I've met this guy before! He's such a cutie, and it's like he hasn't changed a bit. He's looney too! Sectionable-but-still-respectful, the hands-off type, I mean. But maybe that's not what I'm going for:P In scrubs and a straight-jacket, he's walking around the room. He's safe here until I get hold of him!
"Hob!"
He doesn't look at me, doesn't acknowledge me. He knows my gender not. He isn't aware I'm even in the room. Playing hard-to-get he is!
"Hob, you prick!"
Pacing around with a hard lean, as if the floor were rotating and he's trekking uphill. Then his face smushes into the wall—-which comes to him as a total surprise!—-and he crumples to the floor. The whole area is padded, just like Academy on Thursdays. Maybe I'll get to demonstrate him a few things? Maybe show off my mat lungs too bc he already seems pretty feisty.
Laying at my feet, I just love a man in the forced-hug position. Mandatory self-care. We gotta look out for our menfolk, us ladies, and guide them appropriately.
"Hob, welcome to the LBC! You've been subjected to California's code 5150, which is why you're at my place of employment. Hob?! Yoo-Hoo!" He sees me!! Finally. "Hello, Hob. I'm Dr. Puzzehl," I say with a wink. I crouch down, calves taut, my thighs disappearing upwards into my favorite skirt. He's wide-eyed as an animal in heat, and I lean in close. His right eye protrudes more than the left. "Hob, it's me!" I whisper. "From the Big Apple, remember? Listen, there's cameras, so just call me Jacq-lene Puzz-ehl. New York hasn't been kind to me, but it's still me, okay?"
Hob rambles: "Your voice it terrifies me it's distinct like the voices when sucked out by plague when I's just a wee lad like goblins then they grew faint and disappeared and I could see again it's the voices you sound just like them!
"What?! Hob, no!"
"Please take me Demon take me from this life it's serious this is real suffering end me!"
"Sure, okay. But I'm out to get mine too, ya know," I says, kicking off my heels. Jobs, eh, dime a dozen.
"Most all people just recycle and new people are born but there's no stability for me I outlive everyone eternally afflicted the world is coming apart at the seams it never stops changing but neither will it ever cease!"
"Sweetie, you're just having anxiety. Calm your body."
"I turned six-hundred and sixty-one years old yesterday me thoughts are a haunting echo chamber I can't take it I'm—-"
"Well, Happy Birthday, Hob!"
"—-up and down sometimes I've a grasp sometimes it's too much it's never going to end I'm stuck here different parts of me health are failing one day I'll stop crying for me mum because her name'll be forgo'en it's the end times forever doomsday is here the infinite void is on repeat!"
"Hob, focus on the now. Regardless of your past—-where you think you come from—-endeavor to be present. You have an unfailing self-belief that you are very old—-even though you don't at all look it. Hob, I mean, wow, you are still a very, very handsome man . . . "
Some kind of indication? Even just a hint? Something? Please?! But nothing, totally irresponsive to my advances. I remove my scarf stripper-like.
