The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 1: The Introduction
My name is Benjamin Abbott and this is the story of how I took over the world. The year was 2004. I had moved from a small midwestern city to Los Angeles1 as part of my plan for world domination. And I won’t lie to you, the first couple of months that plan wasn't going very well.
You see, I had died the previous year. I didn’t notice this death at first. It snuck up on me. I was just continuing my normal everyday life doing normal everyday activities and then mysterious things started to happen. I would go days without shaving. That isn’t very mysterious by itself but shortly after I lost the ability to coordinate my clothes. I turned on my television one day and could only understand shows dubbed into Latin. And then I started speaking in Latin. I suddenly became allergic to the sun, so I removed all the mirrors in my apartment and refused to eat garlic. I felt the irresistibly uncontrollable urge to knock the hats off strangers when they passed me by in the street. Then I started knocking the hats off those strangers as they passed me in the street. I built Lego castles in my cubicle and real castles in my backyard and air castles in the air. I stopped obeying traffic signals and the laws of gravity. All of the life had been sucked out of my soul, all of my fight had been extinguished, I was no longer a person, I was a pod, a plant, watering myself every day, trying to stave off the effects of my disease, but the water wasn’t absorbed, my soul had withered, my leaves turning a disturbing color of brown. I had given up. I was beginning to get worried I’d never find my place in this life. I realized I needed something new, a purpose, a goal, something that would give this little journey of mine significance.
And that’s when I hatched my plan to take over the world.
“That’s ridiculous.” Angel said.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, this story doesn’t just start in the year 2004. It also starts in a very cheap Hollywood motel room with a prostitute named Angel. I told you things weren’t going very well. We weren’t engaged in any illegal activity. We were just talking. I paid for her time.
“My bosses had been trying to kill me for years.”
“What? How?”
Angel seemed alarmed at this revelation.
“They forced me to smoke?”
“How did they do that?”
“We could get extra breaks if we smoked.”
“That’s not forcing you to smoke.”
“You don’t understand. I needed those breaks to stay alive. It was the only way to make it through each day. There was a small group of us and we would sneak out and huddle together in the cold by the loading dock. People who hadn’t even acknowledged me before were suddenly telling me their most precious secrets. We were like a support group.”
Angel shook her head.
“But it only delayed the inevitable.”
“The inevitable?”
“Death. One day at 3:23 in the afternoon on a Thursday in between bouts of staring blankly out the window at a squirrel in a tree and making debt collection phone calls for my company, Thatcher and Associates, as I wondered if I was going to pick up Arbys or Wendys for dinner that night, I realized I was dead, that I had died sometime the previous week, or maybe the previous month.”
“You weren’t dead.”
“I watched city council meetings for entertainment.”
“Okay, maybe a little.”
“That’s when I decided to move to Los Angeles2 and take over the world. Because after you die you have nothing left to lose.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Angel said once again.
“And that’s why I decided to become a screenwriter because screenwriters or screenwriter types are often the heroes of these stories.”
“That’s because they’re written by screenwriters.”
Angel sat up in bed and propped herself on her elbow. I stayed in the chair across from her. She looked at me like I was the most pathetic little snail in the world.
“Can I give you a little advice?”
“I don’t think I need any.”
“Go back to Michigan.”
“Minnesota.”
“This place isn’t for you. You’re not going to survive here.”
“Give up? That’s your advice. That’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard. I’m not going to give up. My story is just starting. I can’t give up at the very start of the story, can I?”
Angel was looking at me with eyes of pity. Those eyes were saying ‘yes, I could most definitely give up. In fact, I probably should.’
Technically, Glendale.
Again, technically, Glendale.