jamieproctor.ca

It was a good sandwich.
Turkey, on rye, with a hint of something else. Cranberries in there, with their jelly. Some sort of mustard.
Sam wasn’t a chef, but he knew what he liked. He knew he liked this sandwich. He knew he liked its taste, he knew he liked that it was at the place half a block from his work, and he DEFINITELY knew he liked that it was under five bucks.
Which is what puzzled him so very much the next day, the next lunch, when he walked up to the menu and saw that the sandwich that he knew he liked wasn’t there.
“Turkey,” Sam asked the cashier.
“Chicken?” he cautiously replied.
“Turkey,” clarified Sam.
“Chicken?” questioned the cashier, pointing at the menu.
“Turkey!” insisted Sam, waving his arm at the menu.
“Chicken,” reiterated the cashier, indicating the line which showed there was only one type of fowl available.
All reasonable discourse exhausted, Sam threw up his hands to the sky. “Chicken,” he admitted in abject defeat.
And it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the same. He knew what he liked, and this wasn’t quite it. Not quite.

Sam experimented with lunch.
He tried lunch a little earlier, he tried lunch a little later. A little faster, a little slower. A littler higher, a little lower.
He never found anything he liked as much. He never found his sandwich.
But he did find out something interesting, on the fourteenth day of his stake-out.
At one oh one, he came in and ordered a small salad. At one oh nine, he left. And on the firmly blackbackboard-backed-white-chalkings of the menu, a faintish wisp of something smeared.
Something had been erased. Quickly. Desperately.
And right in the exact spot, down to the millimetre, where once he had read the words ‘turkey on rye.’

Sam came in at twelve thirty the next day. He laughed, chatted, ordered a casual soup, took an egregiously appropriate amount of time consuming it, then left at an extremely casual and normal pace.
After that he circled around the block, picked up the drop package he’d secreted overnight inside a nearby storm drain, and hid in the bushes opposite the shop with a camo jacket, high powered binoculars, and a stopwatch.
At one oh one, his gaze became intense.
At one oh three, a pigeon shat in front of the shop’s window, and Sam nearly jumped out of his shoes.
At one oh six, a man with particularly interesting shoes wandered out of the kitchen, exchanged a casual wave with the cashier, and strolled by the menu. As he did so, his hand flicked through a quick little scribble against the blackboard.
Sam erupted from the bushes like Venus from the waves, launched himself across the street, tripped over the curb, saw lots of pretty colours, staggered to his feet and lurched inside.
“TurkOWy sandjesuswhich pleasefuck,” he said to the cashier.
The cashier looked confused. “Chicken?” he inquired tentatively.
Sam pointed at the menu after three tries.
There was nothing there but a quiet smudge…. And the rapidly retreating back of the man with particularly interesting shoes.
“Nevermindouchdamnit,” said Sam, and heaved himself after the shoes, which he cornered outside the men’s washroom and slammed against the wall.
“Turkey!” he shouted into the man’s face.
The man opened his mouth and got as far as “chi-“ before seeing the especially descriptive glint in Sam’s eyes and giving up. “Oh fine. Yes, there’s turkey. For thirty-three seconds on the third minute of one o’clock.”
“What? Why?”
“Same answer to both of those,” said the man with particularly interesting shoes. “But there’s a question you’ve got to answer first: you want in?”
“For that sandwich?” asked Sam. “Yes.”
The man with particularly interesting shoes nodded.
Sam nodded.
The man with particularly interesting shoes nodded again, somewhat more pointedly, and Sam realized he was holding him three inches off the floor and dropped him, embarrassed and sore-armed.
“Thank you. Now, this way.”

This way was past the kitchen, behind the sinks, down the stair, into the basement, through the grate, and terminated in a ragged chamber scraped out of raw earth, where there were seven people in baggy bathrobes and a single aimlessly confused turkey and a very shiny-and-well-polished-but-impractical knife.
“He wanted in,” explained the man with particularly interesting shoes to one of the other people, who Sam realized was the mayor.
“Fair enough,” said the mayor. “Okay, you’ve got to take the knife and-”
“This is a cult, isn’t it,” said Sam.
The mayor looked a little hurt. “Not really. It’s-”
“I know what I like, and I know what I don’t like, and cults aren’t it. You’re wearing robes and asking me to sacrifice a turkey,” said Sam, filled with leaden exhaustion and also still aching in the skull. “You know what? I’m very disappointed. I thought this was just an unusually secret menu – I’ve tracked down four of those before – but you’ve gone and brought religion into it. Food is personal enough without that sort of attitude. I’m going home and microwaving a corn dog.”
Which he did. He slammed the grate on his way out, too.

Alone in the preparatory chamber, the mayor, the man with the particularly interesting shoes, and everyone else shook their heads and went back to doing the turkey’s cuticles. The new mascot had to look perfect by the time they launched the autumn menu.

The ground trembled. The skies quaked. Forty-one calves were born with three heads and no legs. Whispers floated on the wind.
Gurg was coming.
Puddles reflected leaves on other trees from stranger places. Rabbits attacked wolves. The salmon swam upstream, then downstream, then slid into the riverbed and sank into the bedrock.
The great and powerful Gurg was there.
The clouds cracked, the dogs went silent, and a hundred cities were no more. Lands roiled and turned and boiled and died, and the world was a stranger.
The great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse had arrived some time ago.
But nobody seemed to notice.

***

At seven in the morning everyone woke up, got dressed, ate a thing, got in their cars.
At eight in the morning they were stuck in traffic.
At eight fifteen, the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse strode overhead, legs a league long, nine mouths screaming, ten nostrils flaring, and its endless eyes drowning in many flames. Four condos were drawn into its body to sate its bottomless urges; fourteen billion dollars in property damage done in its wake, and the foul stench that billowed at its heels drove thousands to the emergency room, or the early grave.
“It’s been a lousy morning,” admitted the mayor. “But we’ve put it behind us. We can adapt to this, and we’re tough people here.”

***

At noon, the beachfront was calm.
As everyone finished lunch, the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse strode into the sea and turned it to churning death. Boats sank, gulls cried, the world became a hellscape of water and tortured wind.
“There are allegations,” announced the second-wisest news channel host, “that this event could be connected to the alleged giant ravenous monster, Gurg, which reports claim is also known as the ‘blasphemous apocalypse.”
The wisest news channel host furrowed their brow at this and considered it with deep insight.
“No,” they said. “What if that wasn’t actually a thing?”
“Hmm,” said the second-wisest news channel host. “That’s a good point. I guess we need to consider that as well. After all, there’s a lot of different sides to this debate.”

At two-thirty the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse uprooted the entire news station and shoved it into its most fearsome orifice, shredding it instantly. The third-and-fourth-wisest news channel hosts maintained an attitude of cautious yet healthy skepticism, and warned against the dangers of alarmism.

***

By that evening, people in search of informed facts had trawled the entire internet. Much of what they had found was, according to standards, useless, but there was a sizeable slew of interesting photos and videos from Micronesia several weeks ago, where many citizens had recorded the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse annihilating the homes and businesses of their friends and relatives. In fact, several alleged that the monster had been steadily awakening there for over thirty years in an increasingly obvious state of agitation, its limbs gathering speed and strength as it clawed its way out from under the seafloor and into a waking nightmare of reality. The past six months were particularly dense with these allegations, which appeared to be growing increasingly annoyed that nobody was paying any attention to them.
“This seems like it could be true, or possibly bad, someday, if it were to happen to us,” pondered a few people, here and there. But their friends and neighbours weren’t so sure, and some of their in-laws were positive it was nonsense, so in the end everyone agreed to disagree.

***

By the following morning everyone had remembered that they probably had someone who could do something about anything that might happen or maybe not, and so word was dispatched to the presidential golf course to see if he knew anyone who could help.
“Help with what?” asked the President.
The President was informed that the great and powerful Gurg, also titled the Blasphemous Apocalypse, could very well be growing in strength at this moment in time, unless it wasn’t.
“I don’t know,” said the President. “That doesn’t seem real to me. I think you’re making this up.”
On the far side of the presidential golf course the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse leaned down and violently shat out six tornadoes from its primary anus, eradicating all greenery within forty miles for all time.
“Bit breezy out here today,” said the President. “Go away.”

***

By week’s end, some people were, against their own will, common sense, and apathy, becoming slightly perturbed. The great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse, if it actually existed – which it might not, after all – was acting like a real nuisance. The fields lay fallow and full of live infant mice; the factories were a riot of burning ectoplasm; the lakes were a-boil and the cities were a-buzz and there was a very real and present danger that some of the things that were happening might actually matter and/or exist. This was troubling, particularly to the younger people who had envisioned a whole life of doing something or other that wasn’t being squashed and eaten or transported into horrifying beings of flesh and pine.
“Best not to dwell on it,” was the general advice. “It can’t help and will only trouble you. Ignore Gurg the Blasphmeous Apocalypse – who may take decades to get around to impacting you – and focus on being happy.”
It wasn’t the advice anyone would have chosen, but it was the advice they’d got, and so it was taken and followed with diligence, and prudence, and indolence, and a hint – just the tiniest, the most ephemeral smidge – of existential fear.

***

A relatively short while later, the great and powerful Gurg, the Blasphemous Apocalypse, having swollen all out of insanity, eradicated the notion of notions, forcing all creatures on the planet to make prolonged and uncomfortable eye contact with it and thereby instantly destroying half of humanity utterly. Very little changed.

I’m average.
My teachers say that. My friends say that. I think I heard my mom say that once, and my dad didn’t really disagree.
It’s like ‘normal’ but less judge-y.
It’s okay. I don’t mind being average. I like being me.
Except for one thing, one big thing about being average and normal. I’m scared of the good people in my closet.

They come in just as I’m drifting off to sleep, every night, no matter how long it takes. I always mistake the first sounds as my imagination.
Clip clop clip clop clip clop.
Horses, usually. A few donkeys or maybe mules – I can’t tell the difference. Ponies mixed in whenever. And once it was a bunch of centaurs.
The people riding them are a lot more mixed up. Tall bearded people, short bearded people, skinny people with skinny ears and glowing eyes, scared kids, and a talking cat. But they’re all the same on the inside. Clean and gentle and right and kind and wanting only the very best for me, and the very best for me is to follow them into the closet to see the Good Place.
I don’t want to follow them into my closet. In the daytime there’s nothing in there but clothes and I’m worried about what they put in there when I’m not looking, at night.
Doesn’t stop them from trying. They never force, but they always push, push push like dad trying to get me to go to grandpa’s house.
The Good Place is imperiled, they warn me. The Bad People from Somewhere Else – the ugly people, the wrong people, the incorrect and vile people who aren’t even real like me and them – are going to hurt it, they’re going to burn it, they’re going to drown it and swamp it. Only through my actions will the Good Place be saved. And I need to do this for me too, because it is only through the experiencing of the Good Place that I will be saved and fixed and matured.
I tell them that I’m happy here, that I like my life and I’m not old enough to understand some of the things they ask me to do. Isn’t there someone else, older and better at it?
But they say it over again, over and over and over and over and always: it has to be you, it has to be you, it has to be you. All the people in the Good Place are already completed; already whole and wise and kind and correct. Nobody else will do, nobody else is average enough.

I’ve asked my mom and dad about this. They say it’s a phase everyone goes through, and I just have to live with it. They told me some people even like this.
I think it must have been different when they were little. Or they were. Who would find this fun?
The good people won’t go away. They keep checking in on me, polling me. ‘Would you like to have fun?’ they ask. ‘Are you developing valuable insights into your character?’ ‘Would you like a best friend, the very best friend, one who always takes your side and devotes themselves to your existence? Would you like a love interest? They’ll be feisty, but sweet, and never leave you.’
Every night.

The gifts, too. Always with the gifts. They keep telling me to take things.
First it was a sword, a plain sword with a shiny blade. Mom told me to be careful with sharp things and I almost lost a finger a year back with her Swiss army knife, so I said no.
Then they brought in a wand – a stick with a little magic inside. I thought I could see it breathing when they held it out to me, so I said no.
They keep trying. Runes, cups, rings – every time they come for me they come with a gift, and they all look hungry. They tell me that the things are part of me, that they’re special, and that they’re looking for me, that I was missing them all along. It scares me.
One time it was a crown and it bit me.

The good people warn me, too. ‘This won’t last forever,’ they say. ‘You’re almost too old.’ ‘The danger is nearly upon us.’ ‘The time is nigh.’
But they’re always wise when they say it, not scared. And they’re concerned, not cross.
I don’t think they believe me when I tell them that I don’t want to go. They just sigh and shake their heads and tell me they’ll ask again tomorrow night. They smile at me in a patient way, like a teacher, and they stare at me as I turn over and put my back to the closet as they leave.

That isn’t what scares me, though – not the smiles, not the stares, not the promises or the begging or the invitations.
What scares me is I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to say no.

Hello.
As you’re aware, the project has run into some unusual difficulties. Since you’ve – repeatedly – stressed since the day you hired me your status as an absolute layman, I thought I’d run you up a little case-by-case guide to what we’ve been doing, to dispel any confusion or frustration you might be experiencing as to the project’s pace and/or cost.

-Porch removal
As you recall, we decided early on that the porch was a lost cause due to severe termite damages, total loss of structural integrity, presence of pests, etc. And we did, in fact, prioritize this. Unfortunately one of the pests in question was a large raccoon – we asked in a vet and his estimate was ~200 pounds – who laughs like an old woman, and every time we approach the porch it laughs at us, everything goes grey, and, according to witnesses, we march down to the pond and try to kill ourselves with our own power tools. It’s not hard to stop with a buddy system, but it’s very difficult to avoid outright, and so we’ve had to do all the rest of the reno work by coming in through the back door. This is less than ideal, and has also exacerbated the problems with the moths.

-Garden clearing
The garden remains a distinct challenge, and as of yet the hedge maze resists removal. I mean this quite literally: it is in a constant state of active resistance, and we’ve had three guys hospitalized by creepers, vines, and in one case an angry, eyeless bear that spat highly venomous blood from its nostrils. We got the wildlife people in to tranquilize it, but its fur seems to be made of wrought iron, so they billed us for a few hundred darts and that’s definitely going to go on the budget.

-Attic insulation
The attic is now fully insulated and the draft problem besetting the second floor should be completely abated. We have, however, received reports from the disposal site that the old insulation we stripped out congealed into a large blob that is currently brooding a large clutch of eggs in the heart of the dump. This has not only resulted in significant legal fees, but has resulted in all disposal operations having to go to an out-of-state landfill under assumed names, which is not only ethically problematic but fiscally damaging. Again, this will be on the budget.

-Living room, study, and kitchen wallpapering
Absolutely no problems here.

-Parlour refurbishment
The parlour is coming along fine, but the moths strongly resent us coming through their living space and have continued to litigate. I don’t know where they got the money but that’s one high-powered lawyer they’ve found and frankly, our legal team is in over their heads. This is precisely the sort of undisclosed information that creates trust issues, and I confess to some disappointment in you for leaving it unmentioned.

-Underservatory renovation
The underservatory itself is complete, but we lost six workers in rapid succession to the euphoric fumes bubbling up through the cracks in its containment sphere – the lining was damaged far beyond original estimates, and to make matters worse the stuff appears to act based on eye contact rather than inhalation or even skin exposure. Also my site manager looked into the eyepiece, had a conversation with something he refuses to describe, and quit. He won’t return my calls either, so the paperwork’s turning into a real hassle.

-Resuscitating my own eviscerated, sacrificed corpse
As you’re doubtlessly aware, a little less than six hours ago I was kidnapped from my bed, dragged into the house through several secret doors of whose existence I was previously ignorant, tied to an altar, chanted at, and sacrificed with a large steak knife. I say ‘doubtlessly aware’ because the lead cultist was unmistakably yourself – yes, you were hooded and cloaked, but I’d recognize the way you scratch at your chin anywhere. This is, I feel, something of a betrayal in the client-contractor relationship, particularly as I had to spend the entire night desperately clawing a way back into my own corpse, which is now only semifunctional at best due to missing all or nearly all of its vital organs and some of the comfort ones. I’m very disappointed and also filled with a murderous undying rage, and so I am compelled to remind you in the strongest terms that this breach of contract will be recompensed through the most aggressive legal means available to me.

Regards,
Erin Nostwell, Morley Renovations.

PS: Also I have already killed and eaten the rest of your family.

I’m not sure what to say. I’m not sure how to feel. And I really don’t know what I’m going to say when everyone else comes running.
Uncle Ellis is dead. But it’s not how I thought it would happen.

He’d been so full of night last night, all cheers and chortles. Beer frothing from under his moustache and red veins throbbing in his eyes.
“More,” he was saying, mostly, probably. It was his favourite word. “More, more more.” More food, more drink, more admiration, more respect, more praise. More more more more.
All of us handing him it, nodding at him, smiling at him, and wondering when it would be enough. And which one of us would do it.
Would it be kindly cousin Harvester, with his twinkly eyes and frizzy beard, who’d put too much money into too many of Uncle Ellis’s sure-fire investments?
Would it be miserable old Uncle Paul, who’d never stopped complaining since his little, little, tiny sister had up and married?
Would it be ferocious little Laurie, the most ignored niece in the history of family, who saw her brothers and sisters lavished with praise and expensive uselessness while she got pats on the head and tousled curls?
Or maybe it would just go to Borgia, the dog who lived as a footstool. Lord knows I’d have snapped years ago, but the thing was fifteen and counting and had yet to bark, snap, or even whine under the weight of those pudgy feet.
More, more, more. Uncle Ellis always wanted more. And he never shared what he was owed for it, not one morsel.
Not alive.
More was never enough, but he took a break then, eventually, seven courses in. Pulled out his pipe, sucked it down to a cinder, threw the ashes on the table and said “look!”
In came Aunt E, so small she didn’t get a name, and with her came the journals and the papers and the collection jars.
Here were all the astounding articles on the exotic wildlife that Uncle Ellis had told his servants to write.
There were all the vibrant sketches of magnificent wilderness that Uncle Ellis had described to someone with artistic talent.
And in sealed jars and displays cases, pinned and pickled and glassy-eyed, were the creatures Uncle Ellis’s employees and staff had snatched from their burrows, dens, webs, nests, and branches. Some of them had scales, some of them had feathers, some of them had fur and some were just bald and clammy. Many of them were segmented and crunchy.
And one of them was in a big, smooth glass tank that wasn’t filled with formaldehyde but plain, nourishing air.
We couldn’t see it, and said as much.
Uncle Ellis laughed at that, then picked up his pipe and gave the glass a good whack.
Something small and alarmed darted across the tank’s gravel and slipped underneath the big dead branch that had been, until that second, the only thing inside it we could see.
“Ribbon snake,” he said. “Leptogracilis fragillimus, as I’ve called it. See its spine? So tall and thin. Prickly too! Funny thing. Took a keen eye to spot it, which I did.”
We all smiled and agreed that the incredibly thin snake – almost as narrow face-on as a page of paper – was indeed a lovely creature, worthy of intense praise. Truly he was astounding, a genius, a true noble, a worthy soul.
Then we all retired to our rooms, waited, and wondered who’d go first.

Maybe Grimbly. He was a good friend of Uncle Ellis’s son, Hubert. Hubert who’d been bright, who’d been curious, who’d been disinherited for asking questions that made his father feel foolish. Not that it had taken much to do that.
Maybe Edith? She’d been a maid for a long time, she’d cleaned a lot of floors, she’d carried a lot of laundry, she’d put up with a lot of shouting, and she could use a little cut of a promised inheritance if she’d just put a foot in and speed it all up a bit. Accidentally confuse the rat poison with the salt shaker, maybe.
Speaking of meals, what about poor trembling Joshua? Best friends for forty years, ever since the day Uncle Ellis knocked him down and broke his leg and laughed at him. Through thick and thin, like the time Uncle Ellis drove away his fiancée by starting a fist fight with her father. Comrades ‘till the end. Which frankly, he might appreciate being sooner rather than later.
Or of course, me. No particular motives there beyond annoyance with blowhards and a fondness for money, but I counted those as honest commonalities with the folks seated around me at dinner that evening.

So. Who first?

Creak, crack, crunch. The floorboards are whispering and whining, shaking and twisting in their old wooden beds, trying to get comfortable underfoot.
Who’s taking a stroll? Who’s visiting the privy? Who’s just getting some fresh air?
Better wait it out, better not go just yet. If they’re innocent, they’ll ask questions. If they’re guilty, why interrupt them?

It had been well past midnight before the real dead of night hit over Uncle Ellis’s manor, before I really felt comfortable moving. Soft slippers, a careful tread, and not even a candle to wander by. I had felt my way along the halls like a drunken spider, waving limb by careful limb and squinting in the odd patch of starlight a window leaked in.
I had a plan, a very simple plan. I would creep up to Uncle Ellis’s bedchamber and smother him with his own pillow. No muss, no fuss, no wounds, no blemishes. A nice softy mushy pillow. He’d have at least three of those.
Of course, this was assuming someone else hadn’t reached him first. Like Burroughs, his assistant, who had illustrated, composed, and edited so many of those papers he claimed as his own. Or Taft the batman, who had lost a leg to sepsis after saving him from a crocodile, and had found his pay cut by half as recompense for his new tardiness.
I supposed I would raise a fuss, once I was sure the coast was clear. Maybe faint away, so nobody thought to accuse me. So long as uncle was dead, fair enough, but there’s a special kind of unfairness in being blamed for a murder you didn’t even get to do.
The floor was dusty here, bar the center. Feet had shuffled, fingers had groped. Uncle Ellis’s private chambers had to be close by, near at hand.
Near at foot, however, was a corpse. I almost fell flat-out, but caught myself on a giant and hideous door handle that was probably the entrance to the study.
The body, I determined by feel and smell, belonged to my cousin Janice, who had many of my own qualms about the likelihood and magnitude of her inheritance. She seemed extremely dead, with little trace save for some froth along her lips.
This puzzled me as much as it alarmed me, and it was with this in mind that I put paid to notions of true darkness and filched a candle from the wall, which I lit.
Illuminated (faintly) Janice became slightly more edifying – there was a faint red swelling on her palm. I considered this, then considered the door whose handle I had grasped.
It was festooned with ornate images of sea shells from Uncle Ellis’s voyage of a decade and more ago. Beautiful, colourful, coiled.
I looked closer.
One of the sea shells – a cone snail I believe – had a small dart protruding from its tip. Something cloudy glistened off it in the candlelight.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t shriek, didn’t gasp, didn’t mutter ‘hmm!’
But I DID reconsider how easy this might be. Clearly Uncle Ellis was less unaware of his popularity than I’d presumed.
Carefully, gingerly, daintily, I opened the door with a single finger and slid inside without so much as a creak.

The study was in some disorder, and I decided to put some time into taking stock.
Dark-paneled wood, with thick black curtains drawn firmly around what must be quite high and sweeping windows. A desk that could anchor a ship of the line, built right into the floor. Several chairs so overstuffed they sighed to themselves in the draft of the opened door. Rugs so plush that my feet nearly vanished in them. And a big sturdy door, with the key still in the lock.
After I was through with that, I began to catalogue the causes of death.
Laurie had stepped on the wrong floorboards, judging by the large and ferociously bladed beartraps that were latched around her ankles.
Grimbly had paused to check the desk for something – perhaps the key? – and appeared to have instead found an exotic and large spider, whom I hurriedly shut back into its drawer, where it hissed angrily.
And finally the door appeared to have been opened by Cousin Harvester, because when I stepped through it and found myself in a stairwell it was his bobbing body that I found, suspended rather alarmingly from a leg-trap that had misjudged and caught his neck instead. Rest assured, I was very careful to check the stairs as I went.

The staircase was clear, as far as I could tell – though I did leap the last five steps, and so can’t verify their safety. The hallway was similarly safe, although my careful and suspicious proddings at the closed and silent doors did lead to my discovery of Uncle Ellis’s bathroom, where Joshua had stepped onto a bathmat – hunting for a weapon in the medicine cabinet, perhaps? – and into a twelve-foot tiger-pit that must’ve eventually emptied into the furnace, by the smell.
The master bedroom was surprisingly simple to locate – Uncle Paul had gotten halfway through the door before a pair of decorative axes had collapsed on him. The other half remained in the halfway, leaking.
I had stepped gingerly over him, into marvels and horrors.
Heaps of papers, all crisply unruffled by any prying eyes or greedy fingers – Uncle Ellis did not like to read.
Great mounds of fine clothing and luxurious canes – Uncle Ellis did not like to dress up.
Opulent furniture crafted from the heaviest and most indestructible timber, gilded in pearls and gold, with dirty plates sitting atop them – Uncle Ellis left that sort of things for maids.
Edith, the maid herself, face down and ghastly pale on the floor, where she’d slipped and cracked something vital – Uncle Ellis appeared to have left his slippers in the most peculiar place.
And finally, quiet and deadly vast as a mountain, heavier than the roots of the world, the bedframe and sheets and covers and mounded pillows. Because Uncle Ellis always wanted more.
I picked a sizeable pillow, whipped back the blankets, aimed for the face, and smacked down, hard. And it wasn’t for a good minute that I risked to raise it for curiosity at the ease of it all, and found the thing soaked to its eiderdown in blood.

Such a thin little cut across his throat, like a papercut. And when I looked around for explanation, for excuses, all I could find was the little glass tank with its one dead branch and a perfect missing circle of glass. Like somebody had taken a little blade to it.

Good lord, I’m still thinking on that. Good lord.
What kind of snake SLITS someone to death? Can’t it just bite them?

There’s shouting and gasping and running feet. Someone – Taft? Burroughs? Loyal for their salaries, unless they were paid off to tuck themselves to bed early – must’ve come looking for him when he didn’t call for breakfast. I should be running, jumping, screaming with the rest, fixing my alibi and making my excuses.
But all I can do is sit here, like a stone on a riverbed, and let the current rush around me. Thinking about that ribbon snake, and where it might’ve gone.

A long time ago, there was a man, and this man made the most important, necessary, life-giving, in-all-senses-of-the-term VITAL substance known to us all.
No, not water. That’s harder to manufacture.
He was a baker. And he baked bread.
He baked the BEST bread.

The problem with making the best bread is you grow concerned with all the people wanting a slice of the action. Everyone in his village, in the city, in (as far as he knew, he didn’t travel much) the WORLD lusted for the merest crumbs of his labours.
So he hired some of them, as guards, to keep the bread safe and secure.
Then he hired guards to watch the guards. Who, themselves, needed guards, and guards for those guards, and well I’m sure you can see where this is going don’t you.
Anyways, it came to pass that so many of the guards were tied up in watching guards that were watching guards that were watching guards that were, in turn, distracted and nervous due to being watched, that nobody had been watching the baker. Or where he’d been putting the bread.
There was a great interest in finding those two things at that moment – principally for purposes of payment – but as the efforts bore no fruit or bread or anything much people soon gave up and wandered away, disappointed and breadless. But the legends remained.
And somewhere, too, did the bread.

This was all a very long time ago, when people didn’t know any better. Everybody in the rest of this story had no damned excuse.
Especially Edd. Edd with her old worn bag over her shoulder, walking so carefully through the gates of the old city. Edd with her furtive looks and darting eyes. Edd so obviously getting away with something that four separate merchant guards almost detained her on principal, saved only by the obvious and odious emptiness of her old worn bag. A proper thief would have standards, or at least one standard.
But Edd made her way in, like a salmon wandering upstream, and at last she stumbled into the old city’s marketplace, held her old worn bag above her head, and yelled the following.
“I have come and I will bring the bread!”
Which got the same reaction as ‘I know where Jack buried the spare beans’ or ‘I’m going to go and catch the end of the rainbow.’ A couple people threw (stale) bread at her, and someone took her hat off her head and dropped a few coins in it and put it back on.
“Thanks,” said Edd, “but I was looking for more.
The hat was removed again and more metal was added to it.
“No, like, in terms of support. I’m not looking for money, I’m looking for bread. And I will find it. And everyone will love it. It’s going to be amazing.”
“That sounds interesting,” said the hat thief, whose name was Mun. “I will accompany you on this pointless endeavour if you let me keep this hat.”
“Fine,” said Edd. “But give me back the money first.”

So they walked together down the long surly alleys of the old city, which had emerged where buildings argued over who was going to stop first, and they stopped for lunch.
Mun had bread. Edd had bread.
“This bread is pretty garbage,” said Edd. “When I find us the good bread, we’re going to be set for good. Everyone will remember and love us forever and ever.”
“Damn that’s good,” said Mun. “What’s so great about this bread in particular?”
“It’s extremely tasty.”
“Oh.”

After five or six near-robberies, an exciting chase sequence, a dance number, and a soliloquy, they stood at the heart of the old city. You know, just slightly farther left of center than most people think it is.
“Now I must use the secrets that my great-aunt told me,” said Edd.
“Sounds great,” said Mun. “And I’ll hit the secret switch.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The secret switch. About a hundred years back this wall over here was getting rebuilt and they found a big secret switch inside it. It used to open up a big trapdoor in this plaza, but it was rusted shut. They fixed it up too and I think the guy over here was using it as a cellar, but then he died and it might be empty now.”
“Fine,” said Edd. “Please hit the stupid secret switch. Thank you. Let’s go.”
It was actually full of casks of oil, but nobody was around, so they passed unchallenged.

Past the oil cellar and through the side-tunnel and under the old bridge and beyond the farthest dregheaps there was a maze of twisty little passages, none of which looked quite like another.
“This is what my great-grandfather told me about,” said Edd.
“Wow,” said Mun. “Did he say if it was up the fork or down the warren or through the hen’s teeth?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Loads of kids play down here. My auntie showed me a lot of these tunnels. Is your path up the hen’s teeth? I hope it’s the hen’s teeth. See, when I was really little I’d hang around there a lot and once I swear I saw a giant lizard, and hey wait up.”
It was through the fork. Mun complained loudly until Edd told her to shut up.

They stopped outside a deep pit. Bones crunched underfoot, rot swept into nostril. The air felt inquisitive in the least friendly way.
“What?” asked Mun.
“Go on,” said Edd.
“What?”
“Go on and tell me how your cousin’s friend’s so-and-so’s told you all about this. Go on and tell me how the great and terrible wortalask has been dead for fifty years and all the cool kids had a tooth they pulled out of its rotten old skull. Go on!”
“What? I’ve never been this far. No-one’s ever been this far. There’s bones and stuff. Nobody was dumb enough to try.”
The pit belched and heaved and the wortalask crawled out, broadside-first. Six big legs like an elephant’s opposing three little legs like a stork’s. It peered around its own ass in a surly, myopic way and hissed.
It still extremely had all its teeth, which had grown significantly.
“Woah,” said Mun.
Edd strode forwards with determination in every vein of her body. She held up her worn old bag and rubbed it on the wortalask’s face, slapped its rump three times, gave it a skritch behind each of its five ears, and gave its face a good tussle. It collapsed, burping happily.
“Did your great-grandmother tell you that trick?” asked Mun.
“No,” said Edd. “But she said you just had to make it look good.”

Down under the pit.
Under the shaft
Under the crawlspace
Under the big rusty grate
Under the big stone circle
And just beside the enormous combination lock
There was a door.
Edd and Mun looked at the combination lock and then at the door.
“Now what?” asked Mun. It seemed to be a fair question since there were eighty keys on the lock, none of which were numbers or letters.
“Now,” said Edd, “I use what’s in the bag.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“I told you during the soliloquy,” said Edd, who felt she had a right to be irritated. “Weren’t you listening?”
“I got embarrassed and stopped. It was pretty loud and people were trying to sleep.”
Edd sighed and opened the bag and opened the box and opened the jar and opened the tin.
“That’s overkill.”
“That’s prudence. Anyone could’ve stolen my wealth from me.”
“Your wealth smells funny. What is it?”
“The perfect dipping mix for the perfect bread. Passed down to me, after so many years.”
Edd held the sauce next to the lock and squinted a lot until the blobs and shapes within it congealed into something that looked familiar, then punched them in.
And with a groan, the door slid open under weight of years.
And with a sigh, the two women peered inside.
And with a creak, the gentle gust of fresh air made the dessicated, emaciated, mummified corpse of the long-lost baker fall over precisely on his face, which broke with a blunt ‘crunch.’

“Wow,” said Mun.
She poked at a loaf, stale as dead sea air. “Wow,” she said again, looking up at the colossal, endless ruin surrounding her. “Wow.”

“Huh,” Mun concluded. She looked at Edd, who was looking at the bread, which was beyond looking at, and shrugged. “You want to get a pizza instead?”

The pizza was pretty good.

One day, which very well may have been a Thursday, the sun went out.
It was really very distressing. One moment it was there, and then – ffftt – gone. Pretty shocking stuff, especially for the half of the planet that was in the middle of a perfectly good noonish.
Some peopled wailed. Some people cursed. Some people rent their garments and lamented.
Most people were pretty pissed off. “The damned thing was practically new,” they said, and they were right. You’d never see this kind of shoddy worksmanship back in the Precambrian.

There were a lot of decisions to be made in those first few dark hours. Hard ones.
First off, who the hell was going to pay for this. Some folks maintained that we ought to track down god, the universe, or whoever and give them the bill, while others insisted that we should probably get the sun fixed under the table before we ruined the solar system’s collateral. In the end the latter prevailed, if only because nobody could remember our landlord’s contact info.
Options were considered, dismissed, debated, discouraged, pushed forwards.

But the obvious first solution was duct tape. It was cheap, it was durable, and if it didn’t look like it was working we could always add more of it.
Ten billion rolls coalesced in the sky, spherical and mad. Ten billion more were added to get it looking real nice and round. Then we threw in a hundred billion more and everything was starting to look almost normal when it rained and half the sun came unglued from the other half. The whole damned thing nearly fell apart.

So it took a bit after that to work out whose fault that was – obviously someone else’s, it was decided – and then we were ready for the next plan, which was to send some people up to the sun to try screwing it in a bit more firmly.
The problem was, they got a bit confused. It’s righty tighty, yeah, but which right? Whose right? So while they were figuring that out the damned thing got so loose it nearly fell out – and then everyone was so embarrassed that they tightened it so far it got stuck fast. Christ knows how we’ll ever replace it now.

I won’t lie, after that happened things got ugly. Blame gets thrown around when things are bad, especially if there’s nobody obviously screwing up, because that means it’s EVERYONE’S fault and that’s just no fun at all. Who’d forgotten to check the bulb? Who hadn’t bought spares? Who’d been leaving it on all the time, day and night? What, did you think the sun was free? They don’t grow on trees, you know!
Eventually the problem ate itself: nobody really knew why the sun had gone out and therefore it was either everyone’s fault or nobody’s. Therefore, we blamed nobody. Selfish bastard.

With that important business settled, we tried to plug the moon into the sun to see if that’d help. It didn’t. The sockets didn’t match. Frankly, I don’t know who came up with that one, because I’m not even sure they use the same kind of gravity. We’re lucky we didn’t burn out anything or start a fire. You can’t just mess around with celestial engineering like that; this is how people get bolides dropped on them. Leave that sort of thing to the experts.

After that little episode things picked up. More solutions at greater speed, but fewer and emptier results.
We tried shouting at the sun. Didn’t work, didn’t make anyone feel better, caused noise pollution.
We tried begging the sun. It didn’t have ears so that was never really a good idea.
We tried threatening the sun. This made as little sense as the last thing, but felt a lot better.
We looked up the manufacturer to see if we could order a new sun, but they’d gone out of business several billion years ago due to industrial entropy and the whole field of solar construction was still in a state of perpetual collapse.
We even tried making peace with the fact that the sun had gone out and working on adapting to the new understanding: that things were going to be very dark and inconvenient for a long time. That lasted about five minutes before we all went nuts again.

Finally, when all hope was lost, when we’d just about given up on ever seeing another morning, someone suggested turning it on and off again and hell, what do you know, there it was.

Probably should replace the cord though.

On a particular and particularly rocky stretch of a road, a fight was breaking out, or maybe a discussion.
“Are not.”
“Am so.”
“Are not.”
“Am so.”
The participants collected themselves for a moment to consider their options; the debate was becoming too technical and abstract. A grounded, fully-developed statement was needed.
“You are NOT the most disagreeable of all of us pebbles. I’m much spikier than you.”
“Well I say I AM the most disagreeable of all us pebbles, because even if you’re spikier I’m pleasingly irregular – I can’t sit still against someone’s foot, I’ve got to rock and roll my way around and mess them up heart and sole. I’d take any bet you can name that I’m the most disagree, unpleasant, nasty piece of pebbly business ever to chip off the old block, and I dare you to bet me right now or give up your case.”
“Fine,” said the dissenting pebble. “Listen: an extremely holy and enlightened man is walking down this road. In five minutes, he’s going to step on us. I dare you to hop into his shoe. If you can drive him nuts, I’ll accept your idiot claims to being the most disagreeable, unpleasant, and generally shitty pebble to ever exist.”
And the candidate for that title was pleased, and so the bet was struck.

Five minutes later the holy man came walking down the rocky road, head down, mind above. He was yet holier still than the dissenting pebble had described; just looking at him was like taking a valium. Even the disagreeable pebble felt itself soften a little as his feet approached, but it had a job to do and it knew it. It shook its pebbly head, shrugged its pebbly shoulders, thought of its reputation, and leapt into the holy man’s shoe with the force of a thunderbolt covered in prickly thorns.
The holy man hop, skip, tripped and nearly tumbled down the sloping road, but he caught himself on a little tree and continued apace, unflinching.
“Right,” said the disagreeable pebble. “Time to work.”
And it did.
It worked itself through epidermis and into raw red flesh.
It spun and nudged and whirled and gyrated like a weasel in a war dance.
It sang all the correct pebble songs, such as ‘I’m shifting from toe to toe’ and ‘your heel is a fiery land of pain.’
Soon, very soon, the holy man stopped his walk to mop his brow and have some water. A passerby stopped for a quickie blessing and asked precisely where he was travelling.
“To the sea,” said the holy man. “There’s a holy place there, so it’s very much necessary.”
“That’s a long walk,” said the passerby.
“Oh, that’s not too much of a problem,” said the holy man. “Discomfort is fleeting.”
And he smiled when he said that, and the disagreeable pebble cursed and began to plan the next angle of attack.

For the first hundred miles, the disagreeable pebble rolled constantly from ridge to ridge, never resting, always moving. It left no inch of flesh unjabbed, no callus unshredded.
The holy man hummed holy things to himself as he walked those hundred miles, and those things passed, and the pebble swore and planned again.
For the next hundred miles, the disagreeable pebble sat still, rock still, stone still, immobilized and unyielding as it slowly ate through a single spot in the holy man’s heel until it was practically lodged against his bones.
The holy man sang holy songs to the wind and the birds as he walked those hundred miles, and that thing passed too, and the pebble snarled to itself and planned again.
For the final hundred miles the disagreeable pebble went mad and struggled on top of the holy man’s foot and attacked its soft skin like a rabid dog, worrying and chewing at it with flinty teeth until it looked like he’d gone dancing in a rosebush.
And the holy man stopped, and the disagreeable pebble rejoiced at first, but then it realized they were at the sea, in all its vast blue, and the holy man had only stopped because he had succeeded in his journey.
“Damnation and rubble,” mourned the disagreeable pebble. “I was so close!”
“Not as far as you thought, for sure,” said the holy man. “But farther than you would’ve liked to hope.”
The disagreeable pebble was greatly surprised by this interjection into its private thoughts, and said so.
“Everything talks, and I’ve tried to learn how to listen,” said the holy man. He fished the disagreeable pebble from his abused shoe and held it on his palm. “This is far too big a world for any of us to not learn to get along with all sorts of neighbours. Look! Look at how big it is! Look at the sea!”
And the disagreeable pebble looked at the vast and briny water under its huge sky and was humbled as pie.
“I’m sorry,” said the disagreeable pebble. “I’ve been presumptuous and petty, and caused you pain because of my own small insecurities. Will you forgive me, holy man?”
“Sure,” said the holy man. “Be seeing you.”
And then he overarm chucked the pebble out into the sea, where it skipped seventeen times at increasing velocity before sinking.

The first thousand years the pebble spent screaming. It was a shocking thing for a small pebble from the backroad countryside, to find itself immersed in the deeps.
The second thousand years it spent swearing vengeance as it crawled its way along the ocean floor, buffeted by currents, hurled about by the grinding of the great tectonic plates, insulted by slimy things with bony fins.
The third thousand years the pebble spent getting warmer, hotter, faster as it boiled with fury and also increasing heat as it dropped down back into the earth.

Finally, as its prized ridges melted off, as its perfectly irregular and torturous surface was crushed into a layer so thin that it didn’t exist, the pebble understood.

It understood it was not a pebble, but a particle. An undifferentiated one.

It understood that it had always been this way, and only its own ignorance had kept it so small, so focused on itself.

It understood that it and all that it had just joined were one.

And at that moment, at the pinnacle of its scope, it understood that it remembered the holy man’s voice extremely clearly, along with every one of the seventeen times it had skipped across the water.

And this is how we get earthquakes.

It was eleven thirty in the morning and Carl still hadn’t gone to bed because he’d been conquering the universe.
God knows it had taken too much effort already. He couldn’t afford to stop now.

He’d tried it dozens of ways.
At first Carl had been subtle. He’d tried to establish bare facts.
“I am in charge,” he told the universe. “Me!” he shouted. “Look at the capacity of my braincase! Look at the bumps on my skull! Look at the dexterity of my fingers! Look at the shape of my face! This constitutes my authority.”
Then he’d gotten really cunning, and had appealed to simple logic and rationality.
“I have personally built a coat rack,” he told the universe. “My father couldn’t afford a coat. Therefore, you haven’t got a prayer. Tomorrow I’ll seize you. I’ll take all that’s in you, and I’ll have it, and it will be mine. It’s inevitable.”
Finally, he’d gotten down to brass tacks.
“I, personally, unlike everyone else that’s ever lived, am definitely going to live forever and see my legacy expressed as I see fit,” he told the universe.

Surprisingly, the universe had not responded to his arguments, despite the fact that so many of his facts were totally correct and therefore his conclusions were unavoidable. So there Carl sat, on his roof, staring up at a sky that had possessed the indecency to take away its romantic (in an adventurous sense! Not in any way connected to anything as messy and unscientific as feelings, sociology, hormones, or the anatomy of the human brain) blanket of bright stars on black space for a bland blue sky with tufts of cloud.
“Fuck you,” he told the sky. “Get out of it. Bring back the universe. The universe is outer space, you’re just trying to hide it from me. The universe is mine, and you’re trying to keep it from me. I KNOW YOUR TRICKS.”
The sky didn’t answer him either, not even when he threw his bottle at it.

This was, of course, not the beginning of the whole problem. It had been brewing for years.
It was the universe’s fault. It had definitely promised Carl things, things which it had brutally, painfully failed to uphold – nah, reneged upon utterly!
And they had been such wonderful things. The most wonderful things of all.
Flight! He would soar, he had been told, he was very sure. If not himself, then his car; if not his car; then his species. All of them. Gloriously, eternally, entirely. Everything would fly to all ends of all places forever, and ever.
Prosperity! Everywhere he voyaged, all things would be his, or if not his, used to make something that was, which was useful, and practical, and satisfying. This would be the most beautiful thing of all, and actually useful which beautiful things weren’t so there.
War! In the path of Man – his path – there would be honest, uncompromising, and utterly inferior enemies who would be mulched in a straightforward test of strengths in which they would inevitably come up wanting, unless they sneakily attempted to triumph by means of deceit in which case they would learn that Man was not only a violent animal but the smartest one, and also the best, at everything, consistently and comfortably. It would be good and wholesome, and build character for the young men.
And finally….freedom. He, and every other Man worthy of the title, would do exactly as they wanted and bow to no one and organize themselves according to common sense and the laws of nature as their common sense understood them. They would all agree on these things all the time.
Those were the wonderful things that had been promised to Carl of the universe, and he was pretty pissed that it had welched so thoroughly on him. It hadn’t written him; it hadn’t called; it hadn’t even let him out of low earth orbit for decades. He’d been used in a most outrageous and unseemly way, and he couldn’t believe the universe had the gall to pretend this was permissible or acceptable behaviour.

Sitting there, on his roof, with his beer, without a prayer, Carl tried to remember what his father had told him. Or some assertive older man with a command of orbital physics, which was close enough. It had been a long time, but he recalled something about hard work and determination and maybe apple pie for some reason.
Carl closed his eyes. He gritted his teeth. And he reached out, out into that uncaring universe, grabbed it in fistfuls, wrenched it to him.
Then he opened his eyes and realized he’d almost fallen off the roof and the universe he thought he’d grabbed was actually just boring ol’ air. Instead, the universe was still above him, hiding. Laughing. Flaunting its impossibility in his face. The conniving tart.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t real, but it was still there. An unconquered universe, and Carl without so much as a sword to pillage with.
There must be a way. There had to be a way. But there wasn’t a way, not in all the sky he stared at. He’d wheeled, he’d proclaimed, he’d coaxed, he’d threatened, he’d even pulled out his calculator and done some basic mathematics on it, proving at a single stroke both his utter mastery of the invisible magic that ruled all interactions of matter and his infinite creativity.
Nothing.
Which, in a tiny part of his mind, was what he was beginning to suspect the universe actually was, by volume.
God he hated that nagging thought. It was not only absolutely irrelevant and entirely unconnected to his extremely coherent worldview, it ascribed unnecessary importance to Earth, which was the opposite of the universe. Earth was tiny, squalid, and frivolous. It spent zillions and zillions of atoms every year on entirely useless things like plants, animals, and geography, when if it was halfway practical and sensible it would be building spaceships and large, sentient computers. And it did it all through some kind of random willy-nilliness.
Not like the universe. The universe was cold and pure and pristine and worked in perfect math and everything happened for a reason out there which was why he was tremendously disappointed in it for ignoring him for no reason at all.
“YOU’LL DO WHAT I SAY!” he yelled. He threw his bottle at it, but he’d already done that five minutes earlier and ended up throwing his suntan lotion at it instead. “I WAS PROMISED AN ORBITAL HABITAT AND MINERS IN ASTEROID BELTS! I WAS PROMISED BUSSARD RAMJETS TURNING STRAY HYDROGEN INTO THRUST! I WAS PROMISED SOME KIND OF PROTECTION FROM COSMIC RADIATION AND I WAS PROMISED I’D LIVE TO SEE IT ALL HAPPEN! YOU OWE ME, GIVE IT TO ME NOW!”

An awful lack of silence descended.
It was filled with sound carried by air, with annoying insects and birds and dogs and neighbours being inconsiderate and people calling the police and the stink and stir of that smallest of things next to the universe: a planet.
Carl felt himself going mad from the inside out. But as he opened his mouth to scream, filled with awful, awful atmosphere, a light turned on inside him.
Ah. Of course.
How had he missed it? Naturally, as the universe hadn’t responded to him, it was proof that it agreed with him. His case had been made and he was right. Now that his claim for the universe was acknowledged, all he had to do was conquer.
Patting himself on the back (carefully, with stiff joints), Carl climbed in his bedroom window, walked downstairs to his computer, booted up his obsolete operating system, and carefully began to type.

Naturally, it is in the nature of Man to expand, by force if necessary, and so, it is equally true, that Man shall expand until the Universe is His. Quod era demonstratum.

“Done,” he said.
And then he had another bottle, and saw the man jump over the moon.