The Warlock Book: The Warlock’S Daughters and Granddaughter

By Xlibris US

In The Warlock Book, a man late in life passes on his arcane secrets to his daughters and their friends, then he sends them out on an eternal mission to clean up mankind. His oldest daughter is eventually allowed to meet Lucifer and sojourns in hell. Her surviving daughter, following in her mothers footsteps, picks up the trail of her lost aunt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499051391

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Copyright © 2014 by Theodore Lyons.

ISBN:          eBook                    978-1-4990-5139-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/30/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

~Part 1~ Demise Of The Battleaxes

~Part 2~ Twisted May~December

~Part 3~ Candy And Sandy

~Part 4~ Sojourn In Hell

~Epilogue~ Venus, Then Heaven

~Part 1~ R. Slob

~Part 2~ Sednah

~Epilogue~ Lucifer

THE WARLOCK’S

DAUGHTERS

Fais-moi répandre mes mauvais rêves,

soleil, boa d’Adam et d’Eve.

Jean Cocteau

Make me scatter my bad dreams,

sun, boa of Adam and Eve.

Quand je lis les cruautés d’un tyran féroce,

je partirais volontiers pour aller poignarder

ce misérable, dussé-je cent fois y périr.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When I read about the cruelties of a fierce tyrant,

I would gladly leave to go stab this wretch,

even if I have to die there a hundred times.

Il n’y a au monde que deux manières de s’élever,

ou par sa proper industrie, ou par l’imbécillité des autres.

Jean De La Bruyère

There are in the world only two ways to rise up,

either by one’s own skill, or by the stupidity of others.

Je vous peindrais l’ingratitude, l’imposture et la rapine,

me poursuivant depuis quarante ans jusqu’au pied des Alpes,

jusqu’au bord de mon tombeau.

Voltaire

I would depict to you the ingratitude, the deception and the plunder,

pursuing me for forty years as far as the foot of the Alps,

as far as the edge of my tomb.

~PART 1~

Demise of the Battleaxes

1

My dad, my sister Sandy, and my dad’s friend Buck are all dead, so I’ve been on my own for awhile now. My life turned out pretty much the way my dad predicted, except for Sandy dying. Well, she didn’t exactly die…she changed dimensions. I know how hard that is to imagine. She wanted to go with the ally, and he took her at her word. I know how to find her, so I can still see her, but I don’t know if I want to; it’s so harrowing, plus I don’t want to be tempted to stay with her and the ally. I’ve spent my life writing and publishing books, snapping photos, and being a sorceress—upending buffoons, rogues, frauds, cowards, and murderers, and writing about them, all thinly disguised so they know I’m writing about them, but they can’t prove it of course and probably wouldn’t want to admit to it. I stayed in the Southwest for awhile to be closer to my mom and my daughter in Nevada, but I decided to come back to Illinois because that’s where I was born and where everything important happened to me. I spent my life just like my dad spent his, and I remember everything he taught us. To give you an idea about some of this stuff, I’ll start with the present and work my way back….

I recently saw an advertisement by a hypnotist at a local learning center offering a past-life class and a hypnosis session, and I decided to pay the fee and planned to attend. I managed to get the night off from work, and I found a way up there to the class, though it was rather far from where I lived and was scheduled late at night. There were nine of us in the class. After the hypnotist, a board-certified psychologist, discussed hypnosis and past-life theory, we each took a turn being hypnotized before a softly burning candle in a private room. When it was my turn, he asked me if I wanted to know anything in particular, and I said, No, but since you have a lot of experience and expertise in this field, I’d like you to sift my subconscious for whatever you think is most important for me to know right now.

All right, he agreed.

I only remember concentrating on the candle flame for a minute, and the next thing I knew, he was snapping his fingers and I came to. Then he said: You were a powerful sorcerer in a previous life, and that’s important for you to know because you always bring troublemakers to ruin whenever they mess with you. He chuckled lightly and routinely gave me his card with the address of his private office. The first one’s on the house, he offered.

Thanks, I said. See you later.

That night, I had what seemed like a past-life dream: a bunch of disfigured or grotesque people were chasing me in order to trap me or catch me, and they always used flimsy excuses and policies to justify their attempts to ruin me; running like hell, I led them to the brink of a steep ditch obscured by brush and high grass; I had been over there many times, so I knew just where to cut through the brush, and just when to jump over the ditch, like a mote, safely to the other side; they unwittingly chased me, but they all flew to the bottom of the steep ditch like Napoleon’s armies at Waterloo; and although my pursuers survived the perilous fall, they hurt themselves, tore their clothes and limbs on the stones and rocks at the bottom, and were never able to climb out, condemned to misery and filth—a living death—until they died.

I woke up when the grating caw of my neighbor’s hoarse voice next door pierced its way up to my bathroom window. Her horrible, shrill shouting and demonic growling every morning then usually persisted on and off throughout the day. She yelled relentlessly at her little dog: HURRY UP! HURRY UP! HURRY UP! She yelled so much at it that I was surprised that the poor little thing could pee at all and probably didn’t half the time; even dogs need a little peace to do their business. COME ON, TINKER-BELL, COME ON, COME ON, COME ON! I felt sorry for the little dog. I wondered how horrible it must be to live with a battleaxe glowering over you 24/7. I’m sure the little dog caught hell about everything all day: making a mess with its food and water, snoozing on the wrong sofa, barking at the postman, you name it.

There was no way that anything from the bath towel that I shook out of my bathroom window could’ve flown into her house next door; but I heard her distinctly carping rather loudly about it one morning to the men cutting her grass: LOOK AT THAT! STOP THAT! HEY, YOU, ALL THAT CRAP IS FLYING INTO MY HOUSE, DAMN YOU! YOU STOP THAT! Her voice was like the chill of death, ugly and otherworldly, not the sort of griping you’ve ever heard before, nor would be likely ever to forget. She was the most unladylike woman I ever encountered. She was in her yard next door behind the apartment building in which I lived. I had heard her so often from my bathroom window, a flight up, while she was outside waiting on her little dog, that it never occurred to me that she would notice if I shook a towel or rag or rug out of my window; the sort of thing you’re apt to do unconsciously as a tenant because you just can’t take the time to go all the way downstairs and outside to shake something out.

Well, I ignored her, of course, and I pulled in my towel and shut my bathroom window and took a shower. In the first place, it was unlikely that she could’ve seen any debris from my bath towel; any minuscule particles, I mean, flying microscopically through the air and through her window screens, if her windows had screens. Since she was outside, how could she know whether any hair or dust from my bath towel flew into her house? All she knew was that someone, but she didn’t know who, whether male or female, Mexican or American, was shaking a bath towel out of my bathroom window. She didn’t even know if it was a bathroom window or some other window, like a kitchen window or bedroom window. She was a typical troublemaking buffoon, and her carping was completely bogus, which is usually the case with a buffoon.

Secondly, why would anyone not use window screens? Thirdly, why would anyone leave a window open on a cold day? There again, everything she said about me shaking my bath towel out of my window was bogus. If she really believed that debris was making its way into certain windows, why would she leave those windows open? There again, she was an impostor—a quarrelsome shrew of a homeowner. It was just my bad luck that I had to put up with her at all, so I had to watch my step with her, but I didn’t give a damn what she yelled or what offense she pretended to incur. She was really starting to work me up though, and I wondered how long I could live next door to her or if she would drive me out of the building eventually. I hadn’t lived there too long yet, less than two years, and it hadn’t been an easy move either, so I was in no hurry to move again.

For another thing, I deliberately shook my bath towel, even my throw rugs, out of my bathroom window because I didn’t believe that she was sitting there right across from my window, waiting to yell at me. In fact, when she wasn’t outside snapping at her little dog, she never even noticed whether I shook anything out my bathroom window because sometimes I’d shake a towel or rag out of my window every week or so for months on end, and she wouldn’t say a thing about it. That’s how I knew she was a liar and full of shit. Plus, sometimes through different windows in my apartment, I could see other people watching television in different rooms throughout her house, so I guessed that maybe they were tenants or family members who obviously didn’t care about the alleged debris from my bath towels or rugs that I shook out of my window; or maybe they did notice one of my stray hairballs floating around their windows from time to time, but if so, they never said anything to me about it. That battleaxe homeowner was the only one who complained about me; that was another reason that I couldn’t take her carping seriously. When there’s a legitimate problem with a neighbor or tenant, more than one person is usually affected and usually complains. The next time she yelled up at me when I was shaking my bath towel out the window, she threatened me obstreperously: I’M GOING TO CALL JORGE! WHERE’S HIS PHONE NUMBER? DON’T LET ME FORGET TO CALL JORGE, TINKER-BELL, as if her dog, or any dog, could remind her to call my landlord. She yelled very loudly so the workmen would hear her, but the strange thing was that my landlords were cutting our grass just then around the apartment building. I could hear them, loud and clear, and I could smell the odor of freshly cut grass wafting up to my windows. The smell of freshly cut grass was so strong, you could smell it even with the windows closed, and I lived on the second floor. Obviously, the smell of our freshly cut grass would’ve been evident to the battleaxe and her workmen next door; and it almost goes without saying that the dust, pollen, and fumes flying in profusion around our building were all entering her window screens, but she didn’t complain about it. There again, she was a hypocrite, and everyone knew it.

2

I was fairly certain that a disgusting coworker of mine, a predatory fake named Bunny Blumgarten, was a closet drinker. She had dyed hair, bloodshot eyes, and a bulbous, gin-blown nose, what cosmetic surgeons call a whiskey nose, like a W.C. Fields nose or a Bozo the clown nose. She had a grim look about her, ugly as death, and her nose always looked red and swollen, I supposed from being smashed into a kitchen table every night as she passed out after getting liquored up. I imagined her getting sauced when she wasn’t at work, and when she was at work, she went around telling everybody: YOU’RE SO KIND! SO PATIENT AND KIND!. I mention her only because I had to stay clear of her physically, so she couldn’t touch me, for she had taken insidiously to trumping up an excuse to get me to come over to her desk so she could caress my arms, and I wasn’t sure what else she might try to caress. Her advances were revolting, but as soon as I let on that I knew precisely what she was doing, she chewed me out by using some bogus pretext or other because she was violent, like most frauds, and was always ingratiating with clients so she could get what she was after. Red-faced, contorted, and shaking with rage, she once erupted loudly in front of everyone, I’M NOT CRITICIZING YOU! as if by shouting it, she could convince herself and everyone within earshot of her lie. She would give me hell about negligible, meaningless oversights—the same ones she was guilty of, for how else would she know enough to accuse me of them? Rogues always do that sort of thing, owing to their mental illness; for example, a dangerous, faithless sleazebag, a psychopath at large, a walking incubus of communicable disease, will suspect anyone else of being exactly like him and will make sure that any of his girlfriends or dates never speaks to another guy. If he catches her, he’ll berate her, he may even beat her. I always wondered how anyone so false could ever get a girlfriend, but he manages to deceive a few women.

Bunny wasn’t the sort of creep to take anything lying down, and like a lot of self-serving people, she erupted as soon as it was clear that she wouldn’t get anywhere with me. I had been suspicious of her for a year because she once complained about forgetting to clock in, and that she had just worked an hour for nothing. She was sitting next to me at the time, a complete stranger, and this was before I knew anything about her. I didn’t think anyone could be so stupid that she could forget to clock in and then proceed to work for an hour, so I smiled. I knew the timekeepers would fix her timesheet without any questions because they could easily check the project logs, but she screamed at me immediately, IT’S NOT FUNNY!—but I hadn’t laughed. That’s when I knew she was someone to avoid because she wouldn’t hesitate to bother me; and people like Bunny expose their true natures when they use the slightest provocation or excuse to jump all over someone. After that, I kept my distance from her whenever possible. About a year later, I guess, she started to warm up to me by saying things like, Well, I haven’t seen you for quite awhile!—if I happened to be within earshot, that is.

Bunny liked to take the council book to her desk to read it because she claimed she had nothing to do. Obviously, she was too stupid to read a newspaper or a paperback or write a letter or a poem, like the rest of us did to pass the time; and even though the council book was a huge, heavy binder, she’d sit at her desk with it for hours, that way, anyone else who needed to look at the council book or return their council book sheets had to go to Bunny. The only way for me to avoid her when she had the council book was to set my binder sheets loose-leaf on the big table where the binders were usually kept, a centralized location; that way, anyone could use the council book without going to someone else for it, but Bunny was a troublemaker and liked to mess up the nice arrangement the managers had put in place for making the binders available to everyone. If she saw me heading over to the big tables to look for our binder, she and other employees would flag me down, HERE’S THE COUNCIL BOOK! OVER HERE! WHERE ARE YOU GOING? IT’S OVER HERE! Of course, I had to pretend to be as stupid as Bunny; I had to pretend I didn’t know that she was sitting on the damned council book so we’d all have to go over to her desk to return our council book sheets when we were clocking off. Sometimes, I pulled a fast one, and this just infuriated her: I’d wait until she was on a long, important call, then I’d slip over to her desk and snap in my binder sheets as loudly as possible, in order to be as disruptive as possible; but she’d rush through the call while I was standing there, so she could get her hands on me. She might even signal me not to leave, as if she had something urgent to discuss with me, but bear in mind, she was nobody’s supervisor and had no authority whatever: if I played along and stood there, she predictably pointed out an almost imperceptible oversight on my part, which any employee might be guilty of, like forgetting to dot an i. You have to understand the sort of hypocrite I’m talking about to really understand where I’m coming from. Frauds always take their own faults and use them to accuse others, and Bunny was a mastermind at this.

I had to keep my distance from her because I dreaded her illegal caresses. I also feared that I might mouth off to her and accidentally get myself fired, and I think that’s what she wanted, so I always set two simple, feasible guidelines whenever I slunk into work: keep my physical distance from her and don’t speak to her or within earshot of her if I could possibly help it. If I saw her sitting anywhere, I immediately sat as far from her as possible, so she couldn’t say anything to me or touch me. If I didn’t see her sitting anywhere, for example, if she wasn’t on the floor, I always sat in an aisle seat next to someone, that way Bunny couldn’t snake into a seat next to me; or I sat at a vacant seat between two employees, but I had to make sure they weren’t about to clock off, which meant that Bunny could make an excuse and run and grab a vacant seat next to me. Hence, I rarely sat next to anyone who was clocking off soon, and I always kept careful track of other employees’ shifts. For example, Bunny once stole an employee’s seat who was on break and asked me if anyone was using it, and I said I didn’t know. This was the truth, although I strongly suspected that someone was still using that desk; because when Bunny tried to log on, she found the computer was locked, which often meant that someone was using it. Bunny shut it off and rebooted, and started chuckling loudly like a malicious clown or dangerous buffoon, SNOOZE YOU LOSE! SNOOZE YOU LOSE! She acted as if the employee had passed out in the break room or on a park bench; or had been hitting the bottle and passed out face first at a table or on the floor or on the ground, like Bunny did every night. Upon returning from break, the employee told Bunny that she had taken her seat; and they exchanged words about it, and the employee was miffed and had to log in elsewhere. I smiled, so Bunny spent the rest of the shift complaining about someone’s handwriting and asking me to decipher it. I finally had to say, Why don’t you ask the employee who wrote it? But everything Bunny did was designed to annoy someone, often myself.

The way she excessively padded her hours was of course overtly fraudulent and nothing short of disgusting. She pretended to stay late making callbacks that could’ve been made during her shift; but instead, she’d sit there doing nothing except taking an occasional call, or jacking her jaws at anyone who would listen to her blather, or scouring the binders for mistakes, in order to make trouble for someone, especially me. When Bunny’s shift was finished, she wouldn’t clock off, but instead would begin making longwinded callbacks to waste as much time as possible, and she wouldn’t clock off for another hour or two. She once leaned into me, with her bulbous whiskey nose in my face, this was before she started pawing me, to ask if I ever stayed late; she knew that I usually didn’t, but she often asked questions to which she already knew the answers. In fact, I usually clocked off early to avoid the rush at the elevators and get the hell away from creeps and buffoons like her. I honestly answered, Sometimes.

Don’t you have to stay late to make callbacks? Bunny immediately asked.

No, I never stay late for that. I want to get out of here on time, otherwise I don’t get home until rather late, and I still have to fix dinner and sometimes do other things, and then of course, the trains don’t run as often late at night. I only stay late if I get caught on a call just before I’m supposed to clock off. Much of what she said and did was bogus, but that’s usually the case with closet drunks: they start by making excuses for their drinking and gradually make excuses for anything and everything, until they reach the point at which their lives are no more than one giant, elaborate imposture; as if they’re always acting a part in a play, saying the same well-rehearsed lines over and over.

One evening I was browsing through the available shifts for the next day, and she leaned into me and said, Why not take that one? Go for it, she said. I’m working tomorrow, too!

In that case, I won’t take it. Tomorrow’s my day off anyway.

Why are you sitting at your desk during break?

I have a migraine.

Do you want some aspirin?

I’ve already taken some.

Well, don’t you ever eat? You’re so skinny, said Bunny, undressing me with her eyes.

I’ll eat when I get home, I said. She was really stupid to think I’d sit in the break room so she could corner me while she was stuffing her face and fantasizing about a tall cocktail after work. That night, I realized I had to get clear of her once and for all.

Are you an orphan? she asked. Don’t you have anywhere to go for Christmas? Is that why you’re working tonight? Don’t you have any kids?

Only a conniving weirdo would ask a stranger questions like that. It was Christmas Eve. I didn’t bother to reply, thinking only, Are you trying to run me off the job? Is that why you’re trying to find out about my personal life? Or do you take me for a lesbian—one stupid enough to go to bed with you? Holy Christ.

I’ll never forget the time Bunny feigned complete imbecility in order to find a new excuse to talk to me, even though talking wasn’t allowed on the floor, but she didn’t care about the rules and broke them all the time. She made up work-related excuses to babble and gibber at me and other employees. What does this mean? she asked me one afternoon, leaning into me and pointing a long, sharp fingernail at my notation on a council book sheet: NC < 50. It was as if she were totally stoned and didn’t have but half a brain; as if she had Alzheimer’s and didn’t know her name and address; or as if she hadn’t already worked there for a few years and didn’t have a clue, like a vagabond fresh off the street, but then again, that’s just what she was.

That means ‘No council less than fifty members in the state,’ I replied. She knew perfectly well what it meant. I remember thinking, Haven’t you ever had a math class, you buffoon? Didn’t you attend any of the trainings here? She had a lot of nerve bothering me. So just to fool with her some more, I started writing out everything longhand, wondering if she would next pretend to be illiterate. Some weeks later, Bunny vanished, and I breathed easily for a spell, but I knew it was just another of her tricks; that she hadn’t really resigned because who else would ever hire a buffoon like Bunny?—with her bloodshot eyes and Bozo nose, her rotten attitude, and the phony lilt in her voice belying rottenness. You’d have to be obtuse not to see right through her, transparent as cellophane. I could tell that other employees were starting to see through her act, too.

3

Jiminy was another troublemaker to avoid at my office; and it was more imperative that I avoid her because she was a hypocrite masquerading as a law-abiding manager. If I didn’t watch my step around her, I could get written up or fired. Getting written up wasn’t the end of the world, but it might affect my raises. One bitter cold afternoon in January, my computer wouldn’t let me log on, so I deliberately told Jiminy, who smarted off instead of helping me: Are you even scheduled to work today?—as if that was why I couldn’t log on. What a buffoon, especially when you consider that these are the sort of managers working as contractors.

Of course I’m scheduled to work today, I innocently answered. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how she could accuse me of trying to log on if I wasn’t scheduled; or why she thought I’d commute two hours round-trip to work in bitter cold weather, with a foot of snow and slush on the ground, if I wasn’t scheduled. That was when I realized that she was a creep. Another day, after I had been on the job for an hour, a supervisor told me to log off and report to Jiminy on another floor. When I got there, Jiminy made another supervisor show me how to log on at the test station computer because it was a complicated procedure, unlike our regular log on procedure; Jiminy didn’t even know how to do it herself and probably had never even used that workstation because she cut corners and could hardly breathe when she was standing. That was when I realized that she was a meddling, unscrupulous conniver; she could’ve asked any employee to work at the test station, even an employee on her own floor. And that wasn’t the only time; Jiminy made me do it over and over, always when I was working on another floor. The disruption was aggravating, particularly because it was hard to log on and off the test station properly just to use the restroom, but I muddled through. Sometimes it was so aggravating that I didn’t bother using the restroom for a whole shift, four or five hours, while I was working at the test station. I knew she couldn’t keep it up for long because other employees would notice; and then there was always the fear that I might complain about it, so I knew Jiminy would have to cook up a new plot to mess with me, and of course she did because that’s basically how she spent her workday.

Her breath was so foul, I had to stand a few feet from her and glance away in order to ask her a question. That tipped me off about her as well: people who are foul on the inside often have trench mouth, too, because they’re usually too selfish and self-absorbed to take care of themselves or even brush and floss their teeth; so naturally they don’t care if their breath is revolting and repellant, the worse the better because they have no respect for others anyway.

She didn’t like it that I clocked in early, sometimes 9 or 10 minutes before my shift started, but a lot of employees clocked in early, some even clocked in 15 minutes early; but when I had been hired, supervisors told us we could clock in up to 10 minutes early or 15 minutes late. Jiminy complained and complained about it because she was a whiner, and that’s what whiners like to do most of all. The company execs were so sick of her complaining that they reprogrammed the computers to prevent anyone from clocking in more than a few minutes early; but losing even a few minutes after rush hour in a big city costs you 20 minutes while you wait for the next train because you just missed the previous one, since you couldn’t clock in 10 minutes early anymore.

For some weeks, I sat off in a back row of desks by myself out of the line of fire, but then Jiminy suddenly began sitting at the front desk—it took me a long time to understand why. She then began shouting at me to sit in the center row of workstations, which was also completely baffling; so I would log off, and this particular program had quite a few logoffs, seven or eight altogether, then I would move to the center row, if a seat was available, and then log back on quite a few times to restart my project. This nonsense went on for many weeks; it even got to the point that she would send another employee to tell me to move to the center aisle of workstations, even though other employees working on the same program were allowed to sit wherever they wanted. One day, after I had logged into my program at a workstation in the center aisle, because I had automatically begun sitting in the center aisle to avoid getting screamed at, Jiminy was helping someone next to me, so I said, Aren’t you happy I’m sitting in the center row today, Jiminy?

Snarling like a rabid animal with plaque-covered teeth, she lit into me as if I had just been caught vandalizing her car. Her revolting breath wafted at me, and I had to recoil to evade the noxious fumes. After this went on for some months, I finally understood that some days, she was assigned to supervise my project; but she was too lazy to walk around the floor, so she wanted everyone to sit right under her nose, so she could see anyone raising a hand who needed help. That way, Jiminy wouldn’t even have to stand up, much less step over to a workstation; she could just sit and shout back at anyone with a question. She spent whole days doing nothing but sitting on her ass, then when the telephone occasionally rang, she might answer it, if it was within reach, that is; and she might reply with a clever witticism, for example, Grand Central Station, can I help you? Everyone would laugh, even me. That way, it sounded like she was pleasant, which was the exact opposite of the truth, and was being worked to death in a busy office, which was the biggest lie of all. I’m sure that if a lazy trench mouth like Jiminy had to do any real work, she’d have a heart attack almost immediately. Some days, she was so bored, she left half an hour early.

Then she made me move one day when I was sitting in the center aisle. When I asked her why, she said, This row’s reserved until tonight. The next day, since there were no vacant seats, and I didn’t know whether I could sit in the center aisle, I asked a supervisor to find me a seat; I overheard Jiminy tell her to seat me in the center row, where I had been sitting the day before, when Jiminy had asked me to move. It was hopeless. There’s no way to win against people like Jiminy; they always have a new trick up their sleeves and make up the rules as they go, so it’s impossible to know for sure from one minute to the next what you’re supposed to do.

The following week, she screamed at me from the other side of the office, as if I had just been caught ripping up her new car’s interior with a pocket knife. Believe me, I wanted to. I calmly walked over to her desk, and she screamed at me for forgetting to respond to a voicemail, claiming that I had written down the wrong telephone number. I apologized, then she threatened to send the director over to discuss it with me, and that’s exactly what happened next. He asked me if I had been responding to voicemails, even though I was told by another supervisor not to call anyone back unless they were in our database; so until then, none of us knew what to do about it. Another manager then came to talk to me about it and said I must’ve called the wrong number. That didn’t seem likely because sometimes the voicemails were so difficult to hear or understand that I frequently played them back more than once in an effort to write down the telephone numbers and messages correctly. People leaving voicemails often speak too quickly because they assume that you already know their names and telephone numbers among the millions in a database; they may even assume that you have their names and telephone numbers on a list by the telephone. I asked the manager what was really happening, if for example I was supposed to remove that particular telephone number from our database because people get angry if you forget to delete their numbers. He replied, No, it was a test call. So Jiminy or someone had set us up. It hadn’t even been a real call. A bogus respondent had been instructed to leave a telephone number on a voicemail to see if any of us would respond. Some employees never checked the voicemail, so some days, there might be quite a few, even 10 or 15, unchecked throughout the day. I knew Jiminy wouldn’t take that tone of voice with other employees because they would realize what I knew, that she was an impostor. Nonetheless, some managers organized a special training for voicemails and other callbacks, and I later spent entire shifts dealing with that; sometimes there were a lot of callbacks because other employees never made any, and no one ever said a word to them about it, but I knew if I missed one, I’d get chewed out about it from someone like Jiminy.

I overheard an employee say, I’m so thankful to God that I got this job, considering that fifteen million able-bodied employees have lost their jobs in the last two years.

Jiminy then remarked predictably, I’m not thankful to God for my job because I got this job on my own. Like most people, she was a sort of crooked humanist subscribing to the policy, Say and do whatever you want, break the law if you want, as long as no one can prove anything. I wondered how Jiminy ever got a job, what with her rotten breath and her rotten attitude; or how she ever got through an interview or ever got an interview in the first place. It was obvious from her attitude that she was a hypocrite and didn’t believe in God because evil people usually don’t or only pretend to because they’re cowards, fearing what others will think or say otherwise. I always wondered how anyone could think it’s okay to say and do anything whatever and that there won’t be any consequences? They cower behind the law, or behind bogus self-made policies, and then mouth off with some lame bullshit like, Oh, that’s not what I was doing, that’s not what happened. The people I was indicted for murdering are still alive, or The people I was indicted for running off the job are still employed here. They deliberately make trouble, hoping to run employees like me off the job; hoping we’ll quit because we won’t put up with them, but I didn’t quit. Instead, I turned the tables on them, and before long, they were avoiding me; and it was impossible for other employees not to notice, and that always makes matters worse.

I only sat in the side aisles if Jiminy wasn’t around; otherwise, she screamed like a lunatic because that’s what she was, and it was getting harder for her to pretend otherwise. That’s what happens to the mentally ill at large in society: to avoid getting caught, or fired, or locked away, they have to pretend not to be mentally ill, like alcoholics pretending not to drink or pretending to be sober. The mentally ill know they’re mentally ill but often blow off seeking treatment, even though they have insurance, because they don’t want to admit their debilitating neuroses to a therapist; because for one thing, a therapist will likely have five times as much education and will nod complacently, thinking to herself all along, Oh, my God. What a wacko. It was getting hard for me to run the risk of sitting next to a vacant desk used by an employee on break, in case it was Bunny’s seat and she returned; then I might be stuck sitting next to her for four or five hours, a nightmare from hell, unless I could find another seat, which wasn’t always possible. Of course, she would think I had chosen to sit next to her, horror of horrors. She might even make excuses to sit by me, falsely claiming, as she once did, Oh, my headset over there doesn’t work, or Oh, there’s no place else to sit, even if there were four or five empty seats behind us; because she was an expert at feigning imbecility and myopia. It was all bullshit, and this went on for months at a time. Sometimes, I could check a computer monitor surreptitiously to find out who was using it, but that wasn’t always possible or advisable.

Predictably, Bunny returned one day after two weeks off and immediately sat next to me and tried to strike up a conversation. She was so stupid that she thought that if she pretended not to know that I loathed her, that we could start all over and be pals after two years of her garbage, comments, phoniness, and scheming. I glared and mumbled, then when she stepped away, I logged out and moved to another desk. Nothing makes more trouble for a troublemaker than to get up and move, as if you might catch lice otherwise; and if that employee follows you around the office, you are justified in reporting the problem to your supervisor in an awful way, for example, An employee is bothering me. Do I need an attorney? I returned some calls and snapped some council sheets back into the council book on the table where it’s usually kept; then I sat back down and finished my shift in relative peace, since it was a holiday and not many people called that evening. Later, when I took my break at the end of my shift, I didn’t see the council book on Bunny’s desk, so I went to the big table to snap in my council sheets. Lo and behold, that stupid fuck Bunny had taken it again and probably had hidden it under her desk, or in a floppy bag, or behind her computer, or under a bunch of council sheets; and that’s why I hadn’t seen it on her desk, but that almost goes without saying. She was obsessed with holding onto that big, fat council book. An employee nearby flagged me down and said, That lady is waving you over to her desk.

It was Bunny. So what? I said. Fuck it. There was nothing Bunny could do since she wasn’t a supervisor. She was nobody: just another asshole making trouble for me every chance she got because that’s what they do; the sort of scumbag who had to be taken out. There was no way I was going over to Bunny’s desk to snap my council sheets into the council book so she could paw me some more and then pretend she wasn’t. I sailed my council sheets onto the big table and went to the restroom. I’m surprised she never attempted to bother me over there, too, but I’m sure she would’ve, given half a chance. When I returned, I sat down and waited out my break. The employee who had flagged me down at the big table then came over and asked me if I wanted her to put my council sheets in the council book. Since she was nice and trying to be helpful, I said, Sure, thanks. I really didn’t care, but whenever you’re dealing with a scoundrel, a rogue, or a perverse troublemaker like Bunny, likely a lawbreaker with an untreated mental problem, it’s good to involve as many people as possible, so you have lots of eyewitnesses, who can later say, Yeah, she’s definitely a crackpot. Here’s what I saw…. To minimize the risk of bumping into Bunny or any other neurotics at the elevator, I clocked off five minutes early and got the hell out of there.

The next night, she deliberately sat behind me, probably to make it look like there really wasn’t a problem, or that she wasn’t really harassing me; (some nerve the woman had!) but she was afraid of me, and she wasn’t sure what I might do next. For one thing, the seat to my right was vacant, and she had been too afraid to sit next to me; if she had, I would’ve moved, and nothing is more humiliating to a coworker—nothing sends a clearer signal that you don’t want so-and-so in your personal space. After a couple of hours, another employee sat in the vacant seat next to me, fortunately, but still it galled me that I had to sit within earshot of Bunny. That’s the sort of troublemaker she was: knowing I loathed her, she would still sit nearby to force me to move or listen to her phony, obsequious voice for four or five hours. I thought about moving to another desk, but I stayed put and then clocked off early and slipped out.

Three nights later, I sat next to an employee who clocked off after four, so Bunny couldn’t sit next to me, since her shift started at four; but if she had sat next to me, she knew by then that I’d move, so she sat behind me again. Before long, she was asking me the sort of stupid questions she had been asking all along and which she already knew the answers to; as if she couldn’t come up with anything new to say and was digging for any excuse she could drum up in order to be a nuisance, in order to annoy me, which by the way is illegal in the workplace. Yes, harassment is illegal, but she pretended not to know that she was harassing me; she was hoping of course that I’d react or mouth off because she knew, since I had already made it plain to her, that I despised her and wanted nothing to do with her. I wisely said nothing and only nodded. She asked me questions that little kids could answer and would never bother to ask. This is perhaps your brightest red flag for mental illness and perversity: she knows you loathe her, so she pretends not to know and in the meantime continues to approach you nonetheless. Bunny was even more repulsive than many of the people I had to talk to on the telephone. Did she actually think I couldn’t see through her stupidity, even if she feigned it?—which is even more stupid, when you get right down to it. Imagine feigning stupidity. Did she think I was even more of an imbecile than herself? These are critical points to consider when you’re working near someone with serious neuroses.

She had to be careful, though, didn’t she? My supervisor was sitting right there, too, a few feet away, and vigilantly made the rounds because it was his job; and lots of other employees nearby saw and overheard everything. I thought about telling my supervisor what Bunny was doing and that I would refer her to him if she had more complaints about my council sheets. Then again, if I said anything to him, he might say something to her, and then she might be too afraid to continue her intrigue; but if I could get her to keep it up, she would eventually expose herself to everyone around her. Then what would she do? She wasn’t following the protocol that managers had given us, and she was making up the rules as she went along, and then complaining about me to my face for not following her bogus rules. I overheard her grousing about her retirement account losing money; but so was mine, so was everybody’s. I personally didn’t care, however, since I was always on the verge of homelessness anyway, but that explained why Bunny had been forcing herself on me: she was in financial trouble and needed a roommate to share expenses. The thought of living with someone like her was of course revolting, and imagine how stupid she was not to know it.

The strangest thing of all was that I hadn’t seen Jiminy around in a few weeks, but then again, she was strange. I had little doubt about whether she would return to her easy, high-paying job, sitting around, mouthing off to rank-and-file employees; and pretending to be nice to certain other employees, who would then go around telling everyone that Jiminy was nice instead of unlawful. Bunny did the same thing: she was ingratiating with clients and other employees, but she was a complete asshole to me, and that’s how I knew what she really was. Jesus had said the mouth speaks from the heart’s overflow, and their false hearts were filled with hatred and fraud. Jiminy suddenly returned, just as I thought, but she had to because who else would ever hire her?

4

Tiny was another buffoon to sidestep at all costs. Everyone called her Tiny, even though her gut protruded about 18 inches; she was like one of those incredible cases at a fat farm you read about with a gut that stuck out so far, she couldn’t see her feet or bend down to put on a sock or tie a shoe. She was a heart attack waiting to happen, as the saying goes, and I pictured her keeling over the first or second time she shoveled snow. She was the sort of supervisor who didn’t like to supervise, didn’t want anyone asking her questions, and kept up a threatening air of furtive violence in order to repel employees, except for new employees who didn’t know any better; I always felt sorry for them because they had to find out about her the hard way. She walked around slamming vacant chairs; cracking the chair arms back into place as hard and fast as possible; and lowering the seats very loudly in order to smack the chairs back under the vacant desks; all the while appearing to be very pissed off about something, maybe about her gut that was so big now, there was no way in hell she’d ever work it off, and she knew it. Well, let’s face it, what else was there to do in that place if you weren’t a rank-and-file employee? She cracked and whacked those vacant adjustable chairs so hard, she jarred the employees sitting nearby; jarred them out of their mindlessness, out of their unavoidable reveries; jarred them right out of their wits. You could just tell, with her big gut and violent approach to furniture, Tiny was no one ever to tangle with, no one to disagree with, and someone to avoid at every turn.

Tiny conducted one of my training classes, and throughout her rapid-fire lecture, she kept repeating, "Don’t worry about any of this now