Readers Note – Piece Contains Graphic Violence, Taboo Situations and Potentially Triggering Language
In the food court of a nondescript mall, our show opens with kiosks and mild throngs of passersby in the background. Host Jim Skipper welcomes Philip Howard of Worcester.
Howard prattles on about this foot tall Indian figurine chiseled from what appears to be obsidian which he found while having to clean out his late, great auntie’s estate in Providence. He was due back to work early the next week so was miserably forced to make a rush of the proceedings, allowing many of his great auntie’s possessions to be divided between the county landfill and the Salvation Army. Among the heirlooms he salvaged in his brief time on the property was this strange figure, found quite by accident while inadvertently breaking a false floorboard in the basement.
Skipper feigns interest for the camera, in keeping with his job description. “Oh really?” he declares.
“Oh indeed,” assures Howard. He continues by saying that neither he nor his business partners nor his boss’ wife with whom he shares an illicit affair had ever seen anything of the sort, and so was quite curious what the experts of Antique Road Show might ascertain of the grotesque mystery. And if it was worth money, because his dear late great auntie seemed to have left the vast bulk of her actual bank accounts to her small schnauzer, dreadful little thing.
“Oh really?” retorts Skipper while wiping a small stream of blood from his nostril.
“Oh indeed,” answers Howard, before carrying on about the cost of taking the days off from work to travel out of state to go through the dead woman’s horde of meaningless baubles. He mentions having also managed to rescue the contents of her knickers drawer, as when he was a boy he would often touch himself late at night while his family visited his great auntie, strangely comely in the breezy silk robes she always wore. Why if he had known her as an adult he would gladly have shattered her dentures with his throbbing member.
Lights behind the scene begin to flicker, an indiscriminate shout is heard distantly off camera, with strangers among the background extras starting a shoving match here and there.
“Oh really?” asks Skipper, removing his glasses to wipe the drops of blood that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Hope the camera is not zoomed in enough to catch that! He jokes, blaming the godless foreigners likely in the mall that day and their disgusting diseases and sweat and satanic eyes.
“Oh indeed,” Howard states in powerless agreement to the growing airs of madness to the scene, unzipping his pants to urinate on the floor. The camera suddenly grows shaky, the cameraman audibly more distraught by the tears in Howard’s eyes than the vulgar act itself.
Skipper takes the statue and violently swings it across Howard’s face, the flesh hanging off and sprays of blood immediately dotting the camera lens. Lifting the statue on high above his head, he snarls “We’ll be right back after this word from our sponsors,” before racing to the side of the staging area to shove the statue down the throat of a small child whose parent was preoccupied with biting the fingers off of an increasingly concerned security guard.
The camera surges jarringly, falling sideways down and landing with a crash. The cameraman yells out “JESUS CHRIST PLEASE SAVE US NOooo…” The camera suddenly auto-zooms to the small black statue, mysteriously standing upright in a pool of blood on the floor, with pieces of furniture and bodily limbs alike flying in every direction through the air above, screams and shrieks and growls all around. Fade to black.
-Nil
