The sound of a knock on the door interrupted Randall's thoughts.

"Are you.......can't read the dang thing......Randall? Randall Boggs?"

"Yeah." He turned around and saw a kid monster standing in the doorway. She was a bored-looking iguana type with a Walkman on and her hair in pigtails. About 14, he guessed. "What about it?"

"Message for you." She handed him a note. "It's from Mrs. Flesh."

"Oh, thanks, uh-"

"Zera. Resident mailgirl."

"Yeah, sure Zera. Thanks." He looked down at the note.

Randall:

We forgot to talk about your job. Come down at once. I'm so darn forgetful.

-Alice

And that was how it had began. The official term was "sock monster", but Randall thought of it as more like "puke your guts out until you die and the X files comes after your body." There were numerous other jobs to choose from, such as "weight lifter", which wasn't what it sounded like, but rather involved placing your hand on weigh scales and either fixing the prices of meat or making a woman who thought she'd lost weight annoyed. Then there was "crash causer", a rather risky job in which the employee stood in the middle of highways, invisible, then quickly appeared and disappeared, causing drivers to not pay attention to the road and crash. It was commissioned; the more cars you crashed, the bigger your pay. A major pile-up meant a bonus. On the other hand, if any deaths or severe injuries such as paralysis or permanent brain damage resulted, it meant big bucks lost. He had dismissed both of them, saying the former was too easy and the latter too hard.

"What's the point in doing all this work, anyway? What are we accomplishing?"

" Randy, you would be soooo surprised."

"What?" Now she had peaked his curiosity.

"My great-grandfather was no dummy. He had a theory. One that proved right. He believed that annoyance was the anti-scare, anti-laugh, anti-everything. And he discovered misery waves, unlike any other. The power outages you had back home? That's us. Now, ordinarily misery waves are low in concentration and therefore don't make an impact. But ever since we went into business, it's been booming. Now that they've switched to laughter, they don't realise that they're not getting all the power they're entitled to. Actually half that." She let out a half-hearted cackle.

Randall couldn't believe his ears. It was so perfect, and so wrong, all at the same time, yet he felt no pity for his "friends". They deserved it for sending him out in a world like that. Of course, when it came to Cally,.........he still wasn't sure exactly how he felt about that. Okay, maybe there were some good things about it. They weren't so hateful.

And so he returned to the world of the bathroom, and the vomit, and the sink, and all the things he knew. Staring at the pale, wasted body, the heaving chest, the sad, dark eyes. Slinking away into a corner, he bedded in some forgotten sheets, much as he had that first night in the trash. Nausea and pain invaded his body the way he'd invaded this foreign world just months ago. It was just too much.

Hours later, he woke up, still achy, still sick, but with a fervour and determination such as he had only read about in books.

He was going back.

Evidently, Randall's newfound strength was a DOA, because it was all he could do to stagger up to the sliding doors of Pester Enterprises and flop over between the two. As the doors repeatedly opened and closed on his head, he felt waves of pain rack his body. He could hear snoring coming from the main reception desk. The night shifter, he guessed.

"Help," he moaned softly. "Help."

Suddenly, he heard the sound of a cell phone. The snoring stopped abruptly and he heard the rustling of papers. "Hello...hey, Kimmi.......no, I'm not doing anything......yeah, you woke me up. What is it?...........uh huh..........no. I am not going skiing. Even on the bunny slope.....no. No. I swear I will die in a cloud of snow. Seriously.........okay,listen, I heard something at the door. Probably another stray dog or something. I'll call you later, Kimmi. Okay? Bye." Sneakers on the floor. Then a look that started out as "huh?", became "oh no, are you all right?" and finally "I'll go call someone."

The pelican ran back over behind the desk and punched in some numbers. "Hey, this the Meds? Yeah, good, I got the right number this time. There's a guy out here, looks pretty bad..........yeah, he's concious, but just barely. Looks rather sick. Just get down here. Okay? Bye." He heard some more noises, then she came out and covered him with a blanket.

What followed was as cordial a welcome as Randall could have wished for, albeit hectic. Pure pandemonium ensued as various doctors and nurses hovered around him, all performing different tasks at the same time. He gazed at the ceiling for a good long while, then drowsed off for a minute. The last thing he remembered was a sharp pain in the back of his hand.

A "minute" later, he was still staring at the ceiling, but not that ceiling. He looked at the clock. 9:30 am. The whole night had passed in seconds for him.

Looking down, Randall saw he was wearing a gown not unlike the one Bob had clad him with. His gaze shifted to his right upper hand, tightly bound with a bandage that covered up a small needle that someone had inserted there. The needle was connected to a tube that wound its way up a metal pole form which was hanging a bag of clear stuff.

"It's called an IV. That's food." He looked up and saw Cally standing at the door. "Say, you gave us quite a scare last night. What happened?" She walked in and sat down on the edge of the bed. Randall got a sick feeling that didn't come from last night's puke fest, and strangely wasn't the bad kind of sick.

"I got into an accident. Washing machine. Socks. Yuck."

"Oh, that job.'Sock monster'."

"I should've known better. I used to get motion sickness just riding a bike."

"You actually lasted the longest at it than anyone I know. Most give up their first time."

"Hey, so I'm a winner. Gee, I wonder if my misery is worth anything."

"Nope. If that were true we could just take turns playing April Fool's Day tricks on each other. Which would be pretty pointless, because the best misery is unexpected misery, and after a while we'd get used to being annoyed."

"Makes sense."

"You know, you'd better hurry up and get well soon. Or else I won't let you go on the company ski getaway with me. You'll have to be babysat by someone else." Cally's eyes flashed in a way that made Randall want to make it happen again.

"So that's what that woman was saying-go on."

"Yeah, every year we get to spend the holidays breaking our legs just so we can get free time off. But that's just for new guys. Us old-timers love the powder."

On the wall, Randall saw a copy of the PESTER Code. It was an acrostic.

Perserverance

Elusiveness

Strength

Teamwork

Enthusiasm

Responsibility

Elusiveness. That was the one he'd had trouble with. Having had the ability to be invisible since birth, it was rather strange to him that he'd be so bad at it now.

"Randall? You still with me?"

"Oh, uh yeah. Yeah." He glanced at the bag of "food". It was practically drained. "Uh, my dish is, uh, empty. There's painkillers in there?"

"Mmm-hmm. I may be kinda tough, but not that cruel. Hang on, I'll get you another. Want me to ask for a sedative? You look awful tired."

"Sure. Go ahead and do that."

"Okay. But first I'll close those curtains." She walked over and untied the sashes. The drapes fell across the window. "Bob says we should probably wait a week before starting you on solid food again. Get some weight back on you, get rid of those bruises. You know, you lost 10 and a half pounds." She moved towards the door. "Now take it easy. I want you to be asleep before I come back, you bad boy."

"Yes, Nurse Cally. I'll do as you say." Randall said in a teasing tone of voice. As she left the room, he laughed softly to himself, winced slightly upon turning over on his side (the painkiller wasn't foolproof) and slipped into a dreamless, natural sleep.