North Tonawanda, NY—Dave Smith, a senior supply specialist at Railroad Universe: (A Universe of Supplies From Mercury to Uranus and Beyond), innocently posted a picture on social media of his just microwaved breaded fish and two pills (see above). Smith was hoping to generate some lighthearted banter about his sketchy lunch, when P.A.Kane, the 1.5 millionth ranked Amazon author, commented that the pills looked like a Percocet and a Contact capsule and that Smith was going to have a nice afternoon after lunch. Smith, however, quickly corrected Kane saying the pills were the antidepressant Prozac and the antimanic drug Lithium. From there the post took a dark turn about Smith’s mental health issues.
Smith related that he was a happy-go-lucky-popular-kid. He’d won the third-grade science fair; he placed second in the Soap Box Derby at Cub Scouts after his father illegally put a couple of weights in the front end of his car; and, when he was ten, he used to play “soap opera” with a girl from up the street named Melissa Hornberger, where they imitated kissing scenes from General Hospital. Melissa was very interested in the changes in Smith resulting from kissing and would feel around his pants, which he liked very much. But the carefree, good times changed after Smith’s older brother, Alberto saw The Godfather on HBO and began to terrorize him.
On five successive nights Alberto, who is presently a resident of the Attica State Penitentiary, recreated the severed horse head scene from the mob movie, placing the decapitated heads of frogs, birds, and finally Smith’s beloved pet hamster, Bilbo, in his bed. Bilbo was named for his favorite Hobbit character, Bilbo Baggins.
After hearing the horrifying story Kane tried changing the subject asking, “So how was the fish?”
“How was the fish? . . . The fish can wait,” Smith responded, which sounded eerily like something from a movie he couldn’t place.
From there Smith talked about how he started to see hamsters everywhere. Waves of kids in gym class turned sandy brown and hairy. People at the mall with overactive little pink noses sniffed everything. Alberto being savaged by the furry creatures in his dreams. His therapists prescribed anti-psychotic drugs and they worked to some extent, but girlfriends and his first two wives all eventually turned into hairy little rodents right before his eyes. And then he posted, just like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, “That’s right, I see hamsters.”
Smith then went on to talk about how excessive drinking led to the Prozac and Lithium prescriptions and more hamster visions. Sensing that he said too much, he tried to change the direction of the post with lighthearted mentions of his favorite “rodent” things like: The Boomtown Rats . . . Ratatouille . . . Hot Rats by Frank Zappa.
But, by then Kane had slipped out of the thread, unfollowed Smith and returned to arguing with people about politics.
