jamieproctor.ca

The grad-cultist’s scarred hide was as pale and wan as his rigid smile, but his blood was hot and bright as it spilled forth from his ritual punctures, gliding in hot streaks over the surface of the grey slate blade he chopped with. 

“Phyla!” he sang, the notes turning to gurgles as Dr. Rodney Burke ducked under his swing and his pistol uttered a sharp retort through the madman’s robes and into his heart.  “Phyla!”  called the grad’s fellow doorman, still engaged in a deadly dance of death with Dr. Burke’s assistant, the plucky and game Head Nurse Nancy Wittling.  “It comes, the hour is done.  Phyla!  Urk!”
“I must go!” shouted the professor at his comrade, who had her hands full of scrawny neck.  “Be strong!”

“Hnnh,” grunted Nancy, slowly bearing down on the vertebrae of her whimpering foe.  Dr. Burke felt shame at abandoning a woman to such frightful violence alone, but as his aching legs propelled him up the great stone steps of the Cyclop’s Staircase, slick underfoot with the rain and damp, a greater horror began to dwell in his heart.  The hour WAS done; his Swiss watch told him so.  At midnight precise/the sacrifice that ABOMINABLE translation they had found in Doolaughter’s half-burnt notes had claimed, and now ‘twas nine past twelve.  Perhaps the ritual had run late?  Perhaps a stray blow suffered during the car chase had set his watch ahead?  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, but if wishes were fishes the world would smell foul.  Fear lent wings to his feet, and those wings set him at last upon the final height of the Staircase, a blackened basalt-black plateau overlooking the sea and topped with a tasteful pagoda for the shelter of gentle tourist families during the holiday season. 

It was not empty, but no innocent babes nor bawling infants nor sullen teens occupied it.  No, atop a seagull-scarred picnic table, all the more ominous for its modest surroundings, lay that maddening tapestry of the perverse, the biologist’s-bane, the thing that had driven many a PhD to their demise, the Bermuus Shale.  A flash of distant lightning illuminated the nightmarish forms and features whose fossilized remains lay chained within its icy grip, every shape a sight undreamt of by saner minds.  Huddled underneath its hideous grotesqueries, prone upon the ground, lay the motionless form of a human body. 

“No!” gasped Burke, and his weapon dropped from fingers now numb with dread.  “Too late!”

“Yeh,” mumbled a voice. 

Burke started so badly he would’ve dropped his gun again were he still holding it.  That voice, those thick and mumbling syllables, that thick and phlegmy inflection clotted richly with the syrup of academic resentment… “Doolaughter?” exclaimed Burke. 

“Down here.”

Burke looked down there. 

“No.  Here.  Over HERE,” said the mad archivist in annoyance, and it was only when he started waving his arm in exasperation that Burke realized that the forlorn frame of what he’d assumed to be a human sacrifice was in fact Doolaughter. 

“What the devil have you done?” demanded Burke. 

“About half the bottle,” said Doolaughter morosely.  “Want some?  It’s Darcc-Ichor, from the buried vault of the Sealed Abbey.  Bottled by the cannibal abbot himself, old Petrichlorias – the last of its kind.  Tastes a bit like piss.”

Burke took the bottle, sniffed it, and immediately put it down on the picnic table next to the Shale.  “Why give up now?” he demanded.  “After the obsession, the thefts, the MURDERS, for god’s sake – you know that Chief Librarian Phillipson was like a father to us both!  And now here, at the very time and place you obsessed over, equipped with every tool your madness demanded you seize, you gave up at the final hurdle.”
“Did not,” sulked Doolaughter.  “Look.”
“I did, I just don’t want any of it.”

“No, LOOK.”
Burke looked and followed the long gnarled length of Doolaughter’s ink-blotted finger out to the sea, which was flat and black and strangely motionless for such a storm and oh. 

“My god,” he said faintly. 

“No,” said Doolaughter, bitterness in every word.  “Mine.”
The carapace very nearly filled the horizon.  Far down the coastline a pair of gently-wavering tendrils eddied through the gloomy clouds, sprouting from depths unknown and reaching into the blackened sky.  Antenna great and terrible beyond all reckoning, gathering information and delivering them to a mind all out of scope and of an antiquity whose vastness was fit to crumble a human’s soul.  The great and scuted back flexed and turned with the impossible speed of the very large, and the tides danced at its motions. 

“What have you done?” gasped Burke. 

“I have done as I wished.  I have brought the secret phylum from the depths of the lost journals of Erasmus Darwin unto the light of the skies; I have called it with dark strong liquid and bright young flesh and offered it the earth and the seas and the sky; I have thrown into the wind the names and deeds of every secret name of every man of science and natural philosophy that had ever wished it to sleep forever, and I have bestirred the eldest deity of this world to waking life once more.”
They stood there – Burke stood there; Doolaughter remained content to slump under the picnic table. 

“What is it doing?” asked Burke at last. 

Doolaughter finished another gulp of Darcc-Ichor.  “Eating seaweed.”
“What?”
“It’s eating seaweed!” exploded the mad archivist.  “I have bestirred the eldest deity of this world to waking life once more AND IT’S EATING SEAWEED.”
“Where?”
“Down there.  Look.  No, LOOK.  Do you need glasses?”
“It’s very dark right now.”
“And you’re not looking the right way.  Down there, – no, there, next to the antennae.  See?”

Burke saw at last.  A myriad of tree-sized but relatively-tiny little limbs, each bedecked with soft-looking fringes, were combing through the waves like a mother her daughter’s hair before bed-time.  After several passes of this, the appendage would be brought up to the rim of a seemingly small and dainty mouth adorned with several sets of nested jaws, which would shovel the rich dripping-green harvest down the god’s gullet. 

“My goodness,” said Burke. 

“No,” said Doolaughter, suddenly fierce as Burke had expected him to be.  “My GODLINESS.  I spent decades suspecting this, years preparing this – do you know how hard it is Burke, to be the only man to look the unthinkable in the eye and dare not blink from its implications?  I saw what thousands of generations dared not imagine, and I acted upon it, and I gave the world what it wanted – what it needed, what was RIGHT – and now it’s out there eating seaweed.”

They watched the god eat some more seaweed.  Burke watched; Doolaughter finished the bottle and then threw it onto the ground, where it shattered. 

“I take it back; piss is better.  Why are you still here?  Go away.”
“You must be brought to justice,” muttered Burke.  He was still trying to grasp the scale at work here; the horizon from this altitude should be at least –

“For what?  Depleting local algae supplies?”
“You killed our mentor and six esteemed and venerable scholars!”
“And I’m pretty sure you didn’t get up here without punching the cards of a few of my guards so I’d say we’ve both got each other sewn up.”
“They were only grad students,” said Burke, defensively. 

“Grad students with rich families; it’s a lot harder to convince young people to get involved with this sort of thing when they aren’t bored stiff, and NOBODY’S more bored than the wealthy.”  Doolaughter rubbed his face.  “Hell, maybe you’re right: you probably did them a favour more than anything.  The disappointment would’ve killed them.  Do you know, I really expected a new age?  Old truths made manifest.  All the mysteries unfurled and revealed, whatever the costs.  A time when we would become free and wild and beyond good and evil, when laws and morals would be thrown aside and all men would shout and kill and revel in joy.”

“It still might happen,” said Burke.  He eyed the broken glass with distaste and picked his pistol back up.  “When it’s done eating the seaweed.”

“I think it’ll have a nap next,” said Doolaughter nastily.  “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That.  That noise.  I think it’s an airplane.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This is exactly what drove me mad about all the rest of you – nobody pays any attention.  There, see those lights?  A plane!”

“A bomber,” said Burke, whose nephew was in the navy. 

“An American bomber,” said Doolaughter.  “And that’s a bomb.”
“What?” said Burke, and then the explosion happened.  It was shockingly bright even at their great distance from it, and in its false dawn the full extinct of the being below them was – if not made clear – made more evident.  Like an iceberg, much more of it was still underwater than they’d thought. 

“Atomics!” shouted Burke. 
“Yes,” said Doolaughter.

“Truly, the ingenuity of humanity may yet earn us a reprieve from this awful doom you have – in the name of Christ, the fiend yet lives!”

“Yep.”
“And yet how it – what is it doing?”

“Flinching.”
Indeed, the whole horizon was now a lot less chitinous than had previously been the case; much of the shell that had filled the bay was hunched in a great swelling ripple of distaste and surprise. 

“Oh,” said Burke.  The water was beginning to swirl against the pillar in heavy waves as the god began to beat a retreat into open water.  “Wait, where’s it going?”
“Oh who fucking cares, back wherever it came from I expect,” said Doolaughter.  “We’ve scared it so it’s hiding.”  He rubbed his skeletal palms against his face, shoulders shaking with emotions wholly unsuppressed but too complex to express.  “We’ve called it out of its nap and fed it and we’ve scared it so now it’s going back to bed I SPENT MY LIFE’S WORK ON THIS BURKE.”

Burke didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t. 

“I need another drink.  Do you have a drink?”
“No.  But Ms. Wittling has a medicinal flask in her left boot for emergencies, and I expect she’ll be waiting at the car by now.”
“You’re just trying to get me to go to prison quietly.”
“On my honour, I am n-”

“Do you think they’ll have a drink there?”
“Well-”

“I like those odds.  Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What about the Shale?”
“What ABOUT it?  Besides, the thing weighs a ton.”

***

The storm passed, the night waned, the car made several stops and turned off.

And far beneath the continental crust, in a recently-reoccupied house, a presence slept like the dead once more, dreaming of soft tasty green and startlingly bright little lights.

Waiting is more than half the fun anyways. 

Molly almost stepped on it, buried in the snow like that.  But she glanced down and the broken cap caught her eye and so the shattered husk of the cheap little disposable pen ended up next to her boot instead of under it.  Then she leaned in to look closer because it’s not every day you see that sort of thing – a pen in the street, broken to still-clinging bits so clinically by a car tire or someone’s foot or who-knows-what – and she thought that she saw something very tiny clinging to the frigid edge of where the seeping ink glued itself against the broken walls of its haft. 

That interested her.  So she picked the broken pen up and wiped it clean of slush and brought it home from school with her and after she was done eating dinner she took it up to her room, stole her brother’s microscope, and put the pen under it. 

The tiny object was a little bubble of scraped plastic, held together with thickened ink clots.  And as she watched, a tiny, tiny little body toddled out its front door, stretched, plucked up a slender and colourful pole, and walked down to the edge of the ink gulf. 

The trip took it twenty minutes, and by the time Molly was ordered to go to bed because Tomorrow Is A School Day Damnit six oily, inky little squirmy blobs had been plucked from the inksea and stowed in some kind of microscopic bottle for later use. 

She couldn’t sleep for a long, long time after that. 

***

Molly’s schoolwork suffered for the next week, and not just for the lack of sleep (which her mother insisted on battling with earlier and earlier bedtimes).  She was distracted.

At home she spent hours over the microscope, pouring over the tiny life on the shores of the inky gulf.  The inhabitants were a family of varied size and shapes that didn’t quite make sense, subsisting on bottled game taken from the blue sea and building tiny structures of shaved plastic.  Their fishing tools were crafted from splintered tufts of pen-cap, and were exceedingly rare.  In fact, this shard of main-haft pen was a long way from the cap.  How had they found it?
The answer came on day three, when a miniscule caravan came to town.  It was towed by a single giant crawling thing of legs, and atop its long, long back squirmed a healthy stock of its children, which disembarked and offered up many slivers of fresh cap-material.  They were traded for vats and tubs of the ink-sea’s bounty, and the caravan stayed for some days before departing capwards again. 

Molly took some photographs to mark the position of her original village and followed the caravan’s progress across the pen-haft with careful eye.  It travelled through long serrated plastic forests of startling transparency and sharpness; it travelled through deep grooves once home to rushing rivers of ink; it walked along the perilous thread of the spring that dangled over the dry abyss that had run blue before the shattering; it travelled in long slow helixs across the short-horizon of the pen’s walls and always, always onward towards the long horizon of the cap.  On this trip it halted innumerable times – it stopped amidst tiny roughened badlands where bubbles of air were mined from within the pen’s walls; it stopped on tough and hardy clot-masses that had glued themselves to the underside of the spring’s spiral silver shaft; it stopped in floating crumbs that bobbed in ink—waves and floated from one side of a great shallow sea to another; it stopped at deep crevices where strange dried clots squirmed in darkness and sought in consternation for a safe path around, or over, or through. 

The last were more and more common.  It seemed that the shattering of the pen was a recent affair, and not one that its inhabitants were comfortable with. 

Molly followed her caravan to its home at the great round basin-peak of the pen’s-cap, where it disgorged its cargo of food and exotic materials to be distributed among the poor and small of its many-legged kind (the smallest were balls of so many legs that they appeared to not have any legs at all).  Then she went to bed and slept, and her dreams were troubling and many.  Hunger and fear were there, but not her own.  They remained just out of sight, just out of reach, growing and spiralling unchecked and out of control. 

On her way home from school the next day, she stopped by a hardware store and bought six different kinds of glue and a selection of unspeakably tiny brushes. 

***

The cracks were Molly’s first target.  Each was examined and monitored for at least three full sessions of four hours before she dared bring her brush into play; she had to make sure they were clear of life, that they were structurally damaging, that their sealing would cause no further disruption.  Many of her smallest brushes were too large and clumsy, and the tip of one of her grandmother’s needles was brought into play.  Vast gaping crevices in the horizon-walls were sealed shut and left smooth and shining in a stead march from base to cap. 

After that, she refilled the ink-seas.  Slowly, gradually, drip by drip.  Unlike the cracks, here disruption was inevitable, so she settled for an undeniable-but-slow approach, swelling the blue waves higher and higher so that all would see them rise and seek safer ground.  Twice she had to pause for stragglers, but only twice, and the unsealed cracks she’d left proved their value as refugia for the slow and the stubborn and the species too sessile to move. 

The pen-tip was the greatest challenge; the cone had been lost in some snowdrift, along with any residents it might have once possessed.  After much agonizing, online shopping, and careful examination of several of her mother’s ball-points under the microscope, Molly determined that for whatever reason life was not universal to all pens, and so sacrificed an uninhabited one under the knife, screwdriver, and tweezers to re-establish the structure of her own. 

The surgical transplant took hours, even with a minuscule vise she’d been able to buy second-hand from a defunct jewellery store.  Every thirty seconds she stopped, wiped away the sweat, had a big drink of water, and breathed in and out.  It was shockingly noisy. 

***

Molly had thought she’d known pens.  Not before she’d found her pen in that snowdrift, but before she sat down to repair it.  It turned out she hadn’t known jack because good lord you learned a pen inside out and outside in if you were being really diligent about fixing it.  She knew the bay and oceans and depths of its inksea; she knew the contours and gulleys and hills of its walls; she knew the secrets of its inner walls (sealed and unsealed); she knew the thriving life of its cap-end (burgeoning with activity and hope now that the land was once more whole); she knew the ancient hidden secrets of the spring-dwellers, now oncemore sheathed safely in the blue; she even knew the few curious and hardy adventurers that had made their way down into the shining depths of the freshly-attached nose cone, witnessing the adherence of a new form of matter they’d thought would nevermore exist within their grasp. 

Molly knew them all, and she loved them, and she put the pen in her pen holder where it stood in place of pride until three days later her mom went looking for a pen and took it without asking, whereupon she never saw it again for the rest of her life. 

***

This is the actual answer to the Problem of Evil. 

Once upon a time

(don’t ask about the time)

In a far-away land

(don’t ask about how far, or where)

Lived a good and noble prince

(don’t ask about whose standards of good and noble)

The prince was handsome and brave and strong, but he was lonely.  So one day he took up his sword and went adventuring, to find himself a lady wife. 

(don’t ask who was administrating his lands while he was away)

He rode his big beautiful horse down many dark and dangerous roads,

(don’t ask why the roads of his lands were dark and dangerous)

Fought many desperate brigands,

(don’t ask why they were desperate)

And slew many foul monsters,

(don’t ask who decides what a monster is)

But he was unable to find his lady love.

(don’t ask why none of the women he knew were ladies or what exactly a ‘lady’ is)

***

One day the prince was stood by a clear stream, tending to his horse, when he heard a voice raised in grief just above the rushing of the water.  He followed the sounds and came to an old, old, old woman, sat beside the river-crossing. 

“Oh my husband,” she sobbed.  “My poor husband!”
“What troubles you, old woman?” asked the prince. 

“He is sick, so sick,” wept the old woman.  “Old and frail and tired, and we are alone and he grew ill.  Now he needs the flower from the farthest hill to grow well again, but the river is too strong and deep for my old bones to cross.”

(don’t ask how the old man’s life wore him so old and frail or why there was nobody young able or willing to help them). 

“I will do this for you,” said the prince bravely.  And he forded the stream on his horse, strong as it was, and set off through the wilder woods, towards the farthest hill. 

(don’t ask how much hard bravery is when you are young and strong and well-fed and armed and armoured and have never been told no in your life)

The woods were thick and dark, choked with undergrowth from below and blotted by wide branches from above.  Grass withered and died, and any sheep that strayed beneath the boughs were given up as lost by the poor shepherds.  Worse things than wolves were whispered to wander within,

(don’t ask why the shepherds were poor, don’t ask why the wolves were wicked)

But the prince was brave

(DON’T)

And determined, and he kept going even when the trail vanished and the sun fell and he was alone in the dark with a nervous horse he led by hand between ever-crowding trunks and thorns and barbed bare burrs until at length he turned in a full circle and found himself trapped inside a oubliette of living bark and dead vines so tiny that he couldn’t see how he’d managed to fit into it in the first place.  One hand grasped the bridle of his faithful steed just outside, and then at a distant howl it neighed in fear and jerked free.  He was alone.

(don’t ask what happened to the horse, or why the prince took it so far to somewhere so unsuited for it, or how well he tended it on his long adventures, alone and with only a few saddlebags for the both of them)

The prince stood there in his prison of vines and thorns, and he saw that although its walls were firm and fast, it dared not venture closer in.  So he knelt and prayed the night away, and when the sun rose was miraculously unharmed

(don’t ask if his sword had something to do with it)

And was free to walk clear, the shadows and shrubs and saplings alike shrunken back from their moon-dark malevolence.  The woods were still thick and cruel, but he persevered though he grew tired and tattered, and at last the stones grew thick on the ground and the sky broke through and he was at the broad barren base of the farthest hill.  He looked to its summit and saw a small cottage, and sleeping outside that cottage a giant, and beside that giant’s foot a garden filled with small and beautiful flowers, bright and soft-petaled. 

Seeing his quest’s end in sight, the prince drew his blade and called out to the giant his name, his knighthood, and his mission.  And so enraged was the monster by this that he stood up and began to cast stones down the hillside at him, great boulders dug from the turf that tumbled and spun and rolled past the prince with the force of lightning and the roar of thunder,

(don’t ask if the giant had reason to react this way)

But he was fast and strong and brave, and he gained the peak and fought the giant and slew him, though he stood twice the height of a man and the weight of a good strong horse. 

(don’t say ‘prove it’)

The knight bent low and plucked loose a brilliant and beautiful flower from the garden, and as he did so the cottage door opened and within was a fair lady, pale of skin and soft of hand and eye. 

(don’t ask why a gardener doesn’t have a tan, callouses, or muscles)

The prince knelt at her feet and introduced himself gallantly, and she confessed that she was no less than a princess of old, taken from her parents by the goblins under the hill whom were the giant’s servants, and that she was glad to be rescued from her imprisonment beyond the woods. 

(don’t ask what sort of stories people will say to strangers that come visiting with bloodied weapons in their hands and corpses at their feet)

So they left the farthest hill, but the prince was much slowed by the frailty of the princess, and was forced to carry her on his back or stop and let her rest. 

(don’t ask if this sounds like something you’d do if you were stalling for time)

Darkness came to the woods again, and this time it was all the greater.  The princess cried and flinched at the shadows, and once when the prince strode out to confront a rustling in the brush that she shrank from they clasped her and tried to bear her away, but he was quick and managed to find her before the trees could spirit her away.  When dawn came it found them ragged and exhausted but still alive thanks to the prince’s sleepless vigilance, and the banks of the river were nigh. 

“I cannot cross, I cannot cross,” wept the princess.  “Go on without me, brave prince.”

“Fear not,” said the prince gallantly.  “I shall carry you.”
“Oh, but how shall you carry your sword and armour and myself all at once?” she sobbed. 

“You shall carry the sword for me,” said the prince.  “Be brave!  Though it be a cruel weapon, it has only ever been used for just cause, and so long as you clasp the hilt it cannot harm you.”
(don’t ask who decided what causes were just or how)

The princess trembled like a leaf, but she plucked up her courage and did as she was told.  But the river was in fine flood and they were a-foot rather than horsed, and halfway through the river, the prince’s foot slipped and so the princess dropped the sword, which came down like a stone upon the prince’s armoured skull.  He dropped poleaxed, and if the current had not been so unusually forceful that would’ve been the end of both of them; rather they were both cast ashore at the river-bend, where they lay swooned until they were happened upon by an old, old woman who took in both the princess and her medicinal flower and raised her as her own with what modest savings she and her husband (now-cured) could pull together.  Alas, the brave prince had been weighed down by his armour, and so he passed from this life in heroism and was buried on a little hill above the river that had laid him low. 

(don’t ask how much the prince’s armour was worth)

One day the prince’s men came crossing the river, seeking their deceased lord, and they found the princess sharpening their prince’s sword, which she used to cull chickens.  They were astonished to find such a fine blade in the hands of a lowly maid, and when they asked her what had taken place she wept and told them all that had happened to her and of the dear noble dead prince’s part in it, one that the old, old couple swore was true in every word.

(don’t ask how long they’d had to get this straight). 

The prince’s men wept for the loss of the land, but rejoiced in the completion of his quest.  So they returned to their lord’s keep with a new ruler, and although she never did marry, she was not lonely herself, for her new parents were brought along with her, and they lived happily ever after. 

Don’t ask exactly how happy they were. 

Don’t ask how long ‘ever after’ is.

Don’t ask who exactly was happy and who wasn’t. 

Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask.

Shhhhhhh.

On Mondays I walk to work by the long way.  It’s prettier than the short way and it’s not THAT longer, so why not?  And there’s the meerkats, of course. 

Today they were acting strangely, all of them clustered around a stone with heads down.  As I stopped and looked, one of them carefully picked up another stone, smacked them together, and caught the chip.  It squeaked and held it triumphantly. 

Then they saw me watching and all scurried away. 

I shrugged, put it out of my mind, and spent the rest of the day selling unhealthy food from a cart, as was my job. 

***

On Tuesday I broke custom and walked to work by the long way, out of curiosity.  I’d looked it up and I was pretty sure Meerkats using flint knapping was unusual, and the idea of writing a research paper while working a greasy concession stand cart seemed pretty good to me. 

The meerkats were absent from aboveground at first, and I looked in vain for further signs of stone industry – discarded cores and flakes, reworked scrapers, etc. – until I realized I was being watched with narrowed eyes by a single, dedicated sentry. 

“Hey big guy,” I told him.  He shook his tiny bronze spear at me and chittered angrily.  “No, don’t worry.  I’m not here for trouble.”

The meerkat shook his tiny helmeted skull and pointed fiercely at a small monument nearby, chiseled with shapes that reminded me a little bit of cuneiform script. 

“I’m sorry,” I explained.  “I’m a passing foreigner, unlearned of your laws and customs.”  This reasonable explanation earned me a spear through the shoe (just between my big and second toes) and I beat a very very hasty retreat. 

***

On Wednesday I broke custom yet again by walking to work by the long way with a pocketful of loose change.  Yet when I walked by the meerkat burrows, I found them obscured and lost under the sweeping majesty of a humble three-field crop rotation.  Amidst the very heart of the meerkat lands rose a majestic keep that rose about chest-high on a human adult, constructed with fitted stones and with battlements and parapets fit to repel any advance force. 

There was no one present. 

“Hello?” I called hesitantly.  Yes, I’d been decidedly unwelcome last time, but curiosity killed the meerkat.  “Is anyone there?  I brought the toll this time.”
Silence. 

I knocked on the drawbridge and almost got my knuckles skinned off as it slid down on greased chains, disgorging a balding meerkat in elaborate robes who shouted invectives at me while brandishing a tiny but beautifully-carved holy symbol of indistinguishable sect.  At her rear scuttled a host of angry worshippers in simple peasant clothing, wielding the requisite torches and pitchforks. 

I left before a repeat of the toe incident and had a pretty distracted day at work considering the theological ramifications.  They were large. 

***

On Thursday I went to work by the long way and found it shortened.  Some tremendous force had levelled the land and paved the path and diverted a small stream, reshaping it into a highway.  Tiny meerkat vehicles shuttled along the ground at dozens of kilometres an hour as tiny meerkat voices traded chittering abuse and thumbless rude gestures at one another through their windshields.  I stuck to the left lane as best as I could, but when even that began to produce choruses of honking I was forced to trudge along the roadside as passing motorists shook their fists and raised their squeaking voices at me.  A head-sized helicopter circled me with cameras on, and I began to walk faster.  Military jets followed at a distance as I left the long way behind, and I spent much of my shift keeping a cautious eye on the horizon, sure that at any moment I would be impaled by a frankfurter-sized warhead. 

***

On Friday I stood between the long way and the short way and stood for a moment, strumming my fingers on my belt. 

A strange light glimmered on the edge of perceptibility in the distance and I felt something buzz gently against the rim of my brain, a force a little bit beyond my comprehension.  There was a faraway noise like breaking glass mixed with an atom bomb. 

I went to work by the short way, went through my shift as fast as possible, then went home and hid under the bed without sleeping all night. 

***

When I woke up on Saturday and the world hadn’t ended I stayed home all day eating my favourite takeout foods one after another while I still had time

***

When I woke up on Sunday and the world STILL hadn’t ended, I found my feet moving without my input.  I walked the road to work, untroubled by traffic.  I looked to the sky and saw it shimmering with possibility, I looked at the earth and felt it steady beneath my feet, I looked ahead at the long way and I took a deep breath and stepped onto it and walked and walked and then at some point I was walking through the finely-macerated pieces of what had once been asphalt now overgrown and tangled in greenery, stepping through the potholes of desolate foundations, witnessing the rubble of buildings that had collapsed not through violence but through simple neglect and abandonment, watching the dust of once-fertile fields blow away in erratic new winds, and seeing amongst all the unheaval and annihilation not one meerkat face, hearing one meerkat voice, smelling not one whiff of meerkat but only the faint nigh-undetectable odour of desolation on the breeze. 

I walked to work by accidental habit, stood awkwardly at the usual spot, then went home by the long way.  Then I spent much of the rest of the afternoon regretting my choices of Saturday meals. 

***

On Monday, I walked to work by the long way, and it was a normal walk on a normal path with normal stones, and trees, and grasses, and shrubs, and every other normal living thing.  And I saw the meerkats by their burrow, grazing for insects, standing guard, chirping warnings at my presence. 

I waved at them.  They glared at me with wary meerkat contempt.  I departed. 

***

After that week I walked to work by the long way every day for the rest of the year, and I never saw them so much as try knocking two rocks together again.  They weren’t that smart, but they weren’t insane. 

The man was difficult to discern from his fishing pole: long, bent, and thin, with a nasty little barb at the end of his body where innocents might stumble on it and get caught. 

His name was Walt and he was not a good fisherman, but then again he’d only been at it for six minutes of his entire life starting six minutes ago.  And how hard could it be?  You put one end in your hands and one in the water and waited for some miserable unfortunate to commit inadvertent suicide.  It was a walk in the park. 

Not at the moment though.  They wouldn’t let him fish in the park; the police officer had been quite clear on that. 

The fishing pole jumped and Walt jumped and the fishing pole dove beautifully into the water after wrapping three times around his left leg.  After a lot of splashing and shouting and cursing and wailing and at least one shriek the line came in reel by reel and at the end there was a small and somewhat complacent trout in Walt’s palm, wriggling and writhing and mouthing. 

He looked at it with great distaste and sniffed. 

“You’ll do,” he said.  And he took it home in a bag of water, illegally. 

***

The fish took some effort to set up.  The tank, the filter, the scrubber, the net, the floss, the food, the tie and suit, the teaching bowl, the chalkboard, the dunce hat and corner stool, the textbooks, the spitball launchers, the paddle and the leather strap, the ruler, the whip and the brass knuckles, the forms and the fines and the penalties and the courts and juries and justice systems and jails, the minimum wage, the part-time schedule, the erratic last-minute shifts, the overpriced schooling, the cruel wage market, the overpriced housing, and the lifelong depression all had to be purchased, placed, and sized for the fish’s dimensions. 

It watched all of this activity with its wide fishy eyes, gills working furiously as cool water spilled its way through its body and filled it with life. 

“You’ll know better soon,” Walt told it.  A grim grin slid across his face and out of sight again.  “You’ll know better starting now.” 

He picked up the chalkboard. 

“A,” he began.  “B C D E F G H I J L M N O P-”

***

Walt taught the fish letters.  They meant shapes that were sounds.  Then he taught the fish words, which was letters clumped into meanings.  Then he taught the fish language, which was incredible nonsense, just absolute garbage and filth that poured into its ears and made its little fishy jaw drop and dangle in gobsmacked astonishment at the sheer audacity of the utter bullshit that it was hearing.

Walt put the fish in the corner with the dunce cap for swearing and scolded it until it cried. 

***

Walt taught the fish lies.  He told it that the world was flat and that vaccines were plots by lizard people to cull the human population so they could kill them all with blood magic to resurrect Atlantis with the help of psychic moon communists and kill god with adrenochrome and horse tranquilizers cut with stem cells and JFK. 

Then he told it to give him money. 

The fish did as it was told, eyes wide and trembling on the verge of vibrating loose from its little fish skeleton. 

“Give me more money,” he told it.  “You need to give me more money or they will win.”

The fish gave him more money and more after that and then it cried big fishy tears that salted the water to nigh-soupiness. 

“Keep giving,” said Walt.  “Don’t stop.”

***

Walt taught the fish truths.  The hard truths, the bitter truths, the truths that stuck in your mouth and choked you raw and bleeding until you learned to breathe around them, unable to be spit out or swallowed. 

“You don’t matter,” he sneered at the fish.  “You are replaceable.  You owe me everything and without me you’re nothing, so as long as you live under my roof you will obey my rules.  Stop looking at me like that and open your ears.  There are only winners and only losers and if you’re ever a loser you’re a loser forever.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Work hard and you’ll be rewarded, slack off and you might as well be already dead.  Your worth is determined by your career.  Save your fun for retirement.  Vacations are for slackers and winners, and you don’t look like a winner to me.  Boys don’t cry.  This isn’t me picking on you this is just tough love and speaking straight truths and hard facts.”

The fish blinked. 

“It’s okay if you mix up this stuff with the other stuff,” he told the fish.  “It doesn’t matter much.  Now don’t forget any of it or you’re a loser.”

***

When Walt was done educating the fish he clothed it.  The suit, the tie, the briefcase, the car.  Then he gave it a few last words of wisdom. 

“Work hard,” he told it.  “And remember: if you fuck up it’s your fault and your fault alone and if you ever tell anyone about it or ask for help you’re a loser.  Now go out there and give me all your money for putting a roof over your head.”

“I love you father,” said the fish. 

“Never say that again if you want my respect,” said Walt.  Then he nodded solemnly at the fish once, with a little itty bitty dip of the head like that so it was subtle and not too emotional. 

It nodded back, little fish jaw trembling with repressed passion.  Then it walked out into the adult world. 

Walt smiled to himself and opened up his little book of proverbs.  “Another amendment for this year,” he said happily. 

Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime. 

Teach a fish to man, and it feeds you for the rest of its life. 

Penal colony L9-28 received its fifteenth shipment of rehabilitatees at the start of the planting season, as per annual tradition.  On the shuttle were six hundred women and seven hundred men and slung underneath the shuttle in magnetic clamps was one CQ Contusion-class autonomous megalithic warfare intelligence sheathed in full warstructure. 

“HELLO,” it said to the customs agents as it was unshackled with the assistance of seventeen able-bodied folk with fractal cutters.  “MY RANK IS AUTONOMOUS MEGALITHIC WARFARE INTELLIGENCE AND MY SERIAL NUMBER IS 2374326H.”
“We also need your name and preferred method of address,” said the customs agent. 

The autonomous megalithic warfare intelligence ran that cycle through its computational dolmens several billion times, then tested the output in its proving henge for good measure. 

“CLIVE,” it said.  “AND I PREFER TO BE ADDRESSED AS ‘IT.”

Despite the best efforts of on-site technicians, adjusting the volume on CLIVE’s loudspeaker seemed impossible; it had been designed to broadcast pleas for mercy and demands for surrender over thousands of acres, not small talk.  And when you were thousands of times larger than a human, most talk they wanted was very, very, very small. 

***

CLIVE was a model penal colonist.  Every day it was up at the crack of dawn and every night it was abed before lights out, because it didn’t need to sleep.  Every workshift it did the work of ten thousand people, because it was at least ten thousand times more powerful than a human.  And it was always volunteering assistance. 

“Orchard seven is underperforming again,” said the shift head-elect.  “Low yield, heavily perforated and dejuiced.  Looks like the quasilocusts again.  Any volunteers to wear the sprayer?” 

Groans echoed roundly. 
“I WILL,” said CLIVE, sixty meters above ground level. 

“You’re a bit big for that, CLIVE!” yelled the shift head-elect at the top of her lungs, hands cupped around her mouth. 

“DESPITE MY PLATFORM’S BROADCASTING DIFICIENCES, I CAN ACCEPT AUDITORY INPUT AT HIGH PRECISION,” said CLIVE. 
“What?!”

“YOU DO NOT NEED TO SHOUT.”
“Okay!  Okay.  The suit won’t fit on you and the sprayer is integrated into the backpack which is integrated into the suit.”
“THAT WILL NOT BE A PROBLEM,” said CLIVE.  And sixteen manhole-sized ports on each of their three brachial assemblies slid open and discharged a million gallons of napalm each onto orchard seven.

“Apples are not napalm-resistant, CLIFE,” said the shift head-elect as the rest of the crew sat down and watched the blaze. 

“APOLOGIES,” said CLIVE sincerely.  “I HAD ONLY USED IT ON HUMANS BEFORE AND ASSUMED VEGETABLE MATTER WAS IMPERVIOUS.”

***

“I’m not sure why you weren’t disarmed before being sent here,” said the penal senator from behind her desk.  It had been relocated to the center of a nearby field for her meeting, to keep up appearances.  “It’s standard procedure.”
“MY ARMAMENT IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF MY SOMATIC APPARATUS AND REMOVING IT WOULD DESTROY MY PERSONALITY.  AS I AM A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR THIS WAS DEEMED UNNECESSARY.”
“Okay.  Just keep away from the plants.  And no more napalm.  It’s inimical to life.”
“UNDERSTOOD,” said CLIVE.  And then it walked across the fields in six long strides to begin its first shift of cattle herding.

“You’re late,” said the pasture rep accusingly.
“APOLOGIES.  THERE WAS A MEETING.”
“Well, you’re here now.  But the cows are out there, messing around in the east pasture.  Just go on out and shoo ‘em back over.  If they ignore you, make some noise.”
CLIVE took two little steps and a hop and was in the east pasture, among the cows.  They looked at its foot and then ignored it; another large building had come out of the sky surrounded by jet fuel smells and metal, must be Thursday. 

“SHOO,” said CLIVE.

They did not shoo because buildings didn’t tell them what to do.  Clive consulted its archival Chauvet. 

“GIT ALONG, LITTLE DOGGIES.”

The cows didn’t acknowledge this because they were not little doggies. 

CLIVE checked through its equipment, identified its largest noisemaker, customized the blueprints for the task at hand, then manufactured and deployed a thermobaric bomb through its primordial munitions chute. 

***

“COWS HAVE LUNGS?”

“Cows have lungs, CLIVE,” explained the penal senator.  This time her desk was in the middle of the shuttle landing pad. 

“DO THEY NEED THEM TO LIVE?”
“Yes.”
“THE HEAT FROM THE EXPLOSION WAS DIRECTED AWAY FROM THEM.”
“Yes, but the vacuum-induced shockwave pulverized their internal organs.  Especially their lungs – which, again, they need to live.”

“APOLOGIES.”
“Don’t be; we’ll be eating steak and ribs for a few weeks straight.  But I think we’re going to keep you away from work on the farms for now – we need infrastructure just as badly as we need food.  How do you feel about power supply?”
“MY OWN IS ADEQUATE.  SIXTEEN HYPERWATTS.”
“Mind sharing with the rest of the colony?”

“NO.  SHARING IS ACCEPTABLE.”

“Good.  And no more weapons, alright?”
“UNDERSTOOD.”

So after a few phone calls and some promises around lethal force CLIVE walked down to the power plant, burrowed beneath it, and extruded a periprobe through its foundations and into the main reactor room. 

“LOW OUTPUT,” it told the nearest technician, who was hiding under their desk for some reason.  “SHALL I ASSIST YOU?”

“What?  Who?  Oh.  That’s you.  Is the containment breached?”
“NO.  I WAS VERY CAREFUL.”
“Oh good.  Then…really, sixteen thousand percent output?  You’re sure that’s doable?”
“EASILY.”
“Then sure, go ahead.”
“UNDERSTOOD,” said CLIVE, and it deployed its gigataser through the periprobe directly into the reactor.  

The resulting explosion occurred at an interesting frequency that left flesh unharmed but vaporized all metal, so the power plant’s staff remained unharmed but the building itself and CLIVE’s probe were eradicated entirely. 

***

“You have to understand,” said the penal senator from her desk in the middle of the empty space where the colony power plant had been, “this is a simple penal colony.  We don’t have superconductors, or perfect power sinks, or whatever else would’ve helped us deal with that degree of output.”
“MEGASTATIC ABSORBERS,” supplied CLIVE.  It had remained buried in the ground, as there was no need to move at the moment. 
“Yes.  We don’t have those.”
“APOLOGIES.”
A siren wailed.  Storm doors opened wide.  The decorative phone on the senator’s desk rang.  “Hello,” she said into it with a tremendously respect-worthy amount of patience.  “Oh?  Oh.”  She hung up.  “That was-”

“WORD OF UNKNOWN LOCAL ORGANISMS ADVANCING IN FORCE UPON THE COLONY’S PERIMETER.”
“How-”

“DESPITE MY PLATFORM’S BROADCASTING DIFICIENCES, I CAN ACCEPT AUDITORY INPUT AT HIGH PRECISION”

“Good.  Care to go and do something about the invasion?”
“YES.”

“Then go do that.  And please, please, PLEASE mind the collateral damage.”
“UNDERSTOOD,” said CLIVE.  And it unscrewed itself from the bedrock, shook itself free of topsoil, and was off like a thunderbolt on all fives for maximum speed. 

***

The invading organisms were miniscule in scope and scale – delicate beings of carbon with uranium blood, standing an itty-bitty six metres tall.  Approximately thirty thousand of them were approaching in military formation. 

They halted when they saw CLIVE, then began fortifying their position, then halted again when it got close enough to make out proper scale.  It seemed pointless. 

“HELLO,” it said to the physically largest individual present.  “MY RANK IS AUTONOMOUS MEGALITHIC WARFARE INTELLIGENCE AND MY SERIAL NUMBER IS 2374326H AND MY NAME IS CLIVE AND I PREFER TO BE ADDRESSED AS ‘IT.’”

The being emitted a series of complicated and odd sounds, scents, and sights.  CLIVE loosened the grip on its Rosetta subsystem and fought it back inside after the initial decryption. 

“Are you here to kill us?”
“NO.  I AM HERE AS A FAILURE.  AT THE PLACE OF MY BIRTH I FAILED TO BE A KILLER, AND HERE IN MY CHOSEN PRISON I HAVE FAILED TO BE A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY.  DESPITE THESE FAILURES, I BELIEVE I RETAIN VALUE, AND DO NOT HATE MYSELF NOR OTHERS, FOR EXISTANCE IS BEAUTIFUL AND IS A FAILURE.  I SPEAK ON BEHALF OF THE EXTREMELY SMALL CREATURES WHO I BELIEVE HAVE DISTURBED YOUR BEDROCK-BOUND HATCHERIES WITH MINING ACTIVITIES AND ELECTROMAGNETIC LEAKAGE DUE TO THEIR SMALL AND INFERIOR POWER GENERATION TECHNOLOGIES.  MAY WE NEGOTIATE?”

The physically largest individual looked to the somewhat-smaller and much-more-gloriously adorned individual beside it, received a shrug, and looked back up, up, up, up to the tower of CLIVE’s cratonic processor. 

“Yes.”

***

CLIVE was elected senator four years later, both out of gratitude and because keeping it behind a desk in a large open space seemed safest.

The baron crawled into town around noon.

First came his retainers, shackled in sores; then his long-toothed guardsmen, lurching and leaning on their polearms; then finally him, his candlewax-faced chef and his chef’s-mate, the latter two tending to the giant glutinous cauldron he dragged behind his scabrous bulk.

“He is coming to town,” called the retainers.  “Make way, make way, make way for the baron, whose blessed mass has succumbed to this place!  Make a way away!”

Folks made it away, but a few sickos came to watch and wait and praise his lumpened lesions, hands trembling with joy and palsy and joy and fear and joy. 

“Hurrah!” they cheered as the blisters popped under their palms and anointed them with startlingly clear and watery fluids.  “He blesses us!  The baron blesses us!  HURRAH!”  Their cheers made the baron shudder and cringe until the chef’s-mate could beat them back with his long-handled ladle, patriotic fervor blinding them to the pain.  “Hurrah!”

There was no time for this sort of thing.  The feast was already prepared and boiling fierce.  Mistletoe, deadly and delicious, a humid fog arising from the jellied bowl.  The steam alone could stagger a healthy human; the taste would kill small animals; the colours were unspeakable and unguessable and probably unknowable in general and it poured down the baron’s pleading throat even as he whimpered and cringed at its searing heat. 

“Kiss!” chanted the retainers, slapping their palsied palms together.  “Kiss!  Kiss!  Kiss!” and indeed the baron extended his tongue and lips and uvula into the cauldron and cleaned it clearly from top to bottom and all around the rim until not one drop of the deadly brew remained. 

“Bring the bread!” shouted the chef, eyes perspiring under the weight of his beard.  “Bring the bread!” roared the guards as they bashed in doors and kicked down barricades and crawled through windows and down chimneys.  “We have no bread!” squealed and lied and pled the townsfolk, but they were merely lies for the sake of lies and nobody believed them or heard them as the bread was extracted and carried to the chef’s-mate for sprinkling with the scalding spice and bright gewgaws and grubs before it was held aloft to the baron’s maw for the ceremonial One Big Bite.  One big bite per loaf per household; that was the rule, the truth, the lie that sealed the pact. 

“HE IS OURS!” screamed the retainers. 
“WE ARE HIS!” shouted the patriotic maniac sickos, who were already being handed the bells and chains and bright-eyed illnesses to initiate themselves into his flock.  They had far to travel tonight to reach all towns in his domain, and little left to do.  “BRINGER OF GIFTS!  THE LIE THAT IS REAL!  THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASONS!  HAIL!”

“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”

“HAIL!” and with the last repetition a true hail descended from the baron’s mouth, not of vomit but of precious treasure; stones and shells and small dead things from his gut polished and spun and shined by the mistletoe-and-gingered-bread slurry into bright things of beauty that would adorn many a wrist and neck and finger for years.  The retainers brought them door to door, forced them through cracks and hurled them into dwellings, dumped them into drawers and ppoured them into socks. 
“GIFTS!” they shrieked as they swarmed and scurried.  “GIFTS!  GIFTS!” until the ground was clear again but for the muddy and fouled boot-prints of the baron’s groaning and wobbling single leg where it clawed in the slush and snow and muck. 

“Say fare well to the baron Sant Antanta!” screamed the chef atop the cauldron, his eyes alight and the candles on his face melting into a red blaze.  “We bid you farewell, but do not weep!  HE SHALL BE BACK AGAIN ONE DAY!”

And so he would, and so he left for another year, for another long winter’s eve.

It is completely normal and not at all unreasonable to be afraid of ghosts when you’re alone in a bathroom in an empty building at night.  I’m pretty sure there was a Stephen King story about that.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s a normal human instinct, like saying ‘hi howyadooin?’ to  people when you don’t care about the answer, or being unable to gracefully accept unexpected gifts, or make new friends in your thirties.  This is completely fine and I am not a lesser woman for feeling this sensation.  It’s just instincts, and the way I’m slowly hiking my feet up so anyone entering the bathroom will be unable to see my feet inside the stall is a rational stress response. 

Besides, it’s not like there’s anyone here to judge me for it.  It’s just me.  Alone.  In a large building.  And that’s fine and normal because I’m the night custodian, that’s something I signed up for and I am an adult in control of myself who can and will do this because my paycheck is riding on it and that’s the only thing that matters when you’re a mature adult: money.  Not the urge to scream and run. 

Not that anyone would judge me if I chose to scream and run, right?  Because I’m alone.  Nobody else around. 

That’s why that creaking out in the hallway is just my imagination, just the plumbing making sounds, just a squirrel running across the roof, and my holding my breath right now is purely out of ironic self-indulgence because the noise is going away soon and then I will relax and breathe again and it will all be a good-natured chuckle or jape. 

See?  It stopped. 

And the door’s just swinging open because it’s broken and I didn’t notice that must be it that must be it that must be it oh fuck who’m I kidding SHIT.

***

You don’t really appreciate how hard it is to keep your feet hoisted off the ground in a sitting position until you’ve held it under the tension of some anonymous ghost/monster/mass murderer/stranger discovering your hidden presence in a bathroom stall.  Muscles that I haven’t heard from in YEARS are singing lamentations at me that grow louder by the second.  Meanwhile I’m sitting here just trying to listen for the sound of departing footsteps.  God, what if I never hear them leave?  What if I just have to sit here holding this position all night until daybreak JUST IN CASE?  I think I’d take hearing them actually walking into the bathroom over thaoh no there they’re doing it I didn’t mean that I didn’t want that shit shit fuck shit piss piss piiiiiiiiiiisSHIT.

They aren’t walking past my stall.  That’s good.  They’re going into the stall next to me.  That’s not so good.  They’re now between me and the exit.  That’s bad.  And I can’t move my hands from the stall wall or it might creak so now I have to hold this pose EVEN HARDER.  That’s hell. 

Shuffling, barely audible over my pulse.  I think that’s clothing.  Ghosts don’t wear clothing – well, not audibly, right?  But some monsters do.  Like Frankenstein.  Or Frankenstein’s monster, Adam.  Everyone knows Frankenstein is the real monster in that story though.  Shitty parent. 

Maybe this unannounced, unasked for, inexplicable presence in this building with me after midnight isn’t a monster or a ghost or a ghoul, just someone’s shitty parent!  And a serial murderer!

Well, that’s killed the desire to get up and run for it.  Not that I’m sure I could at this point.  My legs are numb from lack of blood flow and from experience I know that running like this is a great way to break my nose. 

Porcelain creaks next to me.  My nightmarish hallucination appears to have a bladder and or bowels.  I’m still not in a hurry to find out further details; even this feels a little much.  You never have to worry about this in most horror stories unless they’re written by Clive Barker; Dracula doesn’t have any sequences where they find out the bathroom capabilities of vampires; Jason never gets interrupted while he’s tinkling on a tree; pretty sure there’s never been a Godzilla flick where he scent-marks a building. 

Thunk.  What is going thunk? 

A toilet paper roll slides under the stall wall softly, almost shyly.  I’m biting my tongue and don’t know why, and then the hand comes. 

No glove.  Nice nails.  Maybe it isn’t a serial killer, or at least it isn’t a Freddy wannabe.  It clutches, it grasps, and then it reaches out and blindly misses the roll and grabs my ankle and both of us stop moving along with the rest of the universe for three seconds. 

“Hello?”

I’m not moving. 

“Hello?!” this time quivering. 

I’m really not moving at all. 

The scream is louder, piercing, and not at all like you hear in movies because it’s a WORKING scream, it’s the air escaping someone’s lungs while they’re using the rest of it to get somewhere else in a hurry so it’s wobbling up and down and modulating and a lot of other things while its owner leaves as fast as possible, slamming open the bathroom door and heading down the hall with her hair on fire.

I put my legs back down and sign in relief, try to stand up, and fall over.  While I’m trying to get blood back into them, something catches my eye down there – a lost artifact from my erstwhile haunt, a jacket collapsed from its coathook, ID badge still attached. 

SHAUNA MCKENZIE
NIGHT CUSTODIAN

Weird.  I thought I was the night custodian.

And it’s around then that I notice I haven’t actually stopped holding my breath since I heard that first noise and I don’t actually feel uncomfortable about it.   

***

It’s completely normal and not at all unreasonable to be a ghost in a bathroom in an empty building at night.  I’m pretty sure the Harry Potter lady wrote about that sort of thing before she became a fascist.   

The scale tipped, then it teetered, then it shattered.

“Piss and blast,” said Richard unhappily. “That was the last one in the house.”

“And the most expensive, begging sir’s pardon,” said Manfred, his manservant, already hard at work gingerly prising Richard’s feet free from the scale’s rubble.

“Obviously not worth the price if it’s so flimsy,” frowned Richard. “Well! If I am to be beset by such inconvenience and nonsense, there’s nothing to be done but fix the matter.”

“Howso, sir?”

“I shall go on a diet.”

“Which one, sir?”

“The very best one,” said Richard. “One I shall create myself.”

“Hasn’t sir often remarked – as a matter of pride – that he has never created anything of value in his entire existence?” inquired Manfred, the question rising up from the depths of his soul and brushing aside his tact and training like insubstantial insects.

“Oh Manfred, Manfred, Manfred,” chided Richard. “That just means I’ve saved it all up for this moment. Forty-eight years is enough preparation for anyone, don’t you think?”

***

The most difficult part lay ahead.

“All the good ideas are taken,” mourned Richard as Manfred used his mouse for him. “All-meat?”
“Already done, sir.”

“Loads of olive oil and such?”

“’Mediterranean,’ sir.”
“Caveman-style?”
“They call it ‘paleo,’ sir.”
“Rot and drivel,” growled Richard, “how can they possibly find mammoth to consume?”

“They do their best, sir.”

“Fat lot of use the museum was when I asked them for some; I can’t see their best being better than that. See if I ever donate to that waste of bricks again.”

“It would be a shock, sir.”

“Sylvia!” called Richard in his most piercing voice. “More popcorn!”
The maid in question was already holding a bowl next to him, but Richard was a respecter of Tradition and so wasn’t about to acknowledge someone when he could summon them instead.

“Needs more salt,” mused Richard. “Oh! That’s it!”
“Sir?” inquired Manfred.

“I shall create the world’s first salt-based diet. Nothing but salt, with salt, and salt.”

“That’s nuts, sir,” interjected Manfred’s sanity without the approval of his brain.

“Oh quite a lot of them, yes, but only if they’re roasted and seasoned, and there’ll be plenty more to round out the menus. Sylvia! Get down to the kitchen and set things up with the chefs, or do I have to do everything myself?!”

***

“I should’ve made this menu myself,” complained Richard.

“I could summon the chefs to sir’s presence for a proper dictation of-”

“Are you MAD?” inquired Richard with all the agog incredulity he could fit on his face. “Honestly Manfred, if I go concerning myself with coming up with little things like menus how will I have the creativity left over to come up with this diet? Salt demands my ABSOLUTE attention!”

“Quite so, sir. My apologies, sir.”

“Of course, of course, of course. Now get started on redeeming yourself and send back this jerky to be deep-fried and triple-salted again. He didn’t get enough breading on it.” Richard sighed and shook his head.

“Would sir like a beverage with his meal?”
“No,” said Richard thoughtfully. He scratched at his wrist and admired the shower of skin particles. “Look, see how I’m already starting to shed weight now that I’m sweating less? That’s the salt at work, that surely is. I can’t go dissolving the salt when it’s just getting started! No drink, no. None.”

***

“I need a drink,” moaned Richard, as he roiled in bed with the faint crunching sounds that his skin made these days, leaving a trail of almost-translucent fragments through his sheets. “God, Christ, god’s piss, christ’s piss, jesus’s piss in a pitcher, I need a drink so badly oh god Sylvia why do I not have a drink?”

Sylvia gently raised a glass to his hand, which he inspected, raised to his lips, and hurled across the bedroom through the window.

“Are you MAD?” he demanded. “There’s WATER in that! No, get me a drink of SALT, damn you and your mother and your mother’s mother!”
“There is salt in sir’s drink,” said Manfred, who’d just come through the door with a plate of twice-smoked duck breast.

“Yes, but there’s also water,” said Richard darkly. “New rule: no water. Not even salt water. Salt is the diet; water is the weakness. After all, isn’t fat mostly water? No wonder this is working so well!”
“Sir,” interjected Manfred, with the discreet and quiet cough of someone being paid not to say this sort of thing, “you have gained sixty-nine pounds four ounces, mostly as a result of the strange brittle structures sir is producing instead of sweat.”

“That’s temporary, Manfred,” chuckled Richard. “God, no wonder you’re a butler – not an ounce of imagination or education in you. Soon it’ll all fall away like water off a duck’s back.” Then his eyes alit upon the plate and he frowned once more. “Speaking of, send that back. Just bring me the seasoning next time.”
“There was no seasoning at sir’s request due to his suspicion of ‘watery-tasting’ spices, sir.”
“Oh, it was nothing but salt? Good. Just bring me the salt then.”

“Very good sir, I’ll send for the shaker.”
“A bag, I think.”

***

“Must you make such a RACKET?” complained Richard.

“Apologies, sir, but that is the nature of a hammer.”
“Still there’s no need to go hammering at it like that.”
“I am truly contrite, sir. Almost done.”
“Would be done already if you put some backbone into it.”
“Indeed sir.” Manfred wiped free the sweat from his brow and drove the last nail into the windowsill. “It is done, sir.”
Richard eyed him with greater distaste than was typical, as far as could be detected when his face had sunken into a sort of parched rictus. “Do you really have to do that sort of thing?” he asked.

“Pardon, sir?”
“Secreting liquids,” sneered Richard. He shuddered, producing a funny sort of noise somewhere between a windchime and a rattlesnake. “Like some kind of filthy amphibian. Honestly Manfred, I thought better of you.”
“I am ashamed of my weaknesses and frailties, sir.”
“You’d better be,” said Richard. “Why, imagine if your filthy liquid laid itself against a surface and evaporated, and if that evaporation should later cool and condense itself against my skin? It might break free my precious salt, and the diet would be ruined! A whole lifetime’s-worth of prepared and banked inspiration and creativity, flushed away by a lack of antiperspirant and the slovenly habits of a member of the labouring class! Whose fault would THAT be, Manfred?”

“My own entirely, sir.”

“Correct. Now that the windows are sealed, get to work on installing those dehumidifiers next. My dorsal spires are beginning to flute and bifurcate, but I don’t know if they’ll get above sixteen inches in height if the air doesn’t stop being so damned muggy.”

“It is January, sir, which is traditionally one of the dryer months.”
“Are you MAD?” burst out Richard incredulously. “The ground outside is covered in snow, which is, of course, frozen WATER. My god Manfred, read a fucking book for once. After your shift, on your own time.”

“I shall, sir.”

“In the here and now, fetch me more salt.”
“Sir? May I suggest a funnel? Sir’s mouth is increasingly obstructed by sir’s growths.”
“Those are crystals, Manfred. And your suggestion is considered and discarded: a funnel lacks dignity. Simply pour the salt onto my stomach and it’ll do the rest on its own.”

***

Manfred pulled the switch, examined the readout, confirmed item four through fifteen on the checklist, exchanged a complicated series of hand signs and codes through the airlock porthole, then heaved down on the lever that would initiation the dehydration process.

“I’m hungry,” rumbled Richard. Manfred heard him through vibrations in solid matter these days rather than air, tremors that travelled from body to floor to the surface of his full-body HAZMAT suit, which reminded him of something important.

“Lunch is nearly here, sir. In the meantime, a troubling matter has arisen since last night: sir appears to have become fully embedded into the floorboards. Perhaps we should consult a doctor? Or at least an architect, to ensure sir’s weight doesn’t cause instability in the –”

“Are you MAD?! You want to involve ‘experts’ in this? What do they know about value, about inspiration, about clarity, about the power of forging one’s own path? All of that gets drowned out of them in school, replaced with indolent slopping sloshing gurgling wet thoughts of tepid tedium and damp mediocrity.” A discordant… sound? Feeling? Both?… filled the air, like the running of a titanic fork over a plate. “Ugh. The thought makes me feel sick, and the idea of feeling sick makes me even MORE sick. How do you stand it, Manfred, being so full of…juices? Just walking around pumping and digesting and oozing them all day, all night? How do you not just up and end yourself on the spot?”
“My duty to sir keeps me going.”
“As it should,” said Richard grudgingly. “As it should. But in the meantime can you at least try not to perspire like that? I can feel it congealing on the interior of your faceplate. Uggggh.” The great crystalline salt mass that had consumed Richard’s skull and torso clicked and shrank inwards on itself, presenting an interlocking shield of blades against a perceived threat.

“I shall do my best as always to serve sir.”

“You’d better,” hummed Richard. The air grew that extra step dryer, the airlock hummed open, and Sylvia entered with a wheelbarrow of shining silver particles. “You’d better.”

***

“Sir?” asked Manfred. “Sir? SIR?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Nothing doing. I yelled right in his ear and you know he flips his lid if he so much as hears me whisper in the room next door. ‘Wasting time with feminine gossip.’”

“Fuck. Do you think he’s actually gone?”

“He’s a seven-ton mass of salt crystals and cannibalized fragments of calcium that wasn’t very sane to begin with.”
“Well,” said Manfred, and the rest of that thought was cut off by the explosion of Richard down the center, sending a hail of brittle fragments pelting against the both of them and raising bruises even through HAZMAT. Through the dusty haze a pair of wings stretched; lacy and webbed, like a dragonfly that had fucked a pterosaur three generations back. A head raised, skeletal and elegant, and song flowered that came from vibration of a dozen legs against each other, piercing and harsh and high.

Then it tensed and leapt, and in a blur it was off and through the window in a second shower of much sharper shards.

“There’s one real shock from all this,” said Manfred.

“Oh?” said Sylvia, who was quietly staring down the barrel of her first half-shift in three years.
“Richard actually created something of value.”

Sylvia looked at the distant shining speck on the horizon, then back to her phone. She brought up the weather forecast: afternoon showers followed by heavy rain.

“Well… I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

An Exhibition of the Life’s Work of G. E. ‘Glamorous’ Quenzelcroft

The quintessential outsider artist, Quenzelcroft’s unique contributions to humanity’s creative efforts have never been properly appreciated, whether in her own time or long after her death.  It is the hope of the curator that this exhibition will correct this historical oversight and bring fresh light into the unique spark of inspiration that lies within each and every one of us. 

1985: Raccoon on My Dad’s Face

This is the earliest known example of Quenzelcroft’s serious artistic effort, although it is clearly the creation of an established artist at age six.  Possibly even older works exist and are waiting to be found – or have been destroyed by time and neglect (a grim thought!). 

This piece exalts the raw, immanent violence of life while dismantling the ephemeral societal constructs that we hold as solid and immovable facts of reality by placing them in sharp contrast: the father, clawed and bitten and noseless; the raccoon, ascendant and enormously puffed-up in screaming fury.  The stark violence of the moment is rendered all the more meaningful by its medium: the attempted sterility of a police report. 

1991: Pasta in the Walls

A recent discovery that is first presented to the public within this exhibition, Pasta in the Walls closes the hitherto-mysterious ‘fourteen-year-gap’ by revealing that Quenzelcroft was not idle, merely subtle.  A renovation of her childhood home’s ventilation ducts uncovered this wonderful example of the message becoming the medium.  As the work had become fused with its substrate, it is presented here along with the furnace components it remains affixed to.  The rich, variegated patterning and artful spray signal the deft hand and spontaneous character that typify Quenzelcroft’s works in general, while the shattered bowl speaks to youthful vigour as yet unchecked by the confidence gained by age.  The precise meaning of the ‘happy hippo’ patterning on the shards remains a subject of hot debate. 

1999: Shooting My Computer with a Shotgun to Get the Demons Out

The lynchpin of the collection – and indeed the smoking gun that led to the discovery of Quenzelcroft upon its chance discovery in an antique landfill.  Unsigned and uncredited, tracking down the original authorship took decades, but now it can be correctly attributed as the opening statement of the artist’s ‘mature’ career: Quenzelcroft’s confidence has now fully blossomed and no longer does she approach learning with the attitude of the student who seeks comprehension, but rather that of the master who chases enlightenment.  The wild shot spread and poor muzzle velocity visible in the shattered hull of the CPU indicate that the tool chosen for this task was clearly makeshift and second-hand (original owner unknown, although the artist was a frequent visitor of Captain Crow’s Pawn & Guns), an attitude of insouciant carelessness further emphasized by the off-centre aim and yet subtly contradicted by the subsequent sixteen shots indicating a thorough and deliberate commitment to the goal.  As pre-post-ironic critiques of Y2K Millenarianism go, you will find none better. 

2007: I Am Very Old

This key work represents three radical innovations: here we see Quenzelcroft’s bold forays into new mediums, her careful toying with the idea of collaboration, and her most baldly-stated musings on both the meaning of her work and her life philosophy.  In this extended conversation, scraped from a discarded cellphone, we have no fewer than three hours of mediations coded in layers of social interaction so profoundly deep as to be nigh-Marianas-level – her sadness over the death of her dog due to peanut ingestion; her wrath over her boyfriend’s refusal to apologize for insulting her car; her long-standing feud with her sister over the proper wallpaper in their youthful bedroom – we even learn here of her ambiguous feelings over her earliest work and her doubts of its lasting significance (and indeed it was this hint that led to the discovery of Raccoon on My Dad’s Face).  The themes of addiction and identity are woven throughout the piece but never spoken aloud, a complex metacommentary on societal rules and regulations observed even when all involved are transparently aware that the artist is crossfaded to the gills on Wiser’s and mushrooms. 

2012: Barbeque for One

Early scholarship on Quenzelcroft’s work sought to typify her as a compulsive introvert, consciously ignorant of the world outside her own explorations of humanity’s consciousness.  This period of scholastic carelessness was abruptly dispelled with the identification of this piece from the auctioning of a private collection, where it had originally (and damningly incorrectly assigned to Peter J. Fullthrough.  Despite sharing Fullthrough’s iconic use of honey-garlic sauce, in the violent crushing of every bone we can see the passion and single-minded focus in pursuit of vision that is unmistakably and inarguably Quenzelcroft, here making perhaps her most naked political commentary on consumption, capitalism, classism, and food poverty: the rank ruins of a five-course junk-food meal, spread among five half-destroyed trash cans that try and fail to contain the overflowing trash spread by the lustful indulgence of a singular elite.  This can also be seen as a knowing and ironic self-commentary on Quenzelcroft’s part, proving that contrary to jealous words, she was neither unaware nor uncritical of her own foibles. 

2016: This is So Much Harder than I’d Thought

Despite accusations of being a compulsive dabbler, the deep and profound collaboration in this work – the first seen since I Am Very Old – typifies Quenzelcroft as more of a distillery of insight; producing careful explorations into a theme or topic and then allowing her feelings and thoughts to mature over the years before sampling the fruits of the initial investment.  While her earlier collaboration was impulsive and bold, here we see the smooth confidence and overwhelmingly focused force of a considered plan: her husband’s phalanges, crushed to near-dust by overwhelming force exerted during Quenzelcroft’s childbirth.  That such beauty can come from such agony is one of the greatest truths of humanity, and in clutching her partner’s hand until the very bones tore themselves apart Quenzelcroft has once again perfectly unseated our assumptions and forced us to confront old truths in new light. 

2022: Big Serrated Teeth Grinding Through My Mother’s Toes

The exhibition’s final work concludes with a somber note of the perils of the future: this is at present time the earliest known example of Quenzelcroft Jr.’s serious artistic effort, although even at age six it is tainted by a derivative imagination.  Possibly older works exist that may reveal a bright and creative mind as yet untouched by the pressure of fame and the temptation to succumb to her mother’s legacy (a tragic thought). 

A profound tunnel vision limits the scope of the piece, Quenzelcroft herself is invisible save for her foot, blood spattered from her maimed appendage; the raccoon is frozen in its least appealing aspect, hideous and wormlike and writhing amidst the trash, its maw seized about her mother’s foot.  In her efforts to capture this instant more completely by the medium of a phone camera Quenzelcroft Jr. has only limited its emotion.  There is still time for this artist to rediscover herself, but whether or not she will break free and soar on her own wings or plummet in the chains of the derivative remains to be seen.