It started out with an innocent chuckle; one of those polite ones reserved for when you're told a not-to-funny joke by a good friend. The problem was, that in thirty-three years he had not laughed, setting straight faced through every funny situation. For it he had been tagged a scrooge, but he didn't give a shit. Then after thirty years he woke up on a cloudy Sunday and chuckled.
He spent the rest of the day chuckling. By night he released his first full laugh. He couldn't stop; he laughed all night. Finally as the first light of Monday rose, he was forced to face work. He laughed at the person on the other end of the phone, when he called in sick. He tried to eat, but his laughter stooped him, and grew worse everything seemed funny as opossums giving birth in trash cans. He looked in the mirror at his over-weight body, with his gray tinted hair. He saw himself as the stereotypical fat-man and laughed ever harder.
He tried to watch television. They were showing one of those feel-sorry-for-Hodgy- becaseu-we-sure-as-hell-are-not-going-to-feed-him-as-we-film-him shows and he hee-hawed loud. He set for three hours of telethon, and laughed his ass off. He had never felt so jolly at any other time during his life.
"I thought you would be more feeling," she said.
He laughed harder, so she hung up. He tried to cook some food, but the sight of animal flesh burning in the skillet was hilarious to him. He tried to sleep, but he found the pillow amusing. By Tuesday morning he was exhausted, but he couldn't stop. 'I got to stop,' he thought; the thought was the funniest joke that he had ever heard.
His sister called back to tell him that, John had left and he laughed at her again.
"What the fuck's the matter with you," she screamed repeatedly as he cackled.
By Wednesday night he thought that he must have experienced every type of laughter possible. He was wrong. Through his third sleepless night he discovered new ways to laugh, and new ways to realize the true humor of things.
By the next afternoon he still hadn't stopped; he decided that something was wrong. He found his way to the hospital to find help, but all the white coats stared at him. To him they were giant white rabbits. He couldn't stop imagining them suddenly asking him if he wanted some tea. So he snorted in imagined joy.
"Can I help you sir?" the young attendant behind the desk kept repeating.
He couldn't answer her except in chuckle. After several minutes, the young nurse grew tired of him and the guard escorted him to the street. He went home. He was ravenous, but he couldn't eat. It's hard to swallow while you laugh. He was thirsty, but every time he tried to drink the water would spew out of his mouth and run out of his nose. His throat cracked like a desert, but the kept laughing.
By Thursday night, his laughter had gotten loud enough that the neighbors pounded no his walls to quiet him. He found the pounding funny as a Pope-joke and laughed louder. They banged on his door later that night, but he was too busy in his humor to answer it.
He went to the office to clean out his desk, and found hilarious. The picture of his wife, dead now three years, became his center of amusement. He took it home and sat on the couch laughing at her short brown hair and blue eyes fro hours. 'She always wanted me to laugh,' he thought. She looked fabulous dressed in his favorite red silk, revealing dress. She had been attractive, until the car crash. He remembered going to the morgue to identify her mangled corpse, and cackled like a mad-doctor in a fifties make-a-monster-to-destroy-the-world movie.
He lay back, on the couch and tried to think of something that wasn't funny. Finally he though of his dead dog, cat-tail, named after the plant that its tail had resembled. He had found cat-tail lying dead on the side of the road, when he was six years old. He stopped laughing.
He thought about Cat-tail's face, smashed like a hollowed pumpkin on the berm. The driver never stopped. The dog corpse had already filled with worms by the time that he had found it. In his mind he pictured his six years old self moving the dog to his lap so he could hug it. The worms fell out as he did. He had squeezed the dog hard and maggots ran out like a living mountain water-fall. The river of worms had run out of the dog's body and covered his leg. Suddenly it was the funniest thing that he had ever thought. He started to snicker and again he immersed in full, loud cackles.
'I like to laugh,' he thought, 'its inexpensive entertainment.' So he laughed harder.
His chest hurt, his lungs labored to get his body the necessary oxygen. That was something that is hard to accomplish in mid-chuckle. His face red, he thought he would suffocate while breathing. He laughed boisterously at that; the pounding of his neighbors started again. He clutched his chest. It felt like his ribs where going to poke out of his flesh like a prairie dog out of the earth of the Kansas plains.
He tried to stand, but he found it too difficult so he just sat there and laughed. His chest burnt; pain shot down the length of his body. He couldn't breathe; the pillow of laughter pressed too hard against his face. He fell back his face repainted from red to pale white, then blue, then dark green, the black. His lungs stopped and he no longer needed to breathe. The banging of the neighbors stopped with his laughter.
END
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