VACUUMED SOUL

BY

JORDAN A. THOMAS

Dear Happy,

Recently I had the strangest thing happen to me. I think I experienced what is called a Hypnagogic Hallucination or waking dream.

I had answered an ad in the local want ads, Maintenience Technician Wanted. Will Train.

And there I was standing in a cramped storage space with twelve other applicants listening to a cheesy wannabe cult leader who dubbed himself, The Instructor.

I was unemployed, broke and my girlfriend had just broken up with me. But I still had enough self-esteem to not listen to this hoser spewing his get rich quick nonsense about making a fortune selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. 

The shameless twat even wrote himself a check for $10,000 and showed it to us as if it were proof of his success. 

I was looking for a good spot to walk out when I noticed four smoking hot ladies in the room digging what this cheesedick had to say. 

So I stuck around for the rest of the presentation.

What a great night! I talked to each of the four ladies and they all gave me play. 

The next day we were all supposed to meet up at the shop and canvas several neighborhoods in the area. 

The game was to go door to door and offer people an entry for a free carpet cleaning in exchange for their contact information. 

Everyone wins of course and the free carpet cleaning isn’t a free carpet cleaning as much as it is a demonstration of the vacuum cleaner we plan to sell them. 

The whole thing made me feel dirty, but I was horny and okay with feeling dirty. 

The Instructor was a total Jabroni. He sent me on a canvassing expedition with a couple of loser dudes and two middle-aged married women. Meanwhile he escorts the fine ladies off in his Humvee. 

They were all into him like he was a guru and I feared that more than one of them would end up with a broken heart.   

When we got to a large neighborhood of new construction my Loser’s Club decided to split up to cover more ground. This was fine by me. Nothing against the people I was with. They just weren’t hot twenty-something females. Why would I wanna talk to them?

The canvassing was mixed. Got a door slammed in my face. Got a cracked-out housewife that was very eager to win something of value like a carpet cleaning. 

I turned down a cul de sac lined with houses in various states of finish. I was sick of canvassing and was ready to call it when I zeroed in on a thick patch of trees with a dirt driveway running through the middle at the end of the cul de sac. It looked very out of place in this pristine neighborhood of seven figure homes. I got curious and wandered down to the dilapidated mailbox at the treeline. 

The single word, Nobody written in crumbling sticker stencils lined the rusted out metal mailbox. 

I don’t know why I had to see the house. But I started past the threshold of the tree line and up the dirt road. The world around me darkened immediately as the thick of the trees choked out the sun. Something smelled dead. Like still water rot. I continued until I came to a tiny run down single wide trailer with a half-collapsed roof and boarded up windows. 

I really didn’t need to be here. Nobody living in this place had a thousand dollars to spend on a vacuum. I turned away from the old shanty trailer when the crusty voice of an elderly woman shouted out, “What do you want?”

I turned slowly to meet Nobody, A plump raisin of a woman wrapped in an old brown shawl and wearing the permanent frown that must’ve stuck to her face early in life.

I stammered trying to think of a polite way to get out of further conversation. I apologized and told her I had made a mistake. 

She asked me about the paper entry forms in my hands and I told her they were for a drawing to win a free house cleaning. I offered her one but she grunted at me and told me to save them for the rich people in the neighborhood.  

I didn’t wait for her to change her mind before I turned tail and fled back to the light at the treeline. I could hear her bellow at me all the way to the mailbox. An incoherent rant about my soul being in danger and how the people I worked for were plotting to suck the spirit out of me and leave me an empty shell.

I could see how doing this day in and day out for years could leave someone a little hollow. 

One day of canvassing was enough for me. I went back to the shop to tell The Instructor I quit when the finest of his ladies approached me and said hello. 

I nicknamed her The Elf Princess because she looked like that girl from that movie about the ring, the wizard and the funky eyeball. 

I got a boner instantly and had to adjust my junk with my hand in my pocket. 

I wasn’t paying attention to anything she said but I nodded a lot and caught something about The Instructor wanting me to ride with them down to the convention in Portland next week. 

The next day I met up with Elf Princess and the rest of the gang and headed off to Portland. A two hour drive with The Driver, a weird chick who wanted to listen to a self-help sales podcast to get us in the mood for the convention.

Portland couldn’t come fast enough. By the time we pulled into the parking lot I was so weirded out by the shit I heard on that podcast I was ready to hitchhike back home.

But the Elf Princess took me by the arm and led me toward the hotel before I could extend my thumb.  

The hotel slapped with action and I’ve never seen that many beautiful women in one place. Dozens of them dressed up in professional attire milled about the large conference room lined with large eight seated tables. 

We found our table and each place was set for dinner as if we were guests at a wedding.

I noticed my Elf Princess has slipped away without a word. 

I got that sinking feeling. 

The one every man has experienced. 

The one where you’re in a shitty situation. 

And you aren’t going to get laid at the end of it.

Still no sign of the Elf Princess. 

No way was I coming in here and getting a free meal without having to sit through some bullshit. 

Sure enough the bullshit started flying. They brought out an old Polish immigrant to testify how selling vacuum cleaners had changed his life. How he once was penniless, broke and couldn’t speak English but now he’s a multi-millionaire with 12 grandchildren.

One by one the testimonials came.

Another immigrant, this one from Mexico tells how he made enough money to bring his entire family over. 

A bald girl shares that she has cancer and uses it to her advantage to sell, sell, sell.

Then the singing began. 

I’m not kidding. They started singing. Not regular songs but church-like songs written especially for the vacuum cleaning company. Everyone was on their feet clapping their hands like it was an old school revival.  

I sort of fake clapped along as I watched more and more of the salesman become enraptured with the spirit. I was convinced I had slipped into hallucination. 

The rhythm reached a fever pitch and I was the only one in the audience who didn’t have their hands up to the sky chanting the name of the company. 

I’m totally freaked out at this point and looking for a way to exit. They seemed distracted so I backed away from the table to ease my way through the throng of the congregation toward the wall. 

Then everything stopped! 

The music, clapping, dancing all came to an abrupt halt and everyone’s eyes trained on me. 

But their eyes were not normal eyes. 

Glossy sky blue orbs filled their eye sockets. I recoiled against the wall.

The Instructor screamed while pointing at me, “UNTETHERED!”

The rest of the zombie salespeople took his cue and began chanting, “Tether! Tether! Tether!”

I pushed up against the wall. Nowhere else to move. I began hearing the lispy drawing of breath from half the crowd as they pursed their lips toward me. 

The other half the crowd continued the chant. “Tether, tether, tether!”

I looked down at my shaking hands being held out in front of me by a force not my own. A soft translucent white aura emanated from my hands and I realized this aura surrounded my whole being. 

My aura stretched away from my fingertips out toward the tightening crowd who continued to chant and draw in their breath as if trying to suck the soul right out of me. 

That’s what they were doing. That was the plan all along. The reason I’m here. They were trying to take my soul and tether it to themselves. 

The aura began to stretch out away from my face.

My vision blurred. 

“Tether, Tether, Tether!”

“They’ll leave you an empty shell.”

The raisin lady’s words flashed in my mind and I screamed. 

I had to fight!

Somehow, someway.  

I summoned my will and clenched my butt checks tight. 

I don’t know why I clenched my buttchecks. I’d never had to reel in my soul before and that just seemed like the way to do it.

“My soul belongs to me” I testified! 

It was a declaration. 

I don’t know how I did this. To this day it’s the strangest sensation I’ve ever felt. But I pulled my soul away from the crazy cultists and snapped it back into my own body. It felt the same as snatching your arm back away from someone who had grabbed it. 

I scanned the circle around me. 

The other poor newbie schmucks were still having their souls sucked from them.

I screamed, “Fight it! They can’t take it if you don’t let them!”

I grabbed the hand of a Hot Chick I didn’t know and tried to pull her away but her soul tore right out of her body as I did it. .

The Hot Chick laid still on the floor in front of me. 

I looked up.  

Her poor sexy soul split through the crowd feeding the hungry mob. I glanced down and she had the same cold orb eyes as the rest of the cult. 

She began drawing in her breath through pursed lips pointed at me. 

I couldn’t save them. I had to save myself. 

So I ran for it. 

“Get him!” Yelled the Instructor as I slid feet first over a table filled with dinner dishes.

One of his Orbies tore away from the crowd and charged me. I pulled a flower vase off one of the tables and smashed him over the head with it. 

It didn’t phase him. 

What happened next is a little blury. 

There’s a gap in my memory but the next thing I remember is sitting around the dinner table with my group. Dinner was served, Chicken Cordon Bleu with asparagus and garlic mashed potatoes. It was delicious! My Elf Princess sat by my side with her hand on my leg and we were all laughing, drinking wine and listening to our dear Instructor tell stories of selling vacuum cleaners in the old days. 

Everything was okay.  Everything was better than okay. 

My only explanation for the waking dream was that the singing must’ve put me in an odd mental state. 

Regardless, my life has never been better since that convention.

That’s why I’m writing to you today. 

Ryan and Shane, as thanks for reading my story I have chosen you to receive a free carpet cleaning! 

I will come out to your homes or office and demonstrate an amazing new technology that is going to revolutionize the way you clean. 

And it’s all for free!

No strings attached. 

Jordan A. Thomas’ debut novel Coronation is available ONLY on audiobook wherever legendary audiobooks are sold.