Skewed Perspective.com Presents...
Phent
by Navin Vembar, Tamara Carleton, Jason Nichols, Andrew Kozma, Ken Watson and Jason Myers
(click to view the story with contributions labeled)
So far nothing unpleasant had happened to Herrick Phent, and he was beginning to get a little bit worried.
Normally he wouldn't have been bothered by such a thing, but judging from more recent events in his increasingly more complicated life, he knew that he was past due. Phent checked his watch. According to the volume of the pounding at the door, it was time to get up, but the hour was hardly agreeable. The disagreeableness of the hour was a point made all too obvious by the lack of light streaming through his window. Phent wondered briefly what day it was, though it didn't much matter. Of late, each morning brought a new visitor to his door, and not one of them seemed to care if it was his day off or not. The pounding came again, this time louder, as if to remind him to finally get up out of bed. He grudgingly complied, throwing his sheet off his somewhat frail body, standing, scratching himself, and slowly making his way to the door of his apartment.
"Hello," said Phent, cautiously opening the door. He awkwardly adjusted his pajamas with its eggplant print so that the purple buttons lay flat in front, and he didn't notice his dark-skinned visitor raising a hand.
"Mr. Baum, I think you know why I'm here," came a baritone delivery that nearly knocked Phent over.
For a moment Phent could do nothing but gape blankly at the man until, remembering he was indeed Phent and not Baum, he finally managed a stuttered "I...I'm, um...I'm Phent."
The dark-skinned visitor smiled delicate knives. “Don’t worry, Mister Phent. If you’ve acquired a new identity, we can certainly change our records to reflect that. I can even take down your information myself, if you’d like. I think you’ll agree, though, that we have more--” the dark-skinned visitor’s pale eyes flickered toward the object clenched in his upraised hand, “immediate concerns to attend to.”
Phent could feel his whole body shaking beneath his PJ's. Despite his recent string of somewhat inauspicious dealings, he had never before had a gun pointed at him. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, he thought to himself as his mind scrambled desperately for an explanation. He hadn't paid his last cable bill for the Pay-Per-View indulgence; he hadn't properly thanked the little Korean grandmother at the laundromat last week; he shouldn't have given his address over the phone to verify his bank account... But then Phent noticed that the man's gun glowed neon purple under his hallway light. And it had an oddly squirming bag attached to the back of its barrel. "I don't understand..." Phent attempted, raising his empty hands as he slowly began to take a single step back.
“Why is it always like this?” the stranger interrupted, his eyes widening with exasperation. And with neither his protest nor his retreat completed, Herrick Phent was gone.
A gentle sigh sounded as the air slid into the vacuum left by Phent's sudden absence. The dark-skinned visitor, for the first time in his short and dedicated existence, stopped smiling and blinked instead. He turned the gun upon himself and said, "This is going to require more than the usual explanation."
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"Mr. Baum? Mr. Baum, please go on." Herrick Phent managed an uncertain "Hmmm?" as he blinked the world into focus.
"You were telling me about your daydream," the earnest voice prompted, "the one about the dark-skinned visitor."
Phent flashed a quick, embarrassed smile before briefly staring down at his shoes. "I'm sorry, Dr. Romanov," he replied, "but that's really all that I remember."
The doctor merely nodded her head absently and scrawled some more in her notebook. Herrick Phent nervously fidgeted his fingers, eagerly awaiting her diagnosis of what, as of late, was wrong with him.
The doctor raised her head thoughtfully, strawberry-blonde hair tousling over her cheekbones as she tapped the pen against her chin. "Mr. Baum, you mentioned the lack of light in this dream. It seems worth noting that your description of the previous 17 daydreams were all set at 6:03 p.m., and this squirming bag is even a new detail."
"Well, er, maybe my visitor wanted to get rid of some kittens?..." Phent's voice trailed off at the end at his feeble joke, and he berated himself for his miserable one-liner at another session with a Level 4 psychiatrist.
Romanov stared intently at the strange little man as she considered this. "Mmm. Yes," she said speaking more to herself than to Baum, he having slipped back into the trancelike state he seemed to walk through life in. He would be talkative again in another fifteen minutes or so, she knew, and so she waited patiently. Waiting patiently had long become something the Doctor was very, very good at. Wait. Wait patiently. Waiting patiently as Baum stared now just above her head at the back wall and his face was that of a fish frozen in a pond staring up at the air.
"Dr. Romanov, he's here." Dr. Romanov turned around, and there, staring past her, was Mr. Blank, the new file clerk.
"Mr. Blank," she sighed, "I'm with a patient." He didn't even glance at her.
"Hello, Mr. Phent," he smiled, "I hope you've been resting up. When you're feeling ready, please let me know, and we'll resume our interrupted conversation." The dark-skinned man grinned slyly at Herrick Phent and slowly began to walk toward him.
Dr. Romanov stood up swiftly and boldly walked between them. "Mr. Blank, I don't know what you're doing, or who you think my patient is," she said sternly to him, digging a well manicured finger into his chest, "but I strongly suggest that you leave now!" The dark-skinned man, not once taking his eyes off of Herrick Phent, grabbed Dr. Romanov by her upper arms and effortlessly tossed her onto her desk. She crashed hard onto its surface, her face hitting the bronze lamp, her body spreading papers onto the floor, her legs knocking over the coffee cup full of pens and pencils.
Herrick Phent sighed and looked down at his shoes before closing his eyes and listening intently to the clumping sound of the dark-skinned man's footsteps slowly approaching him. Soon brown wingtips stopped under Phent's gaze. He craned his neck to fix two pale hazel eyes on Mr. Blank. "I guess this requires more than the usual explanation?" Phent said quietly.
Angry mutters were heard from behind the desk as a disgruntled Level 4 psychiatrist got to her knees. "I think," she spluttered, "that HE can wait while I finish this session with Mr. Baum."
From behind her came a voice like dry ice. "This session is finished, Doctor, I must insist. Mr. Blank, you are dismissed." No protests were raised to the impeccably manicured gray figure in the doorway whose gaze now calmly met Phent's. "Come with me, Herrick, please... something's gone terribly wrong."
Something surely had gone wrong, Phent could tell that even though he wasn't sure about anything else. He wished he could have claimed to comprehend even a small smattering of the events that were circling him like a malevolent wagon train. A sad smile from the man in gray stopped Phent from running blindly. Where could he go, in any event?
"Herrick, it's for your own good."
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The gray man set his can of Mellow Yellow down on his marble desk, folded his hands, and said, "This is going to require more than the usual explanation."
Phent nodded numbly.
"The reason why things have been so... confusing for you lately is that at least five different interests have been authoring your life. You, of course, have had a hand in authoring your life, but, with the help of Dr. Romanov, I have as well; there are at least three others, one I know of, the other two I do not.”
"You're speaking as if I were a character in a story," Phent said, almost laughing.
"Oh, no, Herrick," the gray man chuckled, "I'm afraid it's nothing so simple as that."
"It never is," said Phent, his accompanying high-pitched, hysterical giggling interrupting the gray man's explanation.
An odd sound drew all of three of the room's occupants attention to the desk – the can of Mellow Yellow was vibrating, producing an empty metallic noise against the marble.
"Why are there 'w''s—?" began Phent.
The can stopped moving, but suddenly started emitting a high-pitched, desperate mewling. "Mr. Phent, please be more careful when speaking of kittens," said the dark-skinned man, without inflection, "especially with Dr. Romanov." He reached into his pocket.
As his hand emerged, Herrick saw a tiny creature whip its tail frenetically around the man’s fingers. It turned solemn orange eyes to Herrick and then fixed its almond gaze on the vibrating soda can. The can began jittering a loud path across the desk.
Mr. Blank looked pleased. “Welcome to the sonic squeal of a--"
"Mr. Blank, you’ve skipped protocol.” The gray man moved a trashcan by the desk and caught the can neatly as it spun off the edge. "You will return to your duties immediately. I believe you have other matters pressing?"
With a grunt of acknowledgement Blank slid towards the door, grinning back over his shoulder at Phent. "Another time, Mr. Baum, I'm sure," he mumbled to the confused little man. "When you're feeling more yourself." Blank stopped at the door, turned, executed a curt little bow, and quickly let himself out; the troubling, bottomless smile never left his face. As he stepped backwards, his foot caught on the sill of the door and he tripped. Phent watched Mr. Blank fall backwards, smile still on his face, until he was fully out of the door, and then the door slammed shut.
Phent turned back to the gray man. The gray man had retrieved the can of soda from the wastebasket and jammed his finger underneath the tab.
“Now, Mr. Phent, we come to the very important matter of how you help us here at—” The name was hard to hear, as though partially erased. "You are one of our best Slates. Or at least you were, until certain other parties took an interest in you-" The tinny pop as the gray man opened the can was immediately followed by a rush that sounded like the intake of air. The gray man cursed, slammed the hissing can down, and touched a keypad on his desk. As the hissing grew louder, he yelled, "Collectors, get down here immediately. We're going to lose him again."
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Phent sat in a swan in the Tunnel of Love, his right hand clutching a can of Mellow Yellow, his left arm around the shoulders of a highly attractive circus freak.
The circus freak turned to Phent with eyes twinkling and patted his oversized cap, which jiggled a row of blue curls. "Pretty funny, huh?"
Phent blinked. Then he held the soda can away from him as if it might sprout wings next.
The freak snorted merrily and reached for the can. "How can I please the crowd if my jokes don't even get a decent reaction from friendly strangers?"
Phent sputtered out, "I guess you have a point." He didn’t really see what was funny, but he had learned long ago that the wise never disagree with circus freaks. All of the attractions in the Tunnel of Love were conventional, though he inspected them with great care. A giant heart pulsed to the right of their swan, a deep thudding he could feel jarring his own heart. To the left of them, coming up, was a wax model of a woman with her left arm around the shoulders of a not-so-attractive circus freak.
Phent felt suddenly as though he were being watched.
He stared intensely at the figures, searching for any sign of movement, until the circus freak squeezed his knee. Her curving pointed nails bit ever so tenderly into the skin beneath his clothes.
“Why so quiet, pet?”
Her yellow-green eyes shimmered as she searched his face. He stared back at her for a moment, mesmerized, and almost reached out to touch her hairless, scaled head. Then she laughed, slick fangs glinting in the darkness.
“We’re going to be great together, hon, I can see it now.” She flung both hands out in a grand banner gesture. “Lilith the Amazing Lizard Girl… and… Mephisto, Clown Prince of Prestidigitation!”
Her outstretched right arm caught on machinery hidden in the tunnel's shadows. She grunted in bored surprise when it tore off with a Velcro-noise.
"It'll grow back," she said, calmly, in response to Herrick's shocked stare. "I'm, y'know, a Lizard Girl?"
Herrick jumped out of the swan, screaming girlishly, ignoring the attendant over the loudspeaker admonishing him to stay in the boat. The wax figure tripped him as he ran by it and his tumble morphed into a Olympic-class gymnastic routine, despite the rather cramped field of play the Tunnel of Love afforded him. After sticking the landing off the head of another couple's swan which he momentarily appropriated as a vaulting horse, Herrick heard, over sourceless but appreciative applause, a disembodied, dispassionate voice, observing, "Note the level of absurdity that this Slate presents --- it's as if his defense against our completely, unabashedly evil and intrusive co-opting of his abilities (and, thus by extension, his rights and freedoms as an individual), is to construct Scenarios that are useless to us, as if *that* is actually going to prevent us from getting what we want from our confused Mr. Baum-slash-Mr. Phent."
"Why, Grandma, what baroque sentence structure you have," said a dry, equally disembodied voice in response.
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Grandma paused in his narration, his lips contracting like a fat red rubber band. The skin of his protuberant skull, which normally gleamed like a polished Golden Delicious apple in the florescent glare of the Observation Room lights, dimmed momentarily with an intricate map of furrows. The smirk of his underling hung in the air, invisible, pointedly unsmirked, but still, infuriatingly, present.
“Yes, yes, if you say so,” Grandma replied with careful neutrality. His underling had become increasingly insubordinate, but Grandma was certain that even she knew enough not to be flippant in front of The Investors. The Investors, for their part, remained, as always, impassive and opaque.
“Wipe him and run him through again. Let’s see where he leads us.”
He said it with more confidence than he felt.
End.
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