Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! (12 page)

Mister Bear springs up with a mean grunt of determination and sprints off down the path at awesome speed, and I strain to keep up with him. Then he stops: ahead of us in the trees is a lone building, an isolated forest hideaway. Actually it looks a lot like my luxury condominium in Bainbridge, only instead of cedar shingles it’s covered in animal hide, and the luxurious front lawn is landscaped with thick fur instead of grass, and the dramatic front-yard Water Feature is now more of a Blood Feature. Parked in the rawhide driveway is a rawhide-paneled Range Rover. Bear and I creep stealthily up the driveway, wary of hunters.

I peer through the rear window of the Rover and see a pile of human carnage in the cargo area — it’s Image Team! All of them, all dead. All of them? What about Marcia from Product Dialogue? I don’t see her in there, I see Frink and Wollencott and Smith and there’s Baumer and Edna too, and a few more unidentified arms and legs but they look pretty male. This is terrible, catastrophic! This blows six different development schedules! The Ups are not going to be happy about their department being all killed like this, right before sweeps week. Maybe I can get some new hires lined up before I get back.

Mister Bear takes the shotgun from the car and creeps silently up the walkway to the open front door. Inside we hear sounds of animals and human screams. We enter stealthily, although I find I have something sticking in my throat.

Christ, it’s like a luxury abattoir in here. In the living room there’s blood all over everything: the sofa, the walls, the Venetian shag carpet and the doorknobs. The flat-screen LCD cinema display TV on the wall blares a program from the Animal Attack channel: a small foreign man being devoured by geese. In the center of the room is a cloth-draped surgical table with a bright operating lamp hanging overhead, and a small cloth-draped table beside it holding a glinting array of stainless steel knives and saws. The apartment seems deserted … but when I approach the table bears stream into the room from all sides!

There’s two polar bears wearing white surgical gowns and masks. A third polar bear pushes a large wheelchair, and in that chair is a huge, legless Grizzly in bandages, hooked up to a beeping life support machine. The bears surround me on all sides, and stare silently at me. They’re looking at my legs. I look down and realize I’m not even wearing underpants, and my Monster Black Torpedo is dripping blood on the crimson rug.

The legless bear raises a weak paw at me and growls, “Mine.”

I turn to Mister Bear — he rears up on his hind legs and levels the shotgun right at my heart! Why … you … bastard! After all we’ve been through together! He shoves me backwards with the gun and bear claws grip me and throw me on the table. Mister Bear climbs up on my legs and sits on them, pinning me. The other bears hold me down as one of the polar bears takes a huge Leatherman Super Tool from the tray and opens up the bone saw. I try to scream but no sound escapes my lips. No. They are cutting me up, they are killing me, they are driving iron spikes of fire into my body. No, please! Please, please, give me something for the pain! Doctor, please — the pain! I can live without legs but I can’t live with this pain. You can take my negro bear feet, you can take my monster black torpedo, but knock me out, block the pain …

12

Note to self: fucking
yowch!
It hurts, oh yes, it hurts! Now I remember pain: pain was exactly like this, only not so painful. Pain, I got your e-mail, I got your fax, I am not interested! Will you please stop calling me? What is up with pain? If I’d wanted pain I would have seen an acupuncturist, not a pharmacist, certainly not a toothless Canadian hair farmer with a sideline in prescription pills. That dickhead dealer sold me bogus drugs! Why is everybody always trying to rip me off ? Please, God, get this painful hunk of luxury off me. Oh God.

No God. There can’t be a God. God wouldn’t take a brilliant concept like Homo Sapiens and fuck it up with Pain. Only Nature would be so retarded, so cruel.

Hello, God? Can you hear me? This is Marv Pushkin calling. Yes …
that
Marv Pushkin. And I’m a big fan of yours as well. So, if you do exist, could you please consider dropping whatever important bullshit you’re doing and getting your holy kiester down here to rescue me and my car? Look, whatever you need, I’ll take care of it if you’ll just airlift me out of this forest, I’m a wealthy guy, I’ll give money to Mother Theresa, or the Ronald McDonald house or whatever. Whatever the fuck you want, penitence or I’ll pray or shit I’ll go door to door with the stupid magazines and talk about how you changed my life! I was dying under a car and now I’m out from under a car and not dying, that would be miraculous to me right now and I wouldn’t mind lecturing on that, I could use PowerPoint, I’ve got a real talent with PowerPoint, I’m like a PowerPoet. Owww, just help me get out of here NOW and we’ll work out the details back at my office, or shit we can do it at
your
office, on a mountaintop, in a manger, wherever you say, you’re the Man, you’re in the driver’s seat, I’m prepared to be flexible but
please please please.
Look at me, I’m praying here. Marv Pushkin is praying, so make it snappy with the miracles please!

Please!

Please?

Asshole
! I
knew
he didn’t exist. Oh, my torture has a

first name, it’s ow ow OW OW OW! I’ve got hot needles all the way up my spine and I’m freezing and there’s a dozen ticks burrowed into various parts of my ass, laying eggs and tending their new lawns of my butt hair. I’ve got itchy bug bites on my eyeballs, my teeth won’t stop twitching, my mouth is dry as a double-absorbent diaper, I’m so thirsty I’d drink gasoline.

Not That I’m Complaining! ASIDE FROM THESE MINOR ISSUES, EVERYTHING IS JUST GREAT!

Except, did I mention the hallucinations? The Rover keeps melting, collapsing, vibrating, turning blue, advancing and receding. In a different time and place I probably could enjoy that, have sex to it, but then I keep seeing things in the corner of my eyes. When I turn to look, well, who knows what I see since I can’t even focus my eyes properly but it sort of looks like tiny ground squirrels in hospital scrubs running around with scalpels and saws. I am inclined to doubt that they are real. I mean, of course they’re not real. Give me a break, I’m not nuts.

I bet God does exist, and I bet he’s a sick sadistic prick who created the world just to have something small and defenseless to poke. Maybe that’s why animals eat people and people eat animals, and justice is so fleeting. Maybe God is laughing at me: my suffering, my pain, my “problems.” Maybe my reality is God’s Reality TV. That would just about explain all this.

Fuck you, God, I’m leaving. I’ve got to. I’ve got to do it somehow. I’m getting out of here with as much of me as I can carry. So long God … hello Leatherman Super Tool!
You
I believe in.
You
are made from only the highest quality hardened stainless steel, using advanced computer aided manufacturing technologies. You never dull, rust or snap. With you I could disassemble a car, or a rifle, or a TV set. Today we will disassemble a Marv. But first, tourniquets. I have already snipped my sleeves, so just a simple tug … here … whoops, slippery … this should just rip right off … whoops, dammit. Tool, where did you go? Where’s my tool? Tool? It was here, I just dropped it, it’s got to be here next to me, I can hardly feel anything but it’s obvious it’s here, where is it? Back off, squirrels! It’s mine, where is it? It’s here! It’s got to be here! WHERE IS MY TOOL?

GOD DAMN ASSHOLE SHITFUCK PIECE OF CUNT WIPING TAIWANESE TECHNOLOGY WHERE THE COCK FUCK DID YOU GO YOU PIECE OF STINKING ASS CRAP GOD DAMMIT I NEED YOU TO SAW OFF MY SHITPIECE MOTHERFUCKING CORNHOLING CUNTWIPING LEGS, OH DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT, OH GOD IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS — ah, here you are. Sitting on my leg. Now then …

Now then … the saw.

Deep breath. The saw. The legs. For instance: the left leg.

How to do this?

Like …
so
?

Fuck! Shit!
Fuck! Shit! Fuckshit. Ow ow ow. Nope! Wrong. Not like that. That’s … that’s maybe not going to work. Hell, I didn’t think I could
be
any more in pain, let alone any more bleeding. Dammit! I could do this! If it wasn’t for the pain, I’d be free! Oh man, oh God, oh Jesus … this is not as planned.

But what’s that sound … hello! Look who’s come to join the party? If it isn’t everyone’s favorite stinking mammal, Mister Jesus H. Bear, huffing and puffing and ambling home at sunrise like he hasn’t been mysteriously absent for the last day and a half.

Where you been, M.B.? Out partying with your bear pals, I suppose. Didn’t even have the courtesy to phone home while I was up all night worrying about you. Well, why don’t you just fuck off back to wherever you’ve been pleasuring yourself. I have some important neurosurgical business to attend to and I don’t appreciate your snarky back-seat commentary. It takes a light touch, presence of mind, it’s a delicate business and you make me nervous when you stare, so please just give me a half-hour of Marv time. Come back later and I’ll leave you out some breakfast.

Don’t you speak English? Go, A, Way. Shoo! Mush!

Mister Bear, what are you staring at? Nothing to see here, please move along. Sure, I was stare-worthy once, I was something to see, I was Marv Ascendant, not any more. I stink, I’m sick, bloody and bug-bitten. I wouldn’t eat me if I was the last piece of meat on earth. I’m dying, and I hurt like bullets. Satisfied?

Mister Alaskan Black Bear, mister Ursus Americanus, I don’t even get you. You are supposed to be largely herbivorous. You are supposed to prefer nuts, berries and bugs. Is my name Herb? Do I look nutty to you? Why are you doing this to me, Mister Bear? Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you?

That was your cub I ran over in the Rover, wasn’t it? Can you smell his blood under the front fender? Is that why you’re angry? You can tell me.

I’m sorry. Really, I apologize. But that’s the law of the jungle, isn’t it? Kill and/or be killed, day in, day out. Someone’s always killing your children these days. You can’t let it get you down. All the other animals in the forest have predators, how would you deserve a free pass?

No … no it’s
not
your forest, you don’t
own
the forest. We’re all co-owners of This Condo Earth and we’ve got to share. We’re all in this together, am I right? Interconnectedness of all living things, et cetera. I’d expect a bear like you to understand new-age granola concepts like that.

Yes, I know you were here first, but we’re here now, and we’re not going away. People don’t go away. Only Nature goes away.

What do you mean? I have
tons
of respect. Tons! I love this place. Humans adore nature, that’s why we come out here to hunt. We wouldn’t hunt animals we didn’t respect, would we?

Oh, look who’s calling who stupid. What’s your B.A.T. score anyway?

Smelly
? Oh, now the pot of bearshit calls the kettle
smelly
! Hah! Go sniff yourself in the mirror sometime.

Hey, hey Mister Bear: I think it’s great that you’ve decided, finally, to open up and share your feelings with me but — no, let me finish — but I sure wish you would have brought some of this up before you chewed my fucking legs off. Maybe we could have, you know, torn down the walls between us, had a weep-in, become spirit siblings, all that would be great for a guy who still had some legs. But right now I’m afraid I’m just a little bit low on sympathy for your bear problems. Ow.

Well yeah, I
said
I was sorry. But imagine how I feel! This sucks, this hurts, this is torture! You’re actually torturing me.

Yes! OK! Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry! Don’t I look sorry? Isn’t that good enough for you? It was an accident! I didn’t park on top of your son and eat his feet, did I?

Oh
please
. If I taste that bad, why’d you eat so much of me? Hmm? You know, don’t bother to answer. Just forget it. I’m sick of talking to you. You don’t understand what’s going on here. You still think this is the forest primeval and you can slaughter any old hunter who happens along without fear of reprisal. Don’t you realize what you’ve bitten off ?

They’re going to take you down, Mister Bear. When they find my carcass under this Rover and they realize there’s a dangerous man-eater loose out here, a hunt will be called, and the humans will come, hundreds of loud, stinking humans with their guns and their dogs and their helicopters and their gasoline burning vehicles. They will mow you and your family down in just reprisal, and that’s not my fault Mister Bear, that’s yours. All the other animals have learned not to hassle the Man. You hassled the Man, now the Man’s going to hassle you.

Alone? You wish. Loneliness is obsolete. Haven’t you heard? Oh but you don’t have the Internet up here yet, I keep forgetting. Poor, disadvantaged bear. Let me give you the rundown: basically, we live in a global village now, we can transport anything to anywhere instantly, all life is deeply and magically intertwingled, all places are connected, and so every place on earth is slowly but certainly becoming more like every other place on earth. The deserts will get a bit more foresty and the forests will get a bit more deserty. I’m sure you’ve noticed how the winters haven’t been as cold as they used to be. Thank us later. Likewise, the wilderness will get more highways and the urban centers will get nicer landscaping. The polar bears are swimming south, the koala bears are climbing north. The property developers are beating a path up here to deflower the last virgin stretches of undeveloped property, while lumber and seafood floats away to Japan in crush-proof canisters. That’s the power of the global market: if someone in Taiwan wants a bear hide for their executive lav, market forces will suck it toward them with magnetic strength. But don’t worry, because Capitalism is a fair God, a good God, it uses its magic power to make everyone rich, perhaps even bears.