fuck this job.com

Simon is startled when Patty rejoins him. She can't help but smile a little at his appearance. He looks like a rumpled hamster.

"There is orange juice and iced coffee in the fridge. If you get hungry there is cereal in the cupboard and the milk is still good I think. There is some soy milk in there too." She waits for Simon to respond but he's unresponsive. She kneels down beside him.

"Are you feeling any better?"

"A little. I want to thank you again for helping me."

"I'm going to go to bed now. If you need anything or have a problem, just knock on the door."

"Okay."

Patty hesitates just as she is about to close the door behind her.

"Good-night, Simon."

"Good-night."

When Simon closes his eyes, the room spins. He's never experienced this before, and he's both amazed and a little frightened by it. The burning sensation has lessened but it still feels like a bad sunburn. His eyes are crusting up. He imagines that he will feel better in the morning. He makes a trip to Patty's bathroom, shuffling his feet to avoid falling, and feels quite proud of himself when he manages to find the sofa again. Checkers seems to feel that the sofa is his but he defers to Simon's superior bulk.

Noises from the street and the headlights of cars indicate that things outside are returning to normal. Simon drifts off to sleep a few times, although he doesn't realize it. Eventually, Patty is awakened by a razzing noise that at first she assumes must be the self-destruction of the refrigerator, but turns out to be Simon's snoring. She puts her head under the pillow. Simon does not usually have bad dreams. His dreams tend to be unremarkable and predictable. His one recurring dream is that he discovers that he has somehow managed to sign up for a class and then forget all about it until the night before the final exam. In a panic, he has to learn everything in a single night.

But this night is different. He sleeps very deeply. He turns and tosses on the sofa but never quite awakens. Then he wakes up with a full bladder and rolls onto his feet and shuffles to the bathroom again. He notices that the light is on in the kitchen. Patty must have left it on. He doesn't see her. Maybe he left it on? No matter. He shuffles back to the sofa and gets the shock of his life.

Somebody--a fat man--is sleeping on the sofa!

Simon's heart is beating at about triple time and he feels the blood rushing out of his head. Who? How? He isn't sure what to do? Yell for Patty? Call the cops? Confront this person?

Then Simon realizes who the fat man is.

It's him. It's Simon.

"God, are you fat!" Simon thinks before he can stop himself. Simon is amazed at how his own body looks when he's not in it-- and he's afraid. He shaking so badly that he can feel his teeth chatter.

Of course, that presents the question--who's teeth? Simon discovers that he has a kind of body, but he can't get his eyes to focus on it. It seems way too tall and way too light. It's not his body--it's someone else's body. Now he's definitely going to faint. His hands feel cold. This vision is beginning to tunnel. He collapses down on top of the fat man on the sofa and passes out.

Suddenly he's walking towards a door. It's the door to Dr. Chokem's office. He feels himself passing through the door--as if it weren't even there. He sees Dr. Chokem look up and the expression on Chokem's face fills Simon with a kind of terrible joy. Chokem is scrambling with something under his desk. He's shouting but Simon can't hear anything. He doesn't seem to have any hearing. He's deaf. But he can see very well. He turns around and sees a Sackanut Security guard come into the room. The guard pulls a small pistol from his hip pocket (Simon is surprised. He didn't know the guards were armed.) The guard seems to fire the weapon at Simon but Simon doesn't hear or feel anything. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion.

Then Simon feels something. Weight. Heaviness. He has something heavy in his hand. Again, his eyes refuse to focus on his own body, but the thing in his hand is clearly visible. It is a sword. It gleams like chrome. On the blade are letters.

E X P R E T I U M

Simon hears a sound now. It's the only thing he can hear. A soft, high pitched tone that seems to emanate from the blade. He watches as the blade swings down on the head of the guard. Simon is horrified at the result. He seems to be unable to control the body he is in. It turns back to face Dr. Chokem. Chokem looks as if he is pleading or begging. He actually falls to his knees and puts his hands together as if in prayer.

Simon suddenly finds himself back on the sofa in Patty's apartment. His heart is pounding. His head is pounding as well. He smells burning hemp. A car horn honks. Simon is relieved that he can hear again.

God! What a nightmare!

He sits up and gazes around the room. The sun is just coming up and he see that Patty's apartment is funky but clean. More or less. He notices that she is already up and making something. He smells coffee. Aw! His head is pounding! This must be a hangover! Simon has never had a hangover before, but he's pretty sure that's what he has. Patty is wearing a clean pair of blue coveralls and she brings him a large mug of coffee. She looks at him thoughtfully.

"Pretty hung over?"

"I think so. I don't usually drink. My head hurts."

Patty looks even more thoughtful for a moment. Finally she works up the nerve to speak.

"Simon--do you smoke?"

Simon can tell by the way she says it that she's not talking about cigarettes. Patty discovers that once she starts talking it's not so easy to stop. Kind of like her first experience riding a motorcycle. She holds out a joint.

"Because if you want a hit... it's a great hangover cure."

Simon eyes the bizarre looking cigarette for a moment. Hangover cure? At this point, he would have drank goat's blood if somebody said it was a hangover cure. Patty hands him the joint and a lighter, but Simon just looks at them in the way that a native from the Amazon jungle looks at a cell phone. Patty took the joint back, lit it, took a small hit and, in general, demonstrated the technique. Simon had never smoked anything in his life, so he expected to cough. But, surprisingly, he didn't feel any choking sensation at all. He wasn't even sure he had inhaled anything until he exhaled and a huge cloud of blue smoke came out. Patty looked serious.

"To get the full effect, you have to hold it in."

Simon was getting an effect already. He felt a lot more confident about his smoking skills, for some odd reason, and the nightmare that woke him up seemed as if it had happened twenty years ago.

Patty got her Smurfs lunch-pail purse and searched around for her keys. She left the joint and the lighter with Simon. She pointed at the phone.

"You're in no condition to go to work. Call in sick. The door will lock behind you." She spins out the door and it locks, just as she said, with a loud clack. Simon looks at himself in the mirror and at first he doesn't see why he shouldn't just go to work. Then he remembers the night before and realizes that he is still wearing the same clothes. He feels his face but there is no burning or redness or any other effect. Amazing. It felt like the skin was going to peel off. Now--nothing. He notices that the whites of his eyes look a little red. He needs a shave.

Better call.

He dials the number and gets Todd on the phone. Oh great. Todd has the ability to lose or confuse any phone conversation. Simon asks for Jennifer and is relieved when Todd puts her on the phone instead of trying to transfer the call.

Jennifer seems weird. Happy. Kind of. And hyper. Too hyper.

"SIMON! Ah...Simon. So, how are you?" (What the hell?) Simon isn't sure what to make of this. Normally, Jennifer immediately begins to ask rude questions, lie or brag. Really, she only has three ways of talking to Simon and this isn't one of them. He decides that he must be "stoned." That would explain the strange things that are happening. He decides to just say what he has to say.

"Jennifer, I'm...I'm not feeling well."

"Then you should stay home. Don't come in. Stay at home today. No problem."

Being stoned is cool. Jennifer has never, ever said anything like THAT before. This marijuana is amazing! Simon enjoys the Nature's Organic Breakfast Cereal and milk more than any food he has ever eaten in his life. Who knew that organic food was so good? He spends a lot of time cleaning up Patty's apartment. He finds that cleaning is a really, really interesting thing to do. Who knew? He leaves Patty's apartment clean and shiny, and feels good about it when the door locks shut behind him. Then he feels a moment of panic because he wonders if he left anything important in there, but he calms down as soon as he finds the pentagram hanging around his neck. It's reassuring, somehow. He can't remember if he has her phone number, so he writes down the address and starts walking up the hill to his own place.

It's just a wonderful morning. He has to detour around a police barricade--but the memory of the pepper spray convinces him to stay far, far away from anyone who looks even remotely like an officer.

He's hungry again. He stops at a bagel shop and gets a peanut-butter bagel and a coffee. He sees a newspaper that someone has abandoned on one of the tables. The headline is unusually large.

"INDUSTRIALIST MURDERED. Terrorists send package to newspaper. By Alan Tenkins, special to the City Times. The mutilated bodies of industrialist Dr. David Chokem and a security guard were found in Dr. Chokem's office on the 49th floor of the YQZ Building early this morning..." Simon can't absorb it. David Chokem? Isn't that the associate vice president? Dr. Chokem? Dead? Simon throws the bagel and coffee away. He trudges up the hill to his apartment building. He thinks about the dream. Dr. Chokem. Dead. The dream. Then he remembers himself standing by the sofa, looking down at his own body.

Simon makes a pledge to himself. He will never get drunk again.

(TO BE CONTINUED)