What Goes Around Comes Around Hi. I’m Ehtkaets Recnad. My mother was an alcoholic, and drank excessively while she was pregnant, and as a result I’m not as skilled as the average person. I wasn’t smart enough to get into any college, or do anything commendable in school for that matter, and I simply am not skilled enough to get any normal job. I can’t get any normal job, so I’m stuck with a very abnormal job. I am what is called a Meat Dancer. Every night I go to Bob’s Place, dress up as a piece of steak, and march about on a small platform for hundreds of drunk people.
I work for Bob Schumacher, the owner of Bob’s Place. Bob’s Place consists of a fortune teller booth, a tattoo shop, and a Chinese restaurant.In the middle of it all is a circular area which has a small platform in the middle of it. Every night, at 8:00, I come to this place, put on a steak costume, and walk on this platform in front of hundreds of drunk people. With me, in a hotdog costume, dances Charlie Smokes. Charlie is probably a nice guy, but he’s hard to talk to because he’s never seen without a cigarette in his mouth. He has a smoking problem. I seldom speak to him because I don’t want to inhale any of his second hand smoke, and when I do speak to him he is frequently pausing to light a new cigarette. He even smokes while on the job. He’ll be dancing on the platform and puffing away at the same time. Also on the platform is Fat Phil. Fat Phil’s a very happy, jolly person. He’s immobile, because he was in a car accident as a child, and so for most of his life he’s pretty much sat on that platform. Fat Phil doesn’t dress up in a costume, however, nor does he dance. He just sits on the platform barbecuing meat and chatting with the drunk people. He’ll hand the meat he barbecues to the other three people that work with me, who will subsequently throw it at the drunk crowd. These three people are triplets who are each deaf and dumb.
When I tell people what I do, they usually ask what kind of people come to Bob’s Place. The idea of watching me dressed up as a piece of steak and dancing on a small platform doesn’t seem very inviting to most people. Well, I can explain to them the popularity of Bob’s Place. People come to because it has free beer. What Bob Schumacher figures is that if he gets enough people drunk enough, he’ll make enough of a profit off of the tattoo shop, because we all know that when people get intensely drunk, they tend to wake up the next day with some very embarrassing tattoos. Bob Schumacher also secretly enjoys watching people prance around small platforms while dressed up as meat, for he is a very strange man, and the only way other people will enjoy watching something as such is if they’re drunk. So he figures he has nothing to lose by giving out free beer. He gets to watch people dance while dressed up as meat and not look like a complete freak himself, and make some money at the same time.
So back when I was unemployed because no employer could possibly use someone as unskilled as me, I came to him and asked for a job. He said that he definitely had a job for me. Bob Schumacher always has a large “Help Wanted” sign outside of his place, because not many people want the kinds of jobs that Bob has to offer them. Neither the idea of watching nor being a person that dresses up as a piece of meat and dances for drunk people is appealing when you first hear about it. Bob asked me if I spoke Chinese or if I was a tattoo artist. I responded no to each of his questions, which ruled out the possibility of being a waiter in his Chinese restaurant or any work in the tattoo shop. So originally he employed me as a fortune teller. What I had to do all day was stare into a crystal ball and tell people that somebody they loved was going to die. The idea behind this was to depress the customer. As Bob himself told me, “the more depressed the customer, the more beer he’ll drink, the more drunk he gets, the more money he’ll spend on tattoos.”
Bob didn’t mention this, but the more drunk the customer, the more he’ll enjoy the dancing meat, and the more the customer enjoys the dancing meat, the less Bob looks like a freak. You see, Bob loves watching meat dance, but he hates looking like an idiot. And he’s not stupid. He’s a little bit weird, I’ll give you as much, but the guy isn’t stupid. He knows that if he's gonna stand in a crowd of sober people salivating over dancing meat, he's gonna look a little out of place. So for a couple months I would depress people severely and watch them get drunk and subsequently get very, well, embarrassing tattoos. Needless to say, I didn’t feel good about what I did. So one day I approached Bob. “Bob,” I asked, “I don’t like this fortune telling business. I was wondering if you could employ me in a different field.”
“Have you learned how to speak Chinese?” he asked of me.
“No. I haven’t.”
“Can you tattoo people?”
“No. I can’t.”
“Well, then, keep telling fortunes. Or learn how to speak Chinese.”
“Bob, you know that I’m not smart enough to learn Chinese.”
“Keep telling fortunes.”
“I don’t want to tell fortunes, though.”
“Nonsense. Everybody wants to tell fortunes. Back to the booth.”
“Only a sadist would want to tell the fortunes you have me tell. The people leave my booth depressed.”
“That’s an absurd allegation. It’s a sweet sorrow. So, you tell them that their father’s going to die. Their father most likely beat them as a child. Temporarily you bring sorrow, true, but ultimately you bring happiness.”
“Well even if they do want their father to die, their father doesn’t die. The fortunes don’t come true.”
“Yes they do. Go back to the booth.”
“And they get so drunk as a result of their depression that it probably shaves a few years off of their life…”
“Aah, a little bit of beer never hurt anybody. Back to the booth.”
“A little bit of beer might not hurt them, but they don’t drink their beer in small amounts after they leave my booth.”
“Yes they do. Go back to the booth.”
“How about the meat dancers? Can I be one of them?”
“You are not experienced enough.”
“What?”
“You are not yet worthy of being a meat dancer.”
“Are you kidding? Not worthy?” I asked.
“The art of meat dancing is very difficult to learn,” he told me.
“What do you mean? You put on a steak costume and walk around that platform.”
“There is more to it than you know. It is a sacred art. An unskilled meat dancer is offensive to the art of meat dancing.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.
“I am not kidding, and the fact that you think that I am kidding shows that you do not respect the art of meat dancing. I shall have no meat dancers that disrespect the art that they perform.”
I was angry. I went back to the booth dejectedly. I told three people that their mother was going to die, but to the fourth I said something different. I told him that his mother was going to be killed by Walter Morbley, the guy who was my predecessor in the steak costume. I told the customer that the only way for him to save his mother’s life was for him to kill Walter Morbley. I feel bad about this; I’m not that bad of a guy, and I didn’t think that the guy would listen to me… but by the end of the day the customer was in prison enduring police brutality, and Walter Morbley was being examined in the city morgue. The moment the man whom had just had his fortune told opened fire on Walter Morbley, Bob Schumacher asked me if I still wished to be a meat dancer. I told him that I did, accepting his offer, and that’s how I got to where I am today.
On April 17th, in the year 2000, Bob Schumacher approached me while I was putting on my steak costume.
“Hey, Ehtkaets, I was wondering if you still want to be a meat dancer. I was wondering if perhaps you had a change of mind about your dislike for fortune telling.”
“No, Bob, I still want to be a meat dancer. Why do you ask?”
“Well, Jeff Feur, who currently tells fortunes just like you used to, was wondering if there was a meat dancing spot available. I suppose there is not,” he replied. I then watched Bob approach Jeff and tell him that there was no spot available. They got into a very heated argument and eventually Jeff went back to the fortune teller booth with a hateful look upon his face. Soon thereafter people began to arrive and get drunk, and I began meat dancing. I noticed some weird things happening, however. As people left the fortune teller booth they would stare at me for minutes on end, seemingly contemplating about I knew not what. After an hour Jeff, the fortune teller, left the booth with an extremely drunk and angry man at his side. Jeff and the drunk man talked to each other in whispers for a couple seconds, and then the drunk man began to charge at me. He screamed “don’t kill my mother!” at the top of his voice.
Charlie, quite ironically, asked the drunk man, “What’re you smokin’?” His reply was answered by two gunshots, both which entered my body. As the gunshots were fired, Charlie jumped, gawking, his mouth open. His cigarette fell out of his mouth and onto his hotdog costume. His costume immediately lit on fire, and Charlie began running circles around the platform screaming as he burnt. As I was hit with the two bullets, I fell over. I bumped into Fat Phil, who subsequently bumped into the barbecue. He knocked the barbecue over onto himself, and the barbecue began to sizzle him, but he could not get up because of both his impairment and the fact that I was on top of him, bleeding abundantly. As Charlie ran in circles around the platform, he bumped into the platform, which caught flame. That was when smoke alarms began to signal deafeningly, and all of the intoxicated onlookers began to evacuate the building in hordes, spilling their beer as they went. Most of them were too drunk to so much as walk straight. Many people were trampled on the way out. By the end of the night, 12 fatalities had occurred.