tongue :or: the talent of oliver elephant elephant

7/29/2019 Tongue :oR: The Talent of Oliver Elephant Elephant

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Tongue :or: The Talent of Oliver Elephant-Elephant

I: Oliver Elephant-Elephant and his very nice mother:

Oliver Elephant-Elephant was two foot tall and had no mouth and only two

invisible slits for nostrils. And he had no hands and he had no feet -- the end

of each limb was rounded and hardened, almost like marble knobs -- and Oliver

Elephant-Elephant had skin that was a little bit wrinkled like burnt skin, and

it was colored sort of a sunset orange. And this made people think he was fake,

like a little orange puppet or doll walking around. And he could walk on his

feetless legs; he had good balance: his mother tried to make him ride in an

electric wheelchair -- he still lived with his mother in a little dimly lit two

bedroom house; they lived in this little house and they always lived in this

little house -- older than normal mothers, Oliver’s mother had trouble some

times taking care of Oliver Elephant-Elephant and wanted to get him a

wheelchair, a motorized wheelchair. She only had retirement money; she saved a

lot of it for Oliver. But Oliver Elephant-Elephant taught himself to have

perfect balance, better than most.

But he still had the epileptic seizures and his mother always worried,

what if he’d go into one at the wrong time, she’d say, and wouldn’t he

appreciate a wheelchair then, my word. The older she got, she said, the more

he’d need something else. But Oliver Elephant-Elephant only ever had little

seizures: a handless arm would vibrate up and down, or a mouthless face would

vibrate back and forth -- and that would frighten unaware passers-by -- they’d

assume he was a doll or toy until his arm would vibrate and his eyes would roll

up into the back of his head -- and the passers-by would scream at the

suddenness. But he’d never make a noise: Oliver Elephant-Elephant didn’t merely

lack a mouth opening; he lacked all of the mouth’s minor bits: he had to get

food and water through tubes -- he wore three tiny tanks all day long and the



tubes went from the tanks into his tear ducts -- “Because of your son’s odd

anatomy, Miss Elephant-Elephant, they have to go into his tear ducts and he has

to wear the tanks all day long” -- and to communicate, he wore a flat key pad,

like a large calculator, over his chest and stomach with a display screen

sixteen letters long -- eight spaces, two rows -- so all he had to do if he

wanted to say something was punch letters with the rounded end of his arm until

he spelled something at least sixteen spaces. For example: on his little

machine he’d type: “tank emp/ty now” -- and she’d fill it.

The typing was awkward and slow. And the machine wasn’t always helpful.

His mother took him to confession every week. She’d roll him up to the

confession box, pick him up out of the wheelchair and place him inside. The

priest would say, “What sins do you have to confess today?” and he’d only hear

the quiet click of a slow hand typing. When his mother came to get him later

she’d say, “Doesn’t matter if he heard it so long as you said it.”

Likewise, Oliver’s mother applied this philosophy to other actions. For

example: if he needed a book from the top shelf, he’d have to type this: “can

you/ lift me?” -- exactly sixteen spaces -- then he’d hit the erase button and

write this: “need a b/ook”

He’d reach and he’d reach and he’d keep reaching. Only after a few

minutes his mother got the book for him.

She didn’t always wish for an electric wheelchair; when he was a kid she’d

tell him that he couldn’t always rely on others and couldn’t always rely on

machines. When he got older, she got older, and when she got older she couldn’t

move around as well. And she’d look at brochures at helpful machines she

couldn’t afford. But when he was younger she’d say, “See if you can do it

yourself.” And he would try. And he learned how to do many of the things his

mother did -- as much as he could from a wheelchair he couldn’t push, as much as

he could do while wearing canes that strapped around his arms.

But still, his mother would sigh, so much to do, she got so worn out.



She’d tell him to try but he’d fail time after time, only so much he cold do, no

hands, no mouth. She’d sigh and she’d hide in her bedroom. He’d hear her in

the other room sobbing; his ears, though they were only unadorned holes on the

side of his head, worked very well.

She still encouraged him and applauded every little step. She’d say to

him all the time: “It doesn’t matter what your body lacks. Some great men in

this world have come from nothing and you can too. You’ll never learn to do

that if I help you with everything.” And she’d repeat this over and over using

examples sometimes. She’d say, “Look at this” and she’d point to a picture in

the paper and she’d say, “Look at this wealthy man, he used to be nothing,” and

any time she ran across specific story about a specific rich man who came from

nothing she’d say, “Look, at that rich fellow Horus Demmipuppet. He started out

as a clerk in his father’s antique store and now he’s CEO of Uni-Chron,” and

she’d say, “Look at Gravity Shepherd; he started out as a nothing at all and now

he’s running that umbrella company.” So when he got older and when his mother

got older and everything got harder for Oliver’s mother to do she had the idea

for an electronic wheelchair to replace the regular wheelchair Oliver wasn’t

able to push himself and those little canes that wrapped around his forearms.

Oliver Elephant-Elephant decided instead to learn to balance. And he became

better at balancing than most people.

And he tried hard at everything, just like his mother taught him. When he

decided to go to college he stacked up books on the rickety table and he’d leaf

through the books with a little bit of awkwardness. His mother would ask him

what he was studying, then he’d start writing something on the machine on his

torso -- “tele” -- and his mother would say, “No television now. You have to

study.” He didn’t finish many sentences; his mother made assumptions. And his

mother with her failing memory would ask a few days later, “What are you

studying?” and he’d write on his little machine “tele” and she’d say, “No

television now. You have to study.” Or one time when she said, “What are you



studying?” she was on the telephone on hold and he wrote “tele” and she said,

“Aw, sweety, you know you can’t talk on the telephone. I’m sorry but I’ll let

you listen if you want to.” But he didn’t make any move to listing and he

looked back down at his books. The books he was studying were never business

books. He studied a lot and he said he wanted to be a business major -- he’d

write “business/major” when his mother asked -- but they were never business

books. He got a job at a very tall building, and it was a very important job

and it was a business job but he never even made it to college. He never even

went to highschool. But he got an important job anyway. It was because of his

secret talent. A mouthless boy, in many ways, is obliged to keep secrets.

II: Oliver Elephant-Elephant has a fondness for a certain young lady:

And Oliver Elephant-Elephant certainly had secrets. Secretly he’d give

looks at people who thought of themselves as kind. Secretly, every time he

walked to work he’d stare at this underbridge village of homeless men in a

shadowed little area; unseen by passers-by, they’d rummage and the little food

they had they ate passionately. And Oliver Elephant-Elephant would look at the

ground sadly and keep walking.

Secretly he’d stare at his neighbor Amanda Lockley -- he timed when she

would go out on the front porch every morning and he’d pretend he had something

important to do on the porch and she’d wave and he’d waggle his rounded knob a

little. And she was still in her pajamas -- nothing sensual, just normal

pajamas, but the blonde hair in the morning light and her sweet voice, “Hey

buddy,” and the pink lips. He’d go next door frequently to borrow sugar --

showing up on her door step with,

sugar?

already typed on his little machine. And she’d say, “Your mom sure runs out of



a lot of sugar.” And they’d sit a minute and she’d talk to him and as he left

she’d hug him and say, “You’re just like a little doll aren’t you? I could just

put you in my doll house and you could live there forever.”

Amanda Lockley had eight boyfriends. And she expected them all to be

perfect and they kept themselves perfect for her. All of them tall and

handsome; all of them driving nice cars. She only expected Oliver to be her

little doll.

III: How Oliver Elephant-Elephant got a very important job:

And this is how Oliver Elephant-Elephant got his job. This is what he

did: He went to the big marble lobby of the company he’d chosen and asked for

the leader of the company. The company he chose was Hexagon/Overman Machines

and Electronics, or H.O.M.E. Now, he wanted to be CEO eventually so he couldn’t

go to the biggest companies in the city -- Uni-Chron, O.M., FKM -- all his

mother’s favorites with his mother’s favorite CEOs. He went instead to the

fourth largest company in the city, H.O.M.E., a company his mother had never

mentioned.

So he went to the ornate H.O.M.E. building which stood just as tall and in

fact right beside and in many ways nearly identical to the O.M. building, but

the H.O.M.E. lobby was even more ornate with clean marble checker board floors

and a fancy silver escalator up to the second story. And just before that

escalator was a desk and behind the desk was a nice older lady named Gia Tari

and before her sleepy eyes that morning appeared a little orange man with a

rounded head and rounded limbs. And strangely the checker board floor seemed to

be at the same level as the desk, like the little man lifted the floor up to see

her -- but she saw so many weird things in and out of the building, things she

never thought she’d see, machines that build cars for you, machines that do

everything -- and this little orange man had a little machine on his chest and

the little orange man punched a few buttons and on the screen; it said,



where is

your le

and then he hit the erase button and wrote,

ader?

And Gia Tari stared at him a minute, trying to comprehend. He wanted a

snake maybe. Oliver saw her confusion, hit the erase button and wrote this:

leader?

And Gia Tari said, “Oh you want to see the leader, the, uh, uh, CEO?” And

Oliver nodded. And she said, “You’re looking for Mister Jim Ociil. His office

is on the top floor. But he’s a very busy man so you’ll probably need an

appointment.” And the little orange man, with no answer, descended. And Gia

Tari smiled at her own helpfulness.

And as Oliver Elephant-Elephant walked toward the escalator, behind him

loose bits of floor gathered like a rug in a magic act -- but this was solid

marble -- and it kept rising until it took a human shape and walked behind him,

human except it walked on its knuckles and the shoulders had frighteningly long

spikes; the mix of the black and white sections of the floor made it look gray

from a distance. This golem was about eight foot tall and four foot wide and

its reach was nearly six and a half feet and its arms were as thick as tree

trunks and shaped to look muscular -- but exaggeratedly muscular; more like

bulbous growths -- but the muscle shape was made of marble; much of the time it

walked on its knuckles like a gorilla; in fact it most resembled a gorilla

except for the face which was only a mouth.



Then Oliver Elephant-Elephant went up the escalator followed by the marble

golem, an awkward fit, then the escalator itself became a knuckle-walking golem

-- Gia Tari didn’t notice, all these weird things nowadays -- and Oliver

Elephant-Elephant stood there on the second floor with his marble golem and his

escalator golem, looking around and wondering and deciding.

And this was the secret talent of Oliver Elephant-Elephant: telekinesis.

And he became good at it. He became so good at it that when he couldn’t find a

way to get to the top floor he turned the floor he was standing on into an

elevator. And when he and his two golems got to the top, Oliver Elephant-

Elephant saw the huge office of Jim Ociil and went in past a dumb-founded

secretary and other dumb-founded employees. And when Oliver was inside the

office with his marble golem and his escalator golem, Oliver shut the door and

locked it with out touching it.

And Jim Ociil was on the phone -- he was on the phone with his wife

talking about wall colors; “A blue” he said, “Make it a dark blue” -- when

Oliver Elephant-Elephant came in with his marble golem and his escalator golem.

And Jim Ociil screamed, “What in the world? What is the meaning of this?” and

he said, “I’ll have to call you back honey. I’ll explain later,” and he used

one finger to hang up the phone and said again, “What is the meaning of this?

Who are you and what do you want?” And he used the same finger he used to hang

up the phone to push a different button to dial security. But the phone

suddenly imploded; Oliver Elephant-Elephant, with out any fingers at all,

crushed the telephone to the size of a golf ball. And Jim Ociil said, “What the

hell are you ...? What the hell do you want?”

And Oliver Elephant-Elephant fumbled awkwardly and weakly with the rickety

key pad on his chest and he wrote,

to be ce

o



“What? What the hell are you talking about? ‘Be CEO’? Are you saying

you want to be CEO of this company? I’m the CEO of this company.”

And Oliver typed,

replace

you

“Replace me? You want to buy my company? You come up in here in these

weird costumes, you do some kind of trick with the telephone and then you tell

me you want to buy my company? Do you know how much time and money it took to

build this company out of nothing? There’s no way you’re getting it without a

fight. The time and money...” and Jim Ociil continued repeating variations on

the same thing: time and money, he said, time and money is the key.

And while he was talking, Oliver Elephant-Elephant typed this,

is that

what it

and he hit erase and wrote,

takes?

And Jim Ociil said, “What? ‘Is that what it takes?’ Is that what what

takes? What the hell are you talking about?”

And Oliver typed,

money?



and he happened to have a dollar sign key on his key pad so he typed it once

with a question mark --

$?

-- in case Jim Ociil failed to understand him again.

But Jim Ociil was confused again. “What? What do you mean ‘money’? Are

you asking if it takes money to buy this company? Are you retarded? Of course

it takes money to buy a company. Are you retarded?” And Jim Ociil went on

another angry tirade about audacity and gumption and fortitude.

And Oliver Elephant-Elephant thought briefly that anger made him such a

good CEO. He had to remember this when he was a CEO. But then he quit paying

attention altogether. He concentrated instead on the bank next door and the

vault in the bank and suddenly the bank vault grew legs like an iguana -- and

all the people in the bank that day witnessed it; people in line to give and

take money saw this bank vault grow iguana-like legs and stand -- and the bank

vault crawled out of the bank and crawled across the street and started crawling

up the side of the building and crawled all the way up the side of the building

to the top floor. It rotated its thorax until the opening of the vault faced

the window. Oliver Elephant-Elephant shattered the glass and sucked all of the

money and all of the valuable bits out of the iquanaed vault into Jim Ociil’s

office.

And Jim Ociil protested, shocked but unable to think of anything else to

say: “This is not the way things work. This is not the way you do this.” Of

course by, “This is not the way things work,” Jim Ociil meant: This is not the

way things work in the business world, and this is not the way things work in

the world; he meant: You don’t just dump a bunch of money at my feet and expect

to buy the company, and bank vaults don’t grow iguana legs and climb walls.

And in all the yelling Oliver Elephant-Elephant got confused. He never



studied business after all. But this guy kept yelling at him. He reacted in a

simple way: The hole in the bank vault became a vacuum and it started sucking

all of Jim Ociil’s important papers inside, though the money stayed put, and the

vacuum started sucking Jim Ociil inside -- and Jim Ociil had a lot of papers, so

all the time tons of papers sucked inside the vault like an odd horizontal snow

storm -- and Jim Ociil held himself to the desk to keep from slipping into the

vault. And then he slipped. But before he slipped he grabbed one framed

photograph and held it to his chest. He flew into the vault and was buried

completely with in seconds by a fluttering and innocent looking whitness. All

these papers meant something. Oliver didn’t care.

Oliver Elephant-Elephant resealed the vault and let it drop, story after

story after story until it hit a weak place in the street and fell through the

street into an underground transit station. It landed on a corner like a spear

jabbing right through the street, and it went right through the street and into

that subway station, that corner jabbing right through a newspaper box, and

metal pillars the shape of iguana legs fell beside it -- nobody knew what to

make of them -- and the bank vault sat there flat in very suddenly that

afternoon in a subway station.

The official explanation was this: Earthquake, or some other sort of

seismic phenomenon, lifted that bank vault out of the bank, slammed it into the

top floor of the H.O.M.E. building and down into the subway system where it,

coincidentally, fell on H.O.M.E. CEO Jim Ociil, who survived thanks to the

cushioning of a ton and a half of his own business papers. Sixteen witnesses

corroborated. What choice did they have? Jim Ociil was bound to a bed in a

blue tube coma at the Saint Bumbleshot’s Home for the Disproportionately

Blessed, for years in bed dreaming of the little orange demon and his two

monsters.

So that’s how Oliver Elephant-Elephant got his job. He declared himself



wordlessly the leader of H.O.M.E. He did this by approaching the board of

trustees -- he knew he needed to go to the board of trustees; he knew a little

bit about business -- and the board of trustees was eight men in black business

suits who sat around a table and grumbled about money day after day. And when

Oliver Elephant-Elephant declared himself the new leader of H.O.M.E., the board

of trustees quickly overcame all initial trepidation at the vision of an orange

midget and two trashpile giants and started yelling in big important voices

about Oliver’s audacity and how outrageous this nonsense was. One of them even

approached Oliver and this black-suited man pointed his finger angrily and

pronounced every syllable of the word “audacity” one at a time. The marble

golem simply picked him up and tossed him out of the window: picked him up,

marble hand completely around the waste and in one swift motion snapped him

through the glass of the seventeenth floor window; the angry executive went

toppling through the air, arms and legs flailing like a weird firework, nice new

black tie swinging every which a way in the wind, until he crashed into the

eleventh floor of the FKM building five blocks east -- through the window and

into the desk of an unsuspecting zero counter: this very important man now

merged with the desk of the lowest of functionaries in a completely different

and inconsequential company.

At the sight of the golem so casually tossing this man out of the window,

the rest of the board of trustees got quiet and stared at Oliver with mouths

open and stared silently at the broken window in front of them and the littler

broken window five blocks away. And one older board member pointed and stared

at Oliver and stammered, “What did you do? What the hell did you do?” They’d

never seen anything like that before: people got angry and people even

threatened to toss people out of the window: but that very important and

powerful business man flying like that: very terrifying, very heartbreakingly

pitiful, yet very funny, the flail of his arms, but only funny in the deep and

evil back brain. “You killed him,” the older board member said with exasperated



but affectless simplicity. And the marble golem grabbed that one by the tie and

tossed him out of the now glassless window. This one missed the FKM building by

a few feet and flew into the sidewalk, skipping like a stone on a pond then

skidded into a lamppost.

The rest of the board members quickly decided that it was a bad survival

move to question Oliver’s amoral violence. They whimpered and begged and cried,

but they knew now not to point fingers accusingly -- for hours, a complete

panoply of emotions. Board members broke down into rage only when their will

broke and madness took over. Anger became then, essentially, a desperation

suicide.

And it continued like that for days it seemed: board members variously

raging and supplicating themselves before Oliver. Oliver held the door shut and

wouldn’t let them leave. They’d beg, “What do you want? Please, God, tell us

what you want!” And he’d fumble on his key pad and spell out the word

money

And they’d write checks. And Oliver would look at the checks a little baffled

-- Oliver never had a checking account; he didn’t really know what to do with

the check -- so the marble golem threw the check writers out the window. And

the survivors cowered. And one board member cowered in a shadowed corner with a

telephone, slowly and quietly dialing. Then Oliver Elephant-Elephant

concentrated on all the telephones in the building and crushed them and tossed

all of the telephones out of the windows.

And all the other employees in the building, curious why their phones

suddenly imploded and flew out of the window, investigated. And their

investigation led them to the main board room where they saw Oliver Elephant-

Elephant and the two golems. And they saw that Oliver had turned the board room



table into a weird sort of an iron maiden and in the middle of the board

table/iron maiden were three executives who kept whimpering, “We don’t carry

cash. I swear to you. I swear to God!”

So the employees who came to complain about their telephones gave out a

gasp and said instead, “What the hell are you?” And Oliver fumbled awkwardly on

his key pad and typed,

new lead

er

And they whimpered, “What the hell do you want?” And he lied again:

money

Some of them were smart enough to run but the building was sealed, all exits

were sealed, only the suicide-height broken windows (and many hopeless be-suited

workers took advantage of that opening).

Meanwhile, after the entire accounting department was eliminated, in the

mortal sense, because they claimed all the money in the company was abstract,

some of the employees begged: “We can get you some cash. We can get you some

cash easy. Let us go and we can bring you back some cash in no time.” So he

let a few go.

Some ran with no intention of getting cash and they got sucked into the

concrete. Some went to an ATM but changed intentions midway through and

pocketed the cash and they got sucked into the concrete before the baffled eyes

of an ATM line. Some were honest and brought back the cash they promised. And

Oliver Elephant-Elephant was kind when the worker supplicated.

And the rumor spread that Oliver Elephant-Elephant was both telekinetic

and telepathic. But Oliver Elephant-Elephant wasn’t telepathic at all. He was



just a lucky guesser. And he guessed correctly that if he let the employees go

home at the end of the work day they’d come back the next day, ready to work.

So at five o’clock Oliver opened the doors and let the employees go home. At

eight o’clock the next day, all surviving employees returned.

And so the years passed.

IV: The way in which Oliver Elephant-Elephant conducted himself at work:

H.O.M.E. continued operating normally except all money received had to be

converted to cash very quickly.

Inevitably police people came to investigate various mangled and hard to

identify dead bodies. They would say something like, “We found a body in a tree

in the park and lodged in him were eight hundred pencils. And all the pencils

had the H.O.M.E. logo. Records also show the body was an employee at H.O.M.E.

Call it a wild speculation but ... Do you know anything about this?”

But the poor employee who got questioned by the police didn’t know Oliver

wasn’t telepathic and so he or she would say something like, “No ... I ... know

nothing about ... nothing.” And some of the only slightly brave employees might

say something like this: “What about ... all the other people who have ... who

have died who have ... who have come from our company?”

And the police person would say, “You mean the increased rate in

suicides?”

And the only slightly brave employee would whimper helplessly, “Suicides?”

And the police person would say, “Yes, we’ve noticed an increased rate in

suicides at H.O.M.E. Mostly people jumping out of windows. But that’s not so

unusual when company stock hits rock bottom.”

But the only slightly brave employee would usually be too weak or too

scared to continue. One day one especially brave employee yelled in a whisper:

“Suicide? Suicide? This little man is moving things with his mind. It’s not



suicide. It’s telekinesis.”

“You’re saying some ‘little man’ tossed people out of the window with his

mind?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Sir, there is no such thing as telekinesis. Most reasonable people don’t

believe in telekinesis. It’s like saying a UFO killed somebody.”

And this one brave employee was so desperate he grabbed the police man’s

hand and dragged him to the elevator, took him to the top floor, and dragged him

to Oliver’s office. And when the brave employee and the police officer

approached Oliver, Oliver merely sat there and his golems didn’t move --

immobile, they looked like weird modern statues, and Oliver, small in his CEO

chair, just looked like a feeble burn victim.

The police man stared silently a minute as the especially brave employee

desperately pointed.

And the police officer laughed and said, “This guy tossed people out of a

window?”

“With his mind!”

“With his mind? Please,” the officer said and turned around and walked

away.

And the brave employee yelled after, “It’s the statue things; they do it.

He’ll probably try to throw me out of the window any second now. He’s not very

smart. He reacts like a child. It won’t matter that you’re a cop. He won’t

figure it out. Call for back up. We’re all in danger. We’re all going to die,

one by one!”

And as soon as the officer closed the door, the marble golem snatched the

brave employee around the waist, and before he flew out of the window toward

final concrete, the brave employee said, “Thanks a lot, asshole.”

And some resisted Oliver violently. One guy named Mister Bishop, a sort



of a skinny blonde-haired fellow with an all black suit, came into the office

and pointed a gun at Oliver and Oliver typed one word --

please

-- and Mister Bishop thought Oliver was begging for his life -- with out vocal

tones it was difficult to interpret Oliver’s “please” with the true dismissive

quality with which it was intended, the same “please” tone the police man gave

the brave employee.

And Mister Bishop screamed, “No mercy, you butcher from Hell!” and he shot

an odd volley of bullets and smiled at the cathartic noise of the gun and the

come-like release of the bullets. And as he saw the bullets slowing and

suddenly reversing, his comprehension of the situation went completely black: he

didn’t know where the sudden pain came from -- let alone how the bullets

reversed or the tone “please” should’ve had -- but when he felt the sudden

impact and the sudden intense pain, his sensory input also went to black. And

this was the next thing he was able to sense and comprehend: he was wrapped in a

flag pole and wrapped in a flag and there were holes in his hands and elbows and

knees and feet and the yoke part of his shoulders and he was bleeding and the

blood dripped nine stories down to the concrete. And he looked around him and

there were about a dozen other H.O.M.E. employees hanging from flag poles like

heads on pikes to keep Turks away.

And one time this guy named Mister Bishop, kind of a skinny guy with

blonde hair wearing a black business suit, came into the boardroom with a gun

and shot an odd volley of bullets at Oliver. And the bullets very suddenly

reversed and very gently went in to Mister Bishop’s mouth and very gently slid

down his throat and down his esophagus and into his belly. And Oliver Elephant-

Elephant let him go home. And the very shocked Mister Bishop stumbled out of

the building. And he believed bullets would fly out of him any second. And he



lived like this for many years; even though after a few years he stopped setting

off metal detectors, even though he got countless x-rays that showed his belly

empty, he believed any second those bullets would come exploding out of his

belly. And he told his grandkids, “A little orange man put bullets in my

belly,” and his family thought he was mad.

V: Oliver does a very nice thing for people after work:

Some days after work Oliver would buy or steal food, piles and piles of

food, and go out to that place under the bridge where the homeless people were

living and bring the food, golems carrying this tons of food and carrying

Oliver’s throne on a sedan chair and Oliver would be wearing a red crown and the

golems would toss the food to the homeless men. And they -- unfed and invisible

to most -- ate it passionately and Oliver would stare with equal, possibly

greater, passion at their mouths as the food went in. And he got the best food

he could find -- he could afford it or he could easily steal it -- and they ate

it passionately; he looked at their tongues and watched it all tumbling into

their open mouths. He wanted them to describe it for him and he typed into his

key pad,

describe

it

-- most of the time they ignored the words on his chest and Oliver was too shy

to make a big deal about it; when they did follow the order, most often they’d

give an inelegant comment like: “It’s good, man, it’s good. God bless you. I

hadn’t had a steak like this in forever: not a warm steak, not even a steak, let

alone a steak this good. God bless you. A saint of this earth. A saint of

this earth.” And Oliver usually went home disappointed.



VI: Oliver has a very interesting encounter with a very angry lawyer:

And some employees tried to use their brains to get rid of Oliver

Elephant-Elephant.

The most exciting plan they ever had started from one escaped employee

named Mary Hapless-Blacksnake. On the day Oliver Elephant-Elephant got his job

one girl escaped, a second story bagel shop teller named Mary Hapless-

Blacksnake. And on the sidewalk as she was escaping, she encountered Gravity

Shepherd, CEO of Labor of Love Umbrellas: legend says Gravity Shepherd owned an

indestructible blue umbrella, and Mary Hapless-Blacksnake knew this and thought

an indestructible umbrella might be useful against Oliver Elephant-Elephant.

And so she begged Gravity Shepherd to help her, to help all of the employees of

H.O.M.E. who were in the tyrannical grip of a very small orange person.

But Gravity Shepherd said, “Why does it concern me?” and Mary Hapless-

Blacksnake stared at him in disgust. And as Gravity Shepherd walked away under

his umbrella, he was protected from the falling blood of Mister Bishop and he

was protected as Oliver Elephant-Elephant tossed the accounting department out

the window and they fell all around Gravity Shepherd like giant, odd, be-suited

hail in glasses.

Mary Hapless-Blacksnake ran and ran until she got to the Clemson Armory

and she laughed at the impotent tank and she wrote postcards back relating the

whole experience. And from this beginning -- from Mary Hapless-Blacksnake’s

postcards about Gravity Shepherd’s indestructible umbrella -- the employees

hatched a plan, a plan to find something or someone indestructible, something to

fight Oliver Elephant-Elephant. Maybe Gravity Shepherd wouldn’t do it, but

there had to be somebody out there more willing and just as capable.

And these were the employees who figured out that Oliver Elephant-Elephant

didn’t actually have telepathy. They knew he wasn’t telepathic; he just

happened to know things, like he was so in touch with the physical matter all



around him and he just happened to know things, like the walls became his actual

ears and the surface of everything became his skin. But not telepathic. He was

too stupid to be telepathic: and they thought this phrase loudly, “You’re too

stupid to be telepathic, asshole!”

And they developed a code and wrote memos back and forth about “paper

clips” which actually meant “agent of destruction” and “inactionable” which

actually meant “indestructible.” So they set about their remaining days as

employees searching for inactionable paperclips and since Oliver Elephant-

Elephant never studied business and never really advanced above a middle school

level reading skill, he never figured it out.

So these employees found a man with an indestructible fedora and a girl

with an indestructible polo mallet and a boy with indestructible flip-flops and

a man who owned an indestructible fish. And there were people with

indestructible body parts: like the man with indestructible shoulder blades but

the rest of him was vulnerable and a girl with indestructible teeth and a boy

with indestructible intestines and a girl with indestructible arms and hands and

an old lady with an indestructible circulatory system.

And finally they found a man who was indestructible all over. And better

yet he had a five foot blade in place of a right forearm. His name was Eugene

Monsterpillar. He was a copyright lawyer.

So the cleverest employees of H.O.M.E. started violating copyright laws as

much as they could, infringing on protected ideas as much as they could and

since Oliver Elephant-Elephant didn’t study law, let alone business, he never

caught on. Other copyright lawyers came to the office but, like most visitors,

the employees turned them away politely -- “Mister Elephant-Elephant can’t see

you now” -- and they gave the visitor a stern look as if to say, “For your own

safety, turn back now.”

But finally Eugene Monsterpillar showed up. The clever employees were in

the lobby to see Eugene Monsterpillar show up. He was better than they



imagined: blue all over, angry red hair and frighteningly long and sharp and

jagged blade coming out of his right elbow like a giant butcher knife. So they

ushered him very giddily -- they laughed like it was all a practical joke -- to

see Oliver Elephant-Elephant who had at this point made a throne out of Jim

Ociil’s old office -- the marble golem at his left hand, the escalator golem at

his right hand -- and below him the board room had become pits in which

employees were expected to supplicate themselves. Eugene Monsterpillar climbed

the stairs to Oliver’s throne and behind him scuttled the conspiratorial

employees all attempting to suppress their giggles.

Eugene Monsterpillar said, “Hello Mister Elephant-Elephant. I’ve been

trying to contact you for days but none of your telephones are working. We have

very important business to attend to.” And Eugene Monsterpillar babbled on

about this copyright law and that copyright law and Oliver Elephant-Elephant

having never studied business, let alone law, could only respond by pressing the

question mark button on his key pad over and over.

????????

????????

Finally, confused and exasperated, Oliver looked at the marble golem, the marble

golem grabbed Eugene around the waist and tossed him -- very casually like the

most quotidian task -- out of the top window.

So the conspiratorial employees looked at each other, confused and broken-

hearted and very frightened -- they had no way of knowing who Oliver would

blame. They huddled in their offices frightened for hours. Then suddenly

Eugene Monsterpillar charged angrily through the front door walking his powerful

lawyer walk, past the ever-oblivious Gia Tari -- and nothing was broken, nothing

bleeding, only his expensive tailored suit roughed up and torn in places, his

brow pressed into his eyes but only by anger, not by sidewalk impact. And rumor



spread quickly: the blue man with the blade arm was back. And the employees who

planned it in the first place heard this rumor and the fear metamorphosed into

elation.

Eugene Monsterpillar went directly to the top floor and charged up to

Oliver and said, “Look, I am not a violent man, but...” and the marble golem

grabbed him and tossed him out the window. And hope was lost again. And hours

passed. And Eugene Monsterpillar came back and he marched up to Oliver and

said, “Look...” and this time that’s all he got out before the marble golem

grabbed him and tossed him out the window. And hope was lost again. And hours

passed.

And Eugene Monsterpillar came back and marched up to Oliver and said,

“Look...” and the escalator golem grabbed him -- but this time in two quick

motions Eugene separated the golem’s hand from its wrist and its fingers from

its hand. Oliver seemed a little bit surprised. But the escalator golem grew

its hand back -- it reached for Eugene again and Eugene sliced the hand off

again. And the golem reached with its other hand and Eugene cut the other hand

off. And the escalator golem lunged at Eugene and Eugene slashed and slashed at

the body and he’d cut an arm off and the arm would grow back and he’d cut the

other arm off and the arm would grow back and the golem pushed him backward and

kept pushing him backward and he’d go back and back and back and he kept

slashing -- and finally the escalator golem tackled Eugene out of the window:

they tumbled down and down -- and desperate employees watched the falling -- and

Eugene and the escalator golem held onto each other the whole time, the

escalator golem trying to bear hug Eugene into submission, Eugene trying to

slash the golem in this awkward position -- and then Eugene tried to reorient

the falling position so that the golem was below him and the golem would hit the

ground first but when he readjusted his weight and swung the golem below him, he

swung too hard and they kept rotating until Eugene was below the golem again.

So when they hit the sidewalk, escalator parts went flying everywhere; Eugene



was buried beneath a pile of gray machinery.

The desperate employees all leaned out the window to see who won, praying

the blade man would be standing alone, but all they saw was a pile of escalator

parts. And so they murmured, “Is he dead?” And those who knew said, “No, no,

he can’t be. He’s an inactionable paper clip.” So they waited breathlessly to

see how inactionable Eugene really was.

Then suddenly -- so suddenly it ellicited a gasp from everyone staring out

of their windows -- a blade popped up out of the pile. And slowly Eugene

Monsterpillar climbed out. And all the employees watching tried very hard not

to cheer. He’d beaten one of the golems but not yet Oliver himself; it was too

soon to cheer. And Eugene with his weary arm and his torn suit started walking

to the front door of the H.O.M.E. building.

Then behind him, so slowly few people noticed at first, the parts of the

escalator started to roll to a center point. The golem was reassembling itself.

After only a few seconds of Eugene walking confidently away, the escalator golem

was once again whole and gorilla-shaped. Then one employee on the second floor

screamed, “Blade arm guy, behind you!” and a bit of the plaster ceiling fell and

clocked that overly vocal employee in the head.

But Eugene did turn around and he saw the reassembled escalator golem --

but the golem was smaller now and some debris was scattered here and there and

Eugene realized that each time he had sliced off a hand or sliced off an arm the

escalator golem seemed to get smaller by minor increments. So Eugene, still

seething beyond decorum, rushed at the golem, ducked a swat of the huge arms and

sliced off the golem’s legs -- and as the golem lay on its back trying to regrow

the legs, Eugene sliced off both arms and the head, but the golem grew the arms

back and the head back; Eugene continued like this, never letting the golem’s

body too close, never letting the golem apply a bear hug and he kept slicing and

slicing limbs until the golem was Eugene’s size and then the golem was smaller

than him and then the golem was Oliver’s size and the golem got smaller and



smaller and smaller until it was only this: Eugene repeatedly and maniacally

beating a single escalator gasket into the sidewalk. Eugene breathed heavily

and looked around at the sidewalk and the scattered escalator parts and he

laughed. And he muttered in his eastwoodian self-confidence as the H.O.M.E.

employees responded with chills and little tears: “Only one more of those

gorilla-looking bastards left.”

And at that moment he was very suddenly surrounded by twenty four new

golems. Twenty four new golems the size and shape of the one he’d tried so hard

to obliterate. But they weren’t escalator golems; they were made out of

concrete and parked cars and telephone booths and a nearby water fountain with a

horse and rider statue and at least one was made out of a very interesting

mingling of a lamppost, a mail box and a fire hydrant -- all of them in the same

gorilla format -- and Eugene Monsterpillar stared at them a long time. And

finally he said, “Okay. Fine. I give up. You tossed me out of a window; so

what? I’ll just forget anything ever happened. We’ll call it a day.” And he

walked away. And Oliver let him walk away.

And the H.O.M.E. employees were devastated.

Oliver would eventually vibrate that whole building and everything in it

to dust.

VII: What Oliver does when he comes home:

He’d go home every day from work and one of his golems would stuff a big

pile of cash in his mother’s mail box and one of his golems would stuff a big

pile of cash in Amanda Lockley’s mailbox and his golems would wait for him all

night as shapeless piles of marble or escalator parts until he was ready to go

in the morning.

And his mother would always ask, “How was it working at that place today?”

And he’d shrug. And she’d say, “Anybody say bad things about you?” And he’d

shake his head no. “Is the work easy for you to do?” And he’d nod his head



yes. “See, I always knew you would make it, Oliver. You’re a very strong boy.”

And she’d change his feeding tank for supper time and then tuck him into bed

when he got sleepy.

He would try to go over to Amanda Lockley’s house with a bouquet of

flowers he had picked from his mother’s garden but with out fingers he couldn’t

hold the bouquet and it would fall on the ground pitifully. Instead he stared

out of the window as one of Amanda Lockley’s eight boyfriends would kiss her.

French kiss her. Open mouthed.

VIII: Oliver gives one more present:

And Oliver Elephant-Elephant died of old age. Many years after his mother

was gone, many years after the H.O.M.E. building was gone, he lay in a hospital

bed at Saint Bumbleshot’s -- the doctors at first baffled by his own machines --

not only clear tubes in his tear ducts, now blue tubes ran all over his body,

all over the room, weird jointed machines beeping and blinking; another baffling

mystery: where to put the breathing tube -- finally a tracheotomy in his tough-

to-puncture neck and they still let him have his calculator-sized punch pad --

the only way they knew to communicate.

The only one who came to visit him was Amanda Lockley. And in the same

room in the bed next to him: the still comma-bound Jim Ociil and his still loyal

wife. And Amanda Lockley would come every morning when Oliver woke and say

things like, “My poor little doll. Don’t have your momma any more. So

pitiful.”

And before he died he wrote one more thing, exactly sixteen spaces,

fourteen letters and two blank spaces. And when he died, old tattered and used

quilts came out of the ground, rotating like a hurricane, and covered the city,

faded blue and yellow and green quilts, every steel and glass and concrete

surface of the city covered in quilts. And this is what he wrote a few seconds

before he died:



what the

y wanted

tongue :or: the talent of oliver elephant elephant

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