NEW ALBANY —  

An unearthly greenish glow emanated from the general vicinity of a pockmarked school desk that had been salvaged from a cold-water Westendia rental property about to be sub-let to an immigrant. The desk had been deposited hastily in the corner of a dimly lit room.

It was dusk. Crickets chirped, and pins were heard to drop. Down the pot-holed street, a dog barked at the baleful outline of his shadow. Somewhere, a bored school board member absent-mindedly scratched a building off the map, and returned to election team calisthenics.

From the vantage point of a silverfish slowly navigating the spine of a dusty, autographed copy of Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy’s list of Communists in the State Department, it almost seemed as though the man seated at the desk was hiding behind his keyboard.

Accustomed to a life of peace and serenity snacking on the book bindings of a seldom disturbed buffet, the silverfish shrugged and resumed his meticulous gnawing. Soon agitated finger puppet images were bouncing off the faux wooden paneling as Councilman Cappuccino ran his fingers through the thatch of a recently botched buzz cut and glared malevolently at the computer screen.

If only the local newspaper hadn’t joined the far-reaching conspiracy to withhold vital information from long-suffering rate payers like him, Cappuccino would not have been forced to eliminate the option of readers exercising genuine freedom of speech by leaving their thoughts and comments on the blog that he swore he’d never even have.

Now, in order to preserve the sanctity of the information that his sworn enemies at City Hall refused to give him, he was compelled to remove any chance that his Internet readers might offer additional information of their own, which in fact he regarded as misinformation and maybe even disinformation, such was its stark divergence from the information he already didn’t know, and because he didn’t know it, needed to protect.

The final straw in Cappuccino’s creased bonnet had been an obscene comment that read:

“2 + 2 = 4. The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west. President Lincoln gave a speech at Gettysburg.”

When he read it, Cappuccino felt sick and violated. How could he let obviously falsified information like this pass without losing face? If permitted on his “A Latte of Cappuccino” blog, he’d never again be able to look both his loyal fans in the eye, and so he censored the comment, and then, for good measure, he did just what his pen pal Kim Jong Il suggested he do: Shut down free speech. 

“Them people,” Cappuccino muttered. “If them people hadn’t come here, I’d be mayor by now … and then I’d have to give myself the information - or else!”

By now, the silverfish had ambled on to a highly prized dessert: “The Blue Dog Dixiecrat in Us All,” by Evan Bayh, and the sucrose had barely begun flowing into the insect’s tiny, throbbing veins before the passive stillness of yet another underachieving New Albany day was shattered by the force of a loud, blunt-force cacophony.

TWANG

It was L’il Stevie, the Uncouncilman, practicing the scales in preparation for his forthcoming headliner’s gig at Trogapalooza.

TWANG.

“No no no no no no no no …

 … No no no no no no no.”

Cappuccino’s brow looked like a relief map of Switzerland. He barked, “goodness gracious, Li’l Stevie, can’t you see I’m blogging?”

“Flogging? Heck, that’s what I’m doing to these defenseless notes. Listen, C.C. This is my last number. It’s a real showstopper.”

TWANG

“And I said, ‘No-no-no-no, I won’t take it no more

I’m tired of waking up on Doug’s floor

No thank you please, I’ll take the government cheese

Then hand it to my voters, door to door’”

“Hmm,” mumbled Cappuccino, “that isn’t bad at all. Maybe we can use it at the meetings instead of the prayer, now that them pergessives went and took it out. It was my favorite one, too, because I had it memorized.”

“Is that why you go around saying ‘God bless’ all the time nowadays, C.C.?’”

“Of course not,” thundered Cappuccino. “I believe in a humane, just and merciful God who’ll dole out terrible swift merciless vengeance on all them people and their big words.”

“And so this one goes out to the pergessives,” chirped Li’l Stevie. “It’s from an old Alice Cooper tune.”

TWANG

“For reading books and poking sticks in our cage

For being a brat

Refusing to be our sage

For all the decent people you’ve enraged

You can go to Hell”

“That’s right,” said a now happier Cappuccino, his foot still tapping. “The pergessives, the newspaper, the pointy heads, bicycle riders, city hall — they can all go straight to Europe, right where they belong.” 

•••

It was late. The barbecued bologna jerky was gone, and the iced tea jug had been drained dry. On Cappuccino’s flickering antique Dumont, Dave Ramsey was preaching. Behind the weathered wallpaper, an irate termite was wide awake, listening to the silverfish snore off his feast. 

Li’l Stevie nodded and yawned.

“Say, C.C., you mind if I use that couch over there?”

“Sure, you can spend the night,” answered Cappuccino. “It’ll be just like those sleepovers in junior high. We’ll get flashlights, and take all that EDIT money we have, and go out and flush it into the sewers. That’ll show them pergessives.”

“Huh? Sleep here? No thanks. I thought I’d rent the couch out to someone, you know, by the hour. After all, we need all the nickels and dimes we can get.”