I wrote this like 3-4 years ago and know it's kinda terrible but still would like some thoughts. Still working on the new 10+ pager when I have computer access.... just wanted to post somthin
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Hal McCracken was a fifty-five year old male citizen of the state of Ohio. Hal’s primary function as a human being was to oversee the operation of three offset-printing presses for a company called Printec, which was actually a division of the Ohio State University. His secondary function was to supervise the student workers at Printec. Hal generally enjoyed both his primary and secondary functions, even though he had always said that they would cause him to go absolutely batshit-insane. This story is about the time that Hal actually did go absolutely batshit-insane.
Up to this time Hal had lived what would be called a pretty average life. He had graduated from North High School in Springfield, Ohio and had then attended college at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. He was an English major and he had planned to become an English high school teacher.
Hal never finished his English degree at Kent State University because of the shootings, and therefore never became an English teacher. In 1970, when Hal was a sophomore, National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of student protesters demonstrating against US involvement in the Viet Nam war. Bullets from the guns of the National Guardsmen directly caused the deaths of four of Hal’s classmates, and Hal did not enroll in classes the next semester or any semester after that.
Hal spent a year looking for work and wound up getting a full-time job in Columbus, Ohio working for the Ohio State University. His primary function during this time was to move horses out of their stables and then clean horseshit off of the ground and off of the sides of the walls. This is how Hal met Elisa Mendoza, who would wind up being his wife.
Elisa was a very well-to-do girl from a rich family. She had ridden horses since before she could remember, and she was a member of the Ohio State Equestrian team. Her primary function was studying veterinary medicine.
Elisa had initially liked Hal because he was so good at cleaning horseshit off the ground and walls everyday without being in a bad mood. Hal had initially liked Elisa back because she was pretty. They wound up dating each other and after a short while Elisa told Hal that she wanted to be married. Hal wasn’t exactly sure whether or not he wanted to be married so soon until he read a report on the Average American’s Sex Life in Time Magazine. The magazine reported that the average male American had sexual intercourse with an average of thirteen partners during his life. At this time Hal was twenty-two years old and had had sexual intercourse with exactly thirteen partners, including Elisa. At this time Elisa was nineteen years old and had had sexual intercourse with two partners, including Hal. The average number of sexual partners for a female was six according to Time Magazine.
The next spring, Elisa Mendoza became Elisa Mendoza-McCracken.
A few years later Elisa earned a degree in veterinary medicine and began practicing for the university. Hal found a new job at Printec and got to quit his horseshit-cleaning job. They both had remained married and kept these jobs for over thirty years, and had even cooperated in the creation of one human being together. Her name was Kendra McCracken, and at the time of this writing she was twenty-one years old and had had sexual intercourse with three partners. Her primary function was studying medicine at Michigan State University.
Hal had always said that the offset-presses and the student workers at Printec would one day cause him to go absolutely batshit-insane, but in reality they were only indirect causes at best. The direct reason that Hal wound up going absolutely batshit-insane was the large amount of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide that he had ingested while attending college at Kent State University. Hal had not ingested any Lysergic Acid Diethylamide for over thirty years when all of this happened, but the rather large amount that he had ingested in the past was causing him to suffer from Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder.
Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder is more commonly referred to as an “acid flashback”.
The day in which everything was set into motion began just like any other day. Hal arrived at Printec at 7:30 am, allotting him one half-hour to enjoy a grape jelly donut and a cup of coffee before starting up the presses. Hal enjoyed a grape jelly donut and a cup of coffee every morning, if he could help it.
Around nine o’clock the student workers began arriving. The first to arrive was Lester Stevens. Lester was twenty years old and had not had sexual intercourse with any partners (though he would never tell!). His primary function was organizing freshly printed business cards by name and packaging them accordingly. He was also responsible for creating an identification tag by taking one card out of each stack and sandwiching it between layers of plastic and sealing it with heat and pressure. Lester the laminator.
Lester also had another habit at work that was neither part of his primary nor secondary functions. Lester would sneak one business card from each pile into his pocket when he thought that no one was watching. Later he would put the digits from the phone number on each card into his own cell phone and show off to everyone how many different people’s phone numbers he had. Of course, of course, he wouldn’t honestly tell anyone exactly where the numbers actually came from.
Lester particularly liked another student worker named Gina, but Gina didn’t like Lester back. Gina had just turned twenty-three years old and had had sexual intercourse with seven partners. Gina’s primary function was to take incoming order information over the phone or computer and deliver the instructions back to Hal. Like I said, Lester liked Gina but Gina didn’t like Lester back. Gina liked a different student worker. She liked me guy writing this story.
I worked at Printec also. I was twenty-two years old and had had sexual intercourse with twelve partners. My primary function was entering order information into a computer and printing off delivery slips. Hal needed me to do this because he wasn’t “a computer guy”, as he would frequently tell us.
Gina liked me but I didn’t like Gina back. It wasn’t because she wasn’t pretty or fun or intelligent or anything, because she definitely was all of those things. I didn’t like Gina back because I was still hung up on a girl named Maria.
I had met Maria during the time that we had taken an English class together in the spring. Maria had liked me and I had liked her back. We would always sit at side-by-side desks during lecture, and everyday after class was released she would say “Let’s get coffee”. We would walk to the nearest decent coffee shop and discuss poetry and literature and things of that nature, because that was what Maria was interested in. She was an English major and she would often share some of her poetry with me during our coffee-drinking excursions. I told her that I wrote short fiction for fun, and she said that she would like to read some of it. I let her read one of my stories and we haven’t spoken since then.
Maria was twenty-two years old and she had had sexual intercourse with three partners, not including myself.
So anyway, that was why I didn’t like Gina back. I knew that Lester liked Gina and that Lester was a virgin and that Gina had a reputation for being a little “easy” so I decided to let that situation play out as it may. Suffice to say it never worked out to Lester’s satisfaction. I know this to be true because I invented these characters and ultimately control their actions.
I am writing this story. Sorry Lester.
The morning rolled by smoothly and when Hal returned from his lunch break he looked around the room and at Lester and me. Lester was packaging business cards and I was punching numbers into the computer.
“Busy, busy, busy,” said Hal. Hal said this a lot.
Hal always like to have a small radio turned on in the pressroom, and Lester and I didn’t really mind it either. When no one was speaking it made the day much less boring for everyone. Today, as usual, Lester was listening to National Public Radio.
Sometimes, even when the radio was playing, Hal would still like to have conversations with us. I didn’t mind this either. I would often tell Hal about whatever interesting thing I had read or heard about recently and I’m pretty certain that Hal enjoyed this. Lester didn’t really care, and whenever Hal or Gina would ask me questions about my short stories he would just say, “Really, who writes for fun?” Today Hal was talking about riding horses.
Get this: Even when Hal’s primary function was cleaning horseshit off the floors and walls, he had never actually ridden a horse. But after Elisa Mendoza became Elisa Mendoza-McCracken, she taught Hal to ride horses so well that he actually rode competitively for a while. At the moment he was telling us a story about his most recent ride a couple of years back. He was just over fifty and was competing against a male rider in his twenties. Before the competition began, the young rider approached Hal and said, ‘It’s really admirable that you’re out here riding today. I admire that courage’.
Hal beat the young rider in the competition.
“Take that, you son-of-a-bitch,” said Hal.
Hal went on telling Lester and me about choosing the correct saddle, which was apparently of the utmost importance. He told us that his own saddle cost him roughly two thousand dollars.
“Anything less is garbage,” he said.
Hal could tell that we were not so much interested in saddles, so he asked me, “So what’s new, Joe?” Lester looked around the room and stuck a business card in his pocket. The name on the card was Michelle Salmon.
Anyway, it just so happened that I had read a particularly interesting article about the peoples of the North Sentinel Island off the coast of India. I had thought that Hal would be interested in this topic, so I was saving it for such an occasion.
Get this: A group of anywhere between forty and five hundred people live on the North Sentinel Island, and have lived there for longer than any geographer or anthropologist can guess. There is such a wide estimate on the population because no one has ever been able to get close enough to the island to study the inhabitants in detail without being attacked with spears. They even killed two fishermen once who came to close to their island and the corpses could never be retrieved.
I told Hal about all of this, and about how these people had somehow been overlooked when white people had conquered most of the rest of the world, including nearby India. They still utilized stone-age technology and everything. Hal seemed particularly interested when I told him that they speak a unique language that no one else in the world could ever know, and use a unique alphabet also. We call them “The Sentinelese”, but only because we have absolutely no idea what they call themselves.
Just then, Gina came walking back to the pressroom with David Gothel, one of the Printec front office workers. Gina was bringing back an order for me to punch into the computer and David was on his way out to the back to smoke a cigarette.
David’s primary function was hiring and firing human beings at Printec. He had hired me earlier that year. He was forty-five years old and had had sexual intercourse with twenty partners.
Busy, busy, busy.
Of those twenty partners, seven had been females. One of those females was named Elisa Mendoza-McCracken. Hal didn’t know about this, and neither did anyone else except David, Elisa, and myself, since I wrote it. After Hal wound up going absolutely batshit-insane, I would tell everyone that the affair between David and Elisa was probably the reason, so that I could feel better about doing such a cruel thing to Hal with the acid-flashbacks and everything. The truth is, David didn’t even like Elisa, even though she liked him back. David actually liked Hal. Hal didn’t know whether or not he liked David back because such a thought had never even crossed his mind.
“How are you doing, sir Lancelot?” David asked Hal as he walked by.
“Busy, busy, busy,” replied Hal.
Get this: David called Hal sir Lancelot because of a story that I had told Hal the previous week. I told Hal about this old book called “The History of Printing” that I had been reading which said that during the Middle Ages, printers were the only craftsmen who were allowed to carry swords. Actually, the only people period except knights. So Hal experienced a small bout of Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder the next morning and tried to carry an antique long-sword back to the pressroom. David saw him and made him take it back home. David didn’t tell anyone about it because he liked Hal and didn’t want him to be in trouble. At the time, David didn’t really suspect that Hal was going absolutely batshit-insane. He thought that Hal was just being funny, or cute, or something.
David smiled and walked outside and Hal let out a quick, nervous laugh. Gina handed me a paper and asked me a few questions about what I was planning to do after work.
“I’m working on a short story,” I said.
“Really, who writes for fun?”
Gina walked back to the front of the building, and everyone got back to work and listening to NPR. I started punching numbers into the computer from the paper that Gina had given me when Lester leaned towards me.
“Dude, she is so fucking hot. I would totally bang her,” he said.
I finished punching in the information for the order and hit the button to print off the delivery slip, but the computer had a malfunction.
A malfunction is when something performs in a way that does not satisfy the needs of any primary or secondary function. Mal is actually a Latin word for “bad”, so a malfunction is literally a “bad function”.
When the delivery slip printed, this is what was written across the bottom of the page:
“Shit,” I said. I showed the page to Hal.
Suffice to say Hal did not take it well. It’s not that was visibly angry or acted incredibly upset. He just became very quiet actually and looked very puzzled. He studied the page for a couple of minutes until David came back in and slapped him on the back.
“Joe can print off the other computer for now,” said David.
Hal remained strangely quiet for the rest of the day. In fact the only other time that he really spoke was when the reporters on NPR started talking about automobile exhaust in China contributing to global warming.
“Even the Chinese are wrecking the planet just like us now,” said Hal. “I’ll bet the air’s clean and fresh for the Sentinelese.”
I didn’t say anything and neither did Lester. I didn’t speak because I already knew that the events of that day would indirectly lead to Hal going absolutely batshit-insane. Lester didn’t speak because he was a lousy, unfeeling, contemptuous asshole.
We all went home after a few more hours of NPR. I didn’t go anywhere with Gina because I really didn’t want to. Gina didn’t go anywhere with Lester because she really didn’t want to, although he really did. I was thinking of making him call Michelle Salmon that night, but then I decided that that would have been too mean.
Hal went home and was by himself because his wife was out of town at a convention for veterinarians. This didn’t bother Hal so much tonight. He was on a mission! Hal had kept the malfunctioned delivery slip and was determined to decode the message.
The funny thing about Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder is that no one actually knows for sure what causes the flashbacks. Some psychologists claim that repressed emotions are triggered that call up memories from hallucinations, and some doctors claim that some of the LSD remains crystallized behind the brain, and then randomly and periodically melts away and drips onto the brain stem. Either way, Hal was experiencing a particularly bad bout of Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder at the moment and had convinced himself that the symbols were actually the primitive language of the Sentinelese. They were trying to contact him by jamming his computer with their untranslatable symbols. Of course, he had not taken into consideration that the peoples of the North Sentinel Island had absolutely no idea what a computer even was, and that if he had utilized a Microsoft Word Processor he could have pretty easily seen that the symbols were actually what normal keystrokes look like in the Wingdings font. When converted to Times size 12 font, it would look like this:
LLMMZZVVVLLMMZZVVVLLMMZZVVV
Nothing too outstanding. Hal was never a computer guy anyway.
But he was convinced! There was really no stopping him. I could have tried, but I’m not even so sure that I could have done it. Hal decided right then and there that the Sentinelese were trying to contact him. He stayed up all night packing various belongings, and he purchased an airline ticket early the next morning. Hal eventually made it all the way to an airport in India before he was arrested and deported for public nudity. Hal had decided that he shouldn’t bring anything from the outside onto North Sentinel Island, even clothing. However, he did keep his two thousand dollar saddle, which he threw around his shoulders like a backpack before exciting the restroom otherwise completely naked.
That morning at work, while Hal was on his flight to India, none of us had any idea what had become of him. Well, I knew exactly what had become of him, but I played along. I felt bad, too. It was such a cruel thing to do to old Hal.
After David made several attempts to call Hal at home, Elisa finally called David at Printec. She had no idea where Hal went. She only knew that he had packed up some of his belongings and left the front door ajar. We can guess what David and Elisa were thinking. It was the same thing that I told Gina and Lester that we all should be thinking. I lied and said that Hal must have found out about David and Elisa’s affair.
“Gross!” said Gina.
Lester was very contemplative. Out of character, but it’s the end of a short story and at least one character needs to change.
“It’s all bullshit,” said Lester.
“What do you mean?” I said, playing the straw man. I knew exactly what he meant and exactly what he was about to say. I even used part of it as the tile of this story all the way back on page one.
“Relationships. They fuck people up. I mean, in the end, who cares who slept with who? It’s not worth throwing everything I way, I think. It’s not the end of the world. I mean, I have passing thoughts on the end of the world myself when things get real bad. I think we all do. But I think people just need to realize what’s really important and what shit just doesn’t matter.”
Gina nodded her head and said something that wasn’t really noteworthy. I looked at the ground in silence. I felt like calling Maria.
Hal was hospitalized for a short while upon his return to Ohio. The ‘cat was out of the bag’, as they say, and everyone now knew of his wife’s affair. Including Hal. He underwent psychiatric evaluation, and it was decided that Hal had a stress-induced breakdown.
Lots of adult males have stress-induced breakdowns in this country. It’s called a “midlife crisis”. But those usually happen to men in their thirties, and usually involve a new convertible or working out or tanning. Hal was in his fifties and tried to escape in the nude to a Stone Age island near India.
No one ever suspected that Lysergic Acid Diethylamide was the real culprit, and I never told anyone. Not until right now, anyway. Hal got to keep his job at Printec, and the university even paid for him to have indefinite access to a psychiatrist, should he ever begin to “feel weird” again.
Hal even forgave his wife! Now, as far as he knew, she had had sexual intercourse with three partners, including himself and David. That was still only half of what the national average for women had been.
The End
