The Job Job

"And he (Job) said, 'Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'" —The Book of Job
1.
It was shortly after trial four when he got the nickname Knucklehead—not only because he was, admittedly, a simpleton, but also because of the bruises and bumps that served as a reminder of that night—the night he almost died at the hands, shall we say knuckles, of those who had been tormenting him day in and day out. Not that they would’ve let him, of course—die, that is.  They needed him alive, for the job. And funny enough, the job all started on the day he got fired.
He was a perfect fit for it. Not that job, the Job job. Though, arguably he was fit for both—uneducated, undriven, and unqualified for practically anything else. A real knucklehead for sure. But before he was Knucklehead, he was simply Joshua Mitts.
That’s, at least, the name he signed on the application, though they swore he had spelled it incorrectly. M-I-T-T-S was a far cry from M-I-T-Z, though they supposed it meant virtually the same thing. And it did, except for that a quick background check on Joshua Mitz—with a ‘z’—proved that he couldn’t hold a job for longer than six months. Either that, or he purposefully got himself fired to collect unemployment. It didn’t matter to them one way or the other, but somehow the possibility of the latter made their little experiment seem justified.
Fortunately for Joshua—and most unfortunately for him—was that he was already going to be fired from the moment he got hired, whether or not he deserved it.
“Fired?” he exclaimed, somewhat choked, “It’s Labor Day!”
“And you’ll have the holiday off,” his boss nodded. Joshua dragged the Labor Day Mattress Sale sign to a halt along the trimmed carpet, wiping a fresh handful of sweat from his brow and removing his red, white, and blue hat, pressing it to his chest as if he were mourning. He was. It wasn’t as if he were trying to lose his job, this time. Especially one so trivial as a sign spinner.
“Well, then, who’s gonna spin the sign?” Joshua asked. His voice was high and flustered, and the Uncle Sam costume clung to his form in patches of damp fabric and rode up his crotch—which wasn’t a part of the torture, mind you, but it certainly helped. He pinched the sweat-stained polyester smeared on his chest and began fanning himself, beating his chest in the process.
“Oh, wait’ll you see this,” his boss said, a smile spreading throughout his face, and he turned for the back room. After but a moment inside, he emerged, wheeling out a covered silhouette that looked like a person hidden underneath. With one tug, the blanket dropped to the floor, and a static, lifeless robotic mannequin, of sorts, stood—a waving arm held high.
“Beautiful, isn’t she? Of course, we’re gonna need that Lady Liberty costume back after whatever the hell you did with it- “
“It’s being dry-cleaned,” Joshua said. His boss nodded.
“That’s fine, just bring it back. She’s gonna wear it from now on.”
“She?” Joshua said, eyeing the female form perched atop the wheeling cart, eerily looking down at him, as if flaunting that it had just stolen his job. It did.
“Oh yeah,” his boss clicked. “The public trusts women way more than men. No offense, Josh, but it’s true. And if we wanna get more asses in this place, we’re gonna need a little…eye candy, huh?”
Joshua looked around the barren mattress store—so quiet and boring that its mere existence necessitated the very beds that it housed. And if he didn’t know any better, Joshua might’ve taken to the conspiracies about such a place. There were a lot of them, after all—both conspiracies and mattress stores, that is. So many, in fact, that the general consensus was that they were all money laundering fronts—which is completely ludicrous, yet not far off.
They actually are fronts, just not for money laundering. At least, not yet. For now, they’re fronts for an experiment—a project, codenamed ‘JOB’.
No, not job. Job. Like the guy.
2.
“Y’ever read the Bible, Jer?”
Jericho stopped typing, cracking his knuckles before swiveling around in that computer chair of his, those half-inch-thick glasses halfway down his nose.
“My name is Jericho, Mr. Wolfe,” he said, avoiding Wolfe’s question. It was Wolfe’s burning gaze that finally brought the answer out of him, “Yeah, I’ve read it.”
“Then you remember the book of Job, I take it? When God allowed for a man to be punished for doing absolutely nothing?”
“God didn’t punish Him, the Devil did.”
“Yes, but God allowed him to shit on Job. It was a test, an experiment—God’s little experiment. And what did it prove?”
Jericho shrugged. Wolfe cleared his throat, pacing around to the other side of Jericho’s desk with a spring in his step. Something was on his mind. Dubious, no doubt.
“Did I ever tell you about ‘Nam, Jer?” he said, eyeing that little flag that waved amid a bowl of pens just beneath the air vent.
“You went to Vietnam, sir?” Jericho asked.
“We all did. Every kid on the goddam’ block,” he said, shaking his head as he did. “Y’know what war is like Jer?”
“I couldn’t imagine, sir.”
Wolfe knelt before the desk jockey and locked his red and worn eyes onto the four looking back at him.
“War is hell. I still remember the day we got our orders. Of course, I wasn’t sent to the front lines. No, my pops had already sent me off to university—I was educated. But a lot of the kids on my block…they weren’t so lucky. None of us were.” He took a long breath as he cleared his throat before speaking again, his voice crackling like an old and broken record, his tone stale, “I’ve been to a lot of funerals, Jer—most of ‘em closed casket ‘cause they didn’t have any heads. Just kids in boxes,” he reiterated, “kids that grew up all too fast. But it made us strong—my generation was. Now, we got a whole lot of pussies, drivin’ around crisscross applesauce in their f’ck’n Priuses and whining every time they get a flat tire. Weak people, Jer,” he said, folding his arms across his chest as it heaved, “and weak people make a weak nation.”
Jericho followed Wolfe’s stare to the tiny flag that flapped in the artificial breeze, fluttering to the rhythm of his fingers that drummed along the desk with a military-like cadence.
“So, you’re saying, sir, that hard times create strong men?”
Wolfe nodded to the beat of his own fingers.
“And strong men create good times. And good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times. It’s a vicious cycle, Jer. Real vicious.”
Jericho nodded, turning that chair of his.
“So, you’re saying, sir, that…if we could make life harder, we’d make people stronger?”
Wolfe agreed as a smile parted his lips. Jericho was grimacing too—as if to say, ‘are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
He was.
“This is why you’re my number one guy, Jer,” Wolfe said, beating his shoulder with a palm as rough as sandpaper.
“But it’s just a hypothesis, sir. And even if we wanted to answer it…how?”
Wolfe curled his face into a grim, thoughtful scowl, biting his own tongue. He breathed in a great gasp of air before exhaling.
“Take a man, like Job, and ruin his life—bring on some of those hard times. And watch.”
3.
Trial one was about to begin when Mr. Wolfe dinged his way into the lab. Investors were getting worried. He promised results by March. It was July.
“Jericho,” Wolfe echoed from across the stagnant room, those polished shoes of his squeaking beneath his trot, “I’ve decided. I’m cutting funding. You’re welcome!”
That spiffy son of a bitch.
“Sir, with all due respect- ” Jericho started.
“Jer,” Wolfe interrupted, “I haven’t felt any of the respect I’ve been due from you recently. And frankly…I’ve had it. You’ve embarrassed me in front of- “
Mr. Wolfe stopped; his eye snagged on something draped from the ceiling.
“Jer,” Wolfe asked, “what the hell is up with the monkey?”
It was an ugly sight in such a sleek place. Rather barbaric, actually: a monkey, a chimp, dangling from the ceiling, its head perfectly sliced in two, just above the eyes, and a little monkey brain extruded from the skull. It was awake—those eyes watching as Wolfe approached. He couldn’t speak. He was stunned.
“Sir, lemme explain that- “
“Jericho,” Wolfe interrupted, following the wires that zig-zagged from the tiny brain, “what the hell did you do to my monkey?”
“We’re almost done, sir,” Jericho excitedly said, “and, sir, this is big.”
Wolfe sighed as he bit his lower lip, shaking his head to and fro.
“Can it throw its own shit?” he asked, matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?” Jericho replied.
“Can…it throw…its own…shit?” Wolfe reiterated, as if for a child.
“I mean,” Jericho hesitated, “I suppose it- “
“You mean to tell me…that we’ve given you six-and-a-half million dollars of investments and taxpayer dollars…to make a shit-throwing monkey?”
Jericho swallowed, clutching his tablet in his hands.
“Sir, it’s an ape, not a monkey. And no, we’re not experimenting with its…dung. Sir, we think we’ve successfully isolated the amygdala.” Mr. Wolfe’s expression clearly didn’t match Jericho’s level of enthusiasm regarding the amygdala.
“And I care…how?”
“The amygdala, sir, controls the stress response. And aggression. At least, in vertebrates. It’s the primary focus of our experiment. If we can overstimulate the amygdala—as we have with lil’ Albert here—I suppose we can recalibrate the brain to accept that high level of stress as the norm. Thus, we create a stronger ape.” Wolfe rubbed his temples, his own amygdala activated, if he understood Jericho correctly.
“So, what ‘bout our guy?”
Jericho took a long pause, making narrowed eye contact with the strung-up primate, then turning to the ape, “The human subject, sir?”
Mr. Wolfe nodded. They had been searching for months, cleverly disguising their little operation as a job—a career opportunity. And what job better suited the everyman than one so simple than any man could do it? A sign spinner.
“Well, sir, we’ve narrowed down a lot of the applications, but we still can’t find the one. And we know you’re still adamant about Mr. Mitts but- “
“But what?” Wolfe clicked.
“He just seems too…” Jericho’s voice trailed off, “Sir, why can’t we choose one of the convicts?”
“No,” Wolfe snapped, “They can’t deserve it—that’s the point. Job was upright and blameless in his day. And Joshua Mitts is upright and…jobless.”
4.
But Joshua’s joblessness didn’t last long, as soon after that very conversation, Joshua Mitts was hired as the official sign spinner for Mattress Nation USA, a company that didn’t exist.
Well, technically. And technicalities aside, trial one could officially begin—which brings us back to Labor Day. 
“Did I do something wrong?” Joshua asked. It was not even a month into his sign spinning career, and he thought he was doing a pretty good job. In fact, two cars put their turn signals on after he waved them down. They both missed the turn, but he figured they were gonna make a uey and come back around. And two cars meant two customers—a job well done in his eyes. His boss hemmed and hawed, waiting for his answer over the concealed earpiece Wolfe had handed him.
“No,” Wolfe finally murmured into the plump actor’s ear, “Tell him he did nothing wrong.”
Joshua’s former boss cleared his throat, “No, you did nothing wrong, Josh. We just had to make some cutbacks, is all.” Joshua nodded and grumbled, accepting his fate. What was he going to tell Kelly? How was he going to pay rent? He was already two days late, and it wasn’t like he had savings. He was out of a job and couldn’t even collect unemployment this time.
And this was only trial one.
5.
The landlord palmed the money tightly as his fingers curled around the dry paper, confused to high heaven but compliant as hell.
“And when he asks for you to delay rent, you’re going to say-?” Mr. Wolfe’s eyebrows lifted as the landlord licked his lips, his face smeared with uncertainty.
“Y-yes?”
“No. You’re going to refuse. And then you’re going to evict him.”
The landlord nervously nodded, “Well, he’ll have three days. It’s a federal holiday so he’ll have until Thursday.”
“Fine,” Wolfe said, “just remember that come Thursday…he’s out.” And with that, trial two was set into motion—which originally was going to be wrecking his car. But because he rode his bike to work—still qualifying as reliable transportation based on his application—they opted to jump right into taking his home, fearing an accident on a bicycle might’ve been fatal.
The ride from work felt longer than the ride to it, which was true considering the sluggish pace of his pedaling, avoiding the inevitability of telling Kelly that he had gotten fired again. His treading was so drunkenly jarring that they had to keep a keen eye on him throughout his entire trip home. One wrong turn and he could’ve died, which would’ve completely compromised their study.
Fortunately, he made it back—not that fortune was in his favor anymore.
“How was your day, hon?” Kelly’s voice rang from the kitchen, mixed with the sounds of fumbling silverware. He hadn’t even set his backpack, wound in his bike helmet, down, and yet she knew something was wrong—perhaps he didn’t jiggle the keys in his usual, playful manner.
“I, uh,” he swallowed, “a robot stole my job.”
Whatever that rummaging noise was stopped, amplifying the silence throughout the one bedroom and one bathroom.
“A robot?” her voice raised, muffled by the wall between the hallway and kitchen, “you’re a sign twirler!”
He shrugged, “I know.”
Kelly stepped out into the hallway. She was holding something of a BLT, and a knife in the other hand, drenched in ketchup. He always told her that the ketchup was excessive on a sandwich with ‘tomato’ in the name, but much like her, Kelly loved to tease and argue until she convinced him otherwise. They never argued about anything serious, usually trivial things, but that was better than the serious to them—and maybe that’s why they still weren’t married.
“Well, what did you do?” she asked, knife pointed in his direction.
“Nothing.”
“I mean, how’d you get fired? What’d you do?”
“Nothing.”
A shot of hot breath burst from her nostrils as Kelly lowered the blade, shaking her head and sighing, “I find that hard to believe. C’mon, really…what the hell’d you do, Josh?” Kelly was seriously pissed, maybe for the first time something serious really affected her. She had never acted like this before, but the threat of being evicted from their home was cause enough for some added frustration.
Joshua shrugged, “Nothing.”
Kelly nodded ferociously, her lips curled up, “Oh, of course. That’s all you ever do, Josh. You can’t even get off your ass to let the cable guy in!”
To be fair, the man she was referring to wasn’t exactly the cable guy, but just another pawn of the researchers—a technician, tasked to rig the entire apartment in cameras. He had barged in one afternoon while Joshua was taking a nap, which forced Kelly to perform the whole ‘small talk’ thing. She hated that. And on top of chatting with the man, he had left a chocolate bar wrapper underneath the sofa, which she had found earlier that day—only pissing her off more.
“I’m sorry babe,” Joshua sighed, “I’ll talk to Mr. Harris and see about an extension. Don’t get so choked up.”
6.
“Evicted?” Joshua choked, squeezing his own wrist to the point where his hand grew pale. Mr. Harris, the landlord, nodded, trying to hide his aversion to his own, half-assed, statement.
“I’m, uh,” Harris stumbled, “sorry, Josh. But I can’t grant another extension. You’ll either have to pay up or…be out by Thursday.”
And come Thursday, trial two was complete.
And so was trial three. 
“What do we do about Miss Lawrence, sir?” Jericho asked, plopping himself, exasperatedly, into his swiveling chair. Mr. Wolfe’s fingers drummed along the glass window overlooking the makeshift phony mattress store, turning to face the monitors as Joshua and Kelly mouthed screams at one another, transcribed by the sounds of a clacking keyboard from beneath a nearby researcher’s fingers.
“You think they’re gonna break it off?” Wolfe asked, arms crossed. The researcher shook his head, tethered to his monitor by the cable of his headset.
“Hard to tell,” was all he managed to say, still clicking away. Wolfe shook his head.
“My ex-wife would’ve left me the minute I couldn’t pay the mortgage. Luckily, I paid in full.”
“Then, how would you know, sir?” Jericho asked.
“Because she was a bitch.” Wolfe was about to descend into a rambling about his ex when the headset-wearing researcher pulled them off and shook his head.
“She’s sayin’ that she’s gonna pay the rent, now.”
“What?” Wolfe snapped, “I thought she didn’t have a job.”
“She’s got savings—something about some inheritance money.”
“Well, shit,” Wolfe said, his foot pounding the ground. “Jer, we’re gonna have to roll out trial three early.”
Jericho began to nod when he froze, those four eyes locked onto the monitor that rested in front of him. Wolfe could make out a face reflected by the lens of his glasses, and when he strolled around behind that creaking computer chair, he could see exactly what spooked Jericho so much: Kelly—her eyes staring directly into the hidden camera, smudged with a greasy, chocolatey fingerprint.
Not so hidden, after all.
“Damn it!” Wolfe said, smacking the desk and rattling the pens and flag, “She’s gonna compromise the entire study!”
Kelly pried on the not-so-hidden camera until it came loose from beneath the mounted tv. It was a perfect hiding spot, so perfect that she had stowed away her dead grandmother’s inheritance money in the exact same place—a place not even Joshua would ever check. Or maybe he had, she thought.
“You sick little pervert,” she murmured under her breath, her face made enormously wide by the camera’s lens.
“She thinks our technician was a creep,” the headset-wearing researcher spoke up, stroking the last ‘t’ in ‘pervert’. “Or, maybe, she thinks Joshua did this.”
“Yes, but Mr. Mitts will know he didn’t,” Jericho said, “and we’ll be compromised.”
7.
When the doorbell rang, Joshua rushed to his feet, as if in pure contradiction to Kelly’s claims that he was a loaf.
“I got it,” he yelled, not that Kelly was listening, too infatuated, herself, with her find—that being the camera. Joshua scurried across the carpet to the door, statically shocking himself as he gripped the knob—just another dose of bad luck, he thought. And as he twisted it, his gut turned, wondering who might be on the other side. Perhaps Mr. Harris came to issue an apology—or, better yet, his boss. It was neither, of course, just another plant from the researchers—a traffic cop.
“Hey, are you Joshua Mitts?”
“Yeah,” Joshua slowly said, his voice churning like spoiled milk. What did he do now?
“One of your neighbors reported a robbery—a couple of bikes some kids had stolen. And apparently one of ‘em was yours—blue one with black handlebars?”
“Shit,” Joshua said, his hand digging into his scalp.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” the officer said, “c’mon, let’s go fill out a report.”
And as they left down the elevator in a hurry, Joshua failed to notice the second officer waiting at the unlocked apartment door. 
“So, what do we do about Miss Lawrence, sir?” Jericho pleaded again. Mr. Wolfe bit down on his knuckle for a moment, his eyes shifting about as rapidly as his feet until they didn’t, and a smile appeared on his face. Jericho knew that look.
“What if we kill her?” Wolfe asked.
“Sir?” Jericho trembled, thinking that, maybe, his boss truly had gone off the deep end.
“I mean, think about it, Jer,” Wolfe said, pacing between Jericho’s desk and a plethora of others, “we were gonna force the break-up anyways, and she knows about the camera. We can’t let her live, now.”
He was right. She couldn’t tell Joshua about the camera, it’d ruin everything.
And if anything, she did it to herself.
8.
Joshua had just finished penning his name for the officer—M-I-T-Z mind you—when she fell, all fourteen stories down, and screaming the whole way. She—rather her body—landed ever-so conveniently atop the squad car. Joshua vomited immediately, his stomach ringing out like a sponge as he gasped for breath. Luckily, and perhaps the only stroke of luck for him during the entire situation, was that the officer was genuine, so he could help accordingly—except when it came to actually solving the crime, of course. They paid too generously for that.
The death was ruled as something of a freak accident, evident by the opened bedroom window in their fourteenth-story apartment. It’s not like Joshua could afford a balcony, and neither could he afford a funeral—which happened to be that Thursday, the same day he became homeless.
9.
It was after most of the mass had left that Joshua truly broke down. Sure, he wept before, here and there, but with his mind pulled in so many directions he didn’t stop and consider what his life had crumbled to in a matter of three days. And when that realization hit, while listening to the preacher benedict his late girlfriend, he crumbled, too—right there in the front pew. His sobbing was so that it reverberated off of the many walls in the nearly empty cathedral—a church that, had fate designated it so, he thought, they might’ve been married in.
“Son?” the preacher asked, “How’re you holding up?”
Joshua sniffed an unruly string of snot back into his nostril before shaking his head, his chin dragging against his button-up. The preacher approached and plopped himself down next to him, a calm hand resting atop his shoulder.
“We were arguing about the rent,” Joshua said, his cadence slow and droned. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small wad of cash, mostly tens and twenties. “I was savin’ up for an engagement ring. It’s not much, but I told myself I wouldn’t spend it. But I guess now that doesn’t matter anymore.” He sighed and clutched the money tightly, “God, we shouldn’t’ve argued,” he said under his breath.
“Everybody argues from time to time, son,” the preacher said, reassuring Joshua with a pat. He lifted his head to face the preacher, his eyes bloodshot and wet.
“Father,” he said, “why is God doing this to me?”
The preacher licked his lips and breathed in heavily, looking up at a stained-glass depiction of Christ on the cross, then down to the stained black rings sunken into Joshua’s eyes.
“We know that suffering produces perseverance,” the preacher said, “and perseverance, character, and character, hope.”
“Well, I don’t feel it,” Joshua admitted.
“You will,” Wolfe said in the preacher’s ear.
“You will,” the preacher said.
“Oh, he’ll feel it, alright,” Wolfe said, “he wants to cry like a goddam’ pussy? We’ll give him something to cry about. Proceed to trial four, Jer.”
Jericho hesitantly cued the others in following Wolfe’s word. If trial one took away his job, his money, and trial two took away his home, and trial three his love, then trial four would take the last thing he had other than his life, itself—his health.
10.
With a final blessing from the preacher, Joshua stepped into the night, bundling himself beneath the warm blanket the preacher had gifted him. It was a shame, really, that he confided in that preacher about that hidden wad of cash. Because now they knew he still had money, and what they were about to do would’ve been dismissed as just another mugging.
“It’s in his right pants pocket,” Wolfe said, watching from the street camera as the gang of men rounded the corner, heading straight for the church. They had very specific orders for being there—bruise him, beat him, take his money, but don’t kill him. Just leave him for dead.
Although, after the beating, he wished he was.
They started by pushing him to the ground, ripping that warm blanket from his body, and kicking him until he coughed up blood and a couple of teeth. They snatched the money from his pocket and spit in his face, where shortly thereafter they planted their knuckles, painting his face a cool black and blue.
His cries for help were not unheard, but the preacher was told not to interfere. At least, not until they finished.
“Now,” Mr. Wolfe said in the preacher’s ear, “call 911.”
And he did just that.
11.
Mr. Wolfe was worried because he feared they might’ve killed him.
“No, he’s not dead, sir,” Jericho said, pointing to the fuzzy monitor’s image, “his finger’s twitching.” Wolfe leaned down and inspected the screen. It was—twitching that is.
“Good eye, Jer,” Wolfe said, watching as the ambulance pulled up to the curb where Joshua laid motionless, aside from that finger, of course. “What a knucklehead,” Wolfe said with a wag. And when realized he had said it, he gleamed. “Yeah, knucklehead. That’s good.”
And from there on out, that’s what they called him: Knucklehead.
It was Knucklehead, then, who was loaded up in the ambulance and booked into the ER as soon as he got there. Of course, he didn’t have insurance, so the least they legally had to do was stabilize him—and that was enough work cut out for them already.
“Mr. Mitz?” the nurse’s voice faded in from the void, “Mr. Mitz? Joshua?” He wiggled his finger, and she noticed. “You’re going to be okay,” she said, “it’s a miracle that you’re alive.”
But he didn’t believe in miracles anymore. His finger curled up and he groaned beneath the gauze that wrapped his face so tautly that he could hardly breathe. He lifted that same finger and tried to pry it off, but the nurse stopped him.
“No, no, Mr. Mitz,” she said, “you need to leave that on, okay? There’s ointment under there. You’re badly bruised.” She set his hand gently against his chest as she paced around the bed. “Do you remember what happened?” That little finger curled up, and she took it as a ‘yes’. She promised she’d be back in about half an hour and saw herself out, leaving Joshua alone with himself. He lifted that finger once again and dragged it down the gauze that concealed his face. It was lumpy and sore, and the gauze itself was stained with crackled bits of dry blood. Right then and there he contemplated smothering himself with the pillow under his head, but in order to do that, he needed to lift his neck, which was something he simply couldn’t do.
12.
“You have a visitor,” the nurse smiled. It had been about a week since the attack, and the only visitor that bothered to come around was the hospital chaplain—mumbling something about the mysteries of the gospel. He didn’t ask for those visits, of course, but he couldn’t refuse—not with a pound of bloody cotton wedged between his jaws, which had swollen so tightly that it made it hard to breathe. And that breath escaped him for a moment, at first seeing the white collar on the priest that entered the room, but all the more when his eyes caught those of a familiar face—the preacher.
The preacher’s eyes immediately dashed over to the camera perched in the corner of the room, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a buoy on a rough sea as he swallowed back a salty gargle of warm spit. He turned to face Joshua, approaching, and resting a hand on his shoulder before sitting down, but inches from his face.
“Son?’ the preacher asked. Joshua turned his head, still wrapped up like a mummy, to face him—his eyes filled with hurt. And the preacher could see it. “How do you feel?”
Joshua breathed in slowly. No response.
“Son, I haven’t much time,” the preacher said, a wretched look upon his face. “There’s something you need to know.”
He took a glance at the camera yet again, then over to the door. And when the room was still, he continued. Joshua was all ears.
“They’re doing this to you,” he said in a harsh, hushed, whisper, “all of this.”
Joshua pulled himself up and tried opening his mouth, but nothing came out, aside from a small unraveling of cotton.
“Joshua,” the preacher said with a shake in his throat, “they’re testing you. It’s all a test—your job, your home, your bike, the attack, Kelly,” he paused, “it’s all a setup.”
Joshua was breathing heavily, now, through his nose. The gauze on his face was trembling and his jaw continued to move, but nothing was said.
“Mattress Nation USA,” the preacher said, “that’s where they are.”
Without a word given, Joshua hoisted himself up. The preacher gripped his shoulder and pleaded for him to lay back down, but Joshua tossed his arm and rose to his feet, the bed creaking beneath him. He was uneven in his footing, but as he took his first step in over a week, pain swelling through his knee and ankle, he grit his teeth and bore his own weight, inching toward the door, strength in each stride. And when his gauze-wrapped hand wrapped itself onto the knob, he turned to face the preacher, hawked a wad of bloody cotton straight onto the floor, and achily said:
“I feel it now, Father.”
13.
Mr. Wolfe watched on in silence, followed by the others. The lab was so quiet that Wolfe’s breath was louder than the cars driving by outside, and the oncoming crackling of thunder.
“We’re compromised, sir,” Jericho said. His swiveling chair was still, now.
“I know, Jer,” Wolfe said, all too calmly, “I know.”
He was about to scream—chew them all out and fire them and demand an explanation as to how the goddam’ lyin’ preacher got into that room—when he stopped himself and grinned—that trademarked, dubious, Wolfe grin.
“He’ll be comin’,” Wolfe said.
“Are you sure, sir?” Jericho asked. His swiveling chair was shuddering now. Wolfe nodded.
“If I was right this whole goddam’ time, he’s comin’.”
And he did come.
14.
He looked like a walking corpse. The strips of gauze that once clung to his face were sagging now, some hanging past his chin as droplets from the dark clouds above soaked into the red-stained fabric. The hospital gown he wore had untied itself in the back, exposing his bare ass, and the purple bruising that stained his lower back like an unwanted tramp stamp. He stopped himself from staggering, for a moment, and hunched down and forced himself to stare directly into a rippling puddle through the obscuring bandages—a grotesque, bulging face looking back at him through the wrappings. Tears mixed with rainwater streamed down his cheeks as he stood and continued to drag himself through the pouring rain to the phony mattress store. It was remarkable that he had any strength at all, but as Mr. Wolfe knew it, hard times made strong men.
Through the fog and rain, he could make out a figure in the distance waving him down—it was his replacement, the automated figurine of a woman that stood, proudly, draped in a soaked Lady Liberty costume and holding a liquidation sign. EVERYTHING MUST GO, it read. He stared at it for a long moment—both the sign and, finally, the robot. It was the first and, now, final insult—the straw that broke the camel’s back.
So that’s what he did. He broke it—cracked it against the curb and left it in the rain.
“Joshua?” his former boss said, the door to the phony mattress store held wide open as spattering rain stained the cleaned carpet, “What the hell’re you doin’?” His former boss—rather, the actor that was playing his former boss—took a nervous glance to the back window, a two-way mirror that overlooked the empty store, before turning back to face Knucklehead.
And that’s when he gripped his jaw, and the back of his head, and twisted. And with one loud popping crack, the actor fell dead, halfway on the carpet, and halfway in the rain.
“Holy shit!” Jericho screamed, watching his monitor through foggy spectacles. He jolted up as he and the other researchers broke into a flurry of panic. Mr. Wolfe was still, however. His eyes simply narrowed on Knucklehead as he approached the glass and, with a stray metal rod, probably from a dismantled bedframe, shattered it, revealing the hidden lab that had been there the entire time. And he wasn’t even surprised.
15.
Despite the fact that he had four eyes, Jericho, in his panic, didn’t see it coming—but only heard the sound of pens rattling against the floor before the tiny star-spangled flag was thrust through the half-inch-thick glass that shielded his right eye, punctured it, and shot straight into that big brain of his. He stammered backward into his swiveling chair and collapsed onto the floor with an exasperated moan.
And that’s when Wolfe charged at Knucklehead. But not even a tour in ‘Nam prepared him for the grip that soon found its way around his neck. Knucklehead squeezed, and slammed Wolfe into the desk, dragging his face across the keyboard until lifting it, looking dead into his eyes, and slowly parting his lips.
“W-why?” was all he could muster to say through the cottonmouth. But Wolfe didn’t answer. And that was the worst answer he could’ve given. Knucklehead lifted Wolfe by his neck, yanked him over to the shattered window, and rammed him onto a shard of broken, jagged glass. He screamed as his mouth instantly filled to the brim with blood. And, yet, through the pain, he smiled somehow.
“A-attaboy,” Wolfe spat. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he dropped dead.
16.
Through the wall, we could all hear the muffled screeches of the other researchers. And after the fourth puff of my celebratory cigar, I stood, with a stern glare and gestured for Knucklehead to—finally—be apprehended.
“And don’t you hurt him,” I snapped at the soldiers, “that’s our gold’n, fuk’n goose. You hurt him and I’ll rip your balls off. Got it?”
They did.
“Daniels,” one of my hoity-toity lackeys slurred. He was three sheets to the wind, maybe four, and reeked of expensive bourbon that trailed out of his opened, fat mouth, “what’re you screamin’ all ‘bout? Don’t you know what time it is?”
I scanned the room of silent faces—hanging on my every word. I could tell they were all a bit appalled at the display in the other room—the project we had collectively funded together—voyeurs to some, investors to Wolfe.
I sighed and, with a chuckle, kneeled down before my pudgy acquaintance, flicking up my wrist and eyeing my watch, “It’s two o’ eight AM, you drunk bastard,” I said with a smile, “which means you’re right on time…to be both drunk and a bastard.”
There was a collective chuckle around me, and the fat man toothily grinned, a glazed-over look in his eye. I stood and surveyed the room. They were all watching the monitors. Knucklehead was flailing around and ranting and raving—not saying anything, of course, but just screaming. Our boys had their guns trained on him. And even though they’d never fire, he didn’t know that—though he probably wanted them to.
“A double-blind,” I said, regaining their attention, “they set up Mr. Knucklehead, and we set up them.” I took a swig from my vodka and tonic before I continued, “A moment of silence for our fallen comrades, their sacrifice was necessary.”
There was a hiccup here and there, but they were silent—at least, for a moment.
“Especially Wolfe,” I said, “he was right all along, y’know? Hard times truly make strong men—and he was one of the strongest. To Wolfe,” I said, lifting my glass. And they all reciprocated the gesture.
After our toast, the drunk fatty had to open that fat mouth of his again, “So where the hell’d all my money go? We ruin some prick’s life and cost us six-point-five million dollars?” He wheezed and slapped his meaty thigh, “My ex-wife did that for free!”
I shot a hot breath out of my nose, and, out of pity, I reminded the drunkard and the rest of our group, who were up well past their bedtimes, mind you, about the value of what we had just accomplished:
“You of all people, Burt, should know that freedom is never free. So what if it took six and a half mil? Freedom’s usually a lot more expensive.”
“The hell’re you goin’ on ‘bout?” Burt said, his fuzzy chin wrinkled like a worn-out carpet.
“I’m talking about freedom,” I said. “It’s a double-edged sword, y’know? Freedom is dangerous, and sometimes we gotta take it away to have it. Take our friend Knucklehead, for instance—what say-so did he have in this charade of ours?”
The room was still and silent. It was a rhetorical question, after all.
“But thank God for him,” I said, winking at the phony preacher lounging in the corner, drink in his hand, “‘Cause now, we’ve got ourselves a programmed killing machine—the most dangerous man in the world—one with nothing left to lose. You wanna talk about strong Americans?” I asked, tapping the static image of Knucklehead on the monitor before me, “There’s your answer,” I smiled. And with a faint tickle, I chuckled to myself.
“Y’know, it’s funny—but Job was right, too. The Lord takes away, and the Lord gives,” I said as my finger continued to rest on the monitor’s display of Knucklehead, “just look at what He gave us.”
Category:Science
Category:Reality
Category:Weird
Category:MakRalston