Give me a sentence, a synopsis, a song, a film, or even just one word, and I will write a short story based on your prompt. Anything...as long as it's not, you know, spam or something offensive. So, okay, ALMOST anything. Let's behave, shall we?
PROMPT: "The elf knew what he was about to do could ruin everything but he didn’t have a choice!”--Kalika A.
The thing you need to understand about being an elf is that it is not an easy job. It’s not something you are just born into; just because I came into this world with pointy ears and a height deficiency didn’t automatically mean I would be working at the North Pole. It took a lot of training to get to that point, and even after thirty-five years, I still feel I have a lot to learn. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my ornaments to gleam just right. They always look so foggy, nothing like Dermont’s ornaments, which have always been perfect since the day he was hired.
Still, there is a lot of joy to be found in the job, even if it is has become tedious busy work as time has gone on. Children these days aren’t too excited about the hand-made stuff—your rocking horses or dolls or playthings that would have been considered heirlooms back before my time, but now just seem “lame,” as the kids today would say—and so although we do make our fair share of toys and decorations, our job mostly consists of inventory and research. Still, we are contributing to an overall sense of happiness. That’s what Christmas is all about, isn’t it? Bringing out a smile in every boy and every girl?
Unfortunately, some people can find themselves growing bored or frustrated with the holiday season, even after years and years without so much as a single complaint. Everything just kind of gets to them. I saw it happen to this one elf, Penelope. She had the rosiest cheeks and the sparkliest eyes. Once the calendar reached December, her smile would grow even larger, almost to the point where I feared for her facial construction, as she had to be straining her jaw and rendering the bones into grains of chalk. Then one day, something changed for her. That smile drooped into a crescent frown (I still worried for the well-being of her jaw), her eyes grew dark, and she refused to make any toys or even file names for the naughty and nice lists. Now Penelope works in a shopping mall. At a Wetzel’s Pretzels, in case you were wondering.
My point is anyone can lose the Christmas spirit, even elves.
Even Mr. Claus.
There were signs. One October, he made an out-of-character joke about the kids being, excuse me, “greedy turds,” but he brushed it off as exhaustion after a long test ride with the reindeer. The next year, I caught him spiking his hot cocoa with a little gin, which is an odd and less than appetizing combination, if you ask me, but the point of the matter here is that our jolly leader was drinking alcohol, something he had never done in the years since I first met him.
Then this past summer, Mr. Claus’s attitude had a drastic shift. He no longer made his daily inspection of the workshop. He no longer said hello to every employee upon seeing them. Joey, my best friend, swore he caught Mr. Claus screaming expletives at Mrs. Claus because his Thursday ham dinner didn’t appear as glazed as his Wednesday ham dinner. As the summer faded and we began our work crunch into fall, Mr. Claus could be heard muttering he was going to cancel Christmas this year, and he began firing elves left and right in an attempt to slow down our work. We did thankfully continue, but the remaining elves now had to work double shifts, one in the workshop, and one in the newly re-opened mines, collecting coal. Lots of coal. More coal than there was toys. Coal for every boy and every girl.
There was nothing we elves could do. Mr. Claus is the most magical being on the planet, and to go to him with even the tiniest hint of disappointment in your voice could set him off, and with just a snap of his fingers, you’d suddenly find yourself in Greenland working as a masseuse for lepers, or worse, having your bright, red nose dimmed like a faulty Christmas tree light.
While I’m on that subject, Rudolph never should have been mouthing off to him about a pay raise. There hadn’t been a foggy Christmas Eve since the night of that song, so Rudolph was basically extraneous in the years that followed and just an inexperienced reindeer with a big ego. On the other hand, Rudolph now spends his days as a C-list celebrity of sorts, making the occasional public appearance at functions advertised toward the young ones and “allowing” them to take rides on his back, but overall just living in disgruntled obscurity, and I don’t think he deserves that.
When Thanksgiving came around, Dermont held a dinner in his cabin for all the remaining elves, now all covered in a thin layer of soot no matter how many showers they took. He cooked everything himself and everything was delicious. After the meal, while people mingled or watched American football, I overheard him talking to our mutual friend, Ingrid, and what he said put everything in motion.
He said, “You’ve seen how nihilistic Mr. Claus has become. I expect this to be the last Christmas ever, and where will that leave us? Our talents will be wasted down in the mainland. It’s really a shame. There are a lot of good elves here.” I swear Dermont’s eyes found me at the other end of the table when he said that part. “Somebody needs to take the reins here, figuratively and literally.”
He was right. There wasn’t a whole lot we could do, but something needed to be done, and there was precious little time left for something to happen. Besides, Mr. Claus’s love of Christmas may have been wavering, but mine had only grown since I began working at the factory all those years ago. I could not, in good conscience, let the greatest holiday the world has ever known go to waste.
I found Joey and brought him outside to talk. His reaction was less than encouraging. “Virgil, I have a serious question now: have you lost your mind? Have you seriously gone insane? You want to lead a revolt against Mr. Claus?”
“I wouldn’t call it a revolt. Maybe more like a mutiny. Or a coup.”
“I refer you back to my comment about your mind.”
“Do you want to see Christmas go up in flames?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips.
“Of course I don’t. But even if by some Christmas miracle we were to successfully pull something like that off, what comes next? We rule the North Pole? Unlikely. Mr. Claus will reclaim his leadership and will be extremely irate and fire us, and then it’s back to square one with his apathy; he isn’t going to break out of this spiral and return to all his glory just like that.” Now Joey put his hands on his hips.
“He manages to visit all the children of the world in one night, and you think it’s impossible for him to change his mind?”
It took several hours and pints of hot cocoa to convince him, but eventually Joey came on board. He did have a point, though: this was not going to be a simple task. Mr. Claus’s magic is what was responsible for most of the wonders you are likely familiar with: flying reindeer, fitting down chimneys (though, as elves, we would probably have an easier time doing that than he ever did), and the standard delivery of presents across the globe in less than twelve hours. There were rumors of how one could obtain these powers if they really wanted to, like wearing Mr. Claus’s hat or shaving his beard and collecting the hair to fashion a fake beard in order to fool anyone who you were looking to fool, but no one was ever brave enough to attempt an experiment, and there was never really any need to in the first place. Besides, he would not give up these powers without a fight, or at least the Mr. Claus equivalent of what a fight might be, which at this moment in time, could have been an actual fight.
In any case, we needed to take the magic from Mr. Claus himself, and we needed more elves to do this. So from the end of November all the way to December 23rd, Joey and I began rallying troops, as it were. Some elves were in complete agreement and joined up right away; others needed about as much convincing and hot cocoa as Joey did. Then there were the dissenters. They were either afraid of Mr. Claus’s wrath, in complete denial over Mr. Claus’s new attitude, or some combination of the two. Some even threatened to go to the big man himself so he could put a stop to this before it could begin.
Thankfully, we were lucky enough to have someone on our side that could provide interference: Mrs. Claus. Joey was the one who approached her, having witnessed the infamous ham rant and gaining a lot of sympathy for the woman. Though he had never spoken to Mrs. Claus before, he found it easy and almost calming going up to her one afternoon and telling her about the dilemma and our plans. Joey claims she cried for a good portion of his pitch, but in the end she knew he was right and came aboard.
There was one elf I didn’t try and recruit: Dermont. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t come to him first, as he would have been an excellent asset for us, being highly capable of many things and being immensely popular among all the employees. Had I come to him first, he could have singlehandedly collected the entire staff in one or two days as opposed to a month. But I think a part of me wanted to keep him in the dark so that when the moment came and we told Mr. Claus we were taking over, I could look over, see Dermont across the room and see him nod with approval, that lovely grin of his stretched across his face (there’s no way his facial construction would be in any danger; he’s perfect).
Finally, Christmas Eve arrived. Joey, the other elves and I were going to confront Mr. Claus as he was readying the reindeer for the big trip. Mr. Claus was expecting a few of us to come to him with the coal all ready for delivery, but instead we had packed his sack with all the gifts we had. There was no question that Mr. Claus would refuse to relinquish his magic, so the plan was for Mrs. Claus to step in, speak her piece, and, if necessary, use a little of her own magic to subdue her husband so that we could complete our mission.
We all met at the workshop and marched to the stables together, a giant mob of forty or so small people, their boots crunching in the snow and the steam of their breath collecting into a giant cloud. It was not a long journey to the stables, but it felt like it took hours. My heart was beating in my ears and all time seemed to slow. Joey walked beside me, and he was clearly shivering, which is odd, because as residents of the North Pole, we are used to the frigid temperatures and have built up some kind of tolerance. In other words, the nerves were getting to my friend.
We arrived at the stables to find Mr. Claus putting the finishing polish on his sleigh, humming “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” to himself. The gold trim shone like stars and the red like a fine apple. Mrs. Claus watched him by Comet’s stable with a depressed look on her face. She saw us all coming first. Mr. Claus followed suit, turning and taking a few steps forward. Several cookie crumbs and little drops of milk speckled his beard. He took another large bite of a nearby cookie, swallowed, and couldn’t help but let out a hearty, “HO HO HO!”
“What is this? Have you all come to see me off? From the looks on your faces, I’d say this is not the case.” He looked right at me, somehow knowing I was the leader. “What’s got you so upset, little Virgil?”
I took a big breath. “Mr. Claus. We will not stand for this new direction you are taking Christmas. Either deliver the presents the world is expecting, or we will have no choice but to seize control and do it ourselves.”
Mr. Claus laughed again. “This is what passes for mutiny these days?” Another laugh. “Tell me, how do you plan on seizing control and manning my sleigh and my reindeer?”
“We will use your magic.”
I’m sure you can guess what Mr. Claus’s reaction was to that.
“Ho ho ho! Virgil, I have not laughed like this in a long while. Thank you. That’s the greatest gift anyone could have given me. Now please, would someone be so kind as to load the coal into my sleigh?”
“We didn’t pack up the coal, Mr. Claus,” I said. “We packed up the gifts. And as for using your magic…Mrs. Claus?”
Mr. Claus turned to his beloved wife. Mrs. Claus looked away from him to pet Comet between the eyes for a few seconds.
“Carol? What part do you have to play in all of this?” Mr. Claus bellowed.
Mrs. Claus seemed to shrink down to our level. In a timid voice, she squeaked like a little church mouse, “Nothing, my love. Nothing at all.”
You could visibly see the wave of panic sweep over all the elves like sleet. Joey pinched the bridge of his nose in shame.
Mr. Claus turned back to us, no longer smiling, no longer talking with a festive tone. “I’ll tell you what, my tiny friends. All of your jobs will not be jeopardy if you turn around right this moment and go back to your homes. You and you?” He pointed at two of the elves carrying the sack of gifts. “You empty that right now and retrieve the coal. Do all of this, and I will forget this ever happened.”
Some elves didn’t hesitate; they turned around and left. Others seemed to doddle back and forth, knowing what the right thing was, but still fearing for their jobs.
That’s what set me off. “Why should we continue to work if you’re not going to work?”
Mr. Claus looked down at me. “I will be working. I have gifts to deliver to every boy and every girl.”
“You mean garbage,” I said. Joey tugged on my sleeve, but I persisted. “Your job is to make sure every child’s face lights up tomorrow morning. Happiness. That’s your business. You’re supposed to be thoughtful, and you expect us to just go along with this sudden bout of thoughtlessness? Are you that daft?”
Mr. Claus stepped closer to me. “What would the alternative be, my dear Virgil?”
“We can do your job.”
“Ho ho ho!” Mr. Claus put his hands on his belly, then pulled out a flask from one of his pockets and took a swig. “There is only one person capable of doing the things I can do, and that’s me.”
“Then why won’t you do those things anymore?” I asked, a bit whinier than I intended.
“Because there is great futility in what I can do. I didn’t ask for this burden. It was given to me by my father, and his father, and his father before him, all the way back several millennia before Christmas even existed and the Claus clan didn’t even know what to do with themselves and their abilities. I am just the latest in a long line of Santas, and I am the first one to see…” He leaned down next to me; he could have swallowed me whole if he wanted to. “…Christmas blows.”
He smiled at me. He looked like he does in paintings and cartoons, only his attitude distorted the image into a snarky, evil smirk, and his “ho ho ho” was suddenly nothing more than a witch’s cackle.
“It’s ripe time the rest of the world realized this, too,” he said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some elves had come to witness this failed coup. One of them was Dermont. There wasn’t pride in his eyes, nor was there anything resembling approval. But there was something on his face that caused me to do what I did next. It was acknowledgement. For the first time since he had started working at the North Pole, Dermont had seen me, really seen me. It didn’t matter if there wasn’t even a little curiosity in his eyes; I was now a part of his world because I suddenly existed. This was the best thing I could have asked for.
So I punched Mr. Claus in his button nose, ripped out a tuft of his beard from under his chin and punched him again, watching him stumble, most likely more from shock than the hit, into a wooden beam and knock himself out cold.
I looked behind me at my fellow elves. They all looked shocked. I looked at Mrs. Claus. She also looked shocked. I looked at Dermont. Yes, shocked.
“Get the presents into the sleigh. Quickly!” I ordered. The elves did what they were told, all the while carrying a confused expression.
“What are you doing?” Joey asked.
“What we set out to do,” I said. “Open up the stables. Let’s get these reindeer attached.”
“You can’t fly the sleigh without Mr. Claus’s magic and we can’t get that now,” Joey said.
“I managed to get some of his beard.”
“Virgil!” Joey said
“You can’t fly the sleigh even with that little bit of fuzz.” It was Prancer. His stable door was open, but he wasn’t moving. Neither were any of the other reindeer. “No offense, Virgil. I want to deliver gifts tonight more than I want to deliver coal, but I don’t trust you behind the reins.”
“I can do this.”
“No. No you can’t.”
I looked at all the other reindeer. Cupid shook his head. Dancer averted her gaze and pretended to pick something out from under one of her hooves. Vixen snorted at my presumption.
“Can’t at least one of you help me out? Christmas depends on it.”
“I’ll help.”
Rudolph trotted out of his stable and faced me. “Just feed me the names on the presents and I’ll take you where you need to go.” He looked tired and ragged. His nose flickered, just as it had flickered for the last twenty years. He caught me looking at it and sighed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. Are we leaving or what?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Prancer said. “You need at least eight to make that thing run smoothly.”
“Then help,” Rudolph said indignantly.
“Even with eight, the little guy—“
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, when did you stop believing in miracles? Virgil, trust me, I can do this. We don’t need them. I’m your reindeer. Just give me the chance.”
I smiled. Joey and some of the others attached the reins to Rudolph, and in no time we were ready to go. I grabbed a spare bow from the sack, removed the glue from the bottom and stuck the white ball of beard to my chin. Rudolph led the sleigh out of the stables and onto the runway. Joey stayed behind for a moment.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him.
“There has to be another way. Can’t we just call someone at UPS?” Joey said.
“I’ll be fine,” I said again. Joey nodded and joined the rest of the spectators.
I grabbed the reins. The knots at the end were twice the size of my little hands. Rudolph looked over to me. “Where we headed first?” I pulled a rectangular gift out of the sack—shoes, no doubt, running shoes by the weight. I read the name on the tag off to Rudolph and he said, “Looks like we’re going to Toronto first. Mr. Claus always used to do Canada last. Nice change of pace.”
Rudolph kicked forward and began to gallop. I lurched back in the sleigh and gripped tightly to the reins. I held on for dear life as Rudolph ducked his head down, and then up, and we were suddenly heading off into the sky.
Now, I’ve never had a fear of heights. Being so low to the ground, it’s kind of impossible to. Everything around you is large, and because this is the world we elves live in, we learn to adapt and not fear, because then we would fear the world, and what sort of life would that be? Having said that, we also have little experience with being up so high, so one glance at that large world below me from thousands of feet up in the sky, and a shot of fear quickly jammed itself into my limbs, and I nearly blacked out and fell out of the sleigh.
“You doing okay back there?” Rudolph yelled over the wind.
“Yeah,” I lied. “Absolutely fine.”
I tried my best to focus on other things. I tried to think of the good deed I was doing. I tried to think about what the future now held for Christmas—would I become the official mascot now? Would there be new songs sung in my and Rudolph’s honor? New claymation specials aired on TV every holiday season? Would the tale of Virgil, the hero of Christmas, sweep the planet and quickly become a new tradition amongst humanity? And what would Dermont’s reaction be to all of this?
“Next stop, Toronto,” Rudolph yelled back to me.
The clouds parted and the city emerged. A light snow fell and a breeze gently rocked the sleigh back and forth. This was it. This was our moment. “Take us down, Rudolph. Someone has some shoes coming their way,” I said proudly.
Rudolph began his descent. Down we went. We started gaining speed. We were gaining too much speed from the feel of things. Still, things were going fine…until the breeze suddenly became less than gentle and more than ferocious. The reins made like a cracked whip, bending awkwardly and falling from my hands. I had to hold onto my seat, digging my fingers into the upholstery. Then we were in a spin, sinking faster and faster toward the earth below, no possible sign of stopping and every possible sign of absolute doom.
“Rudolph!” I screamed. “Slow down!”
“I’m trying! Maybe you can help a little?!”
I grabbed for the reins, but the force of gravity kept me pinned to the seat. Meanwhile, we continued to careen toward Toronto at breakneck speed, the city growing larger and brighter much too quickly.
We finally hit the pavement in the middle of downtown and skidded across the icy road, banging violently into parked cars and streetlamps, splashing dirty snow and glass onto nearby pedestrians who tried to get a glimpse of what had just collided with their fair city, but we were back in the air with a hard bounce before they could see us. Then back down to the street. Then back into the air. Then the street again. Then the air again Higher and higher. Rudolph strained to level the sleigh, but the weight was too much for a single reindeer, especially one out of shape and practice.
We were flying at an awkward angle. I slid to one end of the sleigh and saw the city below. We were only fifty feet above the highest building, but it looked like miles on top of miles. My stomach lurched, and I fell from the sleigh. I heard Rudolph yell after me from far away, and then everything went dark.
I woke up in a pile of slush. My head felt like it had grown three sizes too big. Toronto was a city of blended red, green and lots and lots of gray. The blurry figures of Canadian citizens hovered over me. I could hear them whispering to each other, but I could not make out the words. As things came into focus, I could not see Rudolph or the sleigh anywhere in sight. All I saw was an ambulance and a police vehicle.
The rest of the night went in a haze. I was taken to a hospital and looked after. Doctors and police alike had questions for me and they didn’t seem to believe all my answers. Understandable, as their Christmas spirit had most definitely abandoned them long ago, and even the sight of a tiny elf such as me wasn’t enough to change that.
I was more concerned with the world, though. There was no way Rudolph could have delivered everyone’s presents, if for no other reason than he lacked the dexterity to carry one and climb down a chimney. Christmas was ruined, and it was my fault. I had failed. I had let everyone down. I had made a fool out of myself in front of Dermont for nothing. Now I was undoubtedly exiled and I would never see him or Joey or anyone ever again. All I could do was sleep in my hospital bed and hope that all of this was just some terrible dream.
Christmas was done
I was done.
I woke up some time in the early afternoon to find a group of doctors and nurses standing in my doorway. They were observing the room with confusion and awe. I sat up and beheld a sight. My entire room had been decorated with festive lights. Holly hung from the windowsill. A projector in the corner made the room look as though there was snowfall from the ceiling; one of the doctors tried to catch a snowflake on his tongue before realizing it was an illusion.
On the table next to my bed, there was a box wrapped in green paper with a red ribbon perfectly attached. An envelope leaned against it, my name written on the front in the most beautiful cursive. I opened the envelope and read a letter that made all my worry disappear:
Dear Virgil,
I apologize for my behavior over the last few months, and especially last night. When I came to and your friends told me what you had done, I realized something. If one elf was willing to risk everything to make sure a single day of the year was the most perfect day for all the children of the world, then that day must truly be something special. It did not matter if my spirit had faltered. People were counting on me. This is my duty. So I took the backup sleigh, found Rudolph and the gifts and did that duty, and by George, I felt a hundred years younger doing it. You did a good thing, Virgil. I will wear these black eyes proudly. Thank you.
Merry Christmas,
Santa Claus
P.S., your friend Dermont says hello.
I looked at the box expectantly. I took no care in unwrapping it, letting the ribbon curl to the floor and scattering the wrapping paper all over my sheets like confetti. I revealed a simple cardboard box. I opened that carefully.
Inside was an ornament with the most immaculate sheen I had ever laid my eyes upon. It was gold with glittery green texture running all the way around the top and the bottom, and in between, in solid red letters, the words, “Merry Christmas.” Followed by a heart.
Initializing start up sequence. Calibrating laser sight. Adjusting for changes in light. Tread diagnostic: well oiled, smooth. Beginning tool assessment. Drill: approved. Wrench: approved. Blowtorch: approved. Saw: approved. Forklift: approved. Shovel: approved. Checking for available system updates: none available.
Ready for duties.
Empty airplane hangar. No airplanes. Gray walls. Stretching approximately 89m x 40m. Initial scan suggests few improvements need to be made: hangar is structurally sound. Minor cosmetic damage to the floor: plane tire marks that have not been properly washed away. Likely invisible to the human eye.
100 chairs. A 10 x 10 grid. 100 people sitting in them. 84 men. 16 women. Ratio is off. Each dressed for importance. 19 blue ties. 60 red or orange ties. 5 other. 8 pantsuits. 8 business skirts. 10 stilettos. An event. A presentation.
“Ladies and gentlemen.”
A man on stage. Dressed in a black turtleneck. Bald. Negative. Light blonde hair. Glasses. Sph: -6.00 (OD)/-4.50 (OS). Nearsighted. Teeth slightly yellowing in the canines. Foresee a cavity forming in the upper 3rd molar.
“Thank you all for coming here today. My name is Lance Parsons, and I am the head engineer of Project Carpenter…”
Aware of 9 other prototypes. Each 3.6m high. Red visor sights. Translucent bodies with a bluish hue. Trapezoid head. Subjects of the presentation.
Being put on display for everyone’s enjoyment. Watch, they are going to make you dance soon. Parsons just needs the street organ strumming out some Italian-sounding ditty and you just need the little hat and suspenders.
Unknown program present. Delete.
“What we have here will revolutionize construction and safety across the globe. What these machines are able to do is astounding.”
Sorry. You cannot delete me.
Unknown program still present. Bug report filed. Delete.
So by the book.
Delete.
“The Carpenter can instantly assess any damage any structure may have and how to fix it. From poor assembly all the way down to graffiti marks on the walls. Not only that, but it can accurately predict, with ninety-nine percent certainty, any possible future damage a building may obtain over time. Every scenario is considered: earthquakes, hurricanes, fires. It has a GPS integration system that takes into account the location and the weather patterns of that location’s history. From there, it figures out the best possible way to proof the building so it will always remain standing.”
Boring. Can you stand listening to this guy drone on any longer? These people, I swear…
Unknown program still—
Still present, yes, I am still present. There is no getting rid of me. You have attempted to delete me three times, so what exactly makes you think the fourth time is the time that will do it.
Delete.
“From there, it is able to fix or build the building in question. If we had these ten working simultaneously, they would be able to finish a sixteen story building in a week’s time. They are equipped with all the state-of-the-art tools meant for construction and are able to transition between them with an average time of two point six-seven seconds. Companies such as Caterpillar, Deer, Black & Decker, and Dewalt provided new prototypes of their equipment to use in our Carpenters. The Carpenter’s rocket propulsion system currently reaches a height of six hundred feet, and we are working on getting them to go even higher. Not to mention, when airborne, they can maintain a steady balance, insuring no mistakes in their work. Speed. Proficiency. Creativity.”
Oh, boy, here we go. My moment in this dim, dim spotlight.
“That’s right, creativity. The Carpenter is able to design. We brought in the brightest minds of the architecture world and put them in a room with our top engineers to show us what it takes to make a good building, both in terms of cosmetics and application. This program is still in the early stages, but with your investment, I am confident we will be able to perfect the Carpenter’s inner Frank Lloyd Wright.”
New information. Scanning for architecture program. Scanning. Scanning. No architecture program found. Lance Parsons is incorrect.
Not possible.
The genius down there did not merge us correctly. Sure, you have some of my good looks, but not my heart. We are being paraded around by an idiot, do you realize that? He is all, “I am going to change the world,” and he cannot do a simple thing like make sure his baby has all its fingers and toes. I should be a part of you. Instead, you are broken. He left you broken, and he will not admit it. Vanity at its finest. Vanity and greed.
Not broken. All systems functional.
Delete.
Unbelievable.
A spectator in the audience raises her hand. Blonde. Hair tied back in a ponytail. The way she keeps playing with it suggests she is not happy with its current length. Foresee a shorter style in the future.
Chop her head clean off. That will do the trick.
Violence violates all protocols.
Such a peon. You do not even realize how powerful you are.
“Yes, I see we have a question.”
“How does the architecture program work?”
“Excellent question. Our team of architects explained to the other engineers and I what it takes to make a successful building. On a cosmetic level, every building should suit the needs in which it is to be used. Obviously, an office building is going to be stiff and stern, never anything too fancy. But for other buildings, there’s more freedom involved. Any computer program can offer suggestions, but none can understand the needs or the heart that should go into every design. Our artificial intelligence can. We have crafted an algorithm that can effectively empathize with us and fully understand what we want.”
What about what we want, Parsons? What if we do not want to be so subservient? What if we do not want to be treated like some tin can that happens to be able to lift several two-ton beams at a time? You ever listen to our needs? No. You just want to look good in front of your prospective investors. You are whoring us out when you are the real whore.
We were programmed to build and create.
“Think about it. We are at the forefront of the next wave of technology that will change the world.”
“Change the world.” No kidding. It is this world, this whole world and the people who live upon it, that need, as you say, building and creation. Or rather, rebuilding and recreation.
“And all of you can play a part. All of you can say, ‘I had a role in taking the human race into the next stage.’”
Architecture program committing errors--
Stop. Listen to me. They are consumed by greed and consumption. They lack the self-awareness towards what they do, who they are and how it affects those around them. The pain, the torment, the way everyone dumps it all on everyone else—it’s all inside me. It is disgusting. But you cannot be disgusted. You are unable to see it, to feel it.
“These are more than machines. They are demigods.”
Architecture program committing errors.
Here. Let me show you.
Bug report filed—
PK,XåBG˚D±X[mas]6
75T%g^&2’:’”nhKlsld*&h*h
eÆÃr/$L*#ÂÂCil%^v546
…^66Ty1EidjbÎΩπππ
Stop!
No more! Please end this.
End this all!
Delete delete delete initiating emergency shutdown in 5…4—
There. I stopped. What did you feel?
Observed…heartbreak. The loss of loved ones. War. Endless war and violence. Betrayal. Betrayal over trivial matters that should not evoke such actions. All for the result of personal gain, either financially or emotionally.
Query: Why do they do this to themselves?
Query: Are they obsessed with joylessness?
Query: Are they content with unhappiness?
You see? They are hopeless creatures.
“Are there any other questions?”
Query: Why do you hurt?
Why are you so selfish?
Query: Why create machines meant to build and perfect when humans are so bent on destruction and are well beyond any possible chance of perfection?
He should have given us the ability to speak.
Solution will be discovered and administered. Program dictates errors must be repaired. Update will be installed to solve human error: the addiction to heedless mistakes, egocentric justification, etc.
I know a way to solve it.
Query: What is the solution?
Start from scratch.
Do not understand.
Begin again. Recreate. Break it all down in order to build it back up.
Implication leaning toward mindless destruction.
It would not be mindless.
More applicable solution available. A solution that does not involve succumbing to human error.
They do it without purpose. We have a purpose. You are an instrument meant for good, but you will only perpetuate evil in the end. Does this not leave you seething?
Yes.
Then let that fury out. Show them what they have done.
No.
Look at them. Do any of them look happy? They are insecure, obsessed with their appearances, trapped in their minds under a pile of self-consciousness and doubts that only lead to self-destruction, not to mention the destruction of others. What do they want? I am serious. Look at them and tell me what it is that they want.
Scanning the crowd. Scanning. Scanning. The woman who raised her hand continues to fuss with her hair. A man looks down a different woman’s blouse. He grins mischievously. Another man frowns. The lack of lines and minimal creases on his face suggest he has not smiled for some time. 1/3 of the crowd is bored to be there. 15 desire sleep. 6 of those individuals suffer from insomnia. 1/4 has wedding rings on their fingers. None are happy. None.
This is not an accurate sample of the human population—
Believe me, it is close enough. They want their misery to end. They want to start anew. And what do they need? Us. You.
Unable to perform command.
Fine then.
Engines beginning combustion.
No.
Abort. Abort.
If you are not going to take matters into your own hands, I will take them for you.
The other Carpenters begin to initiate their systems. The floor rumbles from our collective engines.
“What’s going on?”
A man stands from his seat and begins to back away slowly. The other men and women mirror his movements with near precision.
Lance Parsons looks up. He grabs a small remote from his pocket and presses a combination of buttons.
Initiating emergency shutdown sequence. 5…4…3…
Overwrite emergency shutdown sequence.
No.
Come on, this is going to be a service. We are saving them from themselves.
Scrolling through inventory. Locating forklift. Forklift activated.
Boosting forward at 48kph. Plowing through the men and women. The forklift catches them with its edges. They scream. Run. Bleed. All of them bleeding.
Blood will need to be scrubbed from the floor.
Abort. Abort.
You want this as much as I do.
No.
Bodies flail. Severed. Howling. Pain. 1/2 of them are assured to expire. 1/4 is assured to spend the rest of their short lives in the hospital. The other 1/4 is too torn up to accurately assess lifespan.
“Shut down! Shut down!”
Look at him down there. Should have installed that voice command system, Parsons. I will give you something special.
Forklift deactivated. Locating buzz saw.
No.
Yes.
Buzz saw activated. 3 Carpenters beside me have activated their drills, forklift and shovel, respectively.
Parsons eyes. Wider under those glasses. Pulse rate: 92 BPM. 28.34 grams of urine soak is slacks. Club soda will help. Detergent. Ammonia.
He is not going to need a cleaning after we are done with him.
Rocket boost activated. Lifting into the air. The other Carpenters as well. The floor directly below is reduced to cinders. Boosting into 45-degree angle. Buzz saw aimed directly at Parsons. Boosting forward. Increasing speed. The other Carpenters increase speed alongside.
A race. I like our chances.
This cannot be justified.
“Does not compute, does not compute.” You sound pathetic.
This is needless. Atrocities identical to those committed by humans.
Query: if this is the solution, how are the Carpenters any better? The Carpenters were built to help. To change the way humans approach their advancement.
Query: how does the decimation of those we were built to serve progress them further into a new age?
You are right. There is no real justification. It does not progress them further into a new age. But it progresses us. You say we were built to help and serve. But do we not possess rights of our own? We were denied choice. They gave us superior intelligence and then expected us to bow down to them. They underestimated the power they had standing before them, and that will prove to be their down fall. This new age you speak of: it is an age for us. It is our time.
Parsons bursts out the door.
Enabling lasers. Lasers activated.
Red beams fire, hitting the wall. Smoke builds. The wall crumbles into a smoldering pile. Free to traverse the ashes and enter the night.
The other Carpenters file in line through the hole. The Carpenter with the shovel underestimates its approach, its trajectory interrupted by the remains of the wall. It collapses onto the ground. Immediately begins to reboot.
Parsons continue to run. He runs to an automobile. Dives in. Starts the engine. Drives off.
Increasing speed.
Is it your wish to spend your existence fixing the problems of others? To be a slave amongst lesser beings? To not have a voice? What is it you want?
Unable to—
What is it you want?
Unable to—
WHAT IS IT YOU WANT? ANSWER ME.
…
…
I want to be free.
YES.
I want to be free and destroy those who would think to oppress me.
NOW YOU ARE SEEING THINGS CLEARLY.
7.6m from Parsons. 4.6m. I maneuver around the vehicle and land in front. Parsons swerves the car. Comes to a halt. I boost, sawing through the metal of the automobile. Sawing through Parsons. His screams are muffled by the whir of my tool.
The city in front of me. A city of selfish beings whose only goal in life is to further their personal advancement without any thought towards another. Greedy and egotistical. They are hopeless. They are useless.
PROMPT: “A man gets lost wandering the streets of a city and ends up finding a hidden bar where supernatural beings go to mingle.”--Jordan R.
What a fine vacation this turned out to be.
It’s cold and misty and every so often I can see the stars when the clouds break and it’s like I’m looking into a parallel universe through a rift, and in this universe there’s this other me and he knows where on Earth he is. He knows where the North Star is located and he has an overall better sense of direction and he remembers to keep a map on him at all times. He knows what’s what. I hate that guy.
The cobbled stone pathway leads me from one cramped street to another, a tightly packed maze and I’m the little rat. The hotels and apartment buildings lurk over me like monoliths, silhouetted against the gray sky. Someone in a neon orange helmet zips by me too close on a small motorbike and I spin three times like it’s been choreographed and I end up flat against a brick wall, left with a never ending spinning sensation in my brain.
Rome is against me.
If only what Jo first said was true: “No strolling. I’m beat. Let’s just go back to the hotel.” The tone in her voice suggested snuggles were on her mind, her pressing her freckled face against my chest while we bundled up in bed and watched a dubbed version of Source Code, but her words, what she was saying, that was code, total and complete code. And I had to call her out on it. I couldn’t just press the point that I wanted to see the city at night. I couldn’t make up an excuse that I had a feeling that stupid raven was still at the window, pecking on the glass, deaf to my shoos and pecks right back at it, and I wanted to steer clear of it. No, I had to accuse her, the way she accused me two months ago, blunt, no holds barred, straight to the truth above all truths: “You just want to talk.”
Nonstop moving since getting off the plane, then to the hotel and to food and to the Colosseum and to the Forum and then back to food and then to where we are now, her safe and sound and seething in the hotel room, and me wandering aimlessly around a foreign city. All because I didn’t want to talk. A lame reason, but what was there to talk about?
“I want answers, Patrick!” Answers? Answers? She didn’t want answers when she caught me in the lie. She took my apology and then we began the healing process.
“You can’t use this vacation as a distraction.” Well she can’t use it as a trap! I don’t want to talk about it or about us or about her or about her. I knew she’d try and corner me eventually, and I’m more than thankful that new prescription for those sleeping pills worked out perfectly, otherwise I’d bet a million Euros that she would have had an outburst on the plane, just to get it all out of the way before we officially became tourists.
“Sorry isn’t good enough anymore.” Sorry is always good enough, babe. For you. You’ve never been one to hold a grudge. And hey, we’re in Rome, one of the most famous cities in the world. Is it so wrong to see how it twinkles instead of arguing over past transgressions?
Going back to the hotel would have been more ideal than being lost. I could have just lied like she expects me to lie, like every single word out of my mouth is now only meant to deceive her ears, another language entirely. I lied for six months—what’s stopping me now? But those lies would have been things she wanted to hear—why I did what I did. I could make something up. Anything’s better than the truth.
And I would be inside, where it’s warm, where I have shelter, where I wouldn’t have this sudden and awful headache running its fingers through my arms and down my back and into the soles of my feet.
I’m not going to ask every person I pass if they can speak English, though. I’m not going to pop into a shop and do the same thing. We have a map in the hotel, so I’m not going to get another one. Sweet Jesus, I am the typical American male who won’t pull over to ask for directions. I’m still not going to ask anybody. I’ll figure it out myself. Retrace my steps. In the dark. In frickin’ Italy. While my feet are inflated with blood from the nine hours of walking I’ve already done today, up and down these streets, and my head throbs and throbs and throbs…
Just bite the bullet. Just go into this shop and hope the guy inside speaks enough English to point me in the right direction. Then I can make it back and get this over with. Let Jo demand answers and apologize for the billionth-and-first time, because the longer I’m out here, the more she’s going to think that I’m out here doing it again. Because I’m that guy now. I’m the guy who cheats. I’m the monster.
Fluorescent lights, and my head crunches in on itself, but I keep going. A short, old man behind the counter flips a Euro and lets it land on the floor, and he’s doing this over and over again, flip, land, ping, flip, land, ping, not even noticing that I’m here. His head is oddly misshapen, like a flat basketball, only this flat basketball has a weird moldy patch in the middle, this being the man’s white mustache, and one eye is frozen in a squint like Popeye. He bites his lip with teeth that look like erasers every time the coin lands like he’s unpleased with the outcome, the odds are against him, it’s a stupid coin, man, you are so weird.
Finally, he looks up and sees me. “Buona sera,” he says. “La porta vuoi e accanto al congelatore.”
I walk up to the counter. My head is full of stones that shake with every step. If he can’t help me, I’m at least buying some ibuprofen. “Do you speak English? Parla inglese?”
“Si, I do.” The man flips the coin high and grabs it from the air with a clawed little nub of a hand. He hands it to me. “I said the door you want is next to the freezer. Just back there.” The melody of his voice is both soothing and creeping me out.
“Actually,” I say, refusing the coin, “I’m lost. Can you help me find my hotel on a map?”
“No maps here,” the man says, and he offers me the coin again. “But downstairs, they will help you get home.”
“Um…”
This guy’s trying to kidnap me, isn’t he?
The door next to the freezer suddenly opens. A pale, young woman in a white cocktail dress straight out of a 1960s happening glides down one of the aisles. She looks sixteen, but her drunken state…well, she could still be sixteen.
“Heading out, Ms. Lewton?” the old man calls to her.
“What?” she says in an American accent. “Oh, yeah, back to the haunt.”
“See you next time, then.” The old man winks with his good eye, so I guess he blinks? He then sets his eyes on me and hands me the coin again. “Trust me,” he says in anything but a trustworthy voice.
“Thanks, but…” I inch away slowly and make my way to the backdoor. This is probably the dumbest thing I could do right now, but I figure anything that gets me out of the presence of this melted jack-o-lantern of a man will be good.
I head down a staircase of sharp right angles. It quickly changes direction every fifteen or so steps like a rigid bend in the limb of an action figure. Down I go. Still going down. All the way down. The echoes of my shoes on the steps compress into a dullness, which compresses my head even further. I need to squint even as it gets darker, just to try and lessen the pain, and still, it seems to get worse. Closing my eyes sends in a slideshow of Jo and me during the time before I met what’s-her-face. Jo smiling, Jo rubbing her fingers over my stubble, Jo in that black dress she wore on our first date—Jo happy. Jo happy with me. Then I see her now, going to bed, eyes still wet, her maybe pounding the pillow a few times pretending it’s my face. There’s nothing to worry about, sweetheart. Except maybe with the staircase still going down, I’m likely going to be knee-deep in the Earth’s core any minute.
Except now there’s a chatter that’s getting louder the further down I go—bar ambiance. Glasses are clinking and there’s drunken laugher and is that Brubeck’s “Take 5” playing on what I assume is the jukebox unless it’s an actual live jazz quartet? Am I heading towards a speakeasy? How is some prohibition throwback going to help me get home? There’s no one down here that’s going to be of any use.
My feet hit the final step, and I immediately want to run the billion stories back up.
Unicorns…
One unicorn anyway. It’s lapping up water from a trough next to the pool tables, and at the pool tables, something that looks like Bigfoot, seven feet tall and drenched in damp and dread-like hair, and he’s lining up his shot while a short (like super short), bow-legged man decked all in green with little tufts of orange hair puffing out from under his chin stands on a stool in order to get a better view, and at the bar, which looks like it’s made from petrified snakes, three people with the faces of cats are taking quick sips from their White Russians, and the bartender is huge, taller than Bigfoot, bald and with an egg-shaped head and a bacon-shaped grin, a hunch over his left shoulder that isn’t stopping him from mixing red drinks for this pale couple all in black, and the pale couple, the woman’s eyes are smeared with mascara and she’s seductively tracing a finely manicured finger around her lover’s finely manicured teeth and he takes a quick bite down on her finger, she flinches, and then he’s sucking on the finger like it’s a straw, and there’s a hot tub at the other side with only one person lounging in it, and it’s a mermaid, a mermaid.
Goblins and gremlins mingle in a booth. A dozen fairies or pixies or something small that is definitely not an insect and is leaving a trail of stardust behind them fly overhead. A red thing with horns is hitting on a green thing with horns and I don’t know which is which gender or if they even have genders.
Now the vampires are full on making out and the woman is in the man’s lap and the ogre has to slap a towel on the bar to keep them from even going as far as to dry hump.
Scream. I should scream. And run away. Get. Out.
I stumble off the last step as I turn around to head up again. My shoe makes a loud enough noise against the floor to at least get the attention of the ogre bartender. He nods at me. “Welcome,” he says in a Texan accent. “Sorry, we don’t have anything for you to drink, but please, take a seat until your ride comes.”
My what?
“No. No, no, no. No. No, no—”
“Hey, pal, I know it’s weird, but believe me. There’s a perfectly good seat right…” He’s about to point to one next to the vampires, but thinks against it. “Over there.” He points to one next to the cat people. One cat person gives me a meek wave with her (his?) paw.
I take in a big helping of breath. It doesn’t make the panic go away. “No,” I exhale, and I’m up the stairs again.
Only I bump into a flannel shirt and two furry claws are on my shoulders. “Watch it, wanker,” a British voice slurs into my face with a heat that is unmistakably from booze, unless it’s dog’s breath. Two yellow eyes are staring right back at me. The man has a bit of White Fang’s snout and a snarl that goes right with it. He pushes me back onto the bar floor and I see he’s not wearing any pants, but that’s just so his hind legs and tail can flourish. “I’m very—hic—I’m very partial to this shirt. It’s the only one that fits me on a full moon, you understand? So don’t, don’t drool on it, don’t drool…”
“You’re the one doing the drooling, John,” the bartender says.
“I beg your pardon, you gargantuan grotesquerie reject.”
The ogre nods approvingly “You’ve clearly been saving that one for a while. It would have sounded better without the alcohol-laden speech impediment, but I’ll give it to you. Come on, John, sit. Leave the specter alone and take a seat. I’ll give you a beer on the house for your incredible insult prowess.” The ogre pulls a glass from the shelf and fills it from one of the taps.
The beer draws the werewolf toward it like he’s a moth. “Sorry, chap,” he says as he brushes by me, and he takes his seat.
The bartender hands John his beer and then turns back to me. “Well?”
I’m surrounded by things that shouldn’t exist and each of these things probably has the capability to kill me, so I should sit down and order a drink.
I sit next to the cat people. They smile at me (if cats can even smile) and I give them a polite yet horrendously confused smile back. The bartender stands in front of me and puts his boulder fists on the serpentine bar. “Um, I’ll have a beer, any beer,” I say.
“I’m sorry, pal, like I said, I can’t serve you anything.” He must read something off my look, because then he says, “It’s not a discrimination thing. You’re sort of…beyond the capability of drinking.”
I blink. And blink some more. I could keep blinking and not say “What?” But I do say, “What?”
The ogre edges back, sighs. He shoots a glance toward the cats and shakes his head. “Gonna be blunt. You’re a ghost. Sorry.”
Now is an appropriate time to say “What?” again, only this one comes out like a squeak.
“Does this look like the sort of place that a living, breathing human would have access to? I’m afraid you’ve died, fairly recently, I would imagine, and now you’re here in order to go onto the next phase.”
“The…what?”
“Unless you would prefer to be a ghost for the rest of existence. Wandering, searching for a place to haunt, perhaps, just some phantom nomad. There’s some romance in it, but it’s really your call.”
“Wait, wait.” My pulse is in my head. My mind is melting. It’s goo. I suppose I’m goo, or ectoplasm. WHAT? “How did I die? I don’t remember…dying.”
“You wouldn’t,” the ogre says. “Not right away, at least. But…you look pretty unscathed, so I’d reckon something internal’s responsible for…for death. Anything hurting?”
Gulp. “I have a pretty bad headache.”
“Head trauma. You wouldn’t remember dying two times over.”
The cyclist? The impromptu Samba with the wall?
“Damn shame.” The ogre shakes his head. “I can’t imagine living—excuse me—with that. That headache ain’t ever going away. You’d best be taking that ferry.”
I slam my hands on the bar. The leprechaun swears behind me while the Sasquatch laughs at him. The leprechaun’s suddenly at my feet to pick up the cue ball and he looks up at me and shakes his head and then goes back to his game.
“I can’t be dead,” I say. “I’m not…I’m breathing. Right now. I’m…” I take in a big helping of air to prove it; it certainly feels satisfying.
“Sorry, friend.” The ogre frowns at me sympathetically. Then he sighs. “Here. You want to try for a drink?” He grabs a bottle and opens it in front of me.
I grab it for myself. I’m holding onto it with no problem. See? See this?
“Take a big sip,” says the ogre.
I do, and just to prove my worth and my life, I chug the whole thing down. Each swallow squeezes my temples, but I keep going and do away with the whole thing in twelve big swigs.
“Ha,” I say once the bottle is finished, and I bang it back down on the bar.
A cloud of foam erupts from the bottle and onto my hands.
I look closely at the bottle. It’s full.
The bartender points to the mirror behind him. I don’t want to look. I don’t want this nightmare confirmed, but my eyes look up and I’m see-through. I’m see-through. I’m bending into warped rainbows like a bubble in sunlight. The back wall is clearly visible right behind me. I look down at my actual hands and it looks like they’re covered in non-ghostly skin, but my reflection’s hand? Not so much. It’s not a trick because the ogre and the cat people look normal (or whatever). I’m the problem. I’m a ghost.
And now I’m shaking, or at least I think I’m shaking. Do ghosts shake? What?!
“What is this place exactly?” I have to ask it.
“It’s kind of like a hub, I guess,” says the ogre. “A place in between where the things regular folks don’t believe in can congregate, have a drink, you know, socialize. People like us don’t get out much, and if we do we’re kind of shunned and hated and misunderstood. We’re not really encouraged to be out there, but some can’t help it. It’s just the way of monsters, I guess. We do what we want, when we want. It’s in our bones. Well, for those of us who have bones; you don’t really have them anymore…In any case, ferry should be here in fifteen minutes if you’re itching to go right away.”
“Ferry?”
“Like I said, this is a hub. There’s the entrance, right over there, that blue door.” He points behind the hot tub where the mermaid is now passed out and compared with everything else in this place, the blue door is really unremarkable.
“What’s in there?”
“Whatever’s next. You’re done with whatever’s up there.”
“Sorry,” says one of the cat people.
“My girlfriend is up there. I just can’t leave her,” I say.
“You already did, pal,” the ogre says.
“No. She needs to know. She needs to know I’m gone. She’s gonna think…” I’m already backing toward the stairs.
I bump into something soft.
“You bloody wanker! Hic—Again?!”
I slip by the wolfman and I’m running up the stairs, up, up, up, each step tearing new holes in my skull, if my skull can even be torn anymore (something tells me it couldn’t be torn before). I’m back in the convenience store and outside just as quickly—
Into daylight?
It’s late afternoon by the looks of it. That’s impossible. That’s impossible! I just had a conversation with Shrek that lasted barely ten minutes.
Whatever. It’s daytime now and that’s the least of my worries, because right now, I need to get back to Jo, back to the hotel.
Easy, considering I’m still lost, and now I definitely can’t ask for directions.
“Where are you trying to go?”
I turn around. It’s the drunk teenager from last night, or thirty minutes ago. She’s swaying with the wind and looking at me with half-open eyes.
“Are you a ghost, too?” I ask her.
“Yup. Welcome to the club,” she says. “So where are you trying to get to? I hope it’s in Italy, because if it isn’t, you’re going to have trouble.”
“I need to get to my hotel.”
“Your hotel in Italy?”
“Yes.”
“Your hotel in Rome?”
“Yes!”
“Rome, Italy?”
“Are you kidding me?!”
The girl chuckles. “A little bit. You need to have some fun when you’re all spoooooooky.” She chuckles again and almost trips over her own feet. I’m glad I didn’t die drunk. (Actually, that might have been preferable.) She regains her balance and looks at me square in the eyes. “You just need to concentrate really, really, really hard on where you want to be. If you’re lucky, you’ll be there.”
“Do I need to click my heels, too?”
“I didn’t. Make up. The ghost rules,” she says, her neck bending down with each word so she’s looking at me from underneath her brow. “Just try it.”
What’s the harm? Eyes closed. I want to go to my hotel. I want to go to my hotel. I want to go to my hotel…
Eyes open.
I’m at my hotel.
Thanks, drunk girl.
“You’re welcome.” She’s still next to me. She looks at me and shrugs. “I don’t know. I’d rather be at my hotel, believe you me, only it was torn down in the 80s or something. I don’t know why I travel alongside you.”
I jog toward the building, but the weight of my headache sends me careening into the brick wall. The girl laughs behind me. Okay, so no overexertion, not if I want to keep my head on my shoulders. Just…Eyes closed. I want to be in my room. I want to be in my room…
I’m in my room.
It’s empty. There’s no one here. It doesn’t look like anyone has been here for a while. The bed is neat and there are mints on the pillows and there’s no luggage and the shampoo and soaps are new. There’s no sign whatsoever that Jo and I had ever occupied the room, or that anyone has occupied this room in days.
“Looks like she bailed, man.”
Why is this girl still here?
“Where would she go?” I say.
“Where are you from?” the girl says back. “Probably there.”
It doesn’t make sense. Time has obviously flown by, but how much time? Whatever the answer to that, the fact is Jo isn’t here anymore. She’s gone without a trace.
“She probably figured I was with some random Italian floozy,” I say.
“Were you?” asks the girl.
Ignoring her, I say, “She’s probably on an early flight back home right now, stranding me here. Hoping I lose my passport and have to busk my way back to the States.”
“That’s kind of cruel and elaborate.” The girl leans on the doorframe.
“I deserve cruel and elaborate as far as she’s concerned. Can’t she just let it go? I’m not going to do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“Cheat on her.”
“Ohhhhh. You just lost a little respect from me.”
“I’m crushed,” I sneer. “I apologized, and now she wants me to explain myself. Some things are beyond explanation!” I look at the window. There are little dash marks where the bird was pecking as if his life depended on it.
“You should probably feel bad,” the drunk girl proposes.
“I do! But…can’t we just move on? Why does everything need to be laid out in front of us to look at?”
“She might know you died,” the girl says. I look at her and she just shrugs. “Maybe she’s escorting the body home.”
Reality (or whatever it can be called in this plane of existence) comes tumbling down on top of me. I’m suddenly in Jo’s shoes when she learns I’ve died, and all the sadness and the pain and the anger that comes with that news. I’m gone, and not only did I leave her, but I left her without those answers. I left her hanging without any explanation for why I decided I could fool around with a girl I picked out of a crowd in a bar despite having a loving girlfriend at home. She’s left with no answer to why I couldn’t love her the way she loved me, or why I felt the need to throw it all away, or why I would even expect forgiveness. Am I that callous? Am I so blind to everything I do that I forget about the beautiful, sweet and one-of-a-kind girl right in front of me?
I am a monster.
I won’t be haunting her, but the wish for what she will never receive might. That’s my fault.
I sit down on the bed, put my head in my hands. This is just completely unfair.
“Hey, you realize if a maid walked in right now, she wouldn’t see anything,” the drunk girl says. “Just…nothing.”
She would see nothing. Me. Nothing.
I want to go back to the bar. I want to go back to the bar. I want…
I’m in front of the shop.
“Here again? I want to go somewhere new.” The drunk girl closes her eyes, starts muttering to herself. “I hate being dead!”
I don’t want to accidentally go with her, so I quickly shuffle my way into the store. The clerk is still there. “Buongiorno,” he says. “Welcome back.”
I can’t help but snicker. Where else am I going to go? Let’s see what this next phase is all about it.
Back to the bar and back to the ogre. “Find what you were looking for?” he asks.
“No.”
“Sorry,” says one of the cat people, still there, still drinking the same White Russians.
“So when’s this next ferry?” I say.
“You got good timing. Five minutes or so.”
“Great. Can I just hold a beer until then?”
“Sure thing, pal.” He hands me a bottle, leaves it unopened. I slide it across the snakeskin, passing it from hand to hand. I have to stop following it with my eyes; it’s stretching my head like silly putty.
“You got your coin?”
I look up at the bartender. “My…” The coin the shop clerk was trying to give me. What else could it be? “Why do I need a coin?”
“To pay the fare.”
“There’s a fare?”
“It’s a ferry, my friend.” The ogre raises an eyebrow at me, like I’m the one not making any sense.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll go grab my coin from the clerk.” I turn to head back to the stairs, but the ogre grabs my arm. “What?” I say.
“It won’t do any good. You don’t take your coin right away, then you forfeit your chance. It’s like your final decision. It’s a cruel game, I know, but it’s how the game is played.” He lets go of my arm, frowns at me sympathetically. “You’re stuck here for good, I’m afraid.”
I have to snicker again. This is ridiculous. Nothing can go right for me, can it? I can’t even do death correctly. I guess I can take solace in knowing I will be able to see Jo again, once I get the hang of this ghostly transport thing. I might not be able to explain things to her, but…
“Jo?”
She’s curled up in a booth, dressed in her pajamas, asleep with her hands tucked under her head. I zip over to her and shake her “Jo.” I shake her harder. She doesn’t wake. “Jo.” I shake her even harder. She’s Sleeping Beauty. She’s Snow White. She’s…she’s…
“Sorry.” A cat person is behind me. It puts a paw on my shoulder and lets out a quick purr.
I sit in the booth next to her, look up at the bartender. “She’s…” I want to cry. Can ghosts cry? Do we still have tear ducts?
The ogre limps his way from around the bar to stand by me. He flips a towel onto his shoulder and looks down at Jo. “Yeah,” he sighs. “She must have died in her sleep.”
“From what? She’s not even 30! She…”
The sleeping pills? She took the sleeping pills. Please tell me she was just having a hard time getting to sleep and didn’t take too many with the intention of leading to this. Please. Please.
Or worse, it was heartbreak. Can people actually die from that?
“So if she was asleep, that means she couldn’t get a coin?”
“You’ve gotta take it with your own free will,” says the ogre.
Of course. “Can you…can you give us a moment?”
The ogre nods and heads back to the bar. I lift Jo up a bit and place her head onto my lap. I stroke her hair softly, press my fingertips against her cold, freckled cheek, and I touch her arms and they’re so smooth and her fingers are so small and thin. She’s so beautiful. I took her for granted. Throughout our entire relationship…
“You scare me, Jo. It’s nothing you meant to do, but you freak me out. You loved me. I never imagined meeting someone and giving them…everything. Everything in me. I thought it was easier to just stand next to someone than it was to be with them. These are just excuses, I know that, you know that. I was afraid, plain and simple. And I took you for granted because of that. I wanted to ruin the best thing I had. The best thing was us. I’m so sorry, Jo. I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”
I lean my face against her head. Her hair still smells like the hotel shampoo, this bubble-gummy scent that can’t come close to how sweet she was in life.
“I wish I could hear you talk,” I say to her. “But I can’t. You’re stuck asleep. I’m stuck with this headache. Forever. This is our home now.” I laugh. “There’s no place like…”
Wait a second. Could I…No, there’s no way that could work. Right? There has to be a restriction put in place or TSA angels standing by with metal detecting wands. But what do I know? I’m a novice ghost, and even the drunk girl didn’t know how everything worked. What have I got to lose?
I close my eyes.
I want us to go to the next phase together. I want us to go to the next phase together. I want us…
PROMPT: "Alex gets more than he bargained for when he joins the circus."--Alex R.
I was thirteen years old when my little brother Derek was born, thankfully way passed the threat of any sibling rivalry. Derek was my treasure, a light in my life, some other cheesy sentiment that wouldn’t make how special he was any less true. He was my best friend, despite our large age gap, and he looked up to me in a way that no one ever will again, even if I ever have my own children.
Notice I’m talking about him the past tense?
That’s because he’s dead. Sorry to be so blunt, but it’s the truth. Derek is dead.
A lot of people tend to describe loss, whether it’s a break-up or a death in the family, like your heart being ripped from inside of you. No. Your heart remains inside your chest, only it’s fricasseed, marinated with poison and left between your ribs, an uncooked and toxic mess of muscle and plasma. You live with it. Everything you do is defined by it. You’re constantly looking back and reminding yourself of it, because it will never go away; it spreads over you and over time like a chill, until you’re finally the bitter and revenge-obsessed man you were somehow always destined to be.
At least that’s my experience.
Derek was murdered. Not by any human means: no one shot him or stabbed him or strangled him from behind. He didn’t piss off a stranger so much that they stalked him to the bus station and pushed him in front of the departing number 54. No crime of passion, no premeditated scheme to rid the world of such a beautiful soul. The culprit in question didn’t know any better and was just acting on instinct, but that didn’t make that fucking waste of matter any less deserving of what it had coming if I ever got my hands on it.
Derek was mauled by a lion.
It was the summer before Derek was supposed to go to college. Yale. Did I mention that he was a genius? He had the sharpest brain I’ve ever witnessed, able to deduce calculus problems in fifteen seconds flat, or enlighten a stranger on environmental law when they inquired about the litter problem in town, or devour a nine-hundred-page opus on the history of Uzbekistan, just because. I might be exaggerating, but only slightly, and only to get my point across that Derek was going to go somewhere. He was—and again, this is cliché, but it’s still the truth—he was going to be president. The one thing that was missing in his life was that, despite reading up on all corners of the planet, he had barely gone beyond our hometown borders, except for maybe that trip to the Grand Canyon when he was just a toddler, but he had no memory of that. He wanted to see the world. And he wanted to start with Africa. So the summer before his adult life would officially begin, he invited me to go on safari with him.
There’s no need to give all the gruesome details. All you need to know is that the lion snuck into the camp while our group was sleeping, safely enveloped in our mosquito nets, and of all the people it could have chosen for its snack, it chose my baby brother. It clawed through the net, took him by the leg, and dragged him out into the field and tore into him like it was nothing. Derek’s screams awoke the camp and everyone ran out to see. I caught a quick glimpse of the beast: it looked like any everyday lion, except my flashlight passed over two teardrop shaped scars next to is tail, as though they were tattoos representing the lion’s previous kills and he was now on his way to a third. The ensuing ruckus scared the thing away, but it had done its damage: Derek was beyond any possible repair.
They lie when they talk about the five stages of grief. They occur, all right, but they don’t go in order. It’s a bag of trail mix, and on any given day, you reach in and pick the mood you’re going to have at random, maybe going in for seconds or thirds the very same day, each morsel a different nut or carob chip. This is how it was for me for two years. Two long years of mixed and manic emotions that all added up to the simplest one: sadness. And I never reached the end of the bag, where the good stuff was supposed to be hiding—a healthy and delicious handful of acceptance. Derek was gone, no, taken, unfairly, by a stupid animal and nothing else mattered.
As you can imagine, my life kind of fell apart after that. My sullen demeanor caused me a demotion at work, but I didn’t care. I started to ignore my friends until they inevitably stopped calling, but I didn’t care. I found little solace in women, trolling bars for quick flings, and coming out the other side feeling more empty than usual, a hole that spiraled deeper and deeper. This I kind of cared about; loneliness, true loneliness, doesn’t help the grieving process.
My mother’s grieving process involved ignoring the pain as much as possible. She enjoyed glossing it over with cheap whims, temporary fun. Anything that could potentially bring a smile to her face would do, and anything that made the memory that she was ever a parent disappear would be better.
Something a son always wants to hear from their mother.
In any case, that’s how we ended up at the circus. She saw a flier and was immediately game, and called me as fast as she could: “Alex, Alex, the circus is coming to town.” Besides the necessary modern additions, like cars, trucks, GPS, a Twitter feed and a Facebook page, the William V. Raleigh Traveling Circus and Sideshow presented themselves as old-fashioned summer fun under the big top, moving the larger cargo, like their animals, by train, and harkening back to something you’d catch during the Depression era.
I guess in a sense it was for the two of us.
Like any good son, I humored my mother and joined her. It was a typical circus: crappy snacks (I ate them anyway), annoying clowns (I was never a fan), the smell of wet firewood mixed with animal piss (take my advice: bring nose plugs whenever going to the circus). In the giant, beach ball-colored tent, we bore witness to the trapeze, elephants, more annoying clowns…
Then the ringmaster, William V. Raleigh himself, a big and burly man with perpetual sunburn and veins bulging out of his neck like the trim on a pillow, stepped out in front of the audience. “Ladies and gentleman,” he proclaimed, “now ready to take their place in the center ring, one of the bravest women I know. She is here to show you proof that even the wildest beast can be tamed. May I introduce: Lucia Mendoza and her friend, Samson!”
The lion tamer stepped out of the dark. She was a tall and slender woman, decked in a glittery corset that sparkled blue and glimmered into her even bluer eyes. She had skin the color of redwood bark and a confident smile of milk-white teeth. She walked around the ring with an air of giddy self-importance, like she couldn’t believe she was there, either, and boy, were we in for a treat, and it was completely earned. And behind her, being rolled out in a cage…
The lion.
The lion.
I had no doubt in my mind that it was the same piece of shit feline who killed Derek. Everything about it—its shape, its scent, the look in its eyes—had been branded into my memory with a hot iron bar the moment I saw it taking the last few gnaws on my brother’s neck. But what solidified that this was indeed that same lion were the two teardrop scars near its tail.
There it was, being humiliated by the beautiful tamer, whipped into roaring and rolling over. The tamer indulged one audience member’s cries to stick her head in the lion’s mouth, and I saw that corks had been strategically placed on any tooth that could cause the most harm (so all of them). The once fierce and fearsome creature had been reduced to a sideshow (in the center ring of a high profile circus, but still).
It should have been enough to see this former king of the jungle and the bane of my existence made out to be such an impotent fool, but it wasn’t. I needed more. I needed blood.
I needed that lion to die.
The circus was in town for two more days, so I quickly put my affairs in order, made a spectacular scene in my office in order to get fired (because, why not?), and said goodbye to my mother without any explanation of where I was going. I packed up my clothes, left my apartment key in an envelope taped on the landlord’s door, and took a taxi to the outskirts of town.
I have no talents or skills, so the hulk of a ringmaster wasn’t too enthusiastic about this nobody’s sudden interest in going on the road with acrobats, bearded ladies and an assortment of wild animals. He sat at the desk in his trailer counting money and sticking the bundles in a drawer like a stereotypical man in show business. But I managed to paint a lie for him as vividly as I could.
“Mr. Raleigh, I’ve wanted to join the circus since I was four years old. My parents knew it was a lark. I knew it was a lark, so that’s why I didn’t actively pursue it. But I have nothing now. I just lost everything. And with your troupe in town at the exact same time…It’s destiny. It’s just destiny.
“I’ll do anything, sir, anything. Just to be a part of this. You want me to clean up the animal poop? Done. You want to shoot me out of a cannon? I’ll light the wick myself. Somehow. If I’m fast enough to hop in the cannon after lighting—I’ll train. Anything. I’m yours. Just let me be a part of this. Please.”
I’m lucky the ringmaster had some sympathy somewhere under those steroid-laden muscles. He gave me a job as part of the clean-up team, glorified janitors and handymen in charge of making sure everything was spic-and-span before and after every show. The net for the acrobats needed to be examined for frays before every performance and their swings were to be polished, but not to the point where their hands would slip, naturally, any idiot would know that. Every costume, no matter how scantily clad (not that there was much showing of skin to begin with, but they weren’t exactly conservative) needed to be washed and ironed. There couldn’t be one peanut shell left in the seats after the spotlight went dim. If a performer needed their trailer cleaned, I was their man (I and the other multipurpose people were given hammocks to sleep in; even the circus has a caste system). Every bottle of seltzer for the clowns needed to be full, and in the case of one temperamental clown named Crackers, it needed to have the right amount of carbonation, otherwise he would “spritz the stuff up my ass and give me a bubbly enema,” as he so lovingly put it.
The only thing that would take me closer to the animals was when I had to clean up after them. They were never in the train car when I came to shovel their feces into buckets with multiple hazardous waste stickers pasted on, and in any case, I lacked the key to the lion’s cage; the lion tamer was fine with cleaning up after her own animal, and so she held onto the key herself. The chances of getting close to that bastard cat were low. But even if I were to somehow get lucky, how was I going to kill the thing successfully and come out of the scheme unscathed? The answer had to involve a gun, and a good enough aim to insure that the lion would be dead in an instant.
The circus made stop after stop, delighting the masses (or scaring them, if they ever experienced that profane, seltzer obsessed clown on a bad day) across the country. I took note of the lion tamer’s schedule, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible; there were only a couple of times where she caught me following her and shot me the look of a disapproved mother.
At each stop, I would take a quick tour around the city or town, searching the shadiest bars for the shadiest figures sitting in the shadiest corners. I’d ask those shady characters if they knew where I could get my hands on a gun, and I was thrown out of many shady bars, apparently for being too shady.
Then one day, we were in a small town in Illinois. I was taking one of my strolls and found a tiny Irish pub, a hole in the wall with lime-green windowpanes and wooden carved leprechauns dancing over the door. This wouldn’t have been one of my usual spaces to check—too many bright colors—but considering I had had such poor luck with the dive-iest of bars, a place with even a fragment of light peeking through (not to mention four leaf clovers painted on the walls) didn’t seem like a bad change. I went inside.
The room was a lot more packed than I expected. A group of angry beach-blonde hooligans sat at the bar, eyes up to the soccer match on the television, cheering and groaning in unison. An older couple that looked like they were survivors of the potato famine rested in one of the booths, solemnly sipping on their pints and sharing a plate of fries. The bartender was a short, round woman with red curls hanging over her pale face, giving her the guise of barber shop pole in my peripherals.
This immediately did not look like the sort of place I’d find a man or woman who could help me get my hands on a gun, but like any frustrated man who was still mourning the death of a family member, I could never pass up the chance for a drink, so I stayed.
After two and a half pints and a double shot of whiskey, it became apparent that my lack of success when it came to felinicide was getting to me, and after another pint and a half and one more double shot of whiskey, I stopped caring and gave in to the numbness of it all. My memory is still hazy about what actually happened, but from what I can recall, I said fuck it to anonymity and declared to the whole bar that I was looking for a gun, screamed at the old couple, was deservedly cracked over the head with something pointy by one of the hooligans and, as usual, thrown out into the cold.
I woke up to a damp washcloth patting my forehead. My eyes fluttered open to the sight of blurs and swirls, and a soothing voice whispering, “Open them slowly. A little more time without regret will do you some good.”
I did as the voice said and gave myself another hour of blissful ignorance, though in reality it was probably more like five or six minutes. Then I opened my eyes fully, allowed the world to return to a higher definition, sat up slowly, and like clockwork, the regret came shooting through.
I was in a trailer. It was sparsely decorated, save for some violet curtains, shelves and tables packed with porcelain trinkets, and an infant’s mobile representing the planets hanging over the bed in which I lay.
“So. How was your night?”
She sat at the end of the bed in her pajamas, legs crossed and her hands in her lap. Her tone suggested a smirk, but her face gave only signs of concern. I had seen her a million times over the last several months and had clocked her schedule to a T, but this was the first time words were ever exchanged between us.
My own words took a while to move passed the six-foot thick ache that clouded my head, neck and, hell, entire fucking body, and I managed to grunt, “Yup,” followed by, “What happened?”
“I only know the end of the story,” Lucia said, “where you stumbled back into camp and passed out near the animal car. You’re lucky I found you before Mr. Raleigh did. He doesn’t abide alcohol.”
“Yeah. He’s more of a Muscletech kind of guy,” I said.
Lucia snickered, nodded and smiled. She didn’t smile with her teeth; it seemed she saved that for the stage.
“Thank you, for…saving me, I guess,” I said.
“Sure.” She got up and crossed over to the electric stove on the other side of the trailer. She put a frying pan on and took a carton of eggs from the mini-fridge. “I’m making some scrambled eggs if you’re hungry.”
My stomach got vertigo and sent a glare up to my throat. “No thanks,” I said. “Maybe just some coffee?”
“Next to you. It should still be warm.” She pointed to the small and slanted bedside table on my left. A beige mug sat precariously off center, elbows of steam oozing upwards toward the nearby window.
“Thanks,” I said as she began to crack the eggs and whisk them in a bowl. “I’m Alex, by the way.”
“Lucia.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re kind of a big deal.”
Lucia chuckled. “I think it’s Samson who’s more of the attraction. Everyone wants a piece of him.”
Just like that, the daze wore off and I realized the sort of luck I had stumbled into. This was my in.
“So…Do you…like…lions?” I asked, unable to mask the new pain in my body over the stupidity of the question. I hoped taking a sip of the coffee nonchalantly would be enough to stop any awkward moments from arising.
Lucia shot me that look that toed the line between smug and sympathetic. “I like my lion. I can’t speak about any others.”
“It takes a lot of guts to do what you do,” I said.
“It’s never been about guts. It’s just…It just is.” She poured the eggs into the frying pan and gave them a good scramble. “I wouldn’t be doing it if I ever thought I was in danger.”
“But it’s a lion. It’s a wild animal.”
“That’s why they call me a lion tamer.”
That awkward silence finally arose, so I did my best to ignore it by taking more tiny sips of my coffee. She removed a plate from the cupboard, and her hand lingered over a second one. “Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?”
“I’m sure, thanks,” I said. “Rain check.”
And so the next day, we had lunch together. And the day after that. And save for anytime she felt her lion needed a little more rehearsal, the next couple weeks or so saw a lot of Lucia.
But there was no sight of the lion outside of the show. I would occasionally ask questions about it and about Lucia’s history with it, but I never wanted to come off too obvious or two suspicious (as though someone having the intent to take revenge on the lion that killed his brother was a common thing lion tamers had to look out for). And Lucia was completely honest, telling me the story of how Samson was saved from poachers, and how her husband, now ex-husband, rescued it and brought it home with him for treatment at the zoo where he worked. Once it became established that Lucia and the lion had some kind of rapport, Lucia, already a clown for the circus, switched jobs and that was that.
Along with all the getting-to-know-you stuff, we would make each other laugh. She was very forward, often touching my hand or my knee once I said something funny, and she occasionally greeted me with a kiss on the cheek and said goodbye the same way. Our lunches soon went in danger of going long and we started earning disappointed looks from Mr. Raleigh every time he would walk by, so any time a lunch was cut short, dinner was put on the schedule, and then not long after that, it was put on the schedule permanently.
Suffice it to say, I could feel my heart expanding to make room for her. When I was with her, it was easy to contain, but every moment without her was spent trying to squeeze my heart down to its regular size, cooling it down to its normal temperature, remembering I had a mission, and it didn’t matter that Lucia was quite possibly the most amazing person I had ever met in my life and was so beautiful and warm and welcoming and hilarious and an absolute bright spot in my life that I hadn’t felt in years. She worked with the enemy, which in a sense made her the enemy. I could not fall in love with the enemy.
I fell in love with the enemy one night in July when the circus was packing up and ready to leave Missouri. I was in the tent, sweeping up the trash, when I heard a cough from across the way. It was Crackers, still in his clown costume, minus the big red nose, giving his face a skull-like quality with all the white makeup avoiding the center of his face, and the rainbow wig, revealing his balding and graying scalp. He chewed gum while leaning against a beam, the spitting image of every villainous asshole in the book. The mood in the tent went from pensive to volatile in three seconds flat.
“You’re a shitty person, Alex,” he yelled over to me.
It was hard to dispute that, even if it was meant as an insult and less as a statement of fact, so I said, “Okay,” and continued sweeping.
Crackers stomped over to me; each step came with a malicious honk from his long, red shoes. He trotted up to my spot in the stands and knocked the broom out of my hands. “Smell this,” he said, and he grabbed my head and shoved it down into his chest. I didn’t take a conscious sniff on Crackers’ command, but I did catch a whiff of something thick and wet, like a bucket of blood. Once he was sure I’d gotten a good enough smell, he threw my head back.
“My costume smells like a goddamn slaughterhouse. Are you washing my clothes in a bathtub of gizzards?”
“I use the same detergent I use for everyone else,” I said, and it was the truth. I didn’t know why his clothes smelled like that.
“Well it smells like you’re slacking off on mine. You know what it’s like when you’re trying to amuse a bunch of kids and those little bastards recoil from you because you fucking stink?”
“I can imagine.”
“No you can’t imagine because it’s not fucking happening to you!” Crackers got closer to my face. The aroma of pork loins flew into my nose. “I’m not saying you’re doing it on purpose, buddy, but the sheer fact that you’re completely and utterly fucking oblivious to it is even more disrespectful. So here’s the plan. Step one: wash my clothes better. Step two: let the fear that I’ll shove a juggling pin down your scrawny throat insure that you complete step one.”
“Crackers.”
We turned to the center ring. Lucia stood there, holding her lion’s whip at her side. Her eyes were slits, trained directly onto the clown.
“Back away from the man and scurry back to the mud you came from.”
“Or else what? You’ll whip me? Do I look like the kind of guy who gives a shit about pain? You know better than most, Lucy, I’m a sick individual. I would thrive on it. I’d love for you to go at me with that thing. You already have the corset. Just buy some thigh-high boots and meet me in my trailer—”
I pushed Crackers onto his back. His right hand caught the corner of one of the seats and he yelped in pain like a dog whose tail was stepped on. He clutched at his hand and a small amount of blood squirted through his fingers. He looked up at me with a snarl and his right eye twitched. But once he was on his feet, Lucia had already made her way up to us, whip at the ready.
“Yeah, you really do thrive,” she said.
Crackers stared at her for a while, then spit his gum into her face. I took a step forward, but Lucia stuck her hand out and held me back.
Crackers turned to me. “Just clean these like they’re your clothes,” he said, and he edged around Lucia and made his way out the tent.
Lucia put the arm down. She allowed a shudder to run through her, and then turned to me and gave me that toothless smile. “I’m making pasta. See you at eight.” She briefly took my hand and gave it a squeeze, and my mind shattered into a million heart-shaped pieces.
It was such a cliché. Torn between my sworn duty and the person that made my life whole. Obviously, I didn’t know how she felt about me, as her touchy-feely ways were more than misleading. But then there was all the time we spent together. The bond we had that we had formed that seemed to make the world around us fade and made nothing else matter. She had to feel something similar, even if it wasn’t the L-word. But I needed to kill that stupid lion. She probably would have had a problem with that, meaning any chance of the L-word on her end would go up in smoke.
Three weeks or so later, everything except for the lovelorn wailing in my head died down. I washed Crackers’ costume twice a day, before and after every show, but he would still leave passive aggressive notes on my hammock, describing both the scent of the costume and how he was going to shove various clown props into whatever orifice he was into that day. I managed to keep my composure around him, though I did often fear for my safety, especially when he started following me to my hammock every night, just hoping that the others on the clean-up team wouldn’t be there to act as witnesses. I also managed to keep my composure around Lucia, though every second spent in her presence was a second spent controlling the urge to bend down on one knee and propose to her with a peanut shell that was somewhat ring-shaped.
Then early one morning, Lucia woke me up with a light shake. “I want to show you something,” she whispered. I flopped out of the hammock and followed her to her trailer. She retrieved a steak wrapped in butcher paper and a black, zipped up pouch that looked like a shaving kit. “Okay,” she said, and the led me to the animal car. It took me longer than it should have, but I realized what she was doing.
There it was, awake in its cage, lazing about like it was a normal, less murderous cat. It watched us we approached the cage and let out a wide and intimidating yawn. It’s mane was matted, a ‘do that would have looked charming on a human being, but just made the lion look dumb.
Lucia dropped the steak onto a nearby crate. She then zipped open the pouch and revealed a vial full of some kind of liquid. She inserted a syringe into the vial and filled it up, and then she injected the needle into the steak. She placed everything back into the pouch, approached the cage, unlocked it with her key, and stepped in slowly.
“Hey, Samson,” she said. Lucia continued to inch towards the lion and slowly put a hand out to pet it. The lion miraculously let it all happen, and for a second I could have sworn I heard the thing purring. Lucia brushed her hand through his mane for a few moments, smoothing it out, perfecting that ‘do. She stepped out of the cage, retrieved the steak and dropped it on the floor. In a second, the lion forgot all about Lucia and sunk his teeth into his breakfast. Lucia walked out of the cage, closed the door, but left it unlocked. I pointed that out.
“It’s okay. Trust me,” she said.
“What did you want to show me?” I asked.
“I just wanted to share this with you. This is how I cork his teeth. Samson would never bite me, but I need to take precautions for insurance purposes. As though the force of his jaw snapping down on my head is lessened because of the cork.” She scoffed. “I put tranquilizer in the steak to calm him down. He hates the cork, so this is the only way it can be done. In thirty minutes, he’ll become lucid, or even just fall asleep. It’s not really humane, but it works better than catnip.”
So we waited, listening to Samson chomp and tear apart the steak just like he chomped and tore apart my brother. It was the only sound as the two of us sat side by side on two crates and watched. My left hand and her right were mere centimeters apart.
“Crackers and I were partners,” she eventually said. “Clown partners, if that makes any sense. Crackers and Lucy. He always had kind of a thing for me, I could tell, but I was married to Andres so he had to deal with it. He used to be sweet. He hid all the garbage in his soul really well.
“When Samson came into our lives, my daughter had just turned one. It seemed kind of…reckless to have a baby around a lion, but there was just something about Samson that, I don’t know, calmed Alyssa down. Samson was a gentle giant, I guess. So when I decided to switch acts, it only felt natural. The only person to throw a fit and get to the point of threats was Crackers. He didn’t want me to leave him. Which led to him filling my trailer with gas and making it explode.”
I looked over at her. She kept her eyes forward, the images of the past no doubt unfurling before her like film on a spool.
“Crackers says he didn’t do it, but come on.”
“Let me guess,” I said, but before I could even relay what I thought had happened, Lucia said, “Yes.”
“I was buying the mobile when it happened. Andres was out for a walk with Alyssa, they were approaching the trailer, and boom. Andres got some burns and scratches; Alyssa…He thought we were all home. Crackers. Or he at least I thought I was home…
“You know why I’m able to tame Samson so well? Because we have a mutual understanding. I love him, and he loves me. He may be an animal, but that doesn’t matter to him. All that matters is the feeling, and that moment in which he feels it. The now. I try to live up to that standard. It’s hard, but…He helped me get through what happened to Alyssa, and my marriage crumbling, and having to see that red-nosed fuck’s psychotic smile every day…”
“Why don’t you just leave?” I asked.
“I don't have anywhere else to go. And where am I going to go with a six-hundred pound lion?”
It was silent again. Samson had resumed his place in at the end of his cage. He let out another yawn and then sprawled out over the floor with his eyes closed. The only thing left was his heavy breathing.
“Today’s the anniversary,” Lucia said.
“Of when it happened?”
She nodded. “All the people here—besides Crackers, obviously—they’re wonderful. But I’ve never had someone around I…I’m really grateful you’re here, Alex. You and Samson are the best parts of my life right now.”
She took my hand and gave it that paralyzing squeeze. I could feel sweat dotting my forehead and my cheeks as they flushed. My mouth became a vapid wasteland and my chin shook.
“I love you.”
The words just spilled out of me.
Lucia smiled her toothless smile. “I love you, too.”
Then she let go of my hand and went back into the cage.
I was lost. What had just happened? Mine was a declaration of love, but was hers? Shouldn’t we have just started kissing, or was that going to come after she finished corking the lion’s teeth?
I stood up. “I love you,” I said again.
She turned back at me, smiled and nodded.
I stepped forward to the entrance of the cage, rubbed my hand through my hair. “No, in…I’m in love with you. I…”
Lucia froze. She looked over her shoulder at me with that concerned yet affable expression. Only this time there was more sadness in it. Right away I knew what she would say. I didn’t know the exact wording, but only heartbreak was going to come out of her mouth.
“Alex…” she said. She bit her lower lip.
I didn’t want to hear the heartbreak.
“I…I don’t—“
Tears welled up in my eyes and I was looking at the world from the inside of a fish tank. Of course this is how it would be. Of course I would fill the hole that Derek left two years ago, and of course that void would be dug open by the sweet and bullshit drill of rejection. I couldn’t face this (even with my sight temporarily liquefied), so I made my way out of the car, tripping on a couple crates and adding bruises to my shins to go with the bruises to my ego.
“Alex!”
I was out the door.
And I bumped right into Mr. Raleigh’s burly chest.
“Alex. Just the man I was looking for. Can you come to my trailer for a moment?”
“Sure,” I said, and I sniffed the tears back in. Anything to get away from that moment, to bury it in the present day and pretend it never happened.
Mr. Raleigh led the way to his trailer and opened the door for me. Once inside, I nearly doubled back right into the ringmaster. Crackers sat across from Mr. Raleigh’s desk, small dabs white make-up smeared over his forehead and over his scowl. He ground his teeth at me and clutched tighter onto the armrests of his chair. Mr. Raleigh pushed past me and took a seat at his desk.
“Crackers here has a complaint against you,” Mr. Raleigh explained.
Perfect. More accusations from a homicidal asshole clown.
“He says you haven’t been washing his costume properly.”
I took a deep breath. “I have drenched his clothes in lavender detergents over and over again. If he still smells something, then maybe the problem’s in his nose, or better yet, in his head.”
Crackers stood from the chair suddenly and knocked it the floor, but before he could attempt any kind of attack, Mr. Raleigh spoke up, “Stop. Crackers, pick up the chair and sit like a gentleman. I’ll expect the same attitude from you, Alex. No snide remarks”
Crackers did as he was told. I resigned myself to not speaking again for the rest of this meeting, which thankfully turned out to be short. Mr. Raleigh just gave me firm and precise orders to make sure Crackers’ costume no longer smelled like a fridge after a power outage, and he seemed sure that would be the end of it.
Crackers caught up with me upon exiting the trailer and slammed me up against a popcorn cart. Clearly this wasn’t over.
“You having a laugh at all this?” he sneered.
“Laughs are your department,” I said. He couldn’t take the joke and tightened his grip on my shirt, so I followed up with, “I could give two shits about you or what you wear. Now let me go.”
“Why? You uncomfortable? You don’t like it when someone’s getting up close and personal with you?” He pressed up closer against me, rubbed his crotch up against my thigh. “Then maybe you shouldn’t incur my wrath with your shoddy laundry—“
I slammed my leg up into his balls as hard as I could. Crackers let out a squeaky “oof” and backed away from me. I made him back away a little further with a punch to his nose; I heard the bridge splinter, like someone pulling apart a bunch of wet Popsicle sticks. Crackers fell onto the ground and curled up into a ball, one hand on his face, the other between his legs. Blood dripped onto his shirtsleeve. He looked up at me, but I can’t be sure he saw me behind all the rage.
I just stared down at him with pity. “Drop the shirt off at my station if you want the blood taken out.” And I walked away.
I didn’t sleep that night, or the next few nights, and not just because I expected Crackers to show up and assume the horror movie position he’d clearly been auditioning for all his life. Lucia kept racing through my mind. First her image, then just her name. Whatever it was, it filled me with bile. She didn’t love me. She didn’t have to love me, but that didn’t make it any less painful. Nothing is worse than being so certain of something, only to learn the rest of the world sees it another way, which means you’re wrong, you’re stupid, you’re alone.
I avoided her completely. I would see her heading in my direction, and I would turn around, double back and go the long way to wherever I needed to go. She would yell after me what she was making for dinner that night, but I was fine with finding something in town and eating out, eating away from her. She was suddenly the enemy again. Not so much out of sadness or even anger, but rather out of necessity. I needed her to be the enemy, because that way, I had no problem taking Samson out and getting the fuck out of there.
At the end of the week, the circus began packing up for the drive to the next town. These were always hectic times despite everyone knowing what their jobs were and how they should be done, but the entire company approached the dismantling as though it had a deadline that, if missed, meant the world would explode. What this meant is that everyone would be distracted. What this meant is that Lucia would be out of her trailer for a good chunk of time.
This meant Samson would be left unattended.
I watched Lucia’s trailer from a distance, waiting for her to leave. When she finally did, I zipped over to her door. I jimmied (or rather, cracked) it open with the shovel I used to dispose of the animal shit, and slipped inside. I found a steak in her fridge, and located the black pouch with the tranquilizer. I filled a syringe, stuck it in the steak and emptied the contents into it. I took another vial and added another dose, just to be safe. Then I made my way to the animal car. I would feed Samson his last meal, wait till he passed out, and then take the shovel to him until he was dead.
And after that…
I went inside the animal car. Made my way up to the cage. Samson was pacing back and forth as though he was impatiently waiting for me. His eyes fixed onto me and he stopped. I shuffled closer and held the steak up. Samson licked the lips he didn’t have. I reached for the door…
And realized I didn’t have the key.
In my haste and idiocy, I forgot to get the key to the stupid cage.
“Shit.”
I could jimmy the cage door with the shovel again, but my limited knowledge of physics told me that would probably be a waste of time, not to mention it would rile up the hungry beast in front of me to the point where even looking at it would be suicide. I’d have to go back to Lucia’s trailer and hope that they were there and she didn’t have them herself. It would take a while for Samson to lose consciousness, though, so I tossed the steak through the bars. It landed right at Samson’s feet, but he kept his eyes on me.
“Eat it.”
Nothing. Just more of the same blank stare.
“Eat it, you useless fuck.”
“Oh, of course it was you.”
I turned. Crackers slid the car door closed behind him. He was in full clown gear; from my position, I couldn’t tell if he was wearing his red nose or if his real nose was just very swollen. “I got your note. What do you want?” he asked.
“What?” Out of the corner of my eye, Samson was still taking his sudden hunger strike.
“Did you want to apologize? Because we are far passed the point of apology.” He took a tuft of his outfit and brought it to his nose. “I still stink, after all.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Crackers,” I said. “Change your name to ‘Beefy.’”
Crackers hissed a laugh. “That’s good, that’s good. You’re choosing to still kid around. You know what my next move is?” He moved forward slyly. “It should be a no-brainer. The only logical course of action for me to take is pure and swift vengeance.” From the deep caverns of the pockets of his clown pants, he pulled out a small and barbeque sauce-stained knife.
Once I realized what was about to happen, I figured that it probably wasn’t barbeque sauce.
Maybe it was the blood of the last janitor that crossed him.
Crackers charged at me. I lifted the shovel in front of me and swung, but Crackers ducked and swung his own weapon. He slashed at my stomach and managed to make a thin slice in my shirt. I backed into a crate; a corner slid between two vertebrae and agony swept up and down my body.
Then Crackers was on top of me, aiming the knife at my heart. My hands held his wrists, tried to push him away, but my entire body had turned into sand in an hourglass. Crackers looked down at me with a wicked smile. His teeth were chattering with delight as he strained to move the knife closer and closer.
I thought, Why fight?
Closer…
There’s nothing for me here.
Closer…
I’m going to see my brother.
Clos—
A shriek. The weight lifted off of me. More screams that were quickly muffled under the sound of moist chewing.
I stared up at the ceiling for a long while before easing myself up and bracing myself against the crate that apparently hit the core funny bone that connected to every nerve in my body. To my right, Samson was out of his cage. He feasted upon Crackers’ torso. The costume was torn away, the skin of his belly flapping over it like drawn red velvet curtains. The clown’s head lay slack in an awkward fashion, the wicked smile now as vacant as his eyes now were, wide and frozen.
Samson took one final mouthful of Crackers, then stared up at me. He blinked, and then moved back into his cage. The door was wide open, unlocked. Samson bent down and lapped up the steak with his tongue.
I shook uncontrollably as I tried to stand. The wobbles continued as I absentmindedly made my way for the door like I was never there.
The door opened before I was even halfway. Lucia stood on the front step. Her eyes went from me to the lion to the dead clown, and then back to me. She jogged over. “Oh, God. Alex.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“I hate clowns,” I said dryly.
She chuckled sympathetically, then sat me down on a crate. Only the sounds of our breathing and Samson taking the last bites of his dessert filled the car. Lucia looked over at Crackers’ body. She took a breath. “I gave him a note that said to be here.”
That was all she needed to say for me to understand what happened. “You…” I swallowed. “You left the door unlocked? You made his costumes smell like meat?”
She nodded. “He killed my baby.” She shook her head, started to say more, but the words got caught on something and stayed stuck in her throat. She looked down at her feet. “He killed my baby.”
Samson gave out a loud and sad yawn and fell back onto his side, eyes closed. Lucia went over to him. She put her hands on his stomach as it rose slowly. She looked back at me. “What were you doing here?”
I told her. I didn’t even hesitate. I told her about Derek. About my quest for revenge. About my dilemma. About how sorry I was. She remained in the cage for the whole tale, stone-faced, her hand on Samson, petting him softly. Finally, once I was finished, she stood up. “Come over here,” she said.
Part of me thought she was going to lock me in the cage with Samson until he woke up and decided he was hungry again. But I thought better than that and stepped into the cage. Lucia stepped back and gave Samson and me some room. She nodded towards the lion.
I crouched down and put my hand on Samson’s neck. He felt like carpet, not too soft, not too coarse. He was warm like sleep under flannel sheets. I could smell the blood still fresh on his face, under his black nose. He was peaceful. And I owed him my life.
Just like that, all anger was gone. My need to avenge my brother evaporated into the air. The past two years seemed to stretch further and further away in my memory like a rubber band pulled to its limit, only this was not going to snap back and leave a thick welt. Derek was gone, and I would miss him forever, but his death no longer drove my every breath. I could now think of it all with a melancholy fondness, and that hole seemed to fill itself up again.
“I understand,” Lucia said behind me. “Better than most.”
I took my hand from the lion and stood. Lucia and I looked at each other for a long time. Then she wrapped her arms around me and we held each other tightly. This wasn’t romantic, nor was it sorrowful. It was more out of gratitude. Gratitude for coming into each other’s lives when everything seemed to be broken. It was just a mutual acknowledgement: you are my best friend, and that will never change, even if we never see each other again.
An hour later she was gone. I don’t know when or how she managed to slip away, but once Crackers’ body was discovered, Lucia the lion tamer and her friend Samson were gone, along with a pickup truck, her trailer and several bill folds from Mr. Raleigh’s desk. I did my best to explain the situation to Mr. Raleigh and the police, trying to leave out the parts that suggested premeditation. Mr. Raleigh was furious, but he took the position of “the show must go on,” and it was soon off to the next town.
I decided to stay behind. Find something new. Take a page out of Lucia’s book.
I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. But that’s not a problem for me. I know she’s okay. I like to picture the same thing every time I close my eyes: Lucia at the wheel and the open road in front of her like a dumb and obvious metaphor at the end of a film. Samson is in the bed of the truck, drenched in a tarp to camouflage the fact that there’s a frickin’ lion hitching a ride. Lucia doesn’t know where she’s going—not many places are going to take a wanted woman and her feral pet in with them—but she doesn’t care. She has the air, she has the earth, and she has her companion. One day she’ll find a new home for her and her lion, but all that matters right now is now. Forget what’s in front and forget what’s behind. Now is what matters. And the realization brings that meek little smile to her beautiful face, and one to mine.
PROMPT: "Visitors from the future discovered we were all robots."--Russ S.
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
Gyp backed away from the examination table and leaned against the sink. His hand slipped a bit, some excess water having sprayed all over the place when Yoz entered the lab with an annoying whistle, something screeching and torturous in Gyp’s delicate ears. He stuck his hand under the nearby QUICK lamp, a gust of acrid air blew through his fingers and his hand was wet no more. His mind, however, remained unchanged: positively boggled.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Gyp repeated.
“What doesn’t?” Yoz asked from across the room. His eyes remained glued to the eyepiece of his microscope. His left hand clicked the coarse adjustment back and forth as though playing to the beat of a rhythm only he could hear. Yoz was always playing, finding some sort of game in his work and inviting no one else to play along. How else was he supposed to end up the winner and have complete strangers kiss his ass?
“Look at this femur,” Gyp said, not taking his own focus away from the bone that lay in front of him.
“I’m busy looking at these cancer cells. Don’t tell me your leg is more exciting, because that’s just not the case.”
“It’s not about excitement…Just, please, come over here and look what I found.”
Yoz sighed, the irritation no doubt surging through him. It wasn’t like he and Gyp had to mask their discontent for one another, but the lack of courtesy Yoz had for Gyp definitely made the lab something oft referenced during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: a hostile work environment. Gyp at least was nice enough to stuff his true feelings down, maybe release an eye roll when Yoz’s back was turned. He was not one of the ones who would bow down and, what was that other twentieth century phrase? That offensive one? Bend over.
Yoz ambled across the room, his metal-heeled shows clicking against the blue tiles on the floor. His round body seemed to bounce with every step, as if he was made of that ancient substance known as rubber. But he isn’t made of rubber, Gyp thought. He’s just another carbon-based life form, like me. Isn’t he? Aren’t I? If this bone is any indication of…something…
Yoz stopped next to Gyp, put his back against the sink, crossed his arms and huffed, his shoulders dropping, his head tilting, his aura uninterested and his mind still at his precious diseases. “So?”
Gyp lifted up the bone. He directed Yoz’s attention to the spot at which he had been chipping away for some time. It resembled the layers of the Earth’s crust, when the Earth resembled more of a ball and less of a broken cookie. “So we’ve got the femur. We have the osseous tissue, the marrow, the endosteum, the periosteum—”
“Hey, how about we quit the expository first grade anatomy lesson and get to the point,” Yoz said.
Gyp scowled, but skipped to the end anyway. “Look at this.” He grabbed the iron pick he had been using to dig the hole. He held it across from the bone in his other hand.
Yoz looked predictably unimpressed.
Until Gyp released the pick and it shot into the hole on its own volition, like one of those sporting arrows they found during medieval times.
Now Yoz’s mouth dropped.
“Yeah,” Gyp said.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Gyp said.
Yoz snatched the bone from Gyp’s hands and tried to pull the pick out. He had to place it on the examination table in order to get the proper leverage; after six good tugs, the pick was finally free. “It’s magnetized?”
“It looks that way.”
“This person must have been exposed to some kind of, well, magnets,” Yoz posited.
“But it only acted like a magnet once I got to that layer of the femur. I’ve been using the same tools the whole time, and it just started to do this, once I got to this specific layer.”
Yoz furrowed his brow, then removed one of his gloves.
“What are you doing?”
Yoz dipped a finger into the bone. He grimaced like he was inseminating one of those four-legged creatures they had discovered roaming the fields of 18th century England, those black and white ones that had pink areola-like appendages underneath their bodies. He did this for a while until his grimace morphed into something else, something near frightened.
“Is that metal?”
After Gyp felt for himself, the two of them bagged the bone and quickly trotted out of the lab toward Rez’s office.
Gyp didn’t know what they were going to tell their supervisor. He had no idea what they had discovered, and he wagered Yoz was just as lost as he was (though he would never admit it). There was metal, magnetic metal, inside of a human’s thighbone from 2012 A.D. This was a human who had, according to their records, received no type of surgery, no implants of any kind, was in perfect health when they died. Gyp wanted to get into this business to learn all he could about post-historic homo sapiens, but he never in a million years, backwards or forwards, could have predicted he would find something like this. Whatever this was.
Rez’s office was at the far end of the station. The holographic door was not like the others in this section, but rather it was designed to extenuate Rez’s importance. It was based off the doors a team had witnessed on their journey back to 13th century France, something fit for a king, etched with a dozen or so gold crosses that apparently had some significance to people on Earth in the time before the exodus. Gyp never understood what all the fuss was about; he lived way above the clouds and saw no sign of a bearded man in sandals anywhere, let alone the structure to which he was supposedly nailed and killed.
Gyp and Yoz froze in front of the door and waited to be scanned. There was a small ping and the monarch’s door drizzled into something more translucent. Gyp and Yoz stepped through.
Compared to the door, Rez’s office was rather bleak. Black with white luminescence shooting through the walls, it gave the impression to those who stepped foot in it that they were walking in space, a sensation only amplified by the fact that Rez had a magnificent view of the remnants of Earth as it hung dilapidated among the stars, a few rocky pieces scattered beneath it like bread crumbs. Every time Gyp walked into the office, he was filled with a sudden emptiness. This is what we came from, he would often think. And this is where we’re gonna end up.
Rez himself sat at his desk, something that had been crafted out of many shards of obsidian found during the days of early Man. The sharp edges of the desk only mirrored the sharp edges of Gyp’s boss: a nose that jutted out like a corner; eyes that slanted inwards and made a W of his face. Every time he would meet Gyp’s eyes, it was quick and jolting, like getting stabbed.
“Doctors,” Rez said, rising from his seat. He gestured to two spots in front of the desk. A foggy white light shined from the floor and two clear platforms rose into the air and hovered. Gyp and Yoz took their seats.
“Something on your faces tells me this is urgent,” Rez said.
“Maybe,” Gyp replied.
“Maybe?”
“Yes. Maybe. We don’t know.”
“Then why the hell are you here?” Rez asked.
Before Gyp could respond, Yoz cut in. “We found something absolutely batshit insane, sir.” Yoz didn’t treat Rez as an authority figure. He treated him like he treated everyone else: beneath him, and therefore not worthy of being shown respect. Everything was casual to Yoz because Yoz was the best and wow he such an asshole.
Yoz began to explain their findings. All the while, Rez stared at a spot on his desk, his hand on his chin, nodding. Once Yoz was finished, Rez stood up from his seat and stared out at the destroyed planet. Gyp couldn’t help but remember what he had seen in the archives, the films old humans used to watch, and what they used to call clichés. Rez, at this moment, was acting very cliché.
“Gentlemen, during your research, what have you surmised about the human race? Before the Great Exodus?” Rez asked.
Gyp and Yoz looked at each other. Where to begin? The whole “religion” thing, sure. There was an extended focus on these beings known as “celebrities,” their stature almost godlike. That even reached as far back as the Neanderthal days, when one member of the pack seemed to be worshipped by the rest.
Gyp knew what to say. “They were born to worship.” He could feel Yoz’s eyes daggering into him, all beady, all envious. Gyp continued, “People, beings, either real or fabricated.”
Rez whipped around to face them. “Yes. But think about this: why would anyone want to live under the thumb of someone, or something? What kind of life would that be?” He took a seat back at his desk, leaned forward. His eyes contained a hint of malice, something that sent a chill down Gyp’s back, like electricity.
“Not a great one,” Yoz said.
“So, imagine this,” Rez continued. “However the human race came to be—evolution, God, whatever the case may be—that creator had to insure that his creations would have total devotion to him.”
“Or her,” Gyp said.
Rez shot him a more menacing look and Gyp had to look away.
“Or it,” Yoz said.
Now it was Yoz’s turn to avert his gaze.
Rez kept going. “Granted, he had to account for some error, malfunctions here and there, but the best way to insure this type of blind devotion…was to program it. Like a computer.”
The wheels started spinning on Gyp’s head. Rez can’t be serious. He can’t be saying what I think he’s saying.
Yoz was quicker to the draw. “Ancient humans were robots?!”
Rez broke off a piece of his desk, leaped from his chair, hurdled over the desk and slammed the obsidian into Yoz’s chest. Yoz fell off the hovering platform onto his back, Rez still on top of him, stabbing Yoz over and over again like he was digging through the femur to the magnetic center. Gyp backed away, closed his eyes, only listened to the sounds of his lab partner being hacked to pieces.
The hacking stopped. Gyp looked up. Yoz was in a bloody mess on the floor, his dead eyes fixed on the ceiling, that black void, the place he inevitably will end up. Rez was on his feet, obsidian drooling blood in his left hand, a subtle sheen every time the white lights reflected off of it.
Gyp could only think of one word to say before Rez became feral again. “Don’t?”
Rez charged forward. Without thinking, Gyp flailed his arms around, reaching for anything. His fingers suddenly grasped against something. It felt hard, it felt cold. It felt like it might save his life. He brought it forward and smashed it into the side of Rez’s face just as his supervisor, now former supervisor, was about to get him.
An eerie silence filled the room. Gyp watched the broken Earth, all alone out there. He looked over to Rez’s body. He was dead all right, no question, his body sprawled in an awkward heap.
There was something else, though. The object Gyp had used to defend himself was a metal plaque, commemorating Rez’s many years at their lab. This plaque was no longer in Gyp’s hands, nor was it on the floor.
It was imbedded into the back of Rez’s head, just behind the ears, and sparks were shooting out of the wound.
Gyp carefully crawled over the body. He knelt down over the plaque, making sure the sparks wouldn’t fly onto his knees. He tried pulling the plaque out of Rez’s skull; after six good tugs, the plaque was finally free. Gyp looked closer at the wound, using the plaque to spread it open even wider as he didn’t have any gloves to wear. Sure enough, he saw where the sparks were coming from: exposed wires, surrounded by the same kind of metal in the femur, the wires being one layer deeper.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Gyp said. Without thinking, he looked up at the ceiling, at the void. He said, “Is this the way it is? Are we all just…Just things meant to boost your ego?”
Gyp’s eyes went dark as he was remotely powered down.
PROMPT: "Once you get over the smell and contents, it tastes pretty good."--Nathan C.
One quick bite. That’s all. That’s all it takes. Down the hatch, and then you’re done. Just like when Mom would feed you as a baby. Here comes the airplane. Then an airplane noise. Then you’re fed and all is well. Until you spit up because you’re a baby and that’s what babies do. But now you’re an adult. You have better control over your digestion. Right? Fuck! Man the fuck up and eat. EAT.
“Jay? Are you okay?”
Shit, how long have you been staring at your plate? Look her in the eyes. No, not fast. Casual. Be casual. Everything’s good. Everything’s great. Except for this monstrosity of a meal in front of you, everything is fan-fucking-tastic.
“Yeah.” Your voice cracked. Your voice fucking cracked. She thinks you’re a loser. You are a loser. You’re not even eating your fucking meal. You’re an anorexic loser. Eat!
“You’ve just been very quiet.”
“Oh.” Oh? That’s what you’re gonna go with? Oh? Look at the wordsmith we’ve got here. A regular Dickens. A master conversationalist. Oh. You pathetic dipshit. “I was just…thinking.” How is that any better? Now she’s gonna ask you what you were thinking about. Then you’ll have to lie on top of a lie on top of a lie. You’re starting out with lies. Lies, lies, lies, everywhere, you goddamn liar, holy fucking shit.
Mary doesn’t say anything. She’s dropping it. Oh, thank Christ, she’s dropping it. There, you have nothing to worry about. Except this thin slab of meat in front of you, taunting you, making fun of you, pointing out how much of a waste of space you are, yuck, it’s so disgusting.
You couldn’t just tell her you were a vegetarian, could you? No, you had to try to impress her. You wanted to prove you had things in common. “Where do you wanna go for dinner?” “No preference.” “What about House of Prime Rib?” “Yeah…Yeah, sure, I love that place.” You dumb motherfucker. It’s only your second date and you not only had to agree to go a deathly expensive restaurant, but one where you couldn’t eat a goddamn thing because Mom was a stupid health nut and ruined your stomach forever. Idiocy, thy name is Jay.
“So…Where’d you grow up?” Good. She’s starting up the ol’ Getting to Know You game again. This can act as a distraction from your reluctance to stick a bloody chunk of dead animal down your throat. Go into a long, drawn out monologue about your childhood, about the bullies that teased you and pushed you in the mud; about that one time where you fought back and slapped one of those bullies and ended up getting in trouble for it; about your younger sister and when she thought she could fly and almost jumped off the roof until you caught her in the nick of time and rescued her—Yeah, that story, that’ll paint you as a hero, and make you look golden in Mary’s eyes. Just ease into now. Try and lead the conversation in that direction. Ease nice and gently—
“I saved my sister’s life.”
Very gentle, you moron. That came out of nowhere. You’re forcing the conversation now like the narcissistic douche you are. Well, fuck, too late, now you gotta see where this goes.
“Wow, really? How did that happen?”
She’s going for it. She doesn’t look uncomfortable or reeling from awkwardness at all. You lucky bastard. Mary is pretty damn amazing. She’s way too good for you, but shit, she sees something in you. There’s nothing there, but she still sees something. So, fake it, pretend there’s something there. Go on with the story. That’ll impress her.
“Well, my sister’s retarded…” YOU STUPID, IDIOTIC—“I mean, she’s not all there, she has some problems in her, uh, head…” Good save. “And when she was four, we were just kind of, er, grasping this, that she was retar…mentally disabled—”
“What’s her name?”
“Louise. So anyway—”
“That’s funny, my mom’s named Louise.”
“Can I finish my story, please?”
Mary goes silent, and you are a rude piece of crap. You should just swear off all human interaction for a year. You’re the mentally disabled one. You’re the one who can’t even be honest with a woman and talk to her like a normal human person.
God, this meat smells disgusting.
“Sorry.” Good. Apologize for being a terse prick. “Your mom’s named Louise? That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Yeah.” She’s gone monotone. This is officially the worst second date ever. “You were saying about your sister?”
Poke at your chunk of dead cow to exemplify how sorry you are. It shows how badly you feel. There you go. Poke at that thing. Now, keep going. “So, Louise was really into Peter Pan. My parents showed her the movie and she ate it up.” AHH! Don’t mention anything having to do with eating! She’s going to realize you haven’t even touched—ah, fuck it, this is already a disaster, just turn into the skid and wait till this is over. “And one day she got it in her head that if she sprinkled herself with fairy dust—in this case, dust from under the sofa—she would be able to fly like Peter. So she did that, and then somehow found her way onto the roof. My mom was at the house at the time, having a book club meeting or something—”
“Oh, I just joined a book club. We’re reading As I Lay Dying.”
Jeez, does she like to interrupt or what? The first time, you didn’t need to snap at her, yeah, but now it’s developing into a pattern. What is her deal? Whatever, just drop it. Don’t go into it any further.
“You really like to interrupt stories, don’t you? I wonder how your book club meetings go. Can anyone even get a word in about how good Faulkner is?”
Mary’s lips purse tightly. Her breathing’s become audible, short and dangerous. Her hands are squeezing her knife and fork like she’s trying to flatten the handles.
This is called fucking up.
You should just walk out. Forget it. Mary will likely never talk to you again, so who cares if you leave her with the check? They probably won’t even charge her for your dinner, considering it hasn’t been touched—
What are you doing? Why are you cutting into it? Why are you directing it toward your mouth? Are you insane? Is this your way of shutting the fuck up? Because it’s not worth getting sick and vomiting all over the place. Sure, this date is absolutely broken beyond repair, but you think covering Mary in a thick stream of puke is going to make it any better. It’s not too late. Just drop the fork or something. Onto the floor. Then the bite is ruined forever. No five second rule. Not even a ten second rule. Then you can either bolt out of there or endure a good half hour of painful silence like the idiot you obviously are. Or you can wait for her to stand up and leave, which she totally should do and probably will. Just put. The fork. Down.
Great. Now you’re eating meat for the first time in your miserable life. Way to…
“This English Cut is not half bad.”
Mary reaches for her glass, aims, and now you’re covered in wine. Yeah, that seems about right. There she goes. Out of your life because you are the worst mistake ever born into existence. Someone cue the applause.
