jamieproctor.ca

Valleydale was nice.

It was well-maintained and well-planned and well-bred and well-priced to ensure that it all stayed that way. Its fences were picket fences and the picket fences were so white they gleamed in the lovely blue skies of its tasteful and comfortable summers and there were many of them with several nice beaches. It was mostly suburbia, and the bits that weren’t mostly existed to serve the suburbia.

Everyone there was happy. If they weren’t, they did something about it immediately. Which was why it was so surprising to have a last-minute complaint added to the minutes of the town hall’s monthly meetup.

“It’s the vultures,” said Carl Shapes. His mouth puckered in irritation as he enunciated the word ‘vultures,’ it wasn’t one he liked to have so close to his person. “At the dump. They swarm in the sky there, all day. Quite unpleasant.”

“We’ll do something about that,” promised Mayor Crisp. He snapped his fingers. “Get me a plan and an expert.”

After a quick coffee break an expert was herded to the podium, having been snagged from her own coffee run at the nearest drive-through. “Vultures,” she explained while dusting the large, firm handprints of the town’s aldermen from her shoulders, “are an important component of any ecosystem they exist in. They not only consume carrion – removing it from the environment along with any pathogens it may contain – they act as signals to other scavengers to locate corpses and remove them. An environment without vultures is a less healthy one, with more disease and decay. Also, you really don’t want to offend the birds.”

“Hmm, yes,” said Mayor Crisp. “Astounding. Well, that’s our expert. Plan?”
“I don’t like them. Let’s kill ‘em,” said Carl Shapes.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” said Mayor Crisp, shaking everyone’s hands. “Much good work done by all, happy to meet you, etc etc. Pour poison in some dead cows and leave them by the dump.”

So it was done, and the skies of Valleydale were bluer and emptier than ever, and if the smell got worse well, that was in the dump and nobody cared about that, or it was in the woods and DEFINITELY nobody cared about that.

***

The first reprisal came a week later.

Mayor Crisp awoke to hear a tapping, as of someone gently rapping at his windowpane. “It’s some branch,” he muttered, “smacking at my glass it’s plain – what a pain.”

Then the screaming started and didn’t stop.

It didn’t stop at five am, it didn’t stop at six am, it didn’t stop at seven or eight or even nine am. It was a nest of grackles posted just outside the mayor’s bedroom, filled with violent delight and eager to express it as if pus from a boil. At ten am he caved in and went downstairs to get some work done, where he found mail in his mailbox, email in his inbox, recordings in his answering machine, and worst of all, Carl Shapes on his doorstep.
“I don’t mean to complain,” he complained, “but we don’t have pigeons in town, right?”
“No,” said Mayor Crisp.

“No we have pigeons or no we don’t have pigeons?”
“No, we don’t have pigeons.”

“So we don’t have pigeons.”
“Yes. I just said that.”
“You’re forgiven,” said Carl Shapes ungraciously. “Anyways, like I said, I don’t mean to complain but pigeons seem to have crapped all over my car. Can you do something about that?”
“Yes yes of course yes, very interesting,” said Mayor Crisp. “We’ll do something about that. I’ll call an expert and make a plan or something.” He gently made shooing gestures at Carl, then squinted behind him. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“The big off-white blob in my driveway.”
“I don’t know. It looks like someone’s care covered in pigeon crap.”
Mayor Crisp looked up and down the street. “Fascinating. Amazing. Do you know where my car is?”
“It could be under the pigeon crap.”

“Hah! Ahahaha! Hah! You’re a real card, Mister Shapes. Hah. I’m going to go make a plan and call experts. Goodbye and good-day.”
Mayor Crisp slammed the door, went upstairs stopping to punch the drywall at every other step, and phoned the chief of police. “Give me weapons,” he demanded. “Give me giant clouds of pepper spray. Give me bb cannons. Give me anything to purge winged, feathered little fuckers from my town. Things here are nice, and that means they work the way we want them to. This is unacceptable.”
“Sure, whatever,” said Susan. “Y’want handcuffs with that?”
“Yes. No!” Mayor Crisp shook his head. “They don’t have hands. Awful. Just awful.”

He hung up. The phone rang in his hand as if in offense, and his treacherous thumb answered it before he could stop it. “Hello?” he ventured.

“Mister mayor, I am Ramone Shoe. I work at city hall, and I am sorry to report that your office is full of grackles right now. You haven’t used it in the last three years, but you can’t use it right now, and I wanted you to know that just in case. Thank you, and goodbye.”

Mayor Crisp phoned the chief of police again.

“Hey.”
“Get me swat teams armed with rubber bullets and rubber teams bulleted with swat arms,” he snarled. “This bird ain’t gonna fly.”

***

The citizens of Valleydale didn’t complain. The birds were a nuisance, and that was unacceptable, and therefore dealing with them – however it was done – was acceptable.

But it was a bit much to have armed police on every corner, magdumping into the sky at the first twitch, coo, or cackle. The treecover was getting denuded to nigh-on-autumnal levels, and it was barely June.

“I think things are going great,” said Mayor Crisp at the monthly town hall. “They’re amazing and fabulous. We’ve gone from one hundred percent pigeon crap saturation of every vehicle in town to eighty-seven percent, which means we only need to try six to seven times harder and we’ll be right back where we started. It’s really great and wonderful. It’s great. It’s great. It’s great.” He squinted at the nearest figure. “Are you a reporter?”
“No mister mayor.”
“I knew that. I know that, it’s really excellent that I know that. What time is it? Four am?”
“It’s five pm.”
“Oh god I need to go to bed, they’ll wake me soon. They wake me. But we’re winning. We’re winning. Are you a reporter?”
“No mister mayor, I’m Ramone Shoe. I work at city hall.”
“I don’t recognize you.”
“You don’t talk to anyone at city hall.”
“That’s good, that makes sense. What is it?”
“We’ve lost the beaches to geese, mister mayor. They’ve already spiked the bacterial count in the lake beyond our water treatment plant’s capacity to handle, destroyed the marina, and secured a beachhead on our beach head. The lifeguards are holed up in the snack bars but are unable to escape. They request immediate evac. Your orders?”
“That’s great. Let’s get an expert and a plan.” Mayor Crisp blinked six times very quickly. “Take five for coffee,” he concluded as he slid bonelessly to the floor.

***

They couldn’t find the first expert because she’d left town, but they were able to find someone who knew someone who knew someone whose brother was an expert, and after luring him in with a false promise of a weekend festival, they were able to extract information from him.

“It’s really simple,” he explained before the amassed citizenry. “You’ve got to apologize for what you’ve done wrong to the birds. Then they’ll stop. Anything else will prompt further escalation. Can I go now?”
“But we’ve done nothing wrong,” said Carl Shapes from the audience.

“You’re killing them in large numbers and when they got upset about that you killed more of them. Can I go now?”
“They started it.”
“Can I go now?”
“Why are you so concerned about that?”

“You tied me to the podium. Can I go now?”
“We did that or you wouldn’t have stayed.”
“I’m done. Can I go now?”
“Yes, yes, send him back to the birds or wherever,” said Mayor Crisp, slapping his hands together firmly. “So! We have an expert, we had an expert, now we will have a plan. I’m thinking cybernetic housecats.”
“Spray DDT on everything and fill the lake with lead shot pellets!” shouted a maniac in the crowd.

“Takes too long,” said Mayor Crisp. “I need to be re-elected next year, not in ten years. So we’re going to do the cybernetic house cats. And flak cannons. And we’ll weaponize the park’s lawnmowers. And mowerize the parker’s lawn weaponry. Yes. Yes! It will work. It will work. It will work. Everything’s fine and nice and will be perfect again, surely.”

There was breaking glass and a short, sharp shriek, interspersed with furious squawking. Seagulls were pouring in through the street exit and were demolishing the tardier citizens as if they were stray fries. Carl Shapes was already lodged halfway down the throat of a cold-eyed black-backed gull, arms waving an inadvertent, desperate farewell.

“Be strong! Be brave. Be well-groomed,” urged Mayor Crisp, already halfway out the window. “I’m with you one hundred percent!”

***

The lawnmowers kept the geese from spreading free of the beaches, but at a cost: every backyard within six blocks of the shoreline was sheared bald. Brown soil bleached under merciless heat where once thick, luscious blades of grass grew to respectably-groomed heights. And although the enemy armada was stalled, their irregulars remained undaunted. Despite martial law and the mass recruitment of every able-bodied citizen above age fourteen into the town guard, car defilement remained above eighty-five percent (one hundred percent for law enforcement transportation) and most citizens were receiving a little less than an hour of sleep per day due to incessant screaming from blackbirds, grackles, chickadees, jays, finches, thrushes, doves, crows, and the odd escaped parrot.

A citizenry thus under siege cannot maintain vigilance forever, and it is in such dishevelled states that the cracks of distraction will blossom into the furrows of destruction.

Mayor Crisp stared blankly at the paper in front of him. “What am I looking at?” he inquired hopefully.

“Your desk, mister mayor.”
“What’s on it?”
“Some blank notepaper for notes.”
“Wow. Who did that?”
“I did, mister mayor. I’m Ramone Shoe. I work at city hall.”
“Great, beautiful. Phenomenal. Why am I here?”
“To read the message you’re holding in your right hand.”
Mayor Crisp stared at his right hand, then gave it to Ramone Shoe.

“It appears that under cover of darkness, last night a squad of crack owls snuck into the county museum and liberated certain esoteric texts from the security vault.”
“Aha,” said Mayor Crisp, nodding his head firmly. “That makes sense.”

“And now we can expert grave repercussions.”
“Right, great. We should get an expert.”
A distant crash echoed for miles.

“It may be a little late for that,” said Ramone Shoe, as they watched the cloud of dust rise from what had once been the police station. Above it circled a single form, five-winged, wider-spanned than any human field of sport could measure. It hissed like a snake, then gently horked. The streets below it sloshed gently and subsided under the weight of tens of tons of acidic vomit.

“A plan, then?”
“That’s a gros vautour, mister mayor. There is no existing plan for that.”
“Right, right, right. No plan, no expert. Great, wonderful. I’m going home to clean my car.”

There was a heaving crack outside. The dead rose from beneath the streets and began to claw, moaning in agony, at the monuments of the living. A crow sat on a lamppost above them, cawing in glee through a mouthful of priceless and untranslatable blasphemic script.

“It’s too late for that, mister mayor.”
“Ahahaha, I don’t think so, not really. Always more time to make sure everything’s nice and tidy, right? It’s got to be perfect, yes, perfection starts at home.”
“By whose standards, mister mayor?”
“Look, stop being so pushy. What’s your job, anyways?”
“Ravens, mister mayor.”
“Right, right. Right. What’s that?”
“I’m ravens.”

For the first time in twelve years, Mayor Crisp looked another person in the eyes to see what was there.

A beak clattered insolent at him from Ramone Shoe’s left eyesocket.

“Oh.”
“All you had to do was think, mister mayor,” said Ramone Shoe, through his eyesocket and his coat sleeve and his pants and his suitcase. A leg emerged from one ear and gently grasped his shoulder; feathers shuffled loosely under his shirt. “All you had to do was think.”
“But that’s so HARD,” managed Mayor Crisp feebly. His hands were on his desk. Surely there would be something there that would save him. A pen, wielded bravely. A desk ornament, flung with force. A letter-opener?
But all that was there was him and some blank paper.

The paper was nice and white and clean though. That made him feel better until it wasn’t, and by then he didn’t care as much about anything.

***

On the seventeenth day of the siege, a mockingbird reached the left ear of the universe and spoke into it. Thereafter, Valleydale was no longer a problem. Its offense was removed. Its crimes were resolved. Its existence was sorted and its debtors recompensed. Nicely.

Tragically, the vultures did not return. Even as an important carrion-removing, disease-preventing component of an ecosystem, utterly and soberly devoted to keeping things clean and well-kept, you can’t eat trace electromagnetic smears.

The sun seemed bigger out here. How about that. Less than a day from LA and it was like you were on a different planet, as long as you pointed the camera the right way.

“You’ve gotta talk to her.”
Leslie shaded her hand and followed the sunlight across the grey, cracked rock.

Jasper wasn’t as patient as the rocks; he crumbled a lot faster. “Listen, Les, you’ve gotta.”
The sky was so blue it hurt to look at it, like a sugary-sweet cavity in your eyeball. “I’ve got to do what now?”
She could practically hear the sweat beading on his skin, trickling down his palms and make his eyes blink and sting. “Talk to-”

“What am I talking to her about?”

“About the film.”
“What about it?” God, the water flowing off this man. Another twelve hours of this kind of stress and maybe he’d match the plants; turn into something thin and scraggly with a surface like shriveled plywood.

“For fuck’s sake Les, you know it can’t happen without her!”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes!”
“So why am I only just hearing this now, and why did last night go the way it did?”
“Please Les, c’mon, it’s more than just me on the line here-”

“It’s not my job to fix your fuckups, Jasper. I’m a makeup artist.”
“She listens to you!”
“Right, right, so if the film can’t happen without her, and she won’t work without me, then I guess I’m the goddamned director now. Give me the keys to your trailer.”

“What?! No!”

“We need the good shower and some privacy. You don’t like it, I don’t have to help, you don’t have to be helped, I can be the director once the producers take you out behind that ridge and shoot you.”

She held out a hand without looking and counted. Five seconds before the keys hit her palm with snitty force. Pathetic.

“We’re redoing the contracts tomorrow,” she said, as she turned and strode for effects storage. “You fob me off, you’ll wish the producers got you. You’re welcome.”

***

Finding Helen was easy. Right where she thought she’d be: tucked underneath the hand-painted scaly belly of Zorgg the Beast of Ages, curled with her spine to the room like a nervous porcupine.

She flinched when Leslie patted her back, and metal and wood creaked gently above them both.

Helen didn’t flinch. She’d planned not to flinch. It wouldn’t help.

“C’mon. Let’s get you a shower.”
“Cold.”
“Nope, we’re using Jasper’s. Up and at ‘em.”

Helen didn’t uncurl.

“Remember the pig from prom? ‘Sleep on it’ isn’t advice that works on bloodstains.”

Helen still didn’t uncurl, but she permitted Leslie to uncurl her manually. Hands under armpits, pulling back, legs wobbling into position as shaky as a crane colt. She was holding her shoulders still and looking down. Hiding.

“Are they out there?”
“No,” said Leslie. “Nobody’s out there.” No point in starting early when the shoot can’t happen.

“Okay.”

The easy part was over.

***

Jasper’s shower worked and it had hot water. It also whined like a starving dog at a loaded dinner table, but two miracles was enough to excuse a little mundane shittiness.

Still, Leslie spent the time cleaning up the rest of the room, especially the bed. Jasper wasn’t a complete slob, but this’d be a lot easier if the place were comfortable, and that meant fresh sheets, emptied garbage, and stuffing a few posters into the trash. He’d live to complain about it and like it.

Half an hour. She pulled the best towel she could find (too pink and too big, but still with some fluff in it, somehow) and knocked on the door.

“Towel’s here.”

“Okay.”
“Hot water’ll be going soon.”

No reply, but after twenty-two seconds the water switched off.

Helen took the towel without complaint. She let Leslie dry her hair with the second-best towel she could find (too small and worn on the thin side, but scentless and unstained). She even accepted Leslie’s sleep clothes (too-big shirt, short-legged cotton pants). And then, having taken all the things Leslie offered, Helen laid down on top of Jasper’s newly de-odorized bed and curled up with her back to her.

“I’m going out for a smoke. Back in a sec.”
Helen didn’t nod. The acknowledgement of a nod was there.

Leslie walked outside of the trailer, looked up at that big blue sky – already curdling at the edges from heat haze – and lit up her shortest, least-appealing butt to fulfil the letter of her obligations. She ignored the taste, kept her mind on the plan. Stubbed out the butt of the butt on her heel, made eye contact with Zorgg the Beast of Ages through the open door of effects storage, nodded, and walked back in.

Helen was still curled up. But her spine didn’t jut, and her muscles didn’t tense.

The tricky part was over.

Leslie sat down. Helen didn’t make room for her. She also didn’t turn away from her. Neutral move.

“I ruined everything.”
There we go. “No you didn’t. He started it.”
“That’s a little kid’s excuse.”
“Little kids are smarter than people give them credit. Remember Lester?”
A small snort. Not a sniff. “Adrian thought he was so funny.”
“Yeah, and he wasn’t a little kid, he was a big kid trying to prove we were little and dumb. Hur hur hur I named a lizard after my sister. And he was our first one, wasn’t he?”
Small shuffle. Helen peered back over her shoulder at her, a little confused but in an annoyed way. Good. “No. That was Buzzsaw.”
“No, I mean the first one we worked up. I told you it sucked having a lizard named after me. You said he didn’t look dumb he looked cool. I told you he could look cooler. You asked me what I thought would help, I told you, you drew something, I drew something else…”

“…but we never did anything,” said Helen. “And then Lester got eaten by Ribs.”
“That was the dumbest dog your family ever owned.”
“Don’t be mean!”
“He was mean. And dumb. He choked to death on your Barbie after he ripped it out of your hands.”
“He didn’t mean it.”

Mournful, upset, but old and familiar upset. Still, don’t overpush it. “Whatever. Point is, Lester was our first. We didn’t finish, but we tried, and we wouldn’t have done our second without it.”
“Buzzsaw.”
“No. Buzzsaw was fourth. Maybe fifth.”

Helen sat up all at once, too surprised (and still a little annoyed) to be sad. “What? But we didn’t-”

“We tried a second time with the Barbie Warriors, and that was one we took off paper into action. We started the book after we made the Bird Coffin. I don’t know if your grandma’s dolls count; do you think they counted?”
Helen thought, but only to recheck her answer. “No,” she shook her head. “Those were hers, not ours.”

“Right. So Buzzsaw was fourth.”

“But the first where it happened.”
“Hey,” said Leslie, and she was unfair and caught Helen’s gaze, right after she’d lulled her into moving it off the wall. “Say we don’t do the stuff before it. Does it still happen?”
Her eyes twitched, but couldn’t outright dodge. “Maybe.”
“Does it happen the way it did?”
They slid down to her hands in her lap. Defeat. “No.”
“Then Buzzsaw was fourth.”

“Okay.” Withdrawn, but not withdrawing. Fine.

“Half of what we did for him was built on the Lester ideas anyways. You said the horns would look cool, we made him horns. I wanted a spiked tail club like a stegosaurus, we made him a big spike on his back because it was easier to pin on. The only new idea were the wings.”

“And the eyes,” added Helen. Couldn’t help it.

“You want to count those?”
“We never talked about Lester’s eyes,” she said, and she almost didn’t seem to notice she was volunteering complete sentences. “You said we should try a Barbie idea with Buzzsaw, I found some safe makeup, we made his eyes look scarier. It was new.”
“Okay, sure. So Buzzsaw the Burner, Dragonlord of the Diorama, was all dressed up and ready to trash that shitty shoebox model of a castle. And he was the way he was because of the ideas we had for Lester, and the ideas we had from the Barbie Warriors, and the stuff we wrote down from making the Bird Coffin –”

“We didn’t really make it all up, half of that was just origami advice from your mom’s book.”

“-we took the stuff we needed and used it, that was ours – and we took all of that and put it into Buzzsaw. He was fourth.”
Helen was smiling a little bit. Almost a smirk, meant to mock. “And the first to fly.”

“He was fourth. That matters.”
“He flew. That matters too.”

Definitely smug. Push back, but not too hard. “Yeah, fine. With the puppet strings.”

Back to annoyed, verging on genuine ire. “No. I told you it happened.”
“Pretty quiet happening though.”
“I told you.”
“Right. Okay. Fourth time, first time it happened, I get it.” Throw her a bone. “It’s like Lester. It wasn’t big time, it wasn’t complete-”

“-I TOLD you-”

“-but without it, the next time maybe doesn’t happen, and it doesn’t happen the way it did.”

“Okay.” Helen’s brows were set. Bushy and grumpy about it in that way that made you want to grab her head and fuss up her hair. Leslie wondered if this was how grandmothers felt all the time and hoped it wasn’t.

“So then the sixth was when it happened big time.”
“Fifth,” said Helen.

Leslie raised her own (thinner, less charming) eyebrows. “Really? With the cabinet play?”
“I dropped one of the rods on the clown’s arm. I panicked and just kept going, remember?”
“I thought you used your hand and just faked it.”

“That’s what I said I did.”
“Huh. Sixth was just the first time I couldn’t ignore it then.”
“Yeah,” said Helen. She was stroking the sheets with her thumb. “Because of the fire.”
Leslie grinned and she didn’t even have to plan for it. “Because of the fire.”
“Poor Buzzsaw. I didn’t think it would work.”
“I don’t think he thought it either.”
“He was just a little lizard, I’m not sure he thought at all besides ‘when I’m done doing this, they give me treats.’”

“We did too, didn’t we? Stole half a quart of my mom’s pie berry batch. Boy earned it.”
“Hazard pay,” said Helen solemnly.

“We should’ve gotten some too. My ass was never the same after mom got through with it. ‘Don’t play with matches!’ ‘Don’t tell lies about not having matches, I saw what you did!’” Her mom voice was never accurate; all snotty and whiny. Putting the shriek in right as she remembered needed bone-deep hate she didn’t want to uncover. Not when the fake thing made Helen giggle.

“And then I told you, and you didn’t believe me,” said Helen happily.

“I did.”
“You said ‘that’s bullshit!’”

“Yeah, because it is. I didn’t say it wasn’t real.”
“So I showed you with the Barbie Warriors,” said Helen. “Which makes it seventh?”

“Nah. That wasn’t a new idea. If your grandma’s dolls weren’t five, these aren’t seven.”

“Right. But they marched so well.”
“They did.”
Helen sighed happily. Honestly happily, full on. “How many of them do you have numbered like this?”
“They’re all in there, but I stop lining them up after seven. Real seven – the scarecrow that waved at cars. That’s when we got into the groove, and we stay in that until graduation.”
“Yeah. The prom. With the pigmeat DJ.”
“That was so good.”
Helen’s mouth downturned at the corner. “It was really dumb.”

“We were still teenagers, of course it was really dumb. I’m amazed we only had the one big fuckup.”
“All we had to do was not show off as much. Everyone already thought pigmeat DJ was amazing.”
“Yeah, but going on stage to accept a trophy for our costume when it was still standing in the booth and running the music was amazing.”
“It freaked out everyone.”
“That’s why it was amazing.”
“I should never have let you make me decapitate it.”
“That was the icing on the cake. The pig’s head landed right on the turntable, your aim was perfect. Best thing we ever did.”
Helen buried her face in her hands. “I can’t believe they thought it was a radio control.”
“Our teachers were very stupid, Helen. Why do you think I went all the way to LA?”

She hunched over double. Not good. Interesting. “I thought you were mad.”
Oh that was new. “Why?”

A little heave. That’s not laughter. “I thought you lied. I thought you left because you were scared of me.”
Leslie laughed, and she meant it. “Really? A pig’s head on a turntable? That’s what you think made me lie to you and run away to Hollywood? That’s what made me walk right up to you on the set of a shitty B-movie and tell you to start making it happen like I know you can? That’s what made me lock Jasper out of his own trailer?”
Helen didn’t look up, but she didn’t stop when Leslie pulled her face up with one hand. Ugly, ugly silent weeping. Snotty, cheeks wet, eyes squinted shut and sore from timid stress. “I’m sorry.”
“For being silly? Sure, that’s okay. Feel it, get it out, leave it behind. But for everything else? Don’t you dare. Jasper knows about it, you know.”

She hiccupped. “After last-”

“He knew about it before. I didn’t tell him shit, but he’s not a complete moron and your special effects and their budget are the one reason he’s not in the red ten films ago. He pays attention enough when there’s money, and honey? You’re money. He’s not going to burn you over one bigmouthed asshole that thought slapping you was funny.”

“But-”

“Do you believe me?”

Helen looked at her, all of eight years old and in the attic surrounded by marching war-painted sword-armed Barbies again, and she said what Leslie had said to her then, because what else could you say? “Yes.”

“Good. Get some rest. The day’s off for the shoot, don’t worry and don’t think. You can do that tomorrow.” She was going to anyways, but at least now she’d probably feel guilty enough to stop. “I’ll get you some water and start explaining shit to Jasper.

A little touch on her wrist as she readied to rise, hesitant.

“You’re sure it’ll be okay? He was the lead.”

“Absolutely,” said Leslie. Probably. “They’re already over it.” Hopefully. “Jasper can hire another ten Stanley Jacksons by turning over any LA rock and catching whatever scuttles fastest.” Definitely.

“Besides,” she added, because that little touch still felt nervous, “there’s no way in hell anyone’ll try that shit again. This gossip won’t die on its own, and it’s easy to keep fresh. We just don’t clean Zorgg’s teeth.”

“Mmm,” said Helen. “The stain could look nice if we treat it.”

And she smiled, and Leslie knew the hard part was over. They’d done it again.

CRA the Creator, aspiring Maker, checked Their metabox again, and again, and again, and on the seven-thousandth six billionth and forty-second hundred millionth time They found it full of package, and the package was full of promise, and all was revealed unto Them.

“Oh boy oh boy!” They yelled. “It’s here, it’s here, oh hoo boy it’s a good time guaranteed!”

And so saying They cleared off a big section of cosmic nothingness on Their desk and opened the box and shook out all its contents, which promptly exploded into existence and flew everywhere.

“Oops,” said CRA the Creator.

They looked at the side of the package. DO NOT SHAKE was writ upon it in fundamental metaphysics.

“Maybe I can sort of push it all back together?”
They could not sort of push it all back together.

“Well shit,” said CRA the Creator, looking across an infinite extending universe consisting almost exclusively of empty space to the point that matter was a rounding error of infinitesimal, unimaginable smallness. “I guess I’d better just sort of, pick a bit to focus on?”

***

CRA the Creator, Prime Mover and Shaker, gazed upon the foundations of the most convenient piece of Their creation They had found, which was where Their eyeball had rested after they concealed Their vision with one hand and went eeny meeny miny matter.

“It’s a little bit molten,” They said. “Is it supposed to do that?”

So CRA the Creator pulled out the manual and took a look at it, but it was in very small printessence and parts of it were upside down and some of it was back to front and while They were engrossed they heard a cataclysmic sundering sound and looked up and saw-

“AWW, NO! BAD! BAD CITTY!”
-that CAHT the Companion had wanted to help too, and had decided that what this piece of creation needed was for another piece of creation to smack into it at tremendous speed.

“No! That isn’t good! Good cittys keep their paws off creation! Bad!”
CAHT the Companion slow blinked remorselessly, and no amount of scolding improved that, nor did it undo the fact that CRA the Creator’s project was now being circled by a second wobbly lump of great sized comprised of ejected still-cooling rock.

“Oh well,” said CRA the Creator, as They hurriedly splashed water across Their creation. “Maybe it won’t make a big difference.”

***

CRA the Creator, Director of Cosmic Theater, sat patiently and watched, enraptured, as tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells.

Sometimes, one of the cells absorbed another.

“This is great, this is really peak stuff. See, citty? See how nice things are when you don’t bap at them? Do you see?”
CAHT the Companion ignored Them. This meant it was feeling affectionate, and CRA the Creator was deeply touched and gave them a one-armed noogie as they peered back at their world, now so full of very small and very hardy life. They regarded it all with deep and profound fondness on a scale that, although incomprehensible to their children, they hoped they could feel on some level.

“Oh!” said CRA the Creator. “Look! See, citty? That one’s turned blue-green! Isn’t that beautiful? Look at it. Look!”

CAHT ignored this too.

“So pretty. Maybe we can make a few more of those.”

So CRA the Creator gently reached out and twiddled a submenu to open a window to find an option that unchecked a box that controlled a slider and moved it.

Nothing happened.

CRA the Creator moved the slider a little farther.

Nothing happened again.

CRA the Creator moved the slider a little bit farther than that, then changed Their mind and cranked it all the way to one side.

A preponderance of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) overran creation, filling its atmosphere with oxygen and exterminating almost all anaerobic life on its surface.

“Oops,” said CRA the Creator. “Well, it’s still a beautiful colour.”

Creation began to rust.

“Oh man,” said CRA the Creator, and began to look for a Help menu. Those were still around, right?

***

CRA the Creator, Diligent Maintainer, could not find a Help menu. Which was annoying, because by now They were pretty sure They needed one.

“Not AGAIN,” They complained. “That’s like, the THIRD time everything’s gone anoxic! What am I doing wrong? Is it the volcanism? I can’t turn that off, can I? Not without losing continental drift.”
CRA the Creator did not want to turn off continental drift. They liked seeing the new patterns older rocks made; it kept Them from getting bored, and making maps was interesting.

“There’s got to be something that I’m missing,” They muttered as They rummaged around inside the packaging for a manual. “I can’t keep losing over fifty percent of all marine species every other geological period, it’s getting embarrassing.” They made manifest the sum knowledge of Their peers and consulted Their Wisdom. “No, no, I don’t want guides to Creation from six omneons ago; I want the rerelease. No, not the REMASTER. Goddamnit. Ugh, whatever happened to WorldFaqs?”

Disgusted, CRA the Creator drummed their fingers on the limitless expanse of their desk. “You know what?” They said, rhetorically, “I can do this Myself. On My own. I can fix this. Just with care, and attention, and limitless love and a lot of patience.”
So vowing thus, They opened Their eyes just in time to see CAHT the Companion carefully, curiously guide a twelve-kilometer bolide directly into Their creation’s atmosphere, directly above a carbonate seafloor underlaid with rich sulfur deposits.

“NO NO NO BAD CITTY BAD CITTY awwwww shit.”

***

CRA the Creator, Break Taker, gave Themselves some time to stretch Their legs and think about other stuff for a minute after putting Caht the Companion in the Time Out Spatial Fold.

It was fine, They decided. Sure, there had been some mistakes along the way, but that just made things exciting, right? Nobody learned from perfection, nobody wanted to watch nothing happen. Messiness was just more satisfying. A rich tapestry contained all kinds of knots, and scars, and loose threads, and so on. Right?

CRA the Creator looked back to Their creation, then zoomed in closer and closer, looking here and there. A small group of hairy bipeds was wandering in a wood, hooting excitedly at each other about ripe fruit, about interestingly shaped rocks.

“Here you go,” said CRA the Creator, and lo, They manifested for an instant and gave unto the little creatures a pile of interesting and pretty-coloured stones containing eye-catchingly shiny alloys. They chose soft ones, so they wouldn’t hurt themselves with them. “Have a good time, guys. Be messy. Learn!”
One of the bipeds picked up the biggest shiny stone and was immediately set upon by two others with tooth and fist, each seeking it for themselves. A fourth desperately started collecting every shiny stone in reach and bit its own children when they came too close.

CRA the Creator got up and took another walk.

***

CRA the Creator, Demotivated Faker, sat by the water on the grass in Their creation in the soft light of dawn and moped for a minute.

“I can’t do anything right,” They lamented. “This is really hard. I’ve just made a mess, and not an entertaining mess, a frustrating and painful one. I can’t even blame CAHT the Companion for it. Shoot.”
Something splashed near Them, and They jumped. Standing at the water’s edge, ignorant of Their presence, a heron of large size and immaculate posture clutched a fish in its bill. Water droplets flecked from its prey, then a blink passed and it was gone and the bird stood still as a statue again, legs steady and eyes clear.

“Okay,” said CRA the Creator. “I’ve done something okay. Look at that! Wow! Those legs! That neck! That’s a really lovely shape. Amazing. I can’t believe I came up with that. I bet I can do it again!”
So CRA the Creator cast about the shore until They located a small, round, quacking waterfowl, fixed it most sternly with Their grasp, and began to work mightily.

“Longer. No, not longer there, longer THERE. Well, the neck’s right, even if the legs aren’t.”
“Bigger – no, not wider, BIGGER. Well, wider IS bigger.”
“Louder – no, raspier, raspier – well, it’s louder anyways.”

The sun was setting when Their work was complete, and They looked upon their labours and saw what They had wrought.

“All else aside,” said CRA the Creator, “I think I can say this: I don’t believe I screwed up this one thing. You are My masterwork.”
“Honk,” said Their creation.

Then it wing-slapped Them.