HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me! - Mykle Hansen [36]
I peer through the rear window of the Rover and see a pile of human carnage in the cargo area — it’s Image Team! All of them, all dead. All of them? What about Marcia from Product Dialogue? I don’t see her in there, I see Frink and Wollencott and Smith and there’s Baumer and Edna too, and a few more unidentified arms and legs but they look pretty male. This is terrible, catastrophic! This blows six different development schedules! The Ups are not going to be happy about their department being all killed like this, right before sweeps week. Maybe I can get some new hires lined up before I get back.
Mister Bear takes the shotgun from the car and creeps silently up the walkway to the open front door. Inside we hear sounds of animals and human screams. We enter stealthily, although I find I have something sticking in my throat.
Christ, it’s like a luxury abattoir in here. In the living room there’s blood all over everything: the sofa, the walls, the Venetian shag carpet and the doorknobs. The flat-screen LCD cinema display TV on the wall blares a program from the Animal Attack channel: a small foreign man being devoured by geese. In the center of the room is a cloth-draped surgical table with a bright operating lamp hanging overhead, and a small cloth-draped table beside it holding a glinting array of stainless steel knives and saws. The apartment seems deserted … but when I approach the table bears stream into the room from all sides!
There’s two polar bears wearing white surgical gowns and masks. A third polar bear pushes a large wheelchair, and in that chair is a huge, legless Grizzly in bandages, hooked up to a beeping life support machine. The bears surround me on all sides, and stare silently at me. They’re looking at my legs. I look down and realize I’m not even wearing underpants, and my Monster Black Torpedo is dripping blood on the crimson rug.
The legless bear raises a weak paw at me and growls, “Mine.”
I turn to Mister Bear — he rears up on his hind legs and levels the shotgun right at my heart! Why … you … bastard! After all we’ve been through together! He shoves me backwards with the gun and bear claws grip me and throw me on the table. Mister Bear climbs up on my legs and sits on them, pinning me. The other bears hold me down as one of the polar bears takes a huge Leatherman Super Tool from the tray and opens up the bone saw. I try to scream but no sound escapes my lips. No. They are cutting me up, they are killing me, they are driving iron spikes of fire into my body. No, please! Please, please, give me something for the pain! Doctor, please — the pain! I can live without legs but I can’t live with this pain. You can take my negro bear feet, you can take my monster black torpedo, but knock me out, block the pain …
12
Note to self: fucking yowch! It hurts, oh yes, it hurts! Now I remember pain: pain was exactly like this, only not so painful. Pain, I got your e-mail, I got your fax, I am not interested! Will you please stop calling me? What is up with pain? If I’d wanted pain I would have seen an acupuncturist, not a pharmacist, certainly not a toothless Canadian hair farmer with a sideline in prescription pills. That dickhead dealer sold me bogus drugs! Why is everybody always trying to rip me off ? Please, God, get this painful hunk of luxury off me. Oh God.
No God. There can’t be a God. God wouldn’t take a brilliant concept like Homo Sapiens and fuck it up with Pain. Only Nature would be so retarded, so cruel.
Hello, God? Can you hear me? This is Marv Pushkin calling. Yes … that Marv Pushkin. And I’m a big fan of yours as well. So, if you do exist, could you please consider dropping whatever important bullshit