jamieproctor.ca

It was a house designed for soothing worn senses.  The chairs were overstuffed and worn; the lights were soft and homely; the floors creaked in only the quietest and most reassuring ways.  Even the timbers that made up the walls seemed to have been softened by time and care, turned into something battered and buttery that couldn’t so much as hurt a fly.  After half an hour of exposure the cruelest scoundrel would feel their heart soften and melt like chocolate in a microwave, and the everyday cares and woes of the universe would shrivel up and vanish without a word.  It was a place for rest and calm and love, and nobody had been so much as cross in it for decades.

Lauren was beginning to get a bit cross. 

Honestly, what was the POINT of grandchildren?  Children she could understand – you went to the effort to make the damned things, so you might as well keep working on them so it wasn’t a total waste of time – but grandchildren just sort of appeared, and half the work put into them wasn’t even something you were personally responsible for.  And then they grow up immediately and you go to all the effort of making them their favourite crab cakes and the little shitheads don’t even bother to let you know they aren’t going to show up so now you have two plates of goddamned crab cakes and you can barely finish half a plate now because you’re old and tired and your stomach hates being fed so much you’ll hear about it half the night if you actually let yourself eat as much as you like for CHRIST’S sake. 

“Piss,” she said aloud.  And it almost made the day much worse, because she said it at the same time as there was a tiny little knock on the door, and nearly missed it. 

There was nobody outside in the little salt-scoured excuse for a seaside garden, not even the usual tired snails.  But there was a letter jammed half-under the humorous ‘GO AWAY’ mat that Laurel had given her for Christmas a few years ago. 

Well, nothing better to do.  Lauren dragged it back inside, opened it with a kitchen knife, and read it over the sink while eating a crab cake. 

we have the kID.  BrING the B O T T L E to the DEAD PIEr by evENing

It wasn’t signed. 

Well.  That made things better.  As things stood she had been going to go from cross to worried in about an hour, but now she could focus on being fucking furious instead, which was much less stressful and more fun. 

***

Evening was a nice long ways away, which meant Lauren had time to pack even if she was early, which she was going to be.  Nobody wanted to be late to a hostage exchange, even if it was just family and you didn’t have to impress them.  It was just embarrassing. 

So she took her old rucksack and she put some crab cakes in it for the trip, and some more for Laurel, and some odds and ends and her big knick knack and of course two bottles from the big shelf in her cellar, wrapped carefully in . 

Then she left.  The wind was salty and fresh and the gulls were loud and crude and the sun was fighting the clouds and it all was so wonderful and bright that she found herself whistling, which was a terribly inappropriate thing to do on your way to a hostage exchange. 

She didn’t stop though.  She was in a santy anna sort of mood. 

“Do you have grandkids?” she asked one of the larger gulls, which was sitting on a rock glowering at her.  It warked at her hatefully.  “I do.  I have three and counting and this one’s the second one and she is a right pain in the asshole.”
It warked at her again. 

“Cloaca, for you.”
Wark. 
“Oh go away.”

She started up santy anna again.  Someone was getting Molino del Rey’d today. 

***

The Dead Pier was dead.  It was in the name. 

Once upon a time people had brought in nets and lobster traps and swore and cut themselves and fallen off it while drunk and yelled hellos and goodbyes and occasionally pissed off it.  But then the shoals had gotten all overfished and the boats had gone farther afield and now it was empty except for the occasional necking teenage couple.  Not many of those either, since there were many more romantic places to lose your virginity that also didn’t smell as badly of antique fish guts. 

Lauren had worked the Dead Pier, back when it was Shipley’s Pier.  And she’d never fallen off it.  This would be like going home, except home was holding your family hostage and making demands of you, so almost exactly like going home except smelling badly of antique fish guts. 

She breathed deep as she stepped onto it.  Tasted like the old days.  She could almost feel the terrible little sandwiches Charley had made her dissolving in her mouth on a cloud of stale wonderbread. 

“Hey,” someone said from right in front of her, where they were inconsiderately blocking all the light. 

“Fuck off,” Lauren said reasonably.  “I’m reminiscing.”
The interchangeable man scowled.  God she was embarrassed just looking at him.  Even if you were nothing more than a two-bit hired thug that didn’t have the grace to not look the part, at least you could get an impressive tattoo or something.  This asshole looked like he’d been printed off a production line and stocked in a Walmart under ‘goon.’  “Shut up or-”

Lauren was very very bored, so she took her hands out of her pockets and one of them was holding odds and the other was holding ends and she put them together and threw them gently underhand into the interchangeable man’s face, where they latched on and began taking out their frustration.  Crabs warrant their name, even baby ones, and being kept in pockets doesn’t improve their mood any. 

The interchangeable man screamed and clutched at his face so Lauren kicked him where he wasn’t covered and went on her way as the noises died down a bit into whimpers.  Two more interchangeable men kept a wary distance from her at the end of the pier, and between them was Laurel, looking VERY annoyed (good girl) and in front of them was Gus.

“Hey, Gus.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t dump both of you off this pier.”
“You only have to pay two guys now.”
Gus thought about that.  She could tell because his whole brow furrowed.  The interchangeable men thought about it too.  She could tell because they looked at each other, then at Gus, then at what their odds were.  They didn’t appear to enjoy them. 

“Take your hands where I can see them,” said Gus.

“They’re already doing that.  Quit stalling to show off and let’s get this done.  What do you want?”
“The bottle.  Take off your coat.  Hands in plain sight.  Drop the bag.  Move slowly.  Put it on the pier.  Stop DOING that!”
“But my hands are in plain sight.”
“Put your fingers back you old shithawk or your grandkid gets it.”
Lauren rolled her eyes (Laurel did too – good girl) and put her fingers back.  Gus was the sort to do something stupid if she pushed a little too hard, which wasn’t good, but he was also the sort to do something stupid if she made him a little angry, which was good. 

She put the bottle on the pier. 

“That’s it?”
“That’s the bottle, yeah.”
Gus pointed at the left interchangeable man over his shoulder.  “Check it.”
The interchangeable man did so, at considerably slow pace and with many changes in his expression.  Lauren gave him a big smile that showed off all eight of her teeth as he picked up the bottle and held it up to the evening sunshine.

“It’s heavy!” he said in surprise. 

“Not for what’s in there,” said Lauren. 

“And it’s glowing!”

“Well, you’re holding it up to the light.”

“And it says ‘retirement’ on the cork.”

Gus relaxed.  She could see it in the way his lips moved into a large smile and his jowls relaxed into a calm set of folds to make a boarhound jealous and his shoulders slumped into their stooped state and his toes unclenched in his gumboots and his guard was down, which was why Lauren chose that moment to step on the interchangeable man’s toe. 
He yelped and flinched two feet in the air and down went the bottle onto the pier, where it presumably broke.  Lauren didn’t really check, because by then she was ten feet away and latching herself to a mooring post with her belt, and just barely in time. 

***

Some of the older sailors Lauren had met back in the day had made ships in bottles, putting tiny replicas of their whole lives in glass cases.  She’d always thought that lacked ambition. 

The ocean was VERY glad to be let out of its cage though, so the appeal to safety made sense.  And fuck knows it had been two and a half jobs to cram it in there in the first place. 

When the tide went out to sea Lauren took the time for a deep breath.  She couldn’t take an angry sea to the gut like she used to, even with forewarning. 

“BITCH.” 

Gus, on the other hand, was all gut.  Even the fist coming for her face had a spare tire or three wrapped around its knuckles.

“FUCKIN’ CHEAT.”
The other fist was a little faster.  Right, Gus was a lefty.  God she was forgetful in her old age. 

“GONNA” and Lauren pulled her knick knack knife from her sleeve and  she never found out what he was gonna. 

God that was going to need a good cleaning later.  He even smelled like stale sweat and beer on the inside.  But first things first.

Lauren hobbled up to the edge of the pier and looked over the side.  “Hello.”
“Hi granny.”
“You’re still a good swimmer.”
“Yep.”
“Counted on it.  Want me to throw you a line or…?
“Nah, there’s a ladder.”
“Good.  Get up here and let’s go home.  You can have your crab cakes on the way.”
“Extra-greasy?”
“As always.”

“Good.”

And she was right.  It WAS good. 

Do not even talk to me without my coffee.

It was earliest morning and the sun was still sleeping in behind the very last and longest of the hills.  Everything looked like ink blots, especially the eyes of the few shambling zombies that roamed the streets, grunting and moaning and gurgling at the just-lost moon. 

“Caffeine,” they whined.  “Caffeeeeeeine.”  And their feet took them down the worn grooves in the sidewalk that their bodies had walked ten thousand times before, never once with the brain in charge, never once with a soul to guide them, to Long Noodle John’s Cigar and Coffee Shack.

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee. 

Long Noodle John didn’t sell cigars, but it had been called that since Short Noodle Hoover had set up the place a century back and he didn’t want to push his luck.  You messed with the rituals and omens of the decaffeinated at grave peril, of both your business and of your person. 

So you kept the name of the business and changed your own to match it, and you kept the specials on the menu, and you gave everyone the same damned thing they’d asked for the first day you met them, and you never stopped smiling, and behind the counter you kept that ancient creaking sign that said:

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

And you followed its advice as you served them one and all. 

The long, slouching man with a welder’s fingers: red hot black coffee, with no napkin to keep his fingers from burning. 

The single father with eyes buried in many-folded-flesh-flaps in his face: tea, three bags, no sugar, no milk, a squirt of lemon juice from the bright yellow bottle. 

The ragged college person with the thrice-crushed nose: the cheapest, coldest coffee legally saleable. 

The woman in the suit: a triple-quadruple with a stale cookie from the stale cookie box that had, fifty years ago, held cigars. 

The three teenagers with their three backpacks and their three bad haircuts: two coffees and a tea, all of them with one milk and one sugar and honey in the tea.  The tea went to the second-worst haircut. 

And Long Noodle John did it all without a word, without a cleared through, or a cough, or an acknowledging ‘hmm!’ or a ‘have a good one’ or having to say ‘workin’ hard or hardly workin’??!’ or anything.  Because of the sign. 

Good money came from this, since you were dealing with people that weren’t actually awake or even really alive.  You took bills and coins and cards and cheques and small polished bird skulls and shark-tooth necklaces and car keys and land deeds and stocks and bonds and gift certificates and in one case a complete set of flawless dentures made from real ivory, only barely used and still warm from the old man’s first sip of coffee. 

It made good money at the pawn shops and the banks and the so ons and so forths, legal or not.  Ten more years of this and Long Noodle John would be free to spend the rest of his life without seeing a single bean. 

If they didn’t get him first. 

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

The first rays of gold breached the treeline, crawled down the sides of the buildings.  Long Noodle John’s customers hissed and recoiled and snarled at the sun, eyes averted into the safety of their own shadows as they scurried to him like rats boarding a ship sinking straight into hell.  They tripped, they crawled, they ran to him with trembling hands and buckling backs, limping and wheezing as the awful truth of the morning began to beat down on them in full. 

Chamomiles and chamomiles of leaves and grounds and cups, disposable and indispensable. 

Long Noodle John smiled, and poured, and gave no change. 

Orange Peckle, double-steeped. 

It was almost time for the rush to be over.  Almost time for the relaxing part of his day, where he could start counting his gains and thinking about what island he’d spend his retirement on and whether he should live on martinis or margaritas.  He would smile for real, and laugh, and talk with his voice, using words.  And until the next morning he wouldn’t have to think about caffeine. 

English Breakfest with two sugars. 

Unlike most of his customer base, Long Noodle John believed in early to bed, early to rise, and so he woke up with working eyes, an uncreased face, and a healthy, regular appetite.  He had never revealed this to anyone, for fear of death. 

Early Grey with milk. 

And that.

Dark roast

Was.

Mocha

That.

And a latte.

Done. 

“Oh man, one more thing!”

But not actually.

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

It was a new customer, and this one was wearing clothing, real clothing, that a person might wear, not whatever cloth could be placed on a barely-animate scarecrow.  It was wide-eyed.  It was bright-eyed.  It was bushy of tail and mint of breath and it was striding up to the counter and putting down exact change and asking for a herbal blend WITH ITS MOUTH and Long Noodle John couldn’t close his mouth or believe his eyes or stop the horrible droning sound of rushing blood from filling his ears.

“Well gosh I didn’t know that this place was here hahahaha joke’s on me well now there I was jogging and good thing I’ve got this wallet on me and hey no rush now man yeah can’t go too fast in the morning  you know or else well you know it’s no fun at all, gotta ease into it, y’know?”
Long Noodle John nodded mutely.  He felt the weight of a great and powerful embarrassment on his neck, trying to snap it.  His fingers moved without guidance and put bags and water and heat together, hoping this would save him. 

“Here y’go!”

He took the change. 

“So, working hard or hardly workin’?” inquired the stranger, voice loud and happy and echoing from one side of the street to another.

Long Noodle John shrugged and almost lost a shoulderblade. 

“I bet you get LOTS of traffic this time of day!”
His smile was cracking.
“Well, see you tomorrow!  I’ll bring photos of my cat, you can have them as a tip!”

Nod.  Smile.  Cry inside. 

“G’bye!” said the stranger.  “And really you should stop selling cigars, y’know?  Bad for you!”
“It’s historical,” said Long Noodle John. 

Every eye turned to him, sunken and cold and dead over their warm beverages. 

“Oh shit.”

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

That’s what it says on the sign of Medium Noodle Davy’s Cigar and Coffee Shack.  He got it embossed for good measure. 

And just to be safe, he works with his jaw wired shut. 

The doorbell was a dreary little dead thing – cracked and chipped and worn from too many fingers too long ago – but it might as well have been a venomous snake the way it looked to Janet. 

She pushed it anyways.  There were some dares you didn’t back down from, even if it was your best friend who’d made them.  Especially if it was your best friend that made them. 

There was no footsteps, no oncoming shuffle, no creak of the floorboards.  First the door was shut and the house was empty and then they weren’t and there he was in front of her, shortish and squatish and with a crease to his brows that made him look like you’d interrupted him at all times from some very important thought.  His skin was all over rough and chapped and ridged and his eyes were a murky puddle. 

The Lizard Man. 

He didn’t say a single thing to her, just waited patiently.  Probably had this sort of thing happen to him all the time.  If she was lucky he’d just slam the door in her face. 

He waited.  And just like it had when Yasmine made her dare, Janet’s nerve cracked. 

“Can I see your basement?” she asked. 

The Lizard Man’s brow furrowed a little more deeply. 

“It’s for a dare,” she caved, and then because oh what the hell might as well spill everything: “my friends all think you keep bodies down there.”

A snort came through the Lizard Man’s nose, a distant cousin to a giggle.  But he opened the door wider and turned on his heel and damnit there was a dare to live up to. 

Hopefully. 

***

The Lizard Man’s house was dry and dusty.  Everything was in its place, had been put in its place decades ago, and had never been moved again.  It made Janet think of her grandmother’s house, especially her grandfather’s room.  His shaving razor was still set on the counter where he’d left it, and when she put it back in the wrong place – just to take a look, that was all – the next time they’d visited it’d been right back where it came from. 

The Lizard Man wasn’t as old as her grandmother.  But his eyes were.  Funny, that. 

Unsurprisingly, there were lizards – none of them caged, all of them free to do as they pleased, which was mostly sit there and not move, like most lizards and most people.  Thin little elegant ones stuck on the walls blinking with reproachful eyes at the noisy new intruder (somehow Janet’s feet weren’t capable of the same noiselessness as the Lizard Man’s).  A couple big fat ones on the kitchen table eating carefully from a bowl of chopped plants and plant byproducts.  A small bug-eyed one atop the refrigerator, which the Lizard Man gently took down and placed on his head.  It seemed satisfied with this, although it kept a wary gaze on Janet with one rotating eyeball.  She’d have returned the favour if she could have. 

The door to the basement was bigger than she’d have assumed.  Most old houses hid them in narrow little doors that looked like they’d open up cupboards or closets; this was nearly a front door itself.  But it opened with a special little key in the Lizard Man’s hand and the stairs led down, so she followed. 

The door shut itself after her, and it was only when they reached the bottom of the stairs that Janet asked herself why anyone would need a key to their own basement. 

***

The basement was less dusty, in defiance of natural law.  Soft red light seeped from the lamps overhead, and around them were many more lizards.  Some of them hung from the rafters; some of them squatted on the floor.  A big pile of them were piled up in a big pile.

A VERY big pile.  Some of the lizards were bigger than Janet.  As a matter of fact, they looked like something she’d seen at the zoo.  Dragons?  Komodo Dragons.  She wanted to ask, but was worried about the answer, so she didn’t.

The Lizard Man ignored the dragons.  The dragons ignored the Lizard Man.  They did eye up Janet some, but in a very disinterested way, which suited her fine.  Their tour group had come by the dragons enclosure during feeding time, and she knew those shut-tight mouths had awfully big teeth.  Was this legal?  She was sure this couldn’t be legal.  Even if the Lizard Man had a permit somewhere for breeding – Ten?  Twenty?  More? – Komodo dragons in his house, surely they’d get him for his basement.  This had to be bigger than the house. 

There was another staircase, which was confusing because Janet’s house only had one basement and it still flooded every spring because the water table was high, or so her mom cursed.  The Lizard Man’s staircase was cool and a little damp but not flooded.

The second basement, however, was. 

***

Actually, maybe it wasn’t a basement.  Janet was pretty sure that even if basements could have cut-stone walls, they didn’t have stalactites.  A little line of lights marched away down the center of the ceiling into the far-away night, out of sight. 

There was a boat, which the Lizard Man got into.  Then he waited. 

Yasmine really, really couldn’t claim Janet had chickened out by now.  She really couldn’t. 

But Janet’s grandmother had told her many times about the importance of not doing things by halves, so she got into the boat too. 

There were no oars, which was odd.  Then the Lizard Man tugged gently on the anchor, and it tugged back, and a lizard head the size of the boat breached the water and blew gently over them through its nose, washing them both in cold spray and mosasaur snot. 

It tasted like salt, and while Janet was spitting and coughing the boat was taken up by the anchor and gently but speedily towed away until the dock at the entrance of the second not-basement was out of sight and mind. 

Other mosasaurs followed them alongside, just as big, smaller, bigger than the one hauling their boat.  They were green and black and blue and white-bellied and striped and spotted and stippled, all very faint and very soft in the faint brightness from the cavern’s ceiling.  Then they grew brilliant and beautiful and gorgeous, and Janet turned her eyes up from the water and saw the city. 

***

There was a special dock for the Lizard Man’s boat in the harbour, and an emissary was waiting for him.  It consisted of lizard-men. 

These ones were a lot more lizard and a lot less men, but they seemed friendly enough – moreso than the Lizard Man, if Janet were being honest and just a little cruel.  They bowed to him and shook his hand, and they waited politely to greet her with nods and hisses as the Lizard Man introduced them with his silent manners.  Some of them were bigger than her and some of them weren’t, and that and the beautiful shining coats they wore were all that Janet had time to notice before they were off through the city, the beautiful stony city. 

It was high and bright and there were lights on every corner, little cages filled with lively-glowing bugs tended to by the careful hands of lizard-men.  They shone down upon houses and causeways and aqueducts and halls and wells and even stables where the lizard-men tended and fed giant rainbow-scaled snakes and made bright clothing from their shed skins.  Little gliding lizards swooped from tower to tower, filling the giant empty space above their heads where the cavern climbed out of sight, and the torchlight shone off their white bellies.  Beautiful and complicated carvings of lizards decorated every surface, doing much the same thing as the living ones around them.

There was a grand hall, but there was no throne, only a wide amphitheatre.  Lizard-men of all kinds and sizes and demeanors filled it and Janet and the Lizard Man stood in the center of it and they called and chirruped and croaked their cases one after another, voting and deliberating and making the odd inquiry. 

It reminded Janet of the videos they’d seen on parliamentary procedure in civics class, except she was actually interested. 

Then the Lizard Man spoke. 

***

It was impossible for her to describe the sounds that came out of him.  They were big, and he didn’t open his mouth to make them, and they made the floor shiver and her hair stand on end.  They filled the air and the stone and the flesh and they coddled and rocked and warmed them safely until everything was right and proper and done and sensible, and by the time they were done Janet was asleep, and who wouldn’t be?

She woke up in her bed.  Yasmine insisted she’d made the whole thing up. 

Ten years later, the Lizard Man died. 

***

His will was a little unusual, but anyone who’d have wanted to make a fuss didn’t dare, cowed by the surprisingly wealthy and intense gazes of his lawyers and their very large and beautifully rainbow-patterned briefcases.  And Janet certainly wasn’t about to.  Housing was hard to come by these days, and the old building was in good condition. 

She did dust, though.  Her grandmother had always been very insistent on dusting. 

The foot-sound was the first thing that caught their attention: the big sucking slorp of a giant foot yanking itself out of ankle-deep mud.  Their heads jerked up and their mouths opened to yell warnings – spilling lovely fresh foliage everywhere, barely cropped – but it was all too late to even start, let alone make it in time, and so the last sound was the inevitable big meaty THUNK of her mouth driving directly through scale, skin, meat, muscles, and finally a good chunk of bone. 

It was a good sound and it tasted like sweet salty red. 

The rest of the meaties ran away from the lakeside waving their long tails and worbling their fat floppy alarms and it was good, so very good, that with the adrenaline in her veins and the red in her mouth and the tingle in her teeth she reared upright and sang the murder-song, which sounded like this:

I.  AM.  HERE!
I.  AM.  HAPPY!
I DID A MURDER!

ME!  I DID!
THIS MADE ME HAPPY!
MURDER!  MURDER!  MURDER MURDER YAAAAAAAAY MURDER!
DON’T MESS WITH ME!

A lot of it was subsonic and rumbly and was done with her mouth closed, hiding her six-inch banana-teeth behind her gums while her saliva wiped off the spicy red from them.  It built up her appetite to excruciating levels and she made short, sharp work of the meaty’s body when she was done. 

Nothing like the murder-song to make your appetite surge.

After that she went for a nap, and she dreamed, and her dreams, like her, were big.   Forty foot long (not her feet: her feet were bigger), fifteen foot high, with a head like a refrigerator filled with teeth and a pair of eagle eyes backed to a turkey vulture’s nose for trouble.  A lovely set of equipment for any tyrant lizard king, awake or asleep. 

Her dream was simple and powerful and it went like so:

***

There were a bunch of meaties by a lakeside and she ran up to them but her feet stuck in the mud and they slid away from her without using their legs.  She tried singing the murder-song and they all fell over dead but kept sliding and then she fell over and into the lake and the lake was upside-down and inside-out, so she was in the middle of a dry hill while everything else was swimming in the water and she was by herself until  

***

she woke up. 

Well.  What the heck did THAT mean?

It was raining now, and she wondered if she’d woken up because the water was trickling into her nose.  She snorted phlegm in a little yellow flume and shook her head free of dampness and doubt. 

Why must her head be full of odd ideas when she slept?  Something must be bringing them into her body when she wasn’t looking; maybe the meaty had been full of bad ideas.  It hadn’t been able to hear her when she was creeping up on it so clearly its head wasn’t a sensible one.  Best not to dwell on it but to simply move through it. 

After she had a little more of it for breakfast. 

A big full belly refilled, a nap taken, a rain ended, a drink at the lake (she checked to make sure it wasn’t inside-out OR upside-down first: it was neither), and she was fit as a fiddlehead fern and taking a stroll through the woods, peeing on things so nobody else got clever ideas about hunting ‘round these parts.  Little things sang in the trees and bushes; big things sang in the blue sky; the air smelled like urine and promise, and she realized that since she was happy as a clam she too should sing the happy-song, which sounded like this:
I AM HAPPY.
OH SO HAPPY.
OH SO HAPPY AND RUMBLY AND FULL.
I MURDERED YESTERDAY AND ATE TODAY AND SLEPT AND NOW I’M HAVING A NICE SLOW WALK

OH SO HAPPY THAT I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT’S REAL

And as she walked and sang the low deep quivering notes of the happy-song her mind left her body to do its own things and it made up its own story and it went like so:

***

She was walking through the forest and all the trees were made of meat but then they blew away and standing there was a very pretty man and they bobbed their heads and wiggled their tails at each other and sang the happy-song and made many romantic memories.  Then they built a little nest and they raised a little clutch and they all lived together a very little much until she was lying starved and expiring in a pile of smouldering rubble somewhere which really jolted her

***

out of her daydream. 

That surely wasn’t what she’d been planning to fantasize of.  At least, not the last bit.  Meeting a very pretty man sounded nice.  Expiring in a pile of smouldering rubble sounded not at all pleasant and VERY unfitting of the happy-song.

Which she had stopped singing at some point, she realized. 

Well.  That was unhappying in and of itself, and now the day was ruined.  The small things in the trees and bushes seemed whiny; the sky was empty and smirking, and even the urine in the air no longer filled her with pride.  The absence of the happy-song was merely the last straw, and so she sulked her way along the remainder of this stretch of her border, peeing with duty rather than joy.  Stay out of my way, it said.  I’m in a bad mood and I’ve got big sharp teeth.  Don’t mess with me.  Unless you’re meaties in which case please please please come in; there’s a nice lake here and I’ll only eat some of you a little lot. 

She was tired early.  Not even proper-tired in her muscles after a nice day with lots of fun that ended in lots of food; weighty-tired, inside herself, like she’d eaten a rock even though she’d never tried doing that again after the one experiment with a pebble when she was a baby.  It dragged her down and made her eyes close and the world shrink and she found the nearest little thicket that offered some protection from the nighttime rains she could smell on the horizon and as she pulled herself towards it she curled her tongue and arced her neck and uttered the first notes of her lonely-song, which sounded like this:

I AM ALL BY MYSELF
ALONE
THAT SUCKS
PLEASE IF YOU’RE NICE COME SEE ME AND WE CAN HANG OUT
FOR A WHILE
IF YOU’RE INTO THAT AND I LIKE YOU

I PROMISE I’M LONELY BUT NOT IN A SAD WAY JUST A TRAGIC ONE
THESE ARE DISTINCT THINGS
I AM VERY VERY LONELY

She sang the lonely-song a lot these days.  Those days too, come to think of it.  After she was done she laid down and set her jawbone to the ground to listen for the vibration of someone else. 

Then she fell asleep and pretended she’d meant to do that, although she surely hadn’t meant to have a nightmare.  It was a very direct and unsubtle nightmare, and it went like so:

***

She dropped dead in a burning gulch and fell asleep and a cliff fell on her and jumped up and down for ever and ever and ever and ever until the wind blew it away and let her nose stick out.  Then a passing stubby little meaty with two legs and no tail at all waddled by and pulled her out and dragged her away for other meaties to look at and even though she was terribly, terribly thin they made her stand straight up and show her thin bones to them and made silly, sloppy meaty calls that let their mouths fall open and their tongues slap around – ridiculous!  Grotesque!  Grossssss! 

They had no decency at all, they had no fear at all, they had no SONGS at all, and they wouldn’t stop, they just went on and on and on and on and on and

***

she woke up with a start and a snort and a little blurt of a song-stub that wasn’t very friendly AT ALL. 

Her dreams were awful these days.  That was the sixth time she’d had the same one, and if she were capable of counting she would be even more peeved. 

But it was a new dawn, a new day, and she could see a little herd of meaties grazing on the lovely fresh foliage down at the lakeside, unaware of her presence. 

She’d go and have breakfast.  And if she felt like sleeping after this and found herself dreaming again, maybe this time she could try and see what would happen if she got up and ate the little two-legged meaties. 

Maybe then they’d stop making all those stupid noises. 

It was a good, comforting, comfortable thought, and as she prowled down towards the lakeside she could already feel the happy tingle of the murder-song warming itself in the back of her throat.

She wished this moment could last forever. 

A Little Chicken

Edible, but will give you heart palpitations all night long. 

Blackbird Pie

The appeal of this dish depends entirely upon your tolerance for dinner music. 

Cried Wolf

If you really must eat wolf, at least eat it properly prepared.  Cried wolf is practically raw, and not worth paying any attention to. 

Englishman Bread

Made from Englishmen bones, not by Englishmen hands.  Gritty, chalky, tasteless and hard on the gut.  Only recommended for those who detest the British, so 50/50 odds you’ll enjoy this. 

Frog Legs

If you touch your lips to them there is a small but not absent chance they will transform into the legs of a prince, which will be much less hygienic.  Do not consume. 

Gingerbread Cottage

Typically inhabited by cannibalistic and powerfully magical octogenarians.  And will give you cavities. 

Gingerbread Man

Much safer than the gingerbread cottage, but almost impossible to get a hold of. 

Golden Eggs

Not actually edible, but can be exchanged for money which can be traded for food itself so you shou

Golden Goose

oh for fuck’s sake you IDIOT

Little Red Hen

Edible, if a trifle over-indulgent and smug.  Best enjoyed with a loaf of nice fresh bread. 

Magic Beans

Gives you terrible wind, but delicious.  Unfortunately they will also grow a skyscraper-sized beanstalk out of your gut. 

Monkey’s Paw

You’ll wish you hadn’t. 

One Entire Grandmother

If you need to be told why this isn’t acceptable there’s something wrong with you. 

Pea From a Princess’s Mattress

It looks small and theoretically it’s nourishing, but it sits in your stomach like a bowling ball.  Not only will you be up tossing and turning all night, unable to sleep, you’ll probably end up with an impacted colon to boot. 

Poisoned Apple

This is actually almost safe, provided you only eat the white half.  The red half of the apple puts you into a deathlike coma unless you spit it out, and since few bother to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a corpse, you run the risk of getting buried alive, cremated, or stuffed into a glass casket before anyone notices what’s up. 

Porridge That is Too Cold

It’s too cold. 

Porridge That is Too Hot

It’s too hot.

Porridge That is Just Right

This one tastes okay, but may lead to you being eaten by bears.

Pumpkin Carriage

Tastes like road mud, mice, and someone’s ass.  Avoid at all costs. 

Roc Eggs

By the time you’ve managed to crack the shell – which will probably take six months, with a full demolition crew – they’ll have hatched on their own.  Which is bad, because they’ll be hungry. 

Stone Soup

Surprisingly good!  Just remember to add the water, marrow, stock, potato, carrot, leeks, onion, garlic, chicken, tomato, beef, and a splash of wine to impart a bit of flavour and body to the stone. 

Swan Maiden

Have you ever tried to fight a swan?  Don’t try.  Don’t even ask.  Just don’t. 

Three Little Pigs

Be reasonable: nobody can eat that much, ‘little’ or not. 

Tortoise With Hare

The tortoise is excellent so long as you don’t eat it too fast.  Don’t bother with the hare: it’ll put you to sleep. 

Trails of Breadcrumbs

Will inevitably be eaten by birds, leaving you to starve to death in the middle of the woods. 

Wishing Fish

Yes, the fish is not actually magical beyond being able to speak lies.  Yes, it will never actually grant you the wish it promises you for releasing it.  Yes, it will laugh hurtfully at you for falling for its bullshit every time it leaves.  But you don’t want to eat it.  Its ability to talk doesn’t fade with ingestion, and it will sob pitifully the entire time. 

It was a peaceful day in Manhattan, portrayed by Vancouver.  Little did the city know what was about to happen to it.  Little did it suspect what was coming.  So very tiny was its understanding and so feeble was its knowledge. 

The plane taxied in.  The taxi came in for a landing.  And the ship hauled itself onto the beach.

And out of each vehicle, immaculate and unafraid, stepped the Romance Lady.

“Hello, world,” she told the passersby and birds and sun and sky.  “I am romance lady.  I am busy and endearing and relatable.  I would like to work job now so I am go to job for work.  Coworkers, relatable, banter, relatable, witticisms, relatable.  Always most relatable all times.  Relate!”

She danced through the rain and stepped in the puddles.  Dozens were dazzled from the brightness of her smile, and the glee in her teeth cut the power for blocks around. 

***

In an apartment in Manhattan, portrayed by Vancouver, an alarm rang.  A single hand shot out lightning-fast and slapped it senseless, and the world’s most immaculately disheveled creature emerged from a pile of artistic slobbery. 

It was the Romance Man, and his unshaven jaw could chisel diamonds. 

“Hello, morning,” he mumbled.  “Gosh, I’m just a mess.  I’m a hot, burning, searing, seething, boiling, bubbling mess.  If only I had a romantic of comedy to share my mess I would be mended and excellent.  Now for me to sip this coffee and stare broodingly over the city before I go to my am job.”

He sipped that coffee and stared broodingly over the city.  A raccoon withered under his gaze.  A pigeon sobbed into its nest.  Three seagulls collided in midair and died together. 

Then he went to his am job.

***

Job was good that day, better than usual.  The banter was better-written, and the coworkers more lively.  They made faces and quoted quips. 

“Ooooh I want donut now” squealed one, a character actor from a Netflix without chill. 

“Do not even talk to me without my coffee,” intoned a retired person, dragged out of the nursing home to die without dignity.  “I am drinking my coffee now.  Mmm.  Don’t even talk to me about my coffee.  Shhh.  Listen.  Shh.”
The coffee spoke but nobody was listening because Romance Lady had come in for her first day of work. 

“Oh no gee I’m such a klutz,” she burbled happily as she kicked over the coffee machine and tripped over her own two arms and stumbled down the hallway slamming the janitor’s head into the wall over and over and over and over until it broke into pieces.  “Oh nooo my job is work poorly!  Oh nooooo.”
“You musts be fired,” seethed her boss.  “Get in here and I’ll have your badge!  You’re a not worker, and that’s verboten in der big shitty.  Look at this.  Look at this mess.  Look.  Look.  Look!”
Romance Lady burst into murmurs and whimpers, and that was the blood in the water that the Romance Man needed to shove his face into the room, shark-like. 

“I heard simpering dialogue and many moments of introductory characterization,” he hissed as he poured himself into the room coil by coil.  “What whimsy whither?”
“It is me, Romance Lady,” said she. 
“It is me, Romance Man,” hollered he.

“Oh no oh god oh please lordy lou,” bellowed the boss. 

“Let us Romance,” they vowed, before the boss and the workplace and the coworkers and everyone.  And the building shuddered with the force of their meet-cute. 

***

They went for Coffee.  It was Tradition. 

“Do not.  Even talk.  Before Coffee,” warned the Romance Man.  Brooding coruscated across his cheeks
“Ohmigodmi2,” chattered Romance Lady with a fluorescent flush of bioluminescent perfume eddying from shoulder to shoulder to shoulder.  “I will have a double triple quadro latte ventilation unit hold the mayonnaise.  This is quirks.”
“I will make this face,” said the Romance Man.  “This is wry.  Then I will have a black coffee with a black marker in it.  This is Manly.  I will tell you my mother liked Coffee this way.  This is Sad Backstory.”  It was so sad the clerk creaked and dissolved into the Coffee. 

“This is not how I like Coffee I am seethed,” said the Romance Man. 

“Ohh you cans share mines,” chirruped Romance Lady.  “Manic it into your mouth and share my pixie dreams, girl.”
“Stoic acceptance masking tender vulnerability,” droned the Romance Man.  He intook it into his intake, and they made meaningful eye contact across the Coffee cup’s rim.  It creaked and crumpled into a ball along with the entire Coffee shop. 

“Could this?  Be?  Love?” inquired Romance Lady internally. 

“I cannot love after the accident removed my loverliver,” mourned the Romance Man.  His sorrow struck two drivers blind.  They collisioned. 

***

The Romance Man went home to speak to his bro, who was chained to the door of his apartment. 

“Yo what up broooooooooooooooo,” it croaked.  “You lookin sharp fit to bust how’s it gooooooooooooooin’ kill me.”

“I met, this girl?” theorized the Romance Man?  “And she?  Was sort of a mess?  Woman, man,”
“Woman, maaaaaaaan,” said the bro.  “Woman, men.  Menwo, wo.  Wo wo wo yo.  Bro.  Kill me.  I exist in pain and limbo.  Stop this before the credit is given.  Oh no brooooo.”
The Romance Man locked the bro back in the freezer and sipped his evening Coffee as he stared over the city again.  A dog barked and died.  A cat drove a car.  Three clouds fucked sideways and exploded. 

Romance Lady went homme to speak to her girlfrond. 

“I met a Romance Man today,” she said as she watered her girl fronds.  “I think it is fate.  It is romance.  It is love.  It is inevitable and inexorable and the death of all things in the quiet quite emptily, as all things go and go go and go. 

“Catch him,” rustled the girl through her fronds.  “It’s to be or not to be, that is the question.  Man, woman.  Man, women.  Menwo, me.  Me me me mad.  Go forth and clutch him to your claspers.  I crave blood.  Feed me blood, girl.  Fresh and flowing.”
Romance lady chuckled as she cut offered her fingers on the altar, bright and tasty. 

“Mmmmmmmm landydigits,” droned the girlfronds.  “Such taste delight of bright hope and offers.  Go forth and Date Night.”

“But what of my hairs?” shrieked Romance Lady.

***

The Dated Night drew itself over Manhattan’s Vancouver like a bowl of soup on a towel.  Romance was in the air and it poisoned an intersection.  Truck drivers honked and farted and died in their seats; bikists bickle-backled out of their lanes and dove dome-first through windshields and fought with Karens in their SUVs.  Joyous screams everywhere. 

“Ohmygosh the reservation wasn’t reserved,” whimpered Romance Lady at fancy dining platter place.  “I’m bareassed and illiated.  How retched.”

“Grovel your doom elsewhere, peasant,” sneered the waiter.  “I would buy and eat your mother if she were here.  You are an ugly duckling.  Ugly little duck.  Quack quock.”
“Fear not for this fear, my swanliest of duckets” said Romance Man, his eyes narrowing to slits of cheap granite.  “I know a place.  Now watch as I intimidate this manling with my penis,” he grimly swore, and then stabbed the waiter in the brisket above the gasket. 

“Alas I am shown that I am not the boss,” the waiter sputtered as he writhed on the floor. 

“Romantic Comedy!” cheered Romance Lady as she stepped on his genitals on the way out.

“We will now go and eat food cheap of wallet and rich with inner-city life from a joint I know on corner it shows how well I fit in this city for you now you will love me as you will come to love it love will be all you are and all I am love me for you cannot love yourself, NOW,” roared the Romance Man.

“Pleeeeeeaaaaaassseee,” said Romance Lady.  “Let’s skip that and get to the good bits.”
They kissed in the street under snowfall and the camera rotated around and around and around and the traffic spun around and around and around and the bodies flew around and up and down town as the raccoons feasted on hearts and cherubs. 

***

It was the morning after and so it was darkest before the dawn.  The battlelines were drawn in the park where dorgs borked on corners and people’s ears bled from the fury and the scorching heat of the words that were being meaningful around them. 

“I cannot believe you cheated on me using childfriend from home,” mourned the Romance Man.  “I imply your whore because I am sensitively struck.”  He lurched browards, desolate. 
“I cannot unbuy your disrepoval,” sobbed Romance Lady.  “I’ve made a muzzle of it all and now my life is over.  The city is too good for my shitty bad.  I will retreat to home and apple pie sandwiches wrapped in baseball bits.”
The tragedy struck as the comedy arrived with a truck of girlfronds. 

“I am sassy,” whispered one.

“I am fat,” breathed another.

“Let us get you wasted to lay waste to these memories of misapplied mammaries,” said the last and first in a susurrus.  “Here is Replaceman.”
“Hello,” said Replaceman.  He held a sword in one hand and a big gag ring in the other.  “I child friend home.”
“FUCK OFF,” said Romance Lady.  “There’s no time!  I have to find the Romance Man before he kills himself!”

***

The Romance Man sipped his Coffee and stared out at the city his hardest yet.  The bleakness baked it to the horizon. 

“Bro free me bro let out my unwashed veins,” groaned his bro. 

“Silence,” he snapped.  “I’m going to die myself out this window in just onedow moment.  I have let loose my single mantear.  It shows complex in my depths.  Do you see them, insipidity?  Do you see how deep they are?”  He tore open his chest and on every rib was written LOVE. 
“You love me!” breathed Romance Lady, who had snuck in behind the Romance Man and was eating his fridge as a quirkiness.  “You have love for me even though I am relatable?”
“Always,” he swore, and tore out his heart and his liver and his appendix and handed them to her hands. 
“My love!” she cried tears of bitter acid.

“My love!” he howled as his bro’s skull burst. 
“My love!” she called, her head spinning around and around and around and vomiting perfect roses.
“My love!” he seethed, grasping her arm and placing the shackling-bands upon their fingers. 

“To fuck!”

“To implicit fuck!”
“Raise the camera above us that all may hear and none may see!

“Yes!”
And the grunt and the thunder and squirt was so passionate and joyous that not one building above a quarter-story or half-paragraph was left standing by its end and no human body was left with all limbs. 

***

“You are mine now,” smiled the girl fronds, as she lifted the rotten body of the bro from the rubbles.  “Feel relief from denoument and dehumanization.  Joyous.”
“Brobabcious,” it whispered through its neck.  “Brodicality.”
“Shhh,” she said, sinking her leaves deep into vein and stump. 

A big fat hook came and dragged them away to the sequel, alone and credited. 

“It’ll be a weird job.”

Rej shrugged from the top of their three arms downwards to the spread tips of their twelve fingers.  “You came to me because of that.  I’ve run living teeth from Qarbec and taken things from the Terramac with no name before anyone could know they existed, let alone gone missing.  I’ve been searched by two separate coast guard vessels while there was an adult gyrwolf lying low in my boat, and they didn’t find it.  I can hide an entire deck of cards up my sleeve while topless.  You know all of this and you know that I can handle weird, and I can do it well.”
The customer was still hesitant.  Her shoulders were hunched, her breath was unsteady behind that stupid-looking mask she wore – a cheap carnival toy, grabbed in a hurry.  All instinct and nerves, no forethought. 

“You’ll need these,” she said, and dumped a little handful on the table like it was red-hot. 

“Earplugs?”
“High-grade.  Everyone wears them, nobody takes them off until the cargo is gone.  It’s absolutely vital, you understand?

“Yep.”
“Do you UNDERSTAND?”
Rej made contact with all five eyes for the first time, both daytime and the night-triplet.  “Yes.  You’ve hired me for my expertise, but you don’t seem to appreciate it: I have moved things you can’t even imagine.  If you say nobody on the crew takes off earplugs until the cargo’s off the boat, nobody takes off earplugs until the cargo’s off the boat.  Done.  We take our business seriously and we do it well and we get paid.  Asking you why the precautions are necessary is not part of that.  So don’t go taking out your nerves on me, got it, doctor?”
“I’m not –”

“Don’t lie.  You’re bad at it.”
“I haven’t-”

“No, but you were about to.  The Borrelmore leaves tonight.  The cargo is at the drop point by sundown.  The payment is…?”
The customer dithered between panic and relief for a moment, then handed over a small bag.

“Beautiful.”

“Do you need to count them?”
“No.  You don’t need to tell me why your precautions are important because I take my job seriously; I don’t need to tell you why you don’t try and shortchange me because you take ME seriously.  Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Good.  Have another drink before you leave.  You need it.”
She really did. 

***

The working luggboat Borrelmore left that very evening under a sulfurous sunset, with a full head of steam and salt, a secret in its hidden hold, and a lot of bad-tempered crewmen who were communicating with each other through semaphore signal

But they didn’t fuss.  This was how the job worked, sometimes.  And Captain Rej’s jobs were good ones.  The pay was good; the supervision was clear and direct; and if you turned up dead everyone was always told exactly what you’d done to deserve it so you couldn’t say you weren’t warned if it happened to you too.  Clean, too.  Captain Rej didn’t believe in a prolonged execution.  A nice clean shot to the brain with no warning. 

That kind of leadership attracted a certain kind of crew.  Stable, professional, easygoing in private but sticklers on the clock, and with a kind of loyalty money couldn’t buy because more money than they were making came with attached risks and dead people can’t do much with big paycheques. 

The only real problem was the kitchen.  Sammel was a fine cook, but he was getting on in years and low on legs.  The stove sang at his touch, the soups softened at his stir, but there were more cupboards that he needed than he could reach these days, and they’d only just assigned him a galley-hand last voyage, after thirty days of unsalted meals because he was too proud to ask for someone to grab something for him. 

Able-seaman Jost had already done every other job aboard the Borrelmore, so he was put up to it.  But there were certain obstacles, like his having a bit of a bad ear and Sammel having a bit of an accent (at least half of which was cursing).  Figuring out what the cook wanted when he asked for ‘the big whassik from the upper-therebouts’ had been the chore of the last three days in port.

Now Jost’s bad ear was spared a break, but hand-semaphore wasn’t much fun either.

NOT THAT, spelled Sammel, stomping his peglegs for emphasis.  OTHER TIN. 

It was the third tin can Jost had hauled down.  All of them were identical.  WHICH ONE? He inquired carefully, arms moving slowly as he tried not to knock down half the shelves.  Jost was a big man and the kitchen had spent the last ten years as a small man’s private domain. 

OTHER TIN, spelled SAMMEL. 

Jost nodded and handed over the other tin.  Sammel threw it at his head.

OTHER TIN OTHER TIN OTHER TIN OTHER TIN he repeated. 

“Huh?” said Jost reflexively. 

Sammel walked next to Jost, gently tugged at his shoulder, brought his good ear to mouth level, and screamed full force into it. 

‘the blue tin’

BLUE TIN, signalled Jost.

YES, replied Sammel.

Jost gave him the blue tin, and his ear hurt all for the rest of the evening, which was why he rubbed at it as he walked by the cargo hold on the way to his bunk.

When he woke up the next morning, they weren’t hurting.  They were ringing. 

***

It was a little tune without sound, words with a rhythm.  It popped into able-seaman Jost’s head before he was finished waking, following him from some sort of nonsense blur of dreams, and he found himself mumbling it as he went about making breakfast, trying to puzzle the words as he hunted for SUGAR and RAISINS and found APPLES instead and got berated by an increasingly-irate Sammel. 

But the words wouldn’t come.  He couldn’t hear them properly in his heads.  But the rhythm of it was there, and the beat, and so he tapped his feet at his mess table and drummed his fingers and nodded his head and little Hewut who sat beside him grinned and made fun of him and copied that and by the time all the rest of his tablemates were done laughing silently at him they were doing it to, and it was in their heads and stirring in their fingers and their feet.  A jaunty, hop-along little thing that made mouths twitch at the corner and your step come lively.  It crept into the tug and pull of the cables and chains; it lived in the heave-and-throw of fuel into the furnaces; it kept the beat as hands heaved on nets; it bobbed in heads and made mouths move in unheard words that nobody’d ever really come up with but they all were quite sure of. 

The Barrelmore crew was well-seasoned to begin with, but their performance now verged on gourmet.  There was so little supervision to do that after the first day captain Rej spent little time on deck and kept to her desk, making numbers dance and jig and jib and trim and tack.

For three days.  It was the closest thing to perfect any voyage had ever gone for Rej, and if it hadn’t been so natural and clean she might have been more suspicious. 

As it was, she was very surprised when the Barrelmore went from full ahead to a dead standstill fast enough for her chair to rip free. 

***

The crew were all lined up on deck, stamping their feet and pumping their arms.  Their mouths were wide, their words were spoken with lusty joy, their breath fair-steamed in the cool night air.  Their faces were red with exertion and beaming with joy. 

REPORT, signed Rej, but they wouldn’t look to her.  SOS she signalled, but they wouldn’t heed to her.  DANGER, she windmilled, but they wouldn’t mind her. 

Professional standards are many things, but they don’t include maintaining them at the cost of your crew and ship.  Rej peeled out her earplugs – they SQUELCHED as she did so, the damned things were practically ingrown, screamed out “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT,” and heard the chorus come to an end with a crash of boots just as the splash of the first shark breaching the rail happened.  It was thirty feet long, a great-grandmother of the waves, and its jaws and gills flexed in harmony with the song that the crew now listened to quietly. 

Then came the second through hundredth sharks, and after that it was a bit of a rush.  Tails beat, bodies shook, heads slapped against the wetness of the deck, and fish after fish after fish flung itself aboard the Barrelmore, heeding the beat. 

Rej could hear it too, she realized.  It had been amplified by the crew’s boots, but it was there, quiet, echoed now by the creatures of the deep.  A powerful, incessant drumming.  Thump-thump, a pause, thump-thump, a pause.  A heartbeat of grand and immense gravity, too slow and deep to keep a small thing alive. 

Jost brought it aloft from the hold himself with the rest of his table, their arms tearing at the sockets from the weight and their smiles broad and beautiful and red.  A leviathan’s heart, black and blue with muscle and indomitable in its duty, even without a body.

Thump-thump, in the air, the cold cruel air, all alone.  Thump-thump.

Well, the fish would have that changed. 

Captain Rej opened her mouth again for the first time in a long while, but before she could hope to give an order the rest of the sea came aboard, and the Barrelmore’s command structure and nautical position were altered. 

***

The cargo was never delivered.  A quiet woman in a coat lingered at the docks for some weeks, and a few questions were asked.  Somewhere, a collector went unsatisfied. 

And now and again, out on the waves, a sailor would return to their crewmates with tales of strange sounds from far below, of faint voices from the waves set to a bone-shaking beat that they could never quite make out.

The ones that COULD hear it, hummed it.  And nobody ever tales from them – of strange sounds or otherwise – ever again. 

Admonishment of the Bees: takes place after the first honey harvest of the new year.  Celebrant beekeepers trek out next to their hives and stand around casually making observations of the weather and commenting on how they don’t blame them for not trying harder because after all they know they’ve been having trouble and so on and so on.  An admonishment is considered a failure if it causes the bees to become actually angry enough to sting the beekeeper, and so as a mark of confidence participants typically do not wear protective gear.  Failures are mocked by their peers until the next year. 

April Showering: complex series of rites and rituals based around gardeners soaking each other with hoses, sprinklers, water pistols, etc. to ensure a healthy crop of May flowers.  Under no circumstances may any equipment used be filled with anything other than water following the ‘tragic shower’ of 1889. 

Autumn Solstice: not to be confused with the autumn equinox.  Observed only by the most decorated and anal-retentive of astronomers, neopagans, and calendar maniacs.  Takes place when the first leaf falls from the first tree to turn red – not orange, red – in a very specific and very secret grove kept under lock and key in Bulgaria. 

Blessing of the Beaver: relic of the only permitted holiday in settler Canada from the seventeenth century to the early 20^th, on which date all would flock to the nearest Hudson’s Bay Company manager and suck up to him for a bonus.  Modern versions permit sucking up to any boss, but the past is honoured in the need to stick your incisors out and make little beaver hissing sounds. 

Crunkmas: a celebration of the birth of Jesus Crunk in an old oil tray, in a motor shop in Bethlehem.  Gifts of antifreeze, wiper fluid, and various oils are given, and peace and unity amongst all drivers is hoped for.  The date is not actually the original birthday of Crunk, but was adopted from a Roman cult of Rev. 

Feast of Saint Pip Pip Cheerio: a deeply embarrassing tradition among English boarding schools in which all new students were made to play bagpipes with their noses and recite hymns backwards.  Principally kept alive by the wishes of the upperclassmen to share their pain and humiliation with others.  Became defunct after the onset of World War 2 caused a nationwide shortage of bagpipes. 

Flight of the Snowbirds: Floridian weeklong ceremony honoring the arrival of the first planes of retirees avoiding the onset of winter in more northerly climes.  Traditional garments are margaritas.  Traditional beverages are more margaritas.  Celebrated in Margaritaville. 

Fox Guy Night: everyone in town dresses up like a fox (simple masks and red brooms-head tails will do) and chases down Richard Thomson with power tools until the wee hours of the morning when he drops into a faint from fear and exhaustion.  Fox Guy Morning follows, which consists of persuading Richard Thomson that he sure had a bad dream while keeping a straight face.  Only celebrated in Gumdrop, Massachusetts. 

Gront: very very old and almost totally unknown in the modern day, a holiday dating back to pre-Homo, let alone pre-sapiens.  Gront is celebrated by showing up unannounced at a relative’s home just before they’re about to eat something, then eating it.  Despite nigh-global ignorance of its existence outside the most obscure anthropological circles, it remains widely embraced across the world.

Holly Day: day celebrating the joy of covering surfaces with boughs of holly.  Surprisingly little-practiced, though widely recognized by name. 

Housepet Day: desperate last-ditch attempt by anonymous government to fit in a federal holiday in March.  Mired indefinitely in politics over what its mascot would be: 45% insist on a dog, 45% insist on a cat, and the remaining 10% endorse ferrets or maybe a parakeet.

Listmas: an internet-wide day of praise and glorification of clickbait by the writing of many many listicles.  Often takes place in late December or early January, due to the ease of creating lists that are best-of-last-year litanies. 

Mallweek: predominately American tradition demarcating the patrolling of the malls in the months before Christmas for drawing up rough inventories, mapping out plans of attack, and debating optimized shopping routes.  A dying tradition whose demise has only hastened with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Mamut Morning: the weeklong events following the first mammoth kill of the season, consisting of trying to come up with more and more uses for leftover mammoth (mammoth sandwiches, mammoth stew, mammoth hash, mammoth jerky) before it goes bad.  Deprecated due to a worldwide shortage of mammoths.

Maypoles: nobody is quite sure what you’re meant to do with those things but it’s got to be SOMETHING. 

Pottage: weeklong canning, pickling, and jamming salting spree during summer, performed only by those over age seventy-and-four.  No reason or rationale is known even to its practitioners, making it one of the rare examples of a biologically-driven holiday, or ‘one of those things you just do at that age.’

Rectalbertfest: please don’t intrude on Albert’s privacy.

Spring Solstice: like the Autumn Solstice, but it starts when the first snow shoveller puts down their shovel.  And there’s more booze. 

St. Porturd’s Day: unusual multi-annual holiday traditionally taking place after every other holiday with alcohol.  Rituals include groaning, vomiting, drinking water, and begging higher powers to end your torment.  Celebrated anywhere there’s booze, by every folk of every creed that permits booze. 

Visitation of the Ice: occurs after the first lasting snowfalls.  Participants consume vast quantities of snow and ice until they suffer nigh-hypothermia and near-water poisoning, then hallucinate news from the new year.  ‘Yellow Snow’ visions are forbidden. 

Ween: On November 1^st celebrants (known as Weeners) travel from home to home asking if they’re really going to eat all that leftover Halloween candy by themselves.  Wear warm clothing and be prepared for disappointment, ideally by leaving a big bowl of M&Ms at home. 

Zoliday: secretive and evil counterpart of any existing holiday that entails everything the holiday does but backwards.  Christmas zoliday involves taking presents from people and returning them to their gifters, Easter zoliday involves stuffing eggs inside rabbits, etc.  Under no circumstances can a New Years zoliday ever be celebrated.  Ever.

I was tending to my corals when the message came. 

Weak, tentative, low-powered, quiet, and – to be brutally honest – somewhat garbled and oddly-worded.  But the intent was clear: there was a job for me. 

So I sighed through my fronds and my currents and set things in motion.  Engines roiled, metal shifted, computers hummed, and the wonderful, impossible, titanic mass of technology and power that was the shield between my ecosystem and the endless nothing was on a new course and preparing to once again spit in the eye of every law of physics ever discovered.

An interstellar trucker’s job was never done. 

***

I flushed my tank out as I approached the signal’s source: some backwater dive in the ass end of a spiral arm.  I’d need a clear head from this, however tempting the headiness of slight anoxia might seem at the prospect of a briefing from a freshly-orbit-capable potentate.  They were all the same: carefully obsequious, polite, frightened but trying not to show it in case it spread, so on and so on.  It was all part of the job but riptides I got tired of it sometimes.  At least asteroids and planetesimals don’t try to talk to you when you’re moving them. 

So when I arrived in-system and headed towards a watery little smudge of stones and magma, broadcasting a generic hi-how-are-you message that anything smarter than one of my fish would catch on to, I wasn’t quite prepared for my first reply to be “finally!  What kept you?”
Which is what it was.

“Traffic,” I said without thinking.  My erstwhile customers had relatively unexpressive faces; limited facial musculature and a thin coat of feathers (and a total lack of marine ecological surface features such as a robust reef like myself could count on) kept their social signals to their body language and low-pitched voices.  But everything about this one screamed ‘impatient,’ down to the slightly bared teeth at the very tip of her enormous snout.

“Really,” she said. 
“Yeah.  Traffic.  The main-lanes out here don’t get used much, and all it takes is one other guy going the same way and you both produce paragravitational drag, which-”

“Well, you’re here.  You ARE here, right?  You’re an interstellar object relocator, right?  You’re ready to do business, right?”
I felt my kelp twist in annoyance.  “You are correct.  You’ve heard word of my services and pass-codes from-”

“Creditors, yes.”
Oh wonderful.  “This is the most common method of trans-spatial contact for my services.”  Because what made me money eventually made THEM money.  The little bastards had built my cybernetic interface back when the fastest I could travel was measured in meters per decade; and I was still in hock to them for gracing me with the gift of personal locomotion.  Friendly, courteous, souls of discretion, always eager to find a daring young sapient on the up-and-up and give them a hand with a mighty big bill in it. 
“Clearly.  Now, let’s get down to trimmed claws: we need a rock.”
“A rock?”
“Yes.  A stone.  A bolide.  A chunk.”
“You might want to be more specific; this may be a translation issue, but ‘rock’ appears to be a somewhat vag-”

“We want a mass of easily-accessible nickel and iron, but not just the bulk stuff; plenty of platinum-groups too.  Palladium and rhodium would be nice, but iridium is a MUST – damned stuff is too scarce down here.”
I burbled my bivalves at her.  “Wow, someone’s eager to start on quasimaterial projects.  You’re planning to leave orbit already?”

“You aren’t being paid for your opinions.  Do you require directions to the asteroid belt, or…?”
“No.”

And I might not be paid for them but opinions I had nevertheless: this was a cluster of groundbound knuckleheads still fresh off the high of projecting full influence over their biosphere who’d been unlucky enough to run into the Creditors before they’d even gotten their own intrasystem mining program running and now had talked themselves into thinking they were just skipping all the boring stuff and getting ahead of the competition.  What competition?  Plenty of room out there for everyone. 

“Good.  Mission briefing will be handled by the Secretary for Economic Action.  Get moving.”

And with that my glorious first contact with yet another species of assholes came to a close.

***

My vessel had already bent half of local time and space around its nose-mount before the second connection came through. 

“Greetings, secretary.”
“Under-secretary,” corrected the individual, who was smaller, paler, and twitchier than the… damn, I’d never asked what their leader was called.  Big boss?  “The Secretary for Economic Action’s time is precious and he personally delegated this task to me.  It is of vital importance that the bolide you are securing contain a high percentage of cobalt.  This is your top priority; all other mineral and economical concerns are secondary.”
I sloshed my tides in consternation.  “Really?  First I’ve heard of it, but alrighty.  Consider it done.  Anything else?”
“Yes.  This flowprint should contain all the information you will need.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up, I had my systems dissect the primitive filing system and disarm the many, many secretive viruses, bugs, and tracking systems embedded within it and I began ignoring it at once before I was interrupted.

Another connection?  “Hello.”
“Hello yourself, my good sapient, saviour of our planetary situation.”  The speaker was… well, prodigious.  In every sense.  I was impressed despite myself, if only by whatever life-support system was keeping her going.  “I am Head Representative of the Laurasian Financial Source, and I have been elected to transmit the fine parameters of your mission to you.”
“Uh-huh?  Thought I already had those.”
She clacked her jaws dismissively, creating shockwaves through wobbly tissues.  “Pfew.  High-level stuff.  Bureaucratic oversight.  Plans made by people with no expertise of how to solve real problems that society REALLY wants handled.  For instance, I bet while they were trying to sell you on the importance of dabbling in all sorts of outlandish, implausible technologies through the use of who-knows-what precious metals they never ONCE imagined telling you of the importance of securing organic enrichment materials and water!”
“Yep,” I said. 

“And of course, as our poor dear world suffers under the heel of volcanic activity and perhaps a few unforeseen and insignificant by-products of our valuable and necessary job-creating industries, such substances would be of utmost value in the future.”
“Yep,” I said. 

“So there’s a flowprint headed your way now.  You’re welcome.  The Tyrant Queen will deny this conversation happened if you ask her because it’s all so very, very important to her.  You do understand?”
“Yeeeeep,” I said, and killed the line dead.  This time I didn’t even bother to open the file before jettisoning it. 

Ten minutes later a third flowprint arrived without prior communication.  After careful sterilization, it contained orders from the Secretary for Economic Action, who insisted that my entire contract hinged upon providing them with a bolide as much tungsten as possible at any cost imaginable for the highest stakes conceivable. 

I found them a nice iron-nickel asteroid with iron, nickel, and plenty of iridium.  When in doubt, satisfy the first person to talk to you – and more importantly, just pick the first thing you find. 

***

The rock I’d found was a real brute beast of a thing; solid and ugly and shaped kind of but not really like my ship, which it doubled in length if not quite by breadth.  It was still the friendliest company I’d had since I crawled out here for this job, and I appreciated the depth and stimulation of the conversation it provided me during the para-week it took my vessel to twist itself back through space and into the planet’s orbit once again. 

I parked myself and the cargo at standard holding distance for heavy orbital construction and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.

Then I dropped every rule of galactic contractor courtesy and custom and phoned them myself. 

“Yes?” said the creature on the other end, presumably the Tyrant Queen.  It probably was the same one even; I’d only been gone twelve years. 

“Yeah, it’s me.  Job’s done.”
“Oh yes!  That.  Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.  And you’ve brought us our manganese and copper then?”
Every single one of my shoals snapped its mouth at the same time.  “No.  You asked for –”

“An inexcusable breach of contract,” said the Tyrant Queen, with the sort of quiet, laid-back fury that had clearly been well-planned.  “I can’t believe this treatment.  No progress updates and-”

I didn’t cut the connection, but I did stop paying attention because the actual words weren’t the important part of the message, which was that I was being distracted from something very thoroughly.  Presumably I was being screwed, which I’d expected, but also framed, which I hadn’t.  Silly me thinking that the entire species was simply composed of self-centered and backstabbing short-sighted power-mongers with no interest in the common good; this was clearly a prearranged scheme. 

The barrage of threats seemed to be dying down, so it was probably the time where I should say something. 

“Ahem,” I said.  I’d always hated that noise; I either had no throats at all or ten billion of them, depending on how you counted, and it gave me a headache either way every time I considered the implications.  But it was pan-galactic standard verbalized posturing, so like it or lump it I had to live with it. 

“What is it?” asked the Tyrant Queen, who sounded worn but relaxed after getting that out of her system. 
“My fee,” I prompted.  By this point my real payment would be never talking to them, but I still had standards. 

“Oh yes, yes, yes.  Your fee.  It’s being sent to you right now.”
“Oh.  Wonderful.  Thirty percent of the minerals?”
“Thirty percent.  Maybe thirty-five.  The division operation is underway and should be there shortly.”
“I see.”  And I did.  One, two, three, four hundred separate ballistic trajectories, curving up through the atmosphere like the dancing duel-fish sparring above my conches.  “You are very generous.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.  And hung up. 

I watched the oncoming missiles transfixed perfectly between paralyzing laughter and total numbness: here I was – contracted by assholes, through assholes; given contradictory work orders; framed for intragovernmental politics; and then fired on by what appeared to be crude but functional nuclear warheads.  If I weren’t so annoyed I’d contact the customers again just to ask for another one.  They were the greatest comedy act I’d ever seen. 

The course of action was clear: professionalism or spite.  I did what I always did when faced with a choice of this magnitude and consequence and watched the waves tug at my planktonic masses, picked a random patch of spawn, and made my choice based on whether I’d sorted them as pattern-group A or pattern-group Q. 

It was Q, so I let my vessel spit in the eye of every law of physics ever discovered by sliding gently and masslessly to one side and watched as every single one of  the warheads detonated against the asteroid instead, bopping it as firmly as a mother whale would smack a shark. 

“Haha.  Yes.”
It listed, spun, tumbled, and began to lurch inevitably into the planet’s gravity well. 

“Well.  What.”

***

I watched the asteroid descend as a half-fragmented incandescent jumble of hell with a combination of haplessness, vague remorse, and tentative schadenfreude.  It slammed into a carbonate sea shelf, vaporizing most of it on impact and pumping the atmosphere full of enough engagingly sulfurous products and by-products to… well.

Suffice it to say that even without the wildfires igniting half the surface and the global dust clouds, this planet was in for some rough times.  Even a species with a fully developed orbital superstructure array would consider this the end of an era.  My erstwhile customers, by contrast, were completely fucked, along with most organisms complex enough to realize that Very Bad Things were happening to them. 

Riptides and shit on a shoal, I hated jobs like this.  No pay, no references, and the guilt of another mass extinction on my sponges and conscience alike.  It hadn’t looked like a half-bad planet, too, apart from its rulers.  Still, there was plenty of lifetime left for it before its atmosphere was stripped away by its bloating sun’s senescence. 

Maybe I could hit the place back up in a hundred million years or so, see if anyone less irascible and hasty had evolved.  I mean, what were the odds this could happen twice?

My computer tried to show me them and I immediately stopped it, burbled to myself, trimmed down my gas saturation to induce a pleasantly light anoxia, and began to wander back to home: nowhere in particular. 

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.