YOU’VE WON!
You’ve won! Right. Another email scam. But two hours later, there was a knock at my door. Two men, identical twins, except one was seven feet tall, while the other was three feet tall, were trailed by a little girl with rhubarb red hair, dressed in overalls walking en pointe. The trio pushed their way into my house. The men picked me up and threw me into a coffin. It had portholes. Amazingly, it was quite comfortable. They closed the lid, and I was taken away.
On the first leg of the journey, the box was placed on a small red wagon and the little girl used a tricycle to pull me along. After, oh, maybe ten miles, my box was transferred to a railway handcar. The twins had been following on unicycles. They pumped me down the tracks. With each pump, the smaller twin rose into the air. This leg of the journey lasted for several hours. Then I was loaded onto a golden chariot driven by two royal purple horses. When we arrived at our destination I was taken out of the coffin and stuffed into a laundry bag. The twins left, and the little girl dragged me up a flight of stairs. She then opened the bag and left the room.
The walls of the room were covered with reproductions of paintings, all of which I remember seeing on a trip to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The only furniture was a card table surrounded by folding chairs. Three of the chairs were occupied by drag queens, sitting down for a formal afternoon tea. I sat down in the other chair and stuffed myself with finger sandwiches. I had skipped breakfast because I believed it to be the least important meal of the day. I am a true rebel.
The drag queen to my left began by summarizing the Magna Carta in Yiddish. A parrot translated. Just as he finished, the drag queen across from me began crying. He cried for exactly 6 minutes and 66 seconds before pulling out a portable, powder blue Royal typewriter. He then typed a love letter to the late, great Eartha Kitt. He had seen her at the Anywhere But Here club in midtown Manhattan. He said, “She sang I Want to Be Evil to a Sumo wrestler in a loincloth, who had just come from a gig at Madison Square Garden. She sang C’est Si Bon to the soloist in a Catholic grade school choir. The choir had been the half-time entertainment at the sumo wrestling show. She sang Monotonous to a reformed Buddhist monk, who had just been converted to Hellenism. He was in town trying to get funding for a temple to Zues which he wanted to build in Antarctica. But, to the chagrin of all present, she sang Santa Baby to me.” He then cried for another 33 1/3 minutes. The drag queen to my right got up and sat on my lap. He whispered Dakota Warren’s poetry in my ear, pausing occasionally to playfully nip the tip of my nose. I became aroused. He ceased mid-poem when the second drag queen quit crying. He placed an Infinity ring upon my finger and kissed it profusely. Just then, the little girl reappeared hopping on one leg. She grabbed me by my earlobe and dragged me down the stairs saying, “It’s time for the next part of your prize.”
I counted twenty bumps on the way up, but we went down 149 stairs. She threw me into a room and said, “You get a free medical exam.” The two men were already in the room. One had donned a pink uniform with a round, white pinback button bearing the letters RN. The other had a white uniform. The letters MD were printed on his button. They forcibly undressed me, placed my clothes in a metal box, and locked it with a padlock. The RN rapped a cuff around my neck and took my blood pressure. The MD placed a stethoscope on my chest. Then he placed it on my back and told me to cough. Next, he put it on top of my head and told me to burp. Then on my left butt cheek and told me to sing Votre Toast (Toreador Song) from Carmen in French. I told him I couldn’t. He tsked and wrote something down on a clipboard.
Then I was told to lie down on a hospital bed. They secured me with straps so I could not move. The RN placed a needle in a place I would rather not mention and began drawing blood. At around two liters I asked why they needed so much blood. “We want to be thorough,” I was told. They left me there, naked, strapped in bed while they waited for the test results. Late in the day, an orderly came around with bread and water, but without a wallet, I had no cash or credit cards to pay for them. I could have signed for it, but I hadn’t been assigned a room. The next day, the RN came in. I told her I was starving. “You mean you haven’t been fed? I’m so sorry.” She returned, gave me a dose cup of orange juice and a cookie, and left the room, saying “There you go.”
After three days the MD came in. He said, “You’re fine,” and left the room before I could say anything. Three hours later the RN came back. “Can I please go now!?” I screamed. “Of course, just as soon as we’ve finished your paperwork.” Two days later, they returned my clothes, and I was allowed to get dressed. The little girl returned. I looked her in the eyes and said, “Leave me alone!” She began to cry inconsolably. “I’m just trying to do my job,” she sobbed.
Finally, to console her, I agreed to play hopscotch with her. When I lost (she cheated), I had to agree to go with the two men. We took pogo sticks down the street and stopped at a café. Six fat, grey-haired old ladies, dressed in black with black shawls, sat down and talked about me behind my back. When they agreed that I needed to be taken down a peg, our table, and chairs began to go down into the earth at about the rate of a medium-speed elevator. The two men took it in stride. The small twin tapped his fingers, waiting for our descent to end. About an hour later it did. To my right was a stone archway. Back from the entrance was a stone wall. There were passages to the left and right. Across from me, the two men stood up and in unison said, “Welcome to The Maze of Death!” They stood up, pushed their chairs back, turned around, opened a door, went through it, and locked it behind them. I looked at the door for a moment, shook my head in disgust, and took the right passage.
I took another right turn about ten yards further down. I came face to face with a white canvas surrounded by a huge golden frame. So, I’m thinking, Maze of Death, an Abdominal Snowman in a Snowstorm, but no, there was a plaque, “The Microbe.” I left, making another right turn then another further up. (I wish I could say, “I always try to do the right thing.”) As I walked along, the walls turned from stone to plastic to cloth. Then, I was moving from one room to another. The walls were blank. I got the feeling I was in a museum before the paintings had been hung.
I didn’t search all the rooms, but I only found one painting. It was a full-color oil impressionistic interpretation of Mickey Mouse as he appeared in his first cartoon, “Steamboat Willie.” The front doors were locked, but I found a side door. I went through and found I was in my apartment. Funny, I don’t remember there being a door there. I looked around to make sure everything was still there. My jar of lucky nickels was gone. Quelle guerre. I paused, thought about it for a minute, and decided it was time to break into the 99 packages of jello I had stashed away. I emptied them into the bathtub and ran some hot water. Then I got in, laid back, and laughed until it gelled.
Michael J Crowley, 74, Washington DC area - USA ✯
“Michael has been attending open mic poetry for over 30 years. Among other things, he briefly ran a poetry Special Interest Group (SIG) for The Naturist Society, and as such, ran poetry readings, in Massachusetts, West Virginia, and Florida, where everyone was nude.”