jamieproctor.ca

It was a day that was not like any other, and Jimmy Davies, janitor-in-chief of the U.N.N Sanctum, appreciated it with gusto. Breakfast, for once, was not moving when he ate it, and he was thus spared from having to plead to the Completely Invincible Lizard that he safely digest it without exploding or emitting strange vapours from his tear ducts.
After that exciting moment, things pretty much went back to normal – insofar as a day containing such an extraordinary event can be labelled “normal.” Jimmy cleaned out the old tin he used as bowl, plate, and cutlery in the dirtiest corner of the two-fifths-full reservoir, had a good fortifying gulp of quasiwater liquid from the cleanest corner, and was off to tighten bolts, screws, and security all across the majestic hull of the Sanctum, mostly with his fingers nowadays, since he only had the one screwdriver left and it was a large flake of rust attached to a plastic handle.
After that, the outside of the main fusion reactor was given a careful spit-polish. Over the years this behaviour had gradually worn away every single one of the innumerable safety warnings and descriptive emergency instructions that had once coated its hide, probably because of the interesting diet that Jimmy enjoyed. It also allowed him to hawk exceptional loogies when the mood struck him to engage in a solo spitting contest.
This was rarer every day.
Too many bolts and rivets. Too much rust to spit-shine until you could pretend it was actual metal. Sanctum had been built to last, but the dangling coda was “for fifty years,” and the space station’s centennial was coming up, twenty years of which had been with no maintenance crew bar Jimmy, the Sleek Shark, the Completely Invincible Lizard, the Mind All Light, and the Older. Not that they seemed to do much on their own until he prodded them, and certainly not all together. Jimmy knew it wasn’t their fault, but he still felt annoyed about the whole arrangement.
It was the Older he was feeling particularly annoyed with today, when the rust seemed thicker and more desperate than ever. He did his duty without grumbling (much), he chewed off excess flakes and spat them out, he licked the rest clean, he intoned and politely requested the aid of the Older to make the Sanctum fall apart just a little slower, and, well, nothing happened.
He was starting to think he was the only person on the station with a work ethic. Why look at that! Number five docking bay was still receiving power, and after he’d told the Sleek Shark to cut the juice to it no less than maybe five possibly one none times yesterday! The cheek. If the Shark weren’t a terrifying and unpredictable unknowable known, he’d give it a piece of his mind.
Well, if you want something done right, Jimmy’s got to do it himself. And so he did. He marched all the way down to the big old circuit breaker board, which he delighted in saying as many times as he could until it grew unclear and mushy in his mouth (seven hundred thirty-eight a personal best set seven years ago). Four hundred and twenty-two little tiny electronic locks and dams in a waterway web that Jimmy couldn’t understand and never could. He was by far not Sleek enough.
But the Shark was. The Sleek Shark was the Sleekest.
“So it’d be real nice if you gave me a hand uh fin uh whatever here, okay?” he implored. “Just chip in. Just chip in for a bit, a bite, a nibble, a whatever. Swim.”
He pulled a breaker that was probably the right one, and the lights went out.
“Nope.”
Flip it back. Try another. The ventilation system shut down.
“Nope.”
Third time’s the charm. And the PA system, which began playing a song from Jimmy’s youth that had been just popular enough to be unpopular.
“No.”
Fourth time was not charming, but at last the Sleek Shark looked benevolently upon Jimmy, and number five docking bay shut down noisily and without grace. Now all Jimmy had to do was go down there and unscrew all nine thousand bolts sealing the useless module to the rest of the station, turning it into free-floating space junk that he would no longer have to sweep with the stick that was his one remaining broom, just like the other two-thirds of the original Sanctum.
You have time to think, when you’re using your time to unscrew nine thousand (rounded down) bolts by hand. Mostly about how much your fingers hurt, and if your arm has always hurt that particular way, and if the seal on the airlock’s still good enough that it won’t just pop away with the module you’re detaching and spin you out into a part of space that had been scientifically measured to be at least forty-eight percent emptier than normal empty space.
That was important, for some reason. Jimmy tried not to think about why nowadays. Do not think into the too-empty, lest the too-empty think into you. And who knows what happens then. Maybe it’d be like that physicist, the one whose eyes did that….thing he shouldn’t think about or the engineer, with her hand, and the hand went, no, no bad idea.
Jimmy quietly started mumbling a vague request to the Mind All Light to empty his head of thoughts so he could have some peace and quiet. After a few minutes it was the only thing in his head at all, and that was more results than he usually got. It was a blissfully blank existence, where Jimmy was nothing but a pair of ever-working hands, a mantra inside his noggin, and a pair of ears that politely told him that someone had been hammering on the inside of the airlock door for ten minutes and there were two bolts holding the module on.
“Oops,” said Jimmy. “Shark?”

There was a detour to be made, before Jimmy went to the switchboard. He wandered his way to a conspicuously inconspicuous yet well-tidied maintenance panel near his mounded and tangled bedding, opened it up, and counted out one, two, three little helpers from a bottle that had been mended with scotch tape three times. The rest of the maintenance crew had their places, but other people weren’t one of them. Even if they’d all come from other people to begin with.
One, two, three. With no glass of water, because all Jimmy had was quasiwater liquid.
A surprisingly short time later – the Sleek Shark had been feeling helpful just before it winked out of existence for a vacation – the door was open, Jimmy was being Mr. Davies, and Mr. Davies was politely offering his new friend his second-favourite and second-best seat, which was one of only two-and-a-half chairs on the whole space station.
The new friend gave it a dubious look that suited his face nicely and remained standing. He had dramatic eyebrows and hair that was slightly too long and styled to belong to a proper astronaut. His environment suit somehow managed to look much like a business suit, down to the oddly tie-like patterning on its front.
Also, his nose whistled in a way that made Jimmy not quite comfortable. Which meant it was certainly a good thing that he was too busy being Mr. Davies right now to be Jimmy.
“What happened?” asked the man.
Mr. Davies was clearer-headed than Jimmy, but the parting of the fog had left him stranded on a mountaintop. He fumbled in his social memories, and came up with “It’s a pleasure to meet you, what’s your name?”
The man gave him a look that he would’ve been able to identify at some point long in the past. “I am Edward Hemlock. Ed. And you are the janitor of this station, mister…?”
“Davies,” said Mr. Davies. “I’m Mr. Davies.”
“First name?”
“Not right now, Ed, not right now. Wait a few hours and he’ll be back.”
Another, different look. Mr. Davies hoped he was doing this right; he had a feeling he’d either explained too much or too little.
“Mr. Davies,” said Ed, clearly ready to try a different tack, “what happened to the rest of the crew?”
“Oh, you know the way it goes, Ed. One got fired. A few quit. A lot went mad. Some got between the ones that went mad and the silverware drawers. And some just sort of vanished away.”
“Mr. Davies, I had to go through eighteen levels of government classification to get the location of this station, and there were two cavity searches involved. Two. There was at least two hundred pages of paperwork in a very small font involved, and I, Mr. Davies, I LOATHE paperwork, and I tolerated this all without so much as a peep because it let me come here.” He shuddered dramatically. “The most anomalously empty-of-anything-at-all quadrant of the known universe has one man-made outpost in it, and this was it. This was not an unimportant place, the people chosen to crew it were not selected casually. They were calm people. Level-headed, reasonable people possessed of much equanimity. And you’re telling me that most of them went crazy?”
“No, mad. Crazy’s more passive. Technical terms.” Mr. Davies felt the Mind All Light hovering over his shoulder, where it definitely wasn’t. “Can we talk about something else, Ed?”
“Fair enough. How long have you been alone then, Mr. Davies?”
“Nineteen years and eight months. For a little while there it was just me and one of the security guards, but then Breakfast took poorly to him, and that was that.”
“Did he ever say anything about creatures?”
“No. Mostly he just screamed.”
“Hmm. And do you ever see any unusual creatures around here?”
Mr. Davies thought about the Mind All Light and its cronies. But they were probably staff by now, and they didn’t exist at the moment. And even if they did exist, he wouldn’t see them. And even if he could see them, they weren’t his problems, not originally. He just gave them room and board, and a fat lot of thanks he got for it.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“And you’re the janitor? You clean and dust and polish and that’s the extent of your technical skills”
“Yeah, I guess, if you want to put it that way. I handle the plumbing too, on the small scale. And I’ve been checking all the bolts, screws, and rivets. There’s four hundred ninety five thousand six hundred and thirty-six of them, so it takes a while to make a full rotation, but -”
“Mr. Davies, has this station’s fusion reactor been untended for two decades?”
“Nah. I spit-shine it every morning.” Mr. Davies scratched the back of his neck, then considered his last statement of belief, which made a lot less sense to him than it had to Jimmy.
“Hang on,” he said, but he was too late because Ed had hanged onto him first, and was towing them both towards the reactor as fast as he could.

“It’s itchy in here,” said Mr. Davies.
“I’m sure. There was a lot of dust.”
“I hadn’t been dusting inside radiation suits no one ever wore. Besides, none of them fit me.”
“This one does.”
“Yeah, but it’s a woman’s.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, Mr. Davies. Now, remember: once you’re through the airlock, you need to check for cracks on the reactor core. If there are any, you need to…”
The explanation that followed was extremely long and complicated. Mr. Davies tried to remember it, but then that hovering feeling over his shoulder crept up again and the jar of little helpers was far away and hidden. By the time the lecture was over he was Jimmy again, and not entirely sure what the hell was going on.
“Do you understand?”
Jimmy hesitantly looked to his shoulder, found a receptive audience, and consulted the Mind All Light.
“Sure!” he said.
“Go on in.”
Jimmy went on in, past two airlocks and a broken de-irradiation chemical shower. There were cracks in things, but he wasn’t sure if they were the right sort of things he was meant to be worried about.
“That a problem?” he asked.
The Older, which had muscled its way into his forebrain, told him it wasn’t.
“What was that, Mr. Davies?”
“Huh? Oh. It’s nothing. But listen, it’s Jimmy, okay?”
The silence was hard to read, but even so, Jimmy could feel it shaping itself into another one of those troublesome expressions. He ignored it and foraged onwards, crawling through banks of depilated equipment, most of which had that odd shiny-grime texture that the Older informed him was a telling mark of things that had never really seen heavy use before falling apart in their old age.
Eventually, there was a console that was on. It was also glowing very faintly.
Jimmy poked it.
The Older told him not to be a dope and to press the buttons like THAT.
So Jimmy pressed the buttons like THAT and sure as sure, there was Ed on the suit radio going on about how great everything he’d just done was.
“…power surge without the blowout. Just beautiful. Whole board lit up like a Christmas tree out here. Of course, it’s got the wrong cord of lights on and the decorations are missing, but that’s fixable! You ready to do some more work?”
Jimmy consulted the Older again, but it had lurked itself away when he wasn’t paying attention.
“Sure!”
He wondered if the screen was supposed to be flashing all that red text on it, but everyone seemed happy so he guessed it was all right.

Ed was a different man under the stronger lighting that now scoured the Sanctum‘s innards. His chin appeared larger, his eyes more sparkling, his breath seemed to smell faintly minty, and his footsteps seemed to nearly ring on the deck, or at least they would’ve if the deck wasn’t mostly made of creak nowadays, audibly speaking.
“Right, and now that THAT’S done we can get to some real work. Are you ready to fulfill the purpose for which this station was made, janitor Davies?”
“Jimmy.”
“Jimmy, now is not the time for nitpicking. At any rate, your circuit board here, the one you wore all the labels off through constant dusting-”
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. But we need to get power to the director’s room, and the docking module I left the ship at, and this vault over here that doesn’t exist on the station plan.”
Jimmy looked dutifully at the chart Ed was brandishing. “That vault doesn’t exist on the station plan,” he pointed out.
“Precisely my point! Get cracking!”
Jimmy stared at the circuit board and tried to remember which of the four hundred twenty-two locks and dams moved the waters the ways he needed. Of course, he failed.
“Please?” he asked.
“Eh?”
“Nothing.”
And the Sleek Shark laughed at him as it did the whole thing in a flash, a crackling, juddering, fanged mass of cheer and serrations. It gave Jimmy the shivers as he pushed the right buttons, pulled the right levers, set the tide flowing and gave the moon a good yank. Some of the smaller lights on the board went bright red and then winked out, and he hoped that was supposed to happen.
“Damn, you’re a savant, Jimmy!” Ed gave him a friendly punch in the arm, then froze at the sound of cracking.
“Just my scabs, Ed. Don’t worry.”
Ed removed the punch from his arm and gave him a big, friendly grin instead. “Right, right. Sorry! Sorry. Now, there’s just one more big job, and then we’re all done here. And none too soon – this whole place gives me the creeps. The last ten light-years getting here were no picnic either, I can tell you – too empty. Scientifically interesting, yes, but too empty.”

It was a big job, all right. It took nearly an hour just to get to it.
First Ed had to go to the director’s office and open up the re-powered computer. Whatever he found on there made him sweat an awful lot, but he was a quick reader and Jimmy hadn’t had occasion to use the English language as-written for at least ten years, so whatever was so worrying passed him by. It can’t have been that bad anyways, Ed was smiling his face off when he closed the thing down again.
“Done!” he said, and then he picked up the computer and smashed it briskly against the titanium desk until it was an unrecognizable pile of mangled bits. “Come on now, we’ve got to hurry up.”
“That was important, wasn’t it?” asked Jimmy.
“Oh, yes. Hugely.”
“Then why’d you break it.”
“It was too important for anyone else to see. That reminds me, Jimmy, did you see anything on there?”
Jimmy thought. “No.”
“Good, good,” said Ed, with that big smile. “Ah, we’re here. Just move that pile of filth out of the way, and we’ll be done!”
“That’s my bed,” said Jimmy.
“Nevertheless,” said Ed. “Sacrifices must be made by all if we want to pull through.”
Slowly, reluctantly, with infinite care, Jimmy lugged the disintegrating remnants of his nesting out of place. He’d fashioned it himself from plastic tarps and the innards of expired mattresses, and it was as close to him as a sun.
Or a son.
No, a sun. Those were more important to you.
But not closer.
The Mind All Light told him to knock it off and pay attention, which he did in time to not see Ed push him down the hole he’d uncovered in the deck.
“OW!”
“Sorry, sorry, best if you aren’t tense on impact and all that, surprise was needed, etcetera, etcetera, only fifteen feet down and can you see anything?”
Jimmy looked around. “A notebook on a table.”
“A notebook, hah yes. Had to be paper, of course. Doesn’t need power, and if you suck all the air out of the room until it’s powered up, well, it lasts pretty nicely! Anything else?”
“It’s a pretty bad table. Rusty. If I’d known this was here, I’d have polished that rust ’till you’d swear it was steel, honest truth.”
“Yes, yes, yes, that will do. Here, throw that book back up to me, will you?”
Jimmy picked up the book and weighed it in his hands. It was surprisingly light, and he had to check twice after he’d thrown it to make sure it had left his hands at all.
“Oh lovely,” said Ed, peering at a page. “Oh glorious.” He spun them through his palms and chuckled in a friendly and fatherly manner. “This is just perfect. Jimmy, do you know what this is?”
“Nope!”
“It’s a complete record of every bit of abnormal mental phenomena and wildlife gestated on the station! Who thought it up, what the side effects on the host were, predators and prey and parasites…. oh Jimmy, there’s a goddamned ZOO in here, a zoo that could only have been dreamed up here, in this dank little corner of the universe where space goes runny! And we know exactly what sorts of minds breed these things up now! Engineers to make little psychedelic worker ants, security guards to farm unblinking guardians inside their own heads, doctors to make thoughts that really cut, that really have teeth to them. Good show, Jimmy, good show!”
The Mind All Light proposed a question.
“Uhh….”
“Speak up, Jimmy.”
“Are you going to leave me down here?”
“What a silly question!” Ed shook his head. “Honestly Jimmy, just think. What did I tell you I hated?”
“Paperwork?”
“What do you think bringing back an unexpected missing-declared-dead citizen causes?”
Jimmy thought. “Paperwork?”
“Correct! Goodbye.”
There was a clang, and Jimmy was alone in a dark place.

Which wasn’t really all that novel.

He did feel a bit funny though. And his fists kept curling up into these strange little gnarled things, like they did after he’d tightened his four hundred thousandth bolt.
The Mind All Light made an observation: Jimmy was angry.
“Yup,” agreed Jimmy.
Well, Jimmy needed to get out of there if he wanted to be angry properly. Needed a target for those little balls on his arms.
“Damn straight.” Jimmy squinted up at the ceiling. “How?”
He had to spit.
Jimmy spat, and watched as the hatch went all runny and dripped down to the floor, where it nearly ate the toes of his boots. Apparently Breakfast had been just as nasty as usual, just more subtle. He hated to think of what could’ve happened if he’d belched while talking to Ed, although in retrospect that could’ve been for the best.
“Gross,” he said. And then the gravity went off, then came on again in reverse. It was very exciting, and at the end of it Jimmy was spread-eagled on the ceiling, outside the vault once more, staring at the rubble of his bed, and his head was very sore.
He’d better run fast, advised the Sleek Shark. And then it was gone again, along with half the lights in a shower of sparks.
Number five docking bay was barely any distance at all from there, even with a quick pause to get lost – you think you know a place like the back of your hand, and then it turns upside down on you.
To his right, suggested the Mind All Light.
And he’d want to duck and cling in two seconds, added the Older.
Jimmy turned the corner, saw Ed (surprised), ducked and clung, and winced as a gravitational flux sent a sheet of rust bigger than he was into Ed, who was violently shoved into his own airlock.
Better follow. That was the Mind All Light’s take on it, anyways. He needed off here, after what the Older did to the core. That and the little tidal waves the Sleek Shark had sent through the electrical wiring had probably sent the place under.
“Can I get my chair?” asked Jimmy, as he clumsily dove through Ed’s airlock and into an environment that struck him as dangerously clean.
No he couldn’t. Also, Ed was about to hit him in the face.
“What?” said Jimmy, immediately before Ed hit him in the face. It was a good, solid hit, a real shiner-raiser, and it smacked him over on his ass with a very satisfying thud that he was in no position to appreciate on any level.
Ed was saying something by then, but it was mostly profanity and Jimmy was too busy listening to the Completely Invincible Lizard, who was the one that knew about this sort of thing.
He needed to punch high while kicking low, and use that hesitation to get to his feet.
Jimmy punched high and kicked low, and used that hesitation to get to his feet.
He needed to block that next punch.
Jimmy blocked that next punch, and was knocked over again with another bruise all ready to blossom.
He needed another forty pounds of weight, preferably all muscles.
Jimmy didn’t really have time for that, and Ed had lain hands upon him and was now about to toss him into number five docking bay, which was indistinct in the odd haze of depressurizing atmosphere now filling it.
Oh well just belch then.
Jimmy belched. And because he wasn’t feeling quite proper at the moment, it turned into a yawn. A technicolour yawn, if he remembered his slangs properly.
It set most of Ed’s environment suit on fire. And as he swore and flailed around frantically, attempting to pat out the flames, the Completely Invincible Lizard told Jimmy that now would be a good time to hit him where silly monkeys like him kept their reproductive organs. Jimmy no longer recalled what those were for – at least on his off hours – but he listened. And as he did that, and as Ed toppled and staggered and was rudely shoved back into the docking module, Older gave a happy update on the status of those last two bolts Jimmy had forgotten to tweak up that morning, the only things holding number five docking bay to the rest of the Sanctum.
All rusty, Older told him. Terrible thing.
The next thirty seconds weren’t as alarming as they could’ve been, mostly thanks to the total lack of sound in space, and Jimmy didn’t remember them with any real terror, or, come to that, detail. Suffice it to say that he learned how to input the correct password on an airlock in a total lack of atmosphere very, very quickly. Or at least the Sleek Shark did. As to what happened next, well… most of it was sleep, possibly coma.

After that was breakfast. Not Breakfast, with none of the vivid personality (mostly truculence) that entitled capitalization, just small-b breakfast. Toast. With jam. That was even maybe real jam that had been made or at least been near actual, physical berries at some point.
Jimmy was full. And also out of things to do, except for one important thing.
“Thank you,” he said.
It was asked from a variety of quarters whether this meant that he could stop nagging them so much about stupid things when it wasn’t important.
“Right, right. Right. Uh, thanks.” He scratched his chin, uncertainty weighing down on him for the first time in decades. “I guess I’ll just start checking the bolts then…?”
The Mind All Light told him not to be such a silly. They were all very busy, very important people now, and they had no time to sit around doing silly things. They needed to be doing important things, like examining Ed’s computers and deciding which of the people in the address book needed visits.
“Dunno about revenge,” said Jimmy. “I’m a janitor. I make sure things don’t break and I keep things tidy.”
Those were big loose ends. He probably should be going out to tidy them up. Who knew who could trip on things like that, just lying around.
Jimmy thought about this.
“Fine. But no more Breakfast.”
This was agreed upon.

“Mostly in Your Head,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2012.

You know a lot about a thing, knowing what it eats.
Eating is a messy, nasty thing to do. Something takes up something else and tears it apart and breaks it to bits and it thrives on it, just basks in it, all that decay and downfall. You can make it neat and civilized and give it knives and forks, you can talk about palates and umami and all the flavours of the rainbow, you can do that all you like. You can glorify the act of acquiring your food, the hunt, the chase, the kill.
But you’re still eating, and that’s still not very nice. And what you eat says a lot about you.
Hyenas eat a lot of carrion. Those big strong jaws, they’ll crack open bones that anything else would turn its nose up at, get at all that good tasty marrow in there. That’s productive, that’s industrious.
Wars, they eat the young and the stupid and the deceived. They call them in and chew them up, spit out the little shreds of them into unmarked graves and mass burials and now and then, on special occasions, a casket. That’s tricky, that’s cunning, that’s an animal that hides and sneaks and lies to get what it needs because it knows the moment anyone looks right at it and sees it for what it is, it dies. So they make smokescreens, and snag you in ’em.
Particular angles, as we all know, eat lines, usually straight lines. They chew them right out of existence, and they use that to force a few more particular angles into being. Mindless, but real thorough. And since nothing eats them, they’ll probably outweigh real things someday.
Societies eat people, of course. But the people eat them right back. It sort of works if you squint one eye shut and take two steps back and tilt your head just right. Unless one or the other chews a little too quickly.
And humans, naturally, are omnivores. Which is a lot worse than it sounds, if you think about it.
This human here was exercising her omnivorous rights that night, at the foot of that mountain, on a rabbit and some stale bread.
(The rabbit isn’t important, not in this story, so we can forget about her for now)
The human was old and leathery and her hands moved in that special slow way that said whenever she wanted to she could turn them into striking snakes. She was also a noisy chewer, on account of having three and a quarter teeth, and this was one-third of what caused the problem. And she was a good listener, which lead her to hear the faint, impossibly low sounds of the rock groaning under her wrinkled toes, and this was one-third of what caused the problem. And because her grandmother had been a pretty cunning and crafty lady who’d taught her a few tricks about this sort of thing, she could recognize the language as an itinerant and casual shaman (most people could talk to animals back then, which made hunting a bit more awkward, but talking to rocks and trees was pretty damned hard). And that was one-third, four-quarters, and the whole nine yards of what caused the problem.
The mountain was talking. A slow talker, of course, but the old human was patient and waited the half-hour for the sentence to finish.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” asked the mountain.
“Eating,” said the old human. “Everybody does it.”
“Not. Me. What. Is. It?”
The old human thought about that and she thought that made sense, sort of. Mountains didn’t really eat anything, although the rain and the wind and the rocks that spawned them were happy enough to chew them up over a couple of eternities.
(Human eternities aren’t so long as all that, and that’s a fact)
“Y’know, eating,” she said. “You chew stuff up – well, that’s not true, lot of things out there don’t chew – you swallow things, and it keeps you going so you keep doing, well, whatever you do. Talking, laughing, walking, you know, all that stuff.”
The mountain thought about that while the old human stashed her half-loaf of bread and stripped the rabbit bones clean with her favourite tooth.
(The rabbit still isn’t important in this story)
“How. Do. You. Swallow?” asked the mountain, at length.
“Just gulp,” said the old human, and then she added “good-bye,” and was off and away down the trails, leaving the mountain there to ponder that sort of thing over for a few days.
Then it went gulp. Just to see what would happen.
A small tree vanished on its slopes, and the mountain felt full. Not only that, it knew what it was like to feel empty.
“Hm. Mm,” said the mountain.
Gulp. There went another tree, and a very surprised bear that had been sharpening her claws on it.
“Hm. Mm,” reiterated the mountain.
Gulp.
Gulp.
Gulp.

Now this sort of happening can’t go on for long before people start to notice things, and not more than three days had gone by before everybody who lived around that mountain started to meet up and put their heads together.
“Folks been missing,” said the fox. “My handsome husband, he’s been up and vanished. And so did our house. And most of the hill we dug it into.”
“My granddad is gone,” said the human boy.
“That he is,” said the human father.
“And grandma too,” said the human mother.
“My wife’s gone, and our favourite fishing stream, and the trees near the fishing stream, and all the fish in it,” rumbled the big bear. “I am angry. I want to find who did this and beat them until they are black and red. Or white and red. Or brown, green, blue, and red. But mostly red.”
“I am agreeing with you here,” said the human father.
“Who did this, though?” said the human mother. “We need to find out that first.”
“Let’s ask the old crazy human that wanders around these parts,” suggested the fox. “She knows weird things.”
So they went out and after a while they found the old crazy human, who was the same person as the old human. She was fishing, or at least sleeping while pretending to fish. Same thing.
(The fishhook was made from a bit of the rabbit’s old ribs, there you go, but it’s still not important in this story)
“What’re you up about?” she asked, annoyed. “You’re going to scare off my fish.”
“People are going missing,” said the human mother.
“And streams,” said the big bear.
“And dens and hills,” amended the fox.
“And granddads and grandmas,” finalized the human boy.
“Huh,” said the old human. “Could be that mountain, eating things he shouldn’t. Now, what you could try is…”
And that wasn’t as far as she got, but it was as far as anyone else listened, because the big bear said in his loud voice “well, there’s nothing for it but to beat it up. Who’s coming with me?”
“I will,” said the human father. “I also want to beat it up.”
“Right!” said the big bear, and they left and everyone else went home, or the closest thing to it.
So the big bear and the human father went up the mountainside stomp stomp stomp. They put a lot of stamp into those stomps, so the mountain knew they were coming nice and easy. And when they got halfway up the mountain it stirred, and it twitched, and it spoke up and said “what are you doing?”
“Who said that?” said the big bear.
“I was just thinking that as well,” said the human father.
“It’s me, the mountain” said the mountain. “I can speak clear and fast, talking all I want since I started eating all I want. You’re stomping hard down there on my foothills. What do you want?”
“You ate my wife,” said the big bear, “so I’m going to thrash you.”
“And you ate my father and my mother-in-law,” said the human father, “so I will also thrash you.”
“Gulp,” declared the mountain, and that was pretty much that.

Back down the countryside, everybody who lived around that mountain met up again.
“My husband is gone,” said the human mother. “I think he made a mistake when he followed that big bear up the mountain to go give it a thrashing.”
“You can’t solve a problem like that with your fists,” agreed the fox. “Too daft. Too silly. My husband, he always said, you want to solve a problem you’ve got to use your brains, not your fists.”
“Let’s go check in with that old lady and see if she knows what’s what,” said the human mother.
So they checked in, and the old human was found a little while later. She was in a scrub thicket, teaching herself to sing birdsong, which was pretty nice, and she was learning from a crow, which wasn’t quite as nice.
“Oh, you again,” she said. “Still got problems?”
“We need to trick the mountain,” said the human mother. “It’s too big to fight, we need to talk it around it circles.”
“It’s only been able to talk like normal animals since a day or so ago,” said the old human. “I think it might not be good enough at it for that to work.”
“I could talk my husband’s tail in circles five times before supper,” said the fox, “and he was dafter than a birch when it came to anything but stealing meals.”
“That’s a good plan,” said the human mother, right over top of what the old human was saying, “let’s talk it around,” and they left right there, and told the human boy to stay put and do what he was told.
“I’m bored,” said the human boy.
“Me too,” said the old human, and she showed him how to make a game with pits hollowed in the earth and little pebbles.
Meantime, the fox and the human mother went up the mountainside, tramp tramp tramp. They weren’t sneaky, but they snuck up on the mountain anyways because it was so busy laughing that it couldn’t hear them.
“Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Aha, ha ha!” it said, very carefully.
“Excuse me,” said the fox.
“HA! Ahaha, ha, aha,” continued the mountain.
“We’re here to-” managed the human mother.
“AHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ha. Ha ha,” said the mountain, so loudly that it bowled them head over heels over head again, and then it noticed them as they were picking themselves up and swearing.
“HA HA AHA, gulp,” it said. “Ha. Mmm. Not sure I see the point.”

Back down the mountain, the human boy was bored again. He’d lost four games and won three games and he’d already sorted out all the shiniest pebbles so now the fun was missing. And he was starting to miss his mother.
“Are they coming back soon?” he asked the old human.
She frowned. “Guess not. That mountain must still be eating things it shouldn’t. Troublesome of it.” She scratched herself with her pit-digging tool.
(The rabbit’s thigh. Don’t worry, it’ll have a story where it’s important someday, just not right now, okay?)
“Listen little boy, your mother told you to do what you’re told, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the human boy.
“Great. Okay, listen.”
The human boy listened.
“Smart kid,” said the old human. “Right, here’s what we’re going to do. Well, you’re going to do. I think I probably made this problem, so I don’t think I can fix it proper. You’re gonna go over there, just a little ways, and you’re going to stand on that big spiky hill. And then you’re going to wait. And when that mountain finds you, I want you to ask it politely to stop eating things it shouldn’t. Now, can you remember all that?”
“Yes,” said the human boy.
“Good. Now get going fast.”
The human boy got going fast, and was up on top of the spiky hill lickety-split-lightning, which was just as well because the mountain was walking down towards him, rumbling along very slowly in a very fast way that it didn’t quite seem able to stop and definitely couldn’t steer.
“Hello!” called the human boy.
“Ho ho ho!” bellowed the mountain. “Look at me walk!”
“HELLO!” yelled the human boy.
The mountain looked down at him. “Yes?” it said.
“Please stop,” said the human boy.
The mountain considered this. And then it went “gulp,” and down went the human boy, hill, spiky, and all.
And that was where it all went wrong for the mountain, because that was when it learned about indigestion, and it learned about it a lot faster than eating. And much, much, much louder.
The sound it made was very, very loud and most of it was on levels inaudible to ears, human or any other kind, but if you squinted real hard at what you’d heard, it’d probably sound something kind of like
HLLUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGH
But bigger.
And POP POW out came everything out of its top, the rocks, the trees, the water, the bears and foxes and humans and everything down to the very last insect that the mountain had eaten, one after another, tumbling down its sides into a big messy pile.
“Ow,” said the human father, removing the fox’s foot from his face.
“Blub,” commented the smaller bear, wrenching her face free from the stream she had been fishing in a few days ago.
FWOOSH, declared the mountain, and it coughed up some magma. Of course, once it’s out there in the open, it’s lava. Still really hot stuff, though. There was a bit of a rush for the hills, and the nearest one was the spiky hill, which had landed upside down but was otherwise okay.
The old human was already waiting on top of it, and she gave them all a bit of a leg up with those fast hands of hers. She was grinning. “See? All good now. And look, we even got you something new to look at! Needs a name though. Hey kid, you got a name for this thing?”
The human boy shook his head and hid against the human father.
The old human shrugged. “Have it your way then, and I guess that means I do it my way. Well, I’m sure someone out there has something better for it, but I’M calling it a volcano. Unless our volcano here has a better name for it?”
The volcano belched and coughed.
“Guess not.” The old human scratched herself, chewed on her digging bone, and walked away.
And that was that.

“What You Eat,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2012.

In the first hour, Tammy and Benjamin did put on their snow outfits, and were made to shovel the driveway by the MOM. And the MOM’s word was obeyed, albeit grudgingly, and the driveway was snowed in no more, although it was still snowed upon.
In the second hour, Tammy and Benjamin did think of their fresh snow, and they did consider it beautiful, or at least really pretty, and so they did love it, or at least feel great affection and warmth towards it, and they began to fashion it into small spheres, the shape of worlds and eyes. Which they did hurl at each other.
In the third hour, Tammy and Benjamin did tire from their exertions, and they began to think of other things to do. And they took the spheres and rolled them across the snow, and it was snow no more but part of the sphere, and this was good. So they did it a lot more, and before long they had two greater spheres. And with much effort and struggle the lesser of the greater spheres was rolled upon the top of the greater of the greater spheres, and it was a body, and this was good.
And in the fourth hour Tammy and Benjamin did craft a smaller sphere of hardest-packed snow and ice, and a stick was jammed in it, and pebbles of varying sizes, so that a face was made. And this head was placed upon the peak of the body, and the body was fitted with arms of greater sticks, and this was also good.

Tammy and Benjamin looked at their snowman. The snowman looked back, but without any real enthusiasm.
Tammy frowned and tweaked the angle of his smile, which seemed to fix this.
“He needs a friend,” said Benjamin.
“A cat then,” said Tammy.
“A dog,” said Benjamin.
“Dogs are boring. He’ll have a cat.”
“No he won’t.”
They wandered off, arguing.

And in the fifth hour, Tammy and Benjamin departed to fashion a companion for their human of snow, who was left alone in the world. And it was a bit lost and very surprised, because it had no name, but this was all right, because there were many other things around him that also had no names. So it picked up one of them, which had a handle and a broad blade, and its arm did come off, shocking it so greatly that it almost froze to the spot.

“His arm came off,” said Tammy.
“Your fault,” said Benjamin. “You put it in.” He dumped the armful of fresh branches and sticks at the snowman’s feet.
“It’s your fault,” said Tammy. “This is the side of him that you were pushing, and it’s all soft and unpacked. Because you have skinny little chicken legs for arms.”
“Do not,” said Benjamin, selecting some of the smaller twigs.
“Do so,” said Tammy, briskly rolling up a crude cylinder of snow, preventing it from fragmentation with firm yet brutal love.
“Nu-uhhhh,” enunciated Benjamin, sculpting a skull and jabbing twig-whiskers into it at scientifically determined angles.
“Nope,” rebutted Tammy, fashioning some stubby little snow-legs.
“Whatever,” decided Benjamin.
“Duh,” said Tammy.
They admired their handiwork: a deliberately species-ambiguous probably-domesticated companion for their snowman.
“She needs a name,” said Tammy.
“I think he should name it,” said Benjamin. “It’s HIS dog.”
“It’s a cat,” said Tammy. “And I mean the snowman. She needs a name.”
“It says snowman right in the name, he’s a man,” said Benjamin. “And it can’t be a girl because it doesn’t have long hair.”
“I don’t have long hair.”
“You don’t count.”
A chase was undertaken.

And so in the sixth hour, the snowman learned from the wise and noble creators that it was a girl unless it was a boy. It wasn’t sure, but it loved its creators unconditionally so that was okay. And it looked upon its Companion and was also not sure, because it didn’t seem particularly impressed by the snowman.
It also looked lonely, and the snowman was troubled by this.
And so the snowman did labour, and labour with speed and strength, for it knew much of the ways of cold things. And its labour was undertaken with skill learned from watching those that made it, and so it was done with grace, and care, and finesse, and a love most firm yet subtly brutal. The labour was completed, and it was another Companion, similar in most every way, and they did regard each other with fondness. And the snowman felt a strange stirring in its hard-packed and stout innermost layers, and it knew that this feeling meant that it was good.
The snowman watched as its Companions regarded each other fondly, and it did look upon its creation fondly as well, and the creation of its creators also. It bid them farewell and wished them happiness, and then it knew not what to do and waited there as the first day ended.

On the dawning of the second day, just after breakfast, Tammy and Benjamin did war with snowballs against Rob and Susan. A mighty fortress was erected on either side of the front yard of Benjamin’s house, with Susan and Rob crafting walls from blocks pressed from a garbage-can, unwieldy and foul-smelling. Tammy and Benjamin did laugh at this display, and they did craft their walls from rolled snow as time dictated, and although their victory seemed assured because of Rob being a wimp, they found themselves hard pressed in time, as their own walls crumbled under the stone-cored slushballs of their foes. And in time they did fall to ruin, and were pelted under the open sky with not a scrap of cover to defend themselves.

“This sucks,” said Tammy, spitting out grey snow. “Let’s go have hot chocolate.”

And they did this, and so ended the first hour of the second day. And lo, the snowman did awaken once more, stirred by the sounds of battle and tumult, and it inspected the ruins of the war. Anger stirred within its chilly heart at the sight of the undaunted, blighted walls of the enemies of its creators, and it fell upon the garbage-can, and the slushball-stockpile, and the battlements, and tore them asunder in their names, but it could not destroy the foul-smelling-walls, for they were made of near-ice and of strength beyond all.
Its job half-done and the second hour of the second day gone behind it, the snowman did turn itself upon the fortress of the creators, and it did see where imperfection had been allowed to lair within it. And the wrath faded from its heart and was replaced with industry, and so it did pile up all the snow that was to be found within the front yard and mounded it high about the shattered walls of the fortress of the creators, packed it firmly, and it did this, which it knew was good, until the fourth hour had elapsed, at which point it staggered away to its rest, filled with exhaustion.

“A teenager did it,” suggested Tammy.
“Then who built yours up?” asked Susan.
“Dunno,” said Tammy. “A teenager did it?”
“They don’t fix things,” said Susan. “You did it.”
“We were inside.”
“You asked someone else to do it.”
“Who?”
“Someone!”
“I’ve got an idea for a game,” said Benjamin.

And so the fifth hour was spent in demolition of the new fortress, with much entertainment had by all, and the ramparts were thrown down, and the pack-battlements used as projectiles, and much strife and sport was taken betwixt and between the two enemies, until they all had to go home for dinner.

On the dawning of the third day, in the first hour, the snowman came back to the front yard and beheld the ruin of its labours, and it knew a new thing: that this was not good. A great wrath waxed in its heart for the wickedness of the persons who had made its frame and yet so carelessly and callously thrown asunder its gifts, and it was filled with the desire for vengeance and just punishment. And so it did seize the frost from the air and scrawled symbols of rebuke and regret upon every window in the person’s home, without regard for pity or mercy. Mercy would blunt the necessary force of the message, the weight of its import.

“It got REALLY cold last night,” said Susan.
“Yeah,” said Tammy. She was poking her sheet of math problems to see if it would do anything. It hadn’t the last ninety-eight times, but she had learned earlier that day that Thomas Edison had believed in innovation being ninety-nine percent perspiration, and was testing the hypothesis.
“Really cold,” agreed Rob, in a transparent effort not to be forgotten.
“I got frost all over my windows,” said Benjamin, ignoring this.
“What’d you draw?”
“Dinosaurs. And butts.”
“Dinosaur butts?”
“Yeah, those too.”
“Gross.”
Emily poked her math sheet again. “Bullshit,” she said a little too loudly, and then had to explain herself to the teacher.

And the snowmen did spend the second through sixth hours of the third day in a swoon, paralyzed by the effrontery of those that it had once counted as family, the filth that had undoubtedly malformed its pure essence into the depraved and fumbling thing that it inhabited, for none as foul as they could have created it as it was. It grieved most thoroughly that it had witnessed such defilement, and on the seventh hour it did pray for guidance and move much snow. If blame would not turn the heads of the senseless, perhaps guilt would bind their hearts. And then it saw the way to enlightenment, and it laboured all through the eighth hour of the third day.

On the morn of the final day, the person Benjamin was ordered outside to Clean Up That Mess You Made, and he did see that the Companion that he had crafted for the snowman out back had been relocated to the front stoop of his house, along with another of its kind. He waxed irritated, and did shovel them.
And Benjamin did blame it upon Rob’s older brother Jake, and a resolve filled him to pretend to be nicer to Rob at school lest Jake take his pranking farther, and Rob did enjoy the increased niceness of Benjamin with a bit of surprise but figured it was okay.

“How’s your brother?” asked Benjamin, as innocently as possible. He had shared a small bag of sour cream and onion chips with Rob, to keep the conversation as friendly and inoffensive as possible.
“A little weird,” said Rob.
“Yeah?”
“Um. More than usual, yeah. He stayed out too late last night again, and he wouldn’t say why. Mom got mad.”
“Uh,” said Benjamin, and he thought about Jake’s absolutely terrifying and startlingly realistic werewolf mask. Then he bought Rob a chocolate bar and gave him two thirds of it.

And on the stoop of Benjamin’s home the snowman regarded the rubble of its Companions with anguish, and it wept bitterly or would’ve if its eyes weren’t pebbles and the ambient air temperature were not sufficient to keep the vast majority of its body frozen in a solid state. So be it, as rebuke failed it. so too did guilt fail it. How could you shame that which knew no shame? How could it still attempt to make the blind see? It only lowered itself in the effort – the grey slush of their boot-treads had dirtied the snowman up to its near midsection. Their flaws were truly irredeemable, and their mere existence sullied it beyond hope of salvation, and yet it had to try. It had to try.
And so the snowman did, on the final hour of the eighth day, with its heart filled with pity overflowing, melt itself for the sins of its creators. And it was good, and also surprisingly nice-feeling.

“Your brother is really weird,” said Benjamin.
Rob nodded. Tammy and Susan agreed similarly silently. The ex-snowman had been propped up against the laundry exhaust pipe, where it had been slowly liquified from the cranium down.
“Yeah,” said Rob. “So. Uh. So.”
“Let’s make a bigger one.”

And lo, as there were four of them, they were able to make a bigger one. And in the end, as they came in, the MOM told them that the driveway needed shovelling again. And so it was, and so it would be.

“Snowfall,” copyright Jamie Proctor 2011.

Iris woke up to the sound of a zephyr blowing overhead, blowing through the cracks in the walls of her shack, blowing through the gap where her right canine should be.
It was practically an open invitation.
Snick, snack, snap, open and shut went her wiry, rawbone jaws, chew, pulp, munch, down went half of the zephyr, leaving the other half to run away crying. Swallow, stretch, belch and the walls of the hut shook.
“That’s lucking,” she said, wiping away a shred of uncertain air currents away from her jowls, “that’s gooding. But not besting. Best is the whole thinging”
First things first, such a fortunate moment had to be recorded. Iris hobbled with purpose to the big moldy book that dominated the room, dominated the oaken table it rested on so thoroughly that it almost continually groaned. It was thicker through than the body of a child of ten years, and greater in height from header to footnote, and it was bound in the hide of a thunderhorse, though it was so aged that only the loudest flashs of lights would lead it to rumbling.
Iris heaved it open to the second-to-last page and chewed over her lip without gentleness. It had the consistency of jerky, and was a great comfort between meals, but her mind was elsewhere now. Important work had to be done.

Zephyr, she wrote. Chocolaty, with a hint of a sigh. Soft against the palate but only becomes more tender with each chew, mild as mother’s milk and twice as sweet, but just a hair’s-breadth short of cloying. Succulent raw, would cook using light sautéing with some fresh mushrooms.

Iris stretched her cramping fingers – her writing grew more and more roving and uncertain by the minute, like a drunken dog – and returned to her efforts.

Acquired by happenstance on awakening one early Tuesday morning. Set traps in likely locales and it will cheerfully bumble straight into them. Attempt nonlethal, relatively calming capture to ensure a lack of muscle tension in the meat.

Iris set down her pen with a grunt. It was made from an eagle’s wing, filled with the blackest blood of a stormcloud. Terrible tough, rank eating storms made, but they were useful. You could write pages about all the exciting, dangerous things you could do with their blood and flesh and electrical fields, and Iris had done that, at the cost of four fingers, several cumulative yards of skin, and the ability to control the direction of her right eye, which now did as it wished at all except the gravest moments.
“Almost doning,” she croaked, stroking the freshly inked page. It sparked, but didn’t smear. “So nearing. Just one more, my loveliest. One more, and then the world will know of all that I am knowing. One more.” She pursed her lips. “And what better day is there to go do this thinging, hmm? It is a sign of good luck. I should be off and away while it is lasting. Who knows, maybe it will being flying into my mouthing too, ehh?”
And so Iris prepared herself. She put on her bonnet made from briars, and took up her stone walking stick that could strike a bear dead with one blow, and on her back she slung her trapping-bag, which was woven out of her hair and was stronger than the strongest steel. She smiled, and her teeth shone like angels in the sunlight.
“It is good lucking,” she said. “I will catch a rainbow today.”
And she limped out the door.

Rainbows were harder to catch than they sounded. Things like that usually were.
For one thing, they were rare, rare, rare. If you wanted a chance, you either had to bait them – and they were wary of that, oh so wary – or wait and hope. And Iris was old and impatient.
For another thing, they were too big. Seven stripes! Seven colours! Each was more troublesome and fierce and touch-shy than the last, and if just one of them got away from your grasp the whole thing would wriggle after it no matter how hard you clutched.
Finally, they were as shy and quick to run as cats in a strange house. The first hint of the first sign of anything from anyone and they would be somewhere else before most people had even noticed they were there.
Iris had stalked nine rainbows before. Every time she’d gotten a little bit more frustrated, but today she felt confident. There was luck on her side this time. And luck beats anything.

Iris’s shack stood at the hinge of two mountains, huddled on top of itself in a scree of boulders and broken stone. On one side, a sheer drop. On the other, a soaring wall. Front and back, a small thicket of bitter-thorned shrubs that had been doing slowly for over one hundred years, and then empty space. No living thing had walked up there for as long as Iris could remember. Which suited her fine. She liked her privacy.
Today the west mountain suited her intuition of luck. The zephyr had come from the west, it only stood to reason more might follow. She took her walking stick between her teeth and pulled herself up the cliff hand-over-hand until her house lay below her no bigger than an ant’s and a thin ledge came to her grasp. It was just wide enough for her to shimmy on, greasy hair clawing its way free from her bonnet in thin strands as she wiggled her way to the broader grounds of a little mountain meadow. The air tasted clean and sharp enough to cut taste buds clean out of your mouth.
Iris bit into it four times as she walked, chewing each forty times with her needle-bright teeth. A little snack to whet her appetite properly for when she found the big game. The rumble of her quarry’s home was already loud in her ears.
The waterfall started maybe halfway up the mountain and dropped straight to its base, smashing its face into the cliffs three or four times on the way down. It sounded like the world’s largest bear being woken up from the world’s coziest nap with the world’s pointiest stick, drawn out long. Iris sometimes hummed along with it when she was thinking. It made her floorboards creak and the lantern flicker.
She looked at the spray and roar, then squinted at the sky. “Too early for the misting,” she commented. “Waiting time.”
So grey Iris sat down there, near the top of the waterfall, with her walking stick, and she hummed along to the waterfall as she repaired the small damage that the wind’s careless buffets had done to her bonnet of black briars. She sat there for three days, sustaining herself only on nips and bites of the most faintly eddying breezes, watching and waiting and waiting some more.
On the fourth day, the rainbow came.
It was thin and translucent in the sunlight, a bit uncertain and startled as to its existence. It stretched across the mountain sky with the tentative air of a bird first flapping its featherless winglets.
The rainbow lasted ten minutes, and in that time Iris made no move at all. She was old and experienced; she’d lost her first two rainbows to hastiness and greed. Patience was her watchword now.
“Time loses nothings,” she muttered into her teeth, “and it brings luckings. And luckings beats anything.” And she bedded down for the night with her trapping-bag as a pillow, resting her skull on its unbending coils.
On the fifth day, the rainbow came again in the morning. It was more solid now, more sure. It was a vain creature, as all its kind were, and it flittered most fetchingly in the sun, still wobbly but bolder and more adventurous, testing its limits. It swayed and it shimmered and once it even doubled itself in a fit of pique, though the effort seemed to exhaust it.
Iris hummed in thought, masked by the waterfall’s ever-roar. A double rainbow was twice the catch, but twice the difficulty. Should she wait longer even, hoping for it to properly split itself?
“No, no, noing,” she scolded herself that night. “Greed is a curse. A rainbow is a rainbow is a rainbow, doubled or no, and better one than none, truth be telling.”
On the sixth day, the rainbow was mature. It stood astride the valley of falling waters like a prince newly crowned, with the confidence and beauty of a freshly-greened maple. It held a shimmer in its sides that was the secret envy of every trout and the love affair of countless bad poets, and it knew it and owned it. It made Iris’s mouth water just looking at it.
“Soon, soon, sooning,” she said that night, speaking to her walking stick in a fit of pique that evening. “Sooning.”
On the seventh day, the rainbow innovated some more. Secure in its resplendence, bored in its effortless existence, it shaped itself in strange ways. It reflected from ice particles in some clouds, bending itself into a halo. It shifted its perspective no less than three hundred and sixty times. It even tried to see what was over the mountain top, but grew dizzy before it had grown large enough. And then evening came, and it tucked itself away for the night again.
On the eighth day, the rainbow was confident, determined, and bursting with impatient new ideas. It faded into the visible edge of light with the casual ease of those who belonged there, and was grabbed by fingers so strong and quick that it didn’t even know anything was wrong until a bag of grey iron was spread over its head and it was stuffed straightaways into it.
“Caught! Caught! Caught!” laughed Iris, waving her bonnet overhead in triumph, where its cruel thorns tore at the belly of an innocent breeze. “Caught at last and caught for realings! All one, two, three, four and so on to seven stripes! All of them! All mine!” She laughed so loud that the rocks bleached white with fright everywhere she stepped all the way home down the cliff as she skipped with joy, jostling and bruising the poor rainbow something fierce as it wriggled in her trapping-bag.
“Caught!”

Iris’s home had no cage for her prisoners, but she was wily. She pulled the rainbow out of her trapping-bag by the scruff of its neck and stuffed it inside her black briar bonnet. At every wince the rainbow made, a hundred tiny spikes poked its flesh terribly.
“So good, so good, so gooding,” chuckled Iris. “The last one, the lasting! The final page of my booking! The last sampling! Where shall I start, where shall I be starting? Inside or outside? One big bite or three little ones? Shall I eat it raw or cooked, kill it with my sticking or eat it raw and struggling? Choices! Choices!” She poked the rainbow in the heart with her finger, and it nearly doubled up from the pain.
“If you want to eat me,” said the rainbow, “you had better listen to what I have to say. Eat me now, before my colours fade! By four days time they’ll have faded away, and they’ll be deadly poison to an old hag like you.”
Iris squinted at him. “Liar, liar, lying liaring,” she hissed. “You know well what brightness and light do to an old woman’s tummy. You want me to eat you fresh and sparkling, so bright it burnsing! You evil thing! I’ll coop you up for all four days, and eat your rawing! RAW!” She hissed and laughed and spat once and went to bed with a snore that could scrape lichen off rocks.
Cooped up in its prison of black briars, the rainbow smiled so hard that its teeth nearly jumped out of its mouth. Then it sat up as straight as the thorns would allow, cupped its hands to its mouth, and sang in a sweet low voice.

Winds, winds, here I am, here I am. Rainbow, your prince, is all caught up. Attend me! Help me! Winds, winds!

There was a quiet whistle from far away, and in swept the east wind, wet and lush as a steaming river, long as the end of the world. “Trouble, my prince?” it whispered warmly.
“Free me, free me,” said the rainbow, in a hushed voice. “I have three days before I die, if I am not freed.”
“I will do as you ask on this day,” said the west wind, “and then I am needed elsewhere in the wide world.” And the west wind breathed deeply in and out and flooded the dried old briars with damp, nurturing moisture, suffocating their bitter thorns.
“Free!” called the rainbow. “I am free!” And it leapt out of the wilting briars, and straight into the iron-haired trapping-sack of Iris.
“Woke me woke me woke me!” she yelled. “Smells of clean water and warmth? In my home? Unkind thing! Unwelcome fooding!” She beat the rainbow so hard that it nearly went black as well as blue, and all the next day, the second day, as she wrote notes in her old creaking book she gave it the evil eye.
“Watch it carefullying,” she muttered aloud as she wrote, “or it will be most escaping. Pah!” And then she knotted up her trapping-sack and left the rainbow alone for the second night.
The rainbow huddled in a heap, nursing its bruises, and waited until the old woman was fast asleep and louder than ever, then it hitched itself up, put its fingers to its mouth, and whistled high and fast.

Winds, winds, here I am, here I am. Rainbow, your prince, is all caught up. Attend me! Help me! Winds, winds!

There was a low hum from far far away and up came the south wind through the floorboards, dry as a bone’s soul, turbulent and coarse. “You ask for aid, my prince?” it spoke softly.
“Free me, free me,” said the rainbow, begging open-handed. “I have only two days to live if I am not freed.”
“I will do as you ask on this day,” said the south wind, “but then I must soon speed someplace.” And the south wind spoke strange words that made the air jump and billow with dry, fierce heat, and the iron-hard hair of the trapping-sack withered and shrank until it was no more than a tight little collar around the rainbow, which burst it with a quick shake of its head.
“Free!” yelled the rainbow. “Free! I am free!” And it leapt out of the window and was nearly in the air when Iris’s stone walking stick strike it in the back, knocking it prone.
“Woke me!” she snarled as she thrashed the rainbow without mercy. “The sound of sanding? In my stone homing? Thief! Burglaring of my hospitaliting!” She cracked the rainbow across the head so hard that it saw eighteen stars at once, then stabbed it through its middle and right into the dirt with her walking stick. Squirm and cry as hard as the rainbow might, it could not budge itself and for all of the third day she refilled her eagle’s-wing quill with the bright blood of the rainbow. “Proofing,” she said. “Proof of my capturing.” She went to bed laughing and in no time at all she was asleep for the third night.
The rainbow cried for some hours, hurt and alone and growing more dim by the day. It missed the sky so much, and the ground hurt against its back. But still, when the pain had grown dim, it pursed its lips, cleared its aching throat, and hummed strong and angry.

Winds, winds, here I am, here I am. Rainbow, your prince, is all caught up. Attend me! Help me! Winds, winds!

There was a fierce shriek from farther away than ever, and down came the north wind, storming in the chimney and through the fireplace, colder than a corpse’s heart, fierce and hungry. “You need help, my prince?” it rumbled, nails needling on the rainbow’s skin.
“Free me, free me,” said the rainbow, pawing at its feet. “I will die tomorrow if I am not freed.”
“I will do as you ask on this day,” said the north wind, “and then I must fly away to eat.” And the north wind reached down with one clawed hand and tore the walking stick free and cast it to the floor where it shattered into a thousand frozen fragments, leaving the rainbow to struggle quickly to its feet.
“Free!” screamed the rainbow. “Free! Free! I am FREE!” And as it screamed it ran, ran, ran, and it was barely out the doorway before Iris was pelting pell-mell after it, roaring and spitting.
“Fooding!” she shrieked. “Mine, food, mineing! Come and be eaten!” Her feet cracked the rocks between her toes, her breath curled at the nape of the rainbow’s neck, and it nearly fainted from fear. In between the terror, panted between footfalls, too small to hear for any distance at all, the rainbow called “help!”
There was a soft whisper, just a little ways away, and curling up to wrap around the rainbow as it ran came a gentle little zephyr that had been hiding just down the mountain as it mended itself, so close that it could hear even the tiny little cry for help that the rainbow made, as luck would have it. “Are you all right, prince?” it asked with worriment.
“Please,” gasped the rainbow. “Save me. Save me.”
“I am small and half-eaten,” said the zephyr, “but I will do everything I can.” And the small zephyr sped all the way to the waterfall and seized a handful of its precious spray and whisked it back again quicker than anyone could ever run, woman, man, rainbow, or witch, so gently that not a single drop was wasted. “A path, a path!” called the zephyr as it threw the water into the air, and as the rainbow ran straight up the waterdrops back into the sky it burst into full colour for the first time in four days, as brilliant and bright a light as may ever be seen anywhere. It turned night to day, set Iris back on her heels with a squeal, and in Iris’s shack the old thunderbeast-bound book smacked itself shut with a snap and let out a thunder that would’ve made the mightiest storm stand proud.
The earth shook, the sky yelled, and the hinge of the mountains that Iris’s cabin stood upon – the broken rocks, the shaky cliff, the crumbling wall – fell all to pieces at once in a heartbeat, smashing all the way down to the bottom of it all until nothing was left that was bigger than a gentle calm.

“That was a good thing you’ve done, little zephyr,” said the rainbow as it shone in the sky. “A very good thing.”
“Thank you, prince,” said the zephyr.
“You will watch over the west, if the sky will permit,” said the rainbow.
“But I am small,” said the zephyr.
“You are gentle,” said the rainbow. “That is important. And small means nothing. Luck means everything. And you have been good luck to me.”
And that’s the way it was.

“Taste the Rainbow,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

There was a man. An old man. This sort of thing happens, over time.
He was also dying. And didn’t much like it. This too was not unusual.
“I’m not going to stand for this kind of treatment,” he said, and that WAS a little strange, and he phoned up his three daughters and two sons and told them to get their asses over to the hospital.
And they got their asses along properly, because he was their father and he was dying and they all felt like they owed him that much. In limousines and taxis, motorbikes and minivans, up came each of them, one after another, all within five minute’s time. Up they paraded in their suits and their brightly coloured socks, and they listened.
“My beloved, successful, wealthy, entrepreneurial children,” said the dying old man, “I have a last request for all of you from your father, on his deathbed. I humbly request that you all do your best to fulfill it.”
“Yes,” they all said. “That sounds fair enough.”
“Dying isn’t that great a thing,” said the old man. “I don’t want to go through dying – the thought gets me all tense and wired, like a squirrel stuffed in a spring. I want you to fix it. Go on, give it a try.”
Five moments of thought overlapped.
“I’m not so sure,” said the oldest daughter.
“Doable,” disputed the oldest son.
“Possibly,” seconded the youngest son.
“Absolutely,” said the middle daughter.
“No doubt about it,” said the youngest daughter.
The oldest daughter made a face at her siblings. They made faces right back.
“Enough of that,” said the old man. “Get to it. I’ve got a few hours left and the clock’s ticking. As incentive, the one who pulls it off gets my wallet and buys a free round for the family.”
“I’ll go first,” said the oldest son. He stood up and straightened his tie in a very menacing way, then walked over to the nurse.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I would like to see the doctor, or I’m going to sue you for obstruction of obfuscation of objectification of the Oldowan.”
“Right this way,” said the nurse, and he led the oldest son to the doctor.
“What’s your problem?” asked the doctor.
“I’d like to see the director of this hospital,” said the oldest son, “or I’m going to sue you for breach of privacy, breach of conduct, breach of hospitality, breach of hospital, and breaching with malicious intent to spyhop.”
“Whatever,” said the doctor. “Not my problem.” And she sent the oldest son onwards to the director, who was trapped on his desk surrounded by four ringing cellphones, three laptops blaring with virus alerts and unanswered emails, forty-five unfilled forms, and a savage blackberry.
“What is it?” asked the director. “I’m a little busy here.”
“I would like to meet your supervisor of death,” said the oldest son, “or I’ll sue you for libel, liability, liberalism, and lagomorphism.”
“Screw off,” said the director. “I’m too busy for that. I’ve got forty-five other lawsuits to deal with this afternoon.”
“I’ll give you a chocolate bar,” said the oldest son.
The director’s hand darted out faster than the strike of a praying mantis, snaring the treat from the son’s grasp almost before the words had left his esophagus. “Done deal,” he muttered through the crumbs, and he directed the oldest son to the office of the local supervisor of death.
He was texting with his feet up on his desk, chewing a novelty scythe-shaped toothpick in the corner of his barely-obese lips.
“‘Sup,” he said, without looking up.
“Laws,” said the oldest son.
“Shit. What kind?”
“I am going to sue you for defamation of character, declaration of independence, and defenestration of crepuscularation if you don’t reverse my father’s impending death immediately.”
“Hit me with your best shot, dumbass,” said the supervisor of death, still not looking up from his phone. “Crepuscularation isn’t a word. ‘Crepuscular’ pertains to twilight or dusk, and as a noun it’s ‘crepuscularity.'””
The oldest son returned to his father’s deathbed, his cold blue eyes brimming with tears.
“I tried, dad,” he said. “I tried.”
“It’s okay, we’ve got time,” said the old man.
“I think it’s my turn,” said the younger brother. He pulled himself off the wall he’d been leaning on, took out his laptop, and wrote a very serious research paper.
“I’ve been planning this for a while,” he told his father. “This is really just the perfect time to sum it all up. Nothing like panic to give you that good kick in the ass you need to write more than three pages a minute.”
“What’s it on?” asked the old man.
“What isn’t it? I’ve got philosophy applied to sociology applied to anthropology applied to history applied to biology applied to chemistry. Then I applied that to physics, astronomy, and brought it back around to philosophy again. The gist of the central thesis is that your mind makes other people real but can’t control their beliefs and worldviews, which explains the U.S. Civil War, and how an unusually obvious gene pattern in the skull of Ulysses S. Grant confirms the overall necessity of this, as well as how uranium is a false concept just like the existence of other humans. This means that most of what we know about physics is fake, which throws our beliefs about the universe at large into question and ends up confirming my initial premise, which is that if enough people believe each other not to be fake they become immortal.” He blew his hair out of his eyes, rattled his fingers across the keyboard one last time, and spiked his laptop.
“Done and good as already edited,” he said with satisfaction. “I’ve just disproved death. Published ten seconds ago.”
“I don’t feel any better,” said the old man.
“Wait a few days for the peer reviews,” said the younger brother.
The old man gave him a look.
“Oh. Right.” The younger brother slouched against his wall again and didn’t look at anyone.
“Good effort,” said the old man fondly. “Reminds me of those frogs you sent into orbit years back with nothing more than matches and old cellophane tubes. Anyone else got an idea?”
“Of course,” said the middle sister. She put on a pair of appropriately stern glasses over her contacts, adjusted the indestructible plastic sheen that coated her hair, and beckoned her finest cameraman in for a close shot, adjusting the angle of her head so that it was perfectly silhouetted against the flag a helpful aide was quickly nailing to the nearest wall.
“Citizens, my opponent is all about death,” she announced, the sincerity in her voice sound enough to split redwoods with a single blow. “Death is a necessity, he claims, death is a vital part of our economy, death is there so that there may also be life. But this cold, clinical analysis, which may remind us of Auschwitz (I am most certainly not implying my opponent is a Nazi at all what gave you that idea perhaps you are implying something YOURSELF hmm?), is not the only way to look at death. Death may be necessary indeed, death may be economically sound, death may indeed define our entire species and outlook upon life – upon our very existence – but this cannot excuse on-two solitary facts.”
The music swelled.
“My opponent wants to raise your taxes and is a possible pedophile,” she said. “Goodnight, and god bless.”
The middle sister sat down again as the camera turned off.
“Election won,” she said happily.
“You’re going to abolish death then,” asked the younger son. “Won’t that be a bit messy? I can do the math for you.”
“Oh, nothing so crass as that,” she said dismissively. “I’ll just have the supervisor in charge of his case file fired and get dad lost in the shuffle.”
“Metaphysical affairs,” said the youngest sister. “Out of your jurisdiction.”
“I can get an appointee in there.”
“Sure. They take a few hundred years to process applications.”
“What?!”
“They say it weeds out the applicants that aren’t catchy enough.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said the middle sister, and she sat down again in a frump.
“I believe it is my turn,” said the youngest sister. “Tell me,” she asked the older brother, “where was the supervisor of death for this district?”
“Five rooms and four layers of willing disbelief to your left on exiting the room,” he said.
“Good,” said the youngest sister, and she went there.
“Heya,” said the supervisor. His feet were no longer up on the desk, but he was still texting. His tongue, once prepared to whet his lips once per minute with clockwork precision, had become stuck just to the right side of his mouth. It seemed to leer at the youngest sister.
“I will donate one billion dollars to you if you remove this unnecessary red tape from the path of my family,” she said.
“Nah,” said the supervisor.
“I will place one trillion dollars towards making your life absolute hell if you do not remove this useless obstruction from my father,” she said.
The supervisor shrugged and flicked an errant snotcrusting from the rim of his largest nostril.
“I’ll put in a good word with your boss and get you some stock tips,” she said.
The supervisor looked up from his texting. “Get in line. Position eight quintillion. Rounded down.”
“I’m really sorry,” the youngest sister told her father. “That’s the first time that hasn’t worked.
“Bureaucrats,” grumbled the old man. “Well, I’ve got five minutes. Anyone got any plan Bs?”
“I used all my lawsuits,” said the oldest son. “My tie is flaccid.”
“I can’t make people peer-review any faster,” said the youngest son.
“I’d be accused of flip-flopping,” said the middle sister.
“I don’t have enough money,” said the youngest sister. “I should fix that.”
“Well, shit,” said the old man. He sighed, with an underlying gurgle. “Good tries, everyone. Guess that’s it.”
“I might have an idea,” said the oldest sister, carefully unhooking her stethoscope and coiling it into a neat loop.
“Well, go on and try it,” said the old man. “Can’t hurt to try.”
“It’s going to take a little while,” said the oldest sister. “Just bear with me, and listen hard…”
So the oldest sister talked to him about world war II, and the effect that had probably had on his parent’s upbringing of him, and the possibly psychological effects this might have had, and about his fierce and competitive drive that had so obviously ingrained itself in his children, judging by their career paths, and how the seeds of resentment so easily sown between generations when the children had been in their teenaged years had only fuelled their fierce pursuit of independence, and of how reconciliation had come gradually, achingly, lovingly over the past decade, and of how this whole deathbed effort they’d all put forth really was the most heartwarming and coordinated family event they’d had since, well, ever.
“That’s a really nice thought,” said the oldest brother.
“Well, when it’s put that way, sure,” said the youngest brother.
“Homey,” said the middle sister.
“Cute,” said the youngest sister.
The old man didn’t say anything.
The oldest sister lifted one of his eyelids and critically inspected the pupil. “Gone half a paragraph ago, I’ll wager on my medical license,” she said. “And judging from the amount of tension in his muscles, I’d double or nothing that he didn’t see it coming either. Anesthetic’s for people without a little creativity.” She extracted his wallet and turned it over with a critical eye. “Five bucks. Let’s go get some juice.”

“Deathbed” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

Games for children that are no longer played.
Game: Frog-and-go-seek.
Proposed by: Benjamin.
Rules: One frog is caught and designated “it.” “It” is marked with an unremovable marker filched from Tammy’s dad, then hurled into the swamp. First person to find “it” wins and gets to keep the marker.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Four weeks, four games, four near-drownings, four mandates from four sets of parents to cease and desist.

Game: Throw rocks at the loser.
Proposed by: Tammy.
Rules: Rob is selected to be the loser. All participants must throw rocks at him until he cries for a combined total of no less than five minutes. Winner determined by quality, quantity, and breadth of bruises caused plus bonus “sob value” point system.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Three minutes, three-fifths of a game, Rob’s older brother, Jake, and Jake’s right steel-toed-clad foot.

Game: Monopoly.
Proposed by: Rob.
Rules: Let’s just try playing Monopoly okay?
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Five minutes, proposal of better use of time (see below).

Game: Monopoly is boring.
Proposed by: Susan.
Rules: Monopoly is boring so let’s make it so whenever you land on a space you get punched once for each house and an Indian burn for each hotel.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Thirty minutes, Rob’s sensitive bruises, Jake again, Jake’s other foot.

Game: Queen of the mountain.
Proposed by: Tammy.
Rules: Tammy is the Queen of the Mountain, aka the biggest pile of rocks and dirt in the old quarry behind Susan’s house. Whoever knocks Tammy off the Mountain is the next Queen.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Forty minutes, half of players refuse to be Queen, Susan treacherously uses shovel to undermine the Queen’s throne and instigates an instantaneous counter-revolution.

Game: Pin the tail on the frog.
Proposed by: Benjamin.
Rules: One frog is caught and held immobile by a judge as blindfolded competitors attempt to attach a twig to its rear by any means necessary.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: N/A, vetoed by parents in pregame warm-up on grounds of animal cruelty, unauthorized borrowing of powered screwdriver.

Game: Dictionary wars.
Proposed by: Benjamin.
Rules: Flip the dictionary open at random, then point your finger at it without looking. Whatever you picked, you have to beat the person on your right at.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Three hours, Rob kept trying to pick “rhinoceros” and whining when he missed, Benjamin picked “pugilism,” Tammy was on Benjamin’s right, Benjamin had a glass jaw.

Game: Rake the lawn.
Proposed by: Susan’s mother.
Rules: Rake the lawn clear of leaves. Payment will be granted according to the size of each contestant’s leaf pile.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Two hours, failed argument with Susan’s mother that one big communal leaf pile is worth fifty dollars, downfall of unionization due to treachery in the ranks from Rob who accepted the scab paycheck of a popsicle.

Game: House.
Proposed by: Rob.
Rules: Let’s make houses out of paper mache and whoever has the coolest house wins.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: One hour, Susan made a house shaped like a bear and declared victory early, Tammy’s “butterfingers,” Tammy said it was an accident, Susan disagreed, parents involved, parents discovered paper mache houses, walls, ceiling, partial carpet.

Game: Booooring.
Proposed by: Susan.
Rules: I’m bored so let’s think of boring things and the winner has to think of a more boring thing in ten seconds.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Ten seconds, apathy.

Game: Egg wars.
Proposed by: Tammy.
Rules: Two teams are created. Each team must select a member’s house as “home.” On Halloween, each team must egg the other team’s “home” while preventing egging of their own.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Half a night, illegal intervention at blue team “home” by mercenary party Jake and Jake’s absolutely terrifying and startlingly realistic werewolf mask, illegal defense of red team “home” by throwing rocks above permitted size of pebbles not exceeding 1 cm in diameter.

Game: Let’s try alcohol.
Proposed by: Benjamin.
Rules: Let’s all see who can drink the most alcohol without throwing up.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: N/A, Jake’s refusal to buy, parents’ refusal to buy, impossibility in smuggling 1.5L bottles of vodka out of the store in coats.

Game: Snowman duel.
Proposed by: Rob.
Rules: Each player must crafted the largest snowman possible, then tip them down the old quarry behind Susan’s house. The winner is the one that looks the coolest afterwards.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Six hours, logistic difficulties causing all snow in Susan’s backyard to be consumed, bickering, trash-talking, theft of snow, sabotage, voluntary snowmanslaughter.

Game: Exxtreme snow tag X.
Proposed by: Susan.
Rules: Tag with the houserule of a direct torso or head hit with a snowball also counting as tagging another player.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Forty minutes, exhaustion from continuous running and leaping in full snow outfits, hunger, Rob accidentally kicking Tammy in the teeth when she tackled him.

Game: Icicle fencing.
Proposed by: Tammy.
Rules: Stab the other person, who is Rob, with an icicle.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: Forty seconds, inaccuracy due to blurry vision, falling over due to overexertion and aching teeth.

Game: Just hang out.
Proposed by: Susan.
Rules: Let’s go get some hot chocolate and write some lists.
Duration of existence and reasons for cancellation: One hour, Benjamin’s gotta go home now and Susan and Rob have dinner at six.

Good game.

“Games for children that are no longer played,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

Come here now you little boys and girls, come here and sit by the radiator and listen to an old man talk too much. That’s it, come on in – yes, you too there, big fellow. You’re all little boys and girls to me, eh?
That’s it, come here and listen. The chilly wind is blowing outside; you hear that? You feel that? Jack frost left his fingerprints all over the windows last night; you saw that? You felt that?
Now let me tell you a story then, about that same wind, about a time back when your father’s fathers were little boys.

Those were the days when Riverside was at its height! The men were real men, their pipes were real pipes, heaped high with authoritative soot! The women were real women, their smiles real plastic! The children were real children, obedient and sparkling clean under threat of wilting disapproval! Yes sir, those were the days of the days. But I digress, and what’s worse, I stray from the root of my tale.
You see, life in Riverside was not all that it appeared to be, at least not all year round. Oh the spring sparkled, the summer simmered, the autumn was lush with great feats of yardsmanship and lawnrakery – those were the days! The days, I tell you!
But this suburban community held a dark and terrible secret, a blemish upon an otherwise flawless apple – the sort of apple you might put in a good-old-fashioned one-hundred-and-ten-per-cent-American pie. And it was so shameful that they spoke of it to no outsider. Each newcomer to Riverside only learned the troublesome truth when the first signed of winter came to them, when the chilly breeze blew. And blow it did that one November day, when the frost spackled the windows of the squat little suburban home owned by the squat little suburban family that was the Hoovers. Short, sweet, always-smiling Helena; lanky, loutish, too-loud William; whiny, wimpy, bed-wetting Jack, and Mr. Hoover. Mr. Hoover might have had a first name, but if he did, no one dared speak it aloud. They might get a Stern Look. Some fathers would lecture you, but not Mr. Hoover – never Mr. Hoover. A single moment of paternal authority through eye contact and you would be begging to be thrashed.
But today Mr. Hoover’s thoughts were elsewhere. The chilly wind had blown. Last night, Jack Frost had crept across the windowsills of Riverside and left his handiwork glittering for the children to innocently coo at in the morning, little tykes. For them it was a seasonal wonder.
For Mr. Hoover, and every other red-blooded all-American man in Riverside, it was a warning.
Mr. Hoover looked out the window, brow furrowed in fatherly thoughts as he watched his neighbours go about their business, planning for the future.
“The tramp is nearly here,” whispered the Joneses across the road, as they boarded up their car tight as a drum.”
“Winter’s coming,” muttered the whippersnapper next door as he triple-reinforced the flimsy roof of his convertible with rolls and rolls of masking tape.
“Goodbye,” said an old man to his driveway, stroking its asphalt surface as he held back the tears.
Mr. Hoover’s looked at his own, brand-new car, the pride of the household, as it sat in his immaculate driveway, and his finely chiselled jaw moved. Calling it clenching may have been too hasty, but it most definitely tensed.
What Mr. Hoover said to his wife after that, well, no one knows what he said. Probably nothing, because Mr. Hoover never spoke, merely commanded with firm, authoritative gestures of tie-straightening, eyebrow-raising, and pointed-looking. Mr. Hoover never spoke because that would unclench the pipe from between his teeth, and that was something that would not do, would never do. It had been his father’s pipe, and his father’s before him, and his father’s before him, and Mr. Hoover would hang himself with his best tie before he would let that heirloom be taken from his living lips.
That’s why we don’t know what Mr. Hoover said to his wife on that fateful evening. We know only that he gave a manly and authoritative nod to each of his children, clucked her under the chin, and strode out the door with his hat and coat.
Mr. Hoover stopped in the garage on his way and stayed there for some hours, tinkering with his tools as the sun fell down along with the temperature. The neighbourhood emptied with quiet panic, every single suburbanite holding their breath, waiting for something they were all-too-familiar worth, a named, known fear that was even worse than the strange and unfamiliar. Probably. Maybe. If the strange and unfamiliar went to the right sort of parties and had the right kind of job and combed its hair properly.
The sun set. The curtains of every window in house on every street of Riverside snapped shut at once – bar one. And Mr. Hoover stepped out of his garage.
It was dark and quiet and cold. No dogs barked, and the wind was low and cruel, hissing through the bare branches of each and every one of the single trees permitted upon each lot. The sky was a dead black blot, without so much as the glimmer of a single star or the reflection of light from that horrible “Sputnik” thing that the godless commies had shot up into outer space a few months ago, god knew if they’d be launching atomic bombs up there next, the fiendish red bastards.
There was a new sound. A soft whirl and moan, the whisk of a thousand thousand little bits of cold hard water hitting a new surface every tidbit of a second, far away at first and getting closer imperceptibly quickly.
Nobody was brave enough to look out those windows, but if they had, they would’ve seen a tall, white figure at the head of the oncoming blizzard, a lady that walked the way a proper lady should: with prim, forthright, businesslike daintiness. Where her heels touched, the whiteness spread like wildfire. The street became a mire, the sidewalks hillocks, and at each and every driveway she stopped and knelt and planted a tiny seed of snowflakes. And as she turned her back, each of them blossomed into a snowbank that made the mightiest pile of October leaves look puny, engulfing cars, consuming steps, encroaching saucily upon the doorframes.
The white lady came to the Hoover’s driveway, and stopped. Mr. Hoover was standing in her way, coat frosted over with shining silver from the sky. His pipe was held in his teeth with firm will and steady jaws, with only the frantic weaving of its smoke to betray the strength of the biting wind. A strange instrument was loosely gripped by his right hand, something that wasn’t quite a spade, still bearing the fresh scratch marks of its creation. The snow seemed to slide away from its edge.
The white lady gestured imperiously. Surely a man might be so bold as to approach her, but only to kneel in her presence or at the very least hold open a door. She was of a class quite beyond that of these peasants, no matter how impressive the grades received by their two point five children of indeterminate sex, the lustre of their lawns, or the magnificent of their newly purchased automobiles.
Mr. Hoover stiffly tipped his hat, but nothing more.
The white lady slapped him.
The air cracked for half a block with the approach of her palm, and the smack struck with the sharpness of a honed thunderbolt, just high-pitched enough to make a dog yelp. Falling snowflakes for half a block froze into hail in midair and dropped like stones; the lake crusted over with two feet of ice; Mr. and Mrs. Joneses, who’d forgotten to turn on the heat before going to bed, woke up as frost formed on every surface in their bedroom at once.
Mr. Hoover did not flinch, although his tie was knocked quite askew by the impact. Slowly, carefully, he reached up with his left hand and readjusted the vital piece of attire. Then he eased both hands into a batter’s grip on his not-a-spade, wound up, and struck.

What happened next can’t be said, little boys and little girls – the window frosted over so fast and so hard that my nose – which was pressed up against it, as you can see – froze right up at the time and nearly fell off. The doctors made quite a fuss over it, but not nearly as much as I did at having to miss what happened out there that night on fifteen Maplerow Avenue, Riverside. The aluminium siding on our home nearly shook itself all to pieces with the thunder and fury of the night’s battle, and it wasn’t until nearly six in the morning that it fell quiet outside.
Past dawn that morning, Helena, Jack, and me got out of bed and walked outside. The strangest sight met our eyes: our driveway was completely empty of snow, spotless except for three things: a tattered and snapped high-heeled shoe (white), a battered old pipe, and a strange and miraculous wide-bladed shovel that looked to have been quickly hammered out of a spade, the likes of which we’d never seen.

The rest is history, boys and girls. Once we’d given that thing a try on the Joneses’s driveway and saw what it did, snowed-in cars became a thing of the past – especially once word of what had happened, or might have happened, the night before. Soon driveways were being cleared without fear, cars once abandoned tearfully for the whole winter scraped free of frost overnight in a matter of hours. Women sobbed in relief, men nodded with a hint of moisture in their eyes, and all the other kids at school gave me and Jack their chocolate milk all winter. Which almost made up for all the shovelling.
We haven’t seen the white lady since. And neither have we seen Mr. Hoover.
But we keep the shovels close to our beds, and we haven’t given away the pipe yet. Just in case.

“A Suburban Fairy Tale,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.