The Complete and Unabridged Guide

A short plump man with a mustache shouts "Order up!"  in the back of a restaurant kitchen, and this sets into play a somewhat mundane chain of events:

The man himself moves on to the next order; this is where his part ends, but upon hearing the call of duty a loyal and courageous server sets upon his task as if driven by the hand of some higher being.  He kicks off from where he was previously, which is of no real importance, and runs to the window of the kitchen.  He picks up the order; a large black tray of plates, and balances the tray on one hand with such balance and grace one would be forced to ask oneself why this particular young man does not in fact dance for the Russian ballet.

Thats neither here nor there.

With this tray of satiation he prances, ever so feather like, to a table of four.  A table of lovely and hopefully generous patrons who have used their freedoms, given to them by the bill of rights, to pick this restaurant in which to dine.

Having one of the most fantastic memories any single human being might ever have had the young man places the plates in front of the respective customers with a keen and agile hand not a single morsel on the plates shift from their original places, and further more the food that should be hot is still hot and the food that should be cold is still cold.

The patrons thanks him, and he thanks them, and upon tucking the tray under his right arm he sweeps off and into the depths of the restaurants back of house.  Where he goes is of no particular consequence, because this is where he exits the story, and an even more unlikely protagonist takes his place.

The man we must now turn our attention to now is Benjamin Hubbard: one of the the four at our chosen table.

Benjamin Hubbard is a somewhat tall unremarkable man with hair, skin tone, a nose, and shoes like any other random person you might see on the street.  He has no special skills, talents, secrets, or knowledge.  One could say he might be one of the most generic people this world has ever seen.

So why do we follow him, why are these words being written about him?

His lack of personality, in all of its wonderful glory will change soon.

Quite soon, as a matter of fact, for we feel talking of him as his regular self would bore the reader beyond all possible reason.  Nay the reader would be driven into a world of sheer horror and madness ruled by black and white colors, no grey, no vibrant change or subtle hues.

A terror stricken nether land built solely on plain white toast, white collar shirts, and un remarkable black shoes.

That having been said lets move on to the day this trout changes into a genius and artist of epic proportions.



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It's Saturday and it's seven in the evening.  When most young, exciting people are getting ready for a night on the town Benjamin Hubbard is only three hours into his shift at the "Snak-Attack" gas station, a horrible place that lies some where in between dull street and boring lane.

Benjamin is mopping the store near the soda fountain after a young fat boy, having indulged a bit too much in chocolate donuts and stale soda pop, has spilled his stomach contents on the floor; in quite the messiest way possible.

Mop, squeegee, towel, and broom are Benjamin's tools of the trade; this having been the one thousand one hundred and second time he has cleaned sick in front of this particular soda machine, one might say that Benjamin has a skill for mopping vomit, but this is not the case.  If Benjamin were to try to clean spew on any other floor any where in the store or any other building in the entire country he would fail miserably and be forced into exile, perhaps some where nearer Tibet, until the residents of Tibet found him and forced him more toward Lithuania.

After the floor once again gleams grey-ish tan Benjamin takes up his dull post once again behind the cash register.

Some time around ten o'clock another nondescript man ambles in through the front door; his lack of features might lead one to believe he is possible a friend of Benjamin's, but alas he is featureless because of the black face mask on his head.

And he wants to shoot Benjamin twice in the face if Benjamin doesn't give him all of the money in the register, at least thats what he tells Benjamin when he presses the barrel of a twenty-two caliber shotgun against Benjamin's now bright red cheek.

This could be the most exciting part of Benjamin's life; though compared to other robberies it's somewhat sad, slow, and boring.

Benjamin hurries to open the register and cram all of the crumpled dollar bills and greasy coins into a brown paper bag, and after he's done so his assailant turns the shotgun on Benjamin and hits him in the face with the stock of said shotgun, knocking loose a few of Benjamin's and giving him a black eye that will swell to the seize of a jumbo grade A chicken egg.

A few moments later the glorious blackness lifts and Benjamin is once again brought back to his less than stellar situation.  After a moment of dulled senses and recognition of reality Benjamin slowly pulls himself up and looks around the store, in a very boring fashion.

He notices, once he glances toward the soda fountain, that the small fat boy from earlier had slipped back into the store and been sick on the floor once again.  Leaving that for later Benjamin picks up the telephone and dials the police; they say they'll send a squad car out immediately, all the while Benjamin's stare slips from the puddle of milky vomit to the mop in the corner and back again.

"Thank you for your cooperation, sir." the monotonous voice on the other end of the phone tells Benjamin as his glare slips from the mop to his feet, where a tattered, sad looking hundred dollar bill now lays. 

Benjamin hangs up the phone and considers his situation again.  While he would never normally steal a hundred dollar bill from the cash register, he would also not normally get robbed; not to mention the bill isn't even in the cash register.  Purely on a whim, which is and has always been uncommon for Benjamin, he bends over and grabs the bank note, and stuffs it stiffly into his pocket. 

Shortly after that he grabs the mop and cleans up the globs of partially digested donuts and thick, runny soda or milk.  Which is slightly askew from the normal spot, therefore he does a mediocre job of cleaning it up. 

Promptly two hours later the squad car shows up and two police officers walk in the store, which is, aside from smelling heavily of stomach juices, back in nearly perfect order.  They leave, two minutes and twenty-one seconds later, after taking Benjamin's name and a sketchy description of the villain who jostled Benjamin's brains so thoroughly, and would never be caught.

They say cases go cold after forty-eight hours and it was the weekend...  The weekend of the policeman's potluck dinner, at which there would be free food, and perhaps an open bar.  So needless to say the file clerk would file Benjamin's accounts away where they would never be of any use to anyone who wasn't looking to start a dust collection, or perhaps a collection of papers with chocolate finger smudges on them.

Its ten o'clock, the end of Benjamin's shift, so he locks the store up and starts walking home.

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About half way home, as Benjamin is walking down the poorly lit city streets he notices one light; a beacon, a beckoning light and of utter pureness and beauty, and he is drawn to it. 

He moves toward the light in such an involuntary manner that had he been a June bug and had there been a screen door in front of him, he would have smashed his face squarely into it.

Before he knows it he finds himself in the shop; an antique shop, moseying, browsing, perusing as it were. As he des so he found himself filled with a strange sense of self purpose: Benjamin never acted on impulse, or out of routine and it did him a veritable cornucopia of good to do so.

His head feels lighter, as do his steps; his shoulders are squared comfortably and his posture is perfect; he is a knew man.  Or perhaps after leaving the store he will resume his boring, dull, lack-luster, meaningless, insignificant existence.

As Benjamin moves through the only open business on the entire street he makes his way toward a section filled with tomes of forgotten lore and volumes of leather bound with knowledge and delicate gold leafed pages.

He faces the non-fiction side of the aisle and spots a book that seems to call out to him, perhaps as the holy grail would call out to its seeker.  Gold light seems to seep from the edges of the book as an aura, and Benjamin reaches for it.

He falters only for a moment to consider whether or not the book might be irradiated, and perhaps cause cancer, or some type of heavy metal poisoning.  He shortly pushes this from his mind.

As his grubby finger tips caress the spine of the book, just before he slides it from its spot a tall, short, fat, thin, completely non-descript man manifests from thin air behind him and says "What an absolutely lovely selection you've made sir."

Benjamin turns to his new shopping companion and considers him only for a moment before, holding the book in an outward stretched hand, asks "How much?"
"Well, lets see here." the man says taking the book from Benjamin's now trembling hand.
"Well?" Benjamin asks failing to hide his impatience, after the man has taken too many moments to discover the books value.
"Well..." the man says slowly, "This is a very rare book, a first and only edition, perhaps the only copy in existence..."  He glances at Benjamin's hand, which is now in his pocket. "How does a mere one hundred united states dollars sound?" the man asks with a seemingly other worldly knowledge.
Benjamin considers this offer and rolls the hundred dollars around in his pocket, which is now drenched with sweat from his still shakey hand, and says "I'll take it."
"Shall I wrap it for you?" the man asks.
"No, I can carry it." Benjamin says slipping the hundred dollar bill into the man's hand and jerking the book shakily from his loose grip.

Benjamin slips from shop and hurries home, carrying the book under his shirt the whole way.

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Morning comes and Benjamin wakes to find that he had clutched the book to his chest in his sleep, much like how a crying child would hold a Teddy bear, or perhaps like how a fat woman would cling to her Kentucky fried chicken and Jerry Springer.

(That's it for now)