the end of mr x

by corinne delmonico

mr x ruled the world. most people thought he did a pretty good job. you never heard anybody complain. mr x got to the office every morning and decided what everybody in the world would wear next day. and what they would they eat. and what exercises they would do. and whether they would run or walk, and how many miles, and in in which direction. and what shows they would watch in the evening, after finishing their exercises and running or walking, and after they had finished digesting their final meal of the day, and taken their pills. and when these things had been decided, mr x got down to serious business, controlling the weather, wind, and tides, and adjusting, if necessary, the plan for the world ecology for the next 100,000 years. then a couple of unfortunate incidents occurred. mr x was passing by the typing pool one day, after a visit to the roof observatory to see if the rain was falling properly, when he noticed millie harris, one of the typists. she was wearing a pink scarf. that’s a nice scarf, millie, mr x observed. oh, do you like it, mr x? millie exclaimed. here take it! give it to your wife, or one of your great-grandchildren. oh, no, i couldn’t. please, i insist! mr x took the scarf. word quickly got around. it began to be rumored than mr x was abusing his position for personal gain. then the second incident occurred. the tigers were playing the wildcats for the world championship. mr x was passing through the mail room. johnny miller, one of the mail boys, asked mr x who he thought would win the championship. mr x smiled, and replied that he did not gamble himself, but he had heard that the smart money was on the tigers. the tigers won, and word quickly got around that the fix had been in. cracks began to appear in the smooth surface of human society. historians would long debate whether the cracks suddenly appeared, or had already been developing under the surface. two opposing camps emerged. the parthians, or reds, who supported mr x and the existing order, and the scythians,or greens, who demanded sweeping change. tribes and nations reappeared. families broke apart. brother turned against brother, sister against sister, children against parents and grandparents. gangs and secret societies formed, then militias, then armies, navies, air forces, and missile sites.. * here we are in front of the old world headquarters, where it all began in what now seems another millennia, although it was only a few years ago. here comes a young man, wearing parthian red. good morning, would you mind answering a few questions? go for it. may i ask your name? aaron adams. aaron, you look just old enough to remember the old days, how do you like the new ones? i fucking love it, man. i mean, this is great. life was so boring, every day you would say hi or hello to somebody, and they would say hi or hello back, how lame was that? now, if i see some some asshole wearing scythian green, i can get in his face, say, fuck you asshole, we are the future, we’re going to kick your ass, and if it’s a really nice day i actually kick his ass. i mean, this is the way it was meant to be. thank you, aaron. and you, sir, you look like you want to say something. what’s your name. bud bradley. and what’s on your mind this morning, bud? well, i just saw you talking to that parthian asshole, and i want to say that anything and everything he told you is a fucking lie, a total fabrication because the parthians are living in a brainwashed alternate hypocritical reality that has nothing to do with anything and will destroy the world. and why do you think that is, bud? power, man, it’s all about power. don’t let anybody tell you different. it’s about power and always has been. thank you, bud. and you, young lady, what is your name? doreen. doreen dudley. and what do you think the problem is, doreen? greed. just good old-fashioned greed. these scythians think they own the world. what about mr x? he should be put on trial and hanged. obviously.

i don't like this story

by corinne delmonico

once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess. she lived in a faraway castle on the edge of a faraway sea. everyone in the castle, and the kingdom, loved the princess. but their love was not enough to prevent the princess from being unhappy, and from spending long hours looking out the window of her room at the top of the castle, and sighing as she looked out to sea, i don’t like this story. it’s stupid. but have only just begun it, miss gray replied. why not give it a chance? i have already given it more of a chance than it deserves. why must all stories be about princesses? and castles and handsome princes? why not about something else for a change? well that is a reasonable enough request, miss gray smiled. let me start over. once upon a time there was a beautiful young governess. how absurd! governesses are not beautiful. if they were, they would not be governesses. look at yourself - you are as plain as a stick left out in the rain. miss gray had been warned that sandrine was a horrid child, so she was not entirely surprised by these outbursts. but she was prepared to endure the most wretched and obnoxious child, in preference to the hunger pangs she had experienced when she was lacking employment. once upon a time there was a person who was neither rich nor poor, fat nor thin, beautiful or ugly, or young or old, and the person lived in an old house on a hill overlooking a dismal swamp. not half so dismal as this story is starting out. one day the person was looking out the window of the old house, and saw a space ship in the sky. oh no! science fiction! i absolutely loathe science fiction. all right, one day the person was looking out the window and saw a motley band of creatures appearing over the brow of the hill. the brow of the hill? what a quaint expression. are you sure you even know what it means? nobody uses it any more, except boring old governesses. let us enter the modern world, if you please. a motley band of creatures appeared on the crest of the hill. there was an ogre, a vampire, a werewolf, a cowboy, a witch, a pirate, and a little dog. cowboys? pirates? did i not just say i wished you to enter the modern world? what part of “ modern world” do you not understand? let me start over. please do. this is your last chance. a young woman named pathfinder smith lived in a great city at the edge of the world. she had a cat named constance and a boa constrictor named bartholomew. pathfinder and constance and bartjholomew were hungry all the time, but they hoped to strike it rich by developing a comedy act and appearing on a television show called superstar search. pathfinder had a day job at a day care center and she attempted to hone her comedy skills by telling jokes to the small children entrusted to her care. one day there was hurricane, and the roof of the day care center was blown off. two young men arrived to fix the roof. one was a giant named george and the other was a dwarf named washington. george and washington both fell in love with pathfinder, and as they were fixing the roof, they both laughed so hard at the jokes she told them as they worked that they fell off their ladders. one of the children in the day care center was a little girl named alice james, and she was the richest little girl in the world. her best friend at the day care center was a little boy named millard fillmore, who lived in a hole in the ground behind an opium den … i do not at all like the way this story is progressing. i have heard stupid stories before, but this opens up whole new vistas of imbecility. i think you are attempting to be, in what you no doubt consider a subtle manner, sarcastic at my expense and are not making a sincere effort to entertain me. therefore i am having you sacked. * sandrine watched from the window as miss gray disappeared down the road. how she envied her! free as a bird, free to wander over the earth wherever she wished. not like poor sandrine, a prisoner in this miserable old house with all the boring servants and the even more boring old relatives! * once upon a time, miss green began, there was a beautiful young princess. her name was matilda, she lived in a faraway castle on the edge of a faraway sea. everyone in the castle, and in the kingdom, loved the princess. except one person. her sister, princess mirabella, who bitterly resented that the princess had inherited the kingdom when their father, good king walter, had perished in battle defeating the dragon army and saving the kingdom. one night mirabella sent a raven with a message to the castle of the dragon king… i hope i am not boring you, miss green interrupted her own story. the story is an old one, and perhaps familiar. oh not at all, sandrine replied. please go on, it is quite the most fascinating tale i have ever heard…

page 994

by corinne delmonico

paul looked at the list of things helen had given him to pick up at the supermarket. elastic bands… vitamin c tablets… dunkin donuts iced coffee drink… dish detergent… pomegranate juice… reese’s peanut butter cups… bottled water… corn chips… paper napkins… and on and on… i don’t know why we need all this stuff, he said. a bear in the woods doesn’t need all this stuff. it needs water, helen said. but not in a plastic bottle. it will drink it from a plastic bottle if a human leaves one in the woods. we have had this conversation before. it was not very amusing the first time. or the second or third. i was just making an observation. i was just a guy making an observation, if you want to live with the bears in the woods, go live with the bears in the woods. but if you wander into somebody’s lawn and they shoot you, don’t come crying to me. i don’t know why you feel this insatiable need to belittle me. i am just a guy… helen stood up. that’s it, she said, that is the 1,000th time you have said you are just a guy. i said when you hit that mark i would leave, and now i am. but you can’y leave me now, paul protested. no? why not? because of everything that is happening. the seas are rising … an asteroid belt is threatening the earth… human values are eroding… a plague of spiders is infesting arizona and new mexico… the price of gold has collapsed… there are periodic blackouts all over north and south america… nobody has any respect… you can’t leave me now… we all have to stick together in times like these… what is the point of sticking together if nobody has any respect? hmmm? and with that helen went into the bedroom and emerged a few seconds later with her old red cardboard suitcase , the one she had purchased so many years ago in utica new york and carried all over the world. well then, good bye, paul said. good bye, just a guy. the door closed by itself behind helen. she was gone. finally. now what, paul wondered. he did not have to go to the store to buy any reese’s peanut butter cups or pomegranate juice. there was a book of 1,000 crossword puzzles he had never quite finished. it should still be in the lower desk drawer. he retrieved the book of crossword puzzles. he had done more than he remembered - 993. he found a pencil and started to do the puzzle on page 994. 1 across - a flamboyant concatenation. a gratuitous rodomontade.

forty years

by corinne delmonico

billy and betty brown were married for forty years and they were baseball fans. billy was a sales representative for a drug company. in the early years of their marriage betty had a job in a real estate office, but after being laid off during a “recession” she never went back to work and they both lived comfortably on what billy made in salary and commissions and yearly bonuses. they never had any children, they were not burdened by the care of elderly parents, and neither had any brothers or sisters or other relatives that they kept in touch with. they did not have any close friends that they saw on a regular basis. what they had was baseball. they had season tickets to the games of their home town team, the hometowners, and actually attended about seventy games a year (out of a possible eighty or eighty-one). and all the games they did not attend in person, and the hometowners’ road games, they watched on television. and they had a cable tv package which allowed them to watch every major league game, and to tape them. this was especially useful in keeping track of the progress of the hometowners’ hated rivals, the outoftowners. but all this was only scratching the surface. billy and betty had a bottomless fund of statistics at their command. billy could rattle off, as easy as the alphabet, the names of all the american and national batting champions back to 1876, and the batting averages they won with. betty could not quite match this, but could do a lot better than me or you. and then there were the new twenty-first century statistics, which opened up a whole new universe of fascinating facts. but one tinged with melancholy as they could only be projected back so far. how billy would have loved to know the average exit velocities of balls hit by babe ruth and joe dimaggio! besides statistics, they had an endless supply of little facts and anecdotes about the game filed away in their brains. such as that when the only fatality in a major league game occurred, in a game between cleveland and the yankees in 1920, babe ruth was on the field, playing right field. or that when mickey mantle broke his leg stepping in a hole in the ground in the world series in 1951, he was chasing a fly ball hit by willie mays. or that when the baltimore orioles returned to the major leagues in 1954, the starting pitcher in their first game was don larsen, who later gained fame for pitching a perfect game in the world series. billy and betty knew hundreds of such facts, as surely as they knew that custer died at little big horn, or that jfk was shot in dallas. billy died. few people came to the funeral. after the funeral, betty was approached by a man she had never seen before, who introduced himself as jim witherspoon and said he had known billy in high school. so, jim witherspoon addressed betty, you and billy were married for forty years, eh? yes, betty replied, just like moses wandered in the desert for forty years. um, jim witherspoon replied, you are a big baseball fan, huh? not really, said betty. i hate baseball and always have. i see, said jim witherspoon. i guess… i mean… you never really know about people, do you? betty asked. no, you do not. take me for example. what about you? i look like a pretty respectable guy. but do you know what i have always dreamed of being? what? being a serial killer. traveling around the country, free as a bird, just killing people. whether they deserved it or not. maybe with a partner. betty did not answer. ha ha, just kidding, jim witherspoon assured her. my sense of humor gets me in trouble sometimes. after a few more awkwardnesses, jim witherspoon left, as did the other attendees of the brief funeral service. betty was left alone with her thoughts. forty years, she thought, forty years. great god almighty, i’m free at last, after forty years. money was not a problem, as she and billy had invested successfully through the years. but free to do what? i should have made some kind of plans, she thought, but i never did. surely, she could think of something. but she didn’t have much time.

percival and his friends

by corinne delmonico

percival had lots of friends. he never wondered much if they really liked him, or why they liked him. although he sometimes thought about it a little bit, and had his suspicions. his friends liked him because he was a pleasant fellow. he never argued about anything. he was not bad looking. he knew how to act in public, and never embarrassed himself or anyone else. he dressed well, nothing flashy or ostentatious. he was not particularly witty, and did not have a great sense of humor, but he would laugh at other people’s jokes and witticisms without being obviously “”polite”. he was not very knowledgeable on any subject, which was one reason why he never got into arguments. he had no obsessions, no subject he bored people with. he had lots of money, and was always open to his friends’ suggestions as to how to spend it, on himself and on them. one day percival lost all his money. he did not how it happened, but he had never understood money. the only thing he had ever known about it was that he had a lot of it. sometimes he had read in the papers or seen stories online about “crashes” on wall street , but somehow they had never affected him. now, with no stories in the media about any “crashes” and without any warning, his financial advisor and the manager of his trust both told him he was bankrupt. “what about the money in my checking account?” he asked the financial advisor. the advisor put the tips of her fingers together. “hmm. i don’t know if anybody will bother to go after it, but to be on the safe side, maybe you better take the money out and hide it under your bed. even a safe deposit box would not be completely safe.” percival wondered if his friends would still like him, he was quickly reassured. “that’s all right, percival,” his best friend, nellie, told him. “we had a nice run off of you. now, we will show you how to get a run off of other people. like jeff and bobbi. and harold. harold has more money than god. we have to help him spend it.” “we will teach you to be a parasite,” his second best friend willie added. “it is not that difficult.” so percival began sponging on some of his friends, the way some of the other friends had sponged on him. he did not starve, or freeze to death. but after a while he got bored. his friends started to bore him, and he felt he was boring them. he decided to cut his ties with them, and get out into the real world, which he had always been a little curious about. he got a job behind the counter at mopey dick’s, a startup fast food company. he worked both afternoon and night shifts. he rented a lonely little room with an old fashioned hissing radiator, and bought a second hand 18 inch television, which he went home and watched when he was not working. he especially liked old star trek episodes. he began to watch all the episodes of all the different seasons.

the governess

by corinne delmonico

the twins could be a bit of a handful, but miss carson was still glad she had obtained the job as their governess, as she had been somewhat starving before she did. the twins, mindy and logan, were the heirs to the imperial throne. that is, they were both regarded as “heirs” and treated as such, although, when the time came, only one would ascend the throne. at the time miss carson began her employment, the empire was under the regency of the twins’ uncle, prince e——————. prince e—————— was not a favorite of the people, a fact which did not seem to concern him unduly. when the twins reached their twelfth birthday, the regency would be over, a coin would be flipped by the imperial chamberlain, lord y————, and one of the twins would be crowned and would ascend the throne, with the other would be exiled to a distant planet, or returned to the general populace. in the meantime they were under the care and supervision of miss carson. really, miss carson mused, they were not so much of a handful as that, and got along well enough with each other, and with her, most of the time. the most serious source of conflict involved the stories they liked to be told by miss carson. mindy liked stories with lots of surprises, especially at the end. logan liked to hear the same stories over and over, with happy endings. or maybe it was the other way around. both twins made it clear to miss carson that her own treatment, if and when they ascended the throne, would be largely determined by how well she pleased them in the meantime. miss carson, on the few occasions she encountered the regent or the lord chamberlain, had sought, with such subtlety as she was capable of, some reassurance as to her future situation, but neither of those experienced diplomatic individuals gave her any satisfaction. meanwhile miss carson was left with the twins. * if you were miss carson, which of these stories seems most likely to please, at least to some degree, both children: a) little red riding hood and the big bad wolf are driving down a country road at midnight when a violent storm overtakes them and they find shelter in an abandoned barn. in the barn they find a handsome prince, bound and gagged… b) cinderella is invited to balls by the king of a……….. , the king of b——————, and the king of c————, all on the same night. she can only attend one! she asks her two stepsisters for advice… c) robin hood and friar tuck and maid marian have successfully held up the casino at monte carlo and are escaping in a motorboat with the swag, with robin hood at the wheel. the gendarmes are right behind him in a high powered motorboat of their own. suddenly maid marian falls overheard… d) snow white wakes up in what looks like a motel room, but does not know how she got there. she hears a voice though the thin walls. it sounds like king arthur, whom she had been rather rude to at the lord lieutenant’s ball the year before… e) old mother hubbard carefully tends a flower in her back yard. she has been assured by a fairy that if she keeps the flower alive for seven years, she, mother hubbard, will be restored to eternal youth… f) other (specify)

the billionaire and his four sons

by corinne delmonico

once upon a time there was a mighty billionaire. he lived in a castle on an island deep in the bermuda triangle. he had four sons, named aurelio, gonzalvo, michel, and patrick. one day he summoned them to his office. outside, a great wind was blowing, and the sea around the island was choppy. i have summoned you here today, the billionaire announced, because i have a task for each of you. he paused, but all four stared at him without speaking. the billionaire cleared his throat. i am giving you these tasks, he continued, because i wish you to prove that you are worthy of inheriting any part of my fortune. each of you will have a different task, and one year to achieve it. we will meet here in one year’s time, and you will report as to whether you have succeeded, and then what? asked aurelio. and then, the billionaire answered, we will proceed from there. the four looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes. all right, said gonzalvo, what are the tasks? you, aurelio, are the handsomest of my sons. therefore i give you the task of finding the ugliest woman in the world and making love to her. neither aurelio or the others spoke, and the billionaire continued. you, gonzalvo, are the ugliest of my sons and therefore you are assigned the task of finding the most beautiful woman in the world and making love to her. just like that, huh, gonzalvo replied. yes , just like that. and you, michel, have always been the greediest of my sons so you will find the skinniest woman in the world and make love to her. and finally, patrick, as the biggest wimp snd snowflake among my sons you will find the fattest woman int the world and make love to her. how, asked michel, are we supposed to prove we did all this? go to a drugstore, dummy, or on amazon, and buy a camera. that is all. i will see you all in a year’s time. the four brothers met outside beside the elevator which would take them down to their boats and off the island. aurelio was the first to speak. what kind of sorry-ass bullshit was that? he asked. that was some sick shit, gonzalvo agreed. the old man is living in some sort of medieval fantasy world, said michel. he doesn’t understand modern ways. you got that right, said patrick. i, for one, have no intention of trying to achieve, as he put it, his ridiculous command. it’s all bullshit, said aurelio, he was going to cut us all off anyway. he is just fucking with our heads. michel laughed. he didn’t even promise us anything if we did the things. we will proceed from there. yeah, right. the others nodded, and the elevator arrived. none of the four made any attempt to comply with the billionaire’s program, and they went their separate ways. aurelio got a job in a bait shop in woods hole on cape cod, and married a woman twenty years older than himself. gonzalvo decided to write screenplays, but spent most of his time in a sports bar in albany new york, where he became a familiar figure and often ran small errands for the other patrons. michel met a woman who was passionately involved in various feminist and environmental causes, and became her faithful ally and companion. patrick became a monk and retired to a hut in death valley. the billionaire had his army of spies keeping track of them, so he was disappointed, but not surprised, when none of the four showed up at the island on the appointed day. a tear fell from his eye on to his desk. miss gray, his faithful secretary of forty years loyal service, was standing behind him when the tear fell and she put her hand on his shoulder. life is sad, she said. thank you, miss gray, i am glad there is still some compassion left in the world. the billionaire put his hand over miss gray’s hand, which rested on his shoulder. after a pause the billionaire continued. the little bastards will never know what they passed on. a father’s love, said miss gray. yes, and a bit more than that. they laughed at my studying the old ways and the old magic, but what they did not know was that i had succeeded in summoning a spirit - not a demon who wanted my soul but a benign spirit - and that spirit has opened the door to me of all the wealth in the universe. how would you, miss gray, like to share that wealth with me? i would be honored, sir. and so the billionaire - who was now so much more than a billionaire - married miss gray and they lived happily ever after.