Pile? Who?

“Vat ees zees?” asked Doctor Weimar, the infectious disease specialist, prodding the moist, fleshy growth with a long, bony finger. “Ees eet a vart?”

The patient sat quietly on the examination table and spoke not a word, but stared at the floor and shook her head. The moist, fleshy growth wobbled back and forth a bit.

“Vy are you zo qviet, young lady?” asked the bony-fingered specialist as he turned to prepare a syringe. No answer issued forth from his patient, so he merely went about his business. A long, old-fashioned glass syringe. A long, old-fashioned corkscrew hypodermic needle fashioned from an otherworldly metal that was extracted from a meteorite. Four ounces of cold, cold gin. He drank the gin in one swallow and filled the hypodermic needle with the wondrous pile-driver heiney serum that he was known for.

His calling card. His stock-in-trade. Pile-driver heiney serum.

The patient began to tremble as Doctor Veimar approached with the heinous, heinous implement.

Just a brief word on heinous implements, please, if you will. My father had a heinous implement in his tool chest back home (that was before the war, of course). He eventually moved it into the drawer of his workbench, and mother was much happier. Anyhow, he would use the heinous implement to set straight the tinkling pipes when autumn was in the air. From time to time my Uncle Cheetah (not his real name) would stroll over to our house and ask my father for the loan of his heinous, heinous implement. Father would always deny his request, claiming that “the neighbor needed it later.”

I have become fond of this method of escaping treacherous and unpleasant duty assignments. When the kommandant asks me to saunter forth with my little, shiny rifle and procure animal corpses for feeding my fellow dragoons, I will often say “my neighbor needs it later.” The kommandant will thrash me with his riding crop, but it gets me out of the duty.

And I like that.

More to the point of my aside, it should be noted that heinous, heinous implements were largely outlawed under another famous “public safety act.” One can now only wield a heinous implement if one is also at the same time drinking a 32-ounce sweetened and carbonated fountain beverage. How curious.

Doctor Weimar loomed close. He was not a weaver, mind you, just an infectious disease specialist. The trembling patient held out her thin pale arm, ready for the treatment. She shook with fear.

Doctor Weimar stabbed the hypodermic needle into the muscle of his own lower jaw, just below his right ear. He pressed the heinous, heinous implement hard into the flesh, until it was stopped by bone. He squeezed the plunger and felt the wondrous pile-driver heiney serum flow into what would one day be his mortal remains. We all have a set of those, you know. Some have two.

“I feel infinitely better, Doctor,” said the young patient, hopping off the examination table. “Thank you so very much.” She exited the room with a shining countenance and a newly-found spring in her step.

Doctor Weimar prodded the moist, fleshy growth that now took up residence on his chin. He poked at it with a long, bony finger.

“Vat ees zees?”