An evening with Dr. Doom


Who could ever forget that night, I thought? Me and John were
hanging out with Joey the Ant in his car. I had given him that nickname
in second grade, because he never ate anything, and he only weighed about forty pounds. Now, he's like four of me and three of John! No one cared much for him in school, and I seemed to be the only person who accepted him for who he was. An overactive, obnoxious louse of a kid, whose soul purpose in life it seemed, was to rattle everyone's nerves.

Back then life was cherry pie, and the whole estate of my being pivoted on a single glance in one direction. That was my motivation. My reason for being, so to speak. Oh, I would indeed find paradise, but at such a cost.

As it stands, John and I had just finished taking two hits each of green 'double dome' mescaline, and it was creeping up on us like a spider. Joey talked about going into the service. "That's the only place to go," he said, "where you can shoot people and get away with it." Yeah I said, if you're unfortunate enough to go to war. You should be thinking more about peace and less about war. "Fuck peace," he said outright. "I wanna massacre entire villages! There's nothing like waking up in the morning
and blowing somebody's brains out." What are you talking about said John, you'd be running with your tail between your legs through the Mekong Delta faster than the little gooks chasin' after you with the bamboo stick and the feather! As a playful argument turned into a heated debate,
I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the present situation.
I felt like I was sitting on a powder keg and the temperature was slowly beginning to rise. Joey wore his traditional army fatigues and matching hat, yet for some strange reason that I could not define, the outfit did not match his disposition. Neither did his mood do anything but chastise.
This man, I thought would be most suitable in traditional prison garbs,
for he best befits the profile of an unglorified serial killer! I then started
to think, Joey is not in the army, yet Joey looks as though he is going off to war. Would it be any different if he donned a postal service uniform and was not working for them? I was now earnestly trying to dispel the fact that I was in a car with someone who was wearing a Halloween costume. Only it was not Halloween and people were beginning to stare.

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I then contemplated my thoughts and realized they were changing.
I knew it was the nature of the drug beginning to take effect and so, I immediately disregarded it. We drove around the island for awhile before heading back into New Dorp where we stopped off at Pizza Klown in the square. The animated head above the restaurant was truly something to be admired! It almost appeared to be looking out over the eatery. Scanning the town for someone, though I knew not who. I felt like I was at an empty carnival. One that was deserted for it lacked the main essentials needed to keep it operable. There was no circus music playing wildly to the sound of screaming kids. No funhouse that emanated with the smell of wood and grease. No baseballs hitting the canvas with fury or cotton candy.
Ooooh, we needed that cotton candy!

Joey pulled in, before maneuvering his car in reverse, so we were facing the restaurant. Lovely, I thought, now everyone can see us sitting here as they come and go about their way. What a horrible thought. I just wanted to crawl under the seat and hide. Some jackass decided to have a staring contest with me, and it soon felt as though I were under a microscope.
A speck of dirt or a piece of lint perhaps. All things considered, I was definitely not feeling myself, but rather someone entirely different. With
the onset of the drug arriving like a fancy spaceship, and my heart slowly returning to normal from an incident at the A&P, the evening would soon become interesting.

Joey was babbling about the alien movie, and I paid him no heed, for in my mind, I was barely within earshot of this maniac. Even though he was sitting right next to me, he was in a totally different sector than I was, and
I wanted to keep it that way! Joey was reveling in the gore and the monster coming out of the chest, and why oh why couldn't he be in that ship to kill it? He asked us if we wanted beer, and we said yes. He asked us if we wanted to buy it, and we said no. He then asked us a series of questions that were so ridiculously foolish, they had no relevancy being asked at all. Questions that were immediately dispelled as nonsense. When he finally realized that we were in no way going to play his game, he looked at me
as a father would have, upon finding out that his very son, had just been caught taking a shit on the teacher's desk. He then turned and grumbled
to himself, and it seemed as if he was complaining to the steering wheel, which had nothing to say to him either. If you're going to eat then go in and eat, I said. I suppose he was indecisive about what he was going to do, because he just sat there mumbling.

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When he made the statement that he just wanted to sit there and watch
the restaurant for the remainder of the evening, John made a loud gasping sound in the back seat, and I screamed aloud! I lost my cool with him and that outburst made me feel as though I'd done something horrendous. A monster had taken hold of me and was now manipulating my emotions. To be perfectly honest, I didn't think it would go away, now that it had me. I wasn't sure it wanted to, but gradually it subsided to peace. Joey then said he was thirsty and wanted beer. He also said, since we didn't have money, we wouldn't be getting any. In his own words, as he put it "Ya's got no money, and I don't wanna be dry." Joey, I felt like saying, you couldn't dry out if you sat in the middle of the Serengeti desert for two years, you fat fucking lummox! First he wanted a souvlaki, but a black fellow walked in first, so now he can't eat there because the food is contaminated. "Dat fuckin' nigger just went in, and now I can't eat there!" Next, he wanted to beat up a kid coming out of McDonald's and take what was in his food bag. The kid was maybe eleven. Then he says he'll treat us to a nice Italian restaurant cause he's got 'so much money' but when we get to the restaurant, he says "I just remembered, I forgot to make a car payment so now I can't feed ya's." Congratulations, I thought to myself, you've been fucked by this jerkoff again. And there we sat like three retards. Staring at the entrance of a crowded pizzeria with our thumbs up our asses and that fucking song comes on. . .

Don't know why I came here tonight.
I got the feeling that something ain't right.
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.

Who could have known how popular this song would become
many years later thanks to a man by the name of Quentin Tarantino?

To sum it up briefly, I had nothing against this song whatsoever.
It was just a classic case of bad timing for that song somehow seemed
to pinpoint my whole emotional state in its lyrics. Then fatso went and broadcast it for everyone in the parking lot. I thought I was going to implode! As cars pulled in, their headlights began shining on me like high powered spotlights, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was being done intentionally. I was so totally disgusted with the whole chain of events leading up to this evening, that I just wanted to go home and drown myself. Then John says to me in a state of heightened awareness, "this is
a great night ain't it?" To me, it sounded like the most sarcastic comment ever made by man since the world first started spinning.

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Before I even left the house, Joey was outside beeping his horn, like the driver of a bank heist, alerting us that the police were closing in! Then, to make matters worse my father takes it out on me. "If that imbecile beeps that car horn, one more time, as Christ is my witness, I'm gonna throw
a jar of acid in his face, because I told him last night, and I told him last week, get out of the car, walk up to the door and ring the doorbell,
or better yet, be ready, which you never are!" Okay, I'll tell him again. Beeeeeeep! "Ya know, I'm really beginning to think there's something wrong with that guy!" Yeah, he's got problems. "He's gonna have an
even bigger problem, when I pull him out of the car and lay a nice beatin' on 'em. Then maybe he'll learn. . . To not be an asshole, I mean, enough already!" Beeeeeeeeeeeep - Beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeep! "And there it is!!!" Even before I saw him, I was aggravated. Then, he really did it!

Two hours ago, before the ingestion of the mescaline, and before fatso had any real idea he was going to traumatize us to such a degree, it would send us both into a state of shock! We were just cruising around on the north side of town, enjoying the evening, until we spotted an abandoned A&P. I'm surprised it's still here, said John. "Wanna take a look?" Aah, why not said Joey, speaking out of the corner of his mouth as always,
and so he pulls in. You wanna see something really cool? Yeah, we say.

First he guns the car in drive while holding the brake, just to make it look like we were on fire. Then he says watch this as he kicks it into gear. My neck snapped back and it felt like I was in a plane taxying down a runway. I would never have stayed in the car had I known he was aiming for something! My life flashed before my eyes as we hit the side of a shopping cart doing about ninety five miles per hour. I can still see it, flying through the air in slow motion after my heart had stopped. Me and john were screaming like bitches as the wagon teed off the old Buicks fender from the handicapped parking space. It flipped, banged and then boomed into the building before breaking apart and I wanted nothing more at that point, than to see him go to jail for life. Aside from what could have been an immediate decapitation, I was still having the heart attack an hour later. John screamed frantically at the despicable misanthrope, as if he was about to go a full fifteen rounds in the ring with a prize fighter while I sat there paralyzed! Joey said he really didn't like the car his father had bought for him and just wanted to see how tough it was. Then, the motherless son of a jackel has the audacity to say, "I think it passed." You fat fuck!!! So now, here we are, sitting in the crowded parking lot with a crushed fender. After complaining to us about conspiracies, the Watergate scandal and the Kennedy assassination, he doesn't want to drink the beer in the pizzeria, but rather, bring it back to the car and drink it in front of us.

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Now bear in mind, the only beer served here was on tap. So if you
were able to read, as you entered the establishment you would see
a white cardboard sign which read in black letters in bold print. "No
beer is to leave this restaurant for any reason at any time. There are
no exceptions" *It was really coming on strong at this point* I told Joey this was not possible and that he should just sit down inside the place and have his beer. John then began pleading with him as if his whole being depended on it, for he was slowly succumbing to the malaise of the drug. Listen to me, said John firmly, "You can't go into an establishment, and leave with a pitcher of beer!" John began to laugh heavily, when Joey turned toward him to give a look implying he had supreme intelligence
over both of us. I, however, interpreted the glance as being an underhanded low blow. As if he had fished into his sleeve to unveil
the winning hand. No, that shallow smirk did not impress me in the least!

As he struggled to remove his oversized body from the car, I stretched
out my arms and yawned loudly. Slamming the door, like it was a battering ram, he was using to get into the house of a drug lord, he exits. "Such hostility!" Joey then bellowed, immersed in disdain, "I always get what
I want, ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaaa!" He exits the vehicle and proceeds to march toward the restaurant, as though he were a German soldier at a secret meeting reporting to der Führer. I asked John, how he was feeling
in the back there, and he replied in a tone of total disillusionment, "I don't know." He then began to laugh and told me that it felt like we just got
hit by an Impala! As I continued to dwell on that statement, I became confused. Did he mean the car or the animal? Maybe you should ask
him, said the voice in my head. No, I thought, then it would no longer
be a mystery!

John was now laughing hysterically and trying in vain to compose himself, while his face continued to turn a brighter shade of red. It wasn't long after this, that he began to frolic in the car, while playing with his own emotions in a dangerous kind of way. He would look out the window and point to things that weren't there, while talking to people who did not exist. He then topped it off by answering his own questions in a heteromorphic voice that did not in any way sound human. Little does he know what dragon
he play with; what joy besets the fortuitous man before woe. He suddenly grew impatient as the minutes flew by and his excitement was being replaced by the need to annoy me. "What's takin' this guy? I wanna
get outta here! Ya think he left-is-he comin' back? You wanna go?"

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After all this agitation and bouncing around in the car, he abruptly stopped and held his head in his two hands, for fear that it may somehow fall off. Little could he have known in his oblique state of mind, what, would be returning to the car! As the grim figure leisurely descended upon our vehicle, John screamed out and began kicking the back of my seat uncontrollably, for he noticed in his hand what he was carrying. This
thing, we'll call it appeared to resemble an oversized Chinese food container! John now had tears coming out of his eyes as he said, here comes Mussolini of the Ming Dynasty marching out of China!!! I laughed as though I had never laughed before, and it was sweet. As John was struggling to catch his breath, I saw Joey quickly putting on a mask.
Oh no, I said to myself behind a smirk, while reveling in the thought
of seeing John react to what was about to happen!!!

Joey quickly popped his head into the car where John was sitting. His enormous body, hunched onto the car like a big fat boogie man. Of course John has no idea that Joey is there, for he had still not taken a breath of air yet and his eyes have become streams of water! As John makes the mistake of turning to his right, he sees the monster with its eyes jutting out six inches and almost if not immediately, throws himself to the other side of the car!!! The expression of horror, etched on his face was to such a degree, it appeared as though his very soul had just been extracted from his body! The way his face looked with his mouth opened further than any human has ever possibly opened it, not even I could describe! I laughed harder than I did before, and it felt wonderful! Poor John!!! Finally, he was able to take a nice lung full of air! As he did this, Joey spoke in a placid tone that was rather odd, because he never did anything calmly. Still, no matter how quiet or reserved he spoke, there was always an underlying tone of madness in those well structured verses of his. How subtle, were those words he used in just the right order. How perfect were they indeed. "I always - get - what I want."

He then yelled out in an apocalyptic voice that frightened young girls in
the parking lot. "Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Haaaaaaaa!" His voice echoed strangely around in my head, and only then did I realize that this sinister being on a totem of swaying folly was clearly an imposter! His comics and his comic book collection had taken over his universe, and he was no longer the Joey we knew, but an agent of Doctor Doom. Today, Joey has a beautiful wife, he abuses regularly with the tip of his cigarette because she smiles too much... What happened?

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