Saturday, October 10, 2009
Novella month, day 10
She motioned to one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Have a seat. Can I offer you some candy or a metropolitan?”
I sat. The plaque on her desk identified her as Sandy, Director of Processing.
“I’ll have a metropolitan,” I answered.
She hummed and mixed us each a metropolitan from a desk-side bar.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were the Director of Processing.”
“That’s me,” she sang, giving the second metropolitan a stir.
“I would have thought someone else would have met me at the elevator.”
She laughed, a little tinkling laugh. “Like a secretary? Or one of those awful women in one of those tight white outfits. I take a more hands-on approach than they do in admissions.” She tittered again. “God help us if the Director of Admissions got his hands dirty.” She sat a drink in front of me. “All of our hands are dirty down here.” She winked.
She took her seat once more and took a long, slow sip of her metropolitan with her eyes closed. She was really savoring it. “Mmm-mmm-mmmm,” she sang. “Did you want to watch us kill people?” she asked brightly.
“Not especially.”
She tilted her head and frowned. “We do it in a very nice way.”
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Novella month, day 8
“As I was explaining, Lou wants an informative commercial.”
The Director spat once more into the nearly-brimming dish.
I continued, “Something that sort of illustrates our processes, but makes people feel good about choosing us to kill their loved ones.”
The Director cocked an eyebrow. It hovered, twitching slightly, for the briefest of moments before falling. “Kill? Sir, we do no killing here. Physical Abatement is the term I prefer.”
I nodded. “Perhaps we’ll use that term in the comm—“
The Director interrupted me by noisily clearing his throat. He tapped the glistening dish of saliva. “I must warn you: when this is full our conversation ends.”
Overhead the air conditioner kicked on, ticked steadily for a moment, and hissed.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Novella month, day 7
I scanned the waiting room until I spotted an empty seat by an attractive woman. A brunette, older than me but still attractive, sitting next to a decrepit woman trembling in a wheelchair. The old lady had liver spots creeping across her head like slugs, some unfathomable migration towards death. The air smelled of menthol and disinfectant and some unsettling undercurrent—potpourri mixed with putrescence.
I sat beside the woman and casually looked her over as I reached for a magazine. The only choices were magazines on cooking and housekeeping or golf. I chose cooking and housekeeping.
“Waiting rooms always want to teach you to cook or putt,” I remarked with a smile.
The brunette returned my smile in a pained sort of way but said nothing.
“My father used to say, ‘Teach a man to putt, and he may win a round of golf, but teach him to cook, and you feed him for a lifetime,’” I said.
The old woman coughed and her wheelchair shook all over like a temblor was upon us. Her hazy, milky eyes bulged and watered.
My brunette friend wrapped her arms gently around the old woman’s shoulders, as if too much pressure would shatter the woman’s shoulder blade. The old woman issued a low steady moan and something viscous and dark slid from her mouth.
“I can see why you’re having her put down,” I remarked.
The brunette shot me an unkind look. “Put down?”
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Novella month, day 6
The main elevator stops at the lobby; all points below ground are accessed through Admissions.
I made my way across the quiet, cavernous lobby of KWC toward the Admission Department. The receptionist was an ogre of a woman hunched over a gossip magazine like a hyena over a carcass. I half expected her to snarl and snap at me with her teeth when I rang the bell on the counter. I made a mental note to use an actress for the commercial if I decided to film anything in the reception area.
The receptionist did not have anything identifying her name. I named her Donkey.
“Donkey, I am here to tour the facilities.”
“Sir, in this realm you are at my mercy. I beg you show some credentials ere you begin this journey.”
I slid her my ID badge with the laminate curling at the edges. She eyed it suspiciously, holding it to the light and warping it so that it gleamed at odd angles in the fluorescents. She slid it back across the counter warily. Her eyes flickered uneasily to the corners of the empty lobby. Somewhere above a camera whirred.
“Donkey, I trust my papers are not only in immaculate order, but satisfactory to your keen and judgmental eye. Now, I pray thee let me pass.”
“Nay, traveler. I must detain you but some while longer and inquire: to what purpose do you ply thyself? Take you me for some knave, to let you into my henhouse for naught but villainy? You come with honey to my door, but beware you risk drawing bees or bears.”
I nodded and held aloft my hands in surrender. “My intent runs not to villainy, noble guardian. My goals are scholarly alone. I am but a tourist seeking to learn that which I know not of thine land.”
Donkey’s eyes narrowed. “Thou wouldst not dare tempt me with learned words only to enter, fox you are, and slay my hens with a wanton and vicious nature, wouldst thou?”
“Nay, for your hens are old and decrepit. Their sight doth wane and they doth shake all the night, and surely they are not long for this world. I would not deign offend my tongue with such unworthy meat. Nor would I offend my sense of sport by hunting prey so ill-fitted to provide a stimulating chase. Twould be like hunting something already caught—an empty experience of no import or satisfaction.”
Donkey fell silent and considered my words. At length she fixed her dark gaze on me and spoke: “As if I were a treed cat with dogs about the trunk, baying and snarling for my end, I have little choice of action. I must let you pass, for I can find no further reason to detain thee.”
I bowed low. “I thank thee Donkey. A more just and fair guardian of Admissions than thee could not be dreamt on earth or in the turning spheres of the heavens.” I made to proceed through the doors beyond her station, but she raised a hand.
“Traveler, wait but a moment longer, for I have one last thing to impart to you, and it is this: You may proceed through my guarded gates, but beyond is the chamber of waiting. There you must remain for a spell till the Overseer of Admissions grants you entrance to see the workings of her realm.”
Donkey pressed a button and there came to my ears a gentle buzzes. The doors began to swing open in silence. “Traveler, I shall inform the Overseer that you await her arrival. Enter now, and sit and she shall come at length unto thee.”
I looked within and beheld a waiting room with many ancients accompanied by their low-eyed offspring. “Guardian Donkey, doest thou expect me to wait within amongst those weakened and most unwell elders? Might I not retire to some other place to wait?”
Donkey shook her head, with her eyebrows knitted upward in compassion. “Nay, traveler. There is naught but one place to wait.”
From within the chamber issued coughs, raspy murmurs, the spiky rants of the confused. I looked over my shoulder again at the vast, antiseptic, empty lobby, and entered the warm, crowded waiting room.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Novella month, day 5
At a loss, today I turned things a little odd. I think from now on, if I don't know what to write, I'll just make something random happen.
.......................
I sat and stared at the wall and tapped on my pad and longed to make a television spot that visualized the Turkish Radio Department’s commercials. I tested my hand at sketching a chainsaw.
David Funch came tapping on my door. Funch is a pig-headed lecher. I like him.
“Hey-hey, it’s the Funcher!” Funch cried. He likes to ask women in the office if they want to “Munch the Funch.” He started out in the admissions department and worked his way up. He claims to have euthanized over 50 sick old people. Their skin hung off their bodies like wet rags, he said.
“Funch,” I said. “I’m in a dilly of a pickle.” Funch hates it when people say things like “dilly of a pickle,” so I say things like that all the time to him.
“You sound like an old lady,” he replied. “I should put you down where you stand.”
“I’m sitting,” I replied dryly.
He said nothing and straightened his bow tie.
“Lou wants me to make a new commercial,” I told him.
“Jesus,” he said, sitting down. “Are the number bad?”
“You know they’re not. His mother hates the commercial.”
“Oy. What I wouldn’t do to his mother.”
“Do you mean kill her or screw her?”
Funch shrugged.
“He wants something informative, but kind of feel-good.” I paused and watched Funch push his cuticles back. “How would you make people feel good about what we do?”
“Don’t know. Hot chicks in latex, probably. Crawling all over this old man who only has a month to live. And he looks real happy until he gets run over by a train. Cut in half, you know.” Funch shakes his head. “A damn shame.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Human sub consciousness operates without sense, as if in a dream state. They’ll understand it without even knowing they understand it, see?”
Funch stood and divided himself into three parts and hovered in the middle of the room, arguing with himself in simultaneity. At length, the parts converged. “There,” he sighed.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
October Novella month, Day 2
And here's is the next day's work...
I nodded. “You have something particular in mind?”
Lou put his thick hands behind his back and paced my office a few times and wrung the air between his fingers. “Either something artsy or something informative.”
“Artsy or informative,” I repeated.
“Do not chew on those words, bud. Turn them into something.”
I opened my mouth but Lou waved his hand and continued. “Like old people. Gross, shriveled. They’re gasping for air, flopping around like fish on a dock. Maybe they’re covered in something slick and shiny like oil or Vaseline. Okay. There is a woman. Beautiful, black hair. Completely blank looking. Like she has no emotions. She watches these gasping, flopping old people, and then she stoops and holds out her hand. This is when we see a close-up of a drop of water dripping from her fingers and falling into the shriveled lips of one of the old people.” Lou stops and stares at me.
I cleared my throat. “That’s pretty edgy, Lou.”
He furrowed his brow. “You think perhaps it is too edgy.” It wasn’t a question.
Leaning back in my chair, I tapped my little notepad with my pen. It’s an antique fountain pen, and it is exceptionally nice and very fancy looking. I tap it whenever I want to pretend like I am thinking. “It might be, Lou.”
Lou nodded once, soberly. He had been trying to sober up.
Notebook. Pen. Tap, tap.
“Maybe something comforting.” Lou resumed his pacing. “Reassuring. People are reassured by facts. Maybe something explaining our refined, very humane process. Shots of clean rooms lit by fluorescents. Comfortable beds with flowers on the bedside tables. That sort of thing.”
“I think I can come up with something,” I said.
“Good. So. Okay. Spitball some ideas. Maybe come up with a few pitches. Type them up and shoot me the electrons when you’re done. Do not kill old people in this commercial. Do not do anything that will cause me to listen to endless grief from my mother. I am very very serious in this respect, and I vow to you to reject outright any idea, no matter how good, that I think travels that dangerous avenue.”
I nodded and tapped.
********
In 2010 the United States Government passed the Steinway Humane Euthanasia Retroactive Protection Act (SHERPA), effectively legalizing euthanasia for terminal patients. The law naturally required anyone offering services under the SHERPA act be licensed, bonded, and certified in humane euthanasia practices. This immediately created a cottage industry. Overnight large corporations created and branded euthanasia divisions, installing CEOs whose bonuses are based on kill rates.
Killers Who Care (KWC) Incorporated is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gerber. I work in the marketing department, specifically focused on television ads. Matilda Hock handles print and radio ads are outsourced to
Thursday, October 01, 2009
October is Novella Month! Part 1
Here's my first day's work:
You’ve seen the commercial dozens of times. Late at night when your mind is tired and unguarded. At lunch while you are lulled by daytime talk trash. At the midpoint of the most inane drivel imaginable. Your mind wanders; your eyes drift toward the window or a smoldering cigarette or the ice cubes melting away at the bottom of an otherwise empty glass. It is raining. It is sunny. The street outside is in darkness broken by light pooled around streetlamps. You are drowsy, dozing in a chair or on a couch. You cannot sleep, bleary-eyed, you sit in the dim flickering light of the television. Eyes lingering on the clock as it creeps toward morning.
The commercials that come before the commercial are loud. Blaring, shouting at you, singing to you. Cooing, screaming, imploring, urging. Then silence. You hear the steady pulsing beep of a heart monitor and your eyes drift to the screen. The labored breathing fades in and on the screen the dim details of a darkened room take shape: a bed, a white blanket, an ancient woman, tubes around her face like tentacles, hospital equipment stands like sentinels at the head of the bed.
The camera zooms in, uncomfortably close to the old woman’s face and the commercial has your full attention. She is impossibly wrinkled, skin shiny and sagging like wet latex, liver-spotted. Her hair is but white wisps trembling on her skull. Her face fills the screen at a disorienting angle. You can see dried snot crusted around the oxygen tubes at her nostrils. Drool glistens on her chin. Her lips quiver with each ragged, half-moaned breath. You are horrified and entranced. The IV drips. The camera pans back and you become aware that someone else is in the room: a middle-aged man, dog-eyed and sad. He has dark circles under his eyes and a receding hairline. His glasses rest on his nose at an angle.
You see the pillow in his hand and the trembling gun and for a moment their purpose does not register with you. The man hesitates for the briefest of commercial moments, then strides to the head of the bed. You notice him close his eyes—just for a second—before he presses the pillow against the woman’s face. She starts to struggle, but her movements are slow, weak, feeble, confused. She is swimming, a stop-motion backstroke under blankets, as the man presses the gun to the pillow. He clenches his teeth and the camera cuts away as he squeezes the trigger.
The scene cuts to the same room. Blue and red lights flash in the window as a policeman, shaking his head, slips a bloody pillow into an evidence bag. The scene fades to black as a narrator, deep voiced and grim, says, “Euthanasia without a licensed permit is murder. Call the experts at KWC, Incorporated. It’s legal, safe, and humane. At KWC we let them go with compassion and comfort.”
The whole thing lasts less than a minute. You hate it, but you watch every time, absorbing the details, repulsed, mesmerized. The disgusting, dying old woman. The exhausted man pushed to the breaking point. The disappointed officer and that pillow, soaked, dripping. You hate; you wonder how a commercial like that even got made.
But when the time comes for you cancer-ridden mother to be put down, you will probably call KWC, Inc., and I will have earned my salary.
********
Lou, the great brick pig of the office stood before my desk, panting, clammy. His suit could split at any moment and give birth to great rolls of fat with tufts of damp hair sliding between. He scowled and placed both hands on the front of my desk and leaned forward heavily. His eyebrows butterflied up and down as he spoke. “We need a new commercial.”
This was nothing new. He had been dropping hints that he thought it was time for a new campaign.
“The old commercial is old.” He said.
“It’s not that old. And the numbers still look good.”
“Six months is ancient. That’s like being 80 in commercial years.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not. It’s time to take that commercial out back and shoot it.”
I leaned back in my chair to consider this.
“Shoot it in the head and put it in the dumpster and get me a new baby.”
I pulled out my notepad. “What did you have in mind? Another murder commercial.”
He shook his jowls. “Hell no. I have experienced nothing but grievous complaint about that commercial. My mother, my mother has not shut up about it since launch. Says it’s disgusting. Violent. Panders to the lowest bla bla bla. She has accused me of fear mongering. I tell her the commercial was not my idea. She says that if I am the director of marketing, then I am responsible. Now listen. When my mother is 90 and shitting blood in the corner of the room, I will personally administer the kill drugs. But I will not listen to her harp at me for months about another commercial.”
I wrote “no murder” in my little pad.
Lou straightened up. “And please, no mothers this time. If someone has to die, please let that someone be a man. A very ugly man that is obviously in great pain and gravely ill. Maybe he’s crass. Maybe most people would like this man to die.”
I wrote “no mothers” in my little pad.
“But, and here’s the thing—it still has to be edgy. You have seen, I presume, Divine Intervention International’s new ad campaign. The one with the angels and fairies and shit. And the lady with the six arms. That commercial does not want to make me kill an elderly relative."
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