Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page B

observation.  The spacetime here is a bit outrageous though, and my observations will take a while, so don’t wait up.  If you have trouble finding your way back, just think of the biggest number you can think of, and then add one to it.  That should do the trick.
    Albert Einstein
    PS
    I found the dice hiding behind the wall.  I have no use for them.  Good luck, hillbilly!
    So Jim took the dice and put them in his pocket.  Then he thought of the biggest number he could think of and added one to it.  Having thought of a bigger biggest number, he added one again.  He did this for a while.
    And when the number filled his head completely, he both made and did not make a final addition.  His head collapsed into a black hole, and the superfluities of his person were sucked inside.

 
    V
    1
    As he entered the black hole by way of head, he left by way of ass.  The fall was quick and he landed hard. 
    He was at the gates of a gothic mansion and its grounds.  There was a party.  Limousines and Ferraris drove up the drive and expelled a lace-and-kerchief congregation.  They were pale and beautiful, dressed for grotesqueries and talking French.  Above the mansion a purple moon glowed.
    A woman stepped out of the shadows and into the purple glow of the moon.  She wore a top hat and pantsuit and waved an ivory cane.
    “Cherry?”
    “Jim, you made it!”  Cherry kissed him through the bars of the gate.  “I wasn’t sure you got my text.”
    “You texted me?”  Jim took out his smart phone and saw that he had missed her text.
    “Listen, I’m in a hurry.  I’ve got to run.  But I’ll make sure you’re on the list!” And Cherry ran off.
    Jim climbed over the gate and walked up the drive.  He felt strange in his presence, for he wasn’t pale and beautiful, nor did he drive a Ferrari.  Nevertheless, he walked up the drive to the mansion with the beautiful people and the Ferraris.
    At the door to the mansion he saw the bald bespectacled man, who was kind.
    “You!” he said.  “Do you have any idea what you just put me through?  They shot me out of a cannon!  I tried to transcend the essence of my being, but I just kept flying till I hit the brick wall at the edge of paradise .  Einstein tells me it’s all bullshit anyway, and then I get sucked into a black hole.  My back hurts, I missed an important text, I may or may not be conscious, and it’s all because of you.  You fucker .”
    The bald bespectacled man said, “Hello, Jim.  You’re on the list.”  And he unchained the velvet rope that Jim might pass.
    “That’s it?”
    “That’s it.”
    And Jim became disarmed, for the bald bespectacled man was kind.  “Well what is this place anyway?” he said.
    “It’s the devil’s soiree.  She throws it once a century.  She calls it Frankenmasque .”
    “Lucy’s here?”
    “Among others.”
    So Jim crossed the threshold and entered Frankenmasque .
    2
    It was a grand entrance.  Winding stairs chased macabre paintings up the stone walls.  The carpets were red.  A chandelier dropped dim light from the high ceiling.  The pale and the beautiful mingled.
    Jim looked for Cherry but he didn’t see her.  He looked for the devil too, but he didn’t see her .
    Now he felt more keenly the strangeness in his presence, for he beheld that the pale and beautiful people were also sophisticated.   They drank wine with thumb and finger, spoke a great deal of French, and their laughter was jaded and ironic.
    He thought, If there were a set of infinite Jims, I bet one of them would know how to talk to these people.   Being not that Jim, he waited from a corner for something to happen.
    Then the double doors beneath the winding stairs came open and there was an announcement.  The pale and beautiful and sophisticated people filed through the doors and Jim followed.
    In the next room there were many masked women.  One by one they touched and took away the beautiful people until there was only Jim.