Return to Goat Valley, volume two of The Procurement Man

RETURN TO GOAT VALLEY

By Toadsgoboad

Big Teeth and Prominent Noses

The Snow Globe Cooperative, headquartered in Progross, the largest city in Goat Valley, held a sweepstakes every year. Among the prizes offered was a complete set of the works of Shadrach Meerkat.
“I’d love to win that.” Krayola said eagerly as she examined the flyer detailing the prizes.
“Are you crazy?” Todd, Krayola’s co-worker at the Saltlick, squawked. “Go for the car!” He jabbed his index thumb at the drawing of the new El Cordoobie that occupied the center of the flyer.
“No,” Krayola faced Todd down coldly, “I’m not crazy.”
Watching this interplay were Eli Crank and Captain Swizzle, recent immigrants to Goat Valley.
“She’s so good-looking.” Crank shared with his friend, keeping his voice low.
“Do you really think so?” Swizzle questioned. He targeted the woman with his camera. “She’s got such a big nose.”
“And big teeth.” Crank added lasciviously.
“She frightens me.” Swizzle took a picture, but kept his eyes closed.
Later, as Punchlet, the son of fast-talking Greeny Grant, topped the pass through the mountains at Asortis, Eli Crank (ignorant of the return to Goat Valley of Punchlet and what that would entail) approached Krayola and solicited information about the Saltlick.
“How did you come to work here?” He asked once she had given him a basic overview of the lick’s workings.
“Well, actually I’ve got a teaching degree, but this pays too well to quit just yet. Got to pay off those credit cards.” She added with the warmest of smiles.
“Her smile should be listed in some book of records.” Crank whispered to Swizzle during an interlude during which the woman with the prominent nose dealt with an intractable salt crystal of rare size.
“That nose.” Swizzle whined. His discomfort was evident. He was like a child face to face with a mean dog.
Crank dismissed his friend’s fears with a wave and a Scrooge-like expression of contempt. Eventually, Todd called security and had the suspicious visitors escorted outside.

Son of Direct Deposit

Although the interim governor of Goat Valley had popular support, he refused to put his proposed plan for securing the mountain passes into effect.
“It wouldn’t be right,” He told a gathering of bakers’ assistants, “To take such a drastic action just before the election. Let the next governor implement the plan if he sees fit.”
Even as the bakers’ assistants clapped politely and cheered these words with poorly cooked pretzels in their mouths, Punchlet was descending into the valley of his birth.
“I remember this smell.” He thought as an aroma of strawberry oil and bone shavings wafted up to him. “Oh, what memories it brings back!” Stepping through a mass of weeds Punchlet had his first glimpse of the valley floor in twenty years. “It’s still the same.” He said to himself, equally relieved and disappointed. He was still a couple of days travel from Progross. What changes, if any, would he find there? Were his parents still alive? He gulped as he took a firmer grip on his walking stick. Would Frokosta remember him?
Surely she would, I snorted as I heard Punchlet recount his doubts, hopes, fears at the testimonial dinner some years later. After all, he had been the one who had first sampled her feminine charms to their fullest. (This is the way we talk in my household. There are innocents underfoot.) I shifted impatiently in my seat; I had already given my speech. Finally, after an angry glare from the master of ceremonies, Dr. Knishmack, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled away from the dais.
Out in back of the auditorium I found an unkempt lot full of dandelions and billy goat grass bordered by the twinkling emptiness of times and space’s capillary action. I took out a notecard and began listing all the things I wanted to accomplish before I became but a cosmic platelet in those dimensional capillaries in the distance. I was interrupted by Punchlet himself.
“Oh, there you are, old man.” He said with a friendly smile.
“Here I am.” I answered warily.
“Don’t mind me.” He excused himself, walking by me. “I heard there was some billy goat grass out here and I just had to have some.”

The Lion’s Top-heavy

Stubbornly withholding payment for the console, Clausfeld managed to get Amalgamated Freight’s attention.
“They’re sending a priest to have a word with me.” He told Sally, his wife.
“A priest!” She exclaimed. She scanned the room frantically.
“Now, don’t get in a state.” Clausfeld ordered irritably. “This isn’t one of your childhood tormentors. This is a company priest.”
Sally relaxed somewhat, settling back in her chair. She still looked around, assuring herself that things weren’t too messy.
“We’re not going to clean up the house for some fancy bill collector!” Clausfeld was emphatic. His hatred of the clergy went back to his own childhood, though he would have denied it. For him, it was college that had opened his eyes to the emptiness of superstition. However, it was a priest’s insistence that he would not see his dog in Heaven that had started him down the road to infidelity (the state of being an infidel. Didn’t you know?)
The console, a Junglore 5400 that stood in the zebra-striped rumpus room as if it had been designed for it, was stacked high with albums by Andy Williams and Peter Mayhew. No one knew it, but a miniature lion lay concealed within the false bottom beneath the vacuum tube bin.
“What purpose does the false bottom serve?” Jerry Lancaster asked me as he and I were reviewing the designs for the Junglore 5400.
“Well, obviously, for concealing lions.” I raised my eyebrows and took a sip of the peppermint tea provided by the great architect’s son.
“Come on! That can’t be the reason.” Jerry guffawed sharply. Little did he know of drafting table etiquette. “It must be because there isn’t actually anything to go in that space, but revealing the area would spoil the lines. So, it’s covered up, leaving a false bottom.”
“You’re learning.”
“But isn’t that poor design?” Jerry asked. “Shouldn’t the aesthetics of the item be made to conform to its utility?”
“Says who?” I smirked. “Maybe the aesthetics are the utility.”
Jerry had to think about that one. He thought so long that the lion went back to sleep.

Android Becky Sniffs

To Andie’s credit, she apologized to Becky even though she had been perfectly justified in reprimanding her as harshly as she had. Becky nodded, acknowledging the apology, but keeping her eyes, heavy with tears, averted. She raised the hem of her apron to her nose and dabbed.
“Your mucus,” Doctor Knishmack asked from his chair by the miniature pond, “Is it synthetic?”
“Doctor,” Andie started to reprove the man, but Becky interrupted.
“It’s alright, Andie.” She said, her voice still quavery.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate.” Andie muttered.
“No, Doctor,” Becky continued, “It’s not.”
Barry burst into laughter from the other side of the pond.
“Did you hear that, Sid?” He bellowed to the man in the boat in the pond. “He said, ‘Is your mucus synthetic?’ and she said…”
“I heard it!” Sid yelled back. “Shut up!” He turned to the fish with whom he had been conversing. “Sorry about that. Now what were you saying?”
“I was saying that I think the best way to get the android to show a real interest in her work would be to endow her with real emotions.” The fish glubbed with his mouth just above the surface of the water.
“I think that’s already been taken care of.” Sid sighed. “The important question now is how to get her to stop crying.”
“It’s funny.” The fish said. “Underwater, we handle tears a little differently. Here we…” He was interrupted by Jerry and me rising to the surface of the little pond in the submersible tractor we had borrowed from Pike’s Galley in the prequel.
“Air!” I gasped, throwing open the hatch. The top of Jerry’s head appeared beside me.
“Where are we?” He asked.
“You there!” I shouted to Doctor Knishmack. “Could you please tell me where we are?”
“You are in the pond in the TV room of the Goat Valley Palace and you are trespassing.” The doctor answered with cold disdain.
Becky must have found our predicament amusing, for she laughed.

Hence the Random Cheeses

Every apple in the bin jumped with excitement as the big blue cowboy hat was rolled into the room on the trolley.
“Look at the apples!” Jasper Cloudling pointed, one hand in the classic gesturing pose, the other laid atop his belly.
“Jasper’s gained a little weight. Have you noticed?” Cuttleton whispered to Syway.
“I certainly have.” Syway pretended to be absorbed in the oscillator’s dialstem. “Has he no shame?”
“No shame; yes, that must be it!” Cuttleton’s expression was fierce. His own gut was slowly expanding, yet he tried to conceal it. He hadn’t tucked his shirt in in over a year. How could Cloudling go around as he did, with that revolting belly protruding into everyone’s consciousness?
Later that evening, pondering these matters, Cuttleton found himself among the apples gathered on the grassy cliff that overlooked the audience of bears in bow ties in the audience below. He was careful not to step on any of them nor sit on any when he sat down. The moon, a flattened birthday cake with an indecipherable dedication, hung in the sky overhead.
“Hey, man!” An apple called up to the lab coat-wearing man, “Is it true about the big blue cowboy hat?”
“True?” Cuttleton asked absently, looking around. He was already sleepy; the setting had made him reflective as well. “True in what aspect?”
“Is it true that it exists?” The apple, a nicely rounded one named Modroct bearing a red and yellow skin of the type known among the apples as fladrid, reiterated its question.
“Yes, it exists.” Cuttleton replied. “Why does this excite you apples so?”
“We just like the idea of it, that’s all.” Modroct answered evasively. How could he tell this lab worker that they longed to reenact Kassindi’s famous painting? “Why are you so glum-looking?” He asked, to change the subject.
“Because I’m a fat slob.” Cuttleton sighed.
“You need to eat more fruits and vegetables.” Modroct advised.
“Don’t tell him that, fool!” Modroct’s friend Burley hissed.
Hearty laughter from the bears.

The Portrait of Frozen Father

The golfer was held captive by the Ibblego tribe for nearly a month, during which time he was able to get a good look at the tribe’s most valued possession, the fabled portrait of Frozen Father. After his release, the golfer, Brank Welchard, spoke with our representative about his ordeal.
“Who exactly is or was Frozen Father?” Asked Saul Spelunker, doing the job we assigned him.
“From what my staff has been able to gather,” Golfer Welchard replied, his voice still ragged from all the cola he was obliged to drink during his captivity, “Frozen Father is the name the Ibblego used to refer to a legendary half goat-half man who ran a DVD rental place in the middle of their traditional territory.”
“They are a nomadic people, the Ibblego?”
“Very much so. During my time among them we were constantly on the move. I think the longest we stayed in one place was two nights, and that was in connection with a ceremony held at the supposed site of Frozen Father’s place of business.”
“Were you able to confirm that any DVD rental shop had ever stood on the site?” Spelunker, resplendent in a black robe bearing the symbols of his trade, asked.
“No, Saul, on those two days I was kept under a heavier guard than usual. I wasn’t even permitted to leave my box to go to the bathroom.”
“There was an actual bath available?” Our man asked in surprise.
“Well, no.” The golfer fiddled with his club. “It’s just an expression.”
“So, you meant defecation and urination.”
“Yes.” The golfer’s cheeks betrayed embarrassment by their rosy glow. His eyes darted about the phony living room in which he was being interviewed.
“Then why didn’t you just say so instead of using such a pallid euphemism?”
“Well… I mean, defecation and urination. It sounds so clinical.” Welchard the golfer smiled nervously.
“Would you prefer doo doo and pee pee?”
“No! Certainly not.”
Upon reading the full text of the interview, Eli Crank wondered why he was not given the assignment.

Intercessory Root

Less collegiate than a turnip, yet slightly more stylish than some sort of dress dummy for crayfish, the subject of today’s conference remained shrouded in robes of black, covered with the symbols of the mental cartographer, even as I pulled the mirror down from overhead and tied a bow tie around my neck.
“You wear a bow tie?” Nasaltine, the boor, the doctoral candidate, the insufficiently armored, asked me.
“Yeah?” I begged him to make something of it. I felt fully engaged and verbal for a change. It must have been the grapefruit.
An apologetic look settled on his face like a pterosaur just in for the mating season. “Don’t you think it makes you look kind of gay?” The character named Nasaltine asked me.
“Nasaltine, for the purposes of this ‘conversation,’” I refrained from putting up my fingers in quotes, “I am gay.” Even then I wondered if ‘gay’ should be capitalized.
As he formulated his response, putting all the resources of wit and tradition at his disposal into it, our chairman, Dr. Knickmash, rose from the seat of administration and called our attention to today’s subject.
“He’s getting away!” He croaked, slapping his pockets for a lozenge.
“What kind of lozenge?” My grandson later asked me.
“A soothing lozenge.” I told him. “Not necessarily for a cold or flu-related condition.
My grandson’s model of that day’s subject stood in its crude diorama before him, exciting his imagination with scenes of the way it was before I completely lost my mind.
“When did you cease to care, Grandfather?” The little computerized boy asked, making the subject (which may as well be called Intercessory Root as anything else) fight with a Darth Vader doll.
“About the same time.” I admitted. “But don’t feel sorry for me. It all worked out for the best and, in truth, it was all most beneficial in the long run.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you, Grandfather.” The boy said solemnly.
“You don’t? Do you then envy me my inexorable climb to success?”

How to Strafe Kittens from the Inflated Orange

“Don’t stifle the rifle!” Ted “Bony” Mirmidon held his fist aloft and shouted encouragement to the new guy as they dashed to their respective airships. The new guy, Pinky Plakat, turned to a fellow crewman as they climbed into the craft and asked,
“What did he mean by that?”
“‘Don’t stifle the rifle?’” The other man smiled. “It’s an old saying from the early days of the airship corps. It’s kind of like how they say ‘break a leg’ in the theater.”
Plakat mused on this as he took his place in the large basket secured beneath the inflated orange. He arranged his gear about him and fitted his goggles over his eyes. From the inside pocket on his flight vest he withdrew two finger puppets and worked them onto fingers on his left hand, over his gloves. Both the puppets and the inside pocket were nonstandard additions to his equipment.
“They just let him get away with it ‘cause he’s new.” Bersh complained to Milkdew on the other side of the basket. Milkdew nodded calmly. Bersh’s words had no weight with him. He had often heard Bersh say that others in the corps were allowed to get away with minor divergences from regulations because they had seniority, or were from wealthy families, or provided the staff with drugs.
The pilot, Max Talbot, a thirty-year-old man with a sixty-year-old moustache, was the last to climb in. He secured the trap door through which he had entered and stood up straight and tall, pounding his hands together in anticipation.
“Initiate ascent!” He commanded. Smiling fiercely, he watched his crew perform their jobs with flawless technique. Even the new guy was doing well. “Good job, Plakat!” Talbot praised him.
“See?” Bersh whispered to Milkdew.
Thirty minutes later Talbot’s inflated orange, along with the others in the patrol, was over the northernmost end of Goat Valley, where the kittens lived. As the deadly hail of bullets began to fall upon the populace, Plakat’s finger puppets begged Plakat to consider what he was doing.
“This is evil!” They shouted in their tiny voices.

Scrooge at the Urinal

I like to wander through the buildings on the campus of the University of Progross. Through these wanderings I have become nearly an expert on the campus layout. I can tell you where every restroom is in any building.
I was wandering around in the Mental Cartography building, carrying a briefcase, pretending to be some obscure functionary within the university system (and who knows? In some strange way I may be), when I decided the time had come to pee. I sought out the restroom on the second floor, the one next door to the schizophrenia containment lab.
I’ve been having trouble getting my urine started for a couple of years now. There is a history of prostate cancer in my family, so obviously I have concerns. Learning that coffee consumption has been linked to prostate cancer, I quit drinking coffee, quit drinking or eating anything containing caffeine. In truth, it wasn’t just fears of cancer that led me to quit. I acknowledged, as many people do not, or cannot, that I was addicted to caffeine. An arrested alcoholic, it became distasteful for me to have any sort of addiction. I tell you all this to let you know that I do have vulnerabilities and am not the all-powerful figure that I sometimes seem to be in this narrative.
Walking into the restroom, I found a man at one of the urinals. I can’t pee next to another man, so I headed into one of the stalls. Just before I closed the door I took a good look at the man. He was elderly, dressed in the costume of a Victorian gentleman. Was he, as I suspected, the notorious Ebeneezer Scrooge?
During the course of my use of the toilet in the stall I heard the flush of the urinal outside. I hurried myself as much as I could, but I seem to have lost the ability to force my urine out in a torrent. Maybe the muscles in there have atrophied. It comes out at one speed only now. I wanted to catch up with the man and get a better look at him. Did he resemble Alistair Sim or George C. Scott (another arrested alcoholic)? I had another hindrance, however. My penis drips after peeing now and I have to shake it vigorously before slipping it back in my pants. I did so now. Then I dashed out into the hall.
“Did you see old Scrooge?” I asked a grad student passing by.
“I did.” He replied. “But he’s a changed man. He’s the new Scrooge now.”

Eight More Ghosts

He picked up the pole and disappeared around the back of the tin shed. I watched for a couple more minutes before turning to look back at the house. Old Manfred was still on the porch trying to teach the children to eat Oreos by twisting them apart and licking the creme off first before proceeding to the cookie part.
“It’s the only proper way.” He lied.
I made a noise of disgust and glanced at the shed again.
“Your friend’s not back yet?” Jerry asked, looking up from the interior of my valise.
“He’s not my friend.” I quickly let Jerry know. “I don’t even know his name.”
“And yet you let him take your pole.” Jerry sounded cozy and cool in the valise.
“Let’s not turn this into a phallic thing.”
“God, you’re irritable today.”
“I can’t help it.” I made fists of my hands and looked up at the house, this time at the topmost floor. “They’re driving my crazy up there.”
“What is it?” Jerry struggled to get his eyes above the lip of the valise. “The TV too loud again?”
“No, it’s ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” Jerry pulled himself up by his fingertips.
“Yes. They’re up there rambling around, breaking stuff, making noise. I wanted to puncture them and that guy,” I waved at the shed, “Said he could sharpen a pole for me.”
“Puncture them?”
“Yes. You can get rid of ghosts by puncturing them.”
The pole-sharpening man returned with the pole.
“I did the best I could.” He began, handing me the anti-ghost weapon. “But I don’t usually work with maple.”
“Maple?” I snapped. “That’s teak!”
“Teak?” The man repeated. “Are you sure?”
By the time I entered the attic eight more ghosts had joined the party.

The Forgotten Vincent

After getting ready for the evening’s activities, I sat down on an overturned bucket by the door and brushed up on my trivia. Of course I knew all about Vincent Van Gogh and nearly enough about Vincent Price, but I was disconcerted to see just how much I had yet to learn about Vincent Cormorant.
“I’ll never memorize all this in time!” I complained aloud. I looked up to see if anyone was going to offer me sympathy.
Jerry and Donald Doobie, a puppet from Nutmeg City, exchanged looks.
“What?” I demanded like the second Don Corleone. “What?”
“Mike,” Jerry said, “Are you really going to wear that bow tie?”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, touching its knot with my thumb.
“It’s a bow tie, that’s what.” Donald kept his mind closed to the full possibilities of fashion. He made his judgment as if it was self-evident.
“Have either of you ever heard of Vincent Cormorant?” I asked, looking back and forth between these long-sleeve t-shirt-wearing housemates of mine.
“No.” Donald replied evenly.
“No.” Jerry sighed mournfully.
“Vincent Cormorant, dedicated bow tie wearer, made his fortune after Goober’s War, which, you should know, pitted the residents of Goat Valley against each other, the urban dwellers on one side called the Tacomorphs, and the hicks on the other side under the name of the Decency and Tradition League. Cormorant brought cheer to the war’s survivors through his series of traveling revues. As I said, he made a fortune in this way. He later became a much-loved recurring guest on the old Celebrities’ Challenge game show.”
“Jeez,” Jerry swore. “You’ll have no trouble on tonight’s inaugural episode of the remake of that venerable program.”
“I don’t know.” I said doubtfully. “I can’t seem to get this list of Cormorant’s ex-wives straight.”
“I’ve never heard of this person.” Donald Doobie frowned. “Of what relevance is he to today’s youth and the problems they face?”
“Oh, come on, Donald. Vincent Cormorant sponsored one of the first skateboard exhibitions in Goat Valley.”
“He did?” The puppet scratched his head. “I’ll have to look into him then.”

The Square Leans Toward Ratification

A larger bandage did not necessarily mean a larger wound. Dr. Knishmack knew that. Though not a medical doctor, his extensive training had given him peculiar insights into human behavior. As he listened to Donald Doobie relating the tale of his last shoe purchase, Knishmack observed the two fellows at the opposite table. Each wore a bandage on his right forearm, one larger than the other. To some this would indicate a greater calamity had befallen one of them, but the elderly research scientist was not fooled. He allowed his naturally speculative mind to formulate a theory as to why one would want to fool others with a larger bandage even as the public address speakers blared a final warning about the imminent dirigible attack.
“Damn.” Donald Doobie swore, glancing up at the closest speaker. “Well, anyway, to wrap it all up, I eventually bought a pair of red sneakers.”
Dr. Knishmack turned from the subject of his theorizations to the puppet at his table.
“Red sneakers?” He repeated. “But, why? You don’t have feet.”
“Theoretically, no.” Doobie admitted.
“‘Theoretically?’” Dr. Knishmack mocked. “No, sir. In actual fact you have no feet. It is only in theory the you have feet, as these are vestigial appendages existing only in your human-like consciousness.”
“That’s what I meant.” Doobie shook a finger at his dinner companion. “And isn’t that worthy of a pair of red sneakers?”
“But, dammit, Mr. Doobie, what will you do with them? You can’t wear them!”
“Not in theory…” Doobie began.
“Please stop saying that!” Knishmack begged in a quavery voice. “You don’t have the remotest idea of what a theory is. If only…” Here he was interrupted by the clatter of stones and other debris on the roof, dropped by one of the dirigibles in the attacking fleet.
“Everyone stay calm!” Shouted the man with the larger bandage. He ripped off the bandage to reveal a nucleonic imploder imbedded in his arm. His companion, the one with the smaller bandage, also removed his bandage. Beneath his was a small tattoo of a dirigible with a line crossed through it.

Paltry Faltering Waterfall Palsy

“Even Norwegians Fart.” I wrote on the wall of the men’s restroom in the Art building. I stepped back to take a look at my work and tucked my marker back in the top left outside pocket of my coat.
“Watch it.” Came a voice from within the same pocket.
“Sorry.” I said.
After doing a bit of creative vandalism I usually feel pleased with myself. This was no exception. As I headed out into the hall where the art students’ work was hung, I felt every bit as valid and satisfied as they must feel. I assume they feel this way, although I have never spoken to one, not being a sociable person. A few years ago I begged the administration to let me back into school as an art student. They were willing, but they made so many demands of me and put so many restrictions on the whole thing that I decided to forget it. Maybe that’s when I started defining success for myself (a leaf out of Urge Overkill’s book) and turned my back on what people understand to be a “career.”
Most of the work in the hall was nonsense. That’s no criticism of the students. I know now that the purpose of school is to work all of the nonsense out of you. They encourage you to indulge in nonsense. It takes a self-taught, self-defined man such as me to actively pursue nonsense as he heads into his twilight years. Take a look at this book you hold in your hands, Return to Goat Valley, the second volume of The Procurement Man. What is it? It claims to be a novel, but really it’s a collection of short pieces only tenuously linked together. However, it is a novel because it is at least 40,000 words in length and because if the great Harmony Korine can get away with calling A Crack-Up at the Race Riots a novel, then I can call this collection of silly nonsense a novel as well.
“Even Norwegians Fart.” I have great respect for the Scandinavians. Is Finland really part of Scandinavia? I don’t know, but I have great respect for them as well. I lump them into the same vague conceptual category as the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Danes. Intelligent, liberal people. I bet they’d have no problem embracing me and my work. I’d like to move there and wallow in self-indulgence.

To Trick the Old Man

Normally I stop just shy of the Braderbilge foothills, not wanting to bother with poking through that creepy playground, but on the day of the clamdigger’s picnic I felt obscenely impish (I should have been wearing a pointed hat, a green vest, and a shirt that read “An Oaf and an Imp in One”) and allowed my fancies to carry me past the threshold. Lucky for you that they did, or this piece would very probably be yet more whining about my diet or a conversation between two puppets about the yak in the basement. Just inside, past the hand-carved wooden arch that marked the boundary between the Forest of Mr. Cholerone’s Engagement and these so-called foothills, I remembered that I had left the yak in the basement.
“Too late to do anything about it now.” I muttered. Of course, today’s reader will immediately demand to know why I didn’t make use of my cell phone (just as tomorrow’s reader will wonder why I wasn’t in direct mental contact with all other responsible parties at all times) to deal with the yak problem. The answer to that is simply that cell phones and electronic neural linkage are forbidden under the terms of the Crabluster’s Brokerage Compact. Besides, let the puppets deal with it. I’m sure it would make for good conversation.
Later, browsing for a vintage tie inside one of the foothills, I ran into Eli Crank and Captain Swizzle.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Same as you.” Said Crank. “Looking for sharp old threads. Listen, Toadsgoboad, when are you going to give me and Swizzle something substantive to do?”
“It isn’t up to me.” I protested.
“Come on. Everybody knows you really run the show. If you wanted to give us an assignment, all you’d have to do is say the word.”
“Get a picture of this.” I said to Swizzle, putting a derby on my head. He did so, using the old analog camera around his neck.
“OK, Crank. You want something to do; find out what you can about Punchlet.”
“Punchlet?”
“Yeah, the guy whose return to Goat Valley is supposedly the meaning behind the title of this book.”
“Book? What book?” Crank looked confused.

King Sam Takes a Bath

That black-winged goon whose flightless path crossed that of Punchlet the man-goat could reveal nothing of importance to Eli Crank, for he spoke only the language of the apple-eating goons of Mango South.
“Well, that was a waste of time.” Crank soberly assessed the opening sentence.
“Not really;” Captain Swizzle demurred. “I think it set the tone for our upcoming adventure.”
“Adventure, is it? Well, we’ll see about that, my lad.” Crank adopted the voice of a veteran seadog joshing a young man on his first voyage across the sea.
King Sam, the powerless monarch of Goat Valley, received Crank and Swizzle as he prepared to ritually bathe in the Fadros River. Of course, he wasn’t nude; he wore a long shirt of black silk.
“What a relief.” Swizzle murmured as he removed the lens cap from his camera.
“Is that a digital camera?” King Sam asked with some unseemly excitement showing through his ordinarily stiff demeanor.
“No, it’s not.” Swizzle replied.
“You’re supposed to say ‘your majesty.’” Crank hissed.
“We’re not citizens of Goat Valley; we don’t have to attend to the formalities.” Swizzle argued.
“It’s good manners.” Crank insisted.
“Even if I was a citizen of Goat Valley, I wouldn’t say it!” Swizzle growled, lifting the camera to his eye.
King Sam waited until after the picture had been taken before replying.
“I don’t expect you to. It’s not obligatory for anyone, citizen or not.” He said. A gentleman puts others at ease.
Swizzle stuck his tongue out at Crank. Crank folded his arms.
“And now,” King Sam said loudly, so that the people gathered around could hear. “I shall enter the water.”
“He said ‘shall.’ Marvelous.” Crank enthused.
“Eli,” Swizzle got his friend’s attention. “There’s Punchlet!” He pointed to the man-goat standing on the other side of the river.
“Screw this!” Crank said, pushing his way through the crowd.
This morning there is failure on the wind.

The Snail Bottle Blacks

Many of you wonder how I know enough about the Snail Bottle Blacks to write an article on them. The answer to that is quite simple. In the latest Eli Crank and Captain Swizzle adventure, “It’s Fun to Smoke Marijuana,” it is revealed that I studied under Dr. Knickmash (not to be confused with his hated rival, Dr. Knishmack), the renowned expert on the Tin Caster Dilemma, of which the Snail Bottle Blacks are a subdivision, some might say the largest, but that is debatable.
I remember long evenings around the fire in Knickmash’s living room. Corky, Randall, myself, and sometimes screwy Jasper, would eat Knickmash’s wife’s blueberry muffins as we listened to the great man speak of his years of research. It was there, more than in the classroom, that I acquired the knowledge that has enabled me to fulfill my contract with Pinworm Magazine for the abovementioned article. To my everlasting regret, however, I was unable to finish Dr. Knickmash’s course. Those were the days of the war, days of personal glory and personal defeat, days when young men like me had to drop out of their favorite classes and devote themselves to the manufacture of miniature houses and the mastery of the dolls that were to live in those houses. We do not speak of those days.
On a lighter note, I recently was privileged to meet one of the original Snail Bottle Blacks, Rad Phase, and, in the course of our unrehearsed conversation, learn that I had completely misunderstood the subject of my aforesaid article.
“The Snail Bottle Blacks weren’t an Indian tribe.” Phase, now sporting a wrinkled brown fedora after years of wearing a green plastic novelty derby, explained to me calmly.
“No?” I must have sounded stupid, I know.
“No, they were a rock ‘n’ roll band.”
“Rock ‘n’ roll?” I repeated in confusion. “But what about the feathered headdresses, the arrows, the rawhide vests, the teepees, for god’s sake?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in god.” Phase said.
“I don’t.” I said.
“Then why this use of the word ‘god’ as an emphatic?” He asked.
“Habit.” I admitted forlornly, glancing sadly at the buffalo in the corner.

Stick Bear’s Hedonism

If all of the stick bears in Pocobobash were as hedonistic as Gifford, the titular bear of this piece, none of them would have been able to tell me anything about him. They would have been too busy getting drunk or water skiing or eating oversized cinnamon rolls at the mall. Fortunately, however, I was able to find more than a few with a stalwart sense of duty who were willing to sit down with me and reveal what they knew about this stinking Gifford.
Like almost all of the stick bears, Mrs. Pabstock was only distinguishable as a bear at all by the short vest she wore. Hers was made of pink flannel. She graciously set aside her work on the new battleship to answer my questions.
“I’ve heard that Gifford is quite hedonistic.” I opened the discussion by saying.
“I’ve heard that too.” Mrs. Pabstock replied.
My suspicions about Gifford were confirmed when I spoke to Admiral Drinkinstaff, whose battleship was the one under construction. I put it to him forthrightly: did he believe Gifford to be hedonistic?
“I not only believe it,” the patient man of the sea answered me, “I have proof.” He snapped his little stick claws at the sailor standing nearby. The fellow brought us a packet of photographs showing Gifford getting drunk, water skiing, and eating an oversized cinnamon roll at a mall.
“Damning.” I commented.
“My new battleship will be bigger than that mall.” Drinkinstaff added casually.
Another bear I consulted was Zirgaz, the inventor.
“I don’t know how much time I’ll have for you.” He warned me as I stood in the doorway of his little stick lab. “I’m working on a new water ski that will allow stick bears to drink and eat cinnamon rolls at the same time while they ski!”
“That’s fascinating.” I said. “What do you know about a stick bear named Gifford?”
“He’s precisely the sort of stick bear for whom this new product is being developed.”
“Really.” I said for lack of any other comment to make.
“Yes. The only problem is that a ski this advanced will take a battleship to pull it.”

Violent Luggage

I loaded my baggage on the wagon and watched, with a remarkable level of indifference, I must admit, as Princess Yavolta’s luggage attacked, brutalized, mine.
“I’m sorry about this, sir.” One of the drivers apologized. He stood beside me, helpless in his blue uniform and cap.
“Don’t worry about it.” I said, eager to be away and not have to speak with the man.
As I walked towards my seat on the crawling conveyance one of the other passengers asked a companion how I could be so calm while my bags were being savaged.
“I guess he’s afraid of the princess.” Came the reply.
This was not true. I had no reason to fear the princess. Her luggage, perhaps, but not her person. The truth was that the baggage I had loaded consisted of a few cheap pieces I had picked up at the thrift store that morning. It was loaded with paperbacks by current authors I would never read, socks with toes, cologne, and the remains of an old refrigerator motor. The destruction of this load would cause me no pain. My valise was safe in a secret location.
Still, as I sat down it disturbed me that others might think me afraid. I glanced around until I spotted the princess. She was sitting with her bodyguard Mr. Burtard.
“I just wanted to let you know,” I said, standing over the two of them, “That I don’t appreciate the actions of your luggage.”
“Why? Has it been naughty again?” The tiny woman, stricken since birth with Luckinsow’s Affliction, asked in a voice like the beeping of a microwave oven.
“Yes. I just wanted to let you know.” What more could was there for me to say?
“I’m sorry. Please allow me to compensate you for your losses.” Princess Yavolta begged regally.
“Oh, that’s OK.” I smiled, looking to see if the doubters among the passengers were witnessing this.
“No, I insist.” She said. “What do you say to a blow job?”
“I say I must be in the wrong story.”

Pheasant in Micrograms

The end of Ronsint brought me no grief: I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t even know if he was a he at all, but some kind of object that had met with utter destruction. Jerry brought me the newspaper clipping announcing the end of Ronsint and watched my face closely for my reaction.
“What of it?” I asked, handing back the clipping and taking up my cup of peppermint tea.
“It means nothing to you?” Jerry’s eyebrows went up. They are bushy eyebrows.
“I don’t know what Ronsint is.” I said emphatically. I thought we had covered this ground thoroughly by now.
“Don’t you think it’s two words: Ron Sint, a name?” Jerry pointed at the headline. “Maybe this is a typo.”
“Ron Sint?” I mused with a scowl on my face. “Let me see that.” I took the clipping again. “Ron Sint? I wonder. Could he be the guy that was hired at the shoe store just before I was fired?”
“I don’t know.” Jerry said. “I wasn’t around then.”
“Oh, you were around.” I assured him. “You were just asleep. Deep sleep.” I considered the headline again. “I wish you had cut out more than just the headline. Surely the accompanying story would have contained the relevant details.”
“Not necessarily. Sometimes stories contain no relevant details at all.” Jerry got a little too trenchant for my taste.
“Well, that’s true, but still…”
“Besides, I didn’t cut out the headline. I cut out what’s on the back.” Jerry turned the clipping over in my hand.
“‘Pheasant in Micrograms?’” I read.
“It’s a recipe.” Jerry explained.
“It’s the title of a recipe.” I pointed out.
“Aw, crap.”
Just to be sure, I looked up Ron Sint in the phone book and gave him a call.
“Yes?” He replied to my query as to whether he was a he.
“Do you know how to make pheasant in micrograms?” I asked with a smirk.

Governor’s Little Aesthete

“Transfer of the ice can wait until after the men have finished watching the cartoon.” Captain Frigby declared, all full of his own authority and the sense of history imparted by the solemnity of this occasion.
“It’s a training film, Frigby.” I corrected the man. “And transferring the ice cannot wait. Already the heat from the volcano is causing it to melt.”
“It can be refrozen, can’t it?” Frigby asked as if I was holding out vital information from the discussion.
“In the hell of your tiny sphere of influence.” I thought, but said nothing, only glared powerlessly at the older man in the epaulets.
“Mr. Toadsgoboad,” Winston, Frigby’s underling, interjected, “Our hands are tied. Union regulations state that the crew must complete the watching of Governor’s Little Aesthete before the journey commences.”
“The journey hasn’t begun yet!” I snapped, and I’m afraid to say I think I sounded a trifle whiny. “What has transferring the ice got to do with the journey?”
“Mr. Toadsgoboad,” Frigby began with a bull-like snort, but Winston interrupted him.
“Technically, any activity of a laborious nature performed in connection with the journey constitutes part of the journey.” He quoted.
“Bureaucratic fools!” I snarled as I exited the bridge.
“Well?” Jerry, who had been waiting outside, asked.
“If it’s going to be done, I’ll have to do it myself!” I growled. I looked up at the smoldering volcano in the distance. “How’s it doing?”
“Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on it as you suggested…”
“Yes, yes, we can assume that from my query.”
“And it looks like it could go at any moment.”
“Then there’s no time to waste.” I crooked a finger at Jerry and descended to the deck and from there to the dock. “Give me that ice, boy.” I commanded a uniformed flunky standing by the plastic cup of precious cubes.
“I don’t know, sir. Captain Frigby said…”
“I know what he said. You listen to me, now…” I grabbed at the ice, but the heat of my wrath had turned it to ordinary water.

The Suffering Cranberry

The remainder of my collection was auctioned off on the Saturday set aside for such matters. An older woman approached me afterwards.
“You have done a wonderful thing.” She warbled, close to tears.
“I feel wonderful.” I declared, clutching at the front of my coat. “I… I can’t describe how I feel. I think the only way I can fully do justice to the wonderful, good, good feeling inside me is to… sing!” I sustained this last word with all of the gusto (but little of the technique) of a young Pavarotti. I have inquired whether Pavarotti’s name is an acceptable substitute for the words “opera singer” or if the name “Caruso” might be a better choice, and was met with utter indifference.
I leapt around the auction hall, dancing from table to table, singing the song of happiness written for me by the great song writing team of Meerschaum and Canliner. The audience loved it. They smiled and clutched their thighs with the desire to pour forth from the theater and savor the essential goodness of life before it was too late. Imagine their shock then when the song ended abruptly on the sobs of Dolores O’Riordan, the singer of the defunct band the Cranberries, sitting at one of the tables, unseen and unrecognized until now.
I approached her.
“What’s wrong, little lady?” I asked, propping a foot up in a chair. Almost everyone else in the hall had fled from the madness of my impromptu display of delight. Only Old Weedlicker remained, snoring away against the fire extinguisher.
“Your song. It made me so sad!” She wailed.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m genuinely talented and… and my career’s over! I’ll never sing again! And you… you can’t sing worth a damn! And yet, here you are: singing and dancing to great acclaim! I can’t take it!” She hefted the antique paralyzer unit she had bought during the auction and held it to her head. “I’m going to end it all!”
“You can’t!” I cried, holding out a hand in the universal gesture of restraint. “That’s just a cardboard prop I picked up in Goat Valley!”

Cloud Prankster

Too many dirigibles had been painted red for my taste. It spoiled the effect. I preferred to see a fleet of mostly traditional gray and blue with an occasional red or black.
“I’m not thrilled with this display.” I told Jerry. “Let’s go home.”
“It’s some kind of vogue. The red dirigible.” Jerry observed. “People think it looks ‘cool’ or ‘bad’ or whatever word they’re using now.”
“In the old days they might have said ‘tough.’”
“Yeah, I’ve heard women described as ‘tough’ by old guys.”
I glanced up at the sky again before climbing onto our mechanical camel. “You’d think they’d all be black, as that color seems to be the predominant expression of coolness or badness or sexy evil; whatever quality it is they’re trying to embody.”
“Black isn’t a color.” Jerry said.
I didn’t have the energy for a debate. I shut this line of thinking down as succinctly as I could. “Look on a box of crayons, Jerry. ‘Color crayons,’ it says on the box. Open up the box. Inside you will find many crayons, each with its particular color printed on its paper tube. There among them you will find a black crayon. ‘Black’ it says on the wrapper.” I nodded curtly at him, blinking hard. “Let’s go.”
Jerry bobbed his head a couple of times, looking at me. He took a breath.
“Where is home currently, may I ask?” He said.
“That’s a good question.” I admitted.
“Goat Valley?”
“Hell no. That’s obviously not worked out.” I looked out the window. “I think we’ve entered a new phase.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Well, it’s demonstrably true this time. Now, in a continuing effort…”
“Look at that!” Jerry cried. He pointed at something. I looked in the direction in which he pointed. An orange dirigible, bearing an enormous scoop under its gondola, was flying into clouds, sucking them into its scoop and squirting them out the back in various shapes mocking the shopworn images of horror.
“Go Orange.” I muttered.

Take Shelter

Under the bed, along with boxes of embarrassing photographs and old games too complicated for today’s housebound juvenile to enjoy, lay two puppets, each inactive for some time now. However, as Jerry flipped on the light in the room in which the bed stood, the larger, greener of the two puppets, Stylus Pollack, stirred creakily.
“What time is it?” Stylus mumbled.
“Mike!” Jerry shouted. “Something’s under my bed!”
“Your bed?” I wondered as I put aside the thrilling tale of a building supply store owner who made annoying television commercials in which he hollered “Yee-Ha!” like an idiot. “I’m paying for it.” I concluded, knowing how petty that was and deciding to work harder on keeping that side of me hidden.
“What is it?” I asked Jerry as I stepped into the room.
“Look who’s here!” Jerry was helping Stylus and the other puppet, an orange one named Alexander, into view.
“So that’s where you two got to.” I said. “Well, nice to see you both.”
I headed back to the study, irritated that I had become encumbered with these extra persons. I took up the book again, but the sounds of Jerry and the puppets’ merry talk distracted me.
“To hell with this!” I growled. I threw the book across the room and stormed outside.
There, among the trees of twisted metal in the backyard, descended a legion of creatures consisting of nothing more than heads to which fins had been attached by the arcane processes of evolution. Just before I took shelter under an overturned barrel, I had time to send a little note to Ben Stein.
“Dear Ben,” I wrote, “The creatures are irreducibly complex. What should I do, old pal?”
His reply, delivered a day or two later, after the park-like landscape in which I had settled down had been denuded, arrived by subterranean transport. A hand emerged from the ground under the barrel and handed me the envelope.
“Mr. Toadsgoboad,” Stein’s reply began, “Truly Jesus is Lord of all!”

Two Tarnished Spoons

On average, I steal one spoon a year. Of course, that’s just an estimate. I don’t actually recall the last time I stole a spoon. I know that I have stolen many spoons and spoon-like objects during the course of my long and eventful life. Do they really add up to as many years? Probably. It’s hard to say with spoons. It’s hard to say how old I am. Am I the age I am at the time of this writing? Or am I the age at which the following narrative takes place?
Bukowski is a great writer because, supposedly, he writes the way he talks. I don’t actually talk this way, but I do think this way. My inner voice sounds like this.
Anyway, it seems that two tarnished spoons had been selected from among the thousands on display in Mr. Cloudling’s cradle for presentation to the president of Luscious Juices, Incorporated.
“Why do they have to be tarnished?” Stylus Pollock asked in a whiny voice.
“Because of the oxidation of metal. This is tarnishing at its most elemental.” Jerry Lancaster explained.
Dirk Trammel, president of Luscious Juices, received the spoons graciously, given that he had so little time to spare this fundamentally frivolous ceremony.
“I thank you all on behalf of all of us here at the Luscious Juices family.” Trammel, his neat gray moustache moving like a funky caterpillar to the rhythm of his words, addressed the presentation committee, an assemblage of bears, woolies, goats, and man-goats in a plethora of colors and textures. Trammel mimed the act of eating soup (or perhaps grits, given his hick origins) with one of the spoons to the gentle amusement of his staff and the awed gratification of the presentation committee.
“Sir, if I may,” a young Nancy Brocade stepped forward. “What is that on the spoon?” She pointed at the end of the spoon furthest from the part that goes into your mouth (called the haft by those of us in the know. The part that goes into your mouth is the bowlette).
“It’s the Bukowski family crest!” Someone (no one ever knew who exactly) shouted.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Stylus sneered. Examination of the other spoon revealed only the classic McDonald’s ‘M.’

The More I Earn

Nature, encompassing as it does the realms both of apple trees and the industrialized mass production of hand-operated apple peeling tools, can rightfully claim the excuse of a headache when asked who her favorite child is. Not so in the case of Ellen Dongsweater, for not only was she blessed with but one child, but her head’s imperviousness to aches was legendary.
This child, Tobald Dongsweater, secure in the knowledge of his mother’s partiality towards him, found it relatively easy to succeed in the world of professional essay-writing. That is to say he was emotionally grounded. No disturbing memories weighed him down. True, this meant that his essays tended to consist almost entirely of profiles of the elderly or recently deceased in his hamlet or opinion pieces on what he liked to eat and how it should be cooked, but then, art and commerce rarely go hand in hand.
Now you take me for a contrasting example. I make no money at all writing these damn pieces, and yet they are paragons of fancy, insight, and detail. More than that, I think I can say with certainty that, as my “career” develops (as it inevitably will), and I earn more (selling a book would constitute more) money, I will remain true to my vision of abstraction, silliness, and inconsequence. Art, in other words, dear matador.
In keeping with the above prophecy and the great truth that lies at its heart, let us more closely examine Tobald Dongsweater. Let us intrude upon him in the very midst of his work. There he sits in his scientifically designed desk chair, thinking up a topic for his next essay.
“I say there, Tobald, what do you think you might write about today?” I ask as I burst through the door that leads into his study from the guest room.
“Who are you?” The pot-bellied creep demands, jerking at his collegiate-mascot-decorated pullover in a panic.
“A colleague.” I answer, striding confidently over to his computer. “Old Joe Liked Potato Salad.” I read aloud. “Sounds fascinating. Is it as good as the title suggests?”
“I’m going to call the police!” He shouts.
“What are you going to call them?” I ask. “I’d love to know how a real writer constructs an insult.”

Pennies Overnight

In his affidavit of October in the third year of the reign of King Household Object, Michael Palin denies any personal relationship with me whatsoever. Furthermore, he goes on to say that he had never heard of me before May of that same year, when I published Commentaries on the Rice Krispies Dialogues. In that book I made no direct claim to an acquaintanceship with Palin, but certain passages within it were, I admit, of a confusing nature. So be it. There is a new poster on the wall over the fish tank. This one is of Grover Cleveland. At least he is in no position to object.
As I was tacking this poster up, one of the fish stuck his little face into the atmosphere of the room and asked me how I was doing.
“Oh, I’m doing fine,” I said. “Considering that my new painting is a pile of crap.” This was true. Once again, I had decided to “be free” and put random splatters on the canvas, hoping that, in the frenzy of painting fun, they would develop into interesting monsters and kitchen appliances with faces. Of course, it wasn’t working.
“Really?” The fish, whose name was Somerset, if I recall correctly (I’ve had so many fish that their names are as hard to recollect as those of the monsters and anthropomorphic kitchen appliances that populate the banks of the River Amateur), said in a pondering tone. “You know, I’ve never really thought of you as a painter. To me, you’re a writer.”
“That’s because you live underwater.” I informed him, pushing him back down into his habitat with an over-sized Hello Kitty eraser attached to one of those pencils with the extremely light lead. One buys these pencils thinking one (me, Toadsgoboad) is going to be a “real” artist and build up one’s drawings from light to dark, but it never works and the fancy pencils sit in a cup on the desk for years like a tracking button on a DVD player. I never make preparatory drawings for anything. I grab a pen and grind out the damn cartoons, the way a boy picks up a stick and becomes a sharpshooter without any training. What comes out is what’s inside.
I sat back and admired President Cleveland’s somber dignity while Somerset the fish swam back to his friends, each of whom had his own theory about what “Pennies Overnight” means.

Icy Tomato Preferred

They (meaning the Tableg twins and their accomplices, the so-called Hillock Raiders) blinded the mechanical camel by unscrewing his left eye and smashing the right. The third (you didn’t even know mechanical camels had a third eye, did you?) they merely confounded with a small snapshot of Grace Slick taped to its cornea.
All of this activity served only to create an atmosphere of chaos in the small, but high-ceilinged closet in which we found ourselves that morning. While I lay in my hammock hitched far above the floor, looking down on these opportunistic interlopers, the Tableg twins, Loam and Lauch, argued over the preparations for lunch.
“The tomato needs to be chilled beforehand.” Loam commented and began moving towards the refrigerator that took up more than its fair share of floor space (based on its contribution to the closet-based society).
“Oh, no you don’t!” Lauch countermanded. “It’s a myth that tomatoes need to be refrigerated. In fact, refrigeration is bad for tomatoes.”
“Lauch is an expert on myth.” I said to myself. The hammock was not comfortable. I had made a mistake in selecting it. I should have built a platform in the corner anchored by sturdy triangular braces, but then lumber was scarce. The closet’s forest had been clear-cut in the early days of settlement to deprive the natives of their economic base. A platform would have cost more initially, but more than paid for itself over the weeks in comfort. Little did I know that at the time.
The mechanical camel bumped into the refrigerator, upsetting the box into which I had been dropping my paperbacks as I read them. Soon I would have had room in the hammock to indulge in a bit of photojournalism. I say would have had, because the paperbacks tumbling down got the Tableg twins to wondering.
“Where are those books coming from?” Lauch said aloud.
“I don’t know.” Loam replied, taking the opportunity to slip the tomato into the refrigerator.
“You!” Lauch pointed at me. “What are you doing up there?”
“Killing time.” I said. That was true enough; as soon as I had enough material, I planned on climbing down.


The Ninth Whistle

The rocket was judged wayward and eliminated from the laboratory’s monthly report, but it did hit a grain silo outside the village of Konigbracket.
“If we had been aiming for it, it would have been a success.” Shaftsburn mused.
“But our intentions are peaceful.” Fitcuff whined. “We don’t want to knock down grain silos with our reconnaissance rockets.”
“Oh, it didn’t knock it down;” Joe Flapdash looked up from his microscope to say. “It’s sticking out of the top of the silo.”
“How do you know that?”
“Lucas Lab’s [the first laboratory’s great rival] own reconnaissance rocket took a picture of it.” Of course, Flapdash didn’t explain how he knew that. He just went back to looking at his Petri dish full of carcinogenic mold and his thoughts about this coming weekend’s orgy of sloth and overeating.
“Let’s go take a look at it!” Pelton, the researcher’s apprentice, begged. They all looked at each other dubiously, but in the end decided that it couldn’t make matters any worse to shut the lab down early and drive out to the farmland outside Konigbracket.
“You coming, Joe?” Shaftsburn asked.
“No thank you.” Said Flapdash. “I grew up on a farm.” They left him there, still staring into his microscope, still dreading the waste of time coming up.
Everyone got into the lab’s official transport, a Five O’Clock Smoothie with fake wood grain on the sides and real wood grain on the dash, and started passing around the bottle of industrial grade beak polish. Fitcuff drove and, in that capacity, declared himself also to be Lord High Selecter of music on the stereo. He played an old Elvis Costello album that nobody remembered called The Ninth Whistle.
“What was the hit off this?” Bob Shutter asked.
“No hits.” Replied Fitcuff as he swerved to avoid a small tractor, “But the single was ‘Misdirection.’”
“Oh, I say, how appropriate!” Shaftsburn, hallucinating furiously, leaned forward and breathed his beak polish breath on the two men.
“We’re here!” Fitcuff announced. Everyone tumbled out onto the cow-dotted expanse of grass and stared up at the new monument to weekend disruption.

Trashedy

Mr. Unviable dropped his pointer as the dogs on the screen began barking in distinct words of English.
“Pick it up.” Growled Ed Louvain, a cosmetics broker from New Guam.
“I’m trying.” Mr. Unviable stammered, but he had a bad back and nerves that really couldn’t take much more excitement. Articulate, angry dogs had been the last straw. He fumbled about for several seconds while the auditorium, full of young people, echoed with the sounds of the pointer clattering against the painted concrete floor.
The kind of person who is scared of young people is the kind of person who was scared of young people when he himself was young. I am such a person. I couldn’t wait to get old. Now that I am, I look back at pictures of myself as a young man and think, “By Robert Goulet, I was a good-looking fellow! Why, I could have bedded as many a slinky, vapid morsel as I have fingers and toes in that brief window of opportunity!” But I know it isn’t true. I’m seeing a different person than the one that animated that easily distracted corpse.
I met up with Mr. Unviable outside the auditorium, just as he crossed the border into Pokytown, a small conclave of obese, elderly intellectuals, where violent, phallic youth are not allowed without a fully functioning credit card.
“May I buy you a cup of coffee?” I asked the man in the brown suit.
“Toadsgoboad!” He cried, nearly dropping his flashlight in surprise and delight. “What a sight for sore eyes! No thank you on the coffee: it plays hell with my equanimity, but we can find a seat in the Rococo Room. They have an engaging variety of Kool-Aid there.”
Thus we sat down together in the quiet, charming establishment he suggested and commiserated with one another over the failure of the world to take us into account.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take it.” Mr. Unviable whimpered. He passed a handkerchief over his forehead.
“I don’t know how much longer I can fake it.” I joked. At that moment we saw Ed Louvain roll before us on a skateboard and damn, if I wasn’t sorely tempted to join him!

Conflation Intended as Display

Jerry suggested that I take on an apprentice as we stood waiting for vacuum trunk #19 to come along and transport us to Point B (good name for a bar, by the way).
“What do I need an apprentice for?” I asked.
“To pass on your accumulated wisdom and skills. An apprentice is much better in this regard than a child.” Jerry explained his thinking process to me.
“I am beginning to feel that I should let my secrets die with me. That makes things all the more mysterious.”
“Well, there’s also the fact that an apprentice would serve as an assistant.”
I looked at Jerry and made a kind of single chuckle-burst. “What have I got you for then?”
“I’m a companion.” Jerry replied, looking slightly injured. “I provide companionship. I’m not an assistant.”
I sighed and turned towards the approaching trunk. “I’ll think about it.” I said. The mouth of the purple trunk lowered over me and the vacuum forces within it sucked me along towards Point B, where I would gather sewing supplies. Along the way I did give some thought to Jerry’s suggestion.
My apprentice would be a short, dumpy blond girl with a pageboy haircut. Her name would be Brenda were it not for my dissatisfaction with the conjunction of her appearance and my mnemonic associations with her name. Therefore her name is Monicker, by power of a special decree of the Old Wooden Spool Committee.
“See if you can select some buttons that will appeal to my aesthetic sense.” I instructed Monicker as we entered the Bon Temp Sewing Supply Emporium.
“Yes sir.” She answered and trotted off. I had decided to maintain a barrier of formality between us, not just for propriety’s sake, but to facilitate the learning experience.
“Who’s that, Mr. Toadsgoboad?” One of the store-built puppets asked.
“My new apprentice.”
“Really? What happened to Jerry?”
“Well,” I chuckled (fully this time), “You see, Jerry was never actually my apprentice. He…” I stopped, wondering where Jerry was. As the vacuum trunk placed me gently on the edge of Point B I looked back fruitlessly.

Diurnal Aroma

The pitch, calculated to drop the ball neatly into the fiberglass bear’s blunt-toothed mouth, was disturbed by a freak shower of duck blood and plastic numerals of the small, multi-colored variety, so that it fell short. Moondagger, son of the previous trade representative, had barely had time to wrestle his umbrella out of its case before the singular atmospheric phenomenon had ceased.
“I say, Moondagger,” Laurence of the Bacon-Eaters laughed, “What will you do now?”
“I suppose I could pick up leaves in the park.” The tall, trimly built Moondagger answered without hesitation. His facility with words was well known throughout the Glandular Annex. He made stabbing motions at the ground with the point of his umbrella, enhancing his pantomime with a face like that of a disgruntled old man of the type likely to be relegated to a life of picking up refuse.
“By god,” Tricky said to Laurence’s wife, Angela, “He looks just like my father.”
“He might be your father.” Sharp-tongued Angela, who had risen from the Static Ward to a position of prominence and cared not who knew it, cruelly riposted.
Tricky merely pursed his lips and wandered to the one small window that looked out on Froggy’s gravesite, adjusting his hat as he did so. He stared absently at the fiberglass bear that served as Froggy’s tombstone. Why do they all treat me so vilely, he asked himself. Was it because of his hat? It resembled the ancient symbol for creep, but what of it? Surely, now that creeps dominated every aspect of the entertainment industry, a measure of acceptance, if not respect, had to be expected of one’s fellows? He sniffed, as if from a pre-lachrymose spasm. However, it did not indicate the onset of a crying jag, but the presence of a peculiar, vaguely unpleasant odor. Tricky sniffed again.
“Hey!” He cried, turning around. “Do you guys smell that?”
“What says the man?” Moondagger demanded of his peers.
Laurence sniffed the air.
“I smell it too.” He said. “What is it?”
“It’s daylight!” Uncle Fizzy, Froggy’s son, announced happily.
“Daylight!” Angela cried. “Why, I never!”
Tricky congratulated himself on his social coup.

Time For Narcolepsy

According to the timetable, Giblick’s next bout of narcolepsy was scheduled to begin at one in the afternoon on the Tuesday following my completion of the jumpsuit. If all went according to plan, I would be able to sneak into his house while wearing the new article of clothing and make away with the experimental saxophone without his knowing a thing.
I had felt for some time now that the garments I wore under my overcoat should be just as distinctive as the overcoat and the Gearender (my symbiotic hat) themselves. This all was part of the image I was building up for myself, not only to help me maintain control over my life, but for the people, for whom it is important that they be able to rely on me.
“Will you be needing my help,” Jerry asked as I tried on the jumpsuit, “Or will Monicker’s assistance suffice?”
“Monicker is spending the week with her family in Progross.” I explained. “So, I guess I’ll have to make do with you, if you don’t mind coming along, that is.”
“No, I don’t mind.” Jerry put aside the latest issue of Dustbin. “So, Monicker comes from Goat Valley, eh?”
“Yes. Well, what do you think?” I held out my arms. The jumpsuit was a rusty orange color, covered in zippered pockets. The crest of the Pygmy Kline Sea Foam League adorned the left breast.
“Flex your legs.” Jerry instructed. I did so. “Is it too tight across your butt?”
“No.” I said.
“Aren’t the sleeves too short?”
I flexed my arms. I admitted, to myself, that they were perhaps too short, but I wouldn’t admit this to Jerry, nor did I want to take the time to redo the sleeves yet again. “They’ll do for now.” I said. “I want to get moving.”
“You’re right.” Jerry agitated for movement. “Look at the time!”
It was nearly one ‘o clock. We had to make it all the way to Giblick’s house in the Porkpie Swamp in a few minutes. The only way, of course, was to turn the sofa over and climb inside. We emerged from Giblicks’ cheap davenport to the sound of satisfied, abrasive snores.

Rude Push-Ups

“Sinatra dead ten years and my vision still no closer to reality.” Complained Tweedless, head of the House of Suckerall. He shook his low-hanging head and shuffled over to the liquor cart.
“Sir, perhaps if you were to reveal to us your vision, we might be able to help manifest it.” Phallos, a trusted lieutenant, suggested in a soft, patient voice.
“No.” Tweedless was as firm as the concoction of whiskey and tequila he mixed. “If the vision is to be realized, it must do so of its own accord, by the unaided actions of the universe at large.” He rolled his thick-fingered hand at the universe, which, to him, encompassed everything outside Suckerall House.
Phallos glanced at Winkum, the only other of Tweedless’ lieutenants in the room. Neither changed his expression by as much as the twitch of an eyebrow, but the message had been conveyed and affirmed: the old man was losing his faculties.
Later that day it rained. Phallos, Winkum, and Torger, another member of the executive inner circle, gathered in the intake of one of the massive air ducts at the top of the building to discuss matters.
“The old man mentioned Sinatra being dead ten years. That’s the first time I’ve heard that in connection to his ‘vision.’” Phallos whispered. “What’s it mean, do you think?”
“I’ve never heard that either.” Torger shook his head. “I always assumed this vision of his had something to do with getting wire mesh spectacles accepted by the masses.”
“It’s something to do with the re-adoption of traditional standards in clothing and male-female relations.” Winkum said knowingly. He sounded sure.
“How do you know that?” Phallos asked.
“Stands to reason.” Winkum’s edifice of certainty evaporated under his comrades’ frowns.
“Here’s what’s important:” Torger insisted. “Who’s taking over when Tweedless dies? That’s the important thing.”
“Ownership of Suckerall goes to a board of directors under the terms of the old man’s will. They’ll choose a chairman and that’ll be that.” Winkum stated authoritatively.
Phallos looked at Torger.
“Who sang ‘Singing in the Rain?’” He asked.

Trial Size Inhibitions

In the silence that followed Turnikey’s shocking declaration, Chester listened hard for the telltale clicking of Dr. Collet’s hat, but he could detect nothing. Everett, as could be expected, took charge of the situation.
“Everyone to the bomb shelter!” He cried with his theater-trained voice so that all might hear, even those Kline Sea Foam Pygmies in the back of the hall. As panicky as everyone felt, they still managed to proceed in an orderly and none-too-hasty manner downstairs to the disused cave that had once housed the finest collection of hard cider outside my wife’s celebrated pantry.
My apprentice Monicker was swept along with the crowd and soon found herself seated on a chair made out of an old barrel. She glanced at her watch. Not only were her parents expecting her back at the family home by midnight, but she had to leave in the morning for my on-going experiment in self-referential nonsense. She sighed and settled back in the uncomfortable seat. Good girl; nothing to do but wait; no reason to get antsy.
I smelled the fingers of my left hand. There was an enticing scent of rot there. I had been classified under laboratory conditions as one who preferred earthy odors to clinical ones and this explained my compulsive attraction to the detritus of life regularly caught up on my fingertips. Palms, too, but this was usually attributable more to my having recently sliced an onion. Still, it was no reason that I should indulge in this behavior, especially now that miniature movie cameras were becoming as ubiquitous as the damage Jesus and Saint Paul had left behind. Therefore, I deliberately took my hand away from my nose and sat on it.
“Until these feelings go away.” I said aloud, to reassure the ostracized appendage of my continuing attachment.
“What are you sitting on your hands for?” Jerry demanded, bursting into the room.
“I just felt like it.” I said. “What’s up?” For something certainly was up, judging by the excited look on Jerry’s face.
“Your apprentice, Monicker, is stuck in a bomb shelter at the Chateau Donwee!”
“How do you know?”
Jerry sighed. “It doesn’t matter how I know! I just do!”
I pulled my hand out. “You’re back in action.” I told it, though we both knew it was my nose that had been at fault.

Punk in the Steambath

I came across the hog rooting through the mounds of papers in the back room.
“My memoirs!” I cried out, like a woman calling her child’s name as he plunges over the falls.
“My memoirs are in my songs.” The punk, a skater, a guitarist, a debt-free malcontent, countered.
“Good for you.” I growled, but didn’t make eye contact. What if he had a knife?
“You can get a knife.” The still pool of awareness in my brain where Jesus is supposed to dwell said distractingly.
I took off my hat and waggled it at the hog. “Get out of here!” I yelled, but didn’t get too close. Hogs are supposed to have razor sharp teeth.
“You can get razor sharp teeth.”
“How?” I snarled, snapped my hat back on my head, and maneuvered closer, edging towards the last undisturbed stack, the one full of black-bordered pages.
“I sing about the people I’ve known, the ones that have died, the ones that live as if they’re already dead.” The punk said. “Do you know anybody who’s died?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I screamed. I turned on him. “No, I wasn’t exposed to the depravity of the world from birth; that doesn’t make my experiences petty or illegitimate.”
“Secure in your world of privilege…”
“Enough!” I knocked over the black-bordered stack and buried the hog. I grabbed the punk (a stereotypical one, as it turned out) by one of several prominent piercings and pushed him into the debris.
“Could you use my lighter, sir?” Monicker asked, offering me fire.
“Your intuition is excellent.” I praised. Soon the back room was an inferno. We shut the door on the scene and got our breath back in the hallway.
“What are you doing with a lighter?” I asked my apprentice.
She blushed and looked at the floor.
“You smoke?!” I was aghast.
“Just pot!” She offered mitigation.
But mitigation is not enough for the pure of heart.

Wally’s Corn Chip Alternate

I tried another door. Like the previous dozen or so it was locked. No tool at my disposal would open any of them. What zone had I stumbled into? It was part of the tunnel system, but a part I had never been to before. The pictures on the walls were watercolors of military officers of two hundred years ago. The doors were numbered in the twenty thousands. The lights gave off an orange-pink color. I was getting a little scared in the situation.
I had stolen a bag of honey mustard-flavored pretzels and was desperately trying to finish them before anyone saw me. Not only finish the pretzels, but find a place to ditch the empty bag.
I glanced back. There was no one in view, but any number of Jennifers and Dales could be lurking behind these doors. I scrabbled another handful of pretzels and shoved them into my mouth, careful not to drop any crumbs or pieces. I looked down at my feet and around on the carpet.
That was another thing: the tunnel (or perhaps we’d better call it a hallway at this point) was carpeted. That was unusual. Could it be I had wandered out of the tunnels without knowing it? That was possible, but such a gradual shift from tunnel to hallway was unprecedented and, in any case, bound to make me determine this place as part of the tunnel system. In other words, I considered this hallway part of my domain.
Not that that made any possible residents automatically my subjects. They would have to be won over as usual and one didn’t do that by being covered in pretzel crumbs or being seen apprehended as a thief. I tried another door. It was locked. I moved on, shoving another handful of pretzels into my mouth.
Quite frankly, I was getting sick, but I had purposed in my heart to eat the whole bag and that was what I was going to do. As I turned a corner I put the last handful in my mouth. I stopped under a light and examined the interior of the bag. There was a goodly amount of crumbs and salt crystals that, normally, I would have finished off by tipping the bag over my face, but I decided that I had fulfilled the terms of my contract with myself and rolled the bag up tightly. I wiped my mouth off and tried another door, still chewing. It opened, thank Goulet, although he didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s just something I say.

Ancient Menstrual Tapestry

“You made a good choice in coming here.” The woman in the owl costume assured me.
“Well, I deliberated on it thoroughly before choosing.” I told her with one of my better smiles.
She flushed like a lava lamp in her return smile. The owl has the teeth of a horse.
“Would you like to look around?” She asked.
“If I may.” I stipulated, although we all knew that I was going to do just as I damn well pleased.
“Go ahead.” The woman in the owl costume stretched out a wing to indicate that the breadth of the large room was mine to explore. I suspect that she wanted to say, “feel free,” but felt constrained.
I thanked her and headed down one of the narrow paths between the exhibit booths, grabbing up a handful of complimentary pecan divinity on the way. It wasn’t as good as my Aunt Florence’s, but then, whose will ever be now tha she doesn’t make it anymore?
The ancient menstrual tapestry, which this piece is named for, was to be found in a booth deep within the labyrinth of pathways. An old woman, whose still considerable beauty was marred by the tracheotomy hole in her throat, was the booth’s proprietor.
“Do you fully appreciate the symbolism?” She whispered, gesturing indistinctly at the tapestry. Her breath was like a coal mine full of toothpaste. I guess she still smoked.
“Not only that,” I said, delicately averting my nose, “I appreciate the symbology.”
“Ah,” She laughed breathily and, again, vaguely, not really knowing at what she laughed, perhaps nothing more than the pleasure of benign human interaction in these last cancer-fraught days of her life.
“I particularly like the woman on the red horse.” I said as I took a closer look at the tapestry.
“She is central to the imagery.”
“But of course.” I agreed. No one could have been more stunned than I when I jerked the tapestry down.

The Case of the Jobless Jockey

“Mike,” Jerry put his head in the door and asked, “How tired are you?”
“Not too badly.” I said, looking up from a pile of paperwork. “Why?”
“Think you can see one more client today?”
“Potential client, Jerry.” I corrected. “They’re not clients until I’ve accepted the case and they’ve paid their fees.”
“Well, a customer, at least.”
“A customer, sure. Show him in.” I turned to Monicker, my apprentice, sitting in the schoolhouse desk to my right. “Due to my general taciturnity I acquired a reputation for wisdom.” I told her. “People often make the right judgments, but for the wrong reasons. However, that judgment has enabled me to build this business into what it is today—ah, Jerry.” I broke off at Jerry’s entrance. “Who is this?”
“This is Clyde Clemling, Mike.” Jerry introduced the man. He gestured him to the hard-backed chair before my desk and exited the room.
“Have a seat, Mr. Clemling.” I said. “I once wished that my name was Clyde. My mother thought I was crazy. What can I do for you?”
“I’m a jockey, Mr. Toadsgoboad.” The man began. I could see that he was. He was small, brown, weathered, dressed in green and white satin clothing. A small photograph of a horse was pinned to the front of his shirt.
“That’s terrible.” I agreed sympathetically. “Well, I’ll do what I can, but I’m no miracle worker, despite what the critics say.” I delivered this last clause to Monicker, my eyebrows raised and my ears back.
“No, you don’t understand.” Clemling insisted with a sadness in his voice that would have fittingly graced the most pathetic of circus clowns, should clowns be permitted to speak. “I like being a jockey. It’s just that I’m out of work at the moment.”
“My dear man, you need psychiatric counseling, not… well, whatever it is one calls what I do.” I looked at the walls of my office for some clue, but no degrees, diplomas, or licenses hung there.
“I thought you helped people!” The jobless jockey wailed.
“And I have helped you.” I declared, for there on the wall was the answer to Mr. Clemling’s problem. “Take off that horse picture.” I instructed him.
“Old Beaneater? But why?”
“Take this instead.” I got up and handed him the framed photograph of Roberta, the fastest ostrich in the world.

Enduring Verities

While scanning for suitable victims for my nefarious schemes on the sidewalk in front of the so-called Temple of Enduring Verities, I was spotted by Clover McHuckhurst, the last of the Westside Weasels. This was unfortunate, as McHuckhurst had sworn to avenge himself on me, and only his continuing belief in my untimely death had thus far prevented him from attempting some unfashionable violence on my person. This deception had been put across easily enough. I had arranged to be publicly executed by beheading and made sure that McHuckhurst had been invited to attend.
McHuckhurst was in the passenger seat of a car when he spotted me. While he frantically directed the driver, a big man in some kind of turban, to turn around, I retreated into the Temple of Enduring Verities.
A larger-than-life-sized animatronic replica of William Faulkner greeted me from its post behind the guardrail.
“They got my quote wrong!” Its recorded voice brayed in as fine an approximation of the educated white trash accent as I have heard outside my own impersonation of Shelby Foote at Giggler’s Comedy Club on amateur night.
“Where are the restrooms?” I asked the little old lady in the curator’s uniform standing at Faulkner’s feet like a child with progeria come to visit grandpa. Following her reluctantly given directions, I soon found myself hiding in the handicapped stall waiting for I knew not what.
The door to the restroom opened just as I was beginning to feel foolish enough to step outside.
“Someone’s in the handicapped stall.” I head a voice that could only belong to the man in the turban-like headdress.
“Check it out.” Came the unmistakable voice of Clover McHuckhurst in reply.
I prepared myself as best I could.
The stall door was rattled by thick, hairy fingers on the handle.
“I’m in here.” I sang.
“It’s him!” McHuckhurst cried. “I’d know that off-key warble anywhere!”
I kicked the door open, knocking Mr. Turban backwards into the sink.
“‘Off-key?’” I demanded. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I spent good money on your album!” McHuckhurst’s voice was low and gravelly. Obviously rage of an immeasurable irrationality had possessed him. Some people just can’t get over aesthetic disappointment.

Soap Lady’s Net Worth

The Soap Lady’s brother, Nedwick, worried that he would not be adequately compensated for his years of brotherly devotion.
“I need to know what’s in her will!” He angrily told Hollowell, who had faithfully served the Soap Lady as her attorney for the past half-century, though he had no law degree and only a rudimentary understanding of exactly why the Soap Lady was called the Soap Lady.
“I tell you the contents of the will cannot be revealed until after the Soap Lady’s death!” Hollowell was just as angry in his reply. Why didn’t Nedwick leave him alone so that he could eat his cheese platter in peace?
“If you won’t divulge the information I require,” Nedwick dramatically brought forth his conditional clause, “Then I’ll do something drastic!” His eyes were like the headlamps on a classic American roadster of the Roaring Twenties (a car, by the way, that Nedwick intended to purchase after he’d received his expected legacy): big, round, and unnecessarily bulging beyond the confines of their surrounding structure.
Hollowell merely looked at Nedwick blankly.
“OK.” He said after a long silence.
Nedwick nodded. “Right.” He said. “I’m going to go do it. Something drastic.” He stomped to the door. “Drastic!” He shouted before leaving with a bang.
“Is he gone?” The Soap Lady asked as she stepped out from behind the ceremonial flag to the right of Hollowell’s desk.
“Yes.” Hollowell sighed. He uncovered his cheese platter. Boy, didn’t it look good!
“Mmm, may I try some?” The Soap Lady asked.
Hollowell smiled. “Sure.” He said.
The Soap Lady selected one of the little squares of cheese and bit into it.
“Oh! They’re just like little miniature cakes of soap, aren’t they?” She squealed happily.
Meanwhile, Nedwick had followed through on his threat. He had marched straight down to the nearest franchise of a nation-wide discount retail chain and applied for a job.
“I’m sorry.” Said the store’s manager. “We’re not hiring right now.”

Scorcese’s Indifference

I was reminded of how my sister used to pronounce the classic word game Scrabble as “Scramble.” What reminded me of this? Oh, didn’t I tell you? It came to mind when I was recently introduced to Martin Scorcese at a “mime” party, where no one was allowed to talk. We all wore nametags to identify ourselves and communicated by gestures and by writing on tiny pieces of paper provided by our host, the reanimated corpse of Charlton Heston.
Someone grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me over to Scorcese, pointing back and forth between the two of us and smiling. I was so confused, trying to figure out who had seized me that I didn’t focus properly on Scorcese’s nametag. I thought it said “Sorceror.”
I looked at the person who had grabbed me. It was Andy Summers.
Of course, I was far more interested in meeting the great guitarist than some old sorceror, but, to be polite, I looked again at my intended interlocutor. I pointed at my own nametag (which read “Clavicle,” as I wished to remain incognito for the present) and smiled broadly, waggling my eyebrows like sparklers. The sorceror extended his hand. I thought I felt magic in the touching of our flesh. Doctors later explained to me that I was only feeling a reflection of my own not-inconsiderable powers.
Andy Summers mimed the act of writing and pointed at the sorceror. I nodded. Taking a piece of paper from a passing servant, I wrote,
“How are you?” This I passed to the sorceror.
“Indifferent.” Came the reply in impossibly neat handwriting.
“That’s too bad.”
“On the contrary. It is neither good nor bad.”
“You have much wisdom, sorceror.”
“You call me sorceror? Are you then, as so many of the people here are, a fan of my work?”
“I don’t know. What works have you performed?”
“Taxi Driver, Heat of the Marigolds, Raging Bull.”
“Those are Hollywood movies!” I wrote savagely.
Andy Summers, with his legendary tact, touched my shoulder to calm me down. It was then that I felt the true magic, old as time itself.

Mulch Ladder

“All you’ve got to do is come up with an opening sentence containing the word ‘feedback.’” I told Monicker (my apprentice, for those of you who skipped ahead to this page or to whom this piece has been presented as an excerpt, though why anyone should want to read this piece separate from the rest of the volume to which it belongs is beyond me. I have been trying to do two seemingly mutually exclusive things in my work: writing pieces that will actually stand alone and at the same time fit together into a so-called ‘novel’).
“I-I’m sorry.” She stammered. “You kind of lost me there.” She sat at her schoolroom desk with her pen poised over a blank page.
“Oh, never mind.” I fanned the air before my nose. “We’ll try it another way. You just write until you fill up that page. Don’t worry about what you’re writing about. Facility in cohesion will come with time. It’s just like lifting weights.” I added. That last was one of my favorite similes with regard to the artistic life.
“How long did it take you?” She asked.
“Oh, two or three years to achieve a basic level of mastery.” I reflected. “But never mind that now. You just get started.” I retreated to my own desk and kept my eyes averted so as not to agitate the girl.
Girl. She was a young woman. I liked the fact that she dressed so sloppily, so “butch.” The last thing I needed was to develop a crush on her. I had (still do) a wife I was loyal to (if that means anything to the people in the future reading this. We had odd emotional attachments in the time period in which I lived). That’s not to say that a man like me couldn’t develop a crush on even a sloppy, dykey, dumpy girl like Monicker; my imagination is just too powerful to be balked at much of anything. It’s just that I don’t need unnecessary complications, not to mention the propriety I wished to maintain in my person.
I had enough trouble with my latest obsessions/interests. I was getting into Shostakovich and I wanted to finally write and draw a graphic novel. As to the first, absorbing the music of Shostakovich would take the kind of time and attention that I didn’t have much anymore. As to the second, it would mean overcoming my aversion to drawing the same characters over and over.
“I’m done.” Monicker announced.
“So soon? Let me see.” She handed me her paper. It was titled, “I Want to Go Home.”

The Wherewithal for Withdrawal

Having finally decided that my vehicle was a van, I was now able to drive Monicker back to her parents’ house without that last little bit of confusion hanging over my head.
“I’m sorry to see you go,” I said to Monicker as we seated ourselves in the van, “But this trip will enable us to complete your apprenticeship, albeit in a premature, haphazard way.”
“Just like you do everything else!” Jerry, who was coming with us, shouted from the back seat.
“What will you do upon your return to Goat Valley?” I asked Monicker after we had been on the road about a half an hour and said nothing at all to each other during that time.
“I’m thinking of teaching my brother your techniques and going into business with him.” The young woman with the lank blond mop replied.
“Really?” I didn’t know whether I disapproved or was flattered. Probably both. “How old is he?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Well, I don’t want to discourage you, but that may be too old to properly absorb my techniques.”
“What about your methods then?”
I smiled. She had learned from me after all!
“That might be alright.” I turned into the forest that ringed the town of Bergonzi, the eastern gateway to Goat Valley. “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Punchlet.”
I glanced at Jerry in the mirror.
“Jerry, has it been established whether we are aware of Punchlet’s existence yet?” I asked.
“I can’t remember.” My imaginary friend said apologetically.
“What’s wrong?” Monicker asked.
“Nothing.” I looked at her. “Then you’re a goat!” I tried to keep my voice down. I wasn’t angry with her, just myself.
“Girl man-goat.” She corrected.
“Young woman man-goat.” I thought.

I Don’t Believe They’re Really Laughing

“Is this a diesel?” Monicker asked me about my van. What a typical thing for her to ask. Not “why don’t you get something sportier,” or “where is the nearest place where I may purchase impractical shoes,” but “is this a diesel?”
“No.” I answered, keeping an eye out for wild animals that might dash out in front of me. “This is a genetically engineered vehicle. It is, in essence, an animal. It runs on a concentrated nutritive paste.”
“So it goes to the bathroom?” This was what I would miss most about my apprentice, the fact that for all her lack of dainty femininity, she was still a girl, with a girls’ mindset. I don’t like vulgar women who talk about taking a shit.
I chuckled at her question and went on to explain the workings of the van.
Meanwhile, Jerry sat in the back and brooded. He hadn’t enjoyed this whole episode with the apprentice. Although I don’t think he had any real animus towards Monicker. I know that he resented her presence. He felt left out. Well, all that would soon be remedied. She would be out of our lives forever in a few more pages. Excuse me; I meant to say miles.
“I don’t believe they’re really laughing.” Jerry said aloud.
“What?” I asked. We had reached the town of Bergonzi. The mountains that surrounded Goat Valley loomed over it. I could see the road that led through the Skalap pass above.
“The members of the audiences for sitcoms.”
“Well, of course not. They’re just there to fulfill the requirement that the show be ‘filmed before a live studio audience.’ It doesn’t mean that the laugher you hear came from them. That’s all added later electronically.”
“I didn’t know that.” Monicker said.
“Oh, Monicker.” I was incredulous. How could she have spent so long in my presence and not soak up a modicum of cynicism?
“It’s Monica, actually. I never had the heart to correct you.”
“Until now.” I observed. I glanced at Jerry. He was staring out the window. “Jerry, what made you think about the genuineness of audience reactions to sitcoms?”
“This is where they film ‘Shirking My Duties.’” He replied. Sure enough, there was Fuchsia Studios on the right-hand side of the road.

Shirking My Duties

On the previous episode of “Shirking My Duties,” Ted was working on a way to avoid paying alimony to his ex-wife. Tonight’s episode, “Broken Promises,” continued with that storyline.
“Abigail deserves something after the way you treated her.” Colonel Foxmire rubbed his massive jaw and lectured Ted.
“She got her payment for that. She took it out of my soul.” Ted slopped brown liquor into a juice glass and downed it with a manly grimace.
“Did somebody mention ‘soul?’” The central character of the program, Quacky Loopshooter, entered the scene and asked in the humorous voice that had made him such a cultural phenomenon. There was a roar of recognition and approval from the audience. Quacky spun around on one foot, eliciting further howls of delight.
“Quacky,” Colonel Foxmire rumbled, “Get out of here! We’re discussing serious matters!”
“Hey, ‘serious matters’ is my middle name.” Quacky protested, leaping over the back of the sofa to land on the middle cushion in a relaxed posture. “Actually, my middle name is ‘Walker,’ but don’t tell anybody.”
Screams of hilarity met this remark.
Waiting patiently for the laughter to die down (just as you do in real life), Ted said, “I thought your middle name was ‘Interloper.’”
“Hey, it the title is appropriate…” Quacky left the sentence unfinished. He didn’t need to finish it. His humorous delivery of the line completed the job. Laughter as if from a thousand trained monkeys erupted immediately and then, like a reliable tide, receded just in time for Colonel Foxmire to take a seat next to Quacky.
“Quacky, we’re discussing Ted’s ex-wife.” He said with grandfatherly gravity.
“Abigail? What about her?” When not actively funny, Quacky became rather a juvenile presence, emotionally simple and curious.
“I’m trying to avoid paying alimony.” Ted explained. His juice glass had mysteriously been refilled.
“That sounds wrong to me.” Quacky was un-characteristically somber, a surefire clue that a joke was coming next. “I want to help!”




Wretched Penmanship

“Twist the knife! Twist the knife!” Barbara croaked while making a twisting motion with her fist. Tears were in her eyes and her face was going red.
Stanley sat wide-eyed, embarrassed at this display. He didn’t know what to say. He still held Barbara’s paper, the one he had said (merely said, he reminded everyone later) was not only poorly written, but displayed wretched penmanship. It wasn’t as if he was recommending Barbara for termination; he didn’t really have that power anyway.
“After the way she acted, however, I wish I did.” He told James and Louise an hour later by the potted plant in the records room.
“Try to be understanding.” Louise begged. “She’s under a lot of stress.”
Stanley found this ridiculous. He glanced at James, who showed that he agreed with his assessment by rolling his eyes.
Twenty feet away inside one of the columns that held up the roof, Slim Chapling and his assistant, Mr. Orse, secretly watched Stanley, James, and Louise.
“What do you think?” Chapling asked the tiny man sitting on his lap.
“I don’t know.” Mr. Orse said more loudly than one would have expected from so little a man who was supposedly trying to be furtive. But then, the hollow column inside which he was concealed was soundproofed from the inside out (but not outside in) and he was equipped with a powerful voice in compensation for his diminutive size. Compensated by whom is a question I should not like to debate with anyone at the moment. Certainly not anyone with a PhD. Maybe later when I am more certain of my own role here.
“I should like to take a look at the paper that has brought about such a fuss.” Mr. Orse continued.
“So would I.” Chapling agreed. He flipped open the top of his wristwatch. “Chapling here.” He said. “We’re moving to column B16. Going to get a look at Barbara’s paper.”
“Understood.” I said from my own place of concealment. “Go ahead.”
Cradling Mr. Orse carefully in his lean, but muscular arms, Chapling descended to the crawlspace below the floor and moved like a weta to the entrance to column B16. Once inside, he and Mr. Orse were able to see the rejected paper on Stanley’s desk. Its title, which they could barely make out, was “Why I Love Stanley.”

Pestilential Visions

“Are these not the Puppies of Doom?” Wrancilar asked. “Doom’s Puppies?”
“You make it sound so serious when you say it like that.” Giffunkus, Wrancilar’s partner on the Severance Patrol, made known his feelings so that there might be no confusion later.
Wrancilar stared into Giffunkus’ eyes with a deadly, stone-like fixity. This gave way to wry laughter as he turned away.
The two men stood on opposite sides of a battered cardboard box in which yapped and jumped the little animals that Wrancilar had cynically mislabeled “puppies.” A third man, a civilian judging by the simply-cut, wool-padded, silk jacket he wore, followed Wrancilar’s gaze across the rusted equipment-strewn expanse of grassland. He saw nothing engaging to the sight.
“Go on.” The third man urged, looking back at Giffunkus. “Pick you one out.”
“Funny how the syntax of our German forebears comes out in the speech of the pathetic hillbilly.” Giffunkus spoke into his memorandum recorder. “More, how ironic that whereas the speech of the modern-day German is considered sophisticated, the transliterations of his hillbilly cousin are looked down on.” Giffunkus ended his note to himself and saw that the third man was staring at him. “Pardon me.” He said, “I know you’re no hillbilly, not living in a flatland environment such as this; it’s just that I couldn’t think of any other word to accurately convey the ignorant rural characterization properly.”
“You could have said ‘redneck.’” Wrancilar said. The sun was setting in the distance behind him. When he turned back to his partner, his face was obscured. A halo of light surrounded his official Severance Patrol helmet.
“No.” Giffunkus moaned. “No, ‘redneck’ is more… oh, I don’t know. This man isn’t quite what I consider a redneck.”
“You fellas don’t want to buy a Mars dog, do you?” The one called ignorant rural hillbilly asked, looking back and forth from Wrancilar to Giffunkus.
“Not really.” Wrancilar said. Again he was looking towards the horizon.
Giffunkus caught something in his partner’s tone. He followed Wrancilar’s gaze.
“What is it?” He asked.
“Visions of pestilence.” Wrancilar replied.
“You are a serious one, no lie.” The third man said.

Pinewood Bowler

The fact that we got to wear costumes was described to me as “the icing on the cake.” It seemed that I was going to be one of those kids who only wanted to eat the icing, because, while I liked the idea of wearing a costume, I did not relish the thought of having to be in the same room as all those phonies from the Ministry of Dope.
My costume was that of a typical Lumber Lord of the Second Nineteenth Century. I wore a close-fitting suit of purple serge, tall boots of Mars dog hide, a lapel button bearing a picture of Franz Kline that read “Bleed ‘til You See in Black and White,” and instead of the Gearender on my head, a pinewood bowler.
This last item, like the Gearender, was in fact a semi-sentient, symbiotic creature capable of interfacing with my brain and, in doing so, granting me powers of an other-than-normal nature. Rushed as I was, and chary of mingling with the other guests, I hadn’t had time or presence of mind to try on the bowler before setting out from my palace for this so-called “party.”
“Ah, Toadsgoboad!” Jack Schnitterton met me at the entrance to the large, red-draped room. “I’m glad you could make it!” He was dressed as an enormous fish worm, each of whose eight legs really worked. No doubt they operated on some hydraulic principle. I promised myself I would look into the matter when I got back home.
“You disgust me, Schnitterton!” I snapped for no real reason that I could fathom. Tears gathered on the balconies of my eyes, ready to commit suicide. “Where’s the punch?” I demanded as I pushed past him and the parasitic gleaner fish that milled about his gills.
“There goes Toadsgoboad!” Someone shouted. “What’s he got up as?”
“He’s one of those dudes from Clockwork Orange!”
“Idiots!” I growled, then thought better of it. I screamed it instead. “Idiots!” I grabbed hold of the long table supporting the punchbowl and the trays of sausage balls and cocktail wienies. Like King Kong among the subway cars, I heaved it across the room.
“My god, what’s gotten into him?” They all asked. I had to wonder about that myself. Of course, it was the hat. I put it away in a box in closet #5 and tried to forget all about it.

Prone to Prostration

Over the years crystals have proven themselves to be an efficient and relatively cheap means of prolonging the life of an automobile. Certainly, when one compares their performance to that of a certified mechanic (most of whom are in cahoots with secret organizations with anti-earth agendas), one can readily see the advantages in utilizing “nature’s toolkit.”
Norman Chickrell was a believer in the power of crystals. Although he had several in his house at critical, scientifically determined positions, he had not yet installed one in his Volkswagen Beetle (the old kind). As he was planning on a trip to Chicago for next week and was none too sure of the car’s reliability, he felt the time had finally come to make this important purchase.
“Hello,” Said the person on duty at Earth Household, “May I help you with something?”
“Yeah.” Norman admitted. His sleepy eyes were friendly, just like those of the bearded youth to whom he spoke. “I’m going to Chicago next week.”
“Oh, beautiful.” The clerk enthused. “Chicago’s a great town.”
“Yeah, and I’m going in my ’74 Beetle.”
“Oh, wow. That’s a great car.”
“Yeah, but I’m not certain we’ll make it. The car’s old and I really haven’t kept up with its maintenance like I should. I was thinking of getting a crystal to help it out.” Norman gestured towards the attractive display of crystals before him.
“I think that’s a good idea.” Agreed the clerk. His beard was light red. His tie-dyed t-shirt had originally been yellow. What wonder then that the crystal he selected for Norman was blue?
“I can feel a connection with it already.” Said Norman as he hefted the two-inch stone on its vinyl string.
“That’s the way it is with the right crystal. The bond is immediate.” The clerk explained.
Norman was a little taken aback by the forty-five dollar price tag. It must have been a while since his last crystal purchase. Still, it was a bargain considering the good vibrations he already was experiencing. He paid and returned home, the crystal hanging from the Beetle’s rear-view mirror. Does it surprise you to hear that he made it to Chicago and back without incident?

Indian Cuisine

Supplies of Indian food were laid in for the long summer of cruelty. As a child one looks forward to summer. There’s no school and the traditional activities are all outdoors. As an adult, however, one knows that winter is the better of the two seasons of extremes. It may be cold, but one can always put on more clothes. Plus, one gets to spend most of one’s time indoors, which is far more pleasant than being outside. American children are finally discovering this. That’s why they’re getting so fat.
Of course, spring and fall are preferable to either summer or winter, but, as in history, it is the difficult times, like war rather than peace, that we remember. I feel that summer and winter are just things to be endured. I grit my teeth and focus on my private world, hoping to make the bad times go by faster. I’ll look up from the completion of another novel, another painting, or another crappy collection of cartoons and say, “Oh, has fall started? We must make sure to go see the leaves this year!” But we never do.
Shifting focus slightly, I would like to explain a little about how these pieces are written. I work at the Post Office on the night shift. The one thing that enables me to get through my shift is my writing and drawing. Unlike my colleagues, who spend their lunches and breaks socializing and watching the television that was foolishly installed in the breakroom a couple of years ago, I sit all alone with my headphones on (to drown out some of the sound of that television) and write. I write one piece on my lunch and the beginning of another. This second piece is finished on my first break. The second break, the one I take just before clocking out to go home, is used for drawing cartoons (“comics,” for those of you conversant with the abiding hipness of our culture).
I have my CD player (yes, a CD player. I have not switched, and will not switch, over to the Ipod or whatever novelty gadget is current) as loud as it will go and I can still hear the TV!
I wish I had some Indian food right now. I usually eat a can of red beans and a can of turnip greens for lunch. Tonight, however, in an attempt to liven up my night, I brought an onion pie my wife bought at the grocery store. It was inedible. The crust was gummy and wet. The filling was stringy and snotty. Altogether, this has been a bad week for me.

Every Day A New Hairstyle

“Although required by the conventions of our organization to mention the word ‘mormon’ in this speech, I am reluctant to do so, mainly because I can think of no way to utilize the word without either saying something unnecessarily offensive, and therefore impolitic, or something completely arbitrary and absurd that would have no bearing on the central topic of tonight’s meeting, which, as you all know, is our on-going efforts to end Toadsgoboad’s cruel and capricious rule over the tunnel system. Thank you.” Ned Feese stacked his index cards together and quitted the podium. Another man, rotund, bespectacled, dressed in a black suit, got up from the table on the dais and took Feese’s place. He was clapping as he began to speak.
“Let’s hear it for Ned Feese, everyone!” He urged the ballroom full of rotund, bespectacled men in black and brown suits. The response from the audience was lackluster. Feese, while not actually on the executive council, was the senior-most members of the organization and his speech was a mere formality, a holdover from the days when the Turlobog organization had real power. It meant nothing and was not intended to mean anything.
“It’s a ritual.” Andy Waddalushiyam, sitting at a moderately prestigious table, explained to new member Donal Poroce. “Every year old Ned is permitted to strike the keynote.”
“I see.” Poroce replied. He finished his Jack and Coke and waggled his glass at a waiter.
Another man, sitting opposite Poroce and Waddalushiyam, leaned closer. “Ned’s membership goes back to the days when Turlobog was actually manifest among us. He used to be the great man’s personal secretary.” He added with an emphasis that was exactly midway between genuine and mocking.
Waddalushiyam acknowledged the other man’s remarks with a nod. He didn’t want to confuse Poroce. It was hard enough attracting new members these days, especially normal, hard-working, middle-class men like Poroce.
“I hope you’re enjoying yourself.” He told the new man. “The convention won’t all be like this. Once the workshop get started, we’ll have some fun.”
“I’m sure.” Poroce agreed. “Is the Wives’ Auxiliary meeting similar?” He asked.
“More or less. But there’s more of a focus on trivialities like fashion and such that have little to do with our anti-Toadsgoboad agenda.”

Expensive Fingernails

Each tube-like “hair” on a Mars dog’s back contains a slender, parasitic louse, the vital juices of which are the fundamental ingredient in the nail polish favored by the women of the Efwefti people. Of course, it is expensive. Without the revenue the Efwefti receive from the licensing of their images in various Earth media, it is doubtful that they could afford such costly adornment.
I was flipping through the pages of an Earth magazine, Equitable Honky, the other day, when I came across a two-page spread featuring the images of two Efwefti women, each hauling on a rope attached to a collar around the neck of a krelosam, a tall creature native to the traditional Efwefti lands. It was the animal that attracted my attention primarily in the ad, which was for Mr. Debonair brand cigars, and I was about to turn the page when I noticed the woman on the left.
“Isn’t that Nancy Brocade?” I asked Jerry, pointing at the picture. He was passing through the magazine reading room on his way to the fungus ward when I stopped him.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, still in motion.
“Don’t be in such a damned hurry. Take a good look.”
Jerry put his elbows on the back of the sofa and leaned in. “I don’t know who it is.” He said.
“Doesn’t it look like Nancy Brocade to you?”
“I don’t know who Nancy Brocade is.”
“Don’t you remember?” I begged. “She worked for Luscious Juices, Incorporated.”
“Luscious Juices Incorporated?” Jerry repeated, taking his elbows off the sofa. “Don’t they make fingernail polish?”
“Conveniently so. Among other things.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it, Jerry? Do you really comprehend the implications of Nancy Brocade appearing in this ad?” It didn’t sound as mean as that the way I said it. It was the face I pulled that mitigated any meanness.
“I think so.”
I looked at him closely. “OK, just testing you.” I told Jerry. He exited the room and I continued on to the second part of the story about leeks.

Line Item Treachery

“Mr. President, if you will direct you gaze in this direction, you should see the fabled Kisspercuss ponies coming over that hill.” Weslle indicated the appropriate direction to the chief executive of the Greater Goat Valley Authority and waited. “Any moment now.”
Just as President Henderson was coming up with a pale witticism about such a powerful man as himself having to wait for a herd of wild ponies to put in an appearance, the animals came galloping over the hill.
“Wow.” Said Henderson.
From the observation platform the dozen or so of us that comprised the group watched as the herd, estimated at some one thousand individuals, thundered along, over the hill and down into one of the innumerable ravines that crisscrossed this rumpled, grassy waste.
“Most impressive.” I said within the hearing of Henderson. I kept my eyes on him as I spoke. “But what do you intend to do with them?”
The nominal leader of the people of Goat Valley glanced at me.
“That’s a good question.” He said to Weslle, the high official of the Poko-Efwefti urbanites, who was our host.
“These ponies are protected under the terms of our nation’s Natural Orders Act, a conservation measure much like the ones that more advanced states like your own have adopted.” Weslle explained.
“Strange that a natural phenomenon like a herd of wild ponies can be predicted to put in an appearance with nearly the reliability of a commuter train.” I said.
“Yes.” Henderson now favored me with a steady, direct look. “That is very strange.” He said this flatly, as if merely stating a fact, a mysterious fact no doubt, but one hardly to be solved in our lifetimes.
Later, as the group enjoyed the local peppermint tea under a festively colored awning, Henderson approached me.
“I understood what you were getting at earlier.” He said. “But I’m not in a position to directly antagonize the Poko-Efwefti people.”
“I am, however.” I said. “But I won’t. It is equally beneficial to my plans that things proceed smoothly.”


Able-Bodied Stoner

The ceramic tube in my pocket was a relic from my days as a dedicated consumer of narcoweed.
“Why do you still carry that thing around?” Jerry asked as we made out slow, rambling way to the treehouse hideaway of Mr. Unviable.
“Well, apart from the fact that its presence on my person doesn’t unnecessarily encumber me,” I explained, “There are sentimental attachments.” I am an inveterate packrat and my pockets are crowded with objects of no immediate or apparent utility.
I had the tube in my hand, examining it, sniffing the dead odor of smoke inside it. Jerry and I sat in the sunshine in courtyard #4, sipping peppermint tea and perusing the morning papers. “BATTERY RECYCLING CONTINUES,” read the headlines.
“You threw away all of your alcohol-related paraphernalia; why not that dope tube?” Jerry asked, looking in confusion about him. What was this newspaper doing in his hand?
“Almost all of my drinking paraphernalia; not all.” I corrected, reestablishing our voyage to Mr. Unviable’s residence. “The difference is that alcohol nearly killed me. Of course I wouldn’t want any reminders around. Narcoweed was merely an unhealthy habit. I still have fond memories of those times. And who knows? Maybe when I’m a old man…”
“What?” Jerry wanted to hear the rest.
“I believe we’re here.” I pointed up at the neatly painted red door overhead. Jerry looked somewhat distractedly at the table and chairs around us.
“What about these things?” He asked.
“Well, they won’t fit in my pockets.” I joked. “Leave them. They’ll take care of themselves.” I finished my tea and left the cup on the table. Stepping up to the red door, I pulled the old-fashioned, brass bell knob.
“Toadsgoboad!” The kindly, but sad (you could see the defeat in his eyes) old man answered the door. He drew Jerry and I inside and conducted us to a clean, well-lit niche among stacks of old comic books.
“Can I get you each a cup of peppermint tea?” Mr. Unviable asked.
“No thank you.” Said Jerry. “We just had some… outside, I suppose.”
“We just came for the latest Fu Manchu album.” I said. “You do have a copy, don’t you?”

Townhouse in San Francisco

My aquatic forebears, in their ignorance, failed to secure an adequate heritage to pass on to their descendants. Thus, I was forced to purchase the townhouse in San Francisco that I required, rather than inherit it.
When picturing this townhouse, you should consult an old Rod McKuen book, one published under the Stanyan imprint, not the later Cheval Books. The logo for Stanyan is a Victorian era townhouse and will give you a good idea of both the look and the feel of what I was looking for. San Francisco in the mid to late 1960’s has a feel to it that I needed to see embodied in the townhouse.
“You do us proud.” A couple of my aforementioned ancestors (exactly which generation, I can’t be sure) told me as I walked along the beach with the plucky young real estate agent, Ruth Amici.
“Well, thank you.” I said nervously. I patted their smooth-domed heads and watched them disappear under the waves.
“Too bad I didn’t have any fish on me.” I told Ruth.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a houseboat?” She asked. “I have several on hand at the moment. I see you in a houseboat.”
“So do I.” I admitted. “Just not right now.”
Ruth showed me to the very townhouse I expected to find. I knew it was the one I was looking for the moment I saw it. The previous owner had painted a smiling, patriarchal sun above the uppermost front window.
“Yes, this is it.” I said, flexing my hands. “Proto-hippies lived here.”
“And outright hippies.” Ruth added. “You should have seen all the macramé wall hangings they left behind.”
“Are they still inside?” I asked eagerly as we ascended the steps and Ruth fumbled with the key.
“No, we threw them out.”
I winced. “Another lost opportunity.” I muttered, cryptically, I’m sure, to Ruth’s puzzled ears.
Only a brief walk-through was needed to convince me of the suitability of the place. The deal was concluded that very day, me paying cash and Ruth handing me the key. I went straight from her office to the townhouse, opened the trapdoor in the living room and helped Jerry and our puppet friends up.

They Say the Moon is Cold

Jerry claimed that he had forgotten about our scheduled trip to the moon, but I didn’t believe him. I pointed out that the words “trip to moon” had been written on the refrigerator for weeks.
“I think you just don’t want to do.” I accused, not without reason, as he had pinned a badge on his shirt that read, “Boycott the Moon.”
“It’s not me, Mike.” He argued. “It’s the puppets. I don’t think we can comfortably take them with us, and I don’t think we can leave them behind in good conscience.”
“What bout bad conscience? Would that work, do you think?”
“Mike…” Jerry began to reprove me, or to remind me that he actually had no literal conscience. One of the two, I’m not sure which.
“I’m only kidding, Jerry. Besides, your concerns are unnecessary. I have arranged matters so that we can make the trip without undue hardship on anyone.”
Jerry looked at me expectantly, but I said nothing further for the moment. Let him feel the sweet ache of suspense.
The next day as we all sat eating our breakfast, me with my oatmeal; Jerry with his ethereal paste; and the puppets with the Styrofoam wafers they made such a mess of, I casually asked,
“Well, who would like to take a stroll about the moon?”
Everyone looked at each other.
“‘Cause we’re already there.” I added, hating to keep them dangling as much as I hated surprises myself. Don’t ever get me a birthday present. I won’t like it, whatever it is.
During the night I had transferred the townhouse to the moon by means of the interstellar crane. We opened the front door and stepped down onto the lunar surface.
“It was expensive,” I said, “But worth it, I think.”
“We’re already here?” Asked Stylus Pollack. “This is really the moon?”
“It sure is.”
“There’s the earth!” Alexander cried, pointing with his floppy finger. “It looks close enough to reach out and grab!”
Jerry sat down on the townhouse steps and stared at his shoes.
“I don’t appreciate this.” He grumbled.

Hypocritical Mass

While Turnipman was becoming tipsy from the fumes from the stage reactor, Burlickus and some of the other mechanics leaned back against the gates of the cardboard castle and chuckled.
“Aren’t they going to help that poor man?” Old Lady Givers asked her companion, Mark the Turban.
“One would imagine it isn’t in their contract.” Mark the Turban, so called because of the immense, purple turban he wore on his head, postulated with all the aplomb that his lengthy training had allowed him access to.
“Excuse me,” A little man sitting behind Old Lady Givers leaned forward and spoke. “But everyone hates Turnipman. That’s why they allow him to suffer.”
“I don’t hate him.” The venerable old bird countered.
“Well, you’re supposed to.” Was all the little man could say in reply as he settled back into his seat. His review would, he determined at that moment, certainly include a retelling of this little encounter. Of course, he would thinly disguise Old Lady Givers’ identity; she was still too well known and liked among the older crowd, but the younger ones would see in her the embodiment of the kind of outmoded attitudes that were stifling the modern theater.
In his intoxicated state, Turnipman made the mistake of demanding that a group of sexy young go-getters turn down their electronically disseminated, screen-based entertainment. How the audience roared as he was jeered, threatened, and ultimately thrashed for his temerity. As his mask was torn away during the altercation, gasps echoed through the inadequately darkened hall.
“Why, he’s Jack Schnitterton!” Someone cried. Even Old Lady Givers was shocked. Mark the Turban patted her arm comfortingly, getting one of his silver bracelets hung in her shawl. Everyone seemed to be delighted in one way or another; whether it be from happiness, thrill, or outrage, all enjoyed the revelation.
All except me, that is. I sat in the back costumed as a kangaroo to avoid recognition. I was taking notes for my own review, to be published in Equitable Honky later that month. I knew the message that the players were trying to send, and I didn’t like it. Who did they think they were? I would show them! I got up in a huff and tripped over my tail.

Blow Her a Raspberry

Gramelia asked for nothing more than a swallow of water before commencing to read aloud from Grandpa’s Book of the Lost Bag. For this restraint on her part the elders praised her. The young ones found it pleasing as well, for she made a humorous noise in her throat when the water went down. The ones in the middle, persons like myself, merely sighed and wished she would get on with it.
“OK, here I go.” She said, opening the delicate, dog-eared volume to page one. “‘Know then that in the time before Queen Fisticuff had established Lady Virginal’s School for Young Ladies, a plague washed through the Land of Singulators like the end of a garden hose held half closed with a thumb to give it greater pressure. High in his tower of much-painted paper and pressboard Doctor Dowhatever nervously paced about, wondering whether to involve himself.
“‘“I’m only a theoretical dentist, after all!”’” He complained.
“‘“Has anyone seen my bag?”’” Doctor Dowhatever’s wife Camilla asked with a distasteful lack of specificity of the room at large.
“‘“I mean,”’” muttered Louis to Sheldon, “‘“It’s not like there’s anyone else here besides us.”’”
Sheldon gave no reply. He could not. His vocal apparatus had been damaged during the long voyage from Sesame City, during which the Wild Wrobblies had tried to kill the infant Queen Fisticuff. She survived, of course, as you all know both from my earlier statement, and also by the mysterious tattoos you each bear on your chramorosels.’”
Here Gramelia broke off to giggle at the ancient euphemism. Only the two smartest of the children, Louise and Sheldon, jr., joined her. The rest of us expressed our disapproval in his or her own ways. Mine was to slip out of the room by sneaking along behind the drapes until I came to the uncovered air vent under the portrait of King Chramorosel. Down the vent I dropped, taking care to hold my hand over my cup of ginger ale first.
“Mike!” Jerry cried, looking up from a game of Army Cook, which he was playing with our puppet friends on top of an old packing crate. “Where’d you come from?”
“A very boring gathering.” I said. “What’s that on your head?” I asked in return.
“An old handbag I found. I’m using it for a helmet.”
“He’s our commanding officer.” Alexander explained, innocent joy in his eyes.

Highly Caloric Beverages

My attendance at the parties on Don Plectrum’s yacht was compelled by my need to know what the new head of the official Turlobog organization was up to. Since the death of the fellow posing as Turlobog (who may have, after all, actually been Turlobog; who knows?), the official organization, the Bean League, had lost much of its former power and prestige, and, of course, many splinter groups had formed, further diluting what strength and appeal the whole movement had. Obviously, I need not have concerned myself with any of these petty obstructions, but it is always a good idea to keep at least one eye on one’s enemies.
So it was that I disguised myself as Phil Mulatto with a fake moustache and a suit made entirely of yellow satin. I met with a representative of the Bean League’s recruitment office and, showing my falsified credentials as a Postal Reconstructionist, soon found myself invited to sail around haunted Hog Meat Island on board the Fighting Grouper, Plectrum’s four-masted pleasure boat.
“Why do you hate Toadsgoboad?” Massagia Gelatinum, Don Plectrums’ overly tanned lady friend, asked me as we sipped rum from the polished skulls of monkeys (I had inserted a gullet diverter into my throat before boarding, so that any alcohol I drank would be harmlessly shunted to a hidden receptacle in my boot).
“Well, I haven’t made up my mind whether I really do or not. I mean, what’s he ever done to me?” I wanted to play up my role as a politically indifferent parvenu, you see.
“He destroyed the Post Office’s monopoly cult empire, for one thing!” Gelatinum cawed, eyes wide. “That ought to be enough for a Postal Reconstructionist!”
“Oh yes, of course.” I agreed dismissively. I had forgotten what I was supposed to be for a moment. “But that was long ago. Besides, Postal Reconstructionism is just my career. What I’m really interested in is collecting stamps. That’s my life, you know.”
“Massagia, my dear, are you boring Mr. Mulatto?” Don Plectrum asked, approaching on feet of cat-like delicacy.
“I’m trying to persuade him to join us in our important work.” The woman explained.
“She’s doing a good job.” I said, because this sounded like the kind of pleasantry that these people would say to each other.

No Dirigible Scrapes its Shadow Over My Barn

“All of these pennies are counterfeit.” Brugewell confirmed, raising his weary eyes from the microscope. I felt sorry for him as I watched his corpulent frame from the comfort of my media room ten thousand miles away from the supposed site of his encounter with The Coin Lovers.
“How much more of this can you stand?” Jerry asked. He had stopped short to ask me this, on his way from the battery charging station behind the coat rack to what we once playfully called the fungus ward.
I knew what he meant, and I agreed with him.
“I promised the Colonel I’d watch it.” I said with a sigh.
“What’s it to him if you watch this crap or not?”
“He wrote it.” I said simply.
It was true. Colonel Calculer, retired from the Wax Army, now wrote scripts for such televisual treats as The Coin Lovers, Nobody But Rodney, and Purvis Holdsmeat: Rustic Attorney, among others too numerous to mention and too sickening to recall. In asking me to “just watch this one episode; it’s really very special to me,” the Colonel was severely testing our friendship.
Yes, we were friends.
Now that I had reached a significant point in my development as an artist, deciding upon the overall framing concept and including within that concept a (finally) workable technique for doing something very close to a real graphic novel (not just a collection of random single panels full of strangers and non sequiturs), I found that I had grown just a little weary of my own presence. Not enough to exclude myself from the action completely, you understand; just enough to allow someone like the Colonel to take on some of the burden. Of course, the price to pay for such intimacy was indulging the man once in awhile. Friendship is certainly of dubious value.
“What about me?” Jerry asked when he read the first draft of the above paragraph. Meaning, I suppose, that a whole cycle of mythology could be built around him.
“You’re my sidekick, Jerry.” I explained lovingly. “The Colonel already has one.”
“How is that supposed to make me feel better and who is it?”
“His name is Syvert Nasum. You’ll love him.”

The Influx of New Elements is in Flux

Our attempts to date the artifact were largely unsuccessful.
“Well, it’s at least older than four years.” Dr. Cashmere summed up as we sat around the campfire after another long day.
I grunted. “Yes, based on the few inches of dirt piled up around its base, but that’s all we have to go on. The artifact itself yields nothing in the way of its age.”
“May I take a look at this artifact?” Colonel Calculer asked. He had only arrived a quarter of an hour before. The planned sing-along did not appeal to him. Nor did it appeal to me. The rest of the team didn’t like it when I played my songs on the guitar. They preferred for Serge, the handsome, bearded doctoral candidate, to lead them in renditions of “Heart of Gold,” “Rocket Man,” and “Fire and Rain,” among other chestnuts of the “classic rock” era. Of course, he owned a Martin, while I made do with Bumpy 1, the guitar I had rescued from the belly of a shark and repaired using items salvaged from the wreck of the Fighting Grouper.
“Sure.” I said. “I’ll show you the way.” I stood up, followed by the Colonel.
“Who knows ‘The Circle Game?’” Serge asked everyone, pulling out his richly lacquered Martin as the Colonel and I disappeared into the darkness.
“Watch your step.” I warned my companion. I pointed my flashlight just ahead. The pathway between the smooth boulders was littered with small rocks. “It’s only a couple of hundred yards or so.”
The Colonel grunted in reply. He was an older man, with a bristling gray moustache, a bald head, and a grossly distended abdomen, like a tick bloated on the blood of a pathetic, but feisty puppy now long dead.
“I’m disappointed your friend Syvert couldn’t make it.” I said for lack of anything more substantive to say. I could have remained silent, I suppose, but I felt compelled to make conversation. The residue of my mother’s attempts at instilling manners in me.
“I am too.” The Colonel replied. “I think getting out of the city for a while would do him good, but then, neither he nor I get around with the ease which you seem to.”
“Perhaps the artifact will help.”
“It is a transdimensional scow, isn’t it?”
“I think so, but keep that information to yourself. I don’t want them to know.”



Hose Droplet Readout

It was a simple matter for Colonel Calculer to return to Mall City (“the city of malls,” as one wag put it) and enter Syvert Nasum’s apartment once he had gained access to the transdimensional scow.
Nasum had initially declined to accompany the Colonel on the proposed trip.
“What about my studies?” He protested.
“Oh, come on.” The Colonel begged. “I’ll let you name the scow.” He added as a grand inducement.
Whether this was what persuaded Nasum or not will probably never be determined with the certainty that demanding readers such as you require. Let it be sufficient in your heart that Nasum did, in fact, assent to a little jaunt in the transdimensional scow of possible extraterrestrial manu-facture.
“And I shall name it The Abandoned Doctorate.” Nasum was heard to say, somewhat prophetically, as you will one day see.
“So be it.” Colonel Calculer agreed, thinking perhaps of the script for the very special episode of “Brother Wolf” that he really should be working on. He settled his expansive torso into the comfortable seat in the nose of the scow, Nasum doing likewise in a similar seat to his left. The controls, though clearly designed for a physiognomy closer to that of giant prawn larvae than humans, were not too difficult to figure out and even, after a learning period not to exceed twenty-four literal hours, pleasant and logical to operate.
“Where are we going?” Nasum asked, slipping a finger into one of the textbooks he had brought hopefully along.
“Anywhere you like.” The Colonel offered.
“Anywhere?”
“Well, in keeping with my new friend Toadsgoboad’s theory of life, I don’t think we should limit our imaginations.”
“Your new friend Toadsgoboad.” Nasum repeated with amused cynicism. “I’m going to have to meet this magic man.”
“You will.” The Colonel assured him. “In fact, that should be our first trip.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know, but the tunnel system would be a good place to start.”
How could they have known that I was back in Goat Valley?

Roofing is Proofing

Clark Seville, an agent of mine through several intermediaries, the extent of which and the ultimate nature of which he was never fully to comprehend, had taken up residence in Grenthum, a small town on the outskirts of Progross. His training as a journalist had enabled him to get a job with The Chrysomanthy Shakes, a locally produced broadsheet concerned with the world of the avant garde and its relationship to the occult. In between these duties and the occasional assignment from me, Seville found time to work on a series of novels about Lingam Ho, a semi-retarded farmhand whose adventures somehow symbolized everything that was wrong with society today. Of course I didn’t begrudge Seville the time and effort he spent on these productions. Every man must have an outlet. It was unfortunate, however, that no one would publish these novels. Seville was forced to print a handful of copies of each and distribute them as best he could.
I came across one of these books, Shit Shoveler, in a small comics shop in Progross. Sevill’s address was on the back of the book, underneath an unflattering photograph of the author. As I had some time to kill before my lecture at the civic center, I decided to make the short journey to Grenthum and pay my oblivious underling a visit.
“Clark Seville?” I called through the screen door at Seville’s modest bungalow.
“Yes?” Came the answer. I saw the man come forward out of the shadows. He was a basic Roger Moore type: good-looking, but stiff.
“My name is Toadsgoboad.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’d rather answer that inside. Do you mind?”
Seville unlatched the door and allowed me to enter. We sat down in the tiny den on opposite sides of a low table covered with pistachios.
“Well?” Said Seville.
“What would you say if I said the phrase, ‘Roofing is proofing’ to you?”
“I would have to say, ‘Sheeting is fleeting.’” He answered. His voice was remarkably like Roger Moore’s, but without the English accent.
“Good.” I said. “Now that that’s established, would you be available to accompany me to the civic center this evening? A little bodyguard work, so to speak, nothing very demanding.”
“Well, I did have plans with a lady, but that can wait. Duty first.”


Which Was the Sillier Assumption?

As the audience rendered up its loud and demonstrative appreciation at the conclusion of my lecture, I turned and received a hearty handshake from Dr. Lang, director of the University of Progross’ Department of Theoretical Ramifications. With a final wave and a smile at the audience I walked off the stage, glancing at Clark Seville. He was clapping with the rest, but scanning the hall for danger at the same time.
He met me backstage in the comfortable, but cheerless dressing room.
“Well, I guess I’ll head home.” He said after I had introduced him to Dr. and Mrs. Lang and some of the others present.
“You don’t have to go, do you?” Said Dr. Lang. “Mr. Toadsgoboad is going to have dinner with us. You are welcome to come too.”
“No, I…” Seville began, but I interrupted him.
“Oh, please do, Clark. I should be glad of your company.” I said. With a boyish smile Seville accepted. Soon we were all piled into the Lang’s car, headed for their house.
The meal was fair. I had explained to our hosts that I was a vegetarian. They had done their best to be accommodating, but made the mistake of assuming that I was a health nut as well. The phrase “health nut” was echoing in my head as we headed for the living room to talk. I was trying to think of a better way of expressing that concept for when I would later set down my memories of this day (as you can see I never did think of one) and was so distracted by the effort that I didn’t quite catch Mrs. Lang’s question.
“How long have you and Clark been together?” She asked.
I heard both this and Seville’s answering cough, but didn’t fully take any of it in. Before I could collect my wits and respond, there was a great rumble from my valise, which sat against the wall.
“So!” Shouted Jerry, who burst halfway out of the valise. “I’ve been replaced, have I?”
“Jerry!” I barked, whipping my index finger at him.
Seville had sprang into action as Jerry came into view, pulling out a small, but powerful weapon he had carried concealed under his coat. Dr. Lang clutched at his chest while his wife covered her face with a cushion.

The Same Old Stale Testimony

None of the libraries in the Diurnal Plenitude System contained any of the works of Shadrach Meerkat.
“Damn!” Swore Colonel Calculer after checking at the Sippy Cup branch, the fifth library he had checked.
Syvert Nasum suggested trying a bookstore.
“I don’t want it that badly.” The Colonel answered.
“Which one of his books are you looking for?”
“Any of them will do.” Replied the awkwardly built Colonel. Two spindly legs supported the immense bulk of his torso. His large, jowly head was perfectly flat and conical on top, much like Devil’s Tower. “Except for Doodling Nightmare or Frozen Pie Crust.” He added. “Those are earlier works and not typical of Meerkat’s work in general.”
“I see.” Nasum commented as they walked back to The Abandoned Doctorate. “And why do you require this item?”
“To read. But, more than that: I need it for reassurance.”
“Reassurance?”
“Yes. Here we are on this exciting voyage into the unknown. It’s a little scary, even for a man of my vast experience. I’ve always found Meerkat’s books to be very reassuring.”
“He’s a light-weight then.”
“Not at all.” The Colonel began. He stopped when he noticed that a crowd had gathered around The Abandoned Doctorate.
“This your car?” One of the men in the crowd, obviously not a library patron, judging by his speech and costume, asked.
“Yes.” The Colonel’s hand was in his pocket, gripping the keys. “But it’s not a car. It’s a transdimensional scow.”
“A what?” Asked the man.
“I know what that is!” Cried someone. “It’s a craft for traveling in between the various worlds of the Procurementation!”
“You need to learn to keep your mouth shut.” Nasum said to the Colonel through his teeth.
“Take me with you!” Someone shouted. “This world sucks!”
Soon everyone in the crowd was clamoring for escape.

Rivets in the Cranium Keep it Steady

Krayola’s thumbs had become re-infected during her two weeks’ sabbatical from The Chrysomanthy Shakes. She would not be able to do her own typing for some time, although she would still report for work as usual.
“What’s she infected with?” Clark Seville asked after the situation had been explained to him.
“It’s called fibsobamala.” Old man Wetson, The Chrysomanthy Shakes’ editor-in-chief, told Seville. “Apparently it’s some kind of bacteria.”
“Hmph.” Seville snorted. “If she’d keep her thumb out of her ass…”
“Yes, yes, everybody made that joke the first time she got this thing.” Wetson squelched Seville’s rare witticism.
“So I’m to do her typing for her.” Seville sighed.
“And take her around on her assignments.”
“Jesus!” Seville swore.
“What’s that?” Wetson looked puzzled.
At first Seville seemed not to understand what Wetson meant.
“Oh.” He said, un-knitting his brows. “It’s the name of a fairly big league deity where I come from. I use it as a sort of curse word.”
“I see.” Said Wetson, frowning. He dismissed Seville with a final injunction to give Krayola all the help he could. “I’m counting on you, Clark.”
The first place Krayola asked Seville to take her was to the elder care center run by the Temple of the Symmetrical Six.
“What are you investigating there?” Seville asked as they got into his car. The young woman’s thumbs were immobilized inside fiberglass sheaths, yet she had no trouble with the door handle or the seat belt.
“They have an art program for the old people that is said to aid in the regeneration of brain cells.” Krayola told him.
“I could use some of that myself.” Seville muttered.
“You know, I’ve often wondered why you work on the Shakes. You don’t seem to have any artistic temperament at all.”
Seville did not respond. His eyes were on the rearview mirror. “Hold on tight.” He said as the car behind them suddenly sprouted a couple of rifle barrels.
“To what?!” Krayola squealed. “My thumbs don’t work, remember?”

The Market Remains Weak

“Well, the intelligentsia get it, even if you don’t!” Pamela angrily snapped at Claude.
“Good for them, whoever they are and however you met them.” Claude answered. He pulled at his tie as he turned away from both Pamela and the large painting that he could see no point in whatsoever.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t experienced criticism himself. Take his tie, for example: there were those who felt he presented too stuffy an image wearing a tie. That stuffy image was only reinforced, of course, by his failure to appreciate the canvases on display at the Martha Gold Bold Gallery that evening. Claude looked about for Hayes to tell him that he would very much like to leave.
He couldn’t see him anywhere. The reason he couldn’t see him was because Hayes, whom everyone considered such an adult, going back as far as seventh grade, was in the back room snorting cocaine with the husband of the gallery’s owner.
“What do you think?” Herbert Bold asked Hayes.
“I think it’s heroic.” Was Hayes’ calculated reply. Only a couple more people to use that description in front of and he would have to come up with a new one.
Bold laughed. He liked Hayes. He was more mature than the majority of his wife’s clientele. Little did he suspect it, but this appearance of great maturity found its origin largely in Hayes’ voice, which was like an old-fashioned radio announcers’. Only one person had recognized that this was the root of Hayes’ appeal. Pamela was that person. Not even Hayes realized the truth. He thought that he was merely wiser than everyone else, waiting like a lizard under a rock for the more aggressive combatants to wear themselves out before rushing into the light for a grab at the freshly killed meat.
Pamela had told Hayes he needed to get into voice work. Politely as usual, humorously dismissive as usual, Hayes had told her he was quite happy in the world of international finance. He emerged from the back room with eyes aglow, eyes that saw the hidden scenes in the paintings Claude had described as “bland reunions of the monochromatic family.”
“That’s not bad.” Hayes admitted when Claude had repeated his off-the-cuff remark. “But do you not see the longing for god in these works? The abiding faith in the soul?”
“Hayes,” interrupted Pamela, “You grow more fascinating every day.”

Mop Up the Remaining Words

Legend tells us that Freezerbeard sat under the cheese tree all night waiting for inspiration. Recently uncovered evidence had shed some light on this delightful legend which has been the source of much childhood grief for those born into the households of artists.
The cheese tree, once thought to be no more than a primitive’s description of the mock tomato bush, was actually quite common in the Adono Plain in the Second Epoch. Speculative men estimate there may have been as many as a dozen of the great, rooted organisms thriving at any one time. Standing no more than thirty feet tall, the cheese tree consisted of a central striated stalk and approximately two hundred branches, each bearing its own cheese-producing pod.
Now, exactly which cheese tree Freezerbeard sat under will never be determined. It is not even known whether Freezerbeard was an independent entity in his own right, another name for the contemporary philosopher Fowlangus, or an amalgam of heroic figures from the Second Epoch. The fact that the ancient legends refer to his cheese tree and the cheese tree can mean either that the tree was taken as an archetypal tree, much as the myths of the Unizore speak of Monkey, Bear, and Fish as characters standing for all the monkeys, bears, and fish in existence, or it can mean that this particular cheese tree was so spectacular that it deserved the definitive article. A similar usage of “the” is when well-meaning, but grossly mistaken persons speak of the Toadsgoboad when, as both a copyrighted character and a registered trade name, there is no need for such usage.
A recently recorded conversation between two members of the Comatose Club perhaps can shed some light on current theories regarding the Freezerbeard legend.
Member #1: “Who was Freezerbeard?”
Member #2: “He was that guy that waited under the cheese tree.”
Member #1: “What was he waiting for?”
Member #2: “Inspiration.”
Member #1: “Inspiration for what?”
Member #2: “You got me there. What to do next, I suppose.”
Such depths of ignorance among the ruling classes is to be deplored, of course.



A Sixties of Indeterminate Length

Without modern day refrigeration techniques it would not be possible to keep the population of flightless pygmy seagulls at Rancho Deshabille either well fed nor under control. Although the term “pygmy” is deemed both offensive and inaccurate (technically, a “pygmy” is either a member of the official Pygmy tribe in Africa or a subspecies of tropical animal whose members are smaller than normal; otherwise, the term “dwarf” is used), this is in fact the term that the gulls themselves use. The right of self-labeling is a recognized one among the signatories of the Pan-Refrigeration Union and Bed-Sitter Alliance.
“Now that we have cleared up this business of the seagulls,” Colonel Calculer sounded sour and bored, “Can someone please explain to me…”
“Everything will be explained to you.” I announced, entering the conference room with all the puissance and majesty befitting a magical dictator of my stature.
“Toadsgoboad!” The Colonel shouted. He rose from his seat and extended a hand that I grasped in both of mine.
“Colonel.” I said smiling. “It’s good to see you here in the tunnel system. How have they been treating you?”
“Like a prince.”
“Good. This is your friend?” I nodded at Syvert Nasum. The Colonel introduced us and we shook hands as well. Various members of my executive staff, directors of tunnel system departments, and trusted advisors also were gathered around the conference table. I greeted each in turn.
“I guess you’d better meet Jerry.” I said to the Colonel and Nasum. I opened my valise and fished Jerry out by the back of his shirt.
“Jerry, this is Colonel Calculer and Syvert Nasum.” I said.
Sleepily, Jerry acknowledged the two men. “Where’s Clark Seville?” He asked.
“You don’t have to concern yourself about him. He’s…”
“Toadsgoboad!” Someone shouted, pointing at the widows.
I turned my head and saw a horrifying sight. Hundreds of seagulls, most on the wing, but some in miniature aircraft of the “flying bucket” design, were descending upon my capital city in attack formations.
“The Seagull Anti-Discrimination Army!” I barked.

The Autograph Means Nothing Without A Serial Number

Although the crew members had been taught never to use a tourniquet, when Bob Criddel, the most popular of them, had been injured in the emergency landing, someone had applied a tourniquet. It had saved Criddel’s life, but cost him his right arm. Feeling guilty, the whole crew pooled their money and sent Criddel to a specialist in Gamesburg who fitted him with a technological wonder: a prosthetic arm that looked like one of those wooden, over-sized, novelty salad forks that people used to hang on the walls of their dining rooms in the sixties.
The similarity was remarkable, and in fact many did remark upon it. The only difference was that the prosthetic had a measure of flexibility that no over-sized wooden salad fork could ever have.
That was ten years ago. Now Criddel, long since resigned from the crew, found himself revisiting the site of the emergency landing.
“I’ve been here before.” He told a fellow member of the tour group.
“Really?” Mrs. Hudgins replied, not much interested in anything the man with the three-pronged wooden arm had to say.
“Yes. That promontory,” Criddel pointed, the topmost tine of his arm painted yellow for indicative purposes. “That was where it all began.”
“Where what all began?” Mrs. Hudgins asked, compelled to do so despite her abiding snobbery.
“Well…” Criddel hesitated, thinking of the deeper truth of the matter. “It actually all began back on Colodi Vigo, but…”
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Hudgins interrupted; she knew a rambler when she heard one. “I want to go ask Mr. Phasek, our tour guide, a question.”
Criddel barely realized she had gone. He continued to stare at the sheer rock walls that faced the eternally raging seas on this depopulated coat. Mr. Nembutis approached him.
“Lost another one, eh?” Nembutis asked.
“What’s that?” Criddel jerked his gaze away from the memory.
“Listen, brother, you’ve got to learn to charm ‘em. Just look at how I’m getting on with Mrs. Brasenmore.” Nembutis glanced at the buxom, red-haired matron in the parka. She caught his glance and smiled. Nembutis winked in return.

Humble Bobgot

Throughout these stories I have tried to impress upon you just how important illustrations are. A boldly executed doodle adjacent to the most obscure narrative goes a long way towards convincing the reader that something profound is going on. It is my one great regret (well, actually one of many, but certainly one of the biggest ones connected with my work) that, due to the formal parameters of literature to which I am trying to adhere, I cannot in good conscience include several boldly executed doodles within the pages of this obscure narrative. For that side of my character, you should consult one of the many illustrative (cartoon) works that I have published over the years.
Now, having satisfied yet another of the obligations of my self-determined career, I think I will reveal to you the secret behind the title of this piece (one could hardly call it a story). “Humble Bobgot”, obviously a stand-in for the ancient name of “Humphrey Bogart,” is an oxymoron, for “bobgot” is Procurementist slang for something the opposite of humble. It is, in this context, a description of my work as I see it at the moment.
For example, let us just take that word “Procurementist.” What does it mean? What is this so-called philosophy of Procurement to which I make vague, annoying references in these pages? What don’t I just write marketable stories instead of this quasi-Gurdjieffian nonsense? I don’t know. Sure, I want to be published by a real publisher, not just print up copies of my stuff down at Kinko’s—sorry: Fed Ex. But I can’t do other than as my brain is programmed to do. That, in a nutshell, is one of the main aspects of Procurement, my word for my personal philosophy.
Humble Bobgot. Nonsense.
I’m sorry I didn’t have anything better to write about in this piece. I’m sitting here on my lunch break at the Post Office (which has not yet been defeated and overthrown in this time module) listening to Jean-Luc Ponty’s King Kong. Hell, even Zappa was more commercially viable than I. You can see that, can’t you? I hope you’re intelligent enough to read this (meaning the whole book) out of a true appreciation for it and not just because you’re some relative or something obligated to do so and then tell me how very unique I am.

Don’t You Understand Me, Moses?

The presence of giant, sickening moths at the crafts fair did little to dampen Moses’ spirits. They used to call me Moses when I worked at the convenience store in Middletown.
“Best store in the Garden Party convenience store chain.” Stanislav said, slapping the counter. “You know why?”
“No liquor license.” I said.
“That’s right.” He eyed me suspiciously, though I pretended not to see. Was I too intelligent for the job? What did he care; he didn’t work there. His job was with the Crafts Fair Committee.
The giant moths, sickening in the details of their fleshy antennae and the false legs that surrounded their feeding apertures, settled about the grounds of the crafts fair. The velvety wings, so beautiful if viewed from a distance, were nothing more than masses of choking dust clinging to paper-covered armatures up close. Several children were overcome by the dust and had to be taken to the hospital.
“It’s not fair!” They wailed. “We wanted to see the crafts!” They whined as they were carried gagging to the ambulances.
“That never happened.” I declared bitterly when I read the ancient account.
“How do you know?” Jerry asked. Isn’t he a great foil?
“Because no child, no normal child, cares anything about crafts.” I stated from extensive experience among the peoples of Middletown and its environs. I also had the memory of my own, boring formative years to draw upon.
Government analysts, poring through these scenes, find themselves at a loss to reconcile the character here displayed with the one from the previous story, the one that had intrigued them so.
“Is it the Burroughs influence coming through?” One, gray and without whiskers, wonders.
“At this late date?” Another, tragic and fastidious, is doubtful. Still, he replies, “It’s possible. What with the increase in population, the ratio of aberrance is bound to increase.”
“Yes, but exponentially?” The wondering and the postulation go on all night, as short-lived moths drop dead in disgusting quantities.

Desperate for Social Interaction

In the hands of the winsome maid, the vacuum cleaner became alternately a kind of divinely expressive, if earth-bound, saxophone, and a mobile sculpture lending different parts of the room heretofore unsuspected vistas of contemplative beauty.
“Not a very fast worker, is she?” Colonel Calculer asked Syvert Nasum as the two observed the maid on the horizontoscope in the small, but amply equipped lab somewhere in the back of The Abandoned Doctorate, their transdimensional scow.
“I guess not.” Nasum reluctantly admitted. He not only found the maid attractive in a mousy way, but had formulated a theory about her, that she was working to support an ill mother and a couple of younger siblings, all the while attending night classes in hopes of becoming a nurse. This, according to Nasum’s fantasy, was what accounted for her lethargy. The poor girl needed sleep!
“Let’s see what’s on channel two.” The Colonel suggested, reaching for the selector knob.
“Wait!” Nasum begged.
“For what?” The Colonel looked at his friend, but no reply was forthcoming. Nasum merely stared at the image on the screen, taking in the nearly perfect curves of the young woman’s calves. “Listen, buddy, if you want to watch this girl that bad, why not do it in the flesh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Using the rooter linkage in the nose of the scow, we can go to the source of the horizontoscope’s signal.”
“We can? Then let us be off!” Nasum smiled with all his face for the first time since the introduction of his character into these chronicles.
The Colonel smiled in return, only his smile was more of a frown on his old, weathered face. He led the way to the front of the scow.
Upon opening the door of the scow and stepping out into the apartment where the maid had been seen vacuuming, however, they found no maid.
“Where’s she gone?” Nasum wondered.
“She may not be here yet.” The Colonel told him. “Or she may have already left.”
Nasum looked at him angrily, confused and nervous.
“That’s the trouble with transdimensional travel,” The Colonel said, browsing through a book shelf for something to steal, “You don’t always move in a straight temporal line.”

No Chalice Full of Pills

A single ray of moonlight was permitted to pass through the quasodonic netting over the windows to land on a specially coated square of film secured to my right eyeball. Despite the film’s strawberry flavoring, I found it irritating in the extreme. I had my extensive experimentation with nutmeg to thank for my ability to remain still throughout the procedure.
“Why are you having this done?” Jerry asked me from his perch high on the wall.
“Because,” I said, careful not to move my head, “I have these weird scars on my cornea that look like photographs of bacteria. I’ve been able to tolerate them up until now, since they were always on the periphery, but now there’s one directly before the focusing point of my right eye.”
Although Dr. Pathik was fully licensed by the Quasodonic Trade Union and had given me full assurances that my vision would be cleared, the procedure was a failure. I helped Jerry down from the crudely built platform and put a paper bag of shame on my head. Removing the film had not been fun. The doctor had pulled it away from my eye, pouring a chocolate-based sauce onto the exposed tissue at the same time.
“This is caffeine-free, right?” I had asked.
“What?” Pathik howled. “Oh yes.” More assurance.
Upstairs, outside, in the parking lot, I began to feel strange.
“How do things look to you?” Jerry asked.
“It’s hard to tell.” I said. I held out my hands. They were steady, but I felt the quavering energy pulsing within them. “That liar!” I cried so that the moon might bear witness to my rage. “That sauce contained caffeine!”
“Now, hold on, Mike.” Said Jerry, holding up his wee hands. “Don’t go off half-cocked. Why not use this?”
“How so?”
“Take advantage of this opportunity. You haven’t been loaded on caffeine in over a year. Why not use it to some good end?”
“Like killing an incompetent quack?” I glanced at the entrance to Pathik’s subterranean clinic.
In the end, however, I sat down at the piano until I was exhausted.

Dierdre Remembers the Band

A superior grade of wood was required for the building of the boat. Don knew it; so did Allan. If only Gifdig, the attendant swami, had not been sleeping during that portion of the class!
“Many lives might have been saved.” Franklin growled.
“Might have been, you say. I say, where was the coastal patrol during all this?” Don, never one to be either complacent or quiet, piped up from the plexiglass case in which he was housed for the night.
Even as this debate bubbled like a big pot of gravy on an untended stove, the forces of vengeance, in the form of Ned Feese and his Untended Gravysuckers, were creeping through Miss Abigo’s backyard.
“Watch it!” Hissed Feese, the titular leader of the group, even as J. Geils was the name on the J. Geils Band, but Seth Justman actually ran things, even though the public would have help up Peter Wolf as the central figure. That was how things stood as Murphy, but a mere underling and destined to always be one, trampled Miss Abigo’s lilies.
“Why do old women always have lilies in their yards?” Difficult Dan, one of Murphy’s defenders, wondered aloud.
“Quiet, all of you!” Feese hissed again, shaking his banjo threateningly.
“What are you worried about, Captain?” Hutchinson Burnwell, a reporter imbedded with the Gravysuckers, asked cynically. “Miss Abigo’s been dead ten years.”
At this point an astute reader might ask, “What did ol’ Toadsgoboad do about all this? Where was he while all this was going on?” Well, to answer your questions, Astute Reader, I was fifty miles away, visiting Miss Abigo’s place of interment, her people’s family crypt. A friend was with me, one H. Posthole Gifdig, swami to the stars.
“You want this last sandwich, Posthole?” I asked.
“What kind is it?” He spoke in that wonderfully theatrical voice with which he had mesmerized Madonna, Morley, and Metternich.
“Egg salad.” I told him after I had peeked under the aluminum foil.
“No thank you. I do not care for egg salad.”
Was he right about that? Or was he as wrong as he had been about the wood?

Perilous Speculations

The position of the pontoon relative to the pumpkin was such that together they formed an exclamation point when viewed from above, which was exactly how the two men in the balloon were viewing the formation. One of the men was round like the pumpkin, while the other was much taller, like the pontoon. The latter, the first to notice the two objects below them, observed,
“That looks like an exclamation point.”
“Indeed it does.” His companion replied.
“I wonder whether we might take that as an omen.” Mr. Pontoon, his hands on the ropes that connected the basket to the balloon, looked at the other man, whom we may as well call Mr. Pumpkin.
“We might, had we such superstitious minds.” Replied Mr. Pumpkin, “But we are men of science, as our voyage in this experimental balloon indicates.”
“Yes.” Agreed Mr. Pontoon. “And, even if we did accept the exclamation point as an omen, how precisely would we interpret it? It is merely a symbol of exclamation; that isn’t much in the way of communicating information.”
“Exactly. One could take it in a negative light or a positive one.” Mr. Pumpkin gripped the top of the basket and watched the exclamation point, now looking like an ‘i,’ as it shrank in the distance.
“As for that,” Said Mr. Pontoon, “Though I am a man of science, and I recognize that there is no substantive data to be gleaned from the sight we have just seen, I do take it positively.”
“Oh, Horace,” Chuckled Mr. Pumpkin, “You are so eager for this all to be a success, aren’t you?”
“As far as I am concerned,” Mr. Pontoon said seriously, “It already is a success. I mean; just try to remember what our original attitudes were towards this idea, how we doubted that it would work. ‘A balloon, lifted not by hot air or some gas, but by the collective bad breath of a city full of sloppy, disreputable people?’ We both thought it crazy. But, as we now know, it works!”
“Yes.” Mr. Pumpkin agreed, solemnly nodding and rubbing his chin. “It works. But how? Is it because the earth is so repelled by the smell of the bad breath?”
“Further testing is needed to tell us that.” Said Mr. Pontoon. However, no tests would ever be made, for the balloon continued to rise until it and its passengers were lost forever in the sky.

Clark Seville Aims to Please

During his watch on the Beanblack residence Clark Seville had become chilled. He returned to the mobile HQ after his shift ended with the beginnings of a cold.
“You look terrible.” Davenport told him when he came in. “Get some hot soup inside you and get to bed.”
“That’s a good idea.” Seville nodded, speaking softly. He wasn’t used to being part of a group when on assignment, but in this case he appreciated the company. Drawing the net around the villains operating out of the old Beanblack house was certainly more than one man could handle. Besides this, Davenport was a good executive and the rest of the men on the team were all professionals. At times it made Seville wish he were back in the uniformed service. He got a bowl of corn chowder from the small commissary in the back of the mobile HQ, a large vehicle out of which the team operated. After eating while standing up, Seville climbed up into the overhead compartment where the bunks were located.
He felt he had only slept a couple of minutes when he was thrown out of his bunk by a massive blow to the side of the mobile HQ. Weakly, dizzily, for he was rapidly developing a flu, Seville crawled to the hatch even as the vehicle was turned on its side.
“What’s going on?” He shouted.
“Clark!” Jackson, one of the other men on the team, shouted, “Grab a weapon and get outside! We’re under attack!”
“Outside?” Seville questioned. Even in his disoriented state this sounded like a bad plan. The HQ was armored. “Where’s Davenport?” He asked, but received no answer. The lights flickered and went out as another heavy blow struck the vehicle. Seville fumbled for a rifle in the weapons locker and made his way out into the cold dawn.
Towering over the surrounding trees was the pagoblinth, the gelatin monster the Jai Fei gang had been trying to bring to life. They succeeded, thought Seville. On the monster’s shoulders were mounted sonic impacters. This is where the hammering blows were coming from.
“Clark!” Someone shouted. “Over here!”
Seville joined his colleagues behind an overturned wagon and added his firepower to theirs. They were keeping the pagoblinth from coming closer. Seville’s aim was poor, however, because he kept sneezing.

The Secret Parcel Contained Incendiaries

The plesmogrinth, a mechanical counterpart to the pagoblinth, jerked about with spastic industry, dropping chemically generated embryos in wax cylinders all over the floor of the abandoned sugar refinery. The noise created by these actions was later compared to the music of the band Ministry. Some among the team had wished that the entire display: sound, dance, and spectacle, would have lasted a little longer. This was not true of Clark Seville. Both sickened and sick, by the disgusting sight of the secretion of the wax cylinders and his worsening flu respectively.
“Got any more of those stimulant capsules?” He whispered to Shidwich, the medical officer. The latter man rummaged in his bag. He handed a small foil-wrapped capsule to Seville.
“This is the last one for you for twenty-four hours.” He hissed. “Be sure to drink plenty of water with that.”
Seville followed instructions. He and the other surviving members of the team were hunkered down behind a derelict cane press. Davenport was dead, his head crushed beneath the mobile HQ when the monster had flipped it over one last time.
Outside the refinery Madam Fonsin, leader of the Jai Fei gang, called to Seville’s team through a megaphone.
“Procurementationalist law enforcement officials!” Her voice whipped them with contempt. “The local militia is on its way! We will have to leave you now! I have enjoyed sparring with you! I look forward to our next encounter!”
“What did she say?” Jackson asked.
“I couldn’t understand a word.” Shidwick shook his head.
Clark Seville had understood Madam Fonsin’s words, but didn’t feel like repeating them. He was feeling the last dregs of his strength gather.
“We’re getting out of here.” He announced to the others.
“But how?” Jackson demanded.
“Follow me.” Seville ordered. As he stood up from behind the press, the plesmogrinth suddenly became quiet. Seville looked about. The floor was littered with the machine’s “eggs.”
“Each one of these must be destroyed.” He growled.
Shidwick remembered that sugar dust is explosively flammable.

White Lavender

As with Nazi era paperwork, each of Feldstein’s request forms for additional request forms not only had to be filled out completely, but countersigned by his supervisor, Phil Reynolds. Filling out a request was no problem; in fact, Feldstein rather enjoyed filling them out, since it took more than half a working day to do so and thereby kept him from more onerous duties. Getting the form countersigned by Reynolds, however, was a chore.
“First I have to cross the street to go to the Trumpeter Terminal,” He explained to his dinner date, Miss Clink, “And then I have to go up on the roof to the keep.”
“Excuse me?” Miss Clink begged to hear that again, her eyelashes thick with mascara fluttering at Feldstein like a signalman on a sinking boat desperately trying to attract the attention of another, more buoyant boat.
“The keep.” Feldstein repeated. “It’s a stone tower that rises up from the middle of the Trumpeter Terminal.” He used his hands to shape the keep in the air. “It’s where all the supervisors like Reynolds have their offices.”
Miss Clink shook her head and took up her water glass. “What a weird job you have.” She said. Her eyelashes fluttered again. The signalman had turned away. The ship was going down without hope or rescue. He might as well blind the passengers.
“Are you ready to order?” The waiter asked them.
“I think so.” Feldstein replied, glancing at Miss Clink for confirmation. She nodded. “Why don’t you go first?” He told her. As she conveyed her order to the waiter, Feldstein happened to look at the entrance to the dining room. He was so shocked by what he saw that he didn’t realize that both the waiter and his date were awaiting his own input into the transaction. Rattled, he stammered out his food preference in a little voice and ducked his head down even before the waiter had walked away.
“What is it?” Miss Clink demanded.
Feldstein pointed at the person now taking a seat across the room. He pointed furtively, his finger flicking out like a party favor, indicating nothing more to Miss Clink than some vague thing to the north. She tried to follow Feldstein’s indication with her eyes, but if you think she saw Reynolds just because he is the only other person mentioned in this story, you’re wrong.


A Classroom Exercise

A team of specialists had been flown in from Zone 3 to work on the seemingly inexorable yellowing of Flushtin’s teeth. Dr. Phrud, their chief, spoke in his typically forthright manner with Mrs. Harpie, Flushtin’s keeper.
“We’ll do what we can, but, as you know, this is a common symptom of the aging process.” He took a bite of his lumberjack’s nutritional bar.
“Have you ever noticed,” Mrs. Harpie asked, “That old people’s breath smells like beef stew?”
“And vice versa.” Dr. Phrud nodded solemnly, all senses on alert for any kind of threat to his academic superiority. The two stared at each other for a moment, the specialists’ chief chewing with peculiar attention to textural details, the waxy-skinned woman smiling blankly, as befitted a person of her general station.
Flushtin himself was in the next room, sedated and strapped into a chair that had been designed and built especially for this assignment. His mouth was propped open with a series of wooden posts and crossbeams. Even now Jed Lishtanger, the team’s security officer, was hammering one in place. Flushtin’s eyes rolled slowly about the room as Lishtanger emerged from his mouth.
“Well, that should do it for now.” The man with the hammer announced.
“Will it suffice?” Asked Allan, who tried to ape Dr. Phrud’s business-like manner.
“It’s sufficient for initial operations.” Lishtanger touchily replied. He didn’t like his professional assessments to be questioned. “If we go past the glottal sack we’ll need more braces, but we’re not scheduled to do that yet.” At the look of doubt on Allan’s face, Lishtanger added testily, “We don’t even know if we’re going to need to go that far!”
Allan sniffed. “We’ll see what Dr. Phrud has to say about that.” He said.
“See what Dr. Phrud has to say about what?” Dr. Phrud demanded from the doorway. They all turned and saw their chief closing the door firmly in Mrs. Harpie’s inquisitive face.
Flushtin, having caught sight of his keeper, moved his tail languidly across the floor.
“Secure that tail.” Dr. Phrud ordered.

A Fixation with His Own Image

“Any attempt to falsify the documentation will be punished by expulsion from the academy.” Rangleson warned Dirk as the latter prepared to go into the hills to check on the data collection stations.
Dirk juggled the keys to the department’s van in his hand. He gave Rangleson a look half of puzzlement and half of anger.
“Professor Rangleson, I wouldn’t falsify any documen-tation.” He said firmly, though still with the deference he had always shown the department heads.
“I’m not saying you would.” The older man showed his palms to the doctoral candidate. “But after the incident with the cattle analysis quadrants I’m giving everyone the same warning.”
“You still haven’t found out who did that yet?” Dirk asked to ease things back to a conversational tone.
“Well, we have a good idea who did it, but we can’t act until we have more proof.”
“The guy from Progross—Amalchan?” Dirk postulated. Everyone said he was the one.
“I can’t say anything!” Rangleson insisted.
Later, on the road in the van, Dirk stopped by his girlfriend’s house and picked her up. As she put on her seat belt, she asked,
“Won’t you get in trouble for taking me along?”
“Nah.” Dirk dismissed the idea. “It’s against the rules to have unauthorized persons in a department vehicle, but that’s a very technical rule.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together as if grinding tiny kernels of corn into a meal of insignificance. “Besides, I’m the golden boy, remember?” This was an old joke between them. Although Dirk publicly downplayed his accomplishments and the esteem in which he was held by the department, he privately thought he was the hottest of shit and had confessed as much to his girlfriend. She was one of the few people he trusted that far.
Up in the hills they came to the first of the nine data collection stations that Dirk had to check. Each was a small outhouse-like structure with a battery-powered climatological and seismic detector inside. As Dirk fiddled with the padlock, he and his girlfriend were surprised by Amalchan, who leapt out from behind the station.
“Aha!” He cried. “Now I have the evidence to clear my name!”
Dirk acted instantaneously. He crushed the foreigner’s head with a rock.

Now in Reverse

Quasodonic turbulence from the wheel of plaughter through which The Abandoned Doctorate was passing made for a bumpy ride. Colonel Calculer glanced at Syvert Nasum and wondered how he could sleep during such agitation. His own hands on the control bar were numb from the vibrations.
“Syvert!” The Colonel shouted. “Syvert, wake up!”
“What is it?” Nasum asked groggily.
“I can’t take much more of this! I’m going to jump dimensions!”
“Don’t.” Nasum pleaded. “Every time we do, we get more out of sync with the world.” The younger man sat up straighter. He squinted at the flashes of quasodonic sparklemass surrounding the scow.
“I’m sorry. I’m going to have to.” The Colonel reached for the appropriate lever.
“Damn you.” Nasum sounded just like a woman bitter over the years wasted on a distant promise.
Suddenly the turbulence ended. The sky around them was no longer black strung through with rainbow-colored taffy, but a cloud-streaked greenish blue.
“Pretty.” The Colonel commented, remembering yet again a long-dead companion of his who had continually chided him over his use of the work, stating that real men only used it to describe a woman, never something like landscape. “Thank Goulet I never fell for that shit.” He thought.
“Yes, but where is it?” Nasum wondered sourly.
“Check the horizontoscope.” Colonel Calculer suggested.
“Aye aye, Captain.” Nasum responded sarcastically. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, however.
The Colonel allowed Nasum to exit the nose of the scow before calling back, “That’s Colonel.”
The horizontoscope showed three teenagers; two boys and a girl, hiding behind the ruins of a chimney, all that remained of an old farmhouse deep in the woods. What they were hiding from could not be seen, but it could be heard. The noise was a hideous, stentorian snorting accompanied by the breaking of branches.
“Looks like a show I watched as a kid.” Nasum said.

Hazardous

Tomorrow’s cold shower did nothing to help today’s nosebleed. Real blueberries, baked in coffee cake, along with a little Sonny Rollins, were far more of a tonic, though I still sat with a bloody rag in my hand. I sat alone. That didn’t bother me. I don’t get lonely like some people. I spent two weeks living on a sheet of plywood jammed in a big drainpipe under old Tobacconist’s Road and felt no hunger for human company. I had the collected works of Esther Ramsbladder to occupy my mind by day and the burning eyes of the beast outside the mouth of the pipe by night.
Some would say that mine is a hazardous life, full of adventure and uncertainty. I counter such statements by handing out cheaply printed pamphlets detailing the significant events of my life and the basic tenets of my philosophy.
“Don’t you have any cash, mister?” One fellow recently asked on receiving a copy of this small, but invaluable document. I laughed then as I laugh now: silently, for fear of retribution. Do I carry cash? And risk the chance that I might spend it on a honey bun out of the vending machine? I think that answers the question of how much hazard I allow myself to stray into. My mother said I was always cautious as a child.
They tried to blind me twice as a young boy, but it has always been my teeth that I was most fearful of losing. My father had his knocked out by a horse when he was a teenager. I floss every day.
“That doesn’t help your breath any,” is a statement my friends and family would sign off on, were they around, but as I indicated previously, I am alone.
Apparently, nothing will help my breath. Chewing gum is full of aspartame. That breaks down into formaldehyde in your system and leads to brain damage. As if I needed any more of that after ten years of alcohol and nutmeg poisoning and radiation treatments. I am waiting for my breath to take on the inevitable beef stew smell of old age. By that time, though, I will be borderline senile and won’t care what you or anyone else thinks. Young girls sitting on Grandpa’s lap, nudging out his wallet with their firm, but yielding breasts. Little do they know the danger which they have placed their threadbare existences in such proximity.

Not a Drinking Fountain

No one among the throng of celebrants knew how to play tennis. The birthday boy was therefore forced to sit down to a game of Othello.
“I always called this game reversi.” Uncle Flip said as he watched the game.
“That’s the generic name.” Purvis, the focus of the party’s attention, explained. “Othello is the brand name. Your move.” He informed Dalton, his opponent.
While Dalton contemplated his options, his mother, Amelia, and her sister, Annie, who was Purvis’ mother, watched the fountain with growing trepidation. This fountain, that the dead patriarch of the family had had installed a month before his long-anticipated death a year before, drew its water from a mysterious source apparently unconnected with either the city water system or the local aquifer. Strange rumblings had been heard the day before from the base of the statue of Steve Martin in the center of the fountain (the water issued from the headstock of his banjo). These sounds had been masked by placing a boom box on the edge of the pool surrounding the fountain. A tape of Jody Whatley’s greatest hits, the only piece of recorded music to be found in the house, had already played through three times in succession.
Dalton turned fifteen of Purvis’ black pieces over to white with his move.
“Will you please turn off that crap?” Purvis bellowed, looking at his mother. “I can’t concentrate!”
Annie glanced at Amelia nervously. She rose and switched off the music. In the silence that followed everyone could hear the hollow groaning coming from the fountain.
“I think the pipes are…” Annie began to make some mendacious excuse, but was cut off by the crash of the Steve Martin statue into the pool. From the exposed hole where it had stood an enormous reptilian creature, the tonsilomo, crawled into view.
Everyone except Purvis screamed. The birthday boy merely put one of his pieces down with a sigh of relief.
“Now I’ve got a corner!” He declared.
“Whose birthday is it?” The tonsilomo asked in a wet, gargly voice.
“It’s mine.” Purvis answered, sparing a glance at the creature. “Not that you can tell from the pathetic display about me.”

An Unutilized Plethora

The boots were available in a range of colors vast enough to include everyone’s innermost preference, but I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to start wearing boots.
“Just imagine that you do want to wear boots.” Jerry argued. “What color would you choose?” He stood in the middle of the store it was currently his hobby to manage while the steam vents at the foundation of our Procurementation, which it was his usual duty to watch over (when not running around with me), were being given a routinely scheduled servicing.
“Basic black.” I replied without hesitation.
“Basic black?” Jerry repeated. “Mike, there no longer is any such option. We now have approximately twenty-three different types of black.” He gestured towards one wall where there were indeed a number of dark-colored boots.
“Do you have ‘true black?’” I asked. “I’ve often wondered what that looks like.”
“‘True black?’” Jerry frowned. “Never heard of it.”
“Tell me: with all these different colors, why do you only sell one style of boot?”
“Well, we don’t want to overwhelm our patrons with too many choices.” Jerry explained. Even an illiterate adolescent should be able to figure that out.
“I see.” I said, looking about at the multichromaticism that would shame a candy store full of clowns. I shouldn’t have said that. It was facile. “Well, I still don’t know if boots are the way I want to go. I find them too constrictive. I’ve always been a loafers man.”
“I think you’ve always been a loafer.” A harsh, high voice said. I turned and found myself confronted by a face out of my past, an enemy long since thought to have been left behind. Fortunately, the face was only on a television screen, one mounted on an ambulatory chassis that had stalked into the store like a mobile coat rack.
“I know you.” I said.
“You ought to.” My old enemy replied. “You put me in this position.”
“But I can’t think of your name.” I rubbed my chin and sat down on one of those stools shoe salesmen used to use.

To Shore Up My Fan Base

“Your last novel was called The Ladies Put Faith in the Shade, wasn’t it?” The face on the TV screen atop the walking pole asked.
“Well, not my last.” I joked. I was still trying to remember my old enemy’s name. If any of you have any ideas, shout them out. Not that my past self can hear them, but, time being not only relative, but subjective, it might make all of us feel more participatory. Everyone except the face on the TV screen, that is.
“I thought it was crap.” He said.
“You read it?” I was amazed and, as usual, flattered. Whether they like my work or not, I am always flattered when people read something I’ve written. I suppose that will change as the number of readers I have exceeds the number of fingers I possess.
“As much as I could stomach.”
“What is your name?”
“It is Turlobog.”
“Ah!” I pinched the bridge of my nose and ran my hand down my face. “Of course! You’ve changed though.”
“Being in limbo does that to a person.”
We were outside Jerry’s boot store. Turlobog had purchased two pairs of tomato red boots and had them fitted over the metal feet at the base of his supporting pole. I found it interesting that he paid for the purchase with a credit card.
“You’re not all that much in limbo if you have a line of credit.” I observed.
“I didn’t say I was dead.” The face on the TV, a red mask of calculation, countered. “Too bad for you.”
“Oh? Do you intend to take up your work of trying to supplant me in the people’s consciousness? To be the Anti-Toadsgoboad?”
“You’ll see.” Was all he said before ambling away down the sidewalk.
Thank you, everyone who read this piece and played along. I wish I hadn’t written it, since it really went nowhere, but I had to write something. In addition, in a work like this, I have the luxury of occasionally doing something like this piece. I notice that Jerry is standing in the doorway of his store, hands on hips, wondering what’s going on, so I guess I’ll stop now and go tell him what happened.

Willfully Obstinate

The table I always sit at is the only one in the room from which you cannot see the TV. Unfortunately, you can still hear it, but that’s material for another piece. I have become so familiar with the surface of this table that I have made of its unique scars and coloration a host of figures, each eagerly sought out like co-workers at some place where one would be happy to work, unlike the post office.
I have done the same thing with the spackled ceilings of the various bedrooms I have had since childhood. I remember the faun leaping from the wreckage of the jetliner from my teenage room just as today I look for the anthropomorphic weasel and the rampant goose on the table. I fancy that if I went back to the room I had as a third grader I would see the same things in the spackling that I saw then, but it’s probably not true.
What Turlobog saw in the surface of the table at which his mechanical proxy stood were the reflections of fourteen grim-faced men, the membership of the executive committee of the official Temple of Turlobog. He glared at these reflections from the TV screen atop the slender stainless steel pole as he listened to Hudson Dolphin, the committee’s chairman, speak.
“But how do we know that you are really Turlobog and not some clever recording?” The man asked.
“Is this the same organization that was created to promote my name and deeds?” Turlobog demanded in return. “Are you each not, by the fact of your membership in the Temple, pledged to obey my commands? You owe me your veneration and obedience!” He looked up into their faces as he spoke.
Several of the men around the table glanced uneasily at each other.
Dolphin cleared his throat.
“This organization has changed since the death…”
“Death!” Turlobog burst out.
“…of our founder, the focal point of our beliefs, Turlobog. It is now primarily a social organization. We advance our goals through our contacts, both business and social.”
“You do still work to destroy Toadsgoboad, don’t you?” Turlobog sounded desperate.
“Of course.” Dolphin answered, but he glanced uncertainly about him.

Willfully Obstinate II

“If it is a cleverly manufactured recording,” Frank Mason postulated, “Then the answer-generating algorithm must be of incredible complexity.”
“I don’t know anything about algorithms,” Hudson Dolphin declared. “And I doubt the complexity of their composition will affect our decision regarding this machine claiming to be Turlobog.”
“But that’s just it.” Bob Wandling interposed. “It isn’t that the machine is claiming to be Turlobog; it’s that someone who looks and sounds just like Turlobog is claiming to be Turlobog, somehow having cheated death, and speaking to us through the machine.”
“How succinctly you put it.” Mason praised Wandling.
“But is it really him?” Dolphin wondered.
“Does it matter?” Manfred Harlotighter asked.
“What do you mean?” The chairman looked at the last man to speak curiously.
“This organization was formed to venerate and obey Turlobog and to effect the destruction of Toadsgoboad,” All the men present pulled on their left earlobes ritually at the sound of the name, “But, as you pointed out to the face on the TV, we’ve developed beyond those elementary goals. Sure, we still have them as our primary reasons for existence, but we do much more now. We sponsor a charity golf tournament, raise money for children’s hospitals, promote literacy, and many other things. In short, Mr. Chairman, we don’t need Turlobog himself anymore.”
Thus turned out by the very organization that had once been the foundation of his strength, Turlobog directed the walking TV to confront me at the post office. I was sitting working on a rather pointless story about a kangaroo who runs out of gas in a mall parking lot when the machine approached my table.
“I’d like a word with you.” The face on the TV said.
“Not now. This is my time.” I didn’t bother looking up.
“This is all your fault.”
“Maybe, but I can’t do anything about it right now.” I was only a few lines away from finishing the piece. If I could not be disturbed for just a few more minutes, I could finish it and start a new one before time to go back to work.
“I demand resolution!” The one calling himself Turlobog shouted.
“You’re never going to get it.” Was my honest reply.

The Baker Approves of the Measure

The taste of the beans stayed with the broker long after the meal was over.
“That’s because of all the garlic in them.” He told himself ruefully, worried about whether Marsha would complain that he stank. Personally, he wasn’t concerned about it, but he knew the effect that Marsha’s comments had on his confidence.
“And confidence is the greatest asset a broker can have in a situation like this.” The broker, whose name was Felder, remembered as he pushed Marsha’s doorbell button.
“Come on in.” Marsha said on opening the door. “I’m almost ready.” She was inserting an earring, retreating into the private portion of the tiny house. “Pour yourself a cup of coffee if you want.” She called to Felder as she disappeared.
“No thank you.” Felder answered.
“What?”
“I said no thank you.” Felder took a big step further into the house and shouted. He looked around. The house’s tiny size was belied by the height of its ceilings. Marsha had made the best use of this space, erecting shelves that went all the way up to the ceiling and filling them with her collections.
“You said you didn’t want any coffee?” She asked as she returned, obviously ready to go because she had her purse over her shoulder.
“No, I don’t want any.” Although, now that he thought about it, Felder realized that it might mask his garlic odor. Still, he kept to his decision. Marsha both switched off and unplugged the coffee machine.
“Ridiculous redundancy.” Thought Felder. He would be glad when their business was concluded and he could have nothing more to do with the woman.
By the time they were at the end of Marsha’s driveway, Felder at the wheel of his car, Marsha had made the dreaded comment.
“I don’t want to hear about it!” Felder snapped. He ruthlessly fought his way into the middle of the city-bound traffic.
“You stink like a pig research farm!” Marsha’s tone was as sharp as a letter opener. You don’t think it can cut that badly, but it can.
“Please drop it.” Felder begged, tears in his eyes.
“You’re going to blow this whole deal, stinking like that!”
In the event, however, the beast that lived in the dumpster behind Kinko’s had his nose in a makeshift bandage and could smell nothing.

They Are All the More Hurried for Being a Placid Mob

Turk was no longer able to climb into the loft. He had seen this day coming and made preparations for it, removing everything of value over the course of a half dozen painfully executed trips up and down. Now he sat on the floor in the hallway, propped against the old freezer with a pile of junk around him. He was just admiring a box full of small, crudely carved and painted wooden figures when Enid entered the scene from the back lot, where the villagers were staging their annual pageant.
“Mr. Turk!” She cried, setting her mop bucket down. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“Ah, you’re… Enid. Isn’t that right? Well, Enid, I’m on the floor because it is the most comfortable place for me right now. No more I’ll go a’roaming and all that.”
“What? Are you sick?” The haggard-looking woman, who was only thirty-eight, leant her mop against the wall. She stepped closer to the bear-like Turk and examined his face. Was he really a bear? Some of the villagers claimed so. Most, however, merely said that he had a deformed snout.
“Be that as it may,” Larry Giften had opined, “Still, a man with that much money ought to get his snout fixed. That’s what I’d do.” He added, turning to Enid with a meaningful glare. She had nodded in agreement.
That had been six months ago at least and though she had come to respect Turk’s attitudes, her mop water was no cleaner than when she had first begun her term of duty in the old warehouse. Now she reached out a wrinkled hand to the protruding, whiskered faced.
“Can I feel you, see if you have a fever?” She asked.
“It’s no fever, Enid.” Turk gasped. “It’s…”
The door to the back lot again opened. The glow from the bonfire silhouetted a figure in the drapes and sashes of a mazziastro entering the warehouse.
“Turk!” The man shouted. “Did you get those old issues of Withered Peach?”
The ursine mass on the floor gaped.
“No!” He moaned. “I forgot!” With a roar of pain and effort Turk tried to rise. “I’ll get them.” He croaked. Outside the traditional song of hope was taken up by the crowd.

The Dearness of Petrol

“This was no toothless gosling that faced me;” I recounted the experience for my audience. “This was as fearsome and impetuous a foe as I have encountered in my long career. And I’ve went up against Branford Marsalis.” I added by way of example. At this about half the assembly drifted away, drawn, no doubt, by other, more middlebrow entertainments to be found scattered liberally around the artificial pond.
“Then what happened?” Some wretched farmer type shouted out, seeing that I had lapsed into numb silence.
“Then…” I cried, holding my hands aloft like twin beacons of imminent peril, “I revealed myself in all my puissance…”
“Pwee-sance!?” A little girl, too near to the stage for my comfort, asked. I ignored her and rushed ahead to the climax of my tale.
“…and majesty!” I brought my hands down, as if battering a large lump of recalcitrant dough. “And thus was the Kinko’s dumpster beast defeated.” The words tumbled out like a handful of wooden blocks from an overturned toy chest. I panted, not because I was actually winded, but as a dramatic device to indicated the emotional outlay that had just been expended and that, basically, the story was over. Appreciative listeners might clap now.
Jerry bounded onto the stage beside me, applauding furiously and staring into the crowd as if to say, “Wasn’t that amazing?” He waited until patient decorum once again reigned before announcing, “Toadsgoboad has graciously offered to take a few questions. Does anyone have a question?” He asked, scanning the crowd with his hand over his brow as if it extended back to a sunset laden horizon.
The little girl raised her hand immediately, but I dissuaded Jerry from calling upon her. I pointed instead to a relatively intelligent-looking man of middle years who had scratched his nose.
“Yes sir, you have a question?” Jerry addressed him.
He looked puzzled, but, rising to the challenge, responded appropriately.
“Um, yes, uh… what… what did you say you did for a living?”
Jerry and I looked at each other with smiles of indulgence and the kind of world-weary knowledge that is so sickening to those for whom the towns of their birth are the extent of their experience.

I Know the Tempest

My teeth had become so sensitive by the time of the Great Impartiality that those who would see me eat were forced to provide me with a soft, nutritive paste served at room temperature. I, of course, was not excited by the monotony of this diet, but, once I had obtained a bottle of Sriracha hot sauce to season my meals with, I was content. After a few weeks of eating this paste I lost weight and that brings me to the important part of my story. I was able, in my skinniness, to slip through the bars of my cell and escape from the old warehouse. I didn’t leave immediately, however, but selected a sharp new outfit from the wardrobe department befitting my newly svelte form before making my egress. Did I pay for these clothes? No. I felt that nearly two months of enforced indolence and depression had built up the necessary credit.
“He’s escaped!” The words were repeated throughout the village again and again as I made my way along its cobblestone streets. No one recognized me, of course. They were looking for the overweight fellow in the Cecil Taylor costume. To further my deception, I had adopted a vaguely Slavic accent and showed a friendly interest in the trivial doings of the people I met. That threw them off, if nothing else.
Entering the local branch of Nethernexus Flagellum Movements, I bought a ticket to the border using the only item of value I had one me: a coin that I had kept hidden in a false rectum all this time. Only when the flagellum mover was in transit did admit to myself how scared I had been.
“How about a little water?” I asked the steward as I loosened my ascot.
“Right away, sir.”
I didn’t notice how cold it was until I had downed almost all of it.
“Yow!” I screamed.
“You have awoken my baby!” An ugly woman accused me.
“They say the prisoner that escaped had very sensitive teeth.” I heard a sour-looking, jowly old man say to his companion, an equally sour-looking and jowly old man. They both eyed me suspiciously.
“Steward,” I called imperiously, “Have you any reading matter?”
“We have the latest issue of Withered Peach.”
“I’ll take it. I hear there’s a very good article this month on the historical context of The Tempest.” I said loudly, masking my pain.

No Davenport Was Available

After each of the women had cried her limit, Andy signaled the robots to bring in the tea while noses were blown and makeup reapplied. Marsha snuffled,
“I hope you’ll like it. It’s some kind of tea they drink in China on special occasions.”
As the robots retreated, so did Andy. He slipped behind the old clock and into the so-called secret passage that led down to the pump room. He found old Stafford sitting across the main valvehead from another old man, this one unknown to Andy.
“Andy, come here. I want you to meet someone.” Stafford indicated his guest with a wave of his prosthetic hand. “This is Brooks MaGree. He used to man the cageworks here.”
“Oh, really?” Andy smiled. “Nice to meet someone who escaped this place.” He shook hands with MaGree.
“Not escaped, sir, no. I was fired.” MaGree corrected Andy. His voice was rough, full of the ocean’s brown froth and the droppings of nightbirds.
“That was twelve years ago, wasn’t it?” Stafford asked.
“Twelve years ago last May, yes.”
“Well, what brings you back?” Andy asked as he reached into the shoeshine box for the bottle of whiskey that was always kept there.
“The lure of gold, young man.” MaGree intoned dramatically. He accepted the bottle from Andy and took twice the swallow the younger man had.
“MaGree has a proposition for us, Andy.” Stafford set up the exposition, but before any such words could proceed, the bell that was Andy’s summons sounded.
“Tell me when I get back.” Andy said. He took the bottle from MaGree and passed it to Stafford. “If I ever do.” He added cynically. Back up the passage he went. The sight that met his eyes sickened him, though no such expression showed on his face.
The women each sat with their arms folded, staring somberly ahead. Marsha addressed herself to Andy in a business-like tone.
“Andy, this tea is no good. Will you please bring us our usual, proper tea?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Andy replied. He raised the silver whistle that hung about his neck to his lips and summoned the robots once more.

Up From the Lounger, You Worm

My most stringent critic among the crowd of academics that hang about the pastry shop had recently published an article comparing my latest collection of drawings to “the pianistic ramblings of Cecil Taylor, but without the virtuosity.” Upon being shown this article by a friend of the family, Mr. Seism, who managed an extensive trailer park just up the road, I dismissed it with a laugh.
“At least it’s recognition.” I managed to say in the midst of my hyena-like paroxysm.
“It says here it’s a collection of drawings.” Mr. Seism enunciated slowly, lingering over each syllable like a prospective bride imagining each ring in the jewelry store case on her finger in succession. Well, maybe not that slowly, but still, pretty slow.
“Yeah.” I agreed, pitching the word so that it also meant, “And what’s your objection to that?”
“Martin told me you told him they were cartoons.” The combination of the tilt of Mr. Seism’s cowboy hat and the glint of his eyes under its brim gave me the feeling that he was questioning my honesty. Had I been trying to dupe his son?
“Well, they’re both.” I explained. “I prefer the term cartoons, but, technically, to a man like this critic, they’re not cartoons; they’re drawings. And they certainly aren’t comics.” I added, bitterly perhaps, but there it was: the truth, blowing past like a tumbleweed.
Jerry, who had been listening to all of this from an old mailbox nailed to a nearby tree for a homey effect, broke into the discussion. “Mike, why exactly would a man like this critic not consider them cartoons?”
“Because they’re not funny.” I sighed. The tumbleweed was in my hair.
“Maybe you’ve got it wrong. Maybe you’ve used the wrong term.” Jerry supposed. “Maybe if you used the other term, this critic would feel differently about your work.”
“I think maybe your friend in the mailbox is right.” Mr. Seism reckoned, rubbing his flabby cheeks with a workingman’s hand.
I considered it for a moment, snapped my fingers, and dashed down to the pastry shop on the back of the fastest camel the garage had to offer.
“Hey,” I breathlessly accosted my critic as he nibbled something nice. “Would it change your opinion of my work if I called it ‘cartoons’ instead of drawings?”
Even before he cleared his throat to answer the look behind his glasses told me everything.

Canaries Enjoy the Benefit of Plumage

Just before sunset the children were gathered together inside the palisade of bathroom tissue that the adults had been wrapping about the trees for the past hour. Uncle Wright picked his teeth and muttered, “That ought to hold them.” The gap through which the children had been ushered was closed over with more tissue. Each exhausted roll was passed to a child to serve as his “magic telescope.” Of course, not all of the children received one and these benighted few later became the basis for the slave class.
Strings of electric lights in the shape of chili peppers had been hung in the branches over the makeshift corral and these were now turned on as the last rays of the sun were cut off by the apparent rise of the line of smokestacks on the horizon.
“This is fascinating.” Billy, a child, could be heard announcing through the wall of paper. Was he examining the world through his cardboard tube?
“The whole point,” Explained General Rookwood to this indifferent journalist, “Or rather, one of the main points of this exercise, is that we, the adults in question, don’t actually know what is going on inside the palisade. Speculation is, as you must be aware, one of the hallmarks of the sentient being.”
“Was that Billy?” Asked a nearly frantic woman, Billy’s mother. “I bet it was Billy.”
Her husband sternly led her away from the site. He could be heard saying, “I’ll be you he emerges as the leader.”
All the other adults were leaving as well, returning to the house that Grandpa and Grandma had built without aid of any bank or contractor. Only one had died there, however. Grandpa, his lottery winnings evaporated like breath on a CD, had ceased to function in New York City, far away. What the adults did in the house was as unknown as the doings of the children, for General Rookwood and the sleepy documenter of these events remained in the cab of the army truck, the radio turned to a station playing soft Jazz as anachronistic as the blindly loyal troops that sat in readiness in the back of the same truck.
“Strictly speaking,” the General said in an almost apologetic tone, “This truck shouldn’t have a radio.” He said no more, but beat the steering wheel with his tiny fist in a way that seemed highly significant. Consultation of a basic psychiatric textbook later provided some insight on this action.




Allowances Must Be Made for Medical Waste

“All of the furniture in this room is made of items recovered from the city dump.” Phosdek announced matter-of-factly with a sweep of his slender hand.
“Strange.” Thought Gampry, the noted plumber, “I would have thought that his voice would contain a larger note of pride.” He pondered this as he allowed his eyes to take in the futuristic chairs and bizarre platforms that filled what had once been the chickens’ loft. “Perhaps he had no personal emotional investment in the creation of these pieces.” Gampry theorized even as he made a perfunctory comment.
“Very nice.” He said.
Tellingly, Phosdek sighed before thanking the plumber. “Shall we move on?” He asked.
“Sure.” Gampry agreed. Phosdek shut the door to the room behind them and ushered Gampry down the hall with a gesture as graceful as his earlier one encompassing the former refuse.
“Now this,” Phosdek said, opening a door approximately one hundred feet away from the first, “Is the game room.” Gampry was intrigued by the poster on the outside of the door. It was a stylized profile of some celebrity he couldn’t quite place. Bob Dylan? Donald O’Connor? Larry the Lumberjack? He didn’t have enough time to study the image, for Phosdek was already urging him inside with dainty, flickering movements of his slender hand.
“We call it the game room because of the inappropriateness of such a name.” Phosdek inadequately explained. Gampry didn’t get the joke, but did not bother asking for the secret. He was far more interested in the contents of the room.
“Pipes.” He said aloud in a tone suitable for the interior of a vault. He looked about in awe. Pipes, some large enough to pass wildebeest through, some small enough for standard household water, ran from the corrugated metal ceiling overhead down into the hardwood floor below.
“It’s amazing.” Gampry admitted.
“I’m glad you like it.” Phosdek smiled.
“All of them reinforced ceramic?” Gampry queried.
“If you say so.” Phosdek shrugged. “I really don’t know anything about it. My wife got them on clearance somewhere.”

I Cannot Turn the Other Cheek

The indecipherable Ubspeak, in which all the lines in Frittenmelger’s new film, Laughter Came From Their Weary Jaws, were delivered, was an artificial language originally created by Dr. Schlumpenfus for the World Congress of Metal Brethren in 1966. As if that wasn’t enough to discourage the average American housewife from ever seeing the film, it was also filmed with a thick piece of red plastic over the lens of the camera, tinting everything red and distorting the images. One minute Jonas Ulchber’s head would be tiny and quavering on the end of a fragile stalk; the next it would expand to dominate the screen like the great and terrible Oz in an elevator with a herd of pygmy giraffes.
Jonas Ulchber was the star of the film. His character, Don Perplexed, was apparently intended as a caricature of the later Fradle Brenson, star of such films as Voyage to the Middle of the Road. It was said that Brenson’s widow, a pygmy giraffe named Formalda, was traumatized by the film; but then, she was not invited to the parties where such things were said.
It was at one of these parties that the so-called climax of my adventures in connection with Goat Valley and its inhabitants took place. I and my imaginary friend Jerry Lancaster were at the home of rock star Geoff Hangover, financial backer of many of Frittenmelger’s films, talking to someone who may or may not have been seriously interested in making a documentary about my one man attempt to deal with reality, when who should come clanking up to us but my old enemy Turlobog, now reduced to a face on a TV screen atop a slender, four-legged metal pole.
“Toadsgoboad,” He said, frightening away our previous interlocutor, “I want you to forgive me for my past behavior.”
“Why should I?” I reasonably asked. Though, to the uninitiated, it must have sounded as baffling as Ubspeak.
“Because I’ve mended my ways and am now informing you that you’ve got trouble.” He gestured towards the door with a yardstick that he held in his red-gloved hand. There, entering the party in all the regal finery of bantams dipped in mustard, were Monicker, my former assistant, and her brother Punchlet, whom I had never met before, but for whom Return to Goat Valley would never have been thus titled.
“Now the circle is complete.” I said with resignation to so-called fate.

Another Wasted Weekend

Spinach, the greenest of the leaves proximate to the anticlimax, grew in such profusion in Dimeler’s backyard that he could easily eat all he wanted to of the crop and still have enough left over to sell at the village fair that weekend. However, Dimeler didn’t want the bother of taking the surplus leaves to the fair. He worked hard at the Distraughtening Factory all week and looked forward to his weekends.
“You’re just going to let those leaves go to waste?” Mrs. Arbagleed angrily demanded from her roost on the wall that separated her property from Dimeler’s. “While you sit in that wheelbarrow and pretend you’re piloting a spaceship!”
Dimeler ignored his neighbor’s words. He had no time to waste on the woman. Starlover Johnny was on his tail, looking to blow him and his precious cargo of Prokofiev ear modules into interplanetary dust before he could deliver them to the desperately bored crew of the Macroknockwurst. He was working himself into a state of panic, pumping furiously at the synesthetic controls, wondering when the sneering Johnny’s laser would strike when he was stunned to actually feel a blow to the back of the head. He cried out in terror.
“Good shot, kid!” Mrs. Arbagleed bellowed with glee, throwing her fist into the air like an old cowhand on the periphery of a particularly exciting rodeo event. In fact, she nearly toppled over, such was her enthusiasm.
Dimeler turned around and saw Freddie Permabake, his other neighbor, grinning wickedly at him from the top of the wall that separated their respective backyards. He felt the back of his head. Freddie had thrown a dirt clod at him. As he began to shout abuse and threats of retaliation at Freddie, the latter merely dropped out of view and returned to his wife and their guests, who were sitting around an old power line spool that now served as a table.
“Got him.” Freddie proudly announced, dusting his palms together.
“Freddie,” Freddie’s wife said, “Tell the Fagners where you got this table.”
“We think it’s very clever.” Dad Fagner added, encouraging Freddie to tell the story.
“Well,” Freddie smiled and looked out from under his threadbare eyebrows with sneaky delight. “That’s a good story.” His peg-like teeth stood distinctly apart from each other, like fence posts not yet connected by wire.

Answer Came There None

“How many of you remember Jessica Savitch?” Dr. Pulmonari asked suddenly, peering up into the teeming seats of the lecture hall. Two or three hands were tentatively raised in response.
“OK.” The still-youthful Pulmonari nodded. “Just checking. Now,” He stepped over to a large object covered with a piece of heavy, scuffed canvas. “This is the focus of today’s class.” He grunted as he jerked at the canvas. Once this covering was off, the students beheld a large glass and metal cylinder that looked like one of those vacuum tubes you might find in the back of Grandma’s TV.
“Only this one was about seven feet tall.” Gomez later told his friends.
“Now, who can tell me what this is?” Pulmonari asked.
A hand was raised in one of the upper seats on the lecturer’s right, near the seat where sat the young bruiser Pulmonari had admonished only the other day for talking to his neighbor.
“Yes?” Pulmonari acknowledged the upraised hand.
“It’s a gammafudgican.” A woman of approximately nineteen summers answered.
“Very good.” Pulmonari declared, waggling his index finger like a magic wand.
“Fifty points for Gryffindor.” The young bruiser mumbled to his neighbor.
“And can you tell us what a gammafudgican does?” Pulmonari, who had earned his doctorate one year earlier than the national average, put his follow-up question to the well-informed nineteen-year-old.
“I think it has something to do with the transfer of electrons?” The young woman, whose name was Dawn, was uncertain.
“Just about everything has something to do with the transfer of electrons.” Pulmonari gently expressed his disappointment. “More specifically, a gammafudgican indexes random outlays of subpecuniary… yes, what is it?” He was interrupted by one of the secretarial staff, a thin, older lady in a red dress, hissing and gesticulating at him from the side of what I can only describe as a stage, although I’m sure that enthusiasts of drama would prefer that I use some other term.
At a further beckoning motion of the older lady’s arm Pulmonari reluctantly went to her to see what she wanted. As he engaged in an intense, whispered dialogue with the secretarial-type woman, the bruiser wondered aloud to his neighbor why Pulmonari had asked about Jessica Savitch.

Ladle Out the Treacle

Twice the Feral Council’s Subcommittee on Dizziness had requested that a gammafudgican be brought to their meeting room for direct investigation of certain health concerns involving the device. Neither of those requests had elicited a response. When, on the Monday immediately following a particularly raucous session of the subcommittee, its chairman, Anders Fidzmus, walked into the meeting room and saw nothing resembling a gammafudgican as described to him by a half dozen witnesses to its maleficence, he barked angry threats of retaliation that were heard by no one other than a cleaning woman and a Feral Council page.
Luckily for everyone, genial celebrity Duckling Boston had responded promptly to his summons to speak before the subcommittee. His appearance that Monday brought with it more media attention to the subcommittee’s doings than they had received in all of the two years of its existence.
“Well, I don’t know much about dizziness, but I’m delighted to have this opportunity to show my willingness to be an active participant in the Feral Council’s business.” Boston sat before the eight members of the subcommittee and flashed a smile that would endure beyond the corruption of his overly tanned flesh.
“I thank you for that willingness.” Anders Fidzmus replied. Not normally a man to be awed by celebrities, he was obviously tickled to be speaking to Boston. As he later confessed to a reporter (in a suitably sobered tone, of course), he and his family had spent many an evening watching “Governor’s Grab Bag,” the program that Boston had hosted since its inception.
“Mr. Chairman,” Brice Dybbuk, another member of the subcommittee, interrupted the exchange of pleasantries. “I think I’d like to ask Mr. Boston a question.”
“Go right ahead, Mr. Dybbuk.” Fidzmus betrayed no annoyance at his colleague’s peremptory tone. As a matter of fact, he welcomed the interruption as it gave him time to control his emotions. How well he remembered glorious episode 605 of “Governor’s Grab Bag,” the one where Alan finally breached the fourth wall and confronted Duckling Boston, only to be humiliatingly beaten back to his wretched job at the Distraughtening Factory.
“Mr. Boston,” Dybbuk got the square-jawed man’s attention, “What insight can you give us into the workings of the gammafudgican?”
“Only what I’ve read in the trade journals, I’m afraid.” Boston assumed a serious air.

Raspberry Cobbler

Phosdek, who played Alan on the long-running television series “Governor’s Grab Bag,” finally achieved one of the goals closest to his heart when his play, “Gingivitis Under the Comet,” was performed at the Helen Hoosegow Theater in Mall City (the City of Malls).
“Even if the show closes tonight,” Phosdek declared to a group of well-wishers during the intermission, “This will still be one of the greatest events of my life.” He smiles toothily, as toothily as an alligator, some might say, and downed a beaker of piss-colored champagne.
“Tell me,” said Phosdek’s cousin’s son Ward, who fancied himself a scholar, “Do you prefer the term ‘film’ to ‘movie?’ Because, as you know, in Europe they say ‘film,’ whereas we in America say ‘movie.’” Ward felt giddy at having used the word ‘whereas’ in a sentence, especially in front of these associates of his famous relative.
“Well,” Phosdek began heavily, glancing at a couple of the aforementioned associates, “You’re not in America now.” He smiled, which, in these circumstances, was as good as sticking out his tongue and blowing. He excused himself and went backstage, leaving Ward to wonder what Phosdek had meant by their not being in America. Stupid as he was, he yet realized that asking these people to explain the gag to him would reveal the depths of his ignorance. He remained silent and contented himself with several glasses of free champagne.
The source of Ward’s confusion was that, as an average citizen of the United States, and one pretty much restricted to its interior by the paucity of both his finances and imagination, he was unaware that Mall City lay not only within the United States’ territorial boundaries, but also, at its other end, within the Procurementation. Perhaps some of you have been confused by just this same conundrum throughout the course of this book. Most of you, however, I am sure, have either instinctively grasped the situation or simply failed to concern yourselves with the niggling details of the geography involved. In any case, I salute your persistence.
In retrospect, Phosdek’s words were prophetic, for that evening did indeed see the only performance of “Gingivitis Under the Comet.” The play’s failure, however, did little to diminish Phosdek’s reputation as an intellectual. Among his fans it continued to be felt that he was wasted on “Governor’s Grab Bag,” despite that program’s narrative and aesthetic complexity. Among Phosdek’s detractors the label “intellectual” continued to be the main reason for their disdain.



Retarded Intimacy

Gomez, Dawn, Herbert, and Franca were, in their friendly, collegiate way, socializing together over soda pop at Herbert’s studio apartment.
“How did you know what it was?” Franca asked Dawn, referring to the gammafudgican.
“There’s one on the cover of the new Kamelpfeffer album.” Dawn told her friend.
“Yes, but how did you know what it was called?” Herbert probed further.
“I read it in the liner notes.” Explained Dawn, her nose dusted with beautiful, biscuit-colored freckles.
This sounded suspicious to Herbert. Of course, he wouldn’t say anything to make his suspicions clear; there was no way he was going to jeopardize the future possibility of sexual shenanigans by such a foolish move. Secretly, however, he made arrangements to investigate the cover of the new Kamelpfeffer album.
The next day he called an acquaintance whom he knew would have a copy of the album in question. Along with his request that this fellow bring the album over to his studio, Herbert included the enticement of allowing him to see his new paintings.
“Come see my new work.” Herbert had said.
“OK, but I have to warn you: if I don’t like it, I’m not going to lie about it. I will be forthright.” The acquaintance, Todd Melker, was clear about his intentions.
“You can be as forthright as you like,” Herbert answered, feeling wary now and not caring whether he got to see the album cover or not, “Just bring the album over.”
Twenty minutes later than expected, Melker arrived, the vitally important album (in CD format) in hand.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Herbert declared, noting the gammafudgican in the center of the assemblage of fruit, tires, string, dolls, camels, and furtive, night-dwelling beasts that adorned the cover. “Now to see about the liner notes.” He said aloud, though he mainly spoke to himself.
“Have you heard Kamelpfeffer before?” Melker asked.
“No.” Herbert fought the little booklet out of the jewel case and began flipping through it.
“Where’s your stereo?” Melker asked, retrieving the case and taking out the disc.
“Well, I’ll-Be-Damned.” Herbert repeated, reading the informative words. The CD started playing. He listened to the music for a few seconds and said, “I hate it.”

You’re All Wet, My Pet

Todd Melker’s favorite band was Black Girl’s Stomach. If he were ever to form a band, so he told himself, it would be based on Black Girl’s Stomach in the same way that The Girl Pool was based on The Cure and the Carlsonics were based on the Rolling Stones. Alas, he was not a musician, but a mere cartoonist, and one doomed to obscurity at that. In his cartoons, however, Melker, was able to indulge his fantasies by creating a surrogate band. Actually, he had created several, but the one that had established itself in his imagination most firmly and become something of a fixture in his work was called The Thirsty Kingmen.
Melker’s narrative skills were limited, not only by his inability to consistently draw the same characters over and over so that they actually resembled themselves from panel to panel, but by his failure to interest himself in the ongoing story so that it made any kind of sense. Despite these limitations, however, Melker carried on, drawing what he would. In the latest installment of his oeuvre (which he called The Shaded Fruit as an umbrella title), The Thirsty Kingmen had been captured by representatives of the Reverse Feral Council who were intent on making an example of them by chopping their hands off.
“Young people will think twice before starting bands of their own!” Sneered Manx Joinus, a man in a tall hat.
“I’ll never become a cartoonist now!” Jubal Luxure, the large-eyed guitarist for The Thirsty Kingmen, lamented as a couple of birds hovered just over his head, making spurious comments.
The Thirsty Kingmen, unlike most of the bands upon whom they were based and none of those their creator aspired to emulate, had a saxophone player. Strangely enough, this saxophone player was me. I don’t know if Melker had subconsciously heard my name somewhere and used it without realizing that there was actually someone out there with the copyrighted name of Toadsgoboad, or if he was paying a tribute to me in his own way, but this saxophone player was indeed named Toadsgoboad. It didn’t bother me all that much when I found out. After all, Melker’s work was, as I said earlier, doomed to obscurity. No one beyond Melker’s longsuffering family and friends would ever see it.
This cartoon Toadsgoboad looked to the right side of the panel and thought about escaping into the realm of animation.

Great Mail Order Houses of the Mid-Twentieth Century

Mrs. Feebly enjoyed my saxophone playing. She was quite possibly unique in that regard. Certainly, I think she alone among the sentient, man-sized rats appreciated my chaotic noodling.
“It may not be Jazz,” I said from the stage one evening after a particularly raucous show, “But it’s still music.”
“Hear, hear!” Mrs. Feebly shouted from the back of the room, where the rats, unfairly or not, were forced to sit, segregated from the humans up front.
“Toadsgoboad,” Jonas Thrillgood, the band’s singer, approached me backstage, “We have to talk about something.”
I noticed that the rest of the band were lined up behind Jonas, as if waiting to use the bathroom.
“What is it?” I asked, remembering similar scenes on a half dozen different continents.
“We don’t think you fit in with what this band is trying to do.” Jonas put it forthrightly. At least I can credit him with that.
I took a deep breath. I glanced at the others, the men with whom I had been through so much. How much had they taken from me? How much had I learned from them? It is incalculable.
“So, I’m out. Is that it?” I asked. I could feel my hand on the handle of my saxophone case, sweaty and all too palpably real.
Jonas nodded. “That’s right.” He said.
“They’re crazy.” Mrs. Feebly complained later in the comfortable parlor in her small house. I had already drunk three cups of her genetically enhanced peppermint tea and she was now pouring me a fourth. “What will they do without your horn?”
“Move more in the direction they were heading before I joined up with them” I sighed. “Before long, you won’t be able to tell them apart from Faster Pussycat.”
Mrs. Feebly pursed her furry rat lips and fiddled with the sugar bowl. “I don’t know who that is.” She said firmly. “But I’m sure they must be terrible.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I relented. “I don’t want to disparage them completely. Some of their funk tunes were OK. Still, they weren’t Talking Heads.”
A knock on the door interrupted our sad musings. Upon answering it, Mrs. Feebly found an angry, crudely drawn depiction of Taime Downe awaiting redress.

The King’s Cellar Contingency

“And to drink?” The waiter with the trim blond beard asked.
“Peppermint tea.” Syvert Nasum told him.
“Regular or genetically enhanced?”
“What’s genetically enhanced?” Nasum asked.
“The tea.” Colonel Calculer broke in, witty as usual.
Nasum frowned at him as the waiter explained.
“Genetically enhanced means that the peppermint plant from which the tea leaves were harvested has had its DNA altered by adding vigor-inducing genes from the giant hedgehog bush of southern Bobdragon.”
“Oh.” Nasum exclaimed at a rather less than exclamatory volume. “Well, I guess I’ll have the genetically enhanced then.”
“Very good, sir.” The waiter retrieved their menus and stepped away.
“What an informative waiter.” Nasum decided.
“I can be informative too.” The Colonel replied. “For instance, did you know that red beans add fiber to all of your favorite dishes? They are great with rice and vegetation.”
“Is that right?” Nasum considered his friend. “It’s too bad I ordered the asparagus.”
“It’s never too late to add red beans to your order.” The Colonel reminded Nasum.
“Never?” Nasum raised his eyebrows. “That can’t be true.”
“According to the management of this establishment it is.” The Colonel nodded towards something behind Nasum. The latter turned around and saw a hand-painted sign on the wall. There, among many facts on display were such tidbits as “red beans add fiber to all your favorite dishes,” and “it’s never too later to add red beans to your order,” and a thorough explanation of what genetically enhanced peppermint tea is.
“I knew it was too good to be true.” Nasum sighed.
“Some red beans will cheer you up.” The Colonel started to say, but trailed away to silence as a uniformed policeman approached their table.
“Excuse me,” The policeman said, “But does that spaceship outside belong to you two?”
“It’s not a spaceship.” Colonel Calculer insisted pedantically.

A Pile of Bones As Long As the Troop Train Itself

The Abandoned Doctorate ran on a wide variety of fuels. Along with good old-fashioned gasoline, it could also utilize unwanted foodstuffs. This being the case, Colonel Calculer and Syvert Nasum always got a doggy bag when they went out to eat. If the bag was an actual paper bag and not a Styrofoam box, then the transdimensional scow could consume that as well.
The Colonel turned from dumping his unwanted leftovers into the hopper that led to the mysterious workings of the engine and wiped his hands on the towel conveniently hung nearby.
“That was a good meal.” He belched with all the enthusiasm of a ten-year-old boy, taking absurd delight in the rich cadences the belch added to his already deep, gruff voice.
“It was fair.” Nasum demurred. He sat in his seat on the right-hand side of the complicated control console in the nose of the scow. He stared out the window at the vast herd of oxen that covered the plain.
“I’ve always been a noodle man.” The Colonel confessed as he clambered into his seat.
“Colonel, I think I would very much like to go home now.” Nasum announced, his eyes still on the oxen.
Colonel Calculer stared at his friend, his mouth ajar. He glanced at the controls and down at the shag carpeting that lined both the floor and the walls. He had no interest in the scene out the window. Bovines had lost all attraction for him years ago in the Bajami Campaign of ’46. He had been but a lieutenant then, slim and slightly under average height. The experimental thermal injections had changed all that. Not only had he grown six inches, but his upper lip, hitherto as barren as the surface of the moon, had sprouted the beginnings of the commanding display it bore to this day.
“Did you hear me?” Nasum asked.
“I heard you, Complaining Jack.” The Colonel answered, throwing a lever with a hearty sigh.
“I understand the ramifications, and the effort involved,” Nasum made it clear, “But I want to try and I want to go ahead and start now.”
“We have already started.” The Colonel said simply, as the oxen scattered at the sound of the scow’s engine.

Temporarily Taller

Dr. Pulmonari and Dr. Soupstock, representing the departments of theoretical logistics and pastoral encephalography, respectively, led a group of interested students into the Madradoodle plain to observe the wild oxen in their native habitat. The sound of bongos and flutes accompanied their caravan of cute little streamlined conveyances as it meandered over the gently rolling landscape to the west of Progross, the ancient capital of the once-dominant goat people.
The fourth, and last, oval-shaped vehicle in the caravan held only three students. The remainder of the space was taken up by the two large thermal containers that held the group’s lunch, and Thurston, the teacher’s assistant, who was also driving.
“This is fun.” Said Becky, one of the three students in the last egg on wheels.
“Yeah, I’m glad you suggested this.” Agreed Tom, a rangy lad in a Stetson.
“Where are the cows?” The third of this subset of the overall group, Huck, asked aloud as he peered out the windows.
“They’re oxen.” Thurston called back.
“What’s the difference?” Becky asked.
“Cows are domesticated animals. Oxen are wild.”
Tom caught Becky’s eye. He frowned and jerked his thumb towards the driver, indicating that he thought that Thurston was wrong.
“Where are the other cars?” Huck asked after another minute’s driving.
“Good question.” Thurston said. He stopped the vehicle on top of a small rise and looked around. “They were in front of us a second ago.”
“Where are the oxen?” Huck repeated. Did he mean to suggest that his two previous questions were causally linked somehow? How much did Huck suspect?
The screaming chilled each of them.
“What was that?” Becky demanded.
“Stay here.” Thurston ordered, though he was, on average, only three years older than his passengers. This was significant, for Huck resented being bossed around by a mere TA. Thurston opened the door and got out. Becky would have protested, but again Tom caught her eye, frowned, and jerked his thumb towards the front.
The heavy thunder of hooves was heard.
“Tom,” Huck addressed himself to the other young man, “Where’d you get that hat?”

The Song You Cannot Quite Make Out

As fresh as the orange juice that spattered the vinyl tablecloth, Martin Seism’s breath was at odds with his face. No beauty queen would ever voluntarily kiss that wretched visage no matter how many deodorizing lozenges he stuffed into his mouth. Sally considered all of this sadly as she took a moistened sponge to the tablecloth.
“The best he can hope for is a simple girl whose self-esteem is so low as to be nonexistent.” She said, continuing a discussion she had been having with Freddie Permabake.
“You mean a younger version of you.” Freddie cracked, refolding his newspaper and tossing it onto the cleaned, but still damp table.
“Ha ha.” Sally barked. “Anyway, that’s not true. The me I am today is not just an older version of the me I was at his age; I’m a different person now. But if you mean a girl like the girl that I used to be, then yeah, maybe so.”
“You’re a damn philosopher.” Freddie declared. He rose from his chair with a groan and scratched his belly. “Well… I guess I’ll be going.”
Sally squeezed the sponge into a bucket while she thought of something sassy to say. Before any words could be formulated, however, the door to her tiny establishment was hurled open.
“Stampede!” Frank Hebron screamed into the room and then ran on down the street.
“Stampede?” Sally echoed. “What’s he mean?”
Freddie knew what he meant. He dashed to the window and looked in the direction Frank had come from.
“The herd’s on the move!” He cried. “You got anywhere to hide?” He turned and asked Sally.
She hesitated only a moment. “The old meat locker!” She said. Freddie followed her into the crowded back room behind the grill. The meat locker, unusable for twenty years and yet too big to move, took up more than half the area. Together they crowded inside just as the din of the charging animals overwhelmed them.
Sally was saving a joke about Freddie not getting out of paying for his meal, but she never got to use it, for the noise went on and on as the frenzied herd demolished everything within the range of their movements.


No Stone Left, Turned or Not

Any attempt at a return to Goat Valley was now impossible. The hooves, horns, and brawny shoulders of millions of animals had rendered the entire region both uninhabitable and undesirable as a place to visit. I considered all of this sadly as I applied a moistened rag to my face.
“I don’t understand why you’re so upset.” Jerry scolded me.
“Thousands of people dead! Houses, machines, works of art, municipal infrastructure—all destroyed!” I cried.
“Maybe so,” Jerry admitted, replacing his teacup in its saucer. We sat at breakfast on a balcony in my palace overlooking the muscadine vineyards and fig trees so dear to my damnably, indelibly southern heart. “But you hated the place. You told me so yourself. Hated the whole concept. You said you felt trapped by its implication, limited by its…”
“Yes, yes, I know.” I cut off him off with a wave of my fork. I was beginning to recover my equanimity as dreams of the future pullulated in the hothouse of my brain and blueberry pancakes slowly filled my stomach.
“Excellency,” A properly attired servant appeared in the doorway, summoning my attention.
“Yes, Parker?”
“Colonel Calculer and Syvert Nasum have arrived.”
“Oh, good. Show them in.”
Parker hesitated. He had more to say. “Sir, their… vessel has materialized in reading room #4.”
I laughed (the first time in days) and told him not to worry. “Everything will be as it was when they leave.”
The Colonel and his sidekick (although I’m sure Nasum would object to the term) joined Jerry and me at the table. Their appetites were large.
“Not much to eat on The Abandoned Doctorate.” The Colonel explained.
“I’m glad to see you still have apple butter in this reality.” Nasum added.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing when I’m here.” I assured him. “I am the one constant. Stick with me and things will always be the same.”
Nasum looked at me hopefully. “You mean I can get home, back to my studies, if you’re around?”
I merely nodded, repressing a smile.