Absolute Unit

1.

Every day, all day, Bill smells shit or burning hair. Bill asks everybody if they smell those things, and when they say no (“What smell, dude?”), Bill thinks they’re lying to him. (Bill, your friendly neighborhood health inspector, thinks everybody lies to him.) Only when Bill starts smelling the distinct odor of his wife’s crotch does he begin to suspect something’s well and truly wrong with the ol’ noggin—she’s been dead for years.

Not that Bill will see a doctor about his symptoms, no sir. Instead he’ll smoke and snort and screw the fear away, because a buzz always beats reality, and the idea of a tumor or an artery primed to blow is as real as it gets. On Monday, Bill takes two hundred dollars in hankie-soft bills from a corner market, in exchange for overlooking a frisky roach, and uses it to purchase a few small bags of the finest chemical concoction some creep could cook up in a kitchen sink, which he smokes in the front seat of his Official Government Vehicle before driving to his favorite strip club. That fine institution always earns an ‘A’ when inspection time rolls around, in exchange for a regular gratis lunch of a burger and pints and a bored lap-dance from someone who’d rather be anywhere but near him.

We sense the disgusted look on your face. Really, what else do you expect poor Bill to do? Born with a nubby penis and a tendency toward obesity, the meat computer in his skull loaded with buggy software, it’s a miracle that Bill made it this far. A thousand years ago, he would have been a sex toy for Vikings on his way to becoming worm food. These days, the twin wonders of medical technology and modern law will ensure that he lives long enough to realize he can’t obliterate the memories of his dead wife and all his failures, no matter how hard he tries.

But we’re going to help him, mostly because we don’t have a choice. Bill is our home.