Sockhop

“You’re driving me crazy.” I said, swatting Lothar’s crusty sock away from my scalp.

It fell to the floor with a sweaty smack. Lothar retreated into the corner, feigning hurt in the manner of a damaged puppy. I’ve developed an  immunity to my assistant’s deceit.

I sat back down and pumped out more chapters for my novel. I had just entered the immediate proximity of one of the most gripping scenes I had planned for the story (wherein our handsome, courageous-yet-morally ambiguous protagonist, Benny O’Dare uses a plastic-putty solution of his own design to disguise himself as a zoo animal [I have not decided yet; ostrich and kangaroo each have their own unique narrative barbs and merits] so that he won’t arouse suspicion from his sinister foil, Golgrap and his nefarious acronymic terrorist organization) when I was violently wrenched from fair storyland’s teat into the wire-mother arms of the mortal realm, where a moist sock was waiting for me, spread over my head like an ill-scented toupee. If any aspiring directors out there wish to film these happenings, now is a glorious opportunity to display your cinematic prowess with a well-executed contra-zoom of my head, and the footwear perched on top.

I babbled for a moment (I was still experiencing the spiritual equivalent of the bends; I had surfaced too quickly and my blood-stream was now bubbling with imaginary nitrogen) drawing upon my vocabulary for words of appropriate severity with which to chastise my moronic assistant.

Finding those words, I swiveled around to spit them into Lothar’s face.

The face I was faced with was not the one I expected. It was far more handsome. Courageous, even. He held Lothar’s face (a plastic-putty replica) in clenched fists, stretching it into a garotte.

“You’ve created all my enemies!” Benny said, mercilessly.