The Bluff
March 6 1985
A rental agent finds contractor John Hobart his first apartment in Las Vegas. When John registers he
is appalled by what he experiences in the office. His new landlady is possibly the most obese person John has ever seen. Her
complexion closely resembles a deluxe pizza with everything but green peppers.
There are two Yorkshire Terriers and seven cats longing on the gaudy faded carmine Victorian style furniture.
There is a large cage with two big blue and red parrots. The room smells like there must be a kettle of boiling cabbage nearby.
The landlady smiles up at John from her motorized wheelchair with small perfect little white teeth. She
looks him up and down and the look she then gives him can only be described as sickening because of what it seems to suggest.
John makes it through this distasteful meeting hoping not to see much of this individual in between his normal monthly visits
to the office.
All goes well for about a week and then John feels the first bedbug on his ankle as he wakes up. He has
no experience with these insects, but within three weeks they begin to bother him. The number and size has increased rapidly.
He finds he is beginning to wake up in the middle of the night from the attacks, so he gets some ant and roach killer at the
supermarket.
On the way out to work he sprays the entire bed and the area surrounding it. When he comes back at five
he ventilates the room before making dinner. That night there are even more bugs than before.
Next he repeats the treatment. This time he also uses a foggier to kill all hidden bugs in the entire room.
Poison must make these bugs horny because again the numbers only increase.
Next the fogger treatment with some special "bedbug killer" sold only in big hardware stores. Ain't messin
with em now - we're goin to professional strength. This new stuff must nourish them. Still they increase.
John by now has got into the habit of waking up every two hours, sweeping the bugs into a small dustpan,
and washing them down the kitchen sink. Subsequent poisonings have had no effect. He doesn't want to tell the landlady because
of a clause in the agreement which has led him to believe that the management will turn his room upside down with their debugging
process.
John's accumulated bites have resulted in a rash all over his body. Apparently the bugs somehow poison the
blood. The rash causes him to scratch. This cuts him slightly in places and the smaller bugs gather to drink the blood droplets
like piglets at a trough.
The weeks pass and John begins to suspect another level of pinioning from the bugs - some kind of nuerotoxin,
because his right leg has begun to seize up. Many creatures secrete chemicals like anticoagulants or anesthetics to aid them
in easy uninterrupted bloodsucking, but why nuerotoxin?
John has sciatica and now renews his physical therapy exercises. At night when the leg spasms, he gulps
large glasses of water and takes extra Vitamin B tablets. The problem abates temporarily whenever he does this.
Sometimes he thinks that he shouldn't be so adaptive to this vileness and simply move out instead, but he
is otherwise very pleased with this residence and has after all managed to avoid unnecessary contact with the landlady. Several
weeks pass. The problem increases and with it the frequency of his remedy.
Then one day a terrible fright. When John awakens he can't move a muscle. Complete paralysis from head to
toe. He lies looking at the ceiling wondering if he will now dehydrate and starve. John sleeps naked with no covers and soon
the bedbugs begin to swarm all over him. Within two hours there is one about every square half inch. At this rate they
will drain him.
Hours pass and then he hears his door being unlocked. The landlady comes waddling into the room completely
naked like an eight hundred pound white duck. She stands glowering seductively down at John. A very frightening sight indeed.
"Well, Mr. Hobart, or should I call you John?" she says as she tickles the bottom of his foot. "It looks
like I'm finally going to have my way with you. And my little pets are having such a nice feast. You have been an excellent
tenant, but this is extremely generous of you. Such hospitality. I guess you must be getting hungry yourself by now."
The landlady used to be a nurse. Within an hour John is all hooked up with a highly nutritious intravenous
solution and the requite tubes inserted to drain off metabolic jetsam. "Your stay, of course will be a very long one, but
I know you'll be very comfortable.
John Hobart has always been a courageous man but at this point he must admit that he is extremely worried
and even afraid about his future. "How can I turn this around?" he asks himself.
___
December 25 1986 about 2:00 AM
The landlady is in a cheap silvery wheelchair on a high bluff to the north
of Las Vegas. The entire area has been graded as it would be for the construction of houses. John Hobart owns this land and
is driving a very powerful large metallic red all wheel drive pickup truck. He has it equipped with a light duty forklift,
special extra bright halogen lights, dual diesel-train air horns, and double high intensity loudspeakers behind the grill.
John turns on the lights and drives right up to within a foot of the
landlady. She is all but blinded by the lights. At earsplitting volume he exclaims "Well, what a splendid outing and what
a splendid night. Appears like the shoe is on the other foot now, don't it, gal? Being the fine generous man that I am, however,
now that we've visited this lovely spot together, I'm simply going to allow you go your own way home and I'll go my way. Head
on out now, but please do not continue to block the road this way." As he says this he blows the diesel air horns. They are
so loud that they nearly blow the landlady off the chair. "Please now, please move out of my way!"
The landlady begins to move out towards the road. John swings the truck
around and comes right in on her again. He blows the train horns again and says, "Now there you go, blocking the road again!"
He revs the huge engine way up and bumps her slightly, blowing the horns and bellowing "Get out of the road, please madam!"
The landlady has soiled her pants at this point, but moves again. Again
John comes in on her, yelling "Please Mrs. Cunningham. I'm trying to be reasonable, but you just keep blocking the road!"
Again he blasts her with the diesel horns.
John tries again and again to leave. Again and again the landlady, now crying
hysterically, contrives to block his way. This goes on for another hour and finally John says. "I'm sorry, I have tried to
be patient, but I have to leave right now. I have a pressing engagement with destiny and you have left me no choice."
John drives around behind. Using the forklift he picks up the wheelchair
with the landlady and speeds towards the edge of the bluff. When he stops abruptly just short of the edge, the landlady is
catapulted off the bluff. Six hundred feet below she slashes like a bag of rotten pudding on the jagged rocks.
Looking down John sighs, "By God, this is my finest hour. Thank you,
Lord!"
___
January 12 2003. Sixteen years later
Eric Fenris Magnuson has just finished a nice breakfast of maple cured bacon
and poached eggs at the Paradise Hotel. He receives an urgent call. Soon he leaves to investigate an astounding occurrence
north of the city. The police have discovered a bizarre scene.
Fenris gets out of his blue Mitsubishi Eclipse and walks to the edge of
the bluff. Below there is an accumulation of approximately eight hundred silver wheelchairs all tangled up with human skeletons
handcuffed to the chairs. The cop looks at Fenris and says, "Looks like somebody doesn't like disabled people."
"I don't think that." says Fenris.
"Why not?" asks the cop.
"Of course, the handcuffs, but notice that the wheelchairs are all the same."
