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" The Interrogation: A Dr. Cardboard Revue"

by Terry Echoes

Pierre found himself staring up at a picture of a man with a manic grin. The grin stretched across the man's golden-brown muzzle, and his eyes were lit up with the kind of jovial excitement one has when one has a case of the giggles. The man in the picture had folded ears with a plain earring in the right. He was wearing a dark, almost black, sleeveless turtleneck sweater. Beneath his image was a caption which read: "Employee of the Month".

The picture was of Pierre himself, and at present, it wasn't an entirely accurate picture. For one, he was not in any mood to grin. He was strapped to a slab the likes of which one tends to see in spy movies. The situation was similar, but this wasn't a movie.

His employer, Dr. Cardboard, loomed over a wacky panel of controls off to one side. His fingers were tented, and he was tapping the tips of his index fingers together. He was the one wearing the manic grin at the moment, and it was stretched to a far more ghoulish expanse than Pierre's had been at the time of the photograph. Every so often he would reach over to a rather large lever with a spherical 8-ball tip, like one sees in a particularly tacky vehicle, and stroke it tenderly, as one does to a lover's nipple.

"Now I ask you, Pierre. 'Whose horse is that?'" Dr. Cardboard slipped a little controller out of his pocket and clicked it with his thumb. The image of Pierre slid away and was replaced by a picture of a brown horse with white, blotchy spots standing in profile in a field. The horse was looking dour, as horses always do.

"Your horse, Dr. Cardboard." Pierre's throat strained against the metal arc binding his neck to the table.

"Correctamundo!" That was Dr. Cardboard's favorite catchphrase. He'd been workshopping several, but that was his personal non-pareil. "And why don't we talk to Mr. Horse?"

Pierre's eyes darted from side to side. That was about all he could do, apart from think. It was too bad Dr. Cardboard was ready to wait an interminably long time for an answer. After being stared at for about almost an entire minute, Pierre shouted, "I don't know!" as loudly as the neck brace would allow him.

Dr. Cardboard winced and smiled at the same time. "Oh, Pierre, if you'd just guessed I would have let you out!"

"What, really?" Pierre asked, confused.

"No, not really." The evil doctor clicked his remote again, changing to a slide of many, many, amateur figurines and paper dolls of Andrew Lloyd Weber. Pierre shouted in dismay and tried to shut his eyes, but the sheer tenacity of such an image drew him to look. Dr. Cardboard elaborated. "We don't talk to Mr. Horse because Mr. Horse is a rotten traitor, and never called me 'Ducky'!"

Dr. Cardboard clicked the remote again, now revealing a slide of his scrimshaw collection, prompting Pierre to yell out, "Please, sir, have mercy!"

"Have my secretary do what?" Dr. Cardboard asked.

"No, I mean, please show me some clemency, compassion, lenience, tolerance, forgiveness, pity, charity, mercy!"

Dr. Cardboard frowned. "I really think you're in rather the wrong profession."

"I did make Employee of the Month," Pierre said.

"Then it's time you left on a high note!" Dr. Cardboard said. "Some relationships, work relationships, simply weren't meant to be. It's time for this one to end, and I think we both know that it's for the best."

"Oh, God, how will I explain this to my roommates?"

Dr. Cardboard laughed maniacally, a rippling, practiced laugh, and for the first time that week, it didn't feel mechanical and forced.

"I don't want to die!" Pierre screamed.

"What?"

"I don't want to die!"

Dr. Cardboard grimaced. "I'm not going to kill you, silly-billy. I don't believe in that sort of violence. Instead, I'm going to make you one of my B-movie monsters!"

Dr. Cardboard pushed the lever with the 8-ball on it all the way down, and at the same moment clicked over to the next slide, which played a brief video of lightning and thunder. His laughter almost drowned out Pierre's horrified screams as the slab rose up, angling vertically so that he was suspended over a vat of celluloid. All the bindings shunted open, and Pierre found himself falling, falling...until he was stuck in the hole above the vat. He'd been tacking on mass as part of his strict exercise regimen. Alas, Dr. Cardboard stamping on his head did not budge him, so the mad doctor grabbed a nearby plunger (it was clean) and pushed it atop Pierre's head. After several percussive "thok" sounds, Pierre was stuffed through the hole.

He plunged into the vat of liquefied celluloid with a splash and was totally submerged. He felt his shoes touch bottom, and launched himself upward, cresting the surface. He bobbed around, feeling himself covered with the filmy substance. He rose his hands before himself, his fingers clenched at odd angles, and saw as his body began to metamorphose into a slew of flatly shaded colors. A thick, dark outline formed on the edges of where the sight of his body met whatever was around it. He was becoming a cartoon!