Or, returning to the next-door-neighbor metaphor, they want the action to take place next door to their own house, not in it, because, frankly, if it were in their own house that would mean they were responsible for everything that happened afterward: for putting things back where they used to be, for keeping up with the mortgage payments, cutting the lawn, emptying the gutters, fixing the pipes. And so when they call and Heather picks up the phone, in truth she’s just opening the front door of the house they’ve always fantasized about owning, and for a little while they can pretend they live there, like those people who visit Open Houses on weekends, never intending to buy. So they ring the bell, and when Heather opens the door for them, even over the phone she can feel the heat from the explosion of their fake happiness driving itself straight into the ceiling of her brain vault like exploding popcorn, or Pop-Tarts, or possibly popovers. Hooray for us — hooray for you and me — we did it, honey, sometimes the pervs will tell her, but instead, Heather thinks, what they are saying is: Hooray for me. I got off. I got it on. I got it up. I got down, and all the crap she hears on the other end of her line — the panting, pleading, whining — doesn’t it all come down to WYASBIWYCIM? You bet. Anyway, what kind of a man, she wonders, could possibly imagine that somewhere out in the world might be a woman who, having talked on the phone about nothing but sex for eight or ten hours straight, would still be excited to get his call, still crave more, still be game, a woman who hears his voice and instantly, just by the sound of his voice alone, is able to measure his cock, even though, truth to tell, she might overestimate the size just a teeny bit? Hey, remember me? Are you kidding?
Heather can’t imagine any woman who could possibly live up to this, unless it’s a woman so deep into OCD that she would be incapable of any other action whatsoever, would have to be fed, a bib around her neck to keep the hot gruel, or whatever they are giving her, from spilling onto her chest while she is humping 24/7, after first having been tied down to slow her humping enough for whoever is doing her feeding — attendants maybe — to get enough nourishment in to keep her alive.
Which is a whole other idea, come to think of it: What about those people, women in this case, who’ve had a stroke, or sometimes a brain tumor of the kind that mysteriously activates their libidos (IWYCIM)? Not such a bad idea, truly, to let them take calls instead of her. Let them work off some of their hospital bills, maybe even turn a profit, like those rats she’s heard about in laboratories that, between experiments, are hooked up to wheels in cages so their running generates enough electricity to pay not only for their own torture but also for an occasional weekend in the country for the torturers.
Heather looks at herself in the mirror above her bed. Not so beautiful as she once had wanted to be. Not so smart as she wanted to be. Not as young. Not as special. Not as sexy. But every bit as tired as she feels.
Maybe if she went to a library she could find a book that would tell her how to make Raymond notice her, but all the man seems to care about is ducks, and maybe Madeline. He’s nice to Madeline, she’s noticed.
Tomorrow, maybe. Maybe first thing in the morning, before the phone calls start, she’ll get out and find a library.
And the fact is not only does having a high Death Quotient make killing other people — especially twilight souls — a whole lot easier, but it also makes a person feel less guilty afterward. A lot less guilty. At least in the Captain’s opinion.
In the fourth episode of Mellow Valley, “Junior Falls into a Hole,” Junior, preoccupied with passing the state real estate exam in order to become the youngest realtor in the county, takes a mock exam while walking in the woods behind the backyard of an Open House. It’s the sort of event he’s been attending more or less for practice, but on that particular day he falls into a hole that had been dug by several of the local children as a prank. It is not particularly deep — six or seven feet — but he can’t get out because not only has he sprained both his ankles, but the fall has left him seriously disoriented, triggering a near-psychotic moment that may have originated back in the days when Norm, before he got his rage under control through the use of recreational drugs to become the mellow parent-figure he is today, used to punish Junior for the least transgression by burying him up to his neck in the backyard and leaving him there overnight. Nor, back then, did it help Junior’s future mental health that his mother would sneak out every two or three hours to bring him his favorite cookies, oatmeal, interrupting any sleep he may otherwise have gotten. (All this was to be revealed in a subsequent episode of the show called “A Day in Therapy,” which, though filmed, was never actually aired.)
In the end, Junior is discovered by a wandering group of Boy Scouts engaged in a project that involves clearing the woods of infestations of the notorious death cap mushroom. They find Junior’s plight to be humorous and pelt him with acorns and other woodland detritus until they are told to cease by their scoutmaster who, moments earlier, had been off somewhere returning a baby bird to its nest.
For some reason Jeffery can’t let the thought go: Life after death. Well, okay, it’s not technically a thought, but is there, or is there not, anything that follows?
And if there were, of what would it consist?
Well, what does his present life consist of?
Not that much, probably.
And so what would it mean then, to return?
A darkness punctuated by a sliver of light is the way that Junior thinks of his life these days. The light being his life, as shitty as it was, before he got the gig on Mellow Valley, but then the darkness that followed that light was darker than the dark that used to come before. Because before Mellow Valley he was nobody, but at least he had a name, but when the television series took his name and gave it to a character, that meant when the character disappeared it took him, Junior, with it. It sucked dry the original unhappy, but still hopeful, Junior, and left him with just the Junior from the show: in other words, a hopeless buffoon, a fool, and a clown. So much for celebrity. And the more Junior tried to explain that he was only pretending to be a helpless fool in his role in the series, the funnier people thought he was, the more a fool. In other words, he had tried to explain things, but the world, with the possible exception of his therapist, Tammy, refused to listen. So was it his fault that finally the dam would have to give way and the water would have to come streaming out in a powerful, endless flood? That Junior would be forced to show those people who laughed at him that he wasn’t helpless? And then, wouldn’t these very same people be the sorry ones?