Prayer
A Short Ghost Story
From here and henceforth this petition serves to give notice that Sherman (hereafter to be known as the Partier of the First Part) must have no further contact with the Partier of the Second Part. The burden of truth to be based on events herein. Fuller names not being needed on account of Sherman knows himself. Not to mention all the shit Sherman knows he’s pulled.
Not that the Partier of the Second Part, the Me Party, never pulled any bogus shit. Most notable among that shit-pulling is how the second party admittedly earned a hefty income catering to the demands of bug chasers. Last and most notable among said bug chasers being the party of Sherman.
The Party of the Me Part saw early on how some parties never get enough growing up. Those parties get the picture in their heads that someone pozzing them constitutes the lottery ticket to a forever childhood of paid-for housing and everything-everything benefits with a solid-gold caseworker and a client team always on hand to smooth over life’s rocky path. Thus the Party of Me made bank by promising to glaze their here-to-date healthy doughnut holes.
Not that monetary rewards served as the sole motivation. This, the party in question, is not especially thrown to banging holes that look like sea anemones at high tide in tide pools. Those vintage holes once skin colored only now dyed different shades from bathroom trips. Those holes that with any high tide they might pooch out like sea anemones do when feeding and crawl under the bedcovers to where they’d latch onto some terrified party’s still-asleep manhood. Incubus like. Nor is this party personally attracted to the typical middle-aged, poked-in, pleated starfish hole. No, the party drafting this petition grew weary of busting his nut in holes that look like nothing less than somebody’s exploded a roast beef sandwich. A rare roast beef sandwich with extra warts and skin tags to boot.
A rare roast beef sandwich with extra warts and skin tags to boot.
Given that everybody nowadays has tested negative or tested undetectable viral loads, the social media had backed up. Back-logged it was with bug chasers gaping to get charged. Kids too young to catch the retrovirus boat, they still want to snatch that golden ring of permanent disability with all its benefits and rewards galore, a non-stop party, party, party, because you can’t catch the same bug twice, right?
Yes or no, nobody can blame the drafter of this document for preferring to nail a long litany of glove-tight, barely legal powdered doughnuts as opposed to a tired parade of bloody, pooched-out sea anemones. You know?
Can you see where this is headed? Sherman sure as hell couldn’t.
Sherman’s golden parachute out of adulthood, his plan was to take some gift giver’s extra-chunky load of saved-up bugs even if he had to pay said gift giver for the deposition. As the Partier of the First Part, Sherman had set his barely legal heart on writing full time, writing or painting or maybe modern dance, and if lupus hadn’t exactly made the career of Flannery O’Connor nor rheumatic fever of Carson McCullers, his guess was that a chronic illness couldn’t hurt.
The party of Sherman grasped early on how childhood always ends in disaster. The bright ocean liner of freedom and energy collides with the iceberg of a car accident, a high dive into shallow water, drug addiction, student debt, a shitty marriage. Sherman wanted at least to call down his own brand of personal disaster.
His whole line of thinking Sherman emailed to this Partier of the Second Part who, online, boasted the last viable bugs worth chasing. Bugs, this party promised would geyser forth to pop Sherman’s T-cells as fast as so many helpless microwave popcorns. This Party of Me emailing in return, “You have the five hundred cash?”
To which the Sherman party texted back, “What’s cash?” He was that young.
Both parties thereby establishing a standard oral contract for the performance and discharge of services.
In the interest of full disclosure it must be noted herein that the usual pharmacology of blue and yellow pills with ethnic-sounding names—Levitra, Cialis, Viagra—had not been necessary. The Sherman party, not limited to the hole of him, but the whole of him presented as nothing less than quilted with muscle and rolled in powdered sugar. The likes of which this party would breed with both barrels so hard the bed would scoot across the room in question and out the front door and scoot down the Interstate in increments measured by each pelvic thrust, scooting across mountain ranges and international datelines only taking a break long enough to gasp for air, all the while telling the getting-bred party to keep his feet elevated so the bugs could better achieve their breaking and entering into his bloodstream.
The party of this part says to expect chills the same as you’d get after a Fire Island sunburn. Expect night sweats. Expect raging purple lesions, all good signs of a successfully completed business transaction. Even while delivering this advice is the Partier of the Second Part already turning the Sherman party face down and slipping a pillow underneath to raise the kid’s pink doughnut to the perfect angle. The Partier of the First Part protested that he hadn’t another five hundred so this party was not the total monster you might think. Not for the obvious reasons. The Me Party completes the second transaction gratis and without obligation of additional compensation.
In the interest of fuller disclosure, for additional reasons is this party not a heinous disease-spreading vector. He’s no Patient Zero, just as historical revision has proved not even Patient Zero was Patient Zero, and in the revised new light of this, the entire world rightfully owes Air Canada a big “I’m sorry” after decades of thinking the airline had foisted a deadly flight attendant on the unsuspecting populace of North America.
In defense of this party, the Partier of the Second Part is secretly bug free. He’s entering into contractual agreements and accepting compensation based upon a patently false pretense. The drafter of this document is merely lining up a steady string of non-pozzed doughnut holes to rail. No better assurance being that they’re still chasing. The French term for this deception being: Faux-pozzing.
The French term for this deception being: Faux-pozzing.
A fraud, yes, but a lie that’s kept a small army of powdered doughnuts from otherwise becoming bug infested elsewhere. A win-win, the way this party likes to frame events. This party was mashing Sherman’s hairless, pink doughnut until the cows come home. The party of this reputed bottomless viral reservoir advised said Sherman to get tested in six weeks and to return for another treatment if need be.
Predatory, yes and no, not considering that this party was saving Sherman’s life every time he hired on to ruin it.
Unaware of the actual circumstances, this Sherman, perfect Sherman, returns to get brutally gifted again and again, seeing as how this party is the only virally loaded game in town. From here and henceforth be it known that this, the Partier of the Second Part, always did boast a gift for telling an Irish Truth.
As evidence, witness how one time the Me Party dosed the whole seventh grade on LSD when it was only Easter Seals. This, the first generation raised on messaging and emails, they didn’t know what a stamp was for except as the delivery method for blotter acid. Those middle schoolers paid good money for vintage S&H Green Stamps, and they tripped their brains out based on nothing more than a promise of that outcome. Every one, even an Easter Seal kid who tripped he was an angel with angel wings and took a flier out a top-floor apartment house window, with afterwards the Medical Examiner cutting open the kid’s stomach to find only one soggy trading stamp. That, the first kid this party concedes to endangering by placebo effect.
Jump forward, back to the Sherman. The Sherman situation grew too good to be believed. Despite this party doing his due diligence upon that smooth, snug doughnut, the kid’s returning in tears with a clean bill of health. Thrust into such repeated transactions the Partier of the Second Part comes to feel a deep feeling of affection.
That’s love if love means wanting to doughnut hole the same guy every hour of the day for the rest of your life. If that’s love, this party was smitten.
For his part, this party was always saying, “You don’t look too healthy,” and asking, “Are you losing weight?” if only to put a smile on the younger man’s face.
By this point in history the two parties are cohabitating to better facilitate the near-constant process of fake gift giving. Never during such happiness would this party dream that someday he’d be filing a restraining order. A thing of beauty is supposed to be a joy forever, but other times one party is compelled to take legal action.
A thing of beauty is supposed to be a joy forever, but other times one party is compelled to take legal action.
In lieu of going for further medical tests, the Sherman party begins to lose weight. Pozzed or not, his childhood is going to end in the disaster of his own choosing. He complains of fevers and migraines. Just to boost his mood, the party filing this action looks down his young throat and agrees, “Dude, that’s thrush, alright . . .”
In a bind, this party should tell the kid, “Dude, eat! You’re going to psychosomatic yourself into the hospital!” But if he tells the truth the Sherman party will take off in search of a new doom. He’ll ferret out a giver who has the bona fide bugs to give and the mens rea to make it happen.
So the Sherman party continues to skinny out. Just for the record, this party continues to spoon-feed and sponge bathe long after raw, bareback doughnut glazing is no longer in the picture. In his own defense, this party does his best to make adulthood not look like such a hellhole that the Sherman party would rather stay in bed wearing a diaper and watch Hulu for the rest of his disabled life.
Recognizing that desperate action is needed to turn the situation around, this party tells the truth. When the body weight of the Sherman party falls below skin and bones, this party makes the admission that he’s never had any gifts to give. Therefore the Sherman party is suffering from only terminal wishful thinking.
This admission is made in full and complete knowledge that once the Sherman party recovers sufficiently to spread the news, this party, the Party of Me, will never again touch anything so fine, nothing with such fine puffy nipples, especially after the entire world gets wind that this party is shooting fake bugs.
Even if he never fills the kid’s walls ever again, this party wants the Sherman party to not die. He pulls a chair up to the sick bed and says, “You know I’m not positive?”
To this the Sherman party blinks fake-blind eyes, coughs and says, “You’re lying. You’re lying to make me feel better.”
As evidence, this party introduces a doctor’s certificate of recent date, proving his incompetence as a gift giver.
And for the record, the kid, this Sherman Partier of the First Part, he shucks his mortal coil. A heart attack, says the Medical Examiner, same as Karen Carpenter, on account of his long-term weight loss. Another fatality of the placebo effect.
Another fatality of the placebo effect.
All of this background justifies the need for immediate legal intervention.
The objective is to stem the on-going series of vexatious actions inflicted upon this party by the Sherman party. For even under circumstances that should preclude interaction, the Sherman party continues to stalk and harass the Partier of the Second Part. The voice of the deceased can be heard in the rush of the shower water. His voice whispers in the air conditioner.
A ghost of powdered sugar slides between the aforementioned bedcovers to stimulate this party to four, five, six nocturnal emissions every night. Even this party of the bottomless gonads, the Party of Me is losing weight. Doomed by Sherman to suffer death by sleep-deprived heart attack.
The rest of this party’s natural life is but a wink to where Sherman lives now. Lives or whatever, wherever he is. This party beseeches the court: Tell him to wait. Tell Sherman his death has endorsed the fake bugs of this party, and the chasers are lined up at the door with freshly shaved doughnut holes eager for glazing.
Oh, Sherman, it’s right that you should choose your own disaster. But you should not choose mine. Oh, Sherman, I will be with you forever, and I will love you forever, only not quite yet.
This party beseeches the highest authority to mitigate a de facto menace. As an incubus, the Sherman party is here and henceforth served this writ to spiritually cease and desist.
Amen.
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