A New Commix companion piece to the most recent “Back in the Newsroom” series of Framework stories – soon to become its own Framework story – autonomous and out of control…
“DUUUUUHHH…!!!”
Brent Boner, long-time chief editor of Ukraine’s only leading English-language Window through the World, the Kyiv Poster, is sitting in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Kyiv savoring Wonton Soup and Sweet & Sour Pork, convenient to him both because it is all so good and because it is close to home, where he lives, right in the center of town.
“Huh-huh – it’s a good thing I made that clear in the food review I did for the Poster on Chink places to eat in Kyiv – duuuhh… It’s important that my readers know I’m not going anywhere that’s more than two metro stops away from where I live, doy, that being right in the center of downtown Kyiv, thanks to my, duh, really good salary that I deserve making at the paper I lead. After all, I’m, a-duh… I’m, a-duh… uuuhh… I’m doing it for their convenience… Duuuhh…”
Boner somehow manages to say all this out loud, so that we can actually hear him, despite stuffing his flabby progressively drooping chops full of pig bits and simultaneous slurping of the wonton soup.
The joint’s Chinese part-owner is suddenly at Boner’s side, chopsticks protruding from his nostrils.
“Aaaww, is evelyting awlite, Miss-a Bon-a?”
“Get away from me, slant eyes!”
The Chink half-boss laughs: “Hol-hor-lor-rol-raaa…”
At this instant, a Ukrainian waiter pirouettes into the table, rattling the wonton soup, the bowl of which flicks a splatter of its contents into Boner’s white dress shirt. Ignoring the incident, which has driven Boner into a mental and barely restrained rage, the Ukrainian disingenuously begins expressing concern over the restaurant’s star client with the sole purpose of pleasing his Chinese boss.
He says: “Is everything okay, here… oh, is everything okay?!?” His English is pretty good.
The Chinese half-owner gleefully takes this opportunity to start administering playful yet painful disciplinary martial arts chops to the back of the hapless but no less sycophantic Ukrainian waiter’s neck, as he drives him away from the table, chopsticks vibrating inside his flat yellow nose, laughing his cruel Asiatic laugh over the slavish East Slavic suppliant who depends on the Chinaman for a living. In this manner, both make their way away from Boner’s table.
Boner looks on admiringly as the pair recedes and blurs into the backdrop, fantasizing how he will take up jiu-jitsu as his manly hobby going into his late middle age. He shoves many pieces of pork into his mouth in quick succession as well as at the same time.
“Hey, Boner…”
No response, as a self-absorbed Boner indulges in heavenly mastication, shoving and shoving more and more tangy pork pieces into his trap – oh, the dish seems endless… “So much, and so cheap, and so good – um, arg, urg…”
“I say… HEY, FUCKING BONER!!!”
It’s a kind of very large, flat, transparent, ethereal, yet quite visible face that appears hovering above Boner. Everyone can see it, and no one is particularly surprised – except Boner. Large, very large – like three, maybe four or more times the size of a normal human head – as if instead of an entire human body. No one, not even this face, knows what it is. The face cannot categorize itself. It’s not an angel, it’s not a devil, or a spirit of any kind, and it’s certainly not Boner’s conscience. It accepts itself as a creation of God without knowing what to call itself. Perhaps it’s simply A. Face, or The Face, or Face, for short (not to be confused with Manny Face). Nevertheless, The Face appears to have a keen understanding of its purpose, and is ready to get on with it.
Naturally, Boner looks up and is startled, saying something that is not worth quoting, as it is very much along the lines of what he would be expected to say, like “Duh, who’s that?!” or “What the hell ARE you?!”
But really, he doesn’t quite say either of these, or anything similar, because fear constricts his throat around a saucy pig bolus he is swallowing. The gruff authoritative voice he has grown so fond of expelling is suddenly meek and cracks higher inside gurgling saliva bubbles gathered somewhere between the epiglottis and pharynx just behind the tongue, replacing most of the speech and turning what’s left into a tormented garble of lost helplessness. That’s because Boner doesn’t have a sense of the comic, of the absurd in life, which is life itself, but only a delusion-filled sense of his own significance in the history of the world, which nobody else cares about, because it isn’t real.
Smiling wryly, The Face says:
“I’m going to muck you up, Boner – for sex harassment in the workplace.”
Boner is severely rattled. He shakes his head in disbelief and looks in frightened defiance at the unsettling apparition.
“Yeah?! Duuuhh, duuuhh… uh… Everything I do is naturally incidental. There’s never any intent behind it. You’ve got nothing on me, see, nothing!”
“Yeah, right. We’ll see about that. Tomorrow morning, when you get into work, an email spread all over the newsroom will spell out to everyone what they already know about you, but have been too afraid to say. They won’t know whom it’s from, but that won’t matter so much, as it will suddenly give them all the courage to persecute you in line with the justice that has for so long been lacking in this long-standing and infuriating situation, which you’ve created and increasingly forced on everyone as a result of your sick old man’s perversion, profound sexual frustration, painful existential loneliness, twisted megalomania, and outsized sense of your own power.”
The Face disappears.
“Oh, yeah?!? I’ll show you!” Boner half-rises, pushing with his hairy arms and hands against the table as he stretches his challenging, albeit skin-sagging, neck, unshaven hair standing on the back of it, up into the space where The Face had been. He looks like a sick and grease-grizzled old black wolf traumatized by an ecological disaster, emerging shaken and confused out of an oil spill.
Upsetting all the people seated at the tables around him, he howls, crimson-faced, his voice cracking again, but now out of rage and completely unjustified indignation, knowing The Face is right. He grinds his yellowed, age-dulled teeth, some beyond fillings and further repairs, on the verge of falling out.
“I’m gonna get to that newsroom real early in the morning, way ahead of anyone else and put a stop to this – somehow – before it even gets started. Duuuhh!!! Somehow I’m gonna do it, damn you!!! Somehow!!! I’m gonna call the IT guy right now!”
“Ha ha ha!!! Call anyone you want, Boner,” The Face says from somewhere, out of sight but well within hearing. “But there’s nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING, in this world or any other that’s going to help you! Sucker!!! Ha ha ha haaaaa…!!!”
“Er ah uh er duh duh duh deeeeerrr…”
Filed by Mr. Perry “Nine Yards” Kicker, December 15, 2015