In response to the advert that I had discovered while perusing through old newspapers while folding origami monkeys, I dialled the telephone number supplied. A secretary forwarded my call to Nathan Cherry who provided me with further details; the gathering was to be held at over the following weekend at The Mickey Barnes Institution.The six hour drive to the retreat was boring and uneventful. I drove over a couple of baby hares, a frog and three-medium sized hedgehogs. The only stop I made was at Minney's Inn, a small motel and restaurant erected just off the mainroad. I ordered an apple pie, a packet of crisps and a fried banana which promptly ejected itself from my stomach ten minutes after ingestion into a diarrhea stained toilet bowl.
The Mickey Barnes institution was a dark foreboding five storey building that stretched menacingly along one arm of the forest which it bordered. It was raining as if the gods had abandoned this place to hell's lavatory, so I parked the car beneath a tree and trudged across a muddy grass verge onto a gravel sidewalk towards the entrance.
I entered the reception area via a pair of large wooden doors. Sitting at the desk was a lady, her beautiful soft hair and doe-like eyes caught my attention, and her lips were beautiful like... Arrrggghhhh, I fell over; for whatever reason, my legs had suddenly wobbled and collapsed beneath me like molten rubber. I crawled upon my hands, putting each one down in succession with a loud slap on the cold tiled floor, dragging my legs behind me. By the time I got to the desk, I found that I could stand up again; the strange affliction disappeared as quickly as it had seized me.
She stared at me wide-eyed.
'Hi!' I said in a high pitched voice, 'I'm here for the Nathan Cherry retreat.'
She looked at me as her face betrayed a smirk then asked for my name which she put in the computer, 'Ah, I see, Nathan has you listed as a visitor, proceed to the second floor to the common room, number two-oh-one, he'll be joining you shortly.' I thanked her and ran towards the elevators at full speed, almost tripping over a teddy bear that had been abandoned on the floor..
I hurriedly pressed the switch, nothing happened, with lightning fast reflexes I pushed the button once again -click. I started jogging on the spot as I watched the spots beneath the floor numbers light up in sequence on the display over the lift doors. Some mechanisms could be heard scraping, eventually a clunk. The doors glided open and I sprinted into the small space, bouncing off the back wall and falling onto the floor.
Meanwhile, on the second floor, what delight must have greeted the residents of that level as a fully grown male man sprinted out of the elevator doors. The sound of the elevator ping like the starting gunshot for an athletic race, I ran out of that elevator as fast as a turd pops out of an overstrained anus hole.
So I sat on a sofa in the common area. Some people were gazing at the television, while others were just gazing. To my horror, I suddenly realized that all the heightened activity had left my body sticky with body secretions, otherwise known as sweat. The first part of my body to suffer was my bottom, the crevice in between the bossom of my bony butt. My Y-fronts had absorbed an immense ammount of sweat and slowly crept inbetween my butt cheeks like a panther crawls into a cave to take cover from the rain. I pinched the bottom of my Y-fronts through my trousers, and plucked it from my arse... relief.
After a long wait of about two minutes, a nurse wheeled a man into the room. I instantly recognized him from a photograph in the advert as Nathan Cherry, the founder and owner of the Nathan Cherry Retreat. I stood up and greeted him, shaking his hand vigorously and smiling as if we had both created the world that day. He looked at me, then looked at the ceiling, then looked at the floor, then looked at me once again, 'Oooh, you're tall!' he commented, 'have you got the five hundred bucks?' I handed him the crumpled wad of five dollar bills in payment for the weekend.
Nathan's nurse wheeled him right up to my face after I had reclined to a state of comfort on the sofa, it put me into an abrupt state of alertness as the short figure in the chair invaded my personal space; I dared not say a word. I hadn't realized how dark the room actually was until he had been manoeuvered beneath the incandescence of the standing lamp, then I could see his features clearly. Nathan, looked like a baby; he held the five hundred dollars with little stubby fingers as he flailed his legs up and down, striking the heels of his feet against the frame of his chair.
I stared at Nathan, he stared back. He then looked up towards the ceiling, stopped as if something had caught his eye, then nodded his head down to look at the floor, staring straight through me as I entered his field of vision. This seemed to go on for some time. Finally, after about an hour that seemed like five minutes, he spoke, 'What are you?'
'I am a human.' I replied, but not before licking my lips and blinking my eyelids. I took a deep breath in anticipation of his reply.
Snot dribbled from his nostrils, 'I am a human too.' He spoke slowly to me as if I were deaf, but he clapped his hands excitedly before he continued, 'Where are you from?'
I paused. For the first time in my life, I could not remember where I was from. My whole life seemed to have been erased from my memory. I could feel my face redden, and heat radiated from my cheeks, making my eyes slightly watery. I tried again, 'I'm from...' I stopped, and stared at Nathan. He looked up at the ceiling once again, held his eyes there then looked down at the floor again. The elevator pinged, I felt the urge to run into them as the doors opened, but Nathan's chair was blocking my way. I began to tremble uncontrollably.
I looked at Nathan's helper, the nurse who had wheeled him into the room; it was the same woman who I had spoken to in the reception downstairs, although she had looked vaguely familiar before. Suddenly, everything became clear to me; she was my wife, Nathan was my child, I was his father.
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