Glenn Fishbaum stood about five-feet-nine-inches tall, a man in his early thirties bearing a striking resemblance to, as his friends put it, “that Mulder character from The X Files” – though he himself could never see the alleged similarity. He was of average build, with neatly-trimmed brown hair, and a pair of deep, almost hypnotic, umber eyes. And he was addicted to comic books – indirectly the source of his current problem.

Presently, he paused for a moment, and took a long drag on his cigarette, meditating upon the thin, blue-grey whisper of smoke that rose toward the ceiling. Glenn had given up smoking about five or six years ago – around the time he and his wife had moved into their Essex Circle home in Westminster, one of Los Angeles’ suburbs. To be truthful, he had only restarted the admittedly unhealthy habit that morning – shortly after he had begun attempting to assemble the plastic-and-aluminum monstrosity that now laid haphazardly in partially-assembled piles about the room.He stared at the large, corrugated cardboard box that had once contained the miscreation that was to so greatly improve their lives. Large, amber letters stared back at him from across one face of the box: THE HANDY-DANDY, SPACE-SAVING STORAGE MASTER III: Deluxe Model (Some assembly required).His eyes drifted down to the next line, a slightly smaller line that smiled back at him with friendly black letters: Tailor Made to Save Space. Hah!That was a laugh!

He drifted back through the splinters of his mind to the conversation he’d had with his wife just before she’d left to visit her sick aunt in Cincinnati – a sweet, innocuous little conversation that he subconsciously had begun to consider the catalyst of this entire nightmare—

****

“For God’s sake, Ellen, I can’t throw out my comic book collection! I mean, jeez, do you know how much this stuff will be worth some day?! Here, look,” he said, removing one of the plastic-enclosed booklets from a storage carton. “The Mighty Thor #337 – the introduction of Beta Ray Bill! Do you realize that within just one month the value of the comic quadrupled?”

“Then sell the collection. Problem solved.”

“But, honey, the time isn’t right for that yet,” retorted Glenn as tiny beads of sweat began to form on his forehead at the mere thought of actually selling his beloved collection.

“Glenn—”

“Or, here – Spider-man #252! This is where Spidey went from his original red-and-blue costume to the new, though now defunct, black-and-white one! Inside of a few months, the value increased by a factor of six! Or here – what about the X-Men? Everybody knows the X-Men are a great investment!”

“Glenn, I’m not interested in—”

“Okay, okay, so you’re not a Marvel fan. Let’s try DC, instead.” He produced another oblong storage box in childlike glee, catapulted the lid across the room. “Here we go, a four-part limited series – Batman: A Death in the Family! Honey, they actually killed off Robin in this!”

“Glenn, I don’t ca— wait a minute. They killed off Burt Ward?”

“Uh... not exactly, hon. Burt Ward was the actor that played Dick Grayson – a.k.a. Robin – in the sixties’ TV series.”

“Oh...” retorted his wife as she stared blankly into space, wondering what ever possessed her to ask the stupid question in the first place, and desperately hoping that her spouse’s comic book fixation wasn’t contagious.

“But don’t worry,” continued Glenn, mistaking the shocked look on her face for concern over the character’s demise. “Dick Grayson gave up being Robin a long, long time ago. They only killed off Jason Todd – he took over the mantle of Robin after Dick became Nightwing and—”

Ellen smote the arm of the sofa, quickly rose to her feet. “Enough, Glenn! Enough!I don’t care!”

“Oh, come on, honey! How can you say that?” questioned Glenn as he quickly delved into yet another carton and produced a red-and-blue booklet accented in gold. “Here! What about Superman? You know, ‘Truth, justice and the American way’?”

“Glenn, I really couldn’t care less! Okay?”

“Sweetheart, I can’t believe you just said that! How can you not care?! This is an anniversary issue: Superman #400! They rounded up some of the best illustrators ever to do this issue! Terry Austin. Jack Kirby. Wendy Pini. Steve Ditko! Ditko, honey!” He spread the fingers of his right hand wide, then carefully brought his middle and ring fingers together, proudly displaying the result. “You remember the Ditko salute, don’t you?”

“Glenn, this is the Ellen salute,” she announced, flipping him the bird. “I don’t care!”

“Oh, come on. Everybody likes Superman!!”

“If everybody likes him, then how come they killed him off, too?! Never mind!Don’t answer that!”

Glenn continued his babbling, despite his wife’s latter request. “Although it did effect a wide range of people emotionally, killing off the ol’ Man of Steel actually made great business sense.Sales skyrocketed! Do you realize that one month after it hit the stands, the value of the final ‘Death of Superman’ issue was commanding sixty bucks in some areas? And, as a direct result, DC ended up introducing a number of new titles—”

“Glenn!I don’t want to know about your damned comics!”

“But I haven’t even gotten to the independents yet, or the Japanese—”

“Enough!Read my lips: I DON’T CARE! This house isn’t big enough for your family and your comic collection! We’re running out of room to live! There isn’t even enough room to properly store the kids’ clothes anymore – you’ve got comic boxes stored in their closet, too! It wasn’t until last week that I realized one of the end tables was a pile of comic book boxes with a table cloth thrown over it,” continued Ellen. “You can’t even turn around in this house without tripping over a bloody comic book carton,” she exclaimed.

It was at that moment that little Elly and Emma – the Fishbaums’ young twins – came racing around the corner and tripped over one of the cartons.

Ellen ran a hand through her auburn tendrils as she attempted to right the girls on the plush carpeting and send them on their way. “See what I mean?”

Taking a deep breath, she composed herself, speaking calmly, distinctly, so that there could be no misunderstandings. “Glenn. The—comic—books—have—got—to—go.”

Glenn’s pulse quickened. His temples throbbed. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. His breathing became labored.

“Honey!You can’t be serious! I... I can’t do that! I’D SOONER SELL THE KIDS!!”

“Well that’s not an option. Either you get rid of the comics or find some other place to put them!” She paused.“Get one of those Storage Master things – they claim it’s ‘tailor made to save space!’ I don’t care what you do, just get this house organized! And I want it done by the time I get back from Cincinnati!”

* ** *

Glenn took another drag on his cigarette, panned the room with eagle eyes at the pile of parts strewn about the room. Once again, his mind began to wander, this time to his recent sales experience – yet another nightmare in itself—

****

He had already come up empty-handed at four different department stores in his attempt to find this marvel of modern technology that was to so greatly improve their lives, with each of the respective managers apologizing profusely and attempting to placate him with the same pre-rehearsed explanation: “I’m sorry, sir, but they’re selling like hotcakes.”

Part of him was beginning to wonder where the phrase “selling like hotcakes” actually originated from and, for one brief moment, began to entertain thoughts of actually investing in International House of Pancakes. Before running off to his friendly neighborhood stockbroker, however, he decided to investigate one last possibility – a well-known department store which sported an extremely overworked cliché as their nationally advertised sales slogan: “If we don’t have it, nobody does.”

To Glenn’s astonishment, store number five actually showed some promise. At least they claimed they actually had the damned thing in stock. That was the good news. The bad news was that he had already gone through a number of their departments to no avail, being shuffled from one ill-tempered, inconsiderate salesperson to the next.

The Information Desk pointed him in the direction of the Hardware Department. Hardware, in turn, had suggested he visit Home Improvements. Home Improvements sent him to Housewares and Housewares was just about to pawn him off back on the innocent, unsuspecting salespeople in Hardware when he happened to spy a small sign off in one far corner of the store. A sign which gave him new hope. A sign that beckoned him like the call of sirens once beckoned the legendary Argonauts – THE HANDY-DANDY, SPACE-SAVING STORAGE MASTER III. And there appeared to be only three left – just enough for the three closets in his home.

Racing through the obstacle course of aisles and cardboard displays like a man possessed, Glenn laid hands on his long sought after prize much to the dismay of an elderly, silver-haired woman who obviously had been headed in the same direction.

After a short thirty minute wait on what seemed to be a checkout line the approximate length of the Great Wall of China, Glenn let out an audible sigh of relief. He was free and clear. The product was officially his. Ellen would be thrilled!

So excited that he could literally embarrass himself in public by peeing in his pants, it was at this time that he made the ill-fated choice of visiting the local men’s room. Little did he know how one simple action such as this could drastically affect one’s immediate future. As he gently pushed the innocuous little button on the soap dispenser above the sink, the contraption fell to pieces, jettisoning a full compliment of almond-scented liquid soap all over his shirt, pants and running shoes. A number of thoughts waltzed through Glenn’s mind, the least of which was that Murphy was an optimist.

Pride still intact, yet smelling like a refugee from a marzipan factory, he made his way back to his humble home, never once letting his new purchase out of his grasp -- despite the slimy pink ooze that trickled down the sides of one of the boxes like something from one of his Tales from the Crypt comic books. He was definitely a happy camper—

****

Glenn’s mind snapped back to the present like a balloon encountering one of his great-grandmother’s hat pins. Slowly, deliberately, he crushed out the butt of his cigarette, the gesture holding a curious air of decision... finality... power. He was a man determined.

Wrench in hand, he tightened the last nut in the “lateral drawer assembly” and laughed in triumph – just as the entire assembly fell apart, a metal support bracket giving him a nasty welt on his forehead and sending his “lucky” Dodgers cap tumbling across the room. Blindly stepping back from the pain, he tripped over “vertical drawer assembly P” and landed face first into the pile of spent cigarette butts that lay on the floor before him.

Rapture.Bliss. Ecstasy. Elation.Glenn felt none of these. He sat up quickly and, once the pain had subsided a bit, took stock of his situation.

“So simple, even a five-year-old can do it,” he said, mimicking one of the Storage Master’s sales slogans as he spit bits of tobacco from his mouth. “Yeah, right!Where’s a five-year-old when you need one?” he asked himself, quickly dismissing the thought entirely as he remembered how he’d dragged poor little Elly and Emma in for assistance earlier.

The idea of throwing in the towel on the pretense that the kids insisted on going to Disneyland was becoming more tempting by the minute.But he knew the excuse would never hold water with Ellen.

Slowly, he rose to his feet and lit his last cigarette, crammed the lighter into the pocket of his Levi’s. A few feet away, a cantankerous hodgepodge of parts sneered at him tauntingly. He glared back defiantly and quickly made his way back into the closet, deciding to approach the problem from a different angle.Unfortunately, the storage unit couldn’t care less what angle he approached it from.

Once again, he attempted to connect “tab A” to “slot B,” while carefully balancing the “separator bar” between the two “hanger lock support mechanisms.” And once again the entire assemblage fell to pieces, a large aluminum rod giving the red welt on his forehead a new companion to play with.

* ** *

When Ellen returned, she paid little attention to the three corrugated boxes sitting in the garbage bin, nor the large amber letters that smiled at her from across the faces of each box. Nor the slightly smaller lines that smiled back at her with friendly black letters.Nor the deep gashes along the faces of each box that seemed to be made with some sort of long sharp instrument.Instead, she made her way directly up the cobblestone path, opened the front door, and entered.

Her jaw dropped in disbelief. The living room was – organized. She scurried through the remainder of the house, each of the rooms showing the same. Even the kids’ rooms – normally adorned with countless numbers of clothing, toys and stuffed animals strewn haphazardly about – were now clean. Clean. Empty.Organized. And not one comic book carton could be seen anywhere.

Pinching herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, she made her way into the study to find her husband sitting comfortably in his favorite easychair, a copy of Green Lantern: Mozaic #1 opened in front of him. He looked up gingerly from his comic book, fondling the green plastic power ring that came with it as a free gift.

“Glenn! It’s... it’s wonderful! I don’t know how you did it, but it’s wonderful!You’re wonderful!” She placed a wet kiss between the twin welts on his forehead with an audible smack.

Glenn’s eyes twinkled brightly as he smiled lovingly at his wife.

“Honey.I sold the kids.”

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