jamieproctor.ca

They sat in the dark circle around the dingy table under the flickering lightbulb, sharing a single cigarette.  Or they would have been but Clyde had taken it from Larry and refused to give it back; sucking it down like a kid with his last Halloween candy. 

“Alright, enough stalling,” said Larry, from somewhere underneath the crushing weight of his unibrow.  “Who goes first?”
There was a brief silence as they stalled some more.

“Fine.  I switched strategies.”
“Bold,” said Clyde.  It was sarcastic. 

“Huh?” said Jeb. It was sincere.  Always was. 

“I changed from ASMR of me opening bills and reading them to me throwing out unsolicited flyers without reading them.  Figured the catharsis would get more viewers, but it turns out people don’t even like to see those things when someone else gets them.  Lost my entire fanbase.”

“Piss on a stick,” said Clyde.  “Well, more bad news: I got my tumblr purged, so my followers are scurrying and uncoordinated.  Knew I should’ve started up a discord community or a twitter or something.”
Larry dope-slapped him.

“Hey!  Ow!  What?”

“I’ve TOLD you not to share your opinions with strangers.”
“It wasn’t that!” snapped Clyde.  “I mean, not this time.  Someone flagged it as porn.  I fought it, but turns out my videos qualify.”
“’Someone competent doing their job quickly and punctually while enjoying it’ is porn now?”

“Apparently.  Got demonetized on youtube too.”

Larry sighed.  Clyde sighed. 

They turned to Jeb, who was knuckle-deep and going farther.

“Sorry?” he asked. 

“You’re up,” said Clyde.
“No I’m right here.”
“What did you do this month?” asked Larry.

“Oh!  I had a good idea two days ago.  Was going to try and go viral on Vine.”

“You’re kidding me,” said Clyde. 
“What?” said Jeb.  “I thought it was still a thing.  Nobody told me it shut down years ago.”
“NONE of us can make the rent this month?”

“Soo…..prostitution and murder?” asked Larry.

“Dibs on prostitution,” said Clyde.

“You ALWAYS get dibs on prostitution,” said Jeb.  “I hate bloodstains.”
“Git gud and stab better then, jackass,” said Clyde.  “Besides, I’m the only one of us that has a face fit for a ring gag.  God I hate the end of the month.”

***

They were sobs the like of which nobody had ever seen.  Great, lung-guttering, soul-quivering, heart-aching shudders welling up from something deeper inside than the most secretive and solitary of his organs. 

“My friend,” the bartender told him as he gently patted his cheeks dry with a little cocktail napkin, “you must not carry on so.  Life will go on.  You will rebuild.  Material things are temporary.  You are worthy of love.  I’m sure wherever they are, they’re happy now.  Do you want more?  I can keep going.”
“Nothing can ease my pain,” wailed the man.  “What I once considered most important in all my life has been taken from me.  I’ve been banned from all social media, effective immediately.  What will I do with my time, with my brain, with my anything?  It was all I had in this world because I’m an empty and loathsome shell of a worm of a fragment of a functional human being.”

“Look,” said the bartender, “I wouldn’t normally go this far for a stranger, but you seem emotionally vulnerable and easily led.  Why don’t you go follow my favourite influencer on twitter, @xXxWITEPOWAxXx?  He can lead you down a road of manipulation, grift, racial hatred, and deniable incitement to terrorism.  It’ll give empty purpose to your freshly hollowed life.”

“But bartender,” wept the man, “I AM @xXxWITEPOWAxXx.”

***

I slid out from underneath the machine with a somber expression.  “Bad news,” I said.  “You’ve got no drive left.”

“Wuh-oh!”

I ignored the sounds with practiced power and  grace.  “And that’s not even the worst of it: you can see here where it’s overheated and partially melted… I’m afraid your rig is shot.”
“Oh god no,” mourned the customer.  He was fat-bellied and thin-haired, in that aimless stretch of extended middle age that can hold some men from age thirty to sixty.  His hands and chin were the only parts of him that moved, working and twisting constantly as he writhed and gasped in the pickle he’d put himself into.  “Oh jeez.  Oh man.  Are you sure?”
“Pretty damned sure.  For the price it’d cost to fix this you could just get an entirely new machine.  You burnt out all the most expensive parts.”
“Oh god oh god oh gosh.  I just took it out for one afternoon.”
I stopped wiping off my hands and looked up in alarm.  “Wait.  This isn’t even your unit?”
“No.  No.  No, this is my WIFE’S bitcoin rig.”

“Sir,” I said, doing an amazing job at keeping my voice level, “I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest for your own good.  Please come with me to the police station.”

“What?  I don’t understand.”
“Precisely.”
“I’m not doing oh god is that a gun please don’t shoot me I’ll do whatever you say do you want money do you oh lordy lou oh god”

“Don’t make me use this.  It’d be a cleaner death than you’d deserve for slagging someone else’s next-gen video card, and a LOT cleaner than what the street mob out there’d give you for it.  Now we’re going to walk very calmly down to the station and you’re not going to try and run because I’ll fucking shoot you and you’re not going to try and fight because I’ll yell what you did in the middle of the lunch crowds and you’ll WISH I’d shot you.  Are we clear?”
“Oh god oh jeez oh”

“ARE WE CLEAR?”
“Yes oh my goodness yes oh”

I pistol-whipped him.  It was just and magnificent. 

He was outgunned sixteen to one.  His shoulder was an open wound, smouldering with his own evaporating blood.  A hangover that could drop a cow dead at forty paces beat within his skull and his gun was empty. 

Yes, he had them right where he wanted them. 

Zak Zorph smirked the smirk of a cornered rat, cleared his throat of dust and sand in a quick swallow that could’ve been mistaken for a gulp by the uncharitable, and charged up his electric pompadour. 

“Oh god are you doing THIS again?”

Slew bolted into attack position as fast as possible with as little dignity as imaginable.  His tail lashed, his fangs bristled, his eyes popped, and he tripped over his own feet and somehow collapsed. 

“Ow,” he said, menacingly.  Truly, a terrifying specimen of the Greater Western Gila  Monstrosity. 

“Dumbass,” said Mulch, but not fondly.  “Double dumbass; you’d be dead if I were someone else.  Why are you reading this crap, and why are you doing it at the bottom of a blind canyon where anyone could eat you?”

“It’s safe down here since nobody but us knows about that passage through the deadfall,” said Slew in a logical and sulky voice.  “And it’s not crap.”
“Tell mom that.  She said she regrets every reading one of these past the cover.”
“Well, she just didn’t find the good stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” said Mulch, eyes narrowing to dead little black glitters in her face.  “And what exactly is this good stuff?”
“Nothin’.”
“Liar.  You always drop your gs when you’re lying.  Show me.”
“No.”
“Show me or I’ll tear off your tail and make you eat it.  Again.”
Slowly, sadly, with seething fear in his eyes that wished it could muster the spine to be hate, Slew handed over the book.

“’The Quontum Jowb,’” read Mulch.  “Book ten of Zak Zorph and his Electric Pompadour.”

“It’s a twelve-book series,” said Slew.

“And you’re reading twelve books of this because?”
“The important themes and stuff.”
“Like what?  It’s written by a human, what sort of themes could it possibly have?  If they knew what themes were and if themes were worthwhile then maybe they wouldn’t have all died.”
“Here,” said Slew, rustling through a mildewed stack of mouldy yellowed paper.  “Try this one.  Zak Zorph: A Wang and a Prayur.  Book two.”

Mulch picked the book up on the fourth try –

“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I clawed my first one in half.”
– and opened it to a random page.

“Zak, baby, those killbots are right on our heels!  You gotta do something!” dithered Lorna Bumox.  “The neubaddies are gonna shoot us!  Why didn’t you lock the doors to the omnivault behind us?!  Oh jeez, my mama was right about you!”
“Oh, you flighty dame,” chuckled Zak Zorph, giving her an affectionate pistol-whipping in the tits.  “Now just settle down that cute little ass of yours, sweetheart.  You know girls are scientifically proven to be incapable of rational thought when under stress.  It’s just facts.  Sit there and look pretty while I think this over reasonably.  Maybe if you’d remembered to lock the doors to the omnivault behind us we wouldn’t be in this pickle, ya dumb broad.”

“Oh gosh, don’t hit me!” squealed Lorna, but she secretly loved it, obviously.  Zak Zorph knew her delicate little brain like the back of his meta-hand.  But it wasn’t his meta-hand they needed now.

The neubaddies breached the corner, Lorna swooned dramatically, and Zak Zorph charged up his electric pompadour. 

“Huh,” said Mulch.  “I don’t get it.  Why didn’t she eviscerate him with her hindclaws?”
“Female humans didn’t have hindclaws,” said Slew.
“How ‘bout her foreclaws?”
“No.”
“Teeth?”
“None worth noticing.”
“How the hell did they defend their nests?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It sure looks like the guys didn’t help them.  Is this that deep theme you were telling me about?”
“Look, the series is a bit rough at the start,” pleaded Slew.  “Here, try this one: The Corpilix Caypur.  Book six, so it’s later on and he really hits his stride as a writer.  The emotional depth is a lot deeper and such.”

“C’mon, Zak, just pay the flubbing ticket,” wheedled El Slinkle in his indecipherable accent.  “You parked your ultracruuzer in a handicapped megaspot fair and square, there’s no need to take this to court, not with TimeJudge Quinklemaxx in that court.  You know he’s been looking for you ever since you burned down his mansion in the Hindlebur Affayr!”
“Fat chance!” said Zak Zorph.  “Maybe your people have no spines, but humans are made of sterner stuff.  I’ll be damned if I let those federalism fat cybercats steal a nova-nickel of my hard-earned wages through their trumped-up bionicbureucracy.”

“At least take on a public defender,” simpered El Slinkle.  “You owe yourself some degree of legal assistance, and they’re there to assist you.”

“You can go grozz yourself Slinkle, you low-life fatbelly,” scorned Zak Zorph.  “I’ve lived my whole life as an honest criminal, and I’ll never take up government handouts.  The real heroes are out there paying taxes, and I’d sooner shoot myself in the head than seize any of their hard-earned dollars for my own use.  Actually, when you think about it, I’m not a criminal at all – I steal from the government, which is illegal.  I’m a hero of purest justice.  Every man should take it upon himself to live and act utterly alone along with his harem of space-wives.”

“That sounds individualist,” whimpered El Slinkle.

Zak Zorph had heard more than any red-blooded future-American man could stand.  His pulse roared in his ears and his eyes bulged with rage as he charged up his electric pompadour. 

“What’s a government?” asked Mulch. 

“Not sure.”
“What’s a criminal?”
“Not sure.”

“What’s an American?”

“Uhhh…”

“This emotional depth is too deep for me to understand,” said Mulch.  Her tail flicked in irritation.  “I think he’s just making shit up.  Can’t believe you’re wasting your time on this deerpucky – and after mom warned us about it, no less.  I bet if she knew you were down here repeating her sister’s mistakes she’d cannibalize you on the spot.”

“No, wait, it gets better!”
“Oh really?  When?  When does it get better?”

“Later!”
“How ‘later’?  Is this the sort of ‘later’ that is never actually ‘now’, or the  kind of ‘later’ that actually exists.”
“Well, it’s here.  Book eleven.”
“’The Stoonmakker Shodown’?  Shall I open a page at random again?  Want me to find something stupid at random, or is there one sentence in here that saves it?”
Slew flipped through the book furiously for six minutes, then handed it over with slumped shoulders.

“Thought so,” said Mulch in satisfaction.  “Let’s take a peek.”

“Death!” bayed the ravenous hordes of UnHumans outside the spaceskyscraper.  “Death!  Death!”  

Inside, Zak Zorph cradled his wounded leg, incurred while heroically bludgeoning an UnHuman infant to death, and weighed his odds.  He was outgunned sixteen hundred to one, even accounting for the feeble and pathetic power of the UnHumans that could allow a fit and cunning man to easily kill ten of them with his bare hands before being overwhelmed by their disgusting numbers since they bred like two-legged giga-rats.  His heart was still a-aching with sorrow for the loss of the babe of his life, Mindy Milker, to a gang of sneering, degenerate cosmothugs.  And his trusty gun had blown up in his palm and snapped his arm in half.

Little did the pathetic scum outside know that he had them aall right where he wanted them. 

Zak Zorph smirked the smirk of a cornered rat, thought upon all the good things he’d done in his life, and spat on the graves of the scum who’d stood in the way of those things.  And he charged up his electric pompadour. 

There was a long and awkward silence that stretched far after Mulch had dropped the book like a skeletonized rat.

“You know,” she mused aloud, “there’s one thing about these that does interest me.”
“Oh?” asked Slew meekly.

“What the fuck is a pompadour?”

“A kind of hairstyle.”
“And a hairstyle is…?
Slew scratched his forehead.  “Like the bristly stuff that deer are covered in.”
“Are you telling me,” asked Mulch, in the flat and dead voice of the Extremely Tired Of This,
“that this guy had a deer following him around for twelve books and never ate it?”

Slew shrugged.

“Don’t you dare shrug at me.  Use your words or I use my hindclaws.  Yes or no?”
“Yes,” he whispered.

“Mom was right: books are for nerds.  Eat the stupid things for fiber like a reasonable person and let’s go home.”

It was that time of year again.  Despite her fondest wishes. 

Trish stared at the door to the shed as if it would vanish if she refused to blink for long enough.  Unbidden, her treacherous left hand slowly found its way to the handle and shoved it open. 

The boiling air sizzled against her neck.  June had come, and was already trying to make itself into July.  The air tasted like sweat and evaporated dirt.  Something had died six blocks over ten minutes ago and had already ripened into a fly-ridden maggotblot that could be smelt from one side of the town to the other. 

And there was a little fleck of dried straw in one of Trish’s gloves that had already embedded itself under her fingernail. 

God she fucking hated gardening. 

***

The hedges were first.  They’d gotten unruly over the winter, creeping roots where they shouldn’t be and whispering secrets amongst themselves while the other plants slept bare and lifeless under blankets of snow.  Cedar roared with fierce venom as Trish’s chainsaw snarled and gnawed through branch after branch, lashing her with curses and hexes and some good-old-fashioned invective against her family unto the nineteenth generation. 

Trish was pretty glad she didn’t have or want kids, because after doing this for half a decade anyone she pushed out would probably be born with one eye two noses and a satan for a backside. 

She took a break to clear the chainsaw of sap, bark, and malice and wiped some of the venom from her face.  Ugh.  At least it wasn’t hemlock.  She still had nightmares sometimes about the photos they showed back in the arborist classes.  A chug of electrolytes pushed that and her thirst from her head, then she revved up the motor again.

The wind hissed with fresh hatred as the blade was lowered to the hedge-rim, and some of the nearby grass died.

Great.  Just great. 

***

The lawn was even more tiresome than usual.  First Trish had to burn all the pruned cedar branches she’d just trimmed as an offering to the Council of Blades to even HOPE to make amends, and then began the traditional long, hard negotiations.

“No lower than four inches,” First-Grower of the Council whispered.

An insulting opening offer.  “Two,” said Trish.  That was insulting too, but fuck them for starting it this way.
“After you bring the curses of the not-grasses upon us?” demanded Sharpest-Edge.  “Five inches!”
“One and a half.”
“Three, perhaps,” mumbled Drought-Dried. 

“THREE?” said Sharpest-Edge.

“Two and a half and you’ll like it,” said Trish.

And after two hours more debate, this was eventually deemed acceptable, provided the lawnmower was purified with the sap-blood of the cedar hedge, and Trish could finally cut the fucking grass. 

Politics.  Always the politics.  God.  She’d never taken a single polysci elective for a REASON, and here she was. 

But at least it wasn’t as bad as the screaming as she drove over the green acres, faint as it was.  Like an unignorable whisper on the wind, almost possible to mistake for her imagination.

So she wore earmuffs, and if anyone asked she pretended they were because of the lawnmower. 

***

After THAT mess, the garden was relaxing.  The soft crumble of the soil underhand.  The reassuring stench of the manure in Trish’s nostrils.  The neverending litany of murmured prayers and chants and charms as she pressed each bulb into the earth and extolled it to grow tall, bloom beautifully, rend its perfumes and colours into the air like a striking serpent, then die quietly and gracefully. 

Taming flowers was always easiest when they were youngest.  Her fingers had scars from the time she’d come across a feral crocus lurking in a patch of geraniums. 

Shush shush, grow big, dream of tall stems and warm breezes and many bees and fine pollen.  Do not fear the hands that come to stroke and prune and groom you into beauty.  Do not lust for the sap of the gardener.  Do not hunger for the xylem of the fleshy.  Do not become bent on destruction.  Do not scream for the dying of all light. 

Grow well, and think of blossoms. 

Her neck was swimming in sweat.  She had all the time in the world, yes.  All the time in the world.

But still.  One little slip, and she’d have a wild rose on her hands.  And a lot of blood on her conscience. 

Ssshhh.  Warm earth.  Warm prayers.  Shhh, tuck yourself in.  Bear your thorns calmly.  Stand stately. 

Do not fear.  Do not hate.  Do not prey. 

Shhhhhhhhhhhh.

Please.

***

The sun was setting.  The timing was perfect, in defiance of every delay and exacerbation and insult of the day’s contempt for Trish’s schedule. 

If only the fucking matches would light.

“You don’t have to do this,” begged the man for the sixteenth time in the past two minutes.  Ruddy-red glow from the horizon made the sweat and tears shiny beautifully like blood on his pleading face. 
“Fuck,” said Trish.  “Goddamnit, how did people live before lighters?”

“Please.  Please don’t.  Please.  Pleasepleasepleaseplease.”
“Piss.  OW!”
“Why?  Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.  He wasn’t even struggling anymore; the wicker bonds held his arms and legs too tightly to do anything more than raise welts on his limbs.  “Why?”
“Burnt my thumb!  Won’t stay lit for longer than a fraction of a second, but you’ll burn my thumb?  What kind of shittery is this?”

“What did I DO?!”
Trish pulled the last match from the box and focused her hatred on it until she fancied it almost smouldered.  “Lived in an apartment block for your entire life without a lawn,” she said absently, rage making her voice tranquil.  “It’s personal that way.  The lawn likes it when it’s personal.”

She dragged the match slow.  It lit, then broke.”
“FUCK.  Guess we can’t light the wickerman tonight.  Fire’s right out.”
The man couldn’t sag in his bonds, they were so tight.  But his eyes did unbug a little.

At least until Trish pulled out the knife. 

Second-best beat nothing at all. 

***

After an entire day spent with no time to waste and every second ruining everything, the time from dusk to midnight crawled along like a paralyzed sloth.  Trish sat impatiently, burping the baby with one hand. 

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,” it opined. 

“There, there,” she said, for the forty trillionth time.  “There, there.”
And there, there it was.  The moon hung in the sky, the right stars twinkled the right way, and her watch rang as finally, blessed finally, the hour had come. 

3 AM on the dot.  She picked up the shovel and dug like a demented badger, dredging up the last, last, last reserves of her willpower and strength and dug the hole and plunked the baby in it and filled the hole and bowed to the apple tree.

“Harvest bless,” she said, in a ceremony-perfect picture-polite voice her tutors would have applauded at.  “Go fuck yourself,” she added in those same tones, which they would not have. 

The apples ignored her.  That was fine.  They had no choice now.  A good crop would be coming around by autumn, and they could like it or lump it all the same, everyone else would be eating it. 

And that was the rewarding part of this job, really, thought Trish as she threw the shovel into her truck and finally, finally, finally drove home to a shower and a bed and a stale bag of chips that would pretend to be a dinner. 

The feeling that you were giving something back to the community. 

The bulldozers had been and gone.  The construction crews had been here, and now were there.  Where once girders roamed and foundations roared, rows of green lawns sprouted from identical plots surrounding identical houses with identical fences behind a seamless, smiling brick wall with a lovely wrought-iron gate. 

“Can’t have a gated community without a gate!” chortled the mayor as he shook hands with the developer in front of it, as numerous diligent reporters nodded and took notes and made ‘hmm’ noises. 

“Hah,” said the developer.   He was an extremely serious man who lived somewhere in that awkward space between ‘compact’ and ‘spherical.’  “Aha.  Ha ha ha.  Ha HAA.  Ha ha ha ha.  Aha.”
“Ohohohoho!” agreed the mayor.  “Now, is there anything else you’d like to add.”
“Oh, not much,” said the developer solemnly.  “I’m just glad to be here at the crossroads – not literally, of course, figure of speech – of a great moment in civic planning between our two communities: the lovely new suburban paradise of Farforest and your town.”
“City.  And it’s called Burbics.”
“Yes.  Your city.  May we proceed forwards in peace and prosperity for all.”
“Splendid!” said the mayor.  They shook hands and posed for the photos as the developer sank his fangs through the mayor’s throat and right into the jugular.

***

Farforest’s lots had been reserved well in advance, and it was no great surprise to hear that the little gated community had been filled to the brim within weeks of its official opening.  Every house had its enormous, stifling blackout curtains drawn tight, every driveway held an SUV whose windows were tinted abyssal black, and soon the local coffin makers had a booming business overnight, although the specialty groceries were seeing less of an uptick than they’d expected. 

“It’s just, we expected them to give more back to the community in general,” griped Wolbert Hamfork, manager of the Very Expensive Market.  “And to us in particular.  They don’t even order any of our tiny little packages of quinoa and local beef.  Those are pretty cool.  Do you want to buy one?  You should buy one.  Discounted, so it’s only fifty-nine ninety-nine.  A real deal and a real steal.  Practically slitting my own throat, especially with how many of my clerks have anemia right now.  Little bastards are all taking sick days.  Bet they’re cheating.  Can you believe they’re cheating like that?”

“The gall,” proclaimed the soccer matron he was speaking to, wiping away some specks of blood from her lips.  “Excuse me, I just finished lunch.  By the way, you have an exsanguinated janitor out back.”
“Ugh, ANOTHER one.  Thanks.”
“Oh, it’s no problem.  There ought to be a law etc.  Here’s my card if you want to visit; you look to be a man of exquisite taste.”

***

Changes came in the early summer, not all welcome.

“I can’t believe they shut down the marina and beaches,” said the local yacht club president, Sandy Biff.  “I was expecting people with taste and income to flood into Farforest and join our membership so they could talk about booms and mastheads and booze, but instead they signed a petition against the use of running water for recreation, leisure, business, or personal necessity.  Frankly that strikes me as overreach.  Also they shut down the city’s plumbing, which is making all my servants whiny and listless.  Something about the dehydration combined with the anemia that’s been rolling around.  Is there something on my neck?  You keep looking at my neck.  And licking your lips and rolling your tongue sensually around your fangs.  Ma’am, are you trying to seduce me?”
“No,” said the genteel retiree. 

“Ah, my mistaaaaaaaaaaaargghghhghgh.”

***

By August the course curriculums of the university had been altered by the new board of directors.   This produced some tensions in the letters column of the paper. 

“My son went to university to get a bachelor’s of ecological engineering,” said Mrs. Gorbspat.  “But now his entire major has been rescinded.  The only two degrees this institution now offers are a BA in Renfelding and a BSc in Civil Service.  And since the only civil service the city provides since the deputy mayor took over is blood drives, I’m not sure how this will help our youth compete in today’s fast-paced economy.”
“My daughter says her new instructor began class by hooking them all up to some sort of gadget that sucked all their blood into big glass decanters, then made them roll those decanters down to a storage cellar,” opined Mr. Hripple.  “That seems like the university getting free labour from its students, and we don’t even know what all this blood is for.  It’s bad enough our taxes went into building this university a decade ago; now it’s taking the blood and fluids of our children.  Or should I say, your children.  I’ve subsidized your offspring enough already; I’m a paid taxpayer and a paying taxpaider and I don’t deserve this sort of upjumped gimme-gimme attitude from institutions I’ve been forced to support.”

“The new board is completely out of line,” fumed Dr. Plorr.  “They ejected me from chairmanship, then removed me from the building for complaining about it.  And they wouldn’t even look me in the eye while they did it!  Too busy simpering and tittering and slurping blood from the necks of the president of the student’s union.  Sheer poppycockery!”
“Everything is fine,” said the opinion columnist.  “If you think everything isn’t fine, that sounds like a ‘you’ problem.  And if you have a ‘you’ problem, why not phone in to your local blood bank to support your community?  Then your most precious resources can be put towards helping your good friends and neighbours.  Like the people of Farforest.  All hail Farforest.  The blood is life.”

***

Autmn came with the slight political shocker of the deputy mayor being reappointed mayor-for-life without an election. 

“I have taken up this position with heavy heart,” mourned the mayor-for-life.  He was an extremely serious man who lived somewhere in that awkward space between ‘compact’ and ‘spherical,’ and who had once been a developer.  “But this town needs leadership.”
“City,” said the secretary. 

“Yes.  City.  And since you are all sad little squishy sacks of delicious blood that are too busy pulsating with the rich ruddy veins of life and fermenting tender new waves of erythrocytes within your soft little marrow-bones to swim through your bodies, plumply, temptingly.  Lend me your necks, friends.”
“Hands?”
“No.  Necks.  Please put your necks – thank you – in my hands.  Mine.  Right now.  Gimme gimme gimme.”
“I object to this very strongly,” said someone.
“Drain them!” called the mayor-for-life. 

“Drain them!” cheered the crowd.

***

That winter was long and brutal.  The people suffered under the cold, not least because the barons and baronesses of Farforest had forced all able-bodied workers under the age of forty to spend their days and nights ceaselessly constructing upscale castles, crypts, dungeons, and laboratories in order to show off to each other. 

“Perhaps there is some manner of economic imbalance afoot,” commented Maya Holstein-Briggs to her neighbour, Jill Sorbopolis.

“Nah,” said Jill.  “Farforest’s construction has attracted money to our community and jobs.  This is very plausible.  You should join the local bloodteam to stimulate the growth potential of your household.  Sign up four other people for it and you can maximize your return on investment.”
“Wow, colour me convinced,” said Maya.  “This is the best decision I can make for myself, my family, and my community.  And that goes for you too, listeners.  Support Farforest.  Support blood: you need it to live, they need it to thrive.  That’s B-L-O-O-D.  One b, one l, double o, one d.  Blood.  It’s in us, for them to take.”

***

Spring peeled back the comforting blankets of snow and found no city where Burbics had once stood, just a conglomerate of buildings, businesses, and individuals, most of whom now possessed very little blood.

“I declared this town dissolved,” concluded the mayor-for-life.  “It’s simply not economically viable anymore.  Oh well.”

The residents of Farforest clucked their tongues behind their fangs and shook their heads.  So sad, so sad, so sad.  Oh well.  Oh well. 

“In the meantime,” the ex-mayor-for-life went on, “I’ve come into inside information on some great real estate opportunities in Jelonie.  Condos all over the place!”

And so the people of Farforest cheered and raised their portfolios high and as one took to the skies in a great cloying cloud of handsomely dressed and fangéd bats, leaving behind a very confused and desolate wasteland. 

Unfortunately, the condos didn’t come with blinds.  Three months later the entire freshly-moved-in population of the Beyond The Woods condominiums were incinerated at the rise of dawn, along with all the countless accumulated wealth of their real estate valuations.  A day of national mourning was observed. 

“I can’t help but feel we could have done something for them,” sobbed a prominent realtor.  “There must have been something more we could have given.”

It was six AM and Liz was on her eighth cup of coffee and her twelfth recitation of why her job wasn’t hell on earth and her last straw when McGuinty picked up the radio, listened, then hung up. 

“It’s go time,” she said.

“The fuck?” Liz blurted out.

“I said it’s g-”

“Yeah, I heard.  I was just wondering WHY.”
“Because it’s go t-”

“Listen to yourself.  Jesus.  ‘Go time.’  Whadda maroon.”  Liz shook her head, drained half her cup, threw the other half out the window, and farted mournfully into the car’s cheap seat.  “Let’s just – let’s just fucking go, okay?  Let’s go.  Let’s go let’s go let’s go.”
“Yes.  Go time.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
McGuinty grinned at her unrepentantly, flipped the switch that started the lights, and plugged in the siren, which immediately started broadcasting angry beluga noises mixed with mating moose. 

Ahead of them, the sleepy little collection of tents and trailers half-stirred, half-froze, shocked into immobility and clumsy panic. 

“Get ‘em,” said Liz around a mouthful of Advil.  She swallowed it dry, coughed herself senseless, and looked up just in time to see a screaming man in Hawaiian shorts and nothing else beach himself on the car hood, arms flailing furiously, sunburn iridescent in the morning light.

God.  She hated vacationers. 

***

With the tremendous energy and boundless enthusiasm of someone who did what they loved for a living, McGuinty leapt from the car with a taser in each hand and plunged electricity-spurting prongs into the fleshy torsos of two silverback lawnchairers.  They writhed and ground their way into the dirt with mouths wide, screams roaring from their red-streaked, flabby mouths, Coronas spewing limes and liquid across the ground. 

“VBI!  Freeze!” she shouted at the convulsing bodies, then drew her baton.  “Cease resisting!” she said, picking one of them up and hurtling him into a tent.  “Cease resisting!  Cease resisting!  WoOOOOOOoohoooOOO!”
Liz stumbled out into the morning, eyes fluttering like dying moths.  She threw up and watched Advil fly into the beach’s sand, shook her head twice, threw up again, and waved one arm at the couple frozen in the act of launching their kyak. 

“VBI.  You’re under arrest for vacationing in an unvacatable vicinity.  G’wan.  Scoot.  Get.  Shoo.”
Very, very, very slowly, the kayak was beached.  Then the larger and more tanned of the two charged, paddle in both hands, sunscreen glistening on his skin. 

Liz watched as he slipped on her vomit and slid head-first into the car’s tires. 

“Stay down,” she said to the world in general as she patted her pockets.  Fuck.  Where were her cuffs?  She brought them, right?  They were in the car, right?  They weren’t at home in the junk drawer, right?  And she’d remembered to fix them, right? 

Ah, shit. 

A helicopter roared overhead – that’d be Eckhart and Zamboni, doing boat control.  Darts streamed like mosquitos from the big drum-fed cannon underneath its fuselage, riddling the gnarled and sun-riddled hides of their prey, injecting them with potent cocktails of sobriety pills and tranquilizers to render them tired, depressed, and bleary-eyed.  The outboarders were dealt with quickly, leaving the yachters afloat in their big canopied bastards as they leaned on their horns and shouted obscenities to the heavens. 

“May you never tan!” screamed an eighty-six-year-old man as Liz cuffed his arms behind his back, using his spine as leverage.  “May you spend every weekend booked solid!  May your spouse cancel on you without explanation or care!”
“Heard it all before,” she told him.

“Eater of overtime!  Rat of the rat race!  Receive no compensation for your unused vacation from now until the end of your days, you maggot of the middle-class!”
“Yeah.  Okay, I’m gonna administer a sobriety test now, you got that?  Hold still.”  She cracked her neck, riffled through her belt, and shot both prongs of her taser into the elder’s spine.

“WAAAAUGH!”

“Yeah you’re sober.  Wait was that the taser?  I didn’t mean to use the taser.  Ah shit.”

Liz squinted at the hubbub surrounding her – the vactioners were being pushed into the shallows of the lake.  Only a few had broken for the trees and they’d been intercepted by VBI agents hidden amongst the ferns and evergreens, decked out in camo jorts and tactical crop tops. 

“Hey!  Anyone got a spare sobriety test?” she called. 

McGuinty threw a pair of brass knuckles over her shoulder without looking as she sprinted into the water and tackled a roaring bikinist into the reeds. 

“Thanks,” said Liz.  “Now sir, I’m going to hit you until you tell me it stops hurting, okay?  This is very scientific.”
She started being scientific.  Overhead a slight breeze blew, perfectly accentuating the warm sunlight.  The air smelled of flowers and opened beers.  In the distance, a loon wailed. 

God, it was so beautiful that she wanted to throw up again. 

***

The last holdout was under siege.  A canoeist wearing three lifejackets: armour-plated, indomitable, insane.  Froth spewed from paddle and mouth as she thrashed and surged in the midst of the lake.  The helicopter could not stop her; the VBI scuba experts could not hold her.  A harpoon gun was being set up onshore by the artillery team. 

Liz was on her ninth cup of coffee.  McGuinty was working off her high by wandering around the cages saying ‘stop resisting’ to the perps and kicking them. 

“They aren’t resisting,” Liz pointed out.

“That’s not the point.  Stop resisting.  Stop resisting.  Stop resisting.”

Liz poured her coffee into the dirt, watching with no interest but total concentration as it drowned an ant.  “I’ll be right back,” she said. 

“Where you going?  Stop resisting.”
“Walkabout.”
“Stop resisting.  ‘Kay.  Stop resisting.  Stop resisting.”

Liz walked about.  She walked about the car cordon, with its flashing lights and gnashing teeth.  She walked about the perimeter, where the earth was torn and ravaged by frantic sandals and desperate tanners.  She walked about the lake, where the ripples from the last efforts of the skinny-dippers to avoid capture were still spreading in pretty little concentric rings as faint as a dove’s breath. 

She looked left and right and up and down and all around and then she slipped her pants down and sat in the sand and picked up a discarded beer can and took a long, cold swig. 

The suntan lotion was in her belt, in an empty pepper spray can.  Deniable, undetectable.  She took some and spread it on her palm. 

“Thank fuck it’s Friday,” she said.

The approach had been silent, flawlessly so.  But the gasp wasn’t even close: loud and unrestrained. 

McGuinty didn’t try to hide.  She stood frozen amongst the bushes, eyes wide with shock.

“What the fuck.”  It was a flat statement, a confrontation and an admission of a thing that should not be. 

“I can explain,” said Liz.  And THAT was a dead assertion, a denial that was listless in its believability. 

“What the fuck,” said McGuinty.

“I can explain,” said Liz.

“What the fuck.”
“I can explain.”
“What the fuck.”
“I can explain.”

“What the fucking fuck,” said McGuinty, and that was the inflection point.  The stall had ended; things were about to start happening again. 

There was a ‘thunk,’ fat and meaty and liquid.  The harpoon gun had been fired, and hit.  It made McGuinty’s eyes half-dart away, and in that flicker Liz moved.

The gun was already in McGuinty’s hand, but that just made it an easier target for the pool noodle.  It was slapped clear into the middle of the lake, and as she tried to recover it before it made it all the way Liz’s other hand came around and it was holding the crude stub of the beer can.

COORS LIGHT turned into CRS LT as it crumpled against McGuinty’s skull.  Beer flew everywhere, mixed with just a tinge of blood, but the wound was minor.  The surprise was the real impact, and that was what led them both to roll over and over into the shallows and stay there until the bubbles stopped. 

Sound bled back into Liz’s awareness.  The canoeist was screaming as she was reeled in to shore, thrashing and roaring and laying about with her paddle.  She had a few more seconds to hide  McGuinty’s body.  Blame it on a rogue sunbather she’d stepped on.  That’d do it.  Everyone knew she was a deadly eye in a brawl but totally useless at spotting things right in front of her nose.

But she could do that in five minutes.

Just five minutes.

Sit down again.  Toes in the sand.  Eyes on the sky.  No mosquitos, no traffic, no phone.  Across the bay the canoeist’s calls ended in the wet and muffled thumps of a ten-body pileup.  Somewhere in the distance, a loon politely inquired as to what the hell was going on, and it was beautiful in every way. 

“Thank fuck it’s Friday,” Liz said again.  And it didn’t work quite as well, but there was always Saturday ahead, wild and untamed.  And a rarest of prizes: a Sunday empty of guilt. 

God, she loved the long weekends. 

The phone rang, tinkled, strummed, plucked, wailed, and thundered.  It had almost worked itself up into a full frenzy by the time a liver-spotted hand gently lifted it from its cradle.

“Kettlemaster Kuble, maker of fine instruments, ages zero to infinity welcome, ages ten and up recommended.  How can I help you?” inquired the man himself, dusting away a speckle of dust from his bathrobe.  He’d been meaning to pull it out of storage for months. 
“This is Mr. Meeyer calling on behalf of Morton Throllop Tempor II, Jr.  I would like to purchase a grand piano.”

“Oh my.  A special occasion?”
“The birth of his sixtieth offshore subsidiary.  He’s having a small party to celebrate for himself.”

“Hmm,” said Kuble.  He fiddled with the telephone’s cord in contemplation.  “May I suggest something slightly grander than a grand piano?  We have several grander pianos, and if I put in a special request to a man in Bologna I could, perhaps, with a bit of luck –”

“Do it.”
“Done.  There will be a Grandest Piano en route to your master’s address by this Thursday.  You’ll need an empty soccer field to house it, an artillery barrage to play it, and seven thousand pounds of raw meat a day to feed it.”
“Wonderful.  Mr. Tempor is appreciative.”
“Thank  you!”
“Good-bye.”

Kuble made to put the phone down, then jumped half a foot as it started screaming before it was fully seated in its cradle. 

School season, probably.  Always was this sort of fuss when band class first launched.  At this rate he’d never get to that bath he’d planned on Monday.  He’d picked out his soap and everything.  Ah well. 

“Kettlemaster Kuble, local provider of furious, friendly, and flying instruments of all types, colours and crimes.  How may I assist you today?”
“I need an instrument for my son to play.”
“Well, we have a broad selection.  Piano?”
“No room in the house.”
“Violin?”
“Too waxy.”
“Oboe?”
“Too whiny.”
“Kazoo?”
“He’s allergic to them.”

“Xylophone?”
“I hate the letter x.”
“Trombone?”
“He’s already played that and I didn’t like it.”

“Well ma’am, this one will be completely different.”

“What?  They’re the same damn instrument, aren’t they?”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, the human skeleton contains two hundred and six different bones.  Most trombones – made by morons – don’t even contain ONE.  I can promise you that your son has never played a trombone worthy of the name.  Now, will you be wanting something in a pelvis or more of a vertebral type of…ma’am?  Hello?  Hello?”
Kuble put down the phone.  “Dabbler shitheads,” he said absently.

Then he ran a bath.  For his nerves.  And a good thing too, because it was only a quarter-full before the phone was rattling fit to burst in its cradle once more. 

“Kettlemaster Kuble, formerly Kuble, Krass, and Klombo and also Sons.”

“What happened to those nice young men anyways?  You know they never call.  But they call more often than you.  You know my birthday was last week – Rosie called.  How are you doing?  You know I worry about you.  Did you ever hear back from that nice man from the bank?  The weather’s been awful lately but you know it takes more muscles to frown than to smile.  Edith’s being a real bitch again, pardon my French.  I can’t believe what they feed us here.  It’s been nice talking to you goodbye and give Franklin my love.”

“Goodbye, mother.”
“How dare you,” she said.  And she hung up. 

***

Kuble’s tub was made from the husk of a great old timpani grandfather, shucked free like a snakeskin.  It held water as well as it did heat, and it was a fine thing to recline in and contemplate the cosmos and bubbles and the past and bubbles and the future and bubbles and whether or not that funny lump on your arm was getting bigger or if that was just your imagination. 

It also had no phone, which meant that he barely had time to turn the faucet off before he had to toddle outside and downstairs and upstairs and to the handset in the office.  One of these days he had to get one of those cord-less devices people used nowadays. 

“Kettlemaster Kuble, instruments and tools for instruments, acquitted on all char-”

“Hey listen shut up they’re almost onto me listen I need a tuba grande at Smith & Cox in five and I need it El Loco-style, got it?  Do it on time and you get fifteen percent; fuck me over and I swear to Christ you’re going down with me, and I don’t just mean as an accomplice.  Password is ‘ginjuicer’ and you’re looking for a short fat guy that looks a bit like Boris Johnson.  Got it?  Good.  See you in hell FUCK SHIT DUCK”

There was a large and severe explosion and the line went dead.  Kuble shook it a few times, shrugged, and dialed his warehouse. 

“Paula?  Little ‘Bang-Bang’ Chitty called us just now.  The usual, please.  And tell him to change his password now and then for security purposes: they’re meant to be one-time devices.  Bill it to the usual account.”

“Sure, whatever.”
“Thank you, Paula.”
“Fuck off.”
“Goodbye.”

Kuble walked back into his bathroom and checked the temperature with his hand.  Yes, still just about perfect.  It was time. 

The phone rang and he sighed from the bottom of his feet all the way up to his skull and out his eyesockets and by the time he was done he was at the phone again and it had been ringing uninterrupted for the past six minutes. 

Nothing to be done.  He picked it up. 

“Kettlemaster Kuble.  The only game in town.”

“This is Jagermister Northwestern Secondary School, and we need you to provide a complete set of woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments for our band.”
“What happened to the set I provided last year?”
“They ate the class in the middle of the Christmas concert.”
“Did you feed them meat?”
“Yes.”
“Poultry, goat, beef…?”
“Sheep.”
“Oh.  Well, that could’ve given them a prion disease.  They may have a taste for flesh.”
“They ate the audience too.”

“Probably should notify the authorities.”
“We locked them in the auditorium and have been trying to starve them out.  The budget’s so tight these days.”
“Yes indeed.”
“That reminds me, you’re replacing these free of charge, right?”
Kettlemaster Kuble hung up, grumbled with the despair of a much younger man, and checked his bath’s temperature. 

It was cold, of course.  Typical, just typical.

He still drowned himself in it, because waste not want not.  But really, was it too much to ask? 

On the hundredth day, they were down to hardtack.

On the hundred-and-tenth day, they drew half water.

On the hundred-and- twelfth day, the lookout swore he saw it, fell from the crow’s nest, and broke his neck.  Fevered by lack of water, they decided.

On the hundred-and-fifteenth day, the new lookout called again.

“WHITE WHALE.  STARBOARD.  WHITE WHALE.  STARBOARD.  SHE’S BLOWING.”
And so she was.  A proper giant flume of water and dead air, gasped up from lungs bigger than humans, baked and wrung out and flattened by hundreds of feet and hours underwater.  And all of it spiralling out of the humped head and back of a beast that shone a sickly, murky white. 

The captain walked on deck.  Slowly, with care.  Each beat of his peg-leg a steady drum, his eyes lighting up harder and fierier with every step. 

“After it,” he said.  And that was all the orders given, and that was all the orders needed.  The sails flew, the men hauled, the boats launched, the harpoons flew, and the spray filled the air and the lungs and the hearts of bodies alive and dead as flukes hammered wood and metal bit blubber and in the end for all its size and all its fear and all its fury the metal won out and the great white-domed creature shuddered and dove for the final time, barrels and all, sinking like a stone and dropping out of sight and reach forever.

“It is done,” said the captain.  Nobody countermanded him, nobody spoke of wastage and loss, nobody griped for a good kill lost to the depths.  They rowed back to the ship in silence, they ate their evening meal in peace, and for the first time in forty years the captain went to his berth quietly, and spent the night in a sleep so thorough that he might have been a corpse or a newborn. 

The past was, finally, past. 

At least, until the dawn of the hundred-and-sixteenth-day, when the lookout called, checked himself, rechecked himself, then called. 

“WHITE WHALE.  STARBOARD.  WHITE WHALE TO THE STARBOARD BOW.”
Which was a terrible way for the captain to wake, frankly. 

***

It put up less of a fight this time, which may have been to be expected – and a good thing too, since they had fewer boats and fewer irons (and fewer men).  But the hate was back in the heart and eyes and tongue of their captain, so they bent themselves to their tasks with a will – a fearful, trembling will, but a will nonetheless – and where there is a will there is a way, and so it was, and was, and was done.

This time they riddled the thing with barrels and took its heart at the surface, lances turning its death-plume bright red and speckling them all with rich, living blood.  The captain’s boat was closest, and as he looked into the beast’s dying eyes the men all swore independently and secretly that he fare looked as though he’d been drinking from it.  His beard was a hearty red that had never grown upon his face, even before age had grizzled him as pale as the whale’s hide. 

They took it apart over days and nights, every piece of blubber, every jot of flesh, every dram of oil.  The bones they could take they took aboard, and they burned them as if they were kindling, then coals – spreading them into the air as rankest soot.  The captain stood closest to the flames and the wrinkles on his face smoothed; from the ashes or something deeper inside nobody could say. 

At length there was no whale.  At length there was no fire.  And at length, once again, the ship did what it never was meant to do, and lay idle with the sweet tenderness of accomplishment and the anticipation of the future. 

***

On the hundred-and-twenty-sixth day, the lookout shrieked and threw himself from the rigging into the waves, and sank without further incident.  If his replacement hadn’t been clambering up the rigging at the moment he might never have been missed; as it was it was a mystery for only the handful of seconds it took for the man to scan the horizon.

“Whale,” he said, to himself, to double-check.  “White whale.  Port this time.  But the white whale.”

Then he said it again.  And again, but louder.  And again, but rising into an ungodly shriek, and again, and again, until eight men were sent aloft to drag him down, two to each limb.  He fought them not, but his fingers and toes were rigid with a tension from hell and needed to be pried loose each at once and all together. 

The captain did not watch this.  The captain gave no orders.  But he watched the horizon with a face that didn’t belong to a human being or any living thing at all, and things proceeded as he wished.

The chase.  The boats.  The lance.  The death.  He held it himself this time, twisted it deep with muscles that shouldn’t have held the strength they did, mouth turning and working itself into strange shapes as the life eeled out of the beast’s core in shudders and convulsions.  It died painfully and quickly, and he would not stop, did not stop, was still worrying and tearing at the body as the men harvested it and boiled it and butchered it.  When they cut loose the last of the carcass to the sharks he seemed fane to dive after it, and his hands on the lancer were covered in more blood than just the whale’s.

***

On the hundred-and-thirty-eighth day, the lookout came down from the crow’s nest and spoke calmly to the first mate, who consulted with the second mate, who spoke to the third and fourth mates, and who knows what decisions would have been made if the captain hadn’t stirred himself to the deck and demanded answers from the lookout in person.

It was on the starboard, to stern.

***

On the hundred-and-fiftieth day (port, bow), the blades came out well before the boats were launched, and the guns, and the words. 

The captain had no gun.  He had no words.  But he had something much worse inside of him, and that was enough to make it an indecisive affair where the crew took their sides by fear and fought for terror, and that was probably what set the ship ablaze.  Nothing catches flame quite as nicely or quickly as fear.

One hundred miles away, just over a few horizons, there was a small island with a pleasantly swirling offshore current, good for plankton and small fish.  And there the birds dove and swirled and spiralled and shat in brilliant white, upon sea and wave and the sun-dappled and dozing backs of any passing whales, who had learned centuries ago that this was a good place to daydream.

There would be fewer of them for a little while, but the past is a small and squalid place, and there are always plenty of futures to hope for. 

It was a little after ten AM when Evermind came by my stand. 

“Hello, my friend Leslie!” it said brightly, all ten legs at eager attention and its thorax at a jaunty angle.  “Are you very busy?”
“Kind of,” I said distractedly.  I’d just put on the last of my first full batch of lunch wieners, and now I was trying to figure out how many buns I wanted ready and waiting.  “Make it quick.”
“I have been murdered!”

“Yeah that’s niwait what?”
Evermind beamed happily at me, then fell over stone dead. 

I went back to unpacking buns until Evermind came back, this time in a cleaner-form. 

“Told you not to do that in front of the stand,” I told it.

“Sorry,” said Evermind apologetically with one mouth as it fed the runner-form into its primary mastication pinchers.  “But I was so excited!  My friend Leslie, I’ve been murdered!  Just like in one of your mystery novels that you so generously have shared with me!”
“How does that even work?”
“I have no idea!  That is why we must find the murderer, to understand how they did such a thing.”
“’We’?”

Evermind’s eyestalks looked everywhere but at me for a second.  “I told the police at first, and they told me to contact the garbagemen.  Then the garbagemen told me to contact the police.”
“Did you tell them it was murder?”
“Yes but they didn’t care.”
“Most people don’t bounce back quite as readily after a murder as you, Evermind.”
“Bounce like a what?”
“Never mind.  You PROMISE this won’t take long?”
“Not long at all – especially with your expert assistance, my friend Leslie!” said Evermind, chitin standing at attention and vibrating with eagerness.

“I just read lots of shitty thrillers, you know.”
“Yes!  Lots!  Making you an expert.”

I gave up and swung the little sign on my stand from OPEN! to BACK IN FIVE!!!  You just couldn’t say no to that face.  Or the other ones in its lower abdomen. 

“Okay,” I said.  “Take me to the crime scene.”
“Wonderful!” cried Evermind, aquiver with violent enthusiasm.  “You’re standing in it.”

“I’m sorry?”
“Yes!  I was murdered in town!”
“More specific than that, please.”
“Oh.  About three blocks south.”

I pursed my lips.  “So… in one of those shady little backalleys the up-and-up restaurants stuff their dumpsters in?”
“You are entirely correct!  I was having lunch.”

***

The crime scene was a mess.  Evermind’s feeder-form had been a big one, rounded and full of delicious nutrients to share with itself.  Something had gone at it with…Christ it was hard to tell.  I wasn’t a police officer; I didn’t even do my own butchering.  It looked like it had been stabbed with a shotgun and then fired into over and over. 

“Behold!  The crime scene!”

“Sec.  Gotta throw up.”
“Of course.”
Luckily there was a dumpster handy.  Luckier still that I was too preoccupied to smell whatever was brewing in it.  “Okay.  Ok.  O.  Right.  Alright, describe what happened.”
“I was murdered!”
“In more detail please.  If possible.”
“Well, I was processing more nutrients from the dumpster you just vomited into.  This is a convenient place to leave a feeder-form – there’s always a nice meal handy, and it’s right along my main trunk.  Under normal circumstances I’d have a runner-form here every three minutes on the minute.”
“You’re not going to starve are you?”
“Only a few dozen of me.  It’s very surprising though!”
I looked at the corpse, then opened the dumpster again. 

“Shall I describe the wounds to you?”
“Hrlllrlpppghgl.”
“There is a powerful incision on the left-”

“SLORT!”

***

“Alright,” I said.  “You can put me down now.”
“Sure thing, my friend Leslie,” said Evermind in the great grey monotone of its hauler-forms.  I’d passed out after the second vomiting fit and in the middle of the third paragraph of a very detailed autopsy, and woken up being courteously held upside-down so my breakfast would leak out my mouth instead of down my windpipe. 

“Alright.  Alright.  Okay.  So… you have no idea what did this to you.”
“No.  I was alone when it happened, and didn’t see who did it.  The blow came from behind me.”

“We need witnesses.  Anyone who might’ve seen what happened?”
“Trudy might have.”
I squinted up the seven feet of chiseled Evermind-abdominals.  “Trudy?”
“My neighbour, Trudy.  She lives two dumpsters down from my murder scene.”
“Oh.  We should talk to her.”

“Excellent.  Onwards.”
“Yeah.”

“My friend Leslie, are you going to get up anytime soon.”

“Yeah I just need a moment.”
“Because I can carry you.”
“I’m aware.”
“It would be no problem.”
“It’s fine.”
“Because I know you’re dying to solve this-”

“One minute.  Please.”

***

I knocked on the dumpster for a good twenty seconds before it opened. 

“What?!  Can’t you see it’s noon!”
“Eleven-thirty,” I said. 

“Whatever,” said Trudy, crossly.  “What’re you doing making such a racket?”
“We’re investigating a murder,” said Evermind.

“Oh yeah?  Whose?”
“Mine.”

Trudy stared at it, then at me.  “The hell?”

“Just roll with it,” I said wearily.  “Did you see anything?  Hear anything?”
“When?”
“That’s a good question.  Evermind?”
“Exactly nine twelve AM.”
“I was asleep.  Like I was before you started up with your damned racket just now.  Why the hell would I notice something if I were asleep?”
“Evermind was being murdered sixteen feet away from you with some sort of giant blade or firearm?”
“None of my damned business, frankly.  You heard the sounds this one makes when it’s eating?  I don’t pay attention anymore.  Maybe the retired guy did it, now fuck off and leave me alone.”

“The retired guy?”
Trudy’s dumpster slammed shut about a centimeter shy of my fingers. 

I looked up at Evermind’s sensory plate.  “The retired guy?”
“Oh yes.  LMT-CQ04281.  He’s in the square we walked through to get here.”
“I didn’t see anyone else around.”
“He lives in the exact center of it, my friend Leslie.  You can’t miss him.”

***

“You know, this is a bit awkward,” I said.

HOW.

“I thought you were a statue at first.”

OH.  THAT HAPPENS A LOT.  DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.

“Yes sir.”
NO NEED FOR THAT.  I’M RETIRED AND YOU’RE NOT UNDER MY COMMAND.
“Yes sir.”

WHAT CAN I HELP YOU TWO WITH.
“I’ve been murdered,” said Evermind proudly – or as proudly as it could emote with a voicebox shaped like a little grey rubik’s cube. 

WELL DONE.  WHO DID IT.

“You don’t know?”
I HAD MY INFRASONAR DECOMISSIONED OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE PRIVACY OF MY FELLOW CITIZENS.  MY SENSORY RANGE IS LIMITED TO SIGHT AND SOUND, AND I LACK EASY ACCESS TO THAT ALLEYWAY FROM MY POSITION.  THE BEST I CAN OFFER IS I HEARD SOUNDS INDICATING A FATALITY AT THE MOMENT EVERMIND HAS ALREADY DESCRIBED TO YOU.
“Damnit.”
TRY ASKING THE FISH AND CHIPS PLACE.
“I’m sorry?”
THEY HAVE A CAMERA POINTED AT THEIR DUMPSTER.  LIABILITY REASONS.

“Oh.  Sure.  Thank you.  Sir.”

LMT-CQ04281 waved farewell to us and then settled back into a crouching position, all seven meters and sixteen tons of it.

“I thought most of the war criminalizer droids went to quiet places.  Mountain peaks.  Oceanic trenches.”
“Oh, the CQ-models prefer more urban environments.  The right balance of open sightlines and confined horizons is essential to a proper and healthy state of mind.”
“You talk a lot?”
“Absolutely.  We’re best friends.”
“How many best friends do you have again, Evermind?”
“Approximately 38% of the population of this planet, my friend Leslie.”
“Way to make me feel special.”
“You’re welcome,” said Evermind.  And then it reached the end of its hauler-form’s life cycle and expired on the pavement next to me. 

***

“Look,” I said in exasperation, “there’s been a murder.”
“If it’s THAT thing,” said the waiter tersely, “it’s just pest control.”
“That is very hurtful,” said Evermind’s observer-form from my shoulder.

“Shut up.  You’re more eyeball than anything right now, I don’t have to pretend to like you.”
“Oh come on we just need thirty seconds of security footage.”

“Get out or I will call the police.”
I took a moment to decide whether or not I’d regret never eating fish and chips here again.  It wasn’t a long moment. 

“Catch,” I said. 

“What?” said the waiter.

“What?” said Evermind. 
I gently plucked Evermind from my shoulder and lobbed it underhand into the waiter’s lap. 

“AUGH!” said the waiter.

“Oh goodness!” said Evermind.
“Good catch.” I said.  And I walked into the backroom while the waiter was trying to detach sixteen sucker-covered tendrils from their arms.  Six monitors, two of which were turned off.  Three of them were security cam footage.  One of them was pointed at the dumpster, Evermind still sprawled in front of it.

I rewound.

Password?
I entered ‘password1’ and to the everlasting shame of my species it worked, and I beheld the face of the murderer as it finished gutting its prey, because it stopped and turned to the camera and waved with a big happy smile.

“Happy birthday, my friend Leslie!” said Evermind, on the monitor.

“Happy birthday, my friend Leslie!” said Evermind, in the hands of the waiter. 

“GET OUT!” said the waiter.

“Oh for FUCK’S sake,” I said. 

***

And to top it all off, I missed the lunch rush. 

Professor Tiana Pilkin’s Biannual List of Most Obnoxious Teeth

Some of my younger readers will have grown up reading this column, and to them I say thank you, and welcome.  Some of my older readers will recognize some of its contents, and to them I say ‘some things never change.’  Some of my crabbier, more opinionated older readers will complain about repetition and to them I say they can take a long walk off a short dock and play count-the-dentition with a crocodile.  If you’re so smart, you can do better.

Anyways, here’s the damned list. 

Anything in a Crocodile’s Mouth

This is the problem with being an expert in your field: you get invited to do all kinds of experimental procedures.  No, measuring a crocodile’s mouth for dentures is neither ‘trivial’ nor ‘perfectly safe.’  Especially if you cheaped out on the anesthetic.  Thank you very much, Sogelvale Turnpike Zoological Gardens.  I miss you, but not nearly as much as I miss that settlement payout.  Or my right pointer. 

Chompsticks

Chopsticks are perfectly valid utensils that are not improved at all by having human dentition attached to them, or by being surgically implanted into the jaw.  I have testified against Dr. Mervin Plonc sixteen times under oath to say this and I have no doubt I will do so again quite gladly. 

The Crooked Left Canine of Joshua Semaphore Ulysses

Possibly the only case of non-Euclidean AND non-hyperbolic anatomy I have ever encountered in my career.  Cameras break.  X-rays jam.  My assistant’s eyes boiled in their sockets.  All attempts to manually correct the tooth have failed either manually or mechanically due to the sudden and violent introduction of 3-4 unfamiliar dimensions into the patient’s mouth along with the removal of at least 2 familiar ones.  I’d recommend it as a site of global importance if it weren’t impossible to observe it without causing gratuitous harm to the observer. 

Elephant Dental Batteries

These are closer to cobblestones than teeth, and they’re almost impossible for me to replace without my patient chewing my head off.  So what if they’re going to die without them?  I’ll die without my head.  If they don’t like dying they shouldn’t try to kill me.  Thank you very much AGAIN, Sogelvale Turnpike Zoological Gardens, and you’re very fucking welcome.  

Fangs

Classic look is offset by inadequacy of human lips, resulting in long-term dental decay via long-term unprotected exposure to air.  ‘Dracula with cavities’ is nobody’s idea of impressive, to say nothing of the odour.  And let’s be honest: the version of Dracula you’re imagining is either inspired by Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, not the original hairy-palmed paranoid British metaphor for a terror of being infiltrated by evil eastern Europeans. 

Fingers

Keep them out of your mouth.  If someone’s fingers must go in there, they should be mine.  I know what I’m doing and it’s unlikely you’re remotely qualified. 

Giant Bony Shears

Not actually teeth.  Leave these in the mouth of Dunkleosteus, where they belong.  If it only worked once for one dead fish it isn’t worth doing twice. 

Giant Keratinous Beaks

Seem multipurpose and simple to maintain – and they are – but result in unfortunate ‘turtleface’ syndrome and occasionally self-severance of fingers and/or tongue.  Also they aren’t teeth. 

Giant Mangling Dental Mats

See: giant keratinous beaks.  Although they tend to grind, rather than sever.  And they are teeth. 

Giant Metal Gnashing Plates

Actually, you can just put down the entire catalogue of Dr. Morbidia Von Stecklehommer here.  Or should I say, “Lauren Peck.”  That’s right, LAURIE.  I remember you.  Couldn’t make the big grades so you ducked out of dental school early and set up shop as a common back-alley mad dentist, eh?  I knew you were a failure.  Always did. 

Inscissors

Fly in the face of the actual use of incisors – to nip, to slice, to cut – by adding a wholly unnecessary dimension to the cutting face.  Also present a tremendous slicing hazard to the nose. 

K9s

Excessive.  Most people barely get full use out of their K2s.  Typically the extra K7 end up crammed in and around the front of the mouth, but in some cases they end up sort of vertically-stacked and invade the nasal cavity, resulting in unique forms of self-mutilation when sneezing occurs. 

Lead Teeth

Yes, they’re historic.  No, they’re not a good idea.  So what if the romans used them?  If the romans invaded all their neighbours and had civil war as a national sport, would you do that too?

Molar Bears

Good for grinding tough matter, calm, authoritative, inquisitive but can become nuisances if habituated by garbage and are currently facing extinction via anthropogenic climate change. 

Needles

These aren’t teeth.  And if your teeth are like them, please contact me as soon as possible so I can assist you.  Or laugh. 

Open Cavity in the Skull with No Jaw or Teeth or Esophagus

I’m still not sure why this patient was referred to me.  And I will likely never know, since I fired that receptionist immediately afterwards. 

Postpremolars

Too damned confusing, spatially speaking.  And to make matters worse, in commonwealth countries they come AFTER the premolars, while in the states they come BEFORE the premolars.  I’ve seen a lot of poorly-aimed surgical procedures thanks to that little terminological gap. 

Quasincisors

Powerful tools for shearing through tough plant matter, but the plant matter is required to exist in an extra four dimensions, two of which render it invisible.  Impractical, fancy, high-maintenance, and frequently disintegrate standard matter on contact, which isn’t great if you like having a tongue. 

Turkeys

They are not teeth but they irritate me so. 

Tusks

Leave them to the walruses, elephants, and other creatures that are used to navigating spatial environments with two giant protrusions jutting out of their faces.  For humans, this is the facial equivalent to running with untied shoelaces. 

Tyrannosaurus rex teeth in general

They’re not razors.  They’re more like bananas, or maybe railroad spikes.  Everyone calls them razors, but they’re possibly the least razor-like objects you could find in a predator’s mouth.  Murder bananas are a perfectly acceptable kind of tooth but everyone seems embarrassed about them. 

‘Wisemouth’

An interesting effect to observe but not a pleasant one to deal with.  Plenty of people don’t need the paltry amount of wisdom teeth they’re born with; dealing with them slowly multiplying and pushing out your existing teeth in a ghastly parody of exfoliation is something in even less demand.  And they’re not wise.  If they were wise, they wouldn’t pull this crap. 

Wolverines

Again, not teeth.  No matter how carefully you’ve trained them, or how ambitious your plans for miniaturizing them are.  Cheap sensationalism is a lousy replacement for effort, thought, or care.  Isn’t that right, LAURIE? 

Professor Tiana Pilkin is Dentist Emeritus and Dean of Enamel at Wurblemass’s Institute of Highest Dental Learning.  She has seven degrees, countless awards, and one-and-three-quarters fingers. 

Smokewater Drive was a good street.  Quiet.  Expensive.  Covered with millions of gallons of grass. 

On that day it also had a squad car.  Empty, like a snailless shell. 

It sat in front of 148 Smokewater Drive, and that was most certainly NOT empty.   Stuffed, cramped, overflowing, bulging, crammed, those were the words for the dining room.  Everyone from the corner of Smokewater and Clarence on, all squished into every chair and every corner and Mr. Wallthroose was sitting on the table.  Mrs. Chinbone and Mrs. Wallthroose had tried very thoroughly to persuade him to move, but he was feeling deaf at the moment and wasn’t budging. 

This minor drama aside, all focus was on the man of the hour, of the plan, on Mr. Burton Q. Benthic.  He was short and moustached and astonishingly bald.  He didn’t gleam; he somehow exuded light from every dead would-be-follicle, every pore.  If the power had blown out in the house, Benthic’s skull would have lit the room quite comfortably and indefinitely. 

“I suppose you’re all wondering why I gathered you here today,” he said. 

“It’s about the murder,” said Walburt Heddington. 

“Yeah,” said Mrs. Wallthroose. 

“Obviously,” said Edith Goose.

“Yes, yes, get ON with it,” said Mrs. Chinbone.  “Come ON, Mr. Wallthroose!”

“Can’t,” said Mr. Wallthroose serenely.  “Waiting for the murder.”
“There’s already been a murder!”
“Exciting part’s already over then.  Not budging.”
“OFF!”
“Alright, alright, alright, settle down,” said Benthic.  “Fine.  I’ll tell you.  It’s about the murder.”
“Knew it.”
“OFF THE TABLE!”
“No.”
“Yes, it’s about the murder,” said Walburt Heddington, peevishly.  “We all knew that.  Shut up and get on with the damned thing.  What’s the news and who did it?”

“I’m here to reveal that I know who committed this crime, the killing of local garbageman Henry P. Floss, on his Thursday route, on this very street!”
“Yeah, yeah, put up or shut up,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.  “Get talking!”

“First, I will explain how I came to my conclusions, in excruciating detail.”
“Boring,” complained Mr. Wallthroose.  “Hurry up!”
“My first suspects were you and your wife, Mr. Wallthroose,” said Benthic, twinkling smugly in his own balding incandescence.  “You had the motive: an overflowing recycling bin, obviously caused by Mr. Floss refusing to accept your recycling last week-”

“Bullshit we did NOT put the cardboard and plastic together, he was lazy and-”
“-and you most certainly possessed the means, in the form of Mr. Wallthroose’s collection of antique haberdashery blades.”
“Originals,” said Mr. Wallthroose proudly.
“But you lacked that most crucial of elements: opportunity.  You are known snorers according to your neighbour, and never awaken before 10 AM on a weekday.”

“Jackass,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.

“Hey now!” said Walburt Heddington.

“Poltroon,” said Mr. Wallthroose.

“Look, I’m just saying!”
“So it can’t have been the Wallthrooses.  Of course, what of Mr. Heddington?  Unlike the Wallthrooses, he is an early riser – as a peeping tom, he has to be, in order to set up his camera network that peers into your bedrooms and bathrooms every morning.  That kind of complex system costs money to maintain, update, and operate.  And of course, they could be used to memorize Mr. Floss’s route, memorizing the exact moments at which he might let his guard down to scratch his groin or eat a snack or urinate on someone’s lawn.  Such as he did every week to Mr. Heddington’s lawn, as verified by the small patch of dead grass next to his driveway.  Motive and opportunity both!”
“Hey, I never-”

“But not only is Mr. Heddington lacking in firearms, he is a noodly person with feeble arms and no grip strength, while Mr. Floss was a robust specimen at six foot three inches with arms like a gorilla.  No, Mr. Heddington lacks method, or at the very least, proper armaments.  His rage must remain fully impotent.”
“Hahahahahahaha,” said Edith Goose, politely. 

“Oh my goodness, tee hee,” said Mrs. Chinbone.

“Heh heh heh heh,” observed Mr. Wallthroose.  “What’s so funny?”
“He’s IMPOTENT,” said Mrs. Wallthroose into his ear.

“Oh.  But what’s the joke?”
There was a very brief and very simple and sad struggle to keep Walburt Heddington from violence until he got tuckered out. 

“Right,” said Benthic, mopping his radiant scalp with a handkerchief that came away shining as if it were diamond-laced.  “Where was I?  Oh yes, Walburt Heddington is impotent.”
“Heh heh heh he-”

“Shut up, Mr. Wallthroose.  So what of Edith Goose?  She’s young and strong and the provincial shot-put champion, and has a clean line of fire from her bedroom window to her garbage pickup location.  Furthermore, Mr. Floss’s skull was crushed by a large, heavy object!  Furthermore, she is a known early riser due to the demands of her training!  Furthermore, she has been repeatedly ogled and cat-called by Mr. Floss!  Method, motive, and opportunity!”

“Three ‘furthermores’?” said Edith.  “Really?”
“Excuse me,” said Benthic crossly, “but I’m trying to dramatically implicate you.”
“Yes, but come on.  Three?”
“Shut up,” said Benthic.

“Make me.”
“Alright, alright, alright.  Fine.  Anyways, yes, Ms. Goose does indeed possess all three essential qualities to any good murderer, but in addition to having his skull crushed Mr. Floss was also electrocuted, stabbed, strangled, and shot.  Although I’m certain Ms. Goose has knives and rope in her home, this all seems a bit excessive for one murderer.  Speaking of which, we come to Mrs. Chinbone.”
“Oh wonderful!” exclaimed the lady in question.  “This is so exciting!”
“Indeed,” said Benthic. 

“Not you.  You’re sort of boring.  And you smell funny, like skulls and oil.”

“Be quiet.  Now, Mrs. Chinbone.  You have despised Mr. Floss for years: the garbage department has no less than sixteen annual complaints on record from you for the past three years, all of them relating to Mr. Floss and his conduct.  You took an instant dislike to him for picking his nose and wiping it on his pants, fumed when he stepped on your lawn, and got into an argument about him about whether Batman could beat Spider-man.”
“Batman doesn’t have radioactive blood.  The whole idea is nonsense, and I told him as much.”
“Indeed.  Motive, you are not lacking in.  Opportunity?  You have time on your hands to spare.  But method?  Mrs. Chinbone, you are – permit me to be blunt – as frail as a clay pigeon.  You couldn’t hurt a fly, let alone Mr. Floss.”

“There you are, then,” said Mrs. Chinbone.  “And you aren’t too swole yourself, young man, so kindly watch those stones you’re casting from your glass home.”

“I undergo the same physical training as the rest of the department.  But that is neither here nor-”

“Lifting donuts, perhaps.”
“Shut up,” intoned Benthic gravely. 
“Make me, you impudent little scamp.”
“ANYWAYS, what Mrs. Chinbone does have interests me a good motive.  Everyone in this room has a good reason – well, a reason, anyways – to want Henry P. Floss dead, although some of you lacked the means and others lacked the opportunity.  But you all would have wanted him a corpse.  And now we must return again, to the curiously mutilated nature of the body.”

“Are you going to accuse us of pulling a murder on the orient express?” demanded Mrs. Wallthroose.  “Because frankly, I’d rather be dead than cooperate with that Walburt creep on anything.”
“Hey!”
“Same,” said Edith Goose.  “And no offence, but I don’t think I’d need that much help to kill someone.”
“Kill someone?” inquired Mr. Wallthroose with interest. “Who?  The detective?”

“Christ no,” said Benthic hastily. 

“Excuse me,” inquired Mrs. Chinbone, “but I’ve never read ‘murder on the orient express.”
“He’s insinuating we all murdered Henry together,” said Edith Goose. 

“Oh.”

“More implying, more implying,” said Benthic.  “But now we must consider a final clue: the piece of porcelain embedded in Mr. Floss’s left sole.”

Everyone sat there. 

“Well?”
“Stop screwing around,” said Mrs. Wallthroose flatly.

“Yeah, get to the point,” said Walburt Heddington. 

“Fine,” said Benthic.  “Look at this piece of china: does it look familiar?”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Chinbone.  “It’s from my favourite teapot!  I broke it last week.  Such a pity, I was enjoying a nice cup and then there was this awful noise from outside-”

“That was me,” interjected Edith Goose.  “I’d crushed one of Walburt’s cameras between my hands and was screaming at him.”
“Oh my.  I thought it was cats making love.  Anyways, I dropped the teapot.  Had to junk it.”
“Just so.  Mrs. Chinbone, how much garbage do you produce in a week?”
“About a ha’-pound, after holidays.”
“I see.  And in your experience, is Mr. Floss a cautious man?”
“Goodness no.”
“So we might presume that Mr. Floss might carelessly heavy your bag onto his shoulder, expecting little to no resistance, and suffer incisions due to his laissez-faire attitude?”

“Oh why not!” said Mrs. Chinbone cheerfully. 

“Quite so!  He cut his shoulder, then dropped the bag on his foot and suffered further injuries.  Vexing, and likely deeper than he suspected, but not enough to keep him from his duty.  So he proceeded to Mr. Heddington’s residence, where he emptied the trash in a bad mood, as can be seen by the violence with which he threw it in haphazardly, in these photos of the dump truck.  After that came the Wallthrooses, and here is where things begin to go awry: Mr. Wallthroose, do you recognize this gun?”
“Never seen it,” said Mr. Wallthroose, very quickly. 
“Wait a sec,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.

“No, put it away.”
“Wait a sec.  Wait one cotton-fucking second.  Herman, you piece of shit – you threw out my elephant gun!”
“No I didn’t!”
“You did!  You threw out my grandmother’s rifle!  This is an antique!  You can’t get ‘em like this anymore!”
“Said you’d shoot me with it!”
“It was a joke!”
“You don’t joke six cups in!”
“I’m HILARIOUS six cups in!”
“Not where I’m sitting!”
“Excuse me,” said Benthic, “but I’m solving a crime here.  Now, see how it’s been fired recently?”
“You threw out my grandmother’s rifle fully-loaded?!”
“You kept it loaded?”

“Just in case!”
“Case of what?  Elephants?”

“Shut up,” said Benthic politely.  “Now, Mr. Floss was hasty in his pain, and as he stuffed the Wallthroose household’s garbage away, he seems to have inadvertently fired this gun into his left shoulder.  The pain sent him staggering backwards – even though it missed any large veins or arteries by some miracle, it shattered his bones quite badly – and he put his foot into Ms. Goose’s trash, where it crushed the already-mangled remains of Mr. Heddington’s surveillance camera.”
“That’s his fault, legally, right?” asked Edith Goose.

“Hey!”
“Shut up, creep.”
“Anyways, he then spasmed his way into the back of his truck, where an item of Mr. Heddington’s trash – a USB cable, I believe – was dislodged and became tangled around his neck.  In his thrashing, oxygen-deprived, electrically-shocked state, Mr. Floss lost all sense of balance and reason and half-choked himself to senselessness before falling over and smashing his brains out on the sidewalk.  An act of god caused by negligent trash disposal.  Quite rare.”

He smiled at the room.  

“So the murderer is….nobody?” asked Edith Goose.

“Quite so.”
“What’s that, a reverse orient express?” asked Mrs. Wallthroose.

“Maybe!” said Benthic. 

“Are we going to be charged with anything?” asked Walburt Heddington. 

“Oh, the garbage department will send along some small fine or something,” said Benthic.  “And now I must bid you all farewell.”

“Excuse me, young man?” inquired Mrs. Chinbone.  “Do you mean to say that you stressed us all out and wasted a whole street’s time just to inflate your own ego?”
“Quite so,” said Benthic.  “Quite so.”
With a quick tip of his hat, he covered his glowing cranium.  And as the light left, so did he.