Pills-in-a-Little-Cup

by Rage, Reverend

  Elron never bothered accusing the half retard anymore. There was no point to it. Slow Bennie would just deny it. So, they played the game of hide-and-seek, instead. Sometimes Slow Bennie would guess where Elron’s stash was hidden right away. Sometimes Elron managed to keep it hidden from his nephew for weeks or months at a time. This time Elron got complacent and it had cost him his high. It was his own fault.

  Elron unlocked a desk drawer and got out some gummy Downtown Leroy Brown that he kept here for just this sort of emergency. He opened the bag and tore off a tiny pinch and placed it on a thick piece of tin foil. The metal pen casing he clamped between upper and lower dental implants. Elron held the foil up under the tip of the pen and lit the underside with sweeps of the butane lighter. Elron inhaled thin wispy vapors. He held in the lungful of Downtown Leroy Brown smoke for as long as he could. Elron leaned back against the wall and exhaled gently. The sweet ear wax opiate blew over his conscious mind, sending tendrils of euphoric fingers throughout his body and making him happy. It had to. Downtown Leroy Brown was the best thing Elron Hunt had going for him.

  Elron lived with his nephew, Slow Bennie, on an eighth of an acre of GRID protected farmland. The urban micro-farm legally belonged to the soft-headed only child of Elron Hunt’s dead sister. She was given the land and the domicile beneath as a gift. Every member of the Village Council of The Harbor was given farms of various sizes and condition, depending upon the relative worth of each individual. The property was held in perpetuity with the guaranteed force field protection, now inherited by her son, Slow Bennie. Elron’s nephew was a full-grown man, but he had the mind of a willful child. Slow Bennie could more than take care of the peppers and tomatoes the two of them grew under the protection of the GRID. Slow Bennie knew how to work the dehydrator to smoke and jerk the fish that Elron bought at the Market. But the boy-man could never leave the property to venture out. Not on his own, he couldn’t. If he did, Slow Bennie would no doubt get himself hopelessly lost in the howling wind white-out and freeze to death in no time flat. Elron’s conditions set forth by the Village Council were straight forward. As long as Slow Bennie remains alive, he will need a caretaker and that is Elron. If the boy-man died, the farm would revert back to The Harbor and Elron would be forced to seek shelter elsewhere.

  Elron opened his eyes and looked at the walk-in storage unit he was being forced to office at. It was a nice hide-away, but it was a storage unit, not just in size and grandeur. A real functioning storage unit, the owner would not allow the space enough solar heat to ever be comfortable. The owner told him it was for the packets of powdered hooch they needed to keep cold, anyway. Elron knew it was bullshit. Only fresh items, of which they had none, needed to be kept cold. The owner kept his office cold so that money could be saved and so Elron would be too uncomfortable to ever hide out in it for too long. He hated to, but Elron was forced to agree. He had to keep walking the joint, or the girls would get too sticky with the Federal Bank Notes and Rupees that illegally washed through The Balmy Breezes Sex Club.

  I suppose I could sling a cocoon hammock in here, Elron thought. He chuckled at the depressing thought. Elron had slid a long slippery slope from teaching Artificial Ventilation to being financially dependent on a developmentally disabled kleptomaniac.

  Elron thought that was quite enough feeling sorry for his self. He lit up another lungful. That helped his mood considerably. He held it in while he put the drug paraphernalia away, locking the desk up tight as he exhaled. There came a knock at his door. Elron forced the rest of the smoke out, lighting a cone of incense. He kept it on his desk. He yelled for her to come in. She always stopped at Elron’s freezing office first, before making her stripper rounds.

  3D opened the office door and snaked her way through the clutter. When she made it to him, Elron was standing to greet her with a kiss on both cheeks. He welcomed her and bid her to sit on one of the liquor packet crates. With a smile, 3D tossed him a quarter gram of Downtown Leroy Brown. It was Elron’s standard pay-off for each time she showed her face in his club. He got free smack and 3D got to peddle the Uptown Girl that kept his strippers and showstoppers buzzed, happy and, most of all, productive.

  “Thank you,” he said and slipped it in his pocket. He would lock it in the desk after she left. You can’t trust anyone these days.

  Donna surprised Elron by staying put. Her smile lit up her flushed face.

  “So, Elron, I was curious,” she began. She brought out the Crosstown Traffic. “I wondered if you would be so good as to do me a favor.” She dipped her over-long pinky finger nail into the baggie of salt. She held it out to him.

  “What is it?” Elron asked her.

  “It’s brand new,” Donna replied.

  “What does it do? Looks like salt.”

  “It is salt, in a manner of speaking. It’s a real trip, Elron,” she told him. “You’ll just love it.”

  “How do you know I’ll like the stuff? What if it makes me freak out, or something?”

  Her grin widened. “I know you’ll like it, because I tried it myself,” she replied. “But you better stay seated for your maiden voyage, Gilligan.”

  Elron looked at Donna skeptically, but he held her hand to his nose anyway. When he snorted up the tears, it stung like a mother. 3D’s chuckling faded as he blacked-out.

  * * * *

  Elron Hunt came to, standing in front of a class of his former college students. The sun was high in an impossibly blue and clear sky. The sun shone through the green leafy trees outside. He wasn’t below the surface, in the Underground. There was nothing separating Elron from the elements but a thin pane of plain, clear glass. He glanced down to his hands. Elron clenched and unclenched them. He felt as though he was truly in his old classroom at the University. They were above ground and his class was filled with all of his favorite students he had taught throughout the years. They constituted his All-Star team of students, all the ones he recalled fondly from the time before the Cataclysmic Events. To be here, to have it feel and look so real, this was impossible in and of itself. Add to that strange notion that he had somehow traveled through space and time and beyond all likelihood, but to merge all his best times in one familiar place? Well, it was crazy. It was nothing but some elaborate dream sequence, nothing more. But Elron could feel the breathing and could hear his own excited heart as it beat strong in his chest. He could feel the fabric as he touched his clothes.

  Elron looked out to the class. Their expectant faces were all smiling up at him, gazing with admiration and the desire to learn. The liquid pressure respiration device was attached to a medical mannequin head and torso combo. It ventilated the artificial lungs with precise, smooth and easy breaths.

  Then Elron remembered this lecture. He’d given it several times and the interaction of his best and brightest students always thrilled him. And now the former tenure-track professor, specializing in Alternative Ventilation Modalities, had all his favorites in the same room and right in front of him. It was the best fantasy he could have imagined. He got right into the swing of things. Professor Elron asked, “So tell me, what ratio should be recommended for restrictive interstitial disease?”

  “Are the changes fibrotic in nature?” asked the young lady in the front row of chairs. Each row shared a long buffet table to display their work.

  “Just beginning to change,” he answered.

  “What is the extent of the damage?” asked a bearded fellow in the next row. Elron remembered this guy, too. “How poor is the gas exchange?”

  “The patient has a huge ventilation-perfusion mismatch, say. In a non-immediately reversible scenario.”

  “Like smoke inhalation with tissue damage from a fire?” asked yet a third. Elron was getting wonderfully agitated. He began pacing around the classroom. The students smiled. They recognized when the professor was mentally stimulated.

  “Yes. And permanent damage has been done to the lungs. The patient is extremely short of breath and is tiring out. He has a PaO2
of 35 torr on a FiO2 of 100%.”

  And on and on it went. Elron plunged himself headlong into the realistic as Hell vision. He walked as he talked, going up and down the center aisle, pacing in back of the class. He touched and squeezed the shoulders of those who asked the best questions and made the brightest points. The erection it gave him nearly matched the excitement that was brewing in a deep well within him. He was glad his A.C.E thick shift covered it. He paused, but only for a moment when he realized that everyone was dressed in the style of their particular era. His drab, functional clothing was given no more notice than anyone else’s. It was clearly Elron’s fantasy. No one else seemed to be in control. He thought briefly of the intelligent young females in the room. He’d fantasized many times over most of them here. He instinctively knew he could bend anyone of them over the table and pummel them rotten, but he declined. Perhaps he would indulge himself in this way at a later time. For now, the professor was feeling oxygen coursing through his blood stream and riding the waves of his convoluted brain matter. He hadn’t felt nearly this good in so long, he didn’t want to sully the mental masturbation with a physical one. Who knew how long this hallucination would last?

  Elron continued, “With such a severe and now chronic hypoxemia we should use the viscous medium for more of a direct oxygenation. The use of positive pressure ventilation will force oxygen through the alveolar-capillary membrane while simultaneously evacuating the carbon dioxide.”

  “What inspiratory/expiratory ventilation ratio would you want?” asked the older student to the left of him. Elron paused. He remembered this student in particular, but he’d always been bad with names, even with the ones he liked. The assholes and cunts on the other hand, Elron had committed those folks to unhappy memory. But this one? He was named Joe, John – no! George. George Sutton was his name. Elron admired him so much. George came to class every day, despite working full time at the hospital as a Health Aid. George could never find enough time to study. Elron recalled that George’s hospital was full of vindictive haters. Staff there would go out of their way to make it nigh on impossible for George to carve out any study time. As a result of this, George barely held onto a 2.76 GPA, but his instructor, Elron, had his back. George’s questions were always timely (he had zero time to waste) and pertinent (the dude was brilliant). Elron just knew he would make a fine practitioner. But he never made it.

  “Grossly Inverse, I should think,” Elron replied. Then he asked: “How severe would you suggest going? Say, with the patient on an elevated FiO2 with ten sonometers of end-expiratory pressure?”

  “PaO2 of 35?”

  “Yes.”

  “At least a 4:1 ratio, maybe even as high as a 6:1.”

  “And?”

  “Sedate the heck out of him, maybe even use a paralytic until he acclimates to the unusual settings.”

  Elron smiled. He knew George was bright. Then Elron frowned, remembering that George’s wife was one of the many that had died of the big Flu. It was so widespread and deadly that nearly everyone’s family was hard-hit by it in some profound way. Then George himself disappeared with the rest of the True Believers a few years after. George Sutton never got a chance to practice his chosen field for even one day.

  Then there was no longer any need for any classes any more. Everyone had much bigger fish to fry than keeping chronically and terminally ill patients alive. What for? None of it mattered any longer. Only the Damned and their scores mattered. And if Elron’s field no longer mattered, then his teaching of it mattered even less.

  The new Ice Age came soon after and everyone that was left alive now fled underground where it was still possible to exist. Staying alive became everyone’s new occupation. And staying stoned became the way to tolerate this new, pared-down life. It was how most people had made lemonade out of the bitter lemons Fate had dealt those that remained.

  * * * *

  Elron Hunt was crying his little eyes out when he came back from his drug trip. 3D was shocked at his demeanor. She knew the dude liked to party away his sorrows, just like most former professionals now forced to eek out an existence doing sub-par work. She saw that Elron’s penis was chubbing up like a ball park red-hot. He was smiling, strangely enough, all through Elron’s seventy-two second vision she had timed. Up until the very end Elron had appeared to Donna to be so excited and happy. His face had brightened, turning almost red. His breath had quickened. Now Elron put his head in his hands and cried and cried. Donna felt awful. Making customers cry was not why she did what she did. Dang it!

  “I’m sorry, Elron,” she told him, “I thought you would like it.”

  Elron looked at Donna, while he tried in vain to blink away all of his tears. He told her: “I just miss it so much,” he blubbered unabashedly. “It was the best of times. It was the best I ever was.”

  3D looked at Elron, disappointed in the missed sale and making him upset. Elron was messed up and confused and terrified of the very uncertain future. It wasn’t like Donna to willfully infect pain and suffering. The Good Doctor’s medicinals were supposed to provide just the opposite.

  “It’s so cold and bitter now. It’s so pointless,” Elron cried out in true pain. The snot bubbled thick out of his nose and a sheen of hot tears covered Elron’s pained face.

  “I’m sorry, Elron,” she said. “I made a mistake.”

  “No you didn’t,” Elron replied, startling Donna by grabbing her arm. He seemed to be almost in a panic as he asked 3D for some more Crosstown Traffic. “Please?” he added.

  Elron needed it.

  * * * *

  We feel good. We feel good about ourselves. We have feelings of contentment and adequacy. The new meat-puppet has garnered these wonderfully positive emotions for Us. We could be satisfied at this point, and perhaps We should be. Somehow We sense the need for more shells. We need to find one that We can manipulate and control. Then We can seriously get down with some serious business. It will be time to get to work, time to become whole.

  We have some pretty specific ideas in mind, you know. Darned good ones, too.

  “The world cannot be governed without juggling.”

  John Selden

  SEX

  SPARKLE LAY ON A BED THAT WAS PLACED SQUARELY IN THE CENTER of the stage. The tiny sliver of an auditorium in The Balmy Breezes was empty save the lone pathetic customer that paid dearly for the privilege.

  Sparkle was a lovely diva, an egg-laying hen-woman. She was a performer of rare stature and she commanded top Rupee for her sex shows. And unless it was pre-arranged and paid for up front, Sparkle’s shows rarely had an empty seat.

  The lone customer had paid Sparkle more than a pretty penny for this command performance. Sparkle had the egg she’d been building inside her for the last thirty hours fertilized. Weird and gross, but that’s what the cash-wielding freak-job asked for. The customer is always right. The freak paid Sparkle her highest going rate of 15 thousand Rupees cash or a 10 thousand Rupee or Federal Bank Note auto-deduct for the solo splatter show.

  ****

  Sparkle was born abandoned, as far as she could ascertain, in or about, the 4th year ACE. She didn’t know her parents, not who they were or even what they looked like. She could not tell which parent was chicken and which was human. Heck, they could have both been chicken Halflings for all she knew.

  Sparkle had heard of other Halflings like her. The rumor mill had accused Hell’s Mouth Determining Hospital of making them. She had certainly seen more and more of mixtures like her. But Sparkle was hatched and born the old-fashioned way. She didn’t know why someone would want to make a thing like her on purpose.

  Sparkle’s earliest memories consisted of disjointed bits of molestation, hiding out, run-away adventures (usually terminating in her getting caught, hurt, or both) and turning tricks to keep body and soul together. Sparkle guessed her age to be about twenty years old, but there was just no way to be sure. It’s the age she tells everyone she is.

  ****

  The
battery-powered vibrating probe was strapped tight around her bottom, beneath her hard silver and shiny black feathers. She kept her pay parts covered by a slinky bikini with the feathers. Her wee arm wings were permanently bent and only useful for clutching at a clutch purse. In order to get herself high on the Uptown Girl, she had to peck at and snort it out of a pile she kept in a make-up case back stage.

  The vibrations were grinding deeply into her sex. Her head was snuggled down in a pillow. Her rear was hiked high in the air. The splatter punk of the hour was seated near the edge of the stage. Sparkle was getting nice and sauced down there. Her juices dripped as the paying customer left his chair and dropped to his knees before the stage.

  The vibration bore down. Sparkle began twisting her business, twirling her rump in a tight circle. The man unzipped himself. An attendant, very subtly, opened a bath towel and spread it on the floor as a visual and literal target. He was hoping the customer had surgical strike capabilities, but it did not really matter. At the price he was paying, the customer could have stuck his penis in the mashed potatoes and buttered the whole bowl. Strangely, if asked, the customer would say with utter assurance, that they couldn't care less that Sparkle’s current occupation left her less than satisfied.

  After the Cataclysmic Events (ACE), Christianity had a very brief, very disturbing and unsuccessful resurgence. Since they were not saved by the Christ, and they were not killed by the mutated Avian Flu which reared its ugly head right before, the Day Shorts (as in late and dollar) tried to appease God with works of good. Orphanages and Missions were popular undertakings of this time. Sparkle grew up in one. She also became sexually active following a series of late night molestations. Sparkle then had several affairs with several members of the Clergy, leading one especially despondent Pastor to kill himself. Sparkle was asked to leave soon after. She changed her handle on the spot from Claire to Sparkle and beat clawed feet.