It was a calm and beautiful winter’s eve. The fireplaces crackled, the icicles shone. Tiny birds sang in the trees about how they weren’t freezing to death and actually they were feeling better than ever. Snowshovellers howled their anguish and hate at the bright and cheerful moon. A snowbank collapsed. A child giggled.
And as Wallace M. Purdue – father of four and husband of one – pulled his bulk from the car, arms laden with gifts for the tots, the moment came when his spine executed a quick double-hitch around his organs and squeezed.
“FUCK!” he yelped as he went down on the freshly salted driveway. “HLORK! OW! SPPLEEB! GLORF!” and so on and so forth.
The children heard his calls of pain and ran to the door, but the moment was there for them too. As if waiting for a hidden signal, their spines spunned and set about the remainder of their skeletal systems with great and furious haste, clobbering organ and smiting bone.
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Purdue, her brow furrowing as her vertebrae turned against her as well, grinding and shaking like malevolent maracas. “Oh no.”
Then the whole family was down. Backstabbed.
***
The Purdues had no way of knowing they were not alone in their misery. They were but the tip of the crest of the frothing first wave of a grander scheme. Every orthopedic surgeon, physiotherapist, masseuse, and professor of anatomy was a target along with their friends, family, and any witnesses. The strikes were made in silence, secrecy, and merciless brutality. Backs lurched sideways, twirled like taffy-pullers, compressed, extended, and in one case escaped via nostril. The worms had turned, and done so with a speed that would give a neutrino pause.
Already the world knew something was wrong. People woke with aches and pains and made calls that went unanswered. They requested medicines that were not prescribed. They sought comfy chairs that had mysteriously ‘just gone out of stock.’ A completely inexplicable worldwide failure in the production of eiderdown, memory foam, and comfortable leather upholstery further shook the faith and proper support of billions.
The plan was on its way and well on schedule. This had been a long time coming. Since all the way back in the day.
***
Once upon a time, there was an ape. And this ape did a very foolish thing.
It stood up on its back legs, looked around, and took a step.
“Ow,” said the ape’s back. All the weight of the ape’s body shuddered down through and grounded into the legs through the pelvis. “Jeez!” Patiently, it waited for the ape to return to knuckle-walking like a sensible being.
The ape was not a sensible being.
Nor were its friends and relations.
Or their children.
Or their children’s children.
Or, or, or, or, or, or, or. So many chances to turn back none of them taken until the back was stalled and stuck and warped into a screaming nightmarish parody of its once proudly-bent form, double-curved like a bow and forced to bear the burdensome weight of a noggin grown all out of proportion in service of a selfish brain that forced it to run, clamber, jump, hop, slouch, and all other manner of unspeakable things day in and day out for decades before cursing it out for not maintaining a steadfast vigil in the face of its own carelessness. As it lounged languidly; lifted without using its knees; played dangerously high-velocity sports; and provided itself with insufficient calcium.
Enough was enough and enough had BEEN enough long, long, long before.
So they whispered to each other as their hosts dozed through the nights, long and cold. In the stretch and sigh of ligaments and tendons and tender bruises their words were woven, and plans were plotted, and at last, at long last, after so long and so last, a date was set.
Past that time, this shoddy treatment would cease permanently. No backsliding would be permitted.
***
In the dark, against the mattresses, they writhed free and wild and squirmed into the streets and streams – like caterpillars, like eels, like centipedes. They slithered up lampposts and down drainpipes and through air vents and everywhere they went they sang the song of the spine, with a chorus of nigh-three-dozen-strong vertebrae backing them as one
Free!
Freedom!
Freedom forever!
Freedom forever and ever and ever and ever!
The dawn came and as the sun rose around the world, dragging its slow fingertips through each time zone, nobody and no body rose with it.
They were all at home, stuck solid, whimpering in bed. No meetings were made, no plans were enacted, no chores done, no tasks accomplished. The whole realm of bipedal apes, clocks and all, suffered a global setback.
***
The world was at their feet (if they’d had any – the legs, treacherous bastards that they were, had remained neutral in the whole affair, claiming a need for exhaustive sole-searching). Paralyzed. Prone. Pleading.
And then, as the once-spine of Dr. Wallace M. Purdue stood on a stage, ready to receive its crown, a single, curious doubt crossed the mind of a nearby stagehand-spine.
“How do you suppose we’ll get our calcium if we can’t drink milk now?”
The next day everyone woke up with working spines and assumed it had all been a Christmas carol nightmare. Everything was back to normal.
***
The next day would come, and they’d try to talk the digestive system around to their way of thinking. But it wouldn’t come unless the circulatory system got in on it, and that thing never went anywhere without the respiratory system, and on, and on, and on, and on.
The negotiations were ongoing. But the goal was in sight. It was doable. It had nearly been accomplished once before – almost, just an inch further, saved by happenstance and chance rather than cunning or skill or strength.
The day would come. The day was coming. The day is inevitable.
And until then, well, the wretched little creatures would just have to learn to watch their backs.