Dear diary,
I live in a small town. It is an ideal town: heaven couldn’t beat it. One of the many things I like about our town is when all of us neighbors exit our respective houses at the same moment and stand before our front doors and look around curiously. I wave at neighbor Jim, and Jim waves back. Then I say:
“Why do we always do this?”
Jim sez: “Do what?”
I say: “Come outside at the same time and look around, but without leaving our front step.”
Jim sez: “I suppose we’re greeting the sun. Note that we always exit our houses at the moment of sunup.”
So I say: “But why do we not step forward, give each other a firm handshake to prove that we’re unarmed, and begin to exchange some small talk? Why must we stand here, so far apart, yelling to each other across the street like this?”
Jim sez: “I think there’s an unspoken rule: We’re all pretending that there’s a deadly Wolf Man loose in the area, so it would be unwise to engage in chit-chat here in the road. The Wolf Man might maul us.”
So I thank Jim and go back inside my house. “A deadly Wolf Man?” I think to myself. “That sounds unpersuasive. That sounds like something out of 1940s Hollywood. It’s not the type of thing that would get the green light from a modern movie-studio executive to be made into a feature film nowadays.”
Just then my water heater breaks. I’m not joking: this stupid story that I’m telling is just a veiled attempt to avoid reality — the truth is that I’m alive in March of 2020, when there’s reportedly an actual pandemic threatening humanity, so we’re all at home on lockdown, which is like being on house arrest except you don’t need to wear an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor your every move (yet). And I’m trying to keep my mind off the Horrible Truth by engaging in escapism; but my brain can only reflect the reality it knows, thus I changed the pandemic into a stock character “Wolf Man”; but it’s true that during our self-imprisonment, yestereven, our water heater did stop functioning:
I turned on the faucet to wash my hands and couldn’t get any warm water to flow: it was ice-cold, continually. So I shuffled down to the basement to note the device’s condition, and it was inoperative. Then I followed a series of checks and troubleshooting actions to diagnose the cause of this malfunction, and I concluded that the thermostat thinks it is broken. There’s probably nothing physically wrong with the module: it’s most likely just pre-programmed to “fail” at this point in its life, like Christ at age 33, so that we customers will be forced to keep shoveling money into the manufacturer’s coffers (see: “planned obsolescence”); but the unit’s display light, after you ignite its pilot, repeatedly gives an alert message of four short blinks, which, according to its manual, means that the thermostat must be replaced.
Thus, now, in addition to undergoing a plague like ancient times, our living quarters are also devoid of hot water.
So here I am, isolated in my beautiful small town, reclining on the sofa and pondering neighbor Jim’s blatant lie about the Wolf Man. Suddenly: BANG! my water heater explodes. Icy vapor is spraying everywhere (I hope it’s obvious that, at this point in the writing, I’ve returned to my fantasy tale, now that my real-life confession has bored me — in reality, the water heater just silently gave up the ghost: it did not burst or discharge any poisonous fumes), and this vapor looks lethal if inhaled.
So I say to myself: “Gol darn, it’s always something,” meaning that just when you think it’s safe to relax upon the sofa and contemplate some false rumor or gossip proclaimed by your neighbors, another household appliance erupts.
“I suppose I should go look online for repair companies,” I mutter to myself, while plugging in the cord of my purple laptop (my laptop’s battery is always dead). But the moment I see that logo appear on the screen which represents the most famous Internet Search Engine, I lose my patience. I decide to avoid doing the responsible thing: I opt instead to just let the water heater gush noxious fumes into the atmosphere forever:
I turn and face the direction of the device, even tho I’m upstairs at the moment and the water heater is located downstairs, and I make an obscene gesture with my hand. Then I walk back outside.
My neighbors are still standing, each & all, before their front doors, and now the air is filled with the enticing scent of cigarillos; for the neighborhood is enjoying a communal smoke. I myself don’t smoke and never did (I’m a die-hard day-drinker), but I enjoy the crisp aroma of second-hand fumes — as long as they aren’t coming from a broken water heater. So I inhale deeply.
“Little robin, what are you doing there?” I say to the fat little robin that is poised on the lawn.
“Shush! I’m about to catch a worm,” the robin replies. Then he bows into the soil head-first, in a flash; & when he comes up & jerks his head back to face me, there’s a fragment of a shoestring dangling from his beak.
“Sorry about the quality of my lawn’s inhabitants,” I shout, saluting while the robin flies away.
“Hey Bry, who you bellowing at?” bellows my neighbor Bruce from down the street.
“There was a robin in my yard, looking for foodstuff,” I yell. “For I had told him that ‘every bird who dares to ask will receive his request; and he that seeks shall find what he is looking for’ in my front lawn; I was quoting Jesus from Luke’s gospel, chapter 11 verse 11; but then when this little robin came and asked me for some bread, I gave him a stone, hahaha! And when he asked for a fish, I let him find a serpent under the ground. One time he even asked for a regular egg — I don’t know if he was trying to give birth or become a cannibal; but it didn’t much matter because I tossed him a scorpion instead.”
“You are a cruel deity, Bryan,” remarks Bruce from his doorstep, two houses away, diagonally across the street from my rambler. And he adds: “I hope you burn in hell for eternity.”
“Nah, I don’t like that hope,” I shout, still saluting. “Instead, I hope some magical beast comes and fixes my water heater.”
Then I return inside my house.
The fumes from the broken appliance have filled the whole room, so that its air resembles certain sections of California when the smog is intense.
Now I witness a mythical creature break into my upstairs window by clawing thru the glass. This fiend dashes downstairs and fixes my water heater. The air clears. The being emerges from the dissipating mist, and I note that it’s the Wolf Man.
“Are you the Wolf Man? Did you just fix my water heater?” I pray.
“Come follow me outdoors, into the fresh air; let us continue this conversation in the road.”
So we exit the front door, walk down the concrete steps, continue out past the end of our driveway, over the curbside, and stand in the street, right in the middle of all the houses.
“I am the Wolf Man that your neighbor Jim warned you about,” sez the Wolf Man.
“Wow, OK, thanks for being honest,” I say.
“I won’t lie: I’m gonna kill you; but I’ll try to make it fun,” he sez.
“Alright, then how about you bite my neck, right here,” I suggest, while pulling back the collar of my shirt.
“We could do that; I’m not against it; but I’d prefer something more flamboyant. Everyone gets to die only once, and it’s always a bit sad when the death is so common. You’re offering me the standard vampire role, where I bite you on the neck and you expire on the floor, writhing in agony. I’d rather make it quick and painless, but with a lot more showmanship. How about I chase you up the street here; I’ll run a little slower than you’re running, so that it looks like I’m just about to catch you; and you keep screaming loudly so that we get everyone’s attention. Then, once we reach the intersection, I’ll clutch you with my claws, and you’ll act as if I’m gnawing you up, like I am eating you alive; and you continue to scream and moan, all annoying and spazzy, but we’ll really just be faking it. And then, at the end, I’ll take this silver pistol, which is small enough to fit inside my goat-hair purse here, and I’ll give you two quick shots to your head, aiming upwards into your mouth, and I’ll coordinate the pulling of the trigger with my histrionic slashing motions — I’ll basically be pantomiming biting you in the face (once, in captivity, I saw a chimp kill its own infant in this fashion, and I’ve always wanted to playact something similar — incidentally, the chimps were named Big Jove & Lil Jeez; the former was the father, of course, and the babe was a born loser, so his death didn’t have much impact: it was the state zoo that made the greatest to-do about it) — and then you’ll be dead.”
“I like your artistic vision,” I say; “let’s do it.”
“Great!” sez the Wolf Man. “Now . . . GO!”
So we run down the street, chasing each other back and forth. I’m flailing my arms and screaming bloody murder. The neighbors are all watching us from their porches, smoking and looking genuinely concerned. I throw a rock at the Wolf Man; but the Wolf Man dodges it. I then pick up a plastic three-wheeler that was lying in my neighbor Joe’s front yard (his granddaughter was outside riding it up and down the driveway yesterday, and she forgot to bring it back into the garage): I hold it by its handlebars & swing it threateningly at the Wolf Man, but the Wolf Man keeps ducking and avoiding all my onslaughts. Then, by chance, I land one blow: the toy vehicle’s back wheel smashes into the Wolf Man’s pointy left ear, which then starts to bleed. Both he and I stop confusedly for a moment, shocked that I actually made contact and injured him. Then I come to my senses and swing the three-wheeler another time: WHAM! I hit the Wolf Man again in the same place. The blood is now gushing out. WHAM! WHAM! I hit his other side, and he falls; then I throw the children’s vehicle straight down onto him, with all my might.
“Ow! You gave me a pain in my lower back just now!” growls the Wolf Man. “It feels like someone is twisting a knife in my vertebrae!”
The Wolf Man labors to his feet; he stands there tottering & dizzy:
“You’re a dead man,” he snarls.
Then we do the move where he comes in close & takes the miniature pistol out of his purse and blows my brains out while pretending to chomp his fangs upon my skull. I collapse in a heap.
After brushing himself off, the Wolf Man turns to my neighborhood, genuflects broadly, & then limps away.
“Mommy, mommy!” sez the high voice of one of the children on one of the porches, “Look! the Wolf Man just killed neighbor Bryan!”
The mother leans toward the window and squints at the body lying in the bloody aftermath. “All things are preordained by our Creator, dear Ariel,” replies the mom; “Bryan was probly a very bad person.”
Now after hearing this remark, I grow furious & vow to haunt that house forever. I send prayer-messages to the Wolf Man, day and night (for phantoms require no sleep), begging him to destroy them:
Let them be confounded and put to shame: let them be turned back and brought to confusion.
Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of WOLF MAN chase them.
Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of WOLF MAN persecute them.
Let ruin come upon them unawares; let the trap that they have hid to catch their adversary catch themselves instead: into that same destruction let them fall.
Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonour that magnify themselves against me!!!
(Psalm 35:4-8; 26)
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