After I finished trade school I got a job as a sprinkler head in a fire-prevention system. I worked in an office, sitting on top of a ladder with my head up among the ordinary sprinkler heads, waiting for a fire. In case there was one, the holes in my head opened up and liquid sprayed out. I had quite a few extra holes in my head after my boss adapted me for the job by taking an ice pick to my cranium. Later my boss encouraged me to use all my body fluids and orifices to extinguish fires. I was prepared to spray the two cubicles below me with spit, snot, tears, sweat, vomit, cerebral fluid, blood, piss, jism, the works, so they wouldn’t burn up. I enjoyed the challenge and the responsibility.

Sometimes as I sat on my ladder, dreaming of the day my juices would rain down on the two workstations below me, the pair of pretty women who worked in them looked up at me from their chairs. ‘Hello, John Sprinkler Head’ they called out. I didn’t know if they were flirting with me. I didn’t even know how they knew my name, unless they guessed it. But they were attractive, and when they spoke to me it was all I could do to keep from going off prematurely and spewing my body fluids, cranial and sexual and the rest, every which-way. But I had to wait for a fire, and we never had one, or I overlooked it if we did.

After a while I got bored up there on the ladder and began chatting with the two women. They were that beautiful. ‘Now you ladies let me know if you see anything down there that looks like a fire,’ I said.

‘We will, John Sprinkler Head,’ they both said. They added, in case I missed the point, ‘Thanks, John Sprinkler Head. We have work to do now, John Sprinkler Head.’

‘My job is important too,’ I put in. ‘So you let me know the minute you see flames or even smoke. I’m prepared to deal with those.’

No reply.

‘Even before you call 911 or pull the alarm, you let me know and I’ll take care of it,’ I added. ‘I’ll rain piss and cum and tears and cerebral fluid and diarrhea all over it and save the day.’

They looked uncomfortable, so I quieted down. Things got very boring then.

I tried not to look down the blouses of the two gorgeous women from my spot high up on the ladder, but it was hopeless. They both wore slinky stuff, as if on purpose to tease me. ‘Aw, whadja go and wear that for?’ I’d say to Margaret when I saw her great cleavage. I’d learned Margaret’s name from overhearing all her office conversations and listening to her answer her phone calls. Same with Wanda. She was the other one whose cleavage I stared down and who I tormented with sex talk. The two of them looked surprised when I said such things and didn’t say anything back. After a while they put on high-button blouses and turtlenecks to come to the office. But I kept up the sex talk, though I knew I shouldn’t.

‘Is that a flame I see down there, or the shiny clasp of a new bra?’ I asked Margaret and Wanda a dozen times or more a day. And, ‘If I didn’t have to keep my eyes peeled for fire, I’d stare down your plunging necklines all day, if you wore them.’

‘You better stop saying those things, John Sprinkler Head,’ the two embarrassed women said, ‘or we’ll file a grievance.’ I knew they weren’t kidding. Word had already reached me that they’d complained to their manager about the ‘obscene ravings’ of ‘that retard on the ladder.’ So I shut my trap. By massaging my various glands, I worked on saving a good supply of semen and spit in case of a blaze.

One day my boss came up my ladder to talk to me. He told me there would be a fire inspection soon and that I needed to be at my best. He said the Fire Marshal would look to be sure that I was clear of mildew, mineral deposits, and dirt. Then he took out his pocketknife, which was bigger than his ice pick, and gouged me in my head and body to enlarge all my outlet holes, really working me over. ‘It’d be a breeze if you were a dolphin and had a blowhole in the back of your head,’ he said, ‘but oh well.’ Finished, he climbed back down the ladder and went away.

It’d be a breeze if I were a dolphin and so forth! The boss had me chuckling the rest of the day with that line.

Fire inspection day was my chance to prove myself. Everyone including me knew the exact date and time, so I was ready. When it came, I shot my various wads all over, even though I wasn’t supposed to, it being only an inspection. The Fire Marshal hardly glanced at me during all this. But later he submitted a report that I was inadequate and a pervert, and I got downsized.