“Finger lobotomy special,” read the menu on the elevator.  “Twenty dollars for a blood shot. Level 24.”

The advertisement was poorly laid out, but it still attracted me.  My grandmother's appointment with the hearing doctor was going to take up an hour of my time anyway, so I decided to check it out.

“Level 7,” the electronic voice on the elevator said in four different languages.  Thank god my grandmother, Helen, was hit by a car in March and lost her hearing.  Her prejudice for foreign language was overwhelming, and I hate listening to her talk.

I held her soggy, shit paper hands and guided her to the Doc's room.  I explained to the doctor that she told me she had an epiphany the other night while studying a telephone book and she related to me that she heard astral voices.  She told me she needed a doctor.  I told her she had sloppy handwriting.

“Maybe she meant a psychologist,” I told Dr. Griggen as I was shutting the door.

As the last sliver of light shone from the doctor's office, I heard the doc yelling, “Hey, I don't know sign language.  How the hell do you suppose I communicate?”

I was already in the elevator by the time he finished.  Now, I thought to myself, $20 for a bloody shot.

“Select floor now,” the electronic lady living in the shaft said.

I slammed on the number 24.  The numbers, once white, were worn with time and fingerprints, and about three feet from my knees there were smudge marks from eclectic children.  I remembered when I was young and innocent.

When I arrived on the floor, a man with a prosthetic right hand was waving to himself as he streaked the white tile floor black with his apparently cheap boots.

“Hello, Mr. Wangaloo.  Did you ever bite into a hot dog and lose a wisdom tooth.  But Oh.  I forget, the lizard took my teeth while I was fishing in the Mojave,” the waver said.

I thought he was talking to me.  I tried to ignore him but upon turning around, I was baffled.  Before my swollen morning eyes stood an identical man.  The only difference on the twin of this waver was his left hand was prosthetic.

“Identical twins,” I pondered.

“Hey, hey, hey,” the twin waver said. “Space robots are for chickens and my funk is swooshing away with a bottle cap in the fog of old London.  Oh.  I forgot, London lost the spice and fog when Dickens died.”

The waver and twin waver were obviously wacked out of their minds.  And I don't mean a good wacked like ecstasy.

I mean mental stability. 

I figured I would inquire on where the $20 blood shots were executed.

“Do you know where the lobotomies occur,” I asked, wishing I didn't.  “I'm looking for the Doctor.”

“Dr. Kettleman, huh?  He is in with a patient.  Oh.  I forgot.  I was the patient.  He’s in room 24B.  He'll be waiting,” the original waver said as he was walking toward his twin, waving like a fat Time Square cop directing traffic.

“Thanks,” I said, proceeding towards door 24B.

Walking down the hallway, I could hear two sets of feet streaking the sparkling floor.  They never stopped.

“Finally, 24B,” I said out loud to myself after a five-minute walk down the mirror- covered hallway on floor 24.

I opened the door, happy to get away from the mad wavers.  The lazy advertisement that attracted me there and the words “DR. MAN the KeTTLE-man” were posted on the door.

“What is with the spelling,” I said out loud as the door hit the left wall inside the office after only opening three quarters of the way.

Upon entering the office, which did not appear like an office at all, but like a long hallway angled to the right, the walls were covered with eye scabby pink wallpaper and ocean blue, baseball bat sized paperclips painted every three feet.  The paperclips appeared at noon, 3:30, 10:30, 11:45, and 7:30 in succession.  Look-alike metal apparatuses were stacked three high on both sides of the space.  At the end of the roughly 20-foot hallway, the stench of the inside of an outside shit house in the baking sun saturated the air.

“What in the hell,” I said out loud again, covering my nose with a red handkerchief similar to the one Beckett used in Endgame.

I came to the window at the end of the hallway.  The frame was a bright red and had dents as if someone shot nickels into it with a .270 Sako rifle.  I tapped on the tinted window and yelled in the little opening that was the size of a paper dish those perfect assholes at the Olive Garden serve their food on.

“Anyone there?” I inquired, not being able to see what was on the other side.

“Hello,” a woman said, tapping on my back.

I turned my startled body towards her.

“Where did you come from,” I said wiping the sweat from my brow.

“I was right here the whole time reupholstering the floor with this cow hide,” she said. “My name is Mandy Kettleman.  I am the doctor.”

 “What in the hell,” I said to myself, finally noticing the floor.  The hardwood floor was covered with real cowhide.  Traces of blood were everywhere.  Tendons resembled kite string dangling with mucus. My feet literally walked on raw, greasy hamburger.