he pulls out a handgun and shoots the doctor
between the eyes. Blood splatters everywhere.
Strother slowly leaves the doctor's office, walks down the street, and decides to go into an oyster bar. He orders a half dozen oysters with hot sauce and a double shot of Jack. This palliative does not dissolve his misery.
He continues walking down the street. He stops when he sees a sign for a chiropractor across the street. With nothing to lose but his dwindling self-respect, he crosses the street and enters the chiropractor's office. He meets a burly receptionist—some might say an obese receptionist. At his wits end, he loses control and screams at her, "I need relief from my eye bags!"
She recoils, but because she is so obese, er, burly, she screams back at him, "The doctor don't treat eye bags, he does manipulations!"
Strother screams again, "I don't give a fuck! He's a doctor, so tell him to get out here and manipulate my eye bags!"
Attempting to calm herself, the burly woman says as gently as she can while she has her phone ready to dial 911, "Please let me speak with the doctor. I'll be right back."
Strother waits. After a while, out strolls the suave and debonner Dr. Alonso Milkgraves, DC., ND, DVM. He says, "My dear man, I understand that you are being plagued by your eye bags. I can give you a spinal manipulation that will correct the problem. After all, I am a chiropractor, I can treat any and all maladies."
Strother cautiously smiles and says, "Oh thank you doctor. Will I need to remove my clothes?"
Dr. Milkgraves responds, "You can keep on your underwear. Now come into my treatment room, and let's get started."
Strother obliges and the treatment ensues. Afterwards the doctor advises him that the eye bags have been corrected. Strother thanks him profusely and goes to the waiting room to pay the bill. Feeling a need to pee, he goes into the bathroom. After relieving himself, he washes his hands in the sink and looks into the mirror. His eye bags are as bad as ever!
"You goddamn motherfucker!" he screams. Then he runs out of the bathroom and barges into the doctor's treatment room where the doctor is looking at a young woman's beaver while stretching her hamstrings. Strother takes out a handgun and shoots the doctor between the eyes. Blood splatters everywhere. Strother slowly walks out of the office while the burly receptionist cowers in the corner.
Once back on the street, Strother contemplates traveling to Algiers, changing his name to Meursault, and killing an Arab on the beach.
The vision fades and I fall into an uneasy sleep.
I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre