jamieproctor.ca

Duke Robswaffle raised a fork to his mouth, chuckling lightly over the thought of finally landing the foreclosure against the Bluebits. His chuckle rattled in his gullet, and he coughed. Then he wheezed. Finally he choked, gasped, gurgled, and fell down face-first in his own breakfast, all his wicked deeds not even affording him the time to panic. The chambermaid screamed.
Outside, Tolb the sub-under-gardener was running the lawnmower and didn’t hear anything. Five minutes later he finished the lawn, put away his tools, and left the estate just before the officers of the law arrived, completely unaware of any ruckus.
He went to a pub down the way, drank a pint of something, lost five bits on a game of cards with a local pal of his that he’d originally won from her anyways, drank a pint again (this time of something larger and meaner), lost ten bits he probably couldn’t afford, said goodbye as politely as he could, and went home.
Home was small and dirty and cramped and shared with a rotation of others. Tolb had a shot of something in an effort to chase away the sure-to-come hangover, ate a dirty biscuit and surly bread, and fell asleep wishing he had some cheese.
The next day he came to work at the Robswaffle estate and found its gates barred.
“What’s going on?” he asked a passerby.
“The Duke is dead!” they told him. “His vile deeds caught up with him!”
“Oh,” said Tolb. “I guess I’d better find other work.”
And he did, at some point.

Lady Whibsy-Herringbone, fifth knife of her line, missed. She missed with grace and skill. She missed with great alacrity. She missed with élan and panache and maybe even vivacity. But the most important part of all of that was that she missed, and so her stubby little blade thunked past Lord Basil Tonington’s nape and smacked into the bark of a nearby tree instead.
“Aha!” said Lord Basil. He drew his own tiny knife and darted around the tree’s fat, firm trunk.
“Aha!” said the Lady, retrieving her knife and pursuing him about the tree. She caught sight of his heel for an instant, a petty instant, and then he was gone again ‘round the trunk, and she was faced with a dilemma.
Clearly Lord Basil would expect her to double back counter-clockwise around the tree and ambush him. Therefore, he would double-back counter-clockwise and ambush HER. Unless he expected her to expect that, and therefore he would NOT double-back and would ambush her clockwise as she attempted to ambush him clockwise. Unless…
Lady Whibsy-Herringbone shook her head as the implications became clear. There was no end to the implications of this tree, either in logic or real circumference. Therefore it would be simplest to keep chasing him in the same direction – to save time turning about – and trust in chance. She thanked providence for her expensive and elite education, and redoubled her pace.
Lord Basil Tonington, of similar stature, wealth, and schooling, expressed much the same thoughts. And so the pursuit stalled.
Three months later the tree, fatally undermined by the trench their circuit had worn about its roots, fell over and crushed them both.

“I’m afraid to tell you this, ma’am,” said the storysage, “but your daughter was born under an evil sign. She’s going to be very evil. Extremely evil.”
“O!” said the queen, who knew how to pronounce solitary letters. “Storysage, please help this cruel fate come not to pass! Raise my daughter so that she becomes an upstanding and beloved queen, rather than a tyrant! Do this for me.”
“Okay,” said the storysage. But the queen was already dead, so really it was a promise made to nobody in particular.
Still, she stuck by it. It gave her something to do.
The queen’s daughter grew older, became extremely evil, and ravaged the land with her mighty armies and mightier sword. Eventually a handsome princess came to defeat her, and – with the secret aid of the queen’s son, a most beautiful prince – she was cast down through the careful exploitation of her secret weakness: a fondness for almonds.
The storysage realized she’d really fouled up that promise, and was pretty glad nobody had heard her make it. She hung around the court making general predictions and so on for many years, but tried not to volunteer aid in dealing with the situations she warned of. “I just tell ‘em as I see ‘em,” she told them. Eventually she retired and passed on the duties to her apprentice, an undistinguished and straightforward young man that had nearly become a cheesemaker instead.

Sam and Robin looked at each other, surrounded by the ruin of their ambitions, and suddenly realized something important.
“Well, despite how much I hate you, my vengeance wasn’t worth it after all, and seems to have left nobody the victor,” said Sam.
“Yeah. You’ve got that right,” said Robin. “Seems correct, if unsatisfying”
“Indeed.”

Ted sat down. “Boy, I’m glad THAT’S over,” he said.

Herman was stooped. His hands hooked like claws – ugly claws, claws from a half-eaten chicken, not the stout, strong nails you’d find on something like a wolverine or a hawk or anything. His back was a bunch of frightened vertebrae huddling together for shelter and warmth in the shadow of his destroyed spinal column. His arms shook like a dead tree in a high wind, and when he coughed there was real venom and spittle behind it, the kind you find in a plague ward. Each lungful warned the body that there might not be another getting in for a few minutes.
But hey. The driveway was clear.
“A pox upon shovelling!” shouted Herman. And then he bent over, wheezing.
“Fie upon shovelling!” he yelled upon getting his breath back, and so immediately lost it again.
“If I had my ‘druthers, I’d never shovel another flake of snow in my entire life, and if there was a way – any way! – to do so, I’d make a pact with the devil himself and gladly shake his hand!”
“Hi,” said the passerby who’d stopped to hear all of this out of polite interest. “Want to see a trick?”
Herman’s death-rattle indicated acquiescence.
The passerby bent over to the roughly-scraped asphalt, picked up a few odds and ends of loose snow, and rolled them around a little, muttering in something that didn’t sound French.
“Here you go.”
Herman looked at what was being offered. It was a snowball.
“Get thee hence, snow,” he said.
“This one’s special. It doesn’t melt.”
Herman screamed.
“No, listen. Shut up. There, your lungs are empty again. Listen while they fill up, okay? Okay. Whatever temperature this thing’s at? That’s the temperature of your driveway. Presto. No more shovelling. I’m leaving before you start up again. You’re welcome.”
The passerby left. Herman still screamed a little once he’d gotten his breath back, just on principle.
He looked at the snowball, unmelting, sat squat on the ground. It filled him with horror. It filled him with fear. He knew it shouldn’t be, shouldn’t even be dreamed of.
But what if.

So Herman brought the snowball inside, put it in a little dish on his counter, and went to sleep with the roar of the storm coming in outside his window. He ground his teeth a lot that night, and when he woke, he was halfway dressed and out the door, shovel in hand, before he’d even opened his eyes.
The driveway was half-empty. The snow that remained had a sullen, sulky, half-melted look to it. It collapsed into slush at a nudge of his boot.
“Wow,” said Herman. “Yikes. Yippee!” He took off his toque and threw it in the air, and then took off his boots and threw them in the air, and then he ran in circles three times around his driveway laughing and drove to work after spending thirty seconds shoving slush out of the way while whistling.
“Boy!” he said to his co-workers and also everyone else he met all day, without pausing for their input, “I sure do love shovelling now! Never been better! Never been easier! Yes, now I can ignore it! It’s great! I love that a bunch! Yay!”
Then he went home, shoveled the driveway for thirty seconds again, and went to bed.
But he stayed up a little. Half out of excitement, half out of worry.
“What if,” he said to himself, “what if this keeps up? Thirty seconds in the morning, thirty seconds in the evening. That adds up. That’s a minute a day. That’s an hour every two months! That’s a lot of wasted time, oh no no no.”
He frowned, and pursed his lips, and whined a little, and fidgeted.
Then he had an idea and went into the kitchen, put the snowball in the oven on a little baking sheet, turned it on, and went to bed again (a major fire hazard by the way; don’t do this).

The driveway steamed wetly in the feeble grey mist that passed for light on a winter morning. Herman danced the dance of those who care nothing for dignity, the glee-jig, the cackle-flip, the hoky-gloaty.
“THIS is what it’s all about!” he yelled, “THIS! THIS RIGHT HERE! THIS!”
Then he went to work, sang loudly the whole day, and came home.
And it was still clear. His neighbours were toiling, their shoulders were hunched, their minds bent around bent plastic, metal, wood. And HE, HERMAN, was going indoors for hot chocolate and smugness.
In the kitchen, he put on the water to boil and paused for a moment.
It was awful warm in there. And hey, what was that smell?
“Ugh,” he said, and opened the oven. Something crusted to the baking sheet had been burning away by degrees for the past fourteen hours. “Gross.”
He cleaned it off, went to bed, and stayed up late.
Thinking.
Well. Twenty four hours a day, with the gas on. Singeing anything that ever got into the oven. Good lord, the gas bills. They’d take his money, they’d take his life! He’d be crippled and hunched again, this time by fearsome debt.
What could he do? What would be warm enough, what would be consistent enough, what could.
“AHA!”
So Herman walked into the kitchen, turned off his (groaning) oven, removed the snowball, and gently, carefully, patiently tossed it into his furnace.
Then he went to bed happy for the last time in a decade.

When Herman woke up again, he was very surprised. Someone had come in while he was asleep and painted his room white, taken away all his belongings, changed him into a sort of backless gown, strapped him into an IV machine, and then put his bedroom inside a hospital.
Then a doctor came into his house, quite uninvited, and asked him how he was feeling.
“Annoyed,” said Herman. “Is it snowing? Will I need to shovel? Oh god, please tell me I won’t need to shovel.”
“Herman,” said the doctor, “your house burned down. This is your fourth day in the hospital.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Do I need to shovel?”
“See this graph? It looks like your car had its tires melt when your driveway became superheated. The rubber spilled onto your lawn, which then also became superheated, which ignited your house. It kept the firefighters busy for forty hours.”
“Oh NO!” said Herman. “Forty hours! Does this mean it snowed again? I bet it has. The forecast was pretty bad, you know. Brr. Shoveling.”

The snowball was never found again, even when Herman moved back in – not that he could remember it, then or ever. He was more or less in one piece, but a part of him was always a little boiled after that.
Never got cold shovelling again, mind you.

In the month of October, on the proper day, a man wearing a strange hat sat in the middle of a dusty old side-road and sang an even-stranger song five times.
Then he left a little bit of folded paper on the road and walked away.

Ten minutes later, a dragon stepped on the paper and stopped cold.
“Oh fuck,” it thought. “Not AGAIN.”

The sorcerer did a little dance. He’d planned it since the night before and so it both lacked spontaneity and showed (unflattering) insight into his character. Especially the little shuffle at the end with the rapid clapping.
“Ha-hah!” he cackled.
The dragon waited.
“Ha-HA!” elaborated the sorcerer.
The dragon waited a little more.
“Ah-HA, HA HA HA, BWA AHA, HA HA, HA. HEH,” concluded the sorcerer. “Right. Dragon!”
“Yes?”
“Beast of the fiery pit!”
“Sure.”
“Fiend of the higher air!”
“Okay.”
“I command thee-”
“Yeah, if you must.”
“-I command thee to grant me wishes three!”
“Three wishes. You don’t have to be fancy about it. Sure. Release me.”
The sorcerer squinted at the dragon down his nose, which was tricky because it was pretty small and somewhat adorably button-like. “Do you – do thee think me a fool, wyrm? Thine confabulations and deceit shall find no purchase within me! Swear to me by the fire, by the air, and by the blood that make up yourst bits!”
The dragon held up a claw. “Right. I swear. Done. Let me out.”
“Did thou-”
“Cross my hearts and hope to die, pull off my wings just like a fly. And please stop saying ‘thou’ ‘thee’ and ‘thy’ and anything else like that.”
This seemed to annoy the sorcerer.
“Fine, you’re bound. Three wishes are mine! For my first wish I desire…dominion over men and women!”
“’Dominion?’” asked the dragon.
“What?”
“Oh, forget it,” said the dragon, and it flapped its wings and launched from the ground with all four limbs at terrifying speed, kicking up a windburst that sent the sorcerer’s pants over his head and his ass over his teakettle.
An hour later, it returned.
“Climb aboard,” it told the sorcerer. And he did, and it launched again and this time he was there to see the explosion of force from the other side, to gawp in surprise as the whole world became as small and unreal and far away as a picture in a child’s book of bedtime stories.
Then they landed, and he fell off.
“This is Stebs Hill,” said the dragon. “I asked around town for the deed, here it is, you now possess a dominion over the six hundred twenty five men and seven hundred fourteen women of the visible horizon from this point. It was pretty cheap; the soil up here’s garbage and there’s no prospects for mining or quarrying. No wonder everyone else around here lives in the valley.”
“Barf,” said the sorcerer.
“Yes. Barf indeed.”
“You twisted my words!” yelled the sorcerer, hastily scrubbing the bitter juice from the corners of his mouth.
“Me?” asked the dragon. “No. Not really. I just misinterpreted them. I mean, I assume I did, since you’re so angry. Unless you wished for something you hated?”
The sorcerer paced seven mystic circles into the summit of Stebs Hill, chanted some ominous words that sounded suspiciously like swears, and made elaborate, thaumaturgical gestures in the direction of the dragon and the dragon’s friends and family.
“Dragon!” he shouted.
“Well, yes, we already-”
“Worm with wings!”
“It’s got a ‘y’ in i-”
“Carrion-thirster, goat-fucker!” said the sorcerer, with more spittle than words.
“What? And that was just o-”
“DO AS I SAY AND COMMAND,” shrieked the sorcerer, “and GRANT ME WEALTH BEYOND MORTAL UNDERSTANDING!”
The dragon shrugged and took off in the same instance, an economy of motion only available to a very lucky subset of vertebrates. The sorcerer coughed his lungs out for the duration of its absence, a hardship shared by many smokers.
“Climb on again,” said the dragon.
The sorcerer climbed on again. This time he shut his eyes for the entire flight, out of principal, spite, and the suspicion that he was within rights to demand a refund.
Thump.
The sorcerer opened his eyes again. They were standing on the (slightly smouldering) remains of a pea garden, outside a university.
“Their philosophy classes were all fully occupied, and you have no accreddition,” said the dragon, “but I removed a few of the excess students and a few officials and now they’re open to you staying until your degree is complete.”
“wealth,” said the sorcerer, blankly. “grant.”
“It’s SORT of a grant,” said the dragon. “Or maybe more like a fund. Or insurance. Incineration insurance. I guess protection money’s less oblique.”
“Stop,” said the sorcerer, recovering a part of himself that had slipped from his body. “Go. Go away. With me. Now.”
This time the sorcerer watched the clouds in the sky. They looked like faces. They looked like they were laughing at him.
“Why?” he asked the dragon.
“Why what?”
“Why have you done this?!” screamed the sorcerer into the wind. “I’ve asked nothing that wasn’t within your power! I’ve asked only what you could gran – GIFT me, with the barest of efforts! Less effort than your idiotic games have cost you! Why torment me thus – are you so depraved, so wicked, so perverse?!”
“Look,” said the dragon, “here’s the thing: if we’re having problems, it’s because I can barely understand most of this language I’m using – I learned my first when I was eight hundred and nine. I’d never understood the idea of anything else having thoughts. I’d never understood the idea of communicating anything, to anyone, ever. Frankly, it’s amazing I haven’t eaten you yet in a fit of solipsism, spell or no spell. Me and you communicating at ALL is more than you should ask for, and you’re just quibbling over the wording.”
The sorcerer opened his mouth, shut it, opened it, made a hissing sound like a kettle, puffed up like a toad, twittered like a songbird, and slumped over like a man who’d just had his every dream skewered with a sharpened steeple.
“Take me home,” he said.
“Sure thing,” said the dragon. And it dropped him over a volcano.
The sorcerer tried to make a wish on the way down, but the screaming made it very difficult to concentrate and besides it was his fourth anyways, and therefore null and void as all fourth wishes are.
The dragon then made a wish for a nap, settled into the volcano, and worked on fulfilling it. Which it did, although there were a few uncomfortable twists into the second decade, when its leg fell asleep.

“Health card, please.”
The man had been in line for three minutes. The man had seen six people hand over their health card. The man was completely astonished to learn so suddenly that he, too had a health card – and what’s more, somebody might ever want to see it. He scuffled through all his pockets one after another, pulled out a big wad of mashed Kleenexes, checked all his pockets again, pulled out his keys and dropped them and picked them up again, checked all his pockets a third time and found his health card in his wallet in the first pocket he looked, and did all of this while keeping up a running commentary of ‘ohh,’ ‘ahh,’ ‘err,’ ‘sorry,’ and ‘I’m sure it was…’
The assistant gave the man a friendly, patient smile that had nothing to do with reality, took the health card, scribbled in a folder, and handed it back carefully instead of throwing it at his head. “Down the hall, to your left. The Waiting Room.”
“Oh, the waiting room.”
“No, the Waiting Room.”
“Oh. My second left?”
“Your first.”
“My left or your left?”
“Yours.”
“Right now, or the way I was when I was facing you?”
“Right now.”
“Right now or left now?”
“Health card, please,” said the assistant to the next person in line.
The man stood there for a little while until he realized he wasn’t getting any more attention, then wandering off. It was on his first left.

It, of course, was the Waiting Room.

The Waiting Room was coloured in beige and boredom, and decorated in soft ‘80s numbness. The air tasted like it hadn’t moved since the 40s, and the floor grumbled angrily when used. A big wooden door at the far end sealed away the doctor, behind oaken sternness and a big overhead bell that looked capable of summoning a most foreboding DING.
There was also a clock, which ticked with the wet, rhythmic firmness of an epiglottis.
The man didn’t notice any of this because he was busy gawping at the room’s inhabitants. Most of them were people like him, except the ones that weren’t.
There was a woman biting her nails. Her hands moved, even as she chewed, so it looked a bit like she was wrestling with her own head.
There was a man with a tie and a truly tremendous amount of sweat, which he was furiously adding to every second. Fresh droplets beaded on his face as if from a shower-head. His flesh appeared to have compensated for all of this by sucking itself as close to his bones as possible, maybe in hopes that it could cling on as the rest of its mass was sweated away.
And there was a small child inside eight layers of blankets, in a basket, screaming. Its parent had submerged their entire face into the basket, and was as invisible as the child itself, if a good deal quieter.
“Gosh,” goggled the man, eyes wide and mouth half-open. His lips glistened, his tongue half-protruded. “Woah,” he said loudly, just to be sure everyone in the room understood where they stood with him and his opinion. “Jeepers!” he said with the fierceness of a curse, and then he sat down in the nearest chair with violent force.
Then he got up, took off his coat, put it on three separate coathangers, and sat down again twice as hard. He made a little tune up in his head and hummed it, in precisely the reverse of that order.
But it couldn’t last.
“Hi!” he said to the sweating man.
The sweating man nodded. This tiny motion caused about half a cup of moisture to splash off his neck and drench his tie, changing every single colour on it to something dank and hideous. He turned pale – even paler.
“Boy! What’re you in for?”
The sweating man mumbled something that included the word ‘fever.’
“Boy that’s tough! Gosh! You know, I had a fever one time. Ate a big salad. Old home remedy. NEVER fails. Ever. You know, it’s because it’s full of vitamins. Good for you, vitamins. Vitamin A’s the best one, a cousin of mine’s a doctor and he did a paper that said-”
The bell above the big wooden door went DING. It sounded like schools and amusement parks and forgotten stovetop timers. It was very foreboding.
The sweating man stood up, mumbled something furiously, and ran away. Every footstep squelched and turned into a sucking, lamprey-tinged gasp.
There was a quiet three seconds.
“Hi!” said the man to the woman biting her nails.
She paused for a moment in her chewing.
“How’re you doing?”
She began again, then accelerated.
“Nervous eh? You know, I was nervous once. But my momma told me a special old family secret. You have to peel an orange and put it in your eyes. Then you blink as hard as you can for five minutes. It gets the vitamin Cs where they should be, you know.”
The woman biting her nails stuffed both hands into her mouth and began to grind her teeth furiously.
“Vitamin C isn’t as good as vitamin A of course – or even vitamin B! – but it’s in the top three. Obviously, since they’re alphabetical. And it’s not all THAT weak either – I remember I drank way too much orange juice once and I got too much vitamin C and I almost poisoned myself, although the doctors said it was water poisoning. They were just trying to keep me calm because I was so little; vitamin C poisoning is scary stuff, my mom told me. That’s why you’ve got to make sure it gets in your eyes and not your ears. Otherwise it can leave you numbed and frostbitten and anti-social, which is bad for anyone – not that I’ve not heard a complaint directed at chatterboxes, mind you! Once I went on for a while and it drove my poor old dad so nuts he had to spank me three ways, one for each cheek and an entirely new one all of his own invention. A bit harsh, but I learned my lesson, and I only talk to strangers now, or at least mostly. Common in my family. Anyways, I tend to go on like that, pardon me for not giving you a word in edgewise. Hey, what’s your favourite colour?”
The woman biting her nails was up to her elbows.
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll wait ‘till you’re through. Don’t want to make you talk with your mouth full. So my aunt once-”
DING.
The woman biting her nails lurched upright, fell over, and furiously rolled through the big wooden door.
“Good luck!” called the man. Then he leaned back and sighed. Then he snorted. Then he started humming again, whistled for a few seconds, hummed some more, yawned, stretched, started to snore, jolted violently awake again (knocking over half a table of magazines) and stared at the parent and their child for four minutes hoping they’d take their head out of the child’s carry-basket for a second and make eye contact.
At last, he didn’t care.
“H-”
“We’re contagious,” said the parent.
“W-”
“One more syllable and you’ll catch it.”
The man shut his mouth. “Golly!” he thought loudly. Then he started to clean his nails by picking them off. Some of the pickings he ate – maybe to see what the woman biting her nails had been up to, experimentally – and some of them he simply flicked to see how far they would fly.
One of them flecked off the bell above the big wooden door, which went ‘ding.’ The parent stood up, grabbed their child, and ran through the door so fast the man had no time to see their face. From somewhere in the distance, someone (the doctor?) shouted something rude.
For want of else to do and absent witnesses, the man began to explore, chart, and conquer the rugged interior of his nostrils. This went on for ten million years.
And then, in the distance, hollow as an empty grave.
DING
The man got up, checked the entire room to make sure he hadn’t forgot anything, and very slowly walked through the big wooden door, accidentally shutting it way too hard and making the paintings on all the walls jump.

Inside the door was a hall.
Inside the hall was another door.
Inside the door was the doctor.
He was a small, furious man with large teeth and a stare that made you flinch. Aside from these traits, he was very unlike a squirrel.
“Hello. Sit down.”
The man was a bit like a dog, and turned around three times before doing so – he wanted to make sure he had time to read all the charts on the walls first. One of them had what looked like a cross-section of an eyeball on it, and he was curious as to what it was.
“Hey, doc, what’s that thing that looks like a cross-section of an eyeball over there?” he asked.
“That’s a cross-section of an eyeball,” said the doctor. “Sit down.”
“Wow. Which side?”
“Left. Sit down.”
“Is it blue? My uncle said blue eyes are built backwards from green eyes.”
The doctor gently but firmly gripped the man’s shoulders and pushed him slowly until he was seated.
“Stick out your tongue.”
“Take off your shirt.”
“Breathe in.”
“Breath out.”
“Look at my finger.”
“Keep looking at my finger.”
“Stop looking at my finger.”
“Any problems eating?”
“Well –”
“Any problems sleeping?”
“You kno-”
“Wonderful. You’re healthy,” said the doctor. He checked his watch. “And my assistant just went home, so, uh, bye. Last one out’s a rotten egg, eh?”
“Y’know, that reminds me of a thing my grand-”
“Excellent. Well, nice to see you, see you later, etc, goodbye, good luck,” said the doctor. His handshake was almost a quick slap, and he left at a dead sprint without putting on his coat.
The man raised an eyebrow. Well, sometimes these things happen. Doctors were busy after all. He shrugged, put on his coat, stepped back into the Waiting Room, and was wholly caught by surprise when it pounced and disemboweled him. He didn’t even manage a yelp before he was swallowed.

The room shook itself three times, like a dog. It curled itself back up into a comfortable three-dimensional space.
And then it went back to waiting. It usually took a few weeks before it was hungry again.