All You Need to Know to Choose the Right Afterlife, PLUS Five-Star Rating on Food, Drink, and Accomodations
by E.E. King
The Book of Job
Pesky, Pesky, & Pesky Inc. had been founded in 1910 by Ivan Peskeyvenovitch. Migrating to the sunny west, Pesky Senior had doffed his winter coat and the -venovitch, donned sunglasses, and gone into PR. In the old country, he had sold potatoes; in the new one, he would peddle dreams.
The company’s mission was to come up with catchy jingles and slogans for their client’s myriad products. As with most companies, Pesky, Pesky, & Pesky Inc. had been consumed by a mega-corporation and now existed as merely one tentacle of a many-limbed conglomerate.
Dirk had tried to branch out into product creation; his ice cream, “Goody-Goody-Gumdrops,” was catchy, clever, and colorful. The only drawback was that gumdrops, when frozen, acquire the hardness of diamonds. Luckily, the ice cream was test-marketed in Mexico, where a few broken teeth were no big deal, easily bought off by a bag of beans and mateca or some San Miguel beer. If “Goodie Goodie Gumdrops” had made it to the States, it would have been named “Class Action Crunch.”
Pesky, Pesky, & Pesky Inc. consisted of the copywriting team of Dirk Snigby, Matt Court, Angelica Far (who did voice-overs), a few lucky souls in supervisor-less satellite offices and “the Big Boss,” Marcus Finkelstein. Angelica was Dirk’s favorite. She was an attractive thirty-six and the corners of her gray-green eyes creased with the remnants of laughter. Her thin, straight nose ended in a slope, which prevented it from being a classic. Her teeth were tiny and her mouth wide, exposing a generous amount of upper gum when she laughed, something she did often. It might sound unappealing, but in Angelica, it was endearing.
Matt, on the other hand, had the charisma of a moist crumpet. He worshipped power and was both deceitful and boring, traits that might have been at odds with each other in a crunchier individual.
Marcus, the Big Boss, was an unctuous fellow, oozing insincerity as snails secrete slime. He had thin legs and arms, a flat behind, but appeared to have swallowed a mailbox. He was tall, almost bald, his domed head ringed by a fringe of brown frizz…classic male-pattern baldness. He reminded Dirk of a mutant cue ball.
“Why call it male-pattern baldness? How do people usually bald? ‘Male pattern’…as opposed to…hallucinogenic-swirl or paisley-pattern baldness?”
“Don’t be so hard on him,” Angelica said,“The poor man is just dealing with the stress of being a dickhead. Remember, stressed spelled backwards is dickhead.”
Dirk’s office was situated on the thirteenth floor of a soulless glass and chrome building, which tradition and superstition had renumbered. It was erroneously referred to as the fourteenth floor, but Dirk was not fooled. He knew that no matter the machinations of man, 13, not 14, followed 12. Call it what they would, he worked on the thirteenth floor. The office contained three, color-lacking, cubicles composed of the pressed, condensed innards of some ancient forest. There was a small airless conference room for meetings and a huge airy corner office for Marcus Finkelstein.
Dirk sat in his cube gazing blankly at the project before him. How to make laxative sexy? Picture a hunk, a Brad Pitt type, lifting weights; an incredibly sexy girl enters; full lips pout, “He’s known for his smooth moves. Shouldn’t you be? Buy Bowel Pal.”
“‘Bowel Pal, huh?’” Angelica said, leaning over his shoulder. “Great product name. Do you remember about fifteen or twenty years ago there was a diet candy called ‘Ayds’? It was supposed to help you lose weight.”
“Yeah,” Dirk chuckled,“One of the best product names of all time. How about ‘Black Death Bon-Bons’?”
“Or Gonorrhea Gummy Bears?”
“Herpes Hard Suckers.”
“Plague Pralines.”
“Giardia Jawbreakers.”
“Chlamydia Candy.”
Dirk and Angelica’s brainstorming session was interrupted by a shadow falling across Dirk’s desk.
“So what’s going on here?” Marcus asked.
“Oh, just thinking outside the box, putting our heads together. There is no ‘I’ in team, you know,” Angelica said, walking back toward her desk.
Marcus narrowed his eyes, “So, how’s the Bowel Pal copy coming?”
“Great,” Dirk sighed, turning toward his computer screen, willing Marcus to vanish.
“Hey, what’s with the scratch, Dirk? Your girlfriend get wild?” Marcus chuckled mockingly.
“Cat rescue,” Dirk muttered.
“You need to challenge yourself, Dirk, okaaay? You have a tendency to go for the low-hanging fruit. You need to make them want to buy! You need to infuse it into their drinking water!”
Dirk nodded and Marcus turned back to his office.
Of course I go for the low-hanging fruit, thought Dirk in irritation. It’s there, it’s ripe. First I gather it, then I go for the high stuff. Why let the low-hanging fruit rot? I’d like to infuse something into his damn drinking water.
For the rest of the day Dirk sat in his cube, staring at the computer, feeling the precious minutes of his life tick by. He was thinking outside the box, all right–thinking how to escape his box, and the whole damn building, never to return. Thinking that his life, any life, must have a greater purpose than making laxative alluring.
(CONTINUED IN OUR MARCH ISSUE…)