Join My Cult - Original Falcon Press

“Go to sleep, Doctor. Rock-a-bye, Harold, on the wave front…” The
boy leans over the table and opens his mouth. Wide. Stretch marks form
at the hinges of his jaw before the skin tears with a running wet
zzziiiipppp! and he is growing, looming over the table, rows of sharp
baby teeth sprouting from his palate with muted pops. He leans with
babyfat raptor claws on the table and tilts it up, the crockery sliding into
his maw with cracks and crashes.
“You’re not real!” I shriek. “None of this is real!”
“Then hop in,” he smiles.
I feel myself screaming.
“Oh shit, oh shit, are you okay, is he okay?”
Pavement on my cheek.
“He just ran out in front of me, there was no time-”
“Give him room, people!”
“Somebody call somebody. Call—somebody, somebody!”
I don’t need to feel my ribs to know they are broken. I remember an
old joke: Doctor, Doctor, everything I touch hurts! And the Doctor says,
that’s cause you shattered your fingers!
Laughter. Wait for the crest to abate before the next line, or they’ll be
too afraid of missing something to laugh. Wait for it, then:
I realized something the other day, folks, and it totally baked my
noodle. I realized—and here’s the really, really funny part—I’ve spent
the last four years of my life living in a box, believing I was a psychiatrist!
I know, I know. Trippy, isn’t it? Now I’ve been hit by a truck in
one universe, being eaten by a giant toddler in another, I’m homeless and
I’m consorting with known terrorists and I’m dying, all at once!
What an eternal now this has been.
“I’m a doctor, let me through!”
Hey. I’m a doctor.
“I am Doctor Harold Fein. I’m a psychiatrist.”
“506. I’d shake, but I’m holding a gun on you.” And Jesus kills the
lights and the engine and we drift to a stop.
It’s very quiet for awhile.
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