JARVIS STARCLOUD

Jarvis Starcloud lived alone in a forty million dollar mansion with golden gates and two swimming pools. He was the unhappiest man on the planet. He was impotent and hadn’t had a full erection in more than ten years. He had constant migraines. He had trouble walking or standing up for more than thirty minutes. All his old friends distrusted him or hated him, because he had become incredibly wealthy and they hadn’t. He bought a lot of new friends, but it wasn’t the same—they stole from him and had sex in his house, and did drugs in his house, and threw lavish, expensive parties in his house which prevented Jarvis Starcloud from getting his much needed eight hours of sleep. He had early onset Alzheimer’s and had trouble remembering where he was. He embarrassed himself on a daily basis. No one respected him. The government was auditing him for perpetrating some particularly noxious type of tax evasion which news reporters and pundits loved to loudly complain about. Comedians made constant jokes about his name, Jarvis Starcloud. Bill Mahr called him a cunt on national tv. Rush Limbagh called him a bitch ass money slut. A thousand punk bands all over the country wrote nasty songs about him. Kanye West called him an asshole. Jarvis Starcloud hadn’t even looked at his tax returns in more than fifteen years. When the scandal hit, his accountant fled to Mexico. His beautiful younger mistress threw herself at every dangling pair of balls that passed through the front door. His son was writing a tell-all memoir about his horrific childhood. His daughter was a heroin junkie in Seattle. His wife had been in a coma for twenty years. His priest had politely asked him to stop coming to Mass, because crowds of angry protesters followed him everywhere he went. He had gigantic hemorrhoids on his ass that itched and burned constantly. His doctor told him that he had advanced diabetes, and in a few weeks they would have to start amputating things. His bones felt like they would crack at any moment. He should have been in a wheelchair, but his mistress had said wheelchairs were cowardly and had violently dumped him out of his chair one afternoon after drinking too many Margaritas. He tried to swallow acid but it only ruined his digestive track. Every night, he had intensely vivid nightmares about being raped by a pack of wild wolf men and skinned alive. He’d been hearing voices which told him that Satan wanted to eat his soul. One night a Venetian vase grew to the size of a horse and chased him around the house for a full hour, screaming vicious obscenities at him. He fantasized about cutting his stomach open with a knife. The sky was full of demons. Eventually he was going to die.