Welcome, one and all, the the December 2021 issue of Defenestration: the literary magazine that has been dedicated to humor for so long that we stopped keeping track. (That’s a lie. Eileen has been keeping track. One deep scar on the wall of her living room for every month Defenestration has existed. It looks as if a cat the size of a Volkswagen has been trying to claw its way out of her home.)

As an experiment, a very rich man gave me one hundred million dollars, with the stipulation that I’d let him kill me in ten years, about ten years ago. For some reason it kind of slipped my mind. That’s how I am: taxes catch me by surprise every year; I forget plans until the last second and rush out of the house; once I left my private jet in the Cayman’s because I went back commercial by mistake. The only thing that was on my mind when I got the text reminding me about my agreement was the excruciatingly drawn-out remodeling of the left side of my mansion (when facing the mansion). It was a fairly nice text, as texts about your eventual murder, from your eventual murderer, go.

The sounds of fervent, vigorous shouting vibrated through the office walls and into the lobby where Sloane sat waiting for her Alternative Therapy appointment. When the shouting reached a rhapsodic zenith, the slapping sounds started. She’d never opted for physical violence as a form of treatment, so she wasn’t sure if the therapist was slapping the patient or the patient was slapping the therapist. Either way, it was unpleasant, and she was relieved when Dr. Marcie’s office door swung open, and she ushered another patient, bald and breathless, from the room. 

Congratulations on sneaking into my secret lair. That took a lot of guts, judging by how hard my minions are having to scrub to clean what’s left of yours out of that secret passage. I hope you’re enjoying dangling precariously over an active volcano. 

Many apologies for the delay in my response! It’s been a crazy couple of days. When I got home Monday, I discovered that my wife went missing in the middle of making dinner. The eggs and meat were out on the counter, the water was boiling on the stove, but the sliding glass door and our dining room table were completely smashed up. I’m surprised there wasn’t blood everywhere.