Velociworld

A Blown Opportunity

I was downstairs this morning, outside the Tower of Babel, puffing a smeengie in true drugstore cowboy fashion, when I noticed a backpack hidden in the viburnum in the bed next to me. Right next to a load-bearing wall, I might add, of a 30 story building. Now, I knew what this was: vagrant booty, ensconced in the shrubbery for safety while the owner did a little free-form panhandling. Shit-streaked underdrawers, sweat stained shirts, fetid, corrupt socks. And yet, Orange Alert Velociman saw the security guard rounding the corner, and a malevolent thought crept into my head.

You see, if a security guard is shown something like that, why, she is duty bound to report it to the fuzz. And then there are SWAT teams, bomb squads, the place is encircled with fire engines, the bloodmobile curbside is dragged by heavy chain to the Omni parking lot, 2,000 workers are evacuated.

I finished that cigarette, and then lit a second one. This was a rare opportunity. I could execute a terror-threat meltdown by showing the guard this thing. Which, of course, they never would have seen. It was extremely well hidden. I only saw it because since I've owned a camera phone I'm always on the look out for a piss-sodden, or hopefully dead, vagabond curled up in the bushes. Because I love you people, and want to share with you. And, of course, get on the six o'clock news.

"Yeah, I knew he was dead, because of the way his tongue was swallered back in his haid. Happened to my Aunt Cecelia. What concerned me though, miss, was whether he'd defecated hisself afterwards, which is why security found me in the viburnia, removin his britches."

Now, yes. This story has velocopprobrium writ large on it, but as I ground out the second butt, I thought nah. As much as I'd love to cause general and dyspeptic panic among my fellow tower dwellers and coworkers, while I had already safely removed to the Omni bar for an absinthe, part of me, the safety-trained part of me, thought the price of a grim chuckle too high. People DO panic in these situations, and some peoples may have been forced down 20, 30 flights of stairs to escape, leaving them cardiacally challenged, or trodden under foot like a Who concert.

No, I do dearly love my diabolical pleasures, but I prefer to keep them limited to 1, 2, 3 targeted assholes. 2,000 is a stretch even by my megalomaniacal standards. Plus, there are three or four hotties in that building I would have felt real remorse over, should they have been stompid.

Still, it would have been splendid. Did I mention the possibility that really could have been a bomb? No. But I still strapped on my homemade hi-rise parachute, just in case, being on the 27th floor. I know for a fact it safely drops a neighbor's cat from 30 feet, but I'm not into the beta-testing phase yet. Can't get my boss to cooperate, that pussy.