by

Robert A. Metzger

 Black and spongy.  Five bristling hairs poked from its center.  A wart.  Even though I had a great distrust of warts, I tried to keep an open mind, hoping that this one might exhibit some shred of social decency.  I doubted it, though.

 “Allen,” said Nurse Bemeyer, “this is Dr. Christhoffer.”

 To say the least, I was surprised.  I’d encountered many warts throughout my travels, but few that had names, and fewer still that were doctors.  This did not look good.  Warts were generally bad enough, but experience had long ago taught me to rank doctors at least three notches below a wart.  Facing a wart bestowed with a medical degree left me with little hope that this would be a pleasant encounter.  I prayed that it wasn’t a specialist.

 “Pleased to finally meet you,” said the wart.

 I never saw its lips move when it spoke.  Actually, I never even saw its lips.  I grudgingly had to admit to myself that this might be a wart that was a cut above the norm.  It was then that I realized what the tricky little growth was up to.  It was using the body that was attached to it to do its talking.  This was pretty damn impressive even for a wart that had remained unscathed after four years of medical school.  I realized in an inspirational flash that the art wanted to remain incognito, and pass off the body growing from it as the real Dr. Christhoffer.  It hadn’t fooled me, but I’d go along with the charade until I found out what its real plans were.

 My eyes decided to focus on the creased, white bearded face that was masquerading as Dr. Christhoffer.  His little brown eyes were sunk deep behind rimless bifocals.  A roadmap of crisscrossed veins covered his red nose and cheeks.  This is not a face I would have chosen, but of course there’s no accounting for taste when you’re dealing with something from the medical profession.

 “I hope I will be able to help you,” said Dr. Christhoffer.

 I was momentarily confused.  I rarely get confused.  Then I realized what Dr. Christhoffer was referring to.  It’s amazing how the little things can slip your mind.  I was insane.

 Something grabbed my left hand and pumped it vigorously.  The grasp was moist.  I was not surprised.  I’d expect the handshake of a wart to be moist.

 “What do you say?” asked Nurse Bemeyer.

 “Albacore tuna,” mumbled my mouth.  I have no idea why my mouth said that.  It’s not very intelligent.  Perhaps it was hungry again.  If the damn thing wasn’t drooling, it was eating.  I don’t know why I brought it along with me.

 Nurse Bemeyer and Dr. Christhoffer smiled.  Maybe they liked tuna.  Perhaps my mouth wasn’t the fool I had always thought it was.  It might not be a bad idea to listen to it more often.

 Dr. Christhoffer’s moist fingers slipped from my hand.  It was only as his little finger was just sliding away that I felt the hunger, and I’m not talking about tuna cravings.  Evil ate deep within him.  Squirmy worms munched his small intestine in their quest for soft lymph nodes.  My mouth seemed to like the doctor, and even though it wasn’t the most intelligent organ I had, it was usually a pretty good judge of character.  I tossed aside my distrust of warts with medical backgrounds, and reaching with my third hand, the one that only my third eye could see, I reached into Dr. Chrishoffer’s saggy paunch.  I picked out every last one of those cancerous worms, and hurled them to hell.  I think it was hell.  It might have been Pittsburgh.

 “Oh!” said Dr. Chrishoffer.  He grabbed his stomach, then sighed deeply.  Pain which had lurked in the corners of his eyes faded.  After breathing deeply several times, a smile came to his face.

 “Please take your seats,” he told Nurse Bemeyer.

 Nurse Bemeyer guided me down a crowded aisle, helping me into a slick leatherette chair.  The fatman next to me smelled like garlic.
 
May I have your attention?” asked the amplified voice of Dr. Christhoffer.

 Both my arms twitched, and the fingers of my left hand danced to a tune that my ears couldn’t hear.  My not-so-intelligent mouth decided it was time to start drooling, and my nose decided to join in by dripping something thick and sticky over my upper lip.

 Nurse Bemeyer wiped my face.  When it came to the activities of my mouth and nose, she had what was referred to as job security.

 My eyes cooperated and looked toward the front of the auditorium.  I’d have to remember to thank them later.  The auditorium was large, almost as large as the TV room of the Pennsylvania State Home for the Special Individual.  Like the TV room, dozens of people sat facing forward, their eyes glazed, and their jaws slack.  There was no TV to hold their attention, and I knew it was certainly not the old-man saggy body attached to Dr. Chrishoffer that they found so interesting.  It had to be the electric chair and the washing machine that fascinated them.  I also found it interesting.  Of course I’d read about it, but I’d never actually seen a washing machine that was sentenced to the electric chair.  It must have eaten just one too many socks.

 “Colleagues,” said Dr. Christhoffer, trying to pry the audience’s attention away from the washing machine and to himself.  “I have discovered the true function of the brain.”

 The garlic-drenched fatman next to me burped.

 “The brain is not the center of thought,” continued Dr. Christhoffer, “but an organ that filters reality.”

 This didn’t make much sense to me.  When I was a child, my parents had owned a swimming pool.  It was filtered.  One cold and crisp morning I reached into the basket which held the debris captured by the filter and pulled out a dead frog.  I’ve never met anyone with a frog in his head, so I can’t see how the brain can be much of a filter.  I think that the throat filters reality.  I’ve known lots of people who claimed they had frogs in their throats.  This wart wasn’t as sharp as it thought it was.

 “This is reality,” said Dr. Christhoffer.  He turned to a chalkboard behind him and drew a single powdery white line along its entire length.  “And this is how much our brains let us perceive,” he said.  He drew two close set narrow line which intersected the center of the reality line.  “We all exist between these two lines.”  For emphasis he smashed his chalk between the lines and was rewarded with a shower of white dust and chalk bits.  “However,” he said cryptically, “there are a few of us whose filters have drifted slightly, those whose sense of reality has drifted from the norm.”

 Heads turned and eyes stared at me.  The garlic fatman burped again.

 Dr. Christhoffer had the old man’s body stand as tall as its curved back would allow.  “I have discovered the means to realign the mental filter of those who have drifted from the norm.”

 Turning back to the board, he drew another set of parallel lines slightly to the left of the first set.  Above them he wrote two names.

 “Two such individuals are Allen Griswald and the late Jack Sweeny.”

 My ears twitched at hearing the names.  I think one of them was mine.  I’m not sure which, but I didn’t think I was Jack Sweeny.  Jack Sweeny was a famous man, and I knew I was not famous.  Jack Sweeny had been on TV.  His real name was Mr. Sausage.  Ten years ago Mr. Sausage had been president of the Clairville Savings and Loan.  A little man who Mr. Sausage said lived under his hairpiece told him to kill his family, so Mr. Sausage diced his wife and two sons into little pieces and stuffed them into sausage wrappers.  For five days he sold them door to door, making quite a tidy sum until he was caught.  It seemed he didn’t have a peddler’s permit.  When caught for this crime, Mr. Sausage explained about the man who lived under his hairpiece, and then slipped into a catatonic state.  He never moved or spoke again.

 “It was five days ago,” said Dr. Christhoffer, “that I reached into the mind of Jack Sweeny and realigned the filter that had shifted the portion of reality he could perceive.”  He waved his hand over the electric chair and washing machine.  “After a single treatment, Jack Sweeny stood from this chair and spoke.”  A smile filled Dr. Christhoffer’s face.

 “And dropped dead while clutching a sausage and asking for ketchup!” shouted someone from the audience.

 Dr. Christhoffer’s eyes narrowed and his cheeks grew even redder than normal.  The wart quivered with anger.  “Mr. Sweeny’s old heart was unable to handle the excitement of being returned to a normal state of mine!” he shouted.

 “And the sausage?” asked the same voice.

 “A cruel joke,” snapped back Dr. Christhoffer.  “One of my esteemed colleagues planted it in the poor man’s hand during all the confusion.”  He surveyed the crowd with a hawk-like stare, looking for the culprit. “This time the patient Allen Griswald is in outstanding physical condition, and should have no physical difficulties in coping with being brought back to our limited perception of reality.”  He motioned towards myself and Nurse Bemeyer.  “Please help Allen down,” he said.

 Nurse Bemeyer prodded my body from the leatherette seat and guided it to the center aisle.  I had nothing better to do so I want along for the ride.  With a little luck I might even get a look at the convicted washing machine.

 “Allen Griswald is an interesting case,” said Dr. Christhoffer.  “A normal child until the age of 12, he was then struck by lightning, and soon thereafter ran away from home and joined Reverend Smitblight’s Traveling Revival Show.  It seemed he had obtained the gift of healing.”

 I saw Dr. Christhoffer gently tough his stomach.  The garlic fatman burped in disbelief.  The audience of esteemed colleagues mumbled in unison.

 “I understand your skepticism,” said Dr. Christhoffer in not-very-understanding tones.  “But this is exactly the type of phenomenon that we should expect to see from someone whose mental filter is shifting.  They now perceive a reality that we cannot see.  In this altered reality other things may be possible, things we consider impossible.”

 The audience did not seem impressed.  The garlic fatman burped twice.

 “Unfortunately, his mental filter drifted even further, and he soon had difficulty communicating both with other people and even his own body.”

 That was ludicrous.  I communicate just fine.  It’s just that nothing seems to listen: especially my mouth.

 “Albacore tuna,” shouted my mouth, just to prove the point.

 “The procedure that I will employ to realign Allen’s mental filter is actually quite simple,” said the doctor.  “By attaching Allen to the Reality Monitor I will remove every vestige of the misaligned mental filter he presently has.  In this state, the true nature of reality will pour into his brain.”

 The wart quivered with what I could only construe as pure delight.

 “The human mind, being incapable of viewing true reality, will throw back up its filter, but...”  He held up an extended bony finger do drive home the point.  “This filter will now conform to our norm.  The consciousness of the audience will force the filter to align to our narrow band of reality.  Allen Griswald will be cured!”

 An uproar filled the audience.  Several people laughed.  The garlic fatman let out a record-setting three burps.  But I noticed hardly any of this.  My body had sat in the electric chair, and my eyes were now looking at the washing machine.  My eyes were being most cooperative today.

 Dr. Christhoffer walked to the washing machine and lifted up the lid.  I didn’t see a load of laundry anywhere.  It was then that I realized he must be talking out a load.  Reaching in and rummaging around, he pulled out a football helmet to which was attached the longest strands of noodles I had ever seen.  No matter how far he pulled out the helmet I couldn’t see the end of a single piece.  I hoped Mrs. Christhoffer wasn’t in the audience to see the sort of things her husband tried to put in the washing machine.

 He slipped the football helmet over my head.

 “All I need do is activate the master switch, and in a few moments Allen will be cured.”

 The audience sat quietly at this proclamation.  I might have heard half a burp, or it might have been my ears popping and playing tricks on me.  Dr. Christhoffer set the washing machine to rinse and pushed in the knob.  Nobody starts washing clothes on the rinse cycle I thought.  It was the last thing I thought.  My head exploded.
 
     #

 I looked through a fishbowl.

 The bar swallow cocked its head.  “It’s really quite simple, Allen, reality is a single continuous relationship.  It’s little more than a single equation with user-defined boundary conditions and an infinite number of solutions.”  Its brown beak pecked for hidden mites beneath its wing feathers.

 “I don’t understand,” I chirped in barn swallow.  It was the least I could do since the bird was kind enough to talk to me in English.

 A gassy maelstrom belched gravity waves.  “Of course you don’t” said the quasar.  “The filter still remains.  Let me help you,” it said.

 I drifted through a radiation sea.  The quasar gobbled two red giants, a neutron star and topped off its meal with a pulsar.  Like the garlic fatman, it burped, but what it burped was hard gamma rays.

 The fishbowl over my face crazed.

 “It’s so simple,” said the old samurai.  “Reality is what you make it.  If the mind wills it, the fabric of reality will conform to it.”
 I bowed to the warrior and was rewarded with a smashing blow of his sword.  I heard glass break.

 “It is will alone that dictates reality,” roared Thor.  His biceps bulging, he swung his hammer in a double-handed grasp over his head.  “Will it,” he bellowed.  The hammer crashed into my fishbowl helmet.  A chink of glass flew before my face.  A hard light of infinite colors poured into my eyes.

 “Do you understand now?” asked the Tin Man.  “Have you got the heart to use your mind?”

 I nodded, my head rattling in the cracked and broken fishbowl.

 “Then take heart!” he yelled, his jaw locking open as he screamed.  A swing of his axe ripped the top of the fishbowl cleanly off my head.  My brain sizzled.

 “You’re almost there now,” said the Cyclops.  A single red eye stared into my face.  “Can you see the equation?  Feel the fabric of reality.”  It smashed my face with a tree-stump club.  Glass shattered.

 I picked myself up from the stone floor.  Only the lip of the fishbowl hung around my neck.

 May I help you, sire?” asked the silver princess.

 Floating above the floor, her white slippers too pure to touch the earth, she hovered before me.  “The last slivers of the filter remain,” she said.  “If I remove it, your mind will define reality.  Nothing will bind you.”  Her delicate fingers caressed the glass ring around my throat.

 “Dr. Christhoffer said that a filter directed by the consciousness of the audience would fill my mind,” I told her.

 “Only if you will it,” said the princess.  “You are now reality.  Define yourself.”  She kissed my cheek gently, then lifted the glass collar over my head.

 Nothing obstructed my vision.
 
      #

 “Can you hear me, Allen?” asked Dr. Christhoffer.

 I opened my eyes.  Reaching up with hands that answered my brain, I removed the helmet.  I stood.

 The audience remained speechless.   Not even a burp could be heard.

 “Albacore tuna,” I whispered.

 “What did you say?” asked the doctor.

 I looked into his face.  He knew what I had said.

 “Albacore tune!” I shouted.

 The auditorium shook.  Dust rained down from the ceiling.  A breeze pushed the hair off my forehead.  I could smell the sea, and hear the crack of waves.  The sounds of pounding surf poured from the room’s loudspeakers.

 “Albacore tuna!” I roared.  Fish exploded from the air.  Flopping and squirming, gills pumping out remaining sea-water, tunas slithered across the floor.

 “Care for some may with your tuna?” I asked Dr. Christhoffer.

 Color drained from the old man’s face.  He sagged gently to the floor, which was now covered in wavy-white mayonnaise.
 Far up in the auditorium the garlic fatman burped convulsively.