Doughnut Hole in My Sanity -------------------------- By: Robert Seace (Agrajag/AJ) Published by: Rlunatic/jhayden Pro-ductions Introduction ------------ This is a deranged little short story, by the same insane author who brought you the Life Sucks series of two E-books (available from Rlunatic/jhayden Pro-ductions). But, this book is FAR more insane than my previous two books could even conceive of ever being... It is deranged, insane, loony, mind-twisting, and packed full of things which could turn even the most sane person absolutely bonkers if they actually read it enough to begin to understand it... So, here is a warning: if you begin to actually understand the following short story, then you are surely going mad. Now, whether or not you consider this a bad thing is entirely up to you. But, I know for a fact, that were the Surgeon General to be aware of the existence of the following piece of mind-numbing insanity, he would certainly require the above warning (and probably impose a sin tax on it)... Now, onto the story... The Story... ------------ "Doughnuts," exclaimed Professor Alex Jenkins, suddenly. "are the key to searching for and understanding the truth!" The students in his Philosophy class all stared blankly at him, as if he were about to be carted off by the men in little white coats to his own private rubber-walled room where he would surely expound upon the Earth-shattering importance of cabbage and squash as well. "Doughnuts," the professor repeated, writing the word on the green blackboard behind him, spelling it properly, not "donuts", as the word has mutated into for use by various commercial enterprises. He hated this mutated spelling of the word, as it left out the "ugh" in the middle, and of course the "ugh" was absolutely essential. He looked out among his students for signs of understanding, and found only a wall of nervous, slightly amused, mostly fearful stares, instead. "Do you mean," spoke up one daring student, Peter I. Salem. "Doughnuts, as in those fried pastry things, with the hole in the middle?" "Precisely!!" yelled Professor Jenkins, leaping out of his seat towards the frightened student, who cowered in fear, certain that the man was going to bludgeon him to death with a zucchini. "Exactly!!" he yelled. Then, he alternately yelled "Precisely!!" and "Exactly!!", pausing every couple of seconds to glance around the class and back at Peter. Most of the class was now in hushed agreement that Alzheimer's Disease was what the professor was suffering from. They only hoped that his senility would make him lenient in grading. "Don't you understand?" The professor looked disheartened when no one responded in the affirmative. He began to pace around his desk, staring at the florescent lights in the ceiling, stroking his long white beard, and saying "Hmmmm..." Suddenly, he stopped pacing, his back to the students, and spun instantly on one heel to face them, and immediately jumped, both feet simultaneously, onto a chair in the front row of seats. "Do you know how doughnuts are made?" He asked the question as if their response would be the most important thing imaginable, and quite probably was a matter of life and death. The students had all silently decided that it would be best to humor the crazy man for now. Some nodded, others shrugged, one girl even began to recite the ingredients in your average doughnut. He approached the green blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk, and flung it at the chest of the girl reciting the ingredients. Reacting instinctively, she caught the chalk, and stared at it, and then him, quizzically. "Come up to the greenboard," he told her. "And, draw for us a doughnut." He always called the blackboard a greenboard, because, he had said to the last person to ask him why, "It is green, not black, you color-blind fool!" Susan Selmet seemed very hesitant about moving from her seat, especially in a direction that would bring her closer to the obviously deranged professor. But, at his constant insistence, and due largely to her fear of what he might do if she didn't obey, she finally approached the green blackboard with the piece of chalk which she had been assaulted with, and at his coaxing, began to draw a doughnut. She, of course, drew what anyone would have drawn: one large circle, and a smaller one inside that one. "Yes, yes, yes!" exclaimed Professor Jenkins, congratulating her on a job well done. "Perfect, perfect, perfect!" Placing the chalk in the chalk tray, Susan quickly returned to her seat, wondering what new form of insanity the professor would inflict on them all, now. "Well," inquired Jenkins. "Do you see it? Huh?" Unsure of how to respond, most just nodded or mumbled something about being able to clearly see it, yes. "Good, good!" Now, Jenkins picked up the piece of chalk, and began to make his own drawing beside Susan's. He drew merely a single large circle, the same size as the outer circle on Susan's doughnut. "This," he said, pointing at his drawing. "This is what a doughnut originally looks like, before it becomes a complete, properly-functioning doughnut, like Susan drew." How he knew her name was a mystery to all, especially Susan, as she had never mentioned it, and this was the first time she'd ever taken one of Professor Jenkins' classes. "Now, what is the difference between my drawing and Susan's? Come on, speak up!" "Um," began Quenton A. R. Torez, who hated his own name with a passion, and always insisted that people call him Joe, instead. "The hole?" "Yes!!!!" screamed Professor Jenkins in ecstasy. "That's it, precisely!!!!" But, the students still didn't seem to understand what was so damned important about a doughnut hole. Sensing this, Jenkins turned back to the green blackboard to demonstrate his point by pounding his index finger into the blackboard first in the center of his drawing, then in the center of Susan's drawing. He turned back to the class to see if understanding had yet set in. It hadn't. "The hole! You see, the hole is the key to it all!" He looked wildly about the class, making vague waving motions with his right hand in the general direction of Quenton. Sensing that the students still were at a loss, he began to try to explain his point in more detail. "How do you make a hole? Huh? What exactly do you have to do to add a hole to a chunk of doughnut substance, to make it into a doughnut?" "Well," volunteered Susan, feeling a bit braver now. "You have to remove some of the...doughnut substance, usually with some specially made doughnut-hole-cutter of some sort, which you can buy at any--" "Yes!!!!" Jenkins' scream of pure happiness cut her shopping advice off. "Yes!! You have to remove some the doughnut substance!! To ADD a hole, you must REMOVE some doughnut substance!! You see what I mean?" The students said that they did understand. And they actually did, which frightened a number of them. They wondered if Alzheimer's Disease was communicable. "So, then, it should be clear to you all now why doughnuts are the key to searching for and understanding the truth. Right?" But, none of the students could quite understand this strange leap of the discussion, which made those fearing for their sanity a bit more comfortable. "Doughnuts," Professor Jenkins said, after a few moments of silence. "Represent our sanity. See?" But, they still didn't see. In fact, this new metaphorical leap restored their firm belief that the professor should be locked up. They all began to wonder what other classes they could add to fill the general education requirement for Philosophy, instead of this one. "I know you all think I'm insane," said Jenkins, which prompted a startled response from the students, who were afraid what he might do. "And, you are quite right." They were unsure how to respond to his admission of insanity. But, they were all poised to leap out of their seats and run like bats out of hell at the first sign of a weapon, or a zucchini, in the professor's hands. "You see," Jenkins continued. "I have a doughnut hole in my sanity... Don't you get it?!?" He turned rapidly towards Peter, who let out a little gasp, and practically fell over in his chair as he jumped in fright. "Peter, you understand, don't you?" Peter just sat there, wondering whether to humor the wacko, or not, afraid that he might be able to sense a lie, too. But, as he sat there, a strange thing happened: he actually DID begin to understand. He didn't like that one bit, and shook his head vigorously in an attempt to remove the mind-twisting notion from his brain. But, he couldn't. He understood exactly what Professor Jenkins had been talking about all along, and he knew now that Alex Jenkins was probably the sanest man in the world, precisely because he was certainly the insanest. His mind grappled with this contradictory bit of insanity, in an attempt to get rid of it, and lost. He understood fully, and admitted to Jenkins that he did. Jenkins smiled, and then laughed out loud. The rest of the class knew now that he was trying to make them all as crazy as he was, and had apparently succeeded with Peter, much to his amusement. They were all determined to not think about this doughnut thing any more, because they liked their sanity intact, and not full of doughnut holes, dammit... But, they could not stop thinking about it. The insane idea flowed through all their minds, shredding bits of their sanity, precisely as they were sure Jenkins had planned it. Jenkins watched understanding wash, unwillingly, over the entire class, and grinned, satisfied. He looked at his watch. "Oh, I see class is over for today..." Of course, there was still about 15 minutes left to the class, but Jenkins didn't care, and in fact didn't know, as his watch hadn't worked since 1988 when he hit it with a brick just to see if it would "Take a lickin' and keep on tickin'", which it failed to do. "See you all on Wednesday," he said to the class, who slowly stood and filed out of room 42, shaking their heads in awe. He knew that they'd all be back, and they'd all be ready to learn, as he'd just cut doughnut holes in their sanity, making them all now properly functioning, without the excess sanity substance which they previously had... Jenkins continued to grin, as he took another sip of coffee from his large plastic Dunkin' Donuts mug, and walked out of the classroom, happy that none of them yet noticed the fact that jelly doughnuts have no hole. He'd always hated jelly doughnuts, anyway, so he had no trouble dismissing them from his little doughnut theory, which he just made up this morning at Dunkin' Donuts, but he'd have a hard time explaining it away to others. He decided he would go to McDonalds now, to make up the topic of discussion for the next class. He was toying around earlier with a theory about McDonalds french fries representing humanity's constant struggle against the hellish forces of nature and life itself, and thought he might try to expound upon that...