The Joke's On You

The Joke's On You
by
Zander Williams

One thing about jokes was that they weren't funny to everyone, whether the jokes were verbal or practical. Just ask Wade Durham. He had sat in an interrogation room last Saturday for five hours at the West Palm Beach Police Dept.; three weeks later, he sat on the couch at home and shot the TV with his .40 caliber pistol. Why would Wade put a bullet in the television?
This sounds like a lateral thinking problem, doesn't it? Lateral thinking will not be required. Everything will be as clear as a glass cleaned with generic Windex and newspapers once the story unfolds.
* * *
Wade had sat in that torn chair in the interrogation room because he was thought to be responsible for Seth father's death. Seth was his best friend, a cool white guy that favored Brad Pitt. They were friends since the eighth grade, when Wade beat down the bullies that picked on Seth in his way to the bus stop in the morning.
Wade was a stocky twenty-two year-old with long cornrows that extended to the middle of his upper back (occasionally making many females in West Palm amazed and jealous at the same time), and he never wore bright clothing—a thug, in other words. It was his face and his actions that had his own dad dud him the Toy Devil.
He didn't look like a demon (if that popped in anyone's head). Wade was too intelligent to be one of Satan's angels. The devil had many forms (the film industry contributed much to this), and Wade's facade would have to be one of them. His eyes were dark and bold; his nose was thin; his eyebrows were thick; his face was long with a pointed chin; his lips were even thinner that his nose; and he had a pierced left brow. If all of that didn't give him a devilish appearance, then his height (six-three), his tattoos (which were self-made with sterilized razors, needles and pen ink), and his sharp beard did.
Not to mention that diabolical smile of his.
Being a prankster, Wade was the first was to jump at the position of creating a birthday present for Seth's dad, Garrett. His plan: to tie the fifty-six year-old Garrett at Seth's house and have some strippers—Wade called them skrippers—to come and play with him. He told Seth, and brought his other two friends, Mikey and Juan, into it. Wade already knew who he could hire to strip—Heidi Nunez and Mercedes Ackham. They were skrippers before they were employed at Hot Topic in the West Palm Mall across from Spencer's, where he worked. Mercedes liked him and was more than happy to do strip (they both were actually, since they were getting a hundred and fifty dollars apiece to do it). The truth was, Wade liked Mercedes back, but not the way that singer did it that song that went: "I'm in love with a stripper..."
They all net over Juan's pad on Glade Avenue five days before the days before the day Wade was interrogated. Since had the blueprints to the prank, he opted he would stay outside of Seth's house to tell the rest of them what to do via their Nextel Walkie-Talkies. Mikey, however, wasn't too happy with that; he was a large twenty-three year-old who must've thought that since he was the biggest, he should run the operation. When he suddenly changed his mind, he must've known two important things: that his wit was nothing compared to Wade's, and that if he got on Wade's bad side, the Toy Devil would once more pull another naughty prank on him the very next day. Wade had done everything in the book the Mikey, from putting tacky glue on his car seat to switching one of Mikey's I Love Florida shirts that he always wore to his life-guarding post with an I Love Dudes shirt.
(just jokes)
Out of Wade's three best friends, the big guy was the most gullible, and the big guy knew that, so he let Wade be in charge of the joke against Seth's dad.
Something told Wade that he should have watched Mikey more closely after that little dispute, but he ignored it.
It was now nighttime, and Seth told the them that he'd tell his dad that he was going to the mall, leaving ole Garrett there so the prank could occur easily. The old guy hadn't known that Mikey and Juan were in Seth's room, dressing up like bandits in black as the plan ordered. Wade could picture the kind of thugs the old guy would encounter: one big and dopey-looking and the another one short with a slick ponytail hanging out of his ski mask with the three holes—the same kind of thugs that were a crime lord's suck up subordinates.
Wade, Heidi and Mercedes were out in the back yard.
"Yo," Wade said over the walkie-talkie in his Southern accent. He had the ability to speak Northern, but there wasn't any use for down in Florida—people there always looked at him funny when he did. "Go 'head and tie 'em up. And be careful not to hurt 'em, especially you, Mikey. Ya big ass might sit on him."
Heidi and Mercedes, the two sexy brunettes next to him in heels, giggled.
"Okay, fucker," the walkie-talkie responded with Mikey's bass tone.
At last, after seven minutes, Wade's walkie-talkie beeped. "We got 'em," it said. It sounded like Juan, the Puerto-Rican guy that once tried to start a feud with Wade when they were younger. The Toy Devil had come from New Jersey, and when he moved to Florida at age thirteen, Juan and his little gang called the Glade Avenue Murda Clique had tried to beat Wade up for sticking up for one of their regular victims, Seth Heyward. The Toy Devil had fought half of the fourteen-member gang and succeeded miraculously; afterwards, Juan had no choice but to call a truce with the Jersey native and eventually joined Wade's side when his Murda Clique lost its “Murda” qualities and died off. The both of them including Seth and Michael Hoff, the big white guy from most of Wade's classes in middle school, had become good friends—despite Wade's endless, playful assault on them over the years.
"Alright," said Wade. "Heidi and Mercedes are 'bout to come through the front."
As the brunettes started for the front door, the walkie-talkie beeped again. "Yo, Seth's dad is shaking like a maraca in here!" It now sounded like Mikey again, only this time the voice sounded frightened.
"What?" Wade exclaimed, sounding a little frightened himself. He saw Heidi and Mercedes look back from the side of the house alarmed.
"Seth's dad! He was just shaking, and now he looks dead!"
"What's wrong wit him, man?" Wade's heart was doing jumping jacks at this point.
"I think he had a heart attack or somethin! Oh shit...he ain't breathin!"
Wade looked up bug-eyed in the night. He thought he'd see the bulging eyes of the two skrippers he hired for this special occasion, but they were nowhere in sight. He started to look around frantically until the walkie-talkie in his quivering palm beeped yet again.
"I think he's dead, Wade," the walkie-talkie whispered. It was Juan again. "Yo, I'm about to jet like hell up outta here!"
That was enough to make the Toy Devil jet like hell, too. He ran around the house and out of the front gate in his Nike flip-flops and socks (courtesy of Foot Locker with a thirty-percent discount because he worked at Spencer's). As he ran, a big red van across the dark street distracted him a bit; the moon and the streetlights revealed the white MTV logo on it. Wow, MTV is in West Palm, he thought as he sprinted. He would've stopped to check it out, but when you might be blamed for the involvement of the death of an old white dude, you had to get somewhere far from the scene and fast.

The next day, Wade called both Mikey and Juan and told them to keep quiet until he could think of something to do about Garrett (since he was the evidently the brightest crayon in the box). This meant no telling, especially Seth and the pigs—Wade didn't know how much he stressed that aspect of the matter, but he knew he had stressed it to the point that he repeated it many times over the phone to his two colleagues. He also told them he'd call them at least twice a day to check on them. Everything's Eventual, Wade thought about a Stephen King anthology he read four years ago in 2002. "Eventual" meant good in the title story.
But things hadn't been good.
Mikey wasn't answering his phone anymore. One day had passed, and Wade was more than worried when Big-Ass Mikey had acted like he was away on vacation. When Juan had told him that Mikey wasn't answering his calls either, Wade was now more paranoid than a claustrophobic on coke. He drove his red Honda Accord to Mikey's house on Orange Street that evening, knocking over the gnomes on the corner of Mikey's driveway. He knocked on the front door for nine minutes, forgetting the possibility that no one might be home, and then began to peer through the windows. No one home. Just as he thought of breaking in, his Nextel went off. He pulled it off of the clip on his belt and checked the screen. MIKEY'S CELL, it read.
"Yo!" Wade shouted. His hand was shuddering, heart pumping like a piston. "Where you at, Mikey?"
"I'm at the police station," he said. He was calm—a little too calm for comfort. "I've been here since mornin'. Where are you?"
"At your house! And can I ask you why you're over thurr, at the police station, man?"
"Uh...um...Seth came by and—"
"And let me guess," Wade interrupted. He almost dropped the phone out of his hand. "You told 'em, didn't you? Asshole!"
"Hey, man, that's his dad, Wade."
Wade's mind went haywire. After that was said, he did drop the phone. It fell in the grass next to the steps. After he fished for it, he put it up to his ear and said, "What else did you tell 'em?"
"I had to tell them the truth. I told them that you was responsible for Garrett Heyward's death."
Wade's bottom lip dropped; if he were an animated cartoon, his lip would've dropped down to his feet. Big-Ass Michael Hoff the Lying Two-Timing Snitch, he thought. He then thought of A Nightmare of Elm Street movie where Freddy Krueger's tongue came through the phone—he wished he could put his arm through the his Nextel and choke Mikey the same way.
"I also told them that you threatened to kill me and Juan if we didn't help kill him," Mikey added considerately.
"Hey, motherfucka," Wade bellowed, "I was outside when y'all said he was shakin! Whatever happened to Seth's dad is you and Juan's fault! I specifically said not to hurt 'em! Oh man, you betta get the story straight wit them!"
"Well, the cops are after you, and since you said you're at my house, they will...be there shortly."
Wade immediately pulled the phone away from his right ear and pressed the red END button. Before he did that, he heard a shrill laugh—he didn't know if it came from Mikey's end or from the neighborhood, but it wasn't Mikey's laugh. It sounded masculine, hideous and high-pitched. Nevertheless, he ran to his Accord and left, breaking the same gnome that he knocked over when he arrived at Mikey's house with the left hind tire.
Take that, you bigass rat.

Three days had past since he left Mikey's house, and Wade was jittery in ways unimaginable—since when had the Toy Devil (or any devil, as matter of fact) acquired fear? There was Daredevil, who was very intrepid, and there was the New Jersey Devils, who were a fierce hockey team. Wade Durham wasn't even thinking about bravery or ferocity at that point.
He was now on Indigo Road on his way to Natalie Arnold's residence in Fort Lauderdale; she was his first love, and even though they weren't currently together, they still kept in contact with each other. They had met at an ice cream parlor in West Palm six years ago, and being the clever devil that he was, Wade had intentionally bumped into her and the cone he was carrying landed on the breast of her shirt. From there it had been magical bliss between them, Natalie braiding his hair so nicely, Wade telling her the wacky stories of pranks and other mischievous adventures he had been in.
All had been good until Natalie and her parents moved to New Jersey so she could attend some cosmetology school called Glenwood. From then on their long distance conversations had been far and between, both of them agreeing that long distance relationships were expensive with all of the phone cards they had to buy and the great rise of the phone bill each month. They had tried the letter thing, which proved to be less costly and more effective on emotions that they had for each other.
Then, Wade had received her letter that said that she was coming back to Florida, but Fort Lauderdale was where the house would be instead of West Palm. So form there, they'd visit each other at least once a week, now focusing on each other's feelings rather than engaging immediately in sexual intercourse like before.
On his way down the road, he spotted a blockade consisting of the two police cruisers and numerous orange cones. To the far left, the road was clear and went for it, hoping that those three cops don't flag him down. They did as soon as his Accord pulled up on the left of the cruiser-cone blockade. He stopped and began to gnaw frantically on his nails as the cop who was wearing a tan suit approached the driver's side. The cop knocked on the window and wade reluctantly rolled it down, thinking that this was going to be the end if him.
"License and registration, man," the suited cop said. He had a Spanish accent and what came out of his mouth was Lyceenz n regeestation, main. He bore a mild resemblance to the younger Cheech Marin with glasses. Wade had to struggled mightily to keep from saying Where eez da weeeed, esse?
Wade opened his glove compartment and shuffled nervously through the many envelopes (bills, bills, bills) until he came across what the Cheech look-alike was demanding. He handed the card and the folded document to the cop.
"Here you go," Wade said, smiling without being devilish about it. He tried his hardest to sound proper—maybe the cop might let him go if he sounded uppity and Caucasoid. "Is there a problem, officer?"
The cop adjusted his glasses and studied the license, never minding the registration. "I theenk you know that there's a broblem, my friend, if your name's Wade Durham." He opened the Accord door and motioned for Wade to get out, his middle finger ring glistening in the afternoon sunlight; it looked liked one of someone who had won the Super Bowl. "Step outta the car, main."
Tensely, Wade stepped out of the accord, almost falling because his right foot got entangled in the seatbelt.
"Don't try eeny slick shit, main," the suited cop said, helping Wade stand straight. He noticed two things about the cop, one funny and one not so comical: a) The cop's shirt was unbuttoned at the top, revealing his bushy chest hair (all that taco meat), and b) the glossy .45 pistol on the cop's hip. "You're wanted for the questioneeng for the murder of Garrett Heyward. I'm not gonna read you your rights 'cause you should know theem."
Wade had to look down at the cop to gaze into his dark eyes. "Look, officer, I don't know what the rest of them told you—"
"Relax, main," the cop interrupted. "We can talk when we get to the Department, o-kay?"
Wade thought and then nodded.
The cop went on. "Now you look like a cool guy, so I'm gonna keep the cuffs on my belt, o-kay? 'Cause if you gotta use 'em on you, I will—and I promise you it'll be damned ugly, main."
(who does he think he is? Scarface?)
"I'm cool," said Wade. He was willing to cooperate—even though he could do an Arnold Schwarzenegger stunt: Take the gun from the Cheech look-alike's belt, shoot him in the head, use his body as a human shield, kill the other two cops, jump in the Accord, and head to Mexico. Wade didn't think he could do that as proficiently as he envisioned and Schwarzenegger couldn't either, since he was the governor of California and falling off of bikes and all.
The suited cop shut the door of the Accord and led Wade to the closest cruiser, grabbing his arm to do so. The cop opened the rear door of the cruiser and Wade got in, grimacing because there wasn't enough room to move his knees. He gnawed at his nails again like a beaver as the suited cop drove with on of the other cops in shotgun. The cops said nothing the entire trip.
They arrived at the West Palm Beach Police Department, a building that looked old on the outside and advanced on the inside. The two cops parted ways and the suited one directed him through this place, an air-conditioned complex where the fuzz fingerprinted and questioned a strange mix of accused murderers (like Wade), rapists, thieves, embezzlers, prostitutes, and gang members (all linked together with handcuffs).
I never knew there was so much crime in this city, Wade thought.
Finally, the suited cop led the Toy Devil into a small room with a gray marble table, two collapsible chairs, a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling on a wire, and a one-way mirror—an interrogation room. It was cold in there and it made Wade shiver like a junkie in withdrawal; he could see himself do so in the cop's silver-rimmed glasses.
"Have a seat, main," the suited cop ordered. Wade did so, and watched the cop shut the door and sit backwards in the chair on the other side of the table, where the one-way mirror was. "Sorry—I didn't tell you my name, did I? I'm Deetective Eduardo Bina."
Bina held out his hand as if to shake with Wade, but when Wade held his out, the cop's hand did a sharp turn and grabbed the red ashtray in the middle of the table. This motherfucker just played me out, and there's nothing I can do about it.
The cop placed the ashtray in front of him and pulled out a pack of Marlboros,
(the cowboy cigarettes)
tapping two cigarettes out and placing one between his thin lips on one side.
"Cigarette?" Bina asked.
"Nah, I don't smoke," Wade lied. It wasn't much of a lie, though—he didn't smoke cowboy cigarettes. Black&Mild was what he was used to, and now that they came in assorted flavors (mmm, strawberry), he had fallen in love with them.
"Aw c'mon, my freend!" Bina snatched the cancer stick from his lips and the one the table and aggravatingly stuffed them back into the pack. "It isn't much fun smokeeng by myself."
He put the pack back into his pocket, and then tossed the ashtray in back of him, leaving a splotch of ashes on the mirror. If the ashtray were made of glass instead of plastic it would have shattered into a gazillion pieces. The cop got up, looked at Wade gravely, and sat on the edge of the table. The Toy Devil tapped the table with his fingers, still edgy—this cop was stalling for some reason, and the anxiety of being arrested was irking Wade's nerves.
"So," Bina said, being complacent, "tell me your side of the story. There are so many sides to this story that I'm starteeng to theenk I'm in geometry class. But I have to tell you that all the stories I've heard so far all have a common theme, main—that Wade Durham keeled Garrett Heyward."
Wade started to just say that he didn't do it, but that was starting to sound obsolete. He had seen so many crime movies to know that most criminals—whether they did do it or not—always said that they didn't do it, even in the face of hard evidence. He came up with another tactic—just telling how he was a part of everything. Tell the butt-naked truth.
He sat up in the chair he once was slouching in and did just that: How Seth Heyward had called him to set Garrett Heyward up for a prank because it had been the old man's birthday that pending day; how they had planned to have the old man tied up so that the skrippers (wade corrected himself at this point and said strippers) he hired could go in the house and dance for the old man while the music would play; how Wade had been outside on the phone while Michael Hoff and Juan Gomez were dressed up as robbers when they were supposed to tie the old man up; how they had told Wade that the old man had been convulsing like he was having a heart attack while they were tying him up; how wade had run home when Mikey and Juan told him all of that.
"So what you're saying, main," Bina said, "is that you were in charge of and reesponsible for the whole thing?"
"Wrong," said Wade, shaking his head back and forth. "I was in charge of the prank, but I wasn't responsible for what happened to Garrett."
The cop stood. "No? Michael and Juan said that you threatened to keel them if they told the cops."
"Nah, that's not right. I told them that we should wait and talk the whole thing out before going to the cops."
Wade thought hard and went on.
"Besides, the last time I ever saw the old man was a couple days before the day when we pulled the prank."
"That's funny," Bina said, "because your fingerprints are all over the wire that Garrett was tied to the chair with. The joke's on you..."
Wade was enraged. None of this was making any sense.
"How the fuck..." Wade trailed off, then: "I didn't even know they used a wire to tie—"
He stood up strong as if he was going to take a stand against abortion. "Look, Detective Bean or whateva your name is—I didn't kill nobody!"
The cop leaned across the able and stared Wade directly in the eyes. "Since you used a double negateeve, that means you deed kill somebody. The joke's on you!"
"N-no, that's not what I m-meant," Wade stuttered.
Bina smiled and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt like Batman, swinging them in front of Wade's distraught face like a pendulum.
"You have the right to remain silent the joke's on you!" the cop exclaimed. "You are being charged for the first degree murder of Garrett Heyward the joke's on you!"
This was it—he was about to be arrested for something he did not do. Now he knew exactly how some inmates felt when the jury had deemed them as guilty when they were really innocent; he could already see himself fighting off sex-starved convicts the size of whales who'd want to shank him or throw him blanket for killing a helpless elderly man. He had long hair, long, black and girly hair, too, which made him highly susceptible to being somebody's bitch the moment the soap falls to the floor in the showers.
That's why the made that show, Injustice—'cause dudes were being tormented in a place they didn't rightfully belong.
The handcuffs were lustrous in a bad way as he looked at them, and something caught his eye momentarily—
Wait, that wasn't what he thought he saw, was it?
It was—there was something he could make out on the handcuffs: at the base of each cuff read SPENCER'S. He worked at Spencer's in the mall for two years and knew that anything bearing the mark of that novelty shop was at once a fake or stimulated real (and almost always disgusting) things—plastic vomit, gum that would turn your mouth black, itching powder, fart machines.
"The joke's on you!" Bina said. Why was he keep saying that—
"What the fuck?" Wade uttered, sitting back down in the chair, feeling indefinite about himself and the whole situation.
The door of the interrogation room flew open like the legs of a hooker, and in came two men with big black things on their shoulders, things with lenses and buttons, things that the men holding them were looking through with one eye—video cameras. Wade's left eyebrow rose as the men approached him and positioned the cameras not that far from his face. There were three words that ran through Wade's mind in a teeny, tiny circle: whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.
Through the same door came a balck guy Wade never seen before or perhaps did somewhere or someplace, at the mall or on the street or even on TV
(on TV?)
After him came three people Wade recognized immediately—the biggest one was Mikey, the one with the black ponytail was Juan, and the Brad Pitt wannabe was Seth. What the hell were they doing here? Everyone was just popping up.
Everybody and their grandmoms are in here! Wade exaggerated inside of his mind. They night as well send the fucking President in here, or even Jesus Christ himself, or even the boy I fought in the eleventh grade, or even the two strippers I paid to dance for Garrett—
Soon as Seth came into the interrogation room, in came the two strippers that he hired to dance for Garrett—but they weren't dressed in the stripper attire—no tight lingerie, no excessive makeup, no slutty stiletto heels. Just reasonable feminine clothing.
"Smile, Wade," said Bina, whose voice no longer owned a Spanish accent, "you're on the new MTV show, The Joke's On You!"
Before Bina said that, everyone in the room had impish grins upon their faces—even the two men who each had an eye closed another eye covered with the cameras grinned. After Bina said that, they all started laughing at Wade; just cracking up, falling into each other, falling into the cold walls of the room, pointing at the Toy Devil, the only one who wasn't laughing at all.
"You know you wanna laugh," said the black guy, his voice hideous and high-pitched. He looked familiar because Wade had seen his face on a commercial while watching MTV2 late one night promoting The Joke's On You. His name was Melvin Lash, and Melvin Lash put a hand on Wade's shoulder as Wade stood up. "Yo, kid, there are cameras all over the place—behind the one-way mirror, in the left hand corner in back of you, one on Mikey's house door, and even in his glasses."
Melvin pointed at Bina as Bina took off his glasses and showed them to Wade. "He's one of our actors, Joey Knoll. He scared the shit outta you, didn't he?" Bina (or Joey Knoll) pulled at his chest hair and it all came off together in a bundle. He dangled it in the air and Wade saw that it was fake—something else that could've been purchased at Spencer's.
"But don't blame me or him for any of this," Melvin went on. "Your friends are the ones who set you up."
Wade wanted to smile, really wanted to, but couldn't—wouldn't. The anger wasn't coming out, like a bleach stain on a black shirt. He wanted to curse up a storm and found out that he couldn't even do that. Just as he was about to utter at least the three words that kept revolving in his head,
(what the fuck)
he saw the old man standing next to Seth; Wade didn't see Garrett come in, the very same guy they said had died from a goddam heart-attack. He was laughing as well. Wade thought he heard the old man's bones creak. Was he back from the dead?
"Man, we got you good!" Juan said. "Yo, you should see ya face right now!"
"How does it feel to have a prank pulled on you?" Mikey asked, holding out his hand. Wade honestly thought that Mikey was going to do something similar with his hand as Bina (or Joey Knoll) had did earlier with the ashtray, but when Wade put his hand up, his big companion shook it with hulky vigor. "You took it like a man, though—I have to congratulate you on that much."
Everybody was still in a state of hilarity when Garrett came forward and said with a wrinkled smirk, "Ah! You thought you could fool an old fool, huh? Ha-ha! We gotcha this time, ya toy devil, you. Ha-ha, you're the last person I thought would fall for this prank."
No, he's not anywhere near dead.
"I almost thought it wasn't going to work," Seth said, now directly in front of Wade. "You didn't see that MTV van in front of my house that night? I thought that once you saw it, you'd pick up on the joke we were pulling on you."
"I saw it," Wade said with frigid monotony. He said it like that because he in fact had seen the MTV van when he ran home after Mikey and Juan had said that Garrett was dead over the phone. The Toy Devil fit perfectly well as a title for Wade—a devil that had been played like a toy.
Fuck.
How could I have been so stupid? I'm the prankster around here—this city ain't big enough for another man like or a group of men like me! I can't believe I couldn't snuff out any foul play going on between them.
* * *
(they reversed my own prank on me)
It came on at exactly ten o' clock at night as they had said it would. He sat in front of the TV to watch it as he had said he would. Didn't he have to sign some contract in order for his face to show up on TV? He tried to be a good sport and watch himself being the center of the joke on the new MTV show, but this shit didn't feel good to the heart. He was the joker, the humiliator, the embarasser—not the embarassee, not the one being humiliated, not the one being the victim of a joke. Once the show was done for the night he'd be the laughing stock of West Palm Beach and all of the other beaches along the same coast. People would see him and ride him on about how his own friends set him up to appear on a comedic show. He hoped that it wouldn't receive any ratings and be cancelled soon after. How unreal that sounded—when his friends had let him know that he would be on a reality series on MTV three weeks ago, they laughed their asses off, so everyone who wasn't doing anything tonight would be watching The Joke's On You.
(cruel)
Melvin Lash came on the screen, doing some retarded dance and looking goofy and dumb. "This is my new show, and I got someone you're gonna laugh at for a long time," he said.
Laugh at for a long time.
(stop playing, stop bullshitting)
Melvin went on. "Here's this cat, Wade. His boys said he liked to play alotta pranks on people. So they got in contact with me and said they were sick of his pranks and that they wanted revenge. So just sit back, relax, and see how we got Wade."
(sick of them? I thought they enjoyed them)
Wade was sitting on his couch, watching himself on his own TV, seeing himself run from Seth's house in his flip-flops at an angle that show the right side of his body
(perhaps the camera had been in the MTV van that night)
Next, he saw himself knocking endlessly on Mikey's door from the back, meaning that they had been following him that whole time; he saw himself up close and personal with the background being the street in front of the house. He saw himself looking in Mikey's windows. He saw himself pull up to the roadblock on Indigo Road. He saw himself up close and personal again, remembering that the actor portraying Bina had had a camera implanted inside of his glasses; he could see how shook he had been. It still wasn't right looking at all of this on national television.
This was enough. He took out his .40 pistol and fired it; the TV made wild electrical noises as the new and warped hole in it glared at Wade like the eye of a Cyclopes monster.
"They are gonna get theirs," Wade said, loving the metallic scent of the gun. He didn't let his eyes waver away from the gaping crevice in the TV, the abyss that wouldn't let him watch any more shows until his next paycheck, whereas he could buy another TV. He had destroyed the only one in his apartment, but it felt wonderful to do so, strangely. "No one pulls a practical joke on the Toy Devil and gets away with it."
He laughed harder than ever as smoke danced slickly on the tip of his pistol. Sure, the joke had been on him; but the joke would always let off of one person and come down on somebody else.
Besides, they were just jokes, weren't they? Nothing but fun and games. No need to get all serious...
(they said that the old man was dead)
Wade shot the TV again, just for the fun of it.