After several months, Judd had started pulling in a sizable income from his link farms/adult single affiliate sites. I now envisioned his constantly-bouncing leg as a piston, pumping money from the internet into his banking account. His income from the cave was nothing more than a supplemental welfare check. The effects of these new-found riches were quite striking. The mullet had gained a fullness and luster that was quite majestic, as far as mullets go, and he had started to put on weight after having his rotten teeth pulled and replaced with dentures.
Eventually, he had accumulated enough money to put a down-payment on a house. He collected several cave employees together to help him move. I was one of those fortunate, elite few. Initially, I had been happy to help but that sentiment quickly dissolved when I was tasked with moving some mattresses out of the basement, which served as the kids’ room. Innocently, I entered that chamber of horrors with a coworker. We both marvelled at the decay around us. Exposed pipes and wiring, infestations of exotic insects, mattresses stained with… something brown… urine, I hoped, was the worst of it.
“This looks like a fucking smack den,” I pointed out to Daniel.
He could only respond with a look of shock and horror.
The smack den was the low point of the move… unfortunately it came first and put a sinister shadow over the rest of that otherwise pleasant Saturday afternoon. The last things to go were various boxes filled with useless junk confiscated from the cave or fished out of a dumpster behind K-Mart, some Nazi paraphernalia of questionable authenticity and Judd’s cat that pissed all over the back seat of his new car. I was given weekly updates for several months afterward on the status of ridding the car of the resultant odor. I have no doubt cat urine could be used to manufacture an effective, madness-inducing biological weapon.
A new car, a new home: Judd was living high on the hog. But nothing happens in a vacuum and his vast internet empire turned out to be the impetus for his undoing.
A few weeks after moving into his new home, Judd had tracked down his estranged son from a previous marriage. He invited his son to come live with him in exchange for wiring his house such that he could have an internet connection in every room–this was just before wireless routers became widely available. Judd was proud of this modern addition to his house and expounded upon it at length during smoke breaks or any other time he could get some unconcerned coworker to listen. I was amazed he could think up that much to say about the subject–day after day for weeks.
“So me and Kenny have the whole place wired now. I can work on the internet from any room in the house! Every room is connected to a hub in my main office. I got it off one of the palettes.”
“Got it off one of the palettes,” was a euphemism, I recognized, for “stole it from work.”
I would stare blankly ahead at this point, losing myself in a thick, gray fog that acted as a barrier to his voice: I wonder if he has the floors of that place reinforced against the constant jackhammering of that fucking nervous leg.
One Monday morning, I dragged myself in to my bench like a wet rat and got to work finishing off a system to be sent to the store. Judd stirred from his meditations–which was unusual enough to notice and disappeared into a stocking area partitioned off with chicken wire and particle board. I heard a crashing sound and a muffled, “Uhhh!”
I looked at the particle board in the direction of the noise and shook my head, “What is that damn fool doing?”
A minute later: “Uhh!”
“Sounds like a tortured banshee back there,” I thought.
A minute later: “Warren!”
Lazar looked up from his porn tape du jour, “Bah! Ghar-rhon, what isss…?”
“Jesus,” I exclaimed, rolling my eyes as I got up to see what all the commotion was about.
I went through the same doorway Judd had taken and found him lying on the floor surrounded by boxes. Next to him, a short stepladder had been toppled over.
“Dude, what the fuck?”
“I fell! I can’t move!”
Indeed, the scene looked grim. The mullet was in complete disarray. Using that as a measuring stick, I urgently rushed out into the darker parts of the cave to summon a supervisor. By a stroke of pure luck, I saw one passing by. I knew from past conversations he had worked for the fire department before coming to the cave. Ideal.
I led the supervisor to Judd and returned to my bench, satisfied I’d managed to free myself from having to deal with the drama.
Concerned, Lazar approached, “Ghar-rhon, what iss….?” He gestured at the particle board.
“Judd climb ladder,” I mimed with my fingers two stick-legs climbing up the steps made by the fingers of my other hand, “Boom!” the stick legs toppled over and slammed on my workbench.
“Ahhhh! Tsk, Tsk.” Lazar shook his head, returning to his pornography.
After a half hour, Judd had been returned to an upright position and made it, under his own power, to his car which he drove to the emergency room.
* * *
The next day Judd looked like he had been in a severe car accident on his way to the emergency room. His chest was wrapped in bandages, he wore a neck brace and he carried a bottle filled with painkillers.
“Lucky bastard,” I thought.
Judd told us of broken ribs, a screwed-up neck and various bruises and scrapes. But the real horror of the accident didn’t manifest until several days later: A lump on his elbow about the size of a lemon.
I wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed the lump or if they were just silenced by the grotesqueness of it, as I was. I was somewhat suspicious of the entire situation. The ladder was only a few steps high. Was his body really that weak?
One day, Ashley rushed over to my bench, “Warren, you’ve got to see this!”
“Uhh…” I got up and followed her over to her pricing station. She pointed at a long smear on a box. There was what appeared to be a small white speck of plastic glued to the box by the smear.
“I don’t get it.”
“Judd put that there,” her nose was wrinkled in disgust.
“Huh?”
“That’s from his elbow! It’s leaking and he wiped it on that box!”
The hair on my arms stood on end, my back crawled, “Oh my god.”
The elbow soon became the object of inter-department speculation. It threatened to dethrone the Mad Shitter as the subject of scorn, horrified amusement and enchanted wonder.
Lazar, who was dating a woman who had practiced medicine in Russia, even took part in the gossip.
“Ghar-rhon, my girlfriend see Judd at Christmas party. She speak,” he pointed to his elbow, “Blahhh”, followed by coughing sounds and thumping on his chest and a gesture of something coming up from the esophagus.
I thought for a moment, “Ebola?”
“Ahhh! Yahhh!” Lazar nodded, putting far too much faith in my Lazar-speak translation abilities, which didn’t yet take into account sarcasm.
“E-boo-la,” he repeated as he returned to his bench.
A month or so later, the elbow was still swollen and draining. The shock value had worn off somewhat, but it was still a mystery to everyone. One day, Daniel–who had helped move Judd into his new house–came over to my bench.
“So, I was talking to Judd earlier.”
“Yeah,” I replied with minimal interest.
“Yeah. You can’t tell anyone this.”
I turned to face him, suddenly intrigued, “Oh?”
Daniel’s mouth was turned up in an evil grin, his voice lowered to a whisper, “That whole accident in the stock room was bullshit.”
“Huh?”
“Judd had a fight with his son the night before. That’s how his ribs got broken and everything.”
“What the fuck?”
“He staged that whole thing so he could get workman’s comp out of it. Get the cave to pay for everything.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I glanced over at Judd. A stream of clear fluid dribbling from his elbow, leg bouncing rapidly up and down, mullet coated with a thin film of cave dust.
Behind him, Lazar was carving off slices of cheese with a dirty knife and eating them while interacting with a “Jerry Springer Uncensored” video.
“What is it with this place?” I shook my head in futility.