Myron Quackenbush, 43 years old, balding and overweight, over stimulated and entirely too fond of smooth jazz, found himself in a bit of pickle recently when he tried in vain to explain to his wife of 22 years the mysterious images she discovered on his camera.
“Mymy,” she said, as she often affectionately did, but this time it was in a contemptuous sneer of false affection. “What do we have here, my honey bee?” she drawled like saccharine.
Myron sat at his folding TV-table come work desk, upon which sat his cheap laptop computer–there smack in the middle of the living room. He was dressed in a powder-blue fleece bathrobe and flimsy, worn-out brown slippers. He edited his day’s shoots. When his wife screeched in his ear several decibels louder than was probably legal without a permit, he at last looked over at his hag wife. She reminded him at that moment of the cartoon nag come to life, only uglier–and meaner. She had the whole nine yards: rollers in her hair, a house dress, pink fuzzy slippers…”Whattsamattah, now?” he whined.
“Thissss! She hissed like a Burmese Death Viper. “Thissssssss!” She hissed so loud and so hard, her waving fat-flanged arm–it all made her look like a fantastical pachyderm-she-beast from the mind of Dr Seuss. The video display panel on the camera she abused showed a fantastically younger Myron: thinner with a full head of hair, and, strangely and rather unfortunately, wearing the very outfit he donned just yesterday. In an impossible twist, the scene showcased him lying on a very large bed with three attractive women in lingerie.
“Whaaaa?” Mr. Quackenbush protested. “That’s not–” he tried to offer, but was cut off.
“I knew it! You–philandering loser!” his darling bride sneered.
Mr. Quackenbush had no explanation. What he saw with his own eyes not only defied rational explanation, it taunted him like the vaguest whisper-thin dream, the one you suddenly remember in a brain flash of something they may or may not have really experienced before…once.
He smiled, delighting at the idea of having somehow, quite possibly, experienced some form of wormhole time travel mixed with a cocktail of REM sleep and astral projection tonic on an XTC escape pod thing. All of this recorded somehow on his trusty Shin’Tiago XL22 D-SLR camera.
His mind reeled. Desperately reaching back through his waking memories, his subconscious, he searched for some small piece of recollection.
“Explain thisssss! Explain! Explaaaaiinn!” she demanded.
But Quackenbush no longer heard her, despite the level of her voice. He drifted off–floating away–his mind had sailed, now most calmly home to what was obviously his true and sovereign existence, on a large, comfortable bed with three very attractive women.
A sharp thwack brought him back to earth with a jolt of pain. The Burmese Death Viper had struck him squarely on the nose. Her voice broke the sound barrier…
“Explain thisssss! Explain! Explaaaaiinn, you son-of-ahh-beeetchh!” she pour all she was worth into that declaration.
“No,” Quackenbush calmly replied. “I won’t,” he added, adjusting his robe and rose from his chair to walk out the front door and on into the cool, autumn evening.
Galusha V. Peppes, Esq. was double-parked out front, awaiting him.
“Groovy, Quacks. Very cool, man. C’mon, get in. We’re gonna pay a visit to Mr. Pennypacker. He’s quite the shutterbug too, dontchya know….”
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If you want to continue the shenanigans, you ought to be here.
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