Thursday, October 01, 2009
October is Novella Month! Part 1
Here's my first day's work:
You’ve seen the commercial dozens of times. Late at night when your mind is tired and unguarded. At lunch while you are lulled by daytime talk trash. At the midpoint of the most inane drivel imaginable. Your mind wanders; your eyes drift toward the window or a smoldering cigarette or the ice cubes melting away at the bottom of an otherwise empty glass. It is raining. It is sunny. The street outside is in darkness broken by light pooled around streetlamps. You are drowsy, dozing in a chair or on a couch. You cannot sleep, bleary-eyed, you sit in the dim flickering light of the television. Eyes lingering on the clock as it creeps toward morning.
The commercials that come before the commercial are loud. Blaring, shouting at you, singing to you. Cooing, screaming, imploring, urging. Then silence. You hear the steady pulsing beep of a heart monitor and your eyes drift to the screen. The labored breathing fades in and on the screen the dim details of a darkened room take shape: a bed, a white blanket, an ancient woman, tubes around her face like tentacles, hospital equipment stands like sentinels at the head of the bed.
The camera zooms in, uncomfortably close to the old woman’s face and the commercial has your full attention. She is impossibly wrinkled, skin shiny and sagging like wet latex, liver-spotted. Her hair is but white wisps trembling on her skull. Her face fills the screen at a disorienting angle. You can see dried snot crusted around the oxygen tubes at her nostrils. Drool glistens on her chin. Her lips quiver with each ragged, half-moaned breath. You are horrified and entranced. The IV drips. The camera pans back and you become aware that someone else is in the room: a middle-aged man, dog-eyed and sad. He has dark circles under his eyes and a receding hairline. His glasses rest on his nose at an angle.
You see the pillow in his hand and the trembling gun and for a moment their purpose does not register with you. The man hesitates for the briefest of commercial moments, then strides to the head of the bed. You notice him close his eyes—just for a second—before he presses the pillow against the woman’s face. She starts to struggle, but her movements are slow, weak, feeble, confused. She is swimming, a stop-motion backstroke under blankets, as the man presses the gun to the pillow. He clenches his teeth and the camera cuts away as he squeezes the trigger.
The scene cuts to the same room. Blue and red lights flash in the window as a policeman, shaking his head, slips a bloody pillow into an evidence bag. The scene fades to black as a narrator, deep voiced and grim, says, “Euthanasia without a licensed permit is murder. Call the experts at KWC, Incorporated. It’s legal, safe, and humane. At KWC we let them go with compassion and comfort.”
The whole thing lasts less than a minute. You hate it, but you watch every time, absorbing the details, repulsed, mesmerized. The disgusting, dying old woman. The exhausted man pushed to the breaking point. The disappointed officer and that pillow, soaked, dripping. You hate; you wonder how a commercial like that even got made.
But when the time comes for you cancer-ridden mother to be put down, you will probably call KWC, Inc., and I will have earned my salary.
********
Lou, the great brick pig of the office stood before my desk, panting, clammy. His suit could split at any moment and give birth to great rolls of fat with tufts of damp hair sliding between. He scowled and placed both hands on the front of my desk and leaned forward heavily. His eyebrows butterflied up and down as he spoke. “We need a new commercial.”
This was nothing new. He had been dropping hints that he thought it was time for a new campaign.
“The old commercial is old.” He said.
“It’s not that old. And the numbers still look good.”
“Six months is ancient. That’s like being 80 in commercial years.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not. It’s time to take that commercial out back and shoot it.”
I leaned back in my chair to consider this.
“Shoot it in the head and put it in the dumpster and get me a new baby.”
I pulled out my notepad. “What did you have in mind? Another murder commercial.”
He shook his jowls. “Hell no. I have experienced nothing but grievous complaint about that commercial. My mother, my mother has not shut up about it since launch. Says it’s disgusting. Violent. Panders to the lowest bla bla bla. She has accused me of fear mongering. I tell her the commercial was not my idea. She says that if I am the director of marketing, then I am responsible. Now listen. When my mother is 90 and shitting blood in the corner of the room, I will personally administer the kill drugs. But I will not listen to her harp at me for months about another commercial.”
I wrote “no murder” in my little pad.
Lou straightened up. “And please, no mothers this time. If someone has to die, please let that someone be a man. A very ugly man that is obviously in great pain and gravely ill. Maybe he’s crass. Maybe most people would like this man to die.”
I wrote “no mothers” in my little pad.
“But, and here’s the thing—it still has to be edgy. You have seen, I presume, Divine Intervention International’s new ad campaign. The one with the angels and fairies and shit. And the lady with the six arms. That commercial does not want to make me kill an elderly relative."
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