The Jar

"How foolish!" He thought, "this pink-faced prawn believes she really has come up with something. I can't believe I turned down a host spot on Shark Tank for this." He turned over the bell jar in his hands and stared into its depths. She smiled with dead eyes as he inspected the object, that horrible child smile that belies their utter inhumanity. He gasped, seeing her distorted face through the glass. "What's the matter, mister?" Alicia cooed. "Your face...I mean...er...nothing. What does it do?" He handed the jar back to the girl. "Well, it's kind of hard to put into words." Alicia began gesturing and Don zoned out, his mind focused on how her fat fingers reminded him of an Italian deli. "A quarter pound of Mortadella!" Don screamed. The girl blinked repeatedly at him. "Please continue." "Maybe you should just try it yourself."

Alicia took the jar from his hands and tapped the edge several times. "Now put it over your hand just like Mommy does to Daddy." The girl enacted a severe thrusting motion and Don knew not to question the idyllic childhood of that impressionable youngster. Taking the jar, he slipped it over his hand and twisted it around his wrist. "Now, take this rubber band and slide it onto your left ankle." "Awww, it's just like a tiny garter." Don accomplished the task. "Okay, so the last step is you have to drink this." Alicia forked over a shot glass filled with a white glistening liquid. Don cringed at the fetid fluid. "Just pinch your nose like when you're eating broccoli" she said. "That's a genius! A nose clamp for eating terrible home-cooked meals so you won't offend the host! You kids are marketing wizards! Have you ever done any consulting?" The girl frowned. "Oh yeah, that's right. Your kind is too damn lazy to get a job!" Don threw back the shimmering swill.

It was like his taste buds were being curb stomped by penis that had recently been used to stir a large cauldron of habanero shit chili. He collapsed to the floor scraping his tongue and writhing in olfactory agony. Like some parasite the pain purposefully clawed through him and settled in his lower neck. Alicia stood idly by and was not the least bit disconcerted when Don jumped up seemingly unaware of the past few moments. His eyes now coated with a crimson film like the inner eyelid of an alligator. "I've heard of seeing red, but this is ridiculous!" exclaimed the Don. "I knew you we're going to say that." Alicia droned. Don threw himself upon the girl like a child into a well in a 1950s TV script. "What in the name of Fortune 500 have you done to me?!" He lifted up the girl by her exaggerated lapels and only know realized how strange it was for a girl of her age to be wearing a suit. He shook her violently. However, a sudden bilateral pain weaving it's way down both sides of his spine froze him. Alicia solemnly grabbed his finger and bent it at an acute angle causing Don to drop her. In turn, Don collapsed to the ground, face down and arms scratching his own back.

Alicia tapped a packet of cigarettes against Don's head. Staid and cool she slid a cigarette from her pack and hung it from her lip. "See you in a minute." Alicia walked away smoking. "I'm going to tell your fucking mom, you goddamn loser! I'll have you black balled from all the Bank of America's in south West Virginia!" Don eked out through his suffering. His slowly building torment suddenly spiked...literally. Spines emerged from his backbone, two for each vertebrae, symmetrical down the spine but with each with decreasing length from the neck down. Don reached back and felt his mutation. "Jesus, I look like a fucking harp!" The agony subsided and Don stood upright. His back now rigid with excess bone and his vision deeply red. "Alicia, you cunt, get back here!" Don mused about whether she was the youngest person he had ever called a cunt. He then recalled that particular incidence of mistaken paternity in which he sauntered down the aisles of a large nursery and asked his ex whether this or that cunt was their cunt. So basically this was just a drop in the old cunt bucket for Don.

His rosebud colored glasses proved to be more than just a tint, however. Creatures slowly filtered into his field of vision. Hideous beasts of an unknown provenance. All quadrupedal, yet all afloat in some mesmeric effluvium. Perfunctorily, Don called for an intern to clean up the mess. None came and Don was faced with an existential crisis that business men of his station spend their whole lives insulating themselves against. Delusion, however, was strong with this one. "It must be some kind of metaphor for free market economics!" Don thought. "Yeah! The starfish-faced hippos are an allegory for supply and the squirrel mantis shrimps, well, they're tiny Alan Greenspans!" Pleased with his hermeneutical gymnastics Don began pitching the creatures his "can't miss" business opportunities. "Listen, all I need from you is 68 million dollars and a minor act of terrorism in the Balkans." The creature which had seemed to be listening spewed a caustic sludge in Don's face and swam away. "I'll have you know spittle amounts to a contractual obligation in some countries!"

With Don berating his new found business associates, Alicia returned. She stopped in front of the mutated corporate goon. "You're coming along nicely" she said. "I don't understand. Your lack of corporate jargon is, well, jarring." He gestured with his jar hand. "The mutation has taken a shine to you. Soon I will install you as the resonator, the link between this dimension and that of the creatures you see about you! You shall live in eternal torment as these beings filter through you on their voyage to our plane!" Don looked askance at her. "That is a terrible business model. Where is the planned obsolescence? The thinly veiled insult to the consumer?" Alicia took Don by the hand and led him into a large crystalline chamber. She closed the door behind him and slid a stack of business cards under the door. "Please hand them out as our guests begin to arrive." Don carefully took up the pile of business cards. "Ooohhhhh, Junior Associate Inter-Dimensional Meat Gate! Does this mean I get PTO?" A bloody beak gnashed through his through his sternum and the air sang with his screams.