Dragons With Cancer

I loathe work. My boss, M. Makulahbaum, is supposed to be a dentist; I’m supposedly his assistant. I don’t know a damn thing about dentistry. I don’t believe he does either. He’s never filled a single cavity or capped a crown or shoved things into sleeping and/or euthanized patients. In fact, all he does is float around in the form of a red mist.

A sign above his door says:

M. Makulahbaum, Dentist
Where nightmares of flesh and bone collide

I enter the foyer to his office and take the steps up. A song plays on the intercom. Makulahbaum blasts it each time an employee walks through the door.

I reach the final step. The chorus gets so loud it penetrates me. My body ripples with data and pulses to a synchronized beat. I slam my head against the wall, harder and harder, until my brain rock n’ rolls right out of my skull and into a deposit box by the door.

Makulahbaum refuses to let employees carry brains to work. It used to bother me, but I’ve gotten over it. Mine is usually riddled with little holes when I get off, like something long and hard has been rammed into it, perhaps for hours, but I don’t need a brain when bathed in the light of Makulahbaum’s office. It infuses me, reaches into my synapses, finds the soul inside the machine, and has its rough and tumble way with it.

Inside the reception area, I adopt the customary tone and greeting one uses with underlings, fellow employees, and higher-but-not-too-higher-ups.

"Baby, I’m back! Use me!"

The secretary and a passing custodian drop what they’re doing and clamor towards me. They run claw-like fingers over my body and use words like "ripe" and "succulent." I brush past them, entering the office where Makulahbaum waits.

He’s a man of Spartan taste. There isn’t much here apart from his desk, though he has a rather impressive wall-mounted face collection. I’ve yet to see one quite like it, and don’t think such a thing can be bought retail.

Miniature manatees swim in a tank by the desk.

I take my seat as Makulahbaum floats from his. His soul-body enters mine, producing a sudden electric tingle and the bite of copper on my tongue. He says nothing, but that’s to be expected. He’s not the talkative sort.

Behind his desk are two identical white doors. I’ll enter one or the other; the morning routine never varies. Makulahbaum lets me know, in his special, silent way, that I am to enter the door that opens into the bad room.

His mist-body pulls away and floats back to the desk. I get up and head toward the door like a gas chamber gurney or an electric chair sits behind it. In truth, the door leads to an office almost identical to Makulahbaum’s, only smaller and without the neat wall-faces and mini-manatees. It’s a drab, boring place—painted all in white—and sunrays streaming through the window look gray even when it’s night.

The clock says twenty minutes have passed. They rarely stay hidden this long.

Not seconds later, something flaps against the window.

Great. They were waiting for me to think about them...

I turn, not wanting to see the wing that made the sound, but knowing I must. It’s their customary way of announcing arrival—the penguins that waddle out on the ledge and, on bad days, hover above it.

There are only two of them, regarding me from behind the window, eyes looking past my flesh and into my soul. They hiss—I almost thought "jizz"—at what lies within. I always thought hissing was a trait reserved for cats, geese, and certain reptiles.

The first penguin’s eyes turn red.

"Stop it!" I bang my fist against the facing. "I will not accept this!"

The second penguin’s eyes do the same; an ethereal flipper curls around my skull.

"Get out of mind, you ball-gnashers!" I clutch my swelling head. "Leave me be!"

They refuse; three more waddle into view. The ethereal flipper curls tighter. I grab my head, screaming as my brain breathes. I ram my head a few times against the filing cabinet before realizing there’s no filing cabinet, but notions of "real" and "unreal" don’t concern me, not when those birds fix me with their fucking graveyard-all-night stare-a-thon gaze.

I’m powerless. I can’t shoo them off, not when they see past my mask, not when they know who I really am. (Hell, I don’t even know that!) Any attempt would be feeble, impotent, and the penguins would surely laugh.

I imagine the sound of penguins laughing and my ears bleed a little. In desperation, I launch myself at the window, smacking my body against it so hard the pane rattles. Then I repeat the process, twice.

More penguins. The world becomes a black cave. Everything’s dead here. No light. And, God help me, I think I’m dead, too. I’d hoped to make it longer, but I’m going out now, baking under the wilting stare of urban penguins.

It’s time to go to my Happy Place and observe events from there. Goodbye.

My watch beeps. The world sucks me back in, and I’m not dead. It’s just lunchtime.

The penguins waddle away from the window. They know the drill.

Zip lock bags filled with brown, pulsing blobs lay on a table in the employee’s lounge. A piece of scrawled-on tape on the front of each bag reads "work food." There’s no drink, but the food is moist and soppy so I don’t need water.

I take a bag and walk up a stairwell to the roof. The penguins are there too, swooping across the backs of weathered statues, roosting in the mouths of gargoyles.

I don’t remember the roof having statues and gargoyles. No matter. I sit down by the door and hope the penguins understand I’m on break.

They don’t bother me on the roof, but are waiting at the window upon my return, dozens of them, plastered against the lower half of the window, red eyes aflame, fixing me with their stare.

I face the opposite wall and don’t think about them, but feel a presence nevertheless, like a huge and terrible monster standing behind me. I turn around. One of the penguins levitates at least a foot above those plastered against the pane.

"We are inside you, Brian," it says. "We are you. Let you become us."

"I will never become you!" Then I hiss at him. I’ve never before been so bold, especially not so soon after cowering. It gives me a frisson.

It hisses back, and I return the favor. I refuse to let it have the last one. For hours, we hiss in turn.

A Makulahbaum flunkey enters the room. I call him "Dickey" because he wears a necklace of dried, severed penises. I don’t know his real name and never see him—or any flunkey—unless I’m needed.

"Makulahbaum says you’re free to go." He faces the penguins. "And you guys did an extra good job today, so you’ll get a raise."

"Thanks, bub," one of the penguins says through the pane.

"How about me? Do I get a raise?"

Dickey cocks an eyebrow. "Why ask, Mr. Cocks?"

"I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve been taking it up the ass for five years now?"

"Broach that subject with Makulahbaum."

"He doesn’t speak!"

"You heard me. I don’t have my mouth stuffed full of cotton, do I?" Dickey opens his mouth. At least eight spit-soaked cotton balls fall out.

Negotiating with flunkies is useless. I face the penguins. "Damn you all to hell," I shout.

They ignore me, put on tiny hats and coats, and float off, heading north.

I almost forget to pick up my brain at the drop box. When I return to get it, there’s a new sign taped to the door:

NEW COMPANY POLICY: Effective next Friday, leave your heart as well.