james

prologue: imagine someone very much like yourself, if you are a somewhat pathetic white male with modest savings in your early thirties with liberal tendencies living in a small town in the northeast. otherwise, imagine that person. and imagine that person dies: such things usually do not happen, at least to people with savings accounts, but we all hear stories that they happen, so imagine that it does to this person, whose name is james. and imagine further – you will not be asked to do much imagining in the main story, just here in the prologue, which is fantasy – that his ideas of Utilitarianism and Atheism and Humanism, while impressive, were quite wrong, and God and Justice and Hell were more or less as most of humanity presumes them to be. and so he goes to hell, which is hot and has fire and demons, et cetera. and his death was sudden, so within a span of five minutes he goes from trying to install a light fixture to being rowed across the river Styx by a demon – a demon! - who is probably doing all sorts of nasty things to him, and that is just the beginning of what will presumably be an eternity. how sad he would be! how full of regret! and stunned, and despondent – he would very likely just curl up and become comatose, if not for whatever torments the demon would visit on him that would keep him from even that peace. and that would be just the beginning! and he would think, last night – last night! - he was watching a rerun of Seinfeld, and while that was not enjoyable, but still how preferable it was to this! he would be very, very sad.

anyway, that has little if anything to do with the story.

main story:

james and his family were not interesting, as far as characters in a story go. they were regular, but not regular in the way that is sometimes interesting, because it can reveal truths about existence, but regular in the way that is hardly worth writing about. but, sometimes interesting things happen to uninteresting people, and even though they remain uninteresting, the thing itself is interesting enough that someone feels compelled to record it, and that someone will just have to accept his misfortune that the people involved are uninteresting. and, sometimes the thing itself isn’t that interesting either. that is the case with this story.

there are seven things that are important about james, both relative to this story and overall. he is not a moral agent; he was born in the suburban united states; his genes and society are structured in such a way that he is good at math; his moral worth is very nearly equal to the sum of his wife’s and youngest two children’s love for him, minus the disdain of his eldest; he is not interested in living (which follows from the last point, as does the fact that his moral worth is not great, but that is not important); the value of an eight week old fetus inside james’ adultering friend Jill is determined in large part by james’ interest in her, the fetus, which bodes ill for it; and, he is a Pisces (which is to say, that there is nothing important about james, ultimately.)

also, james was under a lot of stress at work.

but anyway, there is nothing else to do; that is the introduction, and rationale.

the interesting thing that happened to james is that he began to grow extra toes; normally, when one’s toes are described as interesting, a more apt word would be revolting, and that would typically be the case with james as well, as he paid little heed to their upkeep. james often had dreams where terrible things would happen to his body, usually involving his face catching on fire or his teeth falling out. but, he would be relieved to realize that they were just dreams, when he would later wake up. so he was not relieved, of course, when he noticed that he had an extra toe, and he was awake. of course, what do you do when you see you have an extra toe – he recounted them, though being good at math, he had counted them correctly the first time. it was not a nub of a toe, nor was it an additional little toe; it was a regular toe, most similar to the one next to the pinky toe, and placed right in the middle, so perfectly that at first glance, you wouldn’t know. and vexingly, the nail was well trimmed. and, his foot didn’t seem any wider than normal, and in fact his shoe still fit, though maybe a little snug, though maybe that was in his head, which would be understandable. sigh! an extra toe.

and at this point, it’s worth mentioning that it was on his left foot, this first extra toe.

his wife – who is not worth naming, though this is no reflection on my wife – did not notice. whereas once she would play with his toes as he drifted off to sleep, it had in fact been several years since she’d even really seen his toes – neither were especially adventurous – and so, if his main concern was hiding his extra toe from her, it would not have been so difficult. but, his main concern was the toe itself, because he was old and uninteresting enough to have grown quite fond of his body, and he had been fooled into believing that it was some sort of flabby temple. so, he set about removing the toe.

it didn’t occur to james to go to a doctor, because he hadn’t been to a doctor in many years, and he’d have to ask his wife about the insurance, because this was before they passed socialized medicine and he couldn’t remember their plan. but that was not even the issue, because he soon realized that, while he was certain that he had an extra toe, he was quite uncertain as to which toe was extra. it was not the pinky, nor the big one – he clearly had one each of those. but of the four in the middle, they all looked fairly similar, and none had any newness about it. and, he could move them all, and they all seemed to have bone in them, such that removing it – in a bit of a daze, he had gone for and in fact retrieved his pliers – might actually be more difficult than at first he thought, though in retrospect, of course it is difficult to remove an extra toe, and everything that he did was in the same sort of daze. his next thought was, how could he ever go to the beach? and though he never went to the beach, he clung quite tightly to his cherished illusion of freedom, and hated to see it shrunk even a little. but that was not even the issue; the issue, of course, was his extra toe.

it was the sort of thing that ruined an evening. his wife was out with her friends, god bless them all, though of course there’s no god. and he’d quite looked forward to the time alone, because he could do all the things that he couldn’t do ordinarily, like sit in a room by himself. (earlier, it was mentioned that he had children; they were at a sleepover, say. and the fourth was still enwombed.) but as absurd as it was to have grown an extra toe, it was more so to ignore it. and really, this day and age – with cell phones, and post-9/11 – was it really so strange to grow an extra toe? maybe there was actually a rash of it going about, and no one would speak up for the shame. or maybe there was an underground network of rogue doctors who did nothing but toe removal to treat this scourge – but how would you find them? james googled ‘toe removal.’ most entries were for toenail removal, often to fight fungus, one of which included a youtube video that he very stupidly watched; there was a thinkpiece on camel toes, which distracted him for a bit; and then, finally, a blog that dealt with toe removal explicitly, though in the context of women trying to fit into particular shoes. But james was not a feminist, and he was not trying to have fewer than five on his left foot, he just wanted five exactly, and the phrase ‘lifelong pain and disablement’ stuck out, as phrases like that do. so, square one.

james stood up, and walked around a bit. he could walk just fine; better, actually, though he hadn’t had a problem with it before. maybe he would keep it. that was certainly the easiest route. he couldn’t really imagine doing away with it himself anymore, and if he got help, the questions he’d have to deal with would be intolerable. and it wasn’t doing any harm, and he didn’t wear sandals anyway, so maybe no one would even notice.

that ends part one, where james is introduced, and he grows his first extra toe.

part 2.

[aside before part 2 begins: it is quite possible that the toe is a metaphor, and not coincidentally, there is a presidential race in full swing as i write this. but, i am not saying that it is a metaphor; it might be a very real toe, as it is to james, who is fictional]

days passed, as they do. james wore a sock on his left foot, and only took it off to shower, and when he did, he looked to see that he still had his extra toe, but after confirming he did, tried hard to think no more of it; he didn’t look at his feet as he dried off, and quickly put the sock back on. thus, life.

but, james grew another extra toe. it was not something he had planned to do, of course, nor was it something that he had really considered to be a possibility. upon growing an extra toe, you don’t think, i hope this is the last extra toe i grow; you think, how can i get rid of this toe? if you do not believe this, trust james. so it was an unpleasant surprise to find that he grew another. but, within the realm of finding extra toes, this one was particularly unpleasant, because it was on his left buttock. needless to say, james was at first confused to sit on the toilet and find that he was sitting on something; more confused when he stood up and found nothing on the seat; more confused when he sat down again and found that there was still something there; confused and unsettled when he reached behind and found that there was something on his buttocks; and then, absolutely appalled to twist his neck and look and see a toe, with toenail polish. red. and, here james considered that he might be mad. he had recently seen a beautiful mind, and figured that if russell crowe could see three extra people, he could see two extra toes, one on his buttock. but, thinking he was mad didn’t help him any, especially since he was on his way to work. and, while his foot-toe was hidden by his shoe, his butt-toe was somewhat apparent through the seat of his pants. and there was nothing to be done about it.

james called in sick. his wife was already at work, but, when she came home, she would certainly notice the newest toe. and, then he would have to mention the first extra toe, and it would seem as though he lied by omission, and this would lead to a discussion about their relationship, even though the real issue was his eleventh and twelfth toes, and he was not at all in the mood for a relationship talk, and he couldn’t be blamed (nor could she, or anyone). james considered killing himself, but the truth was he was not a man of action or courage, and so, he got drunk.

he would have happily drunk enough to kill himself, but again, he was old, and so he fell asleep well before his organs became concerned. then he woke up and threw up on the blue couch, and he didn’t clean it up, which would be even more trouble later on. he thought briefly of leaving it all and joining a circus, but he had no idea how to go about it, and the eleventh toe probably wasn’t remarkable enough – sometimes people are born with such things, and he had no proof it was new – and while the twelfth was remarkable, he was also quite embarrassed because his buttocks were hairy, in a way that he didn’t think anyone else’s were, and while for some reason he didn’t mind people looking at his butt-toe – he was quickly accepting that he was something to be laughed at, and his moral worth was diving – he did not want people laughing at his hairy buttocks, because he had been born that way. and he thought of course of shaving, but this whole line of thinking was so abhorrent to him that he nixed the idea. (even if he hadn’t, it required initiative that is determined largely by the presence of conciptillation in the amygdala, and he was one and a half standard deviations below the mean in this respect – so, that was that.)

and what would you do? he stayed in bed, on his side, though he was more typically a back sleeper. when he thought, he thought of his wife’s reaction to the twelfth toe. but, for good or ill [author’s note: ill], that proved to be a non-issue, of sorts, because by the time his wife came home from work, he had grown a thirteenth toe behind his left ear, and a fourteenth smack underneath his nose.

at this point, it might be worthwhile to devote a paragraph towards character development. james was a former catholic; he was a democrat; he was predispositioned for prostate cancer, but he was unaware of this; his middle school language arts teacher had fondled other boys, but not him; and, he was from the midwest, and in the gaps that aren’t yet filled in, he was very similar to other midwesterners you know or imagine. (mentally; obviously, there are physical differences).

when james’ wife arrived home, her first sentence used the word fuck three times. as in, ‘holf fuck, what the fuck is that – and what the fuck is that on our couch?’ the first was an interjection, the second referred to his nose-toe, and the third to his vomit on the blue couch. she had groceries, which made her seem more sympathetic, domestic, like she was a 50s housewife who already had to put up with a lot and should not have to put up with this. james didn’t know what to say, and he wasn’t sure what he was meant to take responsibility for first.

‘i made sick on the couch,’ said james – then, he realized that that was not an adequate explanation of the situation, and that was not even the way he normally talked. james’ wife was not the least satisfied – ‘what the fuck is that on your face,’ she said, loudly.

with the introduction of dialogue, I’ve forgotten to say several things that are relevant to the story. first, james’ wife came home three hours early, her office closed because of a strange smell. (again, this was post 9/11 but pre 3/17). second, it was a woman’s toe on james’ face, and in fact they were all women’s toes, but this one just looked especially effeminate while the others, even the one painted red, were just more like asexual toes. finally, jill was on her way to james’ home and would be there soon.

‘fuck, is that a toe? what did you do?’ obviously james’ wife can’t be blamed, but it’s just as obvious that she was not making positive contributions to an already unpleasant situation. ‘i’ve been growing toes,’ said james, a bit feebly. seeing her confusion, he dropped his pants and showed her number twelve. ‘no,’ she said, then left the apartment.

james’ wife’s departure was a relief both for him and the author, who has trouble writing dialogue. he was sober enough now to resume drinking (another thing that applies to us both). but, of course, when he went to drink it all ran past his toe; he tried drinking vodka through a straw, but it was as bad as you’d imagine; he had a bit of an idea and loaded it into a squirt gun, then shot it down his throat, but it just spread the taste across his mouth without really doing any good. it was a lonely moment for james.

outside, jill ran into james’ wife; there was some screaming, but, the voice in this story right now is limited omniscience, so we don’t know what happened.

james dialed 911 on his cellphone – it had gone beyond his control, he wanted to be sedated and to have people do to him what they will, he didn’t care. he started to tell the woman about the toes, then wisely said instead he’d tried to kill himself, then gave his address and waited. but, 911 didn’t come. james was sweating, and he couldn’t stop scratching his back. he went to get a drink of water, but then nearly choked on it. then, on spitting it back up, james realized that something was wrong. and the something, of course, was the toe that had grown on his tongue. ‘fuck, fuck,’ he yelled, but realized it was unintelligible, and the only real sound was that of his toenail clicking against his teeth.

having something in your mouth that you don’t want in your mouth is one of the more unpleasant experiences one can have, within reason. james dragged himself to a mirror to examine his tongue, but in doing so, was made to witness something again worse; the flesh on his left cheek reddened, swelled a bit, then woopf!, out popped a toe. james passed out.

asterisks

james awoke, as if from a dream. and, it was from a dream. he felt his face, then rushed to the mirror – no toes. it was saturday morning, and his wife was still in bed. a silly grin spread across his face. it had been a dream, he thought, and he went back to bed.

and it had actually been a dream, except for the first extra toe, which was real. and, it was real that he was about to grow more. just not on his face, or buttocks – that had been his imagination running away from him. if it’s frustrating to read something and find that it had been a dream, how much more frustrating must it be to grow an extra toe, then a series of extra toes, then wake up and believe that it was all a dream, then fall asleep and wake up again later to realize that the first part hadn’t been a dream, but was really real? so now you know a bit how he feels.

part 3.

[aside – it makes me think of the toes i have grown, of pride, intolerance, et cetera, that i have worn on my own face, and waggled in front of perfect strangers.]

here’s the background story on james: when he was 14, he developed an unnamed condition in which he stabbed people. it began in a classroom, when he quite abruptly stabbed the young girl sitting in front of him with a pencil, to everyone’s surprise, and then stomped loudly on the ground after she gave a little shriek.

james was removed from the class, reasonably, and taken to see the principal, whom he stabbed. the principal smacked him – this was not reasonable, according to byron white, though he was on the losing end of a 5-4 decision – but it was certainly understandable, as is anything to someone with appropriate perspective. anyway, she didn’t smack him very hard. nevertheless, it made her nervous enough to decide to not make so big a deal of the whole event, so she had james wait in her office until classes changed, then sent him on his way with a warning.

but to james, the warning had little effect. more troubling to him than potential detentions was that he was stabbing people without meaning to, and stomping, as well, which the principal said made him look petulant, a word he did not know. but he did know that ped meant foot, so he thought she was being descriptive rather than insulting. and, waiting alone in the principal’s office for the bell – she had gone to ‘see about the halls’ – he watched with a touch of despair as his right arm made stabbing motions at the air in front of him, and though by now he had fortunately put down his pencil, the sight was still disturbing. and then, bam, he stomped. when the bell rang, james did not go to class, and instead walked home.

this was a ballsy move for 14 year old james, who had not skipped class before, though then again, he hadn’t stabbed anyone before either, so this was a day of firsts. he drew some looks from some of the older, sexually-active students as he darted through the hall, his left arm trying to prevent his right arm from stabbing wildly. bam, bam, bam, and james left and went home.

james, who was not stupid, went to webmd as soon as he had opened a can of coke. he entered in ‘uncontrollable stabbing,’ and came up with three entries: one on MS, one on migraines, and one titled ‘Top 10 Reasons Women Don’t Want to Have Sex.’ None seemed appropriate (though the word ‘stabbing’ at least figured into the first two, followed by pain) so he clicked on the one about sex, because again, he was 14, and this was enough to distract him. after reading the comments section for an half hour or so, he hadn’t found exactly why that link had been returned, and his parents came home.

part 4.

and so, the ordeal with the toes was not the first peculiar thing to happen to james. it was the second, and there would be a third.

here's a bit of advice. if you told a rabbit that she eats her own poop, she would not understand you. but, it's true nonetheless. it's the same with james.

the third peculiar thing to happen to james occurred that november. but, this is skipping ahead; the toe issue, which occupied the first few pages of this story, is unresolved. james woke later that saturday, about eleven o'clock, and his wife was already up, and had in fact left the apartment. he thought briefly about his toe dream, but not with any distress, as he believed that the crisis had past, and was not a real crisis anyway, but was instead a bad dream, as though that were less real than his current life, in which he owned property and had affairs and earned money by being a partial owner in companies that pollute the environment and had several hundred times the net worth of people who didn't even eat meat. so, everything was copacetic – it was a word from a song that he clung to, though, he couldn't remember the song, though, he was pretty sure it was meant to rhyme with 'so pathetic.' probably one of the bands with a harvard frontman. donuts and cheese for lunch, he had work work to do but he didn't do it, and he didn't dare call jill because he didn't know where his wife was, and the uncertainty made his bowels hurt so he didn't want to leave the apartment, and he kept checking the news on his computer. a long paragraph! but, it's a pivot point in the story and merits some detail.

but the fact is, he did not realize he still had his eleventh toe that entire day. no, he did not take a shower, because it was saturday and he'd showered every day already that week, and he just did not feel like it, on a saturday, and he was never very dirty anyway, because he was well enough off. and, he did not put on socks, which might make you think he would therefore have seen his toes at some point, but really the only time you notice your toes is when you put on your socks, and how much time do you think would elapse between growing an extra toe and noticing? the light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach the earth, as a reference. so he walked around barefoot all day without realizing that the first part of his dream, which by now he'd quite forgotten, was not a dream but real.

but his wife noticed, of course. she would. she came home with her rucksack full of market shopping, placed everything on the counter, took one look at james and said, “Holf fuck, what the fuck is that?” because for some reason, her gaze went immediately to his toes. intuition? and, if you don't believe in that, how else did it come to be that she said the exact same thing when seeing his eleventh toe as she had in james' dream when seeing his nose toe? right down to the typo. of course, this is fiction, but the point still stands that we live in a determinist universe where accurate predictions of the future can be made given knowledge of the present state and direction, and this quite possibly happens subconsciously all the time.

“do you have an extra fucking toe? is this a fucking joke? how long has that been there?” and she went on and on. it's not necessary to record everything she had to say, and even the things i have recorded are inaccurate.

“i don't know,” said james, and if ever it is appropriate to replace 'said' with 'stammered,' it is here.

they continued for some time – blah blah blah.

“you know what,” said james' wife, who again, i haven't bothered naming and she's leaving the story now so i won't bother here either, “you need to figure this out. the insurance cards are in the bureau. i'm going to marcy's.” and she left.

it's true i've painted an unflattering picture of james' wife, and it's not entirely merited, but what i haven't said is that she talks loudly – you wouldn't know it, just from reading – and i can't stand people like that, even though it's not their fault, and so i'm predisposed to dislike her. in fairness though, she did at least tell james where the insurance cards were, which might be useful, and which she didn't have to do, and he certainly didn't know himself. though, maybe she was just preventing him from having to call her later to ask about them, which would take her back to being quite selfish, though of course everyone is, though ironically, there is no Self!

but she left, and james got drunk – not a lot of arrows in his 'dealing with problems' quiver, it's true. he didn't really get drunk though, because he didn't care for the taste of hard alcohol, so he had some alcoholic lemonade, which got him somewhere but he kept needing to go to the bathroom. but he did get drunk enough to strike upon one idea of what to do, and though it was not a good one, its implementation was within his reach, and so he went for it. he took a close up picture of his foot, and posted it to his blog. caption: “fuck my toes.” and then he went to sleep.

there are a couple things to note, here. first, it was not “his blog” - i was wrong to say that. it was more of an open liberal political forum that he posted to from time to time, to make sure that everyone knew what he thought on the issues of the day. as such, it had a bit wider readership than it would have if it had been just his blog, because his thoughts were banal and his web design skills minimal, and any blog he had created would therefore have been terribly dull. second, though he'd meant to take a picture of his six-toed foot, there were actually now seven toes. ever since the argument with his wife, he had tried not to look at it, so hadn't noticed when one more grew in. and he didn't even notice it when he took the picture, because he didn't want to look and his vision was a bit blurred, and if you think that is implausible, it is not, you should try it. and he didn't notice the seventh when he posted it either. unlike in his dream, they were all men's toes, and an analysis of the toe prints would show them all to be his – that part of his dream, about them being ladies' toes, had just been his imagination getting away from him, as had the part about them growing underneath his nose, on his buttock and on his tongue. so, those were the two additional points to note.

but none of this explains how james came to be elected mayor.

you're familiar with memes, yes? because that's what “fuck my toes” became, on the Internet, along of course with the seven-toed picture. and, it just happened to be the year 2007, which in james' town meant that it was a mayoral election year. and, because they elect mayors in an off year, there's generally low turnout. and someone – it's not clear who, but it wasn't james, and it wasn't me or you – made a website www.sevenin07.com – like the drink! kind of – and the website was devoted to electing james mayor, based on the user information from his profile on the liberal political forum. anyway, this part is dull, you can easily enough take a lesson on how the internet works and how such stunts are pulled off, it's not worth going into. suffice it to say, james narrowly won a write-in campaign, without his knowledge, as he'd essentially gone dark since that day and had been fired from his job, and had not even seen his wife, who had eventually separated from him via an email that he hadn't replied to. when he found out, however, it gave him a bit of a renewed purpose, and he accepted the job, and was quite good at it – balanced the budget, lowered taxes, etc – and, several years on, was beginning his reelection campaign.

up until now, the moral might be something like, Hey, Look on the Bright Side! or, Things Will Get Better! or, Don't Give Up! but, it would have been better for james had he given up, actually, in the long run. because, while james is smelling like roses after part four, there are five parts, total.

part 5.

when you're a politician, you don't want to open a newspaper one day and find a story about a woman who says you had an affair with her, and that affair produced a child. and if you're inclined to deny it, you especially don't want that child to have extra toes, when you're rather well known for having extra toes – even a Creationist could put that together.

and that was not the worst of it – you remember that his oldest child does not care for him? the true reason is fairly innocuous, that she is half a standard deviation below the norm in anonctillin, amorphillicin and amptylilin, and while half a standard deviation is not too large, being deficient in all three leads to a lack of filial emotions, and because “scientists” hadn't yet traced filialty to these three chemicals she went to a psychiatrist, who convinced her that james had molested her as a child, and while she didn't quite remember that it did explain why she couldn't stand to be around him, so she thought it was likely correct. the psychiatrist went on to have sex with her, which ended his marriage, though he was given partial visitation rights to his two children, the first of whom eventually had a string of boyfriends and then killed himself, the latter of whom went to art school but was not terribly good so she married an executive in a factory farming company, and she went on to have two of her own children, the first of whom died in a drunk driving incident at 15, the latter of whom killed three people at a mall and is serving life in prison, though is up for parole next week and hopes to become a pottery instructor based on classes she took while in prison. in the short term, though, this was bad news for james, because his daughter went public, on advice from her psychiatrist, in order to cleanse.

and that was not the worst of it – because james, no longer with jill or his wife, had taken to call ladies, provided by his staff, and did not see a moral problem because the call ladies were expensive, and so he believed this was not immoral or even amoral but instead close instances of the Form of Call Lady, and so who was hurt? but this one lady in particular was hurt, because she died during sex with james, though it was not his fault – he liked a touch of oral on occasion but otherwise he was standard missionary, and people shouldn't die from that, but this lady did because of an undiagnosed heart condition inherited from her grandfather, which fortunately at least was the only time her grandfather played a role in her sex life. so, now there was a “dead hooker problem,” as they say in politics. the problem was somewhat compounded by the fact that there were three government employees making well over forty thousand dollars a year who did not exist, and that money instead went into the Mayoral Recreation fund, and her death threatened to shine a bit of light on all that. (in a just world, the light would shine on how james was able to balance the budget while maintaining such an extravagant fund for his own pleasure, several times the normal amount for a town his size, and he would be lauded. unless the light shone too brightly, revealing that he had stolen money from the town's pension fund and over four hundred people would ultimately die an average of three years and two months earlier due to not being able to afford medical care in their old age, and then he would be reviled again, at least by the elderly, though in a self-correcting solution to the problem, many would be dead before the next election anyway, and their outrage would fall silent on dusty crochet patterns. but even then he would still be a finalist for the Chamber of Commerce's Town Executive of the Year, an award that comes with a prize of over 10,000 of the local currency.)

and actually, that was not the worst of it either – james had pancreatic cancer and would die an excruciating death over the course of the next several months. but, james was as yet unaware of this so it doesn't enter into the story.

this brings us to present day, james huddling with his advisors, and crafting a plan to deal with the first three problems, which had all more or less developed in the past twelve hours, while james was reading a picture book to elementary school students. instant polls taken during the day seemed to indicate that the public had turned away from him, though, these were not scientific polls and were instead just things his deputy mayor had overheard while out at lunch that afternoon, so not too much stake would be put in those. there were three advisors – the deputy mayor, a legal counsel, and executive assistant – and james.

the legal counsel had gone to law school to please his wife, who liked money. but, he was not a good lawyer, as he would tend to agree with whatever anyone tried to convince him of, so he fell through various law firms and cities before his wife's father found him his current job, which involved very little work and to which he was well-suited. the executive assistant thought that she could be a better mayor than james, and she was planning her own political career, but her boyfriend didn't always use condoms and she was catholic, so, she would instead go on to win PTA elections, though even those she had to fix. the deputy mayor had had a reuben sandwich for lunch, as he did most days, and at 36 was within seven years of the heart attack that would kill him. due to the earlier death of his semi-wealthy grandparents, he actually had enough savings to live out these last seven years without working, and he hated his job and so could have easily enough spent his time between Yellowstone, Yosemite and Glacier, where he probably would have started to eat better and maybe not die, but, he believed that he needed to save for his retirement. and james, you remember james.

they sat in his office, james behind his desk, the other three in chairs in a semi-circle in front of the desk. a TV was off, there were papers and books on the desk, and the room was lit by fluorescent lights that didn't look as sickly as sometimes fluorescent lights do.

there was dialogue – imagine this for yourself. suffice it to say, none of it was reassuring. the deputy mayor and the executive assistant were both fairly unhappy people, so they had little desire to assuage their boss (and the latter was distracted by thinking if there would be a special election), and the counsel was too dim to realize that some consolation was called for.

james felt ill. he started to have that feeling you have right before you grow extra toes, though of course you probably wouldn't recognize it, but he did. and in truth, STA has been shown to be brought on by stress, though, stress is not a sufficient condition, of course: there are other factors. but james was predisposed to them all, so for him stress was enough to put him over the edge, and nothing adds to one's already-high stress level quite the way that growing extra toes does, so, james had entered vicious-cycle territory. “blah blah blah,” said the assistant, as james grew an eighth toe, then a ninth. he brushed away a small tear as his shoe burst, it was a loafer though and rather quiet, so the assistant kept talking, oblivious, as james grew his toes. 10, 11, 12. he didn't look, but he could feel them. the others sat around the table, thinking the morning's events were still pressing, and the counsel tried to feign some interest in them to please james, who now was trying to feign interest in them as well, as he was quite sure that were he to stand up and say, “i'm growing extra toes!” his administration would be at an end. 13, 14, 15. the body is quite adaptable, and it handled his first two extra toes with great aplomb, but this was too many. his foot ballooned up like a blowfish, covered in toes, now reaching his sole, now his ankle.

a brief aside – james had been dabbling in lucid dreaming, i haven't mentioned it before because it didn't seem relevant and i only just found out myself, but one of the techniques meant to import lucid dreams is to give yourself periodic reality checks during the day to determine if you are awake, one such check is to push the fingers of your right hand through the palm of left hand – if you can, then, you are likely not awake, as this is impossible. james did this now, with his hands under the table in his lap, and confirmed that he was indeed awake. and i mention this only because earlier in the story there was the ugly incident wherein james turned out to have been dreaming for a few pages, and i wanted to be clear that we weren't repeating that device, which i know shouldn't have even been used in the first place, and wouldn't have been if things hadn't been getting out of hand too early.

on his shin now, popping up along his fibula and towards his knee. “james!” exasperated the assistant. “are you even listening? do you want to do the address or not? god damnit, am I the only one who even cares?”

james had not been listening, and had to act quickly to regain control of the room. He grabbed a steak knife on his desk – he used this in place of a letter opener – and stabbed the assistant in the neck. the neck is one of the more unpleasant places to be stabbed, for a number of reasons. first, it holds your esophagus, which you need to breathe. second, it contains quite a few arteries, or if not, at least a small number of important ones, as it seems that the brain would need to get a supply of blood somehow, and how else would it? so, when you're stabbed there, it's very messy. third, your spine's in there too, though if you're stabbed from the front of the neck, then by the time the knife makes it to the spine, it's probably already gone through the esophagus and arteries so you've bigger fish to fry than a lifetime of paralysis. anyway, he stabbed her, and you'll recall that this was foreshadowed, so it's not as though i've introduced something unfairly.

well, what a to-do! the assistant made just the most awful gurgling noises, she can't be blamed but still, it was not the level-headedness that the situation called for. the legal counsel sat a bit dumb-founded. the deputy mayor got up from his seat. james withdrew the knife – he really, really, really hadn't meant to stab her, and he was in a bit of shock as well. the deputy mayor drew his sidearm – he was from the south – and shot james in the head. that was cool and level headed, and much appreciated by the others, but then he panicked a bit, because right before he shot him james had dropped the knife and fallen back in his chair, so he really wasn't a threat anymore, and, was this still self-defense or was it now murder? a relevant question, because the deputy mayor had been involved in two eerily-similar situations earlier in his life, both times as the shooter, and the human brain has evolved to identify patterns, which is what the judge would very likely do. anyway, it wasn't murder as james didn't die, though the bullet would be lodged in his skull for the rest of his short life. but the deputy mayor didn't realize that, and he shot the legal counsel – he started to write a story in his head about what happened that he could tell the police, that the assistant attacked the counsel, james attacked the assistant, the deputy mayor shot james, then the assistant grabbed the gun and shot the counsel – that didn't really make sense, but he should get her fingerprints on the gun just in case. so he wrapped the assistant's fingers around the handle of the gun, and of course she was still panicking and gurgling and sputtering and suffocating, though actually the wound was not fatal but she can be forgiven for overreacting, and then when she heard the gun shots and felt something being put in her hand, which she couldn't see because the blood had got in her eyes, and she must have squeezed, because BAM-O! the deputy mayor took it in the stomach, a very painful place to be shot. silence; then, james' cell phone rang after a few minutes, it was jill, she wanted to talk.

and, scene.