Posted by:
ziller
(
)
Date: February 12, 2019 07:26PM
in b 4 ~ 9/17/2010 repost ~
Ziller opened his eyes. Without rising from the bed he scanned the room for signs of something, anything recognizable.
It was a typical motel room: the bed, dresser, sink, cheap towels, and crappy wall art were all familiar - familiar in the sense that this particular motel room could be any motel room any where.
As he mouthed the words, “How did I get here?” his tongue felt like it was stuck to the side of a snakeskin boot.
Ziller closed his eyes again in an attempt to discourage the little man inside his skull who was trying to hammer his way out, electrical storms played out across his eyelids.
“I wonder where “here” is,” he mumbled.
Ziller snatched a matchbook from the ashtray on the side table and read, "Close Cover Before Striking”.
Ziller checked his pockets. No wallet, no keys, no cell phone. Just a crumpled paper napkin scrawled with "tHURSdAy, sEpTEmBER 16th --- nO lATER tHAN tHE wEEKEND!"
He needed coffee.
Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.
Ziller opened the motel room door while shielding his eyes from the rays of the blazing noonday sun that bore into his cranium like a laser.
He shuffled across a gravel parking lot to a lonely country bar where a lone pick-up truck was parked outside. The sign on the door said “Recovery from Mormonism Board”.
As his eyes adjusted to the light inside, he found himself alone in a room of worn red leatherette booths and lime green patterned carpeting. A large dance floor crowned with a vintage mirrored disco ball stood empty. Aged karaoke equipment was piled in a corner.
"We ain't open yet."
Ziller startled at the voice and turned to see a little old balding man with large ears and glasses pushing a broom. He looked like a white Yoda.
“Oh my heck,” thought Ziller. “It's Spencer W. Kimball! But he's dead! So Ziller must be friggin’ dead too and Hell is a nasty motel in BFE!”
"I really can’t say when we will be open again either,” Spencer W. Kimball added. “The administrators went to the City to get a part.”
"All I want is a cup of coffee. You gotta have some coffee,” Ziller pleaded.
"Make it yourself." Kimball nodded toward an ancient Bunn-O-Matic behind the bar.
“The middle of downtown Hell and you can't get a decent cup of black,” Ziller muttered.
As the coffee began to brew Ziller sat at the window and stared out at a river moving in the distance - the River Styx.
As he allowed his eyelids to rest he could hear the brook calling to him, babbling in an almost ominous way like the sound of a gurgling, steaming Bunn-O-Matic. Oh yeah.
Coffee and biochemistry are tied together in ways still yet unexplained by science. The effects of the first few sips began to enter the arterial framework around Ziller’s temples. His skin tightened. The crud in his nose and throat began to soften. His heart-rate increased and began the task of pumping toxins from his brain-pan. As his grey matter bathed in the caffeine laced elixir, things began to become a little less hallucinatory.
As the scales dropped from Ziller’s eyes he could see that Yoda’s name tag read “Bob” and that he was actually just a lowly custodian.
Ziller began to think that he might be wrong about being dead on the banks of the River Styx after all.
More coffee.
As the gears in his head began turning more freely, Ziller considered ways to figure out where he was without someone calling the police. Still, each thought he processed was like moving a pile of bricks.
"You okay, friend?” the custodian asked. “You were hammering it pretty hard last night. You and all your apostate buddies."
Ziller finally landed on the right question, "What is that over there?” He pointed out the window to the river where boats were playing on the current and friends and lovers were picnicking on its grassy banks.
“www.postmormon.” said the custodian still sweeping.
Ziller looked blank.
"dot org." the custodian added for clarity, stopping to light a pipe.
Ziller took a long contemplative sip of coffee.
“www.postmormon.org.” Ziller said. “Ziller just might check that out.”
Ziller