“Grieve on, foul beast,” I say, per Script.

“Foul indeed!” says Artie, Feuding Ghoul Four: great guy, always blurting out such quips as “Brian, you are really on it, in terms of the way you keep casting your eyes fitfully back and forth while squatting!” To which I might reply, “Thanks, Artie, you Feuding Ghouls are also ripping it up, I so admire how, every day, you guys come up with a whole new topic for your Feud!”

Into my paper bowl goes: Lunch. A broth with, plopped down in it, a single gleaming Kit Kat.

Someday I, too, may be old, knees giving out, some group of Squatting Ghouls as yet unborn (or currently mere Li’l Demons, running around in their bright red diapers) allowing elder me, kaput like Leonard, to sit on, perhaps, this very same plastiform Remorseful Demon, in that dismal future time!

Today, however, all is well: Break Week is nigh.

Next A.M., via Tram, the Break-eligible among us are taken all jolly to the Room: a cavernous space shaped exactly the same as our workhouse, MAWS OF HELL, as well as the eleven other plenteous underground workhouses within our Region. But free of the supplementary Décor that makes each workhouse a unique immersive experience. Free, as well, of Byway Paths, and the small cars on tracks that bear our delighted Visitors through us. The Room is, truth be told, just a great space for a relaxed chill-out! It has Bowling, should you choose; pretend meadow, with real-appearing flowers; free-flowing creek, beside which we may sit, out of which fake fish leap on these sort of wheels, four fish per wheel, smiling, as if to say, “Leaping is what we love!”

Plus we each get a niche into which to put our stuff.

In the Room, we may mingle with individuals from our sister workhouses, such as BENEATH OUR MOTHER THE SEA or WILD DAY OUT WEST. May we mate there? Sure. We may. Many do. Should you observe someone mating and wish to be polite? Lurch off suddenly, as if you have left something back in your niche. Sometimes (tight quarters in the Room!) you may need to step or hop over a mating pair. The polite thing: step or hop over, saying nada. Should you personally know one or both, and feel saying nada might violate politeness, well, say something encouraging, such as “Go, go, go!” or “Looking good, James and Melissa, all best wishes!”

Today, hopping over two such folks, I think, Hey, isn’t that Mr. Tom Frame, normally the “Before” manifestation of Monk Decapitated for Evil Thoughts, in the portion of maws of hell called “Payback’s a Mother”? Mr. Frame, out of his seventeenth-century-monk threads, is mating with Gwen Thorsen, one of our rotating team of folks in hooded robes playing Death, and here I did not even know that Mr. Frame even knew her!

“Hey, Tom, hi, Gwen!” I cry, not wishing to violate politeness.