Previously: Part One – The Annunciation, Part Two – The Obligatory Production Number
Jane Fappington-Smyth slumped in the elevator lobby, waiting for the old woman to arrive, annoyed that she had to meet and greet her predecessor like she was an intern or an assistant or something. She, Jane, was now Editor of Thought! magazine; Regina Kestrel had had her day. But no matter, today would be her shining moment. She was going to do the one thing which Kestrel never could – rid the magazine’s website of the hated yokel commenters. Gilhooly and the others would take her seriously after this.
She could hear the receptionist yelling, presumably into the phone handling one of the many prank calls. “No, there is no Hugh Briss here. Please stop calling.” She wondered if this one would last a week. The elevator lobby was dated and old-fashioned, just like Kestrel. Lots of chrome and smoked glass, the shiny sculpture of the Thought! magazine nameplate covering the wall opposite the elevators. Large antique metal ashtrays, tapered metal bowls from the days when people actually smoked lined the walls. This was a liberalterian magazine, after all. A real one that got printed out on thin shiny paper every month and mailed to people who mattered. People who had cocktail parties where you could meet Tim Russert and get invited onto the Sunday morning cable talk shows if you sucked up.
Gilhooly joined her in the lobby. It made Jane feel slightly better that she wasn’t greeting Kestrel alone, but equally annoyed that Kestrel was still getting the royal treatment after all these years. “So, Jane, about that Salter fellow, the one whose mother, the nurse…”
“If we’d have covered that then it would have given them a taste of power,” said Jane, interrupting peevishly. “What, then? Thought! acting as their own personal Sixty Minutes whenever any of their yokel friends or relatives get in trouble? These are not people who exercise good judgment; this is the ‘hold my beer’ crowd. It was a good opportunity to rid ourselves of them, and I took it. That bullshit piece I published the next day about that other police overreaction case was the ultimate ‘fuck off’ to them. It felt so good after all those years of sleights and snark.”
“The man sells tractors for a living. Tractors.” Jane was on a tear. “Imagine bringing him to a cocktail party. ‘What do you do, Mr. Salter?’ ‘I sell tractors for a living. Hyuk.’ What would that person actually have to say to Andrew Sullivan or Arianna Huffington? ‘Yep, tractor business real good this year.’ Andrew may be barking mad, but at least he’s witty and presentable, and he had the foresight to not have comments on his website,” she said, getting in a desperate dig at the founding editor.
“Don’t even get me started on his kids’ names – ‘Notapenny Fortribute’ – poor thing will have to spend her life explaining to people that her father is a bitter clinger. Hopefully, she goes by ‘Penny.’”
“Jane,” the voice came through her fashionable headset with the purple light which matched the highlights of her hair. Just because you were editor of a major think-tank magazine didn’t mean you had to stop looking stylish, unlike Kestrel who looked like everyone’s grandma and probably bought her dowdy outfits at Dress Barn. “Ms. Kestrel is boarding the elevator. Oh, and the commenters just mooned Preet and taunted him in song and someone managed to setup a live feed; it’s going viral.”
“Fuck.” Jane felt herself about to throw up and looked around desperately. The ashtrays. She lurched toward the nearest one on her over-tall heels and buried her face in the bowl just in time. The gush of digestive juices amplified the long-dormant stale cigarette smell which wafted up to her nostrils causing a fresh gout of vomit, this time fully emptying her stomach into the foul, reeking bowl which didn’t have a flush feature.
The elevator doors opened. The first thing that hit Regina Kestrel was the acrid stench of vomit. Hmph. In her day it had been piss; good writers always smelled of piss. She stepped off the elevator and recognized her successor, all rump and purple bangs, obliviously throwing up into one of the corridor ashtrays. The purple hair always reminded Regina of her ten-year-old great niece.
“Dmitry.”
“Regina,” said Gilhooly sheepishly, glancing at Fappington-Smyth.
Jane straightened up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and turned around to see Kestrel. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
“Another one, dearie? At your age, too,” asked Kestrel.
“Hello, Regina,” she said hoarsely, her throat burning with stomach acids. “No, it’s not that. Those yokeltarian monsters in the dungeon just mooned and taunted Preet in a really bad musical number and it got out and went viral. But I’m getting rid of them, and those stupid squirrels, too!”
“Foolish girl,” hissed Kestrel.
“Oh, what-ev-er,” Jane finally broke composure and did something she had always wanted to do, sass and eye-roll the old woman. “You always hated the commenters, anyway.”
Gilhooly shook his head slowly.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened and squirrels began streaming out. Goddammit, thought Jane, someone had put the motherfucking squirrels on the goddamn elevator as a joke, probably that little shit Suave. She was so going to dock his pay for that. The squirrels didn’t scatter but stayed together in a roiling gray mass which swarmed in her direction. She stepped out of the path of the swarm, pressing herself up against the wall. The swarm then changed direction towards her. Jane looked desperately at Gilhooly and Kestrel, who looked on disapprovingly from well outside the path of the swarm.
Suddenly, she understood. She had laughed at their warnings and ignored their explanations. She had persisted in her attempts to destroy tradition. At least she wouldn’t have to live with the shame and embarrassment of defeat.
She backed up against the wall and began screaming. The swarm quickly engulfed her and the screaming continued for thirty-eight seconds, a very long and uncomfortable thirty-eight seconds for Gilhooly and Kestrel, and presumably the poor receptionist. The swarm of squirrels then disengaged, revealing a skeletonized body. The face had been eaten completely off, but the purple-streaked hair remained intact. The body seemed to want to take a step forward but both knees collapsed, then the pelvis hit the floor and the torso pitched forward into a faceplant on the carpet and lay still.
“You tell them and tell them,” observed Kestrel.
“Indeed,” said Gilhooly, sucking on his unlit pipe. Gilhooly pulled out his phone and called the special emergency number he’d been provided.
The swarm of squirrels returned to the elevator doors and reared up to push the “down” button.
“Sunshine Cleaning Services…Good evening, Dr. Gilhooly…Yes, we’ll send a van right away, about fifteen minutes…Of course, sir, the ‘problem’ will be handled with the utmost discretion and dignity.”
Next: The taint-withering conclusion.
