The Usual Shop

Posted by Steve on September 8th, 2008 in Uncategorized

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock…
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock…
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock-

“Whaaaaat?” Asks a groggy young man in pajama pants and a Jethro Tull, Aqualung tee shirt as he opens the door.

The man, interrupted before his final blow - fist still in the air, hands said Tull fan an envelope and then turns and walks away without a word.

The Tull fan opens the envelope and extracts the letter.  In ridiculously neat handwriting is the following:

I’m sorry to inform you, the recipient of this letter, that you have died.  Your soul is due in Hell at precisely 2:30 pm Mountain Daylight Time today.  Take the number 12 bus from the corner of Main and Fifth South at 2:05 pm.  Do not delay.

Yours Truely [sic],

Satan

“Goddammit,”  says the Tull fan out loud, “And on a Monday to boot.”  He gets dressed and now sports blue jeans and a Thick as a Brick shirt.  The one with the newspaper article on it.  He calls the transit authority hotline to make sure the bus is running on time.  Almost Mussolinish, the lady replies.

The Tull fan grabs his jacket and leaves the house.  He’s decided to walk the two miles to the bus stop to get some air and clear his head before his diabolical bus ride.  Before he gets too far down his street, he encounters a strange sight.  One he’s not sure he would have noticed before, when he was alive.

On this very suburban sidewalk sits a small table with a checkered table cloth.  On top of the table is a chess board with a game already underway.  Kneeling at one side of the table is an old man in a black robe with a very long beard.  The Tull fan is reminded of Led Zeppelin’s fourth (Zoso) album.  Across the table from the old man, sitting in a child’s rocking chair, is a Wilson tennis racket.

Clearly the tennis racket is winning.

“Why don’t you take his queen with your knight?” asks the Tull fan.

“Why don’t YOU take HIS queen with YOUR knight?” repeats the Zeppelin character but with the obviously-implied change of inflection.

“I see what you mean,” He didn’t.  But he continued anyway, “But, what if my knight is swordless?  What if my knight is impotent?  What if my knight is not an L away from his queen and it ends up taking me several moves to get there?”  This last question seemed - although the Tull fan could not say why - to be the most relevant question.

“Then you cheat.  You simply change the rules.  Move your knight diagonally, nobody’s going to stop you.”

The Tull fan decides to cease taking chess advice from someone losing to sporting equipment.  He proceeds on down the street.  At the end of his street, he turns right onto Main street.  He’s traveled approximately two-thirds of the total distance from his home to the bus stop.

As the Tull fan is walking down Main Street, nearing his bus stop, he comes across another strange scene.  He sees a man having sexual intercourse with a toaster.  The toaster is unplugged and seems rather disinterested.

From purely altruistic motives, the Tull fan says, “Maybe you’d get a better response if you plugged it in?”

The man stops thrusting and considers.  After a few seconds he finds the end of the cord and inserts it into a nearby electrical outlet.  Immediately the toaster comes alive.  Sparks start flying, the sound of sizzling and shocking is almost overwhelming and the man with part of his body inside the toaster collapses and dies.  The power goes out all over the block.

Postmortem, the appliance-philiac stands up, his toaster still hanging limply in front of him.  He sighs and glares at the Tull fan.  Then, abruptly, he turns and heads down the street towards the bus stop at the corner of Main and Fifth South.  Clearly, he’s done this before.

At last the Tull fan reaches the bus stop and sees the aforementioned characters also waiting for the bus.

“Did you die when you lost that game of chess?”  Our hero asks the Zeppelin character.

“Yes, of course.  One always loses his or her life when he or she loses a game of skill to an inanimate object.”

The Tull fan decides that this just doesn’t make any sense.  He turns around and heads home as he hears the squeaky breaks of the bus pulling up to the stop.  He doesn’t turn around to see, but he hears the door open and the toaster clang against something as the two men get on.  The bus door closes and the bus leaves.

The Tull fan goes home, puts on A Passion Play, and falls back asleep.  He’s determined never to take for granted again the verity of being informed of his death by post.