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by Barbara Hall

She turned the switch on the light, a brief flicker, then darkness again. 'Dammit', she said aloud, and slowly made her way to another light, thinking to herself, 'I usually don't like 100 watt lights, but this will have to do', and proceeded to turn the light switch. Again there was a brief bright flicker and again she was in darkness. 'Shit', she said, 'two in a row, I will have to go out and get more lightbulbs today.' As she said this she made her way over to the third lamp in her apartment only for the same thing to happen. 'Well shit, ain't THAT just a kick in the head?' She slowly walked to the last lamp in her apartment, and fearing the outcome, flipped the switch, just for that to burn out on her as well. 'Well', she thought to herself, 'I have to go to work in 20 minutes so there is not time to go to the store for more lightbulbs, I will do it later'. With this thought in mind she used her lighter to find some clothes to wear, got dressed and headed out the door for work.

On her walk to work she thought about how she would word this story, for when she got home from work she decided she wanted to tell people this story. After all, it would keep her from telling people what was really on her mind, and hey, it might even amuse some people. She recognized that this was the result of listening to way too much They Might Be Giants. So, she thought to herself that she would word things as such, 'Jesus Fucking Christ, someone really must have it in for me, all my lightbulbs burnt out at once.' Just then a voice in her head interrupted her, downright scared the shit out of her is what it did. It said 'No, no, no, no, no! That will simply never do! You can't use words like Jesus Fucking Christ, don't you know you might offend some people? Namely Jesus Christ Himself.' She said aloud, 'Who the hell are you?' The voice replied, 'I am your conscience, but you can call me Mr. C. for short.' She thought back to the voice 'Listen, first of all, calling you Mr. C. has more syllables than calling you conscience, second, I don't give much of a shit about anything at this point, let alone if I offend people, _especially_ Jesus Christ, and third, I am just trying to figure out how to word this story to my friends ok?'

At this point there was divine intervention, Jesus Christ Himself _did_ indeed take offense and spoke thusly to her (keep in mind she will not have remembered this): 'For that my childe I will have to punish thee, prepare thyself for the worst.' At this point she fell flat on her ass on a patch of ice, looking all smacked and stupid she got up. However, there was a marked change, she was no longer herself, although there was some memory of that self. She was in control of her mind to some degree but she could not remember her name, and someone else was controlling her body. She realized that somehow Elvis has invaded her body. She tried to scream but found she could not. Music came from nowhere and her body started moving against her will.

With her hips gyrating beyond control, someone came up to her and insisted that she was Amy some or other. She knew this could not be true and asked this big greasy man who he was. Joey Buttasomethingorother. The next thing she knew she had done the horizontal mambo dance of love with him and had managed to escape. 'I know this is not me,' she thought desperately to herself, I will go back to my house and look at my mail, that will tell me for sure.

If she had only gone out for new lightbulbs.

the end