Execrable/ Samuel Clemenstein and the Execrable, Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
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Execrable- extremely bad; awful; appalling
Samuel Clemenstein and the Execrable, Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Samuel woke up to the SQUAWK! SQUAWK! Of his Swiss cuckoo clock alarm and sat up so quickly that he banged his noggin on the reading lamp that hovered over his bed. Rubbing the sore spot on his head, he spotted, with his one open eye (still blinking away the slumber) the time on the intricate wooden face of the clock.
“SHIT!” He cried out. “I’m going to be late!”
That day at the mall renowned comic book artist John Byrne was stopping by the Comics Castle to sign original prints of The Sensational She-Hulk, and Samuel, a comic fanatic and muscle-mommy enthusiast was not about to miss this once in a lifetime chance to meet one of his idols and fetish brethren.
Samuel ripped the Jillian Michaels-printed covers off of himself and turned over to his nightstand to sip from a half-full pint glass.
“BLEH! PTOOOEYY! PTTOOEEY!” He spit out the rancid fluid that tasted of jet fuel and bleach. He completely forgot that he had been sipping on grain alcohol last night as he tucked into bed to unwind to a video of Stefi Cohen shattering the women’s deadlift world record.
Already off to a rough start, Samuel rifled through the clothing in the top drawer of his dresser, searching manically for his She-Hulk t shirt. He tossed shirt after shirt over his shoulder, eventually reaching the bottom of the drawer, sans-shirt.
“You’ve got to be KIDDING me!” Samuel exclaimed, his fists balled up like the Hulk Smash hands toy that he so loved in his youth, but which he had always found a little too masculine for his tastes (not dainty enough!). With not a second to waste, he scooped a random shirt off the floor and popped it on. It was a bright pink spandex long sleeve with a center-chest image of Beth Phoenix holding up the WWE Women’s championship belt. Not bad, all things considered.
But that mystery shirt pull would soon prove to be the lone bright spot in Samuel’s day, as things begun to go from bad, to execrable.
Samuel knew the line in front of the Comics Castle was going to stretch down an entire wing of the mall, all the way down to Boscov’s, so he had to fuel up if he didn’t want to keel over and double up with hunger pangs. Opening and slamming shut every cabinet in his kitchen, his rations appeared to be bone dry. The only things in his fridge were a collection of fire and diablo Taco Bell sauce packets and a jar of Vlasic kosher dill spears. He cradled these in his arms, grabbed his key off the rack next to the vintage Rosie the Riveter rotary phone, and headed outside to his car parked on the potholed street in front of his dingy apartment.
As he approached the car, he noticed a stack of magazines on his hood with a note attached to them. The magazines were the previous three editions of Shredded Shorties, and the note read, “Next time make sure you use the right address, FREAK!”. He had wondered why he hadn’t been receiving that mag recently. As he glanced up at his neighbor’s house, a blind was pulled up and a middle-aged man in pajamas flipped him the bird and then made an “up-yours!” gesture with his fist. Samuel had no time to explain this mix up, no time to explain that he was in it for the sport and he didn’t get any lewd pleasure from perusing the pictures. He was mostly interested in the articles anyways.
Samuel got in his car and sped off towards the mall. On the way there, he got stuck at every possible red light. Instead of making up time, he lost a few more minutes. At one of the red lights he was stuck behind a Red Dodge Charger with the vanity plate: DRSWAG. As if the hot sauce and pickles weren’t upsetting his stomach enough, the sight of this egomaniacal and paradoxically poorly endowed losers’ eternal scream of “I’m cool, I swear! Believe me!” into the void made Samuel want to gag.
Just as he was about to turn into the mall parking lot, Samuel was side swiped by a new teen driver who was too focused on posting a BeReal to see the car turning right in front of them. This was it. This was make or break. Samuel had to act fast, his odds of catching John Byrne growing slimmer by the second.
Samuel ditched his car in the intersection and began running on foot towards the far-end entrance of the mall, by the Boscov’s. As Samuel arrived, huffing and puffing, in front of the lowbrow department store, his heart plummeted. There he was. John Byrne. Entering a stretch limousine.
“Mr. Byrne! Don’t go! Please, sign this! Please!” Samuel desperately shook his mint edition copy of The Sensational She-Hulk in front of the limo.
John Byrne didn’t even look Samuel’s direction as he got into the limo. The limo began to peel out, heading towards Samuel. As they pulled up alongside him, one of the side windows began to roll down. Samuel cupped his eyes and leaned into the window to get a better look at the dim interior. Seated in the back seat was John Byrne, flanked by two women in tank tops, their delts seemingly cut from stone. Everything Samuel ever wanted was right there in that limousine at that very moment.
“Tough luck kid. There’s always a next time. Sabrina, Ivanka, wave goodbye to this little freak” said John Byrne.
“Goodbye little freak” said the muscle mommies as they waved their toned arms in the direction of the window.
“Now get lost, would ya?”
A tear formed in Samuel’s eye as the window began to roll up. Right before it sealed completely he heard Mr. Byrne do his best hulk impression to the girls, “Hulk want to SMASH!” followed by a chorus of giggles.
What an Execrable, Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.