Before the Board of Directors

by D.Harlan Wilson

I had my tear ducts sewn shut. The doctors used very tiny strands of razorwire to do the job. They could have used very tiny strands of dental floss or platypus hair, but that's not what I wanted. And I always get what I want.

To tell the truth, that's not true. The truth is, I rarely get what I want. But I want to get what I want all the time, and sometimes this want of mine is so strong I deceive myself into thinking that I'm getting what I want all the time.

I can remember a number of occasions when I wasn't deceiving myself, and when I wasn't getting what I wanted. On one of these occasions, what I wanted was to get away from The House On Anti-Avenue Avenue. No matter how fast I drove, no matter what direction I drove in, I always ended up where I started: in the parking lot that was The House On Anti-Avenue Avenue's front yard. It didn't make any sense. I was in motion but I wasn't going anywhere. It was a breach of the laws of physics, my inability to get away. And yet I couldn't get away.

A Stick Style house, The House On Anti-Avenue Avenue was a High Victorian elaboration of the Gothic Revival style, which harkened back to medieval castles and cathedrals. It was tall and gray and distinguished by its three needle-sharp rooftops and its long distorted windows, the latter of which resembled the frozen, screaming mouths of cartoon characters. If you stared at the structure for too long, you got the uncanny impression that it was not only staring back at you, but taking notes on you, judging you, maybe even plotting against you.

Then again, if you stared at anything for too long, animate or inanimate, you got the same uncanny impression.

Finally I gave up trying to get away from the House on Anti-Avenue Avenue and parked in the best-looking parking spot I could find. All of the parking spots looked more or less the same, so in order to gauge which spot was the best-looking, I deployed what might be called intuitive logic. Then I got out of my car.

The moment I closed my door and turned my back on my car, it was immediately stolen. I didn't see or hear who stole it. I didn't even see or hear it get driven away. But I knew that the car had been driven away, because when I glanced over my shoulder to see if I had remembered to lock the doors, it wasn't there anymore.

My car was just an everyday ordinary SUV with four doors, a sun roof, a cracked rear view mirror and chrome bumpers, but I had grown close to it over the years and the prospect of never seeing it again frightened and infuriated me.

There were eleven other cars in the parking lot: eight Model-T Fords, all of which were in excellent shape; one Volvo station wagon, which was in crummy shape (rust and mud were caked all over it); and a souped-up hearse with monster truck tires, shotgun exhaust pipes and the head of a shiny silver engine peeking out of a hole in its broad black hood. All of the cars were empty except for one of the Model-Ts. Inside it, two teenage albinos were making out.

Since I couldn't swear at the person who stole my car, I decided to swear at the albinos.

I stomped over to the Model-T, rapped my knuckles against the window, and waited impatiently for the couple to stop making out and roll the window down.

"Sunzabitches," I seethed.

Their pink eyes blinked at me. I noticed that they were both wearing lipstick. There was lipstick, in fact, smeared all over each of their crooked, ovular faces from the top of their foreheads to the tips of their chins. I wanted to call them a couple of goddamn weirdos. But that would be overkill: sunzabitches would suffice for now.

I turned and marched to the front door of The House On Anti-Avenue Avenue. I tried to open the door. It was locked. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I rang the doorbell. There was no ringing noise.

Clearing my throat, I walked back to the albinos in the Model-T. They were now naked and having sex. The one who had been in the driver's seat was straddling the other one. Both of them were staring down at the social interaction of their genitals with the fascinated scrutiny of an entomologist studying a newly evolved species of bug through an electron microscope. I rapped on the window again. The couple didn't stop having sex or looking at their genitals, but they did roll down the window. I apologized for being intrusive, apologized for calling them sunzabitches a minute ago, explained that somebody had ripped off my car, explained that I needed to get inside The House On Anti-Avenue Avenue and use the telephone to call the police, told them that the door to The House On Anti-Avenue Avenue was locked and nobody was answering it, assured them that I was very upset, and at last asked if they had an axe in their trunk. Luckily, they did. I asked them if I could borrow it.

The soft growl of a mellow orgasm leaked out of the car and into my ears as the trunk popped open and the window rolled back up.

I tested the axe to see if it would be sharp enough to do the job I needed it to do, first by running my thumb over its blade, then my tongue. Both extremities were cut open. I was bleeding all over the place.

The axe would do just fine.

I waited patiently for the blood to coagulate and seal my wounds. It took a long time, but I had nowhere to go. Then, screaming like an insane Indian, I charged towards the front door of the house, waving the axe above my head. Sound and spittle flew out of my riptide mouth like buckshot.

It was not long before the door was in pieces and I was standing in the foyer of the house, loosening the burgundy tie of my whitenoise-colored suit and using a handkerchief to clean all of the saliva off of my chin and cheeks.

I'm very interested in the details of things. As a matter of fact, the details of things interest me more than things themselves. It's the details of things, after all, that give meaning and character things, which, in the absence of details, would cease to be things. Before I had a chance to take note of the details of the inside of the house, however, I was accosted by a man and forced to take note of the details of him instead. This man immediately reminded me of a man I used to know, not because he looked so much like him, but because he looked so much unlike him. The man I used to know might be described as bald, thin and religious. This man right here, in contrast, was the opposite of that one: the hair on his head was thick, profuse, and resembled a lion's mane; his body was that of a bull standing on its hind legs; and his belief system, if I was reading the shiteating gleam in his eyes correctly, was clearly not informed by hopes of, let alone faith in, the prospect of an afterlife. I had chopped down the front door of The House on Anti-Avenue Avenue, I had invaded The House on Anti-Avenue Avenue—and so this big bastard clobbered me on the head with a hard, meaty fist. He didn't knock me out, but I was dazed and helpless to defend myself when he picked me up by the head with his giant hand and stuffed me into an itchy burlap bag.

Mumbling inarticulately, he dragged me down twenty flights of stairs. The stairs were made of granite. By the time we had reached the basement, my body was a morass of welts and bruises.

Had my tear ducts not been sewn shut, I may have begun to leak.

My bound body was tossed through the air. I struck a wall and went, "Ouch!" I fell on the floor and went, "Fuuuck!" More curse words came out of my mouth as I wriggled out of the bag like a crippled worm trying to wriggle out of a hole that's too small for it. But I managed to free myself anyway.

Disturbed and disoriented, I got to my feet and began to stagger around. My head was spinning. My eyeballs were each moving in different directions and I couldn't see two feet in front of my face.

My legs collapsed beneath me. I fell on my rump, burped, coughed...and puked up my breakfast (steak and eggs with a side of blueberry pancakes and six cups of coffee).

After that it was fuzzy. I think I may have passed out for a while. Or maybe not. The next thing I remembered, I was feeling surprisingly refreshed and my vision had returned to me.

The room I was confined in was a basement with a smooth concrete floor and walls and a ceiling caked in spider webs. There were no windows. Swinging from a short chain on the ceiling was a big flickering light bulb that chirped and clicked like a half-conscious cricket. The only major article of furniture in the basement was a long wooden table that stretched from one side of the room to the other.

Sitting behind this table was the board of directors. I knew they were the board of directors because somebody had used a manure stick to draw a line of graffiti onto the wall behind and above them. The graffiti was printed in neat, diligent lettering and looked like this:

Despite the poor lighting in the basement, I could see them fairly clearly. There were one, two, three, four...nine of them in all. They all had tight business suits on like me, albeit their suits were black instead of whitenoise in color, and they all had vegetable-colored skin and pencil-faced heads. Thin horn-rimmed pince nez were perched on the tips of each of their sharp noses, except for the man in the very middle, who wore thick black-rimmed spectacles.

They sat in their seats like petrified plants.

Two of the nine board of directors were large-breasted women. Like the men, they had scraggly black beards. I couldn't tell if their beards were strap-ons or if some genetic defect had effectuated the production of too much testosterone in their systems. Perhaps they even administered regular testosterone injections to themselves in order to maintain their beards. I wanted to walk over to one of them and tug on their facial hair, to see if it would come off. But that would have been too aggressive a thing to do; strangers don't tug on the facial hair of other strangers, no matter how outrageous and inexcusable the circumstances of their coming together.

I was standing before the board of directors, staring at them. The board of directors was sitting before me, staring back at me. In their eyes was the cold understanding of people who think they have certain affiliations with Destiny. In my eyes was the curious regalement of a person who thinks that people who think they have certain affiliations with Destiny are dipshits.

We regarded each other for an indefinite amount of time in complete silence before I noticed that my now crumpled up suit was stained in places with vomit. Removing a silk handkerchief from the inside pocket of my coat, I took my eyes off of the board of directors, who I had been observing one at a time in a methodical, calculated manner, and began to wipe the vomit off of myself. I paused now and then to wet the handkerchief with spit.

A few moments after my gaze strayed from the gaze of the board of directors, the man in the thick black spectacles pounded his fist against the table and stood up.

"Indeed," said the director sitting on the man in the thick black spectacles' immediate right, and glanced up at him. At first I thought the utterance signified that he was in concordance with his colleague. By saying what he said, I thought he was saying, "I support your decision to get angry, comrade." But I soon learned that that was not what he was saying. Indeed was the man in the thick black spectacles' name.

"How dare you address me by my surname and my surname alone," said Indeed, staring down at the man with profound enmity in his eyes. "Do that again and I will have you banished from this hellhole, do you understand me? I say do you understand me?"

The director penitently bowed his head. "Yes, Dr. Indeed," he said, and then added, "Yes indeed."

Dr. Indeed stared at the top of the out-of-order director's bowed head for a few more seconds, as if he was trying to burn a hole through his bald spot with his eyes. "It irks me," he kept repeating under his breath. I couldn't tell if he was referring to the man's bald spot or his impudent conduct.

The rest of the directors coughed, cleared their throats, and made subtle, obscene gestures with their lips.

I wondered what kind of doctor Dr. Indeed was. He looked like a history professor—all of the directors looked like history professorsÑbut for all I knew he was a herpetologist. I could have asked him what he was, but frankly I didn't care enough about it. Not now anyway. Now there were more pressing matters to get to the bottom of.

When Dr. Indeed failed to return his attention to me in a timely fashion, I said, "Is somebody going to tell me what's the matter here? Is this about the front door? Sorry I chopped it down. But you're the ones who locked it and didn't answer it when I knocked on it. What did you expect? Well, it's just a door. You can get another one. They sell doors all over the place."

His eyes on the verge of popping out of his skull and smashing through the lenses of his thick black spectacles, Dr. Indeed's aquiline head slowly turned in my direction. There was a long, irritating pause before he shouted at the top of his voice, "Who do you think you are, sir!"

I frowned. "What do you mean? I don't understand. Could you rephrase yourself, possibly?"

Agitated by my response, the doctor exclaimed, "What a burden!" Then he began to vibrate with rage. In order to stop himself from vibrating, he slapped himself across his own face. For good measure he also slapped the director who had mouthed off to him. Then, to me, he spat, "I shall ask the questions in this realm of existence! Am I making myself clear!"

"Actually you're the most unclear person I think I've ever met in my life," was my calm, calm response. "Look, I just want to use the phone. Some dickhead stole my car and I need to report it. Where's the phone? Does anybody have a cell on them?"

Two irate veins inflated on either side of Dr. Indeed's high forehead. The other directors took stupid glimpses of one another.

Placing his fists on the table before him, Dr. Indeed leaned closer to me. He blinked at me. He nodded at me. Then, whispering, he said, "Kneel before the board of directors." His colleagues tilted back their heads, pursed their lips, sucked in their cheeks and raised their eyebrows, awaiting my reply.

My reply was a mask of confusion.

Apparently the mask was not well-received. In response to it, one of the female directors stood up, turned her back on me, angled over and dismissed a long, loud fart. The sound and the fury of the fart, once it was finished, prompted all of the male directors except Dr. Indeed to nod in grave affirmation and tap the table with the thorny tips of their index fingers. It prompted me, on the other hand, to transform my mask of confusion into a mask of disgust.

"Kneel before the board of directors," the doctor repeated.

I kept my mouth shut and made another face. What were these people trying to accomplish? More importantly—what were these people?

The doctor repeated himself again...and again...and again...his determined eyes were penetrating me like knives...

I had a good feeling that anything but obeying the command would ignite a tedious dialogue between Dr. Indeed and I, and I was not in the mood for a tedious dialogue...all I wanted to do was call the cops and try to get my car back. At the same time, I was not in the mood to obey Dr. Indeed's command and give him the upper hand in the power-relation that had been established between us. I may not have known what the board of directors were ultimately trying to prove, but it was clear that they were attempting to dominate me.

Not being a big fan of being dominated, I opted for the tedious dialogue.

"Kneel before the—"

"I heard you the first twenty-three times," I snapped.

Dr. Indeed raised an eyebrow. "Then submit. Submit, I say."

"Why?" I said.

He groaned as if I had kidney-punched him. "I thought I told you that I and not you shall, in every way and shape and form, act as the inquisitor here. What about what I told you did you fail to understand?"

"I understood you. I simply chose not to mind you. I made that choice."

"I can respect that. I can also denounce it. I can do anything I want to do."

"Of course you can. You're a powerful man, aren't you."

"Indeed," said Dr. Indeed, and the corners of his lips curled up.

"Very funny. Now listen to me where's the phone? I have to go. Can you tell me where the phone is?" I gesticulated at him impatiently.

The doctor's smirk persisted. "I can tell you. But I won't."

"Why not?"

"Because of your disgraceful insistence on defying my authority. Disgraceful—yet by the same token delicious. I like a man who resists bending over and taking one in the ass at the drop of a hat. But I hate him more than I like him. Much more."

I shook my head. "I'm not going to kneel down. No, I'm not going to do that. There's no point in it and nothing will be accomplished by it. What is this, elementary school? You're some kind of otherworldly jackass."

"So you say."

"Knock it off."

"Silence!" Dr. Indeed made a maestro-like cutting motion through the air with the blade of his palm as he squawked the word.

I smirked. "No."

He sneered. "Be quiet!"

I intensified my smirk. "No."

He intensified his sneer. "Do as I say!"

I allowed my smirk to fall off my face. It hit the ground like a potato. "No."

Dr. Indeed's sneer, in contrast, leapt off his face and drifted up to the ceiling like campfire smoke. "Why not?" Both of our faces were empty now. I considered filling up that emptiness with something, then decided against it and said, "Because it doesn't make any sense."

Dr. Indeed began to flex his jaw. "That's because you're not applying the correct logic to this situation."

"What's the correct logic?" I returned the flexing jaw gesture with a widening nostril gesture.

It was countered by a wiggling-of-the-ears gesture. "That's for me to know and for you to try and fail to figure out."

"Asshole," I said.

"Silence!" Dr. Indeed said.

And so on. We continued to argue in this manner for another five minutes. By the time we tired out, all of the other directors had nodded off; heads slumped onto their shoulders, they were snoring like warthogs.

I suddenly became aware of the fact that the basement smelled like a latrine. I attributed my not becoming aware of this fact earlier to one of two possible things: 1) I was so discombobulated by being dragged down the stairs and thrown against the wall that my olfactory senses had not been working properly; 2) the basement had not smelled like a latrine before, it smelled like a basement, until one (or more) of the directors took it upon themselves, for whatever reason, to urinate in their pants a few moments ago.

In any case, I was ready to go. My body hurt. I was bored out of my mind, too.

"I'm leaving," I said. "I'm going to see if there's a phone upstairs. If there is, I'm going to use it. If there's not, I'm going to raid your refrigerator. I'm hungry. Goodbye." Favoring my half-sprained left foot, I walked towards the stairs.

Dr. Indeed pointed at me with the resolve of somebody fingering a criminal in a line-up. He looked like he wanted to leap over the table and tackle me, but something was prohibiting him from doing so. It was as if an invisible containment field was keeping he and the others at bay behind the table and beneath the graffiti that told people like me who they were dealing with. "Not so fast!" he carped, jarring his colleagues awake. In one communal motion, they jumped out of their seats into a soldier's ten-hut position, thrust their left fists over their heads, and bleated, "Leben lang die Direktion!" Their hypnogogic eyes were glazed donut holes.

I stopped at the foot of the stairway and turned to the board of directors one last time.

The doctor eyeballed me, shook his finger at me. He lifted up his bearded chin and flashed his teeth at me. His visage looked demonic in the flickering light of the basement.

"Indeed," I intoned...and that was all I intoned. To call him by his first name, I had an inkling, would incite something unpleasant in him.

I was right. Incensed, Dr. Indeed's demonic expression became more acute. He also started to vibrate again. He had no choice but to slap himself as hard as he had slapped himself a little while ago, only this time he used the back of his hand.

Maintaining their rigid stances, the other directors answered the slap by repeating the phrase, "Leben lang die Direktion!"

It was fascinating. The conduct of Dr. Indeed and his entourage reified my belief in the idiocy, the utter lunacy of the human condition. I said his name again. "Indeed."

Another backhand flew across his cheek. This one smacked his thick black spectacles clear off his face.

"Leben lang die Direktion!" said the board of directors.

I closed my eyes, nodded, and started up the stairs. After I had taken a few steps I looked over my shoulder and cried, "Indeed!"

Slap.

"Leben lang die Direktion!"

"Indeed!"

Slap.

"Leben lang die Direktion!"

"Indeed! Indeed!"

Slap. Slap.

"Leben lang die Direktion! Leben lang die Direktion!"

I kept saying Dr. Indeed's name like that until I reached the third flight of stairs, at which point I figured my voice would no longer carry. I climbed up the remaining seventeen flights in vigilant silence. At every corner I expected the Neanderthal that was responsible for putting me in this position to jump me, but he never did. Not even when I emerged from the staircase back into The House On Anti-Avenue Avenue. The godless freak was nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be found.

Maybe he was outside smoking a cigarette? Maybe he was in the bathroom taking a crap?

Maybe he never existed in the first place.

I decided to ask. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I shouted, "Hey shitface, I'm back! Do you exist?"

My answer was an echo. The echo sounded so sad, I could have cried. But I couldn't cry, of course, so I shrugged and proceeded down a long dark hallway towards what I thought might be the kitchen, where I would either find a phone and report my misfortune, or rid the refrigerator of its finest, tastiest booty.