“Now Mr. Hurlbutt, we have a special treat for you on your birthday! Instead of daily corn-on-the-cob which we know you just love, we have something else!” the guard says as she brings the test subject his tray.
“Oooh boy, oh boy, what is it?” Damien exclaims with glee, orange neckbeard aglow.
Bourbonnais cinema clerk, neckbeard and communal narc-a-doodle Damien Hurlbutt does the fart dance when he goes to rip one. The only thing he loves more than his hoard is the smell of his own gas blasts.
Bourbonnais multiplex clerk, neckbeard and communal narcissist, Damien Hurlbutt, has caught word that his estranged former wife Lori is coming into Kankakee County for a doctor’s appointment. He is deathly afraid of running into her because he is scared she might confront him about his history of verbal abuse toward her, tarnishing his squeaky-clean image. He heads over to his brother Robbie’s apartment to ask him and fellow con man Pat Splatt to come up with a sneaky way into avoiding her.
“I’m back!” Damien tells his younger brother and fellow narcissist, Robbie.
“I’m front!” Robbie snickers back.
“I am leaving town for a week or longer. I am telling my boss at the cinema and then hitting the gas. My ex-wife is coming back into town and I am scared.”
“Scared?” Robbie replies in his typical faux-Elvis voice.
“Yeah. Sssh, don’t tell anyone. I really look good online after I smear campaigned her to all my friends, even to that famous couple until they had told me to stop messaging them, sending them presents and mailing them weekly postcards. I had sent them a drawing I made all by myself after our friend passed away since I had talked them into letting me send them art instead. I swear, they are really impressed! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Damien exclaims with glee as he rubs his palms together.
“Just man up and deal with it!” Robbie Hurlbutt tells his older brother Damien.
“Come now. That is not how you talk to a fellow Men’s Rights Activist! You know that!” Damien says on the defense to Robbie.
“I hope you get the time off approved.”
“Okay, okay, okay, okay…” Damien repeats ad nauseum, not knowing his little brother Robbie is already out of earshot.
“Ding-dong.”
“You’re wrong!” Damien snickers beneath his breath to the person at Robbie’s door.
A half-grinning Pat Splatt opens the door and struts inside.
“I popped the question!”
“What question?” Damien asks.
“Heyyyy…where did you meet her?” Robbie replies and looks away.
“Hey Pat, my ex is coming into town and I am feeling lukecold about this. I was wondering if you could help come up with a scheme—“
“Damien, I just got engaged!”
“I know, I know. My ex is due in sometime this week. I would like to gingerly bow out of town but I have to work. What do you suggest I do?”
“Hey, can I sing at your wedding, Pat?” Kankakee’s number one Elvis impersonator, the one and only Robbie Hurlbutt asks.
“Do you know anything besides Elvis?”
“I can sing lots of oldies.” Robbie replies.
“Do you play any metal?”
“No, but you can book me really cheap. I will throw in my groovy dance moves for free.”
“I’ll consider it.” Pat says to Robbie.
“So where did you meet her?” Robbie asks.
“The dating app OKStupid. Hey, I’ll show you guys a picture.” Pat gets out his phone and opens up said dating app.
“Who’s Daniel Sprague?” Damien asks.
“Oh, that’s my profile,” a half-embarrassed Pat replies as his gawky, straggly self shows the Hurlbutt brothers the obviously-stolen photos of the handsome, athletic man in the photos with the gorgeous hair and eyes.
The Hurlbutts smile and ask to see his new girl.
“Her name is Alix. She’s from South Africa.”
“When did you meet her?” Damien asks.
“Oh, a month ago.”
“She came to Kankakee?” Robbie asks?
“No.”
“Hey Damien, let’s work on avoiding your ex,” Pat says to change the topic and the three work on scheming.
The next day arrives and so does Damien. Unlike Pat, Damien rings the bell and waits. While he waits, he taps his foot and jiggles the doorknob a dozen times. Make it a baker’s dozen.
“Well doesn’t that put poop in your soup?” Damien asks Robbie.
“Say what?”
“My time off did not get approved. I have to work. That means if my ex-wife comes into town, and visits the theater, she could say something bad about me if I am mean to her! What do I do?”
“Weren’t you saying you had heel spurs, just like the former president?”
“You know, the Moon landing may not be real but durn it, my bone spurs are!” Damien sternly replies.
“You deserve a long, hard week off.”
“You know, that’s right. I’ll just call in.”
“What do you do at that theater anyway?”
“Oh, make copies of tickets and give them away. And make color copies of things I print out…all on the company’s dime. Why not? They’re paying for it.”
The brothers share a giggle and Damien drives home to his neckbeard nest to sleep on the floor.
Damien dials his supervisor, Cinema-13 owner Konrad Teirant, on his ten year old flip phone to call in “sick.”
“You will need to be examined by a doctor and have a written excuse for each day you are out. Company policy.” Konrad says to Damien.
Upset and surprised by this rule, Damien makes an appointment to be seen. The office cannot tells him he cannot in until next week.
“Phew!” Damien says aloud after he hangs up his ancient flip phone and writes down his doctor appointment.
Damien drives over to Robbie’s apartment, where Robbie, his roommate Andy Skandees and Pat Splatt are all dancing and watching children’s entertainment.
A bulbous Damien sits down on the basket chair and nearly falls out, while Pat stares angrily at his phone on the couch next to Andy, who is relaxing in his white tank top and cargo pants.
“She says she wants to come meet me. In person. I keep telling her I am busy. She says she is on her way to Kankakee in a week-and-a-half for a business meeting via way of Chicago!” an unhappy Pat exclaims.
“Why don’t you want to meet your girl? Andy asks.
“Reasons,” Pat replies.
“Did I tell you my story about the poop elves?” Damien asks with a large grin on his face.
“Way too many times…” the rest of the room answers in unison.
“Oh, I forgot.” Damien lies.
The Kankakee storm rages on, and then changes to sun five minutes later.
Damien spends the next week off work, feeling glad he does not run into his former wife out and about, especially at work. It is review week coming up and he is deathly afraid of this time of year, as he is every year. Damien lives to impress, and will not even let his peers throw him a birthday party because he is not the one doing the impressing. If anyone would care enough to surprise him —not that they would — he would take over the check, (in a not-so-polite-way) and insist on paying on it himself thinking that would somehow impress them.Damien only does this for image, as he only cares about himself. He just wants to look good to cover up his lack of empathy.
Damien goes to the doctor’s office the following Monday before returning to work at the movie theater that night. After all, he had just spent a week off for his heel spurs!
While waiting for about an hour for his fifteen minute exam, in walks a familiar-looking woman, along with a much older lady. Damien looks up.
“Oh gawd.” Lori says to her friend after briefly looking over at Damien and then back at her friend.
Damien is now shaking with fear. He immediately dials up Robbie. It goes straight to voicemail. He calls Andy. Same thing. He calls Pat.
“Hey, man. It’s an emergency.”
“Be right over. I am charging you double-time.”
“Fine.”
Damien flips over his bronze-age phone and waits, tapping his fingers, whistling audibly.
Thirty minutes pass and Damien has not been called back to see the doctor, neither has Lori.
Pat Splatt walks in, cowboy boots a-clomping.
“Hi Damien. What’s going—“
“Look, Pat.”
Damien points across from him, to his former wife and her friend.
“What do you want from me?” Pat asks.
“That’s my ex wife! I thought her appointment was last week! You gave me the info.”
“So what. Things change. It happens.”
“Hey, you sound familiar!” says one of the ladies across from him.
“Hey-hhmm-hhuhhh—hmmm—what?” a melodramatic Damien replies.
“No not you, that guy next to you.” the elderly lady replies in her Cape Town accent, appearing to be about 72.
“You mean Pat?” Damien snarkily replies.
“Pat? I thought your name was Daniel!”
“Alllll-iiiiixxxx?” a stunned Pat Splatt replies.
“Yes, sonny. It’s me. I had told you I was coming into town. But you hadn’t wanted to meet me. I wonder why not? You do not look anything like your picture. The engagement is off.”
“Well neither do you!” Pat exclaims.
“Calm down everyone!” a staff member shouts from behind a window.
The group of people waiting wonder how any of them would get any calmer by a comment like that.
Damien is eventually thrown out of the office and Lori is called in next.
Needless to say, Damien does not pass his yearly review at Teirant Cinema-13. Poor Damien. If only he had just tried to be nice. But then again, he would not be Damien.
Kankakee pharmacy clerk, vulnerable narcadoodle and the city’s number one Elvis impersonator Robbie Hurlbutt was surprised to see his ex-girlfriend who had left him 17 years ago. Mimicking his self-entitled communal narcissist brother Damien, he put his flip phone up as she passed by him at the grocery store and took a photo of her, in plain daylight.
He never got over her having broken up with him, and him being the creepy narcissist who thinks he can do no wrong, Robbie thought it was just dandy to take her photo and keep it in his souvenir collection of exes he idealized, devalued and discarded like chewed up gum.
Bourbonnais cinema clerk, neckbeard and communal narcissist Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt really wants to reconnect with a m’lady he saw in a Kroger grocery store. Do you think she will respond? He fudged his age a bit, typical con job. Maybe she will come into Teirant-13 Cinemas so he can catch a whiff. Maybe.
Manteno’s favourite pretend-do-gooder Bernadette Cacca plays accordion cover tunes for the Manteno Optimal Club. She also tries raise funds for Ukraine – and of course – the photo opportunity. Why donate anonymously when you can make it look like you care?
She only accepts Craptocoin, mined the old-fashioned way, donating 10 per cent of her tips to charity. She takes the rest home and burns it in her fireplace.
From what is Craptocoin made? NFTs – Newly Formed Turds!
Manteno port-a-potty proprietor, singer and communal narcadoodle Bernadette “Bern” Cacca spends her vacation swimming in the bog. She gets bored devouring the living and speeds home to her shack to visit her husband Peppi.
Bern opens her mailbox to find a letter sent from Peppi.
“DEAR BERN. I GOT OUTTA REHAB AND AM LIVING IN A HALFWAY HOUSE. BRING BEER.”
Bourbonnais cinema clerk, communal narcissist, and proud neckbeard Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt is visiting his brother; Wally Green’s clerk, Elvis impersonator and covert narcissist Robert Roy Gary Hurlbutt at his apartment, with whom he used to share with drifter Andy Skandees.
The Narcissist Brothers: Robbie and Damien Hurlbutt
“What are ya gonna do on ya day off?”
“After lunch, smunch, gonna zogg on over home and write me an article!”
“Don’t you wanna spend it with your only brother? I am in a dark mood.”
“Naw, you see, I am going to write a paper.”
Awkward silence passes the two, like a fart in the wind.
“Since people think we are narcissists, I am gonna prove them wrong! Bwahahahaha.”
A sinister grin fills Damien’s face, morphing his orange, straggly beard into something even creepier.
“After I write an article all about narcissism, I am going to send it to my former therapist down in Champaign for a once-over, and prove forever we are not narcissistic at all. Then I people will know I am the victim and all her friends will say goodbye! Bwa ha ha ha ha!”
“She’s the counselor also who saw the convicted murderer who lived in your old apartment complex, right?”
“I know, I know, I know…”
“Did you help him move the body?”
“Anyways…I need to go back to Bourbonnais and write this important article.”
Damien taps away at his 10-year-old desktop machine atop his TV tray, sitting on a folding metal chair, the only furniture he has since the rest of his apartment is cluttered with boxes containing useless crap; shredded tissues strewn across the carpet, empty pop cans littering the apartment he uses as a dumpster.
Bern runs all over Manteno looking for gullible men, to no avail.
Remembering that fellow communal narcadoodle Damien Hurlbutt hit on her at Cinema-13, she heads over to pay him a visit. Damien is not there, so the clerk hands Damien’s card to Bern.
“Damien Hurlbutt, old soul and tender-heart looking for M’ladies.
Call me now. I am the last of my species. 1-815-555-FART”
Happy she does not have to look anymore for someone she can idealize, devalue and then discard like used burger wrappers, Bernadette calls Damien and heads over his neckbeard nest in Bourbonnais.
Damien opens the door and immediately hugs Bern, handing her a bouquet of long stem roses.
“Hello, M’Lady. I tip my hat to you, so little and dainty. I have another surprise inside.”
“Oooh, let’s go!”
Damien holds the door for Bern, and brags about it as if he needs a medal.
Atop one of his many boxes of crap is a bunch of balloons attached to a massive teddy bear.
“I gotta go for real.”
“So soon?”
“No, I mean I need to use the washroom.”
“Ahh.”
Bern wades through the lake on his washroom floor, farts a bunch of times, and takes a massive crap.
Bern opens the door to a wide-eyed Damien.
“Are these for me?” Bern asks Damien, mouth wide open, almost inhaling one of the flies buzzing around Damien’s dumpy excuse of an apartment.
“Yes, honey puddin’.”
“Oh you are the best, Damien!”
“Anything for you, M’lady, Madame.” Damien tips his black fedora.
“By the way, I’m impressed!”
“You think so? Oh, you are nicest guy on earth. I love to sing for charity, I am the best giver you know! And the best listener.”
“No, I’m the best giver. And I mean your farting. Man, those are some hot toots!”
“Yeah, I light them to burn poopies in my fireplace.”
“Dang, wanna stay the night?”
“Yeah, baby!”
“Hoooo!”
“I don’t know. Who? I hope me, handsome dahhhhling.”
The two spend the night together on Damien’s bare floor, cuddled together under Damien’s ratty blanket, sharing his lone pillow.
Bern awakes many times in the night by a loud, dissonant noise.
Damien wakes up, farts three times, and heads to the washroom, peeing loudly. Then he rips a few more air biscuits, bragging, “Pheeeew!”
Bern checks her phone for donations to the Manteno Optimal Club, for which she plays accordion, covering pop tunes to raise money. Secretly, she does not really care about the charity nor the community as a whole. She just wants to look good on the outside.
Damien walks back into his room.
“Dude, why do you snore so loudly?”
“Oh, I have sleep apnea.”
“Why don’t you wear your mask?”
“It fills up with water in the night.”
“You do know they make automatic cleaners for those things. My mom has one.”
“I know, I know, I know…”
“And no bed? My back is killing me from sleeping on your hard floor.”
“How about we go to your place, M’lady?”
“I don’t want my husband to find out.”
“Husband?”
“Yeah, Peppi is in rehab for his drinking again.”
“Oh, I won’t tell him. I was married once before I married Grimace and I never told her.”
“Grimace? Who?”
“Oh my ex-wife. She got more hostile every day when I was getting ready to leave her down in Champaign. It was all about her, her her,” Damien smears the woman he emotionally abused.
“Why do you call her Grimace?”
“She is so fat and so dumb. One year I bought her a vacuum and she could not even put the thing together.”
“Sounds like me.”
“Naw, honey puddin’. You are a lot prettier than her.”
Damien takes his usual hour-long shower, runs out the bathroom to grab a towel and spills water all over the floor. After drying off his manhood with a hair-dryer, he gets dressed, and meets Bernadette in her car.
The two walk into Bern’s Manteno shack, which she shares with husband Peppi.
“Can I use your computer?
“Go ahead!”
Damien checks his email.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Damien exclaims with glee.
To: “Damien U. Hurlbutt” [connivingpimp@hautemail.con]
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Subject: Re: I have a great idea which I think you will like
Damien, you have sent me four emails now. You are not my client any more, and I will not sign off on your idea. Here is a list of therapists in Kankakee County.
Attached file: “TherapistsInKankakee.pdf”
Damien fires back an angry email:
From: “Damien U. Hurlbutt” [connivingpimp@hautemail.con]
To: “Florence” [ProgressiveTherapyLLC@dmail.calm]
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Subject: Re: re: I have a great idea which I think you will like
No, I do not need help. There is nothing wrong with me. You are psycho like my ex-wife!
Bern walks in and Damien quickly locks the computer screen so she cannot see what shenanigans he has been barfing up.
“I gotta head upstairs. I will be awhile.”
Damien grabs Bern’s hands and looks her dead in the eye.
“I was about to close off my heart and never love again, M’lady. When I was born, my mother saw my head full of red hair and named me after the kid from The Omen. We redheaded males get discriminated against—“
“Damien, you are really handsome and your farts smell amazing. I really need to go poop for awhile.”
“Okay, honey puddin’. I will be here.”
As Damien hits send on his email to his former therapist, someone rings Mrs. Cacca’s doorbell.
“Oh, horse-hockey,” Damien complains.
“Come innnnn!” Bern’s voice emanates from the upstairs restroom.
“Bernadette, somebody is here.”
“Let them in.”
Damien opens the door. A 5’10” average looking male asks for Bernadette.
“Who are you?”
“I am JB, her boyfriend. Who are you?”
“Uhhh-I’ll go get her.”
JB sits down on the Caccas’ couch while Bernadette continues to pinch loaves.
“Bern, I am gonna go on home. I have a stitch in my side, and my heel spurs are hurting.”
“PPPHHHPPPTTTTTT” says Bern’s butt. Damien’s derriere returns the sentiment and he heads home.
Bern comes down the stairs to greet her other boyfriend.
“Hey sugar, you the most handsome man alive. How are ya?”
“Do you have any turds? My turd-machine is out of ammo again and I have no luck stealing poopies.”
Little does Bern know, she has an audience.
“Is this the dawning of the age of morons?” the next-door neighbors Gothic Diana Ross and The Midnight Supremes ask each other, giggling. They have been standing on their porch, listening in on Bern’s conversations with her boyfriends.
“Bern Cacca has her nose so far up her enablers’ butts she can see out their mouths,” Gothic Flo quips and the gothic girl group busts out laughing, happy to have a laugh at the Caccas’ expense.
Clio Bersola spots the temper-tantrums of Bourbonnais cinema clerk, neckbeard and communal narc-a-doodle Damien Hurlbutt in the “Nice Guys Looking For The Finish Line” Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) themed group on Fakebook, under her alias JG Wayne.
Best friend of Damien’s verbally abused and rightfully estranged ex-wife Lori, Clio messages him and fake-agrees with him over IM on so many points, stringing him along. They become instant friends, soulmates, solely in Damien’s “old-soul” nitwit brain.
Damien swiftly asks Clio out on a date because he is so impressed. Wow, someone like him, the last of his species! Umm…yeah.
They agree to meet up at Ma Barker’s restaurant in Chicago. Little does Damien know what is in store for him.
Damien complains about the entire drive up Route 57, and nearly gets rear-ended getting off 90/94. Clio parks at a friend’s house and takes the train.
The two meet up at Ma Barker’s. Damien is wearing a red feather in the brim of his brand new, black fedora as Clio had instructed.
The place is rather large, decked out in gangster memorabilia, reproduction crime scene evidence, Ma Barker photos and those of her famous outlaw sons.
Clio instantly recognizes Damien — a spitting-image of Squirrely Dan minus the ball-cap — whistling loudly to himself, orange neckbeard aglow.
“There’s my lovely Men’s Rights Activist!”
“M’lady, m’dame!” Damien says to Clio as the two embrace, Damien hugging more tightly than Clio.
The two sit down and chat. Conversations flow rather quickly and Damien rambles on about how he was about to give up on love in a month or two had he not met Clio.
“I was about to tuck my heart away forever, had I not met you. So many women treated me badly, especially my ex-wife Grimace. She is so fat and ugly, eeew. She ate so much fast food and begged me for $50 a day. Fifty dollars! My life is complete now I met you!” Damien gushes to Clio, not even respectful enough to call his former bride by her name.
Clio shudders a bit inside and then gets excited. “The Time is Now” by Moloko plays over the restaurant loudspeakers.
“I have something I would like to ask you, Damien.”
Clio takes Damien’s hand. It is the first time he has been touched since he and his wife divorced. Damien’s grin widens.
“What is it with you so-called ‘Men’s Rights Activists anyway? Don’t you have anything better to do than complain about your privileges?’”
Damien snaps his hand away from Clio.
“Huh-whom-who-why-hwat?” Damien snips, pauses, adds extra “whoooos” and “huhhhs” for melodrama.
An awkward silence passes by as Damien coldly glares into Clio’s eyes. Meanwhile, Clio fills with anticipation, and smiles inside.
“You women are awful. Misandry is the real problem, WOMAN. Men get kicked in the nuts on TV. You people give us a hard time for this fake thing called mansplaining. Men are always the butt of women’s jokes. We are oppressed all the time and your feminism is the cause! You women are horrible! You are a horrible person who will be alone forever! You’re psycho!”
Damien gets up from his seat and goes to the couple next to him.
“See this woman next to me? She is psycho. Stay away from her,” Damien gaslights.
The couple roll their collective eyes and go back to eating.
Damien stomps over to a family across the room.
“See that skinny woman sitting by herself at that table? With the dark brown hair? She is crazy. Stay away from her. I am trying to help and she won’t listen.”
The mother gives Damien the stinkeye and motions to protect her kids should Damien harass them again.
Mr. Hurlbutt huffs, puffs, and sits down by himself with his head planted squarely on the table, hand stroking his neon orange neckbeard. He adjusts his fedora, and tries to slam the red feather down, only for it to fly away.
Clio heads for the kitchen, to speak with her former coworkers.
“I am getting harassed. Can you please call the police?”
“That neckbeard dude throwin’ a fit? We already had some complaints. Hang tight. I got ya back.”
Damien storms toward the kitchen.
“Pardon me, sorry to interrupt your important work. See that woman there? She–”
“Find your own way home, Damien,” the server commands.
Damien refuses to leave and sits in the men’s washroom farting away, wishing he could brag about his poop size to an unsuspecting young lady.
The Chicago Police Department hauls away the unwanted person, Mr. Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt and puts him in the holding tank with a bunch of other smelly, sweaty men.
Clio meets up with her buddy — the former Mrs. Hurlbutt — and they have dinner together, laughing and giggling all night long.
Damien taps away at the cold cell floor, much to the annoyance of his cellmates.
“Socks with sandals?” a fellow inmate complains as he stares at Damien’s feet. “Grrrrr.”
“These stupid meds. I hate having to take them. Plus they’re so plop-happy! Plop, plop, plop. If I wanted them on the floor, I’d put them on the floor!” the former Mrs. Hurlbutt said about the medication she took to cope with the stress from her then-husband. Communal narcissist Damien Hurlbutt used neagtive humor to devalue his supply Lori whom he used to idealize, as his mask was crumbling.
“That’s so clowny. Why don’t you get a spice rack for your pill bottles, Lori?”
“Damien, you said that about 12 times before. It was not funny the first time.”
“Are you taking your Klownopin?” Damien asked wearing his clown outfit, and honked his bicycle horn for extra moronic effect.
Lori gladly left Champaign and her narcissistic ex-husband, multiplex clerk Damien, famous for writing these Lunacy Letters to mansplain psychology to Lori’s psychologist.
Damien got fired after several poor reviews from his boss, and moved to Bourbonnais to work at a multiplex owned by CRASS Chief Financial Officer Konrad Teirant.
MoronicArts 
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