(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

When I lived in the suburbs I wrote this - I started writing this out of no-where and then the person from porlock appeared and ruined it.  I sometimes read it again because I think it's one of the better things I've done.

Dinner

“I don't know if you know this but I was just chased by a pack, is it a pack? Anyway a herd of deer just chased me here.” Kevin was saying this while trying to dust the snow off of his ancient trench coat. It was a real trench coat that had seen action in the trenches at the Marne and it had been patched where the hun had speared the tommy that had worn it with a fixed bayonette. They'd probably both been half blind and crazy from the mustard gas as well and the coat had a peculiar bleach smell to it that made Kevin think it was perpetually clean even though it was filthy. “A herd of deer.”

His roommate Badminton could not become concerned about this. Part of his arm had been cut open, presumably by Badminton himself, and there were bones and gears and mechanisms laying all over the kitchen table. He'd also set up some arc lights and had even left open the refrigerator for good measure. “Maybe they could smell the sandwich in your pocket.” Badminton stared at Kevin and used his Unfathomable Gaze, which made a lot of people feel important and some people feel very ill at ease, usually women. It made Kevin feel likehis roommate was going to kill him one day. “Listen. Listen to me.”

“Uh, okay.” Kevin was willing to listen. He hung his coat in his special closet and started untying his shoes, sitting on the dirty tile floor of their split level house, one of the dogs came up and started licking his face and he let it, since its dumb little pink tongue was warm and his face was really cold. He was thinking about how he didn't have a sandwich in his pocket.

“Listen, I met someone who wants to beat your ass.” Badminton couldn't even pay attention while he was telling Kevin this. He'd gone back to the mechanisms and bones and pieces of muscle that were laying all over the kitchen table. Probably ruining it forever Kevin thought.

“Wait a second man, come on. Don't say it was your...”

“It's my balls.” Badminton concluded, using his Unfathomable Gaze to make Kevin even more uncomfortable than he already was. Another dog climbed onto him and started trying to do its sex to his lap, just to make him feel even dumber.

“Come on, I just had to run across the green man, those deer, there were like seven of them! They came out of the bushes and they were just charging me!” Boots finally untied he settled them in his special closet and pushed the growing pile of dogs off of himself. Once up he really wanted to get into the kitchen to get something to eat. He hoped that anything of his wasn't ruined and that the refrigerator hadn't been kept open for very long. But getting into the food prepatory portion of the kitchen was hard because in the 'L' shaped area of the house, most of the small line of the L was taken up by the table and Badminton's bloody parts, so he had to squish past Bad and all of his bits and pieces and then accidentally blind himself by looking into the arclight and then find nothing in the kitchen but some dried noodles, which it turned out was plenty though. “Those deer. What's up with them?”

“Maybe they were hungry.” By now Bad had settled down at the table and was putting the pieces of himself or whatever back inside his cut up arm. He'd cut himself up pretty good and here and there he'd hold it up to the light and Kevin could see between the two bones that made up that part of the forearm. The tibia? He couldn't remember.

“I don't think deer eat anyone. Is it a thing of the city? Some new defense?” Kevin joined Badminton at the table and without looking up from his bowl started eating his noodles.

“No, no it's not the city, they would have billed me for something like that. Listen. Listen to me.” Kevin listened. “I don't want to hear about your problems.”

That made sense. After all the guy had skinned most of his own forearm and was shoving parts into it, most of them didn't even seem biological, most of them didn't even seem like anything. “Is that an ashtray?”

Badminton wouldn't respond but he seemed pretty focused, the veins in his head were pretty visible, but it could have been just the UFO style light effect that was coming out of their kitchen. Kevin wondered about breakers and fuses and if he'd have to worry about them, or know. “Guess you've got some problems of your own.”

“No. I don't have any problems. I don't have any problems and I don't want to hear about your problems, and I don't want there to be problems ever about anything at all. Listen to me.” He used his Unfathomable Gaze again. “I don't have any problems. If someone asks you if we're married you tell them yes okay?”

“Uh, alright. Um. If I'm your husband... As your husband? Shouldn't you tell me what's going on with your arm?”

“My arm.” Bad looked at him like he was being asked about his leg, or some other part of him that seemed to function normally and hadn't been dissected on the kitchen table. “There was a problem with my arm, back when I had problems. Do you remember the other day when I was screaming?”

Kevin remembered it pretty vividly. He was sure that all the screaming, and there had been a lot of it, he was sure it meant that Bad was going to finally kill him. He'd locked the door of his room and tried pretty feebly to push the bed against the door, but in the end had to settle for lying under the covers very still all day. He'd peed out the window that day. Twice. “I think I remember something like that, vaguely.”

“Anyway it's not a problem anymore. I got some upgrades and well. It's going to be a lot better around here now with my new arm.” He started putting more pieces into his arm and he was having to screw bits into it using his other hand and his mouth for a lever to hold the screwdriver, so whatever he said next Kevin couldn't really hear.

“They can do that? You can get a new arm?”

“Listen. Listen to me. They can do anything.”

When he said 'they' Kevin had a vague sense of outside market forces, that built bilboards and somehow paid for there to be an internet and a city and everything, but he thought that when Bad said 'they' he meant his job, which was one of the main secrets about their house. He knew Badminton was really rich, since he had a house in the city and a car that was totally shiny and huge and he had new clothes all the time and sometimes wouldn't come home for weeks on end, but he never spoke about it and once when he was asked he used his Unfathomable Gaze for almost ten consecutive minutes, so Kevin didn't bring it up. Still it seemed like a good time to broach the subject so he tried his hand. “Who's they Bad?”

“My Balls.”

Commuting

The bus could only go near the city and that was how it was allowed to operate at all. As the poorest boy in the city Kevin had to take the bus, but because he lived in the city he was the only person ever getting on or off the bus at his stop, and then nobody on the bus would ever talk to him even though he was very friendly. He told himself that he was very friendly every day after he tried to strike up a conversation with the driver and the driver would usually (it wasn't always ever the same driver) would tap the glass and point at the sign on his or her helmet that said he wasn't allowed to have unnecessary conversation with them. It didn't say – Kevin, you can't have conversations with the driver. It said, No Unnecessary Conversation, but Kevin sometimes felt like an amount of conversation was pretty much necessary. Only he thought that.

When the bus had let him off it was snowing. And dark. And it had been snowing and dark for about a week. Something had been weird about the sky, Kevin didn't follow the weather or sports, but something had been weird about the sky enough that you'd just notice even if you didn't ever watch any Weather or Sports. Anyhow! He couldn't tell if had been a week or however long that the sky had been this way, since it had been dark for kind of a long time. And snowing. He'd slept about six times since he'd seen the sun but that didn't mean that much since he kind of slept when he could or when he was too poor to have something else to do, which was most times. Well the snow was pretty deep and he had to walk through the Green, which was the big area of defenses built up on the border of the City and the rest of the city where all the undesirables lived. The Green was supposed to be mined and Kevin had to be careful, especially on a snowy day(or night or whatever) like this because sometimes the guards would leave false trails through the green for interlopers to follow and get blown up. Kevin hadn't ever seen anyone on the green, or trying to cross it but himself, and he had to know where the mines were and where the automatic guns were and there was always a password every week he'd find in the mail. Usually that was the only mail ever addressed to him at their house – the password and the new map where the mines were.

So on this particular snowy dark night(or day or whatever) he could see off in the treeline, which marked the border between the city and the City that there were some animals lingering. The only light on the Green came from the bunch of restaurants and gas stations and slaughterhouses and fisheries that lined up along Euclid avenue. And the big statue of the idealization of The Man as Industrial Product that sometimes was lit up but usually not, that was at least stainless steel so when the other lights were on it cast a big reflection over the green, which was otherwise really dark. “Dark like the seven day night, dark like the insides of a black dog at midnight.” Kevin sang to himself a little because it helped him not to be afraid of the mines and the automatic machine guns. He'd once been given a bullet from one of the automatic machine guns that were supposed to ask for the password. The Mayor had given it to him along with his bus pass when he'd moved in. It had been a pretty unpleasant meeting and the mayor just sat behind his desk and stared at Kevin with a face like he'd been given some kind of venereal disease. By his mother. “I'll only explain this the once, but if you don't take care to remember the password, you'll get about ten of these in you son.” And he'd given Kevin the bullet, which was longer than his hand from wrist to fingertip. “You keep that to remind you son.” The mayor had acted pretty much like he was sure that Kevin would forget the password right away and he was right, but then, no automatic guns ever appeared so it hadn't been a problem.

Well in the treeline though there were these animals, and they had glinting black eyes that were dull like an animal's eyes, and they had white points, pointed parts that were white and very visible, but were otherwise invisible, except for those eyes and the white parts and that they were moving. When Kevin walked onto the green and was humming his song about things “Not going to get blown up or shot up or blown up or shot up or shot up or...” He saw the things moving out of the woods and toward him. Pretty quickly right toward him. “Or eaten or shot up or blown up or eaten up or eaten up...” And here he could see at last, and this was because the lights of The Man As Industrial Object had come on suddenly and that cast the whole snowy field of the green into a terrible color the mixture of acid yellow storefront lights and the verdigris reflection off of The Man and then the moonlight reflecting off of the bright snow and then the snow was still falling, big thumbnail sized flakes of it just blowing down like the ashes. So it was a pretty sickening time and the half mile or so of the green didn't seem like a good place to have to cross. Well a lot less of a good place, but it seemed like the deer took notice of him as the lights shone on him and his ancient trench coat and then they were after him like they were with the Kaiser himself. They started darting right at him, which seemed like a big surprise since he didn't think deer would do that, he was pretty sure they were supposed to be afraid of people. He watched it happen without thinking at first and was almost happy that only two of them had horns. “Or rammed up or horned up or eaten up or blown up or shot up or rammed up.” But the song wasn't accomplishing anything so he started rushing through the snow, and that was dangerous, sure, the whole green was silly with mines and automatic guns after all. Except that he noticed that the deer didn't seem to get shot up or blown up and were darting in their weird skippy bounds right at him. “Antlers!” He said, remembering, and started running. Now ignoring what might be or was supposed to be safety he charged across the green and into the Abbot's territory. The Abbot was neighbors with Kevin and his roommates, or anyway, the monastery was. They just said it was the Abbot's because he was the only one of the monks who could talk and they'd see him once in a while out mowing the grass. Well he dove over the fence into the Abbot's yard and that's when the deer broke off their chase. But then the Monks were all over him since going over the fence tripped something that made the floodlights come on to reveal him standing on their perfect lawn which didn't even have a speck of snow on it. A few of the Monks came bounding out of their kennel and they'd probably have snarled at him if they were able to snarl or make a noise – but luckily the Abbot was on his porch and saw poor Kevin. “Run on home boy and keep off our lawn. It's sanctified by the power of Christ you heathen.” Kevin jumped off the lawn but cast a frightened eye toward the woods where the deer had retreated. “May his spirit dwell in you.” Said the Abbot unhelpfully, but in a helpful tone of voice.

Kevin walked down the snowy sidewalk to his house. His roommate Badminton Imposter's beautiful tank of a car sat in the driveway. Like the Abbot's lawn, snow wouldn't dare to fall on it. Big and black and studded with guns and knives and every sort of convenience and apparatus of pleasure and security, it seemed always like it would come alive and also like it could somehow fit inside your hands – like it could be a thing. A thing that belonged to you.

Kevin didn't have much. In his pocket he stroked the seam of the pocket with his thumb while his hand clenched and unclenched around the bullet that the mayor had given him. Really, now that the thought about it, the bullet was the size and kind of the shape of a probably pretty self confident man's dick. It was pretty much exactly the size of The Man As Industrial Products' member. He was kind of concluding this and also wishing he could think of something else to think about and also worrying about what it meant about him that he thought of that at all when he came in the front door.

Badminton was at the kitchen and his arm was all cut up but none of his other roommates were around.

Bedtime

There was knock at Kevin' door and he woke up. “Who is it?”

From the other side of the door came Bad's response. “Listen. You don't have to let me in. My new arm is. Listen, my new arm doesn't need for me to be let in. You don't understand.”

“I don't understand.” Kevin was pretty upset that he was growing more certain that he would have to pee out of his window again pretty soon.

“It's just listen. Listen. I won't bother you tonight. I just want you to understand something.”

“I'm trying my best to understand what you tell me.” This was Kevin earnest reply, it was a good one. He was hiding under the covers.

“Remember when I said if someone asked to say we are married right?”

“Yes I'll remember.”

“I know you will. Listen. Don't tell anyone you're my husband.”

“I thought you said...”

“Listen. My new arm wants you to listen.”

“I'm listening.

“You're the wife.”

“Okay.”

“Go to sleep now. Big day tomorrow.”

Breakfast

When he came back down to the kitchen in the morning the sun was shining. The sun was shining pretty brightly in fact and it woke him up before his alarm or the confusing antics of his roommates could. He went down to the kitchen to forage for some food and one of his roommates was there, sitting at the very clean kitchen table, shining, gleaming in fact, kitchen table. The roommate was Larry, who lived in the basement. He was eating oatmeal, and on the counters around the sink were stacks and stacks of groceries. Items of food of every description.

“Badminton said that you have to put this away but you should eat whatever you want, he said you were out of food.” Larry didn't look up at him when he said, he didn't even stop eating. He had a really confusing, far away look, like he was staring at television. Kevin was displeased to notice that Larry was not wearing a stitch of clothing except for one sock, which was covered in mud. “You look pretty hungry man, you should eat. Badminton bought you that food so you should eat it.”

“I will. I guess I will.” Kevin picked up some of the groceries, mainly fruit and he didn't think he'd be able to finish it all before it wilted. Strawberries mostly. Plus a lot of bread and peanut butter and some chicken. He picked out a cardboard carton of blueberries to eat for breakfast, and a pack of fancy crackers and started making coffee. It seemed pretty nice to see Larry, Larry hadn't been around for a while. At least Kevin hadn't seen him for a while, who even knew who was around, or who lived with him anymore. He decided that conversation was the thing. “Hey man, did you hear that screaming the other day? Anyhow I guess it was Bad, he was cutting off his arm, but they gave him a new one. Did you seem him installing it last night?”

“What?” For the first time Larry was looking toward him, and even though he'd been talking to him already it seemed like he just was noticing that he was in the kitchen. He didn't look at his face though. He was staring at Kevin's feet. “Oh, hey. Hey if you can find some shoes I kind of need new ones. Size 10, that's the most common size right? That's right. Get me some shoes will you?”

“Uh, I'll try and get you some shoes.”

“There's probably a lot of them.”

“I... I'm sure there are a lot of shoes.”

“No-no. I mean, down at the green, what with the trespassers, all the automatic guns probably mow guys down all day. Just find me some size tens. I don't care if they match or whatever.”

“Uh, okay. Okay I'll look for shoes.”

“Yeah. That's good, thanks for that. You're a good friend. Were you screaming?”

“I don't... Oh! Oh, that was Badminton! He cut off his arm, he said it was making too many problems. Didn't you hear him?”

“I didn't hear anything man.” Larry shook his head then and stopped staring at Kevin's feet. He started looking deeply into the middle distance again. “It's been pretty weird in the basement lately. It's been pretty rough.”

“Uh. Do you want me to find you some clothes? Some clothes and shoes and clothes too?”

“Oh, well. If you do that's fine. Sure.” The idea started coming to him. Realization like the sun coming out. “Yeah, I could wear some clothes. That could be alright. Do you need some money? Get some money out of my wallet if you do.” Larry kept his wallet lying on the coffee table by the television. He never seemed to take it with him and it was always full of money, full to bursting usually. Usually with $50 bills. “Just leave whatever you find by my door okay man? Get your self some if you want. If you want that, that's fine.” Larry spoke in a really quiet voice and didn't move for a while. Slowly he started talking again but he was just saying numbers or some kind of mathematical formula that must have had to do with what went on in the basement. Kevin helped himself to a few hundred dollars. “You should get yourself something too. You look pretty thin.”

“I will Larry.”

The Interview

Charlotte was a girl and that meant trouble for Kevin. He was supposed to look at her and be attentive and answer her questions because she was interviewing him for a job and he was supposed to act like he had answers whenever she asked him something. Or he was supposed to know answers. A real person at a job would have answers. Badminton would definitely have answers, probably something smart about having a good car or an appropriate haircut. Kevin's haircut wasn't appropriate at all and he had a really hard time concentrating when he talked to Charlotte and also most other girls. Even though Charlotte was pretty much older than him and also kind of weird shaped so that her hands were the same width as her wrists and her thumb was weird and stubby past the first knuckle so that it didn't even seem like a thumb or else maybe a baby's thumb, and even though he could only look at her hands without going crazy he kept thinking about what it would be like if they were kissing and then he took off his clothes and then she'd be excited and take off her clothes and they'd stare at each other in the eyes while they were naked and they'd be in love. He imagined it just like that. They'd be in love and then she'd lead him away out of the cubicle in the lobby where she worked and into some room. Probably some kind of room where they'd kiss a lot more and then she'd put her hands on him which were weird, but he'd overlook that because of their love and then they'd have a lot of sex. He couldn't not think about how they were having crazy amounts of sex while she was talking to him.

“It says you're interested in religions.” Charlotte new better than to ask questions. She made statements and hoped that Kevin or Johan or whoever it was she had to talk to at that particular moment would nod stupidly or else act like they disagreed or would blather on like an asshole about something she didn't care about. Charlotte liked to smoke a lot of grass and mostly she would think about if the person she was talking to had a lot of grass with them for them to smoke, and they would smoke it together and maybe she'd take off her shirt if they were a good kisser. Sometimes it would be a girl that was saying whatever stupid thing that she was goading them into saying and she'd think the same thing because Charlotte didn't care who she smoked grass with.

“Oh, I guess I am interested in religions?” Kevin wasn't doing so well. He was asking Charlotte questions and he should have known she would hate that.

“Wait, you aren't interested in religions? Think carefully because I might have a job for someone who is interested in religions. Someone smart who can learn about a religion.” Charlotte thought that Kevin was just kind of a dummy. Not a total dummy because he had good references. His references were his roommates and they seemed to be rather together sorts of people. She would often talk on the telephone for a long time with Badminton and Larry and Evie and she would imagine what it would be like to go somewhere with them and smoke grass. Mostly she thought that Evie would be into that. And it seemed like Evie, after she talked to her on the phone, was a pretty cool girl, and if she wanted to take off Charlotte's shirt after they had smoked some grass together and had kissed for a while, that would be alright with Charlotte.

“I am interested in religions,” said Kevin, and he said it in a way that made it seem like he wasn't at all interested in religions but in getting a job which was really good enough for Charlotte. It didn't even say on Kevin's form that he was interested in religions. She had said that because she needed him or Johan or someone exactly like them to take a job that was getting to be hard to fill and which she had become obligated with filling. It was a terrible job and it made her feel better about herself that she could make people do a job that was worse than hers. They would do this job because of money, and that also made her feel better but in a way that made her feel really terrible so that she felt like the only good think she could do with her life was to smoke grass with people.

“That's excellent Kevin because there is a very good opportunity for you. I think it will be an excellent fit in a rewarding field.” Charlotte thought a little bit about the job and worried about the kind of people that might feel rewarded by a job like the one she was about to make Kevin have. She would definitely keep her shirt on when smoking grass with such a person.

“It's a good opportunity in a religion?” Kevin was not interested in religions. His neighbor was the Abbot but it didn't seem like it would be a good time to work for the Abbot, and besides that it seemed like the Abbot had a lot of monks already and Kevin didn't think he would be cut out to be a monk at all.

“Well you would work for a religion Kevin, but you don't have to join it. Not unless you want to, and that's fine, if you want to. Or maybe... Kevin, are you religious?”

“Uh, I am interested in religions?”

“But do you have a religion of your own Kevin. Are you a member of a religion?”

“Not yet. Not lately no.”

“That's fine Kevin.” Kevin did not look into Charlotte's eyes so he was spared the terrible embarrassment he would have felt if he could see her very solicitous smile, and Charlotte was spared the indignity of allowing someone to see her behave like a fucking lunatic. She decided that she liked Kevin and that if he had any amount of grass to smoke with her, or even a flask of bourbon she would take her shirt off if he was good at kissing at all. Then she thought about how he wouldn't look at her and that probably he was not attracted to her, but then she felt that men were all attracted to her a little bit because she had a bad opinion of men because of the kind of men that she dealt with every day. Later she would call Evie and they would have a real conversation and it would make her feel better about her choices. “You don't have to join this religion, but I wanted to see if you were already a member Kevin. If you aren't it is okay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay Kevin, you're going to work for the temple of Ba'al, which is a religion that is not far from your neighborhood. Do you have reliable transportation?”

Kevin decided that the bus was pretty reliable and said “Yes.”

“Alright Kevin, what you will do is this, you will help the Temple of Ba'al to gather children for their religion. The temple of Ba'al needs children so you need to get them for the temple.”

“Uh,” Said Kevin. He felt like his conversation with Charlotte was really terrible. He felt sick when she said things and he could sense that she was using the full stop in conversation. He wanted her to talk to him like a normal person, but then he felt like having her talk to him in the way that she did said that he was not a normal person and that he was failing to pretend to be a normal person adequately. He wanted to ask Charlotte if it was really alright to gather children and he was very curious to know why the Temple of Ba'al would need children, also he could not stop thinking about the way that he and Charlotte would have just tremendous amounts of sex after they had confessed their love for each other after nakedly kissing. He imagined that they would spit into each others mouths and call each other filthy names and also she would slap him because he was so strange and not at all a normal person, but that she would be alright with that because of their love in the same way that he would be alright with her weird thumbs which he also imagined grabbing onto his penis.

“It's a perfectly legitimate job Kevin. The city has too many children now and most of them are feral, so your job will be to go into the abandoned factories that these children hide in and gather them up. Here is your uniform.” She handed him a baseball cap with Chief Wahoo. The cap had a sweat stain on the brim and the lining was yellowed and greasy to touch. She reached into the back of her cubicle and when she stood up to do this she turned around and bent over slightly and Kevin stared at her behind while she did this and tried very hard to have less of an erection and crossed his hands over his lap and tried to think about how his roommate had cut up his own arm just the night before, probably it had been the night before. Charlotte produced a length of aluminum pipe with a looped cord attached to the end. “And this is what you'll use to gather the children. You should practice on dogs or maybe a friend before you attempt to gather a child. A child is more ferocious, but also fragile. The temple of Ba'al, Kevin, needs for these children to come to them intact. Do you understand intact Kevin.” Charlotte had bent over a little bit to show Kevin her bottom and that she was wearing a pretty tight skirt, which she knew was a thing that men would like. She had no interest in knowing Kevin at all except that she thought he might try to use the grass that she supposed him to have in order to seduce her. Because of the way that she was Charlotte was willing to engage in that transaction and also because she felt that such a transaction would be more honest and decent than making Kevin have a job gathering children for the Temple of Ba'al. When Kevin was not looking at her she decided that she did not like him anymore and that he was probably exactly the kind of person who was really suited for the job with the Temple of Ba'al. Also she began to judge his haircut.

“Kevin. This job will pay you $400 every week. You need to fax me a time card every week and then come and get your check every other week. Do you understand Kevin? I will pay you your first check in two weeks. Two weeks from today Kevin.” Kevin, Charlotte decided, would spend his entire paycheck on lottery tickets and probably a kind of beer which she thought was unpalatable. Probably he'd share that beer with a really unattractive girl. Probably the same one that had given him his awful haircut. “There is a substantial bonus for catching. Excuse me. Kevin, for gathering a large amount of children. It is a very large bonus.”

“A bonus?”

“Yes Kevin, for every five children you gather in one week you will be paid a bonus of $10,000. Kevin your income potential is unlimited!” Charlotte especially did not believe this and felt as if she would perhaps soil her tight skirt when she said it. It was very, very difficult for her to not start laughing when she told Kevin that he had unlimited potential.

Kevin immediately believed that his income potential was unlimited. He imagined, not what kind of sex he and Charlotte would have once they'd confessed their love nakedly, but instead what it would be like when, like his roommates, he was able to have a huge amount of money. He would be a nicer person than they were he decided, just then. He also decided that he would buy a car for himself but would still take the bus sometimes to maintain a common touch and that when he was interviewed about his job by a famous lady that he would look in her eyes and have an easy pleasant demeanor and that he would be cheerful about his job and prospects. 'Yes, I do hold the record for gathering children Beautiful Woman of Television, but it's really all thanks to my beloved Charlotte, who nakedly confessed that she loved me.' That kind of thing. “I want this job Charlotte.”

“I can see that Kevin! Well, then, it's yours! Just check in every so often. If you don't report back with your time card or to get your check we'll have to assume you've been killed. Kevin it is sometimes dangerous, this work, but I know you are brave. Kevin, bring back as many children to the Temple of Ba'al as you can and you'll do really well. I'm excited for you Kevin.” Charlotte was pretty excited about how Kevin might be killed doing this job. She was confused about why he was roommates with people that were all pretty good, especially Evie, and she decided later that she would call Evie and they would laugh about how Kevin was a creep and how he would never, ever earn the bonus.

Getting There

This is how it would be when Kevin took the bus. He'd look at his map for a little while and try to remember where the mines had been placed and the automatic machine guns had been set up on the green. He was terrible at remembering this and had decided that there weren't really mines or automatic machine guns at all. That's what he decided that morning, after the situation with the deer. In fact, he was pretty worried about the deer, in a way that he used to worry about getting blown up or shot up with bullets longer than his hand. The deer were certainly around – their hoof marks were all over the snow and there were dangerous signs of them all over the woods. Kevin kept mistaking the naked branches of trees for antlers, or was it the other way around?

He walked past the monastery and again, like every day, like a mechanical clockwork, like call and response the monks charged down their lawn and bayed at him and howled as he walked past their fence. He understood they wouldn't cross the fence so he was never afraid of the monks. “Repent, repent your sins!” Shouted the monks. “Sinner!” They called him. Kevin didn't feel much like a sinner, he hadn't done anything that could seem sinful to him in a long time. He just went home and drew pictures and then took the bus down to the hotel where his manager worked, and that was pretty much it. Maybe his roommates were sinful enough that their sins were rubbing off on him. He'd heard of that before. And he definitely wanted to do a lot of sins to Evie. He wanted to do unspeakable things to most of the women he met, but to Evie especially, because he was in love with her and would draw pictures of her naked and with him naked and doing all kinds of unspeakable, but eminently drawable things. So he'd draw those things alone in his bedroom and masturbate while she was in her area in the livingroom and Badminton was doing surgeries on himself and Larry was in the basement probably sinning. Maybe, thought Kevin, it was a sin to draw pictures of a girl that he was secretly in love with and then masturbate on them. It might be. The monks seemed to think he was a sinner, and he was pretty sure they were usually right about that kind of thing. He'd heard it once, that they could tell about people.

But it was probably Badminton that told him that too.

So with his eyes on the treeline all intent and vigilant against what he was sure would be an assault by some deer, Kevin crossed the green toward where the bus stop was. He barely noticed it but from the other direction, over by all the glowing bright shops, there was a raccoon hustling at him. It was a big one, probably about 60 pounds, which is the weight of the largest raccoon ever documented, thought Kevin. It was big and it was definitely going to kill him and eat him and probably start with the softest parts, like his armpits and groin and eyes. Plus it was filthy and covered in trash so, he thought, 'probably diseases', for some reason he said this to himself in a little song. “Probably diseases, raccoon, raccoon go away and don't give me diseases and eat me up and diseases and eatings and diseases and eatings...” The raccoon exploded in a shower of guts and skin and trash, some blood and gore got all over Kevin's face and hair, pretty much ruining his appearance. He would never make an impression on Charolotte, his manager, that would help him to have a job. 'She will hate me more than usual.; thought Kevin, 'because I am covered in Raccoon guts because the biggest raccoon in the world just got blown up by that automatic gun that I didn't really believe in but that is over there and smoke is coming out of it and and there is my bus so I must run to go on it and not return home, or should I return home and get ready a second time? And what if there is another, bigger raccoon this time? And what if the gun shoots me instead and oh my god, I've left the map with the guns at home and it was always more serious than I ever thought it could be with that gun situation and definitely, definitely I'm going to get blown up to pieces by a gun that shoots ten bullets the size of the Man's penis if he had one. A penis makes it so you can't have industry I bet, I bet industry really means without-penis in the original german or whatever.' These were Kevin's thoughts as he raced for his bus. Even if he thought it would have been better to prepare again for his meeting with his manager his usual instinctive sprint for the departing bus thought otherwise. He was running as soon as he saw the bus and thinking about it at all was kind of pointless. It was alright for Kevin, generally, because he could live out his life this way pretty much usually.

Once his autonomic nervous system had got him to the bus he looked at the bus driver's name, which was in a plastic plaque which was bolted to the side of the bus. Ossian was the driver's name. Kevin did not call him by his name but he knew that he would recognize this driver. He got onto the bus which had waited for him to sprint to it. “You okay boy? That gun nearly zapped you young man!” The bus driver was concerned and solicitous.

Kevin's autonomic nervous system saved him from embarrassing himself by embarrassing him itself. “Fine thanks, and you?” Said Kevin's autonomic nervous system. Kevin was mortified and rushed to an empty seat. Most of the seats were empty on Kevin's bus. The painfully old man, who had the emphysema canister and a cane, he sat far away toward the back door of the bus, but after Kevin had sat in the front seat the old man hobbled over, even as the bus jostled him violently as it skipped over potholes, he hobbled over and sat next to Kevin.

“Young man, your hair is a mess.”

“I know sir, a raccoon burst on me. A raccoon was killed sir.”

“Young man, where are you going today?”

“Sir I’m going out to look for work.”

“Young man, I will cut your hair so that you can get a proper job. You can’t get no work looking as you do all covered in blood.”

Because Kevin had no good alternatives to letting a stranger cut his hair on the bus, he agreed. The old man had a pair of fingernail scissors with him so it was pretty much set. It did take a long time for him to finish cutting it, but fortunately his stop and the stop for the hotel where he met his manager were pretty far apart. As they drove on down the road the bus driver let more and more people in, and every person he let in commented and stared as the fragile old man tried to cut Kevin’s hair as the bus jostled down the potholed street. It was not a good haircut and the man was not good at cutting hair. He coughed a rather considerable amount and it was a disgusting kind of cough that really set Kevin’s nerves on edge. He was sickened by the man, especially when his cold bony hands touched his neck or ears, and then he’d shudder and the man would click his gums but say nothing. He cut Kevin’s hair all the way to Kevin’s destination, downtown, where Kevin just got up without saying anything. He stood up and the rest of the now packed full bus just laughed and laughed at him. Embarrassed even more than ever he bolted off of the bus and right into the hotel. He barely glanced in the lobby as he looked for Charlotte’s cubicle. All the while he was humming “A raccoon got on me and a man cut my hair, don’t cut my hair, don’t cut my hair, don’t cut my hair, gross old man, don’t cut my hair, don’t cut my hair, gross old man, get the raccoon out of my hair, out of my hair…” And then it was time for him to talk to Charolotte.