When I tell people that I’m a development producer they think that means I’m rich. Maybe there was a time before streaming when that was true about people in my role, I don’t know, but I’m not rich. I know that. Think about it. How many streaming services are there? Eighty trillion? And more every day? The head of programming at Hulu or Netflix they’re sitting pretty but if you think the person in charge of new programming development at Gazzz TV or Superdupershow HD can even afford the clean hookers you’re fooling yourself.
I do okay but I’m rich by no means. Considering what I accomplish day to day for the world, nothing, I get paid a lot. But “a lot” is a sliding scale. My parents’ first home in Kansas cost what Wolf spends on sushi each week. Richness or not aside I have one extravagance in my life. Have you ever heard of an Alaska king mattress? That’s nine feet by nine feet my friend, eighty-one square feet of bed. I’ve been in apartments in New York smaller than my bed.
Okay Ela, you have a BIG bed but is it comfortable? No, it’s not comfortable, it’s only the THE MOST comfortable bed in the world. You think I’m going to have a bed custom made for me in Norway and shipped over here and not worry about comfort? What kind of dumbass question is that you sloppy bitch? Work hard play hard? Fuck that noise. I work hard and I sleep hard. I’m not one of these go-go junior executives that works 80 hours a week and then is out all night on a coke binge. I work 80 hours a week and then I sleep like a dead woman.
No one else touches my bed. No one. I’ve largely given up on any person with a dick at this point but I have another bed for that category of activity just in case something jumps off. You want to stay and sleep or leave afterwards, either is fine by me do whatever you want man, but I’m heading back to the mothership and you are NOT invited. I don’t need anyone else funking up my mattress or staining it with their oily body. I have an entire other bed for you bro, what are you complaining about? It’s not like you want to cuddle.
That’s how I knew things were wrong before I even opened my eyes. I could tell instantly that I wasn’t in MY bed. It felt like I was laying on a haybale with a burlap sack over it. I could also tell that I wasn’t alone because someone was tickling with ankles, not on purpose tickling, just the kind of ankle tickling that happens when someone’s feet are next to yours and they don’t have the mattress discipline to stay on their side of the bed. Tighten it up people, we’re adults, stay on your side.
My mind immediately went to thinking that I had been drugged and taken advantage of. I was doing a rewind in my mind to figure out when it could have happened. I came straight home after work, I wasn’t at a bar or a club or a party where these things usually happen. I wondered, is it possible that someone spiked my Unfabulous water bottle at work and then followed me home, some kind of slow acting time bomb rape cocktail?
When I opened my eyes that notion was blown away. At the end of the “bed” I saw what was tickling my ankles. Seeing what I saw I started screaming, not super proud of that, and tried to scramble away, smashing my head into the headboard in the process. The bad news is that I did it hard enough to draw blood and probably give myself a concussion, the goods new is that blazing pain instantly told me that I wasn’t dreaming.
I’m going to bury the lead for a moment and talk about the bed. It wasn’t even five feet long first of all. And the mattress felt like a hay bale on a burlap sack because it was a burlap sack full of hay. And that sack was hanging on ropes. Ropes! No box spring, just a net hanging on a wood frame (of sorts) with some straw in a bag on it. It’s the kind of thing that prisoners of war should be sleeping on not a high-powered businesswoman!
What was tickling my feet was a feather duster tail stuck on the ass of some kind of Pokemon creature. A real one. A real pokething. I’m not talking about Shikadu or Bibliak or Haiku Toshashiba or Hakkatakka I’m talking about a flesh and blood and stank creature that looks like a Pokemon. It was round like a sickly green watermelon, a roundness that doesn’t exist in nature, and aside from the feather duster tail its most prominent feature was its giant black eyes like blobs of raspberry jam.
When I lurched away kind of half-jumped and made a herky-jerky motion like a cat that doesn’t know which way to leap when someone steps on its tail combined with an over-excited puppy presented with a bunch of new people for the first time.
Since the dream theory had already been discarded on account of the blood streaming down my face (might be good for me, I know several women who swear by seal pup blood facials) and the stars in my eyes, I did what every character in a horror movie or body swap story or any kind of tale where something weird happens, I thought that it was a joke.
I hate that. That’s bad writing. Really main character? Really? You think that your friends are somehow projecting an image of a ghost into your house that happens to be better than any visual effect possible in the world today? Somehow your friends put together some shit in the real world better than anything Industrial Lights and magic can do on film? That’s what you think? And yet, when presented with the same thing in the real world that’s where my mind went.
It’s a thing you know, like the invisible gorilla test. If you’re not expecting something sometimes your brain just refuses to accept it. Stupid brains. Don’t trust ‘em I say.
Things were about to get weirder than real life Poke-critters though. The watermelon blob rushed at me and I kicked it away, it felt like a volleyball made out of memory foam under my foot. When it flew back towards the door it started emitting a noise that was an admixture of a crying baby, a distressed racoon, and Neil Patrick Harris being kicked in the balls.
Two seconds later the door to the shitbox room, which I haven’t even had time to notice was so shitty, flew open and She was standing there taking up the entire doorway. The creature jumped into her arms and she started stroking it and cooing at it and then kissed its slimy hide, which I won’t lie almost made me yak like a USC freshman.
“Rappongi, what’s wrong?” she fussed at it with a voice like a clear and melodic like she was almost singing the words.
I jaw dropped so hard that I think I have TMJ now but I managed to force out a word “Avara?”
that sickly green watermelon is ADORABLE
Heck yeah it is