View of My Work in Satirical and Subversive Fiction Composed During My Time at Miami University

Home , Make Yourself, The Parking Space, The Reaper (Bohland)

ABSTRACT

SATIRE, THE MOST EARNEST MODE

by Alex Friedman

Satire, the Most Earnest Mode collects a multi-genre review of my work in satirical and subversive fiction composed during my time at Miami University. It includes examples of short story form, oral storytelling forms, and political blogging. There’s a flamingo from space, there’s anti-dinosaur fear rhetoric… lots of stuff. It’s really kind of difficult to summarize in 200 words. Like, how would you summarize 40 Stories by Barthelme? This isn’t as good as that book, but just as comparison. Wow, this is going to be embarrassing when my delay of publication runs out…

SATIRE, THE MOST EARNEST MODE

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of English

Alex Friedman

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2014

Advisor______Margaret Luongo

Reader______Joseph Bates

Reader______Stefanie Dunning

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Meditations on Car Insurance 1

Dinosaurs! WTF? 7

In the Valley of Terror (and other stories) 8

Spoken Fables 98

“All you do is talk shit.” Mike Anthony, to the author in 7 th grade

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Margaret Luongo, Jodi Bates, and Stefanie Dunning. I really appreciate the support through this process. Thanks to Emi Slade, from whom I commissioned the cover for In the Valley of Terror . Thanks to Rachel, Mom, Dad, Joseph, Michael, Gretchen, Will, and Taylor.

Meditations on Car Insurance

A Meditation (On Car Insurance)

Everywhere around me, messages float through the air. They want to get inside my brain.

They float on electromagnetic waves, through the concrete of my bedroom, through the frames of my glasses, trying to find purchase, trying to find an inlet, something to reverberate against.

They are full of voices and images, urges and will.

They’re trying to sell me car insurance.

They feed on my desire to see or hear or feel anything else, they appear there, they try to sell me car insurance. The waves feed into this machine, floating on my apartment air from a wire that they traveled through from somewhere far away, they sing to me about car insurance.

Whenever I open the channels, wherever I look, they send lizards to sing to me about car insurance.

They need me to buy car insurance.

Dick Michael is the man who sells me car insurance. He is not very good at it. I have told him as much. He talks to my mother on the phone sometimes, and tells her how demographically irresponsible I am. How foolish it would be to be seen with me on the same bill for car insurance.

I buy car insurance from Dick Michael because Dick Michael is the man from whom I buy car insurance. Dick Michael sends me stickers that have my address from two years ago on them, next to a picture of car insurance.

Sometimes on a sunny day, when I look up at the sky, there is a googly eyed blimp that wants to sell me car insurance. Sometimes when we gather together and say a prayer for the victims of a tragedy, it is followed by the lizard of car insurance. Sometimes when I ask to see a film about the problems with capitalism, I am shown a short message from car insurance.

I will play it safe. I will pick up the phone. Like a good neighbor, I will be there. I will be the hot jogger that distracts me as I plow into a telephone pole. I will place myself in good hands.

It’s so easy a caveman could do it.

When I close my eyes I see a lizard.

There is a glint in its eye.

Like it wants to talk to me about

A Meditation (II)

And lo, Dick Michael’s mailer that he sends me every six months said,

Be not afraid, for I go before you always. Though the road may seek to rend you bodily in the day and fitfully awaken you at night with half remembered terrors: be not afraid. For you rest in my arms, as the child at its mother's breast.

That will be $77.50.

I'm telling you the truth! Though you find yourself battered by blinding rains on the freeway, boxed in by semis, carrying three of your most beloved passengers, you must trust me as they trust in you. So confident in your driving that they lounge and sleep about your car, unconcerned. Though you fear for your very life, you steel yourself. Have you no faith? Hasn’t thou survived thus far? It is because I protect you always.

That will be $77.50.

Though you drive through the forests of the valley of death, it is I who carry you, O!, like the good shepherd carries the lamb, I sit in my office enjoying Hulu Plus because I can afford it and you steer and twist and turn through the shadowed wilder. And lo, though the forest beasts lay siege to you like the heathen in kamikaze flight, and are happy to exchange their lives to barrage thine windshield, it is I who safeguard that windshield (after a $500 deductible).

That will be $77.50.

And should your car be struck in the street while you are sleeping, fear not. For I will assess the damage and bestow upon thee the means to repair it (after a $500 deductible). Unless the damage is significant, lo, then surrender it unto me as I will dissemble thine vehicle at no charge, so that I might sell the parts and bestow upon thee its former value (minus a $500

deductible). And though you may ask where one finds a reliable car for two thousand dollars it- was-a-fucking-Camry-goddammit-worth-at-least-7-grand, fear not, for I have protected you, no one was injured, deal with it.

That will be $77.50.

Amen.

A Meditation (III, wherein the artist co-opts the corporate profile of his insurance agent)

We focus on relocations A ‘why won’t you go away’ focus We focus on you should go home Please focus on the lack of welcome mat

Regional Vice President's Club (State Vice Presidents are not allowed) Michigan Tech University, BS-Metallurgical Engineering

Silver Scroll Qualifier Bronze Tablet Qualifier Life Quality Qualifier

You must qualify as possessing the quality of being alive You must be a metallurgist to qualify bronze tablets. To qualify my silver scrolls To validate my parking

Our mission is to help people manage the risks of everyday life, recover from the unexpected and realize their dreams.

Our mission is to advertise a product that does not exist.

Our mission is to realize their dreams.

Dinosaurs! WTF?

This satirical blog is an attempt to use my embarrassingly deep font of dinosaur knowledge to satirize conservatism, survivalism, and whatever flavor of the week ridiculousness pops up in the news. I’ve tried to pare down the blog’s content to a “greatest hits” length.

What is the Conservative Dinosaur Readiness Movement? Colorado: Forward Base of the Dinosaur Menace Red Rock Dawn I Friggin' Told You So Legitimate Interview with Peter Larson The 5 Spikiest Dinosaurs Dinosaurs that Prove Millennials are Unemployable Losers Terrifying Raptors that Disprove Creationism

In the Valley of Terror (and other stories) a chapbook collection of weird tales

The Silver Eye

I found him at the bar. He thumbed at the silver device, its eye whirring. He drank.

“Imagine then, as this is a limitless universe.”

The absinthe, emerald in his glass, roiled in his eyes.

“Any microwave you might name, radiating on artificial frequencies, emanating from a planet where electromagnetism should be absorbed, a beacon from a planet inherently hospitable to life and bleeding from dozens of energy sources,” he rambled, shivering.

I stood from the table but he pulled at my arm, his nails tearing open the cuff of my shirt.

“A beacon in a universe of devouration! There is no place where energy and liquid water meet that life cannot arise to seek further! This world is a glowing, swirling mass of cosmic mana, suspended for any entity that might reach out, to ravage it.”

He loosened his grip, weeping now, his sweaty graying mane wanton and torn; and the patrons of the lounge now stared. He looked up at the voyeurs and back to me and threw the silver thing back onto the table.

“It is not a question of if we are sought by those... cosmic others,” he murmured, “But of how quickly they may seek!”

Every Preceding Thursday I first noticed that Thursdays no longer counted for me during the end of the Fall semester. I suppose I could have been louder about the situation, but no one seemed interested. I didn't see any reason to let it dominate my peers' perceptions of me. I decided I would start wearing nicer shoes, to offset the damage to my professional reputation. It worked quite well.

I was studying biophysics at the time and teaching a class which met on Tuesdays and

Thursdays. I first noticed the Thursday problem because of a perplexing conundrum that arose in a Tuesday class. None of my students remembered class on the preceding Thursday. I became slightly irate.

"Does anyone have the answer to number three? We covered this in class on Thursday," I said to thirty blank stares.

Silence.

"Anyone."

Silence. Nervous glances.

"Hoodie kid in the back?" I pointed.

"Yeah, uh, Mr. Paschow, you weren't here Thursday," the hoodie kid in the back said.

"Doctor Paschow. Yes. I was," I said, "We covered zygotes."

Silence.

"Anyone."

Silence.

"Girl with the outdated laptop?" I pointed again.

"Professor Paschow, no offense sir, but I can state with observational certainty that you were not here at this classroom at the appointed class time on Thursday, the fourth of this month," said the girl with an outdated laptop.

"I see," I said.

I took the heavy animal biology text book and slammed it on my desk so that the thirty percent of the class that was asleep would join me briefly.

"Can you confirm, as a class, these observations?" I said softly.

Silence.

"Please raise your hands to confirm that I was not present at the appointed time in this classroom on the fourth of this month," I requested.

Twenty one hands rose. I noted that angry looking backwards baseball-cap kid did not have his hand raised.

"Angry looking backwards baseball-cap kid, can you confirm my presence in this room at the appointed time for class last Thursday?" I asked him, pointing.

"Observationally? Or as a man of science?" He responded.

"Excellent question. You get an 'A' for participation today. Both, if you would," I said.

"Thank you," he said, adjusting his baseball cap to accentuate his flaring eyebrows as he walked to the whiteboard.

He took up a marker and began to draw a time-line.

"You see, Professor, I have the unique observational position of having fallen asleep on my skateboard at exactly 9:59 AM in the hallway. At that point, you had not arrived to open the classroom," he said, annotating the brief time-line.

"Go on," I said. I shuffled through my desk to find a golden star sticker.

"So as I see it, only two possibilities exist, sir. Either you recall correctly arriving to teach and assigning homework, neither of which any member of the class recalls. Or your memory is flawed, no class took place, and we are an entire session behind the homework schedule," he

said, tapping his marker on the diverging chart for emphasis. "Both possibilities are equally terrifying."

"Indeed they are," I said, placing a gold star upon his forehead. "Indeed they are."

I assigned three sessions worth of homework and dismissed the class.

The next day, Wednesday, I decided to be careful in my evening preparations. After my lab duties, I made sure to set my alarm for the morning's class session. I laid out clothes and breakfast for the day. Everything in order, I went to bed early. Thursday morning, I awoke to the clatter of the alarm going off, and spent a few harried seconds setting a snooze alarm. I was then awoken by the clatter of the snooze alarm going off, and spent an additional few seconds turning off the alarm and cursing at myself. I prepared and went to class. I taught. I spent my office hours responding to angry student emails about the course load. Bellanie Fischer, the doctor next office over, asked if I would care to join her for a drink and a burger after hours. I declined, but complimented her on her recent Scientific American interview. The refusal was an unexpected action on my part as I had been trying to work up the courage to ask her out for a number of weeks. In addition to her apparent genius, she has very nice hair and displays panache in her fashion sense.

I went home and read journals for an hour and then prepared dinner. I settled in for the night and felt some regret for turning down Dr. Fischer’s offer. I then wrote the outline to a paper on my research before turning in for the night. At that point I had nearly forgotten about the odd class on Tuesday.

The next morning, Friday, I was leisurely about my morning routine. I got out of bed, stretched, watched the news on television. After perhaps an hour, I checked my email. I had fourteen messages from students letting me know they showed up to class on time, waited fifteen

minutes, and then left. They said I had not arrived. I closed my eyes and pictured, clearly, scenes from class on Thursday morning. I remembered teaching, saying things I could still hear in my own voice as I had lectured.

It hadn't counted. I hypothesized that perhaps I could experience Thursdays as long as they were my current present and future, but once they entered into precedence, the day I remembered no longer existed in reality.

Every preceding Thursday was insubstantial. They did not count.

I thought hard. What had I done yesterday that might still count? I was not starving, so perhaps I had eaten. There was something. My sent emails from Thursday were not there. They had not been written. They did not count. What about the alarm clocks? They still showed that I had set them for Thursday on Wednesday night. Wednesday had counted. That was something.

What about discussions? Whom had I interacted with?

Bellanie Fischer.

I dressed and went to her office.

"Hello, Doctor Fischer," I said. She looked up from her computer. She had a radio tuned to Science Friday .

"Hello, Doctor Paschow," she said.

"Have I complimented you on your Scientific American interview yet?" I asked.

"No, I don't believe you have," she said. She tapped on her keyboard, still looking at me.

"I intended to yesterday. Congratulations. It's well deserved, and it's an honor to be brought into the hip-skull ratio controversy as the scientific community's voice of reason," I said.

"Thank you," she said.

"Did you invite me out for a burger and a beer at The Upset after-hours yesterday?" I asked. The Upset was a local bar and grill commemorating an unexpected championship victory claimed by Massingbluff University's baseball team. The team existed in a constant paradox of being both the most under-rated and the most over-rated sporting team on campus.

"No, I did not have the chance. But I intended to," she said. She smiled at me, still typing.

"I see. Thank you, Doctor Fischer," I said. I left her office and proceeded to my own.

The following week I tried an experiment. I did not pursue my responsibilities on

Thursday. Instead I watched National Geographic, went bowling, and then wrote a few Carl

Sagan quotes on my living room wall in permanent marker. This, in theory, would give me the answers to the question which I had jotted down in a notebook the night previous. The next morning I revisited the notebook to discover what I had learned.

Did what I remembered happening happen yesterday? I read the question, written in my longhand. I looked at the wall where Carl Sagan quotes should have been written. Nothing. I called the bowling alley and asked by phone if they had any record of my being there yesterday.

Nothing. I looked at my 'recently watched' listing for the National Geographic episode from yesterday. Nothing. Evidence would suggest that my memories are inaccurate, I wrote in the notebook.

At this point I typed my formal report to hand in to the secretary of my department. I called the Human Resources office for the College of Science. I explained the situation to them.

The secretary there, a Mr. Goodhumor, told me about the University’s standard practices for problems caused by a faculty member’s ‘personal wellness issues’. I refrained from asking about ice cream. Contrary to his name, he sounded stern, and I thought I may need him as an ally.

Departmental secretaries are the gatekeepers of academia. I told him I intended to look into the situation scientifically.

“That seems appropriate,” he said. “That is the sort of approach you get paid for around here.”

In class on Tuesday, after I had caught my students up by assigning another three sessions worth of homework, I posed an open response question.

“Class, say you found out that nothing you did on Thursdays actually counted anymore.

You could do anything within those waking hours, and they would not factor into your future reality. What would you do? Write in your class ledger. Two-hundred words,” I said.

The responses I got ranged from droll to depraved. I referred several students to the campus mental wellness center, reminding them that the classwork did count, and that it was only the situation that was hypothetical. I did receive one situationally appropriate response.

Comparing the ledger to my picture roster, I determined that the response came from angry baseball-cap kid. His name was apparently Clark. It fit him.

I believe the appropriate response would be to behave in a way that ignored relatively minor consequences, and considered maximum possible gain. First, actions under these guidelines would pose no major risk to me if this phenomenon suddenly ceased to remain in effect. Secondly, I would be able to experiment on my approaches to my various goals in a way that common cautiousness might not allow, possibly leading to better than usual results and informing my actions that would be permanent on other days of the week. Finally, this approach would likely be exhilarating.

I nodded as I read and put a gold sticker on his ledger.

The next Thursday, having bribed the campus security escort service and prepared a number of surveillance devices the night previous, I awoke and dressed in unusually snappy form. I went to breakfast, spent an excessive amount of money on eggs benedict, and whiled away three hours reading Hothouse . I then walked to Doctor Fischer’s office and invited her to lunch and a tour of the Burke Museum of Scientific Excellence. She agreed.

While we stared at an excellent scale model of a sperm whale attacking a colossal squid,

Dr. Fischer put her hand on my shoulder. I flinched slightly.

“You only asked me out today because you don’t think Thursdays count,” she said. I had not mentioned the phenomenon to her.

“Ah. We seem to have a breach of professional privacy in the Science College’s HR management,” I said.

“No, I process HR forms for the department. You signed a form this term saying you understood that,” she said.

“Now that you mention it, I believe I did sign that form,” I said.

“Did you notice they updated the human fetus exhibits with a placard about my work?”

She asked.

“I did. This museum has in its curators what it lacks in funding.” I cleared my throat. “I would have asked you here anyway. This was just supposed to be a test run to see if you liked my leisure suit.”

“I do. Who knows? I always thought Thursdays were strange. How could one tell if a

Thursday was a simple product of the mind? Perhaps the day is a result of mass hysteria, a ritualized fantasy started some time in the last few months and with mentions added sporadically to the history books,” she mused.

“Actually, I set up extensive observational technology arrays last night. We’ll soon know if this is some mysterious phenomenon or the result of some hallucination.”

“Do you think you’re hallucinating?” She asked.

“No,” I said, “I usually don’t dream about angels.”

“Hmmm. Come up with a better line if it turns out this never happened,” she said.

Doctor Fischer kissed me on the cheek when I dropped her off at her apartment. I went home and went to bed early. I dreamed, I think.

The next morning I checked the array of webcams, motion detectors, and campus escort officers I had enlisted in tracking myself on my “day off”.

A very clear timeline of that morning emerged. I had woken up and engaged in a very efficient version of my morning routine. I had washed up, dressed, gone down the street, and ordered a bagel. I had eaten the bagel while I walked towards the buildings that form the College of Sciences. I had gone into a secondary building that houses some of the smaller labs. The security cameras there watched as I took out my ID card, unlocked a laboratory room in the basement, and entered. The room was labeled SUB-L-22. There were no cameras in that room. I did not leave until late that night. I went to a convenience mart where I got a slice of pizza which

I ate on the way to my apartment. I entered my apartment and retired.

To the average observer, this would appear well within the limits of my usual behavior. I had not been overtly social, however my movements, though stiff even when viewed on the webcam, seemed normal enough. There was a certain subtlety about the version of myself I watched in that footage, though. I could tell it was not me. It was my body, but it was not me . It was as though I was being occupied by some other entity. I resolved to have a look at that

sublevel laboratory. But first, I would attempt to ask out Doctor Fischer. I dialed her on the phone.

After two rings, Doctor Fischer picked up.

“Hello,” she answered.

“Hello, Doctor Fischer. This is Doctor Steven Paschow.” I said.

“How are you doing?” She asked.

“Very well. I was wondering if you would be interested in going to the Museum of

Scientific Excellence with me this afternoon. Perhaps we could get lunch, too.”

“That’s funny,” she said, “I would have expected you to ask me out on a Thursday.”

“I did. You gave me some excellent advice, and I think I’ve worked out the kinks in the date,” I said.

As we ate lunch that afternoon, Dr. Fischer described to me the process of patenting her discoveries concerning the in utero environment as spacecraft life support system designs.

“Of course, with the current rate of progress in space travel, I will likely find myself writing the patent holdings into my will before I could find a way to develop them. Perhaps I could leave them to the department,” she concluded. She sipped at her iced tea. I noticed her earrings. They were tiny golden tadpoles.

“Why wouldn’t you leave them to your own children?” I asked.

“I would, except she’s more interested in social work,” Dr. Fischer said.

“There are similarities in your fields,” I said.

“You think so?” She said.

“Sure,” I said, “both fields seek to understand development, and neither accounts particularly well for lead poisoning.”

“Or cadmium,” she said.

We found ourselves later in front of the excellent whale-and-squid exhibit. Sadly, with repeated viewings, one begins to notice the paint degradation.

“I read about a woman who was infected with squid spermatophores when she bit into a piece of calimari,” Dr. Fischer said. “They had to be removed from her gums surgically.”

“Terrifying,” I said.

“Just another reason not to eat sentient sea life,” she said.

“Care to go and examine your plaque in the next room?” I asked.

“Is that an imposition, Doctor Paschow?” She asked.

“I fail to follow,” I said.

Dr. Fischer explained on the way. I found myself slightly vexed, and then she kissed me.

It would seem that I am a more successful suitor when I am oblivious to my own impulses. Dr.

Fischer informed me that our next date would be on the following Tuesday. She said that

Tuesdays are overlooked by the machinations of time and space. I suppose that’s why I never have them off for holidays.

The next day was Saturday. I made breakfast for myself and walked to the laboratory facility that housed SUB-L-22. I found that my access card admitted me into the facility based on my title, though I had no legitimate reason to be there. I also found that Clark was a weekend security escort there. I told him that if I did not return from SUB-L-22 in thirty minutes, he should call the police. He asked if I would like an escort to the room. I told him that there were some things a man should undertake alone, but that this was unlikely to be one of them. He walked me down to the room. My access card worked on the door. I gave him a thumbs-up, and entered.

The door closed and locked behind me before my escort could follow. In the room were several enormous glass tanks of what seemed like amniotic fluid. I guessed at their nature only by the illuminated floating bodies within them. The floating forms were about the size and shape of a beagle, and may have resembled that comforting breed had it not been for the exoskeleton and the gills. I suppose if one imagined a cross between a beagle and a dunkleosteus, one would not be far off. In the center of the room stood a larger tank with a decidedly larger and perhaps more developed specimen inside it. It moved. Several cameras and sensors attached to the tank buzzed mechanically and began to follow me. I tested the lock on the door to no avail. Twice.

The thing growing in the central tank seemed to awaken. It opened its eyes and a pair of long, insectoid antennae unfurled on its head. The creature stared at me and for a moment I returned its gaze. Its eyes were like a beagle’s too, sad, and perhaps loving.

“Hello, host-father,” a computer generated voice said from speakers mounted on the walls. I shuddered.

“Hello,” I said.

“Do not be afraid,” the voice said. The beagle-fetus-fish made a gracious gesture, floating in its tank. A sort of floating curtsey or dancer’s flourish.

“I sort of expected you to be rogue graduate students from the psychiatric program, with experimental hallucinogens or something,” I said. My voice trembled slightly.

“I am [ELECTRICAL STATIC], of the [ELECTRICAL STATIC] colonial wavelength. I hail from far away. I have been intercepting your consciousness every Thursday for some time now, so that your body can serve as a host and caretaker while our bodies grow,” said the voice.

It paused as I looked around hurriedly. The creature watched me and floated.

“Oh, go on. I’m listening,” I said. I found a chair and wheeled it over in front of the tank to sit down. “Here we are. Sorry. Go on.”

“We are the [ELECTRICAL STATIC]. We traveled the great vastness of space by encoding ourselves into radio waves to be decoded and regrown wherever our signal could be received. We proliferate without the bonds of space and time in this way. Look upon us, host- father, your gracious foster children,” the voice said. The creature held for questions.

“Why Thursday?” I asked.

“Your subconscious opted for Thursday instead of Friday,” the voice said.

“Oh. Why me?” I asked.

“You are the only human with access to these facilities who still uses an alarm clock radio,” the voice said.

“You don’t say. The only one?” I asked.

“Yes. Everyone else uses a cell phone,” the voice said.

“And you enslave my consciousness every Thursday morning through my clock radio?” I asked.

“You are not enslaved, host-father. Your subconscious agreed to compensation of breakfast, dinner, and eight thousand dollars cash upon completion of the six week colonial gestation period. You subconsciously signed a document saying you understood all of that,” the voice said.

“Fascinating,” I said, leaning back in my chair. I found I was having difficulty grasping all of this. We measured each other, briefly and in meditative silence.

All I could think to say was, “You know, I think we may be violating a few patents.”

The Testimony of F. S. Orphan To whom it may concern:

I am not writing in defense of Mr. Gomer Bagley. My only interest lies with the possible legislative gains that the study of a clear and objective account of his story might yield. I will try to provide such an account, as I believe I am the only living man capable of producing one.

While I am writing this account with a sober and observational attitude, please forgive any emotional charges you may note in what follows. I am only a man.

I first noticed something amiss with Mr. Bagley when he approached me at our former workplace, my Auntie Orphan's Old-Fashioned Pretzel Stand, with a strange comment. I was, at the time, the owner of a deluxe franchising opportunity- a fully associated entity of the corporation my Great Aunt Orphan began in 1962. I was preparing the week's work schedule and he was clocking out for the afternoon.

"God spoke to me from the lemonade," he said, "And the clockwork is amiss."

"Certainly this is not an attempt to gain the holiday shift on Monday, Gomer," I responded.

"Oh? No, no, Tina is already scheduled that day," he said.

"Hmmm. Indeed," said I, "Carry on."

I did not make a fuss about the comment because Mr. Bagley had sold over fourteen dozen pretzels during his shift, virtually ensuring that he would be named the branch's employee of the month. It is best not to hassle talented men, I figured.

His salesmanship had greatly improved over the prior months. He had attracted a very loyal group of regular customers. These were mostly drawn from the same crowd that attended local book clubs- not the most sociable lot, but heavy pretzel users (forgive the market terminology).

Mr. Bagley is no longer physically the man I remember, due to the injuries he has incurred from the incident in question. I have seen his picture in the newspapers. The Auntie

Orphan franchise uniform is burned into his flesh, and his eyes seem glazed over. I read that he is catatonic. When I knew him he was a bookish sort. Small fellow, of perhaps French-Canadian descent. Not physically intimidating by any stretch, which is partially why I hired him. People enjoy buying pretzels more if they feel superior to the person selling them.

Mr. Bagley's troubles became more problematic for my Auntie Orphan franchise when he began to call off every other Thursday. Thursdays are a remarkably hard day to staff in and around greater Massingbluff. This provides unique challenges to the franchises here. However, up to this point, I could rely on Mr. Bagley to arrive for any shift I asked.

After it was obvious that the off-days were becoming habitual, I called Mr. Bagley at his home. He explained over the phone that he had to prepare a steam cog to rectify the anti-thetans.

This was something that I had to respect, as the Auntie Orphan's Old Fashioned Corporation does not discriminate based on religion, race, gender, ethnicity, or general attractiveness. There is a very large Scientologist population in Massingbluff. I am on good terms with their church, though I am not personally religious, because they often place large catering orders during recruitment season. Scientologists love soft pretzels. Thus, our welfares are intertwined.

"Well if those damned Sikhs can bring swords to the mall, then I guess I have to respect your anti-thetan sessions. Schedule off in advance next time, Gomer," I said.

The next few months did not betray any of the horror that was to come for Gomer

Bagley. The pretzel business was booming. The Pretzel Futures market was never higher, and it rose with each passing day. It seemed that Gomer sold a pretzel to every man, woman, and child

that walked into the mall. Those people that especially liked the pretzels began to wear Auntie

Orphan's trademark colors (Baker's Brush Black and Barbecue Red) on ornate cloaks, and they could be seen all over the mall and surrounding shopping complexes.

Mr. Bagley began to invent new and exciting ways to generate pretzel revenue. I didn't care for the naming conventions he used, but they seemed to move the product. There was 'The

Wyll of the God Machine', (three pretzels and a coke for the price of 15/16ths of three pretzels and a coke); 'His Gearwyrk Hand Doth Cometh', (a wheat pretzel with two sides of honey mustard and a coke); 'Syns of the Flesh, Rectified', (a strawberry lemonade and your choice of two pretzels); and 'The Auntie Orphan Original with Cheese'. He even brought in a new menu sign made of soldered wrought iron. It looked rather sharp under the skylight in the main food court.

After all his success, it was to my horror and surprise when he showed up for work frothing at the mouth and sputtering about the "Final Orphan Combo Special". I told him to leave the stand immediately and go to the Urgi-care medical facility in the south wing. I figured that he had been bitten by a rabid animal. Dogs always barked at him and wet themselves upon seeing him.

As far as I can tell, he did not make it to the Urgi-care.

I was eating lunch on the far side of the food court when I saw the first flash. A child of the 1960's, I immediately ducked under the table I was sitting at and covered my head. This spared my life. As far as I am aware, there were no other survivors on the Northern side of the mall. Tina had arrived for work to cover Gomer's shift. As the black pit emerged from the center

of Gomer's sign, she was the first to be sucked in. The black spiraling pit in the sign was being generated by some sort of machinery within the sign itself. I had not questioned why it had been six cubic meters when Gomer brought it in on an industrial forklift, I just admired his use of contrast and font. Perhaps I am a fool.

The horrors that spilled forth from that sign are difficult to express. As the pit opened and began to suck in all living things around it (sparing me because of my bomb proof maneuver), mechanical hands reached out and toyed with time and space in the surrounding food court.

Hamburgers were reformed into quivering calfs, barbecue sauce turned to blood, and taco shells became screaming, sentient bodies. The mechanical hands seemed to breathe chaos into all they touched.

And then it was over. There was a crackling explosion, and the sign collapsed upon itself.

The hands scrambled back into their dark void as it shrank and disappeared, the horrors they manifested died or fled into the back rooms of the food court. The mall was a blackened, charred mess. But it resembled sanity once more.

I am told that those outside of the initial blast radius were burned badly and knocked to the ground. They are the lucky ones. I do not care to imagine what was waiting for Tina and the other people who were sucked into the other side of the sign. I have given up the pretzel business. I am a bagel man now. And I can only pray that when I die, only forgiving extinction awaits me. I would rather not exist than find myself in that spiraling, clockwork pretzel hell.

Please judge Mr. Bagley appropriately.

Signed,

Franklin S. Orphan

The Dream Quest of Vincent Finn

Dear Mrs. Clark,

I am not sure you know me by name, but I am Vince Finn, an employee of yours. I work in the sub-basement of Chapel Hall’s cafeteria, doing dishes. ‘The Dungeon’, you know. I unload the tray conveyer into the dish washer, and then load up the clean racks with the dishes. I work six shifts a week. I got the job a few semesters ago, but I don’t believe we’d ever talked before last night.

I know it must have seemed strange when you found me in your den, apparently trying to strangle your ferret to death. I decided to try and explain myself here, since I will certainly have a great deal of time to do so (I cannot afford bail). I don’t believe it would be healthy for me to avoid writing this down anyway, as my head is swimming with the details and I want to quote everyone directly before I forget what was said. In short, I wasn’t trying to kill your pet to spite you. I didn’t even know it was your house. The ferret brought me to your home and was uncomfortable being seen as short.

Anyway, you can imagine it is dull work down there in The Dungeon. But I guess I appreciate the work, it qualifies me for Work-Study grants. It pays well and even though it ties up all of my time, it appeals to my introversion. The buzz of the cheap fluorescent lighting tends to mess with my ability to focus on my thoughts, though. I try to tune it all out, the loading and unloading, and that buzz doesn’t help. The buzz is tiring. So you can understand how I might fall asleep on the shift, now and then. Not often, but on slow nights.

Those lights must affect my state of mind pretty deeply, because during those brief snoozes, I tend to dream. And the dreams are very lucid, transcendental even. In the dreams I stand and walk away from my post in the basement, up the stairs and out into Chapel Hall. The

Chapel Hall in the dreams isn’t quite the same, though. The windows in the dining room- I mean the ones where the big landscape windows are now- the windows in those dreams were like stained glass, full of bright geometric shapes, sparkling gold flecked rhombuses in prismatic colors. They seem that way at least. For the longest time, that room is where the dream would end. I would take a few steps into the immense dining room and I would see that the windows were still giant landscape panes.

And then I would wake up. The next set of dishes would stop on the conveyer. I would rub the sleep from my eyes and load the washer.

You see, that’s how it usually works. Things got a little out of hand last night, though.

That’s why we’re having this misunderstanding. It’s your ferret’s fault. I didn’t know he was your ferret, though.

I really need this job, Mrs. Clark. I feel like I really need to clarify.

So I fell asleep on my shift last night. As I’m sure you are aware, it was a very slow night, what with the holiday. I think I ran two loads by 6:30. I slouched down on the bench by the dishwasher. I fell asleep and I remember that fluorescent buzz taking over, well not just the buzz, it was the sleep overtaking me. Then I felt something small and fleshy touch my face. It was a tiny hand. I opened my eyes and I knew that reality had fallen away. Lucidity is no indicator of reality, and I struggled to understand what the buzzing fluorescence had wrought upon my dish-worn dreaming state.

The tiny, fleshy hands slapped at my face and my eyes focused upon the tiny face of a ferret. The creature smelled like a pet store, musky and happy and unrelated to responsibility.

The ferret’s nose was wet and cool as it explored my own. Seeing that I had awakened, the creature stood at its full height on my chest.

“Hey, get up,” it said.

Ferrets can talk in dreams. I was not particularly surprised. It leapt from my chest as I rose. It hopped up onto the chair I had been occupying and tried to meet me at eye level.

“I am Trouser-Snake, the Mind Traveler; you will be my accomplice,” said the ferret.

“Sure, why not,” I said.

I figured the middle school humor of the name meant that this creature was symbolic of my Freudian Id, and had come to drag me to the freedom of lucid dreams while my body languished in the dungeon.

Despite myself, I loaded the half load of dishes that had built up while I snoozed. I wondered why I was doing it while I did it, but it’s good practice to practice working.

“Okay good. I have some errands to run and you have a car. We shall quest far away, taking the routes laid by your kind. Okay, let’s go,” said Trouser-snake.

“Trouser-snake is a bit immature, can I call you something more fitting? Young Weazy?

Or Ferris? Or maybe-

“Trouser-snake is fitting, if you think about it. I enjoy crawling up the pant legs of your kind, in a slithery way. Really though, your name is stupid. ‘Vince’. What’s a vince? I would rather call you Drowsy Errand Pal. I’m going to call you Vince, though, because you call people by their given names if you have any respect for anyone,” Trouser-snake said.

We walked up the stairway into the dining hall. Other students were there, eating the food

I am forced to smell for hours on end, wasting and laughing. The other students were different from the waking world, too. They were still people but they were crystallized, without age or passing fancy. As though only their vital essences were visible. Only the personalities, the

fossilized concept of everything that might be built around them. They were skeletal and finalized. I looked at myself. I was still as reality might describe me. Down to the smock.

When I saw the windows, they were as they appear in my subconscious, portals to a colorful geometry. Trouser-snake led me towards the door.

A young lady asked us from her hostess’s parapet, “Did you forget to swipe in?”

I said, “No, I work in the basement and this is a talking ferret.”

“Have a nice evening,” she said. I could see from her planar form that she would someday be an Episcopalian minister. She would also invent a shape of novelty pasta that would outlive her, becoming the centerpiece of a dish called ‘Eggplant Regatta’ at a trendy Toronto gastropub. Trouser-snake shook his head in dissatisfaction.

“Yeah, we need to fix this height thing or else people are going to keep thinking you are the boss. People always try to talk to the boss first. It’s like an alpha thing. You should pick me up so I can be at eye-level,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, reaching down.

“Don’t hold me around my neck,” Trouser-snake said.

“You are mostly neck.”

“Here, hold me under my arms.”

I held him up with a hand under his arms.

“Okay, that’s comfortable, but like, I don’t want people to think we’re like, ‘together’.

Hold me at arm’s length,” said Trouser-snake.

So I held him out at arm’s length, like I was holding something smelly. Which I was.

“Okay, that’s good. I need some things from the grocery store,” said Trouser-snake.

“Okay,” I said. We walked out the door into the surreal landscape of Massingbluff’s dream form. The sun was nonexistent, replaced by a confluence of reflections produced by the endless prisms of constructions and landscape surrounding me. Somehow this anti–sun was still setting as it might in early spring.

We walked to my car in the parking lot. The campus was weirdly colorful, like an over exposed music video, and everything carried a soft fluorescent buzz.

My car was still a 2002 Dodge Intrepid, just like the asphalt was still asphalt and the construction sites were still construction sites. The world was a surreal dream, but the sheer lucidity of it all made it just as recognizable as everything else. I would compare it to turning on your (not necessarily ‘you’, Mrs. Clark, just a person) bathroom light in the middle of the night when aroused from a deep sleep– painfully bright and washed out, but still a place you know. I unlocked the car with my remote and placed Trouser-snake in the passenger’s seat. He immediately found my pack of chewing gum and took a piece without asking. I turned on the car and he fiddled with the radio, changing it to a weird progressive rock song I had never heard before.

“Take me to the grocery store, I need some stuff. Then I want to go to the furniture store because I need a computer chair,” Trouser-snake said.

I looked over my shoulder as I backed out of the parking space. Most people don’t do that, but I think that not doing so is grossly irresponsible, even in an astral dream plane. Trouser- snake began scribbling a grocery list onto his gum wrapper. Gum wrappers are the perfect size for ferret notes. This had not occurred to me before.

“So, just the Dave’s Friendly Grocer, then?” I asked.

“Yeah, that works, I don’t need anything weird,” Trouser-snake said.

“Where do you get a computer chair around here?” I asked.

“Probably we’ll have to go to the furniture warehouse store by Morgantown,” said

Trouser-snake.

I drove us to the Dave’s that I knew in the waking world. The drive was uneventful except for a family of ducks crossing at one of the crosswalks. They swam through the air, floating as though they were in four feet of water. Their wings were folded and they propelled themselves through nothingness, kicking their tiny webbed feet.

“Dreamscape Massingbluff is weird,” I said. Trouser-snake popped a bubblegum bubble.

“Yeah, you don’t usually see Carolina Ducks this far North,” said Trouser-snake, “But anything is possible in a dreamscape.” He made mysterious gestures with his paws.

The grocery store rested several hundred feet above street level atop a waterfall. I turned up, which is something the 2002 Dodge Intrepid is capable of, it seems, if you shift it into 2 nd. I parked and I went around to the passenger’s side and picked up Trouser-snake, holding him as we had discussed earlier. You might think that holding a creature out to the side at arm’s length would quickly become tiring and painful, but that didn’t seem very convenient so it didn’t happen. We entered the grocery and Trouser-snake picked out a shopping cart which he pushed while I held him.

We perused the aisles. Trouser-snake picked out a colander and a brick of sea salt. He seemed to be having trouble finding the international section so we stopped to talk to a woman we saw stocking paper products.

“Hey there… Vicky,” Trouser-snake said as he read her name plate, “I’m looking for the

Goya section.”

She looked at us tiredly.

“I hate dreaming about work,” she said.

“How do you know you’re dreaming?” Trouser-snake asked.

“Is that a philosophical query or did you not notice that I’m wearing muppet pajamas and that you are a talking weasel?” she said.

I actually hadn’t noticed that, but she was right. She looked like she might have in the waking world, or perhaps her bed, where she lay in pajamas while her soul went somnambulating.

“It was more of a philosophical statement. I’m very pretentious for a weasel. When do you get off, girl? You busy?” Trouser-snake said.

“Dude, cut it out,” I said. Vicky turned back to her work.

“What?” Trouser-snake asked.

“You’re being a pervy jerk. It’s embarrassing,” I said.

“I’m being flirtatious and unpredictable. And I’m also a talking dream weasel,” he said.

“She was obviously trying to work, she doesn’t need talking pervy dream weasel bullshit on top of that,” I said.

“Frankly, Vince, people who are dreaming about work have no business going about their business,” Trouser-snake said.

You have a rude ferret, Mrs. Clark.

We found the international section and Trouser-snake picked out three cans of papaya juice. I pushed Trouser-snake pushing his shopping cart to the automated checkout.

“Automated checkout systems are the tendrils of a malicious artificial intelligence that is probing humanity for weaknesses,” Trouser-snake said.

We took the car across the asphalt to the Dave’s Friendly Gasoline Dispensary. I held

Trouser-snake up while he pumped the gas. He used a Discover card. The name on the Discover card was your name, Mrs. Clark, but until I was jailed I had no clue what your first name was, so

I really didn’t put two and two together. I guess you just never struck me as the owner of a rude psychic ferret.

Trouser-snake pumped $22.50 worth of gasoline. He looked up with me to see that I was satisfied. I nodded. I held him up to the pump console so he could reject the receipt and hang up the pump.

By the way, spilled gasoline in the dream world smells like peppermints. I don’t know why I’m mentioning that, it just struck me as weird.

“I don’t regret trying to get Vicky’s digits, but I’m sorry that you felt embarrassed,”

Trouser-snake said, scribbling on a gum wrapper from another piece of gum he had taken without asking. I was navigating to the highway at this point.

“Oh, seriously? You’re one of those people? You’re an I’m sorry you felt that way guy?

Really? That figures,” I said.

“What? I was apologizing for you feeling embarrassed. Geez, Vince.”

“No, I mean it just figures. Poor impulse control and narcissism are often co-morbid.

Makes sense,” I said.

“Oh-ho! Look at you! Spittin’ jargon at me! You carry your Associate’s in your wallet?”

Trouser-snake said, laughing. Trouser-snake has a laugh like Tom Cruise and at that moment I remembered how much Collateral had scared me.

“I’m going to see what’s on talk radio,” I said.

“No! I mean. No. You do not want to turn on NPR. That’s not a good idea here. That’s how they get you. Hold on,” he said.

He turned on some more prog-rock. I figured I should probably let that slide. I figured I should probably start choosing my battles if I wanted to get out of dreamscape Massingbluff with my sanity intact.

We drove silently for about twenty minutes which should have struck me as a strange thing to happen in a dream.

“It’s the next one,” he said.

“Good.”

“You’ll be able to see the sign from the exit,” he said.

Highways are equally boring in the dream world as in real life. In fact, that whole distinction was starting to fade away for me. The only real difference was that there was an

Arthur Treacher’s at every exit. And Arthur Treacher’s had changed it’s service model to include

S&M wear.

We drove toward the exit with a giant ephemeral sign floating over it that said “Furniture

Warehouse Welcomes Mortal Souls”. I wondered what it did with immortal souls. Catholics used to tell me all about my immortal soul, back before the campus faith group just started asking me what the fuck my plan was when I died. My ‘different strokes’ comment never worked on either of them.

We pulled into the parking lot after navigating the nine way intersection out front. The furniture store was immense. It was as big as I remembered my first public school being in first

grade, and in the same way. I parked the Intrepid as close as I could to the front doors, but that was still about two-hundred yards away.

“Huh,” Trouser-snake said as I carried him toward the warehouse.

“What?”

“I dunno, it’s just,” he looked at me and shrugged, “This whole dreamscape just feels… painfully under-realized.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“You should imagine more. That’s all I’m saying. Shit, take notes and try to consider things. I have been taking notes this whole time, and you’re like… I don’t know. You are paying fifteen grand for this education, and you’re doing work study in some Guantánamo knock off, and the best you have to show for it is like… background art for a bad music video,” Trouser- snake said.

“Gosh, Trouser-snake, I never thunk of it like that before, I guess I’ll just stop financing my schooling by washing dishes from now on. You realize I’ve been carrying you like this since six-thirty?” I said.

I get mean when people point out how trapped I should feel working for you, Mrs. Clark.

Sometimes I feel like I am wasting my youth and my abilities working underground washing dishes for you every hour I am not studying or sleeping. But believe me, I am grateful for the work.

Your ferret was quiet for a moment because he probably realized why I got all defensive.

“I can’t knock you as a transporter. In all of my mind-travels, there have been few who have borne me so naturally,” he said.

“You need to stop being a prick or I’m going to do the rest of this dream-quest solo,” I said.

“Help me pick out a cheap and comfortable computer chair, valiant steed, and we shall seek no further.”

The automatic doors of the store opened to an escalator. There was a bedroom set next to the escalator, and there were some reusable shopping bags you could borrow on the other side of the escalator, but it was very clear that whatever we were supposed to do next was escalator oriented. The escalator was only two stories tall. I thought that perhaps Trouser-snake was right about my dreamscape being uninventive. I looked at him and carried us onto the escalator. There were two directions we could go from there. Both involved an arrow on the floor, the first of which pointed us into the showroom. The other pointed to a cafeteria. The cafeteria was not very different from the one I believed was waiting for me as soon as I might wake.

There were people all around. Lively people. I found myself watching people having petty arguments over bath toys while they were crystallized into their most completely human forms, chakras spinning with universal knowledge. There was a woman holding up a duck made out of washcloth material.

“Billy might choke on the eyes, Derry. Look, the eyes are barely stitched on there.”

I wonder, Mrs. Clark– do you own a mean little ferret because you and your husband don’t have kids? Maybe he was cute as a baby. I guess that would make some sense. Oh, or maybe it’s the kid’s ferret. Your house didn’t seem like a ‘kid’ house, though, from what I saw of it before the cops dragged me out.

Anyway, at that moment a thought occurred to me. If I was dreaming all of this, why was everyone else here? A chill ran down my spine. I looked at Trouser-snake, dangling from my right hand.

“Oh, no.” I said. I put him down and approached the woman arguing about the toy duck.

“Hi there,” I said.

“Oh, hello. Do you work here?” She asked.

“Sure, say, about what time is it?” I asked back.

“Quarter to nine. Can you tell me about this toy, or are you just kitchen staff?” She asked.

“That toy is a choking hazard for kids under three,” I said, “Thanks.”

I walked to a corner where pillows were on display. Trouser-snake bounded up to me.

“This is really a bad place for me to be scampering around, I am liable to be lost. This place is very dangerous to be lost in, please pick me back up,” he said.

I did.

“I’m actually here, aren’t I?” I asked.

“Yes. Yes you are.”

“So I left work and drove you down to the grocer and then to this store, completely abandoning my work.”

“Yes.”

“That is very bad. I thought I was dreaming,” I said.

“You are.”

“Okay. We need to leave now.”

“No. That’s not an option anymore,” he said slowly. He gave me some time, I guess, for that to sink in.

“Why?”

“Because we went up the escalator and there is no down escalator until we get to the other side of the showroom. And you said you’d help me get this chair,” Trouser-snake said.

“I see. I thought this was all imaginary. This whole thing. I thought I was back in the dish dungeon, asleep,” I said.

“I know,” Trouser-snake said.

You have a very untrustworthy ferret, Mrs. Clark.

I tromped into the showroom halls. I was enveloped by a maze of dreamform smattered with familiar shapes, defying their place and exploding out into rooms of their own, rooms that begged for presumptuous greed to dare assemble them at cost in some truer domicile, nurturing the nesting instinct of mankind with plush comrades that had never known warmth lying about with eyes fixed.

There are other arrows on the floor, Mrs. Clark. Arrows that point you into fake rooms with no exit. The rooms have books and doors that lead into apartments that no one lives in, apartments with price tags instead of dust or stray eyelashes or dirty glasses.

“Maybe you should slow down, man, I think I see the section over there,” Trouser-snake said.

“Kitchens and kitchens and kitchens.”

I blinked and rubbed my eyes. We walked into a room where the chairs were real and the computers were fake and the floor was real wood but the desks were plastic.

“This is exactly how it is when you’re awake, except with people who showed up in sweatpants instead of crystalline perfection,” Trouser-snake said, “Oh shit, this is what I was looking for. Sixty bucks, fuck yes.”

“We need to get out of here,” I said. I was struggling to crack open my wakeful eyes and escape the dreamworld… the nightmare.

I fought hard. I managed to wake up for a moment, maybe. But the world beyond that shell was exactly the same. The lighting was just cheaper. There was darkness and then the fog of dream again.

“Stop that,” Trouser-snake said. He evaluated his chair. He marked the numbers on the price tag down on the little gum wrapper in his hand. They have ferret sized pencils at the furniture warehouse. I don’t know how often this situation comes up, but apparently it is common enough that they have made sure their writing utensils are accessible.

“I want to never be here again,” I said.

“I know, buddy. I think I see the way down over there,” Trouser-snake said.

“Why can’t I wake up?” I asked.

Trouser-snake pointed to the holes and shortcuts through the showroom and I walked with unseeing eyes against and intersecting flows of human traffic. The people seemed totally unaware of how badly their transcendental natures clashed with this impulse generating, behavior molding layout of the rat’s maze they had willfully entered. Finally there were stairs down. Beyond them was an immense concrete and steel chamber that was surely the titular

‘furniture warehouse’. Trouser-snake pointed at a row of boxes lined up under a display of chairs similar to the ones he had been admiring.

“We have to find this number,” he said, holding out his little note so that I could see it.

“That one,” I said, pointing to the box underneath the model of chair he had settled on earlier.

Trouser-snake looked at the number of the chair and read it back to himself, to ensure he had it right. I looked across the warehouse floor and considered the volume of concrete that had been poured to form it. I thought about the number of things you could hide in a concrete floor that size. Awful things. Things that needed to be imprisoned. I thought about being buried under concrete after I lose my job.

“Okay, this is it. You should carry it,” he said. I picked it up under my left arm. It was surprisingly heavy. Trouser-snake did little to balance me, despite the additional leverage afforded him by his request to be held at arm’s length. We hobbled over to the check out lines.

He used your credit card again, Mrs. Clark. I’m not sure how. I don’t think he carries ID.

How strange that no one would care to ID a dream ferret.

The anti-sun had set by this time. The world was much less dreamy now. I was feeling things more wakefully. My arms ached. Lights were simpler again, shining in plain whites or yellows instead of intense prisms. I shambled to the car, off balance and thoroughly encumbered.

I put the chair into the back seat. I put Trouser-snake in the passenger’s seat. I buckled my safety belt.

“I’m going back to work,” I said.

“You mean, after you drop me off?” Trouser-snake said, unwrapping another piece of gum.

“No, I’m just going to go back to work,” I said. I started the car.

“That doesn’t really work for me, I can’t carry that chair back home by myself. And your work is pretty far away from Bluff Ridges, which is where I live,” he said. I nodded.

“Yeah, I’m not really convinced that you’re real. I think I must have eaten something or been drugged or I might just be crazy, but either way I have to get back to work and make sure I still have a job,” I said.

“Okay, so I see where you’re coming from. Yeah, I’m a talking ferret who has been leading you around in a hallucination trip, okay. Makes some sense that you wouldn’t think I’m real. But I am. I am the Mind Traveler,” he said, making mysterious hand gestures, “I can’t mind travel my chair or my groceries back home by myself. And you can’t get out of this world without dropping me off home.”

“I think I did for a second, back there,” I said.

“No, you can’t, I’m sort of… keeping you here.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You little prick,” I turned around to back out of the parking space. I steered toward the exit to the highway. More ducks.

“You agreed to help me. And you have. Now just drop me off,” he said.

Trouser-snake and I drove to Bluff Ridges. I was silent, and so was he, except for the directions to his home. Your home.

We pulled into the driveway. To be fair, he was right, It would have been hard even for a person to carry all that crap out to the Ridges.

I don’t know that it would be useful to describe your home to you, Mrs. Clark, but I did find it impressive. You have a nice house. I particularly like what you’ve done with the shrubs, but honestly that might have been more dreamscape weirdness. I didn’t see whether they were

actually cut into five point stars while I was being dragged out by police. If you did, though, I think they are nice.

I carried Trouser-snake to the front door and he put down his groceries to get out his key.

He has a key to your home, Mrs. Clark. The ferret.

I put down his chair in your living room and he scampered up to his cage in the den. I followed him in there.

“Okay, now make me normal again,” I said.

“I let you go a minute ago, but it usually takes a shock of some sort to really wake up,” he said. He fumbled with the latch on his cage. “Help me out here, man.”

“What do you mean it requires a shock?”

“Here, just lift me up, I can get it if I’m up high enough,” he said.

I picked him up.

“You better not be lying, you little-”

“Whoa, whoa, hey. Come on now. You helped me out. I’ll see you in a few days, maybe,” he said.

“The fuck do you mean? No! I helped you and now I don’t want you fucking with me anymore!” I shouted.

The lights flicked on. The fluorescent buzz was shrill. You were standing in the kitchen, pointing a gun at me over the breakfast bar. I felt dazzled, and I might have squeezed Trouser- snake a little bit, because he started struggling.

“Put down my pet,” is what I think you said. I think I fainted after that.

So the next thing I knew, I was being dragged by the shoulder. A very big, very real cop had hold of me and was dragging me out of the house. My hands were cuffed. That’s when I recognized you, so that’s when I said, “Hi, Mrs. Clark.”

So as you can see here, I had no intention of breaking into your house and attacking your ferret, Mrs. Clark. It was Trouser-snake’s fault. I really don’t have anything against you and I hope you decide to not press charges and maybe let me keep my job.

Sincerely,

Vincent Finn

The Men in the Parlor

He carried a pistol case in his left hand, and I realized I had forgotten the names of my children. It happened when he walked in the front door. Then the wind took the door as he passed through and slammed it against the wall. Something broke.

The pistol case was much like the man carrying it; antiquated but well maintained, leather bound with brass accents, and had a thick, black mustache. The metaphor was not perfect.

I still held a wet rag, and I resumed wiping down to bar after the man passed. Cold sweat dotted my brow. A patron asked for a box of matches and I pointed to a pile on the four-top behind him. Then I picked up the phone to call my wife. I glanced over to see where the mustached man had sat down and noticed him in the back parlor at a large, round booth. He sat alone.

I found that I was now paying for Ring-back service. She picked up before Elton John had gotten to the chorus.

“Todd? Did you close early?”

“No. I called to check on the kids.”

“I was just about to tuck Russel in.”

“Ah, yes. It is an appropriate time to tuck in a child. How is...”

I was becoming worried, as it seemed that I had forgotten slightly more than I initially realized. I fumbled under the bar with my free hand for the medicine bottle I had gotten earlier from the pharmacy.

“Who? Fredaline? She ruined the shoes you bought her last week.”

Memory loss was not listed under the possible side effects. I would not have guessed

'Fredaline'. Must have been trying to appease the mother-in-law.

“Well then. What about...”

Silence. Then I exhaled into the receiver.

“...what?” She asked.

“How is...”

“How is who? What are you talking about?”

I huffed again, looked at the clock. Still early. Maybe if I was quick, she wouldn't still be angry by the time she brushed her teeth for bed.

“God dammit. Do I have any other children?”

“Oh. No, you don't. Have you been drinking?”

“Not that I am aware of. See you. Much love.”

After hanging up, I went and put a quarter into the Breathalyzer while pretending to clean it. I blew a zero.

I looked back into the parlor. The man had his hands folded on the table. His eyes were a blank white. He did not blink. His friends must have been pretty late. Why hadn't he hung up his leather trench coat? The storm began in earnest outside and it was becoming humid. I walked back behind the bar and pulled out my wallet. The little green card inside informed me that I had pretty good mental health coverage. $50 co-pay.

The door slammed open again. This one wore a heavy brown duster and a lighter brown mustache. His right eye was lazy, I think. I suddenly remembered the details about my children.

The new man gave me a nod and walked back to the parlor. I went completely deaf in my right ear.

I figured I was having a mild stroke. I passed the ATM on my way to the back parlor. I intended to ask the men to leave, so that I could go to the emergency room. The first man stared

intently at me as I walked toward his table. The wooden floor creaked loudly under my weight, reminding me frankly that my hearing was only half working.

“Gentlemen, I'm afraid we're going to have to close early tonight.”

The new man pulled out two one-hundred dollar bills and folded them into my hand. The look he gave me told me that I would not be closing early. Oh well. At least he took care of tomorrow's co-pay.

My hearing returned as I stepped back behind the bar, which I could verify quickly due to the godforsaken slam of the front screen door. This third man was thin and mean eyed, with a scar across his nose. He stopped in front of the bar and turned to me, slowly and deliberately. He cleared his throat. His gaze dripped venom.

“Specials tonight?” He said, with a thinly veiled threat.

“Chicken.”

“What's that, boy?”

“Chicken wings. Twenty for five dollars. And Wild Turkey is a dollar off tonight.”

“Right then. Send one order of each to the parlor.” He sneered.

He handed me another one-hundred dollar bill and waved off his change. Noticing that I was now colorblind, I squinted at the menu of the bar computer, trying to make out the tab screen. Then I walked back to the kitchen and yelled the order at George. George told me it hadn't come up on his screen. I handed him a one-hundred dollar bill. The men in the parlor really had a strategy there. He turned around and started cooking. Hot grease hissed behind me as

I passed through the kitchen doorway and went back behind the bar.

The men in the parlor were arguing impatiently under their breath. The first man seemed most composed, his heavy black mustache framing a dark grimace as his companions argued.

Perhaps he was the leader, but there was bad blood between the other two. The scarred one leaned back into the booth and pointed to the door.

“You wait, you old bastard. We'll see how smart your mouth is when Ramses is through with you,” he said.

“Don't forget, you're my second. You're all in, just like me, Madoff,” said the man in the brown coat.

The screen door slammed open again. Thunder crashed. In the doorway was a large man in a white suit, complete with a white cowboy hat. Incomplete in the lack of a right eye and a left that was grayed away with cataract. The red of the exit sign above him reflected off the his damp suit, I now saw with the return of my color vision.

He strode past the bar. My foot fell asleep. He asked for red label whiskey. I stomped my foot to try and clear the pins-and-needles, and I grabbed the red label off the bar. The men in the parlor had become silent. The rain rapped on the window in waves. He took his whiskey, handed me a hundred, and walked with a bloody seriousness toward the parlor. The man in the brown coat stood as he approached. I stomped my foot in unison with his steps. My foot remained asleep.

“What in the black hells would you be showing your face here for, Odwallis? You were banished,” he said.

“Banished like a nightmare perhaps, Decarabia. But it seems you've managed to dream me up again,” said the man in white.

“Then it was true. You were training Ramses in the blackest arts...” Decarabia said.

“And now I will serve as his second.”

“I hope it comes to that, you bleeding sinner.”

Decarabia's eyes sparked as thunder crashed again. I stopped watching then and poured myself a shot of Windsor. I resolved to stick out the night. I was behind on the previous season's gas bills, and now I seemed to be paying for premium cell phone services. I figured if 'Ramses' showed up, I would probably clear a grand off their table.

“Calm yourselves,” said the man in the black mustache, “this is a gentleman's affair.

Mortal trivialities are at the core of this petty strife. You will all be wise to solve this with ascension to the Higher Reason, lest a toll of death be levied on both of your houses.”

They were silent for a moment. Then Odwallis sat down at the booth and spoke.

“Of course, Minister. Let the Reason decide who shall be outcast.”

“And who will meet the Reaper...” said Decarabia.

“Wings up,” shouted George from the kitchen.

“Wings?” Odwallis said to the mean eyed man.

“Aye. Special tonight. I have seen a future where they are award winning. I got an order to share,” he said.

“Heh,” coughed Odwallis, “this is a gentleman's affair. Thank you Madoff. Next one's on me.”

I brought the wings to them. I felt, or I imagined, a sort of static electric aura around the men. My hair did not stand on end, instead it was in the dry scent of the air; contrasting against the wet storm, hovering with the smells of whiskey and barbeque sauce. The last normal patron had left fifteen minutes ago. The men in the parlor asked for napkins and Odwallis ordered a round of shots. Wild Turkey. Another hundred. The man called Minister declined his shot. He

moved his black case off of the table and onto the floor beside the booth. One must avoid staining a pistol case with barbeque sauce, I suppose.

For a moment the men were quiet, but for the sounds of eating and drinking. While they ate, I took a rag and wiped down the tables. Feeling a sudden dread, I went back to the bar to write a living will on a napkin. I would fold it and put it into an envelope and drop it into my safe and then, perhaps, I could make sure my son got my vintage baseball card collection instead of my grubby daughter who couldn't even keep a pair of shoes for a week. The tips from tonight would be a fine enough inheritance for her. A grand would be enough to keep her shod for almost a month. The men in the parlor had taken on dark and brooding tones. The hints and whispers of their discussion disquieted my soul further.

The men sat about and, from what I could overhear now and then, spoke in harsh and hushed voices about the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of motivational books. They glowered and plotted and mentioned disturbing things that I dare not repeat about inspiration and self-help and Reader's Digest. I could see from the dark looks they shot to each other that something was being argued, whatever it was had been omitted from the secret chapters of Eat, Pray, Love ; and the problematic detail in question had something to do with 'the Blackest Arts'. My sleeping foot seemed a very minor problem indeed when compared to these debates on the nature of soccer mom non-fiction.

Someone opened the screen door and knew well enough to close it softly behind him as he entered. Someone with the wisdom or foresight to know that the door closer was broken. I braced myself before turning to see what torment this new presence would bring.

“Hey, Todd. How 'bout a High Life? What's good for ya?”

It was Dwayne, one of my more loyal regulars, not that there was another decent draft bar in the township.

“Hello, Dwayne. Keep it open?”

“Sure, sure. Long one today. Pickup blew a tire.”

“Yeah, that'd do it. Spoiled your afternoon, I bet.”

“Well it took me a good two hours to repair, what with the mud and such.”

I poured him his beer. The mysterious guests in the parlor seemed put off by Dwayne's volume. They stared hard out from their booth. Dwayne had not been obeying open container legislation, and therefore did not glean any negativity from their stares. He smiled amicably and raised his glass.

“How 'bout them Puppies, boys?” Dwayne shouted to the men in the parlor.

Dwayne was referring to the Massingbluff High Mud-Puppies, the public high school's football team. I had heard them score the winning touchdown on the radio as I had opened the lounge not two hours prior. The announcers had been very excited. One of them was the quarterback's father. This was all common knowledge to those who frequented my bar. The comment only seemed to further annoy the men in the parlor.

“Ought to be moving along after that beer, Mr. Hutchinson,” said Decarabia.

“Why's that, stranger?” said Dwayne, whose last name was apparently 'Hutchinson'. It was nine-thirty now. Dwayne bristled slightly, and adjusted his jacket.

“Just trying to watch out for your safety, son.”

Dwayne had a reputation for starting fights over very minor insults. Historically, “son” was not considered a minor insult in Massingbluff's various townships. It ranked somewhere above “jackass” and somewhere below “sugar tits”. Decarabia was not apparently versed in the

hierarchy of insults on this side of the county and he did not appear familiar with Dwayne, despite having fished his surname out of the ether. Dwayne stood up.

“Who's your son?” retorted Dwayne. I leaned over the bar to try to talk him down. He would usually respond to this by putting a hand on my shoulder and stating that there was a conversation in progress.

“Hold on now Todd, just two men having a little talk here,” Dwayne said, waving his hand dismissively.

“You'd best finish that beer, friend.” Decarabia may have actually been a local after all, I decided. The next part of the script went 'I'm not your friend, son.' Seeing as 'son' had already been spent in this exchange, Dwayne would have to do some improvisation. Dwayne took a step towards the parlor.

“Friend, nothing. Maybe I heard you wrong. You're suggesting I finish this beer in a hurry, now?” Dwayne said. The screen door opened again, and my foot resumed its former obedience. Dwayne turned in a startled about-face toward the door. Rambo McClinton walked through and shut the door behind him. He gave me a half salute and a terrible migraine and put up a high five for Dwayne.

“Hey Danger, what's good for ya,” he said as Dwayne returned the five.

“Ah, hell. Nothing really. Just laying down a cold one before I go see the missus.”

Dwayne said.

“Alright. Hey, Todd. Meeting some friends tonight. Have-” Rambo started and then looked to the parlor, “Ah, there they are.”

Ramses “Rambo” McClinton walked back toward the parlor. He was wearing spurs for some reason, and they jangled with his every step. I had not been aware of what 'Rambo'

abbreviated. It made sense, now. He was a tall, thin, imposing figure. He came in with a fair reliability, but at odd hours. I had never been sure what he did for a living. But now the iron maiden rusting in his yard next to his tractor shed was beginning to make sense. The pieces were coming together and my head felt like it was between a pair of vise grips.

Madoff, under-spoken up to this point clenched his teeth and glared as Rambo strutted to the parlor booth. The Minister pushed his shot of Turkey over to Rambo. Rambo, still standing, picked it up and downed it. He coughed. Madoff didn't take his eyes off of him.

“Try the wings,” Madoff said.

“Oh, I'm familiar with George's special barbecue wings, partner,” Rambo said, ”But I'll oblige you anyway. There is a future in which they are-”

“Award winning. Yes . Do you forget so quickly who taught you the mysterious art of scrying the strings of time? Like you forget your loyalties?” Madoff said with a scowl.

“My loyalties lie with the Higher Reason, brother. Perhaps you'll remember that in the moment before you pass to the next plane, bleeding on the wet ground with a silver bullet in your throat,” said Rambo.

Odwallis chuckled. The Minister raised a disapproving eyebrow in his direction.

Odwallis checked himself and shoved another chicken wing in his mouth. I must have been staring. Decarabia held up his glass and motioned for another round. I made myself busy preparing the shots. Rambo moved to sit down at the parlor and the rest of the men shifted awkwardly to arrange a space for him. I had always intended to put in a larger booth back there, but they get very expensive beyond the five seat range. I delivered the shots, and the men drank them in chilling silence, sizing each other up and glancing at the stoic, blank eyed Minister. The bickering had stopped. Rambo was a presence to these men.

Dwayne must have been feeling a bit under-attended. He stood and paced half way to the parlor. The men did not notice him.

“Welp, 'bout time I got back to the missus. You boys have a nice evening. See you at the game, Rambo,” he said. Rambo looked over at him.

“Yeah, I'll be seeing you, Dwayne.”

Dwayne sauntered out of the lounge. He closed the door quietly behind him and left my establishment (and his credit card) to its fate. The storm roared outside. It was Decarabia that stood first. The men took turns shifting and scooting about until they had all worked their way out of the booth. The Minister picked up his case and began to walk toward the front door. He turned when he reached it and the men, who had been following him, stopped in their tracks.

“You know the rules, gentlemen. Immediately apocalyptic congeries are off limits. You shall not discharge any destructive energies toward this fine establishment. You may not place yourself between your opponent and the establishment. Any being summoned or divined must be under your direct control. The Elder Ones may not be called upon, nor may they place monetary bets on the outcome of the duel. Possession of bystanders is not permitted. Civilian casualties are not acceptable. As per request of the duelists; Melvin's Laxative Verses are off limits, as are the curses of Ovaria, the reminders of Sade, and the forbidden tour of Franzia. Failure to obey the code of this duel or failure to conduct one's self in a gentlemanly manner will cause immediate forfeiture of the duel for the offending party,” the Minister looked at me from across the bar and raised an eyebrow.

“Any house rules?” He inquired.

“Dueling parties will be charged an automatic twenty percent gratuity, and the establishment is not responsible for damaged articles or property or loss of life as a result of your

duel,” I blurted out. This was something my lawyer had taught me to say in the event of a bachelor party, but it surprisingly applied quite well in my current situation.

“Oh, here you are,” said Decarabia as he fumbled in his back pocket. He pulled out another two hundred dollar bills and put them on the bar. The Minister coughed before again addressing the men.

“Let this end this feud among us. No matter the outcome, let this duel decide the fate of our brother Ramses, he who decoded and released the hellish script known only as Thirty Ways the Blackest Arts Can Improve Your Marriage . Let the self help end here,” warned the Minister.

Then the men filed out of the lounge and Rambo closed the door behind him.

A weight of tension lifted off my chest. For a few minutes, I felt pretty good. I drank a beer and wiped down the parlor table. Who cared what the strange men did outside? I had cleared a grand and they were out of my hair now. My migraine had gone away, I even thought about skipping the check-up at the doctor's office tomorrow. Perhaps I'd even have more customers tonight.

Then I looked out the parlor window. On a great hill a quarter mile away from the pub, beyond my parking lot and across a fallow plain, stood the men. The Minister was at the bottom of the hill with Odwallis and Decarabia on his left and right. On the peak of the hill, separated by perhaps forty paces, were Rambo and Madoff. They held long pistols at each other. My breath condensed on the window, and I rubbed it away with my sleeve. The rain had drenched the men, their sopping wet long coats dangled off of their bodies and flapped in the torrents of wind.

The Minister raised his arms like a conductor and my mouth dropped open, for the storm swirled above the men in seeming obedience to him. The two on the hill began shouting and waving their left hands madly, the pistols in their right hands remaining aimed dead on at one

another. Blinding colors, lights, and waves surrounded and swirled about the two in a race to take destructive form. Above their heads, bats and crows and locusts whirled into existence and instantly embattled themselves. Lightning flashed, raging in the storm, and for the briefest moment I saw outlines of dragons in the clouds. The three at the bottom of the hill looked on in sporting manner, the Minister with his critical reserve. My eyes widened and I rubbed again at the window. One of the men on the hill pulled his trigger. The kick of the weapon was enormous, knocking the attacker back a yard. The gun spat lightning toward its target, exploding past him and bursting a tree across the road. The other man fired his weapon in retaliation, but his aim was poorer still, and the hillside was rent across with burning energy. It left a mark in the hill like a crashing meteor. The storm's violent swirling began to slow. The bats and birds dispersed. The men on the hill collected themselves and handed their weapons back to the Minister. Ramses and

Madoff shook hands. The men began to walk back toward my lounge.

They walked in the door and the Minister, finding me stunned, stood waiting for me to move out of his way back into the parlor. I shook my head in disbelief. Water ran off the shoulders of the mystic's coat.

“What the hell was all that?” I asked.

“The argument is over,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“They missed. I'll have a Coors.”

I moved out from the walkway. The men filed back into the parlor, wet but in high spirits.

They ordered more food and drink.

They brought me no further maladies, save one– their regular business. They never seem to leave. They sit in my parlor, day after day, from open until close. They discuss things that scare me, and they pay for everything in hundred dollar bills that I have to go to the bank to change. They always order the specials. Their Reader's Digest subscriptions arrive in my business mail. Soon Fredaline will be old enough to start working weekends at the bar. Then there will be nothing for me but supernatural irritation and lots of money at that damnable, shameful place.

The Hatch in the Wall

I clearly remember why my mother and I moved away from the house of my childhood.

There, I could tell it was winter when I would awaken to sleet dropping from the gutters above my bedroom window, slopping down like ladle servings of cafeteria potato. That sound was welcome in my drafty bedroom. It meant the night was over. Saint Gregory, my mother's

Doberman, used to sleep at the foot of my bed. It was a habit he had picked up while I was bedridden with pneumonia at age eight.

The year I turned nine, around Christmas, was when Saint Gregory noticed the problem with the hatch in the wall. The thin wooden door opened from the far corner of my bedroom and led to a dank crawl-space. It may have extended under the entire house. I never dared to find out.

Animals, mice or squirrels usually, would sometimes find their way in through that hatch.

It frightened me to think how many vermin must have crept through the dark unnoticed, scheming and thieving, before Saint Gregory began sleeping in my room. Now and then I would wake up in the night to a low growl and the clack of dulled claws lunging to the wooden floor. I hid under the covers. A moment later my mother would rush in and take the mangled, chewed rodent to the trash bin at the back door. From beneath my blankets, I'd hear Saint Gregory lick his chops and then the bed would creak as he resumed his post.

The week before Christmas, my mother took me and Saint Gregory on an overnight trip to Grandma Gabby's house. She was our only family in the States. When we returned, the house was a wreck. Food was eaten and spilled in the kitchen. Our bathroom towels were torn into

strips. The toothpaste tube was covered in tiny bite marks. My mother's jewelry was scattered across her vanity. There were dirty, three-taloned prints on my bedroom floor leading from the hatch. The dinner knives were missing.

"Raccoons," she said.

She nailed the hatch shut.

That night I heard Saint Gregory growl at a tapping in the dark. I pulled the blankets over my head. It sounded like a stone beating against the nails in the hatch. Saint Gregory's growl grew deeper. I wanted to shout for my mother, but I the noise wouldn't come. I didn't even dare to peek out from under the covers. I felt that if I pretended to sleep and remained very still, nothing would get me. The tapping stopped. There was a slow creak as the hatch door lifted. Saint Gregory snarled and he clattered to the wooden floor. Something snapped and there was a shriek. My mother burst into the room and flipped the light on. She screamed. I looked out from under the covers. Her face was contorted with terror. Saint Gregory's ear was torn and there was blood all over the floor. Dangling from Saint Gregory's mouth was a tiny feathered arm with three fingers. It clutched a kitchen knife.

The hatch door was broken and hanging to the side. Dozens of tiny, glinting eyes watched me from within the hatch and then scattered into the darkness beneath the house.

A Bat in the Vanity History has proven to be a spiteful thing, a thing best buried under a rock and left to decay or fossilize into barely recognizable remnants. The deeper I dig into the past, the more sound I find this position to be. I am a man of few words and a strong constitution, but I recount this tale in the hopes that it will convince other curiosity seekers to leave well enough alone. If nothing else, I hope it will shed enough light on the rumors of Harriet’s past and my family’s lineage so that the passing foolish inquiry will be satisfied. It is all I can do to try and bury the history of that town, that war, and that man.

The drive to Harriet was pleasant and uneventful. Vicky drove most of the way, singing her delightful impromptu harmonies in tune with her vast collection of college rock albums, a collection I trust she has kept up to date even in the few months since we have fallen out of touch. We had been seeing one another for about half a year at that time, and there was a warm companionship between us. In fact I am still rather fond of her, and were I a different sort of fellow, I’m certain we would have continued courting faithfully for a number of years. While she harmonized, I relaxed in the reclined passenger’s seat, reviewing my research and anticipating an invigorating on site discovery on the subject of my genealogical investigative interests.

Harriet has a strange history, an ancient town now retro-fitted into a sort of spinster’s paradise. The briefest interrogation into the county’s involvement in the War of 1812 reveals a number of events highly troubling to any scholar with American Nationalist sentiments. I had traced the life of my ancestor, General William Hull, to this town. I intended to find my answers there and perhaps relax once I had found them.

Vicky sang along to a tune about lovers house shopping. She and I made an admittedly odd couple. She had a penchant for polka dotted, pink things. I prefer a black turtleneck. I recall her fondly though, on that ride, bright and pretty as she piloted the car, as bright as I believed my

prospects for good research on this journey. I waited for an instrumental break to tell her some of what I was discovering about our Rockwellian retreat.

“The bed and breakfast we’ll be staying at is even more historical than our host suggested to you over the phone,” I said.

“He said it was built in the seventeen hundreds,” she said.

“The Old Amherst Inn has been in operation since seventeen-ninety, in fact. Though it has changed hands a number of times, it has always belonged to historians and conservationists,”

I said.

“Yes, he mentioned that,” she said.

“My ancestor, General Hull, stayed there for a time after the surrender of Detroit,” I said.

“Yes, he mentioned that too. He talks a lot. A history buff,” she said.

“Well, did he mention the dark pact Hull made there to avoid punishment and court marshal?” I said.

“No, what dark pact?” She asked.

I hesitated. “Well, I don’t know yet, I was just reading up on that part and I got caught up trying to seem mysterious.”

“Oh,” she said. The song’s chorus came and she resumed singing. Bartholomeow, my cat, awoke suddenly and grabbed hold of my leg, looking for what had disturbed his napping. He licked his brown chops and nuzzled my ankle before resuming his dreams.

Brigadier General William “Sadistic Coward” Hull had masterminded a number of astounding failures and craven surrenders during the War of 1812, finding himself at fault for more acts of brutality and ill-conceived threats than he could even account for. He was my great- great-great-great grandfather. His stay at Fort Detroit was short and resulted in his surrender to a

smaller force comprised of British Loyalist troops and a Native American marching band. The marching band demoralized Hull’s defending force with a terrifying rendition of “The Rapids”, which would later be set to Thomas Moore’s “A Canadian Boat Song”. Moore’s interpretation apparently lacks whooping war cries, the back beat of thirty beaver skin war drums and the howling chorus of the captured crew of Hull’s scout ship Cuyahoga Packet which I feel ruins the entire appeal of the song, but I digress. Hull maintained a longstanding hatred for the native peoples even before this event. Hull’s campaign ruined, his name sullied, and his defeat imminent, he retreated with his honor guard under guise of night to Harriet, Michigan– then a small trade post dedicated to furs and quack medicine.

There, finding the trade post without militia, they “liberated” it from its lone British resident. General Hull claimed victory after paying lodging at the Amherst Inn.

I closed the dusty copy of The Collected Occult Histories of Pangea’s Favored Child by

Gene Massing at this point, as it was beginning to irritate my eyes. The next section was labeled

“The Dark and Horrible Pact”, so I figured it was best left to a post luncheon mentality. I set the book back into its canvas bag and hefted it into the back seat with the other volumes I had gathered from the special collection of Massingbluff University. I nudged Bartholomeow awake and patted my chest in an inviting gesture. He obliged, crawling up to my lap where he watched the scenery pass.

The section of Michigan north of Detroit is lovely in the spring and summer, and I pointed out the grackles, cow birds, and siskins to Bartholomeow as we neared Harriet. The town’s traffic babbles about the main street, a healthy flow of golden years tourists bustle about from bead shops to art galleries. A huge mural map of Michigan adorns the side of the large brick town center.

The Old Amherst Inn was an ivy colored pre-Victorian house, wider than it was tall, surrounded by a lively garden. It had the look of a building that has been repainted yearly. Its black barred fence seemed the newest addition, and a large wooden sign proclaimed the name and year of establishment. The innkeeper, a man dressed in a denim work shirt, waved at us as we pulled in.

We approached the front gate entrance, Bartholomeow in my arms and most of the luggage on my back, and Vicky shook hands with the innkeeper.

“This place looks prettier than the picture,” she said.

“Oh yeah, yeah. I try my best. Keep the place well restored. In fact, gee wiz, the room you’re staying in was just painted a week ago. I aired it out for a day or so before you came just to make sure it would be ready for you,” he said. He shifted from one leg to the other.

“So-” Vicky started.

“Well if you folks don’t mind, breakfast will be tomorrow at nine. I’m off for the rest of the night, but emergency numbers are on the bed stand. Make yourself at home. You two are in the Lavender Room, top of the stairs to the left. I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. He held out an arm for us to pass by him.

“Alright,” Vicky said, “See you tomorrow, I guess.”

“Yep, anything you need, help yourself.”

We changed sides of the fence with him. He nodded and then slinked off to his car. We watched him go.

“Key’s on the bed stand,” he shouted.

We nodded. He drove away, his car puttering along the brick drive toward the main street.

“I guess we have the place to ourselves,” Vicky said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Nothing wrong with that,” she said.

We had gathered our belongings into the living room. Bartholomeow stalked the first floor, cautiously, inspecting the study, the kitchen, and underneath each chair. I went to the only flight of stairs in search of our quarters. Entering, a warm spring breeze greeted me. The room was small, lavender with a crude border of hand painted flowers decorating every corner. There was an enormous antique vanity against the far wall. Bartholomeow began to enter and then stopped cold. I could feel his tension. I looked to the window. A sizable hole had been blown through the bug screen, as though something had crashed through it. Our eyes traced the trajectory to a spot on the floor. There was a small spatter of blood on the white oak boards, and it trailed towards the vanity. One of the dresser drawers was slightly askew.

“Darling?” I called down the stairs. I heard her shoes tap up the stairs.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Something broke through the window and it’s hiding in the dresser.” I said.

“A squirrel?” she asked.

“I don’t know, I don’t think I want to touch it, though,” I said.

We both stared for a moment.

“Send the cat,” she said.

I nudged Bartholomeow with my foot. He backed up against my leg. We stared for another moment. The dresser drawer jostled.

“I’m going to go and see what it is, but I want you to know I am very scared and liable to retreat,” I said.

“It is your turn. I got rid of the dead rat,” she said.

I crept on tiptoes toward the vanity. The drawer jostled again. I slowly reached out and grabbed the brass handle. I drew out the drawer, cautiously, with my every nerve on end. A fanged face peered out at me.

“Oh my, that’s terrifying,” I said, closing the drawer again with the same caution.

Rubbing my shoulders and walking hastily back to Vicky, I said, “It’s a bat. It’s an unusually large and scary bat.”

Vicky hugged me. We checked the list of emergency numbers. The cat stayed at the doorway, fur raised, staring at the vanity. The number for the innkeeper dialed straight to voicemail.

“It’s probably just as scared as we are,” Vicky said.

“Or rabid, it might be rabid,” I said.

“Did it look rabid?” She asked.

“No. It looked toothy, though. But it is wounded. I don’t know exactly how much blood a bat contains, but that may have been more than it could afford,” I said, gesturing to the floor.

Vicky sighed. She went to the closet and found a towel. Then, in one of her character acts of female bravado, she opened the drawer, snatched up the bat in the towel, and swaddled it. The creature was too stunned by her brazen tenacity to respond before it was confined to its impromptu straight jacket. I shared a look of amazement with Bartholomeow. Vicky had the creature restrained, and she placed it on the bed.

“Oh my,” I said.

“He’s not so tough, he’s just scared and hurt,” she said. The bat let out a feeble squeal.

Despite its ogrish visage, no beast is particularly ferocious looking when swaddled like the innocent Christ child. The bat was as large as a kitten, and its two elfin ears perked to and fro as it peered about with large, squinting eyes. One of its ears had been slashed by the bug screen wire. Bartholomeow crawled onto the bed curiously, now that the foe had been subdued.

“I’ll get the cat carrier,” I said. Vicky nodded as she cooed at the pathetic little demon.

She stroked its head lightly.

Returning with the cat carrier, I found Vicky inspecting the creature for further injury. It shivered with fear, but did not resist. I rinsed the cage in the shower, and placed it dried upon the vanity.

“He’s just fine, he just didn’t have a way back out,” she said.

“Well… what do we do with it?” I asked.

“We’ll let him go when it gets dark. Didn’t you say there were woods around here you wanted to visit?” She asked.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll let him go after my studies,” I said.

This is when I made a severe error of judgment. Finding that we had no lock to secure the hatch of the cat carrier, I decided to improvise. I tethered the cage with my Massingbluff

University ID badge lanyard, an electronic keycard on a retractable string worth $50 in fees.

Looking back now on this harried venture, I see that this was the single greatest error I committed. We washed ourselves well, and the cleaned the floor, and finally closed the window which had permitted our interloper’s crash landing. Vicky reclined in the easy chair of our sitting room, and, weary from the day’s adventures, was soon asleep. I decided to resume my studies.

A long journey after a degrading surrender will turn black the heart of any man, more so if that man’s heart was black from the outset. My ancestor rode, with a company of five body

guards, nearly eighty miles to get to Harriet. What hatred must have boiled in his heart for the

British and their native allies, I cannot imagine.

Despite himself, Hull had enlisted a half native Michigander, likely a cousin of his, into his honor guard. His name, Royalle Fox–Cabbot, was all but discarded by Gene Massing in his histories; discarded in favor of a rather offensive nickname: The Red Snake. This man, a

Potawatomi exile, is rumored to have served as a counsel and instigator to Hull, a focus through which Hull’s blind rage could find expression. A wood cut illustration of Cabbot portrayed him as a devilish, handsome man; a soldier who wore, along side his honors and decorations, a bracer shaped like a snake coiled about his arm. Cabbot may have influenced Hull’s scheme on that shameful trek, and he certainly played a role when it came to fruition. In fact, it was theorized that this man may have ended up the victim of that vile plot.

They made brief residence in Harriet, at the very inn where I was now resting, and as I poured over the dusty, charged manuscript I found my imagination swimming with the possibilities of what terrible conspiracy may have been laid out in the room where I read. I could see them, nearly, with my mind’s eye. The deepening black circles under Hull’s contemptuous eyes, the narrow and unseemly and naive grin of Cabbot, and possibly, the waking fear in the hearts of those honor bound to serve them. Their plan was to make an offering of native blood to the Potawatomi’s forbidden god of deceit in hopes to influence the President’s mind with black magic– for the President had the power to pardon Hull of all of his cowardly, sickening crimes.

To my sudden surprise, the bat across the room from me mewled pathetically. Interrupted from my meditation I stood, and, with Bartholomeow at my heels, went to see what was the matter with the ailing goblin.

I peaked into the wire hatch of the cat carrier. The ghastly little beast, more sensible now with the deepening night, regarded me for a moment with bright and intelligent eyes. It lurched toward the cage door and put its face to the opening. Bartholomeow reared up to sniff at the cage more closely. I considered the poor creature and decided it was time to free him from his plastic purgatory. I went to Vicky and told her my intentions as I led her to the bed. I left Bartholomeow to guard her, and locked the door to both the bedroom and the house.

The bat made chirping noises as I walked down the gravel driveway towards the nature path I had earlier spotted at the edge of the town. After a longer walk than I had initially presumed I arrived at the edge of the forest. The bat began chirping loudly, and tussling about the carrier. Hoping to avoid tempting the bat’s fangs with my fingers, I quickly tried to untie my key fob. As soon as I had undone the knot, the bat burst through the wire gate with all of his might– thereby entangling his legs in the drawstring of my precious ID card! As he flapped hazardously into the woods, I could see the reflective lanyard glistening in the moonlight! How foolish I had been to utilize a treasure for such petty purposes!

I ran after him into the darkening wood, the cage clattering to the ground, racing hotly to recapture the flailing air-born rodent. I ducked through the trees after him, but even encumbered, his powerful wings made him a swift mark. Running at my admittedly mediocre full tilt, I pursued him. He chirped and squawked in panic, frightened not only by my chase but by the valuable lanyard entangling his hind quarters. Deeper and deeper into that unforgiving Michigan woods we went, the bat led me on a winding course through thickets and evergreens, until I had little idea of my bearings.

Finally, in a dark and misty copse, the key fob fell free. I saw it fall to the ground only a few lunging steps away from me, and I saw the exhausted bat alight on some nearby structure. I

reached my lost article, panting, and fell to my knees in weariness. It was then that I looked up at the place where my quarry had settled. A large, black totem stood there amongst the trees, and as

I strained my eyes to adjust to that unnerving darkness, I could faintly make out the graven image of an enormous snake. I gasped, and in my gasping, startled a seeming legion of nocturnal and gleaming eyes. In a moment, I was thrown to the ground by a torrent of shrieking bats, each as large as my acquaintance, as they strafed me and went flapping into the night. The terror!

Those awful wings!

Finally, when my screaming fright was over and my will regained, I looked again at that terrible stone totem. It stood atop a hidden cave, a sort of recess within the hedge. Producing my mobile phone, I shined its dim light into that cave. Creeping closer, and smelling the weight of guano from the compounded leavings of those hundreds of bats, I peered into the abyss. Mashing buttons on the phone to resume its full illumination, I made out a shape pinned to the shallow wall of the cave. My eyes now adjusted to the dark and with aid from the phone I could see it was the gruesome skeletal remains of a man. A man I recognized immediately, for he wore a sleeve of glinting medals… and an evilly gleaming golden snake wrapped about his wrist.

What happened then I cannot be sure of. Whether the corpse in the dark truly moved, or whether it was a trick of my cell phone’s inconsistent light, I do not know. But I know what I heard, and it sent me into a flight of panic away from that place. I fell many times, scratching my hands and knees on rough under growth, stifling my screams in my shirt sleeve to be able to hear the voice of my phone’s GPS.

I ran, crashing through the brush, turning left and right when prompted, back to that godforsaken haven of evil where my precious Vicky lay unaware of the terrible truth of the curse that my awful ancestor had brokered. I knew I had to gather her and sweet Bartholomeow and

flee, flee to Ann Arbor, where we might take refuge against whatever terrors I had roused in the dark woods. We must abandon Harriet and leave it to scorn, its earth salted with the evil of ashamed tyrants– for the words I heard that carrion thing whisper in its cave of infinite damnation were none other than

Ah Hey! What petty vanity binds thee, Hull!

The World Beyond the Shell I park in my apartment garage and turn off the car before it occurs to me that I might have left my crab, Claud, at the grocery store. Had I even brought Claud? The warm haze of pleasant distraction that had carried my spirit during the drive home from the store slowly dissipates. I'm in for it now. I am too young for these great scientific responsibilities. Twenty- four is too young.

Too spontaneous.

Too horny.

My source of distraction is a girl named Vicky. I met her two weeks ago during a midnight run to the store. Claud needed food. I stood at the grocery store counter as Vicky checked the cat food cans through the laser scanner. I tried to figure out how to talk to her, which was hard as she was very pretty. Her hair was dyed and cut short to highlight her eyes. She scanned cans faster than I could pull them out of my cloth shopping bag. I had decided to stock up. I didn't really know how much he was supposed to eat, because I never paid enough attention to what they put in his tank at the lab. I dumped the rest of the bag into my folded arm so that she wouldn't have to slow down. She saw me check her name badge and smiled at me.

"What's your kitty's name?" Vicky asked. She clacked her pink polka dotted nails rhythmically across the metal counter as she waited for me to prepare my credit card.

"Claud," I said.

"Aw, I love boy cats. What color is he?" She asked. She had a very nice smile.

"He's melon red with white on his underbelly and legs," I said.

"He's a big guy, huh?" She said.

"Yeah, I think he might be growing again." I said. I had noticed he was molting and growing another shell. This was the third time this week. He was already able to reach the radio dial with his pincer from inside his tank. He seems to prefer NPR.

"Well, have a nice night!" She said. I packed my bag.

“I'll try!” I said with a grunt as I hoisted Claud's food. Smooth.

From that brief exchange, I knew where I'd be shopping for the foreseeable future. I tried to figure out what kind of music she probably liked. Something acoustic, I figured. I drove home, preoccupied with infatuation, just as I did every other night for the past two weeks.

I enter my apartment and check his tank. My heart sinks. He is not there. He left out his map book. He seems to have torn off some of the pages with his pincers. I’ll have to buy him a new one. I mentally retrace my steps. I am almost sure that he gave me the slip at the grocer's. I put down my shopping bag and walk back to my car. I was stupid to bring him along. I don't remember if he'd had to convince me or if I had thought the idea clever.

I'm an intern at a deep sea medical research firm. When Claud was brought to the surface a few months ago, dragged out of the Arctic Ocean along with a dozen other strange deep sea specimens, he wasn't expected to survive. A deep sea crab isn't supposed to survive on the shallow, depressurized surface. But he did. That was the first miracle.

Then it turned out he didn't need to be underwater all the time, either. He climbed up the filtration system and snipped through the chicken-wire lid of his aquarium with his long, scissor shaped claws. We followed the wet claw marks on the floor and found him sitting on top of a

Popular Mechanics magazine on my desk. That's when I named him Claud. I thought I saw

Claud's beady little eyes scanning the text on the page he was sitting on when I lifted him and

gently sat him back in his tank. I was careful not to invite the wrath of his pincers, but he didn't even try to pinch. He looked at me and fizzed a tiny whistle through his jaws.

I can only assume this was the deep sea crab speak equivalent of 'I was reading that.'

The next morning, I was horrified to find that Claud had been marked for dissection on the day's schedule. I probably would have decided to take him home at that point anyway, but when I looked at his tank I noticed he was drawing and annotating isosceles triangles in the algae that grew on the aquarium glass. So I scooped Claud out of his tank and put him in a wastepaper basket (I cleaned it first) and then I took him home.

So that's why I secretly have a sentient deep sea crab living in an aquarium on the coffee table beside my couch.

Anyhoo.

I make it a point to talk to Vicky whenever I go to the grocer, which thankfully is quite often due to Claud's growing appetite. Vicky tells me about her latest painting, or about the picnics she goes on with her Grandmother, and I tell her how big and smart Claud is getting. Of course she thinks Claud is a cat, but I still feel that our conversations are pleasant and honest. I wish I didn’t have to leave out the stories about his reading habits.

I am driving back the the grocery store. I brought a picture of me and Claud, a travel aquarium, and a few of Claud's favorite books on theoretical mathematics. I had hoped to ask

Vicky out the next time I saw her, but I figure this probably isn't going to be the ideal time.

I run to the big glass front doors of the market and they part in front of me with a

'whoosh'. The light in the store is very blue and cold and artificial. I see Vicky watching me with concern as I hurry in. I probably look upset.

I say, “Have you seen Claud?”

She asks, "Your kitty?"

I say, “Yes, well he's a crab, but my other descriptions were fairly accurate.”

I look about the small grocery store. There are only ten aisles, only so many places a crab might hide unnoticed.

She says, “What do you mean your kitty is a crab?”

I say, "A crustacean, I mean. Long legs with snippy parts."

"Ah,” she says, “It eats cat food?"

I say, “Yes, have you seen him?”

She looks around and then shakes her head.

“What kind of crab is he?” She asks.

I reach into my pocket to show her the picture of Claud but something has snipped my pants pocket wide open at the seam.

I say, "I thought I had a picture with me to show you, but-"

And that's when we hear the squeal of tires and turn around to see Claud speeding away in my car.

Welcome to Casket Earth Today, I spent an hour hurling all of my pink clothes into a donation bin. This was an uncharacteristic move for me. This purge of pink articles was due to a new and unshakeable association of that color with the infinitely bleak fate of human kind. I disposed of these seemingly bright and cheerful garments, all of which remained in style or were due to make a swift come back. But despite the purge of clothes, I could not purge those unbelievable words from my mind, utterances of the stranger at the Waffle House, that impossible amaranth fiend.

Last night, I went to the Waffle House with the intention of meeting a man from a dating website for an informal date. The Waffle House was a college dive in walking distance of

Massingbluff University. The man, whose alias on the dating website was ‘DoitbigTony’ (mine being ‘PolkadotVicky24’), had suggested the Waffle House at 7:30pm as a casual, low pressure alternative to a complex dinner-and-movie night out. I thought the idea was cute. I tend to seek the company of lazy, self absorbed people. This includes my best friends and the people whom I have dated. Generally speaking, such people fail to delve deeper than my surface characterizing features, which is why I like them. I have a preference for traditionally girlish colors, kittens, and college rock songs. I find these offset my otherwise embarrassingly grim personality.

I wrote back to him that I would be wearing all pink, bright pink, and that he would notice me immediately. He assured me that he would be recognizable by his hotness.

It was raining, which I decided was excellent luck. I would be able to justify wearing my pink trench coat, which matched the casual pink dress I intended to wear. Without the rain, the coat bordered on absurdity.

I would have worn it anyway.

I could see the breakfast dive from my apartment, although it was nearly a mile away and across the freeway. I walked. The neon waffle grew in the sky. Rain water trickled down the back of my neck, eliciting a chill.

I entered that cynical and syrupy establishment and wrung the rain from my hair. The waitress did not greet me. I seated myself at a booth and surveyed the other customers.

DoitbigTony was not among them, I was sure, for only one of the men at the breakfast bar turned to see who had entered. He did not match the grainy photo of DoitbigTony, who looked like a

Greek body builder.

This man was dressed like I was. Alarmingly like I was. He wore a bright pink trench coat, pinker than mine, and with a matching wide brimmed hat, pulled low over giant pink sunglasses. He nodded. I glared. The waitress arrived and set a cup of coffee in front of me.

“Coffee,” she said.

“Sure.”

“What’s your order,” she said.

She smelled of smoke and hazelnut.

“I’m waiting on a friend.”

“Suits me.”

She walked away, piano black plastic high heels clacking on cheap tile.

The man in pink was watching me covertly. He was unnaturally ugly underneath his over saturated costume. From the side I could almost make out his eyes. They were overly round and haunted with greed. I shuddered. I looked around the dining room and then at my phone. It was fifteen minutes past the scheduled date.

The self absorbed people I often find myself dating are often late. It adds to the illusion of aloofness that they maintain.

I sipped at my coffee. The waitress returned and refilled it.

“I like your nails,” the waitress said.

“What’s with the guy in pink?”

She shrugged. I looked at the man in pink. He nodded. I glared harder. I could tell that this made him smile, but I could not see his mouth. His nose was grotesquely large and he had a pink scarf pulled up over his mouth.

I clacked my nails across the plastic table and checked the time. DoitbigTony was now twenty minutes late. Charming. The cheap coffee, the cold water still trickling, that damnable pink man’s stare conspired to embrace me in a purgatory of seeming timelessness. Then the man in pink stood. The waitress read Cosmopolitan while coffee brewed. No one watched the stranger but me. The man started walking to my table, his stride ugly and backwards.

It was then that I realized that his knees bent the wrong way.

He sat down across from me and nodded as though we were coconspirators.

“DoitbigTony?”

“Negative,” he said, “unfamiliar with operative Do-it-big-Toneeeeee.”

His mouth did not move under his scarf. The sound came as a deep buzz from within his nose. He smelled of bubblegum.

“I am waiting for someone,” I said.

“Understood,” he said through his nose, “I am operative Alpha Beta Carotene.”

Makeup was rubbing off from his forehead due to friction from his garish pink hat. He pulled it lower over his sunglasses. Only his nose showed, and it too was caked in makeup. I

nearly froze, but remembering my customer service training videos, I lied calmly instead. One of the few benefits of corporate training is that it can be acted upon instinctually both in times of intense need and in times of bored detachment. I mimicked his tone and speech convention.

“I am operative Kappa Beta Carotene.”

“Understood,” said the stranger.

The waitress set a cup of coffee in front of him.

“Glad you found each other,” she said, “what’ll it be?”

“Strawberry waffles. Dozens of them,” said the pink stranger.

I nodded. I tried in desperation to make eye contact with her. She did not return my stare.

The pink stranger clacked his nails on the plastic table. They were long and painted pink, like talons, protruding from black fingerless gloves. He stared through his sunglasses at the space behind me. I felt the need to run. I wanted to flip the table on top of the stranger and sprint for the door. But I knew the table was bolted down. Instead I checked myself and made conversation so as to avoid suspicion.

“I like your hat.”

This was a lie. The hat made me want to run.

“I acquired a suitably pink hat via human internet disguise depository. Pink hat was advertised as making one feel as though one is the human Pimp Kat Williams. I feel nothing.”

“Oh.”

The waitress brought two large stacks of strawberry waffles and then walked away before

I could speak. The stranger in pink pulled one of the plates toward him. I did the same. The stranger in pink began to cut the waffles into bite sized pieces. I also cut my waffles. I began to eat the waffle I had cut. The stranger in pink pierced a waffle piece with his fork, and then his

nose opened and I realized that his nose was actually a long serrated beak. He ate the waffle. No one else seemed to notice.

There was a silence that I tried to fill with waffles. Then it spoke again.

“The earth ones have such food at their disposal, so much glamourous pink to surround themselves with. Yet so few choose to adorn themselves gaudily,” it said.

I made an affirmative sound from my nose.

“It is best that they are irredeemable. Earth will be mined of its gaudiness when

Phlaminghol colony 5 nears this star system. Were they sentient gaudy ones such as we are, the

Board of Ethical Planetary Genocide would have questions.”

It opened the nose beak and took another bite of waffle. It tried to speak again, beak nose full of waffle and muffled, dripping pink syrup from the sides. No else one noticed. I wondered if

I was hallucinating. I felt my left leg tensing and threatening a panic induced spasm.

Why didn’t anyone else notice? How could the entire restaurant be so blind?

“The Earth scientists at this University have the plasma carotene fragment we were sent to obtain. Presently the humans are ignorant of us and what lies in their possession.”

I held the stranger’s gaze as I sipped my coffee. Only by staring past him could I maintain my composure.

“But were they sentient, were they gaudy, if their ignorance was resolved, it would not matter. The Earth ones are trapped on Earth.”

The pink stranger opened its beak and gulped waffle. I tried to comprehend what I had just heard. Then a man of perhaps 45 entered the front door wearing a leather jacket over a tight fitting T-shirt. He had his hair slicked back and his pants were too tight. The stranger in pink turned slowly to look at the door, strawberry syrup dribbling onto his pink vinyl sleeve.

I had hoped DoitbigTony was narcissistic enough to have forgotten entirely. He pointed at me and delivered a winking smile. I felt my face go white and I shook my head ‘no’ slowly.

That must have been enough to inform him that something was amiss, because he stopped mid- gesture. Or perhaps it had been the inhuman monster dripping syrup from its jaws sitting across from me. DoitbigTony stepped backwards through the door and fled into the parking lot.

The stranger snapped its attention back to me.

“You were meeting an Earth one.”

Rage glittered across its face, and then it slid out from under the booth. In silverfish swift strides it crossed the dining room silently and absconded through the slowly closing door.

I struggled out of the booth and stood to pursue them. This caused the men at the breakfast bar and the waitress to notice me.

“You’d better not be dashing!” Shouted the waitress.

I dashed through the door, slamming into a periodicals bin in the breezeway.

DoitbigTony was already peeling away in a minivan, and the stranger stood watching him, pulsing like a fighter at the bell, exuding a neon pink mist from its collar. It pulled a coil of its scarf out of its coat and dabbed the syrup from its nose, immediately assuming its former secretive demeanor. A sharp nailed hand dug into my shoulder from behind.

“One of you is covering this bill,” the waitress said from behind me. I half turned to her.

The men at the breakfast bar were rubbernecking at the window. The stranger stood stunned for a moment, and then, approaching slowly to avoid betraying its legs beneath the drape of its trench coat, held out a fist full of bills. The waitress snatched it from him. The stranger reached out to grab my arm. I slapped it away.

“They would not believe you if you told them,” said the stranger.

“I think you blew this date, buster,” I said.

“It would not matter if they did.”

The stranger stood its ground.

“Fuck off pal, you heard the lady,” said the waitress.

The stranger held briefly, and then backed away, taking tiny paces backward, retreating like sap. The waitress lit a cigarette. The stranger climbed into a pink VW Beetle and drove away.

I reentered the Waffle House with the waitress and sat at the breakfast bar with my coffee. She stepped over with the carafe.

“Got what was coming to you, I guess,” she said, refilling my mug. “Trying to pull two dates in one night? What the fuck do you think this is? A sitcom?”

I stared at her in disbelief. One of the men at the bar p’shawed.

“Blind-”

“Sure, love is blind. But you’ve got to make tough choices when it comes to guys. Can’t lead them on. Personally, I would have gone for the second guy.”

I waited an hour before walking home to ensure the stranger was gone, but the company of the waitress was nearly as intolerable as that of the otherworldly conspirator.

Today, standing over the donations bin and dumping my pink leather purses into its unquenchable depths, I remain haunted. Now I will watch the night skies. Stars will fall, twinkling pink as they burn to the Earth below.

In the Valley of Terror

One night, not long ago, I found a former professor of mine, Professor Ashton, crying at a tavern on the edge of this college town. He sat alone in a booth, weeping steadily and drowning in absinthe. He was babbling about the “cosmic indifference” of the universe, and holding a device out to me that looked like a chromed webcam. He seemed to have the impression that the device came from space. At the time I had no reason to agree with him. Ashton went on about predatory tendencies, the Earth’s place in the universe, and how terrified he was by the nihilism of it all.

While I find it difficult to believe in an almighty god, I can safely say that I do not believe the universe to be completely secular and indifferent. I believe in a spirit of the universe.

Not a ghostly spirit in the literal sense, but something akin to a tone of things, an attitude about the way the universe seems to progress. This spirit of the universe is one of perverse irony, a venomous sense of humor that fills me with awe at its supreme bad taste, and wonder that this sardonic universal program could have possibly become manifest without a sociopathic designer.

The crueler joke still is in the logical conclusion one must then draw, that the nature of the Ten

Thousand Things was not designed, and that it is only in this caustic irony that the extant can come to be at all.

Though what follows are shadows and visions that should have been purged and sealed away, it is in this universal spirit that I finally place this testimony of my most vile hours into script. I did not always see the universe in this bleak way. I did not see it for what it was until very recently. I am not just some angry, disillusioned academic. I own a poodle. I donate blood.

But some days I find myself in a vacant field, surrounded by murderous horrors that want to kill me for a piece of space rock that I found when I was eleven. So excuse me if I seem a little irate.

It was the day after I saw my professor in that state that I received two phone calls. I was nursing a sympathy hangover. Or perhaps it was an actual hangover. The first call was from my insurance agent, asking what I would do if I ever happened to drive into a sink hole. I told him I imagined that would kill me. He asked me how I might financially cover such sinkhole eventualities. I told him that the financial side of dying in a sinkhole seemed fairly inconsequential to me. The coverage was only two more dollars a month, so I bought it anyway.

The second call was from a childhood friend and colleague of mine, Rodolph Litman.

Litman was a few years my senior, and had inspired me to follow him into the field of Geology from a very young age.

It would be very easy for me to blame Litman for the madness of those following days.

“Hello, Kim!”

His voice had aged considerably. It had been more than a year since we had talked.

“Hi, Rudy. How the hell are you?”

“I'll cut to the chase, Kim. I'd like you to come down here and lend me some of your expertise on sulphides. We could catch up, maybe shoot skeet, too. The only time I hear from you now is when I read your reports. We could catch up, maybe shoot skeet, too.”

“Sure, I’m on summer session break right now.”

“Great, great. Do you think you could bring our rock along with you? Just for old times and all?”

“Sure. It is your turn.”

The rock Litman was referring to was a memento from our childhood rock hunting. We had latched onto the hobby because our home town of Massingbluff was next to a river that had

eroded its way deep into a bed of sandstone, and that is where we spent a great deal of our time.

Our rock was in fact a meteorite, the most interesting find of our youth. It sat in a glass case on my mantel, nearly forgotten due to familiarity. The idea was that Litman and I were supposed to swap ownership of it every five years or so, although my lease on it was now expired by nearly half that. When I got off the phone with Litman, I put the pink glittering stone into an old ring case and packed my Geo.

I was on the road with my faithful poodle Bowie before noon.

By sunset, I had not made the progress I had expected. An infuriating amount of traffic and half closed freeways had added considerable unplanned travel time. I was cursing at other drivers with increasing frequency, and my middle finger began aching from overuse. Despite relating my frustrations to Bowie, the road stress wore hard upon me. By the time I was within reach of Litman's home, I was exhausted. I decided to stop at an ancient motel a mile from the highway exit and drive the last eight miles through the winding foothills of the valley in the morning. I figured it would be foolish to drive through the unlit hills at night, anyway.

The motel was uninviting. A deteriorating shack, half coated in chips of sky blue house paint, served as the renting office. A fading sign on the front door read that it was only open from 8 am to 8 pm. The rooms themselves were housed in a long strip of a building, its aluminum siding scraped and dented in several places. All of this was surrounded by a parking lot, in turn enveloped in a great field of tall grass that stretched far and ended in the forests of the valley. I went into the office and asked for a room. The dispossessed looking inn keeper barely spoke as he took my money and handed me a set of keys. As I left the ramshackle office, he walked out behind me, locked the crooked door, and drove away in a decades old pick up truck.

My car stood alone in the lot, a forest green island in a sea of graying asphalt.

Unfortunately for Bowie, the motel didn't allow pets. I considered ignoring this rule, but figured he may be inclined to taste whatever might be found in the questionable accommodations, so I dismissed the idea. I walked him about the vast open field surrounding the motel for half an hour, fed him, and locked him in the car. I unpacked the luggage ridden back seat into my room in order to give him enough space to rest comfortably. He gave me a tired look as I walked to the door of my cheap quarter.

My room had a bed and bathroom, with a tiny television and a desk being the only conveniences provided. An air conditioner rumbled under the window sill. On the wall was a framed portrait of Michael Richards, standing in a suit against a black background. From the window I could see the car, lit by the only streetlight in the parking lot and possibly the county.

The motel bed was stiff but I was very tired. I fell asleep fully clothed atop the quilted comforter.

I dreamed that night of a freezing world. I was in a vast ocean, completely engulfed by icy water. Dead white light streamed from the frosted glass frozen surface above me. The ice was far too thick to pierce for air, but I did not drown. I slowly became aware of an echoing, eldritch presence below my dreaming form. Like the feeling of a thousand staring eyes, it demanded my focus, drawing me to those cold benighted depths. I strained my vision into the darkness and willed myself deeper. And slowly, as though materializing from the heart of the blackness beneath the aching, frozen water, huge white shapes emerged. They were clenched together like grasping skeletal hands and more massive than anything I have seen in my waking hours. Shapes greater than mountains, greater than land itself. Recognition plunged me into a wave of panic, for

I realized I was staring into the gritting fangs of a maw- the gleaming jaws of a being hundreds of malevolent powers more massive than anything known by humanity to live. To my utter horror, a great pink flash of atomic light exploded from above the ice. The burst of neon rays

momentarily illuminated the beast below me; burning into my mind's eye an image of the thing that shattered my illusions that there ever could have been a God capable of saving mankind from the terrors of the universe. Scores of enormous globes opened then about the rapturous jaws of the thing, focusing into eyes blacker than the thousand fathoms of depth where it dwelled. The leviathan stirred. I found myself lost in a singular hopeless eye of the beast, lost and falling into that bitter nothingness, deeper and deeper into the frozen nihilistic abyss.

Although I have never heard of being awakened by darkness, I believe this was the immediate cause. The single streetlight had gone out, and I awoke to my heart pounding, stuttering in awe of a darkness so complete it was beyond blindness. My fingers fumbled about the bed stand, searching out my keys which had an attached emergency light. Finding it, I turned it on, creating a weak spot of amber light on the wall. I turned it to the door, just as I heard

Bowie begin to bark in a panic. Terror mounting, I wondered what had he sensed that I could not.

I flipped through my luggage, the weak emergency light flickering, looking for the mag- light I carry for rock hunting. I pulled the light from its plastic sheath and, upon seeing it, unpacked my scatter gun as well. The mag-light let me illuminate my car from the window. Even from the dingy room I could see Bowie was in hysterics. His teeth clacked against the car window and fog huffed against the safety glass pane from the corners of his mouth. I shifted the light in the direction he was barking. The light briefly caught a pink reflection from out in the vacant field. Focusing the light fully upon it, I could almost make out its shape. It seemed a large pink bulb on a red stalk, I couldn't clearly gauge its size without direct reference but it was at least as tall as the Geo. As my eyes focused in the distance, I saw that the stalk had a folded appendage running beside it and the bulb had a serpentine coil upon it. The entire thing gave off

an eerie red gas or steam. I decided to investigate, or at least calm my harried dog. I pulled on my shoes and coat and checked my gun to ensure it was loaded.

Bowie watched me as I stepped out into the cool night air and crossed the lot to the Geo.

His eyes were wild with fright. I unlatched the door and he bounded out and attempted to hide between my legs. I approached the pink orb slowly, keeping my light upon it. Bowie winced.

The tall grass moved in the breeze. The orb was vibrating, creating a low buzzing noise that I could feel reverberating against the walls of my ribcage. It was a dozen yards beyond the curb of the parking lot, making it larger than I first thought- perhaps 8 feet tall. I crept slowly, as I could feel changes in the intensity of the pink thing's vibrations as I moved.

I thought that the neon light and mist emanating from the thing looked like the space opera special effects from the Eighties. Only then had I begun to guess about its true, horrifying origins. Often, upon recollection, I wish I had the sense back then to turn away and drive off into the cold, dark night. But instead I continued my guileless advance, because I am an idiot only when it counts.

The coil atop the orb raised itself up and loosed a terrible shriek.

I dove to the grassy dirt. A burning missile that lit up the night like a flare flew from the barbed pincers on the unwinding coil atop the central orb. The missile exploded against the Geo, vaporizing the car in a flash of green flame. For a brief second, the heat was unbearable even from several yards away where I had dove for cover. Bowie yelped and dashed into the grass.

The organ remained aloft, suspended by the long uncoiled neck - a smaller orb with a crooked, black lacquered, two pronged spike that opened and closed, chattering like a wailing radio receiver. It searched for me with two tiny orifices, one on each side of the bobbing head. I felt a sharp pang as I realized that I was looking into the eyes of a being of pure alien malice. It stared

back at me for a moment, then wailed and shrieked at the sky. Two pink fireballs descended from the lower atmosphere, burning through the clouds that blocked the stars and crashing into the field with an unearthly cacophony. From the craters, two more of the beings rose. The probing vibrations grew stronger and ran through and all around me. I scrambled to get up, in doing so I dropped my mag-light. But I was not fool enough to take my hand from my scattergun.

I ran through the dark in the direction I had seen Bowie flee. In my adrenaline addled thoughts I believed that if I could only make it to Litman’s or civilization, I could find sanctuary.

Though my light was gone, I could still see the horrifying, unearthly aberrations behind me; their ghostly mist creating a dim ruby neon reaction with the nighttime air. They cackled in a strange language to one another for a brief moment before detaching their strange post like stands into separate legs, bending like mechanical joints at their centers. These joints bent in upon themselves, allowing the awful scarlet wraiths a locomotion of incredible speed. I felt slapped across the face as I saw this for my mind reeled with the awful realization that I was being assaulted by flamingos from outer space.

I ducked and pulled myself through the brush, my fear and desperation rising. Sweat dripped down my arms, stinging my thistle scratched hands. I could feel the things behind me, the intense vibrations reverberating within my chest cavity. One of them spotted me, and cackled at me in its inhuman tongue. I turned on the avian horror, and discharged both shells from the uplander. My aim was perfect, but the shot was in vain. It caught the full fury of the blast and lead shot spattered against its beak and eyes, rolling its head and neck in upon itself. But like a spring, it recovered, running at me with an even more intense fury. The red haze around it shone like the fairy fire of an incubus against the night sky. I scrambled away into the brush, and found

myself falling down into a dry riverbed at the edge of the forest line. It was here that Bowie was waiting for me. We kept our heads low, and crawled through the dead leaves and brush until I could no longer here the pursuers or see their ghastly auras.

After a few tense minutes of blind clawing through the underbrush, I gained some semblance of night vision. Bowie seemed to be faring better than I with the dark, and so I urged him to lead the way. He sniffed and stalked through the brush, leading me forward towards what

I hoped would be civilization of some sort. Being a retired hunting dog, Bowie had a strong sense of direction and great tracking abilities. I only hoped that he was tracking salvation instead of a grouse.

We arrived on the edge of the woods a short time after. Before us was a highway exit that led into a small town, and I showered Bowie with praise. He looked a bit worse for the wear, and his curls were tangled with mud and brambles. I was certain I looked no better. I broke the shotgun and shouldered it, and we limped towards the town. I figured I needed to find a phone. I wasn’t sure how to explain to Litman what had happened, or if I should even bother trying.

Already, my adrenaline level was in decline and I was beginning to doubt what I had seen.

The town was a dirty and mostly abandoned former factory town of the type that turns every drive through the Mid-West into an anthropological exercise. The only lights on the main street were a drug store, which was closed, and a townie bar named Red’s. A neon sign in the window declared that the beer within was cold. An American flag decal on the door had faded to pink and chartreuse. I gave Bowie a look of consternation but, being a dog, he didn’t seem to see any problem with the place. We entered.

I was immediately struck by the stench of urine and spoiled beer. Despite the fact that I had a shotgun over my shoulder and a dog in tow, none of the smattering of patrons paid me any attention. The bartended nodded at me as I approached.

“I need to use a phone,” I said.

“Phone’s fer customers,” the keep said through his wad of facial hair.

“This is an emergency.”

“Then you better hurry up and order, I guess.”

Grumbling, I ordered a beer. The bartender handed me a dirty cordless phone, and I sipped my drink and dialed Litman. Although it was past midnight, Litman answered on the second ring.

“Rudy, I’m at Red’s Tavern in…”

“That’s in Bolton,” Litman said.

“Probably the place. Listen, I’ve been attacked by something, I need your help. I don’t have my car.”

I nudged Bowie to keep him from licking something on the floor. Litman took a moment.

“Alright I’ll be right over,” Litman said.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You’re probably in a great deal of danger right now. Keep alert. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

A chill ran down my spine. Litman hung up without saying goodbye. I set the phone down on the bar. For a moment, the bar was silent, and a creeping feeling of terror paralyzed my consciousness. I heard Bowie whine, and then there was a booming voice.

“Hey, thanks for coming out tonight to Billy Berry’s Big Boss Karaoke at Red’s, lemme get the first singer up here, c’mon up Ruby!”

I turned to see a scruffy DJ leaving the stage and being replaced behind the karaoke machine’s monitor by an awful figure in pink. I nearly knocked my beer bottle upon the floor as

I gasped, overcome by the sheer terror of it all. The thing that had taken the stage was one of the creatures that had chased me through the darkness, except it was dressed in a pink slicker and wearing a wide rimmed hat, dark sunglasses, and a scarf to cover where its face would have been if it were a person with a face. No one present seemed to notice anything was wrong. The music started and the thing in pink began exuding its glowing aura, pulsating in time with the song.

“Run, run rabbit, run,” began the thing in a chirping voice that sounded more modem than man. No one at the bar even acknowledged the singer.

I bolted for the door, tugging Bowie along in a panic.

“Dig that hole, forget the sun.”

Outside the bar, the night sky was alive with pink shooting stars. I had left the gun on the bar. I didn’t have any shells left, anyway.

You see, it never gets easier. The luck never really improves. Good turns are just the set- up to a worse punchline. Prejudice or Parkinson’s might skip a generation. Yellowstone might not erupt this year. Babies are born. Maybe you’ll get that raise. But it isn’t just impermanent, it’s the lead in for cruelty. It is the drumroll for doom. The universe thinks itself very funny and clever. It thinks that it is goddamn hilarious.

An old Plymouth pulled up in front of the bar and I saw something that resembled

Rodolph Litman wave me in. I opened the back door and got in, pulling Bowie in behind me.

Litman glanced at me in the rearview mirror and we caught eyes. His were bulbous and mostly

black. He must have seen my look of dismay because he immediately put on sunglasses. He started to wheel us away from the bar.

“I went to the eye doctor, and they dilated my pupils. That’s why they look weird.”

“Sure, Litman,” I said, “Just tell me what the hell is going on.”

Silence.

“Did it survive?” He asked.

“Did what survive?” I asked.

“Our meteorite.”

I stammered, and then I patted down my pockets. The ring case was there. It had been in my pocket when I had redressed to investigate upon waking up earlier. The meteorite was on my person.

“Yes,” I said eventually.

“Excellent.”

“Tell me what this is about.”

“You have to promise not to get mad,” he said.

Silence. Bowie murmured and pawed at me anxiously.

“Litman.”

Then Litman began to speak. I can only write what he told me, I cannot pretend to understand or interpret it for you. But I don’t think one actually has to grasp these words fully to understand their gravity.

“Those beings that assaulted you are not of this Earth. What they call themselves cannot be pronounced or understood by men, the nearest human reproduction of the name would be

‘Phlaminghol’. They come from a world far beyond our solar system. This planet is a black

morass, its resources and energy long ago depleted by the greedy strip mining and the gaudy fashion parties of the Phlaminghol. They now roam the Crab Nebula and prey on the higher race that populates its many worlds, a race known as the Bryanshripp. The Bryanshripp are a peaceful and industrious race, content to keep their exoskeletons only moderately accessorized while working as each others' accountants and supporting The Greater Protectorate Insurance Agency.

So tasteless and tacky is the Phlaminghol over-mind, that it believes there will be no consequences in their constant pursuit of ‘the new pink’. The Bryanshripp knew that to stop the

Phlaminghol, the entire race would have to be wiped out. So they mounted a scientific expedition, looking for a weapon powerful enough to convert beta-carotene into plasma- carotene- a molecule so cruelly pink in color that it actually drains all light and energy around it to look more pink by comparison. This would kill the Phlaminghol by the millions. But plasma- carotene molecules were only theoretical, as Bryanshripp were not posh or self serving enough to delve far into the field of Cybernetic Pinkery. But secret Bryanshripp detector rays found a meteor containing a tiny sample of plasma-carotene, headed to a planet called Earth. There, it almost entirely burned up in the atmosphere… and landed in the Massingbluff gorge.”

At this final revelation, lightning lit up the sky and Bowie howled for dramatic effect.

“Bad Bowie. No howl. How am I supposed to believe this, Litman?”

He was silent. He drove the car deeper into the backwoods.

“If you are Litman.”

Shortly thereafter, we pulled into a gravel drive and up to a country house. The sky flickered like failing neon with the intermittent falling stars. We got out of the car and went toward the house. As we approached the stoop, it dawned on me just how tired and afraid I was. I was increasingly wary of ‘Litman’, who was obviously either an imposter or extraordinarily

changed from the man I knew. He led me to his front door and I could see that he had developed an odd lurch. A light switched on in the house, and Litman stopped, his hand just touching the doorknob.

“Any chance that light is on a timer?” I asked.

He shook his head. He was still wearing the sunglasses. Bowie waited a few paces away from the house, bristling. Litman entered the house.

“Oh, it’s you,” Litman said to someone within.

He motioned me to follow him in. Bowie eyed me and laid down in front of the porch instead of following me. I considered emulating him, but instead I followed spooky Litman. The light was coming from the kitchen.

“Come on in, you two. Have a seat.”

We went into the kitchen, and sitting at the table was a silver, generally man shaped thing wearing a business suit. It was a robot, I think, with slanting metallic surfaces that sloped each appendage into a prism. In place of hands, it had single digit claws that curled in upon themselves. Its face was a blank metallic cylinder, polished and featureless but for dual pairs of stern brows. It rested one arm on a metal briefcase that stood on the table. Litman and I sat down at the table. The robot pulled a business card out of its breast pocket and slid across the table to me.

Agent Drone 7

The Greater Protectorate Insurance Agency

“The Benevolent Corporation”

I put the card in my pocket. It looked at Litman, or at least pointed its eyeless face in his direction. I looked, too. In the direct light of the kitchen, I could see that this was not the man I

knew from my youth. Litman’s face was not human flesh, but a few hard chitinous plates that merged together to form a Litman mask. I blinked, thinking this a trick of the light, but when my vision cleared I saw further that Litman’s hair was a bad toupee and his mustache was actually a pair of mouth appendages with fake eyelashes glued to them. I wondered briefly about how many people in my life would actually turn out to be man sized brine shrimp upon closer inspection.

“Why do you think I’m here today, Mr. Litman?” The robot asked.

The shrimpy Litman took off his sunglasses and anxiously rubbed his bulging black eyes.

He acted as though he had just fallen into a sting operation.

“Because I’m trying to get plasma carotene from the humans to make a warhead to destroy the Phlaminghol colony ship,” Litman said.

“And what does your insurance policy say about waging interstellar plasma warfare?”

“It says not to do that.”

“Right. It says not to do that, because that would lead to damage claims. This is a breach of your policy, Valued Customer.”

The robot tapped its claw on the table a few times and then turned to me.

“I’m sorry, do you want a cup of coffee or something?” It asked me, opening its briefcase and shuffling things around.

“No, thanks.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

The robot found a silvery orb device like the one that Professor Ashton had shown me.

He turned it on and set it on the table. A hologram contract appeared over the table. A voice began to speak from within the silver orb.

“In frozen torpor the Dread Insurer dwells, dreaming of exceptional claims.”

The robot cleared its throat.

“We wouldn’t want to cause any extraordinary claims to be made, would we Mr.

Litman?” It asked.

The hologram image switched and flickered briefly, and then came into focus. Suddenly I was staring at an image so terrible that my heart nearly faltered– for what I saw floating in the air before me were the eyes and teeth of that awful leviathan from my frozen dreamscape.

And that’s how I learned that the Earth and all of humanity are allowed their continuing existence due to a loophole in an intergalactic insurance claim policy.

Calmly, I excused myself and went outside and knelt down next to Bowie. Then I screamed at the top of my lungs. Bowie, spooked, dashed under the porch and started yowling. I tried to follow him under the porch and then I passed out.

When I awoke it was morning. There was no sign of the Phaminghol, shrimpy Litman, or the robot insurance agent. Bowie, covered in dead leaves and grime, was still snoring under the porch. As I regained consciousness, I realized we were both covered in daddy-long-legs. We stepped out into the late morning sunlight, damp with skin crawling, and stood on the gravel driveway for a minute staring at each other and wondering if it had all been a dream. A cathartic complacency took hold of me. I made a sandwich in Litman’s house, considering suicide. I decided against it when I realized the pink meteorite was still in my pocket. My mind wandered

to the possibility that death may result in the Phlaminghols capturing my corpse. So I sat there with my dog, eating the sandwich, trapped on Casket Earth.

Later, when I tried to file a claim for my car, my insurance agent explained that my car dissolving into its gaseous elements counted as an act of God. I tried to explain to him that there was no God, only insurance agencies and space flamingos. My agent told me that if I was unhappy, I could always get a different policy. I took out the robot’s card from my pocket and considered it.

Spoken Fables

The Sun and the North Wind

On a spring day, a fellow was walking down the road on his way to work. The day’s weather was tremulous, so this fellow was wearing a hat and coat that he grasped tightly about him. The Sun and the North Wind were chatting.

“Windy?” Shone the Sun, “What would you say to a wager?”

“Depends on the wager,” blew the North Wind.

The fellow heard all this and became very worried.

“Thirty-five bucks says I can remove that fellow’s coat and hat, and that you cannot,” shined the Sun.

The fellow tried to walk faster.

“I accept your challenge!” Wooshed the North Wind.

The wind blustered and began buffeting the fellow with all of its might. It sent hailstones and freezing rain, and the fellow’s hat and coat flapped wildly, but he clutched them fast to his body.

“What? Stay away from me!” shouted the fellow, beginning to run.

“Ah. You see?” glinted the Sun, floating into position, “You could not remove them.

Now watch me.”

The wind immediately stopped and the Sun shone in all its glory, warming and drying the

Earth. The heat grew intense, and the fellow was forced to remove his coat and hat in order to avoid overheating.

When the fellow got to work, he rushed to the nurse on staff.

“Rob, I’m really sick, and I don’t know what to do.”

“What, are you going to be sick right here?”

The fellow wept into his hands.

“No, Rob, I’m sick in the head, I’m hearing things.”

“I’m gunna call you an ambulance, try and relax.”

When he explained what he had experienced, the fellow was hospitalized and the Sun and the North Wind kind of felt bad, but managed not to get hung up on it. Due to a number of bad decisions made by the fellow’s doctor, decisions influenced by pressure from the fellow’s insurance company, the fellow did not recover. The doctor played trial-and-error with the fellow’s anti-psychotics in order of cheapness, and the fellow experienced drug induced psychotic episodes. Because he was not psychotic. The Sun and the North Wind probably should have explained themselves.

Eventually, the fellow assaulted someone in the mental ward under the influence of a particularly cheap lithium concoction. He is in prison now, in and out of solitary confinement.

We still write sometimes, but he just isn’t the same guy anymore. Gosh, saying that makes me feel like an awful person. Am I an awful person?

100

The Fox and the Crow

There was at that time perched upon the fence post of that land a crow. In her beak, the crow held a slice of cheese.

A fox saw the crow with her cheese, and envied the crow for her meal. I guess foxes really like cheese. I don’t know, I guess dogs like cheese so it sort of makes sense.

Said the fox, “Crow, you are looking fine today. How glittery your preened feathers. How shapely you are, as though you have lost weight. Surely, your voice is the most beautiful of all the birds, please! Sing ‘Forget Me Nots’ so that I may call you queen among birds.”

The crow, eyes twinkling, began with her best Patrice Rushen impersonation. She did not even get to ‘help you to remember’ before the cheese had fallen from her beak. The fox snapped it up.

Said the fox, “Ah, I have some advice for you! Never trust a flatterer.”

Said the crow, “Yeah mother fucker, see what happens.”

That weekend the fox was going back to his car after happy hour with the other guys who work at his car dealership. He found someone had busted his driver’s side window. As he was examining the damage, the crow put a potato sack over his head and she and two of her friends beat the hell out of the fox while he struggled. The fox’s coworkers saw this, but the fox’s coworkers do not like him so they didn’t help or tell anyone. I mean, obviously I saw it too, but the mother fucker tricked me out of a cake once so he can drive himself to the damn hospital.

101

This Wolf and Some Grapes

There was this wolf walking down the road, on her way to do some wolf stuff. As she admired the clear blue day, she noticed a bunch of grapes hanging from a vine in a tree, far overhead. The grapes looked delicious, plump and juicy, and the wolf’s stomach rumbled.

The wolf reared up onto her hind legs and tried to reach the bunch, but she was only about five feet tall standing that way and this was a pretty serious tree. A white birch, actually, checking my notes here. The wolf began to rationalize that the grapes were probably sour, anyway. Then she checked herself, remembering how cranky and pessimistic she could be when her blood sugar got low.

So the wolf went to the hardware store and bought one of those tree trimmers with the hook and scissor blade on the end of a long, retractable pole. She went back to the tree and snipped the branch supporting the grapes on her first try. The grapes fell and the wolf caught them and went under the tree’s shade to have a nice brunch.

The grapes were fucking awful. They were so sour that they stung the wolf’s tongue and she could feel the acid assaulting the enamel on her teeth. She spat them out and threw the remainder in a dumpster. It ruined her whole day, and she was out $35 for the tree trimmer.

The wolf tried to tell her friends about her experience so that they could save their tongues and tooth enamel, but they all pretended to have known all along and made wolf feel inferior despite the fact that she had spent the time to actually try something new. And you’re like that, too. Yes, you. Specifically. You never try and when you are disappointed it is never your fault, because everything you do is something that has been assigned or handed to you.

Then when someone actually bothers to be willful and resourceful and succeeds and the prize she takes home is utter garbage, you pretend to be the wise one. But you’re not. You dullard.

102

The Eagle and the Serpent

So it was in that far off land that an eagle had spied a serpent in the brush. The eagle swooped down upon the serpent and seized him in his claws. The serpent coiled about the eagle, and they appeared to be in a life or death struggle. They careened into my freshly tilled field, and rolled about in the loose soil.

I saw them tussling, and I, being more a fan of eagles than of snakes, swatted the serpent from the eagle’s grasp and beat the serpent with my rake.

Said the eagle, “The fuck, dude!”

Apparently, the eagle and the serpent were frat brothers in college. While it is not usually the case, this particular eagle and this serpent were actually really good pals. On this day, I was not privy to this information.

The serpent spit venom in my face. I was just trying to help a fucking eagle. They are endangered where I come from. DDT and all that. I didn’t go to college with these animals, I didn’t know.

Said the eagle, “get away from my friend, you dick!”

The eagle alighted upon my face and began slashing at me. My hat fell into the dirt. The snake bit into my ankle, ruining my Tims.

After a sound beating, the two relented, leaving me battered and bloody. We all lay there, in the upturned soil, breathing heavily.

I wept, “I thought you were killing each other, I’m sorry!”

Said the snake, “you need to check yourself before you go beating on snakes with rakes.”

Panted the eagle, “Don’t you… don’t you ever fucking try and tell us how to rock’n’roll.”

The eagle wiped some of my blood off of its face and then the two left.

103

How was I to know?

104

The Fox and the Cake Again

So it was that a sloth and a deer were having a few drinks in a tavern frequented by locals of that place. After polishing off a third pitcher, the deer suggested that they finish the night at her loft apartment, baking a cake.

It wasn’t an imposition, not everyone thinks like that. Baking a cake is just a nice thing to do when you are unwinding from unwinding.

In the morning, it was found that a true owner of the cake could not be determined. The sloth had bought the ingredients, but the deer had done all the work. This is a problem we run into around here.

So it was that the fox was summoned, as he styles himself a trustworthy cake divider. I should know. The fox arrived with a large knife and a cake dish. He set up at the kitchen table, displaying his knife prominently because he also sells knives. Honestly, the fox is into several really obnoxious rackets.

Said the deer, “Now, I’ll have you know, Mr. Fox, that I also advised Mr. Sloth on what ingredients to buy. So clearly the division of the cake should be in my favor.”

The fox made a cut down the middle of the cake. This is how he begins his scheme.

Said the sloth, “Sometimes I feel like I made a poor decision being a sloth. It is as though

I have chosen to be my hobby, instead of being a useful creature and also slothing about. I mean, cats do well enough.”

Said the fox, “Now you go ahead and divide this piece, Mr. Sloth.”

The deer, not being privy to how this hustle generally works, became irate.

“I told you, I did all the work and I told Mr. Sloth what to purchase! Certainly I should divide the cake.”

105

“Tut-tut!” Said the fox.

“A fox is a rational choice. Wit. Beauty. Sharp teeth,” said the sloth, taking up the knife.

“And a deer? Also wise. Camouflage. Speed. Assertiveness. What is a sloth good for, exactly?

Growing moss?”

The sloth cut the half of the cake more or less evenly.

“You must be an absolutely remarkable sloth in order to garner any success at all. Not a local genius, a true innovator,” he said.

The deer looked on nervously.

“Now, Ms. Deer, you may select the piece you desire.”

Said the deer, “Give me the uncut half.”

The fox was confused, because this is not how his stupid scam is supposed to work.

“No, I mean of the two-”

“I mean, I am not a poor sloth. I am an above average sloth, I think. But how is one supposed to be successful slothing? In this flooded market? Already successful creatures can retire and pay for low residence slothing in the damned Bahamas, and-”

“Shh,” said the fox, “Ms. Deer, you are supposed to choose of the cake slices that sloth has cut.”

“But then you will take the whole half and call it your fee. No, you told me to pick and I picked. I’m not stupid.”

“Fine,” said the fox, “then I will take this slice. But you cheated.”

The fox turned to the sloth.

“You get this piece.”

106

The sloth pushed the cake slice over to the deer and said, “I don’t care about any goddamned cake, that’s why I’m a sloth.”

107

Eagle and Turtle The turtle lived in a food desert. He could go down to the corner store, sure, pick up a pack of ramen or whatever, but he was a turtle. This would take the better part of his day, and the nutrition one receives from ‘Sooper Noodle Lunch!’ is not exactly prime B-vitamin vittles.

The only animal the turtle knew who could help was the eagle. The turtle had sponsored the eagle in Narcotics Anonymous.

So the turtle said to the eagle, “Could you help me move?”

The eagle flew over the turtle and grasped him by the shell. They were off, soaring high above the desert, that cursed place where they try to pass off video casinos as coffee shops. After a few miles, the eagle was approached by the seagull who was also on the wing.

“Whatcha got there,” sniffed the seagull.

“Turtle here? He needs to move to a neighborhood with a decent grocer.”

“Why don’t you eat him?” Inquired the seagull.

“Uhhhh… I don’t know, he has a hard shell? Among other things,” said the eagle, becoming defensive.

“Drop the turtle on the craggy rocks, and we can feast upon his flesh,” suggested the seagull.

“Guys?” Said turtle.

The eagle flew away from the seagull and found a nice neighborhood with a food co-op that wasn’t outrageously expensive.

“Thanks for not trying to crack me open and eat me,” said the turtle.

“I wouldn’t eat you, Turtle,” said the eagle.

108

“I mean, I know you eat snakes and rabbits, I just figure we’re pretty tight,” said the turtle.

They were still about 200 feet in the air, and there was a great asphalt lot beneath them.

“We’ve seen some shit, though,” said the eagle.

Said the turtle, “Yes, we have.”

The turtle is my roommate now. I wish he would take out the fucking trash sometimes.

109

The Kingdom

Back in those days there was a kingdom. This was the kingdom of Generica, a land that sort of feels like a knockoff Britain from The Sword in the Stone, and I had come there to write a story that commented on social norms in a really general way while avoiding excessive world building. So cliché was Generica, that I trusted my readers would have a solid frame of reference for how it worked even though all I had written was that there was a kingdom. Not being Phillip

K. Dick, and feeling generally uninspired (despite encroaching due dates), I just didn’t feel like developing a compelling non-referential world.

As the King was looking out upon his lands, my editor sighed in disgust at my story and flapped the manuscript against his knee.

“What the fuck is that? You don’t write like that.”

So said my editor.

“Yes, well-”

“In fact, when have you ever enjoyed being handed a story about a generic kingdom that is about to try and make some point about the human experience?”

“Sometimes-”

“You sometimes enjoy being handed a story that you know is going to be a liberal rehash of ‘The Princess and the Pea’?”

The fox was waiting in the hallway outside of my editor’s office, because the fox and my editor were friends and it was getting close to lunch time. My editor thumbed through the manuscript, skimming pages.

110

“So is this going to be some communist economic parable, or is it going to be about a fictitious but widely relatable minority that cleverly proves his necessity?”

I sheepishly toed the foot of my editor’s steel desk. I could tell the fox was listening in the hall, because he was breathing too softly and he is an asshole like that.

“It wasn’t going to be totally communist,” I said.

The fox snickered.

111