In Persuasion Nation (13 page)

On
FinalTwist,
five college friends take
a sixth to an expensive Italian restaurant, supposedly to
introduce him to a hot girl, actually to break the news that his
mother is dead. This is the InitialTwist. During
dessert they are told that, in fact, all of their mothers are dead.
This is the SecondTwist. The ThirdTwist
is, not only are all their mothers dead, the show paid to have
them killed, and the fourth and FinalTwist is,
the kids have just eaten their own grilled mothers.

"What a riot," says Doris.

"Doris, come on," says Brad.
"These are real people, people with thoughts and hopes and
dreams."

"Well, nobody got hurt," says Chief Wayne.

"Except those kids who unknowingly ate their own mothers,"
says Brad.

"Well, they signed the releases," says Chief Wayne.

"Releases or not, Wayne, come on,"
says Brad. "They killed people. They tricked people into eating
their own mothers."

"I don't know that I'm all that interested in the moral ins and
outs of it," says Chief Wayne. "I
guess I'm just saying I enjoyed it."

"It's interesting, that's the thing," says Doris.
"The expectations, the reversals, the timeless human
emotions."

"Who wouldn't want to watch that?" says Chief Wayne.

"Interesting is good, Brad," says Doris.
"Surprising is good."

Just then Buddy hops sheepishly off the card table, bearing his own
genitals in his mouth.

"Buddy, you're alive!" says Doris.

"But I see you're still castrated?" says Chief Wayne.

"Yes, well," says Buddy, blushing.

"Maybe you could tell us who did it, Buddy," says Doris.

"Oh Doris," says Buddy, and
starts to cry. "I did it myself."

"You castrated yourself?" says Doris.

"I guess you could say it was a cry for help," says Buddy.

"I'll say," says Chief Wayne.

"I just get so tired of everyone constantly making jokes about
the fact that I need a certain kind of 'assistance' in order to
move," Buddy says.

"You mean a hand up your keister?" says
Doris.

"A fist up your poop chute?" says Chief Wayne.

"A paw up your exit ramp?" says Doris.

"You're still doing it!" barks Buddy, and runs out the dog
door.

"Somebody's grumpy," says Doris.

"He'll be a lot less grumpy once we get those genitals of his
sewed back on," says Chief Wayne.

Chief Wayne steps outside.

"Uh-oh, guys!" he says. "Looks
like, in addition to a persnickety dog, you've got yourself
another
little problem. Your darn backyard has morphed
again!"

Then we hear the familiar music that indicates the back yard has
morphed again, and see that the familiar Carrigan back yard is now a
vast field of charred human remains.

"Carrigan, I've about had it with this nonsense!" shouts
their neighbor, Mr. Winston. "Last week my grumpy boss, Mr.
Taylor, came for dinner, and right in the middle of dessert your yard
morphed into ancient Egypt, and a crocodile came over and ate Mr.
Taylor's toupee!"

"

And when my elderly
parents came to visit?" says Mrs. Winston. "Your yard
morphed into some sort of nineteenth-century brothel, and a
prostitute insulted my mother over the fence!"

"Oh come on,
Brad," says Doris. "Let's go find Buddy."

Brad, Doris, and Chief
Wayne set out across the yard.

"Jeez, where is
that crazy dog?" says Chief Wayne.

"Look for the one
thing not smoldering in this vast expanse of carnage," says
Doris, stepping gingerly over several charred corpses in the former
horseshoe pit.

From the abandoned
farmhouse comes an agonized scream.

From behind a charred
tree darts Buddy.

"Let's corner him
by that contaminated well!" says Doris, and she and Chief Wayne
rush off.

"My God,"
mumbles Brad. "Who were these people?"

"We're
Belstonians," says one of the corpses, lying on its back, hands
held out defensively, as if it died fending off a series of blows.
"Our nation is composed of three main socio-ethnic groups: The
religious Arszani of the north, who live in small traditional
agrarian communities in the mountainous northern regions; the more
secular, worldly Arszani of the south, who mix freely with their
Tazdit neighbors; and the Tazdit themselves, who, though superior to
the southern Arszani in numbers, have always lagged behind
economically. Lately this course of affairs has been exacerbated by
several consecutive years of drought."

"Don't forget the
complicated system of tariffs, designed to favor the southern,
secular Arszani, emphasizing, as it does, the industrially driven
sectors of the economy, in which the southern Arszani, along with
certain more ecumenical Tazdit factions, invested heavily during the
post-earthquake years," says a second corpse, whose chest cavity
has been torn open, and who is missing an arm.

"Which spelled
doom for us mountainous devout northern Arszani once gold was
discovered in a region ostensibly under our control but legally owned
by a cartel of military/industrial leaders from the south," says
a third corpse, a woman, legs spread wide, mouth open in an
expression of horror.

"That was our
group," says the corpse missing an arm. "Northern Arszani."

"Wow," says
Brad. "That's so complicated."

"Not that
complicated," says the corpse who died fending off blows.

"It might seem
complicated, if the person trying to understand it had lived in total
plenty all his life, ignoring the rest of the world," says the
corpse missing an arm, as a butterfly flits from his chest wound to
his head wound.

"I agree,"
says the corpse who died fending off blows. "We know all about
his
country. I know who Casey Stengel was. I can quote at
length from Thomas Paine."

"Who?" says
Brad.

"Now, Bliorg, be
fair," says the woman corpse. "Their nation occupies a
larger place on the world stage. English is the lingua franca of most
of the world."

"The what?"
says Brad.

"I'm just saying
that occupying oneself with the genitals of a puppet, given the
brutal, nightmarish things going on around the world this very
instant, I find that unacceptably trivial," says the one-armed
corpse.

"I miss life,"
says the woman corpse.

"Remember our
farm?" says the corpse who died fending off blows. "Remember
how delicious vorella tasted eaten directly from the traditional
heated cubern?"

"How the air
smelled in the Kizhdan Pass after a rain?" says the woman
corpse.

"How hard we
worked in the garden that final spring?" says the corpse who
died fending off blows. "How suddenly it all came upon us? How
unprepared we were when suddenly the militia, including some of our
southern Arszani brethren, swept into our village—"

"With what
violence they rended you, dear, while you were still alive," the
woman corpse says, looking tenderly at the corpse who died fending
off blows.

"How the men
encircled you, taunting you as they . . ." The corpse who died
fending off blows trails off, remembering the day the secular
Arszani/southern Tazdit militia dragged his wife into the muddy yard
of their shack, then held him down, forcing him to watch what
followed for what might have been ten minutes and might have been
three hours, after which they encircled him, bayonets mounted, and he
attempted, briefly, to fend off their blows, before they eviscerated
him while he was still alive, as his wife, also still alive, lifted
and dropped her left arm repeatedly, for what might have been ten
thousand years.

Just then Doris rushes
by, bearing the re-genitaled and softly whimpering Buddy in her arms.

"Brad, honestly,"
she hisses. "Thanks for the help."

"Not!" says
Chief Wayne.

We
see from the way the corpses, devastated by memory, collapse back
into the dust of the familiar Carrigan back yard, and from the sad
tragic Eastern European swell of the music, that it's time for a
commercial.

Back at the Carrigans', Doris and Chief Wayne come back inside
to find hundreds of ears of corn growing out of the furniture,
floors, and ceiling.

"What
the—?" says Doris, setting Buddy down.

"I
believe this is what's called a 'bumper crop,'" says Chief
Wayne.

"I'll
say," says Doris. "It's going to 'bump' us right out of
this room if it keeps up!"

"My balls hurt so much," says Buddy.

Brad comes in, eyes moist with tears, and sits on the couch. "What
gives, Mr. Gloomy?" says Doris.

"Still
moping about the corpses in the yard?" says Chief Wayne.

"Give it time, hon," says Doris. "It'll morph into
something more cheerful."

"It always does," says Chief Wayne.

"Things
always comes out right in the end, don't they?" says Doris. "As
long as you believe in your dreams?"

"And accentuate the positive," says Chief Wayne.

Just
then from the TV comes the brash martial music that indicates an
UrgentUpdateNewsMinute.

In
California, a fad has broken out of regular people having facial
surgery to look like their favorite celebrities. Sometimes they
end up looking like hideous monsters. Celebrities have taken to
paying surprise compassionate visits to the hideous monsters. One
hideous monster, whose face looks like the face of a lion roasted in
a fire, says the surprise celebrity visit made the whole ordeal
worthwhile. In the Philippines, a garbage dump has exploded due to
buildup of natural gas emitted by rotting garbage, killing
dozens of children digging in the dump for food.

"Wait a minute," says Brad. "That gives me an idea."

"Uh-oh," says Chief Wayne. "I don't like the sound of
that."

"I hope it's better than your idea about installing heat
sensors in old people's underwear," says Doris.

"I also hope it's better than your idea about putting a radio
transmitter on Buddy while you guys were away on vacation, which then
short-circuited, causing Buddy to be continually electrocuted for two
straight weeks," says Chief Wayne.

"And the Winstons thought Buddy had been taking tap lessons?"
says Doris. "Oh gosh."

"So what's your idea, pal?" says Chief Wayne.

"Never mind," says Brad, blushing.

"Come
on, Mr. Mopey!" says Doris. "Share it! I'm sure it's
terrific."

"Well," says Brad. "My idea is, why do we need all
this corn? Isn't it sort of wasteful? My idea is, let's pick this
corn and send it to that village in the Philippines where the kids
have to eat garbage to live. Our house gets back to normal, the kids
don't have to eat trash, everybody's happy."

There
is an awkward silence.

"Brad, have you finally gone totally insane?" Doris says.

"I have to say, the heat-sensor-in-the-underwear-of-theelderly
idea is starting to look pretty viable," says Chief Wayne.

"I just want to do something," says Brad, blushing again.
"There's so much suffering. We have so much, and others have so
little. So I was just thinking that, you know, if we took a tiny
portion of what we have, which we don't really need, and sent it to
the people who need it ..."

Doris has tears in her eyes.

"Doris, what is it?" says Chief Wayne. "Tell Brad what
you're feeling."

"I don't see why you always have to be such a downer, Brad,"
she says. "First you start weeping in our yard, then you start
disparaging our indoor corn?"

"Brad, to tell the truth, there are plenty of houses with lots
more indoor corn than this," says Chief Wayne. "This,
relative to a lot of houses I've seen, is some very modest
indoor vegetable growth."

"You probably see it as you make your rounds," says Doris.
"Some people probably even have tomatoes and zucchini growing
out of their furniture."

"Oh sure," says Chief Wayne. "Even watermelons."

"So this very modest amount of corn that we have, in your
opinion, is nothing to feel guilty about?" says Doris.

"His
'rounds'?" says Brad. "What do you mean his 'rounds'?"

"His
raids, his rounds, whatever," says Doris. "Please don't
change the subject, Brad. I think we've been very fortunate, but
not so fortunate that we can afford to start giving away everything
we've worked so hard for. Why can't our stuff, such as corn, be
our
stuff? Why do you have to make everything so complicated? We aren't
exactly made out of money, Brad!"

"Look Brad," says Chief Wayne. "Maybe you should start
thinking about Doris instead of some Philippians you don't even
know."

"You really get me, Wayne," says Doris.

"You're easy to get, Doris," says Chief Wayne.

Just then the doorbell rings.

On
the lawn stands a delegation of deathly-pale Filipino children
dressed in bloodstained white smocks.

"We've
come for the corn?" says the tallest child, who has a large
growth above one eyebrow.

"Brad," Doris says in a pitiful voice. "I can't
believe you called these people."

"I didn't," Brad says.

And he didn't. Although he can't say he's unhappy they're here.

"Look, what's the big deal?" says Brad. "We pick the
corn, give it to these kids, problem solved. If you guys would help
me out, we could have all this corn picked in ten minutes."

"Brad, I've suddenly got a terrible headache," says Doris.
"Would you go get me a Tylenol?"

"Brad,
jeez, nice," says Chief Wayne. "Don't just stand there with
your mouth hanging open when your wife is in pain."

Brad goes into the kitchen, gets Doris a Tylenol.

Buddy follows him in, hops up on a kitchen chair.

"Uh,
Brad?" Buddy whispers. "I want you to know something.
I've always liked you. I've consistently advocated for you. To me,
you seem extremely workable, and I've said so many—"