jamieproctor.ca

I woke up face down in the mud and the muck with one nostril standing between me and suffocation and I rolled my tongue in my mouth and between the dirt and iron my front tooth was missing and that was that.

***

I was mad.  Hadn’t been mad in a long time.  Angry, yeah – angry is shouting and waving your fists around and laughing and kicking someone after they fall over and feeling that thrill of the rib making way for your toe.  Everyone loves angry out here, next best thing to drunk.  But mad is when you’re the one on the floor. 

***

The light at my back was red hot with sweat and joy and drink and sick.  So much pay spent so fast so bright like an overfed lamp.  Screaming and laughing and someone singing it sounded like Bert like FUCKING Bert who was my friend Bert you put your toe in the same ribs I did you laughed when I told the jokes Bert I lifted that damned widowmaker off your leg all by myself don’t you remember is it worse if you do or don’t?

I needed to throw up.  I thought I’d thrown up already.  Hard to tell all I could taste in my mouth was the dirt and the iron. 

While I was doing that I walked away from the light. Decision made from the ground up my feet knew what they were doing and the rest of me would learn when I needed to. They were the part of me that worked the best right now anyways I’d gone down hard and gone down fast and then once that’d happened there’d been no more dignity for it no more respect everyone take a piece and it’d been work on the face and the ribs and they’d held my arms until my shoulder joints felt like rotten apples swelling and bruising out of shape.

***

I didn’t need anyone to hold arms for me.  I didn’t want anyone to hold arms for me, because as long as they kept flailing you could keep hitting.  Back up!  Back up!  Let them keep their pride so they had something left to defend, let them make the call second by second: which can you survive with longer, another broken bone or a little more lost face? Can you heal fast enough, set your arm straight enough, to make it through on missed pay?  Can you work hard enough, cut and haul and strip fast enough all on your own when the rest of camp would sooner partner with a plague rat than share a crew with you?

That’s what makes the eyes glaze over.  Not the brainfog from the boot to the skull, not the pain from the broken-bloody bruises.  Trying to decide which will kill you: the wounds or the shame, with almost no time at all.

***

It was dark in the woods dark at midday darker at night but it didn’t matter I could see it when the red pulsed in my eye now light dark air tree and my legs still worked didn’t they were still in charge weren’t they not alone anymore the thoughts had moved up to my stomach curdling around a dinner of grease and too much cheap beer burning my throat on the way out raw and scraped like an unoiled sawblade.  Unoiled broken-tooth wasn’t me couldn’t be I could always find a new blade always find someone to oil it for me a polite word from me carried a dozen nights of impolite memories of meat and bone and blood always giving me weight pushing others into the places I needed them to be pushing the saw through the wood but not the wood I was wandering now farther now past the clearings past the edge of the roads stumbling and held upright by briars following the places where no trails lead.

***

Fear really could get you anything.  Oil. Fresh blades. Eager backs to haul timber.  A little extra sluggishness on the first swing. A flinch when you moved in for the arm lock. 

It could keep things away too – requests, insults, elbows and knees and boots on your feet, bunkmates that snored or complained.

Thoughts and words.  Blazes.  Trails.  Roving feet.

***

The stand was exactly where it was meant to be of course I could find it half dead and half gone at midnight because of course I knew where it was we all knew exactly where it was because how else were we supposed to stay away from it?  Dry needles on the ground growing thicker dry needles on the trees growing longer sharp sap in the air so thick and clotted it can cut your nose from your face you see those things you steer away you spread the word you give it space.

If a bird looked at the whole forest from above they’d see a perfect uncut circle around this spot but it wouldn’t because the birds didn’t fly here there were no nests in the trees no owls screech no bats flittered nothing there but the pines and the needles and the resin-stitched cones and me and the ache in my arms as I pushed through the boughs and came to the shattered center of the stand.

Thick gnarled snapped in two at the base lightning scarred who knew what killed it enough timber for a cathedral but crooked and knotted even firewood wouldn’t like the shape lying on its side unrooted.

The stump was clear.

Very clear.

***

The problem is that it can flip – and so fast.  Two minutes between Bert and Nickle buying me drinks to holding me down, between cheering and kicking, between the hum in my veins and the mud in my throat. Between somewhere you should never go and the only place left.

***

Twigs from my jacket dirt from my face blood from my mouth needles from the ground a match from my boot.

A little red light in the dark so bright it hurts.

***

I wasn’t frightened of Mike Horn. I didn’t care about Mike Horn.  He wasn’t a nobody, he was an anybody.  I slept in a bunkhouse with dozens of him.  I ate my meals with scores of him.  I’d broken a face just like his a hundred times, I’d watched him laugh with me and back off from me and look up to me a thousand times, if you’d given me a million tries I wouldn’t have picked him out from the rest of the camp once. I didn’t care about him. 

He could’ve been anyone.

He did this.

So, anyone could have done this. 

Everyone could be anyone.

Everyone could do this.

So.

***

The fire burned bright and hot and glowed white and flared and flickered until it hurt to watch then shrank and wavered and went out.

Couldn’t see anything had no other matches alone in a deeper dark with eyes that didn’t work and a thought that had worked its way up my spine to my brain and it was:

What are you doing?

And I had no answer.  Just a shape in my body. Sore feet hunched back ragged breath singing nerves curdled stomach aching skull creaking ribs. 

Mad enough to act. Too mad to think. 

All alone in the worst place. Aching. Cold.

When I stood back up, my legs didn’t say a word against it.

***

Half my baby teeth had left me on their own, the others had gotten help from dad.  My grown set I’d sworn to hold onto unless the loss was something worth telling.

I’d lost five teeth to rot; three to a bull with opinions; two to going under in the rapids and taking a whole log in the face.  Enough chips and nicks on the leftovers to make a pretty penny from a tooth fairy.

But that front tooth had stood there the whole damned time, still entirely whole, still mostly white.  And now it was gone, lost to Mike Horn’s knuckle, lost on the barroom floor, lost and nobody to give a damn but me. A loser gets punched in the face and sheds a tooth, what’s the big deal?  What’s the big deal about that?

***

The branches creaked. 

There was no wind.

Gently, softly, carefully, the needles sank into my shoulder, through cloth and skin, and turned me.

Taller than any church steeple I’d ever seen, covered in bristles to make a boar bleat, long-limbed and thick-reeked of sap, Old Jack Pine. 

A bough swept up in front of me, long and slow and unavoidable as the fall of a widowmaker.  At its tip, a red coal glowed.

thank you

Whispered no wind, no words.

it is small, but it will grow

And it planted it at my feet.

***

The night is bright around me.  My legs are numb and stumbling, my arms pump harder to make up for it, my lungs are boiling.  The smoke is outrunning me already, the sparks are at my heels, the stream I stumble into is starting to steam at the edges, cinders fill the air and my jacket is smouldering. 

Crack!  Pop!  Heartwood steaming apart?  Cones opening, ready to ripen in fresh ashes?

Blood in my mouth.  Old?  New?  Wrapped around the hole in my jaw.

Lights in the woods.  The barroom?  The blaze?

So many questions I hadn’t asked and hadn’t answered.

Which will kill me first: the shame or the fire?  There’s no time atI woke up face down in the mud and the muck with one nostril standing between me and suffocation and I rolled my tongue in my mouth and between the dirt and iron my front tooth was missing and that was that.

***

I was mad.  Hadn’t been mad in a long time.  Angry, yeah – angry is shouting and waving your fists around and laughing and kicking someone after they fall over and feeling that thrill of the rib making way for your toe.  Everyone loves angry out here, next best thing to drunk.  But mad is when you’re the one on the floor. 

***

The light at my back was red hot with sweat and joy and drink and sick.  So much pay spent so fast so bright like an overfed lamp.  Screaming and laughing and someone singing it sounded like Bert like FUCKING Bert who was my friend Bert you put your toe in the same ribs I did you laughed when I told the jokes Bert I lifted that damned widowmaker off your leg all by myself don’t you remember is it worse if you do or don’t?

I needed to throw up.  I thought I’d thrown up already.  Hard to tell all I could taste in my mouth was the dirt and the iron. 

While I was doing that I walked away from the light. Decision made from the ground up my feet knew what they were doing and the rest of me would learn when I needed to. They were the part of me that worked the best right now anyways I’d gone down hard and gone down fast and then once that’d happened there’d been no more dignity for it no more respect everyone take a piece and it’d been work on the face and the ribs and they’d held my arms until my shoulder joints felt like rotten apples swelling and bruising out of shape.

***

I didn’t need anyone to hold arms for me.  I didn’t want anyone to hold arms for me, because as long as they kept flailing you could keep hitting.  Back up!  Back up!  Let them keep their pride so they had something left to defend, let them make the call second by second: which can you survive with longer, another broken bone or a little more lost face? Can you heal fast enough, set your arm straight enough, to make it through on missed pay?  Can you work hard enough, cut and haul and strip fast enough all on your own when the rest of camp would sooner partner with a plague rat than share a crew with you?

That’s what makes the eyes glaze over.  Not the brainfog from the boot to the skull, not the pain from the broken-bloody bruises.  Trying to decide which will kill you: the wounds or the shame, with almost no time at all.

***

It was dark in the woods dark at midday darker at night but it didn’t matter I could see it when the red pulsed in my eye now light dark air tree and my legs still worked didn’t they were still in charge weren’t they not alone anymore the thoughts had moved up to my stomach curdling around a dinner of grease and too much cheap beer burning my throat on the way out raw and scraped like an unoiled sawblade.  Unoiled broken-tooth wasn’t me couldn’t be I could always find a new blade always find someone to oil it for me a polite word from me carried a dozen nights of impolite memories of meat and bone and blood always giving me weight pushing others into the places I needed them to be pushing the saw through the wood but not the wood I was wandering now farther now past the clearings past the edge of the roads stumbling and held upright by briars following the places where no trails lead.

***

Fear really could get you anything.  Oil. Fresh blades. Eager backs to haul timber.  A little extra sluggishness on the first swing. A flinch when you moved in for the arm lock. 

It could keep things away too – requests, insults, elbows and knees and boots on your feet, bunkmates that snored or complained.

Thoughts and words.  Blazes.  Trails.  Roving feet.

***

The stand was exactly where it was meant to be of course I could find it half dead and half gone at midnight because of course I knew where it was we all knew exactly where it was because how else were we supposed to stay away from it?  Dry needles on the ground growing thicker dry needles on the trees growing longer sharp sap in the air so thick and clotted it can cut your nose from your face you see those things you steer away you spread the word you give it space.

If a bird looked at the whole forest from above they’d see a perfect uncut circle around this spot but it wouldn’t because the birds didn’t fly here there were no nests in the trees no owls screech no bats flittered nothing there but the pines and the needles and the resin-stitched cones and me and the ache in my arms as I pushed through the boughs and came to the shattered center of the stand.

Thick gnarled snapped in two at the base lightning scarred who knew what killed it enough timber for a cathedral but crooked and knotted even firewood wouldn’t like the shape lying on its side unrooted.

The stump was clear.

Very clear.

***

The problem is that it can flip – and so fast.  Two minutes between Bert and Nickle buying me drinks to holding me down, between cheering and kicking, between the hum in my veins and the mud in my throat. Between somewhere you should never go and the only place left.

***

Twigs from my jacket dirt from my face blood from my mouth needles from the ground a match from my boot.

A little red light in the dark so bright it hurts.

***

I wasn’t frightened of Mike Horn. I didn’t care about Mike Horn.  He wasn’t a nobody, he was an anybody.  I slept in a bunkhouse with dozens of him.  I ate my meals with scores of him.  I’d broken a face just like his a hundred times, I’d watched him laugh with me and back off from me and look up to me a thousand times, if you’d given me a million tries I wouldn’t have picked him out from the rest of the camp once. I didn’t care about him. 

He could’ve been anyone.

He did this.

So, anyone could have done this. 

Everyone could be anyone.

Everyone could do this.

So.

***

The fire burned bright and hot and glowed white and flared and flickered until it hurt to watch then shrank and wavered and went out.

Couldn’t see anything had no other matches alone in a deeper dark with eyes that didn’t work and a thought that had worked its way up my spine to my brain and it was:

What are you doing?

And I had no answer.  Just a shape in my body. Sore feet hunched back ragged breath singing nerves curdled stomach aching skull creaking ribs. 

Mad enough to act. Too mad to think. 

All alone in the worst place. Aching. Cold.

When I stood back up, my legs didn’t say a word against it.

***

Half my baby teeth had left me on their own, the others had gotten help from dad.  My grown set I’d sworn to hold onto unless the loss was something worth telling.

I’d lost five teeth to rot; three to a bull with opinions; two to going under in the rapids and taking a whole log in the face.  Enough chips and nicks on the leftovers to make a pretty penny from a tooth fairy.

But that front tooth had stood there the whole damned time, still entirely whole, still mostly white.  And now it was gone, lost to Mike Horn’s knuckle, lost on the barroom floor, lost and nobody to give a damn but me. A loser gets punched in the face and sheds a tooth, what’s the big deal?  What’s the big deal about that?

***

The branches creaked. 

There was no wind.

Gently, softly, carefully, the needles sank into my shoulder, through cloth and skin, and turned me.

Taller than any church steeple I’d ever seen, covered in bristles to make a boar bleat, long-limbed and thick-reeked of sap, Old Jack Pine. 

A bough swept up in front of me, long and slow and unavoidable as the fall of a widowmaker.  At its tip, a red coal glowed.

thank you

Whispered no wind, no words.

it is small, but it will grow

And it planted it at my feet.

***

The night is bright around me.  My legs are numb and stumbling, my arms pump harder to make up for it, my lungs are boiling.  The smoke is outrunning me already, the sparks are at my heels, the stream I stumble into is starting to steam at the edges, cinders fill the air and my jacket is smouldering. 

Crack!  Pop!  Heartwood steaming apart?  Cones opening, ready to ripen in fresh ashes?

Blood in my mouth.  Old?  New?  Wrapped around the hole in my jaw.

Lights in the woods.  The barroom?  The blaze?

So many questions I hadn’t asked and hadn’t answered.

Which will kill me first: the shame or the fire?  There’s no time at

1.69.5 Quiet Reckoning

H1045

Malcold Cobbles

The Battle of Boulderblood

Since the dawn of time, the peoples of the world have fought to share it through one means: war.  But few moments of war, of all time, have mattered more than the crucial fulcrum of the Battle of Boulderblood: the moment where the Long War between the stunted Tunnelmen of the Breadlands and the elder empire of the last Saurceropods, that final dynasty of the Arch-saurs, reached what was, at that time, its zenith (Circletersh, 1.65.5, p99-217).

–awkward sentences – too many commas

–highly imprecise citation

The two sides had been at war for untold generations… the deceitful Tunnelmen coveting the wealth of the surface for their own, the noble Saurceropods seeking only to guide and protect the smaller, feebler, more squishable species that squabbled within the gentle enclosure of their mighty All-Paddock from themselves and their own baser instincts (Vellisimar, 1.69.4, p1).  Alas, they were led astray… words of clotted earth dripped slimily into many an envious ear…and so, the great crime of Brachio Bay swallowed whole the light of many of the Stompers Eternal, and, with the subsequent opportunistic arising of the bug-swallowers, and the tube-feeders, the world was plunged into… the Long War (Vellisimar, 1.69.3, p2-3)

–imprecise language: by the battle of boulderblood the long war is agreed to been underway for between twenty-nine to thirty-two years (depending on if you count from the initial undermining of brachio bay or the entry of the musselfolk as the final member of the greater alliance after the third megatsunami), and while a tunnelman generation is approximately four years; a saurceropod’s is twenty

-excessive use of ellipses for a nondramatic work

-repeated use of hate speech

By the time of the Battle of Boulderblood, both the so-called ‘Greater Alliance’ and the Protectorate of the Herds had exhausted many of their initial reserves of allied subliminals and nocturnals, war-tapestries, all-anthems, and personal virtue.  As the result, of this, the remaining sources of renewable extraordinary advantage were of prime strategic and tactical value.  These stood out among the wan’d muck and dross of the drained and unromantic battlefields of the middle Long War like grandest pearls among the sad silt of the lands of the tube-feeders… and none stood out brighter than those, of Boulderblood Vale (Sircletersh, p 88-252).  The wondrous backwash of its headwaters had ease’d peace to weary’d minds of wizened elders in the neighboring villages for generations, and now, it had been put to use in sharpening the cunning of mudshoveler commanders and officers in the field… bottled and parceled out like mere rations…  The Protectorate’s command realized the foulness of this, and stood ready, to remove this, advantage.

-mention of the exhaustion of primary resources but no mention of the subsequent second through fifth ‘harvestings’ that preceded the adoption of the foraging doctrine by both sides.

-even more imprecise citation

-additional use of hate speech

-incorrect use of the term ‘backwash’

Command of the besieging forces lay with Metamagistrate Mooomph Megas; while the commanding molekisser was named as Snert Snid. However, few records remain of this, and it is likely that the defense was in actuality co-opted by one of the mercenary groups of the Eaters of Gnats present, Colonel c. Evidence of this is borne out by the rapid detection of the elite Sneakapod commando crew – how could sightless dirtslappers possibly have detected the noble straight-backed forms of the most silent walkers in all the known world, whose feet are padded anvils? (Vellisimar, p2-4).  The subsequent miring and entanglement of the entirety of the commando team in a targeted molepit as they were distracted and disturbed by the harrying shrieks of the Squeak Squadrons was truly a case of the cruel hand of reality descending upon even the most skilled… but, fortune is fickle, and friendless, and fierce…for even as the initial decapitation team was waylaid, the Protectorate’s main field army advanced from directly above Boulderblood Vale, borne on the breath of the titanic leaf-ship the Great Branch itself….the Cherry’d Rain of the Fruit of the Great Branch, the Food That Is No Foe…the Berry-Good-Friends.

-landmiral snert snid is attested as commanding the defense and continued to serve at their stated field rank until they perished three years later at the sinking of the grand lilypond, where they went down with their dredger

-it is widely understood that protectorate command was unaware that tunnelmen could hear saurceropod subsonic vocalizations until the early late war, with suspicions first arising at the ferocity and precision of the defense during the crying of clove cove, and this combined with a known lack of communications discipline among protectorate commando squads is a simple explanation that demands no additional conspiracy theories.

-failure to specify which vellisimar article is being cited

-failure to cite sircletersh at all

-failure to stop using hate speech

The skirmish over the surface of the Vale was brief, but prolonged.  The BGF Windleafs were thick-skinned, but tender when pulped, while, the siphonsucker chant-squad that squatted within the Boulderblood spring itself were sluggish to move and quick to hide shellfishly, but clamped down fiercely on their adversaries.  Although prevented from suppling extraordinary advantage, they stubbornly refused to clam up and surrender.  Meanwhile, the stout BGF were cornered by the returning Squeak Squads which then ascended to deal very superficial damage to the Great Branch, causing it to wisely reposition itself off the battlefield for tactical advantage before vanishing, mysteriously, for the remainder of the war.

-repeated insensitive puns

-use of the ‘tactical retreat’ theory of the great branch’s demise, which was conclusively disproven thirty years ago

-truly perplexing use of hate speech; the term ‘siphon-sucker’ was last used as a serious insult two hundred years ago

Mooomph wasted no time as his trustworthy, loyal servants courageously bought him time.  He strode forward in the Fast Herd Flank, a mighty sight sure to stir the souls of all who witnessed a Saurceropod’s wrath… (Vellisimar, p1-6).  They stepped atop the walls of the Vale as might a colossus, and so, doing, toppled them with song and stride.  You are small, they sang, and we are great, they sang, and so, you shall serve, and so, you shall serve.  They collapsed the nestowers of the Squeak Squads, and stamped in the foul brooding-tunnels of the Tunnelmen, and – alas, alack, – the naked animal cunning of their foe came upon them!  For ‘neath what they had treacherously disguised as a ‘medical ward’ (a place of war no doubt (Vellisimar, p9)) was in fact a full float of snapping beavers, which did snap away half of the Protectorate’s regional command in defense of their eggs.  Woe, to the bravery of those fallen to treachery of the lesser!  Joy, to that they fell in defense of something so fine!  Hurrah, that they fulfilled their goal even in death… for lo!  Lo, the rupturing of the land did tear asunder the spring that fed the Boulderblood, and so, in fact, the goal of the mission was rendered true, the extraordinary resource was not captured, but nor was it remained in the hands of the foe – and never thereforemore would the peaceful peoples of that place be menaced by the brutish undersoldiers of the ‘Great Alliance’!!!  And so, having triumphed, the Protectorate Forces staged a cunning redeployment in every direction at once, of which legend says many of them survived.  It is moment like this that echo through the ages, from toe to skull, echoing in one’s own throat, through the jugular, and the trachea, and the lovely spinal column, all the most important aspects of ones’s soul, in one slim section, so pure and true… in a way, it could be certainly asserted that all of us who listen, to our necks, can hear those echoes and know the truths of our long-lost past. 

No amount of mud can bury the bones of the great truth beneath!  Ascend, HEADS HELD HIGH!!!!

-Malcold Cobbles, High AND Mighty.

-lack of citations

-excessive dramatics

-multiple exclamation marks

-mr. cobbles, I must repeat for the third time in print that there is no evidence connecting either the pre-long war saurceropod dynastic states OR the modern sauropaddock communasteries biologically, culturally, or ideologically with modern ‘longneckism’ movements that advocate the dismemberment of all creatures with fewer than ten vertebrae, a number that you yourself fall short of as a normal, healthy physically adult giraffic who is not suffering from ‘vertebral collapse’ as a result of ancestral curses performed by the ‘short—souled’

Bibliography

Hurley & Burley History Print, A Short History of the Long War; Sircletersh, S. C., 1.65.5 QR

Prudent Pamphleteering Press, The Moment that Caught the Sun, Vellisimar, V.V., 1.69.4 QR

Prudent Pamphleteering Press, Treason Above and Below, Vellisimar, V.V., 1.69.3 QR

-several problems here:

–you were required to cite at least seven sources.

–the title of the article is required to be in italics

–the order of information under Crumbledown format is author, title, journal, date.

–you were required to engage with the scholarly literature of the field of history. Prudent Pamphleteering Press is a vanity press whose principal product is advertisements. 
-your singular scholarly source is older than I am

12/100 for using the correct header formatting, mostly correct spelling, meeting half of the wordcount, and very, very, very clearly writing this without outside assistance

The scream had only just begun to die away by the time Mortimer was in the hallway, torchless, heedless, heart in his mouth.  It had been decades since he’d heard the sound of a human soul departing its body, but he knew it when he heard it.  Yet still he ran – no time to switch on a light, no time to get dressed – hopelessly hurling himself towards the bedroom, knowing he was too late.

Master Eddlemont was sitting on the edge of his bed, breathing heavily and sweating a bit.  “Oh!  Hello, Mortimer,” he said.  One sleeve wiped fluid from the corner of his mouth.  “Could you bring me a drink, a snack, and my draft-board, please?  Something has come up.”

“Sir?” Mortimer managed.   “You’re bleeding.”
“Oh, that.  Yes, I suppose I am.  Well, get on then!  I’ve got a lot to do, and quickly.  The draft-board first, Mortimer.  What I have seen – it cannot wait!”

The great-grandfather clock – crafted by Eddlemont’s great-grandfather to win the love of his great-grandmother – chimed midnight with a hollow clang.

“The doctor, perhaps-”

“No!  No such!  Mortimer, I beheld the face of my own dear mother just now – my own dear mother, perished when I was but a child!  I beheld her in my dreams, Mortimer, and do you know what she said?”

The great-grandfather clock – worn with four generations of love and care – chimed midnight again, shriller this time.  In the distance, thunder rumbled.

“Sir?”
“She said ‘You must NOT do the thing you’re thinking of.  I know you, Percy, don’t you dare!  No!  Don’t you dare!  I need you to PROMISE ME not to do it!  NO DON’T DO IT HONEY DON’T DO IT DON’T DON’T DON’T AAAAAUUUGH’ and then I screamed too and then I woke up.  But I woke up knowing what I must do.”

A wolf howled outside, somehow.  The rain was beginning to pick up.  The great-grandfather clock – towering higher than a chandelier, standing broader than a wardrobe – rocked furiously on its heels, sending dust bunnies seven decades old scurrying for cover as it chimed midnight yet again. 

“I am going to build a completely unsinkable ship that will suffer no calamity whatsoever,” said Master Percival Woolwurst Eddlemont, lead designer of Sloomoot Shiplines.  “And it shall be called …the Gigantic.”

The great-grandfather clock chimed midnight ten more times at increasing speed, then exploded.

***

Mister Vooms prided himself on his imperturbability.  He was a man of business, a man of numbers, a man of reason, a man who did business by explaining which numbers were reasonable to other less reasonable less numerate and less businesslike men.  He had seen grown men reduced to crying and screaming and wailing pull themselves back together at his rightly-placed handshake, nod, or stiffening of his upper lip.  He was an anchor of sanity on which ships lost in the midnight of the soul were moored.  He was a rock in the storm of the world.  He was the spoken voice of the quiet wish in the back of humanity’s skull that everything would work out.  He had walked past thirteen black cats on the way from Master Eddlemont’s driveway to his front door. 

“Shoo!” he told the nearest one.  It hissed at him, arched its back, and vanished in the way cats can.

The door opened.  Mortimer the manservant was behind it.  A manservant shaped like Mortimer was behind it.  Whoever it was, they were operating on a lot less blood than a mature human was meant to have. 

“Please,” whispered the emaciated wraith, as it ushered him down a hall filled entirely with shattered mirrors, shards crunching under their feet like beetles.  “Please, you must speak to him.  You must make him see sense.” 
“Enter!” cried a voice from within, and whatever Mister Vooms might have replied to this was lost to him for all time, for as soon as his hand opened the door and his eyes alit on the office he beheld the drafting-board of Master Percival Eddlemont, and he woke up on the floor being gently splashed with water and filled with a terrible foreboding he could not recall, let alone describe. 

“Sorry,” said Eddlemont, with an apologetic sort of grimace.  “It does that when it’s exposed to light.  I assume it’s noon out there?”
“Two forty nine PM,” said Mister Vooms reflexively.  “You have cut yourself.”
“What?” Eddlemont glanced at his shirt.  “No I haven’t.”
“Repeatedly, I should say.  With a bayonet.”
“Oh!  Ahaha, no, no, not at all!  I’m fit as a fiddle!  That’s just from my pen.  Damn things keep jamming up on me and then all that comes out is blood.”  Thus saying, he took up the blamed instrument, applied it to the edge of his notebook, and with a flick produced a rusty red smear and a faint scream.  “Makes the noise too.  Gruesome.  Anyways, behold the purpose of our entire endeavour as a company, Vooms!  Also, of our lives in any meaningful capacity!  I give you …the Gigantic!”

Mister Vooms squinted with caution, but in the shadows of that curtained room the schematics were mere lines – of blood – and curves – of dread – arching off into symbols – of dire portents. 

“Your scale bar is oddly labeled,” he noted.  “And the man is posed strangely.”
“That’s not a man!  That’s the state of liberty.”
“Oh.  I see the Gigantic is not just a na-”

“No!”
“Pardon?”
“It is NOT ‘the Gigantic!’  It is ‘…the Gigantic.’  The ellipsis is PARAMOUNT!”

“Ah!  Yes, of course.  Sorry.  Anyways, it’s very big.”

“Yes!  But, like an iceberg, the true genius of my vessel remains hidden below the surface of your assumptions!  It is unsinkable!  It cannot be sunk.  Nothing will ever sink it.  I promise.”
A rattle of soft thuds came from the shrouded windowpane. 

“It didn’t look like rain today.”
“Flock of pure white doves.  Third time the past hour.  Anyways, I’m sure I don’t need to explain the fundamental marketability and rationality of making a boat that the creator of the universe would find themselves powerless to raise a hand against in anger.  See, if you’ll look at the math it’s all very simple.”

Mister Vooms looked at the math.  Mister Vooms felt something else stir in his mouth that was not his tongue, then spat frantically until the centipede came loose and curled resentfully under the desk.

“Yes,” he said, patting his lips with a handkerchief.  “This all seems in order.  I’ll bring it to the board’s attention at once.”
“Thank you VERY much Mister Vooms!  And keep up the good work!”
The door shut behind him, and Mister Vooms realized he had been shivering and short of breath for the past half-hour.  He sighed, and wheezed, and as he tottered gingerly down to his waiting car – no Mortimer in sight, for which he worried – he felt as though he were being watched, and turned about to find that this was so.  On the house’s thirteen chimneys perched thirteen vultures each larger than the last, and atop the bald head of the vastest vulture stood an ancient raven of great size, and upon her head rested a crown of human teeth, and from her throat dangled a feathered greying beard woven through with human thumb-bones, and from her open hollow blackened bill there came a voice as deep and dark as the door of death itself, and that voice spoke one word, and that word was “doom.”

“My goodness,” said Mister Vooms.

As he left, he thought it peculiar that although the house was bedecked with so many and so darkened a flock, the building itself cast no shadow. 

***

The construction of …the Gigantic took several years longer than planned, largely because of four unforeseen problems.

First, every ladder erected during construction irresistibly pulled every passerby within a hundred yards to walk underneath it at least five times in a row, after which they would begin to leak blood from their mouths.

Second, the boiler pieces refused to stay properly assembled until every church bell in the country was melted down into rivets that wept continuously as they were driven in and filled the boiler-room with the sound of crying children. 

Third, despite the ship clearly being designed to be unsinkable, it persisted in being able to sink.  This made Master Eddlemont very angry until he realized it was simply a problem of math, and after recognizing this he removed all math from the ship’s blueprints, which solved the problem at the cost of rendering the hull fundamentally uncountable – making it hard to explain how many ships were being built, or how large they were beyond ‘very.’

Fourth, no priest would officiate at the ship’s launch, nor governmental representative, nor businessman, nor pillar of the community, none but a very old bent man with a very faded silk robe and a forked tongue, who cackled to himself as he stood athwart the great boat’s bow.

“I dub thee…the Gigantic, who is unsinkable,” he croaked, and smashed the bottle of finest sparkling wine atop its metal brow.  Six dead bats fell out, each caught in the act of swallowing the next smallest. 

“Augh!” he shrieked, great tears of pitch and piss rolling down the melted rivulets of his face.  “Get it away from me!”   And so wailing, he cast himself from the hundred-story height of the gunwales down into the timid and browbeaten sea.  The band played, then vomited.  Every dog in town danced on their hind legs, jaws agape in rictus grin, mouths spewing words that made humans sad to hear them.  The sun went black and exploded. 

“Good job everyone, who wants cake?” asked Master Eddlemont cheerily.  “It’s pineapple upside-down!  With ice cream!”

***

…the Gigantic’s passengers boarded, bedecked in ribbons.  Everyone who was anyone was there.  Everything that was priceless and irreplaceable was there.  Ten tons of Faberge eggs; half the world’s gold reserve; the social security numbers and birth certificates of every royal family member, celebrity, and world leader alive; the copyright certificate to the New Testament; the last living dodo; the first living mechanical man; a nail, a pail, and a snail; the eternal peace treaty sealing the mutual siblinghood and love of all nations to all others for all time; the only known bar of immortalium, the cancer-eradicating element; and Little Orphan Anna – the most precious child in the world – all went into the cabins and the vaults and the banquet halls and the gilded display cases of …the Gigantic.

“We are unsinkable, and this is great,” they told each other as they drank gallons of whiskey and brandy and champagne and dandelion-and-burdock and gin-and-tonic and cheese-and-crackers and roast-and-beef and French-and-onion-and-soup and so on and on and on and on.  The band finished playing and to applaud every single audience member took out an umbrella and opened and shut it indoors thirteen times, the leathery flapping a parody of the slapping of hands.  Every single penny on the ship flipped itself over to tails and refused to be budged. 

“This is your captain speaking,” said Captain Bluggs over the announcement system.  “As we are impossible to sink, I will be sailing full speed ahead without touching the steering wheel or looking at the controls or indeed looking at anything at all.  I will not be trying to do anything to direct the vessel until someone tells me we reach port.  I have already left the bridge and consumed three bottles of red wine.  Goodbye, and remember: we are entirely unsinkable!”

A drunken cheer went up from every passenger aboard, all of whom picked up the nearest holy book or symbol to hand and spat on it before flipping it off. 

“Unsinkable!” they cried, dancing in the halls with no pants.

“Unsinkable!” hooted the first mate, dangling from the mizzen

“Unsinkable!” sang the choir who performed at dinner, each of whom had found a two-leaf clover pressed in the pages of their sheet music three minutes earlier.

“Unsinkable!” shouted Little Orphan Anna, whose dog had been trained to bite in the presence of the poor. 

“Unsinkable,” chanted Master Eddlemont, tied upside down to the ship’s prow with an upside-down horseshoe branded on his chest and an upside-down rabbit’s-foot in each upside-down hand.  “Unsinkable, unsinkable, unthinkable, unsinkable, unstinkable, unsinkable, sinkable, sinkable, hee hee hee.”

The sun went down.  Only two things glowed: the horizon’s rim and the gigantic candlelit altar to Thing Under The World that trailed black blood from the ship’s stern so that all the sharks in the sea might follow and know their promise was not forgotten.  For an instant, the stars failed to come out.  The ship’s mad prophet spoke three normal words and his eyes popped out.  The engine sang.  The bow hummed.  The stern whistled.  The steering wheel whispered an apology.

Then …the Gigantic struck a floating leaf on her starboard bow and exploded.

***

In truth and sincerity the ship did not sink, as every atom and particle of its composition rocketed directly upwards into the sky and left earth’s atmosphere entirely.  With this the insurance companies were appeased, and so life went on without anyone the wiser.

Welcome back to the weekly edition of Uncle Uglond’s Urban Critter Survival Guide, aka What’s In My Trashcan And How Do I Stop It?  This week we’re going to be tackling one of the most-demanded subjects since this blog’s launch: Bigfeet.  More like big pain in the ass!

Get Out Of My Business

At a layman’s guess, you’d figure bigfeet’re a security nightmare, right?  I mean, they have opposable thumbs, and look at how much a raccoon can get done without those (covered previously HERE); plus they’re the size of a grizzly bear (covered previously HERE).  You’d figure you might as well lie down in the street and give yourself up for the coyotes (covered previously HERE) after handing the ape your keys, your phone password, and your credit card, as long as your evil ex didn’t steal it from you (covered previously HERE, amended HERE, and legally certified HERE, comments are blocked until you sign the acknowledgement of my innocence HERE).  Not so!  Dealing with bigfeet trespassing on your belongings is actually the easiest part of this whole post!  Their sense of smell is much worse than a bear’s is  (barely better than a human’s, in fact) so even the most basic of precautions taken against attracting bear attention – storing food and garbage behind secure locks and containers, cleaning outdoor garbage residue, installing an electric fence, installing a motion detector attached to an air raid siren, and the ‘street powerwasher’ homemade flamethrower, all detailed HERE and which I legally must explain I do not officially endorse – is already more than sufficient for preventing not just bigfoot ingress to your home, but the most likely bigfoot motive for ingress to your home, which is also not all that likely in the first place.  They’re big neurotic babies that hid in the woods for a few zillion years hoping nobody saw them and now they’re big neurotic babies that hide in the ravine out back of your neighborhood hoping nobody sees them, nothing’s changed!  You still shouldn’t corner them in your garage with a shovel and try to take a swing (see testimony of Jimmy ‘One-Armed-Bandit’ Frunklit, HERE), but they’re definitely more scared of you than you are of them, and keeping them physically out of your stuff is easier than a bear, or a human, or my evil shitty ex. 

No, your problem with bigfeet won’t be keeping them out of your stuff.  It’ll be forcing them to be half-decent neighbours.

Quit That Hollering

So the most well-known propensity of the bigfeet – besides their big feet (we’ll get to that) – is their yelling.  Bigfeet are like wolves in that they like to keep in touch over long distances through sound; they’re unlike wolves in that although they’re shy, they’re not so shy they won’t enter cities (exhibit: you are reading a bigfeet column, I haven’t had to write a wolf column).  So you won’t get woken up at 2 AM on a weekday by a moonlit awoo, but if you’re living in bigfeet country you WILL have experienced a two-hour sleep cycle induced by yapping, hooting, yowling, screeching, and sometimes whistling of all godamned things (and they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket).  As if that isn’t enough, when they decide the spoken word simply can’t convey their emotions, they’ll pick up sticks and start whacking trees with them – what the old timers used to call ‘wood knocking.’  Except now the stupid hairballs are living next door to you, so maybe they don’t have a tree or a stick, they have an old crowbar and a stoplight.  They sure appreciate the upgrade in volume per meter travelled, but I don’t think you will, and it won’t be helping your morning commute, that’s for sure. 

The bad news is that this is among the greatest challenges facing someone living near urban bigfeet, the good news is that this is something I’ve put a corresponding amount of effort into solving, because ‘I can’t sleep because there’s a 1,000+ lb ultrabass freestyling a house call to his cousin across the river’ is not a situation that lends itself to problem-solving.  Triage, right, like putting on your own airmask before putting one on someone else.

So, here’s what doesn’t work:

–Removing all ‘knockable’ tools and surfaces in the city.  This just isn’t realistically practical.  Not sure what I was thinking here, might have been underslept.

–Leaving out baited ‘knockable’ tools that discharge a household battery’s-worth of electric current into the palm of anyone that picks them up, creating an aversion response.  This one got me in a LOT of trouble with the cops, although I think they only found me because of my evil shitty snitch ex. 

–Yelling at them and clanging pan lids together.  Does less than nothing, they start making more noise. I think they figure you’re trying to talk to them and they start going slower and louder so you can understand them.  If I don’t want to learn how to speak French, Spanish, or Chinese, why would I want to learn bigfootish?  Dumbasses.

–Putting a running fan in front of your motion detector air raid siren.  This one actually works until your other, human neighbours start shit, but it doesn’t let you sleep so it’s more of a moral victory.

Now here’s what does work:

Ultrasound.

That’s it.  Get yourself some good, specialized speakers, rig them up around your block (or anywhere else you want to silence bigfeet concerts) where the cops won’t see them and get snooty, and pump out enough high-pitched frequencies to make a mosquito fall dead out of the air from a brain bleed.  They can sing over it, but their pitch goes all wobbly and they give up; it’s like trying to sing happy birthday while someone yells yellow submarine in your face.  As a bonus it also prevents dogs from crapping within a two-mile radius, so if you’re sick of having to clean your front lawn off it’ll fix that too. 

Get Off The Road

You’re driving home and it’s getting dark and all of a sudden something big and poorly-lit and hairy and FAST scuttles across the road.  You honk and brake and great, now the guy tailgating you just gave you a back massage with his front bumper. 

Bigfeet cross the road as sanely as squirrels, but without giving you the grace of an out where you grit your teeth and make a rodent pancake: you just get to choose whether you want a nine-foot ape to come through your windshield or to get rear-ended in the middle of rush hour while the hairy asshole runs off laughing down sidewalk.  This was a lot cuter behaviour when it happened on lonely country roads with one car per league of highway, you little shithead. 

The good news: this is the rarest form of urban problem created by bigfeet.  The bad news: I am currently unable to provide a confirmed solution, since the guy I paid to rig a spiked electrified cowcatcher on my car is holding it as collateral until my bank account gets unfrozen because my evil shitty snitch control freak ex took ‘her’ account with her when she left.  Pretty sure it’ll work though; just make sure you accelerate on impact or you might lose momentum and get tangled in the aftermath of the collision.  

That’ll Leave A Mark

Okay, this is probably what all of us have dealt with the most, although some of us won’t have realized it.  Bad roads are everywhere, right?  And roads in the city get a lot of traffic, right?  Nothing weird there at all, right?

Except where there’s bigfeet in town, because then the number of potholes skyrockets.  The same big, fat, heavy, hairy feet that used to leave perfectly-legible impressions in riverbanks, sandy paths, and dirt trails wreck merry goddamned havoc on fresh asphalt and overloaded concrete.  Look closely the next time your car’s wheel does a fishing-bob bounce or you nearly trip and break your neck and you’ll find that half the time the pit you just fell afoul of has five big toes and one big heel because one big asshole stomped a little too hard while wandering around last night.  That’s your time, your health, AND your tax dollars being put at risk by these jackassquatches, and I think that merits restitution. 

There are basically two parts to this solution.  First, restorative: renegade roadwork. Get a big bucket of ‘baker’s asphalt’ (recipe found HERE, copyright me) and get to filling: a kid’s bucket and spade should pass off any looky-loos, and if an officer gets up in your grill hey, is it illegal to carry around flour, water, and gravel?  You’re doing them a favour by putting a patch job on the local pothole count; think of all the road rage you’re saving them, so there’s no need for them to be ungrateful, like my evil shitty snitch control freak backstabbing ex who didn’t even say ‘thank you’ in the note she didn’t leave you.

Second, preventative: get a big wheel of haywire and rig it on pedestrian pathways everywhere you can around knee-height.  Humans shouldn’t stumble too badly over it most of the time probably, but it’ll take bigfeet for a tumble. Besides, the humans are going to be tripping in bigfeet potholes anyways, so at worst you’re not doing new harm, just switching the old one around.

Now, there’s still other woes of bigfeet presence near your home, but I’d say these more or less cover ‘the big three’ of this particularly urban critter.  Shut them up, shove them away, shoo them out. 

Since you’ve read this far, why not consider SUBSCRIBING or DONATING?  Every dollar goes towards the research and innovation that makes Uncle Uglond’s Urban Critter Survival Guide a world-renowned resource for city slickers dealing with wild critters, and right now that research and innovation are being stymied by legal fees and bounty hunter hires, so I could really use the dough.  If you know where my evil shitty snitch control freak backstabbing gaslighting ex is, please click HERE instead and you’ll also receive a personally hand-authenticated certificate of Uncle Uglond’s Appreciation.  Limited supply!  Act now!  Act soon!!  ACT FAST!!!

1 Comment

@itsspeltfoot

Sacha sasys the card was reppsaym,entg for 3 years of rent alsoi you might wasnt to cancel it soon because wew’ve alrteasdy hafd like six delkuxe takeout alkl you can eat barbexcuesa with it

Thank you

-the root and vbrancgh peoppple

Ps don;t do the wire thing we’;ll just uproot it but it could hurt someone elkse

Pps Sascha says if this is still up by Thursday she’kl phone the copps abouyt it just a heads u[p

Ppps whyy areew trhesae strupoid screens soi smasll

Hello, and welcome to Qorvold Qorners Qommunity Questions – where we give you the answers to satisfy your questions, queries, and qonfusion every day!  We know adjustment to living in a strictly-voluntary individual-focused qommunity can be a big adventure after spending so long living in the over-perfumed bosom of Big Government and that some spots on the yellow brick road to freedom are especially prone to causing trip-ups, so on today’s Themed Thursday, we’ll be touching on a single topic troubling many of our merry newly-moved-ins, solving several stumpers at a single swoop!

Deer Qorvold Qorners Qommunity Questions,

My name is Stephen Brooges and I moved into town last week to get away from pasteurized milk. Its’ been great so far accept that every time I go for a walk I start hearing jazz music coming from the left side of my mouth and talk radio from the right side of my mouth, then my tongue feels warm and I wake up lying on my side once the sun goes down.  Whats’ going on? 

-Stephen Brooges, Citizen.

Dear Citizen Brooges,

This is a wonderful example of the sort of little ‘bumpy step’ that can afflict newcomers to our land of the free in their first few months.  As most long-term liberty-lovers surely suspect already, you have happened upon the hunting grounds of Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel.  The bird is equipped to both transmit and receive radio signals, and she’s worked out that if she hits just the right frequencies she can induce a stroke in any species of rodent that contains sufficient amounts of iron in their tooth enamel, rendering them ‘easy pickings.’  Just your luck, your dental fillings appear to meet the threshold.  Luckily, this is easily remedied with a visit to the dentist – Schwartz’s Schmiles is the local specialist in mercury-free all-natural non-artificial colloidal silver fillings, so you can look at this as not a sudden and unbearable living expense, but a generous opportunity to shed your old government-mandated fluoride-ridden microchipped teeth and move on to a brighter, glittering grin!  Remember: it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, and more than either to lie rigidly on the ground convulsing!

Yours Freely,

Hurdi Gordi

Dear Hurdi Gordi,

As I ambulated today in my peregrinations, I was burdened on this occasion by my family’s Canis familiar, yclept Cinnamon (against both my habits and my wishes).  Preoccupied as was my wont by matters most portentous in matters of past, present, and future, I was torn from the assemblage of mine mind-cathedral at the very keystone of its apse by a greatly indecorous yipping.  Upon regaining my eyesight, I found myself holding a snapped leash bedecked with shredded collar, no dog in sight ‘pon the land – no!  For lo, aloft she was, legs a-waving, in full song of shock and sorrow as she vanished o’er the treeline and far from my confounded gaze.  I seek enlightenment as to the ultimate cause of this troublesome airborne canine so that my wife will let me back in the house. 

Urgently,

Ronald T. Millbuick, BSc

Dear Mr. Millbuick,

Enlightenment is yours for the taking this day, and at the mere cost of a subscription to the Qorvold Querulant (archives sold separately).  You may not have described poor Cinnamon in detail, but her fate-as-described strongly suggests that she either was a German Shepherd or a mix that somewhat resembled one.  Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel ran ‘a-fowl’ of a member of the breed at an early age (search our ‘deep archives’ [sold separately, separately] for details on the incident) and has borne a substantial grudge against the breed ever since.  The good news is, this isn’t predatory behaviour – she seeks only to ‘mob’ your dog, and has probably released her after escorting her out of her territory.  The usual spot is a small islet in the middle of Lake Qorvold (the one with two saplings, not the one with three rocks) and it should be safe to pick up your dog there after dark when the kestrel shuts down to recharge as long as you stay quiet and low (no powerboats!).  For a long-term solution, we recommend trading Cinnamon in on the free market for a better model that will not be abducted by birds.  Doctor Symun’s dabbled in the field himself and the ‘Qorvoldian Bald Beagle’ is both popular among local freethinking dog enthusiasts and 87.3% unlikely to be mistaken for a German Shepherd due to its distinctive coloration, pennaceous plumage, and grasping talons. 

Yours Freely,

Hurdi Gordi

Dear Mr. Gordi,

Me and my husband moved to Qorvold Qorners to stop Yankee federal death squads from murdering us for being Proud Patriotic Aryan Christians three months back, and it’s been very lovely until two hours ago when my husband went outside to refill our new birdfeeder.  There was a thump and a bright flash and when I could see again the birdfeeder, my husband, the sunroom, and my left leg had all been vaporized.  I can’t access either of our bank accounts because my Qorvold Qorners financial card/Qommunity ID/passport says I have two legs and a husband.  Could you please tell me what happened so it won’t happen again?

Graciously yours,

Mrs. Beverbelle Leefert

PS: I have never asked for a handout in my life and I won’t start now but the LORD spoke to me just a moment ago and said if anyone wants to contribute some money (cash only) to me they would be SAVED praise jesus the christking amen

Dear Mrs Leefert,

The good news is that what happened to you is unlikely to happen again unless you attempt to put up another birdfeeders.  Birdfeeders, you see, operate on two levels: on the first they directly feed many species of birds that enjoy seeds or grains, including many common songbirds; while on the second they indirectly feed raptors that prey on those common songbirds, such as American kestrels – including Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel.  From your description it seems likely that she analyzed your feeder as a key target and proceeded to launch a ‘decapitation strike’ with several ‘pocket cruise missiles’ (trademarked and patented to Doctor Symun all rights reserved in perpetuity no stealing permitted), ensuring that your birdfeeder, its residents, your husband, your sunroom, and your leg almost certainly had no time to suffer or even register that they were under attack before they were surgically eliminated and the backyard was secure.  As a bystander to the attack you are free to proceed on your way unmolested, although you should be aware that your proximity to the initial planned attack may have resulted in you being filed as a ‘person of interest’ in the kestrel’s database, meaning that further activity deemed suspicious could result in a reassessment of your threat level and subsequent barrages.  Past records from our ‘sealed subarchives’ (sold separately, separately, separately, secretly) indicate you are unlikely to be in danger as long as you remain more than fifty yards from any and all small songbirds for the remainder of your life. 

Yours Freely,

Hurdi Gordi

We at the Querulant hope that the above tips and tricks will bring enlightenment as to this (one of many!) quirk of the qommunity, and that you new citizens may now proceed apace without further hand-holding.  Further qomplaints, qommentary, or quarrels regarding Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel can be directed to Doctor Symun’s secret lab in the fortified bunker just outside the town’s south border.  Alternatively, messages can be left for him at the mayor’s office, as they are very good friends and he visits regularly for a couple of beers every other weekday ending in y. 

Remember to have a great day, walk tall, breathe deep, and stay liberated!

Yours Truly AND Freely AND Proudly,

Hurdi Gordi, Qorvold Qommunity Questions

Hurdi Gordi is a Free Man on the Land, Sea, and Air and bears no relation to the false ‘paper-man’ identity of Gordon Howards that was unbindingly associated with him by the State at birth without permission granted freely.  He can be contacted on the Qorvold Qorners intranet at HurdGurdiSTANDSTURDY@qorvold.qet.  He cannot be reached by phone due to his sincerely held and scientifically articulated belief that the State can use them to read your brainwave patterns and STEAL your privately-owned thoughts. 

Ranna had come of age. The proper number of turns of the sun (thirty-five); the proper number of Polite Words memorized (two from their mother, one from their grandmother) the proper number of trips into the berrywoods where the ripened clusters glowered far overhead and bristled thorns (nine formally with their elders, ten approved with their friends, one not-quite-secretly all on their own); and the proper amount of common sense and wisdom garnered (a little; none at all). It was the time agreed upon that they be made someone else’s problem, and so they took the generally agreed on first step and consulted with the local bonecracker. Her name was secret but she’d lived there for all of Ranna’s life and their mother’s and her mother’s and her mother’s; she was ‘pithecus: three meters tall with a six meter armspan and a way of snapping a femur in half to read the marrow that made every motion feel as gentle and soft as milk pouring into tea. She frowned at what she saw, but her face was made for sad slow gestures so nothing much was meant by it.

Ranna waited politely at the singing table while the bonecracker reseated herself and placed the beads and buttons and rocks in their correct and serried positions, then grabbed the vibrational clutch. Subsonics trickled from her body into the glass, and the air sounded like the rim of a befidgeted winecup.

“Troublesome, but ordinary,” she said. “Difficult, but doable,” she said. “Start having mistakes sooner so you can fix them faster – do that, and you’ll make it,” she said. “Try the thousand pillars,” she said. “And remember: the name’s a lie.”

“That’s kind of you,” said Ranna, and they meant it. So they shared tea of the living leaves with her until their overwidened pupils gave them a headache and left a little more as a going-away present, and having already said as much as they must to their friends and family and unspecific others they walked the crooked pathway out of town – between the mirrors that caught sunlight to keep out demons after dark – and waited in the early hours of the orange-and-white dawn for the early early trek on the great snakeway. It rumbled up from its burrow with a hiss and the rattle of a million dry armoured scales on smoothed dirt and Ranna paid the vole and five ha’-moles and seated themselves on a comfortable esophageal nodule.

Twelve hours by snakeway to Needles. Three days hike from Needles to the thousand pillars. They would have to sleep. They couldn’t imagine ever doing it again, tea or no.

***

Needles was the first place Ranna had ever walked that wasn’t where they’d been born. They should’ve noticed more about it, but the journey and its anxieties had consumed them from head to toe: the crafting of their pack from local hawk hide (feathered and airy, waterproof with the occasional preening); the arguing with their fellow voyagers in front of an exhausted jerky vendor as to whether boof or gutton would keep longer in inclement conditions; the agonizing as to whether they’d brought enough water the night before they left; the last minute checking-and-rechecking of all six of the local skywatchers to make sure they weren’t about to walk into a mudstorm or cinderhail squall. All of this was borne with utmost grace and boredom by all around them, which was its own kind of reassurance to Ranna: their anxiety over their journey was as regular and ordinary as the journey itself.

So in a way they were almost as calm as they’d ever been when they began – halfway across the Purple Salt, the Red Salt behind them – to witness the thousand pillars rising from the sky up towards the ground, budding like icicles from the universe above.

The name was as great a lie as the bonecracker had said: there were a thousand and ten thousand more pillars, as towering as mountains – all the mountains, small and tall alike, and at their pinnacles sat a fraction’s fraction of the universe’s truths, writ in immaterial form, waiting.

The ground around them was flat and empty, and in all the thousand and ten thousand pillars the hundreds of walkers who had come to them vanished like salt in the river, alone and dwarfed and sore-footed on sand so compacted by so many feet over so many years that it felt more like solid stone than solid stone ever would.

You could stand there for days, peering at the heights. Searching for which glimmer matched something inside you. Ranna did. Then they saw others begin to shrink and shrivel doing the same, and shook themselves, and spoke, under their breath, the first Polite Word their mother had taught them.

“Please,” they spoke. The warmth pooled in their gut and stayed there, a little engine that fueled their fingers as they reached for the first stones.

This was where they had been standing when they decided to ascend. That made it the right choice, and that rightness was confirmed that evening, when Ranna tucked themselves into a thin crack in the worn grey surface of the pillar, fingers bleeding, and was met by a polite cough and thin candlelight clutched in the fingers of a fist-sized raptorial, all sickled claws and needle teeth, who smeared soothing paste on their palms and went over charts of the path upwards with them until the night’s howling wind lulled them to sleep. Ranna offered payment in the morning and was laughed at in that silent, open-mouthed way peculiar to maniraptoran emotions.

“This is not done for reciprocity,” explained the little raptorial. “It is done because it must be done. Look for the handgrips.”
Ranna learned to look for the handgrips, left behind and worn smooth by generations beforehand and afterhand and underhand.

“Keep an eye afield for the wells,” said an ancient ‘therium several days and kilometres farther up, stretching an overwhelmingly furry arm that would make even a ‘pithecus stare to pour something crystalline and esoteric into Ranna’s beverage that made it taste like neurons and hellfire.

Ranna learned to keep an eye afield for the wells, where the rainwater and the cloud haze congealed against specially-prepared surfaces and ran in rivulets ripening into basins of ancient make, where they could drink and fill their flasks and see their reflection in the ripples of a million who’d come this way before.

“Don’t give up,” said the writing on the wall. The cell was empty, but clean of dust. Someone had been here and gone only recently. Ranna had learned not to look down the first day, and so they had no idea what might have become of the unknown author.

Ranna didn’t give up. They did, however, climb up. And up. And up and up and up until the air was thin and their arms were aching knots and their fingers cramped and no amount of food or water fixed them and all that was keeping them going was that little warmth in their gut from the Polite Word.

It was rude to ask for something and then not take it.

That was what they thought, when their hand closed over thin air and they lurched – gasping, terrified – onto the very tip of their pillar. Unexpected, unprepared. The climb was done and a fraction of universal truth was before them and they didn’t know what to do or say but it WAS rude to ask for something and then not take it.

So Ranna moved to close their hand over the fraction of universal truth, but at the last they stopped, and thought twice, and instead held their hand out gently and marvelled at how softly in nestled into their palm.

Then they stood tall, sighed, slipped, and toppled off backwards, hitting the ground with an ‘oof’ and a cloud of near-rock-grit dust.

“Careful!’ shouted someone, and indeed Ranna was surrounded by milling travellers, all fresh of face and unkissed by atmospheric gales. They marvelled at them and they marvelled right back and Ranna was very confused when they professed it insanity to claim that their survival from falling from the pillar’s peak was reasonable, for the pillar was said to be a thousand kilometres or more in height but to Ranna’s gaze it seemed to be a pylon standing not much taller than their own head.

“You’re crazy,” they told them, and when Ranna held up the fraction ofuniversal truth that had nestled in their palm they said it didn’t look very big, so to save their patience they spoke nothing more of it, and left for Needles.

There were no sure trails marked for returning from the thousand and ten thousand more pillars. But everyone who did found their way somehow, and Ranna knew the look on each face they saw, for it was their own.

What next?

***

Shortly after Ranna left, a great demon arrived at the thousand and ten thousand more pillars, with a thousand tearing arms and a thousand drooling orifices and no brains at all. It battered blindly at the pillars, uprooting half of them, and it pissed in many of the wells that fueled the climbers of the other half, and its clinging and acidic feces smeared away the handgrips and erased the paths from all sight. It ran riot for ten days before it melted into the air in foul vapour, flesh unable to tolerate the gentle tapping of the summer rains.

The fractions remained. But the road to them ran longer now, and the avenues were fewer.

***

What next was a full turn of the sun spent riding the snakeway, then walking the snakeway (safe as long as you ducked and scuttled when the ground rumbled), then trading your hawkhide pack for a moment with a wizened guy.

“Show me your truth,” said the guy, and burst out laughing when Ranna did so. “Well!” he coughed out his sides, spiracles venting themselves het-het-het, “no wonder you’re lost! That’s of no practical use whatsoever!”
“Maybe not,” said Ranna, “but it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said the guy with great fondness and a little shrug of his pinchers. “And it does prove you’re willing to put in the work one way. Try the other! Go to the old stone, and look for a piece of the ever-burning fire.”

“I will try,” said Ranna, and this time they laughed along with the wizened guy, and departed in good spirits. They were lighter without the pack anyways, and though the snakeway vanished as the ground turned into hard stone and the wind grew cold and the sun fierce they remembered enough of their time ascending the pillar that these things were pleasant to them, in that lying way of memory.

Far, far along that road, beyond the wide deep rolling forests, there were places where the trees grew thinner, and leaned in the wind, and planted roots in nothing more than moss and lichen and their own needles and the thinnest of cracks in the stone, and in that deep stone – the old stone – there were the mines, and in the mines there were desperate and determined folk, and in their minds was only the hope of cracking through one last sheet of sheer stone and seeing the glimmer of a piece of the ever-burning fire. This was because the ones who thought of other things lost that hope, and those who lost that hope left.

Ranna knew how to hope already. But they didn’t know much else, which was why they walked into the first of the delvehalls they saw and signed on, where they were given a pick of diamond and iron and a chisel of adamant and copper and a cloth of flowers and a single metal rivet, which was hammered into their left hindmost mandibular molar, as a marker of initiation.

After this they were all led to the nearest mine – which was set into a drift of sandstone that had been laid and died a hundred million years before – and led below the sun’s grasp, and taught.

Ranna did not know how to mine.

“Place your hands here and here. Swing like this.”
Ranna did not know how to breathe.

“Take the flowercloth, hold it over your mouth. Change it when you can’t smell spring anymore. Never take it off. If you do take it off, get back to the sun before you hear the bones sing. If you hear the bones sing, sing louder than they do.”

Ranna did not know what the singing of the bones sounded like, and this Ranna foolishly did not ask, so after one long, long session where their own sweat was all they could smell they began to hum to themselves, and it was only when they stopped to drink of their flask that they realized they were humming along with someone else, and yet they mined alone. And in the hum were words without sound, meaning without language. Long, long, long. So long, so long. Bones we are, bones you are. Why do you walk, when soon you rest? We are lonely and you are lost. Come rest. Rest long, long, long.

Ranna listened to this, but as they listened, their hand clenched and the fraction of universal truth they bound in it sliced their skin, and with a yelp they stopped listening to anything but their nerves – and then, freshly jangled, they sang Three Gazelles And Three Giraffes all the way home to the sunlight of evening on the surface, over and over, too nervous to try and think of other words.

“They don’t mean to be dangerous,” their shift leader told them, “but they are. They want company, but they can wait.” And Ranna was mocked for the evening and watched over for the week and when no further foolishness was demonstrated they felt they had done if not well, then not so badly.

Then they were moved to the Shieldbelt, where the bones were absent and the earth moved never. Ten billion tons overhead at every step, no movement, no motion, no life, only the weight of everything forever and the tiny idiot stabs of the pick and chisel and the quiet strangled creak of the minecrawl’s desperate little legs as it spidered back up the shaft-ladder to the surface, laden with tiny chips of grit.

The flowercloth was needed here too. It kept out the dust, and the ghosts of the stone, and when the pressure behind your eyes grew too strong you could close them and breathe in three times in a row and feel the grass under your feet. Then you could swing again.

The day Ranna stopped counting how many times they’d done that was the day their pick peeled through stone and into air that had never known oxygen. It rushed past them in a hurry – all tumult and shock, four billion years gone in a blink! – and in that moment of dizzying confusion, eyes rippling with the flow of something unseen by any other living creature, Ranna peered through the crack in the stone and saw something they’d always known.

It was hot. It hurt. It beat like a heart, but ten million years apart. And it was as surprised to see them as they were it.

There were six of them. They broke down the wall farther, made measurements of the cavity. Called in a second shift. Notified the elders. Got some sleep there, filled the silent hollow with the noise of respiration and bad dreams. And then, when it had been measured and allotted, Ranna was handed their pick and told to strike at a very specific spot, marked by the eldest and most thoughtful of the delvehall.

They aimed. And as they aimed, they paused, and they spoke the second Polite Word their mother had taught them.

“Thanks,” they said. It escaped their lungs, blistered their lips, wrapped around all the delvers and the granite and the lost alien air and the ever-burning fire, cradled them together. And while they were all together, Ranna struck the chisel and the fire split into even segments, perfect as an orange, and each of them clutched one in their palm no matter how it hurt, all the way back to the air, to the light, to the land where the sun existed.

Ranna slept in the delvehall for three days. Then they returned their pick and chisel and flowercloth and had a second metal rivet hammered into their left hindmost maxillar molar, so that they might feel the mines whenever they clenched. And after one last long conversation with the eldest of the delvehall they walked down the long roads until they took them elsewhere.

***

Shortly after Ranna departed, a great demon arrived at the old stone, with a million stamping feet and a million clumsy hands and no thoughts at all, and it stamped and danced upon the ground so furiously that half the mines caved in, and many of the delvehalls were destroyed, and the roads that connected anywhere to there were wiped clean by its carelessness. It rampaged for a hundred days before it collapsed and died, unable to ever breathe and choking on the air.

The fires burned still. But the delve towards them was deeper now, and the stone harder to the hand.

***

The roads ran long across the land, in accordance with the wishes of the hills and the grudging permissions of the rivers, who left them be when they were well-behaved and dropped mud and stone on them when they were not. They ran long, then they ran thick, and finally they poured themselves together into a different kind of slurry that was a street, or streets, and from among them rose and descended and sprawled outwards the great city of Tronna,

In the streets of Tronna walked the millions, and among them walked Ranna, with a fragment of a little fraction of universal truth clutched in one hand and the hot red ever-burning fire in the other and tired feet that could not rest, for there was much to do. Tronna was filled with towers and temples and halls and walls and mansions, of gold and silver and platinum and aluminium and cobalt and pearl and plutonium and carbon and helium and adamant and quartz, but all of them had foundations, and all of those foundations were set upon the ground, and that ground must be prepared and made right, and that was what the hot red fire in Ranna’s hands would make so.

At first they needed to survive, and so they worked for any pittance that would give a meal – scrawling the flame of the world and sealing it upon old newspapers, the wrappings from shawarma, and once Ranna’s own shirt – small workings that would prevent a shed from collapsing one more summer; keep an eavestrough flowing straight through a nasty overload of ice; clean a latrine the night after a party. Once they were fed enough that they could sleep without wondering if they’d wake, they found clothing. Once they had clothing, they applied to a local guild, and on seeing the rivets of their molars and the state of their hands they were accepted conditionally, laying the basalt and uranium slabs that would grow sky-cutting structures as acorns would oaks as berries would bushes as spores would moss, once upon a time, upon the ancient shore. Ranna laboured and saved the praise they earned in sheets of frugal parchment, kept them close to their workvestments, kept them clean and reviewed them by the light of their fraction of universal truth at midnight, whispered them to themselves as a reminder: that is real, this was done, I am still here.

When the buildings Ranna had worked on remained tall and straight at the end of the season of growth, after the mercury rains of the equinox had howled and raged and moved on, they were approached to work for Tranna itself, to sear the foundations of the municipal parklands.

“This is dangerous and powerful work, and you are not obligated to accept it,” warned their guild-steward, a ‘toise of no small magnitude and age. She had begun flippering in her old age, her shell reshaping itself to something softer, her limbs widening, and soon she would descend to the seaways and begin her second, longest life.

“I will do it,” said Ranna, who still managed to like green things in a way that filled them with ease rather than desperation, and so they worked at night, consulting the stars against their fraction of universal truth and cutting deep into the living soil with their ever-burning fire, marking the trackways and guiding the footsteps of the eternal beasts consulted by the officials and masterminds of Tronna. The beasts themselves watched them or didn’t, and Ranna respectfully stayed silent unless spoken to – which was always, save a single energetic debate with a recursive-titanosaur concerning the merits and demerits of bipedalism against quadrupedalism (contrarily, each coveted the other’s).

After three years of this, Ranna was approached again, this time not through their guild-steward but by a being wrapped in smoke.

“You are ordered,” it whispered by means of burning, “to report to the Heightworks, and there to shape its foundations. Attend promptly or become sublimated.” And thusly it dissolved.

“A poor omen,” said the guild-steward when consulted (she now maintained a small personal atmosphere of water; her last hurrah before her departure). “We can hide you, remove you from the city and out of range of material destabilization. At the very least we can demand retraction of your death should it occur.”
“I will take the task,” said Ranna, “and see what I can shape from it.” And so they went to the Heightworks – where Tronna was born – and were placed very lowly beneath the esteem of Mastermind Megalith (who had named himself) and set to work sealing and cutting a matrix for a tower that would be of a scope exponentially above that of the others of the city.

“Haven’t you heard?” he said often to anyone – then proceeding without an answer, “the pillars have fallen! We must move forwards! I will have us reach to new heights, grasp new fractions! Where once we followed brute reality’s remnants, we shall forge our own factualities as we please!” And other things like that.

Ranna did not pay attention because they did not care to, then they did not pay attention because they did not want to, then they did not pay attention because they did not get any sleep. The lack of sleep made understanding the secret whisper-talk developed by the gestures and eyes of their fellow workers difficult, but they were fluent in time, and so learned to cut here and not there, and move this rather than that, and in short to set things as they needed to rather than as they were commanded to, and finally, they were told – as the first mercury rains were to arrive – to leave early, and leave Tronna behind, along with all who would listen.

Ranna stayed to watch from halfway down town. They told themselves it was for edification. They told themselves it was for historical merit. They admitted it was for the curiosity.

And besides, they had missed the last two demons. So when they saw the first heavings of the rotten ground around the tower of the Heightworks, as of yet half-grown and straining to lurch skywards more, they felt justified in their suspicions.

“Behold!” called the mastermind, who was standing atop the tower. “A flawed being now perfected, at its third birth! Witness its glory!”

And as he said such, the great third demon – who had a billion screaming mouths and a billion searching eyes and no heart at all – began to tear up all the other towers of the heightworks and slam them into the new tower, overbalancing it as sloppily as a child’s first snohuman, crushing floors into ceilings and ceilings into walls. It moved faster, more frenzied, and as the tower rose it wobbled and as it wobbled it swayed and as it swayed it grew and as it grew it lurched and finally the tower, the great third demon, the Heightworks in total, and whatever trace slurry remained of Mastermind Megalith, all toppled end over end into the sky itself and sank into the sea between the stars where no fractions glimmered.

Ranna, who had missed some of this when they were ducking for cover, marveled at the sight for an appropriate amount of time before attempting to remove their leg from under the large slab of toppled gigahogany that had trapped it.

“Here,” said a fellow worker, a fellow gawker, and between their biceps and the slivers of ever-burning fire in their hands they lifted free the slab, and by chance and the light of the fractions of universal truth in their eyes they recognized each other.

“Sarg?”
“Ranna!”

“How long’s it been?”
“Oh, a couple dozen years, I think.”
“Time flies.”

“It does! I haven’t see you since you talked to the bonecracker and walked out of town. I left a few weeks later – how have you been?”

“All over the place.”
“Well, I believe you, and so have I.”

“We should go…somewhere else? Catch up. Like old times.”
“Yes.”
“You know, you really should’ve said something before you left.”

“Yes,” said Ranna, and then, without thinking it at all – just feeling it – the Polite Word of their grandmother left their lips as easily as breath itself, and it was “sorry.”

“That’s nice of you,” said Sarg, and the word wound through them as softly and truly as blood and flesh. “So, still want to get married someday?”
“I guess. But no big ceremony. We’ll go get married at city ha – at the OLD city hall. And we can catch up after that. I’m tired.”
“Oh, like I’m not. They tell you to make it, but they don’t tell you how hard that is.”
“It is.”
“Did you?”

“Mm?”
“Did you make it?”
“I think so.”
“What did you make?”
“Myself.”
“Oh! That’s alright then.”
“It is.”

So they walked home, towards the cheaper fringes of Tronna where the demon had not reached, and as they did so, Ranna asked “kids?” and Sarg said “I don’t think we can afford them right now,” which wasn’t no or yes at all.

Dictionary Dick and the Missing Money

It was another exciting day in Decklestone, Pennsylvania, home to twelve and a half thousand humans.  One of them was little Richard Button, but even his own family didn’t call him that.  They called him Dictionary Dick, because even though he was just in the fourth grade he’d already read the entirety of Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia.  This made him just the person to be consulted when people were puzzled, and he’d already helped his father, a police detective, solve over four and a half cases.

Today wasn’t a day for detective work though.  It was a day for schoolwork.  Dictionary Dick sat in class with his fellow schoolmates and wondered what the weird little glowing rectangles they were holding were.

“Phones,” explained his best friend, Katie Greene.  She wasn’t holding one herself, instead doing bicep curls at her desk with a barbell. 

Dictionary Dick’s brow furrowed.  “But where are the rotary dials?” he asked, bewildered.

“Oh NO!” came a sudden wail, sharp and piercing.  It was their teacher, Mr. Morguns, who stood stricken at his desk over a cartoonishly empty cardboard box, its padlock dangling wide open.  “Our class’s donations to the Decklestone Orphans and Dolphins Fund have been taken – stolen!  One of the three people in this class I entrusted the lock’s combination to must have done this over the weekend….but who?”

“Not me,” said little nerdy Nedd, straightening his bowtie.  “I was in the big city all weekend, visiting the museum’s temporary exhibition of feathered dinosaurs from the Jehol Biota.”

“It can’t have been me,” argued the principal’s daughter, Petunia, who was applying her morning antibacterial soap.  “I hate touching money.  It’s all germ-y. You can catch poor people from it.”
“I would never ever steal,” said Sam ‘Slick Sicko” Swanson, leader of the local gang of tough kids (the ‘Serpents’), and the directly proven culprit of half of Dictionary Dick’s schoolyard casework so far, “but of all the stealing I haven’t done, I wouldn’t have stolen the hardest from this cause.  I love dolphins!  They’re some of my favourite fish.  I’d never do anything to take money away from them…a lake without dolphins would be like a lake without sunshine!”  He wiped a tear from his eye and sniffled dramatically, which turned into a slight squeal as Katie Greene turned her menacing frown upon him. 

“Oh no, this is impossible to figure out!” sobbed Mr. Morguns.  “Who will provide for the Orphans and Dolphins now?”
“Not to worry,” said Dictionary Dick, pushing back his chair and putting away his slide rule.  “After what we’ve just heard, I can safely say that the thief’s excuse doesn’t hold water!”

Who’s the culprit?  Do you think you know the answer?  READ BELOW TO FIND OUT!!!

Answer: Nerdy Nedd can’t have seen any feathered dinosaurs at the museum because Dictionary Dick knows for an absolute fact that dinosaurs are basically big dumb dead lizards, which could never have grown feathers!  Nedd was put on academic probation, his parents were ordered to replace the missing money, and Slick Sicko started the fund anew with a single shiny nickel before leaving class early to buy all the Serpents triple-decker-deluxe fudge sundaes down at the ice cream shack.

***

Dictionary Dick and the Absent Dinner

After a long day of hard work at school – the first day back after the Long Weekend –  Dictionary Dick – the amazing fourth grader who had memorized all the facts from Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia – took the bus home with his friend, Katie Greene.

“I’m bushed,” said Katie, doing one-handed pushups in the aisle.  The bus driver had given up on warning on her.  “Are you sure your parents are going to be okay with my staying over?”
“Absolutely,” said Dictionary Dick.  “I asked last week and they said it was fine.”

But when the two of them walked into the Button home, the air was not full of savory smells – rather, it was full of confusion and argument. 

“I could’ve sworn it was your turn to make dinner,” said Dictionary Dick’s father.  “Besides, I was late at work. I got called in to interview the Nortons after their kid got caught stealing from school.”

“And I could’ve sworn it was your turn to make dinner,” countered Dictionary Dick’s mother.  “Besides, I had to work overtime at the nuclear power plant. The number three cooling tower was an absolute wreck.”

“If only there were some sort of simple solution that entails neither of us making dinner!” bemoaned Dictionary Dick’s father.  “Or at least a way to know who should be making it right now tonight!”

“Not to worry!” said Dictionary Dick, pulling out a chair.  “I know exactly what’s confusing the matter here!”

What do you think has thrown Dictionary Dick’s Parents off their schedule?  After you make your guess, READ BELOW FOR THE ANSWER!!!

Answer: Dictionary Dick’s mother has clearly been telling fibs about her schedule to avoid chores – there’s no such thing as a nuclear power plant, let alone one under civilian administration!  After a long conversation for the rest of the evening, Dictionary Dick’s mother moved out of the house, leaving Dictionary Dick’s Father, Dictionary Dick, and Katie to order late-night pizza. 

***

Dictionary Dick and the AWOL Mayor

On the weekend, Dictionary Dick went with his father to city hall.  His father was going because there was a special meeting happening that the deputy mayor had requested police presence for, and Dictionary Dick was going because fourth-graders – even amazing ones that had memorized Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia – shouldn’t be left home alone for too long.

“I worry what you’ll get up to with that Greene kid,” Dictionary Dick’s father confided in him as they walked up the steps into city hall.  “The two of you solve so many crimes, you’ll put me out of a job.”

“Katie’s busy today though,” said Dictionary Dick.  “She’s out deadlifting all the benches in the park.”

“Well,” said Dictionary Dick’s father, “so long as she puts them back where she found them.”

The council chamber of city hall was in an uproar: a cluster of three prominent local businessmen had perched themselves around the deputy mayor, whispering strange and surreptitious things into his ears. 

“Fellas, I keep telling you, the mayor’s on vacation in Estonia,” whined the deputy mayor, twiddling his thin little thumbs together. 

“And that makes you the man in charge, doesn’t it?” hissed Carolyn Peats, chair and CEO of Peats’ Meats.  “Just initial here and your town can have the world’s first jackalope slaughterhouse at the low, low, low, low price of a few billion dollars.”

“Don’t go throwing your money at just any old money-for-meat scheme,” snarled Devin Boggs head of Bogg’s Birds, “not when you could invest your nest egg in eggs!  A pittance, a mere ten billion dollars, and I can make you the nation’s foremost provider of snipe eggs – no hunt required!”

“Lunatics!  Frauds!  Liars!” ejaculated Ed Urp, tech bruncle and safari-taker.  “Gimme all your bitcoin, the keys to this building, and your daughter’s hand in marriage and I’ll set you up with a bigfoot conversation park that’ll draw every tourist’s eye from here to Dubai!  Sure thing!”

“I’m not so good at big decisions…” fretted the deputy mayor, brushing his fingers back and forth through his wispy moustache.  “Detective?  What should I do?”
“I’ll tell you what you should do right now, Dad!” interrupted Dictionary Dick, “and don’t take no for an answer!”

What does Dictionary Dick detect is off about these offers? READ BELOW TO LEARN THE ANSWER!!!

Answer: Estonia is a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – the deputy mayor is a spy who has kidnapped the mayor and sent him behind the Iron Curtain to Stalin!  Thanks to Dictionary Dick’s quick thinking the deputy mayor was arrested and interrogated until he confessed to committing not only the commie kidnapping, but also every unsolved crime in Decklestone in the past decade!  Well done, Dictionary Dick!  In the interim, it was agreed upon that the mayor’s office would be jointly filled by a team of concerned local investors and businessmen who were deceived by the traitor through no fault of their own.

***

Dictionary Dick and the Invalidated Deal

At half an hour past eleven PM, on a clear, cloudless night, the roof of Dictionary Dick, fourth-grade detective and the only boy his age to ever memorize all of Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia, was yanked into the sky by means of science unknown to humanity.  Dictionary Dick’s father lurched off the living room couch only to find his gun fused to its holster and his shoes seared to the carpet; while Dictionary Dick himself only made it halfway down the stairs before being confronted by a tall, glowing biped composed entirely of what appeared to be fingers. 

“We are representatives of the Glorteezian Hyperpublic,” it seethed into the knowledgeable mind of the crime-solver, “and we are here to investigate a terrible breach of intragalactic property laws!  By all rightful legislation our pre-existing claim on the lunar regolith of your planet’s satellite for use in beach replenishment programs throughout the lesser widdershinsward core!  Your civilization’s unlawful and wilful orbiting of said satellite in and crudely manufactured manned vehicle constitutes interference in a sanctioned industrial, commercial, and recreational necessity of multisolar import!  We demand restitution, and repentance!”

“Don’t worry, dad,” said Dictionary Dick.  “This is the most obvious case I’ve ever handled!”

What does Dictionary Dick know?  What will he do about it?  IF YOU DON’T KNOW, READ BELOW!!!

Answer: No human being has ever orbited the EARTH before, let alone the moon!  These so-called ‘aliens!’ are clearly ordinary humans in costumes, playing an elaborate hoax!  Alas, while trying to prove this point by removing the Glorteezian’s ‘mask’ Dictionary Dick partially removed the skin from the entity’s face, for which he was punished by having his brain ‘Full Degloved’ from his entire body and placed within a Mind Amphorae to be shipped to Glorteeza. 

Decklestone was only lightly menaced following the spacecraft’s departure, as the single six-story sentry quadripod left behind was uprooted and hurled into the lake by local fourth-grader Katie Greene. 

***

Dictionary Dick and the Pontifex Precarious

This was by far Dictionary Dick’s most perilous case yet, in all the years he’d worked from first to fourth grade – even with his full and staggering command of all the knowledge contained within Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia, his current position (Full Degloved and floating in a Mind Amphorae) and location (in the Cerebralplex of the Glorteezian Pontifex) were quite tricky. 

“Your MEAGER BRAIN is of MODERATE WORTH to my GLORIOUS PERSON,” bellowed Pontifex Precarious from atop its Self-Throne of glorious tentacular forces, from whence it commanded the life and death of a thousand thousand thousand thousand million worlds across the lesser widdershinsward core of the galaxy.  “REJOICE GREATLY as I PREPARE INGESTION of your SMALL SELFHOOD into my GREATER PERSONA.  Following this TRIFLING MATTER I shall ANNEX UTTERLY your TINY WORLD using your very own HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE of its PUNY DEFENSES.  Any LAST WORDS?”

What will Dictionary Dick say in reply to this chilling ultimatum?  ANSWER FOUND BELOW!!!

Answer: Trick question – Dictionary Dick has been Full Degloved, remember?  He can’t say anything anymore, because he has no mouth!  However, luck was on his side: after ingesting Dictionary Dick’s intellect, the strain of trying to parse hundreds of pages of tiny cramped font caused the Pontifex’s amygdala to implode, decerebrating it instantaneously and subsequently collapsing the Glorteezian Hyperpublic into feuding warlord star-states for generations of untold strife.  Another case solved by Dictionary Dick, fourth-grade detective!

Katie Greene went on to solve global inequity and poverty through a series of targeted suplexings. 

Three old ones sat together in the morning, watching the sun go up and putting off useful things.

“It’s the weekend,” said one.

“About time,” said two. “We should go fishing.”

“I know the perfect spot,” said one.

“I know a more perfect spot,” said two.

“Prove you wrong.”
“Prove YOU wrong.”
“I don’t really know where to go fishing,” said three.

“Shut up and stay out of this,” said one with long-held kindness.

“Yeah, button it,” agreed two generously.   “Loser owes the winner.”
“Sounds good to me, the winner,” said one.  And with such good grace they parted in three ways.

***

One slithered between the trees and ghosted through the light morning mist, breath hissing from the gills of their thorax.  They followed the smell of water.

“Aha!” one said, and wriggled through thicket and muck until they at last triumphantly reared up and beheld a deep bog; quiet, still and dead.

“Aha!” one said, and surged over hill and dale and across wide-scouring sands until they spiraled up into the air and gazed down upon a salt-encrusted sulphuric basin, thoroughly populated by gypsum deposits.

“Aha!” one said, and heaved their long segmented self across the stones and the lichen and the moss and the strange ancient trees until they were worn and tattered and they nearly slipped and fell right into their quarry: a narrow streamlet, trickling over mountain gravel and empty of anything but glaciermelt.

“Ahh, to hell with it,” one said, and spun their self up and around in a small and very rude dance culminating in the sharp-splitting snap of their snout at the sky, which cracked an orbit which diverged a descent which sent many hundreds of tonnes of metallic elements slamming directly into the local geography, venting many billions of years of momentum in a single instant with only the briefest, politest deference from the atmosphere.

“See,” one said, once the steam had cleared and the crater had begun to fill, “now THAT’S a fishing hole.”

***

Two strode long-legged and thick-armed, sky to sky, eyes peeled like bloodied grapes, like sparkling-cut gemstones, like dead black suns: primary, secondary, AND tertiary.  All focused all flickering all finding. 

“There!” two said, and lunged at the glittering prize on the horizon, closer and closer and closer until they loomed low and large over perfect wind-swept waves, palely white-capped and made of nothing but fine soft sand. 

“There!” two said, and lurched forwards, push-pull, push-pull, crashing limbs like tree trunks and feet like ancient stumps, elbowing past massifs and mesas, descending with eager haste to find themselves at the shores of a shallow salty sea, too dense to drink, let alone let something live.

“There!” two said, and hurried, shimmying toe to toe to toe to toe to target, stumbling from step to step, vaulting valleys, hurdling hills, stubbing digits and blunting nails and almost toppling, sinking to all sixteens before their discovery: a soft and blue-streaked wall of water, frozen, caught in the long process of slinking down the flank of a mountainside. 

“There’ll do,” two said, and raised their hands and their hooves and their claws and their talons and swept and paddled and poked in ways that weren’t appropriate, which so shocked the glacier that it slipped free from its home and fell pell-mell for thousands of miles and millions of tonnes, dragging itself home whimpering and pouting atop a wake of scraped stone and dredged bedrock basins.

“Finally,” two said, watching the meltwaters rise and lap at still-raw shorelines.  “Somewhere to fish.”

***

Three waited until they were absolutely sure the other old ones weren’t coming back.  Then they stretched themselves from tail to tail to flagellum and went for a long, long walk.  Their ears were open, and they heard birds (a thousand kinds) and insects (a million kinds) and moving earth and rushing wind and dripping water and breath and life and death and rot and birth and everything, almost everything that moved and some things that didn’t.

And three heard frogs.  So they walked to where the frogs were loudest, which was a soft and worn-down sort of oxbow lake (like all oxbow lakes), surrounded by trees like well-wishers at a hospital bedside.

Three brought some flowers, so not as to be rude.  The petals splashed gently on the water, attracting some bugs, which attracted something else.

Splash.

“Oh,” said three, as they sat down atop a bare, barkless, age-softened old stump, “so THAT’S where you go fishing.”

***

“Clearly,” said one, “this is where you go fishing.  Look at how deep and pristine its waters are!  Clean and cold and held aloft by the edges of its impact, mathematically perfect!”
“It’s a simple bowl,” said two.  “Behold – a thousand lakes, a thousand shapes!  Don’t like one?  Try another!  Beauty enough to make a fine fit for the eye of any beholder!”
“It’s shallow and weed-ridden and looks like you doodled on half the continent with your arms and legs all the wrong way around,” opined one.  “Weren’t you supposed to have good vision?”
“And you’re always bragging about your nose,” observed two, “yet you can’t see your fishing spot stinks. Bad.”

One roiled.

Two pointed.

Troubles came to pass.

***

The fire was just climbing to proper height when one and two returned to the camp, eager yellow looking forwards to a red-glowing future. 

“Hello,” said three. “How was the perfect fishing spot?”

“Insufficient,” said one, coiling as close to the firepit as possible as ice-cold water steamed free from bruised scales.  “Someone tripped over their own feet and fell in the water, scaring off all the fish.”
“Unsatisfying,” said two, all uncurled limbs disjointedly picking and plucking algae and waterweed from every crevice and every other crevice.  “Someone kicked up a big stink and fell in the water, scaring off all the fish.”

“Whoosh,” said three.  “So, no fishing today?”

“Yes,” agreed one.

“No,” agreed two.

“Ah well, that happens.  Always better luck tomorrow, right?”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said one. “The perfect fishing spot doesn’t exist.”

“Bad luck is the only kind that exists,” said two.  “And it’s just bad luck that the perfect fishing spot isn’t real.”
“Well, maybe you two can come with me tomorrow,” said three, “I know a spot that’ll help you feel better.”

“You found a perfect fishing spot?” asked one, before two.

“You found a perfect fishing spot?” asked two, before one.

“No,” said three.  “But I did find a nice place to listen to frogs.”

***

And it really was.

The sun is high as I approach, a boiling clot in the midday haze that makes the inside of my highway mask damp with sweat as I take the last turns down the old roads.  I’m three hours out of the core, three from the compaction when I finally spot it: a red smudge rising up to touch the sky.  From there it grew and grew until it ate the horizon, then the road; crawled in through the cracks in my windshield to smear over my goggles and itch my skin in the gap between my gloves and jacket; put the taste of blood and lighter fluid in the back of my throat.  And then, through the mist, its source: a house-tall tractor, armoured in rust and caked residue, dragging a billowing hive of belching pipes and chugging diesel.  Red liquid foundtained into the air, poured hissing down on the twisted and towering stalks of nuclear hogweed that filled the lawn and tore at the sidewalk with hungry roots, dripping sizzling poisonous sap as they cracked and crumpled at the seams under the acrid red weight of the pesticides.  The roar ended, the tractor stilled, a hulking, gas-suited figure leaned from its open cab and waved a paw in greeting.

The last of the suburbanites had invited me to lunch.  I’d just arrived a little early. 

***

My roadhopper has never lived so luxuriously: half of a six-car garage, all its own.  The tractor scrapes the ceiling a little, but otherwise even that monster couldn’t have a happier home.  An older way of parking. 

The lunch Kaylee Hawthorn serves me is just as antique: antibiotic Jello apertif; tuna salad and dreadelion sandwichettes lunch brushed gently with ground gigagarlic mustard; a dessert of whipped headache pills meringue on multigrain meal-loaf. A real microwave does the cooking; actual plastic is the surface the meal graces, dyed soft blue and worn with age. 

“It’s hard to get this far from the distribution centers,” Kaylee explains as I finish eating, “but really, what isn’t?  I’m not out here for convenience.”

Many people don’t know Kaylee’s out here at all.  To them, the suburban way of life has been gone for decades, a long-fallen victim of rising fuel prices, the civic tidal retreat, and the groundwater annihilations.  Even those stragglers that limped through the gauntlet of the 21^st century are assumed to have withered away with the final stake through the heart that was the complete and irreversible erasure of Facebook during the global electromagnetic pulses set off during the Third Limited Exchange. Unable to detect, communicate, or like and friend one another across the countryside, the isolation claimed those few remaining surbanites one by one, sending them home to relatives in corebound groundscraper apartments or into shallow graves scraped in the soil by passing waste-roamers.

Kaylee never used Facebook. “More of a Myspace girl,” she says.  “I liked to make playlists.  And when that went down, I just sort of kept doing my thing.  I noticed the downturn, of course – fewer neighbors, fewer holiday cookouts, less of a need to buy a full two-four for a party when a six-pack would do – but I think it was all so gradual that I didn’t realize I was alone until the super coyotes took Brendan Clarke, and I didn’t even notice THAT until I went by to ask him why he’d stopped spraying my lawn for the nukehoggies – now, as you can see, I have to do it.  We used to trade off: I’d uproot the dreadelion colonies for him because he hated getting his hands dirty.  I know it’s really awful of me to say this, but the first thing I thought when I found him lying there all tied to the roof of his garage with his liver in his mouth and EAT YOUR’RE SELF, APESES written on his chest with his small intestines was ‘well, maybe if you’d done more weeding you’d have had the muscles to put up more of a fight.’  I swear, that man had no work ethic.  But he DID know his way around the insides of a toxitractor mister setup; I sweat every five years I have to hike to Lonesville to get someone to come out here and fix that damn thing because I just do NOT understand machinery.  How’d you like your sandwichettes?”

I tell her I loved them.  It’s the truth.

“Good,” she says.  “That was my second-to-last tuna.  I haven’t been able to find any for the last while, do you know why that is?”
“The last tuna sighting was just before the Second Limited Exchange,” I explain. 

“Oh,” she says.  “I’d better save that one for Christmost.”  She looks at the can for a moment, wiped clean and put in the recycling compactor.  What year is it?”

I tell her.

“The tin wasn’t punctured,” she draws out, carefully.  “I’m sure it’s fine.  Besides, I put plenty of rootcohol in the dressing.”  

***

After lunch we walk the most important feature of the suburbs: the lawn.  The redmist has settled now and the nuclear hogweed lies subdued and sullen, shriveled down to nothing.  Kaylee gives me her backup scythe and together we lop off any surviving limbs, now bereft of their virulent inner fluids.  They’re piled in a heap out back atop a scorchmark, a lone barbecue standing sentinel among the scanty remaining bricks that once outlined a mighty patio. 

“It was so easy to have cookouts back in the day once they moved in,” she tells me.  “Can’t really do it without guests, but I do it every couple days anyways.  Got to do SOMETHING with the stuff, and if you pile it up sometimes it comes back.  That’s what happened to the Hendersons down on Third Avenue.”  She wrinkles her nose.  “Take a look on your way back.  But from a distance.”

Once the weeds have been limbed, the rest of the yard work comes quickly.  A wind generator powers a pump that brings up septiwater from the waste tank, sprays it over the field of sheltered brown blades that cling to existence beneath the weed-corpses – glowing them a healthy green, for now.  The dreadelion patch’s perimeter is inspected for holes or flaws, all eight feet of chainlink topped by a live wire.  And as the shadows grow long, the barbecue is loaded: three skewers, strung heavy with members of the local rodent clade and spare crapapples.  I carry the briquettes to fill its maw, stand well back as it steams and growls to itself, sit back in an ancient deck chair and stare up at the clouds and marvel how so much of this place is expressed in burnt offerings.  Charred oil, steamed gasoline, seared vegetation, and charbroiled flesh.  A sacrifice in an empty temple to a god long forgotten by humanity at large.  I pay the price of philosophy and nearly burn the skewers, scramble in haste to put the meal in order and my mind back on the ground. 

Kaylee stands up suddenly, plates my work, and gently motions me to stay put as she walks out to the far side of the bonfire-to-be.  She comes back without the food, strikes a match, starts the conflagration, and together we listen to it crackle and fume.  The gas masks keep out the smoke, the smoke keeps out the malarial swarmers of the evening that swarm in waves from the creaking eavestroughs, the bugs keep the unseeable, unavoidably audible flapping wings of the mushbats fed and fruiting, showers us in tiny wisp-winged batlings that glow in the dark and die in thousands so that dozens might one decades-hence day sporulate on their own.  I finish my mojoitoid and try not to make an analogy out of it. 

The fire dies quicker than you’d think, fueled by the pesticides and the dried weeds.  Behind it, the skewers are gone. 

“The HOA isn’t as bitchy anymore,” she admits.  “But it’s a lot stricter on the deadlines.”
“Super coyotes,” I guess. 

“Mostly,” she says.  Her smile is complicated.  “I think maybe Brendan Junior is out there sometimes.  Can never actually prove it, just never found the body, and he never did like his old man.”  The sigh that comes out rattles a little through a loose hinge on her mask.  “Too bad, either way.  He was the best paperboy our neighborhood ever had, back when we had a paper.”

The conversation wasn’t lively to begin with, but that kills it outright.  Kaylee’s had practice not saying much, and I’m feeling the strain of a more complex cocktail – drink, air enviroquality, take your pick and pick both – than I’ve inhaled in years.  She tells me to stop by again whenever I want to, and we both know I don’t, and we’re both relieved.  The lights go out before I’ve even left the driveway; the six-car garage gaping black as I back out of its maw.  Something that sounds like six somethings yips behind me as I shift gears, and I try not to accelerate.  I can’t outrun them, but I CAN provoke them.

***

On the way out of the suburbs, back to the compaction, back home, I stop and follow the old signs for a bit.  Just for a while. 

It’s not hard to find the Hendersons’ street, but it’s impossible to see their house.  The nukehoggies have it in their grip now, swaying tall and invincible, barbed rachises swaying in the breeze until they scrape the undersides of the smouldering night fog. 

I watch them, unsettled by the lack of city light reflected in the sky.  Then I drive home, back to the compaction, back to the core, back to all two hundred million remaining civicilians in North Amerigo, away from the last suburbanite.