The Book of All Things New

Zebulon reporting... Now morbid acts continued to occur. And since Annie was now secure within our sheltering busom (did I spell it right? I know how funny mortals are about words pertaining to the female breast) we could not rightly blame them on her, or on the use of her physical body. That meant the Shaky Hand Man was doing it alone. He had achieved physicality. He could move things and influence matter on his own. Quite the trick actually. Want to see how special it is? Take something light, like a ping-pong ball. Put it down upon the center of a level table in a spot free of drafts. Pull up a chair and sit down. Turn off the television. You can watch The Price is Right some other time. Besides, they ain't playing Plinko today. There, you heard it.... a peek into the future. And I don't lie. Now try to make that ping-pong ball move. And don't breathe on it. That's cheating! You're doing it! You're doing it! And a certain kid in Chicago better stop it before I give him a greasy nose zit like he'll never forget!! Well, now do you know how hard it is? Two college girls in Pennsylvania seem to have it. I'll have to keep an eye on them. But the Shaky Hand Man is really good at it. He can like move a piano, or send electricity juicin' up into all the asses planted in all the seats of The Radio City Music Hall. Thats not what he did though. Two guys were out shopping in T.J. Maxx. They were looking for bargains. I guess they blew their loads buying gifts for everybody else. And it is not often you find ski boots hiding out in the shoe department of T.J. Maxx. So they each grabbed a pair of some shiny, black plastic, James Bond looking numbers and jammed their feet right into them. Stomped around a little to see if they fit. You know how it is. And everything was copasetic. Everything was good. Case closed. Sale made. But when they tried to take those suckers off, everything was not so good. Those bastids would not budge. And what was worse, they were getting tighter and tighter and tighter. Folks were gathering around. Everybody had  a plan. Stick their feet in a freezer, which turned out to be extremely difficult, since there ain't no freezers in a T.J. Maxx store and it would be pretty hard to jamm that mother shut what with their legs being attached and all. One old fart wanted the manager to rub butter all over their feet. And they did find some butter, or actually a candy with a lot of butter fat in it over in the gourmet food department. But that only made a mess, not to mention it poisoned some bitch's little chihuahua which she had stashed in the bottom of her satchell. And all the time those boots are getting tighter. The two guys are screaming! Blood is dripping out from the top. A kid who was tryin' to boost a couple video games claimed he could hear bones cracking. The manager finally calls 911. And by the time they get there, the guys are passed out. People are screaming. Folks are running out into the street. And them boots just keep shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Like little kiddie boots they were. No, like doll boots. Like something Ken would wear when he takes Barbie to their cozy, little, three-sided, cardboard and pink plastic ski lodge. And then the two guys were dead. Everybody got real quiet. Turned out they was workers for a group dedicated to supplying warm winter shoes for poor kids. Some shrill, blond haired girl from the TV news wanted to splash this interesting event all over everything. But a guy from the government, sort of like them men in black, took her aside and told her to shut her bleached teeth, lipstick smeared, fast-talking mouth if she didn't want to end up accidentally on purpose mostly dead or something. So she packed up her crew real fast and they executed a smart turkey trot over to cover the folks waiting in line to see Santa Claus (who himself was suffering from a near terminal attack of flatulence) in The Gallery. And T.J. Maxx got rid of all them wide-eyed, Lookie-Lou's by giving them each a hundred dollar gift card. The guys from the government told them Obama'd pay for it, so that made it all right. Only it wasn't all right, for I could hear the spirit laugh of that Shaky Hand Son of a Bitch for a long, long, long, long time......